SnoopyStyle

It is WWI. Brooklyn gal Doris Kendall (Constance Bennett) meets American flyer Captain Barry Craig (Joel McCrea) during a Zeppelin attack in London. She is later told that he has been shot down and presumed dead. Her friend Sir Wilfred Drake (Paul Cavanagh) proposes marriage. She tells him that she's pregnant with Barry's baby. He marries her anyways. It turns out that Barry is still alive.

This is a rather boring story for the first hour. It's a lot of things that keep it that way. The movie makes a dramatic turn at around the hour mark. It needed the villainous turn to raise the intensity. By then, most of the audience has probably lost interest. Then it takes a dark turn that feels undeserved. I don't really understand Wilfred at that moment.

In West Texas, preacher David Martin is driving to his new congregation in the tiny community of Bevel. He comes across an unconscious man (Shea Whigham) in the middle of the road. After picking him up, the man kills the preacher at a quarry. The man decides to head for Bevel and take over the preacher's identity. He stays at the home of local parishioner Celia (Catalina Sandino Moreno) who is dating local sheriff John Moore (Michael Shannon).

This has great actors. This has a good location. The plot has potential, but little issues keep coming up. First, I don't know why he would go to that town. Of course, the story would be different. As a rule, I do question why movie characters wouldn't go to the police. In this case, I question why he would go to the police. There are little wrong things along the way. It is borderline fine.

It is 28 years after the rage virus release. It has mostly been contained to the UK which has been placed under quarantine and left to its own device. On an island off the British coast, a small community of survivors has found some stability. They are connected to the mainland by a long causeway which is only accessible at low tide. Young Jimmy lives there with his parents. His mother Isla (Jodie Comer) is sick. Without a doctor, his father is unwilling to do much to help her and he's having an affair. Upon learning that there may be a Dr. Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) on the mainland, he escapes with his mother to find him.

Director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland have returned to the franchise. One can sense that they don't want to do a simple by-the-number sequel. They are putting in plenty of artistic flares. Some of which do leave me questioning their logic. By the tower of skulls, one has to leave reason on the back-burner. It's the naked crazies. It's the towers of bones. I feel the pull of those weird British horrors from the 70's. In those movies, it's the weird little communities on the fringes of the nation. In this case, the entire place is this weirdness. By the end, the movie is letting its freak flag fly. Some people will not like this. They probably want a logical straight-forward sequel. This is not that.