2013 Horror Part Ten

THE PURGE

Dir - James DeMonaco

Overall: WOOF

"Dumb people in horror movies" - The Movie aka The Purge is certainly in the top running as the most insultingly stupid film ever made, regardless of genre.  In this respect, it is a fascinating viewing experience where a laughably preposterous idea is played straight in a logic-void manner befitting to the material.  Writer/director James DeMonaco envisions a world where the upper class wall themselves off in mostly impenetrable security systems once a year and show their support for a night where anyone can kill anyone legally, which of course puts them in the hot seat where they have a change of heart once the tables are turned.  Unfortunately in order to pull this off, the premise has to run though a barrage of cliches where every character at every opportunity with no exceptions makes the most asinine decisions that they possible can.  This is because it is an impossible sell to convey a society where people are so detached with their own lives, (either living comfortably or not), where they can even pretend that legalized murder is remotely OK without taking into account any psychological ramifications, let alone while gleefully and ignorantly accepting such justifications.  It is a type of story idea that sounds cool for only about three seconds before even one completely normal question gets asked to make the whole thing collapse.  So how this not only became a hit, scored Ethan Hawke, and spawned a franchise is enough to truly prove that our actual movie-going society very much doomed.

 

CULT

Dir - Kōji Shiraishi

Overall: MEH

Sticking with his favorite of sub-genres, Japanese filmmaker Kōji Shiraishi offers up yet another found footage movie with unfortunately weak results in Cult, (Karuto).  This time it is a ghost hunting-style television show that puts a barrage of footage together from boatloads of cameras while also taking the time to add scary music throughout the whole thing, which already makes the movie far more silly than it was probably intended to be.  Such a trend continues to nearly every other aspect though since the story plays out like a Paranormal Activity knock-off in many respects, except one that actually shows what the supernatural entities look like instead of leaving them to the viewer's imagination.  Considering that such entities are nothing more than cartoony squiggly lines that are occasionally attached to a face, the entire affair comes off accidentally ridiculous.  There is also a young, weird super-exorcist that seems right out of a manga or anime product who finds everything fascinating and announces that the real fight has only just begun, (cut dramatically to credits).  So yeah, this is hardly scary stuff.  Shiraishi's pacing is rather off as well and as is the case with much contemporary found footage, the format is wrongly uses in a lazy way that would be far more fitting to a conventional style.

JUG FACE

Dir - Chad Crawford Kinkle

Overall: MEH

After winning the 2011 Slamdance Screenwriting Competition, Chad Crawford Kinkle's script for Jug Face was picked up by indie production company Modernciné, resulting in a typically small-scale film with some good performances, one or two genre tweaks, and several issues that keep it from being all that impressive.  On the plus side, both Lauren Ashley Carter and Sean Bridgers are good as a troubled young woman and a dim-witted potter, both of whom seem hopelessly stuck in a hole in the ground-worshiping cult and their backwoods traditions.  Though it is always nice to see Larry Fessenden, (plus Sean Young emerging in something is a welcome surprise), both are a bit unconvincing here.  Kinkle's direction is unassuming, fading out of most scenes and trying to make the most out of some gore sequences and hackey-looking specters.  His script underplays its supernatural components too much as well, but the manner of fact way that it depicts the sparse, traditionalist community and their relationship to otherworldly forces is refreshing at least.  Still, the story and its isolated setting give way to a lot of back 'n forth in the long run where it runs through slight variations of the same set pieces over and over again, ending with more of a whimper than a though-provoking gasp.