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The Year in Review: The Most Disappointing Horror Films of 2015

30 Wednesday Dec 2015

Posted by phillipkaragas in Uncategorized

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2015, Alleluia, cinema, disappointing films, Felt, film reviews, films, Harbinger Down, Hellions, Hidden, horror, horror films, Horsehead, Let Us Prey, Lost River, Movies, personal opinions, The Diabolical, Turbo Kid

DisappointingHorror

Let’s get one thing out of the way: none of the films in the following list are bad films. Well, that’s not exactly true: one of them is actually a terrible film but we’ll get to that. For the most part, however, none of these are bad…in fact, a few of them are actually quite good. So what gives?

As the title might indicate, these are the horror films, released in 2015, that disappointed me the most for one reason or another. Perhaps they were exceptionally strong films that completely collapsed by the conclusion. Maybe they had great central ideas/effects/actors/intentions but only a middle-of-the-road approach. Perhaps they were created by filmmakers I normally follow or had such high pre-release buzz that I couldn’t help but anticipate them. For whatever reason, these are the thirteen films (in rough ascending order, leading to my biggest disappointment) that disappointed me the most in calendar year 2015.

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Harbinger Down — This had great effects (practical, might I add), a killer location (the frigid Arctic), a kickass concept (downed Soviet-era satellite causes mutations, ruins everyone’s day) and then managed to plow as mundane a path with the material as possible. The performances tend towards broad (to put it politely), the creation mechanics/mythos is too fluid and unformed to make much sense (logically or narratively) and the whole thing devolves into a rather clunky rip-off of Carpenter’s The Thing. That being said, Harbinger Down is a lot of fun and certainly no worse than many of its ilk. My disappointment comes from the fact that it could’ve been a lot more unique but never quite crested that hill.

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9

Let Us Prey — Another film with a great cast (Liam Cunningham and the always amazing Pollyanna McIntosh), a great concept (sort of Needful Things meets Assault on Precinct 13) and some genuinely impressive gore effects, Let Us Prey’s devolution into sheer inanity is a real headscratcher. While starting out strong and atmospheric, the whole thing collapses into so much macho posturing (Hanna Stanbridge is one of the chief offenders, along with Douglas Russell), shouting and stupid decisions that it actually made my head hurt. Again, this was never an out-and-out terrible film: it just became an incredibly stupid film, which handily earns it a spot here.

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Turbo Kid — I really wanted to love Turbo Kid: in fact, going in to the film, I fully expected to love it as much as Hobo With a Shotgun, which is quite a bit. By the end, unfortunately, it was not to be. While the film was frequently charming and featured a great score, clever world-building (the BMX bikes were a nice touch) and some truly surprising gore (almost in the same ballpark as Hobo, if more reserved), it just never connected with me on any kind of a deeper level. While it’s hard to really pinpoint where the film went wrong for me (I loved the incredibly similar Manborg), the incredibly awkward romance between Munro Chambers and Laurence Leboeuf was certainly one of the main culprits. Leboeuf, in general, turns in such an odd, affected and irritating performance that it made me grow tired of the film fairly quickly: at a certain point, I was just ready for the credits to roll. This may be a case of “individual results may vary” but for your humble host, Turbo Kid was pretty much stuck in neutral.

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Lost River — I’ll be honest: I never actually expected Ryan Gosling’s Refn-inspired directorial debut to be a great film. Hell, I didn’t even think it was going to be a good film. Festival buzz bespoke a film that was all style over substance, a confused attempt at creating a new fantasy mythology amid the wreckage of modern-day Detroit. Lost River ends up on my biggest disappointments list instead of my “worst of the year” list, however, for one very simple reason: it’s a pretty fascinating film. Is it a complete mess? Oh, absolutely: not only doesn’t the film make any kind of traditional narrative sense, it never adheres to enough of a mythology to make any kind of fantastical “inner” sense, either. What we’re left with are alluring snippets of a truly intriguing idea (just the submerged city, alone, is kinda classic), some interesting performances, some genuinely amazing visuals and the overriding idea that this souffle coulda been a contender. Next time, however, I think the Gos may come up with something that actually sticks.

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The Diabolical — This started out as a genuinely creepy, unnerving haunted house flick (albeit an incredibly familiar one) before taking a complete left-turn into wacky sci-fi for the final third. None of the finale makes sense, the fast-pace feels more “caffeine rush” than “rollercoaster plunge” and it becomes head-poundingly dumb. A classic example of how adding too many ingredients to the soup doesn’t make it better: it just means you have to throw the batch out and start from scratch.

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Hidden — Until the stupid “twist” rears its ugly, misshapen head, Hidden is an endlessly tense, smart and claustrophobic little chiller about a family trapped in an underground fallout shelter while the world falls apart above their heads. Or doesn’t, as it turns out. When the film sticks with our plucky trio of survivors, there’s a combination of sweet domesticity and ominous foreboding that’s immensely winning. Once filmmaking duo The Duffer Brothers drop the other shoe, however, it ends up being a moldy old boot, held together with nothing more than dust and duct-tape. Pity, too: if they just could’ve stayed the course, this would have, easily, been one of the biggest sleepers of the year instead of one of its biggest disappointments.

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Monsters: Dark Continent — Remember when I said one of these disappointments was also a terrible film? Well, here’s the culprit. While I never loved Gareth Edwards original Monsters, I still had a lot of respect for what the film was trying to do. The only emotions I feel for Tom Green’s sequel, however, are derision and a slight irritation at my wasted time. Dark Continent is a terrible film is so many ways, from its utterly generic, anonymous cast (every soldier looks the same and they’re all assholes: they’re sort of like the Borg, in that respect) to its “Poli-Sci 101” level of political commentary (the soldiers are in the Middle East to fight giant mutants but spend more time fighting human insurgents because war is hell, man) to it’s utterly “who gives a shit?” notion of narrative continuity. I don’t even mind that the monsters aren’t the main focus of the film (they weren’t in the first movie, either): I mind that this shitty, utterly generic, middle-of-the-road “war” movie is.

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Horsehead — What starts out as a lush, crazy, Gothic fever-dream slowly morphs into something that could best be described as a misguided attempt to turn A Nightmare on Elm Street into an art film. It’s a real shame because Horsehead is one hell of an eye-popping experience until the whole thing sags and collapses under the weight of expectations it can’t possibly fulfill. Had this stayed a creepy, moody and nonsensical little bit of nightmare fantasia, ala Argento’s best work, Horsehead might have ended up on my Best of the Year list.  In the end, however, the film is just too cluttered, stretched-thin and vaguely silly to have much lasting impact. A pretty film, to be sure, but also pretty vacant.

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Alleluia — As someone who really enjoys Fabrice du Welz’ films, I was definitely looking forward to Alleluia, his take on the infamous case of the “Honeymoon Killers.” While there’s not much technically wrong with the film, Alleluia ended up being one of my biggest disappointments this year simply because the film ends up being so repetitive, predictable and (at least for the Belgian provocateur) too darn safe. The beauty of du Welz’ films is that we get the idea that anything can happen at any time. Laurent Lucas and Lola Duenas’ actions have such a “lather/rinse/repeat” quality to them that everything gets telegraphed, after a while. We always know exactly how Duenas’ Gloria will react, which significantly reduces any sense of tension. As such, the whole film becomes a waiting game in-between Gloria’s “manic” episodes. While visually alluring and full of strong performances, Alleluia is definitely the low point of du Welz’ filmography and that, my friends, is massively disappointing.

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Hellions — As someone who considers Bruce McDonald’s Pontypool to be a bona fide modern-day classic, any follow-up was going to instantly make its way to the top of my “must-see” list. When I found out that Hellions was about a pregnant teen who must make a desperate stand against demonic, trick or treating, home invaders on Halloween eve, well, let me tell you: I pretty much expected this to be one of the very best of the year. And here we are. While Hellions is a true visual marvel (the whole thing is shot with a hallucinatory pink filter and is probably the most unique-looking film I’ve seen since Wheatley’s A Field in England), it’s also kind of a mess, shooting for the stylized insanity of primo-era Itallo horror films but ending up somewhere closer to Rob Zombie’s “close-but-no-cigar” Lords of Salem. This was a classic case of style over substance which is especially disappointing coming from the auteur behind the whip-smart Pontypool. I definitely don’t mind films that are genuinely odd: Hellions, however, feels like it tries way too hard to achieve that. As you might guess: that’s pretty disappointing.

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Felt — You know what’s disappointing? When you agree with a film’s message, part and parcel, yet can’t stand the messenger. There’s nothing about Jason Banker and Amy Everson’s Felt that I necessarily disagree with: this searing indictment of our modern rape culture is both unflinching and long overdue. There are some genuinely powerful moments here, both visually and narratively, and if the film is never as fundamentally mind-blowing as Banker’s earlier Toad Road, well…what is? The problem (at least for me) was Everson’s consistently unpleasant, tedious and obnoxious performance as the tortured lead. I agreed with what Amy (the character) wanted to achieve but everything about the character and performance was needlessly “kooky,” off-putting and tiresome. It wasn’t just that Amy “told it like it really is”: she turned her rage on everyone around her, including her put-upon “friends” and often came across as nothing more than a spoiled brat, eager for attention. The hell of it? There’s every indication this could have been the modern Repulsion.

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The Hallow — Cool setting? Check. Interesting blend of fantasy and horror elements? Check. Solid acting and filmmaking? Check. Excellent creature effects? Check plus. So, with a scorecard like that, how did writer-director Corin Hardy’s The Hallow end up in this particular list? Quite simply because it promised so much more than it actually delivered. While The Hallow promises an immersion in Irish folktales and mythology that will produce a raft of terrifying new cinematic creepy crawlies, what it actually gives us is some zombifying fungus (not bad) and a whole bunch of pale, generic beasties that look like second-cousins to Marshall’s cave-dwellers in The Descent (not good). That’s pretty much it.

Add to this the fact that much of the film either takes place while poking around a creepy house (been there) or running through the creepy woods (done that) and there’s the distinct idea that The Hallow is much less fresh, original and interesting than it first appears. One of my biggest disappointments of the year, however, was getting all the way to the final credits and releasing that Hardy wasn’t going to utilize any of the terrible, wonderful, ridiculously cool creatures that have been teased throughout. No film this well-made can (or should) be considered a loss: there’s just too much that works here to write it off. The Hallow takes the penultimate spot on my list, however, because it was absolutely capable of so much more: the proof is right there, on the screen…what little of it there is.

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It Follows — If there was one film that seemed to be on every horror fan’s lips in 2015, it was David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows: similar to last year’s The Babadook, the film even managed to top most genre critics “best-of” lists for the year. Depending on who you talked to, the film was either the freshest horror offering to come down the pike in years (since The Babadook?) or one of the most ingenious throwbacks to old-school horror/slasher films: take your pick. One thing everyone seemed to be in agreement on, however, was that It Follows was an easy pick for best horror film of the year.

Since you’re now staring at the aforementioned film at the top of my “biggest disappointments” list, it’s probably obvious that I didn’t agree. Was this an attempt to be “edgy” and buck the trend of popular opinion? Not in the slightest: I’m in complete agreement whenever anyone wants to discuss the film’s outstanding electronic score (Disasterpiece is, apparently, the new John Carpenter), gorgeous cinematography or (mostly) solid performances. As a film (and especially as a debut film), It Follows looks just great.

The film fails for me, ultimately, because it’s just too damn sloppy with its “rules.” Part of the sheer terror of the concept (an unstoppable, constantly moving figure is always behind the victim and will move slowly and surely towards them) comes from the inevitability of the scenario: when there’s a creepy figure moving inexorably closer in the distance, our pulse elevates right along with the character. We’re told, point-blank, that the figure will pursue its quarry to the ends of the earth, slowly, constantly coming for them. Even if you stop moving, it never does.

But then we see the figure just hanging out on top of a roof, looking menacing. Or kicking back in the background, giving the characters enough of a head start to get away. Or, in one of my personal favorite bits, seemingly able to appear right where the character is, even though she drives miles away: I’m guessing the figure hopped a cab to save its aching feet? The most important takeaway, however, is this: the “rules” for the creature are exactly as flexible/non-existent as the film calls for at any particular time.

This, for me at least, had the effect of completely deflating any tension from the film. Let’s use another example: suppose that we have a zombie film where they explicitly state that a head-shot will kill a zombie. We know this, so know what to expect in the oncoming “humans vs zombies” melee. We see countless zombies being shot in the head and dropping, until one reaches our heroes: in a bit of dramatic action, our heroes narrowly put a bullet right in its head…but it just shrugs and keeps coming. Our heroes look at each other and shrug, too. Why did this happen? Why, the need for increased drama and tension, silly!

For me, however, increasing dramatic tension by jettisoning your own established rules does nothing to serve your story or your audience: it’s the equivalent of painting yourself into a corner and then just walking back across the wet paint. Since we’re never really sure what the “rules” regarding the “it” in It Follows are, we’re pretty much left with an unbeatable McGuffin that displays just enough weakness to allow our heroes to get the upper-hand. In short, it’s a plot contrivance more than an iconic new source of terror.

Does this make It Follows a bad film? Not at all: there are genuine scares aplenty, even if the atmospheric ones gradually fall by the wayside for more traditional “we gotta come together and fight the monster” beats. My big issue with all of the hype is the baffling anointing of It Follows as a modern classic: it’s a solid, well-made film but it’s too inconsistent and laise-faire to be as ironclad as it needs to be. If It Follows was the best horror film you saw in 2015, I’m going to wager that you might not have looked quite as hard as you could have.

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

19 Thursday Nov 2015

Posted by phillipkaragas in Uncategorized

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31 Days of Halloween, Asylum Blackout, cinema, Da Sweet Blood of Jesus, Dark Ride, Extinction, film reviews, films, Halloween traditions, horror, horror films, Let Us Prey, Manborg, mini-reviews, Movies, October, Offspring, Sleepaway Camp, TerrorVision, The Gift

The VHS Graveyard’s post-October wrap-up continues with the first part of the fifth and final week, 10/26-10/28. Coming soon: the last half of the fifth week, our final thoughts on the October viewings and a complete listing of all films watched during the 31 Days of Halloween. Stay tuned, faithful readers: the finish line is finally in sight.

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Monday, 10/26

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Manborg — I’m not sure why Steven Kostanski’s Manborg worked so much better for me than Francois Simard and Anouk Whissell’s similar Turbo Kid but it was a night and day difference. Purposefully cheesy, goofy, extremely low-budget and endlessly fun, Manborg reminded me of Hobo With a Shotgun, which is extremely high praise, indeed. Thematically similar to RoboCop, this story of a half-man/half-machine hero out to save our post-apocalyptic world from the vile clutches of Draculon and his legions of Hell minions is a fast, smart little thrill ride.

Full of endearing performances and characters (Ludwig Lee’s illiterate #1 Man is one of my favorite characters in forever, with the epic scene where he finally sounds out the word “grenades” being pretty awe-inspiring), Manborg is a loving throwback to the direct-to-VHS ’80s and promises big things from Kostanski in the future (the writer/director was also responsible for the outrageous Father’s Day, as well as the flat-out amazing “W is for Wish” segment of ABCs of Horror 2). Here’s to hoping he expands the included fake trailer for BioCop, an insane mishmash of Maniac Cop, Toxic Avenger and RoboCop that features the best ever use of “Please kill me,” into a full-length: with Kostanski behind the wheel, I bet that would be a real showstopper.

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Extinction — These days, it’s all but impossible to do anything new with zombie films so, in many ways, the best that fans can hope for are well-made films that attempt to eschew as many of the moldy tropes of the sub-genre as possible. Using that rubric, writer/director Miguel Angel Vivas’ Extinction is just about as good as modern zombie films get. Tense, beautifully shot (the film is gorgeously lit, especially for this type of fare) and grounded by a trio of sturdy performances in the persons of Matthew Fox, Burn Notice’s Jeffrey Donovan and youngster Quinn McColgan, Extinction doesn’t reinvent the wheel but does nothing to dilute its basic power.

While this often familiar tale of a trio of survivors trying to out-last a zombie outbreak in a harsh, frozen near-future can occasionally be a bit confusing (the need for a “twist” makes some of the relationships more convenient than realistic) and lightly sketched, it’s also refreshingly serious, very smart and quite thought-provoking. For fans of the living dead, Extinction proves that the sub-genre still has plenty of (un)life left in it.

9

Let Us Prey — Extremely well-made but odd and rather off-putting, Brian O’Malley’s full-length debut is helped considerably by its strong performances and Piers McGrail’s cinematography but suffers quite a bit from an over-reliance on flashbacks, a ridiculously macho, chest-beating vibe and its frequent descent into pure innanery.

The story, itself, is familiar but reliable: it’s PC Rachel Heggie’s (the always awesome Pollyanna McIntosh) first day on the job in a remote, Scottish police station and she’s been put in charge of four prisoners, one of whom (the equally awesome Liam Cunningham) might or might not be the living incarnation of the Angel of Death. Once Cunningham’s Six starts to get into everyone else’s heads, however, and exploits their innermost fears, weaknesses and shames, the insanity and blood flow like a raging river.

Always more interested in being badass than making sense, Let Us Prey is too well-made to be easily dismissed but frustratingly short on depth, once the endgame is revealed. I’ve seen lots of films over the past several decades that have involved a mysterious person wrecking havoc on the unknowing inhabitants of an isolated establishment: Let Us Prey certainly isn’t the worst (McIntosh and Cunningham are actually outstanding) but it’s also nowhere near the best.

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Da Sweet Blood of Jesus — In a career that’s spanned three decades, it’s interesting to note that Spike Lee’s Da Sweet Blood of Jesus (a remake of Bill Gunn’s ’70s-era Ganja & Hess) is actually his first ever horror film. As such, I was genuinely curious to see what one of cinema’s premiere social commentators might do with a fright film, particularly one centered around the experience of black Americans in our current climate. Would this be a classic tale of an auteur out of his natural element or a bold, fresh new entry in a pretty formidable filmography?

As it turns out, Da Sweet Blood of Jesus is more Twixt than Bram Stoker’s Dracula: a misguided, dull and disjointed attempt by a well-respected filmmaker to branch out and try something new. The problems here are legion: the film is drastically over-long, full of acting that ranges from rough to amateurish and the tone flip-flops dramatically from art-house serious (lots of long, silent, mournful shots) to over-the-top cornball, sometimes in the same scene. There’s very little trace of the revolutionary director behind such staples as Do the Right Thing or Malcolm X: Da Sweet Blood of Jesus is filled with awkward dialogue, nonsensical action and intentionally comic bits that completely miss their mark (a bit involving a glass of blood vs a glass of vodka is, for lack of a better word, really dumb).

It really is a shame, to be honest: parts of Lee’s film are genuinely beautiful, fusing moody atmospherics with evocative cinematography to produce something that almost recalls the glossy Euro-vamp flicks of Jean Rollin, albeit with much less of their trademark hallucinatory visuals. The film also employs a genuinely fascinating soundtrack: while the score is sometimes at odds with the action, it usually sets up an interesting parallel and is never less than thought-provoking. At the end of the day, however, Lee’s tale about almost/sort-of vampires who find love (almost/sort-of) is way to talky and stage-bound to ever be truly effective. After two back-to-back and largely unsuccessful remakes, looks like Spike needs to get back to the original stuff post-haste: the “Tim Burton career path” (patent pending) is the last road any filmmaker wants to get stuck on.

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TerrorVision — Equal parts weird, goofy and genuinely cool, oddball auteur Ted Nicolaou’s TerrorVision belongs in the rarefied company of such cult classics as Repo Man and Meet the Hollowheads: ’80s films that seemed to have been beamed to our poor, unsuspecting world from some insane galaxy light years away. To perfect the comparison, TerrorVision is actually about something being beamed to Earth from light years away: in this case, the “something” in question is actually a slimy, ravenous alien bent on liquefying and devouring as many tasty Homo sapiens as possible.

What makes TerrorVision so weird? Take your pick: the acting is so cartoonishly over-the-top that it’s hard to take anything (including the impressive gore effects) seriously; the punk-metal angle is approached in a similarly OTT manner, resulting in such glorious moments as Jon Gries’ O.D. character, who’s sort of the love child of Mad Max’s Toe Cutter and Otto’s dumbass friends in Repo Man; odd material like the swinging subplot is treated so matter-of-factly as to seem even odder; the script is full of incredibly strange exchanges like the one where O.D. tells Chad Allen’s Sherman (yes, the same Chad Allen that was in Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman: that is correct) to “Kiss the boot, little man,” to which the youngster replies, “Kiss this, asshole!” and pulls a pistol.

In fact, one of the single, greatest things about TerrorVision is just how truly unpredictable it is: the film employs an absolutely bonkers “anything goes” philosophy which means that it’s never dull and, at times, is genuinely mind-blowing in its inherent weirdness. Embrace your freak flag with TerrorVision which proves the old adage “Some television is so awful that it can kill you…literally!”

Tuesday, 10/27

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Asylum Blackout — In many ways, Alexandre Courtes’ Asylum Blackout is the best John Carpenter film that the Godfather of Slashers never made. All of Carpenter’s trademarks, circa Assault on Precinct 13, are here: the low-key, realistic style; evocative electronic score; sustained feeling of tension punctuated by moments of shocking violence; mean, gritty vibe; claustrophobic setting; sense of helplessness; siege storyline…the whole thing might come across as needlessly worshipful if, in fact, Courtes’ film wasn’t so damn good.

This streamlined story of mental asylum staff trapped by the patients during a blackout is so good, in fact, that even some unnecessarily confusing plot points and a genuinely head-scratching twist ending (I’m not quite sure what happened, although I have my suspicions) don’t derail the proceedings. Asylum Blackout isn’t a particularly pleasant film, although it also never wallows in the grim events, preferring to focus on a few explosively gory, effective set-pieces to sell us on everything, part and parcel. With strong acting, a great sense of period detail (the late ’80s, in this case) and some truly ferocious moments, Asylum Blackout is both a sleeper and a keeper.

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Offspring — Like an even blunter, far less poetic Cormac McCarthy, author Jack Ketchum has been detailing the heart-stopping depravities of humanity for decades, culminating in a series of novels about a clan of feral cannibals who claim the coastline of Maine as their feeding ground. As a producer, Andrew van den Houten has been responsible for bringing several of Ketchum’s books to the silver screen including Offspring, which he also directed.

Prior to this year, I had seen and been thoroughly impressed by Lucky McKee’s The Woman, finding the film to be a bracing mixture of awesome and repugnant, filled with deliriously insane characters, relentless violence and razor-sharp social commentary. It would be a stretch to say that I enjoyed the film (there’s far too much intense torture, gore and sexual violence to ever make that claim) but lead Pollyanna McIntosh’s performance was an absolute stunner and the whole thing was just too smart to easily dismiss.

Van de Houten’s film serves as a direct prequel to McKee’s, detailing the events that led up to McIntosh’s mysterious wild woman being taken captive by the family of civilized savages. The film is a much cheaper, more amateurish affair than The Woman, bordering on crude at times (the children, in particular, often look more silly than scary) but it also possesses a tremendous amount of brutal, feral power. In many ways, Offspring is The Hills Have Eyes, Maine Edition, with all of the positives and negatives that the descriptor may carry. Above and beyond any of the film’s shortcomings, however, rises another outstanding performance by McIntosh, quickly proving herself to be the modern era’s Sigourney Weaver. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is never a bad thing.

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Dark Ride — A great setting can take a film pretty far and, for a while, the creepy, abandoned amusement park in Dark Ride seems ready and able to hoist the rest of the film on its shoulders and rumble straight to the finish-line. It doesn’t, unfortunately, which is certainly a bummer but probably not unexpected.

Until it falls apart considerably in the third act, Dark Ride comes across as a third-rate Funhouse, although that’s not quite the pejorative that it might sound. The aforementioned setting is fantastic, the tension is strong and the various references to classic films like Texas Chainsaw Massacre are fairly subtle and well-integrated: throw in some decent, Hatchet-like ultra-gore and you have the makings of a pretty nice little B-movie. The lead anchor here, unfortunately, ends up being the strictly by-the-book (and oftentimes much less so) acting and the thoroughly generic, bland killer. One of the cardinal sins of any slasher is a villain with no personality and Dark Ride’s mannequin-faced hacker just never makes an impression…on the viewer, at least. Strictly middle-of-the-road but certainly not the bottom of the barrel.

Wednesday, 10/28

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The Gift — Rock-solid, if never exactly amazing, writer-director-actor Joel Edgerton’s The Gift is a timely reminder that while we may be done with the past, the past may not be quite done with us. Essentially a three-character piece with added accoutrements, half of the fun here is watching the seamless ways in which Jason Bateman’s Simon, Rebecca Hall’s Robyn and Edgerton’s “Gordo” feint, prod and maneuver around each other.

The other half of the fun, of course, lies with the twisty, thorny plot, one of those Oldboy-type deals that unveils grim, new information with each unraveling layer. The Gift is a smart film, which is often its biggest asset: while the replay value may diminish a bit after an initial viewing (ala Seven or The Sixth Sense), there’s plenty to mull on here for repeat viewings including the poisonous nature of bullying, the terrible power of karma and that age-old realization that getting what you want can often be the very worst thing for you. Not really a horror film, in any strict sense of the term, but the psychological scarring is strong with this one, so I’ll allow it.

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Sleepaway Camp — Although it will probably always be best known for its eyebrow-raising final shot/surprise (which I wouldn’t dream of spoiling here, gentle readers), Robert Hiltzik’s Sleepaway Camp is actually one of the better slashers to emerge during the post-Friday the 13th ’80s glut, although it’s nowhere close to its spiritual forebear in terms of quality. Featuring inventive kills, an odd tone that splits the difference between serious carnage and goofier frivolity and an energetic (if amateurish) cast, Sleepaway Camp has tons of personality that belies its ultra low-budget roots.

While the film can occasionally be rough going (pretty much anytime the awkward/goofy needle winds up in the red), the central story is strong and, while the ultimate denouement would undoubtedly raise all kinds of red flags in our modern times, it’s easy to see how it would have floored a more unenlightened era. Although the two sequels that followed were lots of fun (albeit so much more exponentially silly as to be horror-comedies rather than true slashers), the first film manages to tip the scales heavily on the side of the horror. Like A Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween and John Carpenter’s The Thing, Sleepaway Camp should be on every true horror fan’s must-see list: history lessons were never this fun!

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