4. The Revenant (2009) Director - Kerry Prior

Imagine that your best mate came back from the dead. Would you chop off his head and plunge a stake through his chest? No, you help him of course, help him get back on his feet. It gets a bit difficult when you realise that he needs to drink blood so he doesn’t decompose, but solutions can present themselves. If you accidentally fall into a vigilante lifestyle that provides dead bad-people to feed on then, morally speaking, you’re off the hook - you also get the advantage of finding big roles of cash and the occasional stash off white powder! So far so good, though things, of course, are never that easy, as Bart (David Anders) and Joey (Chris Wylde) find out.

Effectively, this is a buddy movie, but with a couple of seriously flawed, weak-willed and largely unsympathetic characters. Mind, finding yourself in this particular situation would be enough to test the moral compass of any person, you would think. You don’t really find yourself rooting for these guys, which is perhaps where the (very dark) humour lies, in seeing them fail. Joey, who tries to do right by his undead friend, is still a self proclaimed “asshole” and Bart, despite trying to “do the right thing” all the time rarely displays true feelings of regret and has a tendency to absolve himself of blame from his actions.

As a base horror comedy it delivers in more ways than one with a good few laughs and silly situations (like taking a dead person to the hospital to find out what’s wrong with him) alongside some nicely brutal and sickening set pieces. It has a high production value, looks slick and uses a stunning diverse soundtrack to great effect. We like the film’s ambition to attempt to convey messages on everything from religion to race, politics and general degenerate behaviour, but unfortunately those comments often feel muddled and unclear. Perhaps a lack of central theme makes it difficult to truly lose yourself in the plot. Maybe it is just saying that bad things happen because people are fallible and screwed up - in essence, shit happens!

Overall though, this film is causing Fraser a problem. He could imagine really enjoying this in his twenties, it has action, humour and lad-like behaviour fully approved of in his early years, but is it good enough to warrant a place in the cupboard when he’s pushing forty? Paula says no - the comedy doesn’t make up for the scrambled social commentary and the bro-mance isn’t appealing enough. Fraser is going to hold onto it.

Does it make it into the cupboard? Yes, just. 
(Though, whether it will make it through the next cull is open to debate.)

Our next post will be up on Sunday 10th of January around 3 pm Swedish time (15.00).