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A selection of horror reviews, but are any of them horror classics? Well actually yeah, I think some of them are! This is a pretty neat little selection for the most part...
The Thing (2011)I had high hopes for this in spite of the poor reviews and to be frank part of the reason why I've not reviewed any non-marathon horror films for quite a while now is because I really DIDN'T want to review this one. I must point out though, this isn't a clear cut issue. There are good elements here. But overall this isn't really a good film.
As you're probably already aware this is a prequel to John Carpenter's "The Thing". The opening starts with a bunch of Norwegian characters in Antarctica. So far so predictable. But i've still got high hopes during this opening because of the re-use of Ennio Morricone excellent score from John Carpenter's original. Then all of a sudden the ground opens up and their vehicle plunges into a large crack in the ice. The vehicle becomes stuck part way down this newly opened chasm and after a bit one of them shines a torch down to see.... the opening title. And that's all the film shows of this extreme scenario. What seemed almost like it could have been a film in and of itself showing how these guys get back to the surface is just cut short. And the Ennio Morricone score never returns. Oh well....
One thing everyone was really concerned about is how the effects would look, particularly in CG. Well I've got good news and I've got bad news. Okay, on the one hand some of the Thing transformations look great. On the other hand there's something very hard-to-take-in about the visuals.
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If you want to see the transformations (and trust me they are the main reason to see the movie) you can actuallys see every single one of them online (if you aren't going to see this movie but want to know what the Thing effects were like,
check whether this link is still working.). When our protagonist is first shown the crashed spaceship. While our protagonist is gasping in awe at a breathtaking spacecraft it mostly feels like a blank empty space. It feels like the shadow effect has been overdone so that it's not simply hard to see, it's pretty much painted over in black. It makes me think of Douglas Adams'
"somebody else's problem" field.
And oddly all of the effects feel somewhat like this. There's something weightless and insubstantial about the alien monster that makes it hard to focus on. It's a common complaint that CG doesn't have the same physical feel of practical special effects, but there are definitely times when I haven't been able to tell the difference. Here I could definitely tell the difference and while there are some effects that work very well indeed even in spite of a slightly unreal feel, there are other points where the effects are not so much bad as hard to take in. It's like the frame rate for the effects is different than the frame rate of the film at times.
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It also doesn't help that the blood splatters look more fake than the transformation effects do, meaning that more violent moments pull you out of the movie instead of reeling you in.
But that's enough time spent making frivolous complaints about the effects. The point is that the effects are good ENOUGH and what follows is that none of these misgivings would matter (though I still think the spaceship would be a sticking point) if the film as a whole had a good plot.
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Once again, I have to give the film some credit. The writers manage to find an entirely new way of judging who is a thing and who is still human which is pretty clever (though the final 'twist' if you want to call it that kind of forgets that The Thing seems to be a perfect copy down to memory - which makes this final 'clever' scene yet another disappointment). There is also a fairly tense point towards the middle where, as you'd expect, the people at the scientific camp turn on one another somewhat.
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People have questioned whether Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Ramona Flowers from Scott Pilgrim VS The World) has the acting chops to take the central role. I'm inclined to blame the direction. I'm noticing more and more actors in this are people I've seen elsewhere. There's Joel Edgerton from "Animal Kingdom" and "Warrior" and Eric Christian Olsen who plays Vaughn (small-nipplied neo-hippie) from the tv series "Community". No doubt there are other actors in this who I'll see doing better work elsewhere too.
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It feels like the film is intending to build tension, but it removes the main feature which made John Carpenter's "The Thing" such a scary film. I already mentioned that there is a point in the film where people stop trusting each other, but to be frank it kind of comes out of the blue. There isn't the build-up and it isn't long before the build-up is broken. This is because this time around The Thing keeps on just revealing itself of its own accord. It's more of a rampaging killer monster than a hidden monster which plays the humans off against each other while replacing them in the background. This caused a bit of a mixed-up identity for the movie, since the way you play a straight-out monster movie is rather different from how you play a slow-burn encroaching terror movie. Prometheus knew how to do slow encroaching terror, but this prequel to The Thing is too impatient for that.
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Right at the end there's a scene which explains where the two Norweigians with the helicopter at the beginning of John Carpenter's movie come from and that last five minutes is done pretty well, but it's not worth sitting through this entire film for. Still in this last five minutes I felt like what I was watching mattered and that there was a genuine tension building... because they brought back the Ennio Morricone theme from John Carpenter's original.
I think seeing the effects in this movie is probably worth it, but not THAT worth it. In the end this entirely fails to provide the proper tone and suspense that made John Carpenter's movie work so well and it's certainly missing all of the intelligence of the original black and white movie that John Carpenter was remaking. While I can credit the writers with a new clever alien-spotting idea that's about all I can really credit them with since this feels like a pretty baggy script overall. I know there are people out there who feel they ought to see this because they can't miss their "The Thing" fix, but trust me, overall it's kind of soul crushing as a fan of John Carpenter's movie to sit through this dreck.
D+The Revenant (2009)It is absolutely shocking to me that this has gone straight-to-DVD. This was
a 'too good to be true' trailer for me a long while back. The premise is that a guy returns from the war as some kind of zombie/vampire thing and he and his friend try to find some interesting uses for his new ability to survive after death.
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There was a fair bit more given away in the trailer (and even in the poster above), but I'm not going to spoil anything. "The Revenant" is a horror comedy which is pretty damn creepy and absolutely hilarious. I'm absolutely not a fan of cheesy American comedies like "Anchorman" or "Tropic Thunder" which seem to think going over-the-top will instantly be funny and "The Revenant" is certainly not one of those, but it does have its over-the-top moments. However "The Revenant" slowly builds up its scenario so that when it starts to get ridiculous and over-the-top it really feels like it has earnt it and the bizarreness almost seems natural even as I'm in hysterics at the absurdity of it all. This is black comedy at its best. For those who aren't always keen on black comedy, it doesn't do a slow-burn like in "A Serious Man" or "Submarine" and, in any case, there's some pretty cool undead stuff and drama to keep you interested even if the humour doesn't entirely work for you.
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I must warn you not to be put off by the opening scene. The film opens with three soldiers talking in a van and I couldn't help but feel "this is not what real soldiers are like AT ALL". However, once the film gets started that scene is quickly forgotten as the real action takes place back home in America.
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Funny, original, and (eventually) batshit insane. I absolutely loved this film. One of the best films I've seen this year.
A+Take Shelter (2011)I'd heard good things about this one, but it was hard to expect much from it. A film about a man slowly going insane sounds quite introspective and dull. However, this really gets you into the head of the main character and his doom-laden visions are very vivid and tense. I've got to give credit for the cinematography and effects. Right from the start we see what looks like an impossibly huge stormcloud and the visuals are always striking.
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In "Take Shelter" Michael Shannon plays a man who becomes convinced that a massive catastrophe is going to arise. There's something supernatural about his nightmarish vision. Some have even said the nightmare he envisions is "Biblical" in nature with some even suggesting that this is like a modern-day telling of the Noah story (which means this has already thrown down a gauntlet for Darren Aronofsky's upcoming "Noah" expected to be released in 2014).
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A further intriguing aspect of the film is that Michael Shannon's character knows there is a history of mental illness in his family. His mother suffers from schizophrenia. He makes some effort to try to self-diagnose himself and takes the possibility that he is schizophrenic very seriously. However, he is also highly convinced by his visions and very very afraid of what the future holds. More than anything he fears the loss of his family.
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This had a very similar feel to "We Need To Talk About Kevin". If anything I think "We Need To Talk About Kevin" might marginally win out in terms of visual flair (though only just), but the storyline was much more streamlined. While "We Need To Talk About Kevin" may have intentionally have left me disorientated by its ever-shifting timeline, it limited the extent to which the film could build up tension (though to be fair it did a great job of that anyway). It's hard to feel tense when you are confused. In "Take Shelter" however, the tension just builds and builds and while there's a mysteriousness to it, the basic gist is hard to miss and there's a genuine progression in story rather than simply a progression in mood.
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Michael Shannon gives an incredible performance in the central role and I was very pleased to see that this was a highly enjoyable (albeit very atmospheric) horror film rather than a big pondersome misery-fest. This film makes a great use of tone and really grips you and if you want your horror films to pull you in and creep you out, look no further.
A+The Innkeepers (2011)The latest film from Ti West. I was a bit unsure about this. As much as I loved "The House Of The Devil" Ti West's follow-up was "Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever", a widely panned sequel. Also, I HATE ghost films. I just generally find that ghost films disappoint me and I have ranted on this in the past. It might be getting confusing when I give a pretty good score to "Poltergeist" and seem to wave the problem away in the case of the "A Nightmare On Elm Street" films, however I've always made it clear in those cases that the ghost angle is a negative for me. Here is the first point where I really have to step back and say that my normal irritation with ghost story elements is somehow not a problem for me this time...
That being said, I have given ghosts a free pass before. In the tv series "Being Human" one of the main characters is a ghost (I haven't seen the fourth series yet, but I'll probably check it out at some point. Not hearing promising things about it now that the cast has changed quite dramatically.) Annie is a fully developed character with an interesting personality and clearly defined powers. That's pretty much the opposite of what a ghost IS in most films. That difference from the majority of ghost stories is what makes it manageable. I'm inclined to say that something similar is going on here. The way this film unfolds doesn't follow such a typical format for a ghost story. The difference is that this is still very much a ghost story and so I'm not really able to wriggle my way out with "well this is an exception".
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So in case you hadn't worked out where this was going, I LOVED this movie. Like with "The House Of The Devil" it's a slow-burn, but it's expertly done in a way that somehow manages to get me to seriously jump WITHOUT the cheesy jump-scares. Far from making inevitable scares obvious by slowly building up screeching violins and wind whistling noises, this film has a number of scenes where the character wanders about in complete silence and it isn't necessarily going to pay that off with a scare. Instead it has to make us care enough to follow around the characters because they are genuinely fun to watch and keep our interest.
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The Innkeepers centres around two college drop-outs who are the only staff in the hotel because it is about to close down. Both are somewhat obsessed with the idea of uncovering evidence of a ghost in the hotel. Luke (played by Pat Healy) is a cynic when it comes to human beings, but is a good friend to his co-worker and seems to put himself forward as almost like an expert in ghost hunting. Claire (played by Sara Paxton) seems like a more naive character and comes off more like a teenager than a ex-college girl sometimes. This is intentional. Her whole body language has this floppiness to it and she's quick to avoid eye contact when she feels uncomfortable. There's one scene where she slumps down on the bed, kicks off her shoes and picks up the tv remote while her is pressing into her chest as she vegetates watching the television. Sounds like a pretty mundane scene, but her body language is perfect. She's like a kid at heart and while in some films that could be the most annoying thing ever, here it's very endearing. Naturally she's not just an apathetic layabout and her expression shifts to wide-eyed wonder and eager excitement whenever the topic of ghosts comes around.
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There are a small number of guests who show up at the hotel and all of them are also quite interesting characters. But in the end the main two are always Luke and Claire. All the way through the encounter with the ghost is an inevitability but it's made clear to us that it's not going to play out as we expect. The backstory Claire has on the ghost doesn't seem to properly line up with the ghostly experiences she has. The two characters use a recorder to pick up the sounds of ghostly activity and to capture their evidence and in scenes where they use this, the audience also finds themselves in a heightened state listening for anything unusual.
The House Of The Devil never had fleshed out characters like this. The slow build seems much more story-driven rather than just time-filling this time around. The ending has, I think, left a lot of people puzzled, but when I thought about it afterwards I realised that this is a really clever film. If you ask me about it then I'll tell you my interpretation. It seemed pretty clear cut to me, but perhaps ghost story expectations make it rather hard to put together.
Anyway, a ghost movie which focusses on the characters, earns all its scares properly and gives its own original take on the genre even as it emulates the old horror movies of the 70s and 80s? Sign me up!
A+(cross-posted to Halloween Candy)
