Zombies are hot. In addition to AMC’s smash hit The Walking Dead on the small screen, Warm Bodies raked in $117 million worldwide early this year and World War Z bounced back from some bad pre-release buzz to chew up the box office this summer to the tune of a $526 million accumulated haul, but there are plenty of other zombie tales out there too — including one likely shot, quite literally, for the catering budget on Brad Pitt‘s film.
Putting a Shaun of the Dead-like spin on one of filmmaker John Hughes’ beloved teen classics, Detention of the Dead centers on an oddball (and at-odds) collection of high school students who find themselves trapped in detention while all their classmates and teachers outside have turned into zombies. If its budget and cramped settings sometimes let it down, director Alex Craig Mann, in his feature debut, shows a nice ability to juggle character-rooted comedy and horror, in a manner that would surely make a young Sam Raimi proud.
Geeky but tightly wound Eddie (Jacob Zachar), who may have compromised his lofty college ambitions with a recent slip-up, seems an unlikely fit for detention. But that’s where he finds himself, along with the popular Brad (Jayson Blair), affable stoner punk Ash (21 & Over‘s Justin Chon) and dimwitted jock himbo Jimmy (Max Adler). Eddie’s attentions more naturally gravitate toward Brad’s blonde cheerleader girlfriend, Janet (Christa B. Allen), but wise ass alterna-chick Willow (Alexa Nikolas), Eddie’s partner in zombie film fandom, fancies herself a better fit.
It sounds damning with faint praise (and I suppose it somewhat is), but the easiest and most honest line on Detention of the Dead is that it’s better than it has any reasonable right or need to be, given its aims. A calling card for its maker and young cast, the movie isn’t seeking to reinvent the wheel or radically reinvent formula, and yet the extra thought and care put into it on various levels of production is evident throughout. Composer Cody Westheimer’s score, for instance, is a buoyant treat, as are a number of smart song selections, from Nada Surf’s cover of “Where Is My Mind” to Band of Skulls’ “Impossible” and the Sprites’ peppy, closing “George Romero.”
Working from a re-written script originally penned by Rob Rinow (both share credit), Mann blends together quip-based comedy rooted in familiar high school archetypes, but never in a way which sells his characters short or completely empty. One unusual thing is that the film’s roots lie nominally in a stageplay — a fact which obviously informs some of the slapstick-y horror setpieces that crop up in the second act and beyond. It’s a credit to Detention of the Dead, however, that while it possesses a satirical soul (and indeed apes some of the set-ups of The Breakfast Club), it isn’t just explicitly that: it has its own legs underneath it, and is more of a loose-limbed, energetic homage than anything else.
Mann also shows the ability to marshal his troops and get them on the same page as to the type of movie they’re making, and that’s not without accident — in addition to directing theater, he has an extensive background as an acting teacher. If Zachar is a bit on the nose as Eddie, he and the rest of the cast still have a great rapport with one another. There are far worse cinematic sentences than this Detention, that’s for sure — particularly for those with an affinity for the commingled genres.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case in turn stored in a complementary cardboard slipcover, Detention of the Dead comes to DVD presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, along with a Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track and optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles. In addition to a motion menu and chapter stops, its supplemental features consist of an audio commentary track with Mann in which he discusses the film’s Michigan location shoot as well as some of the trims he had to make in order to condense the production schedule. There’s also a meaty, 40-minute behind-the-scenes featurette which includes lots of on-set footage, obviously, as well as reflections from the cast and crew, who seemed to have had a good time. To purchase the DVD via Half, click here; if Amazon is still your thing, click here. C+ (Movie) B- (Disc)
Daily Archives: August 9, 2013
Milla Jovovich, Ethan Hawke Set for Cymbeline
Milla Jovovich is set to star alongside Ethan Hawke, Ed Harris and Penn Badgley in writer-director Michael Almereyda’s modern day adaption of William Shakespeare’s timeless play Cymbeline, it was announced yesterday.
Set to start principal photography on August 19 in New York City, Cymbeline unfolds as an epic battle between dirty cops and a drug-dealing biker gang set in a corruption-riddled 21st century America. Pitched as in the vein of Sons of Anarchy and the style of Baz Luhrmann‘s Romeo + Juliet, Cymbeline will aim to put a fresh spin on a universal story of love, betrayal and revenge. The film will be produced by Anthony Katagas and Michael Benaroya, the latter of whom will fully finance the movie through his banner Benaroya Pictures.
Planes
Mid-level animation meets a slapdash, achingly familiar story in the lackluster animated adventure tale Planes, billed as a spinoff to Disney’s successful Cars franchise. Absent much in the way of any special Pixar pixie dust, however, Planes shifts into autopilot early on, and rushes through a checklist of underdog self-actualization in a manner more dutiful than inspired. All but the youngest viewers may leave feeling they’ve overpaid for this flight. For the full, original review, from Screen Daily, click here. (Disney, PG, 92 minutes)
Off Label
Acute moments of heartbreak punctuate the new documentary Off Label, a collage-type snapshot of runaway pharma-culture which otherwise struggles to find a topic sentence or cultivate a cogent point-of-view. A nonfiction competition title at the Tribeca Film Festival, directors Michael Palmieri and Donal Mosher’s movie is an example of well-intentioned cinematic social advocacy undone by haphazard, point-and-shoot construction.
Off Label ostensibly centers around seven subjects (or family members of same) who have served, either wittingly or unwittingly, as test subjects for drug manufacturers or doctors nominally in their employ. And certain of its narrative strands are undeniably hugely compelling. Iraq War veteran Andrew Duffy, a one-time medic stricken with post-traumatic stress disorder, talks about being directed to use 14-gauge needles on Abu Ghraib prisoners for their IVs, as part of effort to psychologically break them. A montage of gruesome photographs, meanwhile, shows some of the other horrors of war to which he was subjected.
Equally affecting are the reminiscences of Mary Weiss, the mother of a mentally ill young man who committed suicide during a 2004 University of Minnesota clinical trial of the drug Seroquel. There’s an eerie tranquility to many of her musings, but the chilling, graphic recounting of the specifics of her son’s death (“This is what the drugs do — if Dan simply wanted to kill himself, he wouldn’t have done that”) provides Off Label with an unnerving moment of piercing, wretched sadness destined to be rarely surpassed on the screen this year.
The problem is that directors Palmieri and Mosher evidence little instinct for corralling their story into something manageable and salient. Their efforts to select a broad cross-section of people whose lives are impacted by Big Pharma is commendable, but they get caught up in secondary details or character traits (the marriage of a bohemian couple who have lived largely off of income as compensated test subjects; the gambling habits of another such young man) without first establishing many of the specifics of their respective stories.
Off Label can’t see the forest through the trees; its makers get lost as to exactly what sort of story they’re telling. Is it about the immorality of forced drug trials from the 1960s on prison inmates whose consent was at best coerced? Is it about psychiatrists dealing with poly-pharmacy generated by primary care physicians prescribing medications about which they have little expertise? Is it about the continued lack of substantive national dialogue on mental illness as it relates to health care? Passionate and jumbled, Off Label is a conversation-starter, but as much for its shortcomings as for what it says about the state of drugs in America. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here; to visit the movie’s website, click here. Off Label opens this week in Los Angeles at the Laemmle Royal; it expands in weeks following to a limited national release. In addition to its theatrical engagements, though, the movie is also presently available across VOD platforms. (Oscilloscope, unrated, 80 minutes)
Jug Face
A rising tide of dread and desperation marks Jug Face, a low-budget, independent slice of Southern Gothic characterized by a solid technical package. The freshman feature effort of writer-director Chad Crawford Kinkle, this psychologically rooted horror film recalls the movies of Lucky McKee — and with good reason, since the May and Sick Girl director serves as an executive producer here.
The story unfolds in a rural, backwoods community, where moonshine seems to be the only connection to the outside world. Teenager Ada (Lauren Ashley Carter) is set to be married off to Bodey (Mathieu Whitman) by her father Sustin (Larry Fessenden) and mother Loriss (Sean Young). What they don’t know, however, is that Ada’s walks in the woods with her brother Jessaby (Daniel Manche) are more than innocent strolls — and that she’s pregnant.
All this would be a simpler tragedy if not for the fact that the community indulges in occasional human sacrifice to a mysterious pit. The pit supposedly heals wounds and sickness, but also requires fealty in the form of a corporal offering when potter Dawai (Sean Bridgers) goes into a trance and carves the visage of someone onto a ceremonial jug. When Ada discovers she’s been tabbed as the next sacrifice, it sets off a scramble for survival — with far-reaching consequences for her entire burgh.
There’s a simple, streamlined narrative quality, and corresponding restraint, to Jug Face. It feels properly scaled. Though it does get bloody, the film eschews much in the way of gore in favor of steeped atmosphere and tension. It mostly works, even if Ava and Jessaby’s sibling bond could use a deeper and more sincere exploration, and Kinkle doesn’t quite figure out the most compelling bridge between the movie’s second act and its ending.
What gives Jug Face its punch is Kinkle’s instincts for construction; they’re superb, and extend to composer Sean Spillane, who offers up a great, memorable and evocative leitmotif as part of his score. Chris Heinrich’s cinematography is also quite nice, fitting the naturalistic aesthetic of the movie. For genre fans there’s more of moody interest than not here in Jug Face — a film of modest intentions, but solid execution. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. Jug Face opens this week in Los Angeles at the Laemmle Music Hall, and in addition to its theatrical engagements it’s also available across VOD platforms. (Modern Distributors/Modernciné, unrated, 81 minutes)