BLACK WIDOW : Wednesday 28th July 2021.

I finally got around to watching the M Rated 'BLACK WIDOW' this week - the long awaited superhero film based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name. This is the 24th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the first film in Phase Four of the MCU. Its release was delayed three times from an original May 2020 date due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. 'Black Widow' saw its World Premier screenings on 29th June this year at various red carpet fan events in London, Los Angeles, Melbourne, and New York City and was released in Australia and the US on 8th and 9th July respectively, having garnered generally favourable Critical acclaim off the back of a US$200M production budget. This film is Directed by the Australian multiple award winning and nominated writer and film maker Cate Shortland whose three prior feature film credits are 'Somersault' in 2004 with Abbie Cornish and Sam Worthington, 'Lore' in 2012 with Saskia Rosendahl and 'Berlin Syndrome' in 2017 with Teresa Palmer. The film has so far grossed US$320M and is also available to stream on Disney+ with Premier Access.

The film opens up in 1995 in Ohio where two young sisters, Natasha (Ever Anderson) and Yelena (Violet McGraw) are playing in their back yard. Their mother Melina (Rachel Weisz) calls them in for dinner. Their father Alexei (David Harbour) joins them saying to his daughters that the adventure he had always promised them is happening tonight and that they need to leave immediately. They bundle a handful of their belongings into the family car and drive off into the night. They turn down a dirt road and into a field, where under a concealed canopy is a light aeroplane. The two girls jump in, as does Melina, leaving Alexei to fend off a convoy of advancing patrol cars all guns blazing. Melina sustains a gun shot wound leaving Natasha to take the controls. With Alexei hanging onto the wing shooting at the patrol cars Natasha guides the small aircraft into flight leaving the carnage below. They land in Cuba and are greeted by General Dreykov (Ray Winstone) who has Natasha Romanoff and Yelena Belova drugged and carted off for training and indoctrination to the Red Room. It turns out that Alexei Shostakov and Melina Vostokoff are Russian undercover agents who posed as a model family in Ohio with two surrogate daughters for three years before making off with S.H.I.E.L.D intel which they passed onto Dreykov (a nod to James Bond here), who also runs the Black Widow programme. Dreykov has Alexei imprisoned for life, while Melina becomes a top tier scientist within the Red Room.

We then fast forward twenty-one years and Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) is on the run for violating the Sokovia Accords after she had defected to S.H.I.E.L.D and following the bombing of Dreykov's office in Budapest seemingly killing him and his young daughter Antonia. The US Secretary of State Thaddeus Ross (William Hurt) is hot on her heels but she successfully evades him and escapes to a safe house located in remote Norway that has been provided to her by a close friend and former S.H.I.E.L.D ally Rick Mason (O-T Fagbenie). In the meantime in Morocco, Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) kills a Black Widow but comes in contact with a synthetic red gas that neutralises the Red Room's chemical mind-control agent. Belova sends the small case of antidote vials to Romanoff, hoping she will send the Avengers to free the other Widows. Romanoff unknowingly drives off with the vials to get fuel for her generator when her car is bombed and she is attacked by Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko) who is after the case of vials and not her. 

Romanoff manages to escape Taskmaster by jumping off a bridge into a river and when she surfaces with the clutch of vials she notes from a childhood photograph contained therein that they were sent by Belova. The pair reunite in Budapest and after some intense close quarter hand to hand combat they call a truce (a nod to Jason Bourne here) and Romanoff learns from Belova that Dreykov is still alive and the Red Room is still very much active. They are then set upon by a group of Black Widows and Taskmaster from which they successfully escape and then meet up with Rick Mason again who supplies them with a beat up old Russian helicopter. 

Flying their helicopter into what looks like a Siberian prison camp located at the base of a snow covered mountain range Romanoff and Belova break Shostakov out of prison, in a high stakes extraction that ultimately sees the prison complex flattened in a cascading avalanche of snow and ice. They expect him to tell them the whereabouts of Dreykov and he tells them to speak with Vostokoff, who now lives on a farm outside Saint Petersburg raising pigs. There she developed the chemical mind control process used on the Widows, that she perfected on her now very obedient pigs. 

There, Belova reveals that while they were not a real family, she believed they were so, given that she was only six years of age when the family returned to Russia. Afterward, Vostokoff admits to Romanoff that she sent their location to Dreykov and within thirty minutes or so his agents arrive and take them to the Red Room, a floating facility located above the cloud line, and therefore above radar detection capabilities.

Vostokoff and Romanoff use face mask technology to swap places before being captured (a nod to 'Mission : Impossible' here),  so giving Vostokoff the chance to free Shostakov and Belova from their captivity. Meanwhile, Romanoff confronts Dreykov, who sees through her disguise. Dreykov reveals to Romanoff that Taskmaster is in fact his daughter Antonia, who suffered damage severe enough through the bomb explosion when she was just a child that Dreykov had to implant a chip in to the back of her neck. This turned her into the perfect compliant soldier, capable of mimicking the actions of anyone she sees. Romanoff attempts to kill Dreykov but fails to harm him due to a pheromone lock activated through her sense of smell. Dreykov reveals that he is in control of an army of Widows worldwide which he operates via his desk console. 

Romanoff intentionally slams her forehead down on his desk and breaks her nose, severing a nerve in her nasal passage to negate the pheromone lock, and then attacks Dreykov. Shostakov now suited up as the Red Guardian battles Taskmaster, while Vostokoff takes out one of the facility's engines setting in motion the eventual destruction of the entire complex. Belova goes off in search of the other Widows, who now have to guard Dreykov. Together, Shostakov and Vostokoff capture Taskmaster in a cell. The Widows arrive in Dreykov's office and he orders them to kill Romanoff and to make it long and painful. Just as Romanoff is about to be overcome, Belova arrives and detonates numerous vials of the mind control antidote over the Widow's so freeing them from their life of servitude. 

Romanoff gets into Dreykov's control desk and uploads the locations of the other Widows worldwide as the facility begins to explode and begins its free fall back to the ground below. Romanoff retrieves the two surviving vials of the antidote and frees Taskmaster from the locked cell. Vostokoff and Shostakov escape via a plane while Belova takes out Dreykov's aircraft, killing him and his Red Room soldiers, but Belova is blown clear in the explosion and begins plummeting towards the ground. In freefall, Romanoff gives Belova a parachute before battling Taskmaster. After landing, Romanoff uses one antidote vial on Taskmaster, freeing her from servitude. The freed Widows arrive as Belova, Vostokoff, and Shostakov reluctantly say goodbye to Romanoff, as Ross and a convoy of patrol cars arrive to apprehend her. She hands Belova the last vial of antidote and the portable drive, telling her to locate and free the other, still mind-controlled, Widows. They leave with Antonia, as Romanoff waits for the convoy to pull up.

Two weeks later, a now blonde Romanoff reunites with Mason, who has procured her a Quinjet. She leaves, saying that she came into this with no family, and now she has two intending to make amends and free the imprisoned Avengers. Stay tuned for the end credits sequence too. 

'Black Widow' is a fitting send off and a great big last hurrah for Natasha Romanoff in her own right. Cate Shortland here Directs her first superhero film with aplomb and proves that's she more than capable of helming big budget action spectacles on a US$200M grand scale. This is essentially a espionage story wrapped up in a tale of a dysfunctional family battling it out against a supervillain intent on world domination very much grounded on our humble blue planet rather than the standard MCU offerings of late centreing around intergalactic Gods, faraway planetary systems and those with superhuman powers. Johansson and Pugh are perfectly cast as the surrogate siblings with Pugh especially demonstrating her ability to carry the Black Widow universe in further instalments whichever direction that may go in, and Harbour provides much needed moments of levity amongst the more serious and emotional scenes. A well made stand alone entry into the MCU that delivers on the action, the emotion and the overall story arc. 

'Black Widow' warrants four claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five claps.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-

BLOOD RED SKY : Monday 26th July 2021.

With Greater Sydney still in COVID lockdown, and as a result all cinema's closed until August 29th at least now, I've been reviewing over the last few weeks some the latest feature films released recently onto Netflix. One such film that I watched from the comfort of my own home this week is the German and UK Co-Produced action horror film 'BLOOD RED SKY' that is Directed and Co-Written by the German film maker, Writer, Actor and Producer Peter Thorwarth. The film was released on Netflix on 23rd July and is an original film for the streaming service. 

The film opens up at a remote Scottish RAF Base airport where an aeroplane is seen coming in for an emergency landing. Air traffic control are guiding the plane in as it is believed that a terrorist is in the cockpit trying to land it. Colonel Alan Drummond (Graham McTavish) arrives on the scene and takes control of the proceedings watching the now stationery plane from the ATC tower. He is in radio contact with the man in the cockpit, and his snipers strategically located around the perimeter of the airport have him in their sights. Then from the cargo hold, a door opens, a parachute is deployed down from which emerges a child. The special forces advance on the child, and take him in for questioning, but he refuses to speak. The plane meanwhile, remains on the tarmac while Drummond and his men monitor what unfolds. The female officer questioning the child ask what happened on the plane.

We then go back twelve hours or so, and that child, Elias (Carl Anton Koch) and his German widowed mother Nadja (Peri Baumeister) prepare to leave on an overnight flight to New York. Elias goes on ahead to check in their luggage, while Nadja prepares herself for the journey and has a video link-up with a doctor in New York who is able to provide treatment for her leukemia that will restore her back to full health. At the airport, after Nadja has arrived, Elias meets Farid (Kais Setti) who is boarding the same flight (Transatlantic 473) to attend a conference, and they make a connection. Nadja returns having taken some more medications, and is introduced to Farid, but quickly dismisses him.

Shortly after take off and as the passengers are settling in for a non-eventful flight across the Atlantic Ocean, a group of men including the Co-Pilot Bastian (Kai Ivo Baulitz) shrewdly murder the three air marshals on the plane and disable the black box flight recorder so the plane can't be tracked. Berg (Dominic Purcell) their leader makes an announcement over the PA system that he is now in control of the plane and expects all passengers to be compliant until a ransom is paid. 

Elias makes a dash for it and attempts to hide, while Nadja goes to retrieve him. Eightball (Alexander Scheer) one of the more unhinged hijackers sees them and shoots Nadja several times in the chest. Assuming she's dead, Elias is plonked back down in his seat where Farid tries to console the sobbing young boy. Berg then begins the second phase of their plan, by forcing Farid to record a prepared statement as though the plane has been hijacked by terrorists for a suicide attack, knowing it will be shot down.

Nadja slowly begins to come round but she remains motionless. She begins to recall the day her husband, Nikolai, was killed. He had gone to a local farmhouse for help when their car broke down during a snow storm late at night and in the middle of nowhere. Failing to return Nadja went in search for him, finding footsteps in the snow that led to the abandoned farmhouse. Following a trail of blood, she stumbles across the body of Nikolai and was then attacked by his murderer, a vampire who managed to bite Nadja on the hand before being burned to death by the sunrise. Shortly thereafter Nadja turns into a vampire, and later went back to the farmhouse in search of answers. She comes across an elderly vampire who tried to shoot her for killing his son, but she manages to overpower him and beat him to death with his crutches before escaping with several dozen vials of vampire suppressant and setting the farmhouse ablaze.

Nadja is now fully conscious and manages to gain entry to the cargo hold, where she removes the contact lenses and dentures that mask her mutated eyes and fangs before killing and feeding on a dog. A hijacker catches her in the act and she kills him and drinks his blood, which then transforms her fully into a vampire. By injecting herself with the suppressant she tries to find the pilot only to be told that he's dead. She then finds another man who claims to be able to fly a plane having taken a few simulator lessons and they manage to regain control of the plane just as the hijackers are about to parachute out. Berg tries to take back control of the cockpit before Nadja surprises and bites him. She then stabs him with a knife cleanly through the heart killing him before he can transform fully.

The remaining hijackers, have come to the stark realisation of exactly what they're dealing with, and so they order Eightball to kill Nadja. He subdues her with an Ultra Violet torch light before extracting some of her blood with a syringe. Having whittled down a wooden ice hockey stick to a pointed end Eightball is about to drive the stake through her just as Elias uses Berg's gun to shoot out a window and depressurise the plane. The hijackers take back control of the cockpit, send the plane into a deep dive and so restore the cabin pressure. Eightball flees into the cargo hold and sits in a souped up Merc in the cargo hold fitted with bullet proof glass. Nadja follows him and shoots at the glass with little effect. She locates a steel rod and punches a hole through the glass where the bullets had most impact attempting to impale him but this too proves unsuccessful. 

Eightball then injects himself with Nadja's blood, as she pours of a bottle of spirits into the hole in the window and then throws in a lighted match trying to set him on fire. The inside of the car erupts into a ball of flame engulfing Eightball but fails to fully destroy him when the sprinkler system is deployed. Shortly after Eightball emerges badly burned but still very much alive and mightily pissed off, the other hijackers, with the exception of Bastian, are ambushed and killed by him having now turned fully vampire. Meanwhile, the passengers arm themselves as Nadja convinces them that she wants to help, and they manage to lock Eightball in the hold and secure the plane. 

Bastian in the cockpit informs Nadja that the plane doesn't have enough fuel to reach New York, and that they must soon land or risk crashing. A selfish wealthy passenger dying from an injury caused by being impaled by a runaway drinks trolley releases Eightball wanting to be bitten instead, he kills him and proceeds to turn most of the other passengers into vampires. Farid is caught in the subsequent conflagration and is bitten on the hand. Nadja's quick thinking sees her chop off Farid's hand with an emergency axe at the wrist to stop the spread of the infection. Knowing that the now infected remaining passengers will escape if the plane lands, Nadja makes the decision to sacrifice herself by using the hijackers' explosives to kill them, but the detonator and explosives are located in the planes cargo hold. The crawl space is too narrow for a adult to pass through, so Elias goes himself, but only manages to grab the detonator before being surrounded by vampires. Nadja makes Farid promise to look after him when she's gone before killing and feeding on Bastian. She tries to save her son but is attacked and drained of her blood by Eightball. Just as he lunges for Elias, Farid manoeuvres the plane into the direction of the rising morning sun, causing Eightball to burn and fall to his death.

Elias slices his hand open using his blood to save Nadja's life. When she comes round moments later he tries to embrace his mother but she rejects him and retreats, knowing that her taste for his blood puts him in danger. The plane lands at the RAF base in Scotland, but Drummond ignores Elias and Farid's pleas for help and caution and board the plane looking for survivors, resulting in a bloodbath, as Drummond looks on via bodycam's wondering WTF. Elias escapes from an ambulance taking him away to a hospital and runs back to the plane, seeing his mother now on the ground with other emerging vampires, feeding on a soldier. Knowing that she is too far gone as she runs towards him, he activates the detonator which he had concealed in his teddy bear, causing the whole aeroplane to erupt in a massive explosion killing the other vampires and presumably her too. When Drummond witnesses this and sees Farid run from his captors to locate Elias and finding him the pair embrace, he orders his troops to uncuff and free him. 

'Blood Red Sky' is a mash up of 'Snakes On A Plane' (self explanatory), 'Last Train to Busan' (zombies marauding on a Korean train) and 'From Dusk Till Dawn' (vampires rampaging in a desert roadhouse) so the concept is nothing new here, but there still remains lots to like about this suspenseful action horror offering including the fast paced action, the blood and gore and a few emotional heartfelt moments between mother and son. On the down side however, there are very few surprises here, there are genuinely no scares to keep you on the edge of your seat or biting your nails, it is just a little repetitive in places and the run time at two hours is probably twenty minutes too long. This film will keep aficionados of the genre entertained for sure, and even if you're on the fringe then it's worth a look just to see a seven year old, clearly much older than his tender years indicate, defy all the odds, repeatedly kick ass, thwart them pesky vampire types, kill his own bloodsucking mummy and be one of only two survivors from the whole plane load of passengers, crew and hijackers.

'Blood Red Sky' merits three claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five claps.

    

-Steve, at Odeon Online-

What's new in Odeon's this week : Thursday 29th July 2021.

The 20th annual Transilvania International Film Festival (TIFF) is currently running from 23rd July through until 1st August and is the biggest international film festival in Romania and is held in the fourth largest Romanian city of Cluj-Napoca in the historic province of Transilvania. The festival's main goal is the promotion of cinematic art by presenting some of the most innovative and spectacular films of the moment that feature both originality and independence of expression, that reflect unusual cinematic language forms or focus on current trends in youth culture. Dedicated to first and second time Directors, the Official Competition focuses on discovering new voices. In 2011, TIFF was accredited by the FIAPF (International Federation of Film Producers Associations), which places it among the forty most important festivals in the world.

The Opening Gala feature film was 'The People Upstairs' from Spain and Directed by Cesc Gay and concerns two couples, one living upstairs from the other, who explore the complexities of modern relationships over dinner one evening. The Closing Night feature film is the Italian drama 'The Best Years' Directed by Gabriele Muccino and tells the story from the 1980's to almost the present day, told through the life of four friends, during forty years of loves, aspirations, success and failures.

This year there are ten films in Official Competition with awards being presented for Best Film, Best Director, Special Jury Prize, Best Performance with the jury also being able to award two Special Mentions. There is also an Audience Award within this category. Only national Romanian premiers are considered in the Official Competition. Those ten films are :-

* 'Apples' from Greece and Directed by Christos Nikou. This drama film is set amidst a worldwide pandemic that causes sudden amnesia, and here a middle-aged man finds himself enrolled in a recovery programme designed to help unclaimed patients build new identities. 

* 'That Was Life' from Spain and Directed by David Martin de los Santos this drama debut feature centres around two Spanish women from different generations who forge an unlikely friendship while sharing a hospital room in Belgium. 

* 'Marygoround' from Poland and Directed and Co-Written by Daria Woszek here we see a lonely, small-town, grocery store worker, living an uneventful boring life. On the eve of her 50th birthday however, her senses and imagination suddenly come alive.

* 'Pebbles' from India and Directed and Written by P. S. Vinothraj. Two arid hamlets separated by a distance of 13kms sees an alcoholic wife beater embark on a journey, on foot, from one to the other, dragging his young son along to fetch back his wife whom he had chased away.

* 'Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time' from Hungary and is Written and Directed by Lili Horvath. Here a neurosurgeon returns to Budapest from here comfortable home in America to reunite with the love of her life - a man who says they have never met. 

* 'The Flood Won't Come' is Written and Directed by Marat Sargsyan, and in this Lithuanian drama film a famous Colonel, who served in different countries for many years, finds himself in a strange situation when civil war breaks out in his native country. 

* 'The Last Bath' from Portugal and Co-Written and Directed by David Bonneville, this drama offering sees a nun who is called upon to adopt her fifteen year-old nephew, and as a consequence religion, family and love become intertwined. 

* 'The Pink Cloud' from Brazil and Written and Directed by Iuli Gerbase in her feature film making debut, this is a Sci-Fi drama film set following a toxic and mysterious pink cloud that appears in the skies above, and when a woman finds herself stuck in a flat with a man she just met, the events that unfold change her life in a way she never expected. 

* 'The Whaler Boy' is Written, Directed and Edited by Philipp Yuryev in his feature film debut, this Russian film sees a young Russian whale hunter embark on a perilous journey to America to locate a beautiful girl he met on webcam site. 

* 'What Do We See When We Look At The Sky?' from Georgia and Written, Directed and Edited by Alexandre Koberidze, this film sees a chance encounter on a street corner between a young woman and a man who fall in love at first sight, but an evil spell is cast on them. Will they ever meet again?

The other sections of TIFF comprise 'Romanian Days' - the competitive section for Romanian shorts and features films produced in 2020 and 2021. National premieres have priority in this section. Four awards are presented here - the FIPRESCI Award (International Federation of Film Critics), and for Best Feature Film, Best Short Film and Best Debut. 'Supernova' is the non-competitive showcase of the most significant features of the year, including titles awarded in major international festivals, works by renowned auteurs, national box-office leaders, and audience hits. 'Full Moon' showcases fantasy, thriller, and horror genre features. 'No Limit' is also a non-competitive section dedicated to features that are provocative, controversial, experimental, transgressive, and innovating in both form and content; and 'What's Up, Doc?' is a non-competitive section for Documentaries over sixty minutes run time released after the 1st May 2020.

For all the news, views and low-downs from this years 20th Transilvania International Film Festival, you can go to the official website at : https://www.tiff.ro/en

 

With Greater Sydney, where I live, still in COVID lockdown for a further four weeks now ending (at this stage) on Friday 27th August, which means all of our cinema's are closed until this date, which further means that the release of the movies as given below, slated for release this week, will be delayed somewhat across certain parts of Australia at least. That said, these movies will either have been released or are set for an imminent release somewhere in the world, and as Odeon Online has an international audience, I thought it best to carry on regardless. And so, we open with an action adventure based on a Disney theme park ride where a small riverboat takes a group of travellers through a jungle filled with dangerous animals and reptiles and a supernatural element. Next up, after being recruited by a group of unconventional thieves, a renowned criminal finds himself caught up in an elaborate gold heist that promises to have far-reaching implications on his life and the lives of countless others. This is followed by a darkly-comedic thriller about a lone toll-booth operator on a remote roadway in Wales, with a past that is quickly catching up with him. And we conclude this weeks latest releases with an audio visual documentary that shows the viewer stunning images of forgotten places and buildings we constructed around the world and then left to slowly fall into decay and for nature to reclaim. 

Whatever your taste in big screen film entertainment is this week - be it any of the four latest release new movies as Previewed below, or those doing the rounds currently on general release or as Reviewed and Previewed in previous Blog Posts here at Odeon Online, you are most welcome to share your movie going thoughts, opinions and observations by leaving your relevant, succinct and appropriate views in the Comments section below this or any other Post. We'd love to hear from you, and in the meantime, enjoy your big screen Odeon outing during the week ahead.

'JUNGLE CRUISE' (Rated M) - is an American fantasy adventure film based on the Walt Disney theme park attraction of the same name and is Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra whose prior directorial credits take in the likes of his debut feature 'House of Wax' in 2005, and then 'Orphan', 'The Shallows' and four Liam Neeson actioners 'Unknown', 'Non-Stop', 'Run All Night' and 'The Commuter'. This film has been in gestation since 2004 with Tom Hanks and Tim Allen being attached to the project early on. Initially,  slated for a mid-October 2019 release before being moved to an end of July 2020 release date, and was then further delayed to its current date this week in both Australia and the US due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with its World Premier screening at the Disneyland Resort in California on 24th July. The film reportedly cost US$200M+ to produce. 

Set during the early 20th century, Frank Wolff (Dwayne Johnson) a riverboat Captain takes a British scientist, Dr. Lily Houghton (Emily Blunt) and her younger brother, MacGregor Houghton (Jack Whitehall) on a mission into the Amazon jungle to find the Tree of Life, which is believed to possess healing powers that could be of great benefit to modern medicine. All the while, the trio must fight against dangerous wild animals, a hot and deadly environment, and a competing German expedition led by Prince Joachim (Jesse Plemmons), and a deadly mercenary hired to guide a rival mission, Aguirre (Edgar Ramirez) that are both  determined to find the tree first. Also starring Paul Giamatti.

'THE MISFITS' (Rated M) - this American heist comedy film is Directed by Renny Harlin whose previous big screen film making credits include 'Die Hard 2', 'Cliffhanger', 'Cutthroat Island', 'The Long Kiss Goodnight', 'Deep Blue Sea', 'Driven' and '12 Rounds' amongst less notable others. This film saw its World Premier screening in South Korea in early June this year, was released Stateside in mid-June, costs in the region of US$15M to produce, has so far grossed US$390K and has generated mostly unfavourable Reviews. Here then, set in the Middle East, master criminal architect Richard Pace (Pierce Brosnan) finds himself caught up in a major gold heist with implications that go far beyond what he could have ever possibly imagined. Also starring Tim Roth and Hermione Corfield. 

'THE TOLL' (Rated MA15+) - this comedy mystery drama thriller from the UK is Directed by the Welshman Ryan Andrew Hooper in his feature film making debut. Brendan (Michael Smiley) works solo shifts in the quietest toll booth in Wales located quite literally in the middle of nowhere, while hiding from a former criminal history where nobody would ever look. When he finally gets rumbled, word of his whereabouts gets out and his enemies head west for revenge. Meanwhile, local traffic cop Catrin's (Annes Elwy) investigation into a simple robbery finds her heading for the booth at precisely the wrong time. Also starring Paul Kaye, Iwan Rheon, Gary Beadle and Julian Glover.  

'HOMO SAPIENS' (Rated G) - this Austrian audio visual cinematic experience was first released in 2016 bringing together the work of a contemporary film maker, Austrian Director, Writer, Cinematographer and Co-Producer here Nikolaus Geyrhalter and Austrian Australian experimental composer Heinz Riegler. With not a single human being seen for the duration of this ninety-four minute film, it is based on long static shots of abandoned buildings and deserted landscapes that have been long forgotten, neglected and fallen into decay by their builders and architects, the people who used to work in them and who used to live there - be they towns, churches, shopping malls, movie theatres, hospitals, prisons or amusement parks which are now overrun by steadily creeping foliage and animal activity of every kind. The film has garnered critical acclaim and from this week gets a limited release in Australia. 

With four new release films this week to tempt you out to your local Odeon, remember to share your movie going thoughts with your other like minded cinephile friends afterwards here at Odeon Online. In the meantime, I'll see you sometime somewhere in the coming week, at your local Odeon.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-

'FEAR STREET PARTS ONE, TWO and THREE : 1994, 1978 and 1666' - Tuesday 20th July.

Having watched Parts One and Two upon their release, I saw the concluding chapter in the supernatural teen slasher horror 'FEAR STREET TRILOGY' earlier this week, which has been released on Netflix over three consecutive weeks in July - on the 2nd, the 9th and the 16th. Directed and Co-Written for the screen by Leigh Janiak and based on the book series of the same name by R. L. Stine, the series of three films has a total running time of 5½ hours, was filmed back to back over the course of six months from March to September 2019 and each of the three instalments has received generally positive critical acclaim. 

'FEAR STREET PART ONE : 1994'.

In 1994, at the Shadyside Shopping Mall, Heather Watkins (Maya Hawke), working late as a bookstore employee, is brutally stabbed to death by her unassuming friend Ryan Torres (David W. Thompson), who had previously shown no malice towards her. After murdering her and several other mall employees, Ryan is shot dead by Police. The news channels report the mall massacre as being largely business as usual for Shadyside, which they hail as the murder capital of the United States. Meanwhile, the neighbouring town of Sunnyvale is the complete opposite, and is reported to be one of the safest and wealthiest cities in the whole country. Plenty of the Shadyside teenagers believe this is because the witch, Sarah Fier, placed a curse on the town before being hanged for witchcraft back in 1666. 

Deena Johnson (Kiana Madeira) has no time for talk of the Fier witch, her brother Josh (Benjamin Flores Jnr.) keeps himself busy researching the town's sordid history, her friends Simon (Fred Hichinger) and Kate (Julia Rehwald) sell drugs, and she has recently split up with her closeted girlfriend Sam (Olivia Scott Welch), who has since moved to Sunnyvale. One night, a car accident in the woods puts Sam in hospital but before being carted off in the ambulance she has a vision of the Fier witch. The next night Deena and her friends visit Sam in hospital when one of Shadyside's past killers murders Peter and a number of others in the hospital. The town's Sheriff Nick Goode (Ashley Zukerman) arrives on the scene and is confronted by a mass of dead bodies and a blood bath. After learning of Sam's vision, the group comes to the conclusion that the car accident disturbed the grave of Sarah Fier and that as Sam touched her bones in her final resting place in a shallow grave in the woods, they also deduce that the killers only want Sam and that they cannot be stopped by reburying the body or killing the killers, for they will just keep on coming back.

Through Josh's collection of historical newspaper articles on the Shadyside killings, they discover that a C. Berman (Gillian Jacobs), was the sole survivor of the Camp Nightwing massacre in 1978, and that she died but was resuscitated. Deena tries to call Berman, but there is no response to her phone call. They hatch a plan to kill and revive Sam using drugs from a pharmacy. Upon ingesting the drugs Sam promptly vomits them up. Inside a supermarket at night, the Shadyside killers attack and murder Simon and Kate with an axe to the head and a bread slicing machine respectively. Deena meanwhile drowns a willing Sam in a fish tank. The killers disappear and Deena revives Sam using EpiPens and CPR. Later that evening, while Sam is at her house, Deena is called back by Berman who tells her that there is no escaping the witch. Sam, now possessed, attacks Deena who in turn subdues and ties her up. 

'FEAR STREET PART TWO : 1978'

The film opens up in 1994 with Deena and Josh Johnson restraining Sam, who remains possessed. All three go to C. Berman's house for help. Reluctantly, Berman allows them inside and begins recounting the events of the Camp Nightwing massacre which occurred on 19th July 1978. Ziggy Berman (Sadie Sink) from Shadyside is accused of stealing by a Sunnyvale camper, and her friends. They rope her to a tree and start to burn her upper arm with a lighter before camp counsellors Nick Goode (Ted Sutherland) and Kurt (Michael Provost) intervene. Ziggy's older sister, Cindy (Emily Rudd), and her boyfriend Tommy Slater (McCabe Slye) are cleaning the dining hall when Nurse Mary Lane (Jordana Spiro), who is the mother of Shadyside killer Ruby Lane, attacks Tommy, saying that he will die that night, before being escorted from the camp by the Police. Later, Cindy and Tommy go to the infirmary to investigate her motive where they interrupt counsellors Alice (Ryan Simpkins), Cindy's former friend, and her boyfriend Arnie (Sam Brooks) going for it. They find Lane's diary which reads that Fier made a deal with the devil by cutting her hand on Satan's stone, so granting eternal life. In the diary too, they find a map which leads them to Fier's house in the woods.

When the group reach the house, they find empty graves dug up in the surrounding area and discover the witch's mark below the house. Alice and Cindy come across a stone wall with carvings of the names of all the Shadyside killers engraved on to it, and Tommy's name included. Tommy, now possessed, kills Arnie with an axe to the face. He chases the girls but they escape through an entrance behind a book case into a cave behind. Tommy reaches the camp and murders several Shadyside campers, including a counsellor. Nick takes several of the campers to the dining hall and instructs Kurt to take the remaining campers to the bus and ring the bell before they leave to alert the others. In the meantime, Cindy and Alice use the witch's mark in the diary as a map of the cave in order to escape. They come across a pulsating mound of beating organs, which, when Alice touches out of curiosity, gives her flashbacks of all the past killers and their hapless victims. Ziggy and counsellor Gary (Drew Scheid) try to rescue Alice and Cindy who have made their way to an opening under the outhouse. Tommy arrives and decapitates Gary with his axe. Ziggy escapes and hides with Nick. The two are later found by Tommy who injures Nick in the leg, but Ziggy escapes to the dining hall. Cindy locates an escape route leading to the dining hall while Alice stays behind having suffered a compound fracture to her ankle in a fall. Meanwhile, Tommy attacks Ziggy, but Cindy intervenes and kills him by stabbing him repeatedly. Alice arrives a short time later saying that she found the witch's hand. Her nose started bleeding and realised that she was sitting near Satan's stone, from where she dug it out.

The three decide to end the curse by reuniting Sarah's hand with her skeletal remains when Ziggy suddenly bleeds from the nose and on to the hand and has a vision of Sarah Fier. This in turn triggers the curse, resurrecting several Shadyside killers, including Tommy who rises and kills Alice, but Cindy slices his head off at the neck him with a spade. Ziggy and Cindy run to the tree where Sarah Fier was hanged in 1666, with the Shadyside killers in pursuit. They dig and find a rock inscribed with 'The witch forever lives', suggesting that this is not actually where Sarah was buried. The killers arrive and Cindy realises they are after Ziggy. She drops the hand and sacrifices herself. Ziggy is killed by multiple stab wounds to the abdomen and Cindy by repeated blows to the chest with an axe. The killers disappear, until Nick finds them and resuscitates Ziggy via CPR. Now back in 1994 again, Deena and Josh realise that C. Berman is in fact Ziggy, whose real name is Christine. They tell her that they found the witch's body and now, with the hand, they can bring the centuries old curse to an end. The camp eventually became Shadyside Mall, where Deena and Josh dig out the hand from under the same tree that remains a centrepiece of the mall. They take it to the place where the body is buried and Deena reunites the body with the hand. Deena's nose bleeds and she sees a vision where she is in 1666 as Sarah Fier.

'FEAR STREET PART THREE : 1666'

Having reunited the hand of Sarah Fier with the rest of her corpse, Deena has a vision showing the events of 1666 from the perspective of Sarah Fier herself. She lives with her father George (Randy Havens) and brother Henry (Benjamin Flores Jnr.) in the community of Union, the original settlement before it was split up into Sunnyvale and Shadyside. One night, while Sarah and her two closest friends Lizzie (Julia Rehwald) and Hannah Miller (Olivia Scott Welch) whom Sarah is secretly in love with, make their way to a party for the young adults, they sneak into the tent of a reclusive widow, where Sarah comes across a book of black magic. After fleeing, Sarah and Hannah run off and get intimate in the forest, but are unknowingly seen by Mad Thomas (McCabe Slye). The next day, Hannah's father Pastor Miller begins to act strange, and the settlement is struck with horrible misfortune as livestock dies and fruit and vegetables turn rotten overnight. Sarah confides in Solomon Goode (Ashley Zukerman) as the only trustworthy person she feels she can turn to and wonders if she is responsible for the community's run of bad luck. Meanwhile Pastor Miller has locked a number of children in the chapel. When the townsfolk gain access inside the chapel, led by Solomon, they see that Pastor Miller has murdered the children, by tearing out their eyes. Sarah finds Henry's lifeless body in the front pew and, while distracted, is set upon and almost killed by Pastor Miller before he himself is killed by Solomon using a pitchfork.

Later that evening, a community meeting is held in the chapel at which the gathered folk decide that witchcraft must be the cause of the grim events they are all suffering and that Sarah and Hannah are the witches responsible because they were seen by Mad Thomas. The two try to escape being hunted down, but Hannah is captured while Sarah flees, and the locals determine that Hannah should be executed by hanging at dawn the next day. She decides to locate the widow's book of black magic and use it to make a deal with the devil in order to save Hannah. However, she finds the book has gone and the widow had been murdered. She flees to Solomon's house for help as her only place of safe refuge, and hides in a back room where she discovers tunnels under the house, revealing some sort of ritual and the widow's book. It turns out that Solomon took the book and offers to share it with her, but Sarah rejects his notion and escapes into the tunnels. He catches up with her and the two fight, with her hand cut off as the pair struggle. She makes her way out of the tunnels, having stabbed Solomon in his side, but is found by the townspeople. At Sarah and Hannah's execution early the next morning, Sarah confesses and convinces the locals to spare Hannah's life, while sacrificing herself. Sarah swears vengeance from the grave saying that she will shadow Solomon for all eternity, she will never let him go and she will follow him forever just before she is executed via hanging. Shortly after, Hannah, and her three closest friends grieve for Sarah and properly bury her (handless) body.

As Deena's vision of the events of 1666 ends, and now back in 1994, she realises that the Goode family is responsible for the Shadyside curse, as the firstborn from each subsequent generation repeat the ritual begun by their ancestor Solomon. Sheriff Nick Goode begins to realise that Deena and Josh are onto him, and he tracks them down in the woods, but they manage to escape in the Sheriff's patrol car. They arrive at Ziggy's house, where she remains watching over a possessed Sam. Ziggy is shocked to learn that Nick and his family are the reason for her sister's death, but understands that they now need to kill Nick in order to bring the Shadyside curse to an end. Josh recruits the help of friend Martin (Darrell Britt-Gibson) who works as a janitor at the mall, and the foursome devise a plan to coax Nick to the mall and set traps to have the undead murderers kill him. Lured by the smell of Deena's blood, the group successfully manage to trap the killers behind the reinforced roller shutters of several of the mall's stores. Ziggy coaxes Nick out into the centre of the mall, and pours Deena's blood over him, so leading the undead killers in Nick's direction. However, Nick manages to escape into the centuries old tunnels now running beneath the mall. Deena follows him while the others fight off the undead killers. Nick pins Deena down and nearly kills her, but Deena is able to thrust Nick's hand on to the unholy pulsating mass of beating organs at the centre of the tunnels, which gives him a vision of all his killers' victims down through the ages. With Nick distracted, Deena gains the upper hand and finally kills him with a knife directly in to his eye socket, which makes the undead killers disappear and finally breaks the curse on Shadyside. Deena and Sam emerge through a perfectly maintained house in Sunnyvale. Keep watching for the mid-credits sequence involving the book of black magic. 

The 'Fear Street Trilogy' as a whole is entertaining enough with ample nods to the slasher horror genre that was so prevalent in the '80's and '90's and while it hacks, chops and thrusts it way through largely familiar territory there is still ample fresh perspective to add life to the old tried and tested formula yet. The first instalment is the bloodiest, most brutal of them all with plenty of gruesome murders by our gang of marauding undead serial killers intertwined with teenage angst, supernatural goings-on and surprising plot twists. Part Two is a tad more predictable in its Summer Camp rampage by a lone axe wielding killer but nonetheless ramps up the bodycount, the tension and the excitement that offers up more than a commendable bridge between Parts One and Three, and could almost stand alone on its own right. As for Part Three the segment set in 1666 offers up more explanatory narrative on the origins of the curse and less of the bloodletting, but the finale set back in 1994 cleverly knits the whole storyline together that brings this trilogy to more than a satisfying conclusion that is sure to please lovers of the genre and proves that Leigh Janiak is new force in the horror canon to be contended with. 

The 'Fear Street Trilogy' merits four claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a potential five claps. 

-Steve, at Odeon Online-