8/10/15: Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here

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Adam Butcher, Alexander Conti, alpha males, Andre Chemetoff, Arnold Pinnock, Balmorhea, Bryan Murphy, bullies, Canadian films, cinema, co-writers, correctional officers, Dewshane Williams, Dog Pound, drama, emotional abuse, English-language debut, father-son relationships, film reviews, films, first-time actors, guard-prisoner relationships, hunger strike, independent films, indie dramas, inmates, Jane Wheeler, Jeff McEnery, Jeremie Delon, juvenile detention facility, juvenile offenders, K'Naan, Kim Chapiron, Lawrence Bayne, Lynne Adams, male friendships, Mateo Morales, mental abuse, Michael Morang, mother-son relationships, Movies, multiple writers, Nikkfurie, non-professional actors, pecking order, physical abuse, power dynamics, power struggles, prison films, prison rape, prison riot, rape, remakes, Scum, Shane Kippel, Sheitan, Slim Twig, suicide, Taylor Poulin, Trent McMullen, William Ellis, writer-director, youth in trouble

Humans are amazingly resilient animals. We can endure any number of extreme climates, fight back against overwhelming odds and turn veritable wastelands into virtual paradises. We can ponder questions both basic and metaphysical, learn to do just about anything we set our minds to and wrestle the world at large into submission by sheer force of our nearly boundless will. Humans can do all of this (and more) with surprisingly little: all we really need is air to breathe, water to drink, food to eat and a little something to keep the elements off of our heads.

While these biological necessities go without saying, humans also need something that’s a little harder to categorize, a little more difficult to study in a lab. We also need hope. Hope that bad situations can become better, hope that we can achieve our dreams by working hard, hope that we can not only survive, on a day-to-day basis, but find some measure of personal happiness and satisfaction. Humans need hope just as much as we need sustenance and oxygen: without either one, we’re just empty husks of decaying meat, carcasses too stubborn to know that we’re already dead.

There is no hope in French writer-director Kim Chapiron’s Dog Pound (2010), although that’s not really surprising: after all, there was precious little hope in his shocking debut, Sheitan (2006), either. As a filmmaker, Chapiron possesses an almost supernatural ability to submerge his characters (and his audience) into such unrelentingly dark, tragic and terrible situations that the very concept of hope is both elusive and rather laughable. We know that Chapiron’s characters are all doomed from the very first frame: that they often don’t recognize this futility makes their inevitable struggles even more sad. These characters aren’t waving their arms for rescue: they’re thrashing around, frantically, as their increasingly tired bodies drift further and further from the shore, closer to their ultimate ends than they are to any new beginnings.

Essentially a remake of the grim and unrelenting British prison film, Scum (1979), Chapiron’s English-language debut (the film is Canadian but set in Montana) concerns the Enola Vale Youth Correctional Facility and the various individuals who are imprisoned there, as well as the ones doing the imprisoning. We’re quickly introduced to three inmates who will become our entry-way into this particular world: 16-year-old Ecstasy dealer/born victim, Davis (Shane Kippel); 15-year-old repeat offender/car-jacker Angel (Mateo Morales) and 17-year-old hot-head/nominal protagonist, Butch (Adam Butcher).

After being thrown into the facility (Butch has been transferred to Enola Vale after laying a ferocious beat-down on an abusive guard at his previous facility), the trio are quickly brought up to speed by Superintendent Sands (Trent McMullen) and the boys’ immediate authority figure, CO Goodyear (Lawrence Bayne). The rules are easy: do everything you’re told, behave yourself and walk the straight and narrow. The boys who manage to do that become “trustees” and earn more responsibilities, perks and freedom, along with signifying black shirts. The ones who don’t follow the rules get orange jump suits and a one-way ticket to “Special Unit” or, in extreme cases, solitary confinement.

As with any prison film (or actual prison, for that matter), day-to-day life in Dog Pound revolves around a strictly observed pecking order: the alpha dog gets to call the shots and dispense the punishment in whatever way he sees fit. In this particular case, the alpha dog is one seriously scary bully by the name of Banks (first-time actor/former prisoner Taylor Poulin, in a genuinely frightening performance), a character who takes an immediate dislike to both Davis and Butch, albeit for different reasons.

In Davis, Banks and his cronies, Looney (comedian Jeff McEnery) and Eckersley (Bryan Murphy, another first-time actor), see the quintessential weak link, the eternal victim that’s as vital to any bully as oxygen is to those aforementioned humans. They steal his new boots, envy his short sentence, submit him to constant abuse and, in a particularly devastating moment, subject him to a particularly violent sexual assault. Davis is the naive lamb, the chosen sacrifice for those too hard and jaded to feel anything besides hatred and the need to dominant. He’s the face of every petty drug offender tossed into the correctional system, the minnows that feed the sharks.

With Butch, the bullies see something altogether different: a genuine threat to their established social order. In order to maintain his position at the top, Banks must bend Butch to his will, show the pugilistic teen that he may have been able to take out a CO but he’ll never stand against Banks and his minions. While destroying Davis is “pure entertainment” for Banks and his crew, taking Butch down is something much more important: it’s a matter of survival, plain and simple.

As Davis, Butch and, to a much lesser extent, Angel (Morales ends up with the least screen-time, overall, leaving his character rather under-developed) try to negotiate these increasingly choppy waters, CO Goodyear tries to reach the youths through a combination of “tough love” and an unyielding need to do the right thing, even when the right thing isn’t the most pleasant thing. He’s not a perfect man, by any stretch of the imagination: over-worked, under-paid, given to sporadic moments of anger and too thin-stretched to ever affect much change, Goodyear, at the very least, tries. That all of his goodwill becomes undone in one tragic, accidental moment is, unfortunately, to be expected: there is no hope for anyone at Enola Vale, whether they’re behind the bars or in front of them.

This, ultimately, is both the film’s source of strength and its ultimate weakness: since there is no hope for anyone, Dog Pound is an unflinching, full-throttle descent into a literal hell on earth. The camera doesn’t cut away, we get no reprieve from anything that has happened or is about to happen. Even when the characters find some tiny measures of individual happiness, such as when Davis regales the other boys with made-up stories about outrageous sexual dalliances and becomes, if only momentarily, the closest thing he’ll get to “respected,” there’s always the notion that more misery, tragedy and gloom lies just around the corner.

In one of the film’s most subtle, if icky, moments, Butch immobilizes a wandering cockroach by spitting on it until the crawling critter is stuck fast in a globular prison of phlegm and saliva. The insect twitches and moves, compulsively, doing its best to break free, to pull itself from its sticky bonds and scurry off into the safety of the nearest dark corner. By the morning, however, the cockroach is still in the exact same position, drowned in a tiny pool of Butch’s spit. Despite what it might have thought, the roach never had a chance: it was dead the minute Butch’s spit nailed it to the floor, whether it knew it or not. In Dog Pound, the differences between the youthful offenders and the dead roach are many but the similarities? Infinite.

Despite its constantly dreary subject matter, Dog Pound is beautifully made and exquisitely acted, no small feat considering the non-professional status of a good half-dozen of its cast members (many of whom, like Poulin, are actually youth offenders, themselves). Andre Chemetoff’s cinematography captures the inherent grit and claustrophobic quality of the facility perfectly, while the subtle, moody score (featuring the work of instrumental ensemble Balmorhea, among others) counters the often sudden, stunning violence to masterful effect. As with Sheitan, it’s obvious that Chapiron is a filmmaker in full command of every aspect of his craft.

For all of this, however, Dog Pound is still pretty difficult to recommend. The reason, of course, goes back to the point I’ve been hammering this whole time: there is absolutely no hope to be found here, in any way, shape or form. This isn’t to say that every – or even any – film needs to end happily: this is to say that Dog Pound makes a particular point of pounding each and every character so deep into the ground that there’s no possible outcome but the one we get. Each and every victory is false, any and all attempts at understanding or evolution are met with the harshest possible retributions. There is no need for comic relief here, no hope of any of the protagonists coming out on top of their individual struggles. If there is any kind of message to Dog Pound, it’s as basic, cynical and bleak as possible: if you end up in this situation, you are completely, totally and irreparably fucked.

As an example of “feel-bad cinema,” Dog Pound is nearly peerless: this is the kind of film destined to ruin any good mood, turn any optimist into a card-carrying misanthrope. While the world around us can be a harsh, grim place, the world inside Enola Vale is nothing but gray: a million little variations of the shade, infecting every single person that steps behind its walls.

It’s tempting to say that Dog Pound is the kind of film that could change anyone’s opinion about the correctional system (or, at the very least, the youth correctional system) but that just isn’t true: the guards don’t shoulder an inordinate amount of the blame here any more than the inmates do. This is not a tale of power-mad authority figures trying to beat their wards into submission, nor is it a story about hard-working correctional officers dealing with the soul-killing every-day business of keeping individuals locked away from society.

At its heart, Dog Pound is a story about average people making (and continuing to make) terrible decisions, the kind of decisions that can bring nothing but pain to all around them. This is a film about wasted youth, about squandered loyalty and altruistic intent blown to pieces about the terrible reality of the human condition. This is a tragedy, in every sense of the word. This is a hopeless film about hopeless people in a hopeless place, crafted by a singularly unique, uncompromising filmmaker. If you can stomach it, Dog Pound will rip your beating heart from your chest and smash it to smithereens on the floor. There is truth to be found here, some fractured beauty and hints at what could have been, under far different circumstances.

There’s a lot to find and appreciate in Kim Chapiron’s Dog Pound but hope? That, my friends, is one commodity that’s in perilously short supply.

7/18/15: The Shadow That Trails Behind

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Afflicted, casual sex, cinema, coming of age, Contracted, Daniel Zovatto, David Robert Mitchell, Disasterpeace, electronic score, film reviews, films, gorgeous cinematography, horror, horror films, hot pursuit, It Follows, Jake Weary, Keir Gilchrist, Lili Sepe, Maika Monroe, Mike Gioulakis, Movies, Olivia Luccardi, rape, Rich Vreeland, sexually transmitted diseases, supernatural, The Babadook, The Myth of the American Sleepover, thriller, writer-director

Gorgeously shot, lushly atmospheric and as funereal-paced as a Sabbath song, writer-director David Robert Mitchell’s sophomore feature, It Follows (2014), has already been pegged as this year’s The Babadook (2014): in other words, the mature, intelligent and well-made antidote to the seemingly endless horror remakes and sequels that clogged multiplex arteries for over a decade now. A hit on the festival circuit, It Follows managed to kick up quite a bit of dust with both critics and fans alike, leading to early calls of “neo-classic” and “the next Halloween (1978).” As someone who was quite taken with Jennifer Kent’s Babadook, I approached this with no small amount of excitement and trepidation. Does It Follows live up to the hype, propelling the horror field into a bold, exciting new era? Follow me and we’ll find out.

Jay (Maika Monroe) is, for all intents and purposes, a pretty normal young lady: she likes to sun in the pool, enjoys hanging out with her friends, Paul (Keir Gilchrist) and Yara (Olivia Luccardi), and sister, Kelly (Lili Sepe) and is just wasting away the lazy days before they all have to head off to college. She’s also dating a “really nice guy” named Hugh (Jake Weary) and, despite some obvious jealousy vibes from “friend-zoned” Paul, Jay and her beau are about to take their relationship to the next level.

After a tender lovemaking session in their car, in the middle of the woods, Jay’s post-coital glow is rudely interrupted by her “nice guy” knocking her out with chloroform. Upon waking, Jay is tied to a chair in the middle of a gutted building and Hugh, albeit apologetically, fills her in on her very grim future. It would seem that Hugh “contracted” some form of curse/demonic STD from a one-night stand and has slept with Jay in order to save himself and pass it on to her.

The “rules” are simple, if somewhat less than consistent: Jay will be followed relentlessly by “something” that has the ability to look like anyone it wants. It will walk after her, slowly, literally willing to pursue her to the ends of the earth. If the “presence” touches Jay, she’s DOA. If it kills Jay before she passes it on, Hugh is DOA, meaning he has an obvious stake in keeping her alive. The only thing that Jay can do is stay on the move and find some unlucky guy to screw (literally and figuratively).

As she rushes about, always keeping one eye behind her, Jay and her friends, along with some dude named Greg (Daniel Zovatto), try to unravel the true nature of Hugh’s identity and get to the bottom of the curse that threatens to end Jay’s very young life. No matter where they go, however, “it” is always just over the horizon, slouching towards Jay like that “rough beast” towards Bethlehem. Will Jay opt to meet her doom head-on or will she, like Hugh, decide to damn another innocent? She’d better make her mind up fast: it follows and it has no intention of stopping.

Writer-director Mitchell first appeared on my radar via his feature-debut, the surprisingly exceptional teen relationship drama The Myth of the American Sleepover (2010). Mitchell’s first film was exquisitely shot (the cinematography, alone, was worth the price of admission), realistically acted and full of some genuinely thought-provoking moments: the script, alone, was probably one of the better ones to come down the pike in some time and the film established David Robert Mitchell as “someone destined for great things.”

Flash-forward a few years and we arrive at It Follows, Mitchell’s next major step into the public consciousness. Like his debut, Mitchell’s follow-up looks absolutely beautiful: Mike Gioulakis’ cinematography has a warm, panoramic quality that makes every single frame look immaculately composed, framed and presented for maximum visual impact. The score, courtesy of Disasterpeace (aka Rich Vreeland), is pretty damn awesome, handily recalling both John Carpenter and Goblin’s moody, synthy masterpieces: when combined with the astounding camerawork, It Follows is reminiscent (in mood and look) of something like Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko (2001), albeit filtered through a neo-slasher aesthetic.

The acting is solid across the board, with Maika Monroe proving that her fantastic performance in last year’s The Guest (2014) was anything but a fluke: endlessly likable, strong, intelligent and utterly human, Monroe’s Jay is the epitome of the “final girl” and a massively successful hero. The selfish part of me secretly wishes that she’d get pigeonholed into horror roles for the next several years although, realistically, Monroe is way too talented to get stuck anywhere for long: if It Follows marks her big leap into prestige pictures, it’s still a win-win for everyone.

Despite her commanding performance, Monroe has plenty of able support in the backfield. Gilchrist, perhaps best known as the son on United States of Tara but possessed of a resume that includes stellar performances in everything from Dead Silence (2007) to It’s Kind of a Funny Story (2010) to Dark Summer (2015), is great as the love-sick Paul, bringing just the right combo of frustration, obsession, disappointment and infatuation to the role. Paul is a character that could have come across as kind of a creepy perv but Gilchrist makes him as eminently likable as Jay.

While Luccardi, Sepe and Zovatto all turn in strong performances, Jake Weary really surprises as Hugh, the “nice guy” who does a very bad thing. On paper, Hugh could’ve come across as a real villain, a callous, vaguely threatening presence (his chloroforming of Jay carries more than a little hint of rape, despite coming after the actual sex) who exists only to jumpstart the action. Onscreen, however, Hugh is much more sympathetic and seems genuinely concerned about Jay: he’s not a bad guy, per se, just an exceptionally desperate one. While stepping over Jay to “get to safety” will never wash as the “gentlemanly” response to the situation, nothing about Hugh (or Weary’s performance) bespeaks of douchebag bros or raging misogynists.

So: It Follows is beautifully made and features a great cast…how does it actually stack up as a horror film? To be frankly honest…it’s good but definitely not exceptional. Unlike The Babadook, which possessed more than its share of genuine scary moments but was also appropriately knotty and weighty, It Follows is a much more obvious, straight-forward kind of monster. The entire film consists of sinister figures appearing in the background, usually without the main characters noticing, and proceeding to slowly advance to the foreground. There’s certainly a variety of “stalker” represented here (one of my favorites was the exceptionally odd zombie-cheerleader who appears to urinate all over the place) but that’s about it, as far as the “monster” goes.

In fact, one of the places where It Follows stumbles the hardest is with the actual mythos/rules surrounding the sinister presence. To be blunt: the rules end up being vague, inconsistent and more than a little nonsensical. We’re told that the presence walks everywhere (slowly, to boot) and that driving away is a good way to get a head start. No matter how far Jay drives, however, the presence is always just over the horizon: for an exceptionally slow walker, that damn thing sure can sprint, when necessary. There’s also the matter of traveling to someplace like, say, Australia: would the presence need to walk through the entire ocean to get there or would it hop a plane, too? While I realize that the “always there” factor of the monster is a nod to classic slashers like Freddy and Jason, it’s kind of undone when the film goes out of its way to hammer home the whole “walking” aspect.

There’s also the question of the creature’s forward momentum. Hugh makes it a point to say how the creature never stops moving but, time after time, we’re treated to atmospheric shots where the presence is just standing there, looking menacing (chief among these being the rather silly bit where it appears on top of a nearby roof). For my money, the notion of an endlessly moving threat is pretty terrifying: take a minute to catch your breath and kiss your ass goodbye! Here, the creature seems to be given to so much inactivity that, at one point, Jay even goes into the woods and falls asleep on top of her damn car: while I never expect perfect logic from horror films, this silly scene pulled me right out (if only briefly).

A third issue lies with what the creature actually does. Hugh tells Jay not to let it touch her but, at several points, it does and she seems to be just fine. At one point, it appears to fold its victim into something resembling a human pretzel (which is, admittedly, a really nice touch): at another point, it appears to violently “hump” someone to death. There’s also the notion that the creature is only hazardous to its intended victim, since no one else can see it: despite this, however, the others are able to attack it, shoot it, throw blankets over it, et al, while it can handily toss them around the room with impunity. Again, the details of the actual creature become so foggy that it’s hard to ever get fully invested. In a zombie film, we know that a headshot kills, so we automatically tense up when a character shoots anywhere else and assumes it’s groovy: in It Follows, we’re never quite sure what needs to happen (aside from the passing it on part), so it becomes difficult to know when a character is truly in danger.

Thematically, It Follows splits the difference between a coming-of-age story (ala Mitchell’s own Myth of the American Sleepover) and a thinly-veiled metaphor about sexually transmitted disease, ala Contracted (2013) or Afflicted (2013). As such, the coming-of-age aspect actually works a little better: Contracted was much better at portraying the inner turmoil and anxiety of not only the act of sex but the acquiring of an infectious disease, whereas It Follows really shines when it comes to the interactions between the various characters.

Ultimately, I really enjoyed It Follows but definitely didn’t find it to be the “genre savior” that others seem to have. While the film never looks or sounds anything less than gorgeous, it’s also got more than its fair share of problems, including that aforementioned dodgy mythos and a few too many plot holes for my liking. The film is also a little long, which only becomes problematic in the final half where too many scenes devolve into what seems to be time-killing and foot-shuffling. I worship at the altar of slow-paced films but there’s a balance and, too often, It Follows had trouble with the ratio.

Despite all of this, however, I eagerly await David Robert Mitchell’s next foray into film, whether it be horror or something closer to his debut. He’s an obviously talented filmmaker and writer with a real knack for capturing eye-popping visuals: in certain ways, he reminds me of an up-and-coming Adam Wingard, which is certainly no insult. When It Follows is good, it’s pretty damn great: at times, it seems to so perfectly evoke the spirit of J-Horror films that it could almost be an import. It’s a smart film that features realistic, likable characters relating in ways that feel authentic, never phoned-in or phony. It’s also a fairly original film, which is certainly nothing to sneeze at: even if the mythos is inconsistent and vague, it’s obvious that Mitchell put lots of thought into the overall feel. It Follows may not be the next Babadook (and it’s certainly not the next Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), despite the scuttlebutt) but it’s a more than worthy entry in the modern horror sweepstakes and deserves the attention of any discerning fan. Best of the year, though? Not by a long-shot.

6/6/15 (Part Three): Making Wrongs Equal a Right

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'80s action films, '80s films, action films, Anthony Franciosa, auteur theory, Ben Frank, Charles Bronson, cinema, crime thriller, David Engelbach, Death Wish, Death Wish 2, director-editor, E. Lamont Johnson, Film auteurs, film franchise, film reviews, films, gang rape, Golan-Globus, Jill Ireland, Jimmy Page, Kevyn Major Howard, Laurence Fishburne, Menahem Golan, Michael Winner, Movies, Paul Kersey, rape, rape-revenge films, Richard H. Kline, Robin Sherwood, sequels, set in Los Angeles, Silvana Gallardo, street gangs, Stuart K. Robinson, Thomas Duffy, thrillers, Tom Del Ruth, vigilante, vigilantism, Vincent Gardenia, Yoram Globus

When we last left everyone’s favorite vigilante, Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson), he had just finished avenging the rape of his daughter and murder of his wife by blasting half the criminal population of New York City straight to kingdom come. After being given a one-way ticket to Chicago by the NYPD (rather than reveal their complicity in not locking him up), we get the notion that Kersey won’t be any less forgiving to the Windy City’s scum than he was to the Big Apple’s. What’s a guy like this do for an encore?

As it turns out, he goes to Disneyland. Well, not quite: he actually goes to Los Angeles, which was probably a lot closer to New York City in the dawning years of the ’80s than it might care to admit. Our lovable avenging angel’s next act, the follow-up to 1974’s Death Wish, would be Death Wish 2 (1982). As with most sequels, Death Wish 2 would attempt to up the ante on the first film, featuring a more graphic rape scene, a more cold-blooded vigilante and a more over-the-top, ineffectual police force. The film would feature the same director, action-auteur Michael Winner, and a musical score by Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page that featured more guitar solos than a ‘Battle of the Bands’ competition. Death Wish 2 would also do something a little more insidious: by jettisoning Kersey’s previous moral quandaries, the film would place its sympathies almost wholly in the Dirty Harry (1971) school of “shoot first, ask questions later.” Rising crime rates…street gangs…the average citizen running in terror from armed lawlessness? Welcome to the ’80s, Paul: enjoy your stay!

When we meet Paul Kersey again, not much has changed since the fist time, aside from the location. He’s still an architect, he’s still taking care of traumatized daughter, Carol (Robin Sherwood) and he’s still got a romantic interest, albeit a new one: reporter Geri Nichols (Bronson’s real-life spouse, Jill Ireland). He’s also the same take-no-shit asskicker that he was before, as we see when he runs afoul of a highly colorful gang of street toughs, led by the squirrely Nirvana (Thomas Duffy) and counting one Laurence Fishbourne III among their august ranks (his absolutely insane sci-fi shades deserve their own film franchise, perhaps some kind of interstellar private-eye thriller).

The gang lifts Paul’s wallet and decides to head to his place to enact a little “justice” over his rough treatment of Jiver (Stuart K. Robinson). When they don’t find Paul at home, they opt for gang-raping his housekeeper, Rosario (Silvana Gallardo), in what has to be one of the most vile, protracted and gratuitous rape scenes in the history of cinema. When Paul and Carol return, the gang knocks him unconscious, shoots Rosario dead and takes Carol captive. After yet another gratuitous rape scene, Carol jumps through a plate-glass window and ends up impaled on a wrought-iron fence. Needless to say, this sequence of events pushes poor Paul over the edge and he takes to the streets once again, intent on hunting down and slaughtering the animals responsible for brutalizing Rosario and Carol.

To complicate matters, the same NYPD chain-of-command who let Kersey go in the first movie get wind of his recent activities in L.A. and begin to get a little worried: if Kersey gets caught, he might decide to blab about the NYPD opting to shuffle him out of town rather than do the paperwork. In order to prevent this, they send Detective Frank Ochoa (Vincent Gardenia), Kersey’s foil from the first film, to Los Angeles in order to permanently deal with the problem. The only problem, of course, is that Ochoa doesn’t necessarily think Paul’s doing anything wrong. Neither do the citizens of L.A., for that matter, as they cheer on their vigilante hero in the same way that the New Yorkers did almost a decade earlier. Will Paul put down his weapons of war before he loses the rest of his humanity or have the bad guys pushed him too far this time? One thing’s for sure: the scum of Los Angeles have a death wish…and Paul Kersey’s just the guy to grant it.

One of the biggest issues involving sequels is usually the disparity between the first and second films in a series: in many cases, different creative personnel handle the various films, particularly if they were never conceived as a unified “series” in the first place. Death Wish 2 avoids this pitfall, in part, by having Michael Winner return as director: both Death Wish 2 and its predecessor share a similar aesthetic and feel (despite swapping the first film’s cinematographer, Arthur J. Ornitz, for Part 2’s team of Tom Del Ruth and Richard H. Kline) which definitely helps to weld the films together. Unlike the completely over-the-top Death Wish 3 (1985), the second film still has enough of the first’s DNA to seem like a natural succession rather than just another product.

As mentioned earlier, however, Death Wish 2 certainly fulfills the stereotype of sequels in one big way: there’s more, more and more of absolutely everything here. While the rape scenes are more prolonged and nasty than the first film, the personalities of the various gang members are also bigger and more outrageous than the original. Keyvn Major Howard’s “hardcore Hare Krishna,” Stomper, could have been lifted directly from The Road Warrior (1981), while Thomas Duffy’s Nirvana gets one particularly ludicrous bit where he plows through several dozen cops as if he were an exceptionally pale version of the Incredible Hulk. While the gang from the first movie (which included an appropriately bug-eyed Jeff Goldblum) weren’t exactly the picture of restraint, the creepoids in Part 2 are one slim pen stroke away from complete comic book territory.

The political commentary is also much more pointed and one-sided than in the previous film. Gone are Paul’s “bleeding-heart liberalisms,” replaced by the kind of steely-eyed disdain for criminal lives (and rights) that mark any good ’80s crime fighter. Right from the get-go, we get talking heads and worried news reports that not only talk about the escalating crime rates but compare the whole situation to “being struck by an enemy bomb.” This is war, according to the film, and it’s us or the bad guys. Unlike the first film, there’s no need for hemming and hawing on Kersey’s part: he already did the heavy emotional lifting last time…all he has to do, here, is load the gun and pull the trigger, as many times as necessary.

Not only is Death Wish 2 a much nastier film than its predecessor but it also marked a shift in Bronson’s career from his earlier tough-guy ’70s roles into films that were much bleaker, more explicit and all-around more unpleasant. After Death Wish 2, Bronson would go on to 10 To Midnight (1983), The Evil That Men Do (1984), Death Wish 3 (1985) and Kinjite (1989), all regarded as some of the nastiest “mainstream” thrillers to hit in an altogether over-the-top decade.

Despite my lifelong appreciation for Death Wish 3 (oddly enough, it was one of the films that my father and I found ourselves watching the most, over the years, possibly due to the overt cartoonishness of it all), I’ll readily admit that Death Wish 2 is the better film. In many ways, I equate the first two films in this series to the first two films in the Halloween series. Carpenter’s original, like the first Death Wish, was a lean, mean statement of purpose, a film that was just as much art as exploitation, with very few frills and a simple, but effective, structure. Halloween II (1981), like Death Wish 2, has a very similar aesthetic to its predecessor yet manages to be much bleaker, more explicit and, arguably, less fun. The direct sequels also added storylines that made the inherent structure more complex, if not necessarily better (the Det. Ochoa bit never really amounts to anything and is, in and of itself, a pretty massive plot-hole), something that’s also par for the course with most sequels.

At the end of the day, Death Wish 2, like its predecessor and the vast majority of these ultra-grim and graphic ’80s crime thrillers, is always going to be an acquired taste. Whereas the Dirty Harry series always traded on Eastwood’s ever-present snark and way with a quip, the Death Wish series (at least for the first few entries) was a much more dour affair. While both series’ trade on the notion of a world run rampant and in serious need of an ass whuppin’, the underlying point behind the Death Wish series seems to be thus: your loved ones will be cut down in front of you, no one will help and it will be up to you to avenge them. In many ways, it’s easy to see the character of Dirty Harry as being a sort of right-wing superhero (for the record, despite any personal inclinations, Dirty Harry will always be one of my personal heroes), while the character of Paul Kersey is much muddier and more complex.

When he started out, Paul didn’t want to kill but felt he had no choice. Here, we get the first inclinations that he’s begun to develop a taste for it. By the time we get to the third film, where he gleefully blows a reverse-mohawked punk through the side of a building with a rocket launcher, we’d be forgiven for thinking that he’s getting a kick out of it. Is that progress? I’ll let you be the judge.

2/2/15 (Part Two): No Justice…Just Us

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Alejandra Yañez, Alejandro Fernández Almendras, Ariel Mateluna, based on a true story, bullies, Cape Fear, Chilean films, cinema, Daniel Antivilo, Daniel Candia, Death Wish, divorced parents, family, family in crisis, father-son relationships, fighting back, film reviews, films, foreign films, forest ranger, guilt, harassment, ineffectual cops, Inti Briones, Jennifer Salas, justice, masculinity, Movies, Pablo Vergara, rape, revenge, set in Chile, Straw Dogs, thugs, To Kill a Man, vigilante, vigilantism, writer-director-editor

Most of the time, cinematic evil is pretty flashy, memorable and, let’s face it, kinda cool: it’s the Bond super-villain plotting the world’s destruction from the comfort of his high-tech, fortified island estate…the suave, dastardly mustache-twirler butting heads with the hardy hero…the badass monster with acid for blood and a hankering for humans…the evil genius who’s constantly building killer robots, turning people into zombies and infecting the water supply with some sort of designer mega-virus. Take a minute to think about which characters in any Nightmare on Elm Street film are more interesting: the bland, anonymous victims or wise-crackin’, ultra-cool Freddy? Evil may be something to overcome (most of the time) but that doesn’t mean it can’t be gussied up with some sweet duds and an enviable haircut.

In the real world, however, true evil is rarely as “cool” as movies make it out to be. In fact, true evil, for the most part, is exceptionally banal: it’s the bureaucrat moving “casualties” from one column to the next…the terrorist who kills based on dogma…the egomaniacal dictator who rules by virtue of having the most guns, not the best plan…the bored thrill-seekers just looking for something to do…the bullies who indiscriminately target the weak in an effort to make someone’s, anyone’s life more miserable than their own…the fat cats who relentlessly pad their own wallets at the expense of those around them…the companies dumping pollutants into the water and air. Real evil, for the most part, is boring, beige. True evil is also all but impossible to eradicate: you may be able to send in Rambo or Jason Bourne to take care of the cinematic baddies but it doesn’t work quite like that in the real world. Most of us are in no position to eliminate the day-to-day evils of the world: evil, like good, is just a fact of life.

Alejandro Fernández Almendras’ To Kill a Man (2014), which the Chilean director also wrote and edited, takes us right into the thick of real evil, showcasing the casual cruelty, misanthropy and harassment that often leads to violence, heart-break and death. There are no heroes here, just a desperate, broken-down father who tries (and fails) to protect his family. There are no super-villains, either, no suave harbingers of cool chaos for us to vicariously live through: the evil in To Kill a Man is earth-bound, sweaty, stupid and ugly, the product of generations of degradation, not a special serum or radioactive infection. There is nothing rousing, fist-raising or “epic” about the fight between good and evil in Almendras’ film: this is real evil, in all of its slouching, misshapen glory. There are no happy endings here because, in the real world, evil is seldom vanquished: it simply returns to the soil, like so much rot, in order to spring anew elsewhere. By removing feel-good notions of cosmic justice and the supposed balance between good and evil, Almendras lifts up the rock that is our world and let the hidden things spill out into the light: in the process, he creates one of the most powerful, tense and unpleasant films of the year, a funeral dirge for our modern age.

The protagonist of our little film, Jorge (Daniel Candia), is a mild-mannered forest ranger, father of two and loving husband. He’s soft-spoken, diabetic, gets his family whatever they want at the drop of a hat and seems like a genuinely nice guy. As with Paul Kersey in Death Wish (1974), however, this is not the kind of world for a meek, kind-hearted push-over: this is the jungle and the weaker animals are always prey for the stronger. In this case, the stronger animal is one Luis Alberto Alamos Alamos (Daniel Antivilo), also known as Kalule. Kalule and his gang of reprobates have recently taken over a small park in Jorge’s neighborhood and currently “rule” with an iron fist. No one is safe from their harassment, petty larceny and thuggish violence: think a meaner, stupider and crasser version of Alex’s droogs and you’ve on the right track.

One night, while passing through the park on his way home from work, Jorge happens to run afoul of Kalule and his “boys.” At first, the thugs just harass the poor guy, kicking a soccer ball at him, calling him names and cheerfully menacing him. When Jorge is forced to go back through the park later, however, in order to buy his son, Jorge (Ariel Mateluna) and his friends some beer, his second meeting with the gang isn’t quite as “pleasant.” The creeps surround Jorge, push him around and snatch his wallet, taking what they want and throwing the rest into the dirt. The scene is terrible and humiliating, with Jorge as defenseless as a small child, despite his status as patriarch of his household. To add insult to injury, Kalule refuses to take Jorge’s credit card (“I’d probably have to pay your bill,” he laughs) but does take the expensive blood tester that Jorge needs to help control his diabetes.

When Jorge gets home, he’s too devastated to even look his family in the eyes. His wife, Marta (Alejandra Yañez), and daughter, Nicole (Jennifer Salas), seem mortified and his son is pissed off and ready for action: he wants his dad to give him 5000 pesos so that he can go to the gang and, at the very least, negotiate the return of his dad’s tester. Jorge tells him to drop it which, of course, has the opposite desired effect: young Jorge sneaks out while his parents sleep and attempts to get his dad’s stuff back. When he finds out, Jorge rushes after his son, only to get to his side right after Kalule has shot him. While he watches, Kalule calmly shoots himself and then calls the police, claiming that Jorge’s son attacked him and he only shot in self-defense.

At the trial, Kalule continues to plead his innocence, even as he accepts a plea deal that would put him in prison for 1.5 years. Jorge’s family, for their part, is heartbroken: young Jorge has survived but his injuries have put an end to his schooling, dooming him to the same sort of lower-class life as his parents. Marta, meanwhile, has never stopped blaming Jorge for their son’s injury and the couple have since divorced, with the kids staying with their mother and Jorge taking up residence in a flea-bag motel. Faster than you can say “Cape Fear (1991),” however, Kalule is out of jail and looking to even the score with Jorge and his family. The thug begins a campaign of terror and harassment against the family that includes obscene phone calls, throwing rocks at their house and stalking young Nicole everywhere she goes. The police, so unhelpful during the original crime, are just as unhelpful now: regardless of how many complaints the family lodges, how many protection orders they get or how much they try to avoid Kalule and his gang, the authorities merely shrug their shoulders, leaving the family completely on their own.

As the pressure begins to wear on him, Jorge finds himself changing in subtle ways. After a confrontation with an asshole in the forest ends with Jorge chasing him off with a shotgun, however, the beleaguered father begins to feel empowered, if only ever so slightly. After Kalule and his men commit a shocking, vile and humiliating act against his daughter, however, Jorge finds himself at a crossroads: will he be able to continue taking the “high road,” hoping that the police will eventually do their job, or will he take matters into his own hands and try to make his own version of “justice?” When he finally does make a choice, Jorge’s decision will have a terrible, lasting impact on all those around him: there are no winners, here, only various shades of losers and wrecked human beings.

Lean, mean and consistently down-trodden, To Kill a Man is one of the finest examples of “feel bad” cinema I’ve seen in some time. Everything about the film is calculatedly to make the viewer feel as tense and uncomfortable as possible: the ominous score, all deep-voiced wind instruments and droning, low tones crawls under your skin and stays there…the violence, when it happens, is sudden, shocking and all-too realistic…the gang seem all-powerful and absolutely immoral, lending the film an overriding sense of futility…in every way possible, To Kill a Man is the epitome of a stacked deck.

Jorge, as portrayed by Candia, is a sympathetic, yet largely pathetic, character, a man who wants to believe in some notion of balance and justice yet keeps getting kicked in the nuts by the universe at every turn. Yañez, for her part, serves as surrogate for anyone taking the view that bullies need to be stood up to: the scene where Marta sneers at Jorge and warns him to beware of “mean kids in the park” is a real heart-breaker, since it just reinforces the notion that Jorge was too weak and not “masculine enough” to protect his family. We witness young Jorge go from the traditionally supportive son to a bitter, jaded shell of a man who holds his father in the same contempt that his mother does. And poor Nicole, so hopeful and positive, is absolutely destroyed by the violence and misogyny that swirls around her like a toxic cloud. This isn’t a family so much as three horses which, along with Kalule, are striving to pull Jorge to pieces.

While the acting is consistently strong and nicely understated, the cinematography, courtesy of Inti Briones, is a real thing of beauty. Time after time, Briones comes up with some truly gorgeous images: the shot of an automatic door slowly closing, only to stop midway, works on a number of levels, as does the awesome shot of Jorge’s truck disappearing backwards into the night, its wan headlights gradually swallowed in the same manner as Jorge’s rapidly dwindling humanity. The sense of framing is exquisite and the frequent close-ups, shot from odd angles, keep the constantly shifting power relationships as off-kilter as possible. As difficult as To Kill a Man is to sit through, content-wise, the film always looks and sounds amazing, a razor blade wrapped in a candy shell.

Ultimately, I was pretty blown away by Almendras’ film: while I’ve never been the biggest fan of what I like to call “hopeless cinema,” it’s impossible to deny the raw power of To Kill a Man. In many ways, the film is a modern successor to Death Wish, a searing, jagged examination of the destructive power of vengeance and what it means to be a “protector” in these violent times. While Jorge’s measured march to his own annihilation is painful to watch, it’s the kind of pain that any cinephile should force themselves to endure. At its core, To Kill a Man peels back humanity’s skin, revealing the coal-black heart that beats beneath. You may not necessarily “enjoy” the film but truth, like life, is often painful. Sometimes, you need that pain to appreciate everything else. Sometimes, that’s all there is.

1/17/15 (Part Two): The Horns Know What the Heart Hides

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Alexandre Aja, based on a book, cinema, Daniel Radcliffe, dark comedies, David Morse, dead girlfriend, demons, fantasy, film reviews, films, flashbacks, Frederick Elmes, friendships, Heather Graham, High Tension, Horns, horror movies, Ig Perrish, James Remar, Joe Anderson, Joe Hill, Juno Temple, Kathleen Quinlan, Keith Bunin, Kelli Garner, literary adaptation, Max Minghella, Michael Adamthwaite, mirrors, Movies, mystery, Piranha 3D, rape, revenge, secrets, small town life, suspicion, telling the truth, The Hills Have Eyes, vengeance, voice-over narration

When French writer-director Alexandre Aja first exploded onto the scene with the feral, jaw-dropping ode to unmitigated carnage that was High Tension (2003), it looked like the horror world had found their next uncompromising dark master. Red-lined, kinetic, non-stop and a veritable workshop in on-screen brutality, High Tension may have made an imperfect kind of sense (think about the central twist too much and the whole thing collapses into dust) but there was no denying the terrible power of the images and ideas contained within. Rather than capitalize on this bit of extreme nastiness, however, Aja appeared to have doubled-down in the opposite direction: his next two projects were both remakes – The Hills Have Eyes (2006) and Mirrors (2008) – while his most recent directorial effort was Piranha 3D (2010), which either counts as another remake or a sequel, depending on how generous you’re feeling.

This, of course, ended up being massively disappointing: here was another seemingly unique voice who appeared to have shackled himself to the remake train, foregoing any notion of “new” or “original” for the much safer territory of “been there, done that.” When Aja was announced as the director for a big-screen adaptation of Joe Hill’s bestselling novel, Horns, this seemed like a step in the right direction: at the very least, this was a literary adaptation, not another re-do of someone else’s earlier work. As it turns out, Aja’s version of Horns (2014) is good: well-made, full of clever moments, good acting and some genuine surprises, there’s a lot to like here. On the other hand, the film feels about 30 minutes too long and much of what’s on display here feels distinctly old-hat. This might not be the Aja who slept-walked through Mirrors or Piranha 3D but it also bears precious little resemblance to the Aja who blasted out frontal lobes with the sheer insanity that was High Tension.

Beginning with some voice-over and a suitably cool scene set to Bowie’s unbeatable “Heroes,” we’re quickly introduced to our hero, Ig Perrish (Daniel Radcliffe), and his current predicament. Seems that Ig’s girlfriend, Merrin (Juno Temple), has turned up dead and everyone in his small town, including Ig’s family, thinks he’s guilty of the crime. Shunned by everyone, publicly accused by Merrin’s father (David Morse) and given the cold-shoulder by all of his childhood friends, save his lawyer buddy, Lee (Max Minghella), Ig has become the town’s pariah, a social leper that everyone wishes would just disappear.

After he drunkenly desecrates the makeshift shrine that the townsfolk have set up for Merrin, Ig ends up with the local barkeep and wakes up in her bed the next morning. In a decidedly alarming development, poor Ig appears to be sprouting rudimentary horns from his head. Even stranger, however, is the way in which the bartender uncharacteristically gorges herself on food, in his presence: she seems to act as if possessed by some powerful force, unable to control herself. After several more awkward/humorous scenes involving overly honest medical personnel, clergy and his own parents, Ig comes to the startling realization that his new horns have the ability to force people to act on their deepest, darkest secrets.

In no time at all, Ig has decided to use his new power to conduct his own investigation into Merrin’s death: wandering the town like a scraggly, sardonic avenging angel, he “interviews” one person after the next, piecing together the details of Merrin’s last days as he goes. While the investigation takes place in the present, we also get copious flashbacks to Ig and Merrin’s youth, where they first fell in love and hung out with their friends Terry, Lee and Eric. These flashbacks hold little clues to the current mystery’s resolution, although Ig won’t know the full story until the final reel (astute viewers will probably figure this out way ahead of our intrepid sleuth). Once the truth is revealed, Ig becomes hell-bent for revenge, as he finds himself transforming into an increasingly powerful, unhinged and demonic force. Will Ig be able to bring his girlfriend’s killer to justice or will the flames of his own burning anger incinerate him long before he can make his final move?

There’s a lot to like about Horns: the cinematography is, in general, quite good and the soundtrack, full of nicely evocative songs like the Pixies’ “Where is My Mind?” and Bowie’s “Heroes,” works spectacularly well: the film actually had one of the best soundtracks I’ve heard in a while, with the score being equally memorable. The acting is also quite good, with Radcliffe being especially impressive: if The Woman in Black (2012) hadn’t marked Radcliffe’s transition from the world of Harry Potter to more “adult” genre roles, his performance as Ig certainly makes this clear. There’s a certain charisma that’s never far below Radcliffe’s performance, informing every snarky comment, confused squint and determined glower that crosses his face. He sells the concept of the horns by virtue of not looking goofy wearing them, which says a tremendous amount about his performance.

Also on the plus side, it’s nice to see David Morse in a rare “good guy” role: all too often, the veteran character actor is the equivalent of a twirling mustache but he gets a chance to stretch out, a little, and play a genuinely conflicted, human being. I’ll be the first to admit that Morse’s very presence seemed to signify the guilty party but I’m giving nothing away by saying that his grieving, angry and rather irrational Dale comes down distinctly on the side of right in this issue. I was also rather impressed by Minghella, who brings a little bit of depth to an odd character. While I thought he could be a bit bland, there was always a great interplay between him and Radcliffe, which helped sell the friendship.

On the negative side, we get some rather dodgy special effects (the CGI snakes are particularly offensive) and the final transformation bears an uncanny resemblance to Tim Curry’s Darkness, which ends up injecting a rather unintentional level of hilarity into what’s supposed to be a very climatic moment. There are also some patently stupid scenes in the back half, such as the ones where Ig induces someone to take “all the drugs” and another where he makes a couple of characters act on their latent homosexual urges. The tone on these is pitched all wrong (the drug scene features a “trip” that would’ve seemed stale in the ’60s) and they come off eye-rolling rather than impactful.

The biggest issue I had with Horns, however, ended up being how damn familiar the whole thing was. While I haven’t read Hill’s novel, I found myself predicting so much of the action that it definitely felt like I had. Chalk it up to screenwriter Keith Bunin or the original source material but there were precious few times that I was caught off guard and I couldn’t help but feel that I’d seen this same story (minus the horns, obviously) many times before. Hell, squint and the whole thing looks a bit like Rian Johnson’s Brick (2005), again, minus the horns.

I didn’t dislike Horns: ultimately, the film is too slick and well-made (minus the damn snakes and poor Heather Graham’s bug-eyed cameo) to invite any kind of easy derision. When it all works, there’s a pleasant sense of del Toro-lite that, coupled with Radcliffe’s natural charisma, makes the film highly watchable.  When it goes off the rails, however, it’s actually pretty silly, which certainly tempers the stormy mood established by the rest of the film. Bar a few tell-tale moments, however (the shotgunned head and the pitchforkin’, for example), the film never approaches the oomph that characterized Aja’s earliest films (remake or not, The Hills Have Eyes was the furthest thing possible from a placid lake). More than anything, this feels like another multiplex horror, something to enjoy with some popcorn and a date. There are a lot worse things in the world but I can’t help but be disappointed, nonetheless.

12/19/14: Mommy Issues

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auteur theory, broken families, castration, cheating husbands, Cho Jae-hyun, cinema, dual role, dysfunctional family, extreme films, father-son relationships, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, foreign films, graphic films, infidelity, insanity, Kim Jae-hong, Kim Jae-rok, Kim Ki-duk, kinky films, Korean films, Lee Eun-woo, Moebius, mother-son relationships, Movies, no dialogue, organ transplants, perversion, rape, S and M, sadomasochism, Seo Young-ju, sexual perversion, sexual violence, South Korea, unpleasant, writer-director-cinematographer-editor

There are a lot of ways you could describe South Korean auteur Kim Ki-Duk’s newest film, Moebius (2013): you could certainly toss out the terms “revolutionary,” “daring” and “brave,” as long as you also make room for “graphic,” “perverse,” and “unpleasant.” Calling the film “relentless” and “difficult” certainly seems apt, along with “eye-opening,” “raw” and “frightening.” It certainly is “colorful,” no two ways about it, although “deviant” also seems like a fairly apt term. No description could be complete without “dialogue-free,” although leave “silent” at home: Moebius is anything but. “Exquisitely made?” Absolutely. “Fun,” in any way, shape or form? Not on your life, bub…not in this one or the next.

Moebius concerns itself with the fate of an anonymous family which consists of the father (Cho Jae-hyun), mother (Lee Eun-woo) and teenage son (Seo Young-ju). Despite the film’s complete lack of dialogue, it’s pretty easy to pick up the main narrative thrust: to whit, the father has been having an affair with a local shopkeeper (also played by Lee Eun-woo) and his long-suffering wife has just found out about it. Needless to say, the wife isn’t happy about this particular development: to be more accurate, it appears to drive her more than a little mad. In a fit of passion, the wife takes up a large kitchen knife and decides to perform some “elective” surgery on her husband’s wayward manhood: he’s able to fight her off but her thirst for vengeance needs some sort of outlet. In a move that some might call “questionable,” the mother decides to go ahead and just castrate her son, instead: any port in a storm, right?

As can be expected, the mother’s action has a host of connected consequences, not the least of which is driving her son into the arms of her husband’s lover. As the father tries to deal with his guilt over his role in his son’s mutilation, the son tries to come to terms with the loss of his penis, a loss which can be particularly difficult to deal with when one is attempting to start a new romantic relationship. Never fear, however: the father has been busy researching alternate ways for his son to receive sexual pleasure and the shop-keeper is only too happy to assist. The particular method may rival anything in Cronenberg’s Crash (1996) in terms of sheer icky sexuality but, hey…the heart wants what it wants, eh?

To this incredibly toxic stew, be sure to add a crazy street gang, school-yard bullies, plenty of rape and attempted rape (male and female, both), incest, penis transplants, hallucinatory dream sequences, masturbation, S & M and the very embodiment of “violent sex.” If it seems like Moebius is pretty much one atrocity after another, like a perverse parade of deviance rolling down the main thoroughfare…well, in a way, it kind of is. There are some films that you enjoy and there are some films that you endure…without a doubt, Moebius belongs to the latter category.

In certain ways, Ki-duk’s film is a bit of a gimmick but one that’s exquisitely executed: from the first frame to the last, there’s isn’t a single spoken line of dialogue in the film’s entire 90 minute runtime. This is no silent film, mind you: we get all of the expected digetic sounds along with an effective musical score. This isn’t even a “fantasy” world where everyone is mute: there are numerous scenes where characters make or take phone calls: they just step outside so that we can’t hear anything, that’s all. In short, it’s a brilliant concept that could have been a complete disaster in execution but ends up working so remarkably well that it’s surprising it hasn’t really been done more. By its very nature, cinema is a visual medium but dialogue and “info dumps” have become such a disproportionately “important” aspect of modern cinema that it’s not only refreshing but damn right wonderful to experience a film that’s been completely stripped back to the visual element. Despite the fact that we never learn any of the characters names, it’s never particularly difficult to keep up with what’s going on: some of the more surreal latter-half occurrences may have benefited from a little explanation, all things considered, but I never felt so lost that I became frustrated. This, in itself, makes Moebius one of the more impressive films I’ve seen in some time. From a filmmaking perspective, Moebius is very well made, albeit in a no-frills style that actually compliments the visuals and themes.

On the other hand, Moebius is going to be an extremely tough sell for just about anyone other than extremely hardened, jaded filmgoers. Speaking for myself, I am absolutely not a shrinking violet when it comes to films: I’ve seen Cannibal Holocaust (1980) and Salo (1975), any number of Italian gore flicks and enough “video nasties” from the ’80s to drive a normal person crazy. I learned the difference between “real” and “fake” when I was a kid and have frequently been revolted by films but rarely truly disturbed. Moebius is a truly disturbing film. There were scenes here that not only managed to turn my stomach but fundamentally bother me: it’s no hyperbole to say that I’ll never be able to get a lot of this out of my head, similar to the atrocities I witnessed in Salo. It’s just a movie and I know that: the knowledge, however, did nothing whatsoever to convince my poor, addled mind once I was in the thick of things. Regardless of how “hardcore” audience members think they are, Moebius is the kind of film that delights in proving folks wrong: there is something in here, somewhere, that will offend and disgust just about every human on the face of the earth…some things will offend on a physical level, others on a moral level and still others on a larger, metaphysical level but make no mistake…you will be shaken to the core by what you see.

So…just what kind of person will enjoy Moebius? To be honest, I’d like to think that no one could possibly “enjoy” the film, even if I strongly feel that everyone should respect it. Kim Ki-duk is an absolutely uncompromising, revolutionary filmmaker, a virtually unstoppable force of nature who also happens to be a one-man wrecking crew (writer/director/cinematographer/editor) with a unique vision and no interest in holding audience hands whatsoever. Is there a greater point to Moebius than pure shock value? Absolutely: Ki-duk makes some very provocative comments about the destructive power of infidelity and Moebius can be read, in a way, as a detailed examination of the particular ways in which cheating in a marriage can destroy not only the trust and love between husband and wife but also between children and their parents. Of course, Moebius can also be read as a mind-blowing examination of the mutability of gender and identity (anytime you have the mistress and wife both played by the same actor, there’s obviously something deeper bubbling below the surface) or about the ways in which deviant sexuality can seem “normal” to those with no other options.

Moebius is a complex, fascinating film that also happens to be revolting, extreme, unpleasant and as far from a “crowd-pleaser” as possible. It’s feel-bad cinema, in the best possible way, and the perfect antidote for those days when everything just seems too sweet, nice and hopeful. If I was being conservative, I’d estimate that only about 5% of the entire film-going populace will actually be able to get through all 90 minutes here: this is no challenge to the “meek,” mind you, but simple fact. If you’re one of the few who wants to give it a try, know that Moebius is monumentally impressive filmmaking and just as much fun as getting a root canal with no anesthetic: don’t say I didn’t warn you.

10/27/14: Disease as Love, Death as Eroticism

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'70s films, 31 Days of Halloween, Allan Kolman, alternate title, apartment-living, auteur theory, Barbara Steele, body horror, Canadian films, Cathy Graham, cinema, David Cronenberg, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, Fred Doederlein, horror films, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Joe Silver, Joy Coghill, Lynn Lowry, Movies, parasites, Paul Hampton, possession, rape, Ronald Mlodzik, set in the 1970s, sexual violence, Shivers, Silvie Debois, Society, Susan Petrie, They Came From Within, Vlasta Vrana, writer-director, zombie films, zombies

In the world of horror filmmaking, it’s not uncommon for fledgling directors to first cut their teeth on low-budget zombie flicks: after all, ever since George A. Romero kicked the door in with his revolutionary Night of the Living Dead (1968), the walking dead have become an ingrained part of the horror industry, even bleeding over into pop culture over time. Over forty years removed from Romero’s modest black and white chiller, we now live in a day and age when graphic fare like The Walking Dead can become a hit television series: stick that in your pipe and smoke it, NYPD Blue!

Why do zombie films make such good “starter projects,” however? For one thing, zombie films lend themselves well to a low-budget aesthetic: as Romero proved, you don’t really need more than a willing group of actors, a dedicated location and rudimentary special effects to capture an audience’s attention…in fact, grainy, visceral images tend to heighten the impact of zombie films, not detract from them. The same can’t really be said for any other over-arching horror subset, for the most part, unless one is discussing slasher films: trying making a sci-fi-horror film “on the cheap” and see how effective it is. For another thing, zombie films readily lend themselves to a filmmaker’s desire to “shake things up”: individual filmmakers can mess around with the origin of the infection, the behavior of the dead, the general world around the characters, the internal politics, etc…and come up with a hundred different films off of the same basic “the dead get up and eat the living” log-line. It’s a generic “recipe” that can be turned into an awful lot of different dishes.

To this group of filmmakers who got their start with zombie flicks, be sure to add the inimitable, confounding, living legend that is Canadian body horror auteur David Cronenberg. Although Cronenberg’s first films were actually a pair of art features, he first gained notice with his third film (technically his first feature, as the others were right around an hour apiece). Shivers (1975), known in some circles by the far kitchier title They Came From Within, might be early Cronenberg, but anyone familiar with his career will see the through-line with little trouble: chilly, clinical, unemotional, obsessed with yet disgusted by sexual activity, full of skin-crawling body horror elements and ooky practical effects…in other words, classic Cronenberg.

Kicking off with an effective faux-infomercial for Starliner Island, a self-contained community with everything from apartments to stores and recreational areas, we’re given a sneak peek into what will become our besieged farmhouse, as it were: Starliner Towers. We’re introduced to a number of characters, including Nick Tudor (Allan Kolman) and his wife, Janine (Susan Petrie); the apartment’s manager, Mr. Merrick (Ronald Mlodzik); resident physician Dr. Roger St. Luc (Paul Hampton) and his nurse/paramour, Miss Forsythe (Lynn Lowry); the Svibens (Vlasta Vrana, Silvie Debois) and, perhaps most importantly, Dr. Emil Hobbes (Fred Doederlein) and teenager Annabelle (Cathy Graham). When we first meet Hobbes and Annabelle, the good doctor is strangling the young woman, after which he cuts her open and proceeds to pour acid into her chest cavity before slitting his own throat. As we might gather, all is not sunshine and warm summer breezes here at Starliner Towers…not by a long shot.

As it turns out, Dr. Hobbes, along with his partner, Rollo Linsky (Joe Silver), was working on a way to use parasites as an alternative to organ transplants: the researchers wanted to breed special parasites to take over the organs in a sick person’s body, allowing them to opportunity to heal internally. Somewhere along the way, however, something went drastically wrong (or drastically right, as we’ll come to learn later): the parasites are now jumping from host to host, taking over their victim’s bodies and transforming them into mindless, sexually ravenous zombies. As more and more residents of Starliner Towers fall prey to the disgusting, fleshy slug-things, Roger and Nurse Forsythe, along with Dr. Linsky, must do all they can to remain uninfected, all while frantically searching for some cure to this disorder. In no time, however, the trio find themselves trapped in a house of horrors that’s one part orgy, one part stone-cold nightmare. This is no ordinary “zombie infection,” however: as the ill-fated protagonists will discover, what’s taking place may be as simple and terrifying as the next step in human evolution…an evolutionary move that may see humanity wave goodbye to its cosmic neighbors and embrace a way of life that can best be described as primal, animalistic and completely free of the niceties of polite society.

As with the majority of Cronenberg’s “body horror” films, Shivers can be a massively unpleasant piece of work, especially once one takes into account the added weight of the violent sexuality aspect: if you’re the kind of audience member who shudders at the thought of nasty little slug creatures crawling into every orifice imaginable, you might want to give this a wide berth. For everyone else, however, Shivers serves as an interesting reminder of where Cronenberg started, a particular psychosexual neighborhood that he still lives in, even though his most recent body of work has tended to minimize the sci-fi/horror elements while playing up his more violent tendencies.

Like The Brood (1979), Scanners (1981) and Videodrome (1983), Shivers is a chilly, spartan, clinical film, all blown-out whites, hard-shadows and insidious things happening in the background. It’s a meticulously crafted film, which is par for the course with Cronenberg, but it’s also a very detached film, so unemotional as to occasionally seem aloof. Paul Hampton, in particular, has a bearing about him that seems to speak more to extreme boredom and ennui than the “normal” emotions one might expect from someone under attack from mind-controlling parasites. Truth be told, much of the acting in the film is rather rough and detached, with the exception of genre-vet Barbara Steele, who turns in one of her typically hot-blooded performances as Mrs. Tudor’s friend, Betts. Shivers is also one of the few Cronenberg films, his adaptation of Stephen King’s Dead Zone (1983) being another, to feel distinctly dated and “of its time.”

For all of its rough edges and occasional tonal missteps (one scene involving a slug “jumping” at a woman is very silly and reminds of something Paul Bartel might have snickered his way through), however, Shivers is still undoubtedly a Cronenberg film. When the film is firing on all cylinders, such as the horrifying finale that handily presages Brian Yuzna’s equally yucky (if brilliant) Society (1989), it’s an unbeatable, claustrophobic nightmare. The notion of the “new flesh” that Cronenberg explored so brilliantly in Videodrome seems to get its genesis here, as does his career-long melding of disease, sex and bodily functions. Shivers is also a much more streamlined, “simple” film than Cronenberg’s later work, which helps to amplify the genre elements: in many ways, this is one of the auteur’s purest horror films, hands down.

Despite being a lifelong fan of Cronenberg’s horror films, I must admit to really relishing his more recent “non-horror” films like Spider (2002), A History of Violence (2005), Eastern Promises (2007) and A Dangerous Method (2011). As of late, it seems to me that Cronenberg has sharpened his already lethal skills into a fine, diamond-edged blade: his films may be decidedly less “icky” than they used to be, but the grue has been traded for devastating insights into the human condition that are that much more powerful for being delivered relatively straight-faced. That being said, however, I’ll always have a soft-spot in my heart for his early genre work, especially when I’m feeling down on the human condition, in general. As Cronenberg knows so well, despite all of our innovations, art, emotion and high-minded morality, we’re all just sacks of meat, at the end of the day: clockwork piles of blood, guts, sinew and muscle that may aim for the heavens but spend the majority of our lives wallowing in the muck.

10/18/14 (Part Two): From Hell They Came

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31 Days of Halloween, Bill Moseley, Bonnie and Clyde, Brian Posehn, cinema, Dallas Page, Danny Trejo, Dave Sheridan, dysfunctional family, Elizabeth Daily, film reviews, films, Free Bird, Geoffrey Lewis, gritty, horror films, horror movies, House of 1000 Corpses, Kate Norby, Ken Foree, Leslie Easterbrook, Lew Temple, Mary Woronov, Matthew McGrory, Michael Berryman, Movies, Natural Born Killers, P.J. Soles, Priscilla Barnes, rape, road movie, Rob Zombie, Robert Trebor, sequel, set in the 1970s, sexual violence, Sheri Moon Zombie, Sid Haig, Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, The Devil's Rejects, the Firefly family, the Unholy Two, Tom Towles, torture, William Forsythe, writer-director

What does it actually mean to “like” a film? On the basest level, of course, it’s a pretty self-explanatory sentiment: if you “like” something, that means you derived some measure of pleasure from it, either on an aesthetic level (“My, what a pretty film!”) or a more primal one (“What a badass movie!”). Maybe it got to you on an intellectual level (“Now THAT was a smart film!”) or because it was completely successful at its goal (“That was the funniest comedy I’ve seen in years!”). For most of us, liking a film comes with the implicit notion that we’d be more than happy to revisit the film at a moment’s notice: maybe we don’t want to see it four times in the same day (or even the same month) but we certainly shouldn’t balk at wanting to rewatch it at some point in time.

There’s a parallel to “liking” a film, however, sort of a shadowy doppelgänger that stands just outside our field of vision, creeping into our comfort zone inch by relentless inch until it’s managed to assume the pole position: “respecting” a film. From my perspective, “liking” and “respecting” films are two very different things: I might “respect” what Pier Palo Pasolini was trying to do with Salo (1975) but saying that I “like” the film would certainly put me in the same great company as Ted Bundy and Ed Gein. Ditto Deodato’s unforgettable Cannibal Holocaust (1980): I “respect” the ever-loving shit out of what Deodato accomplished but “like” it? Not on your life, buddy.

This notion of “respecting” versus “liking” a film brings us round to our current subject, The Devil’s Rejects (2005), Rob Zombie’s sequel to his feature debut, House of 1000 Corpses (2003). When House of 1000 Corpses first came out, I was a huge fan, a sentiment which only recently waned once I’d had a chance to critically examine the film after not seeing it for several years: this time around, I found the movie to be visually interesting, if a little trite and too-indebted to Hooper’s original pair of Chainsaw Massacres. The Devil’s Rejects, however, was always a different story: more realistic, visceral and, ultimately, disturbing than Zombie’s cotton-candy-colored original, The Devil’s Rejects never really sat right with me after my first theatrical viewing. I found myself reacting to it in some pretty definitive ways, don’t get me wrong, but it was always a little hard to figure out whether I actually, you know…”liked” the film. After re-screening the film recently, it’s become a lot easier to categorize my feelings: I still don’t “like” Zombie’s sophomore film but I’ve gotta respect it, nonetheless, as being a pretty streamlined statement of purpose, an adrenalized, if ultimately unpleasant, examination of how the love of one’s family can produce some pretty terrible outcomes.

Beginning several months after the events of the first film, The Devil’s Rejects kicks off with a massive police assault on the Firefly’s homestead that makes the Waco raid look like duck-duck-goose. Sheriff John Wydell (William Forsythe), brother of the first film’s slain George Wydell (Tom Towles), has come down on the Fireflys with as much righteous fury as an army of angels with flaming swords: in the ensuing chaos, Otis (Bill Moseley) and Baby (Sheri Moon Zombie) manage to shot their way out, while Mama Firefly (Leslie Easterbrook, taking over for the first film’s Karen Black) is captured by Wydell and his lawmen. Meeting up with Captain Spaulding (Sid Haig), who’s revealed to be Baby’s biological father, the trio decide to hit the open road and head for the (supposed) safety of the Old West-themed whorehouse/town run by Spaulding’s larcenous brother, Charlie Altamont (Ken Foree).

Sheriff Wydell, however, isn’t quite your average lawman. Rather, he’s a bloodthirsty sociopath who resembles the Fireflys in deeds, if not necessarily philosophy. He’s determined to capture the Fireflys, not because he wants to bring them to justice for all of their crimes but because he wants to personally torture them to death for killing his brother. As Wydell gets closer to Otis, Baby and the others, whatever humanity he once had continues to slip away like water through a sieve. In time, it will be all but impossible to tell the two sides apart and woe to any poor, unsuspecting “civilian” who happens to come between them.

From the jump, The Devil’s Rejects is a noticeably grittier, grimmier affair, both in look and content. Whereas House of 1000 Corpses operated along the lines of a particularly demented fever dream (or, quite possibly, a feature-length metal video), The Devil’s Rejects is much more reality-based: there’s nary a Dr. Satan, zombie or fish-boy to be found in the entire film. The more supernatural-based horror of the first film has been entirely replaced by physical assaults which tend to emphasis sexual violence and rape, elements which were certainly hinted at in the first film but rarely executed with as much zeal as found here. In particular, the scene where Otis and Baby torment the family of traveling musicians at an isolated motel is just about as unpleasant and revolting as similar scenes found in films like Death Wish (1974) or I Spit On Your Grave (1978), albeit markedly less explicit (visually, at least).

For the most part, Zombie’s modus operandi here seems to be fashioning his own version of Oliver Stone’s polarizing Natural Born Killers (1994), the ’90s-era phenomena that sought to make serial killers sexy, fashionable and chic. To that end, we get lots (and lots and lots) of scenes and shots that seek to mythologize the Fireflys to nearly ridiculous proportions, not the least of which is the entire opening sequence. After fashioning makeshift armor, Otis and Baby emerge from their home, guns blazing, to the tune of the Allman Brothers’ classic outside anthem “Midnight Rider.” Via a series of shuddering freeze frames, the Fireflys make quite the dramatic escape, hitting the road like a brother/sister version of Bonnie and Clyde. The problem, of course, only comes in once you really think about the difference between the Fireflys (and Micky and Mallory, for that matter) and Bonnie and Clyde. Bonnie and Clyde were a pair of folk-hero bank robbers who captured the imagination of the era thanks to their propensity for telling the “man” to shove it up his backdoor. The Fireflys, by contrast, are nearly subhuman monsters who kidnap, torture, mutilate and murder scads of innocent victims. While it’s certainly possible to associate oneself with the meaning behind Bonnie and Clyde’s actions, if not necessarily the actions, themselves, how, then, does one go about associating with the Fireflys? Is the family supposed to appeal to the (hopefully) minuscule audience of spree killers in the world who fancy carving things into cheerleaders? People who enjoy wearing others’ faces like masks?

To stack the deck even further, Zombie turns the character of Sheriff Wydell into such a rampaging sociopath that it becomes even murkier as to who we’re supposed to throw our support behind. Sure, the Fireflys like to rape and murder but they’re the bad guys: when Wydell gets down with a little good, ol’ fashioned nail-gun torture, he’s supposed to be wearing the white hat. A case can, of course, be made that Wydell’s retribution is only fitting, considering how horrible the Fireflys are: how, then, are we to react when Zombie takes every opportunity to frame the Fireflys as romantic heroes? I mean, fer Pete’s sake, they get riddled full of more holes than Sonny Corleone at the film’s climax, in slo-mo, to the tune of Skynyrd’s “Freebird”…if that doesn’t say “romantic hero,” I don’t know what does.

And here, of course, is where the other shoe thuds to the floor: despite my intense misgivings over the actual content/message of The Devil’s Rejects, the film is head and shoulders over Zombie’s debut in almost every way. For one thing, it looks great: grainy, gritty and sun-bleached like an old grindhouse curio. The cast is impeccable, although Forsythe consumes so much scenery that he becomes a veritable black hole by the conclusion: along with the ever-reliable Moseley and Haig (the best we can say about Sheri Zombie is that she’s much less shrill here than in House of 1000 Corpses), we also get great performances from genre vets like Ken Foree (Romero’s Dawn of the Dead), Geoffrey Lewis, Michael Berryman (The Hills Have Eyes 1 and 2), P.J. Soles (Carpenter’s Halloween)  and Mary Woronov.

The late-’70s period-setting of The Devil’s Rejects is actually much stronger than in the original film: this looks like the ’70s, through and through. The soundtrack is also much more effective, consisting exclusively of ’70s-era soft-rock classic, unlike the metal tunes which cropped up in House of 1000 Corpses. At times, the film has a brittle, desolate feel that manages to seem completely authentic, unlike the everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach of the debut. Oftentimes, the film feels more akin to a particularly mean-spirited spaghetti Western than to a horror film, although there’s always another graphic murder waiting just around the corner.

Ultimately, all of this adds up to a film that I end up “respecting” more than actually “liking.” Truth be told, there’s not much about The Devil’s Rejects that actually gives me pleasure, although I will admit some sick kicks every time Brian Posehn’s Jimmy gets his head shot off (nothing against Posehn, mind you, but it’s a pretty bravura moment, nonetheless). That being said, I’d be completely remiss if I didn’t point how well-made the film is: despite its unpleasant subject matter, this is absolutely one lean, mean, sonofabitch. As a fan of film craft, I can’t deny the power of Zombie’s images or the measurable improvement from his first to second film. That being said, I also can’t get behind the wholesale mythologizing of a pretty reprehensible group of people, which also ended up being my big complaint about Stone’s film. In the end, The Devil’s Rejects is proof of the old adage that “here’s something you’re really gonna love, if this is the kind of thing you like.” I didn’t like it but I respected it and that’s gotta count for something.

7/30/14: Support Your Local Spirit Squad

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All Cheerleaders Die, Amanda Grace Cooper, back from the dead, battle of the sexes, Brooke Butler, Caitlin Stasey, cheerleaders, Chris Petrovski, Chris Sivertson, cinema, co-directors, co-writers, Felisha Cooper, film reviews, films, football players, girls against boys, Heathers, high school, high school angst, high school cliques, horror films, horror-comedies, Jordan Wilson, Leigh Parker, Lucky McKee, magic stones, Michael Bowen, Movies, Nicholas S. Morrison, rape, Reanin Johannink, Sianoa Smit-McPhee, Sidney Allison, teenagers, The Woman, Tom Williamson, troubled teens, Warlock, Wiccan, writer-director

For a time, Lucky McKee and Chris Sivertson’s All Cheerleaders Die (2013) is a rather nasty piece of work, a combination of the high school clique napalming of Heathers (1988) with the lethal gender conflicts of Donkey Punch (2008). Just as the film seems like it’s really going to dig its teeth in, however, it inexplicably becomes a mish-mash of Warlock (1989) and Dragon Ball Z, which is a much less effective, much sillier combination. As someone who was really blown away by McKee’s last film, the thoroughly uncompromising, jaw-dropping The Woman (2011), I was really hoping that his follow-up would continue the discussion on the battle of the sexes in a similar, uncompromising manner. To say that I was disappointed…well, that might just be the understatement of the year.

From the get-go, All Cheerleaders Die seems to be taking us down a fixed but certainly intriguing path: the film begins with hand-held footage of vapid head cheerleader Alexis (Felisha Cooper) performing a routine before landing on her head with a sickening crunch. Cut to the title, red letters on a black background. From here, we meet Alexis’ “friend,” Maddy (Caitlin Stasey). Maddy was the one filming the opening footage and, for all intents and purposes, seems to be the farthest thing from a stereotypical high school cheerleader: she’s droll, sarcastic, a budding journalist and quite intent on avenging Alexis’ death. To this end, Maddy tries out for (and makes) the cheerleading squad, although she rightfully hides her true intentions from her new “friends.”

Once ensconced within the spirit squad, Maddy goes about trying to detonate the popular girls from the inside-out. There’s Tracy (Brooke Butler), who’s now dating Alexis’ former boyfriend, quarterback Terry (Tom Williamson); Martha (Reanin Joannink), the team captain and Martha’s little sister, Hanna (Amanda Grace Cooper), the team’s put-upon mascot. Maddy blames each of the girls (along with their football player boyfriends) for Alexis’ death but saves the bulk of her vehemence for Tracy and Terry. By wheedling herself in close to Tracy, Maddy begins to drive a wedge between her and Terry, claiming to have evidence of Terry’s infidelity. On the periphery of this toxic little group is Maddy’s former best friend, the Gothy Leena (Sianoa Smit-McPhee), who also happens to be a practicing Wiccan and, apparently, was once Maddy’s girlfriend. Maddy has been dissing Leena, lately, which is all part of her plan to ingratiate herself in with the cheerleaders: this, of course, makes Leena feel like she’s been betrayed by the only person at the school who actually seems to understand her.

Things come to a head when Maddy encourages Tracy to send Terry a nasty breakup text message. When Terry shows up at that night’s cheerleader/football player kegger, the shit really hits the fan. Maddy pressures Tracy into shit-talking Terry in front of his team and you’d have to be completely dense not to see the gathering storm clouds. Indeed, after standing there, emotionless, Terry hauls off and punches Tracy square in the face, a shocking, gritty piece of violence that immediately seems to set the film on a grim track as a visceral examination of violence against women. Maddy tries to get the other football players to jump Terry (they don’t), Martha tries to call the police, only to have Terry snatch away her phone and the cheerleaders jump in their car and take off, pursued at maximum speed by the football players. As Leena watches in horror, the car containing Maddy, Tracy, Hanna and Martha plunges through a railing and straight into a pitch-black lake. Leena does what she can to save Maddy and the others but their bodies are already cold and water-logged by the time she hauls them to shore.

At this point, there were at least a handful of paths the film could have taken: it could have kept the revenge angle, with Leena taking up Maddy’s mantle; it could have had one of the girls survive, making her the avenger; there could have been a falling out among the football players, pitting the more hesitant members against gung-ho Terry and his best buddies. What the film opts to do, however, is to spin the film off into an entirely different direction: namely, All Cheerleaders Die transitions seamlessly from a gritty “battle of the sexes” into an FX-heavy supernatural thriller, sort of a cross between Warlock and Drag Me To Hell (2009). You see, Leena uses her magical powers to enchant the magic stones that she carries around: these stones than “reanimate” the dead girls, as it were, granting them with such things as super strength. The trade-off, of course, is that the cheerleaders must now feed on blood in order to sustain themselves. In other words, the cheerleaders are now zombie/vampire hybrids who are powered by magical glowing stones imbedded in their innards. Suffice to say that any sense of “grit” or “realism” just flew out the window, along with most of the savvy plays on high school cliques and popularity contests.

Instead, we end up with a film that consists of the cheerleaders playing cat-and-mouse, of sorts, with the football players. When the guys return from their little murder spree, they strut through the school like they were, literally, the cocks of the walk. Until, that is, the cheerleaders return to strut through the school. The guys know that the cheerleaders went into the lake, so suspect some sort of teenage version of Gaslight (1944): Terry, for his part, isn’t so sure and gets all the confirmation he needs when one of his guys witnesses Leena levitating her stones in the middle of class (Leena also ended up with a stone in her chest, despite not being dead, which appears to have amplified her magic powers). Every time the cheerleaders kill one of the football team, their power increases exponentially. This fact isn’t lost on Terry, who decides to turn the tables by consuming the cheerleaders’ magical stones and increasing his own powers. Soon, with the ranks on both sides decimated, it’s up to Maddy and Leena to finally put an end to Terry’s reign of terror. Will they be strong enough to stop him, however? And what other tricks might Leena have up her sleeve?

Right up to the point where the film transitioned from a tense, blackly comic drama into a full-on supernatural action film, I was largely, if not completely, on board. In many ways, All Cheerleaders Die plays like a lesser version of All The Boys Love Mandy Lane (2006) or a very light version of Heathers. While I didn’t love the film, I could appreciate where it was heading and looked forward to seeing if McKee was going to get as extreme as he did in The Woman. Once the magic, glowing, floating stones appeared, however, it became pretty impossible to take the film seriously. It doesn’t, of course, help that the CGI on the stones is utterly absurd and awful, reminding of nothing so much as all the damn cheesy “lightning and laser eyes” effects from crappy ’80s-’90s direct-to-video sci-fi epics.

Once the film finds its footing as a silly supernatural tale, it manages to recover a bit, based purely on its ability to grab the concept with both hands and refuse to let go. While the stones never do look any better than the similar effect in Warlock, there are a few eye-candy moments in the latter half that are well-executed (the bit where Tracy’s stone causes Ben (Nicholas S. Morrison) to bleed out in slo-mo, ala liquid droplets in zero gravity, is pretty awesome, as is the final jump-scare, which handily and honestly sets up a sequel). The biggest issue is simply that the two separate aspects don’t really cohere, making this seem like a couple different films jammed together.

In fact, in some ways, All Cheerleaders Die is a tale of several movies: a horror film, an indie superhero tale, a battle of the sexes film, a black comedy set in a high school…the unfortunate truth is that only a few of these films actually work. The horror elements are well-done, with some nicely realized gore scenes, while the “super powers” stuff is hackneyed and trite. The battle of the sexes stuff ends up being fairly negligible (again, Donkey Punch did it much better and pulled, ahem, fewer punches), while the blackly comic high school material ends up being fairly effective. Focused on any one of these angles, All Cheerleaders Die would have been a much stronger film: as it is, the movie lacks focus and coherence, issues that McKee has never had in his previous films.

I really wanted to like All Cheerleaders Die more than I did but, alas, the film was pretty much one continual disappointment. While the acting was solid, there were never any truly stand-out performances, although Stasey did admirably as the protagonist. The film looked and sounded pretty great, which made the ultra-cheesy SFX all the more laughable and obnoxious: it was almost as if the whole concept of the magic stones was added in post-production, which is just about as bad as it sounds.

I will say, however, that I appreciated how the filmmakers managed to marginalize the concept of the “male gaze”: unlike just about every other horror film involving cheerleaders in the history of horror films, the women in All Cheerleaders Die don’t spend the film in various states of undress, the camera lasciviously tracking up and down their nude bodies. In fact, there’s really only one scene that I can recall that broached this in any way and that would be the one where Tracy has just “reawakened” and proceeds to march across the street, wearing only a bra and panties, in order to find some “food.” In many ways, this is the scene that proves my rule: despite Tracy’s attire, the emphasis on the scene is squarely on her ravenous appetite, not the female form. It’s a smart bit and, unfortunately, one that I wish were repeated more often.

Ultimately, I’m probably so disappointed by All Cheerleaders Die because of my experiences with McKee’s other films: May (2002), The Woods (2006) and The Woman, along with McKee’s entry in the Master of Horror series, Sick Girl (2006), are all fascinating examinations of both feminism and male/female violence, with smart, three-dimensional characters and some astoundingly original/shocking elements. The Woman, in particular, was such a gut-punch that it easily ranks as one of the most unpleasant, yet necessary, films I’ve seen in decades. By comparison, All Cheerleaders Die is an entertaining, yet slight and disposable throwaway: by the time the climax rolls around, with Terry and the surviving women fighting like left-over Street Fighter characters, the whole thing feels like a cheap direct-to-video curiosity, rather than a film with an actual agenda.

If only the film were able to stay on the gritty road it started on: there’s definitely a really good movie buried in All Cheerleaders Die…the evidence of that film is pretty much everywhere you look. The problem, of course, ends up being that there are also at least three mediocre films trapped in there and this is, of course, at least three films too many.

7/23/14: Red Light Morality

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Adrien Brody, based on a book, Black Box, Cam Gigandet, Clifton Collins Jr., Das Experiment, David Banner, degradation, dehumanization, Ethan Cohn, Fisher Stevens, Forest Whitaker, humiliation, Jason Lew, morality, Paul T. Scheuring, power struggles, prison break, prison films, psychological torture, rape, social experiments, Stanford Prison Experiment, The Experiment, Travis Fimmel, writer-director

While most people, if asked, would probably describe themselves as having some sort of moral compass, it really all comes down to a matter of degrees. It’s often easy for people to follow moral codes when either the state or religion sets up the guidelines but remove those constructs and things get a bit iffier. The real problem, of course, tends to be those who are more “circumstantial moralists”: people who would abstain from theft while the clerk is watching but think nothing of nicking a pack of gum when his back is turned. As evidenced by the sheer volume of folks who think nothing of grabbing as much as they can for themselves, with no regards to others or a “greater good,” I’m inclined to say that we, as a society, have largely become circumstantial moralists: we have no problem doing the “right thing” when it’s mandated or when people are watching but tend to revert back to purely selfish needs when the camera isn’t pointed directly at us.

Writer/director Paul T. Scheuring’s The Experiment (2010) is yet another in a pretty long line of films that take the concept of a specific social experiment and uses it as a way to shine a light into the darkest recesses of the human psyche. In this case, the film re-examines the phenomenon of the Stanford Prison Experiment, although it’s also explicitly listed as both an adaptation of Mario Giordano’s novel Black Box and a remake of the German film, Das Experiment (2001), itself an adaptation of Black Box. Despite its slightly thorny genesis, The Experiment ends up being a fairly standard psychological drama, albeit one with more than its fair share of degrading situations and unpleasant scenarios. At the end of the day, however, the film ends up being just another example of the evil that men do when given free rein and how a complacent society is just as guilty as the monsters it allows to roam the land.

For those not aware, the Stanford Prison Experiment was a real social experiment that lasted for all of six days in 1971. In the experiment, a group of 24 men was divided into “prisoners” and “guards,” using the basement of an old Stanford University building as a mock “prison.” The purpose of the experiment was to test how subjects would break down into power relationships, based on their “roles,” but the whole thing ended up being a pretty spectacular disaster. The “guards” turned into brutal authority figures, using violence and psychological torture to break down the “prisoners,” all of which was allowed by the scientists running the test. Needless to say, very few academics will go on record as supporting psychological torture and the tests were shut down post-haste, leaving the whole failed experiment as a sort of sociological shorthand for unexpectedly brutal, authoritarian experiments on conflict study/resolution. Suffice to say that, over forty years later, the Stanford Prison Experiment still stands as a notable black eye for the world of psychology.

For the most part, The Experiment doesn’t veer far from this basic premise: a group of 26 men, all from different backgrounds and walks of life, are brought to an abandoned prison facility, separated into “guards” and “prisoners” and told to follow a set of five rules. When the rules are violated, punishment must be swift and unflinching: if rule-breakers are not suitably handled within 30 minutes of their violations, a red light will go on, signalling an end to the experiment. Since each of the men are set to earn $1000/day for their participation, it’s in everyone’s best interests to make sure that the light never goes on. This, of course, leads to the film’s central conflict/point: if anything goes, as long as the red light doesn’t come on, how can there possibly be any moral standard or guidelines? The short answer, of course, is that there can’t be: once the experiment revolves around punishing “wrongdoers,” a Pandora’s box is opened, unleashing all manner of horrors upon the “guards” and their unwilling charges.

We meet several of the test participants but two principals emerge pretty early on. The first is Travis (Adrien Brody), who serves as our “every-man” protagonist, a kind-hearted, smart, altruistic guy who’s just lost his job, met a new girl and wants to use his earnings to follow her to India for some good, old-fashioned spiritual awakening. Travis is the kind of guy who attends peace rallies but has no problem putting the hammer down on obnoxious, violent pro-war party-crashers. He’s a good guy, with a capital “G,” and he’ll come to represent the prisoner faction. The other principal player is Michael (Forrest Whitaker), a soft-spoken, shy, slightly nerdy 40-year-old who still lives at home with his brow-beating, ultra-religious mother. Despite his friendly, laid-back attitude, we get the distinct impression that Michael may not be playing with a full deck. Faster than you can say “Overlook Hotel,” Michael has been made a “guard” and has begun what can best be described as a “Nicholsonian” slide into complete bat-shit crazy territory.

Everyone else seems to fall in line somewhere between these two polar opposites: on the prisoner side, you have Nix (Clifton Collins, Jr.), whose tattoos seem suspiciously reminiscent of real Aryan Nation prison tats; Benjy (Ethan Cohn), a gawky, comic-book obsessed diabetic; and Oscar (Jason Lew), the only openly gay member of the group. On the guard side, we have Chase (Cam Gigandet), a ridiculously macho, sadistic “bro-dog”; Helweg (Travis Fimmel), a guyliner-wearing sycophant who follows whoever happens to be the current alpha male and Bosch (David Banner), a kind-hearted individual who becomes increasingly uneasy as “upholding the rules” quickly devolves into “inhuman torture.”

And devolve it does…rather quickly, too, if I might add. After an impromptu basketball game ends with Bosch’s bloody nose, Chase decides that a little punishment is in order and forces the prisoners to do push-ups. Helweg sees Chase as some sort of conquering hero but Michael isn’t so sure…until, that is, he comes to believe that the prisoners all need to be knocked down a peg or two. Targeting Travis, who is seen as the defacto leader, Michael initiates psychological warfare against the other man: he’s chained to his cell wall overnight, wearing only his underwear; blasted with a fire extinguisher; has his head forcibly shaved and, in one of the film’s most horrifying/nauseating moments, is repeatedly urinated on. Despite what they throw at him, however, Travis refuses to break or resort to violence: the rest of the prisoners continue to look up to him and the guards’ hold remains tenuous, at best. Michael is not a man to be trifled with, however, and power can be a heady drug. The harder that Travis resists, the harder that Michael strikes back, culminating in a shocking act of violence that ends up pitting the prisoners against the guards in final, bloody conflict.

Although The Experiment is neither a particularly original nor an especially thought-provoking film, there are a few elements that unnecessarily hobble the production. Chief among the issues, unfortunately, is Whitaker’s completely over-the-top performance. Normally an incredibly reliable presence, Whitaker seems to be channeling the worst excesses of Nicholas Cage here and his transition from “slightly subdued” to “full-bore loony” is so quick as to be virtually non-existent. When Whitaker really takes off, such as the absolutely awful bit where he screams, “Time to clean the TOY-A-LETT!,” at Brody’s character, the film pretty much grinds to a halt around him and becomes something closer to parody than drama. There is one fairly brilliant moment that gives visual representation to the notion that power gives men a boner but, aside from that bit, it’s almost impossible to take him seriously which makes suspension of disbelief a bit of a problem.

Brody, for his part, turns in one of those standard-issue performances that are just tuned-in enough but no substitute for his better genre performances in films like Splice (2009) or Predators (2010). This is more along the lines of his work in Wrecked (2010) or Giallo (2009): good enough but too prone to histrionics to be truly affecting.

The rest of the cast ends up being a mixed bag, although Cam Gigandet is a thoroughly repulsive presence as the rape-happy Chase, a character so loathsome that he seems to have been wholly subbed in from something like the modern remake of I Spit on Your Grave (2010). Travis Fimmel, by contrast, is a complete non-entity as Helweg, a character who ends up being even less three-dimensional than the rest of the paper-thin characters. In one of the film’s strangest moves, veteran weirdo and all-around awesome character actor Fisher Stevens gets what amounts to a cameo: they couldn’t have made him one of the test subjects?

There are plenty of tonal issues and more than a few plot holes (the resolution, in particular, makes less and less sense the more you think about it) but the uneven, generally OTT performances are definitely the crippling blow here. The film isn’t short on ideas, even if none of them are particularly interesting, but it’s impossible to take anything seriously when Whitaker is stomping around, bellowing, rolling his eyes and cracking prisoner skulls like he was a fairytale ogre. Writer/director Scheuring is probably best known as the creator of the TV series Prison Break, which would seem to make him a natural fit for something like this. There is plenty of “prison drama”-type brutality on display here (that urination scene will stick with you for a long, long time…trust me) but little of really seems to hit with any impact.

Minus issues like the overacting and over-reliance on cheesy slo-mo effects, The Experiment would be a well-made, if rather unexceptional prison-drama/thriller. As it stands, however, the film is, by turns, genuinely cringe worthy and unintentionally humorous. There are scattered moments of real power and impact but, for the most part, this has all been done before, to greater effect. Unless you’re an Adrien Brody or Forest Whitaker completest (or a prison-flick aficionado), skipping The Experiment is probably a safe bet: if the red light doesn’t go on after thirty minutes, you’ll know that you made the right choice.