BA_Harrison

The first twenty minutes or so of The Dark and The Wicked were so slow and uneventful that I soon began questioning my decision to watch the film, but I soldiered on, hoping that it might pick up as it progressed; but no... the rest of the film was just as stupefyingly dull, with lifeless performances from a cast who mumbled their way through their lines as though they just didn't care.

And who could blame them? It couldn't have taken them long to realise that the film was a clunker: there's nary a plot, the dialogue is extremely dull, and the whole thing moves drearily to a very weak climax. I'm guessing that all involved couldn't afford to call it quits -- bills to pay and whatnot -- but were unable to muster up any enthusiasm.

The film takes place on a remote ranch where an evil force has taken hold of the owners, whose son and daughter have no idea what is happening. The father is in a comatose state, the mother hangs herself, the goats all wind up dead, and spooky stuff happens - but director Bryan Bertino shows none of the film-making moxie that he did with his 2008 hit The Strangers: this film is slow, and devoid of the chills, atmosphere and scares that it is so clearly aiming for.

After an hour and thirty-five minutes of mind-numbing tedium, interspersed with a couple of lame gore scenes (the CGI in the knitting needle scene was so bad), Bertino wraps up his film with an incredibly lame attempt at a jump scare. 2/10.

Some people say that Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum is the scariest found footage horror film ever made. If that's the case, it doesn't say much for the sub-genre as a whole.

Gonjiam does pretty much everything by the book. The creators of web series Horror Times recruit several other people to take part in their next episode, a live broadcast from a supposedly haunted psychiatric hospital. Wearing body mounted cameras, the ghost hunters sneak into the asylum after midnight and investigate the building's hot spots, and bizarre stuff happens: there are inexplicable loud noises and things move by themselves. It's revealed that these happenings have been orchestrated by the guys behind the web series in order to get more viewers, but then scary stuff starts happening for real...

No cliché is left unturned: there's tons of wobbly cam, close-ups of the characters looking petrified, characters who try to escape but find themselves somehow returning to the same place, people standing motionless with their backs to the camera, and people who are dragged off into the dark. It's like the makers of this one created a checklist and diligently ticked all of the boxes. That said, if you're a huge fan of the sub-genre, this might be exactly what you are after; I'm not, and I found the film very tedious, with the exception of one scene involving someone putting their arm through a hole in a wooden locker. That bit was pretty good. Shame the rest wasn't.

Dave Franco and Alison Brie play long-term couple Tim and Millie, whose relationship has hit a sticky patch. The couple move to the country so that Millie can take up a teaching position, but this puts further strain on their relationship, musician Tim feeling like he is trapped. While taking a walk in the woods, the pair fall down a hole, unwisely drink water from a creepy subterranean well, and then gradually discover that doing so has altered their biology, making the couple inseparable - literally so, as their bodies combine whenever they touch.

Director Michael Shanks's commentary about the nature of relationships is extremely muddled: what exactly is the film trying to say about how couples interact? (If, indeed, it is trying to say anything meaningful at all). Are Tim and Millie meant for each other, or should they have parted ways long ago? The film's stance is uncertain. There's definitely something interesting to be said about the co-dependant nature of a human couple, but this film doesn't say it. Instead, having established it's basic premise, the film just trundles along repetitively until its inevitable 'shocking' finalé, which feels like a lame attempt to match the craziness of the Substance's blood-drenched climax. It comes nowhere near.

The film boasts one memorable scene, in which Tim and Millie become stuck together post-coitus, with a surprising shot of Tim's member stretching as he tries to pull himself loose (a cock shot in a 15 certificate!). It's definitely the wildest moment in a film that needed a lot more of that kind of craziness to succeed.

3.5/10, rounded down to 3 for the unnecessary humour that jars with the horror, and for the cheesy, predictable use of the Spice Girls' hit 2 Become 1.