Held

Copyright © 2020 by Magnet Releasing

Story
On their ninth wedding anniversary, Emma (Jill Awbrey) and Henry Barrett (Bart Johnson) spend a weekend reconnecting in a lavishly state-of-the-art, gated rental home. In the next day, they awake to find all of their belongings have been replaced with new things and are instructed by a menacing voice from within the house to obey or the couple will be punished. Trapped, they are coerced into enacting ‘traditional’ husband and wifely duties while also searching for an escape route and away from their hidden tormentor.

Review
No stranger to horror, directors Travis Cluff and Chris Lofing’s follow up after ‘The Gallows’ films is a progression in style and choice. The found footage, jump scares and night scenes have been replaced with sharper, brighter and more distinct visuals. They proficiently capture the set’s beautiful interior and exterior designs of the house while maintaining its eeriness as the intrigue kicks in. Allowing them their visionary breakthrough is a thoughtful script capitalising on the #MeToo movement.

Doubling as writer, Awbrey cooks up quite literally about gender politics as Emma and Henry are pressured into behavioural conformance; she is the cook while her man is the chivalrous specimen from a bygone era. Having more life experience from troubled pasts, it also defines one of them moving forward as the decisions made shape a new future for the character. The gradual reveal of the pair’s layered history has adequate subtext to whet the viewer’s appetite underscored by Richard Breakspear’s sporadically haunting music.

Cluff and Lofing only disclose minimal information as to what is going on. They cleverly leave us as disoriented and confused as the two leads. It does mask the plot’s limitations and unrealised ideas that resemble a more violent edition of ‘The Stepford Wives’ with the mayhem contributed by the smart home’s advanced features. Lofty expectations aside, ‘Held’ is still an above average chiller which is held together by a hybrid of imaginative concepts and a tautly controlled direction from the film makers.

Rating
Entirety: B+
Acting: B+
Plot: B+

Stowaway

Copyright © 2021 by Netflix

Story
On her final space flight, Commander Marina Barnett (Toni Collette) has been assigned for a two-year research operation to Mars with her crew consisting of biologist David Kim (Daniel Dae Kim) and medical researcher Zoe Levenson (Anna Kendrick). After a successful takeoff, the team finds an interloper Michael Adams (Shamier Anderson) hidden in a ceiling access panel. He unwittingly damages the ship’s CDRA which scrubs away carbon dioxide to prevent any onboard from suffocating. As aborting the trip is impossible, the three travellers will need to decide if the mission is still their priority.

Review
Space expeditions are always a risky and dangerous exercise for human beings to continue broadening our reach beyond our own planet in the name of preserving humanity. Writer-director Joe Penna reminds us of how susceptible and feeble we really are in a foreign environment and engages us with a thought-provoking philosophical offering sans the horror movie clichés (of aliens and evil conglomerates or robots) that are commonly utilised in framing the familiar peril-in-space tropes about a moral dilemma faced when our lives are on the line.

A perceived general view which has no direct answers to the situation the people are put in. It is about sacrifice and who gets to determine the order of importance. Will they be able to live with the consequences from that loss? Penna and Ryan Morrison grant a profoundly gripping, realistic and captivatingly acted drama. The direction is uncluttered and the sci-fi does not rely on any aggrandisement in exploring its issues from every possible angle to the detriment of its less than stellar spacewalks. But even the unlikeliest condition can be used to amp the dread and Penna is a wonder at that.

It is during interactions with Mission Control, we only hear a one-sided conversation involving the crew’s reactions, shoving us to scramble and figure out the rest. It is tense and Penna is refining this technique, having done previously in his debut effort ‘Arctic’ where a stranded Mads Mikkelsen is exposed to a brutal, subzero weather. Joining Mikkelsen and producing identical complexity and intensity are shared equally among the four actors, never overblown. Collette is amazingly strong and centered allowing Anderson to be tender and moving as the titular character. Kim’s range finally is in full display and it peaks at a career best thus far but it is Kendrick whose performance conveys anxiety, shame, empathy, conviction and vivacity from the onset till the film’s heartbreaking end is the key to why it hits as deeply as it does.

Rating
Entirety: A-
Acting: A
Plot: A-

Arlo the Alligator Boy

Copyright © 2021 by Netflix

Story
Deserted as a baby, the basket in which Arlo (Michael J. Woodard) laid drifted down to the New Orleans bayou where he was found and raised by Edmee (Annie Potts), a woman living alone in the swamp. Years after his arrival, Arlo’s individuality has made him curious about the wider world urged by his habitual gazing at passengers enjoying themselves on passing riverboats. With Edmee’s blessing and information about Arlo’s past, he sets off to New York City, hoping for a reunion with his biological father (Vincent Rodriguez III).

Review
Contemporary queer cinema so often centres on tales of tragic outcomes, it involuntarily projects an image to society that if you are queer, you are bound for adversity stumbling your every move. It is the lack of optimism in these films that a feature like ‘Arlo the Alligator Boy’ is not only appreciated but revolutionary. Queer representation in animation is still severely deficient especially in mainstream productions which bait us with possibilities only to end up with blink-and-you-miss-it moments.

However, ‘The Alligator Boy’ avoids the same pitfalls. It daringly molds its characters with LGBTQA+ personalities and traits but subtle enough to be enjoyed as a sweet, touching and colourful story about acceptance and kindness that the undistinguished storytelling is a minor quibble. As a setup for the upcoming TV series, it functions as an extended pilot which loses some of its allure in three quick sequences to establish stronger characterisations and relationships among the main characters.

It sidelines Arlo’s newfound friends while maintaining his daddy issues as the primary focus for this 90-minute yarn. It strains to sustain an adult’s interest but my guess is children will be sticking around for more buoyed by the exquisite singing voices and chemistry from Woodard, Rodriguez and Mary Lambert though the songs themselves are vexingly forgettable, preventing the musical from being anything more than the flavour of the month. But it is greater than the sum of its parts as a voice for advocating diversity and inclusivity.

Rating
Entirety: B+
Acting (Voice): A-
Plot: A-

Mortal Kombat

Copyright © 2021 by Warner Bros. Pictures

Story
To make ends meet, mixed-martial artists fighter Cole Young (Lewis Tan) participates in these cage contests but his self-doubt is keeping him from returning as a champion. He meets Jax (Mehcad Brooks) after a fight and is told that the dragon birthmark he bears will fulfill a prophecy as one of the selected to defend his world, aka Earthrealm from the dark forces of Outworld’s Emperor Shang Tsung (Chin Han).

Review
The critically divisive 1995 adaptation from the future ‘Resident Evil’ director Paul W.S. Anderson set a low bar for video-game movies to be taken seriously. Helming the remake is Australian commercial director Simon McQuoid along with screenwriters Greg Russo, Dave Callaham and Oren Uziel have assembled a more faithful and violent feature. It is fairly obvious the main objective is to rectify the earlier version’s watered-down fatalities and almost securing an NC-17 rating on purpose, it culminates with a couple of gruesome battles that should please diehard fans.

The 2021 retelling has been constructed as the first of many more adventures to come. So it does go through the motions of being an origin story that packs enough background description on ‘mandatory’ characters such as Liu Kang (Ludi Lin), Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee) and Jax. They add a bit of emotional significance to the carnage of their mano-a-mano brawls which do not necessarily follow the game’s narrative. And that is a welcome creative decision. But before we are treated to said sequences, the movie degenerates into an extended training session. It feels rushed and offers no satisfactory pay-off when the defenders finally unlock their unique talents.

Grounding the premise’s fantastical nature and being just a little too earnest, the script wisely lets Kano (Josh Lawson) rip and be a punchline machine whose ‘surprising’ choices prod the action onward. Lawson is annoyingly amusing. Although a richer staged climax with Sonya evading Kano and his laser eye would have been awesome, McQuoid and cinematographer Germain McMicking still deserve praise in capturing the fluidity of camera movements in all the fight scenes, allowing continuous action to be seen between screen martial artists like Joe Taslim and Hiroyuki Sanada. A flawless victory it ain’t; partially nullified by a less memorable theme song originally composed by the Immortals though I dare say that it will test all of Warner Bros.’s might not to greenlight a sequel.

Rating
Entirety: B
Acting: B+
Plot: B

Rated R for strong bloody violence and language throughout, and some crude references