Three Films Make A Post: In a world of temptation, obsession is the deadliest desire.

Warm Bodies (2013): I suspect Shaun of the Dead will always be the best romantic comedy with zombies, so it is outright decent of Jonathan Levine’s teen romantic comedy with zombies (or rather the book it is based on) to not at all try and compete with that classic but rather to do its own thing. It’s a generally inventive, usually funny and often cute film, with a likeable romantic couple in Teresa Palmer (alive) and Nicholas Hoult (dead). It is a pretty enjoyable movie, but it’s not really made with the horror fan at heart, so if you can’t help yourself, you might be turned off by the only very mild gore, the too pat and friendly ending and the film’s general niceness.

Twisted Nightmare (1987): Being too nice is probably nothing anyone will blame Paul Hunt’s slasher for. It’s the usual thing about a bunch of attractive young things gathering in a cabin in the woods and getting struck down. Atypical for slashers of the time (and of today, really) the film features three(!) victims that aren’t white. That’s of course not terribly important in the long run, because everyone’s meat for the usual ritualistic killings anyway. These are decent but not spectacular but do run through the whole of the film instead of the last twenty minutes, which is not something all cheap-o slashers have to offer. The script even contains one or two ideas that make it possible for it to have more than one “finding the bodies” sequence and plays around with who its final girl may or may not be. There’s also a potential supernatural angle involved, lots of nudity, and the whole she-bang was apparently shot on the same set as the third Friday the 13th (though that film is certainly better shot and directed).

That’s certainly not the worst you can get out of a late 80s slasher.

Secret Window (2004): David Koepp’s Stephen King adaptation is certainly one of the decent ones, mostly living off the – sometimes rather more showy than the director knows what to do with – central performance by Johnny Depp and the sort of slick look money can buy a production even when it otherwise lacks much of an aesthetic identity of its own. It’s not terribly deep either, never quite digging into the meat of the novella (one of King’s best as far as I’m concerned) it is based on, or displaying anything but a Hollywood screenwriter’s idea of human psychology, but is coasting on Koepp’s – again very slick – rather emotionally distanced conventional thriller stylings. Curiously enough, the film goes for a darker ending than that of the not exactly chipper novella, yet still has a lesser impact than the story did, perhaps because Koepp misses out on fleshing out the other characters (as played by an underused Maria Bello and Timothy Hutton) enough to convince me the film actually cares about what happens to them.


It certainly is still a well-made, entertaining film but I never felt myself getting emotionally involved.

Three Films Make A Post: There's a new police force on the streets... and they only come out at night.

I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House (2016): There’s the old chestnut that says not every film is for everyone, and that some films are definitely less for everyone than others. This pretty much describes Oz Perkins’s Netflix arthouse horror movie about a live in nurse (Ruth Wilson) moving into the house of elderly writer Iris Blum (Paula Prentiss) and the haunting she experiences. Which sounds rather easily consumable, but in Perkins’s telling, it is a film of shifting realities and meanings, where there’s never a clear dividing line between the real and the unreal, the psychological or the supernatural, and where that line only ever dissolves further. It’s a very slow and subtle film, with a brilliant lead performance by Wilson, yet it is also a film that needs patience, thought, and viewers absolutely willing to follow where it goes. For me, the film is beautiful and intense, but I can definitely see why someone might watch it and just get bored. Some films just either resonate with you, or they don’t.

Rollercoaster (1977): In comparison, James Goldstone’s thriller with disaster movie elements about an amusement park ride safety inspector (George Segal) finding himself drawn into the hunt for a mentally not terribly healthy blackmailer (Timothy Bottoms) threatening to sabotage rollercoasters around the USA is downright fast. In actuality, it’s a bit of a slow starter, spending too much time dithering before Segal’s Harry Calder is drawn into the plot. Once it gets going, though, this turns into an exciting little film that makes highly atmospheric – and often clever - use of the amusement park surroundings, plays fair with its audience and comes by its best set pieces as organic parts of the plot. There’s a fine cast too, with people like Richard Widmark and Susan Strasberg in various supporting roles.

Goldstone’s – who was mostly a TV guy - direction isn’t spectacular, but he’s effortlessly effective when it comes to the suspense sequences, and by now the style has taken on the enjoyable patina typical of well made but not spectacular 70s films.


The Wackness (2008): Looks like I’m not escaping the coming of age films these days. Jonathan Levine’s genre entry recommends itself through an off-handed but efficient portrayal of mid-90s New York – with hip hop as the logical soundtrack – solid acting by coming of ager Josh Peck, mandatory The Girl Olivia Thirlby, and Famke Janssen as her mother, and one of his showy yet intelligent and typically enjoyable performances by Ben Kingsley as the psychologist of our dope dealing hero – also his best customer, friend, and the stepfather of his love interest. The best parts of the film really concern the relationship between the two male characters, with Kingsley’s Dr. Squires despite the age difference still not having life figured out much better than the kid has. The relationships between the men and their respective women alas don’t really work too well because this is one of these male-centric coming of age films that never does spend any time alone with its female characters, and so never develops much motivation and personality for them not connected to the guys, turning their actions into plot conveniences more than choices made by human beings. Which to me always seems like a rather childish approach for films supposedly all about growing up.

All the Boys Love Mandy Lane (2006)

Mandy Lane (Amber Hearst) is the walking dream of all boys in her high school. Just about every single one of them finds her angelic virginity (hey, I didn't write the script!) irresistible. She tends to keep her distance from them, though. When she finally agrees to visit a jock party, she takes her slightly nerdy friend Emmet (Michael Welch) with her, who promptly convinces one of her admirers that the best and easiest way to impress Mandy would be to jump to one's death. Which the guy promptly does.

Nine months later, Emmet and Mandy aren't on speaking terms anymore, instead she runs with a somewhat wilder clique of rich idiots, although she still is as pure as the white winter snow.

When the clique goes on a druggy weekend in the country, they are stalked by a shadowy figure who murders them one by one. Oh, who might the killer be?

Mandy Lane is a film that has some problems finding a distributor outside of Germany, a somewhat curious state for an American film made with American money that is really quite nice.

Sure, it is a teen slasher, but a very well-made one. Since the budget didn't allow to cast the typical modern horror movie TV teen idols many mainstream horror titles are plagued with, the script is able to at least touch on a few things modern slashers ignore: the teenage years as wilderness, teenagers are taking drugs (oh noes!) and so on. All of this isn't explored all that deeply, but treated realistically enough to make the (more than solidly acted) characters a lot more deep than one is used in the sub-genre.

Plot and twists should be surprise to no one, I think, but most of it is handled in such a way that knowing what will happen doesn't take away from watching it.

Mandy herself is a very interesting character in her being used so heavily as projection surface for the demands and wishes of other people I have my doubts there is anything like a "real her" there. In this, the film stands very much in the tradition of classic exploitation movies, who never had a problem with treating their female protagonists as objects while at the same time criticizing the objectification of women.

So, subversion is still alive.

 

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