The Chamber

Director: Ben Parker
Writer: Ben Parker
Producers: Jen Handorf, Paul Higgins
Cast: Charlotte Salt, Johannes Kuhnke, Christian Hillborg, Elliot Levey
Country: UK
Year of release: 2017
Reviewed from: preview screening
Website: www.facebook.com/TheChamberMovie

The premise of The Chamber is beautifully simple: four people trapped in a mini-submarine. Water is seeping in, time is running out. It’s a scaled down Lifeboat with a ticking clock. It’s handled very well and is a cracking good tale founded on confident direction and a quartet of solidly impressive performances.

The pilot is Mats (Johannes Kuhnke), an experienced Swede working as part of the international crew on a South Korean vessel. The boat is near North Korea, just on the edge of international waters. The submarine, the Aurora, is a beat-up, third-hand old tin can. That seems reasonable. Brand new mini-subs are not cheap. Get a reconditioned one.

His three passengers are US Special Ops agents who have been winched onto the shop from a helicopter. The British Captain (David Horovitch, whose career stretches back to an episode of The New Avengers) has to give them what they want for political reasons that neither Mats nor the audience are privy to, and which frankly don’t matter. The important thing is that the Aurora, which normally carries two people, goes down below the waves at very short notice, with four people on board, one of whom has no idea where he’s going, what he’s doing or why. And the other three would prefer to keep it that way.

Of course what the Yanks are looking for is something American which shouldn’t be this close to North Korea. When they find it, they blow it up. And because they don’t retreat far enough away, and because the Aurora is an old underwater jalopy, this puts them in a bad situation.

Good news: the Aurora is in one piece. Bad news: the sub is upside-down. Good news: they’re all still alive. Bad news: one of the crew has been badly injured. Good news: they are only 300m down. Bad news: they have no way to contact the mother vessel. Good news: they have plenty of air. Bad news: water is leaking in. Good news: there are evac suits on board. Bad news: there are only two.

Yeah, that’s pretty much the balance sheet right there.

The lead Special Ops agent is Red (Charlotte Salt: Casualty, The Hoarder), who is a serious, no-nonsense operative, utterly dedicated to her work. The mission comes first. End of. The other two are Denholm (Elliot Levey: Florence Foster Jenkins), a quiet, studious, techie guy and Andy (Christian Hillborg: The Bridge), a more aggressive, intolerant type who nonetheless has an emotional core because he’s the only one of the four with a child, whom he obviously wants to see again.

Over the next hour or so, the sub’s crew explore their options. Not in a calm, let’s-think-about-this sort of way but in an understandably tense, anxious and at times violent way. All the while, the water is steadily rising, the cruellest and most terrifying of ticking clocks.

Despite having played at both Frightfest and Grimmfest, The Chamber is not obviously a horror movie, though it is very much being marketed as one. Don’t get me wrong, it’s scary because these four people are pretty much guaranteed to drown, or possibly die from the bends in an escape attempt, and that’s assuming they don’t kill each other first. But it’s the tension, rather than the fear, which underlies the story and, marketing aside, I would have classed this as a thriller. But it’s being sold as a British horror film – and it will certainly keep horror film fans happy – so onto the master list it goes.

Ben Parker, who made an equally tense horror short called The Shifter in 2011, does a frankly terrific job of keeping the viewer’s attention despite the limited cast and single location, evidently aided by a top crew. Byron Broadbent (Basement, Resurrecting ‘The Street Walker’) and Greg Shaw  (much TV comedy including Summer in Transylvania and Sorry, I’ve Got No Head) are jointly credited with production design and I suspect their work will shine in the Making Of when this hits DVD. The sheer practicalities of creating a cramped, flooded set that allows enough movement of actors and camera boggles my mind. You can’t have fly-away walls if it’s waist-deep in water, so how was it done?

Props also to cinematographer Benjamin Pritchard (The Ghoul) who does a corking job on lighting the set from believable light sources. And Will Gilbey’s editing should win some sort of award. Once they’re underwater, I think the film proceeds in pretty much real time. I’m struggling to think whether there were any ellipses or lacunae in the narrative, but it doesn’t really matter because the point is that the water keeps rising inexorably and it all fits together. Gilbey is a very experienced horror cutter of course, having also edited The Tapes, The Borderlands and A Lonely Place to Die (which he co-wrote with his brother).

The Chamber was shot in Cardiff in May 2015 with Lottery funding from Ffilm Cymru Wales. It premiered at Frightfest in August 2016 with a UK theatrical release in March 2017.

One final name I must mention is the composer. I rarely discuss film soundtracks on account of having no musical knowledge (or ear) but it’s very much worth noting that this film’s cracking score is by James Dean Bradfield. I’m a big fan of the Manic Street Preachers and he doesn’t disappoint as he joins the list of pop stars who have scored British horror films.

Tense, taught and ultimately terrifying, The Chamber is definitely worth seeking out.

MJS rating: A-

Octopus

Director: John Eyres
Writer: Michael D Weiss
Producer: David Verod, Danny Lerner, Boaz Davidson
Cast: Jay Harrington, Ravil Issyanov, David Beecroft, Carolyn Lowery
Year of release: 2000
Country: USA
Reviewed from: UK DVD (Hollywood DVD)

Nu Image are very much the Ronson’s Woodseal of film production companies: their movies do exactly what it says on the tin. Hence there are spiders (well, a spider) in Spiders, a crocodile in Crocodile and - quelle surprise - a bloody great octopus in Octopus (and for those of you still confused, there is of course Spiders 2, Crocodile 2 and Octopus 2).

After a prologue in which a Russian nuclear submarine is sunk by a US sub off the coast of Cuba, Octopus leaps forward a few decades. Terrorists (well, a terrorist) attack the US embassy in Sofia for no more reason than Nu Image have a studio in Bulgaria so it’s not far to carry the cameras (and it’s easier than trying to find bits of Sofia that might pass for other cities). This is the evil Casper (Ravil Issyanov: The Omega Code, Doomsdayer, Arachnid) who is captured by handsome young CIA agent Roy Turner (Jay Harrington from the US remake of Coupling).

Turner has to accompany Casper back to the States to face charges, and they are transported - for no obvious reason - on a submarine, commanded by Captain Shaw (daytime soap heart-throb David Beecroft, who had a small role in Creepshow 2). It’s really not clear why Casper isn’t simply being flown to the States, nor why a sub travelling from Sofia to the USA has to go via the waters around - guess where - Cuba. Also a passenger on the sub is sexy scientist Lisa Fincher (Carolyn Lowery: Candyman, Tales of the City). The only other discernable character is a crewman named Brickman, played by Ricco Ross (Aliens, Wishmaster) who also worked with director Eyres on Project Shadowchaser I and III.

Off Cuba, Casper somehow escapes (he shouldn’t be too hard to find - it’s a submarine for Heaven’s sake!) but worse than that, the ship is attacked by a giant octopus, presumably mutated by the spilled nuclear fuel from that old Russian sub, and sinks to the ocean floor. It must be said that the CGI octopus is not only pretty well-animated but also sensibly underused by Eyres, who has plenty of experience of this level of movie-making. That said, there is one deeply stupid sequence when a tentacle somehow gets inside the sub without depressurising the hull!

Eventually our heroes (and villain) escape in a mini-sub and are picked up by a passing luxury ocean liner which is promptly hijacked by Casper’s associates, who have come looking for him. But the octopus which they thought had been destroyed by the sub’s self-destruct mechanism is still around and rises to the surface.

Let’s be honest, Octopus - like most Nu Image films - is pure B-movie nonsense from start to finish. Characters are paper-thin, effects are adequate, the script (by Michael D Weiss, who subsequently worked on the Jackie Chan/Steve Coogan Around the World in 80 Days) makes no sense whatsoever. But Nu Image films are also unpretentious and fun, suitable for a late-night screening with one’s brain in neutral. There are plenty of better films than Octopus, but there are also many, many films which, despite huge budgets, name directors and stellar casts, are far, far worse.

It’s called Octopus - it’s a movie about a giant octopus. You were expecting perhaps something else?

MJS rating: C+