Panic Button

Title: Panic Button

Director: Chris Crow

Released: 2012

Staring: Scarlett Alice Johnson, Jack Gordon, Michael Jibson, Elen Rhys, Joshua Richards
 

Plot: four strangers a brought together after winning a competition for an all expenses paid trip to New York on fictional social networking site “All2gether.com”. Having given up their mobile phones, the group board their private jet, were they are greeted by a mysterious voice represented by a cartoon Alligator, who appears on the numerous monitors in the plane, who proceeds to invite them all to play a series of games, in a bid to win even more prizes. It’s only once the games begin that the group realise that things might not be what they seem and even more so that they should really have read the terms and conditions.

 

 

Review: It’s safe to say that this era will be defined as the “the social networking” era, especially as it seems the majority of us can’t get through the day without our Facebook / Twitter fix and I know that i’m certainly no exception to this. So what better time could there be for “Panic Button” to come along, the second feature by English writer / director Chris Crow who here supposedly attempts to highlight the dangers of social networking sites, especially with it’s Dan Brown esq title card “Inspired by true stories shared via social networks”.

The group chosen to play the game though small in number are interesting enough from the first impressions we get from them as we have single mum Jo (Johnson), the geeky computer nerd Max (Gordon), the laddish Dave (Jibson) and the bubbly blonde Gwen (Rhys), but it’s once the games start that we truly learn who these characters really are, as their darkest secrets are dredged from their internet histories and social network pages and put on show for the others to see, as director Crow reminds us just how much information we send across the internet on a daily basis and what it can possibly revel about us. Though small in numbers especially when compared to the group numbers in similar films, they still manage to have enough dark secrets to compensate and the claustrophobic setting of the aircraft cabin certainly working to the advantage of such a small number of potential victims.

The cast are all unknowns yet still pull off believable performances, with the anonymity certainly working to their advantage here as no one is viewed with any preconceived notions of what sort of characters any of the group really are. Joshua Richards however seems to be channeling Brian Cox for his portrayal of the mysterious voice known funnily enough only as “Alligator” seeing how he’s represented by surprise! Surprise! of all things a talking alligator. Still this Brian Cox inspired voice acting is a great choice, especially seeing how Cox was so memorable with his own commentary in brutal PS2 game “Manhunt” and it’s a similar switching between playful and taunting that Richards brings to the role, which proves to be one of the stronger parts of the film, especially as he continually gives the impression of being in complete control, even as the group try to fight against the game they are being forced to play.

Premiering at “Horrorfest” it’s premise made this film instantly one of the most talked about films of the festival, with its premier being greeted with much excitement and honestly the first thirty minutes of this movie are really great with the tension slowly being cranked up, as the games start of innocent enough with truths about the groups members being exposed to revel such fun facts as who secretly has a pierced scrotum, only to then suddenly take on a much darker edge, as the once playful voice suddenly becomes a lot more taunting and with the plane in flight it leaves the group with no were to run and zero means of escape, leaving them fully in the hands of this anonymous voice. Sadly it’s around this point that the film soon starts to loose it’s way as the group members are each assigned their own individual tasks causing a serious break in the tension, as the film now starts to feel as if it has no place to really go and is essentially padding out its run time, with this drawn out final game.

The main problem though for the film is that it tries to keep the focus purely on the group, no doubt due to budget restrictions which makes sense to keep the action purely in one setting, though without a second plot thread to keep the film flowing it results in the audience soon growing bored of these characters, especially when we know who they are which results in grinding everything to almost a standstill. A quick glance at similar films to this one only further highlight this issue, for example “Saw” is set largely around the two guys locked in a disused bathroom, but we still have the second plot-line involving Detective Tapp tracking Jigsaw to help keep the action flowing, even “Cube” had it’s series of identical interlinking rooms to throw in a few surprises, were as here it feels that they have written themselves into a corner with the setting and outside of how certain contestants meet their demise, there is very little on offer to surprise the audience once their secrets have been revealed and we know who they really are, with the final big twist almost seemingly anticlimactic once the big revel is given, while when the face behind the mysterious voice is revealed it only results in more questions as to how they managed to orchestrate the whole thing, while the epilogue is certainly undeniably chilling.

Director Crow takes the refreshingly original direction here to keep the film largely gore free, which might be slightly disappointing for those expecting to see “Saw on a plane!” but it certainly doesn’t take anything away from the film by not painting the walls with buckets of gore and amputated limbs, which after seven “Saw” movies is a much needed breath of fresh air for the genre and proving once again that you don’t always need to gross out your audience.

Despite having it’s numerous flaws “Panic Button” is still worth a rental, even if it doesn’t exactly manage to keep up the tension the whole way through, it still plays out well enough to keep your attention, even when it feels like such minimal plotting is being stretched way too thin, while Director Crow show potential for good things, it is still way too early to start categorizing him as the new voice of British horror, he has still managed to pull off an effective film on a minimalist budget which reminds you again that a good films doesn’t always need to have big named stars and a huge budget to achieve it’s effect and perhaps with a little more tweaking this film could have been a better example of this.

Summer Wars

Title: Summer Wars

Director: Mamoru Hosoda

Released: 2009

Starring: Ryunosuke Kamiki, Nanami Sakuraba, Mitsuki Tanimura, Sumiko Fuji, Takahiro Yokokawa

Plot: Kenji (Kamiki) is a high school student with a gift for mathematics who also works as a part-time moderator along with his best friend Takashi (Yokokawa) for the VR World OZ which has replaced the internet for worldwide conectivity. However when an AI called “Love Machine” hacks Kenji’s account her is drawn into a battle with the entity before it takes over OZ.

Review: Following on from the success of “The Girl Who Leapt Through Time” Director Mamoru Hosoda here once more returns to give another unique spin on a fantastical subject, having previously combined High School romance with time travel for his previous film, this time he combines elements of a family reunion drama with a tech fantasy.

While it might have been enough to set the film within the virtual world of Oz which is introduced at the start of the film as this sprawling network of information were users create unique avatars which they can then use to interact with other people to play games, socialise or even conduct business there really is no limit to what you can do, all the while watched over by its guardian whales John and Yoko. This of course provides the perfect area for Hosoda to conjurer up any fanatical idea he can think of. Needless to say its rather fitting as we become ever more dependent on living our lives on the net that Hosoda would craft this story which really questions if perhaps with a more fantastical edge what would happen if the network contracted a virus that took it all out.

The other element to the plot concerns Kenji being invited by his friend and fellow student Natsuki (Sakuraba) to her great-grandmother Sakae (Fuji) 90^th birthday being held at her estate, were to his suprise he finds himself introduced to her family as her fiancé. This of course is the least of his worries though as its safe to say that Natsuki’s family are a colourful bunch to say the least as we soon get to discover aswell as how one of them is connected to Love Machine.

The world of OZ while essentially a white background with characters superimposed on the top so that they fly around the central structure of this world and yet its a world which perfectly works for this idea of a super information hub, especially once the battle against Love Machine starts as it becomes one which can be turned suddenly into any structure Hosoda needs and enables him to craft some truly exciting sequences such as showdown between Love Machine and Natsuki’s cousin Kazuma whose avatar King Kazma takes the form of a samurai rabbit.

While the majority of the film takes place in the virtual world we also get a sizeable portion spent with the oddball characters of Natsuki’s family who ultimately become key in beating Love Machine as they perhaps alittle to coincidently all come with either skills or access to resources that Kenji needs and leading to the slightly surreal scenes of a supercomputer suddenly being delivered let alone a ship being dumped in the koi pond to power it and yet somehow none of them are able to chase up a few fans to keep the computer cool leading to the ground instead filling the room with large blocks of ice, which seemed kind of strange considering everything else they’d put together on the fly.

Despite their usefulness the family group I felt could have benefited from losing a couple of members as while on one hand its amusing seeing Kenji trying to deal with this huge group while on the other we end up with several members feeling supplemental and underdeveloped. That being said they are still a colourful group of characters and help hold your interest when not in the virtual world. It can be assumed that the decision to have such a large family unit was derived from Hosoda’s own large family and this ends up just being one of those overly sentimental nods that just doesn’t quite play out.

The animation is unquestionably vibrant throughout with every character being animated it makes it only the more enjoyable to see what each character is doing on the screen, rather than just using looped animations that other productions might use for their background characters. The crispness of the animation is none the more clear than those in the virtual world which at times can feature hundreds of unique characters bringing back fond memories of “Paprika”. Again like our real world characters the avatars we encounter in this world come with their own personalities let alone distinct designs which of course only adds to the scenes when you have large groups on the screen. True a lot of these avatars are more simple designs than those belonging to main characters like Love Machine or Kazuma’s Samurai Rabbit avatar King Kazma.

An entertaining film which with its engaging visuals and colourful characters makes for a great companion piece to the likes of “Paprika” as Hosoda juggles multiple genres to craft a truly fascinating anime which reminds us that anime goes a lot deeper than giant robots, ass kicking schoolgirls and tentacle porn a stereotype which Hosoda seems more than happy to break.

Catfish

Title: Catfish
Director: Henry Joost & Ariel Schulman Released: 2010
Staring: Nev Schulman, Ariel Schulman, Henry Joost, Abby Pierce, Angela Pierce

Plot: A documentary charting the quickly developing friendship through “Facebook” and continuous e-mails between photographer Nev Schulman and the child painting prodigy Abby. Soon this friendship expands to include her mother Angela and her older half sister Megan, who Nev soon begins building a romantic relationship with. However it’s not long before Nev begins to suspect that everything is not what it seems and sets out to find the truth.



Review: “Catfish” should really come with a “Google Earth and Facebook proudly sponsor” tagline on it’s poster as essentially as this feels almost like a glossy advert for both, especially seeing how extensively they are both used throughout, which is pretty much right from the start. Still “Catfish” or the other “Facebook” movie as I like to call it, is kind of a curiosity seeing how it’s limited cinema release saw it in the cinema and pretty much straight to DVD within a couple of months, were it now joins a pretty exclusive list of films, which have never been made available to rent through Blockbuster, which when you consider that they stock nearly pretty much every new release made it only all the more surprising that this one was never picked up. It’s safe to say that this lack of distribution, has only really proved detrimental to the film and meant that it’s been left for the audiences to hunt it out themselves, leaving the film relying heavily on word of mouth promotion, especially when it comes to the authenticity of the footage, which most notably had “Super Size Me” (2004) director Morgan Spurlock branding the film “The best fake documentary he had ever seen”, despite the constant protest from Directors Joost & Schulman who still maintain that everything shown in the film is real.

This documentary really comes with great timing, especially with so many people now using social networking sites like “Facebook” and generally using the internet as their connection to the rest of the world, as the film explores the frequently asked question, since the internet became such more than a nerdy obsession, of how you can really be sure that people who they say they are, after all the Internet is essentially a platform for you to become anyone you wish to be, with the minimum amount of hassle and this is at the core of what the film is about and I will attempt to keep any spoilers until the end of this review, as this is another film which works best when entered blind of with the minimum amount of information, so my advice would be to stop reading now and go see this film, unless you’d rather risk spoiling any potential surprises.

Nev’s photography mainly revolves around dance and theatre and it’s when one of his recently published photographs gets sent to him as a painting that the story begins, as he begins first of all communicating through e-mail and later “Facebook” with the child painting prodigy Abby, as they slowly build a friendship as she sends him more and more of her paintings. Soon it’s not long before he has also started speaking with her mother Angela on the phone, who soon becomes the spokeswoman for her daughter, frequently making excuses for Abby whenever Nev asks to speak to her, which for some reason he never seems to question, until later in the film when cracks start to appear in the story. In the meantime Nev also begins talking with the equally talented half sister Megan, with their friendship soon turning to romance which again Nev seems to never question until later in the film, happily reading off dirty texts sent back and forth between himself and Megan, while also making up photo-shopped pictures of them together, which did have me asking myself who essentially is the more creepy here. Still It’s only after Nev receives a song supposedly being sung by Megan that he starts questioning the whole situation further and sets out to find out the real truth behind the family and this is were the real meat of the film comes into play.

Part social commentary and part thriller the film rolls along at a steady pace, making the viewer feel that they are part of the group as each piece of the mystery is slowly revealed, the further the film pulls you into the mystery behind this supposedly talented family. However the further the film goes the easier it becomes to understand why accusations have been made to the authenticity of the footage, especially when the film crew descend on a horse farm supposedly owned by Megan only to find it eerily empty, with the choice to shoot it in a Blair Witch style certainly being questionable, meanwhile at the opposite end of things we have shots like Nev scratching his crotch in full view of the camera, while on the phone and more worryingly a prolonged open legged shot of one of one of Abby’s friends also go a way toward justifying authenticity, after all why would you choose to include scenes like that otherwise? What is clear though is that having stumbled across a more interesting story, almost by accident Directors Joost and Schulman are keen to film it through to it’s conclusion while trying to clearly playing dumb to prolong the mystery which the viewer has no doubt figured out before they choose to play thier big reveal, with this choice questionably make the film all the better as a result, especially as we discover the reasons behind this ruse are more to do with escaping a difficult and emotionally draining existence, with the true depth and plotting behind these created character proving only the more astounding especially when you consider how it was pulled off, by one person as revealed in a fantastic scene in which the real artist behind the paintings and also creator of this ruse explains it all as they sketch Nev’s portrait, an moment which almost feels like a final wish being granted aswell as a way of bringing a satisfying closure to the whole strange journey.

In all it is a strange movie to describe as what starts off as a strightforward documentary and what could have made an intresting short film, soon changes it’s focus towards internet fakery and how we choose to represent ourselves, before finally making us question if it is a good thing that we have people like this in the world, as the true meaning behind the title is finally revealed and that it’s a question which like the film I will end this with, while urging you all to hunt down this film, for what will no doubt be one of those films which sadly slips from the general conscious of the public only to be passed around the film junkie ranks were no doubt it will truly be appreciated for the intriguing documentary it is.