90's American Horror Part Forty

THE BORROWER

(1991)

Dir - John McNaughton

Overall: MEH

John McNaughton's follow-up to his seminal Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer was the goofy, Cannon distributed The Borrower; something that the director admittingly took on primarily for the paycheck.  An unabashed B-movie with the premise of a convicted, extraterrestrial criminal who is given a human body and sent to Earth as punishment, the camp value is on the nose enough to forgive the abysmal plotting.  Mason Nage and Richard Fire's screenplay is ambitious yet comes off as if it was written on the fly, throwing in some police procedural drama, a human serial killer, a heavy metal band, homeless people, and a horny doctor all into the mix without bothering to establish any type of rules concerning the alien threat that has to keep ripping people's heads off to attach to its body that also then turns into the same actors whose heads were just ripped off.  There is plenty more dopey laziness than that, but McNaughton handles the material accordingly with its tongue properly in cheek.  Rae Dawn Chung is stuck playing it straight, though Tom Towles, Antonio Fargas, and Mädchen Amick get to have more fun with the proceedings, the cheap gore effects are hilarious icky, and some of the ridiculous set pieces are even clever on occasion.

 

JURASSIC PARK

(1993)

Dir - Steven Spielberg

Overall: GOOD

 

Though its plot inconsistencies are both numerous and laughable, (plus the tone is unabashed schlock), Steven Spielberg's top-tier adaptation of Michael Crichton's novel Jurassic Park became one of the biggest cinematic spectacles of any age and was historically paramount in ushering in the modern era of digital effects work.  As is predominantly the case, Industrial Light and Magic's CGI cannot hold a candle to how fantastic Stan Winston's practical animatronics look, but said computer generated imagery here has only mildly improved in the proceeding decades and ergo holds up well enough.  Crichton penned his own screenplay along with David Koepp; a screenplay which poses easily digestible moral conundrums involving mankind's use of science to interfere disastrously with nature.  It is more in the point A to point B framework that the movie crumbles under its own massive weight though.  Glaring oversights on the part of the characters, predictable foreshadowing, campy comic relief, and some narrative holes that a T-Rex could fit through are equal parts detrimental and also why it is so much fun.  This is largely due to the stellar cast and Spielberg's flawless delivery of popcorn spectacle that is silly, white-knuckled, mildly violent, and lightning-paced for easy consumption.  It remains a quintessential blockbuster that proved immediately iconic, spawning two different generations of franchises with diminishing returns that nevertheless, still manage to keep the dinosaur destruction enthusiasts perfectly happy.

 

THE FEAR

(1995)

Dir - Vincent Robert

Overall: WOOF

Despite the fact that Wes Craven makes bookending cameos for reasons that perhaps somebody out there can explain, The Fear is a completely unmemorable mess and an embarrassing stab at psychological horror.  The only film to be directed by usual screenwriter Vincent Robert, (though he oddly had no official part in penning the screenplay here, that unfortunate credit going to Ron Ford and Greg H. Sims), it sets up a simple if uninteresting premise of a college student and some friends going up to an isolated cabin for the weekend to work on his thesis about the nature of people's fears or whatever.  The fact that each and every character is thoroughly unlikable, none of them are properly fleshed-out, and their behavior is bafflingly inconsistent is arguably the biggest problem.  Yet the film also throws a life-sized, wooden mannequin into the equation that begins murdering people after merely appearing in odd places for over an hour, because horror movies are dumb.  The ending flies off the rails and becomes impossible to follow, but not before we are treated to a Rastafarian white guy with intimacy issues involving his best friend's girlfriend and his mom/sister maybe, some other asshole who gets all rapey with another girl, an uncle dressed as Santa Clause who is also an asshole, and an uncharismatic lead character who meets his former child self or something.