THE LOVED ONES (2009)

Though at heart another tied-to-a-chair-and-tortured film, this Australian debut from writer-director Sean Byrne rings the changes on an overworked form, owing more to Stephan Elliott (in Frauds or Welcome to Woop Woop mode) than Eli Roth. Material which is usually filler – comic relief teen hijinx, the police investigation, secondary characters catching on to what’s wrong, angsty family tragedy – is all tied intimately to the central situation, and considerably deepens the black comic ordeal. In a prologue, long haired teenager Brent (Xavier Samuel) is bantering with his dad while driving home when a bloody figure shows up in the middle of the road. Brent loses control of the car and his father dies in the crash. Months later, Brent has taken to cutting himself and can’t connect with his girlfriend Holly (Victoria Thaine). When wallflower Lola (Robin McLeavy) asks him to take her to the dance, he is more disturbed than touched. Later, while climbing – he seeks out dangerous situations from guilt over his father’s death – he is bagged and snatched by Eric (John Brumpton), Lola’s loving, disturbed father. Brent is tied to a chair (of course) in the isolated Stone house, which is festooned with balloons and party lights. Lola appears in a pink dress, expressing manic glee that shows she’s gone beyond playing with Barbie dolls and dreaming of perfect romance to persuading her father to kidnap hot guys so they can be transformed into her dates by power-drill lobotomy (a prelude to the real brain-boiling process, which involves a kettle of hot water). Eric has already turned Lola’s mother (Anne Scott-Pendlebury) into ‘Bright Eyes’, a lolling zombie, and the cellar is stocked with other failed attempts at ‘loved ones’ (Lola has a scrapbook about them, and chatters callously about their fates). Brent is pinned to the floor by knives through his feet, drugged and dressed up formally, and has a love-heart carved on his chest with a fork, but wisely keeps quiet through the long night as the psychos do all the spieling. BTK horror has thrown up too many similar restraint situations, but Byrne does more with the familiar material than many an exploitative hack: we get mad tea parties, sawn-through ropes (Brent has his cutting razorblade as a necklet), gruesomely permanent assaults (the drilling is especially painful – a first try skitters off Brent’s forehead because the girl doesn’t put her weight behind it), casual humiliations (Brent has to pee in a glass) and a captive-overcomes- captors finale (Eric’s fate goes back to Dr Moreau’s). It’s not a complete downer and the last-reel heroics hinge affectingly on the way Brent’s ordeal opens him up emotionally (he really values the loyal Holly, who Lola is out to get). A wide- open-spaces climactic face-off (all great Aussie exploitation films take to the road eventually) ends with a satisfying punch line splat.

SHARKNADO (2013)

‘THESE FISH SURE HAVE A HANKERING FOR ME. SEEMS LIKE ONE TASTE OF BAZ JUST ISN’T ENOUGH.’

Anyone who grew up loving Attack of the Crab Monsters, Piranha and Alligator (or even Anaconda and The Relic) is entitled to feel rooked that The Asylum and Syfy Channel have drowned the monster movie genre in disposable shit. It’s hard to imagine anyone in the future being nostalgic about a ’nado movie. The foundation of a beyond-a-joke franchise, Sharknado offers an attention-getting title (NB: Arachnoquake got there first), ’80s/’90s nostalgia or just-out-of-rehab players (is John Heard really not getting better off ers than this?) and just enough footage of terrible CGI sharks in a terrible CGI tornado to fill a trailer. Otherwise, it’s cynically thrown-together rubbish… not funny when it tries for snark, padded with family arguments and weather footage, and unexciting in its action/peril scenes (compare the better-made, not-entirely-dissimilar Bait). Yes, a tornado off the California coast sucks up sharks and tosses them at victims. Bar owner/ex- surfer Fin Shepard (Ian Ziering), his Aussie sidekick Baz (Jaason Simmons) and waitress girlfriend Nova (Cassie Scerbo) rescue his nagging ex-wife April (Tara Reid) and trek inland, stopping off to save folks (an interminable school bus rescue scene features much rappelling off a bridge) or watch them get bitten. The moment of glory comes after Nova has fallen out of a helicopter into the maw of a flying shark – Fin lets himself (and a chainsaw) be swallowed, then saws his way out of the fish, rescuing the girl. In a slightly creepy subtext, Fin gets back with his family, and Nova is passed on as a potential girlfriend for his chopper pilot son (Alex Arleo). Weather conditions or use of rain/wind machines vary from shot to shot and that shaky-cam attempt to suggest an ongoing hurricane gets wearisome quickly. Hard to see why it got more attention than Jersey Shore Shark Attack or Ozark Sharks. Written by Thunder Levin (Atlantic Rim/From the Sea); directed by Anthony C. Ferrante (Boo).