Movie Review: Pyewacket

Pyewacket *** / *****

Directed by: Adam MacDonald.

Written by: Adam MacDonald.

Starring: Nicole Muñoz (Leah), Laurie Holden (Mrs. Reyes), Chloe Rose (Janice), Eric Osborne (Aaron), Romeo Carere (Rob), James McGowan (Rowan Dove), Bianca Melchior (Pyewacket), Missy Peregrym (voice), Neil Whitely (Detective). 

 

It was just last week when I reviewed Paco Plaza’s Veronica, about a teenage girl, who holds a séance to communicate with her dead father, and gets more than she bargained for. I didn’t think much of that film that was a slow burn, until a fairly satisfying finale – but ultimately indulged in every cliché imaginable through its runtime. Now comes Pyewacket, a film about a teenage girl, who performs a blood incantation, to get even with her mother who she is upset with following the death of her father, and gets more than she bargained for. The two films are similar in some ways – but while I don’t necessarily think Pyewacket is overly original either – it is a horror film that worked for me, slowly getting under your skin, and building to a truly frightening climax. The two films are perhaps a study in how horror, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

 

The film stars Nicole Muñoz as Leah – a teenager girl, who has started hanging out with the “goth” crowd following the death of her father. Their interest in the occult is somewhat comforting to her – interest in that implies there is an afterlife, so it provides some of the same comfort as religion does, but is “cooler”. Her mother, (Laurie Holden) isn’t doing well however – she cannot seem to get over the death of her husband, or reminders of him, so instead she decides to move an hour away from everything Leah knows, to a remote house in the middle of the woods (seems logical). One day in the car during an argument, her mother says something that infuriates Leah – so that night, she heads to the woods to call upon a spirit – Pyewacket – to punish her mother. It’s something – much like that séance in Veronica – which a grieving, angry teenager may well do, without meaning it. She almost immediately regrets it – but it’s too late, as the spirit makes their presence felt almost immediately.

 

Pyewacket is a slow burn of a horror movie – first getting us to care about Leah, and even her mother and her friends, and then working to scare us. I liked how the film shows the teenagers interest in the occult, and how confident they are all in how cool it – right up until they actually confront it in real life – Leah’s friends Janice (Chloe Rose) comes up to the house to try and observe what is actually happening, because she thinks it’s great – but the next morning, she’s hiding in the car, freaked out and wanting to go home.

 

Pyewacket makes great use of its setting to help deliver the scares – from the dark forest that surrounds there new home, to the attic that Leah repeatedly has to go to – either to try and figure out what that strange noise is, or to try and get away from it. The film is nicely subtle in the scares too – it doesn’t lead the audience as much with music or jump scares, but like the slow burn of the film itself, the scares are similarly subtle at first, and then mount as the film continues.

 

I would not argue with someone who felt the opposite of me – that Veronica was incredibly scary, and Pyewacket was too slow. Different strokes for different folks I guess. But to me, I was mainly bored by Veronica – a film that didn’t scare me, and felt like it was going through the motions. I was scared though by Pyewacket – enough that I really should go back and catch up with Adam Macdonald’s other horror film – Backcountry. He clearly has horror movie chops – and while Pyewacket isn’t overly original, it delivers. 

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Movie Review: Veronica

Veronica ** / *****

Directed by: Paco Plaza.

Written by: Fernando Navarro and Paco Plaza.

Starring: Sandra Escacena (Verónica), Bruna González (Lucía), Claudia Placer (Irene), Iván Chavero (Antoñito), Ana Torrent (Ana), Consuelo Trujillo (Hermana Muerte), Ángela Fabián (Rosa), Carla Campra (Diana).

 

In horror films there is a difference between a slow burn and the downright bland – and while that difference can vary by viewer, I’d argue that the Spanish horror film Veronica is much more of the later. The film was released on Netflix earlier this month – after being on the festival circuit last fall – and after receiving some attention as a film Netflix claimed it was a film so scary that people couldn’t finish it. That, and the fact that I admired the first two [Rec] films co-directed by Paco Plaza who made this film, made me curious to check it out. Disappointingly though Veronica is basically a standard issue possession film, and one that hits basically every cliché imaginable during its runtime. The climax is pretty good – but it takes a long time to get there.

 

The film takes place in 1991 in Madrid (it is loosely based on a real case) and the title character, played by Sandra Escacena is a 15 year-old-girl, who basically has to act as a parent to her younger twin sisters, and much younger brother. Their father is dead, and their mother basically works non-stop at a local bar. It falls onto Veronica to get the kids up, feed them, get them to school, and then bring them home, feed them and put them to bed – all while going to school herself. One day, during an eclipse, she goes down to the basement of her school (spoiler alert – the basement is creepy) with her two friends and an Ouija board to try and contact her dad. She contacts something alright, as things go horribly awry, in a way that she basically does not remember. She spends the rest of the film is a mounting state of paranoia, as she starts having dark visions of a dark man in their apartment, threatening her siblings. Her mom doesn’t believe her and her best friend is creeped out by her because of what happened with the Ouija board. The only person who seems to give her any advice at all is an old, blind nun at the school – but she’s more on hand to provide some creepy moments during the long (long) hour between the Séance and the climax.

 

Basically, Veronica hits ever note you expect to see in a possession movie from the innocent girl introduction of Veronica, right up until the climax. As a movie like The Conjuring proved a few years ago, a gifted director can make those clichés feel fresh and scary again, but it takes some work. The best thing about Veronica is the lead performance by newcomer Sandra Escacena, who really does sell her mounting paranoia and terror, as well as her relationship with her siblings, that really is deeply felt and important to her. She’s a find for sure.

 

Other than a decent sense of place though, Plaza never really figures out to make much of the movie all that scary. I understand that he’s going for a slow burn here – gradually building up the tension before finally releasing it with the climax. But slow burns work when each scene builds on the last, and there are some genuinely unexpected moments in the film. That doesn’t really happen in Veronica, which has some okay individual scenes, but they don’t build on each other – and every moment is too neatly telegraphed in advance.

 

Yes, the climax mostly work – even if, like the rest of the movie, you know what’s coming before the film does. But other than that, Veronica is basically a dull, predictable horror film that plays out exactly how you expect it to. I suspect that some people turned it off on Netflix because they were bored.

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Movie Review: The Strangers: Prey at Night

The Strangers: Prey at Night *** ½ / *****

Directed by: Johannes Roberts.

Written by: Ben Ketai based on the screenplay by Bryan Bertino.

Starring: Christina Hendricks (Cindy), Bailee Madison (Kinsey), Martin Henderson (Mike), Lewis Pullman (Luke), Emma Bellomy (Dollface), Damian Maffei (Man in the Mask), Lea Enslin (Pin-Up Girl).

 

It felt rather lonely in 2008 thinking that Bryan Bertino’s The Strangers was one of the scariest films I had seen in years – most reviews dismissed it as another cheap horror movie, but it was a film that creeped me out to no end. To be fair, home invasion movies do that me more than most horror films do (I rarely get all that scared by movies featuring ghosts for example) – and having kids has only heightened that anxiety. Re-watching The Strangers in the lead up to the long awaited sequel, I was even more impressed by it now than I was then (and seeing how I hadn’t watched it in 10 years, the scares worked again). I’m glad that the film has become a new horror classic in that time. The Strangers: Prey at Night is now here – why it took 10 years to make it, I’ll never know (especially since it as announced right after the original was released), and while it isn’t quite as good as the original, it’s pretty damn close. For horror sequels, it’s tough to do better.

 

The original film was about a couple, who were already frayed when the film opened – thanks to a proposal gone awry – but for the sequel, the filmmakers have decided to expand that to a family, but has kept the fraying part. After a brief prologue that re-establishes the trio of masked killers – the film sketches this film in strokes that seem broad, but still get to the heart of who they are. Cindy and Mike (Christina Hendricks and Martin Henderson) are concerned about their teenage daughter Kinsey (Bailee Madison) – and have decided to ship her off to boarding school (her exact “crimes” are not spoken, but she wears a Ramones t-shirt, and smokes cigarettes). Kinsey is angry at her parents for sending her away, and resentful of her older brother Luke (Lewis Pullman), who she thinks her parents see as the golden child. The family is headed to a trailer park run by an older, drunk uncle for the night before dropping Kinsey off at boarding school. It’s off season, so no one else is going to be around. If you’ve seen the original film you know what will happen next – a knock on the door late at night, a young woman, faced obscured by darkness and long blonde hair asking for “Tamara”, and then escalating terror as that woman is joined by two others, another woman and a man – all wearing fake cheery masks, as they torment the family.

 

The Strangers: Prey at Night is smart enough to know that it cannot repeat everything from the first film. The original eventually does build to a bloody, bleak climax, but it takes almost its entire runtime to get there, so that for most of the runtime you don’t really know what the masked stranger’s intentions are – they could just be really committed to pulling off a perverse prank. You cannot get away with that twice, so this film doesn’t hide what those intentions are, and while the result is a fairly standard structure of the family members getting picked off one at a time, it also means that once the terror starts, it never really lets up.

 

Bertino is back as a screenwriter, but not as a director – that falling to Johannes Roberts this time, but improves greatly from last year’s surprise hit 47 Meters Down, starring Mandy Moore and Claire Holt as a pair of sisters, trapped underwater, with diminishing oxygen, as sharks circle above them (that film was effective, but not this effective). Roberts in many ways takes his cues from what Bertino did in the original film (at least when he’s not cribbing from John Carpenter – especially Christine) – there are a lot of shots of the potential horror in the background – we can see them, the characters cannot. Roberts makes great use of the confined spaces inside the trailers – but perhaps even better use of the dark fields around them – providing just enough light to see what’s happening. Sure, he may too heavily on the ironic use of 1980s pop songs against the killings – but that’s a cliché he fully embraces, and works wonderfully.

 

The result is another horror film that has haunted me for days since seeing it – a truly scary film that may not be original, and may not have quite the impact of the first film, which was one of a number at that time turning horror clichés on its head – but is ruthlessly effective at what it’s doing.

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Movie Review: Mom and Dad

Mom and Dad *** / *****

Directed by: Brian Taylor.

Written by: Brian Taylor.

Starring: Nicolas Cage (Brent Ryan), Selma Blair (Kendall Ryan), Anne Winters (Carly Ryan), Zackary Arthur (Josh Ryan), Robert T. Cunningham (Damon Hall), Olivia Crocicchia (Riley), Lance Henriksen (Mel Ryan), Marilyn Dodds Frank (Barbara Ryan), Samantha Lemole (Jenna). 

 

There is a scene in Mom and Dad in which Nicolas Cage sings the Hokey Pokey, while destroying a pool table with a sledge hammer – and in the timeline of the movie, this is BEFORE he is infected with a strange virus that makes him – and every other parent – want to murder their children – preferably in some brutal and bloody fashion. Mom and Dad is some sort of strange mixture of satire, comedy and horror – and it the movie begins by being way over the top, and then just tries to top itself again and again and again. In Cage, the film found the only actor who could really pull this off. What’s odd about the film – what I think ultimately makes it work – is that every so often the movie does slow down, to show you another side of Cage’s Brent, and his wife Kendall (Selma Blair) – instead of being just a completely over-the-top bloodbath.

 

The film takes a little bit of time setting things up. Brent and Kendall are suburban parents to teenager Carly (Anne Winters) and 10 year old Josh (Zackary Arthur). Like all suburban parents in the movies, they aren’t really that happy – he trudges off to work at a job he doesn’t really like, she is dealing with the fact that her kids don’t need her as much anymore – and her daughter openly insults her. The movie doesn’t waste too much time before some sort of strange outbreak happens – which gives parents the uncontrollable urge to murder their children. Most of the movie happens at the family house – with the kids locked in the basement, and the parents trying inventive ways to get them – and a boyfriend of Carly who gets knocked out repeatedly, but regains consciousness at just the right moments.

 

The film takes more than a few missteps along the way – the biggest may well be in the character of the family maid – an Asian American woman, who is little more than a stereotype, used to add in a little more bloodshed. The film also seems to be hinting at bigger ideas at times, and then backs off to back to the looniness. It mainly works, but there are hints at a better movie than Mom and Dad ultimately ends up being.

 

The film was written and directed by Brian Taylor – one half of the Nelvedine and Taylor duo, whose films include the god-awful Crank films, offensive and violent films in which Jason Statham has to keep his heart rate up or else he’ll die. I hated the Crank films for their nihilism and misogyny – but you do have to admit that the films had energy. He brings that energy to parts of Mom and Dad as well – particularly in the back half of the film, as things spin wildly out of control, and they get some unexpected visitors that bring things up a notch.

 

The reason to see the film is mainly Cage and Blair. Cage can, and will, go wildly over-the-top at all times, and he does so here. But unlike many of his recent films, it works here – there is a reason for it, and the movie requires him to do so. Oddly though, it’s Blair who is more the center of the movie – she’s the one who keeps things grounded. Cage and Blair have a nice chemistry together – particularly in the more serious scenes – like right after Cage destroys that pool table, where the pair of them wonder what exactly happened to their life.

 

Mom and Dad is a demented satire – another look at suburban life, and home empty it can be. It doesn’t really add anything that Hitchcock, Lynch of Solondz hasn’t done – but it’s done it all in such a demented and over-the-top entertaining way that it should become a cult hit – particularly among parents with a black comedic streak. We may not actually want to kill our children, but we all relate to Cage’s final moment here.

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Movie Review: Les Affames

Les affamés *** ½ / *****

Directed by: Robin Aubert.

Written by: Robin Aubert.

Starring: Marc-André Grondin (Bonin), Monia Chokri (Tania), Charlotte St-Martin (Zoé), Micheline Lanctôt (Pauline), Marie-Ginette Guay (Thérèse), Brigitte Poupart (Céline), Édouard Tremblay-Grenier (Ti-Cul), Luc Proulx (Réal), Didier Lucien (Vézina), Robert Brouillette (Paco), Martin Héroux (Demers), Patrick Hivon (Race driver).

 

I am constantly surprised by how durable the zombie genre is – how new directors find new ways of exploring the genre, and finding new notes to hit. I don’t necessarily think that Robin Aubert’s Les Affames (The Ravenous) is completely new or different, but I do think he is trying something interesting with the film that marks it as different from most of the Night of the Living Dead (or now The Walking Dead) clones out there.

 

The film takes place in the Northern Quebec countryside, and spends a long time bringing together its cast of characters. When the film opens, the zombie apocalypse has already began, and the film makes no effort to try and explain what happened or why. It also doesn’t waste any time explaining the “rules” of this particular zombie outbreak, because they are the same as every other one we’ve seen in the past 50 years – you get bit, you’re turning into a zombie, it’s only a matter of time.

 

There are a few things that make the zombies in Aubert’s film different from most. Like all right minded people out there, he knows zombies move slowly, but here they are quite the unthinking, unfeeling killing machines we have normally seen. There is something about them that remains at least somewhat human – when you kill them, they do in fact cry out in pain, which is somewhat different. They also seem to cling to some semblance of their former lives – one of the most haunting moments comes with the realization that they are building some kind of shrine out of their old belongings – chairs, toys, etc. They may no longer be “human” – but what are they?

 

Gradually we get to know the characters – including self-confessed nerd Bonin (Marc-Andre Grondin), who is somewhat lonely and regretful that he never had a family of his own in his life – aside from his mother, who is still around. There is Tania (Monia Chokri), who has found her way to this small town, clinging to her accordion – the one thing she has from her old life. The two form some sort of weird family unit along with little Zoe – an orphan who is there as well. There are more of course – a business woman realizing she has lived her life the way she was meant to, not the way she wanted, and a strange pair – an older man, and teenage boy, both of whom made the perhaps fatal flaw of not killing their turned families soon enough.

 

As with all zombie stories, Aubert is more interested in the living than the living dead – and using the genre to explore that. The characters in Les Affames are more downbeat and introspective than most. They do eventually decide to try and leave the ravaged small town countryside for the city – reckoning that the government would be active there (just one of many, small moments that imply a particular hostility between rural and urban areas in Quebec in particular – but also there in wider context as well).

 

We know where the story is going – and it doesn’t disappoint. There is plenty of bloodshed in the film, although tellingly, Aubert lets some of the more major events happen off-screen – we see what leads up to them, or the come down, but not necessarily the act itself. The end of the film, in its way, is both heartbreaking, and somewhat affirming. All is not lost yet.

 

I don’t think Les Affames truly breaks new ground in the zombie genre – but it doesn’t enough interesting stuff that it should be a zombie film on your radar. For those (like me) who eventually gave up on The Walking Dead because of its seemingly limitless nihilism, Les Affames offers something refreshingly different.

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Movie Review: The Ritual

The Ritual ** ½ / *****

Directed by: David Bruckner.

Written by: Joe Barton based on the novel by Adam Nevill.

Starring: Rafe Spall (Luke), Arsher Ali (Phil), Robert James-Collier (Hutch), Sam Troughton (Dom), Paul Reid (Robert).

 

Director David Bruckner is a talented filmmaker. He did my favorite segment of the horror omnibus films V/H/S (Amateur Night, about a group of horny college guys who get way more than they bargained for) and Southbound (The Accident, about a man on a remote highway looking at his cellphone, and runs over a young woman – which ends up being just the beginning of a horrible night). Both of those are stylish mini-horror films that do an expert job at building the tension, and then finally letting it out. His debut feature, The Ritual, shows some of that talent but is mainly undone by a rather lackluster script, that hits every story beat we expect it to and is essentially going through the motions of this type of horror film. Bruckner, mainly, does a fine job at directing, but there is only so much he can do with what he has to work with.

 

The film is about a group of four university friends, now in their 30s, who instead of the usual “man’s trip” to some party city, have decided to go hiking in Northern Sweden instead. In large part, this decision was made to honor a fifth friend – a man he see murdered in the opening sequence in a random convenience store robbery – a place he would not have been in if not for Luke (Rafe Spall) – who was able to hide during the robbery and escaped without a scratch. The four surviving friends are on their way back to the lodge they are staying at, when they decide to go off the defined path, and instead, to walk through the forest instead. After all, the forest is a more direct route, they can relax sooner, and one of the men, Dom (Sam Troughton), has just twisted his knee and won’t shut up about it. What can possibly go wrong in the dark, remote woods of Sweden?

 

Basically, what The Ritual wants to be is a more polished, all male version of The Blair Witch Project. For most of the movie, the horror comes from noises in the night, things hanging from or carved into trees, and a house in complete disrepair that has some weird stuff in it. As a director, Bruckner doesn’t go with the hand held camera on The Blair Witch Project, but a more polished look. He makes great use of darkness and the house, and all the trees – perhaps that’s easy, but he does a great job regardless.

 

What Bruckner cannot help is the basic plot of the movie, which builds and builds and builds towards a climax with an actual monster (which, to be honest, looks more strange than scary, and was clearly created on a budget). He can also not help the fact that other than Rafe Spall’s Luke, the other three men are ill defined and interchangeable. I do wish someone along the way questioned the need for all the flashbacks to “that night” that litter the film, since it doesn’t actually seem like it has anything to do with the plot at all.

 

I still do think that Bruckner is a talented horror film director. He got a chance to make a full feature after three omnibus segments (I have not seen The Signal – although several people have said that, like the others, his segment was the best) – and decided to take it. I think he does what he can with a script that doesn’t really work.

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Movie Review: Thelma

Thelma **** / *****

Directed by: Joachim Trier.

Written by: Eskil Vogt & Joachim Trier.

Starring: Eili Harboe (Thelma), Kaya Wilkins (Anja), Ellen Dorrit Petersen (Unni), Henrik Rafaelsen (Trond), Grethe Eltervåg (Young Thelma).

 

If you can imagine Stephen King’s Carrie directed by Ingmar Bergman, who can get close to seeing what Joachim Trier is going for with his film Thelma. This is a horror story, about a teenage girl with psychic powers in the first throes of love and lust, and who naturally loses control over everything, without really realizing it. The first scene in the film sets things up so we know this isn’t going to be a typical story, as a father and daughter (around 6) go plodding through the snowy forest. The father sites a deer and raises his rifle – his daughter is transfixed by the deer – and doesn’t realize that her father has changed his aim, and is now pointing the gun at the back of her head. Eventually, we will figure out why.

 

But most of the action takes place in the present – where Thelma is a college freshman, away from her parents for the first time. We assume that they are just a little strict – they get nervous if she doesn’t immediately answer their phone calls, and know her class schedule better than she does – and even comes down to stay with her, in her apartment, on a weekend. The whole family is religious, and while it doesn’t seem to be the fire and brimstone type Christianity of Carrie, it is quietly strict. Things seem to be going okay with Thelma – she’s lonely, but smart – until she becomes friends – and then more – with Anja (Kaya Wilkins). Whatever has been lying dormant in Thelma is suddenly not dormant anymore.

 

On the surface, Thelma is a genre film – a horror film going over some well-worn terrain, combining the coming-of-age, sexual awakening of a teenage girl, and unleashing of her power upon those around her. Trier, however, takes this story seriously (perhaps a touch too seriously – I’ll get to that), making a film that really does look at this young woman, her faith, her sexuality, her family, her past and letting it play out as naturally and realistically as it can, given Thelma’s powers. None of the deaths or action is played for thrills at all. The film ends up, perhaps, where you expect it to, but it takes a different, more serious route there.

 

This approach mostly works for me – but left a few nagging complaints for me. For one, I don’t think Trier needs to spend as much as he does showing Thelma playing detective looking into her family history – savvy audience members will get there before the film even starts, so move it along. As well, it always bugs me a little – just a little – when filmmakers making a genre film seem to think that theirs is “above” the genre, and therefore doesn’t want to offer any of the baser pleasures of the genre. Carrie is a masterpiece of its kind, has a lot to say about its subject – but doesn’t hold itself above the genre. Same with Raw. Thelma wants to cloak some of those genre trappings behind a prestige sheen.

 

Still, that’s a minor complaint – and something that didn’t bother me much when watching the film. This is an engrossing film, and one that is expertly directed by Trier – more than making up for his thuddingly dull English language debut Louder Than Bombs a few years ago. Eili Harboe is terrific in the lead role as well, delivering a sympathetic performance, even as the film goes along, and she starts making increasingly questionable choices. She slowly reels you in, as does the film. I just wish Trier had loosened the reigns just a little bit – and let the genre loose.

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2017 Year End Report: Best Horror Films

A few things to note – you may well see films like mother! (Darren Aronofsky), The Killing of a Sacred Deer (Yorgos Lanthimos), Personal Shopper (Olivier Assayas) and Colossal (Nacho Vigalondo) on some lists – and if I fully considered them horror films, they would be right near the top of this list (at least, the first three). But I erred on the side of not including them here – as they really aren’t pure horror films. Feel free to disagree.

 

Death Note (Adam Wingard) takes what could have been a good premise, and really screws it up – I cannot believe this is the same director as The Guest and You’re Next. Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (Paul W.S. Anderson) is more of the same mixture of action and horror, that doesn’t really work for me. Rings (F. Javier Gutierrez) has as its scariest moment, the opening of an umbrella, so that’s not a good sign. The Snowman (Tomas Alfredson) is very nonsensical, which undermines everything about it. The Void (Jeremy Gillespie & Steven Kostanski) is dull when it starts, starts to look like it will go somewhere, and then goes wildly wrong. We Are The Flesh (Emiliano Rocha Minter) thinks it is saying something profound about our empty culture – it is not.

 

The Bad Batch (Ana Lily Amirpour) really does try to do a lot – only some of it horror – but none of it really works. Dig Two Graves (Hunter Adams) has style to spare – which helps makes up for the underwritten screenplay, but not too much. Jigsaw (Spierig Brothers) has a couple of nifty kills – but not much else in this limp reboot of one of the biggest horror franchises of the 2000s. XX (Jovanka Vockovic/Annie Clark/Roxanne Benjamin/Karyn Kusama) is an omnibus film that goes one for four in terms of effectiveness.

 

A Cure for Wellness (Gore Verbinski) has a ton of style, and it takes guts to make something on this scale – I just wish it all came together better. 47 Meters Down (Johannes Roberts) is admirably low-key and realistic shark/scuba diving film for an hour, before it throws it all away with a terrible ending. The Girl with All the Gifts (Colm McCarthy) wants to twist the zombie genre in knots, and only gets part of it right. 1922 (Zak Hilditch) would have been a great, 1 hour adaptation of a Stephen King story – but stretched into 100 minutes, it’s a little thin.

 

A Dark Song (Liam Gavin) has a great premise, and style to burn – but is perhaps too slow of a burn to be truly great. Gerald’s Game (Mike Flanagan) is as good an adaptation of a nearly unfilmable Stephen King I can imagine – but they should have jettisoned King’s awful ending. Happy Death Day (Christopher Landon) is a lot of fun, even if I wish it took a few more chances. Life (Daniel Espinosa) is stylish and fun – and also incredibly dumb – but if you can accept that, the fun outweighs the dumb. The Lure (Agnieszka Smoczynska) is such an original – a musical, mermaid, horror, sexual film that you have to admire the sheer balls it took to make it – even if I’m not sure it works. Prevenge (Alice Lowe) has such a brilliant premise – a woman kills because her unborn fetus tells her to that it’s enough that the movie doesn’t quite deliver on its promise, because it does to be kind of nuts and insane. Split (M. Night Shyamalan) is a fine film from Shyamalan – an improvement over his The Visit, which was an improvement over most of his most recent films – but it’s still nowhere near as good as his best work.

 

Alien: Covenant (Ridley Scott) is a film that I quite like as a stylish horror film, with some delusions of grandeur – but then again, I liked Prometheus, so take my recommendation for whatever its worth. Better Watch Out (Chris Peckover) is a tremendously entertaining, horror comedy about a little psycho tormenting his babysitter, which never crosses the line that would make you feel icky – which is harder than it sounds. Creep 2 (Patrick Brice) makes the original look even better, as this low budget found footage entry is creepy and scary, as it follows its killer into middle age – and sets up the conclusion of the trilogy really well. Hounds of Love (Ben Young) is one of the year’s most disturbing film – about a couple who kidnap and torture a teenage girl, which captures every dirty, grimy detail – without being overly exploitive. Super Dark Times (Kevin Phillips) has tremendous horror movie atmosphere in its story of teenage violence.

 

Top 10

 10. Annabelle: Creation (David F. Sandberg)

I wasn’t much of a fan of the original Annabelle – a spin-off of The Conjuring franchise – but this film, a flashback in time to the dusty, Midwest of the 1940s is superior in every way – and has actually grown in my mind since seeing it – it continues to haunt me. Director Sandberg made an excellent feature debut last year with Lights Out – a film that, like Annabelle: Creation maybe clichéd, but is brilliantly directed. Here, the combination of creepy dolls, little girls, a sick wife and Anthony LaPaglia, combined with great technical merits, makes for one of the most satisfying mainstream horror films of the year.

 

9. The Devil’s Candy (Sean Byrne)

I’ve been waiting for Sean Byrne to make a follow-up to his wonderful The Loved Ones – a demented prom horror film – ever since I saw it at TIFF years ago. While The Devil’s Candy isn’t quite up to that level, it’s still disturbing and horrific, with a great performance by Ethan Embry as a rock loving painter, haunted by visions of dead children. The film’s casting of Pruitt Taylor Vince as a psychopathic child killer is perhaps a little too obvious. Yet, because this film is about a father’s fears about his children – and the imagery that haunts him – the film really did weasel itself into my brain, and wouldn’t leave. Byrne is still a horror filmmaker I want to see more from – I just hope it doesn’t take as long to get his next film.

 

8. The Blackcoat’s Daughter (Oz Perkins)

This is actually Oz Perkins (son of Anthony) first film, even though it is being released a year later than his second – I am the Pretty Thing That Lived in the House – a film that I thought was technically wonderful, but overall hollow. Here, the brilliant technical merits are still there – and it’s paired with a story that actually works (actually, a couple of interconnected stories). In one, a wonderful Kiernan Shipka is stuck at her boarding school over Christmas break – with only one other girl (wonderfully played by Lucy Boynton). This is the stronger of the pair of stories – although the one with Emma Roberts as a hitchhiker has its moments as well. Perkins clearly knows horror, and he gradually ratchets up the tension here in wonderful ways. I wanted to see more from Perkins even after I was underwhelmed by his second film – no, I really want to see more.

 

7. Most Beautiful Island (Ana Asensio)

Most Beautiful Island isn’t only kind of a horror film – it is basically an immigrant drama, about the lengths they have to go to survive in America – that has two absolutely terrifying scenes – the second of which comes at the end of a brilliant 30 minute build-up. So, it’s close enough to horror for me. The film was written, directed by and starring Ana Asensio, who does all three wonderfully (well, the movie is perhaps a little under written) – and has made a brilliant calling card here. I won’t spoil the horrifying scenes – but I will never, ever forget them. Truly scary.

6. The Transfiguration (Michael O’Shea)

I have seen countless vampire films over the years – and yet, the ones that do something truly different and original with the genre are few and far between. But Michael O’Shea’s debut feature – about a young teenage African American teen who believes himself to be a vampire, and occasionally goes out “hunting”. His slow, blossoming relationship with a new neighbor makes him at least reconsider his action. The film is more haunting and spooky than out and out scary – it’s also wonderfully ambiguous, and quietly disturbing. O’Shea does – and tries – to do a lot of things, and I’m not quite sure he sticks all of them – but I cannot help but admire the ambition, on such a small budget.

 

5. The Untamed (Amat Escalante)

How does one describe Amat Escalante’s The Untamed – other than to say it’s a horror film about a tentacle monster that gives women orgasms – but is also capable of inflicting great pain on those it comes in contact with, depending on what they deserve? The film is a strange blend of genres, a critique of macho, homophobic culture, and it pretty much swings for the fences from the first frame to the last. Escalante’s film is inspired by films like Zulawski’s Possession – and even if it doesn’t quite live up to that level, damn if you cannot help but admire it for trying.

4. It Comes at Night (Trey Edward Shults)

Trey Edward Shults’ second film is a dystopian horror film, set in the middle of the forest, as one family tries to stay alive in their home, in a world ravaged by some sort of disease – and what they decide to do when they meet a second family. His first film – last year’s Krishna – was an emotional horror movie of sorts, about a woman who returns to her family for the first time in years, and cannot quite make a go of it – and so he makes an easy transition to the horror genre, gradually building the suspense, right up until a great finale. True, they sold this film as something it isn’t – there is no big monster, or big jump scares, but the horror here is more insidious, and works its way inside in ways that don’t leave. This is a horror film that will last.

 

3. It (Andy Muschetti)

The biggest hit of the year in horror is also one of the best films the genre had to offer. It could not have been easy to adapt Stephen King’s magnum opus – splitting it in two was a good decision (although it worries me a little about the second one). Bill Skarsgaard’s Pennywise the Clown will join the ranks of the all-time great movie monster performances – he is creepy in the extreme. Yet, it’s really the non-horror elements that make It such a great film – the kids, and their relationship between them, hits exactly the right spot – and is one of the best films I have seen in getting the tone of King’s novels correct. Sometimes audiences make horrible movies hit – not with It – this is about as good as mainstream horror films get.

 

2. Raw (Julia Ducournau)

Julia Ducournan’s Raw is the most shocking horror film of the year – a film about a pair of sisters a veterinary school in competition with each other. The film gained legendary status after TIFF 2016, when apparently a member of the audience passed out watching it – and it’s true, the film can be a lot to take as you watch it, with lots of horrific things happening. Yet, the film is far from just shock cinemas – there is a very real undercurrent of sexual awakening and sibling rivalry, and coming of age going through. The brilliant lead performance by Garance Marillier starts out supremely sympathetically – and then challenges us to keep having sympathy for her throughout (one time directly). The film is shocking – but that’s only part of what makes it so great. This is one of the best debuts in horror cinema is years.

 

1. Get Our (Jordan Peele)

Yes, the most talked about horror film of the year is also the best. Jordan Peele’s debut film knows it horror history down cold – brilliantly playing off of the films of the 1960s and 1970s, while also finding its own voice. The film is scary – but not in the way most horror films are, and not in the same way for every audience. I cannot speak as to how African-American audiences reacted to the film (I can certainly guess), but for “good white liberals” like myself, the film made me cringe and want to hide for the entire runtime – making us question each and every interaction we’ve had for years. Horror films are strange – you never really can tell which ones will last – but in the case of Get Out, I think it’s safe to say we’ve see a genre mainstay – a classic that will be studied as long as the genre is still being watched.

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Classic Movie Review: Carnival of Souls (1962)

Carnival of Souls (1962)

Directed by:Herk Harvey.   

Written by:John Clifford. 

Starring: Candace Hilligoss (Mary Henry), Frances Feist (Mrs. Thomas – Landlady), Sidney Berger (John Linden), Art Ellison (Minister), Stan Levitt (Dr. Samuels), Herk Harvey (The Man).

 

Apparently Carnival of Souls became a cult hit because it aired on TV late at night often – and that makes complete and total sense. It isn’t a particularly scary movie, but it is a completely and totally surreal one, a film that plays a strange dream edging into nightmare territory, that doesn’t really operate according to our logic, but a more dreamlike one. It would be the perfect film to watch if you stumbled out of bed at 1 in the morning, and couldn’t get back to sleep – or perhaps even better, drifting in and out of sleep as you watched it, never being quite sure what you saw and what you imagined. The film wasn’t really noticed when it was released in 1962 – it was starred unknown actors, and had a first time director and writer (neither of whom would go on to make another film) – and yet it became a key inspiration for filmmakers like George A. Romero and David Lynch.

 

The film opens with two cars full of young people doing what you’d expect two cars full of young people to do – acting like idiots. There is an accident, one of the cars – carrying a trio of girls – goes off a bridge into the water. Hours later, one of the girls – Mary (Candace Hilligoss) emerges – apparently fine. She doesn’t want to stick around her small town however – and has a job lined up as a church organist in Salt Lake City. On the drive two strange things happen – first, she says the ghostly face of a man in her car window – giving her a momentary fright (that man will appear frequently throughout the film) – and the second is she drives by an abandoned carnival on the outskirts of Salt Lake City, and is drawn in by its haunted atmosphere.

 

The plot of the movie from there is fairly thin – Mary is a strange young woman, and you can never quite tell how she’ll act next. One of the weaknesses in the film is that because the film starts with the accident, we never really know what she was like beforehand – and because she leaves everyone who knows her behind, we don’t know just how much she has changed from before. The film implies that Mary has become sexually frigid – because of the accident, although considering she only rejects her creepy across the hall neighbor, I don’t think that really works.

 

Still, the movie isn’t so much about its plot – or even, really, about its characters. It is all about the atmosphere – and on that level what director Herk Harvey accomplished with $30,000 and a three week shooting schedule is pretty amazing. Apparently inspired by the likes of Bergman and Cocteau, Harvey went out to try and achieve something similar to those masters shooting in Kansas. What’s amazing is how close he really got. The sound design here is brilliant (a definite influence on Lynch – who since Eraserhead, has obsessed about sound) – to help create the otherworldly atmosphere – but it goes deeper than that. The limited budget perhaps helped here – the editing is strange (how much coverage do you think he could have shot), and the performances don’t feel at all natural. That may just be because the actors aren’t very good, but it certainly contributes to the strange overall feel of the movie. The big set pieces here are not scares or special effects – but simply when Mary has a few breaks with reality, and no one around her can see or hear her – and she runs around trying in vain to be noticed. This leads up to the brilliant climax at the carnival itself – which if you can watch without thinking of Night of the Living Dead, it’s probably because you haven’t seen Romero’s masterpiece.

 

As a film unto itself, Carnival of Souls is not a masterpiece, but it sure is creepy and effective – creating images and sounds that stay with you, long after the plot and characters have faded away. As a key influence on horror films going forward though, its impact has been invaluable. I wish it had found its cult status earlier in its life cycle – and that perhaps Herk Harvey could have made something else. Now, it’s one of those rare unicorns – like Charles Laughton’s Night of the Hunter, Barbara Loden’s Wanda or Leonard Kastle’s The Honyemoon Killers – great films by a director who never made another one. .

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Classic Movie Review: Zombi 2 (1979)

Zombi 2

Directed by: Lucio Fulci.

Written by: Elisa Briganti.

Starring: Tisa Farrow (Anne Bowles), Ian McCulloch (Peter West), Richard Johnson (Dr. Menard), Al Cliver (Brian Hull), Auretta Gay (Susan Barrett), Stefania D'Amario (Nurse Clara), Olga Karlatos (Mrs. Menard).

 

The idea of a zombie fighting a shark is one that is so good, you wonder why it took so long for someone to come up with it – and why we haven’t seen it copied a million times since. Lucio Fulci’s Zombi 2 (aka Zombie) has built its entire reputation on one, about five minute sequence when a shark starts to stalk a potential victim (who is scuba diving topless, as beautiful young women are wont to do in horror movie), but instead ends up fighting a zombie, who zooms out of the depths, at first at the naked young diver, but then finds himself embroiled in a fight with a shark. The actual zombie vs. shark part of this sequence is less than two minutes, and its set to a strange score – softer core porn music than horror movie. This whole sequence – from when the girl goes into the water, to its completion, runs about 6 minutes, and I loved every second of it. Unfortunately, there are 85 other minutes of Zombi 2 that have nothing to do with topless scuba divers or zombies fighting sharks – and there’s nothing much there.

 

The reason the original title of the movie was Zombi 2, was because George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead was a hit in Italy, and when released there was entitled simply Zombi. The movie has nothing to do with Romero’s film – I don’t even think that had any sort of rights deal with him – they just want a quick, cheap knock-off to make some money. The fact that the film is remembered at all nearly 40 years later – let alone that it inexplicably shows up on lists of the greatest horror films of all time (ranked in the top 100 of the They Shoot Zombies, Don’t They? List) is likely a surprise to all involved.

 

The film opens in New York – with one of those scare scenes that horror films are obligated to open with. A seemingly abandoned boat, turns out not to be so abandoned. A policeman is killed, the owner of the boat’s niece wants answers, and ends up with a reporter heading to the Caribbean, where that boat had just come from. It’s there where this supposed zombie outbreak had begun. The pair end up with another couple on a boat, heading for a “deserted” island where everything started. The movie owes more to something like Island of Lost Souls or perhaps I Walked with a Zombie than Romero’s film.

 

All of it is fairly lame. There is some more gratuitous T&A – nothing as silly as the topless scuba diving, but none of it germane to the plot either. There is lots of fake blood spill, and zombie bites, etc. – if you’ve seen a zombie film, you know the drill. What’s lacking is any real reason for being – the best zombie movies use the genre to make some sort of comment on, well, something – Zombi 2 just wants to be a cheaper exploitation film. On that level, I’m still not sure the film really works all that well. Somehow director Fulci – a pretty big figure in Giallo horror films of Italy, but not as accomplished as Argento or Bava – somehow takes things a little too seriously. The film doesn’t have the goofy pleasure – other than that shark sequence – needed. It also isn’t grimy or blood enough to be one of those horror movies I don’t like much, but have a big following in that they leave wanting to take a shower.

 

In short, Zombi 2 is brilliant for about 7 minutes total – the six minutes of the scuba diving/shark vs. zombie sequence, and the final minute, which really is an effective ending to a horror movie like this (oh, and the eye scene is pretty cool too). Other than that, it’s a fairly dull slog of a horror movie, without much to recommend it.

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Movie Review: Most Beautiful Island

Most Beautiful Island *** ½ / *****

Directed by: Ana Asensio.

Written by: Ana Asensio.

Starring: Ana Asensio (Luciana), Natasha Romanova (Olga), David Little (Doctor Horowitz), Nicholas Tucci (Niko), Larry Fessenden (Rudy), Caprice Benedetti (Vanessa), Anna Myrha (Nadia), Ami Sheth (Benedita), Miriam A. Hyman (Bikie), Sara Visser (Katarin), Natalia Zvereva (Ewa), Jennifer Sorika Wolf  (Mai), Fenella A. Chudoba (Alina).

 

Spoiler Alert: Even more than most movies, Ana Asensio’s Most Beautiful Island works because of the narrative twists and turns it takes – starting out as one thing, and ending up as something else entirely. Because the best sequences in the film are the later ones, I would find it hard to discuss the film without talking about them – so be warned before reading on. You should definitely see the film – and you should definitely NOT know what you’re going to see when you do. You’ve been warned.

 

The first half of Ana Asensio’s Most Beautiful Island is essentially a neo-realist immigrant drama – a well-made one, with fine performances, directions and writing, but something that you have definitely seen before. Yes, there is one sequence in a bathtub– if you’ve seen the film, you know the one I mean – that at least hints at the possibility that there is something more going on here, but because of the brevity of that scene, and how much time after it seems like a normal drama, you put it out of your mind. You know it’s probably not going to be good when the main character, Luciana (played by writer/director Ana Asensio) is invited to work at a secretive party – and needs black heels and little black dress – to do so. Just what happens there, however, is something you will not see coming.

 

Most Beautiful Island is a film that works because of just how committed writer/director/star Asensio is to telling the story. The first half of this 80 minute movie, is about the regular challenges and humiliations that a working class immigrant faces in America – with multiple jobs, family back home, past traumas, no access to health care, and many other things piling up. It makes sense that Asensio would jump at an opportunity to make some quick money when her friend, Olga (Natasha Romanov) tells her about a party she’s supposed to work, but cannot make it to. From there, the tension starts to escalate, as Luciana follows some instructions, and has to travel to a few different places in New York, given cryptic messages, and a little purse she must bring with her. When she finally arrives at the “party” – welcomed by Larry Fessenden (never a good sign when he shows up) the last act of the movie is almost unbearably intense and frightening.

 

I don’t really want to reveal what happens next, so I won’t. What I will say is that the film says that each “game” lasts only two minutes, but it sure the hell feels a lot long than that. Perhaps it is because of my own phobias (then again, I think Asensio is smart to pick such a wildly held phobia to play with) but I’m not sure I’ve held my breath in a movie for that long ever before.

 

The whole film isn’t as great as that one sequence – and yet the sequence is as effective as it is, because of everything that surrounds it – which skillfully misdirects you away from it. The film is an ultra-low-budget debut for Asensio, who pulls it off brilliantly. This is a calling card movie for her. You can dismiss it as a stunt, but it works – and it should allow her to do something even better with her next film.

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