Film Review: Trapped Inn (2024)

From its intro sequence and the first minutes, Trapped Inn shows that it's a different kind of movie. Starring the multitalented Matt Rife, it immediately sets the stage for its main characters - a US cycling team training in Europe. After a grueling session, the team goes back to their lodging inn, an isolated place where things look better than they should, but also come with an underlying sense of menace.

The great thing about the setup of Trapped Inn is that it uses the entire cycling team as its main character, quickly establishing different personalities, relationships, and rivalries. All of that feels very familiar, but it has rarely been presented in films, especially ones like this. The director of the film, Leah Sturgis, uses the setup in a refined manner, being that the risk there would have been for the movie to slide into a regular sports drama early on. However, Trapped Inn builds up its mystery and a sense of growing unease and danger just as effectively.   

Besides Rife and his main team rival Greg, played by Robert Palmer Watkins, Brian Gross as the team's coach manages to perform really well in this kind of odd setup of things not being what they seem. Along with them, the entire team does a great job in molding realistic characters who find themselves in an unexpected, emerging hellscape. As the disappearances and the bodies begin to pile up, the film kicks into a whole new gear with the threat of a mysterious infection and death.

Trapped Inn is shot and edited perfectly, using the best out of natural light and gorgeous locations, both indoors and outdoor. All of the subtle special effects manage to blend into that almost seamlessly. This also offers a great counterpoint to the plot once the danger becomes very immediate and real. That further enhances the tension that the character begins to experience as survival becomes a desperate plight with no good outcomes.

From beginning to end, Trapped Inn is a masterful combo of genres and setups. I'm sure that the presence of big acting names will attract the viewers and the fact that the entire cast performed great, but the actual appeal of the film lies in its ability to blend and sustain its unique approach to its storyline. As the world implodes inside of the characters and outside of them, Trapped Inn offers the audience a world-ending ride that they will never forget.

Learn more about Trapped Inn on its official website and see where you can watch it right now!

Film Review: 'Salem's Lot (2024)

Last year was brimming with fantastic new horror films. Movies like Oddity and Longlegs are just some of the titles that managed to impress and terrify both critics and the audiences. However, 'Salem's Lot, which has the most impressive pedigree of the bunch, was not able to do the same. For me, however, the film more than does justice both to its original source material and the modern horror genre.

Created by Gary Dauberman, a modern horror-making veteran, the film is based on  the 1975 novel by Stephen King. In it, a writer comes home to a small town of Jerusalem's Lot looking for inspiration, but ultimately finds only terror and danger as an ancient vampire is slowly taking over the town. He and a small band of locals try to put a stop to it, or at least survive.

While the latest adaptation is not a masterpiece, Dauberman and a really solid movie cast still managed to turn it into a very entertaining horror. The use of light, especially in the form of glowing crosses, is exceedingly impressive from a visual side, while the photography overall manages to paint a bleak and scary picture of a small-tow-US slowly becoming a graveyard of both the dead and the undead. Yes, there is scant character development and some moments are abruptly ended by the director and the script, but I found that refreshing.

Instead of blindly trying to make a film copy of the book - necessarily in a limited TV series from - the director wanted to make a semi-original iteration of this famous tale, which is in itself basically a modern retelling of a generic folk story. Throughout this, 'Salem's Lot keeps a grip on the audience akin to the best horrors of the 1980s and early 1900s. While it might not be very innovative, it is still appealing from start to finish. Horror movies should not be judged too harshly if they end up in a position like that.

Film Review: Archive (2020)

 

If you start watching Archive and get that weird sense that the film reminds you of something, but you’re not quite sure what, don’t be confused. Its strongest suit definitely lies in its most peripheral elements, where the first-time director, Gavin Rothery, has loads of experience. Here, that sense of familiarity really lies. As a film set creator and graphic designer, Rothery worked on titles like Moon from 2009, and this rich experience shines through.

The main topics of Archive are eerily similar to those ideas as well, being that they talk of identity, grief, and the ability of machines and other artificial elements to integrate themselves into the most personal parts of our lives. Here, the main character is George, played well by Theo James, who is a robotics engineer and scientist, building a new humanoid model in a semi-deserter research station. As the plot is set in the near future, George is also keeping his deceased wife on the premises, here in the form of Archive, a mainframe-like device that stores the deceased person's consciousness for an additional 200 hours.

Soon, those final hours start to run out and so does the time that George has for his pretty obvious secret plan. But, movies like this rarely try to fully surprise their viewers and Archive is no different. Aside from the very familiar-looking script and the main twist that comes with no big surprise, the film also somewhat fumbles with its prolonged, drawn-out pacing and several dead ends. That places the film in the realm with titles like Ex Machina, but which simply do everything slightly better than Archive.

It all makes the movie ultimately feel forced and unnecessarily long, while it shines the best in montages of robotic visuals and mechanical sound that show an alien technological landscape. That space lies in the heart of the story but does not manage to compensate for its lacking elements. Thanks to that, Archive would have worked much better as a short film or even some kind of techno music video that leans into the strong sides of Rothery and avoids problems that the feature-length film ended up having.