2000s American Horror Part Seven

CITIZEN TOXIE: THE TOXIC AVENGER IV

(2000)

Dir - Lloyd Kaufman

Overall: MEH

 

In many ways a contender for the most Troma of all Troma movies, Lloyd Kaufman and his band of shameless misfits go to all the extremes conceivably possible in Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV.  As Stan Lee of all people announces at the beginning, this installment disregards the last two "rotten sequels", but canon concerns are hardly of importance.  What is important to all parties involved is cramming fart noises, body liquids, and offensively juvenile jokes in every possible frame and line of dialog.  Dialog such as "Somehow your wiener has miraculously turned into a vagina", "I have become...the Retarded Revenger", "Fill my chocolate starfish with your chunky chunky dick snot", and "Oh gross, this whisky tastes like pregnant lady piss".  Kaufman keeps things moving at a frenzy, forcing any opportunity to make fun of the movie's own way off-color stupidity, as well as retarded people, minorities, racists, and homosexuals.  For fans of Troma's unabashed, gross-out shtick, this one has everything to disgust, appall, and please.  For everyone else, just leave out the please part and you get the idea.

 

MONSTER HOUSE

(2006)

Dir - Gil Kenan

Overall: GOOD

 

This full-length debut from animator/director Gil Kenan, backed by the production studios formed by both Robert Zemeckis and Stephen Spielberg is a conventionally charming and witty family movie with enough macabre elements to please horror fans.  Monster House features the same motion capture animation used in Zemekis' The Polar Express from two years prior and it is innocently cartoony and as effective as any Pixar property currently being made.  The well-known supporting cast of Steve Buscemi, Kevin James, Maggie Gylennhaul, and Jason Lee fare well and funny enough against the three leads in Mitchel Musso, Sam Lerner, and Spencer Locke, though Nick Cannon is a bit obnoxious as a stereotypical, skittish police rookie.  The story while not intricate or mysterious is kept engaging due to Kenan's flowing direction and pacing, plus the script by Dan Harmon, Rob Schrab, and Pamela Pettler, (all of whom have noteworthy resumes of their own), has enough amusing components and mild sprinklings of adult humor present to keep older age demographics tuned in.  It is nothing too astonishing, but it achieves its goal as fun, expertly crafted popcorn fare.

THE SIGNAL

(2007)

Dir - David Bruckner/Dan Bush/Jacob Gently

Overall: MEH

Boasting a promising enough creative team behind it, (including one of the Southbound and V/H/S directors David Bruckner), The Signal has an excellent premise and some very funny moments, but does not bring its working elements together by the end.  Broken up into three segments, (each handled by one of the three filmmakers), The Signal can be reviewed more as an anthology horror movie even if it tells a single story.  Beginning on a creepy and interesting note, the second act goes a jarringly different route and the film becomes a full blown comedy for about thirty minutes.  Though it is still certainly enjoyable, the tone shift is very harsh and arguably a little sloppy.  So whether or not it was a good idea to make it more episodic is really up to the viewer's particular taste.  The final act though kicks right back into serious gear and by that point, things unfortunately becomes a bit tedious, (this is another movie where characters get the ever loving shit beat out of them to the point that they should be crippled, brain dead, or dead dead and instead keep dramatically reemerging with all of their strength and speed).  There are a few too many elements that tarnish the experience, though it is impressive enough in most respects.

2000s Foreign Horror Part Twelve

FAUST: LOVE OF THE DAMNED

(2000)

Dir - Brian Yuzna

Overall: WOOF

 

Pure, unmitigated, gleefully gross-out, wackadoo garbage for the sheer sake of it, Brian Yuzna's laughable, filthy, ultra-violent, extreme-metal schlock-fest Faust: Love the the Damned is a shamelessly neanderthal-brained adaptation of Tim Vigil and David Quinn's comic book character of the same name.  There is not a solitary ounce of subtlety anywhere in the proceedings.  Mark Frost in the lead seems to be going for some kind of over acting award, crossing his eyes, constantly slipping his accent, and bouncing between inexplicably silly Nicolas Cage via Jim Carey mannerisms like someone desperate to gorge on every ounce of scenery at his disposal.  That is all before he even turns into a rubber suit-wearing Wolverine/Batman/Spawn hybrid that would rather implode than stop making "Somebody stop me!" one-liners.  Elsewhere, B-movie regulars Jeffrey Combs and Andrew Divoff seem downright restrained in comparison, even though their and everyone else's dialog has got to be parodying every lame action/horror hybrid movie that come before to warrant its atrociousness.  Just to make sure it crosses even more "Satan, blood, fire, and yelling" cliches off the list, the soundtrack by Roadrunner Records is full of groove, industrial, death, and nu metal bands making the pathetic attempt at bad-assery even more embarrassing.  It was made for bad movie night that is for damn sure.

LINKEROEVER

(2008)

Dir - Pieter Van Hees

Overall:  MEH

The debut full-length Linkeroever, (Left Bank), from Flemish filmmaker Pieter Van Hees is technically well made, well acted, and has a consistency grounded tone, but it falls short of its would-be eerie potential.  While the occult-themed components are certainly sprinkled throughout, they are routinely glossed over to the point of bare minimal importance.  Because of this, it barely feels like it isa horror film for large portions of it, that is until its rather abrupt genre shift in the final ten minutes.  While this is not problematic on paper, the whole thing comes off awkwardly clumsy under these circumstances.  The puzzling clues simply do not appear all that menacing, so there is not a slow-boil type dread built up.  When then movie does finally reveal its true motives, it is both confusing from a narrative perspective and very jarring in how rushed the final moments come off with questions left unanswered just as quickly as they are raised in the first place.  There are many other films of a similar nature that take a more naturalistic or even "gritty" approach to such material heading in this direction, but Van Hees fails to provide enough if really any suspense here and that is a ultimately a bit of a shame.

PONTYPOOL
(2008)
Dir - Bruce McDonald
Overall: GOOD

The phrase “jump the shark” is used primarily to describe that moment where a television show takes a sharp or even subtle turn in an ill-advised direction that never again steers it back to what originally made it work.  Bruce McDonald's nearly faultless Pontypool does the horror movie equivalent of that exact same thing.  The first two thirds of the film, all hyperbole aside, are astonishingly well done.  The level of mystery the film ominously builds up is increasingly strange, plus the unsettling set pieces are captivating in a way only very few genre films are ever able to achieve.  This ends up being the movie's downfall though as McDonald unfortunately builds up so much to a would-be satisfying conclusion that he insurmountably cannot deliver on such a thing.  It comes so close yet ultimately, so far.  What is great here is unbelievably great, so much so that it bypasses the enormously disappointing last chapter.  The discussion afterwards may be unavoidably tied into what went horribly, horribly wrong, but for many, that may be a worthwhile price to pay for how profound of a near landmark it could have been.

2000s Foreign Horror Part Eleven

SAINT ANGE
(2004)
Dir - Pascal Laugier
Overall: MEH
 
French director Pascal Laugier started off his full-length career with the bog-standard, creepy orphanage movie Saint Ange, (House of Voices).  Everything here from the beaten down location, somber performances, haunting piano music, and vague supernatural occurrences are presented in an identical way that various other such films have presented them.  This is all perfectly fine if any number of things like a sufficiently eerie mood, intriguing mystery, or skin-crawling scares are also thrown into the mix.  Sadly, none of the above are on display here.  Virginie Ledoyen's protagonist is terribly underwritten and seems perpetually bored to be on camera, while Lou Doillon takes every aspect of her portrayal right out of the "crazy people off of their meds with a wild, unkempt haircut" rulebook.  Not to exclusively hark on the the movie's unoriginality, but it really cannot be understated how problematic it is in elevating so much as a single scene into something that will be remembered mere seconds after the credits roll.  When things do try and get trippy, the completely uninteresting story makes such moments seem more random and incoherent than anything else.  Lucio Fulci's favorite leading lady Catriona MacColl shows up for a couple of scenes though so at least it has that going for it.

ANTIBODIES
(2005)
Dir - Christian Alvart
Overall: GOOD

Filmmaker Christian Alvart has delivered a steady stream of thriller/horror/sci-fi outings since around the turn of the century, (both in and out of his home country), and his second entry Antibodies, (Antikörper), is in many ways a German Silence of the Lambs.  There is even a joke made early on where the psychotic pedophile murderer, (an appropriately vile André Hennicke), proclaims "What did you expect, Hannibal Lecter?".  That is not the only nod to arguably the most well-known and respected "interview a serial killer behind bars who plays mind games with you" FBI profiling thriller ever made and in many respects, this one ups the unpleasantness while still successfully adhering to the formula.  The conventional structure and familiar plot points do not end up jeopardizing the whole though, as it is still exciting to witness a wrap-up that successfully gets under one's skin.  While it certainly will not be for all tastes in this respect, most of the uncomfortable moments are delivered through dialog as opposed to being explicitly shown in an irritating, torture-porn shock value way; something that is always nice for a change.
 

FIDO
(2006)
Dir - Andrew Currie
Overall: GOOD

Throwing domesticated zombies into Leave It to Beaver suburbia proves to be quite an enjoyably silly pastiche in Canadian filmmaker Andrew Currie's Fido.  The initial script by Currie, Robert Chomiak, and Dennis Heaton was written twelve years earlier, finally emerging somewhat unfortunately when both serious zombie movies and parodies of them were a dime a dozen.  Despite the walking corpse over-saturation, this one takes an angle that is pretty distinguishable from the rest.  It is not like you are going to see a zombie milkman accompanied by an exaggerated, whimsical, G-rated musical score anywhere else.  The detailed, sugar-coated set design and throwback newsreel footage are flawlessly convincing for the 1950s, alternate reality setting and they mix hilariously with both the gore and simply bizarre elements like Carrie-Anne Moss's textbook housewife gaining genuine feelings for Billy Connolly's undead title character.  It all has a macabre, quasi-perversity to it that puts thing squarely in the spoof category and Currie knows just how to maximize the amount of goofy joy to be had out of such a juxtaposition that by all logical means, should never work on paper.

2000s Foriegn Horror Part Ten

DARKNESS
(2002)
Dir - Jaume Balagueró
Overall: MEH

Front and back loaded with practically every "family moves into an old isolated haunted house in the country and starts arguing" cliche known to man, Jaume Balagueró's Darkness is impossibly derivative.  The formulaic nature is not limited to the dark mystery revolving around the spooky setting and things like electricity not working, toys turning on by themselves, laughably creepy pictures being found, photographs showing things naked to the eye, phone lines being blocked by ghostly voices, kids making disturbing drawings, forlorn and ominous characters lingering around for expository dialog dumps, etc. People see unexplained things and either do not mention them, are not believed by anyone if they do, or such things simply are not taken seriously.  Nearly every supernatural occurrence on screen is accompanied by the same stock sound effects or musical cues in every other such movie to the point where you could die of alcohol poising having a drinking contest over how many violin screeches and loud bangy noises show up.  The issue with the sheer, overwhelming number of unoriginal components is that the story which is not very interesting to begin with has absolutely no chance of being engaging.  Which leaves only a checklist of crap seen a billion times by now.

 

DEAD END
(2003)
Dir - Jean Paptise Andrea/Fabrice Canepa
Overall: WOOF

There is a nifty, otherworldly premise utilized in French filmmakers Jean Paptise Andrea and Fabrice Canepa's debut Dead End that very tragically gets handled in a multitude of awful ways.  First off, the choice to make the film comedic is a terrible move both in how obnoxious all of the characters are, (particularly Mick Cain who is a parody of a smart-ass teenager that in any realistic situation would have gotten the ever loving shit beat out of him numerous times over to stop him talking to his parents the way that he does), and also because this clashes very poorly with the often severe and creepy mood the movie simultaneously goes for.  Traumatic things happen to the family in this movie, emotional breakdowns transpire, and when characters smoke a joint and dance around soon afterwards or start talking like people with Alzheimer's disease for laughs, it is a messy contrast.  The tone issues are the biggest detriment and it is also not helped by the crummy, second-rate performances, sadly including Ray Wise who seems to be overdoing it most of the time.  The piss-poor script though is really to blame while a dysfunctional family unloads cliches at each other as they mentally deteriorate when instead there is much more interesting and frightening things taking place that are given far too little screen time in comparison.

 

REQUIEM
(2006)
Dir - Hans-Christian Schmid
Overall: MEH

 

While not a horror film in any conventional or otherwise sense, German filmmaker Hans-Christian Schmid's Requiem finds inspiration from the infamous, real life case of Anneliese Michel who died at the age of twenty-three from malnourishment and dehydration after undergoing sixty-seven exorcisms.  The film gets by on its bare-bones presentation which favors handheld camerawork and very little incidental music.  The lead performance by Sandra Hüller as Michaela Klingeler, (a young woman struggling with epilepsy and a dysfunctional dynamic with her strongly religious parents), is also quite strong.  It is a shame then that the film seems oddly rushed, particularly in its final act and very abrupt ending.  Klingeler's overall relationships and eccentric personality are ill-defined and it is not quite clear to the viewer how either she or the ones trying to help her are processing her particular ailments.  There are plenty of redeemable qualities to be sure, but they do not quite elevate it above the murky narrative.

2000s British Horror Part Four

DOG SOLDIERS
(2002)
Dir - Neil Marshall
Overall: MEH

Neil Marshall's full-length debut Dog Soldiers is basically Predator and Night of the Living Dead thrown into a blender, except sillier and more gory than either.  Oh, and also with werewolves.  Marshall is not so much interested in creating a slow-boil level of dread and then unleashing it in an aggressively terrifying manner here as he did superbly with his follow up The Descent.  Instead, this is overtly comedic and over the top, with British, military badasses screaming and swearing some pretty funny dialog at each other while shooting off gallons of ammo.  There is also plenty of absolutely ridiculous set pieces, (a human and a werewolf engaging in a fist fight anyone?), all sorts of things getting blown up, and even some organs literally pouring out of a man's stomach.  Davos Seaworth is an asshole in it as well.  Good times!  All that said, it is overall less engaging than it sounds and more a combination of action movie hijinks dialed to eleven than a consistently solid movie.  It is worth a chuckle or two though.

DONKEY PUNCH
(2008)
Dir - Olly Blackburn
Overall: MEH

The somewhat ambitious Donkey Punch from Olly Blackburn, (who also made the unbelievably awful Kristy as his second and to date last full-length), ultimately bites off more than it can chew.  Large parts of the film are grounded in reality; the violence is awkward and messy and exclusively brought on by extreme acts of panic and desperation.  As things go on though, the script has an impossible task of making the rash choices that its characters engage in seem plausible.  Too many moments dip their toes into schlock while trying to simultaneously ground them in reality.  Characters at one moment seem believably remorseful only to switch to almost cartoon-villain levels of scumbaggery.  Once it becomes clear that everyone will be doomed and that the "final girl" has been established from the opening scene, it falls into the trap of conventional slasher movies where it is just a boring waiting game for increasingly awful people to get picked off.  Even though Blackburn tries a different approach here, it does not avoid enough genre pratfalls to work as well as intended.

BOOK OF BLOOD
(2009)
Dir - John Harrison
Overall: MEH

This rather loose adaptation of the linking segment to Clive Barker's "The Book of Blood" and "On Jerusalem Street (A Postscript)" from his Books of Blood collection has an acceptable amount of gore and eroticism, but does not offer much else.  John Harrison's first non-television full-length since 1990's Tales from the Darkside, it is remarkably low on schlock and plays its hand rather seriously. While this keeps the tone tightly consistent, the screenplay by Harrison and Darin Silverman does not offer much beyond typical horror movie tropes and sub-par dialog.  The diluted color pallet, generic Spirit Halloween looking ghosts, poor CGI, stock score, and stock sound effects keep it grimy and gloomy, but everything that happens plot wise is also a predictable mishmash of supernatural ghost hunter cliches.   It is worse though that the characters never become properly fleshed-out even as we spend a great deal of time trying to get to know them.  The film just continues to escalate to a skin-crawling, (and removing), finish line while falling pretty flat in the process.  It is nowhere near the worst bit of celluloid to be based on Barker's works, but it is also nowhere near the best.

2000s Robert Morgan Shorts

THE SEPARATION

(2003)

Overall: GOOD

 

This heartfelt tale of two conjoined twins seemingly removed from each other's physical bodies against their will plays out against Claude Debussy's "Claire de lune" movement.  A clear metaphor of the overall longing for the comfort that the past can offer, the entirety of said twin's lives seems to be summed up in The Separation's running time that is just shy of ten minutes as they are content when together and forlorn when apart.  Robert Morgan's animation is unsettling, but its most gruesome set piece is more emotionally tragic than horrifying.  Thus can be said for the entire film really.

MONSTERS

(2004)

Overall: GOOD

 

Both the first live action film by Robert Morgan and first not to use any stop motion animation, Monsters is a puzzling look into a disturbed child's head and what can manifest inside and out of it.  Ridiculed and threatened by his older sister and primarily brushed-off by his parents, an over active imagination starts blurring the lines of what may or may not be actually happening.  As far as presenting disturbed visuals from a kid's mind, Morgan does quite a job in tapping into such visceral fears.  It is not quite clear what to make of things at the end as it has all been too murky up until then to have the seemingly narrative left-turn appear plausible, but it is effective as a whole all the same.

 

THE CAT WITH HANDS

(2007)

Overall: GOOD

 

Two versions of Robert Morgan's The Cat with Hands exist; one made in 2001 as a "pilot" of sorts to secure funding for future projects and another, more fleshed-out one that was released in 2007.  While the initial installment which showcases but one scene is a bit darker and void of dialog, its ambiguity makes it somewhat more unsettling than its future counterpart.  That said, the latter, (which is presented more as a dark fairytale and features live actors as well as stop motion animation), is satisfyingly creepy in its own right.  It is also more gleefully macabre, with Morgan presumably having a bit more fun with the material the second time around.

OVER TAKEN

(2009)

Overall: MEH

 

Robert Morgan's entry in the Branchage Film Festival's 2009 48-Hour Film Challenge, Over Taken is unapologetically baffling, most likely for the mere sake of it.  A woman prances around a beach as a claymation stick figure ogles her with almost completely indecipherable dialog.  Meanwhile, a melancholy piano pieces plays throughout and at one point another woman shows up, laughs a bit, then gets beaten and stepped on by the first woman.  As it was made so quickly under the predetermined confines of the festival, attaching much meaning to the proceedings is a bit of a grasping-at-straws endeavor.  For those that enjoy pure, avant-garde befuddlement though, Morgan assuredly delivers it here that is for sure.

2000s Asian Horror Shorts

COMEDY
(2002)
Dir - Kazuto Nakazawa
Overall: GOOD

Part of Studio 4°C's shorts collection Sweat Punch, Comedy, (Kigeki), was directed by Kazuto Nakazawa who Westerners might be familiar with as the guy that did the anime segment in Quintin Tarantino's Kill Bill as well as doing the animation for Linkin Park's "Breaking the Habit" video.  Essentially a vampire story though it deliberately does not come out and officially proclaim it, the presentation is that of a dark, mysterious fairytale that is told in flashback by a young woman.  Even with some massive bloodshed near the end, it is all beautifully done and mostly plays out to the tune of Franz Schurbert's famous "Ave Maria", giving it a highly romantic feel.

 

HAZE
(2005)
Dir - Shinya Tsukamoto
Overall: MEH

 

Two versions exist of Shinya Tsukamoto's Haze; a twenty-five minute one initially released and a more unforgiving forty-nine minute one that indulges in torture porn a bit more than is comfortable.  In fact there is very little comfort if any to be found here as it is one of the most brutally claustrophobic works in horror there is.  Tsukamoto's cinematography is relentlessly harsh; it rarely breaks from close-ups lit in a manner one notch above "complete blackness".  Because of this, it is irritatingly difficult to tell what is happening for large portions, though this is no doubt completely intentional.  The ending is curious in a different, less visceral fashion and if anything else, Tsukamoto stays the course for virtually all of his work in challenging his audience in an assuredly confident manner that is quite meritable if not altogether enjoyable.

 

CHAINSAW MAID

(2007)

Dir - Takena Nagao

Overall: GOOD

 

If anyone wanted to know what a scene in Peter Jackson's Braindead might look like if it was done in claymation, Chainsaw Maid would probably satisfy such curiosity.  Simple, silly, and gore-ridden, animator Takena Nagao's second short is exactly what the title suggest.  Some hanky-panky between the title character and the man of the house that she is taking care of, (whatever that is about), gets interrupted by zombies and as you would predict, bloody mayhem ensues.  Nagao's design work is quite crude yet stylized with stark, brightly painted paper sets and zombies getting hacked in half and puking up piles of intestines that look like Play-Doh.  The intertitles are another humorous touch as there is barely any need for dialog save one moment anyway; it is primarily just hacking and slashing at colorful corpses.