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Movies (Horror)

Cowboys & Aliens (2011)
Aliens Home on the Range

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Cowboysandaliens
Zombos Says: Very Good

Three things make Cowboys & Aliens a sure-fire, popcorn-gumption summer movie: Harrison Ford, Daniel Craig, and it shies away from the lackluster graphic novel it’s based on. Grimy tough cowboys, vile aliens, and noble Indians go head on in rousing, mixed-genre action after outlaw Jake Lonergan (Daniel Craig) wakes up with a Clint Eastwood glare, no memory, and a very useful weapon wrapped around one arm.

Mixed genre meandering between Westerns and science fiction isn’t new: Gene Autry tackled invaders from the underground nation of Murania in 1935’s The Phantom Empire, along with a robot, a few musical interludes, and ray-guns. There aren’t any robots or musical numbers in Cowboys & Aliens, and the time period is Arizona in the 1870s. The invaders come from outer space instead of inner space, although they do bury their mining ship deep to extract gold, and as Ella (Olivia Wilde) says, they look on humans as we would insects. She should know since she’s also an alien (no spoiler here, it’s telegraphed loud and clear the minute she appears). Her race was decimated by these gold-loving, vivisecting monstrosities with their surprise– coming-out-from-where?– appendages. As bug-eyed, mucousy, multi-limbed, naked alien creatures with advanced technology go–this motif is becoming as old as the Western hills–they at least provide a bona fide threat to the townspeople of dusty Absolution, and are more tension-building than the graphic novel’s more cartoony predators.

In his review, Roger Ebert mentions that if you take away the aliens you’d still have a good Western movie. He’s right. At its core, Cowboys & Aliens brings to its rugged terrain the tried and true: the ornery cattleman making his own law; his out of control son bullying townspeople; an honorable sheriff upholding the law though it could get him killed; a struggling, tender footed saloon keeper who doesn’t carry a gun but needs to; the common-sense, steady as a rock preacher (the intimidating Clancy Brown from The Burrowers); and the notorious outlaw regretting his past deeds as soon as he remembers them.  The shaggy dog and worried kid round out this home on the range.

Harrison Ford’s Woodrow Dolarhyde is gruff, civil war weary, and bitter, providing lots of room for potential soul-searching growth, especially with his son Percy (Paul Dano). He and Lonergan lock horns over stolen gold, but a strafing run by marauding spaceships brings everyone quickly and reluctantly together. Percy and townspeople are lassoed by the small ships and whisked away until Lonergan’s weapon activates. A posse is formed to go after one alien that escapes from its downed ship. The trail leads them to an upside down riverboat steamer–far from a body of water– where they spend the night to get out of the rain. The alien attacks, making the posse a lot leaner.

Needing more help, Lonergan seeks out his former gang, but they aren’t happy to see him after he absconded with Dolarhyde’s gold coins from their coach robbery. Another attack by the aliens saves Lonergan but brings in the Apaches, who are uniquely persauded by Ella to provide a medicinal remedy for his amnesia, which brings a heap of guilt and remorse as he remembers, along with the location of the alien mothership he had escaped from. Everyone saddles up for the showdown with the Apaches taking the high ground, the cowboys taking the low ground, and Lonergan heading into the mothership to rescue the townsfolk.

As current horror and science fiction movies would have it, the aliens are tough as rawhide, pug-ugly, much stronger, and they fight hand to hand (they’ve got a lot of them) without using any of their advanced weaponry. Jon Favreau captures enough of the tumbling tumbleweed desolation and the stable of writers (7 plus!) behaved well enough to capture Wild West grit.

I think Louis L’Amour would have liked it, although I personally think adding a Gatling gun alien mow down would have made it a hog killin’ time to the manor born for sure.

TrollHunter (2010) Troll-ble With Giants

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troll hunter posterZombos Says: Very Good

I had two questions in mind after watching Andre Ovredal’s TrollHunter: Why does Hans (Otto Jespersen) work alone, and why can’t American Horror movies take off-the-wall risks like this small budget Norwegian movie more often?

Hans is the laconic troll hunter followed by three students from Volda College. They’re filming a documentary about bear poaching and he’s pointed out by the local hunters who suspect him because he’s a stranger. He tells them to go away, but they persist and follow him at night, deep into the woods. Thomas (Glenn Erland Tosterud), the leader of the trio, makes a joke about meeting inbred pig farmers (but this is not a French Horror movie, so he needn’t worry).

Now comes the refreshingly audacious part: flashes of light and strange roars in the distance, followed by Hans running past them yelling “Troll!” I’m thinking this is going to be silly and it is, terrifyingly so. The troll crashes through the trees he nearly towers over and hunts them. All of the trolls in this movie are big or bigger, slow moving, and look like Jim Henson’s furry Muppets, but uglier and nastier than you’d find on Sesame Street. They are also quick to kill in this mockumentary, especially if they smell Christian blood. Hans isn’t sure about a Muslim’s blood when asked if the trolls hate it, too.

Hans uses UV light to turn the three-headed troll chasing them to stone. Later, the veterinarian he works with explains the biological factors behind that for us, but UV light either makes them explode if they’re young, or turns them into concrete if they’re old. Seriously. It’s this droll seriousness that keeps TrollHunter’s humor from trumping it’s chills, which come each time we meet different trolls,  each getting bigger as we do. Telling Thomas, Kalle (Tomas Alf Larsen) the cameraman, and Johanna (Johanna Morck)—who holds onto a boom microphone—that he “doesn’t get a night bonus,” Hans finally agrees to let them follow him as he hunts trolls for the Troll Security Service. The TSS, using bear attacks as a cover, is not happy Hans let the secret out.

The funniest images happen when the veterinarian tells Hans she needs a blood sample. The needle he uses is a tad smaller than the one they used in the Amazing Colossal Man, but it’s still big enough to be a clown’s prop. Dressing in what looks like a suit of armor with a big red button on his chest, he carries a bucket filled with a “Christian man’s blood” to attract a troll living under a bridge. There’s a terminal amount of blood in that bucket so I wonder how he got it. After getting chomped on, slammed, and dunked by the annoyed troll, Hans warns Thomas not to touch the button as Thomas helps him up.

Given the this-is-film-footage-found-after-the-fact style of this movie, with the now standard night-vision scenery and budgeted special-effects viewing angles further obscured by shaky-cam, the story hangs onto its Blair Witch quality of suspenseful immediacy at the cost of details, especially when that footage ends abruptly.

Even so, the American remake is already around the corner. We’re always good at taking safe risks after others take the more riskier ones.

Super 8 (2011): The Gang’s All Here

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Super8
Zombos Says: Very Good (but will seem very familiar)

The gang’s all here in J. J. Abrams’ Super 8. You’ll recognize them from The Goonies, The Monster Squad, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial: there’s the fat kid waiting for his lean years; the geeky kid with needed gadgets (explosive ones this time); the love-struck kid dealing with loss; the cute, hip girl everyone likes more than she likes herself; and parents who stay in the background much of the time because this is not their story. What’s different is the monsterkid nostalgia you’ll experience if you’ve ever held an 8mm camera to film backyard horror movies, or dry-brushed Aurora model kits with Testors paints, or just wore dark paisley shirts with big collars, sported mutton chops, and listened to music cassette tapes while cruising.

Charles (Riley Griffiths) is the fat kid who’s directing a zombie movie everyone’s got a part in. He’s secretly got a crush on the cute girl, Alice (Elle Fanning), so arranges for her to drive them to the train station late at night for a shoot. The Dick Smith’s Do-It-Yourself Monster Make-Up Handbook geeky kid, Joe (Joel Courtney), unknowingly mucks it up by falling for Alice, but he does fantastic zombie make-up so Charles can’t lose him. Watch the gang’s finished ‘movie’ during the end credits and you’ll see the same Dick Smithish zombie kid stumbling in different scenes, although he’s killed each time. Getting to the end credits is a Spielbergian adventure seen through Abrams’ eyes and the avocado greens and harvest golds of 1970s melange.

A mysterious late night train surprises the kids during taping, and when it’s driven off the rails, it surprises us. An almost endless shooting gallery of heavy train cars, twisting metal, flaming explosions, and mad dashes through it all flying through the air, thunking down too close, becomes absurd, outrageous, and awesome. The incendiary-prone geeky kid (Ryan Lee) eats it all up with relish. What comes out of one of the train cars is a multi-legged nightmare for the small town and a Hardy Boys mystery for the kids to solve. The adults get in the way without realizing it, but youthful resourcefulness pays off when the military takes over the investigation of the train derailment, and the hunt for the missing living cargo. Of course there’s the essential antagonistic-and-sadistic-career-military-guy-who’s-sinister-agenda-only-makes-things-worse running the investigation (Noah Emmerich).

Charles, taking a page from the Roger Corman school of filming, unperturbed, takes advantage of the army’s investigation and train derailment by including them in his taping. His investigator (Gabriel Basso) conducts an investigation while the military conducts theirs in the backgrounds of his scenes.

The often hopped-up, long-haired, electronics store shlub Charles gives his 8mm film to have developed provides necessary ground transportation in exchange for a date with Charles’ hot sister as the hunt picks up speed for the monster, the really pissed-off something kidnapping townspeople, wrecking property, and driving all the dogs away. It’s unhappy and angry from being locked up for years. Coincidentally, Joe is unhappy and angry because his mom was killed at the steel mill and his dad ignores him. And Joe’s dad is unhappy and angry at Alice’s dad, who was supposed to be working that shift where she died instead. And Alice is unhappy and angry with her dad because he can’t get over his guilt, either, or the loss of her mom. Her dad’s a long haired shlub, too, but he has his moments of redemption. And redemption comes for everyone when it’s needed the most.

Super 8 isn’t a coming of age movie. It’s not really meant to be a nostalgic mind trip, either, though some of us will be reminded of nostalgic things and yearn for them again. It’s even not a Spielberg adventure, but the camera movements and your emotions will remind you of what those adventures were like, except Super 8‘s more up to date in its nostalgic hipness.

It knows what we miss and gives it back for a little while.

Pirates of the Caribbean
On Stranger Tides (2011)

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On_stranger_tides Zombos Says: Good 

“I simply do not buy Penelope Cruz in the role of Blackbeard’s daughter, Angelica,” said Zombos, stretching his long legs and leaning back in his short chair. We had just finished watching Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides at a local theater; in 2D not 3D, since the movie was atmospherically murky enough.

I started crossing my short legs, but in the process tipped over the gigunda-sized popcorn bucket I had barely touched, spilling its contents all over Zombos’ expensive Mezlan Giambis. Those are frightfully expensive shoes by the way. He alternated shaking his feet, but the buttery kernels stuck fast. He grimaced and swung his legs away from me.

He continued. “With her diminutive presence, she hardly holds her own between Ian McShane’s smoldering Blackbeard and Johnny Depp’s conniving, roguish Jack Sparrow. She looks so blow-the-man-down fragile. How can anyone possibly believe she is the daughter of a demonic pirate? Missed the casting boat on that one I dare say.”

“Aye,” I said, “and quite a demonic pirate Blackbeard is. I’ll say this movie careens into darker territory, bordering horror, and shows less of the loaded to the gunwalls playfulness  toning the other movies.”

“Where would you say the horror elements come into play?” asked Zombos, continuing to shake his shoes every now and then. I pretended not to notice.

“The mermaids for one, when they need to get a single tear from one for the Fountain of Youth to work. Vampire-like fangs, frisky evil intent; they’re seductive yet monstrous as they seduce the sailors, then drag them under to drown and devour. It’s a well-choreographed fight. You’ve got Blackbeard using his crew as bait to bring in the mermaids, and when they come it’s every man for himself. Just like in a horror movie.”

I continued. “Then there’s Blackbeard’s quiet but deliberate entrance during the mutiny on his ship, the Queen Anne’s Revenge, with his hair coils glowing red and smoking at their ends, a stark contrast–his sinister demeanor I mean–against Jack’s grog and looping swagger deportment. Blackbeard’s voodoo powers, his zombiefied men–a nod to the popularity of zombies more than a properly fitting story element–peg him more as supernatural horror threat than did Captain Barbossa’s curse in the first two movies.”

“Yes,” said Zombos, ” waving his cutlass to control the ship’s cordage to entangle his mutinous Jack Tars and stop them, Blackbeard does cut a strikingly horrific figure: evil to be reckoned with or avoided. And seems there is always a prophecy to spur on the wicked: a one-legged man to spell his doom. I wonder how he found it out?

“Geoffrey Rush’s Barbossa is almost as sinister and callous as Blackbeard, a departure from his earlier helm at captaincy,” I added.

“Well,” interjected Zombos, “if you had to cut off your leg to save yourself from Blackbeard, I  suppose you would become quite soured and surly yourself. Superb way to carry a rum bottle, though.”

“True, but since the story’s jury rigged from Tim Power’s On Stranger Tides, I’d guess that’s another  reason for discrepancies in characters from the first three movies and this one. The lower budget keeps it less ambitious in swashbuckle and six pounders, too. Or maybe the tempo is off because Gore Verbinski didn’t direct his pirates this time around.”

“Budget may be another good reason, since it was filmed in Hawaii instead of the Caribbean. Pirates of Hawaii does not sound as imposing, does it,” quipped Zombos, stretching his legs out again. “Given all the computer enhanced scenery, I am not sure location matters all that much anymore.”

“The coach chase through London didn’t seem budget-restricted,” I said.  “Lots of clamor and mayhem.”

“Still, there is plenty of fodder for another go round,” said Zombos.

“Right,” I jumped in. “There’s the voodoo doll of Jack–glad we stayed past the credits to see the teaser with Angelica–the Black Pearl shrunk and pickled in a bottle, along with all the other ships Blackbeard had captured. And the possibility of a merman popping up, given the romantic entanglement between Philip (Sam Claflin) and the fetching mermaid Syrena (Astrid Berges-Frisbey). Enough elements for Jack to sail round the seas again should the Hollywood winds take him.”

“With Kevin McNally as Gibbs by his side I would hope. He personifies the pirate wannabe in all of us even more than Jack,” Zombos summed up.

I crossed my legs the other way. I didn’t see the gigunda-sized Coke I had bought but hardly drank–too many trips to the bathroom with that one–and tipped it over. Zombos almost caught the wave, but managed to scrunch into a ball before it reached his shoes. He slowly unfolded his legs away from me. Again.

“You guys done?” asked a pimply-faced kid holding a carpet whisk almost as thin as he was. He dropped the bucket with determination and began sweeping up the spilled popcorn.

“You may need to swab the deck here,” I told him, pointing to the floor in front of Zombos. ” I spilled some Coke.”

He grimaced at me, too.

Priest (2011)

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Print007 Zombos Says:  Good

I saw Priest and Thor on the same day, but in different theaters. Both used a prologue (backstory preamble) to prep the audience for their stories. My favorite prologue, by the way, is the Sauron battle in Lord of the Rings.

Priest uses an animated one, which, like the one in Jonah Hex , is unnecessary and ill-fitting: the cartoon story transitions poorly to the live action one. I would have preferred being dropped knee-deep in Priest‘s Blade Runner cities, Mad Max wastelands, and Old West outposts without a cartoon explanation. It’s about vampires running rampant. I get that. It’s about the church using the vampire threat to create a controlled and repressed society dominated by Christian faith. I got that, too.

The CGI vampires in Priest are blind, monstrous, and live in hives held together by their slimy body fluids. They look and move like typical video game monsters and have protruding upper and lower fangs much too long. There’s a queen mother for the hive, like Alien, and human familiars—Renfield-like servants to the vampires—who look moribund themselves. People live in large walled cities or Wild West looking  settlements. The cities are all slimy, techno-grunge decay with video-confession kiosks arranged like Porta-Johns on the streets, and the settlements are located in the wastelands outside the cities, a post-apocalyptic landscape with high radioactivity and voracious vampires looking to make a comeback, led by a hybrid super vampire with dreams of gory.

It works in spite of its derivative dialog and posturing because the plot is uncomplicated–a renegade priest risks excommunication by declaring the vampires are back–and the action is straightforward–the priests (and priestesses) trained to be vampire-killers are kick ass at what they do.  What doesn’t work is the 3D because it’s ignored: in daylight the wastelands are bleached white, leaving no contrast for depth, and at night it’s too dark for highlights, which again are needed for depth. Worse, the movie was 2D changed to 3D.

When a homestead is attacked and a girl (Lily Collins) taken by the vampires, Priest (Paul Bettany) defies Monsignor Orelas (Christopher Plummer) and heads to the wasteland, on a rad motorcycle, to kick up some dust. He teams with Sherif Hicks (Cam Gigandet) to find the girl. The monsignor sends priests and a priestess (Maggie Q) after Priest. They ride rad motorcycles, too.

At Mira Sola, a vampire hive Priest still has nightmares over, a tangle with a large hive guardian and a discovery of what the vampires are up to leads to a showdown aboard a fast moving train heading to Cathedral City, where the sun never shines. Motorcycles replace horses, and Black Hat (Karl Urban) fills the role of villain.

Insidious (2010)
Poltergeist On Elm Street

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Insidious Zombos Says: Good

Combining Poltergeist‘s spectre of evil intent poised at the threshold, and Nightmare On Elm Street‘s gloved spiritus emeritus, Insidious provides scares aplenty, making it a perfect first date movie.

The evil intent comes from unwholesome spirits trapped in the Further, a place that’s dark, endless, and appears to be one train stop from Hell. The paranormal investigator who explains the Further takes too much time to do it, and gives us more mumbo jumbo about it, and astral projection, than we really need to know; but getting to this point and moving on from it are what make this popcorn movie from director James Wan and writer Leigh Whannell so much fun.

The Lambert family moves into their new home, a dark old house that has a darker, creepier attic. Soon, voices coming from the baby’s monitor, dark shapes moving between rooms, neatly shelved books found scattered on the floor, and banging on the front door in the dead of night make mom Renai (Rose Byrne) fearful the house is haunted. When her son Dalton (Ty Simpkins) cannot wake up, and the loud noises and disturbances escalate, she insists they move.  Her husband Josh (Patrick Wilson) reluctantly agrees.

Their new, new home is brighter and cheerier until those disturbances start up again. Muting colors increases the dread. When the Lamberts are in the older, darker house, it’s still a tad brighter before Dalton falls into his coma-like sleep, then the color fades away. Color returns in their second home until the haunting continues, then it fades. Josh is losing his color, too. He avoids going home, saying he needs to stay late at work, leaving Renai terrorise en solo. Her mother-in-law Lorraine (Barbara Hershey) believes her: Lorraine has seen and spoken to the evil shadow with the red face hovering near Dalton’s bed.  She knows what it wants. She explains why Josh has been avoiding the situation and why there are no photographs of him as a child.

Elise (Lyn Shaye), a psychic investigator and family friend,  is called in. Elise’s two nerdy, geek-squad-style investigators pull out the ghost-hunting gadgetry and start searching for evidence, each trying to top the other with his technical savior faire. When one pulls out a flashlight after the lights go out, the other pulls out a bigger flashlight. Elise sees the red-faced thing hovering around the boy and realizes Dalton, like his father, has out of body experiences–astral projection–and has traveled too far into The Further: a place where spirits and demons dwell. He’s stuck in The Further while they try to take over his body and use it as a bridge to reenter the living world.

It’s hard to tell when Wan is being cheeky or serious, especially when Elise dons a goofy gas mask contraption to enter a trance, but the chills keep coming. I counted four jump scares I jumped at, then stopped counting but didn’t stop jumping. Insidious plays like a William Castle spookfest. One of the pararnormal investigators even has his own makeshift version of Illusion-O to find spirits by looking through different colored filters.

If you insist on eating popcorn while watching this movie make sure it’s not buttered; the people sitting around you will appreciate that. It also helps not to have buttered fingers when you need to reassure your date everything is okay. She (or he) will need lots of reassurance.

Season of the Witch (2010)
A Short Season

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Print001 Zombos Says: Good (in spite of itself)

There is a lot to dislike about Season of the Witch. For one,  the disenchanted knights awol from the Crusades, Felson and Behmen (Ron Perlman and Nicolas Cage), left their acting bleeding on the battlefield. I like Cage and Perlman. They are capable of much better.

Then there is the flippantly modern dialog, which grates against the grittiness of Medieval grime and Black Death Plague. Felson and Behmen might as well have been taxi drivers picking up fares in Wormwood Forest the way they banter. I don’t know when English language contractions first took hold, but given my understanding of the Dark Ages, their speech oft vexed my ears. Not that I expected Shakespearean diction, mind you, but I question director Dominic Sena’s undermining of his historical illusion in this way. Thankfully he didn’t add a thumping rock score.

Print003

For more dislikes I’ll add: the superfluous voice-over ruining the mood of the ending long shot; the Devil’s wimpy voice (both of them, oddly enough), and the dead monks scampering across the walls–so J-Horror yesterday, you know what I mean?–were enough to make me write ill about them.

And so I have.

But Season of the Witch is still a good movie in spite of itself. It just doesn’t try hard enough (aka poor choices made in production). It hurries past its subtexts like the opening montage of battles hurries us through the long years of Crusading in just a few moments, and leaves us accepting it all at face value.

A peaches and cream complexioned young woman (Claire Foy) is accused of witchcraft and blamed for causing the plague. The church desperately needs to transport her to a monastery whose  monks possess the only copy of The Greater Key of Solomon (though I believe it’s referred to as The Book of Solomon in the movie). The book contains the incantation to de-witchify her and stop the plague. Felson and Behmen are coerced into doing the transporting, though they have their doubts she’s a witch and distrust the priest (Stephen Campbell Moore) accompanying them. They also need to pass through gloomy and doomy Wormwood Forest, fraught with perils, to get there.

Now let the terror begin, or the uncertainty of the truth ignite conflict within the group, or the lost faith of both knights rekindle. Although all three of these elements fitfully glimmer they never infect the dramatis personae enough to deepen the drama or tie our emotions to it.

The uninspired and budget-limited computer-generated imagery, and the overly done Elephant Man-styled special effects makeup for plague victims–while attention to basic detail is missing–is a distraction. Look closely at Cardinal D’Ambroise’s (Christopher Lee) forehead covered in large, bubbling cysts. You will see the ambitious rubber piece droop as he talks. Look at everyone speaking and you will see perfect white teeth (except for the Cardinal).

There is a wonderfully gruesome but telling depiction of bloodletting conducted by the plague doctors as they attend to the Cardinal. Bloody rags and bowls of blood are everywhere as the group of beak doctors, dressed in their weird accouterments, go about their useless treatment. There is an energetic, Hammeresque opening teaser involving three accused witches hanged from a bridge. It not only sets up what follows but twists our perception of what we think should follow.

More of the mood, depth, and grain found in these two scenes needed to spread across the rest of the movie.

Black Swan (2010)

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Print001 Zombos Says: Excellent

While other directors choose to infuriate and nauseate their audiences with outrageous human centipedes, Darren Aronofsky goes to the ballet instead to unleash Black Swan, a movie that releases the repressed demon within through restrained gore and unrestrained pirouettes.

Natalie Portman plays the emotionally crippled Nina Sayers, a New York City ballerina whose repressed sensuality and domineering mother (Barbara Hershey) keep Nina’s bedroom crowded with pink, stuffed animals, and her social life as busy as the one the little dancing ballerina in her music box has.

When offered the chance to play the dual role of the White and Black Swans in Tchaikovsky’s ballet Swan Lake, Nina’s descent into madness, and ascent into freedom, begins. Goading her on is her director, Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel), who, like the evil sorceror, Von Rothbart, wants to control her passion. It is this transition from White Swan, which Nina dances flawlessly, to Black Swan, which requires her to unleash a sensual side long repressed that makes Black Swan almost like watching Carrie‘s Carrie White dressed in a tutu. It is an engrossing and jarring farandole macabre, one filled with horrific moments for Nina and us as her mind splinters into paranoia and hallucination, and feeds on its fears.

Much of Black Swan is filmed in uncomfortably unsteady and confining closeups. Rarely do we see beyond what Nina sees or imagines. Like the mechanical ballerina confined to her music box, Nina’s world is confined to her apartment, her bedroom, and the ballet hall where she brutalizes her body with constant practice. A real or imagined rivalry between her and Lily (Mila Kunis), an unbridled ballerina whose sensuality makes her a natural to dance the role of the Black Swan, erupts into more self-torture for Nina. Her obsessive compulsive behaviors grow into waking nightmares. In a scene reminiscent of the nasty face peeling in Poltergeist, Nina picks at a scab until the blood flows red. Her self-scratching leaves bloody tears she’s not conscious of making. Her paranoia leads to a smashed and bloody dressing room mirror.

Aronofsky doles out gore to emphasize the physical punishment Nina is going through, and lavishes it on in one queeze-inducing hallucination: a closeup of a cracked and bloody toenail; skin-peeling; blood flowing from under a door. I wonder how the older audience in the theater felt (I was in Florida when I saw Black Swan) seeing these common horror movie images in a movie marketed as a drama and thriller?

Black Swan is a triumph of technique, tension, and metamorphosis as Nina becomes the Black Swan. And it is a horror movie. Make no mistake about that.

Paranormal Activity 2 (2010)
Pavlovian Horror Redux

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Zombos Says: Good (but stretches camera POV thin)

Print001

Watching Paranormal Activity 2 I felt like one of Ivan Pavlov’s dogs, but instead of salivating at the sound of a bell, I would watch the screen more intently each time a low rumbling noise alerted me to the onset of a supernatural event. I can’t readily recall any other horror movie franchise that purposefully conditions you to wait for something to happen by making you watch near endless home video recordings of the same scenes, again and again, in anticipation of something happening. Either this is an ingenious use of minimalist cinema verite and camera POV, or we’re being suckered big time. Maybe it’s a little of both.

A prequel and sequel rolled into one, the reason for the haunting is also hinted at, removing the unsettling feeling of this-could-happen-to-anyone you get in Paranormal Activity, but leaving room for another franchise entrant. Since the explanation involves family members back in the 1920s, you’d have to show it through box camera and scrapbook photographs, and hand-cranked newsreel footage instead of modern handycams and convenient home security cameras, like the ones watching Hunter’s bedroom, the swimming pool vacuum cleaner, the living room, and the front door during the night. Their use is a creative and necessary extension to the first movie’s handycam-only point of view, but this camera POV storytelling is wearing its compensating techniques thin through overuse, to a point of creating a self-conscious persistance that erodes believability. How many people, young or old, have a handycam glued to their hand to record everything, including lengthy poolside chit-chat and room-roaming discussions?

Recordings from the security cameras are shown again and again, each night, until the family takes notice (and us) of the escalating activity around Hunter, the German Shepard, and Kristi Rey (Sprague Grayden), Katie‘s sister. Katie was haunted and possessed by the demon in the first movie. The events in this one take place two months before that happens and explain why.

I suppose demons have all eternity to mess with mortals, so that’s why not much happens for a while:  the pool’s vacuum cleaner strangely winds up outside the pool each morning; the German Shepard barks and growl’s at empty air; Hunter keeps staring at empty air; kitchen pots rattle and drop off their hooks with a bang in the dead of night; the family’s nanny, Martine (Vivis Cortez), keeps cleansing the house of evil spirits. Like Maleva, the old gypsy woman in The Wolf Man, Martine knows something bad is happening. They didn’t listen to Maleva until it was too late, either.

After her continual religious-based cleaning smokes up the house and irks Dan Rey (Brian Boland), he sends her away. The haunting begins in earnest after she leaves, and Dan’s daughter Ali (Molly Ephraim) turns to Google to find out what’s going on. In the older horror movies characters turned to moldy books, dusty parchments, curled scrolls, and bloody scrawls, and spent much of their time seeking them out (except for bloody scrawls of course: you just stumble across those); now every teen in a horror movie goes to the Internet to learn everything about the supernatural and demonic: same motif, different notes.

And yet it still works its magic. I jumped at the kitchen jump-shock, and waited uneasily for those payout moments that built from little innocuous events to the terminal ferocity in the basement.

In a horror movie, the basement is always the place you don’t want to be.

Case 39 (2009)
This Social Worker Needs Help

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Print002 Zombos Says: Good (but formulaic)

It almost seems every horror movie this year has shown a kid hugging a pillow or a crucifix hanging on a wall–or both. Case 39 shows both, and adds Renee Zelwegger’s puffy-pouting cheeks and coy eyes, which are better suited to her romantic roles. It also shows a little girl named Lillith (Jodelle Ferland) whose suspense-killing name is an obvious clue to her demeanor for any devout horror fan watching.

The 39th case in question concerns overworked Emily’s (Renee Zelwegger) new assignment. Emily is a social worker who hates the overwhelming case load she struggles with but can’t ignore any child in need. Lillith is Emily’s 39th case and appears to be in need. Her parents want to kill her.

They almost do, but Emily’s persistence manages to get Detective Barron (Ian McShane) involved just in time to stop them from roasting Lillith in the oven. Her parents head to the psychiatric ward while Lillith does a little social work of her own to eventually convince Emily to look after her. After Lillith moves into Emily’s home is when those puffy-pouting cheeks work overtime with growing worry. Emily finally notices all those quirky things you should never ignore in a horror movie like: Lillith’s parents locking themselves in their room at night with big honking bolts on their bedroom door; an ominous looking scratch in the wood floor; people start dying when phone calls are made from Emily’s cell phone late at night; Lillith tells Emily she better provide lots of ice cream and nice things to say or else.

Here is where I take note of my disappointment. I thought Case 39 would try a different direction  for a change.  I hoped for a kid plagued by demons, not a demon-kid plaguing adults. We’ve seen evil kids before: pony-tailed Rhoda Penmark in The Bad Seed, sinister little Damien in The Omen, long-haired Samara in The Ring, and tightly-wound Esther in The Orphan. Ferland can hold her own against any of them, but the formula here ignores interesting possibilities an innocent child cursed by demon playmates can muster. Instead we have typical, all-purpose, no-seasoning-required scares coming from Emily’s growing realization she was wrong about Lillith and her parents.

Some tension is here, but it is straighforward and builds predictably, although Christian Alvart directs us through it with strong imagery as shown in the oven-stuffer attempt by Lillith’s parents–which shows another use for duct tape I bet you never thought of–a jaw slamming hard enough into a refrigerator door for both to crunch, sparingly used (until the end, anyway) CGI-enhanced demonic features playing across innocent little Lillith’s face when she gets mad, and token growls and voices not of this world. True to Hollywood Horror Think, Zelwegger even gets a chance to run screaming in the rain wearing little more than raindrops. She does have great gams, though.

Ray Wright adds a subtle twist to the story: how will Emily, a social worker, deal with a kid-looking monster everyone else sees as an innocent angel? But he never brings it to a boil after the simmering set up. If you’ve seen The Crazies and Pulse remakes, you already know his approach. It’s adequately underwhelming, lacking any finer points of fear-making, like making us guess what’s going to happen next instead of worrying about how creatively he can make people die.

The breakout point should have come at this scene: Lillith sitting across the table from psychologist Doug (Bradley Cooper); he thinks he’s talking to a little girl who’s scared, but she makes him fearful for his own safety. Wright follows the path of least resistance and uses the moment to set up a nasty death later. It’s a wasted opportunity for mounting real tension,  just so the CGI boys could gimmick up another corpus exitus?

Still, those gams are worth a look.

Let Me In (2010)

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Let_me_in Zombos Says: Very Good

Abby: “You have to hit back.”
Owen: “I can’t. There’s 3 of them.”
Abby: “Then you hit back even harder.”

Between the idealized romance-fantasy of Twilight and the fetishistic terror romp of 30 Days of Night lies Let Me In, Hammer Studios’ English-language remake of Let the Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in), a movie that returns the vampire to its cursed existence.

Abby (Chloe Moretz) is a peculiar 12-year old girl who says she’s not a girl. During the night she quietly moves into the apartment complex where Owen lives, accompanied by her sullen father. Owen (Kodi Smit-McPhee) is a peculiar, lonely boy, bullied at school, and wedged in the middle of his parent’s divorce. He lives with his mother, who is very religious and hangs a crucifix on the wall. He also eats Farley’s and Sathers Now and Later candy, in what possibly may be the most seemless product placement done for a film. It’s Owen’s only constant and cheerful companion. He sings the jingle in-between chews, “Eat Some Now. Save Some for Later.” Abby can’t share in Owen’s enjoyment eating Now and Later because human blood is the only thing she can stomach; but both share an isolation, a need for companionship and acceptance, and both are caught between uneasy nows and always certain laters.

Abby is a vampire that doesn’t kill for herself, although when aroused she attacks viciously, tearing throats apart and ripping off heads. Her father (Richard Jenkins) collects blood for her by waiting behind car seats and surprising his victims. He drains their blood into a plastic jug.  His joyless laters are filled with killing for Abby and he’s been doing it for a long time. He hates it, but why doesn’t he stop? When the butchered bodies turn up, a detective (Elias Kotias) investigates, believing a Satanic Cult may be involved.

Print001 Both Abby and Owen are lifeless: she’s dead and he lacks vitality. When they first meet, she’s shoeless in the snow because she doesn’t feel the cold. He has no friends at school and the apartment complex is filled with adults, so he spends his time alone in the courtyard chewing Now and Laters and avoiding the bullies at school. Owen can’t emotionally grow up and Abby physically can’t; she doesn’t even remember how old she is. He probably wants to forget how old he is. He’s so unhappy he puts a mask on and coldly pretends to stab imaginary bullies with his newly bought pocket-knife. Both Abby and Owen share a dark side, too.

Matt Reeves keeps us close to everyone, only briefly opening our view to see the turmoil Abby’s curse brings, or to watch her from a distance as she easily scales a hospital’s facade. She is a traditional vampire: her bite spreads the curse, sunlight is her enemy, and she must be invited into a room. When Owen asks her why she must be invited in she cant’ explain why, but shows him what happens if she’s not. The tone of the movie is dark and subdued by its close framing, which helps highlight the sudden moments of terror when they come: Abby’s victim in the hospital awakes to sunlight as a nurse opens the curtains; Owen is held under water in the school’s swimming pool at night; Abby transforms and attacks when the need for blood overtakes her; a car rolls over and over as seen from inside it.

It’s unusual for a remake to be this good, this measured. Let Me In is an unusual vampire movie. It captures the sordidness of being cursed as a vampire and leaves no wiggle room for romance, blood substitutes, medical explanations, or sadistic predator delight. Abby travels in a box, sleeps in a bathtub, and smells funny. Unlike Bella Swan, the last thing on Abby’s mind is wanting to be a vampire: now or later.

The Last Exorcism (2010)
The Devil Is One Busy Soul

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Lastexorcism Zombos Says: Very Good

I once wanted a TV ministry. Now all I want is health insurance. (Cotton Marcus in The Last Exorcism)

Religious motifs in horror movies have been explored as far back as the 1920 movie, The Golem, the story of a rabbi using sorcery to bring a giant clay man to life. Usually what’s involved are questions of faith (either too much or too little), questions of spiritual morality (again, either too much or not enough), and nasty demons chewing on souls and scenery with equal zeal (you can never have too much of that).

Often there are also important tests of faith when vampires–remember Fright Night‘s vampire and cross confrontation?–Satan, assorted minions of Satan, and especially Uwe Boll are involved. Strong characters–or at least heavily stereotypical ones–are essential for selling all that flashy Hell and licking flames of damnation mumbo-jumbo convincingly enough to seal the deal, too.

Minister Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian) does the mumbo-jumbo in The Last Exorcism “like nobody’s business” as his wife would say, only he doesn’t have faith in what he does. Coming from a family lineage of exorcists–they even have an old Latin guidebook with illustrations to identify those pesky minions of Hell–he’s the last exorcist, but only in showmanship, not spirit. He knows it’s simple quackery, on a par with snake oil, sold with hidden string pulling and MP3 recording playing. He explains his showy casting out of demons “gets all the press because they got the movie” and okay, maybe it does help those who believe in the devil’s Hellfire of possession; but for him it’s another payday after an easy salvation sale is made.

We know how he feels about this because he’s doing a documentary to reveal the truth and, like the 2-person film crew in tow, we follow him as he does his knee-slapping sermons, illustrates the Prince of Lies’ trickery with card tricks, and takes on a dare by preaching a Banana Bread sermon. He can summon a sparkle of brimstone between his fingertips with a snap and an Amen as easily as he dons his linen suit to reveal how he fakes an exorcism at the Sweetzer farm in Baton Rouge. After cattle killings have convinced Mr. Sweetzer the Devil’s on the hoof and soul-snatching his daughter, Marcus answers the call for Nell’s salvation. It’s really another dare because to Marcus it’s all so easy to do.

Nell (Ashley Bell) is all milk and honey and innocence. She draws beautiful pictures and hangs them on her wall. Mr. Sweetzer (Louis Herthem) is a devout, devil-fearing father who home-schools his daughter and fears for her immortal soul because she’s possessed and butchering the cattle. Nell’s exorcism is conducted in-between Marcus’ revelations of the gimmicks he employs. The father is satisfied the demon has been expulsed and Marcus collects his pay.

When Nell shows up later at the hotel room where Marcus is staying, unresponsive and in her pajamas, the minister is unsure and no longer in control, two feelings he doesn’t have much experience with. Returning to the Sweetzer farm, the test of faith for Marcus, the unintended revelation of another truth for his documentary, and those creepy new pictures that Nell drew and hung on her bedroom wall–pictures of Marcus and the camera crew in pieces–call for more involvement beyond what he had in mind, and another exorcism: this time a real one.

Or so it would seem. The Prince of Lies is either dishing it out hot and heavy, or someone else is putting on a better show. Marcus is eager to dig deeper, but his film crew is getting the willies. And for good reason: The Last Exorcist plays unfair with its handheld camera point of view style made famous (or perhaps I should say infamous) with Blair Witch. Like the unexpected shift in point of view seen in The Last Broadcast, Daniel Stamm directs in pseudo-documentary style, then ignores it by using more refined setups and music, two things you normally don’t see in pseudo-documentary style because they confuse the effect. He even let’s Nell hold the camera for a while: a surprisingly effective twist of possession, about her possession. The ending is surprisingly audacious also, but if you pay close attention earlier in the movie, not completely unexpected.

The Last Exorcism is a clever, well-acted, oddly directed, and a I-can’t-believe-you-actually-did-that-ending scary movie. You won’t see copious pea-soup vomiting, bed levitations, or 360 degree head turns, but what you do see is damn good terror. I’ll stake my soul on that.