Movie Review – The Town That Dreaded Sundown (2014)
In the spring of 1946 the Texas town of Texarkana experienced an odd string of unsolved serial murders, known collectively as the Moonlight Murders, by a masked assailant. In 1976 a docudrama based loosely on the murders was released. The Town That Dreaded Sundown was something of a proto-slasher, and the hooded killer it depicted would go on to influence later horror films, especially Jason’s sack-mask in Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981).
After watching the documentary Killer Legends (2014), which dealt in part with the Moonlight Murders, I felt it was time to look at the remake/sequel to the 1976 film. Carrying the same name, 2014’s The Town That Dreaded Sundown, directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, takes place in a world where both the Moonlight Murders and the 1976 movie exist, and a copycat is now stalking Texarkana, killing people in the same manner as the original film. An intriguing basis for a film, no doubt.
What results is an attempt at self-aware meta-horror in the style of Scream (1996). Unfortunately, the film stays too closely to the formula perfected by Wes Craven and the movie becomes predictable and lackluster. The film-makers seem more interested in sweeping camera movements than improvements to plot. The kills are derivative of typical slasher fare, being sure to insert gratuitous sexuality before most of the kills. I’m not one to complain about sex on film, but these scenes are pointless.
I know full well that many, if not most, slashers fans will disagree with me. I enjoy the subgenre, but more its earliest entries from the late 70s and early 80s, when it still took itself seriously, before it became a formulaic shadow of its former self. This film has been referred to as a return to form for slashers, but it’s not the form I prefer. I have fun watching the mindless popcorn variety, and it’s no secret that these are the overwhelming majority that were made, but I have no desire to see it reborn. I’d prefer to see the slasher movie forward instead of retread well-worn paths, and this movie doesn’t do that for me. Let the old formula go the way of Aqua Net and legwarmers. Even the meta angle, after the Scream movies, is tired.
This is all not to say that The Town That Dreaded Sundown is a bad film, because it’s not. It’s a good slasher, but the bar is so low that such a compliment isn’t high praise, and that’s partly the problem. It doesn’t try to move the subgenre forward, but merely tries to conform in the best way possible to what we already have come to expect. Given the movie’s meta-sequel status it could have been something deeper and cleverer, but it settles for the middle of road and doesn’t have much to say. If you’ve seen the Scream films, you’ve seen all that this film has to offer.
A few years back I watched the horror documentary Cropsey (2009). It began with an exploration of the urban legend of Cropsey, a child-killing maniac who lived in the woods of Long Island. He was a campfire tale told at sleepaway camps throughout the 70s and 80s, one which even inspired the slasher film The Burning (1981). The film then found connections with a real child-killer in the same area and to the infamous Willowbrook State School. The tale which unfolded was unsettling and fascinating and it made me wish there were more documentaries like it.
In 2014 the same filmmaker, Joshua Zeman, obliged and released Killer Legends for Chiller. Instead of focusing on one urban legend, this movie delves into four of them: the hook man, the babysitter killer, the poisoned Halloween candy, and the killer clown. It seeks out the real life events which may have inspired them and attempts to test their validity. The stories are disturbing, but also informative. Rather than reinforcing our fears the investigations tend to have the effect of relieving them and revealing them to be exaggerated or misplaced entirely. Nevertheless, the film doesn’t hold back from showing actual crime photos and other unsettling primary sources.
Killer Legends is thoroughly enjoyable and watchable, even if it’s not as hard-hitting as the filmmakers sometimes try to make it seem. I enjoy documentaries in general and I appreciate having ones which cross into my favorite fictional genre.
I saw Paul W.S. Anderson’s Event Horizon when it first came out in 1997. Preparing for a re-watch, I recalled really liking the premise but being less impressed by the execution, especially the ending. Though it received mostly negative reviews when it was first released, in recent years its reputation has grown and many genre fans appear look upon it fondly. With this in mind, I decided to give it another go, hoping I’d find more to appreciate this time around, as I have with some other 90s films like Wes Craven’sScream(1996).
The premise is indeed intriguing. In the screenplay by Philip Eisner we follow a rescue crew who are investigating a spaceship called the Even Horizon that disappeared to the outer reaches of space and has now mysteriously returned. Unlike the 90s trend of sending franchise monsters into space for no good reason, here we have a legitimate premise for a sci-fi horror film. To my sincere disappointment, that’s where my favorable views of this film, like a real event horizon, end.
Instead of finding more to appreciate on my most recent watch, I found more criticize. A really cool idea is bogged down by poor dialogue, thin characterizations, and an incoherent plot. A character is smart one minute and stupid the next, depending on the needs of the story. In just one instance of idiocy, one woman goes chasing after what appears to be her son after we’ve already established that her son is safe back on Earth and that the ship is haunted and trying to kill them with mindfuckery.
What I remembered as being nods to Aliens (1986) and Hellraiser (1987) feel more like rip-offs, especially as Pinhead was killing people in a space station just a year prior (Hellraiser: Bloodline). Worst of all is Dr. William Weir’s change, which is wholly unconvincing and turns him into a poor-man’s Pinhead. Sam Neill is a fine actor, don’t get me wrong, but he’s simply not scary. Lastly, while the special effects are pretty good, the scares they serve often don’t make sense and, worse, are generally cheesy.
Anderson has claimed that there is about ten minutes of footage that was cut from the film to please producers and that, if put back in, would solve many of the pacing and narrative problems. Unfortunately, most of that footage has either been lost or damaged. As it currently stands, Event Horizon is a mess of a film kept afloat by a great sci-fi setting and good special effects. But it’s too much style over substance, and rather than only disliking the ending this time I found myself irritated with the movie shortly after the halfway point.
2009’s Dead Snow, by Norwegian director Tommy Wirkola, told of a group of students fending off attacks from Nazi zombies at a cabin in the Norwegian mountains. The film was humorous and gory, but at the time I missed the overall joke, which is that these students were so enamored with American cinema that they mistook the undead Nazis for Hollywood zombies rather than as a draugr, a revenant of Norwegian folklore obsessed with protecting its treasure. Had they been more educated about their own culture, they may have fared a little better against the undead. Dead Snow is a cultural lesson that is easily lost in translation for foreign viewers.
Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead (2014), filmed in Iceland, picks up right after the first film, and it does so with gratuitous gusto. It’s lighter in tone and heavier on gore. Want to see Nazi and Soviet zombies do battle? Want to see three American nerds – including a Star Wars fan girl and a Trekker – team up with a gay Norwegian to kick some zombie ass? Want to have hilariously disturbing images stuck in your head hereafter each time you hear Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart”? Of course you do! And Dead Snow 2 brings it. It’s one of those movies where you keep asking yourself, “Are they really going to go there?” And the answer is almost always YES, and you’re glad that they did. Plus we get the hulking Derek Mears, who played Jason in the 2009 reboot of Friday the 13th, as the reanimated Soviet leader Stavarin.
Stig Frode Henriksen in Dead Snow 2.
The references to American cinematic culture are more endearing this time around. Instead of lamenting its prevalence, it embraces and revels in it. My only real gripe with these movies is that I never felt a connection to the main protagonist, but the second film solves that by surrounding him with likable allies that we gladly root for. The first movie was filmed only in Norwegian, but this sequel was filmed in English as well. While I certainly recommend the first film, the plot is so thin that you don’t really need to see it to watch this movie, and if I could only recommend one it would be this sequel.
Doc of the Dead (2014), written and directed by Alexandre O. Philippe, who also directed 2010’s The People vs. George Lucas, is a documentary which focuses on the zombie subgenre and its cultural impact. Made with the help of Red Letter Media, whose YouTube channel features one of my favorite shows, “Best of the Worst,” and having interviews with the iconic Bruce Campbell and some of horror’s other greats, this film should have been a home run.
However, at least for my tastes, Doc of the Dead is too light on film history and too bloated with cutesy zombie-culture consumerism filler that I found myself quickly getting bored, and I don’t have a particularly short attention span. It’s not a bad movie but it’s about twenty minutes too long and about twenty IQ points too shallow to be really engaging. Not to mention, the perspective which it examines is purely American, missing the chance for some cross-cultural insight. In an era where we have superb horror culture documentaries like 2010’s Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy, horror fans can and should expect more from documentarians who choose to cover our genre. Doc of the Dead is light nonfiction that can be watched with the family around Halloween, but you won’t come away with a more than superficial understanding of zombies and their place in culture after viewing it, and for a film that markets itself as “the definitive zombie culture documentary,” that kind of misses the point.
Discussion of a film like Deadgirl (2008) is the kind for which the phrase “trigger warning” was created. After watching it, considering its disturbing nature, I couldn’t shake a certain notion that I felt shouldn’t be there. I asked a friend to view it, warning him of the premise, so as to give me a second opinion. Despite its subject matter and all of its flaws, we both agreed, surprisingly, that the viewing had been worthwhile.
Two disenfranchised teens, Rickie (Shiloh Fernandez) and J.T. (Noah Segan), skip class and decide to break into an abandoned mental asylum. After drinking warm beers and vandalizing the premises they are chased by a stray dog into a remote section of the building from which there is no clear exit. They pry open a rusted door and find a woman naked, tied to a gurney and covered in plastic – and still alive. The two characters diverge at this point as Rickie wants to get help and J.T. wants to keep her as a sex slave. J.T.’s dominant personality wins out and Rickie, though not participating, keeps J.T.’s actions a secret. Audiences will certainly have their opinion of this movie germinating at this point, and much of this will rely on their ability to buy into the quick, horrific decision made by J.T. As a side note, I live in a fairly quiet New England town where, when I was in high school, a teenage girl was kidnapped, raped, drowned in a river, and had her corpse violated by her supposed peers – teens that remind me in many ways of J.T. As morally corrupt a decision as this character makes, it is certainly a possible one, and perhaps that’s what makes it truly horrific.
Soon J.T.’s violent nature leads to the discovery that the girl cannot be killed and that she seems to have an uncontrollable urge to bite anything that comes near her mouth. If the viewer as not figured out what she is at this point, maybe they’re not ready for this film. The situation, naturally, spirals out of control, and the plot takes the form of both the predictable and the surprising thereafter, including an unexpectedly hilarious kidnapping attempt gone awry.
Deadgirl is a film that deals directly with rape culture and the effects of misogyny. These teenage males have been raised to view women as commodities. “She’s like something out of a magazine,” says J.T. when first feasting his eyes upon the dead girl. He later takes this a step farther by placing a magazine photo over her battered face. Women are prizes to be won and possessed. Even Rickie, who should be our protagonist, wants to be a hero but is allured by the dark side. His attempts to help the dead girl and later his unrequited love, Joann, are motivated less by sympathy and more by an outdated chivalrous notion which sets him as a female protector. Manhood is continually defined by the males as having sex with women, and they are pressured to “man up” and not refuse to take advantage of the writhing corpse strapped to the gurney, no matter how cold, dry, or foul smelling she may be. This is not so much misandry as it is showing the terrible effects that misogyny has upon both women and men. In a world inhabited by a living dead girl, the teenage males become the real monsters.
Jenny Spain in Deadgirl.
Other themes are explored in interesting ways, contributing to J.T.’s malicious motivations. Rickie and J.T. come from poor families, and though they appear to be on different paths, with Rickie looking to a life beyond his meager trappings and J.T. resigned to it, they are both too afraid to be alone to leave the other behind. Rickie’s pining for Joann, who dates jocks, is seen by J.T. as Rickie trying to rise above his class, and thus leave him behind. When trying to convince Rickie to choose the dead girl over Joann, J.T. declares that “this is the best we’re ever going to have!” For J.T. the dead girl’s chamber becomes his domain, and it’s appropriate that it’s located in the basement. For once he is in charge, no longer subject to the standards of school or society. “Think about it,” he tells Rickie, “Folks like us are just cannon fodder for the rest of the world. But down here we’re in control, and we call the shots down here, man. It feels good, doesn’t it?” The dead girl is J.T.’s trophy, a symbol of manhood his fellow male teens will recognize.
Lastly, Deadgirl is about that stage in a teenager’s life when they realize life won’t turn out the way they’ve dreamed. This realization has a profound effect upon Rickie, and gives insight into the seemingly strange ending which at first appears out of his character.
Deadgirl, written by Trent Haaga and directed by Marcel Sarmiento and Gadi Harel, is a movie that manages to rise above some of its more mediocre elements. It begins a bit shoddy but progressively becomes more eloquent and enveloping during the second half. Noah Segan won the 2009 Fright Meter Award for Best Actor for his performance as J.T., an award for which Shiloh Fernandez was also nominated. And of course, Jenny Spain’s performance as the titular dead girl is brave, compelling, and disturbingly convincing.
It’s not a film for everyone. If the subject matter it too disturbing, it is an easy film to pass up. But for those who do watch it, they may come away feeling surprised, and perhaps more than a little uneasy and guilty, for having enjoyed it.
Julia, a psychology grad student, meets a childhood friend, Billy, at a diner late at night who, after babbling about “they” and the night terrors they shared as children, unexpectedly shoots himself. At the funeral Julia meets two of Billy’s other friends who also had night terrors, and they begin to suspect that what terrorized them as children might be real and is returning to get them now. This is actually a great premise for a film, exploring childhood fears and what could lurk in the dark places. Unfortunately, They (2002), directed by The Hitcher’s (1986) Robert Harmon, never rises above mediocrity, despite providing a few jump scares and an atmospheric setting. It is a ready-for-cable, PG-13 horror movie that never really tries to break from the formula and trappings that so often plague movies of that rating.
They does well at creating tension-filled scenes without relying on sex and gore to keep our attention, and the CGI creatures are actually quite good, but the thinly-written characters and plot ensure that we care nothing for the fate of the victims. Julia is played by a capable Laura Regan whose performance nevertheless lacks the depth needed to empathize with the audience. Other characters do little except provide for a predictable body count. Indeed most of the scares, though some being effective, are of the clichéd variety. Nevertheless, rare moments of genuine creepiness, such as the face of a little girl paused on a television screen, rarely shine through.
The script is credited to Brandon Hood, but is actually the result of numerous rewrites by many authors, and it shows as it is, overall, uninterested in providing explanations for what is going on, and may explain the presence of so many plot points that go nowhere. Truly, the story continually forgoes following interesting plot-lines in preference for hitting the tired old horror steps. For instance, rolling blackouts are mentioned many times throughout the film, but they are never used within the script. The fact that the creatures can affect light makes the mention entirely pointless. Additionally, the characters make absurd decisions which ensure they put themselves in harm’s way even when they know danger is lurking. This is most illustrative when Julia abandons the security of her boyfriend’s well-lit apartment for a deserted subway at two in the morning, knowing full-well that the creatures coming to get her move in darkness. It is difficult to care for such a profoundly stupid character.
Similarly, Julia being a psychology student is significant in alluding to the possibility that the events she is witnessing are merely playing out in her mind, and that her sanity is in question. This aspect is explored more fully in an alternate ending which is ultimately more interesting and helps to fix some of the narrative shortcomings of the rest of the film.
They is a film that might have been promising, but is ultimately forgettable.
John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness (1987) is an interesting amalgam of classic horror films, offering us some of their best aspects while also giving viewers a fresh take on the “demonic” story. Horror fans will quickly recognize the overall plot here: a group of people are trapped in a building while malevolent entities try to destroy them from without and within. The group at hand is a research team made up of scientists, a priest, and a theologian. A mysterious, liquefied evil is infecting people, turning them into violent zombie-like soldiers controlled by a malevolent will and who in turn are empowered to infect others. From these elements one can see the influences of the genre’s classics, including The Haunting (1963), Night of the Living Dead (1968),The Legend of Hell House (1973), and even Carpenter’s own earlier masterpiece, The Thing (1982). In fact, this film is the second installment of what Carpenter refers to as his “Apocalypse Trilogy,” which begins with The Thing and ends with In the Mouth of Madness (1994). I have always been a sucker for ensemble horror, and this is no exception. And rather than be distracted by these similarities, they instead pay homage in endearing ways.
The script is smart as it interweaves quantum theory, religious philosophy, and a healthy smattering of pseudoscience in a way that is believable and compelling. The result is not your average tale of good versus evil, or even God versus Satan, but rather a dystheistic scenario in which man is confronted and endangered by the forces of the universe. It takes what man understands of reality and spirituality and turns it upon its head, calling into question the nature of evil and God’s role in the world. There are some genuine scares in the movie and Carpenter builds the tension well, adding some shocking, unsettling imagery. The cast, too, is compiled of capable actors, though there are no stand-out performances.
Unfortunately, the film is sometimes clunky and has begun to show its age. Its pacing, for instance, is unnecessarily slow to start. Carpenter shows some good direction by establishing some character relations, but in the end those relations do not matter much or contribute to any real emotional impact. Despite these relatively minor flaws, however, Prince of Darkness is a horror film with a truly interesting premise. Besides, it’s got a cameo of Alice Cooper as a possessed homeless “schizo,” so what more could you ask for?
Shutter (2008) is yet another Americanized remake of a well-received, ghost-in-the-machine Asian horror film. It is not the worst by a long shot, and that’s the extent to which it can boast. I have not seen the original Thai film on which it is based, and therefore cannot tell which story elements can be credited to its predecessor, but Shutter is a movie with some intriguing plot qualities that unfortunately become buried in a timid approach with mediocre scares.
Directed by Masayuki Ochiai, the plot tells of a newlywed American couple who move to Japan so the husband, played by Joshua Jackson, can resume his work as a photographer. While driving they hit a woman in the street who mysteriously disappears, and thereafter they begin to see apparitions in photos and a ghostly presence which malevolently stalks them and kills their friends. The setting of the film is an attempt to recreate the success of 2004’s The Grudge in establishing the foreboding atmosphere of an outsider in a foreign land, but this effect is nullified when nearly every “Japanese” character with extensive English dialogue speaks with a perfect American accent.
The characters are never deeply developed in the film and the overly pretty actors are used more as models to showcase fashion. We care absolutely nothing for their fate, and therefore there is no tension. This is particularly true for the couple’s friends who are killed shortly after we meet them in quick succession in ways that are both laughable (a spirit-bullet-of-sorts through the eye) and/or boring. Unfortunately, the film’s approach to the now familiar techniques of Asian horror that were used with such gusto in the past is so tame that they’re stale.
I have to wonder, too, if there is more to the script than made it to the screen, for some elements are unclear. For instance, is their friend Bruno in his underwear because he’s too distraught to dress, or because of some sexual implication? Such ambiguity and reliance on suggestion are important for a film like this, the target audience of which is teens, to maintain a PG-13 rating, but too often these suggestions seem muddled or are missed entirely. This is also glaringly obvious when the couple hits the girl with their car on a rainy night, and the scene fades to black. When it fades back it is snowing, and when they get out of the car a moment later the snow has stopped falling and there is a thick layer of it on the ground. I have to assume that they both were knocked unconscious, though this is unlikely and the actors don’t indicate it, and it instead comes across as a mistake in editing continuity, which it still may very well be. Other elements of the script itself are unintentionally laughable, such as the way in which the “spirit photography” angle is worked into the script in an absurdly convenient way.
There is an interesting twist to the film’s ending and I will give the movie credit for not trying to rely exclusively on fake jump-scares, which is rare in a teen-targeted horror, but the air of dread it tries to muster is ultimately tired and ineffective.
Movie Review – The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death (2014)
The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death (2014) is a sequel to 2012’s The Woman in Black and the first Hammer Film Productions sequel since 1974’s Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell. Directed by Tom Harper and written by Jon Croker, the plot is adapted from a story written by Susan Hill, author of the original The Woman in Black novel. In it we follow Eve Parkins in WWII, played by Phoebe Fox, who as deputy headmistress is charged with escorting and caring for London orphans whose homes were destroyed during the Nazi blitz. With housing scarce and the attack of bombers ever-present, the government commandeers the abandoned Eel Marsh mansion as a makeshift orphanage, unknowing that the place is inhabited by a malevolent entity that targets children.
In my review of Hammer’s previous offering, 2014’s The Quiet Ones, I praised the detail of the period set designs while condemning its over-reliance on fake jump scares. With Angel of Death, Hammer moves further into both territories. The period setting of the film is beautiful, brought to life by crisp cinematography, nice costumes, and impressive set design. However, sometimes scenes are so dark and murky that making anything out, scary or mundane, was an unnecessary chore. The war is incorporated in interesting ways, especially in regard to the character of Harry Burnstow, played by Jeremy Irvine. Performances are generally strong, with Helen McCrory as Headmistress Jean Hogg being the notable example.
There are a few genuinely creepy moments in Angel of Death, but they’re diluted by a constant assault of irritating false scares. Remember the last time you were watching a beautiful scene and someone needlessly jumped out and scared the crap out of you? Remember how much fun that was for you? Me neither. Jump scares are fine in horror films when they are something we should be genuinely afraid of – after all, the thrill of being scared is partly why we watch them. But here we get a crow flying in front of a window, Parkins tripping over bells, people popping up quickly for no damn reason constantly, each time with the sound blaring to announce their arrival, as though we could miss it. It distracts us from the story. It’s annoying. It’s insulting. It ruins a tension-filled experience as the heart is sent racing for the dozenth time for no purpose at all pertaining to the plot. Towards the end we get a few jump scares used right, but by this point the viewer’s good will and patience has been worn too thin.
Please Hammer, don’t squander that good will. I love your sets and your attention to period piece horror. Your camerawork is beautiful and the stories have been promising. But lay off the damn fake jump scares; it’s beneath you. It makes the kind of movie that nongenre critics would be genuinely surprised by into exactly the sort of movie they lay hate upon the genre for, and in cases like this I can’t blame them.
John Carpenter’s The Fog (1980) is considered a minor horror classic, though an imperfect one. Among Carpenter’s impressive early outings it is, by his own admission, the one with the largest possibility for improvement. It’s a thoroughly enjoyable film, not so much for its effects, and it’s not a very scary film, but the story that it tells of a leper colony being betrayed by the founders of a quiet island town that returns after one hundred years in a thick fog to exact revenge upon the descendants, is a fantastic backdrop to a ghost story. If any horror movie could be improved with modern technology, with the potential to be greater than the original, it is this one.
What a profound disappointment, then, is the lifeless, boring remake that is 2005’s The Fog, directed by Rupert Wainwright. Wainwright had directed 1999’s Stigmata which, although not a great film, showed more promise than this offering. Though the basic story remains the same, save for a few tweaks, all other elements have been dumbed down and tamed for the adolescent crowd. The film is a perfect example of the same manufactured, generic, formulaic celluloid that is continuously churned out of the Hollywood horror factory, complete with beautiful actors in their underwear ready for the teenage consumer market.
In addition to the audience’s target IQ, the film has also lowered the ages of its main protagonists, which works only to its detriment. Instead of the everyman Tom Atkins, who is easy to relate to and identify with, we get the handsome, jockish Tom Welling, who adds nothing to the film and who unfortunately has no screen chemistry with the female lead, played by Maggie Grace. The characters are paper thin and are made to fit their stereotyped roles, including the token black friend who exists only for comic relief. Other problems persist, such as that the film cannot seem to decide on the motive of the mist and the final scenes leave the viewer dumbfounded and feeling cheated.
I have very little interest in the fashion world, but I am aware that designers will create budget-friendly, off-the-rack clothing based upon their top-of-the-line, thousand-dollar pieces. Movies such as this remind me of those identical, ten-thousand-of-a-kind blouses. They are of a lesser quality and made for the maximum number of consumers possible, marketed as the latest thing when really it’s the same crap they sold you twenty years ago, maybe even twenty days ago. Most buyers know they are not paying for the best. Unfortunately, though, too many young people being introduced to horror will not know that this new version may have capable CGI and a hot blonde, but it is a poor, dollar-store quality film when compared even to its flawed original. It is New Coke. Please, if you must see one, stick with the recipe that worked the first time around.
In July of 2015 actress and model Paz de la Huerta filed a lawsuit against the makers of Nurse3D (2013) for ruining her career. De la Huerta played the lead role of Abby, a nurse who kills unfaithful men until she forms an unhealthy obsession with a fellow nurse. When the nurse is unresponsive to her advances she sets out to ruin her life. De la Huerta claimed that she was injured on set, treated badly by the director, Douglas Aarniokoski, and that her career has suffered since.
Nurse 3D is not what anyone would call a good film, though it did meet with mild success. The script is rather rote and poorly conceived, borrowing elements of Single White Female (1992) and American Psycho (2000), yet the direction never seems to truly embrace the trashy B-movie nature of its premise and plot. It appears written as a parody but takes itself too seriously, and therefore it’s never as fun as it should be. Even the potentially good gore is ruined by excessive CGI blood sprays (or were those supposed to be funny? The confused tonal nature doesn’t help the viewer to decide).
The movie is marketed as an erotic thriller, but it’s hardly erotic. De la Huerta tries very hard to be sexy with pouting lips, swinging hips, and a constantly breathy voice, as well as being gratuitously nude much of the time, but these tricks never truly mask her monotone performance. She does a serviceable job, which is the most that can be said for the rest of the cast, but looks bored throughout much of the film. I can’t deny that I was too.
Horror is a genre that, when a film is done badly, can easily morph into comedy. Perhaps if I had watched Creature of Darkness (2009), directed by Mark Stouffer, with some buddies and a few judgment-impairing drinks it may have been funny, but viewing it alone and sober was nothing short of painful.
In it, we see a group of campers being slowly picked off by an alien known as The Catcher – and it makes me shudder to think just how wrong the direction of a masterpiece like Predator (1987) could have gone. Apparently, this cloaked and hooded creature has the ability to travel through time and across light-years in an advanced ship with the purpose of collecting human specimens for an intergalactic museum. However, its weapon technology is effectively limited to sticky spit and tripping tongues, some terrible CGI openings in the ground, and a hand-axe that it takes from the campers. There are some capable animatronics in the (overly used) close-ups of the monster, but the CGI is subpar even for the video-games of a decade ago.
The performances are confused and awkward (as I imagine the actors must have been and felt) and the long expositions are ridiculous, and I’m someone who has watched televangelists for laughs. The film is subpar even for SyFy originals. It would be one thing if this was all done intentionally for laughs, but there’s no reason to think this.
There are two 90s teen stars in the cast, being Matthew Lawrence and Devon Sawa, who many will remember from Final Destination (2000). As a bit of trivia, Sawa played this film’s director, Mark Stouffer, in the 1997 biopic Wild America, about the director’s childhood. Indeed, Stouffer is an award-winning nature film-maker. Unfortunately, that talent doesn’t cross genres here.
Movie Review – Scream (1996)/ Wes Craven In Memoriam
Yesterday, horror lost a legend. Wes Craven passed away at the age of 76 after a quiet battle with brain cancer. When I read the article heading last night while lying in bed, scrolling through my newsfeed, it hit me like a gut punch. Wes Craven’s career was certainly a varied one. For every hit there was a miss, but when he got things right he redefined the medium and made his colleagues up their game. The Last House on the Left (1972), though not a great film, is still a visceral experience and a post-Vietnam genre touchstone. A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) is an undeniable classic, arguably giving modern culture its most iconic monster in Freddy Kruger. The dream-dwelling killer pierced every facet of pop culture. As a kid I had a plastic Freddy glove and rubber mask (and I now have a beer koozie bearing his scarred face). However, Craven’s strongest directorial effort was yet to come.
Wes Craven
It was tough being a young horror fan in the early and mid-nineties. Most of the offerings were mediocre and formulaic save for a few gems like The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Candyman (1992), or Se7en (1995). Then 1996 came and a wave of imaginative horror flowed in, including From Dusk Till Dawn, The Frighteners and The Craft. Though all were strong entries, none had the impact on the genre, and certainly not on Hollywood’s hunger for profit, like Wes Craven’s Scream.
Note: While I will avoid outright spoilers, even a casual reading of the following paragraphs will likely suggest important plot points better experienced by a watching of the film.
I saw Scream when it was first released. Though it did not invent the self-referential “meta” subgenre, as we had prior entries like Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990) and of course WesCraven’s New Nightmare (1994), it quickly became the subgenre’s standard. As a fifteen-year-old I had not seen many of the movies that Scream references. Though I loved horror movies, my knowledge of slashers was limited, so while I knew there were jokes and nods being made, I failed to appreciate many of them. My impression of the film was that it was decent, but I felt that its blockbuster status was overblown and unwarranted. The next two sequels were of diminishing quality and the dull teen slashers that the movie spawned as Hollywood hopped on the blood-red gravy train only reaffirmed and deepened my view that the movie was overrated.
Fourteen years later I’ve matured as both a general film viewer and as a horror fan. I’ve seen many more slashers, particularly the pioneering films of the late 1970s and early 1980s, and I’ve come to respect them much more than I did in the past. It’s still not my favorite subgenre, but they’ve grown on me. I felt it was time to go back to Scream and give it another chance.
Scream was penned by Kevin Williamson, who would later go on to create Dawson’s Creek, and was inspired by the real life Gainsville Ripper who killed five teenagers in Florida back in the late 1980s. Wes Craven, of course, was already a horror legend who had twice before revolutionized the genre and this film would once again be credited with the same, revitalizing horror marketability and giving us thus far the last true slasher icon in Ghostface, who unlike his predecessors was klutzy and seemed to get his victims more by perseverance than by skill or craft. Some give Scream too much credit in putting horror films back on track, when really it was the terrible events of 9/11 and the fears which followed that inspired the latest creative renaissance of movie horror. But Scream made money, and for Hollywood, that counts for everything.
Drew Barrymore in Scream (1996)
The film pays homage to horror’s history in sometimes subtle, and sometimes obvious, ways. It opens with a move inspired by Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), supposedly at Drew Barrymore’s suggestion, and then follows teen Sydney Prescott, played by Neve Campbell. We find her dealing with the repercussions of her mother’s murder and the prospect that she accidentally falsely accused a man now on death row. And now a serial killer who may be connected with her mother’s death is loose on the town. He’s harassing his next victims with phone calls and seemingly taking cues from slasher movies. Everyone around Sydney is the possible killer – her boyfriend Billy, his friend Stu, the film-geek Randy, the dorky Deputy Dewey, the tabloid reporter Gale Weathers, and even her own missing father.
The script is tight and witty and first time viewers are expertly enticed down forking trails of suspicion, constantly second-guessing themselves. As Randy explains of horror movies to Stu, “There’s a formula to it. A very simple formula. Everybody’s a suspect!” Wes Craven exploits that formula with his visuals. The twist at the end was ingenious for its time and one I recall not seeing coming when watching it in 1996. Watching a second time is still entertaining as comments and looks between characters take on different meanings. One can appreciate just how fine a line needed to be walked to keep the mystery alive and its success makes it highly rewatchable.
In Scream the teenage victims know they are in a horror film without breaking the fourth wall. They know the rules and either willfully obey or disregard them at their own peril. They deconstruct the film for the audience as it moves along in a manner that perfectly encapsulates late mid-nineties cynicism. Movies make up the characters’ language, relationships, and understanding of the world. As Sydney says to Billy, “But this is life. This isn’t a movie.” To which Billy responds, “Sure it is, Sid. It’s all, it’s all a movie. It’s all one great big movie. But you can’t pick your genre.” The movie acknowledges and eviscerates the previous decade of sub-par slashers that had been fed to fans. It works to twist our expectations and bring the subgenre to another level with smarter victims, both potential and actual. It serves as both a criticism of horror’s state and a celebration of its tropes. It fulfills this promise with Sydney, who as a final girl turns the tables and deals out punishment to those who would harm her with a hefty dose of their own medicine. She doesn’t merely survive – armed with her horror knowledge, she triumphs. Even with all its self-analysis Scream still manages to be an effective slasher in its own right.
The acting is relatively strong throughout, though sometimes overacting creeps in. This is the case with Matthew Lillard’s Stu, however, his performance in the last act becomes the movie’s highlight as he steals the scenes with a delivery that is both humorous and perfectly pathetic. Jamie Kennedy is memorable as Randy, and I can’t help but love the scene where he’s watching Halloween (1978) while Ghostface is behind him and he’s saying to the screen, as if to himself, “Jamie, turn around. Turn around, Jamie!”
Scream poignantly captures the youth of the era. The nineties were a time of teen angst, not derived from hardship, but from cynicism and boredom and a reaction to the frivolous popular culture of the 1980s. There were no wars in which to be swept up. Clinton was in power and our only oval office anxieties revolved around cigar placement. The internet bubble was expanding and the economy was strong. Yet grunge and industrial music were popular, music that was disillusioned with and questioning of society, which then gave way to bratty pop punk, the purposefully obnoxious style of which began to dominate airwaves. It was a period of transition as Gen X gave way to Gen Y. There was an arrogance and entitlement that emerged in the youth. Combined with anger, the villains of Scream embody this spirit entirely. They’ve got it all figured out, or so they think.
Obviously, I appreciated Scream far more this time around. It has aged surprisingly well. I recognized and understood more references, laughed at the cameos, and I found respect in Craven’s direction of the material. Truly, there are many, many allusions to, references to, and scenes inspired by horror film history. And it’s genuinely funny, but the laughs never come at the cost of the horror.
It’s not without its shortcomings, certainly. The film begins strong and ends strong, but the middle is a bit uneven. Also, Ghostface tends to pop up in odd locations without regard to logic, such as the girls’ restroom or a grocery store, and I’m uncertain if this is meant to be yet another jab at slasher tropes or simply the film failing to learn from its own lessons.
Regardless, Scream is filled with scenes, both gory and funny, that become emblazoned into the consciousness, such as Casey’s opening sequence, the blood-red windshield, or Stu’s “Ow! You fuckin’ hit me with the phone, dick!” (which was apparently just one of Lillard’s many adlibs that Craven found hilarious and kept in).
When I first began making a list of the horror films I’ve seen and grading them, I gave Scream a “C+” because I thought it was only slightly above average but, as I said before, ultimately overrated. Unlike many other nineties horror films that I originally disliked and have since revisited, I am now convinced that Scream’s exalted status is warranted. Unlike the previous fourteen years, the next fourteen will undoubtedly be filled with many, many rewatches.
Thank you for the nightmares, Mr. Craven. You will be missed.
The Fourth Kind (2009) partly employs the successful found footage approach of The BlairWitch Project (1999) and Paranormal Activity (2009) to the largely neglected horror subgenre of alien abduction. Splicing supposed “actual footage” with Hollywood quality dramatizations, often in split screen, the film manages to create a unique and effective viewing experience that really allows the audience’s imagination to run wild.
Most of the genuine scares are relegated to the “archival” footage which the film claims was taken in 2000 (my reason for using quotations marks will be explained below). This includes the psychiatric therapy sessions conducted by the protagonist, Dr. Abigail Tyler, which eventually show disturbing body-bending levitations. Assumingly due to magnetic disruptions of some sort from the aliens, each time the footage begins to show the evidence of an abduction the video will distort and obscure the audience’s view, leaving only glimpses of what is transpiring accompanied by an unsettling audio. Those hoping to see advanced CGI or monstrous aliens will be disappointed, as the director wisely leaves the majority of the thrills up to the viewer’s imagination, understanding that what we envision in our minds is always more frightening than what he could show us.
The film opens with Milla Jovovich, who plays Dr. Abigail Tyler in the dramatizations, talking directly into the camera, telling us that the story we are about to see is based on actual (though conveniently unspecified) case studies and that what we ultimately believe is entirely our choice. This potentially sets the audience up to be more accepting of the scenes that follow – the possibility that what they are seeing is real likely increases the terror factor considerably. The strong performances by the cast help in pulling the audience in (although Jovovich, who I credit as a good actress, can be distractingly attractive).
Of course, this is all a Hollywood gimmick to make the experience more potent (and it’s admittedly more sophisticated and cheaper than William Castle’s vibrating seats), and all of the events are in actuality fictional. The “actual” Dr. Abigail Tyler who is seen in the interview session throughout the film with the director, Olatunde Osunsanmi, is in turn merely another talented, though lesser known, actress.
While I commend the film for taking this psychological approach, and executing its scares with a less-is-more attitude, the director unfortunately does not follow that same wisdom when it comes to selling his story as being based on actual events. He is too heavy-handed in beating it over the viewer’s head. Particularly in the end, which is understandably abrupt considering the movie’s nature, when we are told of an imaginary character still missing, given the current whereabouts of fake people, and then are still told to take the “evidence” into account and make up our own minds. There is a point at which a film asks us to suspend disbelief for entertainment purposes and a point in which it flatly begins to lie and mislead, and the line begins to be crossed in the last moments of the film, which I will not spoil here. It can lose people just when it really has them. Osunsanmi should have started the credits a minute earlier before he showed us too much.
The Fourth Kind is a creative film that works best when it centers on the fears of invasion and violation, where not even one’s locked home is a refuge. (There are also allusions in the film linking alien abductions to demonic possessions and religious experience – i.e. the intervention of a deity – which is an interesting idea that I wish they had explored further.) However, just when I think a director understands and trusts his audience enough to be confident that his scares will resonate, he instead relies too heavily on exhaustively selling the truthfulness of his fiction, and in turn distracts us from enjoying what could have been a more effective story.
The Revenant Review 