Movie Review

Movie Review – Scream (1996)/Wes Craven In Memoriam

**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.

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 Wes Craven’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.

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.

Grade: A-

September 1, 2015 9

Movie Review – The Fourth Kind (2009)

**Movie Review – The Fourth Kind (2009)**

The Fourth Kind (2009) partly employs the successful found footage approach of The Blair Witch 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.

Grade: C+

August 29, 2015 0

Movie Review – The Unborn (2009)

**Movie Review – The Unborn (2009)**

2009’s The Unborn brings with it many reasons to expect a satisfying horror film, just two being that it stars the incredible Gary Oldman and is written and directed by David Goyer, one of the writers of Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins (2005) and The Dark Knight (2008). Unfortunately, these expectations only add to the disappointment. Goyer’s previous directing forays, The Invisible (2007) and Blade: Trinity (2004), might have foretold this, though I had hoped that after the Batman reboots he might have learned a few new tricks. He might have, but far too few.

This film had some promise. The cinematography is appropriately moody, some of the creature effects are impressive (if not entirely original), and the story, though deriving inspiration from Kabala mysticism, nobly attempts to not be confined by any one religion or creed.

However, in the end The Unborn is formulaic and forgettable. After a decent first third the movie loses steam and becomes dull and convoluted. It relies on tired clichés and ineffective jump-scares to irritating degrees. These tactics have been rehashed countless times that even casual horror fans are completely desensitized to it. Rather than make the audience jump it instead clues us into the fact that what we are about to watch is stale and unimaginative. When this is done over and over early on in a film, before we even know the characters or what we’re supposed to be afraid of, it becomes infuriating. Sadly for The Unborn, the characters are so thin and clichéd that we never fear for their well-being or care for their fate – tension and true horror is therefore lost. It does not help that the acting is also poor, including the uneven performance by Odette Yustman, who plays the lead, Casey, a role that has her posing between scares in her underwear just to keep our attention.

The plot follows Casey as she begins to be haunted by a ghost child who repeatedly tells her, “Jumby wants to be born now.” Casey begins having a pigmentation change in her eye, leading her to discover that she was a twin and that her brother (said Jumby) died in utero from her umbilical cord. We assume that the ghost child is Jumby until we meet Casey’s long lost grandmother, an Auschwitz survivor, who tells her it is a dybbuk, an evil spirit wanting to inhabit this world. Actually, the grandmother seems to be living across town in a nursing home, though for unexplained reasons nobody, even her father, seemed to tell Casey. The grandmother explains that her own twin brother was possessed by the dybbuk, perhaps after the experiments of Dr. Josef Mengele (though he is not named), in the concentration camp before she had to kill him. It’s telling in a supposed horror film when not even Auschwitz looks scary. The dybbuk has been haunting the family ever since, even driving Casey’s mother to suicide.

So just forget about all that Jumby stuff, I guess. As the story progresses, it becomes ever more of a struggle to buy into it, and makes me think that Goyer started off with a good idea but ran into a wall when he needed closure. Not even Gary Oldman as an exorcist rabbi can elevate this movie. There are so many clichés and borrowed elements that it is difficult to know when Goyer is paying homage to the genre’s alumni or plagiarizing them. With so much missed potential, The Unborn lives up to its name.

Grade: D

August 27, 2015 0

Movie Review – The ABCs of Death (2012)

**Movie Review – The ABCs of Death (2012)**

Earlier this year a 58-year-old substitute teacher in Ohio was convicted on four felony accounts for disseminating matter harmful to juveniles. She played The ABCs of Death (2012) for five consecutive Spanish classes. It’s reasonable she began playing it the first period not knowing its contents, but to continue playing it and then showing it again and again? Apparently, when an administrator got wind of it and walked in during the last period she reached for the button to stop it and inadvertently paused the screen on a pair of bare breasts. I’m sure the students’ laughter was deafening.

This story is probably the best publicity imaginable for this type of film. After having now seen it myself, I can’t help but sympathize with the court.

The horror films I watch can generally be split into two categories: those that I watch with my wife, and those that I don’t. The reasons for the latter are normally as follows:

1. I think it might suck and I don’t want to over-saturate her with genre crap and ruin her good will.

2. It may contain a level of misogyny best not watched with the woman with whom I share a bed.

3. She’s not a fan of graphic torture or violence – The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) remake was a theater experience the memory of which still makes her shudder.

The ABCs of Death, at one point or another, fulfills all of the above criteria. At its core it’s a simple but clever idea for an anthology horror film. They gave $5,000 and a letter of the alphabet to 26 different filmmakers from around the world, and those filmmakers created a short film based upon a word they chose which corresponded to their letter. The word isn’t revealed until after the film, leaving the viewer guessing as they watch.

As is to be expected with this type of project, the quality of filmmaking varies. There are some which I’m convinced the filmmaker must have $4,990 still in their bank account. Some are of a very hardcore nature, featuring disturbing subject matter and graphic representations. Some are art-house. Some are hilarious and clever. More than a few are about poop. Some are thought provoking and intense. While I strongly recommend some of these films, a sensitive viewer may want their finger primed on the fast-forward button.

Bottom line: understand what you’re getting into and, by the wisdom of Odin, do not watch this with anyone you hope to sleep with in the near future.

Grade: C+

August 26, 2015 0

Movie Review – Autumn (2009)

**Movie Review – Autumn (2009)**

Autumn (2009), a Canadian film directed by Steven Rumbelow, is a film that, though showing promise in some respects, is unable to break free from its low-budget confines. In the beginning of the movie we see a mysterious virus kill off most of the human population and watch as the survivors try to come to terms with their new world as the dead begin to rise. The zombies (though they are never called this in the film) are benign at first, but slowly begin to become more cognitive and dangerous, giving time for tension-free character development for the first half of the story. Autumn is a slow-burn, which is partly what makes it almost work, and there is certainly a noble effort to become more than a simple zombie film, but it never quite achieves this. Even the make-up effects, which do their job in making the zombies look progressively rotten, do little to help.

Choppy editing, overly long sequences (which make it difficult to gauge the passing of time), and a lack of focus on the main characters work against the final product. The acting, too, ranges from adequate to Community Theater, and some performances are out of place with the mood of the film. There is also the curious mix of accents which makes it difficult to place the setting. The main characters consist of an American and two Brits, and early on there is a character who sounds like an Irishman attempting an American accent (note to such actors: Americans don’t say “bloody” unless we mean the red stuff). It is not until a good way into the story when a character speaks of visiting American cities that one can assume that the U.S. is the setting. This is not helped by the lack of location shots, as the movie essentially concentrates on a single devastated street on which we see the characters traveling a half-dozen times throughout the film – obviously another drawback to a low budget. We never really feel the scope that the film attempts to convey.

Unfortunately, even if the finances had been unlimited this film still would not rise above the superior zombie films which came before. Indeed, had this film come at the forefront of those competitors it may have been more relevant, but as it stands there is nothing new offered here. It is not scary, gory, dramatic, well-shot, or even terribly interesting. The script, which is based upon the David Moody novel of the same name, is predictable. We have seen it all done before, and we have seen it done better. Without giving away too much, the movie even culminates with a besieged farm house, offering us little variation even on Night of the Living Dead (1968), the classic film which established the modern zombie over forty years ago.

There is certainly a lot of heart in this film, but it is ultimately an unnecessary work that contributes nothing new to the genre. Nor is it able to recreate familiar genre elements in a way that warrants its viewing. It is easy to respect the efforts made in this film, but that unfortunately is not enough to recommend it.

Grade: D-

August 25, 2015 0

Movie Review – Triangle (2009)

**Movie Review – Triangle (2009)**

I knew nothing about 2009’s Triangle, a film by Christopher Smith, before watching it, and I must say that that is probably the best way to approach this movie. If you plan to watch it, don’t even watch a trailer, as it gives too much away. Triangle is a mind-twisting mystery which smartly employs both supernatural and slasher elements while never venturing too far into either subgenre. Each time I expected the movie to take a turn for the worse, it only became more interesting.

Triangle is about a group who board a seemingly deserted cruise vessel after their yacht is capsized by a freak storm. To say any more about the plot would be giving too much away, making this review torturous to write as this is the kind of movie you want to share with others and discuss.

The script is tight and intelligent – don’t blink or you may miss something – and supposedly took two years to write. The casting is great and the cinematography beautiful, filled with appealing, vibrant colors. The direction reveals an expert storyteller on the rise in the mold of Christopher Nolan, who similarly messed with our sense of time and perspective in films like Memento (2000). Smith’s love of the horror genre is apparent as Triangle conveys a veiled homage to Kubrick’s masterpiece, The Shining (1980). Additionally, Melissa George ties the film together in a terrific lead performance, playing a distraught mother trying to get back home to her son.

For fans of shows like The Twilight Zone, who like to bend their minds to wrap around an unfurling mystery, I recommend Triangle most highly.

Grade: B

August 24, 2015 0

Movie Review – The Haunting of Molly Hartley (2008)

**Movie Review – The Haunting of Molly Hartley (2008)**

2008 was a year in which true horror was released upon cinema in the unholy trinity of sub-par, terrible tween horror. Including One Missed Call and Prom Night, The Haunting of Molly Hartley, directed by Mickey Liddell and written by John Travis and Rebecca Sonnenshine, is probably the best of these three films, and that is all that can nicely be said about it. The story follows a teenager whose mother tried to kill her, and as she enters a private school and copes with the trauma she begins to believe that she is destined to become an agent of Satan unless she can do something to stop it. Think a prettier Damien: Omen II (1978), but less competent.

The plot of this film can be found in about the first and last five or ten minutes of this overly long film and the rest is simply teen drama filler fit for an ABC Family Channel series. Just in case you begin to fall asleep or forget you are supposed to be watching a horror film, there is a fake jump-scare at regular intervals, and you can safely guess that a bathroom mirror is involved in at least one. Each attempt at generating fear fails under the oppressive weight of its ineffective clichés and from a story line that is impossible to become invested in. In all fairness, Haley Bennett as the titular Molly makes a valiant effort as the lead but cannot hope to save a film which has her jumping at shadows every couple of minutes. The characters – attractive, privileged white kids – reflect who the target audience is.

It also helps if said audience belongs to a fundamentalist Christian youth group. Though the only Christians in the movie are extreme caricatures, they are also justified for their fanaticism and paranoia. The movie is light on horror enough, but religiously overtoned enough, to play well at a conservative Christian teen sleepover. Just for the record, that wasn’t a compliment. Truly, the movie’s biggest crimes are that it’s terribly dull and uninteresting, because by the time Molly is begging to accept Jesus as her savior we are merely begging for the film to end, and are willing to sell our souls to the Devil to see it done.

Grade: F

August 23, 2015 0

Movie Review – Prom Night (2008)

**Movie Review – Prom Night [remake] (2008)**

2008’s Prom Night, directed by Nelson McCormick, would have us believe that it is a remake of the 1980 Jamie Lee Curtis Canadian slasher, but the similarity goes only so far as the name. I admittedly am not a fan of the 1980 film as I find it fairly dull (I much prefer Terror Train, which Curtis had starred in that same year). This new film follows Donna, played by Brittany Snow, whose family was murdered by an obsessive teacher. Three years later she’s preparing for prom and, of course, the madman escapes custody and goes searching for her.

While I get bored with the original, it’s nonstop quality entertainment when compared with this new teen-targeted commodity. The acting is bland, the dialogue nauseating, the plot formulaic and predictable, the characters flat, and the directing uninspired. It’s amazing how the instantly forgettable killer is able to take out most of her friends in the most bloodless of methods. Truly, it is astounding that he can continually stab people in places that they will not bleed.

If one had to endure this film for whatever unfortunate reason, a good drinking game would be to take a shot each time a fake, clichéd jump scare occurs (two shots if a mirror is involved). You will be seeing double halfway through the film, and it might not only make the viewing endurable, but you may even see what the psycho-stalker killer sees in Donna, because my sober self didn’t buy it.

This review is a lazier attempt than most of my others, but this is the only way I can manage to keep thinking about this awful, awful film. So as to spend less time on this film, I’m going copy and paste a portion from my review of One Missed Call because the same message applies: I have seen countless terrible, mostly low-budget horror films that are easily forgettable and often times laughable. However, these bombs are usually made with the best intentions, and even though they are lacking in almost every other way, they contain some heart in their creation. This film, however, is nothing more than a cold, calculated profit machine meant to separate young teens from their parents’ money. It is the horror genre’s equivalent of a boy band.

Prom Night might even be able to take the tiara from One Missed Call for worst horror film of 2008, so there’s an accomplishment.

Grade: F

August 23, 2015 2

Movie Review – One Missed Call (2008)

**Movie Review – One Missed Call [remake] (2008)**

One Missed Call (2008) is directed by Eric Valette, written by Andrew Klavan and starring Shannyn Sossamon. It is a remake of Takashi Miike’s 2003 Japanese film of the same name, seeking to capitalize on the late 2000’s J-horror remake craze. It is probably the worst among them, and that’s saying something. I never thought that I would see a horror film that was so bad that making fun of it lost its appeal.

While watching it I couldn’t help but imagine aliens observing our planet through our horror films and trying to communicate with us by making their own, except that they do so without possessing any understanding of the human psyche or why these films scare us. One Missed Call would be the result. It is a paint-by-numbers wreck with poor acting, annoyingly frequent but ineffective fake jump scares, terrible CGI, and a script that is unable to tell even a simple, coherent story. What the plot is supposed to be about, though the film makes every effort to make you not care, is a group of college students who receive phone calls in which they hear their own deaths, and then die a few days later in that same way, which in turn prompts ghostly phone calls to be sent from their phone to those in their directory, repeating the pattern. I have not seen the original on which this is based, but I must assume it was far more competent.

The opening scene illustrates the ineptitude perfectly. After some shots of a hospital fire we switch to a girl talking on her cell phone in a backyard garden which has a small pond. The girl is startled by her cat (the cliché of clichés) who is near the pond and then turns back to her homework. When she looks toward the cat again it is gone, and for some reason she seems to think it fell in the water and drowned and so goes to investigate, which proves this scene was written by someone who has never owned a cat. The cat appears at the other side of the water and, just as the girl is visually relieved, a hand pulls her into the water. As silence again settles, the cat is then pulled into the water as well, and the girl’s phone begins to magically dial her friends. Aside from the fact that this is all much more funny than scary, it is also angering how the movie cannot even stick to its own rules in the first few minutes. Did the cat receive a phone call? Did the killer hand not want feline witnesses?

I have seen countless terrible, mostly low-budget horror films that are easily forgettable and often times laughable. However, these bombs are usually made with the best intentions, and even though they are lacking in almost every other way, they contain some heart in their creation. This film, however, is nothing more than a cold, calculated profit machine meant to separate young teens from their parents’ money. It is the horror genre’s equivalent of a boy band. One Missed Call is one call from Shannyn Sossamon’s agent that she should have missed.

Grade: F

August 23, 2015 2

Movie Review – Sorority Row (2009)

**Movie Review – Sorority Row [remake] (2009)**

It doesn’t take a great stretch of the mind to anticipate what a slasher movie entitled Sorority Row will offer. Cute girls? Check. Bare breasts? Check. College parties? Double-check. Oral fixations? Quadruple-check. Said cute girls being taken out one-by-one? You get the idea. This is an unoriginal (it is a remake, after all) and formulaic entry into the slasher genre that will largely be forgotten in the years to come (if it hasn’t been already).

However, while this usually works to the detriment of a horror film, it becomes a rather endearing quality here. This loose remake, directed by Stewart Hendler, of the 1983’s The House on Sorority Row has no delusions about what it is and what it plans to offer. The script is fast-paced, the kills are entertaining and bloody without being gratuitously excessive, and the dialogue offers jokes based on well-rounded character interaction. The capable cast certainly helps in this regard. There is no pretension here; the movie practically begs its viewer to relax, enjoy, and to not read too much into what is going on. If one can do this, even a discerning horror fan like me can enjoy the film.

Had other aspects of the film been better, this could have been more memorable. Much of the movie’s appeal rides on the satisfaction of seeing snobby, shallow individuals being disposed of with extreme prejudice. That’s a start. The killer, unfortunately, is a bland figure stalking his/her prey cloaked in a graduation gown. The weapon of choice is a tire-iron which, in the words of one of the catty characters, has been “pimped-out,” though it could be more accurately described as impractical. The film-makers seemed conscious of all other aspects of exploitation slasher films except for what is perhaps the most important element – the creation of a visceral killer that will stay engrained in the audience’s minds for years to come. In slasher films it’s the killer’s show, after all.

Grade: C

August 22, 2015 0

Movie Review – The Quiet Ones (2014)

**Movie Review – The Quiet Ones (2014)**

The Quiet Ones (2014) is another installment of the Hammer Film Productions revival, coming two years after the generally well-received The Woman in Black (2012). The earlier film dripped with superb sets and exquisite costume designs but was too reliant on jump scares, including those damned fake ones, to be anything truly remarkable for me. What could have been a new tension-filled Gothic classic instead became an incessant assault of things flying at the screen to the point where tension was too often lost. Directed by John Pogue, The Quiet Ones falls into many of the same traps.

The story is set in 1974 where an Oxford professor and three young people set out to use science to help a young woman tormented by what she believes is a spirit. It is loosely based upon the actual 1972 parapsychological Philip experiment which was conducted in Toronto, Canada. Philip was the name of a fictionalized ghost that the researchers sought to manifest by the sheer will of the experiment’s participants, helped by traditional séance conditions. Perhaps not surprisingly, the experiment was considered a failure by critics.

The film is largely seen through the eyes of the working-class local hired to film the girl’s treatments, and so the film continually transitions from traditional narrative to his docu-style footage. Once again, the sets are nicely done and at times the cinematography and lighting is very appealing. Additionally, the acting is good, particularly by Olivia Cooke, who plays the tortured girl. She’s able to transition from menacing to a sweet vulnerability in a convincing manner.

When the film is restrained it excels, but too often it seems to seek to meet a jump scare quota every three minutes. This is often achieved by ratcheting up the volume to an absurd decibel which stops being scary and quickly becomes annoying, making the movie’s title an irritatingly ironic misnomer. Plus, the film’s promising first two acts are squandered on a disappointing ending that is not really worthy of what came before.

I wish that these Hammer films, which show so much potential, would also show more confidence in their craft and allow the audience, meaning us, to immerse ourselves in the film. Instead they keep us at a distance by throwing things in our faces or battering our eardrums. By doing continuous jump scares, whatever tension that was built is immediately lost. Sure, the person watching the movie involuntarily jumped, but a second later they’re laughing and not at all scared.

A jump scare should be earned and it should be a part of the danger, such as in the way James Wan employs them in Insidious (2010). That film has plenty of jump scares but they are always something worth getting scared about. They increase the sense of danger because they are dangerous – they’re not cats or birds or idiot friends bumbling unexpectedly into the camera shot. Anything else is the stuff of amateurs or charlatans, in my opinion, with very few exceptions. It shows a filmmaker who is not confident that they have their audience, or one who is strictly making a film for teens looking for an assault on their senses. Either way, I’d like to see Hammer Film Productions do better, because they keep hinting that they have it in them to do so.

Grade: C

August 22, 2015 1

Movie Review – Sharknado 2: The Second One (2014)

**Movie Review – Sharknado 2: The Second One (2014)**

Sharknado 2: The Second One (2014) is another intentionally campy made-for-television movie and is the second installment in the Sharknado series. In sitting down to watch this I hoped that the second time around for director Anthony C. Ferrante would reveal that he has learned some new tricks in keeping the movie interesting and solving the slower, duller moments of the previous entry. Overall, he has, but Sharknado 2 is only slightly more watchable than its predecessor.

The kills are actually less numerous, but this time around the script writers give us things to watch in between, like E-list celebrity cameos (Wil Wheaton and Biz Markie) and horror homages that include the Twilight Zone and, of course, Jaws (1975). It’s still intentionally bad filmmaking and the gag always threatens to wear too thin, but it does a better job at ratcheting the absurdity to comedic levels.

Sharknado 2 still isn’t something I’d recommend, but for anyone who’s curious I’d say watch this one rather than the first one.

Grade: D

August 21, 2015 0

Movie Review – Sharknado (2013)

**Movie Review – Sharknado (2013)**

Should one critique a film that’s bad on purpose? If so, how? I guess the real measure is whether the film is bad while still being entertaining. Sharknado (2013), a made-for-television entry directed by Anthony C. Ferrante, is certainly bad, and at times it’s entertaining. However, it’s a joke that gets old quick. Some of the kills are funny, but in between we have to spend time with lame characters and dumb filler scenarios that didn’t hold my attention. This isn’t a film I was able to sit down and watch through one sitting. I had it playing over three evenings while doing chores in the kitchen. I’d chuckle here and there, and then my eyes would glaze over and I’d have to turn it off.

What the film lacks that would have made it more enjoyable is characters and actors I actually don’t mind spending time with. Instead we get Tara Reid.

And what about the sharks? Meh. When I hear “sharknado” I picture a swirling vortex of blood and teeth that’s sucking in bodies and spitting out bones. Instead we get a tornado with sharks flying around and occasionally landing on people and eating them. Yeah, that’s funny, but not enough to fill up 90 minutes.

I’m glad I live in a world in which Sharknado exists, as I do love campy, bad horror films. But the best bad movies are the ones that were made with good intentions that for whatever reason failed miserably, and Sharknado never had those good intentions.

If you haven’t seen it and plan to watch it, and I entirely sympathize if you don’t, make sure you’ve got a large, loud group that can talk during the dull parts and laugh when the guy on the basketball court gets his arm ripped off by a falling shark, then gets his leg eaten, then has a hammerhead fall on his face.

Am I a snob for criticizing an intentionally bad film for not being better? Bottom line: give me a terrible horror film any day, just don’t bore me.

Grade: D-

August 21, 2015 1

Movie Review – Joy Ride (2001)

**Movie Review – Joy Ride (2001)**

When I first rented 2001’s Joy Ride years ago, back when video rental stores were still a thing, I did not expect much from it. Despite the mantra to not judge a book by its cover, we all do it, and the same goes for DVD covers. This one was bland and the synopsis offered nothing to distinguish it from the plethora of other terrible B-movie thrillers that have always abounded, but especially so in the 90s. I was surprised, then, at just how enjoyable and well done Joy Ride, directed by John Dahl, actually is. I have seen it several times since then, and with each viewing I grow to appreciate it more.

In an intelligent script, written by J.J. Abrams and Clay Tarver, two brothers on a cross-country road trip to pick up a girl have a moment of lapsed moral conscience and use a CB radio to play a cruel prank on a randy truck driver. However, their plan goes awry when it turns out the trucker is an unhinged maniac who does not like to be shamed, and who has a dedicated sense of vengeance. The unseen villain is clever and genuinely menacing, and is expertly voiced by an uncredited Ted Levine, whose voice still brings back flashes of Jame “Buffalo Bill” Gumb. The plot closely resembles and pays homage to Steven Spielberg’s first directed TV film, Duel (1971), but is certainly not a remake. Surely, there are some genre tropes, but they’re done so well you don’t mind.

What really shine in the movie, however, are the performances of the three protagonists, who carry the dialogue and tension of the scenes well. Especially noteworthy is Steve Zahn, who allows the film some comic relief and provides a nice balance to the late Paul Walker’s straight-laced character.

Joy Ride is not a classic, and the premise only allows for the plot to go so far. Nevertheless, it is a thoroughly entertaining thriller.

Grade: B-

August 20, 2015 0

Movie Review – The Happening (2008)

**Movie Review – The Happening (2008)**

2008’s The Happening, M. Night Shyamalan’s fifth film after his critically acclaimed The Sixth Sense (1999), opens with scenes of beautiful brutality. A woman on a park bench near Central Park looks off camera and says that she sees people clawing at themselves. Her friend then takes a silvery hair-pin and jabs into her own neck. Meanwhile at a construction site the camera pans to see workers falling violently and voluntarily to their death, smacking and crunching on the pavement. Considering what is later found to be the film’s subtext, these suicides could be seen as a metaphor for mankind’s actions toward the environment, effectively sealing its own doom. However, it may more accurately describe M. Night Shyamalan’s career.

What follows these memorable first scenes is a steady decline in quality, logic, and continuity. The film’s first and most evident weakness is that it is badly miscast, made obvious by Mark Wahlberg’s first scenes as a high school science teacher named Elliot. Shyamalan apparently wrote the lead role with the actor in mind, but Wahlberg, while a capable actor in certain scenarios, was not made for this. His delivery is almost comical, and at many times in the film you question whether or not it is all supposed to be intentionally campy. He speaks with a high, light voice, almost a loud whisper, and never diverges from this tone no matter the situation. One scene in particular, towards the end of the movie, involves an old, disturbed woman accusing his character of plotting to kill her (played by a genuinely creepy Betty Buckley in one of the film’s few good performances). I cannot adequately portray the hilarity of how Wahlberg’s answer, “What?! … No!” is delivered, but I will say that if he had then added, “Gee whiz, ma’am, that would be bonkers!” it would have been fitting.

Mark Wahlberg adds physical presence to a role that does not call for it. He is not the only actor miscast, as Zooey Deschanel, who plays Elliot’s wife, Alma, wanders throughout the film doe-eyed and dazed. She seems as confused about her character as we are about the director’s decisions. Shyamalan can without a doubt frame a beautiful shot, but his constant use of close-ups demands actors who can convey subtle emotions. John Leguizamo, as Elliot’s friend, whose performances are often criticized by viewers, is the only other convincing player and is sadly underused.

The Happening also suffers from continuity issues. Remember that description of people clawing at themselves? We never see it. Instead, those affected by the phenomena become confused and then calmly commit suicide.

At one point the characters are riding a train that stops in the middle of nowhere. When Elliot asks what’s happened, the conductor tells him they have lost contact, and when he asks with whom, the conductor answers, “Everyone.” Color me confused, then, when a few moments later the characters are in a diner where people are using cell phones and watching news broadcasts – is Amtrak communication technology really that inept? This diner scene also demonstrates just how incoherent and badly constructed this film is when a woman announces she has received a video from her daughter on her phone. The video shows a man in a zoo being mauled by tigers in the most unrealistic and unnatural manner reminiscent of a Monty Python sketch, and again I wonder if I have been tricked into watching a comedy. Other frustrations abound: twice the movie shows us people who are unaffected by the “happening” with no explanation or acknowledgment. Also, the ending, which I will not give away, is so cheery and unbelievable that it is almost nauseating – just pay attention to the passage of time to realize why and be prepared to feel like your intelligence has been viciously assaulted.

The film, no matter how well-acted it could have been, could still not be saved due to its atrocious script. The dialogue is unnatural and the film’s pacing is awkward. The very premise, too, becomes more ridiculous the more one thinks about it. In a terribly convenient scene where a greenhouse owner solves the mystery halfway through the film, we find that the plants are releasing a neurotoxin which changes people’s self-defense instinct into a self-destruct one, and each time the wind blows it gets carried. So Shyamalan seeks throughout the film to make us afraid of wind. It should come as no shock that he does not succeed. For better eco-horror with nature fighting back, stick with Alfred Hitchcock’s brilliant The Birds (1963) or the slew of “big creatures attack” films from the 1950s, which even with their camp factor are more entertaining.

The Happening calls back to the paranoia films of earlier decades and makes one wish they rewatched them instead, or at least had an MST3K soundtrack to turn to. Shyamalan has made some great films in the past, but as for this movie… well, to take inspiration from This Is Spinal Tap (1984), shit happens.

Grade: D-

August 20, 2015 0