Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings (2011)

OCTOBER 17, 2011

GENRE: MUTANT, SURVIVAL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (FESTIVAL SCREENING)

With expectations firmly below sea level and non-too-enticing advance word from friends who had gotten screeners, I had little reason to go see Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings; in fact the only reason I went is to preserve a “record” that will impress absolutely no one. However, I don’t regret going for a second; the movie is pretty bad, but it’s that exact right kind of bad that made it a hoot to watch with a few pals and a full crowd of the type of over-excited goons who come to free screenings like this.

Actually it starts almost legitimately good, back in the 1970s, when our hero mutants are still children and locked up in a sanatorium (the movie actually explains the difference between a sanatorium and a sanitarium. I actually learned something from Wrong Turn 4). Their fellow inmates are a bunch of other dudes who could probably lead their own horror movies, and for a while I thought it was going to be an Alone in The Dark/Don't Look In The Basement scenario. But after a new nurse accidentally lets one of them grab her barrette through the bars on his cell, they pick their cell lock and all get loose, running rampant and killing the head doctor in a Saw-esque barbed wire trap that pulls his hands and feet apart in delightfully gory (and practical!) fashion, while the other inmates just sort of goof off and enjoy their freedom. So far, so good.

Then we meet our idiotic teens, of which there are too many (ten!), and things look grim again, as they’re all obnoxious and horny and largely interchangeable (points for offering a lesbian pair though, skewing the male/female ratio a bit to make it slightly less confusing who’s who). The snowbound setting is a nice change of scenery, and by taking place in 2003 we can have all three of the (adult) mutants again, but they do a lousy job on the makeup – they look nothing like their counterparts from the first film, even though they are set only a few months apart. They also seem remarkably stupid, getting lost instantly and then seeing the abandoned sanatorium in the background, resulting in the following exchange:

Idiot #1: “What is that?”
Idiot #2: “I think it’s a building!”

However, once the killers show up (thankfully not TOO long of a wait) it improves considerably, even if for not the reasons writer/director Declan O’Brien intended. All of a sudden our protagonists become master strategists, coming up with complicated plans instantaneously, and even weirder – they work! These schmucks, who couldn’t even positively identify a building an hour ago, are able to lure all three mutants into a cell and lock them up. They’re also adamant about sticking together more often than not, which is a nice little touch, except for one guy that they inexplicably leave on the floor covered in the blood of his girlfriend, whose death was more or less his fault. The dialogue even improves a touch; the “porterhouse steak” line got the best non-kill response in the entire movie.

Then the movie enters total batshit lunacy territory, with the kids taking votes on whether or not to go save an injured friend, stabbing the ever loving shit out of one that they assume is one of the mutants, and momentarily breaking the “we stay together!” rule when one drops a crowbar or something and insists on going back (alone) to get it, defending her decision by pointing out “It’s a really good weapon, we need it!” (they’re in the giant heavy branch-filled woods at this point, I should note). Not two minutes ever went by without me howling and applauding at something that I probably wasn’t supposed to be laughing at. It’s hard to get a read on Mr. O’Brien, I should note that this is the first of his three films that I’ve seen that he wrote himself, so perhaps his dull and unfunny (intentionally or not) previous films could have been saved if he wrote their scripts himself? He also delivered the exact same speech to the crowd that he did before WT3, so there’s no telling if he had a different approach this time around or just made an entertaining movie on accident.

He’s also improved with his kills, opting for practical more often than not. And that’s a relief, because his approach to CGI remains as awful as ever. You know when you look at a bright light for a while and then shut your eyes and see this amorphous blob in the middle of your blacked-out vision? That’s what the blood “spray” looks like during what should have been the movie’s best kill, involving a snowmobile. Bad CGI mars the film’s final kill as well, though at least in that case it’s so wonderfully ridiculous I was too busy laughing and applauding to mind much. I will never understand why they would put their best looking effects up front and make the final couple so bad – I guess they figure by then you’re either on board with the movie or not so it doesn’t matter?

If I had any serious critique, it would be that I wish they used the snow setting more. They get to the ‘building’ pretty early on and don’t go back outside until the final 10 minutes, which just seems like a waste of a fun setting (our guys ARE survivalist mutants, after all). Especially when the plotting inside is painfully repetitive; one male character goes off to look at something and then returns to the others, no exaggeration, FIVE TIMES in a row. Sometimes he brings a few others along to “explore”, but it still feels like the movie is caught in some sort of loop. They also take time to point out that the idiots parked their cars in a tow zone, but it has no bearing on anything since their lack of cars isn’t a problem (they’re lost and the sanatorium is shown to be quite far from where they parked anyway). It feels like a remnant from an earlier draft or something. Dammit, I demand tighter plotting from my Wrong Turn sequels!

So yeah, it’s a bad movie, but the good kind of bad. That I was sober and still having this much fun laughing at the nonsense flashing by on the screen is quite telling, I think. If I was watching alone I probably would have hated it, but I’m quite sure this is an improvement on every level from the 3rd, as after all I saw both in the same exact setting (a free Screamfest screening). Still not up to the legitimately good levels of the first 2, but all I can ask from one of these things is that I am entertained on SOME level for most of its runtime, and that it kills a bunch of idiots in satisfying manners (if you recall, the awful CGI on EVERY kill in WT3 ruined any chance of them being worth applauding). I believe it hits DVD next week – invite a bunch of friends over and have a good time!

What say you?

*I have now seen all FOUR Wrong Turn movies in theatrical screenings. I have to be one of the very few who can make this claim. Please ensure it is included on my tombstone.

PLEASE, GO ON...

Exit Humanity (2011)

OCTOBER 16, 2011

GENRE: ZOMBIE
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (FESTIVAL SCREENING)

I guess I just like somber horror movies. Like Stake Land, Exit Humanity spends a good chunk of its runtime on our characters moodily making their way through life as they constantly battle undead creatures (plus a few evil humans), wordlessly and grimly staring around at the fallen world around them, looking for that tiny glimmer of hope. Oh and the score is all strings, that always helps. It’s not a perfect film, but John Geddes solo debut (he co-directed an earlier film called Scarce) is the sort of zombie movie I wish I saw more often: character based, not too concerned with creative ways of killing the roamers, and… uh, in the Civil War.

OK that last one I don’t need to see too often, but I really dug the setting, set a few years after the war concluded (but still lingering in everyone’s mind, with Bill Moseley’s antagonist character seemingly having not gotten the memo that the South had fallen), during a cold Tennessee winter. I’ve been saying for years that not enough horror movies are set in the snow, and while it doesn’t really factor in the plot in any meaningful way, the melting snow and cold gray skies add immensely to the overall feeling of a “dead” world.

Also the setting allows for everyone to have a beard. There’s a weird stigma around beards in modern movies – they’re used to show characters who have let themselves go, or are villains. You never see a Bruce or Sly action movie where they have a nicely groomed beard (indeed, Bruce (playing himself) having a beard was a damn PLOT POINT in the otherwise forgettable What Just Happened?), and my buddy Joe is currently clean shaven because he was advised not to have one for his TV show. LAME. Beards are awesome, period. Between this and The Thing, maybe we can start restoring order.

Back on point, I also liked that the movie had a sort of tragic journey built into its narrative, something that you don’t often see in a zombie movie (in which our hero is usually just trying to escape to some promised safe area). Hero Mark Gibson loses his son early on, and thus commits to fulfilling the boy’s promise to be taken to a waterfall that Gibson had come across during the war and had turned into his metaphorical “happy place” (my words, not theirs). Along the way he encounters the rest of the cast, but it’s essentially a one man show for its first 30 minutes or so, which I also dug.

Unfortunately he has to “share the screen” with Brian Cox as an omnipresent narrator; a descendant of Young’s who is reading the journal that he made about the zombie outbreak. I never care much for narration in the middle of a movie anyway (bookends are fine), but his is painfully on the nose at times and frequently disruptive, as he seemingly butts in every 10 minutes with nonsense that didn’t really need to be said, as if Geddes didn’t trust the stuff he shot to convey the message. It’s almost as bad as in that one Twilight sequel (New Moon?) where they show Bella looking out the window as the seasons change but they also put on-screen depicting the months going by, as if Jack O’Lanterns and Christmas trees weren’t enough to clue us in. It’s 2 hour zombie movie with like 20 zombies – dumb people aren’t going to get this far into it! Just assume the folks watching it are smart enough to understand that our hero doesn’t want to kill a zombie unless they pose a direct threat to him, and then you don’t need the disembodied voice of Hannibal “Lecktor” to tell us as much.

I also wasn’t too crazy about the animated sequences that would often depict far more exciting action than the film offered (if you want a bunch of cool zombie killing bits, do not watch this movie). I don’t know if they were planned scenes that were deemed too complicated to film (one travels along with a bullet being fired from a gun and then going to slo-mo to see the zombie’s reflection in its metal surface before impacting its head), or just a way to break up the movie some, but either way, as with the narration, they are used far too often and aren’t really necessary. The animation itself is great, but it seems like stuff best used for a prologue or to recreate key scenes from the film during the end credits (not unlike Fright Night 3D), not as frequent breaks in the narrative.

One animated bit that I did love, however, was an explanation of other zombie outbreaks over the years. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a zombie movie where the problem was addressed as a recurring thing, like a virus or plague that was wiped out and somehow came back. I liked it because of something that I brought up a while ago, that I was sick of zombie movies where the heroes don’t know how to kill zombies, because at this point they have been a big enough part of culture that the average Joe should know (like vampires – everyone knows crosses and garlic, they don’t need to figure it out in the movie). So this sort of thing helps my case – this is a world where zombies are not only threatening humanity now, but have in the past and will again in the future (that’s where Cox comes in). Love it!

Some digital blood aside (boo-urns!), the movie was technically flawless, and provided some wonderful scope imagery (the rare shots of direct orange sunlight were particularly wonderful and well placed). Acting was great across the board as well, though Gibson’s pained howls early on were a bit Tom Jane in The Mist-y (read: almost laughable). Moseley in particular was quite good, saving his few angry outbursts for when they’d count the most and playing it straight otherwise. Dee Wallace also has a nice turn as a local suspected witch who cures one of our heroes’ wounds, though they stay with her a bit too long – I think I would have liked the movie even more if it was more like an "Odyssey" style journey (or Cold Mountain, to be more exact), with Gibson meeting folks along the way as he heads toward his destination; I almost forgot about the ashes subplot for a while because it seemed he did too.

Still, apart from the narration, the other issues were minor and didn’t detract from the movie as a whole, and with so many zombie movies of late leaning toward more high concept ideas (zombies at a prom! Zombies that sing!), it was nice to see one that take them seriously again, and since Romero wasn’t that successful with his attempt at a zombie western, it was good to see that it could be done well with the right resources and talent behind it.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

DeadHeads (2011)

OCTOBER 16, 2011

GENRE: COMEDIC, ZOMBIE
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (FESTIVAL SCREENING)

Hey remember one review ago when I was championing Exit Humanity for taking zombies seriously for a change? Now I’m going to do the same for DeadHeads, which is a full blown zombie comedy – there are barely even any other zombies in it besides our two heroes, who retain their intelligence and ability to speak even though the few others they encounter (and their trusty sidekick Cheese) are typical moaning/drooling dolts. In lieu of zombie action, it’s the sweet and quite funny tale of a guy seeking to tell his girlfriend how he feels about her and give her the engagement ring he had in his pocket prior to being killed.

The backstory is that these zombies are the result of yet another military experiment, and since our guys are the most successful test subjects, the agents want them back. So it becomes a road/chase movie, with our heroes heading back to Michigan to meet up with the girl, all the while evading a trio of hardasses that are hellbent on capturing them. It’s very much in the spirit of 80s teen comedies (if the Brent character was a girl it would almost feel like A Sure Thing), right down to one of the military guys being an alpha male macho douchebag that William Zabka would have played if the movie HAD been made in the 80s, and the hero having to prove to his girlfriend’s dad that he is worthy of her hand.

But it’s funny as hell. The random asides, Brent’s slightly stoner-esque but endlessly enthusiastic nature, and even the slapstick-y elements involving their deteriorating zombie state play great – the audience was laughing at all the right spots, with very few clunkers. The script is also careful with its movie references; this is in “our world” so they have the Transformers movies and such (I think I even caught a Cast Away reference), and even go see Evil Dead at one point, but it never becomes too winky or even strained – they naturally feel like the sort of things an obvious slacker type like Brent would watch and reference once he found himself in the situation (as I might).

As the hero Mike, Michael McKiddy is quite charming and makes an impression even though Brent (Ross Kidder) gets most of the funny lines. It goes on a bit long, but when Mike finally meets up with his girlfriend and delivers a little speech (while in a ridiculous mascot costume, posing as another classmate at a reunion so he can hide his zombie status), you can really feel for the guy. The movie doesn’t have them eating anyone, or even killing their attackers despite numerous chances to do so, so zombie or not, it’s quite easy to accept them as true heroes, not “well they’re zombies but they can’t help eating people” characters such as Bub or whatever.

Also, since one of my few issues with Exit Humanity was that the “bury the ashes” quest was seemingly forgotten for a while, I liked that it kept moving, never letting us forget why we were on this journey. I forget/missed where the journey began, but it takes a few days to get to Michigan, thanks to a few setbacks (mostly the constant threat of the military). They are aided by a guy named Chuck who doesn’t seem to notice/care that they’re zombies, and he (oddly enough) has his own ashes quest to complete that provides a nice little subplot as well as a motivator for Mike, as Chuck’s sadness over the loss of his beloved makes him further realize the importance of love and all that corny shit that wouldn’t work if you didn’t like the characters. Not Shakespeare, but its more than you can usually expect in a zombie film (that I saw two zombie modern movies in a row with characters I cared about is just sort of mind-blowing. Kudos, Screamfest!).

I just wish the finale wasn’t so extended. Everything is about him getting back to the girl, and he does that at the reunion, but then the military guys cause a problem, they get taken away, then another plot twist and they’re back on the road, seeking to meet her at a second location. I think everything could have gone down at the reunion with no jump in time and it would have worked just as well if not better, as it makes the second scene a bit anticlimactic. Also, on the outtake reel we see a better resolution to a goofy subplot about one character’s “detachable” body part than was presented in the film itself, which is a bit odd. Put that stuff back in!

According to the post-film Q&A, the film has secured distribution in most major territories, but not the US. This doesn’t surprise me – it’s an original, crowd-pleasing horror movie. The US distributors only want remakes and sequels, or movies that can shock and awe. That Serbian Film or Human Centipede 2 may have better theatrical releases in the US than this movie is just plain depressing. But by this point I’m sick of trying to convince you guys to show more support for the original horror movies that come around, because no one apparently listens, so I’ll just say that I wish Brett and Drew Pierce luck on their attempt to secure an acceptable release for their charming and very fun movie. I will also suggest maybe they throw a “2” at the end of the title to increase their chances in a marketplace that seemingly punishes those who dare to make a movie that won’t already have a built in awareness.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Crawl (2011)

OCTOBER 15, 2011

GENRE: THRILLER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (FESTIVAL SCREENING)

Not every movie has to be rewatchable in order to be considered good/great. There’s nothing wrong with seeing a film and loving it but not having the desire to see it again, especially when they are built around suspense, toying with the audience’s expectations of what will happen next. Crawl is one such film; for 90 minutes I was pretty captivated by the on-screen action, having no idea where the story might go next, and that is the movie’s best asset. There’s no complicated story to piece together or “highlight” scenes to revisit on their own like, say, the Michael vs Laurie showdown in H20 (skipping the mostly interminable hour before it), but for that initial, in the dark viewing, it works like gangbusters.

As such, I’ll have to keep this one vague (read: short! Everyone wins!), because spoiling too much would be extremely detrimental, and I advise you to go in as blind as possible when the opportunity to check it out comes your way. I will say that it sort of transplants an Anton Chigurh-esque character into a home invasion thriller, and leave it at that in terms of story.

As that nameless character, George Shevtsov is one of those actors that will make you wonder why he hasn’t been in the spotlight sooner (he’s been around for over 20 years), managing to make the guy likable even though he barely speaks and is a cold blooded murderer. His kindly face and hilarious fixation on his appearance (bleeding from a car crash, he stops to put his hat back on) are hilariously at odds with his behavior, and his methodical, two-steps ahead actions when he needs to spring into action are wholly impressive (after watching Sector 7 again last night, maybe I can just appreciate a villain that’s not a total klutz – that goddamn monster gets tripped up more than Ghostface).

On the other side of the movie’s “war” is Georgina Haig as Marilyn Burns (cute), playing the sort of character who you instantly love and know she will kick all sorts of ass when required. The movie’s nearly real-time approach doesn’t give her too much in terms of backstory, but what little we do learn is enough to know she is worth caring about, and even though the movie doesn’t get into it too much, you will really feel the tragedy at the center of the film due to the fact that she doesn’t deserve it. And the lack of cynicism is much appreciated (SPOILER AHEAD – sorry, gotta write something here); she knows her boyfriend “needs to talk” and thus assumes he is going to propose – a lesser film would twist the knife a bit by having her go through an ordeal and then discover he actually planned to break up with her or something, but as we learn early on, her assumption was correct.

Of course the movie could be a shot of a log on the road for all I care, as long as it still had the terrific Herrmann-esque score by Christopher Gordon. How good was this score? I sat in the theater like an idiot tapping it out on my legs during the end credits, that’s how good. And it’s even more impressive when you consider that the eerie QUIET of the film is its other strength, with several nailbiter bits milked for every second of potential suspense and often set to the sounds of absolutely nothing. There’s a wonderful bit with our two leads on opposite sides of a door, waiting for the other to make the slightest sound and give their position away – masterful stuff. I don’t often compare anything to Halloween in a positive way, but the two films have filmmakers that are clearly relishing in their power over the audience, stretching the tension of a moment as long as possible before releasing in satisfying ways.

If the film has one flaw, it’s a silly, pace-breaking scene where Haig’s boss engages in some sexually charged spanking of one of the other employees who apparently owes him money. The film as a whole has a Coen-esque vibe to it (in addition to Chigurh, Blood Simple seems to have been on their mind, and a minor subplot about a stolen gun wouldn’t feel out of place in Fargo), but this bit just doesn’t really fit with the rest of the movie and doesn’t really further the plot along any. I guess it provides the film with another explanation for its title while offering some sort of visual dichotomy between the Stranger and the lowlife boss, but I don’t think it was necessary – we already knew the guy was a dickhead, and the girl getting spanked never appears again in the movie anyway, so there’s no need to further explore her character.

Still, one misstep in an otherwise solid thriller is hardly damnable, even if the film was from a veteran. And thus it’s almost unfair to point it out for a first time filmmaker (Paul China) who has delivered something this assured. Hell, according to the IMDb he doesn’t even have as much as a short under his belt, so to come out of the woodwork with something that works this well is nothing short of incredible. Even Carpenter had to goof around with Dark Star before finding his footing with Assault on Precinct 13, and the Coens worked in various fields (Joel was an editor on Evil Dead, for example) before Blood Simple. China has hit a homerun in his first at-bat, and I eagerly await to see what he does next.

Now, someone get me that soundtrack!

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

The Walking Dead 2.1: "What Lies Ahead"

OCTOBER 14, 2011

GENRE: TELEVISION, ZOMBIE
SOURCE: DVD (SCREENER)

Few could argue that The Walking Dead’s first season was inconsistent; when it was good it was great, and when it was off you might start wondering why you even watched the show in the first place. And with the behind the scenes drama surrounding the show as of late, there was some fear that the show might run itself into the ground faster than you can say Heroes. Well, if "What Lies Ahead", which serves as the season premiere of Season 2. is any indication, we don’t need to worry about a damn thing – if anything, it’s better than ever.

As much as I loved the pilot, there was a minor thing holding it back – it was running a bit close to the comic. The beats taken from the source, while well executed, didn’t feel organic with the new stuff, as if they weren’t sure how far they should stray before returning to familiar ground. But it seems they’ve finally nailed the balance, as the season opener does recreate elements from the comic (I won’t spoil which) but truly makes them its own – when a certain character is wounded, it’s not because it happened in issue whatever of the book and that’s where they should be in the show’s timeline, it’s because it perfectly follows the increasingly dire situation that the episode revolves around.

The premiere picks up more or less where the 1st season finale left off, with everyone driving out of the city, hoping to find a safer refuge. It’s not long before there’s a hiccup – the highway is blocked with cars that were either abandoned or stalled out when their owners died (the logic of this scenario never makes sense to me, but as it is a part of every post-apocalyptic tale ever, I just have to deal with it). Everyone unloads out of the RV or car they are traveling in and gets to work clearing the road and finding supplies – it’s merely an inconvenience at first. But then (spoilers!) zombies show up. A lot of them.

What follows is one of the most intense sequences in the show’s history, possibly THE most. Our group is scattered up and down the highway, and not everyone is aware of the looming danger (zombies may be slow, but they’re not deaf – shouting “WALKERS!” isn’t an option). Also, not all of our characters have made it into the main title credits yet (welcome, Norman Reedus!), which ramps up the tension when two such characters are put in extreme danger. The script wisely gets Rick out of danger early on (he’s the first to see them) and instead focuses on “not so safe” folks like T-Bone and Sophia, plus an attack on one main caster that is no less intense thanks to the close quarter location (the RV’s bathroom) and their complete lack of defensive weapons. It’s a terrific sequence, and while it might seem a bit like they’re blowing their wad putting the big zombie setpiece in the first act, it’s actually a masterstroke when you think about it.

Because as a result of this swarm, one character is separated from the group, and then it becomes a zombie-lite but still intense search and rescue mission, allowing those who tune in for zombie carnage to be consistently engaged (particularly during an impromptu “autopsy” sequence) while also strengthening the characters. Rather than present a fun but ultimately pointless bit where our heroes silently kill anonymous zombies in a sequence made entirely in the editing room, nearly all of the characters get to engage in a little personal drama, all centered around this event. One wants to leave the group, another feels they are responsible, another feels it might be a waste of time, etc. It took 7 episodes, but they have seemingly finally found a way to blend the dramatic beats with zombie action in a way that can satisfy fans of both areas at once.

The dialogue has also improved. I cringed at a few lines here and there (Laurie Holden’s Andrea actually bemoans the “madness of the world” or some melodramatic nonsense along those lines), but most of it sounds natural, particularly a mini-speech that Lori delivers to most of the group, defending Rick’s un-asked for position as leader. Dale also gets a nice bit with T-Bone, explaining how he’s sick of the “needs of the many vs the needs of the few” argument. Darryl (Reedus) still feels a bit one-note (does he even remember his brother?), but I assume now that he has been added to the main cast that they will be giving him more to do as the season progresses. And pay close attention to Rick’s opening lines for a slightly meta joke about Dr. Jenner – good to know they’re listening to us.

Obviously this is just one episode, and while it is a great one, that doesn’t mean next week’s will follow suit – this show has been defined by its uncanny ability to lose its own momentum. But I think the time off and fan responses haven’t been in vain; even if next week’s isn’t AS good, it’s obvious that they’ve found their footing and gained some confidence with their storytelling, and even if they never make another episode as good as this again, I am willing to bet that the worst is behind them.

What say you?

P.S. This means nothing to almost no one, but I want to applaud and give props to AMC’s publicity for doing the watermark on the show in a very unobtrusive way that did not annoy me but also clearly makes perfect sense on their end in terms of using it to catch anyone that uploaded it to the internet. I won’t explain further because I’m sure no one cares, but if anyone from AMC publicity reads this, know that it’s much appreciated to this watermark hating grump. Cheers!

PLEASE, GO ON...

The Thing (2011)

OCTOBER 14, 2011

GENRE: ALIEN, MONSTER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

I really wish I liked The Thing more, because I have been hoping for a resurgence of monster movies, and thus I could wish this one box office success (would also be good for the genre as a whole, what with just about every horror movie this year tanking). But alas, if this was a hit, future monster movies would be more or less ripping this one off, and even on my daily diet I don’t think I could endure too many of these in my lifetime.

The most offensive thing about the movie is that it actually has no story of note. I guess it’s good that we are spared lengthy passages of exposition that explain where the monster came from and why it’s doing what it’s doing, as those things tend to be terrible. The problem is that there’s no way to discern what the monster wants from its actions in the film, as it changes its MO from scene to scene without rhyme or reason. At one point our heroine (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) points out that if the Thing managed to escape the base it would kill millions of people. OK, well if that’s its plan, why the hell did it “thing out” and cause the helicopter TAKING IT TO THE MAINLAND to crash? It literally had a free and clear ride out of the desolate Antarctic wasteland, and it chose to destroy it.

OK, so maybe it just wants to kill? If so, why does it then go into shapeshifting mode, hiding amongst the Norwegian/American mix of scientists? In its native form, it’s a giant monster that can’t be easily killed – it seems like it could wipe out everyone in the base in about 5 minutes if it wanted to. But instead it assimilates one of the humans, resulting in a brief period of paranoia with everyone accusing the other of being the Thing (the line “We can’t trust him!” or some variant thereof is repeated with alarming frequency). Why it would be subtle now after crashing a damn helicopter is beyond my ability to understand things, but whatever, paranoia stuff is always awes-

WAIT! Then it switches gears again, once again revealing itself and (spoiler) wiping out like half of the cast in a single sequence. Now we’re back in regular monster movie mode, so I guess the Thing just got bored or something. But now it doesn’t matter, because none of the movie really makes sense after this point, with the Thing (sigh) once again assimilating a human and driving to its alien ship, apparently with the intent to leave. So our heroes drive after it to stop it, even though for all they know it just wanted to fly home since the humans were all too stupid to bother with anyway. I won’t spoil how things turn out, but I assure you, every decision screenwriter Eric Heisserer (assuming he wrote it; I know better than to assume the only credited writer actually wrote what we’re seeing on-screen) makes from this point is the exact wrong one. It’s a film that just gets worse as it goes; I was actually enjoying it for the first half hour or so but once that chopper crash occurred it began an endless downward spiral, ending on a moment that literally made me yell "WHAT?".

Another major issue is that none of the characters stick out for reasons that involve the script. You can pick out Ms. Winstead for the obvious reason (there is another female but she's just as anonymous as the other guys), and a few others because you might recognize them from a TV show or something (Mr Eko!), but otherwise they all blended together; mostly just a bunch of bearded Norwegian dudes whose functions are interchangeable. Can’t even remember any of their names; I think there’s a Lars but I wouldn’t be able to pick him out of a lineup. The only minor exception is Eric Christian Olson as Winstead’s boyfriend (or ex? They have a history at any rate), who scores a few good lines that sound more like improv than scripted bits (if they were scripted I apologize).

One is in the “test” scene, which starts off great but falls apart. The Thing cannot assimilate inorganic matter (fanfic idea: The Thing vs T-1000 with his “knives, and stabbing weapons”), so Winstead figures out that all you have to do is look at someone’s mouth and check if they have fillings to know whether or not they are human. Which is fine, but as Olson points out, “You're going to kill me because I floss?”. And then like 3 others don’t have fillings either, leaving four question marks. But rather than come up with a new plan, someone who is an accused Thing breaks back into the base, all hell breaks loose, and we never know which of the four were Things to begin with and which got turned in the off-screen chaos. I’m pretty sure you could remove the shapeshifting element from the movie entirely and it would barely affect the narrative.

As for the FX, they’re not too bad in the first hour or so. Director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. wisely used practical FX (courtesy of Tom Woodruff Jr. and Alec Gillis) for the most part, but they seemingly all have minor but still distracting CG enhancements. The little facehugger type things look great, as do the occasional “botched assimilation” visuals, but when the Thing goes full out at the end (with one character’s face) as it rampages around the ship, it looks like something out of the Mummy movies, and the compositing of the two heroes running from the creature rampaging under the floorboards of the spaceship (huh?) is Syfy level amateur hour stuff. This wasn’t a particularly huge budgeted film, but any big studio film should have better looking visuals than this – especially for the climax of the film. A lame movie can be somewhat saved with a rousing climax – having it the other way around is just inexcusable.

Don’t get me wrong – its otherwise a perfectly made film on a technical level, and again, the first act is quite solid (loved the opening scene in fact). But when I have to cease thinking about the already thin plot in order to remain entertained, I just get angry. Dumb spectacle can be fine every now and then, but they set up something a little more interesting early on, only to abandon it. If you want to make a big monster running around movie, fine - but stick to it, don't occasionally make it look like its smarter than its prey just to break up the monotony. And I never enjoy seeing a good cast wasted in interchangeable roles – I should walk out of this kind of movie wanting action figures of particular characters, not consulting the IMDb to try to remember who was who. Plus, said spectacle doesn’t even look that great when it matters most, so it doesn’t even really work on that level anyway.

What say you?

P.S. Forgot to mention, it’s also a tone-deaf remake of a perfect John Carpenter movie.

PLEASE, GO ON...

Root Of Evil (2003)

OCTOBER 13, 2011

GENRE: ASIAN, SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

Good or bad, I always respect a movie that I can’t tell where it’s going after the first 15 minutes. I don’t mean like, “I didn’t guess who the killer was”, I mean I wasn’t even sure what genre it would be. Root Of Evil (formerly Acacia) starts off a lot like Orphan, and even seems to be heading into similar killer kid territory (yay!) but switches gears midway through and becomes more of a tragic supernatural/ghost-type story, which might be a “lesser” genre in my eyes (look, I like seeing kids kill people) but was no less compelling.

See, that’s what can happen when you base a horror film around characters, not a particular subgenre. This isn’t so much a ghost movie as it is about a couple dealing with what is obviously an unhappy marriage, and how the things they do to repair it only end up making it worse. If you strip away any supernatural/horror elements, you’re still left with that rather sad story; maybe not as interesting a tale, but there would be SOMETHING there to latch on to. Take the killer out of a slasher movie and what are you left with, 99% of the time? Nothing. A bunch of kids hanging out in the woods and then going home, I guess.

Also, because it’s not really a killer kid movie, we are allowed to see the stuff those films often leave ambiguous for its first half. Not too long after the kid (who seems troubled from the start, using dead bugs in his artwork for starters) arrives at their home, he destroys one of the mother’s hand-knit… things (I couldn’t tell if it was a clothing item in progress or some piece of art). When a fire breaks out in the tool shed, he admits that it was him without any resistance, and when they have a baby of their own he tries to suffocate it. All of this in the first 40 minutes, and again, it’s not a killer kid movie! From a “body count” point of view, it’s a very slow movie, but it certainly doesn’t lack in exciting visuals.

Even better – it’s coherent! It’s a family-based Korean horror film from 2003, same as Tale Of Two Sisters (which it was compared to on its IMDb page), and I was so baffled by that one I couldn’t even manage to write a review. But here, while some elements are left a bit vague, I never felt totally in the dark with what was happening, and those vague moments seemed intentionally designed to spark discussion, as opposed to just being merely confusing. Writer/director Ki-hyeong Park - you're one of the good ones!

That said, it still has a couple of “Whaaaa?” moments, such as when the entire house gets covered in red string, a terrifically weird/creepy visual but one that I can’t logically comprehend. And like Lake Mungo, it seems that the screenwriter couldn’t make up his mind over whether or not the movie had supernatural elements; we see flashbacks that more or less explain everything in a real world way, but then a final shot goes back into supernatural territory. Some of the camerawork also annoyed me; at one point it feels like you’re watching a found footage movie as a lengthy scene goes by without any cuts and the camera constantly whipping around to focus on the most important character of that moment. I get the idea of jarring camerawork to simulate the uneasiness of the situation and such, but when it so closely emulates another type of movie it just takes me out of it entirely.

Also, the mother was obnoxiously slow to react to things. When she sees the kid tearing apart her yarn thing, she just stands there for a few moments before finally walking over to him and putting a stop to it. Likewise, when the fire catches her eye, she not only watches it for a few seconds from her 2nd floor window, she also stops to put on a pair of shoes when she finally decides to run outside and attempt to extinguish it. Since we ultimately side more with her than the father, these moments make it hard to take her seriously, as she comes off as somewhat pathetic.

Still, minor issues in an otherwise fully solid horror film. As I’ve said before, when I nitpick its only because the movie is good enough to care about the things that are a little off. If Mary Winstead delayed too long to react to the damn Thing ripping a guy’s chest apart, I wouldn’t notice – I’d still be steaming about giant plot holes or the fact that this supposed prequel felt a lot more like a remake (right down to the flamethrower malfunctioning in the break room). Plus I have a thing for horror movies that are kind of sad, something that our Asian filmmakers excel at. When I was watching Hell Night at the New Bev I started pondering the exterior reality of the film, how much of a bummer it was that these kids were all dead when they were pretty likable – but I had to go way outside the box and overthink it to reach that point. In this (and other K-horrors, such as Whispering Corridors), the tragic fallout over the loss of a loved one is actually part of the plot.

If I didn’t already like the movie, my tune would have improved, maybe even changed after watching the interview with the director, where he starts off by saying that he likes horror films. Yay! After that Barilli guy the other day, this was a relief. Not that it can’t be done, but I think the number of good horror movies that are made by directors who don’t care for the genre is a very small one. Even if they want to lean toward the more dramatic side of the story, it is essential that a filmmaker respects the craft behind a good horror film and knows what makes them work. Otherwise, you end up with Perfume Of The Lady In Black, where a bunch of cannibals show up out of nowhere in the last 30 seconds because the filmmaker doesn’t think horror movies need to make sense anyway.

Said interview is probably the best feature; the 3 behind the scenes featurettes are pretty bland (and needlessly separated – they’re all the same sort of fly on the wall look at the film’s production), and the interview with the actors is a bit too dry for my tastes (the actress comes off as quite snobby, actually). I also enjoyed the commentary by Park, actor Jin-geun Kim, and one of the producers (name escapes me), though if you aren’t interested in the technical aspect of filmmaking I wouldn’t recommend it; they discuss things like cranes and dolly tracks at length, and even detail the process of digital grading at one point. However, they also provide a little context for the adoption process in Korea (tougher than ours in the US), and like the Italians, aren’t afraid to be candid over what they feel is a poor acting choice or bad effect. But most importantly, they joke around with one another and bust balls every now and then (particularly at the producer, who apparently had to maintain the fake grass on set in addition to his more legitimate functions). As the interviews and behind the scenes material on most Asian horror that I’ve seen is quite serious in tone, it’s nice to hear them having a little fun. Also, thank you Palisades Tartan for including subtitles for the commentary – I’ve actually come across Region 1 titles with foreign language commentaries sans any way for the typical Region 1 user to make use of them. It makes up for the lack of a dub track for the film itself, though luckily it’s not a very dialogue heavy movie so I was able to focus on the main part of the frame most of the time.

If you can’t stand slower paced horror movies, I wouldn’t recommend this one – it wouldn’t change your mind the way something like Session 9 might. But if you are a fan of those and/or of Asian fare, this is highly recommended. More accessible than Two Sisters but far from a generic ghost movie, it’s the sort of offbeat entry I wish I could stumble across more often. Plus, any movie where a little kid claims that his mom is a tree is automatically a winner.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

51 (2011)

OCTOBER 12, 2011

GENRE: ALIEN, MONSTER
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

My buddy Kristian had admonished 51 over his Twitter due to the fact that they made the Air Force characters out to be idiots (he is in the Air Force himself – respect!), but even he admitted that the movie otherwise wasn’t too bad, and I fully agree. For the most part it’s the same generic aliens/soldiers/base combo movie that you’ve seen a dozen times on Syfy alone (which is where this premiered), but if you actually compare it to one of those things you’ll easily see that this one is more worthy of your time.

For starters – the monsters are practical!!! Notice I put THREE exclamation points: one for each monster. I like to imagine that they couldn’t decide on the kind of alien during the writing process – should it be a traditional “little green man”? Or a shapeshifter? Or just some all-purpose, insect/lizard/rock monster type thing? Well fuck it, they went with all three, and even cooler, they all have their own motives. The shapeshifter guy seemingly wants to access information and find something, the big monster just wants to lumber around and kill dudes every now and then, and the little green guy… well, he’s actually on our side, using his telekinesis and other powers to aid our protagonists as they attempt to both escape and contain the other aliens. So it’s sort of like a smorgasbord of generic ideas, but I liked that it wasn’t so straightforward. Also, by having them off on their own adventures, none ever wore out their welcome. Shapeshifting antics getting old? Let’s cut to the big guy dragging some poor sod down a hallway or up through a ceiling vent.

And again – practical! The only CG I caught was in a few impact shots (tentacle/blade things penetrating a guy’s chest or whatever); otherwise it was all rubber monster and animatronic stuff. Given the fact that Syfy movies have consistently produced the worst CGI ever seen in a film not directed by Stephen Sommers, it’s always a relief when they decide to go with something practical, and that it’s used for a reasonably entertaining movie in its own right makes it all the more appreciated.

I also enjoyed the lack of evil human characters. Sure, the head Army guy (Bruce Boxleitner) has been lying about aliens and also conducted an autopsy on one (lying to the green dude in the process), but he’s not some gung ho asshole intent on killing everyone to protect his interests. Likewise, the two reporter characters (one played by John Shea from Stealing Home – his character’s name is Sam in both films!) don’t put others in danger in order to secure some major news scoop; hell, I don’t think either of them even mention the possibility of a Pulitzer, which is like the go-to line for these sort of characters. The female (Vanessa Branch) even gets a gun and fights alongside Boxleitner!

Our other heroes aren’t so interesting. Nothing against Rachel Miner and Jason London; maybe they’re not the best actors in the world, but they’re certainly personable enough in most of their movies. The problem is they seem to be in a different movie until the final 15 minutes; they never encounter the other characters until then, and don’t even seem to be aware of the alien problem until the movie’s half over. Instead they just sit around wondering what their purpose is and trading back-stories, like they just stepped in from a Jarhead TV pilot or something. And when they finally do spring into action it’s always with the big monster, who is the least interesting for obvious reasons.

I also wish they did more with the shapeshifter. As with Super 8, he actually has a fairly benevolent purpose, so he can’t go all out and just start killing folks for no reason. But apart from a brief “let’s test each other to see who’s human” scene (which just involves shining a light in each person’s eyes – zzz), the shapeshift scenes are all the same. Alien grabs a human, morphs into him, and then a 3rd party isn’t sure which one’s which. This always ends with the human dying (this movie has a ridiculous amount of “friendly fire” kills), and it never impersonates someone for more than a few seconds. With reviews of The Thing premake largely negative, I could really use some solid suspense/paranoia type action this week, dammit! I did love the cute sight gag early on though, when they mention that they use the shapeshifter for certain real world activities before flashing a picture of Reagan tossing out a pitch at Wrigley Field.

My only other gripe was an extended “POV” sequence in the 3rd act that seemed to go on forever. Obviously with two reporters from the start we’re going to have some camera footage with the little “record” icon and guide markers around the edges of the frame, but they keep it to a minimum for the most part. However, during a particularly exposition heavy moment where Boxleitner is formulating a plan, we switch to this view for the entire scene, complete with overuse of shakicam and edits that make no sense. I don’t know if they were just running out of time and needed a quick way to shoot the scene (the movie only took 15 days to shoot, which is pretty impressive considering how much action it has), or if it was the plan all along, but either way it really took me out of the flick at a crucial moment.

The DVD has a 10 minute making of in which the use of practical effects is rightfully applauded and covered in depth (well, as much depth as one can get in 10 non-exclusive minutes). The actors also talk a bit about their characters (riveting stuff) but they also devote a few moments to the job of the 2nd unit, an area that’s not always given their props in these things. Director Jason Connery also gets some shoutouts, though if you ask me his only priority should be convincing his father to make one last GOOD movie instead of letting fucking LXG be his cinematic swan song. The film’s trailer (which inexplicably promises a theatrical release) and a few spots for the Kinect game Rise Of Nightmares are also included – I have no Kinect so I have no use for the latter, though the idea of the game sounds cool (no idea what it has to do with this particular movie though).

As always, I should remind you that I’ve seen more of these things than I’d like to remember, and thus if you’ve never seen one and put this on as your first, you’d probably think I was nuts for saying that it was pretty decent. If so, I think you should watch Bats 2, Dead Space, Anaconda 4, The Rig, Proteus, and Eye Of The Beast (to name a few), and then give this one a look and tell me if you still think there’s nothing good about it.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

The Perfume of the Lady in Black (1974)

OCTOBER 11, 2011

GENRE: ITALIAN, PSYCHOLOGICAL
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

On one of the bonus features for The Perfume Of The Lady In Black (Italian: Il profumo della signora in nero), director Francesco Barilli claims that horror movies never make any sense. Well, no, sir, a lot of them actually do, at least in horror movie logic. YOURS doesn’t make any sense, I won’t argue that, but I’ll defend the interior logic of Psycho or even a slasher film easily. Also, logical or not, a horror film usually lets you know you’re watching one before the first hour is up, unlike this – but since Barilli seems rather dismissive of the genre in his interview, it’s not much of a surprise to me that this was more in line with “art-house” horror.

And thus it also wasn’t a surprise that I didn’t like it very much. Even armed with the knowledge that it was inspired by Repulsion and that it was NOT a giallo (as I had initially believed), I still found the film too slow for my tastes, as over an hour of buildup produces a brief killing spree that apparently didn’t even really happen, followed by a ridiculous, out of nowhere cannibal sequence that inspired me to rewatch the film thinking I had missed something.

To be fair, this second viewing made me look at the film a bit differently – it’s not so much about her cracking up as it is (spoiler) that the entire population of the film is out to MAKE her crazy so that she eventually kills herself, which will allow them to eat her (yep, that’s the plot). So all the scenes of her trying to buy raspberries or butterflies or playing tennis or whatever, albeit still rather dull, take on new meaning – the people she encounters are all part of this grand plot. However, not only is this seemingly complicated way of eating someone never explained – it’s never even set up! I could see if there were random hints about cannibals in the city or something throughout the movie, but apart from occasionally realizing that two seemingly unrelated characters were familiar with one another, it just comes completely out of nowhere, which isn’t nearly enough for the movie’s lethargic pace.

And that’s a shame, because there is a good movie to make out of this material. It’s nice to see a “let’s drive her crazy” movie that doesn’t have anything to do with inheritance or real estate scams, and there are a few creepy moments sprinkled throughout that could have been really memorable if everything all came together in a more satisfying way. For example, the closest thing to a hint about the cannibalism comes early on, when our heroine (Mimsy Farmer) gets a cut on her hand from a tennis racket and this dude offers to help by sucking the blood. But it just seems like some voodoo-inspired (or just plain weird) moment, and I had actually forgotten about it until I watched the movie a second time. “Oh, I guess this was hinting at the cannibalism”. It’s one thing for a movie to take on a new meaning on a second view; it’s another to practically require you give it another look in order to tie some of its plot strands together when it STILL leaves giant holes in its narrative.

At least it looks/sounds nice. Like most Italian productions, half of the actors are speaking English anyway, so I put the dub track on (both are available) and was pleased to discover that it sounded natural for the most part (only the boyfriend sounded a bit “sound booth-y”). And the score was lovely – I don’t listen to too many horror scores on their own, but I think this would make a wonderful addition to my iPod. Farmer’s performance is good, particularly when she deals with the little girl who may or may not be a ghost/hallucination/whatever of her younger self.

Oh, speaking of these scenes – the little Mimsy is made to look like Alice in Wonderland, a literary source that is referenced throughout. Please, can we give this particular story a rest, horror movie makers? I know this movie’s almost 40 years old, but I’m still seeing “Alice”-inspired motifs in modern films more often than necessary. “Wizard Of Oz” too. Before writing your script, ask yourself: “Does the book/movie I am drawing from have ten pages’ worth of “movie connections” on its IMDb page because of all the guys before me who have used it as a backbone for my script?” If so, change it to something else, or just come up with wholly original ideas.

The Barilli interview runs about 26 minutes, but that’s fine since it’s pretty much the only extra of note on the disc – Barilli’s bio and rather slim filmography round out the supplements. There’s no trailer, which is a shame because I would have liked to have seen how the film was marketed (Youtube was no help either - the trailer I found seems to be newly made to promote the DVD). It also might have been nice to hear from the still very much alive Farmer (she works as a sculptor now – apparently she’s working on Clash of the Titans 2, in fact), since she’s in pretty much every frame of the movie, and thus maybe could have explained what the hell was going on. Oh well.

So if you like your horror saved for the film’s final moments and beyond ambiguous, you should dig this one. Movies like Black Swan and The Tenant were also in this vein, but they had something to hold my attention throughout and had satisfying conclusions – this one misses those marks.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Devil's Playground (2010)

OCTOBER 10, 2011

GENRE: BRITISH, ZOMBIE
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

Despite jarring shifts in tone, some lousy editing, and a terrible performance by Danny Dyer, Devil’s Playground works if you look at it as a sort of Resident Evil type movie, where things like plot and dialogue aren’t really important as long as you’re being consistently entertained by zombie action. The problem is, I don’t think that’s quite what the filmmakers were going for, as the somber tone and the fact that they were seemingly looking to Children Of Men for inspiration suggests mindless fun wasn’t their main priority.

While most of the movie plays out like every other 28 Days Later/Night Of The Living Dead type zombie movie, there’s an added twist – a possible cure (for once!). The outbreak is caused by a new steroid that seemed fine at first but ultimately caused side effects in 29,999 out of the 30,000 test subjects. That one exception, of course, might hold the key to a cure, so it’s up to hardass Craig Fairbrass to get her back to the lab. Obviously, doing so won’t exactly be easy, as there are zombies and assholes standing in their way, not to mention the fact that she’s pregnant and her baby daddy (Dyer) doesn’t think too much of her being treated like a lab rat.

Unfortunately Bart Ruspoli’s script botches this rescue mission plot by keeping her and most of the other characters holed up for the entire second act, killing the momentum and urgency of the situation. With more of a chase/protect motif (think Children of Men, or Babylon AD for something more in line with the sort of movie we’re dealing with here), this could have been a lot of fun, not to mention helped us forget or forgive the derivative aspects of the story. But once they finally get going, there’s no hiccups until the movie’s almost over. Not that anyone would believe that she WOULDN’T be safely brought to the lab, but they could have at least put her in danger more often.

They also could have had more heroes dying to protect her. It’s borderline stupid that no one besides Fairbrass seems to understand how important it is that she be kept alive – two characters even intentionally try to kill her! What in the hell sense does that make? At least Dyer’s opposition makes sense: he’s afraid her/their baby will be subjected to tests that might harm them. But everyone else just has generic “We have to think of ourselves first” plans, which also reduces the urgency of the situation – if her own companions don’t seem to think she’s all that special, why should we? Without her storyline to guide us, the movie is just another “zombies take over we need to get away” movie, of which we’ve seen many.

And again, the editing is questionable at best. Sean Pertwee shows up with a silly mustache, has one scene with dialogue, and then later appears out of nowhere, steals a boat and zooms away, never to be seen again. It’s not like they put his name on the cover or anything, but why bother casting him if he’s going to be some sort of anonymous cop, and why give ANY character such a random “arc”? Plus, it starts at the end, with Fairbrass telling the story, something that almost never works for me. It also might have been fun to keep us in the dark of how our characters related; the film starts off like Contagion or whatever, with a bunch of characters in different situations reacting to different parts of the outbreak, but we learn how they connect long before their characters actually meet up. For example, Dyer gets out of prison at the movie’s beginning, and it’s not until the halfway point that he meets up with his ex (The Descent’s MyAnne Buring; a stunning presence). It would have been a fun little surprise to discover their connection when they actually met, but they talk about each other in their introductory scenes. It’s like the movie wants us to be constantly way ahead of its characters.

But like I said, if you look at it more as a Resident Evil-esque timekiller, it’s pretty good. Fast zombie fans should enjoy all the running and jumping, and even though I belong to the slow zombie school, I like that their super strength and parkour style antics actually made sense (they WERE on steroids, after all). The budget wasn’t high but they did a fine job of depicting a chaotic London, and you’re never more than a few minutes away from Fairbrass going to town on some poor zombie bastard with a hammer or multiple close range shots from his pistol. And in addition to Pertwee, Colin Salmon pops up as the head of the pharmaceutical company that caused the whole mess, so along with the others I’ve mentioned, the cast is like a who’s who of vets from better movies (and of course Salmon was actually IN a Resident Evil movie).

It also looks fantastic. The deleted scenes shows the raw digital video, so even though none of them are particularly interesting (they’re also out of order), it’s worth taking a look at them just to compare to how good the finished film looks. There are about a dozen different companies listed on the DVD (Indomina and Vivendi seem to be the most major), so I don’t know who to thank for the transfer, but it looks almost blu-ray perfect at times. I know 28 Days Later is considered a classic and all that, but quite frankly that movie just looks like an amateur film school project more often than not, and of course Colin only cost about 12 quid – it’s nice to see a professional looking zombie ravaged London for a change!

In addition to the deleted scenes, there’s a brief making of that quickly covers the usual bases, nothing essential. There’s also a QR code imprinted on the disc; scanning it will bring you to a webpage that apparently has a bonus video clip. My phone isn’t good enough to open it, so I have no idea what it is, but I hope this is not how bonus material will be provided in the future. I am a firm believer that everything should be on the disc – why should those who don’t even know what a QR code is be deprived of bonus material? Unless it’s something specific for a phone (i.e. a ringtone or a mobile game), then I shouldn’t have to use my phone to access it.

So A for effort and all, but it never quite becomes the compelling “serious” zombie movie it tries to be at times, and the things it does get right have been done in other movies anyway. Again, fine to put on in the background while you sort laundry or maybe do your nails if that’s your sort of thing, but the more attention you give it, the less impressed you will be.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

The Hillside Stranglings (2004)

OCTOBER 9, 2011

GENRE: SERIAL KILLER
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

If Zodiac was a hit, I wonder if we would have gotten a new stream of serial killer films told largely from the cops’ point of view. Because in a lot of cases, such as the one behind The Hillside Stranglings (changed from Hillside Strangler, more on that later), the police investigation was far more interesting than the killings or killers. Not to make light of the tragedies, but with their MO being the same and most of the girls being runaways or prostitutes, there isn’t much to the victims’ stories, and the two killers were basically a couple of douchebags who started killing when they got bored with merely being second rate pimps.

However the police story was sort of fascinating. Because the bulk of the victims were transients (and thus not given much thought), the cops didn’t even connect the murders until late in the spree, even though most of them were found in the same Glendale area and all killed the same way. There was some sort of pissing contest going on between the LAPD and the Sheriff’s department at the time which didn’t help, and it wasn’t until one cop got assigned to a murder and his partner assigned to another that they started to realize the pattern. The resulting trial for one of them was also fairly interesting; taking nearly two years to convict him of the murders (the jury process alone was nearly four months – only a little less than the entirety of the OJ trial).

Sadly the movie ignores police activity of any sort beyond the anonymous cops who question strangler Ken Bianchi after a few of the murders, and the other anonymous ones who arrest him in Oregon a few months later. The trial is also skipped entirely; the film just offers the usual text wrap-up that tells us that they were sentenced to life and that co-strangler Angelo Buono died in prison in 2002. Instead, we just get a traditional (read: generic) serial killer movie, showing what led up to the first killing and providing a newcomer to the story with very little context for a lot of the events that it depicts.

Even major aspects of the story just sort of appear at random, such as Bianchi’s scheme of claiming he had cancer and needed chemo, which would explain his absences from work and home. Well, we’re never even really told what he DOES for a living or that he even had a real job, let alone that he was scamming his way out of attending it when he was supposed to. The cancer also gets dropped into casual conversation as if it was a recurring plot thread, making the mother’s “I definitely have cancer!” line from The Room look like great storytelling in comparison. It’s as if writer/director Chuck Parello was determined to include every bit of “trivia” about the cast in his 90 minute movie, even if it meant never setting it up. Again, if you knew everything about the case already, this sort of stuff would be fine – your memory could provide the context. But for someone who knew nothing (I wasn’t even aware that there were two killers until I read the back of the DVD), it makes the movie all but completely impenetrable.

It’s also very TV movie like at times; while Parello has no problem showing nudity, he seems somewhat prudish when it comes to the actual killings, keeping many of them off-screen. They also don’t mention that the men killed a few children (one victim was only 12), which I only mention because Parello seems more interested in showing the dysfunctional relationship between the two men (who were cousins). And that would be fine, but there’s not a lot there beyond the fact that Buono was a huge asshole 24 hours a day (whereas Bianchi seemed to be almost bipolar), so their scenes primarily involve Buono (Nicholas Turturro) yelling at Bianchi (C. Thomas Howell). Why skip over some of the more “outside the box” murders in favor of being repetitive in other aspects of the story? Or hell, even ignoring the murders – why not show more of the relationship between Bianchi and his girlfriend (the always welcome Allison Lange)? They seem to have barely met before they’re already living together, and her pregnancy is treated as randomly as everything else. It would have been interesting to show more of what she saw in him, but instead he’s a dick to her in nearly every one of their scenes together after their first date. The film also ignores the best random bit of trivia about the real case – the two men almost killed Peter Lorre’s daughter, but let her go when they realized who she was.

Parello does get one thing right, and that is the period setting. They don’t specify the exact date very much, but it’s clearly the 70s – the styles, the music, etc are all spot on. And even with all of the scenes in Hollywood, shot in 2004, I didn’t catch any glaring anachronisms (far cry from Freeway Killer, with its 1980 setting botched by frequent sightings of Starbucks and Priuses). Hell it’s even LIT like a 1970’s movie for the most part. It’s an area he also excelled at in Ed Gein, so perhaps it’s really writer Stephen Johnston who is to blame, as he wrote both films (though Parello gets a co-writing credit here). Johnston also wrote the weakest Bundy movie, so yeah, it’s probably his fault.

Either way, he doesn’t join Parello on the commentary, which might or might not be a shame. If his writing skills were as good as his commentary skills then maybe he wouldn’t have helped, but I can’t imagine anything or anyone making this track LESS of a chore. With no one to converse with, Parello mostly just narrates the movie while occasionally tossing in additional information (such as Ken’s birth father being a bit of a mystery as his mother was a prostitute – I don’t think they mention this in the movie) or making ridiculous claims like a rather generic murder scene being “one of the most terrifying ever depicted on film”. And lest you think he’s not the type to toot his own horn, the track ends with him plugging Gein and Henry 2 (which I still haven’t seen). Even if you loved this movie I can’t imagine anyone finding the track worth their time.

The other extras are better; a few deleted scenes provide some missing exposition from the film (such as why Bianchi’s girlfriend moved to Portland in the first place), and a lengthy interview with Howell explains how hard the role was for him and how it took a toll on him personally, saying he needed to spend a week with his parents after it was done in order to sort of decompress. Howell is actually quite good in the film (Turturro's seeming "Joe Pesci in Casino" impression, on the other hand, was rather grating), so it was nice to hear him talk, and also laughingly admit to some of his poor career choices, though none by name. Come on man, throw Hitcher II under the bus! The red-band trailer, posted below (and NSFW!) is also included.

Back to the retitling, this DVD is from Palisades Tartan, who is apparently re-releasing a bunch of old “just” Tartan movies with new titles/covers (the box art for this version depicts a killer who doesn’t even remotely resemble Howell or Turturro, standing over a girl in the woods – the entire movie takes place in Los Angeles suburbs). Now, this one isn’t too much of a stretch – they just changed it from Strangler to Stranglings. However, Carved has gone back to its original title of Slit Mouthed Woman, and Bad Blood has been changed to Blood Curse – a switch that actually confused me into sitting down and watching it for today’s HMAD entry only to realize after a few seconds that I had already seen it*. So be careful with their releases, as you might have already seen it (or even own it) under a different title. It’d be one thing if there was some sort of disclaimer on the back somewhere (like “previously released under the title _____”), but the only clue to the change is buried in the credit box at the bottom, which retains the original title, which is most likely just an oversight. Tartan did point the changes out on the press release, to be fair – but I think it’s a bit misleading for consumers. It was a damn shame when they went under a couple years ago; now that they’re back (under the new moniker Palisades Tartan) I hope they will be releasing new movies and not just re-releasing stuff from their back catalog.

What say you?

*Also, score one for my crusade against subtitles; both Bad Blood and Blood Curse are supposedly the translation from Coisi Rum (the actual translation of which is roughly “bad thing”). What if people were using obscure horror movies to learn a language, you subtitling monsters?!?

PLEASE, GO ON...