More Jonathan Rhys Meyers Horror
by Kristin Battestella
Let's have a birthday supper with two more genre bending pictures featuring Jonathan Rhys Meyers! Unfortunately, the horrors here do a disservice to the stars – to say the least.
A Mixed Bag
6 Souls – This international production originally titled Shelter starring doctor Julianne Moore (The End of the Affair) and patient Jonathan Rhys Meyers (The Tudors) was originally released in 2010 before this 2013 US re-branding, which already doesn't bode well. After a tense hearing explaining multiple personality disorder as a fake fad defense, our psychologist Cara is on a new case at the behest of her colleague father. The wheelchair bound Johnny with a southern accent answers her questions before scratching, growling, color blind changes, and no wheelchair required inexplicable. Tearful recountings, creepy sores, and vomitings increase, but the x-rays look like two different people and the high school history doesn't gel. Occult symbols, ritual murder, Appalachia magic, and religious undercurrents are apparent early, yet Cara continues to pursue the psychological. Spooky flashes and dream scares break her point of view, and backstory of her husband's murder on Christmas feels forced amid the cool babysitter uncle banter. All the family elements seem unnecessary; doctor dad keeps pushing Cara to prove her motivation and it would be better if she was alone. The psychology interrogations are a tense who is who with angry alters and who's going to blink first chilling. Unfortunately, the medical treatment is fast and loose, and local superstitions, iron nails to ward off evil, and who does or doesn't wear a cross don't get enough attention. JRM's personality changes are well done amid gory discoveries and satanic possibilities, and thankfully we mostly hear rather than see the bone cracking transformations. The one on one scenes are best, yet they don't get us any closer to the root source and Doctor Cara actually doesn't seem very good at her job? Her daughter is a plot device to advance the science versus god when our supposedly religious doctor spends too much time on a medical solution when it's clear to the frustrated audience she is totally missing the demonic at work. We wonder why the authorities weren't involved sooner because she continually oversteps her medical bounds and makes the situation worse. Religious mothers and granny witches take too long to get to the backwoods backstory, with intercut rituals and over the phone info dumps making Cara look stupid alongside one step behind detectives and repeated road trips. The freaky is good when it happens, but so much time is wasted on cryptic ominous that it makes viewers question if there is another version of this left on the cutting room floor. Sepia toned back and forth faith versus faithless cures or curses are confusing with technological audio and visual ease advancing revelations when the characters should be experiencing the consequences directly. It's foolish that critical horror action happens while our doctor merely listens on the phone, muddling point of view and familial motivation and doing a disservice to the emotional, chilling leads. Hospital versus witch doctor choices wait while phone contrivances allow for more driving with in-world hop, skip, jump convenience on top of too many characters and plot detours when we should have focused on the psychosis versus religion twofer. The sacrificial action, influenza timeline, and twists upon twists unravel, descending into wooded chases instead of any scientific or spiritual resolution.
It's Bad
Operation Blood Hunt – Louis Mandylor (My Big Fat Greek Wedding) directs and stars in this 2024 action horror lark featuring Jonathan Rhys Meyers amid vampires, werewolves, and World War II South Pacific incomprehensible. The brief 1928 opening has a unique black and white scheme with stylish hints of color and yellow glows, but the subsequent modern de-saturated drone photography does not set the period mood– and it only gets worse from there. The initial werewolf shock is actually well done, however it's premature to reveal the wolf in the first five minutes. Location changes and onscreen notations telling us it's 1945 London jar with hamfisted contemporary dialogue. Fedora wearing, Bogarting it up JRM is hammy yet suave amid wooden deliveries, Kung Fu strobe, and confusing direction that make the cast seem like they are in different scenes. There are pieces of everything here from Dracula to Kong: Skull Island, and with the modern metal music and cool silver crossbows, they could have tossed in time travel and it wouldn't be out of place. Overlong, obnoxious banter introduces try hard people a half hour in with freeze frame titles while they jump out of a plane: casanova, tracker, assassin, spy, sharpshooter, veteran, supernatural specialist, gambler. None of this preposterous can be taken seriously largely thanks to the World War II trappings – visualized only by the period helmets that are too big and fall down over the actors' eyes. The perplexing Wikipedia summary reads like a novel, and JRM's vampire bar with the cool black and white flashbacks look like they're from another movie. Why is all this jammed into one ninety-four minutes when it could have been contemporary set? Werewolf slices and slashes are too few and far between, and it all should have been from the village's perspective where shaman rituals and animal curses give the asshole intruders what they deserve. The bad vampire wants to get to the North Pole, and I can't imagine how anyone in this movie kept a straight face. Attempted dramatic moments, deaths, and dire radio calls are inadvertently bemusing thanks to a contemporary edgy ballad. Ironically, a woman's arms being ripped off by the werewolf is another good effect, but we don't get to the hairy action, silver bullets, and curse mythology explanations until the final twenty minutes. Blaming the native village history feels racist, and intercutting the mercenary island action with London explanations that it's all about hidden gold and not the monsters adds more messy. But hey, maybe every film needs a naked woman who is clearly wearing a flesh tone tank top yet is still treated as if she is naked. JRM is a vampire who's been listening to everything the entire time, and a racist coda inviting them to Egypt to battle mummies leaves it open for a sequel, lololol. I can't believe I watched this whole thing!
