so. But in the end, its focus on a mysterious, seem- ingly unstoppable source of terror makes me not only include it under the horror banner but also rank it as one of the genre’s most accomplished and original releases in a while.
PETER GUTIÉRREZ SOW-SOW
RITES OF SPRING Starring Anessa Ramsey, AJ Bowen and Sonny Marinelli
Written and directed by Padraig Reynolds IFC Films
Writer/director Padraig Reynolds certainly can’t be
faulted for trying to cram as much as possible into the anaemic one-hour-and-fifteen-minute running time of his debut feature, Rites of Spring. It’s just that it’s all been done before, and more successfully. The film starts off with the abduction of two friends,
Alyssa (Hannah Bryan) and Rachel (Anessa Ramsey), who are blowing off some steam at a bar after a bad day at work. The girls are taken to a farm where their kidnapper, a man known only as The Stranger (Marco St. John), attends to them by creepily freaking them with lines like “Are you clean?” and “I need to be sure.” We soon learn that there is a creature on this guy’s farm that needs the girls’ blood in order to en- sure a plentiful harvest. Or something like that. The Stranger isn’t the only kidnapper at work in
Rites of Spring, though. A separate plotline follows a group of crooks (including indie horror stalwart AJ Bowen: House of the Devil) whose plan to abduct the youngest daughter of a wealthy family goes awry. The two plotlines eventu- ally converge in ways that won’t come as much of a surprise to anyone, set- ting up the obligatory monster showdown. The creature is less than im- pressive: imagine an axe- wielding farm-mummy with the demeanour and gait of a schtick wrestler, and you’re pretty much
there. As the hunters-become-the hunted smack- down ensues, we sink into an all-too-quickly imple- mented stalk-’n’-slash scenario that is neither exciting nor particularly rewarding. Rites of Spring is well made for what it is and works
as casual viewing for the seasoned horror fan, but don’t expect anything new or surprising. As far as this blood harvest goes, the seeds just weren’t ready to sow.
DEREK NIETO ERRORISM
OSOMBIE Starring Corey Sevier, Eve Mauro and Jasen Wade
Directed by John Lyde Written by Kurt Hale Entertainment One
This preachy, shambling shocker is a good case- in-point for why expressing your political opinions
Rites of Spring
with ambiguous, Romero-style metaphors works far better than stomping them into the viewer’s head. Poking fun at a former hot-button issue, this mili-
tary-action-horror flick posits that Osama bin Laden isn’t quite as dead as we’ve been led to believe. In- stead, the terrorist is living it up as a zombie, thanks to an American-made biological weapon-gone- wrong. Now it’s up to a yoga instructor (Eve Mauro) and a ragtag team of special-ops soldiers to eliminate the bin Laden zombie plague and save the people of Afghanistan. Starting strong with a pair of action sequences
loaded with gunplay, sword-fighting (one soldier has a katana) and hand-to-hand zombie ass-kicking, the story grinds to a halt as it plops in boring, heavy-handed expo- sition that builds to the next action scene, then repeats this for- mula several times over. The cringe-in- ducing dialogue, made up of lacklustre one-liners and some- one’s idea of pithy repartee, makes sure that nary a plot point
is explained without a zinger to follow (including a joke stolen from MTV’s Human Giant – bad form), not to mention ham-fisted political commentary (one dis- cussion refers to former US president George Bush as “George Bonaparte”) and dated pop-culture refer- ences to everything from Facebook to Beanie Babies. One of the biggest problems with the movie is that,
despite its ludicrous premise and “clever” quips, it’s not a comedy. Osombie takes itself too seriously in all the wrong places, giving the audience stern-faced explanations of the zombie infestation, banal back stories for all of the characters and overly dramatic death scenes that have no place in an offensively fun rotter romp. If the sole purpose of Osombie was to drum up
some brain-dead military mayhem to tide you over until the next Call of Duty, mission accomplished. But if the filmmakers were aiming for insight, their marks- manship needs work.
PATRICK DOLAN REICH IT OR NOT
OUTPOST: BLACK SUN Starring Richard Coyle, Clive Russell
and Catherine Steadman Directed by Steve Barker Written by Steve Barker and Rae Brunton Mongrel Media
Given some of the formulaic genre crap that gets
pushed in our faces with giant PR bulldozers, it’s as- tounding that certain distributors get hold of well- made, original horror movies, only to dump them onto the market without so much as a press release. Out- post is a perfect example. The 2008 film showed up at the office one day with a generic cover, yet it turned out that this story of a mercenary unit sent into an un- stable part of Eastern Europe to retrieve something from a WWII-era bunker, only to come face-to-nasty- face with reanimated Nazi zombies, was a really well- made low-budget gem. Director/co-writer Steve Barker delivered what was essentially a Neil Marshall film with a touch of Hell- boy’s supernatural Nazi technology, but with a frac- tion of those filmmakers’ coin. Yet, it was given al- most zero promotion. Unfortunately, the same
goes for its sequel, Out- post: Black Sun, which also arrived at the office like an orphan on the doorstep. This time the story unfolds from the perspective of Nazi hunter Lena (Catherine Steadman), whose search for notorious war criminal Klausener leads her back to the titular outpost, which has birthed an army of undead, un- stoppable Nazi ghouls that are cutting a path through the NATO forces sent to contain and cover up this ris- ing Fourth Reich. With the help of an engineer named Wallace (Richard Coyle) and the military unit they hook up with, Lena descends into the bowels of the bunker to unlock the mystery of the undead army and destroy the technology that created them. Firefights, gore, hideous monsters and a WWII con-
spiracy make for an exciting story, and Barker is very assured in his direction and pacing. Black Sun feels a
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