The Entrance (2006)

JUNE 5, 2008

GENRE: SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

Attention casting folks: If your lead actress resembles Angelina Jolie in any way (as the woman in The Entrance does – same lips, very similar eyes), then make sure your male lead in no way resembles Ethan Hawke, for it leads to the viewer making unnecessary comparisons to Taking Lives, one of the absolute worst thrillers of all time. Hell, there’s even a scene in Entrance where Jolie-lite (also a cop) is interrogating a frantic Hawke-lite, much like their simulacrums did in the former film. Gah.

Luckily this movie’s much better than Lives. It’s not great, but it’s a well done low budget film with a plot that is a bit similar to that of the first Saw, but with a religious/supernatural bent. It’s also the 2nd movie in a row to deal with a little boy being molested. Great. But hey, horror movies SHOULD be disturbing on different levels, not just “look how graphic this murder is!”, so I guess that’s, in a twisted way, a good thing. And both molesters were killed horribly, so hurrah!

Speaking of yesterday’s movie, this one was also Lionsgate. And I must give credit where credit is due: It’s an anamorphic transfer! Yay for the Lion! You did it! Wasn’t that easy? Now just do that for ALL of your goddamn movies and I can stop bitching at you for it, and focus on bitching at you for forcing me to watch your goddamn 20 second logo at the top of all your DVDs.

Unlike Saw though, the games the killer plays are not about torture. They are actual games. Bingo, Poker, Musical Chairs... all played by our victims. Loser dies, winner goes on to the next game. It’s kind of funny to see a group of grown men playing musical chairs, and impressive that it’s actually pretty suspenseful to boot. Nice work.

Another thing I’d like to point out that has nothing to do with the movie: lighters. At one point, the main dude lights a cigarette, and his lighter is a metal one with the lid (I don’t smoke so I don’t know what these are called). In real life, I almost never see these. Everyone always has the regular Bic type long thin type with no lid. But in movies, they always have the other kind. Why is that? No matter how much of a low-life the character is supposed to be, they ALWAYS have the more expensive lighters. It bugs me for some reason.

One thing I didn’t care for in the movie is that it is maddeningly vague on certain plot points. The end credits promise 2 more movies, but that’s no excuse for not providing key information for THIS movie, you know, the one you made and possibly might not get to sequelize. I’m all for leaving things for interpretation, but here there is more unanswered than not. Even minor things aren’t resolved, such as the film’s conclusion, which has one character holding another at gunpoint. Come on!

This is addressed in the making of; the director says he wants the audience to decide for themselves. Which, again, is fine, but it should be the exception, not the rule. I would also like to suggest avoiding the making of before you watch the film, as it gives a lot of stuff away. Like Saw, the surprising connections and twists are a big part of what makes the film enjoyable, so I won’t give them away here.

It’s not perfect by any stretch (the woozy acting of one Ron Sauvé in particular is pretty damaging, since he’s an important character with a lot of exposition), but it’s not the usual junk, and it’s nice to see a “Saw ripoff” that rips off the ideas, not the gore/torture.

What say you?

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Supernatural,

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Fear Itself: "The Sacrifice"

JUNE 5, 2008

GENRE: ANTHOLOGY, VAMPIRE
SOURCE: DVD (SCREENER)

Tonight is the premiere of Fear Itself, a semi-sequel to Masters of Horror that is airing on NBC. Like MoH, each week will have a different director/writer, and is billed as a ‘new movie every week’. Of course, even if one considered an hour to be a movie, that’s not even the case here, with commercials we are talking less than 45 minutes, and with some obvious restrictions (while the gore seems intact, there is no nudity or profanity to speak of here). Tonight’s is called The Sacrifice and is written by Mick Garris (based on a short story by Del Howison) and directed by Breck Eisner.

Wait what? Breck “Sahara” Eisner? Why NBC chose to lead off their horror director-themed show with an episode by a guy who has only made one (non horror, or even successful) movie is beyond me, especially since it’s not even supposed to be the first (it’s listed as episode 4), but whatever. But what’s more troubling is that, if they are going out of order, they must think this is a stronger episode than the real episode 1, which is by Stuart Gordon. Which sucks, because this is hardly a home run.

The setup is fine (an isolated, borderline Amish town with a vampire problem), and the makeup on the vampires is good, but the way everything plays out is just so by the numbers, and I was hoping for a twist or two to the proceedings. Even for a TV show, the entire thing feels very generic, from the carefully laid out revelations (our female “villains” aren’t really the villains after all!), the downer ending, the horny guy whose desire to nail a broad he literally met 10 minutes before leads to his doom, etc. There is nothing we haven’t seen before in a regular, unrestricted film. And yes, the gore is there, but gore does not make a horror film – good ideas do. Whether Garris/Eisner just botched Howison’s original story or it was simply bland to begin with, I do not know, but either way it’s not exactly a strong start for the series.

It’s not a total loss though. The three girls are all hot, and Friday Night Lights’ Jesse Plemons is amusing as the talkative and nervous sidekick to our hero (Jeffrey Pierce). And the pacing is good – the heroes end up at the vampire infested compound in the first five minutes, and folks begin being attacked in the first 15. Not too shabby. There's also some great lines here and there, like "If this is luck I hate to see misfortune." - again, I don't know if this is Howison's doing or Garris' (and I am really sort of peeved that Howison's credit is buried in the end credits - it should be up front with Garris and Eisner. If it was based on Stephen King or Edgar Allan Poe, you can bet your ass it would be more prominently credited), but either way it's one of more than a couple instances where the talent behind the scenes really shone through. And honestly, for all its shortcomings, it’s still better than say, the MoH episodes Dance of the Dead or Cigarette Burns, but it’s nothing worth setting up a new Tivo recording for either. The very first MoH to air was also one of its all time best (Don Coscarelli’s Incident On And Off A Mountain Road); if that’s the case here, yikes.

And that is a shame, because there are a lot of great directors on board (Gordon, Brad Anderson, Darren Bousman) and NBC is certainly not against canning a show before giving it a chance. They aren’t as bad as FOX in this regard, but if the next couple episodes are as bland as this, I can’t imagine this thing lasting all 13 planned episodes, because hardcore horror fans will just watch their unrated DVDs and non-horror fans won't find much to win them over. Luckily, due to their ties with Sci-Fi and USA, it’s not like the episodes will be lost forever, but since horror is so rare on the major networks (with Moonlight canned, it’s basically just Supernatural), I want the show to be a success.

So uh, ignore my review and watch tonight’s episode!

What say you?

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Anthology, Television, Vampire,

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The Chair (2007)

JUNE 4, 2008

GENRE: GHOST, POSSESSION
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

Two days ago I made a rather unmotivated crack about Lionsgate’s utter ignorance of the anamorphic transfer for many of their DVDs. And sure enough, the next day I rented The Chair, which was presented sans anamorphic transfer, despite the promise of a 16x9 presentation (which I suspect their DVD department doesn’t actually understand the meaning of) and even anamorphic menus. It’s like they are just TRYING to annoy me at this point. Granted, it’s not a great film, but it deserves better (and F you to all but one of the other reviews I found for the film, even those on DVD sites, that don’t even mention this – maybe if more people point it out they will knock it the fuck off).

Here’s some advice to any filmmaker who is willing to take suggestions from a random horror movie fan who writes a blog: if your movie is only about one person, and it’s a slow burn of a film (neither of which are usually a problem with me), make sure that person is A. interesting, 2. fun to be around, and D. portrayed by a good actress. Alanna Chisholm, who stars in the film as Danielle, is pretty much the only character on screen for about 75% of it, but she is none of these things (though, strangely, she’s better as a crazy psycho than as a regular person). Making matters worse, her friend (or actually, sister, something that I refuse to believe since the two share not a single physical attribute) Anna, played by Lauren Roy, is a much better actress (and cuter to boot, IMO) and seems like someone I wouldn’t mind hanging out with for a whole movie. Danielle is, like the broad in Catacombs, dour and possibly delusional (and like that film, we’re never really given any information as to how/why she was crazy – it’s just a convenient plot point without any backup), which is fine if it’s a dramatic movie about getting over your fears, but the plot requires Danielle to more or less succumb to them, becoming slightly more interesting but even less likable, and the film awkwardly promotes Anna to the heroine with only 20 minutes to go.

There are many curious moments in the film that kept me relatively amused. There are at least two scenes of Danielle masturbating (one in the film’s first 4 minutes – way to set up a much more exciting film!), all of the phones in the movie have cords (do they even MAKE those anymore?), the film’s most exciting sequence is when the cute friend, er, SISTER, tries to sync a video up to a sound recording, and one scene inexplicably begins like this:

We are also told that the anniversary of the ghost’s original death took place 3 weeks before Danielle moved into the home, which means ‘something went wrong’ (what, we are never told). It also means that the ghost hung out for 3 weeks doing jack shit. Oh, and the ghost is apparently Powder:

It’s also yet another movie that attempts to spook us with a children’s song, in this case “Mockingbird”. Music is a problem throughout – at one point they watch a video (before it gets synced) and one of the girls makes a comment that there is no sound. But the film’s music score plays over the entire scene, so the silence of the clip (which would be presumably creepy) is sort of irrelevant.

But then the final 20 minutes save it. The titular chair finally gets built/used, on a little kid no less (for a movie about the ghost of a child killer, there is a distinct lack of child killing; just saying). Meanwhile, Anna goes off to the woods in order to find a body, and is helped by Danielle’s professor, who turns out to be the still-living Doctor from the video. He says the ridiculous line “A crowbar for Crow!” (why not a scarecrow or a DVD of The Crow?) and they find the corpse buried under what appears to be a thin layer of leaves. The corpse wakes up, has an Avid fart, the prof is whacked by a shovel, the corpse disappears via the worst CGI I’ve seen in a while, and Anna gets back in her car and drives home, where the kid takes a shovel to her. Lot of shovel action. It’s ridiculous enough to be entertaining; and a stark contrast to the rather dour and overly serious first hour.

The commentary track (buried in setup, not listed as a special feature) has some interesting nuts and bolts stuff, but doesn’t quite help explain some of the story’s lapses and holes (though to be fair, one or two issues I had were resolved upon watching the film again – there’s some rather subtle foreshadowing in the first act). They point out that most of the film was ADR, which is a surprise, as it’s never noticeable. In fact, with the exception of occasional use of the horrendous body-mount camera, all of my problems with the film are limited to the creative side; from a technical standpoint the film is pretty solid (and despite being shot on DV and given the standard lousy LG presentation, looks pretty good as well, with lots of nice camera trick shots that are more interesting in the ‘how’d they do that?’ way than anything resembling a scare). There are no deleted scenes either, just some making of stuff that won’t change your mind one way or the other regarding how you feel about such things (I find these 15 minute pieces rather boring 99 times out of 103).

I didn’t realize that the film was directed by the game guy who directed Ginger Snaps 2 (Brett Sullivan), which was not only a superior sequel but a good werewolf movie as well - two praises I almost never give out. It’s possible that this film is closer to his heart and all that (in addition to being an original, it’s also shot in his own home) but for the most part, it didn’t work for me. Hopefully on his next film he will find a way to keep the originality of this movie with the fun/suspense of Snaps.

One final note – the chair on the cover in no way resembles the chair in the film. Customary Lionsgate false advertising, though at least it’s only promising a chair and not things that aren’t in the movie at all (like zombies on Rise of the Dead, or a graveyard in The Off Season, or a decent looking werewolf like in Devil’s Hound). Progress?

What say you?

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Ghost, Independent, Possession,

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Chosen Survivors (1974)

JUNE 3, 2008

GENRE: PREDATOR, POST-APOCALYPTIC
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

Like, well, not many of the films I watch ("many" would be like, 250 at this point), Chosen Survivors is a film I never heard of until I saw a trailer for it at the New Beverly (which film it was attached to I can no longer recall, sadly). It didn’t look particularly good, but it did promise killer bats and cheesy 70s disaster movie scenarios. I figure, if nothing else, maybe there’s a joke from Airplane! that would make more sense after I saw it.

Nope.

It’s not a terrible movie by any stretch, but it’s painfully dated (again: THIS is the type of movie that should be getting remade) and jarringly paced. I wasn’t expecting nonstop killer bat action, but after a good 20 minute chunk in which the bats are pretty much the major focal point of the film, they all but completely disappear for another half hour or so, only to once again become the main antagonist again for the final act. In between these sequences is like something out of another movie, in which our eponymous characters try to cope with their situation, pair off in order to breed, etc. One film or the other would be fine, but they are combined so clumsily they end up canceling one another out; at no point do the two plotlines feel intertwined.

Essentially, it’s like a lost Michael Crichton adaptation. We have our group of experts in various fields stuck together in a situation that requires them to work together to fight off a common threat. You know, like Jurassic Park. Or Congo. Or Sphere. Or Timeline. Or Prey. Or...

One thing I never expected this film to have in common with yesterday’s was something that reminded me of Tourist Trap. Early on, as the elevator taking the characters down to their new home begins to crash, they all flail about in slow motion. However, the AUDIO is quite obviously recorded at the correct speed, with the actors just trying to SOUND slow. Thus, they just utter some hilarious “aaahhhh”s and “ohhhhh”s, sounds that remind me of my favorite Trap scene (where all the mannequins “scream” before falling on the girl). It’s the best part of the movie by far, but sadly, nothing else is as hilariously inept.

One thing that certainly isn’t funny is a would-be rape scene halfway through. Jackie Cooper (Perry!) suddenly attacks one of the female survivors and forces her to the ground. He keeps pressing on and yelling “I won’t hurt you!” and such, and then finally she says “All right!” and returns his kiss. Uh... no. In a straight up exploitation film this might be perversely hilarious, but in the middle of a melodramatic thriller it’s just awkward and wrong. Then again, for all I know there were more things of this nature; according to the IMDb, the film once ran 130 minutes, but all existing copies run only 99 (and thank god, even at that it gets pretty dull – another 31 minutes would be borderline torture).

The bat effects are actually pretty good. They obviously use real bats as often as possible, and there’s a scene where a few of them crawl (yes, crawl) around on one of the girls’ bed and attack her that’s actually pretty damn great. And the film’s most promoted setpiece, where one of the guys climbs up the elevator shaft to try to reach an emergency button (good place for it), is also pretty thrilling, and again, the effects are reasonably believable. Only in the final bat attack did the effects budget clearly run out, with bad projection and an odd blue outline around all of the characters being attacked. Oh well, can’t have it all.

On a two pack with the superior (and shorter, woo!) The Earth Dies Screaming, this is a pretty good deal for under 10 bucks. No extras, but in the age of Roland Emmerich, it’s sort of refreshing to see post-apoc movies with actual ideas, not effects.

What say you?

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Post-Apocalyptic, Predator,

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Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy

Brandon Sanderson's books include the Mistborn Trilogy--Mistborn: The Final Empire, The Well of Ascension, and The Hero of Ages (October 2008)--which he has called "a Hybrid fantasy, heist story, kung fu epic!"

Here he discusses his thinking about the cast and crew should the books be adapted for the big screen:

I know a lot of authors "cast" certain actors in their books as the characters, but I've never done this. In my mind, they're who they are--and that's not a given actor. It's someone else, as unique as any of us are. That isn't to say I wouldn't like to see a director adapt my books to film! It just means that it is very hard for me to pick actors for my books.

Now, directors are a different story. I've often thought about who I would like to make the Mistborn trilogy into a movie. The obvious choice would be Peter Jackson, but I shy away from this one. Perhaps because he's the aforementioned obvious choice. More, I've always kind of thought that I'd like to pick Robert Rodriguez. Why him? Well, because of his versatility. I've seen so many different types of movies from him, but I've liked every one. He's good with action sequences, can film a nice, dramatic scene, and has proven that he can do adaptations. Mostly, however, he's able to mix blockbuster storytelling with an artist's flair.

So, that would be my pick!

Learn more about the Mistborn books and Brandon Sanderson and his work at his website and his blog.

--Marshal Zeringue

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Sheitan (2006)

JUNE 2, 2008

GENRE: FRENCH, WEIRD
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

Anyone want a copy of Sheitan? I didn’t hate it, but I can’t imagine watching it again. This is why I more or less stopped blind buying; I end up owning films like this. And with the ‘rules’ of Horror Movie A Day dictating that I watch a ‘new movie every day’, I never have time to rewatch something unless I truly love it. Or it’s the Halloween remake.

Sheitan was recommended by my good friend Anonymous (twice!), and other folks with better names have sung its praises as well. And it’s certainly worth watching, but I have a problem with any movie in which the back of the DVD tells me more about what the fuck is going on than the actual film does. The movie, it would seem, is just about a batshit farmer named Joseph (the always interesting Vincent Cassell) who takes in yet another group of young thuggish French citizens (do ANY French people below 30 behave in a civilized manner?) and acts like a complete nut, but since they want to fuck one another the kids all stick around anyway. Finally he goes even MORE apeshit and begins punching and kicking them, before his wife/sister literally squirts out a kid, they make a doll and then smile, and the movie’s over. Huh? But the back of the DVD tells me that they are Satan worshippers and Joseph has made a demonic pact. Gotcha.

Still, it’s an entertaining movie, thanks to Cassell’s unpredictable behavior, the oddball supporting characters (including a trio of abnormally skinny redneck boys), some truly fucked up sequences (one of the girls our heroes lust after masturbates a dog for some reason), and my not-quite-resolved quest to understand what the hell was going on and how the movie was considered horror. On the surface, it’s another “kids run afoul of rednecks” movie, but it is presented in a manner quite unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Good or bad is your call, but undeniably different. Even though it was late and I was quite tired when I watched it, I never even dozed for a second (my standard “forgetting to read the subtitles” sickness applies, however – maybe the demonic pact stuff was better explained), because I was just too joyfully baffled by what was on the screen. Come on, how many movies feature the characters singing lyrics like “Hit up yo grandma and rape your dad”?

The movie also won me over a bit by reminding me of Tourist Trap. At one point our heroes walk into an attic and there are mannequins and doll parts (doll eyes, doll mouth, doll legs...), just like Chuck Connors’ workshop. If there’s anything I feel is entirely lacking in pretty much all modern horror, it would be things that remind me of Tourist Trap.

The only real unquestionable flaw in the film is when it stops cold about an hour or so in (the counter didn’t work for this particular DVD – anyone else have this problem? I had no idea how much was left, ever!), as one of the jerk heroes tells a story about a girl with an ugly vagina. Not that it’s without amusement, but it’s the type of thing that should have been in the film’s first act, not the last. It’s a slow film anyway (in terms of horror/violence), to stop it dead just to tell a goofy joke is a bit unforgivable.

As for extras, nothing to write blogs about – a making of/interview with Cassell that details the origin of the film and offers some standard behind the scenes footage of no real interest (though I was surprised to discover that the hot springs seen in the film was actually a built set). Which makes two in a row from Tartan that have been pretty lacking in this department – maybe I just lucked out with my first bunch of selections from the company, all of which were pretty wealthy in the features department. A few deleted scenes would have been nice, especially since there are a couple of noticeable gaps in the story (one of the girls disappears entirely with no explanation). The trailer is also there, but I don’t consider that an extra, it should be standard, like scene selection and anamorphic transfers.

(Somewhere, a Lionsgate exec is thinking that last line is in error.)

What say you?

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French, Weird,

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Undead Or Alive (2007)

JUNE 1, 2008

GENRE: COMEDIC, ZOMBIE
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

HMAD reader Kristian recommended Undead Or Alive, and while I don't love it, I have to admire writer/director Glasgow Phillips for combining three genres in one film, particularly three that hardly ever work together even in pairs: Western, Comedy, and Horror. Sadly, it doesn’t really work as a comedy, and that is clearly the main ‘ingredient’, considering the wealth of comedian actors and relative lack of zombie action.

Right off the bat I was a bit unsure as to how funny the film would be, as I saw the names Chris Kattan, Chris Coppola, and Brian Posehn in the cast. Posehn is OK but his comedy stylings seem mainly limited to sitting there and making faces at the other, more entertaining characters in the stuff I have seen him in (a few episodes of Sarah Silverman, Fantastic Four 2). Kattan I never cared for on SNL (Mango being the least funny recurring sketch in the show’s history), and Coppola is just awful (though I guess it takes some sort of skill to stand out as the worst part of an Uwe Boll movie). The only character in the film who managed to get any laughs out of me was James Denton, playing the straight man. Like Tommy Lee Jones in Men in Black, Denton’s laid back, straightfaced approach to the nonsense around him was the most amusing part of the whole thing. And as clichéd as it is by now, I laughed every time they played a takeoff on the Brokeback Mountain score during any scene of Denton and Kattan “bonding” (how great is it that I not only recognized it, but knew it wasn't the actual score but a slight variation of it?).

But that’s pretty much it for the laughs. The rest of it was just Police Academy-esque pratfalls and obvious humor (Posehn actually puts his foot in a bucket and tries to walk around after getting a pie in the face – come on, this doesn’t even work as a meta-joke on comedy itself) and even the less generic stuff made me groan (the opening text crawl calls attention to the fact that no one wants to read at the beginning of the movie - Ha. Ha). And according to one of the extra features, Glasgow once worked as a writer on South Park during its strong 6th season (Free Hat!) which makes the failed humor even more disappointing; even the weakest Park episodes have a good laugh every couple minutes or so. Actually, speaking of the extras: the commentary track is actually pretty funny, as the three leads and Glasgow just shoot the shit for the most part and rib one another. Since the dialogue isn’t exactly Shakespeare and one could probably figure out what was going on without it, I would actually suggest just watching it with the commentary right off the bat.

Does it work as a horror movie then? Well, no, not really. The zombie makeup is good and I rather liked the idea that simply shooting them in the head won’t do (here they literally have to remove the head entirely). But all of the zombie attack scenes (of which there aren’t too many, plus the zombies disappear entirely for a solid 15-20 minute chunk in the middle of the film) have these nonsensical cutaways to the ancient Indian men who created the zombie curse. Doing it once or twice so the audience gets the idea would be fine, but they literally do it on EVERY SINGLE ZOMBIE BITE. It completely ruins every single attack scene. Also not helping matters are the rockabilly songs that accompany every such scene, which are just completely out of place (it’s supposed to be the 19th century) and lousy songs to boot (though the theme song is rather rousing). And the zombies talk (source of more non-humor), which outside of simply saying “Brains!” I never quite shine to, especially when only a few of them talk while the others utter the usual moans and groans.

It’s a shame too, because the film concludes on a rather mean-spirited note that I loved, but tonally didn’t fit the sort of good natured humor of the rest of the film. It’s an idea that should have been saved for a horror comedy that was as morbidly funny for the entire running time.

It’s a pretty good Western though.

What say you?

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Comedic, Zombie,

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