After the death of his pregnant wife, Rachel (Gaia Weiss) caused by a fatal car crash, Eric (Tom Hughes) accepts a job as a shepherd as a means of taking time to recuperate on his own. Shepherd is a profoundly unnerving and eerie portrayal of the overwhelming grief and pain that can consume a person, turning the mind into a muse for the demons within us.

Except with Shepherd, the horror is external, too. Aside from his hostile and shifty employer, Fisher, played by a brief but blood-curdling performance from Kate Dickie, Hughes carries the storyline through his psychotically charged performance that aids as a testament to the actor’s impressive talent. Extensive dialogue is absent from the script, and the film relies on the regularly recycled tropes that come with the ‘depressed man spirals into madness’ plotline. The film begins with a generous dosage of horror with constant hallucinations that blur the line between Eric’s nightmares and reality; and a plethora of red flag warnings against the island (which the protagonist expectantly ignores) is credited to the talents of the filmmaking crew who provide a reliably sinister take on the familiar subgenre of indie, isolated horror.

In the first act, Eric is accompanied by a teaser of creaking floorboard sounds and lipstick stains, just enough to trigger his fight or flight response and pique the audience’s interest. From piercing sounds of whistling wind, screeching crows and the iconic Scream like echoes of a ringing phone, Callum Donaldson’s sound design is manipulated perfectly to compliment the haunting setting.

Visually and thematically alike to Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse, director of photography Richard Stoddard captures the elegantly sombre atmosphere of the island. With wide-angle shots of the imperilling vast open land and unforgiving crashing waves that barricade Eric from escaping the hellish reality, to close-up shots that translate the terror and disorient in Eric’s eyes.

Unfortunately, the subtext and themes don’t land with as much impact as Owen intended without solid writing. Owen’s focus on visual artistry, plot twists and jump scares supersede the vital connection between the character, story, and audience. Whilst Eric’s trauma and depression cause him to be a character detached from the outside world both physically and mentally, this grieving and guilt-stricken character lacks clear motivation.

Owen encapsulates the notion of ‘if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it’ with a safe yet successful psychological Gothic horror that pays homage to the classics that came before it. Shepherd provides the ghostly chilling experience that you’d expect – a must-watch for fans who find comfort in the unsettling.

The Shepherd from Parkland Entertainment / Darkland Distribution is available on digital download from 21 February 2022.

The post Shepherd starring Tom Hughes: Film Review appeared first on Quays Life.

The idea for the film began in autumn 2017, when media company O2 contacted director Vít Klusák with a request to make a viral video that would highlight in a dramatic manner the sharp rise in the number of children being abused on the Czech internet. Klusák brought his colleague Barbora Chalupová on board the project and together they undertook research in the form of a test, creating an authentic-looking fake profile of a 12-year-old girl, Týnka, and waiting to see what happened. Within five hours of the profile going live 83 men aged between 23 and 63 contacted the girl, the overwhelming majority with explicit propositions. It soon became clear to the pair that a short viral video was not enough to bring attention to the scale of the online abuse they’d witnessed.

“We faced a challenge as to how to document a phenomenon that takes place behind the doors of children’s rooms,” Chalupová explains. “We wanted to show as accurately as possible all the tricks and manipulation that predators employ in their communication with kids. We believe that if we’d shot the film as, for instance, a collection of interviews or as reportage, nobody would be able to imagine all the stuff that children go through today.

“The only thing that never ceased to surprise me throughout filming was the speed with which the predators contacted our girls. After a few opening lines they immediately moved on to explicitly sexual propositions. Frankly, there’s some stuff I never need to see again in my life.”

During filming, the three actresses, Tereza Těžká, Anezka Pithartová, and Sabina Dlouhá were subject to harrowing exploitation from predators online.

“It was the toughest work I’ve ever done in my life,” says Tereza. “Every time I thought it couldn’t get worse the next day something happened to show me I was wrong.

“I hadn’t a clue how big the problem of child abuse on the internet was. I think it’s the same for most people. I encountered it myself when I was 12 and thought I was the exception, that the internet was more protected nowadays. But the opposite is true”.

The actresses’ dedication to the project has created an urgent and necessary documentary, which without them would have allowed for the sinister harm against children to stay quietly buried and in the dark. And despite the challenging nature of the work, none regret their decisions to sign up for the film.

“I wouldn’t like to experience it again. But I definitely wouldn’t change my decision at the casting session,” says Anežka. “I get that for some people it’s going too far, but I’d be sorry if they missed out on the film out of fear. If you want to tackle evil, you have to get to know it first.”

The film makers have created two versions of the documentary Caught in the Net, rated 15 (100 min.); and Caught in the Net: School’s Out, rated 12 (63 min), an educational campaign that travelled across the Czech Republic to schools to highlight the danger and discuss how it can be avoided.

“We regard it as important that school children, who the film is chiefly about, can see it”, director Vít Klusák explains. “It’s a selection of dramatic scenes from the big film supplemented by appearances by our actresses in which Tereza, Sabina and Anežka give younger viewers advice on what to do in such highly charged situations and who to turn to.

“I’d like the film to set off a discussion throughout society that would result in positive ideas on how to protect children in the online sphere, not just from abusers but also from themselves.”

Caught In The Net is available on Digital Download from 7 February 2022.

The post “Frankly, there’s some stuff I never need to see again in my life” – Caught in the Net director Barbora Chalupová appeared first on Quays Life.

A freedom of information request from 42 police forces in England and Wales found 5,441 Sexual Communication with a Child offences recorded between April 2020 and March 2021 – an increase of around 70% from recorded crimes in 2017/18. And almost half of the offences used Facebook-owned apps, including Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger.

Caught In The Net successfully takes statistics like this, which the public can quickly become desensitised to, and humanises the data into a harrowing watch.

The documentary follows three actresses, Tereza Těžká, Anezka Pithartová, and Sabina Dlouhá, all aged 18 or older, portraying 12-year-old girls online. The crew compiled memorabilia from the women’s childhoods and created three replicas of little girls’ bedrooms. Aside from the fake names assigned to each actress, the line between truth and façade is blurred once the fishing for predators online begins.

A code of conduct appears on the screen, laying out eight rules, which vary from the actresses must only respond and never approach anyone first, to ‘no flirting, seducing or provoking’. The code also explains that ‘psychologists, sexologists, lawyers and criminal investigators’ were consulted during the project. What follows over the 10 days is an expose of more than 2,458 sexual predators that the three women have to filter with resilience while maintaining a childlike and naive exterior that revoltingly appeases these paedophiles.

The incredible actresses take a utilitarian approach to this project and subject themselves to the salacious exploitation of men online. They’re bombarded with unsolicited nudes and child pornography videos while enduring the heavy turmoil that comes with tantalising predators. Yet, despite the knowledge that child predators are indulging in their bodies and performed naivety, the actresses rarely break character – a testament to their talent and dedication to the injustice.

The documentary doubles as a realist horror with abrupt reels of pixelated nude photos accompanied with intense, raucous music playing out like jump scare. The blurred faces and pixels hide the graphic imagery but reveals the sickening obscenity within every exchange. The film unnervingly but necessarily removes the mental barrier that allows a viewer to dissacociate from the horrific reality of child abuse, forcing the audience to confront the unimaginable head-on.

The first half of ‘Caught In The Net’ sets itself up for an opportunity to explore the psychological impact that online abuse can have on a child. Or, even the effect this project had on the actresses who, rather than playing fictitious characters, immersed younger versions of themselves into the traumatic territory. Instead, the documentary repeatedly revels in video chat conversations that present nothing more than the obvious moral message that the audience became aware of early in the film. The documenatairans could have better utlisied the professional psychologists and lawyers they hired to provide a crucial exploration into the minds of the victims or predators. Unfortunately, the few ‘gotcha moments’ barely compensate for the psychological torture the cast and crew endured, with an ending absent of legal justice or even a slither of catharsis.

Regardless of its flaws, the harrowing documentary is grounded in the devastating reality experienced by too many children. So, in a society that silences this subject matter for being too taboo, ‘Caught In The Net’ is the necessary loud noise we need to hear.

Caught In The Net is available on Digital Download from 7 February 2022.

The post Caught In The Net: Film Review appeared first on Quays Life.

Trying to condense Titane into a short synopsis almost feels like a disservice to the complexity of this masterpiece. But, nevertheless, Titane is a body horror about a pregnant serial killer who has sex with cars and poses as somebody’s missing son. And yet, may be one of the most resonating and moving films you’ll ever watch – only if, you embrace its absurdity.

The film follows the double life of stripper and serial killer Alexia, played with fluidity by Agathe Rousselle. The film opens with Alexia and her father in a car accident, resulting in her having a titanium implant inserted into her head. Fast forward to Alexia as an adult, dressed like your typical, cool alt-girl with a mullet haircut and wearing fishnets. Presumingly a cause from her psychological trauma, Alexia is a mechaphile who acts on her impulses to have sexual intercourse with motorcars, which incidentally impregnates her.

Just as you’ve come to allowing yourself to absorb the outlandish plot and violently piercing sound and graphics, the film takes a sharp turn. Alexia poses as Adrien, the son of quietly grieving father, Vincent (Vincent Lindon) whose son went missing ten years ago. Visually and stylistically alike to Gaspar Noe’s films, Climax and Irreversible, Titane has a similar air of energy and extremity, but with much more heart.

Ducournau’s story is brought to life by Agathe Rousselle’s captivating metamorphic performance, accompanying the pulsating soundtrack and electric visuals. Alexia is a character seeking unconditional love amongst a debris of trauma. Rousselle encapsulates a balance of bite and warmth that elicits an unexpected sense of empathy towards a character who could understandably elicit no compassion for Alexia when just words on the page of a script, or performed by any other actress. Rousselle grounds the fantastical narrative featuring scenes of murdering rampages and sex with cars in authenticity with an enthralling performance that radiates a deep sense of longing.

The familiar father and son dynamic, commonly explored in cinema, is explored in Titane too, but here dismisses the restrictive gendered stereotypes tethered to the paternal label. The on-screen relationship between Adrien who represents progressive ideologies, contrasting with Vincent who represents traditionalist views, is a tender depiction of fear, desperation and unrequited love enhanced by Lindon’s spectacular, multifaceted performance as a father desperate to love.

The true beauty of Titane lies in the thematic web crafted by Ducournau. The intertwining of trauma and the ways it can manifest in a person’s life through the link between a car crash and Alexia’s mechaphilia, to the surrealist portrayal of the rapid merging of humankind and technology told through the contortion of Adrien’s body with machinery. With delicacy, Ducournau layers a plethora of existential discourse amongst the chaos and absurdism.

The film claws into the psyche of Adrien and Vincent through visceral scenes of self-harm that they inflict onto themselves for contrasting reasons, but both tied to the constricting expectations held by society. Both characters attempt to keep-up their physical appearances to align with their gender identity – Adrien’s abusive rejection of his pregnancy as if it was malleable and Vincent’s addiction to injecting steroids into his body. These graphic scenes serve the body horror genre, evoking nail-biting and stomach-churning in the audience whilst triggering a mental awareness of the transgressive commentary.

Titane scratches at the surface of your skin, crawling along your arms and down the back of your neck and lurks at the back of your mind long after its runtime. As absurd, illogical, and mad as it is, Titane is human. Like picking a scab and drawing blood, Titane claws at the discomforting fears that blemish our minds – but in turn, bleeds the love and acceptance within us all.

Titane is showing at Home, Manchester and cinemas nationwide, certificate 18.

The post Titane starring Agathe Rousselle: Film Review appeared first on Quays Life.

The film is set in Jolly Springs, an isolated cabin resort home to the merciless killer, Russ Thorn (Rob van Vuuren) who preys on naive teenagers. In the first five minutes before the opening credits have rolled, Esterhazy immediately sets the tone for the film with a respectable kill count of two and an on the nose reference to rape culture, where the stereotypical laddish male, fittingly named ‘Chad’ assumes his ex-girlfriend, Trish will have sex with him because of the way she’s dressed. After she rejects him, Chad follows Trish back to the lodge, where he creepily peers on the girls eating pizza, dancing and making brownies through the window.

Esterhazy frames Chad’s point of view with the same voyeuristic camera position she and Jones in the 1982 original use for Russ Thorn’s perspective, which blurs the intentions and differences between a murderer and sleazy high school boys, focusing only on the impact of the victims. Of course, Chad isn’t self-aware enough to see why his spying is an issue, but he calls Russ Thorn (who he doesn’t know is a killer yet) a “pervert” for doing exactly the same thing as he is. Fast forward a couple of minutes, and the killer has murdered Chad and one of Trish’s friends, leaving Trish as the final girl in the cat and mouse chase scene for blood. Esterhazy brings back the iconic drill as the murderer’s weapon, which is seen on the original poster dangling between the killer’s legs, doubling as a not so subtle symbol and commentary on male violence towards women and rape culture.

Once Trish defeats Russ but doesn’t actually kill him, the title credits roll, and we’re introduced to another female lead, Dana (Hannah Gonera), who we quickly learn in Trish’s daughter. Esterhazy pays homage to the first scene in the 1982 version where the original Trish, played by Michele Michaels, is changing and, in classic 80s horror fashion, does a nudity scene, whilst the news of a killer on the loose plays in the background.

There’s no nudity in Esterhazy’s version and a ‘True Crime’ podcast about Russ Thorn plays instead. Dana’s mother, Trish, is wary of Dana going away with her friends for a sleepover due to her own trauma, but she and her four friends obviously go anyway. The chemistry between the women playing best friends on screen is as charming as you’d hope, emphasising the significance of strong female leads that support one another during challenging times. It’s refreshing to see a cast on-screen that use intelligence and logic, and not once does a female character utter the spineless words “what do we do now” to a male character. It’s minor, but it is vital that this sort of realistic representation of women on screen who are just as composed as their male counterparts during taxing moments.

The group stay at the chilling Jolly Springs. This cold and familiar setting gives the film a true 80s slasher, gritty feel to it that lovers of the original will undeniably love. Esterhazy also provides the audience with plenty of gruesome, spine-tingling kills that treat its male and female victims equally. Andries Smit’s intense and suspenseful music builds momentum in the pacing of all three acts before spiralling into a whiplash-inducing concoction of unexpected twists and turns that will keep you on the edge of your seat throughout the whole film.

Esterhazy creates a film that is extremely critical of the treatment of women in horror, which at times works well but regularly doesn’t land because the director’s attempt to make a parody of Jones’s original which was already a parody of the genre to begin with. The delivery of dialogue containing buzz words like “toxic masculinity” and “male privilege”, whilst very valid phrases, feel unnatural and break the rhythm of scenes.

The film humorously refers to two of the True Crime obsessed male fans, also staying at Jolly Springs, as ‘Guy 1’ and ‘Guy 2’ but unfortunately falls flat with the dilution of the comedy by over explaining the joke, as though the audience wouldn’t have understood the reference. In an attempt to preserve the best bits of the 1982 original and cut the unnecessary nudity and sexism, Esterhazy seems to forget about the value of subtext and oversaturates scenes with back and forth conversations that you’d expect to see in a Twitter argument against an anonymous troll account, rather than in reality.

Whilst the political narrative is significant to the 2021 remake of a 1982 cult classic, the ‘less is more’ idiom would be better applied to Esterhazy’s take of The Slumber Party Massacre. Nevertheless, the film is a subversive and surprising slasher time capsule that transports you back to the charming and killer-crazed 80s – just without all of that sexism stuff.

Slumber Party Massacre will be released on Digital Download on 13 December and on DVD from 10 January 2022.

The post Slumber Party Massacre starring Hannah Gonera: Film Review appeared first on Quays Life.

Salford-born auteur, Mike Leigh, is one of UK’s most internationally recognised and critically acclaimed film-makers working today. A seven-time Oscar nominee, winner of five BAFTAs, and nominated for another ten BAFTA awards, Leigh is also the only British director to have won the top prize at both Cannes (for Secrets & Lies, 1996) and Venice (for Vera Drake, 2004).

As part of a nation-wide celebration of Leigh’s work, Home, Manchester is hosting a special season of his early films coinciding with the nation-wide re-release of Naked, which won Leigh best director and David Thewlis best actor, at Cannes Film Festival in 1993, as well as a nomination for the Palme d’Or.

The film, newly remastered in 4K by the BFI National Archive, is a powerful and raw depiction of Thatcherism in England. Thwellis’ character, Johnny, is an intellectual, angsty and abusive Mancunian. After a failing attempt to win back his ex-girlfriend, Louise (Lesley Sharp), Johnny toys with Louise’s housemate Sophie (Katrin Cartlidge), exploiting her vulnerability, abusing and then abandoning her. The film follows Johnny wandering the streets at night, unloading his rage onto unsuspecting strangers. It’s a complex and unnerving character study of a destructive misogynist – a by-product of a broken society under Thatcher’s Britain.

Twenty-eight years later, old and new audiences can revel in the controversial and cutting exploration of alienation and male aggression that sadly is still recognisable today.

After the screening, Mike Leigh was live on stage to answer questions from the audience.

The restoration (of Naked) brings out the colour palette and the visual style of the film. I think people often talk about the content of your work rather than the visual style. Can you talk about how the black and blue colour palette was developed?

Mike Leigh: “The film was shot by Dick Pope, cinematographer, who’s shot all of my films since 1990. But it was also designed by Alison Chitty, who designed Life is Sweet and Secrets and Lies.

“I spend quite a long time, over months, with the actors developing the characters and relationships. But there has to come a point in that process where I share with the guys behind the camera. With the cinematographer, and the designer and the costume designer and the makeup designer, what I think is evolving.

“In the case of this particular film, Naked, I said, ‘Look, this is a solo journey. This is nocturnal’. We knew we were going to shoot the film in colour but somehow it’s monochromatic, it’s dark. So Dick Pope used something called bleach bypass, where you miss one of the things that happen in the laboratory, and you get this effect. So we sat and looked at those reels and then, as always happens, he shot some tests in collaboration with the designers. And it was absolutely stunning – very, very dark and very, very moody.

“Obviously for me, I’m thinking 24-7 about the characters and relationships in my head, but once I’m sitting with them and looking on screen at the tests, that feeds back. I’m now thinking about filmmaking, the practicalities and the actual cinematics, as well as the dramatics. So really, that’s how it came about. We haven’t changed the story. It’s merely enhancing it and also taking out all the gunk and scratches that accrue over time”.

How did you go about finding settings and locations?

Mike Leigh: “That building that the flat is in – Alison Chitty is a brilliant designer and she kept coming back with various houses and buildings in London and I’d say, ‘This is just a building with a flat in it. It has to have an edge’. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what that edge was, and then one day they rushed in and said, ‘How about this?’ And they found this building we’ve been looking at and it’s on the corner and it’s like Charles Adams. It’s neo-gothic and it’s on an angle. I said it’s great, so that was that.

“One of the great contributions that Alison Chitty made was we invented this guy, Brian (security guard) in this working office block. And one day she came in and she said, ‘I’ve had a brain wave, I’ve found this building and it’s empty. There’s nothing in it at all, it’s an office block that’s not been used. So how about if he’s guarding empty space?’ I said, ‘That’s fantastic, that’s absolutely what the film’s about’.

“And one tiny detail in design – ,one of the things about the discipline about the visual look was to avoid reds. So in the office block, if you look very carefully, there is a grey fire bell on the wall. Now there aren’t any grey fire bells anywhere; they’re all red. But Alison Chitty painted it grey because she didn’t want any red in the shots, little bit arty but I like it”.

Where do your narrative ideas come from?

Mike Leigh: “Life. It comes from life. There are so many facets. I mean people say, ‘Oh, your films are about working-class life’. Well they are sometimes, and there are also working-class characters. But it’s about people, really, and I think it’s the little ways of looking at different kinds of people even though it’s the same sort of philosophy”.

If you were to bring Johnny back to life now, would he be a success, would he have destroyed himself or is he destroying others?

Mike Leigh: “I mean, it’s a hard one this. You see, here’s the thing about Johnny, and nothing about this guy or the film is black and white. But I think first of all, the thing about Johnny, apart from anything else, I think he’s the victim of a crap education system. If at school, instead of sending him out of the room or putting him in detention every time he opened his mouth, they thought, this is a bright kid to nurture and bring out, he’d have been different to the guy we’ve just seen in the film. I’m not sure that what we have in Johnny, is a victim of ‘conspiracy theory-itis’, as it were. I think he’s a very intelligent guy, a very frustrated guy. His head is full of ideas, but he is an idealist, an intelligent idealist who is frustrated by how the world is. So I’m not sure that he’s the guy that you project, but don’t ask me to say precisely where he would be now because I just don’t know”.

You use character acting in all your films, where the actors become the character and improvise the scenes as if they were a real person. However, suppose things happen in an improvised situation that isn’t what you envisioned the character to say or do, or you want something different to happen. How do you navigate this without making it forced and stripping the authenticity?

Mike Leigh: “First of all, I’m in on it with the actors from the word go. We have collaborated with the actors to create the characters, so my job inevitably, is to understand the character completely. So if the actor says, ‘I don’t think they would do that’. My job is not to say, ‘Bog off and do it’ or ‘I just don’t agree with you and that’s that’. I will immediately understand why that is. So we have in our armoury, at our disposal, an understanding of the character as a real person and his or her motivation. And you know, you can work with the motivation. It’s in some way negotiable, and the actor always wants to cooperate without compromising, and I want to do the same thing without compromising. So it’s about improvisation, intelligence and collaboration”.

And finally, how has your Mancunian background impacted your filmmaking?

Mike Leigh: “Well, I have to say, apart from everything else, that if it were not for my Mancunian background, you would not have had an unpredictable moment in this film. The Manchester anthem: ‘Take me back to Manchester when it’s raining’, that’s a very important aspect of the film. We had a blast inventing the fact that Johnny and Louise came from Manchester. It informs the film in an implicitly Mancunian way. And, I think there’s a certain Mancunian, Salfordian wry, wry look at the world going on in these films”.

Mike Leigh Retrospective is at HOME, Manchester from 7 – 30 November 2021

For full details of the BFI’s Mike Leigh Celebration visit bfi.org.uk

Read our interview with film director Maciej Barczewski on bringing Tadeuz “Teddy” Pietryzkowsi’s fight for survival to the screen, in The Champion Of Auschwitz.

The post Improvisation, intelligence and collaboration – life in film with Mike Leigh appeared first on Quays Life.

#Like follows the spiralling vengeance of Rosie (Sarah Rich), a teenager from Woodstock, whose younger sister was sexploited online by a cyberbully. On the anniversary of her sister’s suicide, Rosie finds ‘The Man’ (Marc Menchaca), who she believes is to blame for her sister’s tragedy and attempts to regain justice.

The film is a trio blend of Hard Candy (2005), Cyberbully (2011), and the more recent Promising Young Woman (2020) in its premise. Embracing more of the thriller genre than horror, #Like is a portrait of repressed female rage that is grounded in the sinister reality of online grooming and sexploitation.

Pirozek successfully subverts the usual tropes that we are so commonly overwhelmed with in revenge thrillers. Without the cheap plot device of graphic scenes depicting unnecessary violence against female characters as a set-up for a cathartic resolution, #Like builds an intense and unnerving amount of suspense through the character study of Rosie. The psychological torment that the protagonist endures is poignant enough for the audience to empathise with her draconian tactics against The Man.

The film opens in the small town of Woodstock, where Rosie and her mother live. It’s a typical thriller set-up, surrounded by woodland and distanced houses. Director of Photography, Brian Jackson uses a bleak, negative colour palette to create an isolated, eerie feeling that lingers during the whole 90 minutes.

An immense credit of the film’s strength is attributed to Sarah Rich and Marc Menchaca for their auspicious performances. Their chilling on-screen relationship, which develops in Rosie’s basement, the underbelly of her traumatised mind, requite the descend of the plot in the second half of the film. Pirozek’s attempt to subvert gender roles and dissect the complexities of grief in the digital age and an outdated and inadequate justice system is set up with empowering potential but unfortunately plummets into a resolution that lacks logic and a clear message beyond surface-level morals.

Nevertheless, for a debut film, Pirozek’s #Like is both an entertaining and anxiety-inducing viewing experience that speaks to a younger generation entrapped in an online meta world. Whilst significant filmmaking elements such as its writing and plot feel weak in the final act. Holding a mirror up to the dangers of the digital age is vital, and Pirozek, regardless of critical success, achieves this without fantasising in torture porn and cheap thrills, making #Like a valuable film for a young audience in a sordid society.

#Like will be available on Digital Download from 1st November

The post #Like: Film Review appeared first on Quays Life.