BEFORE: The James Franco week (OK, almost a week, it's 5 days) rolls on as he carries over from "Spring Breakers". Tonight's film is probably going to seem like a masterpiece, no matter what, when compared with that piece of trash film. I just saw there's a new Harmony Korine film coming out, this one with Matthew McConnaughey, and the E.W. critic just trashed it for many of the same reasons I didn't like "Spring Breakers". OK, so I can just avoid Harmony Korine films in the future, I think that would probably be for the best.
But I seem to have hit an odd pocket of horror films, like "Tucker & Dale vs. Evil", and tonight's film apparently qualifies, too - plus I've got another film tomorrow and then "A Quiet Place" coming up next week. So it seems like just going by linking alone, I've hit a little vein of this topic - so if I want to preserve my linking chain, I may just do a reduced horror chain when October rolls around this year, and I'll just point back to the films I watched in March and April, saying I covered this topic already for 2017. I'm still looking for links among horror films I haven't seen, I might be able to cobble together a 7-film chain if I'm lucky, but hey, you never know, things could change. Maybe I can also get to "Coco" and "Hotel Transylvania 3", those also seem obviously Halloweeny.
THE PLOT: Two estranged sisters are forced to help rob a bank in order to save their brother. But this is no ordinary bank.
AFTER: You just don't see a lot of genre mash-ups these days, everything's so targeted that a film has to usually fit squarely in a pocket so it can be properly marketed to fans. The days of good comedy/documentaries or romance/Westerns are behind us, it seems - but then along comes a genre mash-up I haven't seen before, the heist/horror combination. I'm guessing the elevator pitch here was "Dog Day Afternoon" meets "The Sixth Sense".
There's a pretty fair build-up as we see a number of customers going about their bank business, or at least pretending to. But how many people in the bank are just pretending to do their business, apply for teller positions, or wait for credit approval? Who's that guy? Is he in on it? Is HE part of the plan? What about HER?
At some point, the trap is sprung, guns are drawn, and hostages are tied up. Fortunately (or perhaps it was planned) there's some kind of fire emergency down the block, so the bank robbers appear to have all the time they need, right up until the moment that they don't. But it's pretty clear this is a bunch of amateurs (they never stop using their REAL NAMES, for example...) and their petty squabbling and arguments over how to handle the hostages puts them at odds with each other, but JUST when it looks like they're all going to shoot each other, one of the hostages speaks up, and a man claiming to be the bank's assistant manager tells them everything they need to know about the alarm systems, and how to get where the BIG money is, in the vault in the basement.
There's just one catch, and that's getting the money out of the vault, since the basement is the remains of the "old bank", and it's rumored to be haunted. Seems there was another bank robbery back in the 1980's, and it didn't end well. Some say you can see the masked bank robber out of the corner of your eye, or hear whispers of the hostages pleading for help. But I'm sure those are just silly ghost stories, right, and there are no such things as ghosts, so what could possibly...OH MY GOD, he's right behind me, isn't he?
They use a lot of the old horror-movie tropes here, like the mysterious phone call that can't be traced, and people seeing things that aren't really there (or..ARE THEY?) and security cameras that fizzle out or lights that dim at EXACTLY the wrong moment, and so on. Which reminds me that I've never seen the "Scream" movies, maybe I should check them out for the same reason. But I do like the mixing of genres here, I thought it really worked, where you might not think that it would.
Also starring Francesca Eastwood (last seen in "Jersey Boys"), Taryn Manning (last seen in "Hustle & Flow"), Scott Haze (last seen in "Venom"), Q'orianka Kilcher (last seen in "Hostiles"), Clifton Collins Jr. (last seen in "Super Troopers 2"), Keith Loneker (also last seen in "Jersey Boys"), Jeff Gum, Jill Jane Clements (last seen in "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire"), Michael Milford, Aleksander Vayshelboym, Debbie Sherman, Lee Broda, Anthony DiRocco, Dmitry Paniotto, Adina Galupa, Beatrice Hernandez, Cristin Azure, Rebecca Ray, John D. Hickman, Robin Martino, Keenan Rogers.
RATING: 5 out of 10 safe deposit boxes
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