#survival movies

[acecroft]

CHRIS O'DONNELL as Peter Garrett in Vertical Limit (2000)

[neonfeel]

The Last of Us (2023)

[kevinsreviewcatalogue]

Review: Hundreds of Beavers (2022)

Hundreds of Beavers (2022)

Not rated

<Originally posted at https://kevinsreviewcatalogue.blogspot.com/2024/04/review-hundreds-of-beavers-2022.html>

Score: 5 out of 5

Hundreds of Beavers is one of the funniest damn movies I've seen in a long time. A mix of Looney Tunes cartoons, wilderness epics, video games, and old-time silent comedy, it's 108 minutes of non-stop, rapid-fire slapstick with barely any dialogue that gets going in the first five minutes and never lets up until the very end, constantly escalating its jokes into the ridiculous in ways that never failed to put a smile on my face. It's the kind of movie where, at nearly two hours, I should've gotten bored given my distaste for comedies that run overly long, but just as John Wick: Chapter 4 managed to pull off the feat of maintaining non-stop action movie energy for nearly three hours, this movie had me laughing out of my seat constantly. If this movie is playing anywhere near you, be it in theaters or on VOD, you owe it to yourself to seek it out.

The plot is simple. In the rugged forests of 19th century northern North America, applejack maker Jean Kayak loses his farm in a comic mishap and now has to survive in the winter wilderness with his limited wits, whereupon he eventually crosses paths with an army of beavers building... something a bit more elaborate than a dam. The only outpost of civilization for miles around is a fur trading post, where Jean both trades pelts for equipment and sets out to win the heart of the owner's beautiful daughter, who's also the trading post's furrier who skins all the beavers he brings them. From that setup, we get a constantly escalating series of comic mishaps and set pieces as Jean sets out to trap rabbits, beavers, and other woodland critters while they in turn try to outwit him -- not a difficult feat, as it turns out. This is a film that runs on cartoon logic where realism takes a backseat, with holes in the ground serving almost as a portal network in the forest and both Jean and the beavers building increasingly outlandish contraptions to kill each other with. This film doesn't have an MPAA rating, but if I had to give it one, I'd probably give it a PG-13, with some light sex jokes (specifically one involving the trader's daughter) but nothing explicit and all the beaver death presented in an extremely slapstick manner that's more Wile E. Coyote than Red Dead Redemption.

Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, the film's co-writer alongside its director Mike Cheslik, plays Jean, and he is an immediately larger-than-life figure, a parody of a 19th-century outdoorsman and hunter-trapper who starts the film cocky and dimwitted and eventually turns into a cackling madman as it goes on. Working entirely without dialogue, he delivers a phenomenal comic performance purely through his expressions as Jean is subjected to every indignity under the sun in his quest. The entire cast understood the assignment, but this was the guy who had to carry the whole film on his shoulders, and after this, I'd happily pay to see him in other films. No less important, however, were the titular beavers, all of them, together with most of the other animals in the film, played by humans in furry animal suits. If Jean is like Wile E. Coyote or Elmer Fudd in live-action, then they're like Bugs Bunny or the Roadrunner, their obviously human proportions adding to the sense of these creatures as mischievous little critters who seem to be enjoying the torment they put Jean through. The overall aesthetic of the film, shot in black and white with gleeful disregard for realism in its special effects, not only makes the painful slapstick that Jean is constantly subjected to feel, well, more slapstick even as it touched on some surprisingly dark areas (including the funniest scene of an animal getting skinned you'll ever see), it also creates the feel of watching a live-action video game, specifically a mix of an open-world RPG with Jean's quest and accumulation of gear and a Super Nintendo side-scroller with the fantastical environments he goes through in that quest. This was a longer-than-usual comedy, but it was one that, between its non-stop onslaught of jokes and the constant progression of its story, never got old or felt like it was spinning its wheels.

The Bottom Line

Great comedies are hard for me to review without giving away the best parts, and this was a great one. I expect everyone involved with this movie to get a lot of attention going forward, such was the great time I had watching it. This is probably gonna be on my personal "best of 2024" list when the year is up, and I'm telling you now: go see it.

[glitter-and-be-gay]

I just started watching Finch (2021) and I must say "putting Tom Hanks in solitary survival situations to see what happens" has to be one of my favourite genres

[tharindumanujaya]

[afabstract]

Dark Night of the Soul Review: Cuts Deep but Runs Long

Dark Night of the Soul follows Alex Waldan, a CDC scientist, as she battles to stay alive after a horrific car accident. Kristanna Loken leads this survival drama filled with tension, flashbacks, and a race against time.

Follow us on Twitter | Instagram Dr. Alex Waldan is a brilliant scientist working for the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), and her groundbreaking research could potentially cure a devastating pandemic. However, before her work can bear fruit, Alex is involved in a horrific car crash in an isolated area, leaving her trapped inside the vehicle with no help in sight. Written and…

[worrynoodle]

Istg I'm going to start writing fanfiction for all of the survival movies that end without any closure.

Like, the helicopter lands in the background just as the hero gives up, or the hero is being carried away by emts, or is finally picked up by a vehicle and credits roll

I'm going to write the "they arrive at the hospital, are taken care of and thank their saviors" part, or even "their bodies are found and their family is informed" or SOMETHING

It's so FRUSTRATING bc that's one of my favorite types of movies but they always end SO BADLY.

[chloesimaginationthings]

How Jeremy Fitzgerald survived the FNAF bite

[neptunejheart]

Some endings require no follow ups however, I really need them when it comes to survival movies.

[acecroft]

47 METERS DOWN (2017) dir. Johannes Roberts

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

main take aways from Halloween (1978) rewatch:

michael myers is canonically 21??? this bitch should be at the club

*sees tiddies* ***MURDEROUS RAMPAGE NOISES***

that's it that's the movie

outside of the fact that everyone who has sex is murdered by the narrative, this is a surprisingly chill portrayal of female sexuality? these teen girls are horny and actively enjoying Getting It On with their boytoys. no pushy boyfriends sneaking in through their bedroom windows--these ladies are taking the initiative to sneak out and GET SOME. one of them gets laid and then immediately orders her boyfriend to get her a beer. (yes she gets Slashered soon afterward, but so does the boyfriend so honestly, gender equality.) yes the Final Girl is the only one not having sex, but she's not bullied for that, nor are her friends slut shamed except possibly by being murdered by the narrative

actually the only character who is shown being morally condemned on-screen is michael myers. specifically FOR his violent overreaction to other people's sex lives. (people he is spying on). metaphorically, the villain is American Puritanism sticking its judgy nose into other people's business.

aka Michael Myers Is A Republican

but actually the real villain is the doctor. guy's a judgemental, shaming, pathologizing asshole. and he's been in charge of michael's care since he was SIX YEARS OLD? kid never had a chance. i'd go on a killing spree too

also the parents. where are the parents? it's halloween night and all the teenage girls are home babysitting their younger siblings? come to think of it, michael's first victim was his own older sister, whom he killed while she was babysitting him. teen girls are really shouldering a labour burden here. maybe parentification is the true villain

side note: mike commits his first murder wearing a clown costume...which is never referenced again? his 'iconic' costume is a generic mask and wig and jumpsuit, when we coulda had a Killer Clown Michael Myers??? travesty

i like how the Final Girl and her friend casually smoke weed in her car. yeah she's an honor student and her friend is the sheriff's daughter. yeah they smoke weed. so what it's 1978

(to reiterate, mike is 21 and should be at the club. im not saying he shouldn't be rampaging, im saying it's sad that he broke out, tasted freedom for the first time in his life, and immediately snuck back into his childhood home to go rampaging. let's have a remake where he goes to a nightclub and has a few beers. maybe some slutty dancing. then rampage)

oh no he's hot

[kevinsreviewcatalogue]

Review: Who Can Kill a Child? (1976)

Who Can Kill a Child? (¿Quién puede matar a un niño?) (1976)

Rated R

<Originally posted at https://kevinsreviewcatalogue.blogspot.com/2024/10/review-who-can-kill-child-1976.html>

Score: 2 out of 5

Who Can Kill a Child? is a Spanish horror film with a daring premise that occasionally manages to live up to it, especially during its wild third act, but all too often finds itself mired in self-seriousness that felt like a poor man's George A. Romero, even though its best moments were the ones that ran headlong in the other direction from such. It's overly long, plodding, and beset by unlikable protagonists who constantly make stupid decisions, and while I got the social commentary it was going for, its attempts to convey such often dragged. This is a movie I'd love to see remade as a darkly satirical horror-comedy, as the basic conceit is one that still stings today, and the film's best moments were the ones that fully embraced the gonzo nature of that conceit and didn't pull their punches. As it stands, though, this doesn't really hold up beyond that.

The film gets off on the wrong foot almost immediately when it opens with a lengthy documentary montage of the history of how children have suffered in modern conflicts, from World War II to Korea to Biafra. I'll put aside the questions of whether or not this scene was in poor taste (it's pretty much of a kind with a lot of the "mondo" shockumentaries of the '60s and '70s) and instead focus on the fact that it came out of nowhere, contributed little, and was mostly rather boring. It was a ham-fisted way to convey this film's message, not through its actual story but by straight-up holding off on getting to the actual movie for several minutes so it can tell us. It felt like the filmmakers assumed that the audience was stupid and wouldn’t understand what was going on otherwise, especially since there were multiple moments when the film did and otherwise could’ve done this within the context of the story, from a scene where the characters are listening to a radio broadcast about violence in Southeast Asia to the climax where the kids explain exactly what they’re doing.

It doesn’t get much better in the rest of its first act. Our protagonists Tom and Evelyn, a young couple on vacation in Spain, are as dull as dishwater, with little characterization, fairly mediocre performances from the actors playing them, and lots of stupid decisions on their part once they get to the remote resort island where most of this film’s action takes place. They take far too long to realize that something is wrong once they get to the island and see no adults there, and even after they realize they’re not safe on the island, they don’t seem to act like it, whether it’s Tom failing to inform Evelyn (who doesn’t yet know what’s happening) what he saw the children doing to some poor schlub or a lone adult survivor they encountered abandoning all of his well-earned wariness around the island’s children when he runs into his own kid. I was able to buy the fact that the protagonists have a very difficult time bringing themselves to actually fight back against their attackers, because, as the title and one character helpfully inform us, who can kill a child? It was in these scenes where the characters know they’re in danger, try to act accordingly, but are held back from doing what they have to by the obvious moral dilemma involved that felt the most intense, as you knew that, either way, you were about to see something horrifying. Unfortunately, the adults’ poor decision-making went far beyond that, often feeling like it had been contrived for the sole purpose of advancing the story along to where the writers wanted it to go.

It was when the focus was put on the children themselves that I was the most intrigued. The basic premise is that somehow, the children on this island have come to develop both a psychic link and a virulent, murderous hatred of adults, seeking revenge for how they have no say in adults’ wars and conflicts and yet are usually the ones who suffer the most in such, a premise that, for my money, is evergreen and no less relevant today than it was in 1976. And when this movie is putting its focus on the children, it kicks ass. The thing that grabbed me is that these kids aren’t portrayed as the usual “creepy kids” you normally see in horror movies, acting in troubling, distinctly unchildlike ways to make them seem more off-putting immediately. No, these kids, as murderous as they are, still fundamentally act like kids and treat what they’re doing as a kind of play session, most notably when they string up a guy’s corpse and use him as a piñata (and a scythe as the stick to beat him with) while acting like they’re at a birthday party. It’s sick, it’s mean-spirited, it’s darkly hilarious, and it's a tone that I felt the whole movie should’ve leaned into. Instead of trying to take itself so seriously, it should’ve taken the South Park approach and leaned into satire and black comedy, depicting the idea of children suddenly turning against the adults around them and playing it for a ridiculousness that makes it that much wilder and more shocking. There were already elements of this in the final product, from the piñata scene to the ending where the police finally show up from the mainland and react to everything that has happened (and the children react to them in turn). More importantly, depicting the film’s setting as a sick, sad world that’s slowly going mad would’ve done a lot to alleviate the problem I had with the dumb adult characters. A little black comedy, I’ve noticed, can turn that into an asset, especially if the film is mocking its protagonists for their stupidity and presenting them as avatars of everything else it's mocking about the world as a whole.

The Bottom Line

Who Can Kill a Child? had an interesting premise but only really came together in its third act, and before then was a fairly boring film that thought itself more profound than it actually was to the point of insulting viewers' intelligence. It's only worth a watch for diehard aficionados of retro European horror.

[ayo-edebiri]

#Someone save Florence, she's not gonna survive this press tour 😭

[squirrellyshorrorreviews]

Held (2020)

A couple's ailing marriage is put to the test when they are held hostage in an isolated vacation rental by an unseen Voice that commands their every move.

where can I watch it: hulu

rating 8/10

Content warning up top, this movie uses sexual assault as a theme.

I actually really enjoyed this movie. It has some very mind-bendy moments in the beginning and it escalates in deeply uncomfortable ways. This is a movie that really leans into the discomfort it inspires and it does so very well.

It also has a delightful act 3 twist and really gives the SA survivor motif its legs. It subverts tropes in fun ways.

I was genuinely surprised by this movie. It was absolutely delightful and I've been recommending it since I saw it.