Cheap Thrills

Director: EL Katz (2013)
Starring: Pat Healy, Sara Paxton, David Koechner, Ethan Embry
Find it: IMDB

Essentially, the movie adaptation of that stupid game you and your dipshit buddies used to play where you'd stand around asking each other questions like "how much would somebody have to pay you to chop off a finger?" and other such deep, existential dilemmas. This film is what happens when you throw Champ Kind from off've Anchorman and a serious amount of money into the mix.

In Cheap Thrills, down-on-his-luck dad Craig (Healy) hits a gloomy dive bar in order to drown his sorrows. There he runs into old friend Vince (Embry - looking a lot like Tom Hardy) and heavy drinking commences. There they encounter rich couple Colin (Koechner) and Violet (Paxton), out celebrating the latter's birthday. As you might expect from a drinking session with a man who resembles The Rich Texan from The Simpsons, a quiet night in the pub is not on the cards.

I had heard good things of Cheap Thrills, but still I approached with caution. After suffering through umpteen-or-so movies called Truth or Dare (or some variation thereof), I must admit to fatigue when it comes to films about people being forced to sit around mutilating themselves each other for some weird bastard's sadistic pleasure. Thankfully, Cheap Thrills is not that movie. Make no mistake, people do sit around mutilating themselves and each other for another's sadistic pleasure, but the story is infused with much more wit and energy than you'd get from any film called, say, Truth or Dare. 

Perfectly cast, frequently hilarious and even more frequently nasty, it delights in subverting expectations at every turn. To go into too much detail would be to spoil the fun - the highlights of which involves a dog, trying to take a shit and a crucial photo of David Koechner on the mantelpiece. Best of all, nobody is 'forced' to do anything. I had expected a scene in which Champ Kind pulls a gun and tells our heroes that "no-one can leave. Now cut off a testicle" - but it never comes. A lesser film would have the action descend into a nonsensical gorefest, but Cheap Thrills does a great job of handling its own logic and 'rules'. It's consistent, which is underrated, in this day and age.

A barnstorming bruiser of a movie, Cheap Thrills is tremendous fun. To employ the laziest of movie reviewing cliches, it's a film that does exactly what it says on the tin.    
 

Magic Magic

Director: Sebastian Silva (2013)
Starring: Juno Temple, Michael Cera, Emily Browning
Find it: IMDB

Mumblecore turtleneck hipster icon Michael Cera stars in this psychological horror film, driving poor Juno Temple around the twist over the course of what will surely turn out to be the worst holiday of her life. Visiting her cousin in Chile, the nervous young Alicia (Temple) is abandoned among a group of people she barely knows in a claustrophobic, remote country house.

Not-so-gradually, the already bewildered Alicia begins to lose her mind, bullied by the aloof Barbara (Catalina Sandino Moreno) and harassed by sleazy, weird Brink (Cera). Add to that a terrible bout of insomnia, definite mental health issues and chronic moodiness, and we're left with the most uncomfortable holiday since that one time I was trapped on a fucking houseboat with a cretin who identified himself as a standup comedian. Temple does a good job with a thankless role, but it's Cera who will win the lion's share of the applause. And rightly so; he's magnificently malicious in it, like a more drawn-out version of his role in This is the End.

Everything else is so purposefully odd that it almost hurts. This is horror for the mumblecore crowd - a darker version of Youth in Revolt. Sadly, Cera didn't bring the moustache back for this one, although he does rock a series of great jumpers. Browning is less effective as cousin Sarah, surrounded by terrible people and having little to do but look tired and react resignedly to her friends' shitty behaviour. Augustin Silva is cool as the only guy in the group who's not an unbearable arsehole, but that just makes his decision to hang around people who are seem all the more conspicuous.

Not being the sort of horror movie with ghosts or chainsaws or even horror, Magic Magic jumps to a Kill List change of pace in the third act, but it's no game changer. Those who hate the film will likely hate it even more, while those who were enjoying it will support its arty dive into nonsense.

Magic Magic is a convincing portrayal of a girl suffering a mental breakdown while surounded by shitheads and Michael Cera. It's grim and dirty in all the right ways and has a great villain in Michael Cera (as far as anyone can be anything in this sort of thing) but remains about as enjoyable as holidaying with a gang of bickering hipster numpties could ever be.

Which is to say, 'not very'.