Horror 09

Beautiful, yet horrifying. Profound, yet ridiculous. Thought provoking, yet maddeningly confusing. A sympathetic and affecting portrayal of grief, yet shockingly misogynistic. Unfairly maligned, yet absolutely deserving the controversy leveled towards it.

NOT for the faint of heart, the movie contains some of the most horrifying violence ever perpetrated in cinema, and a slew of equally disturbing images, that are either profoundly symbolic or weird for the sake of weird. This film is a boiling pot of contradiction, but that makes it all the more mesmerizing.

Charlotte Gainsbourg gives one of the strongest, bravest performances of the last decade, absolutely willing to tear herself open and expose every facet of mind, body and soul, like a raw bleeding nerve. It brings to mind the exceptional work Von Trier pushed out of Emily Watson in Breaking The Waves. Dafoe is more than ready to meet Gainsbourg in the battle of wills, he has to balance out her dysfunction and mania with both calm and misguided pride. Without the equally strong performances from both players, the film would fall apart at the seams.

Antichrist is either a work of uncompromising genius or simply Lars Von Trier feeding us a trough of bullshit and seeing how much were willing to swallow, or it could be both. Either way, it is a film you simply cannot ignore and one you will talk about for a long time after seeing it.

Revised review, there will be spoilers.

Sam Raimi does not make horror films that claw deep into your subconscious, keeping you awake at night, he doesn't want to destroy that last shred of safety or make you fear the shadows in the corner of your room for weeks to come.

Sam Raimi makes horror films that are the cinematic equivalent of a well maintained ghosthouse ride at a fun fair. Easing you through the dark and delivering well timed shocks that will have you laughing as soon as shriek. Drag Me To Hell is a well made ghosthouse ride, and there is no one better qualified to work the levers than Sam Raimi.

Raimi has been out of the game for a while, due to being stuck in the Spider-Man business for so long, but anyone paying attention would know the old Raimi was still there. Norman Osborne's psycological dialogue with the Green Goblin or the Doctor Octopus surgery tentacle attack from Spider-Man 2 carried all the hallmarks of a Raimi horror movie - the energy, the inventive camera work, the sheer sense of glee at the chaos being unleashed. Finally we get to see that energy channelled into a real horror movie.

The film's story operates like a classic EC horror comic - a morality play that takes particular glee with punishing it's hapless victim for their trangressions. If you've read an EC Comic, then you know what to expect.

The beauty of the film being that Christine Brown (played perfectly by Alison Lohman) really did nothing to help herself throughout the entire film. Her initial act of self serving callousness spurs on the curse (one could see it as an overreaction, but consider what followed and Christine actually sentenced the Ganush to death in that scene) and, as the demented trickery of the demon that begins stalking her escalates, Christine just seems to get worse and worse. A very human trait, self-preservation, but it's delightful to think that all of her selfishness and resistance only made her fate even more inevitable.

Raimi really puts Lohman through the ringer in this film, much like he once did to Bruce Campbell to wonderful effect in the Evil Dead movies. He takes an almost giddy pleasure in punishing Lohman for our entertainment but it wouldn't work if Lohman didn't sell the character. Lohman plays the part much like Campbell would, with a dumbfounded, almost baffling lack of self awareness, and this makes her very endearing even when her actions make you wonder if a one way trip to Hell wouldn't be a bad idea to straighten her out.

I cannot imagine how the movie could work, had the original casting of Ellen Page gone ahead, Page would carry the film with more confidence and force than the character necessarily requires - I think the slighter presence of Lohman really works for the character.

All complaints about a PG13 horror movie are unfounded as Raimi finds a way to cram nearly every other foul fluid into this film (usually in Christine's mouth), as well as retaining that demented Evil Dead spirit. The seance scene is 100% Evil Dead; with talking goats, grotesque human puppets dancing a jig and others being thrown around like ragdolls. It's insane and hilarious, which is exactly what the Evil Dead films were. I'm almost convinced this film takes place in the same universe because I'll be damned if the Lamia isn't a Deadite after seeing him work his magic on his victims in the seance scene.

Thanks to Raimi perfectly building the tension during scenes (for instance, when the Lamia is enters the house and begins slowly walking up the stairs) and delivering expertly timed shocks with the assistance of an amazing sound design, he'll have you spending a good 80% of the film an inch off your seat. On that topic, Drag Me To Hell may be the loudest film I have ever seen, and while some will say "loud noises don't make a movie scary" I would have to disagree in this case, an amateur will use a loud noise to get a scare but without tension or atmosphere they won't have the same impact, which is where Raimi succeeds here - every time he wants to ratchet up the tension, he does it perfectly. Whenever he wants to surprise you, he catches you off guard.

Raimi also knows when to just have fun, not every scene needs to dye your underwear a deeper shade of brown, and with his wickedly demented sense of humour he makes us laugh at Christine's torment just as much as he makes us jolt around in fright. The dinner party scene with the demonic cake is one such scene, absolutely priceless, Lohman sells the hell out of that scene, she does the kind of work that would do any Bruce Campbell fan proud.

It seems to balance Evil Dead's sincere (although imperfect in ED's case) desire to scare you out of your seat and Evil Dead 2's manic sense of humour.

Outside of Lohman, the rest of the cast provide a solid background to her suffering; Justin Long convinces as the concerned but supportive love interest. Lorna Raver positively exudes menace as the curse-happy Mrs. Ganush. Dileep Rao gives the film much needed gravitas to mask his job as Mr. Exposition. And David Paymer is delightful as always in a short role that he makes worth every minute: "Did any get in my mouth?"

It's not their show, and Lohman makes every second worth watching while Raimi drenches her in every foul goo he can get away with and tosses her around like a puppy with a new rope toy.

I can only hope Raimi doesn't spend so long out of the spook-game because we really need more flat-out entertaining movies in the horror genre.

To any lifelong fan of Raimi, this film is the real deal. To everyone else, well your mileage may vary.

Something is very wrong in Pontypool, Ontario, but don't worry because we've got the media to carry us through the troubled times. The voice of the media comes in the form of the wonderful Stephen McHattie as Grant Mazzy, a former shock jock aging disgracefully and relegated to breakfast show host. McHattie has one of those great actorly voices, the man has a voice you can listen to for hours, which is helpful because he will be carrying the film on the soundwaves of his pitch perfect, gravelled tones.

The film presents what could be considered a zombie outbreak in a format reminiscient of Orson welles' War of the Worlds radio broadcast, we hear the information (and perhaps disinformation?) via television, phonelines and the radiowaves. Words must convey the imagery and the drama, and it does so with great potency, as powerfully as it could have been had it been seen from a big budget staging. Rarely do we see the carnage and that works in it's favour presenting a paranoid, claustrophobic atmosphere that more than compensates for any budgetary constraints that keep the horror under-represented.

Much like Deadgirl, Pontypool is a horror movie about ideas above violence and the idea is an interesting one. The virus is spread through language. The English language is a virus. The infected find themselves struggling with words, then thoughtlessly repeating other people's phrases, words now robbed of context through no real understanding of their meaning. As if the words were being uttered for the first time. Reduced to babble, the infected turn savage. The effect of hearing the infected echo words is remarkably effective in it's creepiness.

It could be argued that language has always been a virus, the day we learned to speak was the day we learned to hate, to lie, to fight. The problem is the conceit is not fully explored or cohesively realized, are they stating that the understanding of words, the exchange of language, is dangerous? Or is it that the loss of that understanding is dangerous? Both are valid interpretations of the impact communication can have on us as a society. It seems to send mixed signals in this regard, but perhaps that is in keeping with it's exploration of information and disinformation via the media. They certainly posit the idea that the media can hinder epidemics with rash reportage without considering the implications of their words. Repeat viewings may yield a more concrete opinion on this, but it works regardless of which side of the coin it lands upon.

McHattie is fantastic throughout, he sways between a detached bemusement off-air and sly, manic energy in his radio personna. He comes alive when the On-Air light goes red and the epidemic gives him a new lease of life from his boring, small potatoes gig. He is the primary focus of the entire film and his marvellous voice lends every update with a greater gravity than a visual interpretation could have managed. It's very in keeping with the film's central concept that all vital information would be processed entirely through language. A particularly haunting sequence recounts the casualties, depicting entirely through McHattie's on-air obituary and a montage of black & white profile shots of all of the victims. We never see their deaths, but the words convey the toll and the horror with incredible effectiveness.

Intermittently paranoid, creepy, thrilling and funny. A meatier exploration of it's theme would have been helpful but it works entirely on it's own terms and is a truly great, original horror film.

The French truly own the horror movie now. Taking the slasher movie (one of America's great artforms along with the comic book, jazz and racism) and completely turning it on it's head, divorcing it from it's cheesey, pleasurable roots and infusing it with something uglier and nastier. The French have given the horror movie it's balls back, Inside was arguably the benchmark for modern cinematic nastiness but Martyrs takes that nastiness and amplifies it.

The violence belongs more in the 'torture porn' genre but it is not used for mere gory titillation, it services a meaning in the film. Thematically similar to Hellraiser, and even Passion of the Christ, this film explores the relationship between violence/suffering and transcendance/spirituality. Is pain a fundamental part of existence? It's not a concept bashed into our skulls, but it the filmmakers have thrown it out there for us to catch, if we so wish.

If there is one criticism against the film it's that there are some rather abrupt pacing shifts in the narrative, what starts out as a brisk and brutal home invasion movie then quickly shifts into a relentless, creepy and disturbing monster movie/psychological horror, before screeching to a halt and turning into a much slower, more ponderous torture movie. The thematic payoff at the end of the movie more than justifies the sudden down-gear of the story, but it does take some of the wind out of the movies sails, which was firing along at a great pace until that point.

While more cerebral and as equally well shot, Martyrs wasn't nearly as visceral or relentless as Inside, which trumps this film in terms of atmosphere and intensity, but Martyrs has a deeper quality that made it disturbing on a more existential level.

A flawed, but highly effective horror that deal with ideas over empty shocks. Deadgirl explores the boundaries of human morality, where do we as people draw the line in the sand, and when do we make it acceptible to cross this line?

While exploring an abandoned mental asylum, high school friends JT and Rickie discover something locked away in basement; a young woman, chained to a table and wrapped in plastic. She looks sick, dirty and dazed. Rickie decides they should leave and get help, but JT has other ideas.

Cut off from the prying eye of others, with a girl no one is looking for, JT is seemingly free to do as he pleases. He does not choose to do the right thing, simply because he does not have to. This is long before JT discovers that, despite his best efforts, this girl cannot die. In realizing this he is truly free to explore his most base of instincts.

This film explores what a man free of consequence is capable of, and the result is not always something we want to confront. Other concepts explored include the objectification of women and misogyny inherent in the genre, the different degrees in how we empathize and humanize with those different to us.

There's a strange tone to the film, at times it's gruelling and disturbing and others it carries a black comic tone somewhat similar to that of Heathers. Unfortunately I feel it played it almost too subtle, perhaps a limitation of the budget, but it could have featured more brutality and cruelty in order to really nail it's central themes.

The acting was generally good, everyone played their parts with the right tone for the right scene. It had some nice rich, dark photography coated in atmosphere.

Problems lie in the story progression, the storybeats stutter at times, either speeding through when more time could be spent exploring an idea or a scene, and drags through others. It does not get in the way of the overall impact of the film, but tighter storytelling and a more aggressive, unflinching tone could have elevated this original, fascinating work into something much bigger and more enduring.

Friday the 13th began life as a desperate money-making scheme by director Sean Cunningham, it cribbed heavily from both Halloween and Psycho, it is a strange franchise in that it didn't find it's identity until the third film and that wasn't made apparent until the fourth film. Even then it went through some absurd transformations by the time the seventh film showed up but there was at least a four picture window (4-6) where the Friday the 13th franchise was a lot of brainless, harmless, charmingly predictable fun. 7-10 is where the franchise really, truly, spectacularly hit the skids - flipped it's car and fell down into a ditch of flammable cow shit. It ceased to be a uniquely guilty pleasure and became insufferable crap, and rightly died a death from which even Jason Voorhees could never return.

Platinum Dunes, however, knows not the meaning of the word "dead" or "best left alone" or "nobody asked for this" and will take any film or franchise that should have been left well alone and, like a demented cinematic Herbert West, will pump it full of fantastical fluids and shock the ever loving shit out of it until it resembles something like life.

Fortunately, in this case, we have long established that Jason's movies are not the holy grail of horror cinema. Rob Zombie remaking Halloween and Platinum Dunes remaking another horror classic (Texas Chain Saw Massacre), not once but twice (the brazen balls on these people) have dulled the shock a little. Really, once you clear out the limited number of great cinema in horror, there's really very little to get mad about nowadays.

Platinum Dunes' Friday the 13th remake is not so much a remake as a modernized reboot, foregoing the original (dealt with quickly in a pre-credit teaser) and skips to the iconic stuff that the fans love and that Drew Barrymore in Scream pretends to know about; Jason/hockeymask/teenagers. Simple and to the point. The point of a machete. Yes.

Jason - now a full grown, deformed psychopath - roams the woods of Crystal Lake, promptly killing any dumb teenager that crosses his path for reasons only he needs to understand. Within 10 minutes he's already met his first batch of dumb teenagers and, almost immediately, the film makes it's intentions known: Jason is going to fuck you in the face with violence, and you'll just open wide and take it because it feels so good.

The opening 20 minutes of film is a hyper-condensed Friday the 13th movie in it's own right, we get teenagers, drugs, sex and then the blur of a retard-powered murder train. Jason has his Part 2-era sack cloth mask, adorning the face that only a homicidal mother could love, and he wastes no time in doing said mother proud by inflicting the carnage upon debauch potheads.

What I particularly enjoyed about this sequence was the idea that Crystal Lake has a crop of wild marijuana growing on it's grounds, the one thing that would attract dumb kids to Jason's hunting grounds. I like to imagine Jason is utterly unaware of the plants significance and is just pissed that people keep showing up to take it. He wants to be left to his own devices and these bare chested, booze addled pricks just swarm to him like ants to a homicidal sugar bun.

This opening mayhem mirrors the opening sequence of MBV3D, a quick super-condsened explosion of violence to set the tempo for what is to come. The tragedy of this method is that when the film inevitably slows down to introduce the real cast, it feels painfully slow and you're slobbering at the prospect of more sex and death.

The main thrust (see, that could mean a penis or a knife, I'm multi-layered in my punnery) of the movie's "plot" is that the older brother of one of the victims from Jason's initial attack has arrived at Crystal Lake to look for his missing sister. This is reminiscient of a plotline used in Friday the 13th IV: The Final Chapter. Much like Final Chapter, the cast of young and good looking machete-fodder have arrived at a summer house on the edge of the woods, to enjoy themselves with booze, pot and casual fucking. Jason wastes no time before he's greeting his new neighbours with a welcome basket full of wanton stabbing.

Once again, as is customary with a slasher movue, let's get to the boobs. There is a wide selection of breasts on offer in this movie but most of them are fake and uninteresting but Julianna Guill arrives to save us Friday fanboys, like the second coming of nudity. Guill has now dethroned Debbie Sue Voorhees (Part V: The New Beginning) for the greatest breasts in the Friday the 13th franchise. Travis Van Winkle's character cannot help but comment on them during their sex scene together.

Travis Van Winkle plays the same character he played in Transformers, literally, it's the same guy. Same name, both films by the same producer, it's the same guy. This means that after being a dick to Shea LeBeuof he took a vacation to New Jersey and got all fucked up by Jason. This says to me that Jason Voorhees needs to go head to head with Optimus Prime in a battle royale of awesomeness. Winkle's character is probably the highlight of the film, he's an irredeemable douchebag with possibly the greatest scream in a Friday movie. Despite having a pair of testicles he's out-scream queened the rest of the female cast. Put this man in the horror hall of fame.

While the nudity exceeds it's predecessors, sadly the killings aren't as creative in the way they were in the sequels but there was a memorable kill or two tucked away in there. The sequel can up this particular ante because, while most of the kills are pretty standard fare, the real buzz comes from the gigantic man-child responsible for this violence: Jason Voorhees, as played by Ray Mears.

This is without a doubt the best incarnation of Jason so far, previous performers have differed greatly from lumbering lunatic to a wannabe-Michael Myers, with the most famous performer being Kane Hodder who just played Jason as this giant who was always moments away from having an epic hissyfit. I have never understood why he got so much love from the fans, partly because he's so one-note and largely because the films he starred in were without question among the worst pieces of shit to ever grace a video rental shelf.

New guy, Ray Mears brings something of substance to the character that remains true to the character's foggy history. He plays Jason like a retarded Rambo. A survivalist, a cunning wild animal unleashed. Shellshocked from a past trauma, just trying to get by on his own and being driven to defend his territory from intruders - those that remind him of his traumas - in Rambo's case, enemy aggressors / in Jason's case, annoying teenagers that killed his mom. There's a guile and an intensity to his Jason which has been absent from every incarnation before him, and resting everything on his massive shoulders is the best thing this relaunched franchise could have done.

So bring on part 2, but let's avoid the zombies and the telepaths and any taking of Manhattan, please.

This is a (albeit late) review of the theatrical release, I have no idea how effective an experience My Bloody Valentine 3D is on a home thearer and I don't plan on finding out.

My Bloody Valentine was something of a Jonny Come-Lately to the slasher genre, a matter not helped by the fact it was Canadian, so relatively few people actually bothered to see it.

To a degree they were missing out because it was a solid piece of genre fare which often hit just the right note of creepiness that was absent from most slasher-clones of the late 70s/early 80s. Unfortunately it was butchered in the editing room and most of the delicious kills were left out until a recent Director's Cut re-release added them in (with questionable picture quality). It was a good little film for what it was, but when Halloween (arguably the only slasher film with any artistic or technical merit - note: texas chainsaw massacre isn't a slasher film) has already been remade and shafted in the shitter, it was never going to be above the ravenous eye of the remake-rape beast.

That this remake comes in the glorious new wave, next gen RealD 3D projection system is just the right amount of lubricant to ease in that shitter shafter. Analglyph 3D was the conventional red and blue/green system which worked to mixed results and did leave everything looking like someone ate a box of crayons and threw up on your eyeballs. RealD is different, take your glasses off and it's a blur, and because you're wearing sunglasses the picture will look a little faint and dark but it's still a step up.

And the 3D itself? Mostly great. Things fly out at the screen effectively, to the point where people can't help but scream and jump and dodge the projectiles speeding at their eyes. Anything involving a lot of motion caused excessive blurring and dizziness. It was at it's most effective when there was some manner of framing onscreen, such as peering through a hole or looking through a forest, something that creates a sense of depth. I think this idea of depth is going to be Real D's secret weapon, if 3D is going to become a legitimate storytelling tool within the medium it cannot rely on these jump gimmicks, that is a theme park attraction staple and it will eventually lead the technology to die out and disappear from our screens...again. Real D can be used to create a sense of space and a sense of environment in a highly effective manner and this should be the priority usage for the technology.

Then again, I still want some room for tacky gimmick flicks like this because, let's face it, they're fucking fun.

So, how about the film itself? It's a by-the-numbers but earnest attempt at a slasher film. It has been over 10 years since Scream and now the 'knowing' send-up of the genre conventions has been put to bed, allowing the guilty pleasure of simply enjoying those convention to finally wake up and root through your kitchen cabinets. The slasher genre is back, and it's hungry.

The film contains numerous quality kills, heightened by the gimmickry of 3D, there are some kills that are easily on par with the tacky greatness of Friday the 13th Part 3-D. There are only so many times you can see a pick-axe fly at your face, or an eyeball pop out at you, but this is the first time I have seen a jaw hurtle out of the screen.

The film holds few surprises, especially with it's big twist, which is barely a twist at all given that there are only ever two suspects in the film and they accidentally tip their hand pretty early on in the run-time. Yet, I overestimate the general audience as there was active discussion in the aisle in front of me in regards to who the culprit was; I'm talking genuine cinematic detective work on display, they worked their asses off to uncover the truth to the bane of the audience within hearing range. Bless 'em, they were too sincere in their hunt for answers for me to hate them.

Jensen Ackles (TV's Supernatural), lacking the great writing and charm of his TV personna, is largely seen as the rather bland (but supposedly tortured) protagonist. Even when he gets to cut loose towards the end of the film, he's not really committed to creating a credible character from his rather obvious and one note role. I like Ackles, but I don't think this screenplay or director did justice to his talents.

Jamie King (Sin City, as well as The Spirit... poor girl), pretty as a picture (really, she has never looked better), is saddled with the role of the heroine, which is a thankless role in this genre, rapt with cloying sincerity and general blandness. She does her best to infuse some heart into her scenes but it's often a losing battle in this genre. Credit to her for at least taking the part seriously.

Kerr Smith (Final Destination) is the highlight of the film as the town's asshat sheriff and King's husband. He plays the role of a total tosswit with absolute conviction and turns out to be the most believable character in the film.

Every slasher film needs its T&A, or it's just not doing it's job properly, and big props to Ms. Betsy Rue ("Blonde Girl in Bar" in TV's Days of Our Lives) for having the courage to perform the lion's share of her screentime absolutely stark naked. You see everything here, and it's a shame 3D technology has not advanced enough to make THAT pop out of the screen.

Despite Betsy Rue's profound nudity, Megan Boone (The Mustachioed Bandit Meets His End... wait, what?) takes the prize for MBV3D's top eye candy. She's cute as all get out and the camera has some pleasingly lingering shots on her adorable behind in boy shorts. Get used to letchy comments like that here, it's a slasher movie review, gore and T&A are the prequisites for success.

Old pros Kevin Tighe (Locke's bad papa in Lost) and the legendary Tom Atkins (Halloween 3 and Night of the Creeps) make brief appearances and suffer suitably enjoyable deaths (that's not a spoiler since it's a slasher film and only 1 or 2 people survive slasher movies; death is as inevitable and wet as the tide). It was particularly enjoyable to see Atkins back in front of the screen, the man is a total hero of genre film.

Generally speaking, My Bloody Valentine 3D is a pretty bad movie, or at the very least a decidedly average one. The dialogue is clunky, most of the performances don't connect with one another, it's flatly shot and they miss a huge opportunity to end the film on an awesome 3D POV jump-scare and instead follow this great shot by spoonfeeding us a happy ending and segue into the "sequel this, please" final shot - which could have been easily serviced by the awesome 3D shot I mentioned.

Not a great film, and I wouldn't recommend anyone waste their time with it in 2D but coupled with some fun 3D effects, and a really good crowd, it becomes a great movie going experience. The two girls sat beside me were screaming every time something flew out of the screen, and I laughed every single time they did - this happened all throughout the room (which was sold out).

Laughter and screaming; something that has been sorely missing from horror movies since the Saw sequels took a big dour shit all over the genre. There is a place for horror that is serious and bleak (and preferably GOOD), but there needs to be room for horror that just makes you laugh and enjoy yourself in the company of others. Sitting through the first Saw movie was entertaining, hearing the reactions of the crowd, but they have become increasingly convoluted and focused on sheer brutality that they lose any appeal and the prospect of the hero getting out alive are non-existent. There is simply no tension in a movie where you know the bad guy will win, even if it is by some overly elaborate deus ex machina. Slasher movie deaths are inevitable, but it's fun to root for either side with some level of uncertainty as to how the final reel is going to play out.

I digress, back to the experience: I saw people flinching to avoid broken glass and blood spray. I have to admit, it did look like the blood from someone's severed arm was dripping on the guy in front of me's head. I wanted to wipe him with a napkin.

An ok film but a great introduction into the next wave of 3D technology.