Sunday, July 8, 2018

Return of the Family Man - 1989

What happened to South Africa?  South Africa, in the 80's, was a upcoming film location, it seemed.  Suddenly in the 80's, flicks were popping up filmed in Australia and Canada and South Africa and more.  Google shows me some of the known South African movies recently.  District 9...yeah.  Okay.  I guess it's not that unknown of.

Well, anyways, back to the subject at hand.  Return of the Family Man is filmed in South Africa and they spend the whole movie quietly pretending it's America.  Which is pretty awesome, I might mention.  I love how, in older movies like this, they just casually pretend it's America.  Obviously trying to succeed in America by doing this, but now they'd do the opposite.  Emphasize it's South Africa in order to succeed.

Return of the Family Man has a couple of groups of people coming together at a junked out house in the semi middle of nowhere, tricked there by some resort thing they bought into.  Okay, it's original enough, I'll go with it.  Meanwhile, a bus transporting criminals is derailed when serial killer "The Family Man" kills the guards and escapes.  He begins his journey home, home ends up being the same house where the group of people is staying.

It's a simple enough story, and it works with the subject matter.  The killer is given enough screen time to be interesting, and he's well acted enough for it to not be a total mistake.  Some parts and the some of the pacing is a bit wonky, but all in all, nothing goes off the rails.  The kills are pretty decent too.  It's not super memorable, it's not out to hurt anyone, but it could have easily been worse.

Return of the Family Man was forgettable, but fine, ultimately.  Nothing much to say.  2.5 stars.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Saw IV / Saw V - 2007/ 2008

 I'm going dual review because this series is not giving me a lot to say, and in fact I barely remember what happened in these films des...