Daredevil: Cut Man

"Word's getting around..."

There's a certain logic to the structure of this second episode. Last episode introduced the characters and the format; this time we get a slower episode in which an injured Matt Murdoch is treated by a kindly person who agrees both to help him and be exposited at, although it isn't anywhere near as crudely obvious as all that, and Claire is allowed to be mildly disapproving of some of his ways.

Said exposition is balanced by the inevitable flashback to Matt's childhood, the loss of his sight in a terrible accident involving bizarre chemicals, and his close relationship with his poor and put-upon father Jack, a decent man at the mercy of organised crime who dies because of his principles. Matt shares those principles but, unlike his father, he refuses to be a victim. Still, these are early days. He's making dangerous rookie mistakes, and even his outfit is a "work in progress". We also explore more of his powers in the form of his superhuman hearing.

Meanwhile, Karen and Foggy bond through the happy medium of an alcohol-fuelled all-nighter. And who's that Battlin' Jack is fighting in flashback? Why, it's "Crusher" Creel, the Absorbing Man, so recently seen in Marvel's Agents of SHIELD.

All this is still just set-up, but it's very good indeed.

Daredevil: Into the Ring

I'm "I'm seeking forgiveness for what I am about to do..."

Daredevil was never a title I followed much as n my comics reading days, although I followed Ann Nocenti'scrun for a bit in the early '90s. I have, though, read Frank Miller's iconic work on the title and, much as Miller's star may have since fallen with his increasingly apparent right-wing obsessions and his inability to move beyond what Alan Moore has called "hard-boiled", his run on Daredevil is truly great and possibly the highlight of his career.

It's good, then, to see that Drew Goddard's 13 episode season, released all at once on Netflix, haas retained the mood and approach of Miller's work. This episode is a perfect introduction to a very likeable Matt Murdoch and Foggy through the eyes of a desperate Karen Page, but also an introduction to a world of incredible darkness. Hell's Kitchen is a realm of crime, despair and entropy where hope and goodness are stamped out by cruel, amoral cynicism. Corruption and conspiracy conspire against the innocent and the good. And yet, amazing just all this, like Philip Marlowe, stands Matt Murdoch, starting out as a vigilante but not quite Daredevil yet.

(Intetsstingly, dialogue shows him to have a more robust attitude to crime and the law than Foggy. Is this setting something up?)

We're introduced, significantly, to Matt's father Battlin' Jack, a huge influence in his life and no doubt to appear in many more flashbacks. There's only a slight reference to the wider Marvel Cinematic Universe,  as it's inferred that the destruction of New York in The Avengers afforded the opportunities now available to organised crime.

The pivotal scenes, I think, are of Karen staying with Matt. On the one hand it illustrates Matt's blindness- he never uses the light switches- and on the other it helps the two of them to bond. We are also introduced to Matt's ability to tell if someone is lying by their heartbeat. And towards the end we see him as a mysterious hero in black, fighting the bad guys in the dark and the pouring rain. 

We end with Karen being hired by Matt and Foggy, and the corruption behind her persecution is out in the open. Yet only the foot soldiers are punished; those truly behind it are untouched. We end with a boy being kidnapped by a gang; crime and cruelty go on, and Matt has a Sisyphean task.

The Cabin in the Woods (2012)

"That's not fair! I had zombies too!"

"Yes, you had "Zombies." But this is "Zombie Redneck Torture Family." Entirely separate thing. It's like the difference between an elephant and an elephant seal."

Oh dear, spoilers can be such an awkward issue, can't they? You see, usually I don't have to think about them too much. Most of the time I just review old telly or old films, or at least telly that's been officially broadcast, so the gloves are off, spoiler-wise. I mean, I'm usually kind enough to warn about spoilers if they're a particular issue, but that's rare. I suppose I've never really had to think about it much, and occasionally it's occurred to me that it's rather unclear whether I'm writing for people who haven't seen the thing in question, people who haven't, or both.

Thing is, this time it really does matter, and I'm going to have to come up with a spoiler policy for this review. This is a film on current release, it twists and turns like Lord Melchett's patented twisty-turny thing, and the whole point of it is to subvert all the tropes of the slasher movie. It's very, very Joss Whedon, and I'm not just saying that because Amy Acker is in it. So I think I'll have a go at a "no spoilers" policy just this one, at least up to a point, as it obviously depends on how strict a definition of spoilers you like to use. I do actually need something to talk about, after all. But I'll try and be no more spoilery that those film reviews in magazines and broadsheets. If you generally read those without fear of being spoiled, it's ok to read this. I mean, you might as well. You're three paragraphs in now.

Joss Whedon has said that this film is a "hate letter" to a genre which he loves but which has of late descended into the "torture porn" of Saw and its clones. Hence, this film has plenty of blood and gore, but it's old-fashioned, cheesy blood and gore, without the nasty sadism. It's also a bit of a deconstruction with the genre, playing with our expectations, which is particularly interesting. For one thing, as with all slasher movies, we, the audience, are forever trying to second guess who's going to get killed, which means we're deconstructing it as we watch. For another thing, the Scream saga already exists. But this is very different- much less self-consciously metatextual, deconstructing itself while leaving the fourth wall intact.

Without saying too much, let's say that this starts out as a typical slasher movie, with five potential victims staying at an isolated cabin being slowly picked off. We have the promiscuous and sexy Dana (male gaze alert, not that drew Goddard and Whedon are unaware of this), the sporty and muscular Curt (played by Chris "Thor" Hemsworth), "good girl" Jules, the bookish Holden, and the rather amusing stoner, Marty. There are certain expectations we have for these archetypes, and let's just say that these expectations do not go unaddressed.

I love this film. It's witty, it's playful, it plays with a much larger canvas than you expect, and when I say that it subverts your expectations I mean that in a far more wide-ranging way than you might expect. It is and isn't the kind of film you expect. It makes you think it's one thing, then pulls back to reveal it's something bigger, and then pulls back again to reveal it's even bigger, etc. And yet it remains firmly a slasher film throughout. Watch it. It's good.

A word of advice, though. I watched this at the splendid Phoenix Square Cinema in central Leicester, and had a couple of pints in the bar with a friend beforehand. I also took a pint of Boddingtons into the film with me for good measure, which you're allowed to do. Told you it was splendid. But the inevitable happened and my viewing of the film was interrupted by two embarrassed trips to the gents…