Director Philippe Mora has made some distinctively ropey films throughout his massive 49 year career (he's still making movies), but The Beast Within, a film you could easily mistake as a werewolf picture, is certainly one of his best. Loosely based on Edward Levy's novel, Beast is a slow-burner, but nevertheless features some satisfying scenes of gory horror, and one mutation scene that is still pretty impressive today. But there's no werewolves here; the 'beast' of the title is somehow a cicada, something that, due to studio butchering (when will they learn?), remains unexplained and confusing, putting a bit of a downer on what is a perfectly passable 80's horror.
The movie begins with happily married couple Eli (80's rent-a-bastard Ronny Cox) and Caroline MacCleary (Bibi Besch) breaking down near a small town in Mississippi. As Eli wanders off to search for help, Caroline is attacked and raped by a beast lurking in the woods. 17 years later, and Michael MacLeary (Paul Clemens) is the result of that rape, and is in hospital dying from a strange condition that has left the doctor's baffled. Desperate for answers, Eli and Caroline return Nioba, the town in which the incident occurred, only to find secretive townsfolk and a possible cover-up. Michael escapes hospital and, apparently driven by an external influence, murders and cannibalises Edwin Curwin (Logan Ramsey), a man possibly involved in what happened 17 years previously.
It will hardly give the likes of John Carpenter, David Cronenberg and Sam Raimi sleepless nights, but Beast is very well-made, with care taken to develop an intriguing plot and a creepy atmosphere. It's all anchored by an impressive performance from Clemens (whatever happened to him?), who spends most of the film looking as if he's about to explode. The change scene is hardly on par with An American Werewolf in London (1981), but it's a very good scene, and when Michael's head swells up to the size of a medicine ball, it becomes inadvertently funny in a what-the-fuck kind of way. When the 'revelations' come, it will leave you scratching your head, but it does not ruin what is a well-directed, character-driven horror that features plenty to appease gore-hounds and casual viewers alike.
Rehashing comedy formulas seems to be the go-to approach of recent years, especially for sleeper hits. One of the last decade's most successful comedies - both critically and commercially - The Hangover (2009), rode it's success to the tune of over $1.4 billion, managing to squeeze not one, but two sequels out of little more than re-telling the same jokes in slightly different ways. A whopping 9 years after Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004), comes the long-awaited sequel. The budget has been upped, the running-time stretched, and the improvisation isn't nicely spattered throughout the film, but seems to define it. But director Adam McKay and actor Will Ferrell, who both co-wrote the film, seems to think it's army of dedicated fans want to see their favourite characters do the same thing all over again.
So, rather than Ron (Ferrell) having comical conversations with his pet dog Baxter, he rescues a shark he names Doby and cradles him like a baby. This time, Brian Fantana (Paul Rudd) wows his co-workers with his condom cabinet, rather than a collection of rare (and illegal) after shaves. There's another ridiculous flute performance, but this time on an ice rink in a scene that looks like it was left on the Blades of Glory (2007) cutting-room floor. And one of the most memorable moments from the first film - the cameo-filled news-anchor street fight - is done again, but the cameo's come from Oscar-winners, superstars, a manticore, and a douchebag pop star. Only everyone forgot to make it funny. I'm admittedly being harsh, as although Anchorman 2 is not a patch on its predecessor (which I find overrated anyway), it's still funnier than the vast majority of the pap that Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson churn out what seems like every month.
Years after the first film, Ron and Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate), now his wife, are co-hosts at a successful New York news network. When their boss Mack Tannen (Harrison Ford) announces he is to retire, he promotes Veronica to fill his spot and fires Ron for his frequent on-air follies. Jealous of his wife, Ron forces Veronica to choose him or the job, to which she chooses the latter, leaving Ron to storm out on his son Walter (Judah Nelson), and take a job at Sea World. When he is fired for having a meltdown, and a failed suicide attempt, he is offered job at a new 24-hour news station by Freddie Shapp (Dylan Baker). After accepting, Ron rounds up his old team Champ Kind (David Koechner), Brian Fantana, and the presumed-dead Brick Tamland (Steve Carell), who turns up at his own funeral.
There's also a new romance that sees Brick Tamland thrown into the spotlight. While Carell is a very talented performer, the laughs he tries to squeeze out of his awkward scenes with love interest Chani (Kristen Wiig) seem desperate and forced, and these scenes frequently descend into unfunny anarchy or being weird for the sake of being weird. It is only in its final quarter when the film picks up on the laughs, making Ron blind and holed up in isolation. It's a bizarre tangent, even featuring a song about Doby the shark, but, alas, it works, and Ron even finds his humanity and bonds with his son, making it oddly sweet. This will not have the same success as the first film, which has since becomes a cult classic, and the fans certainly weren't appeased (the reviews on IMDb are outright angry), but it's simply not bad, and amusing enough throughout to warrant everyone at least giving it a fair shot.
Only his third film in 17 years, Scottish director Donald Cammell followed his mind and identity-bending psychadelic masterpiece Performance (1968) and the studio-butchered Demon Seed (1977) with another oddity, the strange and confusing, yet nonetheless effortlessly intriguing White of the Eye. Cammell killed himself shortly after seeing his final film, Wild Side (1995), heavily censored by an appalled producer, at the end of what seemed like a frustrating career. It's a shame he wasn't allowed more opportunities to direct features, as although White of the Eye sometimes steers into TV-movie aesthetic and features an unnecessarily overblown climax, it is something to be savoured and thought about a long time after the credits roll.
After a series of brutal murders of upper-class women, tire tracks left by the killer leads Detective Charlie Mendoza (Art Evans) to sound expert Paul White (Keith David). We learn through flashbacks the meeting of Paul and his now-wife Joan (Cathy Moriarty), and how he stole her away from her boyfriend Mike Desantos (Alan Rosenberg). There's something not quite right about Paul - he has the strange ability to omit a sound that echoes through his head, allowing him to hear at what point in a room that the sound from speakers should come from. Mike knows something too, and when Joan discovers Paul's secret affair, she slowly uncovers who her husband really is.
There's not really much point trying to unravel the mysteries in the movie, as it will leave you with a headache. Below the surface of giallo-esque murders and the sleazy Lynchian atmosphere, there seems to be a mythology happening somewhere. At one point, Paul whispers "I am the One,". Is this really a deeper story than it lets on, or is Paul just simply a narcissistic loon? Whatever it is, the film works better if you just let it play out, as the film has a lot to offer in terms of style. The soundtrack, by Rick Fenn and Pink Floyd's Nick Mason, is a powerful presence, and drums up a dusty, apocalyptic feel reminiscent of Richard Stanley's Dust Devil, which came out 5 years later.
Keith's performance is also impressive, especially in the latter stages when he is let off the leash. But it's about the only good thing about the climax, which tries too hard to be a number of different things and fails in just about every one of them. It becomes almost generic, with car chases and a stalk-and-slash set-piece, completely betraying the slow-build that came before. Whether Cammell was simply trying to appease his producers or indulging in mainstream aspirations, I don't know. Still, this is a bizarre little treat; uncomfortable and distinctive, cementing it's status as a must-see for fans of cult oddities.
Coming second, after The Fall of the House Of Usher (1960), in Roger Corman's six-film series of Edgar Allen Poe adaptations (all but one starring Vincent Price), The Pit and the Pendulum is possibly Corman's greatest film as a director. Shot with a lush, atmospheric mood, Pendulum faces the task of stretching a two-page short story into a credible, 90-minute movie. Working with I Am Legend author Richard Matheson, who helms the script, the film retains the psychological trip of Poe's original, while creating an interesting and ironic plot surrounding a very small group of characters that leads us to Poe's famous pendulum.
In 16th century Spain, Francis Barnard (John Kerr) arrives at his brother-in-law's mansion to investigate the unclear and mysterious death of his sister Elizabeth (Black Sunday's (1960) Barbara Steele). Seemingly overcome with grief, Elizabeth's widower Nicholas Medina (Vincent Price) tells Francis that Elizabeth died of heart failure. Francis, however, seems unable to accept this and insists that he stay until he knows the truth. With the arrival of the family physician Doctor Leon (Antony Cabone), Francis slowly unravels the story of the 'heavy atmosphere' of the castle and the torture devices in the chamber, previously owned by Nicholas' father, a notorious torturer in the Spanish Inquisition.
Made for just $30,000, the film looks remarkable and the set design is a suitable mixture of the elegant and the grim. The movie noticeably lacks out-and-out scares, and opts for a more thoughtful, psychological approach. You could even go so far as to name the movie a period piece rather than a horror. Although his toes may creep over the ham line occasionally, the film is dominated by the presence of Vincent Price, who delivers a rather hypnotic performance, flicking between creepy, tormented and simply bat-shit crazy, with relative ease. The only real complaint about the film is the performance of John Kerr, who, although a promising leading man in the 50's, delivers a one-note, forgettable performance, but that is forgivable in a movie so rich in beauty. Corman should be truly proud.
The Coen Brothers' screw with the audience from the get-go with their 1996 Best Picture nominee Fargo, widely considered their finest work amongst a filmography that can be compared to that of any of the greats. Claiming this to be based on a true story when it is in fact anything but, the Coen's cement Fargo's twisted and now highly recognisable quirkiness from the first second, only for us to transported into this strange and oddball world of funny accents, eternal snowfall, wood-chippers and kinda-funny-lookin' criminals. In fact, the movie is not even set in Fargo at all. We glimpse it briefly before moving onto Brainerd, Minnesota, where the tremors of a dangerous arrangement are played out with violence and greed.
Car salesman Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy), in a desperate attempt to make some quick cash to fund a real estate deal, hires two hitmen - Carl (Steve Buscemi) and Gaear (Peter Stormare) - to kidnap his wife and split the ransom money paid by her wealthy father Wade (Harve Presnell). With the deal arranged, Jerry makes a final plea to Wade for investment, only for Wade to accept. Jerry tries to call the kidnapping off, but it is too late, and soon enough Carl and Gaear are leaving a trail of murders behind them. With a triple shooting at Brainerd that leaves a state trooper dead, pregnant police chief Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand) is called in to investigate the crime spree.
What the Coen's, cinematographer Roger Deakins and music scorer Carter Burwell created with Fargo is a film like no other, where a giant statue of a lumberjack carrying an axe looms over the film like some unconventional deity, and the characters are equally as mocked as they are warmly captured. With their small-town ways and strange, chirpy Swedish-American accents, not many of the characters in Fargo seem to notice the darkness that has crept into their town, and seem content with planning fishing trips, shuffling along the buffet table, or discussing the weather. The accent works like a character itself, a portal into these character's lives. You've most likely quoted "you betcha!" or "oh, geez," in homage at some point if you've seen this movie before.
Fargo also treads dangerously along the black comedy line, somehow making a man being blended through a wood-chipper hilarious and throwing us off course entirely with Marge's bizarre and uncomfortable catch-up drink with lonely friend-from-school Mike (Steve Park). But the Coen's have always done that, and probably never more successful than with this. The cruelty that the Coen's inflict on the rather loathsome characters seems somehow just, and offer a truly loveable character in Marge, one of the Coen's greatest creations, and wonderfully performed by the Oscar-winning McDormand. This is a masterpiece, a defining moment for Joel and Ethan Coen, who have created a haunting, strange, dark and very funny noir, and possibly the greatest film of the 1990's.
Ranked as his personal favourite amongst Vincent Price's vast acting catalogue, Theatre of Blood seems to have stood the test of time thanks to a macabre mixture of tongue-in-cheek blood-letting and genuinely gruesome horror, a stellar ensemble of memorable cult British thespians, and some interesting observations about the death of theatre. Perhaps the latter is looking a little too much into it, but it gives the film an interesting angle, especially with Price delivering one of his greatest performances as a strictly Shakespeare performer, roles the actor himself expressed a desire to play, only to be repeatedly type-cast in the horror genre that was admittedly very good to him.
Price plays Edward Lionheart, a forgotten thesp who spends his time performing in full make-up in an abandoned theatre to a gang of meth-drinking vagrants. Only a few years ago, he believed he was on the cusp of winning the elusive Critic's Circle Award, only for it to be awarded to a younger actor who embraced the 'new'. Distraught, Lionheart was thought to have committed suicide in front of the critics who voted against him, but actually survived the attack and was nursed to health by the gang of drug addicts who found him. Lionheart was simply preparing for his greatest performance yet, and is hell-bent on murdering or destroying the people he thinks wronged him, all in the style of his greatest idol, William Shakespeare.
Above all else, Theatre of Blood is just bloody good fun. Narratively, it isn't much more than one murder after another, each one as gory and rather clever as the last. My personal favourite is Lionheart disguising himself as a camp hairdresser, dressing in outrageous clothes and a huge blonde wig in order to lure critic Chloe Moon (Coral Browne - Price's future wife) into a false sense of security so he can fry her with hair curlers. This is crazy stuff, and I don't care how many horror films you've seen, you've never seen one with a Tybalt/Mercutio-inspired sword-fight. On trampolines. But I'm selling the film short. The script, by Anthony Greville-Bell, is really quite clever, and with an ensemble this good (Diana Rigg plays Lionheart's daughter, and supporting roles go to Ian Hendry, Harry Andrews, Jack Hawkins, Robert Morley, Michael Hordley and Arthur Lowe), Theatre of Blood doesn't disappoint.
Will Ferrell is a very funny man. He has the ability to squeeze comedy gold out of the raising of an eyebrow or a silly accent, and usually steals whatever film he appears in, regardless of how long he's in it for. Somehow, his movies tend to be bad, relying on juvenile behaviour and frat-house antics for laughs, which would be fine if any real thought was put into it. Anchorman is a sort of different, mixing childish humour with first-class improvisation from some of the most talented comedy performers working at the moment, and featuring one of Ferrell's most inspired creations. Based on real-life anchorman Harold Greene, who had a talent for sharp suits and a formidable 70's 'tache, Ron Burgundy is an egotistical, chauvinistic and narcissistic ass, but boy can he read the news.
In the male-dominated workspace of 70's 'action news', Burgundy and his troupe are the cream of the crop in San Diego. Burgundy delivers the news, Brian Fantana (Paul Rudd) is the lecherous field reporter, 'Champ' Kind (David Koechner) is the loud-mouthed sexist sports reporter, and Brick Tamland (Steve Carell) is an innocent with an IQ of 48, delivering the weather and being led astray by the groups antics. Everything seems harmonious until the arrival of the beautiful and ambitious Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate). Ron falls for her and she for him, until the word 'diversity' is introduced into the newsroom, and Ron finds himself with a new co-anchor.
Ron thinks that 'diversity' is an old wooden ship used in the Civil War era, a joke no doubt the product of multiple takes and the actors playing around with their lines. Due to this heavy reliance of improvisation, the film is scattershot and random, and by playing with the rules of random, as many jokes fall flat as they cause you to burst out in fits of laughter. So for every spontaneous accapella version of 'Afternoon Delight' or Burgundy wailing over the loss of his beloved dog Baxter, we have Koecher trying to squeeze laughs out of an unfunny character or an extended joke about Fanatana wearing Sex Panther, a rare and banned after shave which just happens to smell awful.
Anchorman's main success comes from, surprisingly, Christina Applegate. It was one of the first modern comedies to really put some thought into its female character, and rather than her playing the role of whiny other half trying to get her man to behave and grow up, she is vital in bringing to life this dark era of male-dominated office spaces, and she accepts Ron for the buffoon that he is. In the ten years since its release, it has garnered a huge cult following, and led to the release of it's sequel, Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues earlier this year. Though I don't share the hype surrounding this film, it's still a consistently funny oddity, and most probably Ferrell's best comedy work.
Inception wasn't the only time English writer-director Christopher Nolan has blown our minds with a big-budget summer blockbuster - two years before, he made The Dark Knight, which destroyed most people's pre-conceptions of what superhero movies should be made of, and showed you that movies designed to make a lot of money can work your brain as much as your heart-rate. Inception also blows the minds of it's characters, themselves barely able to keep up with the multi-level dream universe they create. It's a film that revels in it's own heavy exposition; finding visual thrills in discovering the possibilities of consciously walking through a dream, or showing you the beautiful art of dream-stealing.
It follows Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), an exiled criminal who makes his money from corporate espionage jobs bankrolled by rich CEO's. Only, Cobb applies his craft by entering people's dreams, extracting information left over by the dreamer's subconscious, usually within a locked safe or protected by projections of that subconscious. After a botched job, Cobb's target Saito (Ken Watanabe) offers him the chance to redeem himself and to go home, only the task is not to steal information, but to implant it, known as 'inception'. Saito wants Cobb to implant an idea into the head of Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy), the heir to an energy conglomerate. Cobb alone has ever achieved inception, but it is a near impossible task, especially with the psychopathic projection of his dead wife (Marion Cotillard) stalking his subconscious.
It's a dangerous and bold thing for a mainstream director to have confidence in it's audiences intelligence. If there's a main problem with Inception, it is probably that things get a little too baffling at times, as the crew delve deeper and deeper into the levels of the dream, and new rules start to apply. There is a lot of information to process here, and the film spends nearly its duration trying to explain it to us. But Nolan is a fantastic writer, and most directors would lose the audience without such expert storytelling ability and great dialogue. Thankfully, Ariadne (Ellen Page), an architecture student recommended to Cobb to design the dream world, plays as a proxy for the audience, learning as we learn.
Ariadne is one of a bunch of experts lined up for the job - Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is Cobb's right-hand man and the brains behind the job, Eames (Tom Hardy) is a skilled in-dream impersonator, and Yusuf (Dileep Rao) is a chemist who provides a knockout drug so powerful that the dreamers cannot be shaken awake. There's also Tom Berenger, Michael Caine, Lukas Haas and Pete Postlethwaite in the mix, making this a huge ensemble. As expected, Nolan keeps tabs on them all, never allowing you to forget about anyone or about what the role they have to play. It's a miracle he even managed to line up such an impressive group of actors, let alone make sure no-one gets lost amongst the thick plot.
Although the climax gets a little too over-crowded in the final half an hour, and Nolan places us in the pretty dull setting of a snowy mountain, this is still innovative, stylish and exciting action cinema. It still abides by all the standard rules of the genre, but it dares to toy with them and to keep the action moving with intriguing sub-plots or simply delivering an exceptional set-piece (Arthur's no-gravity hallway fight comes to mind). It bends the mind as much as it bends the rules, and this is much about the strangeness of dreams and what it means to dream them. Nolan went on to deliver an ever better movie two years later with The Dark Knight Rises (2012), and I'm eagerly awaiting his upcoming Interstellar (2014). He alone has reawakened my faith in the 'big' movie, proving that films can deliver brains as well as bang for your buck.
Schindler's List is a film that will no doubt forever grace the endless 'Best Movies' lists trumped up by various organisations and movie magazines. It's serious subject matter, black-and-white photography, rousing score and 'directed by Steven Spielberg' tag has cemented it's status as one of the best American movies of all time. But the more hardened movie-goer will more than likely pick holes in it, and tell you that this in fact not even Spielberg's greatest achievement. Which is why, 21 years after it's release, I decided to revisit Schindler's List, and although I would agree that Spielberg has made better (he did make Jaws (1975) after all), this is still a masterful work, a wonderfully mature step-up for the film-maker who had, up to 1993, leaned towards the visual spectacle of David Lean and Howard Hawks.
The Holocaust is now very much a roll-your-eyes focus for a film-maker, easily passed off as a desperate plea for awards and serious recognition, and the Oscar are routinely stacked with movies portraying this appalling historical event. But Spielberg's movie was the first one brave enough to show it for what it was - a sickening, bloody event that humiliated its victims and where the life of a Jew was worth less than the work the Nazi's could squeeze out of them before they were routinely disposed of. Documentaries such as Night and Fog (1955) and Shoah (1985) hit hard, much more so than in this movie, but Schindler's List feels like a documentary come to life, with Janusz Kaminski's cinematography giving the movie a sense of timelessness.
Liam Neeson is Oskar Schindler, a Czechoslovakian opportunist looking to use cheap Jewish labour during World War II to make him enough money to help him retire a very wealthy man. He employs Jewish accountant Itzhak Stern (Ben Kinsley) to hire his workers and run his factory for him, at first making kitchen utensils to be used in the war. After witnessing the liquidation of the Krakow ghetto under the direction of SS-Untersturmfuhrer Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes), in which many Jews are massacred, Schindler is profoundly affected. He begins to lavish gifts and bribes upon Goeth in order to protect his workers from being murdered, but as the Germans begin to lose the war, Goeth receives the orders to move the Jews from his camp onto Auschwitz.
Made the same year as his CGI blockbuster Jurassic Park, Schindler's List showed an unseen maturity in Spielberg's work. He had made 'serious' films before, but they were always in the style of classic Hollywood; grand, sweeping epics that were generally homages to better directors. Here, Spielberg is invisible, his hand nowhere to be seen until one of the final scenes. This was film-making closer to Italian neo-realism, with hand-held cameras, bleak cinematography, and a glorious lack of sentimentality. Rather than make you weep into a tissue, he has you looking away from the screen in utter shock. Hundreds of naked Jews are humiliated as decisions are made on their ability to work and Goeth coldly shoots workers with a rifle from his balcony before breakfast. In one of its most famous scenes, a group of women are led into a shower room that may just be a gas chamber. It's one of the most terrifying sequences in recent memory.
Spielberg wisely chose relatively unknown actors to fill the roles. Neeson, now inexplicably an action star, brings a complexity to Schindler as he changes between smug womaniser and Nazi suck-up to a man capable of great kindness and selflessness, and the film isn't afraid to show the darker side of his character. Kingsley, who was known for his Oscar-winning role in Gandhi (1982), is Schindler's consciousness, a constant reminder of the atrocities that were being committed outside of Schindler's comfortable bubble. As Amon Goeth, one of cinema's most memorable villains, Ralph Fiennes steals the film. He is a hypocritical, loathsome psychopath, embodying the sense of self-righteousness of the Nazi power trip. He despises the Jews, and preaches about their extermination, yet falls in love with his servant Helen Hirsch (Embeth Davidtz), only to beat her in his disgust.
Although there are better films out there that focus on World War II or the Holocaust, it is of no surprise that this is still one of Spielberg's most revered films. It is a brave, accomplished film that gives you a sense that this was the film the director was always meant to make. However, he seems unable to resist stamping his recognisable dose of sentimentality at the climax, as Schindler breaks down in front of his workers wishing he did that little bit more. It's an unnecessarily slushy scene, a piece of director self-indulgence in what is damn near a perfect film, that, if anything, lessens the brutal impact of what came before. But this is a staunch reminder of the atrocities that humanity is capable of, and, as all great movies do, feels incredibly short at over three hours.
Documentary film-makers are required to be somewhat voyeuristic in their attempts to capture the truth, but when first time film-maker Andrew Jarecki was working on a documentary on New York's number one clown 'Silly Billy' David Friedman, he stumbled upon a shocking story, and found that most of his work had already been done for him. Not to say that Capturing the Friedmans isn't a well-structured and well-made film - it certainly is - but what Jarecki stumbled upon was something so intimate that even the very best of film-makers could not have captured footage so startling and devastating.
The footage I'm referring to is the wealth of home footage captured by David Friedman, his brothers Seth and Jesse, and his father Arnold, before and during Arnold's trial for child molestation. What we witness is an apparently happy, picture-postcard middle-class Jewish family fall apart before our eyes, unravelling a history of tension, sadness and sexual frustration between Arnold and wife Elaine, and a dysfunction that inevitably rubbed off on the children. Aside from this, Capturing the Friedmans also documents the arrest, trial and incarceration of Arnold and youngest son Jesse, revealing possible police ineptitude and holes in the American Justice System.
When a federal sting operation results in the arrest of Arnold Friedman following the delivery of child pornography, the respected teacher finds himself questioned further when police find out he taught computer classes at home to kids. Soon enough, children are appearing out of the woodwork making claims of sexual abuse and humiliation at the hands of Arnold and Jesse, and the story becomes a media frenzy. Jarecki unearths flaws in the investigations, even recording some of the former pupils denying that there was any abuse at all, as well as pointing at the obvious fact that there was no physical evidence or anything noticed by the parents at the time.
The film doesn't offer any answers, nor does it attempt to as it's not the point of the film. It puts the viewer in the role of judge, jury and executioner, forcing you to ask yourself if this is really justice, and whether Jesse (Arnold's guilt of paedophilia is certain), as annoying as you may find him, really got what he deserved based on suspicion and child testimony alone. Capturing the Friedmans is many things - a condemnation of American justice, a devastating record of family dysfunction - but whatever you get out of it, it is an expertly pieced-together documentary, frustrating and shocking throughout, and telling a great story at the same time.
The movie begins with happily married couple Eli (80's rent-a-bastard Ronny Cox) and Caroline MacCleary (Bibi Besch) breaking down near a small town in Mississippi. As Eli wanders off to search for help, Caroline is attacked and raped by a beast lurking in the woods. 17 years later, and Michael MacLeary (Paul Clemens) is the result of that rape, and is in hospital dying from a strange condition that has left the doctor's baffled. Desperate for answers, Eli and Caroline return Nioba, the town in which the incident occurred, only to find secretive townsfolk and a possible cover-up. Michael escapes hospital and, apparently driven by an external influence, murders and cannibalises Edwin Curwin (Logan Ramsey), a man possibly involved in what happened 17 years previously.
