HorrorFest 4 – Surprisingly Tolerable!
Posted by Chris in Horror, New Releases, Zombies on February 4th, 2010
After a two year exile, I decided to grant After Dark HorrorFest another stab at being entertaining with the hope that this year’s choices would at least be “funny-bad” and not “I hope to choke to death on my popcorn bad.” As I discussed earlier, if you’re like myself and don’t have the time to see all eight films, then, as HorrorFest history has taught us, you’re at the mercy of a 75% terrible rate. Our choices were dictated by whatever the hell was playing on Saturday afternoon and evening, which basically left us to face Zombies of Mass Destruction and The Reeds.
While waiting for these flicks, Matt and I did our best to appreciate the diversity of the twenty other people who showed up for this thing. Our few but proud ranks consisted of a few single girls equipped with novels to read, some young couples, some older couples, a handful of the usual loud comment making riff-raff, and a dude in a twenty year old Starter jacket reading a week old newspaper.
Zombies of Mass Destruction was first and it started off with the typical zombie apocalypse trappings: a few rogue zombies lurching around going unnoticed, infected blood in the water supply, and of course some unforgivably bad “false alarm” jumps. While all this is going on we get a introduced to a split protagonist arc that plays out in the sleepy island town of Port Gamble, which is geography ambiguous but bears the stereotypical ignorant attitudes of The South/Middle America. One side of the story follows Frida Abbas, (Janette Armand) a pretty twenty-something of Iranian descent, who is trapped between her traditionalist father that wants her to honor her Middle Eastern heritage and the ignorant white-bred townies that barely accept her as an American despite the fact she was born in Port Gamble. The other half of the plot follows a gay couple, Tom and Lance (Doug Fahl and Cooper Hopkins), that have come to Port Gamble so Tom can come out to his mother.
Of course, we finally get back to the fact that there’s zombies taking over Port Gamble, showing up at the most inconvenient of times as Tom is about to come out to his mother and immediately after Frida has a big blow out with her father. Both parties are forced to seek refuge in the worst possible of places: the gay couple must hide in a Catholic church and Frida becomes a prisoner of her red-neck neighbor that wants to torture answers out of her after he discovers the zombie outbreak is the work of a Middle Eastern Terrorist group.
After the proverbial poop hits the fan, the film becomes a blend of borrowed slap-stick humor from Shaun of Dead, corny dialogue, some fun gross deaths, and a lot of preachiness about American attitudes and hypocrisies. Unfortunately, it’s an odd mix. It’s hard to swallow a serious commentary about post 9-11 paranoia after the corniest dialogue this side of porno.
One exchange between Frida and her boyfriend goes something like this…
Frida: You’re like the tenth person I had to tell I wasn’t from Iraq, today.
Derek: Maybe, it’s because you have ‘nice eyes-and-a-rack.’
Frida: Well there’s Nor-way you’re getting into my panties tonight
Derek: Kuwait-a-minute, I’m not from Norway….
And the humor only gets worse from here folks. However, it’s a fun movie if you don’t take it too seriously and ignore any attempts at a political commentary. Zombie fans will enjoy faces being peeled off like Fruit Roll-Ups, gardening tools used as melee weapons, and the typical “boom-head-shot.” There’s even a couple chuckles if you relax (drinking heavily before watching wouldn’t hurt either) and enjoy the ride. However, I prefer my political commentary zombies flicks to either be a bit more subtle or directed by a guy whose name ends in “omero.” Still, all things considered, I easily would put this one in the top ten of HorrorFest’s best movies without thinking twice about it.
After a short coffee break, we returned to the theater to watch The Reeds and discover only the same twenty people were still there with very few new comers. I’m pretty sure most of them didn’t even bother to get up for the hour and a half intermission, but I digress. The Reeds rolls out with another clichéd premise: the old “a group of twenty-somethings going off on a fun getaway” bit. How uncommon. Anyway, three couples head off and rent a boat to cruise through what is essentially a swamp and try to sail over to some pub for dinner.
Long story short, they get lost—even more uncommon for a horror movie—don’t find the pub and start seeing ghostly images of themselves while punky looking teens run through the reeds and cause general mischief. Eventually, the boat runs aground on a giant spike and one of the twenty-somethings fall ass-backward onto it. With one of their members mortally injured, the group has to split up and send somebody on foot through the reeds to get help.
The movie does pick up some steam here, and the atmosphere of isolation is done to a T. Surrounding them, the reeds become an endless desert of water and grass with an eerie air of mysterious happenings around them. Skeletons in cages rot below the boat. Members of the group start having prophetic visions. The strange teenagers hold some sort of Pagan ritual with mutilated animal parts. Good times.
Once this creepy stage is set, the black curtain falls and cast members start biting it in some of the most brutal deaths I’ve seen in a while. Every kill is raw, grainy, and wince invoking. I couldn’t wait for the conclusion; why are these people dying and what is going on?
Then the climax came, and “Ku-wait a minute,” what happened?! It goes from intriguing and eerie to nearly as Loony Tunes as The Gravedancers’ ending. Every creepy image from the first hour becomes over-exposed in a long drawn out finale that had me laughing out loud in the theater. Matrix style fast motion effects and overly dramatic music were just the tip of the iceberg as the director flushes the creepy tone he brilliantly developed down the toilet and replaced it with HorrorFest’s greatest hits collection, borrowing from both Wicked Little Things and The Abandoned for plot points.
Despite the terrible ending, The Reeds is not a bad watch at all. The creepiness spikes with some decent effect and the misery these people suffer through is done well. Again, as HorrorFest goes, this is still in my top ten.
While we didn’t discover any budding Sam Raimis or John Carpenters at HorrorFest this year, and I’m not sure if Janette Armand will replace Jamie Lee as the next great Scream Queen, I was not disappointed. I went with very low expectations and got pleasantly surprised. Both films were watchable and fun, which is more than I can say for most of the past two year’s slop. If HorrorFest keeps taking steady zombie steps to improve their film choices, maybe by HorrorFest 23 they’ll have a great thing going.
La Casa Muda – Taking Shaky-Cam Horror One Step Further?
Posted by Matt in Horror, New Releases, Trailers on February 2nd, 2010
With shaky-cam, documentary style horror films, directors aim to immerse us in the worlds of their characters. We follow them around tight corners and see through their eyes as they run into a flesh hungry demon. Or perhaps, we watch them stupidly argue with their girlfriend about staying in the house to become victim to said demon, but I digress. This sub-genre actually has a strong track record with The Blair Witch Project, [REC], Quarantine, Paranormal Activity leading the way. But now, La Casa Muda (The Silent House), an independent film from Uruguay, is bringing something new to the shaky-cam table.
First, full disclosure. I was contacted by one of the film’s producers, who gave me some info about La Casa Muda. I get things like this from time to time but usually I don’t write about them because frankly, I don’t care but this one piqued my interest since this sub-genre is one of my favorites. Now that that’s out of the way…
What makes La Casa Muda most interesting is that it is the first horror movie to be filmed in one continuous shot. That’s right – no cuts, edits, nothing. Director Gustavo Hernandez needed to painstakingly plan every single shot and aspect of his 72-minute film before ever pressing the record button. Cynics may say that this approach begs for mess-ups, flubbed lines, and poor acting but I’m being positive about this one. I’m excited by the idea. Also interesting is that this film was shot using the video capabilities of a digital SLR photo camera, specifically the Canon EOS 5D Mark II, making it the second film of its kind in the world (according to the producers – I couldn’t find the other one).
La Casa Muda is based on a real event that took place in 1944 in an old Uruguay farmhouse where two brutally tortured bodies were found without their tongues. Disturbing photographs found a the scene were key to solving the crime. Based on what I’ve read, it seems that Hernandez takes this real event and uses it as the backdrop for his plot:
Laura (Florencia Colucci) and her father (Gustavo Alonso) settle down in a cottage which seems to be off the beaten track in order to update it since its owner (Abel Tripaldi) will soon put it up for sale. They spend the night there in order to start the repairs. Everything seems to go smoothly until Laura hears a sound that comes from outside and gets louder and louder in the upper floors of the house. The father goes upstairs to investigate while Laura remains downstairs.
Pretty bare bones for a description, but I’m intrigued. If nothing else, I’m interested to see how effective a $6,000 72-minute continuous shot can be. Based on the stills I’ve seen, it looks pretty damn good. La Casa Muda is set to premiere at a few film festivals next month. The official website has some more info (if you speak Spanish). Check out the trailer too.
Appreciating Horror Cliches – Volume I
I have a love/hate relationship with clichés in horror movies. For one, I find poorly written, cliché-ridden films the easiest to review because I’m a sarcastic asshole and part of me lives to mock things. But when I’m taking the genre seriously, searching for that ever-elusive genuine scare, clichés are a disappointing sign of lazy screenwriting and studios’ desire to satiate audiences who are either too dumb to know any better or sadly just don’t care.
You’re all familiar with them and probably roll your eyes every time you see a demonic child doing a spider-walk towards our protagonist or a suddenly irresponsive cell phone displaying the “no signal” message during a crucial moment.
So, I’ve taken it upon myself to start a little project to point out the various clichés we love and loathe. Rather than a long, wordy blog post, I’ve chosen to briefly introduce each cliché (hopefully at the rate of one per week, but we’ll see) and create a compilation video showcasing its awesomeness/douche chilliness. This week’s inaugural cliché is…
The False Alarm – Our protagonist is home alone. They’re planning a quiet night of studying in their bedroom before bed but an odd noise disturbs them from their plan. Of course, they leave the safety of their bedroom to investigate (another cliché, itself). The camera, positioned just above their shoulder, follows them as they head toward the source of the noise – a closet, perhaps. The noise occurs again. Our protagonist hastily flings open the door – CUE SHRIEKING SOUND EFFECT – to reveal….a cat! They scream and then scold the animal for freaking them out.
There are dozens of instances of the false alarm – a sudden shoulder grab, a character pretending to be dead, etc. This overused device is meant to create tension and then reveal it to be a ploy so that when the real kill or attack happens, you won’t be ready for it. It never really works, yet it just won’t die. Let’s take a look.
HorrorFest II: Return Of The Low Production Dead
If HorrorFest’s virgin voyage is defined as a small handful of triumphant then HorrorFest’s return trip could only be described as a very tiny silver lining on some very dark clouds. Yes, the seas become rockier from here on out, so buckle down on the hatches and open up one of the rum barrels because viewers of these movies are going to need it. Production values sink significantly and story lines become near laughable, but I braved the storm and dealt with this collection as best I could. Needless to say it’s been a long week.
Nightmare Man (2006): I need to get this one done first, because in an hour I have an appointment with a hypnotist who’s going to remove it from my brain. Yeah, it’s that bad. Two seconds into this film, you’ll notice a jarringly abysmal production quality that makes Paranormal Activity look like had the budget of Titanic. What makes matters worse is the storyline that deals with an evil mask that looks like the producers blew $19.99 at Spencer Gifts (probably 1/5 of their budget), and this cheap piece of rubber is haunting a seemingly insane woman on her way to an asylum.
The plot utilizes the typical “oh no the car ran out of gas”, and crazy girl’s husband decides it’s a good idea to leaves his certifiable wife alone in the car. Shortly after darkness falls, something, someone, or a figment of her insane imagination shows up wearing the mask and chases her through the woods to a cabin where two twenty-something couples are playing truth or dare, (very clever), and we learned that the two girls have secret past of sexual experimentation in college, which has nothing to do with the plot, but this film need somethings to make it interesting.
To make a painfully long story short: people start dying, and the plot has some twists that are intended to keep the audience wondering if there’s demon or if the woman’s just insane. The answer is unveiled with the subtlety of Looney Toons, and for no good reason “Bull” from “Night Court” shows up to sort things out. Unnecessary cameos, like Richard Moll, are the going motif this year so stay tuned. Anyway, this one wins the “Most Horrible Award” of the bunch, and keep reading; it had some stiff competition.
Tooth and Nail (2006): This flick starts off with an artsy tone and an over-voice explaining that the apocalypse came because we ran out of gas so everyone started killing each other—okay—and the plot follows a group of survivors that is lead up by a professor type guy conveniently named “Darwin.” I suppose calling him Einstein would have been too much. Regardless, Darwin and “the tough” guy, “Viper,”—played by Michael Kelly of the Dawn of the Dead remake—are always at odds because Viper wants to secure their defenses and Darwin thinks their energies should be spent elsewhere.
Turns out Viper is right, but he splits after an argument with Darwin, and before this film’s motif cameo shows up in the form of Michael Madsen with his gang of cannibals called the “Rovers.” At this point, I settled in for some great Madsen antics. Remember that cop he tortured in Reservoir Dogs? He’s going to be bad-ass leader of this gang and he’s going to mess up some people. Then I blinked he was gone, wasted by a mentally challenged ten-year-old-girl. He must have lost a poker game to get stuck in this film, and was happy for a quick exit.
However, the film drags on without Madsen, through a predictable twist, a few okay kills, but overall it comes down to the typical: last girl is going to paint her face and get all primal and tough and is going to get revenge. And she does—film over.
Tooth and Nail, unlike Nightmare Man, is at least a decent attempt that makes a lick of sense. Its production value is also on the low side, but at least tolerable, and almost fitting for the post-apocalyptic setting. Overall, it’s a film that can’t shake the stench of average. Should you catch it? Only if it’s your in-flight movie and there are not any pretty clouds outside the plane’s window.
Borderland (2007): This film ups the ante a bit, especially in its cameo department since this time its Sean Astin playing Randal, an American, that helps a Mexican drug lord kidnap and sacrifice people along the Mexican border. Astin plays a convincing role, an extremely loyal servant following blindly on a lofty quest (“You don’t see it, do you? He’s a villain.”). Astin aside, the plot deals with three Americans that go into Mexico to get laid and one of them ends up getting taken by Astin’s “Lord of the Drug Ring,” and the two remaining Americans seek the help of a renegade cop, who lost a partner to the cult, to get him back.
While this title boasts the “Based on a True Story” tag, and I hate to fall for that spell, I still will file this one under “enjoyable.” The images do justice to real brutality and avoid the cartoonish. The plot itself is a much told tale of strangers in a strange land, over their heads, and combating a force they can’t understand, but the raw nature of the delivery is worth a watch.
Lake Dead (2007): I thought I knew what ridiculous was until I saw Lake Dead. Basically, it’s the tale of two bad films. The first half is an off-the-wall soft porn romp in somebody else’s wet dream, which was maybe an attempt to homage the horny-teenage exaggerations of the early 80’s slashers but it’s too over-the-top. Second half rolls over into a typical incest-born super strong killer/Texas Chainsaw clone type mess. Ugh, I can’t bring myself to relive the viewing of the film anymore, but it’s still better than Nightmare Man.
Crazy Eights (2007): Anything with Traci Lords can’t be bad, right? Horrible acting aside, this film follows six people that are following a map to a time capsule at the request of a dead friend. The group starts reliving childhood trauma and bad flashbacks that lead the viewer through this puzzle of the past that’s scattered around the circumstances of a box with a young girl’s bones in it. During all the hoopla of “I know what you did last summer-twenty years ago” the filmmakers make a couple attempts at strong atmosphere, but generally fall short. This one you can watch over the pretty cloud if it’s the in-flight movie, I guess.
Unearth (2007): Look out! Someone has dug up some bad CGI that looks H.R. Giger’s failed early sketches of The Alien and it’s pissed off. It’s hard to find anything constructive about something that reeks of straight to SyFy-monster movie. I understand that there’s an audience of people that love this type of flick, but I find they follow a formula, developed by the original Tremors (1990). Even the variables on this recipe are typical: one character has to have an addiction and another has to be a pseudo-villain, which has some obsession with the monster, that the good capture and refuse to kill him (because this guy never escapes and gets more people killed.) Another character will have a tragedy in their past, and the rest of the energy of the film involves developing some delivery system for the really exotic method to kill the beast.
Like I said, I know people that can’t get enough of this formula. Me, when I’m in the mood for the medium size monster movie, I just re-watch Tremors.
The Deaths of Ian Stone (2007): Someone jumped up in the middle of the night and realized that Bill Murray’s Groundhog Day (1993) just had to be a horror film. They sat down and got writing and this is how we got “Ian Stone.” I think I want to like this one. It’s different and even hard to describe the plot, which deals with this guy that is being pursued by these creatures that kill him every day so he can wake up in another life and do it again. While I do applaud the originality, since there isn’t much in this festival, the film attempts a loftiness beyond its means and doesn’t really do the sci-fi/horror multi-genre well, but I still slide this one at the top half of this year, and most of the previous year’s for that matter.
Mulberry Street (2006): How can you go wrong with rat zombies? Mulberry Street answers the question: what would happen if you combine Ben (1972) with 28 Days Later? Well, you get a halfway watchable zombie horror piece with some decent cinematography. While Mulberry Street is a bit grainy and some of the rat zombies are pretty hokey looking, I still enjoyed this one. It has a artsy feel like the filmmaker knew what he was doing at least half of the time, which is more than I could say for much of the slop we’ve been talking about. If you like zombie horror, check it out.
If I step outside of myself and examine HorrorFest as an entity where young filmmakers can have a chance to air out their amateur products, then I can recognize it as a positive – everyone needs a chance to start somewhere. As an artist I applaud all attempts at art, but as a critic I recognize that the product which is HorrorFest seems to be on a steady decline. HorrorFest I was mostly tolerable, HorrorFest II was mostly terrible, and HorrorFest III featured Ashton Kutcher’s Butterfly Effect’s (2004) second straight to video sequel, Butterfly Effect III: Revelations (2009) that seems to discount my theory that film festivals should be enjoyed with the knowledge it’s intended to showcase NEW artists attempts at ORIGINAL creations.
For better or awful, HorrorFest will invade theater this Friday, January 29, 2010. Buyer be warned. Stay tuned for a quick look at HorrorFest III and a preview of HorrorFest IV.
More Award Love
Horror blog award season seems to be wrapping up but I’d like to thank Corey and Jon from Evil On Two Legs for nominating us for not one, but all three of the awards being given. If you don’t know already, Evil On Two Legs is a terrific blog written (much like this one) by two friends that share a passion for horror. They also have one of the best blog names ever. If you don’t already, be sure to check them out.
Also, a big thanks to Jay Clarke from The Horror Section for issuing us the Fantastically Frightening Award. Jay runs a quality blog over there and has been a reader of ours since we started up almost a year ago. Thanks, Jay!
So much love in the horror blogosphere these days.
HorrorFest I Review
With the fourth installment of After Dark HorrorFest: Eight Films to Die For—or at very least films you want to die while watching—on the way, I thought I’d take this week to examine what has been and maybe gain some insight of what a potential HorrorFest viewer is getting himself into. Let’s roll with the highlights and disappointed groans of the first year.
Since I already touched on Wicked Little Things I will forgo diving back into that train wreck and start with a superior film, The Abandoned (2006). This strange little piece about a woman’s bizarre homecoming was one of the more surprising films in the series. Its quirky tone and Twilight Zone-esk format made it stand out amongst the crap pile. The plot deals with a woman who returns to her home country to the family house she never knew and while there she meets her estranged brother, but before the siblings can enjoy their reunion two zombie doppelgangers stumble onto the scene. Confronted with undead mirror images, the brother and sister team are forced to investigate a mystery that exposes a tragic past and leads to a thought provoking conclusion. This one IS worth a watch.
Next up we have Unrest (2006), a story about a Med-student whose cadaver’s angry spirit starts some havoc. While this piece had some good cringe moments–anyone up for formaldehyde diving with corpses–everything about this piece just reeked (worse than the compilation of bodies) of average. Nothing much to say, watch it if it’s a rainy day and this one is on SyFy, but don’t go out of your way.
Penny Dreadful (2006) – which first off, I thought was the stupidest title ever and then discovered that two other movies share the name – rolls onto the screen with a pretty awful premise. The trick is that “Penny” has a paralyzing fear of cars, so her shrink decides it’s a good idea to drive her out to the middle of nowhere where—oops—a killer happens to be on the prowl, and now her biggest fear is her only sanctuary. Yeah, it was as dumb as it sounds. Do yourself a favor, don’t watch it.
Gravedancers (2006) is a strange one, but not in a good way. I could write an entire piece on this movie alone. The premise seems simple enough: a bunch of 30 somethings go to an old buddy’s wake, get drunk, and dance on some graves, which produces a trio of unpleasant vengeful spirits, which is pretty standard and simple, not something you would think could be easily screwed up in a complex way. However, stick around, because while the first half is creepy with artistic ease, the second half takes one of the worse dives in film history. It’s like the filmmakers ran out of money, starting using heavy drugs, or just ceased to care, and the imagery goes from eerie to laugh out loud funny, until it leads up to a climax that is close to Looney Toons quality; I thought Wile E. Coyote was going to show up and drop an anvil on someone. People who like funny-bad need to see this one. Everyone else should steer clear.
The Hamiltons (2006) was my favorite of this year’s films. Its loaded with plot holes,cartoonish acting, and incest is apparently hot according to this movie, but, with all that aside, this film is a decent character driven and genre transcending experience. “The surprise” of the movie is fairly obvious as the premise is that a family of murders moves from place to place, kidnaps people, and keeps them bound and gagged under their house while systematically draining their blood. What this piece does well is everything that Rob Zombie attempted and failed to do with The Devil’s Rejects, the old sympathy for the devil routine. The Hamilitons forces you to live with the family in a manner that makes you identify with them. I think this one is a matter of taste. It worked well for me and has my recommendation, but I recognize that many people may hate this one.
Reincarnation (2005) aka Rinne comes to us from Grudge director, Takashi Shimizu, but is a much more creative film then either Grudge film. It deals with an actress that starts having strange vision after taking a role in a film that portrays a real life mass murder of forty years ago. The mystery unfolds with a creepy, but slow pace that’s worth waiting for. The climax is both terrifying and thoughtful. If you like J-Horror and want to see something that’s not the same the Ring-clone garbage then give Rinne a shot.
Dark Ride (2006) is New Jersey answer’s to The Funhouse (1981) and is set in Jersey’s once iconic amusement capital, Asbury Park. To really Jersey it up, this flick stars Jamie-Lynn Sigler of Meadow Soprano fame. The setting and her presence is mildly distracting but something had to distract people from the typical format, the typical twist, and the cheap rip-off quality to this piece. Not a gooden by any stretch of the imagination.
Snoop Dog’s Hood of Horror (2006) is your typical Creepshow format vignette piece. There’s nothing all that original about this one—especially since somebody basically did this ten years. Remember Tales from The Hood (1995)? However, this film does what it sets out to do: fun splatter and dark humor at its best. Plus, it features Jason Alexander of George Costanza fame up to his usual jerk-store-number-seller antics. Even though “HOH” has about as much artistic subtlety as a sledge hammer it’s still just good fun.
At the end of HorrorFest I, I would say that the average and horrible outweighed the brilliant six to three. That’s a low ratio, if you just pick one at random, which could really suck if you drive far for this thing, and since the cities are limited this year, that’s a definite possibility. If you’re a die hard horror fan that wants to truck out to somewhere to check it, my advice is weight the evidence carefully, watch the trailers, visit the sites, do your homework, and use your judgment, but don’t go out of your way if it doesn’t come to your city.
HorrorFest starts January 29 check official site for details: http://www.horrorfestonline.com/
After Dark Horrorfest 4 Is Upon Us
Posted by Chris in Horror, Movies, New Releases, News on January 17th, 2010
Well the fourth one of these things is upon us…. oh goody. For those of you who missed the first three, After Dark Horrorfest is a film festival of sorts that places eight unrated horror films in theaters across the country. Sarcastic tone aside, Horrorfest tends to be a mixed bag.
When I first heard about the concept of eight unrated Horror films coming into theaters I was pumped, pumped enough to race to the internet and find a theater near me that had was hosting Horrorfest. Unfortunately, my choice of movie was poor, a piece about zombie miner children called Wicked Little Things (2006). Maybe I went into the theater with lofty expectations about what shocking material an “UNRATED” horror film might bring. Other than a couple little-more-gorey-than-ususal kills, the film was pretty weak on all fronts. The plot was typical: the zombie children aren’t evil, but they just want revenge on the evil rich owner of the land, and the direction of the children made them comical enough to produce audible laughter in the theater; they ate flesh, but they didn’t run like demons or sulk about like Romerian zombies. Instead, they kinda briskly walked like the Seven Dwarves did with pick axes slung over their shoulders in their famous “Hi-Ho Hi-Ho” musical number, but it doesn’t work when “it’s off to eat flesh you go.” It’s just awkward looking.
The cliched plot and silliness singled handedly put a pick axe in my interest for After Dark Horror films for a while. I let about year go by before I started catching them on DVD, SyFy, and Fear.Net, discovering that if you sort through the garbage, the tonally awkward, and the cliched crap then there are some pretty damn good films involved. The Hamiltons (2006), which I picked as one of the best of the last decade – for reasons I can’t even sink my own fangs into – came from the first Horrorfest. On the other hand, there was Crazy Eights (2006), Dark Ride (2006) and Penny Dreadful (2006) that were all…well, dreadful.
Regardless Horrorfest will be in limited theaters the weekend of Jan. 29, and if anything can be learned from the history the eight films should be a handful of crap, cliches, and confusing dribble with a gem or two mixed in. Choose wisely.
For theater and film information hit up Horrorfest’s official site at www.horrorfestonline.com
King’s Picks
Just to be thorough, the article by King, which I cited from last week, had a second part in which he gave his list of the best scary movies in recent history. While King’s list didn’t really suggest a hierarchy he still agreed with us that Shaun of the Dead, 28 Days Later, and The Descent deserved high honors.
The rest of his list included: From Dusk Till Dawn, Scream, Mimic, Event Horizon, Deep Blue Sea, Stir of Echos, Final Destination, Pi, Red Lights, Saw, The Jacket, Pan’s Labyrinth, Jeepers Creepers, The Moth Man Prophecies, Eight-legged Freaks, The Hitcher (2007), The Mist, 1408, Funny Games, The Strangers, The Ruins, and Snakes on a Plane…
While it’s hard to agree with many of his choices… King, at least, presents a diverse from across the genre. King also gives great justification for each one. Without rehashing the entire article, a perfect example of this is his description of Final Destination where he compares it to “R-rated splatter versions of old Road Runner cartoons” because of the “Rube Goldberg” nature of some of the death sequences.
Also noteworthy, is that two his picks are based on things he wrote, however his praise of them are objectively geared towards the film elements. I personally thought 1408 was one of the weakest horror movies I’ve seen in a long while with the scariest element being the unnecessary casting of Samuel L.
Regardless, King’s list illustrates a diverse appreciation and open mindedness that we try to maintain here at No Room In Hell and more importantly doesn’t acknowledge the works of our patron punching bag, Rob Zombie.
King Revists Blair Witch For Formula On Fear
In a recent Fangoria article, America’s favorite son of the macabre, Stephen King, took his best swing at our recent motif here at No Room In Hell’s, “What’s Scary?” The article, which was titled as such, dealt with King’s experiences with horror cinema throughout the years, but focused on Blair Witch, docu-horror, and zombies. His analysis of the subject matter was intriguing but once again the demon of subjectivity reared his large horns.
Subjectivity in itself is interesting. After Matt’s piece, “The Search For Genuine Scares – Horror Fans And Bloggers Weigh In,” we discovered that horror is a personal experience. Something we couldn’t pin down. What is it about that feeling in our hearts and stomach that thrills us and freezes our blood in its veins that creates such diversity from person to person? When thinking about Blair Witch, I always ask what the hell made sticks and the extreme close up of an annoying girl’s nostrils terrifying? King’s answer, “The first time I saw Blair Witch was in a hospital room about 12 days after a careless driver in a minivan smashed the shit out me on a country road. I was, in a manner of speaking, the perfect viewer: roaring with pain from top to bottom, high on painkillers, and looking a poorly copied bootleg video tape on a portable TV.” I knew it; it takes heavy drugs, excruciating pain and bad picture quality. Seriously, though, the situation of how you watched that movie for the first time was important.
My girlfriend talked about seeing it in a basement at Princeton before the hype. Watching it in the dark on an unlabeled VHS and seeing those grainy woods, rough cuts, and just anti-Hollywood dinginess (King observes how one scene you can actually hear the sound of plane passing overhead) had to make the audience wonder could this be real? That spell was long defused when I watched in 2007, on cable TV, on a 54 inch TV screen, probably in HD, and my girlfriend sat by waiting for a reaction that would never come. Why? Because the magic was gone, the compilation of weak images had no value without a dose of imagination that I could not stir up after knowing it was fake.
Family Guy, in its endless wisdom, once a had a scene where Brian Griffin brings a blind man to Blair Witch and describes the film to him. Brian basically goes through a lot of “nothing happening, something about a map,something about a witch, the camera keeps moving, the credits are rolling and everyone is leaving the theater really pissed off looking!” Silliness aside, when you break Blair Witch down to its images that’s all this film was. It’s the personal experience of people who came to it at the right time and right place that brought it its success.
King attributes much of the recent docu-style horror to a formula that Blair Witch introduced. He praises Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead (2004) for its fast-paced opening that tears across the screen and settles into a title sequence designed to show our society responding to a zombie crisis. The blurry faux news clips, King asserts, seem to be inspired by the Blair Witch formula. King talks about one image in this sequence, “What we see in that brief black and white shot is what looks like a thousand devout Muslim worshipers, bowing towards Mecca in Unison—an image of mass belief that most Americans found troubling.” King goes on to make Synder’s unyielding, charging zombies a parable of terrorists, creatures that won’t respond to reason or threats; only a well placed bullet puts them down. His point seems to be that terror is about right audience, right place, and right time. In his words, only three years after 9/11 “What haunted us was the idea of suicide bombers driven by unforgiving (and unthinking, most of us believed) ideology and religious fervor.” What more is a zombie than a creature driven by a single purpose?
Horror is the blood stained mirror that allows us to look at our terror in a jar in a place we know we’re safe from its contents. Night of Living Dead 68’ hit society in a time of The Cold War and has often been analyzed as a parable of the “red scare.” Unknown monsters with a different way of moving about, turning us into them, and sweeping their ways across the country side. Communism or terrorism, the media will always have suggestions on what you should be afraid of, but just the classic fear of being lost with the unknown in the dark woods may do it for you (worked for Little Red and her wolf problem). Fear depends on what dark fingers tighten around your heart when you are afraid. For me, I’ve seemed to miss the boat on Blair Witch, but I think King’s analysis of it as a formula, giving the audience a douse of grainy reality, will be a growing trend in the next decade as low and high budget filmmakers alike try to find ways to run their claws down our spines.
Zombie Chicken Award!
Massive thanks to Ryne from The Moon Is A Dead World and Nicki from Hey! Look Behind You! for bestowing the Zombie Chicken Award upon us here at No Room In Hell! In case you’re not a horror blogger or haven’t read other blogs lately, The Vault of Horror started this impromptu award-giving season yesterday, encouraging us to pass it on to our favorite fellow bloggers. Here’s the description:
The blogger who receives this award believes in the Tao of the zombie chicken – excellence, grace and persistence in all situations, even in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. These amazing bloggers regularly produce content so remarkable that their readers would brave a raving pack of zombie chickens just to be able to read their inspiring words.
Over the past year, I’ve met some excellent like-minded horror bloggers and fanatics. It’s awesome that such a supportive and talented community of people exists. I hereby grant you the prestigious Zombie Chicken Award:
The Horror Section – drawing inspiration from the robust horror movie section at a video store he worked at many years ago, blogger Jay Clarke never seems to run out of content. His posts are both funny and informative as he lets readers know about small upcoming indie releases, has weekly features for cover art and news, and throws in regular reviews. But what I find most interesting about Jay’s blog is his coverage of horror film festivals/events/shows/screenings/you name it. Over the past year, the guy has had the opportunity to attend some really awesome events and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t jealous.
The Moon Is A Dead World – Not sure if I’m supposed to give this award back to the person who gave it to me in the first place, but I have to. Aside from being probably my first supporter here, Ryne is an outstanding blogger himself. Focusing not only on horror movies, he also reviews books, anime, and the occasional non-horror film. Ryne’s writing is concise and organized in a way that I can only manage on good days. He consistently has a strong voice in his posts and I always check in to see what he’s been up to.
The Horror Digest – Blogger Andre Dumas is a writing machine. Not only does she consistently post once or more every day, what she posts is quality stuff. Quantity really is quality on The Horror Digest. Aside from her seemingly tireless ability to write reviews, she spices up her blog with great features that, to me, are the sign of a quality genre blog. No one wants to only read reviews and she knows that. Check out her recent “Pranks Gone Wrong” post for a fine example of a feature I wish I had thought of.
Horror Crypt – Never afraid to piss people off with her opinions, Bloofer Lady is one ballsy blogger. While her recent rant on Paranormal Activity stirred up some firey thoughts in my brain (still formulating my plan of attack/response), it’s just a great example of how effective her writing is. I’ve always believed that writing shouldn’t be safe and it shouldn’t be done to always make people happy. She’s also one of the most active Twitterers (I refuse to say “Tweeters”, sorry) I have ever seen. Follow her for some quality tweets. For example, I believe her recurring theme yesterday was her quest to make macaroni and cheese. Quality stuff, folks.
More awesome blogs that deserve a full description/praise (but I’m sorry, time is short for me right now):
- Zombos’ Closet of Horror
- Fascination With Fear
- Hey! Look Behind You!
- Kindertrauma
- Evil On Two Legs
- Zombies DON’T Run
- Horror Extreme
I know this is an abbreviated list and many others deserve some attention, so forgive me if you feel neglected. I still love you.
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