October 6, 2010 - The Wild Hunt

I wasn't sure how much of a horror movie this was when I rented it. After seeing it, I can say it's not much of a horror movie at all. It is, however, one hell of a movie.

Erik's girlfriend is a LARPer, or a live action role player. So is Erik's brother, Bjorn. Erik think they are both weird. But when she sort of dumps up and goes off for the weekend, he goes chasing after her. Once he gets there though, he finds out she has been fake kidnapped by a fake shaman and that he must team with his brother, the fake Viking king, to lead fake Vikings to save her before she fake dies. Along the way though, reality and the game sort have become the same, and things get a whole lot less fake.

This was director's Alexandre Franchi's first feature, and he is the real deal. He gets great performances out of his actors, who do not have the easiest job. All the characters, with one slight exception, are well rounded and interesting. They are all real people, who just happen to enjoy something many others consider ridiculous. And no one comes across as lame, or weird, or a parody. I bought the world and it actually made me want to join in. At least until people started getting fucked up with hammers.

The only problem is Erik's girlfriend Lynn. The actress tries, but the character as written is a bit wishy-washy, She wants space, she wants to sleep with Erik, she wants out of the game, she makes fun of the world outside of the game. There were a few too many character shifts for me to really buy. And her last scene was a bit of a stretch, though it did work in service to the story.

I'm thrilled that this got a theatrical release back in April, and I hope it finds it audience on DVD. Like I said, it's not really a horror film, but it is certainly a cult film. It's well acted, well written, and well directed and looks great. And the ending will stick with you and will provoke conversation. See it with some of your smarter friend and go for pie to mull it over after, this movie deserves it.

October 5th, 2010 - Hell Night

What a pleasant, little surprise. When I randomly picked a movie off my shelf that I had never seen before, I have to admit I wasn't expecting much. I had never really heard of it before, the cover was ugly as sin, and the only recognizable star was a teenaged Linda Blair. And man, I have rarely been so happy to be proven wrong.

It's a pretty basic setup. Fraternity/sorority hazing dictates that the 4 initiates spend the night in a spooky old house. Legend has it, the previous owner killed his wife, 4 of his 5 children and then himself. The last child was never found, and I'm sure you can tell where this is going. The four leads prepare for a quiet night of recreational drug abuse and pre-marital sex, and 3 of the frat members sneak in to operate all manner of spooky noises and effects to the snot out of them. The child, all grown up and named Andrew, decides to get those damn kids off his property.

In all fairness, this is a pretty standard slasher movie. All the archetypes are there, and you can probably guess who gets killed in what order. But that's all part of the fun. Even better are the slight twists to the formula. One character actually escapes the grounds, and failing to find help, comes back with a shotgun. And once he gets back, he manages to go to town. No traumatized survivor testimonies to an unbelieving authority figure, no getting killed off as soon as he gets back. The kids don't take to getting killed of one by one, and they do take the fight to Andrew more than once.

The film's low budget doesn't really hurt it either. The kills are not quite as spectacular as they could have been, and the makeup and effects in general are rather dodgy. The actors are a mixed bag, but no one really leaves a lasting impression. Linda Blair switches from sounded shrill to bored. Sometimes in the same sentence. The cinematography however, is pretty damned good. With the exception of some poorly choreogrpahed sequences meant to disguise the budget, the entire thing looks sharp. The framing is well thought out and often witty in an odd way, and the lighting has some great contrasting colours that called to mind Dario Argento on a few occasions.

The script isn't too shabby either. There are some facepalm worthy clunkers, but they're few and far between. More noteworthy are the absolute gems of conversation that happen every now and again. It almost feels like a Marx Brother threw a cue card in randomly every 10 pages or so.

All told, Hell Night doesn't have a lot you haven't seen before in some form, but it's done really well, and chances are you haven't given this a shot. Don't make my mistake, if you see it on the cheap, pick it up and put it proudly on the shelf beside Friday the 13th. Show it off to friends who will pick it up and mock you for owning it. Prove them wrong, and prove to yourself that bottom shelf videos deserve a chance like everything else.

October 4th, 2010 - The Rig

Fuck. This. Movie. I know I said I was itching for some terrible DTV horror, but this was too far. I also said that I was tired of movies ripping off the formula from Aliens. Ripping off Alien isn't much better. Some might even call it worse. Here are 10 reasons why you should not waste your time.

10. The creature was made with costume materials found at your local drug store. Seriously, it looks awful.

9. It's a 30 minute movie stretched to 94 minutes. There's more stock footage than a bad nature documentary, and some of the slowest transitions I've ever seen.

8. It has no idea who the real character is. And neither do I. The movie switches focus between two or three people, which means I have no idea who will actually make it to the end. It also means I don't care.

7. It's poorly edited. They actually fade out and back in during a conversation. Some shots are hardly on screen for a second before fading to black. Continuity errors abound and don't even think about trying to follow eyelines.

6. It's also poorly shot. It ignores the line of axis, and the entire thing seems underlit by a full stop. The action is all shot the same and it's impossible to tell whats going on. Not to mention some shots are just plain out of focus.

5. The acting is embarrassing. William Forsythe is the only actor of note, and he just seems bored. This says a lot, because I've seen him in movies almost as bad as this one but in those he's trying.

4. The writing is terrible. The writer tries his hand at Tarantino-esque banter but comes up with stuff that a student would have been ashamed of. A high school student at that.

3. What little blood and sex are there sucks. All the kills are the same and you don't really get to see them anyway. There's a bit of nudity, but boringly shot and not that attractive either.

2. I wasn't kidding when I said it rips of Alien. The drilling company is named Weyland. The logo is even a ripoff of the Weyland-Yutani from the Alien franchise. I wonder if Fox knows?

1. I'm just going to stop here. The filmmakers didn't this much effort into the movie, I'm not going to in my review. I'm all for people livign the dream and making movies. And I'm happy for them that they got distribution, but this kind of film just dilutes the market and takes the shine off of really great DTV films like Timecrimes or The Tournament. So I can't really feel guilty. That said, if you feel you must support them, then by all means rent it. By the looks of the end product, 5 or 6 rentals should get them their budget back.

October 3rd, 2010 - 30 Days of Night: Dark Days

It's about time. I've been looking forward to a truly terrible horror movie to tear apart, and this is the perfect one. Bad acting, terrible action, boring unoriginal story....it's got everything.

To start, let me say while I was a fan of the original 30 Days of Night, it was held back by a couple boring lead performances and some terrible dialogue. It's a shame because it's well paced, scary, and has some incredible shots. Which is fairly loyal to the source material. Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith's graphic novel still has some of the most amazing art I've ever seen. The stylized panels suggest frightening things well before anything happens. The writing though, is dreadful. I physically cringed reading some of the dialogue, and it told us far more than it should. It was a great concept, illustrated wonderfully, and undone by the writer's love of his own voice. And believe me, I know all about being undone by loving the sound of your own voice.

We weren't off to a good start when the pre-credits sequence just recycled all the best shots from the first movie under terrible, heavy handed narration. Then the credits rolled and I saw Steve Niles credited as a writer, and I got that horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach. The movie never really got better from that point. Stella, the surviving character from the first film, is going around trying convince people that it wasn't a bad pipeline that killed her town, but vampires. Clearly this doesn't go well. Not with the public, who don't believe her, or the vampires, who want to shut her up. After a strict warning from a vampire lackey in the FBI to stop it, she meets up with some other vampire hunters and decided to kill the queen. Things do not go according to plan.

I've got to get this off my chest. Aliens is a great movie. It's number 2 on my personal list of best films ever made. But just because it was the perfect way to do a sequel once, doesn't mean EVERY FUCKING SEQUEL EVER has to take the same route. Stella doesn't want to go back, but a trained group with weapons convince her and they declare war on the queen. I saw this before, when it was awesome. It's not so much anymore.

Kiele Sanchez, taking over from Melissa George, sleepwalks through her role as Stella. It's a shame cause I dug her in Perfect Getaway last year with Timothy Olyphant. The rest of the cast are a step above Central Casting, but only a small one. Harold Perrineau and Mia Kirschner show up for 5 minutes to lend the movie some credibility but never get it back. The movie is drably shot, and the music is generic industrial nonsense. I'm still not sure what happened in most of the action scenes. The gore is dreadful, ranging from 10 dollar CGI to grape punch for the practical stuff. There isn't any really nudity to speak of either, usually the saving grace in a movie like this. The one sex scene is boring and just left me wondering for the characters thumbs.

To give credit where credit's due though, I did like how they called vampire wannabes 'bug eaters'. That made me smile. And the initiation to be allowed to become a vampire involves ripping someone's throat out with your teeth while still human. I've got to give them props for that, it was clever.

30 Days of Night: Dark Days is not the worst DTV movie I've ever seen, but it's close. A true return to form for terrible video sequels to decent original movies. Even if you find this one playing late at night, just watch infomercial. At least that way, you can pretend Zombie Billy Mays is selling you stuff.

What, too soon?

October 2nd, 2010 - Martyrs

Everyone knows I'm a fan of direct to video horror. I watch pretty much all the crap that comes through my video store at one point or another, and I've taken some flak for it. Now last March, we get this one single copy of Martyrs. I'm excited, I've heard all the film festival buzz. Walk-outs, people fainting, death threats to the director. I'm shaking, I'm so excited. And of course, someone rents it before me. But when they brought it back, I could tell they were shaken. I finally take the disc home, watch it. 100 minutes later I'm pacing my kitchen, feeling a tiny bit queasy. A film that justified watching all that junk. Finally taking all those chances paid off. So, the question is 'how does it hold up?'

Man, I remember this movie being way more intense. I daresay I was a bit bored in the second half this time. The concept is great. A girl gets kidnapped and tortured. She escapes and makes friends with a girl at the hospital, but is tormented by her memories. 15 years later the two of them hunt down the people responsible with a shotgun. After that, things get weird. I still appreciate that the story throws me for a loop more than once. Without spoiling anything, lets just say some of the deaths do not happen when I expected they would. The first attack on the kidnapper's family is brutal and effective. Some of the shots are terrifyingly beautiful and stick with you well after the movie is over. And I still love the extremely nihilistic ending.

That said, the entire thing is 15 minutes too long. The scenes with Lucie, the main character, fighting with her inner demons are violent and disturbing the first few times, but they just keep going and going. The same happens for when another character gets captured and tortured. The scenes that were shocking and uncomfortable eventually just meld together into an unpleasant sameyness. It's a shame, because it ruins the pacing and just makes the entire thing feel bloated. Then again, it's possible that director Pascal Laugier wanted us to feel numb to the proceedings, to put us in the villian's shoes, but numb isn't quite the same as bored.

All told, it's still a bleak, dark, violent horror film that deserves an audience. Most of it works, and works quite well. It just could have a leaner, meaner classic. Tomorrow, I'm going to watch another direct to DVD flick, only more recent and probably not nearly as good. Remember I'm still open to suggestions!

NOTE: My official blog is not quite up and running yet. I didn't want to delay the start of this, so for the meantime I will be posting my reviews on Facebook and my temporary blog here, interiorityentertainment.blogspot.com

October 1st, 2010 - John Carpenter's They Live

It was a long, hard process, figuring out which film I wanted to start off with, and They Live is one of the few John Carpenter films I haven't seen. Now I know this isn't a horror movie in the strictest sense, but it's got aliens, mind control and shotguns so I say it counts.

Like I said, I had never seen They Live before tonight. I didn't even know that much about it, except it's where Duke Nukem got one of his more famous line. The plot is this; a drifter comes to LA, finds magic sunglasses that reveal a huge extradimensional conspiracy to take over the world and brainwash all of humanity, and then kicks alien ass. It's not that well acted, and the script is not one of Carpenter's finest moments. Much of the dialogue is awkward and the pacing is wonky. The movie drags on and on for most of the first hour, and only picks up steam once Rowdy Roddy Piper gets the sunglasses. The scene where he slowly puts everything together and gets angrier and angrier and starts antagonizing the aliens is amazing. Then again, that may just be because I'm a sucker for the juxtaposition of black and white with colour.

The movie also gets points for having Keith David. He could read the phone book and make it sound badass. Mostly because it would just sound like a list of people he was going to kill. His first shot has him wearing a pink wife beater and he's still pulls it off. Roddy Piper doesn't quite embarrass himself, though I'll always wonder what could have happened if Kurt Russell was in his role. John Carpenter and Kurt Russell were the best director/actor team since Kurosawa and Mifune. But I'm getting away from myself. The lack of a strong female lead also didn't do the movie any favours. That said, the fight between the leads was one of the greatest hand to hand fights I've ever seen. It just kept going and going, until each man was barely able to stand. Then it kept going for another 5 minutes. Awesome.

Also, while I heard that this movie had aged rather badly which I don't quite understand. The whole divide between the rich and poor and the disappearing middle class seemed almost painfully topical and obvious. It's like John Carpenter predicted all of this ages ago. Though I guess better this coming true than Prince of Darkness.

All in all, They Live was a fun, but very flawed movie that should be seen. It's no Thing, or Assault on Precinct 13, but lesser Carpenter is still better and more original than pretty much anything else out there.

Tomorrow, my personal second favourite of the recent French Horror New Wave.

NOTE: My official blog is not quite up and running yet. I didn't want to delay the start of this, so for the meantime I will be posting my reviews on Facebook and my temporary blog here. interiorityentertainment.blogspot.com

2008. The Good, The Bad, The First Part.

So another year has come and gone, and everyone is making their lists. The best, the worst, the funniest. And since I figured it was ages since I updated this thing, I should throw in my two cents. A note of warning, I have yet to see some of the bigger heavyweights from December, but am working to remedy that this week. This will explain the curious lack of Slumdog Millionaire, Wrestler, and Benjamen Button. That said, let us begin, good first.

1. Let The Right One In
Good goddamn. This is why I love movies. Beautifully shot, emotional, funny, violent. If there was justice this would have grossed 150 millions dollars, and be up for an Oscar or 8. That said, there is no justice, and it will have to suffice being at the top of my (and countless other) lists. A vampire story, a love story, a coming of age story, and still somehow more than all this. A testament to the power of good horror. See it.

2. In Bruges
Hands down the best thing Colin Farrell has ever done. Wickedly funny, touching, brutal, a little bleak, but still manages to be heartwarming. And Ralph Fiennes on top of his game. Most quotable movie of the year.

3. The Dark Knight
In Bruges may have been the most quotable movie, but this was easily my most quoted. Sure it has a couple plot holes, and maybe the pacing could be tighter, but really, the only problem I can think of is that Heath Ledger stole the spotlight from the rest of super talented cast. Gary Oldman may have given his best performance since Leon, and Aaron Eckhart raises his own bar so high, it'll be tough to top. Throw that on top of gorgeous IMAX photography, and the most nihilistic story a summer blockbuster probably will ever see, and you've got a bonafide classic.

4. Wall-E
Best romance this year. I dare anyone to say they don't want a Wall-E of their own. Besides the guts of making a movie with no dialogue for the first 45 minutes, it was wonderful to go to the movie theater and feel hopeful when you left. And hey, a pro-enviroment message doesn't hurt.

5. J.C.V.D
Possibly the greatest cathartic moment in cinema in 2008. You'll know what I mean when you see it. And yes, it's even better than the moment in Let The Right One In. Jean-Claude actually, and well, is just a bonus.

6. Son Of Rambow
This one is frustrating cause I can't get anyone to see it. They always make some stupid excuse about 'not liking Rambo movies'. Well, maybe if they took a goddamned chance, and maybe opened their eyes, they would realize that this is just a wicked awesome coming of age story that celebrates the power of movies. It's something I think pretty much every 12 year old should see. As well as First Blood.

7. Redbelt
A martial arts con man samurai movie. Written and directed by David Mamet. Yes, it's as awesome as it sounds.

8. Repo! The Genetic Opera
I could nitpick this movie to death. From some of the songs, to the singing ability of those involved, to the production values, the list goes on. But to do so would miss the point, and the fun. This is easily the most original movie I've seen in ages and will likely see for a long time. I'm just glad movies like this are still made.

9.L'age des Tenebres (Days of Darkness)
Denys Arcand is a national treasure, and this is one of his funniest efforts. Until you realize the truth behind everything. And then it is one of most crushingly sad movies you've ever seen. And yet, you still walk out with a smile of your face. A must see for those who think that Egoyan and Cronenberg are the only two Canadian autuers.

10. The Visitor.
A movie that slipped under everyone's radar and is just getting some recognition. A very quiet, soft character drama with an ending while certainly not happy, still kinda makes you want to high five the main character. Check it out.

Honourable mentions:
Snow Angels
Diary of the Dead
Man On Wire
Speed Racer
Iron Man
The Ruins
Doomsday
Zack and Miri Make a Porno
Vicky Christina Barcelona
Milk
Valkyrie
Cloverfield
More or less everything I saw at TADFF

Worst Movie

1. Twilight
I've already said more than enough on this subject. Needless to say, my thoughts haven't changed.

2. Sex and the City
I kinda dug the show. Not great by any stretch, but well enough done for it's audience. The movie spits on all of that. Long, slow, unfunny, it's the female equivlant of a dumb guy comedy. And not a good one. And will someone please explain to me why the hell did they have to go to Mexico.

3. 88 Minutes
Oh, Al Pacino. Why?

4. The Happening
A decent idea and a great first 5 minutes hype you up that M.Night is back on form. And the rest of the movie plays. And your jaw drop. And tears of pain roll down your cheeks. Cheeks locked in uncontrollable, uncomfortable laughter. Just a waste.

5.10,000 BC
I could overlook the stupidity if at least it was fun. I mean, I kinda dug Death Race and Wanted. It didn't even give me that. Slow, boring, stupid, ugly. Roland Emmerich is a long way from Stargate and ID4.

Dishonourable Mentions
Max Payne
Love Guru
In The Name Of The King
Postal
Mummy 3
Jumper.

Like I said, this isn't a complete list. I still have to see a handful of films. I'll throw up my thoughts on those as I see them. That won't be Part 2 thought. Part 2 will be specific awards, so to speak, as well as some of my thoughts on last year. I'll try to get that up in the next week or so. Feel free to argue with me and stay tuned

TO BE CONTINUED.