Beyond the Reach – GOAT Film Reviews

Director: Tom Harper

Cast: Phoebe Fox, Jeremy Irvine, Helen McCrory, Adrian Rawlins, Leanne Best, Ned Dennehy

Screenplay: Jon Croker

98 mins. Rated PG-13 for some disturbing and frightening imagery and for thematic elements.

Ah, the January movie dump bin…how tragic.

Decades after the events of the first film, Eve Parkins (Phoebe Fox, One Day, War Book) and Jean Hogg (Helen McCrory, TV’s Penny Dreadful, Skyfall) have taken their schoolchildren to the Eel Marsh House in Crythin Gifford as a place of refuge. Eve doesn’t fully understand, though, that a dark force still resides in the house and wants the children for herself. Now, Eve and her new friend Harry (Jeremy Irvine, War Horse, Beyond the Reach) must discover the horrifying truth about the Woman in Black (Leanne Best, TV’s Ripper Street, Salting the Battlefield).

Helen McCrory is kind of a bish in this movie. Yeah, I said it. Bish.

There are two classic types of characters in horror films. The first is the character that you want to live. The second is the character that you want to die. Then, there are the characters of The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death, the type of character that you just want to be interested in, but you still don’t. Not a single character is performed in such a way that I cared about any of them.

Don’t even get me started on the look of this film. It certainly has less elegance to it than The Woman in Black, very poorly shot and very blurry during some of the sequences that should’ve been more exciting. The film was also very poorly lit. I couldn’t see a damn thing.

The question we need to be asking ourselves when seeing a sequel is: how are we progressing the story or taking the series in a new direction? With this bland sequel, we don’t have an answer. This film is unneeded and essentially rehashes the progression of the first film. We don’t move forward. We, in fact, move backward. I’m not even sure how that is possible, but it happened.

The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death goes nowhere when it makes a smart move that explore new territory by moving the story forward years. It could have built on the story presented of the first film, and then it didn’t.

1/5

-Kyle A. Goethe

Director: Paul Verhoeven

Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rachel Ticotin, Sharon Stone, Michael Ironside, Ronny Cox

Screenplay: Ronald Shusett, Dan O’Bannon, Gary Goldman

113 mins. Rated R.

Academy Award Winner: Special Achievement Award for visual effects
Academy Award Nominee: Best Sound
Academy Award Nominee: Best Effects, Sound Effects Editing

Each time that I watch 1990’s Total Recall, I find that I enjoy it just a little more. Don’t get me wrong, our relationship didn’t start out that great. Boys hears of Movie. Boy sees Movie. Boy is confused, bewildered, and a little frustrated. Boy is convinced to watch Movie again. Boy remembers enjoying himself, but can’t place why. It’s the same story you’ve heard a thousand times by now.

In Total Recall, Arnold Schwarzenegger (The Terminator, Maggie) is Douglas Quaid, a normal everyday construction worker with a lovely wife (Sharon Stone, Casino, Fading Gigolo) who dreams of seeing Mars. Oh yeah, this is the future. Quaid decides to take a cheaper route to actually going to Mars and instead chooses to go to Rekall, a company that will implant memories of a fantastical vacation anyone would dream to be a part of. When the Rekall implantation goes awry, Quaid is pursued by the malicious Richter (Michael Ironside, The Machinist, Extraterrestrial) while he starts to wonder if he has a secret past that even he wasn’t aware of, or is it all part of the Rekall?

I happened to truly love watching this movie again this afternoon in honor of its twenty-fifth anniversary. I even got my girlfriend, someone who I’ve been goading towards this film for a long time, to watch it with me. She kept telling me she would hate it, but she admits she was wrong. The effects and the cinematography still look incredible, with the exception of a few shots that have aged (I’m speaking specifically about the space travel to Mars sequence).

Arnold’s portrayal of Douglas Quaid is strangely camptastic, and I enjoyed it even though I admit he wasn’t convincing. The real winner for acting belongs to each of the supporting roles, Rachel Ticotin (Man of Fire, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2) and especially Ironside and Ronny Cox (RoboCop, Beyond the Reach).

Total Recall is an absolutely fun ride which posits some truly trippy questions. Director Paul Verhoeven (Starship Troopers, Black Book) has proven time and time again he can handle just about any film (Showgirls not included) and his take on the Philip K. Dick short story “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale” is very interesting. What’s even better, it looks great still twenty-five later, so check it out…for the first time or the next time.

4/5

-Kyle A. Goethe

Tag: Beyond the Reach

The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death (2014)

[Happy 25th Birthday!] Total Recall (1990)