JFL

Vampire Sisters is a boisterous guilty pleasure, but because that’s what its creators intended it to be, so it is actually an outrageously entertaining film; I will even heretically declare that it is the unexpected highlight of the Berlinale, or rather the European Film Market. The film is like an enthusiastically hyper-stylised Harry Potter, but with vampires instead of witches, and the target audience is girls instead of boys. Most the of the adult actors can be described as incredibly wooden, but together with the utterly self-indulgent hyper-caricature roles for adults, they form a captivating style that compliments the intentionally off-the-wall narrative and fanatically detailed production design. No one would have expected that a children’s movie about a pair of strikingly different sisters (one a rebellious emo rocker; the other longing to be ordinary) who are half-vampire would be such an admittedly bizarre trip that could elevate clichés and formulas to the level of camp, while also proudly pointing out its own primitiveness and contrivance. The sequence in which an aspect of the plot that had already been made clear long before is presented again after a series of illustrative sequences that spell everything out just so the simpletons will understand becomes a welcome joke, the all-encompassing affectation is surprisingly not annoying but oddly infectious and, when the film’s creators get themselves into a tight spot, they get out of it by tossing off a blatantly crude, Fantozzi-style joke (the farting, blood-sucking worm is somehow not the highlight in this respect).

After a handful of questionable or compromising titles that only somewhat recalled his peak years, Johnnie To carved out a surprising return to his top form. Drug War is thus actually a new beginning (or at least let’s hope so) – a thriller shot in China and maximising its potential in order to be a literally nonstop ride abounding with imaginative twists. It can even be said that, unlike Yau Nai Hoi’s spectacular displays of screenwriting flair, To’s new film features an inconspicuously refined narrative that flows from one thrilling sequence to the next without any stupid passages. At the same time, however, the whirlwind of events in the film conceals a well-thought-out machine that leads viewers precisely to where it wants them to go. An essential role in this process is played by both the lead and supporting characters and their presentation as the fast-paced narrative progresses, thanks to which the basically formulaic figures are given life and energy. An exception to this is the main character, who seems to be impenetrable through most of the film, but is eventually fleshed out in a captivatingly complex way through his own actions. Let’s hope that this gritty and chaotic thriller, which takes an entirely ruthless approach both to its characters and to viewer expectations, is truly not only a revival of To’s career, but a completely new direction in his work, as he has definitely accepted the challenge of lucrative Chinese co-productions while creating an exceptionally intense, well-thought-out and captivating film within the established boundaries.

V/H/S/2 ranks among those rare anthology films that rely on certainty rather than on a mix of newcomers and renowned established filmmakers. The originators of the project were dissatisfied with the basic stylistic requirement, which consists in filming from the first-person perspective and thematising the recording medium, as was the case in the preceding “VHS” horror-movie format. It is apparent that the next criterion for the individual filmmakers was that their contributions should also be entertaining and have an imaginative or innovative concept. Paradoxically, this setup further escalates the competition between the individual segments, as the strengths of the individual filmmakers are made apparent in their degree of imaginativeness. The biggest fiasco is the overarching narrative, which is hindered by the fact that it should provide some kind of framework for the otherwise entirely unrelated and fundamentally different segments. But the idea that the other segments are VHS tapes played by private detectives in the apartment of a deranged student fascinated by recordings of death as they investigate his disappearance doesn’t make much sense. It is an extremely absurd notion that someone transferred the segments shot on miniature digital cameras and portable HD cameras to the old VHS format. Due to the fragmented nature of the narrative, which is interrupted by the other segments, the filmmakers could do nothing more than exploit the unpleasant atmosphere and rely on scares. The first coherent segment, by the emerging directing star Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett, co-screenwriter of Wingard’s recent feature-length films, is a bizarre variation on The Eye, which gets extra credit due to its humour and ridiculously literal grasp of the “first-person” concept. This is followed by a segment from the creators of The Blair Witch Project that finally takes the camera out of the hands of protagonists facing various monsters on the opposite side of the barricade. Though it’s not anything groundbreaking, it is a perfect treat as a humorous gore show with a single idea that sets it apart. The absolute highlight of the anthology is the third stand-alone segment by Timo Tjahjanto, one-half the Thanatos promising Indonesian duo The Mo Brothers, and Gareth Huw Evans, director of The Raid. Starting out as a news report about a fanatical cult led by a deviant, their story proves to be an ingenious game played with viewer expectations. Furthermore, it is the only segment in the whole anthology that doesn’t use the presence of cameras as merely a formalistic quirk or as a means of enhancing the scares, but instead as a narrative device. And thanks to the fact that there is a full range of lenses instead of just one camera, the filmmakers have the possibility to work more with the pacing and suspense. Evans clearly shows here that even if he runs out of ideas for action and fight movies, his creative abilities will definitely not be exhausted. The last part is simply just a superb exercise in camerawork and setting up the mis-en-scén that shows off the staging skills of Jason Eisener (Hobo with a Shotgun), but it doesn’t offer anything more tangible than formalistically refined chaos.

This magnificently nonsensical eighties flick, which reveals the hideousness, perversity and degeneracy of clowns, was very aptly described by one viewer as “the best 1950s sci-fi B-movie that wasn’t made in the 1950s”. This unique project by the Chiodo brothers, who otherwise work as special-effects artists on Hollywood productions and are specialists in animatronic effects (e.g. Critters and Team America), is pure camp. The film literally and self-indulgently revels in the overwrought tastelessness of the eighties mainstream while simultaneously pushing it to an entirely absurd level by means of the titular killer clowns from outer space and, especially, phantasmagorical ideas about the clowns’ weapons and methods of killing.

I had previously considered the insipid pseudo-striptease trash flick Orgy of the Dead to be the pinnacle of lifelessness and asexuality in the realm of exploitation movies and superficial trash. Now, however, the top spot has been taken by The Stewardesses, which is legendary among fans in the western world, which can perhaps be explained only by the fact that it is one of the few Z-movies shot in 3D that has been preserved or, more precisely, remastered and subsequently re-released on DVD. The barely tolerable ninety-minute runtime can be divided into thirds. The first introduces the various characters of the stewardesses (I suppose); in the second, we see how they spend a free evening indulging in physical pleasures; and in the final third, the narrative focuses on just one of them. So far, the concept is generally unobjectionable, but its actual execution is so lame and anti-dramatic that there’s no reason to wonder why the director never made another film under his own name. The only hint of any contribution on the part of the film’s creators is the preference for women with perky breasts and, in the camerawork, the apparent inspiration of ancient statues or, more precisely, what is left of them today – most of the shots frame the actresses from the shoulders down. In the hands of a more capable crew, The Stewardesses could have been made into something watchable. As it stands, however, it is merely an asexual work (despite its numerous “erotic” sequences, which don’t come until after the fortieth minute) with radically stiff performances by everyone involved (it’s not even worth mentioning the actors and actresses), elevator music and avantgarde-style intuitive camerawork (a number of shots give the impression that someone shoved the camera or that it didn’t have a viewfinder). There are a few mitigating passages, such as the expressively conceived masturbation on LSD and a few bizarre shots made for the 3D effect – in this respect, the shot of a guy sprawled out on a chair with his legs stretched out toward the camera and the passage with a folding coat rack reign supreme. A separate segment comprises the purely nonsensical final part of the film, where for the first time, after roughly 70 minutes, there is some indication that the film actually has a screenplay, and yet it results in a desperate attempt to imitate exploitation tales with a cautionary would-be message. Nevertheless, even the momentary flashes suggesting that the film’s creators may have known what they were doing, even though it made no sense, don't make up for the all-encompassing and all-consuming triviality and lifelessness of this monstrously overrated dud.