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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SEPTEMBER 18, 2013

GENRE: THRILLER
SOURCE: STREAMING (ONLINE SCREENER)

If you've ever watched a zombie movie where the outbreak is caused by some sort of faulty medicine or experiment gone wrong and wanted a prequel to it, The Facility (previously Guinea Pigs) should hit the spot. It's not a full blown horror movie, but the afflicted characters DO exhibit symptoms not unlike the "rage" zombies of 28 Days Later, and the confined space/dwindling cast motif certainly gives it a bit of a John Carpenter flair (it's even widescreen!), so it won't be totally out of place in Fangoria (or Horror Movie A Day!) - I just hope none of its distributors attempt to pass it off as a full blown zombie flick.

Taking place only over a day or so, the film depicts the (supposedly true) tragic events that occurred during the testing for a new drug, with the willing participants exhibiting strange behavior a few hours after their dose. For various reasons, the group is locked off in a wing of the facility where no one will be able to see that anything is wrong, and for security reasons they're all without cell phones or any other means to contact the outside world - it's a pretty basic but still effective way to isolate everyone in an otherwise fully functioning facility (unlike say, Halloween II - were there NO OTHER patients at this hospital with a staff of 5?). And the setup allows for a reason for folks to offer up a lot of personal info - they're all strangers and thus are sort of obligated to give their names, a bit about their jobs, etc. This sort of material is usually shoehorned into a narrative in a clumsy manner (if they bother at all) because the "group" usually knows each other and thus has no reason to say what they do for a living or whatever; in short, it makes the characterization stronger than the average modern horror flick.

It also allows for a varied group; most of them are 25-30, but there's an older guy who apparently makes his living being a paid guinea pig for such things, and a young girl in the Juno Temple mode. Their occasional fights are understandable being that they're all stuck together in a shitty situation (as opposed to lifelong friends who inexplicably turn on each other instantly at the first sign of danger), and watching friendships form is always more interesting to me than watching them dissolve. I particularly enjoyed the friendship between Alex Reid (Beth from The Descent) and Aneurin Barnard (the dude from Citadel), which gave the film more of an emotional center than I was expecting.

And that leads me to a sort of puzzling notion about the screenplay - it tells us exactly the order in which the patients will turn. As they were injected in a certain order, an hour (or whatever) apart, they begin to turn crazy in the same order, so once that's figured out (before the halfway point!) it loses a crucial element in such movies: the "Who will be next to go?" idea. It'd be like if at the top of Scream 2 someone said "OK, CeCe goes next, then Randy, then Haley, then Derek...". We're even told about who WON'T turn (as they were the "control" and thus got a placebo), deflating the suspense even further. Sure, there's still the possibility that they get killed by one of the crazed fellow patients, but it still seems to me like the movie would be more fun/suspenseful if there was a chance anyone could turn at any moment.

Otherwise, it's a pretty enjoyable, small-scale thriller. I liked just about everyone (the only one I didn't went out early), and I LOVED that it wasn't overly complicated - no nefarious mad scientists watching them from behind a monitor, no reveal that they were developing some sort of new bio-weapon or whatever - it remained grounded and focuses on the characters' basic plight of being stuck and suffering from a potentially fatal injection. Also (sort of spoiler) the ending has a gutpunch of a twist that reminded me of a recent medical-horror movie that I also quite enjoyed (one that was more of a drama than a thriller), though I can't reveal the title without giving too much away for both. I actually wish they dragged it out a bit more; it happens quick and then we get on-screen text to wrap it up in full - I'd rather see the surviving character(s) hear that information, just to twist the knife a bit more.

Speaking of the on-screen text, the movie starts by telling us that it takes place a couple years ago and a final card saying "this is what happened". This led me to believe that the movie might be a goddamned found footage exercise, which would have resulted in a very fast closing of the tab. Luckily, it wasn't the case, but the irony is that if it WAS this would be the rare movie to justify it. Being that they were undergoing tests, it would make some sense to have monitors up all over the place, and it wouldn't be too much of a stretch for the doctor to give them all video cameras so they could keep a running journal or whatever. But nope! It's filmed like a real movie, and quite well I might add. First timer Ian Clark can rely on shaki-cam a bit much for my tastes, and some obnoxious hyper-editing during the more action-packed scenes (especially when a body is thrown through a window - there's something like 20 cuts in 5 seconds), but the widescreen images are often well blocked without much wasted space, something I see quite often by budding Carpenter wannabes. And it moves along nicely, drawing us into the situation and getting to know our heroes before all hell breaks loose.

The limited "horror" elements (i.e. kills) and emphasis on character in the first half might turn off the gorehounds, but otherwise I found this to be a refreshingly stripped down and suspenseful flick, the sort of thing I'd catch at a festival and would walk away happy that it wasn't the same old crap but also wasn't aiming too far beyond its means. Worth a look!

What say you?

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AUGUST 28, 2013

GENRE: THRILLER
SOURCE: STREAMING (SCREENER)

Not as much as I'm sick of found footage, but thanks to HMAD I've gotten pretty tired of movies that start off with a guy with amnesia and/or locked up somewhere with no idea of how he got there. Saw of course was the one to kick this trend off (thanks to Cube, a terrific movie, not getting a big enough release to be ripped off much), and thankfully it's mostly died down now in favor of, well, found footage movies - but as Ritual proves, there's still some life left to the sub-genre. Note - there will be vague-ish spoilers ahead, so stop reading if you want to go in as blind as I did! Just know that it's more thriller than horror, and have fun!

So once again our main character doesn't know who he is or why he's been buried alive in the middle of the woods, and spends a good chunk of the movie getting those answers. He finds his wallet fairly quickly so he can at least know his name (John, of course) and that he has a family, but the rest of the answers are always eluding him. When he stumbles across his home he finds his wife dead, but his children seem to be missing, and thus goes about trying to find them before whoever has done this to him comes back and finishes the job. It's pretty much a one-man show for most of the runtime; the sons show up on occasion to give us a little more context, but otherwise it's just John, running around and evading his pursuer. The movie is admirably almost completely free of dialogue - apart from his occasional "Where the fuck am I?" type shouts, we really only hear lines when the sons show up - without these scenes the movie might be incoherent. In a way, it's the glut of such films that helps inform us of what is happening early on (his amnesia, for example - not an easy thing to get across when there's no one to say "I don't know who I am" to), because you will probably be familiar with the behavior of someone in that situation from other

But that's the first hour. In an unnervingly slow reveal (again, with almost no dialogue to speed things along), we discover what's going on, and it's pretty damn sinister. I actually was on the right track with my theory, but I chalk it up to having seen too many movies and thus catching little "cheats" that a casual viewer might not pick up on (or think much of if they do). And I was still wrong, so kudos - and the way that the English title comes in once that final piece is in place is kind of awesome. Interestingly, the original title (Modus Anomali) translates to "Anomalous Mode", which would sort of be the OPPOSITE of a ritual, no? Either that translation I got is wrong or they actually have the better title now.

Now, as I said, it's not much of a horror film. There's a bit of a home invasion aspect to it once some of the backstory is revealed, and on occasion John's attempts to elude his pursuer feel like something out of a Friday the 13th stalk scene, but it's closer to something like The Vanishing or Kidnapped (2010) than any Saw/Strangers type movie. Plus, expecting a horror film does a disservice to its best shock moment, as it's the sort of thing you would probably expect in a horror film (it's actually similar to a moment in The Descent), but in a thriller is a drop-dead "Holy shit" moment. However, in terms of "How evil can someone be?", it's scarier than most films, so there's that.

On that note, if you're the type to hate a movie that doesn't explain why a villain does a particular thing, skip it. The movie offers about as much motive as the original Halloween did - "just because" seems to suffice for its screenwriters, and that's fine by me. As with Kidnapped, a big part of the film's appeal isn't so much the cleverness of its screenplay, but in how they use the basic language of cinema to do something a little off-kilter. In that, it was the long takes (and occasional split screens - that one where the two shots join up in real time still impresses me), and we had to just connect a few dots ourselves, like the opening scene that we just have to assume is the group's previous victim. Here, without any dialogue, and pretty much only one character, director Joko Anwar requires you to pay close attention to the clues, and just trust him in a way - everything makes sense (except, again, the possibly "Why?") but every single thing is conveyed with images, not a line of dialogue telling you. I guess the best way to explain it would be to imagine the big scene at the end of Usual Suspects, with Chazz Palminteri seeing all the names on the board and putting it together, but WITHOUT the voiceover and flashback footage actually linking those things up.

In other words, it's not a movie that you can tweet or text during if you want to follow everything (it's almost funny to imagine someone running to grab a drink or something and coming back after the first big reveal). I bring it up because while I was watching, I paused for some work stuff and figured I'd check Twitter before resuming the movie, only to discover yet another misguided and selfish goon had written an op-ed about how "e-screenings" should be encouraged (best was that she pointed out 46% of people admitted to tweeting at the movies - even if that number was true, which I highly doubt, that's still not even the majority, so how does that help your cause?). I'd actually pay money to have a bunch of entitled assholes playing with their phones throughout this particular movie give a thorough plot synopsis after. Memento would be a good one too. Maybe Inception...

The point is, most movies are meant to be paid attention to, not something you have on in the background. And in this day and age, I applaud Anwar and his crew for making one that absolutely requires the viewer to be immersed in order to keep up, rather than spoon-feeding the important info. Thus, an easy one to recommend when it comes your way (it just hit physical media, and I believe it's going up on Netflix Instant soon).

What say you?

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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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MARCH 16, 2013

GENRE: SERIAL KILLER, THRILLER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

If The Call was a better movie, it wouldn't be fit for Horror Movie A Day (indeed, I went in not knowing if it would count, leaning more toward "No" based on the trailers). I'd tweet to everyone to go see a pretty decent thriller from the director of Session 9, go home, load up some DTV killer scarecrow movie or whatever, and that'd be that. But the entire 3rd act is a hodgepodge of moments from Silence of the Lambs, Saw, and even goddamn Captivity, so along with the random killings along the way, this sadly becomes a serial killer thriller that would fit comfortably with a bunch of others I've reviewed.

Because when it's NOT being a horror movie and earning its unnecessary R rating (more on that later), it's a fine thriller in the Cellular vein, with Halle Berry as a 911 dispatcher who is trying to keep a kidnapped girl (Abigail Breslin) calm while trying to determine her location as her attacker drives along the freeways of Los Angeles. Berry's ideas are pretty intelligent - kicking out the taillight and waving, hoping another person will call 911 and report it (and the actual freeway), dripping a (conveniently placed) can of paint out the light's hole to leave a trail, etc. Obviously we know none of this stuff will work or else the movie would be over, but Brad Anderson, if nothing else, knows how to wring tension out of very little, and it becomes the rare movie that's 2nd act is the strongest (there's a rather long setup to Breslin being kidnapped; if you've seen the spoiler-ific trailer, you know the drill).

And before I lay into the 3rd act, I should stress that I was fine with the first 20 minutes or so, with Berry screwing up another call and inadvertently getting the girl killed, which comes after a lot of stuff to show how she's an old pro at her job (She knows obscure codes off the top of her head! She has a recurring caller!), and then after the girl is killed we have to deal with generic "rock bottom" nonsense - pills, taking the 911 equivalent of a desk job, etc. It's funny that I happened to have my Shocker T-shirt on, as it's the same problem that hurts that movie for some folks - it takes a while to get to the part that the movie is actually about, because so many pieces have to be in place first. But it wasn't interminable; the scenes with the first girl were pretty good nail-biters, and there are some darkly funny 911 calls to enjoy ("Some guys are breaking into my neighbors'... I have a shotgun, want me to take care of them?"). One could levy the same complaint at Speed - GET TO THE BUS! - and that turned out OK (whereas Shocker is an acquired taste - I've come to accept it), so I was willing to be patient.

But alas, act 3 (SPOILERS AHEAD!). The trunk stuff ends, and our killer (Michael Eklund from the interminable The Divide) has brought Breslin to a generic horror movie dungeon, complete with filthy walls and an accompanying green/brown tint to everything. It's here we finally get some glimpses as to what his motive is, but that's all there is: glimpses. If I'm understanding correctly (SPOILERS, again), his beloved older sister died of cancer and lost her beautiful blond hair in the process, so now he's kidnapping blond girls and scalping them, but then what? If he's killing them all, where are the bodies? Why does he need so many? At one point Breslin sees something we do not, and I was hoping it would build to a twist that he was either re-building his his sister out of similar bodied girls, or that the sister was actually alive and he was trying to find her a perfect hair replacement, and both of which would have been far more satisfying reveals than what it actually is (a bloodied bed - who cares? We already know he's a murderer).

Oh, and then it has an epilogue worse than the one in Last House on the Left remake. Almost as if to punish the audience for putting up with the stupid final act, they twist the knife a little more. And then the credits cut in without a real epilogue that offers any closure about the other girls or whatever. The Call may be the first movie where I wish it had a scene of the villain explaining everything before being merely shot to death, as it would be a vast improvement over what we actually get here.

Now the funny thing about this is that it seems tacked on, but totally fits the movie's seemingly PG-13 vibe. The kill scenes are largely off-screen and loaded with freezeframes, which seem to almost be signaling a more conservative audience to look away before it resumes and shows something nasty, which it never actually does. And there's an odd subplot about how Breslin's character doesn't like to swear, so of course at some point she's going to scream MOTHER FUCKER! at her captor, though when it does it's an afterthought that doesn't register at all. It's almost as if the "no swearing" thing was just a throwaway explanation for the lack of harsh language, and the one allotted use of an F bomb in a PG-13 would be that big moment where she finally learns to swear. But alas, it goes nowhere, and her friend drops 1-2 anyway, and the movie got an R rating for " violence, disturbing content and some language", none of which is false but could describe any number of PG-13 thrillers as well. It's like they got the R when a PG-13 was in mind and didn't feel like contesting it or going back to add stuff to justify it.

Speaking of things that amused me, I picked a perfect venue to see the film: the AMC located adjacent to the Burbank Town Center mall (which has another AMC inside of it), as the mall was the shooting location for where Breslin's character is prior to being kidnapped. Some laughter and "whoa!" erupted from the crowd when it first appeared, followed by a LOT of laughing when the mall was described as "Fashion Plaza" and located downtown. Obviously even 20 miles away or so this wouldn't have any reaction whatsoever, let alone throughout the rest of the world, so it was a pretty great little crowd moment (as was the equally loud laughter when Berry idiotically drops her cell phone, which was less amusingly followed by someone in the crowd's cell going off). Some of the other geographical details were way off, but again no one will notice - however I wonder if anyone else was puzzled by the fact that we see the first girl's address on two different computer screens (other calls) before she actually calls and gives it aloud. And what LA station would be playing Taco's "Putting on the Ritz"?

Basically, it has the same problem a lot of high concept thrillers have, in that the act almost always has to be dropped for the climax, and it's never as interesting as what came before. Speed loses the bus, Cellular loses the phone, etc - but in The Call's case, they trade what's actually working better than it should be for dumb torture horror staples that barely work in actual torture horror movies, undoing just about all of its goodwill (whereas the others just sort of deflate a bit but are still good). The trailer pretty much shows every beat of the movie except for things that are mind-numbingly stupid, and it's a shame to see the guy who made Session 9 doing something so generic and silly. In short, it's a movie that would be fine in August when you just want something to look at when it's too hot to be outside and the theater offers better AC than your own home, but it's March. Just go outside.

What say you?

P.S. No, I have no idea why this is a WWE movie. There were no wrestlers in it or even any tough guys - just Eklund and Morris Chestnut, who disappears from the movie at one point. UPDATE - I have since learned that Chestnut's partner - a role so tiny I actually forgot it existed when writing the review a few hours later - is a wrestler. Still, they used to give them the starring roles (Marine, Condemned, etc) and now they get bit parts that could have been played by the producer's cousin.

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MARCH 11, 2013

GENRE: MAD SCIENTIST, THRILLER
SOURCE: STREAMING (NETFLIX INSTANT)

OK I'm two days past the "weekly" deadline but as promised, Jean Rollin's Night Of The Hunted (French: La nuit des traquées)! It's one of the more commonly requested titles whenever Rollin comes up, so I hope you can all sleep easier now. And it's more proof that some of you guys are trying to fuck with me, because like Gozu and Battle Royale (two other highly requested movies) it's not really horror, at least compared to his other movies. Compared to The Remains of the Day, sure, it's horror, but most of the body count is courtesy of random shootouts, and is closer to Memento than anything else.

But don't let that scare you off - it's a sequentially told story! I suspect Jean Rollin attempting a reverse chronology would be the most batshit confusing movie ever made, since his storylines can be a bit puzzling even in order. No, it's just that our heroine Elizabeth (Brigitte Lahaie) seemingly suffers from a Shelby-esque memory loss where she forgets what she's doing while doing it, can't remember someone moments after meeting them, etc. But she's also got regular amnesia, which makes things even worse (but doesn't stop her from bedding down with the guy who found her wandering in the road) until she is discovered by the people who she was escaping from - a mysterious team who oversees her and several other patients with similar memory issues. They're all in a dark tower in the middle of the city, and the movie is basically about her trying to figure out who they are and why she's there.

Spoiler: she never does. In a puzzling move, the male lead disappears for a good chunk of the movie, only to come back later when she finds a phone and calls him from the tower. And he's the one that the bad guy scientists explain things to, so he's sort of the audience surrogate while also being a random guy we don't care much about. If we stayed with him after she was recaptured and he investigated, maybe it would work, but since we're with her for almost the entire movie, on a narrative level it doesn't quite satisfy that she's pretty much in the same boat (actually a bit worse) at the end as she was when we met her.

However, if you look at it as a tragic love story, it's quite successful in an odd way - the last shot of the two of them actually made me sad, and at the same time I was kind of charmed by oddly sweet it was. I won't spoil the particulars, however - words would fail to describe it accurately anyway. Still, I wish the guy had a little more presence throughout the movie; when she returns to the tower she is reunited with another amnesiac who was apparently very important to her, but after a while that character is written out and replaced with another woman - it's just hard to really get a grasp on anything or get a sense of what's going on, which is fine for a mystery as it does sort of put you in the mindset of someone with memory loss (which Memento did beautifully), as you're constantly seeing new people while others disappear, but there's nothing to "solve" here. We're just kind of hanging out until the sinister doctors decide to tell someone what's going on.

And by hanging out I mean: watching sex scenes. There's a hint of lesbian attraction, but nothing explicit this time - all of the lovemaking we see is "straight", and thus we get a shot or two of a guy's junk to (sort of) balance out all the naked female bodies we see during the film (at least four, and more than once for most). At times it seems like Rollin is suggesting that sex can help slow down the memory loss in some way, but if so that never really comes to fruition (it'd be a hell of an idea, though). And like the end, some of these scenes are kind of sad; Elizabeth is tormented with the notion that she won't be able to remember something that is currently giving her so much joy.

So how is it horror? Well there's certainly a sense of unease and some dread throughout the film, and the really far gone patients act like zombies, but once a few of the pieces start falling into place it's pretty obvious that they're not having their memories wiped to create an army of drone killers or anything genre-specific like that, so it loses a lot of that feel. However there's an extended sequence that seems lifted from a different movie entirely - one of the guards decides to have his way with one of the women (she barely fights him off, and after a minute is seemingly OK with it), when suddenly a guy who looks like Roman Polanski walks over and begins beating him with a hammer, covering the poor girl with his red paint blood.

But that's pretty much it for the full blown genre stuff - I think it's better to approach the movie as a sad drama with some minor thriller elements, and let the occasional bits of horror act as a bonus - if you want a regular horror movie from Rollin, Living Dead Girl or the lesser Zombie Lake would be your best bet. I'd also recommend watching it if you need a Cronenberg fix, since he doesn't do horror anymore. It's not "body horror", but I got a Scanners/Rabid/The Brood vibe at times all the same, which reminded me that I still need to see Shivers! But until then - what Rollin should I watch next, out of the ones that are on Instant (which is most of them, thankfully)? Less than 3 weeks left!

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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