April 20, 2023

New Movie Roundup: Evil Dead Rise, Shackleton & Paper Spiders

Evil Dead Rise finds new and graphic ways to kill but there’s torture of a different kind in Shackleton: The Greatest Story Of Survival and Paper Spiders…all in cinemas today.

Alrighty…let’s get started with the good stuff…

Evil Dead Rise is the fifth instalment of this franchise that started 45 years ago based on characters created by Sam Raimi. But don’t worry, you don’t need to have seen any of the previous Evil Dead films to enjoy this one.

Maybe enjoy is the wrong word as this blood-bath features every kind of torture imaginable… vomit, bugs, eye trauma, broken glass, broken bones, decapitation, dismemberment, stab wounds, shotgun blasts, sharp objects going straight through the soft palate and out the back of someone’s head…its all there along with over 6500 liters of fake blood spilled.

And the plot…this is one film you don’t want to overthink. Just let the blood and gore wash over you. At the screening I attended there were almost as many laughs as screams coming from the audience…it was that much fun.

And…its was shot in New Zealand.

Best line: “you don’t look so good, mom”.

13th Floor rating:⭐⭐⭐⭐

Shackleton: The Greatest Story Of Survival details terror of a different type. Of course we all know about Ernest Shackleton’s disastrous expedition to the south pole, the wreck of The Endurance, etc. But directors Bobbi Hansel and Caspar Mazzotti find a new way to tell an old story.

Aussie adventurer Tim Jarvis tries to re-enact a few of Shackleton’s more daring feats resulting in quotes like this…”if we carry on here, we are going to die’.

Of course there is a Kiwi connection in the form of Captain Frank Worsley the navigator who helps save the crew despite wrong turns, horrific weather and angry seals.

An inspiring story well told and a well-made film: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Paper Spiders has been knocking around since 2020 but finally gets its release here today.

Paper Spiders Starring Lili Taylor as Dawn, a widowed mother who starts acting strangly. Her teenage daughter is Melanie, played by Kiwi actor Stefania LaVie Owen has to deal with her mother’s increasing paranoia that eventually becomes full-on mental illness.

The performances are uniformly excellent, although the script seems to have a few holes in it. The inept high school mental health counsellor comes across like a cartoon character and it seems unlikely that Melanie has no other family to help her deal with her unwell mother.

When mum accuses the new neighbour of using electromagnetic technology to give her migraines you know its time to seek professional help.