In short: Below (2002)

I have repeatedly seen somewhat confused or annoyed comments online regarding the general disinterest towards this particular submarine-set horror film, given the involvement of general well-regarded people like David Twohy as director and co-writer, Darren Aronofsky as one of the writers and Bruce Greenwood and a cast of talented faces in it. Personally, after today’s re-watch I’m not very surprised, for while Below is a highly competent little horror film it is neither a very memorable nor a very deep (sorry) one, with little that’s thematically interesting about it, nor much about its scares that gives them staying power in my mind beyond the film’s running time. This is a particular problem if one keeps in mind this was made after the central films of the big late 90s/early 00s Asian horror wave hit, films that were much more memorable and often quite a bit more complex, so Below just looks a bit mediocre and conservative in comparison.

This isn’t to say Below isn’t good for a hundred minutes of mildly spooky, pleasantly claustrophobic fun, it’s just so traditional in its approach to its ghost story, you basically know everything that’s going to happen in it and how it’s going to happen once you read the film’s basic set-up of “haunted submarine during World War II cursed by its murdered captain (or is it)”. There are no surprises, little about the characterization that goes beyond the obvious, and little about the film’s thrills that doesn’t carry a slight whiff of staleness. I’m tempted to describe Below as “competent, yet lacking soul or an actual personality”, and look here, I just did.

In short: Batman: Gotham by Gaslight (2018)

Warning: structural spoiler ahead!

It is not a difficult feat to suggest that a few too many of the animated Batman movies made for home video or tiny theatrical releases and then home video in the decades after Mask of the Phantasm have gone back to the well of “Batman: The Animated Series” in one way or another, even when they weren’t actually connected to it. But then, when they don’t, they can easily end up like that absolutely dreadful The Killing Joke adaptation, so while there might be a certain lack in originality in that approach, it does tend to result in a film that’s not a disgusting piece of crap, so it seems to be the right one.

Rather ironically, the villain of this particular film as directed by Sam Liu and with a script by James Krieg that’s based on an Elseworlds tale by Brian Augustyn and the great Mike Mignola seems to share that version of The Killing Joke’s makers opinion of women (at least based on that film), seeing as he’s Jack the Ripper stalking the streets of an alternative Victorian age Gotham.

The Batman (as voiced by Bruce Greenwood whom I like nearly as much as Kevin Conroy in the role), clearly rather early in his role, is there, too, and he is going to be more than capably assisted by a pretty heroic version of Selina Kyle (Jennifer Carpenter, also excellent) whose instant mutual attraction here does make perfect sense. Aesthetically, this one is still clearly indebted to BTAS, with some genuinely successful attempts at injecting a hint of early Mignola into the proceedings (don’t expect shadows quite as thick, though), giving the film’s Victorian era Gotham the proper mood and feeling. There are some fine action set pieces but the film’s also – despite an mere 80 minute runtime – deftly creating its world and its characters.

Part of that is of course the old Elseworlds trick of understanding that the audience of an alternative reality version of Batman and other characters of his universe will have a working understanding of them, so you really only need to emphasise what’s different here; the rest, the audience will do for you. However, the script to this one goes one step further and bases one of its central twists on what an audience will expect from these characters and then delivering quite the opposite, while at the same time playing fair with the audience and – not alas a thing you can expect in plot twist land - still making sense.


All of this comes together exceptionally well, so well indeed the film really doesn’t end up being a copy of BTAS’s approach, but rather one that uses what it has learned from the show like it used its own aesthetic predecessors.

Three Films Make A Post: BUDDY HAS AN AXE TO GRIND. A BIG AXE.

The Black Room (2016): Softcore veteran director Rolfe Kanefsky here turns his gaze to the seldom effective genre of the softcore sex horror comedy, delivering nothing to write home about. Nudity-wise, the film is surprisingly restrained, probably because it managed to catch Natasha Henstridge for the protagonist role but clearly can’t afford for her to take her kit off, leaving the bit of sleaze it does offer in the hands of the other actresses and Lukas Hassel. It doesn’t much matter anyhow, for the supposedly sexy bits – apart from some pretty damn embarrassing stuff like Henstridge having her way with a washing machine or the other way round – usually go hand in hand with the gory bits, keeping The Black Room away from possible titillation for anyone but the most specialized audience. Which  of course would be perfectly okay if the film had much else to offer. Alas, the plot is a bit boring, the comedy unfunny, and while the effects are actually fine, there’s still nothing going on here to keep one awake.

The Frighteners (1996): Of course, I just might have no sense of humour at all, for I never did find myself terribly amused by the very slapstick-y first hour or so of Peter Jackson’s final horror comedy, apart from Jeffrey Combs’s hilarious FBI agent. To me, the film’s first part is a bit of a slog, with a plot that doesn’t get going because it is permanently put on hold for funny bits that aren’t. Once the film actually does get going, and the jokes and the actually rather dark story begin to seem to belong in the same film, it’s a different matter, the film turning funny and exciting and even a bit scary.

Exotica (1994): If you look at it from a certain angle, Atom Egoyan’s film could very well be your standard erotic thriller. Of course, it’s not a thriller at all but a meditation on loss, guilt, the search for closure, degrees of obsession, the lies we tell ourselves to survive, as well as the human capacity for compassion. It is shaped – quite typical of the director – like a puzzle box or a mystery, not because Egoyan seems much interested in suspense but because understanding the film’s characters and the ways their lives intersect is not meant to be a dry movement from plot point A to point B. There are complex and complicated undercurrents to these peoples’ lives we can better understand when we don’t experience them too linearly.


Apart from letting the viewer do this rather brilliantly, Exotica is also one of Egoyan’s most beautiful films, coming by poetry and beauty and sadness without feeling to strain for them, and certainly never showing any of the tendencies to artsy bombast that have marred parts of Egoyan’s films in the last fifteen years or so.