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

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

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

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

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Thursday, 10/29

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

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

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

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

Friday, 10/30

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

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

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

Saturday, 10/31

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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!

The 31 Days of Halloween: Week 4 Mini-Reviews (Part Two)

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31 Days of Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors, A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Child, Bone Tomahawk, cinema, Dead of Night, film reviews, films, Freddy Krueger, Freddy vs Jason, Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare, horror, horror anthologies, horror films, horror franchises, horror westerns, Lost River, mini-reviews, Movies, October, Pay the Ghost, remakes, Saw franchise, Saw: The Final Chapter, Wes Craven, Wes Craven's New Nightmare

Slowly by slowly, little by little, we continue to try to catch up with the avalanche of films from our October horror spectacular. Here are the mini-reviews from the second half of the fourth week of October, 10/22 to 10/25. Coming up, we finally approach the end of the 31 Days of Halloween with the fifth (and final) week of October. We’ll be discussing new films like Spike Lee’s Da Sweet Blood of Jesus, Contracted: Phase 2 and The Gift, as well as old favorites like Jaws, Trick ‘r Treat and Swamp Thing. Stay tuned, gentle readers: that light at the end of the tunnel might be daylight or it might be some sort of creepy ghost train…only one way to find out!

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Thursday, 10/22

A Nightmare on Elm Street — It all started here. There’s a reason why Wes Craven’s seminal creation would go on to spawn not only a blockbuster franchise but a genuine pop culture phenomenon: it is, quite simply, one of the best, most original films to come out of the entire history of the horror genre, from the silent days to modern times. By welding the burgeoning slasher genre to something explicitly supernatural and dream-like, Craven made a cinematic Frankenstein that would change the game for decades to come and introduce the world to one of the most iconic boogeymen of all time.

Much grittier than anything else in the series until Craven would return with New Nightmare, there is very little of the trademark wisecracks and villain worship that would come. In the original installment, Freddy Krueger is a terrifying creation, a scarred, insane, remorseless child killing demon who morphs and bends reality to his whim, far removed from the smarmier jokester that the character would eventually become. The setpieces (Johnny Depp sucked into his own bed; the body-bag dragging down the school hall; Freddy in the bath; the victim tossed around her room by an invisible Freddy) are as iconic as anything by Argento and the cast is likable enough to make us actually care what happens. In a long career, Wes Craven would never top this unforgettable blast of pure nightmarish nitro.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge — Coming off the high that was the original entry, the first sequel to Craven’s iconic creation was always going to have an uphill climb. It’s not that director Steve Miner didn’t try: there are certainly moments and setpieces (the opening school bus bit is pretty great, for one) that stand up with the first film. There’s a gleefully gonzo element to much of the film that allows for exploding parakeets, backyard barbecue massacres and an unexplained (but plainly obvious) homoerotic subtext that prevents the film from ever becoming boring.

On the other hand, however, Freddy’s Revenge is also sort of a mess, featuring an unnecessary possession angle (Freddy takes over a teen’s body in order to continue his killing spree), lots of rough acting and an unfortunately silly aftertaste to much of the proceedings: the aforementioned parakeet is one of those oddities that would never fit in anywhere, regardless of the film, context or era. If anything, Freddy’s Revenge stands as a fledgling franchise taking the first tentative steps towards immortality.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors — The first NOES film that I ever saw in the theater (I snuck into the showing when I was the ripe old age of ten), Dream Warriors is also my very favorite installment in the series, including Craven’s original. Hell, the third entry in the NOES franchise is actually one of my favorite films, of any genre, period.

For my money, Dream Warriors is the perfect culmination of what Elm Street has to offer: the kills/setpieces are inventive, unnerving and pretty glorious (Freddy as puppetmaster and “Primetime Freddy” are probably my favorites); the kids are likable and fun; the pop-metal soundtrack is appropriately kickass (in that patented late-’80s way) and, most importantly, Robert Englund’s Freddy finally perfected his trademark brand of razor-sharp snark here, finding a perfect balance between smarmy sarcasm and genuine dread. Dream Warriors also has the benefit of being one of only three Elm Street films that creator Craven was directly involved with: although he didn’t direct the film (that honor would go to The Blob remake’s Chuck Russell), Craven did co-write the script. As far as I’m concerned, horror films just don’t get much better than this.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master — Although it’s at least a solid half-step down from the utterly amazing Dream Warriors, Renny Harlin’s The Dream Master (his precursor to action juggernaut Die Hard 2) is still a great film and a more than worthy entry in the franchise’s “golden era.” We continue to get more of Freddy’s back story here and, although the humor is much more upfront, this is still, first and foremost, an inventive slasher film. Dream Master is also where Alice, NOES’ best final girl after the original Nancy, really comes into her ass-kicking own.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child — Although Stephen Hopkins’ (also known for Predator 2, Judgment Night and the criminally under-rated Ghost and the Darkness) Dream Child is much jokier and more gimmicky than its predecessors, it’s still a fun, highly watchable and suitably entertaining entry in the series. Although the film is never as inventive as the ones that immediately preceded it, the notion of Alice’s ever-sleeping unborn child is a great revelation/complication and the “doll party” death is still one of the ickiest and most disturbing in the entire franchise. The last truly good NOES film, since I’ve always considered New Nightmare to be a slightly different kind of animal.

Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare — When it first came out in theaters, I remember that I couldn’t get enough of Freddy’s Dead, the “supposedly” final installment in the Elm Street saga (at that time, at least): I know that I saw it at least twice but I might have actually seen it three times, to be honest. I do remember one thing quite distinctly, however: if I got any more excited about the film’s 3D aspects (we were given glasses at the screening and I think I still have a pair stowed away somewhere), I’m pretty sure that my head would have literally exploded, sending brain matter to every corner of my humble multiplex.

Time and perspective, as they often are, have not been kind to The Final Nightmare (feature debut for Tank Girl’s Rachel Talalay and one of only three non-TV credits to her resume, thus far). In every way, Freddy’s Dead is the absolute nadir of the series (including the goofy second film), a film that’s much more interested in throwing silly, random pop culture references at the audience (“You forgot the Power Glove!” is as immortal as it is idiotic) than it is in crafting anything approximating a legitimate scare. Gone is any notion of actually being frightening, in any way, shape or form: this is Freddy Krueger as stand-up comic, “slaying” the audience with the aid of things like an extended Wizard of Oz gag and cameos from Tom and Roseanne Arnold.

Despite a genuinely intriguing core premise (with all of the children on Elm Street finally gone, the adults have all gone insane), Freddy’s Dead is nothing but one lame, dated raspberry after another. Small wonder, then, that when the series did finally attempt to move past The Final Nightmare, it went in the completely different, meta-fictional direction of New Nightmare: when you’ve scrapped the bottom of the barrel straight to the wood, there’s just no further down to go.

Friday, 10/23

Saw: The Final Chapter — As hard as it is for me to believe now, there was once a point in time where I not only really liked the Saw series but actually anticipated each entry with something that probably approached a low-level kind of fanboyism. Youth, as we all know, is very much wasted on the young.

By the time I finally got around to watching the concluding chapter of the series recently, not only was I no longer a die-hard fan, I actually disliked much of what I previously enjoyed, finding only the first and third entries to really have any merit. Saw: The Final Chapter (or Saw 3D, if you were “lucky” enough to catch it in theaters) is, without a doubt, the absolute worst entry in the franchise, a feat made all the more impressive when one remembers how truly wretched the 4th and 5th installments were. Loud, chaotic, nauseatingly violent, lunk-headed, ugly, inane and tedious, The Final Chapter manages to wrap everything up with a bow by introducing so many deus ex machinas and “twists” that it’s pretty obvious the series’ caretakers must dislike it as much as we do. The very best, most succinct way I can describe this film is “obnoxious.”

Wes Craven’s New Nightmare — After the franchise went out in a cotton-candy bang of celebrity cameos, Nintendo references and more bad one-liners than an amateur open mic, it seemed that Freddy Krueger and his little spot of suburban hell might go the way of the dodo. Instead, creator Wes Craven would return to the series he kickstarted a mere three years later with New Nightmare, a smart bit of meta-fiction that would serve as a sort of dry run for what would become Craven’s “modern-day” legacy: the Scream series.

Much more serious, stream-lined and genuinely eerie than anything in the franchise since the debut film (not surprising, considering the genesis), New Nightmare uses the conceit that the actual creative personnel behind the films (writer/director Craven, original stars Heather Langenkamp and John Saxon, Freddy portrayer Robert Englund) are now being haunted by an honest to god demon, a creature which has decided to portray itself as Elm Street’s resident stalker for familiarity reasons (think of the various forms that It takes throughout the novel, as comparison).

The meta-angle is smart because it allows Craven to not only return to the franchise he created but to also comment on the violence, terror and nightmares he’s left behind in his wake. More so than his peers, Craven has always been at his strongest when he’s not only creating horror but actively commenting on it, perhaps due to his early turn as a member of academia. As a NOES film, New Nightmare performs lots of smart fan service, giving Elm Street acolytes the opportunity to spend a little more time with some beloved old friends: as a horror film, it’s generally successful, trading in the gaudy variety of the later films for a more streamlined sense of stalk-and-slash. That said, the film’s action can tend towards the cheesy, at times (the final confrontation, in particular, is pretty silly), and there’s never the overriding sense of fun produced by the best films in the series (3, 1 and 4, if we’re keeping score). It’s a good film, mind you, and exponentially better than what immediately preceded it: it’s just never been one of my personal favorites, that’s all.

Saturday, 10/24

A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) — I actively avoided watching the 2010 remake of Craven’s immortal Nightmare on Elm Street for a few different reasons: I really, really dislike unnecessary remakes; the recent “reboot” of Friday the 13th not only didn’t add anything new to the mix, it wasn’t even a particularly good F13 ripoff and the NOES “reboot” looked identical; I didn’t think Jackie Earle Haley was a suitable replacement for Robert Englund’s take on Freddy; the implied ultra-serious tone turned me off in the pre-release buzz; there wasn’t anything particularly wrong with the original NOES and I wasn’t sure what the new one was supposed to “fix” or “improve” and, of course, the most important reasons: I really, really dislike unnecessary remakes.

When it came time for this year’s October programming, however, I decided to give the reboot a shot and programmed it at the tail end of my NOES “marathon”: if there was ever a time to approach this with fresh, unjaded eyes, this was it and believe me when I say that I absolutely tried to do so. Despite my preconceived notions, I was fully prepared to let Samuel Bayer (better known for directing roughly a million music videos) blow me out of the water with his vision.

And then, of course, I actually watched the thing. Too technically well-made to be called crap, I still don’t have a problem applying the descriptor: this is soulless, overly glossy, loud, inane garbage, the kind of by-the-numbers modern multiplex filmmaking that’s conducted by committee rather than imagination. The new take on the makeup is awful, Haley’s performance is so generic and beige that he completely fades into the woodwork and all of the numerous references to the far superior original film (such as the “Freddy in the wall” gag) only serve to show just how chintzy and lame the new version is.

Look, I get it: modern audiences don’t like old stuff. No problem. In that case, why not give them someone new, then, instead of some idiotic reinterpretation of something that they’re not going to give two shits about in the first place? The NOES remake is offensive precisely because it appeals to exactly no one: old school fans need this roughly like we need a hole in our heads, whereas “the youth” will probably find this tepid version about as fascinating as listening to Gramps talk about record stores.

Dead of Night — Perhaps the less said about this haphazard late-’70s TV anthology film, the better. Consisting of three stories, Dead of Night features a suitably interesting cast (Ed Begley Jr., Patrick Macnee, Elisah Cook Jr., Horst Buchholz, Joan Hackett and Lee Montgomery all feature prominently) and then doesn’t give them much of anything interesting to do. Ranging from a pre-Back to the Future time-travel jaunt to a clichéd vampire period piece to a grieving mother bringing her dead son back from beyond, nothing here hits with any lasting impact and the overall impression is of a strictly bottom-of-the-shelf product slotted into a lonely Sunday night in order to kill time. Hopelessly dated, Dead of Night is proof that not every wine becomes a classic with age: some just turn into vinegar.

Lost River — Although it’s often easy to forget, celebrities and matinée idols are really, at the end of the day, just human beings like every one else. As such, they love (or hate) corn chips, sing in the shower and idolize other celebrities, just like everyone else. Case in point: leading hunk and all-around indie-action renaissance man, Ryan Gosling. While he may be a mega-charged star, in his own right, it’s pretty obvious that the Gos also really, really looks up to writer/director/badass Nicolas Winding Refn. After all, Gosling was already a lead before Refn cast him in the enigmatic Drive but it was that film (and role) that have clearly resonated the most with him: his “legitimization” in the world of “cool” films, as it were.

For his directorial debut, it’s not surprising that Gosling would turn towards the Danish wunderkind for inspiration, nor is it necessarily surprising that the result would be a huge mess. After all, Refn had to walk before he was setting the asphalt on fire, priming the pump with his Pusher series and the kinda/sorta biopic Bronson before diving into the weird with his surreal Viking curiosity Valhalla Rising and the magical-realist brutalist epics that would follow. With Lost River, Gosling jumps in without testing the waters, aiming for something like the neon-lit melancholy and perversion of Only God Forgives.

The problem, of course, is that all of this is way beyond the abilities of a fledgling filmmaker, especially one who’s still getting the hang of essential storytelling elements. In essence, Lost River is a mishmash of several dozen disparate tropes and themes, pulling in everything from weird, futuristic sex clubs (ala Clockwork Orange) and submerged towns to wandering gangs and general dystopia. There’s a love story (or two) here, lots of evocative atmosphere, plenty of head-scratching strangeness (the sex club, in particular is exceptionally strange) and not a whole lot of narrative. We get random musical numbers, probably because Only God Forgives did the same thing, but the effect is more one of opening random doors and observing assorted activities rather than any sort of overriding theme or intent.

None of this would, of course, make a damn bit of difference if the actual film was as mesmerizing as it intends. It’s not, unfortunately, but it certainly does try: Ben Mendelsohn turns in another of those performances that reinforces his status as the modern-day’s go-to sleazebag, while Christina Hendricks and Iain de Caestecker are solid as the mother/son duo at the heart of the film. There are eye-popping visuals aplenty and the sunken town is a fantastic concept, even if the actual execution leaves a bit to be desired. Even better, Gosling and cinematographer Benoit Debie (who shot Gaspar Noe’s mind-expanding/exploding Enter the Void) turn Detroit into a virtual post-apocalyptic wonderland, a crumbling land of the dead that provides the best possible backdrop for what Gosling has cooking.

Which, as previously mentioned, just doesn’t amount to much, in the end. Films certainly don’t have to make sense: there’s no written (or unwritten) rule that’s ever enforced that, least of all in my personal rulebook. The chief sin of Lost River isn’t that it makes an imperfect kind of sense: the chief sin of Lost River is that it’s haphazard and random, mood and image for the sense of such. Gosling might be looking towards such stylish artisans as Refn, Bava and Argento for inspiration but he’s forgotten the most important part: first and foremost, those filmmakers could tell a story. Lost River might be an “experience” but it could (and should) have been a whole lot more.

Sunday, 10/25

Bone Tomahawk — Although I like and watch all kinds of films, there are two genres that definitely have a lock on my heart: horror films and Westerns. While I’ve loved and been obsessed with horror films since I was a little kid, I actually grew up disliking Westerns something fierce, although anything with Clint Eastwood in it was always at the top of my fave list, regardless of genre. Once I grew up and was actually able to appreciate the genre, I learned that I had been a pretty huge bonehead (sorry Mom and Dad!) and that Westerns could be every bit as glorious as the horror films that I always swore by. Doh.

Since that point, I’ve always had my eyes peeled for that perfect intersection of my twin loves, that Venn diagram of utter awesomeness: the horror-Western. Like most rare, reclusive creatures, however, the horror-Western is a mighty difficult one to pin down. In fact, in all of these years, I’ve really only seen two films that I would consider to be absolutely essential horror-Westerns: Antonia Bird’s criminally under-rated Ravenous (1999), one of my all-time favorite films, and J.T. Petty’s stunning The Burrowers (2008), which has been burned into my mind since the very first time I saw it. At long last, these past favorites can finally set another place at the table: writer-director S. Craig Zahler’s Bone Tomahawk (2015) is not only the single best horror-Western I’ve seen since The Burrowers, it’s also one of the very best films of the year, hands down.

Bone Tomahawk, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love how Kurt Russell channels the world-weary air of latter-day John Wayne for his flawless portrayal of Sheriff Franklin Hunt, one of the most effortless cinematic badasses ever. I love how Richard Jenkins’ Chicory is the culmination of every sassy, ancient deputy in the history of the genre. I love how none of the characters, whether Patrick Wilson’s kind-hearted and “traditional” hero or Matthew Fox’s charismatic but odious “Indian-killer” are ever reduced to just simplistic stereotypes or lazy cinematic tropes. I love how the smart, Tarantino-esque dialogue adds to the overall feel and flow of the film rather than calling unnecessary attention to itself: there’s a great scene involving the relative merits (or lack thereof) of reading in the tub that provides big belly laughs without detracting from the film’s overall thoughtful, mournful air.

I love cinematographer Benji Bakshi’s gorgeous, panoramic imagery, beautifully composed shots that elegantly place our small, insignificant heroes into a massive, almost apocalyptic landscape that perfectly illustrates the immensity of their quest. I love that the horror element (cannibalistic, nearly inhuman cave-dwelling troglodyte savages who communicate via a series of eerie howling calls) is grounded in reality but never so ruthlessly explained as to lose its overriding air of mystery and menace. Did I mention how much I love the opening that features Sid Haig and David Arquette doing what they do best? No? Well, I love that, too.

To be frankly honest (as if it wasn’t already painfully obvious), I loved every thing about Bone Tomahawk. Just like with The Burrowers and Ravenous, this felt like an instant classic from the very first frame, a feeling which remained constant and consistent throughout its runtime. This is not only a quality horror film or a quality neo-Western: it’s a quality film, period, the kind of immaculately made, exquisitely acted piece of art that makes my heart soar and validates any and every shitty, boring or clichéd film I’ve had to sit through this year. It’s an absolute given that Bone Tomahawk will end up on my year-end Best of list: if most critics didn’t wear blinders when it came to horror films, I’d be willing to wager it would end up on their lists, too.

Freddy vs Jason — The worst thing about Ronny Yu’s Freddy vs Jason isn’t that it’s a dumb film, although it certainly is that. In fact, I’d go so far as to say the film is aggressively stupid, pitched at such a loud, blaring and bubble-headed level that it all but guarantees derision from anyone who grew up on the original NOES and F13 franchises: by comparison, Freddy’s Dead and Jason Goes to Hell both come across as downright Shakespearen.

No, the worst thing about Freddy vs Jason, by a long-shot, is how hard it tries (and overwhelmingly succeeds) in making Freddy Krueger look like a complete and total moron. Never more than one banana peel slip away from outright buffoonery (perhaps that’s on the Blu-ray extras?), this is even more terrible when one realizes that it will also probably stand as Englund’s last official outing behind the makeup. When I think of Freddy, I’d rather think of the cunning, wily and bloodthirsty monster of Dream Warriors or New Nightmare, not the dope in Freddy vs Jason who spends the entire film running around shouting the equivalent of “Those meddling kids!” while shaking his tiny fists at the sky. There’s never a point here where Freddy approaches anything like his former menace (although the Alice in Wonderland riff is a nice try): he’s the whiny nerd making threats while someone gives him a swirly in the boys’ room, the blowhard doofus who needs a little comeuppance from the “cool kids.”

Is it fun, though? Eh…it’s certainly loud, kinetic and action-packed…is that the same thing? Although Freddy gets the shortest possible end of the stick, Jason makes out slightly better, possibly because his constantly bemused expression stands as a perfect surrogate for our disbelief. It’s almost as if Mr. Voorhees is thinking: “Huh: get a look at this, will ya? This is some pretty out there stuff, man.” The actual fight between Freddy and Jason is fun, sure, even if the whole thing feels suspiciously like one of those Peter vs the Chicken fights from Family Guy: at a certain point, they might as well be smashing through panes of glass on the street and upending fruit carts, for all the actual impact it has.

I will freely admit one thing, however: I laugh my damn ass off each and every time I watch the scene where the stoner, referencing Jason’s murderous rampage, observes “Dude, that goalie was pissed about something!” My guess? He just got finished watching this stupid movie.

Pay the Ghost — When it comes to Nicolas Cage, it’s never a given as to which side you’re going to get: will it be the teeth-gnashing, out-of-control, bee-hating Cage of The Wicker Man remake or will it be the restrained, low-key artisan of Joe? The glory of Cage, of course, it that it could be either (or both!): like a box of mixed chocolates, you never really know until you’ve paid your money and taken your chances.

For Uli Edel’s Pay the Ghost, we get a little of both sides, albeit watered-down: call it diluted Cage, if you will. And it works, for the most part: Cage is a massively likable presence as Mike Lawford, the hapless professor who manages to lose his young son during a chaotic Halloween carnival and uncovers a supernatural conspiracy when he tries to find him. There are some genuinely eerie moments here, even if many of them seem borrowed from similar genre fare like Mama or The Woman in Black (perhaps the closest parallel to Pay the Ghost’s themes and execution) and Edel (who was also responsible for the fantastic Baader Meinhof Complex) builds up a reasonable amount of tension throughout.

The biggest problem, as it turns out, is that the film ends up being both too convoluted and too familiar: the moments where Edel and screenwriter Dan Kay (scripting from Tim Lebbon’s novel) break away from the usual “evil forces snatching children” tropes end up being some of the film’s weakest, mostly because it’s often difficult for us to make the connections that the characters are. Even now, I’m not 100% sure of what transpired, although I’m pretty sure I’ve got the gist. That being said, the film is still a reasonable solid, well-made piece of multiplex-ready fare and features a strong performance from Cage and lots of creepy vultures: if that sounds like your thing, I suggest you pay this particular ghost and see what happens.

The 31 Days of Halloween: Week 4 Mini-Reviews (Part One)

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31 Days of Halloween, Alleluia, cinema, djinn, Feed the Gods, Felt, film reviews, films, Gravy, Halloween, Halloween traditions, Lost After Dark, Love in the Time of Monsters, mini-reviews, Movies, October, Teeth, The Boxtrolls, The Diabolical

Our recap continues with the first few days of the fourth week of October, Monday through Wednesday (10/19-10/21). As with the others, it was necessary to break this up since 24 films were screened that week. We’ll have the second half of the week a little later: stay tuned for my run-through of the Nightmare on Elm Street series (including the remake) along with another of my picks for film of the year, Bone Tomahawk.

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Monday, 10/19

Alleluia — If French auteur Fabrice Du Welz has an agenda, I’m more than willing to bet that it’s making audiences extremely uncomfortable.  With his stunning debut, Calvaire, Du Welz put his own unforgettable spin on one of the moldiest horror tropes out there (dangerous, inbred backwoods folks), turning it into a thoroughly unpleasant, if bleakly powerful, examination of obsession, insanity, gender assignment and creepy yokels. Du Welz would follow this up with Vinyan, an equally unpleasant if slightly less successful look at parent-child relationships and the bottomless hole that is loss.

For his third feature, Du Welz turns his attention to the oft-filmed, true life crime story of the Honeymoon Killers: a charming con artist woos and swindles women until he ends up in the orbit of an obsessive lover, at which point his chicanery combines with her insanity to produce an increasing pile of murdered women. While this features plenty of Du Welz’s trademark visual flair (a blue-lit journey through a sex club is particularly impressive), it also becomes unfortunately repetitive by the third act, as we settle into an increasingly predictable “wash, lather, rinse” cycle of Gloria getting jealous, Gloria getting seriously violent and Michael staring in shock at the aftermath. If the film, itself, is Du Welz’s most straight-forward and least surprising yet, then the searing performance by Lola Duenas as Gloria stands as one of the very best performances I saw this year. With her big, soulful eyes, goofy, glazed grin and propensity to turn into a Tazmanian Devil when angered, Duenas’ Gloria is, perhaps, one of the single most terrifying characters ever brought to the screen. Too bad Alleluia isn’t as feral as its lead.

Gravy — This one’s a bit tricky, folks. On the one hand, writer-director James Roday’s feature debut is astoundingly funny, full of brilliant dialogue, some awe-inspiring performances (they don’t normally offer Oscars for splatterific horror-comedies but, if they did, both Jimmi Simpson and Michael Weston would receive an equal half, split down the middle like Solomon’s infamous baby), brilliant setpieces and some genuinely amazing gore/effects work. It’s no hyperbole to say that, come the end of this year, Gravy will absolutely end up in my Top 5: it’s all but guaranteed a spot, given that the damn film is pretty much flawless, as streamlined of purpose as a shark.

So what’s in that other hand, gentle readers? Well, in this case, it would be the twin qualifiers of societal taboo (cannibalism) and extreme, unabashed and outrageous bad taste. While most folks will probably find themselves turned off by the actual story (a trio of nutty cannibals takes the employees of a Mexican restaurant hostage on All Hallows’ Eve and proceeds to butcher and eat them, all while playing a series of silly games), I’ll wager that the tone will tick just as many off. Thanks to the astounding performances, cannibals Simpson and Weston become the de facto, ultra-charismatic leads, even as they’re sawing people in half or biting their voiceboxes out through their throats. To put it bluntly, our cannibals are so damn lovable and quirky that it puts the audience in a weird situation: we want to root for the employees (who are also such a lovable, cool bunch that it’s never a chore) but then Simpson, Weston or Molly Ephraim (whose female cannibal easily holds her own in the boys’ club) will do or say something so gut-bustingly rad that it’s hard not to cheer ’em on.

Make no mistake about it, however: if you can stomach the intense bloodshed and far less than PC humor, you’ll find that Gravy is one of the funniest, most original and most ingenious films to emerge in the last decade or so. With its phenomenal score (“La Bamba,” “Sowing the Seeds of Love” and “Walking on Sunshine” are all used to turn already epic setpieces into the kind of water-cooler talk that make legends) and razor-sharp dialogue (the scene where Simpson and Weston discuss how Jenny Agutter going “full frontal” in Equus was the source of Simpson’s love of British accents is so perfectly timed that it’s like a comedy workshop), this thing is a crowd-pleaser dressed in lunatic garb. Final word: any film that makes me laugh this often and pump my fist this high gets only one real descriptor, in my book…classic.

The Boxtrolls — Despite a slightly off-putting visual style (sort of like drastically over-lit Claymation) and a slightly too long running time, I rather enjoyed this quirky little story about finding your own family in the world, regardless of whether they look like you or not. With some nice voice-acting, heartfelt themes  and fun setpieces, The Boxtrolls doesn’t reinvent the wheel (or even spiff it up, to be honest) but it’s a pleasant enough way to pass the time.

Tuesday, 10/20

Djinn — Of all the ’70s horror masters who’ve gradually lost their edge, few have fallen further and harder than the once unstoppable Tobe Hooper. While everything between his iconic 1974 debut, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and its direct 1986 sequel are varying degrees of awesome (the worst thing you can say about any of the eight films in his “classic” period is that they might be a tad bit over-the-top), he’s been unable to create anything worthwhile in the nearly 30 years since.

His newest film, the UAE-funded Djinn, fits nicely into the pattern of latter-day Hooper: clichéd scenarios, iffy acting, and an overall workmanlike quality that’s the polar opposite of essential films like TCM, Fun House or Life Force. There’s no point in the film’s 80 minutes where it ever exceeds expectations, surprises or produces anything like the glory of his mid-’70s to mid-’80s output. In fact, if you didn’t catch his name in the credits, I’m willing to wager there would be no way whatsoever to discern this as a Tobe Hooper film any more than an Alan Smithee joint. Save one really smart scene involving a pair of oblivious cops and several coolly atmospheric moments, this tired story of a husband and wife finding ancient evil when they return to their homeland is just about as D.O.A. as it gets. Hard to call this a disappointment, really, since ol’ Hoop’s been driving this awful back road for almost three decades now.

Lost After Dark — Nowadays, with nearly as many retro-’80s-themed genre films floating around as there were actual films back in the 1980s, it’s a little harder for any one to make a genuine impact. Enter writer-director Ian Kessner’s full-length debut, Lost After Dark, which utilizes a surprisingly smart and simple way to stand out from the pack: by playing the film mostly straight, the whole thing ends up feeling like a long-lost slasher curio rather than a calculated homage to an era. Sure, there are meta moments like the obligatory “missing reel” gag (albeit used in a pretty fresh way, here) and the fact that every character in the film is named after either a famous horror director, performer or character (most head-slapping bit being the point where Heather proclaims “I don’t think I’ll ever sleep again” because, ya know, the actress who played Nancy in A Nightmare on Elm Street was Heather Langenkamp. Get it? Huh? Huh?).

For the most part, however, we get a pretty well-made old school slasher film filled with unique kills (the giant corkscrew to the back was certainly original), fun characters and a pretty neat performance from Robert Patrick as a tough-as-nails high school principal (“I’m no teenager: I was in the ‘Nam and I’ve got chunks of guys like you in my stool!”). If the film occasionally comes across as slightly generic, well, that may just be the most authentic bit of verisimilitude yet.

Wednesday, 10/21

Love in the Time of Monsters — In the past, I always held fast to the notion that horror-comedies were, quite possibly, the hardest films to really knock out of the park. Judging by the amount of amazing ones I saw this year, however, it looks like filmmakers may have finally cracked the code. Next exhibit? Matt Jackson’s thoroughly endearing Love in the Time of Monsters.

All of the necessary aspects are present and accounted for: funny, unique angle (the various guys who play Bigfoot at the Sasquatch-themed Uncle Slavko’s All-American Family Lodge become infected by toxic waste and turn into rampaging Bigfoot-costumed zombies who chow down on the guests and other employees); well-done gore effects; fun, likable characters (Doug Jones gets a marvelous bit as an Abe Lincoln-costumed doctor, while every employee of the lodge has their own personalities and quirks, ala Gravy);  great setpieces (the scene where the Big Kahuna and Brandi have to “dance like lives depend on it” is fantastic but the scene where our survivors get a full view of the contaminant’s effect on the local wildlife is a showstopper); great acting; smart, fast and funny dialogue (writer Michael Skvarla’s script rarely comes up for air, preferring to batter the viewer with one hilarious line after another, again, ala Gravy)…if it’s possible to create quality film with a checklist, this is the one to use.

While Love in the Time of Monsters isn’t quite as flawless as either Gravy or Cooties (the film sometimes devolves into silly chaos and there’s a really ill-advised and, frankly, awful electrical charge effect that’s used way too often and never failed to make me groan), if you’re a fan of horror-comedies, this should be just what you’re looking for.

Feed the Gods — Needlessly confusing, drastically under-lit and genuinely odd, Feed the Gods is one of those horror film collages (creepy backwoods locals, Bigfoot, sins of the parents, humans in thrall to monsters, yadda yadda ya) that seems to have a lot on its mind, yet doesn’t end up saying a whole lot. There’s lots of interesting stuff in this film about brothers who travel to a virtual ghost town in search of their birth parents and run afoul of the Bigfoot-worshipping locals but the plot takes so many sudden zigzags that it becomes tiring trying to keep up. It was never a terrible film, mind you, but by the time the film chugged into the finish line, it had become a somewhat silly film, which rather belies its serious-as-a-heart-attack tone. Extra points for finding a way to channel Shirley Jackson’s immortal The Lottery, even if it ends up being just another hanging thread in a pretty shaggy tapestry.

The Diabolical — There’s nothing worse than a lazy, middle-of-the-road film that takes zero chances and does it’s damnedest to blend into the pack: Alistair Legrand’s The Diabolical is probably the furthest thing from that. On the other hand, however, films (and filmmakers) that bite off way more than they can chew can be just as bad, albeit in a different way. The Diabolical, without a doubt, falls under that category.

Ostensibly one of the ubiquitous “troubled family moves into a new home and experiences strange occurrences” family of films, Legrand throws in diabolical scientific experiments, time travel, typical haunted house stuff (skinless apparitions are plentiful here) and convoluted familial drama until the whole thing begins to resemble a Whitman’s Sampler of Horror. There are moments of genuine power here (the bit where a skinless creature crawls out of a clothes dryer is the genuine stuff of nightmares) but the ultimate resolution makes imperfect sense (at best) and the whole thing becomes almost unbearably cluttered and confusing by the “twist” ending. Nothing wrong with a little ambition, mind you: complete lack of focus, however, is something else entirely.

Teeth — Pitched somewhere between a particularly grim fairy tale and a tongue-in-cheek reproachment of misogyny, Teeth details the adventures of Dawn, a goody-two-shoes high school student who’s a little different from her peers. For one thing, she’s a highly aggressive proponent for abstinence and wholesome entertainment (PG-13 movies have too much “making out,” so cartoons are safest), which makes her the object of ridicule for her “cooler” peers. For another thing, she has vagina dentata, a fact which she discovers when the supposedly nice guy that she has a crush on tries to rape her and gets his manhood forcibly removed.

Held aloft by Jess Weixler’s positively effervescent performance as Dawn, Teeth is always lighter than its subject matter might indicate but never sells the very serious core themes short. There’s lots of thought-provoking discussion about gender norms, the stereotype of the “good girl,” the fallacy of the “white knight” and the notion of justice versus vengeance. That’s not to say, of course, that the film is all dour philosophizing: thanks to the quick, smart dialogue, Weixler’s constantly engaging performance and some genuinely impressive setpieces, Teeth ends up being a whole lot of fun, a smart teen comedy with a significant edge and plenty on its mind.

Felt — It’s quite possible to love the message, yet dislike the messenger: Jason’s Banker’s follow-up to Toad Road, Felt, is proof positive of just that. Despite being 100% on board for this searing indictment of misogyny and rape culture (with a little Repulsion thrown in, for good measure), I was left cold and, to be honest, a little irritated. Chalk it up to co-writer/lead Amy Everson’s thoroughly off-putting performance as a traumatized artist who gradually loses her grasp on reality amid a seemingly unending array of piggish, assholish masculinity, the best of which can said to be liars, the worst of which are no less than dangerous predators. Even though I agreed with everything Amy was saying and (for the most part) doing, I just couldn’t stand her character, finding her to be obnoxious and rather tedious.

It’s a shame because there’s so much potential that feels squandered here, so much more that could have been done with this set-up. After loving Banker’s previous film, Felt was just about as highly anticipated for me as anything this year: that makes my general dislike of this one of my biggest disappointments of the year. Aside from a few unnerving setpieces and some genuinely beautiful cinematography (Banker continues to be a real wizard with the camera, just as in Toad Road), the film is just sunk by Everson’s unlikable performance. I wanted to love this, trust me: it hurts me deeply to say that I didn’t even like it.

The 31 Days of Halloween: Week 3 Mini-Reviews (Part One)

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31 Days of Halloween, Beneath, Berberian Sound Studio, Cam2Cam, cinema, Dark Skies, film reviews, films, Halloween, horror, horror films, mini-reviews, Movies, October, Pontypool, The Dark Crystal, The Fog, The Lazarus Effect, The Pyramid, The Snowtown Murders, The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death, What We Do in the Shadows

With Halloween almost upon us, I find myself falling further and further behind in my quest to document everything that I’ve watched during the month of October. In an effort to help the process along a little, I’ve decided to split my Week 3 Mini-Reviews into two separate parts. This first post will deal with all of the films watched from Monday to Thursday of that week. I’ll post the second half (Friday-Sunday) as soon as I’m able. If you’re having trouble picking some suitable Halloween viewing, let any or all of these serve as some humble suggestions.

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Monday, 10/12

The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death — Austere, leisurely-paced and more interested in building an oppressive atmosphere than in shocking jaded audiences with mindless gore, Hammer Films sequel to their surprise Daniel Radcliffe-starring hit is a decidedly old-fashioned film. For a time, the film works marvelously: the isolated manor house is a distinctly creepy, well-utilized location, surrounded by marshes and darkly gleaming water on all sides and possessed of plenty of those “locked doors that you shouldn’t unlock.”

Well before the finale, however, the film begins to flounder and spin its wheels, doling out loud jump scares and creepy background figures like any number of lesser films, while dooming its cast to do precious little besides wandering down one increasingly dark corridor after another. It all winds up at a resolution that’s both overly complex and too slight, losing whatever made the film unique in the first place. To add insult to injury, the film is often way too dark, rendering many of the visuals and scares rather moot. I appreciate a dark, creepy atmosphere as much as the next horror hound but come on: when you find yourself staring at an inky black screen, watching vague movements and trying desperately to figure out what’s happening, well…that’s not atmosphere…that’s frustration, pardner.

Pontypool — An absolutely essential modern classic and one of the most unique zombie films to ever grace the silver screen, Bruce McDonald’s Pontypool (adapted for the screen by the book’s author, Tony Burgess) is one film that I like to return to as often as possible. Featuring a phenomenal, career-making turn from the amazing Stephen McHattie as a big-city shock jock demoted to the boonies of a tiny, sleepy, Canadian town, Pontypool takes everything we know about zombie films and burns the rulebook. The concept is mindblowing (the “virus” is spread through the English language and can only be fought by “misunderstanding” commonly used words), the performances are exceptional and the claustrophobic atmosphere (the majority of the film takes place in the church basement where the radio station is located) digs its hooks in and never lets go. Above and beyond all else, however, is the one and only Stephen McHattie, giving the kind of performance that makes you want to replay each of his scenes after they’ve finished. This is, without a doubt, one of my all-time favorite films and deserves much more acclaim than it normally receives, similar to Antonia Bird’s equally-perfect Ravenous.

The Fog — Although not quite as well-known as classic Carpenter films like Halloween, The Thing and Escape From New York, this under-stated follow-up to Halloween is actually one of his best, most frightening films. The set-up (vengeful leper sailors return from their watery grave to exact revenge on the coastal town that murdered them a hundred years before) is the stuff of campfire tales and there’s an impenetrable air of suffocating dread that covers the entire film like the titular fog that rolls through town. This features a pretty nifty cast (mother and daughter Janet Leigh and Jamie Lee Curtis appear, along with the always amazing Adrienne Barbeau (Carpenter’s wife at the time), John Houseman, Hal Holbrook and Tom Atkins) and there’s no denying that the ghostly sailors (who are prone to be quite stabby) are pretty damn creepy. The opening sequence, where things subtly go wrong in the town between the hours of midnight and one, is one of the very best horror openings ever. Needless to say, avoid the remake at all costs.

Tuesday, 10/13

Dark Skies — Despite some particularly head-slapping “Why did they do that moments?,” Dark Skies is a pretty decent alien invasion flick with lots of creepy atmosphere and a handful of tense setpieces. The acting is pretty good, although JK Simmons handily steals the film when he pops up as a preternaturally serene and almost Zen-like alien abduction expert. A calm Simmons? That might be the most out of this world thing of all!

Cam2Cam — This is actually two films in one, which I rather suspected but later confirmed. The first film, which I took to be an extraordinarily long opening setpiece, is a tense, sleazy little bit of stalk ‘n slash that managed to be gripping, if thoroughly unpleasant. The second film, which comprises the rest of the movie, is a complete slog, a tedious, obvious, repetitive and, at times, quite stupid piece of product which manages to fail on pretty much every level. Favorite “Huh?” moment? The lead character walking through the crowded streets of Bangkok, covered in blood and holding an ax. No one even blinks an eye because, you know, foreign places are super scary already. Or something like that.

Wednesday, 10/14

The Snowtown Murders — Similar to Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, this unflinching, gritty and rather repellant film takes a look at the devastation wrought by one of Australia’s most notorious serial killers, John Bunting. While the story is filtered through young Jamie, it’s Daniel Henshall’s Bunting who really guides us through this tale of misplaced loyalty, brutal vigilantism and pure, unadulterated evil. Absolutely nothing about this film is fun, in the slightest way, but that doesn’t stop it from being one of the most powerful, unforgettable films I’ve ever seen. Like Salo, this is a movie you don’t watch twice.

The Lazarus Effect — I went into this expecting nothing more than typical, modern multiplex horror fare: conventional storytelling, an overabundance of CGI, loud jump scares at perfectly-timed intervals and a complete dearth of anything truly interesting. What I ended up getting, to my complete surprise, was an intelligent sci-fi-oriented horror film with a great cast (Olivia Wilde, Mark Duplass (one of my favorite modern actors), Donald Glover, Ray Wise and American Horror Story’s Evan Peters), some genuine creepy moments and a thought-provoking premise. If the final half hour ends up devolving into my preconceived notions, it doesn’t really diminish what came before. For multiplex fare, this is pretty darn good. Who would have thought that the director of Jiro Dreams of Sushi would have a horror film in him?

Berberian Sound Studio — In many ways, Berberian Sound Studio is the furthest thing possible from a horror film. After all, there’s nary a monster, insane killer or mutating virus to be found anywhere. Don’t let the outside covering fool you, however: patient viewers will soon realize that BSS exists within the same rarified company as Polansky’s Repulsion or Jacobsson’s Evil Ed in that it doesn’t portray outside horrors so much as the much more terrifying horrors of a fractured mind. Although this tale of a mild-mannered American sound editor who somehow gets involved with a sleazy Italian horror film (which seems to be a rip-off of Argento’s classic Suspiria) is often more droll than horrifying, it ably portrays the slippery slope that leads from “normal life” into the twilit land of utter, howling insanity. For my money, one of the most brilliant films of the past decade.

The Pyramid — Sometimes, a film’s concept is so good that it helps to smooth over some otherwise choppy waters. Take Gregory Levasseur’s The Pyramid, for example. As someone with a lifelong love of archaeology and all things Egyptian, a horror film about a group of scientists uncovering and exploring a previously buried pyramid would seem to be a dream come true. For this reason, I was willing to put up with some thoroughly unpleasant characters/actors, a found-footage angle that always seemed like an after-thought and weird elements like the jackal/rat/cat things that are constantly jumping out of the shadows. For a time, I was able to keep the blinders up but the whole thing collapses into so much crap by the final third that I was forced to face a pretty obvious truth: The Pyramid is about as worthless as a handful of sand.

What We Do in the Shadows — There’s not much to say about this film beyond the obvious: I absolutely loved it and consider it to be an easy frontrunner for horror film of the year, if not one of the overall best films of the year, regardless of genre. Equal parts hilarious, heartfelt and horrifying, this look into the “real lives” of a group of New Zealand roommates, who also happen to be vampires, is an absolute blast from the first frame to the last. Although it plows the same basic land as the hilarious Belgian film Vampires (2010), What We Do in the Shadows is absolutely its own beast and a simply wonderful one, at that. I foretell that this will be regarded with the same respect that genre fans give to staples like Let the Right One In within the next decade.

Thursday, 10/15

Beneath — I absolutely adore genre stalwart Larry Fessenden, so I was unbelievably excited to watch Beneath: after all, Fessenden, a monstrous fish and a group of teens trapped on a boat sounds like the key ingredients for another classic along the lines of Wendigo or The Last Winter. Unfortunately, what I got was actually the first Fessenden flick that has not only disappointed me but that I’ve actively disliked. What went wrong? Well, the concept is great, the fish looks fantastic (great to see old school effects work) and the location is perfect. The problem ends up being that every single character is a complete and total piece of shit. When you have a film filled with hateful characters, well, let’s just say that it makes it a little hard to be invested. By the ten minute mark, I pretty much wished that the fish would eat every last one of ’em. I don’t normally approve of remakes but I kinda wish someone would take this concept and do it right.

The Dark Crystal — This was a childhood favorite of mine, along with films like Labyrinth, The Last Starfighter and the animated Hobbit. As often happens, however, the films of our youth don’t always hold up to the unforgiving light of adulthood (see my current hatred of Clerks, which used to be a youthful staple). In this case, however, I’m happy to report that this particular boyhood love remains as potent and effective today as it did in the past. The puppetry is out-of-this-world (would you expect anything less from Jim Henson?), there’s a genuine sense of menace and threat that you don’t normally get in kids’ films and the whole thing is visually spectacular. The basic story (an uncertain adolescent must undertake a dangerous quest in order to save the land he loves) is almost as old as the written word but The Dark Crystal manages to fold the cliche into an utterly absorbing, captivating new form. This is the kind of kids’ movie that they just don’t make anymore for a very good reason: they can’t.

The 31 Days of Halloween: Week 2 Mini-Reviews

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

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

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Monday, 10/5

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

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

Tuesday, 10/6

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

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

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

Wednesday, 10/7

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

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

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

Thursday, 10/8

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

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

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

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

Friday, 10/9

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

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

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

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

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

Saturday, 10/10

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

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

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

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

Sunday, 10/11

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

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

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

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

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

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

The 31 Days of Halloween: Week 1 Mini-Reviews

Tags

31 Days of Halloween, cinema, Cooties, Dark Was the Night, Deathgasm, film franchise, film reviews, films, Hellions, horror, horror movies, mini-reviews, Monsters, Monsters: Dark Continent, Movies, October, Saw, Saw 2, Saw 3, Saw 4, Saw franchise, The American Scream, The Blood Lands, The Boy, The Houses October Built, The Nightmare, They, Turbo Kid, White Settlers

Grains of sand are curious things: if you have one, you really don’t have much of anything…if you have a couple trillion, you have a beach. This is, of course, all by way of saying that the scattered grains of sand that were my pending film reviews have quickly grown to something that more closely resembles a dune. Since it will still be some time before I can completely catch up, I figured I’d do the next best thing and write up some mini-reviews in the meantime, lest I quickly find myself buried beneath a solid month’s worth of films.

To that end, I now present a few thoughts about the films I screened during the first week of this year’s 31 Days of Halloween (10/1-10/4). Since one of the main purposes of this humble little blog is to turn folks on to new films, I wanted to make sure to get some recommendations out there while folks can still program a little Halloween goodness of their own. With no further ado, then..

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Thursday, 10/1

The Nightmare — This fascinating little documentary about the frightening phenomenon of sleep paralysis comes to us from the filmmakers behind the recent Shining/conspiracy theory doc, Room 237. Through a mixture of interviews and re-enactments, we get a front-row seat to a genuinely disturbing, almost impossible strange malady that might affect more people than you at first realize.

Dark Was the Night — Coming across as a sturdy combination of Feast and 30 Days of Night, DWtN is a thoroughly competent “monster invades a small town” flick that features strong performances from Kevin Durand, Lukas Haas and Nick Damici (one of my all-time favorites) and a suitably bleak resolution.

The Blood Lands — Starting strong before gradually losing its way, The Blood Lands (formerly known by the much more incendiary but pointless title White Settlers) ended up on my shit-list by taking one of the best genre actresses in the business, Pollyana McIntosh, and saddling her with a simpering ninny of a character. Imagine if Lt. Ripley took one look at the Queen Xenomorph and decided to let the boys handle it, instead: yeah, I didn’t buy it, either. McIntosh’s glorious “The Woman” character would take one look at The Blood Lands’ Sarah and knock her straight into next week.

They — Despite some effective (if minor) chills, Robert Harmon’s They is just about as beige and generic as its title would indicate. While this tale about now-grown friends confronting (literally) the demons of their childhood makes some minor nods to classic “confronting-the-past” horrors like It, it really plays out as more of a watered-down version of the already tepid Under the Bed. Even Ethan Embry can’t make this particularly interesting: make of that what you will.

Friday, 10/2

The Houses October Built — This modest little found-footage flick about friends looking for the ultimate haunted house experience (as in “professional haunts with people in masks,” not “actually haunted houses,” which is an important distinction) genuinely surprised me: gritty, unnerving, fairly realistic and genuinely creepy, there’s a whole lot to like here. The “villains” are all quite memorable (scary clowns never get old, for one thing) and the film never quite devolves into “torture porn” territory, even though it toes the line. Pretty much the definition of a sleeper.

Saturday, 10/3

The American Scream — A charming, thoroughly winning documentary about three families in a small American town who go all out for Halloween, turning their respective homes into some of the most impressive, cool amateur haunted houses that I’ve ever seen. Growing up, we always turned our home and garage into elaborate haunts every year, so The American Scream ended up being the best kind of nostalgia for me.

Saw — Despite some truly terrible performances (Leigh Whannell, in particular, is astoundingly bad and poor Danny Glover isn’t much better) and a really ugly look, there’s something inherently feral about James Wan’s surprise hit debut. More of a mystery, ala Se7en, than the latter entries in the series, Saw features some great twists (I’ll forget the audience reaction to the final revelation when I watched this on opening night) and introduced the sense of moral relativism to torture porn that it so desperately needed (and still needs, to be honest). It’ll never end up on any “Best of…” lists but it’s also not the worst thing out there.

Monsters — I was never a huge fan of this film when I first saw it, although my opinion has softened a bit in the ensuing years. In a nutshell, Monsters is sort of a mumblecore creature feature: we follow our hesitant “will they?/won’t they?” potential romantic couple as they attempt to make their way from monster-infested South America into the relative safety of the United States. Just as much an immigration/border parable as a monster movie, Monsters keeps its creatures firmly in the background, allowing the humans to take the stage. Think of this as the “anti-Pacific Rim,” if you will.

Saw II — Continuing to expand on the original film’s “mythos,” the first sequel introduces Donnie Wahlberg and puts more of an emphasis on the traps. It’s a solid step-down from the first film, mostly due to writer/director Darren Lynn Bousman’s obnoxious stylistic quirks and some of the most unpleasant characters to grace the screen in some time. No wonder audiences rooted for Jigsaw: if it was up to me, I woulda nuked ’em all and been done with it.

Monsters: Dark Continent — A fairly massive disappointment, this belated follow-up to Gareth Edwards’ effective original is really just another film about U.S. soldiers in the Middle East. It’s telling when the filmmakers opt to make local insurgents the real threat over the massive monsters that blithely roam around the Iraqi desert. We get it, guys: this isn’t “just” another monster movie….it’s about “bigger things.” They’re right: it’s not just another monster movie…it’s actually another dull, generic and clichéd war film. Huzzah!

Saw III — Part from the first film, the third in the series is, hands-down, my favorite. The twisting machinations of Jigsaw’s convoluted plan are suitably gripping but it’s the downright nefarious traps that really get the blood pumping. There’s an honest-to-god story arc here about a father trying to get over the hit-and-run death of his young child and it really works. Plus, ya know, that bit with the liquified pig carcasses is pretty impossible to forget.

Saw IV — More convoluted than the previous entry and decidedly less fun, the fourth entry in the series isn’t terrible (that would be the second and fifth) but it is pretty forgettable. This fully introduces Costas Mandylor’s Hoffman character and starts the series down the winding, twisting path that ultimately leads to its resolution. More than anything, though, it’s the fourth entry in a multiplex horror series: innovative, it is not.

Sunday, 10/4

Cooties — Thus far, this gleefully misanthropic horror-comedy is not only my favorite film of October but one of my favorite films of the entire year (and then some). The concept is unbeatable (chicken nuggets turn pre-pubescent kids into ravenous flesh-eaters and it’s up to a motley group of grade school teachers to save the day), the cast is amazing (Elijah Wood, Rainn Wilson, Alison Pill, 30 Rock’s Jack McBrayer, Nasim Pedrad and the single best performance by actor/writer Leigh Whannell that he’s ever done) and the whole thing expertly toes the line between laugh-out-loud funny and edge-of-your-seat tense. I instantly loved this as much as Tucker & Dale vs. Evil and I definitely don’t say that lightly.

The Boy — The polar-opposite of Cooties, Craig William Macneill’s The Boy is a stunning examination of a burgeoning serial killer’s first, tentative, boyhood steps towards ultimate evil. Nothing about the film is pleasant in any conventional way but, like the iconic Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, I dare you to tear your eyes from the screen. David Morse and Rainn Wilson are fabulous playing against their usual types but it’s young Jared Breeze (who’s also in Cooties, ironically) who will stomp your heart into a mud-hole. This is the kind of film that everyone should see, especially as terrible acts of random violence continue to plague our world.

Deathgasm — Heavy metal and horror go together like beer and Slayer shows: you can have either/or but it’s always the best when they’re paired up. Screaming out of New Zealand, writer/director Jason Lei Howden’s full-length-debut is hilarious, heart-felt and full of more fist-raising set-pieces than you can shake a Flying V at. Sort of like the tragically under-rated Canadian TV marvel Todd and the Book of Pure Evil, Deathgasm doesn’t take any cheap shots at his corpse-paint-bedecked heroes: the “beautiful” people are the fodder and it’s up to the outcasts to save the day. Extra points for Kimberley Crossman’s frankly adorable transformation from stereotypical blonde princess to ridiculously epic ass-kicker: she needs her own stand-alone movie, stat.

Hellions — I absolutely loved Canadian wunderkind Bruce McDonald’s Pontypool (easily one of the best, most ingenious and freshest zombie film to come out in a good 15 years), so my anticipation was through the roof for Hellions: after all, how could a film about a pregnant teenager making a desperate Halloween-eve stand against demonic trick or treaters fail? Turns out, it’s not quite as difficult as I imagined. While Hellions is far from a terrible film (the film’s pink-tinted look, alone, makes it one of the most visually interesting films I’ve ever seen, assorted creepy, hallucinatory images notwithstanding), it is a terribly confusing, cluttered and rather haphazard one. Similar to Rob Zombie’s Fulci homage The Lords of Salem, Hellions emphasizes odd, evocative visuals and dreamy, nightmare scenarios over any kind of narrative cohesion. I didn’t hate Hellions, by any stretch of the imagination, but there’s no denying it’s an odd, often off-putting film.

Turbo Kid — My level of anticipation for this throwback to the VHS ’80s was so high that it’s probably inevitable I would be disappointed. Don’t get me wrong: there’s an awful lot to like here and even quite a few things to love. The synthy score is spot-on, the over-the-top violence comes close to Jason Eisener’s ridiculously radical Hobo With a Shotgun and the sense of world building (albeit on an extreme budget) is admirable. For all that, however, the film never fully connected with me. Perhaps it was the awkward love story (Laurence Leboeuf’s performance as Apple is so unrelentingly weird and strange that I was genuinely baffled as to what Munro Chambers’ Kid saw in her), the too-often self-conscious acting or the overall scattershot feel. Whatever the reason, I went into this expecting Turbo Kid to be my new favorite film and came out extolling the virtues of Hobo With a Shotgun, instead. Gotta love Skeletron, though!