David F. Sandberg – Christian Sauvé

Shazam! (2019)

ByChristian Sauvé 2019-12-262023-03-09 Movie Review

(On Cable TV, December 2019) Either I need to take a break from watching superhero movies or Hollywood need to take a break from making them, because watching Shazam was a singularly average experience. Even as I recognize that we’ve reached the degenerate stage of superhero movies—essentially, we’re just being served increasingly ludicrous variations on a theme—and can recognize what Shazam! is going for, it found it very difficult to work myself up to what it was showing me. OK, so it’s a standard superhero origin story, except with a kid being given a superhero’s body, an adoptive family helping, and a supervillain miffed because he’s not pure at heart. With humour. And a Philadelphia setting. In the DC universe. Aaaand, so what? In what may be a case study in excessive crankiness, I just feel jaded by having seen so many of those movies that by now, even well-crafted, slightly off-beat takes such as Shazam leaves me cold—I feel as if I’ve used my share of 2019 “oh, a variation on a familiar theme” indulgence on Captain Marvel and I’ve got no more to give. (On the other hand, I now understand those who essentially turned in the same review after seeing Captain Marvel.) I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with the execution of Shazam: director David F. Sandberg graduates to the blockbuster leagues with this film, with a likable Zachary Levi and a wasted Mark Strong in the duelling leads. The back-story, in the modern tradition of superhero films, does get convoluted at times for no good reason. The good news, I suppose, is that Shazam avoids the usual dark tones and dark colour palette of the DCU (although it does get surprisingly sombre at times), saving it from outright rejection. Too long at nearly two hours and a quarter, Shazam ends up as a perfectly average example of the contemporary superhero film, and so I suspect that reactions will largely depend on how exasperated (or delighted) you are at the genre at this specific moment.

Movie Review

Annabelle: Creation (2017)

ByChristian Sauvé 2018-03-302019-03-24 Movie Review

(On Cable TV, March 2018) With Annabelle: Creation, we’re now up to a sequel to a spinoff (Anabelle) to an adaptation (The Conjuring). That’s not quite a record (Scorpion King 4 has an antecedent chain that’s seven movies long over eighty years and three series) but it shows how much of a derived product we’re dealing with here. As such, my expectations for the film were low—Annabelle was deathly dull to begin with, so I expected the worst from this sequel. But if Annabelle: Creation isn’t a particularly good movie, it’s still quite a bit better than you’d expect. Much of this credit goes to writer Gary Dauberman and director David F. Sandberg, who spend much of the film’s first half-hour setting up an unusual setting for a horror film: An ersatz orphanage moving into a vast country house stained by a terrible tragedy. The sunny rural setting, coupled with the nature of the house, blends with the personalities of the six young girls, caretaker couple and a nun to create an extended familial atmosphere not unlike that of the original The Conjuring. It works fine until the standard horror shenanigans begin, with your usual demonic possessions, unspeakable death sequences and setups for later instalments of the series. Atmosphere counts for a lot in horror movies, and it’s what makes Annabelle: Creation stand out even when it had everything run against it. Still, let’s not pretend that “better than expected” is anywhere close to objective enjoyment—In most ways, it’s a completely average horror film that will work best on fans of the genre and few others. This being said, it doesn’t quite give a convincing answer to why they’ve felt it necessary to stretch out a good horror movie over a four-film franchise so far.