Past Misdeeds: Behemoth (2011)

Through the transformation of the glorious WTF-Films into the even more glorious Exploder Button and the ensuing server changes, some of my old columns for the site have gone the way of all things internet. I’m going to repost them here in irregular intervals in addition to my usual ramblings.

Please keep in mind these are the old posts presented with only  basic re-writes and improvements. Furthermore, many of these pieces were written years ago, so if you feel offended or need to violently disagree with me in the comments, you can be pretty sure I won’t know why I wrote what I wrote anymore anyhow.

A US small town situated close to a mountain that was an active volcano ages ago is hit by a series of tremors and rather curious earth activities, while deadly CO2 starts leaking all around the mountain. Strangely, at the same time this mysterious activity starts up, various off-screen natural disasters hit places all around the world.

Retired professor William Walsh (William B. Davis) has found an explanation for the strange phenomena through his extensive study of myth, or rather myths. William thinks what's happening has to do with the true base of various myths shared by cultures all around the world, myths in which a gigantic creature acts out the wrath of the Earth whenever humanity too actively disturbs the natural order; now, says William, the creature is waking up again.

Of course, William is mentally ill (probably schizophrenic, though the film doesn't dare use the word in what I assume is an example of inexplicable US puritanism), and going off his meds, so neither his son Thomas (Ed Walsh), a lumberjack boss, nor his twenty year old daughter who acts like a teenager Grace (Cindy Busby) believe a single word he says. Too bad he's right.

The seismic activities are so peculiar that Thomas's former flame Emily Allington (Pascale Hutton), now a seismologist, returns to her hometown to find an explanation of her own, and convince her Sheriff uncle (Garry Chalk) of the danger of the situation, if need be.

The danger is, of course, even larger than she could have expected. Also as a matter of course, Emily, Thomas, Grace, and a mysterious government agent of the Department of Weird Shit (Ty Olsson) will end up on the mountain exactly when the tentacles really hit the fan, and William's theories are proven quite beyond doubt.

The Internet disagrees with me here, but I truly think W.D. Hogan's Behemoth is a particularly fine example of SyFy Channel movie making. Certainly, it's a film pushing a lot of my buttons with the way it mixes a basic SF horror idea right out of Weird Tales or Astounding in its more horrific moments with the highly localized global disaster movie style SyFy is so very fond of. It's a great mixture, particularly because Hogan (and/or Rachelle S. Howie's script) really does know how to sell the age-old clichés most of the film is built from as natural instead of annoying.

Plus, there's a monster as big as a mountain with tentacles that is first partially revealed in a sequence where its very large eye peers angrily out of a hole in the mountain at our non-teenage teenage co-protagonist and her boyfriend, which is as perfect and resonant an image as one could hope for to find anywhere. Once we get to see the monster completely, it also turns out to be one of the rather more creatively designed SyFy CGI creatures, again fully fitting into the traditions of certain old pulp magazines. The only disappointment when it comes to the monster is the rather lame way our heroes end up getting rid of it, even though this comes with the territory when you as a filmmaker aren't allowed to let it eat the world and surely couldn't afford the pyrotechnics anyhow.

Behemoth, despite being a film deftly made from clichés and well-worn tropes, also has some moments when it's making small steps into directions you don't expect. I was particularly surprised by the film's treatment of William's mental illness (even though it doesn't dare name it - people could infect themselves with it, or something). There's a believability and truthfulness about the way his environment reacts to William's illness and what they believe to be just another expression of it in what must have been a long line of expressions. William's family shows a mixture of sadness, exasperation and plain tiredness that isn't just unexpectedly real for a SyFy monster movie but for movies in general. Even better, the film also allows its mentally ill character the same degree of dignity (one thing many mental illnesses don't exactly leave you much of, while your environment generally does its damndest to take away the rest) it gives its other characters, and even provides him with an opportunity for small-scale heroism without feeling the need to kill him off for reasons of “redemption”.

William B. Davis uses the opportunity to for once not play a bad guy, and provides William (the name-giving fairy was out, sorry) with just the right mixture of obsessiveness, fragility, and a warmth suggesting a complete human being.

In general, Behemoth is pretty good at breaking up its ultra-competent and highly entertaining giant monster/disaster tale with small moments of truth in the character department (not in the moments when everyone just has to act like an idiot for genre conventions, obviously). Apart from everything to do with William, there's - just for example - the telling fact that the Sheriff doesn't take what Emily tells him about a possible catastrophe seriously, despite her being an actual expert, because she's just his niece, and surely she can't know more about anything than he does, which seems to mirror the experience most younger women of my acquaintance have with their own families.


For me, these kinds of elements and small details often are what make or break a SyFy creature feature; it is of course important (and pretty much unavoidable) to work with and within clichés and tropes when making a low budget genre film for TV, but it's these small things that differentiate a competent movie from one truly worth watching. Behemoth, for its part, clearly belongs to the latter group.

SyFy vs. The Mynd: Snakehead Terror (2004)

A few years ago, a lake belonging to a US small town was overrun by snakeheads, who proceeded to eat the local fauna until they (and whatever was left of the other lake life) were destroyed by a particularly effective poison. Now, snakeheads return to the area, but the new animals are curiously large – it’s as if someone (William B. Davis!?) had put growth hormones into the lake - and have developed an appetite for larger prey like bears, dogs, and humans, which is particularly unpleasant in a fish species that does like its land detours.

The situation spells trouble for the local sheriff, Patrick James (Bruce Boxleitner). Things don’t improve with a mayor doing the traditional Mayor of Amity bit, or when James’s stupid annoying teenage daughter (Chelan Simmons) decides to go on a stupid annoying teenage snakehead vengeance boating trip to avenge one of her stupid annoying teenage friends. Well, at least James has help from fishologist Lori Dale (Carol Alt) who even comes with her own fish killing device. Did I mention James is – of course - widowed and Dale single?

With Snakehead Terror, the usually at least dependable Paul Ziller again manages to make a rather entertaining film out of a definitely stupid idea, at least if you’re willing and able to roll with it. If you do, Ziller thanks you with lots of scenes of slow, loud fish hunting people down on land or sneaking up on them like Solid Snake (Solid Fish Filet?), a snakehead as big as a whale, William B. Davis going “I didn’t mean anyone to get hurt”, and knowledge about the real use and effects of electricity.

It may not be much, but it’s enough for a perfectly fine time. Personally, I was also quite happy to find the snakeheads realized as a mixture of CGI and practical effects, with many a scene of people wrestling with oversized fish puppets. Adding to this particular joy are some fun gore effects (at least if you like nibbled off extremities), all presented with a well-developed sense for escalation that is quite typical of most of Ziller’s films (except the three I don’t like).

I think I need to warn my more sensitive readers about the good sheriff’s stupid annoying teenage daughter and friends, though, for even a person steeled by dozens of stupid annoying teenagers in SyFy/Sci Fi Original movies like me did not expect the stupid teenage apocalypse that are Amber and her friends, creatures so vile I can’t imagine anyone will not root for the killer fish trying to eat them.

Technorati-Markierungen: canadian movies,american movies,american tv,in short,syfy vs the mynd,paul ziller,bruce boxleitner,carol alt,william b. davis,horror

December Beach Party: Stonados (2013)

The agents of M.O.S.S. (yes, we still kind of exist in our own, half-assed manner) are nothing if not timely - or secret sympathizers of the Southern hemisphere - so December seems just like the right time to get down to the beach and find out what we find there.

There's trouble brewing for the people of Boston, British Columbia. Huge, water-y tornados are hitting the city's coastline, but these aren't your grandpa's tornados. Unless your grandpa's tornados spat more rocks than a disaster movie meteor shower (an early victim is the Plymouth Rock, and I'm not talking about the chicken breed), squashing people left and right. And even then, I suspect the rocks of Grandpa's tornados never exploded as the ones in Stonados like to do because of SCIENCE!

Fortunately for Boston, former volcanologist and storm chaser turned science teacher Joe (Paul Johansson), his former storm chasing buddy turned weekend replacement TV weather forecaster Lee (Sebastian Spence), and Joe's cop sister Maddy (Miranda Frigon) are there to help. Unfortunately, The Authorities represented by the Oceanic Blah-Blah Agency of Tara Laykin (Thea Gill) don't think a series of absurd tornados building over the open see and spitting exploding rocks are anything more than "freak weather", and want to see proof. No idea proof of what, really, but there you have it.

So, before the Government will provide our heroes with the bomb they'll need to blow the bad weather up - a time-honoured SyFy Channel way to get rid of all kinds of bad weather be it Ston- or Shark-nado - there's an ill-fated regatta to save and some sort of sports game (taking place in "the stadium", so the kind of sport is anyone's guess, though I suspect a film this pretend all-American will mean baseball) ending in catastrophe. Of course widower Joe's not quite happy kids need saving, of course Lee and Maddy will finally get around to doing something about their twenty years of affection disguised as bickering, and of course Laykin will die right when she's making her "oh Doctor Joe, you were so right and I'm so sorry" speech.

Obviously, and not surprisingly, there's nothing new going on in SyFy Channel disaster movie land, though Jason Bourque's film goes through the usual motions with enough élan to keep simple-minded folks like me entertained throughout. The film's tone, mostly treating the ridiculous bomb-throwing storm idea it has been cursed with by a marketing department in desperate search of stupid movie titles seriously but not treating it too po-faced either, works pretty well for the material, helping to distinguish it from Sharknado whose very American ideas about getting rid of tornados it shares.

The special effects aren't half bad this time around either, and they are surprisingly numerous too. I suspect it helps that the effects houses working on SyFy's projects have by now made so many films with giant tornadoes in them the people involved probably do tornados (particularly exploding tornados) in their sleep.

On the acting and characterization front this is perfectly decent though I couldn't escape the impression Bourque races through the character bits to get to the next piece of destruction, which, to be perfectly honest, is a bit more interesting than watching another US white core family get together again. I'd rather love to see a film showing one of these core families growing quickly apart again after the chupacabras are dead, the storms are gone, and the ice age prevented, but then I might be a mite cynical about these things.

Stonados earns itself bonus points by including a handful of scenes featuring William B. Davis as Boston's lighthouse keeper, having a chat with his bird, talking on the radio with the film's actual protagonists, and in the end getting crushed by his lighthouse.

So Stonados is a fun enough time at the beach, if you don't mind the exploding rocks.

Technorati-Markierungen: december beach party,american movies,american tv,reviews,jason bourque,paul johansson,sebastian spence,miranda frigon,william b. davis,disaster

On Exploder Button: SyFy vs. The Mynd: Behemoth (2011)

In my by now extensive studies of SyFy Channel Original (heh) Movies, I have found many horrors and many surprisingly enjoyable things, but there are only a very among these films that do anything interesting on the character level.

While Behemoth isn't any kind of psychological horror, it is one of these chosen few movies that do add some rather interesting aspects to a few of their characters, in this case specifically to the one played by William B. Davis. It also contains a monster right out of our ideals of what Weird Tales was supposed to be about, so my column about the film over at ExB may sound a bit smitten.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,american tv,reviews,sf,horror,w.d. hogan,william b. davis,ed quinn,pascale hutton,other places,syfy vs the mynd

Satan's School for Ghouls: The Tall Man (2012)

This October, the agents of M.O.S.S. are digging deep into the heart of Halloween, taking a look at films about demons, the devil, and every kind of fiend. You can find our collected annals of evil here. In the first of my contributions, I interpret the definition of "fiend" as broadly as humanly possible.

(Warning: even though I'm not going to go into this film's twists in any detail, discussing anything about it can't help but touch spoiler territory, so proceed at your own risk. Structural spoilers ahoy, too!).

The charmingly named US mining town of Cold Rock, Washington (as always doubled by British Columbia, the Bronson Canyon of the 90s and beyond) has taken a turn for the worse ever since the mine shut down years ago. It's now a poster child for picturesque poverty and squalor, like a kid's version of Winter's Bone. But there's something worse than mere poverty stalking the town's streets. For some time now, the town's children have been disappearing one after the other, without a trace. The townspeople are convinced their children are taken away by someone who has taken on mythical proportions in their minds. Thus they have turned him into "the Tall Man", a creature half monster from under your bed, half mystery.

This case is quite beyond town sheriff Chestnut's (William B. "Cigarette Smoking Man" Davis) abilities, but Lieutenant Dodd (Stephen McHattie), the big city cop sent to take care of the case, hasn't proven to be any more effective. He's hanging around, watching the town by night, getting nowhere. Things change when the child of Cold Rock's only remaining medical professional, the nurse moonlighting as a bit of a social worker, widow of the town's now dead and practically sainted GP, and designated protagonist Julia Denning (Jessica Biel), is kidnapped. In the following hours, some truths about what is really going on are bound to get to light, though not all of them will be pleasant, or believable to an audience.

If Pascal Laugier's The Tall Man is one thing, then it is willing to be more unpredictable than it at first seems to be. The film starts out like your typical stylish Hollywood thriller, with a plot, characters and narrative beats that are realized with great technical proficiency by people of obvious talent. It begins as the type of film that is clearly competently made, but also a bit boring thanks to what looks like a total lack of imagination; really not what I had hoped for from the guy who made my favourite piece of "torture porn", Martyrs.

However, after forty minutes of the expected have firmly established in the audience's mind what kind of film it is watching, Laugier pulls the rug out from under our feet twice in short succession. The first time he does it only changes the sub-type of thriller the film is working in, suggesting a classic piece of small town paranoia, but the second one undermines all the unspoken assumptions one makes when watching a movie of this style and type, assumptions about the nature and character of protagonists and audience identification. Laugier uses its audience's knowledge of filmic structures against itself. For the following half hour or so, the film thrives on a rather delicious feeling of confusion, because now that it has shown how far it is willing to stray from the conventions of the genre it is working in, everything seems possible, any direction open again. For once, the question of what the hell is going on in a thriller actually becomes pertinent again.

Unfortunately, the film's problems begin once Laugier decides to answer the question about what is going on. I would argue that, after the awesome (in the classic sense of the word) double-twist, there were only two ways the movie could have kept what its build-up promised: either by not answering the central questions of its plot at all, but keeping to suggestions and hints to incite feelings of dread and/or hope, or by giving an answer that's as dark and unpleasant as it could get away with.

Instead, the film ends on a curious mix of sentimentality and the sort of classism that makes a few distracting noises to pretend it isn't classist but humanist. There's pretension of going for a morally grey zone, but it's just damnably unconvincing after a film that seemed interested in doing interesting things with the genre it is working in, a film that seemed to be willing to go to uncomfortable and surprising places. Even worse, the ending we get is banal and therefore deeply unsatisfying, leaving the carefully built mood of what came before and the promises of mythic depth behind for the least exciting and thoughtful ending. Which at least is in keeping with The Tall Man's unpredictability.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,french movies,canadian movies,reviews,pascal laugier,jessica biel,stephen mchattie,william b. davis,jodelle ferland,thriller