2019 Horror Part Three

THE HOLE IN THE GROUND
Dir - Lee Cronin
Overall: MEH

Adhering to a large number of generic checkmarks, (too many in fact), the full-length debut from Dublin-born filmmaker Lee Cronin The Hole in the Ground is another where a single mother and her quiet son move into a huge, isolated house in a small town, a doctor prescribes sleeping pills, the kid starts acting weird, the mother is made to look crazy, and then other stuff.  It even opens with swelling noises on the soundtrack over the production and distribution credits before it goes black and reaches its crescendo.  Then the movie begins proper, followed of course by a psyche-out car accident and a creepy person standing in the middle of the road in a robe.  Some may argue that Cronin uses such a very safe, contemporary horror movie structure in a sufficient manner that benefits the story, but the story is as tripe as the rest of it.  The lack of originality in the premise is enough to sink the sufficient atmosphere, consistent tone, and solid performances unfortunately and the only really interesting narrative element is that very hole referenced in the title which provides a decent, ambiguous supernatural foothold.  Elsewhere, we have been to this rodeo many, many times before, especially as of late.

BRIGHTBURN
Dir - David Yarovesky
Overall: MEH

The James Gunn-produced project Brightburn is one of the many that boasts an interesting premise on paper, but fails to bring its warped concept to life in a consistently successful manner.  Written by Gunn's brothers Brian and Mark and directed by David Yarovesky, (2014's The Hive), it is a solid set-up of "What if Superman went evil when he was twelve-years old?".  What follows is a movie that thinks it can skirt by on a few "cool" or even "creepy" scenes, but at the same time boasts a near terrible script and an uninspired presentation.  As for the sound design, people are either whispering at barely-audible levels or ear-splitting jump scares are popping up every couple of minutes, every last one of which can be seen coming miles away.  It also clumsily balances its tone, mostly trying to be straight, emotionally-driven horror, yet setting itself up to become a fun franchise with some ridiculous moments of gore tossed in along the way that come off as comical.  Every plot point is just there to get us to the next thing that the screenwriters wanted to do as opposed to say, actually contemplating what the characters in the movie would believably do.  It is not dumb enough to be schlocky, but still pretty dumb which possibly could have been avoided, but eh, trying is hard sometimes

THE LIGHTHOUSE
Dir - Robert Eggers
Overall: GREAT

The highly anticipation follow-up to Robert Eggers' The Witch, (that ultra, ultra rare instant masterpiece that has only since become more rightfully renowned), The Lighthouse hit Cannes about a year after it wrapped up shooting and then still only saw a limited theatrical run on its scheduled release date.  This only caused more of a stir for those who had to hunt down a convenient enough place to see it.  Impressively, there is virtually no comparing it to The Witch as it is a unique, complex beast all its own.  Liberal on the humor and myth-heavy symbolism, there is a lot to weave through in The Lighthouse.  The plight of loneliness, toxic masculinity, the negative effects of alcoholism, the pitfalls of both seeking forbidden knowledge and withholding it, the futility of trying to escape one's past, longing for identity, and how all of this and probably some other things can lead to inevitable madness, the speculation is ideally fascinating.  It seems to be about so much simultaneously and how remarkably photographed and acted it is, (cinematographer Jarin Blaschke and Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattison deserving so much credit), only further magnifies the movie's intensity.  While it never really bothers to go for gut-wrenching horror and once again embellishes virtually no tired cliches, none of this ultimately matters in the slightest.  Eggers' reach is clearly a bold one and the meticulous nature of his work here is once again as captivating as it comes.

2019 Horror Part Two

THE DEAD DON'T DIE
Dir - Jim Jarmusch
Overall: GOOD

Dipping his toes into horror more often than not as of late, Jim Jarmusch returns with a zombie film this time that very Jim Jarmuschingly rips a hole in the entire fabric of the "dead people chomping on alive people to make more dead people chomping on alive people" formula.  It would logically seem that Jarmusch is late to the party here with zombies being worn-out to the point of utter aggravation, but this is wonderfully a saving grace in and of itself.  The very themes of humanity being powerless to stop nature and all of us humans basically being shallow shells just waiting to turn into braindead ghouls are offered up very on the nose like, being just as funny as all of the suffocatingly dry humor that is in every nuance of the script.  So even as Jarmusch may be appearing to make a smart, social commentary here, he is probably just taking the piss out of everything about zombie movies in the knowingly smirky way he knows how.  This could make The Dead Don't Die annoying, but the wonderful, consistently recognizable cast seems positively delighted to be here and the film never once stops being amusing.  One or two unresolved plot threads aside, it is about as good of a horror parody as can be made by a guy who is rightfully adept at making one.

MIDSOMMAR
Dir - Ari Aster
Overall: GOOD

As a follow up to the utterly outstanding Hereditary, writer/director Ari Aster's sophomore effort Midsommar is excellent though imperfect.  Comparing the two films is inevitable, but Aster brings a lot of this upon his own work as one of the complaints one could find is the perhaps too similar nature of both.  Centralizing the story on an emotionally distraught character that is suffering from a hugely traumatic event and then fusing that with pagan rituals both factual and dramatized, Aster clearly has a fetish for a rather specific type of material.  In this respect, it cannot help but to make the end product consistently predictable.  On the plus side though, he has a knack for delivering his shtick strikingly well.  Perhaps even more than Hereditary, Midsommar works outside of its horror elements as a powerful exploration of grief.  This complements the folkloric, communal cult backdrop perfectly, exposing in an exaggerated fashion of course how one damaged person can become sucked into such a thing.  There is even more going on than that though and none of it seems sloppy.  The not quite up to par elements are more minor details like how believability is stretched a little too far when people start disappearing and acting suspicious, stiff dialog at times, the pacing which drags just a hair, and some minor sub-plot details that seem a little half-baked.  There is likely a method to even these presumable missteps judging by how intelligently made and wonderfully genre-defying the rest of the film is though.  Aster is still two for two, hopefully setting the stage for something a little more outside of his chosen comfort box that will take a few more chances next time.

SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK
Dir - André Øvreda
Overall: WOOF

For something that makes absolutely no attempts to break any rules, has all the weight of a decently funded studio project behind it, checks off every currently trendy horror trope there is including being something nostalgic, wraps itself up in a nice, glossy little package and puts all of the pieces in place for a franchise to blossom out of it, there is probably still an audience out there for the big screen adaptation of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.  Namely blind followers of anything with the horror tag attacked to it or teenagers who do not know any better.  Based off of author Alvin Schwartz and artists Stephen Gammell's much beloved children's books from the 1980s and 90s and the third feature from Norwegian filmmaker André Øvreda, the version here represents absolutely everything hack about modern, PG-13 horror movies.  Øvreda's Trollhunter is quite excellent as is Schwartz' and Gammell's source material of course, but no amount of nostalgia or admiration for anyone's previous work can make the spell cast by such a completely safe, uninspired and stock product like this do anything more than rile the blood.  At least for those who have little to no patience on tripe nonsense.  Horror movies do not all need to reinvent the wheel and many enjoyable ones make no such attempt, yes.  This particular example is just insulting to the audience though and top to bottom disappointing because of it.

2019 Horror Part One

GLASS
Dir - M. Night Shyamalan
Overall: MEH

Another botched effort from the perpetually flawed filmography of M. Night Shyamalan, Glass is the sequel to both Unbreakable and Split.  Coming nineteen years after the former and three after the latter, it is hardly the conventional way to go about establishing a cinematic universe and wrapping up a trilogy.  Yet Shyamalan did have a lot of embarrassing to utterly terrible movies to make in the meantime.  Glass is akin to Unbreakable far more than it is Split in tone as there is not really a single horror-esque moment to be found here.  That is not the problem though.  Once again, M. Night cannot quite juggle his good ideas and in the process throws some very unnecessary and sloppy ones in instead.  No movies of his are void of plot holes and the fact that there are more than even usual for him here gets quite distracting.  The circumstances that bring James McAvoy, Bruce Willis, and Samuel L. Jackson together in the very same building with only the flimsiest of security measures that are easily thwarted, one of the most forced twists in any of Shyamalan's movies, and arguably the very most lackluster ending make for a highly unsatisfactory result.  McAvoy is positively brilliant once again as a lunatic with too many multi-personalities to count and as always, Shyamalan proves himself a way better director than writer with a multitude of well structured, stylistic shots.  Still, Glass is a disappointment in every other way.

US
Dir - Jordan Peele
Overall: MEH

There is a frequently used saying regarding horror movies in particular that "less is more".  Though it is a simplification of course to suggest that explaining as little as possible automatically means that the movie is going be better, but there are times when you can overstuff your film with exposition, twists, and themes on top of themes to the point where the weight of it all completely collapses upon itself.  With Us, that is precisely what happens.  There are few filmmakers out there embracing the horror film more than Jordan Peele.  Coming out of being a Mad TV writer and performer, (nobody's perfect), to the highly successful and hilarious Key and Peele, to taking a hefty enough gamble with his directorial debut Get Out, Peele pleasantly surprised many.  While Get Out was also flawed and similarly wracked up the plot holes, Us reeks of overcompensating while desperately trying to both appeal to whoever it can and challenge whoever it can at the same time.  Because Us was sufficiently funded and Get Out was such a roaring success, Peele is unfortunately stuck in this position where either studio heads or he himself feels he cannot be too ambiguous as to alienate his whole audience so instead, he goes the complete opposite route and drowns his movie with ideas that have no payoff.  Throw in some trendy, terrible details like boo scares and supernaturally strong, agile bad guys standing still and tilting their heads and there is way too much here to aggravate and undue it.  A movie, (no matter what genre), does not get by on its clever premise, good performances, and a few well done scenes.  Not when the filmmakers cannot stop throwing shit in there with no possible hope of it adding up.  Taken as a whole which is only fair, Us is a regrettable mess.

EXTREMELY WICKED, SHOCKINGLY EVIL AND VILE
Dir - Joe Berlinger
Overall: MEH

Making a serial killer biopic has to be one of the most monumentally difficult cinematic tasks there is.  So the conflicting nature of Joe Berlinger's Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile is troubled in more ways than one.  The positives to point out are in the structure of the film, which shows almost none of the deplorable acts of Ted Bundy and instead looks at the most notorious amongst too many of America's serial killers primarily through the eyes of two women; his one time girlfriend and later wife.  Giving us a view from just two of the people he manipulated and not focusing on the things a monster like Bundy himself would be most proud of is the admirable way to go to be sure.   That being said, the usual biopic problems are numerous.  With a case so incredibly infamous as Bundy's and one that carries so much unbelievably tragic weight, taking such eye-ball rollingly dramatic liberties is a bad move.  Perhaps this softens the blow a bit and helps the whole ordeal to be more "movie-like" as to dilute the viewer from what really went down.  Using embarrassingly on the nose pop music cues, re-ordering real life events, and simply making up others might take the edge off, but it does so in an annoying and somewhat disrespecting way.  A movie about Ted Bundy simply should not be entertaining is the long-short of it, but then why watch it if that is the case?  Also, Zac Efron forgoes most of Bundy's actual mannerisms, ditches the slight-southern accent, and conveys hardly any of the sociopath's smirking narcissism and is more just giving a straight, competent performance here.  It is difficult to surmise what the movie could have done "better", but it gets probably a C+ to a B for effort at least.

2000's British Horror Part Three

DEATHWATCH
(2002)
Dir - Michael J. Bassett
Overall: MEH

Writer/director Michael J. Bassett's debut Deathwatch is an ambitious, somewhat interesting psychological yarn that fumbles a bit too much along its way.  Some of the presentation brings it awfully close to B-movie schlock, particularly a good amount of the dialog, the swelling, dramatic musical score that never shuts the fuck up, and how every character routinely screams all of their lines.  Set during an exasperatingly cold, wet, and muddy World War I backdrop, some of the macho behavior seems appropriate, but as the movie continues to spiral into more ambiguous terrain, these details become a bit irksome when they probably should not be.  Bassett concocts a small handful of creepy moments, (more so earlier on), and he utilizes the modest budget to good enough effect to stage a harsh setting with some brutal battle sequences.  Yet a lot of it unfortunately rambles along with a host of underwritten characters, the spooky mystery never picking up a compelling enough momentum.

SEVERANCE
(2006)
Dir - Christopher Smith
Overall: MEH

There are only a few scant moments of unpredictable humor scattered about Christopher Smith's Severance, another thriller parody that is pretty standard and mediocre.  Smith and his co-screenwriter James Moran being rather avid genre fans judging by their filmography, utilize a few too many cliches all around, like loud noises on the soundtrack every time something scary happens and thematic red herrings.  On that note, the earlier scenes are far more intriguing than what ultimately transpires, with psychological and supernatural elements introduced, all of which end up being a mere tease.  Once we find out what is actually going on and it turns into just another cat and mouse game with some kind of vague military undercurrent, it becomes easy to check out of the story.  Tone-wise it is also inconsistent as it plays like a straight slasher movie and borders on torture porn once or twice while still continuing to bust out random gags on the regular.  The humor is certainly a preferable ingredient, otherwise it would be generically drab, but it is just not all that memorable of an end result.

EDEN LAKE
(2008)
Dir - James Watkins
Overall: WOOF

You know what is fun, meaning not the fuck fun at all?  Getting to know a nice, normal couple on the brink of starting the rest of their lives together who instead meet an entire town full of appalling douchebags who have the worst teenagers ever birthed who proceed to terrorize and murder them for ninety-minutes.  Eden Lake, the debut from James Watkins, is the worst kind of torture porn bullshit.  It is miserable enough when you are watching a bunch of exaggerated, horror movie-level psychopaths do awful things to people for their own warped reasons.  Yet when you change the evil-doers to just a crop of bullies who should have all been drowned right out of the womb and your big finish then is to show that it all comes down from their parents who also should have been drowned right out of the womb, the unrelenting miserableness is just comically obnoxious.  It is the same question posed by all of this garbage, being "Who the fuck wants to watch this shit?"  Poor Michael Fassbender certainly does not deserve to be here and neither do we.  As little Elizabeth Cronin would say, "What a pile of shit!".

2000's British Horror Part Two

THE DARK
(2005)
Dir - John Fawcett
Overall: WOOF

Based off of the Simon Maginn novel Sheep which hopefully is not as dreadful, The Dark is a wretchedly formulaic and highly confused, supernatural horror trainwreck.  It is bad enough that the movie plays like it is trying to check off every last "daughter goes missing, people going through old newspaper reels at a library, grungy kids who whisper cryptic dialog, old locals who can explain legends and spooky stuff, let's try and overcome something traumatic in our lives at the end, oh never mind it is a plot twist" trope.  It is another thing that the script by Canadian playwright Stephen Massicotte comes off at least like the pages got mixed up and they decided to shoot it that way regardless.  Things become increasingly off the rails as the film tries to deliver the ghost story goods near the last act, with random foreshadowing, reoccurring, (and awful), dialog, and sloppy editing all contributing to the disastrous whole.  It is as far a cry from director John Fawcett's landmark Ginger Snaps as can be expected and even though Sean Bean amazingly does not die in this one, it is still a pretty embarrassing entry on his resume, as well as everyone else's involved.

THE COTTAGE
(2008)
Dir - Paul Andrew Williams
Overall: GOOD

The sophomore effort from British writer/director Paul Andrew Williams swings for being over the top both in its humor and it's nastiness.  There are many moments that pull this off, particularly in the first two thirds where a botched kidnapping consistently and hilariously goes more and more off the rails.  It is in the last act where the movie indulges in full-on slasher parody that things regrettably get a bit lazy.  The about-face, thematic shift is appreciated as is the fact that the mayhem never stops, but once an isolated farm house with a deformed maniac playing cat and mouse with everyone who trespasses on his land is introduced, it unfortunately goes through all of the standard motions.  Even though everything is still played primarily for laughs, it still comes off a bit too dumb while riding such cliches to the ground.  The cast who mostly yells "Fuck!" at each other a lot is pretty strong and Laura Rossi's blatantly Danny Elfman-inspired score sets the comedic tone right out of the gate.  Even though the last horror movie section is less-inventive, the rest of it just gets by enough on its vulgar, bloody charm.

PANDORUM
(2009)
Dir - Christian Alvart
Overall: MEH

Technically a German production with British producers and an international cast, Pandorum is visually impressive with expertly designed, grimy, lived-in sets and sufficient enough effects, but it is also as stock and generic of a science fiction film as has ever been made.  Melding two scripts from Travis Milloy and director Christian Alvart together, it is a shame how disastrously mundane it is.  Astronauts waking up from hyper-sleep on an arc vessel to try and relocate humanity and then having to deal with hostile aliens aboard as a basic premise is fighting quite an uphill battle to offer up anything remotely unique to such cliches and indeed, there are none.  It is further unfortunate that the presentation is more obnoxious than not with loud, screechy monsters, unintelligible dialog often mumbled, grumbled, or whispered and at least one character, (Ben Foster), getting tossed and dropped around like a rag doll without even so much as a broken pinky toe to show for it.  The dialog itself is as tripe as everything else and it is all spoken/screamed by people being macho and miserable simultaneously.  As a strict, by the books and gritty, contemporary outer space action movie, it fits the mold a little too well.

2000's British Horror Part One

28 WEEKS LATER
(2007)
Dir - Juan Carlos Fresnadillo
Overall: MEH

It may not derail itself in its third act the way that its predecessor 28 Days Later did, but the follow-up 28 Weeks Later offers up its own shortcomings instead.  Spanish film director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo steps in for Danny Boyle with most of the previous creative team still on board, but the new story they have presented is hugely uninteresting.  The military this round are not portrayed as needlessly barbaric villains, but once again they are outnumbered and go for an "execute everyone...no exceptions" route which simply results in half of the movie being people running around, crying, getting shot at, and either dying horribly or turning into the franchise's rabid zombie stand-ins.  Sadly, one of the parties invited back is editor Chris Gill who does a thoroughly obnoxious job frantically cutting every action sequence at such a rate as to make it absolutely impossible to comprehend what you are looking at.  This is not so much Gill's sole fault as this blitzkrieg editing style was all the rave at the time and even still rears its obnoxious head in many a film nowadays as well.  It still makes the movie an unnecessary headache though.  Adding insult to injury, the ending is just kinda "Wha...oh, OK I guess it's over", and at the end of the day, nothing is learned, there is no one to give a shit about, and same old, same old.

THE CHILDREN
(2008)
Dir - Tom Shankland
Overall: WOOF

Creepy kids in horror movies have long been a thing.  As have kids and parents in general in movies that cause nothing from the audience besides face-smacking scorn.  The second full-length from English writer/director Tom Shankland is the generically titled The Children which is one of the biggest offenders of the aforementioned tropes in recent memory.  It is difficult to tell if the characters are in fact underwritten or if there are just so many screaming and crying kids mixed with frantic editing as to make it appear that way.  Lacking a clever, inventive premise and pacing all of the stock, would-be tense moments at a slumbering crawl, Shankland is unable to elevate the lame material with any kind of captivating flare.  It also cannot be overstated how obnoxious every person on screen is from the stereotypical, introverted teenager brat who does not like her stepdad, to the oblivious parents whose answer to everything their shitbag kids keep doing is to promise them gold stars and insist that they all run around and play more fun games.  It does not really add up if in fact Shankland was trying to make some kind of critique on such detrimental parenting techniques as said parents are both overbearing and inattentive at the same time.  Nothing works here and the quicker it is forgotten about the better.

 

TONY
(2009)
Dir - Gerard Johnson
Overall: MEH

The full-length debut Tony, (Tony: London Serial Killer), from writer/director Gerard Johnson is a fleshed-out version of his 2005 short of the same name.  A deliberately subdued serial killer movie, the complete lack of insight given into the title character can be seen as either a detriment or an interesting angle to take, depending on how much the viewer wishes that they could delve into the psychology of a murderer.  We are presented with Peter Ferdinando's protagonist/antagonist at merely a face-value level; he is crippled by social awkwardness, twenty years unemployed and mooching off of government hand-outs, obsessed with R-rated action movies, and a failure in all of his attempts at human connection.  With no backstory or means to understand him, we merely witness a pathetic and broken man's lifestyle for roughly ninety-minutes as he gets away with violent outbursts, leaving the film with no more information than we had when it started.  Ferdinando is compelling in the lead and the movie's frank, intimate style creates a dingy atmosphere that makes for a more somber than exploitative end result.  Still, it is too narratively barren to resonate, with an anti-climactic ending that leaves our pathetic killer more room to go about his business, perhaps intentionally making the point that mental illness and evil sometimes simply makes tragic bedfellows.

2000's Asian Horror Part Eight

SORUM
(2001)
Dir - Yoon Jong-chan
Overall: MEH

The first full-length offering from South Korean filmmaker Yoon Jong-chan, Sorum is a bit of a detrimentally slow boil.  The small cast of characters are aloof as soon as we meet them and they stay that way throughout.  Meanwhile, it is practically vacant on plot and poses an endless stream of ambiguous details that it makes no attempt whatsoever to dig into.  No doubt this was deliberately done and does create a thoroughly consistent, dour mood, but the movie does not seem to be saying anything, which makes it rather difficult to sympathize with on any level.  None of the horrific elements are explicit and instead they are used to make the storyline even more murky, which is an interesting idea.  Are these characters ghosts, children of ghosts, lost, eccentric souls, abandoned orphans drawn back to a cursed location, or all of the above?  This would make for some interesting things to ponder, but the film could afford to explore some of these avenues itself a little bit more instead of letting the viewer do basically all of the work.

MAREBITO
(2004)
Dir - Takashi Shimizu
Overall: GOOD

Filmed in between making Ju-On: The Grudge and the American remake, Takashi Shimizu's Marebito, (a.k.a. Unique One), is a bizarre and challenging work.  Casting none other than cult filmmaker Shinya Tsukamoto as a man off of his meds and presumably going insane for the entire movie, it provides Shimizu with an ideal pallet to explore the psyche of someone very troubled indeed.  Along the way, everything from vampires, to Richard Sharpe Shaver's detrimental robots, to underground, supernatural cities, to Dante's Inferno, to voyeurism, to Lovecraftian mythos are thrown into the mix and it is anybody's guess what is going on in the head of the main protagonist, let alone going on in "real life".  Some of the editing near the beginning is a bit off-putting as the film seems unclear as to whether or not it is going to be a found footage movie and to what degree.  Yet once things settle into the main arc revolving around a feral woman and cryptic phone calls, the tone gets more focused and endlessly puzzling.  Despite some technical limitations and a few dragging spots, it still ends up being an adequately unique, deep dive into psychological horror.

TOKYO GORE POLICE
(2008)
Dir - Yoshihiro Nishimura
Overall: MEH

Amazingly void of humor and instead sacrificing such a necessary thing for mindless gore montages and a completely wooden lead in former model Eihi Shiina as a badass monster assassin, Tokyo Gore Police is almost impressively boring and dull.  The cheap, nasty, and utterly ridiculous splatter effects are relentless which all logic would dictate would make at least a visually entertaining and disgusting end result.  This is not the case though since the tone is botched, the plot is not at all interesting, and the movie seems to forget that it is even telling a story at all throughout the majority of the running time.  Shiina being terrible in the lead is not even that big of an issue amongst the other more paramount ones and the whole film has the wrong kind of odd feeling where it should be a hoot yet just seems a conceptual mess instead.  Director/editor/co-writer and prolific make-up artist Yoshihiro Nishimura would do far more engaging work with collaborator Naoyuki Tomomatsu with his follow-up Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl, but left to his own devices here, his absurd, gross-out fetishes make for surprisingly lackluster results.

2000's Asian Horror Part Seven

A TALE OF TWO SISTERS
(2003)
Dir - Kim Jee-woon
Overall: GOOD

Some of the details are imperfect to A Tale of Two Sisters, (Janghwa, Hongryeon), Kim Jee-woon's adaptation of the frequently-filmed source material that is based off of Korean folklore.  Consistently moody, beautifully photographed, and making good use out of a few select, hair-raising set pieces, even if the obligatory boo scares are structured around drawn-out sequences of almost total silence, as is the norm.  Jee-woon still cannot avoid using "girl with long hair hanging over her face with a crooked neck" ghost cliches, yet these moments are handled uniquely, with more time being taken to sustain dread as opposed to endlessly showering the audience with familiar, lazy tropes one after the other.  On that note, the running time feels cumbersome and the twist is hardly the most revolutionary out there.  The last twenty-odd minutes do more to muddle the previous hour and a half than to satisfyingly expand upon it, but the film delivers enough unnerving manipulation to ponder the whole ordeal long after it is over.

 

GIDAM
(2007)
Dir - Jung Bum-shik/Jung Sik
Overall: MEH

It is a shame that the debut Gidam, (Epitaph), from the Jung brothers is so nebulous from a narrative perspective as it is simultaneously refreshing from a stylistic standpoint.  An anthology horror film that does not reveal itself as such until nearly halfway in, its lackadaisical way of shifting through timelines, spontaneous dream sequences, hallucinations, and different character arcs and perspectives, (which all hing around a hospital during World War II), is endlessly frustrating.  By morphing through everything that may or may not be happening on a physical plane, (let alone trying to follow several different plot points), the movie only stays lost in its nostalgic and tragic musings on loss, love, and regret.  Despite their murkiness, the powerful themes are expressed in a visually superb manner with Yoon Nam-joo's rich cinematography being a star of the show, followed closely by the period set design and the Jung brothers Bum-shik and Sik's vast array of images that bounce between unsettling and beautiful.  Most of the film plays to stark silence which gives it a haunting sense of suspense, yet unfortunately this is interrupted by Park Yeong-ran's overly-sappy orchestral music at irregular intervals.

 

THE FORBIDDEN DOOR
(2009)
Dir - Joko Anwar
Overall: GOOD

This slick adaptation of Sekar Ayu Asmara's novel The Forbidden Door, (Pintu Terlarang), from Indonesian filmmaker Joko Anwar fuses together David Cronenberg's Videodrome and David Lynch's Lost Highway, with a dash of John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness thrown in for good measure.  By Anwar's own admittance, it examines the fetishization of parenthood and namely how certain couple's can be accused of starting a family more in order to fit properly into a societal norm than out of an innate, nurturing desire.  The movie takes an approach that is on-the-nose for the most part, though it disguises itself as being more psychologically dense.  Setting up the forbidden door of the title early on, it dangles said carrot for both Fachri Albar's troubled protagonist and for the audience, so that we all know that the climax will revolve around what answers will be given therein.  This twist is easy to spot, but it is still delivered with an emotionally unsettling payoff that fits the rest of the film's boldness.  While the ride is fun and punctuated by interesting, tonally bizarre choices that give it an appropriately heightened sense of non-reality, the ending unwraps everything in a manner that leaves the viewer with nothing to further contemplate.  So even though it is less intellectually challenging than it may promise at times, it is quirky and brutal enough to keep one's interest before the credits roll.

2000's Asian Horror Part Six

DARK WATER

(2002)

Dir - Hideo Suzuki

Overall: MEH

A return to J-horror for director Hideo Suzuki after the one-two punch of the ridiculously successful Ringu and Ringu 2, Dark Water, (Honogurai mizu no soko kara), is unfortunately messy and formulaic.  An adaptation of a Koji Suzuki short story of the same name, it is predictable from frame one and relies exclusively on illogical, "because horror movies" tropes for its scares.  The film consistently poses the question as to why a ghost would behave the way that it does, (meaning that the supernatural forces here act exclusively in an arbitrary manner to stretch-out the running time), which does not even take into account things like characters standing completely still while scary shit slowly happens in front of them.  Lazy by conventional means then, such a process can still wield entertaining results and on a surface level, there is a creepy enough ambiance here to please genre fans, but it is by-the-books to a fault.

 

DEAD FRIEND
(2004)
Dir - Kim Tae-gyeong
Overall: MEH

Turn of the century K-horror and J-horror adapted many of the same motifs and in this respect, Dead Friend, (Ryeong, The Ghost), sticks to the formula without being entirely pointless.  Serving as the debut from South Korean writer/director Kim Tae-gyeong, it comes right out of the gate with a scenario that we have seen countless times before of a group of high school girls conducting a seance out of boredom, which naturally leads to a supernatural death.  Things become more interesting once the timeline jumps ahead where one of them, (Kim Ha-neul), is now in college and has suffered an amnesia spell as well as having acquired a completely different personality in the process.  This and various other hints are in place to set up the twist ending which is effectively done even if it seems obvious in hindsight, but the bulk of the film is delivered in a bog-standard manner for better or worse.  The ghostly apparitions are of the "long black hair hanging in front of the face" variety, all of the scared are predictably broadcast, and the vengeful spirit plot has various characters getting picked off while the main protagonist tries to unlock the mystery and set things right before she suffers the same wrath as her friends.

RAMPO NOIR

(2005)
Dir - Akio Jissoji/Atsushi Kaneko/Hisayasu Satō/Surguru Takeuchi
Overall: MEH

With four filmmakers teaming up, (including Ultraman director Akio Jissoji and manga artist Atsushi Kaneko), to each adapt a work by Japanese horror author Edogawa Ranpo, it is remarkable how terrible most of the result are.  Over two hours in length, not one of the four stories is either comprehensible or engaging.  The shortest segment "Mars Canal" that starts everything off is a pretentious art film with barely any sound and just features naked people doing things in slow motion.  The other three seem like they each last a century and maintain the same lackadaisical approach.  The stories are frustratingly vague, making it impossible to pick up any possible humor or dread in any of them, if any such things were even supposed to be there in the first place.  Instead, everything comes off as needlessly indulgent and occasionally disgusting.  Though the movie fails to work due to its treacherous pacing and impenetrable scripts, it is at least photographed excellently and has a unifying tone that unites each director's vision together seamlessly.  It is just a shame that it is wasted on such a boring, boring movie that is in the arthouse vein for the mere sake of it.

2000's Asian Horror Part Five

THE EYE
(2002)
Dir - Danny Pang Phat/Oxide Pang Chun
Overall: MEH

The most well known effort from the Pang brothers and the first in the The Eye series, The Eye, (Seeing Ghosts), is a promising yet ultimately tame, unoriginal supernatural yarn with some consistent problems.  It can fairly be seen as the Hong Kong/Singapore answer to The Sixth Sense, minus any kind of twist or even remotely frightening set pieces.  The lack of spookiness is a major problem since it is actually a ghost story, but since the audience is fully aware of what it takes the characters far too long to discover, it remains unengaging by the time that the movie starts to answer its own questions.  The climax seems abrupt at best and sloppily handled at worst, plus the movie still tries to present itself as an uplifting tale with a happy ending.  The awful, warm piano music that continually reemerges also conveys a safe mood that plays its part in making the film even less potentially scary than it already is.  The performances are adequate and the horrible digital effects get a pass due to the era and moderate budget, but not enough is done with the material to make it stand out.

 

DOLL MASTER
(2004)
Dir - Jeong Yong-ki
Overall: MEH
 
A South Korean revamp of the type of killer doll movies that were churned out here or there throughout the 1980s and 90s, Doll Master, (Inhyeongsa), is less intentionally schlocky than the Charles Band productions that influenced it, adhering to bog-standard scare tactics and a dour tone.  The directorial debut from Jeong Yong-ki, (who also penned the screenplay), it has many familiar motifs at its disposal, with a common enough premise of several strangers who have been invited to an isolated mansion where strange things begin to occur.  We also have a "vengeance upon the descendants" angle that gets divulged in a silly expository dialog dump during the third act, making sure that every audience member is crystal clear as to what has been going on.  The presentation is both bloated and monotonous at times, particularly where Lim Eun-kyung's mysterious Mi-na character is concerned, who repeatedly stares longingly at Kim Yoo-mi with her enormous eyes while fighting back tears.  Some of the set pieces are gruesome and inventive, (like a girl who gets mutilated in a bathroom stall that has a life-sized doll hovering over the toilet bowl), but the story tries to be more profound than it actually is and the whole thing overstays its welcome after awhile.

 

MUOI: THE LEGEND OF A PORTRAIT
(2007)
Dir - Kim Tae-gyeong
Overall: MEH

A notable footnote for being the first produced Vietnamese horror film following the fall of Saigon as well as the first Vietnamese movie to receive a rating, Muoi: The Legend of a Portrait is actually a co-production between that country and South Korea, serving as the second full-length from director Kim Tae-gyeong.  Though it boasts effective atmosphere and performances, both the story and presentation strictly adhere to derivative J-horror motifs as well as the hackneyed trope of characters witnessing supernatural events and never mentioning them to a single soul; a trope that spans generations of horror movies across the globe.  The idea of a cursed painting and a woman investigating an urban legend for journalism purposes is passable if not unique, yet the more intriguing moments are between the two central characters who have a troubled backstory.  Sadly, the screenplay does not lean into this dynamic more and keeps the focus on the formulaic supernatural elements, with vengeful spirits, countless nightmare sequences, loud screechy noises and/or creaky sounds accompanying scares, and CGI monster faces undermining themes of judgemental and selfish betrayal amongst former friends.  Still, it is agreeably paced and the mystery has just enough juice to keep one on board until the nasty, revenge-tinged finale.