8/2/15: Don’t Look Now

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abandoned inns, Brian Austin Green, cinema, Curtiss Frisle, David de Lautour, debut feature, Don't Blink, dramas, Emelie O'Hara, feature-film debut, film reviews, films, Fiona Gubelmann, horror, horror movies, independent films, indie horror film, isolated estates, isolation, Jayson Crothers, Joanne Kelly, Leif Gantvoort, Mena Suvari, Mike Verta, missing friends, mountain resort, Movies, mystery, romantic rivalry, Samantha Jacobs, supernatural, Travis Oates, vanished into thin air, weekend in the country, writer-director, Zack Ward

If you think about it, almost all horror films boil down to one central question: how much do you show/explain/reveal to the audience and, conversely, how much do you keep concealed from them? Do you show the whole monster or just a shoulder? Cut to black before the final assault or let the camera’s unblinking eye do its worst? Explain the whole thing via a complicated system of flashbacks and “ah ha!” moments or leave it open-ended so that your audience does the heavy-lifting? Carpenter’s original Halloween (1978) is the film that it is because of what he purposefully doesn’t show, whereas Zombie’s 2007 remake is the film it is because of what he does. It all comes down to that paraphrased adage “To show or not to show…that is the question.”

Voice-over actor-turned writer/director Travis Oates’ feature-length debut, Don’t Blink (2014) is a good example of a film knowing when to keep its mouth shut, even if the result ends up being more than a little vague and kind of arbitrary. Despite any reservations and/or complaints I might have about the film, itself, I have to absolutely give props where they’re due: Oates manages to avoid one of my biggest cinematic pet peeves (let’s call it oversharing, to be generous) and, in the process, turns in a modest, effective and suitably chilling little indie horror film. Toss in a pretty great location and you get a film that gets the job done, even if it’s not setting the world on fire. Sometimes, that’s victory enough.

Utilizing one of the mustiest conceits in the horror film playbook, a group of ten assorted couples, friends, enemies and frenemies all descend upon a suitably isolated location (in this case, a supremely creepy abandoned mountain resort lodge) for some of that good old-fashioned movie r & r that always seems to involved vacationing with folks you kind of hate. In one car, we have Tracy (Mena Suvari), her brother, Lucas (Curtiss Frisle) and her new boyfriend, Jack (Beverly Hills, 90210’s Brian Austin Green). In another car, Claire (Joanne Kelly) and Amelia (Emelie O’Hara), a couple of single girls on the prowl. For balance, we also get best friends, Alex (Zack Ward) and Sam (Leif Gantvoort), along with Sam’s girlfriend, Charlotte (Samantha Jacobs). And, of course, for maximum dramatic potential, we have Jack’s ex-girlfriend, Ella (Wilfred’s Fiona Gubelmann, once again caught in a love triangle) and her new boyfriend, Noah (David de Latour).

Once they’ve all arrived at the lodge, the group begins to notice a few things that make them all slightly uneasy. For one thing, the nearby lake has frozen solid, so fast, apparently, that a row-boat is stuck fast in the middle. This might be explained away by unseasonable weather if the surrounding area wasn’t, conversely, strangely warm. There also seems to be a decided lack of wildlife, including birds and fish: again, not so strange in and of itself but decidedly unsettling when one considers the remote wilderness locale. And then, of course, there’s the little matter of the lodge, itself: each and every guest seems to have just vanished into thin air, leaving behind warm bowls of food, purses, still-running vehicles and handily hidden messages with helpful declarations like “Help me!” and “Don’t blink.”

Just as the group gets down to the business of arguing amongst themselves, with Alex leading the charge to get the fuck out of Dodge, Tracy takes a cue from the other missing guests and just disappears, without so much as a trace. This, of course, does absolutely nothing to quell anyone’s nerves and pretty much wrecks Jack’s romantic weekend, all in one, fell swoop. Once Noah and Lucas follow suit, the rest of the group changes lanes from “rather concerned” to “full-on freaked out,” as they try to figure out what’s going on, all without vanishing themselves. The rules, as inexplicable as they may be, seem pretty simple: don’t stop looking at anyone, don’t take your eyes off them for even a second (in other words, “don’t blink”) or they’ll disappear.

As the group is slowly whittled down, one by one, the remaining “survivors” must band together (multiple eyes, in this case, really are better than two) in order to prevent a repeat performance. Will they be able to hold out until help arrives or are they doomed to disappear, just like the untold number before them? What, exactly, is going on in this picturesque place…and where do the people go if (and when) no one’s watching? They might not want to see but looking away could very well be the last thing any of them ever do.

For the most part, Don’t Blink is a very well-made indie horror flick, even if it never quite scales the heights to become more than that. The acting is pretty solid for this kind of thing, with Green coming out the worst (his performance as Jack is never believable, even if he’s always kind of likable) and Ward’s alpha-asshole take on Alex coming out the best: in between those two poles, the rest of the cast does just fine, even if none of them really stand out (Gubelmann, in particular, is just kind of there).

The film looks consistently good: cinematographer Jayson Crothers produces lots of nicely atmospheric shots, including plenty of cool overheads, and the creepy lodge location makes for a suitably beautiful, eerie location. While the film does feature plenty of red herrings in the form of visual and audio “fake-outs,” it never overuses jump scares, which is another big checkmark in the “plus” column. The script, for the most part, is good: the twist ending is obvious but strong and while not all of the dialogue has an authentic feel to it (Green, again, comes off the worst here), the group really does feel like they at least know each other, which is more than you can say for some micro-budget horror films.

Story-wise, the film is endlessly intriguing, even if it’s also more than a little vague and open-ended. While Oates allows for several different answers to their collective predicament (I, personally, favor a “Cabin in the Woods (2012)-type scenario but that’s probably just my over-active imagination), nothing concrete is ever determined or, to be honest, even strongly hinted at. For the most part, the group just disappears, one by one, and no one is ever the wiser. While I’m sure that some viewers out there might call foul on this, I still prefer this kind of “choose your own adventure” tact over the always eye-rolling “take my hand and I’ll walk you through every nuance” approach that many indie films seem to have tattooed over their collective hearts. Do we ever really know why the group is disappearing? Nope…and the film is actually stronger for it.

All in all, I enjoyed Oates’ debut and certainly look forward to seeing more from the filmmaker: hopefully, this wasn’t just a one-and-done but actually the beginning to the next phase of his career. While Don’t Blink never really explodes out of the box and will never be mistaken as an unsung classic, it also doesn’t make a lot of obvious mistakes: the movie is eerie, tense, interesting and no more weighted-down by clichés than at least two dozen other films I might mention. Not every horror film can be “the next big thing” but I’m more than happy to say that Don’t Blink is a perfectly good way for any horror/suspense fan to spend 90 minutes.

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7/26/15 (Part Two): Run to the Light

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Anna Paquin, auteur theory, Carles Cases, cinema, Craig Stevenson, darkness, dead children, dysfunctional family, father-son relationships, Fele Martínez, Fermí Reixach, Fernando de Felipe, Film auteurs, film reviews, filmed in Spain, films, Giancarlo Giannini, haunted houses, horror, horror films, human sacrifice, Huntington's Disease, husband-wife relationship, Iain Glen, isolated estates, Jaume Balagueró, Lena Olin, Luis de la Madrid, Miguel Tejada-Flores, missing children, mother-daughter relationships, Movies, multiple writers, possession, set in Spain, sins of the fathers, sins of the past, solar eclipse, Spanish-American films, Stephan Enquist, The Nameless, writer-director, Xavi Giménez, [REC], [REC] 2, [REC] 4

Back in 2007, before found-footage/first-person-POV horror films had become as standard a fixture in the industry as zombies were before them, Spanish writer-director Jaume Balagueró unleashed a feral little film known as [REC] (2007) on a largely unwitting populace. While the film would go on to produce three sequels (two of which were also directed by Balagueró) and an awful American remake (Quarantine (2008) is, without a doubt, one of the most unrelentingly shitty films I’ve personally sat through), I was taken enough with Balagueró’s style to check out his entire filmography.

Beginning with his feature-length debut, The Nameless (1999), and continuing through Fragile (2005), his short film To Let (2006) and the [REC] series, Balagueró’s films have been darkly stylish, atmospheric fables that combine the stresses of familial interaction with the traditional tropes of haunted house films. In Balagueró’s hands, the sins of the parents always come home to roost on their children, every dark, sinister room holds a secret and mysterious figures have an alarming tendency to slink around while the hapless protagonists are looking in the other direction. In many ways, Darkness (2002) is a synthesis of his myriad themes and influences, all top-lined by an all-star cast that includes Anna Paquin, Lena Olin, Iain Glen and Craig Stevenson. Primo Balagueró? For better and worse: absolutely.

Darkness details the adventures of a small family of American ex-pats who’ve been uprooted from their home and moved back to the father’s childhood stomping grounds in Spain. As horror movie families are wont to be, our happy clan is more than a little dysfunctional: father Mark (Iain Glen) suffers from Huntington’s Disease and has a tendency to either fly into manic episodes or collapse into painful-looking seizures; mother Maria (Lena Olin) seems distracted to the point of completely ignoring her children; teenaged Regina (Anna Paquin) is as overjoyed as any kid would be who has to leave all of their friends behind and move to a foreign country just as she’s about to begin her senior year of school; and young Paul (Stephan Enquist) keeps getting his colored pencils stolen by spooky ghost children. You know…the usual stuff.

As their new home, a sprawling, isolated country manor that practically screams “Here there be ghosts” begins to reveal certain creepy, sinister happenings at an alarming rate, Mark begins to channel ol’ Jack Torrance, leading Regina to fear for the safety of her brother, especially after he begins to develop unexplained bruises and injuries. While investigating the convoluted history of her family’s new abode with her new friend, Carlos (Fele Martínez), Regina begins to unravel a strange story that spans back 40 years and involves her father, his father (Giancarlo Giannini), a complete solar eclipse, insane cult members, murdered children and the end of the world. Will Regina be able to save her family from the grip of ultimate evil or will all of her best efforts, inadvertently, bring about the very apocalypse that she so desperately wants to avoid?

When Balagueró eases back on the narrative clutter, needless back-and-forth and pointless quick-cut editing, Darkness is actually a pretty decent “old dark house” film, albeit one with a “twist” that puts it firmly in the camp of someone like Adrian Garcia Bogliano (there are more than a few similarities to his Penumbra (2011), not the least of which is the eclipse element). The problem, as it turns out, is that the writer-director over-seasons this particular dish something fierce: the final 20 minutes are so cluttered, confusing, noisy and melodramatic as to be almost completely off-putting, despite the genuinely intriguing core story.

There’s just too much of everything: too much explanation, too much confusion, too many vague motivations, too much unrealistic interaction, too many noisy jump-scares and musical cues…stripped of all its bulky “clothing,” Darkness would be a much scrawnier film, to be sure, but it would also be one that could stand better on its own two feet. As it is, the narrative (and film) is too overladen to ever move far in any direction. It’s difficult to get fully invested in a story where new elements seem to pop up at random (the bit about the snake and the egg makes no sense, no matter how I try), while old standards like “characterization” leave and return like a wandering sleepwalker.

Lest I heap too much abuse on the cluttered narrative and stylistic issues (when the quick-cut editing falls by the wayside, cinematographer Xavi Giménez produces some suitably attractive, evocative images), Darkness is also plagued by some seriously odd, uneven performances. While Paquin has a few moments that strain credibility (her occasionally halting line delivery is a real head-scratcher), Glen is all over the place and Olin, despite her legendary status, is almost completely worthless. The character of Maria never makes a lot of sense, to begin with, but Olin’s totally “checked-out” performance does no one any favors. Each and every moment of her screentime is painful (for various reasons) and I never could see through to her character’s actual motivations: was Maria crazy? Did she hate her kids? Her husband? Did she actually care about any of it? Each and every reaction and bit of dialogue is so laissez-faire and noncommittal that Maria always seems superfluous to the larger story.

Glen, for his part, goes the full “Nicholson” here (as we all know, you never, ever go full Nicholson), which turns the film’s back-half into something of a poverty-row re-imagining of The Shining (1980): as Mark bellows, huffs, screams, rages and attacks doors with aplomb, in frantic pursuit of his wife and young son, it’s hard not to think back on the far-superior older film. Glen has moments that are nicely realized (unlike poor Olin) but he’s never a particularly believable character, which really hurts any identification we might have with him. On a lesser note, Mark’s Huntington’s Disease never seems to function as anything more than a plot device, leading him to act in whatever manner the narrative calls for at that time. For all the difference it makes, Mark could have been a recovering alcoholic, a schizophrenic or just really angry…like many of the film’s elements, the disease seems as arbitrary as anything else.

Despite my frustrations with Darkness, it’s still impossible to deny that Balagueró has some genuine skill, both as a writer and a director (here, he co-scripts with Fernando de Felipe). When the film is allowed to work on its own merits, there’s some undeniable power to be found: amidst the chaos and noise of the film’s climax, there’s some really interesting observations about familial duty, fate, the nature of reality and weird dooms-day cults. More’s the pity, then, that the whole thing collapses into a soggy mess of evil doppelgängers, frantic action, ridiculous proclamations (“Regina is in her house…in Hell!!!”) and haunted house conceits that would have been moldy decades ago (the scene where a character is pursued down a hallway by extinguishing lights is so well-worn that it’s threadbare).

As it stands, Darkness is an interesting enough part of Balagueró’s oeuvre, even if it never comes close to either its predecessor or the [REC] films that would follow. Think of it as a transitional film, a bridge between his more atmospheric chillers and the action-packed fare that would follow, that first tentative moment where one transitions from walking to running. While his future ended up suitably bright, there will always be a little Darkness in Balagueró’s rear-view mirror, for better or worse.

7/15/15 (Part One): Peachfuzz Still Loves You, Little Buckaroo

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awkward films, Best of 2015, cinema, co-writers, confessions, Creep, dark comedies, disturbing films, feature-film debut, Film, film reviews, found-footage, found-footage films, Funny Games, horror, horror films, insanity, isolated estates, lake house, Man Bites Dog, Mark Duplass, Movies, multiple writers, obsession, Patrick Brice, Peachfuzz, psychopaths, small cast, The Puffy Chair, trilogy, unsettling, videographer for hire, writer-director-actor

Suppose that you’re a freelance videographer and you’ve just stumbled upon one of those “too-good-to-be-true”-type Craigslist ads: you know, the ones that promise lots of money for what seems like a surprisingly small amount of work? In this case, the job offers a cool grand for just a few hour’s work…not too shabby, eh? When you get to the address, you find out that it’s in a really picturesque, isolated mountain town, at the top of a long, wending hill. Once there, you discover that your prospective employer is the dictionary definition of a meek, unassuming guy…basically, the kind of guy that no one would cross the street to avoid, although they might do so to steal his lunch money.

This guy, he seems like a nice enough dude but he has a few quirks: he really likes to hug, for one thing, and he has a rather unsettling propensity for jumping out from around corners and trying (and succeeding) to startle you. He also keeps a wolf Halloween mask in his closet, which he’s named “Peachfuzz” and written a jaunty tune about. No biggie, though: the guy’s house is really nice, modern, well-lit and comfy…no piles of bodies, bone chandeliers or Sawyer-approved home decor to be found here, doncha know! In every way, shape and form, this guy is the poster-boy for middle-of-the-road, plain-ol’-vanilla normalcy.

After talking to this friendly, unassuming fella, he makes a pretty good case for needing your services: turns out that he’s been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor and he wants you to make a “My Life (1993)-esque” video document for his unborn son. He may not be around to raise him, but this dedicated soon-to-be-dad wants to leave his child with as much of his wisdom and attention as he can: get the life lessons out of the way right now, while he’s still around to give them, and leave his son a legacy for the future.

All well and good, no alarm bells whatsoever…if anything, this guy might be in the running for “Father of the Year,” unborn child or not. After paying you upfront (talk about a totally upstanding dude!), your humble host decides that it’s time to get down to business: you were paid to film, so film you will. The first thing on the agenda? This totally normal, average guy wants to walk his son through the mechanics of “tubby time,” so he strips naked and jumps in the bathtub, all while you keep filming. And then things get really weird.

This, in a nutshell, is Patrick Brice and Mark Duplass’ intensely awkward, genuinely disturbing Creep (2014), a two-person, found-footage examination of obsession, insanity, loneliness and the often terrifying “real faces” that supposedly normal folks hide from the world at large. Despite the inherent simplicity of the set-up and format (Brice and Duplass co-write the film, as well as starring in it, while Brice also served as the director…at no point do we ever get another actor on-screen aside from these two), Creep is endlessly engaging and so tightly plotted that it’s almost seamless. Creep is not only a first-rate found-footage film, it’s also one of the best, most unsettling films of the year.

The secret weapon here, as in many other indie productions, is wunderkind Mark Duplass. Although perhaps best known for his pioneering work in mumblecore and for his role on the relentlessly hilarious TV show The League, Duplass and his brother, Jay, have been involved with an almost dizzying variety of projects, either as writer, director, actor or all three: The Puffy Chair (2005), Baghead (2008), Cyrus (2010), Greenberg (2010), Jeff, Who Lives at Home (2011), Your Sister’s Sister (2011), Safety Not Guaranteed (2012), Zero Dark Thirty (2012) and Mercy (2014), to name but a few.

In this case, Duplass has teamed with Patrick Brice, whose follow-up to Creep, The Overnight (2015), made big waves at various film festivals this year. Described as the first in a trilogy, Creep is as low-budget and bare-bones as it gets: in essence, the entire film consists of Duplass’ Josef creeping out Brice’s Aaron in every way imaginable, with the tension slowly ratcheting up until the entire film threatens to explode like a busted water heater. To make things even odder and more uncomfortable, Creep is also full of pitch-black, deadpan humor, much of which walks an incredibly thin line between making one burst out laughing (Josef’s “Charlie Day-worthy” Peachfuzz song is an easy highlight) and making one cringe down in their seat, attempting vainly to become invisible.

Perhaps the greatest triumph, here, above and beyond the masterfully economic production (“anyone” can do this…provided, of course, that they’re as talented as Brice and Duplass) is the way that the film sinks its hooks into us and refuses to let go. Unless you’re a complete horror neophyte, you’ll probably be able to predict where the film eventually ends up. The route to get there, however, is a particularly thorny one, full of red herrings, dead ends, misplaced assumptions and cinematic slight of hand: at one point, we seem to be witnessing the natural progression of what we assume will happen, only to have it be revealed as recorded footage from earlier. Brice and Duplass don’t engage in the same sort of meta-mind-fuckery that Haneke did in Funny Games (1997) but they’ve managed to set up show just one door down, which is a pretty neat trick all by itself.

Creep is a strange film, no two ways about it. It’s a surprisingly complex narrative for such a short, deceptively simple film: Brice and Duplass seem to be telling a pretty straight-forward genre story about a creepy guy (think Psycho (1960) stripped down to a two-person drama) but constantly throw in allusions, asides and nods to much bigger, darker things happening in the background. The film could be about the hidden dangers lurking behind any potentially smiling face but it could also be about the very nature of truth and perception, sort of a Schrodinger test to see if “absolute truth” exists outside of our individual understandings. It could be about loneliness and mental illness but it could also be about the horrifying randomness of the universe, the howlingly unknowable cosmic coin toss that puts some folks on the road to happiness while others end up mulch.

There are moments in the film (the harrowing bit involving Josef’s ringing cell phone, that amazing final long shot) that are as classically “horror” as the genre gets, while other scenes (tubby time, the unpleasant Peachfuzz story, the visit to the healing spring) would be odd fits in any film, regardless of the generic focus. Creep is such an amazing piece of work because it somehow makes all these disparate elements fit together in a wholly organic way: Brice and Duplass’ film could be about any or all of these things or it could be about none of them.

While Brice has a few off moments, acting-wise (some of his close-up asides to the camera feel more like delivering lines than just “being”), Duplass has such a singular focus that it’s difficult to see where the actor stops and the character begins. At times, I was reminded of Duplass’ archly awesome asshole from The League, a totally cool dude who fucks with people just to watch their reactions. At other times, however, that odd combo of sweetly goofy happiness and reptilian, dispassionate reserve would chill me straight to my blood cells: it’s always difficult to get under a lifelong horror fanatic’s skin, especially where more modern horrors are concerned…Creep makes it seem distressingly easy.

As the first film in a proposed trilogy, I’m deathly curious to see where Brice and Duplass go from here: while the film ends in a way that seems to “pan back” and give us a wider overview of the evil we’ve witnessed, I’d hate to think that Brice and Duplass might get lazy and just give us more of the same in future installments. As it stands, Creep was one of the most uncomfortable, unpleasant, powerful and astounding little films I managed to see this year: I’d love to be able to say the same thing about the next two, whenever Brice and Duplass decide to unleash them upon the world.

For now, however, I’m going to double-down on my long-standing paranoia regarding other people: the world might be full of totally nice, cool individuals, but as long as there are Josefs out there, I think I’ll be a little more comfortable behind my locked door, thank you very much. As for answering Craigslist ads? Fuggedaboudit.

 

6/1/15 (Part One): Invasion of the Vicious Kind

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Alien Abduction, alien abductions, alien experiments, alien invaders, alien invasion, Anja Savcic, Blitz//Berlin, Brittany Allen, cabins, cabins in the woods, cinema, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, co-directors, co-writers, Colin Minihan, Emily Perkins, Extraterrestrial, film reviews, filmmaking duo, films, Freddie Stroma, Gil Bellows, Grave Encounters, Grave Encounters 2, horror films, isolated estates, isolation, Jesse Moss, Melanie Papalia, Michael Ironside, military coverup, Movies, Samy Inayeh, sci-fi, sci-fi-horror, science-fiction, Sean Rogerson, special-effects extravaganza, Stuart Ortiz, the Vicious Brothers, UFOs, Vicious Brothers, writer-director-editor

If you’re the kind of horror fanatic who prefers the road less traveled to the well-worn thoroughfare, you’ve probably also spent your fair share of time backtracking from dead-ends. With the almost mind-boggling array of horror films being released these days, be it studio-supported tent-poles or direct-to-streaming vanity projects, separating the wheat from the chaff has never been a more daunting prospect. While the number of horror films actually released to theaters still seems as small as it’s ever been, direct-to-video/streaming releases are healthier than ever: with companies like Netflix and Amazon looking to scoop up as much content as possible, potential audiences have more choice than we have in some time.

To compound this issue, horror filmmakers have beaten some sub-genres such as found-footage and zombie films into the ground, releasing so much unmitigated crap that it becomes almost impossible to shift out the diamonds. To these over-mined fields that include the possession film, the haunted asylum and the post-apocalyptic wanderer, feel free to add the alien film, whether in its “abduction” or “invasion” variety. As of late, it seems that indie filmmakers are pumping out one alien-themed horror flick after another. Just recently, we’ve had Dark Skies (2013), the “Slumber Party Alien Abduction” segment of V/H/S 2 (2013), Skinwalker Ranch (2013), Alien Abduction (2014), Honeymoon (2014), The Signal (2014), and Oren Peli’s long-delayed Area 51 (2015), along with a host of others that have managed to slither under the radar. As mentioned, sifting out the diamonds in all of the mud is quite the task.

All this, of course, is by way of saying that the Vicious Brothers’ (aka writers/directors Colin Minihan and Stuart Ortiz) Extraterrestrial (2014) is not only a diamond, it’s easily one of the brightest diamonds that I’ve had the pleasure of witnessing in some time. I’ll actually go one step further and, with no hyperbole, state that Extraterrestrial (warts and all) is easily the apex of the modern alien abduction film: the filmmaking duo, along with wunderkind cinematographer Samy Inayeh, have managed to craft a film that is, by turns, gorgeous, terrifying, mind-blowing and endlessly thrilling. Thanks to its impeccable visual effects, amazing costumes and ability to cherry-pick the very best of sci-fi horror gone by, the Vicious Brothers’ ode to little green men looks like it cost roughly 500 times what it probably did. It’s not a perfect film, mind you, but it’s very nearly the perfect alien movie.

Plot-wise, the Brothers’ film stuffs an alien abduction filling into a cabin-in-the-woods casing. Overly serious April (Brittany Allen) and her clingy boyfriend, Kyle (Freddie Stroma), are headed to her family’s backwoods cabin so that she can take pictures in order to facilitate its sale. Without her knowing, Kyle has decided to turn this into the weekend that he proposes and has invited along their friends, Melanie (Melanie Papalia), Lex (Anja Savcic) and uber-asshole Seth (Jesse Moss), to join in the joyous occasion.

The problem, of course, is that no one bothered to ask April what she wanted: turns out, she doesn’t want to marry her high school sweetheart and settle down. She has a job offer in New York and wants to get out there and experience life, neither of which plan really involves Kyle. As expected, this little revelation throws a monkey-wrench into the weekend, causing Kyle to become withdrawn and moody, whereas asshole Seth just gets one more excuse to get blitzed and act like a jerk, in order to “protect his boy.”

Our little close-quarters domestic drama plays out with a larger, more sinister drama unfolding in the background: local sheriff Alan Murphy (Gil Bellows) is investigating a mysterious disappearance that seems to be tied in to a string of local livestock mutilations. He doesn’t necessarily suspect the city slicker kids but he also doesn’t want them stirring up the locals or interfering with his investigation: toss a personal angle into the missing person phenomena (Sheriff Murphy’s wife vanished without a trace) and you have a lawman with an agenda and no time for tomfoolery.

Just when our group of young people seem to have comfortably settled into the kind of restful vacation that might befit Virginia Woolf, however, a fiery meteor explodes out of the sky, screaming right into the nearby woods, where it explodes in an appropriately impressive little display. Upon closer inspection, the group discovers that the object wasn’t a meteor but an honest to gosh flying saucer. To amp the “uh oh” factor to 11, they also notice a set of humanoidish footprints leading away from the crash site…back in the direction of their cabin.

From this point on, the film becomes an unrelenting triumph in building and relieving tension as April and her friends, along with the able assistance of her surrogate uncle/old family friend/pot farmer, Travis (Michael Ironside), attempt to fight back against their other-worldly visitors. From the claustrophobic confines of their cabin “sanctuary” to the surrounding woods and, ultimately, to places that no human has ever gone, the survivors will learn one very important lesson: not only is humanity not alone, we’re not even at the top of the heap.

First off, let’s get the negatives out of the way. As far as the “human” relationships go, Extraterrestrial doesn’t show us anything we haven’t seen a million times in the past, nor does it present us with a group of unique, sympathetic characters: while the young group in the Vicious Brothers’ film doesn’t necessarily fall into the most generic “stoner,” “final girl,” “jock,” et al stereotypes, no one really stands out with the exception of Allen’s April and Moss’ odious Seth. This isn’t the kind of film where one gets wrapped up in the intense interpersonal drama of the characters, let’s put it that way.

The acting is fine, if a little unmemorable, although Ironside and Sean Rogerson both manage to chew a fair amount of scenery: Ironside’s Travis is a great character, however, brought to vivid life by an iconic character actor, whereas Rogerson’s Deputy Mitchell is a blustery, loud-mouthed and very silly caricature. Allen and familiar-face Bellows are constantly sturdy, although I’ll admit that Papalia and Savcic sort of blurred together, in my mind: they just didn’t get much to do, aside from the stock “run and react” options.

There are also a few moments where the editing and/or cinematography gets a little too flashy for its own good: one particular shot featured so much focus-shifting that I would have assumed the operator was having problems if the rest of the film hadn’t been so impressive (more on that later). I’ll also freely admit that the hand-held camera stuff doesn’t work at all, especially when held side-by-side with the actual cinematography: it’s like touching up a Picasso with ketchup rather than paint. The film also has a tendency to over-rely on the soft/loud dynamic of the modern jump scare, leading to numerous moments that are telegraphed by audio stings or ridiculous increases in volume.

And that, folks, is pretty much the downside to Extraterrestrial. The upside? Everything else. The film looks absolutely astounding: from gorgeous, evocative establishing shots to cleverly revealed shocks to immaculately composed frames, cinematographer Samy Inayeh goes way above and beyond the call of duty. It helps, of course, that the film’s visual effects (both CGI and makeup/costuming) are jaw-dropping: when combined when the absolutely state-of-the-art camera-work, Extraterrestrial is as immersive as any mega-budget Hollywood sci-fi film.

In fact, the first full reveal of the massive space craft reminded me of nothing less than Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977): there’s a genuine sense of awe, grandeur and spectacle to Extraterrestrial that is almost completely missing from other indie sci-fi/alien films. Say what you will about the Vicious Brothers’ grasp on the human dynamics of the story: the technical aspect is so astounding that it should, automatically, vault them into the upper echelons of the “event picture” biz.

This sense of perfect visualization continues with the actual aliens, which are pretty much the apex of the traditional “gray-headed, almond-eyed” alien in pop culture. The aliens, here, aren’t so different from other depictions of said types but they inhabit the film in a purely physical way that feels real, refreshing and, ultimately, rather terrifying. I was immediately reminded of the ways in which Spielberg’s original Jurassic Park (1993) felt so organic and “physical”: Extraterrestrial feels the same way, which is pretty much the antithesis of the current “green-screened-to-death” trend.

While the Vicious Brothers’ and their excellent crew absolutely ace the technical aspects of the film, there’s another, even more important aspect that they also nail: the claustrophobic atmosphere. Unlike most alien abduction films that aren’t called Fire in the Sky (1993), Extraterrestrial is genuinely, absolutely frightening. It’s actually frightening on several levels: it perfectly hits the “something in the background” vibe of modern horror films but it also digs in on a deeper, more existential level. There are moments in the film, particularly in its final 20 minutes, where it honestly feels as if the Vicious Brothers are letting us peer into the howling maw of madness: I don’t have to tell you how exhilarating that is, I’m sure.

As I’ve mentioned several times, Extraterrestrial isn’t an especially ground-breaking film, plot-wise: it’s not difficult to see the Alien (1979), Fire in the Sky and Night of the Living Dead (1968) references. The most important thing to remember, however, is that all artistry is theft: it’s what you do with the ill-gotten gains that makes the difference between trash and treasure. In this case, the Vicious Brothers have taken a laundry list of their influences and spun them into something that feels complete and whole on its own, regardless of the foundation its built on.

Lest I seem like an overly supportive stalker, let me conclude by stating that I had seen the Vicious Brothers’ debut, Grave Encounters (2011), some time before I saw Extraterrestrial and wasn’t overly impressed. While the film had its moments, it also didn’t really strike me as anything more than another “found-footage in a creepy place” film, which we already have plenty of. Based on that experience (I’ve yet to see the sequel), there is absolutely no way I could have predicted Extraterrestrial: suffice to say, the level of growth, here, is roughly the same distance between adolescence and adulthood.

Is Extraterrestrial one of the best films of the year? Not at all, although it at least has the finish line in sight (unlike a basketful of films that I won’t mention). Is Extraterrestrial the film to beat for modern, indie alien films, however? I’ll stake my damn reputation on it. There a level of craft and imagination that’s impossible to ignore: if filmmakers can get “discovered” and jumped into the big time based on Youtube videos, here’s to hoping that they can still do it the old-fashioned way…you know, by creating a great, memorable film. If we don’t see the Vicious Brothers directing a tent-pole picture within the next few years, I’ll buy and eat an entire haberdashery.

Catch Minihan and Ortiz on the small stages while you can, gentle readers: something tells me the Vicious Brothers are going to be doing a helluva lot of headlining in the near future.

 

5/6/15: Blurring the Lines

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Alexandria Fierz, backwoods folk, based on a true story, Bert Wall, cinema, David Z. Roberts, dead father, Devil's Backbone, Devil's Backbone Tavern, Devil's Backbone Texas, directorial debut, father-son relationships, film reviews, films, found-footage films, ghosts, Haley Buckner, haunted houses, horror, horror films, isolated estates, Jake Wade Wall, James Carrington, Jodi Bianca Wise, mockumentary, Movies, screenwriter, supernatural, twist ending, Unsolved Mysteries, writer-director-producer-actor

If the whole point of mockumentary/found-footage horror films is to obscure the dividing line between truth and fiction, freely mixing the “real” with the “fake” until audiences are too dizzy to know the difference, then Jake Wade Wall’s debut, Devil’s Backbone, Texas (2015), just might be one of the most successful yet. By interweaving the actual story of his horror writer father’s experiences on the titular patch of land with the kind of traditional found-footage aspects that we’re used to seeing (the Blair Witch Project (1999) is an obvious inspiration), Wall is able to come up with a virtually textbook example of the subgenre. If Devil’s Backbone, Texas is less successful as an actual film, well…let’s chalk that up to growing pains: there’s enough good ideas here to make Wall someone to keep an eye on in the future.

The concept of the film, as mentioned above, cleverly blends the real-life story of Bert Wall, a writer/rancher who lived in the area of Texas known as Devil’s Backbone, with the usual “running through the woods with a camera” found-footage schtick. Wall’s ranch came to fame via a mid-’90s segment on Unsolved Mysteries that detailed the massive amount of ghostly activity that he claimed to witness on the land, including everything from ghostly monks to ghostly Native Americans. Wall’s real-life son, Jake (the film’s writer/director/producer/lead), uses this as the basic setup and then jumps us 20 years into the present. After his father has died, Jake’s mom asks him to take his ashes to his old homestead and perform the “ash ceremony” that Bert always wanted.

Seeing this as a great opportunity to explore stories of the area, Jake takes the ashes and a small passel of his best friends, a group which features the usual mixture of believers and non-believers. As Jake interviews the locals, in order to get a better picture of his estranged father, he also begins to uncover hints of the strange doings in the area: there’s even stories about a mysterious German POW camp on the ranch, providing yet another possible source for the region’s “hauntings.” As things gradually become stranger, Jake’s friends want to pack up and leave, especially after they keep bumping into a strange pickup truck that, for all intents and purposes, shouldn’t be there. Jake has become obsessed with getting to the bottom of his father’s death, however, as well as the legends of Devil’s Backbone and he has no intention of backing out. Will Jake’s stubbornness lead to the ultimate revelation of the Devil’s Backbone’s secrets or will his poking around spell the doom for everyone he holds dear?

One of Devil Backbone, Texas’ greatest strengths (perhaps its single greatest one) is the way in which it ingeniously melds fiction and reality within the framework of the film. To be honest, I wasn’t actually aware that there really was a Bert Wall: I assumed that the Unsolved Mysteries segment was a clever mock-up and that the whole film was an entirely fictionalized account of a real area/phenomenon. Imagine my surprise, then, when a little research revealed that not only does Bert Wall actually exist (along with that illuminating Unsolved Mysteries segment from 1996) but that Jake is his son. This sort of (gently) blew my mind, as it managed to recontextualize much of what I had just seen, especially considering the familial angle. Any film that can actually fool me gets big props, in my book, and Wall definitely deserves props.

The main problem with the film doesn’t really have much to do with the story, although it does end up feeling a bit musty, in places: in general, Wall throws plenty of good ideas around and many of them end up sticking, even if nothing is explored in as much depth as it should be (in particular, the German POW bit is so under-developed as to be mystifying). The big problems with the film, unfortunately, all stack up on the actual production side of things: while Wall has plenty of intriguing ideas, the film that contains them is, at best, rather average.

As the lead, Wall has a tendency to swing between an effective, upbeat kind of understatement and a much more ineffective hyper-emotionalism: when Jake really gets wound up, his character tends to come across as whiny,  shouty and altogether unpleasant. Found-footage films have a history of leads like this, of course (think back to Blair Witch’s insufferable Heather), but that doesn’t make it any more tolerable here. If anything, I found myself constantly wishing that Wall had stayed behind the camera: while his character definitely has moments, I found my suspension of disbelief shattered a few times too many for comfort.

The rest of the cast does decent work, although I’ll admit that the only one who actually left any kind of impression on me was the fella who looked sort of like Hugh Jackman: he had an easy-going delivery and charisma that was quite effective. Other than that, however, the group seemed like the usual crew of interchangeable types. As with similar mockumentary films, Devil’s Backbone, Texas, also features various interviews with academics, experts and towns’ folk: this all help with the film’s verisimilitude immensely, even when the acting from the cast becomes just rough enough to notice.

Ultimately, Devil’s Backbone, Texas is a decent debut, albeit one hampered by a shaky lead, slight lack of focus and a rather dreadful twist ending (not to put too fine a point on it but the lazy “surprise” finale is easily the dumbest part of the film, hands down). That being said, there’s something about the film that still got to me: perhaps it was that initial blurring of real and fiction or Wall’s very obvious enthusiasm for the film and subject. Perhaps it was the genuinely creepy location or the standout bit of atmosphere where we see teeming masses of spiders all over the walls of Bert’s abandoned home (as a lifelong arachnophobe, this practically had me crawling out of my skin). Whatever the reason, I walked away from Wall’s debut entertained, which is quite a bit more than I can say for many micro-budget indies. As such, I can’t wait to see what he comes up with next.

4/25/15: The Fixer-Upper From Hell

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Adam Thomas Wright, Altar, Antonia Clarke, British films, British horror, children in peril, cinema, film reviews, films, ghost whisperer, ghosts, haunted house, haunted houses, hidden mosaics, home renovations, horror, horror film, horror films, horror movies, husband-wife relationship, isolated estates, isolation, Jan Richter-Friis, Jonathan Jaynes, Matthew Modine, Movies, Nick Willing, Olivia Williams, parent-child relationships, possession, Rebecca Calder, Satanic rituals, set in England, sins of the past, Stephen Chance, Steve Oram, supernatural, twist ending, UK films, writer-director

If we go by the conventions of horror films, one of the single most dangerous occupations out there is home renovation. Sure, law enforcement, fire fighting and high-rise window-washing might seem more dangerous, at least on paper, but we know the truth: anytime someone tries to fix up a creepy, old, decaying country estate, there’s a roughly 90% chance of something terrible happening. If those were Vegas odds, Sin City would have gone the way of the dodo generations ago.

Writer-director Nick Willing’s Altar (2014) is but the latest in a long line of haunted house films precipitated on the above notion: a family moves into a creepy, isolated country manor in order to renovate it, runs into long-buried secrets and ghostly presences and must survive the sinister residence’s sustained assaults upon their persons and psyches. In this case, Meg Hamilton (Olivia Williams) is the renovator who, along with her artist husband Alec (Matthew Modine) and children, Penny (Antonia Clarke) and Harper (Adam Thomas Wright), move into the creepy abode. Faster than you can say “Jack and Wendy Torrance,” the family are dealing with ghostly manifestations, Alec’s obsession with suddenly crafting a life-like clay figure and Meg’s discovery of a strange, vaguely pagan floor mosaic. If you guessed that “possession” factors into the proceedings, you’d be right but Willing has a few tricks up his sleeve that help take Altar in a slightly different (even if barely so) direction from the rest of the herd.

As far as atmosphere and location go, Altar is strictly top-notch: there’s a genuine sense of foreboding that lingers over every scene, thanks in large part to the exceptionally creepy location. Quite simply, Radcliffe House is the kind of evil, Gothic edifice that can make or break a haunted house film: in this case, it goes an awful long way in stocking up good will for the (occasionally) rough going. Willing goes light on the obvious jump scares, allowing for the whole thing to feel much more organic and old-fashioned than similar films (obnoxiously loud musical stingers are, thankfully, few and far between) and cinematographer Jan Richter-Friis’ camera-work helps to subtly play up the creep-factor.

The acting is uniformly good, which is another important factor in this kind of film: when a movie relies on mood and atmosphere, nothing spoils the party quite as effectively as over-the-top, amateurish or stilted acting. Williams is excellent as the mother/renovator: her extremely expressive face always seems to be reflecting some new measure of fresh horror, amping the psychological horror to an almost unbearable level. Modine, who’s had an almost ridiculously varied career over the past 30+ years, doesn’t fare quite as well as Williams does, mostly because his character is saddled with a few more eye-rolling traits than hers is. That being said, Modine and Williams have good chemistry together: until things go completely off the rails, it’s easy to imagine these two as a (once) loving couple, which is certainly more than you can say for many horror film duos. As the beleaguered children, Clarke and Wright are quite good, although they don’t get quite as much to do as their parents: at the very least, neither one wears out their welcome which, again, is more than you can say for many young actors in horror productions.

If anything really lets the air out of Altar’s sails, it’s definitely the hum-drum, overly clichéd ending: while the plot has plenty of holes (especially in the later going), the film manages to glide over most of them pretty effortlessly until it crashes headfirst into the chasm that is the film’s final “revelation.” While I wouldn’t dream of ruining the ending (perhaps because I understand it so imperfectly), suffice to say that faithful genre devotees will have seen this exact same thing done many, many times in the past…and done much better and much clearer, might I add. It’s a pity, really, since the film has some fairly intriguing ideas about transmogrification that are completely lost in the muddle. However unique the film begins, it ends in territory that is, to be kind, well-worn.

Ultimately, Altar is a good, if not great, entry in the crowded “family in peril” subgenre of horror films. When the atmosphere and mood are allowed to develop at their own measured, glacial pace, Willing’s film stands tall above the pretenders, buoyed by its own sense of stately grandeur. When the film becomes overly familiar and middle-of-the-road, however, it sinks right back into the teeming masses, indistinguishable from any one of two dozen other similar films.

4/8/15: The Silence is Deafening

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British films, cinema, Erin Richards, evil dolls, experiments, film reviews, films, foreign films, ghosts, Hammer, Hammer Films, haunted houses, horror movies, insanity, isolated estates, Jared Harris, John Pogue, Movies, multiple writers, obsession, Olivia Cooke, paranormal investigators, possession, Rory Fleck-Byrne, Sam Claflin, set in the 1970s, The Quiet Ones, twist ending

For old school horror fans, few names bear quite as much weight as Hammer Films. For the uninitiated, Hammer Films was a British production company that specialized in lush horror films that were, by turns, elegant and suitably lurid. From the ’50s all the way through the Swingin’ ’70s, Hammer churned out a fairly staggering amount of stylish films, many of them sequels and offshoots to popular properties like Dracula and Frankenstein. As the times changed, Hammer Films became bloodier and more sexually charged, although they always maintained a least a little of that initial elegance. As the world moved on into the 1980s, however, Hammer’s cachet in the genre dwindled to nothing and the company, essentially, petered out of existence.

Like any good undead monster, however, the Hammer story would also include a bit of reanimation. After lying dormant for decades, Hammer Films was bought-up and the company began to release new films in the mid-2000s. Beginning with Beyond the Rave (2008), Hammer would release a handful of films including the American remake of Let the Right One In, Wake Wood (2011) and The Woman in Black (2012), as well as a sequel in 2015. They would also jump into the currently hot topic of possession stories with The Quiet Ones (2014), which is where we enter this particular tale.

As someone who grew up on Hammer Films, I was pretty excited when they announced a restart to the fabled production company. My one concern, of course, was the same one that I had when Hammer originally petered out: would they have any relevance in a modern world that had long ago left behind the stylish, Gothic trappings of their best films or would they stick out like a septuagenarian at a One Direction concert? My first experience with the “new” Hammer didn’t set the bar very high, as I found Wake Wood to be a marginally entertaining, if massively flawed exercise. Much better was The Woman in Black, which managed to retain much of the old-school Hammer elements (slow-burn horror, stylish production design, mature themes) and used them in service of a pretty good ghost story. As such, I was primed to see where The Quiet Ones would take me: would this be the disappointment of Wake Wood or the pleasant surprise of The Woman in Black?

Taking place in 1974, The Quiet Ones concerns the experiments of one Professor Joseph Coupland (Jared Harris), the kind of driven, obsessive man-of-science that was practically a staple for Hammer back in the day. Coupland is conducting research into the intersection of “faith, superstition and medicine” which, as we all know, is shorthand for “messing around where he doesn’t belong.” Along with his faithful students Brian (Sam Claflin), Krissi (Erin Richards) and Harry (Rory Fleck-Byrne), Coupland seeks to observe actual poltergeist activity in a test subject, with the ultimate goal being to remove said “bad spirits” in a purely scientific manner. The subject, in this case, is Jane (Olivia Cooke), a disturbed young woman who seems to have an unhealthy relationship with a sinister doll named Evie.

After Coupland has his funding pulled by the overly-cautious Oxford University administration, he’s forced to relocate Jane and his team to a secluded, out-of-the-way country estate so that they can continue their experiments. If you guessed that moving the proceedings to a secluded area is a bad idea, go ahead and give yourself that cookie. As strange, unexplained things begin to happen around them, Coupland and his team are quick to realize that they’ve opened a door to a very, very dangerous place. Our obsessed professor has a secret, however, a secret which will threaten not only the team’s collective sanities but their very lives. Who, exactly, is Jane? Is Evie an actual sinister presence, like a demon, or she just a manifestation of Jane’s own damaged, fractured psyche? All these questions and more will be answered as our intrepid heroes discover that, sometimes, the quiet ones are the ones you need to watch out for.

As previously mentioned, my opinion on the “modern” Hammer Films is a little mixed, making The Quiet Ones a bit of a tie-breaker, as it were. In this case, however, the scales have definitely tipped down towards the Wake Wood end of things, rather than the Woman in Black end. Like Wake Wood, The Quiet Ones alternates between measured, stately scares and purely ridiculous moments in an awkward ballet that never seems to come into its own. The initial premise is intriguing and there’s plenty of room for commentary on the obsessive quality of “good” researchers, the horrors of the past, etc etc but a late revelation about the “true” nature of the evil upends the film and turns it into an all-too-familiar possession story without adding anything new to the mix.

For my money, however, The Quiet Ones critical flaw is, ironically, found right there in the title: for a supposedly stately film about “quiet” evil, this film had more excruciatingly loud jump scares than anything I can remember in the near past. This was also an issue with Wake Wood, although not to this extent, while The Woman in Black managed to largely avoid this issue. Here, each and every instance of Evie’s presence is denoted by some sort of blaring loud sound, usually an intensely unpleasant EMF “whine” that’s positively headache inducing. I’m not ashamed to admit that I have a complete and total bias against loud jump scares: call it extreme prejudice, if you will. In this case, The Quiet Ones obnoxious sound design managed to hobble the film before it even made it out of the gate.

Which, in a way, is kind of a shame: there’s a lot to like here, even if nothing is extraordinary or particularly thought-provoking. Harris gives a phenomenal performance as the far beyond driven professor, proving, once again, that he’s an absolute diamond in the rough when it comes to these sorts of films. While none of the other actors have anywhere near Harris’ presence or charisma, they still produce decent enough work, although I can’t shake the feeling that Sam Claflin has to be one of the most generic, vanilla protagonists in some time. The film also blends its found-footage and “traditional” cinematography to good effect, although the film, eventually, devolves into much more of a stereotypical found-footage film, complete with “spooky” things in the background. I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention the location: the secluded mansion is a masterpiece of set design and any of the film’s genuine frights are to found from the hapless researchers bumbling down its dark halls, ala any number of more traditional Gothic affairs: this is one aspect of the “new” Hammer that most resembles the “old.”

Ultimately, The Quiet Ones was a disappointing film, mostly because there was so much potential here. I’ve yet to see the Woman in Black sequel, so it would be a little silly to make any concrete declarations about the dreadful state of Hammer’s current incarnation. So far, however, suffice to say that I’m somewhat less than impressed. While the new Hammer resembles the old one in some fundamental ways, it also lacks a lot of the original’s soul and spirit. Like any good ghoul, Hammer refuses to stay dead and buried: at this point, however, it’s difficult to determine whether that’s a noble attribute or whether this particular creature needs to be put out of its misery.

 

2/13/15: Old Habits Die Hard

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Aidan McArdle, alternate title, British films, British horror, Catholic church, Christianity vs paganism, cinema, Elliot Goldner, feature-film debut, film reviews, films, Final Prayer, foreign films, found-footage, found-footage films, Gordon Kennedy, haunted church, horror, horror films, horror movies, insanity, isolated estates, Luke Neal, mental illness, miracles, Movies, paganism, paranormal investigators, Patrick Godfrey, religious-themed horror, Robin Hill, suicide, The Borderlands, UK films, Vatican investigators, writer-director

Sometimes, it doesn’t take much to give a particular film a leg up on its competitors. Take writer-director Elliot Goldner’s feature-debut, The Borderlands (2014), for example. For the most part, Goldner’s film doesn’t do much different from the majority of other found-footage horror films on the market but it also doesn’t make many obvious mistakes, either. Add to this some effective performances, along with a creepy, fairly original main concept, and you end up with a pretty winning formula. While The Borderlands doesn’t raise the bar for these types of films, it’s still a suitably sturdy entry and should prove duly thought-provoking for patient horror aficionados.

Goldner’s debut deals with a small team of Vatican investigators who have been sent to a rural British church in order to check on claims of strange, miraculous occurrences. Our team consists of Deacon (Gordon Kennedy), the good-humored, gruff, hard-drinking veteran investigator; Mark (Aidan McArdle) the stick-in-the-mud, uptight, by-the-book priest who doesn’t actually seem to believe in anything; and their tech expert, Gray (Robin Hill), a studied non-believer who still seems more open to the concept of miracles than his religious-oriented cohorts. The group has been called to the small church in order to investigate the resident priest, Father Crellick (Luke Neal), whose claims of strange, unexplained happenings have set off alarm bells in Vatican City. While Deacon and Gray are used to debunking such claims, the case quickly proves itself to be a singularly odd one. For one thing, Crellick is a decidedly weird duck, given to strange proclamations and privy to “visions” that no one else seems to have. For another, the rural church is a ridiculously creepy place, less of a functional religious center than a hold-over from a much older, darker time: as a rule, folks in films should steer clear of anything built “on top” of anything else: suffice to say, it’s always bad news.

As the team continue to investigate, Deacon comes upon a journal, belonging to the church’s 1800s-era caretaker, which seems to hint at some sort of dark presence in the area. After a horrifying incident involving a flaming sheep, the group gets the distinct impression that the locals are a little less than welcoming of this intrusion into their land. Who (or what) is responsible for the mysterious, seemingly paranormal incidents at the church? Is eccentric Father Crellick somehow responsible? Is it all related to stories of ancient pagan ceremonies in the isolated valley? Is someone trying to chase the investigators away from an earth-bound conspiracy or is the reality something much darker and more sinister? As each of the men begins to experience their own strange events, Deacon and the others will be forced to face the unfathomable: if a “miraculous” event isn’t a miracle…what, exactly, is it?

For the most part, The Borderlands (given the unbelievably boring, generic alternate title of “Final Prayer” for American audiences, natch) is an assured, well-made and interesting film, albeit one that makes many of the same (inherent) missteps that most found-footage movies make. While nothing here is as obvious as the many Paranormal Activity (2007) sequels, we still get plenty of scenes that involves the audience intently peering at a static video image, waiting for something to move/jump/make a scary face/etc. Again, not terrible but so old hat, at this point, as to be almost risible. There are also plenty of strangely “unmotivated” camera shots, such as the lovely but out-of-place landscape exteriors, that pop up from time to time: like many found-footage films, the makers of The Borderlands don’t always have the tightest grasp on their “gimmick,” as it were, although this is hardly the sloppiest example of said issue.

Where Goldner’s film really sets itself apart from the found-footage pack is in the quality of its acting. Gordon Kennedy and Robin Hill are both pretty great and make nice foils for each other: there’s a level of shared respect between the two characters that’s nicely illustrated in the performances. Kennedy does the gruff “two-fisted man of God” schtick to a tee and Hill is nicely nerdy and kind of sweet as the tech wizard who only wants to believe, even though he really doesn’t. For his part, Aidan McArdle is appropriately assholish as the immovable Mark but, for some reason, I had the hardest time not seeing his character as a non-secular version of David Mitchell’s odious Mark character in Peep Show (2003-present). Jerks are jerks, however, and McArdle acquits himself nicely as the smug priest/bean-counter.

One of the biggest issues with found-footage films is always the endings: in most cases, they simply devolve into shaky camera-work, motion blurs and the all-important “drop the camera” bit, regardless of what came before. The Borderlands doesn’t (quite) go that route, opting for something quite a bit creepier and more bizarre. While the ending is certainly open for multiple interpretations, I’d like to think that the whole thing is a nod to Ken Russell’s batshit-crazy Lair of the White Worm (1988): it’s probably highly unlikely but who wouldn’t want to throw some props Russell’s way? Regardless of what it ultimately means, however, the ending is just different enough to warrant sitting through the entire film, especially if one is inclined to enjoy found-footage films.

For a debut-feature, The Borderlands is surprisingly good and makes an effective calling card for Goldner. By making good use of a rather unique location, a rarely-used religious angle, some rock-solid acting and a creepy, unexpected climax, Goldner and crew have come up with a film that looks a lot like its peers but has enough individuality and presence to stand on its own. It also features one of the single most disturbing, horrific and unforgettable scenes I’ve ever seen in a film (the burning sheep scene will haunt you, guaranteed), indicating that writer-director Goldner has no problems hanging out in the “dark side,” when necessary. Here’s to hoping that his next feature takes the good will he earned here and runs it in for the touch-down: The Borderlands may not be perfect but I’m willing to wager that Goldner has a pretty fascinating career ahead of him.

 

2/1/15 (Part One): Crazy in Love

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alienists, alternate title, Asylum, based on a short story, Ben Kingsley, Benjamin Salt, Brad Anderson, Brendan Gleeson, cinema, David Thewlis, Don't Look in the Basement, dramas, Edgar Allen Poe, Edward Newgate, electro-shock therapy, Eliza Graves, Even Dwarfs Started Small, film reviews, films, Gothic, Guillaume Delaunay, House of Crazies, inmates, insane asylum, insane asylums, insanity, isolated estates, Jason Flemyng, Jim Sturgess, Joe Gangemi, Kate Beckinsale, King of Hearts, Lady Eliza Graves, lobotomies, love story, lunatics, madhouse, medical school, mental breakdown, mental illness, Michael Caine, Movies, mysteries, period-piece, Session 9, set in 1890s, Shutter Island, Sinéad Cusack, Sophie Kennedy Clark, Stonehearst Asylum, The Call, The Machinist, The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether, Tom Yatsko, Transsiberian, twist ending, Vanishing on 7th Street

Back in the 2000s, writer-director Brad Anderson was responsible for two of the most interesting, thought-provoking films of the decade: Session 9 (2001) and The Machinist (2004). While Session 9 was a subtle, endlessly creepy psychological chiller about a supposedly haunted, abandoned insane asylum, The Machinist showcased Christian Bale in a haunting role as an emaciated factory worker suffering from insomnia and really seemed to put Anderson on the map. After being duly impressed by both films (Session 9, in particular, is a phenomenal horror film and truly frightening), I eagerly awaited what seemed, on the outside, to be the ascension of a brilliant filmmaker. And then…nothing.

When Anderson finally followed-up The Machinist with 2008’s Transsiberian, I couldn’t help but be disappointed. Unlike his previous two films, Transsiberian was average, at best, a Hitchcock-lite exercise that had been done much more effectively by Sam Raimi with A Simple Plan (1998). While the film wasn’t terrible and featured a good turn by Woody Harrelson, it was a notable step-down from The Machinist. After Vanishing on 7th Street (2010) showed up, however, my disappointment turned into a sort of dismal acceptance: not only was Vanishing worse than Transsiberian, it managed to be a fairly awful film, by any definition. Marked by iffy acting, a scenario that felt cobbled together from much better films and a decided lack of common sense, Vanishing on 7th Street was the first legitimately bad film of Anderson’s I’d seen. After spending the next few years working in television, Anderson returned to the big-screen with the Halle Berry-starring howler The Call (2013), which only seemed to drive home the fact that the party was over. Suffice to say, he fell off my radar at that point.

Which, of course, brings us to the present with Stonehearst Asylum (2014), Anderson’s follow-up to the critically reviled The Call. Since I no longer had any particular expectations one way or the other, I was able to approach the film with a relatively clean slate, so to speak. From the outside, there certainly seem to be a lot of positives here: Michael Caine and Ben Kingsley top-line the cast (never a bad thing), it’s a period-piece set in a turn of the century insane asylum (always a cool setting/time) and it’s listed as an adaptation of Poe’s classic short story, “The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether.” On paper, this would definitely seem to have all the earmarks of an effective, low-key psycho-drama. In reality, however, Stonehearst Asylum (originally titled Eliza Graves) is much closer to Transsiberian: decidedly average and middle of the road, Anderson’s newest film features some good acting and plenty of nicely realized Gothic atmosphere but is a decidedly “been-there, done-that” affair. It’s always problematic when a film’s big “twist” can be parsed within the first quarter of the film, especially when the film makes great efforts to obscure this fact, only to deliver the self-same “twist” that was previously discovered.

Taking the basic narrative of Poe’s story but expanding upon it (in ways both effective and decidedly less so), Stonehearst Asylum tells the story of Edward Newgate (Jim Sturgess), a newly graduated “alienist” (a doctor who specializes in asylum patients) who finds himself at the mysterious, Gothic Stonehearst Asylum. Once there, he meets the eccentric staff, including Dr. Silas Lamb (Ben Kingsley), the head administrator; Mickey Finn (David Thewlis), the earthy, vaguely threatening chief steward; Lady Eliza Graves (Kate Beckinsale), a piano-playing patient who also seems to serve on the staff and Millie (Sophie Kennedy Clark), the swoony nurse who seems to be smitten with the young doctor.

Settling into his rounds, Newgate discovers that the asylum employs a decidedly unconventional approach: not only are the patients not restricted in their movements or activities, they’re also encouraged in their various psychoses. One patient fancies himself a horse, so Lamb and the staff hand-feed him and “brush him down” regularly. “Why turn a perfectly happy horse into a miserable man?” Lamb impishly responds when Newgate asks why he doesn’t attempt to “cure” the poor, delusional fellow. Most of the patients at Stonehearst are “outcasts” and “embarrassments to their families,” Lamb continues, and have been, for all intents and purposes, abandoned at the facility.

In very short order, Newgate seems to be falling hard for Lady Graves, who suffers from a particularly debilitating form of “female hysteria”: any time she’s touched by a man, her body locks up in a rigid, paralytic state and she becomes completely unresponsive. She looks the piano, however, and her and Newgate begin to bond over their shared affinity for music. At this point, Stonehearst Asylum begins to seem like a Gothic romance, a story about star-crossed, ill-fated lovers doomed to feint and pirouette around each other like so many shadows. There is, of course, another shoe waiting in the wings.

This other shoe drops with a resounding thud when Newgate happens to look into the basement and discovers a group of filthy, hungry people locked in cages. Horrified, he listens in stunned disbelief as the leader of the group, a man who calls himself Dr. Benjamin Salt (Michael Caine), explains that the captives are the real staff of the asylum: Lamb and the other patients overthrew them, imprisoned them and took over the facility. In the strictest sense of the term, the inmates, according to Salt, are running the asylum. In a case of extreme agitation, Newgate approaches Eliza with his discovery and she seems to confirm Salt’s story, with one caveat: the former administrators of the asylum were monsters who tortured the patients in the name of “science” and deserve to be caged.

Caught between a rock and a hard place, Newgate doesn’t seem to have anywhere to turn. Although Eliza confirmed Salt’s story, certain discrepancies indicate that either (or both) parties might be lying. If Salt’s story is true, Newgate is in terrible danger, especially if Lamb and the others discover that he knows the truth. If Eliza is telling the truth, however, imprisoning Salt and the others is more an act of self-defense than anything else: restoring the original balance of power could have tragic results for all involved. As everyone around him (including the caged prisoners) continue to act in increasingly erratic, troubling ways, Newgate must figure out how to get both himself and Eliza out safely, even though she’s explained that she has no intention of leaving. Newgate must be quick, however: Dr. Lamb has just developed a new technique called “electro-shock therapy” and he’s quite eager to test it out…if Edward isn’t careful, he might find his stay at Stonehearst to be a bit more permanent than he might’ve hoped.

As mentioned earlier, there’s a lot working in the film’s favor. For one thing, the Gothic atmosphere is always thick and highly effective: aside from Session 9, this is, easily, Anderson’s most atmospheric work. Thick wisps of fog obscure the hulking, angular asylum’s exterior walls, long, dark halls hold endless secrets and the continuous cries and laughing of the insane form a cacophonous soundtrack to the events. The asylum, itself, is a great location and cinematographer Tom Yatsko shoots it to great effect. The cast is also, for the most part, quite effective: while Sturgess and Beckinsale are blandly vanilla as the potential lovers, they’re surrounded by a suitably colorful cast doing some nice work. While Kingsley and Caine occasionally slide from “passionate” into “melodramatic,” they’re still both rock-solid and their handful of shared scenes are an easy highlight. I actually wish that Caine would do more low-key genre work like this: he’s pretty great and lends an air of prestige to the film that certainly helps elevate it.

There’s also plenty of great performances from Thewlis as the ultra-slimy Finn (the scene where he slow-burns over Newgate’s jokey comment about his name is genuinely scary), Clark as the (presumably) nymphomaniac nurse and Brendan Gleeson, in a glorified cameo, as the head alienist. There are plenty of quirky psychiatric conditions on display here, most of which make for (at the very least) some highly entertaining scenes: the man-horse bit is pretty damn great, truth be told. The film is also able to whip up some decent tension, especially as conditions in the asylum begin to rapidly degrade and we can start to see the unfortunate writing on the wall. The lobotomy scene is both effective and highly disturbing and there’s an incredibly chilling scene involving a pair of escapees that manages to be both beautifully visual and a subtle gut-punch.

On the downside, however, Stonehearst Asylum is just never quite as surprising or inventive as it should be (or thinks it is, to be honest). As mentioned, the film’s big “twist” is pretty apparent at about 30 minutes into the film, which makes the various “slight of hand” machinations at the end seem both unnecessary and a little offensive. It’s the equivalent of trying to run a shell game with only one shell: we know exactly where the pea is, so moving the shell in endless circles doesn’t really do anything. The film is also about 30 minutes too long: it would have been much more effective as a tidy 80-90 minute sprint but quickly runs out of ideas and energy when stretched to marathon-length. The use of flashbacks to illustrate one character’s fractured mental state is both ineffective and confusing and the ultimate “twist” makes so little sense as to be almost completely arbitrary. In many ways, Anderson seems to be trying to approximate the look and feel of Cronenberg’s latter-day “prestige” pictures, such as A Dangerous Method (2011) without any of his trademark character development: it’s definitely a far cry from the anguished internalism of The Machinist or, even, Session 9.

Ultimately, Stonehearst Asylum is decent enough, which is actually part of the issue. While well-made and sturdily acted, nothing here stands out: this exact same storyline has already been explored (to much greater effect) in films like Asylum (1972), Don’t Look in the Basement (1973),  Shutter Island (2010)…none of these are necessarily classics but all manage to come up with more unique scenarios than we find here. This isn’t a terrible film but it does seem like a terribly unnecessary one: by-the-book, largely bereft of genuine surprise and unevenly paced, Stonehearst Asylum will probably only be of interest if something…say, a lobotomy, for example…has managed to wipe out all memories of other, better films. Check in to Stonehearst if you like but, unless you’re nuts, you might want to find better accommodations.

12/26/14 (Part Four): Letting the Idiots Speak

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actor-director, animal masks, Boris Mojsovski, children in peril, cinema, co-writers, disappointing films, dysfunctional family, father-son relationships, film reviews, films, horror, horror movies, isolated estates, isolation, Jordan Barker, Katherine Isabelle, masked intruders, Michael Foster, Movies, Peter DaCunha, Robin Dunne, Stephen McHattie, stepmother, Thomas Pound, thriller, Torment

For roughly the first half of Jordan Barker’s Torment (2013), all signs point to an above-average little chiller: effectively shot, tense and extremely atmospheric, this little “family in peril” flick doesn’t break a lot of new ground but it ferociously stakes claim to the terra firma that’s already there. Creepy, relentless and with an absolutely ruthless sense of forward momentum, Torment (at first) seems like it’ll be one of those “horror sleepers” that worms its way into my sub-conscious, complete with some very eerie, animal-mask-bedecked baddies…again, not original but highly effective, nonetheless. But then, unfortunately, something rather terrible happens, something that cuts the legs out from under the film and leaves it to die a slow, miserable, humiliating death, flopping around and about like that poor fish from Faith No More’s “Epic” video: the creepy, masked bad guys speak and the whole thing heads straight to Hell in the proverbial hand-basket.

Until the film manages to completely squander all of its accumulated good will, there’s actually quite a bit to like here. The central story, about a pair of newlyweds who vacation in the country with the husband’s extremely difficult son (from his first marriage) opens up some nice avenues for drama: there’s a genuine sense of tension between bratty Liam (Peter DaCunha) and his trying-too-hard stepmother, Sarah (Katherine Isabelle), and a few quietly astute observations about the ways in which step-parents and their families interact. The familial relationship feels fairly authentic (in particular, you really feel for poor Sarah’s attempts to bond with her step-son) and none of the acting gets in the way.

From a horror level, Torment’s first half is a real slow-burn that still manages to include some fairly nasty, abrupt violence, including a very memorable scene involving some sharp garden shears and an astoundingly creepy shot involving shadowy figures in the basement (to be honest, one of the creepiest shots of the year: bravo!). There are some really tense action setpieces, including a marvelously executed cat-and-mouse chase involving Sarah and the masked baddies. Hell, Stephen McHattie even shows up as the lackadaisical sheriff and that’s always a good thing.

Once the film hits the midpoint and decides to let the masked intruders talk, however, the whole thing instantly collapses like a castle made of wet tissue paper. Gone is the tension, mystery and atmosphere, replaced by some of the most tedious, obnoxious and straight-up stupid “tough guy” talk this side of a dinner-theater production of Glengarry Glen Ross. The question of whether to have your masked bad guy speak is always a tough one: in most cases, any mood and mystery goes right out the window as soon as any formerly “strong and silent”-type tests the mic and Torment is absolutely no exception. Suffice to say, that my burning interest in the film was almost instantly doused and the resulting 40 minutes became as awkward, terrible and stupid as the first 40 minutes were effective and chilling.

Hard to pinpoint exactly where to lay the most blame here, but I’ll go ahead and toss a heaping helping of scorn onto the film’s two scribes (that’s right, two screenwriters for this drivel), mostly because the dialogue in the latter half of the film is so painfully stupid and contrived as to stick out like a neon sign. The whole thing ends with an obvious setup for a sequel, which, of course, begs one enormous question: who in the hell wants seconds from this particularly rancid smorgasbord?

Ultimately, Torment is that most terrible of films, at least for me: a scrappy little coulda-woulda-shoulda contenda that ends up as just another cauliflower-eared, empty-headed palooka. There’s plenty of potential here but precious little follow-through: “Torment” might not accurately reflect one’s experience with Barker’s film but I’m wagering the more accurate title wouldn’t have looked as good on the box art: “Tedium.”