When I was putting together the “quote banner” for the site, I came across a guy who liked Horror Movie A Day, but that it lost points because I “dislike Asian horror”. This was written a year or so ago, when I had very few Asian films reviewed here, and yes, most of them negative. But I hope that guy is still reading, because I have given several high marks to Eastern fare since, and X-Cross (aka XX (Ekusu Kurosu): Makyô Densetsu) certainly continues that trend – it’s actually one of my favorite movies of the year.
The setup is what really makes the film. It’s like Saw III and IVcombined, in that the first part of the film shows you one character’s journey through an event, and then the 2nd part shows the other girl’s adventures. And each part has its own horror sub-genre feel – the first is a suspenseful girl in the woods type thing, and the 2nd is a one on one battle between a girl and a romantic rival who has gone insane and taken to running around dressed up in a costume and wielding giant scissors. But then the 3rd part is where the movie truly takes off, as the girls reunited and face their enemies together, culminating in a huge bloodbath via a batshit insane 4 way fight.
And that’s what makes the film work so well. We start off with suspense (suspense that actually works for that matter), then go into some light survival/”torture” elements, and finally just the gonzo type of stuff that director Kenta Fukasaku is known for (he did Battle Royale 2, for example). It works much better than you might think, and the way the film keeps elevating is admirable to say the least.
Plus I always like those sort of ‘two sides to a story’ movie setups. You see a broken light swinging around in one story, and the second story explains how it got that way. It’s not an easy thing to pull off – you run the risk of making the first part of the story incomprehensible because there is too many pieces that won’t be filled in until the next part, but Fukasaku and screenwriter Tetsuya Oishi do a good job of providing a lot of these type of “ohhhh.... that’s how that happened” moments without sacrificing story coherence.
Sadly, no US release is planned for this one yet, though since it’s been released in Japan and other countries, perhaps those among you who know their way around a region free DVD player can figure out how to get their hands on a copy. And then tell me how, because I can’t make heads or tails of that stuff.
Note - you may notice my review is rather vague compared to usual. That's because I think the movie is best when you go in totally blind, as I did. But because I like to serve, here is the (too long) trailer for the movie nonetheless. Watch at your own risk (of not enjoying the movie as much as me)!
By now, there’s not much that can be done in the way of originality in the “Girl’s car breaks down in the middle of nowhere and she runs afoul of a mutant or two” genre, but bless writer/director Stephen Goetsch for trying in his film Alive Or Dead (aka Inhospitable, a fact that is provided to us right at the beginning of the film in one of the oddest legal language screens I’ve ever seen:
On a basic level, absolutely nothing new happens here; the entire film plays out just like any of the millions of others over the past 30 years. But there’s just enough originality, or at least peculiarity, to warrant giving this one a pass, despite its many flaws.
For starters, the film begins with a girl having phone sex with her boyfriend – as she drives on Old Horror Movie Road. And when she reaches the point where a vibrator is necessary, she uses her cell phone charger instead (the cigarette lighter port end – not the phone end, you sick bastard!) when the vibrator falls under the seat. THEN, as her phone dies, we can assume that her... business makes the thing short out when she tries to use it for its intended purporse, thus providing the most unique reason for a dead cell phone I can recall. The vibrator is also used in another horror movie staple: the dead flashlight. When the flashlight dies, like it always does, she uses the vibrator’s battery to get it going again. What a resourceful sex addict.
After this we actually get a good solid 10-15 minutes of cat and mouse suspense, and the reason it works is because we still don’t know if this girl is our heroine or not. It’s a long standing tradition to kill off someone in the opening reel, and since the girl is a complete unknown, it’s not quite clear whether she is our heroine (and safe) or our first kill (and thus a goner). Once it becomes clear she’s the heroine, the movie loses some of its steam in terms of suspense, but it keeps the randomness coming at a steady clip.
Along the way to its conclusion, we get a castle in the middle of nowhere (instead of the usual shack or rotted house), a guy who loves ice, a monk delivering long exposition rambles in a Shakespearean manner, an incredibly overplotted backstory, a rare reference to the film First Knight, and a redneck who looks like Mark Boone Junior dressed up as the killer from Antropophagus.
So all that is good, but the movie is far from perfect. For starters, the consumer grade digital video does the movie no favors – there isn’t any goddamn detail in any of the imagery! A closeup of a girl’s face should reveal pores, individual strands of hair, etc, but not here. It’s all a blurry mush, looking hardly better than Youtube. They also forgot to color time it, and the sound is quite often noticeably dubbed in later. All of this makes the film feel cheap and lazy, and since obvious effort went into making the film stick out from the others, it would have been nice if the technical aspects followed suit.
Not all of the problems are technical related though. For example, our heroine is one of the dumber in recent memory, as evidenced in the scene where she hides as close as possible to another girl that is chained up inside a bus – hide as far AWAY from her as possible, so when the killer makes his way to the back to get at her, you can escape! Dumb broad. It also gets very padded at times, and even at 80 minutes with credits, feels like it could stand to lose about 10 minutes or so.
The extras are pretty worthless; the commentary track is loaded with gaps (and they pretty much mute the film’s audio, so you’re literally listening to dead air half the time) and the making of is as dull as any other. Strangely, Lionsgate’s usual 4.5 hrs of trailers at the top of the disc include several for films that have been out for ages, like The Descent and Devil’s Rejects. Maybe this is a good sign though; perhaps they are going to return to focusing on quality instead of quantity.
OR, are simply ignoring horror in favor of Tyler Perry. Either or.
After a nearly year long attempt to rent (or even find) the original version of Funny Games, I decided to make an exception for my “watch the original first” rule when I saw that the remake was now on DVD. I figured it was a safe risk – by all accounts it was the exact same movie, shot for shot; and with the same director to boot. And once the film had concluded, I was quite thankful that it was the same thing, as it will spare me another wasted 110 minutes of my life.
The problem with this pretentious drivel is that writer/director Michael Haneke assumes that the only reason people go to see horror movies is to see people killed, graphically. No, asshole, we go for the suspense, and yes, STORY when applicable. I am sure that the success of Hostel and the Saw films led to him being able to remake his 1997 film, but the irony is that those films have better stories, more interesting characters, and more noble intentions in mind than simply mocking their audience. I’m not going to lie and say that I am not curious as to what sort of traps Jigsaw has come up with for us every October, but if the movies were as plotless and boring as this one, there’d be no such thing as Saw II, let alone V.
And fuck any movie that has a “rewind” sequence. Yes, I get the point – it’s “not the movie you came to see, you WANT to see the bad guys kill the good guys, blah blah”. Again, fuck you – your goddamn movie is long enough without spending 5 minutes showing us something and then rewinding it (rewinding it too far in fact) for a “do over”. At 75 minutes all of this could have been a bit easier for me to digest, but after an hour or so I am not hoping for someone to get violently killed because I’m a gorehound; I’m just sick of watching underdeveloped and snooty characters sit around doing nothing while two other underdeveloped and snooty characters talk to them. This might work as a play, but even then I’m not sure (it's worth noting that it doesn't work as a black comedy either).
Also, since one of the killer guys talks directly to the camera a few times, telling us that we want to see the good people die, it’s sort of a foregone conclusion that they all do. So there goes any suspense.
That said there are occasional moments where I was actually enjoying the film. There’s a great bit in the kitchen, with Naomi Watts walking back and forth with a doorway in the background. Having just watched Halloween again the night before, it’s easy to see where the idea for this scene came from; at some point, you’re expecting to see someone standing there watching, only to disappear the next time the camera passes. It’s suspenseful (it occurs before the guy talks to the camera), and well shot as well. Later, there’s a shot that’s something like 7 minutes long, detailing Watts’ attempts to free herself of her binds. It’s not particularly suspenseful this time around (this one’s after the 4th wall break), but on a technical level it’s pretty impressive.
There are also two things I flat out loved. One – despite like 5 production companies listed, only one has an animated logo at the top of the film. THANK YOU! The movie is long enough, thank Christ we are spared another two minutes of self-fellating logos. Second – there’s a scene where Watts runs out of the house and sees a car coming up. This scene always goes one of two ways in a horror movie: the heroine waves the car down, and it contains the villain, OR, her attempts to wave it down fail and the car keeps driving. But for once they do something different. She hides from the car to see who is driving before approaching it. She fails, and then of course the next car has our villains, but hey, it’s a start. But again, the movie is just shy of 2 hours long – it has to offer more than a handful of impressive moments and appeal to my hatred of logos in order to maintain my interest.
The irony, of course, is that the film has almost zero onscreen violence. The kid and the father (Tim Roth, NOT playing a hardass for once) are killed offscreen entirely, and Watts is merely pushed over the side of a boat. Oooh, so clever! I really wanted to see a kid’s head blown off, but instead I only got to HEAR it while I watched the other killer calmly fix himself a sandwich! Such brilliance!
(Actually, I DO want to see the kid get shot, if only to explain how the blood splatter from a kid barely four feet tall managed to have a central point located about 7 feet up on the wall. Was he diving through the air at the time?)
I dunno, maybe since I am neither a critic of “torture porn” nor someone who gets off on seeing such things, I’m just not the target audience for the film. I enjoy being held in suspense in the context of a good story with well written characters (at least for horror “films” such as this – if we’re talking popcorn junk, I just want to be entertained, a la Shocker), something Haneke and crew clearly weren’t interested in achieving. Romero and Cronenberg’s movies say something – but they work on an entertainment level as well. Making a pointless film to make a point (one that isn’t even totally valid to begin with) is just idiotic. In a way, it reminded me of that steaming shitpile Crash (not the Cronenberg one), albeit not as insulting or vapid. Still, the similarity is hard to dismiss; both films are trying to make a generalized and obvious point (and at least Crash’s point – “racism is bad!” - is actually true), and using a generic, dull film as a vessel of making it. I’m surprised Games didn’t win any Oscars.
Even though I knew The Strangers was very similar to Them (Ils), I still watched the latter knowing I was going to see the former in a few days. So knowing that, I think it’s even MORE surprising that I didn’t just like The Strangers, but liked it more than Them. Granted, some of the structuring was a bit less exciting than it might have been, but the differences were all for the better.
For starters, they don’t leave the house. Them really lost a lot of its tension when they went out into the open and into the sewers. I am afraid of being killed in my home, but not the sewer, because I’m never going to go in there unless I’m drunk and looking for Turtles or Barry Otto. Incidentally, the one time in Strangers that I felt myself relaxing was when they head out to their shed. Not that it’s a bad sequence, but the tension when they are inside the house is nearly unbearable at times, whereas the shed sequence seems a bit standard.
A big part of that is due to the fact that the house is rather small. It’s only one floor, so you know they can’t exactly back into a corner in the attic and be safe, because the killer might be walking around on the outside; a strong swing of an axe away. There are also only like four or five rooms, which limits hiding spots. Of course, there’s a trade off – without a lot of options, they need to find ways to keep the characters moving around, some of which are a bit clichéd (like the shed – they are going out there to use an old CB radio), but never flat out idiotic, which is good.
Interestingly enough, the film has a flashback which I think is just there to flesh out the running time, because it’s really not needed. I guess it’s nice to see the couple completely happy (they are on the verge of breaking up because she has just turned down his marriage proposal), but the cause of their issue is nicely (subtly) revealed before the flashback anyway. But since the movie is only 80 minutes with credits, I am guessing that people are already going to be pretty pissed off that even with trailers and such they aren’t even use up their whole two hour parking validation, so making it even shorter by cutting the sequence would make matters worse. Me, I like short films – better a 75 minute movie with a flawless pace than an 85 minute one with 10 worthless minutes.
The reason that the film is so short is that it’s simple. The poster pretty much gives away all the motive the film ever offers (they were home), and there are no dumb twists or tension-breaking backstory to flesh out either the heroes or the villains. You might have spotted a shot of Scott Speedman (hey pal, stick to stuff like this, not Underworld) being called a killer via blood on a mirror – don’t worry, it’s not a hint about his past or anything. It’s a movie about a couple being terrorized in their own home, and that’s it. Like my beloved Halloween, it’s the simplicity of the film that makes it work so well.
Does it work AS well? Well, no, of course not. There are a couple minor issues. One is the rather laughable opening narration, which tells us some statistics about violent crimes, and of course, that this film was based on true events. He also tells us that to this day, no one knows what happened in the house, which sort of spoils the ending (though this works to the film’s credit – if you think they are going to die, it becomes a guessing game of WHEN, as opposed to knowing perfectly well that they will live), but once the film concludes, one might take issue with this (highlight to read):One of them lives. Why doesn’t anyone know what happened if there is a survivor?
You may have noticed that Liv Tyler is the only one on two of the film’s three posters (I think this is the first film to have three posters all taken directly from the film itself). That’s because Speedman is absent for two large chunks of the film (he goes to get some smokes for like 15 min, and then is knocked out and hidden somewhere for another 15 later on). It’s all Tyler most of the time, which is fine by me, since she’s one of the most naturally beautiful actresses in ages. She (and Speedman, more or less) look like regular people, not movie stars, which adds to the film’s realism. Angelina and Brad would be impossible to believe in this situation, but not in Tyler’s case. And that’s even more impressive when you consider that she co-stars in my 2nd favorite movie of all time, a film without as much as a minute of anything resembling real life. So between that and her starring in a film with heavy Halloween influences (some of the subtle reveals of the killers are like the one in Halloween where Michael just sort of fades into view), she is now my de facto favorite actress.
The film’s writer/director, Bryan Bertino, has also shot an incredibly good looking film as well. Other than the cell phones and things of that nature, this film could easily be a well preserved relic from 1975 or so. No tripods, lots of rack focus shots, deliberate pacing, even the overall look of the film (particularly the final, day set scenes) remind me of all my favorites from the era: Halloween, Chain Saw, etc. Rogue better put this on Blu-Ray or there will be hell to pay! And hopefully Bertino gets another film soon, hopefully one that won’t be compared to an ultimately inferior (but still “first”) film.
One last note about the Them comparisons: (highlight for spoilers for both films)In Them the killers were young kids. Here, it’s suggested that they are young (we never really see any of the killer’s faces, but from the sides of their face and their overall size it is fairly clear that they are much younger than our heroes anyway), but never really spelled out. To me this was great, but I’m curious what you guys think – would you rather they had more explanation as to how old they were, why they were doing what they did, etc?
Goddamn you people, go see this movie. Ruins, Doomsday... no one went. Midnight Meat Train is looking at a limited release, and dog knows if Repowill even get that much. Why? I have no idea. Make up for it and go see The Strangers. I don’t care if movies are expensive and people are on their cell phones the whole time – we need to support stuff like this to ensure both the type of film and the people making them aren’t extinct in favor of remakes and kids horror. I also invite you to read this article by my good friend Uncle Creepy at Dread Central, which addresses many of the same concerns.
I got to watch an advance copy of Joy Ride 2: Dead Ahead because FOX was looking for quotes. I offered (truthfully) that it was “Better Than The Original!” but Mr Disgusting said he didn’t want that on there, because it implies that the movie was really great (and Horror Movie A Day is not a big enough site to get quoted, so it would be attributed to Bloody). It’s not GOOD by any stretch of the imagination, but the first one sucks, and this is marginally better, so it’s still true.
This one at least doesn’t bother with the ‘funny’ hijinks that we had to endure in the original (mainly courtesy of Steve Zahn, a man who is only amusing in VERY small doses). In fact they are intent on getting things moving ASAP this time, and thus they have the least original setup in breakdown history. Literally, the requisite dumb character (Nik, played by Kyle Schmid) says “Let’s take this shortcut!!” and within seconds the car breaks down. Honestly, it seems to occur so quickly that it’s a wonder they don’t just turn around and walk back to the turnoff, but another character claims it’s been a couple hours (clever use of exposition to hide confusing scene transitions!). One thing I loved about Leatherface: TCM III was that the ‘shortcut’ is offered by Viggo when he's posing as a good guy. When the crazy gas station clerk allegedly kills him, the heroes see that Viggo was really trying to help, and thus taking his shortcut suddenly seems like a good idea. It’s not exactly Oscar caliber, but it’s at least reasonably clever, and makes the characters feel a bit more intelligent than many of their breakdown movie peers. But Joy Ride 2 screenwriters James Robert Johnston and Bennett Yellin don’t even try; we know they will break down anyway, might as well get right to it.
And from then on it’s fairly well done, more or less. Rusty Nail does the same sort of shit, tricking our heroes (among them Nicki Aycox) and forcing them to do terrible things, but it’s enjoyable. It all comes down to a torture sequence in which the two male heroes are playing a life or death game of Craps, in which certain dice rolls translate into a different torture mode (i.e. a seven means you get a crowbar to your kneecap). Luckily, it ends with the death of the film’s most annoying character, a poseur who one of the girls met on Myspace. It’s kind of funny that FOX would produce a film in which a Myspace (which is owned by FOX) user is depicted as a whiny loser with fake tattoos and no backbone. Granted, it’s realistic, but still rather surprising.
Myspace is just one of many prominent websites to get namedropped in the film (Google, Youtube...). Perhaps it’s the screenwriters’ attempts to make their film more identifiable to their target audience, but if so, they should realize that most people, even Myspace users, aren’t stupid enough to take random shortcuts with an old car owned by someone who doesn’t bother putting oil into it. Remember: if it really were a shortcut, it would just be “the way”. How about, just for once, making horror movie characters easy to identify with by having them act like actual human beings?
This one is directed by Louis Morneau, who also made the unnecessary sequel Hitcher II. It’s a very similar film, but he fares better here, since the script actually has some decent ideas (killing off a traditionally “safe” character for starters) and delivers about what you’d expect out of a direct to video sequel, which Hitcher II couldn’t even manage.
It figures that one of the few good movies that After Dark has acquired over the past few years would get the most limited release. Frontière(s) was released on approximately 8 screens for about as many minutes just two weeks ago, sans any sort of advertising or press. Granted, it was due to hit DVD 4 days later, but still, it would have been nice to see the film in the theater. And since it has an NC-17 rating (which is a nice surprise; I am so used to movies simply being 'unrated' it's almost charming to see the rating again), Blockbuster won't carry it (no R rated cut like Inside, I guess) even on its online service, which STILL limits its audience.
But while I demand you move heaven and earth to see Inside, Frontière(s) is merely a decent movie you might like, though dying without ever having seen it won't keep you up nights (especially since you're dead). There's not much originality on display here, with just about everything in the film taken from any of the Chainsaw films (even the remake/prequel ones), Hostel, Saw, and whatever movie writer/director Xavier Gens happened to see that had a "they are being kidnapped for breeding purposes" subplot. Take your pick!
However, Gens is a fantastic shooter, and despite some too-rapid cutting during some of the 'horror' scenes, the film is quite well made. The confident shooting, coupled with some truly gory/effective sequences, is just about enough to forgive the script's lack of originality, not to mention focus.
Early on in the film, our "heroes" (they have robbed a bank - fuck em as far as I'm concerned!) are trying to escape a riot that has been caused due to outrage over a right wing political candidate (one character exclaims "great, France has their own George Bush!"). But these elements are clumsily shoehorned into the film (even moreso at the end, when a radio broadcast brings it up again, long after we've forgotten about it in the first place), and stink of simply trying to give the film some social relevance. It doesn't work though, because it's clichéd for one thing and left out of the film for nearly 90 minutes for another. Originality issues aside, the film at least works fine on its own; randomly tossing in some half-assed 'commentary' is just distracting and eventually pointless. The bank robbery angle is also fairly pointless in the long run - why make your protagonists unlikeable right from the start when the money has no actual bearing on the plot? I could see if it was used to try to bribe the bad guys, or if the group fought over the money which led to their capture, but like the political stuff, it's essentially forgotten once the horror starts; not even consequential enough to qualify as a Macguffin.
I also wish that J.R. Media Services in Burbank, CA (the subtitler credits himself the second the film fades to end credits) had done a better job with their goddamn subs. In addition to occasional nonsense like this:
There are also several occasions where they are doing an exact translation that doesn't quite work (no one says "Go away!" to their friend who is trying to rescue them, they would be saying something like "go! run!"). But the most annoying blunder is constantly putting two characters' lines in a single scene. This completely betrays dramatic tension at times, because they will have someone's response on the screen long before the character actually says it. At one point, our head Nazi villain says "What do you want?" to one of the heroes, who replies, after a few seconds' pause for dramatic effect: "Kill me!". However, the subs give us both lines at once, so we are essentially knowing his response before the question is even finished.
Sadly, the DVD is completely featureless other than trailers for other LG releases (lucky us). Thus I cannot really condone a full price purchase, but if you come across it cheap (or for rental) then you should enjoy it for the most part. It's good to know that the French can make generic knockoffs just as well as we can!
What the fuck is the point of a movie like The Cave going into theaters? It offers absolutely nothing that the weekly Sci-Fi original movies doesn’t provide for free (hell, I’d even argue that the SCOs are gorier – more on that later), unless you live in some sort of alternate universe where Eddie Cibrian and Cole Hauser are big stars, beyond what Sci-Fi can offer. But yet, shocking as it may seem, The Cave actually opened in theaters in August 2005, against films like Four Brothers and 40 Year Old Virgin. The fact that it even made 14 million is pretty surprising. I suspect it may have even been meant for TV, as there at least four fade to black moments in the movie after a big revelation or (lame) death of a character, the perfect place to stick ads for Battlestar’s next episode and maybe a car or two.
The only thing a theatrical release can offer that Sci-Fi cannot (at least, when it comes to generic “Monster in the water” movies like this) is R rated violence, profanity, and maybe even nudity. The PG-13 Cave offers none of these things. Gore? Half of the deaths are offscreen entirely, and the only blood is seen on minor wounds. Even SCOs offer one or two reasonably graphic kills per movie. Nudity? Well, I wasn’t really expecting any, but no. Profanity? Cole Hauser’s big final line to the monster is “Come on mother f.” Not “F-“, as if they cut away before he could finish. No, he actually just says “F.”, and the shot lingers on him for another second as if to reassure us that he’s not actually daring to swear.
Now, I’ve said more than once (twice) that PG-13 is not an automatic kiss of death for a horror film – Spiral, The Ring, Poltergeist, etc. all manage chills without resorting to these sort of things (and more importantly, never feel like they are MISSING them either). But for a movie like The Cave, which is about allegedly vicious sea monsters tearing people apart, who the fuck wants a PG-13 version of that? Go all out and offer the audience (who are likely just looking to escape from the heat for 97 minutes in August) the occasional visceral thrill.
See, without gore or anything, all the movie offers is the same old “team of folks run afoul of SOMETHING in the _____” (jungle, water, mountains, desert... take your pick!) monster movie. The closest it gets to doing anything original is instead of having a corporate team member who sells the team out to save his own ass, we have Cole Hauser slowly becoming one of the monsters (he gets stung by one early on). And thankfully, this doesn’t result in a finale in which Hauser stalks his own friends, but instead he uses his newfound insight into their world to help his friends escape (albeit with the occasional violent outburst).
Everyone else is standard monster movie fodder, and the only suspense stems from the fact that whoever built the opening credits put them in a weird order that doesn’t reflect either the actor’s ‘starpower’ or their amount of screen time. For example, Daniel Dae Kim, who at this point was one of the stars of the biggest show on TV, is billed after a few no-name actors, even though his character survives longer than any of them anyway. In fact, the movie takes its sweet ass time killing folks off (again, the only reason we are watching), with more than half of them still alive with only 15 minutes to go.
The survival elements are rather weak too - I never once really felt they were trapped or in danger from anything but the monsters, despite a few attempts to make you feel otherwise. Granted, seeing The Descent sort of ruins whatever little a movie like this could achieve, but still. There's more claustrophobic feeling in any one second of Marshall's film than there is in the entirety of this (and, given the PG-13ity of it all, you'd think they'd try to play up the survival elements to earn the suspense/scares).
Botching things even more is director Bruce Hunt, DP Ross Emery, and editor Brian Berdan’s mutual insistence on making the action scenes as incomprehensible as possible. I am a defender of the three Bs of confusing camerawork (Bourne, Blair Witch, and Bay), and even I had no idea what the fuck was happening during certain scenes. At one point, Eddie Cibrian and Lena Headey are about to travel down a current. She gets stuck, and he cannot fight the current in order to help her. So he is whisked away while she screams “Noooo help!” and things of that nature. 300 closeup shots and 12 seconds later, Cibrian is at the end of the current, he sees a monster or something, and then viola! Headey is right next to him. What the fuck?
And while the image is fine (and to be fair, the special effects are generally quite good), the sound is also pretty lackluster. The surrounds have a lot of use, but the overall level of sound keeps dropping down at times (I checked my system with other movies and it seemed fine), and there is almost zero bass on the track (something other reviews have mentioned, though the level problem may be unique to my copy?). It’s really odd when a large rush of water is shown on screen and your subwoofer is barely making a whimper.
The extras are actually decent, strangely enough. One is about the technical advisors, who cave dive for a living. The two of them are far more interesting than anyone in the movie. The other is about Patrick Tatopoulos’ (part of why I wanted to see this movie is the inordinate number of crew who worked on Dark City, one of my all time favorite films) creature designs, which are pretty decent and wasted in this film. There are two commentary tracks as well, but I have a feeling that they won’t quite be worth my while.
Since Blockbuster is just fucking awful lately when it comes to foreign and independent horror*, I had to re-activate my Netflix account in order to watch movies like Ils (aka Them), which I have had at the top of my Blockbuster queue for over a month and yet to receive (the stores I've been to don't have it at all). With Netflix, I was watching a reasonably decent, widescreen copy of the film within 4 minutes of my signing up for an account. I was also able to queue Frontiere(s), a film that BB won’t even carry, apparently. Asswipes.
Note - I don’t like to watch movies on the computer (not counting old public domain ones from Mill Creek), but since the transfer was widescreen (some of the Netflix streaming movies are full frame) and the movie was shot on video anyway, I felt an exception could be made (plus my new computer monitor is only a few inches smaller than the TV I watched every movie on up until a couple years ago, and I have surround sound on the damn thing to boot). I won’t be making a habit of it, at any rate. And I paid for a Netflix account to do it, rather than download a torrent.
I’ve never been to Europe, so I am curious: does anyone actually live near anyone else? Do they have “neighbors”? It seems every horror movie I see from France, Ireland, Italy, etc takes place in a secluded house (or school) in the middle of nowhere. This actually makes the 3rd in a row (actually, The Hand’s 2nd half took place in a secluded cabin too, but that was America). Maybe these people wouldn’t get themselves killed so often if they tried the goddamn suburbs. I’d like to see what a team like David Moreau and Xavier Palud, or even Inside’s Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury (these French work best in pairs!) would do with a straight up Halloweenstyle “neighborhood” slasher.
Random ranting aside, this is a solid little movie. Like High Tension and (again) Inside, it presents the killer’s identity/motive as a twist, but with two major differences. One – it doesn’t damage the film in the slightest (in fact it’s pretty goddamn chilling), and two, it prevents me from listing the film under a certain sub-genre. And since it’s just hitting DVD and never got a real theatrical release here, I will refrain from spoiling anything concerning the killers’ identity/motive (the fact that there is more than one is hardly a spoiler – it’s the name of the goddamn movie).
A lot of people have noted (and even praised) the film has very little dialogue, which is odd because it didn’t seem like it had any less than any other film of its type. In fact, the couple is almost always shouting each other’s name, or saying things like “run!” “go!”, etc. I will say that even though the movie is in French, one does not really need the subtitles, because the dialogue is pretty easy to understand from the body language and tone of voice (not counting the minor character stuff early on – he’s a writer, she’s a teacher, he can’t cook, etc).
Another minor gripe is that it’s another of those films that are described as something that doesn’t even take up the majority of the film. Anyone will say “a couple is terrorized in their home” is the plot of the film, but the terror doesn’t begin until the 30 minute mark, and they escape their home with another 20 minutes to go. I only note this because while I liked the slow build, I didn’t care for them leaving their home for the final act. To me that was the most terrifying thing about it – your home is your sanctuary, where you have the most control - and the attackers seem to have had the upper hand. Once they leave, it’s sort of a typical chase flick. The surprise conclusion helped to erode some of this disappointment, however.
And in another similarity with The Cottage, Ils has a great “killer on the other side of the door” scene. The payoff is similar (not played for laughs here, obviously), and again, it’s timed out perfectly – I’ve seen probably 50 of these scenes, and yet here it got me, and I jumped a bit.
My good friend Matt, who runs BloodandSleaze.com, recently bemoaned how sick he was of hearing how much superior foreign horror is to its modern American counterparts (not that he disagrees, but that he didn’t want it rubbed in). And after watching this movie, it’s easy to see at least part of the reason why – our unfamiliarity with the actors. I don’t know either of these two folks, so when they are in danger, I believe they might be killed, even if the movie isn’t at the end yet. As far as I am concerned, there is no risk of losing box office potential because Michael Cohen is killed at the halfway mark (he isn’t, for the record). But take a similar movie like Vacancy, which I enjoyed until the end, when they pussed out and let Luke Wilson live. Even if he had died, there was no chance he was going to die anytime before that final scene, because he’s Luke Wilson, and there’s no way in HELL Kate Beckinsale is going to die even then. So even though the film was enjoyable, it wasn’t nearly as suspenseful as it could have been with two no-name actors in the roles, because their star persona inadvertently made them safe. Hell, it’s why the Drew Barrymore sequence in Screamworked so well, before it became a trademark of Dimension to kill off a big star in the opening scene of all their movies, never to be effective again (with the minor exception of the otherwise worthless Scream 3, which killed off one of the series’ most interesting CHARACTERS in the opening reel, rather than a big actor).
Moreau and Palud did a great job shooting the film as well; only the attic sequence suffers from some digital-y looking imagery. It’s also surprisingly shot in scope widescreen, something you don’t often see in low budget films anymore. Then again, given the killers’ predilection for toying with the couple, and the fact that they are kept largely in the shadows (I don’t think you ever see one of them in full reveal/focus until the very end), it’s obvious that Halloween was an influence, so the scope is fitting.
I highly recommend this film. I am almost sad I watched it on Netflix, it’s definitely worth owning (but since I just watched it, if I bought it now I wouldn’t get around to seeing it again until, I dunno, 2015 or so). Hopefully, unlike me, you don’t depend on fucking Blockbuster for your horror movie needs.
What say you?
*They also only carry the worthless “R rated” cut of Inside. Normally I wouldn’t care, but since they have exclusive rights to rent the film out, the only way to see the film properly is to buy it. And granted, the film is amazing and one does not need to worry about a blind buy, but I understand some folks just can’t afford to spend 20 bucks on an 80 minute horror movie sight unseen. And since BB rents plenty of unrated cuts of horror films (what they rent for Henry, for example, is unrated), it baffles me why they would opt not to at least give their customers a choice. Then again, between this, Ils, and Frontiere(s)....maybe they just hate the French.
Oh the British, why are you so good at combining graphic gore with subtle comedy?
Much like the under-appreciated Severance, The Cottage is essentially a Friday the 13th film crossed with a black comedy, in this case something like Fargo or Ruthless People, in that you have a kidnapping gone wrong due to inept ‘criminals’, a kidnap victim who seems to have the upper hand, complications and double crosses, etc. But then a Victor Crowley-esque mutant killer comes along and everything goes to hell.
It’s not as laugh out loud funny as Severance, but it’s more consistently humorous. One thing about Severance that always kind of bugged me is that once the plane blows up (the film’s comedic highlight), they essentially drop the humor altogether. That’s not the case here, as there are giggles to be had right down to the final scene. And the film wastes no time getting to the laughs either, as the brothers begin humorously bickering in the film’s first scene (naturally, as this is a British movie, they bicker over tea).
Of course, the humor wouldn’t work at all without a capable cast, and thankfully director Paul Steven Williams has assembled one. Andy Serkis is great as the only intelligent criminal of the three, and has most of the film’s best lines. I was surprised at how good he was, since I only knew him as a guy who stood in for CGI characters (Gollum in LOTR, Kong in King Kong). Hopefully he will be taking on more actual roles. Reece Shearsmith as his brother is also good, playing a nebbish who inadvertently causes most of their problems. The only minor flaw is Doug Bradley, in a distracting cameo as one of a few townsfolk who show up long enough for you to say “what the hell was the point of that scene” (their one scene comes and goes out of nowhere, isn’t relevant to the plot, and is never even mentioned again).
As for the gore, it’s top notch. Not all of the gags are original (decapitation via shovel, again), but they are executed flawlessly, and none of the effects look fake. It’s also occasionally pretty suspenseful; the film has the best “guy stupidly puts his head to the door when he knows the killer is on the other side” scene in ages, as Williams has the timing for such a clichéd sequence down perfectly, resulting in not only a jolt but a laugh as well once punchline to the bit is delivered. It should be noted that the killer doesn’t make his official appearance until the end of the 2nd act, and those seeking a nonstop gorefest will be disappointed. Structurally speaking, it’s more like Hatchetthan a F13 movie.
My only other minor complaint is that the Danny Elfman-esque score (it sounds exactly like Beetlejuice at times) was overbearing at times, and not always ‘right’ for the scene. Maybe if played softer it would work, but since it’s drowning out the scene audio at times, it becomes doubly annoying.
The DVD comes with deleted scenes and outtakes. The outtakes are typical (i.e. not very funny, though it’s somewhat amusing to see how jovial Serkis is out of character), but the deleted scenes are interesting for the most part. In addition to a deleted character (wisely excised, as it spoils the surprise of the killer, much like I and the box art have done), there is also a moment where Serkis is actually nice to the 3rd kidnapper, something that never occurs in the final cut. I would have liked a commentary, but alas (the deleted scenes have some explanation of their removal via onscreen text). Luckily, the movie was enjoyable enough on its own. Definitely recommended for fans of dry humor, and also fans of giant mutant killer dudes tearing fat guys’ spines out.
Last week I knocked on Lake Dead for being a derivative movie that offered nothing new to the genre. Well I could say the same thing for Last House In The Woods (aka Il Bosco Fuori), which is essentially Last House On The Left meets Texas Chainsaw Massacre III. But unlike Dead, it has that certain je ne sais quoi that made it worth my while. Also, I really wish it was a French movie (it actually FEELS French, at least in the first half), instead of an Italian one, so that my clichéd use of French would be even more fitting. C’est la vie.
One of those certain “something”s was a first for me. In all the years I have been watching horror movies, I have never come as close to gagging as I did at the sight of a particular makeup effect near the end of the film. I’m the most desensitized sod in the world when it comes to gore and the like, but I legit had to take a few deep breaths and stop eating my Healthy Choice meat loaf dinner for a minute or two. I won’t spoil it, but it involves a giant tumor-ish growth on one of the bad guy’s necks, and the good guy’s mouth. Watch at your own risks!
The score by Filippo Barbieri and Federico Bruno is also fantastic. I actually sat and listened to the end credits so I could enjoy the theme until the very end. I say listened because the credits were in Italian and thus I couldn’t read them. There is one exception, however – the opening credits are all “unanacional” and “rigatoni” or whatever, but when it comes to the effects, it’s in plain English: “Visual Effects and Digital Grading by (Tony Luigi whatever.)”. Do the Italians not have a word for “Grading”?
Another thing about the music that tickled me was the sad music that plays when a certain character dies. Ordinarily, this is fine – but the guy is a goddamn thief and rapist! Early on, three guys are driving around, getting stoned and looking to get laid. They come across our heroine and her boyfriend, and do what any stoned Italian punks in a horror movie would do – beat the guy unconscious and rape the girl. And this is where the Last House comparison comes in, though it’s a bit reversed – the three end up coming to her rescue. You see, the real villains are a family of backwoods rejects, led by a guy who looks eerily like Feast producer Mike Leahy. And this was where the Leatherface comparisons came in. In fact, the film worked better when our antagonists are just two parents and their creepy cannibal son. But then two typical movie redneck mutant guys are introduced, and the movie loses some steam. In the end, everyone is soaked in blood and dismembered (though not necessarily dead), so it’s all good.
The direction/cinematography leaves a bit to be desired, however. For whatever reason, Gabriele Albanesi (director) and Giovanni Cavallini (cinematographer) opt to use constant zooms – fast or slow, in or out, doesn’t matter. It looks like High Tension: The Soap Opera. Sometimes it works well, particularly to invoke that sort of 1970’s feel, but other times it’s just annoying. Everything in moderation!
(Except the gore.)
I watched this on a screener; it’s been playing festivals around the world (including the US) since 2006. Not sure if/when it is ever coming out here, but if it comes to your area, I’d check it out. It doesn’t really break new ground on the survival genre, but, like Doomsday, it’s a “greatest hits” done right, and would probably be a blast with a “Grindhouse” style crowd.
A buddy of mine was angry that I liked Doomsdaydespite the fact that it had zero originality to it (other than the sort of original idea of spending 40 million dollars to recreate a bunch of sequences from older movies and fashion some semblance of a story out of it). The lack of originality didn’t bother me too much, because I was having a blast watching it. The characters were fun, the locales were interesting, it had good makeup gags, etc. Entertainment for entertainment’s sake is perfectly fine every now and then. However, I cannot give Lake Dead the same leeway, because while it also doesn't have a single original idea that I could find, it failed to get the whole “fun” part right either (to be fair, they didn't seem to be intending it that way).
Ripping off Wrong Turn, Mother’s Day, Devil’s Rejects, Bloodlines (possibly – this came along after but who the hell saw Bloodlines?), and Motel Hell for pretty much its entire running time, Lake is technically proficient and reasonably well-paced, but the characters are completely terrible, the makeup is pretty much all (bad) CG, and the setting is Motel Hell, again. Both films were shot at Sable Ranch in California, and it was obvious to me from the goddamn gravel outside of the motel our characters have “inherited” that it was the same exact place. Recycling a locale is one thing when it’s an entirely different type of movie (the Griswolds, the Murtaughs, and the Monster Squad family all live on the same street, for example), but when the movie shares a few plot similarities with another one shot in the same goddamn house, it’s a bit distracting/annoying.
The film also contains one of the most idiotic plot contrivances I’ve ever seen in a movie. The girls inherit a motel when their grandfather dies, and at the funeral they tell their estranged father they are heading up there to see it. “Don’t go there!” he yells. “Please!” They say “no” and go anyway. Maybe, I dunno, tell your fucking CHILDREN that the place is run by their redneck uncle and grandmother, who plan on using the girls for breeding and/or just plain ol’ killing? He obviously knows this (he lied about their grandfather ever being alive at all, in order to 'protect' them), and yet waits a day to bother really doing anything about it. Also, for the plot to work, the girls can never question why they only have one set of grandparents (who/where the mother is – who the fuck knows, the movie exists in a world where such things aren’t important, despite the fact that almost every character in the movie is related).
Speaking of, the characters are poorly introduced. At the funeral, a blond girl is seen with our lead (also a blonde). The next time we see her, she is talking to the lead’s boyfriend. He’s telling her to hurry up and get ready so they can all go check out the motel, alluding to the fact that it’s her motel too. So we can just assume that the two girls are sisters, but the movie never explains this until about halfway through. But why is her possibly future brother-in-law the one to call her up? Do you call up your future in-laws and berate them for being late?
There’s also a third sister, thankfully not another blonde. But she IS the least pleasant character I’ve ever seen in a film (including those who aren’t “good guys”). She swears constantly for no reason, gets angry at pretty much everything anyone says to her, etc. Luckily she is the first to go, but still, the movie never quite recovers from spending most of the first 15 minutes of its running time on a character who should be instantly killed.
This brings me to another gripe: the movie’s complete lack of a mean streak. It’s like the girl is just a bitch only to ‘justify’ her death a few minutes later. The other victims are also jerks (another irritable bitch, a slut, and a guy who cheats on the irritable bitch with the slut); all of the ‘nice’ people survive. Come on! If screenwriter Daniel Couglin wrote Wrong Turn, Jeremy Sisto’s character would have survived, because he was a nice guy who cared about others. This just voids suspense – we know who will be safe just because they haven’t broken the lie/cheat/steal rules of movie heroics.
As for anything resembling fun, like Wrong Turn 2 or most of the other movies I mentioned? There is ONE sort of joke in the entire movie, and it made me retch:
Girl: “Why do I love you so much?” Guy: “Probably because I put you in my top 8.”
ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? The irony is, all of these vapid no-name actors look EXACTLY like the people who are pictured in fake spam profiles. “Hi, I’m new to Hollywood and my first “break” is starring in Lake Dead. I liked your profile pic and see that you like Shocker. Click my profile and watch my boring movie!”
Other than that, the only other thing that got me to chuckle was the final line, spoken by the “finally doing something to stop his daughters from being raped by their uncle” dad, who shoots his brother in the head and says “THAT’S how you fuck family!” Nothing like a good joke to lighten the mood, even at the expense of his children’s psychological terror (not to mention the years of therapy they will endure now that they realize that their father is also their brother, or whatever – again, who the fuck their mother is wasn’t a concern). Dickhead.
The original Wrong Turn worked because it was the first “no humor, no bullshit” survival horror movie in ages when it was released. The story broke no new ground, but it was a successful throwback to 70s horror in the dawning age of PG-13 horror, with good performances, effects, and even a decent level of suspense to boot. But now, Lake Dead does absolutely nothing to distinguish itself from the others of the past few years. In 2007, you gotta be fun or do something original. Doing neither is just pointless.
Here’s a first for Horror Movie A Day – A dual review! Why, you may ask?
As has happened a few times before, Blockbuster sent me the wrong movie. I had asked for American Gothic, which is a late 80s inbred horror thing with Rod Steiger. They sent me American Gothic, a short film by some guy named Carlos Batts. “Fine, whatever,” I said to no one in particular, and put in Cut And Run (aka Inferno in Diretta), a Ruggero Deodato film that had a plot similar to that of his Cannibal Holocaust, only it was a conventionally filmed movie, not a ‘mockumentary’. Except the problem is, despite what IMDb claims, it wasn’t really a horror movie at all. But after doing some research, I discovered that the short film WAS horror, so I will combine: Horror (short film), and (full length) Movie A Day!
The horror angle of Cut comes from Michael Berryman, playing a guy who seemingly lives in the river and seeks to murder drug dealers (and pretty much anyone else). His scenes, largely inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, are gory and violent, and could be mistaken for a Hills Have Eyes sequel. And being a Deodato film, the gore is over the top (beheadings, guttings, etc), something you certainly don’t find in many non-horror films. However, the rest of the film is basically an action movie a la Rambo II, in which a couple of folks (including that hot blond from Prince of Darkness) go into the jungle to rescue their friend, and kill a bunch of “bad guys” with automatic weapons and such. Not exactly horror, right?
The cast is also very HMAD friendly. In addition to Berryman and the Prince of Darkness woman (Lisa Blount, for the unnecessary record), we get Karen Black (Burnt Offerings), Leonard Mann (Flowers In The Attic), and Richard Lynch (Halloween remake). Plus the score is by Claudio Simonetti, aka Goblin.
As for the movie itself, well, whatever. 80s action movies of this type sort of just run along on rails, and if you take away the random gore (and Willie Aames’ ridiculous character) you’re left with any old Chuck Norris/Michael Dudikoff movie; the type that I can only appreciate if I grew up with it. Or I’m at the New Bev (this movie would be ideal for that place, actually). The idea of a group of natives going out of their way to kill drug dealers is pretty awesome, but the movie is kind of dull. There’s a lot of stuff that we really don’t need to watch, like Aames and some broad laying out and then lighting a bunch of flimsy runway lights. And for the life of me I can’t figure out what Eric LaSalle’s strip club owner character has to do with anything, or why he is tossed off a platform into a train by two guys we never see again.
Strangely, the end of the film seems to have influenced the execrable Welcome To The Jungle more than Holocaust did. Our heroes are kidnapped and then held hostage by the very man they were seeking (Lynch), who has now become a sort of Kurtz like madman, and the natives all serve under him. The only difference is, this movie had something fucking happen previously, so there wasn’t any need for him to kill off the heroes like in Jungle (which saved any sort of action or violence for this final minute of the film, and even that was mainly offscreen).
Anyway, not too great, but it was a fucking masterpiece compared to American Gothic. While it was certainly more of an actual horror movie than Cut (what with zombies, a guy covered in blood, etc), it was also an utterly awful and pretentious pile of crap.
The thing about experimental films like this that I don’t get is why anyone besides the filmmaker is watching them. They are experiments! Do scientists hold press conferences and then say “OK, we’re gonna try something”? Of course not. They do their experiments in private, and then show us the finish results. Why can’t these films work the same way? No matter, this experiment certainly failed. The idea is fine (the psychological horror behind the creation of Grant Wood’s eponymous painting) but the execution is as botched as anything can possibly be.
Here is the entire 25 minute movie: An old guy talks to himself, a montage of moving images animated with After Effects, a zombie lies on the ground, two zombies dance, three dead chicks play with children’s letter blocks, the old guy begins stabbing himself with his paintbrush while saying “I wandered aimlessly among the living” over and over, more After Effects, credits. Throughout this nonsense we hear some metal songs. In fact the imagery often resembles a Matt Mahurin music video (think "Unforgiven") but without a. the entire song (the metal songs fade in and out at random, or to allow the guy to say “I wandered aimlessly among the living” again) or b. a point being made in a timely manner. Why this needed to be 25 minutes, I have no idea. It’s pretty sad when a short film is padded and overlong.
Oh fuck you, movie.
There was a kid in my film school who made shit like this. Any time we’d have to present our stuff to the class, he’d show his and there would be utter silence (everyone else in the program made films that were more or less accessible). When the teacher asked about it, he wouldn’t even be able to explain it himself. I’m all for being weird or whatever, but the problem is that shit like this can literally be made by anyone. Film a bunch of random shit, edit it with a blender, throw in some “film damage” filters, and viola! Instant art film! And when someone questions it, you can just say “look, you don’t GET IT.” Oh blow it out your ass. If we’re too dumb to understand your masterpiece why’d you show it to us? And in this case, I got the point of it, I just didn’t get why it had to be so long and obtuse. Like the film Gothic, it’s a fascinating idea to me to show the “real” horror behind a well-known work of art, but I don’t see why it’s apparently so difficult to tell this type of story without being a pretentious windbag. I may not have the slightest clue what’s going on at times, but at least David Lynch’s films are nice to look at (save Inland Empire) and reasonably entertaining. This crap is ugly and boring to boot.
Whatever I watch tomorrow better be a full length horror movie or else there will be hell to pay! I’ll grab Michael Berryman and a few machetes and begin wiping out anyone who ever said “Well, my film is CEREBRAL...” in a dismissive manner.
If there is one plotline that doesn’t hold much promise, it’s “Four college kids are attacked by killer vines. That talk.” And if you want to sell it extremely short, that’s exactly what The Ruins is. But as it turns out, not only is it much better than expected, it’s the best horror movie of the year so far. Take THAT, One Missed Call!
The movie is based on a book (by Scott Smith, who also wrote the screenplay) that I haven’t read, and is directed by a guy I’ve never heard of (Carter Smith), and stars some folks who don’t often star in anything. And like I said, the plot didn’t really hold much promise. But everyone involved gave it their all; an A-Game approach to a B-Movie. The surprising R rating is well-earned, with some truly brutal and shocking moments (such as the first onscreen child killing in a horror movie in ages! YEAH! The movie’s got some goddamn balls!), and some truly impressive (but thankfully sparse) gore as well.
It’s also the rare survival horror film in which actual survival elements are implemented. 30 Days Of Night completely botched this part up, with a 30 day time window seeming more like 30 hours, partially due to the fact that getting food/water was never once an issue in the film. Not the case here; we see them rationing their limited food, crafting stretchers and such out of what they have on hand, etc. The main character, Jeff (well played by Jonathan Tucker, making up for his annoying performance in Bruce’s Hostage) is the most practical of the four, and watching him use his head and think things through was very refreshing.
The other three are good too. Jena Malone starts off as an annoying and whiny drunk, but comes into her own as things get worse for the group. Shawn Ashmore (Iceman!) and Laura Ramsey are the other two, also impressively more than just attractive kids in a horror movie. There are no stereotypes – they are all intelligent (and about equally “famous”), which makes it far more difficult than usual to peg which ones are going to be goners.
Smith also did a fine job of translating what has to be the silliest part of the book (besides the concept itself) onto the screen – the talking vines. Like I said, I haven’t read it, but those who did have told me that this was something that wouldn’t work onscreen. But I think it does, to a degree. The vines don’t talk in a traditional sense, like Audrey II or whatever, but instead mimic the sounds they hear, which include human voices. Apparently it was a bit streamlined from the book, but it seems natural, and is only used twice (to disturbing effect) in the film to boot. It’s nowhere near as disastrous as William Goldman’s attempts to visualize the “memory warehouse” in Dreamcatcher, something that was actually pretty awesome in the book but wholly idiotic when seen on screen.
The movie also contains one of my favorite lines in recent memory. When the kids are all despairing that they will die out there, Jeff tries to calm them by exclaiming “Four American tourists don’t just disappear!” Oh man. I lost it. Of course, the film had already reminded me of the sadly underrated Turistas (during the opening 20 minutes), and anyone familiar with these types of movies should enjoy the line as much as I did.
I should also point out that I saw the film on the Paramount lot. On the way to the screening room, I saw a building with a sign reading “Film Vault”. You can bet your sweet bippy that I wanted nothing more than to bust my way into that place, find the My Bloody Valentine footage that they cut for MPAA, and run off into the night, armed with the knowledge that I was doing the entire horror community a giant favor. BUT, I didn’t.
Please go see this movie, and not Prom Night. They are opening around the same time, and I would really really hate for Hollywood to get the message (again) that an unnecessary PG-13 remake is somehow a better financial investment than an intelligent, suspenseful, and at times downright disturbing horror movie. Come on now.
Attn: Whoever sent me Carver for review – thanks! I wish I could remember who you were or what site I was supposed to review the movie for, but I don’t even recall receiving the damn thing! I was looking for another movie on my shelf and spied the film nested properly in between Candyman and The Cave. No recollection of it at all. It’s as if the Direct to DVD Fairy entered my home, took careful note of my how I sort my DVDs (an impressive feat, to be sure), and filed it away for me to find at my own leisure.
And I was even more surprised to discover that it wasn’t bad! On a surface level, it’s the umpteenth Saw/Hostel wannabe to come along in the past few years, albeit fused to a standard woods-set slasher, but there are just enough fairly unique touches to warrant giving it a pass.
For starters, our hero is the angriest man in horror movie history. He gets so frustrated at the simplest things, and it delighted me every single time. When his brother mocks him for asking him “how far?” one too many times during their road trip, he launches into a sarcastic, seemingly endless rant about how his brother’s non-answer was “exactly what he was looking for”. Later in the film, he shouts about how much he hates “stupid” wine glasses. There are a couple of other moments like this as well. Man, chill out!
He also has the film’s best line by far. He enters a stall, and the toilet is kind of dirty. He makes a disgusted sigh and opens the adjacent stall, which is ten times WORSE. He retches, and then notices a large pile of poop on the wall. “How do you shit on the wall?!” he asks no one in particular. It’s hilarious.
I should note at this time that the film has a particular fascination with bodily functions, particularly poop. After this sequence, another guy walks into another outhouse that is even MORE disgusting than the one with the wall-shit. The guy shrugs and sits down on the toilet anyway, and then the disgusting bowl is used as a weapon against him a bit later. We are also treated to the sight of a girl puking, and in the film’s most memorable kill, a testicle being plied, which results in blood and whatever the fuck else is inside a testicle to explode over the camera lens. Christ.
See, there are only two types of scenes I can’t handle: seeing someone get their teeth damaged (American History X – holy FUCK) and seeing dudes lose their genitalia. Everything else I am fine with, but if your movie has either one of those two types of scenes, you can guarantee that I’ll be squirming (or even looking away entirely). And since I guess that’s one of the reactions one SHOULD have when watching a horror movie, I guess in that respect the movie is a success.
The movie also has a fantastic soundtrack. And by that I mean there is a really weird and annoying (but ultimately catchy) song that plays throughout the movie. The chorus goes “Turkey in the straw, hee hee haw; Turkey in the hay, hey hee hey!” I defy anyone to watch this movie and not sing along with it by the 6th or 7th time it plays over a kill scene. Apparently, it’s an old ‘traditional’ song, much like your "Goin’ Round The Mountain When She Comes" and such, but for some reason it took a low budget slasher movie that mysteriously appeared on my DVD shelf for me to become aware of it.
It’s also a downer. Our Final Girl blows her goddamn head off, and our would-be hero gets HIS head caved in with a sledgehammer. And yet for some reason, the over the top gore/poop humor actually works well with the rather dark final act. Usually I abhor such things (Cabin Fever lost me on several occasions because of this imbalance) but it didn’t bother me here.
One thing that DID bother me was how poor the direction was. It seems like Captain John Tripod, ASC was the primary cameraman here, and several scenes have confusing and awkward blocking (particularly the scenes inside the bar). I wish writer/director Franklin Guerrero, Jr. had left the direction to someone else, as the lazy camerawork makes the film feel overly inert (DP Ryan Bedell can also be blamed). Ironically, the most frenetic camerawork we see in the film is in the snuff films that the killers are making. And this is a problem, because they seem to have been shot by at LEAST two people, when there should only be one (the hero doesn’t even figure this part of it out until the very end of the film). Things like that I am able to forgive, but other people are more stubborn, which is a shame, because Carver is much better (even at 100 minutes and only a few kills it feels fast paced) than I expected.
The DVD also has more extras than I was expecting. Two commentary tracks? I began listening to one with Guerrero and one of the producers, but he claimed that the track would be dry, technical, and “pretentious”, and that the other one would be more fun. So I switched it. On this track (which is Guerrero again, with a different producer), they get drunk, however they are annoying drunks. If you want to know how to do a REAL drunken commentary, listen to Cannibal: The Musical’s track. That thing is fucking amazing. There are a few tidbits to learn along the way, but someone needs to inform them that mispronouncing words and trying to ‘bring back’ forgotten insults is NOT the stuff of comic gold. There are also deleted scenes and a behind the scenes, nothing you’ll miss.
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