THE CULT OF KIM NEWMAN
The critic and novelist on this month’s weirdest straight-to-video picks
IN TREMORS: SHRIEKER
Island , the seventh film in the franchise, Jon Heder replaces Jamie Kennedy as the panicky leading man, and villainy is provided by the reliably demented Richard Brake as a techbro who breeds ‘graboid’ mutations to stock his island hunting preserve. Over 30 years, the series has admirably maintained its quirky, inventive tone. Globetrotting director Don Michael Paul follows his African and Arctic Tremors instalments by shooting in Thai locations — so the CGI monsters rampage through lush jungle. Michael Gross, comedy- relief support when Fred Ward and Kevin Bacon were top-billed, has risen to be the iconic star of the show. His lunatic survivalist hero gets the equivalent of a victory-lap highlights reel that’s surprisingly moving. People you don’t expect to see in a Tremors movie department: UK TV star Caroline Langrishe (Lovejoy, Casualty), a refreshingly mature leading lady cast as Gross’ eco-boffin ex-wife.
OG Tremors fighter Kevin Bacon reteams with his Stir Of Echoes director David Koepp for You Should Have Left , another entry in the crowded Airbnb horror sub-genre. Retired banker Bacon, his much younger movie-star wife Amanda Seyfried and their adorable little girl Avery Tiiu Essex rent a remote house in Wales for family alone time to get past heavily signposted ‘issues’. The star of the film is the house, a brutalist structure in an ancient landscape. Sometimes, doors open to ghost rooms which belong to the houses that stood on this plot before. Bacon delivers a tour-de-force as a horrible protagonist with one redeeming feature — his desperate love for his child — and Koepp wrings chills from the bland, underdecorated depths of the house. Connoisseurs of Hollywood’s depiction of the UK will appreciate the film’s bizarre idea of a village shop in Wales.
The Wolf Of Snow Hollow , written and directed by star Jim Cummings, is a Fargo-type rural mystery featuring either a werewolf or a very smart imitation of one. Cummings, an alcoholic with anger issues, has to do the job of sheriff because no-one can talk the incumbent — his elderly, ailing father (the late Robert Forster) — into retirement. The hero gets so much grief from his father and semi-estranged daughter (Chloe East) that he finds it hard to concentrate on the gruesome case. It creatively breaks several horror/mystery rules but still manages satisfying thrills. Cummings’ performance as a broken guy trying to do better and not always succeeding marks it out from the wolfpack.
Veteran Anglo-canadian supporting actor Julian Richings was featured as a cult hero on this page last year. Now director Justin G. Dyck gives him a rare lead role, alongside the equally undervalued Sheila Mccarthy, in Anything For Jackson , a stalker-captivity story that spirals into Satanic delirium. A grieving couple abduct a pregnant woman (Konstantina Mantelos) and perform rituals in the hope of reincarnating their dead grandson. Because they haven’t read the ancient grimoire properly, the summoning brings disturbing ghosts to their house and their necromancy consultant (Josh Cruddas, in a supremely creepy performance) pursues his own hideous agenda. It’s a wild, suspenseful, shocking ride with touches of very black humour. Mccarthy
(in her best screen role since I’ve Heard The Mermaids Singing in 1987) and Richings play dead straight as nice, ruthless, loving old folks who rank among the most interesting villains in recent cinema.