Spiderhole (2010)

JANUARY 10, 2012

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

The most interesting thing about Spiderhole is its title, which could suggest a giant spider movie from the Maneater series (but come on, they’d just call it "Spider Attack" or something), but as it’s a low budget British/Irish import starring a bunch of teens, the moniker is just sort of meaningless. It’s a very thin metaphor about the fact that a spiderhole is a term for a hole that soldiers use to conceal themselves (usually covered with branches or something), and our killer uses holes in the walls and such to get around the “abandoned” building while offing our group of squatting teens.

However, apart from the squatting backdrop, the movie is largely indistinguishable from a dozen other flicks, and director Daniel Simpson’s script squander its few interesting elements, so ultimately the title is the only thing that gives it any identity. If it was called, I dunno, “Death House” it would be impossible to remember anything about this movie in a week or so. I should note that there are also a few random shots of Daddy Long Legs crawling around to add to the “theme”.

As I was joking about on Twitter, this is one of those movies where a news report foreshadows an event that will pay off later, and our heroine is inexplicably interested in the story even though it has absolutely nothing to do with her. Early on, as she sits in a sort of daze because she can’t pay rent (me too!), she suddenly perks up when the newscaster points out that today makes the 10th anniversary of the disappearance of a little girl. As far as I can tell, she never knew her or anything, so why this would catch her ear over the other news stories is beyond me… unless you’re well versed in horror movies. Then you’ll know perfectly well that the bad things that are about to happen to them JUST MIGHT have something to do with the girl’s disappearance.

So it’s sort of funny that Simpson more or less forgets about this plot point until the final 30 seconds, when our final survivor is tossed into yet another room and we realize (spoiler) that the little girl is still alive and is now feral, living in the walls and eating the victims of our killer. Points for the grim ending, but why wasn’t this stuff brought up earlier? It doesn’t work as a twist if it’s shoehorned in like that – a less astute viewer might not even remember the first scene’s newscast part by the time this comes up at the end. If anything it just makes matters confusing: why did the killer hold on to this particular girl, when he kills everyone else pretty quickly? Was this his house, or was he a squatter himself? Why are these kids so hellbent on living in this shithole? I’d also ask what the odds were that four good friends would find themselves homeless simultaneously, but why bother?

The kills aren’t even that impressive (most of them are off-screen, in fact). The best is a telegraphed bit where two of the heroes beat one of the others to death with spiked 2x4s, thinking that he is the killer (Valentine provides the best one of these), because it’s visceral and over the top – which just makes the climax all the more obnoxious when our heroine DEFINITELY has the killer in her grasp but settles for merely conking him on the head once with a non-spiked piece of wood. What, did killing her friend take all of her energy? Does she no longer have the heart to at least make a guy bleed?

And how’s this for depressing – I actually fell asleep during the following scene, even though the movie was 5 minutes from ending (believe me, I was keeping track). Part of the movie’s dumb gimmick is that they are trapped in the house (that they had to break into in the first place! Clever!!), because he’s boarded everything up and has multiple locks on everything. So of course, when she gets to the door with his keys, she has to open a few locks and doesn’t know which key is which. The scene goes on so long that I actually “rested my eyes”, only to wake up when the movie stopped a few minutes later. Granted, I fall asleep at movies a lot, but it’s usually during the middle act when things are in between being set up and being resolved. Falling asleep during what should be the highlight of the movie is pretty much unheard of for me; even at midnight movies that I’ve seen 10 times I can manage to wake up for the finale. So I had to go back and rewatch this nonsense, which also included the big “twist” that wasn’t worth the effort.

At least it looks OK enough. Mr. Simpson is a much better director than writer, it seems – the digital image is nice despite the low light setting and he occasionally makes good use of the scope image. Even the layout of the house is clear – except when intentional, I always had a pretty good grasp of where everyone was in relation to each other, which is a common problem in these single location/multiple room movies. And the kids get along for the most part – they’re idiots and criminals, but if they also spent most of the movie hating each other I don’t know if I could get through the whole thing.

But it just doesn’t register on any level; not bad enough to qualify as a train wreck, and what little it does (relatively) right has been done better. If you want to see kids get killed, the body count is too low and kills too bland to compete even with 1980s sequels, let alone newer stuff. If you want torture, the Hostels deliver AND give decent stories to go along with them (well, the first two anyway; still haven't seen the 3rd). And hell, if you just want a killer doctor, just watch Dr. Giggles. At least the title is more fitting.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Hallowed (2005)

JANUARY 9, 2012

GENRE: INDEPENDENT, SLASHER
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

With a name like Hallowed, this film is bound to end up next to/in front of a very important genre classic on a DVD rack – but that didn’t really cross my mind until the movie began, as the score seemed more than a tad influenced by Carpenter’s iconic cues. How naïve I was; this movie is actually pretty much a full length version of an in-jokey reference to the film, something that might annoy me on another day, but since real life has been such a giant asshole of late (financial/car issues), the earnestness of the whole thing was kind of charming.

See, after an opening kill and a lengthy, unnecessarily padded opening titles sequence that alerted me to the fact that this film was going to be the type that stretches itself to the bare minimum requirement to be called a feature film, we see a low angle shot of a street along with a title card giving the name and town (Fullerton, CA). “Heh, like in Halloween,” I thought. “Cute.” Then the main character/killer appeared, riding his bike around – and he drives right by the Doyle house. Before I could even finish my thought as to whether or not this was intentional, he drives by the Myers house! Now, to anyone who’s been there, you’d know those houses aren’t even in the same town (the Doyle’s is in West Hollywood, unlike the other Pasadena locales), so obviously they were LITERALLY going out of their way to give Carpenter’s film some love. As the scene progressed he even drives by the Strode house (which looks exactly the same) and the bush that Michael hid behind while Laurie and Annie were walking home.

And there are other things; certain shots are aped from the film, the killer likes to pop up like Myers… there’s even a montage of shots showing empty locations after he disappears near the end of the movie. Along with the music, you’re never more than a few minutes from another Halloween reference, and unlike most bad movies where I say “I’d rather just be watching that”, I’ve seen Halloween probably 100 times in my life – I could use the break. Besides, their own story wasn’t that similar, and they pull off a pretty great third act shock that I didn’t see coming, so it’s all good.

Plus it’s short. As I’ve mentioned a couple times, I’m all about Skyrim right now, so watching my HMADs cuts into how much time I spent crafting leather bracers and smiting the hell out of bandits with my awesome battle axe (45 dmg, 14 pts fire damage!). So I was happy to see that Hallowed had a Netflix envelope listed runtime of a mere 85 minutes, and even happier to see that the disc itself promised only 80. Thus, the fact that the movie was actually only 71 minutes (!) was nothing short of orgasmic. Hallowed filmmakers – your refusal to add a character or two or even slow down your end titles to hit the promised 80 minutes meant I was able to dick around looking for ore veins in the cave I was clearing. Bless you.

Of course, if you have no love for Halloween I don’t have much faith that you’ll be as entertained as I was. The story is RIDICULOUS and under-developed even by slasher standards – basically this guy wants to spread the word of God and decides to “save” this one girl at random (maybe in the sequel we will learn they were brother and sister), and this very occasionally means he will kill someone else along the way. Why he chose her, how often he does this, why he needs to kill her friends… none of this seems to matter. He also doesn’t do a lot of stalking – considering their nearly psychotic love of Halloween, I was a bit shocked to see so few scenes of him kind of playing around with his victims or even POV shots. He does the Myers-style “standing there and then he’s gone” thing once or twice, but that’s pretty much it.

The low body count can probably be attributed to Halloween as well, but it could also be due to the movie’s obviously spotty production. Our two main characters change hairstyles more than once (the film was shot over 6-7 months), and the guy playing the killer is noticeably “Bela’d” in a few scenes. At one point he gives the girl a bible, but the entire scene plays without seeing his head because it’s a different actor (I noticed this BEFORE it was confirmed on the commentary track) – kind of weird for one of the few scenes that actually moves the “plot” along. And there are other disjointed scenes that the commentary will reveal were added later to make the movie longer, which is kind of depressingly hilarious when you consider that it’s still technically too short.

Oh, and the killer talks. Not a lot, thankfully, but actor Rich Lava (come on, that cannot be a real name) is pretty terrible, delivering a performance that falls somewhere between Eric Freeman and the robot from Rocky IV. This could be taken as campy, but with the occasionally vicious kills and that aforementioned shock, this isn’t really a “fun” slasher, and even if it was, he doesn’t talk ENOUGH to ever get used to it. Thus when he appears and says something, it’s just jarring and bad. I’m not sure if they fully explained what happened to him on the commentary (all I heard was “we lost him 3/4s of the way through the shoot” – which could mean anything given the lengthy production), but I couldn’t help but wonder if the actor that played him the rest of the time would have been better.

The commentary is hit or miss; director Rocky Costanzo and producer Roy Thomasson are slightly more candid than I’m used to (one of them points out that he thought another girl was better for the main role but was outvoted, but both of them compliment her good looks more than once), and they’re up front with the obvious replacements and reshoots, but they’re also a bit TOO proud of the movie at times. It’s entertaining enough and they got it finished, so they deserve some praise, but it occasionally turns into a bit of a back-slapping fest, and they also keep referring to their other movies a bit too much for my tastes. And then the confusing ending is given an obnoxious “People have asked us what it means, we leave that up to you” bullshit explanation, adding that they merely thought “it was cool”. No, it merely stopped reminding me of Halloween long enough to say “Why are they referencing Jason Takes Manhattan all of a sudden?”

The only other extra is a somewhat depressing “World Premiere Montage”, which is a slide show of images from the movie’s gala premiere at some multiplex in Huntington Beach, where the film showed alongside such cinematic treasures as The Ringer, Fun With Dick And Jane, and (yes!) Bloodrayne – a film that I can count as *my* first premiere (I won tix from Bloody Disgusting, back before I worked there). There’s also a shot of the attendance sheet, for some reason, as well as the empty theater before people file in. It’s just some standard multiplex stadium screening room, who needs to see a picture of it?

So, yeah. Not much to it, and there’s certainly nothing special about it, but it hit the spot and tickled my Halloween fan-bone. And for 71 minutes I forgot that I might not be able to pay rent next month, so that’s always good. Thanks, Hallowed!

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Beneath The Darkness (2011)

JANUARY 8, 2012

GENRE: THRILLER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

I almost never look at reviews of a movie before I see it, but the plot description of Beneath The Darkness toed the line of what I'd call a horror movie, so I wanted to get a little more analysis than a synopsis written for publicity's sake would provide. And in the one I looked at, which referred to it as a B-horror movie (yay!), they pointed out that this is the first time in his career that Dennis Quaid has played the bad guy. Well to that I say, I guess you haven't seen Pandorum (blacked out since it's kind of a spoiler to say so), but yes, there is some novelty in seeing Quaid, one of our most "All-American" type hero actors, having some fun as a batshit crazy mortician.

Now, I'm not spoiling anything by saying he's the villain - he buries a guy alive in the first scene. Why he did this isn't explained until the final 5 minutes, but believe me when I tell you that it's hardly worth the wait. Part of the problem with the movie is that there's no mystery or intrigue of any sort with regards to whether or not Quaid is a killer, but the movie doesn't focus on him, like Psycho or Henry or whatever. Instead, it focuses on a group of typical high school teens (admirably played by actors within 2-3 years of the age they are playing, for a change), who get bored one night and decide to spy on Quaid and see if he's doing anything creepy in his house.

Well, uh... yes, he is. We saw it in the first scene - who cares if these kids find out about it too? Why would anyone want to watch a movie about a bunch of uninteresting teenagers trying to catch up to the audience? Every now and then they dip into nail-biter suspense territory, such as when an investigating cop almost finds one of the teens (who is buried in a makeshift coffin right below his feet), but otherwise the movie acts as if we don't know if Quaid is a killer or just some lonely, strange guy.

Worse, there's almost zero action. A movie about Quaid covering his tracks (he kills one of the teens pretty early on) might be at least mildly enjoyable, but as he is a high school football hero (because of course he is, he's Dennis Quaid AND the movie is set in Texas), everyone else in town believes his story that the kids were robbing him and one of them tripped and fell down the stairs. After that, it seems as if the kids could have just learned their lesson and left him alone. Instead they just keep going back trying to find evidence, and each time is less interesting than the last - they even recycle the same scuffle on the stairs! But the entire movie unfolds through their eyes - there are precious few scenes that are from his perspective, and unsurprisingly they are the best thing in the movie, even if they're occasionally pointless (there's a scene where he argues with a mechanic about the cost to fix his van - a "subplot" with absolutely no bearing on anything). Still, it's better than anything with the kids, and the others are even better - I wouldn't dream of spoiling its contents, but I shit you not - the film's final NINE SECONDS are the only reason this movie isn't in the crap bin.

It's also loaded with painfully bad dialogue, which I feel a bit guilty about mentioning since the screenwriter sadly passed away a few months ago. But come on, lines like "You got a 100 on this test. That was the highest mark in the class!" are just too awful not to point out. Speaking of the class, it seems the writer couldn't make up his mind over which obligatory literary metaphor to go with, so he awkwardly went with both - for some reason the kids are studying "Tell-Tale Heart" (because it ties into crazed murderers - like Quaid!), but then she tells them to finish Act III of "Macbeth"? So they stopped reading 2/3s of the way through a Shakespeare play in order to cover a Poe short story? But "Macbeth" deals with ghosts and guilt and such, so that ties in as well.

Well, sort of. There's a potentially interesting subplot about one of the teens seeing ghosts (something about his sister's death - a subplot that seemingly has no connection to the Quaid stuff, despite some dialogue that seems to suggest otherwise), but like the broken down van, it goes nowhere. One of the kids also disappears from the narrative at one point, which is fine because he was useless anyway, but it just further proves what a mess this is. And messes can be fun, but it's a BORING mess, with a minuscule body count and a total lack of any sort of suspense.

Plus, a villain that isn't allowed to really chew the scenery until the final 9 seconds. As with Legion, Quaid seemed to be channeling his buddy Meat Loaf at times (Loaf's pal Brett Cullen also pops up), as his character has a weird tic like most of Meat's characters do (in this case, he constantly puffs an electric cigarette) and his mannerisms are similar to Loaf's performances in movies like Black Dog and Rustin. But Loaf would have let himself go a lot sooner, giving the movie more of a spark. Quaid reigns it in too often, and I could never buy him as a mortician, either - Loaf would have been pretty believable in that role (and a football hero, as well).

(Speaking of Legion - second Quaid movie where he co-stars with a Friday Night Lights star; that one had Tara/Adrienne Palicki, this one has Julie Taylor/Aimee Teegarden. Do a buddy cop movie with Kyle Chandler! It'll be amazing!!!)

Ultimately, it just lacks any clear purpose. At times I wondered if it was based on a true life incident and they just forgot to embellish it in order to make an exciting or interesting movie - it's too straightforward and bland to work as a thriller, but the characters aren't defined well enough to work as a drama, either. It's just THERE. In fact I can sum up my feelings with this minor note - two girls came into the movie 10 minutes late and began yammering. I "shushed" them after a few minutes, which worked for a while. Later, they started talking again, but by this point the movie had lost me and I didn't care. "Hey, you're ruining my total lack of enjoyment in this pointless movie!" Here's a photo of the mess they made:

When a movie is so dull that I can't even bother to insult the sort of losers who trash a theater like this, you know it has truly failed.

What say you?

P.S. Odd bit of "trivia", on my way into the theater the ticket-taker made me discard my soda from the Taco Bell next door. I was going to rant about this idiotic policy (I'm not going to buy your soda at 5 dollars a cup, morons), but I felt like I might have done that before - and I did, in my review of Pandorum... starring Dennis Quaid. Weird. But screw it, I'm going to say it again: I understand the basic point of this policy, but it in no way actually produces the desired effect. I'm not going to buy theirs to replace the one they made me toss out, and if anything I'm going to rethink going there again in the future, because they clearly don't care about me having a good experience when I go there. I would also suggest that people might not try to "sneak in" outside drinks if they weren't overcharging so much. If Taco Bell can serve a 20 oz cup of soda for two bucks, why are you charging five? And thus I would stress to theaters - if you have a bunch of eateries nearby, introduce competitive pricing on the items that folks can buy next door. I'd have no problem GIVING THEM MORE MONEY if they weren't charging over double what places within 50 yards are asking. Something to think about.

PLEASE, GO ON...

The Skin I Live In (2011)

JANUARY 7, 2012

GENRE: MAD SCIENTIST, THRILLER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

Having to ask if something can count as a horror movie is usually a sign that it probably isn’t, and honestly had I just watched The Skin I Live In on its own, I probably wouldn’t have thought of it as a genre film. But literally everyone that answered my Twitter query said it was, and it made a few horror-centric “Best of 2011” films, and it’s even featured on the cover of a recent Fangoria, so I guess it qualifies under a few of my “rules” even if I don’t necessarily agree.

And that’s kind of ironic, because it fits into two genres quite well. One would be the mad scientist group; a terrific Antonio Banderas plays a Frankenstein type character here – a doctor with a great idea, going about it in very unusual and illegal ways, losing sight of what he’s trying to accomplish once a personal agenda comes into play, etc. The goal is a new type of skin that can help protect the body it covers – we see him test it with a malaria-ridden mosquito that refuses to bite the skin, which to me is the best thing ever (having spent much time in Maine during the summer, I have put on too much of that awful Off stuff in my life – I want mosquito proof skin!). As is usually the case, he is testing this on a not particularly willing subject, and the movie is essentially about their relationship, which isn’t always antagonistic. The woman he is testing can be tender or abrasive depending on the scene, and the film’s fractured narrative helps keep things interesting – a scene where she defends Banderas is just as surprising as one where she lashes out against him.

The other genre would be somewhat spoiler-ish to discuss, so I have left it out. As I mentioned, the film isn’t told in a linear format, and thus after a half hour or so where we see Banderas testing, getting a sense of what Vera’s life is like while imprisoned in his home/laboratory, we flash back a few years to meet a few new characters and find out how exactly Vera came to become part of his life in the first place. I won’t spoil, but it’s part of what gives the movie its “horror” identity – it’s definitely out there and unique, and more than a touch disturbing. But director Pedro Almodovar (who is beloved and lauded and has several Oscar nominations and even a win, so of course this is the first one of his movies that I’ve seen) never flaunts the movie’s genre origins – even the movie’s most batshit plot element is underplayed, and with the time jumping structure it easily skips over what could have been the more horrific scenes in the film.

It’s also got a surprising (but small) sense of absurd humor, best exemplified with the sequence late in the first act when a man dressed as a tiger (for Carnival) more or less breaks into Banderas’ house, where his mother is employed as the live-in maid/housekeeper/voice of reason to Banderas. Again, without spoiling, he makes advances on Vera that he thinks will be reciprocated, and she DOES, albeit not for the reasons he expect. It’s very uncomfortably odd/silly in a way, and he keeps his tiger costume on the entire time, so it’s sort of an extended sight gag (and she never bothers to learn his name; for the rest of the movie she refers to him as “the tiger”).

Back to the structure for a second – if I had any real complaint it would be that certain questions are left unanswered, ones I can’t ask here without spoiling, but I can do one in inviso-text I guess (How did Vera’s vocal chords change? Hormones or not, they’re usually a dead giveaway for this sort of surgery). Some of the “6 months later” type stuff almost seems like an easy work-around to avoid answering such questions, and as the film is based on a book, I couldn’t help but wonder if those elements made more sense/were more fleshed out there. Also, Banderas has one opinion of Vera that changes, which seems out of character and even a bit confusing (inviso-text time – he seems to actually enjoy banging Vera – it’s almost like he forgot who she really was, i.e. someone he should hate) which also may have made a bit more sense with some more time or even a straightforward narrative where we see his feelings change over time, instead of trying to piece it together as we’re watching. Perhaps someone can edit the film in chronological order and see if his behavior feels a bit more natural.

Or maybe I’m just dumb, I dunno - in fact, halfway through the movie I realized I didn’t want to write up a review. You know me, slashers and zombies are more my speed when it comes to critiquing – I feel a little under-qualified to be appraising such “adult” fare (in a foreign language from a celebrated filmmaker I have no experience with, no less). But in a way that’s almost praise for the film – I really dug it just as a viewing experience, not as a “HMAD entry”. This wasn’t a chore; I would have been happy to go see this strange sounding movie that came highly recommended from friends (and at the New Bev, yay!), as opposed to say, Amityville Haunting or whatever, where I’m just watching it because I needed something to review for Thursday. And also, a big part of my enjoyment came from not knowing much about it, which is why I kept things vague here even though the movie has already come and gone in regular release. I wouldn’t go in expecting a horror movie by any means, but if you like offbeat dramas with disturbing elements and this wasn’t on your radar, by all means seek it out (legally!) and be as surprised as I was.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

The Devil Inside (2012)

JANUARY 6, 2012

GENRE: MOCKUMENTARY, POSSESSION, RELIGIOUS
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

Last night I complained about a giant chunk of my twitter feed essentially spoiling the ending of The Devil Inside (one of the offenders even asked “who” had done it, as if he wasn’t guilty), but after seeing it I realized they had inadvertently done me a service of sorts – maybe if I wasn’t prepared for it I would have been just as angry as they were, but it didn’t bother me, and I was able to more or less enjoy the flick with a few reservations, as opposed to downright hate it as many of them seemed to (haven’t read their reviews, but as with many of my peers, they seemingly wrote half of it in 140 character bursts).

Note – I will talk around the actual ending, but if you’re not on Twitter and haven’t heard anything else, you should choose whether or not to read on – you might be costing yourself some good ol’ fashioned indignation!

So basically, their problem is that the movie just cuts out at a point where it seems like a big climax is about to begin, before an on-screen epilogue tells you to visit a website and then an Asylum-esque SLOOOOOOOOW end credits sequence begins, which means this 85 minute movie is actually a 75 minute one. But I think the real problem isn’t the actual ending itself – it’s that the ad campaign focused on a subplot that is left unresolved, which makes the movie understandably feel incomplete. If you stand back and look at the movie as a whole, you realize that it’s actually about the two documentarians and the two priests they follow around – not the girl’s mother, and thus the fact that the mom’s story isn’t satisfyingly concluded isn’t THAT big of a deal – she was only in two or three scenes! The fates of the four real main characters are definitely resolved, so it's got one up on Last Exorcism.

Also, how I managed to watch TWO movies this week with misleading trailers, I have no idea. Can we PLEASE try to market the movies truthfully? If they’re not easy to sum up in two minute (or less) spots, that just means they are more interesting and less generic. Embrace that, don’t hide it.

Like last year’s underrated (but similarly flawed) The Rite, the movie is more about the exorcists than the ones possessed. Our actual heroes are a pair of priests who engage in “rogue exorcisms” when they feel they are warranted but are forbidden to act upon them by the church. The church doesn’t just do an exorcism for anyone who claims they’re possessed – they must undergo strenuous investigation and evaluation and get approved by the higher-ups (not the pope – that’d be kind of awesome though), and our guys rightfully think they’re too strict. However – and this is what the movie is actually about – they might have a point about being so strict, as we learn that maybe had our protagonists just left well enough alone, a lot fewer people would be dead. Certainly, a movie with the message “Maybe the church is right” isn’t going to go over well with everyone.

But it’s also an independently produced horror movie being put on thousands of screens by Paramount, which means that it’s another found footage movie (two of THOSE this week too!). The other two main characters are the ones making a documentary; Michael the camera operator isn’t seen too much (but plays more of a part than say, the guy who filmed [Rec]’s events), and our heroine, Isabella, whose mother is in an institution after a suspected possession. They’re not quite as interesting as Ben and David the priests, but it creates an interesting dynamic, with everyone having clashing goals: Isabella wants to help her mom, Michael wants to make a movie, Ben wants to prove himself right to the church, and David just seemingly wants everyone to be at peace. So many found footage movies lack genuine conflict amongst the characters beyond squabbling about whatever is happening at the time (Mike throwing away the map, for example), it’s nice to have that extra bit of dimensionality for a change.

In fact, as with the far more problematic Apollo 18, I’d argue that the verite approach is a handicap in some ways. Along with the constant “stop filming” issue (partially solved with a bunch of mounted cameras inside their car – a goofy workaround to say the least), the genre has become overcrowded – this is actually the 3rd or 4th “found footage” exorcism movie – and thus the audience has grown accustomed to cheap jump shocks (which the film offers, though not too many) in place of the more story and character-based horror that the film is actually going for. Also, the shaki-cam might turn off the older viewers who might be more interested in this kind of story (granted it was midnight, but I’m pretty sure I was the oldest person in the fairly packed crowd). That said, they did a fine job of recreating 1980s style news footage, and even left a couple of moments off-screen to keep up the realism – if they caught EVERYTHING of note it would be ridiculous. Also, without spoiling its actual contents, the anger over the ending is overclouding that it’s a terrific mini-setpiece in its own right, nearly justifying the choice to go with found footage on its own.

As with other religious (read: Catholic) based horror movies I’ve watched, I think my upbringing may also contribute to why I enjoyed it more than most. 200 days of the year I spent 6-7 hours a day looking at the icons and images, hearing about miracles and damnation and the Devil and whatever else. And then every Sunday (or Saturday afternoon) I’d be taken out of my preferred element – sitting around playing video games or watching horror movies, usually – to listen to a sermon and read about the same sort of stuff. Even though I don’t think about it too much anymore, you can’t spend that much time being exposed to something without it leaving an impression (especially during one’s formative years), so perhaps I just have a subconscious attachment to this sort of material. I mean, I’d probably really enjoy a horror movie that took place in the fascinating world of end credits design, too.

But to be fair, the movie DOES drop the ball in a few areas. In addition to the mother, there's another subplot regarding the Ben character that is left unexplained, and given the movie's super-short runtime I can't help but wonder if these elements (which would be dialogue driven) were excised in favor of a version that got to the scares more often. They also don't do enough with the "exorcism school" - a few more scenes there might have helped explain why Ben and David were so driven to go against their practices. In fact, I'd still love to see a whole movie centered around this exorcism school - even if it was a straight up drama, I think it would be kind of fascinating, seeing these guys train for a job that their superiors don't actually want them to do (but there's a dog-based jump scare! Can't get enough of those!).

However, I found a lot more here to like than not, so even with its problems I'd still count it as a win. It’s less schlocky than the trailers had led me to believe, and again, those same trailers are more to blame for the negative response (nearly the entire theater booed) than the film itself, which like Blair Witch Project tries to spin a new mythology in which the film is only part of the story (to a much less successful extent, admittedly). If you’ve read this far, I think you should check out the www.therossifiles.com site BEFORE you see the movie, as it gives you some back-story to the characters and some other little tidbits, but doesn’t actually “follow” anything from the film as the on-screen text seems to suggest. THEN go see the movie and make up your own mind!

What say you?

P.S. Kudos to Paramount for picking up another indie and giving it a wide release – I would love to see this sort of thing more often. Given that the film recouped its entire production budget just from the midnight screenings, perhaps we will. Get your as-yet undistributed indie movies in good shape, fellas!

PLEASE, GO ON...

Blu-Ray Review: Shark Night (2011)

JANUARY 6, 2012

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

Folks were pretty divided on Shark Night when it was (briefly) in theaters this past September; some hated the idiotic “revenge” plot and cookie cutter characters, others (like me) had a good time with what was essentially a traditional slasher movie except the bad guy used sharks instead of a knife or a machete. Along with the 3D effect and the fact that we hadn’t had a big screen, wide release horror movie all summer (the last one was Priest, which was more of an action movie anyway), it sort of hit the spot, not unlike a bottle of Bud Light on a hot summer day – satisfying for folks who have better things to do than worry about keeping it classy. So how does it fare at home, in the middle of winter and lacking the extra dimension?

Unsurprisingly, not as well. It’s still enjoyable, and it still has Katharine McPhee running around in a bikini and Josh Leonard having a grand old time as a redneck named Red (!) with pointed shark teeth, but it’s not quite as charmingly ridiculous on the second view. See, now I don’t have the element of surprise helping me along (with regards to the bad guy’s plot, plus a few other moments I won’t spoil if you haven’t seen it yet – judging by the box office, you haven’t), leaving me just with a PG-13 killer shark movie. There’s still some stuff to admire – the sharks start attacking pretty quickly once they get to the lake, and I liked that there was a variety: hammerheads, great whites, “cookie cutters”, etc, but as they say, “the thrill is gone”. This is pretty much a “one time only” kind of flick; not crazy enough to warrant too many repeat viewings, and certainly not deep enough that a 2nd viewing will clue you in on things you didn’t notice the first time around (unless you left before the end credits had concluded – that part hasn’t diminished one iota in my mind). There’s nothing wrong with that – not every movie is designed for repeat viewings – but it’s still kind of a bummer, because the killer shark genre certainly lacks diversity. Even if it’s not that great, I’d rather see another Shark Night-esque take on the genre than the umpteenth Jaws wannabe (no “close the beaches” subplot here!) – but it’s kind of hard to convince folks we need more of these when there isn’t a hell of a lot to say about the one we already got.

And, again, there isn’t a 3D option, and not just because I lack the equipment (my loan has 11 payments left – the month after, I’m buying a new TV to celebrate). No, for whatever reason, FOX has opted not to put out a 3D Blu-ray of the disc at all in Region 1 (looks like the UK has one), so even if you do have one of those nice 3DTVs you’re still going to be sighing as shark guts and pieces of an exploded boat come toward the screen but never “out” of it. Luckily David Ellis was wise enough not to overload the movie with such moments, but it will just make you miss the (quite good) 3D when they do appear in their now flattened glory. Worse, it’s not a particularly great transfer – the scene where the black guy and the male model dude (names escape me) try to escape on a jet-ski has the murkiest, oddly colored presentation I have ever seen on a Blu-ray, and many of the interior scenes suffer from washed out coloring and crushed blacks. The clarity/detail is good - you can count the hairs on Sara Paxton’s head if you wish - but the image is remarkably flat. I should note that this may be true of the 2D theatrical version as well though – I only saw it in 3D (where judging such things is impossible due to the glasses and the brighter bulb trying to compensate for it).

Oh, and no unrated cut, either. Maybe they just never shot gorier material, but I guess we will never know. It’s a shame – certainly this is the type of movie that would best be viewed with a few alcoholic beverages, yet they don’t provide the stuff people that are old enough to consume them will enjoy. Teenagers - if your parents are lax on your alcoholism but strict about the MPAA ratings, Shark Night is the movie for you!

The bonus features are no help, sadly. No commentary (no alternate audio track of any sort, in fact – there’s an audio menu but only one option?), no deleted scenes, no in depth making of… just four 4-5 minute fluff pieces that were probably created for the website or something. The only one worth a look is the one that shows that not all of the sharks were CGI creations – models and such were implemented just as often, and we see a bit of their design and how experts were consulted to ensure they had the details right. Then there’s a montage of all of the movie’s deaths, which is the sort of thing that is only worth it when the kills are super ridiculous and/or gory (think a typical Friday the 13th entry), but here it’s mostly just a bunch of folks being pulled under the surface and/or shots of bloodied water. Equally silly is a segment with a bunch of shark facts – some hilariously inane like “90% of shark attacks are on men”, followed by “Only 10% are on women” for those folks in the crowd who could figure out that complicated math equation on their own. Then there’s a look at Ellis, which unsurprisingly features a bunch of the cast and crew talking about how great he is. The spoiler-filled trailer and a digital copy round things out.

So I dunno. If you’ve already seen it, the sub-par transfer and lousy extras aren’t worth the cost of an encore, and even virgins aren’t given enough here to warrant a purchase. If you haven’t seen it yet, rent away – otherwise just hold on to your pleasant memories of the big screen/3D viewing (if you hated it then you probably haven’t read this far anyway), and pop in Deep Blue Sea instead. That one holds up no matter what!

What say you?

Movie: 5/10 (7/10 on first viewing, for the record)
AV: 6/10
Extras: 4/10
Overall: 5/10

PLEASE, GO ON...

The Amityville Haunting (2011)

JANUARY 5, 2012

GENRE: HAUNTED HOUSE, MOCKUMENTARY
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

Every now and then I am reminded of how much better some of my peers are when it comes to writing insightful stuff about horror movies. The other day, Devin wrote up an amazing analysis of Poltergeist, which not only brought up some amazing points/theories about the deeper meanings behind many of the film’s scenes and characters, but even basic stuff I never really picked up on (like that the fade to an empty kitchen was supposed to trick us into thinking that the Freeling family had moved out). However, I can take some comfort in knowing that most of the stuff I watch, such as The Amityville Haunting, doesn’t require any further analysis than what is directly on-screen and/or conveyed through direct dialogue.

Here’s what I don’t get about the Asylum’s “found footage” movies – there’s no excuse for being so lousy. I can forgive their I Am Omegas and Transmorphers for biting off a little more than they can chew and just kind of looking pathetic in general, because their inspiration comes from movies with blank check budgets. These, on the other hand, are ripped off from movies that were ALSO shot on small budgets and over a period of a few days. The two granddaddies of the genre (Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity) were shot in about a week each, for somewhere around 50k each. The thrills and scares were based on almost nothing – doors opening and footsteps in Paranormal, piles of rocks and a guy standing in the corner in Blair. So again, making a movie this terrible can’t simply be chalked up to “We didn’t have the money/time to do anything better”.

And like Gacy House, this one drags a real story through the mud, in this case obviously the Amityville story. Now, the Lutz family probably made up most of their claims, but no one can deny the true story of the DeFeo family, where Ronald killed his parents and siblings (6 victims in all) one night in the 1970s at their home on Ocean Avenue. Most of the sequels ignored all of this, focusing on unrelated haunted house nonsense (sometimes chalking it up to evil lamps from the house!), but this one directly name-checks the DeFeo family and, according to the IMDb credits (the movie itself doesn’t have any), the ghost is none other than Ronald himself. There’s also a ghostly kid named John Matthews (or Matthew, it depends on the scene I guess); I have no idea who the hell he is supposed to be. But hey, they’re all dead except for the guy who killed them, so who cares about turning their tragedy into a piece of crap DTV movie, right? Stay classy, Asylum.

By not crediting the actors (only a few of them have been entered on IMDb), they can spare themselves the ridicule, since they’re all pretty much terrible, particularly the two males. Unfortunately, they’re the ones with the most presence; the father is often the focus of his son’s camera, and the lad turns it on himself once a night for a sort of “wrap up” of the day’s events, though sometimes what he says doesn’t match up to what we just saw, so I guess there’s some value to them (making the movie seem clumsier than it already is?). He’s also atrocious, possibly the worst child acting performance I’ve seen since Jake Lloyd’s turn in Phantom Menace. But the dad “owns” the movie’s most jaw-droppingly terrible acting moment, which is also his final one in the movie – maybe they shot in sequence and by then he just didn’t have the energy or care to even TRY to give a realistic performance in the scene? Either way, it’s the sort of bit that can actually kill a movie, so it’s a good thing the whole thing sucked up until that point anyway.

Also, for a movie that tries REALLY REALLY hard to sell itself as a totally real “found footage” movie (again, no credits, and the packaging says over and over that it’s 100% real and such), they sure as hell didn’t put much effort into fooling anyone with what is on-screen. Even excusing the obvious – bad “ghost” FX, for example – even someone with the most basic knowledge of the story knows that the house was on a river, which doesn’t appear here. They do a pretty good job hiding the palm trees in the exterior shots (as with all Asylum movies, this was shot in Los Angeles), but the architecture of the house is completely wrong as well. Hilariously they tell us that the house has enough bedrooms for everyone, which would mean four, but we only ever see two of them (and two doors in the hallway). Ironically, the only thing they get “right” is probably an accident – the famous windows are nowhere to be seen (they’re on the poster of course), but that would actually be true if this was indeed the real house, since they have been removed/remodeled so they wouldn’t attract sightseers. I should also note that anyone who has followed the case knows that the owner who bought the house in 1997 just sold it last year, contradicting this movie’s claims that six families have lived in it in the past 10 years and none of them lasted more than a few weeks before moving back out. They also botch the Lutz story, claiming that they were there for 2 years when in reality they left after 28 days.

And that's even more interesting when you consider that the movie is basically a remake of the original (or the remake), albeit with the 1st person perspective and set in modern day. There's the family of five (with two kids much younger than their sibling), they buy the house because money is tight and they don't want to pass up the opportunity for a full sized house that they can actually afford, the dad kind of goes nuts, the little girl does spooky things... you get the idea. It's probably no surprise that the best part of the movie is the largely unrelated opening, where four kids break into the house to party and get killed roughly three minutes later. In fact, if they stuck with these kids for the whole movie (maybe some sort of real-time approach), it might have been OK - at least we haven't seen that Amityville movie two or three times already.

There’s also the sound mix, which is too “good” for what a kid is shooting with his camcorder. Everyone sounds perfectly clear, even when they’re whispering in the next room (his zoom function apparently improves their sound too). At one point the dad sets up a cheap little security camera in the corner of the living room and even that produces crystal clear sound, when in reality those things don’t record sound at all. You gotta love that they seemingly put effort into making this thing sound “wrong” – if they just used actual camcorder sound it would improve the movie’s attempts at authenticity.

Speaking of authenticity, you gotta love the idiotic notion that at least THREE people would die in the house over the course of a week and yet the only police presence is a uniformed officer who stops by to fill out a report. Even with the alleged notoriety of the property, I highly doubt that the police wouldn’t be hauling the adults off to jail after a delivery man, a neighbor, and a family friend all died in about as many days. Hell the delivery man doesn’t even seem to inspire any sort of investigation at all; the kid films everything nonstop yet after the dude takes a tumble (leaving a giant pool of blood at the foot of the stairs) we just cut to the mom being kind of upset about it. SO REAL.

Only at the very end does it finally start getting a bit entertaining, but that’s a given on pretty much any haunted house movie – the subtle stuff is gone and now the ghost is on a rampage. The little girl – the best performer in the movie, incidentally – finally gets a little more to do than talk to “John”, and a character is given full body burn makeup that’s actually kind of freaky. Needless to say, it’s too little too late, but at least there’s SOME sort of “reward” for slogging through this inane shit.

The only extra is a brief featurette that continues to try to sell the movie’s realism, focusing on the guys who have been tasked with going over the footage and assembling it into a narrative, as well as a few experts and a psychic that is obscured/given a distorted voice, so the ghosts that watch this thing don’t know what she looks like, I guess. I’ll give them this much, when they commit to a plan they stick to it. They BOTCH it, and miserably, but they never use their failure as an excuse to drop the act and out the “creators” of these things so we know who to blame.

What say you?

P.S. I didn’t know this was Asylum until after I rented it; had I known I probably would have waited a few weeks as two Asylums in one week is just too much to ask of a man. I’m still kind of surprised that they have permission to use the name – I would think MGM and/or Dimension would have that locked up pretty tight by now.

PLEASE, GO ON...

The Hunters (2011)

JANUARY 4, 2012

GENRE: HORROR?, THRILLER
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

At least once a year I watch a movie that is really a stretch for horror, and only once or twice have I put my foot down and watched something else for the day rather than write a review. Well, we’re only four days into the year, but hopefully nothing else will be as “on the fence” as The Hunters, which I would almost add to that “No way!” pile if not for two scenes straight out of any survival horror movie of the past 10 years, and an ad campaign that pushes the horror angle more than most legit horror movies!

To be fair it looks like most of this is Lionsgate’s doing; an older (non LG) trailer I found on Youtube (I put them both below) is a bit closer to showing the movie that it actually is – a tale of intersecting characters/storylines that intersect in tragedy at a creepy fort (it’s Crash meets The Keep!), but even that one basically makes it look like a survival thriller. Still, it’s nothing compared to the Gate’s trailer, which oversells Dianna Agron’s presence and makes it look like a Hostel type tale of a pair of lovers heading to a secluded getaway and running afoul of a group of murderers. The synopsis on the back of the DVD is even worse: talking about a GROUP of friends going back to the fort that they played in as kids, only to discover bodies and blood and then the titular hunters. In other words, generic but potentially enjoyable B movie fun, right?

Well there’s no group; Agron and her boyfriend go to a place that HE knows about, and they discover nothing – our hero finds them more or less right after they get there and then one of them is killed moments later. And that’s a spoiler, because they don’t arrive until the film’s FINAL 20 MINUTES, which would be ridiculous even for a 75 minute Asylum thing but is borderline offensive for a film that runs just under 2 hours. And, as you can probably guess by now, Agron isn’t even in it that much (dammit); her screentime is probably 15 minutes at best, and she’s just a peripheral character that never interacts with most of the cast.

No, the movie is really about the collision course between our hero cop (Chris Briant, who also directed) and the hunters, four men who aren’t exactly out to nail a few deer. As with Hostel 2, we get to know two of them – one’s a depressed family man, the other an unhappy jerk, and we get the idea that these “hunts” are pretty much the only time in their lives where they feel in control or whatever. Meanwhile, Briant’s character is newly assigned to the police force in the town where the Fort is located, and he seems to think that it might be connected to an unusually high number of disappearances, but his captain warns him not to get involved and assigns him a lame case involving making sure a witness is kept safe until his important trial.

Needless to say everyone ends up at the fort, which could have been exciting had they all arrived around the same time. There’s a serial killer there as well (that’s the horror stuff), and maybe if the cops, the hunters, and Agron and her boyfriend all had to band together to survive during the killer’s rampage or something, it might have been interesting. But instead, Briant is the only one that links them – the killer doesn’t interact with the hunters much, most of the hunters are dead (via Briant) by the time Agron arrives, etc. There’s a not too surprising twist about what one of the hunters does for a living, but otherwise there isn’t nearly enough intersecting in this “intersecting thriller”. It reminded me a bit of Medium Raw, in fact, where they had all of these characters and a potentially exciting situation, but needlessly kept them all apart for the entire running time. And hey, that one was directed by its main actor too!

Briant’s character also makes little sense – he’s supposedly an ex-soldier, but yet he doesn’t seem to be able to hit the broad side of a barn when firing his weapon. Ditto the hunters – what kind of hunter can’t shoot a guy who is pinned down below him? Briant and the asshole husband hunter have a shootout where they are seemingly only like 50 feet apart but neither of them manage to land a shot in their first dozen or so attempts, even though they aren’t even really moving! Also, he for some reason decides to have the guy he’s supposed to be protecting meet him at the fort; I guess it’s just an excuse to go there against his captain’s orders, but is following a lead really worth potentially getting an important witness killed (which, spoiler, is exactly what happens)? Couldn’t he just tell the guy to meet him at Denny’s or something AFTER he looked around the place he suspected was crawling with murderers? I can accept outlandish coincidences and bad plotting in a stupid slasher movie, because I’m just there to have fun – but if you’re going to make this dour, allegedly character-driven thriller, then I expect a slightly more logical script.

All that said, I’ll give it points for being a bit different – horror or not there aren’t too many movies like this, where we see a tragic tale unfold through the eyes of the police, the criminal, and the innocent victim. With a tighter, more balanced script (again, Agron’s role is far too small for her character to really measure, and her boyfriend might as well be an anonymous extra) this could have been something really cool, but instead it’s mostly just frustrating, because I can see what Briant and screenwriter Michael Lehman were trying to do, and that they weren’t interested in making a movie as generic as the one Lionsgate ended up trying to sell us, but alas, they missed their mark.

The disc’s only extra besides the insultingly misleading trailer is a making of that runs just under 20 minutes. It’s half in French and (sigh) features Agron as if she was the film’s primary star, but the other actors get to talk, as does Briant and a producer who of course stresses that this is a psychological thriller drama, not a horror movie. And for once he’s actually correct – it’s too bad his movie got picked up by the most shameless studio in Hollywood. IFC or Magnolia might not have had as much money to offer, or a guarantee of shelf space at Blockbuster – but they’d at least have sold the potential audience on what The Hunters actually was. Sorry about that, fellas! You can always sue them like Jesse Eisenberg is (funnily enough, the Camp Hell trailer plays at the top of the disc), but hopefully you just take the time to refine your ideas into a more satisfying script when it comes time to mount the next project.

What say you?

The original trailer:And the Lionsgate:

PLEASE, GO ON...

11/11/11 (2011)

JANUARY 3, 2012

GENRE: CULT, RELIGIOUS, SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: STREAMING (NETFLIX INSTANT)

A few weeks back, I began harassing folks on Twitter who admitted to downloading an incomplete workprint of Darren Bousman’s 11-11-11 off of various torrent sites, which led to some amusing exchanges. But the best was someone who had “checked in” to his film via GetGlue but was actually (and possibly legally) watching The Asylum’s 11/11/11, which as you can see, merely replaced the – with a /, making it a fairly honest and easy mistake to make. I gotta say, it’s pretty much the most shameless thing they’ve done yet; even When A Killer Calls switched up the longest word!

Oddly it’s not much like the other film; there’s a bit of the “I see the number 11-11 everywhere” nonsense that engulfed Bousman’s version, but otherwise it’s just a ripoff of their own 666: The Child, and thus another Omen ripoff by proxy. This time they toss a bit of Rosemary’s Baby in there though; while “Donald” only had a couple of disciples in 666, there’s a whole slew of folks here who are out to help him. But again, like 666, they’re largely represented by a fake (and hot) nanny who encourages his bad behavior, in scenes that are so similar I wondered if I should have spread the two viewings apart some – should I just copy paste my review of that movie? It’s not like I’ve discovered new things to say about this material in the past week.

But the extra personnel helps, especially since there seem to be a number of folks who are looking to stop the kid from reaching his 11th birthday (on, you guessed it, 11/11/11), which more or less puts the kid and his parents in the middle of a war between the two factions. The kid doesn’t do a damn thing in the movie until the very end (he barely even talks), and his mom spends most of the movie in bed or otherwise off-screen. That leaves his dad, who doesn’t want him to have a particular book but it takes him three tries to finally get rid of it for good. Seriously, at one point he just tosses it in the kitchen trash, as if that would stop a kid who had already taken it back from its first “disposal”. And this is our hero? We don’t even need to invoke Gregory Peck - even Liev Schrieber would scoff at this clown.

So these folks take care of the movie’s action, which is pretty decent for an Asylum thing. I particularly liked the bee attack in a police car, complete with a crash and an explosion, as well as the surprisingly dark ending, which actually deviates from the usual pattern of these things. They truly botch one kill though – there’s a guy on his bike riding away from the bad guys, and one leans out of his car’s window and whacks him with a shovel. Or at least, that’s what’s SUPPOSED to be happening. In reality, the director’s attempt at a forced perspective shot fails miserably – the shovel/bad guy are clearly like ten feet away from the guy’s head when the swing “connects”. Worse, when he falls to the ground and the bad guy comes up to finish him off with a shovel decapitation, we don’t even really see anything! 666: The Child was just as generic in the storytelling department but at least it didn’t rip us off when it came to the kills.

It’s also a bit lazy when it comes to the whole “11-11 is everywhere” thing, not to mention ridiculous. There are a lot of shots of clocks with that time, and again the whole thing builds toward his 11th birthday on 11-11-11, but others are just really strained. 9-11 is brought up a couple of times, along with “that doesn’t really work” factoids like “66 people died on the flight. 6+5=11.” My favorite has to be the never really explained 6 ‘/’ marks on the wall, which are attributed to raccoons – the things are at eye level on an interior wall! So a raccoon jumped up, made a few marks, and then jumped again to make the rest? Or was it a giant, 6 clawed raccoon? Either way, at one point the damn things bleed, which is cool but makes zero sense.

Speaking of bloody 11s, the opening title sequence, like with many Asylum movies, is rushed through, lasting under a minute. As the names come and go, 6 vertical blood drips form the title of 11-11-11 – but the animation finishes before they get through all of the credits, so it awkwardly starts over (and runs faster) so it can form again while those last 5-6 credits race by. You gotta love that the Asylum is so hellbent on getting their product out that they won’t even take the MAYBE five minutes it would take to fix the speed of the drippings so it timed correctly. Then again, since I’m probably the only one who noticed, I’m guessing it wasn’t worth fixing. Like they owe me any favors?

In short, if you want the Asylum’s lovably silly brand of cheapo horror, you have better options, and if you SPECIFICALLY want an Asylum version of The Omen, then you still have better options (well, one: 666: The Child). Add that to the whole “based on an arbitrary release date” factor, and you have a movie that’s pretty worthless (though relatively well made) even by their standards.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Don't Let Him In (2011)

JANUARY 2, 2012

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

Since it’s so short, I don’t know how much I can possibly write about Don’t Let Him In; its 79 minute runtime includes slow/spaced out end credits, an opening title sequence, an unnecessary closing cast roll, and even an outtake. Add in the fact that it’s somewhat built around a twist that is revealed just a bit past the halfway mark and that it’s the sort of movie that’s enjoyable enough to watch but largely dissipates from your brain as soon as it’s done, and there really isn’t a lot to write a review around. Plus, come on, we all just want to get back to Skyrim anyway.

As I said, it’s a watchable flick, with some surprise deaths and a morbid sense of humor - an out of nowhere outdoor art class scene features a terrific punchline. It also has the novelty of presenting a “friends go to a cabin in the woods” scenario but populating it with adults – one of the guys looks like he’s about 40! It’s good to know that grown men and women are just as susceptible to surprise slashers as the usual teens and college kids. Also, the resident asshole guy ISN’T a friend or even wanted there – no one seems to like him much but he tags along due to ulterior motives. So many of these movies have a guy that is just a giant asshole and you can’t understand why they brought him along or why they even hung out with him in the first place (on occasion, some just acknowledge that they’re using him – not horror but I think of Stifler in the American Pie movies as a good example), so it’s a bit refreshing when they turn it into a plot point.

But it’s just so weightless, with barely enough plot to cover a Tales From The Crypt episode, let alone a feature film. I will try hard not to get into spoiler territory, but the basic plot is figuring out who the “Tree Surgeon” (a serial killer who has been working in the area) is, and there’s really only two options. So when one of them is canceled out around the halfway mark, it leaves little surprise to the movie. And it's not like Crawl, which also had a fairly thin story but made up for it with some terrific suspense set-pieces and top notch directorial work (plus a kick-ass score). Only the number of deaths gives it any sort of suspense, but it’s not exciting or creative enough to set it apart from other movies that have more fleshed out ideas, or at least some personality.

Some of those other movies might look better too. I was kind of shocked to discover that this was shot on 35mm, at least until I watched the bonus features. There are a number of “hidden” CGI effects in the movie (adding things like blood on someone’s knuckles or removing an ugly door frame), and the director keeps talking about the color timing and such, so it seems by the time they finished running this thing through all the filters and compression for FX, it sucked all of the “film” look out of it, and instead just looks like a slightly above average digital movie. Kind of a shame, really – it’s a low budget production in a world where even the folks who can afford film are opting for digital instead – it would have been awesome to champion this production as why 35 or even 16mm could AND should be an option for low budget movies, but I doubt anyone would be won over by the results shown here.

Then again that might just be a DVD transfer. Director Kelly Smith (who also co-wrote and produced) is admirably honest about his (and his film’s) shortcomings on the bonus features (more on the “making of” than the commentary), but he has nothing but praise for the film’s look and for those who helped him achieve it. And the commentary is being recorded as the film is just finishing its post-production process, so maybe someone messed up at the DVD house?

Anyway, the extras are in some ways better than the movie. Smith’s 40 minute “making of” (which is just a long interview that he seemed to have conducted himself) goes through pretty much every facet of production – even post-production is broken down into color timing, sound mixing, etc. He admits that the script probably could have used another week’s worth of work, and is charmingly upfront about how naïve he was when he embarked on his first feature after feeling a bit limited in the short film world (he claims he didn’t even know what a gaffer was until he got on set and met one). Even if the movie itself isn’t particularly memorable, you gotta love his attitude – hell, I’ve seen far worse movies from guys who apparently knew what they were doing. There’s also a quick rundown of the various digital FX in the film, many of which escaped my eye (the blood splatter was obvious, but the blood on the knife was added too? Good work). On the commentary this is explained; the chosen makeup guy had to leave the production and his replacement wasn’t quite prepared (a running theme on the movie, it seems), so things were rushed or skipped. The commentary is riddled with little explanations (excuses?), which again makes it a bit refreshing – at least they can admit that the movie’s not perfect. Smith is a bit too obsessed with name-dropping the other things the crew has worked on, but otherwise it’s a solid track, re-affirming that my insistence on listening to them is not a fool’s errand. Sure, most are pointless, but ones like this that benefit from honesty and a lack of pretense are worth slogging through the others to find.

So I apologize for keeping things vague, but as the minor surprises in the paper thin plot are pretty much the only thing the movie has going for it, I’d feel sort of guilty spoiling them even with a warning (especially since it’s new – if this was an actual 1970s movie (Smith was influenced by a few) I’d be OK with it, but it just hit DVD today). It’s a decent time-killer and, again, I admire how it came to exist, but it lacks that je ne sais quoi that would elevate it to something I’d champion.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Aaah! Zombies! (2007)

JANUARY 1, 2012

GENRE: COMEDIC, ZOMBIE
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

Tempting the fates, I once again opted to start the New Year with a horror comedy, as I did in 2011 with the mostly lousy Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Undead (though I didn’t realize the coincidence until later). Luckily, Aaah! Zombies! (formerly the far grimmer Wasting Away) turned out to be a pretty solid zom-com, delivering a decent hit/miss ratio regarding the laughs and a likable, game cast to boot. But even more impressive was how it creatively approached a fairly standard zombie outbreak story.

As is often the case, military tomfoolery has resulted in zombie-making serum getting into the wrong hands, with innocent and fun-loving young folks caught in the middle. There’s an obvious Return Of The Living Dead influence here, except the punks have been replaced with slacker types. And if writer/director Matthew Kohnen (and co-writer Sean Kohnen) weren’t ambitious, this could be a pretty forgettable flick if that was all there was to it. However, at its core is a pretty ingenious idea – what if the movie was told from both points of view?

When we’re seeing things from the human’s point of view, the movie is black & white and the zombies are the typically veiny/drooling lumbering types. However, during every major sequence, the perspective shifts, and we see things (in color) from the zombies’ point of view. To them, they are still coherent and don’t even look that bad apart from whatever injuries they have endured along the way, nor do they really mean any harm. Even better/funnier, the human characters move around in double speed and have chipmunk/tape on fast forward voices. I was actually kind of shocked at how well the gimmick worked; it wasn’t until the movie was past the hour mark that it started to run out of gas, and by then they were more or less sticking with the zombie POV approach anyway.

I also loved the character of Nick (Colby French), who is also a zombie but has ties with the military and may know the answers. His arc is wonderful; we know he’s not exactly a level 5 clearance type but as we learn more about him he becomes more sympathetic (and thus more human, but by saying that I sound like I’m writing press notes, so let’s ignore it). He’s also part of the movie’s best laugh, when we discover where the toxic serum was supposed to go in the first place (it’s remarkably horrible). Even in some really great zombie films I don’t give a shit about any of the heroes, so to be endeared to one who was actually a zombie was a pretty nice surprise.

Two things nagged at me though. One was the bulk of the 3rd act, which centered on a dumb “talking disembodied head” subplot and a pretty lame climax that sidelined the movie’s central character (Tim, who was like our Dante while Matthew Davis inhabited the Randal role) for too much of the action. Again, the gimmick had kind of run its course by then, so it would have been really great to have a really inventive climax or at least a top notch exciting one to make up for it. Instead we just get a mostly off-screen attack, followed by an abrupt “six months later” type scene that doesn’t really wrap up any of the character storylines.

The other was that the Kohnen’s neglected to milk their gimmick for all it was worth. There’s a goldmine of comedic, stand-alone scenes that could revolve around the “human POV vs zombie POV” approach, but those opportunities are missed. There’s a surprising and unfortunate lack of supporting characters; Richard Riehle disappears for large chunks and Tracey Walter only has a single scene – there should have been more characters like theirs. Not necessarily played by names, but just others to interact with in some way. For example, think of the Johnstown sequence in Dawn of the Dead (where “those rednecks are probably enjoying the whole thing”) – how awesome would it be to have this sort of stand-alone sequence with new characters/new situations and problems to tackle with the two POV approach? Instead, we’re always with the same five people throughout, and by the time they’ve added a few zombies to their roster, it’s a bit too late in the narrative for such diversions.

Speaking of that scene – unless I missed something, it seems they broke their own rule, as our hero zombies converse with humans for quite a while like nothing’s unusual, and bowl over one of the girls – it’s only after a victor has been decided that the non-zombie folks notice anything’s wrong with them. But the scene is largely set to “Take The Skinheads Bowling”, so I guess I can forgive them. Also, the opening “evolution of man” animation is so good that I can pretty much forgive anything in the movie.

I am less forgiving about the lack of extras on the disc though! All that’s there is a music video, which is admittedly a fun spot with a catchy tune (and it’s sort of a theme song!), but that’s it? A video I can watch on Youtube? I would have loved a commentary – not only are they the rare zom-com filmmakers with a genuinely smart idea behind their movie, but they’re in some interesting LA locales (like by that bridge that Jack was going to jump off on Lost!) and even their CGI effects are pretty good. In other words, it would probably be a good commentary to listen to, but alas. Not even a damn trailer on this disc. You go to hell, Level 33!

What say you?

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