Betrayal, trust, scares & death enliven Colin Minihan's thriller, WHAT KEEPS YOU ALIVE

What if the person closest to us -- our spouse, say -- turns out to be a raging-and-very-good-at-it psychopath bent on killing us? Not a pleasant thought, and in the new horror/slasher/ psychological minder-bender, WHAT KEEPS YOU ALIVE, writer/director Colin Minihan brings this concept to searing and most unpleasant life. Except, of course, that it will prove creepily diverting for those of us who enjoy an unusually good scare.

Much of the movie's power comes from the fact that one of its protagonists really does care for the other and, even as she tries to stay alive, keeps attempting to piece together why her spouse, suddenly deranged as hell, keeps insisting on her demise.

Mr. Minihan (shown at right), whose addition to the zombie genre, It Stains the Sands Red, I have not seen (being awfully tired of zombies), allows enough psychological material, along with some depth to enter the picture that, for a time, we keep hoping there will be more.

There is, but it turns out to come only via the character of the betrayed wife (and the full-bodied performance from Brittany Allen, below), who is not simply physically abused to the max but also seems to have had her entire persona beaten out of her. She's barely a shell who can no longer, perhaps does not even want to, fight back.
But of course she tries.

Her spouse -- played by Hannah Emily Anderson (below), an actress beautiful of both face and figure -- whether by the performer's choice or maybe having been directed to do this, plays her role much more by rote. Initially the couple seems happy and in love/lust, but as soon as the trouble begins, the need to kill comes barreling down the track like a runaway train, complete with our antagonist taking moments to rehearse her upcoming "grief" scene or turning on a dime from nasty to nice to coax our protagonist out of hiding.

The movie is wisely and economically a two-hander -- save for the pair of husband/wife neighbors, whom you hope will survive the onslaught. As such it relies on its two leading ladies, who come through, one in OK form, the other pretty terrifically. You may be angry at our good girl for not fighting harder, but her performance is such that you will easily buy into her grief and then her diminution.

Minihan has tricks up his sleeve; some are the usual, others genuinely surprising. Pay attention to the small details; as ever with these genre movies, there is some reason for most of them.

The Canadian location is a humdinger: lake, forest, cabin in the woods, and of course a very high cliff -- with everything as real as you could ask for.

The pacing is fine, the dialog decent enough, and the payoff is oddly satisfying. Not perhaps quite what you might have wanted, but acceptable and even more important, given what we know, believable, too.

From IFC Midnight and running maybe just a tad too long at 98 minutes, the movie opens this Friday, August 24, in New York City at the IFC Center (midnight screening only!) and in Los Angeles at the Arena Cinelounge. Simultaneously, it becomes available nationwide via VOD.

Chris Peckover/Zach Kahn's BETTER WATCH OUT: a holiday babysitting movie for the ages

Yikes -- they just don't do this in movies! Well, now they do. In fact, there is maybe one film (I will not give away its name but it was made in 1956) with a similar theme in which some very bad things happen. Based upon a famous Broadway play, the Hollywood movie version, of course, had to futz around with the finale to make sure conventional justice was done. BETTER WATCH OUT, on the other hand, dispenses with just about all the rules of this particular game that you will have formerly viewed. And so well done is it that the movie becomes an instant classic among Christmas-themed, dark thrillers that also boast great comedic flair.

The conception of director/co-writer (with Zach Kahn) Chris Peckover, shown at right, the movie begins as your typical, if rather sexually interested babysitting movie featuring a fouler mouth than usual. (The film is R-rated, the reasons for which, as it moves further along, you will ever more fully understand.) This is a home invasion tale with a twist that, once it occurs, takes us into quite uncharted territory.

That's it for plot, folk. This one deserves utter no-spoiler respect, and I suspect its many fans will rightly refuse to disclose any secrets.

What I can say is that Better Watch Out has been cast to perfection, starting with that babysitter, the beautiful, poised and intelligent Australian actress, Olivia DeJonge (above and below) -- who is simply a knockout.

Her twelve-year-old charge is played by the angelic-looking young Aussie actor, Levi Miller (above, left, and below, right, who also played Peter in the ill-fated Pan), and Mr. Miller walks away with the movie. They don't give acting awards for films of this genre, but if they did, the kid would be a shoo-in. He is that extraordinary.

The rest of the cast is equally well chosen, from our hero's best friend, played by Ed Oxenbould (at left, above) to Aleks Mikic (below, right), who plays our heroine's current boyfriend, and Dacre Montgomery, who takes the role of her ex.

In the roles of our little sleepwalking cherub's parents are two more favorites: Patrick Warburton and Virginia Madsen (below, right). They're just fine, too. Everyone gets quite into the spirit of things here, and the result is a humdinger.

If you read some of the negative reviews, say, on the IMDB (critics were mostly bowled over by the film), you will find a sensibility that screams, "Wait! You just can't do something like this in a holiday/home-invasion movie!" (Unless you're Michael Haneke, of course.) But you can. And they have. And the result, as they say, is a lulu. Don't let this one get past you under any circumstance.

From WellGo Entertainment, and running a just-right 89 minutes, after a short but successful theatrical run, the movie hit DVD and Blu-ray this week -- for rental, purchase and, I believe VOD/streaming, as well. 

In the loop: Gareth Tunley's compelling puzzler, THE GHOUL, arrives on Blu-ray/DVD

A knockout -- even if it may leave you more puzzled going out than you were going in -- THE GHOUL, a movie written and directed by Gareth Tunley so consistently genre-jumping that it's probably sui generis, proves a kind of enigmatic mystery-thriller with over/undertones of everything from the occult to a master class in psychology. Think Repulsion meets... oh, hell, comparisons are pretty useless here. Just watch and wonder. And enjoy. Whatever your opinion at film's end, you'll be hooked throughout and thoroughly enjoying yourself, TrustMovies suspects.

The name most bandied about in the film's advertising is that of Ben Wheatley, who acted as executive producer. And why not -- since his is the most famous of anyone connected with the movie? Yet this is quite unfair, as the movie is better than literally anything Mr. Wheatley has so far accomplished. If any justice remains in the movie world, we shall be hearing from Mr. Tunley (shown at left) again and again.

What this filmmaker has done is to give us the movie equivalent of a Möbius strip or an M.C. Escher drawing. And yet The Ghoul is no mere stunt (or if it is, it's one of the better stunts in film history). It is also a living breathing, beautifully conceived, executed, written, directed and acted tale of... what?

That is the question that will dog you as you watch. The possible answers are plenteous, with character dissolution and/or the take-over of one person's mind and actions by another the most prominent. Our leading man, Chris, played by the unforgettable Tom Meeten (shown above and below) is the film's central character, and he is on-screen for practically the entire movie. Mr. Meeten possesses a face and a body that manage to be, by turns, dowdy, handsome, plain, sexy, riven, graceful, graceless, and always compelling.

The movie is Chris's journey, and Meeten makes it -- thanks to camerawork (Benjamin Pritchard) that consistently finds the right subject and view and editing (which seems to be divided amongst several folk) that couples all this with precision and speed -- something from which you cannot avert your gaze. As writer and director, the filmmaker provides smart detail after detail in the foreground, background, and via the strange and varied cast of supporting characters that makes that journey utterly riveting.

The plot make perfect sense. For awhile. From the opening scene, in which we learn of a bizarre double murder to the penultimate one that provides a kind of climax that explains (and yet maybe doesn't) all that has gone before, Mr. Tunley is able in something like 85 minutes to bring us full circle and yet keep us going even farther (afield).

Along the way we meet a would-be girlfriend (Alice Lowe, two photos up), a bizarre best friend (James Eyers, above), a therapy companion (Rufus Jones, below, right), and especially a couple of very strange but interesting therapists (beautifully brought to life by Niamh Cusack and Geoffrey McGivern) who, together, bring the movie its most unsettling blend of kind, charming compassion and utter manipulation.

There is even an oddball character (Paul Kaye, below) whose entire job in the movie, it seems, is simply to tell a most interesting and funny shaggy-dog story. What drives the film forward (and may simultaneously drive you nuts) is how believable everything seems. Until it is clear that -- yes? no! -- something quite else is wrong here. Still, we and Chris persevere until we've reached... ummm, you'll see. What you'll make of it all is up for grabs.

On the Blu-ray disc's Special Features is a delightful short film featuring the director and much of his cast -- all of who, it tuns out, are comedians known for their character-driven, stand-up comedy routines. Considering that The Ghoul may be one of the most dour, dark creations ever to hit video, this seems particularly intriguing. It's like that clown who so wants to play Hamlet (and then does it damned well) -- times ten.

From Arrow Video and released here in the USA via MVD Entertainment, The Ghoul arrived on Blu-ray (in a fine transfer) and DVD last week, and is available now for purchase and/or (I hope) rental. For folk who demand something different, compelling and lots of fun, this one's a don't-miss deal.

With WIND RIVER, Taylor Sheridan writes and directs another fine where's-the-justice? movie

One of last year's best films, Hell or High Water, turns out to have been no fluke, as its first-class writer, Taylor Sheridan, is back this year with another top-notch movie that is again all about trying to obtain a little justice from people and things -- think corporations, society, America -- that are quite unwilling to provide it. Hell or High Water tracked the banking industry in Texas, while Sheridan's new one WIND RIVER, which the writer has also directed, is set on an Indian reservation in Wyoming, where the malfeasance has dribbled down from another sort of corporate entity into its employees.

If Mr. Sheridan (shown at left, who also has had quite a lengthy career as actor) is not quite up to the level of the two directors who have filmed his other screenplays -- David Mackenzie and Denis Villeneuve -- he has nonetheless done a very respectable job, and often more than that. He captures with great strength and tact the the pain and grief surrounding a death in the family (two families, actually), as well as handling the mystery and thriller elements very well, too. In fact, his movie's single action scene is one of the best we've witnessed in a film in quite some time.

This extended scene (above) is by turns surprising, suspenseful, shocking and as full of violent action as a connoisseur could want. But it is in the quiet, thoughtful moments that Sheridan's poise and accomplishments are also evident, never more so than in the film's final scene, as our hero (one of them, anyway, given a deep, quiet and full embodiment by the excellent Jeremy Renner) and his Indian friend (another wonderful performance from Hell or High Water's Gil Birmingham) sit in the snow, below, as they quietly talk and ponder.

Sheridan's stars here are Renner and Elizabeth Olsen, below, making further good on the predictions of a long and starry career made at the time of this actress' earliest appearances on film. These two work so well together, even as their characters keep their appropriate and professional distance, that I hope we'll see them together in other films again soon.

Mr. Sheridan's deepest concerns appear to be with the longing for and journey toward justice. In Hell or High Water, this is fraught with ironies and sadness. Here it is more direct but no less difficult. Wind River is a depressing movie -- what film about American Indians worth its salt would not be? -- but it is so well conceived and executed that I doubt you will be bored for even one moment of its 107-minute running time. The film is alternately sad and darkly funny, surprising and lively, thrilling and doleful.

All the subsidiary characters come to vital life, too, and this is not easy, I suspect, for a relatively new filmmaker to achieve. Sheridan's writing is unusually on the mark, however, giving us lots of info with little verbiage.

From The Weinstein Company, the movie opened in New York and L.A. a week or two back and hits South Florida this Friday, August 18 -- in the Miami/Fort Lauderdale areas at AMC's Aventura Mall 24, Coral Ridge 10, Sunset Place 24, and Weston 8; at the Cinebistro at Cityplace, Dolphin Mall 19 Theatre, Miami Lakes 17,  Cinemark Paradise 24, Cinepolis Grove 13, Cinepolis Deerfield 8, Deerfield Beach,  Gateway 4, IPIC Intracoastal, The Landmark at Merrick, and Regal's Oakwood 18, Kendall Village Stadium 16 and South Beach 18. In West Palm Beach and Boca Raton, you find it at AMC's CityPlace 20, The Movies of Delray, Downtown 16 Cinemas Palm Beach Gardens, Cinemark's Palace 20 and Boynton Beach 14, Cinepolis Jupiter 14, IPic Entertainment Mizner Park 8, Regal Shadowood 16 and Royal Palm Beach 18. Wherever else you reside in our large, and increasingly Trump-dumbed-down country, click here to find the theaters nearest you.

Robin Pront's dark and devilish THE ARDENNES -- Belgium's BFLF "Oscar" entry -- opens

A few years back the little country of Belgium scored a major coup with its copping a Best Foreign Language Film nomination for its very interesting combination of crime, castration and farming titled Bullhead, which, among other things, brought actor Matthias Schoenhaerts to the world's attention. Belgium's entry into the Oscar sweeps this year is also crime-related, but TrustMovies suspects that this film -- a perfectly good crime-and-family combo called THE ARDENNES from first-time/full-length filmmaker Robin Pront -- was simply too dark and dismal to capture the Academy. (Belgium might have done better entering its fanciful/funny The Brand New Testament.)

Filmmaker Pront, shown at left, has given us something like a cross between a dark Scandinavian crime thriller and Animal Kingdom -- but with this family much less skilled in the ways of crime and socialization. His movie is by turns nasty, sad, consistently unsettling and even occasionally darkly funny, never more so than in a scene involving, yes, a bunch of ostriches on the loose. The settings range from prison to a bleak residential town to those titular Ardennes -- a very large patch of heavily forested hills stretching from Belgium and Luxembourg into parts of Germany and France -- in which the film's fraught and violent finale takes place.

The tale told here is of two brothers. one of whom has gone to jail for a crime without involving either his sibling or his girlfriend to the authorities. By the time he gets out of prison, the girlfriend (Verlee Baetens, below, right) is pregnant by the other brother, and it is clearly but a matter of time before the proverbial shit hits the fan.

This situation accounts for much of the uneasiness that Pront (who both co-wrote and directed) builds throughout. The character of the imprisoned brother -- high-strung and very violent -- accounts for the rest. As played by Kevin Janssens (above, left), this fellow is gunpowder, fuse and match all in one. His sibling (Jeroen Perceval, below, right -- during one of the bleakest "holiday" meals you'll have witnessed on film) proves a weak sister who can't seem to follow through on much of anything. This sibling combo proves as negative for all concerned as you might imagine. (Mr. Perceval also co-wrote the film.)

Violence moves from minor to major and then to a climax that offers plenty of the expected plus a very good -- well, very dark -- surprise. The movie lasts but 96 minutes, which is just long enough to contain the few days, post-prison, in which the plot unfurls. The pacing is tight, performances are on target, and all technical aspects are handled with professionalism and flair.

The finale, which brings us to that titular forest haunt, involves a couple of very bizarre characters, one of whom (Jan Bijvoet of Borgman, above left and below) was in prison with our non-hero and is now going to help him out of his "predicament," while the other is a tall transvestite (below, left) who would so prefer not to kill the victim to whom he's quite attracted. Still, duty calls....

For folk who appreciate dark crime dramas, I would think The Ardennes will be a "must."  For the rest of you, it's a matter of taste. But be warned: This is one very dank exploration of a bad-to-worse set of situations. From Film Movement, the movie opens this Friday, January 6, in New York at the Village East Cinema, and in Los Angeles on January 13 at Laemmle's Royal. To see all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters, simply click here and scroll down.

Schrader/Bunker's DOG EAT DOG gives Nicolas Cage his most interesting role in some time

Compulsively watchable, even as it has you occasionally rolling your eyes, the new film by Paul Schrader and adapted by Edward Bunker from the novel by Matthew Wilder), DOG EAT DOG, is Schrader's most enjoyable, if hugely violent, in quite a few years. From its opening in a pastel-colored suburban home (soon to be heavily blood-splattered) to baby kidnapping-and-murder, it is also his most transgressive -- even given his past array, including The Comfort of Strangers and The Canyons.

Mr. Schrader, shown at right (and below, left), also plays a supporting role in the film, and he does a bang-up job portraying a criminal king- (or at least prince-) pin known as El Greco. I am guessing what attracted him as a filmmaker to this tale of really, really bad guys gone worse is its combo of macho posturing laced with light philosophizing on everything from love and need to religion and violence. In any case, it proves a very good match.

Visually, the film is lots of fun, too. As much as I've enjoyed and respected a number of Schrader movies -- from Blue Collar and Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters to Auto Focus and (especially) Adam Resurrected -- it seems to me that this screenwriter and director is loosening up quite a bit from his earlier, more restrained elegance (remember American Gigolo?) to a more relaxed and occasionally even enjoyably florid visual sense.

As restrained as proves Nicolas Cage in his role as the "leader" of a trio of pretty stupid criminals hoping to do that last job that will set them up for life, he is matched moment for moment by another oft-seen (and oft off-his-noggin) actor Willem Dafoe, who has here his juiciest crazy-man role in some years.

Cage narrates the film in a low-key monotone, which reaches its apotheosis in the final moments with a dark, ugly but maybe on-the-nose appreciation of us humans and our motives. Beforehand we're treated to the three first-class performances of Cage, Dafoe and the other member of the trio, a big, bald, beefy lug played with equal parts finesse and frightening menace by an actor new to me, Christopher Matthew Cook (below, right) -- who would steal the film were it not for his co-stars

The women on hand are more or less cursory, but several of them are given very nice scenes to play -- usually with fear and/or loathing, given the characters of the men they're up against -- and they accomplish this with some panache.

The old honor-among-thieves gets the usual workout here, but so dishonorable in so many way is our little group that it takes the film into new realms of betrayal. To note that no one gets out of here alive is to put it rather mildly. The fine cinematography is from Alexander Dynan, and the alternately ugly and gorgeous (oh, that scene in the diner!) production design comes from Grace Yun.

From RLJ Entertainment and running just 93 minutes, the film does not outstay its dark and stylish welcome. It opens this Friday, November 4, in Los Angeles (Laemmle's Music Hall 3) and New York (AMC Empire 25) on November 4th, with a theatrical expansion and VOD to follow on November 11th. The DVD and Blu-ray hit the street on December 27.

Kiyoshi Kurosawa's CREEPY: The Japanese master of quiet fright returns -- with a jolt

If you've seen a film by Kiyoshi Kurosawa -- say, Pulse, Cure, Tokyo Sonata or the beautifully oddball Bright Future -- you'll know how remarkably quiet, riveting, beautifully-if-unshowily composed and surprisingly diverse this filmmaker's work can be. Kurosawa (shown below) is noted mostly for his films that fit somewhere into the thriller/ mystery/other-worldly realm. His latest, the perfectly titled CREEPY, is a terrific addition to that realm.

TrustMovies would call this very creepy movie one of Kurosawa's best, except that I say this about each of the man's films. I've never seen a bad one. He's too subtle and too interested in character and motivation to ever hand us anything so typically "frightening" as those Ringu/TheRing movies. Kurosawa frightens us in an entirely different manner. There is always something beyond our understanding in his films, but he gives this to us in such as way that we buy into it and finally accept that it indeed goes beyond what we can fully comprehend. Somehow he even makes us grateful.

His movies may thrill, frighten, shock and startle us. But they also approach art. Creepy begins with a detective questioning a serial killer and trying to get at the man's motivation and morality. This does not end well.

Soon after, our "hero" (a particularly fine, strong and taciturn performance from one of the best-looking men to grace current cinema, Hidetoshi Nishijima, above, and below, center) is living with his wife and big, shaggy dog in another part of town and attempting to get on with his new life as a teacher, and, along with his wife, to get to know his new neighbors. This does not go well, either, and it leads us, the family, and some of our hero's former co-workers into very dark waters.

To go much further into plot points would spoil things. Suffice it to say that the cast includes the great Teruyuki Kagawa (above, left, and below, from Devils on the Doorstep and Key of Life) as the family's most unusual neighbor, and Yûko Takeuchi , who brings beauty, pathos and finally something very strange and frightening to her role of the detective/teacher's long-suffering (and then simply suffering) wife.

The beyond-our-understanding element here is some kind of strange liquid injected into the various characters that appears to allow them to be controlled utterly. Or maybe only somewhat. The degree is important, and it is central to the theme and mystery here, which deals with responsibility, morality and motivation. By the end of Creepy, you will not only have been creeped-out but left, as are certain family members, to wrestle, perhaps forever, with the results of what they did -- or didn't -- do.
And why.

The movie -- from KimStim Films and running a long but never-for-a-moment dull 130 minutes -- opens this Friday, October 21, in New York City (at the Metrograph), Los Angeles (at Laemmle's Ahrya Fine Arts) and San Francisco (Roxie Theater), with a further rollout across the country coming in November. To see all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters, click here and scroll down.