Tale Of The Mummy (1998)

FEBRUARY 25, 2012

GENRE: MONSTER, SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

At the time of Universal's big budget, largely horror-free version of The Mummy in 1999, there were other projects in development that would be more up our alley, including one from Clive Barker. Instead of that, we got Tale Of The Mummy, a Dimension/Miramax production directed by Highlander's Russell Mulcahy, which I find interesting since the Dimension-ized Highlander sequels were the ones he wasn't involved with. Over the years I hadn't heard many positive remarks about the film, and I had sort of forgotten about it until I got sent the new Blu-ray to review.

Well I'll be damned - it's actually pretty fun. Coming in at the standard Dimension length of 88 minutes, the action never stops for too long, and I usually enjoy the "bad guy takes particular body parts from victims in order to recreate someone/something" plot that this follows, as our "resurrected" mummy (named Talos) needs the organs from folks who were reincarnated from his body over the years (luckily, they're all in London!). In a fun twist, not everyone is reincarnated as a human, giving the film one of horror's few (relatively) justified dog killings. Oddly, Mulcahy's next film also had one of these plots; the Seven ripoff Resurrection had a guy putting body parts together to make Christ.

It's also chock full of familiar faces of every variety, making it more interesting in this department than it was at the time. You get a few genre vets (Christopher Lee, Shelly Duvall) mixed with fun character actors like Jon Polito, Michael Lerner, and Sean Pertwee, and even a bona fide Bond legend (Honor Blackman). But there are also early turns by Gerard Butler and Jack Davenport (watch Smash, by the way! It's pretty damn good.), which turned out to be beneficial for the former, as it's probably how he secured the title role in Dimension's Dracula 2000. All of this helps make up for the unfortunate fact that the two leads are the dullest in the cast; Louise Lombard is nice enough to look at but has very little presence (very much a "Wes Craven presents" kind of heroine), and Jason Scott Lee has a very limited range which is not utilized here - he doesn't fight anyone! Instead he just delivers lots of exposition and even engages in the most out of nowhere romantic subplot I've seen in a while. Can't help but wonder how much more interesting this stuff would have been if he and Davenport switched roles, especially since the movie never bothers to take advantage of Lee's considerable prowess as an ass-kicker.

But again, it moves along nicely, so it's not too big of a deal. Davenport and Lee are the cops trying to figure out who is behind these killings in which organs are removed, giving the film a sort of serial killer vibe in the early scenes, albeit one with big cheesy FX scenes, which are hit and miss in terms of how good they look. Some probably looked terrible even back when the movie was first released (particularly Talos' final form, which is pure PS1 cut-scene style), but others are pretty good and unique - anyone who was ever disappointed with the lack of a "bandage" Mummy in the original Universal film or whatever will be happy to know that the wraps play an important part in many of the kill scenes, wrapping around folks or acting like tentacles. Kind of goofy, sure, but I can't recall seeing that in any other Mummy film (can anyone correct me?). And there's a practical half-formed Mummy in the 3rd act that looks pretty awesome, so there's something.

Mulcahy also tones down his usual music video style, which was a relief as it can get a bit tiresome (not to mention help date his films). He still tosses in some lens flare and flash, but nowhere near as excessive as in Resurrection or the Highlanders. He also gets good mileage out of the London setting, which sticks out in particular nowadays after seeing the terrible London sequence in the 2nd Mummy film, a scene that probably cost more than this entire film. The opening flashback sequence (featuring Lee) is also fun as it recalls the older films (desert, archaeological digs, etc), paying homage to their predecessors before modernizing it, something that the Brendan Fraser films also lacked as those retained the 1920s period. In a way it's kind of like Dracula 2000 in that regard, although in some ways more successful since it lacks that movie's goofy "Judas" twist and excessive plugs for Virgin Megastore (also, no pop stars in this one).

Back to the 88 minute runtime for a second - as is customary for a Dimension film, there is a longer cut out there that runs 20-25 minutes longer. Movie Censorship has a pretty detailed account of the cut stuff, which is mostly character-based (shocking, I know), including a lot of potentially fun banter between Lee and Davenport and a scene or two that would have softened the randomness of Lee and Lombard's romance. Some of the mystery involving what Talos was up to also would have been a little more clear with this information, though it's hardly an incoherent mess like Halloween 6 or other movies that Dimension hacked to pieces.

Sadly, nothing on the site suggests that the ending was fleshed out any more in the longer cut, which is a surprise since I was pretty convinced it was reworked, given how confusing it is. I honestly have no idea what happens in the last 2-3 minutes in the movie; I THINK we find out that one character was working with Talos all along, and Lee was one of the unknowing organ holders all along, but it's very clunky at best (and there's no real fight against Talos either). It doesn't help that the sound mix is pretty far from demo quality; the action scenes were too loud and the dialogue too low at my normal volume setting (and no subtitles are available). Picture quality was better than I've seen on other Echo Bridge blu-rays, however (and at the right 2.35:1 aspect ratio, woo!). They even made a menu and included the trailer, so maybe they took the criticism of their first batch of high def releases to heart.

As I said on Twitter, it's not a movie you need to hunt down or move to the top of your queue, but in the realm of DTV Dimension releases, it's a lot more enjoyable and "classy" than anyone could have expected, and again it's fun to see such an eclectic cast (almost every person in the movie is recognizable). I'll take it over either of the modern Mummy sequels, that's for sure (haven't watched the original in a decade but I recall it being a pretty fun Indiana Jones style adventure, plus a very fetching Rachel Weisz before she turned into a "serious", joyless actress).

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Killjoy (2000)

FEBRUARY 24, 2012

GENRE: REVENGE, SLASHER
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

Life is great sometimes. Driving home, I realized I didn't have any suitable rentals waiting for me at home (between mailings), and thus I'd have to use Netflix Instant on my Xbox to find today's movie, which was bad because it might result in me playing Skyrim instead of editing. And then sitting at my door, like a little gift from the gods of horror movies, a package from Echo Bridge, which included Killjoy, a 72 minute killer clown movie. All problems solved! I could watch the very short film and have more time for editing, without Skyrim tempting me!

(Full disclosure: after the movie I edited for 2 hrs and then played Skyrim for four. Take that, Draugr scum. )

Since most killer clown movies tend to suck (not Killer Klown movies, however), AND this was from Full Moon, my expectations were pretty low, but I must say the movie is fun in a "so bad it's good" way, unlike most FM productions which are just plain bad due to being so damn boring. It wastes no time in offing our tragic hero who will be resurrected as Killjoy, the wisecracking demonic clown, and then the movie goes another step further - he wipes out all three of the guys he seeks revenge against in the first 37 minutes! I wouldn't say it's particularly great writing by any stretch of the imagination, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that A. the movie couldn't be considered too slow and B. I actually didn't know how the second half would play out (I wouldn't put it past Band to run the end credits for the remaining 35 minutes).

The second half is more like a weird Dream Warriors riff, oddly enough. After a visit from a homeless dude who sums up the plot thus far, showing us things we just saw in the exact same context as originally presented, the girl that Killjoy loved as a human, her friend, and her boyfriend are sucked into Killjoy's dreamworld, where they battle the clown as well as the zombie/demon figures of the three guys he already killed. I was a bit baffled by this plot point - why would the folks he murdered suddenly be on his side? But hey, it was keeping the movie from being too boring, so points for effort.

Throughout the film Killjoy offers wonderfully terrible puns and jokes in his attempt to be Freddy Krueger or Chucky, many of them "street" based like "Shut the fuck up before I smoke yo punk ass!" and "THAT's how you bust caps, mutha fucka!". The latter is particularly memorable; one of the bad guys fires about 20 times from his six shooter pistol, and Killjoy absorbs them and shoots them back from his mouth. Then they cut to the guy being shot over and over, represented by some half-hearted attempts from the actor to look like a guy being riddled with bullets as well as a charmingly awful digital effect in which red spots (blood?) appear for a second and then disappear before another one pops on/off in a different spot on his chest. Aw, Killjoy, you're cute.

It's also got a bunch of howler lines from the non Killjoy characters. Our heroine tells her boyfriend that she still thinks about her ex (the main bad guy) even though they've been broken up for a year, explaining that "he took my virginity, I can't just stop having feelings for him." Her friend not once but TWICE says "It's FINALLY over!" with regards to Killjoy being stopped (he "dies" like three times), even though their association with him only lasted about 20 minutes or so in the movie. The boyfriend offers similar sentiment, sighing that "It feels good to laugh again..." during a post-killing-Killjoy celebration (he says "Let's get something to eat!" and it cuts to them having drinks at a nightclub). I'm sorry that your half hour ordeal in which you fairly quickly took down a wisecracking clown kept you from laughing that night, buddy.

Another surprise: the clown makeup is actually pretty good. For whatever reason, we most often see Killjoy in closeup so you can't get a good grasp on the rest of his appearance, but his face is pretty demonic and creepy. Again, this is a Band production, so I was half-expecting the guy to be wearing a mask from the Halloween store. They clearly spent the entire FX budget on him, however - pretty much everything happens off-screen (even the simple gunshot that kills him as a human) and there's no real gore to speak of, just some random "dead" makeup on the three guys when they reappear. The CGI is pretty terrible as well, but that is a given considering who/what we're working with here. The "I'll SMOKE you" bit is kind of inspired though, and a notch or two higher in quality than the other VFX shots.

So I think I can just chalk this up to one of those "I guess I was in the mood" entries, where I might be tearing it apart on any other day. The IMDb board for the film is filled with vitriol (the "Worst movie ever!" type threads offer little rebuttal), and I'm sure any readers that have seen it are probably baffled that this can almost be read as a positive review. But it's the right type of bad movie, and again, it's so short that it barely takes up more time than another lousy episode of Supernatural's 7th season (funnily enough, a recent killer clown type story was pretty much the only good episode of this season). I should also point out that all three Killjoy films are on the same side of the disc (there's even a "Play All" function! Perfect for parties!) so look for the reviews of the sequels soon.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Silent House (2011)

FEBRUARY 23, 2012

GENRE: THRILLER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (PRESS SCREENING)

If I judged it purely on its technical merits, Silent House would be a shoe-in for the year’s best horror film – even the creative choices that left me a bit cold (more on those in a bit, obviously) in a weird way just made the film’s unusual approach all the more impressive. It’s not the first realtime movie by any means, but it is the first horror film I can think of (besides the original, which I still haven't seen) that unfolds entirely in one seamless take, thus preventing its filmmakers from pretty much every trick in the book (i.e. cutting away to a scary thing, cutting back to their reaction). But unlike Rope (Hitchcock’s similarly one-take thriller) it’s not slowly paced either – heroine Elizabeth Olsen starts getting terrorized after about 15 minutes, and it never stops laying on the trauma from there.

Another difference from Rope is that moves around. Olsen travels in and out of the house, and even in and out of a car, all without noticeable edits (I believe I read there are 13 cuts in the film; I only caught 3 or 4), not to mention all of her travels within the three story house. If one considers the lighting and other technical nightmares doing a film like this would cause, it’s nothing short of miraculous that they managed to pull it off as well as they have. It’s also one of the rare films that justifies the choice for digital photography – I don’t know of a 35mm camera in the world that could be used in this way even without taking the limited reel allowance (10 minutes) under consideration. The low lighting and jerky camera causes some problems that might not have been an issue with superior 35mm film (particularly the dining table scare – I have no idea what scares her because it’s too murky to make out), but for the most part - this is how digital should be used in feature films: to accomplish what would be impossible otherwise.

Back to the film’s fast pacing, I should note that it’s not a “torture” flick – I believe the total damage to Olsen’s body consists of a scraped wrist and a few other minor bumps and bruises, and pretty much every other bit of violence in the film occurs off-screen. No, it’s very much in the vein of older scare films, where the intensity and fear of the unknown make the movie scary, not people tied to chairs and screaming. I don’t know if it’s intentional, but there’s a moment early on where we see a bag full of tools –I figured it was foreshadowing later acts of violence, but I don’t think it ever comes into play, and if it was intentional misdirection, I applaud them. Thus, for the most part, it works like gangbusters as an exercise on how to milk a very simple idea (in this case, a girl trapped in her house with a killer or killers) for the maximum amount of scares and suspense, not unlike Halloween.

Unfortunately, whether it’s because of movies like The Strangers or just plain silliness, the screenwriters can’t be satisfied with that simplicity, and what was (should be?) an enjoyable home invasion movie eventually moves into another sub-genre's territory, at which point the movie kind of lost me. Unfortunately I can’t go into it without spoiling things (I will reveal a similar movie in inviso-text so it doesn't catch your eye), so skip the next two paragraphs if you’d like to keep the film’s twist a total surprise.

Before I start speaking against it, I will say this: the twist doesn’t come as completely out of nowhere as some might think. There are clues both overt (a very spooky encounter with an old friend, a locked box that she is unable to open, etc) and more subtle (her uncle’s way of greeting her in his first appearance) that are sprinkled throughout the film, and thus when it becomes the main focus of the final 20 minutes, you can’t accuse them of pulling it out of their ass when (AGAIN, SPOILER!) we discover that the “killers” are in her head and SHE is the one that killed her father and uncle. However, due to the film’s one-shot approach, there’s no easy way of showing the audience how this “works”. In High Tension, we got to see the surveillance footage and such in order to let it make a little more sense, but there is zero way to show us how she was able to kill her dad when we were watching her the entire time (she wasn’t even on the same floor as her was when he was attacked).

Plus, you know, F U! Didn’t they learn from that movie that audiences don’t like to be told that the bulk of the movie was a cheat? I’m fine with a good twist, but it’s got to be sound and pay off what we’ve actually seen in the movie (again: Sixth Sense does this perfectly). Even something like Usual Suspects works, because it’s not that what he’s telling us didn’t happen – it just had a different context than what we were led to believe. Here, there’s no “let me show you how it worked” scene – the twist comes, she finishes off her enemies, and then it ends. Apparently the film originally had some text explanation at the end when it showed at Sundance (with a different ending, though from what I understand it was along the same lines), I can’t help but wonder if that would have helped – anyone see it? Sadly the reviews I’ve found aren’t as willing to get into spoilers as I am!

My only other concern is a minor one. Elizabeth Olsen is a terrific actress and I bow to her for acting in a movie where she’s not only on-screen but nearly hyper-ventilating the entire time (and doing so in 10-15 minute takes). However, her cries sound more like laughs, which severely deflates the tension on more than one occasion (my audience started laughing along with her). I wish they could have dubbed in some more appropriate shrieks - I believe Blow Out perfectly explained how a scream can make or break a horror film.

It’s a shame that the ending wrecks a lot of the movie’s greatness; the few reviews I’ve looked at suggest no one is a fan of how it ends, and thus it’s going to be hard to earn good word of mouth, especially with the ad campaign promising that it’s based on a true story and such. And those reviews, like mine, come from a place of appreciating the technical merits of the film. Those who don’t give a shit about how hard it is to make a movie in a single shot (director Chris Kentis claims some people have told him that they didn’t even notice) aren’t likely to be as forgiving – they’re just going to remember being pissed off by a goofy, under-explained twist. And die hard horror fans might be angry for another reason: it took 7 years after Open Water for Kentis and co-director/screenwriter Laura Lau to make another movie, and it’s a remake with a lame twist that they didn’t bother to “fix” for their version? What the hell, guys?

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Santeria (2005)

FEBRUARY 22, 2012

GENRE: POSSESSION, RELIGIOUS
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

It may be amusing to me on a personal level, but when I find more to say about a movie’s IMDb page and opening/end credits sequences than the actual narrative, it sure sucks having to write a review. Santeria is allegedly based on a true story, but I couldn’t find any record of the events actually happening, which is a shame because I could have burned another paragraph talking about the real case and how it would most likely be far more interesting than the film.

I’ll give writer/director/producer/editor Benny Mathews credit for one thing – he goes all out trying to sell this as a true story, even spoiling the end in the movie’s opening scene, which tells us who dies (and how) in the events that the movie builds up to. If this was a major true life story (say, the Ted Bundy case), this sort of thing is fine: “Ted Bundy killed 20 women in the 70s, this is his story” or whatever would almost be an expected way to start off such a thing. But then it’s not actually true, it’s a bit silly to be so up front for any other reason besides “Maybe it’ll help fool someone” (which I guess it did; I took the time to Google the case for a while trying to find info on the real events).

Likewise, at the end of the movie, we learn the fates of all the characters who didn’t die on-screen: one guy succumbed to cancer, another was decapitated in a car crash, etc. This fake event sure affected a lot of fake people! Sadly, it’s the creepiest bit in the entire movie; true or not, there’s always something that kind of unnerves me about these text based epilogues. I think it’s due to my overdose on Unsolved Mysteries when I was like 9 or 10 (as I write this I am thinking about that silhouetted figure in the opening sequence and getting mad chills up my back); those sort of unexplained tragic circumstances (usually detailed over a freeze-frame) just unsettle me.

In fact the movie LOOKS like an Unsolved Mysteries recreation; it looks cheap as hell (it was shot on film but poorly transferred and/or posted), and the movie feels like the longest Cliff’s Notes account of a pretty simple story. Scenes come and go at a headache inducing rate, with nothing given a chance to register or sink in before the next scene has already began. A character will show up somewhere and say “I need to talk to you”, and then Mathews cuts to other characters in the middle of a conversation, and then it will cut again to a third character in the middle of an unmotivated panic attack. Maybe if Robert Stack was narrating in between it would be easier to digest, but without him or anything else linking everything in a cohesive way, the movie becomes a giant mess.

And again, we know what it’s building to, so there’s not a lot of suspense or thrills. People love to joke “Why watch Titanic? The boat sinks!” but the movie works because you get to know a bunch of (fictional) folks and care about them, and THEN the iceberg hits, giving the movie the suspense it might otherwise lack if it was just retelling a historical account without any fictional characters. Here, there’s no one to latch on to; the closest I came to caring about anyone was the Brother Neil character, a cheesy TV preacher who is interested in the case of the young man who keeps seeing the Virgin Mary (if there’s any “truth” to the movie’s story, I guess it could be considered a very loose modern version of the Lady of Fatima story). And that was only because he was played by Kevin Rankin, who was the awesome Herc on Friday Night Lights. Everyone else in the movie, forget it – I probably wouldn’t be able to pick them out of a lineup in a couple days.

The commentary explains most of the movie’s problems almost instantly – Mathews’ first cut lasted 165 minutes (it runs 82 now, including the credits that first cut probably lacked). When you cut half a movie out, yeah, it’s going to be pretty tough to penetrate. Even Terrence Malick* - arguably one of the greatest filmmakers of all time – can’t cut that much out of a movie and make it easy to follow, and Mathews is no Malick. It’s possible that he explains why he cut it SO short (certainly 2:45 is too long, but 2 hours is acceptable – Emily Rose was that long and it didn’t hurt it any), but his commentary put me to sleep three times (including at my desk at work) so I can’t be bothered to hunt for further explanation/defense. He seems to think the movie works just as well now, so I’m guessing he didn’t feel the need to explain much about his decision anyway. From what I DID hear, he talks about the Fatima case, the amateur actors, losing an actress after a freaky incident, etc. He also sounds like he’s 15 years old, which I wish was true because it would explain the short attention span thinking that resulted in a potentially interesting take on the religious possession genre becoming an interminable clutter of mismatched scenes (and color timing), bookended with typo-ridden on-screen explanations (“Sitings” instead of “Sightings” is my favorite). A few deleted scenes are also included, but they’re mostly the sort of thing that wouldn’t even warrant inclusion on one of those exhaustive 4 disc sets for a movie, let alone be all that represents nearly 90 minutes of lost movie.

The only other extra is the trailer, which added to my amusement concerning the movie’s release date. The IMDb lists this as a 2011 movie, which I knew couldn’t be right because it was released on DVD in 2006 (the Blockbuster sticker has the release date on it, and I know I’ve been passing it up for years during HMAD “hunts”). The trailer says that the movie takes place in 2005, yet the film itself is set in 1998 (it’s actually a plot point, because 666 times 3 is 1998). And the movie itself has a copyright date of 2002. IMDB got the 2011 date from Australia, where it was just released – I would love to hear the story of its 5+ year struggle to reach the land down under. As with most of the above, it’d probably be more interesting than the movie itself.

Oh well. It’s still better than the Sublime song, I’ll give it that much.

What say you?

*Oddly, the film was shot in Houston, Texas, which was also one of the locations for Malick’s similarly fragmented Tree Of Life. That is pretty much where the similarities end, however.

PLEASE, GO ON...

Inkubus (2011)

FEBRUARY 21, 2012

GENRE: SERIAL KILLER, SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

Lots of filmmakers like to blame their budget for the movie’s lapses, and a lot of time the problems with the movie have nothing to do with bad FX, inappropriate sets, etc. More often than not, the movie sucks because the script was terrible, the direction bland, and other things that can sink a movie with all the money in the world behind it (see, or don’t, Pirates of the Caribbean 4). But if anyone involved with Inkubus claims the low budget is the reason that their movie is underwhelming, I will believe them 100%.

See, it doesn’t lack for cool ideas or fun actors in the key roles; Robert Englund plays the title character, who strolls into a police station with a severed head and claims to be an ancient demon that may have been behind several historical unsolved murders (Black Dahlia, Jack The Ripper, etc). It’s pretty clear that he can’t be restrained and is hanging out in their cell on his own free will – all he wants is to talk to the cop (William Forsythe) who almost killed him 13 years before, and is just amusing himself by staying there, talking to head detective Joey Fatone.

Wait, what? The guy from N’Sync as a cop? Yep, that’s what we get here. Fatone is also listed as one of the film’s several hundred producers; in fact, one just needs to read the credits to get a good idea of how this movie came together. Someone had money, some other guys had some experience making movies, and everyone came together with a master plan to make a cheap horror movie that they could sell for lots of money because they managed to get an icon as their villain. That’s why the rest of the roles are miscast with known actors (Jonathan Silverman as an anonymous uniformed officer is a particularly baffling choice) or played by cousins of the filmmakers, who credit themselves over and over (“Produced by Chad Verdi” appears at least three times in the 80 minute film). Like Exit 33, it’s quite obviously a pretty cynical production.

Unlike Exit 33, however, it’s at least kind of fun. Englund can’t ever phone in a performance, and he’s quite lively here, clearly relishing the rarity of playing a horror villain without several pounds of latex weighing him down. Like his fellow “magic villain” buddy Warlock, he fucks with his victims on a psychological level before killing them (the deaths are gorier than I expected as well), and in these scenes the movie’s other issues don’t seem as big of a deal. Forsythe is a bit bored, and growls pretty much every line, but Englund picks up the slack admirably. And hell, even Fatone isn’t that bad; if you weren’t aware of his boy band past before the movie, you probably wouldn’t suspect it after seeing him here.

However the movie just never stops feeling cheap, which is a constant distraction. It was shot with a consumer grade DSLR camera, and while I’ve certainly seen worse digital images, it never looks like a real movie, either. The movie is also far too bright, like they dropped a maxed out “brightness/contrast” filter over the entire film before exporting to DVD. It’s also a bit too sloppy at times, killing would-be scare scenes. There’s a bit where a guy isn’t sure if he’s talking to Englund or another character, and the editor intercuts between footage of them both saying the same lines, but the main character keeps changing position in between the cuts, which ruins the effect they are trying to achieve. The FX are pretty good for the most part, however, and non-discerning audiences won’t care about that other stuff anyway, so that’s a “win” for them.

There’s also a puzzlingly pointless, strange scene where a cop checks the lotto numbers. They set it up early on, that a bunch of cops pool their money to buy a ticket, and he’s watching it very intently, so it should have a payoff, right? Instead, he just demonstrates a shockingly poor understanding of how the lottery works; he matches all but one number (they rattle off at least 5) and says that it’s the difference between $200,000 and a free ticket. Um, what kind of lottery system would only give a free ticket if you matched 5 of the 6 numbers? I even looked it up; in Rhode Island, even if he only matched four of the six numbers he’d get 200 bucks, regardless of the jackpot. You’d think someone that was so into it would know better. Just a waste of screentime in all aspects.

Another issue is the abrupt climax. The movie is only about 69 minutes long without credits, which is OK if that’s the plan, but this one feels a bit shaved. It’s a flashback movie, with Fatone telling the story from a mental institute – his stories of magic serial killers and demon babies aren’t believed by the shrink, needless to say. These sort of scenarios usually build to something, like Sam Neill finishing his story and then escaping from the now deserted hospital in Carpenter’s In The Mouth Of Madness, but this one just ends with Fatone still ranting about the demons as the shrink is (spoiler!) revealed to be the Inkubus in a blink or miss moment. It feels like there should be another beat to it, instead of just ending like it was the cliffhanger for the pilot episode about a guy trapped in a mental institute run by his arch enemy. It also feels like they actually WANTED to build toward a twist, that Fatone just snapped after his wife died, and then chickened out, using a quick last minute effect to tell us that the shrink is the Inkubus without any other follow through.

The disc offers no insight into the production, or deleted scenes that might explain the condensed running time – our main menu has but two options: Play and Chapters. Not even any audio options; Spanish speaking audiences or the hearing impaired are just as shit out of luck as anyone wondering why this movie makes several attempts to blind its audience with its garish cinematography, or if they were actually trying to rip off the movie The Traveler or if it’s just coincidence, or if these same issues will plague Infected, another horror film en route from many of the same cast and crew. I wish them well.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Retreat (2011)

FEBRUARY 20, 2012

GENRE: THRILLER
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

I was sent Retreat to review, and probably should have gotten to it sooner (it hits stores tomorrow), because it’s about a couple on the verge of breaking up and today is the 10 year anniversary of when I began seeing my now wife (awww). Most folks would assume I’d take the day off from HMAD-ing, or at least opt for something light, maybe even romantic (The Eclipse!), but no. I go with the umpteenth movie about a couple who repairs their broken bond after dealing with a psycho.

Anyway, it’s a pretty good “one-time” thriller. Our couple is holed up on an island, trying to sort shit out, when their generator goes out and their calls for help go unanswered. Then Jamie Bell shows up, bloodied and packing a gun, telling them that a virus has broken out on the mainland and that they need to seal up the house to keep it (or anyone else) from getting in. Is he crazy, or telling the truth? Is he dangerous or does he truly want to protect them? Like a lot of thrillers in this vein, not knowing the answers is what makes the movie work; once everything’s in place it becomes a little more routine.

But kudos to first time writer/director Carl Tibbetts for keeping me guessing for a while; I was never too sure one way or the other for more than a couple minutes before I started leaning in the other direction. He cleverly uses a minimalist approach to tell his story – there are only four people in the movie (one only seen in a couple of brief moments in the first reel), so when Bell tells his story, the lack of visual proof fits with the movie’s style, as it almost unfolds like a play. The house is huge but we seemingly don’t see a lot of it, with most of the scenes taking place in the main room, the kitchen, or the bedroom, much like a play would introduce a fairly large location (a train station or something) and confine our characters to one small chunk of it. Thus, it doesn’t seem odd that his story isn’t aided by flashbacks, which would often be the case for such things (as a director would welcome the change of scenery). He totally commits to the single location and compact cast. Kudos!

It also makes good use of Bell, who hasn’t gotten many opportunities to play a “villain” like this. I tend to think of him as a sort of “in over his head” nervous guy (King Kong, the recent Man On A Ledge), but he is legitimately scary here, further demonstrating his range – here’s hoping his agent is looking out for him as a character actor instead of just trying to recreate Billy Elliott. On the flipside, Cillian Murphy is a guy who tends to play more villainous roles in genre films (the Scarecrow in Batman Begins, Red Eye), or at least an antagonist of a sort (In Time), so it’s nice to see him in the hero position again. If it was a conscious choice to reverse their “usual” roles, it was a good one.

Thandie Newton is the heroine, and she’s fine. I’ve never been able to get much of an impression of her as an actress, other than the fact that she’s seemingly ageless. Like many thriller heroines of late, she’s pretty grating as a character; constantly snipping at her husband, doing rather dumb things in a panic, etc. I guess this is supposed to make us cheer when she finally gets her shit together near the end, but it’s getting tiresome to have to “grow to like” our lead characters. Can’t they just be normal people with problems that we can relate to, instead of obnoxious jerks? Ideally, my wife would be sitting there explaining why Cillian was the bad guy or whatever, but she was calling her expletives after like a half hour. You lost the female vote, Thandie!

But I’m used to that by now, so it’s not that big of a deal. My only real issue is one I’ve had with other “is he or isn’t he?” type movies, which is that in order to keep both options plausible, there’s not a lot of wiggle room for the movie to DO anything. Our characters can’t go outside, because if there IS a virus then they’ll get sick and the movie’s over. Plus that would mean he’s not crazy/a villain, so he won’t be playing mind games or trying to get Cillian out of the way to keep Thandie for himself (Dead Calm style). But if he IS the villain, he can’t out himself too early, because there’s not much to work with in an enclosed house with only two other people. Dead Calm had the two boats, after all. Thus, like I said, for the most part it’s only worth watching once, because the movie lives or dies on the lack of knowing the answers – there aren’t any great scare scenes to revisit, or a complicated plot to work out with multiple viewings.

Thus, Sony should have offered a little more meat on this DVD’s bones to warrant a purchase, because the 15 minute making of doesn’t quite elevate it above rental. It’s typical fluff, talking about the cast and finding the location and such. Only the reveal that David Tennant was originally cast (I could have sworn they said Cillian was cast in his place, but IMDb pegs him as being in the Bell role) is out of the ordinary. Tibbetts also says he was inspired by the same Polanski movies every single director ever name-checks, which tickled me enough to joke on Twitter about how I want to make movies just so I can offer inane blurbs on DVD making of pieces, like “This was my love letter to Jim Gillespie” or “I was going for a Joe Chapelle vibe here”. Seriously, modern genre directors – obviously Polanski’s films are great and huge influences, but you gotta stop making that your only frame of reference. I never once thought of him or his movies while I was watching Retreat, yet if you watch the making of first, you’d swear the movie was going to come across as a remake of Repulsion or Rosemary’s Baby. Oddly, it’s more like Hitchcock (Shadow of a Doubt or Rear Window) than any Polanski I’ve seen, but I don’t think he mentions Hitch once.

With such a minimal cast, fans of any of the three actors will be pleased with this one, as they all get a lot to do and plenty of screen time. Thriller fans will also enjoy the fun mystery at its core, and that it’s from a first time writer/director (he doesn’t even have a short listed on his IMDb page!) makes it all the more impressive. Just don’t expect to be a movie you pull off the shelf too often.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Warlock III: The End Of Innocence (1999)

FEBRUARY 19, 2012

GENRE: SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: STREAMING (NETFLIX INSTANT)

I can’t imagine how the folks who defended the original Warlock (of which I was not a fan) felt about Warlock III: The End Of Innocence (what?), which makes the original look like the Citizen Kane of horror movies in comparison. After a while I spent most of my time watching this thing wondering what was more offensive: its total lack of concern for the two films that came before it, or the fact that it was so unforgivably dull.

It’s also poorly cast, which is a shame when you consider that Bruce Payne or Ashley Laurence in a horror film should be a good thing, and thus together should be nothing short of a home run. While Payne is a decent physical match for Julian Sands, he plays the character in a very different way, coming across more like an aristocratic vampire or something, biding his time while chatting up his would-be victims instead of using his damn powers to kill them all and accomplish whatever it is he seeks in this movie (I couldn’t detect a motive beyond “he wants the house they’re in”). There is no attempt to explain his resurrection from the basement of an old house when he was killed in the middle of the forest (in another country!) in the last film, and it’s almost amusing how far he’s fallen with regards to his master plan; in the first film he wanted to rule the world, now he just wants some real estate? Maybe he realized that he was thinking too big and had to take baby steps if he ever wanted to be a successful villain.

Even if you ignore that, it’s just dull as dirt. Warlock once again fucks with people to get what he wants, but he does so in an incredibly inert (and visually tedious) way. Like one guy is afraid he’ll end up like his father… so Warlock makes him look like his father, meaning he ages rapidly, via some lousy makeup effects. Another guy cares about his music, so Warlock turns him deaf. I mean, seriously? This is what you’re offering? A guy going deaf? How did anyone think this was an interesting or scary idea for a sequel in an FX friendly franchise?

At least his demeanor matches his laughably boring plans, as he goes about this non-quest as nonchalantly as I’ve ever seen a villain perform. At one point he even brings one of the guys a sandwich, which is almost charming in a really stupid way. Even in the climax he’s barely even trying; his plans to sacrifice Laurence are undone when she is able to easily undo the knot he tied around her wrist. So he’s an all-powerful warlock, but he can’t double knot a rope. Fine.

Plus, like most low budget horror films of the 90s, it’s blandly shot and drastically overlit, with even the “scary” scenes looking like daytime soap operas. The techno music redefines “ill-fitting”, and there isn’t a single moment in the film that one might consider “eye-popping” or even “visually interesting”, unless you count the terrible CGI effect that blesses the movie’s one cool kill, when he shatters a girl that he turned into glass. Hell, they can’t even get the damn house right – once they get there they never leave, but by the end I still couldn’t tell you the layout, and there’s not much to look at inside either. I suspect the production company found an old estate that had been cleared out and was for sale in a slow market, and convinced the owners to let them shoot their shitty Warlock sequel there on the cheap.

At least it killed this thoroughly unmemorable franchise for good, though I’m sure someone is trying to reboot the damn thing. My advice? Cast Paul Rudd as the Warlock and let him do whatever the hell he wants. He’s got experience with runes and Druids and such, so it’s not too far from his comfort zone.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Terror Trap (2011)

FEBRUARY 18, 2012

GENRE: BREAKDOWN, SURVIVAL
SOURCE: STREAMING (NETFLIX INSTANT)

You know, at least the Asylum mockbusters are up front with what they're ripping off, using only slight variations on the movie's title and even copying the poster design on occasion. Plus, they're usually ripping off giant blockbusters like Transformers or War Of The Worlds, and often doing their version before they have access to more than the trailer for the real deal, so it's just kind of cute. Terror Trap, on the other hand, is a beat for beat ripoff of Vacancy, an under-appreciated film with a title that doesn't sound anything like theirs. I wonder how many people will rent this and be upset that it's a shameless ripoff of that film and not Tourist Trap.

Of course, most people haven't seen Vacancy, so maybe writer/director Dan Garcia (who produced the legendarily awful Carnivorous) is banking on that to hide his film's blatant theft of not only its concept, but even its character dynamic! Our hero couple is traveling on a dark road and endlessly yelling at each other over every minor issue (and once again the male is slightly more tolerable than the female), and then car issues (an accident instead of a breakdown, to be fair) force them to check in at a seedy motel. Before long they realize that the place is the "set" for snuff films, with the murders carried out by a few guys in masks. And wouldn't you know it, the ordeal allows the couple to get over whatever bullshit was driving them toward divorce and (spoiler) walk away happily ever after! Yay! They even copy the "Call 911 only for the bad guy to intercept the call" scene practically verbatim.

Now, horror is pretty much built around copying what came before, so there's nothing wrong with swiping a concept as long as you make it your own. The problem with Terror Trap is that Mr. Garcia fails to make it his own in any meaningful way. The differences from Vacancy are minor and not often for the better. For example - the biggest change is that the motel folk aren't making tapes of the snuff films to sell to random weirdos - they charge folks to come by, crowd around a monitor that we never see (in fact I'm pretty sure we never even see a camera filming them, so I have no idea how this works) and watch the events as they unfold. Now, this could have been interesting if the voyeurs had any stakes or control ("For 100 bucks we'll do 'em quick, for 200 we'll make them suffer first!" or something), or were maybe betting on the outcome. But no, they just stand around watching an invisible monitor, presumably seeing the same near-escapes and dull "attacks" that we are. One guy mentions how long it's taking, but otherwise there seems to be no indication that this is an unusual "episode" of the show or whatever. In other words, the only reason this seems to be in the movie at all is to give it some semblance of a difference from Vacancy.

Another issue is that even the world's biggest fans of Vacancy seem to agree that the ending was a cop out, yet Garcia not only doesn't take the opportunity to satisfy them by killing one of the couple off, but he can't even bother to inflict any harm on them whatsoever! The hero (JAG's David James Elliott) gets a towel wrapped around his throat for about 10 seconds, and they both get a couple of minor scrapes and bruises, but otherwise they walk away perfectly fine. As I've said in pretty much every review of these kind of movies, if these guys have been doing this for so long and seemingly never had a problem, why are our heroes so successful in getting away when all they do are basic survival things like "run away" or "block the door"? There's some backstory about their military background (he was in it, her grandmother was apparently a 5 star general), but these two dolts can't even figure out that maybe grabbing the knife that was thrown at their heads might be a good idea. Basically, considering how idiotic they are at times and yet still manage to get away relatively unharmed, I have no choice but to believe that all of the motel crew's previous victims were in fact mentally disabled children.

It's also rife with confusing sub-plots and unresolved issues. At one point we see a room filled with kidnapped girls, but their fates are left to the imagination (unless I just missed it; by around the one hour mark I started finding more "cat and mouse" excitement in the most literal way: watching my cat play with his little toy mouse). The ending drags way longer than it should, spending time at a funeral scene of the movie's first victim with the promise that the motel crew will continue doing their thing (some random dude offers the grieving mother a room at the place), before villain Michael Madsen talks to some dude for a while before blowing up his truck. Your guess is as good as mine as to what any of this has to do with anything, only to reinforce that a. the movie, which had slow credits over black, still needed padding to make its meager 85 minute runtime, and b. our damn villains get away at the end, preventing the movie from having something as exciting as a "climactic showdown". Hell, the movie's other main villain (Jeff Fahey - the only reason this movie isn't in the Crap bin) is taken down by one of his alleged partners, not our heroes. It's like the movie purposely goes out of its way to ensure a total lack of viewer satisfaction.

It's also poorly made; they clearly spent all of the money on the cast (and I'm sure the producers pocketed plenty of dough as well). The cinematography in particular is incredibly awful; I often have to watch home movies to find so many blown out shots and dull framing. Little is done to make any of the rooms look different, so there's zero visual flair to the film either - most of the 2nd half of the film just finds our heroes running back and forth between identical rooms or the parking lot. Riveting. The action is also poorly staged; there's a funny bit where one of the killers (who have cool masks, admittedly) somersaults from a balcony down toward our heroes as he makes his way toward them, but otherwise it's one of those chase movies where the villains seemingly disappear the second our heroes round a corner or open/close a door. With four guys it should be pretty easy for them to overcome any obstacle that the heroes put in their path, yet they barely even seem to try busting down a door (or just breaking one of the giant windows). There's a second floor to the motel, which could have been used wisely for some chases, but I don't think the heroes ever even notice it. Again, Garcia has a perfect opportunity to improve on or at least differentiate his film from Vacancy, and can't be bothered.

But Michael Madsen blows up a truck! Vacancy didn't even HAVE Michael Madsen, let alone trucksplosion. Way to go, Terror Trap!

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

The Psychic (1977)

FEBRUARY 16, 2012

GENRE: SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

No matter how much you love them, you'd be hard-pressed to defend any of Lucio Fulci's more famous movies as having really good scripts; his films are barely coherent at best, with generic character motivations and erratic pacing being pretty typical flaws of even his best films. So I was surprised to find that The Psychic (Italian: Sette note in nero, or Seven Notes In Black*) was actually a well-written, involving thriller; the characters were still a bit "stock" but there was a real mystery at its core and even some minor poignancy.

Sort of like the crappy John Woo movie Paycheck crossed with a Final Destination movie, Jennifer O'Neill stars as a woman who has a vision of someone's death, but it's all very fragmented - she just sees various items (a pack of cigarettes, a magazine, a smashed mirror). After uncovering a body in her husband's family home, she believes that she had seen the murder as it happened, only to gradually realize that it wasn't a vision, but a PREMONITION of a death in the same room that she found the other body. So the film is about her putting those pieces together as she tries to find the murderer/prevent the death.

As you can guess, this isn't as violent as other Fulci films; in fact the body count is very minimal even for a thriller, and pretty much everything is off-screen. The only "splatter" type moment occurs in the very first scene, as the heroine's mother commits suicide by jumping off a cliff. Most directors would just show the person going over and maybe a quick shot of them on the rocks below, but Fulci opts to insert closeups of the woman's head scraping and smashing along the cliff face (not unlike Don't Torture A Duckling, albeit with less sparks). It's "anachronistically disingenuous" in that nowadays this would suggest to someone like me that we're in for a typically gory Fulci film (a Giallo, most likely), but at the time (1977) he wasn't yet the splatter maven we know him to be today - the zombie movies and House By The Cemetery and such came later. Yet another reason to watch movies in order! But either way, it's a bit odd to put your horror highlight in the first scene. If not for the supernatural angle and a few tense chase scenes in the 3rd act I'd have trouble qualifying this as horror at all.

But I dug it. It's rare to see a sort of "slow burn" Italian horror movie, particularly from that period where everything was a Giallo or a zombie flick, so that alone was novel enough to entertain. And I like the mystery, with her literally putting the pieces together (in fact the only thing I liked about Paycheck was finding out what purpose each of his little items served; when a John Woo film's only saving grace is Ben Affleck figuring out what to do with a paper clip, you know you're in trouble), even if the characters were often a bit slow to figure out some clues. One is a magazine, and even though it's new at the time the story takes place, someone has to point out to her that it couldn't have been around as many years ago as the person in the wall was murdered. Another breakthrough comes from a guy who apparently can't stop thinking about a minor question he was asked by a stranger several days before, which would be like if you went into McDonald's one day and the clerk was like "OH! You left your change here the other day, here you go." However, I expect a bit of silliness with the plotting, and this was minor compared to the wholly batshit nonsense of his other movies. And unlike The Beyond or whatever, I was never confused as to what was going on, so there's something.

And I also loved the somewhat ambiguous ending, in which we are left to decide on our own whether or not a major character was saved or not. I lean toward the more positive version; not only does it only seem to be moments later (said character is walled up, sans Amontillado) when the hero is alerted to their location, but the film was written by Dardano Sacchetti, who also worked on Cat O'Nine Tails, which also had an ending that wasn't so much ambiguous as it was just cut short - we know the little girl is alive, we don't need to see the rescue scene. Same thing here, BUT, if you're a pessimist or just a jerk, you can believe that the person is dead. Either way, it's not spelled out, and given the original nature of HMAD (to discuss horror movies), it's the sort of thing that can lead to fun debate.

Speaking of getting talkback, I'll cockblock some (likely anonymous) smart guy here: yes, the music on her watch was used in Kill Bill. I have nothing interesting to say about it, but I know the first comment will be "I'm surprised you didn't mention...", so there you go. Though it is kind of interesting that the little melody is what gave the movie its original name, so I'm curious why it was changed to The Psychic, which is pretty bland.

The Severin disc has two extras: the trailer, which oversells the movie to an insane degree, promising the most intense viewing experience of the past 15 years or something to that effect, and a phone interview with Sacchetti, editor Ornella Micheli, and costume designer Massimo Lentini. Until the end, it's much more pleasant than I'm used to for retrospective pieces on Italian movies - usually they're just explaining why the movie is so bad or why they personally hate it, and who they didn't get along with, and so on. But here everyone seems pleased; Sacchetti talks about the script's long development process (apparently it took them almost a year just to crack the story, as they were originally trying to adapt a book with similar subject matter), the others talk about the production, O'Neill, the editing, etc. It's all very flattering, and then out of nowhere Sacchetti just starts ranting about Fulci, how he stole credit for other's ideas, didn't care about his movies as long as he got paid enough to go sailing, etc. I did some digging (looked on Wikipedia) and discovered that Fulci apparently did not invite him to write his big budget 1983 film Conquest, and the two had a falling out over another project that Lamberto Bava directed. Apparently he's still pissed, over a decade (at the time this interview was produced) after Fulci's death. However, his lengthy monologue is followed by more positive reflections on the man to close the nearly 30 minute piece out. Severin did not include an Italian language track (and the transfer is marred with lots of digital artifacting), but the dubbing isn't too bad, and O'Neill (who is in nearly every frame of the film) is speaking English anyway.

If you're already familiar with Fulci but haven't seen many of his films, I wouldn't start here. It's good, but very different than the others (that I've seen anyway), and would give you the wrong impression of the guy (it'd be like starting your crash course on John Carpenter with Starman). I think it's best to wait until you've seen a bunch of his others, and then go in when you're in the mood for something a little different. Or, of course, do your best to watch his movies in chronological order, so you can see his career trajectory unfold in most entertaining fashion.

What say you?

*Another reported title is Murder to the Tune of the Seven Black Notes, which like Short Night Of Glass Dolls is an amazing almost parody of a Giallo title, used on a film that's not actually a Giallo. What a waste!

PLEASE, GO ON...

Saturday The 14th (1981)

FEBRUARY 15, 2012

GENRE: COMEDIC, HAUNTED HOUSE
SOURCE: STREAMING (NETFLIX INSTANT)

Two horror spoofs starring Richard Benjamin in under a week? Only at HMAD...

I'm sure I'm not the only one who thought Saturday The 14th was a spoof on the slasher boom of the early 80s, but it's actually a kid-friendly haunted house movie more in line with the House films or a less scary Monster Squad, with a Griswold-esque family of four moving into a new house that they had inherited only to discover monsters living inside, a vampire neighbor who wants the place for himself, and other silliness.

Like First Bite, it's nothing spectacular, but it's a harmless little movie that breezes by, feeling even shorter than its 75 minute run time. It takes roughly 3 minutes from the time they move into the house for the first monster to show up, and it rarely slows down too much from there. Most of the action centers around Billy, the ten year old son of the family who also seems to be the only one aware of the monsters (and thus is the only one trying to do anything about them). The others chalk up their experiences to dreams or a lack of curtains (a charmingly odd running gag), even when they're pretty intense - a bat attack on the mom is legit scary. Nothing much bad happens to the dad (Benjamin); one of the monsters eats his (pretty awesome looking) sandwich, that's about it. He's a bit dim; when I compared them to the Griswolds I mean the later films when Clark had gotten somewhat stupid, not the original Vacation where he was merely too optimistic.

One thing I dug was the variety of the monsters (and, this being 1982, they're all practical!). There's a few alien type things, plus takeoffs on the Universal monsters - a Creature type, a Wolfman type, etc. Plus a "wraps and bandages" Mummy, not the "old guy" type from the Karloff film. This was a Corman production (Julie, not Roger), so you know they didn't have a blank check budget, so seeing so many monsters with pretty good costumes was a nice surprise. And there's even a Van Helsing, played by a guy who looks like Guillermo Del Toro dressed as Dan O'Bannon for Halloween. In a fun twist (spoiler for a 30 year old spoof movie ahead!), Helsing is actually the villain of the film, seeking the book that unleashed the monsters for his own world-takeover plans, while Valdemar (Jeffrey Tambor dressed as Dracula) actually wants to contain the book and PREVENT evil. It got me thinking; I know they were planning to make a Robin Hood film in which the Sheriff Of Nottingham was actually the hero - it might be interesting to see a serious movie where Van Helsing and Dracula's roles were switched.

The film's budgetary constraints do creep in at times, however. The whole movie takes place in the house; they mention the land around it as part of the inheritance, but we barely see any of it. And the finale amounts to Valdemar and Van Helsing just making silly faces at each other while the family just stands there watching. I'm not expecting a Michael Bay-esque action fest, but even in a horror comedy where the emphasis is on the latter, the finale should be exciting in some way, not inert. The movie's action highlight comes rather early, actually, as one of the monsters chases the kids around the house before a cop arrives and starts shooting him. That said, I was somewhat surprised to see the monsters actually a kill a few folks (distant family members) in the 3rd act - there's even a disembodied head! Oh the good ol' days, before the PG-13 rating kept such things out of PG fare (there's no way they could justify giving this an R).

There's a sequel called Saturday The 14th Strikes Back, which has the same writer/director (the late Howard R. Cohen) but is apparently nowhere near as fun; my buddy Jeff in fact dubbed it one of the worst movies ever made, and not in a "so bad it's good" way. With only about 400 movies to go, I doubt I'll go out of my way to make it one of them, but now that this one is on Instant, give it a go if you love "man in suit" monsters, or if your kid is a budding horror nerd but not quite ready for Fulci movies.

What say you?

P.S. Best sight gag in the movie - a box of Count Chocula. There's a reason he was the last one of the monster cereals to be available year round (he's now relegated to the Halloween season like his buddies though; very sad).

PLEASE, GO ON...

The Presence (2010)

FEBRUARY 14, 2012

GENRE: GHOST
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

As I am once again down to maybe 2-3 horror movies in the entire store that I haven’t seen, I opted for The Presence over the others, due to the fact that it sounded a bit more romantic than La Santeria or Zombie Nation. Just because it’s Valentine’s Day doesn’t mean I get the night off from HMADing, so I figured it was a good “compromise” for Mrs. BC if she wanted to watch along with me.

Well not only was it an acceptable choice for her, but it was a pretty good movie, period. For starters it was much creepier than I expected; I was thinking it would be like Ghost or something, with a ghostly guy just sort of hanging around near the woman he loves and maybe protecting her from a bad guy at the end to give it some action, but no – for a good chunk of the movie, our hero ghost (Shane West) is flat out scary, wordlessly watching our heroine (Mira Sorvino) as she goes about her day without noticing him. The first 15 minutes of the movie are entirely without dialogue as we gradually figure out the situation – he’s stuck in the house, he’s fixated on her, and she’s blissfully unaware of his (sigh) presence.

Once we get a bit of a handle on things, other characters are introduced, though the film still goes on long stretches with minimal or no dialogue, and the cast only totals six (three living, three not). Yet the addition of another main character (Sorvino’s boyfriend) and more dialogue does not diminish the impact of the scare scenes; it’s quite a while before we know for sure if West is a good or bad ghost, making his appearances quite unnerving. West never speaks or moves until the 3rd act, so when someone sweeps a light across a room and we see him just standing there watching them (and of course, they don’t see him), it almost always produces results. Maybe not a jump out of your chair moment or even a scream, but just a general feeling of uneasiness that persists, which to me is better anyway.

Some may lose patience with it, however, and I couldn’t exactly argue with them. I am a sucker for slower paced, small cast movies like this, especially when the emphasis is on visuals over dialogue (if it was paced the same but was just a non-stop series of conversations, I’d probably be bored out of my mind). Director Tom Provost has given us a wonderful scope image, and uses the frame very effectively – Sorvino on one side, West standing motionless on the other. A cropped version of this movie wouldn’t work at all, which is not a very common thing I can say – Halloween is one of the few others. And after 5 years, anytime I compare something favorably to Halloween should perk your ears up!

But again, it’s “slow” with regards to action and outright scares that would work in a trailer. If you can’t settle into the movie’s groove in that first 15-20 minutes, you might as well just give up, because it doesn’t really get any more exciting. Also, Sorvino can be a bit grating at times; her character has had some childhood trauma that we learn about in small doses, but not before she has a couple of seemingly out of nowhere outbursts at her boyfriend, who is pretty much the greatest guy in the world. With so few characters, it’s asking a lot of the audience to stick with the film when one of them (the main one, in fact) is borderline unlikable at times. Some things are also left a bit ambiguous, and there’s also a goofy montage near the end where we see that a few of the movie’s events were aided by a new ghost (angel, actually, according to the commentary), which was a bit much for me. Still, by then the movie had built up a lot of goodwill, so I let it slide. For others though, it may be the final nail in the coffin.

Love or hate the film, you can’t deny Provost delivers a solid commentary track. He tackles all aspects of the film: editing, writing, casting, directing, etc, without getting too nuts and bolts-y or self-congratulatory, which is all you can ask for a solo commentary. He points out some influences (Rosemary’s Baby is one) and some things that I didn’t even notice (such as the fact that West never even blinks on-screen), and defends his decision to shoot scope, which is great because not only is he 100% right, but I’ve seen a number of films that should have been one way or the other and their director just ignored it. He also bemoans/laughs at the fact that folks will be watching on their iPhones and thus won’t get the full effect of his visuals, so I’m definitely a fan. Down with iWatching!

The other extras aren’t as essential, especially if you didn’t like the movie (I’d recommend the commentary either way). Some storyboard comparisons are accompanied by additional commentary by Provost and his editor; I didn’t pay much attention to the boards, but it was fun to hear from his editor for a little bit. Then there’s a pretty typical making of that covers all the bases; nothing exciting. No trailer, interestingly enough – I am curious if the filmmakers ever made one on their own, since the one on Youtube seems to be commissioned by Lionsgate and sells a more traditional “Couple moves to a new house and things get scary” movie. Not that there’s anything wrong with that (compared to their trailer for Hunters it’s the most honest spot I’ve ever seen), but I’d be curious how the filmmakers themselves tried to market this unusual take on fairly common material.

Speaking of which, one of the executive producers is Dan Myrick, co-creator of Blair Witch who has turned out a couple of underwhelming films of his own (Solstice, The Objective) but seemingly has better luck with producing (Alien Raiders!). A Blair Witch 3 is continually teased; I sort of doubt it’ll ever happen, but his name still carries some weight in my eyes, and a few more like this would be most welcome. He seemingly enjoys getting behind fresh, “alt” takes on common material, and after 2000 movies, I tell ya – that’s exactly what I’m looking for as a viewer.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Swamp Devil (2008)

FEBRUARY 13, 2012

GENRE: MONSTER, REVENGE
SOURCE: STREAMING (NETFLIX INSTANT)

I try not to get too excited about Maneater films, because even at their best they're just "decent Syfy movies", but I did have a smidgen of hope for Swamp Devil, because not only did it star Bruce Dern, but it was written by Gary Dauberman, who was an uncredited writer on Final Destination 5, adding many of the things that made the movie so good (including the ending, from what I understand). Luckily, my optimism wasn't unfounded; while hardly the sort of movie I'd run out and buy so I could watch it forever and ever, it's one of the more enjoyable Maneater films and even brushes with "genuinely good horror movie" territory every now and then.

It's amusing to me, many of the Maneater films I've really liked deal with non real world monsters. The series' name seems to suggest every day animals: tigers, wolves, sharks, etc, but my favorites are this, Sea Beast (a Predator-esque water monster), and High Plains Invaders (aliens). Maybe they should stick with stuff like that, stay away from wasps or whatever (that is, if the series is still going; seems like it's been a while since I've seen any newer titles).

Anyway, what makes this one work is an emphasis on characters (there's only like 10 people in the movie) and an actual motive for the monster. Usually these things are unleashed and just kill whoever they come across; not that there's anything wrong with that, but they all start to blur together after awhile. However, I'll never forget that Swamp Devil involved a giant tree monster (think an Ent from LOTR crossed with a skeletal demon) who is actually the reincarnation of a guy who was executed by five locals back in the day. Bonus: the guy was a murderer, so it's not a "wronged man seeks justice" thing; our victims don't exactly deserve their punishment like in Dark Night Of The Scarecrow or whatever, which gives it some added suspense. A big issue for me in a lot of these movies is I find myself rooting for the monster since the "victims" are all scumbags, so I like that this guy is more like Freddy, seeking revenge for the death that he actually deserved.

And Bruce Dern! He's one of the five guys that Swamp Devil is after, and the only one with an Oscar nomination, so you know he'll last a while and possibly even survive. The early parts of the movie deal with the idea that he is actually the one responsible for the murders, which I sort of wish they had played with a bit longer. My guess is that they knew the movie would end up on Syfy and thus couldn't be too vague without losing the audience, so the "mystery" over whether he is responsible or if it is actually a Swamp Devil doesn't have any chance to work - we see the thing in the first 20 minutes.

Hell even the CGI isn't as bad as I've come to expect. Since he's just a giant tree with super extendable limbs, he's kind of "natural" looking, as opposed to the usual spider-crab monstrosities that pass for monsters in modern horror movies. And he's often around trees, so the underwhelming compositing actually works in the movie's favor - he's not supposed to be blending into the scenery all that much, so he sticks out but has the same stuff behind him, which keeps it from looking too silly (relatively speaking I mean; he's still a giant walking tree). Plus the attacks are cool - impaling with branches and stomping are his MO, and it never got repetitive to me.

The heroine is played by Cindy Sampson, who I'd love to believe everyone recognized from Supernatural, but alas the ratings suggest otherwise (first six seasons are on Netflix Instant now! Catch up!). I like her; she's got a very natural presence and yet here she is fighting a tree monster, before heading off to deal with her boyfriend's penchant for attracting all sorts of ghouls and ghosts. Someone get her in a slasher movie or something! And she has good chemistry with Nicolas Wright, a childhood friend who still harbors a crush on her. Like the "Is it Swamp Devil or Bruce Dern?" subplot, there's a mystery about his character that is revealed almost as quickly as it was introduced, but ultimately it just keeps the action going for the 3rd act, in which our survivors try to escape Swamp Devil (he can't pass the county line) and the body count rises. Apparently Dern broke his leg shooting these scenes - gotta love that an Oscar nominee in his 70s is still doing his own stunts. I've had the pleasure of listening to him at a New Beverly Q&A - he's such a great character with tons of stories.

It just goes to show how much the slightest effort in a script can make a difference in the final product. The cast, the budget, the locations... all of these things are in line with every other Maneater movie, so why does this one work while something like Hellhounds or Eye Of The Beast is borderline unwatchable? So many producers or directors are quick to blame the budget for their movie's lapses, but I can usually look past budgetary limitations if the script shows some effort. A decent story as the backbone for your bad FX and dull locations can still produce a decent movie; great FX and a globe-trotting production don't mean shit if the script was dogshit (see: Transformers sequels).

What say you?

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