Two indie thrillers from January of this year, two very different experiences…[And a non-thriller, oddball pick I didn’t have a place for.]
Open Grave…A zombie-type thriller wherein Sharlto Copeley wakes up in, you guessed it, an open grave filled with dead bodies. There’s not many scares or compelling moments. The opening sequence is one of the few that really held my attention, and it fills like the movie gets worse the more the mystery is revealed. Grade: D+
Last Passenger…An enjoyable thriller that I’d never heard of until really scouring Netflix for films I might have missed earlier in the year. It’s a simple enough premise: a madman hijacks a London train and the half dozen passengers still on board scramble to either get off, stop the train, or break through the conductor’s door. Dougray Scott (who I always thought of as the guy you get when Gerard Butler is busy) proves a capable action lead, and the film’s not as dumb as it easily could have been. [Although some of the passengers seem a little survival-impaired, and you wonder why they aren’t all trying as frantically as Scott is to do something.] Grade: B
Hateship, Loveship…This isn’t a thriller at all, and is actually really boring, but I just didn’t have another place for it today. Nick Nolte and Guy Pearce are solid as always in undercooked roles, but Kristen Wiig shows—again—that she isn’t really much an actress, and I really don’t care how many reviewers keep disagreeing with that sentiment. Nearly every seen in this movie is a little more lifeless and awkward than it should be. Grade: D+