October Challenge: Horror Haikus - Dracula 3D

Oh Dario, why?
If you need money just ask.
We are here for you.

October Challenge: Horror Haikus - The Mangler

Tobe Hooper? You there?
Nope. Just your worn out shell then.
Call me when you're back.

October Challenge: Horror Haikus - Drag me To Hell

Sam, never leave us
again. We love you more than
Spiderman fans do.

October Challenge: Insidious

Just as the young boy at the centre of Insidious is beset by evil spirits, so too is the film itself haunted by demons. There is a true greatness somewhere within in this movie, but every time it shows itself, it is whisked away by the dark forces of lacklustre direction, a reliance on cliches, and some truly woeful cinematography.

The good stuff first: for at least half of its running time, Insidious is a beautifully well paced chiller. It speedily sets up both its characters and its central plot point, but it does so while still giving us some time to get to know these people. Both Rose Byrne and Patrick Wilson do very good work - they make the characters believable, which is no mean feat when the script later asks them to do and say some pretty unbelievable things.

Just as impressively, Insidious boasts an incredible score, composed by Joseph Bishara. It's a fantastic piece of work - both deeply grounded in the feel of horror movies from the 60's and 70's, yet entirely Bishara's own . Interestingly, Bishara also plays the demon antagonist of the movie, barely recognisable under all that great make up work.

The film does an admirable job of handling the weight of its own plot points, too - the way the young son slips into a 'coma' is treated with a real sense of tragedy. The reaction of the boy's parents - Byrne's desperation, and Wilson's determination to ignore the problem by staying late at work - is impressively true to reality. It gives the proceedings an added depth, rather than sweeping those pesky time consuming emotional responses under the carpet as many lesser horror flicks have done.

But the movie is undone by some awful set pieces. The film's 'seance scene' (although it isn't exactly that, you catch my drift) is a laughable attempt at horror. It isn't the vaguest bit scary, what with demons that look like bit players in a lo budget death metal music video, and all of the expert work the movie has done keeping its horrors in the shadows is thrown out of the window as demons start flinging the characters around the room as though they were paper dolls.

Even worse, although the film spends a lot of its running time establishing a truly inventive and memorable demon - the man with 'fire in his face' - it ruins all of his impact in the final few scenes.

For most of the film's running time, the demon is handled with the subtlety and weight that makes him a truly compelling antagonist. Then, right at the end, we get a scene of the malevolent force sitting in his 'lair', rocking out to Tiny Tim and sharpening his nails. No, seriously...sharpening his nails. Adding insult to injury, he's also seen staring through a giant magnifying glass so tacky it could have been stolen straight from Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland remake.

Just check out this ridiculous image, that comes in the film's denouement:

I mean, the guy looks like the cheapest of Freddy Krueger rip offs. By showing us the dude just, y'know, chilling out, James Wan immediately throws any suspense and horror out of the window. Compare that to this genuinely horrifying shot that comes from the first half of the movie, and you can see just how much wasted promise this film holds:

It's a shame, because although Wan might be a pretty mediocre director (I can't stand his reliance on overexposed film, and those dumb sped up action shots he carried over from his work on Saw) Leigh Whannell is clearly a talented screenwriter. In the hands of another filmmaker, Insidiuous might have become a horror classic, one to be carried down through the ages in the hands of the genre's many fans.

As it is, Insidious is a wasted opportunity. Even its final twist, which could have been a shocking, punch in the guts kind of ending, is instead over-explained and overemphasized until it becomes just another 'bad guys win' horror movie finale.

Some time next week, I'm going to be watching and reviewing Insidious 2 for the first time. I'm not dreading the experience - there's still more than enough good in the first instalment to make me look forward to it - I just hope that between the two movies Wan hired himself a good exorcist, and banished his demons.

October Challenge: Horror Haikus - Vampire's Kiss

The story of a
man slowly turning into
Nicholas Cage. Scary.

The Sacrament: Frequently Asked Questions

 

 

Q: What the fuck did I just watch?

 

A: Ti West's masterful found footage horror film, The Sacrament.

 

Q: Eugh. Seriously? Another found footage film?

 

A: I'm not usually a fan either, but The Sacrament is the first film that actually benefits from being shot in that style. It doesn't just feel like a gimmick: the 'fake documentary'  set up gives the proceedings added weight, and West is the first director who has successfully circumnavigated some of the sub-genre's flaws.

 

Q: Flaws?

 

A: Yeah. For once this is a found footage film where the protagonists have a solid reason to not put down their cameras and just run the fuck away: they're journalists. They are determined to capture the horror that they are witnessing, even if it means they have to sacrifice their own safety. Even more convincing is the fact that they work for Vice, a company famous for going to great lengths to score interviews with subjects as unconventional as cannibal serial killers and paid assassins. If any website was going to release a documentary about a place like Eden Parish - even when said documentary features people committing suicide on camera - it would be Vice.

The fact that the protagonists of The Sacrament are professionals also allows West to avoid a lot of the nauseating camera work that makes so many other found footage films difficult to sit through. The film is beautifully shot, but so it should be: the men behind the camera know what they're doing. This plot device also explains away another plot hole in found footage films - ever notice how random Joes in horror movies pick up cameras and are suddenly granted the extraordinary powers to know what to shoot and how to shoot it? The way the camera whips around to what is most important in The Sacrament doesn't feel unreal: it feels perfectly plausible, and also allows West to frame the film's more shocking moments with real skill.

Even better, West takes time to establish exactly how the shots in his ersatz documentary are being set up. There's a really great little moment when Sam, one of our heroes, is preparing to interview the Parish's chillingly charismatic leader, Father. Before the interview even begins, he recruits one of his comrades to shoot close ups of the crowd who will serve as his audience. It's a breath of fresh air to be in the hands of a filmmaker who takes the time to ensure that everything in the film seems realistic. The cutaways to the crowd allow West to shoot the scene in a way that gives it impact without sacrificing the film's central style like so many other filmmakers lazily do.

Q: Is the film actually scary though?

A: It is. Just like his excellent feature The Innkeepers, West again proves that he can unnerve without having to use much gore - for all the death in The Sacrament's second half, there is very little of the red stuff. The real chills come from the intent behind the fatalities, not the fatalities themselves. The film has a wonderful sense of creeping dread. Just take a scene where Sam and Jake are sprung by a girl standing outside their cabin door. There's no musical stinger to accompany the image - the soundtrack is silent enough to create a genuine sense of unease.

Q: The film is pretty heavily inspired by The Jonestown massacre, isn't it?

A: Yes, but never in a way that seems distracting. The Sacrament makes some very obvious nods to the tragedy - like Jim Jones, Father supports multiculturalism, and there is also the suggestion in the film that he engages in sexual acts with his followers (Jones himself frequently slept with both males and females in his congregation.) Hell, Jones and Father even have the same taste in eyewear.

But despite the numerous similarities, Father is his own fully fleshed out character - he's not just a photocopy of a figure from the past. A lot of that is due to the exceptional work of Gene Jones: in a perfect world, Jones would receive an Oscar nod for his work (don't hold out on that one, though.) The actor turns in an exceptional performance - he has charisma in excess, which makes the devotion of his followers eerily believable. But when he needs to be chilling, he nails that too, and there's an exceptional, odd poignancy to his work in the last ten minutes or so of the film.

In fact, all of the performances are fantastic. Joe Swanberg and A.J. Bowen are understated but impressively so, and Amy Seimetz delivers the performance of her career to date as a lost soul clinging with disturbing determination to the only shred of hope she has left.

Q: You're giving this one your seal of approval, then?

A: Fuck yes. The Sacrament is a powerful examination of the dark side of faith. It's impeccably acted, brilliantly directed and its admirable decision to end the film exactly where it needs to be ended deserves serious commendation. There's no epilogue; no overwrought explanations of what we have just seen. The film just finishes, leaving us on a disturbingly powerful note.

In short: this is a movie that won't leave your mind any time soon.

October Challenge: Horror Haikus - The Human Centipede

How do you make a
movie about violent
acts dull? Ask Tom Six.

October Challenge: Horror Haikus - Freddy Vs. Jason

Fred versus Jason
versus script. Who wins this one?
Not the audience.

October Challenge: Frequently Asked Questions: House.

Q: What the fuck did I just watch?

A: The strangest film Jaws ever inspired.

Q: Wait, what?

A: Yep, believe it or not, this film was commissioned because the Japanese production company Toho wanted to capitalize on the success of Steven Spielberg's Jaws. You can imagine the faces of the board members when this was the film delivered back to them...

Q: What is going on with this movie? I mean, seriously. It's insane.

A: I know, and that's why I love it. I mean, I'm glad that not every movie looks like this one, but all the same, I think it's an exhilarating film. I just love how balls to the wall mental it is - there's not a single shot in this movie that doesn't throw something at you, whether that something is a bizarre editing trick, or the strangest special effect work imaginable.

House creates a sense of heightened reality - nothing in this film even vaguely resembles the real world, and as a result, it enters the realm of the surreal, where emotions must be heightened in order to be addressed.

Q: Wait, you mean the worst special effect work imaginable. Some of it is laughable, even for the time...

A: Yep, and it's meant to be. This film was inspired by some of the ideas the director's daughter came up with, and the movie is deliberately very childlike. It's basically like a children's picture book on crack - it takes the fears of pre-teens and distorts them to become larger than life. It's essentially a movie about discovering that what is meant to be the happiest, most idyllic time of your life - that period where you don't worry about money, or your job - is actually one of the most disturbing, and anxiety producing years you'll struggle through.

That's why the central horror based images of the film are based around the very commonplace and ordinary - the mirror, the piano, etc. These are the things that are more commonly accepted as just being part of the mundane and ordinary life of pre-teens: a lot of us out there have had to sit through the dreariness of piano lessons, just like a lot of us have spent time preening ourselves in front of the mirror.

Like all good horror films, House takes the things from our regular life and injects them with true terror, meaning they stop being just elements of our existence, and become imbued with the emotions and nightmares we give them.

Q: You're sounding oddly intellectual for someone who is discussing a film where a man turns into a pile of bananas...

A: And that's the other great thing about House - it never takes itself seriously. It knows its silly, and it runs with that. That way, it manages to have its cake and eat it too: it can be deadly serious at one moment, reflecting the fear and panic that pre-teens feel when they are faced with the idea that some day they must grow up and enter the real world, but at the same time, it can present us with a scene where...well, where a man turns into a pile of bananas.

Q: So you're saying this is a movie about growing up? I thought you were saying it was a film about innocence...

A: It's a film about both - the central characters are on the cusp of entering adolescence. They're in that weird stage where they are both children, and yet not children. It's a traumatising time in our lives: on the one hand, we still have innocent preoccupations, but on the other, we are just starting to come to terms with our sexuality. It's why we become obsessed with our own reflection, and it's why the mirror in House is both an object of indulgence, and of dark promise. That's why Gorgeous sees her face falling apart into flames - she is becoming aware that she is a creature of sin and lust, but also that said skin will one day fall apart, and she will become like the ghost that sits as the antagonist of the film.

Q: Is that why the ghost is the bad guy? Cause she's old?

A: Yep. She has ties to Japan's past - her love story is one made tragic by war. She represents the past and everything that must grow old and die. The pre-teen heroes reject her, because she is what they will all become - a dead creature, forgotten and ancient.

Q: What about her evil cat? What's up with that?

A: That's just an evil cat. Don't think too much about it.

Q: Wait, you're doing that thing again...

A: What?

Q: Reading too much into parts of the film, and then not reading at all into other parts...

A: Well, again, that's the charm of this movie. It has all of these concerns racing in the subtext, but it's also quite happy to just be a dumb movie.

Q: That's your final word?

A: No way. We haven't even got onto how this is a deeply feminist film yet...

Q: What?!

A: Yep, House is a film with feminist concerns. Horror movies commonly feature female protagonists, but often only so the filmmaker has an excuse to slip in some nudity and some good old fashioned 'women-getting-hurt' cruelty. House is different in that way. For a start, the pre-teen heroes aren't just a babble of screeching victims. Sure, some of them are, but then you have a character like Kung-Fu who feels like she has been transported in from a completely different movie. She refuses to be a victim - when things get weird, she reacts in a way that usually only men in horror movies are allowed to respond. That is, she kicks ass. She doesn't run around screaming - she has a practical response to the danger.

Indeed, even though the rest of the characters in the film wait to be saved by their teacher, the 'knight in shining armour' (in a deeply ironic fantasy, he is even depicted as such, riding a horse and all), he is ultimately revealed to be a waste of space. He's meant to be coming to rescue the girls - instead, he sits in a noodle bar, and yes, in the film's conclusion, gets turned into a pile of bananas.

Even though the film might end with the girls being defeated, they are repeatedly shown as being more intelligent and capable than the film's males. Not only is the teacher a failure, Gorgeous' father is depicted as being totally removed from reality. That's why the scenes he shares with his daughter are filmed against an obviously fake background - he represents a false, artificial element of her life, not part of the drama and importance of her real world.

Q: I dunno, man...You're saying all this, and I keep thinking...Yeah, but someone gets turned into bananas...

Q: Well, at least the film made an impression on you, right? At the very least, even if you think everything I have said is total bullshit, this is a film that is unlike any other you might have seen. And to my mind, that makes it worth every second of its screen time.

October Challenge: Horror Haikus - The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Original)

A punch to the guts
can be beautiful in its
own terrible way.