We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning.
Christmas horror, Full Moon vampires, and aging action stars.
THE SACRIFICE GAME (2023)
Five years ago, Jenn Wexler made her feature directorial debut with the very entertaining throwback slasher The Ranger, which put a group of punk-style criminals up against a psychotic forest ranger – and came off like the closest we’ll probably ever get to seeing a Psycho Cop 3. For her follow-up, Wexler has made a ‘70s throwback supernatural horror film. And while The Ranger wasn’t directly said to be set in the ‘80s or early ‘90s, The Sacrifice Game is very clear about when it’s set: December 1971, in the days leading up to Christmas.
Mena Massoud, Olivia Scott Welch, Derek Johns, and Laurent Pitre play a quartet of murderers who have been racking up a substantial body count this December, and the film opens with a murder sequence that brings to mind – at least, it did for me – the crimes of the Manson Family. Then we’re introduced to characters who inhabit an isolated boarding school. There’s Wexler’s The Ranger star Chloë Levine as cool young teacher Rose, who will even inform a student where they can locate some vodka in the pantry; Georgia Acken as quiet girl Clara, who keeps to herself and doesn’t fit in with her peers; and Madison Baines as the heartbroken Samantha, whose mother recently passed away and now she has been abandoned in this boarding school by her stepfather. When the school empties out for the holiday, Clara, Samantha, Rose, and Rose’s boyfriend Jimmy (Gus Kenworthy) are the only ones left behind. Until that quartet of murderers shows up at the front door.
If you’re hoping The Sacrifice Game will be similar to The Ranger, I have to tell you ahead of time, Wexler took a very different approach to her second film. While there are humorous moments with the killers, they don’t drop one-liners like The Ranger did, and The Sacrifice Game has a much more serious tone overall. It’s also a bit of a slow build – which is part of the reason why it ended up being twenty-two minutes longer than The Ranger, with a running time of 99 minutes rather than 77. This is all fine, as different movies require different styles. But The Sacrifice Game would have benefited from being a bit shorter, because it delays getting to its point for quite some time. The story might have been best suited as a segment in an anthology, but as a feature on its own it could have at least been closer to 80 minutes than 100.
When the killers raid the school and force their captives to have Christmas dinner with them, the whole situation is so familiar that it comes off as dull rather than thrilling. Thankfully, there’s something more coming down the line, as the killers have been spilling blood in an effort to summon a demon, which they intend to do within the school. This is where the supernatural element comes in. Problem is, Wexler and co-writer Sean Redlitz wait way too long to bring this element to the forefront. By the time the demon gets involved, it’s too little, too late. Despite the surprise dance scene that made me think of the dance scene in Night of the Demons, even though the one here is much more low-key.
Even while I felt like the movie was dragging, I was always impressed by the acting. Each of the actors do great work in their roles, and the characters are well written. The four killers have distinct personalities; some of them are even likeable and amusing, while others are not so much. Levine proved she could play a good heroine in The Ranger, and that carries over to this film. Acken gets to show off some range as Clara, and Baines does well as the meek and hurting Samantha.
The Sacrifice Game will surely work just fine for some horror fans, but for me the pace and structure really brought this one down. It’s okay, but it could have been much better if it had moved faster and been more up front about the story it was telling.
The review of The Sacrifice Game originally appeared on ArrowintheHead.com
SUBSPECIES IV: BLOODSTORM (1998)
When I watched my way through the Christopher Lee Dracula movies a few years ago, one of my favorite things about them was seeing how Dracula was going to be revived in each movie after being destroyed in the previous. Sometimes people would accidentally drop blood in his dead mouth, sometimes they would drink his blood. My favorite was when a bat just flew up and vomited blood onto his remains. Seeing how the vampire Radu gets resurrected in the Subspecies sequels is that same kind of fun. Radu gets decapitated? No problem, his little demon-looking minions will help get his head back on his shoulders. He was staked? His mummy mother will revive him with some blood. Did you think he was dead when he was impaled on the branches of a tree and burnt up by the sun at the end of Subspecies III? Well, he wasn’t. Subspecies IV shows us that his body fell from the tree into a puddle of water, extinguishing the flames. Then he was able to regain his strength by drinking blood from the Bloodstone, the magical object that drips the blood of the saints.
It seems Radu can survive anything. His adversaries aren’t so lucky. While shooting the second and third films back-to-back, writer/director Ted Nicolaou would joke about killing off the lead characters in a car crash. And when Subspecies IV got a greenlight, that’s exactly what he ended up doing. We thought our heroes were driving off to a happy ending at the end of part 3, but this film begins with their car wrecked, their corpses lying on the ground. The only survivor of the crash is Michelle (Denice Duff), the young woman who has been struggling with the fact that Radu has turned her into a vampire. From the crash, she is taken to the laboratory of Dr. Niculescu (Mihai Dinvale). He also happens to be a vampire, which is why some call him Dr. Blood. He seems like a good guy who might be able to help Michelle with the symptoms of vampirism – but he’s also hiding some inappropriateness, some creepiness, behind his closed doors. And he has an interest in the Bloodstone that could lead to trouble.
While Michelle is in the care of Niculescu and his assistant Ana (Ioana Abur), Radu once again sets out to track her down. This time he enlists the help of vampire characters first seen in Nicolaou’s film Vampire Journals, Ash (Jonathon Morris) and Serena (Floriela Grappini). This adds some extra drama into the story, because Serena turns out to be quite a schemer. There are also scenes that follow another returning character, Romanian police officer Marin (Ion Haiduc), who is also becoming a vampire. So there’s quite a lot going on in this movie, and that’s just the set-up in the first half of it.
Subspecies had wrapped up reasonably well as a trilogy, so there are times when Subspecies IV feels like an addendum that wasn’t entirely necessary for the story of Radu and Michelle. Especially since the characters of Becky and Mel had to be sacrificed in the beginning for it to play out the way it does. But there are interesting elements to the story, it was cool that Nicolaou decided to work in the Vampire Journals characters, and it was nice to see Radu back in action for another movie. So it ends up being a worthy addition to the franchise.
EXPEND4BLES (2023)
Created as a way to showcase ensembles made up of popular action stars, the Expendables franchise was on a roll a decade ago. The first film was released in 2010, with sequels following in 2012 and 2014. Over the course of those three films, we saw characters played by Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Harrison Ford, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Wesley Snipes, Dolph Lundgren, Jet Li, Chuck Norris, Mel Gibson, and more. But when The Expendables 3 under-performed at the box office, things sputtered out. There was always talk of a fourth film, but there were a lot of ups and downs, personal issues, creative differences, and a pandemic – all of which added up to cause a long delay between films. A goofy comic book called The Expendables Go to Hell – where the mercenary heroes hallucinate a battle through Hell after being dosed with LSD – was released in the interim, but it took nine years for another movie to reach theatres. And when the fourth film was released, it became clear movie-goers hadn’t been anxiously waiting for the franchise’s return. The dopily titled Expend4bles under-performed at the box office much worse than the previous installment did, drawing in only $50 million. Quite a failure when you factor in the $100 million budget... although, based on the cheap sets and dodgy CGI this movie puts on the screen, it’s very difficult to believe they actually put $100 million into this installment.
Of course, one reason why Expend4bles under-performed may be the lack of major action stars. Sure, Stallone and Statham are back in the roles of Expendables Barney Ross and Lee Christmas, and Lundgren and Randy Couture reprise the roles of their teammates Gunner and Toll Road, but we need some other big-hitters for them to share the screen with. Willis has retired, Van Damme’s character was killed off, none of the other big names mentioned above return. Terry Crews’ character from the first three films is absent. So who do we get added to the line-up? Megan Fox as Christmas’s love interest / CIA agent turned Expendable Gina, rapper Curtis “50 Cent Jackson” as a new Expendable called Easy Day, Levy Tran as new addition Lash, and Tony Jaa as former Expendable Decha. Andy Garcia steps in as CIA agent Marsh, with Iko Uwais as the villain, mercenary / terrorist Suarto Rahmat. Antonio Banderas was meant to reprise his role from the third movie, but when he ran into scheduling issues he was replaced by Jacob Scipio as his character’s son Galan.
The new additions do fine work in their roles and Tony Jaa and Iko Uwais are indeed known for doing impressive work in the action genre, but none of the new cast members have the sort of nostalgic action fan draw many previous Expendables cast members had. It doesn’t help matters than Stallone is barely in Expend4bles himself.
When this project was first announced, it had the working title of The Expendables: A Christmas Story. So it was always clear that Statham’s Lee Christmas was going to be front and center this time around. The only question was, how would the passing of the torch from Stallone to Statham be handled? Within the first 30 minutes of the film, it appears to be done in the worst way possible. The Expendables make a failed attempt at stopping Rahmat from stealing nuclear warheads in from a location in Libya, and this mission ends when the Expendables’ plane – flown by Barney – is shot down. It smashes to the ground in a fiery crash and it appears that all that’s left of Barney is his charred skeleton. I’m going to spoil something now, but it’s a spoiler that saved the movie for me: in the end, it’s revealed that Barney is still alive and had to fake his death in order to drawn Rahmat’s employer out into the open. You see, Rahmat is working for a mysterious figure called Ocelot, who Barney crossed paths with decades earlier. An encounter that resulted in his fellow Expendables at the time being massacred. With Barney’s “death”, a document on that event is declassified. A step toward revealing Ocelot’s identity. By the end, Ocelot has been defeated, Barney’s death has been reversed, and Stallone is shown hanging out with his fellow heroes again. But for about an hour of the movie, we’re meant to believe that Barney is dead, and that isn’t cool.
At least the movie packs plenty of action into that hour. Rahmat and Ocelot are planning to set of World War III by detonating their nuclear warheads on a ship in Russian waters, and by the 45 minute mark the Expendables have boarded that ship. Christmas has been fired from the team by then, as he made an error during the Libya mission, but with Decha’s help he boards the ship soon after the rest of the heroes do. And the fighting, shooting, and explosions we’re here to see ensue. It all wraps up in 99 minutes, making this a decently entertaining viewing experience even if questionable decisions were made along the way.
While Stallone had writing credits on the previous three films, for this one the writing duties were handled by Kurt Wimmer, Max Adams, Spenser Cohen, and the perfectly named (for this type of movie) Tad Daggerhart. The story was then brought to the screen by director Scott Waugh, a former stuntman who seems to specialize in medium-budgeted action – much like his brother, Angel Has Fallen director and frequent Gerard Butler collaborator Ric Roman Waugh. Aside from the martial arts on display in some scenes, I can’t say I was very impressed by Expend4bles on any level, but it was a serviceable action flick and I was glad to see one more entry in the franchise. I would also be glad to see it continue – ideally with better directors, better production value, and more famous action stars – but it seems like it might be wrapping up. The older guys are stepping away, Stallone is ready to move on, and the audience didn’t show up for this one. If Expend4bles is the end, it’s a fine one.
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