FOR DYING OUT LOUD 666

BUGGED OUT IN BRITAIN



HUNGERFORD (2014)
Drew Casson, Georgia Bradley, Tom Scarlett, Sam Carter, Kitty Speed, Nigel Morgan, Paul Radziwill
Directed by Drew Casson
Cowen Rosewell is a slacker student in Berkshire who looks like an odd cross of Robert Plant meeting Andrew WK. He and his 3 friends -- prudent Philippa, her jock-ish brother Adam, and nerdy Kip -- live in a small apartment, and for his media studies course, he is recording a week in his life. Everything will make it on to film. After introducing the arguing trio on camera, a thunderous loud bang is heard out in the street where they and several others see an ominous, evil-looking, black storm cloud with a purple flaming center. Impressed by the sudden alarm, the group drink, party & joke around. Shortly afterwards, the group is invited by friend Janine to a party. On their way to her house, they pass an oddly detached mailman standing still in an alley but he is ignored. 2 hooded men who appear to be beating up a pedestrian are also ignored; presumably the usual type of shit that happens in this town. Once arrived, the group mingle and Cowen talks to Janine. Both are attracted to each other. When Cowen sees Janine's father bashing his already bloodied forehead against a window, he runs panicked to Adam, just as the girl Adam is talking to inexplicably coughs up blood and collapses. The night before, Janine's father had stumbled & fallen in a crosswalk but was dismissed as being drunk. Adam is accused of drugging the girl and the next morning, Cowen calls Janine to explain but is rebuffed and basically told to piss off. Phil is attacked by the mailman from the alley, who crashes through their kitchen door attempting to strangle her. First Cowen then Adam each struggle with him. When the mailman grabs a kitchen knife, Adam plunges it into the mailman's stomach but unaffected, the stabbed attacker merely pulls it out and lunges at Adam.

When Adam sprays aerosol deodorant in the man's eyes, it causes a burning sensation causing the mailman to retreat screaming into the living room where he drops dead. His face is horribly disfigured. After this violent incident, the panicked group contemplate either calling the police or disposing of the body in a garbage bin. They are spooked when their police officer buddy, Terry, pays a visit but are relieved that Constable Friendly (who apparently is the ONLY cop in town) has simply dropped by to score some weed. The body is to be 'trashed' and while wrapping it in a blanket, Cowen finds a strange hole in the back of the neck. Kip annoyingly repeats their action is a bad idea but Mr. Mailman is dumpstered. Cowen is bothered by the wound he saw in the neck and believes it to be part of something else terribly wrong. He convinces Adam to spray a random stranger to see if the hairspray thing will happen again, thus confirming a belief of 'I told you so' weirdness indeed going on. A reluctant Adam sprays a passerby in an alley, and the 2 friends chase the man into a field, to a nearby abandoned factory. Finding a gathering of townsfolk, both men are split up when Adam runs off. Cowen returns to the flat, followed by Adam in viral-rage who is sudbdued by the spray. When he falls to the floor, an insect-ish/cockroach-like creature bursts out of the back of his neck which Cowen impales with a knife. An alive Adam describes having the creature (which burrow into their victims) in his head speak to him; using humans as hosts and controlling them in a slave-ish manner. The group plan on getting Janine but first break into a supermarket to grab a fuckload of deodorant spray. [Kip works there and with the crazy shit going on at present, the twerp is worried about getting fired]. The mission is unsuccessful and they return home to collect weapons, then set off to Janine's place where they collect her after smacking down her father.

The 5 sidestep various infested to return to the flat where that night, Phil films herself announcing she is going to retrieve Janine's father's car. Adam desperately goes after his sister in the morning but Cowen instead takes his place (Kip is in tow with the videocam). They run into Terry who clears their path with a trusty shotgun. The infested are out in force but Phil is found safely with the car. As Terry drives and tells the trio of the mayhem that has taken hold, a group of infested in the middle of the road causes him to rollover. An injured Phil is dragged out by the horde, while Kip and Cowen awaken to find her gone and Terry dead. Hiding in a forest from would-be attackers, the 2 friends make it back to their now deserted street and inside their blood-smeared, ransacked flat, they find Adam and Janine nowhere to be found. A video shot on Adam's phone shows the pair being attacked. Re-armed and again outside, the 2 friends find a young girl and her baby sister left in a minivan. As Kip takes the girls to find shelter & safety, Cowen heads to the factory hoping to find Phil, Adam and Janine. In a darkened basement he finds several bodies encased in webbing like cocoons, and is grabbed by a man resembling a butcher. Taken to a room, he finds Adam and Janine, and the 3 are rescued by armed officers who battle their way up a stairwell. Swarms of infested are gunned down as they make it back to the street and are reunited with Kip. An enormous UFO in the sky comes into view and a final quick cut has Cowen filming himself on a roof with an armed Adam at his side. In testimony, he tells of the alien invasion that has swallowed Europe with its parasite creatures and of a resistance that needs to fight back. He swings the lens over to a burning cityscape, lastly promising to find Phil.




THE DARKEST DAWN (2016)
Bethan Mary Leadley, Cherry Wallis, Drew Casson, Tom Scarlett, Georgia Bradley, Sam Carter, Mark Cusack
Directed by Drew Casson
This is a stand-alone sequel to HUNGERFORD, taking place simultaneously to that movie's events. Chloe & Sam Murdock are sisters whose family is celebrating Chloe's 16th birthday. Given a camcorder as a present (watch out Spielberg), she sets about documenting happy hijinx in the home with fluffy reporter enthusiasm. She watches TV news with her Dad as they listen to a report about a mysterious explosion in Hungerford. The worried Dad feels that his wife should perhaps stay home from work but she sees nothing to be bothered about and off she goes. As the day passes, there is no word from the wife, and speaking into her videocam -- with the movie told predominantly from Chloe's POV all the while speaking to her mother as a coping mechanism -- she addresses Mom; imagining various scenarios to rationalize the disappearance, and to alleviate her own growing concern. The night passes with the mother still missing. By morning, military helicopters are in flight, and the Prime Minister speaks on the radio of what is an apparent alien invasion having taken place. He appeals to citizens to not succumb to brutality in the spreading terror, and the wake of what will be hardship. London is under attack, air raid sirens blare, and soldiers and panicked people are in the street. As Dad rounds up his 2 daughters in an evacuation, the previously glimpsed UFO appears overhead and drops a parasite roach that infests him. Dad is shot dead and Chloe -- who is filming all of the confusion & chaos from here onward -- with Sam (the elder sis and also a nurse) take shelter in an underground facility with an agitated, mentally deteriorating stranger named Bob who scrounges for supplies (and may be killing other survivors).

Cowen, Adam and Kip arrive in a tense guns-drawn standoff, but they share food & water, and their purpose of searching for Phil. Bob remains suspicious. As videographers, Cowen and Chloe bond while Adam is told to be careful of Bob. When Bob tries to kill a sleeping Cowen (over a delusion of Chole and Sam being 'his' girls), he is strangled by Adam. Now having to trust and co-operate, the 5 move through a tunnel complex, and find they are in a makeshift HQ that was being used as a mission base for an Operation called 'Ascalon'. Kip discovers Phil was there (with a movement order that has her en-route to outside of Oxford) and a dying nurse circles Manchester on a map. The men stock up on firearms and the 5 leave underground, entering war-torn London which is now a desolate wasteland. They of course take an obligatory group photo, and leave the city by boat on the Thames to find Phil. As they trek down the river, the group have a sad encounter with an old man caring for his bedridden dying wife in an abandoned mansion, and then 2 harrowing scrapes: first with a group of armed pirates at a yacht club, and then a tank on a bridge. With their boat destroyed, the group proceed on foot to the rendezvous point towards Phil. In a forest, Adam kills a small horde of infested chasing a girl and shoots the girl dead upon seeing she is mortally injured. In a moment of despair, he is about to blow his brains out but is stopped by Cowen. That night the group take shelter in a Church and reminisce about happier times but Sam doesn't partake in the lightheartedness, sharing to Kip her disturbance of Chloe having killed a man and being unrecognizable due to being unaffected.

In the morning, 2 camouflaged soldiers (Hopper and Ricky -- the dickhead duo) hold the group at gunpoint and take everyone prisoner back to a farmhouse where Cowen is recognized from the stairwell battle (aka ground zero) by the compound's officer, Sarge, involved in that rescue. The group find Phil alive (and aside from having hooked up with Sarge) she tells them that the dying nurse (Helen) circled an 'O' on the map indicating that O-negative blood interrupts the creatures from controlling humans. While Adam regards himself as a monster for all that he's done to get his sister back, Sam pleads for Chloe to keep her own same blood-type a secret but is blown off for what she said to Kip back at the Church. The compound comes under UFO attack with parasite roaches dropping down. With infested soldiers being shot, Sarge with some of his men, and Cowen's group retreat to a barn. Sarge warns of staying away from a heavily guarded cloak-and-dagger case which a snooping Chloe was kept away from moments earlier, and is alluded to as a weapon tied to Ascalon. Phil suddenly spits up blood in the throes of transforming into one of the infested and when Chloe reveals her blood-type, a hasty transfusion is conducted successfully. After Chloe sees an argument by Sarge with the dickhead duo involving the case, she reconciles that night with Sam. Sarge tells Cowen that the case indeed holds an alien weapon taken from a downed UFO, and part of Ascalon, cannot be wasted over a minor excursion. With everyone asleep, the dickhead duo abduct Chloe, and the group find Sarge dead in the morning.

Setting off to rescue her, they are captured by soldiers at an estate when Phil begins twitching as if to again undergo transformation. A power-mad Hopper has taken charge, hints at Chloe being a rape doll, and shoots Sam dead. Inside a room he removes the weapon from the case but it emits a huge, green-pulsing, electromagnetic blast beam knocking everyone down. Ricky locks the group in a basement but Cowen coerces him to release them. The blast has summoned a ship overhead meaning the arrival of parasite roaches. Back upstairs, crackling gunfire is heard from outside and as infested soldiers are shot, the group find Hopper in a bedroom, holding Chloe hostage with a gun to her head but he is shot in the arm by Kip who then pistol whips him. Another blast flattens everyone's ass (with Hopper vaporized) and Cowen answers a walkie-talkie declaring the Ascalon weapon safe. Once outside with the case, and new soldiers there to retrieve it, the UFO is seen blasting anything it can aim its grubby gamma rays at. A self-sacrificing Adam takes the weapon to wipe out the UFO while Cowen and the group are evacuated onto a helicopter with infact the empty case; it's their insurance to make it out alive. Once airborne and with the UFO in view, a massive explosion occurs on the estate grounds. Rocked by the shockwave, Phil awakens roach-free (the O-negative blood only keeps the creatures at bay in the body) and asking where Adam is. In a final recording, Chloe looks into her videocam silently and angrily pushes it down. Hitting the chopper floor on its side, it shows a mushroom cloud in the sky.



HUNGERFORD and THE DARKEST DAWN are equal parts post-apocalyptic zombie flick, sci-fi shocker, black comedy, and disaster movie, with each filmed largely in the day. The first film has more horror comedy ala SHAUN OF THE DEAD and HOT FUZZ, while the second drops the black humor for a more serious tone of THE 5TH WAVE, CLOVERFIELD and 28 DAYS LATER. Both are in the vein of DAWN OF THE DEAD meets INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS. There's no doubt that Director Drew Casson is a young talent. He was just 19 and had never gone to film school when he began all this -- The first movie at 79min was originally intended as a web series (immediately after the success of his 7-part DIVINITY web series from 2013 about angels at war on earth). As the initially-named 'HUNGER FORD' episodes were shot in 9 days, they were eventually trimmed into a feature film at a slender budget of £20,000. The second movie at 73min was shot in 9 days at a cost of £43,000. As both are found footage, with ambitious storylines of doomsday, devastation, and brain slugs, the problems of this continually-criticized horror genre can't help but turn up like a bad penny with predictable and tiresome cliches: shaky cam; constant dropping; having to grow up real fast; obscured imagery in the dark; dirt and blood splatter on the lens; the lack of monsters on screen; running away from someone/something trying to kill you; nonsensibly continuing to film in life-threatening situations; and where is all the battery power coming from?...

They are limitations that don't bring anything new to the arena. That said, Casson is still promising. Even with their shortcomings/stumbling/flaws (filming yourself dumping a body(!); victims dragged off by hordes and not killed(!); loved ones being found alive & unharmed after impossible odds; the O-negative blood's potency), he manages to punch above his weight. With best foot forward, he's taken threadbare, run-of-the-mill content not unlike what would occur on the SyFy channel or in The Walking Dead (except those zombies don't look as lazily cheap as they do here), and delivers a pair of video diaries that are (for what it's worth) effective with some impressive CGI and nods to Black Mirror. What best helps overall to keep underwhelming found footage from being utter drivel are the actors. Inspite of whatever ragtag presentation, audience interest completely hinges on them investing us from start to finish -- especially when the individuals are all unknowns. For all the emotions on display, and dialogue exchanged, both these movies do a good job of showing support, closeness, confusion, drifting apart, and fear. But Casson is definitely miscast. While Cowen and his friends sound like genuine 20-somethings with their banter -- even as they are quite irritating as would be expected from roomies -- he misses more than he hits as far as exuding authority. And he looks embarrassingly awkward and comes off cheesy in romantic territory.

So are the films a vanity vehicle for Casson/Cowen? I can see those accusations being slung for how he almost shoehorned the 2 sisters out of their own picture. Atleast the relationship between Chloe and Sam make them believable as siblings. I'm sure Joss Whedon would give their understated performances a thumbs up. Adam is the most interesting character. His introduction is that of the macho mate, rough around the edges but loyal. In the ensuing living nightmare that dims the lamp on mankind and with humanity fading, he becomes hardened and uncaring, in total warrior-mode. On the surface, this change might seem like a natural inclination coming from someone already a bit of a bullish meathead who isn't far off from the frat-boy variety. He stresses an unspoken urgency for the need to be tough in this dour new world but stern as he remains, we then see his own inner conflict boil over through pangs of conscience that torture him for his ghastly trajectory -- killing without hesitancy to keep sane but finally breaking down when his sanity tallies the toll. Ultimately, this pair of movies (based on the 2nd's ending) leaves room for a 3rd entry, and a trilogy should wrap everything up. Is Adam alive? Could Janine return? Will a big name pop in for a cameo? Does Kip have what it takes to be a badass? How durable are GoPros anyway? Hopefully Casson's focus won't continue to waver. We'll have to wait and see.

For many, HUNGERFORD's name is automatically associated to a real-life horrific tragedy. I wonder if the filmmakers were deliberately trying to evoke that terrible connection. It would obviously be in very poor taste and yet I can imagine the reasoning: to have a sleepy, quiet market town absolutely shattered by another unthinkable event. [When good guy Kip takes the 2 girls from the minivan as a savior, was this a crass echo of Michael Ryan ordering a mother to leave her 2 toddlers in her car before he marched her into a forest to be shot 13 times in the back? Even the leader of the pirates (Brian), both in name and look, has a faint resemblance to Ryan. Intentional or pure coincidence?]