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.

The trailer for Daybreakers has hit the interblags, and while I’m not expecting much, it does look like a fun fuckin’ movie, on par with Doomsday but not retarded or completely unoriginal.

And is that…Placebo playing over the end of the trailer? Awful, awful choice.

For fun racial musings, check out Horror’s Not Dead’s piece on the conspicuous lack of black vampires in the trailer.

Two weeks…

One month…

We must all fear ZOMBIE MICHAEL!!!

Your thoughts, Horatio?

Man, I just don’t care that he died. I mean, it sucks and all, but only insofar as he was a person who died and it sucks when people die. I don’t care about his past or his music, and I personally didn’t know the guy, so I’m not going to mourn just because he was a celebrity and the media tells me to. Hate mail welcome, I still love you just the same. Huggles to all.

Director: Fruit Chan
Year: 2004
Country: Hong Kong

I’m not going to beat around the bush here: Dumplings is everything a good horror film ought to be.

Leaving much to the imagination though remaining explicit in its unmitigated morbidity, Dumplings tells the story of the lengths an aging actress will go to to regain her youth. In order to do this, Mrs. Li turns to Mei, a beautiful and seemingly young woman who doles out healthy portions of dumplings she claims will reverse the aesthetic effects of aging. From here we learn her methods of preparation and how she obtains the ingredients, and in the end are met with one of the most vile yet brilliant endings to a horror film in recent memory.

Every conceivable button is pushed in this film. Brilliantly shot and featuring a light and airy score that belies the subject matter, Dumplings manages to keep the gruesomeness at bay, hidden by clever camerawork yet right in your face. The twisted secret behind the dumplings is seen only in passing and in a variety of forms, no one less sickening than the other. It succeeds in being suggestive in nature, relying on the characters and subtle dialogue to bring about a slow reveal without drowning you in excessive blood flow or overtly disturbing imagery. While all this is indeed present, it is simply secondary to everything else. Being able to see the faint outline of a tiny fetus, barely out of the first trimester, being slowly boiled in a small piece of dough is enough to make you swear off Chinese food for as long you live. As one scene fades to black another more fucked up scene is right there to sucker punch you in the face, resplendent in the glow of supreme perversity and absolute terror.

Never has sound been so effective in sending chills down your spine. Knowing what Mrs. Li is eating is made all the more real with each crack of a bone between her teeth and each slurp of the tongue, the latter of which is given a surrealist bent toward the end, just before the horrifically morbid climax. Beyond this the score is phenomenal, brilliantly arranged to complement the relatively light atmosphere, the yin to the film’s morbid yang. And as a whole it works, sucking the viewer in to an almost false sense of security, leading to the belief that what you’re watching really isn’t that bad. But it is, and you’re trapped, because the film is just too damned perfect in every respect.

Though this was adapted into a feature film nearly identical to the short but with a different ending, everything I have read about it leads me to believe this is much better. For a better comparison, check out Mr. Hall’s comparison of the two in his own review at Horror’s Not Dead found here.

See this short film. You’ll never eat Chinese food again, but you’ll be witness to one of the finest works of contemporary horror of the past decade.

Rob Zombie is the reincarnation of Frank Zappa.

Am I the only one who sees it?

Based on the Richard Matheson short story “Button, Button,” which was adapted into a Twilight Zone episode, The Box synopsis belies the Saw-like qualities found in the trailer. B-D mentions a particular grievance with the use of the Saw theme, though I find this less of an annoyance than the fact that the movies bares way too many similarities to the Saw movies in terms of plot. I have a modicum of faith in the picture, if only because Richard Kelly wrote and directed it.

After viewing the trailer, I think the movie would work better as an outright thriller, devoted more to the moral and ethical consequences surrounded with the power the couple is given as opposed to the basic cat-and-mouse vibe the trailer seems to be giving off. Also, the poster fucking sucks. Cameron Diaz’s face shouldn’t be on anything.

According to Wikipedia, which once proved for one minute that Nancy Grace had the Sarlacc coming out of her vagina (damned editors), the Arcade Fire will be providing an original score for the film. This is good news for someone like me who actually gives a shit about soundtracks to convey mood and tension. Additionally, Kelly had this to say about the film: “My hope is to make a film that is incredibly suspenseful and broadly commercial, while still retaining my artistic sensibility.” Good fucking luck.

The synopsis, as per B-D:

Norma and Arthur Lewis are a suburban couple with a young child who receive an anonymous gift bearing fatal and irrevocable consequences. A simple wooden box, it promises to deliver its owner $1 million with the press of a button. However, pressing this button will simultaneously cause the death of another human being somewhere in the world…someone they don’t know. With just 24 hours to have the box in their possession, Norma and Arthur find themselves in the crosshairs of a startling moral dilemma and face the true nature of their humanity.

—————————————

As an aside, Hellboy II apparently received Best Horror Film at the Saturn Awards, proving once and for all that anything remotely connected to horror in any way can be deemed horror. I’m looking at you, Twilight. Full list of winners can be found here and a whole host of other places.

…with a house.

A man.

And a little girl.

To be continued…

Director: Gregg Bishop
Year: 2008
Country: USA

When Dance of the Dead, the independent zombie comedy written by Joe Ballarini and directed by Gregg Bishop began, I immediately drew similarities between it and Cemetery Man, that relatively under appreciated Italian zombie flick that features the fine acting of Rupert Everett and amazing tits of this babe. A cemetery groundskeeper, seemingly content with being surrounded by dead people on a daily basis, has is hands full as the dead begin to rise out of their graves. The culprit: a conveniently placed nuclear power plant. In order to prevent the town from being overrun by zombies, the groundskeeper must put the kibosh on their intended assault on the sleepy Georgia town.

Meanwhile, a local high school is preparing for prom, and we’re introduced to a variety of cliches: the nerds, the jocks, the cheerleaders, and the rebels. As prom approaches, the zombies manage to escape the confines of their eternal resting place and begin to wreak havoc upon the town, wherein a small band of survivors comprising a smattering of the aforementioned cliches and the gym teacher must save the day.

Sadly, I am a rare negative voice, as I found the movie to be seriously lacking in terms of, well, almost everything. Where one reviewer praised the character development I felt it was nonexistent. I do, however, have to give praise to the decision to mix up the standard “snobby cheerleader” archetype and make her relatively less loathsome than the rest of her teammates. Another reviewer praised the writing as “sharp,” while I just thought it was stale and lacking in creativity, failing to distinguish itself from other teen-oriented films, horror or otherwise. On the technical side the editing was the film’s biggest flaw. It was jumpy, poorly planned, and did little to alleviate the headache caused by the weak plot.

Despite my grievances, a few moments stand out as being particularly humorous and unique. During the initial confrontation between the our newly ressurected revenants and terrified sci-fi geeks, the zombies literally EXPLODED out of their graves and, defying all logic and knowledge of body decomposition, began to run without missing a beat. The mix of slow, lumbering zombies and Zach Snyder zombies on crack and Red Bull was an interesting decision, and one I felt managed to mix up the zombie trope omnipresent in the film. Though no less irritating than his adolescent counterparts, the role of the gym teacher was downright hysterical, if not for the line “It’s the brick channel! All brick, all the time!” yelled at our protagonist who has been forced to stare at a wall in detention. He reminded me of a weird hybrid between Vince McMahon and Henry Rollins, or rather, their offspring in a weird time-and-reproduction paradox.The gore was clever, especially when considering the low-budget, as this was the first film I have seen that featured a zombie’s spinal column coming off with his head and actually look relatively impressive.

Dance of the Dead was released by Lionsgate through Sam Raimi’s Ghost House banner, bringing the total number of Ghost House films I have seen that are a worth a damn to zero. The overwhelming positive reaction to this film stunned me, eclipsing into full-blown what the fuck mode as the movie progressed. It started strong, managing a slow and steady decline before picking up with a few memorable scenes and one liners toward the end. However, if one were to look past the obvious obstacles – amateur actors, low-budget, etc – you have a fairly solid attempt at mixing two of the more difficult genres to write. Though I personally didn’t like it, I can certainly see why others would.

Undead, the the zombie-alien mashup from first time writing/directing team the Spierig Brothers, was to me a monumental disappointment. What started as a hilarious and bloody good zombie movie eventually degraded into a near-nonsensical alien flick that sucked all the entertainment out of what could have been a solid zombie film.

Despite this, I am looking forward to their sophomore effort Daybreakers, a post-apocalyptic vampire flick boasting an all-star cast. The synopsis:

A deadly plague which breaks out in the year 2017, turning most of the human population into vampires. The dominant vampires plot a way to ensure their survival in the face of dwindling blood supplies, but a researcher (Hawke) works with a rogue group of vampires to save humankind.

The all-star cast includes Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe, Sam fucking Neill, and a couple of women I’ve never heard of. If the eerily familiar plot and cast wasn’t enough to sell me on the film, the poster is.

Special thanks to Quiet Earth for bringing this to my attention.