Murder In The Dark (2013)

APRIL 20, 2016

GENRE: SLASHER, SURVIVAL
SOURCE: CABLE (SHOWTIME)

One of the reasons I really hate the shift toward streaming over physical media is how it will limit our access to bonus features like commentaries and deleted scenes, as those things aren't usually part of the package (Netflix, on very rare occasions, will offer them, but I don't think I've ever seen them on a cable on demand service). Clearly, the filmmakers behind Murder In The Dark also lament that folks might not have access to their behind the scenes material, so they've offered it during the end credits in the same manner you might see outtakes or a music video or something. I don't think I've ever seen anyone take that approach, and as a bonus features (and credits!) aficionado I have to give them props for their novel idea.

Unfortunately, the sad truth is that if they DIDN'T include this material, we'd never know why the movie wasn't particularly involving (and also likely why it was never scary). As it turns out, this movie was not traditionally written or shot - the filmmakers opted for a Blair Witch-esque improvised "script" where they'd give each actor an idea/motivation that none of the others were privy to, and then let the cameras roll as the actors more or less made it up as they went along, with the notes to guide them. It wasn't SHOT like Blair Witch, thankfully - there's a lot of hand-held and shaky tracking shots, but it's not a POV movie - though it shares that very loose, unstructured approach. And, unfortunately, is also guilty of almost everything happening off-screen.

Now, in Blair (or any other found footage type movie), things happening off-screen is fine, even preferable if you consider the logic - why would someone stand there and film their friend being murdered? But this is ostensibly a slasher movie, and it gets fairly tiresome to keep finding bodies while being denied the chase/kill itself. As it employs a whodunit approach, there's at least some justification for having to keep things vague (finding a body of someone killed at an unknown/offscreen time allows everyone to remain a suspect), but that doesn't change the fact that without those scenes the movie itself offers little more than an endless (and ultimately grating) string of scenes where our protagonists find the dead body of one of their friends and then spend the next few minutes angrily accusing one another of being the culprit. Variations of "Empty your pockets!" or "Take off your shirt!" (to see blood or other marks of a struggle) come up pretty often - it's good we learn eventually that it was all improvised.

Of course, that doesn't make the movie any easier to enjoy in the moment. It's watchable enough, and in retrospect I can assign it some more respect and consider it an interesting approach (as opposed to a woefully generic slasher), but shouldn't the movie be compelling on its own? What if I didn't watch the credits? I'd be oblivious to the only notable thing about it, unless you count the pretty wacky twist where the over protective dad to an 18 year old turns out to be not her dad, but a guy she's having an affair with. I mean, that's pretty novel with or without thinking about the possibility that it was something the actor(s) made up on the spot (if it was supplied by the filmmakers we can almost guarantee that they didn't know about that reveal too far in advance), but that's one exception in an 80 minute movie. Besides, the movie spends very little time on character development before the first person turns up dead (in a scene with the one instance where finding a dead body works in the movie's favor), so I must say I don't really have much investment on how they really relate to each other. I mean if Armageddon sprang that twist on me right before Bruce Willis went into space ("By the way, Affleck, Liv Tyler isn't my daughter - she's my girlfriend and you're cuckolding me you asshole") that'd be incredible, but here it's like "Oh, OK. Fine."

On the plus side, the movie has a damn good setting for this sort of thing - a crumbling Italian ghost town, giving it an almost Anthropophagus feeling at times and impressively milked by the filmmakers. There's a healthy balance between day and night scenes, too, allowing them to show off the free production value throughout the film instead of cramming it all in the beginning before it gets dark and they might as well be on a sound-stage. The cast is multi-national (no "token" anyone - there's basically 1-2 of each!) and they're all introduced more or less at the same time, making it harder to guess who will die first and/or who will be the "Final Girl". And that goes for the killer too - I admit I didn't guess who it was (in fact the person I had pegged turned out to be the lone survivor! It'd be like guessing Alicia Witt was the killer in Urban Legend), but again - these aren't characters we have any real attachment to. There's an obvious appeal to getting things going early, but unfortunately the trade off is that the audience won't care as much about the endgame as they might for a film that gave us 20 minutes or so to really get to know/love these folks. The movie had a standard opening scene kill, so I don't know why they felt the need to rush to get to the scares again.

If you're wondering what the title refers to (it sounds like an Agatha Christie title, no?), it's a game where someone is assigned to be the killer (via secret draw - whoever picks the marked paper out of the bag is "it") and everyone walks around shaking hands, with the killer wiping a finger against the other person's hand to "kill" them - the goal is to figure out who the killer is before everyone is dead. Seems like a perfectly fun party game for 12 year olds, not sure why these college-aged kids (and one's "dad") are doing it, but the hook is that the real killer starts offing everyone off in the order they were killed in the game. It's no better/worse than any other "game turns deadly" setup you've seen, but for the gimmick to work they have to spend quite a while on the game - and in retrospect it's kind of obnoxious. We get to see these "kill" scenes but everything else is off-screen? WEAK.

The movie was an After Dark release; I didn't keep tabs on their last fest (released via Fox instead of the usual Lionsgate) but I assume it was part of that pack. The series has never been known for its outstanding and classic horror movies, obviously (though there are a handful of really solid ones), so I wouldn't say I was really "disappointed" with the movie - it was more or less what I expected, in that it didn't make me angry or anything but didn't really draw me in, either. It was "fine", and I'll forget everything about it in a few days - except for the fact that the most interesting part of the movie was a behind the scenes video playing alongside the end credits. As one of the biggest champions of supplementary material for our films, I feel it's my duty to also stress that they should never be a requirement for the audience to take anything away from their experience.

What say you?

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Prowl (2010)

JANUARY 30, 2011

GENRE: BREAKDOWN, VAMPIRE
SOURCE: ONLINE SCREENER

Well, I knew it couldn’t last. After two above average After Dark entries (Husk and Seconds Apart), we have Prowl, a typically forgettable/somewhat bad offering that doesn’t add anything new to its sub-genre(s) and does a fairly lousy job with a lot of the basics. In short, it’s the type of movie that’s barely worth a rental, let alone showcasing theatrically. But on the other hand, if this is the worst of this year’s lot, then it’s been a pretty good year for the series.

The biggest problem with the film is its woeful script. The concept is fine, but everything about it is botched, as if they were going out of their way to ruin their story. For example, our heroine wants desperately to escape to “the big city” (she repeatedly says “the big city” even though it’s Chicago – why does she refer to her specific dream in such a generic way?), and this being a horror movie, she needs one friend’s car and four other friends to join for the ride. And again, it’s a horror movie, so of course the car breaks down, literally inches from the town line. The visual gag is fine, but the script beats us over the head with it – she actually says “It’s like the town won’t let me leave!” But their proximity also renders the rest of the movie idiotic, because rather than simply go back into town and see if they can find another car (or rent one, one kid is 21 even though he looks the youngest), they flag down a truck and hitch a ride. The script even tries to seem smart by having the kids take pictures of the truck and send them to other friends as “insurance”, but nothing comes of this plot point when they are inevitably kidnapped, so it doesn’t matter.

Another big blunder is that they kill off almost all of the kids at once, which means that the bulk of the action involves our Final Girls running away from vampires, hiding, getting found, running... lather, rinse, repeat. Once a rather silly twist is revealed, it gets mixed up a bit, but it’s still rather monotonous. Worse, the action is poorly shot/edited – it’s often too dark to really make out much of the image, and the editing would make Michael Bay sick. And you might be thinking “It’s a vampire movie, it has to be dark!”, but you’d be wrong. Well you’re right, Prowl is wrong. These vamps CAN go in the sun, so I’m actually kind of baffled why they didn’t just set the whole movie in the daytime, which would have been interesting.

But like I said, the concept is fine. It’s not often the breakdown and vampire genres are combined, and the idea of bringing junkies into a deserted warehouse to let vampires both feed AND train to be better hunters is pretty cool (anything that kills junkies is fine by me, actually). There’s also a decent 5-10 minutes in the middle when the kids are aware that they’re in deep shit, prior to any of them being killed – we stay in the truck, as unsure of what is going on as the characters are, and director Patrik Syversen quickly creates (and maintains) tension out of the situation. It’s like a different (better) creative team took over for a while, and it's almost worth watching the film just to enjoy this taut sequence.

Also making it somewhat worthwhile is Courtney Hope as the heroine. She got saddled with some inane dialogue, but that’s not her fault, and of far more importance to her future as a scream queen, she was just as good as the action heroics as she was at screaming and being a potential victim. Also: hot. Always a plus. The other kids are pretty bland, though they looked (and, assuming the IMDb is correct for the few birthdays I checked, ARE) roughly the age that they were playing, which is one of those “why do I have to consider this a plus” things, but ‘for what it’s worth’ and all that, I suppose.

And as I said early on, if this is the low point for this year’s fest, then this new direction was a worthy endeavor. It’s not a good movie, but it’s hardly a disaster on the level of Lake Dead, Unearthed, or The Graves. Sometimes I wish movies were more like TV series, where the pilot or first couple episodes are shaky but they find their footing and become really great shows after some minor tinkering or a change in focus (Supernatural and Community being two examples). Movies like Prowl don’t get that chance, which is kind of a shame - they were onto something here, but they didn’t quite make it work. Oh well.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Seconds Apart (2011)

JANUARY 29, 2011

GENRE: PSYCHOLOGICAL, SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: ONLINE SCREENER

I’m surprised there aren’t more twin horror movies. The basic facts about twins are kind of creepy (to me anyway) – their oft-reported seeming telepathy (one twin is hurt, and the other can sense it hundreds of miles away), the fact that they dress/groom alike, etc. So basically, it doesn’t take too much exaggeration to turn their story into a horror film like Seconds Apart, which focuses on a pair of teenaged twins who possess the ability to cloud/warp/control the minds of those around them. And this being a horror movie and not a porno, they don’t use this to get laid. Fools!

No instead they kill folks, usually for some sort of petty revenge, such as four jock douchebags that they kill in the opening scene by “convincing” them to play Russian Roulette with a fully loaded gun. A lesser film would make it more of a mystery, with the hero/the audience thinking only one twin was responsible and spending the movie trying to figure out which (or worse, springing the twin as a “surprise” in the 3rd act), so I liked that the movie tells us right off the bat that both of these kids are evil. However, a girl comes along, and their relationship starts to crumble, which leads to a weakening of their power and thus unveils some secrets about their nature.

I must admit, there’s a great twist in the film that I never even considered for a second, and made me want to go back and watch the film again (I still might, if time allows). I always love being fooled, especially when it’s not an out of nowhere but still clichéd “twist” (i.e. he was dead the whole time, it was all a dream, etc). I just wish the film was grabbing my attention as well throughout more of its running time. The stuff with the girl is fine, but it slows the film down some, and takes a bit long to get to the point where the boys begin turning on each other, which is something you KNOW will happen even before the girl enters the picture. It sort of feels like the first act takes up more than half the movie, with the 2nd and 3rd acts somewhat squished together. Given the fact that the film has a more complex plot and deeper characters than the other films in this year’s crop, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a longer cut of the film on an AVID somewhere (as it runs the same 80-odd minutes that the other, less complicated films in the series do).

Another nice surprise was Orlando Jones’ turn as the cop who is investigating the initial murders and quickly zeroes in on the twins. He is known mainly for comedic roles (or as the friggin 7UP pitchman), so I was a bit puzzled by his casting at first, but he really did some great dramatic work with minimal humor (his fondness for Bazooka Joe comics is pretty much the extent of his levity). His character has a past tragedy, and he sells the obligatory flashbacks to this event as well as any traditional choice for this sort of thing, even when saddled with some rather silly hallucination/dream sequences, such as when he has visions of being trapped in a snow globe.

I was also impressed with the acting ability of Gary and Edmund Entin as the twins (actual twins - take that, Fincher!). At the start of the film, it’s impossible to tell them apart, but as the divide between them deepens, so does their demeanor, and thus it becomes a bit easier to tell which is which (even when one impersonates the other!). Eventually one changes his appearance, which serves both as a good plot point as well as an easier way to follow the action during their climactic battle, but before that point it was rarely an issue for me (after they start drifting apart I mean). Nice work, fellas.

See, this is the type of film I would love to see After Dark championing more often. It’s not perfect (again, the pacing is a bit wonky, and some of the explanation for their “powers” is a bit muddled), but it’s far from generic cookie cutter crap. Even Husk, which I liked a bit more, is basically another teen slasher/killer scarecrow movie, one that could have gotten a release on its own if it had a few names in it (hell, if 2005’s Venom could get a theatrical release...). But this is a bit smarter, and a bit harder to market, and thus wouldn’t have much of a chance (high school students killing jocks is hardly the most enticing prospect) of a decent release, and would be passed over on store shelves in favor of whatever Twilight wannabe was next to it. As with Dread or even going back to the first year’s The Hamiltons (which I didn't exactly love, but was at least not "typical" of anything) it’s the type of offbeat horror film with strong dramatic elements that I’d like to see more often, and kudos to ADF for putting it through production over what I’m sure were more commercially attractive options.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Husk (2010)

JANUARY 26, 2011

GENRE: BREAKDOWN, SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: ONLINE SCREENER

Well another year of the After Dark festival is upon us, and this year things are different. Instead of picking up a bunch of orphaned indie films and the occasional import, they actually produced all eight films themselves from what I understand, with ADF guru Courtney Solomon working to help develop the scripts and such. And if Husk is any indication, it’s a step in the right direction, because it’s one of the better films to bear the name.

Granted that is faint praise – most of the movies are either forgettable or downright terrible, with only 1-2 per year really qualifying as GOOD (last year’s Dread, for example). And I liked the concept behind the “festival”, which was to take eight films that would never get a big release and offer them some exposure, allowing a little gem like Mulberry St to get the recognition it likely wouldn’t have been able to have if it was just another DTV indie on the shelves at Blockbuster. But I can’t fault them for trying something new, and at any rate, Husk is an entertaining, largely old school horror flick, regardless of how it came to be part of the festival.

Now, I’ve seen so many bad killer scarecrow movies in my HMAD life, perhaps the movie succeeded for me simply by being better than those, but one cannot deny the facts. For starters, it’s got quite a fast pace – the teens are run off the road in the first two minutes, and one of them is dead shortly after that. Also, they’re not the usual hateful bunch – I actually liked all of them. The movie doesn’t spend a lot of time developing them, but at least they are free of the usual red flags – no one is cheating on their girlfriend/boyfriend, no one’s a jock douchebag, the nerdy guy isn’t endlessly berated by his supposed friends, etc.

I also dug how VICIOUS the scarecrows were. There’s a scene where one is trapped in a car with the ‘crow is trying to get in, and the thing just keeps pounding and smashing the glass and circling around trying to find a better point of access – it’s pretty relentless and awesome. Also, good luck trying to peg who dies first/last – it’s damn near impossible. They’re all introduced more or less on equal ground (no clear alpha male, and there’s only one female), and I didn’t recognize any of them either, so there’s no obvious pecking order. Plus, writer/director Brett Simmons is smart enough to understand that injuries can be just as scary as a death, so when someone encounters a scarecrow, it doesn’t mean they’re dead – I think everyone manages to get away or rescued in the nick of time. With such a compact cast, this could have been a real slow burn, but there’s actually quite a few scare scenes – it just doesn’t always end with someone dead.

The only thing that kind of disappointed me was the rather silly “rules” that one of the heroes figures out (using a chess metaphor) late in the film. You know in video games when the bad guy has some sort of Achilles heel that you have to use to your advantage (like in Resident Evil 5 when Wesker had to recharge or whatever) in order to gain the upper hand (i.e. run away and find ammo/health)? This movie actually has one of those, which keeps the scarecrows from attacking en masse and another factor that if I spelled out you’d probably be wondering why I was saying that the movie was pretty good. Suffice to say, it’s not silly enough to ruin the movie, but it’s close. The final scene is also maddeningly obtuse – there’s a survivor and a scarecrow, and a potential rescuer is running toward them both... and then it ends. I like ambiguity, but this is a bit too far in that direction.

I also could have done without the overly Texas Chain Saw-esque approach/investigation of the farmhouse, which like the Sawyer family’s is filthy, isolated, and stocked with macabre furniture and décor. The two guys walking up to it and calling “Hello?” even recalls Tobe Hooper’s film a bit too closely. Ironically, one thing they SHOULD have copied from that film is the length of the daylight section of the film – it gets dark way too quickly. One thing I love about Chain Saw is that it doesn’t really get dark for about a half hour or so, giving it an odd, lonely feel as the sun very slowly goes down. But here, the sun sets like it does in a Michael Bay movie – it’s light out when the characters set off to go somewhere fairly close (in this case the other side of the cornfield) and by the time they get there it’s somehow pitch black.

Especially considering how good the makeup is on the scarecrows. The masks are suitably creepy – they actually LOOK like scarecrows, not CGI’d monsters. And the nails through the fingers was a nice touch. There isn’t much gore (and Simmons has an odd fascination with showing blood dripping onto the various greenery), but what’s there is good and again, not CGI, at least as far as I can tell (Lionsgate’s online screener quality leaves much to be desired – made Hulu look like a Blu-ray). Much like having the characters not act like complete assholes and not following some sort of tradition when it came time to kill off the protagonists, it’s kind of depressing that a lot of my praise for the film is based on things that should ALWAYS be the case. Husk doesn’t have a good story or any really memorable characters, but it works because it’s the rare modern horror movie that isn’t bogged down with CGI or populated with people that I WANT to die.

The After Dark fest hits this weekend (January 28th) and the movies should be out for a week. Husk is the only one I’ve seen, but if it’s indicative of the quality of the other films, it should be a good year. And kudos to Mr. Simmons for making a lean, no-bullshit, entertaining killer scarecrow movie - the first one I’ve actually enjoyed since 1988’s Scarecrows, in fact.

What say you?

P.S. The name Husk kept making me think of the song “Tusk”, which kept making me think of the MST3k medley centered on “Tusk” from the Werewolf episode. I have embedded it below for your enjoyment, and I apologize if my enjoyment of this film was largely aided by my mental enjoyment of that song.

PLEASE, GO ON...

The Reeds (2009)

JULY 1, 2010

GENRE: SURVIVAL
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

And so it ends. Another collection of After Dark titles is “complete” in my eyes, as The Reeds was the only one of the eight I had yet to see. Now that this year is done, I will say that they sort of stepped back compared to last years above average set. While films like Dread and Hidden elevated the “franchise”, this year had a few stinkers, with The Final nearly hitting the 2nd year’s lows (that was the one with Unearthed, Tooth and Nail, and Lake Dead). As for The Reeds, well it falls right in the middle; it’s got too many problems to be considered good, but it’s got enough effort and some decent suspense to elevate it above stuff like Kill Theory.

Some spoilers ahead!

For the most part, it’s squarely in the ‘good’ category. Maybe not too original (a group of six 20ish folks go on a little excursion in an unfamiliar area and things, shockingly, go wrong), but it’s slightly unique within those limits, as they are on a small boat traveling through swampy marshlands, instead of the usual woods or desert locales. That alone gives it a unique element of suspense - they can’t really run around without risking falling into dangerous water, but there IS enough land for someone who knows the area (as their pursuer or pursuers most certainly does) to stalk them, even from a few feet away, hiding in the reeds.

Also, with the exception of the requisite asshole who is also the first to get knocked off (yay!), they’re a very likable lot, something that, as I’ve mentioned before, is sadly rare in modern horror films. I was actually a bit bummed when one of them died (it balanced nicely with the fact that the death in question was horrifically ironic), and even the asshole guy didn’t exactly make me root for the killer (and it didn't take long for me to realize I'd watch Anna Brewster in anything). And while I don’t condone the behavior, it’s actually nice to see protagonists smoking every now and then (you know, like a normal person does) without calling attention to it or making it a plot point (i.e. Avatar). Plus I didn’t recognize any of them, so it gives the characters a natural, lived-in feeling that you simply cannot get in a studio horror film, which will be peppered with cast members from Gossip Girl or whatever, all of them with squeaky clean (or generic “bad”) appearances.

Unfortunately it starts to go off the rails, becoming too bogged down in twists, some of which are never quite clear (anyone understand the closing shot? I sure as hell don’t). On one hand, the APPARENT meaning of the ending (that our heroine has been dead the entire time) allows for an otherwise ludicrous coincidence to make a lot more sense, but it also just adds too many questions, such as how she died in the first place. And again, that’s if my guess at the closing scene is correct - if not, then it’s even sillier and more frustrating.

Also, there’s a reason why you don’t see the survival genre crossed with too many others (in this case, ghosts - I left that out of the tagging to keep spoilers limited to the folks who chose to read the full review) - having supernatural elements goes against the basic appeal of a survival horror film, which is that it’s based in reality. I’m not talking about “this really happened” (the Saw films are survival), but that they COULD. So while they’re just being fucked with by locals and getting lost and such - that I can buy. Once they start getting chased by ghosts (and having far too many nightmare scenes on top of that), it makes it harder to buy into any of it as a genuinely possible situation.

Not helping matters is that the film, like Feast, seems to have been under-shot, rendering some of the carnage borderline incoherent. There’s a scene near the end of the 2nd act where the bad teens (who so far we believe to be our villains) are all running around with machetes, cut back and forth between two of our hero characters, and I’ll be damned if I could figure out what the hell was going on, how one of our guys got stabbed, or why the teens all disappeared all of a sudden. And it’s not the only example - it seems whenever things get really frenetic, they get needlessly confusing as well. It’s one thing to have some basic confusion when a particularly upsetting event occurs (i.e. when their boat crashes), but the kill scenes should be crystal clear - we’re supposed to be scared when they occur, right? Not going “wait, who was that?” and reaching for the rewind button.

Also, there’s a scene where one of the good guys accidentally kills one of the other good guys, because she was badly burnt and thus he didn’t recognize her. It’s the type of scene I’ve seen in other movies, where someone accidentally attacks a friend, but there’s something I never got (particularly here) - why don’t they recognize their clothes? They were just together a few scenes earlier, and even though her face is half burnt off, her attire is somehow not too damaged and thus easily identifiable (not to mention that you’d sort of be expecting to see one of your friends nearby anyway in this situation). Perhaps the scene could have been blocked a bit differently so it would be slightly less plot hole-y (I couldn’t help but think of the perfect execution of such a moment in The Descent, when Juno spins around with her claw out and stabs Beth in the neck).

But it’s still a decent enough time killer. Like I said, there’s a lot to like, and they do manage to take one of the most over-used plot setups in the world to deliver something a bit outside of the box, so that’s laudable. Maybe with better editing (assuming that he had the footage to work with in the first place - given the film’s low budget it’s possible that they never got to film as much coverage as would be necessary for some of the more exciting scenes) and a more coherent ending (which again, could be the result of a “we didn’t get to shoot an important scene” situation) it would be an overall winner instead of a mixed bag. Sadly, that, plus the fact that the disc has no extras whatsoever (a trailer is not an extra!), puts this one in the rental category. However, I do look forward to Nick Cohen's next film - editing snafus aside, this is easily one of the more visually interesting ADF titles of this year’s batch, and I think with some more dough and a less muddled script he could deliver some great stuff.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

The Final (2010)

JUNE 26, 2010

GENRE: HERO KILLER (?), SURVIVAL
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

I’m sure I’ve seen films with less confused morality than The Final, but none are coming to mind right now. In 95 minutes, writer/producer Jason Kabolati never manages to make any sort of point, which I think should be a priority for any horror film that would remind someone of Columbine or similar tragedies. By never really identifying with either the bullies or the outcasts who take revenge on them, the movie just becomes a pointless “torture porn” exercise, and a boring one at that.

Some SPOILERS are ahead.

See, there are only about 10 minutes’ worth of seeing the bullies ridicule our protagonists, and that’s pretty much all they do - ridicule them. One gets his camera broken, but otherwise they just make fun of the goth girl for being ugly (and she’s not, if anything she’s the most attractive female cast member, but that’s the least of this movie’s problems), make stereotypical 7-11 jokes at the expense of the Indian guy, and... well, we don’t even see them doing anything to the 5 or 6 other outcasts (including the “leader” of the group), so who knows what their problem is. Maybe they suck in gym class or something. And yet, before we know how they were wronged or even what all of their names are, they’re setting their plan in motion - they will host a fake party, invite only the bullies, drug them, and make them torture each other. Not even the worst idea, but the lack of characterization for the outcasts, the ones we’re supposed to feel SORRY for, keeps it from having any of the moral ambiguity that would make such a scenario compelling.

On the other hand, the bullies are so generic (and largely played by not-very-good actors), it almost seems like a farce of some sort, with the hot girls actually talking about how hot they are in their own privacy, and the jock dudes smoking weed and yelling about how excited they are to “PARTY!!! WHOOO!!!!” while they drive erratically. So we have two types of characters in this movie: generic bullies, and “oppressed” introverts whose names aren’t even easily identifiable. It's one thing to paint your characters in broad strokes, it's another to make all of them so bland and interchangeable (one of the "bullies" looks nerdier than any of the "nerds", in fact) that you're not even sure which ones we're supposed to root for. I began rooting for the "character" of Unseen Military Error, in the form of a mis-targeted nuke that would kill the whole lot of them.

But that doesn't happen. In fact, nothing really does. A good 50% of the movie is just the main outcast guy standing above all of the bullies, rambling on and on while they rock back and forth or whimper. Apart from the occasional torture scene (nothing too disturbing beyond an Audition-inspired acupuncture session), it’s just talk; uninteresting, generic talk. The only other action surrounds the only decent character in the movie, a would-be rapper who gets free and tries to get help. For some reason they almost instantly have him get tied up by a neighbor (who thinks he’s a robber), so now he’s just tied up in a different room listening to someone drone on and on, same as he was in the other house. But eventually he gets free (again) and goes back to rescue his friends, which paves the way for the anticlimactic ending, where none of the bullies are killed and the outcasts more or less kill each other or themselves. So again, what the fuck is the point? The moral of the story seems to be “If you are picked on, you should try to get revenge, but ultimately become even more of a coward.” There’s a touch of irony in the epilogue, in which the bullies return to their lives, now the outcasts themselves due to the injuries they endured over the course of the movie (acid in the face, a chopped off finger, etc), but it’s too little too late, and it’s pretty obvious to boot.

It’s also not much to write home about on a technical level. There’s a scene early on which has to set the record for most shifts in the color timing in a single scene (something the director at least acknowledges on the commentary), and the editing decisions are largely insane. Apparently there was a scene cut that would explain who the other 3 outcasts were keeping watch outside, and why they had on the same outfits as the ones inside, so as a result things just seem confusing, as there’s only a single throwaway line explaining that they have employed three others to watch outside (nothing about the outfits), so it looks like certain characters are in two places at once. Yet they have TWO montages of our five main outcasts putting on their masks.

Director Joey Stewart also botches one of his few interesting directorial choices, which is to take a page from Spielberg and “never” show any adults without obscuring their face in some way. It’s something I noticed right off the bat (my first note says “ET”), as they are always turned around, or behind a newspaper, or whatever. The only exception (at first) is the neighbor guy, so it just tips off that he’ll be important. But then later a cop is shown in full, and he’s never important. So whatever. I actually thought maybe it was just something I imagined, or a coincidence, but it was pointed out on the commentary as well.

The track is just as pointless as the movie, with Stewart and Kabolati congratulating themselves on pretty much everything, and explaining simple “no shit” things as if we’re as dumb as the characters in the film. Like early on, when a teacher is talking about how one of the generals in the Han Dynasty would disfigure his enemy rather than kill them, and Stewart helpfully points out that its foreshadowing what happens later. But should I expect anything more insightful from the 2nd unit director of Midgets Vs. Mascots? An annoying “making of” (mostly just an outtake reel and various cast/crew trying to be funny), a pointless deleted scene (not the one that would help explain the aforementioned plot hole), and two trailers for the film round things out, continuing the trend of this year’s After Dark Fest having feature-heavy DVDs after last year’s largely bare-bones lineup.

Hilariously, the director himself offers the most useful thought on the entire disc. When defending his poor sense of continuity, he sums it up by offering this to independent filmmakers: “Don’t spend countless hours on things that don’t matter.” Too bad he didn’t follow his own advice. The best thing I can say about this movie is that it’s not as bad as (fellow ADF4 entry) The Graves.

What say you?

Full disclosure - I was picked on in 1st and 2nd grade by a kid named Rob who was 3 years older, due to my big ears and thick glasses. Never considered throwing acid on the dude's face though. Mainly I just hoped he'd leave me alone, which he eventually did. And I had already been into horror movies at that point!

PLEASE, GO ON...

Hidden (Skjult) (2009)

JUNE 18, 2010

GENRE: PSYCHOLOGICAL (?), SLASHER (?)
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

Last night, via Twitter, I begged for a good slasher movie to watch for today, as I hadn’t really liked much this week, and I’m much easier to please with a slasher film than any other sub-genre. But the suggestions I got were not applicable or available to get in time, so I settled for Hidden (aka Skjult), which is one of the few After Dark 4 films I hadn’t seen yet and the only one I haven’t heard horrible things about. But I also thought it was a ghost movie, and yet... it’s sort of a slasher movie! And a good one! The system works.

Now I say “sort of” because I must admit I’m not sure I fully grasped everything that happened in the movie (SPOILERS AHEAD!). Either it’s up to interpretation, or I’m just a bit dumb, as I’m not sure if there was a 2nd person killing folks or if it was just a Fight Club-esque manifestation of the real killer (who would be our main character). There seems to be equal evidence of both, but the great thing is that I’m satisfied with either answer, because neither is “He was dead the whole time”, which is what I thought it was, due to Blockbuster’s “If you like this then you’ll like these” suggestions of Carnival of Souls, Jacob’s Ladder, and Sixth Sense when I added the film to my queue. I mean, those are pretty much the definitive “Dead the whole time” movies, and even one as a suggestion would trigger that theory in my head. So, well played, Blockbuster, you had me watching the movie under the wrong theory (which may be why I had trouble deciphering the actual answer, though a quick check on the IMDb board suggests it’s pretty much a 50/50 split for viewers over whether or not the killer was real or imagined).

Part of why I dug the movie is that it started out like a generic haunted house movie, with a guy inheriting a big isolated house from an estranged relative. I’ve seen enough of those, and was about to sigh in defeat when things started happening that didn’t jive with that type of movie. For example, he doesn’t stay in it. Instead, he goes to a strange hotel nearby, where the walls are all decorated with backlit photos of trees and waterfalls, which offers some incredibly striking production design. And the concierge is a cute Swedish girl who speaks cryptically, giving the thing a bit of a Twin Peaks vibe as well. And then when two teens sneak into the presumably abandoned house and get stalked by a creepy red-coat wearing slasher... let’s say I was no longer feeling so “seen it!”, as it was successfully blending elements of different sub-genres to create something unique (and tragic, ultimately).

Speaking of the production design, it’s a terrific house. Half rotted, things leaking, a room with nothing but a pile of creepy little mummy dolls... if this was an American movie, it would be turned into the next haunted house for Knott’s or Universal’s Halloween attraction season. Added to the hotel, you have one of the most visually interesting titles in After Dark history, especially compared to the rest of this year’s lineup, largely confined to generic locales like desert towns (The Graves) and lakeside cabins (Kill Theory).

Some stuff just seems to be weird for the sake of weird though, such as the female officer character. She wears an unexplained cast on her arm, alludes to being part of the main guy’s past, etc. Again, as I was originally under the “he’s dead” impression, I kept thinking she was possibly some sort of guide that would lead him to his ultimate destination in the afterlife, which would explain her quirks (and seeming ability to pop up just in time whenever he was in trouble), but there doesn’t seem to be any indication that she’s anything but who/what she says she is, making her little oddities all the more puzzling.

Regardless, it’s one of the best of this year’s ADF titles, and certainly the best foreign language one they’ve had so far, though I really should give Abandoned and Reincarnation another look, as I saw both under less than desirable circumstances (shitty theater/with a friend who wouldn’t shut up, respectively). And it’s another win for Norway (Cold Prey, Dead Snow), further cementing their status as a contender to replace Italy as the go-to place for (new) imported horror, since Italy barely makes any anymore. And we can’t give anything to the French.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

The Graves (2010)

MARCH 24, 2010

GENRE: BREAKDOWN, CULT, SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

My original plan to see The Graves in theaters during the theatrical run of this year’s After Dark crop was thwarted by my buddy Mike, who was shooting a short film the same night and needed some extras (my shoulder made it into the final version!). Now that I’ve seen it, I’m glad I waited for home - the screening in question was attended by cast and crew, whereas at home I was free to sigh, laugh at things that weren’t meant to be funny, and yell “Fuck you!” to horrible CGI blood splatters without offending anyone.

That last one really got me. At one point, actress Jillian Murray (from The Fun Park! She’s HMAD’s Girl of the Week, I guess) is hacking away at someone below the camera line, and they STILL use digital blood, which couldn’t possibly have taken less time/resources than having a guy laying on the floor throwing some karo at her. And you’ve seen this moment in a hundred horror movies, so the fact that none of the blood seems to hit her in the face/torso makes the digital-ness even worse. On the commentary, director Brian Pulido says that there wasn’t time to do it “right” on the set, as they would have to re-set and clean up, but at another point on the track he says that they were on schedule every single day. Surely going ten minutes over one day (assuming that there was somehow a way to “screw up” splashing blood on an actress) would have been acceptable if it meant a better moment for the film (and indeed, it’s one of the film’s biggest death scenes, AND a turning point for her character, yet all I can focus on are badly composited red pixels).

I can assume, then, that there wasn’t time for the ridiculously high number of moments that occur off-screen, resulting in confusion. Early on, Murray’s character runs out of frame and lets out a little yelp, and later she’s unconscious on the ground. Was she attacked, or did she fall? Either way, why is she in a seemingly different location entirely? And the climax is filled with off-screen events. The villain literally sucks souls away, but we have to imagine what that looks like most of the time, as it occurs off camera while we look at actresses sort of reacting to it (and a few opaque light filters for good measure). At one point we watch Murray and Clare Grant react to off-screen stuff, stumble around a bit, look for a way to run, and finally run out of frame. THEN they cut to the aftermath of what was happening while we were essentially looking at nothing. One of the film’s biggest problems is a script that has way too much going on for what was obviously a limited budget, so instead of toning the fantastical elements down a bit, they simply leave them up to our imagination, which is a bit difficult when the plot is this convoluted. If you want to keep a simple slashing off-screen, fine. But if your movie’s about a supernatural entity called The Savior who has possessed a group of townsfolk (via smell, I think) into killing tourists so that their souls can be used to resurrect their crops, I think the audience would actually like to SEE some of these things at work, not just be told about them by a hammy Tony Todd while our main characters are screaming and the rest of the extras are chanting.

And it’s strange, because Pulido comes from a comic book background. Surely he (more than anyone else!) would understand the importance of visuals being used to tell a story? And it’s not an occasional thing, it happens over and over throughout the movie - even basic kills are usually presented off-screen.

There is some merit to the batshittedness of it all, however. At one point Murray and Grant (I don’t buy these two as sisters at all, by the way - can’t they at least cast two women with the same hair/eye color or something so there can at least be a BASIC physical similarity?) become possessed by the evil smell and begin hissing and biting at each other, while tied to a chair. Again, the plot developments in this movie are always a bit left of fully coherent, so it seems to come out of nowhere, which makes it even more delightful. And Bill Moseley spends about half of his screen-time wearing a pig nose (at one point he even snorts and squeals). I can’t say much about the movie, but I will say this: it’s never boring.

However, Moseley’s presence just illuminates the biggest problem with the film - it’s derivative of too many other genre films. Our leads are traveling to strange tourist spots while on a cross country trip and they run afoul of Bill Moseley - sound familiar? The climax is largely stolen from Children of the Corn, and the basic beat-for-beat execution is not unlike any dozen “breakdown” movies - finding the room where the villains have kept all of their victims’ belongings, flagging down a car for help only to discover he’s one of the bad guys, trying to get away with the villain’s truck, etc. You, I, and everyone else has seen all of this stuff before, and usually better. Hell, it even brought to mind Machined at one point (Arizona junkyard), though at least it’s better than that.

Sadly, the most original thing Pulido brought to the table is also botched. Our two heroines are introduced as being huge geeks, going to the comic book store and filming their picks of the week (all Pulido titles, by the way - he is the creator of "Evil Ernie" and has worked on several other series). But it’s weird, even though I know that these two girls are indeed a bit on the nerdy side of things in real life (Grant in particular - ever see Saber?), but their geekiness seems a bit forced. “There’s more to life than comics” one says; “There IS?” says the other. It just doesn’t work, and for all the time they spend on painting them as these super-cool girls, it has fuck all to do with their characters once the shit hits the fan. There’s no correlation drawn between the ridiculous stuff that they read (and love) and the ridiculous stuff that actually happens to them, which could have been interesting. Even more interesting - they could have been horror fans too, and thus would be better prepared for all of the clichés they were about to experience (like in Hills Run Red, where the guy is (theoretically) smart enough to bring a gun when camping in the woods).

Bonus points for making a reference to the original Vacation though (“This ain’t Wallyworld”). Even MORE bonus points for not going to the “Not in Kansas” well.

After Dark has made a strong comeback in terms of bonus features, after the bare-bones third series (only Autopsy had significant supplemental material; most didn’t even have a making of featurette). Pulido provides one of two commentaries, and though it starts off shaky (he sounds like he rehearsed the entire thing, and starts off more or less just narrating the movie), he finds his groove and turns in a pretty decent track, pointing out set design details (his wife was the production designer, her and DP Adam Goldfine provide the other track, which I don’t have time for) and heaping praise on Moseley (who was the one to come up with the pig nose), plus the usual sort of nitty-gritty. It seems to be a bit off-sync though, he’s often pointing out things about 5 seconds before we see them. Then there’s a pretty standard making of, trailer, music video, and a “not as funny as they seem to think it is” thing about some lawn gnome that he is “contracted” to put into all of his films. All that stuff you can skip, but definitely check out “Plan To Actual”, which is a sort of storyboard comparison-esque piece in which we see Pulido and a few others acting out certain scenes on location, compared to their final version in the film. I also enjoyed the look at the sound editing, and the brief audition footage, primarily for the fact that Randy Blythe (lead singer of Lamb of God) tried out for Moseley’s role (he ended up playing main villain Todd’s top henchman in the film), so you get to see a different interpretation of the character. Finally, the original script is included (PDF file on the DVD-rom), which is interesting because it seems to be word for word exactly what the film was. Either the actors all followed it to the letter, or it’s actually just a transcript (I lean toward the latter, since it specifies that Moseley sings a certain line, something that Pulido says was an acting choice on Bill’s part and thus probably wouldn’t have been in the script).

The wealth of extras are sort of a double edged sword though. With all of this insight and cooperation, one has no choice but to assume they are happy with the film (in fact, they even say as much on the commentary and making of). Had the film been tossed on a disc sans any sort of input from the creators, I could be persuaded to think that the film’s shortcomings (to sum up - a muddled script that goes from painfully generic to needlessly convoluted, awkward visual storytelling, unbelievable sister dynamic) were the result of the filmmakers fighting with producers (of which this film has several), rewrites, post production editing trouble, etc. But everyone involved is accounted for, and seemingly quite pleased with the outcome. Wish I could have joined them, but sadly this is the weakest ADF entry of the current group so far (5 down, 3 to go!). Better luck next time, folks!

What say you?

P.S. They spelled my boss’ name wrong on the end credits - It’s MISKA, not MISHKA! If he was SAG that woulda cost em 10k.

PLEASE, GO ON...

The Butterfly Effect 3: Revelations (2009)

MARCH 2, 2010

GENRE: SERIAL KILLER
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

I am 99% sure that it was my Horror People, Dear Reader (we’ll bring it back someday, I promise!) cohort Simon Barrett that told me The Butterfly Effect 3: Revelations was a good movie, but Fearnet’s Lawrence Raffel took the fall. Either way, they’re mostly wrong. It’s not a disaster, but it’s seemingly written by someone who read the back of the DVD of the first movie and went from there, ridden with plot contrivances, and sort of dull when the killer’s not around.

But man, those kill scenes are ridiculous. There are only three, but they are gory and insane, something I was not expecting. Body parts are sliced off, blood sprays everywhere, etc. It’s almost like the filmmaker knew that the film wouldn’t catch anyone’s attention otherwise (indeed, such elements are the only things that make this an actual horror movie, which allowed it to play in theaters with the After Dark festival instead of simply going DTV and being ignored forever).

The kills cannot make up for the fact that the movie never establishes clear rules, and its nature as a sequel makes it even more confusing. Our guy can go back in time to whenever and wherever he wants (something Kutcher’s character could not), but he never changes anything, he just observes. In theory - fine; obviously something will happen and cause him to intervene and thus cause the titular effect. But the ripples he causes are largely minor and for the most part, unrelated to anything. At one point he goes back in time and witnesses a “murder” that turns out to be a rape fantasy, only to get caught by the guy (who isn’t into the role-playing, despite his girlfriend’s pleas and explanation that she "read about it in Cosmo" - since when does Cosmo work rape fantasies into their “10 Ways To Please Your Lover” articles?). But when he goes back to the present, he is now living on some dude’s couch. How in the hell do those things correlate?

In fact, none of the “changes” we see are related to what he did in the past, at least, not in any readily logical way. They are just changes for changes’ sake, for audience members to identify that things have changed. The original (I never saw the 2nd film, by the way) didn’t always spell things out either, but it was at least largely coherent - Ashton did something that cost him his arms and legs, and thus in the new future, his would-be girlfriend is with his best friend. Maybe they DID spell this out (can’t remember them doing so), but if not, it’s not hard to see what happened - his injuries prevented him from doing things with them, the two got closer without him, and started fuckin’. This guy goes back and looks at a murder scene (doesn’t even seem to DO anything) and when he returns, his sister is now successfully employed instead of being an agoraphobic pothead. OK, movie. Plus, he jumps back and forth so often, none of said changes ever have any sort of emotional effect whatsoever. They barely even bother with the “OK, things have changed and I can’t let on that I’m confused” aspect of things.

Of course, if anything MEANINGFUL had changed this would be a bigger issue. Despite going back years at times, nothing ever seems to affect his basic relationships with people. He’s always friendly with one cop and suspected/ridiculed by another, he’s always close with his sister, he’s got a Mark Boone Junior-esque friend who he can relay exposition to, etc. This adds to the incredibly jarring nature of the film - if what minor thing he did in the past could cause his sister’s job to change, why is everything else so similar? Same roommate, same wardrobe, same relationship with the cops, etc. It actually plays out a lot like that movie Déjà Vu, where he was observing past stuff and doing something about in the future, but then they just threw in some Butterfly effects for good measure. It wouldn’t surprise me if the film was written as something else and inexplicably (and poorly) reworked into a Butterfly sequel.

The reveal of the killer is also jaw-droppingly inane. I must admit I didn’t see it coming, because I thought HE was the killer, a la Timecrimes. But no, it’s his sister (After Dark staple Rachel Miner), who was killing any girls that Sam became close to because she wanted to fuck him herself. Points for originality, but it also introduces more plot holes. If she can jump through time herself, why was she living in squalor during key scenes in the film? And why has she waited so long to make her move? Hell, they’re so close at the beginning of the film I thought they WERE boyfriend and girlfriend. They then blow their chance to make up for the original’s theatrical (happy) ending - Sam goes back to the fire that killed their parents and lets her die instead. Why not just kill himself (as Kutcher’s character did in the original ending of the first film) and thus spare everyone from having to deal with him? No, instead we get an honest to god picnic, with pretty much every character showing up, alive and happy.

Actually one character is missing - the whore bartender who Sam fucks in one timeline and gets rejected by in another (because now she’s engaged, another change that in no way could have anything to do with what he did when he changed the past). Their fuck scene is probably the most ridiculous in the film (which, again, is about time traveling incest supporters). They go at it in pretty much every position I can think of, but then he sees a picture of his dead girlfriend and loses his mojo, which prompts her to freak out and call him “gay”. Girl, he just fucked you 10 ways from Sunday! It’s about the journey, not the destination, you know?

I knew I shouldn’t have bothered with this one. The other entries in After Dark 3’s lineup were largely decent, but this one is the same sort of laughable junk the first two Fests were loaded with. Congrats, Slaughter, you’re no longer my least favorite entry of ADF3!

Oh, and suspected serial killers aren’t usually placed in general holding cells with drunks and parking ticket violators. Way to waste money hiring extras for yet another plot hole.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Lake Mungo (2008)

JANUARY 31, 2010

GENRE: GHOST, MOCKUMENTARY
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

For a while, Lake Mungo seemed like it might buck the trend of found footage type movies and deliver something truly unique and great. For starters, it’s not really found footage, but presented as an actual documentary (not unlike the bulk of Poughkeepsie Tapes, though far more successfully depicted) with talking heads and news footage and all that. Unfortunately, the filmmakers allow too many threads to go unexplained or underdeveloped, resulting in a decent film that squanders its promise and above-average presentation.

Mungo sort of unfolds like a long-form episode of Unsolved Mysteries, with news footage about a missing person (in this case, a teenage girl named Alice) who ultimately turns up dead paving the way for speculation and few answers. But Robert Stack isn’t here to frighten us by shouting “UPDATE!” at the end of the film and let us know that the killer had been caught or whatever. Instead, the movie ends without even some text wrapup (gotta be a first for this type of movie), and instead makes the movie even MORE bafflingly over-complicated.

Some spoilers follow!

See, for the first half hour or so, we are told about how the family of the dead girl has been hearing things, and then the ghost of the girl begins appearing in photographs and home videos and such. These moments aren’t particularly interesting, but the explanation IS - it turns out that the girl’s brother has been faking the photos in order to help his mother get some closure (the photos make her decide to dig up the girl’s body - which was bloated from being in the water for a few days - and get DNA testing to confirm that it really was their daughter). But then they notice that their neighbor was caught in the girl’s room in one of the photos, and a whole new storyline opens up. And this is fine (the plot twists unfold much like in the terrific mini-series The Staircase, where a guy is accused of killing his wife and halfway through you find out that he was married before and that THAT wife also died mysteriously), but unfortunately, writer/director Joel Anderson never really follows through with it. It turns out Alice slept with the neighbor (and his wife, or mother - they never really explain the neighbor’s family genealogy) and videotaped it, so they assume the guy was in the bedroom looking for the tape. I’ll ignore the idea that a guy would be able to sneak into a house where the occupants are already paranoid about ghosts and not be noticed (even with video cameras rolling!), but I’m baffled as to why this plot thread ultimately goes nowhere. They tell us that the family has moved away, and that’s the end of it. Um, did they not leave a forwarding address? Isn’t their disappearance a bit strange?

And then out of nowhere, one of Alice’s friends lets them see some cell phone video she shot on a class trip to the titular locale about 6 months before she died, where she claims she can see Alice digging a hole. Now, the video is so blurry and dark that I can’t even make out people from trees, let alone specific people doing specific things, but again, I’ll go with it. But I think it’s a bit late to finally get to what I assume is the point of the movie, and it turns out she was just burying her OWN phone to hide a video that was on there! It’s like a Russian doll in the form of video footage. Now, THAT video is undeniably creepy and will likely scare the shit out of folks watching the movie at home, but again, we get no clear explanation or answers for any of it, which seems a bit puzzling when the film is ostensibly a documentary. The video isn’t shown to experts, the other girls aren’t questioned about what they saw, etc. They watch the video, come up with a half-assed/halfway decent explanation for it, and then the movie more or less ends.

Well, almost. Just to further complicate matters, we then see the photos that we know were doctored by the brother, only this time we see that Alice’s ghost REALLY WAS in the photo elsewhere! Like he Photoshopped her on the left, but her real ghost was off to the right. What? Why go through the whole Photoshop plot thread if her ghost really was haunting them? And since the video shows that Alice encountered her own ghost (they think it was warning her of her impending death) then why is she sticking around after she dies? See, that is the problem with the movie - it continually raises questions but never gives a straight answer for any of them, and overcomplicates what should be a simple and subtle story. Ghosts both real and staged, premonitions, shady psychics (I haven’t even mentioned him), sex tapes, possible murders... I wouldn’t have been surprised if they started tossing aliens or something into the mix. “Upon careful re-examination of the photo, I can see what is, without a doubt, a Triceratops.” It reminded me a bit of 24, where each episode is fine on its own, but when you think about the overall arc, those plot twists simply make zero sense when combined with the other episodes. Lake Mungo is similar with scenes - sure, it’s a great twist to discover that the photos were faked, but not so much when you discover that he didn’t need to fake the photos in the first place.

On the plus side, again, it’s well made, and the faux news footage is so good I began questioning whether or not the story WAS based in reality. The actors are good, another thing that can sink this type of movie (they say “Uh....” a lot and sometimes trip over their words - like real people do and actors PLAYING “real” people always forget to do*). And even with its multiple plot branches keeping the movie from having a focus, the basic story (family coping with their loss) resonates in a way few faux docs manage. It’s the rare film that falters simply because it ends when you think that more resolution is on its way; the director’s credit came up and my mental grade for the film dropped a few notches.

Hopefully the DVD will have some deleted scenes and/or a commentary that can clear some matters up. As it stands, it’s a technically well made film (I am definitely interested to see what Anderson does next), but one that is somehow both over-plotted and vague. There are a few creepy moments (Alice’s cell phone video gave me the willies, not unlike that kid’s birthday video from Signs) and nothing particularly gruesome or explicit, making it a must-rent for teenage girls having a sleepover near Halloween-time, but otherwise, I’d suggest holding out (still!) for Poughkeepsie Tapes.

What say you?

*I later discovered that the film was largely improvised, so these might be genuine “flubs” and not actor’s choices. Also, this means that it’s possible that some of these go nowhere plot threads were improvised and Anderson left them in for whatever reason.

PLEASE, GO ON...

Kill Theory (2009)

JANUARY 29, 2010

GENRE: SLASHER, SURVIVAL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

The main problem with Kill Theory (formerly Last Resort) isn't that it's not very good, it's that it's not good enough for a theatrical release. Had it just gone DTV like countless other Saw wannabes, I'd probably look at it differently and give it a pass. But when it's in theaters, for the same price as every other movie (well, except for Avatar - easy to be number one when every 5 tickets sold is the equivalent of 8 standard ticket prices), it has to be judged on the same lines, and that is where the film fails to measure up.

Now, I must point out that in, heh, theory, I like what After Dark is doing - giving a theatrical release to films that wouldn't quite fit in the multiplexes if given a traditional rollout. They lack stars, they lack big effects, they're usually smaller in scope... even the most commercial entries in years past still wouldn't be able to compete with Drag Me To Hell or the newest Final Destination or Saw sequels. But ADF should focus on films like Dread (which despite the Clive Barker connection, is a tough sell due to the fact that it doesn't fit into a traditional sub-genre) or ZMD, which is a low budget zombie film (of which there are countless thousands these days) but with the brains all those others usually lack. A film like Kill Theory doesn't offer that originality OR intelligence - it's yet another hybrid movie (Battle Royale meets Saw, set in a generic "parent's lakeside house" to add that slasher feel) with an occasionally excruciating script.

I have to mention writer Kelly Palmer, because he is the only one who gets a credit at the top of the film. Director Chris Moore (loved this guy on Project Greenlight - I hope the DVD has a lengthy making of with him doing his thing), the actors, the producers, etc. - they are only credited at the end, which isn't uncommon (if it were up to me, no film would have opening credits). But for some reason, "Written by Kelly Palmer" appears before the title. All this accomplished for me was thinking that the script would be pretty amazing (it's not like Kelly Palmer is a selling point; I could see a film maybe wanting to point out that it was written by Shakespeare or Stephen King at the top, but this is the only produced script for the lad). Which is hilarious, because the writing in the next two scenes is jaw-droppingly terrible. First we get Don McManus as a shrink, telling his patient (read: us) about the guy's own history. "You were on a mountain, and the rope was about to break, so you cut your friends loose in order to save yourself, and that was three years ago..." I momentarily thought that the film was a spoof of such films, and that they were going to cut to the guy saying "Yeah, no shit. I'm me." Anyway, once McManus has delivered all of the exposition we need (for now), we cut to our group of kids, who are, of course, a largely intolerable lot, obsessed with sex and drinking. And there's all of the usual stereotypes for good measure, right down to the fat guy who doesn't have a bed partner as of yet. It's so much like Friday the 13th 3, I kept wondering where the two stoner characters were.

Things pick up a bit once the shit hits the fan though. First, they kill off the least annoying character first, which is ballsy (and the jump scare is pretty terrific as well), and then our killer provides a videotape where he explains the rules of the game - they have until 6 am to kill all but one of themselves, or he will kill them all. See, our killer is the guy from the beginning, and he wants to prove to his shrink that anyone, not just him, would kill their close friends when their life was on the line. Not really the worst theory, but the largely intolerable characters keeps the film from being as interesting as it could have been. As usual, I could care less if any of them died, so it makes no difference to me whether or not they kill each other or are killed by the bad guy. Had they been presented as good, interesting people (or even better/more disturbing - a family), maybe things would be different. But no - one's trying to steal her friend's boyfriend, one's trailer trash, one cheats on his girlfriend, one sucks at Gears of War... good riddance to the lot of ya, I say.

Back to the bad guy, for some reason his identity is kept from us until the end, when it turns out to be (non spoiler) Kevin Gage. Kevin Gage was not a previously seen character in the film, so why they kept him off-screen during the opening scene and then throughout the course of the film is a bit puzzling. I assume maybe they were trying to make us think that one of our "heroes" was the killer, but this doesn't work for two reasons - one, early on he shoots at them when they are all together, and two - they are all long-term friends from college who have been together for four years, and we know the guy was away for 3 for killing his friends on the mountain. So for that to work, the mountain accident would have had to have occurred in high school, and then he would have had to have waited for four years after getting out to prove his shrink wrong. So yeah, no. There is a slight twist to the end, but again, the lack of giving a shit about any of the characters keeps it from being as interesting and/or downbeat as intended.

But again, it's not a flat out terrible film. Some of the scares work, there is an admirable tension for most of the 2nd act of the film, and the lack of favoring one character over another (even Agnes Bruckner, who is about the closest to a star the film has, isn't really in the film more or less than the others) makes it a bit harder to peg the final girl/guy. The killings are also pretty surprisingly vicious; one guy gets beaten to death with a shovel (and then some), and another one's eyeball meets the business end of a fire poker. Plus these kills aren't necessarily carried out by the person you thought would do them, so it adds another layer of enjoyment.

I was also tickled by a particular painting in the living room of the house where the movie takes place. I don't know if it's original art for the movie, or something they found, but I want it for my house. It's basically a guy using binoculars, looking at "you" the viewer. Behind him, laying down, is a naked woman. It sticks out like a sore thumb, and every time it found its way into a shot I couldn't help but giggle. My art knowledge is a bit ignorant (and by bit I mean, "wholly"), so for all I know it's up there with the "Mona Lisa" or "Starry Night", so if you think you know the painting I am referring to (again, assuming it's not an original created for the film) then please let me know who painted it and at what Target I can buy a cheap reprint of it.

So when the films hit DVD, it will probably be considered one of the better ones, as it's the type of hard R fare that will go over well with the types of people who watch Saw films for the torture scenes and think Rob Zombie's Halloween is better than the original. And for the price of a rental, it provides 90 minutes of mildly enjoyable, low grade entertainment. But it's also the type of movie that would have done fine on its own, without the ADF push (well, theoretical push - as with last year, the awareness of the festival is next to nothing as they didn't bother to spend any money marketing it), which makes me wish that ADF had given its slot to a more original, challenging film.

What say you?

P.S. Side trivia note - my very first phone interview for Bloody Disgusting was with Agnes Bruckner, when she was promoting Blood & Chocolate. When we got to the "what are you doing next?" portion of the interview, she told me she was shooting this film. And that was three years ago, so maybe it DID need ADF to get released.

PLEASE, GO ON...