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Eclispe Review
[Editor's note: Chris is the braver half our two-writer staff, having willing sat through another Twilight film. I think we owe him a debt of gratitude. Stand up, Chris, and take your applause.]
Ok, let’s get this over with. The third chapter of the Twilight Saga is upon us, and teenage girls everywhere are sacrificing small animals to their Robert Pattinson alters in their goth-ed out bedrooms, but does Eclipse offer any value to the rest of the world, or guys that get brought to midnight showings by their girlfriends…on opening night?
Well, the story starts out in that same damn field with Bella (Kristen Stewart) and Edward as he begs her to marry him, yada yada. Meanwhile in Seattle: trouble is a brewing, some random guy is attacked and turned into a vampire. Back to Bella’s self important life, where despite the fact she clearly told Jacob (Taylor Lautner), in the last flick, that she chose Ed, she still wants to see Jacob so she can torture the last bit of dignity out of him. Jacob motorcycles over to her high school to gladly entertain the notion, and of course, Bella hops on the back of his bike and wraps herself around him with the stipulation that her vampire-boyfriend should be okay with this even though he and Jacob are instinctual supernatural enemies and Jacob clearly wants to get his doggy style on with her. Meanwhile in Seattle: More people are popping up murdered or missing. Cops suspect gang violence. I suspect an unresolved, overdrawn-out plot element with curly red hair hair from the last two films.
Long story short- The above formula continues for some time. Bella wavers between choosing to become a vampire hence alienating her wolf boy and family forever or growing old normally and loving Jacob. While that typical teenage girl flip-flop with a supernatural twist plays out, matters continue to get worse in Seattle and Alice Cullen (Ashley Greene)-via her Jedi skills- realizes that the carnage in the city is the for the purpose of breeding a vampire army to hunt Bella, which is also bad because this indiscreet killing will attract the attention of the Volturi-the stereotypical Euro-trash vampire, supernatural police of the Twilight world. Them sniffing Seattle worries the Cullens since they were ordered to “turn” Bella in the last movie and her lingering humanity might be problematic.
With a horde of newborn vampires approaching and the possibility of the ancient Volturi rolling dropping by while their in the neighborhood, the opposing vampire and wolf clans decide to unite to weather the storm together. This would be really epic if the battle wasn’t for the purpose of protecting one whiny teenage girl who has constantly placed these two ancient clans and cultures at risk for two and half films now. Even though both families can clearly see she is messing with both of their respective “sons,” the wolves and vampires unite for one epic battle that could easily be avoided by tossing one ungrateful teenage girl to the wolves…err the vampires, maybe the Volturi … you know what I mean!
The Good: The writing is self aware of the ridiculousness of its own love triangle and often laughs at itself with clever dialogue by some of the more likable characters, namely Bella’s father, Charlie (Billy Burke). Without the love story, the wolf and the vampire history would almost be intriguing. Eclipse offers some interesting views into some of Cullens’ pasts, and while Rosalie’s story is your typical I Spit on Your Grave formula, Jasper’s brutal past offers more intriguing insights into why he’s been such a tool for two films.
Horror fans and action fans have a much higher body count and dismemberment factor to look forward to, but the imagery is mostly minimalist as the director has the fact that vampires are made from that stupid glittery stone substance to avoid too much blood flow and a higher rating than PG-13. At the end of the day, it’s still a dark romance, but Eclispe has a storyline that moves much faster than the previous two film, so don’t worry about having to sit through another half hour of Bella lamenting how awful her teenage life is in her diary.
I know the feeling...
The Bad: While I won’t rehash the awfulness of Bella’s self important–I don’t know why I hang all over Jacob in front of you, Edward–attitude, the film does have some pretty cliched and obvious writing. Aside from the two groups of enemies having to unite to face a common enemy routine, the film just has a way of spelling out what is about to happen. Every time there’s a flashback it tends to be blatant foreshadowing as if we can’t guess that this out of context story about an ancient wolf woman having to spill her own blood is going to have some later meaning. Without giving away any “spoilers,” it’s safe to say the film telegraphs its punches, just a touch.
Another bit of half-assed writing introduces the fact that new born vampires are the strongest and that’s why we’re supposed to be afraid for the characters in this big up coming battle. What kind of backwards mentality is that? Why are the Volturi so feared than? Couldn’t a bunch of young vampires over throw them if that’s when vampires are at their strongest? Maybe trying to make sense of Twilight logic is unwise….Moooving on.
and The Ugly…
While I was impressed with the introduction of the Volturi in the last movie their direction was pretty weak this time around. Dakota Fanning and co., outside of their of Italian throne room, looked more like the type of losers that hang out in the mall between Hot Topic and Spencer gifts on Saturday nights than vampire royalty. Fanning’s evil Darth Vader presence seemed silly this time around. Considering they’re probably going to be the central storyline of the next two (yes, Breaking Dawn is going to be split) movies, they had better work on their creepiness.
Fin-
What can I say? It’s Twilight, people. If you’re into dark romance, then the film offers the typical trappings of a tortured love triangle and decent lighthearted humor; for the rest of the world, at least, its faster paced and less fluff filled than the other two movies.
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?
Paperhouse – Being A Kid Is Scary, Damn It
Posted by Matt in Creepy Kids, Hidden Gems, Reviews on May 31st, 2010
I used to have this recurring nightmare when I was about 10-years-old. It was my birthday and, as was customary amongst my group of friends, I was having a sleepover at my house. The activities were typical – pizza, video games, a viewing of Dumb and Dumber, and perhaps talking about the girls we refused to admit we had crushes on. After everyone had fallen asleep in their respective sleeping bags, I would remain awake in fear that something was off about this night. Nick had been acting strangely, I think. Before long, he (or another friend, depending on which night I was having this dream) would promptly rise from his slumber, reveal himself as a demon, and proceed to stalk me and my other friends through the neighborhood. When the demon would catch one of us, he’d “infect” that person, so I never knew who to fear at any given time. It’s amazing that my mind made that up without ever seeing The Thing until much later in life, no? I’d wake from this nightmare and sometimes, when I had people sleep over, I’d secretly fear this scenario was going to unfold before my eyes.
I guess the point to this little anecdote is that the lines between dreams and reality are less rigid when you’re a child. I was reminded of this last night by a lesser-known English film called Paperhouse, which Jay Clarke from The Horror Section kindly mailed to me being the nice guy that he is. I’ve been meaning to sit down and watch it for some time as I’ve heard only good things about it, including the fact that it was directed by Bernard Rose who later went on to do Candyman, a personal favorite.
Paperhouse begins when bratty 11-year-old Anna Madden (Charlotte Burke) comes down with a glandular fever on her birthday in the midst of class. Prior to feeling ill, she is shown drawing a house on a piece of paper. It’s a simple thing, like most of us have drawn at one point or another; square frame, rectangle roof, 4 boxy windows, a door, and a fenced yard. After causing a disturbance in class by fighting with a classmate, she’s sent to the hallway where she passes out and seemingly arrives in the dreamworld she just drew. She stands up in a field and runs her way toward the surreal house. Before she can enter, she wakes up surrounded by concerned classmates and her teacher.
Anna’s mother comes to take her home and reveals that she planned to give her a riding lesson for her birthday that afternoon but it will have to be postponed due to her illness. Desperate to not lose her chance at the lesson, Anna lies that the fainting was a hoax so she could get out of class. Of course this backfires and her mother forces her to return to school where she takes off with an older girl to put on makeup and play hide and seek near an abandoned railroad. Once reaching her hiding spot, a dark tunnel, she passes out again and reenters the dreamworld. This time she makes it to the door only to find that it is locked and she cannot enter. She awakens after a rescue party finds her.
When she’s told to stay in bed for a few days, Anna has nothing to do but add to her drawing and see what happens the next time she sleeps. First she draws a boy looking down from one of the windows. When she arrives in the dreamworld, she discovers that the boy, Marc, cannot let her into the house because he doesn’t have legs (she didn’t draw them) and because the house doesn’t have stairs. The boy warns that she should run away because the house is dangerous. She ignores his warnings and later draws stairs and legs. The stairs manifest themselves correctly, but the legs creepily appear disembodied and shatter.
As her illness progresses, Anna’s time in the dreamworld begins to outweigh her conscious moments and strange overlaps appear between the two. She discovers that her doctor is treating a boy named Marc who is suffering from muscular dystrophy and cannot get out of bed. It seems that her artistic endeavors impact Marc in real life as well. Her absentee father who frequently is away on business trips and struggles with alcoholism also begins to appear in the dreamworld as a villain after she draws him, gets frustrated, and scribbles out his face.
The rest of Paperhouse is a journey that rides the border between dreams and reality. We never really know what is going on or why Anna is suddenly able to impact others through her little paper drawing. Rose offers no solid explanation and, without revealing any more plot, we’re left to interpret the conclusion in any number of ways.
I really didn’t know what to make of Paperhouse after it finished but the more I think about it, the more I realize I enjoyed it. The film’s surreal imagery, moody soundtrack by Hans Zimmer, and gritty cinematography take you right into Anna’s dreamworld. It’s a PG-13 film that I suppose could be classified as a “kid’s movie” but I don’t think that’s a fair designation because it deals with themes geared toward an adult audience that perhaps remembers what it’s like to be a kid. What I found most interesting was how it explores the connection between real life troubles and the subconscious/unconscious. In a way, Paperhouse is really an in-depth character study of a troubled young girl. She’s been all but abandoned by her father, acts out in school, and as a result is lonely. All of this manifests itself in the dreamworld where her father is a menacing lunatic and she desperately tries to make a connection with Marc. Rose uses the dreamworld to show how tumultuous a child’s imagination can be – sunny skies and amber fields one moment, then storm clouds and earthquakes the next. It’s not completely a horror movie but it really feels like one at moments, especially when Anna makes a drastic change to her drawing that you know will bring about nightmarish consequences. It’s instant dread when you see her close her eyes.
I’m not sure what to make of the ending and can’t help wonder if Rose doesn’t feel the same way. There are so many themes presented that it might have been impossible to tie them up in a rational way. I could ponder on this one for a while and I still feel like I’m missing some of the meaning but regardless, Paperhouse surprised me pleasantly. On a side note, the version Mr. Clarke provided me was taken from an old VHS tape and it made me feel nostalgic for those imperfections and tracking lines on the screen. I miss those days. Anyway, this one’s tough to find as there’s no Region 1 DVD out there but there are plenty of bootlegs around I’m sure. Just ask me if you’re interested…
Alone In The Dark II – Disgraceful. Will The Real Edward Carnby Please Stand Up?
Posted by Chris in Reviews, Sequels, Trash, Video Games on April 29th, 2010
The other day I sat down and watched, against my better judgment, Alone in the Dark II (2008). I got nostalgic and soon found myself suckered in with the mentality that it couldn’t ruin one of my favorite childhood franchises worse than Uwe Boll did. I was dreadfully wrong.
Growing up, Alone in the Dark’s signature hero, Edward Carnby, was the Chris Redfield before there was a Chris Redfield. He could shoot his way through a house full of zombies, and if he ran out of bullets he’d a grab a knife from the cutting board or even the cutting board itself and crack open some rotted heads. If that didn’t work he would just throw some killer head-butts and crescent kicks. Let’s see Redfield do that.
However, with superior graphics, the Resident Evil franchise took the spotlight away from its spiritual grandfather, so Alone in the Dark attempted to revamp for the new millennium with Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare (2001) which moved Carnby and the franchise out of prohibition era America into modern day with some lame explanation about the character being a descendant in some secret organization that passes down the name… really a load of marketing garbage to try to compete with Resident Evil. Carnby, himself, was transformed into a Fox Mulderish wise cracking, early thirty-something, and if that wasn’t bad enough they even paired him with a red-head love interest and threw some government agency conspiracy into the mix.
Unfortunately, this “X-file” that no one should have opened gave Uwe Boll, the worst German since WWII, an idea. And when Uwe Boll gets an idea, a beloved survival horror title becomes a disgrace.
Boll’s “brilliant” vision of bringing Alone in the Dark (2005) to the screen cast Christian-we thought your career was over-Slater as Carnby while Tara-bad boob job-Reid played the Dana Scully-ish character. The movie was mess of bad slow motion, half-assed CGI monsters, plot holes, and Stephen Dorff – the guy you wouldn’t know if he wasn’t the villan in the first Blade movie – who brought plenty of terrible over-acting as the psudeo-villian that, of course, turns good just in time to save the day. While Slater was, in retrospect, a passible Carnby, the movie itself was terrible and only loosely based on anything anywhere in the games.
After the dust cleared from that mess, I was content on going back to playing the original trilogy on an old laptop and forgetting about the other two massacres until Atari decided they were going to try to make everything better by resurrecting Carnby in 2008 with the simply titled Alone in the Dark, which did its best to try to create a plot that would completely discount everything that happened in The New Nightmare and Boll’s piece of trash by simply pretending the game, and the horrible movie based on it, never happened -what I like to refer to as the Highlander 3 maneuver. Nevertheless, this new Alone in the Dark expected us to swallow the fact that Carnby Rip-Van-Winkled it sometime during the Hoover administration and woke up in modern times. Iwould be wiling to swallow this if the gameplay wasn’t a mess of innovation for the sake of it, an over extended mutli-genre debacle, and filled with more bugs than an apartment in Baltimore. At least, I was sure now that the franchise couldn’t get any worse?
Then I sat down and watched Alone in the Dark II (2008). Although, why it has the right to be a “2″ to anything still remains cryptic. The original game to bear that title was about zombie pirates turned bootleggers kidnapping a little girl during prohibition and this is definitely not that. You could try to make the case that it’s a sequel to the Boll monstrosity, but honestly you would have to get some military quality bungee to make a stretch like that since the plot bares no resemblance to anything Alone in the Dark. Maybe most insulting is that Carnby is now portrayed by Rick Yune, whose ethnic background is completely different than that of the character he is portraying. Real good continuity, people! Perhaps the producers should just be honest about the fact that they just stamped the franchise name on their crappy movie and put Carnby’s dog tags on Yune’s horrible character because they wanted people like myself to get suckered into watching it.
However, if the film was even average I wouldn’t have cared. Instead, it unloads its abysmal writing by kicking off with a shootout/chase scene that has something to do with a witch, a dagger, and some group of demon hunters that run around firing big guns at bad blurs of CGI while yelling poorly acted lines to each other through cool stylish headsets. Carnby somehow, which remains puzzling (yes five minutes in and its already confusing) becomes involved with the dagger, gets stabbed with it, and spends the next half hour being carried around by the demon hunters group. While Carnby is lying around bed whining, Lance Henriksen – who we want to like because he was Bishop from Aliens – goes on this whole rant about how he’s not going to get involved, probably setting up the reluctant hero that has sacrifice himself cliche. Then we cut to more shootouts with the CGI blur.
If you haven’t surmised it, the film was unwatchable, made Uwe Boll look like Martin Scorsese, and I couldn’t even force my
self to finish it, which leaves me with one nagging question. Do I want there be to another Alone in the Dark anything? It’s a really sad reality because this series had some strong potential back in 1992. Back then, there wasn’t anything like it. Dark halls, puzzles, guns, and Lovecraft style creepiness: footprints in the distance and macabre sneaking up on you from behind every corner had never rooted itself in the world of gaming. This franchise should have developed into something fantastic as technology improved. Instead, we get a character that’s completely revamped too many times, too far separated from his tough-as-nails Charles Bronson meets Macgyver roots, and four bad attempts at trying to have this franchise claim a foothold with a new generation. Can the real Edward Carnby please start cracking some more heads with a frying pan, and maybe box the hell out of Uwe Boll, until we get another decent entry into the franchise?
The Descent: Part 2 – No Light In The Darkness
Posted by Matt in New Releases, Reviews on April 27th, 2010
This post may contain spoilers.
As I’ve said many times on this blog, 2005′s The Descent was not only one of the best horror films of the past decade, it was my favorite. Writer and director Neil Marshall crafted a terrifying tale about a group of girlfriends who become trapped in an uncharted cave system and are stalked by mutant humanoid creatures. It was loaded with atmosphere. You felt like you were trapped in there with them because Marshall executed his film perfectly – minimal light, subtle score, and (gasp) a believable premise with believable characters.
And as I’ve also said before here, I’ve been weary of The Descent: Part 2 ever since I first read about it. I didn’t want it to take any magic away from the original and without Marshall’s involvement, it seemed doomed for failure. Still, it would have been unfair for me to write it off without giving it a fair chance so I picked up a copy today and settled in for some more spelunking mayhem.
The Descent: Part 2 picks up immediately where the first left off (if you completely disregard the original British ending, that is….grrr) with Sarah (Shauna Macdonald) escaping from the cave three days after the group first entered. She’s found by a local truck driver/weirdo and is quickly admitted to the hospital where we find out that she’s forgotten everything that’s just happened to her. This plot contrivance comes in handy for when the nonsensically foolish and aggressive local sheriff decides to force her back into the cave to find the rest of her friends. Sorry for all of the italics, but they’re necessary. Sarah, who has been traumatized out of her mind, is being forced to go back into the cave and no one objects? It makes not one iota of sense. But maybe I’m being too snarky here?
Nope. I’m not. From this point, The Descent: Part 2 is a gradual, steady, descent (awful pun intended) into hell – not the good horror movie kind, either. Writers J Blakeson and James McCarthy seem to disagree with Marshall’s idea that believability enhances scariness. On top of Sarah’s baffling return into the cave, the writers also expect us to believe that the sheriff and his inexperienced deputy would go with her and three rescue pros sans training or even a one-minute prep speech. Nonsense. What’s more is that there’s an abandoned mine shaft elevator that leads directly into the cave system and apparently the only one who knows about it is the truck driver who found Sarah. The icing on the cake of this part of the plot (mind you, we’re only about 10 minutes in) is how the old man describes his grandfather’s discovering of the cave system and his subsequent disappearance.
“Looks like they broke clean through to hell and the devil was mighty pissed.” (Wince.)
Beyond the lack of believability, basically nothing works for this film. Gone is the intelligent quintet of women who came prepared (or at least thought they did) and tried to stick together when the craziness started. In their stead, we’re left with a group of cliche horror characters who fail to see the value of teamwork. Even Sarah, the first film’s dominant heroine, runs off like a fool after her memory returns. That’s right – instead of trying to escape the way they came in, she heads deeper into the cave that nearly killed her. Sorry, I guess I’m backtracking into that believability thing again.
Perhaps most frustrating about The Descent: Part 2 is how it takes the first film’s best elements and bastardizes them into trite horror conventions. Scares where you least expect them have been replaced with cheap jumps exactly where you expect them. Before almost every attack, there’s the requisite shot of a crawler creeping up a wall in the background. Additionally, Marshall’s idea of a subtle score has been pushed aside to make way for something that would better belong in a Michael Bay blockbuster. Shrieking strings and banging drums accompany the chase scenes while horns tend to telegraph the jump scares, making the film feel like any run-of-the-mill horror release.
Gore has been kicked up a notch for this sequel in order for it to appear more extreme because the gorier, the scarier, right? Ugh. Sure, the first one had some good pick axe kills and even an eye gouge, but this one uses gore in an attempt to keep the audience interested. Every time that a crawler bites someone’s jugular, the ensuing fountain of blood is excessive and often ends up in another character’s mouth. Then there’s the uber-necessary scene where Sarah and the deputy are standing in a pool of murky water revealed to be a toilet after a crawler takes a shit on them. I fucking kid you not. Despite being bunch of blind, slimy cannibals, they’re still well potty trained. Who knew?
The script also has more groan-inducing moments than I can bare to describe. The writers attempt to insert genuine heartfelt scenes where they don’t belong. They’re cheap and they all come off as hokey, especially the parallel they draw between the deputy and her daughter and Sarah and her daughter. In the original film, Sarah has strange daydream moments where she sees/hears her dead daughter. They’re always appropriately mysterious and ominous but in this sequel, they take the potential subtext of those scenes (sadness, tragedy) and ham it up all over the place. It’s enough to make you want to yell at the screen.
Despite all of these aspects, I made it through about 75% of the film thinking it was going to escape as “mediocre to sub-par” until my jaw dropped, my eyes glazed over and I uttered “you’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” As the asshole sheriff was about to meet his maker, Juno shows up and takes down a crawler Schwarzenegger style. Really? We’re supposed to believe that she fought off all those crawlers after receiving a pick axe through the leg? I hate this movie.
I know. That's how I feel too.
That’s about all you need to know, folks. There are plenty of other dreadful things to be found, including “moments” between Sarah and Juno and a truly ridiculous ending that makes zero sense. It’s like the writers watched the original film and made an effort to cheapen everything that was great about it. If you loved Neil Marshall’s The Descent, don’t watch this one. It bears no resemblance to its progenitor.
Triangle – Sailing On The High Seas Of Repetition
This post contains spoilers
Since we’re on the topic of tired cliches, I just watched Triangle, a film I’ve read many positive things about from other horror bloggers and online reviews. One overzealous Netflix reviewer went as far to proclaim, “A++++ Wow, this movie kept me completely mesmerized, transfixed and eyes as big as saucers for every single frame!!”
Damn. Mesmerized and transfixed, huh? Clearly, we weren’t watching the same film. The one I watched was predictable, repetitive, and average at best. There’s no way for me to convey my thoughts about Triangle without spoiling some if its mysteries, so stop reading here if you’re set on wasting 98 minutes of your life on it.
Still with me? So, how many of you have seen The Abandoned? How about Horrorfest 4′s The Reeds? Shit, how about Groundhog’s Day? You guessed it – Triangle‘s plot hinges on a re-occuring loop of events. Sure, that alone isn’t enough to condemn the thing, but when a movie is touted as “mind-bending” or “thought-provoking”, I’m expecting that if it relies on a familiar narrative device, it at least takes it in a brand new direction.
Unfortunately, Triangle confuses quantity for quality. Rather than putting a refreshing twist on a staid concept, it simply repeats that concept over and over until you wish you too were trapped in a time loop in the Bermuda Triangle instead of watching this movie.
The film follows Jess (Melissa George) as she embarks on a sailing trip with some friends off the coast of Florida. Prior her departure, she’s seen at home with her autistic son, cleaning up a spilled cup of watercolor paint and then stuffing her duffel bag into the car trunk. Upon her arrival at the boat dock, Jess is clearly in bad shape – disoriented, only semi-sure that her son is at school, and looking likely to spend her afternoon vomiting off the side of the boat. But that doesn’t sway boat captain and friend, Greg, who is happy to take her aboard anyway.
Before long, some nasty weather appears out of nowhere and capsizes their boat, leaving them stranded in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle (not that they ever mention that location – I guess we’re just supposed to assume based on the title). After a while of drifting on the open ocean, a huge ship appears and seemingly rescues the group. Only – you guessed it – this isn’t your ordinary ship. No, I’m not talking Ghost Ship proportions, but the entire vessel appears to be empty as the friends walk around looking for a captain or crew. Still, there’s evidence that someone has been here before – a banquet hall stocked with food, a photo of the ship framed in a hallway. Finally, Jess and Greg find cabin 237 (subtle nod to The Shining – Kubrick, not King) where the sink is running and “Go To Theater” is written on the mirror in blood.
Once the group arrives at the ship’s theater, things get all kinds of crazy and Jess gets accused of shooting and killing her friend Downey. She vehemently denies it, saying she was just outside with another of their friends. Before they can get to the bottom of it, a madman in a burlap sack (not so subtle nod to Friday the 13th Part 2) begins to shoot them with a shotgun. As the sole survivor of the shooting, Jess manages to beat her assailant up so badly that he climbs up on the ship’s rails and apparently commits suicide. But before falling, he shouts something about “having to kill them to escape.” Promptly after the assailant’s death, Jess looks overboard and to her horror sees their capsized ship, complete with the entire group of friends (including herself) screaming for help. Begin the doppelganger cycle. Or are we already in it? I think we are.
The cards are out on the table – Jess is trapped in some strange cycle that she’s evidently been trying to get out of for years. The rest of the film proceeds to show the loop from a variety of angles – from the perspective of the burlap sacked killer, who we learn is actually Jess trying to escape from the cycle and also from multiple other versions of herself.
I suppose it could be fun to try to figure out where exactly the loop begins, how it happened, or if it’s really a manifestation of her own mental instability but the problem with Triangle (for me, at least) is that I don’t care to. From the very beginning of the film, it’s painfully obvious that we’re headed for a loop plot. How many times does Jess have to say she’s experiencing deja vu or feels like she’s “been here before”? After the loop has been revealed, we’re forced to watch the same footage multiple times with subtle differences that, I guess, are supposed to be shocking. And just when you think the layers of the loop have all been revealed, another 7 are thrown on top. It’s just overkill.
Oh, yeah - this part again.
Please, please, please don’t get me wrong. I love movies that make me think. A good film should make you think long after you’ve watched it and Triangle did indeed make others think deeply. It just failed to inspire that reaction from me. I didn’t find it at all scary either, which is another matter. So what you’ve got here is a post full of verbal diarrhea about this film. Am I wrong to be so unenthusiastic about Triangle? What do you think?
Shiver – Holy Crap, Horror Movies Can Still Scare Me?
Posted by Matt in Hidden Gems, Horror, Reviews on April 13th, 2010
I swear, sometimes I think Netflix’s watch instantly horror suggestions are purposely and vindictively chosen to annoy me. Why else would they recommend House of 1,000 Corpses or lead me astray with Keeper of Souls? The process of finding a quality horror film on Netflix is disheartening at best and an infuriating waste of time at worst. But, masochistically, I still do it because I just might get lucky with a random choice. So, when my girlfriend recently read the synopsis for a 2006 Spanish film called Shiver to me, I agreed to give it a shot. She rarely chooses horror but when she does, she usually picks good ones (unlike myself).
The plot focuses on Santi (Junio Valverde), a teen with photophobia who gets burned instantly by sunlight and is forced to attend night school. In essence, he’s a modern day vampire (the kind without sparkles, thank you). Coupled with issues surrounding his estranged parents, Santi’s medical condition causes him to be a pariah and an easy target for ridicule. He’s socially awkward, has few friends and frequently has nightmares where he’s bursting into flames. At the encouragement of his doctor, Santi and his mother, Julia (Mar Sodupe), trade in big city living for a house in a remote country village where the sun rarely shines.
Things seem normal in this little town for, oh, about 12 hours following Santi’s arrival until a farmer’s sheep is viciously slaughtered by some sort of monster in the woods. The farmer fires his shotgun at the creature, but it quickly escapes. The farmer drags the dead sheep into a shop run by Dimas (the man Santi and Julia are renting their house from) and exclaims that this is the third of his animals to be slaughtered in such a way. When Julia inquires if the woods are dangerous, Dimas simply advises staying away from them. The next day, Tito, one of Santi’s classmates, is kicking a rock down the road when he accidentally sends it into the woods. While retrieving it, he sees a creepy set of eyes (Suspiria homage, much?), hears a growling sound, and decides to book it. Smart choice, kid. That same night, Santi hears growling emanating from the attic above his bedroom.
The next day, the two boys and another friend (Jonas) decide to hunt down the beast in the woods. Sounds very logical to me. I know I’d be quick to confront an unknown, growling, sheep-slaughtering beast. But I digress. Frightened after the beast runs past them, Tito flees and Santi takes off after him leaving Jonas alone. Jonas is killed and mutilated in no time and Santi becomes the town’s prime suspect.
That much will suffice for plot purposes here. What I’ve failed to mention thus far is how brilliantly this film is executed. Director Isidro Ortiz and Art Director Pilar Revuelta (Oscar-winner for Pan’s Labryinth) create an incredibly tense atmosphere by shooting the film in eerie blue and gray hues, keeping the pace fast with clever editing, and not relying on jump scares. The first half of the film is probably the scariest and most unnerving thing I’ve seen in years. At one point following a terrifyingly creepy stalking scene, I looked at my girlfriend and with a bit of surprise, said, “this is…really fucking scary.” That says a lot about Shiver. That never happens to me.
What allows Shiver to maintain its creepiness throughout the first half is its sense of mystery. What is this thing stalking the local residents? Ortiz gives us some decent glimpses at a long-haired shadowy figure without giving it away. However, it’s this excellent first act that sets the latter half up for a somewhat lackluster finish. I don’t want to give anything away here, but suffice it to say that when the big “reveal” happens, it takes the wind out of the sails. Once that mystery was gone, I wasn’t as scared. It’s really too bad, because Shiver had the potential to be one of the best horror films I’ve ever seen but it couldn’t maintain the momentum it built. That said, it’s still one of the better and certainly one of the scariest films I’ve seen in a long time. The first half alone has enough suspense, terror and atmosphere to make this one still highly recommended. Netflix, you’ve done me a kindness, finally.
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.
Bloody Birthday – Curtis Is Such An Asshole
Posted by Matt in Creepy Kids, Reviews, Trash on February 9th, 2010
Every once in a while, I’ll receive a movie from Netflix that I don’t remember adding to my queue like this week’s Bloody Birthday (1981). Perhaps I took some shoddy advice from a Bloody-Disgusting forum member. Maybe I took to my keyboard in a drunken stupor some months ago. Whatever happened, I decided to go into this one cold without even reading the movie description on the sleeve. From the disc art, it looked like it could be a cheesy 80′s slasher, so I was gearing up for some teenage slaughter mayhem. Turns out there is slaughter, but not in the form I expected.
In the film’s prologue (after a long and annoying titles sequence), we learn that three children were born in the town of Meadowvale, California in 1970 during a solar eclipse. Fast forward 10 years later and a series of bizarre murders in Meadowvale kicks off with a teenage couple fooling around in everyone’s favorite cliched horror film make out spot – the local graveyard. The suave male, who happens to look like Scott Baio during his Charles In Charge days, convinces his girl that sex in a freshly dug grave is the next best thing. Predictably, someone attacks the couple in the grave, killing him with a shovel and strangling her with a rope.
The next day, police question students at the town’s elementary school because the murder weapon is revealed to be a jump rope. Here, we’re introduced to our three eclipse children – Curtis (Billy Jayne), Debbie (Elizabeth Hoy), and Steven (Andy Freeman) who we learn not only share a birthday but also enjoy watching Debbie’s older sister (Julie Brown of Earth Girls Are Easy fame) dance naked through a peephole and oh yeah, murder people. That’s right, explained by some astrological bullshit about Saturn being blocked during their births, these three devils were born without a conscience and love to murder people.
Little Bastards...
Bloody Birthday lays all of its cards out on the table within the first 15 minutes but that isn’t my biggest complaint. By 1981, the “creepy kids” motif had certainly been done before with Children of the Damned and The Omen being the most prominent examples, but it wasn’t yet the cliche that it is today. What does annoy me is that these kids truly do act like 10-year-olds. Meaning, they’re idiots. They need to take some creepiness lessons from Damien – you don’t find him firing revolvers at teachers in a school where he could easily get caught. Plausible deniability, kids. Read up. Of course they don’t get caught and the incompetent local police doesn’t try to determine cause of death beyond “killed by psycho”. Seriously, one guy gets beaten over the head with a baseball bat and his death is attributed to hitting his head after tripping on a skateboard. Another girl gets shot in the eye with a bow and arrow, her body left on the street, annnnnnnd….no indication of cause of death! Must’ve been that damn illusive “psycho” that’s wandering around our little town!
The trio is uncovered by classmate Timmy Russell (K.C. Martel) after a failed attempt to lock him in a refrigerator at the local junkyard. Timmy’s sister Joyce (Lori Lethin) joins the fight after she discovers Curtis trying to poison birthday guests with rat poison. It all leads to an underwhelming conclusion that lacks any suspense (as the rest of the film does).
Also of note is the film’s terrible score which deftly segues from Brady Bunch inspired jingles to Kenny G saxophone-laden sex scenes. If nothing else, it’s funny to laugh at but it really detracts from the “creepy kid” atmosphere that director Ed Hunt is trying to achieve.
Beyond the Swiss cheese plot, Bloody Birthday‘s main offense comes in the form of Curtis. Oh, how I hate this little fucker. While Debbie irritates me with her false angel act (“oh, mommy! I didn’t do anything bad, I’m a good little girl”), she doesn’t come close to Curtis. As the dorky bespectacled dweeb of the murderous trio, he’s constantly annoying me with his faux evil smile, ridiculous gun-holding stalking scenes and general douchiness. If this video doesn’t make you hate him, then I probably don’t like you either.
But maybe it’s not all bad. In images, here are Bloody Birthday‘s strong points:
Scott Baio
Julie Brown's Nude Scene
"Hot" girls in high-waisted pants
This dog with the freaky eye
These headphones
The Bloody Birthday DVD features a recent interview with the film’s now-elderly producer, Max Rosenberg, who explains how he wanted to make a film showing that evil can come in all forms and show the consequences of having no conscience. I guess he achieved this but (and I feel bad for saying anything negative about the venture of an old man) he really only succeeded in creating a sub-par (sort-of?) slasher. Next time I update my Netflix queue, I should probably lay off the booze.
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