When Evil Lurks (2023)

OCTOBER 27, 2023

GENRE: POSSESSION
SOURCE: STREAMING (SHUDDER)

For those not in Los Angeles, our annual Beyond Fest is jam-packed with great, "must-see" events, with a healthy mix of new stuff making the festival rounds, world premieres, and repertory offerings (for the latter, this year gave us the unveiling of the long-in-the-works 4K remaster of The Abyss director's cut, with James Cameron on hand for Q&A - just an example). Perhaps needless to say, tickets for the screenings tend to sell out fast, and you have to fight hard (read: hit refresh a lot) to get to that magical checkout screen, but in one of the many ironies that make up my life, I managed to get a ticket for When Evil Lurks (Spanish: Cuando acecha la maldad) only to not be able to use it due to a scheduling conflict. And then I couldn't make any of its standard showings when it opened in theaters two weeks ago for a limited run prior to its Shudder debut, so alas I had to watch at home, defeated.

Not that it's a tour de force for the senses kind of thing you need to see in theaters, but I just prefer to see films for the first time that way, something that only got worse during the pandemic when I was forced to settle for the drive-in and all its distractions (cars arriving late, various environmental issues like helicopters or nearby traffic, horribly dim screens) for over a year whenever seeing anything new. I can leave my phone in the other room and wait until I have the house to myself (save for the cats), but I still can't have a distraction-free screening at home the way I can in a theater, and while that might be fine for some goofy comedy or even an action flick, a dark supernatural horror film like this can't quite have the same hold on me at home the way it could have in a theater with a respectful crowd (which Beyond Fest ones usually are).

I say all of this as a sort of "grain of salt" explanation, because I can't help but wonder if I would have been as blown away by the film as folks who saw it on the big screen. It's good, don't get me wrong, but it wasn't anything extraordinary either. I suspect two moments in particular (both involving children) have elevated its rep, because of the "rule" that kids don't die in movies, but I mean... they do? We've all rewatched some/all of the Halloween movies recently, and a few young'ns have met grisly fates in those (Buddy in Halloween 3, Bumpy in the 2018 one, plus Billy is nearly killed in H5 - hmm, maybe don't have a B___Y name if you want to survive Haddonfield?). And Quiet Place kicked things off with the death of their kid, and that was PG-13. Sure, it's not a regular occurrence, but while those events are good shock moments here (well one is, the other is off-screen but has an unsettling aftermath), they're not exactly breaking any new ground either.

Outside of those two brief highlights, what you have is a darker take on Mike Mendez' Don't Kill It, where a demon is possessing folks (or animals) but if you kill the host it will just jump into another. A "Cleaner" can exorcise the demon properly, but what kicks the whole plot off is our hero Pedro (Ezequiel Rodríguez, who's got a real Tom Jane vibe that I dug) finding the body of one such exorcist on his land, and they can't find another and the authorities won't help. But it's not that they don't believe him; one of the more interesting things about the movie (albeit not fully explored) is that possessed folks (referred to as "Rottens") are kind of known throughout the area and the higherups just basically shrug it off and consider it something we just have to live with and hope it doesn't affect them directly. I don't know if it was definitely the case, but I read it as a low-key jab at how certain countries (cough, America, cough) ultimately dealt with Covid, and I laud director Demián Rugna for it.

(Also, they specifically say guns are no way to solve the problem, and everyone who uses one in the movie is met with a horrible fate, so that amused me greatly and dded to the "sigh, Americans" vibe.)

Another thing Rugna does that I liked was that it kept switching gears. The first 20 minutes or so all take place on Pedro and the neighbor's property, making it seem like a contained, isolated thriller that will be a slow burn kind of thing. But then after something spoiler-y happens, Pedro and his brother get more proactive, going into the nearby suburbs to rescue their mom and also Pedro's estranged family (his ex wife who has since remarried, his two sons with her, plus the boys' half sister and her dad), and things kick up a notch, as an outbreak of sorts occurs and sends Pedro running/driving all around the area trying to keep everyone safe as the possession jumping gets out of control. And then the third act revolves around a new character with some answers, plus two new locations to boot. It gives the plotting a bit of a random jumpiness, but at least you're never quite sure how things are going to play out, who is safe, etc.

One thing I didn't like isn't the movie's fault though - the subtitle work (the movie is in Spanish) is garbage. The translation is done by someone who was seemingly just going word for word and not always with the correct verb tense, so the longer a line is, the more it tends to be "off" and making you work a little harder to suss out the exact meaning, which is a needless distraction and could be avoided by simply having done the work correctly. I know AI is being used for this sort of job nowadays, and it wouldn't surprise me if it was to blame, but either way we deserve better. This also leaves a crucial bit of backstory involving Pedro's character (and specifically why his ex-wife has full custody of their children) maddeningly unclear, as it seems like it's supposed to be something the audience has to put together as opposed to being spelled out, but that's harder when the translated lines are also incomplete. I am curious if they had a better version for its theatrical showings; they're not burned into the image (and as always with Shudder, they just run on the bottom of the screen even when the credits are there, so you get to squint trying to separate a line of dialogue from the name of the casting director too!) so it's possible they're different.

But other than that, it's an impressively dark possession tale, one that thankfully avoids most of the tropes of these kind of movies (the exorcist is dead right from the start! The police believe it's happening but just don't care!) and has a bit of a mean streak to it that you don't see all that much. I don't know if it's the gamechanger it was made out to be by fest crowds, and I am baffled by the publicity of a "perfect Halloween movie" since it's just dark and hopeless and that doesn't fit the Halloween vibe to me at all (it's a fun holiday and there's nothing fun here?), but a good movie is a good movie, and it's always nice to get one of those.

What say you?

Tweet

PLEASE, GO ON...

FTP: Children of the Night (2014)

MAY 29, 2023

GENRE: VAMPIRE
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

I don’t know what the oldest movie in “the pile” is, but Children of the Night (aka Limbo) has to be in the running, as it came out in October of 2015 (and, since it was sent for review consideration, means I probably got it a month earlier). My life is very different now! Since this film has been sitting there waiting for me to watch it, I’ve moved, gotten a new (used) car, published two books, lost two side jobs (typical layoff and covid shutdown, respectively), and helped turn a baby who only just started walking into a 9 year old who has his own TV and can figure out Zelda bosses easier than I can. Kind of crazy, at least in a low key way that's probably not interesting to anyone reading.

But I bring it up because I wonder if I would have enjoyed the film as much then as I did now. My thoughts on “evil” children movies have gone through the wringer since I had my own child, but here’s one where the kids – who are all vampires – are actually the good guys. Sure, they need human blood and can be pretty creepy, but they also just want to do kid things and eat curry (a drug to their vampiric kind – a delightfully odd idea I must say), as none of them asked to be vampires. And they’re all being hunted by a group of black-clad men who believe them to be the devil spawn or whatever, so it’s not hard to, at the very least, hope they take down the hunter jerks with them.

Caught in the middle is Alicia (Sabrina Ramos), a writer who got a tip about the retreat where all of the children live, believing them to all be suffering from some kind of illness with no cure. At first she’s confused, then scared once she realizes what they are, but then comes around to being an ally, thanks in part to the fact that one of the children is actually her girlhood bestie. As vampires tend to do, he hasn’t aged since she last saw him when they were adolescents, so she finds herself weirdly drawn to this now-man trapped in a child’s body, and of course wanting to protect him so she doesn’t lose him again. It’s a potentially icky plot point, and has a few eyebrow raising moments (they don’t *do* anything, I should stress – she just acts charmed by his seemingly inappropriate comments instead of overly concerned), but it’s ultimately a rather sweet unconventional (and, again, physically platonic!) love story.

But it’s also a vampire movie, and while there isn’t a lot of action, what we get is pretty entertaining, since it’s… well, a bunch of kids taking on grown men. At one point a kid literally kicks the head off one attacker, and the other kids momentarily kick it back and forth like a soccer ball – it’s delightful. The music accompanying these scenes is also top notch, as it weirdly reminds me (of all things) of the music in Tetris Effect: Connected, where it’s exciting but also kind of relaxing? Hard to explain unless you’ve also played that game (and you should! It’s the best version!). I also like how they handle the usual tie-in to pop culture vampires, as it proposes the idea that Bram Stoker was a self-loathing vampire who wrote his book to expose the (real) Dracula, who as it turns out is the grandfather of one of the children there. Silly? Sure, but I’ll take it over the usual corny line about Bela Lugosi “getting it wrong” or whatever

. Honestly the only real flaw, besides running a little too long, is that the low budget is occasionally far too apparent on screen. The video/soap opera look I eventually adjusted to, but there are a number of scenes where it seems like they tried to hide a mistake with a superimposed black oval? For example, in one scene, it seems one of the child actors missed their cue and just stood there while the others ran around, and they tried to hide it with one of these ovals, but another actor crosses in front of them, so the oval disappears and we see the kid just standing there – it’s seriously far more distracting than it would have been to just not draw our attention to it in the first place, though I’m sure it could have worked if the oval in any way matched the color of the rest of the image. There are a few other lo-fi “fixes” like that in the movie that kind of keep calling attention to how under budgeted it was, distracting away from the surprisingly involving story. For some reason there’s a remake of One Cut of the Dead coming, but I feel something like this would be a far better option to remake, as the low budget (which was part of One Cut’s charm, not a handicap) actually harms it here and it deserves a polished presentation.

Director/writer Ivan Noel provides a commentary where he notes some of their budgetary issues and thanks the many people who did favors (CGI shots of a moon eclipse, for example), making it a fine track for those who might feel they can’t pull off their own ambitious projects due to a lack of resources. He also notes that the movie was an hour longer at one point (I’m sure he meant his first assembly as opposed to a “director’s cut”; people who don’t understand the difference make reporting on such things an incredible nuisance), though the only other bonus feature is a 20ish minute behind the scenes where we can see everyone was just enjoying the experience and having a sort of summer camp vibe during the proceedings. Since the movie was still too long, I can’t say I need MORE scenes from the film, but if this stuff was in any way elaborate I can’t help but wonder if he tightened his script in the first place perhaps some of those limited resources wouldn’t have been spread so thin.

That said, what’s left is still much better than I would have guessed after the first few minutes (my heart sunk when I saw that video look), so he pulled it off! It has a lot of tones (sweet and nostalgic! Dryly ironic! Kind of scary!) but Noel balances it out fairly well, and Ramos is an engaging presence (as is Ana María Giunta as Erda, the childrens’ caretaker, wearily dealing with things like one of the children sleep-flying). And then I had to laugh that since the movie’s ten years old now, all of the kids in it are now adults. Such is life in the pile!

What say you?

Tweet

PLEASE, GO ON...

FTP: The Last Matinee (2020)

JULY 18, 2022

GENRE: SLASHER
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

When Bloody Disgusting first started acquiring (mostly foreign) films for release, they had a deal with AMC Theatres to show them a couple times a week. As a then writer for the outlet I felt duty bound to go, but given the very sparse crowds I'd see on those occasions, it wasn't a surprise that the partnership didn't last. But if it did, it would have added a fun meta layer to see The Last Matinee on the big screen with one of those very tiny crowds, because the movie itself is about a handful of people seeing a foreign horror movie in a big theater, only to be wiped out by a killer.

The logic largely holds out, too - the theater seems to have around a thousand seats but only eight of them are occupied. We have a couple on a first date, an old man, a kid who snuck in, a trio of teens, and a lone teen girl who just happens to be the unrequited crush of one of those previously mentioned three, all spread out throughout the theater where the killer can strike without anyone noticing if they're paying attention to the screen. And he only has to do that a couple times; eventually one guy goes to the bathroom and he gets him there, he gets the teen and his crush at the same time, and when he goes in for his next kill he's finally spotted. I mean, in reality would it work? Probably not, but in the context of a slasher movie (i.e. where it's best not to think about such things) I think writer/director Maximiliano Contenti did a fine job of making it work.

I also appreciated that the movie they were watching was a real one, but not a budget pack public domain staple like Night of the Living Dead or whatever. In fact, the film (Frankenstein: Day of the Beast) was directed by Ricardo Islas, who plays the killer here, adding to the meta fun: Islas' work as a director is distracting everyone from noticing that Islas himself is killing their fellow patrons. To be clear, he's not playing himself - he's dubbed with the hilariously awesome name of Asesino Comeojos, or "The Eye Eating Killer." And yes, that's what he does; he kills folks with the usual sharp implements, but then he gouges out their eyes with an ice cream scoop (!) and occasionally eats them, though most he keeps in a big jar like they're pickles or something. It's goofy, yes, but disturbing in equal measure.

The disc is surprisingly packed for a DVD; I forgot they could put this much on there (and the transfer of the film is quite good; I actually forgot it was the lesser format). Contenti provides a commentary (in English; the film and other extras are in Spanish) that can be a little dry but is otherwise worth a listen as he rattles off production stories, casting process, FX secrets (the eyes are some kind of vegetable I'm blanking on right now, covered in sugar), etc. He also notes, somewhat apologetically, the insane number of production company logos at the top; I counted fourteen (eight of them animated), but as he notes that's just the reality now. There's an enjoyable making of with the cast and crew, some deleted scenes, short films, the trailer, and an Unsolved Mysteries kind of thing about the "real case" that inspired the film (please note: this is fictional). Contenti said that his previous film about a killer puppet would be on the disc as well, but that (along with the full Frankenstein feature) is a Blu-ray exclusive. Still, it'll take you another couple hours to go through what IS there, and that's always a nice surprise nowadays.

If you're one of the ninnies who whine when there's no explanation for a killer, you should steer clear (ditto for Halloween and Black Christmas too, you goon), but if you just want old-school body count fun I think you'll dig it. I had a blast, aided by the funny coincidence that the film actually took place on July 18th, the day I finally grabbed it off my shelf having wanted to watch it for a while now (I blame the format; it's a DVD and my eyes tend to gravitate toward the blu-rays since I know I'll get more money for trading them in once I finally watch). And as someone who has never gotten a hand job in a theater, I felt better about missing out after seeing what happened here: the dude (who I identified with as he noted that he likes to go to the movies without knowing a single thing about the film he's about to see) makes a mess of his pants so he retreats to the bathroom to clean it off, and that's where he gets killed. Not worth it imo.

What say you?

Tweet

PLEASE, GO ON...

No One Heard the Scream (1973)

SEPTEMBER 7, 2021

GENRE: THRILLER
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

The back of Severin's Blu-ray release of No One Heard the Scream (Spanish: Nadie oyó gritar) refers to it as a Spanish giallo, but I feel this is misleading and almost doing it a disservice. Not that I blame the company; it's a hard movie to sum up with a genre label. It certainly starts like a giallo, with our beautiful heroine seeing someone disposing a body and becoming the killer's target, but then it keeps surprising until the very end, going from kidnapping thriller to road movie to something approaching one of those kind of sad romantic dramas about two broken people coming together - I was not expecting to think about As Good As It Gets, but bless this odd little delight of a film, I did.

Not that I'd mind if it was just a standard giallo; it's been a minute since I've watched one and thus I'm due for a fix. I try to space out my viewings of such fare since they tend to run together in my mind, so letting them seep in my brain a little before taking in another seems a good way to keep them straight. But once it became clear that this wasn't going to have a huge body count, I allowed myself to enjoy what it actually was, with the added bonus of knowing I could go find a more traditional one today without overload.

And I shouldn't be surprised, since the film comes from Eloy de la Iglesia, who also directed Cannibal Man (itself recently reissued on Blu-ray from Severin), another film that sounds like one kind of thing on paper but ends up being more interesting/unique than a quickie description would let on. Again, things start off pretty standard here, with Elisa (Carmen Sevilla) seeing Miguel (Vicente Parra, the "Cannibal Man" himself) trying to dump a body in their apartment building, prompting the man to chase her back to her apartment and threaten her. But things swerve pretty quickly; instead of killing her to ensure her silence, he demands she help him dispose the body elsewhere, making her an accomplice that would be in just as much trouble. No, it's not particularly logical, but it's a "good enough" excuse for the two of them to pair off instead of chasing each other for 90 minutes.

No kidnapping/body in the car type scenario is complete without nosy police, and de la Iglesia offers an all timer incarnation of the scene, as they drive past a major bus accident and the cops force them to take a few of the injured to the hospital (it's a small village and they don't have enough ambulances to do it). So they need Miguel to put his suitcase in the trunk instead of the backseat so the injured can sit there, but naturally the trunk is where the body is - it's a terrific little nailbiter, one of those fun ones where you're not sure if you want the cops to find the body or not as we've already started sympathizing with the guy in a way.

See, it turns out his wife was a horrible nag and (by 1970s euro thriller standards, I stress) "had it coming", something Elisa seems to understand if not totally agree with. Partly because she too is seeing how empty her life has become, as she is seemingly... well, not quite a prostitute, but makes her living by occasionally spending weekends with wealthy men. In fact she was supposed to be with one such "lover" at the time she encountered Miguel, but changed her mind and broke off the arrangement with the man, having tired of the lack of passion and genuine concern - she wants a real man! Can it be... this dude who slapped her around a bit and made her help him clean his wife's blood off the elevator? Stranger things have happened in these movies!

Things get a little more tense due to the arrival of one of her younger lovers later, and the end provides a legitimately good twist that will make the movie interesting to see on a second view now that we have a key bit of information about one of our two leads, but the movie is ultimately a two hander about these two lonely/broken people getting their groove back, so to speak. I'm sure it'd fall victim to "Film Twitter" types who have gotten it in their head that filmmakers always defend and support the actions of their main characters, but for those of us who aren't near-sighted morons it's a pretty compelling take on this sort of fare, as your always torn between wanting them to find their peace but also, you know, not get away with seemingly unjustified murder (the fact that we don't actually see it helps).

Apart from noting how lovely the score is (from Fernando García Morcillo, another Cannibal Man returnee; you can listen to the opening credits theme yourself below since I couldn't find a trailer), there's not much else I can say - it's a movie that lives on its performances and how the plot zigs when you expect it to zag, so going on any more would rob you of its pleasures. Again, it may not satisfy you if you want a black gloved killer offing the cast, but if you just want, you know, a GOOD MOVIE, then you should give it a look, especially if you're familiar with Cannibal Man and thus are already accustomed to (and appreciative of) de la Iglesia's seeming disinterest in status quo.

What say you?

P.S. The movie is in Spanish with English subs, but they are specifically *subtitles*, not closed captions, and there are occasional lines in English when she goes to London to see her lover. Just an FYI if you, like me, have to often watch with low volume and count on captions!

Tweet

PLEASE, GO ON...

From The Pile: Fangs Of The Living Dead (1969)

AUGUST 25, 2021

GENRE: VAMPIRE
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

The title seemed familiar, so I checked twice to make sure I hadn't already seen/reviewed Fangs of the Living Dead (aka Malenka) on the site before I opened the still wrapped disc from the endless "Pile" (now an overfilled box) with the intent of watching it, reviewing it, and - unless it was great - sending it to the *other* box, the one full of discs that are waiting to be traded in on a literal rainy day*. "I don't want to have another Killer Nun situation on my hands," I thought, before starting the film and discovering that it actually starred the Nun herself, Anita Ekberg. I found that pretty amusing.

Most things are more amusing than the film, as it turns out, as it's pretty much a total snooze. It was the first horror film for Amando de Ossorio, who found success a few years later with the Tombs of the Blind Dead films but hadn't quite found his groove yet (some would argue he never did; his name is certainly not one that inspires me to watch his entire filmography), though he's not entirely to blame for the film's lapses. Apparently no one could decide whether to make a fully serious horror movie or a lighthearted one with comedy akin to the recent (and successful) Fearless Vampire Killers, but even if they did settle that before shooting began, de Ossorio is no Polanski, so I don't think that switcheroo was the only reason the movie doesn't really work.

It's also far too chaste compared to what else we had at the time; it's nearly bloodless, the women don't show off a lot of skin (forget about actual nudity), and the ending can't even bring itself to kill off the hero's horny pal - a character who seemingly only exists to be pointy teeth fodder. Nothing wrong with dialing things back and aiming for a more atmospheric and suspenseful take on the subject matter (which is more or less just Dracula), but de Ossorio isn't exactly delivering on those fronts either, so it's just kind of sitting there like a wet fart for large chunks of its runtime. The only time it really comes to life is in the last half hour, when the town's doctor (Carlos Casaravilla) takes a more active role in the proceedings as a sort of Van Helsing type, but one who has looked the other way on the vampire villain's evil deeds.

As for the villains, well... their whole story doesn't make any sense really, as part of the plot reveal (spoiler for 50+ year old movie ahead) is that they're not actually vampires, though the main one's demise is straight up vampire stuff. So were they lying about lying about being vampires? And why wait until the end of the movie to tell us this when nothing much has happened? Do it earlier and then spring something more interesting on us for the finale instead of an endless scene of the guy's body turning into a husk after being staked. To be fair though, there's another ending where that doesn't happen, and it's presented on the disc as a bonus feature, but it's in the original Spanish language so his not-dying monologue is a mystery to my ears. That ending also gives everyone a happy ending, except for perhaps the hero's buddy, who is now a vampire himself (huh?) and sends us off while comically chasing after a frightened woman. Hilarious!

Honestly the highlight of the disc is the commentary by Troy Howarth, who thankfully doesn't think too much of the movie himself and spares us 90 minutes of defending it. Instead he runs through the filmographies and careers of its players as you'd expect, but also gives some interesting historical background on Spain at the time, operating under Generalissimo Francisco Franco (at that time, *not* dead), as this was one of the first horror films produced by the country. He also notes a few interesting tidbits, such as the fact that a character's name of Vladis was NOT a little nod to Vlad the Impaler, as I assumed while watching, as the connection between Vlad and Dracula was not introduced until a few years later. That sort of stuff is why I always listen to the historian tracks even if I don't like the movie; might as well learn something rather than write the whole thing off as a loss.

But hey, sometimes the discs from the pile end up being worth keeping, which doesn't help me in my never-ending attempt to pare the collection down. I have no desire to keep this one, so thanks for kind of sucking, movie! That's a quarter inch of horizontal space I don't have to find on the permanent shelf!

What say you?

*I started taking walks on my lunch break in an attempt to shed a few pandemic pounds, so that eats up the time I have to go across town and give the box to some weird dude at a CD/movie store and come up with some random amount of cash to give me for it. But if it rains? I will stay dry, and RAKE IN THAT TRADE-IN CASH!

Tweet

PLEASE, GO ON...

The Day of the Beast (1995)

MARCH 31, 2021

GENRE: COMEDIC, RELIGIOUS
SOURCE: 4K UHD BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

I vaguely recall reading about The Day of the Beast (Spanish: El día de la bestia) in Fangoria back in the mid-90s when it was released, but at that time I was still a good Catholic boy going to church every week, so its sacrilegious subject matter would have scared me off (longtime readers know I didn't even watch The Exorcist until I was in college). But now that I have a different view on organized religion, in particular Catholicism (long story short: if it works for you, great! I'm just gonna be the best person I can be and hope for the best), such elements don't phase me. Also, I'm aware that this particular film has been hard to find in the US, with some fans resorting to VHS quality bootleg DVDs, so I am tickled that it jumped a format or two and has been released on 4K UHD by the good folks at Severin.

(While we're on the subject: how about a 4K Cathy's Curse, Sev? Maybe in ultra high def it'll make sense?)

Ironically, after watching the movie I came to the conclusion that had I watched it as a teen, I not only might have liked it more, but it also might have sped up my exodus from committing nearly two hours of my weekend to going to church every week (I'm counting travel time). The plot is wonderfully inventive: a priest believes that the Antichrist will be born that evening (Christmas Eve, in fact) and thus begins committing horrible sins in order to invoke the devil, just so he can kill him and save the world. Along the way he teams up with a metalhead and a phony TV personality who writes about the occult, and the unlikely trio try to find signs and perform the necessary rituals in order to prevent the destruction of mankind in their own roundabout way. It's violent, very funny in spots, and ultimately (spoiler for 25 year old movie ahead) ends with the message that devoting one's life to Christ will leave you with nothing.

I mean, I don't think it's that dire in reality, but the sentiment of how thankless it is definitely rings true. When you add in all of the terrible beliefs they still try to impose on their members (i.e. "homosexuality is a sin") while routinely covering up ACTUAL sins like the sexual assault of children, not to mention the fact that living by their rules more or less confines you to a life of boredom (if you steal your neighbor's newspaper or shout "I hate you!" at your parents if they ground you, and die before confessing, you'll burn in Hell for eternity. Seems reasonable!), you realize that this is not a particularly great organization to revolve your life around when it's the only one you got. Alex de la Iglesia (ironic name!) takes it to the extreme here, yes, but again: the general idea is right on point.

As a movie though, I wish I liked it a little more. It starts off kind of amazing, with our hero Cura (Álex Angulo) telling his plan in secret to a fellow priest, who agrees to help him but is then crushed by a giant cross. We then watch Cura commit several crimes around the city, from petty theft (from a homeless guy) to what might be murder, as he approaches a street mime that is perched on a railing and tips him back, having him fall however far to whatever landing is below. Honestly I could have watched 90 minutes of this, but the damn plot has to get in the way and spoil things, and by that I mean he stops sinning at random and begins actively trying to invoke the devil with a ritual. Some of this stuff works fine (there's a great sequence where he attempts to extract virgin blood from a woman at the same motel, while the lady who runs it tries to stop him with a shotgun), but the film never quite reaches the outlandish highs of its first ten minutes.

It also takes a while to get to one of its best character beats. We know that Cavan, the aforementioned TV guy, is full of shit when we first meet him, but part of the fun is him not only gradually realizing that the Devil is real, but also becoming more assertive than Cura with regards to the "save the world" plan. At a certain point Cura gets disillusioned, but Cavan - who was beaten and kidnapped so Cura could force him to help - keeps fighting the good fight and even figures out the key piece of information on his own. The third guy in the trio, the metalhead who assists Cura throughout, never really does much of anything and is borderline annoying after a while (there's a bit where he keeps laughing and seemingly trying to kill himself, dragging out the sequence for eternity), so I couldn't help but wish it was just a two-hander between Cura and Cazan, giving the latter a little more time to shine.

Don't get me wrong, it's still a pretty good movie (and the transfer is immaculate, should go without saying), but after I saw and enjoyed Witching & Bitching a while back, everyone kept telling me that it wasn't anywhere nearly as good as this, and this was his masterpiece, etc. (even de la Iglesia himself says it's his best film), so maybe I was just expecting a little more. And again, perhaps I waited a bit too long to see it, not only for what it might have inspired in my own personal belief system, but also because I've been spoiled by an additional 25 years of content that also bastardizes these ideas. The Preacher comic (I didn't watch the show), movies like Dogma and mother!, and the aforementioned real world issues have already desensitized me to the idea of bastardizing their ideas. Also, even though this movie barely qualifies as horror in my eyes (the filmmakers call it one, so I follow suit), the pre-Scream mid-90s was hardly a high point for the genre, so it might have gotten a little boost simply for being unique at a time when such things were in perilously low supply, which again won't help it much *now*.

There's a full length documentary called Herederos de la bestia on the included standard Blu-ray (the UHD disc only has the feature, an annoying practice but the one the studios will be going with, I guess) which gets into that stuff a little bit, including the fact that Pedro Almodóvar was asked to produce but he chickened out over the content. But most of it is your standard retrospective documentary, about de la Iglesia's prior accomplishments, the casting, the issues with shooting in Madrid on their budget, the not-great critical reaction it got when it premiered, etc. There's a brief but lovely tribute to Angulo, who passed away a few years ago (in a car accident; unless I missed it the doc doesn't explain how he died), and some insight from other Spanish filmmakers like Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza, so it's a well rounded doc and a nice complement to the feature. Severin also offers one of the filmmaker's old shorts titled Mirindas Asesinas ("Murderous Mirindas") that also stars Angulo, as well as a handful of interviews (including one with de la Iglesia), though I should note all but one are in Spanish (as is the doc) so if you're not fluent you better keep your reading glasses handy if you want to go through all of them.

Severin has also released de la Iglesia's followup Perdita Durango (released in the US in a cut form as Dance with the Devil), so fans of the filmmaker should be stoked that they're finally being given a proper presentation here. He's an interesting guy no doubt, and thankfully jumps around genres (sometimes within a single film) to keep things fresh for both himself and his audience, but the tradeoff is that not every movie is going to click. I was hoping to like this a little more, but it was still good enough to keep wanting to see what else I've missed (and no, I haven't watched 30 Coins yet, you don't need to comment! My queue is endless and I'll get to it... someday?). I'll always prefer to not connect to something from a filmmaker who is swinging for the fences than see something completely forgettable that's right in my wheelhouse (i.e. a slasher I can't remember a thing about a day later).

What say you?

Tweet

PLEASE, GO ON...

Murder Mansion (1972)

MARCH 20, 2021

GENRE: GHOST, GIALLO
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

One valid criticism of the giallo sub-genre is that they tend to get a bit samey; the casual sex, the black gloves, the money schemes... if you take any half dozen at random you're likely to see the same plot points turn up in at least half of your picks. This is partly because they rarely cross with other genres, which can do wonders for what might actually be a fairly generic story; if I were to say "an unseen menace picks off a group of people one by one until there's only one female left" you might think I'm describing Friday the 13th but I'm actually thinking of Alien. So imagine my surprise when I picked a movie called Murder Mansion (Spanish: La mansión de la niebla) from Vinegar Syndrome's latest Forgotten Gialli collection and discovered it was less giallo and more... Old Dark House movie?

Things start off pretty typical for such a "yellow" film; there's a guy on a motorcycle, another guy in a car, and a lovely hitchhiker that the latter picks up and instantly starts rubbing her thigh (with black gloves, of course). Then we meet a guy who tells his wife he's waiting for a notary but he's actually in bed with another woman (a prostitute, maybe? She mentions him spending "all his money on women like her"), so within ten minutes or so we have all the proper ingredients: sex, money, gloves, and motorcycles. But then the hitchhiker, tired of the driver's advances, hooks up with the motorcycle guy as they head toward a town nearby, and things get a little more supernaturally charged.

Turns out everyone is heading the same way (and some are even involved with the same people!), but a thick fog and confusing directions leaves everyone lost. After some atmospheric wandering around in the countryside, everyone ends up at the titular locale (well, it's not ACTUALLY named Murder Mansion, as they probably wouldn't have stopped, but you know what I mean) and it starts to resemble James Whale more than Sergio Martino. I figured someone would just start killing everyone in the joint and it'd be up to our heroes (motorcycle guy and hitchhiker, aka Fred and Laura) to figure it out, but nope! Before long they're full on walking around dusty/spider-webbed basement corridors, and a pair of ancient ghouls seemingly rise from the adjacent cemetery to scare some of them into sounding crazy.

Hell it's even quite possibly the most chaste 1970s eurohorror film I've ever seen, with very little sex and even less violence. It's not until the climax that the body count really rises, and (spoiler for 50 year old movie ahead) it's just mostly bloodless gunshots as opposed to the usual knives and razors. The killer's motive still circles back to familiar giallo themes (money and daddy issues, in this case), but it's kind of remarkable how un-giallo it all is, to the extent that the reveal was the first time in close to an hour I even remembered that this was presented as that kind of film in the first place. If this was somehow the first "giallo" you ever saw, you'd have the weirdest impression of what these movies were like.

That said, I found it delightful all the same. Again, since so many of them are kind of similar, it was great to just get caught up in the spooky shenanigans instead of thinking "They stole that bit from What Have You Done To Solange!" or something like that. There's a great sequence where the two heroes are being shot at in the graveyard, and they think it's the guy from the car (who shrugs off Fred "stealing" Laura from him and hits on someone else at the house, but surprisingly takes no for an answer pretty quickly), but then they discover that his body was just being propped up and he's been dead for a bit - it's the sort of thing that adds to the mystery but without the usual abundance of exposition that usually just ends up complicating these movies. That Fred and Laura are actually pretty likable people is another perk; it's rare to find much sympathy in these movies, as even the heroes tend to be misogynist jerks (you usually end up feeling more compassion for the killer who is often a victim of childhood trauma or something).

The lone extra on the disc (no historian commentary, alas) is an interview with Evelyn Stewart ne Ida Galli, who plays the lady of the house. Fitting for such a PG-ish kind of movie, it's one of the more upbeat actor interviews I've seen from something from this place and time; usually these interviews are hilariously candid about brutish directors, co-stars who couldn't ask, scripts being rubbish, etc, but Stewart is pretty complimentary about the whole affair. She even says something to the effect of "I don't have any bad memories of this one!", and the closest she gets to any kind of dirt is something about the soon-to-be ex-husband of one of her female costars, who she bonded with. It's kind of sweet, though fairly dull if you're used to the more unabashed "I'm retired now so IDGAF" nature of these pieces.

Despite its rather flimsy connection to the sub-genre, I'm super glad Vinegar included it on their set. You can't argue with its "forgotten" status (the IMDb page is pretty bare, and when you click on the title on Stewart's page, it brings you to the page for the '80s adventure game Maniac Mansion, which is another of its titles), and at the end of the day the main goal is preserving these movies and finding them the audience they deserve. Hopefully these volumes will continue; not only are they helping me expand my giallo horizons, but they're also given wonderful packaging that looks great on the shelf. Having survived the shoddy era of cheap cardboard boxes (remember that Omen set? Ugh!), I find myself in awe of how sturdy Vinegar's collections are. I'm all about that deluxe aesthetic!

What say you?

Tweet

PLEASE, GO ON...

Satan's Blood (1978)

FEBRUARY 11, 2021

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

One fun thing about the various Rosemary's Baby/Exorcist knockoffs of the 1970s is seeing what particular things the filmmakers deemed necessary to recycle for their own version, as if they felt explicitly tipping their hat would keep them safe from plagiarism ("it's an homage!"). For example, I've always been tickled about Beyond the Door having their weird kids drink pea soup straight from the can, and of course my beloved Cathy's Curse certainly seemed to think a swearing little girl was essential. In Satan's Blood (Spanish: Escalofrío), director Carlos Puerto lets you know that we're in Polanski territory instantly by having the elderly neighbors of our heroes stare at them in a knowing way, as if to say "Yes, these people are the Minnie and Roman of this film" before anything else remotely spooky has happened.

In fact the only other thing that might remind you of Rosemary by that point (only about five minutes into the film) is that Mariana Karr's character Ana is pregnant, a plot point that has no bearing on pretty much anything that follows. Despite the similar vibes, her pregnancy ends up being a total non-starter in the grand scheme of things; her husband Andres (José María Guillén) tells her she shouldn't go dancing, but that's about it - she spends the rest of the movie smoking and drinking without any concern. And she isn't even remotely showing (at four months! Bless her!) so if they snipped out the quick conversation about it early on I don't think it'd even cause any continuity or plot hole issues.

It also provides a very flimsy excuse for why Ana is bored, so much that when another couple pulls up next to them at a stoplight and the man claims that he went to school with Andres, she quickly agrees to their invitation to come over their house for a while ("We have wine and cheese" the man's wife offers, sweetening the deal to hang out with strangers). They barely even flinch when the drive turns out to be an hour away, and let's not discount the fact that Andres has no memory of the man whatsoever. I myself wouldn't accept this sort of out of nowhere invitation from someone I DID remember, but that's why I have never found myself as the lead in a Spanish horror film.

Or why I've never gotten to be in an orgy. See, they don't care about the baby, but the new couple is... well, horny. I'm not exactly sure what other motives they had (I'll get into spoilers in a bit for one possible explanation), but they sure enjoy having lots of sex with our heroes. After playing with a Ouija board (per 1970s supernatural movie law) all four of them disrobe and begin enjoying one another in all possible combinations except male on male (though we do see a penis or two, so they're not THAT conservative). Later when it's time for bed the couples enjoy each other on their own, as if reinvigorated by their little foray into group sex. And the woman (Sandra Alberti from Trauma, also recently released from Vinegar Syndrome) tries seduce Andres AND Ana on separate occasions, for good measure. These people would be absolutely miserable if they were still alive to deal with covid!

But in fact (spoilers here!) they're actually already dead. After a number of weird things happen, most of which are never explained (why is there a random would-be rapist hanging out in the house? No one - even the woman he attacks - ever really looks into his whole deal), our heroes finally escape the house and return home, only to discover their belongings are gone. The couple from next door - apartment 66 by the way, because subtlety - invites them in to calm down, and when they enter they see all the people from the house they just escaped. Everyone surrounds them and stabs them to death, and then we cut to a new couple who is out for a drive. At a stoplight, the couple looks over and sees... Andres! Telling the driver they're old friends. So the cycle begins again, which is cool, but I couldn't begin to tell you what the purpose of any of it was. If the only goal was to kill these people why did they drag it out for so long? Can't even say it was "to have more sex" because the horniness dies out by the next morning and there's still plenty of time left (and thus, chances to kill them).

That said, please don't take this as a criticism on the movie, at least from my perspective. I found the whole thing delightful, and - as noted on the historian commentary by Samm Deighan and Kat Ellinger - it's part of the "anything goes" mentality for Spanish horror that makes them so appealing. Unlike (most, not all) American films that have similar setups, there's really no way to predict how this one would end, even with the telltale shifty eyed look from the neighbors early on. Even when I was rewatching with the commentary I found myself surprised on occasion, like "Oh yeah, I forgot there was a random bit of possible cannibalism at one point." There's even a random evil doll element in this movie that would cause enough nightmares for a specific killer doll movie, but instead it's just one of the many oddities you'll find. I love that!

Apart from the historian track (which echoes some of their earlier ones in that it spends a lot of time on the general sub-genre as opposed to anything about the specific film) the disc also offers a lengthy retrospective documentary featuring Alberti, writer/director Carlos Puerto and editor Pedro del Rey. Alberti appears more than the other two combined, I think, but it makes sense since she has the most colorful anecdotes, discussing the film's nudity, a ripoff she saw (she doesn't say the title; from the historian track I THINK she is referring to Black Candles), the other actors, etc. For his part, Puerto sighs about some of the changes that producer Juan Piquer Simón (yes, the Pieces genius) imposed on the film but also takes responsibility for the film's lapses, so that's refreshing. An English dub track - which apparently changes the tone of some scenes by sounding more comical - is included for the film as well, for those who don't want subtitles.

Deighan and Ellinger point out that so many of these films are hard to find nowadays (and even those that are available are often presented shoddily), feeling that Spanish horror has never been given as much reverence from these companies as genre efforts from other European countries (namely Italy and France). So I'm glad Vinegar Syndrome has been focusing so much on it lately; it's a pretty sizable hole in my own viewing history (due in part to the aforementioned availability issues) and I've been having a blast diving in with their nearly monthly releases (I missed the second volume of their Forgotten Gialli boxed sets though, so I gotta pick that up to do my part to help convince them for a third volume). I can see a younger version of me hating this movie for its hazy plot details, but as I get older and more mellow, I find myself drawn to this kind of thing more often, and I look forward to more.

What say you?

Tweet

PLEASE, GO ON...

Demon Witch Child (1975)

JANUARY 17, 2020

GENRE: KILLER KID, POSSESSION
SOURCE: DVD (BORROWED)

I saw Demon Witch Child during last year's New Beverly all night horrorthon, but as it played fifth in the lineup (starting around 4 am) the idea of me seeing the entire thing was absurd, and even when awake my mind was more concerned with, well, trying to stay awake than letting myself get caught up in the movie's shenanigans. So I missed a chunk of the middle and had rather hazy memories of most of the rest, and so I asked my friend (and trivia teammate) Amy to borrow her copy so I could see what I missed. And in true BC fashion, I didn't get around to actually watching it for almost three months, which means by that point I barely remembered what I saw, either.

But it's fitting that I finally finished "rewatching" today, because as I write this very review there's a bunch of folks at the Alamo Drafthouse in Houston watching Cathy's Curse with a video intro from yours truly, and Demon Witch Child is very much in the same vein, in that it's an Exorcist wannabe that retains the foul mouthed child but none of the quality. It's actually much more of a ripoff of Blatty and Friedkin's film than Cathy's was though; while that one was basically just "evil kid who swears now", this one has the head spinning, the priest, the mom going to see the priest to ask for an exorcism after doctors fail... hell, they even went so far as to hire the girl who dubbed Linda Blair's voice for the Spanish release to play the titular child. There are certainly more shameless Euro knockoffs of certain films, but this still serves as a prime example of a producer seeing a big hit American film and hiring some folks under the strict rule of "do the same thing, but cheaper and in 90 minutes!"

That said, there's one big difference: witches! The plot is a bit fuzzy due to weird dubbing, a very beat up print (from what I understand, the print we saw at the Bev was the same one they used to make this Code Red DVD), and the usual liberal approach to things like logic and coherency that these films offer, but from what I can understand there's a witch who is the prime suspect in a child's disappearance, and after being harassed by the cops she jumps out a window and dies rather than go to jail for her crimes. And so the rest of her coven does what anyone would do - transfers her soul into the still living and healthy body of a 12 year old girl, who - in fulfillment of the scriptures - starts swearing and killing those she considers responsible for the witch's (so, her) death.

And that's all well and good, but the movie can be a bit on the slow side, and somewhat repetitive - she gets fully possessed by the witch (she shapeshifts into the crone, and while the effect itself isn't good, I must say they did a great job of casting as the little girl and old woman share enough of a body resemblance that it does a chunk of the heavy lifting for those scenes), kills someone, goes home, turns back into the little girl, swears at her mom, and then the cycle begins again. In between these scenes are several (read: too many) of the girl's dad, a cop, a newspaper asshole, and a priest all trying to figure out what's going on. The father's political ties almost make it seem like they're cribbing from The Omen, too, but this actually came out a year or so before that one, so they're strictly aping Pazuzu.

One thing they took from that film, not often one of the copied elements, is Regan's ability to mimic voices. She only used it to freak out Father Karras, but our girl Susan uses this superpower to really mess with people, like calling her mother's lover and using her voice to get him to meet her somewhere for a rendezvous, only to kill him. She also does it to a cop while talking to him, prompting him to angrily yell "Hey that's my voice!" in the same manner one might shout after someone who just stole their car or something. These things, along with some other choice bits of nonsense (like the priest's old flame, who became a hooker after he decided to leave her to pursue a life in the clergy) help offset some of the film's slower elements, but - to be fair, like Cathy as well - it can try your patience from time to time in between goofy highlights.

But it's still an enjoyable way to kill 90 minutes; it might never actually be scary or suspenseful, but its gonzo charms more or less make up for it as long as you're not sitting down expecting to be frightened or tense in any way (that said, the ending is a bit of a downer, and she does attack a baby at one point, so be warned). I wish they could find a better print (and perhaps the original audio) to give it a proper presentation, but since we still don't even have Blu-rays of director Amando de Ossorio's far more famous Blind Dead films, I wouldn't hold my breath. Instead, it's packaged with a movie called The Possessed, which is amusing/confusing since DWC itself is also named The Possessed. The other one is about a guy who whips women and cuts their legs off, which sounds real lovely (sarcasm), so I don't know if I'll be getting around to that unless I hear it's worth my while and possible post-viewing shower. Granted, the best way to watch the movie is when you have no idea it's coming and are surrounded with fellow sleep-deprived (read: loopy) horror fans, but not everyone can have that, and the same version from the DVD is on Prime, so that's the next best option if you'd like to see for yourself. Double it with Cathy's Curse - it'll act as a form of birth control!

What say you?

Tweet

PLEASE, GO ON...

Summer Camp (2015)

MARCH 22, 2016

GENRE: ZOMBIE
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

In a way, it's almost kind of charming to watch a foreign horror movie that's kind of generic. We US horror fans (well, the more well-rounded ones) often look to foreign sources when American horror is in a slump, but the problem with that is that we're often selecting from the creme of the crop (via recommendations, since they're not exactly loaded with such fare in Redbox kiosks). Other countries make perfectly OK, forgettable horror movies too, though it's rare that they get theatrical releases like Summer Camp has. I'm not sure how wide the release is; it's on six screens here in LA but it's not listed on BoxOfficeMojo - using past, similar experiments as a guide I would guess somewhere in the 40-50 screen range in the US, a fine number for a foreign horror flick. The [Rec] films, to compare, played in fewer than ten theaters.

In fact that's a pretty obvious point of comparison, as Summer Camp is directed by those films' producer Alberto Marini, making his debut here. And Jaume Balagueró is the executive producer, so it's kind of a reunion (Paco Plaza is nowhere to be found, however), not to mention that the film belongs to the same sub-genre of "infected"/zombie movies (I'm sick of the idea that the difference is big enough to matter - it's like separating Jaws from Deep Blue Sea as if the details change the fact that they're both killer shark movies). Relax, though - it's not found footage! The similarities end with what I've listed, and there's also another big difference: the movie is actually in English, starring recognizable actors from American productions (the awesome Jocelin Donahue, Diego Boneta from Scream Queens, and Maiara Walsh, who is sadly best known to horror fans for playing the Emma Stone role in that terrible Zombieland pilot). The screening actually had Spanish subtitles throughout, which was a new one for me - and possibly the reason that the only other guy in the theater with me left after 10 minutes.

Had he stayed, he would have been rewarded with... an OK movie. There's a fun wrinkle to the usual "oh no he/she's turning!" zombie movie plot that I'll get into soon, but otherwise it gets pretty repetitive and even drawn out despite only being 80 minutes long with credits. And the title never really comes into play; the movie is about a group of counselors getting things ready for the arrival of the kids they'll be overseeing at the titular camp (yes, very early Friday the 13th), but it's actually being held at a house, so it never really feels like a camp at all - especially since the kids (spoiler!) only arrive in the final five minutes, at which point the far more awesome plot described on the IMDb finally kicks in (they say it's about the counselors defending themselves from the infected children). Those final few minutes are great, but it's one of those things where you can't help wonder why they didn't make it the thing that happened at the halfway point, as it promises more fun than the movie actually delivered. It'd be like if you knew From Dusk Till Dawn had vampires but the RV/Fuller family stuff lasted 90 minutes and then the movie ended after that first big attack.

Instead, we get an endless series of scenes where two of the heroes run or hide from the third one, as this is a unique virus in that it wears off after a while. Unlike a traditional zombie, killing the infected person isn't a good idea, because they will be back to normal soon, which adds a fun twist to the mix but ultimately doesn't really have much zing to it due to the limited cast (a fourth counselor is killed off almost instantly, which minimizes the possibilities). Marini gets some mileage out of Walsh not once but twice knocking out Donahue (whose infection had already worn off, something Walsh's character hadn't realized), but that doesn't sustain a 45 minute stretch where the only real difference is which actor is the one wearing the zombie makeup. There are some random locals that pop up from time to time, but none of them count as real characters and their appearances are usually limited to showing up for a scare and then getting killed moments later. This leads to the other novel idea, that our heroes legitimately feel guilty about defending themselves but also of the things they did while infected (which they can't remember, but obviously know they did SOMETHING once they see another infected in action). It's never as compelling as the filmmakers probably hoped, but it's at least something you don't see very often, and for that I laud them.

Less laudable is Marini's direction, as he utilizes shakey-cam almost nonstop, to the extent that I suspect it might even give Adam Wingard a headache. He also favors cramped, close-up action, so many of the big attack scenes are little more than a jumbled mess of flailing arms and shouted incidental dialogue like "Go!" and "Shit!" Like the plotting itself, it got mighty tiresome after a while, and I'd come to relish the quieter scenes because even if they weren't particularly exciting they'd at least be easy enough to process. And speaking of repeating tricks, it's kind of endearingly goofy the first time two of our infected heroes scream in each others' faces (it reminded me of football players smashing helmets together and yelling "HOOHH!" or whatever) but by the 3rd or 4th time it was just plain stupid to see. Worse, the narrative requires everyone to get infected a second time, which as you can guess certainly doesn't help the film's cyclical feeling. What I wouldn't give for two more characters to mix up the dynamic (it's pretty much always Boneta and one of the girls vs. the other girl) and give the attack scenes more variety.

And the repetition isn't limited to the infected attacks - Boneta loses his glasses twice, Walsh stops everything to make a phone call to her mother twice, Donahue does something self-serving twice... you get the idea. Again, this is an 80 minute movie - when you're repeating stuff in such a compressed timeframe, it's much more noticeable (you can get away with that sort of thing in Titanic, for example), though Marini DOES nail one element that seems like it's going down that same route, involving a sharp branch that's sticking out in the woods that people are constantly running around in, starting in the very first scene. He goes back to it a couple times, and it's not a matter of IF someone will eventually get impaled on it, but WHEN (and WHO, for that record). That opening scene, I should note, has a great payoff of its own but also has a fun little twist for people who have watched a lot of modern horror movies that start at the end and then rewind to how things got to that point (including Cub, another camp in the woods movie) - it seems like this is going that route, only to have a much better explanation for what's happening.

To be fair, twisting those expectations and cliches is something that carries throughout the film, with the infected people becoming human again, the characters who you think are heroic turning into spineless jerks, etc... but the obnoxious direction and endless repetition clouds those ambitious spins. At times it feels little more than a Cabin Fever remake (something we actually just got for real - I haven't seen it yet), and I couldn't help but wonder if I saw it at a festival with a big crowd (and perhaps a few adult beverages) that it might play better. Sitting alone in a theater didn't seem fitting for this particular style of movie (ironic since some of this team's other movies, like Sleep Tight, would be almost perfect for such a setting), and after glancing at a couple of (mostly positive) reviews I wasn't surprised to see how many of them were based on festival screenings. If you've picked up my book (hero!) you'd know I devoted an entire chapter to movies that I think would be better to watch at home, perhaps even alone - this is certainly not one I ever would have selected for that chapter. If I were to include it at all, it'd be in the August chapter - movies that are best watched when you're not really wanting to be blown away by a horror masterpiece. Again, it's an OK movie and I'm happy that it got a theatrical release, but unless those screenings are packed, I suspect you'll find its flaws too easy to notice.

What say you?

Tweet

PLEASE, GO ON...

[REC] 4: Apocalypse (2014)

JANUARY 1, 2015

GENRE: ZOMBIE
SOURCE: ONLINE (STREAMING SCREENER)

The last film in the series polarized folks, so if you hated it you will probably be happy to know [REC] 4: Apocalypse drops the humor for a more straightforward zombie tale, albeit again without the found footage/POV conceit that the title refers to. As a result, this film is somewhat indistinguishable from any number of post 28 Days Later zombie movies, with only the setting (a boat) giving it some identity and the grand return of Ángela Vidal to justify it as a series entry. And to do the latter, they have to undo the ballsy development in [Rec] 2, so boo on that. The 3rd film's splatter humor (and shot at the first two films' aesthetic) might have annoyed some fans, but I'd rather that than just another zombie movie when we already have too many - the film simply has no hook.

Wait, doesn't it have an apocalypse, you might ask? Nope, the plot quite frustratingly picks up right where the 2nd film left off, which itself was immediately after the first, so not enough time has passed for a true apocalypse (so the title as a whole refers to nothing, I guess). It's been 7-8 years in production time but only like 24-48 hours have passed since Angela first entered the apartment building in the first film, which would be interesting and could work beautifully in an anthology series but a bit weird when you have an older looking Manuela Velasco watching footage she just recorded a day or two before. I know I love the Saw series for bending over backwards to present a serialized continuity, but it's not entirely necessary for this franchise - they even include a character from the 3rd film (one of the wedding guests who went back to her room to lie down and missed all the chaos, if memory serves), like most fans would care if it had been ignored as a diversion, the same way the Nightmare on Elm St series pretended the 2nd film never happened.

And not for nothing, but at least when it's a POV movie the shaky-cam shit makes sense - there's a fight in a hallway here that I literally found incomprehensible due to Jaume Balagueró's frenetic camerawork, as if he forgot that he was supposed to be filming it traditionally and was mimicking a character in the fracas. To me, it seems the best reason to drop the POV angle is to open things up and make your film look more like a real movie, but he doubles down and does it when there's no justification for it. Like, Michael Bay will do his swooping/circling camera stuff over a scene of two people talking because he wants to keep the energy up, but why do we need this sort of thing during a giant zombie attack? You can lock the camera down from a half mile away and it will still generate excitement.

But if you're just in the mood for traditional, contained zombie action, and just judge it on its own terms, it should more or less hit the spot. The shaky-cam crap aside, it's certainly well made, and I've longed for a ship-set undead massacre (I thought the 3rd Cabin Fever movie was all on a boat, which would have been a good substitute, but it wasn't, on any level) so that was nice to see. Velasco is a lovely presence, so even though they undo her status as a possessed person (the possession angle is expanded on here) it's nice to have her around again, eventually diving into full blown action heroine mode as she makes her way through the totally infected ship along with the male hero. And said male protagonist was a fun character, and you probably wouldn't have pegged him as the last man standing based on his introduction, so at least the movie offered one surprise.

Well, two surprises. There's a zombie monkey. But not ENOUGH zombie monkey action; it's just there to spruce up some action before returning to status quo. Still, if I don't mention the fucking monkey someone will complain, so there you go.

Oh, and watching with subs was funny, because the characters repeatedly say "Vamos!" but the subtitle guy clearly got bored translating that to the same thing every time, so he offered all of the acceptable translations, rotating them so us readin' folk wouldn't get bored. "Come on!" "Let's go!" "GO!", etc. But that also made me start thinking about the English remake, and how it spawned its own non-found footage, single location sequel (the airport-set Quarantine 2), which I derided for the same reason: it was too anonymous in a sea of like-minded films in this sub-genre. I'd argue that [Rec] 3's wedding setting and weirdo humor (Sponge-John!) gave it enough of its own identity, but there's nothing really like that here - why is Balagueró (and co-writer Manu Díez, also from [Rec] 2) guilty of the same thing as the bland DTV American version of this franchise?

Of course, the missing name from that group is Paco Plaza, who co-directed the first two (best) films with Balagueró. Again, I liked the 3rd one, but maybe solo efforts for this series aren't ideal, as I think we can all agree the first two are the best (I just looked at the IMDb board for this one, and it seems the response is once again highly polarized). The door is left open for a sequel again (and a new strain of zombie, as it infects a fish), if one comes to pass hopefully they reunite and do something a little more interesting, and maybe finish it off for good. Whether it's a return to the POV style or just a narrative that elevates it above whatever crap we pass over on Netflix recommendations, I don't care - I just want this to be the one weak point in an otherwise exciting series.

What say you?

Tweet

PLEASE, GO ON...

Here Comes The Devil (2012)

NOVEMBER 5, 2012

GENRE: SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (AFI FEST)

Third time's the charm? I actively disliked Penumbra, and wasn't too crazy about Cold Sweat, but Here Comes The Devil, the newest film from Adrián García Bogliano, almost completely worked for me. Like Penumbra, it's a bit of a slow starter, but the key difference is, I didn't hate the main character - in fact I really sympathized with her and wanted everything to turn out OK for her. Being a horror film, that was not the case, but the surprising turns the story took more than made up for my being bummed out by its conclusion.

It also dealt with something I've been terrified by almost as long as I can remember: being lost/kidnapped. When I was like 7 I went to a bathroom at a restaurant and some dude came in after and asked me if I wanted to go get a soda with him, which I'm guessing was not his actual intention. Ever since, I've been really upset by kids who weren't so smart/lucky, so the kickoff for the film - two kids go off to play in a cave and never come back - really touched a nerve. Luckily for said nerves, they come back relatively quickly, but the movie had hooked me in already, and then I was able to join the parents in figuring out what happened to their children that night.

Again, it's a bit slow going - the kids come back, and it's not until a few days later that the mother realizes something is amiss (other than that they don't seem to want to talk about what happened), and all rational ideas must be explored before anything nutty can happen. So the mom takes her daughter to a doctor, and tries to talk to her as a woman (the girl recently had her first period), etc... they can't just jump right into "HOLY SHIT WHAT IF THEY GOT POSSESSED BY A DEVIL?", if that was indeed the case. In addition to finding out about their well-being, the mom also investigates the cave, and finds out that lots of people go missing there and that it has some sort of weird energy to it that frightens some locals. Could this have something to do with the crazy dude we saw in the opening, largely unrelated sequence, who chops off a few fingers of a young woman before running to the hill, stripping naked, and thrusting around in the sand?

(Yes.)

Now, if you're the type that likes everything explained, you should skip this one, as Bogliano doesn't seem interested in over-explaining his plot points or filling in every blank. And to be honest, I myself tend to get frustrated with such films, but what makes this work where his similarly obtuse Penumbra did not is that it gave me someone to care about in the lead role. Laura Caro, a singer making her feature debut, is terrific as the mother, torn between her love for her children and her fear for her own life. With each new piece of information learned, she becomes less a mother trying to avenge her children and more of a plain ol' human being trying to protect her own skin. It's a nicely paced reversal, and kudos to Caro for pulling off something that a seasoned actress might have trouble pulling off.

Bogliano's direction is also quite good, though that was never a problem with his others anyway. He brings a real 70s Euro-touch to the proceedings here, fancying a lot of zooms (some of which are mere misdirection, others legitimately give the film an unhinged flavor) and setting many of the scenes in daylight. In the post film Q&A he was asked for his influences, and while perennial "I made a horror movie that's more like a sad drama" shoutout Don't Look Now was no surprise, I was quite charmed that he dropped Neither The Sea Nor The Sand as well, which is a pretty obscure movie. I wasn't too crazy about that one, but he certainly wasn't bullshitting - both films deal with the rather trying notion of someone coming back (yay!) but not as who they used to be (nay!).

The occasional gore is also effective; the opening attack is very sudden and bloody, and there are a few other bursts of sudden violence that jolted every time. It's not a big body count movie, but Bogliano makes those R-rated moments count, which ALMOST makes up for the film's one major flaw - it's too long. For a movie short on exposition, action, and even characters, a runtime of around 80 minutes could have done fine, as opposed to just under 100. The film's heavy focus on sex in its first 10 minutes or so also seems to be selling a different movie - I'm sure its intentional misdirection, but I'm not sure it totally works. Trimming some of this stuff back, plus a few other scenes I won't spoil, could have driven this up a full letter grade.

But hey, I finally found myself on board with this filmmaker, who works at a pace Woody Allen might find jealous (it's his 11th film in 8 years) and will likely be coaxed into making an American feature soon. Like Ti West, I may not like the final product every time, but I definitely dig that he's out there doing original horror films that aren't trying to cash in on any trends. We need more like him (and his brother Ramiro, who sat this one out), because a filmmaker with ambition for originality AND passion for the genre is far too rare these days.

What say you?

Tweet

PLEASE, GO ON...