James DeMonaco

  • This Is the Night (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2022) There’s plenty to admire in the idea of a filmmaker using the medium to deliver a semi-autobiographical period piece – it’s common enough in written fiction, but films are expensive enough to produce that it takes clout to be able to swing such a project. So, if writer-director James DeMonaco -fresh off the box-office returns of a few Purge movies- wants to take us back to 1982 Staten Island for a low-stake day-in-the-life coming-of-age family drama, the least we can do is being open-minded about it. Alas, there’s a limit to the amount of indulgence we can give to what This is the Night becomes. There is, certainly, a good sense of time and place to this take on May 28, 1982 – not so coincidentally the opening night of Rocky III, a cultural event which seems to bring the Italian-American borough to a frenzy. It’s against that landmark that the family drama is set, with overlapping stories about the male members of the Dedea family:  The youngest son has teen-movie issues with a crush and public humiliation; the older son has gender-conformity problems; and the father struggles to keep the mob at bay when his restaurant is in financial trouble. (The family also features a mom, played by Naomie Watts, but her only role is to be supportive of her elder son’s coming-out.)  This is not unpromising material, but various decisions made during the execution of This is the Night limit its effectiveness, starting with using such a milquetoast film as Rocky III as a cornerstone. Blending genres from silly implausible teen comedy to attempted sensitive trans-coming-out drama (in 1982 – but this film is hardly unique in imposing modern sensibilities to period pieces) doesn’t work on a tonal level, let alone confronted with the triumphant machismo of the milieu in which the story takes place. The movie’s screenwriting is often more puzzling than effective, with implausible scenes building on top of each other until there’s no mistaking DeMonaco’s overwhelming contrivances. Putting it bluntly, there are plenty of examples to show that while DeMonaco can deliver a commercial horror script, he doesn’t have the subtlety, sensitivity or wit to carry out something that doesn’t rest on a wildly implausible premise and a very indulgent teenage audience. But, hey, Frank Grillo gets to beat up a guy in the course of a single night so, at least, This is the Night isn’t too far away from DeMonaco’s Purge comfort zone. It isn’t a terrible film, but it fails at being good and ends up somewhere in suspicious mediocrity. There’s a much better movie to be made out of many of the bits and pieces brought together here, but it’s not going to come from DeMonaco himself.

  • The Purge: Anarchy (2014)

    The Purge: Anarchy (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2015) Even after two movies in which to explain themselves, I still think that the very premise of The Purge series is nonsensical, perhaps even moronic.  Twenty-hours of unpunishable violence?  Yeah, I’m sure that’s going to solve problems.  Still, even the least impressed reviewers will admit that The Purge: Anarchy goes much farther in fulfilling its ambitions than its prequel: Writer/Director James DeMonaco at least has the guts to try something more challenging.  While the first film was a glorified home-invasion horror movie, the sequel is a pure thriller, much of it spent running in order to avoid the violence of The Purge.  Carmen Ejogo and Zoe Soul make for a compelling mother-daughter pair of protagonists stuck in a bad situation.  Still, they can’t do much to raise the level of a film content in hitting the same targets with unsubtle bluntness.  Its attempts at social conscience (in acknowledging the The Purge weeds out the weak to the benefit of the powerful) don’t seem particularly well-developed, once again mistreating a high-possibilities premise into nothing much more than a pretext for ludicrous suspense.  While The Purge: Anarchy works on a basic thrill-machine level, it quickly becomes frustrating as soon as we have time to start asking questions.

  • The Purge (2013)

    The Purge (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2013) I hate it when an intriguing premise ends up leading to a strictly routine result.  While The Purge‘s premise is nonsensical (“Let’s allow all crime for the next 12 hours!  That’ll be sure to solve some problems rather than create more!”), it’s different enough to demand attention.  Unfortunately, the premise merely leads to a standard home-invasion thriller, as forced as it is dull.  I suppose I should be impressed by the way the big premise leads to a single-location low-budget movie with a small cast, but the lack of connection between the vast ambitions and narrative possibilities of The Purge‘s imagined future and the ordinary thriller that it expresses.  Big ideas about animalistic urges, fascist states, retribution and repercussions are hardly glanced in a script that doesn’t quite know what to do with what it has at its disposal.  Execution-wise, Ethan Hawke is once again wasted in a role that could have suited a multitude of other actors, while writer/director James DeMonaco doesn’t do much better as a director than as a screenwriter: The Purge is filled with sequences that could have been quite a bit better, had there been a bigger budget or a better imagination at hand.  Maybe someone will re-make it in a decade or two, and we’ll see a better take on the premise.