Intelligent Apes

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes deserves summer blockbuster status

In a time when most action movies seem to have no heart, soul or intelligence, leave it to the one that features talking apes as its central characters to show everybody else how it’s done.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, much like its predecessor, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, is no mere attempt to simply cash in on nostalgia for the Charlton Heston original. (We all agree that the Tim Burton remake didn’t happen.) Thanks to the advances in performance-capture technology and the consistently amazing performances of Andy Serkis, the new films are deeper, richer and more thought-provoking than you might imagine.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes contains plenty of heart-racing action, but for once that is in service of a compelling story.

Dawn takes place 10 years after the events of Rise, and the vast majority of the world’s human population has been wiped out thanks to a simian flu epidemic. Meanwhile, a large contingent of apes, led by Caesar (Serkis), has developed quite the advanced society in the wilderness north of San Francisco.

When humans struggling to survive in the city stumble upon the colony in their search for alternate power sources, both sides instantly become wary and distrustful of the other. And once that fuse is lit, neither side is capable of putting it out, no matter how much cooler heads try to prevail.

What performance capture accomplishes that the previous iterations of Planet of the Apes couldn’t is allowing audiences to completely believe in the ability of apes to communicate on a variety of levels. And because it’s so easy to do so, that allows us to invest in their relationships, which is crucial for selling various plot points.

Director Matt Reeves and the trio of writers also do well in that they don’t turn the film into an “us vs. them” scenario. They take pains to show that the two sides could co-exist peacefully were it not for a select few who ignore the common good and react irrationally, whether out of fear, anger or other negative emotions.

And because neither side is all good or all bad, the action scenes offer an intriguing tension. We can see that war is inevitable, and yet rather than bloodlust, there’s only hope that the battles can be stopped before they go too far.

The nuances of performance capture can make it easy to dismiss the contributions of the actors who bring the apes to life. But Serkis, Toby Kebbell, Judy Greer and others deliver performances that are just as good, if not better, as those who get to play humans.

Speaking of, Jason Clarke, Keri Russell, Gary Oldman and Kodi Smit-McPhee all make for compelling human characters. It would be easy to overplay scenes in a movie like this, but they collectively keep the movie grounded emotionally.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes contains plenty of heart-racing action, but for once that is in service of a compelling story instead of covering for the lack of one. Combine that with a slew of great performances and you have a summer blockbuster that actually deserves to be one.

Caesar (Andy Serkis) is the leader of the apes in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Photo courtesy of WETA and Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation

Caesar (Andy Serkis) is the leader of the apes in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.

Movie Review

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is better than the first but not by much

Five Nights at Freddy's 2

Blumhouse

Five Nights at Freddy's 2

Blumhouse Productions first made their name with the Paranormal Activity series, establishing themselves as a leader in the horror genre thanks to their relatively cheap yet effective movies. In recent years, they’ve added on “soft” horror films likeM3GAN and Five Nights at Freddy’s to draw in a younger audience, with both films becoming so successful that each was quickly given a sequel.

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 finds Mike (Josh Hutcherson) and his sister Abby (Piper Rubio) still recovering from the events of the first film, with Abby particularly missing her “friends.” Those friends just so happen to be the souls of murdered children who inhabit animatronic characters at the long-defunct Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, children who were abducted and killed by William Afton (Matthew Lillard).

A new threat emerges at another Freddy Fazbear’s location in the form of Charlotte, another murdered child who inhabits a creepy large marionette. Mike, distracted by a possible romance with Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail), fails to keep track of Abby, who makes her way to the old pizzeria and inadvertently unleashes Charlotte and her minions on the surrounding town.

Directed by Emma Tammi and written by Scott Cawthon (who also created the video game on which the series is based), the film tries to mix together goofy elements with intense scenes. One particular sequence, in which the security guard for Freddy Fazbear’s lets a group of ghost hunters onto the property, toes the line between soft and hard horror. That and a few others show the potential that the filmmakers had if they had stuck to their guns.

Unfortunately, more often than not they either soft-pedal things that would normally be horrific, or can’t figure out how to properly stage scenes. The sight of animatronic robots wreaking havoc is one that is simultaneously frightening and laughable, and the filmmakers never seem to find the right balance in tone. Every step in the direction of making a truly scary horror film is undercut by another in which the robots fail to live up to their promise.

It doesn’t help that Cawthon gives the cast some extremely wooden dialogue, lines that none of the actors can elevate. What may work in a video game format comes off as stilted when said by actors in a live-action film. The story also loses momentum quickly after the first half hour or so, with Cawthon seemingly content to just have characters move from place to place with no sense of connection between any of the scenes.

Hutcherson (The Hunger Games series), after being the true lead of the first film, is given very little to do in this film, and his effort is equal to his character’s arc. The same goes for Lail, whose character seems to be shoehorned into the story. Rubio is called upon to carry the load for a lot of the movie, and the teenager is not quite up to the task. A brief appearance by Skeet Ulrich seems to be a blatant appeal to Scream fans, but he and Lillard only underscore how limited this film is compared to that franchise.

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is better than the first film, but not by much. The filmmakers do a decent job of making the new marionette character into a great villain, but they fail to capitalize on its inherent creepiness. Instead, they fall back on less effective elements, ensuring that the film will be forgettable for anyone other than hardcore Freddy fans.

---

Five Nights at Freddy's 2 opens in theaters on December 5.

Loading...