DVD Review: Demeking, The Sea Monster (2009)

DEMEKING, THE SEA MONSTER (2009)

"Terror Lies Beneath"
Cinema Epoch


RATED: G
RUNNING TIME: 99 Min.
DIRECTOR: Kohtaro Terauchi
CAST: Takashi Nadagi (Hachiya), Kohei Kiyasu (Kame)
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: Japan

SUMMARY: In 1969, a young man named Hachiya finds an anonymous letter in a glass bottle which foretold of the apocalyptic arrival of a cosmic monster known as Demeking. Since then, he has physically prepared himself in a lone struggle for that fateful day when the monster will arrive. (from CinemaEpoch.Com)

FILM: Demeking, The Sea Monster is a live action adaptation of Takashi Imashiro's 1991 cult manga Demekingu which I've not read as I'm not a huge manga fan, to be honest. As the film begins we see an ominous asteroid as it hurls through space, presumably on a collision course with Earth, setting up the expectation that some creature feature disaster further awaits us. The setting of the film is the early 1970's and  we are introduced to Kame (Kohei Kiyasu), an awkward high school student who just doesn't fit in with kids his own age, he's bullied and generally disliked by his peers. He lives in a sleepy port town where he works at his families tofu shop and has little aspirations other than spending his time with a trio of adolescents who look up to him. Together they form an exploration club and go off on fantasy filled expeditions in search of adventure and fun. While on one of these expeditions at the port they come across a "ghost ship" and decide to explore it. Once inside they are interrupted by the owner of the vessel, Hachiya (Takashi Nadagi), a young man who works at a local theme park.  He tells the exploration club of the Demeking - a creature he is destined to defeat before it can destroy Tokyo. When pressed to give more information about this creature he sends the group on a scavenger hunt that will lead then to the truth. It doesn't really, but it allows them to do what they do best - letting their imaginations soar with the possibility of discovery.

I really enjoyed the acting in this film, very subtle, it's not comedic but it has a definite streak of humor throughout. The two main characters give understated performances as Kame (Kiyasu) and Hachiya (Nadagi), two similar but different young men who seem lost in life with no direction, each filling the void with fantasy. There's a quiet desperation and sadness to their lives that the actors capture really well. They lose themselves in their fantasies. Kame avoids the stress of high school by taking on the role of a big brother to the adolescent exploration club. Hachiya is consumed by the notion that he has been tasked to defeat the Demeking which allows him to internally avoid the pressure by his father to do something meaningful with his life.  And what comes of the mythical creature?

Well, the titular Demeking does finally appear in the final 1/3 of the film, albeit during a fever dream Kame suffers. Dream or not it is a well rendered sequence, Gojira has nothing on this super-beast. As the previously mentioned asteroid slams into the Earth, a gargantuan, stalk-eyed, armored slug emerges and begins laying waste to the cityscape with an irradiated beam it emits from its mouth. It is a thing of beauty as the glowing eyed creature tromps through the village laying eggs and setting buildings on fire. Of note, the creature origins are outer space, not the sea as the title would indicate. I guess Demeking, The Space Monster sounded too much like a schlocky 50's era b-movie.

I really enjoyed Demeking, The Sea Monster and director Kohtaro Terauchi's handling of the material which while not at all what I expected, I did end up enjoying it.  This is much more a tale of two people entering young adulthood while trying to hold onto the delusional fantasies of childhood than a true creature feature though it does meet that criteria as well to some degree.

DVD: The Cinema Epoch DVD of Demeking, The Sea Monster is presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen with a 5.1 Japanese language surround sound mix with optional English subtitles. It's a good looking film shot on HDCAM and the cinematography wonderfully captures the sleepy atmosphere of this seaside village. On the downside, the only special features are trailers for other Cinema Epoch films and I would have loved a featurette that touched on the source material.
 

VERDICT: Demeking, The Sea Monster seems to be marketed as creature feature and this is really dismissive of the film's true nature as a offbeat character piece about two young men lacking direction in their lives. If you go into this expecting a creature feature/disaster film I think you'll be hugely disappointed, but as a dramatic, nuanced character piece it is a great watch that is punctuated by a brief but fun monster attack on a sleepy port town. The DVD from Cinema Epoch is available today, so check it out. *** (3.5 Out of Five Stars)

- McBASTARD

DVD Review: Frozen (2009)

FROZEN (2009)

“No One Knows You’re Up There”
Anchor Bay Entertainment


RATED: R
RUNNING TIME: 93 Min.
DIRECTOR: Adam Green
CAST: Emmie Bell (Parker O’Neil), Shawn Ashmore (Joe Lynch), Kevin Zegers (Dan Walker), Ed Acherman (Jason), Kane Hodder (Cody), Adam Johnson (Rifkin)


SUMMARY: Three friends decide to take one last run down the ski slope of Mount Holliston, New England. Halfway up the mountain their chair lift stops, the lights go out, and the resort closes for a week. They are forgotten on the icy mountain top and left stranded fifty feet in the air, but the worst is still to come. A storm is approaching, frostbite is setting in, and on the ground below them a pack of hungry wolves has gathered …to feed.

FILM: It’s been an Adam Green kind of week here at the Mausoleum folks. This passed weekend I took in a viewing of Green’s brutal gore fest HATCHET 2 on the big screen, just before AMC Theatres unceremoniously yanked the unrated film the following Monday. That travesty aside, I’m here writing about Green’s latest DVD the survival thriller FROZEN (2009), a man vs. nature thriller that takes a premise we’ve seen previously in OPEN WATER (2004) or THE RUINS (2008) and places our forgotten victims not in the open water or on an ancient temple but on a ski lift 50ft. in the air on a subzero mountaintop surrounded by wolves.

 We spend the first thirty minutes of the film getting to know our threesome. Lynch and Dan are best friends since childhood. They make an annual trip to Mt. Holliston to escape the stress of their lives. This year’s trip is being spoiled somewhat by the fact that Dan brought his girlfriend Parker. Don’t you hate it when you begin losing your best buds to relationships? It happens, and it’s a difficult transition. You know Lynch is a bit perturbed that Emmie is tagging along, she’s a shit snowboarder and they just can’t get any decent runs with her falling on her ass every 5 minutes. He’s dropping snide comments here and there, but it’s hard not to like her, she’s actually a cool girl. Towards the end of the day they decide to make one last run down the slope but the resort is closing early due to incoming weather. Emmie uses her not insubstantial feminine charm and $100 to get the lift operator to let them up one more time. It proves to be a fateful decision for the three. Halfway up the mountain when the lift comes to a stops they assume it will start back up in a few minutes,  that is until the lights along the ski runs start turning off and the valley turns dark below them. When they can no longer deny they're in danger this is when the fear and panic set in.They’re arguing, fighting off the cold, freaking out, desperately trying to figure out what to do. They cannot believe this is happening. What can you do? I kept thinking to myself that realistically there’s little you can do, it’s stressing to think about. The cold is setting in, the weather turns and signs of frostbite are apparent. One of them decides that they must jump from the lift to the ground. It’s 50 feet in air, but what other choices are there?  Let's just say that it doesn't go well for that individual. As the night turns to day and the tragedy plays out the film lags a bit, the the build-up loses a bit of steam as we get all talky, but what else can you do stranded on a lift, right. Don't expect a happy ending, this is a bleak affair, when man is pitted against nature man rarely wins. Frozen is about the desperate struggle for survival in the face of insurmountable odds and the lengths we go to hold onto to life.

 The acting is top notch from all the actors, the dialogue rang true and didn't feel contrived, as did their actions. There are only so many options in this situation, so there were few other choices to be made when the alternative is freezing to death. I enjoyed the cinematography and camera work in the film, it captured the desperate drama of the situation, helped by the fact the film was shot on an actual ski lift fifty feet off the ground on a freezing mountaintop, sounds like a miserable shoot. You really feel the cold come through, very well done.

DVD: Frozen is presented in it’s original theatrical aspect ratio of 2.40:1 anamorphic widescreen with a blustery 5.1 surround sound that really puts you up there on that chairlift, good sound design. The film benefits from the panoramic scope lensing that captures the chilling beauty of the mountains. The special features include a commentary, several cool featurettes, a few non-essential deleted scenes and a trailer.

• Audio Commentary with Writer/Director Adam Green and Actors Shawn Ashmore, Kevin Zegers, & Emma bell

• Catching Frostbite: The Origins of FROZEN

• Three Below Zero

• Shooting Through It

• Beating the Mountain: Surviving FROZEN

• Deleted Scenes

• Trailer

VERDICT: Director Adam Green has a sweet filmography under his belt thus far. He’s tackled brutal slashers with the HATCHET series, the psycho-thriller SPIRAL and now an intense nail-biter with FROZEN. I highly recommend Frozen, cinematically I think it's Green's most accomplished work, and is one of the years most tense thrillers.

**** (4 out of 5 stars)

-McBASTARD

DVD Review: The Devil's Backbone (2001)

Today we have a McBastard's Mausoleum event,  our first-ever guest review from noneother than Root Rot. Check out his blog and blogcast The Witch's Hat

Author: Root Rot


About 6 years ago (actually 2weeks ago), I contacted McBastard and volunteered to do a movie review for his blog. I had to think long and hard regarding my film choice, as to ensure that it was on par with the high standards of his blog. Weeks of scanning my mental movie files resulted in the well deserved choice of The Devils Backbone (2001).

Director: Guillermo del Toro

Origin: Spain

Plot: During the Spanish Civil War, a young boy (Carlos) is dropped off at an orphanage by his father who is leaving to fight in the war. Carlos struggles to adjust to life in the orphanage and away from his father. Loneliness and boredom spark his curiosity, as he eventually sneaks away to explore the orphanage. During Carlos’ midnight adventure he is confronted by the spirit of a dead boy. He is told by the ghost, “all will die”. As Carlos’ and a band of other orphans search the orphanage grounds to once again find the ghost, the orphanage’s handyman and former tenant of the orphanage, catches them. The handyman decides to reprimand the boys the handyman’s way, thus revealing his true nature. The handyman’s mode of operation progressively unfolds throughout the film. To begin, it is exposed that he torments and hurts children, he beats his girlfriend (orphanage’s maid) and fucks his bosses wife in a plot to steal the gold from the orphanage. The doctor that oversees the orphanage begins to discover the handyman’s evil side. The doctor fires the handyman, who then leaves the orphanage with his cronies; however, after a brief time spent plotting their revenge, the handyman and his crew return. While the handyman’s crew is focused on getting their hands on the gold, the handyman himself is more concerned with implementing his revenge. So…this is the point in the movie where the evil doers blow up, shoot up, stab, abuse and kill anyone they can get their hands on. Amidst all the mayhem, this is also where the film reveals the what, who, why, when and where’s of the ghost. Will he help the kids? Is there gold? Why is the handyman such a dick? Why is there a bomb in the orphanage’s court yard? I guess I could tell you , but I wouldn’t want to ruin it for you.

The Devils Backbone concludes with a cohesive meshing of the different story lines that evolved throughout the film, this is one of the film’s strongest attribute. The other highlight of the film is definitely the execution of the handyman character, I mean come on, he torments the orphans, fucks old women, and pimp hands his girlfriend, it doesn‘t get better than that.

On the Root Rot scale of (A+) being the best and (E) the worst, the 2001 The Devils Backbone gets a (B)… I really enjoy this flick.. Thanks for reading my review