Three new thrill rides hitting Malaysian cinemas now

SEPTEMBER 3 — I seriously doubt it’s intentional, but if you’re a fan of genre flicks, right now is a great time to hit Malaysian cinemas as there’s practically an overflow of genre movies battling it out for screen time this week. 

With the excellent Green Room, which I wrote about a few weeks back, also surprisingly arriving (albeit in a very low key manner) in Malaysian cinemas, you can even position this week as a sort of three-way tussle between genre auteurs who have, between them, made such genre favourites like the Evil Dead remake, the first two Outpost movies, Murder Party and the Cannes hit Blue Ruin.

Add to that battle royale the much hyped Korean zombie flick Train To Busan and the sci-fi thriller Morgan, you’ve practically got a genre bonanza going on right now in the absence of the usual dominance of mega Hollywood tentpole releases, which looks to be on some sort of short breather as the summer movie season ends. 

‘Don’t Breathe’

If, like me, you’ve hesitated to think of Fede Alverez as a horror auteur just because his sole feature film credit before this was the Evil Dead remake, then his second film Don’t Breathe will prove beyond doubt that we’re in the presence of a skillful genre auteur, and that we should look forward to his future work. 

Looking at least three or four times its reported US$9.9 million (RM40.42 million) budget, Don’t Breathe exhibits David Fincher-esque levels of visual slickness, despite being mostly set in one location — a run-down house in a run-down and deserted street somewhere in Detroit. 

Like The Shallows, Don’t Breathe revels in its minimalist set-up, using its slender story — in this case, it’s about three teenage burglars caught in a game of cat and mouse with the owner of the house they’re trying to rob, making it a sort of reverse home invasion movie — as an excuse to stitch together a dizzying series of thrilling set-pieces that will have you gripping the arms of your seat and leave you worrying whether you might get a heart attack. 

A very close second to The Shallows as one of the year’s finest examples of cinematic perfection masquerading as humble genre thrills, what a year this is turning out to be for genre movies.

'The Rezort'

Directed by Steven Barker, who’s most famous for bringing to the world the Outpost franchise, Barker’s still got zombies on his mind with The Rezort. 

Plenty of reviewers have called this a sort of Westworld with zombies, but I’m going to go with something that came to my mind the moment I saw the movie’s trailer a few weeks back. 

The Rezort is Jurassic Park with zombies, which makes it a sort of “Jurassic Z”, if I were to use the normal lingo for modern-day zombie movies. It’s set in a world that has survived a zombie apocalypse and where things have more or less returned to normal, only there’s now an island theme park or holiday destination where people can come over and shoot some zombies (just like how people can come and look at dinosaurs in Jurassic Park). 

The film’s biggest downside is that every single movement of the plot, every story beat is one that you’ve seen and heard before, which can be crushingly boring for some people. 

But if “Jurassic Z” is a concept that might interest you, rest assured that Barker has kept things action-packed and moving at a brisk pace so that you’ll never get bored. Can’t say the same about myself though!

'Train To Busan'

Thanks to its awesome trailer, Train To Busan has become one of the most highly anticipated zombie movies in recent memory, not just in Asia but also internationally as it’s already been sold to 156 countries with major Hollywood studios like Sony and 20th Century Fox and even European studios like Gaumont, CanalPlus and Europacorp involved in a bidding war over its remake rights. 

What many people might not know is that Train To Busan’s director Yeon Sang-Ho is a critically acclaimed animator, most famous for his film The King Of Pigs, which played at the Directors’ Fortnight section in Cannes in 2012, and that Train To Busan is actually a sequel to his animated film Seoul Station, which will be released in Korea one month after Train To Busan! 

I’m sure you’ve all seen the trailer, so I’m not going to say much about the movie’s plot except that it involves a father and daughter, a few other major characters, all of whom are on a train bound for Busan while a zombie outbreak is going on throughout the country, and of course on board the train itself. 

What makes this one a bit different from other zombie flicks is that this one’s about being kind to others, even when facing a zombie apocalypse. It’s a wonderful zombie flick. 

The action is fun, the trademark Korean sentimentality touching and it even tries to say something nice about human nature. I’d say it’s worth the price of a movie ticket too. All aboard!

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

Source : Malay Mail Online | All http://ift.tt/2c1lIR3

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