Blu-Ray Review: Dead Silence (2007)

MARCH 23, 2023

GENRE: GHOST, PUPPET
SOURCE: 4K UHD (OWN COLLECTION)

For those who came late or just forgot, in the early days of this site, the reviews were more like "reactions", aimed at people who saw the movie already and wanted to chime in after I posted a few scattered thoughts I had about it. One such example is Dead Silence, which says almost nothing about the movie and instead focuses on the poor marketing campaign, and why I think it's a more proper "scary movie" than Saw (not to say a BETTER movie, mind, just more genuinely scary). And ironically, I also note that I'm excited that it's a Universal movie, because that'd mean it'd come to HD-DVD*, which at the time was a. fighting with Blu-ray to be the champion for next format, and b. what I had instead of Blu-ray (I ended up caving about a year later, when it was clear HD-DVD was going to lose that war). Because now it's on the even better 4K UHD format, and in turn I'll finally, you know, talk about the movie.

Even its own filmmakers have dismissed it at one time or another (screenwriter Leigh Whannell flat out called it a "bad movie" on his blog, which is now defunct but archived if you hunt for it), due to studio interference and rewrites by another writer that turned the movie into something different than what they had in mind. The most amusing thing is that they wanted a PG-13 movie, only for the studio - eager to cash in on their Saw notoriety - to insist on adding gory violence to ensure an R rating. Wan and Whannell had the last laugh though; after this, the team went back to their independent roots and made the PG-13 Insidious, which was just as big of a hit as Saw was and spawned a franchise of its own. For younger horror fans who grew up on Insidious and Conjuring, it's probably hard to believe that once upon a time a studio would second guess James Wan about a horror movie, but as a fan of this film from the start who felt kind of sad that it was so poorly received, it's great to have the ultimate seal of vindication all these years later with a Scream Factory release.

Don't get me wrong: it's not a perfect film by any means. The pacing is a little wonky and Ryan Kwanten isn't the most compelling lead in the world (he's gotten better over the years though!), but as someone who always appreciates a studio horror film that goes off the beaten path a bit, I find lots to enjoy here. I mean, it's an original story about an evil ventriloquist, at a time when every other horror movie out was either a Saw wannabe or a remake. It probably threw Wan's fans for a loop (looking back, the twist reveal being accompanied by flashback cuts was clearly someone's call to make it more in line with his previous film), but I feel in a post-Malignant world, people are more attuned to the filmmaker's off-kilter sensibilities, and will be able to reevaluate it if they dismissed it back then.

There's also something that's still kind of unique about it, in that it's a supernatural film starring two guys. Most horror films, especially those with ghosts/possession type plots, focus on women (i.e., well... Insidious, Conjuring, and Malignant, not to mention Whannell's Invisible Man), but Kwanten is front and center for nearly every scene, with Donnie Wahlberg's suspicious but patient cop as co-lead. Their "we don't get along but want the same thing" kind of dynamic reminds me of Witchboard (complete with one of them dying near a boat!), and while Whannell specifically noted Wahlberg's shaving habit as something the other writer added, I apologize but I still find it very amusing for some reason. The women, however? One dies in the opening, another only has a very brief part (but is the only person to survive the film, fwiw), and the other two are the villains. It's not misogynistic or anything to my eyes, just a different, relatively rare shift in focus for this kind of fare.

And the dolls are super creepy! By now we know that Wan prefers that his dolls stay pretty still instead of running around like Chucky, so along with the Malignant-esque kookiness (I absolutely adore the hidden hallway bit) I think it's amusing that for "the Saw guy", THIS film is more of a precursor to the rest of his career, with Death Sentence being the only post-Saw movie that feels like it's from that same filmmaker. The scene where the dolls all slowly turn one by one to look at our heroes is a terrific sequence, and he gets a lot of mileage out of light/shadow making it seem like Billy (why the same name?) is moving more than it is. Speaking of, since this is supposed to be a review of the 4K transfer as well - it's much easier to spot the OTHER Billy in Mary Shaw's lair, and Charlie Clouser's terrific score sounds better than ever.

The disc's packaging only advertises a fresh interview with Whannell for its new features, but it also has a new one from Wan and another from the guy who did the puppets. Each runs 12 minutes or so and are sadly not as candid as some other Scream Factory chats have been in the past, but Wan and Whannell both seem (rightfully!) happy that the film has found its audience over the years and seem less harsh on it than they were back then, though they both spend more time talking about how much they love each other and their time at film school together than they do the movie, making me wish they just had the two of them sit down for a commentary so we could benefit from that dynamic and maybe actually talk more about the film itself, but alas. All of the old features are also brought over, including the original bookends for the film that I feel shouldn't have been cut, but I assume it's far too late for anyone to bother making a new cut. The unrated cut of the film is also included, but (as with the features) is only available on the standard Blu-ray - the 4K UHD disc has only the theatrical cut. But that's fine; the unrated one has a few scene extensions that are take or leave, but is mostly devoted to a very dumb idea of giving Mary a longer CGI tongue during the kill scenes, and it looks stupid. Stick with the R rated one and just swap the disc out for the bonus features if you're so inclined!

The team's attempt to make a modern Hammer movie was an admirable one, and for the most part it worked in my opinion. There's also a bit of House of Usher to the proceedings, with a family curse and a decaying building (the theater), so if you're into those kind of movies (which, like this one, tend to be a bit sluggish with their pacing, with the atmosphere and vibe making up for it) and haven't seen this yet, I think you'll enjoy it especially as it is now itself a bit of a relic (sixteen years old this month!). And if you saw it at the time and walked out disappointed that it wasn't Saw, give it another look! That may be the very thing you appreciate most about it now.

What say you?

*The look and sound of perfect.

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Separation (2021)

MAY 2, 2021

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

Don't get me wrong, the pandemic has been awful; the sort of thing future writers will use for hacky time travel stories ("What if we went back and gave that guy a hamburger so he wouldn't be tempted by a goddamn bat?"). But there have been a few perks to the whole thing: people have used the (forced) free time productively, taken up new hobbies, gotten in better shape, whatever. And for me personally? I have reached a point where a major new horror movie can come out that I know absolutely nothing about. In fact, I only heard of Separation a week before it opened, when I was looking at the theater's advanced showtimes to try to get a ticket for their revivals of the Fast & Furious movies (which I failed to do).

See, normally I'd be sick of the trailer, probably have gotten my mind made up based on early reviews from people whose tastes I know well enough to know whether or not it'll be something I'd end up liking... but I got to go in totally blind. I honestly can't even recall the last time I was able to buy a ticket for a movie I knew next to nothing about, as that's something I can barely even achieve at a festival anymore. And there are other movies coming along within the next couple weeks I'm just as in the dark about; even the big Statham action movie Wrath of Man is something I feel I only learned about a month ago. With the publicity machine for these things having to take a backseat (probably in part because there's still a chance another outbreak causes theaters to shut down again), us moviegoers get to actually be surprised for once. It's kind of nice.

That said, the only thing I did know about the movie is that it was directed by William Brent Bell, which meant reviews would likely mean nothing to me anyway. Except for last year's misguided (being generous) Brahms: The Boy II, I have enjoyed all of Bell's work, but that sentiment is not shared by my peers. To this day people are still angry about The Devil Inside's "missing ending that you had to go watch on the website," which is not what was actually happening there but after nearly a decade I've given up trying to explain to people that it was merely a poorly placed advertisement for their wannabe-viral site, and the film's abrupt ending was in line with most found footage entries (including, uh, Blair Witch Project - perhaps you're familiar?). So basically, if the reviews were rock solid, THEN I'd be worried!

Luckily (for me, not him, or the studio) the reviews are bad, and once again I'm here to defend Mr Bell's apparently very alienating brand of horror. I wouldn't say it's his best film by any means (should I be the first to rank him?*) and it's clearly been tinkered with (more on that soon), but it takes some wacky swings that I admired, so coupled along with my complete ignorance of its plot or even sub-genre, I found myself having a pretty good time with it. The title refers to a married couple in the standard movie partner dilemma: one is a workaholic and thus doesn't spend any time with their daughter, the other doesn't work at all and thus can't really provide for her. An opening "last straw" kind of argument leads to divorce, and during a heated phone conversation about custody (spoiler ahead if you're equally dim on details!) the mom jaywalks and gets run over, instantly killed.

So now the dad has to take care of the little girl alone, and before long freaky things start happening. The nature of them is of course part of the reveal, so I won't spoil them here, only to say that it harkens a bit back to the original (good) The Boy in that there's a twist to the proceedings that keeps the action to a minimum in order to work. This means that impatient viewers should steer clear, as not a whole lot happens in it (the R rating is basically just for language; the mom in particular loves the F-word) and most of the scares until the climax are of the nightmare variety. I had to wonder if I myself would be bored by it if I wasn't finding connections to the material; the dad (Rupert Friend) is kind of a "kid at heart" type who longs to resurrect a project he created in his younger days, which is something I went through myself and only relatively recently kind of gave up on it for good. So seeing a guy I could identify with go through the horror movie motions AND try to be a good dad suckered me in pretty easily, though that obviously won't be the case for everyone.

However, if you like puppets you should be into it! The aforementioned project was a (stop motion, I assume?) animated project featuring a cast of monstrous puppets, and the designs are quite good - think humanoid versions of the supporting cast of Nightmare Before Christmas and you'd be on the right path. He's got normal puppets of the characters that the daughter (Violet McGraw, because by law every major modern horror movie must have one of the kids from Hill House) uses as dolls, but they are menaced by full-sized versions that creep around, loom over their beds, etc. One is played by Troy James, the contortionist who has been making a name for himself using his impressive abilities to play other monsters that don't need to rely on CGI (he was the Jangly Man in Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark), and his big scene is truly unnerving...

...but partly undone because of Friend's near indifference to his appearance. For whatever reason, the actor barely ever reacts to the creepy things he sees; there's even an example in the trailer (which I saw for the first time today, as I wrote the review) where he just watches a portrait burn after a candle tips over on its own. Some are dreams and can be chalked up to dream logic I suppose, but it's an odd choice and kind of hampers a number of the scare scenes, of which there aren't many anyway. But as I mentioned, the movie was clearly retooled some, so it might just be an odd side effect of moving scenes around. There's a scene between him and their nanny (Madeline Brewer) that was either moved from its original position in the film, or simply had its setup deleted, because it starts with her saying that the daughter hates her now and yet there was absolutely nothing like that in the scene before it. Also, a couple scenes before it, she misread her signals and tried to kiss the guy, which you'd think would cause some awkwardness, but in this scene she's asking him to watch movies and get high (and surprised that he says no), which to me sounds like something that would have come before she made her move, not almost immediately after. Near the end of the film there's a montage of all the dad and the daughter's big bonding moments over the movie, and at first they're all ones we've seen but as the sequences goes on we see more snippets of scenes that were otherwise removed.

Don't get me wrong, the movie still more or less works anyway, but I can't help but wonder if panicked producers hacked away at it and switched scenes around in order to get a scare in every ten minutes no matter what. As is the film runs 108 minutes, so we're talking about 10-15 minutes longer than most movies of this sort, and it's easy to imagine a cut running at around two hours, for a horror movie where the "villain" is pretty passive and the scary movie plot takes a while to even get going. This might also explain why some scenes - like a bizarre hallucination scene in the park - go absolutely nowhere. Perhaps there was a followup scene that justified its existence, but got removed for being too talky?

Still, these things didn't bother me too much in the grand scheme of things. I knew after about a half hour or so that this would be the kind of movie I quietly enjoy rather than loudly keep trying to change people's minds on (like, well, The Boy and Stay Alive), and that's fine. With creepy ass puppets, DAD STUFF, and wacky plot points (the dad's comic book writer partner has him take drugs to communicate with the dead!) it was kind of just hitting my particular sweet spots and not even seemingly all that concerned with impressing a large audience, so for that I have to admire it (also, any time I get to use my "Puppet" tag you've already earned a few points). The pacing and plot reminded me of those 1970's "Paperbacks from Hell" I've been consuming ever since that book came out, where they're always kind of slow paced and weird but somehow entertain me all the same. If you're a fellow defender of Dead Silence (and, again, The Boy) you might find yourself equally charmed by its earnest hokeyness, but otherwise you can wait for Conjuring 3 or whatever.

What say you?

*The Boy, Stay Alive, Separation, Devil Inside, Boy 2. Still haven't seen Wer.

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Brahms: The Boy II (2020)

FEBRUARY 21, 2020

GENRE: PUPPET, SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

As a fan/defender of 2016's The Boy, I was excited and a bit vindicated when STX announced a sequel in 2018, and have been patiently waiting for it to come out ever since. Alas, four years is a long damn time to wait for this sort of thing as it's not exactly Star Wars or Avengers; I think 18 months is really the max that any studio should wait before putting out a sequel to a mid-level hit such as that one was, because people just forget about it. And that's especially true in this case, because the first film relied on a big twist in the third act to make up for what was a fairly slow first 75 minutes, making it the sort of movie that doesn't lend itself to repeat viewings. Well, at long last, Brahms: The Boy II is here and... oof.

In my review of the first film I was careful not to give away its twist, but it's been four years so I'm going to do that now as I assume you know or simply don't care: Brahms the doll was not alive, but Brahms the thought-dead boy was still alive and now an adult living in the walls of the manor for the past twenty years, turning the film into a low-key masked slasher film for its final reel. To me, that was what made the movie work as well as it did, as you spend the entire thing wondering if the main character was going crazy or if the doll really was alive like Chucky or the Puppet Master toys, only to discover that it was a third option you likely didn't consider. But now that we know that, how do you do a sequel that focuses on the doll again, since we live in a world where the Annabelle sequels clean up but the masked slasher movies tank? Apparently, the answer that the creative team and producers - all of whom return from the first film, mind you - came up with is "Fine, the doll is alive."

So Brahms the flesh and blood man does not return in this film, nor does it fully embrace the slasher-ness that it had to hide last time around. Instead, a new family led by Katie Holmes moves in to the guest house next door to the original big mansion, their son finds the doll in the woods that separate the two homes, starts acting creepy with it, etc. So any fan of the original is just waiting for the real Brahms to reveal himself, but he never does, though at least some of that unwelcome surprise is dulled by the 40 minute mark or so, as that's around when we see the doll move (only slightly, to be fair) in one of the rare scare scenes that aren't the result of Holmes' character having a nightmare. Worse (spoilers ahead, because I don't care this time), the backstory we get a little while later retcons the original, chalking the real Brahms' behavior up to possession by the doll, and then going back and showing how that his family was just one of several to live there and meet with tragedy, always blaming the doll for the murders and accidents.

Quite frankly, this sort of revisionist approach sucks, and stinks of the same over-complicated mythology that made the first two Annabelle movies such a slog (the third, where they finally just let Annabelle be creepy and put her alongside other evil things, is the best). A disturbed child attaching himself to a doll is interesting, but a doll continuously possessing family after family over a hundred plus years is not. It just feels like a way to turn this into an ongoing franchise (with prequel possibilities), which is somewhat expected for any horror sequel (no one wants to stop with just part 2) but not if it had to come at the expense of what worked about the original. It feels like jumping from the first Halloween to Curse of Michael Myers, but worse because at least John Carpenter and Debra Hill didn't have anything to do with that one. Why do the people who made The Boy suddenly want to shit all over The Boy?

Making things even more frustrating is the fact that William Brent Bell and Stacey Menear seemingly lay the groundwork for another real-world explanation for the film's events. In the opening sequence we see Katie Holmes come home from work, activate a security system, and then facetime with her husband about how he will be working late again. So when she's woken up in the middle of the night by a pair of robbers, one could reasonably deduce that the hubby hired some guys (or is one of the masked robbers himself, having lied about working) to attack his wife in order to get an insurance payout, or even kill her to be with another woman (with the kid being a wild card), as evil movie husbands often do. Other events in the movie that are chalked up to the doll (or the kid) could have been the husband (in fact in one instance it would make a hell of a lot more sense than what we're ultimately told), and had they gone that route, it would have allowed for another twist (albeit a less surprising one) and retained the established "no supernatural hooey" rule from the first.

But no, dad's not an evil jerk, he really does just work late and we are never given an explanation for how the two robbers managed to bypass the security system that Bell and his editor (Brian Berdan, also returning from the original) took the time to establish, or what they wanted, or why they tried to kill Holmes (she actually seems dead*) but left the kid alone. As for why the man is conveniently absent every time Brahms does something naughty, I can only guess Bell/Menear wanted us to suspect him so they could pull an inverse of the first film's reveal (so going from "not a ghost - a real killer!" to "not a killer - a real ghosts"), but it doesn't work on any satisfying level, and it's never a good idea to retcon an earlier movie unless you know for a fact you're improving on it. It's not the first time a horror sequel felt made by people who never saw the previous entry, but it's certainly the first time it was actually made by the exact same people.

Honestly, I can't think of anything that works here. The young lad is effectively creepy when he starts dressing as Brahms, and I can give them a bit of credit for allowing a child to get injured in the movie's only real horrific act (even though it was spoiled on the trailer), but a few sprinkled bright spots can't make up for a film that's somehow even more slowly paced than the first one (unforgivable for a sequel) and actively goes out of its way to sweep its events and reveals under the rug. I could maybe just roll my eyes and forget about it if this was The Boy IX: Brahms Goes To Hell and they were grasping at straws, but this is only part 2 to a movie that didn't need a sequel in the first place. My unending affinity for Katie "Joey Potter" Holmes isn't nearly enough to overcome the film's uninteresting narrative decisions, near total lack of suspense, and - worst of all - seeming desire to tell me I was wrong to appreciate the first film's lack of supernatural elements.

What say you?

*When they cut to a few months later and Holmes was up and about, I spent a few minutes thinking this might be a Sixth Sense thing and she'd be a ghost the whole time, but it's quickly clear she's not as the kid's shrink addresses them both. She's just left with headaches from the ordeal, presumably to allow us to think she's just cracking up. But upon rewatching the first one this week as a refresher, I realized that the two main males in the movie were named Malcolm and Cole - the same as the two leads in Shyamalan's classic, so as dumb as it would have been to pull that twist here, at least "they both pay homage to The Sixth Sense" would give the two Boy films more in common than they actually have now.

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Annabelle Comes Home (2019)

JUNE 26, 2019

GENRE: PUPPET, SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

I was in the very small minority of folks who preferred the original Annabelle to the sequel, but so far everyone I've talked to seems to agree with my sentiment that Annabelle Comes Home is the best of the trio (and thus, the best Conjuring spinoff of them all). Screenwriter Gary Dauberman directed this one himself after writing the previous installments, and I couldn't help but smile that he gave himself the best script to work from; assuming the film makes the same big money the other two did, I wonder if the other directors will be annoyed he never wrote compelling leads and some genuine fun ideas for THEIR entries.

He also got Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga to come back as the Warrens, something that has been limited to reused footage for the others. They're not in it all that much - basically just the first ten and last five minutes - but it gives it that extra bit of validity, and also allows the film to focus on someone we "know", which the other two entries didn't benefit from. In this case, it's their daughter Judy, who is played by a new actress (McKenna Grace from Hill House - she was the young Theo), and it's the rare instance where a recasting pays off narratively, at least for me. Because I couldn't remember how old their daughter was but in my mind she was like five or six, so I spent the whole movie thinking that they recast for money/availability reasons and that it took place after Conjuring 2, a movie that, like the first, I've only seen once and can't remember too many specifics about.

But nope! Turns out the reason the girl was recast was because she needed to be younger, as this actually takes place immediately after the first Conjuring and the original actress would be about 15-16 now. See, I forgot that Conjuring 2 took place like six years after the first, mis-remembering the two films being fairly close to each other in time. So when this one starts with the Warrens collecting Annabelle and bringing her home (i.e. the beginning of the first Conjuring movie), followed by a "six months later" text, I truly thought they were saying "after Conjuring 2". Long story short, every now and then, having a fading memory re: sequel continuity can be a blessing! For all I knew the movie could end with Judy being killed, setting up Conjuring 3!

Still, even if you know she survives, pitting her against the various demons and ghosts from the series in the backdrop of her own home gives the movie more punch than its disconnected predecessors were allowed. The compact timeframe helps too, as the majority of the movie unfolds during one evening, when the Warrens go out of town for an overnight trip (if their journey was an Easter Egg of some sort, I missed it) and leave Judy at home with her babysitter/only friend Mary Ellen. Mary Ellen's bestie Daniela catches wind of her plans and, having an interest in the Warrens (who are in the news as being potential frauds, something that has made Judy an outcast at school), invites herself over to poke around.

And this is where the movie turns into something more interesting than expected. Daniela just seems like the rando who has to set the plot in motion with her meddling (since Judy and Mary Ellen are smart enough not to touch the creepy stuff), but she's got a legit reason for wanting to "make contact": her father was recently killed in a car crash that she blames herself for (she was driving), and she is hoping the Warrens' room full of haunted artifacts will provide her with a way of telling him that she is sorry. Sure, she screws up and the result is a bunch of haunted house/ghost movie scares that a veteran like myself can see coming long before the "BOO!" moment, but the fact that there was a legit and even fairly sad reason for it happening, as opposed to the usual "Oh you have a Ouija board let's try to talk to a ghost!" kinda nonsense, made it more compelling and elevated it above its teen horror peers.

In turn, it made the cliche stuff easier to forgive, because on occasion, Daniela does indeed see her father, but it's the demons messing with her (one such instance provides the movie with its best jolt, in fact) which isn't helping her already rattled mind. Judy's plight is also more interesting than that of her spinoff brethren (including Nun and La Llorona) because she's coming to grips with the fact that this might be closer to her ongoing reality than some isolated incident - it's not a single entity that someone might help her remove for good, it's something her parents brought there by choice! Plus, she is starting to pick up her mother's ability to see ghosts, but she just wants to be a normal kid - her face lights up (for the first time in the movie, maybe?) when Daniela brings over some roller skates, and she is fretting about her upcoming birthday party as it seems her parents' day job and her own demeanor has resulted in a lot of "Sorry I can't make it" replies (at one point she invites Daniela, who she just met, and you can tell Daniela realizes she might be cutting the guest count in half if she says no). So many haunted house movies are of the "We just moved in and things are weird, I wanna go back home" variety - it's interesting to see one more or less from the eyes of a girl who has lived there for years and knows the root of the haunting is sort of her heritage.

As for the babysitter, she doesn't have much of a direct tie to the ghosty stuff - there's some half-hearted "Oh that ghost looks exactly like you" kinda stuff (said specter is a bride who was buried with coins over her eyes for the Ferryman) but nothing really comes of it, and her role is primarily answering phantom doorbell rings and saving one of the two girls whenever necessary. And if you're wondering why they simply don't leave, it's because there's a werewolf outside! In one of the film's smarter moves, the Annabelle doll isn't really the main source for scare moments - she "gets out" of her glass case (as before, she doesn't move on her own, but is manipulated by demons/spirits) and her role as a conduit means all the other things around start using her power to break free of their own confinements. She has to be put back to calm everything down, but it's easier said than done when so many things - including the aforementioned werewolf - are already on the prowl.

It's a shame that they didn't tighten the edit some, though. There's a real funhouse kind of vibe to the third act as one thing after another sets itself upon our trio of young women, but it takes a while to get there (even the Warrens themselves get an extended scare scene of no real consequence, though does add to Farmiga and Wilson's limited screentime), leaving the movie 10-15 min longer than it needed to be. I also wish they did something to justify their R rating - the MPAA chalked it up to "horror violence and terror" but apart from a quick (and hallucinated) stabbing, there's nothing in here to warrant the higher rating, which is a letdown when you are throwing werewolves and some kind of demonic Samurai into the mix (not to mention a potential easy kill in the form of a pizza delivery guy, but he gets to leave without as much as a "is someone there?" kind of bit). I assume at this point, since every Conjuring-verse movie has been R, that they won't do a PG-13 one in fear that it'd look like they had "sold out" or toned things down, but I'm not sure if that's really better than making a legit PG-13 movie (which there isn't anything wrong with!) and calling it R. Kind of like putting O'Douls in a real beer bottle, innit?

Still, far more of it worked than not, and it felt like a real movie as opposed to a scare machine like its predecessor, where I actually DID see it twice and still couldn't tell you much about any of its characters, and often wondered if we looked hard enough that we might see the producer with a stopwatch making sure that there was another jump every five minutes. By smartly moving away from the doll as much as possible and giving the characters (well, two of them) some genuine drama to deal with over the course of the evening, it felt fresh and engaging in ways most prequels never quite manage, even if at the end of the day a lot of it doesn't really stray from status quo. The occasional humor (Wilson in particular is going full Mike Brady) and unexpected melancholy moments - I legit teared up at a scene between Daniella and Lorraine! - safely elevate it above the others in this unusual spinoff franchise, and have me excited again for the third Conjuring after so many underwhelming spinoffs in between kind of diluted the brand a bit (though again, I seem to be in the minority - The Nun actually outgrossed even the Conjuring entries!). Bonus, I kind of love that you can go to a multiplex right now and see TWO evil doll movies (no Toy Story 4 jokes, please), something that I'm not sure has ever been the case. What a time to be alive!

What say you?

P.S. No post-credits scenes, but stick around for the full-screen titles! They're over-stylized and done up like '70s movies - loved em!

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Child's Play (2019)

JUNE 23, 2019

GENRE: PUPPET, TECHNOLOGY
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

The original Child's Play series is most notably the only major horror franchise that has been consistently written by the same person (Don Mancini), and yet the films themselves are probably the easiest to tell apart for a casual fan - seven very distinctive movies from one sole voice. Each one has had its own identity thanks to a specific setting (a military academy! Hollywood! A mental institution!) and even tone - some go for scares, others play up the comedy - yet remain consistent in its mythology and characters. So it's ironic that Child's Play, the 2019 remake that is also the first Chucky movie NOT written by Mancini, suffers from a bit of multiple personality disorder, as if they Frankensteined the script (or at least, the edit - more on that soon) from several versions that had vastly different things in mind. In one movie we got all the jarring at-odds storytelling decisions that previously eluded the franchise for thirty years.

Luckily, at least one of those assumed versions was actually an ideal concept for a Child's Play remake, so it's far from a disaster or anything. In fact it's actually pretty OK overall, and will easily freak out impressionable youngsters who are at that age where they no longer want to play with dolls but are intrigued by the wonders of technology, while making the adults perhaps rethink how many of their devices can be listening to everything they say. In one of its best ideas, the new Chucky isn't so much a generic plaything doll, but an attempt at a cutesy Alexa/Echo kind of device that can connect to your other devices and make life easier. The dolls (called Buddi out of the box, but the owner can give it their own distinct name) can turn on your TV, remind you about appointments, arrange for your rideshare, etc. You ever tell your Echo Dot to add milk to your grocery list or something of that benign nature? These folks can do that with their Buddi, with the added bonus of him being a little friend for your kids as opposed to a little hockey puck on the shelf.

So in addition to finding a way to mock the latest craze (the original "Good Guy Doll" was a spoof on Cabbage Patch Kids; this is on companies insisting all of our devices "talk" to each other), it also allows them to age Andy up a bit, giving the character different anxieties about his doll and also having the adults treat him differently when the "No, Chucky did it!" kind of stuff starts happening. Andy here is like 12 or 13 (the original one was about six if memory serves) so he obviously wouldn't be playing with a talking doll anymore, but one that can act as another device might be appealing, especially to one who has trouble making friends and finds his very capable doll to be an easy way to avoid doing the hard work of coming out of his shell (an early scene has his mother asking him to go outside and make friends - he ends up hiding in the hallway playing with his phone instead of even trying).

I also liked that Chucky was not possessed or anything. As a learning device, it is programmed to pick up on things that people say and do and act accordingly - a walk and talking version of your phone remembering how to spell your pet's made up name or how Gmail can guess you might want to reply "OK, no prob" to an email from someone saying they can't make your birthday party. But a disgruntled employee removes all of the safety features, so Chucky can learn how to swear and (thanks to Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2!) kill. And as his only goal in life is to make Andy happy and be his best friend, he sees Andy's happy reaction to the horror movie, and Andy's sad/angry reaction to people like his mom's boyfriend, and - without a soul to inform him he's doing anything wrong - starts offing people who upset his best pal. It's like the Monster drowning that girl because he doesn't understand the difference between play and reality, essentially, as opposed to an actual EVIL DOLL doing these things because he likes to do it.

So all that is well and good, but as the movie goes on, things start going astray - ironically enough - after Chucky makes his first human kill. Mimicking TCM2's scene where Leatherface puts on the guy's face in an attempt to appeal to Stretch, Chucky cuts the victim's face off and attaches it to a watermelon from the patch the guy inexplicably has, and brings it back to Andy's room as a present. Andy then freaks out, calls over his two friends (his "cool" safety feature-free doll has won him a few pals in the building), and then they decide to use some wrapping paper to wrap it up and throw it away. But he's caught with the makeshift gift by his mom, and his impossibly dumb excuse is that it's a gift for the lady down the hall - who is (and he knows this) mother to a cop. Then he has to convince the lady not to open the gift, then he has to get it back - it's like a bad cringe comedy sketch tossed into the middle of a horror movie, and ultimately the head ends up in the garbage chute where it can be found by the cops later anyway, so why they didn't just delete THIS entire sequence is beyond me, as it all it does is eat up ten minutes of screentime that could have been spent on something that the audience might not find the most implausible thing about a killer doll movie.

I emphasize "THIS" because clearly, the movie got reworked some, something I was convinced of BEFORE the end credits rolled and I saw the telltale "additional editor by" credit in the crawl that you only see in movies that got recut by someone at the 11th hour. Certain subplots never really resolve, and other times people seem to be overreacting to things - which is code for "they're actually reacting to something that got cut and we're hoping you will buy that it's this other thing". This happens most notably in a scene that ends the second act, when Andy is fully aware Chucky is doing terrible things but of course no one believes him. He's yelling about it in the Walmart-y department store where his mom works, and in the confusion/chaos one of his friends accidentally hits his head on one of the store shelves - but the next time we see them, they're all acting like he's this total psycho and no one ever wants to see him again, and the kid who whacked his chin seems more sad than in pain. Turns out (per Reddit and also a friend who was at the test screening) that originally Chucky killed that kid's dog and pinned it on Andy, a sequence that was removed and rejiggered, but with its fallout remaining.

Part of Chucky's plan involved using Andy's hearing aid, which fell off in the scuffle and gets a "Uh oh!" kind of closeup so that the audience is absolutely sure to see that Andy lost it. However, now he recovers it in the same scene (part of a reshoot that occurred in April, apparently), making the whole "he lost it" element mean absolutely nothing. In fact, his hearing issue as a whole never seems to play a part in anything, which is another reason that the movie feels cobbled together - there's probably a version where Chucky helped him with his condition when he's still good or used it to his advantage when bad, but he does neither here - there's a very quick scene where he is seemingly talking directly to the device (a "voice in his head" kind of thing) but it lasts all of four seconds. I can't imagine they went to all of that trouble just to have a bit where only Andy can hear Chucky, especially so late in the film. And then when other people do see that Andy is telling the truth, there's never any kind of "Oh shit, he WAS telling the truth" kind of moment from his mom or the cop, or even any disbelief as to what they're seeing - they just quickly accept it, I guess.

And then there's Andy's dad, who is only really mentioned once, when the kid is first showing Chucky his room (including his strange drawings, another thing that seems to be setting something up only for it to never come up again). When flipping through the sketchbook he comes across a picture of his father, and then he shuts the book saying "that's enough for now", but there's no followup. We know his mom (Aubrey Plaza, basically playing her Parks & Rec character) had him early, and Andy's reaction to the boyfriend suggests he's the latest in a string of losers, so this seemed to be suggesting the father wasn't dead but out of the picture by choice. However, later there's a framed picture of him in the living room, which would be a weird thing for Aubrey's character to have around if he was some jerk who left or was left. Again, two or three different narrative paths, all at once.

Things finally pick back up with the climax, though it's sadly over before it fully gets going. See, Chucky is part of the original "Buddi" line, and now the Buddi 2 is coming - with a big midnight opening at the store Andy's mom works. Chucky manages to tap into all of the devices (by the way, they specifically say he can only do this with his fellow Kaslan Industry products, so I guess these guys own more of our lives than Apple because he never once has trouble connecting to anything), such as drones armed with razors and the other Buddi dolls (including a freaky bear one), then locks the doors and sets everything free for maximum chaos. But we see I think two people get killed; despite the doors locking everyone manages to get away, I guess - or they all just died off-screen, which is possible since the movie is noticeably economical with what it shows us (80% or more of the movie takes place in either his apartment or the store; the rare exteriors are quick and tightly framed). With a blank check budget, I'm sure this sequence could have been a halfway point kind of thing, with Chucky's minions wreaking havoc everywhere a la Gremlins, but instead it became the climax, with everything before it needing to be dragged out to get there so that the film would still be a feature length.

(As for why the Buddy 2 is launching AFTER Christmas, as the movie clearly establishes that the holiday season has just passed, I have no idea.)

I'm sure the original cut was better, or at least, more consistent and less "off", but then again there was probably no real way to get around the other issue, which is that the design of the doll sucks. I'm sure that marketing kept them from making their design too unlike the classic Good Guy version, and so they had to find something in between recognizable and original, but what they came up with is just... BAD. Regardless of its usefulness, I can't imagine anyone would ever want one of these things in their home, and the movie blows its chance to own up to it by not having the Kaslan guy note that the Buddi 2 is "less ugly than its predecessor" or anything like that (though they do now come in a variety of hair colors as parents complained the original one was only available as a ginger, one of the movie's better gags). It seems they wanted to get away from the fact that OG Chucky had two faces (impossibly realized, yes) so tried to get one that was "creepy" but also looked like a normal doll, so he wouldn't have to unrealistically switch back and forth, but that's the wrong approach I think - no one ever cared that Chucky could just go back to looking like a plastic doll after coming fully alive, did they?

As for Mark Hamill, he's a good choice - he rarely yells/snarls/laughs so there's a big enough difference between him and Dourif to work, and he thankfully isn't given lots of one-liners (he only has one, really - and it's kind of amazing in context, which I won't spoil here). Back to the "multiple ideas at once" thing, at times it almost feels like they want us to feel bad for Chucky in that same Frankenstein's Monster kind of way, as he simply doesn't understand what he's doing wrong and just wants to make Andy happy, but they never fully commit to it. That said, if they DID make that movie, Hamill would be perfect for it - his earlier line readings do actually generate some pity for the toy. Bear McCreary's score also does some of the heavy lifting - this movie SOUNDS so much better than it LOOKS, basically. The human actors are all whatever; Brian Tyree Henry is probably the bright spot since he gets some good lines and a big crowd-pleasing moment near the end, but he also never feels essential to the movie and could have been excised without it affecting anything.

So it'd make a good double feature with Ma, now that I think about it, as both movies generate a little goodwill that more or less sustains itself for the runtime, and some nasty/mean-spirited moments that I was surprised to see in a major studio release, but also feel like two movies got made and someone cobbled together the most coherent version they could using equal parts from both. Out of spite they should have focused all of their energy on presenting a screenplay that would measure up to the earlier films, if only to prove that Don Mancini doesn't have to be the only one writing these things, but.. they basically proved Don Mancini should be the only one writing these things. Even he doesn't knock it out of the park every time, but the movies are always interesting in their own way, whereas this one was largely going through the motions. I didn't like Seed of Chucky and never even watched in its entirety a second time, but I can still remember big chunks of it 15 years later - I may have enjoyed this more, but won't remember much of it in 15 days. Call me if they decide to release the earlier cut though - I suspect that despite whatever issues it may have had, it's the more consistent and ultimately more interesting movie.

What say you?

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Cult of Chucky (2017)

DECEMBER 5, 2017

GENRE: PUPPET, SLASHER
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

Universal has a weird knack for keeping series not only going longer than anyone would have guessed, but in some ways IMPROVING as they go on. The Fast & Furious series is only now starting to fall apart (largely due to the real life death of its main character), but in those sorry post-2 Fast days, who would have guessed that part 5 would be the apex of the series and that part 7 would gross over a billion dollars? Or that there would even BE that many sequels? Likewise, when Child's Play 3 came and went without fanfare, it should have been the end of the series, but they revived Chucky seven years later with Bride of Chucky and have continued to make new sequels that people eagerly look forward to (even demand), a far cry from some of its competition where sequels are made only to retain the rights to make more of them (cough, Hellraiser, cough). Cult of Chucky is the newest entry in this consistently surprising series, and while it doesn't quite hit the mark as well as the previous entry (Curse of Chucky), it's a more than worthy addition to the franchise.

Plus, to be fair, Curse was blessed with a bit of a handicap - no one was expecting "Child's Play 6" to be any good, especially when it was going direct to video (the others were all theatrical releases). But it turned out to be a terrific restart for the series, and it did so without "rebooting" or ignoring entries - what appeared to be a largely unrelated entry (or the dreaded "True sequel to the original" approach taken by pretty much every Texas Chainsaw movie) turned out to be very much tied in with the established mythology. When Chucky washed makeup off his face to reveal the scars on his face from his previous injuries, I got downright giddy in a film I was already very much enjoying, as it was a return to the original's suspenseful roots, and director Don Mancini was essentially making an old-school "Old Dark House" movie (complete with a fight over inheritance!) with Chucky standing in for the usual fake ghost or whatever. This time, we KNOW these films can measure up, so the element of surprise is diminished a bit.

At least, when it comes to the overall quality - its narrative is very much on par with the last few sequels, in that you probably wouldn't have guessed where the plot would go. At the end of the last film, Nica (Fiona Dourif, daughter of Brad "as the Voice of Chucky" Dourif) was sent to an institution after being blamed for all of the murders Chucky committed there, while our favorite Good Guy doll got his head blown off by his old nemesis, Andy Barclay. When this one begins, we see Andy going on a disastrous date, then going home to forget his troubles with a beer and a blunt that he shares with... Chucky's disembodied head! Turns out Andy aimed a bit to the side, so while Chucky's looking pretty terrible he's still alive, and the two have a weird co-dependent "friendship" of sorts. Honestly I could have watched a whole movie of this, but before long we're off to catch up with Nica, who was just transferred to a minimum security institute and is seemingly starting to believe that she really did commit the murders, not Chucky. However, her psychiatrist wants to make sure she's really over her fear of the doll, so he buys one (from Hot Topic!) and introduces it to her and her fellow patients. But Chucky's soul is with Andy, so there's no way this one could be alive, right?

Well, if you're wondering what the title was referring to, now you have your answer. Seems Chucky found a way to spread his soul across more than one doll, and once that's established, the movie comes off almost like a Thing variant of sorts, as you're wondering if he's been able to possess any humans along with an increasing number of Good Guy dolls that have found their way to the hospital. Not only does this allow for suspenseful scenes that Chucky isn't even present for (her shrink is seemingly crazier than Chucky, something even the doll notes), but also gives Brad Dourif a chance to have a couple scenes where he talks to himself, as Chuckys argue over who gets to kill someone or whatever. The stuff with the psychiatrist can drag a little in spots, but it's offset by the other patients that he's in charge of, one of whom takes a liking to Chucky because she thinks it's her dead son (leading to what might be the series' first truly horrifying moment). Mancini has a knack for creating characters that are almost automatically interesting, allowing him to quickly get back to Chucky (or Nica, our hero) without having to spend too much time making sure we know/care about these new people. I particularly liked the orderly, Carlos (Zak Santiago), who in one brief scene tells us more about who he is as a person - both with dialogue and actions - than I've ever learned about the main characters in certain Jason or Freddy films. It's testament to both Mancini and the actors that we don't need Chucky on-screen every second to be invested in the story.

But naturally, the film is at its best when it's letting Chucky do his thing. Dourif's as good as ever (his delivery of "I just CAN'T with this guy!" is an all timer in context, which I can't spoil here), and the animation is much improved over the previous film, where Chucky's face seemed to be completely different in some scenes. A behind the scenes clip on the Blu-ray shows that they are still using practical puppets with a number of operators for the facial expressions, so while there might be a few computerized "touch ups" here and there, he's still very much a practical effect and I'm never not appreciative of how well they pull it off (though I think the pre-CG Child's Play 3 remains the best he's ever looked). Since he's not just trying to play "hide the soul" every five seconds he's got more to do here than in many of the other sequels, and is up and about most of the time we see him as opposed to Curse, where the plot dictated that he remain still for a while. After the largely comedy-free Curse, Mancini seems to be dipping back into comedy at times (complete with a meta joke about Hannibal's cancellation - Mancini worked on the show), but the comedy largely works and is still nowhere near the level of the (horror-free) Seed of Chucky.

Chucky also really pops thanks to the film's visual style. As it's set in an institution, you can imagine that you'll be seeing a lot of sterile, nearly color-free environments, so when Chucky scampers down a hallway or someone carries him through the room, you can't help but zero in on him (another reason to be relieved that they do such a great job with the doll work). Mancini also peppers the film with diopter shots and split screens, and it doesn't take much effort to realize he's paying homage to Brian DePalma, which he admits to on the commentary (and in our interview!) and works remarkably well in the context of a Chucky film. As I was saying about the films being surprising, each one has its own flavor and style (remarkably, the three Mancini directed himself are the most varied), so you get a certain kind of film (in this case, the mental institution/psychological thriller movie) but now with Chucky, and so using these specific devices actually has two uses. One, it helps set it apart from the others, but the more important second one is that it gives the audience a bit of a subconscious shorthand to know what kind of movie Chucky is invading this time.

I do wish they had taken another pass at the editing, however. It's actually a few minutes shorter than Curse (the series' longest entry), but it feels a bit sluggish at times, even a bit repetitive in some cases. Indeed, some of the split-screen shots were created in editing (not the original design) in order to speed things along, and I can't help but wonder if that tactic could have been employed elsewhere. The climax is also a bit stiff compared to the others - there's big stuff happening to the characters (particularly in Nica's case), but visually it lacks oomph compared to the others. With Andy back it's easy to remember the big climaxes of CP2 (the toy factory) and 3 (the carnival), and here it mostly just amounts to a few people (and even Chucky) standing around talking. I don't need the hospital to blow up or anything, but a chase or something would have been nice; even if we've seen that sort of thing before it would at least send us off with a bit of an adrenaline rush. It's an unusual film in that the bulk of the "money shot" action occurs in the middle, so that coupled with the slight overlength deflates the movie a bit.

That said, the closing scene (along with the post-credits teaser) suggests a more female-driven followup, which I think would go over like gangbusters. Not to mention, given the current social/political climate, a "woke" Chucky movie might be kind of fascinating as long as Mancini and co. can successfully pair it with whatever new sub-genre they plan to ape next. I'm not a huge fan of Bride or Seed, but I know folks love them, and in turn Tiffany, so I'm sure they'd be happy to see her return after sitting these two out. I just hope they don't go full-blown comedy again; the little asides here were fine (though the shoutouts to earlier kills - "All actual examples!" - were clunky AF) but I'm far more impressed by their ability to make this goofy concept work in the suspense/horror mode. But whatever path they take, I know not to underestimate Mancini (and producer David Kirschner, who has also been around for all of them), so I eagerly await the next one - even if it means my sweet "Complete Collection" boxed set will be obsolete!

What say you?

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The Boy (2016)

JANUARY 22, 2016

GENRE: PUPPET, THRILLER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

If this was 2007, my review of The Boy would include another genre tagging and I'd be gushing about how it pays homage to ______, which I wouldn't have expected given that I had sat down for a creepy killer doll movie (yes, a doll, not a puppet - I just never bothered making two separate tags and I'm not gonna start now). But over the years I got more and more reserved when it came to spoilers, almost to the point of being one of those annoying spoilerphobes that yell at you on Twitter for saying something like "Kylo Ren is the bad guy in Star Wars". I will ALLUDE to the film's later reveals, but not say anything specific that might tip you off, though just to be safe I hope you just wait until you see the movie before reading. Unless you want to know if you SHOULD see it, and in that case - yes, you should.

"But isn't it from the director of The Devil Inside and Stay Alive," you may ask? Yes, and I didn't know that until I saw his name (William Brent Bell) in the credits. But I was a minor defender of those films (neither are great, but nowhere near as bad as their reputations), and this is much better at any rate. Of course, I'm a sucker for creepy doll movies, and since I was so disappointed by The Forest I was just happy to see a movie with less interest in jolting the audience every five minutes with a fake scare. Not that it lacks them - this IS a PG-13 January horror movie after all, so by law there must be at least two (2) nightmare scenes and every character must be introduced to the heroine (Lauren Cohan) by inadvertently scaring her, but Bell keeps them to an acceptable minimum. Plus, he kind of has no choice but to include some, because the nature of the film restricts him from using the doll much.

If you paid attention to the trailer, you'd notice that the doll never moves, and there's a good reason for that. This isn't Child's Play - the question of the movie is whether or not the doll IS alive as its "parents" think, and you take the journey with Cohan, meaning you find out the answer only when she does. The parents go on vacation early on, leaving her alone with Brahms (the doll's name, and also the name of their son, who died in a mysterious fire), and obviously if the thing got up and told her to make it breakfast (one of the tasks she is asked to perform, much to her confusion) on that first day, she'd hightail it out of there and there would be no movie. So she has to think they're crazy at first, and then as strange things start happening she (we) has (have) to wonder if maybe the parents aren't so crazy after all. Bell knows that if he shows the doll as much as blink, he is locked into that answer (otherwise he'd be cheating) and so you have to be patient - you know the truth when you need to, which is to say, the movie's 3rd act.

As you might expect from that description, this means that there isn't a lot of action in the movie, so some might even call it "boring". I'll admit, I think the pace could have been tightened here and there, but when you consider the bigger picture, it all fits. Cohan has to spend a reasonable amount of time assuming her employers are crazy - if she thinks Brahms is really alive after the first strange noise or "Didn't I leave him in the other room?" type moment, we lose sympathy for our heroine. Like any sane human, it takes her a while to start considering that maybe the doll is in fact alive, so Bell and writer Stacey Menear have to rely on the audience's intelligence (risky move nowadays) to accept that the movie isn't particularly exciting. They also run the risk of making her kind of unlikable in a way - if you believe that Brahms is alive and harmless, then you start thinking about how the poor little guy is sitting there with a blanket over his head for hours on end, and being ignored even longer. Eventually/obviously she does start suspecting that Brahms is alive, and then she has to convince the only other major character - Malcolm, the delivery man played by Rupert Evans from The Canal. This casting amused me, because in that movie he was the one trying to convince someone that he wasn't crazy when explaining something that sounded insane, so now he gets to be on the other side of the conversation. Charming actor, that guy - hope to see him in more hero roles soon.

But it's mostly Cohan's show - she's in every scene (except for one, I'll get to that in a bit) and carries the movie easily. Naturally, she has a tragic backstory, though it's not just some random shit - it actually informs her journey with Brahms. Turns out her abusive ex (the one she's running off to England to escape) hit her a bit too hard one night and caused her to miscarry, so when she learns the couple's own sad history, that they lost the real Brahms and have seemingly avoided dealing with it by treating a doll as if he was their still-living son, she starts sympathizing with their plight. It's rare that a modern horror movie going out on 2000+ screens can be considered a character piece, but that's exactly what The Boy is - it's about this woman coming to grips with the fact that she was denied a chance at motherhood. At a certain point, you should stop caring about whether or not Brahms is real and be more focused on whether or not she will be able to fully recover from her loss, making the horror element kind of a bonus in a strange way. It's not much longer after this reveal that the answers start coming, and so that's where I'll stop discussing the matter.

However I do have to go back to that one scene I mentioned. The entire movie is Cohan's POV, to the extent that even when she's talking to her friend (sister?) back home we don't cut away just to give the movie a change of scenery. Malcolm comes and goes with groceries but they never show him in town, loading his car up or anything - the furthest away from her that they get is when she's trapped in the attic and Malcolm is outside knocking on the door. So I'm baffled that Bell opted to not only break this rule to go hundreds of miles away to show something the parents are doing while on their holiday, but does so about 40 minutes before that information is necessary to us in any way. Not only does it cancel out the possibility that they never actually left and are the ones moving Brahms into different rooms or whatever, but it also severely lessens the impact for when Cohan discovers what they did (via a letter that they send), right near the end of the movie. It's obvious that the script went out of its way to make sure we were never ahead of Cohan's character at any point, so for the life of me I can't understand the thought process behind this glaring exception. I mean, sure, they could show the scene when she finds the letter, because at that point we know all the secrets, but why so long before?

The other complaint I have isn't about the movie, but about some people who are accusing it of ripping off ______. The title would give it away, I can only say it's a recent film, not from the US, that people (including me) really liked. Anyway, they're wrong - there's a similar plot element, yes, but in one that element describes the antagonist and in the other it concerns the hero, so those naysayers are already grasping at straws. Add that to the fact that this element has been used in dozens of movies and that ______ didn't come out in the US (save a few festival appearances) until this one was already in production and I'd say that it's likely just a coincidence, and if you watched the two of them back to back you'd see very different movies that happen to share a similar plot device in their 3rd act. That said, I am confident Menear was definitely paying tribute to the _______ title I mentioned in the first paragraph (a sequel, I'll hint at that much), but anyone who would knock the movie for that is a fool. If anything it's all the more reason to champion it.

(If you're reading this review before seeing the movie, I hope realizing all these things I'm talking about during your viewing doesn't get too distracting!)

Long story short, if you're patient and not the kind of person who gets unreasonably angry when their expectations are not met (i.e. the sort of person who still can't get past the lack of Michael Myers in Halloween III to realize it's an awesome movie), then you should really enjoy this one. My audience mostly turned on it (the guy behind me was basically MST3king it, but he seemed unbalanced so I just rolled my eyes instead of telling him to shut the fuck up) but others that I trust (and who were NOT defenders of Bell's earlier films) have also given it their blessing, and I think lots of folks will be pleasantly surprised if they give it a fair chance. And if not, well, you should at least admit it's better than The Forest (which, oddly enough, also has a Bear McCreary score and stars an actress best known for her role on a trendy cable show), as far as this month's horror options go.

What say you?

P.S. This week's Collins' Crypt piece at Birth.Movies.Death will have the spoiler since it'll be part of a longer article about Bell's output, if you absolutely must know what it is and inexplicably only want to hear it from me.

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Curse of Chucky (2013)

OCTOBER 9, 2013

GENRE: PUPPET, SLASHER
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

After the debacle of Seed of Chucky (the least attended entry in the Child's Play series), I figured Chucky would be dead until the inevitable remake, but I was delighted to be proven wrong when Curse Of Chucky was announced, as it would essentially be Child's Play 6 (no rebooting), and would retain the presence of Don Mancini, who had written every entry so far (unheard of in the horror genre) and would also be directing. Now, he also directed Seed, which should have given me pause, but his promise to return the series to its scary roots and largely leave the campiness of the last two entries behind was enough for me to give it a chance. And, I'm happy to say, it worked out well - this is the first time in the series' history that I've liked an entry more than the one before it (I know folks love Bride, but give me Andy Barclay - even the military academy variant - over Katherine Heigl any day of the week).

Even better, it's not an H20 kind of deal where they just ignore some of the sequels to stress that this was a "back to basics" approach. At first I assumed it almost HAD to be - how do you follow up the completely horror-free Seed in a scary film and not break continuity? Indeed, for the first half hour or so I was convinced that was indeed the case; Chucky was a pristine plastic doll once again, free of the scars he earned over the past couple of films, and there was nothing about Tiffany or Glen, or any other characters we've met along the way. But then, once heroine Fiona Dourif (a lovely, charming presence in her first lead role, and no her name is not a weird coincidence - she's Brad's daughter) starts to suspect that something is wrong with the Good Guy doll that was mailed to her and "adopted" by her young niece, she Googles "Chucky doll" and the first five entries match up to the events of the previous films (even the military academy! Yessss), putting to rest any fears that Mancini (and producer David Kirschner, another series mainstay) had opted to ignore the entries that weren't as well loved by the fans.

And there are more ties to previous entries, though spoiling them would be ruining your fun (unlike Dread Central and some other sites, who opted to put one such reveal in a headline). But the real surprise is that it actually dives into the character of Charles Lee Ray for the first time since the original Child's Play, which I found interesting as Mancini has previously said that he wasn't a fan of this concept (it was added by Tom Holland and other writers - Mancini's original script had no serial killer or voodoo). This allows Brad Dourif to appear on-screen in one of these films for the first time since 1988, and while the attempts to de-age him aren't entirely successful (the wig they gave him makes him look like Tommy Wiseau), it's great to see him still committed to this character, which could have been an easy paycheck for an actor of his abilities, something he also could have just turned down as the series continued (in 2004, Return of the King* was winning Best Picture right around the time he was doing his lines for a 5th Chucky movie!).

In fact, it's Dourif's continued presence that brings me to one of the odder aspects of this entry - the "Good Guy" voice is completely different. The usual lines ("I'm your friend til the end!") sound way off, even though there's seemingly no in-movie explanation for this (and would seemingly be an easy enough thing to duplicate). Similarly, his face is much different, even though it's the same doll (unlike in say, part 3, where his blood just went into a new doll). It's not that big of a deal in the long run, but it was kind of perplexing that they'd go out of their way to retain continuity for certain things but not even come close on others. That said, the puppetry behind the doll is pretty good; there are some unfortunate CGI touches on the face and at least one all digital shot that looks horrendous (I almost want to bet money that it was taken from the aborted video game), but otherwise they stick to a practical puppet just like in the old days, and considering the lower budget (about half of the money spent on the original - the previous "lowest budget" entry - and that's without even factoring for inflation) it's a pretty effective display of old and new tricks working together.

Faring even better with the limited funds is the set. The movie takes place almost entirely in one night and in one location, as Mancini wanted to put Chucky into a 1930's style "Old Dark House" movie, with constant lightning, creaking doors, windows opening on their own, etc. Hell there's even an inheritance subplot of sorts - Fiona's character is being visited on this night by her greedy sister, who wants her to sell the house (it belonged to their recently departed mother) and split the money. She brings along her husband, child, and nanny, and there's a priest (A Martinez) around for good measure - only thing missing is a Bela Lugosi-esque butler. And like those films, he milks the suspense for a while regarding the identity of the villain, except not quite as successful since we kind of know it's Chucky (though it would be ballsy to have the doll arrive but just be a doll, with a human character doing all the killing). Still, the best suspense bit in the entire movie is mostly Chucky-free - we see him pour poison into one of the bowls of chili that are about to be served, and then we get to watch everyone eat without knowing who has the poisoned bowl.

I do wish he made his grand re-appearance earlier - hands and feet are all we get until about the 50 minute point, and I get the thinking but at the same time - it's Child's Play 6, we don't need to milk it like Jaws. Plus, at 96 minutes its the longest entry, and didn't really need to be as the story only gets complicated (for lack of a better word) in the 3rd act, when the Charles Lee Ray stuff comes into focus. I thought this might have been because I was watching the unrated version, but (for a change!) the extra stuff IS the sort of thing the MPAA would have a problem with - there are some surprisingly gruesome kills that rated folks won't get to see in all their glory. The R rated version is also missing a fun post-credits scene (one without any sort of violence) for whatever reason, so make sure you're watching the unrated one (it runs 96 minutes instead of 94). Don't get it from Redbox!

The Blu-ray also has a few more bonus features than offered on the DVD. Both owners will get a pretty bland 15 minute EPK making of (hey, the actors all liked working together! Hey, the set was sort of like a character itself!) and some deleted scenes of little merit, but the commentary track by Fiona, Mancini, and FX man Tony Gardner is quite enjoyable - all bases are covered and Mancini offers some thoughts on what he was going for and why he opted to return to the darker style of the original (though he neglects to mention if the shot of Chucky sitting up behind Fiona was indeed a reference to Halloween! I tweeted the query but he didn't answer me) (UPDATE - he answered in the affirmative! Bump my non-existent grade up a half point!). He also explains why the remake never happened (legal issues between MGM and Universal), so hopefully that is dead forever and they can just move on with a 7th film (which he also teases). Exclusive to the Blu-ray are a pair of more interesting featurettes; one has the cast and crew discuss the legacy of the series and talk about their favorite kills (props to the actor who seems to be the only person besides me with a fondness for part 3), and the other shows how the puppet was created for this entry and how they blended a practical animatronic device and CGI for some shots (I'm still baffled why his face is totally CG for the electrocution scene - it doesn't look anything like the way he looks in the rest of the film).

I'm sure it's mostly nostalgia driving my appreciation for parts 2 and 3 (and being older, may also explain why I didn't care much for Bride or Seed), so for me the best possible approach for a new film would be to go back to the style of the original, which holds up nicely (I can tell when it's my nostalgia - this isn't one of those times). It's a shame Universal didn't think this could be a viable theatrical release (especially this year, when October is barren of major horror releases for whatever reason), but if the smaller budget meant they were able to do something a bit riskier (i.e. hiding Chucky for half the film), I'm all for it. It's not a home run, but it's the first time I walked away satisfied from a Chucky movie since I was 11 years old, so for that I'm pretty grateful.

What say you?

*Technically, he only appears in the extended edition of that one. But still.

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Puppet Master X: Axis Rising (2012)

JANUARY 1, 2013

GENRE: MAD SCIENTIST, PUPPET
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

I was quite surprised to see Puppet Master X: Axis Rising at my Blockbuster, as I figured since their selection of new horror was so limited, it would hardly be the sort of thing that they bothered with while ignoring so many others (they didn't even get the new Resident Evil animated film!). But I found it kind of charming in a way; I'm sure a Blockbuster was the gateway to Full Moon/this series for many a lad or lass in the 90s, so it's sort of like carrying on a tradition (or renewing it, since they didn't stock the last couple entries).

My good friend Matt really hated this one, but as with Axis Of Evil and Retro, I found it to be mostly tolerable - mainly because I never loved the earlier ones much either. I can certainly see how a big fan of the first three movies would feel so angry about these later ones, but to me, someone whose appreciation of them doesn't extend beyond "Better than the ones that followed", I didn't see how this was any worse than the last few, since it suffers from all of the same problems.

Yes, despite the nice cover art and the fact that this is actually the first in the series to be directed by Charles Band himself, there isn't much about the production to set it apart from Axis of Evil, at least in the department that matters the most - the puppets. Still no stop motion of any sort, just closeup shots of the puppets (from the waist up) as they wave an arm or nod their head a bit, courtesy of rod wielding puppeteers just off camera. Sure, it's better than digital blasphemy, but when you're talking about a movie with MAYBE 7 minutes of on-screen puppet "action" (mostly, well, waving an arm or nodding their head a bit), it baffles me that Band continues to ignore the series' legacy (and, let's be honest here, only truly good thing about them) by refusing to hire some fledgling stop-motion aficionados to put together a few seconds of Blade or Jester wandering across a floor. You'd think a guy looking to put together a reel in order to secure a job at Laika would be happy to do something practically for free. Everything is shot digitally now; surely a camera, a few of the dolls, and some basic storyboards could be loaned to such a person for a week to see what they can come up with, right? It's not like it has to be Paranorman-level complicated; even in its prime the stop-motion in these movies never amounted to much more than the puppets scampering about, maybe quickly fighting one of the villain puppets.

Luckily they're a touch more active than the last one, if memory serves. The villains make four of their own puppets to fight, so there's a couple of (brief) skirmishes where Leech Woman, for example, will take on Bombshell, the most prolific new puppet, who is an Ilsa esque Nazi puppet who shoots unlimited ammo out of her giant puppet boobs. And then there's Blitzkrieg, a little tank dude who feels like an ancestor of Torch, and Kamikaze, a laughably/terribly stereotypical one who mutters indecipherable Japanese and seemingly can't do anything except blow himself/his surroundings up, which limits his use to one scene. There's also a werewolf puppet, no idea what the hell that's supposed to be about but I assume someone just watched Rob Zombie's trailer in Grindhouse and figured they'd pay tribute. Anyway, they're no better animated than the regulars, but at least it gives the hero puppets something to fight, rather than their usual sneaking around and waiting for a human to trip so Tunneler (who spends most of the movie dead) can do his signature move.

But those other 80 minutes are pretty dull. Again, it's nice that they're trying to work the puppet into a pretty typical but decent enough WWII spy story, and I like the idea of setting such fare in 1940's Los Angeles instead of the usual overseas locales, but Band and co. aren't quite pulling off LA Confidential here. The actors are pretty wooden, the sets aren't impressive, and since they obviously can't afford to dress entire city blocks in period coating, most of the movie takes place with those bad actors talking on those not great sets. The Nazi stuff is not without amusement - before she's turned into a puppet, the fake Ilsa is hilariously campy, and I like that the LA Nazi chapter doesn't seem to be doing much beyond yelling at some scientist to figure out a way to resurrect the dead. It takes place a day after the previous movie, but the failure of their big plan to blow up the weapons factory doesn't seem to be causing much of a concern.

Speaking of which, for a direct sequel, it's hilariously inept. Everyone is played by different actors, and hero Danny has apparently moved overnight - he lived in a tiny apartment in the last one but has his own house here. Ninja is MIA for some reason (though Six Shooter makes an unexplained reappearance - where you been, guy?), and Danny's gung ho attitude about taking on the Nazis has also been lessened in the past few hours, as all he seems to really care about this time is getting Tunneler back. Leave it to Band/Full Moon to opt for a direct sequel to a not very well received entry a full two years later and bungle it in every possible way, rather than just cut their losses on this storyline and try a new path.

On that note, Band also brought something back here: VideoZone! Anyone who rented/bought a Full Moon VHS back in the day probably remembers these featurettes, which would go a bit behind the scenes of the movie you just watched and previewed a few others. I always found that to be a nice little bonus (long before DVD special editions), and was charmed to see it return here, kicked off with Band himself explaining why the series ended and how this is the first in "over 20 years" (an exaggeration; I specifically remember watching one on Arcade and that didn't hit until 1994), as well as hinting at some future projects (including a new Subspecies!). Then it goes into the making of stuff, most of which is pretty bland and made worse by a really cheesy voiceover. Much of the 27 minute runtime is given to Tom Devlin, who did as much as he could (given the limited budget) to make the puppets look more like their original counterparts instead of the cheesy knockoff versions we've seen lately (the results vary; Leech Woman still looks horrible, but Pinhead looks pretty good). The disc also includes a curious montage piece that runs about two minutes and showcases just about every puppet in the series - weird thing to add since it will just remind everyone how much better they used to look AND move. Some trailers for other Full Moon flicks, including a fourth Killjoy that you bet your sweet bippy I'll be watching as soon as possible, are also included, making this a pretty nice package for a not great movie.

But seeing it at Blockbuster gives me hope - if Band's getting his product out there again (well, relatively speaking, since at least one of you is thinking "There are still Blockbusters?", but it's a step up from being featured on Echo Bridge multi-packs), maybe some dough will roll in and they can put it toward improving their most famous property. I don't think I'll ever see a fully GOOD Puppet Master movie, but if they could at least tie it up with something that its fans enjoy, I'd at least have some more respect for this company.

What say you?

P.S. As is tradition whenever I close out a series: 3, 4, 2, 1, Retro, 5, 9/10, the clip show, Curse (the circus one). Vs Demonic Toys doesn't count, but it'd be the worst anyway.

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