Dir - Takashi Miike
Overall: GOOD
Takashi Miike is something of a Japanese Michael Bay; someone whose films are equal parts over the top, ridiculous, and panned by many critics, (Audition notwithstanding). He is also one of the most prolific Asian filmmakers working and has more than several in the horror camp. Lesson of the Evil is a very morally bizarre work as it makes itself lurk in such a disturbing premise that most filmgoers will be naturally uncomfortable throughout viewing it. Yet Miike presents this distasteful outing with a hefty amount of headscratching oddness and the tone shifts seem to compliment it more than they logically should. It is difficult to tell if Hideaki Itō's character is accidentally poorly written or deliberately poorly written. Very curious moments like him fantasizing about having an American serial killer partner, (who also shows up as an eyeball in a shotgun), Odin's ravens, and the song "Mack the Knife" keep Lesson of the Evil from becoming an uninspired slasher movie, even if all the wacky details do not amount to having much meaning. The combination of alarming subject matter, blunt violence, and seemingly irrelevant strangeness seems to be kept at a consistent boil where nothing comes off as too incompetent to crash everything down.
Dir - Eduardo Sánchez
Overall: GREAT
In the last decade or so, a small number of filmmakers have upped their game and taken familiar source material and gone above and beyond in tweaking the formula more than enough to be worth one's time. In addition to this, it is incredibly rewarding in a genre that needs more fresh juice than any that some of these films end up being rather frightening because of it. Which at its core is ultimately the goal of any horror film; to actually be rather frightening There is a lone jump scare in Lovely Molly and one may question a logical move here or there, but even horror movie cynicism cannot deny that everything else presented more than makes up for it. Eduardo Sánchez of course was half of The Blair Witch Project's creative team and though his film output has been small compared to others, it is better to have a single movie like Lovely Molly emerge thirteen years later than a barrage of forgettable ones. Speaking of Blair Witch, there are parts of the found footage formula on display here, but thankfully Sánchez does not rely on them, getting away with their inclusion by letting his characters put the camera down and then having conventional, handheld cinematography take back over. These are mere stylistic details though. The story is genuinely disturbed and it slowly escalates to a practically perfect ending, with excellent performances front to back. This movie essentially shows that you can take a handful of commonplace horror ingredients and exquisitely reward the viewer's intelligence and patience while likewise creeping them out.
Dir - Scott Schirmer
Overall: WOOF
Making a movie that looks like it was shot on video with non-actors and no budget is one of those unfortunate facts of minimal filmmaking that sometimes there is just no way around. Scott Schirmer has made a handful of independent horror movies in the same vein as found. and he deserves credit with doing the best with what he has got. Technical aspects this noticeable though are quite an uphill problem to gloss over, especially when people with youtube accounts are making videos on their phones that are edited, acted, and more dazzling to look at than this. There are other problems here besides budgetary ones though. Essentially it is an exaggerated story about being picked on and fighting back when you are a kid. Well kind of because it is also about having a schizophrenic brother, asks the question as to whether or not having dark interests will in turn make a dark human, and also racism very, very randomly. So it is really a messy effort that tries to tackle on far too many things for its exceptionally modest budget. Schirmer plays the entire film very straight which on paper is a good move, but it also makes several of its themes impossible to buy into when again, it comes off far more as a student film than a "real movie".
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