Review: Pirates Of The Caribbean: Salazar's Revenge (UK Cert 12A)

SPOILER WARNING! This review discusses and/or mentions a few important plot points. If you would prefer not to have these spoiled, please stop reading now and come back once you've seen the film.

It's been six years since On Stranger Tides but the next instalment in the Pirates Of The Caribbean franchise is finally here. Directed by Joachim Ronning and Espen Sandberg (Kon-Tiki), Johnny Depp and Geoffrey Rush return with newcomers Brenton Thwaites, Kaya Scodelario and Javier Bardem as part of the main cast.

Henry Turner, seeking to break his father's curse and free him from The Flying Dutchman, is looking for the Trident of Poseidon. He enlists the help of the notorious Captain Jack Sparrow who is up to no good in St Martin. Along the way, they meet astronomer Carina who is in possession of a diary that might just help him. However, there's a dark force chasing them- the ghost ship of the fearsome Captain Armando Salazar who has a bone to pick with Jack...

It's a minor point perhaps but I can't see any good reason at all for changing the subtitle from Dead Men Tell No Tales. If anything, that's a better title and actually fits in to the Pirates mythology (it's a line that can be heard on the ride). But, for whatever reason, it's Salazar's Revenge in the UK.

Usually by the fifth instalment of a franchise, things get a bit stale and a bit staid, it's all just variations on a theme. Salazar's Revenge has got the same sense of fun as The Curse Of The Black Pearl; a supremely silly but thoroughly enjoyable romp.

Johnny Depp camps it up something fierce as Jack Sparrow. He's been playing this role for the best part of 15 years now so knows it like the back of his hand. He's full of swagger and charisma as usual and the writers have cannily decided to almost have him as a supporting character (this is by no means the Captain Jack show). He's responsible for a lot of the humour in the film- although not all- and it's a real moment of cheer when he finally takes charge of the Black Pearl again.

Geoffrey Rush is as good as always as Captain Hector Barbossa, who starts off as King of the Seas but finds his position diminished by Salazar's vendetta against pirates. Forced into a series of uneasy alliances and accords, Barbossa also has to deal with a few ghosts of his own past. Orlando Bloom hasn't got a lot of screen time but has a decent cameo role which book-ends the film nicely and there's a nice surprise appearance from another old face which is another punch-the-air moment.

Of the new cast, Kaya Scodelario really impresses as Carina. She's strong, forthright, a little stubborn, fiercely intelligent and certainly no passive maiden. She holds the key to finding the island where the Trident is hidden and her intellect marks her out. Indeed, when she's first seen, she's about to be executed for witchcraft, despite being a woman of science (which amounted to the same thing in the 18th century). Her outlook is changed when she comes face to face with the worlds of ghosts and monsters but is still an enquiring mind. In a summer of films with kickass female leads, Carina Smyth is a great addition to that roster.

Surrounded by the charisma of Depp and the strength of Scodelario, sadly Brenton Thwaites can't help but come across as a little bland and a little wooden in comparison (then again, the same argument can be made for Orlando Bloom in the original trilogy). It's not that his performance is bad per se, but it's just not strong and suffers in comparison with those around it. He also doesn't have as much in way of character as the others: Henry is an earnest young man, who knows the legends of the sea and wants his father back. That's all well and good but that's it. A shame he couldn't have been more developed.

Javier Bardem starts off with the right amount of menace as the undead Salazar but becomes more and more unhinged (and therefore less menacing) as the film goes on. By the end, he's a goggle-eyed panto villain rather than the threat he started as. There's solid support as always by Kevin McNally as Jack's right-hand man Gibbs and there's an absolutely wonderful cameo appearance by Paul McCartney as Jack's uncle- he gets a good few jokes and adds a real moment of humour.

Visually, it's pretty good, although I did find the visual effects on Salazar a little disorienting at the beginning- my brain was having problems processing what was going on with his face. The zombie shark attack is probably the highlight, whilst the chase through St Martin after the bank robbery kicks things off in top gear. Although, some bits are very dark- as in, not clear what's really happening due to lack of light (specifically the scenes in the Devil's Triangle).

I'll be honest, Salazar's Revenge wasn't high on my list of must-see summer blockbusters. In fact, my attitude to it was much the same as that for The Curse Of The Black Pearl- 'I'll give it a punt if there's nothing else on that I fancy'. But I'm glad I went to see it. I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I was going to. It's breezy, light and fun.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Tez

Review: Oculus (UK Cert: 15)

Anyone who has kept up-to-speed with the blog will know I’m the one who loves horror films. I get a (some would say weird) kick out of being scared, wanting to look away from the screen but can’t, because I want to know what happens next. Horror is my favourite genre bar none, but for every good horror film, there are plenty of trashy, recycling the same old clichés, straight to DVD time wasters stinking up car boot sales, eBay and second-hand DVD shops. I’ll happily sit and watch a film that has vampires, zombies, werewolves, demons, masked killers, or a haunted house, but I’m high maintenance when it comes to what films deserve a place in my DVD collection. The best horror films are the ones that break the rules, that are subtle and try something different. They take a familiar concept – you think you know where the jolts and loud bangs are – and make it unpredictable. The most frightening horror films are always the ones where you genuinely don’t know what’s going to happen.

Go back ten years and if you wanted a decent scare, you had to watch something with subtitles. Occasionally us Brits came up with something memorable, but for the last ten-to-fifteen years, the very best horror was coming from Europe and Asia. There were a couple of exceptions (Paranormal Activity, The Mist), but America was more interested in torture porn, remakes, and churning out sequels. Take a look at blogs and fan sites in the early-to-mid noughties and there are plenty of posts and articles suggesting that America had forgotten how to scare people. Mercifully this changed in the last few years with first-rate films such as The Last Exorcism, Insidious, Mama, Cabin in the Woods, The Conjuring, and Lovely Molly. You can now add Mike Flanagan’s Oculus to this list.

Having survived a family tragedy, brother and sister Kaylie (Karen Gillan) and Tim (Brenton Thwaites) return to their family home to try and remember what happened. Did their father lose his mind, or was a mirror, the Lassar glass, responsible? Kaylie is convinced the mirror is haunted, that it can possess its victims, and becomes obsessed with finding the evidence she needs.

Oculus is a smart film. You can understand why Gillan decided to come on board, Jeff Howard and Mike Flanagan’s script is like an episode of Doctor Who, if Steven Moffat decided to write something violent and mess-with-your-head disturbing. Flanagan is clearly a big believer in the rule, “Show, don’t tell”. When the film opens we have no idea what happened to Kaylie and Tim when they were children. Instead the film deftly flicks back and forth between past and present, piecing things together until, cleverly, in the final act, past and present combine with both adult and child actors crossing over in the same scene, all skilfully edited together by Flanagan.

Usually in a horror film, it’s all about the scares; fleshed out characters are right at the bottom of the To Do List. With Oculus, Gillan and Thwaites get more to do than jump in all the right places. Throughout most of its hundred-and-four minutes, Oculus asks the question, is the mirror really haunted or are Kaylie and Tim blaming the Lassar glass for their parents’ actions? Rather than the flaky female lead who runs around screaming, Kaylie is aggressive, obsessive, and borderline unhinged. There is no question in her mind that the mirror is to blame. Yet watching how Kaylie behaves, you constantly question her logic. Tim is supposed to be the crazy one, having grown up in an institution. Instead he looks at things calmly and rationally; he’s Dana Scully from The X-Files. While it’s easier to empathise with Tim, you start doubting his version of events; was it all a tragedy, no more, no less, or is it the therapy talking when Tim claims that none of it was real?

Oculus isn’t the perfect horror film like Wise’s The Haunting or Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby; it has one or two niggling flaws. In the final twenty minutes, the film buckles under the weight of its own ideas. By making you question what’s real and what isn’t, it loses some of its coherency. At long last, what happened to Kaylie and Tim’s parents is revealed, the grown-up brother and sister taking on the mirror together. It’s uncomfortable, fidget around in your seat levels of tension, though you’ll find yourself struggling to work out whether a couple of scenes in the film really happened. The dialogue is occasionally clunky instead of coming across as natural, and Karen Gillan’s Scottish accent sometimes rears its head.

These are small issues. Oculus is good old-fashioned horror with plenty of new ideas, relying on an increasingly uncomfortable atmosphere to scare you, and the jolts, when they do come, are when you least expect them. Do you like scary movies? If the answer’s yes, then say hello to one of your favourite films of this year.

4 out of 5

Matt