Michael Rooker

  • Hypothermia (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, October 2021) At a mere 72 minutes, you would think that creature horror feature Hypothermia wouldn’t waste your time… but that’s a generous assumption. There simply isn’t enough narrative to fill up even that time. Consider that it’s about a family ice-fishing trip and an aquatic monster (« climate change » blablabla) eating a few of the cast. That’s… it. Even the ending takes the rather unusual tack of allowing survivors to escape without taking care of the monster. (But not before a funny final speech in which the mom speaks to the monster as if it was listening intently.)  Michael Rooker stars, but it’s clearly just a paycheque for him, and the same sense of dutiful professionalism from writer-director James Felix McKenney permeates a film that never rises above the basics. I did, as a Canadian, like the idea of ice fishing as a setting… but I can tell you from personal experience that freezing for hours while watching a hole in the river ice is far more entertaining (because of the company) than watching Hypothermia.

  • Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986)

    Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, February 2020) Some movies are gritty, but Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is grimy. Shot with an ultra-low budget, it certainly looks like it, with terrible cinematography, a handful of actors, and a sordid subject matter overcompensating for a multitude of other issues. Michael Rooker shows up at the titular Henry, who—as announced—spends the movie killing people. If you squint, you may pretend that this is a character study — but really, it’s not much more than an exploitation film with an appetite for gore. I’ll give it something, though: the atmosphere of the movie, being this close to cinema-verité, can often be unnerving. Henry is painted as such an irremediable monster that everyone in the film can be (and becomes) a target. It doesn’t make for a pleasant viewing experience, but it’s more effective than most of the horror movies out there that play safely with familiar genre elements. I still don’t like Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer and would gladly never see it again, but it gets quite a bit of mileage out of limited means—for better or for worse.