OCTOBER 11, 2013

GENRE: SURVIVAL, THRILLER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (SCREAMFEST)

This morning I looked at BoxOfficeMojo and discovered that You're Next still hadn't even hit the 20m mark, which is so depressing since it was originally projected to make almost that much in its first weekend (and certainly deserved to). I still don't understand why the public rejected the movie, but I DO know that if it was a hit, movies like Torment would be able to get better deals for distribution than they might now, as it's in the same "home invasion" sub-genre and even has some similar elements (including killers wearing animal masks). Hopefully it will still find its way out there, as I found it to be a solid entry in the growing "folks terrorize people in their own home" series of films.

The first forty minutes or so work best; it's not long after our hero family (a man, his son, and his new wife Sarah, played by Katharine Isabelle) arrive at their vacation home that they realize someone has been in there: dirty dishes in the sink and in the bedrooms, a hole in the basement door, and - worst of all - one of the kid's stuffed animals has been taken. Assuming it to be burglars that have since moved on (and receiving no real help from the local police, embodied by Stephen McHattie, in case you weren't sure that this was a Canadian production), they go to bed... only to discover that their son is missing in the middle of the night.

From then on it's almost a realtime account of the two parents running around trying to find their son while dodging their attackers, who kill the cop, injure Sarah, and quite disturbingly have cut the heads off the kid's giant stuffed animals to make into masks. There are some terrific setpieces throughout this portion of the film, with director Jordan Barker (returning to Screamfest after his enjoyable ghost thriller The Marsh played there in 2006) doing Carpenter proud with some fine use of widescreen and background gags - I particularly loved when a barely visible light turned out in the background behind our hero, letting us (but not him) know the killers were still around. And he milks every second of the more suspense driven parts, with Isabelle or Robin Dunne (the husband) making their way down a hallway, not sure if the killer or killers are waiting to jump out of a room or from a closet behind them. And we know they're brutal killers from the opening scene where they kill a neighbor family (another thing that might bring You're Next to mind; I couldn't find if this was shot before or after YN began making its festival rounds), so there isn't much of a "safe" feeling for anyone but the kid - and he's MIA!

The Strangers may also come to mind, but here's where the film differs greatly from that one - the killers have a motive and explain why they are targeting this guy. It's not a terrible concept, but unfortunately the villain speaks with a voice not unlike Bane's from The Dark Knight Rises, and thus it's almost impossible to keep up that level of tension when I keep having the instinct to burst out laughing. I'm sure the thinking was that it would be creepy and unsettling, but it's just kind of goofy, and I'm of the opinion that these particular movies are scarier without any motive (YN being an exception since it was also more of a fun approach to such things), so the final 20 minutes or so aren't as strong as what came before. But it's got an appropriately grim ending and an admirably left-field twist (one that also registers as more goofy than creepy, to be fair), and it's only like 75 minutes without credits, and thus is never boring.

I also enjoyed seeing Isabelle in a likable, "normal" role, since her biggest genre turns so far have been Ginger Snaps and American Mary, both of which had her playing not particularly sympathetic characters. She's a lovely woman and a solid actress, and I was worried she'd only do horror movies that were in line with those, which would get tiresome. Good to see she's not "above" more traditional "final girl" type of roles, and also that she's playing her age instead of following the lead of some of her peers and trying to keep passing for college students when they're in their 30s (the irony being she'd have no trouble passing for someone ten years younger). And it's always good to see McHattie; he is used well in his two scenes and is pretty much the only other person in the movie besides the family and their pursuers, so it's good that they got an icon of sorts.

In short, it's not a game-changer, but it gets the job done and only has a few minor missteps. Sure, I'd rather a movie with a better 2nd half than the first, so you go out on a high note, but it's not like Mute Witness where you might as well shut the damn thing off once the truly suspenseful/scary part is over with and the movie has to get bogged down with its plot. And I liked it a lot more than any of the shorts in the following block, which only produced one I really enjoyed (Dembanger, about the drawbacks of accepting random friend requests on Facebook). There's this new trend where short films are just basically pitches for feature films, and are equally underdeveloped (as they are saving a lot of the narrative for the feature) and too damn long, and I'm getting kind of sick of it. I also tend to dislike guests of a short who are rude when the other ones are playing, such as the folks for Thirteen, which was also the weakest of the lot to boot. This is part of why I'd rather they didn't do a block and just attached them to the features, but oh well. I also enjoyed Woodland Heights, tho it too could have been a bit shorter. Hopefully the programmers just assumed Friday night would be tough and just sacrificed the weakest ones of the bunch in order to save the really good ones for the other nights, though that wasn't the case last year - Friday night's two short blocks in 2012 were among the all time best I've ever seen. Either way: MAKE SHORTER SHORTS. I didn't love ABCs of Death but at least I knew nothing would be more than 5-6 minutes; I saw one in the Screamfest program guide that runs just under a half hour - that's not a short film, that's an episode of a TV show!

What say you?

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OCTOBER 8, 2013

GENRE: PSYCHOLOGICAL, SURVIVAL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (SCREAMFEST)

On Monday night I joined a podcast to talk horror movies, and my hatred of unlikable characters came up, how I was sick of seeing horror movies where I wanted everyone to die and found myself rooting for the bad guy, something that shouldn't be the case (with earned exceptions, as with all things). So it's a shame I hadn't yet seen Beneath (not to be confused with the killer fish movie), as I could have used it as an example of how to do it right. Our protagonists are a blue collar group of coal miners, gruff but likable, and clearly FRIENDS (I didn't mention it, but I'm also sick of the group of people who will kill each other if Jason/Freddy/whoever doesn't get to them first). In fact I even likened them to the oil drillers in Armageddon; they bust each others' balls but clearly all love each other and would risk their lives to save the other guy, something bound to come up as we are told right off the bat that there's a tragedy and they will be stuck down there, seemingly with only one survivor.

Actually, before I begin the praise, let me add another "STOP DOING THAT" to the list - starting a movie at the end and flashing back to however many hours or days ago that it all got started (four days, in this case). The movie opens with a rescue team poking through a pile of rubble and someone shouting "We got a live one!", and then we go back to the night before they went down there, giving the audience an assurance that someone makes it out alive. But that's silly - all it does is deflate a lot of the suspense, because it's obvious who will live, and the script doesn't take advantage of this assurance by pulling a fast one - it ends exactly as you would have expected even without the flash forward. On occasion this can be used effectively (I like to mention Fallen as an example), but this isn't one of those times.

But otherwise it's a pretty tense, admirably ambiguous blend of The Descent and Session 9, offering the claustrophobic panic of the former with the "is it psychological or is there a supernatural presence working against them" dread of the latter. Of course we can't see too much at first without having our answer, so there are a lot of off-screen events - characters will walk into darkness, and then we will cut to another area and interact with some other characters for a moment before they hear that first guy scream, run over to the spot, and find him dead (or missing). But the jump scares are often quite good, and director Ben Ketai keeps finding fun ways of blending the two elements of danger - there's a fantastic bit where our heroine (Kelly Noonan) is inside an inflatable tunnel that is being deflated by the pickaxe attacks of an antagonist, putting her at risk of being stabbed or suffocating until she can find her way out.

The acting is also solid, and it's great to see a horror film with mostly grown men serving as "the group". The team is led by Jeff Fahey, who is top billed though clearly wasn't always around for shooting (note how many scenes where his character is technically there but Fahey doesn't actually appear); it's really Noonan's show, along with Cabin Fever's Joey Kern as her love interest. The rest of the guys are slightly familiar character actors, a good approach as it makes it impossible to guess who will be first/last to go, and again since they're mostly likable you don't WANT any of them to get killed. There's one guy who turns into a dick the second the shit hits the fan, but it's just panic - I've seen movies where someone acts just as abhorrent before they even run into any trouble. Plus (spoiler) he's one of the first to go to boot, so it's not really an issue.

I do wish it had more survival elements. Fahey explains that there's enough food to last them a few days, but we never see them eat any of it, and at one point their makeshift shelter is ravaged - did they get the food? Water? There's also an issue with the air becoming toxic, but there's never any real sense of it being an issue - even when the antagonist destroys their oxygen tanks. It's a modern horror movie so of course we get a compound fracture (complete with the obligatory closeup of a bone sticking out of the skin with someone saying "I have to set it!" before counting to 3), but otherwise the only physical issue seems to be Fahey's cough, as he is presumably suffering from black lung disease or something of the sort. Indeed, this is his last trip down to the mine as he is retiring against his will, and his daughter (Noonan) is making things worse by tagging along for the first time as she prepares to speak against coal mining at her law school. The personal stakes are a touch generic, but Fahey and Noonan make it work, particularly in the sweet scene before they leave for the mine, with Fahey instructing her to follow his lead and write a note for her mother/his wife, something he has done every day for 35 years just in case there's a disaster and he doesn't come back. It's these little moments that give the film more of a personality than the average claustro-horror flick, enough to make up for what seems like a lot of missed opportunities to use the scenario for some truly scary/unsettling setpieces.

However, nothing makes up for Ketai's obnoxious insistence on using shaki-cam throughout the film, with the camera jerking around even during simple conversation scenes prior to them even going into the mine. I get and don't even mind the style during scenes of actual tension and danger, but when it's just someone catching up with an old flame, I really can't understand why I should be reaching for Dramamine. If you want to go hand-held to save time (or simply because a tripod won't fit in the small area), fine, but there's no reason to be bobbing around like a goddamn drunk.

Beneath kicked off this year's Screamfest, an event I look forward to with great relish every year as it's not only how I got involved with Bloody Disgusting (which led to the creation of this very site) but it's also close enough that I don't have to fly or even drive very far. In fact, this year it's even closer, being held at the Laemmle NoHo 7 I frequent all year (cheap or free parking, reasonable concessions, less than 10 minute drive from my house, etc) after last year's horrible downtown experiment. And the move clearly worked; the film sold out not one but TWO screens, a good sign for the festival as a whole. I won't be able to make every movie this year due to work duties (blah!), but I'll be there almost every night - come say hi! Buy me a soda!

What say you?

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SEPTEMBER 23, 2013

GENRE: CANNIBAL, SURVIVAL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (FESTIVAL SCREENING)

During the Q&A for The Green Inferno, an audience member asked if the Peruvian government had given Eli Roth and his team any sort of grief over their portrayal in his newest film, and the filmmaker practically laughed. He then explained that their government doesn't care, that they understand that it's a fictional movie and that you'd basically have to be stupid to think it's a proper reflection of their country. It was a relief to hear, especially when you consider that Wrong Turn, a movie even more ridiculous than this one, caused some official from West Virginia to denounce the film at the time of its release, while assuring the rest of the world that folks wouldn't run afoul of mutant hillbillies when entering his state. It wasn't even shot there!

But it's a fair question, because Green Inferno is very much in line with films like Cannibal Holocaust and The Man From Deep River, both of which (and many others) the victim of much scrutiny and outrage - some of it even deserved. Those films have their fans (I enjoy most on my one viewing; I rarely have any desire to revisit them), but are largely considered to be trash thanks to some unfortunate storytelling decisions - i.e. a lot of rape and the on-screen murder of a few animals. Add in the usual approach to Italian genre filmmaking in that era (basically, rip off and top the guy who did it before you) and you can see why the sub-genre has been dormant for so long - who could possibly get away with such a thing in this day and age?

Eli Roth, of course. He's been MIA from the director's chair for far too long (six years, not counting the Hemlock Grove pilot), focusing mainly on acting and producing, and to his credit he didn't dip his toes in the shallow end for his comeback - he dove right in and has delivered what may be his most violent film yet. It's certainly got the biggest body count: our protagonists are a large group of activist college students who fly to the rain forest to prevent their destruction, only for their plane to crash (a horrific sequence that provides a few of the film's gory deaths) and to find themselves captives by a tribe of natives who look at a human being the same way we look at a cow or pig.

So in some ways it's directly in line with Roth's Hostel films - once again Americans go to another country and get killed by locals (you can even reduce it to "if you travel you will die" and include Cabin Fever in the group), and with the previously mentioned films (and the more extreme Cannibal Ferox) being an acknowledged influence, one could levy the complaint that there's no new ground being broken here. But that's not true - this film will be going out on just as many screens as his other movies, a luxury never afforded to Ruggero Deodato or Umberto Lenzi. This will be the gateway film for many audience members, and Roth is happy to introduce that subgenre to newcomers - the end credits even list the primary entries one should seek out in chronological order. I can honestly say this has to be a first - I don't see Scream or Hatchet's credits encouraging viewers to go back and see the original Halloween or Friday the 13th.

Also, it's the first I've seen that can be considered "fun". It can be grim at times, but there is thankfully no sexual violence of note (the head woman of the tribe checks to see if any of the girls are virgins, but it's not graphic and most certainly not misogynist in tone), and the local turtle population didn't have to worry about any of the actors chopping their heads off on camera. The cannibalism is in line with the others, but Roth's usual gonzo approach to kills (and the makeup FX by the similarly minded folks at KNB) keep it from being too unpleasant an affair, and there's even a damn poop joke to lift our spirits. Hell he even holds back at times; at least one major character's fate is left open ended, and another one is killed off-screen (with proof of her demise executed not unlike the "I never sliced anyone" bit in Rocky Horror Picture Show). I'm not saying "Bring the kids!" - this movie definitely earns its R rating* - but Roth clearly wants the audience to have a good time, something that is next to impossible for even a genre audience with something like Ferox.

This was a make or break film for Eli, as far as I am concerned at least. Hemlock was nearly unwatchable, as was his production of Last Exorcism II, and I wasn't overly thrilled with Aftershock (which showed at last year's FF). But this (and The Sacrament, which he also produced) has put him right back around the top of current genre heavyweights. And even better - he seems HUNGRY; I don't think we'll have to wait another six years for another film (though I was disappointed to hear he's working on a sequel to this already - I guess Thanksgiving is just never going to happen), and he is forming partnerships with other filmmakers like Nicholas Lopez and Aaron Burns (who was the 2nd unit director here and plays the film's most sympathetic character besides our heroine, the daring and lovely Lorenza Izzo) to keep those creative juices flowing. Welcome back, sir.

What say you?

*This was the R rated cut; not sure if there IS an unrated one but Eli claims that he had a very good experience with the MPAA on this one.

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JUNE 19, 2013

GENRE: SLASHER, SURVIVAL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (FESTIVAL SCREENING)

I thought I had written at least a capsule review of You're Next when I saw at Fantastic Fest back in 2011, but apart from an article I wrote for BadassDigest bemoaning the fact that Lionsgate was sitting on it for too long (as it turns out, I was being optimistic!), I guess I never did. I assume it's for the same reason I'm about to put in words here as a full disclosure - I am friendly with a couple folks from the cast and crew, including the writer and director - but now that I've seen the trailer and marketing for the film, I thought I'd at least offer up my two cents as well as "spoil" a certain thing about the movie (not about its plot, don't worry!) that the advertising ignores. Also keep in mind this is the same team that made my least favorite segment of V/H/S/2, so if you want to claim I'm biased, there's some precedent to the contrary.

Anyway, I quite like the movie, and was happy to see it held up to my initial reaction from that long ago screening. Yes, it's unfortunate that LG sat on it for too long and now idiots will claim it's a ripoff of The Purge since both films deal with a family being terrorized in their own giant home by people with creepy masks, but trust me when I say that this is the superior film. Unlike the other film, it's always clear where the characters are in relation to another, and while the exterior of the house suggests potential for more chase/hide n' seek style scenes than we actually get, the location is utilized wonderfully. It's big enough to understand how something can happen (i.e. a murder) without the others hearing, but not so big that you feel "lost" and disoriented - because it's THEIR home and thus they should know every nook and cranny even if the lights are out (an ability the heroes in The Purge didn't seem to have). And speaking of locations, even though it's an isolated home in a remote area, there's an in-movie reason that the cell phones don't work (a jammer) instead of the usual "there's no service out here!" crap, which I appreciate.

Also, it's scary. Granted it's been a while, but I jumped TWICE, which is pretty rare anyway let alone for one I have already seen. And the crowd (men and women alike) were getting jolted much more often, of course (also if you're not familiar with the site, please don't take this as "I'm too tough to be scared" - it's just something that rarely happens that I chalk up to desensitization due to watching horror at a very young age). I've mentioned this before, but there's something that's more depressing/upsetting about seeing a family wiped out as opposed to the usual gang of teenagers, and even though they're dysfunctional and obviously don't get together too often, the movie is still able to take advantage of that inherent "Oh the boyfriend and the bitchy wife will die, sure, but the family unit will be safe" feeling we have sort of built into our subconscious after seeing so many other horror films that DON'T have the balls to say, let a daughter die right in front of her parents.

But while it works on that typical survival level, it's not without crowd-pleasing moments. A few of the kills are frustratingly off-screen or edited around (so we see a weapon swing in closeup and cut to said weapon already embedded into a person's head), but they often have a Friday the 13th sensibility - I particularly enjoyed the upside down blender attack. Even a couple of the good guy deaths carry that perverse sense of humor you see in the Final Destinations or whatever, like when someone makes a run for it in a big hero moment only to be killed almost instantly. The body count is pretty high by the end, and the movie effectively balances our need to care about the people being killed and our desire to see some splatter and cheer for it - it's a tough act to pull off, and kudos to director Adam Wingard and writer Simon Barrett for getting it pretty close to exactly right.

And that leads me to what I mentioned earlier - the movie is a lot funnier than the ads would have you believe. Yes, it's scary and dark and thus not a "horror comedy", but there's definitely a sense of humor to the proceedings. The dinner scene is damned hilarious, with the brothers (AJ Bowen and Joe Swanberg) sniping at each other, the daughter's filmmaker new boyfriend (Ti West) trying to explain what an "underground" film festival is, etc. And their fights continue even when the killers start attacking; Swanberg can't help but say Bowen's character is too fat (he's not fat) to be of any use to run for help, leading to another fight that you can barely hear because the crowd is laughing so hard. And without spoiling the particulars, the main bad guy's final dialogue moment had this audience laughing just as hard as they were in Austin, where I could hear the reaction from the bathroom because I couldn't hold my bladder any longer and (stupidly) assumed I wasn't going to miss much for the next 60 seconds. I guess in a way it's a smart approach, as it can be a surprise bonus to intelligent viewers, but sadly any horror film will attract some folks that simply aren't that bright, and thus they'll mistakenly assume the movie is just being "retarded" (as the idiot behind me described a moment that was, yes, SUPPOSED to be funny). So I figure if I can just let a few people know that the humor is intentional so that they can appreciate it all the more when they see the movie in August, it's worth the "spoiler".

Really, there are only two things about it I'm not completely on board with, and the first is minor though SOMEWHAT spoiler-y (I'll be as vague as possible) - at the end we discover a certain character was not meant to be harmed, but someone was very definitely trying to kill her/him at one point only to be thwarted at the last second by an outside element. It's one of those things that no one will notice on a first view, but on a second it stuck out as a bit of a cheat, making a scene out of something that logically made no sense (its akin to all those bits on 24 where someone will save Jack Bauer from certain death by anonymous goons in an isolated firefight, only to be revealed as one of the terrorists 3 episodes later). The other, more problematic one is Wingard's obsession with shaki-cam, which is thankfully much improved since A Horrible Way To Die, but in a way just makes it more jarring when he does it. It's particularly obnoxious during the dining room attack, with the camera bobbing and swishing around at random to give a sense of the chaos, but they go way overboard with it. Thankfully most of the big scenes keep it in check, but it's almost like he was saving his strength to jerk it around even more during those other moments.

But those are both dwarfed by what the movie gets right, and again, I'm happy to say it holds up on a second view, something I worry about when I like a movie as much as I did this the first time (where I was also a bit inebriated, hence the bladder problem). Not sure if that's quote-worthy ("I enjoyed it even when I was sober!" - Brian Collins, Horror Movie A Day would look nice on a poster, no?), but it's worth noting all the same. August 23rd, folks - don't let the long delay trick you into thinking this was something they were trying to hide. I truly believe they wanted to make sure that they had time to market this one properly and build up a buzz (no one could have predicted The Purge; hell it wasn't even SHOT until after You're Next showed at those festivals that got it picked up by the Gate in the first place), so let's reward them by packing those theaters in two months.

What say you?

P.S. The film was preceded by the short "The Apocalypse", which I had seen before but only online - was great to see with a crowd. It was also great to see post-This Is The End, as Martin Starr (who stars in the short) was reduced to a background extra in that film, so this sort of makes up for it. "I made a puddle!". Highly recommended, I believe it's online as well.

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JUNE 6, 2013

GENRE: SURVIVAL, THRILLER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

Even before I began making a living by creating them, I always stuck around to watch the end credits of a movie if possible; not only is there an increasing chance that there will be an extra scene, but you can gain some valuable insight on occasion. Such is the case in The Purge; buried deep down in the traditional crawl there's a break to allow for a full-screen credit for an "additional editor" - this is very unusual, and almost certainly a sign of a movie that was edited once and then heavily reworked by a fresh pair of eyes. Since the movie was shot well over a year ago and clocks in at a mere 85 minutes including credits, it's not too much of a stretch to suspect there's a different - and possibly superior - version of the movie buried on an Avid somewhere.

By now we all know the concept - in a near-future, the country's government (never seen, and only briefly described as the "New Founding Fathers") has implemented the titular Purge, where once a year (perhaps not too coincidentally on the first day of spring) for a period of 12 hours, all crime is legal and no emergency services will be available. There are some underexplained exceptions - no heavy weapons (i.e. you can't just go blow shit up, I guess), no attacks on government officials (duh), etc, though the movie curiously only focuses on murder/assault related crimes. Not that I need/want to see rape or torture, but the idea is that people can give into their urges without repercussion and thus be OK for the other 364 and a half days of the year, so what about those who just want to, I dunno, jerk off in public? As presented in the movie, The Purge is really just "Go ahead and kill people if you want".

As a result, once this rushed, only vaguely defined world is explained, the movie merely becomes another home invasion film, complete with masked, ahem, "strangers" and people being silently followed around their own home, albeit with more gunplay than usual (the killers brandish machetes and such, but at least 75% of the deaths in the film are by gunshot). At this point, it's no different than Straw Dogs or whatever - regardless of the "law" that says you can kill someone, Ethan Hawke and his family are merely defending themselves from attackers in their own home, which is legal anyway. The moral dilemma comes in the form of a homeless vet (and, while not explicitly brought up, a black man) who Hawke's son lets into their home after seeing that he needs help. His pursuers, led by a guy who stepped out of an American Psycho lookalike contest, find him quickly enough and offer Hawke a pretty easy deal - kick the guy out of the house and let them have their Purge fun, and they'll leave him and his family alone. Otherwise, they'll tear the doors down and kill everyone.

And this is where the movie's insurmountable problems really begin, and the underwhelming (and, despite what the ads play up, not as scary-leaning as you might expect) home invasion elements certainly can't save it. Yes, it's easier said than done to just hand a guy over to be killed, but he's hiding in the house (which now has no electricity; the security runs on a generator but not a single light, I guess), giving us an entire reel's worth of Hawke and wife Lena Headey (who doesn't get to do anything badass until the last 5 minutes - why hire someone who could mop the floor with everyone else in the movie? It would make more sense to hire a NON-asskicker so that when that moment arrives, it actually shocks as intended) looking around their own house for someone who inexplicably turns on them even before the strangers show up with a reason to do them harm. Worse, their idiot son has led him to a secret hiding spot that they seemingly don't know about, so now we have to believe that Hawke, who sells security systems for a living, doesn't know the layout of his own home.

But then again, neither does director James DeMonaco, apparently - throughout the entire movie I had trouble understanding where anyone was in relation to each other or even what floor they were on, or the passage of time. Yes, it's a big house, but how long could it take for Hawke and Headey to look around not only for the vet but their daughter, who has ALSO gone hiding for reasons that never quite make sense. See, the movie needs an obvious "protagonist" kill, so of course her boyfriend has snuck into the house before they locked it down for the Purge (and yes, despite having no reason to go outside or anything, they wait until the last minute to turn on their security system, for some reason). But how (spoiler!) he dies is completely ridiculous even for this movie, and you have to ask yourself - what exactly did the boyfriend plan to do if his original plan had worked out? Would have been a pretty awkward 12 hours.

Anyway, so it's "Hide and seek" the movie, where no one is hiding for a logical reason, and when they DO find him (via a completely botched attempt at what could have been a decent suspense piece - the daughter decides to go hide in the same spot), more time is wasted on the struggle to get him outside. It's as if DeMonaco thought traditional home invasion stuff was far more interesting than the fascinating sci-fi concept that the movie was supposedly about; every single thing that happens from the moment the strangers arrive until the last one has been dispatched could be cut and pasted into any other scenario. Every now and then someone will mention the Purge, but again - once a guy smashes through your window and tries to lop your head off with an axe, you are free to shoot him in the chest any day of the year. The final few minutes finally come back to the scenario and how it doesn't necessarily come down to a war between the haves and the have nots, but the explanation we get for certain characters' behavior is beyond idiotic - and that's with the clumsy foreshadowing that gave it away in the film's opening scenes.

In short, the movie botches pretty much every good idea it has, and while there are a handful of great moments (I love that one stranger terrorizes Headey by tickling her), it never adds up to anything fully satisfying as a think-piece OR a horror/thriller. Even if the characters WEREN'T idiots (SPOILER - Hawke decides NOT to turn the guy over and instead fight the attackers - but leaves the guy (a trained, able-bodied man) tied to a chair rather than hand him a gun to help), it's nearly impossible to get into the movie when they've left so much unexplained. I've said it a million times; I'll accept ANY movie's plot, no matter how ludicrous, as long as the movie takes the time to at least try to explain its interior logic within that idiotic scenario. Armageddon is the easiest example to use (and fitting, since this was co-produced by Bay's Platinum Dunes - their first film in over 3 years): everyone makes the joke about it being easier to train oil drillers to be astronauts than the other way around, but the movie gives it a "fair enough" explanation (drilling problems come up that you need to deal with quickly or else you'll die; the oil drillers didn't have to fly the damn shuttles, just sit there and do their thing once they landed, etc). So, fine. I'm sure it's still nonsense in the real world, but it's SOMETHING for *this* world - The Purge never even offers us that much. We're told that this thing happens and that's that; any questions you may have about how it WORKS (for example - no emergency services, but what if someone falls in their home and needs an ambulance? They just die?) are left to your imagination, because DeMonaco and his producers (including Jason Blum, so of course there's a goddamn video camera in there somewhere) never made the effort to dig deep into their intriguing scenario because they were too busy focusing on the stuff we've seen done better elsewhere. That, or they edited it out. Here's hoping the Blu-ray (or the already planned sequel) has some of that "fleshed out" feel the movie sorely lacked.

What say you?

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MAY 21, 2013

GENRE: SURVIVAL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

I don't know why I felt compelled to make an old-school "HMAD Today is..." tweet for Black Rock; even though I've updated a few times since "retiring" I haven't used that opener once, even when I knew I'd be reviewing the film (Evil Dead, Lords of Salem, etc.). So it's somewhat ironic that it's the sort of bland, mercenary horror movie that I grew so tired of that I wanted to quit in the first place - if not for so many movies like this, it's possible I might still be going at it every day for a little while longer.

And thus, I wasn't even going to bother reviewing it until I read this interview with its director/star Katie Aselton, where she dismissed horror in general and specifically name-checked The Descent by saying she wanted her movie to be what Descent wasn't. I'm sorry, but it's bad form enough to throw another "little" movie under the bus (if you want to make fun of Dark Knight Rises, go ahead), but of all the movies to reference, why The Descent? I'm not alone in considering it one of the best horror films of the past decade (hell, we can almost get to 20 years before it starts having heavy competition), so it's a really baffling movie to use when making a "I did it better" argument. Hilariously, while several movies came to mind while watching this chore, Descent was NOT one of them, but now that I think about it, it's a great example to use to illustrate how badly Ms. Aselton (and her husband Mark Duplass, who wrote the script based on her, ahem, "original story").

In The Descent (if I'm spoiling it, you're a bad person - stop reading my drivel and go watch it right now), our heroine finds out that one of her pals was sleeping with her husband, something that may have actually caused his death (he was distracted while driving; presumably he was either regretting or daydreaming about the affair). And thus she gets the ultimate revenge for it (and for the accidental death of another friend), leaving her to die in the cave and providing a distraction to escape (if she did, of course). There's a similar backstory here; Aselton's character Abbie still harbors a grudge against Lake Bell's Lou (short for Louise), who slept with Aselton's then boyfriend six years before, and of course they will have to work past their issues if they're going to survive and blah blah. But there's no payoff to it - Abbie finally lets it go, and Lou doesn't do much to make up for her transgression. Worse, every bad thing in the movie happens because Abbie was actively trying to cheat on her husband with one of the trio of hunters they come across, so there's absolutely nothing to learn from it beyond "Don't cheat", which we don't need a derivative horror movie to teach us.

And it makes her character a rather puzzling one - should we feel bad for her, or not? She got cheated on, now she's cheating on her own husband (not the same guy, mind you), and that's what leads to all of the death that will follow. She drunkenly lures one of the also drunk guys out into the woods and asks him if he wants to have fun, and then changes her mind when he starts getting going. A near-rape ensues, but she kills him with a rock before he actually does anything (I assume? The blocking and lighting throughout the film leave much to be desired, though it's ultimately the least of its problems), but for the sake of argument let's say he's actually forcing himself inside of her when she kills him - fine. But his two buddies then terrorize all three of them... after she AGAIN (and sober, now) instigates them by calling one a pussy and spitting on his face! This results in them killing one of the other two girls and nearly killing the other, leaving Abbie relatively unscathed despite literally every single thing in the movie being her fault. Yes, the guy should back off when she says no after saying yes, I don't argue that - but it's her irrational behavior AFTER that that really does the damage to the group, and she walks away without a shred of comeuppance or even regret. The right way to pay off the stuff about hating Bell's character for so long is to sacrifice herself to save her after getting her nearly killed, but it comes closer to the other way around.

So it's thematically a mess, but does it deliver as a straightforward Deliverance/Mother's Day ripoff? No; if anything it's even more lackluster in that department. Every single thing you expect would happen does indeed happen, without even a shred of originality or surprise - I even correctly guessed (SPOILER) that Kate Bosworth's character would be killed, because she was the most innocent and had been playing peacekeeper between the other two for the entire first act. Someone on the IMDb board had the idea that the movie was actually about a psychotic woman killing these guys for no reason (sort of like a serious take on the Tucker and Dale twist), which would have been interesting - but alas, it just hits every expected mark, making its scant 80 minute runtime feel like double that because at no point will you find yourself seeing something you haven't already seen a dozen times. And I'll leave it to you to decide which is preferable; the off-screen murder of one redneck or the grade-school level effect on the slit throat of the other.

Speaking of them, rarely has a movie of this sort offered such a weak villain team - the leader (and most sane one, presumably) is the would-be rapist, leaving his two buddies - neither of whom have barely spoken yet - to take over as our primary antagonists. I honestly can't even remember their names anymore and it's only been 12 hours since I saw the film, and the extent of their backstory is "they were in the war so they're crazy". But that just adds to the sneaking suspicion I got while I watched the film (which that AV Club interview confirmed), that Aselton and/or Duplass hated the genre, or at least had zero affinity for it. The one-note villains, the pointless nudity, generic plot - all of these are the sort of things that you'd see from someone who didn't understand how the genre worked, and worse, assumed that they DID. "Give them what they want" is the attitude, without even the slightest notion that we want the same things out of a horror film that you can find in a drama (interesting story, sympathetic or identifiable characters, an intriguing antagonist, etc). Yes, there are a lot of crap horror films (even worse than this) made by people who just see it as a way to make money, but there's a difference between a couple of rich dentists in Iowa somewhere trying to cash in on a trend and acclaimed, prolific filmmakers shrugging one out for whatever reason (this was a Kickstarter film; my pal/boss Devin has a theory that they slapped together a sell-able horror movie (the script was written in 18 hours) as a means of raising the dough to buy themselves a new camera). Those guys may be hurting the genre, but they're not actively insulting it and its fans as these two are.

It's really disappointing to see something this lazy from a female director; there should be more of them working in the genre, and if nothing else they should be able to provide a different perspective on its traditions - not stick to them so rigidly that the movie never manages to have its own identity. In short, if you think the genre is beneath you, feel free to ignore it. No one will miss you or your condescending addition to the world of horror.

What say you?

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APRIL 30, 2013

GENRE: SURVIVAL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (PRESS SCREENING)

It's a shame that Hemlock Grove was such a disaster (well, creatively - if folks are actually signing up for Netflix to see it, I guess it's a success), because since he's not overly interested in directing anymore (yeah he's got Green Inferno coming, but it's his first directorial effort in six years and he doesn't even pretend to want to do Thanksgiving anymore), I'm all for Eli Roth using his clout in the horror genre to trying other things (TV shows, producing smaller efforts that could use the attention his name brings to them, etc). Except for Hemlock, I've liked just about everything he's done so far (can we even count Last Exorcism 2? He couldn't possibly have had much input on something so shockingly dull and "safe"), and for the most park Aftershock fits that bill - it's an ambitious attempt to blend the disaster movie and a survival horror film in the vein of his Hostels, and when it works, it does so quite well.

Unfortunately Roth gave himself one of the lead roles as Gringo, the American who is visiting his friend in Chile when everything goes to hell. He doesn't speak the language and is clearly a boring individual (he tries to explain a merger while dancing with a Russian model), so it probably would have been wiser to cast pretty much anyone BUT himself. Maybe it's supposed to be funny to see Eli Roth striking out with the ladies, but he's not exactly the best actor in the world, so it's impossible to separate the persona from the character - I was almost surprised to see that his character was billed as "Gringo" rather than "Himself" in the end credits. On the other hand, like just about everyone in the movie, he doesn't exactly walk away without a scratch, so if you've ever wanted to see Eli Roth get seriously injured, Aftershock has got you covered (as someone who blew a weekend on Hemlock Grove, I found one moment quite cathartic).

More problematic than his self-casting, however, are the odd tonal shifts that occur once the quake finally occurs at around the 40 minute mark. Like any good disaster film, we spend a lot of time getting to know the characters before the tragedy hits (Poseidon is a rare exception, though the box office returns suggest it won't be something anyone attempts again), but when folks start getting picked off, it's played for laughs via Final Destination style splatter kills. I mean, sure, some assholes in the crowd probably laughed when Leo bit the dust in Titanic, but we're not SUPPOSED to be cheering and laughing at his or anyone else's demise, unlike here where the deaths are almost all engineered as "shock" kills akin to Amanda Detmer getting hit by a bus in the first Destination. And despite the long setup, I can't think of anyone that I was really sad to see go; they each have their own little moments and personal dramas (two of them have kids! One had an abortion!), but after a while it's clear that they were approaching their script not unlike a slasher film, complete with the obvious Final Girl (who doesn't drink and wants her younger sister to be more responsible, like her!). A good disaster film offers up a big ensemble so that we're not sure who will live or die, become a hero or villain, etc - but we just focus on these six friends the entire time; any other characters that pop up are pretty much killed instantly (like an elderly cleaning lady who shows them how to get out of the club and is, natch, suddenly hit by a vehicle for her trouble). I'm all for mean-spirited carnage, but it only works when they take that approach for the entire movie, instead of splitting the difference between that and attempts to make this as a real dramatic thriller (including a rape scene, because of course there is).

However, if you look past the tonal issues and Roth's distracting performance, it's a solid bit of "true" survival horror. The low budget doesn't allow for any huge destruction setpieces - even though it was shot in the same area as the actual devastating Chilean earthquake from a few years back, the journey and devastation are relatively compact. The initial quake occurs inside the nightclub (no exterior shots for scope), and subsequent aftershocks are depicted via a shaking camera and stone pillars falling over. There's a big sequence set on an elevating cable car that snaps loose, but otherwise it's refreshingly free of "disaster porn" sequences like 2012 or whatever - for better or worse, they keep it focused on these six characters and their attempts to get to safety before the threatened tsunami wipes everyone out. This can make some of the danger feel a bit generic - particularly when a gang of thugs begins tracking them down - but the tsunami warning alarm and continued aftershocks never let the viewer forget that just because they're on their feet doesn't mean they're safe. A lot of the movies this is trying to fit in with often get so bogged down with the more traditional horror elements that it's easy to forget that the monster/shark/mutant hillbilly isn't the only thing they have to worry about, but as with something like The Descent, it could have eschewed the "living" threat entirely and still felt pretty scary, letting Mother Nature itself be the slasher (indeed, the human villains are the ones that throw it off - old ladies being smooshed by trucks are funny, but gang rape? Not so much.)

Also, everyone besides Eli is pretty solid and believable - I didn't recognize any of them, making it easier to buy them as their thinly drawn characters. Pollo was easily the best of the lot - as the spoiled rich guy who gets them into the clubs and tries to buy his way out of situations, he had the most interesting arc of all of them, though the character who had an abortion gets to endure one of the silliest "gets past her tragedy" metaphors in history - she finds herself in a tunnel known for being filled of fetuses that were the product of illicit hookups between local nuns and priests. There are also some decent minor suspense scenes of the "What would *I* do in this situation?" variety, like when two of our group stumble across a fireman who is trapped in his truck - he pleads for their help but they are trying to find something to save their own trapped friend. And like any good disaster film, some of the danger comes not from psychos who are taking advantage of the situation, but from scared innocent people who merely want to protect their own. The lack of a true ensemble may make it easy to pick who lives and dies, but Roth and co-writer/director Nicholas Lopez manage to find ways to make up for it with these bits, and even though the final "human enemy" is ridiculous (with the real antagonists given a rather abrupt sendoff), the casual approach to murdering everyone in sight actually made the final battle more suspenseful than the average slasher - would she REALLY be a "final" girl or get offed like everyone else?

I forget what I did instead when the film screened at Fantastic Fest last year, but I remember friends coming out and saying they hated it, and it's not hard to see why. The tonal shifts and occasional unpleasantness, plus the long setup, could make for a very grueling experience. But my love of mean spirited splatter (the Final Destinations, Silent Night Deadly Night, See No Evil, etc) and for the disaster film - which has been largely in a state of moratorium for a while now - provided me with enough entertainment to give it a pass. I'd probably never bother watching it again, but I've certainly seen worse examples of all the different kinds of movies it was trying to be; an amusing mess is still amusing.

What say you?

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MARCH 3, 2013

GENRE: SURVIVAL, THRILLER
SOURCE: STREAMING (NETFLIX INSTANT)

Look, everyone who's ever met Eli Roth probably wants to smack him in the mouth, but that wouldn't suffice for either the producer or the writer of A Thousand Cuts, as the film focuses on an Eli-type Hollywood playboy who is hot shit thanks to his torture movie (also called A Thousand Cuts) and its sequel. Apparently, his film has inspired some deranged asshole to kill a girl he sees sitting outside one day, and now her father wants revenge for the filmmaker he blames for the crime (the real killer being on death row, which is vengeance for the patient). So the movie is basically an Eli simulacrum being tied up and psychologically (and occasionally physically) tortured by someone who doesn't like him much - I hope it was cathartic for them.

It's certainly not particularly engaging for us - the concept is fine but the script never really does much with it. Lance (the director) points out almost immediately that he isn't to blame and that the guy would have killed the girl using a method from another horror movie if he didn't happen to see his, but also feels guilty (he followed the case closely), and so it's hard to really side with the dad - Lance may be a bit douchey but he has a point that the dad (Michael O'Keefe) never successfully counters. In the very similar Hard Candy, we had a clear hero (Page) and villain (Wilson), and then it got all squirmy when you find out he's less guilty than we thought and she's perhaps an even bigger psycho, but Thousand Cuts never offers that sort of grey area uncomfortableness for the audience. I felt bad for the dad, but I never once felt he was in the right for what he was doing - his case was a bit too thin, I'm afraid. Perhaps if the movie was told from his POV for the entire time (i.e. starting with him finding out who the daughter was, seeing the movie, finding out where Lance lives, etc) it might have worked, because our sympathies would be with him and then we'd learn that the guy wasn't so bad at all, but as it stands it just lacks a compelling drive.

Even the occasional attempts at adding suspense don't really work; the best is when some goofy wannabe screenwriter comes over to give Lance a script. The father has ordered Lance to stand in one spot (on a little rug) and get rid of the guy, so there's some fun in seeing this bigshot have to agree to read some goon's script, and actor Michael A. Newcomer (Lance) does a fine job at playing through the entire sequence while awkwardly standing still, but moments like that are few and far between. The other "distractions", such as the possibility that the dad has hurt the sister, don't really work at all - it's clear that the dad has beef only with Lance, and even as an "eye for an eye" thing it wouldn't make any sense for him to hurt another innocent given his situation, so it's just padding (and even with it the movie doesn't reach the 80 minute mark).

Speaking of padding, the best part of the movie is the extended party scene at the top, which has a bunch of easy but still amusing jokes about Hollywood agents and producers and wannabe actors, including a guy inexplicably doing the "Christopher Walken trying out for Han Solo" bit from SNL. It has nothing to do with anything (David Naughton is among the party members, and I kept hoping he'd show up again, but alas), and sets the wrong tone for the fully serious film that followed, but it was spirited and pretty accurate, based on my memories of the 3-4 Hollywood parties I've been to (including one for Hostel 2's premiere, incidentally). I hate all that schmoozery and asskissing, so it was fun to see it mocked in this sort of movie (i.e. not on an episode of fucking Entourage), and it kept the dull attempts at debate at bay for a while.

Not much else to say, really. It's well-meaning, but they either needed another layer or some more complications to sustain a feature runtime, and even then it would still feel a bit too thin to work either as a drama or an intense thriller. The actors are solid and it's technically competent, but it never fully engaged me, and didn't give the father enough justification to do what he was doing to live up to Hard Candy or (the comedic but also Hollywood driven) Swimming With Sharks. However, it's more focused and less inane than Call Back (which also tackled a torture horror director, though that guy seemed to be partially based on Darren Bousman), so if this is a genre, at least it's not the worst of it.

What say you?

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