Fantasia Fest 2021: Dispatch 2
Rich in atmosphere with some tremendous jolting scares, The Night House firmly establishes director David Bruckner (The Ritual) as a major horror talent. The chilling story of a recent widow (the great Rebecca Hall) figuring out whether late-night visits from her late husband are real drops viewers directly in the murky middle to maximum effect, and for a while it also flirts with intelligent commentary on marriage and the tendency of people to hurt the ones they love. Though the screenwriting team of Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski opt for less insightful revelations, they’re neverthless ones that lead to a tense and largely satisfying conclusion. Grade: B-plus —EA
Donnie Yen is an immensely gifted action star who excels in the Ip-Man series, Hero, and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. But fans expecting thrilling set pieces in his new film Raging Fire will be disappointed to learn that it’s nothing more than an unbearable cop drama so desperate to convince the audience that "not all cops are bad" that it forgets to tell an interesting story — or at least one that hasn't been beaten to death a thousand times over.
Yen plays Cheung Sung-pong, a by-the-book police officer who’s looked down upon by his peers for following the rules and snitching on his fellow cops, leading to their arrest. Years go by, and guess who is back for revenge? His former coworkers, who had a hell of a time behind bars with the criminals that they put there. It may seem absurd that, in the world of this movie, an entire police squad would be imprisoned for killing someone — especially when, in reality, police freely use excessive force on protestors and hardly ever see jail time for murder — but the utter seriousness which with the movie portrays laws and procedure as a crushing force that hinders cops from doing their jobs is laughably unaware of what is currently happening in the real world.
When Raging Fire isn't recycling cop film clichés and failing to pay them off (e.g. Sung-pong's wife being pregnant throughout), Yen is constantly overplaying his character by flailing his arms and complaining that being a cop isn't "black and white," and that there are "gray areas." I should mention that he says this after shooting at a bomb squad and endangering the lives of several hostages. Look, I'm not saying that an unhinged cop can't be a protagonist; hell, Liam Neeson does it three times a year, but the film shoots itself in the foot by focusing on the law-and-order melodrama (with limited actors in that department) over the crime and action elements.
Despite all of the egregious copaganda, the movie's worst sin is not delivering on the action potential of Yen. There’s no reason why a star of his caliber should be wasted via unimaginative gunfights and poorly filmed car chases. The movie contains only two standout hand-to-hand combat scenes: One comes about halfway through the film and features a Yen staple where he fights off an army of bad guys by himself, and the other is the final fight scene between Yen and his former partner, which will make you wonder why the film deprived the audience of action even close to that level for 100 minutes. The final public gunfight is a blatant ripoff of Michael Mann's Heat — down to a character with Val Kilmer’s character’s hair, suit, and shades — but misunderstands that Heat respects its criminals and cops on an equal level. The tragedy in Raging Fire is that it can't look past its self-righteous mythologizing of cops to make any character or element in the story worth caring about. Grade: D —Cisco Scartozzi
Though its makers seem to have the best of intentions, Agnes’ quick diversion from its demonic possession roots is a bit disorienting, and not necessarily in a good way. The film pulls at many threads, but by the end, viewers are merely left with more threads as director Mickey Reece never fully commits to his and co-writer John Selvidge’s premise. Furthermore, the absolute whiplash at the halfway mark leads to such extreme tonal shifts that one wonders if a different film has accidentally been spliced in. (I have half a mind to call Agnes an outright comedy.) Reece is a highly capable filmmaker and raises some truly compelling questions, but the film is so purposely divisive that it may have overextended its reach. Grade: C —JW
Equal parts Victorian melodrama and post-apocalyptic COVID-19 paranoia piece, Kelsey Egan’s Glasshouse offers much but delivers little. Hiding somewhere just under the surface of its wonderful set-up and premise (concerning an airborne toxin that causes its victims to lose their memory), the film squanders much of its potential by spreading its focus too thinly across varied themes.
Instead of narrowing in on heavy or topical issues like pandemic politics or patriarchy, Egan widens her lens to include a mish-mash of tangents and underdeveloped plot lines that deviate from her film’s core concepts. While I have no inherent misgivings about melodramatic elements included in movies — or even letting them dominate, should that be appropriate for the story — its use in Glasshouse forces an imperfect balance between an interesting examination of modern gender hierarchies and run-of-the-mill sibling jealousies.
However, Glasshouse does remain well-shot and well-acted, and the politics that stick do have value. Had it found a way to put some of its more disparate components on a better footing with what works well, I’d likely be singing a different tune. Grade: C —JM
(Lead photo courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. All others courtesy of the Fantasia International Film Festival)
