ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE
Dir - Jim Jarmusch
Overall: GOOD
For his first foray into horror, Jim Jarmusch's Only Lovers Left Alive is a very specific and stylized take on the vampire film. Quirky, off-beat, and explicitly "Jarmuschy", the usual blood-sucking shtick is bypassed quite a bit for a humorously cynical, self-loathing, and hipster-centric approach. Certain vampiric traditions are still upheld, but it is amusing how Jarmusch is clearly goofing on them. Tom Hiddleston's Adam is more a parody of a brooding, no sense of humor, centuries-old vampire than a textbook, romantically-inclined sexual fiend. Both he and Tilda Swinton as his estranged soul mate of ages Eve, (get it?), score blood from doctors in typical drug addict fashion, but not just because they do not want to get caught killing people every night. Instead, they simply think human blood is contaminated and therefor unhealthy. There are plenty of other humorous twists thrown in and the overall theme seems to be in finding a little meaning in making yourself useful when you have no choice but to not die. While at the same time loving vintage instruments, vintage gear, 45s, and generally thinking other "zombie" people suck and you're the coolest undead kid in the room.
THE BORDERLANDS
Dir - Elliot Goldner
Overall: GOOD
The full-length debut from Elliot Goldner, The Borderlands, (Final Prayer), is an exceptionally good fount footage film amongst many lesser ones. Setting up a concept where camcorders are strapped to the characters heads as they are sent on a job to "document everything", it therefor lets the camera be the eyes of the protagonists and frees up any distracting questions of "Why would they keep filming all of this?" from the audience. Goldner seems to know all these plus sides to the format and utilizes them well. It also boils very slowly and has a small, likeable, and relatable cast. Minor complaints can be made in that these very characters willingly venture into the most absurdly frightening set pieces near the end, but the stretch in logic is forgivable since naturally, they do not know they are in a horror movie. The jump scares are also there of course, but they are used very sparingly at least. Plenty of intensely creepy moments are scattered through the movie and the finale is particularly superb. Even if it makes absolutely no sense how such footage got in the hands of anyone else to ever watch it, but still, this is about as decent as the sub genre ever gets.
Dir - Zachary Donohue
Overall: WOOF
Well this was rather unpleasant. Shrugging off a person clearly in peril instead of easily helping or at least being sympathetic to them comes off both headscratchingly illogical and obnoxious in Zachary Donohue's found footage dud The Den. Law enforcement basically tells our protagonist "You're on your own, now stop bothering us" more than once and it becomes a lazy excuse just to make the movie go on in the first place. There is a heavy-handed message lurking here that the internet and all the information that can be tracked and exposed therein is dangerous, so the concept behind this movie is creepy on paper, presenting a worst case scenario for anyone paranoid about having their face and/or info online. Yet when no one on camera seems to be concerned enough with said person caught up in such a nightmare, then good luck making the audience care either. More than that though, the whole ordeal is just uncomfortably depressing. Similar to how torture porn tests the audience to a sadistic, completely unentertaining extent, everything that goes on here is just either insulting or miserable or both.
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