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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MARCH 2, 2013

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

I've seen a number of films over the past couple years that are love letters to classic genre films, though few have won me over as well as The Sleeper did. Undeniably an homage to the original Black Christmas (with a few direct nods to Halloween and Friday The 13th for good measure), writer/director Justin Russell avoids a common issue with his film that has sank so many others - he gets the tone exactly right, and it made for a great way to kick off the weekend's Cinemayhem Film Festival, which honored independent horror/thriller films past and present.

Now, no one has reinvented the wheel here. Russell is not the first, nor will he be the last to make a film that pays tribute to the golden era of slashers, particularly the lower budgeted, independent ones that haven't gone on to the same lengthy shelf life that My Bloody Valentine or The Burning has. But so many of these modern throwback films are seemingly made by people who are overly critical of those "classics to us", and thus have their actors act bad on purpose, create characters that are overly (as opposed to innocently) dickish or obnoxious, and basically never let us forget that we are watching an ironic approximation of such movies. Russell, on the other hand, avoids all of that. Save for the digital photography (which he has tried very hard to give a 16mm look, and perhaps the same DVD that they showed on a giant movie screen would look more "right" on a TV in that regard), at no point did I feel like I was watching anything but an actual 30 year old slasher movie. Hell it's even SET in 1979, and there is only ONE very minor anachronism in the entire movie, one you probably wouldn't even notice on a regular sized screen. And that's even more impressive when you consider that it has plenty of exteriors and a number of locations; the college campus where the film was shot thankfully hasn't modernized itself much over the past 30 years.

But even if it took place today he still gets the little things right. The characters are a bit dim but not unlikable, and being that they're playing sorority sisters that's even more impressive. The FX are practical, and made with the correct assumption that we'd rather see a decent effort at a dummy head than some CGI enhanced effect that looks just as fake anyway. It even retains the low points of such fare; the movie stops cold for a disco sequence at one point (perhaps a nod to Prom Night), and the killer can be a bit too mercenary at times - there's a disappointing lack of stalk scenes, and the Final Girl is the only one who gets chased (in fact all but one of them aren't even aware of his presence until he's already swinging a weapon). The body count is more than sufficient, so I would have gladly traded two deaths if it meant the ability to draw a few of the others out a bit.

On the plus side, he gets the homage aspect down pat. The plot is very similar to Black Christmas (a very disturbed murderer makes creepy phone calls and kills the residents of a sorority house in the wintertime), and he goes a bit overboard with the nearly identical musical score (then again, so did the actual Black Christmas), but there's enough difference to keep it from becoming a retread - there's no humor or attempts at social commentary, for example. And when they start tracing his calls (SPOILER) he is thankfully NOT in the house with them, and Russell seems to be having fun with this non-twist. Repeated shots of the attic window and a throwaway line about the house being so big that it's hard to tell who is home seem to be foreshadowing a reveal that he, like Billy in Christmas, is in the house with them the entire time, so this was a great little bit of misdirection.

And when he pays tribute to the other slasher classics, he does so in a non distracting way; casual fans would probably miss them entirely. The end credit font is identical to Halloween's, and one male character gives a look up the stairs that mirrors Judith's boyfriend in the opening scene of that film (which is also referenced by a POV shot of a light going off upstairs). As for Friday, the ending is a bit more overtly similar (with the heroine waking up in a hospital, which could also be foreshadowing a (I hope!) direct sequel that followed in Halloween II's footsteps), but the aforementioned decapitation is shot just like Mrs. Voorhees'. And while the killer is clearly modeled after Billy with regards to his MO and vocal tics, his LOOK is very similar to Russ Thorn from Slumber Party Massacre, in that he doesn't have a costume but still avoids being "just some guy" like in Final Exam.

Most importantly, though - even if you ignore all the homage stuff, it's just a straight up effective little slasher movie. You won't often forget that it was low budget (30 grand, much less than most of the films it honors even before you factor in inflation), but it moves well, has some nice scares, a variety of kills (he favors a hammer, but an axe and some rope get some play), and a very likable heroine in Brittany Belland, who is refreshingly not mousy (she's the one who urges her friend to go to the sorority party) and has a great scream. The script sometimes awkwardly leaves her without much use (he's after the sorority girls and she's not actually a member), but Russell pulls it together for the big chase at the end, which includes a terrific stalk scene inside a theater.

As I mentioned at the top, I saw the film at a festival honoring independent films, and thus most of the movies were still seeking distribution, but I'm happy to tell you that you don't have to worry about the possibility that this will never make it your way - it's already available on DVD! I already bought a copy (which includes commentary and other bonus features), and if you're a fan of Black Christmas or old school slashers, I highly recommend this one, as it's one of the best love letters to that era I've ever seen.

What say you?

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MARCH 1, 2013

GENRE: POSSESSION
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

It dawned on me today that I haven't tagged a wide theatrical release as "Crap" for over five years, and with only a month to go it'd be a shame to break that record, which is one of two things that are sparing The Last Exorcism Part II from the dishonor (I'll get to the other one in a bit). I've seen worse, but they were "you gotta see how bad this is!" type affairs, whereas I can't even think of a reason to see this movie ironically - there's absolutely nothing to it. It's lettuce without the rest of the veggies, or a pie crust with no filling - it has the FORM of a movie, but nothing that actually makes one worth your time to watch.

For starters, it utterly fails as a sequel even under normal circumstances, but especially so when you consider the infamous ending of the original`, which left its main character's fate unknown, introduced an element with no time left to explain it, and generally just left a lot of people wondering what the hell just happened. So what does the sequel do, which literally starts the second the first left off (the first new shot in the movie after some recap footage is of the camera lying on the ground - this is NOT a found footage film, in case you weren't aware yet)? It has Nell, seemingly without much memory of what happened to her, get checked out by a doctor and quickly placed in a halfway house for troubled girls, all but one of whom aren't even given the honor of being named (so you can forget about what they're doing there in the first place). The cult, Cotton, her brother, the documentary team... none of these things are even mentioned, let alone clarified. Her dad appears as a ghost a couple of times, but that's about the only thing that would require you to even have seen the original, which I'd actually recommend NOT doing if you haven't yet and planned to see this for whatever reason - the more you know about it, the more this is likely to disappoint you. Just know that Ashley Bell's character was possessed and is trying to get over it - it seems to be the only thing the new creative team (albeit with the same producers, including Eli Roth) seem to have remembered or cared about anyway.

But I'm a horror fan - I've certainly seen my share of sequels that seem to forget about their predecessors and do whatever the hell they want. Needless to say, that's far from the only thing about the movie that had me wondering if someone was playing a joke on me and the three other people in the audience this morning. Even more obnoxious than the sequel's refusal to clarify or even really CONNECT anything to the original was the fact that it seemed to ignore itself, presenting a random collection of scenes with next to zero connective tissue and a complete lack of anything one could describe as an advancing plot. I don't know if Bell is just a lousy actress or the script was just so weak (I am leaning heavily toward the latter; she was pretty great in the first film), but it's impossible to get a hold on Nell or where she's at; each scene has her completely different. She's feral in the first scene, practically comatose in the next, generally skittish for a while, then angry, then seemingly OK, then skittish again, then crazy... oh, and on occasion, well, horny. I don't want to get into a ratings debate, but I certainly have no problem suggesting to the next filmmaker that if they want to make a horror film that deals with a teenaged girl's burgeoning sexuality, they do so in an R-rated film so that the audience isn't constantly being reminded that this is the watered down, "safe" version of such material. I don't need to see Ashley Bell going at it with a crucifix, but when you're hampered by a PG-13 and thus you have to get your point across by having your heroine listen to a couple banging the headboard in an adjacent room while CGI cracks form around her face (huh?), my mind starts wandering to the many, many other movies I could be watching instead.

And so it continues; she makes a friend at her hotel job that she's either smitten by or afraid of, depending on the scene and whether or not she's still reacting to the latest confusing jump scare. Part of the problem is that the first movie had a cult, and so any intelligent audience member would be thinking "is this person a cult member posing as her friend?", but writer/director Ed Gass-Donnelly doesn't seem to remember any of that, opting to never explain anyone's motives throughout the movie. Is the would-be boyfriend a good guy or not? Fuck if I know; half of his scenes seem to be hallucinations anyway. And just when I had resigned myself to this movie with "Exorcism" in its title wouldn't actually have an exorcism, an exorcist is called out of nowhere and we go through the usual nonsense, sans any buildup or reason to give a shit if he was successful or not (though I do love that they planned to transfer the soul into a chicken). This includes more visions of dubious nature (including some of herself), more lame CGI effects, and a ridiculous climax that sets up a third film no one should have any interest in seeing.

My favorite go-nowhere bit has to be the character of Seizure Girl, so named because we see her once, having a seizure. Nell wakes up, walks around her halfway house a bit, and sees the girl start to contort much like she did, only to start foaming at the mouth and convulsing. The other girls in the house run over, 911 is called, Nell's roommate Gwen gives an evil look that is never explained, and... that's it. No one mentions the girl or the incident ever again. I can only assume that the movie was originally much longer and someone had it reduced to a typical 90 minutes, as it's hardly the only example of what appears to be some reshaping (the 3 "additional editors" in the end credits are another tell-tale sign). Likewise, her boyfriend's first scene is very vague, as if there was an actual introduction beforehand, and even if they never got into the other girls at the house I'm sure that at least SOME POINT her roommate was given an actual identifying character trait beyond her funky hair. I also assume that at one point there was at least a throwaway line about her brother, who is the only character of note we knew for sure wasn't killed at the end of the last movie and would seemingly be a person of interest if they had any plans to return her to her family or investigate further as to what happened.

So what's the thing I liked? A parade sequence around the end of the first act (going in half hour increments, I mean - there's no structure to the movie or progression to the story that one would allow someone to define anything as a typical act), where Nell and her new pals walk around during a Mardi Gras-type celebration (it seems a bit too small to be the actual Mardi Gras). There's a decent little creepout moment involving a masked character watching her from across the street, and later comes the only halfway decent bit of suspense in the entire movie, where she sees one of those dudes who paint themselves silver and pretend to be a statue. She watches him for a while and when she leans down to put something in his cup, he says something eerie (OR DOES HE?), and then later seems to be following her. Of course, like everything else in the goddamn movie, it has no real payoff, but for a few moments I was actually engaged and hopeful that this slow burn would be worth the effort. Alas, it ends even worse than the first one did, with a ton of horrendous looking CGI fire and a bad hard rock song playing over the soundtrack, as if the filmmakers were mocking us for not having walked out a long time ago.

You know what this movie reminded me of? Molly Hartley. It too had an opening scene that felt tacked on, a bunch of grasping at straws and go nowhere "reveals" in place of an actual story, and a dumb ending that tried to be daring but couldn't actually be so since it was hampered by its teen-friendly rating. The only difference is, that movie wasn't screwing up a potentially interesting franchise. No wonder Lionsgate didn't bother doing the sequel (CBS films handled it this time) - they knew this wouldn't even be worth sticking on their shelf for a year before dumping it direct to video.

What say you?

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FEBRUARY 28, 2013

GENRE: RAPE-REVENGE, SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: STREAMING (NETFLIX INSTANT)

I might be wrong with my tagging - Demoniacs (aka Curse of the Living Dead; French: Les démoniaques) very well may be a ghost movie, but I couldn't tell if our two heroines (for lack of a better word) were ever actually killed and/or if they were really "back" or just a figment of a madman's imagination. If you think of the movie as a "Tell-Tale Heart" type of thing, it's barely even horror at all - however if you take everything at face value it doesn't make a lick of sense. So I have no idea.

I do know that I enjoyed watching it. I was certainly never bored - it's a bit more graphic than the other Rollin films I've seen (including non-explicit but still unpleasant rape scenes) and doesn't take long to get going. Indeed, it starts with some full-screen pictures of its villains as a voiceover gives their names and roles within their group of pirate "wreckers", presumably so we don't have to waste time on more traditional character development before getting things going (you can see it below, sans subtitles - I couldn't find a trailer). These guys lure ships to the rocks with the intent of crashing them, killing the folks on board, and taking their valuables, presumably to fund their life of drinking at a local bar, which is all we see them doing when they're not dealing with the heroines. They are a pair of lovely ladies who I assume were on the boat they just crashed (off-screen), and after they are spotted by the pirates it doesn't take long for them to rape and kill them, only for them to keep showing up and driving the Captain crazy. Around the halfway point or so the girls are taken by a clown (sure, why not) to see a Devil (THE Devil? Not sure) who offers them a chance to seek revenge but only a few hours to do so, at which point I just got confused since they were seemingly already doing that on their own. Ah, who knows.

What it lacks in total coherency it makes up for in a number of cool little moments, like when a player piano goes off for no reason, or when the movie's best character (Tina, the female wrecker who also happens to be one of the most alluring women I've ever seen) casually murders another lady after a minor disagreement. There's also a guy who is dressed like the most stereotypical French guy ever: striped shirt, neckerchief, constant bottle of wine... the whole nine yards. And while it doesn't top the sickle bit from Fascination, I assume the bit where religious statues are toppled in an attempt to kill one of the wreckers is the sort of thing that made Rollin such a cult figure back in the day and why folks today yell at me for not having seen enough of his movies.

It's also a pretty great looking film; in addition to the women (what, it seems to be the POINT of these movies), Rollin has some great shots of the beach (day and night) and the castle where the girls meet the devil guy. Almost every person in the movie is terrible and it's wall to wall with unpleasant occurrences, and yet I see the locations and wish I was there! Plus it's more colorful than the others - the clown alone is more vivid than anything in Fascination or Zombie Lake, but the greens around the castle, the bar locale, even the characters themselves "pop" more than I've seen in the others; almost every scene has something that would be worthy of a screenshot, and I'm actually kind of bummed I opted to watch on streaming instead of a Blu-ray, which I'm sure would be even more eye-catching.

And it's a good thing, because on a story level it's kind of weak. The girls are complete cyphers (I don't even think they are named), the guys are completely scummy and thus not really interesting, and I honestly don't even know where to begin with the clown. If their goal is to drive them mad for what they did, they seem to accomplish it in the first scene after their attack, which finds the Captain seeing them (or their ghosts) and screaming like a nut - there's no escalation to his "guilt" or whatever it is that's setting him off. I'd say it was aimless, but I understood where it was heading at least - I just couldn't get a firm grasp on the particulars, and never felt too drawn into it. Unlike say, The Crow (another "dead person returns to get back at the cartoonish villains who killed them), there's no real emotional weight to keep you fully engaged (or a "Sarah" to be caught in the middle); yeah it's sad that this happened but I still need a reason to care about their objective beyond just plain "they have it coming". And the rape elements make it hard to say "Just enjoy the sights", because ew.

In short, not his best (like I'm an expert now?), but worth a look for the scenery, Joëlle Coeur (Tina), and occasional gonzo death scenes (the giant wine bottle/neck slice in particular). Of the five I've seen it's probably the last one I'd want to revisit, but I never regretted watching it, either. Next week is the one I promised last time: Night of the Hunted! This time for real, I swear!

What say you?

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WELCOME HBA MEMBERS

Okay, there are many new HBA Members and you all should check them out, as always "New Members" check to see you are on the list correctly. The new master list is available at top right above the "Donation Button".

IT'S CUSTOMARY TO SAY THANK YOU, OR EVEN BOO...

Welcome them with a scream, don't let the March Madness get you!
Thank you! 

Jeremy [Retro]
Oh, No... Let's Go CRAZY!
HBA Curator

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List of the newest HBA Members:

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E - Every Night is Halloween
http://www.everynightishalloween.com
Diana

G - Girl Meets Freak
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R - Run And Scream!
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