Josh Bell
This week’s fringe VOD releases feature action-packed revenge stories from France and Italy, somber healthcare challenges across Europe, and the horrors of truck drivers and NFTs.
NFT: Cursed Images (VOD March 6): The time for low-budget horror movies to capitalize on the popularity of NFTs has long passed, but that doesn’t stop writer-director Jonas Odenheimer from slapping a perfunctory “February 2021” title card on his movie and forging ahead anyway. After dispatching a couple of extraneous characters in the opening scene, Cursed Images grinds to a halt for what amounts to a 20-minute infomercial for cryptocurrency and NFTs, with a group of London friends awkwardly spouting jargon at each other. Once they all receive the titular NFTs of death, they split up to be conveniently killed one by one, via somewhat creepy-looking creatures that are derivative of J-horror and creepypastas. The interpersonal drama is tedious and poorly acted, the horror is overly reliant on jump scares and leaves the most brutal moments offscreen, and the belated attempt at building rules and mythology for the pixelated menaces is half-hearted and inconsistent. Cursed Images lacks even the staying power of the ephemeral online trend it’s chasing. Grade: C-
Stray Bodies (Film Movement+ March 6): Greek director Elina Psykou’s documentary about several European women seeking restricted healthcare leap-frogs from one nation to another without settling on a coherent point of view. Psykou’s subjects travel from Malta to Italy to Greece to Switzerland, in search of treatments that are banned in their respective countries. Stray Bodies is as much a referendum on the purpose of the European Union as it is a story about these particular women’s individual circumstances, and the sometimes vague depictions of their motivations and outcomes add a sense of distance from the deeply personal journeys. Psykou also devotes substantial time to opponents of the specific procedures (abortion, IVF, assisted suicide), undermining the sensitivity of her storytelling. Certain stylistic flourishes — like having the abortion patient perform a music video to Madonna’s “Papa Don’t Preach” — are baffling, but there are also beautiful, intense moments of raw vulnerability that can be difficult to watch. That direct honesty is worth more than all of the artsy obfuscation. Grade: C+
Trucker (VOD March 10): The characters in this forgettable horror movie say the title so many times that it becomes laughable, as the filmmakers seem determined to turn their eponymous killer into a new genre icon. The Trucker does have kind of a cool look for an indie horror villain, but it’s unlikely that he’ll be joining the ranks of Freddy Krueger or Jason Voorhees — or even their D-list equivalents. He’s not particularly scary, but his sympathetic backstory doesn’t lend him any pathos, either, as he lumbers around with his face fully covered, never speaking or emoting in any way. His victims are an obnoxious group of college students caught in an I Know What You Did Last Summer scenario, after they callously run the Trucker off the highway and leave him for dead, along with his wife and two young children. A year later, he enacts his revenge when they belatedly come looking for their missing friend, meeting their occasionally gruesome but mostly rote and unexciting ends. Grade: C
Agent Zero (VOD March 13): Despite sharing an English-language title with one of the fake movies from Seinfeld, this French action movie offers more than its generic nomenclature suggests. It’s a lean, efficient revenge story in the mold of French action auteurJulien Leclercq, starring Marine Vacth as a former elite military operative whose past comes back to haunt her. Seven years after a botched operation in Syria, Badh (Vacth) is living an idyllic life in Morocco, which is shattered when a pair of local gangsters gun down her cop husband, leaving him in a coma. Badh’s mission of vengeance puts her in the crosshairs of a Moroccan crime lord, who also has ties to her shady former bosses. Vacth brings steely, single-minded determination to her role, and director Guillaume de Fontenay stages gritty, propulsive action sequences, especially a thrilling car/motorcycle chase. There’s nothing new about the story, but it moves swiftly from one set piece to another, with just enough intrigue and anguish to keep the audience engaged. Grade: B+
The Forbidden City (VOD March 17; DVD/Blu-ray April 21): Mixing Italian gangland drama and Chinese martial arts, this stylish but overlong action movie finds creative ways to blend cultures, even if it can get bogged down in its elaborate plotting. At its core, it’s a simple, familiar story, about a Chinese woman who travels to Rome to search for her missing sister. Mei (Yaxi Liu) is also a martial-arts master, which comes in handy when she has to kick and punch her way through dozens of henchmen to get to local kingpin Wang (Shanshan Chunyu). Her quest intersects with mopey Italian chef Marcello (Enrico Borello), whose father has disappeared along with Mei’s sister. It takes a long time and a variety of unnecessary misunderstandings for Mei and Marcello to team up, but their eventual pairing proves satisfying both narratively and emotionally. Liu makes an impressive leading debut, and director and co-writer Gabriele Mainetti knows how to showcase her considerable skills in vibrant and inventive fight scenes, marking her as an action star on the rise. Grade: B+
