Tag Archives: Mystery

Midnighters (2017) [Horrible Imaginings Film Festival 2017]

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A couple coming back from a New Year’s party hits a man on the highway. As they try to figure out what to do, things take turns for the worse and worse, testing them and their resolve.

Written by Alston Ramsay and directed by Julius Ramsay, Midnighters is a thriller with touches of horror that takes its time to set up the situation and the stress of it before through a wrench into the proceeding and ads extra characters in the story and everything takes a few more turns that are surprising yet still make sense. The writing and directing of the film show that they creators work well together and them being brothers definitely help. Their work is good here and the film is a tightly planned and executed thriller.

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Yesterday is Tomorrow (2017) [Horrible Imaginings Film Festival 2017]

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A mourning woman must confront her past and her dreams as they begin blurring and causing her much pain.

Written and directed by James C. Shahanshah, this short takes on issues of grieving, regret, sadness, depression, and other mental issues. It tackles them fairly upfront and manages to make a film that is touching and emotional while also not over-doing any of it. The subtlety of the film and how it proceeds with the emotions at hand works great for this type of situation and message. The film does not skirt any part of the issues at hand, but it also does not go for too bluntly which is something that takes a mastering of storytelling and directing clearly shown here from James C. Shahanshah. He gives his leading lady the spotlight and doesn’t force the gaze upon her but more like lets it rest upon her emotions. The film layers the lead’s emotions to create something that becomes heavier and heavier as the runtime moves forward.

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Assumption (2017) [Horrible Imaginings Film Festival 2017]

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A man wakes up trapped in a cargo elevator, as time goes by, his spends his time speaking with the disembodied voice from the security room and begins to lose his mind.

Written and directed by Anthony Leone, Assumption is a one location film that does make the most of its location and that trapped feeling that happens when one is stuck in an elevator for an extended period of time.  The film explores themes of guilt and purgatory in direct and indirect ways while also showing the true colors of its only onscreen character.  However, this could have been done in less time as here the film feels overly long and repetitive after a while.  The ideas and the story are good, but the way it’s executed feels like something is either missing or it could have been trimmed by a lot.

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Downrange (2017) [Toronto International Film Festival 2017]

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A group of students sharing a car to various destinations has a tire blow-out that leaves them stranded.  Soon they discover that this was not an accident and they are now in grave danger.

Written by Joey O’Bryan and Ryûhei Kitamura with the latter also directing, Downrange is a tense, one location thriller that grabs the viewer early on and doesn’t let go until the end credits roll.  For fans of Kitamura, this is a return to sources, to his earlier style of having a story set in one location and making it a tense experience for all involved.  This, here, is very successful and works like a charm in the desolate location on a road in the middle of nowhere.  This setting works really well here and the collection of characters and how they came to be together adds to the tension and mystery.  The film uses the fact that there are many unknowns to work in its favor.  The situation is tense enough on its own but the way the characters interact and are portrayed make it work even better.

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The Hitman’s Bodyguard (2017)

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“The Hitman’s Bodyguard” is the type of middling, mediocre nonsense that you’re likely going to find playing on basic cable in three years. It’s such an unremarkable, silly action comedy going through the motions and capitalizing on two men and what they’re famous for. Stars Samuel L. Jackson and Ryan Reynolds never break out of their comfort zones, and you can almost sense director Patrick Hughes asked both men to just be who everyone knows them for, and really nothing else. “The Hitman’s Bodyguard” is everything you think a movie starring Jackson and Reynolds will be like. Nothing ever really skirts the edges or thinks outside the box, and the violence seems just tacked on to what was probably a bland PG-13 action comedy in development.

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The Reunion (2016) [Horrible Imaginings Film Festival 2017]

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A man goes into the woods looking for a missing young man with his trusted gun and his will to find him.  What he finds turns out differently than planned.

In filmmaker Francisco Silva’s short film about a man looking for something in the woods and finding out much more than he expected, he explores what one may find on the other side of the darkness and that is may not always be what one expects.  The way the film is written brings horror elements to this story and creates an interesting mystery with a surprising ending.  The film is kept simple in story and dialog as well as setting and development.

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It (2017)

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Andrés Muschietti’s “It” has proven in a year of really bad Stephen King adaptations, that it is very possible to put one of King’s most popular novels on screen and remind us once again why King is King. Muschietti, like Tommy Lee Wallace before him, has the daunting task of compressing an eleven hundred page novel in to what will end up being a five hour epic. Yet, “It” manages to come out mostly unscathed as a film that is both a spooky horror film and a stellar coming of age drama. Much like “Mama,” Muschietti’s work on “It” ends in a film that can be appreciated as a human drama and a pure horror movie packed with heart, scares, insight in to growing up in an unforgiving, cruel world.

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