(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.
(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.
(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.
No comments:
Post a Comment