'Cub'

In cinemas August 7th!
*WARNING: Contains Spoilers*

'Cub' concerns Sam, a member of a Belgian scout troop venturing out into the woods of France with three of the least responsible adults to ever lead a scout troop into almost certain death. They stray from the designated camping ground and into the forest lair of a mysterious man and a feral child in a mask made of tree bark, which is a fantastically creepy piece of design, who has an unclear connection to the main villain who has set an elaborate array of traps to capture and/or kill anyone who dares walk amongst the trees.

Sometimes a film just loses you and 'Cub' lost me at the end. Unfortunately this makes it very difficult to explain why I ultimately didn’t like the film without ruining the ending, so to compromise the next four paragraphs are spoiler free but beyond that I’m going to make no effort at all.

There’s a relatively typical “Lord of the Flies” dynamic amongst the kids with Sam being the token outsider with a nerdy friend who are picked on by a bully on a power trip. Sam seeks out and befriends the feral child at first, which has the potential to lead the plot in an interesting direction, but the story is basically just a ticking clock to the slaughter, which once it kicks in is inventive but feels inconsequential and is actually a little ridiculous in retrospect.

But the characters are all interesting with no weak link, not even the token girl. The villain, though criminally underdeveloped, is creepy and monstrous enough to be an engaging presence. The feral child is a really interesting thread, it not being clear if he exists separate to the killer or as some sort of minion of his since he clearly has only an animalistic level of intelligence, but unfortunately this isn’t explored nearly enough and doesn’t really amount to much of anything. Let’s get to the crux of the problem, I was on board to enjoy this film even though it did drag a little, the premise was solid, the maze of traps throughout the forest made for an interesting and tense situation, and the characters were all interesting in their own way, in fact you could easily have made a drama out of the group dynamic going on. But the end … oh man, the end ruined it.

Here’s the last spoiler free paragraph. This film was very strange for me. About halfway through it was looking at a strong 4 out of 5, strong characters, intriguing mystery, terrifying villain, some clever kills, and then it started to drag... It wasn’t clear where it was going, aside from nowhere fast, and it fell to a 3. And then the final scene ran and it was almost immediately a 2. As I’ve said, the film is pretty solid up until this disappointing ending, so if you want to risk it then consider this a 4 out of 4 rating with the caveat that I hate the end and I can’t explain why without completely ruining it for you. Consider this fair warning.

'Cub' ends in what is a predictably unresolved “dark” way that I’ve seen too many horror movies to have been surprised by, in fact I saw it coming almost immediately. Sam ends up in the lair of the villain who proceeds to try and manipulate him into killing the last of the grown ups, Jasmijn (the token girl), but instead he winds up in a fight to the death with the feral child, even though they were kind of friends before. This fight becomes blurred and difficult to follow as one of the children falls but we don’t know which one! The unknown victor emerges from the fight and is revealed to be the feral child but Jasmijn has escaped and our two villains hunt her down. But during the struggle she removes the feral childs mask to reveal it is Sam underneath, he then kills her and walks off with the other guy into the sunrise with no explanation of who they are or why they are there and I’m left feeling hollow and empty.

There’s a trend in horror movies that I really want to campaign against and that’s the belief that an ambiguous or bleak ending is somehow automatically clever, and it really really really isn’t. Now we can all agree that 'Rosemary’s Baby' is a classic and films like 'The Stepford Wives', 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' or the more recent 'Se7en' are all the smarter for their bleaker endings but somehow it has become acceptable to think that simply being obtuse or depressing makes you clever.

You know what else are good films, 'The Exorcist', 'The Shining', 'Jaws' and a host of other horror movies that have respect for story structure. Now you don’t need to spoon feed your audience all the details of your plot, but at the absolute bare minimum as a filmmaker you have to know the details of your plot yourself, and I’m not convinced stories like this aren’t just being abstract for abstractions sake. That doesn’t work for me. For one thing it’s lazy, and at this point in a horror film it’s cliché not clever, regardless of the message you think you are conveying.

I’ve said before that there’s a fine line between artistic and messy and there’s an even finer line between meaningful and nonsense. I get the impression the filmmakers thought they were saying something with this ending but they’ve ended up with a meaningless mess as far as I’m concerned. The horror genre is not the only culprit of this but it’s certainly the biggest offender.

But like I say, if you can get past this then the film is good and the “twist” for lack of a better term doesn’t really matter enough that knowing it has ruined the film for you, just be aware that the end is much ado about nothing. I really wanted to like this film but can’t bring myself to forgive the end.

Review by Kristian Mitchell-Dolby.

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