Boogeyman 2

JANUARY 12, 2008

GENRE: SLASHER
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

I knock it every now and then, but honestly I don’t really remember much about the original Boogeyman, other than that Xena was in it for like 2 seconds and that the alleged “hero” of the film was really the source of all the deaths, and had he just not been a fucking baby, no one would have died. Yet he was like the only survivor. Jerk.

But I remembered that I didn’t like it all that much, so I was surprised to discover how relatively un-bad the direct to video Boogeyman 2 was. It ties into the original in a very thin way (Barry Watson’s character is mentioned, and apparently now dead) but otherwise it’s not even the same subgenre. Whereas the original was your standard ghost/revenge type movie, this one’s a straight up slasher movie. Our characters are all mental patients with different phobias, and the killer kills them accordingly (i.e. stuffs the anorexic girl full of fat until she explodes). This concept gets stretched at times (the guy who is agoraphobic is suddenly simply “afraid of opening up”, apparently only so the killer can peel his skin away and grab his heart right out of his rib cage), but at least they stick with it, unlike the somewhat similar Bad Dreams, which began on this concept but did away with it after like 2 kills.

(Some spoilers follow... I know I originally said that spoilers wouldn’t be marked but I’ve decided to change this policy for newer films such as this, which has only been out a week and thus doesn’t have many other reviews yet. Plus I doubt many people rushed out to rent it the day it came out, like I inadvertently did.)

However, the Boogeyman (supernatural) one is still around, which leaves the ending of the film a bit muddled. The killer is a regular guy, but he’s nuts because he saw the supernatural boogeyman (presumably, the one from the first movie) kill his parents. So where is the supernatural one? On break? Or did he really kill his parents himself? If it’s spelled out (which is something I expect from this type of movie!!!), I missed it. Either way, I was disappointed that the supernatural Boogeyman and the guy in a mask Boogeyman never fought it out.

(end spoilers!)

Apparently the budget was lower than that of the original, which is really only evident in the casting. It’s all no names here, with some minor exceptions (including small roles by cast members from Xena and 7th Heaven, giving the film an odd connection to the original). Tobin Bell is given lots of attention on the DVD case, but he’s only in like 3-4 scenes. Still, he fares much better here than in Buried Alive, so he’s got that going for him.

I laughed when I saw the DVD listed as an “Unrated Director’s Cut”, since it’s a direct to DVD movie and thus no other version of the film exists. But, unlike many other Sony/Ghost House “unrated” versions, this one would NOT ever pass for PG-13. In addition to occasional nudity, there is a great deal of gore here, which was a pleasant surprise. And it looks good on top of that, so kudos.

One thing that DIDN’T look all that good was the nonstop handheld camerawork. In a film like United 93, it works because it’s adding to the realism. But when you’re dealing with a movie about a fucking boogeyman, realism is sort of the least of our concerns, and the fact that seemingly the entire film is shot this way, it’s a bit annoying. Get a tripod.

There are two commentary tracks, for some reason. I listened to (most of) the one with the director and writer. It’s not too bad of a track, and they are thankfully not under any idea that they have made some sort of masterpiece (nor do they knock it), but I admit I sort of zoned out after awhile. Still, it’s far more worth your time than most DTV commentary tracks (I’m looking at you, Solstice!), and I like that they name drop some more obscure slasher movies as inspiration (including April Fool’s Day; they also admit a love for Amy Steel which endeared them to me). There’s also a baffling “storyboard to screen” comparison which is mainly just a bunch of random images and film clips moving around an After Effects composition set to creepy music. I didn’t listen to the other commentary with Tobin Bell and the producers, nor will I. Despite the movie being fairly decent, there’s just something about spending 5+ hrs with Boogeyman 2 that I am not mentally comfortable with at this point in time.

What say you?

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Slasher,

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The Giant Gila Monster

JANUARY 11, 2008

GENRE: MONSTER
SOURCE: DVD (BUDGET PACK 2!!!)

Huh. It’s not often you get to see a giant monster movie that features maybe 4 total minutes of “giant” monster action and about 60 about car repair. But hey, that’s what The Giant Gila Monster offers us, and more! And by more I mean less.

A big part of the problem with this movie is how lazy they were in demonstrating the monster’s size. On maybe three occasions they use models and a regular lizard to make him look big, but for the most part, they just have closeup shots of an obviously regular sized lizard crawling (if that) near obviously regular sized things like twigs and leaves. No rear projection or forced perspective that I can recall. This renders several early scenes utterly baffling, because I thought the monster had yet to become giant, assuming some nuclear explosion at the end of the first act would result in him becoming a monster. For example, there’s a scene where a guy is driving along in a truck, then the lizard (which is somewhere else entirely) sticks his tongue out, and suddenly the truck flips over and explodes. Huh? OH, he’s giant. Right.

The first 60 seconds are comprised of five shots, the first of which makes up about 50 of those seconds. We see an empty forest/swamp thing as a guy narrates, then suddenly, Michael Bay apparently takes over. BAM! A car. BAM! Two kids in the car getting startled. BAM! The car falls down a cliff. BAM! A monster makes what appears to be the “No cameras!” hand motion. “What the hell just happened?” you may ask, and you’d be absolutely right.

Wait, what?

Anyway, like I said before, the movie is mainly about car repair. We see our hero banging away on a driver’s side door, discussing how he towed a car, explaining why his tires are on a different car... Even when they know perfectly well that there are more pressing matters, some guy begins threatening to have him jailed for using a victim’s car for spare parts. There are occasional folk songs to break up all of the car repair scenes, but not nearly enough (at one point I sort of gave up hoping for any monster action, only something besides auto repair “intrigue”).

OK, there’s the broken cigarette, but where is the penny?

Speaking of the music, once again we have inappropriately implemented library music in a horror film. The scene I described with the kids we don’t know suddenly falling down a cliff, possibly the result of a paparazzi hating creature, has some sort of Benny Hill type thing under it. Then later, one of the interminable car repair scenes (“I thought I told you to fix that headlight.” “I thought it was a suggestion.” “How much does it cost to fix one of those?”... and so on), they play what sounds like “our hero is about to tell his tragic backstory” music. My choice would be, of course, to cut away from two boring people talking about the cost of headlight repair and maybe show a GIANT GILA MONSTER doing something.

The movie also stops cold in order to show a little girl with leg braces try to walk. After she fails, twice, the movie begins again, in that the hero begins singing a folk song. I asked my mechanic about the scene, and he said he didn’t understand how it fit into the rest of the film, which he otherwise loved.

What say you?

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Horror Classics, Monster,

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Untraceable (2008)

JANUARY 10, 2008

GENRE: SERIAL KILLER, TECHNOLOGY

SOURCE: THEATRICAL (PRESS SCREENING)

For a while I thought I was a fan of Gregory Hoblit. I really enjoyed Frequency, and consider Hart’s War to be one of the most underrated films in Bruce Willis’ career (I am proud to say I am one of the 14 people who saw Hart’s in theaters). And Primal Fear is one of the few Ed Norton movies I can stand. But now, after the double whammy of Fracture and Untraceable, I realize that the guy doesn't really have any sort of style or recurring themes in his films, and just sort of directs whatever comes his way, much like your Roger Donaldsons or Stephen Hopkinses.

(I haven’t seen Fallen).

The problem with Untraceable is that it tries to cater to two audiences: those who like Hostel or Saw, and those who enjoy Diane Lane movies and “adult thrillers” (read: movies in which putting a child in momentary danger is considered “edgy”). And it ends up satisfying neither. The traps are incredibly weak, and the whole hook of the movie (that the more people who log into the website, the faster the victim will be killed) is never really explained. We see the numbers going up, and the music and look in the victim’s eyes tell us that THIS IS BAD, but it’s never clear what exactly the increments mean. For example, one trap involves the victim in a big vat of water. The computer tracker thingie is connected to a tank of sulfuric acid. The more people that watch, the more acid is pumped in. But it seems sort of arbitrary – the gas gets released at random hit levels (as opposed to something like “for each million viewers, 1 ounce of gas will be released”). Also, they don’t bother coming up with any sort of explanation for what would happen if people began logging off of the site.

But on the flipside, the 40ish women who flock to see Lane in things like Over The Tucson Moon or whatever the fuck will be grossed out by the “horrible” things on screen, like, well, a guy dissolving in a tub of acid. There’s also a guy who is burnt to death, another is bled to death, and a kitty is starved to death. Come on, only gorehounds will like that stuff, and they will be bored shitless by the rest of the movie. The soccer moms will be disgusted and walk out. So who wins?

Well, assholes like me do! The one saving grace of the film is reading the stuff people post as they watch the videos. Unlike pretty much anything else in the movie, the stuff the kids say in response to the video feels authentic, with “ROFL he’s ded” (sic) and “OMG WTF?!?!?!?” type things flashing by. Most of them are only funny if you’ve seen the respective video, or otherwise I would post more (my favorite is one guy’s anger at “watching a house”). Had the entire movie just been a nonstop scroll of these comments, it would probably be my favorite movie of the year.

Another thing they totally skip over is how an FBI agent manages to get captured by a guy smaller than him (I’m not giving anything away, the killer’s identity is not a secret and he is 'revealed' in the first half hour). Like the notion of people logging off the site, it seems whatever they couldn’t come up with a plausible explanation for, they just skipped it entirely. They set up that he’s the killer’s target, and then viola! He’s tied to a torture device.

I wish they kept this practice for a truly idiotic plot device involving Morse code. The aforementioned FBI agent begins blinking strangely, and Lane figures out that it’s Morse code. This is sort of dumb, but I probably would have went with it. Unfortunately, it’s foreshadowed by the clunkiest line of dialogue ever recorded in a film. Earlier in the film, the same agent comments “Too bad he wasn’t a boy scout, he could bleed in Morse code and tell us his location.” That doesn’t make any fucking sense whatsoever, and no human being would ever say such a thing, UNLESS he was setting up the usage of Morse later in the film. Fucking Christ.

However, I will admit that I liked how, for once, when the one guy who knows Morse begins transcribing the message, he doesn’t find himself magically at the beginning of the phrase. I always hate that in movies, the person translating the code somehow knows everything the guy said prior to the revelation. It’s like, “It’s Morse Code! (grabs pen and paper) ‘Beep BEEEEP Beep Beep BEEEEEP’.... OK he says he is being held at the St James Hotel in room 405 and that there are 12 guys on him with assault rifles and also...”

Well, whatever. It’s a Screen Gems movie, so who is expecting anything but the hope they won’t want their money back? I saw it for free (though I had to pay 3 bucks for parking AND fight an hour’s worth of traffic to get there) so I don’t qualify, but had I paid for it, I guess I’d be OK with the loss of 10 bucks. I like Lane OK enough, and the dude playing her partner was kind of funny, since he swore all the time. Generic time-killer, nothing more, nothing less. *shrug*

What say you?

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Serial Killer, Technology,

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The Girl Next Door

JANUARY 9, 2008

GENRE: PSYCHOLOGICAL

SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

Knowing how terrible Blockbuster is when two movies share a title (try to rent the 2003 Scream Bloody Murder from them), I wonder how many folks will queue the well-meaning and occasionally funny The Girl Next Door (2004), starring Elisha Cuthbert and Timothy Olyphant, and end up getting The Girl Next Door (2007), the decidedly UNFUNNY movie about a crazy woman instructing her teenage children and their friends to abuse her niece in the basement.

Luckily the latter film is the one I intended to see, so all is well. The film is quite good, an adaptation of a novel considered unfilmable (you know, like Ballard’s Crash, and in that case they were apparently right). And I was happy to see the ‘torture’ scenes filmed as un-exploitative as possible, which helped sell the realism, not to mention make it far more effective than trash like Driller Killer or whatever.

This movie isn’t for the faint of heart. The structure is solid in that it gradually builds the level of abuse that this poor girl has to endure, slowly drawing you into the terrible things that are inflicted on her (as opposed to something like the Saw films, which more or less begin with horrible abuse and go from there). No, here it starts with subtle verbal putdowns, escalates to harsher words and slight physical abuse, and ends up... well, let’s just say any female viewers will likely never want to see a blowtorch ever again.

There are two problems I had with the film, however. One is that it’s too short. As well paced as the girl’s downfall is, we don’t get to really know her abusers beforehand. I think an extra 10-15 minutes devoted to these kids’ regular lives prior to the “main event” of the film, as well as their relationship with the aunt, would have helped. The other problem is that the girl playing the lead is clearly around 18, whereas all of the other kids are about 10-14 (her age is never specified, but we are led to believe they are around the same age). Since the whole idea is built around the notion that kids will do whatever adults tell them to do, it seems like they should listen to HER as well, since she’s at least old enough to be in a position to tell them what to do as well. It also makes her character look slightly retarded in her early scenes, because she is ACTING like she’s much younger. Kind of odd.

Still, I can appreciate this sort of “spin on the suburban dream” type movie, and the young actors are pretty good. And, like so few horror movies are anymore, it’s genuinely upsetting (knowing that it’s based on a true story (Google it) certainly helps in that department – if anything the movie is fairly tame compared to what really happened to the poor girl). Plus, there are TWO Die Hard veterans in the cast (über-asshole William Atherton, and the lovable bomb technician guy from Die Hard With A Vengeance), so it comes highly recommended.

One thing I do NOT recommend is the audio commentary by the writers. I haven’t listened to the director/producer one, but the screenwriters drone on about symbolism and whine about script changes. They also frequently disagree with one another about “who cares?” type things. At one point, Jack Ketchum (the author of the book) makes fun of the two screenwriters for pointing out the symbolism of a “phallic tree with a vaginal gash”. I should note one of the writers is Daniel Farrands, who wrote the gist of Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (a film heavily re-written/edited by Dimension and director Joe Chapelle). It’s difficult to discern his screenwriting talent from one film that was heavily reworked by outside sources and another that’s based on a novel, but regardless, on a basic (read: ignorant) level, this is a much better film than you might expect from the writer of the 2nd worst Halloween movie. And there’s even a Haddonfield reference!

What say you?

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Based On Novel, Psychological,

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Kate Pepper's "One Cold Night"

Kate Pepper's novels include Five Days in Summer (2004), Seven Minutes to Noon (2005), One Cold Night (2006), and Here She Lies. In April 2007 she applied the Page 69 Test to Here She Lies.

Here she develops some ideas for a film adaptation of One Cold Night:

Whenever I visualize Dave Strauss, the detective whose quest to find his kidnapped teenage sister-in-law and whose love for his wife are at the heart of my thriller One Cold Night, I see Viggo Mortensen: quiet, intense, brooding, intelligent, and sexy. Dave is a man whose greatest attributes include his keen investigative instincts, the self-doubt inspired by a seasoned past, and his ability to deeply love and cherish his wife, Susan. I can see Mortensen embodying this character with conviction and soul.

Susan is played by Diane Lane, but maybe that’s just because I remember the sizzling chemistry between Mortensen and Lane in the 1999 movie A Walk on the Moon. Both these actors are not only gorgeous but have an emotional range along with the ability to play smart down-to-earth characters, and I like that a lot. (I went to graduate school with Diane’s late father, Burt Lane. He was older than the rest of us but he fit in because he was a great guy, completely unpretentious; at the time, he spoke only briefly of his then-nineteen year old daughter who was about to star in a movie called The Cotton Club. That film sank like a stone while Diane rose to stardom. I’ve always wanted to meet her to tell her how proud her dad was of her.)

In the role of Detective Lupe Ramos, I see Rosie Perez, because no one else has the comic grit to simultaneously strut in tight jeans and snap orders in a high-pitched voice like Rosie. Lupe Ramos is both tough and funny; her appearance in a scene guarantees that the plot will propel forward and also supply some needed comic relief … especially when she’s with her partner, Detective Alexei Bruno.

If Robin Williams would be willing to be cast in a supporting role, he’d make a brilliant Bruno, a leather-clad Russian whose English is peppered with malapropisms. On the outside, Lupe and Bruno seem like opposites, but as partners they’re in perfect synch and much sharper than they appear at first glance. They work seamlessly with Dave in pursuit of a kidnapper who may also be a long-sought killer.

And to play Lisa Bailey, Susan’s fourteen-year-old sister whose abduction sparks the story into action and leads to the revelation of a long-held family secret that nearly wrecks Dave and Susan’s marriage, give me Evan Rachel Wood. Wood embodies the mix of feistiness and sweet innocence that helps Lisa survive her ordeal, and like Lisa, Wood sings like an angel.

Last but not least, among the lead players is not a person but a place that is the main setting for One Cold Night: Dumbo, an acronym for Down Under the Manhattan Brooklyn Overpass. This gritty waterfront neighborhood in Brooklyn, directly across from lower Manhattan, once inspired Walt Whitman to write his poem “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” and now straddles a haunting sense of history in its cobblestone streets and nineteenth century warehouses, with the high-rises and galleries that mark its recent gentrification. The heart of the neighborhood was recently given landmark status to preserve its historic nature, and so no matter how long it takes this movie to get made, the neighborhood that is one of the story’s main characters will be waiting, mostly intact, to supply the sense of atmospheric mystery it lends this thriller in spades. Dumbo is where Dave and Susan live, where Susan has her handmade-chocolate shop, where Lisa vanishes, and where Dave begins his search for her on what becomes the longest, coldest night of all their lives.

Read excerpts and learn more about the author and her work at Kate Pepper's website and her blog.

The Page 69 Test: Here She Lies.

--Marshal Zeringue

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Furnace

JANUARY 8, 2008

GENRE: GHOST
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

Every now and then I see a movie that leaves absolutely no impression on me (something you can probably tell from the accompanying review). Furnace is one of those movies. Hell I even rewatched parts of it just to see if I could get anything out of it, but no. My note page is blank, and there are no extras on the DVD I can use to help me.

I should note that the director is one William Butler. Butler was a familiar face in late 80s horror movies, getting killed in Leatherface, Friday the 13th VII, and the Night of the Living Dead remake. He has shifted to directing/writing in recent years, and this is his 2nd film as a director (he also wrote Return of the Living Dead 4 and 5). He is a source of amusement to me, because one year at a Fangoria convention he sat in front of me and my friends and was obnoxious as hell. Seems like a nice enough guy though.

Anyway, the film is sort of a Ring wannabe (the chick that played Samara in Ring Two is in it, as a normal character, and I should note she is fucking cute as hell), just not as interesting. Nothing about the film is bad on a technical level (the HD looks pretty good, in fact), though the editing is pretty bad in spots (there’s a scene of a character holding a gun on another and I can’t even tell if they are facing one another or the gun wielder is behind the other guy). The acting is sufficient, with a couple of rappers (Ja Rule and Paul Wall) mixed in with B-movie kingpins like Danny Trejo and Michael Paré. And poor Tom Sizemore is also on hand, doing nothing to help us remember that at one point he was one of the most interesting character actors in Hollywood. This makes him 0-4 in Horror Movie A Day land, though this film, bland and forgettable as it may be, is certainly better than Bottom Feeder or Ring Around The Rosie (the other one is The Relic, which is slightly better than this, mainly because I could remember it the next day.

I really wish I could write a more interesting review. But seriously, the movie is like a fucking vacuum. I actually have it on in the background right now as I write this, and I’m still at a loss to come up with anything worth mentioning, good or bad. The movie is just... there. I can’t even think of anything to screenshot.

Oh wait, there is one thing. The fucking climax is during the end credits. The movie ends, the credits roll, and then suddenly, the final scene, which involves the death of a major character, begins to play alongside the credits, as if it were a blooper reel in a Jackie Chan movie. So yeah, if you check the film out, make sure you keep watching for a bit during the credits, or else you’ll miss out on some primo Sizemore screen-time.

What say you?

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Ghost,

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The Terror

JANUARY 7, 2008

GENRE: GHOST, SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: DVD (BUDGET PACK 2!!!)

I used to refer to The Terror as my "Bedtime Movie". I bought it on VHS for like 39 cents when I was 16, thinking it was some lost gem. “How can it be bad, with Karloff AND Nicholson?” I said to myself. “Stop talking to yourself!” replied the clerk at Suncoast. Anyway, a few attempts to watch the film over the next week all resulted in me falling asleep within minutes. From then on, whenever I had trouble falling asleep, I would put it in and let nature take its course (this is back when I used to be allowed to have a TV in the bedroom. Never get married, kids!). Until today, I had never seen the whole thing (I even re-bought the film on its own DVD and still never made it through, making this budget copy version the 3rd copy I have owned!).

I don’t know how the hell I used to fall asleep during the first 10 minutes though. In the first SIX SECONDS we are given a spooky castle, waves crashing violently on the shore, and Karloff walking down some stairs. OK that’s not very exciting, but the way the 3 shots are edited together is so rough and violent, it seems like it is. Over the next few minutes we’re also treated to Jack Nicholson throwing his compass away because it’s not working in the spot he’s in (which is like when a guy in an action movie throws away a gun when it runs out of ammo. They’re not disposable!!!); a near drowning or two, Nicholson yelling at a woman, a bird attack, Nicholson trying to punch said bird, and what I am pretty sure is Dustin Hoffman in drag:

There’s also a nifty opening credit sequence that features some animation, giving the film a bit of extra production value (this is a Roger Corman movie, so PV is welcome wherever it can be found). This credit sequence also features several future names, including Monte Hellman and Francis Ford Coppola (both of whom were among the many uncredited directors of this movie), and the odd listing of RICHARD Miller instead of the usual Dick. Miller is at his most serious in this movie (never cracks a smile or does anything amusing.... hell, his character isn’t even named Walter Paisley), which is perhaps why he used his full name. Also an animated dove, for some reason.

I hope I still have that old DVD, because the compression on this is the worst I have ever seen on these budget packs. There’s a lot of water in the film (always a tough thing for compression, even on otherwise respectable DVDs), which doesn’t help, but even in non-water scenes, it’s very pixely. The whole climax of the film (it’s actually considered trivia that this Corman film has a water finale instead of a fire) looks less like a film and more like a very unattractive mosaic:

As for the movie itself, I haven’t a clue. There’s a woman who may be a ghost, a Baron who may not be the Baron, Nicholson supposedly being in the French army, a witch with a bird she can control, a mute... it shouldn’t surprise anyone that the film was made up as they went along, with several directors shooting stuff more or less at random. At one point, Miller explains that Karloff’s character killed the real Baron and took his place, and now believes he really is the Baron. Didn’t anyone notice? Is his Baron title just sort of honorary?

Corman apparently spent some time just shooting all of the actors walking up and down stairs, figuring he could work it all into the film somehow (and he does! That first shot of Karloff makes sense now!). As was often the case with Corman, the film was shot over a few days, using sets that were about to be torn down. The result is as slipshod as you might expect from such a shooting design, but yet it’s still strangely appealing, with the nonsensical story always moving along, plus some occasional gore. The end of the film, featuring a melting woman (no idea) was on my Doorways to Horror game that I mentioned in another review. So you know it’s good.

There are lots of errors in the movie (including “stones” that float), but my favorite was the giant metal door. Karloff raises the thing using a chain. He ducks under it, and it immediately falls back down (since no one is holding the chain). Then Miller and Nicholson open it, but this time it stays open, for no reason other than the fact Nicholson has to run back outside a few moments later. As he does, the door dutifully drops back down as soon as he gets through. It’s like the world’s first automatic door (the movie it set in 1806). Amazing.

What say you?

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Ghost, Horror Classics, Revenge, Supernatural,

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