No Tell Motel (2012)

NOVEMBER 12, 2012

GENRE: BREAKDOWN, GHOST
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

Folks ask me often why I'm quitting HMAD in a few months, and since I hate repeating myself, I think from now on I'll merely instruct them to rent No Tell Motel, which should answer the question handily. If it was just the watching, I could probably keep going, but writing the review after is the problem - I just can't think of anything else to say about all of these generic horror flicks. Not that I haven't seen worse, but really, the only reason I made it to the end of this was because I "had" to so I could write up this review for y'all and fulfill my daily promise. Not really the best use of anyone's time.

At times I swore I had actually watched the movie before, as it dealt with a group of five kids who experience road trouble (their motorhome flips over) and end up at a strange location, in this case an abandoned old motel. As the film progresses, everyone reveals a secret about themselves (drug addict! cutter! etc!) and I once again watch a film where I don't understand how any of the characters were friends prior to the film's beginning. Conflict works best when the people DON'T know each other (Night of the Living Dead) or when it comes after we've spent some time seeing how close/friendly everyone is. But here, as in far too many modern horror films about a group of high school/college age folks, everyone in the circle seems to actively hate one another, and if not we will find out that they SHOULD.

For example, our heroine buys a pregnancy test early on and mentions getting black out drunk on Halloween. We're supposed to assume it was with her boyfriend, but there's a vagueness to it, and then later his brother expresses feelings for her. And then, at around the one hour mark, he tells her/us what we already figured out - he was the one who got her pregnant in her blacked out state. So yay, we also have a rapist in the mix. Worse, no one in the movie (including the heroine) acts like a human being - even after she is told she was raped, she mostly just seems annoyed, as if he told her it was him that took the last Hot Pocket or something. And this comes after her best friend is killed, another huge deal that she doesn't seem to get too worked up about beyond simply saying that she's upset. I'm not sure if she's just a weak actress or wasn't well directed (or, like me, simply didn't care about anything in the script) but since the story weighs so heavily on people facing up to their mistakes and taking responsibility for their actions, it would have been nice to buy them as real people instead of cardboard cutouts.

The ghost scenes (or three dimensional flashbacks, I guess) were oddly directed as well, with present day characters standing near the ghosts without any sort of effect to differentiate what was happening in the present and what was in the past. So our heroine will watch part of the backstory from a few feet away (like Lisa Zane seeing the flashbacks in Freddy's Dead) but there's no transition or color shift to show us the change; it just looks like the flashback characters are ignoring her. It's especially problematic when the script opts for a "history repeats itself" climax, with present day characters inhabiting the roles of those in the past, shot exactly the same. Change the lighting or something at least, jeez.

I will give it this much: it doesn't waste time, which at first seems like a good thing before you realize that the plot sort of NEEDS you to have some sort of attachment to the characters in order to be invested in the proceedings. But still: they crash in the first 5 minutes or so, plus someone gets hit by a car in a manner much like Gage Creed. And one of the five is dead before long, so you can't accuse the movie of taking too long to get going. Perhaps a Lost-style series of flashbacks could have helped to flesh out their backstories a bit, and then cut down on the repetitive "looking around the motel"/"Where is ____?" type scenes that make up the bulk of the 2nd act. I don't deny that there's a decent idea somewhere in here, but the execution always falls under one of two modes: lifeless or clunky.

And can we give ghostly little children a rest for a while? You've actually managed to kill their inherent creepiness due to omnipresence. How about ghost teenagers, like Victor Pascow (sorry for all the Pet Sematary references; I don't know why it keeps popping in my head) or that one stalker guy in the Twilight movies? Those are due for a revival, I think. Give little girls with white dresses and sunken eyes a break.

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Vamps (2012)

NOVEMBER 11, 2012

GENRE: COMEDIC, VAMPIRE
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

Considering the popularity of vampires these days, and the fact that it reunites the director and star of Clueless, I would have thought Vamps would have gotten an actual theatrical release instead of the two screen writeoff Anchor Bay had given it a mere 10 days before its DVD street date. And hell, it's not even that bad, so I guess I'll just have to chalk it up as another example of how baffling the current distribution system is and why I'm basically rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic when it comes to my dedication to traditional theatrical releases/viewing.

Anyway, Vamps is not aimed at 32 year old male horror fans, so I can't really complain much about the weak jokes or terrible FX during its one (ONE!) real vampire fight scene. I would hope that Amy Heckerling would be a bit above some of the hack one-liners (I swear this is at least the THIRD vamp-com I've seen where the bad vampire eats a Chinese person and then cracks a joke about being hungry again a half hour later), but then again this is only her 3rd movie SINCE Clueless (which is rather shocking), so maybe she's just a bit out of the loop. And I knew going in that the movie was more of a rom-com than a vampire tale, so the rather half-assed villain subplot was no surprise - if anything I was surprised she had a scene in between the one where she was introduced and the one where she becomes an antagonist.

No, the focus here is the friendship and romantic subplots between Alicia Silverstone and Krysten Ritter, best friends and vampires who live in New York, sleeping all day and dividing their nighttime up between their job (cleaning at the hospital), going to clubs, and in Ritter's case, taking night courses. Ritter is only about 40 (she got turned in the 80s), but Silverstone was changed in 1840, something Ritter doesn't know for reasons that never really made sense to me. A huge chunk of the humor comes from Silverstone's inability to speak in modern day lingo or use iPhones or whatever, so Ritter's character busts her balls (what's the female equivalent of that phrase, anyway?) about her age half the time anyway - why pretend to be older but not THAT much older?

Anyway, Ritter meets a cute guy in class and they fall in love, which causes problems because he is a descendant of Van Helsing and his father (Clueless alum Wallace Shawn) is a government agent obsessed with finding vampires. Meanwhile, Silverstone runs into her boyfriend from the 60s, who is now married to a woman that is dying of cancer. It's possible even the teens the movie is aimed at will see how this will all play out the instant these subplots are introduced, but it still coasts along on the charm/chemistry of its two leads, the colorful supporting cast (Malcolm McDowell is particularly amusing as a Ukrainian vamp with a penchant for knitting hideous sweaters), and the occasional good line. When a supporting character vampire is found dead, the heroes learn that he was scheduled to have a Time Warner employee stop by his place, prompting this exchange:

Someone: "Can Time Warner just burst into your place and kill you?" Someone else: "Yeah man, they're awful."

I dunno, compared to the Chinese food line it's pretty much comedy gold. Some of the vamp-centric gags are good too, like Ritter floating an inch above the ground while in view of the public because she doesn't want to get her new shoes ruined, or an unseen vampire friend dying because of a tragic daylight savings mishap. Much like Ritter "flying" down the street, it's JUST enough effort to keep it afloat without ever aiming really high.

That said, it does have a surprisingly poignant (if somewhat lost in the film's excess of subplots and characters) through-line of how much the world has changed before Silverstone's eyes. There's a wonderful bit where she recalls all of the different businesses that have set up shop in this one particular spot in New York, and the end finds her reminiscing about the different incarnations of Times Square over the years. "Being young has gotten old", she says at one point, and I think that's the reason teens should watch the flick, especially with Twilight glorifying the idea of being immortal. Especially nowadays; the world changes so fast that even those growing up with it can have trouble keeping up, so it's nearly impossible for Silverstone's 200 year old character to adapt.

Speaking of the technology - the movie was shot in 2010 but Heckerling was oddly prescient on one detail: at one point a character walks in and announces that he just got the brand new iPad mini, a product that was just released last week in the real world. Good call, and excellent timing for its release, as people who don't know how movies work will probably just assume it was shot recently. That will also be a benefit to the film's editing, which can be rather jarring at times - there were at least three occasions where a conversation was clearly chopped in half, with a character's reaction and next line "sort of" fitting what was just said but was in all likelihood a response to a different line that was cut (along with a few others). It's a short film with a ton of characters, many of whom barely appear; the great Larry Wilmore is on hand and doesn't even get to deliver a joke. Shawn's character also seems a bit short-changed, though we do get one nice scene between him and Silverstone - same as Clueless, the two have an unusually winning chemistry, so it's a shame that it wasn't exploited more.

But don't look for any potential deleted footage on Anchor Bay's DVD; it's as barebones as they come. Much like Silverstone, it's been hard for me to deal with the change - AB used to be a company mostly dedicated to putting out special editions of acquired horror titles, and now they distribute films theatrically and put out DVDs that don't even include the film's trailer. The transfer is fine, but I still miss when a new Anchor Bay release meant you got your money's worth when it came to the content. Screw vampirism, I just want a time machine.

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The Human Race (2012)

NOVEMBER 10, 2012

GENRE: SURVIVAL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (FESTIVAL SCREENING)

One of my all time favorite books is Stephen King's "The Long Walk", which was originally released under his Richard Bachman pseudonym. In it, 100 men and teenaged boys volunteer to be part of "The Walk", in which they merely walk from Maine to Massachusetts, with the catch being if they slow under 4mph or leave the road, they will be shot to death (after two warnings). And since a movie version is seemingly cursed (several have attempted and gotten nowhere; the last was Frank Darabont, who hasn't mentioned it much in at least four years), I was excited about The Human Race, as it sounded somewhat similar but with a touch of Saw for good measure.

See, here, the racers aren't volunteers - they're seemingly teleported to the track, with the rules explained to them moments before they are to begin racing. Also, instead of just a point A to point ? (the Walk ends when the 2nd last walker dies; it could end before they even get to New Hampshire; it might stretch to Connecticut or beyond - we're told it never has), the runners are on a circuit, and rather than the "no stopping/slowing down" rule, if a runner is lapped a third time, they are killed. Of course, this puts writer/director Paul Hough into more of a corner than King - there doesn't seem to be anything to prevent the whole lot of them from merely walking slowly as a group, so everyone has to panic and eventually turn on each other. There's a morbidly hilarious scene where one of the runners - a marathon winner! - laps a bunch of scattered runners for their 3rd time, leaving a trail of exploded heads and corpses in his wake.

Hough also has a great fakeout (spoiler for first 5 minutes ahead!), as we first meet a girl who has the makings of a typical heroine - her sister has just died of the same cancer that claimed her mother, and now she has it too. However, her latest tests show that it has gone into remission, and just as she goes out to presumably celebrate, she is taken to the track... where she becomes the first to die. A bit later we get a similar flashback to tell us about our real heroes, best friends/war veterans Justin and Eddie, the latter of which lost his leg in the war and is thus an unlikely candidate to win what's essentially a running race. However, Eddie (and the actor who plays him, Eddie McGee) is quite capable, and handles running AND fight scenes just as well as anyone else. Any notion that it would seem far-fetched that a guy with only one leg could serve as the favorite to win is quickly vanquished.

There are also a pair of hearing impaired characters, who speak with (subtitled) sign language and are sort of the backup protagonists. Their flashback shows us that the guy of the pair is cynical, and the girl (neither of them are named, if I recall) wants to convince him that there is good in the world if you look for it, which of course will have an ironic payoff later. Without getting into specifics, it's obvious that there can be only one winner, and that not everyone will play fair. And kudos to Hough for having disabled characters presented less than saintly; personally, I think there's no better way to show us that they're just like everyone else than by having them as heroes and villains.

It's also well paced; I was a bit worried that the circuit would mean a lot of repetition and us getting sick of seeing the same areas over and over, but they found a way around it thanks to extended scenes inside the three structures along the path (a house, a prison, and a church), a few more flashbacks, and careful use of a few distinctive spots along the way. There's a long, creepy tunnel that Hough puts to good use a couple of times (under different contexts), and enough general paths in between to keep the scenery from getting too stale. Plus, with each new circuit, there's another batch of littered corpses to mix it up a bit. In short, it's a vast improvement on the terrible Death Race remake, where I was sick of seeing that track by the halfway point.

One blight, apart from a few clunky scene transitions and edits, is the frequency that they use digital replacement and blood for the head 'splosions. Since that's pretty much how everyone dies (with one gruesome, mean-spirited and thus hilarious exception), I DID grow tired of one sight - the detached pixelation on yet another noggin being blown apart. Maybe someday the techno-wizards will perfect digital blood, and a way to CGI what Dick Smith seemed to do a pretty good job with over 30 years ago in Scanners, but even then that technology will most likely not be afforded to low budget productions such as this. Normally I just grin and bear it, because I know that these indie productions don't have the money for the best FX, nor the luxury of a lot of time at a given location which means no time for futzing around with prosthetics and air tubes, but perhaps think of a DIFFERENT way to kill all 80 of your characters (at least half are off-screen entirely, for the record) when your budget/time isn't ideal for the scripted method? That said, the other FX, the nature of which I can't spoil, are quite good, and they DO use real blood frequently; we see it splatter on walls and such often enough to almost forgive the CGI version.

But still, I walked away entertained and impressed. A post-screening Q&A told us that the film cost a bit more than a car, and they hinted about hurrying through shooting locations due to a lack of a permit, so this was obviously not the most luxurious production. It WAS a lengthy one, however, which not only explains some of those clunky edits, but also reinforced my impressed feelings on the rest of it - it didn't SEEM like a movie that took three years to complete. And they are still seeking distribution, which means that it's possible a company can put in a little more dough to fix a few of the FX (the one on that girl at the beginning in particular looks like a PS1 cut scene) and make it even better. Also, even if it's not perfect, I applaud them for taking a high concept idea and mostly pulling it off with limited means, instead of just throwing together yet another zombie or "tie a girl to a chair and torture her" movie. Good on you, gents.

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Wishmaster 2: Evil Never Dies (1999)

NOVEMBER 9, 2012

GENRE: SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: STREAMING (FEARNET)

I wasn't a big fan of the original, but I had heard that Wishmaster 2: Evil Never Dies was an improvement, so I went in as optimistic as I could, given the circumstances (DTV sequel to a bad theatrical release, 90s horror, no horror cameos this time, etc). But those folks are right - it's much more enjoyable than its predecessor, though it does suffer from some of the same problems, plus a new one: terrible FX! If nothing else, the work on the original (by KNB) was terrific, and holds up even today - but some of this stuff (by a whole bunch of folks, so I can't even tell who to blame) couldn't even have been acceptable then.

Of course, part of that above average quality was because the K of KNB, Robert Kurtzman, was the director of the original film. This time it's Jack Sholder, who had helmed a number of great or interesting horror flicks in the 80s: Alone in the Dark, The Hidden, Freddy's Revenge... but hadn't done much in horror since. So even though the FX were going to be less impressive, I was hoping Sholder, who also wrote the script, would bring something slightly more interesting to the table than a series of scenes where the Djinn tricks some poor asshole into killing himself.

Alas, that's pretty much all there is to it (again), but the locations are more appealing. Early on, the Djinn is freed during a museum robbery and takes the heat for a security guard killed by the robbers, and finds himself in a prison full of potential wishmakers. So he does his thing, once again having to trick everyone into wishing for something by basically saying what he wants them to say until they repeat it themselves, but with funnier results. One prisoner wishes his lawyer would go fuck himself, and damned if the Djinn doesn't make that happen. I also liked when a guy wishes to get wasted (meaning drugs/booze) but instead his own henchman start uncontrollably "wasting" him (meaning beating the shit out of him). scene like this helps get around the lesser FX - Sholder just has the martial arts stars The Tiger Twins play the henchmen, doing what they can do naturally, and thus doesn't have to rely on piss-poor CGI. That said, there are some fun practical FX, like the guy who wishes he could walk through the bars and thus can't help himself from walking through until he's squished between them into a bloody pulp.

There are also some good bits during the 3rd act, where the Djinn realizes he needs an influx of souls, fast, and thus heads to a casino. It's a bit confusing, because the casino owner says something like "It's our wish for the customers to be happy", but the Djinn somehow gets to take the souls of all the gamblers who found themselves suddenly winning - they didn't wish anything themselves? At least not out loud, and if he can just read minds can't he just wander around and get a bunch of souls pretty quickly? Any city street would have a bunch of folks wishing they were richer, or banging the woman who just walked by, or whatever. But I guess it's best not to think too much about Wishmaster logic, because if it all made sense we wouldn't get the sight of a woman who apparently wished she had money coming out of her ass.

But (spoiler for 13 year old movie ahead!) they once again go down the "I wish nothing happened" route, more or less. Our heroine wishes that the guard at the beginning never died, and then recites some curse, and then we see pretty much every character of note come back to life. There's a chess motif in the movie, and while I absolutely HATE seeing the hero (or villain) say "Checkmate!" and then have some nonsense happen to prove that they had planned all of the film's events up to this point and it all went perfectly (like chess), it would be preferable to what is essentially an "it was all a dream" copout. Especially when they already did that in the first film - do something new! Even merely shooting him in the head or tossing him into a vat of comic book style acid would be preferable.

They also spend too much time on the heroine, who was one of the robbers and spends most of the movie feeling guilty that her partner died (since he wished he was never born and thus disappears, I'm not sure why she even remembers him, since the Wishmaster's powers can undo reality, but again, don't think about it!), talking to the handsomest/rugged-est priest in movie history, Googling (or whatever the equivalent was in 1999) Persian mythology and other related bits, or having visions. As with the original, the actress is kind of bland, and the character simply not very interesting (not to mention not very sympathetic - she's a damn criminal), so any time they cut away from Andrew Divoff having fun, the movie grinds to a halt. Hellraiser got it right - they gave us someone to care about (Kirsty) before we even MET the admittedly more fun "hero" monster (Pinhead). Here, they give us the Djinn early on and show how fun he can be, but then weigh things down by constantly giving equal screen time to a bland heroine with nothing else going on but her "wish" to stop him. Since he's just fucking with prisoners and awful gamblers, do we even WANT him to be stopped? Not like he's taking out orphanages and hospitals, dude's just ridding the world of some scumbags. Leave him be, boring woman!

Speaking of Divoff, this would be his swan song in the role; much like the similar Warlock, the actor for part 3 (and 4, in this case) was someone new, a guy by the name of John Novak who is physically similar. I wonder if Divoff just simply tired of putting on the makeup; if that's the case they probably could have just had this Novak guy put on the suit and let Divoff handle the "human" scenes, but alas. Those are on Instant, which means I won't have to deal with Fearnet's kind of annoying player - I dig that they let you watch semi-legit movies like this for free on their site, but you have to a. watch the same exact ad every 15 minutes or so, and b. deal with the fact that it barely works. I had to restart the movie 6-7 times due to random freezing, and most times I couldn't even skip ahead to where I left off or it would lock up again. So I'd just let it play in the background while I did something else until it got to where I left off - real ideal way to watch a movie! Luckily, it's just Wishmaster 2, and despite all of that I still liked it more than the first (which I believe I watched on pay cable), so don't give me any shit about the less than proper way I saw this.

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Deadlands: The Rising (2012)

NOVEMBER 8, 2012

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

Here's the thing. Deadlands: The Rising is not a very good zombie movie. The pacing is wonky, the dialogue cringeworthy, the FX nearly non-existent, and the director's use of slow-motion could best be described as "frequently random". Also, for a 62 minute runtime, about 10 are devoted to opening/end credits (plus its MPAA style disclaimer about the sort of R rated material it contains), so once you factor in all the unnecessary slo-mo, the damn thing is only like 48 minutes and STILL padded with nonsense like a cutaway to a street light... during the day.

But I can't hate on it. It's a first time feature (I don't even think he made a short before) from a very small crew of passionate guys, and on a technical level it exceeds a few I've seen from "veterans" of 3-4 previous films that STILL can't figure out how to film a scene from more than one angle. In fact, a couple of rookie mistakes aside (the 180 rule is broken more than once), I was actually somewhat impressed with the editing here, and even more so when I listened to the commentary and learned he cut it on Sony Vegas, easily the most convoluted non-linear editor I've ever used. Godspeed, sir.

I was also impressed with how much support he got from the town. I've seen a few of these things (hell, I even tried MAKING one) that never branch beyond such exciting locations as "the director's house" and "the producer's house", but he's got the town hall, various interior/exterior locales, and even a legit traffic jam that the town helped coordinate. Thus, there's a sense of a good chunk of this small Maryland town coming together to make this movie, so even though it didn't turn out all that great, I was charmed by the "Let's put on a show!" attitude on display.

But man, if you don't have the ability to extend that sort of sympathetic goodwill, I'd steer clear. Despite its brevity, it takes a while for a zombie to show up, and again, there isn't a lot in the way of FX, nor is the zombie makeup all that impressive. You can take two paths - a lot of zombie action that lacks any character (looks like World War Z has taken this route), or you can be a bit more selective and really deliver on those occasional bursts of undead violence - but here we basically get the worst elements of both. Also, the actors aren't very good, which isn't a surprise, but it's a shame that many of them even ATTEMPT to react like a normal person would to a zombie horde coming at them - most just seem mildly inconvenienced by the whole thing. That town hall scene in particular; everyone is sitting around muttering angrily like the people in Jaws do - it's the behavior you might expect to see if the town was considering cancelling the town parade or something (or maybe shutting down a road to film a zombie movie), not for "there are undead monsters outside trying to kill us".

It also lacks a proper conclusion, but on the commentary we are told that was for a reason, and the final credit gives a hint: Deadlands 2 coming soon. I've seen this before, but I (think I) am happy to report that they indeed made their sequel, Deadlands 2: Trapped (with a third on the way, apparently), so grats to them on delivering on their promise. There are two commentaries, one with director/writer/star Gary Ugarek, the other with Ugarek, producer/star Brian Wright, and two others. Ugarek repeats a lot of the same info on both, and he has an unnatural obsession with both dates (paraphrasing, but at one point he's like "Today is August 5th, the film wrapped on June 3rd, we shot this scene on November 12th...") and the fact that the film was shot with four cameras ("This was the Panasonic AG-DVX100, but this was the Sony DCR-VX2000..."), but his enthusiasm and pride is infectious, and even though the film's budgetary limitations meant big scenes had to go and rewrites had to be commissioned, much to his disappointment, he's not whiny or bitter about it - he's merely pointing it out same as he would a shooting location or something. I wouldn't have minded a BIT of "I should have done this/that..." reflection - at one point a rather uninteresting reaction shot is showered with praise - but I'll take a rose-tinted view over a pity party.

The rest of the bonus features are fine; the most meaty being a pair of interviews with Ugarek and Wright, who interview the other in the same location, leading me to wonder why they didn't just plop a camera on a tripod and film it together. There's also an unrelated zombie short film called "I Am Zombie Man", but I couldn't get it to play on this DVD, only the intro which explains why it's on the disc (something about a messageboard that the director of the short was on with Ugarek). Some trailers for this and other movies (including one for something called Ghoul School that I must see at once) round things out.

I still feel movies like this should be released for free on Youtube, or self distributed for the cost of making the disc/shipping it out, rather than (originally) sold at 25 bucks a pop (400 copies sold would cover the production budget), PARTICULARLY in this case when it barely qualifies as a feature film. But as such things go, these folks really were putting a ton of effort into it while admitting they didn't know what they were doing, so speaking as someone who rented it for free, I couldn't get too worked up about it. I'm sure the sequel is an improvement; if so, kudos to them for keeping at it.

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Gut (2012)

NOVEMBER 7, 2012

GENRE: PSYCHOLOGICAL, THRILLER
SOURCE: DVD (SCREENER)

If I could offer one piece of advice to filmmakers making a low budget/independent horror film that will rely on support from folks like my pals at Dread Central, Fangoria, etc, it would be to not make their horror fan character an antisocial weirdo. If there's anyone guys like me will identify with (at first, anyway) in Gut, it would be Dan, the best friend/co-worker of our hero, who wears Fright Rags t-shirts under his business casual work shirt and is thus "one of us". But he's also an obnoxious freak who invites his friend over to watch snuff films and makes fun of him for taking his daughter to a Pixar movie.

See, and maybe I'm not the best person to point this out given the nature of the site, but most horror fans I talk to love all kinds of movies. The same people I sit on panels with about the state of horror or whatever are the ones I call when I want to see the new James Bond or Fast & Furious sequel, and yes, I saw Pixar's Wall-E with the guy who made me shave my beard and dress as a monster. Thus, it's kind of off-putting to present one as a guy who would insult his supposed best friend for wanting to watch non-genre fare, especially so soon into a movie when we're still figuring out who these people are. "So this is a horror movie, and the guy that likes horror movies is a whiny asshole that no one would want to hang out with. Cool."

But that's minor compared to the movie's larger, all but crippling flaw - it's uneventful in a way that might make Ti West impatient. The movie has four locations, and we just cycle through repetitive scenes within those places. Dan and hero Tom go to work at their non-descript office job (one that seemingly involves typing a few keys into a Microsoft Word document and nothing else), Dan and Tom go to lunch at a little railcar diner, Tom goes home to spend time with his family, and Dan (sometimes with Tom) watches the snuff films at the movie's center. And that's it, there's no real deviation. By the 4th time they are seen going to this diner, I began to wonder if they spent their entire paycheck eating there sometimes twice a day, and by the 7th I was just sick of looking at it. I suppose the blank, personality-free locations (and characters, for the most part) are part of the point, in order to show how much a creepy snuff film does not belong in this (or any other) world, but a slog is still a slog.

Plus, with everything so vague and everyone so underdeveloped, it's incredibly difficult to really get into the film or invest yourself in its proceedings. I'm all for a movie that slowly draws you in, but here, even at the 80 minute mark I still felt like the movie hadn't really gotten going yet. There's an elevated sense of detachment to the proceedings that I found rather troubling, as if the director didn't even WANT me to care too much about what was happening. Some of that might just be simple budgetary restraint - this movie clearly didn't have a lot of money at its disposal, so perhaps some of the vagueness was the result of not having a real production design team, but again, justified or not, I found it hard to penetrate.

It's also one of those movies that want to remain ambiguous, so it ends on a question mark and lets you decide who the killer was, who was sending the DVDs, etc. Fine, but there was nothing much in the part of the movie that led up to that "conclusion" that made me think it was worth putting that much effort into considering theories. I'll spend all day with someone debating over whether or not it was MacReady or Childs that was infected at the end of The Thing, because the movie fired on all cylinders throughout - great, likable characters, etc. Plus, it actually left something up for chance, as we didn't know who would survive, if anyone. But here, there are only four other characters in the movie (all female) besides our two heroes, and since the plot is about a series of snuff films being sent to them, it's obvious that eventually the killer will strike close to home. And worse, we barely spend any time with them, so it's hard to even get too upset when they're offed, which should be the point.

And it's a shame, because this could have been a terrific, disturbing short film (not TOO short; like one of those 25 minute ones that usually caps off a short block at a festival), because there things like vaguely defined characters and a not fleshed out world are acceptable - we get the gist and get on with it. A short could have skipped over the go-nowhere padding (Dan provides us with an endless Predator imitation at one point) and gotten to the meat of the story, and we would walk away satisfied even if it too didn't give us all the answers at the end. A film has to earn that ambiguity, and sadly writer/director Elias (that's it; not sure if it's a first or last name) didn't quite get there. I think he was going for a Videodrome meets Serbian Film type thing here, and I think that's actually an awesome idea for a movie, but this isn't it.

On the plus side, it's well made, the male and female actors alike are obviously comfortable with nudity (there's a lot of it), and the FX on the flesh wounds (the title refers to the killer's favorite target) are quite good. It's weird, low budget productions tend to suffer in these areas, but here the thing that kept it at bay was the script. The resources they had seem like they would have been enough for a better film, but the script's paper thin characters, repetitive sequencing, and lack of any true stakes never let it come together in a satisfying way. It's the cinematic equivalent of that old parent's standby: "I'm not angry, I'm DISAPPOINTED."

What say you?

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Here Comes The Devil (2012)

NOVEMBER 5, 2012

GENRE: SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (AFI FEST)

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

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

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

(Yes.)

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

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

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

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

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Amber Alert (2012)

NOVEMBER 6, 2012

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

Community creator Dan Harmon recently tweeted about how the human race was only a couple of found footage movies away from officially becoming the laziest species, which is pretty good considering he probably has better things to do than educate himself on the existence of the more obscure ones, like Skew or Bigfoot: The Lost Coast Tapes. But if he checked his mentions, he'd be aware of Amber Alert thanks to yours truly - because I figured he'd like to know that whatever movie it was that set him off a few weeks ago certainly wasn't as stupid and lazy as this one.

The sad thing is that it wouldn't be a bad idea for an anthology movie; with a better twist at the end, it could comfortably fit in with V/H/S 2 if it was only 20 minutes or so, which is about as long as even a child's ability to process logic could watch this thing. If you're uninitiated, the movie is about a pair of annoying 20somethings who are filming a video audition for a reality show when they notice that the car in front of them is the same one being described on the amber alert road signs. They call the cops, but then the guy takes an exit, and fearing that the cops wouldn't be able to find him, they stay on his tail. So far, so good, right?

Well, it doesn't stay this "good" for long (I use quotes because the movie had gotten on my nerves before they even called the cops, more on that soon), because the characters grow increasingly moronic, and the absence of police gets stupider and stupider by the second. A cop finally DOES show up around the halfway mark, but of course he pulls our heroes over instead of the kidnapper, and when he checks on their story, he comes back with "that alert has been canceled". This is never explained, and that's the last we see of the police. For the life of me I can't even begin to come up with a theory as to how this could be possible; did the parents of the kidnapped girl merely shrug it off? At one point, the guy notices them following him and pulls over to "explain" that the alert was made by his ex-wife, that the girl in the car with him is his daughter and he was late bringing her back from his assigned weekend time with her, but that is not actually true, so where did the alert go? And the car he's driving is his own as far as we know, so if they had his plate number, wouldn't they have his address as well? Wouldn't the cops have investigated his house and (spoiler if you haven't seen the trailer) found the same things our protagonists do when they break into it in the film's third act?

Christ, the movie racks up so many head-smacking idiocies I barely even noticed that it makes absolutely no sense that the movie is presented as found footage. We're told early on that the cops recovered the tape as evidence, but they apparently went through and blurred out license plates and beeped out some addresses and such, and possibly even edited it a bit, because there are jump cuts that are clearly the result of skipping over footage, not the camera man turning it off and on. The 3rd character who films everything is a complete non-entity; even though he's the main character's little brother, neither of them ever expresses concern about having what looks like a 10 year old join in pursuit of a man who kidnaps children.

He also keeps his mouth shut for long periods of time, just filming the other two as they shout at each other, which accounts for what seems like 90% of the movie. Even before they see the car the two were getting on my nerves with their "energetic" behavior (read: they're loud and talk over each other a lot), but from the second the girl realizes that a little kid is in danger, she dials her voice up to 11 and never calms down again for the rest of the movie. Things along the lines of "WE HAVE TO HELP HER!" or "KEEP FOLLOWING OR WE WILL LOSE THEM!" are shrieked over and over, with the male shouting back things like "I'M TRYING!" or "CALM DOWN, LET THE COPS HANDLE IT!" in equal measure. When the kidnapper approached them I was relieved, I was hoping he'd just shoot them both and leave the mute cameraman to take over the heroics, but alas, after this eye of the storm where they talk like human beings for a few minutes, it's right back to the shrieking as soon as they start driving again and realize that the guy was lying (they put a microphone in the car when he stopped at a gas station - don't ask - and it comes back to life as he begins threatening the girl). So in lieu of anything approaching logic or even dumb action, you get two annoying "heroes" yelling at each other for the bulk of its runtime. Awesome.

See, here's the thing I'm not sure director/writer/producer Kerry Bellessa understands about how these movies work. We in the audience will suspend our disbelief about why they keep filming, why their batteries haven't died, etc, as long as the story is interesting, the POV element is being put to creative use, and there's a decent "reward" for putting up with some of the inherent tedium the format demands. Amber Alert offers none of these things; the story is paper thin and riddled with holes, the cameraman is such a non-entity that I often forgot I was even supposed to be seeing it through someone else's perspective, and there isn't a SINGLE moment of genuine suspense in the entire thing until they break into the house, and by then I had completely given up hope that this would pull itself together. And Bellessa doesn't have the stones to commit to the "fact" that these movies are supposed to end with everyone dead - I won't spoil the specifics, but what the traditional text-based epilogue tells us feels like a huge cop-out.

Did the rest of the audience agree? Hard to tell. Of the two other people there, one walked out after about a half hour or so, and the other, after the movie's credits (cast names, a stunt coordinator, etc) began to roll, asked me if this was real. For the good of humanity I will assume he merely meant if this was a true story, and not "real" meaning the footage we just saw, but then again he was a bit of an odd one. He walked into the theater and asked who won the election (which had been called nearly 90 minutes before), and then later went to the bathroom or something and came back with "All right, Amber Alert...", so it's possible the guy was so out of it he legit thought that a snuff film would be playing at a Pasadena multiplex for 7 dollars.

If you read yesterday's review, you'd recall that I actually have an elevated fear/sympathy for kidnapping, so the fact that this failed to generate any tension is even more damning, especially when you consider that I think I am more forgiving on FF movies than most - but another couple like this might burn me on the concept forever. Indeed, the other day I had the sad realization that Devil Inside was actually one of the better found footage films I had seen this year (this being the at LEAST 15th); I didn't hate it as much as most (seriously folks, they ALL end pretty abruptly - ignore the URL and it's pretty much par for the course), but I certainly wasn't thinking that it would be on the upper side of a ranking by the end of 2012. I don't know if this was the worst; Bigfoot was pretty grueling as well, and my review of Episode 50 is pretty damning (I've since wiped all of it from memory), but if you think Devil Inside was among the worst movies ever made (it's the rare film to earn an "F" Cinemascore), you should be grateful that you don't yet know how idiotic and worthless the genre* can truly get.

What say you?

*That's part of the problem - "Found Footage" shouldn't be a genre, yet producers/distributors seem to think it is. It's like 3D - people are using it because it's the cool thing to do, but few are actually putting the thought into it that makes it worth the effort.

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Come Out And Play (2012)

NOVEMBER 4, 2012

GENRE: KILLER KID, SPANISH
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (AFI FEST)

In my review of Who Can Kill A Child?, I theorized that the film would never be remade, since a. it was relatively obscure (most remakes are only made because of their name value) and b. it featured a lot of graphic violence both on and by children, which is a huge no-no these days since everyone's so PC. Thus, I was pretty surprised to discover that Come Out And Play was indeed a remake of the film (though its credits say it's based on the novel, not on Serrador's 1976 feature), and curious what it would bring to the table, as well as how the social commentary would apply to a modern setting.

Well, guess what? It doesn't bring a damn thing to that metaphorical table other than a shorter length. If anyone claims this is a "re-imagining" or some other buzzword, feel free to smack their mouth for lying, as this is one of the laziest, creativity-starved remakes I've seen in quite some time, to the extent where I often wondered if they were using the same script as the original. There are some minor changes in the beginning, but otherwise the only real difference is that it's shorter. Writer/producer/director/DP MAKINOV (yes, more on him soon) drops a few of the original's scenes, such as the human piñata bit, as well as the (admittedly overlong) documentary footage opening that hammered home the original's "war has caused this!" message, but adds nothing to take their place.

There might be a few other minor changes as well (it's been over three years), but for all intents and purposes, this is the same movie. At no point was I surprised by anything, and even things that I thought for SURE he would change, like the idiotic scene where the wife crashes the car to prevent her husband from running down a few of the kids that are trying to kill them, are recreated practically shot for shot. Nor does he bother updating the story for a modern day; cell phones, the Internet - i.e. anything that might actually help/hinder them once they're on the island - is simply ignored. I don't THINK it was supposed to be a period piece (since the hero offers a few thousand bucks as a deposit for the boat rental, I can't imagine it would be set in the 70s), but if so it just makes me even more puzzled why MAKINOV would bother hiring a crew, a recognizable actress (Vinessa Shaw), etc. merely to remake an obscure film without any notable changes whatsoever.

Then again, why question a guy who calls himself MAKINOV (yes, the caps seem to be part of it) and allegedly directed the entire film while wearing a red mask (you can see it below in the intro that played before the movie), thus preventing his true identity from being known to his cast and crew? Rumors abound that the filmmaker is actually an established director who is pulling some sort of Banksy/Joaquin Phoenix type performance art on us (my guess? Nacho Vigalondo), but if so - what exactly is the joke or point? And further, how does remaking a movie sans any new ideas (and stripping it of its context - there's no war or anything "real world" mentioned here) fit into the concept? If it was, say, an angry horror fan who was doing this as a way of demonstrating how dumb the remake machine has gotten, I'd say bravo (even if he was a bit too late - now it's all about found footage!), but we know nothing about him other than the fact that he... well, wears a red mask and directs pointless remakes. His IMDb page has six credits, all for this movie, and searches for his name turn up only reviews of this film and the two intros (the one below is for AFI; there's another that he did for Fantastic Fest).

That said, the movie itself is fine if you haven't seen the original, much like I'm sure Psycho 1998 doesn't seem too bad to someone who hasn't seen Hitchcock's. It's well made, MAKINOV has a fondness for directing around corners and such that adds a bit to the uneasiness, and even if I've seen it before, watching a guy whack a bunch of evil murderous children around with a boat oar can't NOT be a bit entertaining (keep in mind I'm not a parent yet; to me kids are those little folks that keep me from seeing a few friends who have spawned). Shaw and Ebon Moss-Bachrach had a nice chemistry (though I still wish Tom Jane was playing the lead in the redux), and the kids were appropriately menacing - the scene where they "turn" a few kids that had somehow been unaffected until then remains incredibly creepy, and it wouldn't be pulled off if the kids were over-acting (see: The Omen remake) or simply bad actors.

But in a way, all that just makes this movie all the more frustrating and disappointing. They had talent on and off camera, but it all went to waste on a script that couldn't be bothered to make a single real change of any significance, and are seemingly counting on the original film's relative obscurity to secure a pass from a modern audience. To me that is basically ENCOURAGING ignorance, and I find that insulting. Even the Long Weekend remake (which LITERALLY used the same script, or at least, the same screenwriter) added modern technology issues and a few shifts in the character dynamic to create a slightly new experience - this doesn't even try to make a case for why it exists.

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John Dies At The End (2012)

NOVEMBER 3, 2012

GENRE: COMEDIC, MONSTER, WEIRD
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (AFI FEST)

I don't get to read much, but honestly I wish I could just write "Just go see John Dies At The End" for a review so I'd have that much more time on my hands to read the source novel by David Wong. It's not rare that I want to read the book after seeing a movie based on it (actually doing so IS quite rare though - I sometimes miss having a long commute on public transportation), but this is the first time where I want to read mainly out of sheer curiosity as to how it even WORKED as a novel. The film is so visual, so frenetic, and so damn WEIRD that I can hardly wrap my brain around how it would work on the page.

But then again, I think I have a good idea. They made a (not very good) movie out of Douglas Adams' "Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy", and unfortunately it didn't do that well at the box office, which means his other, in some ways superior "series" of Dirk Gently books (there are only two) will probably never see theatrical adaptations. Like John Dies, the Gently novels tell crazy inter-dimensional stories that are also very funny mysteries, thus appealing to all of your senses at once as you experience the story - your brain works to put it together while you laugh your ass off (and in John's case, you can enjoy some monsters). I don't like to do the "blank meets blank" thing, but the best way to describe this film is "Men In Black meets Bill and Ted", so if you think that will be up your alley (with the bonus of an R rating), then start counting down until January 25th, when it will be released theatrically.

And man, I can't wait to see it again. It's almost exhaustive at times, but not in a way that annoyed me like Scott Pilgrim did. Maybe because monsters and aliens and cool character actors like Clancy Brown and Daniel Roebuck are more up my alley than whiny Canadian emo kids, but I never once felt that the constant STUFF being tossed at us was keeping me from ever really connecting to it. I mean, sure, the film's sarcastic, druggy tone obviously meant I wouldn't be too sad about anything (especially with a title that promises the death of its next-to-main character), but I still enjoyed going on the ride, unlike Pilgrim where after 40 minutes I felt I had seen enough.

Let me describe the opening scene, which is damn near perfect in every way. Our hero is chopping the head off a zombie when the handle on his axe breaks, so he takes it to the hardware store to get the handle replaced. Later, he is menaced by a mutant bug/worm thing, which he swings at with the axe, breaking the blade in the process. Back to the hardware store, now to replace the blade. That night, the same zombie he was trying to kill at the beginning shows up, and mutters "That's the axe that slain me!" Dave then asks us "Is he right?". It's so random and dryly hilarious, I knew from the start I'd be a fan of the flick, and that was long before an out of nowhere Eyes Wide Shut joke practically sent me to the floor laughing (I also love "Ghost knobs...").

It's not flawless, however. Unsurprising since it's weird and original, Don Coscarelli did not have a lot of money for this independent production, and thus it's pretty obvious that the FX budget wasn't the biggest. There's an AMAZING design for a monster made of fish and meat, seemingly practical at least in closeups, but most of the other creations are either seen too briefly to leave much of an impact, or rendered with sub-par CGI. There's at least one instance where their lack of funds is actually played for laughs (and it works), but I couldn't help but feel that they were being held back (and likely forced to trim ideas from the book) in order to make sure they got the "gist" of their narrative.

Also, and this may be true of the source material, it jumps around a lot - characters disappear for long stretches, certain things are never explained, etc. It might be by design, and if so then that's their prerogative, but as a viewing experience it can feel a bit jarring. Since Men In Black was on the brain, I couldn't help but think of how certain elements really paid off, like when we get the true meaning behind Will Smith's joke about bringing the alien flowers - JDATE lacks that sort of thru-line - payoffs come moments after they are set up, more often than not, because it's constantly on the go to the next idea. There is one terrific exception, however - I won't spoil it in full, but I will say that this movie manages to justify the taboo of saying the "N-word" in full in a very creative, and yes, funny way.

But in a way its flaws actually sort of improve the movie, if you apply the "I only fight with you because I care" logic. Even though it's basically a stoner comedy (not my favorite genre) at heart, there's something so damn appealing about it (the two as-yet-unknown leads are terrific, I should mention) that I found myself somewhat surprised to give a shit about its minor flaws - I certainly wouldn't care about a dropped plot point in a Harold & Kumar movie or whatever. It's Coscarelli's best film since Phantasm, and I truly hope it finds its audience when its released so he can hopefully find himself behind the next great "cult" horror franchise.

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The Bay (2012)

NOVEMBER 2, 2012

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

I'm sure I've mentioned it before, but it bears repeating since I like to embarrass myself: I am afraid of fish. Not like, goldfish or whatever else a kid might buy for his little tank, but anything one might catch with a rod freaks me out (plus turtles - I saw West Of Memphis today and there's a scene with a giant snapper turtle that terrified me more than any horror movie has in the last 3-4 years). Basically anything that might be in that water that I can't see scares the shit out of me, so the fact that The Bay is about a parasite that lives in the water made it right up my alley. It's rare, but this is a horror movie that actually scared me!

And that's even more impressive when you consider it's a found footage film, as I've pretty much had my fill of these things for a while, and find myself increasingly annoyed, not by the inherent limitations of the genre, but by filmmakers who don't even TRY to get around them. Leave it to Barry Levinson (!) to come up with a new-ish idea: making it an ensemble of sorts, with multiple cameras (and formats) providing footage that is pieced together later. Sure, we've had movies like Chronicle (with its silly "I'll use everyone's camera to film the climax" idea), and [Rec]2 had a similar notion of another perspective on the same events, but nothing to this extent: the framing device is a Skype session of a girl who survived the events, narrating the footage that was put together by a Julian Assange type a few years after a horrific event in a seaside Maryland town.

According to our narrator (the lovely Kether Donohue), the government snatched up every camera, cell phone, and whatever other recording device they could find in the town after this parasite wiped out just about everyone that lived there, and thus the movie is assembled from all that stuff. We see video footage from the town parade, local news footage, kids playing with their cell phones and inadvertently capturing something scary, teens on their video blogs, surveillance footage from traffic and ATM cameras, the mount from a police car... if it's capable of shooting video, it's probably shown here. Thus, the movie has an energy that is relatively foreign to found footage movies, as there's little need to spend time on the "boring" parts. Since it's actually "found" footage of an event that happened three years prior, Donohue is able to quickly sum up who she is and what she was doing there and get to the point, not unlike Angela in [Rec]. And we don't follow her the entire time; she appears more than most but I'd say only about 1/3 of the movie (including her framing scenes) focus on her. There are a TON of characters in this, some only seen for a single sequence (like the teenagers who go out to a dock for a makeout session only to be eaten by the rampaging parasites), which allows Levinson to get around the most common found footage problem: the "Why are they still filming" question. Donohue and her cameraman keep going because they're reporters and want to find out what's going on, but just about everyone else seemingly turns their camera on moments before they are killed, or are filming specifically to show a loved one what is happening to them.

In fact there's only one point during the entire movie that I questioned why the person behind the camera was actually filming things. After Donohue, the closest thing to a main character is Stephanie, played by Cabin in the Woods' Kristen Connolly (ordinarily I hate recognizing someone in a FF film, but I'm not about to complain about her being in this or any other movie). She is a young mother on a vacation with her husband and infant child, taking a boat to visit her parents who live in the town. So we see a lot of them making a home movie of their boat trip, and then they keep filming things after they get to the town and notice that everyone is missing/dead. Some of it's fine, but at one point the husband puts the camera down in order to film him and Stephanie talking to a friend over Skype - little hokey. It's inside of a store, so Levinson could have just shown what happened over a security camera or something, but still, if there's only one or two moments in a 90 minute found footage film that I'm questioning the interior logic, that's a huge accomplishment.

(The EXTERIOR logic is another thing - I didn't think much of it at the time, but later I wondered: why did the government digitize all of this footage for a hacker to find? Shouldn't it all have been destroyed?)

Plus it's just a good story, another thing lacking in many of these movies. Government coverups, killer fish, a town wiped out... it's all very intriguing, almost more of a good mystery than a horror movie. Donohue's narration is sort of like Stephen King's in a way, where she's constantly telling us who died long before they actually do, but it doesn't deflate any suspense like you might expect. When she tells us that the mayor dies, it's actually a PLUS - since he's a spineless dick, you can enjoy the anticipation of seeing him getting a comeuppance you know he will receive. Likewise, we know that a pair of oceanographers are killed after discovering something, but since the movie jumps around chronologically (and perspective-ly), any time we cut to them making a dive or inspecting something they found, there's great tension to it, as they could die long before the movie's conclusion.

The mystery elements are enjoyable as well; there's a Contagion-esque feel to the proceedings as the CDC and a local hospital race to figure out what's going on before more people get infected and die, and we get a new piece of the puzzle every 15 minutes or so. And since what is in between makes up the bulk of the scares, it makes for a very effective pace - learn something, get scared, learn something, get scared. Levinson doesn't shy away from the gore when applicable, and the FX (courtesy of the Strause Brothers) are incredible - the little bugs crawling around are legit terrifying. The movie offers three terrific jump scares, including one that REALLY got to me as it involves a giant fish and a guy putting his finger inside its mouth - luckily I never saw the trailer for this movie beforehand, since it spoils it (don't watch if you haven't seen it yet!). The infected also take on a bit of a zombie-ish demeanor, so even though it's not a very big element, Levinson is able to milk scares out of the film even when no one is near the water.

Other than the somewhat abrupt ending, the only thing that bugged me was that Donohue occasionally made attempts at levity, which didn't seem appropriate considering she was telling the story of a government conspiracy to hide the truth of how hundreds of people lost their lives. She cringes at her bad outfit for the news scenes and makes other little comments, and while I get the human need to use humor as a shield, they seemed shoehorned in, and distracted me every time. It's not a prevalent issue; I'd say there were only 4-5 in all, but if Levinson and writer Michael Wallach (in his first produced credit) wanted to sprinkle some humor in, the 2009 footage would have been the place, courtesy of characters who were just trying to film their gorgeous summer day, unaware of what was about to happen. In 2012, Donohue should have been too shell-shocked and paranoid to be cracking wise.

Otherwise, it's one of the best found footage movies I've seen in quite a while. The fact that it's not about a fucking ghost automatically puts it above most, but even if it was, the creative approach and careful mix of information and scares kept it from being dull; never once did I feel restless or want to shout "JUST GET TO THE SCARY BITS!" at the screen. I'm pretty sure Levinson is the only Best Director winner to ever helm a found footage horror flick - if this is an indication of how it will turn out, hopefully he won't be the last.

What say you?

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Supernatural Activity (2012)

NOVEMBER 1, 2012

GENRE: COMEDIC, MOCKUMENTARY
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

Despite the box art and title's suggestion that it's a spoof of Paranormal Activity, Supernatural Activity is an all-purpose parody, with most of it being a direct lift from Last Exorcism, in fact. Blair Witch Project also gets some "love", and there are nods to a half dozen other movies, including non-found footage flicks like Emily Rose and Inception. Not that I expected it to JUST spoof on Paranormal, but I was kind of surprised that it was Last Exorcism-based gags taking up most of the screentime; there's actually only one scene in the movie that mocks PA directly, I think.

It also spoofs the 371 ghost hunter shows that are on cable, specifically Paranormal State and its douchebag host (with a little Criss Angel thrown in for good measure). So each of the team members is a walking stereotype, and there's a lot of talk about the validity of the "ghosts" that they encounter - in fact one of the movie's subplots is about how the lead of the show (Damon) wants to expose his show as fake, and thus has hired a documentary filmmaker to get everything for something called "Freaky Fraud-Day". This of course is similar to Last Exorcism's idea of Cotton being an admitted fraud, but then they take things another step further by having a guy film the documentary team filming the ghost hunters, which is "explained" by a guy doing an impression of Robert Downey Jr's character from Tropic Thunder. I refused to put too much effort into thinking about it, but I assumed it was just their way of explaining why we were able to see things that no one was around to film.

And that's the thing about the movie - it's overstuffed with movie parodies that aren't necessary or even fully explained (the film's closing shot only makes sense if you've seen Inception, which doesn't exactly have the same target audience), and screenwriter Andrew Pozza goes out of his way to make, for the lack of a better word, a real story. The film's closing moments aren't even an ATTEMPT at being funny - it's actually (if I'm understanding it) a kind of sweet, dare I say poignant conclusion to the romantic subplot between Damon and Blair, one of his team members (an alleged psychic). I recently saw a trailer for another parody of these movies, one with Marlon Wayans and David Koechner, and I can tell it's nothing more than a series of gags that require nothing but an appreciation for pot humor, but here it's like you really gotta pay attention and look beyond the gags to fully digest the story.

Which makes me wonder: why didn't they just do a found footage comedy about a haunting? The direct spoofs are usually an indicator for us to turn our brains off (except the part of the brain that recognizes a movie being parodied), yet it seems like they're almost throwing these things in just to get their movie noticed. Like the one big Paranormal parody - it's an overlong sequence that just packs in a bunch of gags (Damon gets up in the middle of the night, stands there for a bit, and then checks his phone; the girl gets up and falls into the toilet because Damon neglected to put the seat down, etc.) but doesn't actually have anything to do with the real story, nor do the gags show any real effort. However, they can show a clip from it in its trailers, and use a still for its poster, which means it gets noticed at the video store. Kind of cynical, really.

Luckily, there ARE some good laughs sprinkled throughout, and something at least amused me every few minutes (I was smiling and uttering a "Hmm!" quite often), but (again) it's the parody stuff that weighs it down. Some of the direct spoofs work - I loved that the kid was completely helpful when they show up at the farm (unlike the sneering little ginger brat in Last Exorcism), yet they still treat him with hostility, and even though it was an obvious gag I still chuckled when a masseuse appeared to help the possessed girl with her back after she started contorting. The completely out of nowhere reference to the Lost third season finale was also amusing, but otherwise most of my laughs stemmed from original jokes and sight gags, like when Damon nonsensically kicks open a clearly unlocked metal gate, or when the guy who edits the show shrugs an apologetic "...it pays" after explaining how he doctors the footage to make it look exciting. The hit or miss gag unfortunately skews a bit toward the latter side, but the fact that they were legit trying to tell a real story (albeit a convoluted one) was admirable. Also, even if a joke wasn't particularly funny, they didn't go for obvious gags TOO often, so at least it wasn't completely hack, like that Wayans one looks to be. I'd rather not laugh at a joke that simply didn't work rather than not laugh because a four year old could have predicted where they were going with something.

In fact, I think the movie would have been more consistently funny had they just had a better editor. At 95 minutes, it's almost as long as Last Exorcism (and longer than Blair!), and they could have trimmed 15 minutes out easily. Certain scenes go on forever (the seance scene is excruciating), and a few gags get milked to Family Guy level extremes, such as the "you got something in your teeth" bit which is funny for a few seconds but gets annoying (and doesn't go on so long that it actually turns funny again). And I am quite confident that the movie didn't have the best post-team in the world, or else words like Exorcism and Documentary wouldn't be spelled wrong ("Excorcism" and "Documentery"). It was obviously shot a while ago, given the occasionally topical references (Charlie Sheen jokes) and that there's no mention of relatively recent found footage flicks like Devil Inside or even the Paranormal sequels, so it's odd that the editing seem like they rushed the movie out the door. In what seems like at least 18 months since production no one could spell check the damn titles? It's one thing when they're in the end credits; it's embarrassing when it's on-screen info we're SUPPOSED to read (the voiceover narrator at the beginning also doesn't quite match the on-screen text, for the record).

In short, it's not great, but it's mildly amusing enough, and thus it could have been worse. I'd rather watch it 100x before suffering through Vampires Suck again, and with at least two other parodies of this genre on the way, at least it can be the one that got here before those two, I guess (I highly doubt it's the first). The others don't have much to live up to, but sadly I'd still be amazed if either of them were better.

What say you?

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