Dir - Kurtis David Harder
Overall: MEH
Horror movies seem destined to turn a profit even if they are done on a modest scale, which explains why so many independent filmmakers work within the genre. Yet sometime the inclusion of supernatural or malevolently disturbing elements undermine a story that would have been better served without them. Such is unfortunately the case with director Kurtis David Harder's Spiral; a film that spends its first half exploring the type of understandable and devastating paranoia that is suffered by same sex couples coming out of the AIDs epidemic. Set in 1995 yet flashing back ten years earlier when the plight of the gay and lesbian community was at an even more abysmal stage of acceptance, the script by Colin Minihan and John Poliquin paints a devastating picture when a recently out-of-the-closet gay man, his teenage daughter, and his partner that was traumatized as a teenager by witnessing his boyfriend's murder via bigots all move out to the country for a fresh start. A typical set up as far as locale is concerned, but the main focus on Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman's growing suspicions about their new community open the door for illogical and cliched behavior where unsettling things are routinely witnessed yet either never mentioned or brushed off when they are. Eventually, the horrory elements become more prominent and they are both vague and hackneyed enough to come off as an afterthought, derailing an otherwise harrowing drama about the disenfranchised.
Dir - Chelsea Stardust
Overall: GOOD
Though it falls down the stairs during its finale, Fangoria's Satanic Panic does a commendable job as a ridiculous bit of blasphemous mayhem. The full-length debut from director Chelsea Stardust and authored by familiar genre experts Grady Hendrix and Ted Geoghegan, it plays out like a more knowingly stupid and tighter scripted version of Ti West's problematic House of the Devil. Though set in modern times, its adherence to gory practical effects gives it a throwback aura, that and the movie's title which obviously recalls the 1980s wave of pandemonium where moronic soccer moms and religious zealots were convinced that Dungeons & Dragons and Judas Priest were corrupting the nation's youth into a world of Great Deceiver worship. The presentation here leans into such goofy cliches, with arbitrary demon rules, millionaires in red robes, nasty spells being cast left and right, and an overall theme where the little working class Joe, (or Samantha in this case, played charmingly by Hayley Griffith), gets taken advantage of by the upper one-percenters that still want more by way of unholy sacrifices. It is equal parts amusing and clever until it backs itself into a corner during the final set piece, plus this may feature the most unrealistic depiction of what delivering pizzas is actually like. Still, its shortcomings are forgivable due to what it gets right, plus Rebecca Romijn as a cock-sure High Priestess and Jerry O'Connell as a perv in his underwear is always a hoot.
Dir - Aaron B. Koontz/Emily Hagins/Noah Segan/Baron Vaughan/Anthony Cousins/Courtney Andujar/Chris McInroy
Overall: WOOF
The easiest tactic to take when doing a horror comedy is to make fun of the inherent comedy in the horror genre itself, yet as producer Aaron B. Koontz and Cameron Burns' anthology outing Scare Package proves, such a formula can be more grating than fun if it is in the wrong hands. In this particular case, it is in multiple wrong hands since seven segments plus a wraparound one are handled by various filmmakers, some of whom are relatively inexperienced from behind the lens. This is the type of film that has its heart in the right place and has no intention of being taken seriously, but it is also a low-rent one that comes after an incalculable amount of others that do the same ole shtick. If there were any inventive laughs to be had here then maybe one could forgive yet another self-referential rehash of pop culture genre gags that are played up for nyuck nyucks by an endless stream of masked killers and slasher bait characters who never stop quipping, no matter how much blood and internal organs are spilled. As it stands though, the results here are insufferable, rendering this as something worse than just a painfully unfunny meta-horror romp; it is actually a pointlessly unfunny meta-horror romp.
No comments:
Post a Comment