What have you watched recently? 3D!

V/H/S 94 (Shudder) - recovering somewhat from the nosedive that was Viral, this is still an uneven anthology film. I found it a bit frustrating that, having opted for a specific period setting, some shorts decided to pursue the relevant video presentation and aesthetic properly, while others just slapped a default filter on and called it a day. Which, well, why bother? The Jakarta-set short was probably the best of the bunch, though the framing-device story felt like it could have been better if it was given more space to breathe.

Guns Akimbo (Amazon Prime) - I stuck this on with a "let's give it 15 minutes" attitude, but it was better than expected and kept my attention throughout. Narratively it's like Free Guy crossed with Crank, telling the story of Miles, a shluh who accidentally gets himself roped into a duel run by a streaming snuff platform. There's not a lot of flab on it, the humour is dark enough to match the premise (and most of the jokes land, which helps) and the visual style has a fair bit of flair (it does a much better job of the style Suicide Squad 2016 had, but still falls a bit short of Edgar Wright, the current maestro of such presentation). The main downsides are the use of several bloody awful nu-metal covers of good songs during action scenes, and the use of post-production visual effects for things like blood spatter (the effects aren't awful, but they're not quite seamlessly done either). Samara Weaving does a good job of a more plausible version of Harley Quinn, and Radcliffe acquits himself well as a too-inoffensive-for-his-own-good guy caught up in increasingly deranged circumstances.

Having seen a good review in Sight & Sound, I took a punt on The Scary Of Sixty First on Shudder. Short version is - don't bother.

It's a first feature film about a couple of twentysomethings who luck into an apartment in Manhattan's Upper East Side at a surprisingly cheap rate, only to find out that it was owned and used by a real-life sex trafficker whose name still comes up in the news (yes, him).

Technically, it's not bad - it's set in present day but the grain and colour grade feels very much like a throwback to late 70s and early 80s horror. The acting is a bit overdone, like the cast are playing Flanders'd versions of themselves. But the script is really where the problems are. There are two strands to the story - one flatmate meets a stranger, starts "investigating" the sex trafficker (and talking methamphetamine because of course) and goes down a conspiracy rabbit hole, while the other flatmate is apparently possessed by a victim of the trafficker. We know about the latter because she starts talking in a little girl voice and collectiny memorabilia for a specific monarchic friend of the trafficker. It's as subtle as a brick, and serves no narrative function - it's just there to fill time, and mostly takes the form of scenes in which the actor frots herself with her collection of photos.

Ultimately, only the conspiracy plotline goes anywhere - but it would have been stronger had it not relied so much on repeatedly referencing the trafficker and drawing out scenes of two speed-freaks talking about the most facile elements of the news coverage, then adding 1 and 1 to get Q(Anon).

Realistically, nobody would have heard of this if it hadn't gone for the cheaply exploitative angle of overtly setting itself in the middle of a real, horrific situation about which it has nothing to say, no thoughts to offer. It's basically self-involved twenty-somethings being edgy and provocative, which is fine as long as you can offer something more once you have caught people's attention. There is nothing more to this film. I'll be making a note of the writers' names only to make sure I don't watch anything of theirs again, although based on this I don't think we need to worry about a high profile career for either of them.