If Drive were the only film by Nicolas Winding Refn you have seen, you might approach his follow-up, Only God Forgives, with the expectations of it being just like that Ryan Gosling vehicle. While that’s understandable, it’s also wrong.

While Gosling, neon and brutal violence all return from that 2011 instant crime classic to front this Bangkok-set crime drama, the similarities end there. Gosling’s soft-spoken Julian may be a drug smuggler, but he’s a saint compared to his brother, Billy (Tom Burke, Donkey Punch), who is murdered after raping and killing a 16-year-old prostitute.

Flying in from America upon hearing the news is the cold-hearted Crystal (a frighteningly good Kristin Scott Thomas, Gosford Park), their tigress of a mother coming to avenge her fallen cub. (Her character’s animal-print dress can’t be accidental.) Her consideration of Julian as the inferior child is not an opinion she hides — rather, she revels in it — yet Crystal still counts on him to bring down those men responsible for Billy’s bloody end — namely, Chang (Vithaya Pansringarm, The Hangover Part II) the corrupt cop who travels with a very sharp sword he’s not afraid to use.

Using all the fluorescent colors in the Crayola box, Refn is in no rush to draw his tale of good vs. evil; characters often move at literal half-speed. By design, the story is rather simplistic — the moral code of the 12th-century samurai basted in a contemporary dressing. With Refn, what’s most important is not the depth of the tale but how it’s told, and Only God Forgives more resembles David Lynch than Drive. To that end, its calculated visuals can lull the viewer into a trance of sublimity. I get why so many will hate it; I’m just grateful I’m not one of them. —Rod Lott

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Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, Jaws producers David Brown and Richard D. Zanuck returned to plumb the then-shallow well of Peter Benchley novels for another round of ocean-set thrills. The result was The Island, so waterlogged it’s hardly worth even thinking about. Not one moment approaches the spine-tingling suspense promised by the film’s nerve-shattering poster.

After 600 boats have vanished within three years in the Caribbean waters, magazine writer Blair Maynard (Michael Caine, who would later star, ironically enough, in Jaws: The Revenge) is dying to pursue the story. Because the divorced dad has his 12-year-old son (Jeffrey Frank, in his one and only feature) for the weekend, Blair tricks the kid into going to Florida with him by promising a trip to Disney World.

That never happens; instead, they get trapped in a real-life variation of the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction after crash-landing on an island — er, the island — where actual pirates separate Justin from his father, under the orders of their leader (David Warner, The Omen). While Blair is tortured with leeches, Justin is all-too-easily brainwashed into turning against dear Dad.

One method used to turn Justin is sleep deprivation, which is what the bulk of the film feels like. Boasting scenery galore, it’s nonetheless exceedingly dull and slow-moving. Director Michael Ritchie had a flair for comedy (Fletch, The Bad News Bears, Smile), not chills, but he can’t shoulder the blame for the biggest nonmoving part: the screenplay, penned by Benchley himself. It could use some Carl Gottlieb. —Rod Lott

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Hunger for some near-future games? Joining the likes of such government-sanctioned bloodsports as Death Race 2000 and Battle Royale is The Purge, an annual, 12-hour amnesty of rape, murder and what have you— that one night of the year in which you’re allowed to “release the beast,” so to speak, without fear of legal reprisal.

By the year 2022, when this film takes place, the rates of crime and unemployment in the United States have become all but nonexistent and are kept in check by The Purge, practically a national holiday. James Sandin (Ethan Hawke, Sinister) has made a fortune from selling security systems, which shows in the palatial abode he shares with his beautiful wife (Lena Headey, 300) and their two children. Because their high-tech home can go into fortress mode at the push of a button, they’re pretty nonplussed by The Purge; it’s just another night in front of the TV.

All that changes when their son (Max Burkholder, Daddy Day Care) stupidly decides to allow a homeless African-American man (Edwin Hodge, 2012’s Red Dawn) inside after lockdown. The desperate stranger’s pursuers — spoiled rich kids donning private-school blazers, eerie face masks and a swath of entitled arrogance — are so eager to satisfy their savage desires, they’ll do anything to infiltrate the Sandin residence.

With that, the movie shifts into becoming Assault on Gated Neighborhood 13.

The sophomore film of writer/director James DeMonaco (Staten Island), The Purge possesses a preposterous premise that would work better if it set up adequately and if he moved his characters from beat to beat in ways that resembled logic, even judged by speculative fiction’s more forgiving terms. Therefore, I found myself only half-invested in what should be a slam-dunk take on the home-invasion thriller. It’s a slick piece of work and deserves points for having the balls to make an unexpected turn it actually sticks with, but wouldn’t take more than minor tinkering to emerge as so much better than strictly average. —Rod Lott

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The first thing I noticed when I first watched the cult made-for-TV thriller Bad Ronald was that its catchy and evocative title isn’t entirely apt. While the titular character does a bunch of stuff that accurately can be described as the opposite of good, he is also — as portrayed by Scott Jacoby (Return to Horror High) — far too sympathetic to dismiss as just another horror villain, which ultimately gives the movie a sense of pathos you don’t usually find in the genre.

A sensitive, imaginative young man with a fiercely loyal and protective mother, Ronald finds himself wanted by the police after he angrily lashes out at a taunting young neighbor girl and causes her accidental death. Terrified that he might be sent to prison, his mother (Planet of the Apes’ Kim Hunter in a typically great performance) hatches a plan that involves their turning their downstairs bathroom into a secret hiding place where Ronald can stow away until its safe for the two of them to leave town.

The plan goes awry when she dies during a necessary gall bladder operation and the house is sold to Dabney Coleman, Pippa Scott and their three cute blonde daughters. Already a bit loopy from his enforced isolation and the news of his mom’s death, Ronald becomes convinced that the youngest daughter is the princess of Atranta, the fantasy kingdom that has become his escape away from his terrible reality.

At just 70 minutes, Bad Ronald never has time to be boring and, in fact, probably could have benefited from an extra 10 minutes of character development to better justify the act of violence that sets the plot in motion. Beyond that, it is a surprisingly moving film with a highly effective premise and definitely one worth seeking out. —Allan Mott

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With the complexion of tapioca pudding and a hairstyle eventually made famous by Princess Di, Silvia Hacherman (Mimsy Farmer, Four Flies on Grey Velvet) is married to her work in a science lab. Her cad of a boyfriend, Roberto (Maurizio Bonuglia, Foxtrap), wishes she would be less serious and play more tennis. He just doesn’t understand Silvia has a lot on her mind, not the least of which is The Perfume of the Lady in Black.

While at Roberto’s pad, Silvia first glimpses the image in a mirror: her late mother spraying the smell-good. As writer/director Francesco Barilli’s first feature progresses, and our heroine hallucinates, we slowly piece together the acts of awfulness that befell her mom when Silvia was a child — acts that may extend to Silvia herself.

They aren’t pleasant; revisiting them unhinges Silvia, sending her into a spiral of madness and regression. As this happens, Barilli gives his film a Rosemary’s Baby vibe, made all the more distinct by its apartment-building setting and the strange tenants who inhabit its rooms.

But Perfume is not really a horror film, at least not until the very end. It’s also not a giallo, despite that vague title, the occasional saturated color gel and the fate of Barilli’s characters. The path he takes to get there is a bit too bumpy for narrative’s sake; how much you’re willing to forgive its leaps may correspond directly to your overall enjoyment. There’s no denying this Lady has style; I just wish she made a little more sense, too. —Rod Lott

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