Take Back

Cast: Gillian White, Michael Jai White, and Mickey Rourke

Director: Christian Sesma       

85 minutes (15) 2021

101 Films DVD   

Rating: 5/10

Review by Jeff Young

After a college student is kidnapped by a local gang, she’s kept under guard with several other girls. Lawyer turned have-a-go heroine Zara (Gillian White, who played the Amazon warrior Amoria in Xena: Warrior Princess) prompts a stalker/ intruder at home, following video clips of her disarming a gunman, with instant celebrity that results in a recognition by gang-boss Patrick (Mickey Rourke), sleazy chief of human traffickers. Zara is married to her trainer Brian, who eventually joins plans to rescue the kidnap victims and confront the villains. Brian is played by Gillian’s real-life husband Michael Jai White (1st live-action Spawn movie, TV-biopic Tyson, blaxploitation revival efforts Black Dynamite, Undercover Brother 2), and together they make a formidable team.

Take Back is a standard exploitation thriller, about sex slavery, with a twisty sub-plot all concerning further violence sparked by Zara’s traumatic past. A highway chase results in another kidnap victim. Nancy (Jessica Uberuaga, Mind Blown) is obviously part of a most disturbing racket, eventually exposed with evidence that it depends on crooked cops. The prisoner exchange in the desert, predictably becomes a shoot-out, and vigilante justice is served, but far too many actual laws (charismatic heroine Zara is supposed to be a lawyer!?) are routinely broken or simply ignored, throughout. 

Shot on locations in Coachella Valley, California, this movie seems rather like it’s a vanity project for the Whites, married since co-starring in a franchise sequel, Never Back Down: No Surrender (2016). Gillian is not a great actress, although neither is her husband. She has far more than acting ability than previous martial artists, such as 1990s’ star Cynthia Rothrock, but less performing skills than the rightly famous Gina Carano. Gillian certainly does, however, have a considerable screen presence, especially in her fighting scenes. It's a shame that some clumsy scripting, plus a blatantly amateurish supporting cast, adds up to a downmarket production. With just its limited appeal for any genre fans of the Whites, Take Back was probably not a very credible concoction as sensationalist picture about revenge with complex characters. If there was much less talking and more fights, this might have been a very worthwhile actioner.

Watch TAKE BACK's trailer -

Wonder Woman 1984

Cast: Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, and Kristen Wiig

Director: Patty Jenkins       

151 minutes (12) 2020

Warner Bros. 4K Ultra HD  

Rating: 8/10

Review by Christopher Geary

This starts with the Amazonian version of a sports day decathlon, where the young Diana fails to get away with cheating by taking a short-cut during the horse-race. Little stunt-expert Lilly Aspell, from Wonder Woman (2017), is the fledgling princess, Connie Nielsen returns as Diana’s mother Queen Hippolyta, and Robin Wright again plays warrior Aunty Antiope. Certainly a worthwhile prologue, it reminds us of the uber-feminist culture on Themyscira (‘Paradise Island’), while foreshadowing the competitive honour, of ethical dilemmas with moral concerns, that drive this sequel’s main plot.

On patrol, in Washington D.C. super-heroine Diana Prince saves endangered citizens, and halts a robbery in a shopping centre. Back at museum work in the Smithsonian, she meets socially awkward Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig), who finds a weird ‘Dreamstone’, but lets it fall into the wrong hands. Loudly ambitious con-man Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal of Star Wars TV series The Mandalorian) tricks his way into possession of the mysterious crystal, using its fairy-tale powers as rocket-fuel for his struggling business empire.

Following Diana’s silent wish, a random stranger, possessed by the spirit of Steve Trevor, appears, and a revival of their, sometimes self-conscious, WW1 romance ensues. Future-shock amusements occur, in a sequence that mirrors WW2 hero Steve Rogers’ man-out-of-his-time problems in Captain America: Winter Soldier, but, with Diana as Steve’s guide to modernity, these sci-fi rom-com scenes have the always elegantly dressed heroine actually wearing men’s fashions much better than obviously baffled yet earnestly progressive Steve.

The intro for Diana’s invisible jet-plane (from the original comics), is handled with care so that its stealthy quality is not a super-tech solution to essential secrecy, and, when flying through a fourth of July fireworks display, the scene delivers a new reflection of Lois Lane’s dreamy flying at night, seen in Superman The Movie (1978). ‘Invisibility’ is something that antagonistic Barbara already has, as noted in her first scenes, so this uncanny development also mirrors an oddly thematic exchange in their eventual transference of super-powers. 

A chase on an open road in the Egyptian desert, suddenly dramatises how much Diana is losing her strength, while delivering a stunning showcase of stunts and special effects, as Wonder Woman tackles a military convoy. Fighting armed men in the White House, turns into a duel between the weakening Wonder Woman, and Barbara, who is now becoming a version of comic-book villainess Cheetah. Although Chris Pine’s role as Steve Trevor was sadly annoying in the previous movie, here his rather clingy character manages to play a worthy hero and later he’s a suitable inspiration for Diana to learn how to fly alone (no plane needed), with all the attainment of new poetic grace that her solo-flight implies.

Wonder Woman in her golden Amazonian armour, versus a vengeful Cheetah in were-cat form, makes the climactic battle spectacular as beauty against beastly. However, for the final confrontation, Wonder Woman wins by accepting her loss. She beats a now deranged Max Lord (his name evidently a cipher for maximum ‘lording it’ over humanity), by embracing a passion for truth, not fighting against a madman's voracious hunger for greatness. 

Heaven knows why the hell this sequel got such low ratings after its cinema release. Just a thoughtless backlash against movie-distribution problems caused by the pandemic? It’s a compelling drama of wish-fulfilment, where incautious requests soon prompt doomsday situations. Quasi-satirical villainy turns from a comedy of corruption and chaos to frame a magical mystery of how to put an unrestrained genie back into a bottle. Talking to people is clearly the only form of persuasion that actually works.

Gal Gadot is marvellous as Diana Prince, struggling to find and establish her place in this world where she doesn’t really belong. Of course, she’s magical instead of being a macho figure like Superman. She fights only to save her friend Barbara. In the end, she doesn’t even fight to save the world. Wonder Woman is honestly pro-democracy, and she simply urges everyone to make the right choice for themselves. Facing human extinction across the planet, “renounce your wish if you want to save this world” is her plea to be the best we can, no matter what we might desire.

Like all of the best superhero movies, WW84 has its fair share of inventive action scenes and so Diana’s glowing lasso catches a bullet in mid-air, she latches onto a handy rocket-launch, and then a lightning bolt, to swing through the sky. Max Lord is more like a spoof of Gordon Gekko (from Oliver Stone’s Wall Street), than a Latino variation of Lex Luthor. Pascal was in under-rated TV movie Wonder Woman (2011), playing the police detective. Lynda Carter (from Wonder Woman on TV, 1975-9), enjoys a cameo as legendary Amazon warrior Asteria. 

Extras on the bonus Blu-ray disc -

• The Making Of Wonder Woman 1984: Expanding The Wonder
• Gal & Kristen: Friends Forever
• Small But Mighty
• Scene Study: The Open Road
• Scene Study: The Mall
• Gal & Krissy Having Fun
• Meet the Amazons
• Black Gold Infomercial
• Gag Reel
• Wonder Woman 1984 Retro Remix

NOS4A2: Seasons One & Two

Cast: Ashleigh Cummings, Zachary Quinto, and Jahkara Smith 

Creator: Jami O’Brien 

873 minutes (15) 2019-20  

Acorn Media DVD 

Rating: 7/10

Review by Steven Hampton 

Adapted from Joe Hill’s novel NOS4A2 (re-titled for UK market as NOS4R2), this TV show has a dark fairy-tale mood for its introductory sequence, but there’s too much soap-opera between the horror series’ main events before details of a gruesome mystery, associated with working-class family tragedy, is fully established. Small-town tomboy ‘Vic’ (Ashleigh Cummings), a hopeful art student, tries to escape from zero prospects in her broken home, with bickering parents Chris (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) and Linda (Virginia Kull), divided over support for their teen daughter’s future. Christmasland kidnapper Charlie Manx (Zachary Quinto) drives an old Rolls Royce. He’s an immortal, of variable age, who captures young children with the magical lure of presents from Santa and then claims that he saves them from bad parents.

Vic sees the phantom of a covered-bridge in the woods, and this Shorter Way is a spooky ‘Inscape’ conduit with a lost-and-found affect, offering free trips to Iowa, where ‘librarian’ Maggie (Jakhara Smith) practices Ouija Scrabble as a medium answering any question or solving crimes. The mystery unfolds at a leisurely pace, except when ‘strong creative’ Vic does garage art, and then it goes into fast-forward for a busy montage with a rock-guitar tune. Her development into a vigilante biker seems very slow, even for genre TV clearly intent upon atmosphere and nightmarish suspense, rather than action thrills. Much better than this usual approach is a flight of fancy presented as out-of-body experience for Vic and a geriatric patient from the psych ward where the heroine learns a lot about her psychic gift.

The American media trend for often casting a beardy fat bloke, perhaps in some arguably well-meaning inclusive diversity efforts to expand viewing demographics, is part of this series, with role-playing as the villain’s helper, a limping Renfield variant, as a caretaker named Bing (Olafur Darri Olafsson). Another potential flaw in the mostly-grim saga of NOS4A2 is that, when in doubt, switching scenes to an unnecessary, often pointless, flashback (even to 1950s) seems to be a typical narrative strategy. As his age and physical condition is obviously linked to that invisible-to-police Wraith car, Manx can rejuvenate from his emaciated rat-face, looking like Klaus Kinski in Werner Herzog's Nosferatu The Vampyre (1979), to a daylight virility resembling Frank Langella in John Badham’s Dracula (1979), when his faulty motor gets fixed. As predatory Manx, Quinto’s elaborate make-up veers from a twitching cadaver to wily con-man, like he’s a bipolar entity whose human appearance changes in moments, between arthritic cripple with death-warmed-up vulnerability and devilishly pantomime arch-baddie.

Although NOS4A2 lacks the dramatic impacts of Salem’s Lot (1979), where a whole town is destroyed by vampirism, or the deeply psychological man-and-machine connections of Christine (1983), where a car’s restoration changes the mentality of its owner, these are not the only references in this series linking to Joe Hill’s father Stephen King. NOS4A2 offers various in-jokes for keen fans of King’s oeuvre turned into popular movies and TV. Eight years later, season two begins with a cruel chant: “Bite the smallest, drink his blood!” as happy song for demonic Xmas kids. Super-heroine Vic and her son Wayne hear about the death of Manx, but she frets about her nemesis’ return, much like Sarah Conner feared a new Terminator. 

On her Triumph bike, Vic regains access to the Shorter Way ghost-bridge, for a teleporting ride into a mortuary to check on Manx’s corpse. Escaping from post-mortem problems, Manx steals a Pontiac Firebird (a KITT car look-alike from TV’s Knight Rider). Events soon escalate, certainly with a far more rapid urgency than drama in season one, especially when Manx preys on Wayne’s anxiety dreams, and hazardously drunken Vic’s clumsy efforts to protect a makeshift family fail, repeatedly. With mind-control ability, Hourglass man (Paul Schneider) adds to creepy forces moving against Vic. 

After one episode’s dawdling shoot-out, protracted by its replays from other perspectives, changes to supporting-character motivations drags story-telling concerns in sinister new directions that never quite manage to fulfil expectations in terms of genre conventions. Just like its plotting about family secrets is lacking much genuinely modern gothic style (copying from Dark Shadows, TV versions and movie remake), or updated wild western anti-hero themes (such as Near Dark). Driven by grief, Vic’s eventual entry into Manx’s realm of Christmasland is emotionally charged, on her desperate rescue mission, but can’t avoid becoming rather anti-climactic, despite an ice-walled maze for a chase reminiscent of The Shining. 

Overall, it’s hard not to view this TV show as wholly atheistic. While celebrating the formidably creative power of raw imagination, this might be interpreted as a fairly rational condemnation of religion, a horror story about rejecting all of the alleged virtues of traditional faith’s heavenly miracles, as idealised by magical Xmas, and accepting reality in an imperfect world (of sometimes-weird science) that’s nothing to do with any tawdry belief systems. Most fittingly, an epilogue scene includes Vic drawing a comic-book character.

UK & USA book covers

The Craft: Legacy

Cast: Cailee Spaeny, Lovie Simone, and Zoey Luna

Director: Zoe Lister-Jones

90 minutes (15) 2020

Sony Blu-ray

[Released 8th March]

Rating: 6/10

Review by Steven Hampton

Andrew Fleming’s fantasy movie about witches, The Craft (1996) helped to make stars of Robin Tunney, Neve Campbell, and Fairuza Balk. Young Sarah joins a trio of wiccan girls at her new school, practicing levitation, love spells, and healing body-scars. Accidentally creating instant-wealth for a trashy single-mother (Helen Shaver), leads them astray into revenge until the Goth-girl walks on water, and their growing hysteria prompts a murder. There’s a menace of illusions, infestations, invocations, transformations, and the magical deity Manon summoned. Balk easily deserves the best performance award. “Blessed be.”

Although Blumhouse have a spotty track-record of revivals and remakes of notable genre productions, including variably successful Halloween (2018), Black Christmas (2019), The Invisible Man, and Fantasy Island (both 2020), following an unrelated remake of TV show Charmed (2018), the cultural revisionism in The Craft: Legacy may well have seemed a safe bet, especially in a blend of humour and horror. Here, innocent yet secretly powerful Lily (elfin Cailee Spaeny, Pacific Rim: Uprising), teams-up with hopefuls Frankie, Lourdes, and Tabby, to engage in time-frozen hi-jinks, and turning a school-bully into super-woke teen, for oddly cringing amusement, and then facing a creepy sleepwalking lurker, until a tragedy is caused by apparently irresponsible behaviour. What if the stereotype of legacy is actually a curse?

Michelle Monaghan and David Duchovny sketch out a rather blatantly mismatched couple struggling to raise a troublesome joint-family pack of stroppy or sulky, or adopted, teens. Social problems are highlighted keenly by random frictions between the politics of liberal philosophy and more strident binary-thinking disorders within both domestic settings and classrooms. At times, a zealously queer-friendly agenda threatens to overwhelm a chaos of familiar genre elements (reworking scenes from the original movie), and this unsteady balancing of interconnected themes remains shaky entertainment right up to the anticipated ending. 

Whether wiccan or pagan, the competing groups are obviously dysfunctional, and grossly unsavoury themes of patriarchy against sisterhood, occasionally treated as black-comedy in a soap opera framing, eventually build-up to a special effects sequence of cult versus coven action. Exit stage left, but with a weirdo twist, has long since become fairly typical of remakes, and so it is with The Craft: Legacy, as Balk gets a welcome cameo.

Hellraiser: Judgement

Cast: Damon Carney, Randy Wayne, and Alexandra Harris

Director: Gary J. Tunnicliffe

81 minutes (18) 2018

Lions Gate DVD

Rating: 6/10

Review by Jeff Young

British special-effects make-up artist Gary J. Tunnicliffe was screen-writer of the previous Hellraiser: Revelations, and he continues the horror-movie franchise as writer-director of this, tenth movie, of a series begun 30 years earlier, with Clive Barker’s classic Hellraiser.

Three detectives working on a serial-killer case, to catch the Preceptor, seems a bizarrely unlikely scenario, perhaps, when in most of closer-to-reality TV shows, whole FBI squads would be assigned. Two brothers Sean (Damon Carney) and David Carter (Randy Wayne) are joined by Christine Egerton (Alexandra Harris), working together in dingy little offices that immediately betray the low-budget production of this modest effort. Expectations hit a lower register, of course, but there are compensations in this atypical Hellraiser sequel.

If the Cenobites are twisted monks of pain and pleasure, acting like occult assassins, this drama concerns investigative clerk the Auditor (portrayed by director Tunnicliffe himself). He’s often centre-stage, as a weirdly scar-faced interrogator interviewing grotesque suspects with vile habits, like paedophile Watkins, before passing his typed notes to hyperactive paper-eater, the Assessor (John Gulagher, director of the fantastical and cult-worthy Feast trilogy). Angelic blonde Jophiel (Helena Grace Donald) intervenes during the mysterious Auditor’s testing of captured cop Sean. Likeable heroine Christine eventually breaks up the Carters' awkward dynamic, cracks the strange case, and finds the best solution (absolution?) to the otherworldly crimes.

Imagine a Hellraiser movie by Rob Zombie, all visceral impact or nightmarish surrealism, and a shameless black comedy with sickly puns, not a more grimly intelligent horror as usually favoured by Clive Barker. Curiously, it seems that the game-playing Saw franchise, Chris Carter’s conspiratorial The X-Files, and David Fincher’s memorable exploration of sadism in Se7en (1995), are vital influences on this hellish shocker. Reverential in-jokes include Heather Langenkamp, from A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984), and Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994), in a cameo as one suspect’s landlady.

Perhaps inevitably, if not exactly predictably, the reps of hell and heaven confront human morality before the sudden death-scenes of a happily bullet-riddled finale. Hellraiser: Judgement does overcome its foot-dragging pace, and various nods to other iconic horrors, with invaluable expansions beyond ‘Pinhead’ lore, despite a frequently stylistic slasher approach that relies upon comic-book conventions.