Writer and director of the new mystery-thriller, The Ghost Lights, joins Tom and Christopher for a brief talk about the film. The Ghost Lights hits VOD August 26th!
We briefly discuss a film that gives us a take on the vampire myth that we had not seen before, and liked it enough to not spoil the whole thing for you!
Directed by Rebecca Matthews and written by Tom Joliffe.
Starring Rebecca Finch, Peter Cosgrove, Mark Sears, Rita Di Tuccio, and Georgia Wood.
On digital April 12, 2022 from Left Films
“When the world is gripped by a plague unleashed by the evil lord Chaos, and humans are turned into rabid creatures, mankind can only be saved by three young women who are descendants of the Goddess Nike. Only they have the power to stop Chaos’ evil plans.”
This is a story that has been told countless times, and I am admittedly a sucker for watching any one of them that I come across, so its no surprise that I jumped at the chance to get a hold of screener for this one. Knowing that it was a low-budget film, I wasn’t expecting giant, mind-blowing battles, ie The Avengers, or even anything with the Hollywood polish. I WAS hoping for some creative film making and engaging characters to help make up for any discrepancies that minuscule budgets tend to create. Unfortunately what we get with Reign of Chaos is tired tropes, low-key action, and caricatures.
I loathe to completely pan any film, much less an independent feature, but I have to point out some things that I feel the film makers did in this one that they should have known better.
If you are going to hinge your entire plot on the abilities of your heroes to be a super-powerful fighting force, then you should cast some actors with some mad fighting skills! Watching the training montage and seeing the woman weakly hitting punching bags and straining to lift what look like fairly light weights, was painful! It is such an ineffective collection of scenes that it comes across as exactly what it was, and excuse to get your attractive actresses into yoga pants and sports bras.
All this after they are brought together by a mysterious stranger. A mysterious stranger that looks like he’d be more at home as ‘Torgo’ from “Manos: Hands of Fate” than the all-knowing guru that is helping to save the world. He at no point comes across as anything but crazy and certainly not anyone that any person, much less a young beautiful woman would blindly follow.
Chaos and his “sons” are the only characters that comes close to even working. Though, the processing on the voice wasn’t necessary. They are appropriately evil and uncaring about anyone or anything other than their plans to level the planet.
As I said, I knew going in to this knowing it was a well worn idea, but SOME effort should have been made to give it an edge. Turning everyone,(and when I say “everyone” I mean the 4 or 5 people we see who aren’t the main cast) into blood thirsty zombies wasn’t it. We come into the story months or years into the plague, yet everyone we see on camera seems to be doing pretty well for themselves despite them claiming they are struggling to survive. Their hair looks great, their clothes are clean, the homes immaculate, and in one scene, the London city lights are all on! (Only more laughable when the very next scene shows an obviously altered city skyline with fires and explosion. Too little, too late.)
The one thing they really got right is the run time. This mercifully comes in under an hour twenty. The sad thing is that it could have easily trimmed another 20-30 minutes.
The old adage is “always leave them wanting more”, and that is exactly what indie filmmaker Kyle Murphy does with his (too) short film, Vampire Foxes…From Space
Quick run down on some TV news, a quick review of another screener (Wrong Place, Wrong Time (2021)), then we discuss 1976’s Squirm in another “MST3k:Unriffed” episode!
Christopher and Tom both find this 2022 Australian indie “creepy as ‘F'”!
