Shameless Self Expression

(I think) The film concerns Nic Cage going on a vengeance spree after he and wife Andrea Riseborough are kidnapped by a crazy cult (with Linus Roache among its members), and he’s forced to watch Riseborough go through an awful ordeal. Beware a cult film that gets embraced by critics and film festival-types on release. This 2018 ungodly arty-farty mess from director Panos Cosmatos (son of “Tombstone” and “The Cassandra Crossing” director George Pan Cosmatos) and co-writer Aaron Stewart-Ahn is for me the worst film of the year in a year that already featured another dreadful Nic Cage wannabe cult favourite, “Mom and Dad” (Not to mention “Face/Off” co-star John Travolta’s pathetic “Speed Kills” ). Seemingly deliberately aiming for cult status – which never works – the film is as if Cosmatos tripped on acid whilst watching the dreadful remake of “The Vanishing” , filtered it through “The Evil Dead” , but taking in nothing of what made the latter fun. You may also be reminded

A group of people of wildly diverse backgrounds and temperaments are invited by a mysterious person to potentially win $10,000 by finding their way out of an escape room. Well, actually it’s a series of rooms with a series of clues. People yell, people die, and the mysterious host has a reason why he/she has invited these specific people to engage in this task. The people? Taylor Russell is a shy student, Nik Dodani is a geeky escape room enthusiast, Deborah Ann Woll is a former soldier, Tyler Labine is a trucker, Logan Miller is a convenience store employee, and Jay Ellis plays a slick stockbroker. Although not an inherently bad concept to centre a film around, this 2019 film from director Adam Robitel (who did one of the “Insidious” sequels) takes that inherently not bad idea and gives us an M-rated (or PG-13 for you Yanks) version of “Saw” . Or more specifically “Jigsaw”, actually. Don’t get me wrong, there’s potential to get something worthwhile out this idea. However, w