I haven't written here in awhile. Writing here was taking away from time I could be writing my novel in November. Now that the novel is done (first draft, anyway), I want to write at least one more soul-bearing entry here.
Anyone who has spoken to me about weighty issues knows I have struggled with the idea of the God-shaped hole for years. This is the idea that we all have an emptiness inside ourselves that can only be filled by God. People fill it with drugs, alcohol, over eating, etc. Well, for various reasons, God doesn't fit in the God-shaped hole so I have been struggling with just what it will take for me to be happy with myself.
Lately, I have come to the conclusion that I have too much love. When I focus it on one woman, it is just suffocating, stifling and unpleasant for her. And I'm not talking about sex here, I mean emotional attention, full blast. I've started volunteering more and trying to let my friends know more how much I love and care for them. This helps alleviate the excess love I have built up. Once I get my body to a place I am happy with, I think I will finally be able to think about dating again. I think I am finally in a place to offer strong, solid support without being needy and desperate.
The other thing I am focusing on is presence. This sounds totally cheese ball but it works for me. The past got me to where I am right now, which is pretty content. So, I try to take a moment each day and gratefully acknowledge all the good and bad things that led me here. The hard part is letting go of the future. I live there most of the time.
I hate bad surprises. I mean, more than most. I can anticipate most of the ways things can go wrong and be ready for them. When life throws me something I absolutely wasn't expecting, I fall to shit for a little while. This is because it is a terrible shock to me when I am reminded I'm not that smart. So, to avoid bad surprises, I dwell on possible future permutations and outcomes. I am trying to let that go. It is the hardest thing besides changing my diet that I can imagine.
I am focusing on the Buddhist ideals I read about last year, letting go of hope and fear to live in the present. I am trying to be more mindful but it is an uphill struggle. I am already thinking about certain friends of mine reading this and what their reactions will be. Giving up the future is going to be tough but, I think, the healthiest move I can make. Besides, what really matters except right now?
I hope everyone reading this finds a way to improve your life in the coming year or a way to appreciate your life if it doesn't need improvement. I don't know a single person without potential for greatness in them. Next year, I'm leaving the Fortress of Solitude and joining the world.
Monday, December 9, 2013
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
Spooktoberween #23 and 24 The Conjuring and The Roost
Tonight, I am looking at the latest from a not-great director and the first effort of a pretty damn good director.
James Wan burst onto the scene with Saw back in 2004. I quite liked the movie and I think it gets unfairly lumped in with the endless torture porn sequels it spawned. The original was a clever little burst of paranoia and evil. I never saw Dead Silence (Wan's "creepy puppet" movie) nor did I see Death Sentence (his break from horror and attempt at a revenge thriller). Hearing the latter two films were kind of suck, I didn't drop back in with him until Insidious. The first half of that movie has some great little scares and creepy moments that make a horror movie really work. I understand he ran short of money before the end and it does lose a lot of narrative impact once his characters start roaming around the dream world.
I had heard good things going into The Conjuring. My cousin didn't like it but he admits he went in ready to hate it. Watching it apart from all the hype, I still have to rate it as an exceptionally well made horror movie. Even though a lot of scares in the movie are the same old, same old from other haunted house movies, Wan manages to keep things feeling fresh and tense. I had my jaw clenched almost the whole time.
Apart from effective staging, the movie has a couple of other strengths: casting and structure. The film begins with the story of the Warrens, real demonologists in the 1970s. Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson bring the perfect mix of off-kilter likability (her) and manly stoicism (him) to work as protagonists. Set up almost like The Exorcist, we follow their lives as they debunk hauntings and teach classes while the main story simmers in a completely separate storyline. Ron Livingston (who I have loved since Office Space) and Lili Taylor (inspired casting due to her role in The Haunting) have five daughters and a dog being terrorized by an unknown force in their new farmhouse. All the adult leads are believable, likable and sympathetic. The dual structure allows the audience to grow attached to both the Warrens and the Perron family (those who are terrorized) so that the stakes are raised for all the characters once the forces of evil attack.
The corruption of childhood games can be terrifying if used well (see the knocking game from The Orphanage for a perfect example) and The Conjuring employs a great variation on Hide and Go Seek that allows the audience to know that things are going very wrong while the characters are oblivious. Once the explanations start coming out of just how many different entities they are dealing with, I marveled at how Farmiga (in particular) could keep a straight face while talking about witches pledging allegiance to the devil. The movie tries to mix up a straight up ghost story with a demonic possession (a la Paranormal Activity) and mostly succeeds. With touches of The Amityville Horror and The Exorcist, you could do much worse if you are looking for a late night scare.
As Wan seems to be gaining control of his abilities, Ti West seems to be improving as a horror filmmaker. I first saw his work with House of the Devil, the super slow burn movie about a Satanic Cult. I liked it quite a bit. He has contributed little segments to horror anthologies like the ABCs of Death and V/H/S which don't really affect my opinion of him one way or the other. Once I saw The Innkeepers, I was totally sold on his talent. One of my favorite haunted house movies of all time, it might actually surpass Session 9 as my favorite horror movie. I won't say why but it just hits all the right buttons for me.
My friend, Marcus, let me borrow West's first movie, The Roost. The running time would not qualify for a feature without the framing sequence of a late night creature feature show (a la Fright Night) that stars Tom Noonan. The frame feels like a bit of padding/an afterthought except for one intrusion into the story that could be read as a Funny Games style critique of pop violence or the filmmaker covering his ass by undoing the one bit of heartfelt emotion that slips into the movie.
To add another layer, there is a Halloween radio show being performed and listened to by all the characters as they drive around in the middle of nowhere. These radio voices usually provide some ironic commentary on the action and reminded me a little of Kevin Smith's title cards between the scenes of Clerks. These little loving homages to horrors of the past are delightful but also the only bits of the movie that worked for me.
The main meat of the story felt like a nearly impossible slog (I had to keep stopping it tonight to get all the way through and it is only 81 minutes) as four unlikable, completely undefined characters wreck their car and then wander into a farm filled with rabid bats that turn people into zombies or something. There is an implication that this may be a doomsday scenario. Unfortunately, I did not care what happened to any of these people and their agonizingly slow decision making felt like a time filler rather than anything useful or character building. When things don't happen in House of the Devil or The Innkeepers, it is usually to ratchet up the suspense or get us inside the mindset of people who are truly frightened beyond belief. Here, it just seems as if any action taken would resolve the conflicts too quickly.
I would say this is for Ti West completists only. A lot of the criticisms that were unfairly levied against his later work would be totally legit if used against this. The amazing choices of Tom Noonan just serve to underscore how little any one else is doing in this flick. Thank goodness West and Wan have both gotten better.
James Wan burst onto the scene with Saw back in 2004. I quite liked the movie and I think it gets unfairly lumped in with the endless torture porn sequels it spawned. The original was a clever little burst of paranoia and evil. I never saw Dead Silence (Wan's "creepy puppet" movie) nor did I see Death Sentence (his break from horror and attempt at a revenge thriller). Hearing the latter two films were kind of suck, I didn't drop back in with him until Insidious. The first half of that movie has some great little scares and creepy moments that make a horror movie really work. I understand he ran short of money before the end and it does lose a lot of narrative impact once his characters start roaming around the dream world.
I had heard good things going into The Conjuring. My cousin didn't like it but he admits he went in ready to hate it. Watching it apart from all the hype, I still have to rate it as an exceptionally well made horror movie. Even though a lot of scares in the movie are the same old, same old from other haunted house movies, Wan manages to keep things feeling fresh and tense. I had my jaw clenched almost the whole time.
Apart from effective staging, the movie has a couple of other strengths: casting and structure. The film begins with the story of the Warrens, real demonologists in the 1970s. Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson bring the perfect mix of off-kilter likability (her) and manly stoicism (him) to work as protagonists. Set up almost like The Exorcist, we follow their lives as they debunk hauntings and teach classes while the main story simmers in a completely separate storyline. Ron Livingston (who I have loved since Office Space) and Lili Taylor (inspired casting due to her role in The Haunting) have five daughters and a dog being terrorized by an unknown force in their new farmhouse. All the adult leads are believable, likable and sympathetic. The dual structure allows the audience to grow attached to both the Warrens and the Perron family (those who are terrorized) so that the stakes are raised for all the characters once the forces of evil attack.
The corruption of childhood games can be terrifying if used well (see the knocking game from The Orphanage for a perfect example) and The Conjuring employs a great variation on Hide and Go Seek that allows the audience to know that things are going very wrong while the characters are oblivious. Once the explanations start coming out of just how many different entities they are dealing with, I marveled at how Farmiga (in particular) could keep a straight face while talking about witches pledging allegiance to the devil. The movie tries to mix up a straight up ghost story with a demonic possession (a la Paranormal Activity) and mostly succeeds. With touches of The Amityville Horror and The Exorcist, you could do much worse if you are looking for a late night scare.
As Wan seems to be gaining control of his abilities, Ti West seems to be improving as a horror filmmaker. I first saw his work with House of the Devil, the super slow burn movie about a Satanic Cult. I liked it quite a bit. He has contributed little segments to horror anthologies like the ABCs of Death and V/H/S which don't really affect my opinion of him one way or the other. Once I saw The Innkeepers, I was totally sold on his talent. One of my favorite haunted house movies of all time, it might actually surpass Session 9 as my favorite horror movie. I won't say why but it just hits all the right buttons for me.
My friend, Marcus, let me borrow West's first movie, The Roost. The running time would not qualify for a feature without the framing sequence of a late night creature feature show (a la Fright Night) that stars Tom Noonan. The frame feels like a bit of padding/an afterthought except for one intrusion into the story that could be read as a Funny Games style critique of pop violence or the filmmaker covering his ass by undoing the one bit of heartfelt emotion that slips into the movie.
To add another layer, there is a Halloween radio show being performed and listened to by all the characters as they drive around in the middle of nowhere. These radio voices usually provide some ironic commentary on the action and reminded me a little of Kevin Smith's title cards between the scenes of Clerks. These little loving homages to horrors of the past are delightful but also the only bits of the movie that worked for me.
The main meat of the story felt like a nearly impossible slog (I had to keep stopping it tonight to get all the way through and it is only 81 minutes) as four unlikable, completely undefined characters wreck their car and then wander into a farm filled with rabid bats that turn people into zombies or something. There is an implication that this may be a doomsday scenario. Unfortunately, I did not care what happened to any of these people and their agonizingly slow decision making felt like a time filler rather than anything useful or character building. When things don't happen in House of the Devil or The Innkeepers, it is usually to ratchet up the suspense or get us inside the mindset of people who are truly frightened beyond belief. Here, it just seems as if any action taken would resolve the conflicts too quickly.
I would say this is for Ti West completists only. A lot of the criticisms that were unfairly levied against his later work would be totally legit if used against this. The amazing choices of Tom Noonan just serve to underscore how little any one else is doing in this flick. Thank goodness West and Wan have both gotten better.
Thursday, October 24, 2013
Spooktoberfest #s 20, 21 and 22: The Mummy, Gravity and The Chair
From the sublime to the ridiculous, I've ingested three more horror movies.
I have to admit that I am a closet fan of the Mummy remake from the 90s with Brendan Fraser. It was one of the few post-Indiana Jones movies that actually recaptured a little bit of that same fun (I would argue that the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie was also pretty snazzy in that regard). Adventure movies are hard to come by. It was, by no means, a horror movie.
Sitting down to watch the original Mummy from 1932 with Boris Karloff for the first time, I was shocked by how much of the basic plot was identical in the 1999 remake. Besides adding in a bunch of chases and special effects, the story is that of Imhotep, a priest buried alive for the crime of loving the daughter of the Pharaoh. He wakes up in the 1930s and seeks out both the soul and the body of his lost love. There is a hero and a female protagonist who happens to have the soul of Imhotep's love. There are a couple of supporting players who don't make it all the way through the movie. Whereas the remake parlays every plot development into an action set piece, the original is truly a horror movie (laced with tragedy). Karloff is great at portraying the yearning desire of Imhotep. "No man has suffered for a woman as I have suffered for you," he says with the weight of 3000 years behind his words...and you believe him. He can't vomit sandstorms or control flesh eating scarabs but Karloff has the power of dark arts and ancient curses on his side. At a little over an hour, this movie moves quickly and never really slows down. I would recommend it to horror fans who don't need gore or special effects.
Gravity, on the other hand, is nothing but special effects...and it is pretty breathtaking. I know, you are asking how this is horror. If movies like Frozen (three kids stuck on a chair lift) and Open Water (a couple stranded in the middle of the ocean) count as horror, I don't see why Gravity wouldn't. Two astronauts find themselves with no obvious way home after a satellite is destroyed, creating a chain reaction of debris that is whipping around the Earth at 20,000 miles per hour. Like the sharks in Open Water or the Wolves in Frozen, the debris field is a recurring threat that you dread to see coming.
Clooney gets the better role as the experienced astronaut on his last mission. He knows how to handle pretty much anything and can size up a situation very quickly. He is also charming because...Clooney. Bullock has the thankless task of being the newb on her first mission having to deal with seemingly insurmountable obstacles between her and a return to Earth. I have read some reviews that say Bullock can't really carry all the emotional weight that is placed on her in the movie but I think her acting is fine. The dialogue is so damn cheesy at times that there is no way to deliver it where you come off sounding believable.
The person I saw it with wasn't really that impressed but I enjoyed the movie, overall. I was clenching my jaws the entire film. As the pair leap frog from one ruined vessel to another, their chances of missing a handhold and just drifting off into the void get higher and higher. The central metaphor of the movie is also one I am very in tuned with right now. When you are adrift and things seem hopeless, how do you go on? I thought the movie had some decent things to say about this but this is one of those rare times I wanted a little more ambiguity. There are several moments in the final sequence where the film could have just cut to black. Yes, the mainstream audience would have been angry but I think the point of the movie would have been better made. Regardless, Cuaron has crafted a cool thrill ride with some horrible dialogue. I saw this in 3-D Imax and that was totally worth it.
Finally, I watched a video a co-worker let me borrow called "The Chair." It is a low budget horror movie from 2006. Directed by the editor of Ginger Snaps (and the director of Ginger Snaps 2), I have to admit this had a decent enough premise. A girl moves into a sublet old house to work on her Psychology thesis. She has had mental issues in the past. She starts being pretty aggressively haunted and then possessed by a convoluted back story. The execution is somewhat...ok, very...lacking. The acting is subpar, the script goes into at least one completely unneeded twist (did her professor's identity even matter?), the titular chair makes no sense and the decisions made by everyone in the last ten minutes are just really stupid. The guy I borrowed this from likes to pick apart horror movies and tell how he would do them differently. I can't imagine how he likes this movie. So, yeah, not really worth watching but I could totally see a competent remake of this.
I have to admit that I am a closet fan of the Mummy remake from the 90s with Brendan Fraser. It was one of the few post-Indiana Jones movies that actually recaptured a little bit of that same fun (I would argue that the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie was also pretty snazzy in that regard). Adventure movies are hard to come by. It was, by no means, a horror movie.
Sitting down to watch the original Mummy from 1932 with Boris Karloff for the first time, I was shocked by how much of the basic plot was identical in the 1999 remake. Besides adding in a bunch of chases and special effects, the story is that of Imhotep, a priest buried alive for the crime of loving the daughter of the Pharaoh. He wakes up in the 1930s and seeks out both the soul and the body of his lost love. There is a hero and a female protagonist who happens to have the soul of Imhotep's love. There are a couple of supporting players who don't make it all the way through the movie. Whereas the remake parlays every plot development into an action set piece, the original is truly a horror movie (laced with tragedy). Karloff is great at portraying the yearning desire of Imhotep. "No man has suffered for a woman as I have suffered for you," he says with the weight of 3000 years behind his words...and you believe him. He can't vomit sandstorms or control flesh eating scarabs but Karloff has the power of dark arts and ancient curses on his side. At a little over an hour, this movie moves quickly and never really slows down. I would recommend it to horror fans who don't need gore or special effects.
Gravity, on the other hand, is nothing but special effects...and it is pretty breathtaking. I know, you are asking how this is horror. If movies like Frozen (three kids stuck on a chair lift) and Open Water (a couple stranded in the middle of the ocean) count as horror, I don't see why Gravity wouldn't. Two astronauts find themselves with no obvious way home after a satellite is destroyed, creating a chain reaction of debris that is whipping around the Earth at 20,000 miles per hour. Like the sharks in Open Water or the Wolves in Frozen, the debris field is a recurring threat that you dread to see coming.
Clooney gets the better role as the experienced astronaut on his last mission. He knows how to handle pretty much anything and can size up a situation very quickly. He is also charming because...Clooney. Bullock has the thankless task of being the newb on her first mission having to deal with seemingly insurmountable obstacles between her and a return to Earth. I have read some reviews that say Bullock can't really carry all the emotional weight that is placed on her in the movie but I think her acting is fine. The dialogue is so damn cheesy at times that there is no way to deliver it where you come off sounding believable.
The person I saw it with wasn't really that impressed but I enjoyed the movie, overall. I was clenching my jaws the entire film. As the pair leap frog from one ruined vessel to another, their chances of missing a handhold and just drifting off into the void get higher and higher. The central metaphor of the movie is also one I am very in tuned with right now. When you are adrift and things seem hopeless, how do you go on? I thought the movie had some decent things to say about this but this is one of those rare times I wanted a little more ambiguity. There are several moments in the final sequence where the film could have just cut to black. Yes, the mainstream audience would have been angry but I think the point of the movie would have been better made. Regardless, Cuaron has crafted a cool thrill ride with some horrible dialogue. I saw this in 3-D Imax and that was totally worth it.
Finally, I watched a video a co-worker let me borrow called "The Chair." It is a low budget horror movie from 2006. Directed by the editor of Ginger Snaps (and the director of Ginger Snaps 2), I have to admit this had a decent enough premise. A girl moves into a sublet old house to work on her Psychology thesis. She has had mental issues in the past. She starts being pretty aggressively haunted and then possessed by a convoluted back story. The execution is somewhat...ok, very...lacking. The acting is subpar, the script goes into at least one completely unneeded twist (did her professor's identity even matter?), the titular chair makes no sense and the decisions made by everyone in the last ten minutes are just really stupid. The guy I borrowed this from likes to pick apart horror movies and tell how he would do them differently. I can't imagine how he likes this movie. So, yeah, not really worth watching but I could totally see a competent remake of this.
Sunday, October 20, 2013
Spooktoberween #19 Don't Be Afraid of the Dark
I can't always count on Guillermo Del Toro. Directing, yes, he is my kind of storyteller. The Devil's Backbone and Pan's Labyrinth are two of my favorite movies. Blade 2 is my favorite of the Blade movies (not a high bar to cross). Pacific Rim and the Hellboy movies are a lot of fun. He put his production stamp on Splice and directed Cronos, both of which I just thought were so-so. The Orphanage is another of my favorite horror movies. So, all in all, more hits than misses, even if he dabbles in genres I don't have a big interest in.
I had heard bad things about Don't Be Afraid of the Dark and that kept me away for a couple of years. Firstly, I am no Katie Holmes fan since she usually talks out of the side of her mouth like a stroke victim. She actually acquits herself well in this one. Guy Pearce overcomes a ridiculous haircut to do a decent job, too. The little girl is not one of the more sympathetic actresses that could have been cast but she kind of grows on you after awhile.
It was odd that I watched this right after The Hole as both are about families split by divorce and moving into a new house with a portal to unspeakable horror in the basement. While Dante keeps things light and devilish, Troy Nixey (in his big screen debut) makes things slightly more sinister and grotesque (fitting, given the subject matter). Although Arthur Machen gets a shout out, Lovecraft's The Rats In the Walls feels like the obvious ancestor to this story of a little girl who finds a race of fairy folk living in her basement. That they only eat the teeth and bones of children is no nevermind. In fact, I was kind of hoping this movie would tie into the Hellboy mythos since he fought these same fairies in Hellboy 2 (although they were designed very differently).
Pearce plays the disbelieving father, too wrapped up in his work to pay attention to his child. Holmes is Pearce's new girlfriend, who is trying hard to win the bratty little kid over. The creatures are creepy enough but seem as menacing as the Gremlins (which could get slightly nasty when needed). Their aversion to bright light also reminded me of Joe Dante's little beasts.
Not a bad movie. Of course, if it is Del Toro, don't expect a rainbows and lollipops ending. Worth a watch if bored and if you want to delve deeper into Del Toro's world.
My Spooktoberween reviews to date:
#18 The Hole
#16 and 17 Nine Dead and The Awakening
#14 and 15 Red State and The Bay
#13 Hatchet 2
#12 A Horrible Way to Die
#11 VHS 2
#10 The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh
#9 The Corridor
#8 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
#6 and 7 Atrocious and Fright Night
#5 The American Scream
#3 and 4 Transylvania 6-5000 and The Pact
#2 The Dunwich Horror
#1 Room 237
Saturday, October 19, 2013
Spooktoberween #18 The Hole
Joe Dante has more than earned his stripes in the filmmaking world, he doesn't have anything to prove to me. I would also call him the king of family horror, if such a genre exists. The Hole is just creepy enough to not suck to adults but feels like something I should have seen on HBO in 1986.
The story involves two kids moving into a new house with their mother. The brothers make a new friend in the teen hottie next door and, at the same time, discover a hole in their basement that leads to...something. I really think Dante would want me to use that "When you stare into the abyss, the abyss also stares into you" line but that is a bit high-falutin' for a movie that rips of Stephen King's Cat's Eye. Eventually, manifestations of the three kids' fears begin emerging from the Hole and terrorizing them (including a Japan-approved, jerky motioned dead girl and a jester doll where they use a practical effect instead of CGI). The lead kid has the emotional range of a toaster but the other actors do pretty well. Some Joe Dante favorites pop up in small roles, as well.
I don't think this will scare you too terribly but it may be a good horror movie to share with a younger family member this Halloween season (I would say ages 9 and up should have no problems with it).
The story involves two kids moving into a new house with their mother. The brothers make a new friend in the teen hottie next door and, at the same time, discover a hole in their basement that leads to...something. I really think Dante would want me to use that "When you stare into the abyss, the abyss also stares into you" line but that is a bit high-falutin' for a movie that rips of Stephen King's Cat's Eye. Eventually, manifestations of the three kids' fears begin emerging from the Hole and terrorizing them (including a Japan-approved, jerky motioned dead girl and a jester doll where they use a practical effect instead of CGI). The lead kid has the emotional range of a toaster but the other actors do pretty well. Some Joe Dante favorites pop up in small roles, as well.
I don't think this will scare you too terribly but it may be a good horror movie to share with a younger family member this Halloween season (I would say ages 9 and up should have no problems with it).
Thursday, October 17, 2013
Spooktoberween #16 and 17: Nine Dead and The Awakening
I decided to add some more movies to my watch list and work my way through them for the Halloween run. The first is the Melissa Joan Hart vehicle, 9 Dead. It is a cool little premise (not miles away from the Cube) in which 9 strangers find themselves abducted and locked in a room. A masked dude comes in and tells them that one will die every 10 minutes unless they can figure out why they are in the room. As people start getting offed, it gets harder and harder to figure out what they have in common. This is especially true as the first 20 minutes or so are wasted with people distrusting the premise or plotting to escape.
As the captives start spouting every sin they can think of to confess, a picture finally starts emerging. There is a Chinese woman, an insurance agent, a priest, a pedophile, an assistant DA, a gangster, a thief, a cop and an actor in the room so not a lot of immediate connections. Some revelations go nowhere and one character, in particular has a change of heart at a weird time. The ending is kind of weird and ambiguous when it doesn't need to be. All in all, not the worst way to waste 90 minutes but not a particularly compelling way, either.
Much better was The Awakening. Rebecca Hall (the not Scarjo chick from The Prestige) is a ghost debunker in 1920s England. Dominic "McNulty" West comes to her to ask her to investigate a ghost sighting at the school were he works. I liked the debunking aspects of the movie (as I wish Red Lights had stuck to the same idea a little better) as Hall's character is a like the Sherlock Holmes of fake hauntings. When the really creepy stuff starts going down, it doesn't reach super scary levels. The very British production kind of works as a cheeky bodice-ripping romance as West and Hall smolder at each other in between ghost sightings. The aggro groundskeeper was a subplot too many but there is a decent enough twist that is hard to see coming because they cheat it a whole lot.
If you like period romances or haunted house movies, you could do worse than The Awakening.
As the captives start spouting every sin they can think of to confess, a picture finally starts emerging. There is a Chinese woman, an insurance agent, a priest, a pedophile, an assistant DA, a gangster, a thief, a cop and an actor in the room so not a lot of immediate connections. Some revelations go nowhere and one character, in particular has a change of heart at a weird time. The ending is kind of weird and ambiguous when it doesn't need to be. All in all, not the worst way to waste 90 minutes but not a particularly compelling way, either.
Much better was The Awakening. Rebecca Hall (the not Scarjo chick from The Prestige) is a ghost debunker in 1920s England. Dominic "McNulty" West comes to her to ask her to investigate a ghost sighting at the school were he works. I liked the debunking aspects of the movie (as I wish Red Lights had stuck to the same idea a little better) as Hall's character is a like the Sherlock Holmes of fake hauntings. When the really creepy stuff starts going down, it doesn't reach super scary levels. The very British production kind of works as a cheeky bodice-ripping romance as West and Hall smolder at each other in between ghost sightings. The aggro groundskeeper was a subplot too many but there is a decent enough twist that is hard to see coming because they cheat it a whole lot.
If you like period romances or haunted house movies, you could do worse than The Awakening.
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
Spooktoberween #14 and 15 Red State and The Bay
I had this whole big preamble in my head about the different types of directors. The gist was that, after awhile, you get kind of pigeon-holed into certain categories. Often, directors look to break out of these constraints by taking a trip into a specific genre ghetto (Tarantino and Rodriguez both went Grindhouse and have yet to return). Today, I watched two flicks that provided their creators a chance to spread their wings a bit and try something outside their comfort zones.
Kevin Smith is mostly known for his dick and fart joke movies (which are, in my opinion, very funny). He puts just enough pathos in them to make them work as character pieces but they are mostly just delivery systems for intricate scatology. With Red State, he decided to branch out into "horror." Despite the first 30 minutes or so having a horror feel, this is really a movie about some of Smith's pet peeves. He has issues with the Westboro Baptist Church so he fictionalized them and extrapolated a Branch Davidian scenario wherein they are wanted for violating gun laws.
This ground was covered with a little more slickness in the Robert Sean Leonard movie Standoff and (even separated by 10+ years) this movie suffers by comparison. It is stuffed with fine actors and, as always, Smith has a great ear for dialogue. Melissa Leo, John Goodman, Anna Gunn, Badger from Breaking Bad, Stephen Root, Kevin Pollack and Michael Parks all turn in top notch performances (even if some amount to glorified cameos). Unfortunately, the movie doesn't hang together as a coherent statement. It feels more like Smith running down a checklist of "Points I Want To Make" regarding Christianity, Homosexuality, Government Incompetence, Government Evil and maybe a smidgen of "can't we all just listen to each other" thrown in.
Three horny teen boys are lured out to a trailer with the promise of four way sex with Melissa Leo (which...really?). They are soon drugged and awaken to find themselves in a bit of a nightmare. There is a very long sermon from Michael Parks as the head of this extremely violent church. The events that lead the ATF to the compound all arise logically enough but a lot of the impact in the second half of the film relies on dramatic irony and actions from a character we barely even see in the first half of the film.
There are moments where Smith's wicked sense of humor can't help but peek through, but he mostly plays it straight. I understand he ran out of funding and had to ditch his originally ending, which could have played so much better than the talkathon that does serve as an overly-long coda. Some editing, some script tightening and just a tad more money to carry the whole thing through would have done this movie a world of good.
Barry Levinson has not been stuck in as narrow a niche as Kevin Smith but he has not been known for working in genres outside of drama and comedy. With The Bay, he jumps into found footage horror and proves he can handle it pretty well.
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The Bay is a very ambitious found footage feature in that it is culled from a variety of sources. At several points, Levinson apparently just says "fuck it" and goes for old-fashioned third person filmed shots (there is a long shot at the end in particular that breaks the rules). Also, one of the perks of the found footage horror genre is that you don't get to lean on music cues to ratchet up the tension, but Levinson employs some here.
Presented as a compilation of classified footage that the government has worked to keep hidden for the past few years, it tells the story of a deadly outbreak in a small Maryland town on the 4th of July. Now, why the outbreak happens then, I am not entirely sure. The conditions that resulted in the outbreak were present for a long time before hand but I guess this is dramatic license?
Plot holes aside, the development of the affliction (I am purposely being vague because finding out the true nature of the problem is one of the better aspects of the movie) is handled with the strong hand of a master storyteller. I was worried, initially, that there were too many characters and plot threads to follow but Levinson keeps the balls in the air pretty well. We follow a family with a new born as they sail their boat into the bay, the mayor of the town, the police force, a local reporter who was just there to do a fluff piece on the 4th of July festivities, two researchers who are found dead two weeks before the events of the movie, a local doctor, a teen girl face-timing with her best friend and a variety of other sources that come and go as they are needed. At about an hour and a half, Levinson keeps things moving at a good clip. Of course, with all the characters and the low running time, you never really get to know any of them very well (so that drama such as a police standoff or the final fates of any of the characters don't have much of an impact). It won't tug at your heartstrings but it just might keep you entertained for 90 minutes.
Like Red State, The Bay has some finger pointing to do at the government as well as big business. When the immoral collides with the incompetent, evil wins the day. Both of these non-horror directors had something to say along those lines. One just said it a little better.
Kevin Smith is mostly known for his dick and fart joke movies (which are, in my opinion, very funny). He puts just enough pathos in them to make them work as character pieces but they are mostly just delivery systems for intricate scatology. With Red State, he decided to branch out into "horror." Despite the first 30 minutes or so having a horror feel, this is really a movie about some of Smith's pet peeves. He has issues with the Westboro Baptist Church so he fictionalized them and extrapolated a Branch Davidian scenario wherein they are wanted for violating gun laws.
This ground was covered with a little more slickness in the Robert Sean Leonard movie Standoff and (even separated by 10+ years) this movie suffers by comparison. It is stuffed with fine actors and, as always, Smith has a great ear for dialogue. Melissa Leo, John Goodman, Anna Gunn, Badger from Breaking Bad, Stephen Root, Kevin Pollack and Michael Parks all turn in top notch performances (even if some amount to glorified cameos). Unfortunately, the movie doesn't hang together as a coherent statement. It feels more like Smith running down a checklist of "Points I Want To Make" regarding Christianity, Homosexuality, Government Incompetence, Government Evil and maybe a smidgen of "can't we all just listen to each other" thrown in.
Three horny teen boys are lured out to a trailer with the promise of four way sex with Melissa Leo (which...really?). They are soon drugged and awaken to find themselves in a bit of a nightmare. There is a very long sermon from Michael Parks as the head of this extremely violent church. The events that lead the ATF to the compound all arise logically enough but a lot of the impact in the second half of the film relies on dramatic irony and actions from a character we barely even see in the first half of the film.
There are moments where Smith's wicked sense of humor can't help but peek through, but he mostly plays it straight. I understand he ran out of funding and had to ditch his originally ending, which could have played so much better than the talkathon that does serve as an overly-long coda. Some editing, some script tightening and just a tad more money to carry the whole thing through would have done this movie a world of good.
Barry Levinson has not been stuck in as narrow a niche as Kevin Smith but he has not been known for working in genres outside of drama and comedy. With The Bay, he jumps into found footage horror and proves he can handle it pretty well.
The Bay is a very ambitious found footage feature in that it is culled from a variety of sources. At several points, Levinson apparently just says "fuck it" and goes for old-fashioned third person filmed shots (there is a long shot at the end in particular that breaks the rules). Also, one of the perks of the found footage horror genre is that you don't get to lean on music cues to ratchet up the tension, but Levinson employs some here.
Presented as a compilation of classified footage that the government has worked to keep hidden for the past few years, it tells the story of a deadly outbreak in a small Maryland town on the 4th of July. Now, why the outbreak happens then, I am not entirely sure. The conditions that resulted in the outbreak were present for a long time before hand but I guess this is dramatic license?
Plot holes aside, the development of the affliction (I am purposely being vague because finding out the true nature of the problem is one of the better aspects of the movie) is handled with the strong hand of a master storyteller. I was worried, initially, that there were too many characters and plot threads to follow but Levinson keeps the balls in the air pretty well. We follow a family with a new born as they sail their boat into the bay, the mayor of the town, the police force, a local reporter who was just there to do a fluff piece on the 4th of July festivities, two researchers who are found dead two weeks before the events of the movie, a local doctor, a teen girl face-timing with her best friend and a variety of other sources that come and go as they are needed. At about an hour and a half, Levinson keeps things moving at a good clip. Of course, with all the characters and the low running time, you never really get to know any of them very well (so that drama such as a police standoff or the final fates of any of the characters don't have much of an impact). It won't tug at your heartstrings but it just might keep you entertained for 90 minutes.
Like Red State, The Bay has some finger pointing to do at the government as well as big business. When the immoral collides with the incompetent, evil wins the day. Both of these non-horror directors had something to say along those lines. One just said it a little better.
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