The Night of the Hunter (1955)
This was quite a bizarre film in many ways. An old black and white film with a mixture of fairytale and Hitchcock. The 'hunter' in question is a crazy yet charming man claiming to be a preacher who roams the country preying on widows. Having only been caught with a stolen car, he finds himself in prison with a man imprisoned for murder and robbery and works out from what the man says in his sleep that thousands of dollars are hidden somewhere on the man's property.
The actual opening scene of the film has a woman giving children lessons from the Bible and warning against false prophets. There is a very clear theme in this movie of how those claiming to speak 'the word of the Lord' can actually be very scary people indeed. Some of the ways that the 'hunter' (the character is called John Powell) uses religion to manipulate those around him are very creepy indeed. While I found myself amused by the way no one questioned him having "LOVE" and "HATE" on the knuckles of each hand, that became easier to accept as the film went on.
I felt that "Night of the Hunter" had a pretty slow start, but when it gets into it things get pretty hairy and I really enjoyed how things unfolded. There are also some pretty amazing visual moments.
On the less positive side, the pacing isn't perfect. In between some great moments, there are some parts that drag a little. But by far the biggest problem is the ending. And by that, I don't so much mean that the ending spoils the movie. Just that the ending goes on too long. There's a very definite cut-off point where I feel the film should have just stopped and instead the film just keeps on going with elements towards the end being quite simply trivial. This is quite clearly a Hays Code issue. The audience needs to be shown that all crimes are punished and that everything is alright in the end and to hell with a decent ending to a dark film.
Still, the story as a whole is pretty awesome and some individual moments are downright creepy as hell. I had no idea from the relatively clunky beginnings of the film that this would lead to such a mixture of disturbing and beautiful moments, nor that the film would take on a fairytale like style with the wicked stepfather and a magical Snow White-esque 'lost in the woods' section.
B+
4. The Moth Diaries (2011)
A new year begins at a boarding school where many of those attending are dealing with past traumas. Our protagonist, Rebecca, has an extremely close friend, Lucy, who she credits with her progress in coming to terms with the death of her father. But a new arrival at the school called Ernessa serves to drive them apart. Rebecca hates Ernessa from the start, but Rebecca's hatred serves to drive Lucy all the more to take an interest in her.
It's never much of a surprise that Ernessa is a vampire. She's clearly highly suspicious and she seems to be unsubtly suggesting that Rebecca commit suicide like her father did and at other times Ernessa seems to be describing, or at least hinting at, her own death before becoming the undead thing she is now.
But while this tale still draws from the Victorian conception of the vampire, it takes its inspiration from an earlier story than that of Bram Stoker: the story of Carmilla. Carmilla is a story of a female vampire that preys on other women and certainly there seems to be a lesbian implication to the story and there's at least one moment in "The Mother Diaries" where that element becomes explicit in the main story. However, for the most part "The Moth Diaries" isn't about sex, but close female relationships at an age when friendships can be very intense; all the moreso in a boarding school environment.
And the girls are concerned with boys too. Right from the start there are certain girls expressing a concern that they lose their virginity. There's also a question of whether Scott Speedman's teacher character, who introduces the vampire literature and who takes a strong interest in Rebecca's father, might also be a vampire. However, he's actually more of a side-character with his main importance being to display a different sort of predatory approach to the creepier subtler kind put forward by Ernessa.
There are some wonderful moments in this film and the themes are brought out pretty well. I wouldn't say that all the performances were perfect though and more than that there are parts of the film that feel a bit clunky particularly towards the beginning. I also felt that overall the film felt a little too directionless. I felt the ending could have been tied up rather more neatly.
When I say that certain elements were clunky, the most obvious culprit is an annoying bit of product placement. I'm not sure if it was product placement for the "Rock Band" game or for the band "Garbage". Admittedly Garbage have gothic elements, but "Why Do You Love Me?" from their disappointing album "Bleed Like Me" doesn't seem like the most appropriate choice and the message in that scene of "we're all getting along really well asides from the creepy new girl in the corner" felt a little heavy-handed.
I also felt that the film could have done with less actual diary entries. Voice-over is not the best way to push forward a film plot.
Still, I cannot deny that this is a very original take on the vampire legend (or at very least using unoriginal elements in a way that we haven't seen used anything like so often). There's a real mystery as to what kind of vampire Ernessa really is. For example, having made clear that she died of drowning there's a scene where she's forced to do swimming as punishment for being late for gym class where she seems to be practically drowning as she tries to do a length of the pool. For someone who is already dead, she seems strangely vulnerable.
This is a character-driven drama and we get a very clear idea of the mixture of jealousy, fear, psychological trauma, and suicidal inclinations that come over Rebecca, pushed on by the manipulations of Ernessa.
B+
Grabbers (2012)
Weird monsters turn up in Ireland and Richard Coyle (from "Coupling" and the adaptation of Pratchett's "Going Postal") plays an alcoholic police officer in a small town where nothing ever happens. He must team up with Ruth Bradley, who plays a teetotaler who is more concerned with doing things properly. Some weird alien monsters appear and Russell Tovey (from "Being Human") plays a scientist who can help them analyse what to do with the alien.
I would avoid revealing this, but I think it's a major source of the appeal of the movie, so the promotional material is already shouting it all over the place... The aliens have a major weakness. They are harmed by alcohol. Attacking someone who is drunk weakens and kills them.
So you can probably guess some elements of what is coming, but I must say that the central romance (as unlikely as it seems at the beginning and, in fact, for most of the runtime of the movie) is handled very well. I was criticised for using "chick-flick" in a derogatory way in my review of "Silver Linings Playbook" recently and its probably a criticism that is absolutely deserved because I do think "chick-flick" is a derogatory term, as do many women who I've heard using the term. But that doesn't mean I have a problem with a decent romantic comedy. Even one with a happy ending where the relationship plays a central role. But I need the relationship to not be utterly banal, I need the comedy to be reasonably funny, and I need the storyline to treat both sexes like real people rather than pushing some kind of "men are from mars, women are from venus" BS.
So yeah, Grabbers has a central romance and the whole storyline is utterly ludicrous from start to finish and sure, the comedy isn't fantastically consistent. But the film is just so much fun that it doesn't matter. And Russell Tovey is awesome of course. Oooh and also the effects work (which was presumably somewhat on the cheap) is really rather good too.
This is a great little horror-comedy for when you feel in the mood for something light, sweet and fun.
B-
6. Hostel (2005)
Ever since I discovered that "Saw" was not so much 'torture porn', but was actually highly derivative of "Se7en", I've been wondering whether "Hostel" would better fit the bill.
Now admittedly once we get to the fifth movie in the "Saw" series the films had become more of a case of traps with a boring irrelevant police drama surrounding them rather than genuinely seeming like they might have some kind of point to them. (Though I'm fairly sure the fans always believed that the police drama elements were leading to a satisfying conclusion that would tie everything up neatly. Even if I don't think the movie series ever really provided anything like that.)
So is "Hostel" more like 'torture porn'. Actually I'm not sure it is. I'd been surprised to hear that "Hostel" had been promoted by Quentin Tarantino considering its reputation, but in the light of "Inglourious Basterds" it actually makes a lot of sense (as I'll explain further on).
We start with a bunch of obnoxious lads getting drunk, partying and chasing women in Amsterdam. To make clear just how sleazy this group of protagonists really are, we regularly see the camera leering at women, clearly showing us the way that these characters are looking at their surroundings in Amsterdam.
There's one character who seems less inclined towards treating women like a cattle market, but he's not actually supposed to be any better than the rest of them. He's more of a 'nice guy (TM)' really, trying to disguise his own feelings of inadequacy and his own lack of confidence as a sign of moral superiority. So this is a case of a group victims being introduced ready for the slaughter to come later in the movie.
The threat comes when a stranger shows them a set of well-lit pictures that look like they come straight out of soft porn, which he claims are pictures he took at a little-known hostel in Slovakia. The pictures clearly show him the middle of a bunch of attractive women, so like lambs to the slaughter our obnoxious protagonists get straight on a train to Slovakia.
On the way to Slovakia, the gang are approached by a man who starts getting a little too familiar with the 'Nice Guy TM' figure. He becomes very angry with the man, so when they see the same man in a bar near the hostel he takes time out there to buy the man a drink and apologise for his outburst.
In Slovakia things look pretty much how they expected initially. All the men seem to quickly find attractive women to hook up with. However, things are not as they seem and there's a clear indication that members of the group have torture and death to look forward to. While the torture and death elements of the film are pretty nasty, the film does not have a one-track focus on it even to the extent of the first "Saw" movie. This film is very much about context and relevance. The majority of the film is more concerned with a growing paranoia and sense of mounting dread rather than with just "showing us another trap" like we might expect from a "Saw" sequel.
Hostel is actually a very intelligent film in many ways. While it might be said that Wes Craven's "The Hills Have Eyes" and "Last House On The Left" were both about what happens when ordinary people are driven to extremes and choose to fight back, "Hostel" is makes that message much more forcefully in my opinion. In the light of having seen "Inglourious Basterds" and heard Eli Roth (Hostel's director) talking about how wonderful he found Tarantino's movie speaking from a Jewish perspective, I really do believe that Hostel is also related to the holocaust and the wish-fulfilment that would come from being able to make a Nazi pay for what they have done.
I hope I'm staying reasonably vague on this. I haven't really explained what is going on at the hostel in Slovakia asides from a general hint of "torture and murder" which I think was probably pretty obvious already. But what I want to convey here is that "Hostel" is, as opposed to anything you might have been told to the contrary, a movie with a proper message at its centre. A message that properly hits home, rather than just a message for the sake of justifying some bloodthirty torture scenes. (We're not talking about "Saw VI"'s cheesy "medical insurance policies suck" message which, while an important enough message, was mostly an excuse to string together a new set of traps.)
So, against all expectations, (particularly during those opening scenes) I ended up loving "Hostel". It's a great horror movie and I wholeheartedly recommend it.
A+