Sex, Leins & Videotape #27. They come from a land down under…! Paignton film critic Tom Leins reviews three upcoming DVDs with an Australian connection.
Drawing first blood in the DVD dead zone this week is The Horseman (Kaleidoscope) 
, a grisly revenge thriller in which a distraught father (Peter Marshall) trawls Australia’s sordid underbelly in search of answers, when his strung-out daughter is killed by a posse of degenerate pornographers!
If the prospect of a blood-soaked mash-up between Oldboy and Wolf Creek sets your pulse racing, then you should make a bee-line for this gruesome, reckless thriller. After he is sent a disturbing pornographic video detailing his daughter’s final hours, mild-mannered Christian is determined to enact his own vicious brand of retribution on the culprits. Armed with only a tool-kit and a belly full of fury, Christian tracks down the men responsible and makes them pay for what they did to his unfortunate daughter.
The Horseman is cheap and cheerless throughout, but packs a powerful punch, and grabs you by the throat from the opening scene. Chock-full of unrelenting violence and queasily inventive torture scenes, this is a disturbingly raw viewing experience, and feels a lot like picking at an open wound. The Horseman is undercut with a grubby realism that sets it apart from most slick revenge thrillers, and looks set to make a big splash with film fans who crave intense, visceral thrills. Traumatic, absorbing stuff.
After achieving cult success with his first two movies – Creep and Severance – British director Christopher Smith heads down under for the mind-boggling Triangle (Icon) , an artfully assembled psychological horror movie about a shipwrecked group of friends who are forced to board a strange, hulking ocean liner when their yacht capsizes. However, all is not as it seems onboard this mysterious vessel, and Jess (Melissa George) is convinced that she has been on the ship before. Although the ship appears to be deserted, it soon becomes apparent that the group are being stalked by a shadowy assailant, and their nemesis attempts to pick them off – one-by-one. Little do the group know, tormented Jess is the one who holds the key to their fate…
With nods in the direction of TV show ‘Lost’ and the movies of David Lynch (particularly the ‘Möbius Strip’ narrative of Lost Highway), Triangle boasts an impeccable set of influences. Furthermore – although no one involved seems in a hurry to admit it – Triangle owes a huge debt to last year’s freaky Spanish thriller Time Crimes – a film which it resembles in more ways than one. That said, Smith and co. have taken the central conceit of Time Crimes and tweaked it for mainstream consumption, factoring in enough fresh ideas to keep jaded fans guessing. Triangle is a cerebral horror experience rather than a visceral one, but it succeeds on its own terms and will appeal to fans who like to think outside the box.
After years toiling unsuccessfully on the fringes of Hollywood, Australian actor Simon Baker finally hit pay-dirt last year with the hit US TV show The Mentalist. Now that movie producers have woken up to his charms, it seems inevitable that we’ll be seeing a lot more of him on our screens. His first post-Mentalist movie is Not Forgotten (Anchor Bay) , a grubby, twisted little thriller about a loving father who has to face up to the darkness inside himself when his young daughter is snatched by a Mexican voodoo cult!
As the investigation into his daughter’s disappearance deepens, it becomes clear that Jack Bishop (Baker) has skeletons of his own rattling around in his closet, and he shrugs off the attentions of the law and heads to Mexico to do things his way. After a sluggish start, Not Forgotten comes into its own when the charismatic Baker arrives in Mexico and starts trawling the barrios and brothels of the seedy border town. Despite some electric scenes – including a particularly vicious motel interrogation – Not Forgotten never quite gets into top gear and the curious ending falls slightly flat. Fans of The Mentalist will enjoy seeing Baker in a different guise, but Not Forgotten is too frustrating for widespread consumption.
Triangle clearly owes a debt to Time Crimes – wonder if there’s a bit of El Orfanato in there too (released the same year as Time Crimes – 2007 was the year of the sackhead!). Reckon Triangle trumps them all, though. Don’t remember seeing any interviews with Smith about his influences, etc – the movie just kinda appeared with no fanfare.
BTW Christopher Smith is (almost) a local boy – born in Brizzle!
Strangely enough, in the press release there was a mini interview with Smith, and he claimed that the biggest influences on Triangle were Reservoir Dogs and Memento! I can maybe understand the Memento influence, but Reservoir Dogs sounds like a bit of a stretch to me! Overall, I preferred Triangle to Time Crimes too, but it seems odd that no one is willing to admit to the influence…
Guess he’s referring to keeping things quite self-contained and stagey but you’re right, Reservoir Dogs is an odd movie to cite. Been looking at a few interviews and he also mentions The Shining, Dead Calm (natch), La Jetee (oh, puh-lease!), and Dead Of Night – which I’ve not seen but am gonna try and find online.
Did dig out this reference go Time Crimes, though:
BD: Were you p*ssed when other movies with similar themes came out during your production (like Time Crimes)?
CS: I wasn’t p*ssed but I found it very intriguing. At roughly the same time their was Triangle, Time Crimes, Moon, and Primer (slightly before but similar), all of which deal with the idea of looking back at yourself. It’s the zeitgeist I suppose, film-makers responding to the news and culture around them and asking themselves, who’s the good guy, who’s the bad guy and feeding this into their work.