Weekly Screenings: 11/14-11/20

Tags

2016, Belly of the Bulldog, Ben Wheatley, cinema, film reviews, films, horror, horror films, Michael Smiley, Movies, November, Paranormal Sex Tape, Sex Tape Horror, Tank 432, weekly screenings

For the third week of November, I fear that the pickings were a bit slim: the stresses of starting a new job in a new field left little head space for the cinematic arts. For this week, we only screened two films, neither of which could have been called a home-run, by any standards. Call it a wash, then, but we still crossed two more off the 2016 releases list, so the Graveyard remains groovy. In that spirit, let’s take a look at this particular week’s offerings.

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Tank 432

Nick Gillespie’s Tank 432 (nee Belly of the Bulldog, which is a much better title) has a lot of things going for it: if anything, the veteran camera-man (he’s done lots of work for personal hero Ben Wheatley, who also produced) brings an awfully stacked deck to his first stint as a feature-length director. He’s got a great cast of British actors, including Rupert Evans, Michael Smiley, Deirdre Mullins, Gordon Kennedy  and Tom Meeten. There’s a unique concept and location. The visual style and sound design are top-notch and work well with the overall feeling of dread. All of the elements are here for a classic British genre film, ala the aforementioned Wheatley or Neil Marshall. Why, then, did I walk away so disappointed?

A group of shell-shocked soldiers, including Evans as the voice of reason, Smiley as the mouthy Irish guy, Kennedy as the hard-as-nails leader and Mullins as the resolute medic, emerge from an underground pipe and make their way across a desolate landscape. After finding a pile of bodies at an abandoned farm, the soldiers and their hooded, bound captives flee an unseen enemy until they find a single, solitary Bulldog tank sitting in the middle of a wide open field. The motley group stows themselves away in the tight confines of the broken-down gargantuan, jamming the door shut behind them against the threat outside. And then the fun starts.

Tank 432 starts out so strong that it seems all but assured a place in the same Hall of Fame that contains Marshall’s Dog Soldiers or David Twohy’s Pitch Black. The military element is uncommonly sharp, with great dialogue and a genuine sense of unity between the brigade. The veteran actors are all playing types, without a doubt, but they play them with nary a wink nor a nod: combined with the breakneck pace, there’s an instant immersion that builds a tremendous amount of good will early on.

Cinematographer Billy Jackson’s imagery can be quite lovely and mysterious, when he refrains from the sort of shaky, quick-cut nonsense that’s become so fashionable in genre films. The sound design adds immensely to the proceedings, accentuating the otherworldly quality of the tank and lending later events a heightened sense of lunacy. The fantastic element is introduced gradually and with enough organic clues for the astute viewer to pick up on what’s going on fairly early.

And that, in essence, ends up being one of the first (and perhaps biggest) problems with the film: after establishing a few possibilities for the uncanny events, the film proceeds to hammer down on the most obvious one, including a full explanation at the conclusion, just in case viewers were still in a fog. It’s completely heavy-handed and, coupled with the film’s completely chaotic and rather silly climax, left me with a bad taste that managed to wash away much of I’d enjoyed before. There are other issues, to be sure (the fact that the clever script devolves into “Fuck you!” “No, fuck you!” is particularly painful), but that was a real deal-breaker.

Tank 432 isn’t a bad film, by any means, but it is a terribly disappointing one, primarily because there was so much potential for a genuinely unique, strange and memorable film. The result is a movie that promises much more than it can deliver, writing a check that it can’t possibly cash. There’s a shell of a good story here and a pretty good idea of where it could have gone. In the end, however, like that proverbial tank, it just sits there and rusts.

Paranormal Sex Tape

 

I’ll be frankly honest: were it not for my personal goal to screen every single horror title released in 2016, there’s no way I ever would have watched auteur Dick Van Dark’s Paranormal Sex Tape (or Sex Tape Horror, if you make it to the end credits). I’ve developed a sixth sense for stinkers, so to speak, and there’s no way this one passed the smell test. Since it was on the menu, however, I was more than willing to let the dish speak for itself: after all, I’d been surprised by other no-budget horror flicks, this year, so the precedent was there.

If I may continue to be honest, gentle readers, I didn’t make it 10 minutes into the film before it became necessary to employ judicious use of the frame-forward button. I have a longheld personal rule that just doesn’t allow me to turn a film off once I’ve started watching: I may resist watching something for my whole life but, once it’s on, I’m gonna finish it or be damned. I couldn’t turn Paranormal Sex Tape off but there was no way I intended to watch every single obe of its 70 minutes: even I have my limits.

The plot (I don’t have a more appropriate word but that’s not quite right) seems to involve a young woman named Scarlet (the impossibly blank Amber West) and the “terrifying” figure that appears every time she has sex with her boyfriend (I’m assuming, since the film never makes this clear or even gives the poor fellow a name). She sets up a camera, in order to record the “demon” (again, the film never makes this clear in any way) and things get strange.

In essence, the film consists of incredibly long, dull scenes of Scarlet either walking to various places or riding the subway intercut with incredibly long, dull, softcore sex scenes involving Scarlet and the guy, while the demon waggles its hands in the background, looking thoroughly dejected. That’s just about it. We also get some nonsense involving Scarlet and a tattooed drug dealer, along with Scarlet and her strange friend (who I believe was portrayed by the director but, again, who really knows?) but none of them ever amount to more than time-fillers.

As noted above, I started advancing through the film once I realized exactly what it would be. The pattern was pretty simple: watch for a moment, get to a walking scene, advance until it was over, watch for a moment, get to a sex scene, advance until it was over, lather, rinse and repeat. I did manage to watch a few individual bits, here and there: one sex scene involving blacklights, bodypaint and a forced perspective vignette filter was too preposterous not to sit through. For the most part, however, this was just impossible, the kind of impossible that even Troma doesn’t seem capable of.

I’ll freely admit that certain films just aren’t my cup of tea and I don’t hold them to the same standards: the Sharknado series (the 4th, of which, is also on my 2016 list) is a good example of this. Maybe someone out there really got a kick out of this: if so, more power to ’em and a long and healthy life, to boot. As for me, this was amateurish junk, unfitting of even a porn label. Potayto, potato.

Join us next time as we delve further into November with last week’s screenings, including another of my picks for best films of the year. Until then, gentle readers, stay away from abandoned tanks and keep an eye on your sex tapes: you never know what may be watching!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Weekly Screenings: 11/7-11/13

Tags

capsule reviews, cinema, film reviews, films, horror, horror movies, Movies, November, Phantom of the Theatre, summer camp, The Curse of Sleeping Beauty, The Haunting of Alice D, The Monster, The Piper, The Purge, The Purge: Anarchy, The Remains, The Secrets of Emily Blair, weekly reviews

With November rapidly coming to a close, what better time to do a little housekeeping and catch up on the various films viewed in this extremely chilly month? For your perusement, gentle readers, I now present the films screened in the second week of November. Grab some leftovers, pull up a seat and take a peek at the cinematic goodies below.

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The Piper

A lowly piper and his sickly son come upon a hidden village with a rat problem and a leader who’s kept his people in line by pretending that a war still rages directly outside their peaceful hamlet. It’s no surprise to learn that the people end up being 1000 times more evil than the rodents but they sure get a run for their money.

Powerful, grim and often unpleasant Korean retelling of the classic Grimm fairy tale is not for the faint of heart (or anyone with a rat phobia) but it is exquisitely made and filled with moments of unexpected beauty and genuine sadness (along with a little out-of-place silliness). I really respected and often enjoyed this modern fairy tale but I can’t imagine watching it more than once.

Phantom of the Theatre

This tale of murdered acrobats coming back to haunt a recently renovated theatre looked good (aside from some truly awful CGI, especially fire-related effects) but never caught a spark (pun intended). Overly melodramatic, way too long and possessed of a twist that brought to mind nothing so much as bargain-basement Scooby Doo, this was technically okay (CGI notwithstanding) but was also a pretty primo example of “been there, done that.” If anything, it often reminded me of similarly empty, loud, big budget American multiplex fare, with all of the negative connotations that come with that parallel.

The Haunting of Alice D

I’ll be honest: I really hated this indie horror film and could find no redeeming qualities, whatsoever, so I’ll try to keep this short and sour. A co-ed group of shitheads head to the lead misogynist asshole’s childhood home, which used to be a brothel owned by his terrible ancestor (Kane Hodder, being Kane Hodder), and run afoul of murderous spirits. Amateurish, unpleasantly sleazy (lots of implied sexual violence, for one) and with a truly ugly look, this was pure tedium from the first frame to the last. The wastelands of the 2016 horror scene are littered with picked-over carcasses and this is one of the riper ones.

The Purge

I never saw this franchise-starter when it first came out and it turns out I didn’t miss much. Tedious, obvious and so heavy-handed with the social commentary as to be completely leaden, this story of a family-man trying to protect his loved ones on the one day of the year where any crime is legal has a few good action sequences and some decent performances but it never rises above its limitations or does anything interesting with its core concept. Consider this a missed opportunity for something much darker, nastier and more subversive, ala Crossed.

Summer Camp

I absolutely loved every single minute of this smart, outrageous and impossibly twisted little sleeper and happily nominate it for one of the year’s very best horror films, hands down!

Four American camp counselors show up at a Spanish summer camp and prep it for the arrival of the children, setting off a chain of events that leave them fighting for their survival. To say too much would be to spoil some of the best, most genuinely surprising twists of the whole year (I’m talking multiple awesome twists, not just one or two, friends and neighbors), so I’ll let all you fine folks discover the glory for yourselves. Suffice to say that Summer Camp is purely amazing, however, and earns my highest recommendation possible. I honestly wish that everything I watched was as good as this damn film.

The Purge: Anarchy

I disliked The Purge, so fully expected to dislike the sequel, Anarchy. Surprise, surprise: I ended up loving it. Anarchy is absolutely everything a good sequel should be: bigger, better, more bad-ass and an expansion of the original film’s concept, mythos and universe. Check and check plus, right down the board.

Frank Grillo is a relentlessly kickass antihero, the action sequences are all pretty damn sweet (nothing as vanilla as the first film) and the social commentary is handled in a much smarter, more subtle manner (for the most part). This wasn’t quite as good as the ’80s classics but it was definitely in the same wheelhouse as Class of ’84, Death Wish 3 and Escape From New York: I, for one, was fully on board.

The Remains

Aggressively average, with spotty acting and zero surprises or scares, The Remains is another prime example of paint-by-numbers horror filmmaking in calendar year 2016. This is yet another “family moves into a house with a past and gets haunted” films and certainly isn’t terrible (I’ve seen much, much worse, trust me) but also does nothing whatsoever to distinguish itself, despite some flirtations with a truly creepy dollhouse. One of those films that I keep getting confused with other, similarly-themed films, which is never a good sign.

The Secrets of Emily Blair

I’ll admit: I knew this was going to be bad, going in, but I still held out hopes due to the presence of Colm Meaney in the cast. After all, that dude is awesome in pretty much anything, so it would at least have that going for it, right? If I could go back in time and slap myself in the face, I’d do it: no amount of Colm could save this rampaging crapfest about a woman who gets possessed by a demon and has to rely on her dipshit fiance and his priest buddy (Colm, natch) to save her.

Genuinely bad, cliched and ruthlessly dull, this became so stupid and silly, by the finale, that it was almost as if the filmmakers decided to go for broke in the hopes of illiciting any interest, whatsoever, from the stupified audience. It didn’t work, of course, but not for lack of trying…I guess.

The Curse of Sleeping Beauty

A young man who suffers disturbing dreams and sleep paralysis receives notice that he’s just inherited his reclusive uncle’s creepy estate and everything on the grounds. Aside from lots of antique furniture, tons of impossibly terrifying mannequins and what must be a simply tremendous heating bill, the “everything” part also seems to include the enigmatic “sleeping beauty” from his dreams, aka the legendary Briar Rose. Alas, the “everything” part also seems to include a curse and an age-old, Middle Eastern demon, so the poor guy is gonna be kind of busy for the foreseeable future.

Right off the bat, The Curse of Sleeping Beauty surprises with some truly gorgeous cinematography, fantastic visual effects and creature designs (reminding of nothing less than a DIY Pan’s Labyrinth, at points) and a genuinely intriguing and original (if occasionally cluttered and chaotic) storyline. At times, the film is actually scary (anything with the mannequins ranks with the year’s best pure horror moments), which is more than I can say for many films I screened this year. Despite some rough going, at times (this is still very much an indie film, if a remarkably accomplished one), I really enjoyed this, from start to finish: a true sleeper, in every sense of the word.

The Monster

I’ve never understood the derision heaped on filmmaker Bryan Bertino: while The Strangers was a thoroughly decent (and surprisingly popular) home invasion flick, his much-maligned Mockingbird was, without a doubt, one of the most genuinely disturbing horror films I’ve ever seen and the mark of a true, unique voice in the field. Or it was complete and total crap, depending on critical consensus.

This brings us to Bertino’s newest film, the character-driven monster flick The Monster (formerly There Are Monsters, which actually makes more sense, in context), and one of my picks for best films of the year. The film is pure class from start to finish, with an emphasis on real emotional heft, character building and drama that you just don’t get enough in genre films. At times, the interaction between Zoe Kazan’s destroyed mother and Ella Ballentine’s jaded daughter are almost too painful to watch: both performers deserve the highest accolades possible for what are, easily, two of the year’s best performances.

The film looks gorgeous, the creature design is smart and scary, the mood is consistent and there are honest-to-god scares, not just pre-manufactured jump cues. This, gentle readers, is what I look for in a good horror film: Bryan Bertino hasn’t let me down, yet, so I’m going to continue hitching my mule to his wagon and see where the trail leads. I highly recommend you do the same.

 

 

Weekly Screenings: 11/1-11/6

Tags

cinema, Consumption, Demon Tongue, Den of Darkness, Encounter, film reviews, films, Hail Caesar!, horror films, In a Valley of Violence, Mascots, Morris From America, Movies, November, Rock the Kasbah, Scare Campaign, The Windmill, Trash Fire, Voodoo Rising, weekly screenings

As we continue to play catch-up here at The VHS Graveyard, I now present some capsule reviews for the first week of November. Observant readers will note the presence of non-horror-related offerings this time around, including the newest Coen Brothers and Christopher Guest offerings: while we’re still focusing on the horror end of things, vis a vis our goal to screen every 2016 horror film, it’s also time to focus on all the non-horror related things that we’ve been zooming by on the ol’ entertainment highway. To that end, I now present the films screened from Tuesday through Sunday, 11/1-11/6.

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Morris From America

When it was finally time to kick off the horror dust, I wanted to make a clean break and writer-director Chad Hartigan’s Morris From America was just about as clean as I could go. This heartwarming (but funny-as-shit) coming-of-age story centers on 13-year-old Morris (future superstar Markees Christmas in a pitch-perfect performance), an aspiring rapper who’s just been uprooted from the U.S. of A. to Germany by his soccer star turned coach dad (Craig Robinson, proving that he does drama as effortlessly as he does comedy). This hits most of the traditional young fish-out-of water beats (Morris finds love, realizes the agony of youth, finds himself, figures out who is dad really is, yadda yadda…) but does everything with a genuine sweetness and sincerity that made this one of my favorites of the year. The film looks gorgeous (cinematographer Sean McElwee, who also shot Manson Family Vacation, gives this a really cool “indie prestige” look that goes over gangbusters) and the performances are spot on. Easily one of the year’s highlights.

In A Valley of Violence

Full disclosure: aside from House of the Devil, I’ve never met a Ti West film that I’ve fully liked. I really want to love this new star of the neo-horror era but, as far as I’m concerned, he can never fully close the deal, leaving me with films that are mostly good (sometimes very good) but never fully satisfying: he’s the equivalent of a delicious beverage with a nasty aftertaste. I’ll watch anything he offers, no questions asked, but I always kind of assume that it will let me down: call it “Westianiam.”

And then came In a Valley of Violence, West’s first non-horror film and the best film in his catalog by a country light-year. This had me hooked from the totally sweet opening spaghetti-Western credits all the way through to the equally sweet closing spaghetti-Western credits. Everything about this is Grade-A beef, from West’s Sergio Leone by way of Sam Raimi direction to the absolutely pitch-perfect performances (aside from the strange “Valley girl” thing that Taissa Farmiga and Karen Gillan were doing). This story of a drifter walking into a bad town and kicking its ass is manna from Heaven for anyone who grew up on The Man With No Name and, without a doubt, one of my very favorite films of the entire year. An absolute classic from start to finish and damn near perfect.

Den of Darkness

A young woman leads a Girl Scout troupe (composed of college-age young women) and stops, for a moment, to apply makeup…just long enough to allow one of her charges to wander too close to a ledge and fall over. After suffering psychologically-induced blindness, the woman moves into a sinister mansion with her over-protective husband and starts experiencing creepy doings. This was easily one of the year’s lowlights, a tedious, stupid and rather exhausting dive into terrible acting, a ridiculously melodramatic storyline and more forehead-slapping moments than a mosquito breeding convention. Nothing about this worked, as far as I’m concerned, although it does have a beginning, middle and end (sort of): hand them the “Participation” badge and get on with it.

Voodoo Rising

Giving Den of Darkness a run for Shittiest Film of the Week has to be Voodoo Rising, the very dictionary definition of dull, terrible horror films. This aims to be a Texas Chainsaw Massacre ripoff but is really just a stupid House of 1000 Corpses ripoff (thanks, Rob) and manages to fulfill every horrible implication that this particular mental image implies. The camera can’t stay in focus, the voodoo angle is negligle (at best) and you’ll fight the Sandman harder than anyone here fights their telegraphed and tedious dooms. Clip your toenails, instead: I can guarantee that promises more thrills.

Encounter

Paint-by-numbers (mostly) found-footage haunted house flick about newlyweds conducting spirit orb research in a typically creepy country house. This felt like a student film, to be honest, and was pretty much the definition of “middle of the road.” Despite a twist that managed to be as mundane as everything that came before, this was a flatline from the get-go and only served to remind of better films (the original Blair Witch and Paranormal Activity, for starters). The one bright spot was the acting, which managed to be much more understated and effective than expected. Trust me when I say that you have much better things to do with your time.

Rock the Kasbah

When last I left everyman-auteur Barry Levinson (whose resume includes everything from Diner to Good Morning Vietnam to Sphere), he had just dropped The Bay, a perfectly acceptable found-footage ecological horror flick which certainly didn’t reinvent the wheel but was perfectly acceptable for a guy in his seventies. This time around, I got a really tired Bill Murray mugging his way around Afghanastan in what should have been Lost in Kabul but really ended up being another tedious espisode of the Bill Show. The only thing in the whole film that actually worked was Zooey Deschanel’s extraordinarily endearing performance, which is pretty funny considering the fact that I normally find her to be the most tedious aspect of any given film: even funnier, of course, is the fact that her character gets very little screen time, leaving me with bupkis to care about. Easily one of the most tedious, obnoxious and disappointing  films I screened all year.

Trash Fire

In the span of only two films (the unbelievable Excision and the incredibly fun, if flawed, Suburban Gothic), writer-director Richard Bates, Jr. shot right to the top of my Must See list of exciting, new genre filmmakers, making his newest one of my most eagerly anticipated offerings of the year. As usual, this twisted auteur did not disappoint in the slightest.

Owen (Adrien Grenier) and Isabel (Angela Trimbur) are the dictionary-definition of “loving couple,” provided your copy defines the term as “fucked-up, awful, impossibly antagonistic, bullying and determined to destroy each other’s sense of self by any means necessary.” After deciding to give their doomed relationship the ol’ college try, Isabel convinces Owen to return to his long-hated grandmother (the always formidible Fionnula Flanagan) and come to terms with his terrible childhood. Big mistake.

Endlessly inventive, thoroughly nasty and written in a way that would make Mamet blush, Trash Fire is a wholly unique experience. Even if the film falters a bit in the second half, when it become more familiar and less feral, this is still astonishing filmmaking, anchored by a trio of perfect performances and some of the most unpleasant scenes of the calendar year. In a year full of exceptional films, Trash Fire stands tall with the very best of them. You might not feel great when it’s over but you owe it to yourself to experience the flames at least once.

Demon Tongue

Cheap-jack, shoddy, cliched and with 100% more in-camera fuckery than any film could reasonably stand, Demon Tongue took the express elevator down in a big way. The only thing that this yawn-inducing possession fest has going for it is an emphasis on Eastern mysticism over more traditional Western exorcismaloozas but that’s one grain of sand in a really bland beach. Save yourself the headache and watch one of those Yule log videos instead.

Consumption

This takes place in a snowy setting, which is pretty rare for an indie horror film: check plus. Moving on to the other column, we also need to put check marks in the “tedious,” “dumb” and “confusing” boxes. Carrying the four and adding stuff up in the margins, we can come to the natural conclusion that this tired tale of friends heading into the wilderness to find strife, possession and murder in yet another isolated cabin is a complete crap-fest with very few redeeming qualities. I think they were shooting for a Lucio Fulci-esque Itallo-horror vibe but managed to undershoot into complete and styleless absurdity. Less fun than sticking your tongue to a frozen lamppost.

Mascots

I’m always going to have a huge soft-spot in my heart for writer-director Christopher Guest: after all, that dude wrote This is Spinal Tap, one of the single greatest films in the history of the medium, and played Nigel Tufnel, one of cinema’s great creations. As a director, he’s been responsible for a handful of great-to-decent satires, from Waiting For Guffman and Best in Show to A Mighty Wind and For Your Consideration. Nothing has ever approached the heady heights of the mighty Tap, of course, but what could?

Certainly not Guest’s newest film, Mascots, which takes a very gently withering glance at the world of sports mascots, big and small. Despite a pretty amazing cast and some clever moments, the film never catches fire until the climatic final competition and, even then, the flame amounts to a spark more than a blaze. Despite looking grear and being consistently smart, I found myself smiling frequently but rarely laughing. Pleasant enough but thoroughly disposable and forgettable, despite a pretty amazing cast.

The Windmill

Hands down, one of my favorite horror films of this year or any other. A busload of tourists heads to a picturesque windmill in the Dutch wilds and manages to run afoul of a Medieval miller who traded his soul to Satan and ground up the bones of the locals to, literally, make his bread. The Miller guards one of the Gates to Hell (aka his windmill) and he’s more than happy to harvest a few more souls for his infernal boss, much to the consternation of said hapless tourists.

The Satanic Miller is a thoroughly kickass creation, sort of a cross between the unstoppable juggernaut from the Resident Evil series and Jason Vorhees and the destruction he wrecks is massively entertaining, to say the least. The characters are all fun (if a little cliched, as per this type of thing) and the film looks simply smashing, with eye-popping vibrancy and some genuinely epic shots: that windmill is just too goddamn cool and it never gets old watching it loom into the frame. Add in some of the goriest, most impressive kills of the year and you have, without a doubt, one of the best “pure” horror films that 2016 has to offer: no metaphor, no subtlety, just pure pedal-to-the-metal horror. Outstanding.

Scare Campaign

My previous experience with Australia’s Cairnes’ brothers (writing-directing duo Cameron and Colin) was their supremely wicked 100 Bloody Acres, a pitchblack “comedy” that featured some particularly nasty business with an industrial shredding machine and loads of sly insight into the plight of farmers and ranchers in the Land Down Under. This time around, the Cairnes have set their sights on the twin modern trends of reality shows and elaborate pranking: the crew of struggling reality show Scare Campaign decide to take their pranking to the next level when they target a potentially unbalanced individual and film his inevitable breakdown. Suffice to say that things do not go as planned in any way, shape or form. The results, as expected, are deliciously gory, supremely smart and constantly inventive, as befits these fearless filmmakers. Some of the best genre films from the past 20 years have come out of Australia and the Cairnes continue that proud tradition with flying colors.

Hail, Caesar!

I’ll be honest: I haven’t really and truly loved a Coen film since 1998’s The Big Lebowski, which still holds a place in my heart as one of my all-time favorite films. I’ve appreciated and enjoyed what’s followed, for the most part: No Country For Old Men, Oh Brother, Where Art Thou and Inside Llewyn Davis are all great films. I just haven’t loved them in the same way that I loved Lebowski, Barton Fink, Fargo and Blood Simple.

This is all by way of saying that I really loved Hail, Caesar!, the Coens’ adorable love letter to Golden Era Hollywood and easily their most evervescent and bubbly film since The Ladykillers. Everything about this goofy gem worked for me and I lost track of the times where I just sat there with a giddy grin on my face. The nods to various classic film genres are always well-done and clever (Channing Tatum’s Gene Kelly nod was absolutely one of the year’s highlights) and the whole zany affair reminded me of nothing less than my beloved Lebowski and Fink.

More than anything, Hail, Caesar! is the Coens having fun again: there’s a sense of joy and zany glee that fills every single frame, none of which manages to detract from the exquisitely smart and Byzantine plot. The performances are all memorable, the film is impossibly kinetic and veteran cinematographer Roger Deakins makes it all look like a billion bucks. I’ll undoubtedly write more about the film, in the future, but I’ll leave you all with the Cliff Notes version: Hail, Caesar! is one of the very best films I screened in 2016. Period.

Stay tuned for the second week of November, coming soon!

The 31 Days of Halloween (2016): 10/29-10/31

Tags

31 Days of Halloween, cinema, film reviews, films, Halloween traditions, Jack Goes Home, Movies, Nerve, October, Stalkher, The Sighting, The Triangle

At long last, I present the fifth and final week of the 31 Days of Halloween. Enjoy and look for a final wrap-up on the month coming soon, along with information and an update on the ongoing 2016 Horror Project. As the curtain closes on this season, I present the final five films of October.

 

The Sighting

For a while, David Blair and Adam Pitman’s The Sighting (with Pitman also starring) is a pretty average, indie Sasquatch attack film: we have a couple of friends on a road-trip to Canada who take an ill-advised detour and end up attacked by a group of angry Sasquatch. The acting is okay (with a tendency towards the unbelievable), the dialogue is a bit clunky and there’s a little too much split-screen, slo-mo and the like for my tastes. It’s not terrible, mind you, but it is terribly familiar and rather meh.

At a certain point, however, the filmmakers did two things that not only hooked me but managed to elevate the film from “meh” to “decent.” First, there was a thoroughly unique and interesting explaination for the Sasquatch (complete with chalk-line animation) that was actually one of the more original inventions I’ve seen in a genre film, of any budget, in some time: bravo. Second, the filmmakers introduced a genuinely intriguing twist and then managed to develop it intelligently, while still leaving enough room for doubt by the final credits. In a year where too many films proceeded from A to B to C in as safe a way as possible, it was unbeliveably refreshing to see an ultra-low budget flick take the route less traveled. While The Sighting was never exactly amazing, it was solid and ended on a particularly good note: bunts and grand-slams both earn bases, after all.

The Triangle

In a coincidence that can only be termed “cosmic,” the very next film that I screened ended up involving the same creative personnel and actors as the previous film: you might not believe me but I swear this was unplanned. In a further coincidence that can only be described as “impossible to ignore,” The Triangle ends up suffering much of the same exact problems as The Sighting, yet also benefits from the same game-saving twist, albeit one that’s even better than the one in their Sasquatch flick. Truth, as they say, is really stranger than fiction!

The Triangle begins as a pretty standard-issue found-footage film about a group of friends (the filmmakers, using their own names) who go visit an old friend at his commune-like home and wind up in the same sorts of situations that usually happens in these types of things. The acting is decent, there’s an almost comical over-reliance on split-screens (much of which serves to confuse the action rather than heighten it) and the whole thing feels very familiar. Then, out of nowhere, the filmmakers drop a simply genius twist, the kind of thing that would be more at home in 2001: A Space Odyssey and we’re really off to the races. From there, The Triangle becomes pretty damn fascinating, right up to the enormously satisfying (if frustrating) open-ending. If this filmmaking team ever manages to make a consistent film, I’d be willing to wager it would reserve a spot on one of my future Best of lists, no questions asked: the amount of potential here is really exciting.

Stalkher

Some films will just be a tough sell, no matter how you slice ’em, and the pitch-black Australian comedy Stalkher is definitely one of those. The directorial debut of leads John Jarratt (perhaps best known as the terrifying Mick in Wolf Creek) and Kaarin Fairfax, written by Kristijana Maric, Stalkher is the tender story of a creepy guy who slips into his co-worker’s home, one night, with the intention of doing her grevious injury. He wakes up tied to a chair, however, and quickly realizes that his prey is every bit as “damaged” as he is and just as eager to have some human interaction, even if it has to be with the guy who just broke into her house. As the night progresses, a twisted, perverted battle of the sexes ensues, with each of the would-be “lovers” using every trick in their books to gain the upper hand on the other. Will Jack be able to free himself and finish the job he came to do or will Emily finally find the love that she’s always wanted?

Nothing about Stalkher would work if the leads weren’t so unbelievably fearless: this is, after all, essentially a two-person show, almost like a stage play, in a way. There is an undeniable thrill in watching Jarratt and Fairfax (two extremely talanted performers at the absolute heights of their respective games) absolutely rip each other to shreds, both spiritually, emotionally and physically. The dialogue is raw, honest, very funny and pretty offensive, while the frank discussions about men and women pull zero punches on either side: Jack is a revolting misogynist but Emily certainly isn’t spared from Maric acidic script. At times, the film was actually too awkward, painful and honest to watch: there are moments where the action veers effortlessly from extreme hilarity (Fairfax is an absolute master of the cutting comment) to gut-punch ugliness and it can give you a bit of emotional whiplash. There were times were I felt terrible for laughing and did, anyway. Stalkher definitely won’t be for everyone but it’s a massively impressive co-directorial debut and Jarratt and Fairfax absolutely deserve commendation for everything they did.

Nerve

Based on Jeanne Ryan’s young-adult novel, Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman’s (the team behind Catfish and Paranormal Activity 3) adaptation of Nerve is really more of a thriller than a horror film, which makes its placement on my ultimate 2016 horror list a bit dubious. Questions of genre-placement aside, I ended up liking this smart, fast-paced techno-thriller quite a bit, even if much of it was as predictable and leading as an old-fashioned rail-shooter video game. Young Venus Delmonico (Emma Roberts, proving she’s one of the best, most exciting new actors out there) decides to participate in a game where players perform increasingly dangerous “dares” for a horde of anonymous, online spectators. She finds danger, betrayal, heartbreak and true love, all while doing her best to free the masses from the blinders of the status quo. If it sounds a bit familiar, it is, although that doesn’t stop the fun (for the most part).

Nerve has a lot going for it: fantastic cast of young actors (Roberts and Dave Franco are particularly good); exceptionally colorful and cool look, nerve-wracking action sequences (there’s a blindfolded motorcycle ride that easily one of the year’s best setpieces) and just enough familiarity to allow the filmmakers to shorthand many of the characters and situations, getting us right to the “good stuff” (for better or worse). This was extremely polished and decidedly non-horror-oriented but, as mentioned before, I really enjoyed it: as someone who is decidedly not the target audience for young adult cinema, that very fact, alone, elevated this quite a bit.

Jack Goes Home

Several years ago, I saw a film that disturbed and affected me quite a bit: I actually haven’t stopped thinking about it since, to be honest, in one way or another. Eduardo Sanchez’s Lovely Molly was a truly horrifying, painful and impossibly bleak parable about drug addiction and sexual abuse, couched in a demonic possession narrative, that absolutely howled with genuine, real pain. I never thought I would see another low-budget genre film like that. Enter Thomas Dekker’s Jack Goes Home, yet another impossibly bleak film that will, no doubt, knock around in my skull for years to come. And they say that horror is just empty thrills…

Jack (Rory Culkin, in a truly amazing, award-worthy performance), a very troubled young man, returns home to see his mother (Lin Shaye, more unhinged than anything since her tentecular outburst in Mouth of Madness) after he finds out that his beloved dad has just died in a car accident. Jack makes the trip with his childhood friend, Shanda (Daveigh Chase), leaving his pregnant fiancee (Britt Robertson, in one of the film’s most thankless roles) behind. Once there, Jack gets hit on by his gay, next-door-neighbor (Louis Hunter) and meets his dad’s favorite veternarian (Natasha Lyonne, with the film’s other thankless non-role). He also finds a mysterious tape recording, addressed to him, and some rather strange, disturbing things in the attic. As Jack begins to remember more and more about his repressed childhood, he also comes to learn some terrible things, secrets that no one should ever have to know. Will Jack be able to hold on to his fraying sanity or will his trip home be a journey straight into Hell?

Jack Goes Home is one of those rare films where I’m not sure how much it means to say you liked it…or if that’s even possible, to be honest. Extremely well-made and with one of my favorite performances of the year (Culkin really is magnificent in this), this was also one seriously miserable film: the revelation takes the film into a whole, horrible other direction which has the effect of sucking the viewer down into an absolute black hole of gloom. I can honestly say that there wasn’t a single part of the film that I truly “enjoyed,” even though I respected the hell out of the whole thing. Even Culkin’s performance, which I’ve termed one of my ‘favorites,’ is based on such misery, anger and venom (often directed at innocent people) that is something else best admired from afar. Call Jack Goes Home the anti-feel-good hit of the fall.

And, with that, we finish the final day of October, the ever sacred 31st: Halloween. Stay tuned for a final wrap-up on everything screened this month, along with a few final thoughts. Until then: Happy Halloween, boos and ghouls!