12/22/14 (Part One): Tie Your Mother Down

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Adam Robitel, alternate title, Alzheimer's Disease, Anne Bedian, Anne Ramsay, Brett Gentile, children in peril, cinema, co-writers, Deborah Logan, evil old lady, feature-film debut, film crews, film reviews, films, found-footage films, horror, horror films, immortality, Jeremy DeCarlos, Jill Larson, Julianne Taylor, Michelle Ang, mockumentary, mother-daughter relationships, Movies, murdered children, Paranormal Activity, possession, pseudo-documentary, Ryan Cutrona, serial killers, snakes, The Blair Witch Project, The Taking, The Taking of Deborah Logan, titular characters, Tonya Bludsworth, writer-director-editor

Anyone who’s ever watched a loved one succumb to Alzheimer’s knows that the disease is a true monster that rivals anything the brightest stars in horror can dream up: formerly brilliant minds revert to a state of petulant childhood, life-long lovers forget the partner who’s been by their side for decades and, eventually, the victim’s body betrays its own basic functions and forgets such prime directives as “Eat” and “Breathe.” The deepest, most enduring tragedy of the disease is the way it makes the familiar alien to us: when all that we ever really carry with us is our memories, Alzheimer’s ends up being the most lethal, insidious thief of all.

Despite the inherently horrifying nature of the disease, cinematic depictions of Alzheimer’s are almost always delivered as tear-jerking dramas, stories of families in crisis, bittersweet ruminations on life-long love running its course, etc…Thanks to writer-director Adam Robitel, however, the world of cinematic horror finally has its first “Alzheimer’s disease”-related film: The Taking of Deborah Logan (2014) is a found-footage film that purports to examine someone suffering from the effects of Alzheimer’s who may also (or may not) be suffering from some sort of demonic possession. While the film’s angle is pretty unique and the first half manages to offer up some nicely subtle chills, however, Robitel’s feature-length debut winds up collapsing into a mess of lazy Blair Witch Project (1999) and Paranormal Activity (2007) clichés by its final act, squandering much of the good will that the film earns along the way. Nonetheless, The Taking of Deborah Logan certainly earns points for finding a more unique subject to exploit” than the same moldy old haunted house/moving furniture tropes that have been de rigueur in found-footage for the past 15 years or so.

Right off the bat, we’re greeted with text that explains that the film we’re about to see has been cobbled together from various footage sources and has been “lightly” edited and spruced-up: a vague bit of base-covering that, essentially, gives a pass for any and all unexplained angles, non-digetic sounds, etc…that we’ll be encountering. It’s also, by its very nature, a rather lazy approach to the format and the first (of many) warning signs that this particular way will be a rocky one. In a nutshell, medical student Mia (Michelle Ang), along with crew members Gavin (Brett Gentile) and Luis (Jeremy DeCarlos), wants to make a documentary about Alzheimer’s patient Deborah Logan (Jill Larson). Deborah’s grown daughter, Sarah (Anne Ramsay), is eager to get the filmmakers involved, since they’ve offered to help pay for her mother’s increasingly expensive medical care. When the formerly on-board Deborah suddenly decides that she values her privacy more than the assistance, however, all signs point to Mia’s documentary being D.O.A.

There wouldn’t, of course, be a movie without a change of heart, however, the crew are invited back a week later to begin filming their project. At first, everything seems pretty normal: Deborah is certainly more forgetful than the average person but there doesn’t seem to be anything too terrible going on. In short order, however, we see just how fast Deborah is stuck in the sticky web that is Alzheimer’s: she begins to forget basic things about her own daughter and past, has mood changes on a moment’s notice and has started to let her own hygiene slide. As Sarah tries to help her mother retain as much of her personality as she can, we witness the heartbreaking ways in the disease breaks down both its victim and her caregiver: as Mia notes in one of her documentaries many talking points, caring for an Alzheimer victim can alter the caregiver’s brain chemistry, as well, making the terrible disease a truly lose-lose proposition.

Just when it seems as if The Taking of Deborah Logan might be the world’s first found-footage-styled “after-school special,” however, things begin to take a turn for the sinister. Cameraman Gavin happens to spy Deborah doing some odd things with a snake and the older woman seems to develop a habit of appearing right behind folks, scaring the everlovin’ shit out of them. Things really come to a head, however, when Deborah completely flips out and accuses Gavin of stealing her beloved garden trowel: she chases him around the kitchen with a large butcher knife, cornering him on the counter and very nearly costs everyone involved several fingers. After taking her back to the hospital and the kindly Dr. Nazir (Anne Bedian), Sarah gets the worst news possible: her mother’s condition is deteriorating at an ever more rapid rate and she’s losing more of her brain on a daily basis. The end, as Sarah knows all to well, may be over the next horizon but it’s getting closer by the minute.

Deborah’s condition may be terrible but Mia and the others begin to notice a frightening pattern: Alzheimer’s explains some, but not all, of the things that are happening around them. Snakes start popping up everywhere, Deborah has taking to painting a series of pictures which depict a mysterious, black figure moving ever closer to their house and she’s developed an alarming propensity for what medical experts must surely dub “scary, intense and gravely demon voices” (take two pills twice a day, as needed). After a truly creepy incident involving Deborah’s patented in-home switchboard system, Mia and the others come to think that someone else might be responsible for Deborah’s more violent tendencies: specifically, they come to believe that poor Deborah is possessed by the spirit of serial killer Henry Desjardins (Kevin A. Campbell), a pediatrician who mysteriously disappeared after killing four children as part of an immortality ceremony.

As Deborah’s behavior becomes more and more extreme, Sarah is truly backed-up against a wall: she could barely care for her mother before creepy paranormal shit started happening and this all just seems like one cruel cosmic joke, especially when everyone from the local priest to the college’s expert in anthropological studies seems unable to give her any assistance. Is Deborah actually possessed by the spirit of an insane killer or is her Alzheimer’s just getting exponentially worse as time goes on? What’s up with all of the snakes that seem to be popping up everywhere? Could there be another, darker, mystery at the heart of everything…a mystery that could potentially unravel our comfortable belief in a rational world and give us a front-seat to our own demise? What is actually taking Deborah Logan: an unstoppable disease or pure evil?

For roughly the first half of the film, The Taking of Deborah Logan is a really well made found-footage film, albeit one that doesn’t do much new with the sub-genre, aside from the subject matter. That being said, the early found footage aspect of Robitel’s film is quite strong: in particular, I really liked the pseudo-documentary aspects of Mia’s film, such as the computer-aided infographics, actor reenactments and talking head interviews. Unlike other found-footage films that aim for a pseudo-doc feel, The Taking of Deborah Logan actually feels like the real thing: kudos to Robitel for managing to nail the tone/look so spot-on.

The acting is also quite good across the first few acts, with Jill Larson turning in a massively impressive performance as the titular character: her ability to vacillate between sweet, angry, forgetful and prideful is absolutely essential to the success of the character and Larson pulls it off quite handily. There are moments in The Taking of Deborah Logan that are absolutely heart-breaking and it’s all down to Larson’s incredibly subtle, expressive performance. Once she gets more bonkers in the latter half of the film, her performance begins to seem a bit more heavy-handed but the early going is quite masterful.

If only the same could be said of Anne Ramsay’s performance as Sarah, however. Ramsay comes into the film “turned up to 11,” as it were, and her performance only gets more strident as the film wears on. By the climax, both Sarah and Mia are so shrill, giddy and obnoxious that I spent the final 15 minutes secretly hoping something would bump off both their characters, a pretty extreme switch from rooting for them a mere 20 minutes before that. Ditto for Gentile and DeCarlos’ unlikable turns as Mia’s film crew: neither character ever gets more to do than utter tired variations on “Oh, hell no!” and the script saddles DeCarlos with one of the awful “these crazy white people” asides that’s a real head-smacker. I’m also not sure what’s going on with Ryan Cutrona’s performance as next-door-neighbor Harris: not only did he never really seem to factor into the story, his motivations and personality also seemed to change on the drop of a hat, based on whatever the script needed him to do…nothing quite like a character who might as well be named “Johnny Plot Contrivance.”

As mentioned earlier, the subtle, sparse quality of The Taking of Deborah Logan’s first 40 minutes ends up getting thrown completely out the window in the last half of the film, resulting in endless scenes where characters look through a camera viewfinder while running down endless, anonymous dark tunnels, as well as those now ubiquitous “stationary cameras recording while everyone sleeps” clichés that seemed to spring fully formed from Paranormal Activity like Athena busting out of Zeus’ cranium. None of it adds anything new to the format whatsoever and the film even manages to end with one of those moldy “or are they…evil?” “twists” that’s probably only novel for folks that have been in comas for the past several decades.

Despite how disappointing the film becomes, however, there’s plenty to like here, including a thoroughly gonzo, kickass scene during the climax that involves one of the characters spitting acidic venom and distending their jaw like a snake in order to swallow someone whole: suffice to say that my resulting upraised fist probably knocked a big chunk of cheese out of the moon. On the whole, however, The Taking of Deborah Logan ends up being just another found-footage film, full of all of the same problems and clichés, albeit with slightly more imagination and invention, than the rest of the unwashed masses. There was enough solid material here to make Robitel’s film easy to recommend, even if the film will always function best as one of the “rainy day” viewings. Nonetheless, give Robitel and co-writer Gavin Heffernan credit for one thing: they have to be the first filmmakers to plant a horror flag in the desolate wasteland that is Alzheimer’s Disease and that, on its own, has to be worth something.

4/12/14: Building a Better Beast

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cinema, conceptual artist, cyborgs, feature-film debut, film reviews, films, found-footage films, Frankenstein, Frankenstein's Army, horror films, mad scientists, Movies, Nazis, Paranormal Activity, Richard Raaphorst, special-effects extravaganza, The Blair Witch Project, Viktor Frankenstein, World War II, zombies, zombots

Full disclosure: I’ve always had a soft-spot in my heart for found-footage horror films. When done well, such as with Man Bites Dog (1993), The Blair Witch Project (1999), Paranormal Activity (2007), [REC] (2007) and Home Movie (2008), found-footage films can be genuinely claustrophobic and down-right frightening. There’s something about the illusion of looking at “real footage” that can truly mess with an audience’s mind, especially when the fake footage is seamlessly integrated into the fictional material. On the other hand, found-footage horror films can be the very definition of cheap tedium, full of huge plot holes and reduced to the hoary old cliché of staring intently at security camera footage, waiting for a cabinet door to mysteriously open (every Paranormal Activity film after the first one: take a bow) and wondering why the hell the camera operator doesn’t just drop the damn thing and hightail it outta there. By their very definition, found-footage horror films provide both a blessing and a curse: the ability to tell scary stories, from fixed perspectives, on minuscule budgets vs the inherent straitjacket provided by the “rules” of this particular subgenre (picture/audio degradation; a camera that must always be filming, lest we miss any action; amateur actors; slow pace; etc…).

Since found-footage films tend to be cheap to make and currently enjoy a high-profile within the horror community (for better or worse), there’s no chance of the fad dying away anytime soon. At its worst, we’re all guaranteed to see at least another bakers’ dozen of terrible found-footage films within the next few years (at least three of which will be Paranormal Activity sequels, I’m sure, with another couple going to beef-up the [REC] franchise), although I daresay that several gems will, inevitably, sneak their way in. On the plus-side of this equation, we have conceptual artist Richard Raaphorst’s feature-film debut Frankenstein’s Army, a goofy, gory, glorious special-effects bonanza that makes good use of the found-footage aesthetic while giving enough nods to classic horror and ’80s gore films to keep any horror hound satisfied. While it may not be a perfect film, Frankenstein’s Army ably replicates the comfy feeling of settling down with some good, old-fashioned trashy cinema, no mean feat in this era of films that attempt the look but miss the intent of actual exploitation cinema.

The film opens with a small group of Russian soldiers, in the waning days of World War II, on a mission into the dark heart of Nazi Germany. As with most filmic army regiments, these Russians are a pretty varied group of folks, composed of so many different personalities, ethnicities, attitudes and personal morals that they could easily serve as either a criminal enterprise, ala Die Hard, or a super-team, ala The Expendables. There’s even a film student in their midst (how convenient!), which ably explains away the found-footage portion of our proceedings. As the group troops around the desolate wastelands of the German countryside, they begin to notice signs that all might not be right in this neck o’ the woods, especially when they discover what appears to be a large human skeleton with an odd, horse-like head. In due time, our plucky group finds their way to a deserted church, complete with a pile of burned nuns stacked before its front doors. Since curiosity is only natural when one is confronted with a creepy, dilapidated church and evidence of a mass killing, our (un)lucky group decides to head inside to investigate. When they do, they notice that the old church has been retro-fitted into something more closely resembling an Industrial Revolution-era factory. When one of their number turns on the power (via a hand-crank, natch), the Russian soldiers realize two things: they aren’t exactly alone and they’re pretty fucked.

After their captain is killed by a grotesque “zombot,” a vicious power struggle ensues among the survivors, although one of the men, Dimitri (Alexander Mercury), has a little secret of his own. As the rapidly dwindling group progresses further into the abandoned church, they enter a world that’s like a steam-punk version of Saw until they eventually find the madman responsible for it all: one Viktor Frankenstein (Karl Roden). As more and more secrets are revealed and Dimitri takes charge, our intrepid “heroes” now find themselves in the fight of their lives, caught on one side by the megalomaniacal Dr. Frankenstein, stitching together a new race of monstrosities out of the dead soldiers and busted war machines and on the other side by the evil ambitions of their own government. As the poster so eloquently puts it: War may be hell but this place is worse. Much worse.

Once upon a time, the horror/exploitation world was filled with little gems like Frankenstein’s Army, good-natured trash that mixed gooey practical effects, plenty of clever monsters, dynamic (if nonsensical) storylines and fast-paced action. Films like Maniac Cop (1988), Puppet Master (1989) and Wishmaster (1997) were gonzo good-times that seemed made for the drive-in or a rowdy, beer-fueled night with friends. Even though Frankenstein’s Army follows these originators by nearly two decades, it does their sordid memories proud, making for one of the most uproarious times a genre fan can have these days.

Writer-director Raaphorst is a conceptual artist, by trade, and you can really see the influence of his “day job” on his feature-length debut. In short, the zombots are all completely amazing and a few of them are absolutely jaw-dropping (try to not be impressed by the creature with an airplane for a head or the one who seems to be a living tank: I bet you still rewind and take a second…or third…look at ’em). As with the Puppet Master films (or any Full Moon Production, come to think of it), Frankenstein’s Army lives or dies by the strength of its creature creations and these are all top-notch. Truth be told, some of this stuff was as well-done as any of del Toro’s phantasmagorical creations and a few of them may have been cooler. Don’t shoot me, folks: I’m just the messenger!

Are there problems with the film? The answer, obviously, is yes. The found-footage aspect becomes a bit too obvious over time (way too much audio/video grain, dropped sound, etc…) and the Russian soldiers all have a tendency to blur together into one anonymous mob by the film’s final third. If some of the cast have a generic, interchangeable quality about them, this may actually have a bit more to do with the tropes of this particular sub-genre than with any inherent faults of the screenplay or acting, although it doesn’t make it any easier to pick any of them out of a crowd.

The most important question, however, is this: Do the various problems with Frankenstein’s Army detract from the overall impact of the film? Not in the slightest. In fact, these foibles are all things that are pretty much tied in with these types of film. The acting is actually quite good, finding a nice middle ground between over-the-top scenery chewing (could you ever have a Viktor Frankenstein that didn’t chew scenery?) and more restrained, atmospheric tension. The settings, particularly the awesome factory/church/abattoir are all memorable, made even better by the World War II time-frame. I’m a sucker for horror films set during the Second World War: there really aren’t enough of ’em, especially when one compares them to the glut of Vietnam War/Korean War-set shockers and I’ll always welcome a new member to the fold. Whereas previous favorites like The Keep (1983), The Bunker (2001) and Below (2002) were more measured slow-burns, Frankenstein’s Army is all popcorn film and proud of it. While I tend to gravitate towards creepier, more atmospheric horror films as I get older, I cut my teeth on the campy, hyperactive stuff and it will always be comfort food to me.

At the end of the day, I asked myself the same questions about Frankenstein’s Army that I ask about any film, horror or non: Did it keep me interested? Was I eagerly awaiting the next development? Is there enough imagination on display for several complete films? Did I stand and fist-pump at least once, if not more, during the film? Many films are lucky if I can check a few of these off the list: for Frankenstein’s Army, I had to turn the page over. Will I be planning future vacations to this little spot of cinematic terra firma? Absolutely. Will I be eagerly awaiting Raaphorst’s next film? As fast as he can deliver it. Is this film a complete blast from start to finish? Do zombots like to kill?

 

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.