Blair Witch - Sorry guys, I went to see it

The title says it all really.  I feel I have to apologise to my film-watching fraternity for going to see the remake of / sequel to (sigh) The Blair Witch Project after generating disparaging remarks about it both verbally and in print.  I had no intention of going anyway near this, but when Mark Kermode said it isn't as bad as it could have been, and I found myself with a spare Saturday morning last weekend, I decided to wander to the Cineworld at the NEC in Birmingham for a matinee showing.

First point of order - matinee showings of horror movies are excellent.  Some people think you want to go and watch a horror film at night.  But why go when the cinema's going to full?  What better way to experience a horror film than in the middle of the day when - if you're lucky - you get to sit by yourself in a large darkened room in front of a massive screen and surrounded by the modern soundscape of 21st century audio?  Horror indeed.

So, Blair Witch.  Set 20 years after the original, we follow James - younger brother of Heather (the one what was in the original film and did the much-parodied-at-the-time solo "... I'm sorry..." monologue into camera).  James wants to find out what happened to Heather, so he enlists the help of his film student friends and some local conspiracy weirdos.  They wander into the woods to try to find the house where Heather, Mike and JOSH! disappeared.  Guess what - they don't find them.

Though the film stays true to the idea of the original - that of the found footage - it adds a few extra things in that mess with the tone just enough to mean it isn't anywhere near as powerful.  The addition of more cameras, brighter, more crisp footage, and crucially a drone camera all tone down the film's claustrophobia.  Allowing us to see an establishing shot of the forest via a drone camera might be a clever way of allowing a found footage film to have an establishing shot; but by putting it in there the forest feels more and conquerable rather than all-enveloping.  The Blair Witch Project never for a moment let the audience out of the space its characters were inhabiting, and from there came its creeping terror.

The Blair Witch Project was terrifying because of what it didn't show you.  No need for jump scares.  No need for malformed humanoid entities to appear in the background.  No need for an unseen force to drag someone off into the bushes.  No need for a character to get an icky-looking wound that they can prod at in graphic detail.  No need for a scene of traumatic underground claustrophobia.  All this does is present the Blair Witch as an actual entity that we could fight if only we knew how.  All this is avoided in the original film, a film which is endlessly more terrifying as a result.

Blair Witch was not a waste of my time.  Its 89 minutes served as a reminder of just how groundbreaking and creepingly terrifying the original was.  You should take my word for it though, if it takes too much money at the box office they might start thinking about making another.

Coherence - Not Quantum Physics

Saw a very short mystery / thriller type thing the other week - Coherence.  This is another of those films that probably started out as a neat idea in someone's head, but in reality there isn't quite enough to string 90 minutes of story-telling out of.  I am reminded of Devil and Exam.  But whatever (they say) - make a film anyway!  "But why Dean?", asked the 2 or 3 people who will ever read this.  Read on...

First the plot.  A bunch of middle class Americans meet up in at the house of a guy who isn't around for dinner - skeletons in the closet all over the place.  There is an asteroid passing overhead and weird things start happening.  Are these things connected?  Obviously.  But how?  And what - if anything - can anyone do to stop this fun evening turning into a nightmare?  Note - stars Nicholas Brendon of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame.  Good to see he's still in acting!

The coherence of the film's title refers to quantum coherence, which isn't actually what the film's doing - but we'll get away with them misrepresenting the Copenhagen interpretation of Schrodinger's Cat if they can tell a decent mystery thriller.  Sadly, I just didn't buy into the concept of the film, the reason any of it was happening, the decisions any of the characters make and the the way everyone acts throughout.  Pretty damming I guess.

Coherence was at least filmed in an interesting way.  The director makes use of techniques similar to those employed in the production of The Blair Witch Project (of which there is a remake coming - shoot me now).  The actors were given character descriptions for the roles, and then provided with snippets of information before being encouraged to largely improvise.  Sort of like playing Dungeons and Dragons I guess.  Now that's ok in theory, but it doesn't really work when you're trying to tell a story about quantum theory and you have different versions of people flying all over the place.  It gets very confusing very fast, and when someone finally does sit down with a book of science to try to explain everything, it turns into the dullest and most forced exposition scene since Basil Exposition.  It's mainly because of this I think that I didn't buy into anything that was going on.

See when The Blair Witch Project did this it made sense because the confusion of the protagonists was crucial in feeding into the overall tone.  You can't have it both ways.  Either embrace the confusion and have your characters slowly lose their minds to the confusion of the mystery that's engulfing them (Primer); OR have a scientist come and explain everything and have them try to put the universe right (all of Star Trek).  Coherence is made in a way that suits the former, but plotted in a way that insists on the later.

Overall very disappointing.  Coherence messes up its own tone and can't bring itself to not have a neatly wrapped-up explanation for what's going on.  It isn't enough to leaving the fate of our protagonist and where she might be as an open question in the final scene, by that point the mystery has well and truly vanished.

In other words, Coherence is too incoherent.

Suffragette - Bringing history alive and making it relevant

As a progressive, Socialist and Feminist, it is with some shame that have to admit knowing very little about the movement for women's suffrage that swept across the United Kingdom in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  Obviously I know the headlines, that there was a movement called the Suffragettes whose direct action eventually brought about the introduction of votes for women in the early 20th century.  But aside from that - almost nothing.

I assume that I am in a vast majority of British people, and as such the production and release of Suffragette as a major film was welcome.  Starring Carey Mulligan in the lead role, she brings the required star presence the ensure that the film got reviewed more than just as a historical curiosity - well, her and Meryl Streep obviously.  Here Mulligan plays Maud Watts, a washer woman from East London living an ordinary working class life who experiences molestation at work at the hands of her boss and as a result gets swept up into the Suffragette movement.

This is a film that deftly tells a story of one woman's ordinary experiences, and by extension the ordinary experience of women throughout the decades and centuries that eventually lead to the birth of modern feminism.  It's a story of how political change is enacted - via political or direct means.  It's a story about the sacrifices made by those acting to create chance, as they are shunned by their own communities and families.  It's also a story about the role the police take in such matters, how does a police officer who largely agrees with your cause react to knowing it's his job to brutally repress it?  All of this ties in with contemporary protest movements, the daily realities of raging against the machine were the same then as they are today.

Let's turn momentarily to the casting of Meryl Streep as Emmeline Pankhurst.  Initially I was a little miffed that this part went to the American Holywood A-lister, for such a small role why not cast a British actress and allow her to take the limelight.  But then the power of using Streep becomes clear, because Pankhurst's celebrity amongst the Suffragettes is conveyed by Streep's screen presence and our reaction to her.  Similar to the way that Scarlett Johansson's casting in Under the Skin added to the unearthliness of her alien presence in suburban Glasgow, when Streep comes on screen we don't need anyone to tell us that this is an important moment in the politicisation of Maud Watts.

So my message to you Britain is to get out there and see (well, stay in and rent the DVD of) Suffragette.  It tells a side of history that I guarantee few of you are aware of.