Atomic View

Not all of these ladies are final girls, one or two are even questionable in their ‘heroism’ but they are some of my favourite females pitted against rather nasty odds, whether they succumb to them or not…THEY CHARISMATICALLY TRIED OK!

Joan Leaven (Nicola De Boer) - The Cube (1998)

Meek maths geekess Leaven goes on quite the arc after she wakes up one of a group of strangers who have no idea where or how they ended up in an ever moving set of complex and deadly trapped rooms. Once her talent for numbers proves pivotal to the groups escape efforts the shyness fades and the cockiness steps forth, for it to later give way to fight and self sacrifice.

Taryn White (Jennifer Rubin) - Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987)

A teen junkie held in a mental home, being terrorised in her sleep by good old Mr.Krueger. Yep her existence is painfully eighties so no wonder in her dreams she sports a flick knife, mohawk and pleather cut out fashions declaring ”In my dreams I’m beautiful and bad!”.

Becky (Tracy Arnold) - Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986)

Down trodden little sister of a sleaze, he introduces her to a brooding enigma known as Henry, problem is he is a raging sociopath and soon to be infamous serial killer. Poor poor Becky.

Ghost (Tatiana Maslany)- Ginger Snaps: Unleashed (2004)

Left to aimlessly annoy the girls and staff of a Canadian rehab centre where her mummy-looking burned grandmother is recovering, Ghost fills her days with lurking, comics and creepily fantasising about owning her very own she-werewolf-warrior to set upon her enemies, or those who she just happens to not like at the time.

Paquita Maria Sanchez (Diana Penalver) - Braindead (1992)

Tempestuous Paquita is stuck looking for love in fifties suburban New Zealand with little success. Well thank God the spirit world gets involved via her crazy old nana’s tarot reading and praise be for them prophesying a doomed love affair with a nerd who comes off like the local Norman Bates. Even an undead bitch of a mother in law won’t stop her getting her man. Altogether now: ”Your mother ate my dog!!!”

Alzbetka (Kristina Adamcova) - Little Otik/Otesánek (2000)

Proof why kids should be curious, this deadpan little Czech is wise beyond her years and whose bored suspicions saves lives. She does lure an old geezer to a rather grotesque demise, but then she is 10 and he does spend most of the film lusting after her.

Alice (A J Langer) - The People Under The Stairs (1991)

Abused and sheltered by her inbred parents, Alice is forced to hide her interactions with her deformed brothers that are kept under the stairs. So naturally when a wise cracking urban kid shows up dodging shotgun blasts from her bondage geared up father she steps up to help him escape. How she isn’t more of a twitching emotional wreck when we meet her I don’t know.

Catherine Martin (Brooke Smith) - Silence of the Lambs (1991)

Agent Starling may have been the main heroine but then Agent Starling didn’t have to spend her time in the bottom of a dank well waiting for her captor to flay and then wear her skin. Not your average victim with her dog hostage fight back.

Dawn (Jess Weixler) - Teeth (2007)

Hormones are a curse for this chaste teen struggling to stay pure, until a more pressing matter comes into play to make things suitably worst. Though as events unfold Kudos for finally harnessing the full potential of ‘Vagina Dentana’ young lady!

I remember reading in a fair few reviews of Donnie Darko that it was ‘David Lynch for teens’, over the years becoming more up to speed with Lynch’s work and reputation I take this comparison and bestow it on The Oregonian; for complete ambiguity and an Eraserhead-lite isolation.

First the good, or at least the tolerable; I was expecting far more of an assault on the senses from the opening of this meandering 80minutes but only managed to have my ears scratched with pleasant (or very unpleasant depending on how much drone you can stand and personally I am fan) tinny Americana sounds disrupting drawn out silences. The other plus is more self-serving in that this film has no story, in the slightest, so I am saved from raking over the plot which I hate doing in reviews.

The audio is the strongest part of the piece but with no strong visual or narrative (or anything for that matter) to underpin what you hear ends up a lone element in persuading to keep watching.

A girl, a car wreck, girl becomes bloody and traipses aimlessly occasionally remembering to yell for help, cue brief to the point of useless flash backs or forwards and happening upon the odd ineffectively sinister stranger. If this sounds in anyway intriguing it is unintentional on my part.

The decidedly seventies chic hand held camera work lends an almost Evil Dead in the daylight air (when a part possessed Ash similarly stumbles about with a bashed in head) to the wandering through a rainy woodland but never really adds enough in the way of paranoid suspense. Sadly I can’t even sing the praises of any of the performances, coming across as semi improvised it’s not so much the lack of dialogue that castrates the actors but the complete lack of having anything to do. They either appear out of nowhere, stopping briefly to loiter ‘’eerily’’, or if you’re our lead, walk, have flash backs/hallucinations/whatever and not so much wield a shotgun as inexplicably stumble upon one and proceed to ferry it around. Once the ”trippy” jump cuts kicked in I gave up all together, only watching to see if this gun was ever going to get used.

This is a very boring film; the makers mistaking dragging out one long non-event for patient dread. A pretty pointless exercise in vying for grimy cult status but by no means as out-there as it thinks it is.