10/24/14 (Part Three): I Am the Ghost That Haunts My Halls

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31 Days of Halloween, Abigail Breslin, auteur theory, Canadian films, cinema, Cube, David Hewlett, Eleanor Zichy, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, ghosts, Groundhog Day, haunted houses, Haunter, Martine Campbell, Michelle Nolden, Movies, Nightmare on Elm Street, Peter DaCunha, Peter Outerbridge, Samantha Weinstein, Sarah Manninen, serial killers, Splice, Stephen McHattie, The Frighteners, The Lovely Bones, The Others, time loops, Vincenzo Natali

For a time, it seemed like writer-director Vincenzo Natali’s most recent full-length film, Haunter (2013), would be the first one of his movies to really disappoint me. Between the too on-the-nose title, a description that reads like a mash-up between The Others (2001) and Groundhog Day (1993) and a narrative thrust that parallels Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones (2009) to an uncomfortable degree, everything about Haunter felt clichéd and old-hat from the jump. But then, as often happens with Natali’s films, something really interesting happened: just when the film seemed doomed to follow its familiar path to an all-too familiar end, Natali pulls the rug out from underneath us, sending the film into some truly inspired, fascinating directions. By the fist-raising conclusion, one fact seems all too clear: count Natali out at your own peril, since this guy is the king of the 11th hour comeback.

From the on-set, there’s absolutely nothing special or original about Haunter in any way, shape or form: a decent enough credit sequence featuring CGI butterflies in jars leads to an opening scene between Lisa (Abigail Breslin) and her mother, Carol (Michelle Nolden), that makes it explicitly clear that we’re watching a variation on The Others. Despite what her mother and father (Peter Outerbridge) tell her, Lisa is positive that her family is caught in a loop of sorts, ala Groundhog Day. She figures this out due to the fact that it’s been the day before her birthday for, like, ever, which seems like a decidedly good clue. Lisa also seems to catch hints of mysterious forms, shapes and noises around her, ala The Others, including a bewitching snippet of music from Peter and the Wolf that appears to come from the ventilation grates.

One day, while exploring her house, Lisa comes upon a small, locked wooden door in the laundry room, similar to something out of Alice in Wonderland. As she continues to explore, Lisa tries to make subtle changes to her routine, changes when end up subtly altering key moments of her daily “loop.” More importantly, however, Lisa altered routine appears to put her in touch with two mysterious presences: Olivia (Eleanor Zichy), another young killer who appears to be in a different time than Lisa and Edgar Mullins (Stephen McHattie), a sinister, obviously villainous “repairman” who seems to know an awful lot about Lisa situation…and who cautions Lisa to mind her own business, lest she open her and her family up for torment the likes of which they’ve never seen. When Lisa persists in her investigations, however, she realizes that Edgar may be more powerful than he seems, especially once she comes down for dinner and sees that her young brother’s imaginary friend is now visible…and sounds an awful lot like Edgar.

Soon, Lisa is trapped in a life-or-death struggle between mysterious forces, all in an effort to save someone who she doesn’t even know, someone who may or may not even be real. As she gets closer to the truth about her condition and Edgar’s real identity, Lisa will make the ultimate sacrifice in order to right old wrongs and bring peace to the restless dead. Edgar is a canny monster, however, and has no intention of going into that good night without a ferocious battle: as always, the past isn’t quite as easy to overcome as it might seem.

As I mentioned earlier, my initial impressions of Haunter were anything but positive, similar to my initial impression of Natali’s debut, Cube (1997). In this case, Natali’s film seemed to slavishly check comparisons off a list, arriving at something that resembled a greatest-hits jumble of haunted house and time loops clichés. If watching Natali films has taught me anything, however, it’s that initial impressions don’t necessarily mean much: sticking through the familiar aspects, I finally got to that patented tweaking of expectations that he does so well. By the end, not only had Haunter quelled my previous concerns but it kept me rapt and on the edge of my seat all the way the closing credits.

The script is patently solid, another Natali trademark, but the real feather in its cap is an excellent supporting cast, featuring a truly awe-inspiring turn from character actor Stephen McHattie as the villainous Edgar Mullins. While Breslin is great as Lisa, equal parts inquisitive young person and world-weary protector, McHattie is a complete force of nature. It might seem reductive to tell someone to watch a film simply for the “bad guy” but you can make the case with many of the Nightmare on Elm Street sequels and you can certainly make the case here. Without putting too fine a point on it, McHattie is superb, creating a character that deserves to take its place in the “Bad Guy Hall of Shame.” No lie: the character and performance is that awesome…I was still thinking about Edgar Mullins for days afterward.

As the film gets trickier and less obvious, it also becomes exponentially more fast-paced and action-packed, all the way to a stellar climax that manages to reference both The Dark Half (1993) and A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child (1989). Similar to his work in Cube and Splice (2009), Natali ramps up to the action so subtly that we barely even notice the change from more austere haunted house chills to more overt thrills. It’s a nice technique that showcases a sense of restraint missing in many current low-budget indie horror films, a sense of restraint that other filmmakers would do well to emulate.

Ultimately, Haunter is not the most original film you’ll ever see: if I had to boil it down, I’d say that it basically plays like a better, more crowd-pleasing version of The Lovely Bones, albeit one that manages to work time loops into the mix in a thoroughly fresh way. Despite beginning with a rather tired, hackneyed idea, however, Natali manages to breathe fresh life into it: despite my general dislike of remakes, I’m coming to the conclusion that there might not be anyone better qualified to re-imagine an existing film than he is. After all, he managed to take an overly familiar concept and turn it into something shiny and new: if that’s not the whole point of a remake, I don’t know what it.

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6/7/14 (Part One): More of the Same

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Andrew Divoff, Bokeem Woodbine, casino, Chris Weber, cinema, djinn, djinns, end of the world, film reviews, films, Holly Fields, horror, horror films, horror franchises, inmates, Jack Sholder, maximum-security prison, Morgana, Movies, Nightmare on Elm Street, Paul Johannson, Prisoners, Robert LaSardo, sequel, sequels, special-effects extravaganza, Tiny Lister, Vyto Ruginis, Wes Craven, wishes, Wishmaster, Wishmaster 2, writer-director

The original Wishmaster (1997) was a gory, cheesy but irrepressibly fun B-movie that served as a showcase for special-effects/makeup wizard Robert Kurtzman. In many ways, the film was similar to executive producer Wes Craven’s iconic Nightmare on Elm Street (1984): both films were special effects extravaganzas that featured charismatic, talkative maniacs who killed their victims in fantastic way and both films blurred the line between fantasy and reality. It wasn’t much of a surprise, then, when Wishmaster proved successful enough to warrant a sequel, albeit a direct-to-video one. Would this upstart series go on to achieve the same kind of cultural resonance as the Nightmare on Elm Street films? We’ll take about the truly dire follow-ups in an upcoming post but let’s see how this ever-important sophomore effort fared.

There are many ways to do a sequel: immediately continue the previous storyline, put the previous characters into new situations, put new characters into the same situation or just re-do everything from the first film with a fresh coat of paint. Of these various scenarios, I’m obviously happiest with those that continue to expand on and flesh out the characters/villains: after all, what’s the point of just watching the same thing over and over? While I’ll always enjoy the Friday the 13th series, it will never have the same resonance for me as the Nightmare on Elm Street series, mostly because of the sheer variety offered in the latter. Nevertheless, either tact is valid, as far as I’m concerned.

Jack Sholder’s Wishmaster 2 (1999) opts to take a slightly different, more dangerous path: it simply remakes the original film in a slightly different, much less successful fashion. While this tactic worked exceptionally well for Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead (1981) and Evil Dead 2 (1987), Sholder is no Raimi. Whereas Raimi was able to come at his “remake” of Evil Dead from a different angle, playing up the more darkly comic moments, Sholder simply replays all of the beats from the first film with different locations, lesser actors (with the exception of returning Andrew Divoff) and much less interesting setpieces. Let’s be honest: no one is going to Wishmaster for the detailed, intricate storyline: they’re going for the eye-popping, crazy, wishing scenes. When the death scenes are lackluster, it just makes the audience focus on the rest of the film which, unfortunately, is kinda shabby.

We begin in a familiar place, with the Djinn (Andrew Divoff) trapped inside the jewel, which is trapped inside the stone statue of Ahura Mazda. This time around, a pair of bumbling thieves end up breaking the statue during a shoot-out with the museum’s security. During the shootout, Eric (Chris Weber) is gut-shot but his girlfriend, Morgana (Holly Fields) manages to kill the guard and get away. Eric ends up releasing the Djinn and wishes he were never born, due to the pain he’s in: the Djinn makes Eric regress back to an infant before blinking out of existence. The Djinn is now free and has his eyes set on Morgana (the first person to touch the jewel). From this point on, the film follows almost the same path as the first film: the Djinn pursues Morgana, trying to get her to make three wishes so that he can take over the world. Morgana resists and everyone around her slowly succumbs to the Djinn: this all leads to a big setpiece where the Djinn unleashes his powers on a large group of victims (the first film had two such scenes, both occurring at fancy parties) before being ultimately foiled and sent back to his jewel-prison. As in the first film, banishing the Djinn ends up undoing all of the deaths he caused, giving the first two Wishmaster films both very high and very low body counts. Cue the Djinn looking pissed and…prepare the next sequel.

Let me make one thing clear: compared to the abominations that would follow, Wishmaster 2 is a completely worthy follow-up to the original film. Divoff turns in another stellar performance as the Djinn, although his delivery here is a little jokier and more Freddy-esque. The rest of the cast is broad but serviceable, although Holly Fields makes an awful protagonist (she’s so whiny and obnoxious) and Paul Johansson’s Father Gregory is one of the most ludicrous creations in the history of bad films. We also get what has to be the single worst performance from Tiny Lister ever, as a ‘roid-ragin’ prison guard, but I’m not so sure that he wasn’t told to play to the cheap seats, since many of the actors are way over the top.

The biggest issue with the film is how completely lackluster it is. When the Djinn is sentenced to prison (don’t ask), I had high hopes that we were going to get a Wishmaster film set entirely within a prison: talk about a captive audience! To be honest, this is a pretty great idea and might have made for a really interesting film. Instead of following through with this, however, we get a few lame deaths in the prison (although the one where the Djinn grants a prisoner’s wish that his lawyer “go fuck himself” certainly wins some points for creativity) before the Djinn escapes. This ends up leading to the actual “setpiece” of the film which takes place at a generic casino and is, essentially, a really watered-down version of the party scene that closed the original film.

None of the deaths in Wishmaster 2 are anywhere close to the ones in the original, whether in terms of effects execution or creativity. A cop tells the Djinn to “Freeze!,” so the Djinn freezes him. Yawn. Tiny wishes that he could get some time alone with the Djinn, to beat the crap out of him: the Djinn wishes him into a small room where he reveals his true form and kicks the crap out of Tiny. Yawn. In one of the most head-scratching moments, another inmate threatens the Djinn, saying that he wants a cut of his action: he wants all his “drugs” so that he can get “wasted.” In response, the Djinn makes the guy’s henchmen start karate-kicking him: the expression on my face was probably more amusing than any one-liner in the entire film.

There’s also an exceptionally odd and intrusive religious angle that plays throughout the film, similar to what some of the terrible Hellraiser sequels have done. Morgana’s ex-boyfriend-turned-priest Gregory is always trying to get her to convert and it’s stated again and again that she needs to be pure in order to fight the Djinn. In a truly odd scene, Morgana removes all of her piercings, makeup and jewelry, chops off her pinkie finger (for atonement?), dresses conservatively and returns all of the artwork that she stole. Apparently, she’s now pure. It’s an odd, nonsensical moment that manages to feel completely at home with the rest of the film.

Ultimately, Sholder’s film is pretty anemic, even if it’s still noticeably a Wishmaster film (wait’ll we get to those final two installments…). This is kind of strange, considering that Sholder was responsible for two of the most batshit films of the ’80s: A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 (1985) and The Hidden (1987). While NOES 2 is a train wreck and The Hidden is a pretty decent sci-fi/horror curiosity, neither film could be accused of being boring or conventional. Perhaps Wishmaster 2’s greatest sin is that it’s so middle-of-the-road: too well-made to be completely risible, too generic to stand out in a crowd. If you’ve got a rainy day to kill, set yourself up a double-bill of Wishmaster 1 and 2: while the sequel wasn’t the best way to put the series to pasture, it was sure as hell a more respectable way than the two follow-ups.

 

4/10/14: In Which Our Hero Gets Very Disappointed

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Angus Sampson, Barbara Hershey, cinema, disappointing films, film reviews, films, haunted houses, horror films, horror franchises, Insidious: Chapter 2, James Wan, Leigh Whannell, Lin Shaye, Movies, Nightmare on Elm Street, Paranormal Activity, Patrick Wilson, possession, Rose Byrne, Saw, sequels, Specs, Steve Coulter, The Further, the Lambert family, Tucker, Ty Simpkins

In most cases, trying to replicate a previous film’s successes is like trying to catch lightning in a bottle. Most sequels fail, at least as far as I’m concerned, because they’re trying to do one of two things: give the audience exactly what they got the first time around or unnecessarily prolong the original storyline. Horror franchises, in particular, tend to be guilty of both these “sins,” perhaps because many horror villains lend themselves so well to various merchandising options: Freddy lunch boxes, Jason bobbleheads, Michael Myer Halloween masks…the possibilities are endless. Many horror franchises, such as the Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th and Wrong Turn films, are content to merely re-deliver similar goods in each film: Jason may kill in Crystal Lake, Manhattan and outer space but the films all follow the same basic format. If you’re a fan of one of the films, you’ll probably enjoy most of them, give or take the odd dip in quality or various attempts at rebooting. In most cases, however, none of the sequels in these types of franchises are really necessary: despite the various (often contradictory) attempts to give Freddy Krueger a backstory, it never really makes much difference within the actual framework of the films.

On the other hand, series such as Paranormal Activity, Saw and Scream purport to tell one continuous story, adding elements with each new Roman numeral. This doesn’t, of course, prevent these other films from being carbon copies of the originals – I’ve seen almost all of the Saw films but would be hard-pressed to tell most of them apart – but it definitely highlights a difference in intent. As a lifelong horror fan, I’m actually hard-pressed to say which tactic I prefer. As a whole, I’m not really a fan of watching the same film over and over, which often makes many of the faceless Friday the 13th or Hellraiser sequels a bit tedious for me. On the other hand, I can’t think of anything more irritating than a bloated, unnecessarily inflated story and/or series: how much better could the Godfather have been minus the unneeded third entry? There may very well be a reason for splitting a horror film into thirteen separate parts but let’s be honest: there probably isn’t. The Paranormal Activity series is now up to five films, none of which do much to bolster the already flimsy narrative. The film is still flimsy: there’s just more of it, now.

In a similar vein, I settled into James Wan’s Insidious: Chapter 2 with no small amount of trepidation. I really enjoyed the first film, finding it to be one of the freshest, funnest and scariest mainstream horror films in quite some time. Wan’s reliance on actual scares and atmosphere, as opposed to the usual abundance of musical stingers, “scary faces” and jump scares that most modern horror films offer, was quite refreshing and I found myself looking forward to the inevitable sequel (not only was Insidious a huge hit at the box office but the film concludes with a pretty obvious open ending). As is often the case, however, there’s a bit of a disconnect between the wish and the granting of said wish. When I finally saw Insidious: Chapter 2, my sense of joy and wonder had been replaced by a pretty bitter sense of disappointment: not only is Insidious: Chapter 2 a lesser film than its far superior sequel, it’s not even a really good film on its own. Sometimes, you’re better off just wondering what might have been.

Like the original Halloween 2, Insidious: Chapter 2 is a true sequel to its parent film and begins immediately after the first film ended. Returning viewers will recall that worried father Josh Lambert (Patrick Wilson) had just successfully entered and returned from the mystical “Further” with his missing son Dalton (Ty Simpkins) in tow. After father and son had been reunited with mother Renai (Rose Byrne), however, a final scene showed Josh killing Elise Rainer (Lin Shaye), the kindly paranormal investigator who helped Josh recover his missing son. We’re given the impression that Josh has brought something back from the “Further,” something quite nasty and intent on taking over his life and family. With this in mind, Insidious: Chapter 2 begins with the end of the first film before launching us into the film proper, a little piece I like to call “The Possession of Josh.”

You see, from this point on, Insidious: Chapter 2 plots out a pretty specific course that should be familiar to just about anyone who’s seen a modern horror film: Josh begins to act strange, worries his family, is believed to be possessed, is possessed, must become unpossessed, fights against this idea, most overcome his past to preserve his future, etc. Whereas the original Insidious was a typical haunted house film (albeit exceptionally well-done) that went to some pretty unique places in the final third, the sequel is a pretty standard-issue possession film with some recycled haunted house elements thrown in. In fact, I daresay that most of the haunted house/creepy moments seem to either explicitly or implicitly reference something from the first film. It’s a frustrating development, especially when the first film seemed so inventive: this is the equivalent of a metal band scoring a surprise hit with a ballad and producing a follow-up that consists of thirteen ballads.

Insidious: Chapter 2 manages to rattle off a greatest-hits of horror beats: returning investigators Specs (Leigh Whannell) and Tucker (Angus Sampson) follow mysterious figures into rooms; creepy voices whisper in ears; unseen things rustle clothes in closets; creepy women in floor-length dresses (ala the terrifying Woman in Black from the first film) pop out to threaten and terrify everyone; little boys become inexplicably surrounded by countless specters (ala The Sixth Sense); we enter an altered version of our world (the “Further”) in order to better understand our “real” world…it’s all here. Whereas the first film came across as fresh, with just the proper amount of each disparate element (too much of the “Further” and the first film may have collapsed into silliness), the sequel just seems like a rehash of the original, heating up leftovers to have for a post-hangover brunch.

Perhaps my biggest complaint with Insidious: Chapter 2 is how little of an individual identity it seems to possess. Despite featuring the return of both the cast and filmmakers, Chapter 2 is a much lesser film than the first. In many ways, the movie plays like a rather dull synthesis of The Others, Poltergeist, The Sixth Sense and The Shining, with way too much emphasis given to Patrick Wilson’s Josh. I genuinely liked Wilson in the first film but he becomes extremely one-note very quickly in the sequel and I quickly grew tired of his clichéd “sinister grins” and “wicked eyes.” Anyone who complained about Nicholson’s zero-sixty insanity sprint in The Shining will probably smack their foreheads repeatedly: there’s nothing subtle about Wilson’s performance, in the slightest, and you would have to be one seriously tuned-out viewer to not get the whole point relatively early in the proceedings. As such, the film’s constant need to “reveal” new details is not only unnecessary but tiresome: when you figure out the joke by the first line, you don’t want to wade through miles of set-up.

As with any big disappointments, however, Insidious: Chapter 2 is never a complete wash. Lin Shaye, returning even though her character died in the first film, is always fun to watch and screenwriter/actor Whannell and Sampson make a really fun duo. I’m sure that Specs and Tucker will (eventually) get their own spinoff but one can only hope it has a bit more life to it than this mess. I also liked the subplot about the ultra-evil Parker Crane, although this aspect tended to remind me a bit too much of the similar “super-evil-guy” storyline in The Prophecy. More Parker Crane and less possessed Josh would have been a welcome substitution, in my book. There was also some very effective, genuinely frightening imagery associated with the Parker Crane bit, including one fantastic moment featuring sheet-covered bodies that is the easy highlight of the entire film. More moments like this and less of the tedium would have swung this from a disappointing failure to a mere disappointment, for me, but “too little, too late” is definitely the order of the day here.

Ultimately, I don’t think that I would have been quite so unimpressed by Insidious: Chapter 2 if I wasn’t so taken with the first film. I absolutely adore Wan’s original and have seen it half-a-dozen times in the few years since its release. While the original may not be the scariest or best “modern” horror film I’ve ever seen (that honor would probably go to a UK or French film, to be honest), it was certainly one of the funnest and a movie that I never tire of revisiting. I may not be a psychic but I’m pretty sure that I see plenty more screenings of Insidious in my future. The mists of time, however, seem to obscure any information about Insidious: Chapter 2. I’m pretty sure that means I never end up watching it again.