Supernatural Season One Episode 16 – 22

TV Binge

16. Shadow

The brothers investigate a couple of brutal murders in Chicago and discover the people were killed by ancient Zoroastrian demons called Daevas. These are savage demons that are invisible apart from their shadows and they can only be summoned using ancient long forgotten black magic incantations

Sam is suspicious when he meets Meg again at the bar where one of victims worked and  he follows her home because he’s learned there is no such thing as coincidence. He follows her to a disused warehouse and sure enough he finds her performing a magic ritual at a black altar and talking to her bowl of blood again.

Sam goes back and tells Dean what he saw then they both return to Meg’s warehouse and right into Meg’s trap. Meg knew Sam was watching her all along and she captures them easily with help from the Daevas. Dean wants to know what she plans to do to them and Meg reveals she’s actually after John and she plans to use the Daevas to kill the three of them. She’s doing this for her master, the demon who killed Mary and Jessica. Dean laughs at her plan since he has no idea where John is but Meg knows John is in Chicago because Meg knows that John has one weakness, he needs to protect his sons and he will come to save them  Sam manages to break free and overturns the altar which frees the Daevas who turn on Meg and she goes through the window, apparently plunging to her death seven stories to the ground.

Sam and Dean return to their hotel and find John is there waiting for them. He was on his way and suspected the whole thing was a trap (but didn’t phone to warn them). Dean greets his father warmly but Sam is uncertain until John kind of apologises but not really and he hugs him too.  Suddenly the Daevas attack them. Meg was not killed because she’s not human and letting them think they got away was part of her plan. they only manage to escape when Sam ignites a magnesium  flare and the intense light drives off the shadows and the shadow demons with them.

Outside at the car they are recovering from the attack. Dean decides that John shouldn’t come with them. He agrees with Meg that they are a liability to John. John also agrees but Sam is frustrated that minutes after reuniting with John they are splitting up again and he feels he’s getting sidelined in the hunt for the demon but he’s outnumbered and they go off in different directions.

17. Hell House

Action figures in their original packaging

Sam and Dean are investigating a haunted house that really looks fake with all sorts of occult symbols on the walls. They run into a pair of ridiculous ghost hunters Ed Zeddmore (A.J. Buckley) and Harry Spangler (Travis Wester) who have a website called Hellhounds.com. with videos and pictures of supposed hauntings. They are inspired by those lame ghost hunting cable TV shows and they have the motto WWBD – or What Would Buffy Do. and they are obviously comedy geeks, over enthusiastic and completely without any genuine experience.

The Winchesters conclude that there’s nothing to investigate and leave Ed and Harry to their fun. Next night a college student is found hanged in the house and Dean thinks they must have missed something. They return to the house and the authorities have a couple cops guarding the place so Dean sets them on the hellhounds as a distraction to let them get inside. They are attacked by the large axe wielding spirit who tries to kill them and seems immune to salt rounds and they have just get out.

They manage to trace the source of the ghost stories to a dick in a record store after Dean finally remembers one of the symbols is the Blue Oyster Cult logo. He confesses that he made the story up with stupid symbols taken from theology textbooks but Sam realises one of the symbols is real and is used to conjure a spirit called a tulpa into existence from the beliefs of those looking at it. Its weaknesses or strengths are determined by what people believe to be true so whatever Harry and Ed have wrote on their stupid blog is true. Sam and Dean try to trick Ed and Harry into changing the story and making the tulpa vulnerable but that fails hard so Dean just burns the place down – no house, no haunted house, no dead teens. Sam raises the interesting that if tulpas exist what else they have hunted only exists because of people’s beliefs.

This definitely an episode that plays it for laughs. All through the episode the brothers are playing pranks on each other such itching powder in the boxer shorts or superglue on the beer bottle. I enjoyed this series when it’s being playful like this and it lightens the mood for the intense season climax. I’m glad that Harry and Ed don’t get over used because I think the joke could get old very quickly

18. Something Wicked

A text message from John sends the Winchester brothers to Fitchburg Wisconsin to track down a creature that Dean met back when he was ten. Dean is very emotionally driven to track down the Shtriga that is an east European witch that is stealing the life energy of children and leaving them in a coma.

Sam eventually gets the story of how Dean let the Shtriga escape when John was hunting it back when the boys were young and it attacked Sam when Dean was out playing a video game. He feels guilty about nearly getting Sam killed but also responsible for the children this thing has attacked since.Sam gives a hard time for always going along with what John says but this is why he does.

We see a lot of flashbacks to Young Dean (Ridge Canipe) looking after Sammy while John is out hunting inspired by Dean’s memories of hunting the Shrtiga and from seeing the two sons of the woman running the motel they are staying at. When the younger boy is stricken down with the illness Dean realises the only way to kill the Shtriga is use the other kid as bait.

19. Provenance

This episode seemed a bit ordinary. There’s a painting that is being haunted by the evil spirit of one of its subjects and brutally killing anyone who buys it. Sam and dean try stealing the painting and burning it nut that doesn’t work so next its a hunt for the remains of the subjects for the old salt and burn treatment

The subplot here is that Sam really likes Sarah Blake (Taylor Cole) the daughter of the antiques shop owner who learns about their hunting activities when the painting kills another one of her customers. Sam would like a relationship but while he’s mixed up with this hunting lifestyle those he loves are in danger. Sarah tells him he’s being a patronising ass and she can choose how much danger she wants be in.

20. Dead Man’s Blood

The Winchesters hear about the death of a man called Daniel Elkins (Terence Kelly) and Dean remembers the name. John Winchester’s journal mentions him as a hunter and there is a contact number in the journal. They go to check it out and find the place has been wrecked but there are signs the man was a hunter like John and he left message in a PO Box addressed to J W – John Winchester

John actually meets them outside in the car. He knows what is going on and has an important task for them. He expects them to just obey without question but Sam demands answers.

Daniel Elkins used to specialise in hunting one type of supernatural creature – vampires and he and fellow vampire hunters had been so successful that most hunters thought vampires were extinct.  The letter to John was to tell him that Elkins has a magic Colt revolver but Dean noticed that the gun case was empty so now the vampires have it.

This Colt was created by Samuel Colt himself for a hunter in the 19th century and the stories claim that it can kill anything even the demon.  Hunters usually exorcise a demon which just sends it back to hell and doesn’t kill it but if they shoot the demon with the Colt it is completely destroyed.  John wants the Colt to destroy the demon that killed Mary.  The only limitation this weapon seems to have is that it only works with original thirteen bullets created for it and there’s only five left.

John gives them a brief summary of vampires before they sneak into their nest for the Colt. They feed on human blood and are invulnerable to most weapons but crosses, garlic and sunlight have no effect. Decapitation is the way to kill them and dead man’s blood makes them sick. They create new vampires by feeding their blood to humans and instead of fangs they have a row of shark teeth that retract into the gums until they are attacking.

They sneak into the nest and all the vampires are sleeping. John is inches away from getting his hand on the Colt when Sam attempts to rescue a victim who has already been turned and she raises the alarm so they have to run.

John comes with another plan the capture Kate (Anne Openshaw) the girlfriend of Luther (Warren Christie), leader of the nest. John knows they mate for life and Luther cares more about her than the Colt. He sends Dean and Sam to clean out the nest while he meets Luther alone to trade the vampire for the Colt and orders them to get out of the area afterwards.

Naturally they disobey his orders and come to his rescue which is just as well since the vampires had no intention of letting John get away alive. John ends up using one bullet to kill Luther to save Sam and the surviving vamps flee into the night.

Afterwards John agrees that they are more effective as a team working together and they are going to take on the demon and finish this together

21. Salvation

John has developed a unique expertise on the signs and omens that precede the appearance of the demon they are looking for and he thinks he knows where it will be next, a small town called Salvation in Iowa. There are still a number of possible families with six month old children that may by the demon’s target.

Then Sam gets one of his visions of a woman being attacked and he sees this same woman in the street pushing a pram. He tells John who acts all surprised and angry at not being told about Sam’s psychic abilities but we know that he already knows. Dean angrily points out that they tried to get in touch and John stayed hidden and John doesn’t push it any more .

John gets a call from Meg who has been busying murdering Pastor Jim (Richard Sali), a close friend of the Winchesters and she is about to murder Caleb (Josh Blacker), another close friend. Meg knows John has the Colt and she will murder her way through all John’s friends and acquaintances until John gives it to her. She slices Caleb’s throat to make her point.

John agrees to meet Meg and hand over the Colt but he intends to take a fake colt while Sam and Dean wait to kill the demon in Salvation with the real one. It is a risky plan but John has a couple of tricks to buy some time. Dean is not happy with his strategy since it doesn’t really have an exit plan.

Sam and Dean manage to stop the demon from killing anyone in the house but they fail to kill the demon. Meanwhile John’s trick with the guns gets discovered and Meg is very unhappy about that.

22. Devil’s Trap

With John missing, probably captured, possibly dead Dean knows that the demons are after them and they need help. They go to an old family friend Bobby Singer (Jim Beaver) a crotchety old drunk who owns a junkyard and is an expert on demon lore. He has books full of incantations and exorcisms as well as protective circles that can imprison a demon. Considering how important Bobby becomes in later seasons it’s surprising he only appears in this last episode of the first season.

Meg finds them pretty quickly at Bobby’s but that’s because they wanted her to and they fool her into walking into a demon trap, a magic circle from the Book of Solomon drawn eilin. Dean wants to know where John is and is about to beat out information out of Meg but Bobby pulls him aside and tells him that Meg is a human possessed by a demon. Dean gets Sam to start reading an exorcism which directly causes the demon pain. It takes time but eventually Meg tells them what she knows about where John is.

Instead of letting Meg go Dean orders Sam to finish the exorcism. Bobby tells Dean that with the injuries Meg’s body has suffered the demon is the only thing keeping her alive but Dean is very firm that Meg has the chance to live or die as a human. Sam finishes the exorcism and the demon is expelled. The human Meg is still just barely alive but she thanks Dean for freeing her at last.  before she dies she confirm s the demon was telling the truth and gives more information about where John is being held.

They go to rescue John but Sam wants them to leave the Colt behind in car guarded by symbols that keep out demons. Thanks to a fire alarm and couple of stolen fireman outfits they mange to get John out only to run into the demon that helped  Meg capture John. It starts kicking the shit out of Sam and Dean puts a bullet in its head from the Colt which he didn’t leave in the car after all.

Safely catching heir breath in a hotel room John is looking out for anyone following them, especially the yellow-eyed demon who I’m going to call by his name because it’s not really a spoiler that he’s called Azazel. Supernatural uses eyes a lot, with creatures like vampires and shape-shifters having a sort of strange reflection off their eyes that shows up best in video. Most demons have black eyes including Meg but Azazel has cloudy yellow eyes like rotten egg yolks.

John thinks the demon is coming and asks Dean for the Colt but Dean is now thinking that John isn’t really John because John is being too nice and understanding about the use of a bullet during John’s rescue. He is right, John has been possessed by Azazel but Dean can’t bring himself to shoot his own father. Azazel attacks Dean and Sam pinning them to the walls with his telekinetic power. He tells Sam that he killed Jessica and Mary because they got in they way of his plans for Sam and all the children like him.

He starts trying to play to Deans fears and insecurities about his need for his family being greater than their need for him but comes back with a comment about killing Azazel’s kids  Meg and the other demon that captured John. Azazel starts tearing Dean open and  Dean pleads with his father to stop the demon killing him. For a moment John takes a charge and that’s enough for Sam to get free and grab the Colt. He shoots John in the leg which injures the demon enough to let go of Dean and John is in charge but he can still feel the demon inside. John begs Sam to shoot him kill him, kill the demon and end this while Dean begs him not to. Sam doesn’t  kill his father and the demon escapes as black smoke from John’s eyes and mouth.

Sam is driving them to nearest hospital with the badly injured  Dean on the back seat and John in the passenger seat. Sam is talking about still having one bullet so they need to regroup and try again. Out of nowhere a huge truck with a demon possessed driver smashes into them and the season ends with the three Winchesters unconscious and bleeding

 

Supernatural Season One Episodes 9 – 15

TV Binge

9. Home 

The monster this week is an angry poltergeist haunting the boy’s childhood home back in Lawrence Kansas and threatening the lives of the young widow Jenny (Kristin Richardson) and her two children who are living there. Sam had a nightmare where he sees Jenny screaming for help so now he finally has to tell Dean about his precognitive nightmares and of course Dean isn’t happy about been kept in the dark.

They try looking into what John did after the fire and learn that he visited a local psychic called Missouri Moseley (Loretta Devine) so they pay her a visit. Missouri acts as if the boys are old friends and, to Sam’s amusement, she treats Dean like a naughty child all the time, scolding him for things he’s only thinking about doing. John had come to her after Mary’s death to try and find out what killed her but though she sensed powerful evil it was gone.

Missouri goes to the house with them and her warm sympathetic manner gets them in the house much faster than whatever lie Dean was cooking up. Missouri assures Jenny that they can help and she has Dean make up some hex bags to place in house to expel the spirits. The spirit tries to stop them but they they manage to do it  just in time for Jenny to return from a trip to the movies

Missouri is sure it worked but Sam isn’t so sure and they keep an eye on the house that night. Sure enough the spirits are back and the Winchesters leap to the rescue.  Sam gets grabbed by the poltergeist but then a second fiery spirit in the bedroom resolves itself into Mary Winchester and after greeting both her sons her spirit sacrifices itself to destroy the poltergeist.

I like the scene at the end where it looks like Missouri is talking to herself about Sam and his growing psychic abilities only to reveal that she‘s taking to John Winchester.

10. Asylum

The boys get an anonymous text message that is simply coordinates and Dean assumes it’s from their father giving them a job though Sam is sceptical. The coordinates are of the derelict Roosevelt Mental Hospital in Rockford Illinois which is full of ghosts but the ghost of the insane Doctor Ellicott (Norman Armour) who ran the place gives a homicidal rage to people he touches. Sam and Dean discover the place was closed down after the patients rioted and there were many violent deaths of both staff and patients with many bodies never found so plenty of potential for vengeful spirits.

The Abandoned Asylum is a popular location for many horror films and these places are always going have stories of grisly goings on and tales of the spirits who haunt the place. This means it attracts teenage thrill-seekers. Sam and Dean find themselves having to a rescue a teenage couple as they search the place. Gavin (Nicholas D’Agosto) and Kat (Brooke Nevin) are there because Gavin thought it would be cool to go somewhere that is like a film without thinking through the desirability of becoming a stupid character in a horror film since that is the only genre of film set in this location. Dean comments on this himself when he is talking to Kat, advising to avoid wandering into haunted places in future.

Sam tries to take Katherine and Gavin out of the asylum but discovers the place is on supernatural lockdown.  He gets a call from Dean who had gone looking into a lead in the hospital’s records. This turns out to be a fake call to lead Sam into the basement and Endicott zaps Sam with his rage power.

Sam has a lot of pent up rage and he lets it all loose on Dean, his frustration at Dean treating him like kid, deciding where they go and never getting them any closer to finding John and kiling the demon. After Dean has taken out the ghost Sam tries to protest that his words were from madness but Dean clearly thinks it was Sam’s true feelings that inspired them.

Back at their motel room Dean just crashes out and falls asleep. Dean’s phone ring and Sam answers only find out it is John Winchester.

11. Scarecrow

We start the episode with the phone call from John Winchester that was the cliffhanger ending of the previous episode. Sam has so much to talk to John about and John tells them that he knows what killed Jessica and Mary was a demon. John wants them to stop following him and tries to give them a job to take care of but Sam is furious and really doesn’t want to talk to him any more so Dean takes over, noting down names John wants them to look into.

The names turn out to be couples who all went missing on road trips across the country. They all went missing at the same time of year and all their planned routes passed through the town of Burkittsville, Indiana. They have all been sacrificed to the Vanir, a pagan god that looks a lot like a scarecrow.

This episode features the first of Sam’s huffs where he gets pissed off with Dean and he goes off on his own, this time it is mainly about their father because Dean is happy to do whatever John says.  Sam wants to go to California to find John so he heads off on his own.

Sam meets Meg Masters (Nicki Aycox) for the first time, apparently just a young hitchhiker who gets chatty with him and he confides all his troubles to her.  Meg seems genuinely frustrated when Sam rushes off to Dean’s aid when he fails to get in touch with him for a few hours.  Dean has annoyed the local much that they are going to sacrifice him to the god of the apple trees but Sam gets there just in time  save him from the evil scarecrow apple tree god

At the end of the episode we see Meg on her own getting in some guy’s car. Meg seems nice and normal until she pulls out a knife an slits the driver throat, collecting his blood in a strange looking bowl. She stirs the bowl and recites a spell then.she talks to bowl as if talking to someone we can’t hear but the gist of the conversation is that Meg is tracking Sam and Dean and she is frustrated at the order not to kill them .

12. Faith

Dean is dying after accidentally getting an electric shock when killing a monster and rescuing two children. Sam is nearly in tears as he leaves a message for his father and he is calling all their contacts to find some way of curing Dean.

Sam is desperate so tricks Dean into thinking they are going to see some sort of specialist but instead he takes Dean to a faith healer in a tent in a muddy field. Dean is of course grumpy and cynical when the blind preacher Reverend Roy le Grange (Kevin McNulty) starts his sermon.  Unfortunately for Dean, Roy heard his smartass remarks and replies to him directly calling him onto the stage to be healed.

Roy puts his hand on Deans head and something start happening and dean goes down to his knees before fainting dead away. When he wakes up his feels better but sees a strange grey skinned figure in a suit walk behind Roy and vanish.

This episode is the first time the brothers have actually spoken about what they believe. They see things all the time that prove the supernatural exists and to Sam this is evidence that God might exist too and miracles are possible. But Dean has only seen evidence of the evil done by the supernatural so his feeling is that whatever is going here is some sort of evil con.

They get Dean checked out at a hospital where tests show that his heart was never damaged. When talking about strange things happening the doctor mentions a healthy young man dying of heart attack the day before. Dean gives Sam his patented “told you so” look.  Sam looks into the death and confirms Dean’s suspicion that it matches the time he was cured. It was not a miracle that healed him but dark magic that traded Dean’s life for another man’s.

They figure out that somehow Roy has bound a reaper using dark magic. These are beings who escort the souls of the dead into the afterlife and binding them is very dangerous. They have to stop Roy healing anyone else which is complicated for Dean because he was about to heal Layla (Julie Benz), a woman Dean spoke to before and who has an inoperable brain tumour. Dean stops the healing and discovers it is Roy’s wife Sue Ann (Rebecca Jenkins) that has bound the reaper.

This seemed obvious to me since Roy’s blindness would have been a hindrance finding the ancient book of spells never mind reading from it. Sue Ann bound the reaper out of desperation to save Roy when he was dying of cancer and kept it bound out of ambition, her fall to the darkside, echoing what Dean said earlier about what evil can do to good people.

They stop Sue Ann and the reaper takes its vengeance for being bound but Dean regrets taking away the hope of those people, especially Layla. Sam has laid on a little surprise visit from Layla to say good bye and reassure Dean that she’s okay.

It is interesting to note that Dean was nowhere near as upset about his imminent death as Sam was. This a shared characteristic of the Winchester family in this series, they are literally willing to move heaven and hell  to stop each other from dying but are also willing to sacrifice themselves for the lives of others. This is really why they need each other.

13. Route 666

After one Dean-centred story we get another when he gets a call from an old girlfriend, Cassie (Megalyn Echikunwoke). She called Dean because her father has been killed by a ghost truck. Cassie is a journalist and Sam finds it hard to believe but Dean had told her that he was ghost hunter and that’s why she called him. Sam is shocked that Dean told Cassie the big family secret while he kept his hunter background secret from Jessica for over a year. This lapse is how Sam figures that Cassie was more important to Dean than he lets on.

The Ghost Truck appears to killing off important black men in the town and their investigations lead them back to the death of a serial killer Cyrus Dorian who targeted black men in the 60s. Cassie’s father had killed Dorian in self defence but the law at the time would not guarantee a black man a fair trail so he called his friends and they pushed the truck with the body into a swamp. The local deputy investigating Dorian’s disappearance figured it all out but covered it up. He grew up to be the mayor and also becomes a victim of the ghost truck.

Sam keeps trying push Dean and Cassie together and this works eventually. It turns out Dean opened up to Cassie about hunting because he loved her but she thought he was making up a crazy excuse to leave so she broke up with him.

The usual method of destroying vengeful spirits involves dragging the truck out of the swap then salting and burning Dorian’s body but that only seems to make the ghost truck angry so Dean leads it on a chase around the country roads while Sam tries to find another way to destroy the spirit. He has Dean wait in the grounds of an old church that Dorian burnt down when he was alive. When the truck tries to ram Dean car it vanishes away completely. Sam explains that there’s a story that spirits are destroyed by hallowed ground.  Dean is bit worried at Sam using him to bait the truck based on nearly nothing.

14. Nightmare

This episode is all about the psychic Sam plot. He has a vision of a man being killed and rushes them to Michigan to try and stop it happening but they get there too late. While they Investigate what happened Sam has another vision of the man’s brother being killed, this time he’s awake.

They find out Max (Brendan Fletcher), a young man who is the son of the first victim, with powers similar but different from Sam’s. Max is telekinetic and used his power to kill his father and uncle to pay them back for a lifetime of physical abuse. Sam has a vision of Max killing his stepmother and so they try to prevent it.

Max lost his mother the exact same way that Mary Winchester and Jessica died but instead of hunting down whatever killed her Max’s father drank and took out his anger on Max. Sam realises no matter how screwed up his life was it could have been a lot worse. When Sam is trying to talk Max out of killing his stepmother Max traps him in a cupboard.  Sam has a vision of Dean getting shot dead and his desperation seems to unleash a new  telekinetic power just like Max’s and he frees himself in time to stop Max.

Sam is very worried about his powers and whatever the demon wants with him. The most obvious fear is that he turns kill crazy like Max but Dean claims he isn’t worried because Sam has one thing Max didn’t have – he didn’t have Dean watching out for him.

15. The Benders

While investigating a possible supernatural attack Sam gets captured by a family of red neck torture cannibals who capture people to hunt and kill them. This episode is one I often miss out when I’m watching this season because… well I just prefer the other episodes.

The episode is definitely inspired by Texas Chainsaw Massacre with the family of back woods psychos who decorate their house with mobiles made of animal bones. I think there may be elements of other films that I’ve never seen but humans hunting humans is a common plot in episodes of many TV series. The Bender clan are  Pa Bender (John Dennis Johnston) and his three unwashed children and they have made some pretty elaborate cages for their victims.

Dean has to team up with a local cop Officer Kathleen (Jessica Steen) to rescue Sam but only after he convinces her not to arrest him for impersonating a law enforcement officer. Kathleen had younger brother who went missing ten years before so she understands how Dean feels. Dean thinks taking on monsters is easy compared to humans. There is logic to evil of monsters but the evil of humans is just madness.

 

Supernatural Season One Episodes 1 – 8

TV Binge

1. Pilot. 

This first episode starts with the events that initiated everything so I’ll go into a bit of detail with it. At the home of John and Mary Winchester. Mary is awakened by noises from baby Sam’s room and goes to investigate. She sees the silhouette of a man and just assumes it is John and heads back to bed. The she hears the TV on downstairs and sees John asleep in front of it. She screams Sammy’s name and run up to nursery. John wakes up and goes upstairs to Sammy’s cot and at first he sees nothing. A drop of blood on his hand makes him look up to see Mary slashed across her stomach and pinned to the ceiling. Flames erupt around her body and John lifts Sam from his cot before the flames engulf the room and gets the boys to safety giving Sammy to Dean to carry outside.

Forward 22 years to the present and baby Sammy is now straight-A student Sam studying law at Stanford and looking forward to a future with his girlfriend Jessica Moore (Adrianne Palicki). Then Dean turns up in their apartment wanting Sam’s help to track down their father John who’s gone missing. In the intervening years John has been on a single-minded quest for vengeance against whatever supernatural entity killed his wife, hunting and killing every evil thing they come across and when his sons were old enough training them to be hunters too. When Sam left for college John took it badly and they fought so Sam has mixed feeling about seeing John again. Dean really turns on the guilt-tripping and pleading and persuades Sam to come with him.

The brothers investigate a missing person’s casein Jericho California that John was investigating and found it is a Lady in White style haunting though he left before getting rid of the ghost. These are the spirits of women who were driven mad by their husband’s unfaithfulness and murdered their children then killed themselves. Now she haunts the road and bridge where she died, getting a ride from cheating men who she kills and makes vanish.

Sam and Dean investigate the case with their usual brand of wit and deceit including impersonating state marshals which gets Dean arrested and this means he can get his hands on his father’s journal that the Sheriff (R.D. Call) has been reading. This journal has a record of every evil thing John has hunted and how it was killed as well as relevant passages copied from old books.

The ghost attacks Sam and he comes up with a very original solution – the ghost would ask to be taken home but then say she can never go home so Sam smashes the car into the house. This gives the two ghosts of the murdered children a chance to get their vengeance on the spirit of their mother and the ghosts consume each other and vanish.

They find coordinates left by their father in his journal as some sort of message but Sam wants to go back to his college and really has no interest in returning to hunting. He has no memory of his mother and so is not motivated to avenge her death Dean is disappointed but he drops off Sam at his apartment. Sam relaxes back on his bed and drops of blood hit his head. Jessica is pinned to the ceiling with her stomach slashed and there is an eruption of flames that engulf the room. Dean kicks down the door and drags Sam out to safety. Now Sam is just as committed to the hunt as his father was in his quest for vengeance.

2. Wendigo

A group of campers go missing in the wilderness at Blackwater Ridge Colorado, captured by a wendigo, a creature from Native American legends. It used to be human but it has gained powers including speed, strength and immortality from cannibalism and is a fantastic hunter.  Sam and Dean find themselves having to take care of a brother (Alden Ehrenreich) and sister (Gina Holden) who are searching for their older brother (Graham Wardle) and the smartass guide (Callum Keith Rennie) they have hired when they realise what they are up against is immune to their guns. Fortunately their father taught them what was effective if they survive long enough to use it.

Sam and Dean are following coordinates left by John in his journal as a message to the brothers hoping they will lead them to him.  Sam is twisted by grief and rage and this is making him impatient to find John and then find whatever killed Jessica but Dean tries to get him to realise that their search may take time and he can’t run on rage all the time. Their mission is to stop people getting killed by things and they have people to take care of right there.

3. Dead in the Water

The spirit of a young boy is haunting Lake Manitoc, Wisconsin and taking vengeance on those who killed him by killing their families before killing them. Dean and Sam have to keep the local sheriff’s (Daniel Hugh Kelly) daughter Andrea (Amy Acker) and his grandson Lucas (Nico McEown) from the clutches of the spirit who can travel through the pipes to attack people anywhere in the local town. Since the dead boy’s body was lost in the bottom of the lake they cannot get rid of his spirit by their usual method of by salting and burning the remains. The spirit does seem to be appeased when his killer sacrifices himself willingly to save his family.

Dean forms a connection with Lucas who is mute since seeing his father killed on the lake which reminds Dean of how he lost his mother at a young age . The boy seems to have precognitive powers and tries to warn Dean of the attacks through his drawings.

4. Phantom Traveller

A black smoky spirit creature is entering frightened air travellers and causing them to crash the planes they are on 40 minutes into the flight. This is the first demon the Winchesters come across in the series but this is very low level demon. They learn that it was a demon from the sulphur residue it left behind on the wreckage of a plane. The plan is to find the demon then exorcise it from whomever it is possesses and banishing it to hell.

They are brought into this case by a guy Jerry (Brian Markinson) that Dean and John helped before with a poltergeist so he knows this the sort of thing they deal with.  Sam learns that when John spoke about him it was with pride which surprises Sam since they had big argument when Sam left.

They learn that John has put a message on his phone telling people to contact Dean if they need help. This seems to suggest that John knows what they have been doing and Dean is right that he wants them to take over his work of saving people by hunting things.

Dean like likes to act like he is the fearless one and he certainly has no fear when taking on supernatural creatures but he’s afraid of flying in airplanes which isn’t even an irrational fear since if they cannot stop the demon the plane they are on will certainly crash.

There is a running sub-plot about Sam’s difficulties getting to sleep without nightmares that gets first mentioned in this episode and so far it’s just the recurring memory of her death and though Dean is concerned he doesn’t push it.

5. Bloody Mary

In Toledo Ohio three young girls on a sleepover are playing truth or dare and one dare is the old Bloody Mary thing – say her name in the mirror three times ans she”l gouge out you eyes. It is treated as just a stupid easy dare but the audience gets to see a spirit in different mirrors when no-one is looking. This example of the urban legend turns out to be a ghost in a mirror who kills people who have been secretly responsible for someone’s death but not necessarily the person who called her. The victims are found with dead with eyes burst and massive cerebral haemorrhaging.  Sam and Dean use ultraviolet light to reveal the names of people who have died on the back of the mirrors and they discover the link between those names and the people killed by the spirit.

Once they figure out the spirit’s MO Sam thinks he has the right qualifications to attract the spirit which basically means he’s been keeping something important secret from Dean. Though Dean knows Sam has been having nightmares about Jessica’s death Sam has never mentioned that these nightmares started before Jessica died and his guilt is that he said nothing to her out of fear of revealing the secret of his life as a hunter. Psychic Sam is a long-running plot that sees many twists along the way.

They find the original mirror that Bloody Mary was murdered in front of and Sam calls to her and sure enough she appears and attacks him but Dean manages to smash her mirror but this just frees her from the mirror. She attacks both of them but Dean holds up a mirror and her spirit is compelled to attack her own murderous manifestation and destroy itself or something.

6. Skin

In St Louis one of Sam’s college friends Zach (Aleks Holtz) is arrested for murdering his girlfriend but his sister Rebecca (Amy Grabow) insists he was with her when the murder happened. They discover there is a shape-shifter in town and even though they are very familiar with the method for taking down a shape-shifter this one causes extra grief for the brothers when it takes the form of Dean and gets his face noticed by the police.

This shape-shifter changes form by shedding its skin, teeth, hair, everything and it seems to have a psychic link to whoever it impersonates so it not only looks the same, it has the same memories. While in Dean’s form it is a lot more frank with Sam about Dean’s feelings than Dean ever is. It talks about Dean’s fear of abandonment with both Sam and his father leaving him and about how much Dean has sacrificed to follow this mission and keep them together

Sam realises at the end of the episode that he really can’t have a normal life now that he has seen how much keeping things from his friends could hurt them and that Dean may be right about keeping attachments to a minimum.

7. Hook Man

Another urban legend gets an outing with a killer with a hook killing people off around the Eastern Iowa University campus with deaths staged just like in the tales children tell to scare each other. They seem to be associated with a young student Lori (Jane McGregor) who is the daughter of local church minister Reverend Sorensen (Dan Butler)

This is a fairly straightforward case with investigations uncovering a hook handed killer pastor in the past and this is the spirit who is killing people now. The only complication is that after salting and burning the remains the spirit is still active.  Sam figures out that the hook also counts as remains but it was reforged. They have to get all the silver in the church and put it in a fire to destroy the spirit. I always notice this solution as it makes no sense since this exactly what happened to the hook when it was reforged so that surely must have destroyed the spirit.

This episode didn’t have very much to do with main series story arc. There was a bit of a mention at the start of Sam’s effort to find John and the trail going cold.

8. Bugs

A series of deaths in a brand new housing development called Oasis Plains Oklahoma are caused by bugs and creepy crawlies. After investigating it turns out to be down to a Native American curse and there is no getting rid of the curse, there is just getting away from it.

Matthew (Tyler Johnston) the teenage son of property developer Larry (Andrew Airlie) gets a hard time from his dad and Sam sympathises with him and offers advice to the boy that Dean takes as an indirect swipe at their father. It seems Sam is having mixed feelings about meeting their father since in many ways he is still angry about many things but by the end of the episode he accepts he may owe his father an apology.

We see Dean raising funds by hustling pool at the start of the episode. This was mentioned back in the pilot but this the first we actually see how the boys make a living since hunting doesn’t earn any money and is quite costly at times. Sam complain that they could get day jobs but Dean is having none of that.
As soon as they get to Oasis Plain Dean expresses his disdain for suburbia with its manicured lawns but knowing Dean this is him discounting the life he could never have to convince himself that he’s lucky to never be cursed by a life of boredom.

While investigating the brothers pose as potential buyers and there is a running joke of everyone mistaking brothers for a gay couple. It is taken in good humour by Dean who even makes joke of it himself. There’s another nice scene where they go talk to an old Yuchi man who takes instant dislike Dean for trying to lie to him but happily answers all Sam’s questions

 

Supernatural Season One

TV Binge

I spend so much time watching TV series, binging on entire season in one go so I thought I may as well write about them. I cannot see how to avoid spoilers since even the presence of a character in one episode is often a spoiler to previous episodes, especially in this series. I’ll give an overview of the season as a whole before discussing the episodes in more depth in later posts.

Supernatural is about two brothers Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean (Jensen Ackles) Winchester who travel around the United States hunting down dangerous supernatural creatures or phenomena and putting a stop to them. They have been raised in this life by their father John Winchester (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) after their mother Mary (Samantha Smith) was killed by the demon Azazel in Sam’s nursery when he was a baby. Azazel’s signature method of killing is to slice his victims open and pin them to ceiling then set the place on fire. This scene is recapped at the start of every early episode so they really get their money’s worth out of it.

Sam and Dean are very different. Dean is the older brother and never lets Sam forget it, always calling him Sammy just to annoy him. He’s brash and straightforward while Sam is more studious and thoughtful. Dean is totally committed to his family and sees their life as hunters as an important task in itself while Sam hopes to see an end to their troubles and a return to normal life. Dean is always trying to live up to what he thinks his father wants while Sam questions his father in everything. These differences lead to a dramatic tension that runs through all the seasons.

Each season does have its own story arc but in the earlier ones most episodes are standalone “monster of the week” episodes where the Winchesters discover something strange is killing people and they figure out a way of putting a stop to whatever is happening. Although the episodes stand on their own there is often a development related to the main story arc and there’s usually an important lesson for one of the brothers.

The story of the first season is about the quest for vengeance for the murder of their mother and Sam’s girlfriend Jess (Adrianne Palicki). First they need to find their father who has been on this same quest for 22 years. He has left behind his journal with details of all the supernatural creatures he has dealt with over the years and it contains many scribbled notes and newspaper clippings and is one of their most valuable sources of information.

After ten episodes of running all over the country Sam starts getting the impression their father is keeping them out of the way. John does finally contact them only start giving them orders but his only pisses Sam off and he goes off on his own which is something that seems to happen at least once every season. He wants to find John right away while Dean carries on with the job that John gave them. While he’s gone he meets a young woman called Meg Masters (Nicki Aycox) who is actually possessed by a demon. Meg is a recurring character in this show and is actually working for Azazel. As soon as Sam thinks Dean is in trouble he rushes back to rescue him but the episode marks a change to increased emphasis on the search for a way to kill Azazel.

John discovered the existence of a revolver created by Samuel Colt that  according to legend can kill any supernatural creature and this is what he needs to kill Azazel. Acquiring the Colt and keeping it out of the hands of Meg and her demon buddies is a good part of the end of the season and leads to a very violent and intense climax.

This series really got off to a strong start with its first season thanks to the main characters that really get fleshed out. Sam is a fiercely independent man on a mission of vengeance and is much more similar to his father John than Dean is and this why they are always butting heads. Dean is much more committed to his family than the mission and is not prepared to see either Sam or John throw their lives away for vengeance. Dean’s the joker, the jock, the lad but that is really a front for someone who is terrified that those who he loves will leave him.

There are a few important supporting cast member who often return but none are more important than the grouchy old drunk Bobby Singer (Jim Beaver) who in later seasons becomes like a surrogate father to the boys as well as providing important knowledge, helping to back up their cover stories when they are on jobs and having to listen to brothers bitch about each other. He only appears in the very last episode of the season but it is nice to see him

There is nice mix of stories with some more serious than others.There is quite a bit of humour in the stories mostly from Dean quipping and making references to films and making jokes at Sam’s expense. Late in the season in the episode Hell House the boys meet a pair of ghost hunters called Harry Spangler (Travis Wester) and Ed Zeddmore (A.J. Buckley) who think they are experts because they have website. They return in later seasons so we can enjoy seeing the brothers taking the piss out of them again. The more serious side comes in episodes like Faith in which Dean is dying and Sam takes him to faith healer. It is the first time that the series actually discusses the beliefs of the brothers.

This is series where bingeing on one season is not enough for me and I often go on to watch all the available episodes again

Related Articles

• IMDb
• Wikipedia

 

Machete Kills

DVD Shelf

Machete was an over the top Mexplotation film by Robert Rodriguez that spun off the fake trailers on Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s Grindhouse double bill. It was gleefully violent and lots of fun as well boasting an incredible cast. This sequel ramps up the fun of the first with a generous helping of an over-the-top villainous plot. It also has number of big name stars who all seem to really enjoy themselves, not least Mel Gibson as a baddie. This feels like the product of a crazy brain storming session involving drugs, man-children and a YouTube comments section and is like the bastard offspring of the James Bond film Moonraker and the first Machete film. This film is a mashup of cool with crazy and just plain stupid. Before the film proper starts we get a trailer for a sequel with Machete in space called Machete Kills Again.

In this film Machete is called by the President of the USA (introducing Carlos Estevez as the president who looks a whole lot like Charlie Sheen) with a mission for him. This interrupts the attempt by Arizona sheriff Doakes (William Sadler) to execute Machete by hanging. There is a madman in Mexico called Carlos Mendes (Demian Bichir), part of a drugs cartel who has a missile pointed at Washington. Machete’s mission is simple, go to Mexico and kill Carlos. His secret agent contact in Texas next the Mexican border is beauty queen Miss San Antonio (Amber Heard) who tell him to contact a prostitute in Mexico who is Carlos’ favourite girl and who works in whorehouse run by Madame Desdemona (Sofía Vergara) who really doesn’t like people taking things from her without paying.

Carlos turns out to have his heart wired to the launch mechanism of the missile. So now Machete has to keep his heart beating and get Carlos to the US to get the detonator deactivated. To make things much worse Carlos has issued a reward for his own death so now they have every criminal and hitman in Mexico after them. This includes The Chameleon (Walton Goggins, Cuba Gooding Jr., Lady Gaga, Antonio Banderas), a hitman who literally changes his/her face after every job to ensure no-one knows what he/she looks like. They are also being hunted by a brothel full of killer whores and a madame with machine gun tits and a shotgun cock. Did I mention that this film is stupid? When Machete gets Carlos back into the USA he comes up against the real villain Voz (Mel Gibson) and his despicable plans for the world. Mschete enlists the help of Luz (Michelle Rodriguez) and her revolutionaries to take down Voz.

This film is definitely not for everyone and if you are looking for a serious action film look elsewhere. The violence is cartoonish and many scenes are just so ridiculous I was regularly laughing out loud at things like the main henchman who is brutally butchered by Machete several times and the over-the-top violence meted out by Voz’s experimental ray gun weapon. The cast seem to really get into excessive mood of the story and Gibson seems to be having great time as the bad guy. Despite his age Danny Trejo is convincing as the butt-kicking action hero. It has an 18 certificate which means that the teenage boys that would get most enjoyment out of it can’t see it but I’m sure it won’t stop them. The joke is wearing a starting wear bit thin but I still enjoyed it

Rating 7.0/10

Related Articles

• IMDb
• Rotten Tomatoes
• Wikipedia

 

Outpost III: Rise of the Spetsnaz

DVD Pile

I can’t claim to a big fan of the Outpost films. I barely remember what happened in the first film and can’t make sense of the second film. This third film is actually set during the Second World War so this is a prequel to others which were set during the present day. This has all the same elements of mad Nazi science that featured in the other two including creation of creatures that cannot be killed.

A special squad of Russian soldiers, the Spetsnaz, come across vehicles from a secret base near the Eastern Front.  They take out the Germans but find themselves facing overwhelming numbers of troops including patrol with a German officer with a zombie like a dog on a chain. The Russians are killed or captured and the prisoners are taken to a secret research lab underground where we can see many mad monsters screaming behind glass windows like some sort of freakshow display.

Three survivors held in a cell are Dolokhov (Bryan Larkin) the leader of the Russian squad, Arkadi (Velibor Topic) and Fyodor (Iván Kamarás) who has been shot.  There’s another prisoner in the cell, an American spy called Captain Rogers (Ben Lambert) who isn’t very useful in fact he’s a bit of a prick. They are being watched by Strasser (Michael McKell), the German officer in charge of the facility who is your typical evil sociopathic Nazi bastard. He wants to use them to test his experimental subjects and we got some impressive fight scenes. Strasser seems pleasantly surprised to see the Dolokhov is more than a match for even the strongest of them, a huge beast they have nicknamed the Childkiller (James Thompson).

Strasser takes Dolokhov and Fyodor deeper into the facility and tells them all about their research in classic villain style while waximg philosophically about the futility of war. In fact he just won’t shut up about their plans to create an army of indestructible super soldiers. The process has still got a lot of problems and we see a headsplodey example of it going wrong with some poor German soldier. Strasser then puts Fyodor through the process which is not really the smartest idea since this time it seems to go right but this just means they have succeeded in creating a super soldier who wants to kill them all.

The film tends to get a bit repetitive with the Russians taking on limitless Germans in narrow corridors but the film did at least seem more coherent than that second film. It has a low budget and this does show in some aspects like the very limited zombie patrol which could have been bigger and used a bit more. The fight scenes are pretty good and I like the physical effects.  The film uses a muted colour palette with a look of mostly grayish green which does give it a dated feel. Overall is it has some decent moments but is a bit draggy.

Rating 6.5/10

Related Articles.

• IMDb
• Rotten Tomatoes

 

Cabin Fever 3: Patient Zero

The DVD Shelf

Disease and flesh-eating parasites are genuinely terrifyingy things which is what this film preys on. Body horror operates at the visceral level taking advantage of our ability to empathize with the pain and suffering of the characters by giving us an echo of the pain in our own bodies. Zombie films seem to fill much of the horror genre’s discussion of these topics while the more serious films tend to be more action thrillers. Eli Roth changed that in the first film by blending the contagion storyline with a slasher movie set-up of a gang of annoying college students in the woods for a party. Then the sequel took it back to high school but was not as successful.

Patient Zero is the name used by epidemiologists for the first person in a population infected with a pathogen or so the movies have told us. Patient Zero for this flesh eating disease is Porter (Sean Astin) and he’s held captive in a “secure” medical facility on a remote island.  He is not a heap of diseased flesh begging to die which means he is immune and potentially can help researchers find a cure. The facility is being run by Dr Edwards (Currie Graham) with a fairly large staff and two assistants Bridgette (Lydia Hearst) and Camila (Solly Duran). Porter is sick of being abused and still traumatised by what he has been through and it is clear Edwards is never going to let him go.

There is a second plot that involves a small stag party taking a boat to remote island for dope, booze and stargazing or whatever. Only in horror films do characters go away from civilization for a stag party. Let’s get the soap opera details of this plot out of the way. Marcus (Mitch Ryan) is getting married to Katia (Claudette Lali), a wealthy young woman. His best friend and business partner Dobbs (Ryan Donowho) is there, as is his embarrassing younger brother Josh (Brando Eaton) who has brought his girlfriend Penny(). Marcus had short passionate relationship with Penny before she was with Josh and of course this is going to come up later.

The film cuts between the two plots before revealing how they are connected. The plot of the stag party follows the plot of the first film with one of the friends getting infected and slowly getting sicker. This is where the film does a good job of doing gross-out body horror with impressive make-up and special effects but the soapy drama around it seems just too trivial. The mad science plot seemed more promising until Edwards goes full Dr Mengele crazy. I had no idea that the fourth Cabin Fever film is due to be released later this year and I wonder how much this film is just setting up that film.

Patient Zero has some powerful scenes but a weak storyline with a bit too much wandering through dark tunnels. I only recently found it was a prequel but there is nothing that necessarily suggests this in the film. Sean Astin really does a good job playing Porter but he’s really on his own in a story that doesn’t give us anything new. It is an improvement on the other sequel but doesn’t really match the original film and It takes a bit longer for the flesh to really start falling off on this one. It does have some interesting twists and some really outrageous scenes so may of interest to fans of the first film.

Rating 6.0/10

Related Articles

• IMDb
• Rotten Tomatoes

 

Hatchet III

The DVD Shelf

I really enjoy horror films made by those who are fans of the genre so make the type of horror films that they enjoy. This is the third of director/writer Adam Green’s Hatchet series which his tribute to slasher horrors of the 80s such the Friday 13th series. These films don’t have symbolism or character: they just have victims and an excuse to get them into the kill box and I have great time watching and seeing all the new ways the special effects guys can kill them off.

Danielle Harris is back as Marybeth a young woman who was looking for her father and brother in the first film and looking vengeance for their deaths in the second film.  This one starts with her killing the deformed undead maniac Victor Crowley (Kane Hodder) even though he was already dead she actually kills him twice in very gory manners and thinks she’s finished him for good but that is unlikely since this the start of the film and this film is not told in flashback.

Marybeth drags herself to police station where the gore plastered all over her and the shotgun causes a full-scale panic. Sheriff Fowler (Zach Galligan) wants to know what happened and sends a patrol car to check it out while he interviews Marybeth who basically summarizes the events of the first two films. I like a film that can laugh at itself and when Fowler describes her story as ridiculous and contrived he’s talking about those films. Of course he doesn’t believe her story and locks her in cell.

Fowler gets a call from the deputy on the scene and is told about the grotesque collections of body parts everywhere. Fowler tells the deputy to call in cops, paramedics and fire crew to assist finding all the bits and it isn’t difficult to figure how that is going to turn out.  The emergency crews start appearing and one is a paramedics called Andrew (Parry Shen) who is played by the same actor that played two brothers that died in the earlier films. When someone comments on a body looking like him he remarks on the casual racism but it’s actually a reference to the brothers.

Back the station Fowler leaves Deputy Winslow (Robert Diago DoQui) in charge as he heads out to the scene narrowly avoiding having to deal with his ex-wife Amanda (Caroline Williams) who has heard all about the murders over police radio frequency and has connected them to Victor Crowley. She is a reporter whose obsession with the Crowley legend has made her a laughing-stock. Now Amanda has a chance prove she is right. Winslow is soon bullied into letting Amanda talk to Marybeth and telling her that she knows how to kill Crowley permanently.

At the swamp they have Crowley’s body ready for examination by a paramedic in an ambulance boat and the scene is reminiscent of so many slasher films where they have a killer’s body about to undergo an autopsy but he comes back to life. The film doesn’t bother giving us much detail of the symphony of blood and pain Crowley plays with these background characters but we get the picture. Fortunately the deputy gets a call in to alert Fowler and Winslow before he gets cut off.

The report from the swamp convinces Marybeth that Crowley is still active but doesn’t persuade her to go back even if Amanda insists that she’s essential. Winslow just cuffs her and puts her in back of his patrol car. Amanda needs to make a stop at the house of Abbot McMullen (Sid Haig) a crazy old racist who keeps insulting Winslow. It is an amusing scene but I just wanted to get back to action in the swamp which is fortunately where Amada and Winslow are going with Marybeth as their prisoner.

Sheriff Fowler gets to the swamp with his deputies and the place is covered in fresh remains of the first team. A SWAT team has also arrived led by Tyler Hawes  (Derek Mears) who is a patronising arrogant tool and he puts himself in charge. Among the deputies is Schneiderman (Cody Blue Snider) a young deputy who is crapping himself because he totally believes in Victor Crowley and he’s brought a bag full of big guns. He is freaking out at the slaughter around him but the sight of testicles hanging from a tree puts him over the edge and he wants to walk off the job even when total prick Hawes has him against a tree. They get distracted by discovering Andrew who seems to be the only survivor and like Scheiderman he is appalled by the suicidal recklessness of Hawes. Now all the significant characters are in the swamp the films goes the same way as the others with all living flesh just meat for the grinder as Crowley chops, tears and rips his way through the cast until the he is ended for this film by the plot device.

I really enjoyed this film just as did the others. They are self-consciously contrived and ridiculous just like the Sherriff said with an incredible body count brought about by killer and a variety of weapons. The make-up and special effects used are the old style physical effects so the blood looks real and injuries look painful but the whole thing is pushed to cartoonish extremes reminiscent of Evil Dead or Brain Dead.  Though the cast play it straight there is a strong streak of dark humour through film. This film is strongly recommended to those who enjoy old-school slasher films and strong keep away for anyone who likes more grounded cerebral horror.

Rating 7.5/10

Related Articles

• IMDb
• Rotten Tomatoes
• Wikipedia

 

The Quiet Ones

At The Movies

This is from the legendary Hammer studio and it is a quiet low key film that takes it time establishing its creepy mood. This is just a soft way of saying that this film dragged quite a bit especially in the middle. The story is not very original or interesting but the cast do it fairly well and there are some scares leading up to the fairly so-so ending. Apparently based on true events like that matters but  may  be the justification for the slow pace.

Cambridge University Professor Coupland (Jared Harris) is working on his theory that supernatural phenomena are produced by some sort of energy from the human mind and to test his theory he is going to try to cure Jane Harper (Olivia Cooke), a young woman so haunted by poltergeist activity that she seriously contemplates suicide. All of her life she has been passed from one foster home to next when each family become aware of the strange supernatural forces that follow her.

Coupland has two very loyal students assisting him Kristina Dalton (Erin Richards) and Harry Abrams (Rory Fleck-Byrne) who are cultishly devoted to him. Coupland has also hired Brian McNiel (Sam Claflin) a young cameraman to document The Experiment.  Brian is an outsider so is the natural sympathetic protagonist for the audience while is everyone else is so confident the Professor’s bizarre theories.

When the noise of the loud rock music (Slade – Cum on Feel The Noize and is about the only significant detail that nails the period to the 70s) used to stop Jane from sleeping disturbs the neighbours Coupland finds himself hauled before the University authorities and deprived of funds or premises. Coupland moves The Experiment to a large remote house in the country to keep going without interference. Of course Harry and Kristina agree to keep going but Brian agrees to carry on at this stage out of curiosity and his feelings for Jane.  It seems unlikely that if this was official sanctioned research it would be getting held in town with neighbours that could be disturbed even in the 70s

There is a slow escalation of strange events involving the well-used horror technique of long quiet moments followed by jump scares and Brian manages to catch some of it on film. Brian gets increasingly concerned for Jane’s safety when he sees the lengths to which Coupland will go to force a psychic response from Jane. The techniques they are using amount to torture and the only thing stopping Brian going to the authorities is Jane’s willing participation because she is desperate for a cure.

The last part of the film is where conflicts heighten as secrets get revealed and the supernatural freakery gets to dangerous levels. It wasn’t as predictable as thought it was going to be but the ending scene itself was right out of the box of dusty old horror clichés. Coupland portrays himself as a heroic sceptic taking on the supernatural by trying to explain it away with scientific sounding jargon and lots of apparatus but there were lots of clues that his outlook is like a dogmatic religious position especially the scene at the start with the rejection of the non-believer who has moral objections to The Experiment. Brian is the real sceptic in the film investigating the Professor’s history and making it clear that the evidence he has filmed is not really evidence as even he suspects fakery.

This film was just not very notable. It did hold my attention while watching but apart from the jumps it didn’t really do very much to disturb or unsettle me and my attention did wander in the middle and I noticed the three wee bastards two rows in front mucking about on their smartphones. There was a 70s setting that was barely used apart from costumes, music and a lack of modern technology. Jared Harris is good as usual in the mad scientist role giving the character a vulnerability and humanity. Olivia Cooke is also good in the part of Jane Harper. This is a film that is okay to pass the time if it happens to be on TV or streaming on the internet but it’s just nothing special.

Rating 6.0/10

Related Articles

• IMDb
• Rotten Tomatoes
• Wikipedia

 

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

At The Movies

I love what Marvel are doing with their films and even though I never got into Cap in the comics I always liked the character when he appeared in crossovers. Captain America always seemed a more political character than the others which means his adventures perfectly transfer into the political thriller genre with espionage which is just what Marvel chose to do here

The film opens with Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), Captain America, leading a squad of SHIELD agents on a mission to rescue a bunch of SHIELD techs from a SHIELD facility in the Indian Ocean that has been hijacked by pirates.  Fellow Avenger Black Widow, Natasha Romanov (Scarlett Johansson) is also along on the mission but she has her own orders that Steve knows nothing about and he’s not very happy about getting kept in the dark, especially as it endangers his own rescue mission. Seeing Cap in action in these scenes with his shield is just thrilling and the action is really well choreographed.

Back at the SHIELD Triskelion headquarters Steve wants a serious word with SHIELD director Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) about what is going on. Fury takes Steve down to the basement to show him what they have been working on: three new helicarriers bristling with weapons due to be permanently stationed in the skies linked to spy satellites and able to attack anyone on Earth deemed a threat, called Project Insight. Steve is not happy about any of it and especially Fury’s feeble excuse that they have to take world as it is not as the want it to be. It is the all too familiar conflict between freedom and security and as the name suggests SHIELD is all about security and Cap’s not sure he wants anything to do with it.

There a nice scene where Steve goes to a museum a sees an exhibition all about him and there is hint that the second half of the first film had a lengthy period of time compressed in those scenes since it mentions his adventures with the Howling Commandos and his best friend Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) which we only got in a montage in that film.  I hope we get to see some of that history in more detail in a future film or TV series. Cap also visits the very old Peggy Carter for a bit of closure

There are a couple of new characters his film needs to introduce and the first is Alexander Pierce (Robert Redford) Chairman of the World Security Council, who are those shadowy outlines we saw giving Fury orders in The Avengers. Pierce is an old friend of Fury’s and he actually persuaded Pierce to take the job. Fury wants them to halt the launch of Project Insight while he investigates the data Black Widow retrieved and Pierce agrees.

Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) gets introduced when he befriends Steve when they are out jogging and Steve laps Sam several times with the words “on the left” .  Sam is an Afghan War vet who now runs a support group for vets to help them cope with the psychological stresses of joining the real world again. It is no secret that he is also the superhero called Falcon who fights bad guys using a pair of mechanical wings and jets that seem to use repulsor technology like Tony Stark’s.

Nick Fury comes under attack by a very well organised group led by a mysterious assassin called The Winter Soldier and it is clear that not everyone in SHIELD can be trusted so it is up to Steve and Natasha to find out who is behind it. SHIELD has many enemies and it seems when they cut off one two more grow its place. Winter Soldier is someone Natasha has come across before and she knows he is deadly, skilled and relentless.

This film has a plot with many twists and turns and secrets getting uncovered so it really would be risking spoilers to talk much more about the plot but this film really has a lot of call-outs that will please fans of the comic books. It is also a story that whose events are going to have a major impact on the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Even though the film is mainly about Captain America it was nice to see a lot more attention paid to the SHIELD organisation with real questions being asked about what its role is and what is was intended to be. We see Nick Fury getting involved in the action and we get to see a lot more from Natasha Romanov and even Maria Hill gets a bit more to do

This film is just what I wanted to see with a great story that works as an entertaining political thriller while still having all the action elements expected from a comic book story. This film is really plugged into the Marvel Universe much more than the other solo films and ties the present into past with revelations that have ramifications not just for the future but the past too. I know some people are wondering about where Tony Stark and Bruce Banner were but I never got he impression that they were needed or even in the loop enough to be called in by SHIELD to sort out its internal problem.s Any fans of the Marvel film will probably love this but I’m sure it will appeal to anyone who likes action thrillers too.

Rating 9.0/10

Related Articles

• IMDb
• Rotten Tomatoes
• Wikipedia