Tom Jolliffe takes a look at John Hyams’ latest film Alone, and delves into its DNA…
In 2012, director John Hyams delivered a hell of a surprise package. It was his second film in a franchise that he took into wild (and occasionally divisive) avenues.
Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning was near visionary in scraping away almost every ounce of the original films style and tone, replacing it with lurid, violent and artistically inclined genre blend that owed less to Roland Emmerich and more to Kubrick, Cronenberg, Lynch and Gaspar Noe. Quite a few critics loved it. Others were reviled whilst intrigued. The fans of the original and of Jean-Claude Van Damme in particular, didn’t seem to take to it. In a far less vocal corner of cinema, Hyams also foreshadowed the response Rian Johnson got in his reinvention of
Alone Review: An Entertainingly Tenebrous Take on the Survival Road Thriller
Alone Review: An Entertainingly Tenebrous Take on the Survival Road Thriller
Alone is a pulse-pounding entertainingly tenebrous take on the standard chased by a maniac thriller.
Road thrillers are a fun subgenre with few misses, and while many favor electrifying action sequences and zany charm in their psychotic assailants, recently-released
Alone relies on a remote, woodsy setting and an emotionless feel to pull audiences along a grimmer road to survival.
Given we're still sitting deep in the strictly streaming period of films that will continue unforeseeably, I'm grateful for anything new and remotely interesting hitting a platform I use.
NEW VIDEO GAMES OUT THIS WEEK
Release Date, January 21, 2020 (Thursday):
Hitman 3 – PS4, PS5, XONE, XBX – Agent 47 returns as a ruthless professional in HITMAN 3 for the most important contracts of his entire career. Embark on an intimate journey of darkness and hope in the dramatic conclusion to the World of Assassination trilogy. Death awaits.
Ride4 – The ultimate racing experience for all 2-wheel lovers. Get ready to break the boundaries between game and reality. RIDE 4 brings the challenge to a whole new level of realism: hundreds of bikes, tracks and riding gears replicated to the finest detail with the most advanced technologies. A competition like never before. It’s 4 real!
Josh Millican’s Top 10 Horror Movies of 2020 By Josh Millican
Candyman,
A Quiet Place 2, and
Godzilla vs Kong in 2020—but COVID-19 had other plans for us. This year saw the entertainment industry upended, with theaters, studios, and distributors scrambling to find a new way of conducting business during a pandemic. As a result, many of my most anticipated horror movies of 2020 were shelved.
It doesn’t mean that this was a bad year for horror movies—2020 was anything but. The lack of blockbusters allowed indies to shine bright, soaking-up the limelight normally reserved for major players. At this point in time, there’s no way of knowing if films like