Decades of Terror: Takoma's Slow-Moving October Time Machine

It's definitely sexist and all over the place. However, I think that it embraces that and either knows it's absurd or just IS absurd in a such a way that I found myself not taking much serious offence. A man who lets a child participate in an armed robbery doesn't get to complain about how his ex-wife doesn't want him having custody of their child.

Wait, go back and re-read, I added a bunch to the post thinking I could slip it in because it's almost 2am here and I forgot I wasn't in my normal part of the world. I had more to say.

Simon Killer, 2012

Simon (Brady Corbet) is a young American man spending some time in Paris after graduating from college and reeling from a breakup with his girlfriend. Exploring the city’s night life, he meets bar host and sex worker Victoria (Mati Diop). After their initial encounter, Simon finds ways to get himself into Victoria’s life. As their unstable romance develops, it seems that Simon wants more and more from Victoria, even putting her safety on the line.

While definitely not meeting my expectations as a horror movie, this was a well-acted and nice-looking film that doesn’t quite make the most of its premise.

It’s so hard to review a movie when you’re still adjusting to the fact that you didn’t get anything like what you were expecting. In this case, several sites list it as a horror film, though to me it was a drama and a thriller. I know that this doesn’t seem like a huge deviation from horror, but when you are in what you THINK is a horror movie and a character goes on and on about how he studied eyes, at a certain point in the film you start grumpily thinking, “When is someone going to get stabbed in the eye already?!?!?!?!”.

Setting aside the gap between my expectations and what I actually got, I think that this was a film with some strengths that didn’t ultimately add up to a strong final product.

I picked this film in large part to due it starring Brady Corbet, who I thought was really excellent in Mysterious Skin and also very good in the Funny Games remake. I think that he is also very good here as a person who has figured out how to elicit enough sympathy from people to get them to do what he wants. Simon is functionally a sociopath--a man who is willing to get beat up by a group of men just so he can earn pity points from Victoria. There is an indifference to his behavior, as well as a thinly veiled contempt, that is chilling. This is truly a man who serves only his own needs, and values people only for what they can provide to him.

Diop is also very good as Victoria. Victoria has seen some things, both in a past abusive relationship and in her current sex work. She knows early on, from a blank face she assumes after Simon is pressuring her into the blackmail scam, that this is not a pure or good relationship. Just as Simon’s deeper motivations remain a mystery, so do the reasons that Victoria chooses to stay with him. Though it must be said that we can put a few ideas together: coming from a past relationship with physical violence and a job where she has to feign attraction to men she finds unattractive, we can guess why Victoria might settle for a handsome, young man whose sexual tastes are on the mild side.

The film looks good, overall, with lots of reds and pinks hinting at the fate that awaits at least one of the protagonists. The film also sounds good, with a pretty kicking soundtrack.

But ultimately, the story spins its wheels for much of the middle third and even heading into the final act. This is the double-edged sword of a movie centered on a sociopath whose depths we cannot access (and whose depths might just . . . not really exist at all). While there is some interest in watching just how Simon’s various schemes work out (or don’t), there’s a distinct lack of momentum here and the film begins to feel like it’s grinding along. While there is a conclusion, of sorts, I didn’t find it very satisfying, or feel that it was worth the journey.

This one didn’t need eyeball-stabbing, per se, but it did need a bit more electricity and about 20 fewer minutes of runtime.

The witches are definitely the stars, but they are embodying (to comic effect) all of the complaints/stereotypes/fears regarding women that are held by the male characters. I consider them the heroes(ish) because we do ultimately want them to succeed.

Choose, 2011

Fiona (Katheryn Winnick) is a college student who is haunted by her mother’s death by suicide. When a mysterious figure begins accosting people and forcing them into terrible choices, Fiona ends up working unofficially with her father, Tom (Kevin Pollack), a police detective, to get to the bottom of the horrific attacks. As Fiona realizes that the bad guy has his eye on her, she must also determine how she is connected to him.

Cruising along as a fun, if silly, horror-thriller, this one seriously derails in the last 10 minutes or so.

There’s a happy zone of stupid where some truly great horror movies live. No shame in that game. And this movie sits nicely in that zone of dumb for almost all of its run time. Police letting a college student help out with a grisly serial murder/assault case? Check. Absurdly complicated messages and codes that are solved in stupid or weird ways? Check. Murder tableaus inexplicably left in place by police because it makes for a nice visual? Check! For almost all of the film, this is in that sweet spot where you’re sort of laughing at it, but also genuinely trying to sort out how it all fits together. (I was sure I had it cracked, and repeatedly and confidently asserted that my solution was the only plausible one).

And while the film is in that good zone, there’s plenty to like about it. Winnick is a very solid lead, and with a few exceptions, her actions seem reasonable in the grand scheme of the film’s plot. Kevin Pollack is engaging as always, though he seems to be one of the only actors with that “what kind of movie am I in” vibe at times. Bruce Dern shows up for a few minutes as a psychiatrist who is tangentially connected with the case. Everyone here is fine, with no real negative standouts. (Okay, Fiona’s boyfriend is THE WORST, but that is a writing/character problem, not an actor problem).

In a movie this silly, I don’t actually want to be all that disturbed by the gore/violence, and thankfully it’s all in the right degree for my taste in this kind of film. More often than not, the violence here is conceptual and briefly visual. A pianist forced to cut off his fingers is more pondered than portrayed (and when it is portrayed, sorry, I did laugh). Sometimes silly films go with graphic violence, and to me that always feels like a mismatch.

I was already writing essentially a C+ review for this movie in my head, but then the last act kicks in. I think that thinking of a neat horror concept isn’t all that terribly hard, but figuring out how to follow that idea through to an ending is. The closer the movie gets to the end, the more you feel it begin to sweat. You wonder how on earth the movie is going to pull all its threads together, and the simple answer is that it doesn’t. It also can’t resist the bane of the modern horror film: A FINAL SURPRISE! In this case, something that made me boo outloud and also managed to raise like ten questions on top of the ones that were already going unanswered. This is a film that makes rules and then, when it tells you why, you realize that it’s also breaking them just to make the pieces fit.

Very close to a lazy afternoon goofy horror slightly-above-average success, but the wheels really come off at the end.

A Horrible Way to Die, 2010

Sarah (Amy Seimetz) is three months sober, but she’s also coming up on a much more serious anniversary: it’s been a few short years since her boyfriend, Garrick (AJ Bowen), was arrested and convicted of killing multiple women. Sarah begins to tentatively pursue a romance with Kevin (Joe Swanberg), a man from her AA Group, but her future with Kevin and her life itself are threatened when Garrick escapes from prison and begins to make his way toward her.

Making good use of a flash-foward/flash-back structure, this one doesn’t quite go the full distance due to an underdeveloped central relationship.

Several familiar faces---specifically Seimetz, but also Bowen and Swanberg--enticed me to check this film out. And I have to say that when it comes to performances, this film is pretty strong. Seimetz never disappoints, and I think she’s pretty great here in what is almost a dual role. Past-Sarah is drunk, and maybe even using her drunkenness to stave off the sense that something with Garrick is not right. But Present-Sarah is sober and grappling with the twin blades of fear and guilt. In one conversation at an AA meeting, Sarah reflects that maybe things would have been different if she weren’t drunk all the time. It’s hard to parse exactly what she means by this. Does she mean that if she’d been sober Garrick wouldn’t have killed those women? Does she mean that she would have figured things out earlier, possibly saving some women? Or does she possibly mean that he might have killed her if she weren’t so believing and complacent for so long?

Swanberg is unsettling as Kevin, a guy who is all smiles and tenderness, but who is clearly not quite right. Watching his character interact with Sarah is painful, because you can see how this woman ended up with a man who was a killer. On their first date, Kevin takes Sarah to a restaurant where they are surrounded by wine bottles. Clearly uncomfortable, Sarah accepts Kevin’s weak excuses and doesn’t insist on leaving, a bad sign moving forward. Swanberg gives every one of Kevin’s transgressions or quirks an uncomfortable edge, making you wonder how much we are seeing the real man, and how much of his behavior is actually intended to get under Sarah’s skin.

Bowen’s character and performance is the trickiest of the film, and I think that he mostly pulls it off. I started watching this film something like 10 years ago, and stopped very shortly into it because the dark themes and dizzying camerawork (more on that later) weren’t what I needed that night. But one scene that I have always remembered is the opening sequence: Bowen’s Garrick wakes up in a car, realizing he’s dozed off. He goes to the trunk where he retrieves a bound woman. Talking to her in a comforting manner, he rubs her shoulder and tells her that she’s going to be okay . . . all before choking her to death. He exudes a kind of good guy energy, and it’s jarring to see that transition from kind words and comforting tone to brutal murder. The film asks a lot of the character and the actor: wanting him to be scary, likable, maybe kind of sexy, and someone you can root for even as you fear for what he’ll do to Sarah. He’s a dizzying mix of a boogeyman, flawed protagonist, and classic horror slasher killer. I think it’s a credit to Bowen that he makes the character work as well as he does.

I also think that the structure of the film is interesting and engaging. We spend most of our time with Present Sarah, but the long stretches of flashbacks add depth to her story. We watch as she goes from gently questioning her boyfriend to deciding to figure things out to fear and denial about what she’s learned about the man she loves. The lingering question in the film is what will happen when the escaped Garrick finally closes the distance between himself and Sarah, and the flashbacks work to help us make our own predictions.

There are two things that don’t quite work in this film, which is a shame because it does have a lot going for it. The first is that the flashback sequences don’t feel quite adequate to me in terms of carrying the weight of justifying certain character decisions. Garrick feels very much like a character who was written for a movie. Yes, we’ve all heard stories about men whose wives had no clue that they were killing on the side. But we’ve all seen those guys, right? They aren’t empathetic teddy bears, they are narcissists who lived double lives. Garrick’s loyalty to Sarah doesn’t quite check out for me. The movie needs him to be a monster and a loving boyfriend, and I’m not sure that there really are people who actually have those two halves, only people who are good at role playing the latter.

Then there’s the camera work. I mean, guys. Guys. There’s the slightly-shaky hand-held camera work, and then there’s whatever is happening in this film. At several points it looks more like a parody of modern filmmaking style than something trying to be good. Many scenes begin with the camera out of focus, okay, fine. But then as a character is speaking the camera will veer wildly from side to side, or drift up and to one side. There are a handful of times that this technique manages to serve as an extension of Sarah’s intoxication or her fear and disorientation. At other times, it comes off as being “artsy” without purpose.

The conclusion to this film is very interesting. I’m not sure I buy it, but I like it.

Certainly recommended for anyone who is a fan of the on-screen talent.

Strigoi, 2009

Vlad (Catalin Paraschiv) returns home to his Romanian village from a stint in Italy to find a local man named Florian is dead and his name is on the death certificate as the doctor who ruled the death accidental. But delving into that mystery soon leads him to another, more supernatural puzzle: why is the wealthy Constantin (Constantin Barbulescu) so sweaty and hungry? Why is Constantin’s wife (Roxana Guttman) consuming everything in sight? Tales of vampirism intertwine with a land-theft conspiracy, and Vlad must fight through layers of secrecy and tradition to sort it all out.

While I found the political allegories a bit challenging to parse, this was overall a fun, frothy little horror comedy with a charmingly laidback pace.

I do sometimes feel a bit undereducated on world matters/politics when time after time I watch a film from another country and find myself writing things like “I think I would have appreciated the film more if I knew more about the history of [insert place/political movement/etc here]”. And this film falls into that same category. I don’t know enough about either the Romanian folklore of strigoi (vampires) or the politics of post-WW2 Romania to feel confident about interpreting any of what I saw in this film. The good news is that this film doesn’t need interpretation to be a good time.

This horror-comedy leans pretty hard into the comedy side of things, and it’s quirky small town humor. What keeps the film moving is a solid cast of characters who manage to elevate even very slight conversations into something funny and engaging. Case in point is Vlad’s circular interrogation of the men he finds sitting watch over Florian’s body on his arrival back into town. Where did one of the villagers get those nice new shoes? What are those strange marks on Florian’s neck? The men deflect, talking to Vlad about Italy with its amazing women and pizzas. It’s a genial run-around, and Vlad will spend much of the film trying to pry the truth from the closed-lipped locals.

Paraschiv is very understated in his role as Vlad, but his character is gently persistent. When he discovers shenanigans related to land-ownership paperwork, he steadily works to get to the bottom of things. All the while he comes up against very human corruption and very supernatural vampires. Vlad’s no dummy, but he’s also no strapping action hero. Instead, he’s just a nice guy who wants to do the right thing. He’s a much needed rock of normalcy in a town filled with oddballs.

While none of the townspeople get a whole lot of character development, they are surely pretty fun to hang around with. That’s especially true of Vlad’s overbearing grandfather (Rudy Rosenfeld), who himself may be a vampire. (A great exchange involves Vlad grumpily accusing his grandfather of drinking his blood, in a tone you might associate with asking someone to stop putting empty milk cartons back in the refrigerator).

I also liked the way that the townspeople themselves are seen to grapple with the folklore. When one woman asserts that wife, Ileana, is a vampire, the townspeople debate whether that can be true because Ileana in her binge eating has consumed garlic. “Not strigoi!” one man asserts. “Then what is she?” asks the woman. No one has an answer.

But looking around at some other reviews---which I perused hoping for some enlightenment about the political background--I found that I wasn’t the only one a bit confused about exactly how vampirism is functioning in this movie. It’s communism! No, wait, it’s post-war corruption! It’s kind of scattershot, which gives a sense of aimlessness. Now, because the lead character is so laid back and the villagers are so charming, this isn’t the worst thing. But it does mean that as the film enters its final act it lacks some momentum or a satisfying sense of closure.

I also must mention the absolute nostalgia bomb that was the film’s use of the song “Postcards from Italy” by Beirut, which transported me back to grad school and a mix CD I had in my car.

Fun cast and characters, but just lacking enough direction or punch to be really memorable.

Repo, the Genetic Opera, 2008

In a future where organ failure is rampant, the powerful GeneCo company offers loaner organs that, lacking payment, are subject to repossession. Repo man Nathan (Anthony Stewart Head) does the gruesome work of collecting said organs when the bills are past due. Nathan cares for his sickly daughter, Shilo (Alexa PenaVega), while dealing with the ruthless owner of GeneCo, Rotti (Paul Sorvino). When Rotti discovers he is terminally ill, it sets off a power struggle between his squabbling children and an unwitting Shilo.

This movie is probably one of those love-it-or-hate-it deals, and I did not land on the nice side of that split.

This should have been my jam, really. Anthony Stewart Head showed he could really sing in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer musical. A grunge horror musical has me sold on the sub-sub-genre alone. The concept of someone repossessing organs has the promise of an intersection between the grisly and the hilarious.

But . . . it’s bad. It pains me to say it. It’s bad!

There are some glimmers of brightness. Head can sing, and I’ve always enjoyed him as a presence. His role as the conflicted organ repo man and worried father is a good one, and he plays it well. His is the most fleshed out (not sorry) character of the bunch by a wide, wide margin. And while none of the other actors made quite as strong an impression, I loved some of the character concepts, especially the opera singer (Sarah Brightman) who has been given loaner eyes that are soon coming due. I also liked the final setpiece, which takes place at the opera, something that elevates the camp of the whole film. Finally, shout out to the special effects, which are just gruesome to make an impression but squishy and rubbery enough to also be funny.

And that’s it. Everything else not only didn’t work for me, but was actively grating.

Why, why, why, why, why was there so much talk-singing?! Look, yes, sometimes you have that one person in your movie/play whose voice isn’t as strong. And you kind of look the other way as they speak their song with just a hint of melody. But in this film it felt like that was 90% of the “music.” Head and Brightman are the exceptions, but they put the rest of the cast to shame in this regard.

And despite a good effort from actor Terrance Zdunich, the omniscient character of the graverobber was awful. From the overly-expository songs to the character/costume design that looked like something you’d buy at Party City, ugh. Every other character just falls into this neutral/forgettable place.

Different and good are not the same things. I was rooting for this one, but I can already feel it slipping out of my memory.

28 Weeks Later, 2007

Following the events from the first film, the rage virus has spread through England. Don (Robert Carlyle) is forced to make some hard choices in order to survive, and after a glimpse of his desperate life on the run from the infected, we catch up with him 28 weeks later as the virus is supposedly eradicated from the UK. Don’s children, Tammy (Imogen Poots) and Andy (Mackintosh Muggleton), reunite with their father in a “safe zone,” that is overseen by the United States military. As a modestly-sized community begins to build, scientist Scarlet (Rose Byrne) worries that the virus may not be truly in the past.

This is a decent sequel, but it pales in comparison to the original and suffers frequently from comparison.

I had high hopes for this one, as I remember it getting decent reviews on its release and I’ve frequently seen it mentioned on lists of sequels that don’t stink.

Everything in this movie comes as a double-edged sword. I liked the cast, all of whom give good performances. But the strength of that cast--which includes Jeremy Renner, Idris Elba, Catherine McCormack, and Harold Parrineau---calls attention to just how thinly this film spreads itself.

The original film concerned itself with a found family: Jim, Selena, and father-daughter Frank and Hannah. There’s a solid foundation in this film whereby Don is not being entirely honest with his children about how he made it through the epidemic alive. But instead of building this plot out and developing those characters and relationships, we get frequent cut-aways to other scenes. I don’t mind the idea of trying to take more of a big-picture view of the outbreak, but this film seems to want to have things both ways. Unfortunately, if you only spend like 10 minutes with a character, them being put in danger or killed just isn’t going to hit the same way. Don is the most relatable character simply because of the amount of time we spend with him, but we know next to nothing about everyone else.

Like the original film, this one goes frequently to that shaky hand-held look. This wouldn’t be a problem but for the way that it contrasts with sequences that are shot in a much slicker, traditional Hollywood style.

Really the biggest sin of the film, however, is the way that it attempts to trade on the emotions and goodwill from the first film. If you have seen the original film, you can probably easily picture the sequence toward the end of the film set to John Murphy’s “In the House, In a Heartbeat”. Just hearing that song brings that moment, visuals and emotions, storming to the front of my brain. Well, the makers of this film are also apparently fans, as they use the music like four different times. While I was willing to allow the first use--as kind of a bridge from the original to this sequel---around the third time the music cued up, I started to get surly. Not merely because of the overuse, but because every time that music kicked it it just called attention to the fact that nothing on screen was anywhere close to rivaling that moment from the original movie. This film did not put in the work to earn any such moment, and we’re left with characters in peril who even 80 minutes into the film seems shallowly sketched out. Comparing that to Selena wielding a machete as you-know-what happens? No way.

And I won’t spend many words complaining about plot implausibilities, but there were many, many times that I just went, “Really?”. A certain someone not being guarded by a single person? Certain people just being able to slip out with no one noticing? A total lack of emergency response plans? I’m not saying that there haven’t been real-world examples of terrible planning and the like, but a lot of moments felt like stupid things were put in the film to steer events the way they wanted.

Not bad, but it really undercuts itself by calling attention back to the original.

Black Sheep, 2006

Henry (Nathan Meister) left his childhood sheep farm with a serious case of sheep-phobia as the result of a cruel, bloody prank by his older brother, Angus (Peter Feeney). When Henry returns as an adult with a tenuous hold on his fears, the timing couldn’t be worse: Angus has been doing some unscrupulous experiments on the flock, leading to loads of wooly beasties who are out for blood. With the help of his childhood friend Tucker (Tammy Davis) and overly-earnest animal rights activist Experience (Danielle Mason), Henry must save the flock and himself.

Landing in just the right sweet spot of horror-comedy, this one is full of easy laughs and enjoyably campy sheep-based carnage.

Sometimes a movie goes back to the same well over and over and you find yourself rolling your eyes. But other times, the water from that well is just as sweet the fourth time as the first. In the case of this film, I’m talking about a character looking up only to realize that they’re being regarded by a sheep, or maybe a handful of sheep. A dramatic musical sting accompanies the appearance of the sheep. Yes, I laughed basically every time.

There have been countless movies that riff on The Birds, but there’s something very special about sheep. Their faces are cute, but they also do always look like they’d eat your spleen if they felt like it. I cackled like a maniac every time one of the sheep regarded the camera with their patented head-on stare.

Now, this gag alone is obviously not enough to sustain a feature-length film. But fortunately there are plenty of other charming elements on hand. Going perfectly with the sheep is Meister’s performance as Henry. Sure, he’s kind of a hapless hero. But the gag that he’s terrified of the sheep even before they take their first bite out of someone is very funny. The fearful, smothered yelp he lets out every time he encounters one just doesn’t get old.

Davis is also quite likable as the laid-back Tucker. Mason is also very sweet and goofy as Experience, whose every anecdote starts with something like, “We were occupying a poultry farm when . . . “. Feeney’s immoral and greedy Angus is easy to hate, and is the real villain of the piece.

I also appreciated the place where the film landed in terms of its animal violence. It might seem silly to some horror fans, but I don’t like watching animals or creatures get killed, even when they’re the “bad guys.” The zombie sheep here are just rubbery enough that it doesn’t make you cringe when one takes a gunshot to the face. And while I’ll spare a ton of details, the animals are ultimately dispatched in ways that do not feel like they are reveling in cruelty toward them.

While I wouldn’t say that this is necessarily top-tier horror-comedy, there’s an affability to it and a gentle silliness that kept me hooked all the way through and rooting for the people and the sheep.

Feast, 2005

In a rural bar, a half dozen patrons shoot pool and drink their sorrows away, until a woman known only as the Heroine (Navi Rawat), bursts into the place followed by a monstrous creature. Soon the bar is under siege, with bloodthirsty and lustful monsters launching attack after attack on the patrons. They must band together to survive, but some of them are only looking out for themselves.

Too glib for its own good, a dearth of real emotion or character development make this one hard to invest in.

I remember the release of this film, notable because it was the result of the third season of the competition series Project Greenlight, where filmmaking hopefuls pitched their films to a panel of A-list investors. My main memory of its reception was overall positive, with a few caveats. I’m afraid that with even those caveats, I did not feel the love.

There were some strong points. I like the overall premise, which is simple but effective. And while I was largely indifferent to the characters and their fates, I did really enjoy one subplot: Beer Guy. Early in the film, Beer Guy (Judah Friedlander) takes a face full of alien goo, which he ineffectively tries to wash it off with the low-flow bar sink spout. But the lethargic washing doesn’t do the trick, and soon Beer Guy’s face is decomposing, an eye socket crawling with maggots. All through the film, he lifts his bandage to hopefully ask the others if it’s “healing up”. It’s a fun, gross-out gag that manages to stay funny through the whole runtime.

But that’s about the end of the nice things I have to say about the film. Almost every choice in the movie seems designed to keep the viewer at an emotional distance from them. Despite Rawat repeatedly yelling that her KIDS ARE OUT THERE!!!!!!, her character is never even given a name. None of them are. Rawat is The Heroine. We’ve already talked about Beer Guy. There’s actually a decently deep cast of characters, but they made little impression on me. I was happy to see Henry Rollins show up as Coach, but I think it’s telling that I had to look up his character’s label while writing this review. This is a cutesy touch that isn’t worth it. The combination of labels and lack of development leaves them all as caricatures.

But really the death knell in this one for me was its obsession with sex and sexual violence in a way that feels simultaneously juvenile and upsettingly aggressive. Sure, plenty of movies have creatures whose design is suggestive, or use sexual violence as a threat. But in this film, there seems to be an intention not to actually be scary, but to demean the (mainly female) characters. This is a movie where rape and penetration is power, and whether it was the camera needlessly ogling a female character getting undressed or actually watching a woman be viciously sexually assaulted, I was not there for it. It’s not good horror, and neither is it done with a joy or sense of humor that would make it campy fun.

I have a real soft spot for independent filmmakers, so I was rooting for this one. Sadly, it couldn’t meet me halfway.

Shutter, 2004

Tun (Ananda Everingham) and his girlfriend Jane (Natthaweeranuch Thongmee) are returning home from a party when they hit a young woman with their car. Tun convinces Jan to flee the scene, and they drive away leaving her behind on the road. Soon after, Tun begins to notice strange images and blurs in his photographs. Further, he starts to experience strange physical symptoms. As Tun and Jane investigate the chance that the events are supernatural, Jane learns that the young woman in the road was not really a stranger . . .

Rising well above average in a tense final act that turns the whole film on its head, this is a great tale of the supernatural and revenge.

It’s always hard writing a review that you intend for people who have probably not seen a film, and yet all you want to do is pick apart the greatness that is the last 20 or so minutes of runtime. While this review will stay spoiler free, just know that the ending could merit an entire review on its own.

While the last act is the crown jewel of the film, what comes before it isn’t exactly slouching. The first act is primarily focused on Tun and Jane’s investigation into the strange blurs and flashes of light that have started appearing in Tun’s photographs. In one really excellent sequence, the two of them go to visit a magazine that often publishes supposed ghost images. Tun and Jane are surprised to learn that the magazine uses software to create fake photographs, only for the magazine’s editor to explain that they only fake it when they need to, before showing them images that he swears are the real deal.

But what seems like a straightforward case of the victim of the hit-and-run seeking revenge from the other side takes a turn that harkens back to what the editor told them: Why would the spirits bother coming back if they didn’t have a message? Tun and Jane are slowly forced to face their past, and possibly attempt atonement.

The imagery---which goes to another level in the final act---is very strong and scary. The blurred, marred photographs are eerie, but there is also great use of strange figures in the background. In one truly excellent sequence, a character flips a series of photographs like a flip book, revealing a horrible surprise. While some of it feels a bit familiar in the wake of The Ring popularizing the pale, long black-haired woman, the staging of the different scenes is very effective.

I also enjoyed the performances. This is a film where as the plot develops, our feelings about the main characters change. The mystery of the strange photographs involves slowly unraveling the heart of the characters, a journey that takes unexpected twists and turns.

And as I’ve alluded to many times, the ending really takes it to another level. I’ll admit that while I was enjoying the film, I was a little surprised at how positive the word of mouth has been on it. But once I got through that final act, I got it. As with many great horror films, this one manages to take something supernatural that could have just coasted on the scary ghost lady and takes it into a troublesome, personal place. The movie is supernatural, but the ending is haunting on more than one level.

This is a supernatural thriller that distinguishes itself from the crowd and I’d highly recommend it.

Puppet Master: The Legacy, 2003

Eric (Jacob Witkin) has inherited the legendary murderous puppets, but he finds himself taken hostage by an assassin (Kate Orsini) who is determined to discover the secret to their magical animation. As the two argue over the history of the puppets, we see glimpses into their troubled past.

This barely-bookended look back at the series essentially amounts to a clip show summary of the franchise’s constantly evolving mythology, highlighting just how uneven the films have been.

When it came to watching a film from 2003, there wasn’t much that grabbed my eye. And in lieu of something average, I opted for something I knew would be at least enjoyably trashy.

The enjoyment in this case mainly comes from watching the film attempting to somehow put the events of the series into some sort of coherent storyline. Much of the film ends up in the muddled history of the puppets’ creator, a man who was persecuted by the Nazis but who also, you know, created murder puppets who then went on to murder many innocent people.

It did take me a minute to realize that all of the events in the film are clips from previous films, because I’ve only seen a handful of the Puppet Master series, which never seem to fully live up to their pulpy premise. There’s some silly prologue stuff with the Nazis. The murder sprees of the initial films. The some weird futuristic stuff. At one point, you can see that the series just fully ripped off the Twilight Zone episode “The Invaders” to the point where I’m surprised there wasn’t legal action involved.

My reaction to this film was pretty much the same as my reaction to every other film I’ve seen from the series: ehhhhhhhh. I only find one of the puppets actually scary: the Leech Woman, whose mouth distorts so that she can vomit leeches onto her victims. The rest of them are just kind of goofy and lacking in personality.

Bad, but I knew it was going to be, so whatever. I’m giving it a star for having the nerve to end out of nowhere and then go to a title page thanking everyone who has made the series a success over the years.

Malefique, 2002

Carrere (Gerald Laroche) is a middle class man who is imprisoned over a financial crime. He finds himself sharing a cell with an odd trio: Lassalle (Philippe Laudenbach), a librarian who murdered his wife; Marcus (Clovis Cornillac), a young transwoman who talks unceasingly of escape; and Daisy (Dimitri Rataud), a young man whose insatiable appetite lead to a gruesome crime. As if things weren’t odd enough, one day Marcus and Carrere find a strange book behind a brick in the cell and soon realize that it was written by a murderer who was intent on mastering the dark arts for the purpose of escape.

Between a great premise and some disturbing visuals, this one is solid, though I wish everything had been turned up a notch.

When all is said and done, this feels somewhat like a Twilight Zone episode that has been stretched to a feature-length runtime. While you would think that the book of wicked magic would be the center of the narrative, much of the first half is taken up in developing the dynamics between the four prisoners. This works to varying degrees, because when it comes to how engaging the characters are, there is quite a gulf.

Carrere, ostensibly our point of view character, is actually the least interesting. He spends a lot of time talking about his son and how angry he is at his wife, but for the most part it’s just dialogue. There’s not a whole lot of specificity about his marriage or the relationship he has with his child. It gives him a motivation for escape, but the character is otherwise a bit flat. Lassalle gets a bit more development, but his character’s whole thing is being detached, so there are just interesting glimpses here and there of how he regards his crime and his cellmates.

Daisy is the strangest character, and Rataud gives an admirably physical approach as a man who was raised with hogs and not compulsively eats anything he can get his hands on. Daisy is the most enigmatic of the characters, obsessively assembling a collage that’s centered on a graphic image of genitals surrounded by cut-out breasts from porn magazines. The character keeps that edginess of the “innocent killer” trope.

But by far the most interesting character is Marcus. A big part of this is Cornillac’s charismatic performance, which keeps Marcus a bearable (and even borderline sympathetic) character despite us witnessing her physical and sexual violence and domination of her cellmates. We never learn about the crime that Marcus committed. She spends her days training for escape, hanging from her fingers with extra weight to simulate taking Daisy along. The brash, physical presence of Marcus’s character makes for an interesting contrast with her fear of what will happen if she actually attempts an escape.

When the prisoners do finally get around to experimenting with the book, I liked a lot of the visuals. A magic circle that spontaneously bursts into flames. An incantation that costs one character dearly in something that turns out not to be a dream. The effects seem to by and large be practical, and I enjoyed the physicality of them.

So this was an enjoyable horror overall. It does feel, however, like it could have been dialed up several notches. While some of the content pushes it definitely into R-rated territory, the plot itself and how it resolved in the final act feels more cribbed from a TV show. The exact nature of the mysterious book and the fate of its creator wander into disappointingly familiar territory.

A solid small-cast supernatural horror-thriller.

I gave Feast 4/10 and called it "a mess" adding that "it's sloppy with most of the aggression, just making the characters obnoxious," when I reviewed it last year - but it's one that many MoFos enjoy, as I found out subsequently. The one positive I noted was "it manages to deliver a few moments of gory fun."

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My honest reaction is that it's just not a good movie. It's clearly a movie made by guys who are FANS of horror, but the lack of talent in front of and behind the camera just sinks it.

If you're going to make a movie where the whole point is laughing as characters are assaulted or ogle the female characters as we watch them undress for no reason, there has to be an overall sense of fun and camp and "wheeee!".

And because I'm in an uncharitable mood (blame it on all the sexual violence that was supposed to be so funny!) , I'll just say that I thought the effects were pretty meh. The creatures basically all landed in this awkward zone between "actually looks good" and "puppet so fake I can laugh at it."

I really like this one, in some ways more than the original, but what I think it's a crime is to write about the film and not even address the opening sequence. I mean, c'mon!

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Liking this more than the original blows my mind. I didn't hate it, but in every metric (acting, character development, visuals, music, plot, cinematography, writing) I think it falls short of the original. The repeated (like four times!!!) use of "In the House, In a Heartbeat" just started to feel desperate.

The opening sequence was okay, but not enough to carry a whole film. I can't name a single other part of the movie that made an impression.

For a long time, I preferred it to the original. I rewatched them both last year, almost back-to-back and the original really improved for me. I have them more or less in equal level for different reasons.

Here are my reviews for both...

28 Days Later
28 Weeks Later

I will also mount a (half-hearted) defense of 28 Weeks Later.
It came out about a year and a half after Hurricane Katrina and there were a lot of moments that hit harder for me because of it. The scene where the kids are on the Metro returning home, and passing all the body bags and damaged buildings etc were eerily similar to the feeling of finally being able to return after being evacuated for a month. Felt good to be home but there were curfews now, and parts of town where you weren't allowed. No stores were open. The army had commandeered the supermarket next door and were using the parking lot as a heliport. Weird times, and I thought the film captured that feeling well.

And then you have the "gov't screwing up the recovery" angle and the decision by the snipers that shooting uninfected folks was a necessary evil in order to contain the zombies, which called to mind some of the rumors we heard (substantiated or not) about what was happening in the weeks after the storm. It was A LOT for me, in other words.

I acknowledge that "New Orleans native watching in 2007" is a pretty niche audience, so I'm not trying to convince anyone that the film is better than it is but it was memorable for me so I just thought I'd throw it out there. I haven't seen it in many years.

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Captain's Log
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