AT HOME with Michael Hootman

THE LAST WARNING (Eureka blu-ray).

This is a rollicking mystery – with shades of horror – from neglected silent master Paul Leni. Based on an early whodunnit, and a subsequent 1920s stage play, the film starts with the murder of lead actor John Woodford during a performance of something called The Snare. The police are called and, in a tradition that was mastered by Agatha Christie, we’re introduced to the literal cast of suspects. Could the foul deed have been committed by other actors who were rivals, along with the deceased, for the affections of the play’s star Doris Terry (Laura La Plante)? Maybe Terry herself wanted to off her squeeze for reasons later to be revealed. How about the aptly named money men: the Bunce brothers? The cheery stage manager?

The plot doesn’t really make any sense (I’m still not sure why the corpse goes missing) but the film has some remarkably fluid camerawork from Leni and there are some wonderfully ripe performances to enjoy. Torben Meyer pretty much steals the film playing the very suspicious, and slightly crazy, secretary; Carrie Daumery is a great theatrical grand dame, and bears an uncanny resemblance to June Brown’s Dot Cotton. I also loved Mack Swain’s Robert Bunce doing a little dance for no discernible reason other than to annoy his crotchety older brother. The ending is fairly weak as the motivation for the murder is ridiculously mundane, but apart from that it’s an enjoyable slice of theatrical absurdity.

VANISHING GRACE (Monte Perdido Studio).

The ideal narrative-puzzle VR game has to immerse the player in its world, deliver a good story and have puzzles which find the sweet spot of being neither too easy nor so hard you have to resort to a YouTube walkthrough. Vanishing Grace has an intriguing premise: in the middle of this century a man has to find a childhood friend who’s gone off-grid looking for a place of sanctuary on a planet decimated by some world-changing event. You travel through some gorgeously rendered, yet quite desolate, landscapes on a souped-up camper van with solar sails, which is pretty cool.

However, the gameplay itself I found both frustrating and incredibly unchallenging. Tasks which I thought I’d completed seemed to become undone for no apparent reason and I’d sometimes have to go through a level again after becoming stuck. Whether this was due to poor design, a bug or my own ineptitude I couldn’t say. The puzzles themselves are hardly worthy of the name. Having played the first two chapters over a fairly gruelling few hours, the game simply requires you to complete fairly monotonous tasks involving putting an object in its appropriate slot. There’s none of the logical deduction of a Red Matter, the wit of I Expect You to Die or the excitement of battling the laser-shooting scorpions of Moss. Perhaps Vanishing Grace is supposed to be more of a narrative than a puzzle, even so I’m not sure I’m that invested in our hero’s journey to make it to the end. Available on the Oculus Quest.