A Whole Host Of Hitherto Unimagined Threats From Flaming Cars, Rogue Ceiling

There will come a time in the not-too-distant future when the appeal of 3D will fade, when the time-honoured values of story, dialogue and character will once again be prized above giant pointy objects zooming perilously into the delighted faces of a screaming audience. But until that day arrives there’s absolutely no reason not to enjoy ‘The Final Destination’, a film which doesn’t just pride itself on the spikiest, shiniest collection of audience-intimidating implements yet seen (nails, knives, scissors, screwdrivers) but adds a whole host of hitherto unimagined threats from flaming cars, rogue ceiling fans and even a killer car wash.

Occasionally, life throws up situations which defy all logical explanation: premonitions, feelings or simple gut instincts which warn us of impending doom and spookily turn out to be true after the fact.

In Final Destination, Alex (Devon Sawa) is sitting on Flight 180, awaiting take-off with the rest of his high school French class, when he is blinded by a terrifying vision of the aircraft exploding in mid-air. Gripped with terror, Alex flips out and begs everyone to leave the plane.

Following a struggle, Alex and six other people are ejected from the flight including his teacher Ms Lewton (Kristen Cloke), who tries to sweet-talk the airline staff, but to no avail.

Before the group has time to rue the lost opportunity to visit Paris, Alex's vision proves tragically correct, and the plane explodes a couple of miles from the airport. The other six survivors struggle to understand how the boy could have predicted such a terrible event, returning to their sleepy backwater town and a so-called normal life.

When one of the septet meets a grisly end and Alex turns up soon after at the scene of the crime claiming to have foreseen the tragedy, alarm bells start ringing once more, and gradually Alex realises that the group's ordeal is only just beginning. The angel of death which was meant to have taken their lives on Flight 180 has followed them back home and is trying finish the job. Banding together, the fugitives of fate attempt to understand how they can once again cheat death, this time for good.

Eat your heart out, James Cameron. The "final destination" horror series, written by Eric Bress, is back for a fifth movie. This time it's showing in 3D in many cinemas, but there's no sign of Cameron's haughty credo about the modern generation of 3D being subtle.

This one is very much about scary things flying out of the screen straight atcha! As ever, a bunch of male and female babes have a premonition of a terrible bloodbath - this time at a motor-racing stadium - and get the heck out of there pronto, along with one or two others. But the Angel of Death, cheated of his bounty, wants to kill them in freak accidents. So carelessly tipped-over gasoline cans start glugging out their lethal contents and nail-guns teeter on unsafe shelves. Witty, ingenious, horrible entertainment.

"The Rite" Would Likely Be One Of The Dullest Stories About The Devil Ever Told

If The Rite is proof of anything, it’s that the often odd and mysterious nature of real life doesn’t always translate into the best movie. While this familiar tale of faith and skepticism isn’t the disaster some might expect, it is, at best, a mundane entry in the exorcism sub-genre.
In fact, if not for the presence of Anthony Hopkins, who often is the only spark keeping the heart of this film beating, The Rite would likely be one of the dullest stories about the devil ever told.

Based on the book The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist by journalist Matt Baglio, the film follows young priest-in-training Michael Kovak (Colin O’Donoghue), who flees a depressing life working at home in his father’s (Rutger Hauer) mortuary business by enrolling in seminary school. However, Michael is not the stalwart man of faith his priest collar would suggest: events of his past have put him at odds with his beliefs, and his theological training has done little to resolve that conflict.

After one seemingly fated moment of divine intervention, Father Matthew (Toby Jones) comes to believe in Michael’s potential to serve God, and so he sends his student off to Rome to enter a new program on exorcism at a school attached to the Vatican. There, Michael’s petulance and doubt about the authenticity of exorcism cause the teacher of the course (Ciarán Hinds) to send the young priest-in-training to the home of Father Lucas Trevant (Hopkins), a priest with a long resume of successful exorcisms conducted in very unorthodox ways.

However, even after seeing the frightening evidence of the eccentric Father Lucas’ work, Matthew still struggles with his beliefs – that is until strange and ominous occurrences force the young skeptic to consider the possibility that The Devil is indeed real…and may have his eyes on him.

The Rite was directed by Mikael Håfström, best known for helming the adaptation of the Stephen King story 1408, and the Clive Owen / Jennifer Aniston mystery thriller, Derailed. People tend to know both those films more for the performances of their stars, and The Rite will likely be no different. Håfström is a competent enough director, who works from a slightly dull and bleak visual palette, but I can’t say that any of his films really stick out in terms of their craftsmanship. If anything, Håfström has become accomplished at telling slightly odd or off-kilter stories in a sensible, economical way, from start to finish. And that’s exactly what The Rite feels like: a sensible, by-the-numbers films  that knows the limit of its own potential.

Baglio’s book was one of deep probing questions about the reality of exorcism vs. the image of it presented by cinema, but the script for this movie version only clears room for the more familiar and superficial tropes. The script was written by Michael Petroni, best known for condensing other literary works like Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Anne Rice’s Queen of the Damned and The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys into easily digestible cinematic narratives. With The Rite, Petroni sticks to thoroughly-mined themes of the exorcism sub-genre (atheism vs. faith, “possession” vs. mental illness) – though it must be acknowledged that the film does ease us into the story at a surprisingly relaxed and purposed pace. More time is spent establishing the character of Michael Kovak and his backstory than you might expect from by-the-numbers genre film, and what is established at the start works well at making the climax – and all its implications about the nature of god and faith – resonate in the end, if only slightly.

As for the acting: Colin O’Donoghue is a somewhat boring protagonist as Kovak, all brooding and seriousness, his only wit seemingly found in the witty lines he’s called upon to deliver. He falls on the wrong side of the line between stoicism and stiffness throughout most of the film – a distinction made all the more apparent by the over-the-top (hammy?) performance of Anthony Hopkins.

The Rite requires Hopkins to bring a drastic bit of range to his role, and what we basically get it is re-heated Hannibal Lecter schtick clothed in priest’s robes. I bring up Hopkins’ most famous performance because like Lecter, father Lucas presents a mix of piercing intelligence and wild savagery, tied together by that screen-filing charisma that is now Hopkins’ trademark. Every gesture and movement the man makes, every line (no matter how bad) he delivers, and every twitch of his face is interesting to watch – which is good thing, because as I stated before, Hopkins is pretty much the only interesting thing to watch at many times during this film.

Oh, by the way, Alice Braga (Predators) is also in the movie, playing Kovak’s journalist friend and fellow skeptic, Angeline. Angeline is basically the onscreen version of Matt Baglio converted into a female role (for his book, Baglio followed the real-life inspirations for Father Lucas and Kovak around Italy), and there’s little reason for Braga’s presence here, other than to fulfill the obligatory role of a romantic interest. Braga is a solid actress, and I do often wish she was given better roles to work with – but this is certainly not one of them. Cut her character out and the film would essentially remain unchanged.

The Rite does try to offer some philosophical food for thought – but they’re really just appetizers. We’ve seen stories of faith questioned and faith tested many, many times before, and had them presented to us in far more interesting ways than this. The Rite is only recommended for those viewers who prefer the shallow end of theological quandary, or those who get goosebumps from the standard silly bag of PG-13 scares. If you don’t fit either of those descriptions, you may want to wait until this little devil hits home video.

"Priest" Is An Especially Lousy Action Movie With Very Little Compelling Action

Priest, the 2011 film that reteams director Scott Stewart with Paul Bettany (the pair directed and starred in Legion, respectively), is an adaptation of the Korean comic series of the same name by Hyung Min-woo. However, the Priest of Korean print tells a very different story than that of its Hollywood movie counterpart. Instead of battling fallen angels, the American Priest fights beastly vampires – who sleep in coffins and keep humans as pets.

That said, plenty of comic book-turned-movie adaptations have benefited from creative liberties here and there. While Stewart’s Priest has certainly taken more liberties than most – it’s still possible that the final film is better for the alterations, right?

Unfortunately, Priest joins other lackluster films (such as My Soul to Take) that were delayed upon completion and retrofitted with post-converted 3D to help attract audiences to a film that otherwise has very little going for it – aside from a few slow-motion-heavy action set pieces. The alteration to the core Priest storyline (originally about an undead pilgrim who is reborn after merging with a supernatural force) creates one of the weirdest narrative mishmashes in recent memory.

One of the most disappointing aspects of Priest is the shameless lack of world-building. In case you’re unfamiliar, the film takes place in a (potentially) fascinating alternate world where humans and beastly vampires have warred for centuries (The Crusades, World War II, etc) – though the film never takes advantage of this foundation. To turn the tide, the Church unleashes “the Priests,” humans with super-human-like reflexes, who drive the vampires into exile.

Humanity takes shelter in large fortified Church-run cities, and instead of eradicating the vampires altogether, the creatures of the night are quarantined in concentration camp-like facilities, while the Priests are forced to live in obscurity, since the church fears the warriors might rebel against the aging religious regime. This status quo is sustained until a vampire attack on a farming community sends Bettany’s Priest on a journey of revenge which opposes the will of the church leaders, who (predictably) have become vain and subsequently brand Priest a trouble-maker, electing to ignore the vampire threat and attack the  noble warrior instead.

As mentioned, the film never really takes advantage of anything more than the most basic settings and story beats – never really touching on the vampire strata (i.e., that there’s more than one kind), the day-to-day lives of the surviving humans, or what could be an interesting juxtaposition in the character of Priest (a man of faith who enjoys killing). Instead, the film focuses on the cliché story of a “true” man of faith who must do God’s work – in spite of a vacuous and incompetent church organization. Even though the basic plot isn’t particularly fresh, Priest still had room to capitalize on its less-conventional aspects, given the film’s dystopian Western setting and intriguing mix of modern/traditional vampire tropes. Unfortunately, the movie is too one-note to take advantage of anything but a linear race to the final Priest-on-vampire battle.

While the phrase “Priest-on-vampire battle” might sound epic and exciting, the film manages to underwhelm even in the one area that many action fans were looking forward to –the action. Sadly, there are really only about three action set-pieces in the film and the first one is (by far) the best; after that strong start, the film never manages to regain momentum. Despite a couple of isolated fight sequences during the climax, the whole thing mostly goes out in a non-sensical whimper (especially if you’re Cam Gigandet’s character, Hicks).

While it might sound like brow-beating, the problems with the story and action sequences are largely predicated on the film’s ability to make even a character as (theoretically) badass and (potentially) interesting as Priest into a complete bore. Similarly, Karl Urban’s “Black Hat” is kept in the shadows so long that, by the time he’s fully revealed, it has already become clear that there’s very little substance to the character – or his backstory. Gigandet (best known as James from Twilight) plays a Western Lawman (the aforementioned Hicks) who provides a few entertaining moments, but mostly serves as a foil for Priest, and an excuse for Bettany to deliver heavy exposition about the in-and-outs of vampire hunting.

Even the more successful character moments are undermined by some of the most clichéd and heavy-handed dialogue in recent memory. Priest just mutters generalities under his breath; Black Hat spouts the Greatest Hits of essential villainous platitudes –  “You’ve done well” and “I’m counting on it”; Maggie Q (who plays her usual contemplative female warrior role) has the only heartfelt and (almost) charismatic dialogue in the film. Sadly though, the lack of execution with the rest of the project makes even the moments between Priest and Q’s Priestess come across as overly-melodramatic.

Similar to the film’s twist (which has very little bearing on the emotional complexity of the story), the 3D in Priest is entirely unnecessary and is one of the more egregious attempts at selling audiences on a mess of a film by slapping post-converted 3D on it. The 3D itself doesn’t fail as bad as the infamous Clash of the Titans post-conversion but it’s still entirely unnecessary and only succeeds in not making the film any worse than it would be – except for the higher ticket price.

Inevitably, some action fans will read this review and say something along the lines of, “It’s just an action movie – it doesn’t need character development or competent dialogue.” and I somewhat agree. In some cases, it’s fair to overlook whether a movie is technically good, in favor of it being immensely entertaining (Fast Five is a good example). However, Priest is an especially lousy action movie with very little compelling action, boring characters, and a convoluted plot, all put together by a group of filmmakers who failed entirely at capitalizing on the more compelling aspects of the core concept. And given that they had an extra year to get the film into theaters (it was originally set for an August 27th 2010 release), it’s only more disappointing that most that was done to try to salvage the wreckage was tempting audiences with a post-conversion 3D gimmick.