Film Review: Greta

"I Think There's Something You Need To Know About Greta..."

In a year stuffed with superheroes, sequels and the reprise of extended franchises, once in a while a particular film comes along which sticks its' neck out and screams something along the lines of, "and how, here's for something completely different." In the case of Greta, the latest from Interview with the Vampire and Byzantium director, Neil Jordan, such a film can immediately be considered as a glorious slice of B-movie nastiness, a stalker-based, chiller-thriller which although sticks wholly between the genre field posts without offering anything exactly new to a very well-worn narrative, is powered primarily by two superb central performances who in their attempts to add a sense of seriousness to the silliness, propel the movie into a unashamedly tickly guilty pleasure. With the likes of the excellent and little seen Burning earlier this year proving how the Hitchcock template of minimalistic tension continues to work wonders within contemporary cinema, Jordan's movie evades such delicacies and heads straight into Cronenberg-esque levels of eerie, off-kilter madness, and whilst Greta isn't exactly the mainstream option for those not bothered with intergalactic superhero warfare, is still a movie with more than enough to enjoy, or for those more on the squeamish scale of humanity, at least endure. 

Based around a story from Case 39 and The Crazies screenwriter, Ray Wright, Greta follows Chloë Grace Moretz (Suspiria) as Frances McCullen, a grieving young waitress who after the sudden death of her mother has come to live with her best friend, Maika Monroe's (It Follows) fitness obsessed, Erica, in the heart of New York City. Attempting to keep afloat her strained relationship with her absent father as she goes, Frances suddenly begins a blossoming friendship with the titular Greta, a lonely, longing and seemingly upper class French woman who herself is suffering from an absent relationship with her estranged daughter, and whilst the world is rife with actors and actresses who may have done an excellent job with such a role, there is only one person to turn to when a filmmaker needs an ambiguous French femme fetale; Isabelle Huppert. After her barnstorming performance in Paul Verhoeven's rather memorable, Elle, the train to the Isabelle Huppert love-in has well and truly been boarded, and with a central performance which expertly balances comedy with shocktastic horror, her ability to make the most of what is a rather generic thriller plot, pushes Greta into another gear completely and partially covers over the glaringly obvious narrative weaknesses. Add into the mix set pieces which will make even the sternest genre fans gulp with shock, Jordan's latest is no means a classic, but for those after something a slightly bit different, Greta is solid, squeamish stuff with an excellent central relationship between two top-notch actors. 

Overall Score: 6/10

Film Review: The Prodigy

"Miles Isn’t Like Other Kids. His Intelligence Is Off The Charts. I Don’t Have An Exact Score, But It’ll Be Very High..."

Following on from The Hole in the Ground this month by being yet another horror movie fascinated with the eeriness of creepy children, The Prodigy, is the third big screen release from American filmmaker, Nicholas McCarthy, who returns to cinemas after the horror one-two of The Pact and At the Devil's Door. Featuring a screenplay from Jeff Buhler, a writer behind both the upcoming Pet Sematary and Nicolas Pesce's remake of The Grudge due to be released in 2020, The Prodigy sees Taylor Schilling (Orange is the New Black) as Sarah Blume, a middle class wife and mother to Jackson Robert Scott's (It - Chapter One) Miles, a talented and extraordinarily smart eight year old boy who soon begins to show violent tendencies and strange desires, resulting in Sarah attempting to find a cure or a reason for her son's sudden change in temperament and spirit which may or may not have anything to do with the death of a local deranged serial killer. Blending a narrative mix of The Omen and Lynne Ramsay's excellent, We Need To Talk About Kevin, The Prodigy is a film which has an awful amount of interesting ideas but slightly fails as a whole due to cliche after cliche and an overarching sense that we've definitely seen this all before. 

Beginning in a very interesting fashion as we open up with a The Texas Chainsaw Massacre-esque prisoner escape as we cut back and forth between the discovery and subsequent death of Paul Fauteux's Ted Bundy inspired mass murderer and the birth of Miles, the opening act shifts through eight years of early life development as we see the heterochromia laden offspring of Schilling's Sarah progress from eerily silent baby to first school genius. With Scott making waves as the softly spoken Georgie in Andy Muschietti's outstanding It from 2017, McCarthy clearly sees The Prodigy as his own re-imagining of The Omen, with Scott's bowl shaped haircut and sudden behavioural changes making me sort of hoping someone would have checked the back of his neck to see if both the numbers 666 and a copyright symbol were burned into it. Whilst the film lacks in abundance any sort of originality, the tonal shifts between knowing horror and cattle-prod jump scares are actually rather well done, with one dream sequence in particular managing to make me shout a rather expletive heavy sentence loud enough for the entire cinema to hear, and whilst McCarthy's latest is neither terrifying or memorable, for the time it was on, it did the job and left without harming anyone whatsoever. 

Overall Score: 5/10