2013 Horror Part One

V/H/S/2
Dir - Simon Barrett/Adam Windgard/Eduardo Sánchez/Gregg Hale/Gareth Huw Evans/Timo Tjanjanto/Jason Eisener
Overall: GOOD

2012’s V/H/S was a mostly decent, hand-held camera, anthology horror film and it got enough good buzz to generate a hastily put together sequel V/H/S/2 earlier this year.  Some of the same problems persist, (the “frame narrative” story is very weak and the question of “Who is editing all this found footage?” is still the big elephant in the room), and of course there will be weaker entries here than others.  Overall though, all four stories besides the linking one are tighter than in the previous entry.  Adam Wingard's “Phase 1 Clinical Trials” is a definite improvement from his "Tape 56" from the first V/H/S and Jason Eisner's “Slumber Party Alien Abduction” is equally on par.  The Blair Witch Project's Eduardo Sánchez and Gregg Hale wonderfully reunite with the rather amusing “A Ride In the Park”, but the show stopper is by far the gleefully demonic and over the top “Safe Haven” by Indonesian based directors Timo Tjahjanto and Gareth Evans.  A steady improvement from top to bottom with the lesser moments much fewer and farther between, this is as solid of a follow-up as one could hope for.

EVIL DEAD

Dir - Fede Alvarez

Overall: WOOF

Especially after last year’s outstanding Cabin In the Woods turned the entire premise here upside-down, revisiting The Evil Dead in a comparatively straight as well as a pointless manner results in an abysmal affair.  Ignoring those flames in the opening scene, the “no CGI” gimmick is admirable enough and the gore is rather prominent to say the least.  The real problem though is a familiar one for modern remakes which is taking a grittier, darker, more depressing, and serious approach while at the same time having your characters behave with all the tired, logic-less clichés, unload the goofy during the finale, and bust out the groan inducing one-liners.  It is impossible not to compare this updated, overblown, jarringly tone-clashing version unfavorably on every level with the DIY, legendary original.  Ugly and obnoxious with none of the charm of any of Sam Raimi's previous three films in the franchise, this is also completely trite by its very design.  So in other words, just another misguided remake.

THE SACRAMENT

Dir - Ti West

Overall: MEH

With The Sacrament, flawed filmmaker Ti West at least deserves some credit for changing up his game and going for something conceptually left-field from his previous works.  Forgoing any supernatural horror aspects entirely and presenting itself as an original, faux-documentary, the movie in fact borrows nearly every plot detail from the real life Johnstown Massacre of 1978.  Besides the unmistakable familiarity, it is also loaded with all the other problems that West's films have thus far all had.  That is the massive jumps in logic taken upon by the characters that swiftly and absolutely take the viewer out of the proceedings.  Plenty is handled very well here, particularly the tone and performances and West is a very good director who is quite skilled at building unease and dread.  That said, his scripts never, ever deliver on the promise otherwise seen and it is unfortunate that his trademark seems to be making one frustratingly auspicious though ultimately disastrous work after the other.  It all comes down to the writing in his case and the writing is thus far always perplexingly bad considering how much everything else otherwise works.

2000's American Horror Part One

BELOW
(2002)
Dir - David Twohy
Overall: MEH

Co-penned by none other than Darren Aronofsky and directed by David Twohy who handled the Riddick trilogy amongst many other popcorn sci-fi action films, Below is kind of a mess with the potential not to be.  For one, the film's B-movie style presentation, (including very sub-par CGI, Dutch angles, dramatic slow motion shots, and schlocky acting), makes it impossible to take anything as seriously as intended.  That is when Zach Galifianakis is not doing what he seems incapable of not doing, meaning being a goofy weirdo for almost every opportunity he has to deliver his lines.  Everywhere else though, it is deadpan business.  The script is very busy with a confusing mystery and questionably resolved reveal as well as underwritten characters that further befuddle things.  There are also far too many boo scares of course but complaining about them is practically a given for modern day horror movies.  The premise of a haunted submarine would appear to be ideal in a better, overall setting and yes there is certainly nothing terrible going on in Below, but also nothing memorable enough to endorse it.

 

THE GRAVEDANCERS

(2006)
Dir - Mike Mendez
Overall:  WOOF

Yikes.  There are two things that make Mike Mendez' abomination The Gravedancers worse than it otherwise would have been.  A criminally inexplicable 100% on Rotten Tomatoes for one thing acts as a sure fire warning to never trust anything with only seven reviews tallied.  In addition to that though, things go along rather generically while not necessarily horribly here for a good long while, pretty much the whole first and second acts.  It is played conventionally with your standard jump scares and grey depressing filters and what not.  For who knows why though, the finale takes a dive into almost Loony Tunes territory.  If the whole film would have established the comedic, popcorn horror vibe to its fullest, then this could have been just a dumb exertion in camp, but the tone change just spirals and ping-pongs into absurdity.  An extra and detrimental faux pas is that Marcus Thomas delivers one of the worst performances anyone could contemplate.  Imagine if Keanu Reeves was a hundred times shittier at emoting than people used to think he was at his worst and you get an idea.

I CAN SEE YOU

(2008)

Dir - Graham Reznick

Overall:  MEH

 

The full-length debut I Can See You from writer/director Graham Reznick is a very confused bit of filmaking.  One or two frames in and it is clear that we are not dealing with high-end equipment here as it bizarrely looks as awful as most SOV horror films from two decades prior did.  The special effects likewise do not come off far beyond student film level from over two decades prior.  One can look past sub-par technical aspects of course and the Lynchian-esque style that Reznick is very obviously going for is if anything else, admirable.  There is no closure to be found since literally every door in the plot department is left abandoned and wide open, but ambition alone does not make for an overall splendid viewing experience.  In this regard, I Can See You falls apart, blunderingly so by the time the credits roll.  After an hour long build-up of some annoying characters fucking about in the woods, terrible looking, “weird for the sake of weird” nonsense is really all we get.  

New Format = more reviews!

Sooooo, changing it up a bit and basically I shall no longer be using this blog solely for posting lists.  Instead, I figure that I can get far more mileage out of posting reviews for basically whatever I have been watching as of late.  It is not like I have stopped watching horror movies since the completion of my "100 Favorite Horror Films" last year and yeah, I have ranked up quite a few more to cross off my "to see" list.  Since this will go on and on until seemingly always, shit, I might as well throw my two-cents into the online pool of nerds talking about nerdy things.

I will primarily be focusing on film reviews, primarily again horror film reviews.  Yet I do occasionally like to see what Arnold and Sly are putting out, check out some "real movies" that I have been meaning to get to or re-watch again, and of course, I am not missing any major comic book movies that are hitting the screen.  So I shall break out of the horror stuff from time to time I am sure.  Of course more album lists and non-film stuff will creep its way on here before too long as well.  The long-short of it is that I am just going to post whatever I feel like on here and hopefully it is nerdy and silly enough for a few people to get a kick out of.

I do not really have a schedule to adhere to or any kind of scheme with how I will put all of this stuff on here.  Yet I do have a few ideas.  I am going to try and group my reviews into some categories as I am posting them, ala a couple of new films all at once, a couple of classics, some non-horror stuff, etc.  I do not really care for throwing out star ratings, so instead I will have some self -xplanatory, one-word ratings that should get the job done.  Optimistically I will not repeat myself too much or toss around too much hyperbole from review to review.  We shall see what happens though.  So as Heath Ledger would say, "And here...we...go..."

2012 Horror Part One

THE ABC'S OF DEATH

Dir - multiple

Overall: MEH

The ABCs of Death was the big anthology horror release from 2012 along with the similarly themed V/H/S.  Similar in that both movies feature several independent filmmakers given a small budget and complete creative control to make a bunch of horror shorts, there are twenty-six here with each one named after a letter in the alphabet.  Lingering around five minutes in length each, the sheer number of ideas here means that it is basically impossible for them all to knock it out of the park.  Not surprisingly, the two strongest stories are from Timo Tjahjanto and Ben Wheatley, both of whom have done outstanding work elsewhere in the horror genre, (the former with the best segment in this year’s V/H/S/2 and the later with last year's Kill List).  Most disappointing is Ti West's “M”, topped only by the complete waste of time that is Andrew Traucki's “G”.  Nearly all of the shorts are incredibly gory or disgusting in other, far stranger ways, (the almost unwatchable “F” segment per example).  It is admirably ambitious, but far too uneven by design to remain engaging from front to back.

THE LORDS OF SALEM

Dir - Rob Zombie

Overall: WOOF

Rob Zombie's Lords of Salem barely had a theatrical release and made the least amount of money out of his five feature films thus far.  One of the most readily apparent issues is Sheri Moon Zombie being cast in the lead.  Having to run the gamut of emotions in such a setting, Moon is noticeably out of her range here.  She spends probably sixty-five percent of her scenes staring off into space, though this is admittingly intentional to create a very un-Zombie, trance-like mood.  What is very Zombie-like is the awful script.  If there was ever an active filmmaker out there who desperately needs a collaborator to insert some logic and help fine-tune his ideas, (ideas that on paper one could certainly make something out of), Zombie is that filmmaker.  With an almost non-stop barrage of unintentionally silly moments and a rambling, embarrassingly pretentious climax, it is a mess to be sure.  Zombie is clearly challenging himself here as it is unmistakably different in tone than his usual work, but his unchecked vision is almost fascinatingly disastrous.

V/H/S
Dir - Adam Wingard/David Bruckner/Ti West/Glenn McQuaid/Joe Swanberg/Radio Silence
Overall: GOOD 

The found footage anthology film V/H/S is typically uneven as such projects often are, though fortunately more on the decent side than not.  On the negative end of things, the linking segment by Adam Wingard is quite poor and not the least bit compelling, as is Ti West's “Second Honeymoon”.  Gleenn McQuaid's “Tuesday the 17^th” and Joe Swanberg's “The Sick Thing That Happened To Emily When She Was Younger” fair a little better, though still end up being mediocre.  The three aforementioned stories all run in the middle which unfortunately diminish the overall flow.  Thankfully, the bookending stories from Radio Silence's, (“10/31/98”), and David Bruckner, (“Amateur Night”), are very well done.  The latter makes excellent use out of one of the horror film's less-utilized monsters and “10/31/98", though shorter in length, cuts quickly to the chase and delivers some genuinely skin-crawling visuals.  These better segments are excellent enough to make the others more tolerable and to give the entire collection a solid recommendation.