SPRING

 

Publicity poster for Spring (© Justin Benson/Aaron Moorhead/XYZ Films/Drafthouse Films/FilmBuff – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

My film watch on 14 July 2024 was a quite extraordinary movie from 10 years ago entitled Spring, and best described as a body horror/modern romance.

It was directed by Jstin Benson and Aaron Moorhead who doubled-up in various other roles too (they co-produced it, with Benson co-editing it, as well as writing its screenplay, plus Moorhead serving as its cinematographer), and released in 2014 by Drafthouse Films and FilmBuff.

Spring centres upon young American Evan (Lou Taylor Pucci) who flies on a whim from the States to Italy in order to escape his grief after his mother succumbs to cancer. While staying in a small village near Naples, he meets a mysterious young woman named Louise (Nadia Hilker) who is very adept at evading questions but is also very keen to have unprotected sex with him, so they do.

The movie's viewers, but not Evan, are then privy to some grotesque scenes in which Louise shape-shifts into bizarre, monstrous entities, during which phases she kills and devours various animals and also murders a young man who approaches her in a dark alley one evening, mistaking her for a prostitute.

After Louise abruptly breaks up with Evan, however, he unexpectedly turns up at her home to try to resolve matters, but is terrified to find her writhing on the floor in the form of a hideous multi-tentacled monster that reminded me of Greek mythology's Scylla. However, he succeeds in injecting her with a hypodermic syringe that she always keeps close by for a medical condition that she has never elaborated upon to Evan, and he watches as she gradually transforms back into human form.

During the lengthy explanation that follows, Louise informs Evan that she is a 2,000-year-old immortal entity who renews herself every 20 years, on the spring equinox of that year, by becoming pregnant and then absorbing the resulting embryo's stem cells. Just prior to each regeneration, however, her body becomes wildly unstable, causing her to metamorphose erratically into previous monstrous incarnations, as has been happening now, and is the reason why she broke up with Evan, to keep him safe from her dangerous ravages.

Evan pleads with Louise to give up her immortality and become mortal so that they can be together as a normal mortal couple – but even though she does love Evan, is her immortality too powerful a gift, or curse, for Louise to be willing or even able to sacrifice?

The special effects are brief but effective, especially the climactic tentacled monster reveal scene, which is positively Lovecraftian and  quite horrific. On the downside, there is far too much wholly gratuitous bad language, which becomes ever more grating as the film progresses. Otherwise, however, Spring is a thoroughly offbeat but engrossing romantic fantasy, quite unlike anything that I've seen before.

If you'd like to watch an official trailer for this movie, please click here to view one on YouTube.

Finally: to view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

 

LOST TIME (aka BODY SNATCHERS)

 

My official DVD of Lost Time (© Christian Sesma/Spotlight Pictures/Ace Entertainment – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

My movie watch on 7 September 2024 was the 10-year-old straight-to-DVD sci fi/horror movie Lost Time (aka Body Snatchers), and I now understand why I was able to buy its DVD recently at a car boot sale for the princely sum of 10p…

Directed and co-written by Christian Sesma, produced by Spotlight Pictures, and released in 2014 by Ace Entertainment, Lost Time stars Luke Goss, an erstwhile late 1980s/early 1990s British teeny-bop pop star who performed with his twin brother Matt in the UK boy band Bros before reinventing himself a decade later as a successful actor in the USA (including major roles in the likes of Blade II, Hellboy II, Princess of Persia, and Tekken). Here, he plays an American cop named Carter, and the movie itself opens with his girlfriend, a young woman called Valerie Dreyfuss (Rochelle Vallese, who also co-wrote this movie's screenplay as well as its soundtrack's title track), suffering from terminal cancer, and whose sister Melissa (Jenni Blong) is devotedly caring for her.

But returning home from hospital one evening, their car suddenly cuts out, a blinding light encompasses them, and Valerie passes out. When she regains consciousness hours later, however, she is horrified to discover that Melissa has vanished. Nor is she all that has vanished – so too has Valerie's cancer. For, inexplicably, she is now totally cured.

So Valerie utilizes her new-found good health by devoting every waking moment of the next four months trying to find her sister, but when not awake she experiences hideous nightmares of alien entities operating upon her. Yes indeed, we're into alien abduction territory here, explaining the movie's title, which alludes to the frequently reported loss of time experienced by alleged abductees.

A mysterious author, Dr Xavier Reed (Robert Davi), who has written a book with that selfsame title and which deals with people's experiences that are similar to Valerie's, duly attracts her attention, and after meeting him she accepts an invitation to visit his sanctuary – a retreat where such people go to find answers. So she goes, but finds a lot more there than answers – namely, the terrifying realisation that her nightmares were not dreams, but were instead visions of what will happen to her there.

Reed and his staff are all aliens in assumed human form, and are hell-bent on harvesting human DNA in search of the so-called god gene with which to save their own species from impending extinction. Trapped inside the sanctuary, Valerie faces being experimented upon by them and her DNA stolen, not to mention having via an excruciatingly painful operation a centipede-like creature inserted into the base of her spinal cord to control her mind, but boyfriend Carter is hot on her trail after she goes missing.

Will he save her, will they find her sister, will any semblance of a coherent, cohesive plot emerge, will the constant soundtrack oscillations from much-too-quiet dialogue to far-too-loud music and ear-splitting, blood-curdling shrieks at all-too-frequent intervals ever stop, and will the cameramen locate some colour film and lighting equipment after shooting most of the movie in virtual b/w and in the dark?

Luke does his best to hold together and bring some much-needed level-headedness to this rambling, shambling, flight-of-fancy folderol. But when every time that some crucial plot-explanatory dialogue is spoken it is simultaneously drowned out by a cacophonous sound effect or some equally noisy blasts of 'music' (I use that term very loosely here!), you just know that he is doomed to failure.

Worth noting, incidentally, is that the movie tantalizingly ends with a startling twist occurring in its final moments (even more startling, in fact, than the veritable angel entity who makes a highly unexpected, unheralded appearance a short time earlier in finest deus ex machina mode), intimating that a possible sequel might have been under consideration at that time, but nothing has emerged to date.

That may be for the best, however, because at least as far as I'm concerned, the only Lost Time that I experienced here was the 90 minutes or so that elapsed while I was watching this flimsiest of flicks.

Nevertheless, if for some strange reason you'd actually like to watch an official trailer for Lost Time, please click here to view one on YouTube.

Finally: to view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

 

SORRY TO BOTHER YOU

 

My official UK DVD of Sorry To Bother You (© Boots Riley/Significant Productions/MNM Creative/MACRO/Cinereach/The Space Program/Annapurna Pictures/Universal Pictures – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

My movie watch on 19 April 2024 was a decidedly strange but engrossing satirical sci fi comedy movie from six years ago entitled Sorry To Bother You, which wickedly lampoons the perceived evils of capitalism run wild.

Directed by Boots Riiley, released in 2018 by Universal Pictures, and set in an alternate Oakland, California, Sorry To Bother You stars LaKeith Stanfield as feckless young adult waistrel Cassius 'Cash' Green, who, desperate for money to avoid eviction for not paying his rent, takes a job as a bottom-rung telemarketer.

However, and to everyone's surprise (not least of all his own!), a gift for vocal mimicry makes Cash so inordinately successful a telesales operative that he soon attracts the attention of Steve Lift (Armie Hammer), the CEO of an enormous but highly controversial company called WorryFree.

WorryFree makes its gazillions from employing poor people via lifetime contracts, for which they receive free housing and food for life in lieu of wages, but they must work there in perpetuity. In short, a (barely) legal form of slavery – but as Cash discovers when invited by Lift to take on a very special role there for the eye-watering sum of $100,000,000 during five years in that very special position, that ain't the half of it!

No indeed, for in a truly shocking manner, Cash finds out that Lift's scientists are actively but covertly transforming the company's contracted workers into bizarre half-human half-horse monstrosities called equisapiens, because such entities will work harder and longer than normal humans. The first equisapien seen in the movie is actually played  by Forest Whitaker, wearing an animatronic horse head (see later for more details).

 

Cash and two friends encountering a couple of equisapiens in Sorry To Bother You (© Boots Riley/Significant Productions/MNM Creative/MACRO/Cinereach/The Space Program/Annapurna Pictures/Universal Pictures – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Cash, realising how he has been lulled by financial greed into this realm of horrors, plans to expose Lift's abominable actions, but Lift has already taken drastic steps to ensure Cash's compliance, Let's just say that those steps are not to be sniffed at – or, more precisely, are not to be sniffed, literally!

Darkly funny but also bitingly acerbic, and co-starring Danny Glover as Cash's older co-worker Langston (Glover had originally been penciled in for the lead role of Cash until conflicting work commitments meant that he had to decline it), Sorry To Bother You certainly appeals to my more outré cinematic tastes, and is definitely well worth a watch. It takes its title, incidentally, from the conversation opener that Cash and the other telemarketers habitually use when engaging with prospective clients over the phone.

Also worth noting is that in stark contrast to so many bizarre on-screen monsters featuring in modern-day cinema, the equisapiens were created not by CGI but by more traditional physical means, utilizing a horse body suit and an animatronic head operated out of screen shot by puppeteers, including one who specifically operated the head's eyes. Each equisapien has its own unique head (designed and built by Amalgamated Dynamics, who also created suits for Alien and Predator), but the same horse body suit is used for all of them.

If you'd like to view an official trailer for Sorry To Bother You on YouTube, be sure to click here, and for a dramatic spoiler trailer revealing the enslaved equisapiens, click here.

Finally: to view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.