Monster Mash Movie Marathon Month 2014 - Week 2

Well, it's Sunday, so it's time to tell you all about the movies I watched this week, and how I felt about them. But first, here's another friendly reminder of the grading scale.

A = Excellent, a must see

B = Very good, I’d watch it again

C = Worth Seeing

D = Maybe don’t bother

F = Worthless

+ = Superior for this grade

- = Just barely makes it into this grade

I know many of you don't agree with some of the grades I give out, and it just goes to show you how personal the horror genre can be. And, as usual, please be aware that THESE REVIEWS MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS!! So, without any further ado, let's get into the reviews...

Insidious (James Wan) - C+

Josh and Renie have just recently had their third child, and have moved into a beautiful new home. Almost immediately, though, after their eldest son, Dalton, slips into a coma, Renie starts to have horrifying experiences and seeing figures that no one else can. She convinces Josh that they need to move. At first the new house seems to have done the trick, but it isn't long before Renie has the same old problems. Renie hires a psychic, someone Josh's mother knows. The psychic immediately informs the couple that their son is the source of their haunting, and from there, it gets complicated.

This film received a lot of positive hype when it was released, but probably only because it was being made by the creators of successful horror franchises like Saw and Paranormal Activity. It did a very good job of making both houses feel very sinister. The usual format of ghost movies, in my experience anyway, is that the paranormal aspects enter the film slowly, revealing the restless dead piece by piece to the viewer, often not letting the audience see an active ghost til the final confrontation (though, many times, this is probably due to budget-related reasons). Not the case here! The ghosts haunting Dalton physically appear very early in the picture. While at first I found this to be a refreshing change, it didn't leave much suspense for the finale. And while the monsters were very cool to look at, it's hard to be scared of ghosts that always smile. Or of a demon that looks like Darth Maul.

The film's pacing suffers. While it does reveal some of the ghosts early on, you only get frustrated when the reveals end too quickly. It feels like you're just waiting for the next scene that features something other than the protagonist family. It picks up somewhat when the psychics and her lackeys enter the picture, but then it gets real Poltergeist. You know somehow that things are going to be OK, and it seems kind of silly on the film's part to try and convince you otherwise. Still, the presentation and visual effects are good enough to keep you going.

The Thing (2011) (Matthijs van Heijnengen) - D+

A remote Norwegian science team has made the discovery of the century! Frozen in the ice near their base is a friggin' alien! The leader of the Norwegians, Dr. Sandor Halvorson, enlists the help of some American scientists, led by Kate Lloyd. Once back on the scene of their discovery, Halvorson cracks the ice to get a tissue sample, and it’s not too long after that the alien wakes up and parties like its 1982! Before long, only Kate and Carter, her crackerjack pilot ally, are all that stands between the Thing and the end of humanity.

Sound familiar? It ought to. This prequel to John Carpenter's version of The Thing examines what happened to the Norwegian science base that the Americans find destroyed. While it nicely sets up many tie-ins with Carpenter's movie, it also borrows almost every tense moment from it too. The famous blood test scene, the old dead-body-coming-back-to-life-at-an-inconvenient-moment trick, all the classics are there. It also prefers a more direct approach with its monster, rather than relying on building a character story to play off the paranoia of the premise. You get to see a lot of CGI Thing creatures running around in this movie. Big ones, little ones. And most, not all, but most of them have pretty grizzly vagina dentatas.

Maybe that's sour grapes. Carpenter's Thing is one of my favorites in the genre. This movie takes a neat premise - what happened to the last guys that found this impossibly hard to kill alien? - and bungles it. The reason Thing 82 was such a good movie was because there was a decent build up to the meat of the plot, thanks to having strong characters. Macready was a cynic who hated having authority thrust on him, Childs was skeptical of everyone, Blair was paranoid of the legitimate threat to humanity, Palmer was a chuckle-hungry stoner, Windows was a fuck-up who deserved to be badgered through the whole movie and so on. In Thing 2011, you really only get to know Kate as your protagonist, Halvorson as the asshole who was in it for fame, and you kind of got to know Lars, the only Norwegian at the base who doesn't speak English. The trouble is, there's probably over 20 living characters at the peak of people being alive in the film. That's a hard number to keep track of. There's really no chance to get to know many of the characters before they start getting eaten. I think a solution to this problem would have been to dispose of the American team all together. True, Kate is your protagonist, so the story would have to be retooled a little, but the Norwegian characters were all solidly done, so it seems clear they could have done this and still managed to make an excellent film (though it would have been a reader).

Thing 82 largely succeeded because it didn't attach a morality to its characters, leaving the audience to make their own decisions about who was good and evil (other than Macready, who was the only obvious protagonist). Even characters that went bad, like Blair, often did it for very plausible reasons. In Thing 2011, we are supplied with this information. Kate and Lars are good guys, Halvorson is the bad guy, and anyone who supports either immediately falls into that camp for the viewer. As such, it greatly reduces the paranoia the audience feels. While in Thing 2011, there is the ever present threat that some good characters are aliens, there's a whole group of characters that we aren't supposed to like, and whether they're Things or not doesn't add anything to the narrative.

I'm also not sure how to explain this, but the advanced CGI effects somehow seemed more fake to me than the creature effects in Thing 82. Especially the scene in which we first see a character turn into one of them. He's just talking, then his face ripples and then he morphs suddenly into a monster. But you can almost tell when he stops being just an actor. I found several of the effects, specifically when transitioning from human to monster, to look extra fake. This movie had a real tough act to follow in the special effects department, though, so maybe I should be less critical.

Race with the Devil (Jack Starrett) - D-

Frank and Roger, along with their wives, have got a plan to go skiing up in Aspen. They have this new-fangled RV, you see, so they hitch up some dirt bikes, and they get traveling. One evening, thinking they've managed to spy on a hip, young orgy, the pair are horrified when they discover what they witnessed is in fact a ritualistic sacrifice. Those hippies are Satanists, who are pretty pissed off when they realize Frank and Roger saw their misdeed. From there, the RV crew races desperately to flee pursuing bad guys who manage to be around every corner.

There's not much to say about this one. It billed itself in the trailer as one long car chase, but this really only happens for about 12 minutes towards the end. This chase scene is the only scene in the movie of any note. It does contain a lot of shots of Roger and Frank's RV getting smashed, a few car tricks, and some spectacular crashes. I imagine a good portion of this films budget went into pyrotechnics, as more than one car goes up in a huge fireball.

But the majority of the movie is spent watching the characters go through an increasingly frustrating series of attempts to get help. Everywhere they turn, they meet resistance. They, and by extension, you in the audience don't trust anyone they meet. The wives tend to handle every challenge by going hysterical (earlier they try to help by stealing some books on witchcraft from a local library, but this moment of helpfulness is overshadowed by every scene that follows having them scream and cower). The locals are colorful, but you can immediately tell that they are up to no good. In fact, when you realize that every scene in the movie leading up to the car chase is the same thing done over and over again, you lose interest. This is compounded by the film not even taking the time to explore its antagonists. Once you see the sacrifice and our heroes get back on the road, very little is discovered about the satanic society. All you get to know is they're everywhere. But not why. Or to what end. Ho-hum.

The Wizard of Gore (Herschell Gordon Lewis) - F

We open on a monologue from Montag, the Magnificent. Montag is a magician that butchers lady volunteers during his act in just the bloodiest ways possible. Each night of his show he does a different "trick". These tricks are obviously fatal (being sawed in half, having a metal spike driven through a brain, swallowing swords, etc.), but somehow the volunteer is miraculously unharmed after some trippy editing. At least, until about an hour after the show, when the women suddenly die in the same fashion that Montag killed them on stage. Sherry, a day time talk show host, and her fiancée, Jack, see Montag's first show, and Sherry is determined to have the wizard on her program. He agrees, but only if she keeps attending his performances.

This film was completely a vehicle for its gore effects. You can tell by the emphasis the film puts on its gross-out scenes, and by the lack of talent with any other aspect of the movie. Microphones pick up wind in outside scenes, there are millions of jump cuts giving the picture a terribly disjointed feel, and none of the actors are particularly good at acting.

So let's talk about these gore effects. Since it’s obvious by the lack of any sort of talent through the rest of the film, and Lewis used to be considered quite the gore-maker of his day, the special effects have to be kind of impressive. But the way in which they are presented - with uneven, repetitive music, confusing jump cuts, and Montag leering and running his hands through their wounds - leaves a lot to be desired. Nevertheless, fans of bad horror will be delighted by the acting here. Some of the lines are comedic gold, including a little piece in which Jack panics about his friend’s hands.

The Beyond (Lucio Fulci) - C+

Liza purchases a fixer-upper hotel somewhere in Louisiana. Decades previous, however, a murder had taken place, the body boarded up in room 36. As it turns out, room 36 contains a doorway to hell. When Liza has an ill-fated plumber begin to work on the pipes, it sets off a chain of events that threatens to bring hell to Earth. With the aid of smarmy, nonbeliever, Doctor John and the mysterious blind woman, Emily, Liza attempts to find out exactly what is going on with her hotel.

Now, the above paragraph sounds pretty straight forward, but this movie is kind of all over the place. From our first on screen death, the kill scenes are varied and even somewhat confusing. Early it becomes clear that deaths are not confined to the hotel, but it’s not exactly explained how. The special effects are oddly inconsistent. In scenes where ghosts arrive to haunt Emily, you can tell that what you're looking at are rags and paper mache made to look humanoid. Yet not five minutes later, some excellent gore effects happen. Sometimes this can be quite the contradiction (such as a scene where a man who has fallen off a ladder is beset by tarantulas. While some of the spiders are real, others are unabashedly fake). But then, at the same time, some of the gore effects are awesomely done (I howled with laughter and rewound several times when Doctor John offs a character in the last few minutes of the film).

But Fulci is no hack. The cinematography is pretty wonderful. The visuals of the film make up for some of the shoddier special effects. But some of the scenes go on too long. The aforementioned spider scene goes on about three times longer than needed. This movie could be a good time, as long as you don't take it too seriously.

The ABCs of Death (Various Directors) - B+

This collaboration is an anthology film quite unlike any other. 26 contemporary horror directors were each given a letter, and got to pick a word (or phrase) that corresponded to their letter. The result: 26 different short films in which at least one character dies. I couldn't possibly give you the premise of each film, so I'm not going to try. Besides, it’s best to go into a film like this knowing as little as possible.

These films are truly all over the map. The feel of ABCs runs from satirical to hilarious to gory to disturbing. But it evokes these emotions skillfully. It is an international effort, bringing several different languages to the table.  It also includes different formats such as animation, claymation, puppetry and found footage. But the common thread through most of the anthology is talent. Say what you will about the content of some of the pieces, each one is done particularly well.

While not every short could be considered horror, those that are are fairly disturbing. People that can't stand the genre (or violence) will probably not be able to stomach it, but overall, I found ABCs to be an excellent appeal to the horror geek in me. And people like me are most definitely the film's audience.

And while I really don’t want to talk about the specific shorts, I will let you know my favorite letters: D, F, Q, S, U & Z (Which is perhaps one of the strangest things I have ever seen. Thanks Japan!).

Carrie (Brian De Palma) - B

Nobody likes Carrie White. Though she may have secret telekinetic powers, she gets pushed around daily in just the most unthinkable ways by her high school peers. And when her almost-definitely-a-lesbian gym teacher interferes in the pranks against her, ringleader Chris decides Carrie must suffer even more. Of course, it doesn't help that Carrie's mother is a religious fanatic who makes her daughter's private life hell too. What's a girl to do? Hey, I know! After getting pushed to the limit at her prom, she goes berserk (mentally) and annihilates as many people as possible.

Director Brian De Palma tackles the celebrated Stephen King story, and he does a good job of it. True, much of his style is borrowed from Hitchcock, but he still shows a lot of class here. Many of the girl gym sequences are dazzlingly choreographed, and De Palma even brings his signature split screen effect to the table for Carrie's famous meltdown (though, personally, I found he used this technique to greater effect in Sisters). Some of the performances, including Piper Laurie, of Twin Peaks fame, as Carrie’s devout mother are excellent. The film also features a funky, electronic-sounding soundtrack that adds to some of the more surreal scenes.

Parts of Carrie are baffling to me (why does the house implode?), but the film is captivating enough that these details don't matter. Even knowing exactly where the story is going, watching Carrie discover new experiences in life only to have it all crash down around her is a satisfying experience. At points she seems to climb impossibly high, so high that you can't believe that she doesn't realize it's all a ruse. But she needs to climb that high in order for her fall to have the correct emotional impact.

----------------

That does it for another week! This coming week, I think, will be my found footage marathon, including Afflicted, Cloverfield and Cannibal Holocaust. Tonight, though, I'm going to be checking out 2009's Pandorum, starring.... Dennis Quaid? Am... am I sure about this? Aw, mannnn....