Movie Review: All the Boys Love Mandy Lane

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Movie Review: All the Boys Love Mandy Lane

All the Boys Love Mandy Lane
Directed by:  Jonathan Levine.
Written by: Jacob Forman.
Starring: Amber Heard (Mandy Lane), Anson Mount (Garth), Whitney Able (Chloe), Michael Welch (Emmet), Edwin Hodge (Bird), Aaron Himelstein (Red), Luke Grimes (Jake), Melissa Price (Marlin), Adam Powell (Dylan).

The story goes that Harvey Weinstein bought All the Boys Love Mandy Lane when it became a buzzy Midnight Madness selection at TIFF all the back in 2006. He thought that his brother Bob could release the film through their genre division – Dimension. The only problem is that Bob didn’t really like the movie – it got moved around the schedule multiple times – came out pretty much everywhere else in the world (including DVD releases) except for North America. Why it’s getting released now, I have no idea – except, I guess it makes sense to, finally, try and make some of the money back on their investment. I remember hearing about the film at TIFF all the way in 2006 – and thinking it sounded interesting – so I was looking forward to it. Unfortunately, All the Boys Love Mandy Lane is not the horror equivalent of Kenneth Lonergan's Margaret – a long delayed masterwork by a studio who didn’t know what they had. All the Boys Love Mandy Lane left me wanting a lot more.

All the boys in her high school do in fact love Mandy Lane (Amber Heard) – and on a purely physical level, it’s easy to see why. She’s gorgeous, and the fact that she’s an “infamous virgin” only makes her more sought after. Apparently, Mandy was pretty much a wallflower until junior year, when she showed up looking smoking hot – I don’t really buy that she got that much hotter over the course of a summer, but whatever. Soon, she has pretty much dropped her loser friend Emmet (Michael Welch) – to hang out with the cool kids. All the boys want to be the one who deflowers her – one idiot even kills himself at a house party trying to impress her.

Most of the action of the movie takes place at the ranch of one of the cool kids who invites Mandy, alongside some other kids up for the weekend. Everyone is looking forward to a weekend of debauchery – drinking, drugs and sex – and that is pretty much what they get. Until, of course, the kids start being killed in gruesome ways by someone in a hoodie. Could it be Garth (Anson Mount) – the handsome ranch hand – or is it an outsider, or more chillingly, one of the kids themselves. The movie takes a painfully long time to reveal its secrets – and even features a “shocking twist ending” which if you’re like me, you’ll probably see coming from the outset.

Spoiler Warning: I’ll try not to spoil the movie below, but unfortunately, I pretty much have to at least hint what the movie has in store. You’ve been warned.

All the Boys Love Mandy Lane is half of a good idea, that the screenplay by Jacob Forman doesn’t quite follow through on. One of the clichés of the horror genre has always been the “virgin girl”, who survives until the end, and is the one who confronts the killer – and ends up walking away safely - while all of her slutty, alcoholic drugged out pay the price for their transgressions. All the Boys Love Mandy Lane decides to take that cliché, and twist it in the hopes of coming up with something new. It’s a good idea, but in this movie it doesn’t quite work. Like Joe Swanberg’s recent Drinking Buddies, which upended one cliché of the romantic comedy genre, All the Boys Love Mandy Lane doesn’t really have anything new to add to the genre except flipping the one cliché around. So like Drinking Buddies, it’s refreshing to see a movie that tries something different – but disappointing that the filmmakers didn’t come up with something more to do in place of the cliché they are upending. So both movies kind of go sideways instead leading somewhere satisfying. It’s an even bigger problem for All the Boys Love Mandy Lane than it was for Drinking Buddies, because by the time they get around to upending the cliché, the movie is just about over – and we are left with too many nagging, unanswered questions – and not the kind of ambiguous ones that can be intriguing, but instead the kind that feel like no one involved in making the movie really though through.

The movie itself isn’t horrible – it’s well made by director Jonathan Levine (it’s easy to see why he’s made three better films – The Wackness, 50/50 and Warm Bodies – since) and Heard is effective for most of her scenes – until the screenplay lets her down at the end. And yes, there’s a lot of blood for horror fans out there.

Still, it remains a fairly big disappointment for me, because there is so much promise in the premise – in the ideas it raises, that the movie never really follows through on. The film reminded me of Kate Asleton’s Black Rock from earlier this year – another film that tried to confront the misogyny implicit in so many horror films that ended up not quite being able to deliver on its promise.

Movie Review: V/H/S 2

Thursday, September 26, 2013

Movie Review: V/H/S 2

V/H/S 2
Directed by: Simon Barrett (Tape 49), Adam Wingard (Clinical Trials), Eduardo Sanchez & Gregg Hale (A Ride in he Park), Gareth Evans & Timo Tjahjanto (Safe Haven), Jason Eisener (Alien Abduction Slumber Party).
Written by: Simon Barrett (Tape 49), John Davies (Clinical Trials), Jamie Nash & Eduardo Sánchez (A Ride in the Park), Gareth Evans & Timo Tjahjanto (Safe Haven), Jason Eisener (Alien Abduction Slumber Party).
Starring: Kelsy Abbott, Hannah Al Rashid, Fachry Albar, Oka Antara, Devon Brookshire, Samantha Gracie, L.C. Holt, Hannah Hughes, Clarissa, Kevin Hunt, Epy Kusnandar, Lawrence Michael Levine, Carly Robell, Mindy Robinson, Jay Saunders, Jeremie Saunders, Andrew Suleiman, Adam Wingard, John T. Woods.

Last year’s VHS was a nasty little surprise – a horror anthology that actually worked. It featured five shorts – two of which were great, one was very good, one was good and one was awful, to go with an average framing device (an excellent batting average for this type of film). The film used the found footage genre in new and interesting ways – and was also quite scary and disturbing. The film was successful enough on its limited budget to warrant a sequel – but for me, it doesn’t come close to matching the original. The first film had a remarkable consistency in its tone – all violent, nasty little films – and I suppose V/H/S 2 does as well for the most part – but this time the mood is lighter, there’s far more black comedy and over the top gore than the first time around. There is one excellent section to go along with three mediocre ones, and a framing device that may not be any better than the first film, but at least is shorter. When I watched the original VHS, I started out watching in the dark, and slowly turned all the lights in my house on as it went along. This time, I wasn’t scared in the least at any point.

The framing device this time is about a P.I. and his assistant who have been hired by a worried mother to find her college age son. They go to his house, and don’t find him, but do find his laptop open cued to a video of him talking about the “tapes” – which the assistant then starts to watch. The wraparound’s surprise ending wouldn’t have been a surprise if she had just watched his whole video from the start, but then that would spoil the fun, right? This segment is directed by Simon Barrett, who wrote two of the segments for the last film but hadn’t directed a feature before, probably because no one else wanted to direct the wraparound segment. It’s probably better than the wraparound from the first film, but only because it doesn’t drag on as long.

The first real segment is directed by Adam Wingard, who made the wraparound segment of the first film, so as a reward was given a chance to direct an actual segment this time. Wingard’s segment of the horrible omnibus horror film The ABCs of Death (Q is for Quack) was one of that film’s best – and I pretty much loved You’re Next, released after two years in limbo, in August. Wingard’s segment here – which he also stars in – is about a man who gets an eye transplant – with predictably horrible results. As with Q is for Quack, Wingard tries for a darkly comedic tone in this segment to go along with the horror, but the two don’t mix very well this time – and other than a few superficial shocks, there isn’t much here. It’s not horrible, just not very good either.

Next up is Gregg Hale and Eduardo Sanchez’s A Ride in the Park, which is about a young man who goes for a bike ride in the park, and is set upon by zombies. Zombies are over exposed right now, so if you’re going to do a zombie film, at least come up with an original way to do them – and this one doesn’t. Again, the tone is lighter, and never scary, but considering Sanchez is one of the directors behind The Blair Witch Project – which for better or worse is responsible for this found footage genre that is hot right now – the results are disappointingly bland.

By far the longest – and best segment – comes next. Gareth Evans (who directed last year’s excellent action film The Raid: Redemption) who teams up with Timo Tjahjanto (who made an awful segment for The ABC’s of Death) to make their extremely disturbing and creepy segment Safe Haven. It starts with a documentary crew filming a cult on their compound, and the film gradually increases the sense of impending doom, until it explodes with some of the best and most disturbing moments of the VHS series so far. True, the ending was weak, but everything up until then was pretty much brilliant.

The segment I was dreading closes the film – Jason Eisener’s Alien Abduction Slumber Party. Eisener is the man behind the absolutely terrible film Hobo with a Shotgun, and another of the worst segments of The ABC’s of Death, so I was just hoping the segment would be over quickly. But to my surprise, it wasn’t horrible. Eisener is clearly trying to tap into those 1980s movies about a group of renegade kids – like say, The Goonies – only this time, it’s about a sleepover that takes a scary turn when aliens arrive (hence the title). The segment really isn’t good – out of all of the segments, this one boasts the most shaky camera work – but it’s not that bad either – easily the best thing Eisener has been responsible for so far.

V/H/S 2 is not as good as the original. Sorry, but it’s true, and I’m kind of mystified that many critics seem to think it’s much better. Other than Safe Haven, there really isn’t anything great here – although to be fair, there isn’t anything god awful either. And I did appreciate the clever ways the filmmakers chose to film their “found footage” films this time – Wingard literally through his eye, Hale and Sanchez through a camera strapped to a bike helmet, Eisener by a camera strapped to a small dog. Still, the most traditional one – Safe Haven, through the eye of a documentarian’s camera – remains the best.

It’s a generally accepted rule that omnibus film are always better in theory than they are in practice. Quick – name a great omnibus film. I don’t think there is one that is great all the way through. Most are like New York Stories, which has one great segment (in that case by Scorsese), one horrible segment (Coppola) and one mediocre (Allen). V/H/S is actually one of the best I can think of – but perhaps what V/H/S 2 proves is that was an anomaly more than anything else – because this film, like most of its ilk, has one segment worth watching, surrounded by mediocrity.

Movie Review: Insidious: Chapter 2

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Movie Review: Insidious: Chapter 2

Insidious: Chapter 2
Directed by: James Wan.
Written by: Leigh Whannell & James Wan.
Starring: Patrick Wilson (Josh Lambert), Rose Byrne (Renai Lambert), Ty Simpkins (Dalton Lambert), Lin Shaye (Elise Rainier), Barbara Hershey (Lorraine Lambert), Steve Coulter (Carl), Leigh Whannell (Specs), Angus Sampson (Tucker), Andrew Astor (Foster Lambert), Hank Harris (Young Carl), Jocelin Donahue (Young Lorraine), Lindsay Seim (Young Elise Rainier), Danielle Bisutti (Mother of Parker Crane), Tyler Griffin (Young Parker), Garrett Ryan (Young Josh), Tom Fitzpatrick (Bride in Black / Old Parker), Michael Beach (Detective Sendal).

Perhaps the biggest problem with Insidious: Chapter 2 is heightened expectations. When the original film came out in 2010, I went in not expecting much. James Wan was the director of the first (and best) of the Saw series, the horrible Dead Silence, and the underrated revenge film Death Sentence – but nothing I had seen made me believe he had a truly great horror movie in him. But Insidious was just about as good as mainstream American horror films get – it was well made, built on tension, not gore, had relatable characters and was genuinely scary. Than just two months ago, Wan outdid himself with the surprise summer hit The Conjuring – a film that wanted to be a more realistic horror film – and succeeded. Like many films, it owes a large debt to The Exorcist, and well it didn’t break new ground like that 1973 classic, it is about as good as the films The Exorcist has inspired can possibly be. Coming off of back to back genuinely frightening, well-made horror movie then, Wan faced something with Insidious: Chapter 2 he didn’t before – people actually expecting a horror movie to be good.

To be fair, Insidious: Chapter 2 is in no way a bad way film. Yes, it repeats the first film a little too much – as is to be expected in an sequel – and it is at times a little too clever for its own sake – trying to explain some of what happened in the original film with the events in this film. Horror movies require full immersion by the audience for them to work – which is why, I like to see them with as few people in the theater as possible (an errant cell phone, some whispers, etc. that normally you brush off quickly can spoil the whole atmosphere of even the best horror movies). By trying to be a little too clever – and adding in a few moments of bizarre comic relief that border on slapstick – Wan takes you out of Insidious: Chapter 2 a little too often for it to as sustained an exercise in horror filmmaking as his last two films.

Still though, you have to give Wan credit. He may not exactly come up with new ways to scare the audience – his horror movie style is still more rooted in classical tropes (which meant the torture porn he was saddled with for years after Saw was always unwarranted), but he does find ways to subtly shift those classic tropes. He never quite gives us precisely what we are expecting from him, and finds ways to make his films not just scary, but genuinely unsettling. These aren’t horror movie you see once are momentarily scared by while watching and then forget about them. These are the horror movies you find yourself thinking about in the dead of night when you hear a strange noise.

I don’t want to say much about the plot of Insidious: Chapter 2 for a few reasons – the first being, as with any scary movie, surprise is a necessary element for them to work. And the second is that the secrets of Insidious: Chapter are all fairly obvious – if you don’t figure most of them out well before the movie makes its series of big reveals, than I doubt you’ve seen too many horror movies before. I will say that for the most part, the performances are a step above most horror movies – especially by the veterans – Barbara Hershey, given much more to do this time out, Lin Shaye as the medium who isn’t as creepy as she appears, and Steve Coulter, as a newcomer to the series. Poor Patrick Wilson is stuck with a nearly impossible role, and Rose Bryne, while appropriately terrified at the right moments, is more shunted off to the background that I expected.

Does Insidious: Chapter 2 work? Kind of. There are some wonderful horror movie set pieces in the film (never have dice seemed scarier), but it doesn’t have the same kind of propulsive terror that either the original Insidious or The Conjuring had. The result is a movie that is less than the sum of its parts. Wan, however, is still one of the American horror movies directors to watch – perhaps the only one working in truly mainstream horror (others, like Rob Zombie or Ti West, are doing smaller films). It’s almost too bad Wan is directing the next Fast & Furious movie – partly because Justin Lin has done a very good job of elevating those movies in the last few installments, but also because I want to see Wan continue to hone his horror movie chops. Insidious: Chapter 2 may not be the triumph that Insidious or The Conjuring were – but it’s made by a very talented director.

Movie Review: The Lords of Salem

Friday, September 6, 2013

Movie Review: The Lords of Salem

The Lords of Salem
Directed by:  Rob Zombie.
Written by: Rob Zombie.
Starring: Sheri Moon Zombie (Heidi Hawthorne), Bruce Davison (Francis Matthias), Jeff Daniel Phillips (Herman 'Whitey' Salvador), Judy Geeson (Lacy Doyle), Meg Foster (Margaret Morgan), Patricia Quinn (Megan), Ken Foree (Herman Jackson), Dee Wallace (Sonny), Maria Conchita Alonso (Alice Matthias), Richard Fancy (AJ Kennedy), Andrew Prine (Reverend Jonathan Hawthorne), Michael Berryman (Virgil Magnus), Sid Haig (Dean Magnus).

To me, Rob Zombie represents hope for American horror films. His debut film – House of 1,000 Corpses – was not exactly great; it was taken away from him after all, but contained some great moments. His follow-up The Devil’s Rejects was some sort of warped masterwork of the genre that reminded me of Quentin Tarantino. Than he stepped more into the mainstream, and made the fascinating remake of John Carpenter’s Halloween – which unlike most horror remakes didn’t just want to copy the original. His even stranger Halloween sequel was not exactly brilliant, it was certainly something different. I have faith that at some point, Rob Zombie is going to make one of the best horror films of this era.

But his fifth film, The Lords of Salem, is not that film. It is an interesting film, with a promising setup, and a great lead performance by his wife Sheri Moon Zombie, that pretty much completely flies off the rails in the last act, revealing the answers to its mysteries that turn out to be not all that interesting. Pity, because so much of the film is wonderful.

Moon Zombie stars as Heidi, a late night DJ at a heavy metal radio station alongside Whitey (Jeff Daniel Phillips) and Herman (Ken Foree), in Salem, Massachusetts. You get no points for guessing this is a movie about witches, since it is set in Salem, and why else would you set a movie in Salem if it wasn’t about witches, and of course, the opening scene that takes place at the Salem witch trials – although we never actually see a trial, just a lot of burning “witches”. One night, as a guest, they have Francis Matthias (Bruce Davison), who has written a new book at the Salem witch trials, once again “debunking the myth” that any of the women were actually witches. That same night, a strange package arrives containing a vinyl record by a group calling themselves The Lords. Eventually Heidi will put the record on at home – and then on her show – but every time she hears it, something strange happens to her. More than that, I will not reveal – although you can probably guess where the story is going, and you’d probably be more right than wrong in doing so.

Most of The Lords of Salem is Zombie at his most restrained. His films are marked by their ultra-violence, although most of The Lords of Salem contains no violence at all. Instead, Zombie seems to be inspired more by Roman Polanski this time around – and wants to slowly build up suspense, and give his wife the type of role that Mia Farrow played in Rosemary’s Baby or Catherine Deneuve played in Repulsion. The most surprising thing about the movie may well be that Sheri Moon Zombie is more than up to it. She actually delivers an excellent dramatic performance here as Heidi, making her paranoia seem real. Sheri Moon Zombie has always been good in previous movies for her husband – I’ll never forget her truly demented work in The Devil’s Rejects, and she made an excellent white trash mother to Michael Myers in Halloween. But she has never been a subtle actress – because the roles required her to go over the top. Here, playing a lower key role for the most part, she proves she should be working far more than she does.

And her husband proves himself capable of making a horror film more based on suspense than gore. This isn’t to say that The Lords of Salem does not contain scenes of Zombie’s ultra-violence – it does – but for most of its running time, Zombie is more interesting in creating paranoia than anything else. And, for the most part, he succeeds.

But then, the last act hits, and things go to hell. Perhaps Zombie just painted himself into a corner, and found no way out, so he decided to go batshit crazy instead. That’s as good as an explanation as I can come up with, because the final act of the movie seems to have been imported from somewhere else, and quite simply is ridiculous. I admire Zombie for going for broke, but really, he couldn’t come up with anything better than that?

Yet, I still feel Zombie is destined to make a truly great horror film – in fact, after The Lords of Salem, I’m more convinced than ever. Even if The Lords of Salem represents perhaps the most flawed film Zombie has made so far, it still shows growth – still shows Zombie reaching for something different. Maybe next time, he’ll hit the mark.

Movie Review: You're Next

Monday, August 26, 2013

Movie Review: You're Next

You’re Next
Directed by: Adam Wingard.
Written by: Simon Barrett.
Starring: Sharni Vinson (Erin), Nicholas Tucci (Felix), Wendy Glenn (Zee), AJ Bowen (Crispian), Joe Swanberg (Drake), Sarah Myers (Kelly), Amy Seimetz (Aimee), Ti West (Tariq), Rob Moran (Paul), Barbara Crampton (Aubrey), L.C. Holt (Lamb Mask), Simon Barrett (Tiger Mask), Lane Hughes (Fox Mask), Kate Lyn Sheil (Talia).

I heard about Adam Wingard’s You’re Next when it played as part of the Midnight Madness program at TIFF all the way back in 2011. The reviews from genre sties were universally wonderful – they painted this as both as scary example of the home invasion horror movie, a deft black comedy sending up horror movie clichés, and a mainstream example of the Mumblecore movement that actually had a chance of breaking through. In short, many thought You’re Next was a game changer. For whatever reason, it has taken nearly two years for the film to finally get released – and while it isn’t the game changer some have claimed it to be, it’s still a hell of lot better, and more entertaining, than most horror movies released in a given year. I may not think it’s quite the masterwork that some want it to be – but I also know why they love it – and why Wingard has been able to make a nice little career for himself off its back.

The film opens with a bang – as an older man (Larry Fessendam – the first of several directors to appear in roles in this movie) is having sex with a younger woman (the immensely talented Kate Lynn Sheil) – and while he walks away satisfied, she decidedly does not. She walks over, put on a CD on repeat – to Dwight Twilley’s Looking for the Magic (and if you see the movie, be prepared to spend the next few days with this song stuck in your head). Inevitably, these two will not last long – they aren’t the main characters in the movie, but function like Drew Barrymore at the beginning of Scream – to plunge the audience straight into the horror of the film from the opening scene. It is a brutally effective scene – just like the rest of the movie.

The main thrust of the plot is about a family gathering at the isolated house of their parents to celebrate their 35^th Wedding Anniversary. Mother Aubrey (1980s Scream Queen Barbara Crampton – Re-Animator, Chopping Mall, From Beyond) is more than a little on edge, on various medication, and just wants her family together again. Father Paul (Rob Moran) is a rich man, enjoying retirement, although he can still be hard on his kids. Their four adult kids will arrive with their significant others – Crispian (AJ Bowen), a little pudgy, a college professor going nowhere and his girlfriend, and former student, Eric (Sharni Vinson), Drake (Joe Swanberg), who is clearly an asshole, because why do you cast Swanberg, and his wife Kelly (Sarah Myers), Felix (Nicholas Tucci), clearly the black sheep, and his goth girlfriend Zee (Wendy Glenn), and lone daughter Aimee (Amy Seimetz), who no one ever believes, and her “underground filmmaker” boyfriend Tariq (Ti West). If that sounds like too many characters to keep track of in a horror movie to you – you’re not wrong, but don’t worry too much. Once the bloodshed starts, the numbers thin quickly.

The film is essentially a home invasion horror movie – something that has become increasingly popular in recent years. The great French film Them is still the best of the recent entries, but The Strangers (2008) with Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman is a really under rated film, and this summer’s surprise hit The Purge is pretty much a home invasion film, with a dystopian twist. Home invasion films are so effective when done correctly, because there is supposed to be nowhere we are safer than in our own homes – and when that is violated it’s something we can all relate to.

You’re Next gives the audience what it expects from a home invasion movie – creepy people on the outside in masks (this time animal masks) who seem to know just where to be to be able to hack, slash, stab or shoot whatever victim they have deemed to be next. These scenes are well handled – and while the movie is bloody, it’s not as bloody as you probably think it is – as much of violence is more hinted at that actually seen. We know that one-by-one the numbers will dwindle – but there will be one “survivor girl” who inexplicably makes it much farther than we expect – this time it’s Erin, played in a wonderful performance by Vinson – and Wingard and screenwriter Simon Barrett actually make her survival seem more realistic than it is most of the time. This film should get Vinson far more roles in the future.

But the film is also a subtle, very black comedy. Even as the bodies start to pile up, this family, who doesn’t seem to like each other very much, they still bicker and reopen old wounds. One of my favorite moments is pretty much a throwaway one when the family argues which one of them should try and run for the car, and poor Aimee complains that “no one ever believes in me”, only to be reassured by her father that hebelieves in her – only to then promptly show why they probably shouldn’t have believed in her.

You’re Next is an effective horror movie – it’s clever without being too clever, it’s scary and bloody, but never crosses the line into torture porn, it has some plot twists you see coming, and some you don’t. In short, it’s an effective little horror movie. Not the masterpiece some wanted it to be, but pretty damn good.

Movie Review: Aftershock

Thursday, August 15, 2013

Movie Review: Aftershock

Aftershock
Directed by: Nicolás López.
Written by: Guillermo Amoedo and Nicolás López and Eli Roth.
Starring: Lorenza Izzo (Kylie), Nicolás Martínez (Pollo), Eli Roth (Gringo), Natasha Yarovenko (Irina), Ariel Levy (Ariel), Andrea Osvárt (Monica), Marcial Tagle (Firefighter), Ramón Llao (Ramon), Álvaro López Álvarez (Jesus), Ignacia Allamand (Guide), Dayana Amigo (Bartender), Patricio Strahovsky (Priest), Matías López (Marito), Eduardo Domínguez (Russell Dazzle), Gabriela Hernández (Cleaning Lady), Edgardo Bruna (Grumpy Operator).

The Hostel movies, both written and directed by Eli Roth, are essentially stories of the prototypical “ugly American” in Europe who end up being tortured and killed by even uglier Americans. Neither the victims nor their killers have the slightest redeeming quality to them. Roth made grand pronunciations about his Hostel films being about the “post Abu Ghraib” world we live in – but if that was his intention, than he failed miserably. The Hostel movies are the poster children for “torture porn” – the films don’t say anything except all humans are awful and irredeemable, and filming and watching torture is fun!

Roth didn’t direct Aftershock – but he did co-write it, and has one of the lead roles. Essentially, this is another Hostel movie – this time in Chile instead of Eastern Europe, but the results are basically the same. Roth plays one of his “ugly Americans” in this movie – known only as Gringo – and like his characters in the Hostel movie, he is an ignorant buffoon. This time though, it isn’t Americans killing Americans in a foreign land, it’s mainly foreigners killing foreigners in a foreign land. The basic message is the same however – humanity sucks.

The film opens with a very long half hour segment of Gringo and his two Chilean “friends” – Ariel (Ariel Levy) and Pollo (Nicolas Martinez) going from one place to another trying to get laid. They end up at an underground nightclub, where Gringo strikes out not only with the girl he came with – Irina from Russia (Natasha Yarovenko) but also with Selena Gomez (of course he did). Meanwhile Ariel and Pollo hit on a couple of half-sisters – Kylie (Lorenza Izzo), another Chilean, and Monica (Andrea Osvart), half Hungarian. Like the horny idiot boys in Hostel and the idiot girls (not quite as horny) in Hostel Part II, these people are morons.

Then an earthquake hits, the club starts to crash down around them – people are crushed and trampled – lots of people dead, and Ariel loses his hand – which is punished, which has more adventures than any inanimate hand in the movies since David Lynch’s Wild at Heart (1990). Eventually though these six people make their way to the surface – together – only to find that what’s on the surface is worse than the nightclub. See, humanity sucks, and a prison has collapsed, meaning a roving gang of rapists and murderers are now wandering the streets. And even the regular people aren’t much better, adopting a shoot first and never ask any questions mentality. They survived the quake – although aftershocks keep hitting them at the most inconvenient times – only to stumble onto something worse than Mother Nature – other people.

It is possible to make a great nihilistic horror movie. George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968) and Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) are perfect examples of that. More recent examples include films like Wolf Creek or Frontier(s). The difference between those films – all of which are at least good, and two of them are masterpieces – and Aftershock is that the filmmakers of those films took what they were doing – and the issues they were raising seriously. In Aftershock, it’s all a sick joke.

The movie starts as a lame, unfunny sex comedy – and once the earthquake hits, the whole film can be seen as almost a parody of the disaster film. There is no uplift here like in a movie like The Impossible. Director Nicolas Lopez and his writers are essentially making a comedy – I think anyway – but uses the horrific images they use merely to shock to the audience.

Why, for instance, do we need to see one of the women in the film raped repeatedly – often right alongside scenes of almost overtly over the top comic (yet bloody) deaths? This is the reason why to date Eli Roth has never come close to matching his friend/mentor –Quentin Tarantino. Tarantino has his share of over the top comic violence in his films – and yet watch his recent film Django Unchained. Yes, the shootout that ends the film can surely be seen as comic violence if you like. However, Tarantino knows well enough that not all violence is equal – hence the scenes of slaves being whipped or forced to fight each other to the death or being ripped apart by dogs are not comic at all. They are stomach churningly brutal – as they should be. That is the point, after all. In Aftershock, it doesn’t matter what horrific act of violence is all display – it’s all the same to these filmmakers.

So in the end, Aftershock is another morally repugnant film that Eli Roth has contributed to. We shouldn’t be surprised by now that he keeps making this crap. I am surprised though that people keep paying him to.

Movie Review: Berberian Sound Studio

Wednesday, August 7, 2013

Movie Review: Berberian Sound Studio

Berberian Sound Studio
Directed by: Peter Strickland.
Written by: Peter Strickland.
Starring: Toby Jones (Gilderoy), Tonia Sotiropoulou (Elena), Cosimo Fusco (Francesco), Susanna Cappellaro (Veronica), Chiara D'Anna (Elisa), Eugenia Caruso (Claudia), Antonio Mancino (Santini), Lara Parmiani (Chiara), Fatma Mohamed (Silvia), Guido Adorni (Giovanni), Pal Toth (Massimo), Salvatore LI Causi (Fabio), Jozef Cseres (Massimo).

Berberian Sound Studio is a horror movie about the making of a horror movie that curiously contains no actual violence. All the horror exists inside the head of the main character – a mild mannered English foley artist who heads to Italy to work on a horror film – that sounds kind of like Dario Argento’s Suspiria from 1977. His name is Gilderoy and is played by Toby Jones – and if there’s anything better than Toby Jones playing a man named Gilderoy when you want a mild mannered Englishman, I don’t know what it is. Gilderoy isn’t used to making these types of films – he’s more of a nature documentary kind of guy – so the question immediately becomes why they hired him in the first place? And why don’t they seem to like him very much? And why won’t they reimburse him for the flight to get there? And what is with all those increasingly creepy letters from his mother back home?

Berberian Sound Studio is a fascinating film on several levels. For one, it shows how sound effects used to be achieved. As Gilderoy watches the horror unfolding onscreen (horror that we never see, as the camera remains fixated on Gilderoy’s face as he watches), he see him chopping fruits and vegetables, and doing sort of other tricks to make everything sound appropriately creepy and bloody. Try closing your eyes in these scenes after your know what the sound really is, and it’s still creepy.

But the film is even better as a character study of Gilderoy, who slowly comes unraveled. Is it the images on the screen – which we hear about repeatedly but never see – that starts him on his downward spiral towards madness? Or was he already on the downward slope when he arrived in Italy? And what of that strange flight that he insists he was on, but the studio accountants say they can find no record of? Is the finale all in Gilderoy’s head, or is there some real external threat out there?

It’s to the movie’s credit that it never really reveals the answers to these questions. Written and directed by Peter Strickland, Berberian Sound Studio is one of the creepiest movies of the year – a film that doesn’t rely on violence and blood in order to shock the audience, but rather on mood and atmosphere. As Gilderoy, Jones delivers an excellent performance – outwardly, he is the nicest, quietest man imaginable, even as he starts to lose his mind. But there is something off about him as well – even from the beginning, something creepy and just not quite right. Nowhere is this highlighted more than in the letters than periodically come from his mother back home, that get increasingly dark and violent.

Berberian Sound Studio is a movie made for movie lovers. It takes a look back at cinema’s past, and explores the power that movies hold over us. It is also one of the best horror movies of the year.

Movie Review: Black Rock

Friday, August 2, 2013

Movie Review: Black Rock

Black Rock
Directed by: Katie Aselton.
Written by: Mark Duplass and Katie Aselton.
Starring: Katie Aselton (Abby), Lake Bell (Lou), Kate Bosworth (Sarah), Will Bouvier (Henry), Jay Paulson (Derek), Anslem Richardson (Alex).

As horror movie fans, I think we have to admit that the history of horror movies is, by and large, rather misogynistic. They are often about beautiful, scantily clad women being chased through the house, woods, etc. by sadistic monsters, rednecks, etc. before being killed off in increasingly gory, disturbing ways – sometimes, though not always, after being raped. The only way for a woman to save herself in a horror movie is to be as pure as the driven snow – if she gives into her sexual desires at some point, she’s doomed. This is, of course, a gross simplification of horror movies, but you know as well as I do that it describes many horror films – some great, some horrible. Given this history, I like it when a films tries to do something different – tries to actually have something intelligent to say about gender roles, and particularly women, rather than to treat as sexy objects to be ogled at and then slaughtered. If for no other reason, Black Rock should be admired for at least trying to do something different – even if I’m not convinced that it actually succeeds in its aims.

Black Rock starts out as female bonding movie. Sarah (Kate Bosworth) has arranged to go to the island off the short of New England with her two childhood best friends – Abby (Katie Aselton) and Lou (Lake Bell) – but neglected to tell either one about the other. Sarah’s two friends have been feuding for years – because of a betrayal on Lou’s part – and Sarah is trying to bring them back together. At first, they resist, but eventually relent and head off to the island. But their resentments cannot stay buried for long, and old wounds are opened.

Eventually though, this will take a backseat to a more immediate threat. They think they’re alone on this island, but then they run into three ex-soldiers, just back from Afghanistan (with an unlikely story of how they were dishonorably discharged) who are there to hunt. The girls realize they know one of the three of them. Abby, who is married, though we sense unhappily, gets roaring drunk, and starts to flirt with one of the men – the two of them eventually heading out into the woods together, where Abby changes her mind, and the soldier doesn’t let her – leading to, of course, death. The other two soldiers then decide to kill all three girls – but the girls won’t go down quietly.

The movie was directed by and stars Kate Aselton, who also came up with the story, although it was her husband, Mark Duplass, who actually wrote the script. It’s tough to tell if the screenplay is what Aselton thought up when she came up with the story – for instance, it is purposeful that the female characters often talk like men, or is it a sign that Duplass isn’t great at writing female dialogue? While Aselton’s direction cannot overcome that problem, she does sidestep two other potential pratfalls in the screenplay. When the women get beat up by the soldiers, they are left bloody and bruised – and for once, the bruises and cuts look painful and ugly – not the typical sexy black eye many horror movie heroines get. And later in the movie, when two of the female characters have to strip naked, it isn’t played for titillation – despite the fact that the two women are beautiful, there is nothing sexy about this sequence – as there may well have been had the movie been directed by a man. So while the screenplay may have been a setup for another slightly misogynistic movie, Aselton sidesteps that trap fairly nicely.

What she cannot do however is disguise the absolute shallowness of the three male characters. I wonder if the movie was meant as some sort of political commentary – the three soldiers, who represent the worst the army has to offer (no heroes in that bunch) meant to stand in for conservative America, who attack three, liberal women from New England. The two sets of characters vaguely resemble the clichés both liberals and conservatives have about each other (at least on cable news), but this is so underdeveloped that if it was intentional it comes really comes through. The men are basically one note characters – no more developed than any other band of faceless redneck killers. And Aselton also cannot handle the climatic fight sequence – which is clumsily handled to say the least.

I think Black Rock is a horror movie with honorable intentions – a film that tried to reverse the long held misogyny apparent in many horror films. That it doesn’t really succeed is a shame, because it has a promising setup, and the idea is long overdue. But the film is too underwritten to truly accomplish what it sets out to do. Black Rock is a film where I admire the intention far more than the results.

Movie Review: The Conjuring

Monday, July 22, 2013

Movie Review: The Conjuring

The Conjuring
Directed by: James Wan.
Written by: Chad Hayes & Carey Hayes.
Starring: Vera Farmiga (Lorraine Warren), Patrick Wilson (Ed Warren), Lili Taylor (Carolyn Perron), Ron Livingston (Roger Perron), Shanley Caswell (Andrea), Hayley McFarland (Nancy), Joey King (Christine), Mackenzie Foy (Cindy), Kyla Deaver (April), Shannon Kook (Drew), John Brotherton (Brad), Sterling Jerins (Judy Warren), Marion Guyot (Georgiana), Morganna Bridgers (Debbie), Amy Tipton (Camilla).

James Wan has quietly become one of the best directors of mainstream horror films working in America today. While many horror filmmakers are obsessed with the more violent films from the 1970s and 1980s – and all seem to want to make the next The Texas Chainsaw Massacre – Wan has his sights on an era slightly earlier – the classic possession films of the late 1960s and early 1970s. His last film was the excellent, under rated Insidious, and now comes The Conjuring – an even better film, that feels like a forgotten horror film from the year it is set – 1971. Since Wan directed the original Saw, he has often been lumped in by the unobservant with the “torture porn” crowd, which isn’t accurate at all. While the Saw series certainly devolved into that, the first film – the only one Wan directed (he was an “executive producer” on the rest, which probably means he had very little input into them) was really more about atmosphere than torture. The same goes for the awful Dead Silence (2007) that was his follow-up. Even the violent revenge film Death Sentence (also 2007) – which is inarguably his bloodiest – also has a great sense of atmosphere. And that is what The Conjuring excels at. Here is a horror movie with almost no blood, guts or death – and it is easily the scariest film I have seen in a theater this year.

The film is about the Perron family – father Roger (Ron Livingston and) and mother Carolyn (Lili Taylor) and their five daughters – ranging from teenager verging on adulthood, to cute pre-school age. They are a picture perfect family – as we literally see in the many family portraits they have – who move to an old farmhouse in the middle of the Pennsylvania country. As you can guess, the house is haunted – but by what? As the family reaches the end of the rope, and things start spiraling out of control, they reach out to famed “Paranormal Detectives” Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) – best known for The Amityville Horror (which is referenced at the end of the movie, as this case predates that one) to figure out just exactly what is haunting them.

From the opening credits of The Conjuring on, Wan does his best to recreate the look and feel of the films from the era – I don’t think I’ve seen an opening scrawl quite like the one in The Conjuring in any many movies made in recent decades. This extends to the costumes and art direction as well. While often movies made today but set in the 1970s pretty much mock the clothes and style of the decade, The Conjuring does an excellent job of recreating them, without going overboard and becoming a distraction. Even the cinematography harkens back to the films of that era – a difficult thing to recreate in the digital age. The film is obviously inspired by masterpieces such as Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby and William Friedkin’s The Exorcist – and while it would be nearly impossible to equal those two films (and this film doesn’t), The Conjuring easily ranks among the best of those two films many, many imitators.

Like those two films, The Conjuring depends more on atmosphere and slowly increasing tension rather than blood to scare the audience. Normally, I tire of horror movies that rely heavily on so called “BOO!” moments to scare the audience, but they are put to effective use in The Conjuring, because Wan knows not to overdo it, and enjoys toying with the audience. Sometimes, he is seemingly setting up a “BOO!” moment that never actually comes, and other times, they do, and yet other times, they come out of nowhere. An effective horror movie has to keep the audience guessing as to what is coming next – which Wan does amazingly well in The Conjuring.

But what elevates The Conjuring above most other horror movies is simple – the film is full of characters you actually like and get to know, and the film actually takes the Warrens and their beliefs and practices seriously. It is easy to mock Warrens – where Ed is a “demonologist” and Lorraine is “clairvoyant”, and if we’re talking in reality here, then no, I don’t really believe in either of them. But this is a movie after all, and the movie does take what they do seriously – and Wilson and especially Farmiga are excellent in their roles. Add in an excellent performance by Lili Taylor – playing for the most part a normal woman – and you have a horror movie that takes its subject more seriously than most, and contains performances far superior to most of what the genre has to offer.

I have tried not to reveal too much of the plot to the movie – in fact, I think I probably revealed less than the trailers do. As with many horror movies, surprise in a major element to the effectiveness of the film. The film may not break new ground, and may not be the masterpiece that the films that inspired it are, but as an example of the horror genre, it does everything just right.

The Best Films I Have Never Seen Before: They Live (1988)

Friday, June 28, 2013

The Best Films I Have Never Seen Before: They Live (1988)

They Live (1988)
Directed by: John Carpenter.
Written by: John Carpenter based on the short story by Ray Nelson.
Starring: Roddy Piper (John Nada), Keith David (Frank Armitage), Meg Foster (Holly Thompson), George 'Buck' Flower (The Drifter), Peter Jason (Gilbert), Raymond St. Jacques (Street Preacher).

I have long been a fan of John Carpenter. Films like Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), Halloween (1978), The Thing (1981), Escape from New York (1982) and even, dare I saw it, Ghosts of Mars (2001) are great throwbacks to the days of Howard Hawks. His films, like the work of Hawks, has largely been conservative or right leaning. Which makes his 1988 horror-satire They Live all the more confusing, as it is certainly a left leaning movie, even as it disguises itself with right wing tropes and clichés. They Live was a reaction to 8 years of Ronald Reagan as President, and (at that time) possibly four more years under Reagon’s VP George Bush. Carpenter, who maybe more conservative than most Hollywood filmmakers, was no fan of Reagan, and he compared his Presidency to fascism and wanted to show the hypocrisy in it. Perhaps that’s why They Live is often celebrated as one of Carpenter’s best films. But to me, the satire is rather tame and toothless, the movie confused, and weighed down by clichés and a central performance by a wrestler, who let’s face it, cannot act to save his life. They are some great moments in They Live. But the whole movie adds up to very little.

Homeless after being fired from his job, construction worker John Nada (Rowdy Roddy Piper) walks from Denver to L.A. looking for work. He finds it, working under the table on a construction site, but the job doesn’t pay well, so he ends up living in a shanty town that fellow worker Frank (Keith David) invites him along. Depite being homeless and unemployed John “still believes in America”, that if you work hard, you can make a success of yourself. But then he starts noticing some strange things going on in a church across the street. When he goes to investigate, he finds the constantly singing choir is just a recording. When the police invade the church – and then destroy the shanty town – John finds a box full of sunglasses, and puts a pair on. Immediately, his world changes. It goes from color to black and white. Ads no longer look the same and are now just single words or phrases that give their underlying message “Consume”, “Marry and Reproduce”, “Watch TV”, “Don’t Question Authority”, “Obey”, etc. More shockingly, some of the people he sees aren’t really people, but hideous, bug eyed aliens. It turns out that aliens have already taken over America, invisible to the naked eye. They want to make Earth into “their third world”, and all humans are either controlled by the messages in their TVs, or willing collaborators with the regime for financial payoff. The church was the headquarters of the only group committed to fighting the aliens.

I don’t know – maybe this all seemed radical back in 1988, but to me, it seems rather tame. Carpenter is obviously comparing the aliens to Reagan and his administration, who was trying to brainwash people into accepting whatever he put out there. And that’s a little bit of a stretch. But it could have easily worked. But I think Carpenter, so beholden to genres clichés, can never really get out of his own way. The film echoes Carpenter’s idol Hawks far too much – the endless fight scene between John and Frank before they can become friends, is a typical Hawks trait. As are the snappy, sexist one liners that Piper spews (which is supposed to be okay, I guess, because they’re directed at aliens posing as women, and not women themselves). Piper is essentially playing the role that Kurt Russell usually played for Carpenter. The difference is that Russell made it work, and Piper doesn’t. When he delivers the films most famous line - “I’ve come here to kick ass and chew bubble gum. And I’m all out of bubble gum” –Piper cannot make it work. It just sounds dumb.

There are still some great moments in They Live – as there are in any Carpenter film. The first is the sequence following Piper first putting on the sunglasses, which is a small tour de force for Carpenter behind the camera. The sequence that ends the film is full of some great, comedic moments as well. But these moments are few and far between.

Near the end of They Live, John Carpenter has two film critics on TV (obviously meant to be Siskel and Ebert) who are exposed as aliens and complaining about “filmmakers like George A. Romero and John Carpenter” who have gone too far. This shout out to Romero, as well as putting his name in the same sentence, is supposed to signal that Carpenter wanted to make a film like Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (or its sequels Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead), which combined social commentary with horror. The difference between what Romero achieved in those films (and later in Land of the Dead and Diary of the Dead, and even in parts of the most recent, Survival of the Dead), is that while Romero is using the zombie genre to comment on things like racism, the demise of the American family, consumerism, the military industrial complex, capitalism and war, the satire is never pushed to the front of the movie like Carpenter has done with They Live. It’s both more subtle, yet more on target and incisive than Carpenter has pulled off with They Live. That’s why Romero is a master. And why Carpenter, as good as he can be, is a step or two behind him.

Movie Review: The Purge

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Movie Review: The Purge

The Purge
Directed by:  James DeMonaco.
Written by: James DeMonaco.
Starring: Ethan Hawke (James Sandin), Lena Headey (Mary Sandin), Max Burkholder (Charlie Sandin), Adelaide Kane (Zoey Sandin), Edwin Hodge (Bloody Stranger), Rhys Wakefield (Polite Stranger), Tony Oller (Henry), Arija Bareikis (Mrs. Grace Ferrin), Tom Yi (Mr. Cali), Chris Mulkey (Mr. Halverson), Tisha French (Mrs. Halverson), Dana Bunch (Mr. Ferrin).

The Purge is a nasty little horror movie whose ambition far outweighs its execution. Having said that however, considering how few movies of this ilk have any ambition at all – they exist just to be nasty genre exercises (which can be fine in their own right) – I didn’t so much mind that the movie didn’t quite live up to its ambitions, as I admired the movie for having them at all. It is an effective example of the “home invasion” horror story – a subgenre I like anyway – but it has more on its mind than that. Yes, you could pick apart at the seams of the movies, and find some plot holes – or be annoyed by one characters rather stupid actions – but I didn’t mind them very much.

The concept of the movie is that in the not too distant future, the “New Founding Fathers” or America (with a logo not unlike the NRA’s) will have solved America’s poverty and crime problems. One night a year, Americans get 12 hours to commit any crime they want – including murder – and they will not be punished. Critics (correctly) point out that it is the poor who suffer because of the annual Purge – the rich can secure themselves behind security systems, and can afford an arsenal of weaponry as backup – but the poor are left to fend for themselves – and they’re the ones who get murdered. Less poor people, means less of a “burden” they are to the rich, more jobs for everyone else, etc. Crime is now virtually non-existent, because even if you want to kill someone, why wouldn’t you just plot your crime from Purge day, and get away scot free.

The Purge doesn’t take a large scale view of this “annual tradition”, but a small scale one. James Sandin (Ethan Hawke) sells high tech security systems to the rich – and business is good. He finds out that he is the number 1 salesman for his company. He’s doing so well in fact that he and his wife Mary (Lena Headey) are putting an addition on their house – much to the chagrin of envious neighbors. The Sandins are the seemingly perfect, 1950s style nuclear family – mom at home, cooking fancy meals (“No carbs – not one”), and raising the kids – daughter Zoey (Adelaide Kane), who is “in love” with an older boy, and son Charlie (Max Burkholder), who is probably too smart and sensitive for his own good. The family settles in behind their security system, and plan on watching some “purge events” on TV. They are safe. That is until Charlie does something that no one else in the family would do, which sets into motion a series of escalating conflicts. There is a group of young, educated psychos out front – and they want in. And all of a sudden, James admits that the security systems he sells are quite as impenetrable as he made them out to be (“They look good, and people stay away”). The Sandins, therefore, will have to fight for their own survival.

The biggest problem I had with The Purge is the character of Charlie – the young teenage son of the Sandin’s. Much of what he does doesn’t really make logical sense. Sure, his action that sets in motion the rest of the plot does make sense – but from that point on, he acts only as the plot requires him to in order to move the movie forward, not really how a real person would act. This is one of those things you just have to accept in a movie like The Purge – because if he acts differently, you don’t really have a movie. Others may complain that the concept of the movie as a whole is farfetched – yet I don’t think it’s overly far-fetched in terms of other movies of its ilk – where characters believe they’re living in an utopia, until they come face to face with the reality of the situation, when they realize it’s not. You could also complain that the leader of the “freaks” is just a carbon copy of the gentleman killers from Michael Haneke’s Funny Games – but I prefer to see that as an homage. The killers in Haneke’s film are precisely the type of people who would embrace The Purge.

Despite its flaws, The Purge mostly works where it counts. As a home invasion film – the bad guys on the outside trying to get in, the “good guys” on the inside keeping them out – The Purge works quite well. Writer and director James DeMonaco spends much more time building up the tension – both in terms of horror and between the characters – than he does on violence and blood-letting (although, the movie has some good ones of those as well). And the film’s mixture of the high concept dystopia, mixed with the low concept home invasion film worked quite well for me. The Purge isn’t a great film – it would have to fully flesh out its political concept for that, and it never quite does – but compared to most films of its kind, it is vastly superior. Horror films are not usually released in the summer. The Purge is an example of why they should be.

Movie Review: Dark Skies

Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Movie Review: Dark Skies

Dark Skies
Directed by: Scott Stewart.
Written by: Scott Stewart.
Starring: Keri Russell (Lacy Barrett), Josh Hamilton (Daniel Barrett), Dakota Goyo (Jesse Barrett), Kadan Rockett (Sam Barrett), J.K. Simmons (Edwin Pollard), L.J. Benet (Kevin Ratner), Rich Hutchman (Mike Jessop), Myndy Crist (Karen Jessop), Annie Thurman (Shelly Jessop), Jake Brennan (Bobby Jessop), Ron Ostrow (Richard Klein).

When I reviewed the horror film Mama recently I said this: “The problem with Mama is pretty much from beginning to end, the audience knows what the big secret of the movie is going to be – and we just have to wait for the main character to catch up to us. So while Mama is much better made and acted than your run of the mill horror film, it’s just as brainless.” I quote this at length, because it fits pretty much perfectly to Dark Skies as well. You cannot name a movie Dark Skies and start the movie with a quote from Arthur C. Clarke and expect the audience NOT to guess your movie’s big surprise. Like Mama, Dark Skies is a very well made horror movie – but it doesn’t quite have the advantage of Jessica Chastain in the lead role. Keri Russell is fine – but nothing more.

The movie is about the Barrett family – a typical suburban family, who like everyone else is experiencing money problems. Lacy (Russell) is a real estate agent trying to make money on commissions, but doesn’t have the houses to do so, and Daniel (Josh Hamilton) has been out of work for a few months now. Soon though, they’ll wish money problems are all they’ll have. The Barrett’s have two sons – Jesse (Dakota Goyo), on the cusp of being a teenager, and all the confusion that comes along with that, and Sam (Kadan Rockett), a few years younger, who still thinks he sees the sandman – and blames him when he does things wrong. The Barrett’s think this is just a phase – if only that were true.

Of course, strange things start to happen – break-ins to their house, that aren’t really break-ins. Despite a new alarm system, and Daniel’s installation of Paranormal Activity like camera equipment, strange things keep happening – so Lacy, of course, hits the internet and, of course, comes back with a bunch of conspiracy theories that Daniel, of course, thinks are ridiculous but, of course, turn out to be all too true. You get the idea. And without Mulder and Scully to help them the Barrett’s are basically screwed.

Like Mama, the central problem with Dark Skies is that the movie holds no real surprises for the audience. From the opening moments, you know (or should) precisely where this movie is going – and spend the first hour (of a movie barely 90 minutes long) frustrated because the characters take so much more time than you did to figure it all out. Good horror movies need to provide you with a plausible alternate theory – something that makes you go back and forth in your mind trying to piece things together. But from the beginning, there is only one thing that could be causing the problem in Dark Skies.

The film was written and directed by Scott Stewart – and I guess it’s a step forward from his first two features – Legion (2009) and Priest (2011), two horror/action movies that inexplicably tried to turn Paul Bettany into an action hero (it didn’t work). Here, the action is less frantic, the characters more believable, the atmosphere creepier, and more believable. He shows more skill behind the camera this time than in the previous two films. But his screenplay is what ultimately undoes him – it’s hard to get too involved with a movie that depends so much on shocking the audience, when you figure out all the surprises before the characters do – and if there was ever movie that did not require one of those flashback montages that explain the twist, this would be that movie – but it’s there just the same.

Dark Skies certainly isn’t an awful movie. It is well made, and the performances are as good as can be expected given what they to work with – and I did quite enjoy J.K. Simmons in his one scene cameo is a crazy guy who isn’t so crazy after all. But it is a rather pointless one. You have to do something to scare the audience – and Dark Skies gives the game away before the first scene in the movie.

Movie Review: Texas Chainsaw 3-D

Friday, May 24, 2013

Movie Review: Texas Chainsaw 3-D

Texas Chainsaw 3-D
Directed by: John Luessenhop.
Written by: Adam Marcus & Debra Sullivan and Kirsten Elms and Stephen Susco based on characters created by Kim Henkel and Tobe Hooper.
Starring: Alexandra Daddario (Heather Miller), Dan Yeager (Leatherface), Trey Songz (Ryan), Scott Eastwood (Carl), Tania Raymonde (Nikki), Shaun Sipos (Darryl), Keram Malicki-Sánchez (Kenny), James MacDonald (Officer Marvin), Thom Barry (Sheriff Hooper), Paul Rae (Burt Hartman), Richard Riehle (Farnsworth), Bill Moseley (Drayton Sawyer), Gunnar Hansen (Boss Sawyer / Leatherface), David Born (Gavin Miller), Sue Rock (Arlene Miller), Ritchie Montgomery (Ollie), Marilyn Burns (Verna / Sally Hardesty), Dodie Brown (Loretta Sawyer), David Bell (Bear Swayer).

I will give the filmmakers behind Texas Chainsaw 3-D just a little bit of credit for trying something different in this film. I haven’t seen all of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre films (this is the 7^th, and I’ve seen 4) but I’ve seen enough to stop expecting any of them to be as good as the first film – or for any of them to try something different. This tries something I wasn’t expecting –it tries to make the audience feel sympathy for Leatherface. That the movie doesn’t succeed is probably inevitable (although Rob Zombie did succeed with his Halloween remake by essentially making a biopic of Michael Myers – but I digress). But I admire its guts for trying.

The new film is a direct sequel to the 1974 original – set years later (how many years is a good question since the main character was supposedly the baby in the original film, which would make her 39 today, but’s clearly no more than 20 – so either the opening scene of this film, which is really an alternate ending of the 1974 is supposed to be the early 1990s, although a rather primitive 1990s, or the bulk of the movie is supposed to be the 1990s – and then it’s a more advance 1990s – it’s probably best not to think too much about this). The first scene of the movie has the town Sheriff – and then a group of locals – descend on the Sawyer home after “the girl” got back to town and reported what happened. Rather than arrest, the family, they burn the house to the ground – apparently killing the entire family except the baby. She is taken by one of the men and raised as his own – in what seems like a horrible family. This is our “heroine” Heather (Alexandra Daddario), who will find out that the grandmother she never knew she had has just died, and wants her to come to Texas to collect her inheritance. So she and her friends do just that – discovering a huge house on the edge of the same town the Sawyers once lived in. Not to state the obvious, the grandmother wasn’t a popular person – and they don’t much like knowing that there is a surviving Sawyer. Oh, and of course, not everyone died in the fire.

You can probably guess what happens next. Leatherface appears and starts slaughtering Heather’s friends – and then breaks free into town, and wants revenge on those who killed his family. Lots of people die in grisly ways – either by chainsaw or meat hook mostly, although the film adds some other ways as well.

You can also probably guess that the movie isn’t very good. That’s been true of most of the Texas Chainsaw movies, other than the original which is one of the greatest horror films ever made. It doesn’t help that I didn’t see this one in the theater, meaning I didn’t see this one in 3-D, so all the ridiculous stuff the director do that apparently looked “really cool” in 3-D, looks downright stupid on a TV set.

Now, if all you want to see if people get hacked up with a chainsaw, than this movie delivers that. It’s not a horrible movie – not as bad as I feared anyway – and I genuinely admired the twists in the plot the movie delivers as it progresses – painting the entire town as just as bad as the Sawyer family - this isn’t true, of course, as anyone who saw the original movie knows, but because this movie doesn’t show the Sawyer’s crimes, just the town’s reaction to them, it’s easier to see them as victims – which is an interesting idea, but the movie doesn’t do much with it.

The bottom line is that Texas Chainsaw 3-D is a movie with an interesting idea that they never really follow through on. I wish it did, because had they; it could have been a decent horror movie. Instead, it’s just another movie with Leatherface killing people with a chainsaw.