Relax, Because While the Films Are New, the Ground Is Familiar

Who was it that said that fictional narratives could be boiled down to seven plots? The journalist and author Christopher Booker wrote a book about them in 2004, but I remember hearing the magic number in college a good two decades before that. The author Joseph Campbell touched upon the commonality of mythic stories in his book “The Hero With A Thousand Faces,” but there already were scholarly tracts in the 19th century arguing on behalf of a limited number of “dramatic situations.” Bill Shakespeare, as the actor Mickey Rooney supposedly dubbed him, might have had something to say on the matter during the course of his creative life.All of which came to mind recently as I sat down to take in a handful of genre films — partly because they came recommended by reliable parties, and mostly because there are few things more rewarding than an artist putting a new beat on a tried-and-true motif. Take into account the variations on the boy-meets-girl theme: Adding up the good ones requires more fingers and toes than any one person possesses.When I was told that “Lord of Misrule,” recently released as a view-on-demand option on any number of streaming platforms, was a proud addition to the folk horror canon, I parted with my hard-earned money. “Folk horror” is its own peculiar niche, one that trades in traditions and legends that, by and large, predate the Industrial Revolution. The quintessential example of the genre is “The Wicker Man” (1973), in which an isolated outpost of paganism does its best to fend off the modern world.That cult mainstay was preceded by “Eye of the Devil” (1966), an unheralded thriller starring David Niven and Deborah Kerr, and topped by “Kill List” (2011), director Ben Wheatley’s grim take on PTSD, murder for hire, and witches in the woods. The blessing and the curse of “Lord of Misrule” is how dutifully it follows on these precedents. The trappings of the film will strike a chord; the plot muffles its resonance.Directed by William Brent Bell from a screenplay by Tom de Ville, “Lord of Misrule” is centered on Rebecca Holland (Tuppence Middleton from “Downton Abbey”), a vicar recently appointed to a small rural outpost. On the evening of the annual harvest fair, Holland’s daughter goes missing. Where, oh where can Grace (Evie Templeton) have gone, and what do those dotty British marms and amiable barkeeps know about it?“Lord of Misrule” is a handsome movie — the cinematography and production design are top of the line — and the cast is game, particularly Ms. Middleton and Ralph Ineson, whose Yorkshire accent is put to scarifying use. Mr. Bell directs with suitable understatement, but Mr. de Ville’s plot contents itself with spinning the wheels of “The Wicker Man” — which, for all its considerable faults, is at least deeply eccentric.Georgina Campbell, Mark Rowley, and Eamon Farren in ‘T.I.M.’ Via Brainstorm Media“T.I.M.,” the debut feature by director Spencer Brown, also treads familiar ground — basically the core story set down by Mary Shelley more than two centuries ago, in “Frankenstein.” With recent and seemingly unstoppable advances in technology, filmmakers have been poaching upon the trepidation many of us feel about AI. Last year’s “M3GAN” came out of the box looking like a schlocky variation on the science-going-too-far theme, but the picture proved itself a sleek and smart monster movie. “T.I.M.” is essentially the same story, but more modest in scope and scale. Abi (Georgina Cambell) is the new prosthetics engineer at Integrate Robotics, a high tech firm with offices situated in the English countryside, far from the maddening crowd. Madness does intrude, of course, after Abi’s boss Dewson (Nathaniel Parker) delivers a gift to her smart home, a technologically integrated manservant, or T.I.M. All employees are required to have one of the company’s chief products. Abi’s husband Paul (Mark Rowley) isn’t happy about the life-size robot, cunningly portrayed by Eamon Farren.Forget T.I.M. having access to the couple’s locations, bank accounts, search histories, passwords, music preferences, and whatever other information can be culled from their technological accessories: Slowly and oh, so surely, T.I.M. begins to overstep his programming, particularly when he notices that Abi is, you know, a beautiful woman. When T.I.M. learns that Mark and Abi are in the process of getting over a bump in their marriage, he uses the considerable means at his disposal to retain its bumpiness.For those who worry about the promiscuous dispersal of personal data, “T.I.M.” will strike a nerve. The script that Mr. Brown has written with the novelist Sarah Nowett is conventional in its trajectory — the movie’s denouement, especially, is a been-there-done-that variation on “Wait Until Dark” (1967) — but pay attention to the particulars of the story as they apply to the technological conveniences to which we’ve all become inured. Mr. Brown’s movie is at its creepy best when touching on the everyday.Then there’s “Wanted Man,” a spin on the relatively new genre of old coot action hero. Having never been particularly drawn to any movie starring Dolph Lundgren, now 66 years old, I was going to take a pass until I noticed that his co-star was Kelsey Grammar. There have been odder on-screen couplings, but the idea of TV’s Frasier barrel-rolling through a landscape rife with Mexican drug cartels was altogether too tempting.Mr. Lundgren, who co-wrote and directed the picture, hit the big screen in 1985 as Ivan Drago, the Russian powerhouse who fought Rocky Balboa in “Rocky IV.” Some 40 years later, the action star lumbers through his paces with the good sense to pepper the script with geezer jokes and the decency not to bed the movie’s star witness, played here by Christina Villa. As for Mr. Grammar: He gets to gnash his teeth, shoot some ammo, and essay language that would startle anyone who ever wet their beak at a watering hole where everybody knows your name. Should that sound like your cup of bloodshed, “Wanted Man” won’t disappoint.

Relax, Because While the Films Are New, the Ground Is Familiar

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