REVIEW: VENDETTA (2015)

VENDETTA (2015)

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Vendetta is an action/revenge drama and is the second collaboration between WWE Studios and The Soska Sisters (American Mary, See No Evil 2). The story has celebrated Chicago cop Mason Danvers (Dean Cain) finally taking down the crime syndicate duo of Victor (Paul “The Big Show” Wight) and Griffen (Aleks Paunovic) Abbott. Three months later, an important witness vanishes and so does the case against The Abbott Brothers. Victor wastes no time and shows up at Danver’s house and murders the cop’s pregnant wife (Kyra Zagorsky) before the detective and police arrive and arrests him. A distraught Mason then tracks down Griffen Abbott and kills him in cold blood. The revenge minded cop is now sent to the Stonewall Correctional Facility…the same prison that is now home to Victor Abbott…and sets on a path to vengeance.

The Soska Sisters directing duo are two of the more original filmmakers around right now, as is their American Mary one of the most original horror flicks in quite some time. All the more disappointing that they chose such a routine action/revenge flick as their latest project. Written by Justin Shady it is a very straightforward prison-set story of vengeance and gives the Soska Sisters little opportunity to be…well, The Soska Sisters. The directors keep the film moving at a nice click. It’s only twenty minutes before Danvers is in prison and the hi-jinx between he and crime lord Abbott begin. Once behind the prison walls, though, it becomes a series of by-the-numbers fight, beating and murder scenes that start to grow a bit tiresome, when mixed with the been-there-done-that drama in between. As we move towards the eventual showdown, which is also a bit of a letdown, too, considering the build-up, we get very little we haven’t seen before in this type of flick. We also get a very predictable sub-plot about Abbott’s real boss and even that is revealed far too soon to give it real impact and the whole bit about Danvers and his wife trying to conceive…and succeeding right before she’s killed…is beyond cliché. Add to it that the film gets wrapped up very conveniently and we have a movie that is a far cry from what we enjoy watching the Soska’s do. It’s technically well-made and was never boring, but never felt like a Soska Sisters film. There was none of the dark humor and off-the-wall uniqueness that made American Mary such an original film.

As for the cast, I enjoyed watching Dean Cain as a bad-ass. Bulked up and with some facial hair covering his boyish good looks, he surprisingly made a very solid tough guy. WWE Superstar The Big Show is fun to watch as the massive Victor Abbott and is convincing as the vicious and cruel criminal. He also gives us a lively characterization of a routinely written villain. Michael Eklund is very eccentric as Warden Snyder, but despite an off-beat portrayal, the character revelations are not all that surprising and actually make him less interesting, when all is said and done. The supporting cast are all fine as various prison guards, thugs and inmates. Again, in a Soska Sisters film, I expected far more interesting characters, but this isn’t their script.

I understand the Soska’s doing this to keep their relationship with WWE pictures strong, but wish they either picked a more interesting project…like their proposed film with WWE’s horror movie inspired Wyatt Family…or at least been allowed to do a draft of the script to add their quirky/morbid style. Their previous WWE Studios film See No Evil 2 was more up their alley and felt very much like a Soska film despite them not writing the screenplay. They seemed to feel more at home directing that and just seemed more like going through the motions here. The film is still amusing at times and I was never outright bored, but I’d seen it all before and that’s something I’d never thought I’d say about a Soska Sisters film.

-MonsterZero NJ

  2 and 1/2 bullets.

RANDOM NONSENSE: MONSTERZERO NJ FAUX POSTER ART- WWE’s PAIGE as VAMPIRELLA

Some poster art I made in Photoshop…The Soska Sisters, the writers and directors of the cult favorite American Mary and the recent See No Evil 2 have been working with WWE films as of late and I thought it would be fun if they did an adaptation of the cult classic comic Vampirella to star WWE Superstar Paige in the title role. She looks the part and can probably do her own stunts!

poster art: MonsterZero NJ

RANDOM NONSENSE: A FAUX POSTER I DID FOR A PROPOSED SOSKA SISTERS FLICK WITH THE WWE WYATT FAMILY!

The Soska Sisters, the writers and directors of the cult favorite American Mary have been working with WWE films as of late and are trying to get a film going with WWE Superstars, the Wyatt Family. I was inspired to do one of my faux posters of such a flick and it looks like it was a hit with the Twisted Twins!

poster art: MonsterZero NJ

BARE BONES: WALKING WITH DINOSAURS and BARRICADE

WALKING WITH DINOSAURS (2013)

Movie derived from the award winning BBC miniseries has some really nice CGI creations but, really hurts itself with an overly simplistic and cliche’ ‘runt of the litter saves the day’ story and some really juvenile dialog and toilet humor that even little kids might find tiresome. It’s a shame. A little more respect for it’s target audience and maybe a little sly humor to entertain the accompanying adults and this could have been a nice treat. I mean, who doesn’t love dinosaurs but, making them a bit disappointing actually takes effort. Moderately entertaining but, could have been some so much more without all the dumbing down for an audience that has proven, with the success of flicks like Frozen, to be more sophisticated then they are given credit for by the filmmakers here. Also stars Karl Urban in some of the live action footage that bookends the film as a paleontologist whose discovery sets the story in motion.

BARRICADE (2012)

Andrew Currie directs this horror for WWE Studios and while he gives it some nice atmosphere and a spooky visual style, the story, by author Michaelbrent Collings, ultimately doesn’t really go anywhere and doesn’t give you enough of an idea of what’s going on to give you something to fear. It starts out fine with a widower (Eric McCormack) bringing his two children to spend Christmas at a cabin that was special to his recently deceased wife. Once there, we get shadowy figures, strange noises and doors moving on their own. And while that is appropriately spooky, the film goes off on a tangent concerning an illness hitting the children and increasing paranoia hitting dad. It then becomes a bunch of vignettes that may be hallucinations or may not and the film can’t decide whether it is now a supernatural thriller or a film about delusions caused by a strong flu and some residual grief. It all gets rather jumbled and even at it’s end never quite makes clear what exactly was going on and what the story was ultimately about. Mystery is always effective, confusion is just annoying and the film sadly turns from promising supernatural thriller to jumbled mess and never recovers.