The Baby (1973)

JUNE 30, 2012

GENRE: WEIRD
SOURCE: STREAMING (NETFLIX INSTANT)

I’ve been hearing about The Baby for a while now, and I’m not sure why I opted to wait until I was exhausted (see previous review) and almost assuredly unable to watch it all in one sitting to check it out, because this is a movie that requires undivided attention – the ideal location would be a movie theater with people who had sworn on their life to be relatively quiet.

Now, I don’t mean that it’s a complicated movie and you can’t have any distractions or else you might miss a crucial plot point that is essential to unraveling the mystery – on the contrary there’s barely any plot at all. No, you need that sort of focus simply because this is without a doubt one of the weirdest goddamn movies ever given a theatrical release (via Scotia International, who also gave us Horror Express), and you need to ensure that there can be no doubt that what you just saw was real. I was a bit sleepy while watching, and my friend/hotel-roommate had asked me about something, and now I’m not sure – did I actually SEE a 20ish babysitter breastfeed the 30ish title character, or was my brain jumbling a bunch of stuff together?

I assure you, that scene did happen. And it wasn’t even the weirdest thing about the movie (the fact that the babysitter shows up at his birthday party later despite the fact that Baby’s family beats her senseless for “molesting” him might be, however), which tells an ostensibly straight story about a social worker who wants to rescue a mentally handicapped man from his abusive family. However the script by Abe Polsky (who also produced) seemingly goes out of its way to make this as insane as possible, tossing in incest, cattle prod abuse, an intense game of darts, Michael Pataki, a school full of disabled children (the movie’s ickiest moment, honestly), and a surprise ending in which we learn who the craziest person in the movie really is.

But special mention must be made of the film’s soundtrack, which has an appropriately schizo score that changes genre from scene to scene (the main theme is quite lovely and classy; later stuff sounds like a piano being thrown down the stairs). Also, Baby makes typical baby sounds, but they are not that of a grown man – there’s an actual baby dubbed in over him. I later learned that this was not originally the case; actor David Manzy had done his own baby impressions, but the soundtrack was lost and so a real baby was used instead, thus adding to the surreal nature of the film. I would argue that it kind of hurts the plot, since he’s clearly beyond help if at 30 his vocal chords haven’t even developed, but then I’d be trying to apply logic to The Baby, so it’s a moot point.

One legit criticism I can apply is that the pace is wonkier than anything else, which may be problematic for those who go in expecting a batshit crazy HORROR movie. Honestly apart from the babysitter being smacked around there’s nothing horror about the movie until the very end, which one can’t discuss without spoiling it (being that this movie is relatively obscure, I won’t do that). Thus, the awkward structure may be a bit much for some; there’s like 45 minutes of the social worker coming over and trying to help Baby only for the mom (Ruth Roman) or one of Baby’s sisters to thwart her, and then an endless party scene makes up another 20-30 minutes. So by the time the social worker takes action and things start to heat up, there’s only like 15 minutes left of the movie, which means they rush through the plot twist.

Also, the movie’s PG rating (!!!) confines most of what happens here off-screen, another bummer. I don’t know if they intended for a PG or just thought they were being classy by keeping things out of the camera’s range, but while it adds to the movie’s batshit existence, it doesn’t help the rushed feel of its climax. All of a sudden certain people are dead and things are revealed almost simultaneously – it’s a lot to process for a movie that for the past 90 minutes has been more or less hanging out with itself. Or maybe I was just sad that it was over, as I could easily watch this thing all day long.

The transfer on Netflix is most likely from Severin’s recent disc release, which includes interviews with director Ted Post and Manzy, who apparently teaches now and tells a story about his students discovering the film, which mortified me – the internet wasn’t around for most of my high school tenure! How many of my teachers appeared in insane 70s horror films? I may never know, because I’ve forgotten all of their names except for my freshman year English teacher, who was awesome and reminded me of Joey Pantaliano for some reason. I won’t risk cheapening my memory of that dude. Anyway, highly recommended flick! I will add it to my dream list of New Bev screenings!

What say you?

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Worth Mentioning - If You Want to Live

We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning.

Cody counts down to the apocalypse while a lady copies Schwarzenegger.

SEEKING A FRIEND FOR THE END OF THE WORLD (2012)

A massive asteroid is on a collision course with Earth, and the Deep Impact/Armageddon-esque attempts to destroy the space rock have failed. The planet is doomed. When the asteroid hits in three weeks, life as we know it will be over.

It's a big concept, but it's really a small story. We witness the last weeks on Earth entirely through the perspective of one man, a man named Dodge, who has been down on his luck his whole life. As soon as she hears the apocalyptic news, his wife runs out on him, leaving Dodge alone. He's always feared that he would die alone, and now it looks like his fears will come true.

While his friends and acquaintances let loose and spend their last days doing anything they want, things they wouldn't or couldn't do under normal circumstances - nonstop boozing, having as much as sex as possible with as many partners as possible, trying heroin, etc. - Dodge isn't interested in that, he wants to find a friend to spend his last days with. Not just anyone, the right person.

Penny has been Dodge's neighbor, living downstairs in his apartment building, for three years, but they've never really interacted before now. They befriend each other, which gives Penny the opportunity to give Dodge the mail of his that has been accidentally delivered to her and has accumulated over time. One piece of mail is a letter from his high school sweetheart, sent a few months earlier, telling him that he was the love of her life.

Now Dodge has a mission: travel back to his hometown and reunite with his old love to spend his last days with her, while hopefully also finding a way for Penny to get back to her family in the U.K. now that all commercial flights have been grounded.

Writer Lorene Scafaria's directorial debut is a very nice, existential romantic comedy with some good laughs and a lot of heart and emotion. Steve Carell and Keira Knightley are great in their roles as Dodge and Penny. Penny is one of those perfect movie girls; the kind, beautiful girl with a great personality and a cool sense of style (skirts/dresses with Converse, I approve) and an endearing love for good music on vinyl. I could do without her proclivity for smoking marijuana, but that's personal preference. Her interaction with Dodge is quite sweet, and in the end I have to say; spending the apocalypse with a Keira Knightley manic pixie dream girl wouldn't be bad at all.

LADY TERMINATOR (1989)

The story begins with the legendary South Sea Queen searching the land for a man who can satisfy her enough sexually that their lovemaking won't end with the eel that lives inside her vagina killing him by biting off his penis. When she does find a man who can satisfy her, the eel exits her vagina and the man grabs it, turning it into a dagger that he threatens her with. She's his wife now, he says, and he demands that she stop killing people. Angered, the Queen curses the man's bloodline - in one hundred years, she will have revenge on his great-granddaughter - then vanishes, going to the bottom of the sea to join forces with the powers of evil.

One hundred years later, a girl named Tania, an anthropologist who's working on a thesis about the South Sea Queen, charters a boat to take her out to the spot where the Queen's castle was said to have sank into the water. When the boat's Captain, trying to convince her to stay away from that area, calls her "lady", she corrects him - "I'm not a lady, I'm an anthropologist!"

Anyone who goes to the spot where the Sea Queen's castle sank disappears, but Tania cannot be dissuaded. As she goes diving, the boat is wiped out by a large wave, and Tania suddenly finds that she's no longer in the water, she's tied down to a large bed, and an animated eel slithers into her vagina, right through her bikini bottoms.

Possessed by the South Sea Queen, a topless Tania rises from the ocean as electricity flashes around her, and so it has begun... For the remaining hour of the movie, Tania will live out an Indonesia-lensed cash-in on The Terminator that lifts whole scenes from its popular 1984 inspiration. Of course, there are some twists thrown in here and there. For example, the first people the Terminator came across were a group of punks that it takes out with brute strength. The first people Tania encounters are a couple punks, who she takes out by having sex with them so her vagina eel kills them with penis bites.

Tania's target is a singer named Erica, and most of the big Terminator moments are accounted for - nightclub attack, police cruiser car chase, eyeball self-surgery, police station assault, the Tanianator gradually losing all distinguishing features and most of her flesh from battle damage - as she pursues the girl and the local cop who comes to her aid and falls for her. There might even be a nod to Predator with the paraphrased line, "If it bleeds, it dies." As the end nears, things really get crazy.

Not exactly a great movie, it is quite entertaining to watch. It's fun to see how shameless a low budget rip-off can be, it's packed with action, there's a mullet-sporting stoner cop called Snake, the squibs are good and bloody, and Barbara Anne Constable as Tania is a lot nicer to look at than Arnold Schwarzenegger. Plus, it gets major bonus points for managing to work mythical vagina eels into the story.

But Tania would not like the title. "I'm not a lady, I'm a terminator!"

 

Squeal (2008)

JUNE 29, 2012

GENRE: BREAKDOWN, MUTANT, SURVIVAL
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

I can usually sleep pretty easily on an airplane, especially during an overnight flight (i.e. a time when I’d be sleeping anyway), but this early morning was an exception – I maybe dozed for about 40 total minutes for my entire 5+ hour flight to New York, thanks in part to the restless girl next to me, who insisted on using my shoulder (and the guy by the window) as a headrest (or footrest during his turn as human pillow). Any time I started dozing she’d kick me or trap my arm by moving again, so I was never able to join her in slumberland. Nor was I able to watch Squeal on the plane as originally planned, because I was worried if I got out of my seat to get my portable player she would just overtake it entirely.

But maybe she was just doing me a favor, making me save it for my hotel room where I’d at least be more comfortable as I suffered through the damn thing, and be spared of the embarrassment I’d surely suffer from had anyone on the plane looked my way and saw a grown man not only watching but TAKING NOTES for a movie about killer pig-men, instead of, well, sleeping.

The main problem with Squeal is the fact that it delivers on the promise of its title; the characters spend the first half whining and yelling at each other, and then the second half screaming at the tops of their lungs during the endless “chase” part of the movie, where our three pig-men (well, one’s a pig-woman) villains display their complete lack of an objective by kidnapping some of them, killing others, kidnapping some and then killing them… at first it seems they might want to eat them or whatever, but then the littlest pig-man just slashes two of them to death at once, which I’d think would severely diminish their appeal as dinner.

It’s possible that they HAD real plans for them but just didn’t want to deal with them anymore, because they are the most hateful group of people I’ve seen in quite some time. The biggest offender is Travis, who is a typical horror movie asshole – being a complete prick long before he had any reason to be on edge, begging for help when things go bad, and leaving the others to die when he has the opportunity to help. Naturally, it takes forever to kill him, so we have to put up with his bullshit forever. Then again, he’s barely less tolerable than the others, who range from idiotic to obnoxious (second movie this week with a Jack Black wannabe guy). Even the film’s hero drops F-bombs with every other line, and the Final Girl is a militant vegan who pushes her agenda on everyone else, so there is literally no one here worth caring about in the slightest. The only endearing quality about any of them is that the three guys are in a band and are named Mark, Tom, and Travis, which are the names of the members of Blink 182. Hopefully the band will sue this movie for some weird form of defamation.

As for the villains, well, I’ll give them 1 point for novelty I guess. They’re (poorly explained) science experiments gone wrong, sporting pig noses and squealing instead of talking, but otherwise they just do the same sort of shit I’ve seen in a dozen or so other “kids break down and run afoul of backwoods _____” movies, instead of focusing on what made them different. Who were they before the experiment? Were they already murderous, or did the serum (?) make them crazy? What DO they eat? And why can’t any of their victims escape their flimsy chicken-wire cages?

The direction didn’t help matters any, with director Tony Swansey opting to just swing the camera around like in a found footage movie more often than not. It also seems like someone forgot to rent lights for a few shooting days, especially during the scenes where the “nice” characters poke around looking for the others (who have already been taken), sequences which are so dark it’s almost comical, considering what they are about. I assume the low lighting was a way to hide what is probably not the best makeup job in the world for the pig’s noses, but without a single well lit shot of any of the villains (and the film’s low grade digital photography doing it no favors) it’s hard to say. And far too many of the deaths are “creatively edited”, so you THINK you’re seeing something cool but you’re actually just watching a guy wave a knife around and then someone screaming from the presumed hits. Which is fine if the movie is Psycho and it’s amazing and no one is showing up to see the graphic violence, but with this sort of junk it would at least give the gorehounds a reason to stick around. Way to disappoint every type of fan.

One saving grace – the DVD doesn’t have any extra features besides the trailer, and the runtime is a mere 79 minutes. I was able to watch this thing and still have time to hit Dunkins, shower (it was like 95 in New York – forgot what humidity felt like), and finally get some sleep before heading out to see some friends I hadn’t seen in years, hoping none of them asked me what I've been up to. “So you moved 3000 miles away and now you watch movies about killer pig-men? This made sense to you?”

What say you?

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This poster is unintentionally hilarious

I mean, come on.

Are they just trying to underscore the absurdity of a man in a spider suit?

It's so close-up and confrontational, but in a way entirely lacking in mystery.

It's funny how much more I liked the idea of Spider-Man before there were Spider-Man movies.

I thought Sam Raimi's Spider-Man was pretty good, and I thought the sequel was better. But then I never saw the third one. And I never saw the point of rebooting it like two years after the last one came out.

But that's a pretty standard anti-reboot argument, and I try not to make too many standard arguments on this blog.

No, I'm really here to tell you that I will be out of town for the next nine days, and so nine days from now may be the next time you see a post from me. Which means the next nine days won't contain too many fewer posts than the previous nine days, ha ha.

Seriously, I am a busy man. But there's busy and then there's traveling. Traveling is like busy squared.

I do hope that my trip back to New England, the region of my birth -- which will be the first trip for my son and the first summertime trip for my wife -- will afford me at least one opportunity to get out to the theater. My wife and I are scheming to carve out a date night, assuming my parents can bare to part with us for one of the evenings. (The guy they really want to see, their grandson, will be asleep anyway.) Seeking a Friend for the End of the World is our intended target.

And as for The Amazing Spider-Man?

Eh, I'll wait for its next reboot.

Dr. Jekyll's Dungeon Of Death (1979)

JUNE 28, 2012

GENRE: MAD SCIENTIST, WEIRD
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

Sometimes I see a movie and then instantly wonder if I just had a really detailed fever dream. I mean, I know I’ve seen a lot of crazy movies over the years, but did I REALLY just watch a movie about a descendent of Dr Jekyll testing out a new serum on a group of folks by pitting them against each other in low-key wrestling matches, in between scenes of beating his sister and molesting his clearly held against her will “fiancé”? If so, that movie is called Dr. Jekyll’s Dungeon Of Death, and it’s either the best or the worst movie I’ve seen all year.

Right off the bat I knew this would be a very special movie, as Jekyll explains the history of his great grandfather, how his serum didn’t work, etc. Typical stuff, but what makes it puzzling is that he says this as we watch two guys beat the crap out of each other in a dimly lit basement, as if they put the VO on the wrong movie. Later we learn what’s going on, not that it makes much sense, but at least we know for sure that this is indeed the movie they were making.

And by “they” I mean James Wood and James Mathers, who are credited with the script. Mathers played Jekyll (there is no “Hyde” in this version; Jekyll is a big enough asshole as is, and thus doesn’t have to bother with a serum), and Wood did pretty much everything else – directing, producing, editing… he is also credited as the DP, but I don’t know if we can really call anything in this movie “photography”, being that 75% of the image is pure black most of the time. There’s a great bit where one of the few other characters says (in what sounds like an overdub) “Do you always keep your house so dark?” and isn’t answered, so I guess that’s just their way of covering their asses.

As Jekyll, Mathers is a hoot. Imagine a drunken Hugh Laurie in his own Asylum mockbuster of House and you’d have a good idea of what his performance was like here. He delivers the movie’s many ridiculous lines (particular favorite: “My sister has been hopelessly insane since birth!”) with total commitment, wholly making up for the fact that a. they’re the dumbest things ever heard and b. William Shatner himself would think he was hammy. And most of the other characters don’t even talk, so his voice is pretty much the only one you hear through most of the movie.

Except, of course, the grunts and moans of the people fighting during the film’s several overlong, vastly unexciting fight scenes. The poor cinematography, non-existent direction, and dull background make these fights look like something you might film in your own basement with a couple friends as you play “Wrestlemania” when you’re like 11 years old, so when mixed with the batshit insane mad scientist stuff (and a Jekyll with a thing for incest and abuse) it just adds to the WTFness of it all. I actually have the movie on again as I’m writing this review because some of it is just too divine to witness only once, like when Jekyll is explaining his plan over and over to a disinterested party and the movie merely cuts to the next scene mid-sentence, as if the editor was like "Well this is going nowhere, let’s see what else is happening..."

The DVD is an abomination; offering a full frame transfer that seems to be taken from VHS and thus does the already poor image no favors. The only extras are a bunch of drive-in ads for snacks and such, as well as a wonderfully stupid little bio for Cheesy Flix, the DVD distributor who talks about their state of the art DVD facility, which is all the more amusing when you consider the disc suffers from rookie mistakes like not providing a way to go back to the main menu from the chapter selection page. No offense guys, but I can make a better DVD than this on my laptop.

I would love to see this with a crowd; it’s the sort of total batshit strangeness that the Cinefamily would play (probably off this same DVD; I highly doubt this world is good enough to have a 35mm print laying around anywhere). And I almost wish I could keep the DVD to pull out for parties – folks would go home later and wonder what the hell they just saw, partygoers would forget about drinking all my beer because they’re too transfixed by the film… it’d be glorious.

One final note – I was reminded more than once of the terrible movie Nightmare in Blood but couldn’t figure out why, since they had no relation in plot or anything else. But later, I discovered that both films were produced in San Francisco around the same time (late 70s). What is it about this period and setting that produces movies with that certain je ne sais quoi? And did anyone manage to make a GOOD horror movie in San Francisco in the late 70s?

What say you?

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The 2012 Sidewalk Spring Scramble

 Jay reports from the trenches of fast and cheap filmmaking.


Scrambles are events where teams of filmmakers set out to make a short film in as little as 48 hours. The only two I've participated in have ran with this time format as opposed to longer, but I've heard they can go for days. They are open to anyone who wants to put a team together and shoot a short, be it on your dad's old home video camera or something beyond the consumer grade level. For Sidewalk's Scramble, you have 48 hours to write, direct, edit, and turn in your short. They give you a genre to fit into, a prop that must be used in the film, and in this case, a line of dialogue that must be spoken, as "Famous Last Words" was the theme. These are used to not only make you be creative, but also prove that you shot the film in 48 hours and didn't hand in something you've been shooting off and on for the last year. Oh, there is also a time limit. This time limit was 4 minutes including credits.

The Sidewalk Film Festival here in Birmingham, AL puts on a scramble every spring, and may do more, but I'm not sure the exact schedule. Last fall they also did a horror-themed scramble, but I believe that was the first of its kind for Sidewalk. I participated in that, with little to show and as it ends up, have even less to show for my efforts in the 2012 Spring Scramble.

The kickoff event started at 6 P.M. in Birmingham, AL on April 13th. I live just over an hour away from the Edge 12 Theater, which was the location of the kickoff event, so thats the first complaint I have about the set-up. Someone has to be at the kickoff event, and everyone in my team is in Hartselle. So someone has to go. It's me because at this point, I no longer have a team. The drive is a pain in the ass, but must be done, so I improve it a little by heading down early to catch an afternoon showing of We Need to Talk About Kevin and end up loving it. Due to my early arrival, I'm also first in line for the Scramble Kickoff, so I'm one of four teams to receive a complimentary pack of energy drinks, and I also get to leave early and use that extra time to make my film.

I'm the first person in line, the first person to leave, which should translate to more time to work. In actuality it just means that the 15 to 20 minutes I spent getting lost in Birmingham as I attempt to get back on Interstate 65 have put me right back on the same playing field as everyone else, and I'm not sure how many of them still have an hour to drive. I finally decide to use my logic instead of the confusing as hell Google Directions that never seemed quite right to begin with, and I'm back on I-65 with a clear head. The drive is good because it allows me plenty of time to listen to some music and figure out what the hell my short is going to be.

My genre is suspense, and my line of dialogue is "I'm growing old." which is from True Grit. My prop is a clock, only not just any clock, it's a chess clock.

All of these seize my mind on the notion of time, and as I head home, I only know of one actor I have locked in place for the short. Randy Hale, a middle-aged man who (most times reluctantly) appears in just about everything I do. With him as my leading (and only) actor, I decided that the short should be about him going through a divorce. The suspense can come in from the audience wondering if his wife will take him back or not. Simple. I'm good to go! I'm sure I can find someone to play his wife, do all the dialogue through voiceovers with Randy narrating, and that damn chess clock can be symbolism for the time left in Randy's life. The line of dialogue easily fits into the description of a middle-aged man who lost his wife and has realized his days are numbered. One problem: The last rule they gave me was that someone has to die. My quirky little 4 minute romantic dramedy is going to have a hell of an ending. I text a new friend, Khristy Colburn, about being the wife in the short. I met her through Model Mayhem a couple months back, and she'd be perfect to play Randy's leading lady. She agrees and we work it out with her schedule. So far, so good.

Khristy Colburn from a recent photoshoot I did with her

My return to Hartselle is met with Randy not being impressed by my idea. Sure, it's fine, but it seems too easy, he says. I try to convince him that last time we attempted to do the zombie apocalypse in five minutes, and even worse, in 48 hours, and that maybe doing something easier is the best thing we could do. Especially considering we don't have a team like we did last time. He doesn't want to shoot on the first night, and I'm not really ready to anyway, so I agree. Instead I spend the rest of the night trying to come up with a better idea because now I feel like what I have isn't good enough. I try, but I don't come up with jack shit.

Early Saturday is mostly spent making sure I've got what I need. I'm broke as hell, even more so considering my cat has been sick, so I have to borrow fifteen bucks from my great aunt so I can buy some props. The main prop being a bouquet of flowers for Randy to give to his wife in an attempt to win her back. I go into the florist shop and explain that I need something that would look good to give my date, but that I only have a few bucks, then quickly explain that it's for a short film because I don't want to look like a cheap piece of shit, though considering I'm buying the flowers with my great aunt's money, I'm not sure my date would be getting anything better.

Flowers in tow, I stop by Randy's and go over the schedule. He has back problems, and says he doesn't feel like doing anything today, but it's either him or bust. He gives me a hard time about it, but I leave with everything set to get started upon my return in a few hours. We're both set in on the story now, Christy is on board and is even bringing a wedding dress for some surreal images I want to capture, so now it's just sit around and wait. This is the worst part because it drives me insane.

The waiting ends, and I arrive back at Randy's. He's not going fast enough for my speed, and I'm already agitated from our last meeting. On the start of a shoot day, things can't move fast enough for me, and I've had just about enough bullshitting around on my last few sets. Everyone is growing increasingly lazy in my eyes, so I finally just get pissed at Randy because I don't want to wait for his fucking clothes to dry, and I leave. He's pissed that I'm pissed, and I'm just pissed, and I know for sure that the burly 50-something sitting in that house isn't going to pick up the phone to call me and apologize, so I just go home and sit for a few minutes. I know I'll have to suck up my pride and call and tell him I'm sorry, that I'm just stressed because we're doing this entire thing on our own and he doesn't even feel like doing it. I make the call, and we talk it out. The short is back on again, all is well.

Randy Hale ready to kill me

The actual shooting turns out to be the easiest part. Other than me worrying that we won't get to capture the sunset like I had planned, we are getting some good footage and shooting pretty fast. The story is broken down in three phases: Randy on his way to win his wife back, mixed with footage of them together and unhappy, mixed with surreal images of the two dressed up for a wedding, broken images from the mind of the male lead. A voiceover from Randy's state of mind as he attempts to win her back is played over all the footage, and I did it with the mind state that the footage of them unhappy together isn't the past, but the future that Randy doesn't know about yet. So while he is hoping for the best, the audience gets to see what the future really has in store for the lovely couple. Of course, it doesn't really make sense to most people when it plays, but I didn't really expect it to or care if it did. You can make of it what you will, and if you think it's just a bunch of jumbled bullshit, then that's as true as anything.

Randy and I shot about 60% of it on our own, then Khristy joined us that night to fill in the missing pieces. My lovely neighbors pitched in and let us use their apartment as the meeting point for Randy and Khristy so Randy could give her the flowers, and I rigged all of the lighting myself, which is usually something I don't feel comfortable doing. Other than a slight technical difficulty, we nailed the scene, and went back to Randy's to shoot the surreal images as well as the unhappy scenes between the couple. Randy's daughter Devin pitched in for a few minutes and held a light, but otherwise everything was done by myself, Randy, and Khristy. We even did all the special effects ourselves, as I was unable to lure my usual partner onto the set. That would prove to be the ultimate downfall by the time everything was said and done. We wrapped up around 2 AM, then Randy and I hammered out his voiceover until close to 3 with an understanding that I'd return around 7 AM if I needed to add more.

Frame grab of Khristy Colburn

I returned to my apartment at 3 AM and edited, not sleeping at all, and by 7 AM I was basically done. I thought that it could be a little better, but also felt strongly enough about it to go get Randy to finish up the voiceover work. I showed him what I had, despite the constant freezing of my hard drive upon playback, and by 9 AM we had recorded the final voiceover and together had made a few final tweaks in the edit, with the decision being that what we had was good enough for the scramble and that we could improve the edit down the road if we wanted to do more with the short. I took Randy home as the file mixed down. I told him as we left that although the hard drives continuously freezing was annoying for our playback, that all would be fine once it was mixed down, after all, I told him, I'd never had a problem once I got a file saved. I returned to find that my saved file was glitching at just about every point that the hard drives had "dropped frames" during our playback. It took me just under an hour to play around with it, doing nothing with any real logic to fix it, before it finally played seamlessly upon mixdown. I had beaten the system, or so I thought.

I knew going in that there were compatibility issues between my new camera and my editing software, but my understanding was that they were due to rendering nightmares leading to hard drive space problems. Now that I had the file mixed down perfectly, I thought all of that would be behind me, but again I would be wrong. It was just around 11 AM now and I was dead tired, yet my brain was all over the place. Sleep wasn't an option, but the drop off of the DVD in Birmingham didn't start until 5 PM. If it wasn't turned in by 7, we would be disqualified. I had some time to kill and felt fine staying up knowing that I didn't have to make the drive this time. I watched the Knicks lose to the Miami Heat, passed out for ten minutes, then woke up to find that my loyal sidekick had still not replied to any of my texts or phone calls. It was pushing 3 o'clock now and I was beginning to suspect he was going to blow me off. To make this long-winded story a bit shorter, he never replied, and I still haven't been able to get him to talk to me even upon writing this.

Without his assistance, I found myself back at Randy's, where we both cursed the unknown "sidekick" for his shortcomings, but mostly sat in silence. I could barely drive to Randy's, much less Birmingham, and I knew he wasn't in the state of mind to drive either. I tried to impress the idea upon him, but he quickly shot it down. With just over two and a half hours remaining until the deadline, I attempted what seemed to be the easiest solution: Vimeo. You are allowed to upload your short there as long as it is password protected. This means you have to sign up for a pro account, which costs money. I paid the money, uploaded the file, and wondered why I hadn't just done this to begin with. It took about forty-five minutes for the file to upload, then another ten to fifteen for it to process. I went to view the final product only to find that it was full of glitches, even more than had been present in my early attempts at saving the file. I was baffled. The file I uploaded played perfectly on my computer, but on Vimeo it was a shell of its former self.

To make this long story short before it gets even longer, we didn't make the deadline. I made the difficult decision of sticking with Vimeo as the window of opportunity to drive slipped away, and even videotaped my final product off my computer monitor with another camera and uploaded that to Vimeo. If I had filmed it a little better and copied the audio track from the real file onto this imposter video, I could've just submitted that as my final product, but due to time I did neither of the two. It really bugs me that I didn't do those two things, as they would've easily fixed the problem. It would've been my choice to add in a strange "bootleg" feel to my own short, and I've done it in the past, so why I didn't add the audio and reshoot the video off the computer screen with the camera zoomed in a bit more is beyond me. I guess I was just too delirious at that point.

Nevertheless, we did screen at the showing and were up for the Audience Choice award, but none of my team members attended. I have viewed all of the scramble shorts on DVD now and feel a bit better about our result. There were three to five really solid ones, and I would include ours in the bottom half of that group. Some of the other ones were still fun in a really campy way, so all in all I would say it was a very successful scramble for all involved. Maybe next time I'll be a bit more prepared and can come up with something a little better.

Arachnoquake (2012)

JUNE 27, 2012

GENRE: MONSTER
SOURCE: CABLE (SYFY)

There are two types of Syfy movies. One kind is like Sharktopus, which focuses primarily on random victims who are introduced and then killed while the star circles the narrative looking for the beast before it’s “too late”. Those tend to suck. Far more successful are the ones like Arachnoquake, which introduce a group of characters, have them meet their nemesis early on, and then give us what is basically a 90 minute chase scene as they make their way across town or whatever, with the monster(s) killing someone we actually know every now and then.

Now, Arachnoquake is hardly the best example of this type, but at least it gives you a reason to pay attention, unlike the other type where you just need to see the trailer for all the money shots and then tune in for the last 20 minutes to see what sort of “climax” they’ve assembled this time. No, here if you leave for a while, an actual character might die and then you’d be like “Where’d that one guy go?”, something that isn’t a concern in those others. It’s a pretty forgettable movie, though the not sluggish pace and a tongue in cheek tone (the spiders can swim and shoot fire, nonsense that even the characters seem impressed by) warrants its existence as something for Syfy to put on in between commercials. And I had to appreciate the stones to call a movie Arachnoquake and yet start it after the earthquake occurred.

It even has a few likable characters, which is always nice. There’s a grumpy old dude who unfortunately goes pretty quickly, but I liked him because he was the only one who DID anything when first confronted with a spider early on. It’s one of those movies where the things keep growing, so at first they’re just a few times bigger than normal spiders and thus it doesn’t seem like a single one would pose much of a threat to a group of humans. Yet they all panic and run away from it, except for the old guy, who whacks it with his cane. Go Gramps!

I also liked the main character’s dad, played by familiar character actor Ethan Phillips. He’s a sort of salt of the earth, blue collar guy, and thus not willing to put up with the other folks’ bullshit, but what made me feel for the poor bastard was the script’s insistence on putting him through more hell than everyone else – he’s attacked by the spiders like three times before he’s finally killed. By the time of his demise he’s been bitten, burned, stung… he’s like Ash from Evil Dead, but it’s not really funny. It's actually just good that he's finally been put out of his misery.

And those guys put some effort into their roles, unlike top-billed Tracey Gold and Edward Furlong, who are inexplicably supposed to be a couple with teenaged children. I have to assume that Furlong’s role was written for an older actor and someone in casting fucked up along the way, because not only is he only 35 in real life, he actually looks a bit younger and thus doesn’t really look much older than the kid playing his son; another film would cast them as brothers. He’s also supposed to be a high school coach, which makes me suspect what kind of athletic program that school has if this bloated, seemingly permanently stoned dude is entrusted with whipping some would-be sports stars into shape. It’d be like having a Kardashian as the health counselor.

Gold fares no better; she looks the right age but she often refuses to actually act in many of her early scenes, just sitting there with a blank look on her face even when there are spiders nearby. Later she suffers an asthma attack and thus has a reason to DO something, but it’s a pretty shit subplot even by the standards of these things. I also rolled my eyes when the spider kidnapped her, dragging her off to a cave with its webbing. Everyone else in the movie was instantly killed when confronted by a spider, so why did they change their MO for her? Did the spider know she had higher billing than the other victims?

The FX aren’t too bad; there are a couple of practical spiders for closeups, and the smaller ones look fine. However, the big spider for the climax is pretty bad, as is the compositing when one of the heroes is supposedly battling it. I have to wonder if they purposely put the better FX up front hoping to hook people in, assuming that they’ll ride the rest out once everything starts to look like a PS1 game, but it’s a shame that nearly every one of these things drops the ball for their finales. Especially for a movie this average – it’s a C all the way through, but a good ending could have brought it up to a B- or so, rather than sink it another notch. But in between all of those bad FX is a guy running around in a scuba suit while firing a shotgun, so there’s something.

I think we need to give New Orleans a rest for filming locations, however. I know it helps the city financially and such, but it’s getting tiresome, and they’re hardly the only state in the country that could use help. Sure, it’s better than a Vancouver or Toronto location trying to pass itself off for one of our great States, but they gotta mix it up! It’s a sad thing to realize that I’m getting tired of looking at one of the more visually interesting cities in the country. I can’t remember the last time I saw a horror movie shot in New England or in the Northwest. Do it for your country!

What say you?

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The Digital Dread Report for June 26th

 

Sector 7 is probably the safest bet this week. It wasn't A-level or anything, but it entertained and looked slick. Wrath of the Titans... well, it's as hollow as most big budget summer fare tends to be, but likewise it's also pretty and full of all kinds of great, FX laden action scenes. It's going to look great on Blu-ray.

Of the ones we haven't seen, there are a few that we really want to see. Parasitic and Don't Fall Asleep both really appeal to us, but on different levels. Hiding could be a decent Teen Terror flick. Could be.

As for the rest, well, they make us a bit nervous. Amok Train? Really? We'll just take some of these as they come.

Humans Vs. Zombies (2011)

JUNE 26, 2012

GENRE: ZOMBIE
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

The weirdest thing about Humans Vs. Zombies isn’t that it was bad – I figured as much about 7 minutes into the movie. No, it’s weird that they are trying to sell it as a comedy; it’s the first genre listed on its IMDb page, the back of the box describes it as “Dark comedy and horror unite!” and it even has a blurb from National Lampoon. And given its plot about LARPers ("Humans vs Zombies" is a real game people play on college campuses), I figured it would be like Galaxy Quest or whatever, with goofy people only pretending to be heroes having to step up and do it for real, but it’s not a comedy in the slightest.

I mean, yeah, there are a few laughs here and there, and one guy seems to be in the film as a consolation prize for coming in 3rd in a Jack Black lookalike contest, but it plays out like pretty much every other zombie movie ever, including the far more successful Zombie Apocalypse – it’s just a group of folks making their way from point A to point B. The LARP element is largely forgotten after the first few minutes, replaced by a character who plays video games for a living and thus is considered the expert on zombie killing. In fact if I had anything nice to say about the movie, it’s that for once it’s a serious zombie movie where (at least some) people know how to dispatch zombies.

A shame, then, that it’s a pretty terrible movie for the most part, stocked with lousy actors playing bland or unlikable characters, poorly staged action, and mostly abysmal FX work. The dialogue is particularly cringe-worthy; beware any film where the only good exchange is lifted directly from another film (in this case the great "looks clear" bit from Pitch Black). The pacing is also atrocious; we see the zombie outbreak in the opening sequence and then nothing happens for 20 minutes as we meet our characters and learn about each of their allotted single character traits. The two guys are distinguished by the fact that one wants to bang the blond girl and the other wants to bang the brunette (the aforementioned gamer girl, played by Friday Night Lights' Madison Burge), but other than that I couldn’t really find much difference between them. Then there’s the always (not) welcome conspiracy theory character, who… wait for it… is right this time!

And, come on, really?

It’s harder to tell here, but in the wide shot of everyone in the car we can see it’s clearly a composite shot, possibly shot (correctly) with a greenscreen but maybe not, since incompetency is common here. So I figured that it was just a poor job of keying out the green, but the same glitch is seen on a ceiling light in another scene, so it’s possible that they just didn’t shoot it properly to begin with, or had a blind child do their post. What’s your theory?

Also: fake video games. It’s bad enough that Burge plays the most obnoxious gamer ever, the sort of person you’d mute on Xbox if unfortunately stuck with them on Halo (she even refers to something as “gay” at one point – real nice, movie), but she reviews games with insanely bad titles like “Mythical War Gods 2” and “Burning Death 3”, complete with quickie Photoshop covers. Of course, getting real games would probably be easier if she had anything good to say about them, but she trashes all but one, because she’s just so cool.

Two solid points. One is the score, which often sounds like Friday Night Lights’ melancholy, guitar driven cues. The other is the ending, which offers the best of both worlds – two survivors take off on a note of hope, but then if you stick around through a few credits you’ll see that they end up dead too. Sure, it’s probably stolen from the Dawn of the Dead remake (which also killed its “survivors” during the end credits), but whatever. Oh, and it’s shorter than the IMDB promises, so I guess I can call that a 3rd good point.

The disc has a prequel motion comic that has some nice art but a woefully underdeveloped soundtrack, and it seems nearly half of its runtime is given over the credits. Then there’s a trailer reel for movies of all different genres and presented as one long chapter, so you can’t skip past the nature documentary about turtles to get to the horror entries (including Humans vs. Zombies itself; has to be the first time a DVD had its own trailer at the top of the disc). Then there’s a 5 minute slideshow of stills from the movie, set to nothing. Some would take the extra 12 seconds to put a chunk of the score under such a thing, but not these folks!

And so yet again we have a bad horror movie featuring a cast member from one of the best TV shows ever. I don’t know why they have had such bad luck finding horror projects, but I hope that these talented actors collectively get new agents and find work (horror or not) worthy of their charisma.

What say you?

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Is Blade V. a real person?

The goal in any television commercial featuring "real" customers is to prove that they are really real.

Netflix seems to have taken this goal to extreme levels.

I find myself fixated on a recent Netflix commercial featuring testimonials from four "real" customers -- a young woman, a young man, and a young couple. I can take the quotation marks off of "real," probably, because it would seem that this particular group of people has to be real.

The young woman's name? Larissa C.

The young couple's names? Jacob R. and Cia C.

The young man's name?

Blade V.

That's right, it's not the fifth movie in the Blade franchise. It's a late teenager whose first name is Blade, and last name starts with the letter V.

Has anyone else noticed this other than me?

Netflix has millions of real customers to choose from, yet they chose a guy whose first name is Blade. So he's gotta be real, right?

It's just a funny choice. Sure, you want the viewer to have the sense that these are real people, not actors hired to spew positive raves about the company. So no, you don't want your customers to be named John D. or Jane D. You want the names to be a little bit quirky.

Larissa certainly qualifies. Cia certainly qualifies. Jacob is a good everyman name, but not as everyman as John or Bill or Steve.

The kid named Blade sticks out. It's probably too real.

Sure, there are undoubtedly parents out there who named their kid Blade. Blade V.'s parents would be two such examples. But I don't know anyone named Blade, and I'm betting you don't know anyone named Blade. I'm betting most people don't know anyone named Blade.

Why is this a problem? Well, because I noticed it. Because I'm writing a blog post about it. Which means that Netflix has inadvertently caused me to consider the legitimacy of these "real" customers more than I should.

Because it could be a case of Netflix going so far out of its way to prove that Blade V. is a real person, that our only choice is to conclude that he is not a real person. If you were employing actors and making them pretend to be real Netflix customers, the best way to throw us off the scent is to give one of them a name that's so weird that it could not possibly be fake.

Better to just choose someone other than Blade V. to pimp your product. Then I'm not even writing this post.

My guess? Blade V. is a real person, and he was chosen as a favor to Mr. or Mrs. V. Maybe V stands for VIP, and Blade and his family are considered very important to someone involved in the Netflix advertising department.

If you're out surfing today and you see Blade V. mounting his board on the adjacent wave, tell him I said hello.

Film Appreciation - The Weak and the Wounded

Jay Burleson returns to the blog after a long stay at the Danver's State Hospital and talks Session 9 for Film Appreciation.

Session 9
Directed by Brad Anderson

Starring Peter Mullan, David Caruso, Josh Lucas, Stephen Gevedon,

and Paul Guilfoyle

Session 9 is a film I consider to be top-notch as far as newer horror movies go. While it's more of a paranoia-inducing psychological horror, the location and the eerie way it's shot make for one hell of a good ride. It doesn't have much for gore fans, but is definitely more up my alley, as I love a good mood piece.

The film is directed by Brad Anderson, who followed this up with the more well-known film The Machinist, which starred Christian Bale. Anderson has gone on to direct some more notable films, including the 2008 thriller Transsiberian. I like him as a director, but must admit that I haven't seen much of his work. From what I know of him, he seems to be more about suspense and mood, and the influence of Psycho on the score for The Machinist was obvious.

Anderson enlists David Caruso and Peter Mullan in the lead roles here, and I must admit the inclusion of one of the most annoying TV characters in recent memory (Caruso as Horatio Caine from C.S.I. Miami) left me a little turned off when the film started. I quickly fell in love with Caruso's character in Session 9, though, and would say I enjoyed his performance the most. The characters here are all part of an asbestos clean-up team who bid, under ridiculous circumstances, on a job that involves cleaning out an old insane asylum. Thanks to their leader, Gordon (Mullan) and his ambitious bid, the group gets the job but soon find that they would've been better off not bidding at all. The film also stars Paul Guilfoyle, Josh Lucas, and Stephen Gevedon, and even Larry Fessenden turns up.

The movie really digs into the fragile life of Gordon and his slipping relationship with all of those around him. The team he has worked with, and leads, is falling apart and people are starting to people fingers at each other. The tension only grows as things get stranger, and Anderson does a good job of letting the audience in on information that the characters don't learn about each other.

Shot at the real Danvers State Hospital in Danvers, Massachussets, the film owes a lot of its success to the location itself. Interestingly enough, Danvers is built on the same land that was owned by John Hawthrone, one of the judges in the Salem Witch trials. I'm pretty sure the place was torn down and there are some lower income apartments on the property now, which sounds like an Aslyum found footage movie waiting to happen. The location is pitch perfect, but I'm not sure how much of Danvers was actually used in the film. Apparently some of the buildings weren't safe to film in, as they were falling apart. Still, it seems like they did do all of their filming on location at Danvers, and most everything you see in the film was found on location and moved to different rooms to fit the storyline. Pretty eerie!

The thing I adore the most about Session 9 is that it's about a group of middle-aged men, working class guys who have always had similar jobs to this. Most insane asylum horror films are about teenagers breaking into them, not the fathers of those teens working to clean one of them out. It's a nice touch and a great angle. It's not a ghost story, it's all mental and will mean different things to different people. I loved the approach and even though I wasn't a huge fan of the ending, I still thought it worked exceptionally well. There are some genuinely creepy scenes of one of the workers sneaking back into the asylum after dark to play grave robber and collect some coins, and all of the sequences involving the old tapes sessions between doctor and patient at the institution are eerie as hell. Especially when Simon finally shows up.

The music by Climax Golden Twins is very spot on as well. It fits perfectly into the location and feels like something that would be associated with mental institutions in the '50s and '60s. The dread and slightly off-center feel is perfect. I also just learned that Session 9 was one of the first films to be shot on 24P HD video, and for 2001, it looks fantastic. I had never even thought about it being shot on video, so I was quite shocked to find out about this.

All in all, if you haven't seen Session 9, I highly recommend it. It can be a head-scratcher, but it's full of great locations and a very haunting mood. If you get a chance, check it out! Do it, Gordon!

Killer Instinct (2001)

JUNE 25, 2012

GENRE: SLASHER
SOURCE: STREAMING (NETFLIX INSTANT)

Combining the most tired of slasher backdrops (kids partying in an abandoned locale that was the site of a tragedy) with a shockingly common plot device in horror films (real estate!), Killer Instinct is the most boring and lackluster film I’d ever recommend that you watch. Not that it’s a “so bad it’s good” type affair or features a future star in a bit role, but simply because it’s one of the more bafflingly constructed slasher films I’ve ever seen, and I'd like someone else to verify that, so I know I'm not crazy.

See, the slasher stuff in the asylum is pretty typical – the kids arrive, spend an inordinate amount of time playing pranks on each other, and then finally separate into pairs so that they can fornicate and die. It’s textbook stuff for a while, but there’s a great falling glass kill and a funny rolling head gag, and it takes the unusual step of killing the four guys first before focusing on the girls. Not only does this go against the modern slasher “rule” of letting a guy and a girl survive, but it also further solidifies one of the film’s few strengths – it’s not readily apparent who the Final Girl is. Sure, it’s mostly due to the fact that the kids are all interchangeable to the extent that you might even confuse some of the girls for the guys, but let’s just pretend that the screenwriters didn’t want to be so obvious with their heroine’s identity.

But then there’s the real estate stuff, which is what puts the movie in close proximity to WTF territory. Dee Wallace plays a liaison for some big food company who wants to buy Corbin Bernsen’s meat packing plant, and he doesn’t want to sell because the plant is the life blood of the town and people will lose their jobs and blah blah. It’s a story that would barely hold the audience’s interest if Bernsen was playing Arnie and this was LA Law, so why anyone thought it would be a good fit with a teen slasher flick is a far more compelling mystery than the one in the film.

Worse, it only intersects with the slasher plot in the very last scene, and it’s so clunkily depicted I’m not even sure I understood what they were up to the whole time. But even if it was the greatest plot twist of all time and delivered in a flawless manner, I’m still not sure it was worth the jarring back and forth way it was presented throughout the past 80 minutes. We never get to know any of the teens very well (even catching their names takes effort), and part of that is because the script needs to keep leaving them off-screen for long stretches so we can watch Wallace look through records or argue with Bernsen. This also results in the slasher part of the movie not having much time for any good stalk or chase scenes; even good shots of the killer are rare.

The direction is equally grating; director Ken Barbet apparently never learned about inserts and closeups, so several scenes just unfold in master shots with the camera constantly panning around, making me dizzy much quicker than any Bourne or found footage movie ever did. I also got some douche chills while watching due to the excess of nudity, including an early outdoor romp that doesn’t even lead to a death scene. I’m all for some skin, but it feels like it’s there as the result of a reshoot (“Nothing happens in this reel! Get some girl to take her top off, figure it out!”), I get a bit skeeved out.

Also the ending involves a character memorizing a taped copy of news so she can “prove” she was home all night, when she was really with the others and seemingly involved with their deaths. The plot also needs us to believe that this group of pals are all the (sole?) children of a group of folks who murdered a guy 15 years before, not unlike Nightmare On Elm Street but without the, you know, all living on the same street aspect. No, their fathers were all business partners, and now they’re all pals. Sorry, I don’t buy it; we’ve all had one or two pals that we were sort of forced to be friends with because of our parents’ association, but ALL of their friends? And all of this information is given to us at the end of the film in one long montage/exposition babble, so it seems like they just made two bland movies and then drunkenly came up with a way to tie them together for anyone that hadn’t fallen asleep yet.

Oh well. At least it has a song from the band Bonehead over the end credits. Good band. Just a shame that they’re forever associated with this bad movie.

What say you?

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The Road (2012)

(aka You no Drive There!)
Release Date: Available now at Amazon Instant Video.
Country: The Philippines.
Written by: Aloy Adlawan and Yam Laranas.
Directed by: Yam Laranas.
Starring: Carmina Villaroel, Rhian Ramos and TJ Trinidad.

From the first time this we saw the trailer for The Road, it definitely had our attention. It truly looked creepy and atmospheric, and we had high hopes, but it begged the question "can a movie directed by a guy named Yam be any good?"

Sure, why not.

Broken into different sections (or stories), The Road is a movie that moves backwards to establish its plot and answer the questions it poses. The first story, which is also basically the wrap around for all of the others, takes place in 2008; Two young cousins sneak out of their house late one night with a boy, to go joyriding. None of them have a drivers license of course, so when they see the cops on the road ahead of them, they decide to take a detour down a dark and lonely road (hence the title), and they pretty much get jumped by a gang of ghosts. It doesn't end well for ll involved.

You can't run from ghosts! LOL

The second story takes us back 10 years to 1998, and shows us two young sisters traveling down the same road (hence the title), making plans for college and being sisterly. When their car overheats,they turn to a creepy boy for help, and he lures them back to his house to get them some water... and yes, it's the same house from the first story, so you know they are not going to get their water. It doesn't end well for all invovled.

"You come with me I make kidnap."

The third story takes us even further back in time to 1988, where a lonely little boy is shoved in closets and told never to go outside by his domineering, evil Mother. I don't want to give too much more away here, since there are some twists that tie everything together, but suffice it to say that this kid does not grow up well adjusted at all. They also live in a house along the road (hence the title.)

They look so happy together.

The Road was a good effort although it did feel a bit uneven to us. It was well made, the actors all did a fantastic job, and for the most part it maintained a creepy vibe throughout. Yam Laranas's heart was definitely in the right place with this one, even if he didn't give us a perfect film. We loved how the movie's plot worked backwards. In that respect, it reminded us a bit of Christopher Nolan's Memento, but only on the surface.

The first story was good, but it didn't really pack many scares. Sure, there were plenty of creepy looking spirits running around, but it felt a bit... reserved, to us. Maybe we were just expecting the "ghosts" of the titular road to be a bit more vengeful and dangerous.

Run, rabbit, run.

The second story of the three was the one we liked the most, as it had everything; creepy atmosphere, disturbing visuals, tension, and even a bit of emotional pull thrown in for good measure.It felt almost Torture Porn-ish in a few places, although this movie was hardly Torture Porn at all. It was definitely the most engaging segment for us.

The third and last section of the movie, 1988, was solid enough, but by the time it rolled around it was obvious what the "twist" was and it took away a bit of the impact of it all. If anything, the this story was a bit sad, as it made us sympathize with the killer, a bit too much for our liking.

The wraparound story is what threw us off a bit. It wasn't "bad" but it seemed to jar us from the story once or twice. The mystery (or "twist" if you will) behind the whole movie became clear by the time we got to the second segment, the "possession" bit was unclear to us at first, and the way it all wrapped up was a bit too... easy. The movie was still effective and enjoyable, but it just could have been more so had the wraparound been a bit smoother and more eventful. Less subtle, even.

Shine a light on it all you want to sir, it is what it is.

As for the ending and they way it all came together, it was effective enough, but we do have one big gripe; with a lot of Asian horror films (and Asian films in general), they seem to head off into a philosophical or metaphorical place which is great, but we aren't fans of catharsis at the end of our horror flicks. I don't want to see the de-vilification of the "bad guy," because it lessens some of the nastiness that they perpetrated beforehand. I mean, someone kills a bunch of innocent kids and then finds his spiritual release? Blah.

You died for catharsis. Thank you for your sacrifice.

Aside from a bunch of grisly corpses and spirits, some gunshot violence, a few savage beatings, some smothering and a suicide, there's not a ton of bloody stuff to be found here. Sounds like we're being contradictory, I know, but it's really not that bad.

WTF?

Old country roads never lead to anything besides death. Also, Filipino's are a very nice looking people.

She's very nice looking, too bad she has to die on an old country road like that.

Had the movie been a bit more clever and subtle as far as its mysteries went, it would have been far better off for it. As it stands though, The Road is a well made, mostly effective flick that is stronger in the middle than it is at either of its ends. It's a movie that for us teeters on the edge of the C+/B- dividing line. Either way, it's definitely worth a look see.

I'm pretty sure that all of the other girls in this movie were under 18, so all you get is one picture of Rhian Ramos... because she is not jailbait.