Tagged Katharine Isabelle

Put Off Developing The Girl in the Photographs

The Girl in the Photographs. 2015. Directed by Nick Simon. Screenplay by Robert Morast, Osgood Perkins, & Simon.
Starring Christy Carlson Romano, Katharine Isabelle, Claudia Lee, Kal Penn, Mitch Pileggi, Kenny Wormald, Eva Bourne, Toby Hemingway, Miranda Rae Mayo, Toby Levins, Autumn Kendrick, Luke Baines, Kathryn Kirkpatrick, Oliver Seitz, & Corey Schmitt. Alghanim Entertainment.
Not Rated. 95 minutes.
Crime/Horror/Thriller

★★
POSTER
This movie is being touted as something special, simply because it was the last film Wes Craven produced before his passing. But outside of that there isn’t a whole lot to talk about. Even though The Girl in the Photographs has a dark, sleek look with some nice cinematography from the legendary Dean Cundey, along with exceptional music from Nima Fakhrara, ultimately there isn’t anything except style here. The writing is very dull, from a story by director Nick Simon, written by Osgood Perkins (son of Anthony) and first time writer Robert Morast. I enjoy the premise, however, outside of that the screenplay’s really a boring rehash of typical genre fare, which eventually leads us to a disappointing finish.
All the grim beauty in the world can’t save this one. Too bad, as it would’ve been nice to have a final film produced by Craven worth talking about. Instead, his name is attached to this less than mediocre attempt at making something different within the slasher sub-genre of horror. The ending is a nice touch. Just too little too late.
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When Colleen (Claudia Lee) starts to receive pictures of savage murder scenes, young women brutally killed. Are they real? Are they elaborately staged scenes?
Either way hipster photographer Peter Hemmings (Kal Penn) is interested. He wants to start staging photographs, much like this fellow artist or possible serial killer. Except by doing so he might just have put himself, and everyone around them, right in the way of the one taking those pictures.
And there’s nothing stopping the murders from slowing down.
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So immediately, the fact Dean Cundey is the cinematographer on this movie really attracted me. Because you’ve got a guy who’s done everything from classics such as John Carpenter’s Halloween, The Fog, Escape From New York, The Thing, and then there’s his work on lesser, underrated pictures like The Witch Who Came From the Sea, Without Warning, Halloween II & Halloween III: Season of the Witch, Psycho II, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, plus a ton of others like Jurassic Park and Apollo 13, and more. So naturally, if you know his work, you’ll know Cundey has a lot of talent. His eye for horror particularly is incredible. There are some beautiful bits of Steadicam in here, tracking shots that make scenes stand out from the rest of the film. One of the biggest reasons I liked anything about The Girl in the Photographs is due to Cundey and the look he brings to the picture. Everything is beautifully captured, yet even the enormous talent of a cinematographer such as Cundey cannot fully carry a movie into worthy territory.
In addition to the film’s look, its overall atmosphere is definitely aided by an eerie score from Nima Fakhrara. There were scenes where it actually surprised me, catching me completely off guard, and it weighs down the scene with a real ominous, foreboding air. There was a typical feeling at times that takes you back to the usual style of horror score, but still Fakhrara subverts the horror movie score and gives us an enjoyable bunch of music to go along with Cundey’s slick look.
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Kal Penn is great as Kumar, fairly shit in all other regards, though. He tries, but there’s something about his acting that falls flat. Especially here. The writing isn’t that great to begin with, and then there’s his dialogue. Which, coming from someone else, maybe could’ve been a little better. Penn is meant to be a pretentious-type, a douchebag. Although what comes out is just a dreary and forced performance from him that reeks of trying too hard, giving too little. Outside of him there wasn’t much else in the way of acting that’s bad. Not much good, either.
The screenplay kills everything simply because even the visuals aren’t enough to float the boat. Cundey is awesome, he’s not that awesome. Without anything new or innovative, the visuals are merely nice to look at. So on top of that there’s nothing interesting in the screenplay to lift things any further. What begins as an interesting premise, and ends in a fairly intriguing manner, falls apart in the middle like something only cooked around the edges and not inside. There’s nothing exciting at all about the dialogue, the characters are all flat, one-dimensional people we’re only waiting to watch die. So in many respects it’s the completely typical slasher horror, except it’s nowhere near as good as any of the classics, nor is it anywhere near the other horror movies Cundey’s touched in his career.
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I can give this a 2-star rating with a clean conscience. There are a couple eerie scenes, and the masks worn were unsettling. So it’s enough to watch this once, just to say you’ve honoured Craven’s dear memory. After that you’ll likely never put this on again, unless you’re masochistic and want to endure it another time over. It’s not worth it, though. Again, I do dig the ending, and the photograph in the finale is almost otherworldly, it’s scary. But a decent premise and a fun ending does not a solid horror movie make.

Rampage: Uwe Boll Channels His Rage

Rampage. 2009. Directed & Written by Uwe Boll.
Starring Brendan Fletcher, Shaun Sipos, Michael Paré, Matt Frewer, Lynda Boyd, Robert Clarke, Malcolm Stewart, Steffen Mennekes, and Katharine Isabelle. Event Film Distribution.
Rated 18A. 85 minutes.
Action/Crime/Thriller

★★★★
rampage-53f072435d6d0So I’ve been dying to review a couple of the Uwe Boll films that I find are actually decent. As I mentioned in my review of the intense and wild Stoic, I don’t think Boll deserves all the hate he gets online and otherwise. I know that many people see him as an arrogant, egocentric fool, but I don’t see him that way. Sure, he takes the haters by the horns, especially lately with his mad rant online after his funding campaign for a new Rampage instalment failed. I just don’t see why people have pushed him to that point. I agree not many of his movies are good. However, I think filmmakers, and artists in general, ought to be given a chance to get better. Is it easy to make movies? No, it’s not, though fans seem to think it is by the way they treat directors and actors who make subpar movies.
With Rampage, I believe Boll has crafted a damn good action thriller that’s a lot more interesting than so many other movies in that category as of late. There’s a good deal of crazy action, yet what interests me most about the film is the premise Boll has come up with for the main character and what he eventually begins to do as the film goes on.

Rampage is the story of Bill Williamson (Brendan Fletcher). Ole Billy, by all accounts, is what I would call a real slacker. He’s living at home with his parents (played by the fantastic pairing of Lynda Boyd and Matt Frewer), whom he gives a hard time, as if they’re meant to usher him from a boy to a man. Bill works at a garage where he’s not treated how he would like to be treated. Outside of home and work, he beats around with his equally slack buddy Evan Drince (Shaun Sipos who did an excellent job in Boll’s other fairly solid 2009 movie Stoic). The two of them eat chicken and play paintball together.
Lurking underneath all the normality, Bill is a troubled man. Inside him brews a combination of childishness and being unprepared for life, crossed with the injustices of society both actual and perceived. This develops into a boiling rage. Bill pieces himself together a full bodysuit of armour made of Kevlar, as well as the guns and ammo and toys to boot, then heads out onto the streets: the rampage is on and no one is safe. Least of all the structures of society, which Bill – misguided or not – takes aim towards, blasting hard as he can.
4013549032360_B2There are definitely a few faults in the movie’s own logic. Perhaps this has more to do with the fact the script for Rampage was officially only about 10 or so pages long and less with any lapse in reason. Maybe the fact so much improvisation went into the filming made some of the plot get muddled. Either way, there’s not enough plotholes or anything in this movie for me to be turned off. Boll does a pretty good job with the material he brainstormed going in.
What I do enjoy quite a bit is the character of Bill. Not in the sense I agree with the verbal manifesto Bill Williamson pours on us through the camera’s eye throughout Rampage. I think, in my opinion, Bill is ultimately representative of dangerous right-wing logic. Others will say he represents something different, but I think the juxtaposition between Bill Williamson and Evan Drince at so many points speaks volumes. You can tell how Bill is so completely driven by the media, by right-wing flawed logic, and so on, as the television clips & radio stations flick by in the background, like they’re lodged in his brain.
You can tell so perfectly what Bill is setting up as he switches the bag of fake money in for the one with the real stuff, then burns the fake money declaring it is the worst problem of the world. You see how he’s not any kind of left-wing extreme activist. He’s the sort of person who we might see in any school or military complex or theatre, as is so often seen in America today – a sad, lonely, pessimistic soul who only wants to drag the world down to their level. My opinion is that Uwe Boll is making more of a statement about the people who commit these vicious rampages, armed to the teeth, than anything else. While maybe some of the opinions spouted off by Evan are more relatable, Bill Williamson represents the antisocial man in society, the one who just wants to watch the world burn, if I might steal a better written line than I’ll ever write. Even though Bill is an awful person for his crimes, the character is still interesting and I think Bol does well with making statements about this sort of madness. Honestly, he needs to move further away from video game adaptations more and more. If he can do more stuff like Stoic and Rampage, I’d gladly support him even more than I already do.

Bill: “You think people are equal. They’re not.”
RampageNot sure what the budget on this film is, but I’ve got to admit some of the action is great work. As Bill stalks the streets of his city, first disabling the police station with a van loaded up on bombs in its trunk, he starts to mow down anyone and everyone in his path. There are points where I was more than impressed with the raw action Boll was giving us. One scene Bill gets hit with a couple shots from the police, but his Kevlar bounces the shots off him and then he responds with his own gunfire, ripping the cops apart. Vicious, savage action. Got to love some of that!
While disturbing, it’s actually a little funny – of course in a pitch-black sort of way – to see Bill confront a barista in the coffeehouse where he’d earlier been snubbed and insulted by the same man. It’s tense and terrible in the end, however, a brilliant little scene to watch.
There’s a bunch of dark comedy mixed in. Though, most of the film is highly serious. Pretty grim, yet exciting all the same.
11c1c38f080cWhat I like most of all, though, is Brendan Fletcher. The first time I can remember seeing him was way back now, about 15 years ago. I was watching Showcase and a film called Rollercoaster came on; he blew me away with his performance. After that, I made sure to catch any film or television show I could find him in. He has this incredible capacity for emotion, as well as a knack for dark roles. Here he displays several bits and pieces of those qualities. The mocking way he treats people, walking around town and blasting the citizens to bloody chunks, it’s truly macabre to see. Coupled with the action, its intensity, I think Fletcher’s work as the lead actor helps Boll make a solid thriller out of the material. Not sure how much of the character of Bill Williamson came from Fletcher, and what came from Boll. Regardless, I get the feeling the work well together and I’d like to see something outside of the Rampage movies where they work together. I know Fletcher has been in other Boll stuff, but I’d like a new film; maybe similar tone to this stuff, just a different story altogether. They appear to have similar sensibilities at times.
x4bR0WRI can’t not give this 4 out of 5 stars because I really do enjoy the film. Sure, there are moments I bet having a script, as I mentioned before with Stoic, might have been a benefit in the end. Although, I believe having an actor as solid as Brendan Fletcher playing the central role is something which ultimately helps the fact much of the “script” comes from improvisation. I’d like to hear the commentary on this film some day, perhaps more would be explained on that side of things.
The best part of it all is what I perceive to be Boll’s take on those who view right-wing extremist policies as the appropriate way to go, and what all these Kevlar, assault rifle toting gun lovers seem to be thinking in their heads. Bill Williamson is in no way a character fighting for the rights of every citizen, he’s fighting both society and the citizens in it. He just wants to tear it all down.
Either way, if you’re looking for something a little different and you’re secretly rooting for Uwe Boll, with every one of his films, to finally come out with something decent, you ought to check out Rampage. You might be pleasantly surprised with the end results.