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Movies (Horror)

Devil (2010)

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Zombos Says: Good

John Erick Dowdle (Quarantine) locks us in a stranded elevator with five strangers and the Prince of Darkness in Devil, a tidy traditional horror movie that works well by balancing its terror with its Ten Little Indians‘ mystery: Who are these five people? Is one of them the Devil? Why are they being tormented?

It is a minimal premise delivered with a 1970s tempo and plotline, propelled less by gory acrobatics and more by the increasing antagonisms within the tight space as Ramirez (Jacob Vargus), a religious and superstitious security guard, whose mother told him stories of how the Devil would appear unexpectedly in odd places to claim souls, is the first one to recognize what’s happening.

Brian Nelson’s (30 Days of Night) screenplay, based on a story by M. Night Shyamalan, evenly mixes the interplay across the helpless people inside the elevator with the equally helpless rescuers outside, led by Detective Bowden (Chris Messina). Dowdle and Nelson underplay the drama to keep Devil from becoming pretentiously silly and preachy, dropping the pedantic sledgehammer Shyamalan has been pounding us with in his more recent efforts.

Ben (Bokeem Woodbine), Tony (Logan Marshall-Green), Sarah (Bojana Novakovic), Jane (Jenny O’Hara), and Vincent (Geoffrey Arend) are trapped between floors when Elevator 6 goes into inspection mode. The inocuous muzak warms tempers and attitudes as time passes while the engineer finds out why. Vince, the swarmy mattress salesman tries to convince Sarah she needs a good night’s sleep on a new mattress. Ben, the temporary security guard, doesn’t like to be confined: as kids, his brother locked him in a trunk for hours. Jane, the irritating woman with a can of mace from the 1980s, jangles nerves. Increasing everyone’s frustration is the one-way communication with the outside world: they can hear the security guards but the guards can only see them, and the camera in the elevator is not very good for reading lips.

Ramirez’s opening narration explains what to look for when the Devil comes calling, and when a suicide leads the police to 333 Locust Street, he’s the only one–he even makes sure he’s right by dropping a slice of toast with jelly to see how it lands–who knows it won’t end well. Detective Bowden, who shares an important connection, unknowingly, with one of the five stranded passengers, identifies each person, giving us clues as to why they’re in their current predicament, and alternate reasons for what’s happening; but the alternatives are for Bowden to investigate, not us: the Devil is in the details and remains so as he takes souls, one by one, when the lights go out.

I hope the heavy marketing campaign that pegged Devil as an M. Night Shyamalan movie does not deter its potential audience: given his recent movies, it might. Devil is a thoughtful, low-throttle horror that easily avoids inciting snide remarks about going-down in an elevator.

The Twilight Saga, Eclipse (2010)

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twilight: Eclipse

“Bella, would you please stop trying to take your clothes off?” (Edward Cullen)

Zombos Says: Good (but you better be a romantic at heart)

“Well, if you must you must, but be prepared for the worst,” said Zombos, shaking his head in dismay.

“Look, I’m a reviewer, that’s what I do. This is just another movie to critique.” I folded my arms with certainty. But I didn’t feel certain.

“Another movie? Really? Die hard horror fans will have your hide piecemeal. Perhaps it would be better if you mentioned Zimba forced you to see it. Even better, put her name to this so-called review to play safe.” Zombos reached for his cordial and smugly sipped it.

“Zimba didn’t force me to see it, nor am I a mouse. Would Roger Ebert wince at reviewing this movie? Well, maybe while watching it, but I know he’d never falter at reviewing it. He isn’t a mouse either.” I reached for my cordial, forgetting I didn’t have one. I shook off the faux pas and regained my composure. But I wished I had had a cordial to smugly sip from.

Dash it all, I wish I were as certain about writing this review as Bella (Kristen Stewart) is in her love for Edward (Robert Pattinson). Wait a minute, she isn’t all that certain, now that I think of it. She’s gone and fallen in love with Jacob (Taylor Lautner), too. Oh bother, why can’t she make up her mind? She says she’s more in love with Edward. He’s certainly in love with her. Much of The Twilight Saga: Eclipse is devoted to Edward and Bella’s concern over their upcoming nuptials and her turning into a vampire. With Jacob it would be simpler; no bloodletting necessary, just an occasional rinse and shampoo and combing to get the knots out: werewolf hair can get very knotty, especially when you’re as big as Jacob gets when he changes into one. I wish the CGI were better, though, to highlight his wonderful coat of bristling hair. They could certainly spend the money they save on his wardrobe–he rarely wears a shirt in this movie–and the special effects are light on gore and blood–blood for God’s sakes–in a vampire movie you’d expect more of that.

“You’re meandering,” said Zombos, reading over my shoulder. I really hate when he does that. I refocused.

Victoria (Bryce Dallas Howard this time around), still carrying a grudge, begins raising an army of newborns–stronger and feistier fresh vampires–with the help of Riley (Xavier Samuel) to kill Bella. Now into three movies and it’s still all about Bella; her needs, her desires–

Zombos cleared his throat. I refocused. Again.

The Cullens (vampires) and the Quileute clan (werewolves) form a shaky alliance to battle the newborns and thwart Victoria’s plans. Members of the Volturi, led by Jane (Dakota Fanning), watch and wait, apparently up to something but I’m not sure what that might be. Jane can throttle you with her mind so she’s a formidable annoyance to avoid offending. Now, getting back to “feistier,” Bella wants to do more than just kiss Edward, but he’s all for abstinence before marriage. Sexuality, a recurring theme in all vampire movies and novels is nonrecurring here. There is passion, but it’s tepid in comparison to the boiling friskiness shown by Bela Lugosi’s or Christopher Lee’s or Frank Langella’s Dracula. I’m not sure about Jack Palance’s Dracula, but I’ll mention him also just in case.

Preparation for the impending battle with the newborns is guided by Jasper (Jackson Rathbone), who has faced a similar situation before. He knows how terribly destructive they can be. He tells Bella all about his past sins, and in doing so, Rathbone becomes one of the more interesting characters in this romance-heavy, horror-lite movie. The resulting battle between newborns, seasoned vampires, and werewolves is also bloodless, with vampires being broken apart, like statuary, onscreen, or mauled out of sight.

Most horror fans will balk (quite vociferously, too) at the bloodless and sun-walking vampires, and the large, but comely, werewolves in The Twilight Saga, but let’s face it, horror is not at the heart of this series: it’s the love triangle between Bella, Edward, and Jacob. Where many horror movies devote a multitude of endlessly spraying, bloodletting moments to butchering far friskier (and dumber) teenagers, The Twilight Saga devotes its time to Bella, mostly, and what she’s going to do about Edward and Jacob. More time is spent with Edward and Jacob discussing what they think Bella should be doing with them. And the remaining time is spent with somebody, somewhere, trying to kill her, which gets everybody involved in keeping her safe. Which is lucky for us; if no one wanted to kill her, this would be a very boring series indeed.

It’s a wonder they haven’t just turned her into a vampire already so she could protect herself for a change. Maybe we’ll see that in the next movie. It would be cool if she’d become a vamp-wolf or something like that, but that would sideline the romance a bit much. But it would be cool to see.

Splice (2009)
Missing Some Genes

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Dren

Zombos Says: Good (but should have been better)

The Frankenstein brothers had it easier back in the day: just rob a few graves, swap a brain or two, dodge the villagers, and they were good to go. For Elsa (Sarah Polley) and Clive (Adrien Brody), two scientists splicing genetic material for the pharmaceutical company funding them it’s harder: they need to quickly come up with a profitable benefit from their work for the company’s board of directors while avoiding using human DNA in the process to help. There’s all that messy ethical, moral, legal, and congressional-folk just itching to light those political-torches falderol if they give into temptation and cut that corner by doing so. But temptation is the bread and butter of horror, of course, and giving in to it is where Splice begins.

The movie cuts some corners also. It’s not quite a horror movie, though we do have a metamorphic monster; it’s not quite a character study, though there are glimpses into Elsa’s troubled family life; and it’s not quite a panoply for all those ethical, philosophical, and legal issues waiting to pounce when manipulations, creations, and terminations of human substance are involved; though fragments of this triplet codon are to be found here. This leaves Splice‘s horror and dramatic genes only partially joined, spread apart by inadequate dialog (thankfully devoid of too much scientific jargon) and a story that neither emphasizes its philosophical dilemmas or craftily avoids them, nor terrorizes us with their details.

…

Splice (2009)
Missing Some GenesRead More »

[REC] 2 (2009) Divinely Horrific

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[REC] 2 If Prince of Darkness married The Exorcist and they conceived a bouncing bundle of terror while watching Bava’s Demons, its name would be [REC] 2.

Zombos Says: Very Good

[Rec] 2 picks up immediately where [REC] left us, only this time we are with a 4-man SWAT team waiting to escort another Ministry of Health official, Dr. Owen (Jonathan Mellor), into the locked-down building. Only he knows more than they do.

With one skittish hand-held camera and three helmet minicams worn by the heavily armed police, directors Balaguero  and Plaza criss-cross the action across apartments and up and down the stairwell with reckless abandon, informing us and terrifying us with what we fully see, partially see, and don’t see.

Under Dr. Owen’s insistence they head to the attic, stepping over pools of blood as they climb the staircase, guns poised. When they reach the attic, he tells them to record everything, including the newspaper clippings taped to the walls. A frightened voice played from a reel to reel tape recorder hints at an experiment gone out of control. Distant screams prompt an argument when the police want to investigate and Dr. Owen tells them not to. Over the doctor’s protests and warnings, Martos heads down the staircase and enters one of the apartments. We see what he sees as his helmet minicam switches on. What he sees in the dim light rushes towards him with ill-intent, leaving his helmet on the floor and him fighting for his life. They rush to his aid but it’s too late–“He was fine a couple of minutes ago. What kind of a virus does that?”–He’s now infected and attacks them. Dr. Owen stops the attack in an unexpected way and they lock Martos in another room.

How the doctor did it leads to an explanation for what is going on, who lived in the attic apartment, and why they must return there to find a potential cure. The police officers are incredulous and fraying at the seems by the minute. The infected tenants want to pry those seems apart even more. Patient Zero, hinted at in the last minutes of [REC], is also in the attic. Only they need to figure out how to find her…And she’s not alone…And the old reliable gimmick of using an air duct big enough for an elephant to fit through is used for a scare. At least it’s grimy like it should be and the scare is worth it.

[REC] 2 is an old school horror show dressed up with enough exuberantly creative point of view camerawork to keep you dizzy and jumpy at the same time. Unlike its Americanized version, Quarantine, which resorts to a more “plausible” terrorist-weapon plot line to explain the source of contagion, [REC] 2 unabashedly returns to the roots of cinematic horror to overwhelm the apartment building’s tenants with a supernatural malevolence that will not be stopped. By kicking old school for their modus operandi, while playing with our perspective  to the point of disorientation, [REC] 2 maintains a freshness and exhilaration that many American horror movie sequels fail to do.

Better keep the popcorn and soda safely cradled while you watch this movie and your seatbelt fastened at all times. It’s a bumpy-in-the-night ride, the ending of which leaves [REC] 3 a strong possibility. And if that happens I’m definitely taking Dramamine before I see it.

Frozen (2010)
Minimalist Horror Best Served Cold

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Frozen (2010) movie Zombos Says: Excellent

I noticed I was shivering when well into watching Frozen. Granted it was the first show of the day in a chilly theater (outside it was below freezing), but a few of those shivers came from my fear of heights and a persistent memory of the one time I rode a ski lift. I become uneasy every time I think back to that experience; how I kept wishing the long ride would end faster, how I gulped and closed my eyes each time the ground sloped farther away from me and silently cheered when it came closer, how that small seat and flimsy security bar made me wish, even harder, I’d staid back in the warm lodge nursing a hot chocolate like I’d wanted to.

Director and writer Adam Green fills the first half-hour with youthful banter and playfulness. Parker (Emma Bell), prodded on by Dan (Kevin Zegers) and Joe (Shawn Ashmore), convinces the ski lift operator with cash and a warm smile to let them ride without tickets. People are everywhere, the sun is shining, and Joe meets a girl and scores her phone number after her ex-boyfriend gets jealous and knocks him down.

They should have ended the day eating pizza and drinking hot chocolate in the lodge instead of going for one last run on the slopes, but Joe makes Parker and Dan feel guilty for wasting his time earlier keeping pace with Dan’s girlfriend, Parker, who, being a beginner, fell down a lot. They hop onto the ski lift just as everyone else is finishing up or heading home. An all too plausible misjudgment leaves them stranded with a storm approaching. When the ride stops they complain. When the lights shut off, one by one, leaving them swinging in the cold wind, they realize the worst has happened: no one knows they’re up their; and the resort will be closed for the week; and it’s getting colder.

A closeup of the ski lift switch being pulled to turn off the ride and a long shot of those comfortingly bright lights slowly winking out in back of the three skiers, provide two of the most chilling moments in this minimalist horror. Parker, Joe, and Dan’s decisions from this point on provide the rest.

Frozen (2010) Minimalist horror movies, using their characters’ poor judgment to stoke unfortunate situations from inconvenient to life-threatening, rely on events taking place in one location. In Wind Chill, it’s the too easily forgotten bag of critical supplies that leaves a couple stranded on a deserted road; in Blair Witch it’s the carelessly lost map that leaves people lost in the spooky woods; and in Paranormal Activity it’s poor judgment that delays bringing in help before it’s too late for a fearful couple dealing with a demonic presence in their home. While all of these movies also rely on an underlying tone of disrespect for one’s potentially hostile environment to frame their events around, bad decisions provide the catalysts for heaping on the terror, despair, and desperation.

Parker, Joe, and Dan experience all three. As time passes, they acknowledge they’re screwed big time. They can’t wait for help; it won’t be coming any time soon. They can’t jump; they’re too high above the ground. They can’t climb to the nearest tower; the cable holding their gondala has sharp edges. And though their clothes are stylish, they are not good for keeping them warm in the freezing cold. First shock, then bickering and blame, and then desperation. Dan talks himself into jumping. He convinces himself that even if he gets hurt he can still slide down the slope for help. The other two don’t dissuade him as much as they thought they should have afterward. I thought to myself he’s not that stupid, he’s too high up. He is and he was. Dan jumps. He gets hurt. Badly hurt. Gore-effects-showcase kind of hurt. He also finds out why we were briefly shown a missing skier notice posted in the now deserted lodge.

Their situation goes downhill from here. Dan needs to stop the bleeding. Parker needs to pry her ungloved hand off the steel security bar it freezes to. Joe needs to make a last effort at climbing the steel cable, even though the first time he tried it his gloves and hands were cut up badly. Frostbite is a serious problem and even if they make it to the ground, they still need to survive what waits patiently–and hungrily–for them. I’ll leave it at that. I can’t tell you much more without ruining the suspense for you (although I’m surprised some professional reviewers have).

This is one time you will not appreciate the pretty snowy scenery in the background.

Six Other Movies To Watch
On Halloween Night

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DeadbirdsSure, you know all the usual horror movies we watch and recommend for Halloween viewing. But what about those other movies? You know, the ones a little harder to come by, not often mentioned, and spoken about in words that end with a self-deprecating laugh.

Well, I will not apologize any more. These movies are creepy fun for a Halloween night, after you have eaten your twelfth candy bar and littered the floor with candy corn as you rummage deep into your trick or treat bag looking for the dark creamy stuff instead.

Make sure to watch them with others, though. It is no fun laughing in the dark, all alone, on Halloween night. You never know who is listening.

Spookies (1987)

If you are looking for the perfect second-half of a double bill Halloween show with Plan 9 From Outer Space, look no further. Spookies is a film to be savored for its underdone acting, overbearing dialog, and incoherent story. So rarely do horror films reach the pinnacle of hilarious “what the f*ck” ineptitude this film achieves so easily.

The Video Dead (1987)

It starts off innocently enough. The Hi-Lite delivery service delivers an unmarked crate to an unsuspecting writer. We know he is a writer because he is sleeping the day away, surly, and says he does not even watch television. He must be a blogger, too. Over his protests they leave the crate in his living room. He manages to pry the crate open and plug in the battered, rotary channel dial, black and white television set. He checks to see if it works, but only one show comes in clearly no matter which channel he turns to. The show is Zombie Blood Nightmare and not much happens in it except for zombies continuously staggering around in the woods.

Shrooms (2006)

Hack and slash, and run run run…to Glen Garig. The one place in the forest they really shouldn’t be going is where they wind up. Before that, everyone is screaming at the top of his or her lungs for everyone else. So my question is this: when being stalked in the forest, can anyone hear you scream? Based on this movie the answer is no. As panic sets in, Tara manages to do a Looney Tunes into a tree, face first. While I think Elmer Fudd had better timing, she’s not bad at it.

Scarecrows (1988)

Escaping in a hijacked plane with the pilot and his daughter, after a robbery worth millions, a para-military bunch is double-crossed by one of their own; a very nervous guy named Burt. He jumps out of the plane with the big–and heavy–box that holds the robbery money, with apparently no plan on how he’s going to carry it once he is on the ground. Being the dumbest of the bunch, he is murdered first; but not before he happens upon the Fowler residence, nestled snuggly amid lots of really creepy-looking scarecrows perched all around the wooden fence encircled with barbed-wire and lots of warnings to stay away. The weird weathervane on the roof, with the pitchfork and pteradactyl, is a clear sign this old homestead is more deadstead than homey.

And for more serious scares…

Uzumaki (2000)

Taken from the three-volume manga by Junji Ito, the town of Kurozu-cho is beset by spirals spinning into the lives of the townspeople, driving them to madness, bizarre change, and gruesome death.

Dead Birds (2004)

A horror story set in the Old West. Bank robbers flee to a lonely house in the woods. But they are not alone. Strange things lurk in the shadows and under the bed, and when they think they are free from danger, it becomes the most dangerous time indeed.

Trick or Treat (1986)
Wicked Rock and Roll

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Trick or treat

Zombos Says: Good

Metalheads, demonic forces, wicked rock and roll, an intimidated outcast teen, and the 1980s seem to go together in horror movies like Honey Nut Cheerios and fat-rich milk. I don’t know if Eddie Weinbauer (Marc Price) likes Cheerios, but he does
like heavy metal rocker Sammi Curr (Tony Fields). Idolizes him in fact. Sammi does things Eddie dreams of doing if he had the chance. When Sammi goes and dies in a hotel fire, Eddie, disheartened, heads off to school to face his typical day of being emotionally bullied by the in-crowd; the pretty faces, lithe bodies, why-do-you-listen-to-that-crap and why-can’t-you-be-like-one-of-us crowd. His day is made worse when jock Tim (Doug Savant) precipitates Eddie’s sudden appearance, without his very important shower towel, in the girl’s gym class. Luckily for Eddie this is the pre-YouTube, Facebook age, so it was just a Polaroid of his butt making the hallway rounds later.

Sammi, before he became famous, was bullied and intimidated for being different, too. He even graduated from the school Eddie goes to. Both have a lot in common, but it’s Sammi’s death that brings them face to face. But at a price of course; this is a horror movie after all.

Eddie’s deejay buddy Nuke (Gene Simmons) perks up his down day with the master recording of Sammi’s last, unreleased, album. Nuke already has it on tape and is going to play it at midnight. Later, when Eddie falls asleep listening to it, he dreams about Sammi’s death. He wakes up to the record repeating some odd words and, on a hunch, tries the old trick of playing the record backwards (now it is an old trick; back then it was fairly new). Eddie realizes Sammi is speaking to him; really, not philosophically. There is no psychological subtlety here, no maybe it is just Eddie going off the deep
end. Trick or Treat keeps its Black Sabbath evil straight as any self-respecting 1980s heavy-metalized horror movie should.

Sammi is anxious to get even for all the bullying he had to deal with in school. Eddie wants revenge for all his mistreatment. It’s a match made in Hell and both hook up for some payback; only Sammi plays a lot rougher than Eddie and for cemetery-keeps. When Eddie balks after almost killing Tim in shop class, Sammi pays him a fire and brimstone visit, powered by the amperage in Eddie’s stereo.

Ozzy Osbourne puts in a brief appearance as televangelist Reverend Aaron Gilstrom, a crusader against the bad influences of heavy metal music. Brief because, as he appears on Eddie’s television set during Sammi’s sudden visit from the grave, Sammi reaches into the screen and pulls him out by his Holy Roller neck in a 1980s special effects kind of way.

Not only does Sammi look heavy metal rock and roller musician bad, he is bad.

Eddie realizes he may have misjudged his idol a bit, and with the Halloween school dance about to start, needs to act fast to stop Sammi from exacting his revenge. Powering the dead rocker is his music played from a cassette tape (how many of you remember cassette tapes?).

A seductive scene in Tim’s car involving his girlfriend and Sammi’s hot music allows for 1980s puppet-demon and melted ears special effects. Eddie deals with the evil cassette, but Nuke has his reel to reel tape set to go at midnight, and Sammi has set up a mystical force field around the machine at the radio station.

Bummer.

As I recall, there were times I wanted to do to my tapes what Eddie does to Sammi’s cassette—and do not get me started on those really evil 8
Track cartridges.

Eddie gives the task of destroying the cassette to his only friend, Roger (Glen Morgan). Sammi pays Roger a visit and, well, you know where this one is going. The cassette winds up at the school dance, allowing Sammi to appear for a song accompanied by lethal pyrotechnics. Eddie’s sort-of girlfriend, Leslie (Lisa Orgolini), helps him fight Sammi. Both split up; Leslie tries to destroy the reel to reel tape player before midnight and Eddie goes for a hectic drive with Sammi.

Although the scariest things in Trick or Treat are the 1980s hairdos and being reminded of those nasty cassette tapes, Sammi is a cool rock and roll villain, the story is low-key horror fun, and the music is heavy-metally sharp. Eddie’s character is one many of us can relate to and his idolization of Sammi mimics our own glorification of our rock and roll gods.

And playing records backwards is really cool to do, especially on Halloween, too.

Paranormal Activity (2007)

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Paranormal Activity The idea for the film came about when Oren Peli began to experience “weird things” at the home in which he was living and wondered what would happen if he were to set up cameras to capture what happened as he slept at night. The vulnerability of being asleep, he reasoned, tapped into a human being’s most primal fear, stating, “If something is lurking in your home there’s not much you can do about it.” (Wikipedia)

Zombos Says: Excellent

Paranormal Activity surprisingly frightens more with less scares as odd as that may sound. With a razor-thin budget, a cast of only four people, and events taking place entirely in one location–Katie and Micah’s home–director Oren Peli’s ingenious movie is a distillation of simple spook show tactics escalating in intensity. It is the Blair Witch version of home invasion-styled horror, understated but unrelenting.

Katie (Katie Featherston) has been haunted by paranormal events since she was thirteen. Micah (Micah Sloat), surprised by this revelation, is annoyed she did not tell him this before spooky sounds begin to keep them up at night. Micah sets up his camera in their bedroom, facing the bed, and hooks it up to his laptop so it can record while they sleep. We see everything through Micah’s camera: the bedroom they sleep in; the rest of the house as he carries it into the bathroom, or the living room, or the kitchen during the day. We mostly see Katie as Micah holds the camera, which is probably why she grows more annoyed with his insistence on tackling her problem with his typical, and insensitive, guy attitude of technology-can-handle-it. I admit I would have tackled it the same way. While his constant recording and EVPs appear to give him control over the situation, he becomes increasingly frustrated because all he can do is observe events after they have taken place. How many of us, like Micah, feel powerful by all our techno-gadgets, yet, like him, all we do is watch, listen, wait, worry, and yearn for more sleep?

“Once we get a camera, we can figure out what’s going on,” says Micah; but the figuring out part becomes more difficult than he planned. Over the course of twenty or so nights, Micah’s camera records small, creepy instances at first, which happen in the wee hours of the morning, including Katie’s sleep-walking; then bigger, more frightening events happen. While much time is spent in silence watching them sleep, and waiting for something to happen, it never becomes repetitive. A timestamp in the lower right corner tells us when events occur during the night; this, combined with our anticipation of what will happen next heightens the tension. I kept looking intently around the bedroom and through the open doorway as time slipped by. A low rumbling signals an important moment while it helps raise the hairs on your neck. All this combines into a brilliantly simple effect Peli uses to build suspense. Featherston and Sloat fortify the realism by acting exactly like two people caught in a weird situation like their’s would typically act. Their relationship begins to understandably deteriorate when sleep deprivation and powerlessness set in. Ironically, being able to see what is transpiring while they sleep makes them more fearful and helpless.

Katie asks a psychic (Mark Fredrichs) for help. His interview with Katie gives us interesting background to her supernatural experiences. Fredrichs is easily believable as the ghost-hunting psychic. When he concludes it may be a demon causing the mischief, he quickly explains he cannot help her and recommends a colleague who specializes in demon cases. He fears his presence in the house will only antagonize the entity. Micah does not want Katie to call in the demonologist, insisting he can handle the situation himself; a classic, I-don’t-need-to-read-a-map guy-type response. Eventually, when his camera and EVPs do not give him the results he needs, Micah resorts to low-tech by using a Ouija Board to communicate with the entity, over the psychic and Katie’s stern warnings that it would make things worse. The camera chillingly captures what happens when he leaves the Ouija Board alone with it. With the camera stoically recording everything, paranormal or not, its unemotional eye lends a level of creepiness that fosters a portentious atmosphere even when nothing bizarre is happening.

What Paranormal Activity achieves with its reality point of view camera setup–minus the shaky-cam–would have made William Castle smile with its unadorned, matter of fact, unblinking eye on the action. The use of an opening thank you statement to the San Diego police department enhances the realism of its found video footage approach, and even fooled the sales person at Best Buy (who found me the last copy of Trick ‘r Treat they had in stock). A big horror fan, he saw Paranormal Activity and swore it was based on a true story. I thought he was kidding. He was not. I looked him in the eye and told him it was not based on a true story–demons do not go running around bothering people in reality–and  opening statements like that are used all the time in horror movies.

I was right, wasn’t I?

District 9 (2009)
Aliens, Apartheid, Aggression

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District 9 2009 Zombos Says: Very Good

The striking thing about District 9, the expanded version of Neill Blonkamp’s short science fiction movie Alive in Joburg, is how it reworks familiar plot elements from movies like Alien Nation, The Fly, and The Matrix, cements them together with tableaux of apartheid and Nazi-like genetic experimentation, and still gleefully gets away with blowing lots of things up with popcorn-movie zeal.

Important to both the incidental social commentary and the loud action is Wikus Van De Merwe (Sharlto Copley), who makes us first dislike him for what he blindly stands for, then like him for what he learns to stand for. All of this does not make District 9 a great film, just a very good one; lying somewhere between Armond White’s energetically overreaching discontent with its “sloppiest and dopiest pop cinema”
substance, and Roger Ebert’s ultimate disappointment that it “remains space opera and avoids the higher realms of science-fiction.”

It is to District 9’s credit that it dares to place more emphasis on its pop cinema approach, and less on those higher realms, to deliver pulp science fiction that, blow for blow, gets its deeper message across without preachiness or prompting moral revelation above the basic template of blood splatter, bullets, and bombs. Social commentary has all been done effectively and artistically before, frankly, to the point where it no longer really matters it be spelled out for us yet again in a movie that flows much better without it. Sometimes a movie should be just that, a movie; and not held to a higher
accountability.

One aspect remaining uncluttered from higher philosophical exploration is the relationship that grows between the commonly—and somewhat derogatorily—named Van De Merwe, and the non-human alien with oddly human attributes, Christopher Johnson. When both must work together, each desperately needs something from the other, or die separately, everything else flows. It is this working together against an aggression now directed at both of them that District 9 manages to convey its social commentary in an entertainingly lively way.

Like 1988’s Alien Nation, whose Newcomers were stranded in Los Angeles, the derogatorily named Prawns are stranded in Johannesburg, South Africa. But where the more human-looking Newcomers were assimilating, albeit slowly, into human society, after twenty years of not integrating well with the native population (they are mug-ugly and have seriously bad hygiene issues), the Prawns are herded into District 9, a government camp turned slum, where they are exploited by Nigerian gangsters who sell them cat food for technology, and quietly experimented on by the MNU; a privately-run defense and security contractor looking to harness alien technology and weaponry. But alien technology requires alien DNA to work, thus rendering their weapons useless to humans. Van De Merwe, through his clumsiness, provides MNU with the solution.

That solution is to harvest Van De Merwe’s changing genetic material. All of it. After exposure to the alien ship’s fuel source during a forced relocation of the Prawns, he begins changing into one. The transformation he goes through is similar to Jeff Goldblum’s transformation from man to insect in 1986’s The Fly, loose teeth-pulling, changing limbs, and fear included.

Fighting capture from the MNU, Van De Merwe is captured by the Nigerian gang. A black market has sprung up between the Prawns and the Nigerians, trading technology for cat food, which the Prawns love to eat. The gang’s leader figures he can power the alien technology if he eats Van De Merwe’s alien-mutated arm. At this point, the only person who does not want a piece of him is his wife, who has been led to believe his transformation results from having sex with a female Prawn, as preposterous as that may sound given their physical attributes.

All this explosive aggression culminates in Van De Merwe donning an Iron Man and The Matrix-styled exo-suit. Strangely, although the techno-suit is designed for an alien whose body is clearly non-human, the technology fits him like a glove. The Nigerian gang, MNU force, and Van De Merwe duke it out as Christopher Johnson tries to return to the mother ship, providing much opportunity for gory body explosions, vibrant vehicle explosions, and shrapnel-flying bomb explosions.

The movie unfolds after the events have taken place, using interviews and news footage mixed in with shown-in-the-moment situations; not shaky-cam, not cinema verite, but a smattering of the two, handled in such a way as to keep up the momentum for tension-building. Interestingly, critics
have spent more time on its shallow apartheid and sociological underpinnings, and not enough on the movie’s more interesting mechanics.

Moving between third-party retrospections on Van De Merwe’s behavior and showing his panic brought about by his predicament, along with those pop cinema trashy explosive situations, Blonkamp and Terry Tatchell (co-screenplay) accomplish something unique: Van De Merwe’s pain and hopelessness, even the Prawn’s exploited and hopeless situation, in spite of their complete alienness, becomes personal and realistic for us, even through its science-fiction artificiality.

Fans of Stargate SG-1 will recall the need for alien DNA to power ancient alien weaponry in order to save earth from the Goa’uld. I wonder if Blonkamp is a fan of that television series?

Frostbite (Frostbiten 2006)
Swedish Vampire Chills

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Frostbiten 2006 “The night that all the film crew will remember is when we shot a scene with a vampire who had clambered up a lamppost after devouring a messy meal (another dog). This shot involved a large crane and the actor, who was wearing a thin layer of clothing, was strapped to the lamppost.

“At the time, the temperature was a relatively mild 10-12 degrees below zero, but during the shoot, rain came down from the heavens. I have never witnessed anything like it, and I have no idea how rain can fall when it is way below 12 degrees centigrade. The effect of the rain is that when it lands on anything–particularly metal–it freezes instantly, covering everything with ice. One of the crew very aptly described the rain as napalm, but its effects are the other way round. Within seconds, the camera, crane and crew were covered in ice.

“The poor actor, who was strapped to the lamppost, covered head-to-toe in fake blood, froze in thirty seconds. And that was his first day of shooting and introduction to Frostbite. We actually had to pry off the camera assistant who was stuck to the crane–he was stuck fast to his seat. I think it will be some time before we do another film in the snow” (from the interview with director Anders Banke conducted by Jay Slater, in The Dark Side, Issue 125, 2007).

Zombos Says: Very Good

Once I got past the incongruity of the wise-cracking dogs, I realized Frostbiten, directed by Anders Banke, is meant to be fangs-in-cheek fun, just shown seriously. If you can imagine Fright Night with more blood and bite to it you will know what I mean. This unorthodox blending of opposites makes Frostbiten an off-kilter visual experience: dogs chat it up with Sebastian as he slowly becomes a vampire thirsting for blood; an incredulous police officer is heavily, and comically, outfitted in riot gear before he interrogates Sebastian, now a full-blown vampire; teenagers party it up with helium-inhaled voices one minute, then climb all over the house–really climb–as vampires the next, thanks to Sebastian’s stash of stolen red pills. Sebastian (Jonas Karlstrom) is the medical intern who swallows one of the pills when he should have known better than to swallow one of those pills.

Frostbiten Frostbiten is filled with unusual touches that go beyond talking dogs, lending this first Swedish venture into the vampire genre an offbeat quality–lying somewhere between The Fearless Vampire Killers and 30 Days of Night–making it hard to explain but easy to describe.

It begins in 1944 with a skirmish in the Ukraine. Soldiers fleeing to safety come across a snowbound cabin, find no one in it, although the stove is hot, and assume whoever lived there fled when they saw the soldiers. Unable to sleep, they start to wonder how the people in the cabin could leave it since it was snowbound. The answer, of course, is they did not leave, which leads us to the present day. All of this happens before the title credits role, including a surprising visual flourish that sweeps our view from inside the cabin, quickly through its small window, and up to the winter moon; and to present day Northern Sweden, where dawn is a month away.

Annika (Petra Nielsen) and her quiet daughter, Saga (Grete Havneskold), move to a small town so Annika can work at a hospital where renowned geneticist Gerhard Beckert is conducting research. At school, Vega (Emma Aberg–exuding a sultry, classic Hammer glamour, appeal) takes a fancy to the more reserved, but cute, Saga and invites her to an upcoming party.

Vega is the wildest one in the school clique and insists Sebastian bring suitable drugs from the hospital to liven up the upcoming party. What Sebastion eventually finds are the red pills Beckert has devised as a sort of vampire vaccine. With Vega’s help, the pills eventually make it to the party, and into the punch bowl. The action now moves in-between teenagers at the party getting a blood rush, Sebastian slowly turning into a vampire after swallowing one of the pills, and Annika discovering Beckert’s secret.

Frostbiten Sebastian’s awkward situation–he is meeting his girlfriend’s religious parents for the first time over dinner at their apartment–is the funniest: crucifixes adorn the walls making Sebastian uncomfortable; when he shakes her father’s hand his hand starts smoking; the main course for dinner includes sea trout braised in garlic; and when he succumbs to his blood lust by draining their little pet bunny dry, their pet dog thanks him for getting rid of the attention-getting hippity-hopper. His thirst for more blood lands him in police custody after killing a dog. Seen at the top of a lamppost, he is apologetic to the dog’s owner, who stares at him in disbelief.

Back at the party, Saga is locked in the bathroom, helping a teenager going through the vampire metamorphosis, when the punch bowl is empty and the pills have taken full effect. Suddenly plunged in darkness, the teenager’s glowing red eyes are the only thing to be seen. When the light comes back on, the teenager is on the ceiling and looking for more punch. There is blood everywhere as Saga makes her way through the carnage. Vega, now a real vamp, goes after her, leading to a serious, but comical, denouement with a garden gnome. As the police arrive, and call for “so much f**king backup,” they have their hands full as one vampire quips to them “Don’t worry. It’ll soon be over. Dawn is just a month away.”

The vampires in Frostbiten hop around in high jumps, have vampire-vision–a reddish, squiggly haze–along with glowing red eyes, super hearing (there are humorous subtitles as Sebastian listens to his neighbors), and their faces morph into snarling, devilish creatures as their teeth stretch longer when the need for blood takes hold.

Frostbiten captures a cheekiness for nocturnal sanguine horror that you do not often see nowadays. It delights in mixing its bloody discharges with edgy wit and humor, and showing it through a veneer of seriousness. All of this brings a fresh approach to an old genre.

Orphan (2009)
Hell On Heels

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Orphan Zombos Says: Very Good

Kids may say and do the damnedest things, but little orphan Esther is hell to be around. In Orphan, a movie that will do for adoption services what Jaws did for the summer beach trade, young Isabelle Fuhrman chills the scenery.

Dressed in Old World frilly finery, speaking with a European accent that would make Bela Lugosi blush, and harboring a dark secret that makes her a dicey addition to the Coleman family, Esther’s talent with a claw hammer and penchant for surreptitious mayhem is a solid B-movie thrill ride not seen in a while. The twist-ending will also make anyone currently seeking adoption double-check that paperwork again and again.

Kate Coleman (Vera Farmiga) has a rough time of it after her third child is stillborn. Hitting the bottle she loses her teaching job, and her drinking almost costs the life of her second child, Max (Aryana Engineer), who is deaf but knows what people say with the help of her hearing aid and by reading lips. This puts a strain on Kate’s relationship with husband John (Peter Sarsgaard). I should note that many horror movies begin with a severely strained relationship that leads to much more strain (usually from bloodletting and death, of course), which in this case is precipitated by the adoption of sweetly sinister little Esther from St. Mariana Orphanage.

Esther We immediately see Esther is different because she prefers to paint alone upstairs when every other kid is playing downstairs. She likes to sing The Glory of Love when she is painting and also when she is on the toilet. John hears her singing and they bond over their mutual artistic talents. Max, who likes to have mom sign to her a story about the sister who went to heaven, takes to Esther immediately, but her brother Daniel (Jimmy Bennett III) thinks Esther is weird, as does his friends at school. At first he feels threatened by her getting his parents’ attention; after the incident where a razor blade is closely poised near his most vital areas, he has a lot more to feel threatened by.

When bad things begin to happen to those around Esther, like the girl at school, who teases her, breaking an ankle, or like Sister Abigail (CCH Pounder; Mrs. Frederic in Warehouse 13), who signs-off on the adoption papers–before she realizes how Esther is always around when bad things happen–having a car accident, Kate’s suspicions grow. John, of course, along with Kate’s psychotherapist, thinks his wife is having a relapse. Both insist she commit herself for treatment.

Seasoned horror fans will recognize this scenario: the only person to see the threat is the only person no one trusts or listens to. But director Jaume Collet-Serra (House of Wax) provides enough suspense to make this familiar situation work to the Orphan’s advantage. We feel the terror felt by Daniel and Max; they know how awful Esther can really be, but they are helpless against her as she keeps trying to get rid of them. Permanently. I normally do not want to see children in R-rated movies, but their fear and potential to be harmed by Esther is essential to the momentum of the story. Adding to this tension are flashes of Esther losing her outward calm in fits of rage when no one is around, and how Collet-Serra shows her prowling to spy on her adopted parents and siblings. Like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, Esther acts innocently until she needs to act violently. What Collet-Serra should have left out are the overused, falsely queued–music and camera–scares, and person-popping-up-behind-you seen in mirror. Isabelle Fuhrman’s Esther provides all the scares he needs.

Towards the climax, the revelation of Esther’s true intent, previously hidden on the walls of her bedroom, brings the evil vividly home to John just before the lights go out. While this movie may cause adoption rates to dip a bit, it will certainly take the summer heat off you with a chill or two.

[REC] (2007)
When Home Is No Place To Be

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REC It's nearly 2 A.M. and we're still sealed in this building that we came to with the firemen earlier this evening, to assist an elderly woman who later attacked a policeman and a fireman. They're both in critical condition. The police won't let us leave and are giving us no explanations (Angela Vidal, [REC]).

Zombos Says: Excellent

 

After the goosebumps I received from Quarantine (2008), I expected watching the original Spanish version of this home-is-where-the-zombies-are, shaky-cam, movie would be a perfunctory exercise in comparing the two. I was wrong.

While Quarantine parallels [REC]'s situations and characters almost completely, [REC] still scared me even though I knew what to expect. It is more energetic–even more shaky–as fluffy-television reporter Angela Vidal (Manuela Velasco) unexpectedly finds the news story of her career in the hallway and rooms of a Barcelona apartment building. The scenes are more brightly lit, the police officers more ineffectual, and the contagion more preternatural in origin, perhaps even supernatural. Even the rapid staccato of Spanish words alternately screamed, cried, or spoken in desperation by Angela, her camera man, and the helpless tenants around them, gives [REC] a personal sheen of terror that comes from having your home, which is normally a place of comfort and security, become the one place you do not want to be.

The home invasion-styled horror movie is a genre staple with various derivations. I will go out on a limb and state, without crunching the numbers properly, that home intruders terrorizing, as seen recently in The Strangers (2008), and earlier in Ils (Them, 2006), are not as prevalent as home sweet home soured as seen in movies like Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and The Uninvited (1944). The main differences lie in the former involving an active, direct, and immediate threat to one's safety–get out now or die!–as opposed to an ongoing, indirect, and future threat–what are those giant seed pods doing in Becky's cellar?– that make the home the least safest place to be.

Of course, when both are combined into the more inclusive home intruders laying siege scenario, such as in Night of the Living Dead (1968)–-where they're coming to get you inside while keeping you from going outside –the horror generates more from ongoing threats that are direct and indirect, and present and future perfect for terror, usually all rolled into a tidy, unrelenting, mayhem in a confined space.

[REC] falls into the home intruders laying siege category, but with a twist: laying siege within the building are the tenants themselves. While the military and police lay siege from without, keeping everyone, infected or not, locked up tight together. The growing number of infected tenants force the desperate survivors to seek temporary safety within the various apartment rooms as control of the hallway gives way to pandemonium.

While Quarantine adds more of the American sensibility for terror-filled gory moments–annoying man caught in elevator with zombie-dog; menacing zombie-fireman standing on sickeningly, bone-cracked legs; noisy drilling into brain moment (how many times have you seen those?)–[REC] keeps gore a little more subdued and spends more time with Angela interviewing the tenants as a real news reporter would do. It does slow the movie, but [REC] maintains a better sense of realism because of it.

A major difference between both movies involves the cause of the contagion. Quarantine shows its American-influenced zombie provenance by using the more scientifically explained and popular–for today's fiction and cinema–biohazard outbreak. [REC]'s virus stems from the isolation of it from the blood of a possessed girl, giving its explanation elements of religion, exorcism, and an old-world folklore creepy charm.

Within the context of an evolving news story shot from the camera man's perspective through his lens, [REC] and [Quarantine] remain the best use of the shaky-cam, found-footage, school of filming along with the Blair Witch Project (1999). And even if you have seen Quarantine, I urge you to see [REC]; not because it is the original story, but because it will still scare the daylights out of you.

The movie spawned four sequels: Rec 2 (2007), Rec 3 (2012): Genesis, and Rec 4: Apocalypse (2014). While Rec 2 continues the found-footage style, Rec 3 begins with it but then switches over to a more traditional story-telling style. Rec 4 moves the action to a ship and goes off the rails in doing so.