husk

hi there

i had, look you see, a bit of a whim last night. i fancied watching a film, and so consulted the somewhat large amount of movies that i have acquired over the last year or so for fees ranging from 49p to £1. as it happens, one of the more expensive ones, Husk, is what i selected.

a spoiler free review would be that the £1 i paid for the blu-ray disc (yes, really) was worth it, as it was a decent enough sort of horror fright-fest which, despite a somewhat predictable plot, made me do a little bit of a jolt-jump with a mild shock sort of thing.

for the rest of this post, then, let's call on our old friend the scrolling text for a warning........

*** LIKELY SPOILERS AHEAD ***

you've been warned, then.

plot? it pretty much cuts to the chase in this regard, which is somewhat understandable with the film having all of 80 minutes allocated to it as a running time. 5 members of the youth of America are in a car, driving along by some corn field or other. they are chatting about the usual stuff American kids chat about, when all of a sudden a whole load of crows - a murder, i believe the expression is - twats into the windscreen and absolutely knacks it. the kids crash into a ditch as a consequence.

four of the kids seem OK despite the crash, yet one of their number is missing. at certain points the remaining ones decide to stand around and smoke, go look for help, and indeed go looking for the missing one of their merry gang. then all sorts of strange, spooky and scary things happen.

for the most part, then, you get to spend some quality time with any number of the 5 kids who are essentially the only cast members in this movie. it's a very stereotypical Breakfast Club type of thing, with 5 distinctly different personalities on the go - personalities that would not normally be friends in the real world. but this is a  movie.
 

pictured above is one of the kids, the "driver" as it were, who has a knife. he looks like someone has taken the dna, or if you like sperm, of Dennis Hopper and Richard Hammond off of Top Gear, thrown it into one of them massive hadron collider things and decided that the net result should be an actor. in performance, alas, he leans rather closer to Hammond than Hopper in acting skills, but he's not too bad.

actually, they are all fairly decent, or at least acceptable. when first introduced to the cast, i had fears that they were going to annoy the p!ss out of me and i would switch it off, but this turned out not to be the case.

sorry if this review bounces around a bit. there are, it has to be said, gaping holes and massive problems with some of the plot of this movie, as brief and as intended to "just get on with it" as it all is. like, for instance, why exactly the kid with glasses keeps getting flashbacks as to why what is happening to them all is indeed happening.

yeah, that's him in Commodore 64 mode. for some reason, never given, from time to time he goes into a trance and sees the past history of the corn field and assorted houses they find, witnessing things that may or may not say what's going on and possibly give clues as to what's the best thing to do to get out of it all partially alive. if you like pointing out such issues and errors, IMDB is your friend, as that is where people can look and feel as proud as a chicken that has laid an egg by dismissing everything they see in a film.

weirdly, the character i liked the most was the one i thought i would seriously dislike. the "jock" sort of character has all them smug physical characteristics of that twat Vince Vaughan - you know a face that just screams "please punch me in this". as it turns out, decent character played by a decent actor.

a flick through the cast on IMDB suggests that most, if not all, have gone onwards from this movie to bigger and dare i say better things. traditionally, that was the point of these halfway decent, low budget horror films. from the trash that was The Hand Oliver Stone went on to make many classics. Peter Jackson used his experiences making some smart, cheap horrors to do all them films with midgets and rings in them. and so on.
 

my biggest issue with Husk was that it didn't live up to the promise of the 18 certificate it has. i had forgotten what a bunch of namby pamby, fanny nancy boys the BBFC can be. although the film is most certainly not for family viewing, there's no sex or nudity, no particularly gruesome or graphic violence and gore, and only the mildest of psychological shocks. it really does not warrant being made as exciting as an 18 - i would have thought 15 - 17 year olds were the perfect market for this movie, looking for something in it with cheap thrills to watch on a weekend. if that's the sort of thing teenagers still do.

on the disc were some trailers for other films from the same studio - After Dark or something - that actually look smart. Fertile Ground was one, which i also have on disc here, and The Task was the other, which i will most certainly buy if i see.

as for buying this one, well, for some reason a while back Poundland had a mountain of brand new blu-ray discs going for £1 each. that's when i bought this one and, if i remember, Fertile Ground. as Poundland have a habit of randomly stocking stuff like that, well, that's why i try and call in there on a reasonably frequent basis.

some of the film making techniques, alas, screamed throwing every trick the director could think of at it in order to see what works. this was problematic when "shaky cam" was used in a chase through a dense and crowded corn field. i appreciate that it was done this way to try and emulate the sense of fear and terror of those running, but the key here was that the field was dense with corn. all you really saw was smears of green all over the screen. also, as mentioned, the film did make me jump once or twice, but it could have done it a few times more too with a few seconds trimmed in scenes that were trying to create tension.

Husk was a halfway decent idea for a film, made purely to entertain and showcase some above average talent. unless you are a mad keen horror film fanatic i wouldn't say go out of your way to try and find it, but if you stumble upon it on or around the price i did, it's 80 minutes or so of time you won't particularly regret watching it. as it's unlikely that i will be watching it again, if anyone who knows me and knows how to get hold of me wants to have a gander, get in touch via the usual channels and i will send the disc in the post at the weekend.

erm, yeah, whoops - a couple of weeks ago i watched that Dracula Untold thing and have yet to review it here. as it seems i for some reason review every film i watch here, i will write of it eventually.

happy watching, if you do!




be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!