Senritsu Kaiki File Kowasugi Series - Part One

SENRITSU KAIKI FILE KOWASUGI FILE 01: OPERATION CAPTURE THE SLIT-MOUTHED WOMAN

(2012)

Dir - Kōji Shiraishi

Overall: MEH

 

Kōji Shiraishi's on-going Senritsu Kaiki File Kowasugi series kicks off with the first of a two-parter of sorts that dropped in 2012, the elaborately-titled Senritsu Kaiki File Kowasugi File 01: Operation Capture the Slit-Mouthed Woman.  The formula is established where Shigeo Ôsako and Chika Kuboyama each play videographer ghost hunters who investigate paranormal videos that are sent to them, hooking up with the original footage shooters, replaying the scary bits in slow motion, returning to the scene of the otherworldly incidents, and editing it all together in a conventional formula.  Before the series would go further into outrageousness and all-out mockumentary parody, it adhered to the more sincere and unnerving tone of Shiraishi's seminal Noroi: The Curse, as well as the other multitudes of found footage movies on his resume.  Fans of his particular J-horror brand of the sub-genre will have enough here to be interested in, even if much of the logic is flimsy and Ôsako's character frequently ruins things with his inexplicable rage-fueled outbursts that everyone else just nonchalantly puts up with.

 

SENRITSU KAIKI FILE KOWASUGI FILE 02: SHIVERING GHOST

(2012)

Dir - Kōji Shiraishi

Overall: MEH

 

Released a month after Senritsu Kaiki File Kowasugi File 01: Operation Capture the Slit-Mouthed Woman, the follow-up Senritsu Kaiki File Kowasugi File 02: Shivering Ghost follows an identical route and carries over a plot point or two while exploring a singular narrative of an all new supernatural mystery.  The story is more interesting than that in the first installment, as well as less redundant considering that Shiraishi already tackled the slit-mouthed woman urban legend five years earlier in Carved: The Slit-Mouthed Woman.  Here we have something that alludes to outer space, other dimensions, characters getting possessed and convulsing on the ground, protoplasm outbursts with flowers in them, people disappearing, mysterious buildings, and weird guys who do not answer any questions that you ask them.  These are motifs that Shiraishi had and would continue to explore with varying success, and a few moments here are effectively creepy, but once again Shigeo Ôsako portrays one of the worst characters in any found footage project.  He hardly says much and when he does, he is bound to go from zero to sixty on the rage scale, physically beating men and women alike while screaming at them and simultaneously putting them in continuous danger.  It is a baffling choice to take with an entire series' main character, but if one can stomach his unnecessary and obnoxious outbursts, this is otherwise a worthy outing.

 

SENRITSU KAIKI FILE KOWASUGI FILE 03: LEGEND OF A HUMAN-EATING KAPPA

(2013)

Dir - Kōji Shiraishi

Overall: MEH

 

For the third Senritsu Kaiki File Kowasugi series installment Senritsu Kaiki File Kowasugi File 03: Legend of a Human-Eating Kappa, it at first seems like we are going to be sparred Shigeo Ôsako hot-tempered director character since he is still in a coma and his partner and cameraman are soldiering on with a new case.  Regrettably, it turns out that Ôsako merely has to walk around with a cane for awhile and is otherwise just fine and ready to spring back into action.  That said, he comparatively behaves himself here in the team's new plight to rid a dangerous pond of some pesky kappa creatures that have a history of making people disappear there.  There are several glaring narrative inconsistencies, and this contributes more to the paranormal investigator's laughable lack of ability to keep their subjects safe when venturing into dangerous terrain.  If one can forgive the goofy liberties taken with the material and simply bask in the formulaic found footage set pieces, there are some good moments here, as well as some over-the-top ones that would point the direction that the rest of the series would indulge in.

 

SENRITSU KAIKI FILE KOWASUGI FILE 04: THE TRUTH! HANAKO-SAN IN THE TOILET

(2013)

Dir - Kōji Shiraishi

Overall: MEH

 

Four episodes in and the Senritsu Kaiki File Kowasugi series gets around to one of Japan's most frequented urban supernatural motifs, namely haunted bathrooms.  Senritsu Kaiki File Kowasugi File 04: The Truth! Hanako-san in the Toilet introduced the concept of time/dark dimension jumping into this universe, and apparently the returning three characters have amnesia and forgot all about it since in later installments, they act just as amazed and excitingly shout the same boasts that they are capturing such phenomena for the "first" time on camera.  Things get more outrageous here than ever before and also more unintentionally comedic, unless Kōji Shiraishi is in fact deliberately going into tongue-in-cheek terrain.  It is difficult to tell since Shigeo Ôsako, Chika Kuboyama, and their never-complaining cameraman still posses no sense of humor whatsoever and have a problematic lack of chemistry with each other that would continue to be the case throughout the franchise's run.  As usual though, any complaints that one can launch against these movies and many of Kōji Shiraishi's wild found footage mockumentaries in general are complaints about things that are there by design.  So a jerky montage into an evil nether-realm, spontaneous deaths by falling desk chairs, lots and lots of running around and back and forth, also lots and lots of screaming, and supernatural rules that are both blatantly ignored and made up on the fly are all here to delight/annoy your senses.

A Ghost Story for Christmas Part Three

A VIEW FROM A HILL

(2005)

Dir - Luke Watson

Overall: MEH

 

After over two decades, A Ghost Story for Christmas returns with A View from a Hill.  The long wait for a revival should at least appease fans of the original series in the fact that it seems to pick up where it left off, adopting a still and flashless approach that is heavy on mood and deliberate pacing.  It is also of course an adaptation of another M.R. James tale as most of the 1970's BBC run was, period set and concerning a mild-mannered protagonist whose curiosity in supernatural affairs causes some unwanted shenanigans.  Director Luke Watson seems to have done his homework, offering up the kind of vintage and chilled scares that work on drawn-out dread instead of jumps or busy editing.  First time screenwriter Peter Harness' script throws in some humor early on to make the unhurried presentation go down easier, but regrettably, it fails to unsettle the bones as much as would be preferred.  It is in keeping with the previous James adaptations whereas things wrap up just as they are getting going, but there is not enough meat on this story's bones to warrant the wait.  If in the proper and forgiving mood though, viewers may find that it scratches a nostalgic itch well enough to recommend.

 

NUMBER 13

(2006)

Dir - Pier Wilkie

Overall: MEH

 

Sticking to the traditional one episode per year structure as did the original A Ghost Story for Christmas program, (until they would take sporadic breaks from here on out), Number 13 emerges as another throwback M.R. James adaptation.  Unfortunately though, it is front-to-back poor.  As far as the source material goes, it sticks to James' chosen forte of pitting unassuming scholars up against the supernatural, but director Pier Wilkie adapts an incorrect tone that seems like it is a hurry to get to its embarrassingly executed ghost activity instead of gradually building a foreboding and chill mood.  Modern day horror hacks such as scary music accommodating every would-be spooky scene robs them of the type of nerve-wracking intimacy that was usually achieved for the program.  It also has a doofy tone, where Greg Wise's antagonist is an unlikable smirking fellow and Tom Burke plays his annoying hotel neighbor who drinks and womanizes too much for the former's liking.  Also, the digital production is cheap and has none of the rustic authenticity to match its period setting.  So in other words, it makes one mistake after the other and may ward potential viewers off who were afraid that the modern day relaunch would do everything wrong that it used to do right.

 

WHISTLE AND I'LL COME TO YOU

(2010)

Dir - Andy De Emmony

Overall: MEH

 

Officially bringing M.R. James' celebrated "Whistle and I'll Come to You" into the A Ghost Story for Christmas catalog, (the originally broadcasted 1968 adaptation helped inspire the series yet was technically part of the BBC documentary strand Omnibus), this version is significantly tweaked from its source material by screenwriter Neil Cross.  This is hardly a bad thing on paper, since it differentiates itself from its popular counterpart, justifying its existence more than just being a contemporary-set retread of the exact same beats.  Also not a bad thing is John Hurt's wonderful performance as a man who has cared for his invalid wife of many decades, only recently delegating that responsibility to a rest home where he finally has the solitude to contemplate his past, morn for his vegetable-like spouse, and come to terms with the remaining years that he has left.  He chooses to do this in a remote coastline town during the off season of a hotel that he is practically the only occupant of, or so it would seem.  While director Andy De Emmony maintains an exceptional low-key mood that channels the very same tactics used by Lawrence Gordon Clark in the original series, the entire "whistling" angle is gone, leaving just a small series of arbitrary ghost activity to provide a deflating climax.

THE TRACTATE MIDDOTH

(2013)

Dir - Mark Gatiss

Overall: MEH

The first relaunched A Ghost Story for Christmas installment to be both written and directed by Mark Gatiss, (who has so far handled each duty for the program since), The Tractate Middoth is a mixed bag of sorts.  Another M.R. James adaptation which had been brought to the small screen a handful of times going back to the 1950s, Gatiss "updates" the tale to that very decade, tweaking further elements like new characters and an ending that leaves itself hanging for further malevolence to unfold.  The presentation is too pristine and digital to convey anything besides pedestrian scares, (plus it teeters on having a schlocky tone, especially where David Ryall's portrayal of a cartoonish and cackling grump is concerned), but one can still make out some channeling on Gatiss' part of the original program's director Lawrence Gordon Clark who would cut the sound during the intense bits without reverting to cheap jump scares.  Perhaps due to the compact thirty-six minute running time, this lacks the lingering pacing that enhances the suggestive spookiness in James' source material, another thing that Clark consistently delivered during the show's 1970s run.  It all makes for a glossy yet sterile watch, one that is done with love yet seems to have its tongue in its cheek when it should be taking itself more seriously.

 

THE DEAD ROOM

(2018)

Dir - Mark Gatiss

Overall: MEH

 

After a five year break and taking over the series with the traditional M.R. James reworking "The Tractate Middoth" in 2013, writer/director Mark Gatiss offered up his first original A Ghost Story for Christmas tale with The Dead Room.  Serving as a modern day reworking of the 1978 Irish short film A Child's Voice, the camp element is more pronounced than the program ever allowed in either of its incarnations, as Simon Callow plays a crotchety "back in my day" thespian who has been the bellowing voice of a horror radio program for five decades running.  In between lamenting the good ole days and scoffing at the more self-aware yarns that he is employed to read now, (mirroring the nod and a wink tone maintained by Gatiss himself), Callow also experiences random bouts of unexplained phenomena when back at his old recording studio, all of which points to a dark secret that he has lived with for some time.  Callow's silly protagonist seems to be "on" whether he is channeling his inner-hambone with the digital tape running or conversing with his humoring millennial producer, but this seems to be an intentional choice that puts the tongue in the cheek of the whole affair.  Sadly, the finale and the scare tactics are uninspired tripe, plus the presentation is farther away from the show's roots than ever.  Still, it is a charming attempt at tweaking the formula if one is in the mood for such a thing.

2013 Horror Part Sixteen

DESCENT INTO DARKNESS

Dir - Rafaël Cherkaski

Overall: MEH

 

This no-budget debut from actor-turned-filmmaker Rafaël Cherkaski follows in a tradition of primitive and disturbing mockumentaries, (ala Man Bites Dog, Be My Cat: A Film for Anne, and The Last Horror Movie, to name but a few), where a demented individual is either documented or documents themselves in an increasingly unhinged plunge into deadly depravity.  Descent Into Darkness, (Sorgoi Prakov), makes a noble attempt to one-up its forebearers with some extreme nastiness in the third act that is not for the squeamish, but the majority of the film follows a curious path that does not reveal itself until past the halfway point.  It begins as an awkward comedy of sorts where Cherkaski himself embarks on a heart-shaped "European dream" project on a map, filming everything with either a handheld camera or one mounted to his head which makes him look like a goofy, grinning, foreign tourist stereotype that allows for people to be amused by his antics.  The problem is that his slow psychological breakdown is never convincing.  He starts off as a wacky yet harmless fellow enjoying the Paris nightlife and even getting laid voluntarily, only to get annoyed by a few minor instances before snapping into a homeless, vile, sadistic, and murderous madman.  It works as a found footage property since the montage editing can be explained because Cherkaski's troubled protagonist is putting it all together on the fly, but it is difficult to see a point to any of it, let alone buy into it.

 

BIG BAD WOLVES

Dir - Aharon Keshales/Navot Papushado

Overall: GOOD

 

For their second joint writer/director collaboration Big Bad Wolves, (Mi mefakhed mehaze'ev hara), Israeli filmmakers Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado concoct a nasty revenge movie that is seeping in dry black comedy, something that makes its more unflinching moments easier to stomach.  A serial killer who targets children is on the loose, prompting one of the victim's fathers and a cocksure detective to take matters into their own hands when putting all of their elaborate efforts into a lone suspect who pleads his innocence.  The plot follows a foreseeable pattern in some respects as audience members will be able to correctly deduce how much more out of hand the inherently out of hand situation will get, but Keshales and Papushado's script throws an agreeable amount of bleak curve balls into the mix.  They also keep the tone equally dire and funny, always allowing for a line of dialog or a narrative detail to creep in that keeps this far enough removed from torture porn.  It is a story where the inhuman deeds of one monster pushes others down an adjacent path disguised by virtue, the victims becoming the perpetrators.  It is not a refreshing angle to take, (we have all seen variations of the same elongated torture scene here done many times and with similar motives), but the fact that Keshales and Papushado keep the viewer in the dark just as much as the desperate, frustrated, and broken "good guys" are gives the film a necessary and disturbing layer to crank up.

 

SHARKNADO

Dir - Thunder Levin

Overall: MEH

 

The hallmark of the Asylum mockbuster production company and a film that launched an overstaying-its-welcome franchise of increased stupidity, the initial Sharknado comes surprisingly close to being a "real" B-movie.  This is in spite of how gimmicky the premise is and of course how notoriously rushed and penny-pinching the production is, a flagship entry in Aslyum's model of getting it done with D-rent actors, shooting twelve pages of script a day, working everyone nearly twenty-four hours straight, and throwing some special effects in that only look a cut or two above Birdemic: Shock and Terror.  Against all odds and as opposed to future sequels, the Twister meets Jaws tone is played straight here, everyone on screen who is just trying to maintain their SAG insurance remarkably also maintaining their dignity in the disaster scenario.  Director Thunder Levin, (presumably his real name), even manages to pull off one or two aesthetically low-rent yet almost white-knuckled set pieces, like when Ian Ziering's deadbeat dad with a heart of gold decides to detour with his family and rescue a school buss full of marooned kids and Robbie Rist from The Brady Bunch.  The character's internal drama is just there to give them something to say, enhancing the tongue-in-cheek schlock value without stopping the laughable momentum.  It is not so much a "so bad its good" movie as it is just a "eh, whatever" waste of eighty-five minutes that could have been even more idiotic and goofy, (see future installments).

2013 Horror Part Fifteen

EUROPA REPORT

Dir - Sebastián Cordero

Overall: MEH

 

This sci-fi thriller from Ecuadorian filmmaker Sebastián Cordero recalls virtually every other sci-fi thriller ever made, which is as much a detriment to it as the fact that it is also presented as a found footage mockumentary.  Neither of these elements work to Europa Report's favor, both being derivative and distracting despite the top-notch production design, refreshingly no-nonsense characters, and Cordero's masterful use of tension as it inches its way to the preordained and doomed conclusion.  In other words, it is a frustrating watch that gets a lot right, yet it also puts itself in all too familiar waters that leave little room for genre advancement.  In between increasingly sporadic talking head interview segments, we are given a barrage of recovered footage from a Jupiter moon spacecraft mission, capturing every angle of the vessel in pristine A-budgeted cameras that are edited together like a conventional horror movie, with consistent music no less.  As always, if the footage was instead presented in its bare-bones form without the added melodrama, it would be more unsettling and surprising.  Anamaria Marinca being the only astronaut who appears to be interviewed throughout ends up being a dopey twist, and it is also faulty because her commentary is ridiculously hyperbolic.  Still, the third act is well done for those who can forgive the overall issues.

 

RIGOR MORTIS

Dir - Juno Mak

Overall: GOOD

 

The first film from Hong Kong actor-turned-director Juno Mak, Rigor Mortis is a grimy, bloody, humorless, and updated homage to the Mr. Vampire series, featuring many of the same thespians in a tonally unrecognizable work that re-imagines the comedic jiangshi sub-genre.  Chin Siu-ho portrays a fictionalized version of himself, the now downtrodden actor who plans on committing suicide in a derelict apartment complex after his wife and son had left him some time earlier.  Instead, he is saved by some old school hoping vampire hunters in a blaze of slow motion, Matrix-styled CGI moves that reveal a set of vengeful twin spirits who inadvertently posses one of the tenants that has been resurrected as a jiangshi via black magic by his grieving widow.  We meet a barrage of other characters whose sagas intermingle with each other, never leaving the gray apartment setting and never allowing any slapstick hijinks into the proceedings.  It is an interesting concept to see what one of these films would look like if it was done in a completely different manner, and for the most part Mak succeeds in creating an oppressive atmosphere via a deliberately stylized approach that paints a harrowing picture of exhausted and now miserable people either facing off against or abiding supernatural evil as they come face to face with their own mortality.  The script by Mak, Philip Yung, and Jill Leung comes off more as an afterthought compared to the glossy and digitally extravagant set pieces, bordering on incoherent as it fails to establish any of the otherworldly rules that are so dire to the situation.  Still, it has enough redeeming qualities to interest any curious fans of the types of films that it is grittying up.

 

KNIGHTS OF BADASSDOM

Dir - Joe Lynch

Overall: MEH

 

Heavy metal horror comedies are inherently suicide inducing, and if one element could make them even worse, it would be throwing live action fantasy role playing into the mix.  The miraculous thing then about Knights of Badassdom is how it manages to not be the most obnoxious movie ever made, landing some of its easy layup humor with a cast that has enough charisma to forgive some overacting that should otherwise be considered criminal.  It all fits director Joe Lynch's tone, (though allegedly there is a more horror-tinged cut of the film that has yet to be released at this writing which suits Lynch's original intentions), where grown men and a handful of way-too-attractive-to-be-there-women partake of a Dungeons & Dragons version of Civil War reenactments where real otherworldly forces are haphazardly unleashed.  The specifics are not important, nor is the plausibility of such a setting where people talk in wacky renaissance fair vernacular while running into other cosplayers who pretend to engage in epic battle with each other.  Worse yet is Ryan Kwanten who graces us with two "please kill me" metal musical numbers that are the antithesis of both funny and authentic, automatically garnishing a severe warning for any viewers who cannot stomach such braindead cliches being played up to outlandish levels of schlock.  Still, it is difficult to hate Peter Dinklage eating copious amounts of mushrooms, Jimmi Simpson being his usual pompous and weasily dickbag, Summer Glau classing up the joint, and Brian Posehn popping in to correct someone's metal sub-genre grammar.

2013 Horror Part Fourteen

THE STRANGE COLOUR OF YOUR BODY'S TEARS

Dir - Hélène Cattet/Bruno Forzani

Overall: MEH

Same shit, different avant-garde giallo.  For their follow-up to their identically structured and maddening debut Amer, experimental Belgium filmmakers/style-over-any-substance-enthusiasts Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani deliver an equally nebulous excess of throwback Italian nightmare fuel.  Set entirely in a Eugène Viollet-le-Duc-styled apartment complex, it is a visual cacophony of extreme close-ups, (some obscured and some startlingly detailed), flashy editing, (including black and white sequences done while quick-cutting between photographs), wild color schemes, sex, blood, the giallo killer in noisy black leather, Freudian vagina symbolism everywhere, and too much else to mention.  The phrase "too much" is one that will become fixated on the minds of anyone watching and/or enduring all one-hundred and two minutes of this indecipherable experience.  That is the only problem with the film in that it pushes so hard in its experimental direction that it depletes the viewer of their senses instead of enhancing them.  It feels like an act of mercy once the title splashes across the screen in bold letters, signifying that the ordeal is over and we can snap out of the spell that has been cast upon us.  That spell is beautiful, but it is also sadly exhausting.

MR. JONES

Dir - Karl Mueller

Overall: MEH

 

By mixing found footage mockumentaries with some semblance of "conventional" trippiness, screenwriter Karl Mueller's directorial debut Mr. Jones creates a clumsy final product to say the least.  The minuscule production scored some wonderful locations in Santa Clarita, California, using an abandoned mineshaft and rundown houses in the woods to set up its couple who move out there for flimsy reasons, filming their ordeal for even more flimsy reasons, and then eventually stumbling upon some cartoonishly creepy scarecrows that lead them to trespass on an even more cartoonishly creepy house because people in horror movies are always complete morons.  They justify their actions by trying to make a documentary or coffee table book or whatever about the title character; a mysterious fellow who is either one of the world's most illusive and eccentric sculptures, some kind of unholy shaman, or a protector of evil nightmare realms.  Mueller never makes up its mind as to such specifics, (which is a fine route to take in creating ambiguous dread), but he also fails to make up his mind everywhere else.  The lead performances by Jon Foster and Sarah Jones seem forced, which is not helped by how underwritten and unlikable they are.  Also, the hand held camera work is appalling, and one is hard pressed to make out any of the unsettling images that they are presented with.  Also also, it tries to excuse its persistent "Who is filming and editing this?" problems by morphing from just two people turning their cameras on for no reason, to interview footage, to a gloves-off bombardment of bargain bin surrealism.  It seems like a genuine attempt was made to offer up something creepy, but the whole ordeal just falls down the stairs.

 

WARM BODIES

Dir - Johnathan Levine

Overall: MEH

Comedy writer/director Johnathan Levine takes on zombies in Warm Bodies; a cutesy and harmless romance where two attractive people, (one alive, one not), find love during an undead apocalypse.  The premise is both elementary and silly, which makes for an effortless stream of genre gags to accompany a slew of familiar rock, pop, and indie songs on the soundtrack.  Clearly ninety percent of the budget went to procuring the rights to said songs and not to the special effects, since the CGI skeleton monsters look pathetic and terrible.  They are also about as threatening as Nicholas Hoult's doe-eyed flesh-muncher, who looks like he was plucked right out of a Teen Beat magazine and just needed a few scars and pale makeup to sell the whole zombie shtick.  Such grievances are fine though, considering that the movie is light in tone and is not here to reinvent any wheels, let alone scare anyone.  In this universe, the more that walking corpses interact with humans on a playful level, the less ghoulish they become, eventually having dreams, gaining pigment in their skin, and speaking in full sentences with minimal effort.  This leads to a heartfelt finale where even John Malkovich's militant leader finally fesses up to the fact that these good zombies are on his side, but despite everyone's likeability on screen, the film never delivers any surprising chuckles and just "aw-shucks" itself through its moments.

2013 Horror Part Thirteen

SADAKO 3D 2

Dir - Tsutomu Hanabusa

Overall: MEH

Released a year after the embarrassing schlock-fest that was Sadako 3D, the apply named Sadako 3D 2 comparatively channels a more atmospheric and dialed-back tone, yet the results are still largely dismal and still unintentionally moronic.  At this point, the cursed video tape gimmick is rendered inconsequential and there are fewer references to Koji Suzuki's source material than ever.  Instead, we have a typical, blue-tinted, "creepy kid with supernatural powers" agenda that is underwritten enough to be incoherent, making up the rules as it goes along which are flimsy enough to begin with in addition to the screenwriters not bothering to follow any of them.  The second act drags as an uninteresting mystery is trying to get solved by bland characters, but there are a couple of tonally askew set pieces thrown into liven/confuse things up.  Boatloads of jump scares rear their predictable heads, but moments like a room inexplicably turning into a whirlpool of blood, a woman stabbing herself in the eye, CGI monster-faced attacks, and the ole gag of a bathtub inexplicably housing a bottomless ocean are silly enough to laugh at against the somber mood that returning director Tsutomu Hanabusa otherwise maintains.  Ill-conceived, messy, and dumb instead of even remotely scary, it at least falls down the stairs more gracefully than its predecessor.

DELIVERY: THE BEAST WITHIN

Dir - Brian Netto

Overall: MEH

The debut from co-writer/director Brian Netto, Delivery: The Beast Within tackles all too familiar horror concepts within an all too familiar found footage framework, merely ending up as one of a plethora of such movies that fails to convincingly pull off its subject matter.  Another fully edited and musically scored mockumentary that presents us with a series of concerning events that hardly maintain verisimilitude in such a context, the film is off to a troubled start right from the onset.  Concerning an upper class married couple that is expecting their first child after years of trying, they agree to have a documentary crew follow their ordeal for a reality TV show whose apparent only gimmick is that normal people would want to watch other normal people have a normal pregnancy.  Of course the results are anything but normal and production shuts down, yet Netto and producer/fellow screenwriter Adam Schindler manage to find ways to keep the cameras rolling as the pregnant woman continues to act irrationally and a slew of demonic baby possession cliches are hurled at the audience.  Performance wise, everyone does solid work and the movie excels better as a fly on the wall examination of first time parental anxiety and the effects that mental instability can have on already stressed-out individuals.  As far as an unholy bit of horror cinema though, it is as forgettable as they get.

BORGMAN
Dir - Alex van Warmerdam
Overall: GOOD

Unnerving due to its dry tone and perplexing subject matter, Dutch filmmaker Alex van Warmerdam's Borgman is a difficult pill to swallow, yet a refreshingly aloof one.  No concrete details are given as to how the hobo title character, (played with disturbed detachment by Jan Bijvoet), plus his band of no nonsense cohorts manage to take over a wealthy couple, their children, and nanny.  The already puzzling chain of events is punctuated by numerous concerning outbursts, all of which are played with the same air of coldness that permeates the entire film.  Some of these bizarre moments are presented so matter-of-factly that they are comedic, but this humor is arid enough to be undetectable to some viewers, if not entirely intentional on the part of Warmerdam and his cast.  A supernatural element is touched upon only in the vaguest of senses, with Bijvoet crouching like a sleep paralysis demon on Hadewych Minis's sleeping form, Jeroen Perceval getting branded with a spontaneous tattoo on his shoulder, and Sara Hjort Ditlevsen falling under complete devotion after spending mere unseen moments with Tom Dewispelaere's gardening helper.  On surface level at least, it falls more into the bewitching thriller mold than anything otherworldly, but its spell is a singular one worth appreciating.

2013 Horror Part Twelve

THE LAST DAYS

Dir - David Pastor/Àlex Pastor

Overall: GOOD

 

Writer/director brothers David and Àlex Pastor's follow-up to their 2009 debut Carriers once again explores a post-apocalyptic landscape, this time removing the zombies in place of a bizarre virus that causes fatal agoraphobia for the populous.  Switching back to their native Spain, The Last Days, (Los últimos días), was shot in Barcelona with a significant enough budget to accurately portray the type of urban decay that quickly sets in when everyone is forced to make due with rain water, dead pigeons, and depleting supplies while perpetually stuck indoors.  The unlikely pairing of a corporate peon and a ringer boss brought in to enforce company cutbacks provides an adequate amount of tension as they learn to trust each other in a Mad Max, survival of the fittest world where any forms of law and order seem to have been obliterated.  There is plenty of momentum to the plotting where both Quim Gutiérrez and José Coronado have no other driving force than to be reunited with their loved ones and the finale manages to be both heartbreaking and uplifting.  The Pastor brothers may be proving to have a narrative obsession of sorts, but this is a superior work to their first film and one whose emotional turmoil is well-earned.

 

THE CONJURING

Dir - James Wan

Overall: MEH

 

Interchangeable with The Haunting of Connecticut, The Amityville Horror, and Insidious, (plus hundreds of others), the latter's director James Wan continues his insistence in delivering dumb supernatural schlock with The Conjuring; not the first movie to be based on the fraudulent exploits of ghost hunters Ed and Lorraine Warren, but the first to feature them as actual characters.  Patrick Wilson returns from the aforementioned Insidious, this time as half of the husband/wife Warren duo, with Vera Farmiga playing the sensitive psychic medium because ya just gotta have one of those.  You also have to have a down-on-their-luck family moving into an old house, whispering spirits who perform arbitrary paranormal activity, a kid with an imaginary friend, the Annabelle doll, equipment set up to capture the spookies, a big loud stupid exorcism, ghosts with racoon mascara, and plenty of jump scares to keep the easily startled teenagers happy.  In other words, same crap different horror movie and Wan makes sure not to variate from the formula at any instance.  On the "plus" side, it is unintentionally hilarious to watch everyone taking all of the malevolent tomfoolery seriously, (that of course the Warrens have immediate answers to at virtually all times considering that Lorraine herself was credited as a consultant on the movie), giving the film some much needed camp appeal to offshoot its laughable attempts at creepiness.

 

BANSHEE CHAPTER 

Dir - Blair Erickson
Overall: MEH

Writer/director Blair Erickson's debut Banshee Chapter tries as hard as humanly possible to ruin itself with jump scares, forcing the horror genre's most obnoxiously hackneyed trope into an otherwise clever melding of H.P. Lovecraft's From Beyond and the United States government's documented MKUltra experiments with DMT-19.  On top of that though, the film has a disorienting structure where it nonchalantly zig-zags between a found footage mockumentary and a bog-standard, low-budget movie with handheld camera work.  We never see a cameraman, yet Katia Winter's protagonist narrates various sections, on screen text shows up, and real life senate hearings and interviews from the 1970s and 90s are intermingled with faux-retro surveillance footage and the present day narrative.  It is a bona fide mess in this regard, which begs the question of why Erickson bothered to go such a route instead of just investing his efforts fully in a single format.  Winter turns in a solid performance as a journalist exploring the spooky disappearance of her close friend, but Ted Levine also shows up to once again unintelligibly marble-mouth his dialog as a Hunter S. Thompson stand-in that would have been a hoot if we could understand at least half of what he was saying.  The CGI monster faces and Erickson's insistence to punctuate every single "scary" scene with a deafening noise after some silence is unforgivable nonsense, which just makes the whole thing a frustrating ordeal that deserves a far better treatment.

2013 Horror Part Eleven

AFFLICTED

Dir - Derek Lee/Cliff Prowse

Overall: MEH

 

The full-length debut from writer/director/actor team Derek Lee and Cliff Prowse, Afflicted is a perfect example of the found footage framework utilized for the absolutely wrong premise.  One of the biggest mistakes that such movies often make is in maintaining verisimilitude while characters are pointing the camera at things and this fundamental checkpoint is horrendously askew here.  Two bros setting off on a year-long trip around the world and documenting it as a web series is all fine and good, but the second that things go haywire and they still keep filming the dangerous phenomena transpiring, (making sure to pick up the camera at all times and talk into it for the audience's convenience), the entire presentation falls disastrously apart.  This unfortunately happens early on, leaving the majority of the movie to come off as ludicrous and stupid when no such agenda was intended.  On the plus side though, the effects work is convincing, mixing digital and practical trickery flawlessly.  Take away the ill-advised sub-genre gimmick though and this could have been a interesting take on one's succumbing to the undead.

PACIFIC RIM

Dir - Guillermo del Toro

Overall: WOOF

 

The big, loud, wet, loud, aggressive, stupid, and incredibly loud popcorn stinker Pacific Rim is the first bona fide misfire from Guillermo del Toro since 1997's studio-mangled Mimic.  Though it is not as insultingly braindead as the Transformer series per comparison, it is just as sensory-pummeling and elementary in its narrative with groan-worthy over-acting and/or macho posturing periodically breaking up some of the ugliest CGI action sequences ever filmed.  Why the latter were all done at night, in the rain, or under water is a baffling choice since it renders the giant monster vs giant robot fights hopelessly murky, which is further hampered by everything having dark gray, green, or blue hues that muddle together.  As far as the dialog goes, it feels as if it was "written" by a computer program that was fed every testosterone-ridden platitude and monologue from every other schlock-fest action movie that came before it, nearly all of which is yelled at full volume by whoever is over-dramatizing it.  Even Charlie Day, Ron Pearlman, and Burn Gorman in the stereotypical comic relief roles feel the need to strain their voices while delivering their quirky quips.  The bombastic musical score never shuts up, the visual and sound design of the aliens is as stock as they come, every character walks like Jax Teller, (coincidentally since Charlie Hunnam is in the lead and exhibiting zero charisma), and several IQ points will be lost by all audience members, along with two hours and eleven minutes of their life that they can never get back.

COHERENCE

Dir - James Ward Byrkit

Overall: GOOD

An impressive, minimalist, Twilight Zone-inspired thriller and the full-length debut from James Ward Byrkit, Coherence takes its metaphysics/Schrödinger's cat/doppelgänger/alternate universe/quantum decoherence smorgasbord of ideas and presents them via an improvisational character study.  Byrkit and Alex Manugian both concocted of the story concept as something that could be filmed with no crew, no money, and at a single location, thus the director's own home was chosen with an ensemble cast of friends.  No script was utilized; instead, each actor, (none of whom had previously met each other), was given notes over five nights of shooting which instructed them as to what information they were to convey, information that was not known to their fellow performers.  Almost like an experimental, live theater piece in this respect, the spontaneous plotting ends up being ingenious within a narrative concept where multiple, random realities co-exist and the people trapped in them succumb to paranoia and desperation.  Such filmmaking tactics could have easily wielded unfocused results, but lighting was captured in a bottle here as the naturalistic approach and complete lack of special effects put all of the emphasis on complex, thought-provoking ideas that are far more engaging than a similar concept done through conventional means would have likely been.

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.

2013 Horror Part Nine

THE HARVEST

Dir - John McNaughton

Overall: WOOF

Emerging after a significantly long break from full-length movie making and an even longer one since his last to fall into the horror camp, (sans his 2006 Masters of Horror segment "Haeckel's Tale"), John McNaughton's The Harvest is a gargantuan disappointment and not just for a comeback.  The problem lies entirely with Stephen Lancellotti's script which is preposterously idiotic, hinging on a completely nonredeemable couple whose behavior is both horrendous and illogical.  In fact all four grown-ups in this movie exhibit either the type of poor judgement that becomes insulting to the viewer the more that it contradicts previous actions or in the case of Samantha Morton's over-the-top, psychotic mother, just becomes insulting to the viewer because it clashes with an otherwise serious tone.  This is the type of film where people act annoyingly cruel, oddly aloof, or just plain stupid and the answers eventually given as to why are more unsatisfying than could have possibly been imagined.  McNaughton fades out of scenes in a peculiar fashion that makes it seem like a Lifetime television movie, but there is probably nothing he or any other director could do with the material to sufficiently distract from how awful it is.  On the plus side, at least Michael Shannon and fourteen year-old Natasha Calis deliver solid performances that the story hardly deserves.

WORLD WAR Z

Dir - Chris LaMartina

Overall: MEH

 

Boasting a massive budget and Hollywood's biggest A-lister in Brad Pitt, the adaptation of Max Brooks' World War Z still cannot overcome its formulaic shortcomings as one of countless zombie apocalypse movies to emerge at the turn of the century.  The PG-13 rating may be an immediate detriment for gore hounds considering that blood and guts have been a staple in the sub-genre from the get go, but the problems have more to do with the fact that this hardly offers up a differentiating enough take on such incredibly played-out material.  It is a series of set pieces that are thrilling on paper, but also ones that go through all of the expected motions, with high stakes established where only minor characters do not make it out OK.  Pitt's production company Plan B Entertainment locks horns with several others to inflate the scale in order to utilize oodles of CGI, conveying a pandemic sense of global, rabid, animated corpse mayhem the likes of which Danny Boyle's meager in comparison 28 Days Later could only dream of pulling off.  Director Chris LaMartina tackles the material in the safest way possible, allowing for plenty of heartfelt scenes between Pitt and his family while rapidly editing a barrage of footage together to cause either headaches or excitement depending on the viewer's tolerance for such things.  In other words, it is exactly what a two-hundred-plus million dollar Hollywood zombie movie is supposed to be.

THE COMPLEX
Dir - Hideo Nakata
Overall: MEH

 

Up until the grandiose finale, The Complex, (Kuroyuri danchi), is Hideo Nakata's version of a Kiyoshi Kurosawa movie; an emotional character piece, deliberately paced with hardly any incidental music on the soundtrack.  The theatrical film was quickly proceeded by a television series titled Kuroyuri danchi: Joshô which served as a prequel to the events here and also had Nakata's involvement, writing and directing four of the twelve episodes.  As one of the forerunners of contemporary J-horror, Nakata had already carved out a successful niche for himself in the genre, this being his return to purely supernatural terrain since Kaidan, his 2007's version of the often told ghost story.  The highly tranquil atmosphere is immediately striking here as the movie has a standard, slow-boil approach that makes it a top priority to build up a mysterious, spooky mood.  While these early moments are enticing, all of the story's would-be twists are made quite obvious, either intentionally or not.  So by the time that things start to rev up and the CGI becomes more prominent and the noise level intensifies, sadly the movie dissolves into a bloated cliche-fest with a creepy ghost kid, spiritual experts performing chanty exorcisms, tinted-color pallets, and mental turmoil.

2010's Robert Morgan Shorts

BOBBY YEAH

(2011)

Overall: GOOD

Robert Morgan's first film for a new decade and longest up until that point, Bobby Yeah continues his usual themes of purposely disturbing looking, amorphous creatures interacting without dialog and conveying pure emotion to the viewer.  The fleshy, indistinguishable hybrid of beings present this round all have holes for other stringy, tentacle manifestations to spew out of and there are indeed prominent sexual overtones throughout.  Impulsiveness seems to continually lead to reproduction of an increasingly bizarre and grotesque nature.  Things are never all, well, one thing though in Morgan's work.  The pink, angora walls of one location juxtapose against the cold, dark, and blue interior of another and the same goes for every character we meet who often seem adorable and uncomfortably repulsive all at once.

INVOCATION

(2013)

Overall: GOOD

 

As part of Channel 4's Random Acts series, Robert Morgan's Invocation is another combination of live action and stop-motion animation as the 2007 version of The Cat with Hands was.  After spending three years working on the proceeding Bobby Yeah, Morgan dished out its follow-up relatively quickly and more carefree.  At a mere three-minutes, it is rather on the nose and as close to autobiographical as Morgan's darkly macabre and surreal would allow.  A stop-motion animator readies his shoot with a teddy bear when he accidentally pricks his finger and gets blood in the camera.  From there, things go in a typically fleshy, birthy, and violent direction.  Void of more deeper subtext this time, it is something more on the "lighthearted" side; just some ghastly, horror eye-candy fun really.

BELIAL'S DREAM

(2017)

Overall: GOOD

 

Commissioned as part of the Celluloid Screams festival in Sheffield, England, Belial's Dream as any Frank Henenlotter fan could guess does in fact feature said creature from Basket Case fame.  It is not necessarily a sequel; more a loving little ode to one of the strangest horror comedy franchises there is.  As the title would suggest, we get a glimpse into Belial's dreams/nightmares and it goes about as disturbingly as one would expect.  He licks his lips at a fleshy, amorphous thing with red satin panties on, (an nod to the first film), sits on his fleshy Aunt's lap, and gets haunted by a fleshy tentacle version of his "normal" brother Duane taunting him for being a freak.  Robert Morgan thankfully attains Belial's skin-crawling screams and the overall design work thankfully fits right in with the animator's usual dark, surreal shtick.

2013 Horror Part Eight

ESCAPE FROM TOMORROW

Dir - Randy Moore

Overall: MEH

This independent debut from Randy Moore is an odd, somewhat notorious offering in more ways than one.  From a production standpoint, it garnished a significant amount of attention from critics as the film was shot almost entirely at both Disney World and Disneyland, both parks of which fit in quite narratively as well.  Disney eventually acknowledged the movie without pursuing any serious legal action, but from such a sue-friendly company, the mere existence of Escape from Tomorrow is in and of itself remarkable.  As far as the actual film goes, it is strange though not exclusively for good reasons.  It was shot with inexpensive cameras that could remain hidden from Disney staff, then rendered in black and white.  While this gets around the issue of lack of lighting control, it still gives it a bit of an off-putting, amateur YouTube channel quality.  Embarrassing use of green screen in a few instances further emphasizes this.  Some of the story elements like a family dysfunctionally disintegrating while on a stressful vacation and the husband's sex-deprived marriage leading him to horndog hallucinations are interesting and occasionally amusing.  Things increasingly go into sloppy, surrealistic mode though with a nonsensical and pretentious third act and payoff. 

 

+ 1

Dir - Dennis Iliadis

Overall: MEH

 

Full of trippy, Twilight Zone-level aesthetics with plenty of psychological themes in place, Greek filmmaker Dennis Iliadis' follow up to the 2009 The Last House on the Left remake + 1, (Plus One, Shadow Walkers), is interesting though ultimately uneven.  A solid example of posing far more questions than providing answers, those questions sustain the film to a point.  The concept of reliving a regrettable moment with a near immediate level of hindsight gives the movie an emotional backbone that is more intriguing than the rather ill-defined, sinister bizarro-world stuff that becomes more prominent in the third act.  Iliadis goes for a tone of balancing humor with mounting doom, but it is a bit rushed in the violent, catastrophic finale where things seem to arrive there awkwardly.  Likewise, most of the character arcs resolve themselves clumsily and a kind of ugly feeling permeates after the credits role.  It is ambitious and deserves credit for what it may be trying to attempt though, plus the final showdown is visually impressive as far as how it was pulled off.

 

STOKER

Dir - Park Chan-wook

Overall: MEH

A knowing quasi-re-working of Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt by actor-turned-screenwriter Wentworth Miller and South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook in his English speaking debut, Stoker is a partially successful thriller.  The three leads in Nicole Kidman, Mia Wasikowska, and Matthew Goode turn in quite different though equally strong performances, though Goode's incessant smirking does become a bit irksome after awhile.  Chan-wook does an impressive job with the material, maintaining a dreadful tone with no breaks for humor and his frequent collaborator Chun Chung-hoo photographs everything beautifully and stylishly from the cinematographer chair.  It is a shame that the material in question is rather sub-par.  Far fetched and melodramatic in parts with a somewhat foreseeable reveal opening up doors that are fumblingly gone through, the story becomes dull and almost ham-fisted when it should be oozing with tension.  With a lesser director or lesser actors, the movie could have been in far more serious trouble.  As it stands though, it is clearly flawed yet meritable in enough areas to elevate it out of being exclusively mediocre.

2011 - 2019 Horror Shorts

BLINKYTM
(2011)
Dir - Ruairí Robinson
Overall: MEH

This Twilight Zone-esque short from Irish-born filmmaker Ruairí Robinson is the kind that toys with only mildly futuristic ideas that could conceivably be upon us in a more timely fashion than we would be comfortable with.  So in other words, it could also be a Black Mirror episode.  Blinky™ sets up its premise quickly and it is almost immediately foreseeable where it will lead.  So, you cannot say that there is any real tension built up over its brisk, thirteen-minute running time.  It is also a bit annoying to watch a brat kid, (who granted has two parents who seem to make yelling at each other around him a thing they routinely do), treat the adorable title robot like his own punching bag slave, but this may be the point as it almost makes the inevitable finale sit comfortably, (or uncomfortably), in the dark comedy realm.  A bit too obvious maybe, but still harmlessly well made.

THE ONLY MAN
(2013)
Dir - Jos Man
Overall: GOOD

With filmmakers young and old still scraping the barrel as far as zombie apocalypse ideas are concerned, it is a rare thing when a successfully engaging entry in the field can emerge this day and age.  Jos Man's The Only Man is one of these acceptable ideas that portrays the final few days of the title human's predetermined transformation into the undead.  What exactly has transpired to make Earth the desolate wasteland that it is and what exactly has stripped everyone of their humanity to the point that they look like extras in a George Romero movie with cheap rubber masks on, (the film's only minor fault), is not explained, but we are given some potent clues.  The antagonist pits his will against the zombie plague that is clearly overtaking him, desperately proclaiming that he is going to be the one to make it since the rest of mankind willingly did this to themselves, seeing the lack of formidable thought and reason as more of a release than a damnation.  Interesting concepts to ponder and ones that come across excellently here.

VALIBATION
(2013)
Dir - Todd Strauss-Schulson
Overall: GOOD

Teetering on that line of being so on the nose as to be annoying, Valibation is just clever and funny enough to get on board with despite its tongue in cheek, quasi-preachiness.  Written and directed by Todd Strauss-Schulson, (The Final Girls), with an impressive amount of visual showmanship and the budget to feature Cocoa Puffs, a Billy Idol dancing montage, and footage from both David Cronenberg's The Fly and Singin' in the Rain, it beats you over the head almost immediately with the same complaint that the cell phone addicted, information age generation gets routinely reminded of.  Strauss-Schulson has a lot of fun with this cliche though.  It makes for an ideal body horror send up that surprisingly has an uplifting, (be it still warped), final outcome and it is futile to try and not laugh at several of the ridiculous set pieces along the way.

UNEDITED FOOTAGE OF A BEAR

(2014)

Dir - Ben O'Brien/Alan Resnick

Overall: GOOD

The second Adult Swim infomercial from the creative team of Ben O'Brien and Alan Resnick and not the last to fall into the horror camp, Unedited Footage of a Bear is a darkly sly, nowhere near subtle commentary on the dangers of possible side effects attributed to innocently advertised pharmaceutical drugs.  Briefly beginning and ending as what the title misleadingly lays claim to, the short is actually made up almost entirely of a faux-commercial for the miracle stress-relieving drug Claridryl.  Because it is an Adult Swim program which ergo equals drugs, things escalate before too long into a disturbed, highly bizarre nightmare that offers up no possible explanation besides "YouTube adds and drugs are both bad folks".  As a parody, it is impressively convincing and once it makes the complete 180 shift into full blown horror movie, it is just as earnest in its off the rails, disconcerting approach.

THIS HOUSE HAS PEOPLE IN IT
(2016)
Dir - Alan Resnick
Overall: MEH

The guys from Unedited Footage of a Bear fame back at it again and comparatively less on drugs this time.  This House Has People in It follows that staunch tradition for the network of being something that people void of such drugs in their system "don't get".  An entire subreddit was dedicated to cracking the code of this whatever the fuck it is which includes deciphering YouTube comments and visiting various websites.  So yes, plenty of work for people with time on their hands.  Foolishly watching it raw and simply walking away from it, there is really not much to say.  Since it was designed to be investigated, the almost twelve minutes of footage by itself is just a puzzling mishmash of tones, with every potential clue whizzing right over your head if you are not constantly pausing every frame to take notes.  Even then, it is still hard to contemplate how anybody out there is coming up with anything.  It gets points for being a unique, post-interactive media experience at least, but still, you gotta have drugs.

DON'T HUG ME I'M SCARED

(2011-2016)

Dir - Rebecca Sloan/Joseph Pelling

Overall: GOOD

This bizarre project from Kingston University Fine Art and Animation graduates Rebecca Sloan and Joseph Pelling was a series of six independently made shorts which were released online through their website beckyandjoes.com, YouTube, and Vimeo.  Don't Hug Me I'm Scared can be described as Sesame Street on drugs to give it a fair assessment.  It mixes traditional, stop-motion, and computer animation, live action, and puppetry and on a technical level, it is quite impressive while blending its various styles rather seamlessly.  Even if the visceral results are purposely jarring.  More dark humor than explicitly horror, the amusingly childish songs and psychologically disturbing nature grows gradually over the series, culminating in a final episode that hearkens back to the previous five in a satisfyingly trippy way.  It could all mean a whole mess of things or virtually nothing at all, but it is a surreal and manically fun ride either way.