Girl Flu

Girl, you’ll be a woman soon.

(2017) Dramedy (Free Chicken) Katee Sackhoff, Jeremy Sisto, Jade Pettyjohn, Heather Matarazzo, Judy Reyes, Diego Joseph, Isabella Acres, Max Baroudi, Robert Farrior, Fallon Heaslip, Grace Olsen, Jonah Beres, Arianna Ortiz, Marem Hassler, Golden Bachelder, Amanda Troop, Jovan Armand, Kyle Kittredge, Jackson Royce Laurence, Kelly Straub Hull, Madison Dae Clarion. Directed by Dorie Barton

 

Let’s face it; girls have it much rougher than boys. They generally are taken less seriously, are paid less money for doing similar work, are expected to take care of the house and the kids even when they feel like crap and let’s not even start about menstruation. Or, if you’re director Dorie Barton, let’s do just that.

Robyn (Pettyjohn) who has been called “Baby Bird” by her mother since she was a baby, a nickname that irks her (she grudgingly settles for “Bird” which people seem dead set on referring to her as), is not a happy 12-year-old  Her mother Jenny (Sackhoff) moved her from the (San Fernando) Valley where she was happy into Echo Park (an L.A. neighborhood) where she is not. She is bullied by Rachel (Acres) who isn’t afraid to get physical. And to top it off, at her Middle School Graduation party, she gets her first period – wearing her grandma’s white pants, no less. There is probably nothing on earth that could have mortified her more.

That is, until her mother tries to connect with her daughter. Jenny is actually far less mature than Bird; she basically lives to get high and have sex with her musician boyfriend Arlo (Sisto) while refusing to commit to him even though he’s anxious to take their relationship to the next level. Jenny also has issues with her own mother who is at the moment at an Ashram in India. Jenny wants to be there for her daughter and help her through all the lovely things that goes with one’s first period; the cramps, the mood swings, the tears, the rage – and doesn’t understand when Bird gets livid with her. Jenny really doesn’t do the mothering thing very well.

Barton is a first-time feature film director and I give her props for taking on a subject matter that makes members of both sexes uncomfortable. Rough, tough, macho men can turn into squeamish little children when discussing their wife/girlfriend’s menstrual issues, while I can’t imagine women who have to endure the monthly visit of Auntie Flo (as an ex-girlfriend used to refer to it as) discussing it with much enthusiasm beyond saying “Oh GAWD it sucks!” Still, she brings the subject out in an often humorous and always sensitive way.

The movie is nicely shot, giving the overall effect of a sun-drenched L.A. summer (although some of it takes place on rainy days). There is definitely a feminine point of view here and the fact that those types of films are becoming more and more prevalent is encouraging. We certainly need more women who direct in the film industry and the indie ranks are beginning to develop a nice talent base among the fairer sex. That can only translate to more women directing big Hollywood productions over the next few years. One of the best points of this movie is that it allows men like myself to experience a bit what adolescent girls go through. That kind of thing can lead to more understanding, more empathy and maybe down the line the death of rape culture. One can only dream.

I do have a few issues with the film however and the main one is Precocious Child Syndrome; that’s the one where the child is adultier than the adults. I’ve met a lot of children in my time and some of them have been very intelligent, very precocious and very responsible; invariably kids who are that way have adults as role models to guide them in that direction. Generally you don’t see a single mom who is a mess raising a kid who is as amazing as Bird. I’m not saying there aren’t kids who are like Bird out there; they just generally don’t have to rescue their parents. There’s also the misstep of Arlo pretending to be Bird’s boyfriend on a couple of occasions; that was just a little bit too creepy and I can’t imagine Jeremy Sisto felt good about the pedophile vibe that was in the background there.

Sackhoff shows herself to be a fine comic actress and here she brings out her inner Goldie Hawn. Jenny is a bit of a ditz and a bit self-centered and maybe she is the poster child for unfit mothers (in a fit of rage she leaves her child at a fire station; Jade promptly calls a cab to drive her to Reseda, paying with a wad of cash she took from her mom) but Sackhoff makes Jenny vulnerable and scared which gives the audience something to sympathize with.

Pettyjohn is a capable actress; I would have liked to have seen her character be more of a 12-year-old and less of a prodigy. She handles the emotional histrionics of a young girl encountering her hormones for the very first time and the wicked mood swings that brings with it. Parents of young girls will exchange looks of recognition at some of the things Bird puts Jenny through; parents who don’t have girls in their brood will look heavenward with gratitude that they only had boys.

I think this had the potential of being a really important movie but I just can’t get past the pandering to young adult girls that is done here. I think it sets unrealistic images of how moms and daughters actually get along and may give kids the idea that their parents are unstable idiots and that they are wiser and more responsible than they are. Believe it or not, kids do take those sorts of messages to heart.

REASONS TO GO: The film tackles head-on some taboo women’s issues.
REASONS TO STAY: The film suffers from precocious child syndrome. The subject matter may make some feel a bit awkward.
FAMILY VALUES: There is drug use and smoking, a fair amount of profanity and some sexuality.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The movie debuted at last year’s Los Angeles Film Festival.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 4/25/17: Rotten Tomatoes: No score yet. Metacritic: No score yet.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: 20^th Century Women
FINAL RATING: 4.5/10
NEXT: The Holly Kane Experiment

Oculus

The eyes have it.

(2013) Supernatural Horror (Relativity) Karen Gillan, Katee Sackhoff, Brandon Thwaites, James Lafferty, Rory Cochrane, Annalise Basso, Garrett Ryan, Kate Siegel, Katie Parker, Miguel Sandoval, Scott Graham, Michael J. Fourticq, Katie Parker, Justin Gordon, Bob Gebert, Brett Luciana Murray, Zak Jeffries, Courtney Bell, Elisa Victoria, Allison Boyd, Toni White. Directed by Mike Flanagan

It is not always easy to distinguish illusion from reality. Our reality is based on our perceptions, which in turn are based on electrical impulses to the brain that translate the senses – taste, touch, smell, sound and sight. If those electrical impulses are manipulated however, how does one tell the difference?

Tim Russell (Thwaites) has just been released from a psychiatric hospital, eleven years after he killed his father (Cochrane) who had in turn tortured and murdered his mother (Sackhoff). He is picked up by his sister Kaylee (Gillan) who has been busy over the past eleven years.

She blamed the killings on an antique mirror that their dad had purchased to decorate the office. In the days they had owned the mirror, young Kaylee (Basso) and young Tim (Ryan) had watched both mom and dad slowly turn psychotic. Plants died, their dog disappeared and both parents had turned from loving and supportive to paranoid and cruel. They had begun to see things – visions of a haunting woman whose eyes were like mirrors.

Kaylee is determined to prove her family’s innocence; she had spent eleven years painstakingly and obsessively researching the mirror and discovered that over the centuries since it was created, the Lasser Glass (as the mirror is known) had been around during literally dozens of murders and bizarre deaths. Kaylee believes the mirror is possessed by some sort of demonic spirit and means to destroy the mirror once and for all.

Tim on the other hand wants nothing to do with it; he has spent the last eleven years learning to convince himself that nothing supernatural had occurred, that it was all a product of his young mild trying to cope with horrific – but terrestrial – events. Now, in their old family home with the mirror and a failsafe “kill switch” that they must reset every 30 minutes or a weighted anchor will smash into the mirror and end its reign of terror, past and present begin to blur and the two survivors of the first attack might not be so lucky this time around.

Flanagan has crafted one of the great mind benders of all time here. Throughout the second half of the film, I was questioning everything, thinking that this could be an illusion, or the whole thing could be an illusion and the adult Russells were really the child Russells being placated while their possessed parents came to kill them. Any outcome is possible and you don’t know which one it’s going to be, adding to the fun.

Gillan, better known as Amy Pond in the Dr. Who series, is terrific here in a character distinctly unlike the grounded Amy. Kaylee is barely holding it together, haunted by ghosts both literal and figurative. Gillan has a great deal of screen presence that holds up on the big screen as well (or maybe even better than) on the small screen. While her name value is liable to attract die-hard Whovians to a film they might not otherwise have been interested in, she will benefit in being exposed to a whole new audience who is likely to embrace her as fanatically as her previous fan base has.

Thwaites, who will also be starring in the sci-fi film The Giver this fall, also has a bright cinematic future ahead of him. He has the kind of quiet charisma that reminds me of a young Gary Cooper, minus the mannerisms. His star quality is more subtle than Gillan’s who wears her s on her sleeve, but no less intense.

Flanagan does a masterful job of keeping the two time periods parallel until the very end when he bleeds one into the other, with the adult actors appearing in the past and the young actors in the present, sometimes both together. We are also left guessing whether what we’re seeing and hearing is real or the product of the mirror and the confusion and terror of the characters is well communicated to the audience who feels their emotions. That’s all you can ask out of any director.

This has franchise potential written all over it and while the ending of the film is pretty much a given (it is telegraphed early on, giving the audience the impression that the mirror is toying with its prey), it is still satisfying. There isn’t a lot of gore here but there is some and what there is most gore fans are going to be satisfied with. Mostly this movie is about a royal mind blowing and one can be forgiven if they walk away from this moving doubting their own senses.  I know I did.

REASONS TO GO: Awesome mindf**k. Gillan shows big screen potential.

REASONS TO STAY: Some fairly lengthy “dead” periods.  

FAMILY VALUES:  Plenty of horrific images and supernatural violence, some pretty serious mind bending and a bit of brief bad language.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Flanagan earlier made a short, also titled Oculus on which this feature is based.

CRITICAL MASS: As of 4/24/14: Rotten Tomatoes: 71% positive reviews. Metacritic: 61/100.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Mirrors

FINAL RATING: 7/10

NEXT: For No Good Reason

New Releases for the Week of April 11, 2013

RIO 2

(20th Century Fox/Blue Sky) Starring the voices of Anne Hathaway, Jesse Eisenberg, Andy Garcia, Jamie Foxx, will.i.am, Leslie Mann, George Lopez, Tracy Morgan. Directed by Carlos Saldanha

Blu and Jewel have begun a family, but they are keenly aware that they are the last of their kind. Now word comes that some of their species have been spotted in the wilds of the Amazon – and they know that they have to make that journey to find what family they may have left. When the rumors turn out to be true, Blu will come face to face with the two most fearsome adversaries a bird could possibly face; Nigel the macaw-napping villain from the first film, and even more terrifying – his father-in-law.

See the trailer, clips, interviews, videos and B-Roll videos here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard, 3D (opens Thursday)

Genre: Animated Feature

Rating: G

Draft Day

(Summit) Kevin Costner, Jennifer Garner, Frank Langella, Denis Leary. The embattled general manager of the woeful Cleveland Browns has the golden ticket – the first choice in the upcoming NFL draft. For the owner, it’s an opportunity to make a splash that will get fans into the seats. For the head coach, it’s a means of putting together the team he wants to coach. For the general manager, it’s one last shot at redemption.

See the trailer, clips, interviews, B-Roll video, a featurette and a promo here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard (opens Thursday)

Genre: Sports Comedy

Rating: PG-13 (for brief strong language and sexual references)

Jesus People

(Freestyle Releasing) Mindy Sterling, Octavia Spencer, Joel McCray, Wendy McLendon-Covey.A pastor believing he doesn’t have much time to live forms a Christian rock band in order to spread his gospel more thoroughly. But when the talent-challenged band finds themselves with a hit single, their already fragile unity begins to dissolve.

See the trailer and a clip here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Comedy

Rating: PG-13 (for some intense sequences of violence and terror)

Oculus

(Relativity) Karen Gillan, Katee Sackhoff, Rory Cochrane, Brenton Thwaites. A young boy and girl’s parents are brutally murdered and the boy is charged and convicted with the crime. Ten years later, he is released from prison and just wants to put the whole thing behind him. His sister however is bound and determined to prove that what was really responsible was a malevolent haunted mirror that can make you see things that aren’t there – and be blind to those things that are.

See the trailer, clips, interviews and B-Roll video here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard (opens Thursday)

Genre: Horror

Rating: R (for terror, violence, some disturbing images and brief language)

The Raid 2

(Sony Classics) Iko Uwais, Julie Estelle, Yayan Ruhian, Arifin Putra. After Rama, the survivor of the pitched battle inside the stronghold of a drug gang in Jakarta, returns home, he finds that his ordeal is far from over. Higher-ups in the criminal food chain want to see him and his family made an example of. In order to protect them, he must go deep undercover in the most dangerous criminal gang in the world. The first raid will be child’s play compared to this.

See the trailer, clips and a promo here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Action

Rating: R (for strong bloody violence throughout, sexuality and language)

Riddick

Vin Diesel practices his badass scowl.

(2013) Science Fiction (Universal) Vin Diesel, Jordi Molla, Matt Nable, Katee Sackhoff, Dave Bautista, Bokeem Woodbine, Raoul Trujillo, Conrad Pla, Danny Blanco Hall, Noah Danby, Neil Napier, Nolan Gerald Funk, Karl Urban, Andreas Apergis, Keri Lynn Hilson, Charlie Marie Dupont, Jan Gerste, Alexandra Sokolovskaya, Antoinette Kalaj, Lani Minella. Directed by David Twohy

Some characters need to be on their own turf to really be effective. Indiana Jones, for example, is at his best in some ruined palace, searching for treasure; high society shindigs are not his thing. As for Richard B. Riddick, well, let’s put him on some forgotten miserable barely habitable rock in the middle of deep space populated by vicious, deadly creatures and we’re interested.

And that’s just where Riddick (Diesel) finds himself after being betrayed by Lord Vaako (Urban) of the Necromongers (from The Chronicles of Riddick which preceded this). The world is desolate, filled with carrion eaters, a jackal/dog hybrid and a slithering nasty that has a venomous sting on its scorpion-like tail and a penchant for hiding in standing pools of water. Riddick is left on this planet to die, his leg broken and without any supplies or weapons except for a tiny little throwing knife.

Riddick manages to set his broken leg the hard way and finds his way to a grassland which is a bit less predator-filled. He manages to tame one of the jackal/dog puppy hybrids and keeps it as a pet and watchdog. He survives for years this way.

When he sees a storm brewing, he realizes his happy haven is about to be overrun by the slithering nasties. He needs to get off this rock and fast. He’s found a mercenary outpost and presses the panic button, making sure that he is detected. Given the bounty on his head, it isn’t long before two sets of bounty hunters – one led by the sleazy Santana (Molla) with his brutish sidekick Diaz (Bautista), the other a group of mercenaries led by Boss Johns (Nable) who has a personal stake in Riddick. He is supported by the laconic Moss (Woodbine) and the aptly-named Dahl (Sackhoff), a lesbian with no time for Santana’s shenanigans and the ability to kick his ass to back it up.

As you might guess, the two parties begin feuding almost immediately and Riddick is forced to pick them off one by one. The storm is almost upon them and once it gets there, things are going to get really, really bad.

This is more of a throwback to the first film in the series, 2000’s Pitch Black more than its successor. That was more of a thriller than the space opera that was The Chronicles of Riddick. Neither movie did particularly well at the theatrical box office but both performed much better on home video. Of course, it’s taken nine years for the second sequel to hit the screen (has it really been that long?) and tastes have changed somewhat since then.

Diesel has been identified with this role in many ways more so than Dom Toretto from the Fast and Furious franchise. Riddick is in many ways the ultimate badass; he’s a survivor no matter how overwhelming the odds and it is a prudent man who is terrified of Riddick. Yes, he has had his eyes surgically altered so that he can see in the dark – an effect they used well in the first film but for whatever reason have shied away from ever since.

The rest of the cast is pretty much serviceable but then they really aren’t given a whole lot of personality other than the one-dimensional kind. Sackhoff, best-known to genre fans for her run as Starbuck in the highly respected Battlestar Galactica reboot on SyFy a few years back, shows some big screen promise; she’s got tons of charisma, oodles of good looks and plenty of chops to become the female action hero that has been sorely lacking in Hollywood.

The creature effects are pretty spectacular and all of the non-human monsters look believable and deadly. Even Riddick has problems with the slithering nasty and realizes that discretion is the better part of valor with those baddies (he spends some time developing an immunity to the venom but rarely takes them on head-on if he can avoid it). While the slithering nasties (called mud demons  by and large) aren’t quite as lethal in some ways as the creatures Riddick faced in the first film, they do resemble the titular Aliens in some ways.

There is a good deal of posturing and posing, that kind of testosterone-slurping “my balls are bigger than yours” competitiveness between the various Mercs and Bounty Hunters (including Dahl) which gets a bit tiresome over the length of the film. The film’s climax is also a bit of a letdown, lacking epic scope and originality. It just kind of ends.

Thanks to a pretty minuscule budget by sci-fi standards, it seems logical that the movie will make a tidy profit, making the likelihood of a fourth film in the franchise (fifth if you count the short The Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Fury) pretty strong. That won’t bother me in the least; as anti-heroic as he is, Riddick is one of the more compelling characters to come along in the movies in some time. I wouldn’t mind seeing what else he gets himself in to.

REASONS TO GO: Terrific creatures. Extreme badassery.

REASONS TO STAY: Too much posturing. Denouement lacks excitement.

FAMILY VALUES:  Quite a bit of violence, some brief nudity and sexuality and a whole lot of bad language.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Diesel agreed to do a cameo in The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift in exchange for the rights to the Riddick franchise in order to secure financing independently for the film.

CRITICAL MASS: As of 9/23/13: Rotten Tomatoes: 60% positive reviews. Metacritic: 48/100

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Starship Troopers

FINAL RATING: 6/10

NEXT: The Act of Killing

New Releases for the Week of September 6, 2013

RIDDICK

(Universal) Vin Diesel, Karl Urban, Jordi Molla, Katee Sackhoff, Bokeem Woodbine, Dave Bautista, Conrad Pla, Matt Nable, Keri Hilson. Directed by David Twohy

Riddick, one of the most dangerous men in the Universe, has been abandoned and left for dead on a hellish rock. Bounty hunters are on their way to collect him and they’re not too picky what shape he’s in when they turn him in. However, Riddick isn’t the only dangerous thing on this planet and the bounty hunters soon realize that their only chance for survival may be the very man they’ve come to take – only he may be harder to contain than the murderous creatures that live there.

See the trailer and clips here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard, IMAX (opens Thursday)

Genre: Science Fiction

Rating: PG-13 (for strong violence, language and some sexual content/nudity)

Bounty Killer

(ARC Entertainment) Matthew Marsden, Kristanna Loken, Gary Busey, Beverly D’Angelo. Twenty years after corporate greed brought the planet to its knees, the CEOs and executives are being hunted down by a new generation of heroes; bounty killers. Often going up against private armies, these guys go after the powerful to give them what they have coming. Definitely a lefty fantasy.

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Sci-Fi Action

Rating: R (for strong bloody violence, language and some sexuality/nudity) 

Laughing to the Bank

(L2Bank) Brian Hooks, Tabitha Brown, Laila Odom, Curtis Pickett. A struggling actor determines to get the funding to write, direct, star in and distribute his own film project. When the money vanishes, it’s just the start of a whole other thing to get the cash back.

See the trailer and a clip here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Urban Comedy

Rating: NR

Renoir

(Goldwyn) Michel Bouquet, Christa Theret, Vincent Rottiers, Thomas Doret. The beloved painter near the end of his life takes on a new model who brings new energy and passion out in the old man. However his son Jean, recuperating from war wounds, falls in love with her creating tension between father and son. This was one of my favorites at this year’s Florida Film Festival; you can read my review here.

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Biographical Drama

Rating: R (for sequences of art-related nudity and brief language)

Still Mine

(Goldwyn) James Cromwell, Genevieve Bujold, Rick Roberts, Julie Stewart. A man attempts to build a more suitable home for his ailing wife. Confronted by bureaucratic red tape and stop work orders, he defies the system in a race against time to complete the project before his wife’s illness gets more serious.

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Drama

Rating: PG-13 (for thematic elements and brief sensuality/partial nudity)

Tio Papi

(Active Fox) Joey Dedio, Kelly McGillis, Frankie Faison, Elizabeth Rodriguez . A Miami bachelor is quite happy with his life of hedonism and non-stop partying. All that comes to a crashing halt however when he becomes the legal guardian of his sister’s six rambunctious kids.

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Family

Rating: PG (for thematic elements, mild rude humor and brief language)

The Ultimate Life

(High Top) Peter Fonda, Logan Bartholomew, Bill Cobbs, Lee Meriwether. A man, reeling from lawsuits from his greedy extended family, missing his girlfriend away on a mission to Haiti and trying to run the foundation started by his late grandfather, finds some of old granddad’s journals. As he reads them, he becomes fascinated by the old man’s rise from rags to riches. But can he find the strength and the faith to withstand all the challenges being lobbed his way?

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Drama

Rating: PG (for a brief battle scene and mild thematic elements)

White Noise 2: The Light

Katee Sackhoff is thrilled that fans think "Battlestar Galactica" is better than "Firefly;" Nathan Fillion isn't so sure.

(2007) Supernatural Horror (Universal) Nathan Fillion, Katee Sackhoff, Craig Fairbrass, Adrian Holmes, Kendall Cross, Teryl Rothery, William MacDonald, Josh Ballard, David Milchard, Tegan Moss. Directed by Patrick Lussier

I don’t often review direct-to-home video releases; they are almost always uniformly bad. I caught this one because it was initially going to get a theatrical release but was pulled and exiled to direct-to-video land instead. I expected the worst; instead, I actually was rewarded.

Abe Dale (Fillion) has a wonderful life that becomes shattered when his wife (Cross) and son (Ballard) are murdered before his very eyes while taking breakfast in a local diner by a psycho named Henry Caine (Fairbrass) who then turns the gun on himself. They had just been sitting down to pancakes; the crime was as senseless as it was brutal.

Understandably, Abe is distraught and eventually becomes overwhelmed by grief. He takes a bunch of pills with the intention of easing his pain permanently but his best friend Marty Bloom (Holmes) discovers what he’s up to and rushes him to the hospital. There Abe dies and experiences travelling through a tunnel of light where he sees his wife and son waiting for him, but it is not to be. His heart is re-started and he returns to the operating room.

He wakes up in a hospital bed and things don’t look quite right. He is administered to by a sympathetic nurse named Sherry Clarke (Sackhoff). Dr. Karras (MacDonald), his attending physician, writes off his enhanced eye-sight as a by-product of the trauma to his system, believing the effect will go away after a few days. Abe can see electrical auras, discharges from iPods and cell phones, even the auras of people. The horror is that the only auras he can see are in people who are about to die.

He also discovers that he can prevent those about to die from expiring and when he does, their auras go away. However, he then discovers to his horror that three days after their lives are saved they are possessed by the Devil and go on a murderous rampage. He also is shocked to discover that Henry Caine is still alive and moreover had the same ability as Abe does. It becomes his mission to get to the bottom of it and discover how he can prevent the devil from possessing the saved – because one of those he saved was Sherry, whom he has developed a certain attachment for.

Director Patrick Lussier makes some really smart choices here, going for more of an atmospheric thriller and distancing the movie from White Noise, a surprise hit horror film that concerned itself more with Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP) and wasn’t nearly as good as this is.

Much of the reason this works so well is Nathan Fillion. I think he’s one of the most underrated actors out there; he is just so damn likable, even when he’s playing a scoundrel (as he does in Serenity). I’d be willing to bet that Katee Sackhoff is going to join him on that list. She’s as far off from Starbuck (her “Battlestar Galactica” character) as it’s possible to get, and she’s actually very likable here.

The problem with the movie has to do with a couple of elements. First off is the ending of the movie. I don’t mind a movie taking a leap off the deep end into fantasy, but when it does so sideways and in a manner that defies logic, I take exception. Without going into much detail, Abe – who’s shown himself to be a smart fella throughout the movie – does some pretty dumb things. That’s a screenwriting sin that just absolutely drives me crazy; changing a character for the sake of advancing the climax. Write better is the only advice I have in this case.

For the most part, this is well-directed, well-acted and well-conceived. While it fails when it tries to combine science with the supernatural, it nonetheless is a solid bit of horror entertainment (although I somehow doubt most would qualify this as a horror film – it’s more of a supernatural thriller). And as for a direct-to-video sequel outshining the original? That in itself is a feat worth recording.

WHY RENT THIS: Fillion is one of my favorite actors right now. There is a pretty good concept here that deserved a better fate. 

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: The ending dives into the deep end of the preposterous pool.

FAMILY VALUES: There are some fairly disturbing images and a few instances of blue language.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The Dr. Karras character’s name is an homage to Father Karras, the priest played by Jason Miller in The Exorcist.

NOTABLE DVD EXTRAS: While deleted scenes are a home video staple, there is more than half an hour’s worth of them, making this an abundance of unseen footage. There is also a nifty featurette on Near Death Experience survivors.

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: Not available.

FINAL RATING: 6/10

TOMORROW: Surveillance