The 31 Days of Halloween: Week 1 Mini-Reviews

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

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

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

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Thursday, 10/1

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

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

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

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

Friday, 10/2

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

Saturday, 10/3

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sunday, 10/4

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

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

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

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

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

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The 31 Days of Halloween – 2015 Edition (Week 1)

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

Welcome to the end of the first (short) week in October, otherwise known as the beginning of the annual 31 Days of Halloween. In the interest of keeping things short and sweet (my arm still prevents me from doing much typing and any writing), I’ll just list the films that we viewed from Thursday, October 1st, to Sunday, October 4th. As always, expect full reviews, write-ups, thoughts and opinions on all of these sometime in the future, when I’m a bit more together.

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10/1 — The Nightmare / Dark Was the Night / The Blood Lands / They

10/2 — The Houses October Built

10/3 — The American Scream / Saw / Monsters / Saw 2 / Monsters: Dark Continent / Saw 3 / Saw 4

10/4 — Cooties / The Boy / Deathgasm / Hellions / Turbo Kid

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While I won’t be able to clarify this for some time, let me end by saying that Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion’s debut feature, Cooties (co-written by Leigh Whannell and Ian Brennan), is probably the single best horror-comedy I’ve seen in ages. In fact, barring any upcoming ringers, it’s probably going to be one of my favorite films of 2015. Everything about the film is perfection and I urge horror fans to watch it as soon as possible.

5/26/15: He’s Got the World Up His Ass

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abusive relationships, America's Cup, Andy Canny, Angus Sampson, Australia, Australian films, based on a true story, Chris Pang, cinema, co-directors, co-writers, corrupt law enforcement, crime thriller, dark films, dramas, drug dealers, drug mule, drug smuggling, Ewen Leslie, film reviews, films, Fletcher Humphrys, foreign films, Geoff Morrell, Georgina Haig, Hugo Weaving, Ilya Altman, Insidious, Jaime Browne, John Noble, Leigh Whannell, mother-son relationships, Movies, multiple directors, multiple writers, Noni Hazlehurst, period-piece, Richard Davies, Saw, set in 1980s, set in Australia, Stefan Duscio, The Mule, Tony Mahony, writer-director-actor

If you think about it, being a drug mule has to have one of the worst risk-to-reward ratios of any job, roughly equitable to being the royal food taster in medieval times. Let’s see…you get to swallow multiple, latex-bundled packages full of potentially lethal narcotics, any of which could burst, come open or leak out into your stomach, flipping the hourglass on what could be the last, miserable moments of your existence. If this works out, you then get the white-knuckle thrill-ride of attempting to bypass police, customs, airport security and drug enforcement officials, often in countries where illegal drug possession carries a life sentence (if you’re lucky) or something a bit more permanent (if you’re not).

Get through all of that in one piece and you still have to deal with whomever gave you the job in the first place: historically, drug traffickers haven’t been known to be the most trust-worthy folks, so there’s still every possibility that you’ll get a bullet to the face instead of an envelope of cash for your troubles. Of course, if it all works out perfectly, well…you get to repeat the whole process all over again, rolling the dice anew every step of the way. Small wonder they don’t talk about this one on career day, eh?

While drug mule might not be the profession of choice for most, there’s always a first time for everything: under the right (or wrong) circumstances, the role of smuggler’s little helper might be the only one available. This, of course, is the crux of actor Angus Sampson’s co-directorial debut (he shares the role with Tony Mahony), the appropriately named The Mule (2014). Pulling triple-duty, Sampson co-writes, co-directs and stars in the film as the titular character, a meek, down-trodden nebbish who, quite literally, ends up sticking his future right where the sun doesn’t shine. In the process, Sampson and company come up with one of the most intense, unpleasant and genuinely impressive films of last year, a roller-coaster ride where the weak of stomach would be well-advised to keep a bucket close at hand, while those who like their entertainment pitch-black might just find a new favorite for their collections.

Set in Melbourne, circa 1983, we meet poor Ray Jenkins (Sampson), the kind of salt-of-the-earth, blue-collar guy who seems tailor-made for getting screwed over in film noirs. A rather simple TV repairman who’s really into his footie team, loves his mom (Noni Hazlehurst) and step-dad (Geoff Morell) and can chug a pint of beer faster than most folks can blink, Ray seems to have a pretty decent life. He’s also lifelong mates with Gavin (co-writer Leigh Whannell), who happens to be the captain of Ray’s football team…when he isn’t trafficking drugs for the team’s president, the by-turns jovial and terrifying Pat (John Noble), that is.

When the team decides to take a trip to Thailand to celebrate the end of another successful season, Gavin and Pat see it as the perfect opportunity to bring back another half key of heroin. Although he initially refuses Gavin’s request to help mule the drugs, he changes his tune once he realizes that his step-dad, John, is up to his eyeballs in debt to Pat: if Ray doesn’t help, Pat and his over-sized Russian thug will take John apart and put him back together upside down.

Once Gavin and Ray get to Thailand, however, Gavin calls an audible: he purchases an extra half key of product with the express purpose of selling it himself, without Pat’s knowledge. Despite changing his mind and wanting out, Ray is manipulated into swallowing the entire key of heroin, separated out into a multitude of condom-wrapped packages. With a gut full of drugs and enough anxiety for an entire continent, Ray makes it back to the Australian airport but gets busted after he acts like the kind of twitchy idiot who normally, you know, mules drugs.

Separated from his family, his mates and his normal life, Ray is taken to a motel by a couple of hard-ass detectives, Paris (Ewen Leslie) and Croft (Hugo Weaving), after he refuses to either admit to smuggling drugs or submit to a stomach x-ray. Paris and Croft make the situation quite clear: they’ll keep Ray there, under 24-hour surveillance, until they get the drugs…one way or another. From this point on, it becomes a (literal) fight against the clock, as Ray does everything he can to make sure that the drugs stay right where they are. The record for a mule keeping drugs in his system is 10 days, Croft smugly tells Ray: if he can “hold it” for longer, he’ll be a free man.

While Ray is staying true-blue from the isolation of his motel room prison, however, things are a little dicier on the outside. After figuring out what happened, Pat decides that Ray has become too much of a liability and tasks his best friend with the job of silencing him, once and for all. As all of these forces swirl around him, Ray, with the help of his cheerful public defender, Jasmine (Georgina Haig), puts a final, desperate plan into action. Pat and Gavin aren’t the only threats to his existence, however: sometimes, the baddest people are the ones you least suspect.

From the jump, The Mule is a ridiculously self-assured film, the kind of effortless thriller that the Coens used to pump out in their sleep. Despite this being his first full-length directorial effort, Sampson reveals a complete mastery over the film’s tone, triple impressive considering that he also co-wrote and stars in it. There’s never a point in the film where Ray is anything less than completely sympathetic and some of Sampson’s scenes are so unbelievably powerful that it’s rather impossible for me to believe no one saw fit to nominate him for any kind of acting award. In particular, the showstopping scene where Ray needs to re-ingest the packages is one of the most powerful, painful bits of acting I’ve ever seen. The biggest compliment I can pay Sampson is that he actually becomes Ray: it’s an astonishingly immersive performance.

Sampson isn’t the only actor who goes above and beyond, however: if anything, The Mule is a showcase for intense, masterful performances. Whannell, perhaps best known as the co-creator of the Saw franchise, along with James Wan, is perfect as Ray’s best mate/biggest problem. Weaving and Leslie are, likewise, perfect as the bad cop/bad cop duo, with Weaving turning in the kind of terrifying performance that should make folks remember how versatile and valuable he’s always been. Haig does some really interesting things with her portrayal of Ray’s lawyer, adding some shading and subtle deviousness to a character who could have been a crusading do-gooder on paper. Hazlehurst and Morrell are excellent as Ray’s loving parents, with each of them getting some nice opportunities to shine on their own: the scene where Hazlehurst tries to force-feed Ray some laxative-doped lamp is pretty unforgettable, as is the one where Morrell drunkenly confronts Pat and his murderous restaurant employee, Phuk (a likewise excellent Chris Pang).

And speaking of Pat: let’s take a few moments to sing the praises of John Noble, shall we? As an actor, Noble seems to have the singular ability to not only crawl beneath the skin of many a reprehensible character but beneath the audience’s skin, as well: in a long-line of memorable roles, Pat Shepard is, easily, one of Noble’s best and scariest. Riding the fine-line between joviality and cold-blooded, murderous evil, Pat is a perfect villain and Noble lustily grabs the film with both hands whenever he’s on-screen.

While the acting in The Mule is strictly top-notch, it also helps considerably that the actors have such a great script to work with. Loosely (very loosely) based on true incidents in Sampson and Whannell’s native Australia, The Mule is lean, mean and exquisitely plotted, breathlessly swinging from Ray’s motel imprisonment to Pat’s outside machinations with stunning ease. Full of great dialogue, thrilling setpieces and nicely intuitive emotional beats, The Mule reinforces that Sampson and Whannell are one of the most formidable teams in modern cinema. Throw in some excellent, evocative camerawork, courtesy of Stefan Duscio, along with a great score by Cornel Wilczek and Mikey Young, and you have a film that looks and sounds great: there are no smudged brushstrokes or missing lines in this particular “painting.”

To sum it up: I absolutely loved The Mule from start to finish. Smart, twisted, endlessly entertaining and constantly thrilling, it was nothing short of a minor masterpiece. At times reminiscent of the Coens’ iconic Fargo (1996), at other times bringing to mind Sam Raimi’s relentlessly bleak, under-rated A Simple Plan (1998), Sampson’s The Mule still manages to carve out its own unique acre of cinematic real estate. While you might not think that a film about a man steadfastly refusing to take a shit for over a week is your cup of tea, I’m here to tell you to think again: if you like smart, edgy films with brilliant acting, you’d be an absolute fool to pass up The Mule. Suffice to say, I’ll be sitting right here, breathlessly awaiting the next Sampson/Whannell joint: I’d advise you to do the same.

10/16/14 (Part Two): What a Blockhead

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31 Days of Halloween, Amber Valletta, Bob Gunton, Charlie Clouser, cinema, Dead Silence, Donnie Wahlberg, evil dolls, evil old lady, father-son relationships, film reviews, films, ghosts, horror film, horror movies, industrial score, Insidious, James Wan, Judith Roberts, Laura Regan, Leigh Whannell, Mary Shaw, Movies, mystery, Ravens Fair, revenge, Ryan Kwanten, Saw, sins of the fathers, small town life, The Conjuring, True Blood, ventriloquist, ventriloquist doll, ventriloquist dummies

If you think about it, there’s something inherently creepy about dolls: their tiny little hands…those dead, glassy eyes that seem to follow you around the room…the way they always seem to have just stopped moving, right before you happen to look at them…small wonder, then, that dolls, like clowns, make such great subjects for horror films. If dolls are inherently unsettling, however, ventriloquist dummies are just shy of existentially terrifying: after all, these little fellas are just like regular dolls but they can talk. You can keep your masked slashers, fanged vampires and walking dead: when hard-pressed, I’m not sure that I can think of anything more horrifying than animate, ventriloquist dolls with evil intentions.

Although it will probably never be regarded as the “definitive” ventriloquist film – that honor presumably goes to Richard Attenborough’s ultra-creepy Magic (1978) – James Wan’s Dead Silence (2007) is probably the best modern example of this (decidedly) niche sub-genre of horror film. While the film is far from perfect, there’s enough good material here to warrant attention from horror fans, although the film definitely falls short of living up to its full potential. More importantly, Dead Silence serves as a bridge between Wan’s torture-porn beginnings as the creator of the Saw franchise and his latter-day films, the widely acclaimed, mainstream-baiting Insidious and Conjuring franchises.

After kicking off with a rather bombastic, industrial-tinged credit sequence (frequent Nine Inch Nails collaborator Charlie Clouser provided the film’s score), Dead Silence introduces us to our protagonist, Jamie (Ryan Kwanten). Jamie has been sent a strange ventriloquist doll, by the name of Billy, from some anonymous benefactor. Since this is a horror film, the doll introduces itself by slaughtering Jamie’s loving wife, Lisa (Laura Regan), and setting Jamie up to take the fall for the murder. In order to clear his name, Jamie hightails it back to his boyhood home of Ravens Fair, which also happens to be the return address for the evil doll. Once there, Jamie falls into the local legend of Mary Shaw (Judith Roberts), a supposedly murdered ventriloquist who was involved in some pretty dark doings when she was alive. Billy was one of Mary’s star puppets when she was alive but was supposedly buried alongside her when she died.

As Jamie continues his investigation, he finds himself back with his estranged father, Edward (Bob Gunton), who happens to be wheelchair-bound after a recent stroke. While father and son might not have much use for each other now, the secret to Jamie’s current situation, as well as the future of Ravens Fair, lies in Edward’s past. In a town where the living keep the secrets of the dead, Jamie will discover that not everything dead stays buried…and revenge is always a dish best served cold.

In many ways, Dead Silence seems like a test-run for Wan’s big hit, Insidious (2010). Both films share a similar aesthetic, feature imaginative setpieces (although Dead Silence is a much gorier film than Insidious), an emphasis on mood over action (although Dead Silence features about 200% more obvious jump scares than Insidious and The Conjuring (2013), combined) and feature plots that focus on “the sins of the fathers,” as it were. For all of this, however, Dead Silence ends up being a much sloppier film than Insidious: the subtler, low-key moments end up jammed next to some thoroughly stupid jump scares that tend to devalue the whole affair.

Truthfully, the whole film feels just a little sloppy, as if Wan couldn’t be quite bothered to dot the Is and cross the Ts. For every scene like the excruciatingly measured bit where Billy turns, inch by inch, to stare at Jaime, we get obvious schlock like the clichéd ‘scary-face” effect that gets superimposed over Mary’s dolls, ruining an otherwise ultra-creepy look (note to Wan: dolls that turn and look at you are terrifying…dolls with crappy CGI faces are the exact opposite). Dead Silence ends up looking very expensive and polished but often plays like a lowest-common-denominator B-movie. In particular, the film starts to get supremely silly once we get to the obligatory “humans into dolls” bit, an idea that would seem to be ripe with nightmare intent but just comes across as goopy and kind of nonsensical, in practice. Add to this a truly over-the-top score that manages to not only telegraph but belabor some of the film’s scarier elements and it’s easy to see how the film falls short of its own goals.

Which, ultimately, is a bit of shame, since there’s so much truly great stuff here. Ryan Kwanten, from TV’s True Blood, is a thoroughly likable hero, even if he can occasionally blend into the woodwork and Judith Roberts is perfect as the venomous, demonic Mary Shaw: it’s easy to see where the “old lady demon” in Insidious got its genesis, although I dare say that Mary’s backstory and puppet army make her the infinitely more frightening of the two. Donnie Wahlberg’s Det. Lipton is a complete asshole but he’s an entertaining one, proving that it would be entirely possible to get one complete actor out of the Wahlbergs if one could combine Donnie’s over-the-top mannerisms with Markie’s studiously underplayed style.

While the effects are, for the most part, quite good (there also seems to be several practical effects bits, which are always appreciated), Dead Silence’s sound design ends up being the hidden MVP, helping to accentuate the atmosphere of key scenes while contributing to the finale’s nightmarish sense of unreality. It’s the kind of subtle sound design that would be used to much greater effect in Insidious but it’s kind of cool to watch Wan take baby steps with the notion here. For the most part, Dead Silence looks and sounds great, even if the film can, at times, have all of the weight and importance of a Twinkie.

Despite not quite living up to its full potential, Dead Silence is a lot of fun: Mary’s backstory is pretty great, the film moves quickly and the ending, while a little obvious, is still nicely realized and manages to pack a bit of a gut-punch. It’s just too bad that the film often comes across as lazy, more content with throwing out a tedious jump scare than maintaining a consistently oppressive atmosphere. If anything, think of Dead Silence as a test-run for Insidious: while Wan and screenwriter Leigh Whannell might have lit the fuse with their first attempt at a more mature, mainstream horror film after Saw (2004), they would need to wait a few years to truly appreciate the explosion that was Insidious.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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