Attack The Block (2011)

MARCH 31, 2011

GENRE: ALIEN

SOURCE: THEATRICAL (PREVIEW SCREENING)

I ordinarily try to avoid as much as I can about a movie before I see it, but when Devin told me that I could count Attack The Block as a horror movie, I figured I’d watch the trailer to see if I could make a good judgment call from it. And I still wasn’t sure; the aliens looked kind of scary and there was a jump scare in there, but that could be editing. But all those fears quickly went out the window when the film began with an awesome homage to The Thing (even the score was kind of Carpenter-y), and then the first scare made me jump. ME.

So yeah, it counts as a horror movie. In fact I was often reminded of the tone of Critters, where it’s fun and scary in fairly equal measure, but Block is even MORE of a horror than that film, which dealt heavily with its sci-fi aspects (i.e. the opening scenes, pretty much anything with the shapeshifter guy, etc). Also, unlike Critters, it’s a great movie that I think will hold up 10-20 years from now, possibly beyond.

I literally had no issues whatsoever with the film. I was laughing and cheering throughout, and many of the scares did indeed give me a jolt. And I LOVED the aliens, which were sort of ape-like, but without eyes, blue-glowing teeth, and fur that was “blacker than black” (something they use somewhat sparingly). Plus, it’s an R rated horror movie starring a bunch of kids barely into their teens – and there’s still a decent amount of gore. Not all of our little heroes make it out, which surprised me – they introduce some older characters who I assumed were just there to allow the film some deaths without actually killing off a 14 year old, but that is (thankfully) not the case.

I also enjoyed how small the focus was. Pretty much the entire movie takes place in a single apartment building, not an entire block (hey, it's Critters 3, then!), and, without spoiling anything, there’s a perfectly movie-logical explanation for why the entire city of London isn’t being besieged by the alien monsters. It’s not like Night of the Living Dead where we are focusing on one part of what is obviously a large scale problem – the aliens are all sort of contained to this one area. It’s the rare alien film that has an open and shut story without having some lame deus ex machina at the end to solve all the problems in one fell swoop.

The Carpenter influence isn’t just from The Thing, either – the relationship between the two main characters mirrors that of Assault on Precinct 13 (or Ghosts of Mars, I guess – Mr. Beaks from AICN hilariously pointed out that Attack the Block retroactively justified the existence of that film), and I always love that sort of thing. It didn’t hurt that the female of the pair, one Jodie Whittaker, was wonderfully cute and even more personable – she reminded me of Sandra Bullock from her Speed days. John Boyega as Moses was also quite good; there’s a minor ‘reveal’ about his character late in the film, and what’s great about it is that for a second you might think “Oh come on!” but then if you think about it and pay closer attention to that aspect of his character, it makes total sense. Well played, sir.

And all this from a first time feature director. Joe Cornish has done some TV work, but this is his first full length film, although you’d never know it from watching. The pacing is perfect; aliens arrive pretty much in the first scene, right after the character conflict between Whittaker and Boyega is introduced (that’s economy!), and the pace barely lets up after that, as our heroes make their way around trying to stay ahead of both the aliens and 3rd parties who are after them for various other issues I won’t spoil here. But it still finds time for plenty of good character tics and well placed humor (the little white kid of the group, whose name escapes me, gets most of the best lines), and no one element ever overcrowds the others – the balance is flawless.

Speaking of the humor, the trailer would have you believe that Nick Frost is a bigger character than he is; in actuality nearly his entire performance is in the trailer. Hopefully no one sees it just for him, they will be disappointed. But otherwise, I didn’t recognize anyone, which is also a plus – buying into the reality is actually more important than usual, since the movie at its core is about some misguided kids looking out for their own. I really believed they were a bunch of punks from London; something I wouldn’t have been able to do if they decided to throw in a Harry Potter cast member looking to surprise his fans by playing a punk. That said, the accents can be a bit thick at times, but nowhere near as impenetrable as they were in Cherry Tree Lane. I know there was a rumor about dubbing or subtitling the film, but I find that ridiculous – I think there was maybe one line in the entire movie I didn’t quite catch. And I’m an ignorant American (comment section).

I am confounded that the movie doesn’t have a US distribution as of yet. This is a hugely entertaining, nearly perfect horror/adventure that deserves to be seen on the big screen. This and other praise aside, it’s the type of movie that should come out in August and just shock the hell out of everyone who had grown tired of the generic summer fare coming from the big studios. It was fitting that the Hangover 2 trailer debuted a couple hours before the screening began – that trailer was almost insulting as it rehashed the original movie note for note, and we can probably expect the same sort of déjà vu from Pirates 4, Transformers 3, and every other major genre film hitting over the next 3-4 months (let’s not even BEGIN to consider Cars 2, a sequel to the only Pixar movie no one likes). Attack The Block may be informed by films of the past, but it’s very much its own thing, and not insulting to those films OR their fans in any way shape or form. Without a doubt, I can say that I felt the most pure joy watching this movie than I have in years; I think I’d have to go back to Trick R Treat for something else I watched with so much glee and admiration. The rare genre film I honestly could not even conceive of someone disliking. Believe!

What say you?

Seinfeld writers still hard at work

Death Blow.

Cry, Cry Again.

Rochelle Rochelle.

Agent Zero.

Brown-Eyed Girl.

Source Code?

Yes, I think so.

Seinfeld went off the air in 1998, but the spirit of a good Seinfeld fake movie title is alive and well in this week's new thriller.

I can't put my finger on it, but there's something so wonderfully ersatz about the title Source Code. It could be because you can easily imagine someone saying it in the excited, earnest fashion of a trailer voiceover guy: "Source Code!" That tone that's so urgent, it practically mocks itself.

But if you break it down further, it's got all the ingredients of a fake thriller title. It's got two short words that roll off the tongue quickly. It's technobabble. It's a phrase that's familiar to you, but not so familiar that it doesn't carry an air of mystery. And it's easy to imagine Jerry Seinfeld saying it, half in mockery, half in genuine excitement about the cheesy thriller pleasures that lie within.

And it's not the first time I've thought a real movie title sounded like it should have appeared on Seinfeld's eponymous sitcom. The first time I consciously remember that was with Suspect Zero, E. Elias Merhige's Silence of the Lambs ripoff from 2004. However, that connection was more overt -- one of the fake movies Kramer recites when he's impersonating the Moviefone guy is the aforementioned Agent Zero.

Well, the fact that I giggle a little bit when I say it doesn't prevent me from wanting to see Source Code. In fact, I've got a tentative plan to see it Saturday night. I don't necessarily expect it to be better than a string of recent films I wanted to see until they were tepidly reviewed, but I've got to see something -- I can't let every review sap my enthusiasm to get out to the theater. It's been since Red Riding Hood on March 13th that I've seen a movie in the theater. So I'm due.

Besides, if director Duncan Jones can make this script half as good as he made his own script for Moon, he's got my attention and then some.

Contamination .7 (1993)

MARCH 30, 2011

GENRE: ITALIAN, MONSTER

SOURCE: STREAMING (NETFLIX INSTANT)

One of my favorite things about Italian horror movies is how many titles they often have, and Contamination .7 might be my go-to example in the future. You just have to look at the top of its IMDb page to get confused – it’s listed under Creepers, with Contamination .7 underneath as the “original title”, and a poster for The Crawlers next to it. And, as of this writing, the Newsdesk headline refers to its occasional status as Troll 3. Four titles for one movie, and we still haven’t even gotten to foreign language titles!

Oddly, the Troll title isn’t even that offensive, since it appears to be shot in the same location as Troll 2, and features the same sort of non-actors who come off like they haven’t spoken English before. I was actually convinced most of them were Italian folks speaking phonetically, but my IMDbvestigation revealed that they were all seemingly local hires, as most have no other credits to their name (the only exception is Mary Sellers as Josie, whose other credits are all Italian productions, including a fake Demons 5). So maybe they were just stupefied by the dialogue, which in many cases tops Troll 2's “You can’t piss on hospitality!” insanity. Pretty much anything involving the character of Brian is pure gold, such as when he asks why someone is surprised that he has a wife (response: “No, I think it’s a great idea!”). There’s also this slice of heaven, which occurs as our protagonists, seeking help, run up to a pay phone:

Brian: “Who are we gonna call, who?”

Kid: “Yeah, who?”

Matt (the hero): “I don’t know, but we gotta call someone for help!”

Brian could have conceivably repeated the first line of the exchange, and then we’d be stuck forever. The sheriff is also quite taxed when it comes to saying his lines, dropping in odd pauses and laughing at things that don’t appear to be jokes. He’s also a total moron – there’s this depressing old man who loses his dog to the killer plants early on, and the sheriff notices he looks like shit. “I’m in mourning!” the old man says. The sheriff asks if it’s because he ran out of booze, laughs, and then says “Hey, where’s your dog?” Way to put 2 and 2 together, asshole.

And then there’s the things you come to expect from these movies; oddly hateful characters (Al and Peg Bundy showed more affection toward each other than our hero couple), bizarre character tics such as the 10 year old kid who is obsessed with plants, characters who come out of nowhere and then die, and pathetically bad special FX. The branches aren’t too bad, but when it comes time for them to destroy a helicopter... well, see for yourself:

Speaking of FX, it’s a fairly bloodless movie. The plants (depicted primarily with tentacle-ish branches) just sort of drag and/or suffocate people, instead of beating them to death or tearing them apart. At one point, the greedy power plant owner (his dumping of nuclear waste is what caused the killer plants) shoots himself, but it’s off-screen entirely and we don’t even see his body lying on the floor. Speaking of this scene, it’s another hilarious bit – he takes a good ten seconds to do it but no one makes even the slightest attempt to stop him or even yell “No!”. Yet, this is the only Troll movie that has an R rating – seems they should have just trimmed out the profanity and got themselves the same PG-13 the last one had. I poked around for a while, but there doesn’t seem to be any ‘unrated’ version or anything. Part of the charm I guess.

So if you enjoyed Troll 2’s epic badness, you should probably enjoy this one too. I actually PREFER this one, because killer trees (ones that seemingly have a thing for the elderly!) are a lot funnier than goblins, and it’s thankfully a few minutes shorter. The final “scare” is a lot better here too – no weird, depressing deaths, just a killer Christmas tree!

What say you?

So not the last one

Over the years since 2004, when the first Saw was released, I have come to acknowledge that I am a Saw completist.

I knew after the execrable second Saw and the ridiculous fourth Saw couldn't turn me away, I'd be sure to see them all, eventually -- usually before the next one hit theaters. In fact, always before the next one hit theaters, if memory serves.

But because the movies have been so ludicrous, it was with some amount of relief that I greeted the arrival of Saw 3D -- later redubbed Saw: The Final Chapter for its DVD release -- last October. Okay, I can finally be done, I thought.

On Sunday I went to the local Redbox machine in "celebration" of having won my college basketball pool -- with so many upsets this year, we didn't even need to go to the final weekend to determine a winner. I'd been searching for something cheesy-bad, with Skyline as my target. But it looks like Skyline is still within its 28-day window where Redbox doesn't yet carry it, so Saw: The Final Chapter jumped out as my next logical contender. Celebrate the end of the basketball pool (and winnings of $170) with the end of the Saw series.

Not so fast.

Never have I seen a "last" movie have so many loose ends. In fact, except for the death of a character who's been around for the last couple installments, and the return of another who'd been gone a lot longer than that, there's nothing about the "final" Saw that's really different than the other six Saws that came before it.

Stop reading now if you really don't want me to reveal any spoilers about Saw VII. (Maybe I'll just call it that from here on out, since neither Saw 3D nor Saw: The Final Chapter seems exactly accurate anymore.)

Okay, so for the last four installments or so we've know that the life's work of Jigsaw has been picked up by a detective named Rick Hoffman (Costas Mandylor). See, Jigsaw has now been dead for more Saw sequels than he was alive -- he died at the end of the third. I think it was at the end of the fourth that we learned about Hoffman's involvement, though they all tend to bleed together (pun intended) at this point.

At the end of the sixth, Hoffman looks like he'd had the tables turned on him by another insider -- Jill Kramer (Betsy Russell), Jigsaw's ex-wife (or is it widow? I can't remember). I can't remember how she did it, but she got him into the trap that has appeared most regularly in the Saw movies: the device that goes around your head and will rip your face open if you don't stop it within 60 seconds. Early in Saw VII, though, we learn that Hoffman escaped that trap with only a torn cheek, and now is out for Jill's blood. She goes to the police in hopes of being protected in exchange for her testimony.

Suffice it to say it doesn't go that way. Hoffman spends the movie systematically breaking into the station where Jill is being held and killing off all the people who would be guarding her, all the while luring a large contingent of other officers away from the station on a goose chase to catch him -- which also dooms them. Yeah, it's a bloodbath -- police are dying left and right in this movie. This is to say nothing of all the people getting killed in the movie's featured "long trap," which involves a fraudulent survivor (Sean Patrick Flanery), who wrote a book about surviving a Jigsaw trap that never happened, going through a series of tests to try to reach his wife before she's killed at the end of the hour. At each step of the way one of his co-conspirators buys it. Then there are also a couple isolated traps that have nothing to do with either of these narratives, except that they were set by Hoffman (or so we believe). They've upped the death quotient in this one, if nothing else.

Hoffman succeeds at killing everyone, and then, fairly anticlimactically, straps the same device to Jill's head. Sixty seconds usually take about three minutes of screen time to transpire in a Saw movie, but here, Jill just sits there for a minute that lasts about ten seconds, and then her head explodes. If we're real romantics we could say that now she's reunited with her dead ex-husband.

As Hoffman leaves the station following this massive slaughter, he's approached by three figures in cloaks and animal masks -- or, I should say, "animal heads," because their entire heads are covered. We've seen these figures kidnapping future victims in past Saw movies. They inject him with something to put him to sleep. One removes his mask, and it's Dr. Gordon (Cary Elwes) -- the man who cuts off his own foot to survive the original Saw, eons ago now. This is not as shocking as we might think, since the movie opened with a flashback to Gordon's torment, and he's later seen at a survivor's meeting, where he has some cryptic words for Flanery's faux survivor. It turns out Gordon has been Jigsaw's other assistant all these years. It's a bit facile -- like anything we see in a Saw movie isn't facile -- because they already used that same gimmick in Saw II and III, where Shawnee Smith survived a trap and then became a Jigsaw disciple. But whatever.

Okay, so Gordon leaves Hoffman chained to the same pipe he was chained to, way back in the first Saw. There are still at least two dead bodies lying in this location, nothing more than skeletons by this point. I guess that's chilling, because it means that in all this time, the police still haven't found this location -- it must be pretty remote. And then the movie ends with Hoffman panicking and Gordon saying "Game over!" to him as he closes the sliding door, leaving Hoffman there in the dark. That's at least the third Saw movie that's ended with this door being closed on somebody.

Okay, so what have we really "resolved"? Not much. Jill Kramer is dead, but she was always a pretty passive character -- things were always happening to her, and that's no different in this movie, where she spends most of the time cowering in a jail cell. Hoffman is not dead, and the situation he finds himself in is not by any means a death sentence. You'd think he was worse off at the end of Saw VI, when he had the head-exploder strapped around his melon. A bunch of police are dead, but that doesn't matter because they were only just introduced to us. Gordon is not dead, and in fact, even with only one good foot, he makes a pretty good candidate to continue Jigsaw's legacy. And who are those other two people who never took off their animal masks? Then there's the faux survivor, Bobby, who didn't save his wife (she got heated up to the boiling point inside some kind of cauldron), but didn't die either. In fact, there was a peculiar lack of resolution to his storyline, even though it just began in this installment.

No Saw VIII? Really?

Okay, so if there is going to be a Saw VIII, at least it's not coming out this October. I looked up Tobin Bell, the only actor who figures to definitely return for another Saw (who has appeared in flashback in the last four movies now), on IMDB, and Saw VIII is not his next project. If it were coming out in October, we'd know about it.

But I had a bit of a scare when I googled "Saw 8" and came up with a bunch of entries, one of which included the following poster art:


Granted, it doesn't look ready for primetime and was likely made on somebody's home computer, but just for a second, I thought "REALLY??" History is full of examples of series that continued on past what was supposed to be the "last" installment, but I thought it would be particularly disingenuous to say that it's the last one, and then not even miss one Halloween before putting out the next.

So we will indeed have Halloween 2011 off from Saw movies, but I wouldn't be so sure about 2012. If there's one thing the legion of scribes who've written Saw movies have shown, it's a commitment to the series' warped sense of cohesiveness. You may think they've just kept making movies that involved some variation on the iconic killing devices we've seen in these movies, but they've done more than that -- they've tried to keep the storyline internally consistent and plausible. Usually they've failed stupendously in this regard, but even the attempt to maintain a comprehensible narrative throughline is commendable in its sheer sense of crazy ambitiousness.

So expect those dangling threads at the end of Saw VII to be resolved at some point. Maybe not this year, maybe not next, but by 2013 at the latest.

If legends never die, as the fake Saw VIII poster suggests, neither do successful movie franchises.

The Resident (2011)

MARCH 29, 2011

GENRE: BLANK FROM HELL

SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

I can only assume that The Resident was re-edited and tampered with, since filming took place in 2009 (and then "additional shooting" in 2010), and two editors are credited, which is unusual unless they are a team of some sort (the two share no previous credits in this case). Also it’s a goddamn mess, with Hilary Swank telling Jeffrey Dean Morgan her sob story about having to keep the bed her boyfriend cheated on her in, about 15 minutes before her character actually informs him that her boyfriend cheated on her. And why her character is someone who can afford to pay $3800 a month in rent but can’t afford a new bed is never explained.

And it’s a real shame, because on paper this had promise. Boasting three good stars (Christopher Lee also appears as Morgan’s grandfather) and the creepy premise of someone suspecting that one of her neighbors is actually spending most of the time “living” in her apartment, this could have been an above average thriller in the vein of all those 90s psycho movies like Pacific Heights or Single White Female. Plus, it’s the first original production from Hammer in decades, following the remake Let Me In, with Lee’s participation signaling an act of some sort of confidence.

But right off the bat I suspected something was off. In addition to the confusing matter of Swank’s past, it was also unfolding with incredibly generic broad strokes. It’s one of those movies where anytime the heroine’s phone goes off, her sassy best friend automatically knows that it’s her ex boyfriend, and instantly says “Why are you still talking to him?” even though the woman silenced her phone and thus decidedly is NOT talking to him. Or when she goes apartment hunting and the realtor boasts about the "great view" and it’s just a wall – hilarious... in 1982. And every 5 minutes they cut to her jogging, because she’s a strong, healthy woman! Not a loser! Except for the fact that she can’t bring herself to buy a new bed.

And of course, Morgan seems like the perfect guy, so you know he’s the villain. There’s a quick glimmer of hope when Lee is introduced, because for a few minutes they sort of play with the idea that he might be the villain, not Morgan, and maybe the movie would be about our heroine trying to figure out which of these two men are trying to kill her (like Sliver!). Or, even better, they’re both deranged and working together in some sort of creepy father-son tag-team. But then it all goes to hell once they ‘out’ Morgan as the sole bad guy, in a ridiculous "finale of Saw"-like sequence in which we watch pretty much every scene in the movie again, except now with cutaways of Morgan standing in the shadows looking creepy. We also learn that he actually engineered the entire chain of events that led her to taking the apartment, which seems like a lot of planning for a dude to hook up with a specific woman. That it happens only a half hour into the movie is sort of admirable – at least they’re not trying to trick us for too long – but this also means you’re already re-watching scenes that have barely ended the first time.

Plus they never explain why he is so infatuated with her and/or why he seemingly can’t land a date. He’s a handsome guy, and not socially awkward like Norman Bates, so what’s the problem? And why HER? She’s not particularly interesting, in fact all we know about her is that she’s an ER doctor – wouldn’t he want someone who might have a more normal schedule that would allow him to do his creepy stalker thing? It’s like he goes out of his way to pick the least compatible stalkee in New York.

From this point on, Lee has no purpose in this movie. He doesn’t try to help Swank, he doesn’t assist Morgan, he seemingly harbors no secrets of his own... he just hangs out in doorways and his bed until Morgan injects him with something and kills him, and the character is never mentioned again. You’d think they’d give their golden boy a meatier role. It’d be like if Roger Clemens came back to the Red Sox and they put him at 7th on the relief roster.

Most damning, it’s just dull as dirt. There’s seemingly no one else in all of New York, so the entire movie is just Morgan watching Swank. She gets a security system that Morgan never seems to notice (despite the fact that she leaves the program running on her giant computer monitor while she’s gone), her friend never shows up again, and her boyfriend re-enters the picture but never even has a real scene with Morgan. So there are all these opportunities for good suspense scenes, but they are never taken. Instead, once Swank finally catches up to the audience, the two just smack each other around, chase each other through the apartment building, and then smack each other around some more, for what seems like a full twenty minutes at the end of the movie. Luckily, there is one true Hammer quality to the film – it ends as soon as the bad guy is dead. Most of these movies hover near the two hour mark, but this one is 90 minutes with credits.

It’s a shame they screw up the ickiest aspect of the movie, which explains why Swank keeps sleeping through her alarm. It’s actually quite disturbing, and it wouldn’t surprise me if it was part of the initial concept and they reverse engineered the movie to get to that point, but it’s too little too late. Plus, by that time it’s impossible to take Morgan seriously as the villain, because we’ve seen him fondling himself in her tub (fully clothed!) and using her toothbrush, which I guess is supposed to be creepy but it’s just laughable. Maybe it’s just because of my fondness for Morgan, but he’s too much of a guy’s guy to buy into this. Perhaps he and Lee Pace (as her ex) should have swapped roles – I can buy Morgan as a guy who fucked up and wants to get back with the woman he betrayed, and I can buy Pace as a creepy stalker who jacks it in someone else’s tub.

I really don’t know who this movie was made for. It’s rated R, but only for 2-3 F bombs and the most obscured “nude” scene of all time. The body count is 3, and one is by injection and another is off-screen entirely, so we’re clearly in PG-13 territory in that department. So: middle aged single/divorced women seeking something a little more risqué than CSI, I guess? Every man in the movie is a piece of shit, so I can’t see male audiences warming up to it either.

The Blu-Ray isn’t all that much to write home about either. Apart from a few nice exterior shots of New York (oddly, most of the interiors were shot in New Mexico), nothing really pops, and detail isn’t as crisp as I’d expect from a newer film in high def. Black levels seem a bit off too – one of those two editors loves to fade to black, and when they do so you can plainly see that the movie’s blacks are more like gray. Only extra is a trailer, which is a shame as I was hoping to get some sort of explanation for how Renny Harlin ended up with an executive producer credit.

I really hope Hammer gets it together. Let Me In is a perfectly decent movie, but it’s also a pointless remake of a 2 year old film, and thus it’s hardly the sort of thing to point to when rejoicing that Hammer has returned. And this is a thrill-less thriller that rightfully went direct to video. Their next film is another original, a ghost tale called Wake Wood - third time’s the charm, I hope?

What say you?

High Lane (2009)

MARCH 28, 2011

GENRE: FRENCH, SURVIVAL

SOURCE: STREAMING (NETFLIX INSTANT)

Hey all right, the French ARE capable of making something that doesn’t knock my socks off! While most French flicks I see make me go “Why can’t the US make horror films like that?”, High Mile (French: Vertige) caused me to say “Hey, they’re ripping off our movies, and not even doing a very good job of it!”. It’s not a bad film, but it’s shockingly generic, and bizarrely structured to boot, ending without resolving some subplots and having a third act that all but ignores the thing that worked best about the film – the climbing/rope bridge perils.

For the first 40-45 minutes, the movie is a straight up survival movie in the vein of Thirst or whatever, with five youths on a mountain adventure filled with peril. The film’s best sequence finds them crossing one of those super-thin rope bridges, and of course things go wrong. One of the movie’s strengths is that the kids aren’t easily identifiable (as of yet) as the hero, the asshole, etc. I couldn’t even tell which of the two females was the obvious Final Girl. So when things start going bad (bolts slipping, metal hooks stretching into a straight, useless rod, etc), I really believed that the girl could fall, making the sequence all the more nerve-wracking. Plus, they actually found a way to pay off the ever present “angry boyfriend” subplot. Seems like 90% of these movies have a guy who came along despite having just broken up with one of the girls, who of course has her new fellow with them, adding to the “tension”. I find this to be an obnoxious recurring theme, but here it actually pays off – the new boyfriend stubbornly refuses the hand of the ex to help him up off the bridge, and instead he pulls on one of the ropes the wrong way, which causes all the problems. It’s a decent justification for an otherwise tired element.

And then the rest of this sort of stuff is pretty good – someone gets caught in a trap, the others run around for help, and at one point a girl quite shockingly falls into a pit. I was perfectly fine with this being a straight up survival thriller without any slashers or cannibal monsters or whatever. Sadly, that’s exactly when a mutant cannibal slasher shows up. Now, I could have been OK with this if they were doing anything interesting with him, but he’s the same sort of Wrong Turn reject we’ve seen a million times. Hell, he even has a little shack in the woods! With all of these natural element-based locales (woods, cliffs, etc), why not have him in a cave? Why make the Wrong Turn (itself a throwback to older films like Hills Have Eyes) association even stronger?

Worse, once he shows up, there’s no more mountaineering type stuff. There could have been some really cool scenes of the kids trying to make their way up a cliff face with their pulleys and ropes and what not while the mountain man redneck climbs using nothing, but from here on out it’s just the usual run and slash. Except with the added “bonus” of the love triangle nonsense rearing its ugly head, with the new boyfriend leaving the ex to die for no reason (he clubs him over the head and locks him in a basement!), and then later the ex lets HIM die seemingly to get him back... come on. The bridge part made sense – he’d rather do something foolish than let the guy help him, but the fact that they essentially try to kill each other is just stupid.

Oh, and then they rip off Cold Prey. Look, steal from Wrong Turn and Hills Have Eyes all you want. Hell I’d even accept a few lifts from The Descent. But Cold Prey? That movie needs more love and recognition! That’s like an established comedian stealing from a struggling guy instead of letting him open for him. Basically, our killer’s back-story is identical, except they apparently forgot to actually set it up, because it comes out of nowhere in the post-movie text that also tells us that the bodies of our heroes were never found (it also tries to tell us that 3,000 people have gone missing in these mountains, which is nonsense). Apparently there is a 90 minute version of the film (the Netflix one is 85), so maybe that sets it up a bit more.

I actually wouldn’t mind watching the movie again in its original form. Not only for that extra 5 minutes that might make things a little more interesting, but the dubbing is particularly bad. Lately I’ve actually been preferring to watch the dubbed versions due to half-assed subtitle work, and more often than not I don’t find it particularly bothersome, but here I found it quite distracting. Not only is it poorly mixed (the entire movie is outdoors but everyone sounds like they’re in the world’s smallest booth), but they are seemingly trying to match up the words to lips, which makes it distracting. Just ACT! No one will care that it LOOKS dubbed as long as it sounds correct.

And again, it’s not a bad flick. The opening theme alone makes it worth watching the movie, as it sounds sort of like Trevor Rabin’s older stuff before he got obsessed with electronic instruments. I also liked how much of it took place in the daytime, and the movie is wonderfully shot (and yes, the Netflix stream was quite nice to boot). Even the redneck action isn’t all bad – I like how he has a fondness for headbutts, and the grim ending is also a nice touch. But it’s a shame that something that started off so promising ended up being just another kids vs. backwoods killer movie, even if it was a relatively well made one.

What say you?

Sugar Hill (1973)

MARCH 27, 2011

GENRE: REVENGE, ZOMBIE

SOURCE: STREAMING (NETFLIX INSTANT)

I wish someone would do a modern, big (ish) budget voodoo zombie movie like Sugar Hill. Despite coming along after Night of the Living Dead, Hill’s zombies are the old school type – minions who are resurrected for a specific purpose and don’t do much else. Granted, the more popular kind of zombie is more exciting, but I don’t think the basic concept should die. They eventually went “back” to making straight slashers again after Scream, there’s no reason why they can’t go back to making the “other” zombie movies.

This is a pretty good movie, too. Like Blacula, it’s not as silly as I was expecting, though it’s not quite as successful as that film either. The racism is a bit cartoonish at times, with one character literally going out of her way to be a horrible bigot (though she pays for it at the end), and the plot seems to move on rails at times – nothing ever really seems to complicate matters. Sugar (Sugar Hill is a person, not a locale!) gets a voodoo priest to have some zombies help her get revenge on the guys who killed her boyfriend, and she does so in a largely unchallenged manner. There’s a smooth cop trying to find out who’s killing these goons, but he’s far more interested in hooking up with Sugar, which keeps his investigation from ever really getting in the way. In fact he basically admits his true intentions at one point in the second act, after “questioning” her. She asks “Do I look like a killer to you?” and he replies, charm cranked up to 11, “Girl you always look just fine to me!” And that’s pretty much the extent of his interrogation.

The murder is also a bit botched. The bad guys confront the boyfriend in plain sight of everyone else in the restaurant, yet when they beat him to death later (with no one else around) they’re wearing stocking masks. Hell they even have the same ridiculous pimped out 70s clothes on! So it’s a bit hard to take this moment seriously, even though it’s the inciting incident for the entire plot. But once Sugar resurrects the zombies it picks up. I particularly liked the creepy design for the zombies; their eyes are covered with these golden/silver balls, and they have a tendency to stand perfectly still while in the process of scaring the victims out of their minds.

The death scenes are also pretty varied – one guy gets eaten by pigs (!), another gets stabbed via voodoo doll, one drowns in mud.... no lame shootings or whatever here. Plus, while I would have liked a complication or two, it’s also remarkably straightforward. It’s kind of like The Crow, but without giant shootout/rooftop chase scenes coming out of nowhere and distracting away from her very specific goal of getting back at the five guys who were responsible for her man’s death. Also like The Crow, the 5th man wasn’t present at the killing but is the one who put the others up to it. And this movie’s “Top Dollar” type is none other than Robert Quarry, in his final film for AIP (the plan for him to replace Vincent Price never really worked out). He’s only in a few scenes, but he’s as delightful as always, and also a bit admirable, admonishing his racist girlfriend for being ignorant and, well, racist.

And it has a theme song! As I’ve said several times, any movie with a theme song about the plot is automatically worth a look, and Sugar Hill is no exception. “She do voodoo! Supernatural voo-doo wo-man!” It even plays twice! Since the thing everyone’s fighting over is a night club, I was afraid there were going to be a bunch of endless, dated music numbers, but thankfully the music is more or less confined to the theme song. Speaking of confinement – I was sad to learn that star Marki Bey only made one more film after this before appearing in a handful of TV shows (including six episodes of Starsky and Hutch!) before retiring all together. She’s definitely got a Pam Grier thing going on, but I found her even more charming (and beautiful) than Grier. Hopefully she retired on her own terms (unlike Quarry, who was disfigured in a car accident and thus took an extended break from filmmaking, only to return in a slew of crappy DTV movies in the 90s).

So while I wasn’t quite as impressed as I was with Blacula, I still found it quite enjoyable and less dated than expected, and I’m kind of surprised QT didn’t book it for his festival (supposedly it is referenced in Pulp Fiction? Anyone know the specifics? It’s one of maybe 5 movies on the list of “Movie Connections” that doesn’t give the details). But it’s on instant, and the transfer is pretty good, so check it out if you can. Now, come on Netflix – where are the rest of the “blaxploitation horror” movies? Dr. Black and Mr. White, Abby, etc... let’s do this!

What say you?

The Resident (2011)

"The main resident here is mediocrity..."

THE RESIDENT
Sub-Genre- Psychological/Thriller

Cast Members of Note- Hillary Swank, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Lee Pace and Christopher Lee!

What's it About?- Hillary Swank is a doctor who needs a place to live. Jeffrey Dean Morgan is a creepy creep that has an apartment for rent... do you see where this is going? He's lonely, horny and mentally ill, she's dumb and a bit slutty... Get it yet? Long story short, she moves in, teases the creepy landlord, does it with him (I think), then kicks him to the curb to "work things out" with her ex-boyfriend. It's pretty much a recipe for disaster.

"It's going to be so nice to rape you.. I mean, get to know you."
I'm pretty sure saying "let's be friends" to a mentally unstable psychopath is probably the worst idea ever. Those words can drive decent, gentle men into fits of rage, let alone a nut-job who jerks off in walls while watching women eat cereal or brush their hair. And once provoked, why snoop around trying to figure out "what's going on here?" Smile at him until he leaves, then quietly run put of the building and don't come back.

"I rub my jazz on your face while you sleep... LOL!"
Of course there would be no movie if our heroine did this, so she stays and pisses him off. Libido's flare, tensions flare, Christopher Lee's arthritis flares... and we're left wondering if Hillary Swank can escape the evil clutches of rape-o the landlord. This is Hollywood though, so I mean you have to know how it's going to end.

Badly. It's all going to end badly.
The Good- This movie is like Fatal Attraction with pinches of Pacific Heights and Hider in the House thrown in for good measure. Really, the strongest thing going for the movie are Hillary Swank and Jeffrey Dean Morgan; Both are great actors and hold it down in this one, despite the fairly generic storyline. It's always nice to see Christopher Lee in action too, bless his aging little heart!

If you like the occasional by-the-numbers thriller, and don't really care if a movie feels rehashed and like it's been done before, then you should dig this one. It's safe, harmless, and entertaining enough. You'll want to love it more than you will, but you just have to take it at face value and not pick at it too much if you want to enjoy it at all.

The Bad- The last 15 minutes of this movie took away the feel of most of what came before it, as if the filmmakers felt they had to "Horror it up" a bit to finish strong. Not horrible, but it felt a little bit out of place.

"The Eye of Sauron is ever watchful..."
The Downright Horrendous- Why in the world did she not call the cops once she realizes she's been drugged and that her landlord is creeping around in her walls? I mean, she installs some expensive cameras in her apartment because she's suspicious, but alerting the police or doing a background check on the guy or the building isn't a viable option? Weak sauce.

The Gory- We get some fun needle violence and some messy nail gun violence, but it's nothing too crazy.

The Naked- Hillary Swank has no problem either getting naked or bathing on film. Also, it appears as if she likes to lotion her body up all seductive-like on film too. Fine with us.


What did we learn?- Never move into any building if it means that Christopher Lee is going to be your neighbor. Also, There's always rats in the walls.

The Master Says- C+ For a direct to DVD thriller, this is a pretty decent movie. A solid cast helps of course, but beyond that, the movie gives us a straight forward story and manages to keep things interesting throughout, and builds the tension fairly effectively. You could do worse than adding this one to your Netflix queue. Then again, you could certainly do better too.

Final Thoughts- Hillary Swank: sometimes I think she's really hot, sometimes not so much. It confuses me. Still, I think she's a "Do Want"... maybe...

Servants Of Twilight (1991)

MARCH 26, 2011

GENRE: CULT, RELIGIOUS

SOURCE: STREAMING (NETFLIX INSTANT)

Somehow, despite the fact that I’m hovering around the two thousand movie mark, Servants Of Twilight is the first Dean Koontz-based movie I’ve watched for HMAD. I’ve seen a few of the movies based on his novels (Intensity, Phantoms, and Hideaway), but that was “back in the day”, so no reviews for those. Might be able to do Hideaway though, I can’t remember a goddamn thing about it. But I must watch the Watchers films first!

Anyway, it’s a pretty bland but watchable movie. I won’t remember a damn thing about it beyond what I write in this review, but I wasn’t annoyed or notably bored while watching either. Basically, there’s a cult that comes out of nowhere and claims this little Charlie Korsmo-y kid is the Antichrist, so it’s up to his oddly accented mother and Bruce Greenwood to protect him. It’s kind of hilarious how many people die protecting this kid, including what seems like Greenwood’s entire Rolodex of colleagues, but not as funny as the fact that the cult guys like to shoot first and ask questions later when it comes to these borderline anonymous fellow bodyguard/PI types, but are unable to take out the mom or Greenwood. Yet, through all of this, no one ever bothers to really look into whether the cult may be on to something.

Basically, the issue is that they don’t spend enough time with the cult. What spurned them into action, anyway? The kid is like 6 or 7, but we’re led to believe that they never approached him or the mother prior to the start of the movie, and it comes out of nowhere too. Maybe if he had done something unusual that got people’s attention or something, it would make more sense, but the cult leader just sort of follows them around a parking lot one day and starts spouting nonsense. And this leads to the other major problem – obviously the kid IS the Antichrist, or else there’s no point to the movie. He doesn’t do anything that could be construed as a miracle (or, anti-miracle, I guess) or act strangely – he just plays his Game Boy and looks wide-eyed at everyone in sight. But it takes too long until Greenwood starts to suspect the kid might be evil; it should have been around the 45, 60 minute mark tops, but it’s more like 10 minutes before the movie ends.

There’s also a confusing framing device, in which we find Greenwood telling the story of how he met these folks and what happened. Luckily he has a beard in these scenes, because it’s the only way to tell them apart – there’s no flash or fade or anything to signify that they are going back and forth in the narrative. Worse, he’s telling the story to a guy he talks to several times in the regular part of the movie, which makes it even harder to penetrate, beard or not. The one successful thing about these scenes (the early ones anyway) is that we don’t see the kid or the mother, so there is that feeling that perhaps he’s gone crazy because he’s killed one or both of them.

I also liked how they worked a rather sad subplot into the Antichrist stuff, which I didn’t see coming. Early on, the cult folks chop off the family dog’s head (off-screen, thankfully), and the kid wants another dog for extra protection. And they come back with an identical looking dog, and I’m thinking “Aww, poor kid just wants his pal back, not a different one” (also “Aww, the production couldn’t afford another dog”). But it turns out it IS the same dog – he used his Antichrist powers to resurrect him. Which, I dunno, isn’t exactly the most evil way to use your Antichrist powers. Even the real Christ would have to admit that’s actually kind of sweet.

There are also a couple of other minor things I appreciated. For example, when the kid plays his Game Boy, we see that it’s Tetris, but we also HEAR that it’s Tetris. Usually a movie just tosses in some generic bleeps and bloops for a game (or the Donkey Kong soundtrack), but it’s that goddamn Russian music that everyone with a soul would turn off after 30 seconds (another hint that he’s the Antichrist). He even says “I want to play Tetris”. Helps make it a little more realistic. I also liked that they didn’t “cheat” during a fake scare involving a plumber. Now fully paranoid, Greenwood and co. assume everyone is a cult member trying to get them, so when a guy arrives in a white van unexpectedly, they assume he’s with them. But no, he’s just an actual plumber trying to clean a drain. Ordinarily, the filmmakers would go out of their way to try to trick the audience, but here if you pay attention, the guy’s van had the company logo on it, whereas the cult van was plain white. Good work!

However I sort of wish he WAS involved. It’s not spoiling anything to say that one of Greenwood’s men is part of the cult, which is how they’re always finding them (even when the traitor is specifically shown NOT being told where they are going), but it would have been kind of cool/scary if they showed up in more places. Like at one point they go out for some take out – maybe they could have had a cult member there. There was this comic a while back called “Global Frequency”, and it was about this group that had hundreds (thousands?) of agents all over the world ready to spring into Bourne-like action at a moment’s notice – it might have been cool if the cult operated like this, where instead of just constantly tailing the kid, they would have already been in key locations around the country (or, California, since they never venture far outside of Los Angeles county) and then been “activated” when they spotted him stopping into their hotel or restaurant or whatever.

But, it’s based on a Koontz book. I don’t have a problem with the guy, but the books of his that I’ve read tend to be a bit too straightforward for my tastes. He seemingly comes up with a concept and executes it in a very workmanlike manner without a lot of twists and turns or even complexity. And any book is “smarter” than its subsequent movie version, so I can’t really fault it for not having a lot of meat on its bones - especially since it comes from the folks who gave us Dorm That Dripped Blood and Soul Survivors, which is oddly close to a title by Koontz (“Soul Survivor”) but is not based on his book. Also worth noting, the original book is simply called “Twilight”, but they had the foresight twenty years ago to avoid being mistaken for a silly sparkly vampire movie and thus added the “Servants” part of the title. Good call!

What say you?

Horror Hospital (1973)

MARCH 25, 2011

GENRE: MAD SCIENTIST

SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

On the day that Michael Gough passed away, Blockbuster emailed to announce they were sending me Horror Hospital, in which Gough plays the film’s villain. So now I’m going to be scared whenever I get a movie that its own lead actor will die that day. Luckily I buy all of Bruce Willis and Kevin Costner’s movies whether I like them or not, so I shouldn’t have to worry about them too much (Chevy, on the other hand... I just cannot justify buying Karate Dog or Jack & The Beanstalk). At any rate, RIP Mr. Gough, and I apologize for all of my friends who referred to you as Alfred.

Anyway, good movie. Any film that opens with two folks being decapitated by a blade protruding from a Rolls Royce is automatically a success, but when you add in a villain who seemingly only wants to kill hippies (yay!), the deal is just sweetened. By the time our hero announces that “our only chance is a freaky little dwarf they got”, in reference to Gough’s little person slave who does indeed help them out and ultimately dies trying to save them, I knew this was a movie that would have to go out of its way to make me dislike it, and even then I’d probably still give it a pass. I’ve seen enough creepy little person villain sidekicks in my lifetime – we need more like this guy!

And, of course, more movies where the mad scientist is just wearing a mask to look human. Underneath, Gough’s character is this misshapen THING that sort of resembles Paul McCrane right before Kurtwood Smith splatters him in Robocop, which was a nice surprise. In fact, there’s a sort of low-key “kitchen sink” approach to this movie – there are old school zombies (slave drones), the freak, crazy experiments, out of nowhere bar fights, plus a good (and most welcome) dose of genuine atmosphere, Hammer-style. For example, when our heroes get off their train in the town where the girl (the lovely Vanessa Shaw) is supposed to be met by her aunt, and there is simply no life to be seen anywhere. At midnight this morning (that right?) I saw Sucker Punch, which ALSO had a kitchen sink approach (and off-record lobotomies!), but in that movie I just found it exhausting after a while. Here, however, the laid back approach (even played for laughs on occasion – our hero stops to gobble some pie left out on a counter as they make their way through the kitchen during their escape attempt) works in its favor, because these surprise little elements still seem organic to the story, as opposed to Sucker Punch’s “Hey you know what else would be cool? Nazi robots!” mentality.

There’s also an odd non-twist. In the film’s third act, another guy shows up at the creepy hospital, looking for his girlfriend. He shows one of the villains her photo, but we don’t see it, so it seems they are setting up that his girlfriend is actually the girl our hero has been hooking up with after meeting on the train there. But no, it’s just some other girl that we didn’t really get a good look at. Also, the guy doesn’t die – once I realized he wasn’t the boyfriend of our heroine, I figured they just added him to the movie so they could get another death in there while allowing our heroes to live, but nope. Usually this would kind of bug me, but again it sort of fit the film’s laid-back charms, like the dude just sort of wandered into the movie and stuck around for the ride.

I didn’t get the ending though. Gough gets decapitated, but that doesn’t seem to kill him, because right near the end we see his hand rising out of the swamp where he was killed. That part’s OK – doesn’t make a lot of sense, but whatever. However, from that they cut to the train station conductor, who was in cahoots with Gough, lying dead on the tracks, clearly from stab wounds or something of the sort. Who killed him? Headless monster Gough? Why? They were partners! In fact the conductor was pretty much the only one on his payroll that didn’t turn on him. Maybe he was just pissed off, like when Satan smashes Udo Kier’s head in End Of Days.

I also wasn’t too big on Jason, the film’s hero. He’s really ratty looking, and kind of annoying (way too pushy with the girl too, though she only seems to mind once). The guy who shows up near the end was actually more likable, I wish they had swapped roles. I guess it’s nice to have a sort of alt-hero in one of these things, instead of the usual handsome charmer. Speaking of him – his dialogue seems to be dubbed at times, particularly on the train. Bad ADR, or replacing a thick British accent?

There’s a new DVD by Dark Sky that has a commentary, but alas I was sent the original Elite pressing, which is non-anamorphic and lacks any real extras. The only thing this one offers besides “chapter selection” is the awful trailer, which oversells the film’s horror aspects and spoils one of the twists in the ONE shot of the movie it actually shows, though I guess without context it won’t mean much. I can only assume the commentary explains some of the more puzzling aspects of the film, such as why its called Computer Killers on the IMDb (there’s no computer in the movie), or why they list a “85 min/100 minutes (uncut)” running time when all releases I can find (including the new Dark Sky one) run 90 minutes.

One final note, mainly aimed at younger and future readers - the man that Jason goes to see is a “travel agent”. Back in the day, we would use these people to book our hotels, flights, etc, when planning a vacation, because we didn’t have Expedia or whatever to just do it ourselves (and cheaper). Oddly, last night’s 30 Rock made a joke about the death of this particular profession, so it was a weird coincidence that such a person appeared here, as it’s not like travel agents are particularly common fictional characters even back when they were at the peak of their popularity. I think the last one I can recall being in a movie was Truman Show. Weird.

What say you?

A Wimpy sequel despite a wimpy box office

I don't know much about the Diary of a Wimpy Kid phenomenon, if it even rises to the level of a phenomenon. I'm too old to read the books, and my child is not yet old enough. (He's not old enough to read anything -- during story time, he just slaps his hand against the pages.)

But I do know that the first Diary of a Wimpy Kid movie did not light the world on fire when it was released last March. It made a certainly decent $64 million domestically, according to IMDB, including $22 million in its opening weekend -- pretty impressive for March, I guess. And I also acknowledge that the profitability of a film is a function of its budget, not its ticket sales in an absolute sense. Since Diary of a Wimpy Kid cost $15 million to make, it made a healthy 50 million bucks. And that's just here in the U.S., although I doubt a movie like this does gangbuster business overseas.

However, I don't think you can argue that $64 million is enough to call it an unqualified hit. There are certain people out there who take their kids to every single movie that's both available and suitable, just to give them something to do for 90 minutes on a weekend. Considering that, and considering the staggering box office totals of some other brand-name kids franchises, $64 million seems fairly modest.

So I was a little surprised to see a theatrical sequel to Diary of a Wimpy Kid materialize only a year later. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules comes out today, and I guess they're trying to get slightly older demographics involved -- Ke$ha's "Tik Tok" plays during the ads I've seen on TV this week.

Whether or not there should be a Diary of a Wimpy Kid sequel is not really why I'm writing today. I'm actually writing to discuss the phenomenon of committing yourself to a franchise, come hell or high water. Once you've started turning a popular book series into a potential franchise, at what costs do you keep it going?

The most relevant example here is probably the Chronicles of Narnia movies, which I seem to keep coming back to on my blog. There are seven Narnia books, and you better bet Walden Media wanted to make them all into movies when they started out. After all, having what will ultimately be eight Harry Potter movies didn't prove too difficult for Warner Brothers, as people kept on ponying up the money to see those.

But the box office totals have gotten consistently less satisfying with each new installment, ever since The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was considered an unqualified hit, turning an estimated $180 million budget into a $291 million domestic gross. (To say nothing of the overseas grosses, but if you know me you know I like taking a United States-centric view on things like this -- if only because I have historically been interested in domestic gross figures, as something I find easier to comprehend, compare and contrast.)

However, after the third installment, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, earned only $104 million on an estimated $155 million budget (figures from IMDB), it had to give them pause. About as much pause as the fairly unmarketable names of the next two books, The Silver Chair and The Horse and His Boy.

If you lose $50 million on a movie, clearly you stop, right? But it's not that simple. The Chronicles of Narnia is one of the most well-known brand names in all of fantasy literature. Setting out to make seven movies, and ultimately making only three, damages the brand on the whole. It's most likely that financial considerations would take precedence, but still -- I'd argue that Walden Media would be a lot more likely to press onward, despite the uphill battle, just for the purposes of bringing the endeavor in to the finish line, its grace and pride still intact.

Well, here's to writing blog posts in real time rather than planning them out first. I just checked and found that there are plans for a fourth Narnia movie -- but it will be the sixth Narnia novel. Apparently, they're jumping past those two awkwardly named books and going straight to another one with a good marketing hook: The Magician's Nephew. (Let's just hope people don't associate it too closely with last summer's The Sorcerer's Apprentice, which didn't light the world on fire either.) In fact, according to wikipedia, this decision was just officially announced on Tuesday.

Seems like a good way to save face. Instead of making seven movies, make five. Because once they make The Magician's Nephew, they'll have to finish off with The Last Battle, right? It's got a marquee-friendly name, and it would conclude the series. It's much harder to stop 80% of the way there than 40%.

Another good movie to discuss in this context is The Golden Compass, the only movie from what was supposed to be a franchise based on Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials novels. I liked that movie, but I guess a lot of people didn't -- and not only the religious folks who protested its apparently pagan undertones. (Which only made me root harder for it to succeed.) It was pretty clear there would be no other movies made, and getting out after only one just means that it was a theatrical non-starter, and that was that. It wasn't that famous of a property to begin with.

I think the dilemma faced by Walden Media is a bit more tough. If they had made The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and it had only done okay, they could have just stopped there without it seeming too awkward. Sure, many of us would have guessed that they planned to continue onward and make all the novels, but the story is pretty self-contained, so it could have stood on its own without there being too much egg on anyone's face. I think when you get started with a long project and then you have to stop, that's when the stink of failure starts to attach itself.

So what does all this have to do with a modest sequel to a modest movie about a modest elementary school student?

Let me know if you figure it out.

Curse Of Alcatraz (2007)

MARCH 24, 2011

GENRE: SUPERNATURAL

SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

As I inch closer to exhausting the entire horror section at my preferred Blockbuster (for real), I am actually getting kind of excited. Online, I can rent stuff like Curse Of Alcatraz without the soul-crushing moment where the clerk double-checks to make sure I’m renting what I thought I was renting ("And you're renting Curse of... Alcatraz. Correct?"). Yes, I am of sound mind and body, renting Curse Of Alcatraz. And next week I’ll finally tackle that Freakshow movie, just a heads up. However, it IS a shame that Blockbuster (at least, this particular one) is no longer bothering to order even a single copy of newer DTV/indie horror movies, because I feel the occasional gem like Frayed or Baby Blues will slip past me.

Curse, of course, is not a gem, but it’s not the bottom of the barrel either – it’s just the type of OK movie that you just don’t bother to go out of your way to watch, especially 4 years after it hit shelves. But to be fair, for a half hour or so I was kind of digging it. For starters, it was shot on film, which automatically puts it a notch or two above most other indie horror films of this sort. I know it’s a simple thing (and, yes, a preference), but to me it instantly says “we are trying, here”. Any schmuck can pop a tape in and get decent footage with a DV or HD camera, but to get good looking footage with film, at least SOMEONE on the crew definitely knew what they were doing, and for a low budget production, that they were willing to put a good chunk of their dough into film is quite laudable.

And it was unfolding slowly, not unlike an old 70s haunted house movie or maybe something from Hammer/AIP. But the characters weren’t just endlessly dicking around either; something minor occurs early on, with a guy pricking his finger on the teeth of a recently uncovered skeleton (our heroes are archaeology students), and the 60-90 seconds we spend watching him bandage it up lets us know that this is going to be important. But he doesn’t turn villain instantly, instead we continue to learn more about the skeleton, the island/prison itself, etc. It may not be particularly exciting, but it’s different, and I liked that they were keeping the usual hijinks to a minimum. One guy wants to bang one other girl, but otherwise they stick to business. Sort of reminded me of Session 9 at times in that manner; so many horror movies come up with a reason for the protagonists to be wherever they are but never bother to show them actually doing anything related to that after 5 minutes, but even at the top of the 3rd act they’re still dusting bones and such.

The 3rd act, unfortunately, is also where it loses steam. Basically, a couple of folks become infected and run around killing each other, while our two final heroes get locked in a cell and start spouting endless exposition to one another. The audio on the movie isn’t the best, making it hard to understand what they are saying at times, and the girl has a thick accent on top of that (attempts to use subtitles had a hilarious result – it crashed the DVD-ROM player, as if to suggest that it too couldn’t understand what they were saying). Some of the deaths are surprisingly gory, but it just got a bit monotonous watching poorly lit scene after poorly lit scene of these folks taking each other out in succession.

And the dialogue I COULD understand tended to be insufferable. The final girl has an inexplicably profane mouth, even referring to her friends with four letter word intensifiers (“It’s fucking Tiffany!”), which got obnoxious. Plus there were some just plain awful lines, like when another character (fucking Tiffany, I think) shouts “Control panel? I don’t even know what a control panel IS!”. On the other hand, they DID have a better excuse than normal for not having cell phones – the thick walls and often underground locales they were exploring kept them from being able to get a signal, and they’d have to go outside to get one, which was unsafe at night due to the lack of lights and such. Hey, I’ll take it.

Speaking of the locale, it’s kind of interesting that Alcatraz is visible from the very bright, populated San Francisco mainland. Most horror films are built around isolation of some sort, and inner city horrors tend to avoid these sort of “trapped” situations because of that. So even though it’s not a plot point or anything, there’s something kind of intriguing about our heroes being isolated and alone when you can see this major (but inaccessible) metropolis in the background. On the commentary, the director points out that the prisoners who could see the city from their cell windows tended to get violent or suicidal more often than the rest of the population, because the “so close yet so far” sight of the city would drive them mad.

That’s just one of many little tidbits or insights that makes the commentary worth a listen (provided you could stand the movie – the IMDb board is, of course, loaded with “Worst movie ever made!” type drivel). Director Daniel Zirilli and screenwriter Glase Lomond are up front with a few of the movie’s shortcomings (not all), and also provide helpful info for would-be filmmakers (one of them points out that they are, after all, the target audience for commentaries, something I wish more filmmakers would realize), such as imploring them not to waste time getting cool, showy shots that serve no purpose to the movie when you’re on location and on a tight budget – get that sort of stuff if you have time/money when the important stuff is done. They also confirmed something I suspected when watching – some of the interiors were not at Alcatraz but in an Oakland correctional facility. How did I know this? Because the characters ran by the same, oddly grade school-like cafeteria that I mocked nearly four years ago in the god-awful Death Row, which was also shot there! I love how I can remember THAT but it took me until this morning to remember to mail in the Netflix disc that I watched on Monday (Penance). Stupid BC.

Anyway, as these things go, it’s passable. There’s more effort and attempt at telling a good story than I tend to expect from Lionsgate releases of this sort, though I think only a guy watching them all the time would recognize its relative quality.

What say you?