Netflix Review: The Ritual (2018)

"Netflix hits gold with its latest Horror acquisition."

Sure, The Ritual feels more than a little bit like a British spin on The Blair Witch, what with the weird symbols and figures all over the place, but that would hardly be a fair comparison. Yes, it's set in the woods, and sure there's an entity of some sort stalking a group of nature lovers to their deaths, but it's truly got its own thing going on.

Director David Bruckner -who gave us one of the better Horror Anthologies in recent years, Southbound (review HERE)-  has hit a new high with this one, which we think is his best film to date.

*Mild monster spoilers ensue below.

After their mate Rob is murdered in a tragic chip shop robbery, four blokes decide to go for a hike in Sweden to honor his memory. One of the lads, Luke, was with Rob during the robbery, but he bitched out and hid while the robbers confronted and murdered him, so he is naturally carrying around a lot of guilt.

THEY COULDN'T HAVE BUILT HIM A SHRINE IN ENGLAND? WHERE IT'S MUCH SAFER?

When one of the guys falls and hurts his knee, the group decides to take a shortcut through a nearby forest to reach their destination, because as if a nature hike doesn't sound like a shitty enough vacation for four 40-year-old guys to take together, a quick jaunt into the isolated forest makes even more sense.

NOPE.

Of course, there's danger in them thar woods, and it comes in the form of a massive creature that is hungry for human blood. It also likes messing with their dreams, because it's apparently a vengeful god of some sort,

ALL HAIL SNIVENGUTENGORTEN, GOD OF HEADLESS STRAW FIGURES!

The Ritual is Backwoods Horror done right. In most films of this kind, we get a gang of dumb-ass characters making stupid decisions which see them trapped in some remote place, looking a sure death right in the face. Most of those characters tend to annoy too, which makes it worse. In The Ritual though, not only do the filmmakers do a great job of turning the Swedish countryside from stunningly gorgeous to dark and forbidding with ease, but the cast is top-notch, and the situation that they get themselves into is believable one.

The Norse mythology is thick in this one, with the Jōtunn being a giant, godlike creature, who is said to be a child of Loki by its worshippers, although they dare not speak its name; as well as the hanging aspect of things screaming Odin. That whole aesthetic was a really great touch that made what could have been a run-of-the-mill backwoods Horror story into something different, and dare I say, special.

It's a moody piece that emotes waves of quiet dread in a very effective way. This could have been just another B-grade Horror flick, but director David Bruckner and his cast made it into something more.

YES, YOU SHOULD TURN BACK NOW.

The ending threw us a bit. It's a straight-forward ending, and it wraps the story of one character up nicely, but I personally wanted a bit more of a prelude to chew on. Not the biggest issue, but it just felt abrupt.

APPARENTLY RURAL SWEDEN HAS NOT GOTTEN WIND OF THE #METOO MOVEMENT QUITE YET.

We've said it so many times over the years, that we figured everyone would have learned by now: Stay out of the damn woods, especially when you're in a foreign country. You don't know whats in those woods. Killers, demons, angry reindeer... just stay on the main path, avoid shortcuts, and you will survive your journey!

MAIN PATH, GENTLEMEN!

The violence and gore in this one is timely and effective, but not overly-plentiful.

THAT'S A BIG DOG.

Well, there is some naked man flesh on display, but it's not mean to be sexy.

YOU'RE GROWN MEN. ENOUGH WITH THE SELFIES!

The cast is solid, the location (which the cinematography brings to eerie life) is suitably terrifying, and the monster that lurks in the woods is a unique one. The Ritual is a very solid film that really deserved a theatrical run, and at the very least, deserves to have everyone who loves Horror check it out on Netflix.

A

The Ritual is streaming on Netflix now.

This movie is mainly populated by men, but there is some femininity to be found.

Netflix Review: Altered Carbon, Season One (2018)

"This is exactly the kind of TV show that we crave."

(aka Our Eventual Future.)
Release Date: February 2nd (Netflix)
Country: USA.
Rating: TV-MA.
Written by: Richard Morgan, Various.
Directed by: Various.
Showrunner: Laeta Kalogridis.
Starring: Joel Kinnaman, Martha Higareda, James Purefoy, Ato Essandoh, Chris Conner, Dichen Lachman, and Renee Elise Goldsberry.

Every time we (and most likely a lot of Sci-Fi fans) get wind of something like Altered Carbon, the movie Blade Runner instantly comes to mind. It's a Sci-Fi classic that painted the future as a bleak one, where things are run by big corporations, and the Police are ever present, keeping order in the over-crowded streets. The environment is in decay, the divide between the rich and the poor is wider than ever, and technology rules everything.

It's an escalated reflection of our times, which is classic dystopian setting.

Altered Carbon may well inhabit that same sort of dystopian future, but its got its own stories to tell, and so please go into this one knowing that it is NOT a Blade Runner clone or rip-off, but that the movie's influences are undeniable, none the less.

In the future, death is not the end. Our bodies are merely sleeves used to hold storage devices called cortical stacks, which house human consciousness in our spines. If your stack is destroyed, it's game over, but as long as it remains intact, it can be housed in any available sleeve, at any time, making a person virtually immortal. Of course, the richer you are, the more choice you have as to which sleeve you get, so for the poor, it's pretty much take what you can get.

SHE TAKES WHAT SHE WANTS.

The richest of the rich (Meths) live in massive, gorgeous skyscrapers that reach above the clouds, and they live lives of absolute privilege; while the poorest humans (Grounders) dwell on the dirty, over-crowded ground, living in hand-to-mouth squalor. When Bancroft, one of the richest Meths, suspects his sleeve was murdered, a former Envoy (a badass soldier of sorts) named Takeshi Kovacs is awakened from his 250-year stint on ice to find out what happened.

OH LOOK, HE'S WAKING UP... AND HE ISN'T ASIAN ANY MORE.

Along with a hot Latina Cop (who kicks all sorts of ass); a computer A.I. who thinks it's Edgar Allen Poe; and a dude who wants bloody revenge for what happened to his wife and daughter, Kovacs uncovers the details of the intricate plot behind Bancroft's sleeve death, which reaches into his past in ways he could have never imagined.

Let's just say that shit goes down.

YOU DO NOT MESS WITH AN ENVOY.

The world of Altered Carbon is as breathtaking and captivating as it is terrifying. The way people are re-sleeved; the virtual way that people can be tortured to death over and over again, and how it's completely legal; pleasure centers where prostitutes are literally screwed to death, their bodies discarded like trash; husbands and wives fighting to the death, all in an effort to make enough money to get better sleeves, and live better lives... The way the Meths view everyone else as disposable entertainment is frightening, because that's how many rich and powerful people in today's world behave, albeit not to such extreme levels. Usually.

This is a Neo-Noir detective story as much as it is anything, and we're completely fine with that. Tak Kovacs is brooding, death-dealing hero who drinks too much, lovers cyber-hookers, and doesn't care about anything, but of course, he has a heart of gold underneath it all. Sure, it's cliche' as hell, but he's such a great character, and Joel Kinnaman plays his so perfectly, that it doesn't matter, because not only does he dazzle us with his badassery, but he makes us care about him, and that's the whole battle right there.

Even better, his gang of misfit friends are all each as likable, and we cared about their stories too. How do you not love Poe, and his killer hotel, not to mention his love for a human girl that leads him to heal her, making her into something new? How do you not want to see Elliot reunited with his family as much as he does? Or how do you not want Ortega to get naked, because dammit, it's her body, and she can do what she wants to with it! Even the villains are compelling as hell.

Great characters, inhabited by great actors.

Of course it's hard to a watch a show like Altered Carbon in this day and age and not draw parallels between its story and the current state of world affairs. The book may have been written in 2002, but the rich vs. poor angle of its central story is one that is always relevant, and one that always will be. The show isn't here to preach, but it does make some strong statements about how people are valued in our society, and who truly controls things, which makes it all extra compelling.

LIKE A BOSS.

The second season of Altered Carbon will most likely feature an entirely new cast, because the story of Takeshi Kovacs moves to a different world, and that sucks, because everyone did such great work here, that we'd love to see more from their characters in the future.

WHAT A GREAT DUO.

Why does the best damned supporting character in every son of a bitching TV show that we watch and love, have to die?!?? The one damn person we wanted to live died painfully in this one, and it sucked!!!!

THAT'S ABOUT HOW WE FELT.

There is a liberal amount of blood and violence on display throughout this one, some of which is downright uncomfortable to watch. Isn't that great?

KILL 'EM, BABY. KILL 'EM ALL!

There's no shortage of sex and nudity in the future, and there's plenty of both on display throughout the entire season.

BABY GOT FRONT.

• The beginning scene at the hotel with Kovacs.
• The A.I. hotel coming to violent life.
• The arena fight.
• The re-birth of Lizzie.
• The Ortega vs. Mr. Leung showdown.
• Just about every fight scene.

KOVACS WAS AWESOME IN BOTH SLEEVES.

It's not a perfect show, and the end felt way to over-convoluted and messy, but overall Altered Carbon was an engrossing, 10-hour look into a nightmare world that dazzled and horrified us at the same time.

We tend to get more satisfaction these days out of TV shows that we do movies, because with TV, you get more of the story and characters that you grow to love. That is exactly the case with Altered Carbon, and if you're looking to immerse yourself in a truly bingable world for a few hours, then add it to your Netflix lists pronto.

A

Altered Carbon is steaming on Netflix, now.

The future might be scary, but it's filled with gorgeous women who kick ass, so we deal.

VOD Review: Radius (2017)

"As haunting as it is gripping."

High-concept movies that offer a truly unique premise are a rare thing indeed. Titles like Memento, Fight Club, or even Edge of Tomorrow come to mind as examples of movies that offer plot lines that both thrill and bend the normal lines of linear storytelling.

Radius is a movie like that. It's a small movie in scope, but its got a superb hook that can't be ignored, and its a rare film that takes its time with its reveals, and even when it feeds us some info to digest, we're left not truly knowing everything that happened.

And we didn't mind one bit.

A man wakes up on the side of the road after a horrible car accident to find that he doesn't remember who he is, or what happened. As he stumbles for help, all he finds are dead people and animals, which makes him fear that he's stuck in the middle of an airborne viral outbreak.

OH, IT'S NOT AIRBORNE.

To make matters worse, he discovers through trial and error that any living being that comes within 50 feet (maybe 30?) of him drops dead, so it's him causing the mass death all around him. He tries to seclude himself at his home so as not to kill anyone else, but the arrival of a pretty girl changes everything, when she appears to be immune to the effects of his death radius. As a bonus, as long as she stays by him, no one else dies either. Separate them though, and it's not good for anyone nearby.

WHAT A WAY TO GO...

Are the two of them connected somehow? And if so, what happened, and is there any cure for him other than to keep her close? The two of them (who eventually discover their names), will search for the answers together, although what they find might just make matters worse.

DUDE, STOP KILLING PEOPLE.

The idea of anyone coming within a 50 foot radius of you instantly dropping dead is a terrifying one, and it makes for one hell of an intriguing movie premise. Thankfully, Radius makes the most out of that unique premise, with things playing out like an old episode of The Twilight Zone.

The way that the story unfolds in this one is what truly makes it special. We know that something happened to Liam and Jane, but we never quite find out exactly what it was; "A cosmic event" in the form of lightning strike is as deep as the details go on that front. That's alright though, because as much as we wanted to a know what happened and why, it was really the journey of the two main characters that kept us at 100% attention.

As we are fed bits and pieces of Liam and Jane's memories that help us as an audience to figure out what in the hell happened to them, those memories paint a bigger picture that culminates in a reveal that was truly shocking. And pretty awesome, in our opinion. And that big reveal served to humanize the movie even more; we will not spoil it, so it's going to be hard to articulate just how it changed things, but it made the ending a bit more tragic in a way.

And that ending... well, it had an impact to say the least.

ALL THIS POOR BASTARD WANTED TO DO WAS EAT SOME GRASS.

Lots of people and animals dropping dead in this one, and there's a bit of gun violence, but it's fairly light on the blood flow front.

HE'S HAVING A ROUGH DAY.

Not that kind of movie at all.

IT MAKES US MAD TOO, CHARLOTTE.

Every now and then a smaller movie like Radius comes along and knocks our socks off. It's not a perfect film, but it's about as engaging and gripping as any movie we've seen this year. The bottom line is that if you like Sci-fi Thrillers, and if you're a sucker for a unique hook, then this is one movie that you really should check out.

Avoid spoilers, and enjoy.

A

Radius is available now on DVD and VOD.

We like blonde Charlotte Sullivan the best, but she's beautiful no matter what color hair she's rocking.