Reddit introduces me to wonderful things. Flickr user “stothemofob” made this excellent design for Threadless. I encourage everyone to go for it so I can buy it once it’s released. Clicky-click the image to go to his Flickr page and support him. Anyone who makes something as cool as that deserves it.
I know my love for French horror is, oh, a little extreme, but the trailer for Humains, directed by Jacques-Olivier Molon and Pierre-Olivier Thevenin looks pretty solid. The plot is as follows, thanks to imdb and my inability to sum up movies without sounding retarded:
A team of several researchers travel to the Swiss Alps to investigate a scientific discovery on human evolution. The trip, however, turns into a deadly fight for survival when the team crash into a gully and find themselves falling prey to someone…or something.
Peter Hall, Allocine, and Scott Weinberg for introducing me to this little gem.
Director: Phillip Messerer
Year: 2009
Country: USA
I’ve been toying with a suitable way to review this film. While a straightforward, conventional review dissecting its positive and negative aspects would be the appropriate thing to do, I am anything but conventional. Instead, since most people will never view this film, I will present the review in a scene-by-scene format, punctuated by a series of pictures and pithy commentary that I hope has come to be expected of me. As such, I would be remiss if I didn’t include a giant SPOILER ALERT, lest this review result in another pissy director *coughGEORGESNOWcough* getting his panties all in a wad and complain until he gets a positive review.
The film opens with scenes of a Mayan pyramid punctuated by a silly narrative discussing human sacrifices to the Sun God, a deity with a ferocious appetite….for BLOOD! Seriously, it actually says that. From this point I knew I – and the filmmaker – were screwed. While narrative introductions used to explain motives or allude to an eventual explanation are all well and good, it’s good to use a voice that doesn’t sound like a nervous virgin about to have sex for the first time.
Cut to the bedroom of Lara Baxter, our gothy fifteen year-old protagonist with a fetish for Anne Rice, black clothing, and the esoteric. We see her lighting a candle to the vampire novelist-cum-born-again Christian when her twin sister, the bubbly and relatively unassuming Helen, bursts into the room and complains about not being able to find her dumbbells. Here we see stereotypes and stock characters in action. It’s like 10 Things I Hate About You, only less (intentionally) funny and without the hilarious David Krumholtz, everyone’s favorite super Jew. After a brief altercation and shouting match, Helen leaves and we cut to the title sequence.
I have to laud Phil Messerer for his choice in music here, as retarded hard rock on par with Staind and a variety of nu-metal abortions is the best way to convey the angst associated with being a teenage goth in an unassuming town. Having her wander through a cemetery only makes her angst all the more appropriate and not at all cliche.
Angst!
It is now dinner time, and here we get to meet the family. First up is Ray, a twenty-something oddball who practices medicine out of the second-floor bedroom of his parents’ house. Ray is apparently gay and has magic hair. Yes, magic hair. While I understand Messerer was working within the constraints of a very small budget and no doubt shot scenes out of order like most filmmakers, it truly is a testament to his horrific attention to detail when every scene involving Ray features him with different hair style or hair length. I mean every scene.
This is Ray when we first meet him:
Shortly after dinner he apparently gets a haircut.
As the film progresses his hair undergoes more transformations than the genre of the film. This one is by far the most grievous of the bunch. But I digress.
Next up is Helen, the twin sister of Lara, whom we have already briefly met. She’s a vegetarian, blond, and popular, and no doubt jealous of her sister’s ability to wear all black with style! The nameless father is introduced next. He is unimportant in the grand scheme of things, as his only appearance is relegated to this scene. Finally there’s mom, who is perhaps the most developed and interesting of the characters. A former figure skater of Bulgarian descent, an accident left her with a limp and now she spends all her time “making brownies and singing in a local church choir.” While I clearly have misgivings about the cast, the make-up work on her is phenomenal, as actress Jo Jo Hristova is only thirty-two years old, a year younger than the thirty-three year old who portrays her twenty-something son. Despite the low-budget, the effects in the film are impressive. I mean, look at this:
So mom and dad reveal they’re getting separated, and no one really seems to care. Mom copes by cleaning and having neighbors over for tea, while Lara prefers to visit the local occult store, the Freakatorium. The frequency of her visits have allowed her to maintian a friendship with the proprietor, a creepy older dude named Max who sports a long white goatee and a snake around his necl. He tells Lara of the vampiress Oya (sp?), the history of which is detailed in a rare book he recently acquired.
More teenage angst follows in the form of a joint birthday party, wherein Lara relates her hatred of her sister to her mother, followed by a breakdown of the ingredients involved in a curse designed to give her sister “anal acne.” Unfortunately, the curse seemingly backfires and she suffers from a horrendous nosebleed. After a doctor examines her in her bed and advises that she eat a cheeseburger for some reason, everyone leaves. Helen calls back Lara and apologizes for never being her friend. Then she dies. That doctor is fucking terrible. Thanks to the medical inquisitiveness of Ray, he runs a sample of her blood and concludes that not only did she have a rare blood disorder but she has an unexplained virus affected only by ultraviolet light.
DUN DUN DUN!
Later that night mom and Lara embrace and cry, only to be interrupted by a knock at the door. Conveniently enough, it’s Helen, covered in blood and crying. Instead of being absolutely fucking terrified that her daughter just came back from the dead and is bleeding out her eyes, mom embraces her. Following this sentimental and totally fucked up reunion, Helen begins to blame Lara for this but is interrupted by the arrival of the police and a more voice-overs about Mayans.
The background of Oya is described thusly: For generations the Mayans had been sacrificing to the vampiress, interrupted only by the Mayan genocide at the hands of the invading Spanish army. As a result, she essentially cursed the Spanish army, killing most of them. Those who survived spoke of a demon unleashed by the native Mayans.
It is concluded relatively quickly that she’s a vampire, as the notion of her being a zombie is just ridiculous. Plus, Lara’s affinity for Anne Rice makes it all the more appropriate. Ray concludes through a blood test that she has been consuming blood and thus slowing the process of red blood cell death, but warns that the only way to keep her from dying (again) is to feed her more and more blood. Much like the completely unnecessary revelation that Dumbledore is gay, Ray reveals he’s a homosexual, which everyone – even mom – knew.
Here we learn of the vampire mythos created by Messerer. By staving off hunger through the mass consumption of blood, Helen will be able to act rationally. If she gets hungry, she acts all vampire-y, and honestly, that’s just bad news for everyone. The suggestion of feeding her animals is shot down, as not only would it take way too many to actually satisfy her blood lust, but the genetic make-up of an animal is “hardly suitable for a human.” This stands out as one of the few interesting and creative aspects of the film, yet still hindered by convention and stereotypes. The underwhelming theme of familial love is worn on the film’s sleeve here, as Lara and Ray are all content with killing people to feed Helen’s new sanguinary addiction, while mom takes about three minutes to come around.This is the average time for a woman to go from God fearing disciple of the Lord to reluctant murderer.
Enter the Mormons. Clearly the most ironic of choices for first victims given mom’s love of the Lord, all this does is prove even the fervently religious hate proselytizing fundies. I found this scene to be among the most hilarious, if not for the poisoned Mormon drooling all over himself then for the fat Mormon saying “My associate is unwell!” in response to him falling face first into a piece of cake. He in turn is poisoned and tumbles down, only to be strangled by Ray.
Remember the whole “not being able to eat animals” thing? It’s explained through yet another voice-over. Oya began heading north to the “new world,” and while she was able to subsist on animals, they made her too weak and really pissed off. When she finally does see a human, she was too weak and overpowered, her “undead body defiled.”
I’m only going to say this once: voice-overs are a copout and evidence of bad writing and bad storytelling. If everything can’t be explained through actions or dialogue, then you’re doing something wrong. While one voice-over could work, having three just over halfway into the movie is ridiculous. Moving on.
Lara, Ray, and mom, who clearly believe they’re doing the right thing, present the skinny Mormon to Helen, who refuses to eat. Lara insists that all they have to do is leave him alone with her, and once the virus raging inside of her takes over she will drink his blood. What follows is a montage of Helen going insane and eventually sucking some Mormon blood. This scene could have been pretty good, as it possessed one of the creepier shots in the film, as well as featured the elasticity of Devon Dionne, who manages to twist and contort herself into some pretty astounding positions. Sadly, it was burderned by ridiculous “blood-sucking” noises and the worst possible choice in music – screamo.
By this point the movie starts to descend into what can loosely be considered black comedy. Helen can’t understand why this is happening to her, while the soft, subtle acoustic twangs of a country song accompany a montage wherein Ray kills people and experiments with their body parts, at one point attempts to reanimate a disembodied head; meanwhile mom kills the neighbors and Lara reads to Helen while she sleeps in a coffin. The gore is prevalent here, and one of the few aspects of the film that actually shows Messerer’s wayward dedication to the film. Simple elements like continuity, script, and anything that comprises good filmmaking pale in comparison to the impressive use of blood and guts to act as a gruesome mediator to the comedic nature of the film.
The house is now covered in blood, with all attempts to clean having proven to be fruitless. More of Messerer’s vampire mythos is now explained, serving as a blatant attempt at setting up the third act. Not only does Helen’s memory begin to fade (vampires apparently only remember “what they need to”), but she won’t age, can never get sick, and her only real worry is other vampires coming for her. How fucking convenient.
After an amusing Christmas dinner, we’re given another musical montage, beginning with Ray trying on a variety of outfits while Lara watches, shirt unbottoned to reveal her bra and cleavage while she smokes a joint. We’ve eclipsed what can be considered normal behavior, so this is just par for the course. After more murderin’ and experimentin’ on heads, we get to meet the greatest worst character in the history of cinema.
Meet Patrice Duchamp the Third, portrayed by classically-trained Shakespearean actor Peter Morr. Where he was trained I do not know, but I sincerely hope they lose their accredidation. Patrice shows up at the Baxter home to request an audience with Helen and attempt to bring her to his castle and live among other vampires or some other stupid shit like that. His plans, however, are foiled when Ray returns home and cuts off his head and peels his face off. I guess that kills vampires. Who knew?
Mother of God, this is just beyond fucking hysterical now. By now I’m laughing my ass off over the complete devolution of the film into absolute asburdity. After Lara says that more will follow, Ray finally asks her how the fuck she knows everything. Turns out Max, the curator of the Freakatorium, left Helen in a basket at mom’s doorstep. She has always been a vampire, only recently transforming due to a dormant vampire gene in her body given to her by both her parents. Roughly the same age as Lara, she was passed off as her twin, resulting in one of the most ironic sibling rivalries in the history of ever.
Another voice-over about that dumb ho Oya. Other vampires found her and she was inducted into Patrice Duchamp the Third’s “Bordello of Blood,” where she gave birth to a human male that possessed the dormant vampire gene. Sadly, Oya and other vampires were rounded up in the “most famous vampire raid in New Orleans history.” There was more than one?
Instead of ending there and saving everyone from more of the same shit, Helen is shown going crazy, flipping over chairs and throwing shit against the wall while mom, Lara, and Ray discuss what to do. One of the victims escapes, punches Ray in the mouth, and runs outside. Instead of saving the sacrifice, mom plunges a knife into her own throat as a final act of repentance, allowing Helen to drink the blood squirting from the hole in her neck.
Fin.
The title Thicker Than Water is appropriate for this film, as the theme of family and the lengths one will go to preserve that bond is worn on its sleeve. Unfortunately, a theme fit for drama is found in a movie that has no discernible genre, vacillating between horror and comedy with no idea as to which one it wants to be. A secret source informed me that Messerer attempted to toy with the idea of convention, as vampires and indeed horror itself holds no clear genre boundaries. Messerer clearly has no idea what he’s doing.
This extends into his direction, which shows every attempt at being unique and edgy, employing a variety of filters and camera techniques. There was simply no need for any of them. The notion of framing a scene is foreign to him, and the bulk of the film is shot using odd angles, exposing the roofless set and the sweat-laden faces of the characters baking under the lights. As I stated throughout the review, the choices in music were ridiculous, the only scene-appropriate song coming at the end when mom plunged a butcher knife into her throat. Stock classical music and assorted piano plague the film, with no scene containing a song that genuinely fits the action or the depth of emotion the actors are attempting to convey.
This is a film-school film that takes everything one might have learned and throws it in the trash. Uninspired, sloppy in its direction, and indeed an affront to mankind, the only saving grace of this film were a few minor moments of humor and some decent gore that managed to punctuate the listless acting and God awful dialogue. Thicker Than Water has received overwhelmingly positive reviews, proving everyone else who has seen this movie is fucking insane and is simply afraid to criticize an up-and-coming director. My criticism may not be constructive, but at least its honest. After all, what are we without our principles?
The winner of Best Short Film and Best Concept at the 2006 Horror Film Festival in Chicago, The Life and Death of a Pumpkin is a darkly comedic look at the morbid practice of jack-o-lantern carving on All Hallows Eve told from the point of view of a pumpkin. Plucked from its pumpkin patch and family, an unnamed pumpkin undergoes torture and ultimately death at the hands of sadistic revelers and children. Directed by Aaron Yonda and produced by Blame Society Films, it manages to combine the shocking horror of pumpkincide with sporadic bits of deadpan humor. It is not to be missed.
Once I get my site revamped, I intend on making a videos section where all the wonderfully whacky and horrifying videos I find on the interblags will make their home.
Not only is this song ridiculously catchy, it manages to feature that which I love the most – a little kid being terrorized by otherworldly monsters. After the monsters leave it just gets weird…er.
Nothing scared me more as a child than the following three books:
Terrifying me to the point where my father actually complained to my elementary school over allowing something as psychologically damaging as these books to be checked out by kids, my interest in these books was rekindled when I saw the anthology for sale at Borders one day. The stories, edited and adapted from folklore and urban legends by Alvin Schwartz, were actually the least terrifying aspect of the three books. While the books did possess a few creepy-as-fuck stories, it was the nightmare-inducing illustrations Stephen Gammell that forced me to sleep with the light on for God knows how long. Let’s examine some, shall we?
The look of hydrocephaly is not scary in of itself, but when it looks like you’re missing half your skin, have a sealed ocular cavity, are completely bald, and are rendered in black and white, it’s absolutely terrifying. This image accompanied the introduction of the second book, where Alvin Schwartz used the T. S. Eliot-coined phrase “hoo-ha” to describe the fear elicited from scary stories. A “hoo-ha” is a euphemism for the vagina. Deduce from that what you will.
What. The. Fuck. is that? According to the story for which it was illustrated, it’s nothing more than a ghost that likes to give “raspberries” to poor, frightened children. To me, it’s the ultimate cure for constipation, because if I saw that thing sitting on a dresser, in the dark, staring at me with those two dark holes where eyes should be, I would shit myself.
The Macy’s Day Parade has been switched to Halloween. Is that thing smiling?
This scared me the most when I was a kid, as it combined my fear of spiders and my tendency to believe everything I read in a convenient little package. It also looks like they capitalized on the “creepy long-black haired girl” thing before the Japanese ever did. This picture is what prompted my dad to chew out the school and my twin brother to call me a wuss. I WAS FUCKING SEVEN! WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT FROM ME!?!?!
Screenshots of every page of each of the three books can be found at http://www.imgdump.info/, though fair warning: pornographic ads plague the many pages, as does an ad to become a male escort. Coincidentally, if any ladies in the Denver area need a date, I can be reached at http://www.loweredexpectations.com/male-escorts.
B-D by way of Frightfest.co.uk has a low-res copy of the Descent 2 poster, seen above. It’s small but I suppose it gives you an idea. One of the things I loved about the The Descent was the creature design, while the sequel, based on the poster above and screenshots, makes the creatures look a little too….fake.
Judgment should be reserved until I see the film, as the above picture might reflect a new type of creature not seen in the first film. Whatever it may be, however, it still looks incredibly hokey, as if the actor is just wearing a mask. Kinda looks like a geriatric Bat Boy.
The interblags have been all atwitter over the forthcoming release of Juno scribe Diablo Cody’s next film, a horror-comedy titled Jennifer’s Body. Aside from simply being another horror comedy, it stars Megan Fox, the Angelina Jolie doppelganger and star of the Transformers films, a fact seemingly more important than anything else related to the film. For most, this is the most appealing part of the movie, as there was once a rumor going around that she would be naked in it. Sadly, the rumor has been proven false, and once again we are robbed of a wonderful distraction to her terrible acting.
Concerning the experience filming Jennifer’s Body, Megan Fox had this to say:
Diablo is so wicked and funny and it was hard to really make a film that was up to her script but I think Karyn (Kusama, the director) did a pretty good job and I think it’s one of the most interesting movies coming out this year for sure. It’s offbeat comedy. It’s inappropriate comedy which I find to be the funniest.
Now the plot summary, yanked from Wikipedia:
The film follows Jennifer (Megan Fox), a mean-girl cheerleader possessed by a demon who begins feeding off the boys in a Minnesota farming town. It is then up to her “plain Jane” best friend Needy (Amanda Seyfried) to kill Jennifer, escape from a correctional facility and go after lead singer Nikolai (Adam Brody) and his Satan-worshiping rock band responsible for the transformation.
Aside from the glaring miscast of Amanda Seyfriend as a “plain Jane” character, the rest of the cast seems to be a mix of nothing more than annoying teens and all the adults in Juno, which is actually kind of cool ’cause J. K. Simmons is awesome. This, however, says nothing of the plot, which is so ridiculous it’s mind-blowing.
I have nothing more to say regarding this movie. Megan Fox sucks, Diablo Cody is overrated, and I’m getting sick of the incessant fawning over this film and the uproar over Fox not getting nude in it.
Of course, I’ll still see it, ’cause I’m a sheep.
Director: JT Petty
Year: 2008
Country: USA
In regard to my recent spate of negative reviews and outright hatred for most films fellow horror bloggers seem to love, I was met with this reply on Twitter when I voiced my excitement for my soon-to-arrive copy of The Burrowers, writer/director JT Petty’s popular and well-received creature flick:
PeterSHall @Bradmchargue If you hate THE BURROWERS I seriously am done with you.
Now, I was going into this film blind. I had never seen a trailer, and all information on the film was gleaned from reviews. This is a recipe for disaster, as I apparently hate everything, but dammit, I LOVE period horror films and feel that the horror genre suffers from a gross lack of films centered on such time periods at the Salem Witch Trials, the Crusades, and the Civil War, among others.
The Burrowers is a well-crafted creature flick that manages to suck you in with a slow reveal of the antagonists, providing an adequate and believable level of tension lacking in most contemporary horror films. Set in the Dakota Territories in 1879, a family is kidnapped from what is assumed to be Native Americans. Fergus Coffey, an Irish immigrant whose love MaryAnne was one of the abducted, assembles a small posse and goes off in search of the family and their abductors. As the search continues, it becomes all too evident that Native Americans are not behind the abduction, and that something far more sinister is too blame.
Much of the film is spent trying to gain an understanding of who, or what, the Burrowers are, told mainly through the interrogation of Indian prisoners. Interspersed with the gruesome discoveries of their victims, Petty manages to keep the ultimate reveal until the end of the film, preferring instead to focus on the characters, their relationships, and for some, the inevitability of their deaths. The method of dispatch the Burrowers use is creative, eschewing the outright consumption of their victims in favor of a slow, painful, and most importantly, aware death.
My biggest qualm with the film, however, is found in the creature design. While their basic physical construction was unique and indeed pretty creepy, their faces managed to make me laugh more so than tremble with fear. They vaguely resembled an enemy from Doom 3, yet one that suffers from Down Syndrome. If you click the above link you’ll see what I mean, and if you vocalize the stereotypical sound a moron might make when you do you’d have an idea of what I thought every time they appeared on the screen. This response is seemingly a death knell for a film of this sub-genre, yet somehow managed to be relatively insignificant in terms of the film’s overall appeal. The characters were solid if just a little derivative, especially in the case of Henry Victor, the despotic leader of the cadre that initially sets out to find the missing family. Insistent on the notion that Native Americans are behind the abduction, he resorts to torture in order to force confessions.
JT Petty is a writer/director to keep an eye on. Comparisons have been drawn (by me) to Neil Marshall, whose creature flick The Descent is on par with The Burrowers in terms of impact on the contemporary horror industry. With luck his follow-up flick will be on the same level as The Burrowers, and if met with the same level of fanfare, will solidify him as a major force in the horror industry.
Director: Ryan Schifirin
Year: 2006
Country: USA
“So bad it’s good” is a common phrase when dealing with made-for-TV horror and science fiction films. It’s clear these films won’t be the next Citizen Kane, but merely fodder for insomnia or a rousing rendition of Mystery Science Theater 3000, and that’s all we should come to expect from any movie that features giant, mutated, or otherwise unexplainable creatures. At first glance one might think that Abominable, the SyFy née Sci-Fi Channel original film released in 2006 under the auspices of the Devil would be such a film, but really, you’d be wrong. Instead, it’s so bad it goes right past good, waves goodbye to mildly entertaining, and ends up in some tangent universe where darkness and the Wilhelm Scream consume all light.
Abominable operates on the Rear Window formula, a fitting vehicle for an actor who considers James Stewart to be his biggest inspiration. If Mr. Stewart could hear that he’d be spinning in his grave. Matt McCoy plays Preston Rogers, a parapalegic returning to the house he and his wife shared before she plunged to her death from the aptly titled Suicide Rock. Under the care of his abrasive and porn-stache sportin’ physical therapist Otis, Preston is faced with the daunting task of naviagting a house without a wheelchair ramp. When one of the girls vacationing next door goes missing, he believes someone…or something took her DUN DUN DUN! His fears soon manifest themselves in the form of an abominable snowman, or yeti, or sasquatch, which looked like the combination of Grimace and Deadite Ed from Evil Dead 2 after a month-long bender of whiskey and crystal meth with nary a razor in sight. Let’s call him Harry for the sake of clarity.
Bad acting is a requisite for B-movies, yet this takes it to another level unseen without the aid of a telescope. Matt McCoy is dreadful in every scene, uttering every line as if he’s just bored or simply aware that he’s in a movie called Abominable. Preston’s caretaker Otis, played by Academy Award-winning make-up artist Christien Tinsley, was hysterically bad, proudly displaying his ginger stache as if it were the source of his unintentionally comedic acting abilities, though I gotta give him mad props for the line “Hey ass monkey! Eat this!” just before having his head eaten by Harry. The rest of the primary cast was made up of a bunch of girls who simply served as Harry fodder and two veteran actors, Paul Gleason and Lance Henrikson, the former of which died the year this movie was released. Coincidence?
While I’m aware the filmmakers were working within the confines of a miniscule budget, the movie could have been saved by copious amounts of blood and a chorus line outro, but sadly neither were to be found between Harry and the ridiculous horn-heavy and cliched score. It’s sole redeeming quality that wasn’t boobs or laughably oversized e-mail text was the ending, which found me laughing out loud over just how absolutely fucked those cops are going to be once the credits role.
Abominable was just a bad movie, yet absolutely perfect for a gathering of friends who just want to get drunk and yell at the screen. When Mr. Hall of Horror’s Not Dead recommended it to me as a cure for my horror movie rut (see his antithetical review here), I believed him. I don’t know why he would want to hurt me like that. Why Peter, WHY!?!?!?! I’m gonna go cry now.
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