Tale of Tales (2015)

JUNE 4, 2023

GENRE: HORROR?
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

I had a suspicion that “horror” being listed as a genre for Tale of Tales was a bit of a stretch, and I was correct. If the brief presence of a sea monster and the occasional act of violence is enough to consider it a horror film for you, then so be it – I’m not the genre police! (I was. But was killed three days before retirement.) No, like many of the fairy tales of old, this is just a pretty standard fantasy/morality tale, which means it gets dark at times but doesn’t quite qualify as a horror story. Indeed, when Vincent Cassel showed up I thought about Brotherhood of the Wolf, which also fits into several genres, and I feel even that would be closer to a horror film than this. Not a slight on it, just a bit of warning for anyone who might sit down with it!

But again, I figured as much going in anyway, which is important to note because my reasons for being mixed on the film have nothing to do with its genre. Even if it was an all out gore/scarefest, I think I’d still have the same opinion if director Matteo Garrone (who also co-wrote the script, all based on stories by Giambattista Bastile) took the same approach with his narrative. The film is basically an anthology with three stories, but for some reason he opted to intercut between them throughout the 2:20 runtime, which would be fine if there was some kind of connection between their events, but there isn’t. It’s not until the final scene that it’s even clear all three stories exist within the same universe, as we see characters from all three attending the same event, though they still don’t interact.

Weirder still, all three stories are about Kings, so they must all have very tiny kingdoms if they’re all invited to a coronation at the end. It actually adds to the lack of cohesion between the three stories; if two of the kings were changed into other royal/important figures of some sort, there would be opportunities for them to interact and maybe drift into one another’s stories like in Pulp Fiction or Trick ‘r Treat. But really, the whole thing could have worked so much better if Garrone just presented each tale from start to finish instead of cutting between them at random, with no clear strategy as to when he opted to go from one to the other. Sometimes we stay with one story for 20 minutes, other times it seems we only get a scene or two before going elsewhere. As a result it becomes harder and harder to get invested into any of their proceedings, because just when you get settled into one, he’ll go off to another and softly reset your attention.

At least the three tales are interesting/weird enough to be memorable. In one, Toby Jones is a king whose daughter is about to be of the age where she is old enough to be married off, but because he doesn’t actually want that to happen, he arranges a seemingly unwinnable contest for her hand: guessing what animal a skin came from. The “animal” is actually a pet flea that grew to be the size of a cow before it died, so there’s no reason to think anyone could guess it, right? Alas, an ogre figures it out and Jones honors his own rules, so off she goes and then naturally tries to escape the brute. It’s a very random story; even if it was presented fully intact without the other two cutting between it it would feel like two stories jammed together (the flea one and the ogre one), but it’s just so odd and Jones is always so fun to watch, it doesn’t really matter much. The oddness alone keeps it compelling.

Then there’s the most kind of typical one, in which another king (Cassel), who is perpetually horny, hears the sing-song voice of a townswoman on the streets below and becomes infatuated with finding her. But as it turns out, she’s kind of a crone looking older lady that would never catch his attention if he were to see her on the street, so she stays behind her locked door and won’t let him see her. He persists with his wooing, so she finally agrees to come to his bed but only at night with all the lights (candles) out so he can’t see her. He agrees, but sneaks a look and then becomes, as expected, repulsed by her appearance. So he has her tossed out the window, but she survives and is taken in by a witch, who makes her incredibly beautiful (she’s played by the knockout Stacy Martin from The Night House), at which point Cassel sees her and naturally doesn’t recognize her. It feels like it’s going to be a revenge sort of thing, but it goes in a different direction that results in one of the film’s most gruesome images (again, it’s got some violent moments). Unfortunately it feels like it lacks a true resolution, only kind of wrapping up in the film’s epilogue where everyone comes together (well, they’re all in the same spot – again, the characters never interact).

The other one is, I guess, the “main” story, since it seemingly takes up the most time and boasts two of the four names on the cover: Salma Hayek and John C. Reilly (Jones and Cassel are the others). It’s also the shaggiest and thus has the most damage done to it by the cross cutting, telling a story of yet another king (Reilly) whose queen (Hayek) is having trouble conceiving. He is told by a witch that if he kills a sea monster and then the queen eats its heart (if cooked by a virgin), they’ll have a child – and it works! Unfortunately, he also dies of his injuries from the fight (making Reilly’s appearance so short he might as well have gone unbilled), so Hayek has to raise the child on her own. But she barely seems to care about his death – she’s more troubled by the fact that the virginal cook also gives birth to an identical child, and the two grow up to be best buds/brothers, despite Hayek’s insistence that her son not play with the other boy. Eventually she drives the other one away, and her son resents her for it, and then... it just goes on and on, without any real drive to the proceedings, made worse by the intercutting that means it takes 15-20 minutes to get the next piece of its already drawn out story. The twist ending is more of a “Wait what?” than the knockout it’s supposed to be, and Hayek’s hatred of the other kid never really makes a lot of sense, so this one might not have worked even if it was kept intact. But hey, you get to see Salma Hayek devouring a bloody monster heart, and John C. Reilly dressed in an old diving suit that makes him look like the Bioshock guy, so it’s not all bad.

The lone feature on the disc (besides some trailers) is a making of that runs nearly an hour, and while it has some talking head stuff with the cast a lot of the time it’s just behind the scenes footage of key moments being shot sans any commentary, and the chatter before “action!” is often in French without subtitles, so it’s not clear what they’re discussing. I've certainly seen more involving documentaries, in other words, but maybe if you’re bilingual it’ll be of more interest. Kind of funny to see the little bucket next to Salma during the filming of the heart-eating scene, waiting for her to spit into just off camera as soon as they call “cut!”. There aren’t a lot of people on the planet who can look good performing either of these actions, so good on you, Ms. Hayek (sorry, Ms. Hayek Pinault). Ironically, the doc is more structured than the film – it covers the Hayek story, then the Cassel one, and then finally the Jones one, without going back to the others.

Few would deny that the film is lovely to look at it; between the cast and the costumes and the production design, it’s all top notch and looks like it cost a lot more than its reported $14 million budget. But the strange presentation that leaves all three stories feeling like they aren’t properly resolved, not to mention having their narrative thrust constantly weakened, makes it a hard film to recommend with regards to how invested you can get into its proceedings, which is a lot to ask when it’s nearly 2.5 hours long. I’d be curious to see someone recut it to be three standalone tales, because then you could just watch one “episode” at a time if you wanted, instead of investing a not insignificant chunk of your waking day to it. And then you might also spend less time wondering if that’s actually the way it was meant to be, only for Garrone (or perhaps one of his producers) to watch Game of Thrones one night during an editing break and feel the film could work the way that show did, jumping across multiple stories with people who didn’t even know each other. But it didn’t even always work great there, and they had eight seasons to work out the kinks! But again: very nice looking film.

What say you?

P.S. This was a "pile" movie, having been there for over six years (!), but those reviews are supposed to be shorter and this one turned out a little long. Plus I always feel bad seeing so many "FTPs" on the main page.

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Cats (2019)

JANUARY 13, 2020

GENRE: WEIRD
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

I wasn't planning on writing about Cats, because it's not a horror movie (no, I'm not going to joke around and dub it as one, even if the characters unsettlingly resemble humans with fur more than the cats they're supposed to be), but I changed my mind after I had a sorta nightmare about it after my viewing. Not a scary dream per se, but since I very rarely dream about movies I just saw, I found it interesting that my subconscious was still trying to process what I just saw. Indeed, the dream was basically about me being in the theater, trying to comprehend the film's narrative, at one point digging behind the screen where all the "gears" were (I mean, it was still a dream, so part of it made no goddamn sense) to make sure they weren't at fault for the weird nonsense on-screen.

When I woke up, I naturally had no better idea of what the point of the movie was, but it did get me thinking more about WHY the movie didn't work on any level. During my viewing I just laughed along with the rest of the crowd and struggled to get my bearings on the thing, without putting too much thought into why I was finding it so impenetrable, as I needed my complete brainpower just to keep up and even that wasn't enough. The dissection came later, at which time I realized that a huge part of the problem is that the movie never once calms down long enough to allow a viewer to step back and say "OK, this is what this world is, and this is how it works." Instead, you're just tossed into it (almost literally, as the closest thing the movie offers to an audience surrogate is introduced when its owner throws it on the street in a sack) and all of the movie's insanely high number of cats instantly start dancing and singing, and they never stop until the movie is over.

Yes, it's a "sung-through" musical, not one that has isolated songs between otherwise normal scenes. The longest pause (no, I will NOT say "paws", and damn you for thinking I would) is maybe 20 seconds, usually for a character to react to a song for a beat before starting their own. This can be a hurdle for any show if you're not prepared and have your ears properly tuned into the vocals, so perhaps people who are familiar with the stage version weren't as thrown off by the movie's idea of rhythm, but I, a total a newcomer, found it nearly impossible to focus on the lyrics. Why? Because Tom Hooper is a godawful director who never once makes the right choice with his camera and editing, so while a cat is singing about this or that, he's haphazardly cutting to other cats, moving his camera all over the place, and generally making it a god-level challenge to know exactly what we should be paying attention to, what's important, etc.

I should note for people who are just as unfamiliar with this particular show that there is no traditional plot on Broadway; from what I've gathered after reading up on it (again, in an attempt to understand it) is that the play basically has the same thrust as the movie, in that it's little more than a series of "scenes" in which a new cat is introduced, sings a song, and is then whisked away by the villainous Macavity (Idris Elba), who figures he can guarantee ascending to the "Heaviside Layer" (reincarnation/heaven kinda place, except one they all want to go to) by removing all of the other "Jellicle" cats from contention. That choice is made by Old Deuteronomy (Judi Dench), their leader I guess, and she isn't having much of Macavity's shit. So the cats have to stop him and get back so she can make the right call, and I assure you, the way I've described it makes it sound more involving than it is.

The movie bulks up the role of Victoria, one of the background cats in the play. She's the one being tossed off at the beginning, and for about 13 seconds it seems like the movie will be about her learning about this world, becoming something important, and maybe even being chosen herself, or at least having some part to play in the decision. That the play is so plotless that they felt they had to invent a main character for the adaptation was probably the first sign that maybe they shouldn't adapt it in the first place, but maybe it could have worked with a competent filmmaker behind it. Instead, they got Hooper, whose aforementioned directorial ADD undoes the material at every turn. Lead character or not, when you're at a play you have a fixed view on the proceedings, and stage lighting/the confined stage can assure you're focused and not being pulled in seven directions at once. You have no such ability here - Hooper can't even bother to keep from breaking the 180 rule, so their attempts at making it something accessible via Victoria fall completely flat, and after a while she's basically the same background player she was in the source material. When we first meet her she is told Cats have three names, their normal one (that'd be Victoria), their Jellicle one, and a secret one... and that's all there is to that, as she's never referred to by anything else.

If anyone knows one thing about Cats it's probably "Memory", but what they might not know is that the character who sings it is barely seen beforehand (at least, that's the case here - the movie is only 100 minutes whereas the stage show is over two hours, so some stuff got lost), so the song is really doing the heavy lifting there, because it's not particularly moving with regards to the character since we have such a minimal connection to her at that point (it'd be like if Audrey and Seymour sang "Suddenly Seymour" before Audrey II even showed up). Ironically, one of the few other bright spots is Victoria's "Beautiful Ghosts", a new song written for the movie - I can't help but wonder if the thing would have worked if they had taken the basic concept and the best songs and basically started over with a collection of new tunes and an actual plot to tie them together. Instead it's mostly just noise, with occasional moments of relative high quality. Unfortunately, in my opinion anyway, the best songs are near the end, by which point you've probably long given up. Sure, it's good that the most intolerable numbers (Rebel Wilson's and James Corden's) are gotten out of the way early, but when you add that to the aforementioned "you're just thrown into this thing" problem it might be too much to recover from for the average person.

The other huge problem is that the scale of the cats keeps changing, and none of the incarnations ever make any sense. I thought it was just a world run by cats (like how Pixar's Cars is run by cars), but an unseen human drops Victoria off, and later a pair of "bad" cats have her join them as they break into a house, only for the absent owners' dog to realize they're there and try to burst through the door of the bedroom they're ransacking. So they're essentially the same as housecats, but their size compared to the household objects and furniture is closer to that of mice - which is made even more confusing by how big they look compared to the actual mice (also humans in suits) when they show up a few times. Again, the movie never lets you understand how it works on a base level; it's one thing to have specific questions about how this or that would play out in this strange world, but to be kept in the dark about all of its "rules" is simply insane.

Long story short, it constantly feels like you missed the scene before the one you're currently watching, and that continues until the very end, which is actually impressive but doesn't make the movie good by any means. But it's not "so bad it's good" kind of stuff like The Room or Birdemic, either; apart from a few botched FX (yes, even in this upgraded version you still see Judi Dench's ring in a few shots) it's competent on a technical level, and actually doesn't have too many laugh out loud moments that spring from terrible decision making. The performers give it their all (Ian McKellen in particular nails it) despite their hideous costumes and some of the songs are actually catchy, but it can never settle into a groove, because Hooper is too terrible a filmmaker to reign anything in and find one. Exhausting maybe is a better word for it. Again, I suspect it might work better for those who are familiar with the story/songs already and just want to see what it's like in a different format, but I think everyone can agree that this was a misguided project at best. I'm glad I saw it for myself, but it's not even really worth ironic "let's laugh at this" kind of viewing - it's like an actual car crash in that you maybe can't look away but in reality wish never happened in the first place and hope only the guilty parties (Hooper, in this case) suffer from it.

What say you?

P.S. Hilariously, the Drafthouse showed an old PSA about safety from the cast of the Broadway show, and it's possibly a bad idea as it just shows how much better the usual costumes are than whatever it is Hooper was going for here.

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Morgan (2016)

SEPTEMBER 2, 2016

GENRE: HORROR?, THRILLER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

Not too long before I sat down to write this review, I saw that Morgan had one of the worst openings of all time for a movie playing on 2,000 screens or more (i.e. a movie they figured would attract a big audience - otherwise they'd open it much smaller), which can't be a fun thing for anyone involved. I mean when it's something like Major League: Back to the Minors (near Morgan on that sad little list), fine - that's a movie no one wanted and a sequel missing the cast that made the first two films popular, so it deserves the demerit. But an original sci-fi thriller (no, it's not really horror - bear with me, I'm getting to that) should have at least inspired more curiosity, especially when the cast is loaded with interesting character actors and dominated by three female leads - a rarity for all genres, not just this particular one.

But IS it technically original? The trailer kind of sold a different movie, something more akin to Hollow Man or Species, with a lab experiment going awry and the victim offing everyone involved, but there's one other thing it played up that's definitely accurate: Ridley Scott's involvement. His son Luke made his directorial debut here, and it's not uncommon for a big name director dad to throw his name on their child's project to help them get it going (look for Martin Scorsese's new superhero movie for very, very sad proof), but there's a little more than just a ceremonial involvement going on here, which would require spoilers. So if you're one of the 7 billion people who didn't see Morgan this weekend and don't want the twist spoiled, please leave now, or at least skip the next two paragraphs.

Right now, there's a sequel to a Ridley Scott classic being shot, but unlike Prometheus Ridley isn't sitting in the director's chair - he's just producing, and I can't help but wonder if he might get some deja vu since he also produced this, which kind of feels like a blend between low-key remake and prequel of Blade Runner*. As we learn for sure at the end (but many people figured out earlier), Kate Mara's character is actually another genetic experiment, albeit from a different "Phase" than the one played by The Witch's Anya Taylor-Joy, the title character who has shown signs of murderous aggression and needs to be evaluated - should she be terminated, or is the risk worth continuing the study? Mara is Lee, the risk assessment consultant (or some buzzword-y title like that) who is sent by the mysterious company to check Morgan out and make that call, but as things get hairy we see Mara is unusually skilled at fighting and survival - just as good as Morgan, in fact! I mean, it's not too hard to figure out that she's more than just a cold-hearted careerwoman, and we know the company is up to no good because it's run by Bryan Cox, but it's not until the final scene, where Cox talks to his partners and we learn the mission wasn't really about Morgan, but Lee, and to see if SHE was a viable asset for them in the long run.

It's here that the BR connection really sunk in for me (if you did see it and figured that part out a lot earlier - forgive me, I was fighting a doze the whole movie due to my ongoing moving process and a week full of very abbreviated sleeping periods), because you can boil the movie down to "Something that looks human but isn't is tasked with finding/eliminating another faux human". They're not called "Replicants" here, but they're pretty much the same - A.I. programs that can pass for human. There are other little connections/references as well, like Giamatti's character, who basically only appears in one scene, a lengthy interrogation of Morgan designed to get a rise out of her and find out for sure what she's capable of - not unlike Blade Runner's Voight-Kampff test. It also shares that film's rather cold and unpleasant tone; it's easy to see why Fox released this at the end of the summer, as it's even more of a downer than Splice, another genetically engineered "human" goes crazy movie that this would comfortably share shelf space with.

Except, despite its presence here, it's not really even close to horror, despite the trailer playing up those freakier scenes. Yeah, there's a body count and there is interest from genre fans as it's Anya's first post-Witch movie, but none of it is really played for scares, and the mad science stuff is kept to a minimum (I only put that genre tag on here because it will be of interest to people looking for that sort of movie). The last 20 minutes are more like a straight up action film than anything else, as they involve a car chase, a shootout, and not one but two hand to hand fights between Morgan and Lee that are more Seagal than Species. Despite the sci-fi prominence, Splice really earned its genre placement with that horrifying demonstration scene and Dren's transformations, but there's nothing like that here, and I can't help but think Fox really blew it in the marketing on this one, making it look more like a creepy "locked in with a monster" movie than the low-key sci-fi film it really is.

And there's no easier bit of evidence of that than the fact that the trailer barely shows Rose Leslie at all, and yet she's almost a third lead as opposed to supporting character. Her name is Amy, and she's the behaviorist of the little Crichton-y group tasked with monitoring/caring for Morgan - and she's also something akin to a girlfriend to her (who is referred to as "it" by pretty much everyone else). So when Lee and some of the others decide Morgan has to be terminated, she's the one making sure Morgan is set free instead, and gets the most interesting arc in the movie as a result when Morgan starts killing everyone off. At first, she sees Morgan's actions as a sort of "They deserved it" kind of thing, but when Morgan takes down someone who was actually trying to help her, Amy starts showing doubt - maybe they were right? Morgan shows zero signs of aggression toward her, so we're not really afraid for her safety, but it's interesting to see how torn up she gets over her loved one's actions, and you wonder if/when she will finally turn against the increasingly uncontrollable Morgan (or if/when Morgan WILL indeed go so far that she hurts/kills Amy as well).

It's also interesting that it's a summer studio movie (an R rated genre one at that) primarily focused on three women, none of whom seem to be interested in men (in a movie written and directed by men, no less). It makes the movie's failure all the more sigh-worthy to me; every other week the bloggers and "Film Twitter" are finding things to complain about re: women in movies (low point of the summer - the complaints about Apocalypse choking Mystique in an X-Men movie where a guy with all the power in the world required two women to help him), and yet here's a movie where the women are ass-kickers, intelligent, and not defined in the slightest by their relationship to a male love interest. And none of those rabble rousers see it, let alone champion it. I don't think it's a perfect movie, but can you blame the studios for sticking to what works when they do something unique and no one shows up?

As for what makes it imperfect, well for one thing it's not particularly complicated - as misleading as the trailer is, it still manages to hit upon just about every major plot point (save Leslie's character), as there isn't much else to it beyond that. Even at 90 minutes, it feels a bit stretched to get to feature length; to be fair in retrospect some such scenes were just trying to misdirect us (going back into spoiler territory here: Lee jogging is a good example), but it doesn't make the movie any more engaging in the moment. It's hard to really like Mara's character, and it's also hard to feel any sympathy for Morgan after a while, when she coldly murders someone who had only tried to help her. Not that sympathy is really what Scott and writer Seth Owen seemed to be going for, but it still makes it hard to really get attached emotionally to the movie. Especially if you're deaf - Max Richter's score was wonderful and if I heard it isolated I'd probably assume it was for some Oscar bait drama.

But ultimately its biggest hurdle is that it's unfortunately too similar to too many other movies, particularly Ex Machina and the aforementioned Splice. The film is on a lower budget than either of those, and with a lot of it probably going to cast (I haven't even mentioned Toby Jones or Michelle Yeoh!), that means the movie spends a lot of time in the same few rooms and with a lot of talk instead of action, lacking the unique makeup FX of Splice or the visual prowess of Ex Machina (which won an Oscar, don't forget) while running through similar story beats. The hook is the thing we can't really talk about, and even if we could, it's not like it makes up an entire third act or something - it's a last minute reveal. Even if you figure it out sooner, it's merely a confirmation of something you suspected, not a game-changing plot point. Based on the box office, we can't expect Morgan 2.0 anytime soon (of course that would be the title, come on), so all we have is this one little movie that's perfectly enjoyable in that lazy Sunday kind of way, ending on a beat that makes you wish the filmmakers had gotten to it sooner.

What say you?

*I also don't particularly love that movie. Huge fan of the director, but it probably wouldn't even rank in my top 10 of his films. I've tried on numerous occasions, with at least two versions of it, but it just doesn't connect with me beyond appreciation on a visual level. And don't go looking for what movie I mean if you missed the * in the text, because that's the spoiler you were avoiding, hence the vague details here.

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Jack & Diane (2012)

JANUARY 19, 2013

GENRE: HORROR?, WEREWOLF
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

For all the shit people give Twilight, at least they knew what they were, and found a decent enough balance between the teen drama and the werewolf/vampire elements. Sure, there wasn't as much action as the average horror fan would like, but at least those characters' STATUS as such never got forgotten. Jack & Diane, on the other hand, is allegedly about the love between two girls in New York and how one of them is possibly a werewolf, but writer/director Bradley Gray keeps that part at bay to an insane degree, to the extent where it's almost dishonest to refer to this as a horror film.

I will have to get into spoilers here with regards to its werewolf element, so skip the next paragraph if you'd like to be surprised with how much (or little) you see the beast in this film.

So basically, it's a mystery of sorts, because both girls have the same nose bleeds and "weird" moments, so I guess we're supposed to wonder which one of them is the werewolf, kind of like that movie Nature of the Beast where one is a killer and the other a robber and we have fun trying to figure out which is which. And that would be fine, but there IS no werewolf, really. The two scenes in which it appears are dream sequences, and provide no answers - in the first, Diane dreams that she is eating Jack, and vice versa in the other. Even if we give it the benefit of the doubt and say "They're both lycanthropes", it doesn't change the fact that their appearances are confined to dream sequences, which doesn't make this a horror movie in my eyes. It'd be like saying Christmas Vacation is a softcore porn because Clark fantasizes about the girl in the pool.

However, this isn't as problematic as the fact that the romance/drama angle is completely inert. If it at least worked on that level, I could happily tell people to watch a charming teenage romance film (with random werewolf bits as a bonus), but if anything it's even more frustrating than the confused "horror" angle. When we first meet her, Juno Temple's character seems to have teleported to Earth from a strange alien planet - she's unable to ask simple questions, somehow lost her phone and her wallet, etc. It's a very jarring way to introduce a character, though I suppose Gray's trying to get across the idea that no matter what a person is like or where they came from, they are susceptible to the power of love. Fine, but then don't give that character the clichéd plot device of "Oh I forgot to tell you, I have to leave the country for a long time in a few days", because it doesn't mix well. Once we learn that, I spent a good ten minutes just trying to imagine how she got into any school in the first place, since she barely seems to be able to tie her own shoes.

Riley Keough's character is more identifiable as a human being, but not a very pleasant one. Her very hastily explained life involves an absentee mother (Gremlins 2's Haviland Morris, who appears in ONE SHOT where you can't even see her face), making money by selling Photoshopped images of her face on other bodies, and sneaking into clubs and hotels. Anyway, they meet and instantly fall in love, presumably because they're both into blood (Diane's constant nosebleeds, Jack gets hit by a taxi early on and spends the entire film with a huge scrape on her cheek and lip). They bicker a lot, suck on fireballs to settle arguments, drink lots of red colored liquids to make sure the audience says "Ah, like blood, yes!", and generally just sort of wander around in their movie for which they are the only two characters of note. Kylie Minogue appears in a single scene as what I guess is Jack's fuck buddy (like most things in this movie, it's left up to the viewer to fill in the back, and even present, story); with the exception of Temple's aunt (the film's most interesting character), everyone else is a glorified extra.

Now, there's nothing wrong with these sort of "snapshot" movies in general, but the problem here is that neither of them are very interesting. In this "moment" of their lives that the film shows us, there isn't much happening to really draw us in or care one way or the other how it all turns out. I barely even got the idea that they loved each other; the brief scenes where they're getting along and being romantic all come across as "caught up in the moment" bits, not part of a growing love or even much of an infatuation. Add in all of the padding and completely botched subplots (Diane has a twin sister who got duped into a "facial" video for a website - no one mentions it, or even the sister really, ever again) and you have a movie that can best be described as a mess; one that tries to juggle a bunch of elements and can't keep a single one of them in the air.

If for some reason you get the DVD and can't return it, skip over the feature and head directly to the special features, where there's a terrific 10 minute look at the creation/design of the werewolf creature. Not only does it give you an opportunity to actually SEE it (its appearances in the film are in underlit closeups - and can we give the "using a camera flash to briefly light up a dark room" gimmick a break?), but you see how much work Gabe Bartalos put into it across the board, including a mold of Temple's face pressed into the side like a botched Thing, which you can never actually see in the finished film. Since they could have just used a Halloween store costume considering how much of it you see in the finished film, I appreciate the effort that he put into it. They also take a few seconds here to give props to the Quay brothers, who provided some stop-motion animation to show how changing into a werewolf looks on the inside of a human body - awesome stuff that should have been used in a better movie. An EPK style behind the scenes featuring Gray and Keough and a trailer are also included; interestingly, the trailer is fairly honest about the film (read: doesn't show much werewolf, sells as indie rom-drama) where the interview them refer to it as a horror film.

Really wish I liked this one. As I wind down HMAD, I want to avoid generic DTV stuff that no one would have watched anyway, and spend more time with original sounding films like this (which DID play theatrically, though its box office take was pitiful - one of FIVE Magnolia releases that rank among the 10 lowest grossing films of 2012), but I also want them to be worth watching even if heavily flawed. This, sadly, was an almost total waste of time, saved (barely) by Keough's admirable decision to hide her looks (she's actually quite stunning normally), a practical monster you barely see, and some nice New York scenery. Hardly a ringing endorsement.

What say you?

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Crucible Of Horror (1971)

MAY 14, 2012

GENRE: HORROR?, THRILLER
SOURCE: DVD (BUDGET PACK 5)

It’s bad enough that Crucible Of Terror is a dull film that barely even meets the requirements of “Horror?”, but it’s also a confusing one. Only one thing happens in the entire movie and then the final 5 minutes tell you that it didn’t happen, so unless you’re a Michael Gough completist or just love watching people yammer in a big British manor, I suspect you can find something better to do with your time.

To its credit, there’s a decent idea at its core – it’s basically a remake of Diabolique but with a mother and daughter looking to kill the man who is making their lives a living hell. Gough plays the tyrannical father, and he’s pretty damn scary – one of the film’s few “action” bits involves him whipping his daughter for stealing, and it’s pretty horrifying to a modern day audience who only knows him as the kindly Alfred from the pre-Nolan Batman films. Like Diabolique, the “murder” occurs around the halfway mark (once we hate him enough to side with them), and then the rest depicts what happens when their plan goes awry.

But instead of that film’s clever twists and double crosses, we just a bunch of confusion. The body disappears, a dummy wearing a Gough mask swings from the ceiling like Bob in Halloween, and then Gough is shown to be fully alive. So what happened? Did they accidentally kill a dummy or an impostor? Was he not really dead? Was he even in the crate when they buried it at sea? Etc, etc – there are many possibilities, and the movie offers nothing in the way of answers. You can be ambiguous about certain things, but it’s not the best idea when it’s the main plot. It’d be like leaving it up to the audience to decide whether or not John McClane stops the terrorists or saves his wife in Die Hard. No, follow through on that, let us nerds wonder about the minor stuff like whether or not Theo got away or arrested (think about it – Argyle knocks him out, then drives off with McClane without talking to anyone).

And come on, you’ve bored us for 80 minutes and now you’re going to leave us hanging? Again, there’s some mild amusement to be had at watching Alfred Pennyworth smacking people around, but that dies off quickly, and no one else in the movie is all that memorable (though the daughter is quite lovely). And it has a slight bit of Hammer feel, but it doesn’t have any of those films’ rich cinematography or atmosphere. Most of the movie takes place in the house, where the folks sit around the dinner table or sip brandy in the parlor, so it more closely resembles a BBC special than a feature. Nice cliff during the “burial” scene though.

This has nothing to do with the movie really, but I’m kind of bummed to discover that this will be one of the last entries on my Pure Terror set, despite only being the 13th. There are 50 films on the set, but many are duplicated from the others (mostly Tales of Terror), and others are heavily edited versions which I refuse to watch. Then there are a few that I can’t possibly believe to be horror films (one of the movies is a Japanese adventure about a spaceman), which I find kind of insulting when you consider a. Mill Creek has plenty of sci-fi sets and b. like there aren’t hundreds of public domain horror movies to put on the disc instead? Even tossing on Night of the Living Dead for the millionth time would make more sense – it’s not like there are a bunch of people like me who own several of these damn sets.

Another film on this set that I had seen before is Satan’s Slave, which also involves Gough and a British manor, but is far superior to this. Stick with that one.

What say you?

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Point Of Terror (1971)

APRIL 11, 2012

GENRE: HORROR?, THRILLER
SOURCE: DVD (BUDGET PACK 5)

SO DISAPPOINTED. As I mentioned the other day, Point Of Terror is on a disc with three of the better/best films on the Pure Terror set, so I was hoping it would measure up and become a sort of "perfect" budget pack disc. But alas, not only is it a fairly terrible movie, it's barely even acceptable to call it horror; if it didn't fit under two of my rules, I would have just abandoned it and watched something else for the day.

On paper it sort of sounds like a slasher/thriller, at least. A cheesy lounge singer meets a woman who claims she can get him a recording contract, and people start dying. But there's only like two deaths in the movie, and most of it is just a melodrama about this asshole doing his act and wanting to be a star. See, the lady isn't really involved with the record company - her invalid asshole husband is, and the whole thing is a ruse to help her knock him off, which gets complicated because Mr. Lobster Lounge's ego swells instantly and doesn't want to help her do shit. There's a lot of yelling and sex and singing... not so much of the slashy-slash that the poster promises.

That said, this would be a hoot at a "crowd participation" screening. At times I was reminded of the terrible Girl In Gold Boots that aired as an MST3k episode (the only non-genre film of its Sci-Fi Channel run, in fact), and - assuming they could only do ONE melodrama about people who wanted to be stars getting mixed up with crooks - I wish they had done this instead, because so much of it was seemingly tailor-made for Mike and the 'bots to ridicule. The film opens with an awful musical/dance number, and the guy playing the invalid also suffers from restless leg syndrome (!). And it has a godawful twist ending that you can practically hear Tom Servo berating. But alas, I was by myself, and while I recognized its camp value and chuckled a few times, it was mostly just a chore.

Most of my entertainment stemmed from the fact that the main actor Peter Carpenter also wrote and produced the film, which means that his character's ego is nothing compared to Carpenter's own. He writes himself nude scenes, singing scenes, dancing scenes... I wouldn't be surprised if he actually ghost-directed as well, since credited director Alex Nicol never directed again. Interestingly, Nicol's debut film WAS an MST3k entry (and one of my favorites), The Screaming Skull ("Is he reading from a report?"), which Nicol acted in as well. And of course, we can't ask either of them, because as it turns out both men are deceased. Nicol died in 2001 of natural causes, though he apparently retired from show business in the mid 70s, and Carpenter sadly died in 1971, over a year before this film was released (at least, per their info - they have the release as May 1973 but the below trailer claims October 1971). The cause was a massive cerebral hemorrhage according to the IMDb, and forgive me, but a swelled brain is a darkly ironic way of dying for someone who obviously thought highly of himself. Also, is there nothing more depressing than (possibly) dying before the release of your own vanity project? I feel bad saying that sort of stuff, for all I know he was a wonderful guy (couldn't find much biographical info on him), but let's just call it even for false advertising me on a slasher movie.

If this plays a revival house and you enjoy "so bad it's good" entertainment I would highly urge you check it out; it definitely seems like the sort of movie Brian Quinn would dig up as the B-movie for one of his Grindhouse night double features at the New Beverly. The goofy soap-opera plot and rather out of nowhere (and even kind of Giallo-esque) kill scenes are definitely crowd-pleasing, as are the frequent sex scenes (one including Ilsa herself, Dyanne Thorne). But alone at home? Steer as clear as you possibly can.

What say you?

P.S. Adding insult to injury, this had the best transfer on the disc as well. Letterboxed and seemingly remastered (and then compressed poorly), it just added to my "Hey this might be good!" feeling, one that quickly evaporated.

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The Hunters (2011)

JANUARY 4, 2012

GENRE: HORROR?, THRILLER
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

At least once a year I watch a movie that is really a stretch for horror, and only once or twice have I put my foot down and watched something else for the day rather than write a review. Well, we’re only four days into the year, but hopefully nothing else will be as “on the fence” as The Hunters, which I would almost add to that “No way!” pile if not for two scenes straight out of any survival horror movie of the past 10 years, and an ad campaign that pushes the horror angle more than most legit horror movies!

To be fair it looks like most of this is Lionsgate’s doing; an older (non LG) trailer I found on Youtube (I put them both below) is a bit closer to showing the movie that it actually is – a tale of intersecting characters/storylines that intersect in tragedy at a creepy fort (it’s Crash meets The Keep!), but even that one basically makes it look like a survival thriller. Still, it’s nothing compared to the Gate’s trailer, which oversells Dianna Agron’s presence and makes it look like a Hostel type tale of a pair of lovers heading to a secluded getaway and running afoul of a group of murderers. The synopsis on the back of the DVD is even worse: talking about a GROUP of friends going back to the fort that they played in as kids, only to discover bodies and blood and then the titular hunters. In other words, generic but potentially enjoyable B movie fun, right?

Well there’s no group; Agron and her boyfriend go to a place that HE knows about, and they discover nothing – our hero finds them more or less right after they get there and then one of them is killed moments later. And that’s a spoiler, because they don’t arrive until the film’s FINAL 20 MINUTES, which would be ridiculous even for a 75 minute Asylum thing but is borderline offensive for a film that runs just under 2 hours. And, as you can probably guess by now, Agron isn’t even in it that much (dammit); her screentime is probably 15 minutes at best, and she’s just a peripheral character that never interacts with most of the cast.

No, the movie is really about the collision course between our hero cop (Chris Briant, who also directed) and the hunters, four men who aren’t exactly out to nail a few deer. As with Hostel 2, we get to know two of them – one’s a depressed family man, the other an unhappy jerk, and we get the idea that these “hunts” are pretty much the only time in their lives where they feel in control or whatever. Meanwhile, Briant’s character is newly assigned to the police force in the town where the Fort is located, and he seems to think that it might be connected to an unusually high number of disappearances, but his captain warns him not to get involved and assigns him a lame case involving making sure a witness is kept safe until his important trial.

Needless to say everyone ends up at the fort, which could have been exciting had they all arrived around the same time. There’s a serial killer there as well (that’s the horror stuff), and maybe if the cops, the hunters, and Agron and her boyfriend all had to band together to survive during the killer’s rampage or something, it might have been interesting. But instead, Briant is the only one that links them – the killer doesn’t interact with the hunters much, most of the hunters are dead (via Briant) by the time Agron arrives, etc. There’s a not too surprising twist about what one of the hunters does for a living, but otherwise there isn’t nearly enough intersecting in this “intersecting thriller”. It reminded me a bit of Medium Raw, in fact, where they had all of these characters and a potentially exciting situation, but needlessly kept them all apart for the entire running time. And hey, that one was directed by its main actor too!

Briant’s character also makes little sense – he’s supposedly an ex-soldier, but yet he doesn’t seem to be able to hit the broad side of a barn when firing his weapon. Ditto the hunters – what kind of hunter can’t shoot a guy who is pinned down below him? Briant and the asshole husband hunter have a shootout where they are seemingly only like 50 feet apart but neither of them manage to land a shot in their first dozen or so attempts, even though they aren’t even really moving! Also, he for some reason decides to have the guy he’s supposed to be protecting meet him at the fort; I guess it’s just an excuse to go there against his captain’s orders, but is following a lead really worth potentially getting an important witness killed (which, spoiler, is exactly what happens)? Couldn’t he just tell the guy to meet him at Denny’s or something AFTER he looked around the place he suspected was crawling with murderers? I can accept outlandish coincidences and bad plotting in a stupid slasher movie, because I’m just there to have fun – but if you’re going to make this dour, allegedly character-driven thriller, then I expect a slightly more logical script.

All that said, I’ll give it points for being a bit different – horror or not there aren’t too many movies like this, where we see a tragic tale unfold through the eyes of the police, the criminal, and the innocent victim. With a tighter, more balanced script (again, Agron’s role is far too small for her character to really measure, and her boyfriend might as well be an anonymous extra) this could have been something really cool, but instead it’s mostly just frustrating, because I can see what Briant and screenwriter Michael Lehman were trying to do, and that they weren’t interested in making a movie as generic as the one Lionsgate ended up trying to sell us, but alas, they missed their mark.

The disc’s only extra besides the insultingly misleading trailer is a making of that runs just under 20 minutes. It’s half in French and (sigh) features Agron as if she was the film’s primary star, but the other actors get to talk, as does Briant and a producer who of course stresses that this is a psychological thriller drama, not a horror movie. And for once he’s actually correct – it’s too bad his movie got picked up by the most shameless studio in Hollywood. IFC or Magnolia might not have had as much money to offer, or a guarantee of shelf space at Blockbuster – but they’d at least have sold the potential audience on what The Hunters actually was. Sorry about that, fellas! You can always sue them like Jesse Eisenberg is (funnily enough, the Camp Hell trailer plays at the top of the disc), but hopefully you just take the time to refine your ideas into a more satisfying script when it comes time to mount the next project.

What say you?

The original trailer:And the Lionsgate:

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Seven Days (2010)

DECEMBER 2, 2011

GENRE: HORROR?, THRILLER
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

Much like They Came Back, Seven Days is a French (well, French Canadian) film takes a very dramatic, borderline non-horror approach to standard horror subgenre. In the former it was zombies, and here it's the torture/revenge thriller, with a suspected child rapist/murderer being subjected to a week's worth of pain at the hands of the father of his most recent victim. But it's not played for scares or even much in the way of suspense - there isn't even a score that I ever noticed (though someone is credited with the music, so there must have been SOME in there, somewhere).

It's also not too complicated, which was a bit of a relief after having seen yesterday's "Father seeks his daughter's killer" movie, which was too over-plotted for me to ever just enjoy as a thriller. It ALSO keeps the movie from turning into The Tortured, the wholly ridiculous Bill Moseley movie that has a similar plot (the dads are both doctors, in fact). I should note that Seven Days is based on a novel from 2002, so I wonder if that Moseley movie (which still hasn't been released in the US) was "inspired" by Patrick Senecal's original book. But either way, that film dipped into Saw territory with complicated torture acts and 3rd act twists, whereas this one stays grounded in little more than straight drama - even some of the more vicious revenge acts are off-screen.

Actually maybe director Daniel Grou didn't show these things because it would mean adding loud sounds (i.e. a man screaming as he was castrated) to the film, which is unnervingly quiet for most of its run time. I already pointed out the lack of music, but there's practically no sound AT ALL for long stretches at a time, as the dad just contemplates what he's done, or looks at a slowly decomposing deer in his yard, or any other minor act that can have you periodically checking to make sure no one put your receiver on mute. Even the on-screen scenes are fairly low volume; the two men converse but rarely raise their voices.

The fact that the father increases the severity of his acts is a bit underplayed, however, and I can't help but wonder if that would be more clear if the film was more explicit. The castration is off-screen and not really addressed; you just see an obvious excess of blood in his area on the final day. At first the dad is just doing standard stuff - he cripples one of his legs on day one, then whips him with a chain on day two, etc. Somewhere in there he pulls off his most gruesome act, an intestinal-based wound that will make Human Centipede fans might feel at home. Whether a guy could actually survive 7 days under these conditions is questionable, though considering the overly serious/dramatic tone of the film I'm sure Senecal did his research.

Otherwise, the only minor horror elements stem from the police's attempt to find dad before he kills the guy, giving it a thriller angle of sorts. But even that is played largely for drama, as the head cop had to settle for the guy who killed his wife merely going to jail, so there's a question of whether the cop will let the dad do his thing to get the closure he possibly desired for himself. The only reason I associated this stuff with horror is because they do one of those Silence Of The Lambs-esque "the cops swarm the wrong house" bits, which was painfully obvious since the house they were approaching didn't look anything like the one we know the dad was at. Also it was only like day four or something - the title promised seven, and we're gonna get them all!

But as long as you're not expecting a horror movie, it's pretty compelling as a drama, and even somewhat sad. All of the actors are terrific, Claude Legault as the dad and Rémy Girard as the cop in particular give top notch performances as shattered men; it's a shame the film gives them so few scenes together. I also liked Fanny Mallette as the mother, who takes surprisingly little involvement with the proceedings. There's a minor subplot about the fact that the dad didn't check the house voicemail (from the school principal asking why the daughter didn't show up) as soon as he could have, something Mallette keeps nagging him about - but there's no payoff. I kept thinking the killer would somehow reveal that had the dad checked his messages that she could have been saved in time or something, but it's never clear if it was already too late by then anyway. I guess the point is "Who cares, she's gone", but since it's pretty much the only thing the mom gets to do, it felt more important than the way its actually played.

It's a bit long though. Horror or not, the movie's thin storyline doesn't lend itself to just under 2 hours; 90 minutes would have been plenty, especially when it heads to a fairly obvious (and oddly abrupt) conclusion. There's a lengthy scene of Legault tearing a room apart; not only is it kind of pointless to begin with (he already know his frustration), but he does it SLOWLY! They also make too much out of the guys who are helping Legault (setting up a fake computer to track, helping him kidnap the guy in the first place, etc); elements that were probably more interesting (and fleshed out) in the source material but serve little purpose here. Apparently there's an even longer version (115 minutes as opposed to 111), but if some fan wanted to make a 90-95 minute cut I'd be interested in seeing it.

So, up to you. As I said the other day, I'm growing weary of these grim, joyless "horror" movies, and that one was a half hour shorter and offered the exciting "one take" cinematography, at least. And it's hard to recommend as a drama to the folks who enjoyed movies like Law Abiding Citizen or Eye For An Eye, because those audiences might get physically ill at the sight of the aforementioned "intestine" bit. All I know is, tomorrow's movie better be fun or I'm gonna quit 510 movies early.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Red State (2011)

OCTOBER 27, 2011

GENRE: HORROR? RELIGIOUS
SOURCE: STREAMING (NETFLIX INSTANT)

My two “new” filmmaker heroes in high school were Quentin Tarantino and Kevin Smith (joining guys like Carpenter and Romero that I already idolized), and it’s been interesting to see how they have evolved over the years, especially in 2009, when QT released Inglourious Basterds, which was his best film in years and represented a new maturity for the filmmaker, while Smith put out Zack and Miri Make A Porno, a not very memorable comedy built around the same relationship woes and Star Wars jokes he’s been doing all along. But if he had his way, his own “departure” would have been the one coming out, as Red State was written years ago but his inability to secure financing due to its subject matter resulted in Porno going first.

With that in mind, I couldn’t help but wonder if the financing he eventually DID secure was much less than he had in mind and thus had to rewrite his script significantly. For all his talk about it being a disturbing horror movie, it’s remarkably light on horror, to the extent that I wouldn’t even consider it for HMAD if not for the fact that the damn poster refers to it as a horror film (as does its writer/director). It certainly starts off as a religious-tinged take on a “bad things happen to kids who venture out of town” horror movie, complete with a car accident of sorts, but this sort of approach, and the kids themselves, are completely phased out by the time the 2nd act kicks in, when a typical horror movie scene (the villain trying to get rid of a snooping cop) ends in violence and kicks off a lengthy siege film (think Waco).

Given the emphasis on action/violence, I guess it’s a good thing that this is one of the best directed Smith films yet, possibly ever. His scripts were always the main draw, to the extent that movies like Dogma were severely weakened by his inability to stage anything exciting (I loved that script when I read it a year or so before the movie came out; found the movie disappointingly flat). I will also never understand how it is that Kevin “tripod” Smith was chosen to DIRECT an action comedy with Bruce Willis instead of writing one (Cop Out), but in a way those and his other flatly directed films make this one all the more impressive – frenetic camerawork! Decent editing! Hell, even some stylish lighting! Overuse of Snorri-cam aside, it’s one of the better shot low budget “horror” films I’ve seen in quite some time.

Unfortunately the script is the real issue here, which again makes me wonder if he had to rewrite when the dough didn’t come in. He’s revealed on more than one occasion that the original ending was changed, and since it was far more interesting than the one he ended up using, I have to assume that it was changed for budgetary reasons, as it would have involved big FX. Instead, the movie jarringly shifts from the standoff to one of the film’s few survivors talking about what happened after, which in a way is (for the first time in the 90 minute film) trademark Smith: a couple guys in a room talking about doing things that are interesting rather than actually showing it.

It’s also the final example of a problem that plagues the entire movie: a lack of focus. Our three horny youths (baited into the evil church’s clutches for very strained reasons that even the endlessly yammering Michael Parks character can barely defend) should have been the focus throughout the movie, or they should have all been killed at once, Psycho-style, with the focus switching to Parks for the rest of the time. But after spending a while with Parks, (who is terrific; at times Smith's "Oscar qualifying run" of the film almost seemed a worthwhile venture) the focus switches yet again to John Goodman, as an ATF agent who either follows his orders (kill everyone) or feels guilty in alternating scenes, which is just confusing – I kept wondering if I was missing a scene where his change of heart made sense.

And then there are other characters momentarily given the spotlight as if the movie was entirely about them (such as Kyle Gallner, who is the most anonymous of the trio of youths but is suddenly at the center of the ATF vs. cult war), but all of them are pretty much wasted in the end. Stephen Root in particular is given the potentially meaty role of a closeted homosexual (married to a woman), but once the siege begins he is told to sit in his car, which he does, and then we don’t see him again until (spoiler) he is unceremoniously shot by one of the cult folks, with no more fanfare than any of the anonymous cops who get taken out during this sequence. I appreciate Smith’s willingness to kill off so many of his characters, but he didn’t bother to flesh them out enough to make them worth caring about – your concern for Sheriff Wynan has nothing to do with what he does in the movie, it’s all based on the fact that he’s played by Stephen Root, lovable character actor. And thus while it certainly makes for a nice shock when a certain (different) name actor is shot in the head only a few minutes after his introduction, I couldn’t help but notice that the only reason I cared was because of the significance of the actor playing him; put some random actor in the role, and you will barely even notice he’s dead, let alone care.

I’m also unsure what Smith seems to be saying here beyond “These religious whack-jobs sure are crazy, huh?” Parks’ character of Cooper is clearly modeled on Fred Phelps (though Goodman’s character points out Phelps as a “suer not a doer”, likely to prevent Phelps from suing), but does anyone – even Smith’s rabid fans who seemingly only watch his movies and listen to his podcasts – really need to be told that Phelps and folks like him are assholes? Smith himself delivers the film’s final line, a mere “Shut the fuck up!” to Cooper who is attempting to sermonize (spoiler) from his jail cell, which seems to be the most blunt way of summing up his entire position on these folks, but do we really need a movie about that? It’s like Crash winning Best Picture because it had the stones to point out the pointlessness of being racist. Bold! It might have been interesting to peel back the layers on this sort of guy, but the movie never bothers to make that sort of daring observation – even alone in his cell, we can clearly see that Cooper believes what he’s saying, or otherwise with no one around he might be reading a porno mag or engaging in some other hypocritical behavior.

On occasion, Smith seems to be trying to point out that the Coopers of the world are no worse than horny teenagers or cops who blindly follow orders (the cast list is broken up between “sex” “religion” and “politics”), but he doesn’t follow through – Goodman is the closest the movie gets to presenting a hero (with Cooper as the villain), but his constant flip-flopping makes it impossible to get a read on him at all, let alone decide if he’s just as bad as anyone else. Ultimately he just sort of feels like a cog in the wheel, which adds to the movie’s rather pointless feel. Smith clearly chooses a side on this issue, but when the only way to know for sure is via an ADR line of dialogue that he chose to deliver himself, there’s a major problem with the actual movie.

Back on Project Greenlight 3, when they were doing Feast, my boy Affleck had Smith watch a cut of that movie, and when it came time to give his opinion, Smith started by saying that he doesn’t like horror movies. I can’t imagine his position has changed much in the past few years, so overall the movie serves as another example of why guys who don’t like horror movies shouldn’t be making them. Anyone who dismisses an entire genre as a whole probably doesn’t have an appreciation for what makes them work for those that do, which is probably why nearly everyone (even its defenders) has trouble understanding why Smith keeps calling this a horror movie. I guess the idea of these folks existing is pretty scary, but having them all shot to death or imprisoned seems to suggest that the problem can be taken care of; a real horror movie would have their number growing by the end, with Cooper having the ear of a senator or something, insinuating that things will get worse. Even the original ending would have at least had the vague notion that they were right. Either way, if you’re expecting a horror movie you won’t find it, and if you’re expecting a thought provoking “scary” drama about extremists, you’ll probably be disappointed.

Nice looking movie though. Good job on that one, Kev.

What say you?

P.S. Since his fans tend to come out of the woodwork to defend their hero, I’m guessing a few folks will read this as their first HMAD review. First, hi! Second, I am NOT a Smith hater. I don’t think much of him as a person anymore thanks to his obnoxious Twitter feed (which I was able to follow for about a week before getting tired of seeing him clog my feed – and I follow Weinberg for Christ’s sake!) and constant attention-grabbing theatrics, but I still enjoy and own just about all of his movies, with this being the first one I didn’t see in theaters (not paying 20 bucks to see a movie at the New Bev where I usually see two movies for 1/3 of the price, sorry) since Clerks. Yes, I was one of the 37 people who saw Mallrats in theaters. So flame away, but if you call me a hater or whatever I will delete the comment. I encourage opposing opinions but I have no patience for childish name-calling, especially when it’s not even accurate.

PLEASE, GO ON...

Enter Nowhere (2011)

OCTOBER 20, 2011

GENRE: HORROR?, THRILLER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (FESTIVAL SCREENING)

First off, congrats to the Enter Nowhere team – it has been picked up by Lionsgate, making it one of the few Screamfest entries that have firm distribution plans for the US (or at least, that we know of). Secondly – please don’t try to market this as a horror movie. While there’s some tension and a minor somewhat supernatural twist, it really falls closer to science fiction/Twilight Zone-y territory; I just have this fear of a trailer showing people in the woods running and screaming (our hero even brandishes an ax at one point, cut the right way into a trailer and it’s a shot from a slasher!), and then as a result people rent/buy it expecting Wrong Turn 5 and get angry that it’s a blood free “What if?” tale of sorts.

Of course I can’t explain in detail why I feel this way, since the movie’s not out yet and won’t be for a while (if they just picked it up it’ll be several months at least), and even with HMAD’s loose policy on spoilers that wouldn’t be fair or helpful to anyone. So I’ll just stick with the first act, even though ironically that’s the stuff that feels the most like a horror movie.

Basically we have a survival tale of sorts, as three folks end up in this tiny shack in the woods during a particularly cold winter. One had a car crash, another ran out of gas, and the third… well we’re not sure how she ended up there. There’s no food, very little water, and seemingly no way of contacting the outside world. Worse, it appears they are not alone, as gunshots can be heard every now and then. How everyone got there and what their life was like prior to this predicament provides the bulk of the film’s second act, and I will stop there, only to say my initial guess as to what was happening was not only wrong, but far less interesting.

What works about the film is that it totally commits to its potentially silly idea. No one questions it or tries to get ahead of the audience by pointing out a possible plot hole, something that only works in a movie like End Of Days where taking it serious would be detrimental (hence lines like “Midnight? Is that Eastern time?”). You either go with it or you don’t, and as I’ve said a million times, I will always go with a kooky idea as long as I never get the feeling that the director is laughing at us. And any movie that uses Pac-Man as an example to explain part of its plot is automatically worth some respect (though the second callback to it was a bit unnecessary/laughable).

Also, it’s not a particularly action-packed movie (we don’t even see the various automobile issues that got them there), but that just means we spend more time with our characters and learning to like them as they bond, which makes investing into their plight during the hectic third act a much easier task. Sara Paxton’s character is abrasive at first, but quickly drops her guard and becomes close with Katherine Waterston (a very warm presence), who instantly bonded with Scott Eastwood as Tom, who is the most proactive of the group and does his dad proud – he’s got a nice Chris Evans-esque thing going on (or perhaps a Sam Worthington with some actual charisma).

It also has one of the best Halloween references I’ve ever heard in a movie, and it ties into a very clever aspect of the script that makes you rethink certain things about the characters. When all of the answers are in place, what seemed like a character’s quirky character tic actually has a far more “normal” explanation, and it would be fun to go back and watch the movie again knowing its secrets – something that Lionsgate must appreciate in today’s marketplace. It’s not disposable! You might want to watch it more than once, so buying is a conceivable option!

Looks great, sounds great, etc. Screamfest has come a long way in both its selection and its presentation over the years; I remember seeing movies that seemed to be screened off highly compressed CD-Rs a few years back, not to mention amateur productions that made me wonder if the filmmakers were aware of how to turn on a light, but that is not the case anymore. Just about every feature film I’ve seen this year looked just as good/professional as anything you can find at the multiplex right now, and Enter Nowhere was no exception. Even the CGI near the end (can’t even say WHAT without spoiling, though I guess “an explosion” is vague enough for one of its examples) isn’t too bad, and for once I can’t really fault them for not going with practical, given their nature.

Hopefully once the movie gets released (I assume they will go straight to DVD with it; Paxton is the film’s only name and “the star of Shark Night” isn’t exactly a great marketing hook) some of you folks will come back and leave comments and I can follow up without being so vague. You might even wonder why I bothered; the esteemed Simon Barrett figured out a chunk of the twist rather early, so perhaps I’m just dumb (I thought he was joking, in fact). It’ll be a fun movie to talk about, and that is of course what HMAD was designed for in the first place. And you guys will hopefully not go into it expecting a full blown horror movie, so you might even enjoy it even more!

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Phase 7 (2011)

JULY 16, 2011

GENRE: POST-APOCALYPTIC, HORROR?
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

While I'm all for expanding horizons and what not, I'm not sure if B-D's third theatrical "Bloody Disgusting Selects" feature should be so horror-lite. The theater for Phase 7 (Spanish: Fase 7) was even less crowded than the last one and this was the opening weekend (and at a more accessible theater to boot - with free parking!). I love seeing the logo on the big screen and I hope that the series continues, but I can't imagine AMC or whoever being too keen on booking a film that only brings in six people on opening night (well, eight - two walked out).

It's also not a particularly good movie. I liked the concept, in which a guy named Coco, who is not too unlike Shaun from Shaun Of The Dead (i.e. oblivious to the panic around him), is quarantined along with a handful of colorful neighbors and Pipi, his pregnant, easily agitated girlfriend (wife?), as a mysterious virus sweeps across the globe. Rather than focus on the virus victims or them trying to escape the city, the movie just sort of focuses on the mundane side of a quarantine - sitting around with board games and bad TV, for example, as well as the minor issues that can arise that have no easy solution.

Such as burnt out light bulbs. I knew that this was a "zombie movie without the zombies", but I didn't know that what seems like half of the goddamn thing featured people asking/arguing about light bulbs, kicked off by an odd bit during the opening scene when a bulb is purchased at a grocery store and the cashier asks if he checked it to see if it worked (he lies and says yes). How the hell do you check a light bulb at the store? Is this really something you do in Argentina? I just assume that the brand new/wrapped light bulb I am buying will work, same as I do for every other product I buy (well, except for Xbox 360s, as I am on my 5th and thus increasingly convinced that the ones that DO work for more than a few months are flukes).

But this isn't the problem (well, not the main one) - it's just that the filmmakers failed to make their characters interesting. A surprise bit around the halfway point (if that far) decimates most of the supporting cast, some of whom we never really met. The first BD Selects entry, Rammbock, had a fun supporting cast (in another apartment building set film, oddly enough) that each got a moment or two, even though the focus was on our two main guys, but writer/director Nicolás Goldbart doesn't allow for much interaction before this mini-massacre. Worse, Pipi is a horribly unlikable woman; there's a difference between a pregnant woman prone to mood swings and just a total bitch, and Pipi is definitely on the latter side. If not for the fact that she was carrying another life inside her, I would have been demanding her death after 20 minutes, and if anything she just gets worse. At one point Coco gets a facial injury and a minor slip of the tongue results in her raking her fingernails across it - if this is supposed to be funny, it's not.

There are some good humorous bits though. I particularly liked the rather silly bit where the confused residents try to provide a head count for the hazmat-suited guys outside ("Sixteen people and a maid"), and I also enjoyed their oblivious non-reactions to the obvious chaos going on around them in the film's early scenes. Plus I liked that they didn't seem to care much about the quarantine; no panic or anything, just content to hang out for a while. I know as long as there was electricity and a source of food, I would be all for being "trapped" in my apartment; I could finally play Fallout 3! And it would be fitting!!

But those moments aren't enough to make up for the movie's near total lack of tension or engaging characters. Coco is sort of fun but not particularly interesting, and when the action kicks in (a crazed neighbor begins trying to kill the other residents) it's actually another guy who does most of the work, with him sort of standing nearby more often than participating. And most of this action is botched; there's a potentially cool shootout in a basement lit only by a single green glow-stick, but it goes on forever and it never becomes clear why neither side can manage to land a shot. Sure, a glow-stick might not be the best light source in the world, but it IS one, and looked like enough to at least be pointing in the right direction.

And again, I knew it wouldn't be filled with zombie/infected scenes, but there's not enough information about it to ever feel like a strong (unseen) threat, either. The movie is a (too long) 95 minutes, and "nothing happens", so there should have been a lot more TV/radio broadcasts to fill in backstory. Or at least given our heroes a more interesting conundrum to deal with, instead of just having them bicker without any consequence. Hell, even the cliche "She's in labor and we're not getting to the hospital on time!" would have been better than nothing. The movie Right At Your Door, which oddly enough I saw almost exactly 4 years ago today, did this sort of thing far more effectively, I think. It wasn't humorous, but it focused on the isolation and character drama instead of action, but yet still remained quite compelling and suspenseful.

As for its placement in the horror genre, again, it's pretty light. There are some gore effects you won't see in a drama, and the post-apocalyptic/virus concept is scary in theory, so I guess it fits, barely. But again, the characters barely seem scared about anything, so why should we? Even Shaun of the Dead, which was more of a full blown comedy than this, still had the characters being noticeably petrified at times. There's a good movie to be made about the "smaller" side of a virus/quarantine situation, but this, sadly, ain't it.

On the plus side - there was no awful short preceding it this time around, so there's something. Also, this makes my third foreign-language film in a row, which has to be a record amongst all my fellow Horror Movie A Day-ers. But that record won't climb - tomorrow's movie will be in English! Sick of looking at the bottom third of the image!

What say you?

P.S. I know it seems like I skipped one - BD put out YellowBrickRoad under the "Selects" banner in between Rammbock and this, however I already saw that one at Screamfest, and my association w/B-D doesn't get me into these for free.

PLEASE, GO ON...