The Year in Horror (2016) – The Best of Times (Part 2)

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2016, Best of 2016, cinema, Clown, film reviews, films, Green Room, High-Rise, horror, horror films, horror movies, Movies, summer camp, The Alchemist Cookbook, The Autopsy of Jane Doe, The Monster, The Similars, The Witch, Trash Fire, year in review, year-end lists

At long last, after an entire year of watching the best (and the rest) that horror cinema had to offer, it’s now time for me to offer my picks for the very best of the year. In the interest of giving each film its proper due, I’ve opted to split my Top 20 choices right down the middle: the final ten films will be coming up in a future post.

As with most of my lists this year, I present these films in no particular order: if choosing the 20 best films out of a field that featured 44 possibilities was difficult, ranking one of those over the other might prove to be impossible. Truth be told, any of those 20 films might flop places with any of the others, based on my mood or the current weather: the only thing I can say, beyond a shadow of a doubt, is that these were the twenty 2016 horror films that made the biggest impression on me. These were the films that didn’t just get it right: they showed everyone else how it’s supposed to be done in the first place.

Longtime readers will probably be able to figure a few of these out ahead of time (my intense love of Wheatley, Potrykus and Bogliano makes any of their current films a usual suspect) but I’m sure there will be a few that might surprise or confound: as always, the only thing I care about is how good the actual film is. Budget, subject-matter, quality…none of these mean a damn thing if the final product punches me in the gut and makes me think. Any and every 2016 horror film had a chance to make it onto this list, from trad multiplex fare to no-budget indies: I watched them all with the same open, accepting eyes and mind.

With no further ado, then, I present the first half of my Top 20 Horror Films of 2016. Stay tuned for the second half, along with some of the honorable mentions that almost found their way onto this list. My advice? Seek all of these out and thank me later.

– – –

The Autopsy of Jane Doe

The concept is pure simplicity: a father and son team of coroners (Brian Cox and Emile Hersch) are tasked by the local sheriff with determining the cause of death on a seemingly unmarked body recovered from a grisly crime scene. This is an overnight, rush job, since the beleaguered lawman needs some sort of explanation to feed to the hungry press in the morning. Ready to do the magic they do, the coroners bunker down with the Jane Doe and prepare to spend the evening on a very thorough autopsy of a very strange body. And then, of course, all hell breaks loose.

André Øvredal’s The Autopsy of Jane Doe is probably going to come off as a bit of a tough sell and that’s a real shame: get past the idea that you’re about to watch the equivalent of an hour-long, graphic (if tasteful) autopsy and you actually get to the heart of the story, so to speak, and realize that you’ve actually been watching one of the very best supernatural horror films to come down the pike in years.

Nuanced, perfectly atmospheric, top-lined by a pair of performances that would gain much more acclaim in a non-horror film and genuinely scary, this is the kind of film, like Let the Right On In, that expands the reach of the genre and allows for a perfect synthesis of horror and prestige, in-your-face-grue and tender emotions. I watched an awful lot of horror films in 2016 but this, without a doubt, was one of the very finest: to anyone impressed by The Conjuring 2, I gladly point them in this direction and request that they see how it’s actually supposed to be done.

The Witch

It’s easy to discount Robert Eggers’ chilling tale of witchcraft and black magic in pre-Salem Witch-trials New England when it comes to compiling year-end lists. After all: the film received extensive festival release in 2015, received wide theatrical release in February 2016 and had all but secured itself a slot on any critical best-of before most critics had even started their lists. Why add another assenting voice to the crowd?

The truth, of course, is that Eggers’ perfectly measured creeper deserves all of the acclaim that it has received by virtue of actually being that good. Many non-critics have complained that The Witch is not actually scary, that it’s a classic case of style over substance, metaphor and subtext over blood-letting and endorphin rush. This is not only reductive but flat-out wrong: in a darkened room, with a good sound system and none of the external forces that are so good at wrecking internal peace, The Witch is a virtual masterclass in sustaining an oppressive level of tension and dread for the entirety of a film.

There is no release to be found from a silly stoner cracking wise, a musical packing montage or a hot and heavy sex scene: this is the ultimate, existential dread of knowing that you are a tiny speck of dirt in a gigantic cosmos of infinite, terrifying possibility…a tasty bit of food floating in a bottomless ocean, fearfully waiting for an unseen leviathan to gobble you up. I would wager to say that if you didn’t find The Witch frightening on a very primal level, you might actually be a little too afraid to take the good, long look into the darkness that this requires.

High-Rise

One of the biggest conflicts I had when compiling this list (indeed, when embarking on my original plan to screen every 2016 horror release) was the question of what, exactly, constitutes a horror film. Does it have to be explicitly “horror”, filled with zombies, ghosts, monsters, insane slashers or any combination of the above? What about films where characters devolve into frightening fits of insanity and commit terrible acts? Wouldn’t something like that be considered as “horrible” as something like Dracula? After all, almost all horror fans can agree that Alfred Hitchcock’s classic Psycho is a horror film and what is that but the tale of an individual going mad and committing horrific acts?

In that spirit, I handily nominate masterful auteur Ben Wheatley’s stunning adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s novel High-Rise as one of the very best horror films of 2016. This icy-cold, Kubrickian tale about the breakdown of humanity and moral constraints among the trapped residents of a futuristic, 1970s high-rise begins with our humble protagonist chowing down on leg of dog and proceeds to work backwards to show us that there are much, much worse things than this.

Gorgeously filmed (longtime Wheatley cinematographer Laurie Rose deserves a legit award nod but I’m more than happy to nominate for a Tomby), masterfully acted (the entire cast is simply splendid), faithful to the classic source-material and as fundamentally disturbing as Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange, High-Rise is nothing short of a modern masterpiece and further proof that Wheatley is one of the very best filmmakers working today.

The Alchemist Cookbook

A good film can entertain you, provide you with a couple of hours of stress-fire time away from the real world and give you the opportunity to just zone out. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that and there never will be. The thing is…a bad film can do that, too. After all, where would the drinking game industry be without “so bad they’re good” films like Megalodon or anything bearing the name Asylum?

A truly great film, however, doesn’t just entertain you (although it should also be doing plenty of that, obviously): it makes you think. A truly great film isn’t content to merely tick the boxes off that get the job done and provoke the most immediate response: a truly great film will tick off every damn box on the sheet, if it feels like it, in service of whatever point it wants to make, viewer safety, comfort and ultimate entertainment level be damned. Writer/director/genius Joel Potrykus is a truly great filmmaker and his newest mind-blower, The Alchemist Cookbook, is a truly great film for the exact reasons outline above.

This is a film with no easy answers or even a particularly easy narrative reference: you could say that’s it’s about a mentally disturbed chemist trying to find the secret of life while holed-up in dingy RV in the middle of the woods but that would be like describing 2001 as “that ape movie.” It’s about insanity, paranoia and possibly schizophrenia, sure, but it’s also about medieval alchemy, friendship, love, greed, demons, monstrous felines and the need to prove your value to the world at large. Like Potrykus’ previous masterpiece, Buzzard, The Alchemist Cookbook doesn’t just look at fringe individuals: it IS a fringe individual, a completely insane, messy, confusing, fucked up and thoroughly awe-inspiring piece of outsider art.

Trash Fire

Prior to Trash Fire, I knew writer/director Richard Bates, Jr. as the mastermind behind coming-of-age headfuck Excision (The Breakfast Club meets American Mary) and Suburban Gothic (The Frighteners by way of American Beauty), so I assumed that his newest would be more of the same: supremely arch and clever, full of smart, likable characters and some rather intense, if artful, explosions of violence. Turns out Trash Fire is nothing like Bates’ previous films save for one important aspect: it’s just as damn good, if not exponentially better.

The clever set-up takes a while to get to full-blown terror territory. For the first half of the film, we’re basically stuck with the single worst couple in the history of romantic attachments: Owen (Adrian Grenier) and Isabel (Angela Trimbur) aren’t so much in love as ruthlessly dedicated to making each other as miserable as possible. Just when it seems that the couple might actually achieve the impossible and draw physical blood with their virulently poisonous verbal abuse, Isabel drops the bomb that she’s pregnant and they decide, against all odds to try to make their shitty relationship work. Part of this involves Owen getting back in touch with his estranged mother, played by the irrepressible Fionnula Flanagan, a woman who makes their mutual hatred look like childs’ play. There’s also, of course, the little issue of Owen’s long-unseen and hidden sister, a frightened (and frightening) figure who might just hold the key to the entire family’s destruction.

Trash Fire is the kind of film where the verbal barbs are so constant, amazing and genuinely painful that you’ll find yourself watching through clenched fingers for the first half, out of sheer discomfort, only to keep your hands in place once things hit a whole new level of uncomfortable. Never predictable, always fresh and intensely nasty, Trash Fire is the kind of delirious descent into other people’s’ hells that cinema was practically invented for, ending in the kind of Southern Gothic apocalypse that would make Flannery O’Connor proud. Unlike anything else this year, Trash Fire will stick with you long after it’s over.

Clown

I won’t go into the origins of Jon Watts and Christopher Ford’s exceptional creature-feature Clown here, mostly because I’ve discussed them extensively in the past, but the short version is that this is the fake Eli Roth trailer turned actual, third-party movie, with Roth as executive producer. The story is pretty fascinating, as these things go, but decidedly secondary to the real reason we’re here: this thing rocks harder than an uneven washing machine on a cobblestone floor.

Decidedly old-school in construction and intent, Clown looks to ’80s-’90s-era creature features for inspiration (think Pumpkinhead and The Fly, for a basic frame of reference) but vaults over its inspiration by virtue of a genuinely original, slam-bang concept, some ridiculously cool, well-made gore effects/set-pieces and tragic characters that you not only root for but empathize with. Lead Andy Powers brings a tremendous amount of pathos to his performance as the doomed father/titular monster, recalling nothing so less as Jeff Goldblum’s unforgettable descent into the hell of Brundle Fly.

When it came time to salute the best horror films of the year, there was no way in hell I was going to leave off Clown, one of the best, genuine, full-throttle horror films I’ve ever had the pleasure of sitting on the edge of my seat through. There might have been more poetic, measured, artistic and “high-falutin'” horror films released in 2016 but if you were looking for the real deal, old-school style, there wasn’t much better than Clown.

Summer Camp

At first glance, Alberto Martini’s Summer Camp didn’t seem like much to get exited about: a group of camp counselors fall afoul of something evil at a summer camp in Spain, people die, lather, rinse, repeat. I figured this would be just another 2016 film to check off the list, something that probably already had a spot reserved for itself in the “Decent” section of my roster. Boy, was I wrong.

Turns out Martini’s Summer Camp (co-scripted with Danielle Schleif) is non-stop, whiplash-inducing insanity with not one but at least FIVE of the best twists I’ve seen in ANY film, genre or otherwise. I’m not talking about “so-and-so is a double-crosser” bullshit: I’m talking full-blown, jaw-dropped, yell-at-the-screen in delight twists, the kind that show the filmmakers are not only paying attention to their own film but all the ones that came before it.

Summer Camp is the kind of film that indie genre filmmakers need to make more of: simple in construction and execution, yet mind-blowing in concept and intention, Summer Camp obviously didn’t cost a fortune but it didn’t need to. Martini and company have put a premium on an intelligent script, ably executed by a talented cast, and the results speak for themselves. For best results, see this with a group of like-minded souls who are going in blind and then kick back and watch the fun.

The Similars

Right off the bat, writer/director Isaac Ezban’s The Similars should live up to its name: we begin in a desolate, rainy and nearly abandoned railroad station, shot in moody, color-infused black-and-white, as a solemn narrator calmly explains that we’re about to see some very strange sights, indeed. From this direct nod to the glory of Rod Steiger’s immortal Twilight Zone, we leap into a simmering stew of paranoia, fear and suspicion, as the various people waiting for a train to Mexico City all begin, one by look, to look exactly like the same person. As tensions rise, the shocked passengers demand answers: as always, however, they might not like the ones they get.

Endlessly inventive, darkly whimsical and possessed of some of the most casually shocking images I saw all year (a bit involving a dog will haunt me until the very last day I draw breath), this uses The Twilight Zone as a frame but fills the canvas with influences as far-ranging as Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Luis Bunuel and David Lynch, all while managing to maintain a tone that splits the difference between dead-pan gallows humor and full-blown horror.

While this might not fit the strictest definition of a “horror film,” to some, this is another perfect example of the deeper, more intense and existential fears that the best fright films latch onto. There’s something genuinely scary about a machete-wielding maniac, don’t get me wrong: I just happen to find the idea of involuntarily losing your very identity and sense of self to be equally horrifying.

Green Room

Working his way through the color spectrum, writer/director Jeremy Saulnier follows up his bleak revenge tale Blue Ruin with the equally bleak siege film Green Room: at this rate, we should get a film with a name like Red Doom some time in 2017 and it’ll probably make Cormac McCarthy look like Mr. Rogers.

This time around, Saulnier’s patented “hopeless individuals at the end of their rope” are an idealistic straight-edge band who get trapped in the titular location by ravenous neo-Nazis after witnessing a murder in a backwoods, Oregon club. The skinheads outnumber our heroes ten-to-one, are heavily armed, have vicious attack dogs, no qualms about killing people and are led by Patrick frickin’ Stewart, fer chrissakes: this ain’t no rock n’ roll…this is homicide!

Featuring one of Anton Yelchin’s final performances, a rare serious turn from Arrested Development’s Alia Shawkat and a truly memorable, chilling performance from Stewart as the most genteel, reserved and polite monster since Hannibal Lecter sipped chianti, Green Room is non-stop tension and redlined danger, only taking a breather before slamming home the next horrifying development. As with the best that 2016 had to offer, however, Green Room gives so much more than sick thrills, mind-searing violence and an adrenaline overdose: it provides real characters that you actually come to care an awful lot about. When the violence happens (and it happens quite often), you aren’t laughing at stupid stereotypes and cheering on the aggressors: you’re watching people who look and sound a whole lot like people you know get brutally violated and slaughtered. Call it a thriller, if you want, but I think that’s just about as horrifying as it comes.

The Monster

For some reason, writer/director Bryan Bertino seems to get an awful lot of shit from the horror community and I’m not quite sure why. Sure, his breakout debut, The Strangers, was a slick home-invasion flick that struck a chord with the masses but it was also tightly plotted and fairly effective, even if it looks overly familiar these days. His follow-up, Mockingbird, was even better but seemed to be almost universally reviled. For my money, though, that creepy little bit of weirdness about disparate strangers connected via a mysterious “game” was one of the best films of its year, revealing a filmmaker who had no problem deviating from the straight-and-narrow in order to grab his audience by the throat and give them a good shake.

This time around, Bertino presents us with The Monster, a veritable prestige piece about an estranged mother and daughter who find that their own poisonous relationship is the least of their worries when they’re stuck in the woods with an honest-to-god monster. Essentially a two-person film, everything rides solely on the shoulders of Zoe Kazan and young Ella Ballentine: good thing they’re both extraordinary, giving the kinds of performances that normally feature in Oscar clip segments. Although the film moves slowly and deliberately, in the first half, it does anything but spin its wheels: these foundational scenes pay off amazing dividends once the stakes are raised and it becomes life-or-death.

Full of genuine emotional heft and bolstered by two of the strongest performances of the year, The Monster sounds like a Hallmark film, right up until the time the creature (who looks fantastic) pops up and starts laying waste to everything, switching tracks onto a rail that leads straight to Predator land. As someone who foolishly demands that horror films serve both the head and the heart, The Monster is my kind of film: if you’re into quality, I’m guessing it’ll be your kind of film, too.

Stay tuned for the second half of this list, along with the honorable mentions that almost (but not quite) clawed their way into the top honors.

The Year in Horror (2016) – The Ones That Got Away

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2016, Blair Witch, cinema, Film, horror, horror movies, Movies, Ouija: Origin of Evil, Phantasm: Ravager, Shin Godzilla, The Love Witch, year-end lists

259 horror films released to theaters and VOD this year…my plan to see every one of them was always going to be an uphill climb. Despite some truly Herculean efforts, especially during the annual 31 Days of Halloween, there were always going to be a few that slipped through my fingers.

In that spirit, allow me to spotlight five films that I just didn’t get to this year. None of these will (obviously) factor into my end-of-year lists but I’m sure that at least a few of them would have placed pretty high. Since I still plan to see every 2016 offering, these will all get screened at some point but, suffice to say, I regret missing these more than the Cabin Fever remake or Sharknado 4.

– – –

The Love Witch

This lush nod to a bygone era of genre film was on my radar all year but its limited theatrical release gave me too small a window to satisfy my curiosity. Suffice to say that I’ll be watching it as soon as it hits VOD in the new year but, for now, I’ll have to take the critics’ word that it was quite an extraordinary bit of cinema.

Blair Witch

As a fan of just about everything Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett have done, I wasn’t opposed to them tackling a Blair Witch reboot, especially since I didn’t particularly care for the original. The “stealth” marketing campaign came off as silly, however, and none of the specifics really grabbed me enough to get me out of my living room and down to the neighborhood multiplex. This is still Wingard and Barrett, however, so I’ll reserve final judgement until after the film hits video next month.

Shin Godzilla

The buzz behind this was substantial enough to pique my curiosity, even though I’m not the biggest fan of the franchise: I don’t really have anything against Godzilla, per se, but he’s never been my favorite cinematic monster. The darker tone was intriguing, I’ll admit, but not quite enough to get me out for the handful of theatrical dates in my neck o’ the woods.

Ouija: Origin of Evil

Despite having no familiarity with the low-budget original, I actually wanted to see the sequel, if for no other reason than my genuine respect for director Mike Flanagan’s filmography. His other 2016 film, Hush, is one of my honorable mentions for the year but I’ll have to catch this when it hits VOD next month. After seeing so many truly terrible possession and Ouija board films this year (Satanic, I’m looking right at you), I definitely regret missing what critical consensus seems to imply was the best of the batch: c’est la vie.

Phantasm: Ravager

I blame this one on poor time management: I had every intention of watching the final installment of the Phantasm series when it first debuted earlier this year…I really did. It just didn’t seem right to do that without revisiting the rest of the series, however, and that never happened. The final adventures of Reggie and the Tall Man will have to wait until next year, it would seem.

Weekly Screenings: 11/7-11/13

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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.

 

 

The 31 Days of Halloween (2016): 10/22-10/28

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31 Days of Halloween, 8989 Redstone, cinema, Dead 7, Evil Souls, film reviews, films, Halloween traditions, horror, horror films, horror movies, I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House, Movies, October, The Funhouse Massacre, The Interior, The Pack, Within

As we near the end of this glorious month, I now present you with the eight films screened during the 4th Week of October: this features some of the most extreme highs and lows of the year, so enjoy the roller-coaster. After this, we only have the 30th and 31st before we can close out this year’s festivities. Fire up your Dragula and feast those blood-shot windows to the soul on the list below.

Within

Another well-made but thoroughly pedestrian and obvious haunted house film, this one is saved a bit by an absolutely batshit, brutal finale that comes out of left field. A newlywed couple and the husband’s sassy teen daughter move into a house with a bad reputation and run into lots of scary bumps in the night. If the house doesn’t get them, maybe it’ll be the pervy next-doot-neighbor, who also happens to be the neighborhood locksmith: gotta love a creep with a strategy! Well-made and acted but absolutely everything up until the last 20 minutes or so feels about as old as Stonehenge.

8989 Redstone

The hot-headed, casually racist host of a home renovation show and his obnoxious daughter have a new project, deep in the decaying heart of Detroit’s worst neighborhood. Turns out the house may be a bigger threat than the area, however, as weird things begin to happen and various workers suffer injuries ranging from bad to worse. When Rebecca begins to see visions of the house’s original owner and architect, her dad has to determine whether this is a recurrence of a previous mental breakdown or something much darker and more insidious. Despite a cheap look, an occasionally silly script and some strictly amateur acting, this actually had ideas and imagination to spare (the central concept seems to exist in the same wheelhouse as The Dark Tower and House of Leaves, which is pretty fuckin’ rad, if ya ask me) and the chaotic finale hits Fulciesque levels of insanity that were only hinted at earlier. Yeah, the ultimate resolution is a bit muddled (if I’m reading it right) but it’s a bumpy ride with some undeniably cool moments.

Evil Souls

Incredibly sleazy, often unpleasant and throughly gonzo throwback to old-school Italian horror maestros like Fulci and Soavi, Maurizio and Roberto del Piccolo’s Evil Souls definitely won’t be for everyone but it sure as hell got me nostalgic for those old grindhouse days. An insane madman named Valentine (the all-the-way-in Peter Gosgrove, doing frighteningly good work) kidnaps two women and holds them captive in his dungeon. He’s an eloquent sociopath who dresses like a turn-of-the-century gentleman and thinks he’s the Marquis de Sade. He also has some kind of a larger plan, one that involves his drug-addicted, insane prostitute sister (he’s also her pimp) and his childhood best friend, who’s now the local priest. Did I mention that his plan also seems to involve the kidnapped women’s sons and, possibly, something occult? Because it does. Or seems to.

To be honest, it’s a little hard to tell: like the best Italian horror films, this exists on pure nightmare logic, right up to the thoroughly head-scratching finale. Like the best, old-school Italian horror films, Evil Souls works splendidly despite (or even because of) its handicaps and shortcomings: it’s a film that commits to a central tone and runs with it fearlessly. Even when the film doesn’t work (which is often) or becomes almost unbearable nasty (there’s quite a bit of graphic torture and realistic practical effects), it still manages to show a rare level of restraint that keeps it from pitching wholesale into trash cinema: it just toes the art-house line, if barely. Individual results may vary but for someone who grew up on a steady diet of Italian VHS fare, this one felt right at home.

The Funhouse Massacre

Arthouse, slow-burn horror will always be my personal favorite but, sometimes, you really just need a good, old-fashioned blood-n-guts slasher: with that in mind, Andy Palmer’s The Funhouse Massacre was just the film that I needed this October. This endlessly inventive, genuinely cool, outrageously gory little jewel is an obvious love-letter to horror, in all its era, and that’s something that’s always gonna hit me hard. The plot is simple: a collection of nefarious serial killers are sprung from the local maximum security nut-hatch (think Arkham Asylum but with mild-mannered Robert Englund as warden) and take up residence in the local haunted house attraction, an attraction which happens to feature individual exhibits based on the killers’ exploits. The real killers move into the attractions, people really start dying in the middle of a crowded carnival and the whole thing builds to a truly insane Grand Guignol finale on the terror-stricken midway.

I dearly loved everything about this film, even when it veered hard into the cheese (the obvious Harley Quinn substitute was pretty silly, in a cosplay kinda way). The references to other horror characters and franchises could be really clever (the cannibal chef was named Ramsey, ala Blood Feast and Rocco the Clown was an obvious Leatherface stand-in) and the high-energy, good-humored and gory proceedings reminded me of nothing less than Waxwork, one of my all-time favorites from any era. The Funhouse Massacre is an ideal group or party, fill of quotable lines and plenty of genuine laugh-out-loud moments. Easily one of my favorites of the year and sure to be a seasonal rotation, in the future.

Dead 7

The cast list on this one should give you a pretty good idea of what to expect: Backstreet Boys Nick Carter, Howie Dorough and AJ McClean; NSYNC’s Joey Fatone and Chris Kirkpatrick; 98 Degrees founder Jeff Timmons; O-Town members Erik Michael Estrada, Jacob Underwood and Trevor Penick; TV host Carrie Keagan; Jon Secada; Everclear’s Art Alexakis. Behind the scenes, we get SyFy in the producer’s chair and Nick Carter with a screenplay credit. Plotwise, it’s a “comedic” zombie-Western take on The Magnificent Seven, featuring the boy band members in all the pivotal roles, both good guys and bad.

As someone who avoids purposefully campy and stupid films like the plague, I can only give my personal, unbiased opinion: Dead 7 was, without a doubt, the absolute nadir of a year that has seen plenty of stinky cheese. I stretch to think of another film that was so effortlessly tedious and obnoxious, so cheap-jack, manic and utterly tone-deaf: at least B.C. Butcher was under an hour…this monstrosity felt at least twice that, if not more. I’m obviously not the intended audience for something like this but, even in this case, I really did try to find something worthwhile, anything. At the end, the best that I could say is that it finally does end, eventually: that’s really the best I got, I’m afraid.

The Pack

Despite all of the tedious haunted house and possession clones, there were still plenty of absolute treasures in the 2016 horror roster and the Australian killer dog film The Pack was one of the very best…maybe Top 5, even, if I were forced to draw up a list today. Expertly plotted, beautifully shot and full of endearing, empathetic performances, everything about this sleeper is top-notch and virtually flawless. With a supremely simple set-up (a pack of uncannily intelligent wild dogs terrorize an Australian family on their isolated sheep ranch) and perfect balance between pulse-pounding action setpieces and genuine horror, this is as lean and mean as it gets. Like the best films, the less said the better: just take my advice and seek this one out ASAP.

The Interior

Easily one of the most inventive, odd films I screened this month, writer-director Trevor Juras’ full-length debut, The Interior, is pretty impossible to classify. Think of it as an odd, sardonic mash-up of Into the Wild, Dead Man and The Blair Witch Project but that’s probably as far in a box as I can put this one: a cooly blase office drone (Patrick McFadden doing magnificent work) receives some sort of bad medical diagnosis (we’re never really told what) and decides to retreat into the woods, alone, to find some sort of peace within himself.

He doesn’t quite find that but what he does find is certainly open to interpretation: one of the best things about Juras’ confident debut is that there’s no hand-holding, whatsoever. He establishes a consistent mood (helped immensely by the gorgeous forest location and some of the creepiest night scenes ever), gets us to like his main character and then lets the rest develop organically. The Interior is a slow, methodical film but it’s never boring or tedious: as with the best filmmakers, you trust that the destination will be worth the journey and, depending on your level of patience and frustratability, Trevor Juras absolutely does not let down. Eerie, smart and full of surprising humor, The Interior is definitely one of the year’s better films.

I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House

I was fully prepared for Oz Perkins’ second film, I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House, to vault right to the top of my Best of the Year list: after all, his still unreleased debut, The Blackcoat’s Daughter (nee February), received almost universal praise on the festival circuit, with the filmmaker being credited as the next-big-thing in atmospheric, slow-burn horror. Since that’s my favorite flavor, I was ready and willing to dive in with both hands.Spoiler alert: it’s not making the list.

While I Am…looks gorgeous, sort of like a Merchant/Ivory take on the Waniverse, and features more creeping dread and leisurely pacing than a funeral procession, it’s also completely empty inside, so devoid of genuine meaning and impact as to be the equivalent of cinematic cotton candy. Ruth Wilson’s constant, tedious voiceover is a huge part of the reason the film didn’t work for me (I don’t mind a good voiceover but this was just lazy writing, the equivalent of a white noise machine for sleep problems) but the biggest issue is that the film is just so damn dull. There are plenty of good ideas, here, and no shortage of striking, beautiful imagery: Perkins’ grasp of filmmaking mechanics seem pretty solid, no two ways about it. The revelation is also strong, if simultaneously open-ended, leaving the film on a satisfyingly hazy note.

On the downside, I spent almost the entirety of the film looking at my watch, which is never a good sign. Keep in mind that I’m also the target audience for this type of film: they were preaching to the choir and I still rejected the sermon…that says quite a bit, as far as I’m concerned. I don’t mind style over substance: that can produce some truly unforgettable results, in the right hands. In this case, however, the most that I can say is the film looked great and featured a refreshingly different point-of-view and focus. Next time, I’m hoping that Perkins manages to match those awesome visuals and mood to something with real substance. Call this a near miss but a miss, nonetheless.

Coming up: the final two days of the 31 Days of Halloween, including the main event! Stay tuned!

2016 in Horror Films, Mid-Year Report (The Best) – Part 1

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Anguish, Ava's Possessions, Baskin, best films of 2016, Best Horror Films, Best of 2016, cinema, Darling, film reviews, films, High-Rise, horror, horror films, horror movies, Hush, mid-year review, Movies, Nina Forever, personal opinions, The Invitation, The Witch, The Witch: A New England Folk Tale, They Look Like People

It’s now time to take a look at the twenty horror films that have impressed me the most in the first seven months of this year. For the sake of space, we’ll break this up into two separate parts, although there’s currently no real order to any of the listings.

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The Witch — The Witch was hyped so early and so hard (it had steady buzz and good word of mouth from its festival debut early last year) that I assumed it was all but destined to be a disappointment. Rather than being disappointed, however, I was completely entranced by this subtle, genuinely unsettling tale of eldritch evil in the years right before the infamous Salem witch trials. Until the suitably Argento-esque finale, the film plays its cards fairly close to the vest and is all the stronger for it. It’s a strangely old-fashioned kind of a film and rises above the cookie-cutter competition quite poetically.

Baskin — This batshit crazy Turkish export starts out like a sub-Tarantino cop goof before taking a hard right turn in to pure, unadulterated Fulci madness. For stronger stomaches, this tale of a group of SWAT officers finding the literal door to Hell is really one of the very best modern-day Itallo-horror homages and features some truly gorgeous cinematography, along with some of the best use of colored lighting since the glory days of Dario Argento. It might not be a nice film but it sure is an impressive one. Let’s hope that this heralds the dawning of a new era in Turkish horror.

Ava’s Possessions — I expected a lightweight time-waster but ended up with an impressively smart, skillfully made little sleeper that manages to equate binge drinking with demonic possession to rather wonderful results. The titular young woman awakes after being exorcised of a particularly pesky demon and must then put together the very shattered pieces of her formerly normal life, piecing together what happened bit by bit. At times, the film almost plays like a straight-faced Beetlejuice (no mean feat) but the serious themes are never overtaken by the dark whimsy. Suffice to say that I was constantly surprised, which rarely happens.

High-Rise — My early pick for one of the year’s very best films, Ben Wheatley’s adaptation of Ballard’s classic novel is just about perfect. Everything from the film’s immaculate, Kubrickian production design to the mannered performances from top brass like Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Irons and Elisabeth Moss serve to pull you in to this tale of social upheaval and disintegration in the confines of a luxurious, high-rise apartment building. Not a shot is wasted, nor a line tossed away, which is pretty much par for the course with the British auteur. Grab a dog leg and enjoy!

Darling — Quickly earning a reputation as the hardest working filmmaker in the indie genre scene, Mickey Keating follows up last year’s impressive Pod with this even better Repulsion homage. Darling is an immaculately made little psycho-drama that uses gorgeous black-and-white cinematography and an absolutely mesmerizing performance from Lauren Ashley Carter to pull us into the warped world of the title character, as she descends into complete insanity. By turns shocking and oppressive, Darling is never less than razorwire tense, from the first frame to the unforgettable finale. Mark my words: Keating is one to watch.

Hush — While I didn’t love Mike Flanagan’s Absentia, I was quite taken by its follow-up, Occulus, giving me high hopes for his next film, Before I Wake. With that film trapped in a distribution nightmare that might rival its fictional content, however, Flanagan’s next film ended up being this concise, streamlined home invasion/slasher. Suffice to say, I liked this one quite a bit, too, with a few reservations. This nailbiting chiller about a deaf-mute woman menaced in her home by a masked, unnervingly mannered intruder works best before the bad guy removes his mask and starts talking but it’s never less than completely self-assured and packs a real punch. There are moments and scenes, here, that are nearly on a par with Carpenter’s original Halloween and that says a whole lot, in my book.

Nina Forever — Boy meets girl, falls in love. Girl dies. Boy meets new girl, falls in love. Dead girl emerges from the sheets, bloody, whenever boy and new girl have sex. Despite this one little complication, new girl is still determined to make it work with the boy (and the dead girl). The only problem, however, is that the dead girl doesn’t like to share. By turns twisted, sentimental, oddly erotic and genuinely horrifying, Nina Forever was another surprisingly strong sleeper that used a great cast to tell a rather unique tale extremely well. Extra points for this one debuting on Valentine’s Day and for its consistently twisty, thorny plot twists.

The Invitation — Before a final reel twist that’s both obvious and satisfying, this examination of grief and “getting better” is a thoroughly harrowing dive into the mind of an emotionally shattered father who just can’t get over the death of his son, despite his ex-wife’s seeming ease at doing just that. The whole house of cards comes tumbling down at a dinner party where truths are laid bare, secrets are revealed and we learn that one person’s sense of closure may just be the beginning of another’s madness. Although not completely a horror film, in the standard sense, the constant feeling of dread and paranoia keeps this firmly in the “chiller” side of things. Smart, thought-provoking and all but guaranteed to provoke after-screening discussions.

Anguish — I expected this to be another bargain-basement possesion film (I’ve seen way too many in the past seven months, trust me), so was more than happy when it revealed itself to be an effective little indie chiller, instead. Sharing more than a few similarities with Vincenzo Natali’s equally effective Haunter, Anguish revolves around a teen girl who ends up “sharing” her body with the consciousness of another recently deceased teenager: when the dead girl doesn’t want to leave, things get decidedly scary for the living one. Remarkably subtle and grounded by a genuinely affecting lead performance, this is thoughtful, low-budget horror at its finest. Pity this never received a proper theatrical release, since I found it to be pretty much on par with the critically-vaunted It Follows, if not a bit more consistent.

They Look Like People — Although never technically a horror film, this was, easily, one of the most nerve-wracking, disturbing films that I watched all year. Writer-director Perry Blackshear’s full-length debut details the efforts of a laid-back, totally nice guy (the impossibly likable Evan Dumouchel) as he supports his increasingly paranoid, wackadoodle best friend (the excellent MacLeod Andrews). The crazy friend is convinced that monsters (wearing human masks) walk among us, ala They Live. Is he really insane, however? Just what, exactly, are those weird things over in the shadows…? The final fifteen minutes are a master-class in sustained, white-knuckle tension that found me glued to the edge of my seat and unable to tear my eyes from the screen. A micro-budget mini-marvel thay deserves a wider audience.

Coming up next: the other half of this humble little list. Stay tuned, friends and cyber-neighbors!

The Year in Review: The Best Horror Films of 2015 (Honorable Mentions)

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2015, All Hallows' Eve 2, Best of 2015, cinema, Circle, Deep Dark, Digging Up the Marrow, Extinction, film reviews, films, horror, horror films, horror movies, Knock Knock, Last Shift, Lost After Dark, Love in the Time of Monsters, Movies, personal opinions, Pod, Spring, Stung, Suburban Gothic, The Gift, The Midnight Swim, Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead, Zombeavers

Just how good was the “Year in Horror,” circa 2015? It was so good, dear friends and readers, that your humble host had to compile a whole separate listing to contain all of the amazing films that just missed the “Best of” by this much (you can’t see it but it’s about a centimeter, give or take). In any other year, any or every one of these little gems might have made the big list: hell, once all is said and done, I’m sure I’ll second-guess at least a few of these and kick myself, anyway.

With no further ado, then (and in no particular order whatsoever), I present the seventeen runner-ups to Best Horror Films of 2015. If the “Best Ofs” are Rolls Royces, these are Jaguars. In other words, you just can’t go wrong taking any of ’em out for a spin.

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Love in the Time of Monsters — Pure fun from start to finish, this is one of the most unabashed good times I had watching a film all year. Full of endearing, quirky characters, a really great concept (the people who play Sasquatch at a Bigfoot-themed tourist trap are turned into murderous monsters by toxic waste), some great, gory special effects and one of the most kickass finales in some time, this isn’t perfect but it’s pretty darn awesome, nonetheless.

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Pod — Claustrophobic, endlessly tense and with a genuinely smart pay-off, the only thing that holds Pod back from neo-classic status are a set of performances that are slightly too intense and shouty for their own good. When the film is focused on the creeping, oppressive atmosphere and the question of just what, exactly, is down in the basement, there were few films that got under my skin quite like this.

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Last Shift — Full disclosure: I absolutely loathed the last film I saw by writer-director Anthony DiBlasi, the patently terrible Clive Barker adaptation, Dread. Combined with the truly terrible cover art for his newest, Last Shift, I had absolutely no interest in seeing the film whatsoever. Good thing I choked back my bias, however, because Last Shift isn’t just a good film: it’s an absolutely great one. Barring the stereotypical and cliched finale, everything about this film is a master study in minimal effort for maximum unease. Think of it as a ruthlessly slow-burning variant on Assault on Precinct 13 (kinda sorta) and that’ll get you close enough. I’m not to proud to say when I’m wrong: sorry, Anthony D…this was a keeper.

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The Gift — Not strictly a horror film but close enough for government work, actor-writer Joel Edgerton’s directorial debut is, hands-down, one of the subtlest, meanest and most uncompromising films of the year. Based on the idea that we’re only ever a stones’ throw from the sins of our past, The Gift features a trio of razor-sharp performances (Bateman, playing completely against type, is utterly magnificent) and the kind of twist that used to be Shyamalan’s stock in trade. This is psychological horror of the highest caliber and destined for classic status, down the road.

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Knock Knock — This one completely surprised me. While Knock Knock features the usual tonal shifts, inappropriate humor and “thinking bro observations” that are endemic to Eli Roth’s entire filmography, there’s something about this sneaky little gem that sank its hooks into me and wouldn’t let go. Come for the sick head-games, screwy gender politics and shocking level of restraint (suffice to say, this is the first Roth film that doesn’t feature copious gore) but do stay for the scene where poor Keanu discusses, in detail, his inability to turn down free pizza. This should have been completely wretched but, somehow, ended up being pretty good. Surprise, surprise.

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Digging Up the Marrow — In a true gift to genre fans, writer-director Adam Green (the mastermind behind the Hatchet franchise and under-rated “stuck on a ski-lift” epic, Frozen) teamed up with renowned monster illustrator Alex Pardee and the results are some of the flat-out coolest, creepiest and most awe-inspiring, diverse monsters to hit the silver screen since Clive Barker’s Nightbreed took us to Midian. The story, itself, is pretty meta for this type of thing: Green (playing himself) is invited by the always amazing Ray Wise (not playing himself) to check out some honest to goodness monsters. Things, as expected, don’t go well. More monsters on screen would have pushed this into the next echelon but what’s here is pretty damn unforgettable.

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Lost After Dark — In a genre where throwbacks to previous eras have become not only more popular but virtually expected, finding a new horror film that apes a ’70s or ’80s horror film really isn’t that hard. Finding one with the consistent quality, high production values and subtle wit of Lost After Dark, however, isn’t quite so easy. While writer-director Ian Kessner doesn’t do anything radically different, he does manage to nail all of the stylistic quirks of his intended homage, all while conducting things with a modicum more seriousness and less meta tongue-in-cheek than we usually get. If Lost After Dark really were an ’80s film, I’m pretty sure we’d be seeing homages to it right around this time.

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Extinction — Like Lost After Dark, Extinction doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel but, instead, doubles-down on what makes its particular sub-genre (zombie films) such an intrinsic part of our horror-loving culture. The performances are solid (Burn Notice’s Jeffrey Donovan is particularly good), the twists and revelations come across as fairly organic and the whole “zombie outbreak in a frozen wasteland” scenario is explored to good effect. Is this one of the best zombie films ever? Not even close. Was it the best zombie film of 2015? Maybe.

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Stung — Going in, I expected this to be another silly, over-the-top horror-comedy: after all, caterers standing as the last line of defense between a mob of giant, mutant wasps and the sniveling local aristocracy at a posh garden party sounds like the kind of thing that could, troublingly, be dubbed “zany.” Imagine my surprise and delight, then, when Stung turned out to be much more serious than that. Essentially an old-fashioned “giant insect” film with deft touches of pitch-black humor, this was just about a grand slam. Fantastic creature effects (easily in the Top 5 of this year), fun performances (Lance Henriksen gets a nice bit as the elderly, tough-as-nails mayor), some really great setpieces and some genuinely smart tweaks to convention (suffice to say there’s more than a little bit of Cronenbergian body horror here) make this an easy recommendation.

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Zombeavers — In a year with more top-notch horror-comedies than you could shake a funny bone at, Zombeavers wasn’t the creme de la creme but it still held its own. With an intriguingly gonzo premise (mutant, zombified beavers attack partying young people, all hell breaks loose), an all-in cast, some fairly outrageous gore effects and a helluva lot of impolite, politically-incorrect humor (the bit where the “wild girl” doffs her top, for no reason, only to be chided by a stereotypical backwoods yokel for making a spectacle of herself is but one example of the filmmakers biting the hand that feeds), Zombeavers is pretty much the perfect party film. Silly, funny but distinctly horror-minded, Zombeavers is one horror-comedy with real teeth.

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The Midnight Swim — Beautifully made, expertly acted and genuinely unsettling, writer-director Sarah Adina Smith’s The Midnight Swim was one of the most thought-provoking films I screened all year. This is a subtle film, certainly more sororal relationship drama than hard-core fright film. Look closer, however, and you’ll see that the concepts being discussed here (loss of the self, life after death, the dark mysteries of bottomless bodies of water) are the same sort of things explored in plenty of more “traditional” horror films. While those looking for gore and explosions should keep walking, anyone with a thirst for genuinely smart, evocative cinema should have no problem diving into the deep end.

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Suburban Gothic — Essentially a lesser version of Peter Jackson’s superior The Frighteners or Gerard Johnstone’s far superior Housebound (or a much, much better version of the inept Odd Thomas, if you prefer), Suburban Gothic stars Criminal Minds’ Matthew Gray Gubler as a grown man who moves back into his parents’ house and immediately begins seeing spooky things. Kat Dennings and Gubler make a fairly cute couple, Ray Wise is typically excellent as Gubler’s hateful, racist dad and the whole thing has a light-hearted feel that makes it endlessly breezy and rather pleasant. Barring a few scenes of extraordinarily stupid physical comedy, this was definitely a sleeper.

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Spring — Of the two indie-romance-inspired “guy dates a monster” films that were released in 2015 (the much more problematic Honeymoon being the other), Spring is definitely the better one. Featuring strong performances from both Lou Taylor Pucci and Nadia Hilker, great use of the picturesque Italian countryside and a decidedly Lovecraftian bent, this metaphor for the joys and terrors of new relationships is appropriately icky, when necessary, while also managing to be genuinely heartfelt and emotionally resonant. Small surprise that this is from Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, the filmmakers behind the stunning Resolution and two of the most promising new filmmakers out there.

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All Hallows’ Eve 2 — One of the biggest surprises of the whole year for me, All Hallows’ Eve 2 was the equivalent of finding a golden ticket in my Wonka Bar. While I genuinely liked and respected the ultra-gory, no budget original film, nothing about this more polished and expensive follow-up inspired early confidence. Turns out I was wrong, however, since this modest little anthology ended up being one of the best I’ve seen in the past few years. While nowhere near the feral insanity of the original, this is still a rock-solid horror film with plenty of good ideas and no shortage of red stuff for the gorehounds. It’s no Trick ‘r Treat, mind you, but really…what is?

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Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead — Gleefully bonkers, this outrageous splatter film manages to deliver just what the cover promises: Mad Max meets Dawn of the Dead. Detailing one badass mofo’s trek across the zombie-ravaged Australian Outback, in search of his sister (kidnapped by mad scientists), while wearing homemade armor, there really aren’t a lot of films like this out there. Although the film is frequently quite funny (Leon Burchill provides excellent comic support as the sassy Aborigine sidekick), it’s actually more of a straight-forward horror/action flick than the synopsis might make it sound. While the exterior scenes provide plenty of tension, it’s the sweaty, claustrophobic sequences in the scientist’s lair that pack the biggest punch.

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Circle — With a simple concept, obviously low budget, largely unknown cast and lack of unnecessary backstory, Aaron Hann and Mario Miscione’s Circle instantly recalls another sci-fi sleeper: Vincenzo Natali’s classic Cube. Like Cube, Circle is a film that purposely keeps the audience off balance, wondering just what the hell is happening onscreen. By the time we get the full story, the film is already rolling the final credits, which is just the way it should be. Smart, economical and legitimately fascinating, I have a sneaking suspicion that Circle will enjoy the same favored status as Cube in the next decade or so. I went in expecting nothing and was completely blown away: that’s the definition of a nice surprise.

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Deep Dark — This year saw the release of two excellent films about sad sack losers receiving life advice from holes in their grimy apartment walls (if this baffles you, we obviously don’t run in the same circles): we’ll get to Motivational Growth later (I know, I know…”spoiler alert”)…Deep Dark is the other one. Although I prefer the batshit insanity of Motivational Growth, that has less to do with the quality of Michael Medaglia’s Deep Dark than it does with my personal sensibilities. Needless to say, if Motivational Growth wouldn’t have dropped this year, I’m pretty sure that Deep Dark would’ve got called up to the majors. This dark fable of a starving artist who seeks inspiration from a strange, fleshy hole in his apartment wall features blood-spraying art mobiles, man-on-wall sex and that all important warning: be careful what you wish for. Indeed.

 

The Year in Review: The Worst Horror Films of 2015

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Animal, Area 51, Avenged, Bound to Vengeance, cinema, Da Sweet Blood of Jesus, Ejecta, film reviews, films, horror, horror films, horror movies, Movies, personal opinions, Preservation, Some Kind of Hate, The Blood Lands, Treehouse, Tremors 5: Bloodlines, worst films of the year

Before we get to the lists of what I consider to be the very best horror films of 2015, let me take a word (or 1000) to talk about those films that fell on the polar opposite of said extreme. It’s time to talk about the worst horror films (according to your humble host) of this soon-to-be-over calendar year.

I’ll be honest: this was a ridiculously good year for horror, a fact which will be amply extolled in the next post. Since there was so much coming out this year that I’d been waiting for, I tended to steer clear of any obvious turkeys: in other words, I wasn’t actively seeking out any “so-bad-they’re-good” clunkers this time around. The ten films below (listed in alphabetical order) represent the horror screenings that just fundamentally failed for me, for one reason or a hundred. Some of these had potential: others were practically D.O.A. from the jump. There is one important thing to note, however: these represent the worst films of this particular year. In a much weaker year, it’s quite possible that at least a few of these would have passed into my “just fine” column. When stacked up against so much pure wheat, however, the chaff is still easy to spot.

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Animal — From the generic title to the generic performances to the generic creature representation, everything about Animal was as generic, obvious and dull as possible. I certainly wasn’t asking for outrageous innovation in a basic “strangers trapped by a monster in the woods” film but this managed to lack anything substantial. In fact, I’d be hard-pressed to remember much about any of the characters except that there was a heart-broken boyfriend (I think), a really aggressive, shouty dude (I’m positive) and some kind of character played by Joey Lauren Adams. Fade to beige.

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Area 51 — I’m not sure if anyone expected Oren Peli’s Area 51 to be any good whatsoever: after all, this was supposed to be his follow-up to 2007’s Paranormal Activity and it only came out this year. Eight years to release a found-footage, micro-budget film about people poking around Area 51? With this kind of anticipation, one could be forgiven for suspecting that Peli was crafting the first-person-POV equivalent of Kubrick’s 2001.

Alas, he was actually crafting yet another identical found-footage film, with another identical, anonymous group of people exploring another, identical, anonymous location and pointing the camera into the background while we impatiently wait for yet another, identical creepy thing to pop up and make us drop our Twizzlers. While Paranormal Activity was far from a perfect film, it ends up looking like Citizen Kane when stacked next to this dull, event-less exercise in by-the-numbers filmmaking. At this rate, we’ll get the next film in 2025 and it will be a shot-for-shot remake of Ishtar.

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Avenged — This was certainly a strange one. On the outside, Avenged’s concept seems like something that screamed right out of the ultra-nasty late-’70s, early-’80s exploitation market: a sweet-natured deaf woman takes a solo drive through the Southwest when she runs afoul of a bunch of rednecks murdering a couple of innocent Native Americans. The woman is captured, gang-raped, tortured, repeatedly stabbed and left for dead in a shallow grave: a kindly, old medicine man happens to be passing by and digs her up before performing a ceremony that ends up imbuing her mutilated, broken body with the spirit of a centuries dead Apache chief. Once the young woman has been resurrected, she cuts a bloody swath to the rednecks, leaving the path behind her littered with body parts and blood.

Had it stuck to its guns, Avenged might have ended up as a thoroughly slimy but ruthlessly effective rape-revenge flick. Once the filmmakers introduce the heroine’s concerned boyfriend, however, the film’s tone swings queasily from sick thrills to mawkish, stereotypical indie romance and never really recovers. To compound this split tone, the film goes on to introduce silly magical/fantastical elements straight out of something like Big Trouble in Little China. This is a film where the truly terrible main villain describes the main character’s rape in exacting, sickening detail one minute, while the ghostly, green Apache chief somersaults out of her body, pounds the ground and produces ghostly weapons for her upcoming battle in the next minute. It’s a film that’s in bad taste, to be sure, but it’s also a confused film that lacks the courage of its determinedly antisocial outlook.

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Bound to Vengeance — Like Avenged, this was another film that started from a particularly disturbing place (a young woman is kidnapped and held captive in a dingy dungeon before fighting her way to freedom) but then tried to expand the concept past its obvious exploitation roots. Unlike Avenged, Bound to Vengeance has a much more consistent, gritty tone and feel, which suits the material much better.

The problem, as it turns out, is that Bound to Vengeance ends up being an incredibly dumb movie full of rather stupid people making the worst possible decisions at any given moment. Think of it like a slasher movie where the “final girl” trips and falls 35 times in a row and you have some idea of the frustration involved here. The film is actually full of some pretty solid performances, not the least of which is Tina Ivlev as the victim-turned-avenger. It’s a shame that the filmmakers waste her potential, however, by having her make an increasingly bad series of decisions, most likely in an effort to artificially increase the stakes. By the time the tired “twist” is revealed, I kind of felt like I’d been locked in a dungeon for 90 minutes. A solid concept and cast undone by a ludicrous script.

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Da Sweet Blood of Jesus — Since I never saw Spike’s take on Oldboy, his remake of the older Ganja & Hess was my introduction to his take on the horror genre, a move which I’d pretty much been anticipating my whole life. See, I like Spike Lee. I don’t always love his films, mind you, but I genuinely think he’s an auteur with something to say, even if the message is sometimes more interesting than the film that surrounds it.

That being said, Da Sweet Blood of Jesus is a pretty awful film. Incredibly slow (not measured, mind you: slow), way too long, ridiculously stagy (at times, it actually felt like a filmed play) and full of some truly off-putting amateur performances, nothing here really worked for me, aside from random visuals and some of the backstory. It’s not that I didn’t understand what Spike was trying to do: the lengthy dialogue scenes make that more than abundantly clear. It’s just that I thought he did it in the clunkiest, dullest and least cinematically appealing way possible, that’s all.

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Ejecta — While I’ve seen several less than stellar alien visitation films lately, few have been quite so irritating or obnoxious as Ejecta. Despite a typically solid performance from Julian Richings (few actors do “inherently creepy” as good as this guy), this is the film equivalent of the “sound volume wars” in modern music. Everything here is pushed straight into the red: everyone shouts, the score pounds, the audio effects scream, the editing is as fidgety as a Red Bull addict on a bender…it’s just one, loud, sustained but absolutely empty rush of chaos. With so many truly good alien visitation films, there’s absolutely no reason, whatsoever, to deal with crap like Ejecta. The definition of the title is “material that is forced or thrown out”: sounds about right.

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Preservation — I didn’t want to hate this film but I really wasn’t given much choice: within the first 20 minutes, we’re introduced to a trio of thoroughly repellent characters and given so much blatantly obvious foreshadowing that it was a foregone conclusion I’d sprain an eyeball with rigorous rolling. And that I did. Featuring Orange is the New Black’s Pornstache as a slightly less odious character is just about Preservation’s only ace in the hole: everything else is a strictly by-the-numbers “normal people must turn savage to fight the savages” flick…and not a particularly good one, at that. The fight scenes are poorly staged, the “twist” revelation is completely brain-dead (think about it for exactly one second and it totally collapses) and it feels like everyone involved just gives up and wings it during the chaotic third act. Man is the only animal that kills for fun…and makes terrible films about it, apparently.

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Some Kind of Hate — For the life of me, I’ll never understand all of the massed appreciation and love for Adam Egypt Mortimer’s Some Kind of Hate. Not only did the flick get all kinds of great festival buzz, it actually ended up on several “Best of Year” lists and was frequently hailed as the “next evolution of horror.” In fact, the only film that seemed to have as much sustained genre buzz as SKoH, this year, was It Follows, which was also credited with “saving” and “revitalizing” horror.

Actually, I lie: I know exactly why the film has received (and continues to receive) so much praise. You see, Some Kind of Hate is a perfect example of a film that taps into the popular zeitgeist and just happens to be “in the right place at the right time.” With its theme of bullied teenagers fighting back against their oppressors, it’s hard to think of a horror film that’s more relevant in 2015. Add in a genuinely unique method of killing for the antagonist (whatever she does to her body happens to her intended victims) and this seems like an easy shoe-in for modern classic status.

Except the film is an absolute stinker. Message and method aside, there’s absolutely nothing of value here: the performances are uniformly broad and unpleasant, the “rules” are so fluid as to be non-existent and the whole thing is shot with that seizure-inducing “in your face” style that’s so de rigeur in modern horror. We can talk about Some Kind of Hate’s good intentions all we want (and there are plenty of good intentions to discuss) but if we actually want to discuss the film, itself, we can only deal with what’s up on screen, not whatever was intended. One of these days, there will be a really incisive, hard-hitting horror film that addresses bullying in an appropriately focused manner: this ain’t it.

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Treehouse — Like Preservation, this one fell apart fairly quickly and never recovered. Part of the problem, to be honest, lies with the concept, itself: a pair of young brothers and a traumatized young woman must hide out from anonymous killers in a treehouse. It’s a simple concept that, unfortunately, runs out of gas way before the film does, leading to the addition of so many loose threads and additional storylines that any sense of simplicity is tossed out with the bathwater. This isn’t a poorly-made film, mind you: the treehouse ends up being a great location and there are a handful of well-executed scenes that wind up a reasonable amount of tension. This feels like a killer short that completely lost its shape when expanded out, similar to a distorted reflection in a fun house mirror.

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Tremors 5: Bloodlines — I didn’t go in to this expecting anything more than a fun, silly and brisk little monster movie: after all, this is Tremors 5 we’re talking about here, not Lawrence of Arabia. As a fan of the rest of the series (to one degree or another), this seemed like a perfectly fine way to kill some time.

Instead of a snappy little creature feature, however, I actually got a loud, dumb and completely numb exercise in collecting a paycheck, all underlined by a completely baffling need to humiliate and tear down Michael Gross’ protagonist at every possible turn. The action scenes, character-building, etc are strictly lowest-common-denominator, which certainly befits a film that feels one half-step above the usual ScyFy fare. What to make of the scene, however, where Gross’ Burt Gummer is trapped in the middle of the desert, in a cage, wearing only his tighty-whities, when a big lion comes up and pisses all over his face? Is it supposed to be funny? Ironic? Arousing? For me, it was really only one thing: massively depressing.

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Dishonorable Mention

The Blood Lands (aka White Settlers) — The Blood Lands ends up as my “Dishonorable Mention” for this year because it’s actually only half of a terrible film. The half that isn’t terrible (pretty much the first half) is actually pretty goddamn terrifying: it doesn’t reinvent the “home invasion” subgenre but it certainly gives it a nice kick in the rear.

The problem comes in when the filmmakers drop the other shoe and clue us in to what’s actually going on. From that point on, The Blood Lands is actually one of the very worst films of the year, culminating in a finale that made me want to throw a bottle at my TV. Add in a simpering performance from the normally ferocious Pollyanna McIntosh (of all the current performers you could get to run around screaming and acting defenseless, McIntosh is absolutely the last one that comes to mind) and this is one film that actually pissed me off. Word to the wise: if you end up watching this, stop the film just when it feels like you figured it out and save yourself some grief. Trust me: you did figure it out and it just gets worse from there.

The Worst of the 31 Days of Halloween (2015 Edition)

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31 Days of Halloween, cinema, film reviews, films, Halloween, Halloween traditions, horror, horror movies, Movies, personal opinions

After taking a look at the best films that I screened during this year’s 31 Days of Halloween, it’s time to end the festivities with the opposite end of the spectrum: the worst of the bunch. I’ve also included what I consider to be the most disappointing films of the season: in some cases, these films weren’t terrible, per se, but also fell so far short of my expectations as to earn them a place on this humble list.

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The Worst Films of the 31 Days of Halloween (2015 Edition)

(in no particular order)

Monsters: Dark Continent — While I didn’t love the first Monsters, I still respect Gareth Edwards “little film that could” and certainly wasn’t averse to a return to its particular cinematic universe. Writer/director Tom Green’s sequel isn’t that so much as it is a deadly dull, stereotypical Iraq war film shoehorned into roughly the same geographic coordinates. Overlong, tedious, obvious and, most criminally, a chore to sit through, Dark Continent seems to want to be the Aliens to Monsters’ Alien. Instead, it feels like a bad war film with a gimmicky premise which, to be honest, it is.

Some Kind of Hate — I have a feeling that this will end up on several other “Best of” lists, so let me be the sole voice in the wilderness to shout “Bullshit” at maximum volume, while politely reminding everyone that good intentions don’t guarantee satisfactory outcomes. Loud, dumb, obvious and chock-a-block with shitty, obnoxious and unbelievable characters, Adam Egypt Mortimer’s anti-bullying slasher has its heart in the right place and a pretty killer central concept (the avenging figure, who was driven to suicide, injures her prey by inflicting injuries on her own body) but the positives pretty much end there. While I still feel that an anti-bullying horror film is a great idea in this modern world, the cause deserves something a whole lot more substantial and thoughtful than this.

Cam2Cam — Essentially two films cobbled together, Cam2Cam begins with an extended pre-credits sequence that’s actually a self-contained short before continuing with the rest of the film, which serves as a continuation of the first piece. The first piece, an effective (if repugnant) little bit of cyber stalk-n-slash is tense, concise and vicious, certainly not everyone’s cup of tea but no worse than a legion of others. The rest of the film, however, is a confusing, tone-deaf, tedious and outrageously far-fetched bit of “Americans abroad get tortured” sleaze that works itself up into a righteous lather over, ultimately, nothing at all. The cinematic equivalent of staring at a flickering neon light until your eyes melt.

Omen IV: The Awakening — While the original Omen trilogy wasn’t exactly a bunch of home-runs (the third, in particular, is aggressively stupid), this made-for-TV follow-up makes them seem like cinematic royalty. Cheap, poorly acted, over-the-top and dumb, this manages to undo the proper (if overly silly) finale of the third film in favor of an open-ending that promised more sequels that, thankfully, have yet to surface. Satan may be evil but even he’s got his limits!

Djinn — Good thing that I gave up on Tobe Hooper a long time ago, otherwise this exceptionally shabby hack job would have made me break down and cry. Djinn gets points for its unique setting (the United Arab Emirates) but loses points for its failings (everything else). Nothing here surprises, there’s only one setpiece in the entire film that actually works (a clever bit involving security guards seeing an empty building while someone shouts for help right in front of them) and an overriding sense of ennui permeates everything, especially Hooper’s thoroughly anonymous direction. Very rarely does a film manage to meet my low expectations as handily as Djinn did: if nothing else, that’s gotta be worth something.

Sam: The Final Chapter — I’ll be frankly honest: watching this final installment in the Saw franchise was the equivalent of a hate-fuck for me. While I still genuinely enjoy the first film and can find merits in the third, everything else in the series was a progressively faster slide down a garbage chute greased with pig guts, obnoxious music video editing and pointlessly complex plotting that, ultimately, made as much sense as a random number generator. Caustically loud, visually ugly, unpleasantly violent (even by the series’ notoriously splattery legacy) and, above all, dumb as a box of rocks, The Final Chapter in the Saw franchise would have, easily, been one of the worst films of the year it was released: waiting five years only made it one of the worst films of this year.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (remake) — I inherently dislike remakes and love Wes Craven’s original Nightmare on Elm Street, so the 2010 remake was always going to be a hard sell for me. To be frank, I actually figured this would be one of those films that I just never got around to. Well, I got around to it this October and guess what? I really hated it. It’s not like modern horror remakes can’t have value (I thoroughly enjoy Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead, for example): it’s just that the NOES reboot is a complete and total piece of crap. There wasn’t a single thing that worked for me here, be it Haley’s take on Freddy, the effects work or the performances from the youthful cannon fodder. Lazy, unimaginative and strictly by-the-book, the NOES remake is the dictionary definition of an ill-advised cash grab.

Dead of Night — I’m a huge fan of horror anthologies but everything about Dead of Night is dead on arrival. Dull, silly and with a production sense that could generously be described as “Poverty Row,” these three stories are strictly dollar-bin fare. Of value only for idiots like me who really must see everything horror film ever made.

Da Sweet Blood of Jesus — It gives me no pleasure to kick Spike Lee, so I’ll just cut right to the chase: his remake of the cult classic Ganja and Hess is a real mess. Way too long, overly stage-bound, over-the-top, silly and full of some genuinely amateurish acting, this was nothing but missed potential. While I’d still love to see Spike tackle a horror film some day, Da Sweet Blood of Jesus was an almost complete wash for me. Biggest surprise? How depressingly artless the whole thing felt.

Beneath — Remember when I said this list was in no particular order? Yeah? Well, I lied. Larry Fessenden’s Beneath was the worst film I screened in October for a very simple reason: it was one I was looking forward to the most, yet ended up liking the least. The problems are legion but the killing blow ends up being the thoroughly hateful cast: with no one to root for, as it were, I had no investment in any of the action. As far as I was concerned, the monstrous, man-eating fish was the only likable creature in the entire film. As someone who practically worships the ground Fessenden walks on, Beneath was a painful reminder that my heroes are, after all, only human.

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With that out of the way, let’s finish up with a list of the most disappointing films of this year’s 31 Days of Halloween. These were movies that weren’t terrible (in fact, some of them were quite good), yet managed to drop the ball in some pretty major ways. Whether it was an unnecessary last-minute twist, an unfortunate switch in tone, a general degradation of quality or some painfully awkward plot mechanics and performances, each of the following did something to shift themselves from the “Good” side of my personal ledger into that more uncertain territory that’s closer to “Bad.”

The Most Disappointing Films of the 31 Days of Halloween (2015 Edition)

(in no particular order)

The Blood Lands (White Settlers) — After starting out exceptionally tight and tense, this glorified home invasion thriller devolved into complete and utter pablum by the end. With an increasing series of unbelievable twists and a conclusion that demands more suspension of disbelief than it earns, this went downhill pretty fast. Even the normally amazing Pollyanna Mcintosh was thoroughly wasted here.

Hellions — I absolutely loved writer/director Bruce McDonald’s ingenious Pontypool, so my expectations for his follow-up, Hellions, were through the roof. This psychedelic tale of a pregnant teen trapped in her house on Halloween night by demonic trick or treaters is the complete antithesis of Pontypool, however: a flashy, nonsensical exercise in style over substance than relies more on unsettling visuals than anything approaching genuine dread or existential terror, Hellions is frustratingly obtuse and unformed. The film is too gorgeously shot to be completely disposable but it falls well short of McDonald’s previous work.

Turbo Kid — I really wanted to love this homage to ’80s drive-in fare but ended up feeling mildly amused, at best. Chalk it up to a case of trying too hard or just an inability on my part to completely embrace the film’s kitchy aesthetic. Regardless of the reason, I found myself glancing at my watch much more often than I should have and never felt the emotional intensity of something like Hobo With a Shotgun, despite Turbo Kid’s amusingly splatterific gore effects. For my money, Manborg did this basic story much better and more concisely.

The Stranger — This confusing Chilean-made, pseudo-vampire film (produced by Eli Roth) feels like part of a larger whole, even though it’s actually self-contained. Often feeling more like an attempt to recreate a mean-spirited ’80s revenge flick than a vampire film, this certainly has its moments but managed to hold me at arm’s length for pretty much its whole run-time. With a tighter vision, this might have been an effective little sleeper.

Hidden — For a time, this claustrophobic tale of a family living in a fallout shelter while the world above them has been devastated is an incredibly effective, tense and well-made exercise in minimalism. Once the rest of the story reveals itself, however, Hidden becomes exponentially more conventional and proportionately less interesting. By the time it wraps up, Hidden has actually become rather dumb, which is a complete 360 from where it started. In other words: the poster child for a disappointing film.

Tremors 5: Bloodlines — I expected a cheesy, fun and energetic continuation of the frothy Tremors franchise: what I ended up with is a cheap, repetitive and surprisingly mean-spirited film that seems to delight in constantly humiliating Michael Gross’ Bert Gummer character for no good reason. While the whole film delights in heaping abuse on Gross, the piece de resistance has to be the scene where he’s confined to a cage, in the middle of the desert, while wearing only tighty whities and covered in his own urine. As a lion approaches and proceeds to spray piss all over the poor, trapped adventurer, I thought: this may be for someone but it sure as hell ain’t for me.

Soulmate — This was actually a suitably atmospheric, moody haunted house film until it turned into a silly romance between the lead and a thoroughly charmless former suicide. Once that particular plot development is unveiled, Soulmate takes the express train right to irrelevance, ending in a mess of plot threads and contrivances that strains both credulity and patience. Filmmaker Carolyn would go on to much better things with her Tales of Halloween anthology.

Alleluia — Fabrice du Welz’ newest film is not a bad film: far from it. It is, however, a completely predictable and rather repetitive film which handily earns it a place on this list. Prior to this, I knew du Welz as an uncompromising visionary capable of some genuinely disturbing art. Alleluia recasts him as a more refined, conventional filmmaker, similar to the way in which Cronenberg’s more recent output has realigned the body horror wunderkind into something a bit more “presentable.” Perhaps the biggest failing here, though, is the extremely repetitive nature of the narrative: once you’ve seen one violent exchange, you’ve pretty much seen them all, which significantly lessens the film’s impact.

Felt — Writer/director Jason Banks’ Toad Road is, in my humble opinion, one of the single most impressive, disturbing and powerful independent films of the best several decades. Ergo, I really expected the follow-up, a searing indictment of rape culture and toxic patriarchy, to be just as intense, uncompromising and amazing. In actuality, Felt is a frustrating exercise from start to finish, a gauzy, formless film that meanders far more than it should and never finds a firm center, perhaps thanks to the thoroughly unpleasant performance by lead/co-writer Amy Everson. I didn’t hate Felt, by any stretch: held next to Toad Road, however, Felt feels like the infinitely lesser film, which is definitely a bummer considering its important themes and focus. A disappointment because I wanted to love it and, in the end, only thought it was okay.

Lost River — Ryan Gosling’s directorial debut is obviously indebted to the filmography of Nicholas Winding Refn with one major distinction: Gosling just doesn’t have the chops (yet, at least) to pull it off. Lost River is a complete and total mess, a mish-mash of fantasy tropes and elements that feels stitched together from a thousand different sources. None of this prevents the film from being endlessly fascinating, however, which is testament to Gosling’s inherent (if under-developed) skill behind the camera. I’m willing to wager future endeavors might be quite exceptional: at this point, however, it’s more of a curiosity than anything else.

Let Us Prey — This started out strong (if familiar) before devolving into loud, brash and overtly silly nonsense by the conclusion. Despite the heavy-handed approach, however, there’s still lots to like in this tale of a demonic force invading an isolated Scottish police station in the dead of night, particularly the exceptional performances of Liam Cunningham (as the demon) and Pollyanna McIntosh (as a tough-as-nails rookie). This ended up on my list because it promised much, yet delivered surprisingly little.

Nailbiter — Like Let Us Prey, Nailbiter took a strong, simple central concept (in this case, a mother and her daughters take refuge in a storm cellar during a tornado only to find it occupied by a monstrous presence) and managed to hobble it with unnecessarily complex plot machinations and some less than convincing performances. When the film keeps it simple, it’s suitably tense and hews fairly close to the prophetic title. When it tries to expand its scope, however, Nailbiter ends up getting stretched to the point of thinness. Sometimes, simpler really is better.

Contracted: Phase 2 — While I didn’t love the original, this direct continuation of Contracted manages to be a solid step down. By introducing an unnecessary conspiracy angle, Phase 2 muddies the already murky waters of the first film, turning the proceedings into a sort of action film, ala Run Lola Run, rather than the body horror that suits it better. If nothing else, though, Phase 2 stands tall in my mind as having some of the most outrageously nauseating effects I’ve ever seen, effects which make Cronenberg’s Fly remake look like a kid flick.

The 31 Days of Halloween: Week 5 Mini-Reviews (Part Two)

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31 Days of Halloween, Avenged, Black Sabbath, Cannibal, cinema, Contracted: Phase 2, film reviews, films, Halloween, Halloween traditions, horror, horror movies, Jaws, mini-reviews, Movies, Nailbiter, October, Swamp Thing, The Twelve Tasks of Asterix, Tooth and Nail, Trick 'r Treat, Wes Craven

At long last, I present the conclusion to my 31 Days of Halloween mini-reviews. It’s a little late, of course, given that we’ve now tip-toed into Saint Nick’s territory but my adage has always been that it’s better late than never at all. There have been quite a few films to get through and my slow recovery has made it difficult to be as consistent as I would like. Nonetheless, the finish line is finally in sight.

Stay tuned for a final wrap-up on my October viewings, including my picks for the very best and very worst films that I screened during the 31 Days of Halloween. After that, we’ll ease back into our regularly scheduled programming, albeit in a continued shortened form until I’m completely up to snuff. Without further ado, then:

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Thursday, 10/29

Jaws — There’s a reason why Spielberg’s Jaws has lost precious little of its bite in the 40 years since it first scared viewers out of the water: when you build something right, you build it to last. Essentially a master class in how to scare the ever-loving shit out of a multiplex audience, Jaws is stuffed-to-bursting with action-packed set-pieces, likable characters, gorgeous cinematography (Hollywood journeyman Bill Butler turns in some of his best work here) and one hell of an unforgettable score that might (arguably) be the most recognized one in cinematic history.

Nearly as famous for what went wrong behind the scenes as what went right (the constantly broken mechanical shark and vein-popping fights between Spielberg and writer Peter Benchley being some of the most memorable mishaps), Jaws is testament to the fact that a masterful filmmaker can turn grief into gold. Hell, who knows how the film would’ve turned out if they’d been able to utilize the expensive mechanical shark in every single scene they wanted? By using nothing more than the obligatory fin, a rippling wake in the water and John Williams’ clarion call, Spielberg goes the Hitchcock route and trades in instant gratification for unrelenting tension and suspense: the results, of course, speak for themselves.

Although I’ve seen an awful lot of films since the very first time I saw Jaws, I’ll still never forget that damn body floating up in the sunken boat, its popped-out eyeball, literally, the stuff of nightmares. Or the amazing scene where Quint hauntingly recounts the tragic end of the USS Indianapolis. Or the subtle, quiet and sweet little scene where Chief Brody and his young son bond by mimicking each other at the dinner table. Come to think of it, I’m hard-pressed to think of many scenes in the film that haven’t become permanently glued to my brain: that iconic opening…Jaws pulling the dock (plus fisherman) into the water…the barrel-weights popping up, ominously, in the middle of the calm sea…the unbelievably pulse-pounding finale where Quint dies like the man that he is, while Brody becomes the one that he wants to be…it’s all part of one of the very best, most magical films in the history of cinema. An absolutely timeless classic.

Black Sabbath — Consisting of three unconnected tales, Mario Bava’s Black Sabbath has mood and atmosphere for miles, even if the film occasionally swerves over the dividing line that separates the eternally cool from the kinda cheesy. Of the three, the truly creepy adaptation of Chekhov’s “The Drop of Water” burrows the deepest under the skin (the dead old lady’s rictus grin really is the stuff of nightmares) but the segment featuring Boris Karloff is probably the best known. While Black Sabbath has never been my favorite Bava film, it’s earned its classic status (and then some) in the fifty years since its release.

Friday, 10/30

Cannibal — Slow, stately, austere and gorgeously shot, Manuel Martin Cuenca’s Cannibal mixes things up by focusing on the drama and the characters rather than the bloodletting, becoming sort of the Merchant-Ivory of flesh-eating in the process. This story about a lonely, middle-aged tailor looking for love amidst a host of complications (not least of which is his propensity for butchering and consuming the lovely young ladies that he fixates on) features some great acting (Antonio de la Torre and Olimpia Melinte are simply phenomenal as the titular cannibal and the object of his obsession), lovely locations, beautiful cinematography and an almost oppressively sad tone.

Since we never really learn anything about what drives de la Torre to consume flesh, however, it’s hard to become fully invested in the great tragedy of it all. Most of the film breaks down into the tailor/cannibal moping around endlessly, with an emphasis on brooding melancholy over any kind of story or character development. It’s a beautiful film to look at and experience, don’t get me wrong, but it also feels disappointingly one-dimensional once all’s said and done. For my money, Jorge Michel Grau’s We Are What We Are (along with Jim Mickle’s exceptional remake) did the “brooding arthouse cannibal” thing much more successfully.

Nailbiter — Writer/director Patrick Rea’s Nailbiter ends up being a pretty average film and…well, that actually suits it just fine. Full of understated performances, slightly clunky dialogue and an overall style that could best be described as “functional,” this mid-Western update of Lovecraft’s Shadow Over Innsmouth hits most of its marks, even if it never really stands apart from the pack. Dragged down by its nagging familiarity (the creatures have pretty much been lifted wholesale from The Descent, for one thing), Nailbiter surprised me by becoming gradually more grim and uncompromising as it went along: it’s not spoiling anything to say that this story of a family trapped with something evil in a storm cellar during a tornado doesn’t have a happy ending…those kinds of stories rarely do.

Saturday, 10/31

Tooth and Nail — What happens when you toss Neil Marshall’s Doomsday, a bevy of reliable B-actors (Vinnie Jones, Robert Carradine and Michael “Whatta ya got” Madsen, among others) and an elephant-sized pile of genre clichés into a big, loud and dumb dinner-theateresque re-imagining of Mad Max? I’m willing to wager that you’d end up with something that looks an awful lot like writer/director Mark Young’s Tooth and Nail. Despite being incredibly silly and bombastic, this familiar tale of a group of survivors trying to stand strong against cannibal marauders in the burned-out remains of our collapsed society (as expected, our reliance on oil and fossil fuels fucks us royally here, too) is also very energetic, endearingly earnest and just entertaining enough to make the abject familiarity wash down a bit easier.

Even when the cliches pile up high enough to block out the sun (the scene where formerly “mild” Dakota dons warpaint and proceeds to kick major ass is so old that I’m worried about it breaking a hip), Tooth and Nail is undeniably watchable, with Carradine providing a nice turn on the old “crazy genius” character. There’s nothing here that most astute genre fans haven’t seen at least several times in the past (if you’ve seen the aforementioned post-apocalyptic flicks, you’ve already seen about a quarter of this, give or take) but it’s handled competently enough, sort of the equivalent of a particularly gory Syfy flick, if you will.

Contracted: Phase Two — While the first Contracted was no classic, it managed to capably juggle several different horror tropes (body horror, sexual assault, zombie/infection films, STDs, for starters) while showcasing a strong performance by lead Najarra Townsend and some remarkably disgusting gore effects. Since the original film ends on a direct cliffhanger, a sequel was inevitable, if a little baffling (after all, most B-horror films don’t really warrant sequels, much less franchises), which leads us directly to Phase 2.

This time around, original writer/director Eric England hands the reins to a pair of newcomers (director Josh Forbes and writer Craig Walendziak) and the resulting personnel shift does, indeed, affect the tone of the film. Picking up directly where the first film ended, Phase 2 is much more of a straight-forward action/conspiracy thriller, unlike the original’s distinctly body-horror angle. This time around, we follow returning/surviving character Riley (Matt Mercer) as he races around and tries to figure out a cure for the necrotizing STD that Sam passed on to him in the first film.

Unlike the relatively straight-forward (at least until the “twist” finale) Contracted, Phase 2 is a fairly jumbled mess, equal parts thriller, mystery, horror, sci-fi, drama and conspiracy film. We get plenty of large-scale dastardly plans (ala James Bond villains), some truly revolting effects work (which somehow manages to one-up the retch-worthy grue from the first film) and some pretty inexplicable nods to films like Run, Lola Run and Dead Alive. Since I didn’t love the original film, it’s hard to call the sequel a disappoint, although my default emotion for most of it was a sort of gentle bemusement. File this with the stack of “fair to middlings” but gentler stomachs be forewarned: if pus, open wounds and rotted body parts aren’t your thing, you won’t make it past the opening credits.

Avenged — If you’re going to make an exploitation film, might as well go all in, right? Take cinematographer-turned-writer/director Michael S. Ojeda’s Avenged, for example. The storyline certainly smacks of ’70s-era grindhouses: a sweet and innocent deaf girl is on a solo trip through the Southwest when she runs afoul of a gang of sleazy, villainous rednecks. After she witnesses them enthusiastically kill a pair of Apache men, they take her captive, brutalize her in some pretty terrible ways, stab her and leave her for dead in a shallow grave in the middle of the desert. Cue the kindly Apache medicine man who finds her body and performs a healing ritual that somehow imbues her with the spirit of Magnus Coloradus, a murdered Apache chief who wants vengeance on his killers’ ancestors…who just happen to be the same sleazebags that raped and murdered the deaf girl. If you guessed that formerly sweet Zoe becomes a dead-eyed killing machine prone to doing things like hanging sleazebags with their own intestines and scalping them, well, go ahead and give yourself the prize.

Avenged (which originally went by the more implictly offensive title Savaged) is many things but confused is probably as good a descriptor as any. With a tone that veers wildly between gritty, in-your-face, thoroughly unpleasant sleaze (I Spit On Your Grave is an obvious reference/influence) and silly, over-the-top fantasy action (the scene where the green ghost of Magnus pounds the ground and produces a mystical knife and tomahawk for Zoe is straight out of Big Trouble in Little China), there’s never a consistent feel or flow. The acting tends towards the broad (the rednecks are all straight from Central Casting, right down to their tedious hatred of “Injuns,” and Zoe’s boyfriend is so earnest that it hurts), the film is often over-the-top and a little silly (despite the subject matter) and the frequent attempts at pulling on heartstrings tend to grind the film to an awkward stop far too often.

On the other hand, however, Avenged does manage to deliver on one of the key tenets of exploitation cinema: it’s an absolutely unabashed, visceral thrill ride, full of pretty astounding violence and some genuinely exciting action sequences. Zoe/Magnus is a pretty striking figure as she cuts a bloody swath through the beasts who violated her and, as with all rape-revenge films, there’s certainly a sense of satisfaction and, dare I say, enjoyment that accompanies her incredibly gory trip to retribution. When Zoe is kicking ass on the inbreds, Avenged achieves a sort of sublimity that helps carry over the (many) rough patches. The dramatic, humanizing elements, then, are the ones that really prevent the film from making the most of its gutter-trawl. While it’s certainly possible to create an exploitation-shocker with heart (I’m thinking of Hobo With a Shotgun, primarily), Avenged veers between sleazy and maudlin, which splits the difference in the worst possible way.

And that whole notion of a young white girl getting possessed by the spirit of a dispossessed, murdered Native American in order for him to achieve the justice that he couldn’t while alive? Yeah…that’s a subject for a whole different conversation, friends and neighbors.

The Twelve Tasks of Asterix — As a kid, there were a few movies that were my go-tos whenever I was stuck at home, sick: The Last Unicorn, any of the Sean Connery James Bond films, The Gold Bug (an obscure Edgar Allen Poe adaptation starring the incredible Jeffrey Holder) and this little gem: the Twelve Tasks of Asterix. Based on a popular French comic strip, this joyously silly, giddy little treat is sort of like a beginner’s Monty Python, throwing one absurd, fourth-wall-busting gag after another at viewers until the only possible recourse is to just give in and experience the film: any attempt to wring perfect sense from the proceedings is as moot as trying to explicate a pie-in-the-face gag.

Full of sly in-jokes and references (the bit where Caesar cautions Brutus to be careful of his knife because he’ll “hurt someone” is but one breezy example among hundreds), snappy dialogue and genuinely odd occurrences (the Cave of the Beast is straight out of The Holy Grail and I’ve always wondered why people would willingly pay the hypnotist to turn them into animals), The Twelve Tasks of Asterix is a complete sugar rush from start to finish. Unlike some of my childhood favorites, the film holds up remarkably well today, outdated racial stereotypes and humor notwithstanding, of course. Although much of the humor toes the line between racy adult fare and tamer kiddie viewing (the isle of women ends up firmly on the adult side, whereas the bureaucratic insanity of the permit office will likely fly right over the head of anyone too young to deal with government paperwork), this still seems appropriate for young viewers.

The Twelve Tasks of Asterix will always be a nostalgic favorite and reminder of my childhood but that does nothing to take away from the actual quality of the film. In fact, to this day, the separate segments involving the permit office and the plain of departed souls still stand as two of my very favorite scenes in any film, animated or otherwise. The films of our youth establish the foundations of our adulthood and, with this little delight, we can see one of the cornerstones of my own development.

Trick ‘r Treat — Not much can be said about Michael Dougherty’s instant classic that I haven’t already said in much greater detail prior to this (interested readers are always encouraged to revisit my original thoughts on the film from a previous year’s viewings), so I’ll just go ahead and restate the obvious: I love this fucking film to death. I love everything about Trick ‘r Treat: the look, the feel, the performances, the writing, the cinematography, the storyline, the twists and turns, the iconic nods to my favorite time of the year…if there was ever a film that felt explicitly made to my individual tastes, this is it, without a doubt.

Like It’s a Wonderful Life or Miracle on 34th Street did for Christmas, Trick ‘r Treat is the quintessential Halloween film, a remarkably detailed, complex and interconnected love letter to the season that manages to incorporate not only horror elements and seasonal affectations like Halloween parties and trick or treating but also color palettes, symbolism and an overall Autumnal atmosphere. The effect is wholly immersive and all-encompassing: Trick ‘r Treat isn’t a film set during Halloween…it’s a film ABOUT Halloween and that’s a huge difference.

This was the film that not only put writer/director Dougherty on my radar but made him one of the modern filmmakers I’m most excited about. With his Christmas horror film, Krampus, actually opening in theaters this weekend and rumors of a Trick ‘r Treat sequel in the air, I’m really hoping that we get a whole lot more Dougherty in the near future. A filmmaker who worships Halloween like I do? There’s no way that dude’s not stealing a big piece of my heart.

Swamp Thing — When horror auteur Wes Craven died at the end of August, I had every intention of honoring his legacy by re-watching his filmography during my 31 Days of Halloween celebration. As it turned out, I wouldn’t get very far in my Cravenathon: the original Nightmare on Elm Street, A New Nightmare and Craven’s sole attempt at superhero/comic book films, Swamp Thing.

In every way, Swamp Thing is an old-fashioned superhero film, the kind that was de rigueur before ultra-serious, violent and brooding heroes became the cultural norm. With its over-the-top performances, wipe transitions, rousing score (courtesy of Friday the 13th’s Harry Manfredini) and A-Team-level violence (for the most part, Swamp Thing throws bad guys around like rag dolls and there isn’t a single character in the film who can actually hit anything with a firearm, be it pistol or machine gun), Craven’s Swamp Thing is a decidedly kid-friendly affair, despite the usual mature themes of greed, loss, love and murder and, in this case, it fits the subject matter like a glove.

As a film, Swamp Thing is a fun, if arguably disposable, bit of fluff. A very young Ray Wise is perfect as the pre-mutation Thing, playing against type as the noble, easy-going and romantic scientist with hopes for humanity but a fate that will cast him as the ultimate outcast. Genre royalty Adrienne Barbeau is equally excellent as the government agent who captures Wise’s heart and Louis Jourdan is massively entertaining as the dastardly Dr. Arcane, managing to project poise, gravitas and sly humor even when he’s saddled with ridiculous, long-maned boar-man makeup. The rest of the cast is broad, if fun (Reggie Batts is the easy stand-out as young Jude, Barbeau’s droll, laid-back sidekick and deserved his own spinoff), which certainly befits the style/material. Craftwise, Swamp Thing is certainly adequate, although it often looks cheap and the only truly memorable visual moments are the brilliant, green mutagen and the impossibly cool sunken church.

For the most part, Craven’s Swamp Thing strikes me as pretty typical fare for the writer/director/producer, despite the obvious lack of blood or menacing situations: perfectly serviceable, often inspired, frequently run-of-the-mill. In a career that spanned over four decades, there was a lot of Craven’s work that I consider to be utterly indispensable, particularly as regards horror history: A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Hills Have Eyes, The Last House on the Left and Scream have all earned their places in the Horror Hall of Fame, no two ways about it. Swamp Thing is certainly not an essential film but it is a fun one and, at the end of the day, that might be the single most important thing of all.

Wes Craven was responsible for a handful of essential films and a double-handful of entertaining ones: The Hills Have Eyes 2 may be a terrible film but it’s also the only film I’ve ever seen with a dog flashback and that certainly has to count for something. Craven may not have had the consistent brilliance of Carpenter or Romero but he left a mark on the cinematic world that will never be forgotten. I didn’t know him personally but I’m sure going to miss him now that he’s gone.

The 31 Days of Halloween: Week 2 Mini-Reviews

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31 Days of Halloween, A Christmas Horror Story, Air, Alien Outpost, All Hallows' Eve 2, American Mary, cinema, Curse of Chucky, Damien: Omen II, Escape To Witch Mountain, film franchise, film reviews, films, Gremlins, Hardware, Hidden, horror, horror movies, Knock Knock, mini-reviews, Movies, October, Omen III: The Final Conflict, Saw 5, Saw 6, Saw franchise, Some Kind of Hate, The Beyond, The Final Girls, The Hidden, The Midnight Swim, The Monster Squad, The Omen, The Omen franchise, The Stranger, Tremors 5: Bloodlines, We Are Still Here

Welcome back, boos and ghouls, to The VHS Graveyard’s 31 Days of Halloween (2015 edition). Last time around, we gave some brief discussions on our first week’s worth of movies: this time around, we’ll be tackling the films perused during the second week of October, from 10/5 to 10/11. As always, expect more in-depth discussion of these in the (hopefully) near future: for the time being, here are mini-reviews for the twenty-five films we screened last week.

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Monday, 10/5

A Christmas Horror Story — Anthologies are nothing new in the world of horror films but horror-oriented Christmas anthologies? As rare as Kris Kringle in August. Here to remedy this sad little disparity is the multi-director/writer effort A Christmas Horror Story, soon to be joined by at least two other Christmas/Krampus-related anthologies in the next few months. ACHS looks absolutely gorgeous, thanks to some truly beautiful cinematography, and sports a pretty expert use of CGI to create things like a buffed-out Krampus and some pretty authentic gore. If only one of the stories has a truly satisfying finale (the Santa vs zombie elves episode is just about perfect), at least only one of them is kind of a stinker: when you’re dealing with anthologies, sometimes that’s the most you can hope for.

Gremlins — Growing up, I watched Gremlins so often that I pretty much had the film’s entire blocking memorized. While the film, itself, is just about the best example of evil besieging a small town that’s ever been put to film (“Norman Rockwell meets hellspawn”), it’s the slyly subversive sense of humor that really makes this one so memorable. If you were a horror fanatic who came of age in the ’80s, I’m more than willing to wager that Phoebe Cates’ infamous Santa story was as integral to your formative years as it was to mine. Bonus points for effects that have not only aged well but actually surpass more modern, CGI-heavy spectacles.

Tuesday, 10/6

The Stranger — I wasn’t really sure what to expect before starting this and, once the end credits rolled, I still wasn’t quite sure. Nominally a vampire film, The Stranger really owes more to mean-spirited ’80s revenge films. The dialogue is often awkward, as are the line deliveries from the predominately Chilean cast (the cast deliver their lines in English, which recalls nothing so much as similarly-made Itallo-gore films of the ’80s), and the acting can be earnest to the point of self-parody. Written and directed by frequent Eli Roth collaborator Guillermo Amoedo (who also wrote Roth’s upcoming The Green Inferno and Knock Knock), The Stranger is light years better than the patently awful Aftershock but, ultimately, that’s not much of a selling point.

Saw V — Tedious, bland and full of performances that confuse shouting with passion, the fifth entry in the Saw franchise continues to grind out the increasingly complex and navel-gazing storyline but there’s not a whole lot of fun to be found here. There is a nice subtext about the need to work together in order to survive but it’s hopelessly buried in the muck like a rapidly dying star.

Alien Outpost — In many ways, Alien Outpost is like a mockbuster version of Monsters: Dark Continent. Both films use the pretext of alien invasions as a way to make yet another comment on U.S. military incursions into the Middle East. Both films feature groups of largely anonymous, interchangeable soldiers (Alien Outpost, at the very least, has the benefit of Highlander’s Adrian Paul, the patron saint of poverty-row sci-fi productions) duking it out with insurgents in the desert. Both films relegate their creatures to the extreme background. Both films, as it turns out, are not only mostly interchangeable but largely forgettable.

Wednesday, 10/7

The Monster Squad — One of the most important films of my formative years (along with Night of the Creeps), The Monster Squad began my lifelong love affair with those conjoined geniuses, Fred Dekker and Shane Black. While Dekker would only direct three features in his entire career (Night of the Creeps, The Monster Squad and RoboCop 3), Black would go on to write such little-seen indie sleepers as the Lethal Weapon franchise, The Last Boy Scout, Last Action Hero and Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang. Smart-mouthed kids fighting famous monsters as written by the guy that created Lethal Weapon? Yeah…it’s kind of awesome.

Escape to Witch Mountain — Another of my favorite films as a youngster, Disney’s Escape to Witch Mountain feels a little dated, these days, but still largely holds up. Featuring Ray Milland and Donald Pleasence as nefarious 1%ers out to exploit the psychic abilities of a couple of cherubic extraterrestrial kids and Eddie Albert as the kindly (if curmudgeonly) guy who takes them under his wing, there’s lots of the usual Disney shenanigans (dancing puppets in an extended, almost overly jubilant bit) but also just enough real menace to give the whole thing a little bite.

We Are Still Here — Before it collapses a little in the final third, writer/director Ted Geoghegan’s debut, We Are Still Here, is an appropriately chilling little homage to films like Lucio Fulci’s House By the Cemetery and The Beyond. Up until the Grand Guignol finale, the film is a mostly glacier-paced exercise in sustained tension that makes good use of its chilly, isolated locations, puncturing the relative calm with bracing moments of intense, physical violence. Although the film becomes much more predictable when it turns into something of a supernatural Straw Dogs by the end,  what leads up to that is suitably chilling and bodes well for Geoghegan’s future output. And besides: any film that features both Larry Fessenden (his séance scene is fantastic) and Barbara Crampton obviously has its heart in the right place.

Thursday, 10/8

The Hidden — More of a relentless action film than a horror or sci-fi film (similar to the modus operandi behind The Terminator), The Hidden is a giddy, full-throttle and gently mindless bit of cinematic cotton candy. The interplay between a young Kyle MacLachlan and tough-as-nails Michael Nouri is the real star of the show, although elements like the kickass punk/metal soundtrack and a suitably slimy slug-alien creature do their job to keep the home fires burning. Add in a slightly subversive sense of humor (the scene where the alien becomes a woman for the first time is kind of great) and you’ve got yourself the recipe for a fun, if largely forgotten, bit of ’80s action fluff.

Air — With an intriguing premise (two blue-collar guys are responsible for taking care of the rest of humanity, who are all cryogenically frozen) and a pair of solid performances from The Walking Dead’s Norman Reedus and Amistad’s Djimon Hounsou, indie sci-fi thriller Air should have been an easy home-run. When the film just focuses on the nitty-gritty of Reedus and Hounsou surviving against the odds, it’s an enthralling watch. Once the two end up at odds, however, the whole thing becomes much more conventional and much less interesting, winding up in a “happy” ending that feels as undeserved as it is contrived. Moon, Gravity and All is Lost did much more interesting things from roughly the same area code.

Hidden — Rarely have I been as genuinely frustrated with a film as I was with Hidden. For the first half or so, the film is virtually flawless, managing to make the plight of a family of three in an underground bunker seem as white-knuckle and relentless as a rollercoaster. Once the twists start to pour in, however (three major ones, in a row, which is at least two twists too many), the genuinely interesting survival aspect is put on the back burner for an “us against them” trope that’s as old and musty as an ossuary. This was far from a terrible film, which actually made the let-down that much more frustrating. Call it the case of the front-runner who snaps their ankle right before the finish line: the true definition of tragedy.

The Beyond — The effects are largely unconvincing (although extremely enthusiastic), the acting is rather rudimentary and any sense of logic or continuity is largely absent but I’ll be damned if legendary Itallo gore-godfather Lucio Fulci’s The Beyond isn’t one of the most unintentionally badass films in the horror universe. With a storyline that tosses Lovecraft, King and graphic splatter into a blender and punches “liquify,” The Beyond is pretty much the epitome of a film better experienced than pondered.  Fabbio Frizzi’s kinetic synth scores hits all the requisite Goblin tones, the oppressive atmosphere is as thick as denim and that final shot of the “beyond” is as unforgettable today as it was 34 years ago. Fulci might have been somewhat of a spiritual bratty little brother to Argento’s assured maestro but The Beyond proves that the irritable auteur earned his place in the horror pantheon. And then some.

Friday, 10/9

Some Kind of Hate — This had a pretty unbeatable concept for a teen slasher (bullied misfit gets sent to a camp for troubled teens and unleashes the spirit of a vengeful, dead bullied teen) and a great concept for the “ghost” (she harms herself in order to harm her victims) but was pretty much DOA from the jump. Obnoxious, full of eye-rolling performances and never with more than a Wikipedia-lite grasp on teen bullying, this was a complete chore to sit through. Lead Ronen Rubenstein isn’t terrible, even if his character gets annoying before the final reel, but Sierra McCormick’s pivotal Moira (the ghost) is pretty awful, concept notwithstanding. Obvious, blunt to the point of being lunk-headed and ridiculously fidgety, this was a pretty big disappointment.

Knock Knock — For a filmmaker who’s been something of a trend-setter since the early aughts, it’s important to remember that Eli Roth only had three full-lengths under his belt prior to this year (Cabin Fever, Hostel and Hostel 2). With his 2013 cannibal film The Green Inferno (finally seeing release this year) being more of an homage to classic Itallo-cannibal epics, this leaves Knock Knock with the onus of being Roth’s first truly “original” film since Hostel punched our gorge reflexes in the solar plexus over a decade ago. If you think about it, that’s quite a bit of anticipation…could anything actually live up to the hype?

Right off the bat, Knock Knock exhibits many of the issues that I’ve always had with Roth’s films: he can’t direct actors to save his life (he wrings an absolutely awful performance out of poor Keanu Reeves, who seemed to be on an upswing, as of late), his wild tonal shifts fail as much as they connect (his insistence on sneaking slapstick into his films is the kind of smirking affectation that should really be slapped out of him) and his continued reliance on friend/writer Guillermo Amoedo has produced more terrible scripts than bad (Aftershock, The Stranger and Knock Knock all have simply terrible scripts).

On the other hand, it’s impossible to deny that Knock Knock is a huge evolution in Roth’s filmmaking. While his grasp on tension, in the past, was always precipitated on the promise of extreme, mind-searing gore, Knock Knock manages to maintain its white-knuckle tension with nothing more extreme than a fork in the shoulder (for Roth, that’s pretty much the equivalent of a Disney film) and an escalating series of bad decisions that end up bearing enormously bad fruit. Knock Knock is an absolute blast from start to finish, regardless of (and, occasionally, because of) all the aforementioned issues. Reeves goes full Nic Cage, shit goes from bad to worse in record time and the various twists are genuinely smart, regardless of the clunky dialogue. Without a doubt, my favorite Roth film (I’ve yet to see The Green Inferno) and one of the most intriguing films I’ve screened in a while.

All Hallows’ Eve 2 — The first All Hallows’ Eve came out of nowhere and completely bowled me over when I watched it last October, so I was pretty darn excited when the sequel popped up just as mysteriously. This time around, there are eight stories instead of three and multiple writers/directors handle the tales rather than the unified vision of the first one’s Damien Leone (definitely a filmmaker to watch). This is a whole lot more polished and flashy than Leone’s gritty, lo-fi original, which actually works against the whole “found footage on a VHS tape” angle. That being said, the stories are all interesting, even if only three of the eight could properly be considered “shorts” with full structures: the others are more vignettes than anything else (one short is only two minutes long, after all). A post-apocalyptic trick or treat session yields some real chills and “A Boy’s Life” surprises with its genuine emotional heft and great acting. There are a lot worse horror anthologies out there than All Hallows’ Eve 2, even if it never approaches the disturbing heights of its predecessor.

Saturday, 10/10

Curse of Chucky — I didn’t expect much when I started this, which made it all the more surprising when I fell head over heels for it. In the purest ways possible, Don Mancini’s Curse of Chucky (the sixth in the series, all of which have been written by Mancini) is a perfect horror film: the villain is fantastic and genuinely menacing, the acting is top-notch, the scares and tension are based around suspense and anticipation and the effects are astounding. Everything about the film shot for the sky and, for the most part, had no problem hitting orbit. Whether it was the way in which the film’s numerous set-pieces managed to channel Hitchcock (there’s a dinner scene that manages to sit nicely on the shelf next to ol’ Hitch’s classics), the subtle ways in which Chucky’s face gradually changed throughout the film or the brilliant ways in which Mancini not only tied the film in with the others but managed to expand on the mythos, Curse of Chucky is easily the best film in the series (that includes the original, ya purists) and one of the very best horror films I’ve seen in forever. Friends to the end, indeed!

American Mary — I’ve already written extensively about the Soska Sisters’ American Mary when I first saw the film a few years back, so here’s the Cliff Notes version: this is an absolutely brilliant film and one of my very favorites, genre be damned. Impossibly ugly, heart-rendingly beautiful and featuring one of the most iconic protagonists in modern cinema, American Mary is one of those works of art that seems to descend from elsewhere, fully created and ready to set the world on fire. Completely badass, full of instantly memorable characters, thoroughly self-assured and absolutely fearless, American Mary is definitely one of the highlights of modern cinema. While this story of revenge, self-discovery and extreme body modification is a difficult pill to swallow, it’s the instant antidote to anyone who bemoans the lack of quality modern genre films. They exist: you just have to dig a little deeper, that’s all.

The Final Girls — I went into Todd Strauss-Schulson’s The Final Girls fully expecting to love it and, to my extreme joy, I was not disappointed. Incredibly smart, cleverly meta, full of fantastic performances and genuinely emotionally resonant, this is easily one of the best horror films (well…horror-comedies) of the year. AHS’ Taissa Farmiga is simply stunning as the grief-choked daughter who gets a chance to reunite with her now-dead mother, albeit by “stepping into” an ’80s slasher film (blending Friday the 13th with The Purple Rose of Cairo is but one of the brilliant things presented here). There’s plenty of reliably comic performances here from the likes of Alia Shawkat, Thomas Middleditch and the always amazing Adam Devine but if you don’t choke up at the interactions between Farmiga and mom Malin Akerman, well…you might just have a heart of stone, buddy.

The Midnight Swim — Leisurely paced to the point of occasionally feeling inert, writer/director Sarah Adina Smith’s The Midnight Swim is the furthest thing from a thrill-ride. For patient viewers, however, this haunting tale of sisters returning to their childhood home to mourn their dead mother really pays off in the long run. While I wasn’t always on-board with some of Smith’s choices (there’s a goofy lip-synching scene that sort of sticks out and some of the scenes are held past the point of “evocative” straight into “navel-gazing”), I genuinely liked and respected the film. While the end may seem like a bit of a left-field twist, there are plenty of road signs to help guide us there and the whole thing ended up feeling impossibly uplifting and rather inspirational. Combine all of this with the fact that the film is, essentially, a found-footage movie and you have one of the most surprising, effective little films of the past few years. I, for one, cannot wait to see where Smith goes from here.

Sunday, 10/11

Hardware — This genuinely frightening tale of technology run amok is impossibly weird, which only makes sense when you consider the source: auteur Richard Stanley is a genuinely weird genius. Full of hallucinatory images, nonsensical dream sequences, astounding moments of ultra-gore and some of the flat-out oddest characters this side of Mad Max (the scrap-dealing dwarf is great but the outrageously vulgar peeping tom is utterly unforgettable), this has been one of my favorite films since the very first time I saw it as an impressionable kid. I can guarantee one thing: you’ve never seen anything like this before and I seriously doubt we’ll see its like again. Apple pie nerve toxin: delicious!

Tremors 5: Bloodlines — While I genuinely enjoy the first few films in the Tremors franchise (the original is an absolute classic), everything about the newest one is strictly by-the-book and rather silly. While the film looks pretty good and features decent performances from series mainstay Michael Gross and newcomer Jamie Kennedy, it’s strictly Sy-Fy when it comes to tone and intention. Add to this an uncomfortable tendency for the film to humiliate Gross’ heroic Burt Gummer at every possible turn (the scene where he gets trapped in a cage and is forced to drink his own urine, right before a large lion comes over and, literally, pisses all over him, is the worst kind of unforgettable) and you have a film that just isn’t a lot of fun.

Saw VI — When I was younger, the Saw series was one of my favorites and I eagerly looked forward to each new installment. Years later, as I re-watch the entire series for the first time, I’m struck by one, simple thought: these films are actually kinda shitty. Aside from the invention of the first and the third entries, none of them have grabbed me anew and, to that end, Part 6 is one of the worst and most tedious. From the obnoxious hyper-kinetic editing to the genuinely ugly look to the impossibly stupid and increasingly complex motivations of the characters, everything about this film is like getting pounded in the face with a sledgehammer. Helmed by “filmmaker” Kevin Greutert, who would go on to helm the notoriously execrable Jessebelle, the only emotion Saw VI elicits is the overwhelming desire for Jigsaw to help the series end its pain. Wanna play a game? Naw…I’m good, dude.

The Omen — Helmed by future Lethal Weapon director Richard Donner, The Omen is pretty much the epitome of multiplex horror circa the mid-’70s: based on a best-selling book, full of familiar faces, melodramatic and just violent enough to get the point across (the window-pane decapitation is a great setpiece, no matter how you slice it), it’s easy to see this appealing to the Saturday night, popcorn-and-soda crowd. On the plus-side, the film features sturdy performances from leads Peck and Remick and a handful of genuinely creepy moments (the graveyard scene is an easy highlight, as is the birthday party suicide). On the down side, it’s almost unrelentingly loud, heavy-handed and kind of dumb: add to that one of the most “Vasoliney” lenses since the glory days of Liz Taylor’s “White Diamonds” commercials and the whole thing feels fairly dated.

Damien: Omen II — Despite being much more grounded and decidedly less hysterical than the first film, the second movie in the Omen series is still kind of a dud. None of the deaths have any impact (aside from the utterly batshit elevator scene, which easily tops anything in the entire series) and the military school setting is woefully under-used (as is poor Lance Henriksen). There is some interesting discussion based around Thorn Industries becoming a sort of proto-Monsanto but it’s more interesting in theory than execution. This is also where the first film’s mythos about stabbing the Antichrist with the seven daggers starts to get awfully slippery, leading to the final film’s veritable free-for-all. When the scariest thing in your horror film is a sinister crow, you might have a problem.

Omen III: The Final Conflict — Finishing off the series, The Final Conflict lets the narrative from the first two films play to its conclusion, albeit influenced and modified by the burgeoning slasher trend of the early ’80s. There’s some first-person-stalker POV here (unlike the first two films) and the performances and violence certainly seem influenced by the era. Sam Neill is good as the now-grown Damien, even if his gentle gnawing of the scenery erupts into a full-on gluttonous orgy by the film’s final reel. For all that, however, the third Omen film is just serviceable, much like the first two. Extra points for the goofy, straight-faced religious salvation of the finale, which proves that evil always loses…especially when it chews the scenery like the Tasmanian Devil on speed. There are a couple genuinely shocking moments here (the attempted interview assassination begins on a slightly humorous edge before quickly nose-diving into pure horror) but, for the most part, is the dictionary definition of “middle-of-the-road.”