Director: Sam Raimi
Year: 2009
Country: USA

My approach toward horror is different from most in that I hate most everything. This goes double for almost every theatrical release that can remotely be considered horror; yet to assume that Sam Raimi’s latest foray behind the lens would be anything but a bloody delight is to discount the man’s glowing reputation among the horror community. Sadly, I was conflicted, tending to lean more toward the negative in my assessment of the film’s trailer and plot summary, as it seemed to me that too much emphasis was being placed on bombastic imagery and the dreaded jump-scare. Comparisons with The Unborn flowed freely from my mouth, and this is never a good thing. Given the weak output of major horror releases thus far, holding high expectations for this film would ultimately lead to disappointment.  By elevating your expectations you run the risk of experiencing a diminished sense of satisfaction; you go in expecting the next big thing and end up disappointed. This time, however, increased expectations were almost deserved, due in no small part to the overwhelmingly positive reviews and sycophantic fawning being spewed forth by horror news sites and the small number of bloggers who managed to snag an early screening. So I packed away all the expectations one might have for a film of this magnitude and merely hoped for mindless entertainment in the same vein as a Bruckheimer film: not necessarily a good film but damned fun to watch and filled with explosions. While I was indeed entertained – the film possessed some incredibly impressive imagery and epic gross-outs – it was due mostly to abject disbelief that Sam Raimi’s supposed return to horror is mired in his post-horror sensibilities, and not in a good way. This is a problem.

Drag Me to Hell suffers from a severe case of genre confusion. It straddles the line between horror and comedy, yet doesn’t manage to amalgamate the two into anything cohesive. It was clearly marketed as horror, with heavy emphasis on suspense and shock value; instead we’re given a horror film suffused by a type of humor that is distinctly Raimian yet wholly inappropriate for the type of film in which it is found. Eyeballs fly out of heads, epic amounts of blood spew forth from noses, and possessed mediums float in the air and shriek, the latter an obvious throwback to the Evil Dead. Unfortunately, this occurs often enough to overshadow any chance of the film being effective as a horror movie, as the film has been marketed and hyped, and not often enough to push the film into full-blown horror-comedy territory. To add insult to injury it often slides into self-parody, with scenes designed for fear devolving into schlock humor.

I do suppose I could just cast aside all my preconceived notions of what this film should have been and enjoyed it for what I presume it was intending to be. After all, this is a common method of convincing oneself that the film you just watched really isn’t that bad.  This, however, is incredibly difficult when the film in question is bogged down with a weak script, uninspired acting, and a whole host of other problems. Character development is lacking, as is a sufficient explanation of the Lamia. Raimi used a figure rooted in Greek mythology that bears no resemblance to a goat and eats children instead of dragging people to Hell, and in turn gives no explanation as to why. Mrs. Ganush, played by Lorna Raver, is dismissed as a crazy old sorceress with no emphasis on her back story, something that could have explained the significance of the Lamia and its role in her life. Admittedly this is not that important in the grand scheme of things but necessary to help explain the ‘why’ of everything and give to the film a modicum of credibility. Beyond this everything just fell together all too nicely in an utterly predictable manner. How lucky were they to have a Lamia expert right in their own town!

Alison Lohman, who played protagonist Christine Brown, was decidedly unbelievable in her performance, preferring to remain only slightly bewildered and just slightly inconvenienced when confronted with a supernatural demonic entity that wants to literally drag her to Hell. She piles on the cheese so thick and delivers each line with such placid emotion that she just seemed bored throughout. Her character’s shining moment, however, comes with the sudden transformation from frightened young woman to uber bad ass, a role she clearly had no idea how to convey in a believable manner. This merely heightened the hilarity found in the utterly predictable climax of the film, the outcome of which was spoon fed to the audience fifteen minutes before it actually happened. The rest of the cast was no better, though I found Dileep Rao, who played psychic medium Rham Jas, to be unintentionally hysterical thanks to his attempts at injecting emotion into laughable dialogue.

I may be the odd man out here, but Raimi is not the god people make him out to be.  To say this is his “return to horror” is to ignore the fact that Raimi is not nor has ever been a horror director. Like many before (and after) him he has his humble beginnings in horror, and while he has done a lot for the genre, his only real horror film has been the Evil Dead. The rest of the trilogy is delightfully comedic, owing more to the Three Stooges than anything else, and his subsequent films run the gamut from drama to action to thriller. In between directing the Spider-Man movies he and Evil Dead alumnus Rob Tapert formed Ghost House,  a production company that focuses solely on shoving crap down our throats. So Raimi never actually went anywhere, and by elevating him to near god-like status deludes the mind into thinking that his “return to horror” will be nothing short of perfect. People see the slapstick humor combined with the suspense and vulgarity and are immediately reminded of one of the few films that helped to usher in the Generation Y of horror and thus come to the conclusion, “Raimi did it again!.”

Much more can be said, but for the sake of brevity I will end it here. Drag Me to Hell is a throwback to what made Raimi a household name; sadly, it lacks any evidence of the sort of maturation that comes with a quarter-century of experience. Horror-comedy is all well and good when that’s your intent. But what was his intent? Did he make a horror film like the Evil Dead? Or did he make a comedy like Army of Darkness? Whichever it was he failed.

…looks like he needs a slightly bigger hat. I’m aware it’s a quick, out-of-focus candid, but pre-burn Freddy looks just…just awful. This photo was obviously stolen from Joblo in case the big fucking watermark didn’t give it away. I guess Arrow in the Head took the photo? I don’t know, I’m too lazy to look it up again.

At the time of this writing, Drag Me to Hell, Sam Raimi’s latest foray into horror has a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The majority of reviews from news sites and bloggers have deemed the film “amazing,” a seemingly insurmountable task given my preconceived notion that all big-budget horror films are, simply put, utter crap. Given the reviews and fanfare, I suppose I should be giving Raimi and his film the benefit of the doubt. After all, he is the man who made the Evil Dead Trilogy, which is and always will be my favorite horror trilogy about Kandarian demons. But he’s also the man behind Ghost House, the production company behind some of the most abysmal horror films in recent memory. Let us also not forget emo Peter Parker.

Seriously, what the fuck?

Though my judgment might be clouded by my seemingly antagonistic and pessimistic attitude toward modern day big-budget horror, I still refuse to believe that this film can be anything short of a ninety-nine minute exercise in CGI and loud noises. The trailer does nothing to make the film seem frightening, a fact made all the more credible by the dreaded PG-13 rating; all attempts at making the viewer genuinely terrified are buried beneath jump scares, an overused and, dare I say, damnable method of trying to scare the audience; hints of being all too similar to The Unborn emanate from the trailer and send a chill down my spine; and Justin Long plays a professor, which is less believable than the plot itself.

So I apologize if I’m jumping the gun, but Hollywood has so demoralized me into believing that no good can come from big-budget horror that I instantly disdain most everything that gets released in theaters. 2009 has been a banner year for cinematic diarrhea, and while I intend to give Drag Me To Hell a shot on a day when tickets are half-price, my expectations will be almost non-existent. I hope I’m proven wrong.

The horror industry has painted upon the latter half of this decade a unique and identifiable oeuvre. Its medium of choice is the blood of the innocent and our withering sensibilities, its canvas the silver screen of a foreign nation. I am, of course, speaking of the “New Wave of French Horror.” Seemingly a subset of New French Extremism, a term coined by Artforum critic James Quandt to describe the onslaught of French cinema during the 21st century that seemingly transgresses the boundaries of human decency, this pseudo-genre has garnered the reputation as the silver lining on an otherwise decaying genre. Although relatively small in number (less than ten by my count), the films that fall under its ex nihilo definition garner mostly positive reviews across the board, and as such have given the majority of horror fans a fleeting moment of respite from the interminable number of remakes, re-imaginings, and hackneyed zombie films that have taken over like the plague.

But why is that? Have the French tapped into some heretofore unknown Holy Grail of horror production, or are American horror films just so terrible that if it must be foreign, it must be good? Maybe it’s just dumb luck; yet given that the relatively few horror films that have come out of France have all been met with mostly positive reviews, the urge to ascribe a level of superiority to these films is incredible. American horror cinema has become stale, so we’re consistently seeking other methods through which we can obtain our fix of respectable horror. Every so often we’re treated to a horror film that defies convention and offers us a bit of hope, but in the end it’s simply mirroring our obsession with the minor level of success France has had. We in turn lavish heaping piles of praise upon the indie gems that make the latest remake seem like a waste of celluloid, and as such effectively consider “indie horror” to be far and away better than mainstream horror.

This supposed New Wave of French Horror is often compared with the much maligned pseudo-genre “torture porn,” and though not without merit, the comparisons are indeed tenuous. Many of these films, namely Inside, Frontier(s), and Martyrs give off the impression of merely being vehicles for accentuated violence, torture, and gore, with any semblance of enjoyable plot buried beneath layers and layers of karo syrup. Unfortunately, the burden of subjectivity rears its head, and to assign a level of significance, either in terms of plot or metaphor, is a foolish endeavor. My thoughts on the subject can be found here, yet I think to call these films torture porn and thus by extension attaching what I feel is an undeserved stigma does a disservice to the spirit of French horror. Though their films are few and far between, they’re infused with not only a love for the blood and viscera they’re throwing at us, but the standard conventions of cinema – plot, story, structure, and above all, emotion – that most American horror films lack.

Though most of the films discussed here and in other articles focus on the “extreme,” the relatively minor output of French horror is not completely drowned in a deluge of blood. The 2006 nail biter Ils is a brilliant work of minimalist art and a stunning work of survival horror. Often compared with the U.S.-produced The Strangers, Ils manages to forgo horror parlor tricks in favor of seventy-four minutes of brilliantly executed tension. The best part? Hardly any blood. Joining the fray is Les Revenants, a 2004 zombie film that dispenses of standard zombie tropes, dealing with one town’s attempt to cope with an influx of newly deceased who simply want to reintegrate themselves into society.

To consider these films part of the New Wave of French Horror is a stretch; neither feature the requisite transgressive features that typify the other films. This is a problem inherent with genre assignment, especially when that genre – or style – is a journalistic fabrication. Like torture porn, no clear definition is given and we’re left to decide what fits and what doesn’t. Critics such as Quandt and David Edelstein, who coined the phrase “torture porn”, fueled the flames of controversy by giving an otherwise innocuous (though no less good) film a certain type of validity that might not otherwise be present. In the end, we’re left with circuitous debates and an unfortunate level of expectation to go above and beyond the narrowly defined pigeonhole in which French horror seems to have stumbled.

For further reading:

The 8 Most Disturbing Films of the New Wave of French Horror Note: This is funny cause that leaves, like, two films.

New French Extremity

The French New Wave of Blood

One of the biggest hurdles in making a decent zombie film is injecting a semblance of originality in what has become a relatively stale sub-genre over the past year or two. In between the sporadic zombie flicks that claw their way to the mainstream (give it up Romero) and make some sort of lasting impression, horror fans are usually inundated with films that feature the same basic zombie trope: a group of friends or what band together to survive in a world overrun by zombies. Same ol’ shit. So it’s always refreshing to see a zombie flick get released that puts a creative spin on the genre. Colin, by Welsh director Marc Price, is that film.

Told from the point of view of a zombie struggling to understand what is happening to him, Colin was made over a period of 18-months and enlisted the help of a myriad of actors, make-up artists, and assorted crewmen, none of which received any monetary compensation for their work. It was filmed on a ten-year old camcorder and in the end, after a year and a half of filming, cost a whopping £45 to make.

And now it’s playing at Cannes.

What have you done with your life?

The trailer can be found here, and more details on the production of the film can be found here.

Director: Jack Perez (as Ace Hannah)
Year: 2009
Country: USA

This review contains spoilers. Like it fucking matters.

Internet buzz is a powerful yet dangerous thing. It gives the film in question a tremendous amount of publicity, allowing it to reach a much wider audience; conversely it also places a horrible burden on the film to outdo all the expectations the internet buzz has produced. Remember the failure of Snakes on a Plane to achieve a level of success comparable to the excessive amount of praise heaped upon it based solely on a trailer and a Samuel L. Jackson one-liner? While the film has garnered the status of minor cult classic, it was, in short, a total failure when viewed within the context of the internet buzz that preceded it. All it really did was simultaneously revive and kill the career of Julianna Margulies, who somehow got hotter as she got older.

When I first heard of Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus, I was intrigued not because I thought it was going to be a good movie, but because the idea of a CGI megalodon and oversized cephalopod duking it out for an hour or so sounds better than anything I have ever seen or heard of in the history of ever. A few months after hearing about it, I finally saw the trailer and, like the rest of the clueless masses, began salivating uncontrollably. The buzz became so great it even got a mention on Yahoo! News, and while not that big of a deal is still pretty impressive for a studio whose productions consist of mostly low-budget direct-to-DVD rip offs of other contemporary popular films. As a result, instead of waiting for the DVD release and because I’m not a total sucker, I queued up the bad boy and less than a few hours later I had it sitting on my hard drive waiting to be devoured. Last night I sat down and began watching what I hoped was to be an epic tour de force, the mother of all giant animal disaster movies starring washed up 80s pop singers and a soap opera actor who I seriously thought ODed from snorting blow off a hooker’s ass in a hotel in Tucson. Or at least hoped that’s what had happened. It would be fitting end for someone who once starred in a show called Renegade.

Debbie Gibson plays Emma MacNeil, a no-nonsense oceanographer studying humpback whales. Piloting a submersible with a Python 2 NES controller, she notices a large pod of whales that look suspiciously like little penises on the radar beginning to act erratic. The ensuing cetacean panic, which we come to learn is caused by a sensor dropped into the ocean for no discernible reason by a helicopter that soon feels the cold sting of karma in the form of a giant wall of ice, causes them to converge into the underside of an arctic shelf which unfortunately houses a “mega” shark and a “giant” octopus. Now free, they begin to terrorize the ocean, mutilating whales, collapsing oil rigs, and for the shark flying twenty to thirty thousand feet into the air to eat a fucking airplane. All it needs to do is shoot laser beams from it eyes and we’re all fucked. Or carry machine guns.

Fired for stealing the submersible, MacNeil and her former professor Lamar Sanders, who possesses one of the most cliched and offensive Irish accents I have ever heard, begin to unravel the mystery behind it all. Joined by Japanese scientist Dr. Sheiji Shimada, they embark on a quest filled with intrigue, sex, and Lorenzo Lamas. Lamas plays Allan Baxter, a government official/commando/tough guy who forces the trio to come up with a solution to end the threats, as torpedoes, machine guns, and indigestion caused by a jumbo jet don’t seem to have any effect on a super shark. The octopus is just sorta there until the end, causing damage only to oil rigs and airplanes. Clearly not as big a threat as a bridge-eating shark. Yeah, it ate the Golden Gate Bridge, too. Bitch be hungry. It don’t care. It does what it wants. ‘Cause it’s a fucking shark.

After a montage of questionable science and disappointment, a post-coital conversation between MacNeil and Shimada leads to the stunning realization that pheromones are the key. By luring them into the same waters loaded with these pheromones, they hope to force them to continue their epic battle for prehistoric supremacy. or have sex. Either one would have been cool. Now armed with a plan, a submarine, and the help of the trusty Japanese, they begin their quest to make the ocean safe once again. And the skies. And the bridges. After throwing everything they have at the shark, Mr. ‘Pus shows up and begins to go all crazy go nuts on Mr. Shark. It’s touch and guy for awhile, with ol’ ‘pus getting the upper hand until Mr. Shark bites off one of its tentacles and continues its quest to eat as many submarines as possible. Narrowly escaping in a small submersible before the whole thing gets bitten in half, our intrepid heroes manage to not only save the Japanese sub from becoming octopus food, but manage to lure the shark close enough to the octopus so they can resume the fight that should have ended the moment they were unfrozen.

So who is the victor?

Sadly, this picture is not entirely accurate. In the both ended up sinking into the abyss, presumably to reconcile their differences and play checkers.

I can’t tell if starring in an Asylum film is a surefire way to kill your career or revive it. People seem to be praising Debbie Gibson for her acting performance, and one reviewer went so far as to cite her performance as a silver lining among the stolid acting of Vic Chao and the…well, I wouldn’t call it acting, but whatever it is Lorenzo Lamas was doing throughout the film. Sadly it wasn’t dying; but he’s a veteran actor of soap operas and a few other Asylum productions, so he’s being dead inside for awhile.

We want her to succeed, even as she’s marveling at faked greenscreen imagery. We need her optimism and poise, since the men around her are too busy tossing around testosterone to care about compassion or careful planning.

But she didn’t get naked, so who cares?

The film was misleading. The titular conflict took up a mere ten to fifteen minutes of film, the majority of which was terrible CGI and the same shot of the shark swimming toward the camera and the same close up of the octopus’s eye looking angry.  The entire film gave off the impression of the writer doing everything in his power to speed up the process to the aquatic free-for-all and he still managed to fail.  I call shenanigans!

I’m aware the pseudonymous director wanted the movie to be taken with a grain of salt; The Asylum isn’t exactly known for producing stunning cinematic features. Yet given the amount of publicity this film has been receiving on the intertubes and the totally bitchin’ movie poster, I expected something just above abortion but below epic diarrhea. Instead we’re given the cinematic equivalent of diarrhea coming out of your mouth.

Yeah, it’s so bad it leaves the taste of poo in your mouth. Still want to watch it?

So if anyone follows my Twitter or is friends with me on Facebook (and you should do both!), you’ll know that I am taking a huge leap and starting life anew in beautiful, mountainous, and snowy Boulder, Colorado. A bunch of personal shit has expedited this transition from late July to….now (see all the details as I chronicle my move to CO at Boulder or Bust!), so as such updates might be sporadic, but I hope for them to be worth while. Tonight I hope to write a review of Dusk, a vampire comic by one Mr. David Doub. It seems I was put on a mass e-mailing list for this, which doesn’t bother me in the slightest. I guess it means my opinion matters? I know that Count Vardulon, by way of his fascinating audio-only video podcast, received the e-mail as well, and curiously enough expresses the same sentiments as I regarding reviews: we hate everything, presumably due to our high standards. I hope Mr. Doub did a little research before sending it to me. I only need to point you to the US Sinners debate, which I won’t do cause I deleted it, though I might recap the events and include the review once more just to piss off George Snow again.

I also intend on at the very least outlining the book Mr. Hall and myself intend to write, once he finally takes up residence in Austin and I stop being lazy. There’s not too much research involved, and the little that there is can all be done from the comfort of my computer while sitting in my boxers and drinking beer after beer until everything I write sounds like Shakespeare. Once I have a chapter written (my sample chapter will probably be on torture porn, cause I know the most about it), I’ll send it off to a variety of publications with a note that says “Give me money.”

Freelancing. Suggestions?

I have noticed that my old blog (ilovehorror.wordpress.com) still gets upwards of 75+ hits a day, while my real home at I Love Horror dot net received at most 30 or 40 a day. Suggestions for URL forwarding that are affordable?

Also, in my RSS feed, my site shows up as “Feed 5027320.” How can this be remedied?

Comments, suggestions, help, etc are all welcome. I’m going to become more and more involved with this site and the online horror community, so let’s stay connected people!

Canada’s The Burning Hell are an untapped resource in horror movie soundtracks. While Dog Fashion Disco and dredg hold my number one and number two positions respectively for scoring my horror film that will never get written, The Burning Hell come in at a close third. Their predilection for esoteric instrumentation can, given the right type of film, make for an impressive and truly haunting horror soundtrack. The vocalist’s deep, brooding voice belting out absurdly morbid lyrics can do well in those horror films that break the mold of convention (see: Sublime). Horror soundtracks don’t always have to be trite compositions rehashed every year for the latest teen slasher or bombastic string compositions. A competent composer/musician can make even the most lighthearted of songs fit the darkest of horror films (again, see: Sublime, particularly the final scene). Remember: less is more when it comes to horror.

The video below is a live recording of “Everything You Believe Is A Lie.” The lyrics and music are intensely atmospheric and perfect for horror.

While searching for this video I discovered Mathias Kom, the eccentric vocalist behind The Burning Hell, is/was working on a comic soundtrack for the film embedded below. So I’m not totally crazy in thinking all of this. I have yet to watch it, so let me know how it is and how wrong I am re: TBH and horror.

When I first began this blog I began a furtive search for every reputable horror website on the internet. Faced with a seemingly insurmountable task, and, eventually, the less-than-startling realization that all the major ones essentially feed on each other, I stopped and used a select few for horror news. One of those few is Quiet Earth, a site that devotes its space to covering films of the post-apocalyptic sub-genre. The beauty of subjectivity and interpretation allows them the opportunity to report on films that skirt in-your-face PA stories in favor of “what-if” story lines and the like. It is not a strictly horror website, but it does the online horror community a service by discussing and bringing to our attention a large number of films that are often overlooked by the “major” horror news sites. While B-D is busy peddling Alexandre Aja’s latest abortion, PA is bringing to us little-known or barely discussed independent films covering everything from horror to science fiction to romantic comedy.

So now you know. On to everything else.

Who here has heard of Neil Blomkamp? He was attached to what I can only presume is the now dead-in-the-water adaptation of Halo written by Alex Garland. Not many people know of him, so here is your opportunity to learn how he and Peter Jackson are going to blow our minds with District 9.

Some time ago he directed a short film called Alive in Joburg, a brilliant little piece filmed in part-documentary/part-cinema verite style that centers on a South African town and the alien refugees within. Much like Shawn Aker’s 9, which was picked up by Tim Burton and made into a feature film, Blomkamp and one Peter Jackson have teamed up to adapt Joburg for the big screen in a film titled District 9. It looks incredible, and will surely have people inventing a whole host of allegorical connections between the film and contentious issues such as immigration and the war and some other bullshit no one really cares about anymore. Short film and trailer below.

Director: Fabrice du Welz
Year: 2008
Country: USA

Let it be known that this is the first film I have ever seen that gave the viewer a migraine.

I’m not referring to myself, but to my viewing companion, though I walked away with a severe look of confusion and a mild pain behind the eyes, the end result of the gears turning in my head struggling to understand what the fuck I just watched.  Watching Fabrice du Welz’s previous film, Calvaire, might have been an ordeal (pun totally intended), but watching Vinyan was like running through a gauntlet of failed expectations wrapped in rusty nails coated with salt. As for my companion, only silence, darkness, and a charming gentleman could quell the explosions raging in her head. Since one wasn’t around, she had to settle for me.

The plot of Vinyan centers on Janet and Paul Belhmer, a couple still coming to terms with the disappearance of their son, who vanished in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami. Working with aid groups, they eventually view a video highlighting the plight of Burmese children that presumably shows their son, walking away from the camera and wearing the same soccer jersey he was last seen in. Paul remains unconvinced, but Janet believes he is still alive, and the two begin a journey into the Thai-Burmese jungle to find out the truth. Once there they encounter creepy natives with a penchance for throwing rocks and lots and lots of rain. Chaos and confusion ensue.

Nothing with Fabrice du Welz can ever be straightforward. Or normal. Or in any way understandable on this plane of existence. Recall the bizarre dance scene in Calvaire and how it made almost zero sense< to get an idea of what I'm talking about.

Most of Vinyan was like that, sans the cool song played by the guy who reminds me of Tom Waits.

The film is punctuated by bizarre digressions and unexplainable dream-like states, eliciting more than one awkward exchange of confused looks between myself and my companion. Their importance to the plot is up for debate; it all depends on how well you understood what was going on. Meanwhile we’re given highly unsympathetic characters (it’s hard to root for a complete bitch), something that normally doesn’t bother me but made viewing the movie more daunting than it should have been, nauseating direction, and a driving force that goes unfulfilled in favor of even more confusion.

In the end you’re given a compelling, real human interest story ruined by du Welz’s desire to remain the biggest fucker of minds in the horror industry. This pisses me off because I eat this type of shit up. If it focuses on real events, real people, and real fears, then I automatically give it a good review before seeing it. The movie was a tease, leading me into a false sense of cinematic satisfaction by glowing reviews, a compelling plot, bonafide actors, and a title that means nothing until it’s explained halfway through the movie. I walked away wanting more; I wanted closure, and I wanted to find out what happened to their damned kid.

Man, I got blue balls from a fucking movie.