Wholly unsurprising drama fails to spark
H(Madame) Holy Lands is an engaging, if not wholly entertaining, drama.
The impressive cast do their best to add spice to a tasty premise, but they are let down by a script and direction that are somewhat heavy-handed with the symbolism. There’s a little too much portentous dialogue and ploddingly predictable plotting, as the Rosenmercks lurch from one disaster to another.
But there are some definite highlights and sparking moments, most notably the interplay between Hollander’s initially rabid rabbi and Caan’s cantankerous interloper. If the story had focused more on these two and their growing, grudging admiration, Holy Lands might have been more of a must-see.
Around 20 years ago, I made the trip three times to the mostly unlamented Rialto in Wellington, to sit on its excruciating plastic seats in front of a minimal screen and watch a film called Cube.
Strewth it was good. Cube was a low-budget thriller, starring a cast of unknowns as a group of disparate strangers who have woken up in a maze of mostly identical white rooms.
Some of the rooms offer safe passage to the next but others contain outstandingly inventive death traps. The cast are sporadically sliced, diced, julienned and flambed until only one is left standing, staring out a door at nothing we could see. Cube was inventive, lean and quite brilliant.
So imagine my surprise today, turning up to Escape Room to see a film that, despite having a decent budget and actors to play with, manages to be nothing but a flabby and unforgiveably boring retelling of that exact same plot with a bit more interior design and a dash of Saw and Final Destination thrown in.
Director Adam Robitel (Insidious: The Last Key) mistakenly tries to make the storyline somehow explicable. As if we go to any film in the strangersdie-in-horrible-fashion genre wanting to be absorbed in plot and character?
Films from Cube to Groundhog Day have proved that if your story makes no sense, then you’re best off just ripping into it and hoping noone asks any hard questions.
The 20 minutes that Robitel spends introducing his cast and their backgrounds is 20 minutes wasted. As one legendary Kiwi film editor is fond of saying, ‘‘if you want your film to finish fast, you’ve got to kick it in the guts up the front’’.
There’s nothing wrong with any of the performances, – Taylor Russell (Lost in Space) is the standout, though – but Escape Room is flattering itself if it thinks we really care.
These films work a treat when they are nasty, brutish, short and utterly aware of their own stupidities. Escape Room, despite some impressive design and a few decent visual flourishes, ticks none of the boxes. And now I’m wondering whether Wellington’s Aro St Video still has a copy of Cube. problem with some neat sleight-ofhand. It turns out that the young kid who burst in on Teresa every morning is a physics whiz with a doohickey in the basement that can open doorways to alternative dimensions. And it is from there that all this nonsense began.
Happy Death Day 2U suffers a little from its need to explain the mechanics of what is happening to Tree. When a plot is this simple but this daft, it really is better left unexamined. (Did anyone ever need to know how Bill Murray was stuck in Groundhog Day?)
What works here is what worked first time around. The jokes and gags come thick and fast. The horror scenes are competently staged. And there is a level of wit and detail in the film that speaks loudly of film-makers who truly love the process and the craft. Also, Rothe is again outstanding as Tree, with comedy chops that would put most of the Saturday Night Live crew to shame. If you loved Happy Death Day, then I reckon you will be pretty happy with this sequel.