Saw this one the other night, a slight and only slightly enjoyable offering from first-time feature director Leon Ford.

Ryan Kwanten (the zero body-fat human prawn from True Blood, Red Hill) plays Griff, a quirky, lonely loser who moonlights as a not-very-good superhero.  When his brother brings round an equally quirky girl who takes a shine to Griff, his life changes and his skewed reality is challenged.

Featuring a decent performance from Kwanten, who is usually idiotically hilarious in True Blood, as the mousy Griff, this film was pretty junior-burger stuff.  It looked like it was filmed on 16mm with very few visual flourishes outside of its colour palette.  As I was watching it I was constantly reminded of the films of Yahoo Serious (not a compliment), but without the halfway decent music.  The film played out all those shitty short films you see over and over again at local festivals, shot at a friend’s place or a partner’s office, using semi-pro actors mugging at the camera like it’s their only chance to be seen.

The script was flabby and lacking in any relevance outside of the screen, which is fine for highly entertaining films, but not for rom-coms which do best when they play to general themes of love and the importance of individuality.  This film is really only relevant to the highly moronic and deluded…which is to say that maybe it could find its audience if it screened at churches around the nation.

Basically, if you have seen Amelie, Benny & Joon and Young Einstein then you have already seen this story done much better and I have to agree with the website blurb;

GRIFF THE INVISIBLE [] will (dis)appear in cinemas nationally March, 2011

http://www.grifftheinvisible.com/

4/10

PREVUE OF COMING ATTRACTIONS

FEATURE PRESENTATION

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PREVUES OF COMING ATTRACTIONS

FEATURE PRESENTATION

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THE LOVED ONES

Release Date: November 4th 2010 (Premiered at the 2009 Toronto Film Festival)

Director/Writer: Sean Byrne

Key Cast: Xavier Samuel, Robin McLeavy, Victoria Thaine

See the Teaser and Trailer.

The latest in Australian horror comes a twisted story of love and revenge.  Some would say if you mash-up Pretty in Pink with Wolf Creek, you’ll get something like this, though I wouldn’t quite agree on that.

The Loved Ones opens with Brent (Xavier Samuel) driving with his dad on the open roads of a small town in southern Australia. Brent swerves to avoid a bloody, cut up, half-naked man. The car hits a tree, and Dad is killed. Some months later it’s the day of the School formal where Brent rejects Lola Stone (Robin McLeavy) to go with his girlfriend Holly (Victoria Thaine). Lola does not take this rejection well. Brent is abducted and taken to Lola’s home by her daddy (John Brumpton) where the torture begins….

…And torture there is. Along side films like Hostel and Saw, The Loved Ones dives into killing as an art, to the point where Lola marks her captives with a chest <3 LS. The story starts out as a drama, which quickly jumps into the horror. Within about 15 mins the torture begins, making the character development a little lacking and a too bit clichéd. Brent’s grief over his father is a little to unoriginal with heavy metal music and self-cutting. The film however is only 84mins, nevertheless I would have preferred an extra scene at front end of the film to help me care if Brent lives or dies a little less of the secondly story, which follows Brent’s best friend Jamie (Richard Wilson) and his goth date Mia (Jessica McNamee). Their story does help brake you away from all that blood and gore, but breaking out to see Jamie and Mia stoned in a car for the 3^rd time gets a little old.

With all its flaws and its disjointed manor, I do understand why Sean Byrne had these scenes in the film. There are paybacks to the little things, which helps connect the story at the end. The ingredients were all correct, but a little tweaking of the qualities would have helped this film greatly.

Shot on the Red One, the film is looks great, for what I can only imagine was quiet a low budget, though what really sealed it for me was the sound and special effects. Every cut and stab had me squirming. The torture was great and kept getting worst and worst and worst.

So, If you like your torture porn, then I would definitely say see this film or even if you’re just a fan of gore and horror.  It’s a great date flick, though I don’t think my boyfriend would agree after my nails digging into him with every on-screen puncher. I wont be adding this to my horror or Aussie collection but it was worth the $9.

And I’ll never be able to listen to Kasey Chambers “Not Pretty Enough” in the same way again.

Rating: 7/10

In 2019, vampires make up the vast majority of the population with only 5% of the human race remaining. This presents particular challenges as the vampires’ food supply – human blood – is dwindling and rationing is now the norm. There is growing evidence that vampires deprived of an adequate blood supply are themselves evolving into wild, vile creatures that attack anyone and anything in order to survive. Edward Dalton(
Ethan Hawke) , a vampire and hematologist who works for a pharmaceutical firm, has been working on finding an artificial blood supply that will meet the vampire society’s needs. He is sympathetic to humans and sees his work as a way of alleviating their suffering but his views on finding a solution change considerably when he meets someone who found a way to transform himself from being a vampire to again take human form.

Official Site

IMDB

Music used in Episode: My Vampire – Soho Dolls