Macabre

In this Indonesian slasher-y flick, a group of friends give a stranger a ride home, accept her offer to come inside... and of course find out that her family is a bunch of crazed cannibals.

Macabre co-director Timo Tjahjanto was on my radar for directing a not very good but memorably gross segment in ABCs of Death and for co-directing the only good part of VHS2. Macabre is, in story and structure, an unremarkable Texas Chain Saw-y slasher movie, but it's pretty darn effective nonetheless. It's slickly shot but does not hold back on the gruesome violence, contains several effective set pieces, has a sort of brutal knock-down-drag-out spirit to it, and gives the heroes and villains enough personality that you're more invested in the outcome than you might be in a lesser film.

My main complaint would be the inclusion of an unnecessary supernatural element; the killers are cannibals because for reasons I do not understand it makes them super strong and immortal. It doesn't really make the situation scarier (the whole dismembering and eating people thing is villainous enough), and leads to a lot of scenes where the bad guys seem unkillable until one of the heroes, like, kills them extra hard or something and they die for good.

This is a really good slasher movie if and only if you already like slashers. I don't believe it would win any converts. But if you normally dig the genre, this is a well-made, brutal and intense film that delivers the goods better than most of its peers.

Rating: B

No One Lives

A biker gang abducts an out-of-towner and his girlfriend to steal his stuff and money only to find out that, oh shit, he's a vicious serial killer with a young woman held captive in the back of his trailer. When the killer gets loose, this young woman and her knowledge of the killer may be the gang's only hope of survival.

No One Lives is the kind of deadly serious but completely absurd, roller-coaster ride of a horror movie that director Ryuhei Kitamura previously attempted and biffed with Midnight Meat Train. It sets up an already ludicrous premise and continually pushes it further and further over the line, all while maintaining a knowing air of sincerity. I would say it's something like if The Collection had all of its overt humor removed. It's the kind of movie where the killer sneaks into a biker compound by hollowing out a fat man and hiding in his corpse... and admit it, reading this sentence made you really want to see it.

The only major flaw, I think, is the actor playing the killer. I know part of the idea is that we're not supposed to realize he's a killer at first (although it's immediately obvious), so that's why they cast a pretty-boy type, but he is just not convincing when he switches into Hannibal Lector mode. He lacks the required charisma and intensity, and just never feels like much of a threat even as he starts pulling some crazy, brutal survivalist type shit. Luckily, Silent Hill: Revelations star and Michelle Williams lookalike Adelaide Clemens plays his prisoner, and she makes for a great, badass final girl. She may have a great career ahead of her in actual good movies, but for the time being I'm appreciating her as one of the more talented and beautiful scream queens going.

Rating: B

Maniac

This reasonably faithful remake of William Lustig's infamous 80's sleaze-sterpiece about a serial killer who scalps his victims and puts the scalps on mannequins in his apartment and pretends they are his girlfriends (hmm maybe you had to be there), throws an interesting twist in: most of the film is shot from the perspective of the maniac himself (Elijah Wood), only cutting to a 3rd person perspective on a few brief occasions.

The original Maniac is far from perfect, but it is incredibly memorable for the weird, scuzzy, gritty tone it achieves, as well as some shocking violence and a handful of effective set pieces. So it's interesting that director Franck Khaloun (the underrated P2) follows the story fairly closely, but completely changes the style. Not only does he adopt the intriguing 1st person POV gimmick, but his film is all slick, stylish and professional.

The gimmick itself is basically pointless except that it's well executed from a technical perspective and adds an additional layer of entertainment to a pretty straightforward serial killer/slasher story. I would have preferred if the filmmakers had attempted more long takes and played around more with the subjectivity of the events we are seeing through the maniac's eyes. Yet, if they don't go above and beyond in using the gimmick to do something new, they at least don't fuck it up and instead craft a tense, disturbing horror film with a fully realized central character. It succeeds not so much because of the gimmick but in spite of it, or unrelated to it, and that's okay. I'd take a hundred more movies like this over another "found footage" POV horror movie any day.

Rating: B+

Blood Runs Cold

Basically stock slasher plot #12: people partying in an isolated house are attacked by a seemingly unmotivated, unkillable killer. And it's snowy.

Blood Runs Cold is an unoriginal but perfectly acceptable, even kinda fun slasher movie with one weird detail that I can't tell if it helps or hurts the experience. See the film is Swedish, but for some damn fool reason the filmmakers decided to film the thing in English. And although the cast all speak the language well, it's painfully, fascinatingly clear at every moment that not a one of them is a native English speaker. So what's going on here? Are they a bunch of European expats living in America somewhere? Swedes in some weird Swedish town that was originally colonized by the English? Are they all taking a trip to Canada soon and they just want to practice their English? What the hell is going on, why aren't these people speaking their native tongue?

So come for the reasonably well-crafted set pieces and fun gore, and stay for the cognitive dissonance.

Rating: B-

Tourist Trap

Your world is dark. You'll never see again. It's getting hard to breath isn't it? I'm going to seal the last openings. You won't be able to breath but you won't suffocate. Your heart will burst with fright before you lose consciousness.

Rating: A

Hatchet 3

Starting right where part 2 left off, adorable and tiny scream queen Danielle Harris finishes off Jason-esque mass murderer Victor Crowley, then brings his scalp to the sheriff's office to prove he's dead. This gets her promptly arrested (in retrospect she probably should have just gone home), but the investigators digging through the previous evening's bloodbath unsurprisingly find that Crowley is back from the dead (yet again).

The original Hatchet's biggest problem was its bold claim advertising itself as "Old School American Horror." Which was a bunch of horseshit. When a film's opening credits involves the camera whipping around in fast forward to terrible industrial music to show you a bunch of crazy partying 20-somethings, it's pretty clear the film is going to have little in common with classic 70's and 80's slasher cinema outside of superficial details. No, instead it was an unserious, ironic horror/comedy that existed mainly as a delivery vehicle for outlandishly, hilariously disgusting gore.

Once you get past the false advertising, though, that's not a bad thing. The first 2 Hatchet films are dumb, unpretentious fun; a perfectly acceptable way to see some boobies and viscera while sharing drinks with a few acquaintances. And I'm happy to say that Hatchet 3 is exactly as good as the first two, and provides exactly what you'd expect. In fact, they are all more or less indistinguishable from each other.

The only real element of curiosity here is that parts 1 & 2 writer/director Adam Green only wrote and produced this time out, handing the directorial reins to series cameraman BJ McDonnell. Green made the excellent Frozen, but otherwise hasn't really distinguished himself as a filmmaker. And it holds true here because honestly I could not tell any way in which Hatchet 3 looked or felt different from its predecessors. I don't mean to say that McDonnell fails to put a unique stamp on the series so much as Green's template for the series is pretty generic and easily replicable.

That said, so what? With the Hatchet movies, you get a couple of laughs, some awesomely ridiculous deaths, and a reasonably likable cast. Some of us are just the kind of people who want to see Kane Hodder rip out Derek Mears's spine and skull through his stomach, and we'll be happy.

Rating: B-

My Soul to Take

I've already written about Wes Craven's My Soul to Take here, and I'm not sure I have much to add to my intitial drunken impressions. Except that this time (I believe my 3rd viewing) I liked it even more than I remembered.

Craven is (excepting maybe George Romero) the most inconsistant horror director to make some all-time classics. Not only inconsistant in terms of making good and bad movies; his films are inconsitant on the level of technical comptency they achieve, with some of his movies looking downright inept. One of the things in My Soul to Take's favor is that this is one of Craven's better made movies; it looks nice and has more than a fair share of clever shots. That makes the movie feel, to me, less so-bad-its-good and more a combination bad and good in interesting ways.

It seems ludicrous to me that Craven was totally serious about this ridiculous movie, although who knows? The dialogue in particular (a funny mix of witty and [intentionally?] overwritten) clearly tries to be humorous much of the time, which suggests to me that the movie is intended in good fun. And, damn it, I have a lot of fun every time I watch this one.

Rating: B+

Sweet Sixteen

Sexy jailbait Melissa (who even has her own theme song!) moves into a new town shortly before her 16th birthday. But soon after her arrival, some of the locals who have crossed paths with her start turning up dead. Could this young girl have something to do with the murders?

Poised somewhere between classic murder mystery/thriller and tawdry slasher, Sweet Sixteen doesn't really succeed as either. The mystery is a non-starter that trudges it's way along to an arbitrary solution, building no suspense along the way. It's just another generic whodunit that climaxes with the umpeenth thousandth riff on Psycho. As far as the trash goes, the lead actress does get naked a few times, and that was appreciated (I feel fairly certain she was much older than 16 at the time). The violence, however, is completely unimaginative, which is a big problem considering it tends to come out of nowhere without much of an attempt at buildup/suspense. It has the kind of kills where all you see is poorly lit extreme closeup of a knife going into a shirt repeatedly.

I have certain affection for the low-budget early 80's slasher movie aesthetic. There's a certain spooky, offbeat vibe to it that taps into a primal part of my brain. Sometimes it was done deliberately, but more often it was just an accidental side effect of the cheapness, but either way it kinda works for me. Yet whatever mild mojo this one manages to summon, there's just not much here for me to recommend. Two of the main characters, the teenaged son and daughter of the town sheriff, have a goofy, teasing repartee that rings true, and they brighten up the scenes they are in. Otherwise, this is as uninspired as these things come, if not as horribly unwatchable as the bottom of the barrel.

Rating: D

Eyes of a Stranger

A rapist/killer is on the loose, and a local TV anchor begins to believe that it may be one of her neighbors. She begins to investigate, but by doing so, she may be putting herself and her blind and deaf sister (played by a young Jennifer Jason Leigh) in danger.

I will admit that I probably did not play as close attention to Eyes of a Stranger as I could have, but I caught enough to know that it's an above average slasher movie. It's well shot and entertaining, with effective slashing/stalking sequences and good performances. Way better than these movies usually are.

The best is the finale, where the killer sneaks into Leigh's apartment unbeknownst to her. He doesn't just outright assault her, he fucks with her first, moving shit around to confuse her until it slowly dawns on her what happens. It's tense and clever and that's more than we can usually ask for from this genre.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre

I don't think I need to bother describing this one. If you've never seen The Texas Chain Saw Massacre before, then I don't think you can be considered a fan of horror movies. Plus, the title says it all.

I got a free DVD of this at FYE this weekend because I spent more than $30 or something. Kind of fucked up that I didn't already own a copy, I guess, but it worked out for the best.

Intruder

Evil Dead II co-writer (and Sam Raimi BFF) Scott Speigel directs this slasher movie set after hours in a grocery store. The staff is staying over night to do some inventory when one's creepy ex-boyfriend, fresh out of prison, shows up to start some shit. They kick him out, but soon thereafter a mysterious killer shows up, picking off the employees one by one. Could it be the creepy ex-boyfriend? Obviously not, or they wouldn't be keeping his identity a secret. Intruder features a Raimi-tastic cast, in addition to Raimi-regular Dan Hicks, there are small roles for Sam and his brother Ted, as well as a Bruce Campbell cameo.

Intruder has a lot of problems, not the least of which is how much it seems like an early Raimi movie without being nearly as good as an early Raimi movie. It's clear that Spiegel has a similar sensibility to (and has taken much influence from) his buddy Sam, with the goofy sense of humor and overblown, kinetic visuals, but too often the film feels like a failed imitation. There are too many shots that seem like Raimi shots minus the style and wit; a POV shot from a rotary phone isn't clever, it doesn't even make any sense, it's just a meaningless affectation. And not even an amusing one at that. (As I recall, Spiegel also pulled a lot of this kind of bullshit in From Dusk Til Dawn 2.) It's like a kid trying to impress his friends by doing a jump on his bike and he ends up crashing; Spiegel's trying to show-off but he doesn't have the skills to back it up.

That said, I'm giving Intruder a pass. Enough of the film is funny and off-beat, toying with your expectations of the genre, that it can be ranked as a slightly above-average slasher film. I am not recommending it, but if you like this kind of shit then it's not a total waste of your time.

The Final Halloween-stination II

I wasn’t particularly thrilled by this summer’s lineup of major releases. Yes, The Hurt Locker and Ponyo were great movies that happened to come out during the summer, that's not what I'm talking about. What I am referring to are the megabudget action/sci-fi/fantasy/superhero blockbustery movies we get every year, or the major-release comedies. I loved Up and Inglourious Basterds, and they sort of fit the profile, but they were a little more off-beat, a little more interested in doing their own thing. Last year we got The Dark Knight, Indiana Jones and Hellboy 2. What did we get this year?

The Hangover was funny, but not something I need ever see again. Funny People was interesting, but turned out to be a dark, somewhat unpleasant drama with a little humor rather than a comedy. I wrote a long rambling post about being a little obsessed with Transformers 2, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t think it was a terrible movie. I liked Star Trek I guess, it was fun and was perfectly cast, but I’m shocked at the outpouring of critical and commercial love it received considering that it had what I consider to be some rather egregious flaws in its direction and storytelling. Likewise District 9, which seems to already have a (mystifying to me) reputation as a minor classic, exciting and thoughtful; not only didn’t I like it, I thought it was downright poorly made at times, with a lot of lazy storytelling. And I didn't even bother seeing G.I. Joe.

(Update 9/16: Further proving my point about the lackluster summer season, I didn't recall that I saw Michael Mann's disappointing Public Enemies and Justin Lin's passably stupid Fast and Furious. And I totally forgot that Tony Scott's remake of The Taking of Pelham 123, which I didn't waste my time on, even existed.)

(Update 9/18: Holy shit! And I forgot to mention Terminator: Salvation in my update. I think I liked it, or at least liked the action scenes, slightly more than the general public and it still completely slipped my mind. Worst summer ever.)


Looking back over the summer a week or so ago, I worried that I was becoming an old fuss-budget. Honestly, except for Funny People, I hadn't even been looking forward to any of those movies. Am I becoming too artsy-fartsy? Have my efforts to watch a more diverse and eclectic selection of films somehow spoiled my ability to enjoy a dumb summer movie? Am I holding my light entertainment to too high of a standard?

Maybe I am becoming a pretentious asshole, but all I had to do to remind myself that I haven't become a total killjoy was look to the weekend of August 28. What may be considered the final weekend of the summer season was easily my most anticipated, as it marked the release of both The Final Destination (aka Final Destination 4 in 3-D!!!) and Rob Zombie's Halloween the Remake II. You can't be too much of an elitist if you're eagerly awaiting the release the fourth film in a franchise whose inspiration dried up two movies ago, and the sequel to the terrible remake of a beloved classic.

I may be an admirer of Rob Zombie's The House of 1,000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects, moreso it seems than most horror-moviegoers, but I knew that even a talented individual such as Mr. Zombie shouldn't touch Halloween with a ten-foot pole. No horror director, no matter how good, would come off well in comparison to the original, because the original is in a class of its own. (Maybe if they hired a director with a distinct vision who worked mainly outside the genre and didn't feel the need to honor the original, it could have been interesting. Just try imagining, say, Werner Herzog's Halloween). It wasn't surprising that the remake sucked; what was a little surprising was the manner in which it sucked. I'm not going to review it here; suffice it to say that in addition to the film's obnoxious dialogue and seriously flawed structure, I was disheartened to see that Zombie failed to craft a single stalk/slash/suspense sequence that was anything more than tedious.

Yet somehow I found myself looking forward to Halloween II, most likely because Zombie was promising in interviews that he was doing his own thing, not following the original series and trying to stick closer to his own vision. It was clear in the Halloween remake that zombie was trying, unsuccessfully, to use his style to tell someone else's story with someone else's characters. Maybe now that he felt free to tell his own story would his style finally gel with the Halloween series. Instead of remaking the original Halloween II, he'd finally make the real Rob Zombie's Halloween.

So of course the new Halloween II begins where part 1 left off, and then has protagonist Laurie sent to the hospital where she is attacked by Michael Myers, exactly like the original sequel. "Holy shit," you're thinking, "He's actually doing a remake of Halloween II." Turns out it's just Zombie having a little fun fucking with the fanboys' expectations; the hospital sequence is just the opener and then he's on to other things.

I'll say this for the new Halloween II, it's an improvement over the remake. I would go so far as to say I liked it, however that's not an "I really liked it," but rather an "I liked it*". It feels more like a complete film than the remake, not like two half-assed films stitched together.

The element that I thought worked best was that, this time out, Zombie gives us access to Michael's inner thoughts, so he's less of a boogeyman and feels like more of a character. This time we can actually see the wounded little boy inside of Michael, instead of just being told about it. Literally. Turns out that Michael hallucinates about his pre-adolescent self a lot. Along for the ride is his dead mother (nice to see Sheri Moon Zombie back) always dressed in white, a faithful white horse that follows her around, and weird nightmarish creatures that live in the recesses of Michael's mind. These sequences, highly stylized, often backlit with blinding white light and I think in one part shot in black and white, were probably my favorites in the movie, where it felt like Zombie was finally doing his own thing and ignoring the usual generic conventions. The imagery may be a little obvious or even corny at times, but it has a weirdo, surreal, spooky quality that I responded to.

Unlike the remake, this film is fun and even funny at times. Zombie still can't write dialogue for teenage girls that isn't grating and obnoxious, what with them calling each other "dicklickers" and "bitches" ad naseum, but the humor he showed in his earlier films is still present. The best is the subplot about Dr. Loomis, who has become a vain, egocentric publicity hound, trying to capitalize on the murders in the first movie to further his career. He's such an asshole and a whiny bitch that you can't help but laugh, pestering his assistant to bring him a cup of his special tea before he has a hissy fit, or going on a talk show and getting snippy with the host. (The other guest is Weird Al Yankovic). There are other funny bits in the movie too. I liked the kid at the Halloween party with the wolfman costume who promises that the beers in his van are roofie-free.

In the interim between this and the remake, Zombie learned how to construct a chase/suspense sequence. I remember watching the remake in theaters and totally tuning out during the climactic chase. Then I watched it on DVD and tuned out at the exact same point. It was that boring. This time, Zombie starts the movie off with a bang, with the hospital chase, and until he goes overboard with the shakeycam, it's an effective scene.

Poor Laurie, bruised and battered, with a big cast on her leg, wakes up in the hospital and can't seem to find anyone around. She stumbles down the hallway to the nurse's station, where the nurse seems weirdly unresponsive. Always a bad sign. The nurse turns around and, oh shit, her face is split open in she's in some sort of daze. Out comes Michael, and Laurie's got to try to get away, through corridors and down the stairwell, dragging her wounded leg behind her, and the big bastard just keeps coming. The scene also features an effective use of the song "Nights in White Satin" by The Moody Blues, an offbeat musical choice that is Zombie's bread and butter, and a way better choice than his confounding use of "Love Hurts" in the remake. The other set pieces never quite top the opener, but they all still function on an entertaining level.

So, the better screenplay and better set pieces, combined with more of a weird, personal vision from Zombie, adds up to a better movie... but still a problematic one. I mentioned before that Zombie still tries too hard to write clever dialogue for his young female characters and winds up making you hate them all, but it's even a little worse than that. He can't even flesh them into real characters or give them anything interesting to do. Poor Scout Taylor-Compton, she seems like she might be charming and likable in real life, but as Laurie she spends the whole movie either crying, screaming, or running away from Michael Myers while crying and screaming. That is the extent of her character. She is almost always making what my girlfriend referred to as "the super pouty face," and I concur with Shenan that Ms. Taylor-Compton is a pro at it. Zombie tries to go to some different places with her character (is she losing her mind, just like her brother Michael?) but since Laurie spends 95% of her screentime in screamy-crying-pouty-running mode, it doesn't really scan and she comes off as yet another generic final girl.

Halloween II also falls victim to the common slasher movie trope of introducing too many characters for the sole purpose of killing them off to add more violence. Michael Myers is constantly running afoul of characters we've never met before and brutally murdering them after they get their obligatory 2 minutes of screen time. He hides out at a farm, so the owner and his family show up to scare him off and he kills them. He shows up at a strip club after hours for no reason and murders all the staff. Etc. I don't normally like this kind of shit because I have no emotional investment in what's going on and it sidetracks from the main story for no better reason than to satisfy audience bloodlust. It can be fun in a shitty slasher movie if the death is particularly over-the-top, but in a movie such as this one, trying to strike a more serious tone, it's a waste of celluloid and something of a concession.

The worst though, and I really didn't see this coming, is how stylistically bombastic and assaultive the film becomes at times. It's as if instead of trying to scare you, Zombie decided to settle for overwhelming your senses. Bright, blinding, seizure-inducing lights flash on the screen. Loud clanging noises and explosions erupt out of the speakers and drown out your every thought any time there is a mild surprise or bit of action in the film, or sometimes for no reason at all. Completely indistinguishable from the film's overbearing score, I should add. Fuck, even the stabbing noises were louder than gunshots are in most other movies.

Zombie's first two films are excellent enough that he's built up a lot of goodwill with me, so I'm still on board next time he makes an original feature. Unfortunately, that won't be for a while, as the motherfucker signed on to do a remake of The Blob, which already had an excellent remake in the 80's and doesn't need to be revisited. Sigh.

At 82 minutes, The Final Destination (in 3-D!!!!!) is so streamlined that it barely feels like a real movie. No time for character development or new ideas, after rehashing the same plot as the last three films in the series in as little time as possible, it moves efficiently enough, though at a breakneck pace, through a series of deaths, disfigurements, dismemberments, etc. If you saw any of the previous films, then you know the drill: blandly attractive young Dawson's Creek-looking motherfucker has a psychic vision, prevents catastrophic death of self and others, turns out that it was their time to go so the malevolent force of Death kills everyone off (in the order they were originally supposed to die) in elaborate, protracted, Rube Goldberg device-esque ways.

And I swear it takes maybe all of 15 minutes for them to get through the catastrophe and the exposition and get to the murder set pieces. It opens at a Nascar rally, each major character gets about 2 lines of dialogue, then a car crash happens and sets off a spectacular chain of events, etc etc.

The problem here is that, outside of the illusion of an extra spacial dimension, The Final Destination is content to add nothing new to the series. In the original Final Destination, the premise was still fresh and interesting, the complex, ornate death sequences were a surprise instead of an expectation, and it actually made an attempt to flesh out its characters and even get a little philosophical about the nature of life and death (just a little bit, mind you). Final Destination 2 was a step down, but it was at least ambitious and tried to build upon the first movie: it made the plot ludicrously complex and intertwined with the first film, tried to add some new rules and ideas (i.e. if they bring a new life in to the world, maybe Death will spare them). Part 3 was another slight step down, basically resigned to repeating the story from the first two movies and focusing on the death scenes. And now we have the fourth, which strips the formula down even further to a series of showy death sequences barely strung together by a nearly non-existent plot.

David Ellis, the director of Final Destination 2, returns to helm this one (James Wong directed 1 and 3, so I seriously hope if they continue the series that Wong directs part 5 and that he and Ellis tag-team the series for as long as it runs) and along for the ride is one of the two Butterfly Effect guys who both wrote part 2. Apparently the other guy had all the good ideas though, or they need to work as a team, because nothing new is brought to the table. Seriously guys, step it up a bit, throw a twist or two in there. How about next time, the psychic character gets killed halfway through, leaving everyone else totally screwed. Or have it turn out that their lives will be spared if they kill someone else to take their place. Or use my buddy Patrick's idea: have a psychic somehow prevent the destruction of earth, so Death has to go around killing every single person on the planet Mouse Trap style.

That said, I haven't given up on this series yet, and there is still a lot of fun to be had. Maybe the movie boils down to nothing but set pieces, but some of the set pieces are pretty good. There's a kind of slowly building, deliberate, coming together of many different strands style to the set pieces in the Final Destination series that are Hitchcockian in nature. Or, at least, sub-Hitchcockian. Or really more sub-DePalmian, but you get my point. Or if you don't, my point is that this style is rare in modern, mainstream horror movies. I wouldn't dare go so far as to call the construction of these sequences brilliant, but the visual storytelling is often exceedingly clever, and requires a certain amount of craftsmanship sometimes missing in the genre.

The most enjoyable sequence for me was a major one near the end, in which an accident at a construction site in a mall leads to an explosion at a movie theater (showing a 3-D movie, natch) which leads to a series of calamaties that turns the mall's escalator into a conveyor belt of swirly, slashing, bone-crushing doom. Also, The Final Destination re-enacts an urban legend I've been wanting to see in a movie for years: the one where a pool filter pulls out a man's guts through his asshole.

What I'm saying is, if you like this kind of shit like I do, this one is worth seeing even if it isn't anything special. Though I wouldn't say it's a big deal to rush out and see it in 3-D, you can wait for video. Ellis's use of the 3-D gimmick isn't gimmicky enough and pales in comparison to the goofy eyeball-popping madness of this year's My Bloody Valentine 3D. If you're going to use a silly gimmick like 3-D for your silly horror movie, you need to go all out. Except for a few moments, the format is wasted in The Final Destination.

So, wrapping up, maybe this weekend didn't quite live up to my expectations. Certainly I won't be putting either one of these on any "best of" lists. Regardless, both Halloween the Remake II and The Final Desintation are enjoyable endevours for horror fans, and in particular I'd be interested in rewatching Zombie's film some day to see if time irons out some of the flaws.



*but it has a lot of problems.

Dan's 2008 Year in Review Horror Movie Postmortem Extravaganza Part III

Funny Games

Teeth - The cutest and most charming movie you will ever see where several penises are graphically sliced-off by a girl with teeth in her vagina. Not funny or provocative enough to fully recommend, but worth seeing if it ever comes on TV or anything. Definitely a novel idea, but I'd prefer it as less of a teen comedy, and more of a franchise Freddy/Chucky thing we're the girl goes around biting dicks off on purpose and then saying funny catch phrases. "Looks like you'll never get a-HEAD in life" etc etc.

Dance of the Dead - A sort of John Hughes meets Dawn of the Dead thing going on here. Much like teeth, it's cute and somewhat funny, but not enough so to get a strong recommendation from me. This kind of Evil Dead 2-style horror comedy needs to build a sense of lunacy to work, being affable doesn't quite cut it. Still, it's not the worst way to waste your time.


Jack Brooks Monster Slayer - And again, cute and amusing but just not enough. Come on, guys!


The Signal - I don't think I'm going to bother trying to rank my favorite horror movies from 2008, but know that The Signal would be near the top of the list if I did, possibly #1. What this movie lacks in budget it makes up for in cleverness and skill. It is by turns tense, paranoid, funny, disturbing, satirical, surreal, intense, cerebral. It's essentially a Crazies - style set up, with a weird TV transmission turning everyone who watches it into a homicidal maniac. But instead of playing up the action, the movie plays up the paranoia... who is crazy, and who isn't? And if you're crazy, would you know it or would you think you're one of the sane people? It's an uncommonly well-written and especially well-acted horror film, and I think a must-watch for any serious horror fan.


Stuck - Stuart Gordon's been shitting them out for 25 years now, and I swear in a lot of ways the guy just gets better. He's had a bit of a renaissance in the past few years, with King of the Ants, Edmond and now this one. Stephen Rea plays a homeless man who is hit by a drunk Mena Suvari with her car, and gets lodged in the windshield. Only instead of going to get help, she locks him in her garage and waits for him to die. It's both an effectively tense thriller and a hilarious pitch-black dark comedy. And it makes up, at least somewhat, for the fact that Suvari was also in that shitty Day of the Dead remake this year. Fans of old-school thrillers and Gordon's transgressively violent style are highly encouraged to partake in Stuck.


The Happening - Sure, maybe it wasn't intended as a comedy, but you'll laugh nearly as much as you did at the last Judd Apatow movie. But heck, why do I need to dump any more shit on this movie than has already been dumped? And I'd even argue that it was less fucking terrible than The Village. Then again, it also features a scene where Mark Wahlberg talks to a plastic tree, so I dunno.



Thrillas and Chillas

The Strangers - This is a horror movie in the same spirit as Halloween, a horror movie that takes it's time to create atmosphere, present likable characters and works hard to build suspense. I was glad to see that this did pretty strong business, because I'd like to see the studios release more horror films like this, horror films that are aimed at adults and are actually scary and aren't PG-13ified to draw in the idiot teen and pre-teen audience. Yeah, okay, so the movie does lose some tension in the last 20 minutes or so. But that still means there is a great 50 minutes preceding it, and even better the unrated version out on DVD now has some additional scenes in the later part of the film that reintroduce some creepiness into the finale.

Red - This is a movie by Warren Beatty where he plays a reporter in the 1920s who travels to Russia to... no, wait. That's not right. This is a great little slow-burn thriller about an old man who wants revenge for the death of his dog. I had been excited for this one for a long time because it was Lucky McKee's newest movie, and I think his film May is one of the best horror films of this decade. But then it turns out that he quit or was fired part way through shooting and some other guy was brought on board, so I can't really say how much of this movie represents his vision. Either way, I enjoy this one greatly and still look forward to the day when McKee makes a new movie for real.

The Ruins - Another top notch horror movie that knew how to pile on the dread and tension. It's about killer plants, which sounds like the plot to a bad 50's B-movie, but somehow the filmmakers strike exactly the right note and turned it into a minor classic. Also, I would like to credit the film for having some of the most effective gore sequences of the year. There is an amputation scene that will make you squirm, and I would like to make those directors of all those shitty European horror films I bitched about watch it to show them how it's done.


Unclassifiably Weird


Return to Sleepaway Camp - Only 25 years after the original, here comes the true sequel, a slasher movie so inexplicably oddball and funny that I'm not exactly sure why I don't own a copy yet. I could spend all day telling you about Alan, the film's one-of-a-kind protagonist (who hangs out with frogs and screams "your ass stinks!" at everyone who pisses him off), but instead I would like to mention to you that there is a scene where a man's genitals are tied to a jeep with fishing line, and the killer scares the driver into driving away. That scene alone is worth watching the movie for, but pretty much the entire thing is that good. See it now.


Midnight Meat Train - Besides the fact that it's title sounds like a description for a giant cock, there's plenty of other weird things to enjoy about this one. Like the fact that it's a slasher movie where the killer turns out to be the servant of a race of human-eating monsters that live underground and somehow rule our society. Oops, spoilers.




Well, this motherfucking series of posts really dragged out a lot longer than I meant it too. Oh well, if one good thing came of it, it's that I saw Mr. Brooks in the meantime and can talk about it here. Like some of the other movies mentioned, it might almost be fucking terrible if it wasn't also so awesome. It's about a serial killer played by Kevin Costner who has an imaginary friend played by William Hurt and they like to break into people's houses and shoot them and then Kevin Costner cums in his pants or something and then he poses the bodies and takes pictures, and then Dane Cook tries to blackmail him into teaching him how to kill and meanwhile Costner's daughter may also be a serial killer. There is a part where Costner slits a man's throat with a shovel, and somehow they work in another serial killer into the plot and a shoot out and a car chase action scene when Demi Moore is kicked out of a moving vehicle. I don't know how Costner and Hurt got cast in this movie, it seems like some sort of clerical error where they were accidentally inserted into some weird late night Showtime movie but they are amazing in this. And kudos to the casting director who thought to cast Dane Cook... normally I can't stand the guy, but he's pretty much spot on as a perverted creep. Almost makes up for all those jokes he stole from Louis CK. This movie came out in 2007 so I couldn't really include it in the writeup, but I thought it was worth mentioning any way.




And that's it, 2008 horror movies in review. I was going to write some sort of conclusion, but I'm fucking sick of this so draw your own conclusions. Peace out.

Dan's 2008 Year in Review Horror Movie Postmortem Extravaganza Part II

Aliens (because they are foreign films, not because they are about aliens)

Last House in the Woods - Italy is the home of the giallo, Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci and gratuitous Edwige Fenech nudity. I like their horror films, which at their best often display an effective mix of high style and unapologetic sleaze. You get your art and your trash all rolled up in one. But this low budget Italian riff on Texas Chainsaw Massacre doesn't really succeed at either. Occasionally it's violent enough to be unpleasant, but mostly it's a bore. And it makes a mistake that I've noticed more and more in horror movies these days: it tries to be both disturbing and over-the-top fun at once, and they cancel each other out. You can't be both Reanimator and Hostel, you have to pick one and stick with it. Also, props to the American distributors for the original title.

Frontier(s) - Unlike Last House in the Woods, this is a French riff on Texas Chainsaw Massacre. As opposed to an Italian one. And you know what, they should really leave this genre to the Americans. Sorry Europe, I just don't think you understand how to make a good cannibal redneck movie. It's because of your lack of barbecue, which is the appropriate way to eat a human. It's just not scary if you make a person into tartar and wash it down with a glass of cabernet.

Inside - This is it, this is my vote for worst horror film of the year. It had potential to be great. It's a home invasion thriller with a twist: the heroine is pregnant and the killer wants to cut out her baby. That's some fucked up crazy shit right there, but Inside blows it by eschewing suspense and tension for a comically high body count and a lot of overdone make up effects that are too over the top to be disturbing and too seriously presented to be fun. I'm becoming convinced that Europeans don't know how to film violence any more. I mean, say what you will about the Saw and Hostel movies, but they at least know how to properly present gore, whether it be for serious or entertaining purposes. I'm guessing these European directors grew up watching the same hyper-violent 80's horror shit that I did, but maybe something got lost in translation and all they understood was that violence should be graphic. They never figured out that it should be a means to an end... to help set the tone of the film, and to provide dramatic payoffs. Anyway, read my lengthy takedown of Inside here.

Rogue - I'm convinced Australian director Greg McLean is going to do something great at some point. His movies look nice, know how to build tension and have much stronger performances and character work than your average horror movie. But so far, he's given us two movies with a lot to like and also some serious flaws holding them back from being as good as they should be. Oh well, maybe next time. The first 2/3rds of Rogue is one of the best monster movies in a long while, but it loses it's way with a final act that drags on, and when they finally show all of the giant crocodile, it's an unconvincing special effect that kills the mood. McLean is going for the tried and true approach of leaving the monster offscreen to build tension and then revealing it with a classic payoff, but you wish he would have just skipped the payoff and left the croc as a mostly unseen presence. If I'm being a little hard on the movie, it's because it's a good horror movie that had potential to be an excellent one.

Mother of Tears - Maybe this is a bad one, I don't know, but I was so excited to finally see a Dario Argento film in theaters that I didn't notice. I'll admit that it's not his best. But it has baby murder, a woman being strangled with her own intestines, slutty witches, and Asia Argento's tits, so I'm pretty sure I enjoyed it. And like Phenomena and Inferno and some of his others, I suspect it may improve with multiple viewings, at least on the level where you appreciate just how fucking weird the thing is. Still, I'm disappointed that Argento didn't use the same colorful, hyper-stylized look he went for in the other Three Mothers movies, and instead made it look like his other less visually intense recent movies. I was expecting a throwback to his glory days but what I got was a reminder that his best films are probably behind him.

The Orphanage - I did a longer write-up on this one here about my disappointment with the film. Unlike Inside, however, it was because I admired a lot of what the movie attempted, but didn't feel it was properly executed. If I recall, The Orphanage received very strong reviews on it's release in the US, and I can understand why, it's looks nice and seems competent and lacks a lot of the sleazy elements that critics normally object to. But I would venture to guess that, now that time has passed, most of them have forgotten this one, and that few horror fans are finding this one worth revisiting. Any tension they would have felt the first time is ruined by a bad, sorta twist ending that makes everything before it seem completely unscary. So what you're left with is a long, slow horror movie with no tension, some atmosphere and dreary tone that isn't powerful enough to get under your skin, but just effective enough to make the movie a bummer.

Cruel Summer

Untraceable - I think we can officially say that 2008 was the year that torture porn went mainstream. How else do you explain how a blatant Saw ripoff like this movie was made starring fucking Diane Lane and Colin Hanks. Those aren't the names you'd associate with a transgressive horror film, those are the heroine and gay best friend in a romantic comedy. Hell, just sign on Matthew McConaughey to the lead role and you're ready to start shooting Must Love Failing to Launch a Guy in 10 Days. The once derided torture porn genre has been domesticated, it's now no more threatening to our values than Paul Blart: Mall Cop. Oh and in case you couldn't guess it, this movie sucked.

Trailer Park of Terror - I guessed that this was a horror comedy going in to it, but if it was supposed to be funny then the filmmakers and I do not share a sense of humor. Even though this has evil undead trailer park rednecks as its villains, it's surprisingly sick and and cruel in places. One character gets skinned and then boiled alive in grease. In another scene two teenagers are forced at knife point to have sex on camera for the villains' pleasure. So we're not really talking about an Evil Dead 2 style romp here. For what it is, it has some effective moments, but... I still don't understand how this silly premise lead to this dark movie.

Saw V - I've enjoyed this series more than any reasonable person should, I think mainly because I'm excited to have an honest to goodness Friday the 13th or Nightmare On Elm Street style franchise where they shit out a new movie every year. Too bad this was, after two highly ridiculous and entertaining entries, the worst one since part II. Too short, with not enough crazy over-plottedness. Still some satisfying violence and other insanity, but I'm hoping they kick it up a notch with part VI later this year.

Seed - What happened to my beloved Uwe Boll? The man responsible for some of the most unintentionally hilarious films of all time has gotten boring in recent years. Seed, his attempt to cash in on the torture porn genre, sucks mainly because Boll seems to think that he has a real serious, disturbing, provocative horror film on his hands, when it's really just an especially cruel Jason movie. I haven't seen Postal or In the Name of the King yet, I'm hoping those reach the levels of transcendent camp that he achieved with House of the Dead and Blackwoods. However if he keeps trying to make serious films, I'm giving up on him.

Pathology - The guys who did Crank wrote this, a fairly entertaining and amusingly sick movie about a bunch of young hotshot doctors who get off on murdering random people in ways they won't get caught for. What follows is a respectable amount of nasty gore, transgressive sex and dark humor. Not great, but good sick fun.

Dan's 2008 Year in Review Horror Movie Postmortem Extravaganza Part I

I guess I'm a guy that takes horror movies pretty serious. I mean, I take movies in general pretty serious, but sometimes I feel that perhaps that I'm not cultured or intelligent or well spoken enough to discuss my views on Truffaut, or Ozu, or Lubitsch or whatever. But horror movies, I've watched a shitload more of those than I have probably any other genre (and not to toot my own horn, but I watch a lot of movies in general), so I feel like I know what I'm talking about. Plus, no one expects you to write eloquently about chainsaw evisceration or zombies or Jason or any of that, so it's a nice built in handicap.

Let me be upfront and admit that I might cheat a little bit this year. A few of these movies, especially the foreign ones, may have technically been released in previous years, but I'm only counting them if they didn't become widely available in the US in theaters or on DVD until 2008.

While we're on this topic, I would like to note that I was disappointed to see that I couldn't technically count either Joshua or Them for 2008. I thought they came out last year, and both would have easily made it to my list of the best horror films of '08. Them was a tense and to-the-point home invasion thriller, that would make a great companion piece with '08's The Strangers to show how opposing approaches to the same premise can yield equally successful results. And Joshua was the most unsettling and unpleasant-to-watch horror movie I'd seen in a good long while. (I mean that as a compliment). Overall I think '08 was a good year for horror movies (maybe not as good as '07), but the absence of these two movies weakens my argument a little.

Right now I'm looking over a list I made of all the new horror movies I saw in 2008, and I'm trying to figure out if there are any important trends I should be commenting on. One thing I think has happened over the past few years is that horror films have gotten really violent again, with a mean streak to boot. And not just the so called "torture porn" movies like Hostel or the Saw movies, but some real mainstream fare, including a Diane Lane movie I'll mention later.

A few years ago I noticed a strong revenge theme in many horror movies, and I always figured that had something to do with 9/11. I.E. you are attacked unexpectedly and you must fight back, but in the process of fighting back you become like your aggressors etc etc. Now, we have the more of the cruelty but less of the revenge. I'm curious as to what this means culturally. Sure, mostly it's probably just a reaction to the success of the Saw franchise, but I have to believe there is something more to it. Maybe it's all the Abu Ghraib and waterboarding stuff, etc etc, going on with our government that has us thinking about this shit.

Enough of that. Now is the time to talk about all the new horror movies I saw this last year, give me final thoughts on them and see where they fit in to the big picture. I will break them up into themed sections.

Remakes

Day of the Dead - Who needs a new idea when there are plenty of old ones to steal? Just playing, I actually don't mind remakes. At least, not in theory, and especially not when the original movie wasn't very good to begin with. Case in point, here we have a direct to DVD remake of George Romero's worst zombie film, starring the cute Menu Suvari and the unbearable Nick fucking Cannon. And hey, I honestly don't think it's much worse than the original. It's not as boring, preachy or as poorly acted. It is, however, more generic and stupid. I wouldn't even call it a remake so much as it is an attempt to trick people into thinking it's a sequel to the Dawn of the Dead remake by reusing one of its cast members and rehashing the fast-moving zombies. Only for some reason these zombies can also scale walls and weird shit like that, I didn't really understand why. It's a bad movie, but also inconsequential and therefore hard to hate. I think indifference is the right response.

Wizard of Gore - And again, how much can you really mind a remake when the original was a piece of shit? Hell, if you want to be generous, this is a remake that is better than the original. Not that that's saying much. I'll give the Wizard of Gore remake credit for being ambitious, it tries to combine extreme gore with a mindfuck, reality bending plot. It also has Crispin Glover, so I'm going to go ahead and call it the most improved upon horror movie remake of the year. It still sucks though. The plot is convoluted to the point that it's incomprehensible, so instead of drawing you in it alienates you. The gore is mostly CG, and I just can't stand for that. I'll give it points for trying to do it's own thing, it can't easily be lumped in to a subgenre. It just isn't a good movie.

Prom Night - Okay, damn, you think they would have actually tried to remake a good movie at some point, right? They got to this one before they got to Last House on the Left? I watched Prom Night for anthropological reasons, to find out what the state of horror movies aimed at teenage girls was. Not so hot, apparently. My problem with this shit is it doesn't feel like the filmmakers know or care much about horror movies. It was directed by some dude who mostly did TV up until now, and it was probably just a way for him to get into features. It's competently filmed, in the sense it looks nice and the staging isn't awkward, but there isn't even a sense that the filmmakers tried to create atmosphere or build tension. It's just a bullet point on the director's resume that shows he knows how to keep the shot in focus and get adequate performances out of his cast.

Mirrors - If not quite the worst horror movie of the year, it may have been the most disappointing. I haven't seen the Korean movie this was based on, so I'm not disappointed that it didn't live up to the original. I'm disappointed because I thought director Alexandre Aja had potential to be the next great horror filmmaker. His remake of The Hills Have Eyes is one of the best looking, best made slasher movies of the last decade or so, and was a notable improvement over his well-shot but flawed debut High Tension. I thought he was going to go right on improving with each movie, until he released this embarrassing mess. It is a horrible offender of two of the genre's biggest sins: focusing on an overly complicated plot that no one could possibly give a shit about, and having a supernatural villain who does completely arbitrary scary things that don't make any damned sense.

Funny Games - So what if I didn't see it? It's a shot for shot remake of the original by the same director (I guess one-upping Gus Van Sant's Psycho remake?), I know it still sucks. I don't understand how some horror fans have embraced it, when it's the most deplorable horror film of the year: a horror film that tells you that you are an asshole for watching a horror film.

The Return of the Curse of the Blair Witch Project's Ghost

Cloverfield - For what ever reason, '08 marked a major renaissance in the faux-documentary style horror film, popularized 10 years ago by The Blair Witch Project, a movie I wasn't a big fan of to begin with. In all honesty, I don't often like horror movies done in this style. Theoretically it's done to heighten the sense of realism, but instead it tends to underline it's own stagey-ness, i.e. you recognize that the actors are acting and aren't real people, you recognize that everything is pre-planned and not happening spontaneously. And Cloverfield, despite all the love it seemed to get this year, is a particularly strong offender. Even discounting that I didn't much care for the characters or find the story interesting or think that there were any memorable set pieces or whatnot, the movie never worked for me because it felt fake. And I think maybe that had to do with the budget and scope of the film. There were too many special effects, and they always looked like special effects. A more modest film, say one where there isn't a giant dinosaur stomping around New York, would work to hide its special effects and as a result might look more convincing. Somehow when you combine a "realistic" style of filmmaking with an unconvincing special effect, it's extra jarring.

Diary of the Dead - Yeah, with the rise of You Tube and camera phones and all that shit, the return of the faux-documentary trend was inevitable. I said I don't normally like the style, but I suppose it could have seemed like it might be an effective way to comment on the effect this technology has had on our society. "Seemed" being the operative word, because this year George Romero definitively proved that it's an awful idea that should never be attempted again. The observation that our media-saturated culture has left us disconnected from reality just sounds pointless when you say it out loud, and believe me, Romero has his characters state it out loud many, many times. There is some occasional entertaining zombie mayhem here, but nothing about the gimmick enhances any of it. It would all work just as well if done straightforwardly.

Quarantine - I could have counted this under remakes, since this is an Americanized version of Spanish movie that came out in 2007, but I wanted to include it with the faux-documentary set as it is a rare example of an excellent horror film done in this style. No heavy handed themes about isolation caused by modern technology. No over elaborate special effects distracting from the "realistic" style. Instead, it uses the handheld look to create unease in the early scenes, and to add some manic energy during the conclusion. Also, another point I'd like to make is about a smart choice they make about the acting. The main character is a news reporter, so it works that she doesn't feel entirely natural because her character is performing for the camera. One of the year's best horror movies.