2010 Horror Part Nine

MONSTERS
Dir - Gareth Edwards
Overall: GOOD

 

A minimalist debut from filmmaker Gareth Edwards, Monsters is impressive for what it manages to accomplish with shoestring production aspects, bringing a "less is more" aspect to giant, rampaging creature spectacles.  In fact a spectacle this is not, instead focusing exclusively on its two person cast who embark on a dangerous trek across the boarder where extraterrestrial entities have ravished the Mexican country-side.  Such an event is mostly treated as a matter-of-fact byproduct for people to deal with, as Edwards story fails to get into international politics or the specifics of its octopi-like, otherworldly invaders.  Shot without permits over three weeks and in five countries, Edwards originally had a four hour cut to work with, but the streamlined narrative proves to distinguish the film from others that emphasize special effects-laden set pieces.  The CGI here is unavoidably cartoony as is always the case, but the monsters are kept off the screen for enormous portions of the running time, usually only showing up in the distance and against a pitch-black, nighttime backdrop.  This makes them both mysterious and menacing instead of frightening, which is wonderfully conveyed in the closing moments where Scoot McNairy and Whitney Able finally succumb to their pent-up emotions while witnessing two enormous, alien forms engage in what can be interpreted as a harmonious exchange with each other.

INSIDIOUS

Dir - James Wan

Overall: MEH

Writer/director team Leigh Whannell and James Wan keep the schlock train rolling with Insidious, their third collaboration and first to be rated PG-13.  Though the gore is omitted and the profanity kept to a bare minimum, the watered-down approach still continues Wan's trajectory of big, loud, and stupid when it comes to horror.  Bombarding the audience with one tired trope after the other, the first act plays everything comparatively more still, yet also with all of the spooky elements being as arbitrary and conventional as possible, plus violin screeches and piano chords punctuating a plethora of jump scares.  By the time that Lin Shaye shows up, explains that cartoon character demons and ghosts are trying to "enter our world" via an astral projection plane, and puts on a gas mask to talk to spirits while her assistant translates the ominous text, whatever stock level of subtly was on the table gets violently thrown out the window and the movie becomes nothing more than a tacky Halloween haunted house attraction brought to life.  On the one hand, it is admirable that Wan is solely interested in emphasizing played out genre motifs and jacking them up to eleven, but his penchant for tonal inconsistencies still makes his work here unintentionally silly at best.  Combined with Whannell's lazy screenplay that is exclusively made up of unoriginal details, the movie cannot help but to be a disappointing mess for anyone except those who want their popcorn horror served up with heaping amount of cornball aggression.

 

NEEDLE

Dir - John V. Soto

Overall: MEH

The sophomore effort Needle from Australian filmmaker John V. Soto, is an innocently schlocky horror offering that throws back to arguably the genre's most awful era, meaning the late 90s, American teen/college-aged slasher boom.  Why anyone would have blatant cinematic nostalgia for such films as Final Destination and I Know What You Did Last Summer is a question best answered by the gods, but despite its inherent flaws, Soto's work here is not as terrible as it should be on paper.  A sincere tone is kept in check, there is an open lesbian couple, and also a relatable dynamic of two estranged brothers reconnecting that lies at the heart of an otherwise forgettable story.  Granted, said lesbians are of the lipstick variety and are played by actors that are distractedly attractive, (as are all of the young adults on screen for that matter), but gracious viewers can still award the film some progressive points all the same for not just having the supermodel bombshells shack up with douchebag jocks as is the usual norm.  The performances are passable at best, with Travis Fimmel having the worst go of the bunch at the material, smirking his way through every scene while letting his New Zealand accent slip as much as he cannot settle on an American surfer bro or a redneck one.  Utilizing a predictable and ergo boring slasher framework even if the kills technically revolve around a Hellraiser-esque revenge box, it ends up forgettable if not aggravating.

2010 Horror Part Eight

RARE EXPORTS: A CHRISTMAS TALE
Dir - Jalmari Helander
Overall: GOOD

A full-length debut and expansion on two of his previous shorts Rare Exports Inc. and Rare Exports: The Official Safety Instructions, Finnish writer/director Jalmari Helander's Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale is a sly parody of several different movies at once, all while never laying the tongue too firmly in cheek.  In other words, this is played straight for something with the ridiculous premise of a gigantic, horned-Krampus who is accidentally unearthed from a long, frozen slumber, only for an army of naked old mall Santas to try and defrost him with stolen radiators and children in sacks to punish.  A more overtly silly approach would have been expected and arguably still sufficient, but Helander's handling of his material has genuine suspense, a touching father/son dynamic, a fully-realized arctic setting played for ominous effect, and it avoids winking at the audience more than is agreeable.  Some of the CGI in the final set piece is less than convincing, plus the characters could use more backstory to engage with, but the brisk running time is appreciated and the emphasis remains in the right place.  Fusing European folklore with John Carpenter's The Thing and then presenting it as a feel-good holiday movie except with full-frontal male nudity and some gore, Helander has crafted a wacky, R-rated hodgepodge that is endlessly inventive.

THE LAST EXORCISM
Dir - Daniel Stamm
Overall: MEH
 
Another faulty found footage movie with a laughably insulting twist ending, The Last Exorcism botches a fetching enough premise as well as undermining some wonderful performances.  As the huckster preach who is hellbent on setting the record straight, Patrick Fabian has a hard time disguising his smirk, which is something that works wonderfully in the first two acts when he lays out the tools of the trade in convincing poor saps that a couple of demon noises and smoking crucifixes can rid their loved ones of unwanted forces.  Once things become more disturbingly dire though, director Daniel Stramm's mockumentary approach comes off as ridiculous.  Presented as a finished, fully edited account of "real events", the use of location titles, scary music on the soundtrack, and the cameraman making sure to keep his cool enough to shakily capture things, (things that any rational-thinking human on earth would run to the authorities in order to report), all makes for an absurd botch of the found footage framework.  Pentagrams and 666s painted on the walls, child-like foreshadowing drawings, and a robed/Antichrist-esque birth scene amongst a bellowing fire are all unintentionally comedic touches that further impair the previously established exploration of how exorcism can either prey upon or cure, (depending on one's point of view), devout believers who suffer from mental illness.

A HORRIBLE WAY TO DIE

Dir - Adam Wingard
Overall: WOOF

For his first of many collaborations with director Adam Wingard in A Horrible Way to Die, screenwriter Simon Barrett further establishes his modus operandi of utilizing glacier-sized plot holes in order to move things forward.  Perhaps because of this, Wingard chooses to emphasis a dread-fueled mood which disguises none of the script issues, yet does create a dour viewing experience if one can stomach the obnoxious, claustrophobic, hand-held cinematography that never, ever, ever stays stationary.  To be fair, Amy Seimetz and A.J. Bowen deliver brooding performances, each on the verge of either uncontrollable tears or an outpouring of rage.  Also, Wingard spares us most of the graphic depictions of violence, making sure that the audience knows exactly what unwholesome acts have transpired without gleefully exploiting them.  Barrett's work here though is appallingly insulting.  An escaped serial killer manages to evade capture through a massive manhunt, a police-monitored roadblock, and with his face plastered all over the news, (which a quick shave in a truck stop is supposed to excuse).  On top of that, said killer's ex-girlfriend who turned him in is never once contacted by the authorities, apparently pays zero attention to current events, and once she does suspect that her murder-happy former partner is free, she does the "logical" thing which is to run away into the middle of the woods with her brand new boyfriend while still making sure that the police are none the wiser.  Throw in an icky, unbelievably far-fetched twist ending and the whole thing collapses upon itself.

2010 Horror Part Seven

WOMB GHOSTS
Dir - Dennis Law
Overall: MEH

The first work that is exclusively horror from Hong Kong filmmaker Dennis Law, Womb Ghosts is an unnecessarily convoluted one that is riddled to death with the "loud noise must accompany every supernatural appearance" trope.  Some of the moments where random, uncanny activity happens are genuinely surprising, but they are always presented in said obnoxious jump scare fashion and even occasionally are downright unintentionally hysterical.  This includes a scene where a doctor pratfalls out of a window in mid sentence and another where several of the creaky noise-making/long-haired child ghosts float around a living room like cheap pinatas.  The aborted fetuses, (even though they are kid-sized so, whatever), as vengeful spirit premise is certainly weird enough, but Law's meandering script that focuses on too many characters is detrimentally confusing.  So confusing in fact that it is frequently difficult to even tell that the whole thing is told out of chronological sequence.  Such an ambitiously failed approach mixed with the cliche-ridden spook show tactics make for something that is both forgettable and annoying to sit through outside of some gross-out qualities and accidental laughs along the way.

 

THE SILENT HOUSE
Dir - Gustavo Hernández
Overall: MEH

Gimmick films are tricky to pull off by their very design, not just from a technical standpoint obviously yet also in the fact that their artifice must be justified in a narrative context.  The Uruguayan debut from director Gustavo Hernández and screenwriter Oscar Estévez The Silent House, (La Casa Muda), consists of only three takes, the first lasting a whopping fifty-five minutes which post-production trickery aside may be some kind of a record for a horror movie.  This bold maneuver on the filmmaker's part holds the viewer's attention due to its sheer audacity, yet also an effective amount of, (very), slow dread building.  The bottom gradually falls out though as the movie gets derailed by various, unnecessary cliches and it becomes increasingly apparent that the showy delivery is not integral to the story.  Cleaver misdirection and ominous atmosphere aside, it is a laborious viewing experience for anyone with ADD and/or someone who is not jacked-up on enough caffeine to stay committed to the real-time presentation.  In such a context, it is a problem when the nursery rhyme piano score tries to disguise large moments where nothing is happening, abrupt and spooky visuals are never played to more effective silence, Florencia Colucci's protagonist makes idiotic decisions without properly explaining in detail the harrowing events that she has witnessed when given the chance, and the story turns into a confused mess of vague twists.

 

DEVIL
Dir - John Erick Dowdle
Overall: GOOD

Enjoyable, unassuming popcorn horror fodder, Devil does not set out to re-invent the wheel yet crosses its T's and dots its I's efficiently.  M. Knight Shyamalan attached his name to the project as producer and for contributing a story that was already widely known in religious circles as the "Devil's Meeting", where the Great Deceiver disguises himself amongst humans to turn them against each other and claim a fresh crop of deliciously damned souls.  Screenwriter Brian Nelson introduces this concept from the opening frames which leaves no doubt as to what is going on, just making the entire thing a guessing game for the audience as to who amongst the cast is pulling the strings.  Thankfully, the script is well-oiled in this respect, with all of the plot coincidences being purposely woven into the proceedings and casting doubt everywhere while simultaneously revving up the tension as five unlucky saps are trapped in an elevator and getting picked off in increasingly violent fashion.  Having established himself with a few adequate found footage movies, director John Erick Dowdle handles the formulaic material with ease while keeping the sinister tone in check without too much distracting comic relief or bombastic schlock.  The only complaint may be that it holds the viewer's hand the entire way through and is both less creepy and less psychologically interesting because of it, but Satan is always fun, so it gets a pass.

2010 Horror Part Six

COLD FISH
Dir - Sion Sono
Overall: MEH

At nearly two and a half hours in length, the simmering nastiness of Sion Sono's Cold Fish, (Tsumetai Nettaigyo), is a lot to endure, though the movie has a demented absurdity to it that is difficult to forget.  Loosely inspired by the serial killer duo of Gen Sekine and his common-law wife Hiroko Kazama, the ticking time bomb plot involves Mitsuru Fukikoshi's wimpish fish shop owner who gets manipulated into a life of crime and brutality by another, more successful fish shop owner who has a tendency to make less agreeable acquaintances "invisible".  Things head in an inevitable direction where the solid batch of odious characters are doomed by some ultra-violent fate, yet the level that it all goes off of the rails still manages to pack a visceral gut-punch.  Not for the squeamish, the gore is sickening and the depravity on display has a "dog eat dog" gravity to it where people have become so complacent in either their cartoonishly perverse or sheepish life choices that they enter an inevitable rabbit hole of self-destruction.  It paints a broad, cynical brush for humankind, featuring a few references to the Earth's extinction from the cosmos, but the performances are disturbingly heightened and Sono's penchant for dark humor thankfully manages to permeate through the whole thing.

 

BLACK SWAN
Dir - Darren Aronofsky
Overall: GOOD

While Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan indulges in a hefty amount of performance stress cliches and achieves more of an on-the-nose, gaudy camp than the type of arthouse brilliance that it may be going for, these things are not inherently detrimental.  Ten years in the making, Aronofsky fused inspiration from Tchailkovsky's Swan Lake, the concept of doppelgängers, Roman Polanski's "Apartment Trilogy", and a pre-existing script called "The Understudy", all while styling this as a sister film to his flash-less and exclusively intimate The Wrestler.  Certainly ambitious and occasionally a mess because of it, the film strictly plays the psychological horror game, with Natalie Portman's Nina Sayers succumbing to the typical, repressed, duality-stricken turmoil of her chosen profession.  Thankfully, Portman's performance is top to bottom outstanding, not just in how her year long, physical training paid off, but more importantly in her gradual, schizo transition from timid, paranoid perfectionist to the "Black Swan" alter ego that her character struggles the entire movie to master.  Sans the aforementioned The Wrestler, a big part of what makes Aronofsky's movies exciting is his willingness to satiate a barrage of stylistic flourishes which can have a bravado absurdity to them that bounces between unintentionally silly and cinematically fetching.  This is a crystal clear case of this trait, yet the production has an unabashed chutzpah to it, with the type of top-notch talent behind and in front of the lens to entertainingly pull it off.

 

RUBBER
Dir - Quentin Dupieux
Overall: MEH

The indie-meta genre hybrid Rubber from French filmmaker Quentin Dupieux is a bizarre one that tries to find the humor in watching a movie that purposely makes fun of watching movies.  Tongue-in-cheek pretentious in this respect, Dupieux seems to be having a tremendous amount of fun with a premise that can only be ridiculous, constructing a story around it where half of the characters are spectators and the other half performers, with most of them seemingly in on the gag.  The tone is endlessly perplexing and more dry than one may think is even allowed, posing a series of "nothing makes sense" questions that defy the audience to ward off the one-note monotony of what transpires here, as well as coming up with their own reasons for justifying the film's existence.  Perhaps Dupieux trusts his instincts here that an avant-garde, fourth-wall demolishing send-up about a killer tier is far more interesting, (if not altogether more entertaining), than a conventional B-movie spoof which this easily could have been.  He is probably right since if anything else, this will easily spark anyone's curiosity who craves something that is off the beaten path.

2010 Horror Part Five

THE SHRINE
Dir - Jon Knautz
Overall: MEH

The sophomore full-length The Shrine from Canadian filmmaker Jon Knautz has an solid build-up and nearly blows it on an over-the-top finale, but it thankfully misses going too far into eyebrow raising territory.  A number of things hold it back from working as well as it could, namely the character’s motives which are not strong enough to warrant the incredibly bad decisions that they make; a typical horror movie faux pas.  Also, some sub-par acting from an arguably too-good-looking cast sells the film’s more horrific moments short.  The opening scene ultimately proves to be a bad idea as well, since it gives the viewer certain information that the characters do not have, yet it does so at the cost of undermining later developments.  Leaving subtitles out to enhance both the characters and the audience member's confusion is a wise movie and while the twist manages to be foreseeable, it is still effectively done while pushing into schlock terrain.  A standard B-movie in most respects, but enough creepy moments transpire to warrant the safe approach to its subject matter.

 

CONFESSIONS
Dir - Tetsuya Nakashima
Overall: GOOD

Though its disorienting, monologue-heavy style may take considerable getting used to, Tetsuya Nakashima's first foray into the horror/thriller genre with Confessions, (Kokuhaku), is an effective one.  An adaptation of Kanae Minato's 2008 novel of the same name, it takes the point of view of various characters who detail their internal thoughts, (i.e "confessions"), in a nonlinear fashion concerning the death of a teacher's young daughter by two of her students and then the complicated aftermath thereof.  Japan's Juvenile Law of 1947 is routinely brought up, whereby minors who commit murder are not only spared the death penalty, but also get off on light sentences and sympathy from the general populous.  In this sense, it explores warped, sociopathic tendencies influenced by societal guidelines, as well as guilt, abandonment, desperation, and revenge where those who cause suffering or trauma find ways to justify their less than benevolent actions.  Music plays throughout the entire film,with Radiohead's "Last Flowers" making more than one appearance in its entity and Nakashima utilizes this along with slow motion montages to create something cinematic and heightened from bog-standard reality.  It all mirrors the detached psyche of those on screen who are lost while swimming in their own troubled heads.

 

BIRDEMIC: SHOCK AND TERROR
Dir - James Nguyen
Overall: WOOF
 
Recalling the output of non-filmmaker extraordinaire Neil Breen, James Nguyen's Birdemic: Shock and Terror is the type of inept, environmentally tinged vanity project that lacks all self-awareness and becomes a fascinating, bizarro-world bit of independent movie making in the process.  Cluelessly horrendous cinema has been around since the days of Dwain Esper, Ed Wood Jr., Herschell Gordon Lewis, and Bill Rebane, with the SOV boom of the 1980s proving that virtually anyone with a couple of bucks could get their hands on a camera and go shoot something to pass off as a "movie", talent or production values be damned.  Nguyen made this anti-masterpiece for under $10,000 over the course of four years, mostly shooting it on weekends with hardly any crew, plus a cast that is made up of extremely unfortunate people who could either be the world's most wooden actors or simply powerless to come off as anything else under the horrendous weight of the material.  While it is ultimately rare for something so relentlessly unprofessional to keep an audience's interest since acceptable pacing is one of the first elements to be tossed aside, this one has the "benefit" of the worst digital effects next to 2012's The Amazing Bulk, the most inconsistent sound design ever, a pretentious script that is both under and overwritten, unnatural dialog for the record books, laughable editing, and a tone that is oblivious to how embarrassing all of these components present themselves in the final form.

2010 Horror Part Four

BLACK DEATH
Dir - Christopher Smith
Overall: MEH

Too bleak and miserable to fully engage, Christopher Smith's Black Death struggles with some interesting ideas that do not get off the ground.  Funded and filmed in Germany though set during the Bubonic Plague in Medieval England, two Game of Thrones actors are typecast with Sean Bean playing the righteous Christian soldier and Carice van Houten a beautiful, pagan witch.  While it might be fun to see them essentially playing mere variations of their GOT characters, it takes away some of the would-be tension as we can rightfully guess van Houten's unwholesome intentions from the second that we lay eyes on her.  To his credit though, Smith is not necessarily going for any mystery here as this is a dour experience first and foremost, not just in its brutal subject matter, but also in its visual appearance that is muddy, bloody, and color-muted to the point of may as well being in black and white.  A story about how both Christians and non-believers suffer and deal with such a hopelessly, plague-ridden time, the sides are not properly balanced to give them any though-provoking weight.  The Christians are the good guys, the pagans are evil, and any intended sub-text is left mute, which for better or worse, just leaves a violent and gloomy movie set in the Middle Ages.

 

ALL ABOUT EVIL
Dir - Joshua Grannell
Overall: GOOD

A demented, full-length debut from drag performer Peaches Christ aka Joshua Grannell, All About Evil is a movie that revels in its low-budget, goofy sleaze in a way that the material exclusively deserves.  Grannell's background as a midnight movie runner at San Francisco's Bridge Theatre informed both this and his earlier short Grindhouse which utilized the same premise of a crazed theater owner making their own snuff films for the eager masses.  The tone is about as serious as a basement reenactment of The Rocky Horror Picture Show and it is something that celebrates fringe B-movie worship in an enduring way.  Equipped with a razor-thin script, cheap production values, genre in-jokes, and a delightfully ridiculous performance from Natasha Lyonne, all of the pieces are appropriately in place to deliver the trash enthusiast chuckles.  The only downside is that the film is nowhere near as clever as the best ones which it celebrates, since Grannell's overall writing/directing chops are slow on the draw.  Several of the audience-winking gags are fun though and Lyonne's pretentious, wackadoo Mae West transformation is easily worth the price of admission alone.

 

SHIROME
Dir - Kōji Shiraishi
Overall: GOOD

If anything else, Kōji Shiraishi's Shirome, (White Eyes), deserves some ingenuity points for its absurd blending of J-pop musical and found footage horror.  Once again hinging on a premise of a cursed location, it features Shiraishi playing himself as a documentarian that is tasked with making a television special where the Japanese idol group Momoiro Clover Z, (also playing themselves) is sent into an abandoned school to perform for a supposed supernatural entity that is less than friendly.  The concept is so ridiculous that one has to assume that it was intended for at least some laughs.  What is both interesting and clashing is that the tone is straight-faced and Shiraishi does in fact, (against all conceivably odds), create a significant amount of skin-crawling dread during the final act.  Endless questions are raised as to why in the hell any network television program would not only come up with something so nutty in the first place, but also why they would submit six high school girls, (with none of their parents anywhere to be found), to something so traumatizing.  It just plays more into the tongue-in-cheek gag of it all though and while it is far too perplexing in conceit to be regarded as a conventional masterpiece, it is plenty creepy and should still be seen to be believed.

2010 Horror Part Three

BEDEVILLED
Dir - Jan Cheol-soo
Overall: GOOD

The directorial debut from South Korean filmmaker Jan Ceol-soo, Bedevilled, (Kim Bok-nam Salinsageonui Jeonmal, The Whole Story of the Kim Bok-nam Murder Case), is a brutal and unmistakable feminist-themed nightmare.  A deliberately difficult watch at regular intervals, we witness a poor woman get surrounded by the worst husband and immediate family members known to man who consistently disregard and abuse her to a foreseeable breaking point.  It is more of an endurance test than a tension building thriller in this sense and it honestly just gets more and more miserable as the bloodshed revs up in the finale.  That said, the examination of such horrifying, sad, unrelenting, (and worse yet), acceptable neglect towards women makes for a powerful statement since it also leads to some serious comeuppance that makes the victim the villain in a wretched cycle of abuse.  There are other films out there that take their nasty subject matter to more unwatchable heights than this, but the balance is maintained here to make for a harrowing and substantial experience for those that can tough it out.

 

LET ME IN
Dir - Matt Reeves
Overall: GOOD
 
The Americanized version of Tomas Alfredson's Let the Right One In is a curious thing to come to terms with.  Going into production from the resurrected Hammer Studios almost immediately upon its Swedish predecessor having been released to unanimous acclaim, Matt Reeve's take here titled Let Me In only exists to give Western audiences something more user-friendly and digestible.  This is not to say that it is merely a PG affair without subtitles as in some ways it is even more horrific than its foreign counterpart, or at least on par with its gruesome tendencies.  Aesthetically though, it has a more watered-down look and feel.  There are absolutely atrocious digital effects in a number of scenes, plus it spells things out more plainly than the original which was less concerned with spoon-feeding the audience and more wonderfully focused on creating a haunting, melancholy atmosphere.  It sticks to the previous adaptation's plot line almost verbatim and in this respect, it is understandable that coming a mere two years apart from each other, comparing the two is unavoidable.  Still, one could argue that two solid and faithful reworkings of John Ajvide Lindqvist's novel are better than one.

 

BEYOND THE BLACK RAINBOW
Dir - Panos Cosmatos
Overall: GOOD
 
Blurring the lines of comprehensibility in an aggressive fashion, the debut Beyond the Black Rainbow from Greek-Canadian filmmaker Panos Cosmatos is an impressive if ultimately meandering exercise in avant-garde, semi-throwback horror.  The rather razor-thin story is besieged by a series of lavishly designed, hypnotically structured set pieces.  The laboriously deliberate pacing does in fact become a problem by the third act which grows underwhelming under the exhaustive weight of the film's lava-lamp-esque flow, but the movie's significant qualities are a plenty.  The lead performance by Michael Rogers is intensely creepy as he exhibits a constant rage and psychosis both clearly noticeable and desperately restrained all at once.  Then visually speaking, the movie is gorgeously stylized.  Its futuristic-via-retro design hearkens back to an array of notable art and commercial films and while the claustrophobic cinematography is at once uncomfortable, nearly every image therein is bizarrely captivating.  It falls short of being a masterpiece, but it gets by plenty on its thematically dark, challenging, and flashy sensibilities.

2010 Horror Part Two

WE ARE WHAT WE ARE
Dir - Jore Michel Grau
Overall: MEH
 
Plot wise, Jore Michel Grau's We Are What We Are is a different beast from Jim Mickle's 2013, American remake; something that at least warrants the latter as having merit.  Shot entirely in the slums of Mexico City, Jore Michel Grau maintains a dank, desperate atmosphere from beginning to end, with several acts of brutality that are staged disturbingly well.  The mood goes a long way, which is fortunate since the script is poorly formulated and the characters underwritten.  This becomes distracting within seriously-played scenes that are supposed to be emotionally intense as they never connect due to everything being rushed along with only the vaguest of story construction.  There are also moments that come off comical in large part due to the imprecise writing, which clashes tone-wise with the rest of the film.  The concept is macabre enough though and the cast strong though yet again, they would appear even more so if they were properly fleshed-out and the presentation was less aloof.

 

TUCKER & DALE VS. EVIL
Dir - Eli Craig
Overall: MEH

There is clearly an agenda to send-up and severely tweak various tired and lazy slasher horror conventions in Eli Craig's Tucker & Dale vs. Evil; conventions that have run rampant for decades now and deserve the piss being taken out of them to some extent.  Such cliched details are served up a plenty and the movie's overtly slapstick tone is kept consistent so that when the ridiculous repeatedly continues to happen, it works in its own wacky universe without any issues.  Alan Tudyk is one of the title characters, so any self respecting Joss Whedon fan will be genuinely pleased to see him excel with such silliness.  All that being said though, one could argue that what is being made fun of here are tropes that are better off left alone than once again lampooned.  It is still difficult to stand the "stupid college kids venture into redneck territory + serial killer in the woods" premise, since nothing unique is brought to the table here and the story is at the mercy of so many other stories that both came before it and were played more seriously in the process.  Still, the results are entertaining, the title characters are lovable, and the burn-out factor may be more forgivable to the less-jaded horror movie fan out there.

 

I SAW THE DEVIL
Dir - Kim Jee-woon
Overall: GOOD

Despite its relentless miserableness, Kim Jee-woon's revenge thriller I Saw the Devil is brutally satisfying for those who can stomach it.  Lapsing a breath away from torture-porn territory on occasion, Jee-woon thankfully steers sheer of the most disturbing "I really don't wanna see this" moments while at the same time almost gleefully showing the less-disturbing yet just as eye-wincingly brutal "I also really don't wanna see this" moments.  Meaning that it is easier to endure an unfathomably evil lunatic getting his Achilles tendon diced up as opposed to watching some poor, innocent, pretty Korean girl get done in with the same kind of gruesome detail.  Nothing is performed or photographed anything shy of stellar though and even the relatively long running time and monotonous nature of the plot sits uncomfortably yet is necessary to allow for the audience to soak in the most vile aspects of human behavior.  Good and evil are increasingly painted with the same colors here and the whole thing delivers the viscerally channeling chills that are impressive without being outright enjoyable, since "enjoyment" is hardly a thing that is on the menu here.

2010 Horror Part One

STAKE LAND
Dir - Jim Mickle
Overall: MEH

The borderline terrible Stake Land directly proceeded Jim Mickle's much better We Are What We Are remake and even unfortunately got a sequel in 2016.  Mickle and co-writer/actor Nick Damici initially envisioned the film to be a webseries and wrote forty, eight-minute scripts before a producer unwisely advised them to fuck all that and just make it a full-length movie.  Seven, additional mini-prequels were made and released online at the time, but all of this points to the fact that much was left out of the actual film.  Several characters and sub-plots emerge and get glossed over and at the same time, the plotting is tedious.  Everyone goes from point A to point B to point C, (camping, mingling, killing vampires, and repeat), with vague motivation and a downright miserable tone permeating through everything.  Worse though, there are random, schlocky moments full of the most generic, hokey dialog which makes the movie spontaneously morph into B-rate, straight-to-DVD level tripe.  Combining awful, lazy religious themes with so many things that we have seen so many times, it is equal parts Mad Max, The Grapes of Wrath, John Carpenter's Vampires, and Zombie Land, sans all of the humor and with boatloads more ugly grit.

TROLLHUNTER
Dir - André Øvredal
Overall: GREAT

The highly praised, well-respected Norwegian export Trollhunter, (Trolljegeren, Troll Hunter, The Troll Hunter), is deserving of its reputation as a premier horror outing from a country that has produced fewer than most.  Utilizing the often tired found-footage format for another trek into the woods, this time it is to encounter Norway's most iconic fairy-tale creatures.  Thankfully, writer/director André Øvredal plays his cards more competently than others in the over-worked sub-genre, utilizing a modest budget and pleasantly passable visual effects that are on par with any well-funded Hollywood production from the time period.  The plot is not perfect and there may be one or two questionable routes taken, but a mostly convincing job is done to keep the cameras rolling and slam home every character's motivation enough so that when huge portions of expository dialog are given to us, none of it takes us out of the experience.  This is something that is often a problem with hand-held camera horror films and it does not hurt that the cast is exceptionally strong here with Otto Jespersen, (a known Norwegian comedian who is anything but gut-bustingly funny here), being particularly solid.

DREAM HOME
Dir - Pang Ho-cheung
Overall: GOOD

Writer/director/producer Pang Ho-cheung's Dream Home, (Wai dor lei ah yut ho), is inconsistent in some respects yet hits more than it misses.  This is most prominent where the over-the-top gore and murder sequences are concerned; gore and murder sequences which would easily make Dario Argento stand up and applaud.  Though the horror-comedy moments work to a tee, the narrative itself is thin and executed confusingly.  Half told in flashbacks, such moments ultimately derail the otherwise hyper-violent pace, confused further by present day sequences that seem non-linear and take extra work on the audience's part to put together.  While the zig-zag structure is not as huge of a detriment as one would think, the tone suffers with the majority of time being spent on such a somber and serious back story.  Main protagonist Josie Ho's aloof performance is also tricky to pin down as she zombies her way through things, though her inevitable "cracking psyche" scene is well-deserved.  Not for the squeamish or for those who are unequipped to decipher a labyrinth-like plot line, but it is a nasty, Hong Kong Falling Down variation that provides the inflated housing market crash with a sure-fire, feminist anti-hero and again, plenty of nauseating violence.

2000's American Horror Part Thirty-Five

THE GRUDGE

(2004)

Dir - Takashi Shimizu

Overall: MEH

After four Ju-on entries in his native Japan, filmmaker Takashi Shimizu was tasked with the inevitable American remake from Sam Raimi's production company Ghost House Pictures, here simply titled The Grudge.  Garnishing a recently Buffy-free Sarah Michell Gellar in the lead as well as a slew of other recognizable faces to varying degrees, (including Ted Raimi, Grace Zabriskie, William Mapother, Clea DuVall, Ryo Ishibashi, and Bill Pullman who should always be in more movies), it is a slicker production than its counterparts from across the Pacific and is the first not to be penned by Shimizu himself.  Stephen Susco's script sticks to the previously established bullet points and adds a couple of fresh set pieces, but the entire film seems to be oddly stuck in an unenthusiastic haze.  The performances come off as phoned-in, the franchise's disjointed narrative structure is not broken into chapters this time and is ergo more off-putting than interesting, and the Westernized approach lacks the eerie subtly that Shimizu had become adept at delivering.  Instead, the movie is only creepy on paper, with stock scary music, stock jump scares, crappy CGI effects, and no sense of paranormal urgency to an already over-trotted story.

SOMEBODY HELP ME

(2007)

Dir - Chris Stokes

Overall: WOOF

The novelty of a horror film premiering on BET of all places quickly wears off when viewing the atrocious Somebody Help Me; easily one of the most insultingly lazy and embarrassing horror movies of the entire decade.  Written and directed by record executive filmmaker Chris Stokes, all of the details would render this a Scary Movie-styled parody, with a stunning amount of braindead narrative cliches, dialog, performances, and scare tactics that are all played stunningly straight.  The first act is cringey enough, with several young couples throwing a birthday party for one of their friends who all act like caricatures out of a non-threatening hip hop video or a white executive's version of a commercial that is aimed at urban America.  Once some generic, mask-wearing psycho starts picking them all off with implausible ease, we are then treated to torture porn segments, characters endlessly debating if they should stay put, leave, or look for their friends some more, and even a little girl on a swing who sings "Ring Around the Rosey" for Christ's sake.  There are too many other nauseatingly hack details to mention and never once does Stokes present his bombardment of formulaic tripe as anything unique, fun, suspenseful, or even tongue in cheek.  It is movies like this that make people who hate horror movies be 100% correct in their opinion.

THE NEW DAUGHTER

(2009)

Dir - Luis Berdejo

Overall: MEH

A formulaic and uninspired horror movie that is about as scary as an expired pack of spearmint gum, The New Daughter doubles as a dud follow-up to Swing Vote for star Kevin Costner.  The full-length debut from Spanish filmmaker Luiso Berdejo, it adapts John Connolly's novel of the same name which has a handful of familiar trappings that are served up without any flare or intrigue.  A single parent moving into a giant old house in the country with a brat teenage daughter who hates everything about such an arrangement, Native American mysticism about a chosen one, a folklore expert with a British accent, a kid starting a new school in a small town who immediately come in contact with a bully, stock screechy monster noises, a frustrated dad who literally googles "crazy daughter" and "bad parenting", and of course a cockamamie, supernatural scheme that takes its sweet ass time for no reason besides stretching the movie out until at least the ninety minute mark.  Costner is reliably solid in the lead, plus actor Ivana Baquero and composer Javier Navarrete, (both of whom did lauded work in Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth), are appreciated, but the story and presentation here is too pedestrian to remember, even mere moments after the credits roll.

2000's American Horror Part Thirty-Four

FROM HELL

(2001)

Dir - Albert Hughes/Allen Hughes

Overall: MEH

 

The Hughes brothers take a detour with the substantially-budgeted period piece From Hell; a gleefully violent yet bloated adaptation of Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's sprawling graphic novel of the same name.  Neither historically accurate nor a faithful interpretation of its source material, (as well as thematically singular from the director's contemporary crime films), it has a stylistic, glossy sheen that jives interestingly with its frequent bloodshed and dingy representation of late 19th century prostitute life.  Nearly all of the characters are sensationalized variations of historical figures and the performances are admirable, with Johnny Depp utilizing yet another convincing British accent, as does Heather Graham.  Depp's Cockney-adjacent, opium-indulging inspector named after and based on Frederick Abberline, (who famously tried to tackle the Jack the Ripper slayings of the era), comes off as more of a bystander than a Sherlock Holmes-level eccentric and the script's drama is too underplayed and underwritten, failing to capture the gritty flare of Moore and Campbell's initial material.  Still, it is not without some nasty charm and is certainly no more or less forgettable than the vast array of other Ripper cinematic works that came before it.

THE BURROWERS

(2008)

Dir - J.T. Petty

Overall: MEH

 

A period-set, "Tremors if it was a Western" genre offering from writer/director J.T. Petty, The Burrowers pulls no punches in its grit-covered depiction of the Old West's pioneer country.  Riddled with Native American hostility and racism, the trek that the characters embark on is further complicated by underground monsters that paralyze their victims, bury them while still alive, and come back to feast on the mushy bits at a later convenience.  Having previously fed off of buffalo for centuries, the white man's reckless slaughter of such livestock has given the creatures the taste for human meat out of necessity and the movie works as a metaphor for mother nature's non-bias agenda where any and all nationalities are on the menu, regardless of their petty squabbles.  Some familiar faces are sprinkled through the cast, with character actor Doug Hutchison getting the most scenery-chewing in as another odious pipsqueak which he has made a career out of portraying.  Sadly, the pacing is monotonous and the cinematography is of the dark, hand-held, shaky, "What the hell am I even looking at?" variety, which is not helped by Ritalin-fueled editing during the gruesome attack sequences.  Elsewhere, the dialog is largely mumbled and the title monsters look awful in their CGI form at least, though the practical effects close-ups are appreciated.

SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD

(2009)

Dir - George A. Romero

Overall: MEH

Some low-level digital gore effects and an unshakable air of redundancy are the biggest grievances one can find with what would turn out to be George A. Romero's final film Survival of the Dead, which doubles as the closer to his second abysmal Dead Trilogy.  In this respect, the movie's flaws can be seen as a breath of fresh air compared to the misguided mess that both Land of the Dead and especially Diary of the Dead were, the latter being a solid contender for the worst horror film ever made.  Romero had run out of ideas, (or at least not embarrassingly stupid ideas), for his Dead movies long before he got to this one, but his attempts here manage to be silly and ugly without being insulting.  Some of the on-screen means of disposing of zombies are humorous, even if they are also undermined by the aforementioned cartoony blood-splatter.  The moral conundrum presented with focusing on a bitter feud between two families who have opposing views on how to handle the flesh-eating ghouls is just a variation of Captain Rhodes and Dr. Frankenstein's much more bombastic arc from Day of the Dead.  The tongue is still in cheek here, but it lacks gusto as well as freshness, making it simply a competent note for Romero to go off on, which all things considered, is probably the best we could have hoped for after Diary of the Dead.

2000's American Horror Part Thirty-Three

THE COLLINGSWOOD STORY

(2002)

Dir - Michael Costanza

Overall: MEH

 

An interesting footnote at least for being the first credited screenlife horror film, The Collingswood Story is admirable for what it humbly attempts, but it is more unintentionally embarrassing than properly unnerving.  Shot during the early stages of home-used webcam technology, (when a hundred feet of phone cable was needed to keep a conversation going via laptop), independent filmmaker Michael Costanza makes the common found footage mistake of simultaneously utilizing scary music, montages, and conventional editing techniques.  Such would be forgivable if A) the story was any good or B) if the performances and dialog were anywhere near acceptable.  Four actors are given speaking roles, including a comic relief slob, a likeable college student, a cartoonishly silly psychic medium, and a bro with a heart of gold played by one Johnny Burton who is a dead ringer for Glenn Howerton.  All of the performances are high school-level play bad at best and Costanza's script is loaded with inane cliches, none of which makes his tale compelling of a clandestine cult conducting evil tomfoolery in the unassuming New Jersey town of the title.  There are certainly worse found footage offerings out there that came in the immediate wake of The Blair Witch Project, but this is easily one of the clumsiest.

 

RED EYE

(2005)

Dir - Wes Craven

Overall: GOOD

 

Released the same year as his laughably abysmal and studio-mangled, alt-teen werewolf movie Cursed, Wes Craven's Red Eye at least hits its mark as a quasi-silly thriller with a consistent, popcorn-munching tone.  Carl Ellsworth makes his feature film, screenwriting debut here having previously worked in television and even though his plot has one or two loosey-goosey craters in it to keep things held together, it delivers a catchy, high-stakes shift that kicks the second and third acts into gripping gear.  As is often the case with such movies, the audience may be yelling at some of the panicked choices that Rachel McAdams' protagonist makes in such a predicament, but the story avoids more cliched tropes than it adheres to, all of which elevate the tension so that the final set piece seems well-deserved in its B-movie fervor.  Cillian Murphy is ideally cast as the charming hit-man terrorist guy who seems to cross all of his T's and dot all of his I's until a crowd-pleasing monkey wrench gets thrown into his, (throat), gears, at which point the whole thing kicks up the camp and becomes a well-executed cat and mouse chase.  Craven keeps the whole thing together with the bare minimum of his usual, undercutting schlock elements, cruising along to where it might not completely hold together upon closer inspection, but works its cinematic trick sufficiently during the ride.

 

MY NAME IS BRUCE

(2007)     

Dir - Bruce Campbell

Overall: GOOD

Cranking up the self-deprecation to eleven, Bruce Campbell's sophomore directorial effort My Name Is Bruce is a delightfully stupid meta extravaganza made with oodles of nod-and-a-wink love on a shoestring budget.  Filmed independently in Campbell's own Medford, Oregon backyard, he portrays a down-on-his-luck, alternate universe version of himself that is reduced to making throw-away, D-rent B-movies, lives in a trailer, feeds booze to his dog, has Ted Raimi as his agent who is also sleeping with his ex-wife/Evil Dead co-star Ellen Sandweiss, and ultimately gets summoned to a hole-in-the-wall mining town to defeat a resurrected Chinese demon that is also the god of bean curds.  Plot wise, it follows the same outline as The Three Amigos except with Campbell playing up his smug schmuck persona, numerous references to his actual body of work, several beheadings, and plenty of profane, off-color jokes to offend anyone misguided enough to take any of this seriously.  This includes Raimi in yellow-face, cruelty towards animals, a trans hooker, and two hillbilly gay slobs to name but a few eye-brow raising incidents.  Thankfully, the film lays into its overt ridiculousness so hard that even the gags that fall flat are as hilarious as the ones that land, so in that sense, Campbell has crafted something that makes fun of himself so relentlessly that it is impervious to criticism.

2000's American Horror Part Thirty-Two

AMERICAN PSYCHO

(2000)

Dir - Marry Harron

Overall: GOOD

 

Frustrating in some respects while hilarious in others, (with a command performance from Christian Bale), Marry Harron's adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho novel works best as an over-the-top satire of 80s yuppie culture and the soulless narcissism inherent therein.  Nearly a decade in the making with everyone from Oliver Stone, David Cronenberg, and Leonardo DiCaprio at one point attached, Harron and screenwriter Guinevere Turner were able to crack the code in Ellis' self-proclaimed "unfilmable" source material, toning down some yet not all of the horrific violence and focusing on the sigma male qualities of Bale's protagonist Patrick Bateman, which in turn makes it a pro-feminist work.  By exaggerating the laughably self-important and shallow lifestyle of privileged Wall Street bros who consider all attractive women to be of a lesser intelligence and that only smart women can be ugly since they have to make up for their lack of looks, Bale's Bateman is the cartoonish poster boy for a culture that champions vapid consumerism and greed.  Him being an unreliable narrator and leaving the audience in the dark as to how much of his mass murder spree was imaginary shows a cynical yet amusing point of view which might leave many a viewer scratching their head, yet it also fits the hopeless cycle that our wholly artificial main character is admittingly trapped in.

 

THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE

(2005)

Dir - Scott Derrickson

Overall: MEH

On paper at least, the combination of court room drama with demonic possession movie suffices as an adequate gimmick to go with, making Scott Derrickson's The Exorcism of Emily Rose something of a curiosity to seek out.  Whether or not it manages to save face under a barrage of schlocky melodrama and bombastic supernatural set pieces though is another story.  As many a "based on a true story" film likes to proclaim, it was inspired at least by something "factual", specifically the 1970s case of Anneliese Michel and the ensuing conviction of her parents and priest after Michel's death by malnutrition; a death that only occurred once a whopping sixty-seven documented exorcisms were attempted.  The concept of having an agnostic, hot-shot lawyer defend a clergyman while a devout Christian prosecutes him is a clever one, but it leads to Laura Linney's protagonist having a hokey change of heart as demonic forces seem to influence the very trial that she is a part of.  CGI monster faces in the clouds, characters waking up to a burning smell during the witching hour, a key witness with cold feet getting "accidentally" killed, and most of all, Jennifer Carpenter contorting her body, speaking in tongues, dilating her pupils, and screaming at everything in typical horror movie grandiosity gives it all an unintended camp value that is jarring against its otherwise sincere presentation.

DEAD SILENCE

(2007)

Dir - James Wan

Overall: MEH

The writer/director team of Leigh Whannell and James Wan, (unfortunately), return with their first non-Saw film Dead Silence; a shamelessly stupid popcorn horror extravaganza that utilizes some of the cheapest and most hack-laden scare tactics in any such movie.  According to Whannel, it was reworked by script doctors to the point of being virtually disowned by its initial author, and coming from the man who brought us both the Insidious and aforementioned Saw franchises, his own disappointment with the finished product here is telling.  Opening with a misleading, black and white Universal logo to signify its alliance with old school spook shows, the resulting movie is anything but and also about as scary as a bowl of Campbell's soup.  Ventriloquist dummies are inherently creepy, but they and every other visual flourish here plays into such an overdone, cheap haunted house aesthetic that it all becomes comically ridiculous instead of atmospherically chilling.  This tonal misstep is a prominent faux pas in all of Wan's horror efforts and it was done to both lesser and more bloated effect in other entries in his filmography, but at least there are a few silver linings here.  For one, the pacing is agreeably brisk and Donnie Wahlberg leans into his role as a wise-ass detective with a level of glee that at least seems intentionally humorous, as opposed to the asinine twist ending which adheres to cartoon logic that is likely to make every viewer point and laugh at the screen.

2000's American Horror Part Thirty-One

THE ATTIC EXPEDITIONS
(2001)
Dir - Jeremy Kasten
Overall: WOOF

 

Both staggeringly incomprehensible and boring, The Attic Expeditions, (Horror in the Attic), is a nightmare to sit through, despite the inclusion of Jeffrey Combs, Seth Green, Ted Raimi, Wendy Robie, and even Alice Cooper in a completely random cameo not playing himself for a change.  Initially planned to be the forth entry in the Witchcraft series, the project was ultimately reworked into its own ill-conceived thing, with editor Jeremy Kasten jumping at the chance to make this his directorial debut.  Deliberately plotted to be head-trip into a kind-of-insane-asylum patient's mind, it is played straight besides the fact that is is also laughably convoluted and only grows more frustratingly nonsensical as it goes on.  Andras Jones is a daft choice in the lead as he lacks any and all charisma, which is something that hardly helps the viewer to gain interest in whatever cockamamie scenario he seems to be in.  It all has something to do with Combs conducting an experiment with other actors who are all pretending to be either patients or doctors in an institution in order to garnish some sort of black magic secrets from Jones' protagonist; secretes that are locked in a chest in the attic.  Whatever.

CONSTANTINE
(2005)
Dir - Francis Lawrence
Overall: GOOD

An unfaithful yet enjoyable adaptation of DCs Hellblazer series, Constantine gets by on its stylized popcorn-munching aesthetic and plenty of end of days, Biblical mysticism details.  Several years in development, creator Alan Moore removed himself from the project as he is wont to do, which is fitting in that screenwriters Kevin Brodbi and Frank Cappello make-up much of their own nonsense anyway, loosely utilizing aspects from Garth Ennis' "Dangerous Habits" arc while cherry picking elements from others.  Yet another variation of the "birth of the Anti-Christ" motif which is an age-old one for horror films, this time there are fun magical rituals to be abused and supernatural rules to be broken, all with A-lister Keanu Reeves in well-suited, brooding, unwilling world savior form.  A far cry visually from the "Sting with a beige trench-coat" look of the character and minus the British accent, (Reeves not making that mistake again), he still nails some of the humorous and rough around the edges cynicism of the chain-smoking occult expert.  Some fine scenery chewing from Gavin Rossdale, Tilda Swinton, Djimon Hounsou, and especially Peter Stormare as the Lord of Darkness Himself are also most welcome.  It ties up enough loose ends to set the stage for a sequel that of this writing is still yet to emerge, but even as a stand-alone comic book movie that plays recklessly with its source material, its charm is appreciated.

THE RUINS

(2008)

Dir - Carter Smith

Overall: MEH

 

For his full-length debut, director Carter Smith collaborated with screenwriter Scott B. Smith on the latter's novel The Ruins; a nasty nature horror outing that plays with the age ole concept of dumb-dumb young adults venturing into a foreign setting that is off the beaten path for a reason.  Here, it is a mysterious Mayan temple that is home to some sort of presumably ancient vegetation that consumes anyone who comes in contact with it, with the extra unsettling angle of it also being able to mimic its victims through flower pedals.  Wisely, Smiths' script spends a limited amount of time setting up its small cast of characters and the bare-bones amount of personal drama between them in order for us to be invested when things begin to go strangely wrong.  This makes it more of a doomed, would-be survival tale than anything else, sparing us a lot of over-played, Romero-styled squabbling amongst everyone on screen as to how they should handle their hopeless predicament.  The CGI effects are used sparingly, yet they are also poorly convincing, with more icky uncomfortableness stemming from the disturbing scenario itself, as well as some eye-wincing gore in the final act.