The Friday Night Horror Movie: Get Away (2024)

get away

Horror often relies on putting characters in unfamiliar places. They might be somewhere remote and isolated, where help cannot be found. Or maybe they are in a different culture where they do not understand the language or customs. Putting our protagonists somewhere they do not feel safe gives us an immediate sense of dread.

Get Away falls in the tradition of films like The Wicker Man (1973) or Midsommar (2019) where are protagonists are both isolated from the outside world and surrounded by a strange and unfamiliar culture. It then plays with those conventions, subverting them in interesting and fun ways.

Richard (Nick Frost, who also wrote the script) and Susan (Aisling Bea), along with their two children, Sam (Sebastian Croft) and Jessie (Maisie Ayres), are taking a holiday on a tiny island off the coast of Sweden. They are looking forward to the island’s annual celebration of Karantan (where islanders nearly starved to death, resorting to cannibalism due to some forced quarantining).

Before they even arrive at the island, they are given the side-eye by the locals who warn them they won’t be welcomed there. They barely make the last ferry (which naturally won’t return for several days) and arrive on the island where they are greeted by scorn.

The one friendly face, Mats (Eero Milonoff), is the one who rented them the Airbnb, and he turns out to be a pervert, spying on Jessie and stealing her undergarments.

For the first hour, the film relies on the tropes of these sorts of films – miscommunications over cultural differences, an increasing sense of unease – and then it takes a big twist. I won’t spoil it, but unless you really aren’t paying attention, you’ll probably figure it out long before the film wants you to. It is a bit strange that it takes the film so long to get to that twist, because what comes after is where everybody seems to be having the most fun.

At that point, the unease turns into a straight-up gore fest with loads of well-done practical effects and very fun kills.

It is a film that isn’t nearly as clever as it needs to be, or funny, but it isn’t a bad cinematic experience. I like Nick Frost quite a lot, and it’s fun to see him just being weird and having a good time. I just wish I enjoyed myself as much as he seems to have.

Great British Cinema: Slaughterhouse Rules (2018)

slaughterhouse rulez

My tendency with this theme is to look to the past, to choose very old movies. I don’t know why exactly that is, beyond the fact that I just like old movies. But there is something about older English films that just feel British, more than modern ones do. But of course, Britain still has a large and lively film industry. So I did want to watch some modern British films in this series as well.

I more or less picked Slaughterhouse Rulez at random. I’d never heard of it before finding it on my streaming service. But it stars Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, and Michael Sheen (who I’ve very recently been thoroughly enjoying in the new season of Good Omens) and I’m always on board with those guys.

I want to say that it is like Harry Potter but without magic and with more monsters, but I don’t know if that’s fair. I mean it is like Harry Potter in that it is about a bunch of kids at a posh boarding school and there are things like houses and head boys, but I don’t know that this concept is exclusive to Harry Potter. Rather it feels very much a part of British culture.

Anyway, Finn Cole plays Donal Wallace, a working-class boy whose mother has found a way to get him into Slaughterhouse School, an exclusive boarding school. At first, he feels out of place since everyone seems to know each other and other are lots of strange rules, but he quickly makes a few friends, a few enemies and meets a pretty girl (Hermione Corfield).

But before it becomes a British John Hughes-style dramedy, some nasty creatures start killing people off. They seem to be coming from a giant sinkhole that was created by a fracking company working on school grounds (and sanctioned by the Headmaster (Michael Sheen)).

It is a perfectly enjoyable little horror comedy, that never really quite scares or makes me truly laugh. It is the type of film that after watching I said to myself, “that was nice” and then moved on to something else. There is a touch of political commentary with the fracking stuff, but it never goes very far with it.

Simon Pegg is one of the school professors who is rather preoccupied with his wife (played by Margot Robbie for some reason) who recently left him to work in some overseas, war-torn country.

Nick Frost is a former student who now heads a guerilla group in opposition to the fracking company who also sells drugs on the side.

It is funny, just not overly so, and the horror is well done, just not exactly terrifying. It is worth watching if you like that sort of thing, just keep your expectations manageable.

Shaun of the Dead (2004)

shaun of the dead poster

Editors Note: I don’t know what I was thinking with this review. I’ve since watched Shaun of the Dead many, many times and I absolutely love it. I don’t know why I didn’t find this movie funny the first time, I now think it is hilarious. Oh well, you live you learn.

I’m the type of person who doesn’t read movie reviews before I watch the film. I don’t seek out trailers online or read the latest dish on upcoming releases. I prefer to go into a film with a clean slate, knowing as little as possible about the film before I see it. I find the moviegoing experience more enjoyable when I have fewer preconceived conceptions about the movie I’m about to watch. That being said, I love to read reviews and seek out trivia about movies that I have already seen. I enjoy reading other people’s thoughts and ideas about a movie and comparing them to my own.

Since living in France I have completely been out of the entertainment loop. We don’t have a TV and it is rare that we go to a new movie. I do visit a few websites to keep up with the news and hear bits and pieces of the movies that are coming and out and generating some buzz. Shaun of the Dead is a film that I have been hearing buzz about for several months. I refused to read any reviews or really research any aspect of the movie, but I couldn’t help but hear bits and pieces of good things about it. Primarily that it was a funny zombie spoof. Being a fan of the zombie genre, when the chance came up to borrow the DVD, I didn’t hesitate to take it.

The plot is the pretty standard zombie plot. Some type of radiation/virus wreaks havoc on the earth re-animating the dead into brainless, homicidal maniacs. The movie does a good job of spoofing many of the conventions of the genre. The title character, Shaun, (Simon Pegg) is so stuck in his humdrum existence it takes him a couple of days to realize that his city has been attacked by zombies. He has a dead-end job, his girlfriend just broke up with him, and his flatmates are constantly fighting. Despite there being several zombies eating human flesh around him and the constant media blitz, it literally takes a zombie in his backyard for Shaun to notice. There are a number of truly funny scenes that mimic many of the classic zombie cliches.

Here, the zombies walk in the classic, slow-motion, brain-dead way. They are mockingly slow. In one scene Sean and his friend, Ed (Nick Frost), throw a large crate full of junk at two zombies, then have time to run for a crate of records and argue which records are crappy enough to launch. The entire time the zombies are slowly walking toward them to devour Shaun and his friend. Other scenes have one zombie being beaten with pool sticks repeatedly to little or no effect. Time and time again there are little digs at the genre conventions while still lovingly following them.

A quick perusal of IMDB’s list of trivia for this film will show plenty of references to nearly every zombie film imaginable. I consider myself a fan of zombie films, but these guys must be nuts about them. They’ve set up multiple scenes that are an exact homage to older films. They’ve lifted lines right out of the classics of the genre. I must say that while reading the list I became more impressed with what the filmmakers created with this picture, but while watching it most of the references went over my head. As I said, I like zombie movies. They’re gory, violent, bloody, and often hilarious (intentional or otherwise). I have seen more than my fair share of good and awful zombie flicks. Yet here, most of the references were naught caught by me. I can’t exactly fault a film for referencing so many other films, yet I have to wonder who but the diehard zombie fanatic caught them.

My biggest complaint about the film is that it is too comedic, without being funny enough. What I mean by that is that the production is made like a comedy. The actors play their parts as if they are in a comedy and not the horrible zombie-addled situation that is scripted. Sure, there are a few moments of anguished screaming and fear, but those are over acted and far between. The story is truly frightening, the dead came to life and are devouring the city. This is not a light-hearted romp. Though often quite funny, zombie films play the situation straight. I felt let down that everyone was playing the situation for gags and not allowing the comedy to be more organic, or to flow out of the conventions of the genre itself. In the end, I didn’t find the movie funny enough for all that.

It was played for humor all the way through, yet I wasn’t laughing nearly enough. Some of this comes from not getting all the “in” jokes. Some of this is also, likely enough, because it is a British comedy at heart. There are a number of bits that seem to play better for the British sensibilities than my American in France’s heart. There were several moments that I could see the joke play out and “get” it, but it wasn’t enough to really make me laugh. This is not to say the movie isn’t funny. Because it is, often hilarious even. It’s just that the tone of the film was of great comedy, and the buzz I had heard matched this. Yet while watching it, I didn’t find it as funny as expected.

While thinking about this review I began to wonder how I would make a zombie spoof better. It wouldn’t be right to go the Zucker brother’s way. I got over that type of comedy in junior high, and the genre (well the horror genre which zombie movies are a sub-genre of) has been spoofed in this way enough (see Scary Movie). Slap stick spoofs were perfected by Sam Raimi in the Evil Dead series. In the end I decided that what the filmmakers were trying to do with this film is exactly the way to do it. I just think they missed the mark a little. I think I was partially disappointed because the genre itself has produced enough unintentional humor. Zombie movies are so often insanely bad, they are great fun. It is difficult to spoof a convention when the convention itself is so awful it seems a spoof unto itself. Likewise, some of the conventions such as the ineptness and slow walk of the zombies have been revamped by the likes of Danny Boyle. Instead, here, I would have preferred a darker, bloodier movie. I don’t believe this would have hurt the comedy. The references and homages could have stayed in tact and comedy could come out of horrific situations.

Shaun of the Dead is a fine movie. It spoofs a genre of film that is dear to my heart, yet remains firmly a fan of the genre. It references so many of the classics and non-classics of the genre that you’ll need an encyclopedic knowledge of zombies to catch them all. It is truly funny and makes a great party movie. Where it fails, it fails as a zombie movie. It is made for jokes and not scares, and there it falls a little flat for a good spoof. But certainly worth the price of the rental.