Shadows of Willow Cabin review – secrets fester beneath horny hookup in low budget horror

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Two men’s romantic getaway turns creepy in a talky elevated chiller about escaping the binds of the past The best elevated horror makes a metaphor out of its writhing emotional subtext, but writer-director Joe Fria sadly can’t make the leap in this low-budget debut that undoubtedly has issues on its mind: repressed homosexuality, compulsive hookups and generational trauma. For much of the film the horror elements abruptly waylay what is otherwise a fraught two-handed gay drama. After meeting on the apps, middle-aged English teacher Albert (Bryan Bellomo) and lithe paramedic Devon (John Brodsky) are finally getting cosy at Willow Cabin – the former’s childhood summer getaway, named for a line in Twelfth Night. But secrets fester beneath this ostensibly horny hookup. In Albert’s case, he has a wife and son – and this spot, which once belonged to his uncle, is where he first explored the other side of his sexuality, with his cousin. As for Devon, Albert is the latest in a long line of unf...
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Beyond the Raging Sea review – cross-Atlantic rowing race likened to refugees’ ordeal

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Two endurance sailors’ perilous voyage is supposed to lead them to empathy for refugees’ plight – but they sure take their time discovering that

Here is a well-intentioned but brief, unsatisfying and oddly structured documentary, supposedly about refugees and boat people … although the refugees’ experiences are only discussed in the final 10 minutes or so. The film is actually about two Egyptians, Omar Nour and Omar Samra, energetic and prosperous young entrepreneurs who in 2017, in a spirit of adventure, took on the Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge, a well-established annual endurance event with a good safety record in which participants journey in a rowing boat across the Atlantic from La Gomera in the Canaries to Antigua; it is a 3,000-nautical-mile, 40-day ordeal in treacherous seas.

After just nine days, these two guys got into terrible difficulties, perhaps as a result of their relative inexperience. Their craft capsized and they had to be dragged out of the water by a Greek cargo ship, a chaotic rescue that itself could have gone fatally wrong. It all sounds very tense, although as the two men are here being interviewed after the event, we know that they survived. So what was the point of this fiasco? Did they put their families and friends through an agony of worry, just for a macho ego trip? Well, around an hour in to this 70-minute film they tell us that they now appreciate the sufferings of boat people and refugees – some of whose testimonies are duly tacked on to the end of the film.

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