Renny Harlin – The Magnificent 60s

Or The Running, Whimpering and Screaming Film. The laziest horror picture I have seen in a long time and possible even worse than Orgy of the Dead (1965) which at least did not take itself seriously. When the wild boar appeared you were just praying for it to finish off hapless heroine Maya (Madelaine Petsch) with one bite and I was convinced the look in her eyes signalled dread that she would have to return for another sequel. Someone has ideas way above their station imagining this tripe could seriously work as a trilogy.

It’s pretty obvious that director Renny Harlin is far more interested in exploring the backstory of the killers – axe-wielding male decked out in scarecrow mask, crossbow-armed females with doll faces – and making the lamentable error of thinking the audience cared, especially when the origin tale amounts to nothing more than sibling jealousy. This picture stops abruptly, as if he didn’t want to give too much away.

Survivor Maya – boyfriend slaughtered in the previous episode after they inadvertently rented a house in the wrong neck of the woods – wakes up in a hospital, inexplicably deserted. That is simply a device so she can begin her marathon of running, whimpering and screaming while being chased along long corridors or trying to prevent herself being heard while hiding in cupboards, lift shafts and sharing a drawer with a corpse in the morgue.

There’s nothing worse than a dumb heroine – Maya manages to toss away (for narrative purposes you understand) any weapon – gun, knife – that comes her way. Or a dumb bad guy for that matter – he opens a stack of drawers in the morgue but draws the line at opening hers. And soon she’s running barefoot in the rain (which never seems, thank goodness, to soak her flimsy top, so the only sensible directorial decision is to steer clear of blatant leering).

Naturally, she’s suspicious of everyone and runs away from people who can help her, though help is only fleeting because the axe- and crossbow-marauders are on a spree. The wild boar might well, hints a flashback, have been reared by the killers in their childhood, but there’s nothing cute about it now.

This could almost be dialog-free because all Maya does is scream. A couple of cops put in an appearance so the director can hint at a shady past but, unlike the paramedic, they are spared slaughter. I couldn’t quite make out the significance of the ending but I know it was significant because the camera lingered on it. Presumably, Renny Harlin (The Strangers: Chapter 1) thought he was ending on a cliff-hanger because it ended so abruptly.

I felt sorry for Madelaine Petsch (Jane, 2022) because unless she was planning to become the next Scream Queen or auditioning for a marathon she has nothing to do except whimper, run and scream. This was light years from her production debut (Jane) and as many steps backwards.

Please, no more!

**This was the second part of my Monday triple bill that began promisingly with The Lost Bus (see yesterday’s blog). Although this was a dud I had high hopes for the final movie of the day – the highly-acclaimed One Battle after Another which I’m reviewing tomorrow.

Enough already. Dumb as ditchwater, virtually no thrills and they think we’re going to be queuing up for the next one? Have they gone crazy? Could I care less who is behind the masks? And what’s happened to the horror genre? This should be relatively safe territory, every now and then we’d get a gem like Megan or The Black Phone and someone would invariably reimagine one of the old standards, but even remakes of The Omen and The Exorcist have been tired and lacking any spark.

I’m not a huge horror fan but in the last few years in the absence of anything else been happy to top my weekly cinemagoing habit with a dose of the scary stuff. But this looks like it’s going as swiftly off the boil as MCU. Am astonished to find one-time uber-director Renny Harlin (Cliffhanger, 1993) behind this weak sauce, and apparently there’s going to be no let-up because the next two chapters are already in the can.

This might prove the all-time horror hubris as there’s virtually nothing here to suggest any reason for a sequel, and setting aside the question of artistic merit, the box office doesn’t sound like it commands anything except a quick turnaround into streaming. Miscalculation and misconception on a massive scale. Nothing more than a one-set horror outing with elements that have been better done elsewhere and really the dumbest of the dumb participants.

It’s only when you lock yourself in the toilet you realize you might have been better to stop in the kitchen and hunt for a weapon? Though, this being America, you can be sure of finding a shotgun in the shed. Your car’s broken down but there’s a motorcycle sitting outside your Airbnb with its keys in the ignition? You don’t even have the sense to employ the rusty nail you’ve pulled out of your hand while down in a cellar (you went into a cellar, have you no sense?) as a weapon as if you’re incapable of taking lessons from other onscreen heroes.

How can even get lost in the first place? Your mobile phone signal is what brings the cops in the end and yet it doesn’t work enough in the area to get you home in the first place?

You’ve got asthma but you constantly misplace your inhaler. You don’t whack the one member of the masked gang around the head with your shotgun but allow her to hold their knife high up in the air so it’s going to reflect the moonlight and let her confederates know where she is.

These inconsistences would all be acceptable was there any element of menace. This is just all handled so badly you can’t believe Harlin is an experienced director, 40-plus projects on his call-sheet.

So we’re in semi-Deliverance territory, though Oregon rather than hillbilly country, but the kind of place where they seriously look askance at vegetarians and unmarried couples and are constantly thrusting religious pamphlets at you. Loved-up couple Maya (Madelaine Petsch) and Jeff (Ryan Brown) get, as I said, lost and stop at a Nowheresville diner long enough to be made to feel uncomfortable. Then, blow me down if Jeff can’t get his fancy vehicle to start, so they’ve got to spent the night in a cabin.

Someone keeps knocking at the door. Jeff has to leave Maya on her lonesome because he left his inhaler in said car, now residing in a repair garage, and the motorcycle lacks a pillion to accommodate her (nope, he just goes off on his own, otherwise we won’t be treated to the lonely woman in the old dark house where, yep, the lights go off).

Three people in masks, one a cut-price Leatherface number, the other two dollfaces, come a-calling with axes and knives and then…snoresville. If you stay on to watch the credits, there’s meant to be a chilling twist, but by then I guess most people are just happy to get out of the place.

I know there aren’t many like me who still religiously go to the cinema once a week. I’m not a paid-up critic who gets in for free. I’m just your ordinary cinema-lover and in the course of a year I’m expecting a few turkeys, but we are now dredging rock bottom, last year’s various strikes hammering studio output, so that even the traditional Memorial Day, that’s meant to launch the summer season, has been very poor. Hollywood was struggling enough post-Covid with the encroachment of the streamers and it in part depended on ordinary punters like me who would plug movies that fell beneath the radar to other less-compelled movie fans.

Avoid.

Tag: Renny Harlin

The Strangers Chapter 2 (2025) *

The Strangers Chapter 1 (2024) **