Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 3

Tags

1990's, Alyson Hannigan, Anthony Stewart Head, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 3, Charisma Carpenter, David Boreanaz, Eliza Dushku, Emma Caulfield, Nicholas Brendon, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Seth Green

Following on from the shocking and heartbreaking finale of Season 2, Buffy Season 3 swings into gears as our fierce warrior battles all things that the darkness has to offer and survive high school at the same time. Spoilers will follow in this review.

After sending Angel(David Boreanaz) back to hell, Buffy(Sarah Michelle Gellar) has fled Sunnydale. When we catch up with her, she is working in a dodgy part of Los Angeles, using her middle name of Anne. She is plagued by dreams of the lover she had to sacrifice and can’t come to terms with it no matter how hard she tries. She is brought back to her senses after an encounter with a demon and decides to head back to Sunnydale, to face her responsibilities. At first, reconciling with Xander(Nicholas Brendon), Willow(Alyson Hannigan), Cordelia(Charisma Carpenter), Oz(Seth Green) and her watcher Giles(Anthony Stewart Head) is hard, but it eventually gets easier. Trouble is always round the corner for this slayer and the dramas keep on coming. Cordelia and Xander’s relationship is changed after he and Willow share a passionate kiss. Rejecting the gang, Cordelia heads back to her bitchy self and her shallow friends, yet still can’t shake off the memory of her relationship with Xander. Oz on the other hand, eventually forgives Willow. A new slayer, Faith(Eliza Dushku), arrives in town. She is a charismatic and loose living girl with internal emotional scars whose friendship with Buffy begins to disintegrate after Faith kills a human, which is against the rules of  being a slayer and shows no regret for her actions. There is also the matter of the Mayor, this season’s Big Bad. To everyone else he is a chipper guy, but he is in fact involved with the underground demons and plans on becoming a demon once it’s graduation day and he can ascend to becoming a stronger power than he already is. And to top all that off, Angel is back from hell, leading Buffy to question their relationship with one another. For my money season three is one of the best season’s in the whole Buffy saga.

The scripts are as sharp and witty as ever, whilst effectively conveying the pains of becoming adults faced with a very literal hell.  The characters are really starting to grow and you feel genuine sympathy for them in their adventures, especially Buffy who must deal with what life throws at her as well as dark forces closing in. This season gets an extra dynamic through the introduction of Faith, who is played with tough yet vulnerable strength by Eliza Dushku. She’s such an interesting character to watch and in a sense we see that Faith is how Buffy may have ended up if she had grown up neglected and alone in the world. When Buffy becomes friendly with Faith, she flirts with the idea of being a bad girl. She is then brought to her senses by witnessing Faith kill a human and must therefore sever ties with her. All of this leads to some feisty action sequences between the two as the clash of personalities stokes the flames of an already burning fire.  Season 3 also introduces the character of Anya(Emma Caulfield), a former vengeance demon now stripped of her power who must live a human life. She will later become a very prominent character in Buffy and Emma Caulfield is really funny in her early episodes. Also giving Season 3 an edge is the villain in the form of Mayor Richard Wilkins. He is such a creepy yet darkly funny guy who is treacherous to say the least but the kind of the person you just love to hate. Some of the lines he gets to deliver are so strangely funny and ironic such as “Who’s up for a root beer?” after killing an employer who disobeyed him.

The love between Angel and Buffy reaches its end as he struggles to think of a future for Buffy that won’t bring her harm. Their relationship is so emotionally moving and tragic in that they both love one another but are torn apart by all the hell breaking loose around them. It’s sad to see Angel go and he is certainly a missed character in the show. Another point of praise is the exploration of Buffy’s relationship with her mother Joyce. Having been forced to tell her mum of her duty, Joyce has taken time to get her head around it. They may come to blows, but we see how each would do anything to protect the other from harm. This season contains some of the most emotional in the season. The crowning one for me is when Buffy is awarded Class Protector at the prom. Initially believing that no one realises that she saves their lives on a regular basis, she is shocked but very happy to receive the award as the entire student body applauds her bravery and her beaming smile tells a thousand words. If this moment doesn’t get you tearing up, then I don’t know what will.

Our splendid cast delivers amazing work throughout Season 3. Sarah Michelle Gellar adds maturity and strength to Buffy as her life as the slayer continues. We are also shown the vulnerable side to her that wants to just be a teenage girl and isn’t immune to weakness. In other words, Gellar is phenomenal in her portrayal of a girl growing up fast. David Boreanaz bows out of Buffy in style as Angel, imbuing him with sensitivity, danger and melancholy as his doomed relationship comes to an end. Nicholas Brendon is ever reliable as Xander, who provides moral support and jokes, while Alyson Hannigan is luminous as Willow, who this season begins to hone her gift for magic. Charisma Carpenter also bows out of Buffy, and she provides Cordelia with enough barbs and humour to make sure she is a well-remembered character. Seth Green adds mordant and ironic humour to the role of Oz, while Anthony Stewart Head touchingly portrays the way Giles cares for Buffy in a father-daughter way.

Easily one of the show’s best seasons, Buffy Season 3 is not to be missed.

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Wrong Turn

Tags

2000's, Desmond Harrington, Eliza Dushku, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Horror, Jeremy Sisto, Rob Schmidt, Wrong Turn

Film Title

Wrong Turn

Director

Rob Schmidt

Starring

• Desmond Harrington as Chris Flynn
• Eliza Dushku as Jessie Burlingame
• Emmanuelle Chriqui as Carly
• Jeremy Sisto as Scott
• Kevin Zegers as Evan
• Lindy Booth as Francine
• Julian Richings as Three Finger
• Garry Robbins as Saw Tooth
• Ted Clarke as One Eye

Rob Schmidt harks back to 70’s horror film such as Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Hills have Eyes with Wrong Turn, a derivative but effective slasher set in the West Virginia Mountains and woods. If it’s originality you’re looking for, this won’t be for you. If it’s a slasher film with nerve-shredding music, attractive cast and creepy assailants, Wrong Turn may well appeal to you.

Chris Flynn is a young doctor travelling through the West Virginia Mountains to an important meeting. Because of a chemical spill on one of the roads, he decides to take another route to get to his destination quicker. After taking this turn, he collides with a stalled SUV in the middles of the woods. The SUV belongs to six friends; Jessie, Carly, Scott, Francine and Evan. Their vehicle has stopped because someone has placed barbed wire on the road causing their tires to blow. Teaming up with the group, Chris follows them through the woods in search of help, while lovebirds Francine and Evan stay with the damaged vehicles and smoke pot. The rest of the group eventually come across a ramshackle cabin and they decide to enter. Once inside they realise that this is cabin does not exactly belong to the friendliest of people, as body parts, hoards of keys and blooded belongings to campers are discovered. Just as they are about to leave, the occupants arrive. It turns out they are cannibalistic mountain men who are horribly disfigured through generations of inbreeding. They have been turning the woods into a hunting ground and kill anyone who trespasses. Now it is a life or death battle as the group is pursued by the ravenous troika of mountain men. Cue for gory death, chases a plenty and the ambience of a 70’s horror flick as Wrong Turn shifts into fast gear and doesn’t let up until the end.

Whilst low on originality( the film owes more than a debt to Deliverance and Chainsaw Massacre), Wrong Turn still has enough thrills to last it’s 80 minute runtime. Rob Schmidt manages this through unusual camera angles and contrasting lighting. The make up department should be praised for creating menacing villains, we only get a few glances of their faces but the killers are still a startling sight. The trio is all the more scary for their interesting and modern hunting methods, one is a deft archer whilst another has an uncanny gift for smell. The atmospheric and exciting is perfectly attuned to the fast-moving pace of the film.

The two leads, Desmond Harrington and Eliza Dushku, turn in the heroics as the laconic de facto leader and athletic and resourceful babe of the bunch. Jeremy Sisto as the wise-cracking best friend has his moments, but is chronically underused. Emmanuelle Chriqui is also lumbered with an uninteresting character, the screaming girl of the bunch who is basically there to eventually die in some gruesome way. The lack of character development with these two can be distracting, though you probably won’t notice because of the breakneck speed of Wrong Turn.Although it has its fair share of gore( one victim has her mouth torn open with rusted barbed wire), it is the things we don’t see that are most chilling. This is illustrated when the cannibals arrive home and the young group who are hiding, watch in horror as the cannibals eat their daily meal of another unwitting teenager. We don’t really see anything, it is what we hear that makes the blood run cold. Schmidt manages some thrilling, nail-biting sequences such as the group’s discovery of a car and caravan necropolis and their attempt to sneak out of the cabin without becoming the next meal for the trio of mountain men.

So in short, Wrong Turn doesn’t bring anything new to the table. But, it does have two interesting lead characters, some seriously scary killers and a relentless pace that leaves the knuckles white and the blood chilled. Not the best horror film but one that surely packs a punch with gruesome discoveries and eerie surroundings.