REVIEW“The film centres on Rose (a sensational Maeve Higgins), a small-town ghostbuster whose love life is destined to remain as dead as the ghouls she converses with unless she can rid recent widower Martin (Barry Ward) of the poltergeist-y presence of his no-nonsense late wife. We never see the dearly departed Bonnie but she controls every element of Martin’s life – his shirt selection, his toaster settings, you name it. When Martin reaches out to Rose for help, at the behest of his teenage daughter, the pair hit it off. Which cheers Rose, but sends Bonnie into a rage from beyond the grave...
“Ahern and Loughman strike a formidable balance between laughs and lilting moments of emotion. Combining What We Do In The Shadows’ dry wit, the punchy direction and genre fun-poking of Shaun Of The Dead, plus a proton pack’s worth of Ghostbusters gags (“I haven’t read it,” says Rose when Martin references the ’80s classic), Extra Ordinary is spirited in every sense of the word. It’s a film in which there’s something strange in a neighbourhood, to borrow from the Ghostbusters theme song. That “neighbourhood” just happens to be middle-of-nowhere Ireland. What’s strange is how confident this is for a pair of first-time filmmakers… there’s little ordinary about Extra Ordinary – an unfalteringly funny, ectoplasm-drenched horror-comedy that deserves the cult status it’s destined for. — Al Horner, Empire |
FILM SOCIETY SCREENINGSCanterbury
Monday, 24 August, 7:30pm |