Split

#StokerScore 8/10

I clicked Google images to find a movie poster to go with this review, as I always do, and was slightly thrown that the first images to come up were for the Croatian town or a yoga exercise because there was a time, relatively not that long ago either, when M. Night Shyamalan's name was a guarantee of a film's potential. 

Hitchcock was notoriously difficult to spot

He was "the man who does the twist ending", who does the Hitchcock thing of appearing in his own movies, all of this following a string of films that had twists towards the end of the film and small cameos played by the director. The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs, The Village, I enjoyed all of them and I really enjoyed the range of actors that he encouraged into the movies too. Joaquin Phoenix was great alongside Mel Gibson in Signs, much better than when chewing scenery for Ridley Scott in Gladiator at any rate, Bruce Willis, Samuel L., William Hurt, and he was pretty good at getting performances out of kids, too. Haley Joel Osment, Spenser Treat Clark, Rory Culkin and Abigail Breslin, to name just some (notice I don't mention Jaden Smith here)

Shyamalan could have got a good performance out of Jake 

Then the bubble burst, or the schtick got old, or the Midas touch left him because he made a series of dreadful movies topped off by the disaster that was the abysmal, diabolical, awfulness After Earth. Bang in the middle of his bad run he happened to produce a classic little horror in Devil, so maybe he's just better when not playing with big budgets? I guess time will tell because with Split he's back to a much more dialogue-driven, small budget affair. Gone too is the twist ending, well, to a certain extent but this is a spoiler free zone so all I'll say is that if you're over 30 you might just appreciate the end of this movie.

What's good? Well, the writing is getting better again and the performances, especially from James McAvoy and his psychiatrist played by Betty Buckley and reminiscent of Jenny O'Hara in Devil,  are excellent. The smaller scale in terms of the sets encourages you to focus on the actors, and there is a pervasive sense of pessimism that I always found in his earlier films running through this one too.

I just saw the....Last Airbender

I left the cinema having thoroughly enjoyed this, I thought it was sensitive towards mental illnesses, as much as it could be, especially showing the caring side of the psychiatrist and the greater acceptance of mental disorders. All in all it was a welcome return to form and I can't wait to see what M. Night has for us next...

Victor Frankenstein

#StokerScore 1/10

I have been reading horror stories ever since I can remember. My Nan and Pop (Grandparents, in the Geordie dialect) had a little book of northern tales that I came across during a stay at their house outside Durham and it contained the grisly story of "The Lambton Worm". This, along with having the surname of Stoker, was like a gateway into all that was fantastical and horrific in fiction and I devoured every piece of pulp horror I could find and, with the invention of VHS, did the same with movies too. No movie was too Z-grade for me. 

In novel and novella form I was a big fan of Stephen King, Shaun Hutson, Guy N. Smith, Clive Barker and Brian Lumley, as well as the compendiums you could buy too. I never forgot the classics either, the ones that provided all of the inspiration. As well as dear old Bram there was Sheridan Le Fanu, Edgar Allen Poe, H.P. Lovecraft and of course, Mary Wollstonecroft Shelley.

a doctor's worst nightmare that took a lot more than wire wool to get rid of

I was always aware of Frankenstein, even before reading the book. As a kid growing up in the 70's, the BBC would show occasional, late-night summer double-bills where they would pair a classic black-and-white horror from the 1930's with a contempory Hammer Horror. Such was Hammer's love for the classics, you could watch Boris Karloff, with the iconic square head and bolts, and then be blown away by the more visceral (Hammer movies were in colour) Christopher Lee.

I assume that because of the iconic nature of the visuals, Frankenstein eventually became the victim of parody, similar to other equally dark characters. 'Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein' was the end of the run for the character as something to make you squirm and cinemagoers would have to wait nine years for Hammer to revitalise the character and return him to something of his former glory.

The ensuing years saw Frankenstein's monster appear many times, but it wasn't until 1994 that we saw Shelley's character truly come to life through the eyes of Kenneth Brannagh and in the form of Robert de Niro. 

So how does this latest movie compare? Is it a new look at an old character? Well, it has certainly tried to take a different point of view, that of the maligned assistant Igor. But for all of that it is still lacking. The story of the monster, his creation and what it means to the worlds of science and theology, these are lost under overwhelming subplots of unfathomable revenge and unrequited love. It's a mess that even when pared back to the basics seems to lack a sense of direction, instead stumbling from one hackneyed scene to another.

Was the world ready for another Frankenstein movie? Well considering Universal's attempts to design a "Monster Universe" akin to marvel's superhero one, I have a feeling that it won't be too long before we get another one, whether we like it or not. Whether yet another telling of this tale can wash away the memory of Victor Frankenstein,  we'll have to wait and see. But if Dracula Untold and it's tacked-on ending are anything to go by, I won't be holding my breath.

I'll leave you with my favourite version of Frankenstein's assistant and the hopes that no-one ever tries to remake this