October 18, 2024 • 36 mins
In this latest episode of Shelf Criticism, Stephen takes us on a wild ride with Rogue (2020), the Megan Fox-led action-thriller featuring a deadly lioness and a group of mercenaries fighting for survival in the African wilderness. Does the film manage to pull off the suspense and action, or does it fall prey to some seriously bad CGI? Stephen breaks down the film’s environmental message, its place in the animal-attack genre, and how it compares to other lion-centric thrillers like The Ghost and the Darkness. From bad accents to questionable character arcs, this episode has it all—topped off with a discussion of how well Megan Fox holds her own as a hardened mercenary. Plus, Stephen offers his usual deep dive into the DVD’s special features and cover art. Is this one worth adding to your shelf, or is it best left in the wild?
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
All hail the Queen.
(00:25):
Welcome to Shelf Criticism.
Meet your host, Stephen, a scholar of literature and film by day,
and by night, a cinematic archaeologist with a penchant for everything from
art house to popular to outright trash cinema.
Over the past quarter century, Stephen has amassed an eclectic DVD collection,
now occupying five shells of a Curia cabinet in his living room.
(00:47):
Each week, he bravely selects one of these titles to dissect,
drawing him as he unearths everything from obscure gems to cinematic missteps.
From blockbuster hits to forgotten flops, each film gets the critical once over it
probably doesn't deserve but will absolutely receive.
So grab your popcorn and settle in.
It's time to dive into the diverse world of Shelf Criticism.
(01:18):
Thank you one and all for tuning in, from you first timers to my fateful few.
Can you believe we're at episode twenty already?
I could not imagine when I started playing around with this idea at McKenzie's
behest that I would get this into it or have this many people want to hear me
wax intellectual about films that are just collecting dust in my DVD cabinet.
We're continuing the October theme blitz today with a film that maybe is just
(01:39):
barely brushing the edges of horror.
It certainly has elements of the genre in certain places, but if I had to
classify it, I think calling it an action flick would be more accurate.
Yet I had to include it because I was overdue an animal attack film,
and if you don't know why that's relevant, well you will be by episode's end.
This film has all the makings of a notoriously bad outing.
I can't seem to dig up any information on the budget,
(02:01):
never a good sign, but I think it's safe to say low budget is a fair label.
The film was direct to video and grossed just under 243k worldwide, so not quite a
runaway success.
It was filmed in just twenty two days. The film's lead is an actress who has in
years past been panned for acting, fair or otherwise.
And if there is a recurring theme for this episode, it's going to be how freaking
(02:23):
bad the CGI is.
It is putrid. Like I said, I can't see budget numbers, but if they spent more
than a hundred dollars and
maybe a few pizzas to feed the animators once or twice, they get ripped off.
And I'm talking Little Caesar's hot and ready cardboard pizza, not even the fine
cuisine of a Pizza Hut or a Domino's.
Is the film really that bad?
(02:43):
Does it completely lack any redeeming qualities?
Personally, I didn't hate it the first go-round, and this rewatch didn't change
my mind.
Now, I said I didn't hate it, mind you, not that it's the Citizen Kane of the spate
of twenty twenty films.
But either way, get your pith helmets and get ready to roar.
We're going on a safari.
Or more accurately, a black ops extraction with everyone's favorite
(03:04):
mercenary, Megan Fox.
Yeah, you heard that right.
Today's shelf pick is Rogue, the twenty twenty lion attack film,
not to be confused with the 2007 flick Rogue, which was instead crocodile attacks.
Except that there is also a random one of those in today's film, too.
I guess one animal isn't enough.
Looking at our shelf pick, I own the Blu-ray plus digital edition of this film,
(03:25):
which has a slip cover over the top, though both the print on it and the cover
underneath are identical.
Never really understood the purpose of a slip cover.
I think they're kind of a waste of cardboard and, you know, not very
environmentally friendly for that reason.
I get that it makes it look a little better when it sits on the shelf at the
store, but nonetheless, I'll just look at it like a dust jacket on a book, perhaps.
How about that?
(03:45):
So on our DVD front, it reads at the top from the director of Silent Hill
Revelation and then Megan Fox beneath.
She's the only actor to be billed and her face is featured prominently on the left
side of the case.
Throughout the film, she wears a dark navy or perhaps black cap with the NY
logo, the New York Yankees and a raised stitching that is also black or navy.
I swear I can never tell the difference between those two colors.
(04:07):
Seriously, sometimes I have to go outside and just hold up a T-shirt in the sunlight
to figure out which one it is.
At any rate, the NY is not present on the cover.
I guess some sort of deal was made with the Bronx Bombers Organization, but it
didn't include also being in the promotional material.
On the opposite side of Fox's face is a lion's head roaring with fangs bared.
Though only the snout, chin, mouth and eyes are really visible, you can also
clearly see it has a mane.
(04:28):
And that's an odd choice since the panthera leo causing all the carnage in
this film is actually a lioness.
I mean, it's really stressed that she's female and thematically a large portion
of the plot revolves around this as well.
So it's a curious choice.
You can also make out in the background the sketch of a savanna with some acacia
trees behind that and the background, a map of what I presume to be part of Africa.
(04:50):
What text I can see of the map is in Latin and I'm not even going to try to read that.
It's Greek to me.
It is interesting that the film is set in Africa and I'm putting that in air quotes
even though you can't see it.
Like so many films we have no distinct country has ever mentioned,
perhaps deliberately so.
It's just long stretches of unpopulated savanna, grass, cliffs, rivers,
the occasional herd of elephants trotting along.
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Nothing but wild untamed nature.
No, nevermind that Lagos Nigeria has a population of what like 8 million.
Apparently all of Africa is just jungle beneath the fox and the hound.
I mean, lion is the title of the film in bright red rogue.
The bottom of the letters stenciled savanna grass, which is a nice touch and
the tagline beneath when the hunter becomes the prey.
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The back has the same nondescript map in the upper right hand corner.
In the left, we see three of the mercs from left to right, Pata, Mike and Elijah,
if I'm not mistaken.
It's not like it matters.
The other merch are simply there to be offed by militants or shredded by lions.
Aside from Pata and Joey and to a lesser degree, Bo,
none of them really get any arc or pathos.
But beneath them is another shot of Megan Fox, this time decked out in her commando
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gear, lean back squatting and clutching a pistol.
To the right of them, there's that roaring lion again, and
I can still see his mane.
Seriously, why didn't they just put a lioness here?
Skewed to the right of the cover, we get another tagline.
The jungle can eat you alive in all caps and oddly no punctuation.
Would it have killed you to put a period?
The special features are listed below.
Commentary with co-writer, director, producer, MJ Bassett,
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co-writer, actor, Isabelle Bassett, and actor, Philip Winchester,
director's commentary, cast interviews, and trailer gallery.
Beneath that, we get that annoying blue banner that says includes digital copy
with a whole line from monitor to laptop to tablet to smartphone.
And then finally mercifully, we get the synopsis.
Took them long enough.
Megan Fox, Transformers franchise, tackles a thrilling new role as a battle hardened
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mercenary in this explosive action saga.
As team leader O'Hara, she leads a lively squad of soldiers on a daring mission,
rescue hostages from their captors in remote Africa.
But as the mission goes awry and the team is stranded, O'Hara's squad must face
a bloody, brutal encounter with a gang of rebels and
the horde of ravenous enraged lions they encounter.
(06:58):
Well, at least there isn't a bunch of fawning praise from the critics and
quotations.
You think perhaps they couldn't find any, but we'll get into that in a later segment.
This synopsis however is just frustrating on a number of levels.
Transformers franchise?
Fox was in two of them, but okay.
Remember the dust up after where she compared director Michael Bay to a certain
World War II era dictator?
Seriously, look it up.
(07:19):
Second, remote Africa?
I'm not gonna harp on it, but come on.
Third, why do they keep calling her O'Hara?
Everyone around her calls her by the diminutive of her first name, Samantha,
Sam, or Boss the entire time.
What really bugs me though are a couple of points that come after that.
The first I might excuse, hostages?
More like hostage.
Only one captured woman's father is footing the bill, and
(07:41):
when they find there are two other women in captivity, Sam, not O'Hara, but Sam,
makes it clear they aren't being paid to rescue them all.
She does eventually give in, but not before saying, and
I'm gonna clean this up a bit, if I effing die because I'm doing the right thing,
I'm gonna be so teed off.
I get that perhaps this is too much to go into in a simple cover copy, but
a hostage would have been more accurate at least.
(08:02):
Now that may be nitpicky, but I don't think my next gripe is.
A horde of ravenous enraged lions?
It's one lion.
One, uno, eintz.
Webster's defines a horde as a large group, multitude, number, etc., a mass or
a crowd, and the next definition is perhaps more accurate as to how it is attempted to
be used here, a moving pack or swarm of animals.
(08:24):
Nonetheless, I am almost 100% certain one lioness cannot make a horde.
Besides, it would be a pride, wouldn't it?
I know I can be pedantic about stuff, but I think my concerns are genuine here.
As this was a direct-to-video film, likely a lot of folks knew nothing about it.
Perhaps I'm being cynical, but it almost sounds like the use of that word horde,
the suggestion that there are numerous lions,
is meant to make it sound even more action-packed.
(08:46):
After all, the danger of a horde of lions has to be more bloody,
more intense, more spectacle, right?
How I came to own it.
And this is one of the newer additions to the DVD shelf.
I've noted before that this podcast will likely have an over-representation of
films from the early 2000s to mid-2010s, simply because that was the heyday of
DVD purchases for me and most others.
I do, however, have a pretty substantial collection of Blu-rays, but
(09:08):
even those start to dwindle towards the late 2010s, as the rise of digital makes
it so easy to simply hit purchase or rent on the screen and watch it immediately.
And by the way, I pretty much always hit purchase.
I figure what's the difference in $4 and $12?
If I like it, I'm gonna watch it again.
Hey, I never admitted to being exactly frugal, did I?
But there's still something old-fashioned to me.
(09:28):
If you read the end user license agreement, which literally no one does,
you'll know that digital purchases can disappear at any given moment for
a number of reasons, but the DVD is forever.
Besides, there's something about the tactile sensation,
the ability to hold a physical object in one's hand.
Also on those rare occasions where the internet goes down,
y'all streamers are going to be so bored, but I can just pop in a disk and kick back.
(09:50):
It's not like how I do use a Kindle app on my iPad to read some books here and
there, but I still prefer the actual paper and glue held in my hand.
As I've said before, I enjoy going to pawn shops or stores like bargain hunt and
rifling through the DVD bins to see what bizarre selections I can come across.
Incidentally, I made a trip to Dollar General the other day only to find their
DVDs were 50% off the already ridiculously low price.
(10:12):
I came home with four new entries for later episodes, none of which I'd ever
heard of, and I'm pretty sure none are gonna be any good, but I spent less than $10.
There are very few places now where you can even browse DVDs anymore.
I generally try to avoid Walmart at all costs.
I'm not knocking the store, just not the place I enjoy shopping in.
But I used to love diving into their discount DVD bins.
Last time I went in, there was no such creature.
(10:33):
Heck, they barely had any DVDs on the shelf.
Target, on the other hand, is still a reliable source to scour a good amount of
titles, and when you catch them on sale, you can get a heck of a deal.
Even they are starting to dial back their inventory, which disappoints me greatly,
but times change and old folks get left behind.
It's the way of the world, I get it.
But back in 2020, maybe 2021, I recall I was still wearing a mask in those dark
(10:54):
COVID days as I perused the store that somehow always leads me to buy $100 worth
of merchandise I hadn't intended to.
I never walk into that store with hitting up the DVD aisle, though, and
seeing what they're running on sale that week.
I came home with a few discs that day, not sure which ones exactly, but
I do remember when I saw a lion's head beside the foxes.
I thought animal attack.
Reading the back, I saw I was right, and it was on sale for a good price.
I'm sure it was under $10.
(11:15):
It included a digital copy.
So I was pretty sure I'm both psychologically and
physiologically unable to resist a purchase like that.
When we get into the critical reception, you know the last episode I said I was
just gonna stop speculating about critical response?
How I'm always surprised how far off I am when I'm just guessing.
Well, I'm not kidding you when I say you better sit down before you hear me
(11:35):
utter the next sentence.
Seriously, are you sitting?
I don't wanna cause any injuries.
The film holds a 67% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Two-thirds of critics had mostly positive things to say about it.
If you're now on the ground with a skinned knee or a head injury,
I take no responsibility.
I told you to sit down.
Now there's a strong caveat at work here though.
That is based off a meager 12 reviews.
(11:56):
To put this into context, in my previous episode I looked into Lords of Salem,
which was working with 66 reviews.
The episode prior, Van Helsing, had 225.
I dare say this isn't a representative sample size.
Being direct to video, I guess it didn't really entice enough critics to really
move the needle significantly one way or the other.
Plus, not to knock any of the critics, but
only two of the 12 had a top critic designation.
(12:19):
Some of the reviews held from places like Impulse Gamer, South China Morning Post,
Daily Dead, What to Watch, and a fellow named Dennis Schwartz reviewed it on
the Dennis Schwartz movie reviews.
Please understand, I'm again not being negative.
Heck, here I am just some random film scholar blathering away into a microphone
from obscure podcasts where I pontificate about films that have been released years
prior.
(12:39):
Who am I to judge?
I'm just saying, this isn't the rogue's gallery, no pun intended,
of heavy hitters we see for larger releases.
Metacritic simply says TBD,
which means they didn't even gather four reviews for it.
The one they did collect is also in Rotten Tomatoes,
Ellen E. Jones' take in The Guardian, which was mostly positive.
As for audiences, Rotten Tomatoes' popcorn meter drops to a paltry 38%,
(13:01):
and Metacritic's user reviews, and there's still a very low number of 27 here,
place it at a 4.7.
Suffice to say, this is one of those films where perhaps we need to ignore the
aggregators.
While at least one critic recognized for her thoughtful volume of work exists,
plus I really just like The Guardian as a source for film and global news,
let's have a gander at what Ellen E. Jones has to say.
(13:22):
She begins,
If hit Netflix documentary Tiger King had you championing the big cat cause,
here's the animal rights respecting action thriller you should watch next.
Transformers Megan Fox stars as Samantha O'Hara,
the gun-toting girl boss of a mercenary crew in South Africa,
who must retrieve a high-value hostage from a band of Islamic militants
cum ivory poachers.
(13:42):
It's a money-making mission, though, not a humanitarian one,
and any heroics are performed reluctantly.
See, Jones delivers mostly a summary here, but she's direct in saying hostage,
not making it plural, when the other two freed were just reluctantly along for
the ride and
one getting eaten by a crocodile out of nowhere.
She acknowledges Sam and her crew are in it for the Benjamins and not the
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mother-effing Teresa part of it, as one character will say in the film,
again, that I cleaned up slightly.
It's a more accurate, though admittedly less compelling summary of the film
overall. I get that.
Jones continues with her summary. The action rattles along at a decent pace,
punctuated by regular mauling deaths as Sam's utterly expendable crew hunker
down in an abandoned lion farm.
(14:24):
It's not just the local al-Shabaab cell that threatens their lives.
They're also being stalked by a lioness gone rogue.
See, only a mention of one lion,
only one lion.
Jones even calls her a lioness, revealing her gender.
Was it really that hard to accurately describe this film?
Likewise, does that description really make a viewer want to watch it less?
It's a direct-to-video film starring Megan Fox as a mercenary.
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Did you expect a summer blockbuster?
Jones goes on to say,
Clearly Fox v. Lion was intended to be Rogue's big dramatic showdown,
but the computer-generated imagery is so pathetic it barely registers.
A free augmented reality app could magic up more fearsome predators.
I cannot agree more.
The CGI here is awful, deplorable, excreable.
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I could keep going, but I'd have to break out my thesaurus.
Suffice to say, this is some of the worst CGI I have ever seen.
I have criticized the digital effects of some film recently,
from Stardust to Mirrors to Van Helsing,
but at least with all of them,
I gave them a pass for when they were created.
By this point, there is no reason any CGI should look this bad.
I've seen better special effects on the sci-fi channels 10 years earlier.
(15:27):
To the film's credit,
it does try to ensconce the lioness in shadows,
or cut away a lot and use close-ups to keep her hidden mostly from view,
but there are too many points where we see her full-on
and none of them are even remotely convincing.
Matter of fact, they're rather painful to watch.
Finally, Jones states,
rogue isn't offering nature documentary realism,
but director MJ Bassett is a former wildlife presenter
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whose interest in the South American grassland goes beyond mere backdrop.
This is explored through the conflict of Pata,
South African star Sissandeh Hena,
a Maasai tribesman turned al-Shabaab fighter turned mercenary.
Aside from the nondescript stereotypical portrayal of Africa,
Jones may be on to something here.
So often in Western media,
Africa is portrayed as a violent, scary place,
a holdover from those ideas of the dark continent over a century earlier.
(16:12):
Backwards ideas, I might add.
Pata's arc is not only the careful touch that adds humanity and nuance
to themes that could easily come off as dismissive
and perhaps even prejudice as done wrong.
While the aggressors who don't walk on four legs are mostly African nationals,
their leader, Zalam, we actually find out is a British expat,
which incidentally made me feel a lot better about his accent.
(16:32):
It bothered me to no end until they tossed out that little tidbit.
I know I focus on accents way too much.
Furthermore, though the militants are crusading under the guise of religion,
specifically Islam, they're later revealed to be in it only for the money.
They are poachers, smuggling ivory and lion hides for profit.
They've also kidnapped Aselia, the governor's daughter,
not because they want to barter for influence in the region,
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but rather because the governor is using his posturing as a conservationist
to cover the fact that he too is poaching.
We find out, in fact, that the lion farm where so much of the action
takes place is owned by said governor.
Each of these twists helps to add nuance and complexity
to the typical villain roles.
Rather than portraying the African militants as blind followers
of a perverted religious ideology, the film reveals that their motivations
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are purely financial.
They're not true terrorists in the traditional sense.
Instead, they use religion as a cover to line their own pockets
by smuggling ivory and lion hides.
Additionally, the film indicts not just the militants,
but also the British and presumably the Afrikaner government.
The governor, we learn, is himself involved in poaching.
And of course, the film also drives home the environmental message.
Poaching is bad, as if we should have to say this.
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What we're doing to nature is inexcusable,
as Bo laments about the lions.
It's justice if it takes us.
The things we've done to this world.
So much death.
(17:57):
These creatures were killed for what?
Medicine.
Medicine.
Magic charms.
I don't understand how anyone would want these animals dead
instead of alive.
For a belief a thousand years old.
(18:21):
I'm ashamed.
Which leads me to my take.
Bo's speech about the lion farm, how they're bred in captivity,
treated awfully, then killed, is simply too on the nose.
Mind you, it's not that I'm not in agreement.
I'm very passionate about conservation
and even more so perhaps about preserving threatened and endangered species.
I just didn't think it necessary to drive it home quite that hard.
The film's epilogue shows the following text.
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This story is fiction, but the facts are that in 2019
there were over 12,000 lions in farms.
Though this is legal, mostly they are being kept in appalling conditions
before being killed for their skins, bones, and other body parts
to supply traditional medicine markets.
Cubs are bred and used for petting zoos until too old to handle
before being shipped for slaughter or used in canned hunting.
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It is a disgrace and should be stopped.
M.J. Bassett.
Honestly, I don't even mind this.
In fact, I fully support it.
When a film tries to draw attention to an issue as important as this one,
I think we should perhaps make it more obvious.
But do so at the end, like this.
When you also start preaching and becoming didactic during the film,
it does become a detriment to the story.
Likewise, while the maternal and protective themes in Rogue are certainly important,
(19:26):
the filmmakers didn't exactly give us a chance to miss them.
The final dialogue exchange between Sam, Joey, and Tessa
essentially spoon-feed us this idea as Sam's protective instincts mirror the lionesses.
As much as I appreciate a good thematic connection,
this one felt like one of those tell-don't-show moments.
She wanted us to protect her cubs.
That's why she stayed behind and the rest of them left.
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She reminds me of someone I know.
It's as if the film assumed we wouldn't be able to figure it out on our own,
which ultimately detracts from the emotional resonance.
Sometimes subtlety is the best approach,
especially when the film's visual and narrative elements
already do a decent job of conveying the message.
In contrast to Sam's character arc, which is handled with more finesse,
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this final thematic beat just feels forced, as if it's shouting,
Get it? They're both trying to protect their cubs.
Trust me, we got it.
Sermonizing dialogue notwithstanding, the film is interesting visually.
All too common in films set in quote-unquote foreign lands,
particularly the Middle East, South America, or Africa,
Bassett bathes the daylight hours in a deep saturation of warm yellows and oranges,
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though in the sunsets the film instead is steeped in blues and grays.
And even the shaky cam works to some degree.
I still contend it's a bit overused, as it so often is,
but I can still understand the logic behind it.
I've certainly seen far more egregious uses of it.
They're just the right amount of Dutch angles and low-angle shots
to have the intended effect without overdoing it.
Director MJ Bassett understands the elements of horror,
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having directed such films as Death Watch, Silent Hill Revelation,
and some episodes of Ash vs. the Evil Dead.
There are certainly elements here, even though I contend this film is more action,
particularly the sequences where Tessa goes running through the house from room to room,
always trying to dodge members of the militia.
The horror elements are clearly at play.
The culmination where she smashes a would-be attacker's face with a hammer
as the blood splatter covers her face is something straight out of a slasher flick.
(21:21):
The low-angle shot of her out of context would make her look like the villain,
but this is the moment where she fights back,
something she says she's never done before, and it serves as empowerment instead.
Also kudos to the film for having her still have to deal with the repercussions of taking a life,
even in self-defense.
In short, I found a lot to enjoy about this second go-round with Rogue.
The CGI lioness, however, might just undercut it all.
(21:42):
As for my standout performance, well, with a lot of low-budget fare, the acting can be a problem,
yet nothing in this film made me stop and just shake my head,
ruining an actor's choice or wondering why the director let them get away with it.
I'd say it's at least competently acted overall, with nothing standing out as downright loathsome.
Perhaps Chloe is a bit too animated, but she gets eaten by a crocodile very early on,
and maybe that's why she was getting too annoying.
(22:03):
In Jones' review, she says, quote,
It's the contrast between Samantha's dead-eyed and plausibly groomed professionalism and the full-throated compassion
of the Al-Shabaab leader, Adam Deacon, that intrigues.
This is thanks mainly to an energetic performance from Deacon,
whom some will remember as the mainstay of British urban drama until his falling out with Kidult Hood's Noel Clark.
Fox is undoubtedly at the apex of its filmic food chain,
(22:26):
but it's those further down who are enabling it to function.
Now, I'm admittedly a bit of an Anglophile, big fan of British television,
a subscriber to Prime's BBC offering.
I still have no idea what half of this means.
Perhaps it's my fault for choosing a film review from The Guardian, which is a British publication,
but my choices were severely limited.
I have no idea what Kidult Hood is, though I can appreciate the portmanteau,
but I assume Deacon, who plays Zalam, is better known to Jones than he is to me.
(22:49):
He's not bad at all. He's one of the more noticeable performances,
but I don't know if I'd go as far as to say he steals the show.
The group of mercs, as well as the freed hostages, are, for the most part, just flat-out expendable.
Most of the mercs are wiped out during the first action sequence.
Really, it's Elijah, Joey, Pata, and Boe we're supposed to care about, as well as, of course, Tessa and Aselia.
Elijah gets sliced and diced by the lioness pretty quick,
(23:12):
so his whole I got your back speech from Sam earlier means very little now.
Joey winds up stumbling out of the whole frocus as a man who is going to have some scars, both figuratively and literally, but he's alive.
Still, despite his inexplicable penchant for singing the Backstreet Boys, I'm not sure I'm impressed with his acting.
As for Fox's, to use Jones's phrase, dead-eyed professionalism, I didn't really hate it.
Sam isn't exactly the most animated of characters, and she remains calm under pressure.
(23:37):
She rolls with every misstep, every failure, every encumbrance thrown at them,
as she's driven to first complete the job, but later to simply survive.
When she loses members of the team, particularly Elijah, but also others like Pata, you can tell it affects her, but it's subtle.
Sam isn't the type to weep openly or scream, why, melodramatically to the heavens. It's a muted performance, but it falls perfectly in line with who this character is.
(24:00):
We get a small backstory at one point, revealing she comes from a military family, went to a military school, enlisted as soon as she could, and this is all she knows, fighting and death.
It's an actual multi-layered performance that's quite impressive.
Fox's name is never one that comes up when discussing Masters of the Craft, and I'm not saying she should.
I just think maybe we shouldn't be so dismissive of her.
Jennifer's Body is an excellent film, and I will fight you if you say otherwise, verbally, of course.
(24:25):
Fox is great in that, but she is playing a vapid popular chick. And don't get me started on passion play.
What an utterly, unequivocally horrible film. But the one bright spot? Fox's performance.
The only emotion I felt other than boredom, insult, and misery from that film was deeply connected to how she handled her role in that.
So fine, let's be basic. She's the top build, only build as a matter of fact, but we're just going to give it to her. The standout performance goes to Megan Fox.
(24:51):
Just don't expect that much out of her and Jonah Hex.
For the cultural context, I'm going to talk a little bit about my research.
As an academic in the humanities, a lot of people's research often delves into incredibly specific territories.
My niche? Animal attack fiction, particularly between 1972 and 1983, roughly from the publication of Jaws to the release of Kujo on film.
(25:14):
It's a topic for a monograph that admittedly no one's asked for, but keeps me busy.
Since animal attack fiction is already a narrow genre, I also dabble in adversarial animals across the broader span of human storytelling.
Adversarial animals have been part of our stories for millennia.
Just look at the Epic of Gilgamesh, or the 12 Labors of Hercules. At least 10 of those labors involved animals.
I'd argue 11 if you count Laiden the Dragon.
(25:37):
I even consider cleaning the Augean stables in Animal Attack, given the legendary amounts of dung those immortal cattle produced.
Needless to say, my exploration of animal attack cinema starts with King Kong and stretches into the present day, which certainly includes films like Rogue.
And while I'm not fond of self-citation, I'd rather that than self-plagiarism.
So quick note, some of the points I make here were also mentioned in a guest appearance on the YouTube channel Buddies with Film Degrees,
(26:02):
where I discuss the 2022 film Beast, and I will provide a link on the website for those who are interested.
Though there are occasional outliers like the birds in 1963 or 1990s arachnophobia, the post-WWII trends in animal attack fiction are pretty clear.
The nuclear age and the Cold War brought about the atomic creature features of the 1950s.
Films like The Beast from 10,000 Fathoms, Tarantula! With an exclamation point, those dominated this era.
(26:28):
The films gradually fizzled out as the decade ended, and after a lull, the genre resurged in the early 70s.
A lot of that was driven by a wave of cynical cash grabs in the wake of Jaws, but unlike Steven Spielberg's masterpiece,
many of these films have a distinct environmental message, classified as revenge of nature films quite often.
Then in the late 1990s, starting with Anaconda in 97, we saw a rise of a more tongue-in-cheek approach.
(26:52):
Self-aware films with overblown plots, sly winks at the camera.
Think Deep Blue Sea or Lake Placid, and let's not forget about the two Meg films currently swimming around.
The stakes are low, but the spectacle is high.
Of course, the Sharknado franchise and the ensuing wave of sci-fi films would take this trend to absurd new heights.
Absurd new depths, perhaps we should say.
(27:14):
And unlike previous eras, this one shows no signs of slowing down.
What we are seeing lately, though, is a resurgence of a more serious, white-knuckled, suspense-driven film that raises the stakes again.
Kral is a standout example, as is the aforementioned Beast.
Rogue also tries to fit into this category, even if its CGI lioness veers unintentionally towards humor.
Aside from dividing the films and novels up into eras, I also find it useful to group the entries into categories of the actual attacking animal.
(27:41):
They're the usual suspects. Snakes, crocodilians, stinging insects, bears.
There are plenty of outlandish ones as well.
You'd be surprised how many rabbit attack tales there are, and I'm not just talking Monty Python.
Interestingly enough, when it comes to lions, you'd think there'd be quite a bit.
After all, they're part of the rogue's gallery of Wizard of Oz, right?
Lions and tigers and bears, oh my.
However, with exceptions like Hercules and the Nemean Lion, most of the time, lions have enjoyed a positive portrayal.
(28:07):
They're associated with kings, they're regal beasts.
Even Shakespeare turns Ovid's tale of Pyramus and Thisbe on its head in A Midsummer Night's Dream,
including the lion and the rude mechanic's humorously inept portrayal,
even if Bottom didn't have his chance to play him gently as any sucking dove.
The Cowardly Lion subverted our expectations.
Films like 1981's White Lion and Disney's The Lion King put the lions as the protagonists.
(28:29):
Well, they're scar, but the rest of them.
There are a handful of lion attack films, however.
Oddly enough, 1981 gave us two, Roar and Savage Harvest, on top of White Lion with its positive portrayals.
What was it with lions in 1981?
Another outlier is 1996's Ghost in the Darkness, based on the Maneaters of Savo.
Then there's 2007's Prey, and then of course Rogue and Beast that we've already mentioned.
(28:52):
I may have missed a couple, but the scope of films placing lions as the aggressor is pretty limited.
Another common thread among these films is they still elicit some sympathy for the lions.
Though they are attacking human protagonists, and we are cued by the film to root for people,
their motivations are still laid out.
Ghost in the Darkness begs for a post-colonial reading,
with the British workers pushing into the lions' territory as they build their bridge.
(29:13):
In both Rogue and Beast, the lions attacking are due to ways that humans have mistreated and killed so many of their kind.
Only Prey doesn't go too far trying to buy the lions a modicum of pathos,
but even then, in that film they're just lions doing what lions do.
Also, Prey doesn't think too hard about the ecological message.
It simply wants to be Kujo with a mane, minus rabies.
The common theme we see across the three later entries, aside from all having single word titles,
(29:37):
is that they deal with parenthood and the anxieties of protecting one's family.
In Prey, Bridget Monahan plays a stepmother who is trying not only to get in the good graces of her new stepchildren,
commonly visited plot thread, but also protect them from the lion who has surrounded their now derelict jeep.
In Beast, Idris Elba plays a doctor who could not save his wife and now has to protect his two daughters from the rampaging lion who stalks them.
(30:00):
Fox's character, Sam, in Rogue, is a hard-nosed mercenary who winds up getting soft and going out of her way
to protect not only Aselia, the one they were sent to rescue,
thus the payday, which she postures she only cares about in the beginning,
but she's also trying to protect Tessa, whom they rescued simply because Sam has something akin to a heart and feelings.
I suspect she would have done the same with Chloe if Chloe had not wound up in a crocodile's stomach,
(30:21):
but the plot demanded a jump scare and a specific body count, I assume at least.
I could continue to wax philosophical about this topic for hours on end, but I think we'll wrap here.
After all, I have so many more Animal Attack DVDs in the cabinet.
Like, seriously, probably more than two dozen.
Hope you all like sharks.
Heck, I even have a couple more of the mentioned lion attacks.
And of course, Night of the Lepis.
(30:43):
Rabbits, apparently, are truly terrifying.
Just a little bit of trivia.
It's probably obvious, but the director co-writer is M.J. Bassett.
Her co-writer is Isabel Bassett, who also plays Tessa in the film.
There's a reason they have the same last name, of course. Isabel is also the director's daughter.
In 2021, the Bassett combo teamed up once again, this time with the film Endangered Species.
(31:05):
It's another film set in Africa, contains strong anti-poaching messages, conservation messages, and it's also directed by M.J. Bassett.
Philip Winchester, who plays Joey in Rogue, also has a substantial part in that film.
It also has some Animal Attack themes in it, specifically that of a rhino.
Hey, at least they move beyond a lioness and a completely gratuitous crocodile attack.
This film was shot in 22 days, and trust me, you can tell.
(31:28):
M.J. Bassett's latest project, Red Sonja, is currently in post-production, though I can't seem to find a release date in the trades.
I don't know what exact source material it's going to lean into more, the Marvel comic of the 70s, the 1985 film with Brigitte Nelson and Arnold Schwarzenegger,
but I don't know, might be something worth watching.
Either way, it's time to get down to putting this Joker on a shelf.
(31:49):
Shelf Esteem
For those who don't know how this segment works or need to be reminded, there are five shelves on my DVD Curio.
I choose to use the bartender's model.
Top shelf for the good stuff, bottom shelf for the rot guts, and then in between, second shelf, mid shelf, fourth shelf.
I cannot stress to you folks how conditioned I am to expect a horrifically bad film when I watch an Animal Attack.
(32:11):
I do feel compelled to watch each and every new one I discover, but I often dread it, often questioning my choices in life.
And honestly, in most cases, I have good reason to.
Even when I grabbed Rogue from that shelf at Target, knowing it was on sale was Blu-ray, had a digital copy code, I was pretty sure I was wasting my money.
Yet when I watched it, I was never in a point of utter despair.
Except for that CGI lioness. Y'all, I cannot tell you how bad that was.
(32:34):
I realize that in studying animal horror cinema, I can approach any film in the genre and at the very least engage with it,
because I'm always analyzing it, looking for patterns, common threads, symbols, all that stuff.
That's the only reason I got through some of the films I've seen.
But Rogue at least strove to be more than a tawdry made for TV flick on the sci-fi channel.
Everything but that CGI critter.
Now that does not mean this is anything even remotely resembling a good film.
(32:58):
I've done what I can to highlight the positive, of which there are few, precious few.
Still, I'm going to place this film on...
The Fourth Shelf.
It's not the worst of the worst, but it isn't good.
The redeeming qualities are few and far between.
If you do like animal attack films, Megan Fox, or just like to watch a woman wear a unique Yankees cap for the duration of 90 plus minutes, then you're not going to hate it.
(33:23):
Action movie buffs might also find it amusing.
The rest of you filmgoers, eh, probably best to avoid it.
Now that we've got this sucker placed, since I'm ahead of schedule and there's a good bit of time left in the spooky season, guess what?
You're getting bonus episodes.
Well, you're going to get at least one bonus episode, maybe two, depending on what I can squeeze into the schedule.
For the next episode, I'm going to watch a film for the first time, and the selection just might shock you.
(33:48):
I was an enormous fan of the first Scream film.
As a matter of fact, it's at least part of the reason I'm a film scholar.
I liked it so much, I found a way to shoehorn it into my master's thesis, which was about Victorian Gothic literature.
I mean, hey, it's the rules of horror.
I have found something to like about all the subsequent sequels, except for their last entry, Scream 6.
And that's only because I haven't seen it yet.
I know. How could this be?
(34:09):
How could? How could I not have seen Scream 6?
I have no clue.
So it's high time I completed the franchise, at least until the seventh releases in 2026.
If you do watch it and want to talk about any points, feel free to shoot me an email at steven at shelf criticism dot com.
And remember, that's S T E P H E N.
You can also find the podcast on Facebook at Shelf Criticism.
And don't forget about my other podcast, Real It, where I'm joined by my colleague, the inimitable McKenzie.
(34:34):
You can find that just about anywhere you get your podcast fix, as well as our official website, real it podcast dot com and our social media at real it podcast.
Remember, that's R E E L, as in a film reel.
Our current episode covers the Neil Gaiman novel and the adaptation Stardust.
And in just over two weeks time, we'll be back in the studio, also gearing up for Halloween, discussing the 1983 Susan Hill novel and 2012 film The Woman in Black.
(34:59):
So we're just over halfway through this month, barreling towards the greatest of all holidays.
But there's so much more coming before the ghosts and ghouls come out.
So until next time, DVD aficionados, remember to treat yourself to a little shelf indulgence of your own.
Amelia, sing us home.
(35:27):
Shelf criticism is an Owls of Palace production.
This podcast is in no way connected with the educational institutions the host is employed by.
The opinions expressed herein are solely those of the host and do not necessarily reflect the views of any other organization with which he is affiliated.
Most images displayed a public domain.
Images and stills from films, descriptions of scenes and passages from books are used for educational and critical purposes and not for profit and therefore fall under the terms of fair use.
(36:06):
Shooting here won't help anyway.
This caliber is not going to stop her. It might annoy her, but she will kill you first.
How do you know it's a she?
Because females are the true killers.
All hail the Queen.
(00:25):
Welcome to Shelf Criticism.
Meet your host, Stephen, a scholar of literature and film by day,
and by night, a cinematic archaeologist with a penchant for everything from
art house to popular to outright trash cinema.
Over the past quarter century, Stephen has amassed an eclectic DVD collection,
now occupying five shells of a Curia cabinet in his living room.
(00:47):
Each week, he bravely selects one of these titles to dissect,
drawing him as he unearths everything from obscure gems to cinematic missteps.
From blockbuster hits to forgotten flops, each film gets the critical once over it
probably doesn't deserve but will absolutely receive.
So grab your popcorn and settle in.
It's time to dive into the diverse world of Shelf Criticism.
(01:18):
Thank you one and all for tuning in, from you first timers to my fateful few.
Can you believe we're at episode twenty already?
I could not imagine when I started playing around with this idea at McKenzie's
behest that I would get this into it or have this many people want to hear me
wax intellectual about films that are just collecting dust in my DVD cabinet.
We're continuing the October theme blitz today with a film that maybe is just
(01:39):
barely brushing the edges of horror.
It certainly has elements of the genre in certain places, but if I had to
classify it, I think calling it an action flick would be more accurate.
Yet I had to include it because I was overdue an animal attack film,
and if you don't know why that's relevant, well you will be by episode's end.
This film has all the makings of a notoriously bad outing.
I can't seem to dig up any information on the budget,
(02:01):
never a good sign, but I think it's safe to say low budget is a fair label.
The film was direct to video and grossed just under 243k worldwide, so not quite a
runaway success.
It was filmed in just twenty two days. The film's lead is an actress who has in
years past been panned for acting, fair or otherwise.
And if there is a recurring theme for this episode, it's going to be how freaking
(02:23):
bad the CGI is.
It is putrid. Like I said, I can't see budget numbers, but if they spent more
than a hundred dollars and
maybe a few pizzas to feed the animators once or twice, they get ripped off.
And I'm talking Little Caesar's hot and ready cardboard pizza, not even the fine
cuisine of a Pizza Hut or a Domino's.
Is the film really that bad?
(02:43):
Does it completely lack any redeeming qualities?
Personally, I didn't hate it the first go-round, and this rewatch didn't change
my mind.
Now, I said I didn't hate it, mind you, not that it's the Citizen Kane of the spate
of twenty twenty films.
But either way, get your pith helmets and get ready to roar.
We're going on a safari.
Or more accurately, a black ops extraction with everyone's favorite
(03:04):
mercenary, Megan Fox.
Yeah, you heard that right.
Today's shelf pick is Rogue, the twenty twenty lion attack film,
not to be confused with the 2007 flick Rogue, which was instead crocodile attacks.
Except that there is also a random one of those in today's film, too.
I guess one animal isn't enough.
Looking at our shelf pick, I own the Blu-ray plus digital edition of this film,
(03:25):
which has a slip cover over the top, though both the print on it and the cover
underneath are identical.
Never really understood the purpose of a slip cover.
I think they're kind of a waste of cardboard and, you know, not very
environmentally friendly for that reason.
I get that it makes it look a little better when it sits on the shelf at the
store, but nonetheless, I'll just look at it like a dust jacket on a book, perhaps.
How about that?
(03:45):
So on our DVD front, it reads at the top from the director of Silent Hill
Revelation and then Megan Fox beneath.
She's the only actor to be billed and her face is featured prominently on the left
side of the case.
Throughout the film, she wears a dark navy or perhaps black cap with the NY
logo, the New York Yankees and a raised stitching that is also black or navy.
I swear I can never tell the difference between those two colors.
(04:07):
Seriously, sometimes I have to go outside and just hold up a T-shirt in the sunlight
to figure out which one it is.
At any rate, the NY is not present on the cover.
I guess some sort of deal was made with the Bronx Bombers Organization, but it
didn't include also being in the promotional material.
On the opposite side of Fox's face is a lion's head roaring with fangs bared.
Though only the snout, chin, mouth and eyes are really visible, you can also
clearly see it has a mane.
(04:28):
And that's an odd choice since the panthera leo causing all the carnage in
this film is actually a lioness.
I mean, it's really stressed that she's female and thematically a large portion
of the plot revolves around this as well.
So it's a curious choice.
You can also make out in the background the sketch of a savanna with some acacia
trees behind that and the background, a map of what I presume to be part of Africa.
(04:50):
What text I can see of the map is in Latin and I'm not even going to try to read that.
It's Greek to me.
It is interesting that the film is set in Africa and I'm putting that in air quotes
even though you can't see it.
Like so many films we have no distinct country has ever mentioned,
perhaps deliberately so.
It's just long stretches of unpopulated savanna, grass, cliffs, rivers,
the occasional herd of elephants trotting along.
(05:11):
Nothing but wild untamed nature.
No, nevermind that Lagos Nigeria has a population of what like 8 million.
Apparently all of Africa is just jungle beneath the fox and the hound.
I mean, lion is the title of the film in bright red rogue.
The bottom of the letters stenciled savanna grass, which is a nice touch and
the tagline beneath when the hunter becomes the prey.
(05:31):
The back has the same nondescript map in the upper right hand corner.
In the left, we see three of the mercs from left to right, Pata, Mike and Elijah,
if I'm not mistaken.
It's not like it matters.
The other merch are simply there to be offed by militants or shredded by lions.
Aside from Pata and Joey and to a lesser degree, Bo,
none of them really get any arc or pathos.
But beneath them is another shot of Megan Fox, this time decked out in her commando
(05:52):
gear, lean back squatting and clutching a pistol.
To the right of them, there's that roaring lion again, and
I can still see his mane.
Seriously, why didn't they just put a lioness here?
Skewed to the right of the cover, we get another tagline.
The jungle can eat you alive in all caps and oddly no punctuation.
Would it have killed you to put a period?
The special features are listed below.
Commentary with co-writer, director, producer, MJ Bassett,
(06:15):
co-writer, actor, Isabelle Bassett, and actor, Philip Winchester,
director's commentary, cast interviews, and trailer gallery.
Beneath that, we get that annoying blue banner that says includes digital copy
with a whole line from monitor to laptop to tablet to smartphone.
And then finally mercifully, we get the synopsis.
Took them long enough.
Megan Fox, Transformers franchise, tackles a thrilling new role as a battle hardened
(06:38):
mercenary in this explosive action saga.
As team leader O'Hara, she leads a lively squad of soldiers on a daring mission,
rescue hostages from their captors in remote Africa.
But as the mission goes awry and the team is stranded, O'Hara's squad must face
a bloody, brutal encounter with a gang of rebels and
the horde of ravenous enraged lions they encounter.
(06:58):
Well, at least there isn't a bunch of fawning praise from the critics and
quotations.
You think perhaps they couldn't find any, but we'll get into that in a later segment.
This synopsis however is just frustrating on a number of levels.
Transformers franchise?
Fox was in two of them, but okay.
Remember the dust up after where she compared director Michael Bay to a certain
World War II era dictator?
Seriously, look it up.
(07:19):
Second, remote Africa?
I'm not gonna harp on it, but come on.
Third, why do they keep calling her O'Hara?
Everyone around her calls her by the diminutive of her first name, Samantha,
Sam, or Boss the entire time.
What really bugs me though are a couple of points that come after that.
The first I might excuse, hostages?
More like hostage.
Only one captured woman's father is footing the bill, and
(07:41):
when they find there are two other women in captivity, Sam, not O'Hara, but Sam,
makes it clear they aren't being paid to rescue them all.
She does eventually give in, but not before saying, and
I'm gonna clean this up a bit, if I effing die because I'm doing the right thing,
I'm gonna be so teed off.
I get that perhaps this is too much to go into in a simple cover copy, but
a hostage would have been more accurate at least.
(08:02):
Now that may be nitpicky, but I don't think my next gripe is.
A horde of ravenous enraged lions?
It's one lion.
One, uno, eintz.
Webster's defines a horde as a large group, multitude, number, etc., a mass or
a crowd, and the next definition is perhaps more accurate as to how it is attempted to
be used here, a moving pack or swarm of animals.
(08:24):
Nonetheless, I am almost 100% certain one lioness cannot make a horde.
Besides, it would be a pride, wouldn't it?
I know I can be pedantic about stuff, but I think my concerns are genuine here.
As this was a direct-to-video film, likely a lot of folks knew nothing about it.
Perhaps I'm being cynical, but it almost sounds like the use of that word horde,
the suggestion that there are numerous lions,
is meant to make it sound even more action-packed.
(08:46):
After all, the danger of a horde of lions has to be more bloody,
more intense, more spectacle, right?
How I came to own it.
And this is one of the newer additions to the DVD shelf.
I've noted before that this podcast will likely have an over-representation of
films from the early 2000s to mid-2010s, simply because that was the heyday of
DVD purchases for me and most others.
I do, however, have a pretty substantial collection of Blu-rays, but
(09:08):
even those start to dwindle towards the late 2010s, as the rise of digital makes
it so easy to simply hit purchase or rent on the screen and watch it immediately.
And by the way, I pretty much always hit purchase.
I figure what's the difference in $4 and $12?
If I like it, I'm gonna watch it again.
Hey, I never admitted to being exactly frugal, did I?
But there's still something old-fashioned to me.
(09:28):
If you read the end user license agreement, which literally no one does,
you'll know that digital purchases can disappear at any given moment for
a number of reasons, but the DVD is forever.
Besides, there's something about the tactile sensation,
the ability to hold a physical object in one's hand.
Also on those rare occasions where the internet goes down,
y'all streamers are going to be so bored, but I can just pop in a disk and kick back.
(09:50):
It's not like how I do use a Kindle app on my iPad to read some books here and
there, but I still prefer the actual paper and glue held in my hand.
As I've said before, I enjoy going to pawn shops or stores like bargain hunt and
rifling through the DVD bins to see what bizarre selections I can come across.
Incidentally, I made a trip to Dollar General the other day only to find their
DVDs were 50% off the already ridiculously low price.
(10:12):
I came home with four new entries for later episodes, none of which I'd ever
heard of, and I'm pretty sure none are gonna be any good, but I spent less than $10.
There are very few places now where you can even browse DVDs anymore.
I generally try to avoid Walmart at all costs.
I'm not knocking the store, just not the place I enjoy shopping in.
But I used to love diving into their discount DVD bins.
Last time I went in, there was no such creature.
(10:33):
Heck, they barely had any DVDs on the shelf.
Target, on the other hand, is still a reliable source to scour a good amount of
titles, and when you catch them on sale, you can get a heck of a deal.
Even they are starting to dial back their inventory, which disappoints me greatly,
but times change and old folks get left behind.
It's the way of the world, I get it.
But back in 2020, maybe 2021, I recall I was still wearing a mask in those dark
(10:54):
COVID days as I perused the store that somehow always leads me to buy $100 worth
of merchandise I hadn't intended to.
I never walk into that store with hitting up the DVD aisle, though, and
seeing what they're running on sale that week.
I came home with a few discs that day, not sure which ones exactly, but
I do remember when I saw a lion's head beside the foxes.
I thought animal attack.
Reading the back, I saw I was right, and it was on sale for a good price.
I'm sure it was under $10.
(11:15):
It included a digital copy.
So I was pretty sure I'm both psychologically and
physiologically unable to resist a purchase like that.
When we get into the critical reception, you know the last episode I said I was
just gonna stop speculating about critical response?
How I'm always surprised how far off I am when I'm just guessing.
Well, I'm not kidding you when I say you better sit down before you hear me
(11:35):
utter the next sentence.
Seriously, are you sitting?
I don't wanna cause any injuries.
The film holds a 67% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Two-thirds of critics had mostly positive things to say about it.
If you're now on the ground with a skinned knee or a head injury,
I take no responsibility.
I told you to sit down.
Now there's a strong caveat at work here though.
That is based off a meager 12 reviews.
(11:56):
To put this into context, in my previous episode I looked into Lords of Salem,
which was working with 66 reviews.
The episode prior, Van Helsing, had 225.
I dare say this isn't a representative sample size.
Being direct to video, I guess it didn't really entice enough critics to really
move the needle significantly one way or the other.
Plus, not to knock any of the critics, but
only two of the 12 had a top critic designation.
(12:19):
Some of the reviews held from places like Impulse Gamer, South China Morning Post,
Daily Dead, What to Watch, and a fellow named Dennis Schwartz reviewed it on
the Dennis Schwartz movie reviews.
Please understand, I'm again not being negative.
Heck, here I am just some random film scholar blathering away into a microphone
from obscure podcasts where I pontificate about films that have been released years
prior.
(12:39):
Who am I to judge?
I'm just saying, this isn't the rogue's gallery, no pun intended,
of heavy hitters we see for larger releases.
Metacritic simply says TBD,
which means they didn't even gather four reviews for it.
The one they did collect is also in Rotten Tomatoes,
Ellen E. Jones' take in The Guardian, which was mostly positive.
As for audiences, Rotten Tomatoes' popcorn meter drops to a paltry 38%,
(13:01):
and Metacritic's user reviews, and there's still a very low number of 27 here,
place it at a 4.7.
Suffice to say, this is one of those films where perhaps we need to ignore the
aggregators.
While at least one critic recognized for her thoughtful volume of work exists,
plus I really just like The Guardian as a source for film and global news,
let's have a gander at what Ellen E. Jones has to say.
(13:22):
She begins,
If hit Netflix documentary Tiger King had you championing the big cat cause,
here's the animal rights respecting action thriller you should watch next.
Transformers Megan Fox stars as Samantha O'Hara,
the gun-toting girl boss of a mercenary crew in South Africa,
who must retrieve a high-value hostage from a band of Islamic militants
cum ivory poachers.
(13:42):
It's a money-making mission, though, not a humanitarian one,
and any heroics are performed reluctantly.
See, Jones delivers mostly a summary here, but she's direct in saying hostage,
not making it plural, when the other two freed were just reluctantly along for
the ride and
one getting eaten by a crocodile out of nowhere.
She acknowledges Sam and her crew are in it for the Benjamins and not the
(14:03):
mother-effing Teresa part of it, as one character will say in the film,
again, that I cleaned up slightly.
It's a more accurate, though admittedly less compelling summary of the film
overall. I get that.
Jones continues with her summary. The action rattles along at a decent pace,
punctuated by regular mauling deaths as Sam's utterly expendable crew hunker
down in an abandoned lion farm.
(14:24):
It's not just the local al-Shabaab cell that threatens their lives.
They're also being stalked by a lioness gone rogue.
See, only a mention of one lion,
only one lion.
Jones even calls her a lioness, revealing her gender.
Was it really that hard to accurately describe this film?
Likewise, does that description really make a viewer want to watch it less?
It's a direct-to-video film starring Megan Fox as a mercenary.
(14:46):
Did you expect a summer blockbuster?
Jones goes on to say,
Clearly Fox v. Lion was intended to be Rogue's big dramatic showdown,
but the computer-generated imagery is so pathetic it barely registers.
A free augmented reality app could magic up more fearsome predators.
I cannot agree more.
The CGI here is awful, deplorable, excreable.
(15:06):
I could keep going, but I'd have to break out my thesaurus.
Suffice to say, this is some of the worst CGI I have ever seen.
I have criticized the digital effects of some film recently,
from Stardust to Mirrors to Van Helsing,
but at least with all of them,
I gave them a pass for when they were created.
By this point, there is no reason any CGI should look this bad.
I've seen better special effects on the sci-fi channels 10 years earlier.
(15:27):
To the film's credit,
it does try to ensconce the lioness in shadows,
or cut away a lot and use close-ups to keep her hidden mostly from view,
but there are too many points where we see her full-on
and none of them are even remotely convincing.
Matter of fact, they're rather painful to watch.
Finally, Jones states,
rogue isn't offering nature documentary realism,
but director MJ Bassett is a former wildlife presenter
(15:48):
whose interest in the South American grassland goes beyond mere backdrop.
This is explored through the conflict of Pata,
South African star Sissandeh Hena,
a Maasai tribesman turned al-Shabaab fighter turned mercenary.
Aside from the nondescript stereotypical portrayal of Africa,
Jones may be on to something here.
So often in Western media,
Africa is portrayed as a violent, scary place,
a holdover from those ideas of the dark continent over a century earlier.
(16:12):
Backwards ideas, I might add.
Pata's arc is not only the careful touch that adds humanity and nuance
to themes that could easily come off as dismissive
and perhaps even prejudice as done wrong.
While the aggressors who don't walk on four legs are mostly African nationals,
their leader, Zalam, we actually find out is a British expat,
which incidentally made me feel a lot better about his accent.
(16:32):
It bothered me to no end until they tossed out that little tidbit.
I know I focus on accents way too much.
Furthermore, though the militants are crusading under the guise of religion,
specifically Islam, they're later revealed to be in it only for the money.
They are poachers, smuggling ivory and lion hides for profit.
They've also kidnapped Aselia, the governor's daughter,
not because they want to barter for influence in the region,
(16:53):
but rather because the governor is using his posturing as a conservationist
to cover the fact that he too is poaching.
We find out, in fact, that the lion farm where so much of the action
takes place is owned by said governor.
Each of these twists helps to add nuance and complexity
to the typical villain roles.
Rather than portraying the African militants as blind followers
of a perverted religious ideology, the film reveals that their motivations
(17:13):
are purely financial.
They're not true terrorists in the traditional sense.
Instead, they use religion as a cover to line their own pockets
by smuggling ivory and lion hides.
Additionally, the film indicts not just the militants,
but also the British and presumably the Afrikaner government.
The governor, we learn, is himself involved in poaching.
And of course, the film also drives home the environmental message.
Poaching is bad, as if we should have to say this.
(17:36):
What we're doing to nature is inexcusable,
as Bo laments about the lions.
It's justice if it takes us.
The things we've done to this world.
So much death.
(17:57):
These creatures were killed for what?
Medicine.
Medicine.
Magic charms.
I don't understand how anyone would want these animals dead
instead of alive.
For a belief a thousand years old.
(18:21):
I'm ashamed.
Which leads me to my take.
Bo's speech about the lion farm, how they're bred in captivity,
treated awfully, then killed, is simply too on the nose.
Mind you, it's not that I'm not in agreement.
I'm very passionate about conservation
and even more so perhaps about preserving threatened and endangered species.
I just didn't think it necessary to drive it home quite that hard.
The film's epilogue shows the following text.
(18:43):
This story is fiction, but the facts are that in 2019
there were over 12,000 lions in farms.
Though this is legal, mostly they are being kept in appalling conditions
before being killed for their skins, bones, and other body parts
to supply traditional medicine markets.
Cubs are bred and used for petting zoos until too old to handle
before being shipped for slaughter or used in canned hunting.
(19:05):
It is a disgrace and should be stopped.
M.J. Bassett.
Honestly, I don't even mind this.
In fact, I fully support it.
When a film tries to draw attention to an issue as important as this one,
I think we should perhaps make it more obvious.
But do so at the end, like this.
When you also start preaching and becoming didactic during the film,
it does become a detriment to the story.
Likewise, while the maternal and protective themes in Rogue are certainly important,
(19:26):
the filmmakers didn't exactly give us a chance to miss them.
The final dialogue exchange between Sam, Joey, and Tessa
essentially spoon-feed us this idea as Sam's protective instincts mirror the lionesses.
As much as I appreciate a good thematic connection,
this one felt like one of those tell-don't-show moments.
She wanted us to protect her cubs.
That's why she stayed behind and the rest of them left.
(19:50):
She reminds me of someone I know.
It's as if the film assumed we wouldn't be able to figure it out on our own,
which ultimately detracts from the emotional resonance.
Sometimes subtlety is the best approach,
especially when the film's visual and narrative elements
already do a decent job of conveying the message.
In contrast to Sam's character arc, which is handled with more finesse,
(20:11):
this final thematic beat just feels forced, as if it's shouting,
Get it? They're both trying to protect their cubs.
Trust me, we got it.
Sermonizing dialogue notwithstanding, the film is interesting visually.
All too common in films set in quote-unquote foreign lands,
particularly the Middle East, South America, or Africa,
Bassett bathes the daylight hours in a deep saturation of warm yellows and oranges,
(20:36):
though in the sunsets the film instead is steeped in blues and grays.
And even the shaky cam works to some degree.
I still contend it's a bit overused, as it so often is,
but I can still understand the logic behind it.
I've certainly seen far more egregious uses of it.
They're just the right amount of Dutch angles and low-angle shots
to have the intended effect without overdoing it.
Director MJ Bassett understands the elements of horror,
(20:58):
having directed such films as Death Watch, Silent Hill Revelation,
and some episodes of Ash vs. the Evil Dead.
There are certainly elements here, even though I contend this film is more action,
particularly the sequences where Tessa goes running through the house from room to room,
always trying to dodge members of the militia.
The horror elements are clearly at play.
The culmination where she smashes a would-be attacker's face with a hammer
as the blood splatter covers her face is something straight out of a slasher flick.
(21:21):
The low-angle shot of her out of context would make her look like the villain,
but this is the moment where she fights back,
something she says she's never done before, and it serves as empowerment instead.
Also kudos to the film for having her still have to deal with the repercussions of taking a life,
even in self-defense.
In short, I found a lot to enjoy about this second go-round with Rogue.
The CGI lioness, however, might just undercut it all.
(21:42):
As for my standout performance, well, with a lot of low-budget fare, the acting can be a problem,
yet nothing in this film made me stop and just shake my head,
ruining an actor's choice or wondering why the director let them get away with it.
I'd say it's at least competently acted overall, with nothing standing out as downright loathsome.
Perhaps Chloe is a bit too animated, but she gets eaten by a crocodile very early on,
and maybe that's why she was getting too annoying.
(22:03):
In Jones' review, she says, quote,
It's the contrast between Samantha's dead-eyed and plausibly groomed professionalism and the full-throated compassion
of the Al-Shabaab leader, Adam Deacon, that intrigues.
This is thanks mainly to an energetic performance from Deacon,
whom some will remember as the mainstay of British urban drama until his falling out with Kidult Hood's Noel Clark.
Fox is undoubtedly at the apex of its filmic food chain,
(22:26):
but it's those further down who are enabling it to function.
Now, I'm admittedly a bit of an Anglophile, big fan of British television,
a subscriber to Prime's BBC offering.
I still have no idea what half of this means.
Perhaps it's my fault for choosing a film review from The Guardian, which is a British publication,
but my choices were severely limited.
I have no idea what Kidult Hood is, though I can appreciate the portmanteau,
but I assume Deacon, who plays Zalam, is better known to Jones than he is to me.
(22:49):
He's not bad at all. He's one of the more noticeable performances,
but I don't know if I'd go as far as to say he steals the show.
The group of mercs, as well as the freed hostages, are, for the most part, just flat-out expendable.
Most of the mercs are wiped out during the first action sequence.
Really, it's Elijah, Joey, Pata, and Boe we're supposed to care about, as well as, of course, Tessa and Aselia.
Elijah gets sliced and diced by the lioness pretty quick,
(23:12):
so his whole I got your back speech from Sam earlier means very little now.
Joey winds up stumbling out of the whole frocus as a man who is going to have some scars, both figuratively and literally, but he's alive.
Still, despite his inexplicable penchant for singing the Backstreet Boys, I'm not sure I'm impressed with his acting.
As for Fox's, to use Jones's phrase, dead-eyed professionalism, I didn't really hate it.
Sam isn't exactly the most animated of characters, and she remains calm under pressure.
(23:37):
She rolls with every misstep, every failure, every encumbrance thrown at them,
as she's driven to first complete the job, but later to simply survive.
When she loses members of the team, particularly Elijah, but also others like Pata, you can tell it affects her, but it's subtle.
Sam isn't the type to weep openly or scream, why, melodramatically to the heavens. It's a muted performance, but it falls perfectly in line with who this character is.
(24:00):
We get a small backstory at one point, revealing she comes from a military family, went to a military school, enlisted as soon as she could, and this is all she knows, fighting and death.
It's an actual multi-layered performance that's quite impressive.
Fox's name is never one that comes up when discussing Masters of the Craft, and I'm not saying she should.
I just think maybe we shouldn't be so dismissive of her.
Jennifer's Body is an excellent film, and I will fight you if you say otherwise, verbally, of course.
(24:25):
Fox is great in that, but she is playing a vapid popular chick. And don't get me started on passion play.
What an utterly, unequivocally horrible film. But the one bright spot? Fox's performance.
The only emotion I felt other than boredom, insult, and misery from that film was deeply connected to how she handled her role in that.
So fine, let's be basic. She's the top build, only build as a matter of fact, but we're just going to give it to her. The standout performance goes to Megan Fox.
(24:51):
Just don't expect that much out of her and Jonah Hex.
For the cultural context, I'm going to talk a little bit about my research.
As an academic in the humanities, a lot of people's research often delves into incredibly specific territories.
My niche? Animal attack fiction, particularly between 1972 and 1983, roughly from the publication of Jaws to the release of Kujo on film.
(25:14):
It's a topic for a monograph that admittedly no one's asked for, but keeps me busy.
Since animal attack fiction is already a narrow genre, I also dabble in adversarial animals across the broader span of human storytelling.
Adversarial animals have been part of our stories for millennia.
Just look at the Epic of Gilgamesh, or the 12 Labors of Hercules. At least 10 of those labors involved animals.
I'd argue 11 if you count Laiden the Dragon.
(25:37):
I even consider cleaning the Augean stables in Animal Attack, given the legendary amounts of dung those immortal cattle produced.
Needless to say, my exploration of animal attack cinema starts with King Kong and stretches into the present day, which certainly includes films like Rogue.
And while I'm not fond of self-citation, I'd rather that than self-plagiarism.
So quick note, some of the points I make here were also mentioned in a guest appearance on the YouTube channel Buddies with Film Degrees,
(26:02):
where I discuss the 2022 film Beast, and I will provide a link on the website for those who are interested.
Though there are occasional outliers like the birds in 1963 or 1990s arachnophobia, the post-WWII trends in animal attack fiction are pretty clear.
The nuclear age and the Cold War brought about the atomic creature features of the 1950s.
Films like The Beast from 10,000 Fathoms, Tarantula! With an exclamation point, those dominated this era.
(26:28):
The films gradually fizzled out as the decade ended, and after a lull, the genre resurged in the early 70s.
A lot of that was driven by a wave of cynical cash grabs in the wake of Jaws, but unlike Steven Spielberg's masterpiece,
many of these films have a distinct environmental message, classified as revenge of nature films quite often.
Then in the late 1990s, starting with Anaconda in 97, we saw a rise of a more tongue-in-cheek approach.
(26:52):
Self-aware films with overblown plots, sly winks at the camera.
Think Deep Blue Sea or Lake Placid, and let's not forget about the two Meg films currently swimming around.
The stakes are low, but the spectacle is high.
Of course, the Sharknado franchise and the ensuing wave of sci-fi films would take this trend to absurd new heights.
Absurd new depths, perhaps we should say.
(27:14):
And unlike previous eras, this one shows no signs of slowing down.
What we are seeing lately, though, is a resurgence of a more serious, white-knuckled, suspense-driven film that raises the stakes again.
Kral is a standout example, as is the aforementioned Beast.
Rogue also tries to fit into this category, even if its CGI lioness veers unintentionally towards humor.
Aside from dividing the films and novels up into eras, I also find it useful to group the entries into categories of the actual attacking animal.
(27:41):
They're the usual suspects. Snakes, crocodilians, stinging insects, bears.
There are plenty of outlandish ones as well.
You'd be surprised how many rabbit attack tales there are, and I'm not just talking Monty Python.
Interestingly enough, when it comes to lions, you'd think there'd be quite a bit.
After all, they're part of the rogue's gallery of Wizard of Oz, right?
Lions and tigers and bears, oh my.
However, with exceptions like Hercules and the Nemean Lion, most of the time, lions have enjoyed a positive portrayal.
(28:07):
They're associated with kings, they're regal beasts.
Even Shakespeare turns Ovid's tale of Pyramus and Thisbe on its head in A Midsummer Night's Dream,
including the lion and the rude mechanic's humorously inept portrayal,
even if Bottom didn't have his chance to play him gently as any sucking dove.
The Cowardly Lion subverted our expectations.
Films like 1981's White Lion and Disney's The Lion King put the lions as the protagonists.
(28:29):
Well, they're scar, but the rest of them.
There are a handful of lion attack films, however.
Oddly enough, 1981 gave us two, Roar and Savage Harvest, on top of White Lion with its positive portrayals.
What was it with lions in 1981?
Another outlier is 1996's Ghost in the Darkness, based on the Maneaters of Savo.
Then there's 2007's Prey, and then of course Rogue and Beast that we've already mentioned.
(28:52):
I may have missed a couple, but the scope of films placing lions as the aggressor is pretty limited.
Another common thread among these films is they still elicit some sympathy for the lions.
Though they are attacking human protagonists, and we are cued by the film to root for people,
their motivations are still laid out.
Ghost in the Darkness begs for a post-colonial reading,
with the British workers pushing into the lions' territory as they build their bridge.
(29:13):
In both Rogue and Beast, the lions attacking are due to ways that humans have mistreated and killed so many of their kind.
Only Prey doesn't go too far trying to buy the lions a modicum of pathos,
but even then, in that film they're just lions doing what lions do.
Also, Prey doesn't think too hard about the ecological message.
It simply wants to be Kujo with a mane, minus rabies.
The common theme we see across the three later entries, aside from all having single word titles,
(29:37):
is that they deal with parenthood and the anxieties of protecting one's family.
In Prey, Bridget Monahan plays a stepmother who is trying not only to get in the good graces of her new stepchildren,
commonly visited plot thread, but also protect them from the lion who has surrounded their now derelict jeep.
In Beast, Idris Elba plays a doctor who could not save his wife and now has to protect his two daughters from the rampaging lion who stalks them.
(30:00):
Fox's character, Sam, in Rogue, is a hard-nosed mercenary who winds up getting soft and going out of her way
to protect not only Aselia, the one they were sent to rescue,
thus the payday, which she postures she only cares about in the beginning,
but she's also trying to protect Tessa, whom they rescued simply because Sam has something akin to a heart and feelings.
I suspect she would have done the same with Chloe if Chloe had not wound up in a crocodile's stomach,
(30:21):
but the plot demanded a jump scare and a specific body count, I assume at least.
I could continue to wax philosophical about this topic for hours on end, but I think we'll wrap here.
After all, I have so many more Animal Attack DVDs in the cabinet.
Like, seriously, probably more than two dozen.
Hope you all like sharks.
Heck, I even have a couple more of the mentioned lion attacks.
And of course, Night of the Lepis.
(30:43):
Rabbits, apparently, are truly terrifying.
Just a little bit of trivia.
It's probably obvious, but the director co-writer is M.J. Bassett.
Her co-writer is Isabel Bassett, who also plays Tessa in the film.
There's a reason they have the same last name, of course. Isabel is also the director's daughter.
In 2021, the Bassett combo teamed up once again, this time with the film Endangered Species.
(31:05):
It's another film set in Africa, contains strong anti-poaching messages, conservation messages, and it's also directed by M.J. Bassett.
Philip Winchester, who plays Joey in Rogue, also has a substantial part in that film.
It also has some Animal Attack themes in it, specifically that of a rhino.
Hey, at least they move beyond a lioness and a completely gratuitous crocodile attack.
This film was shot in 22 days, and trust me, you can tell.
(31:28):
M.J. Bassett's latest project, Red Sonja, is currently in post-production, though I can't seem to find a release date in the trades.
I don't know what exact source material it's going to lean into more, the Marvel comic of the 70s, the 1985 film with Brigitte Nelson and Arnold Schwarzenegger,
but I don't know, might be something worth watching.
Either way, it's time to get down to putting this Joker on a shelf.
(31:49):
Shelf Esteem
For those who don't know how this segment works or need to be reminded, there are five shelves on my DVD Curio.
I choose to use the bartender's model.
Top shelf for the good stuff, bottom shelf for the rot guts, and then in between, second shelf, mid shelf, fourth shelf.
I cannot stress to you folks how conditioned I am to expect a horrifically bad film when I watch an Animal Attack.
(32:11):
I do feel compelled to watch each and every new one I discover, but I often dread it, often questioning my choices in life.
And honestly, in most cases, I have good reason to.
Even when I grabbed Rogue from that shelf at Target, knowing it was on sale was Blu-ray, had a digital copy code, I was pretty sure I was wasting my money.
Yet when I watched it, I was never in a point of utter despair.
Except for that CGI lioness. Y'all, I cannot tell you how bad that was.
(32:34):
I realize that in studying animal horror cinema, I can approach any film in the genre and at the very least engage with it,
because I'm always analyzing it, looking for patterns, common threads, symbols, all that stuff.
That's the only reason I got through some of the films I've seen.
But Rogue at least strove to be more than a tawdry made for TV flick on the sci-fi channel.
Everything but that CGI critter.
Now that does not mean this is anything even remotely resembling a good film.
(32:58):
I've done what I can to highlight the positive, of which there are few, precious few.
Still, I'm going to place this film on...
The Fourth Shelf.
It's not the worst of the worst, but it isn't good.
The redeeming qualities are few and far between.
If you do like animal attack films, Megan Fox, or just like to watch a woman wear a unique Yankees cap for the duration of 90 plus minutes, then you're not going to hate it.
(33:23):
Action movie buffs might also find it amusing.
The rest of you filmgoers, eh, probably best to avoid it.
Now that we've got this sucker placed, since I'm ahead of schedule and there's a good bit of time left in the spooky season, guess what?
You're getting bonus episodes.
Well, you're going to get at least one bonus episode, maybe two, depending on what I can squeeze into the schedule.
For the next episode, I'm going to watch a film for the first time, and the selection just might shock you.
(33:48):
I was an enormous fan of the first Scream film.
As a matter of fact, it's at least part of the reason I'm a film scholar.
I liked it so much, I found a way to shoehorn it into my master's thesis, which was about Victorian Gothic literature.
I mean, hey, it's the rules of horror.
I have found something to like about all the subsequent sequels, except for their last entry, Scream 6.
And that's only because I haven't seen it yet.
I know. How could this be?
(34:09):
How could? How could I not have seen Scream 6?
I have no clue.
So it's high time I completed the franchise, at least until the seventh releases in 2026.
If you do watch it and want to talk about any points, feel free to shoot me an email at steven at shelf criticism dot com.
And remember, that's S T E P H E N.
You can also find the podcast on Facebook at Shelf Criticism.
And don't forget about my other podcast, Real It, where I'm joined by my colleague, the inimitable McKenzie.
(34:34):
You can find that just about anywhere you get your podcast fix, as well as our official website, real it podcast dot com and our social media at real it podcast.
Remember, that's R E E L, as in a film reel.
Our current episode covers the Neil Gaiman novel and the adaptation Stardust.
And in just over two weeks time, we'll be back in the studio, also gearing up for Halloween, discussing the 1983 Susan Hill novel and 2012 film The Woman in Black.
(34:59):
So we're just over halfway through this month, barreling towards the greatest of all holidays.
But there's so much more coming before the ghosts and ghouls come out.
So until next time, DVD aficionados, remember to treat yourself to a little shelf indulgence of your own.
Amelia, sing us home.
(35:27):
Shelf criticism is an Owls of Palace production.
This podcast is in no way connected with the educational institutions the host is employed by.
The opinions expressed herein are solely those of the host and do not necessarily reflect the views of any other organization with which he is affiliated.
Most images displayed a public domain.
Images and stills from films, descriptions of scenes and passages from books are used for educational and critical purposes and not for profit and therefore fall under the terms of fair use.
(36:06):
Shooting here won't help anyway.
This caliber is not going to stop her. It might annoy her, but she will kill you first.
How do you know it's a she?
Because females are the true killers.
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