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Splice’s Trailer Lied to You All!
Posted by Chris in Movies, New Releases, Reviews on June 14th, 2010
On May 10th, I found myself initially intrigued by Splice’s movie poster, and then subsequently rolling my eyes at the trailer. Readers of the review I posted will remember my panning of it as just another cliched attempt to rehash Mary Shelley’s format and splice it with modern problems in order to sell a Sci-Fi horror film. After sitting down with this flick, on a Tuesday afternoon with the ten other people that were only willing to chance seeing it with discounts ticket prices, I discovered I was wrong and had, in haste, committed the crime everyone’s kindergarten teacher warns about with that stupid adage of books and covers. Instead, I found myself watching a character driven piece about a romantic couple, Sarah Polley and Adrian Brody, who create a specimen, “Dren”, with human and animal DNA after their employing company refusing to support that taboo line of research. Why did I jump to conclusions about it being a cheap genre piece? Frankly, because, the trailer went out of its way to market it that way.
Splice isn’t even a horror film, but you’d be hard pressed to figure that out from the trailer’s dark music, sound spikes, and clever editing that indicates a film loaded with creepy jump scenes. Trust me, there aren’t many and the trailer actually manufactures jump scenes by inserts sound spikes and cuts where there are none. With the except of the last five minutes that takes one of the films notorious twists, little argument can be made about calling Splice a horror film. Again, it’s not.
So what is Splice? Well, its mostly an examination of genetic engineering and the possible effects it could have on the people who dare to mess around with it. This is fair warning for people who get annoyed at preachy-ness this film and its “what’s the worst that can happen” line/motif are very ANTI-genetic engineering. However, the film does make a good case. Well, sometimes…
The problem that remains is that Splice tackles issues and character development within its run time of one hour, forty-four that you’d be hard press to cover in two hours and forty-four. Instead of well calculated development, the audience experiences WTF moments about every twenty minutes as the story unloads a tall house cards worth of twists with very little ground floor to support it. (I’ll give the minor spoiler alert, here, but this film doesn’t really have any Sixth Sense caliber delivery so don’t feel that shy about reading on.)
While the audience is offered a key-hole glance into a Polley’s character’s childhood, an abusive mother, it is hard to believe the transition of her attitude towards the clone “Dren,” which one moment has her treating Dren as her child and in the next Polley starts ripping pages out of Kathy Bate’s Misery playbook. Also, some scenes hint at an attraction between Brody’s character and Dren, but when Polley catches him doing something with Dren that Hallmark doesn’t make an apology card for it tends to feel rushed and unbelievable. When you’re in the theater scratching your head saying “Really?”, it’s never a good sign. While the twists did offer an interesting texture and depth of intellect to the storyline, they were always delivered without enough precedence to make them anywhere near believable.
Eventually after a few more WTF moments, the tension revolving around how Dren should be treated paired with Brody and Polley’s company pushing for results leads up to a final twist that is obviously coming after it’s blantantly foreshadowed. I just yawned as it went down and took the last transition numbly while receiving the trailer’s promise of a horror film, a least for five minutes. Then it’s over, and we have to hear that “what’s the worst that can happen” line one final time.
Worth watching? Kinda. It was different, and different goes far in my book these days, but “rushed” is never a word you want a critic to describe your story line with and that’s the only way I can describe it at film’s end. However, if you’re in the mood for something out of the ordinary then go check it out. What’s the worst that can happen?
Pandorum: In Space No One Can Hear You Be Unoriginal
I know everyone else probably finished bitching about this last year, but anyone else like me that waits for questionable movies to hit Netflix Streaming might just now be thinking about catching Pandorum. Well if this is the case perhaps you should think twice. This lost in space sci-fi/horror/action/martial flick is still looking for it tonal continuity.
Perhaps Pandorum isn’t supposed to be horror. I’m still not sure. It starts off with the typical trappings of a space opera: folks just woke up from cryo-sleep, the ship is F.U.B.A.R, and then we work our way up to a false alarm scare where what appears to be a zombie turns out to be a former crew member’s corpse strung up by his neck. From here on out, the groggy space-van-winkle main character, Bowers, (Ben Foster), runs around the ship trying to shake off his cryo-amnesia while he radios back and forth with the only remaining commander officer, played by Dennis Quaid who wonders how his brother’s Sci-Fi flick was ID4 and here he is doing this.
While Lieutenant Dennis Quaid is trying to get the controls on the bridge working so he can use the communicator to fire his agent, Bowers has his ass kicked by another survivor named Nadia (Antje Traue), that is every bit a bad caricature of every role Milla Jovovich has ever played. About two minutes later, the horror element of this movie flies out of the window as the monsters are given entirely too much screen time, which is a carnal sin for maintaining a creepy setting even if your ghouls are scary. Not only are these things pretty silly looking, but the effects that display their movements are sped up in a cheap obnoxious fashion to the point that I thought I hit the fast-forward button on my remote by mistake.
Milla?
With all the creepiness gone, the movie plays out like some weird combo of Aliens and The Descent, until Bowers meets Manh (Cung Le) and now we can also throw in some martial arts sequences to keep fans from making Aliens rip-off jokes. I know a small party of survivors are racing against a fatal mechanical problem in a ship filled with killer creatures, but look at the pretty Kung Fu; Sigourney never threw no Judo-chop! All that aside, we eventually discover that Pandorum refers to a kind of space madness (didn’t Ren and Stimpy cover this like twenty years ago?) which seems to mirror schizophrenia, and the audience is left to wonder about Quaid’s character who has rescued another survivor that seems a bit quirky, and thus gives us our next little ring of drama. Who has the Pandorum? Is it Quaid or this new comer, Gallo, that’s really crazy?
Flashing back to our trio of survivors… after some more Kung-Fu, Milla-Jo. and Co. run into a little girl named “Newt,” excuse me… I mean some other Pandorum ridden survivor who is clearly insane but they accept help from him anyway, because what the hell else can you do in these movies? So, his insane ramblings and some weird cave painting type carvings, which I guess we’re supposed to assume he did, paired with Quaid and Gallo arguing over who’s insane and who remembers the past clearly attempt to fill in the missing plots points.
From here on out, we’ve reached the home stretch, which means every five minutes must lay down another highly clichéd twist borrowed from various sources: Fight Club, Twilight Zone, Secret Window, wherever. Don’t worry though. Our trio still has the formulaic Aliens- beat the mechanical disaster shot clock and evac sequence, and we even get one more Kung Fu- showdown for good measure.
While this movie isn’t actually as bad as I’m making it sound, its flaws were glaring in your face. Biggest problem was the fact that they never make the viewer care enough about the universe they’ve created to even understand any of the dozen twists that pop out jack-in-box style. While we get some back story about Bowers’ father, their mission to colonize a new planet, and Bowers’ wife, half of these subplots hold no sway over anything. In fact, the characters are constantly making revelations that have little to do with anything. For example, the audience is hyped up by a moment when we see a baby creature and Milla, err Nadia, says “They’re breeding!” Don’t get too excited by that concept since it is never explored again, or maybe, the constant surreal flashback to Bowers beautiful wife have you curious where that line of authorial thought is going. Nowhere! Bowers finds where her cryo-pod would have been and remembers that she dumped his ass while he was still on earth, and hence isn’t even on the ship. So?
Is it fun? At times. Is it scary? Only if you think the shot of the alien’s cheaply made up faces roaring at the screen, which director was clearly obsessed with, is terrifying. Is it worth watching? Yeah, it’s a good rainy day flick, and by “rainy day” I mean category five hurricane that has trapped you in a fallout shelter. Otherwise, I’d be cautious about opening this Pandorum’s Box.
‘Survival’ Theaterical Release- Not Quite A Zombie Plague Sweeping the Nation
Tonight, May 28 2010, marks the national theatrical release of George A. Romero’s Survival of the Dead, but don’t expect zombies to be tearing up the screens from coast to coast. The limited release will be placing Romero’s latest flesh feast in only about twenty cities, (Listed below) which seem to be only working out for Cali that has seven theaters hosting the much maligned movie. However, if you are a die-hard Romero freak somewhere in the middle of the country you’re pretty much left out in the cold.
However, I stand by what I said in my review of the film: I enjoyed it, but I recognize that it may disappoint. So don’t travel for this one; hit it up on of the digital rental mediums first and then gauge how many miles you want to trek for it. And there’s no need to feel guilty about it. To paraphrase Romero himself, speaking to Fangoria on the reverse release to VOD before theater, “this method is perhaps the best preview for a film ever” and “I’m glad it’s out there and available for people.” In short, George says its okay to watch on your PS3 or Xbox before you drive halfway across the country to see it.
1) Atlanta, GA: Midtown Art Cinemas 8
2) Cambridge, MA: Kendall Square Cinema
3) Durham, NC: Carolina Theatre – Durham
4)Chicago, IL: Music Box
5)Austin, TX: Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar
6)Denver, CO: Mayan Theatre
7)Santa Ana, CA: South Coast Village 3
8)San Diego, CA: Ken Cinema
9)West Los Angeles, CA: Nuart Theatre
10)Minneapolis, MN: Lagoon Cinema
11)New Haven, CT: Criterion Cinemas 7
12)Hartford, CT: Real Art Ways Cinema
13)New York, NY: Village East Cinemas
14)Philadelphia, PA: Ritz at the Bourse
15)Seattle, WA: Varsity Theatre
16)Santa Cruz, CA: Del Mar Theatre 4
17)San Francisco, CA: Lumiere Theatre 3
18)Berkeley, CA: Shattuck Cinemas 10
19)San Jose, CA: Camera 12
20)University City, MO: Tivoli Theatre
21)Washington, DC: E Street Cinema
Survival of the Dead Review: Romero Devours His Own Logic
George Romero’s living dead films are known for creating a perfect atmosphere of zombie horror with an undertone of social commentary, but recently it seems old King George has been making social commentary with an undertone of zombie horror. Survival of the Dead, which hit the digital rental market last evening suffered from a political commentary that got in your face like a zombie with bad breath, but didn’t come equipped with as many of Romero’s usual charming conventions to stave it off. Survival has this way of recycling concepts from the previous five films, but executed them with much less grace and a large lack of simple logic.
The movie begins on one such note with a narration from Sarge (Alan Van Sprang) whose acting and explanation of why he went AWOL aren’t in the least bit convincing. Fans of Dawn of the Dead (78) remember the horrors that Peter and Roger faced when they raided the poor tenement houses: family members eating each other, rotting undead bodies stored like cattle, teammates committing suicide before their eyes. When Peter and Rogers abandoned their posts, you were able to sympathize and believe their actions. Survival attempts to condense this concept into a two minute long scene about having to kill your comrades, which just plays out with cartoonish head pops and lines that hurt your ears as Van Sprang tries to act.
After an unnecessary rehashed scene from Diary of the Dead, just to remind the viewer they met Sarge for twenty seconds before, we finally get a glimpse of the film’s main setting, Plum Island, where two warring factions of Irish families are feuding over how to treat the undead. Much like Dawn’s poor slum tenets, Shamus Muldoon (Richard Fitzpatrick) believes the dead should be kept “undead” while Patrick O’Flynn (Kenneth Welsh) gathers his death squad of Elmer Fudd mercenaries and attempts to exterminate all the zombies despite the protests of his daughter Janet (Kathleen Munroe). Her sole voice of reason is mostly ignored by the citizens of Plum until Shamus captures her father and is convinced by Janet to exile O’Flynn instead of killing him.
Back on the main land, Sarge’s own band of AWOL misfits are introduced. The loyal side-kick, Kenny, (Eric Woolfe) is watching a blatant spoof of Letterman on his PC’s wireless internet – which apparently must work better during an apocalyptic situation because mine is constantly re-buffering – and the token female, Tomboy, (Athena Karkanis) that is for no good reason (and I’m not even kidding) masturbating and moaning in front of her teammates. After that WTF moment, we meet the fourth team member, Cisco, (Stefano DiMatteo) who complains that Tomboy should let him help, but unfortunately for him she’s a lesbian. Go figure.
With that bit of awkwardness out of the way, Romero dusts off his old “Us and Them” motif and has the foursome stumble on a group of rednecks that have slain a family of African American Zombies, but left their heads impaled on spikes to suffer and moan. Sarge and Co. take out the red-necks and euthanize the heads in a scene painfully similar to the tenement basement scene from Dawn and then come upon a random kid that shows them that the rednecks had stolen an armored car with over a million dollars in it. Random kid, after arguing over why his iPhone is superior to Kenny’s PC – I guess MAC and PC still have “Us and Them issues” even after the apocalypse – shows Sarge a video made by the exiled O’Flynn that states he will offer anyone that finds him safe passage to Plum island.
O’Flynn and his loyal band of Elmers have fortified themselves in a shack at a Marnia, where they apparently rob the people that respond to the YouTube video and ship them off to Plum. Sarge’s squad falls into the trap but fights them off in a scene that can only be described in terms of a Road Runner cartoon including: a random guy fishing for zombies, a grenade blowing up next to O’Flynn’s shed that only knocks down the wall and leaves them standing there with ash-black dumbfounded faces, and a zombie death executed by putting a fire extinguisher down his throat and inflating his head until it pops. In short, the fight goes badly for O’Flynn but he Bugs Bunny’s his way out of his shed by lighting a bundle of dynamite on his cigar and handing it off to a zombie that actually makes the confused “huh” noise a second before it blows. I’m still not exaggerating.
Diary had its share of silly moments: the fast or slow zombie argument, the sarcastic dorm looter, and the deaf ass-kick Amish, but a bit of subtlety, and more importantly, balance was employed. Survival attempts to unload some chuckle inducing gimmicky death every time zombies are on screen.
After the goofiness, Cisco discovers another hole in logic by commandeering a giant car ferry that O’Flynn apparently never checked to see if it had gas in it. O’Flynn, I guess embarrassed from stupidity, surrenders to Tomboy and convinces Sarge to take him home to Plum, which finally encourages plot progression. Once they arrive on Plum, the team is greeted by citizen zombies chained up perpetually doing, and redoing daily chores including Muldoon’s daughter that is now undead, but still rides and jumps her horse with perfect form.
The plot stumbles along through some sub-plots and back stories, most notably is a Romeo and Juliet type affair between Muldoon’s right hand man, Chuck, and O’Flynn’s daughter, which pretty much means nothing because the girl’s already a zombie. The kicker is that Muldoon has this crazy idea that he can convince the zombies to eat animal meat if he can coax an intelligent zombie to do it. Of course, he sends Chuck to go fetch his old flame, since she’s still smart enough to ride her horse then logic would only follow that she’d be smart enough to eat it? Whatever.
Fans of the Day of the Dead (85) should find this concept most offensive. Dr Logan spent that entire flick explaining how zombies responded to classic conditioning in the same manner as humans and how important the process was. If just putting a “smart zombie” in a cage with an animal was enough, wouldn’t zombies have learned to eat different meats they encountered in the wilderness by now? Using that logic, if Big Daddy, from Land of the Dead, taught his zombie army to use use machine guns and Jack Hammers wouldn’t he have also taught them to use the drive-thru at the Chik-Fil-a?
I’m aware that Diary and Survival represent Romero’s reclamation of his own franchise and he’s shouldn’t be held to the conventions of the old series, which ended with Land, but my point remains that these films took time to develop their concepts, characters, and plot points; sometimes they even followed their own internal logic. Survival felt rushed in everything it attempted to do. Why have millions of dollars in an armored car as a subplot when there’s no society left where it will have value? Why would Muldoon think “these people just have some disease” when people in the same room are missing chunks of their skull? The film is held together by spit and bubblegum too often.
Is there a light side? Yes, true fans will enjoy this movie. Many good lines, amusing kills, chuckle worthy gimmicks, and just that magical Romerian zombie atmosphere are all still present. O’Flynn, while looking like Sean Connery’s drunken cousin, is actually a lot of fun whenever he is on screen, which this film needed desperately since Sarge is a human wasteland of character. However, the film also develops the usual philosophical observations that Romero fans are used to and that should please the heady zombie fan looking for that signature King George moral, but if Survival only gets a limited theatrical release in the big cities then I wouldn’t drive more than an hour to go see it, or otherwise you might be risking a big gas bill for a film that has the potential to disappoint.
Kevin Smith Gives ‘Red’ the Green.
For those of you that remain ignorant of this project, New Jersey’s favorite sarcastic son, Kevin Smith, is trying his hand at horror. His newest project, Red State, that promises to deliver fear by examining fundamental religious groups is now slated to begin filming this July. Smith, who cites real life Kansas Baptist Minster, Fred Phelps, as his inspiration seems to imply that this film will rethink the boundaries of horror. In an interview with Rotten Tomatoes, Smith said, “To me there’s all kinds of horror, and killing someone’s not the absolute worst thing you could do to another human being.” Smith’s heart tends to be in the right place – and we all want more ‘heady’ horror in our genre – but do we trust the guy that thought Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back was a good film to do this ambitious project well?
Whether you approve of Smith’s resume or not, the project seems to be a go for this July and should prove an interesting watch. Smith has certainly chosen a difficult concept to tackle on his entrance to the genre as most of these films end up as bad 1973 Wickerman-esque revivals, but maybe he’ll give something grainy and fresh to revive the extremist group sub genre. We can at least give him the benefit of the doubt until it hits screens. He can’t do worse than (insert Rob Zombie joke here) can he?
The Crazies Remake: More Boom For Your Buck
The basic rundown is a simple recipe for a horror movie, drop a biological weapon that is designed to “disable a population” by infecting them with a disease that causes general confusion and homicidal tendencies into a small town’s water supply and wait. Potential for creepiness is definitely there as fans of the original will remember the granny in the rocking chair with the knitting needles, but for this run they decided to go action flick. Well mostly…
Some remnants of a horror film remain. We get zombie faces on the infected, a high body count, some false alarm scares, and few grizzly kills. One of the more notable scenes involves a mortician that sews his security guard’s eyes and mouth shut despite the fact that he’s still alive, but the dust never settles long enough for the movie to ever really become that creepy. Every scene features something blowing up or bursting into a fireball while faceless government agents fumble around like the Keystone Cops during their bad attempts at quarantine.
In a strange way, the film took on a feel synonymous with the Golden Age of TV – the Western. Why not? After all the main characters are a sheriff, David Dutton, and his loyal deputy, Russel Clank; and, in the tradition of Bonanza or Gun Smoke, Dutton and Clank keep showing up in the nick of time when every anyone is in trouble. The convention gets uncanny. Dutton is about to be castrated by a runaway bonesaw and Clank shows up to step on the cord with just inches to spare. A girl is tied to table with a Crazy ready to stab a pitch fork into her as the duo rides in to the rescue. 
The SAME girl is later tied to chair while a Crazy has a gun on Dutton, but Clank’s does a nifty hard shot through the window with the Winchester to take him down. I’m surprised the Crazy didn’t toss himself out the window and fall to the grounding screaming and doing the flying chicken as a tumble weed rolls by. If a Crazy in a black hat with a long handlebar mustacheo tied the girl to railroad tracks then I was going to leave.
Sarcasm and old action sequence conventions aside, the remake succeeds in cutting down Romero’s lengthy commentary on incompetent military intelligence to managable chunks and mantains an acceptable portion of the original’s creepy feel. At the end of the day, The Crazies 2010 was an enjoyable up-tempo re-imagine of its 70′s counter part, but don’t go into this one expecting a pure zombie film, as the trailer attempts to market it, because the movie never settles into that genre either. However, it’s a decent watch or at very least doesn’t leave you with a blinding rage over the fact that they remade it.
Shutter Island – Unsurprisingly Unshocking
Shutter Island – Martin Scorsese’s latest blockbuster, or as I like to think of it, the latest entry in a line of films that fail to surprise audiences with their formulaic turn-the-world-on-its-head twist endings. If you’ve seen the trailers for Shutter Island, then you shouldn’t expect anything less. They practically spoon feed you the fact that things are “not what they seem” and the entire time you’re watching the film, you’re just waiting for the big reveal. And said reveal is nothing more intricate than the likes of What Lies Beneath or Secret Window. We’ve seen it before a dozen times with different characters and slightly different circumstances but it has become a tired cliche, one that even fabled directors aren’t avoiding.
Rant aside, Shutter Island is actually a pretty good film. It’s loaded with eerie atmosphere, dark imagery, and features strong performances from all of its principal cast. The story picks up in 1954 when seasoned US Marshal Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his new partner Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) are dispatched to investigate the disappearance of a mental patient at Ashecliffe Hospital, a facility for the criminally insane located on an island in Boston Harbor. The patient, Rachel Solondo, drowned her three children in a lake behind her home, went insane and refuses to believe she has been committed at Shutter Island. The night before Daniels’s arrival, Solondo vanished from her secure cell and hospital staff are baffled.
But, YOU GUESSED IT, things just aren’t as they seem. Right from the get-go the island’s officers and hospital staff seem a bit off. Daniels and Aule are required to surrender their firearms before entering the grounds and despite heated interrogation, none of the patients, doctors, orderlies or nurses want to offer any useful information. Before long, it becomes apparent that Daniels is on the trail of a conspiracy with violent and perhaps unethical intentions. I’m being purposely vague here as to not spoil the big ending.
Throughout the film, Daniels’s back story is gradually revealed through a series of beautifully constructed dream sequences. We see him take part in the murder of Nazi guards at a death camp and subsequently become an alcoholic after he returns from the war and we learn that his wife was killed in a fire started by pyromaniac Andrew Laeddis who he believes is also on Shutter Island. As these dreams and hallucinations become more vivid and the hospital staff grow increasingly deceptive, the film’s central question is if Daniels is going to fall victim to the conspiracy or if he’ll expose it.
Visually, the film is consistently striking. When Daniels and Aule arrive, a massive storm rolls in, enveloping the island in hurricane-force winds and pounding rain. As the duo investigate, the the rain reinforces the inherent claustrophobia – there’s really no way off of this island. Surrealistically shot with vivid colors and deep contrast, Scorsese’s dream sequences and flashbacks are Shutter Island‘s strongest moments. One sequence is set to opera, with reams of paper flutter in the air while a bleeding Nazi lies dying on the floor as Daniels’s troop scours the death camp office. Another dream finds Daniels walking through the death camp in pristine snow peppered by decomposed bodies. When he turns to look at the body of a young girl, her eyes open and she asks why he didn’t save her. Through strong style, Scorsese is telling you to pay attention to these scenes as they are central to the “big reveal”.
Even if Shutter Island feels like a 138-minute ride to an inevitable twist, at least it’s an entertaining one. Borrowing plenty of horror film elements (with a few clear nods to The Shining), this film is continuously suspenseful and at times frightening. Daniels’s trip to Ward C, where the most dangerous criminals are kept, even features a terriffic cameo by our soon-to-be Freddy Kruger, Jackie Earle Haley. Scorcese avoides most of the obvious horror cliches (though there is at least one good jump scare) and maintains his claustrophobia and paranoia through atmosphere.
Shutter Island was a fun watch. I just wish the shocking ending was that there really wasn’t a shocking ending. Now that would have been shocking.
The Wolfman Remake…Just Why?
Maybe the moon was full when some Hollywood lunatic decided to remake The Wolfman (1941), but not much thought was put into the project after that. How can anything with Anthony Hopkins and a budget to CGI enough blood splatter to fill a swimming pool go wrong? Well frankly, it goes like this.
The characters (with one exception) are boring and brutish, the trappings of their drab atmosphere just permeated too deeply, and we end up with flat performances. Oscar winning Sir Anthony Hopkins plays Sir John Talbot whose son Lawrence Talbot (Benicio Del Toro) returns home after learning that his brother has been missing. Hopkins mostly mopes around like an aging bad ass while yawning out creepy one-liners and ends up looking like a mix of his characters from Legends of the Fall and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Del Toro suffers from a similar bland personality of an emo kid whose favorite goth band has just canceled their concert a night before the show. I can’t imagine director Joe Johnston could be to blame for this awkward tone with a resume featuring, Honey I Shrunk the Kids, The Rocketeer, The Pagemaster, Jumanji, and Jurassic Park III. How could you go wrong?
The plot tries to hinge itself on Lawrence’s troubled past where he witnessed his mother’s suicide and now must return to the site of his mother’s death to discover why his brother has also met a grizzly end. Long-story-short, Lawrence realizes his memories are false and his mother was also killed by an obvious plot twist that reveals the true identity of the beast, but not before Lawrence tangles with the werewolf and also contracts the curse.
Curses and uninspired writing aside, the movies is visually fun, and I think that is all the filmmaker set out to accomplish here since the movie makes no attempts to be original, to create compelling characters, a compelling atmosphere, or an interesting story line. Instead, the audience is given a laser light show of dismembered limbs, decapitations, disembowelments, and a climatic werewolf on werewolf battle ala Underworld. It’s fun to watch, but it sure as shit ain’t Shakespeare.
The saving grace is Hugo Weaving who portrays an aloof Scotland Yard inspector named Abberline whose presence on the screen is missed the second he leaves it. Weaving unleashes his usual smug delivery of mundane lines, just dragging out syllables, in ways only he can and brings the Abberline character to life in another wise lifeless cast of dull characters. If you need further proof then check out how epic he looks fighting the werewolf below…
Maybe not, but Weaving performance is still the only reason to see this film, unless you’re a die hard werewolf fan that wants to see a lot of cool CGI slayings. Don’t show up looking for substance, because it just isn’t here.
Somewhere in the distance I think I hear Lon Chaney Jr. howling at the moon…mournfully.
Romero Goes Remake Crazy
Well, we all knew that every chapter of the holy zombie trinity would be remade one day, but a remake of The Crazies (1973) seemed like something that would float around the internet like rumors of Romero directing Resident Evil and never happen, but here we are two weeks away from The Crazies 2010 premiere. For the past twelve years, whenever anyone asked me what The Crazies was about I was always quick to say, “its one of Romero’s zombies movies without zombies.” The post apocalyptic environment and snarky commentary about government was still present, but there just didn’t happen to be any walking corpses around. Still, it created that same world-apart-at-the-seams atmosphere and watching it you expected a zombie to lumber from the tree line at any moment. Now-a-days, with an expanded definition of zombie horror; I would argue, from what I’ve seen of the trailers, that Mr. Executive Producer Romero has merely added the zombies to market it into a zombie happy film industry (not that there’s anything wrong with that).
However all this talk about trailers and remakes had me thinking about the old one, and how I remember it being kinda hokey… Well, see for yourself.
Man, have trailers come a long way in thirty-seven years. Guess subtlety wasn’t big in the 70s…I digress, here’s the new one…
Zombie horror or not, as a devoted Romero follower, I’ll be in the theater opening night.
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.
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