Three Films Make A Post: Come to the asylum...to get killed!

V/H/S (2012): I actually think the anthology movie is a logical direction for the POV horror sub-genre to take, but despite the inclusion of directors like Ti West and Adam Wingard, V/H/S isn't really doing much for me. It's clear the stories that make up the film are attempting to use the immediacy of the form for some urban legend style horror with a bit of a messed up ick factor, but the end product leaves me cold at best. It's difficult to bring up much interest for stories that tread well-trodden horror movie paths even when they are going for surprises, and it's equally difficult to have any interest for what happens to characters when they are only some mumbled dialogue, some shaky close-ups and nothing else; especially when most of the episodes go out of their way to also look like utter crap. I know, that's a stylistic choice (and the only time the word "style" can be used when talking about the film's aesthetic), but I'm really more interested in films that make stylistic choices about the way they picture the things their audience sees rather than the choice to shake-shake-shake that camera and put some mock-VHS post-production effects on.

Dead Hooker In A Trunk (2009): This indie movie by and with the Soska sisters Jen and Sylvia on the other hand seems to have its style well in hand, despite an obvious backyard budget. What this one has going for it are a sense of fun, an often rather uncontrolled imagination and the resulting weirdness. It's far from slick, but a great reminder what's actually good about the possibilities of contemporary filmmaking: that a handful of semi-professionals (I had too much fun with the film to use the term amateurs, plus there's more professional filmmaking coming from this direction) can just go out and make a movie full of private jokes, silliness and bits and pieces of the films they love, and it might even be one other people will be able to enjoy too like Dead Hooker. In this particular case, the film works via energy, attitude, some decidedly clever low budget direction and editing, and the fact that at least half of its jokes are pretty funny.

Toshi Densetsu Monogatari Hikiko (2008): A one-part OVA that looks like ass, full of characters with plastic faces and horrifying teeth that move through low detail backgrounds with all the grace of zombies while pulling faces that don't have anything to do with humanity as I know it; in other words, visually, this is your typical piece of CGI animation.

However, what the piece lacks in visual graces, it contains in its script (and voice acting), telling a creepy and rather disturbing tale of quotidian bullying and abuse, just as quotidian cowardice and the inability to face up to the truth. That tale is emphasised by expertly timed ghostly going-ons which mirror and amplify the short film's more natural horrors. It's a demonstration of the concept that timing and an intelligent script can make up for a multitude of flaws in a movie.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,japanese movies,animation,in short,horror,ti west,adam wingard,jen soska,sylvia soska,kishi kaisei

The Innkeepers (2011)

A hotel with the quaint name of "Yankee Pedlar Inn" is in the final week of its existence. Businesswise, there's nothing at all happening, so Claire (Sara Paxton) and Luke (Pat Healy), the place's two remaining employees (its boss is using his ill-gotten gains for a holiday) look forward to a quiet and boring time, which is the thing you want when you have to sleep at your place of work for its closing down, and you'd really rather play around hunting the hotel's ghosts you don't actually believe in.

The hotel's only guests are a cranky mother (Alison Bartlett) and her little son (Jake Ryan), an old man (George Riddle) wanting to sleep in the honeymoon suite for reasons of nostalgia, and the former TV actress Leanne Rease-Jones (Kelly McGillis), so there's enough time and space for Claire and Luke to try and make contact with the hotel's resident ghost. Luke, who is more into the whole ghost hunting thing, or at least more experienced at it, has already encountered the ghost before, but during the course of the following nights, it will be Claire who is most determined to meet the dead.

Alas, as M.R. James taught, encountering a ghost can have dire consequences.

Last time I wrote about a film by Ti West I was more than just a bit exasperated by the director's seeming unwillingness to use his clearly great talents as a filmmaker for anything more than a piece of retro horror so retro it even copied all of the flaws of the films it imitated, instead of making the great Ti West movie he obviously had in him.

I'm happy to report this criticism doesn't apply at all to The Innkeepers. While the film is informed by a knowledge and love for older horror movies and ghost stories, it's not a slave to that knowledge and love, and instead uses them as a foundation on which to build something all its own, really turning it into the Ti West movie - that is, a film giving expression to a personal philosophy and style - I had hoped for.

This doesn't mean that West leaves behind everything he did before stylistically. As the director's earlier films, The Innkeepers is putting its narrative emphasis firmly on mood and characterisation, telling its story in a slow and deliberate way that is the complete opposite of the way ninety percent of modern horror movies tell their stories. I'm sure quite a few people will be bored by the film; I'm just as sure these people are missing out on one of the best ghost stories not filmed in Japan.

For West really is so, so good at creating mood. At first, the film stays tonally so light it could easily turn into an outright comedy (of the mid-brow indie type), but slowly, in ways expected and unexpected, the hotel and the things we see, those we nearly see, and those we only expect to see (not to speak of the things we hear - the film's sound design is decidedly clever), come together to create a mood first of tension, then of outright dread, until the film culminates in a climax that is as consequent (as in destiny) as it is ambiguous. Even though all the clues to understanding what's going on are in the film (which of course does not hinder certain types of viewer from not understanding because the exposition fairy didn't come and puke into their faces), there's still a lingering feeling of the inexplicable left after all is said and done, something, I'd argue, more horror films should try to produce.

I'm still not completely done swooning, for The Innkeepers does not just showcase West's technical perfection (apart from the sound design, his editing and Eliot Rockett's cinematography are something to behold in a subtle, not at all showy, way) applied to a very fine ghost story, it's also a film that shows of a small and very talented case without, you know, showing off with them. The three main members of the cast - Paxton, Healy and McGillis - are all highly sympathetic and manage to not just let their characters come to life - so as to keep the audience more wary of their final fates - but also present their hidden complexities in ways subtle enough to fit in with the rest of a film that is playing with perfectly open cards yet also wants its audience to be patient and attentive, or perhaps rather a film that knows that its audience is patient and attentive.

The Innkeepers is just an all around fantastic film, the sort of movie I'd call a future classic of horror cinema, if I were the kind of guy who made that kind of pronouncement.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,reviews,horror,ti west,sara paxton,pat healy,kelly mcgillis

The House Of The Devil (2009)

It's some time in the early 80s. Financially desperate college student Samantha (Jocelin Donahue) stumbles upon a strangely lucrative baby sitting job for an even stranger couple, the Ulmans (Tom Noonan and Mary Woronov).

Only when Samantha arrives at the couple's house somewhere far outside the city she's studying in does Mr. Ulman explain that this isn't exactly a babysitting job, but that he and his wife want Samantha to watch over Mrs. Ulman's mother. Sam is not keen at all about that change of plans, and only when Ulman offers her a preposterous $400 for one night of work does she agree to do the job.

Ulman explains that Samantha probably won't even see the old woman, and that he only needs her to be there in case an undisclosed kind of emergency happens. Surely, this strange job won't have anything to do with the lunar eclipse that will happen this night?

Once she's alone, the young woman is getting increasingly tense. It takes some time, a bit too much of the unhealthy atmosphere of the house, and some hints at the fact that the Ulmans were lying to her, but after a while even Samantha begins to feel that the whole set-up just isn't right. Of course, at that point, it's already too late and Samantha's new career as victim of satanic rituals can begin.

Ti West's The House of the Devil is a full-blooded piece of retro cinema. Not satisfied with using elements of a certain subset of the satanic panic movies of the late 70s and early to mid-80s, and mixing them with modern ideas, West goes all out in pretending he is in fact making his film in the 80s (and alas, also in avoiding any new ideas getting into it). Film stock, camera angles, the faces of the actors, the music, even the titles, everything here is designed to emulate a very precisely defined group of grim, slow and suspenseful but not too gory horror films, and it's difficult to argue with the success of that part of West's effort.

Sure, the film might be a tad too slow - especially in its middle parts - for many contemporary viewers, but so were the films West is imitating here. However, the slowness, as well as the fact that the audience knows much earlier about the danger Samantha is in as she does herself, are the film's way of generating suspense without having to show much more than the increasingly nervous young woman in a creepy house. For my tastes, it works out fine, but not everyone who has seen the film seems to agree with me here. The word combination "slow and boring" is tossed about quite often by people talking about House of the Devil, and for once, I can understand where they are coming from. Not everybody is made for watching (creepy) bonsai trees grow.

My main problem with The House of the Devil has nothing whatsoever to do with its pacing or anything technical about it.

The problem is the strange lack of ambition beyond making a film that is exactly like some (well-loved, excellent) films made in an earlier era of the genre West's film shows, the spirit of imitation that is so strong West even consciously copies the flaws of those films. Of course, it beats making another remake of a well-loved film that doesn't understand the spirit of the original and doesn't have any ideas of its own worth a new film, but it only avoids the first of these problems.

It's a wonderful thing that West is inspired by parts of the horror genre that seem forgotten and ignored by too many directors working in the genre today and tries to use techniques that have gone out of style quite unjustly, but the product of the director's labours misses out on the next step: using the style and the techniques to make a film of his own, preferably a film of his own time that speaks to and about contemporary anxieties as the films of the 80s spoke about the anxieties of their times. There's no need to just repeat what the old movies said - they already said it, and they are still there to repeat what they said on the flick of a remote.

The House of the Devil is a great replica of great horror movies, and is certainly enjoyable and technically impressive, yet it's so caught up in its admiration of a different era that it's lacking a personality of its own. It's the "retro" dilemma in full effect.

 

Technorati-Tags: american movies,ti west,horror,reviews,jocelin donahue,tom noonan,mary woronov