Make Up
Ruth (Molly Windsor) is a teenage girl who goes to stay with her boyfriend, Tom (Joseph Quinn) at the caravan site he works at as the summer season comes to an end. As she begins to suspect he is having an affair, disorientating events start to occur.

This is all about atmosphere and director Claire Oakley captures the bleak and depressing nature of the holiday camp really well. It is a very impressive feature length debut from Oakley, who also wrote the script. She maintains a sense of dread and it is never clear how much Ruth is imagining what appears to be happening. Molly Windsor, so impressive in Three Girls in the BBC a couple of years ago is excellent here as well.

Make Up is exclusively available on Curzon Home Cinema for home viewing but I think it would be best seen on the big screen where it would be a more immersive experience.
Rating: 8 out of 10

I rented the rest of this week’s movies on Amazon but they should also be available on all the usual sites.

Dreamland
Canadian director Bruce McDonald has a loyal following and is considered a cult talent amongst horror devotees. I enjoyed probably his biggest success, Pontypool, a decade or so ago but Dreamland is an incoherent mess.

Stephen McHattie stars as a killer assigned to cut the finger off a drug addicted jazz musician, also, played by McHattie for no apparent reason, There are various other sub-plots, none of them interesting enough to outline here.

The film gets very tedious very quickly. With a nonsensical script, this is a self-indulgent failure from McDonald.
Rating: 2 out of 10

A much better bet in the same genre is Reborn, an 80s inspired shocker that fittingly stars Re-animator actress Barbara Crampton as an actress who believes her daughter was stillborn 16 years ago. In fact, she had been taken home by a morgue attendant and brought back to life by electrokinetic power, and she is now looking for her mother.

Trashy and ridiculous maybe, but it is old-fashioned unpretentious fun. Crampton, Kayleigh Gilbert as her dangerous daughter and Michael Pare as a detective get the tone just right.
Rating: 6.5 out of 10

Staying with horror there is a reboot for The Grudge. This was always a run-of-the-mill franchise and this outing for a vengeful ghost in a cursed house is pretty weak. An unexpectedly talented cast that includes Betty Gilpin, John Cho, Andrea Riseborough and Jacki Weaver is wasted in this overly sombre story. There are too many time-shifts and way too few scares.
Rating: 4.5 out of 10

Another film that looked like it was going down the horror route is Inheritance though it turns out to be more of a thriller. When her father dies, Lauren (Lily Collins) discovers that he had kept a man (Morgan, Simon Pegg) imprisoned for years. Whilst there are some decent twists, Collins doesn’t convince as a District Attorney and there are far too many holes in a story that takes itself so seriously.
Rating: 5 out of 10

Bad Boys for Life
The first Bad Boys film was fine but I found the sequel bloated and boring. I’m not sure that, after another 17 years, there was clamour for a third instalment but Will Smith and Martin Lawrence return to reprise their roles. It would be easy to hate this film. The plot is basic to say the least and there is too much reliance on gags involving the guys’ age. However, there are some laughs and surprisingly good roles for the female supporting players Paola Nunez and Kate del Castillo.
Rating: 6.5 out of 10

My film of the week is the documentary Echo in the Canyon. Bob Dylan’s son, Jakob, guides us through the music scene in Los Angeles’ Laurel Canyon in the period 1965 to 1967. This is a treat for anyone who loves the music of that period, with the emphasis largely on The Byrds and the peerless Buffalo Springfield. Illuminating stuff and the performances of classic songs from the period by modern day artists works unexpectedly well.
Rating: 9 out of 10