SEASON OF THE WITCH - Despite it being pilloried on its release, I found this a fairly diverting mainstream horror effort. Maybe it could've played on the ambiguity of supernature vs psychology a bit more (which was the route I thought it was going to take at first) rather than blowing it all on a special fx climax with demon, but even so, lurking behind the obvious moves and the usual bombast was an interesting line about power and religious 'authority'. Beyond this, the slightly peripheral aspects ie. the weirdly fungal plague appealed more than the 'main course', which was standard but entertaining enough.
MADE IN BRITAIN - From the great Alan Clarke. Tim Roth is Trevor, a racist skinhead whose confrontation with the state apparatus plays out against the ultra depressing backdrop of Thatcher's Britain. Despite and beyond the crazy distortion of Trevor's idiot ideology, there's something to admire about his apparent utter hatred and contempt for authority. However, his hostility is underpinned by an emotional fragility which becomes clear when at the end of the film he imposes himself on his one tentative attachment, a social worker who is about to 'abandon' him for two weeks for a holiday in Corfu. This is brilliant, searing stuff which shows us where the deep well of rage in our society springs from - not from victims like Trevor, but from the banal institutions which dominate our lives. I've seen a lot of horror films, but few of them contain scenes as eerie as the one where Trevor stares through a shopfront window at a family of plastic dummies gathered around a TV in their living room, all wearing price tags.
 |