The Cabin in the Woods (2011)

 Director: Drew Goddard

I actually own this movie and gave it a rewatch - my fourth viewing of it since it came out. It's still a ton of fun, honoring so many great horror standards with its clever "meta" approach. 

The movie follows five college friends as they take a weekend trip to the secluded, titular cabin in the woods. As they approach, things start to take turns very familiar to anyone who has seen popular and cult horror movies from the 1980s and later: the cabin is a dark and foreboding; there's an eerie basement with a vast assortment of creepy objects; and the overly curious visitors accidentally unleash hellish forces that seek to kill them all. Before the proceedings turn wildly violent, we also get some overt sexuality and dashes of budding romance. Again, very familiar tropes of the horror genre. What is new here is that, outside and above everything happening in and around the cabin, is a vast, bureaucratic organization that is orchestrating the entire thing. Their purpose is to stage the entire group execution, all unknown to the five victims, in order to appease a group of Lovecraftian "old gods" who slumber beneath the earth. These titans of evil and destruction only refrain from annihilating humankind if an annual ritual sacrifice is made in order to appease them.

The Cabin in the Woods is so entertaining, especially for horror fans. I'm not a hardcore horror aficionado by any means, but I've seen most of the standards and classics. I've also enjoyed many of the most frightening and clever films in the genre, like The Shining, the Evil Dead trilogy, and An American Werewolf in London, among many others, multiple times. Like many of the greats, The Cabin in the Woods, written by Joss Whedon, finds a perfect balance between giving you legitimate scares, making you laugh, and dazzling you with its mysterious and layered tale. Yes, the main five characters are loose archetypes of the typical slasher victims: the jock, the whore, the nerd, etc., but Whedon added more depth to them and made them genuinely funny and empathetic. They crack good jokes, and when things start to go horrifyingly haywire, we actually care. 

Our five friends begin to sense something 
horribly amiss in their weekend getaway cabin.
Things only get crazier, on many literal and
figurative levels.

The horror elements hit well. While there isn't anything particularly new to most of the scares, they are effective. Creepy zombies. Jump scares. Gut-wrenching fatalities. Chases through creepy a creepy cabin and the surrounding woods. They're all there, and they're all done well. Beyond that, though, is the larger picture of the powers that are orchestrating everything. The desensitized bureaucrats are really funny in their own ways, but their callousness is quietly more frightening than any of the more immediate, grisly horrors that we get.

The third act of this one is what really puts it over the top, though. Once the grand secret is revealed and the two "survivors" uncover the greater scheme at work, this movie supplies so many fun "Oh shit!" moments in the form of revelations, more creepy horror entities, and straight-up action. To cap it all off, it has the guts to supply a rather dark ending, something which I always appreciate, especially in horror movies. 

Back when I first bought a blu-ray player, The Cabin in the Woods was one of two blu-ray discs that I purchased to break it in. I'm glad I did, as I've gone back to it every few years since, and I'll continue to do so. 

Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988)

Director: Tony Randel

This was just not a very good movie.

About two years ago, I decided to go back and watch the original Hellraiser, and I found it to be a film with a few clear strengths and a few painfully obvious weaknesses. Its sequel, Hellbound, released a mere 15 months later, shows a tentative grip on the original's merits, but has even more warts than its predecessor.

The original movie told the tale of the young woman Kirsty, whose stepmother Julia and Julia's former lover Hank had killed her father in order to resurrect Hank and rescue him from a literal hell in which he had trapped himself. It was a grisly tale that ended with Kirsty barely surviving with her life, though she managed to doom Hank and Julia back into the sadomasochistic netherworld from which Hank came. Hellbound continues to follow Kirsty, shortly after the events relayed in Hellraiser, who has been placed in a psychiatric hospital. We soon learn that the hospital is under the care of Doctor Phillip Channard, a psychopath obsessed with the puzzle boxes which Hank had used to open a door to hell. Dr. Channard uses the patients in the hospital to experiment with the boxes, eventually learning how to open one of them and releasing Julia, who is stripped of her skin in the same way that Hank was upon his initial return. Channard allows himself to be taken into Hell by Pinhead and the other horrific Cenobites, with Kristy and another patient, Tiffany, following in order to stop whatever grand plan Channard has. We see the landscape of Hell, learn that Pinhead and the other Cenobites were once themselves humans, and watch Dr. Channard become a new, even more powerful form of Cenobite. Channard kills the other Cenobites in a bid to take over their realm, and even bring its nightmare tortures to our world. Channard is foiled, though, when Kirsty and Tiffany use the puzzle box to destroy Channard's power source, and him with it.

This sequel was pretty bad. The few strengths it showed were really just lifted from the previous film, and the weaknesses of Hellraiser were mostly here again, a few of them in worse form. As grotesque as the visuals are in the Hellraiser films, one has to admit that creator Clive Barker's concepts and mythology around the Cenobites and Hell are unique and morbidly fascinating. And the neo-goth, sadomasochistic fetish aesthetic was a novel visualization of the entire frightening notion. Combined with the gut-wrenching body horror elements depicted, an iconic horror world was created. These things are the main draw in Hellbound, but they were already created and shown in the previous movie. Hellbound's greatest contribution to Barker's world is the deepening of the mythology. We learn some key pieces to Pinhead's origins, and we see what their realm actually looks like, and these were fairly compelling. The effects and visuals in the sequel are of the same quality, which is to say quite good, but again this was nothing new. It did seem, though, that the actual cinematography and any set designs not part of the horror sequences were rather drab and cheap.

Here's Channard, undoubtedly trying out one of his awful
one-liners. It's like the writers asked, "What if we mix Pinhead
with Henny Youngman? That's be pretty scary, right?"

Nearly every other aspect of the movie I find weak. Like its predecessor, the acting is spotty at best, and sometimes downright bad. This isn't helped by a rather lame script that never really offers good answers to any of the more interesting questions that might come up. I mean, you have a ton of material just sitting there regarding human psychology around pain and arousal, and it is never explored with any sort of depth. The really painful parts, though, are how the film turns its main villain - Dr. Channard - into a lame, Freddy Kruger wannabe. Yes, Pinhead cracked off one or two iconic lines in Hellraiser: "We have such sights to show you," and "Time to play" are all-timers. Well, I guess the filmmakers took that bait and ran with it, because in Hellbound, you have the transformed Channard Cenobite flying around, shredding people left and right, and spouting lame, hokey one-liners in every scene. It's pretty cringe-worthy for a story that has the potential to be truly horrifying in more of a Lovecraftian way, rather than a campy way.

So my Hellraiser itch is now fully scratched. It may come as a surprise to you that there are ten - that's right, ten - movies in this series so far (I think I knew of four or five of them). After watching the second one, though, I feel absolutely no need to go any further. For fans of dark horror, it's well worth checking out the original. But don't give in to the temptation to watch more. If my experience with Hellbound and the overall reception of the subsequent movies are anything to on, it's best to just leave well enough alone. 

Retro! The Hills Have Eyes (1977); I, Tonya (2017)

The Hills Have Eyes (1971)

Director: Wes Craven

This was one of a few 1970s, grindhouse-style horror "classics," along with Texas Chainsaw Massacre, that I had never seen. While I've always been able to appreciate a good horror movie, watching this one reminded me that my appreciation only goes so far. Simply put, these grittier, wilder flicks don't do anything for me.

In a short 89 minutes, the movie chronicles a small family; including an elder married couple, their four children and children-in-law, and an infant granddaughter, whose trailer breaks down in the middle of a desert closed to the public. A weathered old man at a worn out service station gives them parts, but also warns against some sort of menace out in the wastelands. Sure enough, a pack of savage cannibals emerges and terrorizes the family over the next 24 hours.

A film like The Hills Have Eyes is really just too sweaty and wild for my tastes. Don't get me wrong - it's an impressive feat that Wes Craven pulled off here. On a razor-thin budget, he created an entire mood of agoraphobic menace amidst a blasted landscape that could be the stuff of nightmares. Still, I only found the movie so compelling. I admire Craven's willingness to not just threaten the innocents in this movie, but to actually kill a few of them, which in my mind is in keeping with true horror. That aside, the film only did so much for me.

I, Tonya (2017)

Director: Craig Gillespie

An entertaining "based on real accounts" telling of the infamous ice skater-on-ice skater crime that was the entire Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan scandal leading up to the 1994 Winter Olympics.

Anyone who grew up in the U.S. and is over the age of 35 almost certainly remembers the Harding/Kerrigan scandal, wherein Kerrigan was infamously bashed in the leg by a man hired by associates of Harding. It was one of the biggest, weirdest stories during the early years of sensational, 24-hour news cycles. Using on-the-record testimony from both Tonya Harding and her former husband Jeff Gillooly, the movie offers their versions of the wild story. There are bizarre characters everywhere in it, and none of them had the smarts or awareness to deal with what they had unleashed.

I knew and remembered a fair bit about the entire affair from when it all broke, since I was in my late-teens at the time. This movie, though, offered plenty of fascinating nuggets about those involved and their more personal stories. While realizing that more than a little of the narrative is coming from Harding's own accounts, I couldn't help but admire and sympathize with her in a few ways. Unlike most stars in the women's figure skating world, she grew up dirt poor. She also had a vile and abusive mother who bullied her daughter constantly. Still, Harding broke into the world of "ice princesses" and became a champion, such was her raw skill and power on the ice. But through bad relationship decisions and an inability to reckon with her dysfunctional husband, Jeff, she ended up the center and the blame of the entire scandal.

Though there are certainly sad elements about Harding's life - and they are depicted as such - the movie manages to balance that with a humorous tone much of the time. The root of most of it is in the breathtaking ineptitude of the dopes who end up orbiting Harding during her time leading up to and through the Winter Olympics in 1992 and 1994 (this was when the reshuffling happened, resulting in the Winter Games occurring only two years apart). Gillooly (Sebastian Stan) and especially his buffoonish friend Shawn Eckardt (Paul Walter Hauser) provide plenty of laughs just for how doltish they are. Then there's Tonya's mother, LaVona, played in an Oscar-nominated, foul-mouthed performance by Alison Janey. The circus of characters keeps things entertaining, despite the strain of darkness that runs through their lives.

There's always something questionable about making a "bio-memoir" about people who are still alive, especially when it's not long after the actions which made them (in)famous. I suppose it's easier to swallow when nobody was killed. But this is the movie's final message and question: since it was Tonya Harding herself who came out of the affair as the primary villain, being banned for life from the sport which was the one thing that she was great at, who are we looking to blame when our collective narratives fall apart? This is what elevates I, Tonya above merely a salacious re-telling of gossip magazine fodder or strange sports trivia. 

Spoiler-Free New Release Review: Us (2019)

Director: Jordan Peele

A rather novel and compelling horror film by the director who brought us the seminal Get Out, but this follow-up effort I found to have some elements which weren't as effective as I suspect Jordan Peele hoped. Still, it's a movie well worth seeing.

Us follows the story of Adelaide Wilson (Lupita Nyong'o) and her family - husband and two children, during a vacation trip to the shore. When the Wilson's are set upon by a quartet of eerie strangers, Adelaide is forced to recall some very disturbing memories from her childhood - memories which hint at a far larger, far more sinister and horrifying plot unfolding around them.

Being the spoiler-free section of this review, I can only say so much, so I'll stick to general reactions. I found the concept and overall story arc highly engaging. The great strength of this movie is the grand mystery around the Wilsons' attackers - who are they? Where did they come from? What do they want? The answers are teased out at a fairly satisfying pace, and they leave enough mystery in the end to allow viewers to draw more than a few of their own conclusions about several elements of the story. The other great strength of the film is, not surprisingly, the acting. Any movie headed up by Lupita Nyong'o and Winston Duke is one that you know is going to wring everything possible out of the script, and Us is no exception.

But I couldn't shake the feeling that this movie felt just a bit flat. I didn't find the tense moments all that tense, and I didn't find several of the expositions nearly as gripping as I've seen in other thriller/horror movies. To be completely honest, I didn't once feel a sense of dread or anxiety in this movie, unlike other recently-seen horror movies like Hereditary or even the same director's own Get Out. There were also a few of the plot elements that didn't seem to completely add up, though I feel that this is somewhat forgivable, considering that Peele was really swinging for the fences with this story.

I may eventually watch this movie again, or at the very least try to seek out a well-written study of its themes and over-arching messages. There is a certain amount to unpack in this film; I'm just not sure that I need to sit through the entire 2 hours one more time to get at the heart of it all. 

Newish Releases: Mandy (2018); Green Book (2018)

Mandy (2018)

Director: Panos Cosmatos

Whoa. Someone actually managed to cast the off-the-rails, 2010s Nicolas Cage in the perfect film for where he seems to be, career-wise. Mandy is a trippy, wild, phantasmagoric take on 1970s grindhouse cinema, with a slick 1980s shine on it. And I was riveted.

Oddly, it was a bit tough to track down this movie. After hearing significant buzz about it back in September or so, I searched and searched for a theater showing it in the Philadelphia area, to no avail. And so it came and went on the big screen. Then, I had to wait several months before it was available to rent through streaming services, and then only through Microsoft. But when I did fire it up...

I got a tale of Red (Nicolas Cage), a lumberjack who lives with his artist wife Mandy (Andrea Riseborough) in a secluded cabin in the woods. Mandy is an artist and a fan of fantasy novels, and the two have a deep and genuine love for each other. Their bliss is horrifically shattered when a small cult, lead by Jeremiah Sand, kidnaps Mandy to satisfy Sand's self-indulgent, messianic desires. Things go horribly wrong, and Red is sent on a mission of revenge. To gain his vengeance, he cuts a bloody swath through demonic bikers and drugged-out cultists.

This movie is balls-to-the-wall, gonzo crazy and trippy. But it's done with such an amazing sense of cinematic excellence that I was absolutely entranced. In some ways, it can remind one of the hallucinogenic grandeur of the cult classic El Topo, although Mandy has a clearer overall plot. What it shares with that earlier Jodorowsky film is a keen sense of framing, color, and setting. There is a simplistic clarity to the basic story elements which could have had a broad appeal, but the brutal nature of the events depicted puts the emotional tone more in the realm of 1970s grindhouse films, which featured horribly twisted people doing horribly twisted things to each other. Mandy bears more than a few of the hallmarks of those down-and-dirty flicks.

What elevates this movie beyond those filthy '70s shows, which I've never much gotten into, is that director Panos Cosmatos uses cinematic techniques to brilliantly illustrate a man completely and fantastically losing his mind in the most violent of manners. It is set up early in the movie that Red is a recovering addict. Then, there is a point where he falls off the wagon about as hard as a person can, and from that point, we begin to witness what might be an ever-more surreal fevered revenge fantasy. This is all brought home with brilliantly distinct costumes, set pieces, props, and masterful lighting. It's an amazing experience to drink in, if a rather disturbing one.

Obviously, this movie is not for everyone. It is packed with horrifically warped people doing disgusting and grizzly things to others. But if you're like me, and can see the movie as a creative, if violent, flight of fancy, then you may just be as transfixed by this flick as I was.

Green Book (2018)

Director: Peter Farrelly

Note: I saw this movie before its now-controversial selection as the Academy Awards' "Best Picture" winner.

Well-crafted and executed story based on real events from the early 1960s. Though it can be a bit on the nose at times, the overall themes, acting, and craft make this a solid film. Not necessarily an all-time, Oscar-worthy film, but a very solid one, nonetheless.

Based on a true story, the film follows Tony "Lip" Vallelonga (Viggo Mortensen), an Italian-American New Yorker and street-wise bouncer who, when he can't work an angle with his mouth, will effectively work it with his fists. In 1963, Tony Lip accepts a high-paying job driving and protecting Dr. Don Shirley on a music tour through the deep south. Shirley (Mahershala Ali) is African-American, and is a supremely well-educated, intelligent, and cultured genius of music, and his trio is among the most well-regarded in the world. As the racist Tony and aloof Dr. Don spend nearly every waking hour together during the tour, they learn to see things from each others' very different perspective.

At this point, this movie has received probably more criticism that it's deserved. Yes, it is yet another "race relation" film told mostly from the perspective of a white person. And yes, it can sometimes be a bit obvious and even clumsy with its "messages." But there is plenty about this movie that is very well done, and even admirable.

What I appreciated most about the movie is that it utilizes a few new elements and infuses them into the rather well-worn tale of "white person learns to empathize with black people." Unlike most of such tales from the past, Green Book features an uneducated, blue-collar white character having to work with a black person who is vastly more worldly than he will ever be. Dr. Don is immensely poised, articulate, sophisticated, and wealthy in ways that Tony Lip could hardly dream of. The mostly unapologetically racist Tony soon sees Dr. Don's gifts, and he develops more than a little empathy for a man whose gifts and whose struggles as an African-American in the U.S. become clearer as the two men spend so much time on the road together.

The reserved, ultra-intelligent, and sometimes flamboyant
Doctor Don Shirley. It isn't difficult to imagine a better, bolder
film being made more from the perspective lofty musical savant. 

But what, one might wonder, could Dr. Don learn from a New York ruffian-for-hire? Well, this is where the movie starts to get a tad choppy in its themes. While there is some fairly authentic-seeming lessons that a street guy like Tony imparts upon Don, such as introducing him to popular Motown and rhythm and blues music of the early 1960s, there are other nuggets that are almost painful to see. Probably the most cringe-worthy is Tony force-feeding the more aristocratic Don his first ever taste of fried chicken. Having a white man "teach" a black man "the joys of fried chicken" is one of those things that probably looked funnier and more effective on paper than it did on film. There are a few moments such as this, though they are fortunately low in number. And in the end, the film is not one where the two characters have such grand revelations that their entire lives are changes. Ultimately, they change in relatively small but important ways, while remaining themselves for the most part.

A great strength of the movie is is the performances of the two leads, Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali. The two men play their extremely opposite roles to perfection, lending more than a little authenticity to the proceedings. They're both such excellent actors that they can sell the comedy just as well as the drama, which elevates the film appreciably.

Both my wife and I had a similar thought about this movie - that it would have been more effective and enlightening to see the tale much more from Doctor Don's perspective than from Tony's. Though we do get a few scenes in which the brilliant musician struggles with being so very isolated, the bulk of the movie's scenes include the more accessibly appealing ruffian Tony. Focusing on the more elusive and mysterious doctor would have challenged us viewers more, but would have offered us something more novel. 

New-ish Releases, Spoiler-Free Reviews: Justice League (2017); It (2017)

Justice League (2017)

No Spoilers!

Director: Zack Snyder

This one was OK, which actually qualifies as a pleasant surprise to me.

Justice League was the fifth film in the "DC Extended Universe" (DCEU). After paying to see the underwhelming Man of Steel in 2013 and then the utter mess that was Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice a couple of years ago, I swore off paying theater prices to see any of the DCEU flicks. While I broke that vow to see Wonder Woman, after all of that movie's mostly-deserved high praise, that initial boycotting paid off by my avoiding the sloppy Suicide Squad. While I am glad that I didn't shell out theater price for Justice League, I have to say that it was a reasonably satisfying at-home rental.

The story picks up several of the ostentatiously dangling and flapping threads left over from Batman v. Superman. With Clark Kent/Superman's apparent death at the hands of the Doomsday monster, the alien conqueror Steppenwolf sees his chance to lead an assault on Earth and take over the planet. It's an attempt which he had made in the past, only to be rebuffed by the collective forces of several of earth's mythically powerful races. Now that Steppenwolf is back with a massive army of fear-feasting insectoids, Batman recruits one known ally, Diana Prince/Wonder Woman, to enlist the aid of other people with apparent superpowers. These lead them to band together a group that includes Barry "The Flash" Allen, Arthur "Aquaman" Curry, and Victor "Cyborg" Stone.

In most ways, the movie is fairly paint-by-numbers. I will admit that I suspect Joss Whedon, who was brought in to take over as writer/director after Snyder had a family tragedy to deal with, probably was responsible for some of the more intriguing and clever narrative ties in the film. I also wouldn't be surprised if he had a hand in writing some of the more engaging fight sequences. The one which I found most entertaining seemed very much like something we would have seen in The Avengers. Whether it was Whedon or co-writer Chris Terrio, this movie definitely had the lighter tone and funnier gags that Batman v. Superman was painfully lacking. It still wasn't nearly on par with the best MCU or even X-Men flicks, but it was a clear improvement.

Jason Momoa certainly cuts a striking figure as Aquaman, but
the outline and dialogue never came together for me. Most of
the other characters were handled more deftly.

The core characters are a mixed bag. The villain Steppenwolf is dull - a typically one-dimensional warmonger who wants to crush everything in his path. The voice acting by Northern Irish acting veteran Ciaran Hinds is powerful, though. In terms of "The League," I found it hit-and-miss. I've personally never had a problem with Ben Affleck as Batman, and he continues to be fine here. Gal Gadot continues to be great as Wonder Woman, as well. Ezra Miller was rightfully hailed as maybe the biggest revelation in this one, as he plays the iconic Flash exceptionally well, lightening things up nicely. Cyborg, however, I found extremely dull, and this particular vision of Aquaman felt completely off to me. As a group, though, the good outweighed the bad, and the dynamics work well enough.

I can't say that Justice League won me back over to the DCEU, but it did give me an enjoyable two hours. Looking ahead, the film franchise's next movie is Aquaman, headed up by James Wan, known for recent "Fast...Furious" films and the recent Star Trek Beyond. Given my feelings for how Aquaman was handled in Justice League, and my apathy towards the Fast and Furious movies, I don't anticipate that I'll be seeing that one. I do hope that the powers behind the DCEU take some note of what worked in Justice League, though, as they really are sitting on a wealth of great fantasy characters whom they could use to make some wildly entertaining movies.

Spoilers!! You've Been Warned!

Great intro sequences with Wonder Woman. While her solo movie last year had some solid action scenes, her rescue at the bank was top-notch. And the sequence with the Amazons trying to defend the Mother Box from Steppenwolf's attack has some really fun visuals, too.

It was a brief moment, but I absolutely loved the moment when the Flash is running up on a still-deranged Superman, thinking his he has the jump on him, only to have the Man of Steel's eyes turn directly towards him, well aware of the Scarlet Speedster's approach. I have to think that that was a Joss Whedon addition, as it seems like just the type of subtle-but-awesome moment that Whedon has a knack for.

Speaking of Superman, it was probably the least surprising "twist" to bring him back in this one. It was handled fine, if not exactly in a compelling or creative way. The iconic superhero does serve as a half-decent deus ex machina, but he does raise the eternal concern with such a powerful character - how do you find a villain strong enough and interesting enough to contend with him, let alone him and his super-powered buddies?

It (2017)

Director: Andy Muschietti

A solid horror movie, if one that is drawing from several wells that have been heavily tapped by earlier scare flicks.

Based on the hit 1986 novel by popular horror master Stephen King, It follows a group of young kids in their pre- and early teens in the fictional town of Derry, Maine, a seemingly quaint little area that has a history of disturbingly high rate of missing children and horrific disasters. This tale begins in the summer of 1988, when a little boy, Georgie, is apparently sucked into a drainage opening by a monster masquerading as a circus clown. We fast forward a year, with Georgie's older brother, Bill, and his friends wrapping up the school year and looking forward to a summer of freedom. Soon, however, other children start to disappear, and Bill and his friends start to have terrifying hallucinations embodying their worst fears. Wrapped up with these fears isthe same clown, which calls itself Pennywise, that took Bill's kid brother Georgie. Sure that Pennywise means to take and devour them all, Bill and his friends must decide what to do in order to survive and possibly find any of the other children whom Pennywise has already taken.

The movie is a very solid horror movie that I put in the same box as recent horror hits like The Conjuring - it's not really doing anything new, but it uses tried-and-true horror movie techniques extremely well. You get the creepy piano music, a scary clown, creaky doors, dark basements, a spooky and dilapidated house, and almost every other trope you can imagine from such films from the past. Fortunately, director Andy Muschietti executes everything effectively, and he does implement some creative visual scares with sharp editing and a few truly startling moments. On the whole, though, I wasn't dazzled by any wealth of novelty here.

Although this movie is based on a much earlier novel, which had previously been adapted for TV in 1990, it's almost impossible to ignore its similarities with recent nostalgia-laden smash hit TV show Stranger Things, which itself is a bit of a love letter to fiction creators like Stephen King. If the 1980s setting, small town, and gang of 12- and 13-year old misfits isn't enough to make the comparison clear, It even features Finn Wolfhard, one of the young stars of Stranger Things. It doesn't do quite as good a job as the Netflix TV show of invoking the sense of fun and camaraderie, but the bond between the young kids - who dub themselves "The Losers' Club" - is effective enough.

Dank, shadowy sewers are only one of many well-known horror
tropes here. We also get eerie old houses, creaky doors, and
more, to go right along with the scary clown at the center.

The movie isn't one for subtlety, beyond even the standard horror elements already covered. The secondary characters leave no scrap of doubt as to their roles. The bullies are sneering, cackling, jackal-like predators whose every actions are despicable. The single, sleazy father of female Loser's Club member Emily simply oozes lecherousness. The shut-in mom of hypochondriac Eddie seems to have no redeeming qualities whatsoever. And on it goes, with anyone who is not a Loser's Club member being no more than two-dimensional, and basically of no help to the kids. This is an overly convenient narrative device, as it is about the only way that the kids are left to fend for themselves. It's not a fatal flaw, as the movie does need to keep its focus on the kids themselves, but I would have appreciated seeing one or two adults who actually seemed to care about their kids suffering through hellacious trauma.

Though It didn't stun me with anything exceptionally novel, it was a decent enough horror flick. It was always meant as the first of a two-part film series, with the sequel It: Chapter 2 set for a September 2019 release. I doubt that I'll bother seeing it in theaters, but I'll check it out eventually. The concept of a horror movie flashing forward 27 years to see the adult versions of the first movie's children protagonists deal with the returning horror is an interesting concept. 

New Release! Hereditary (2018) [Spoiler-Free Review]

No Spoilers. Read Away!!

Director: Ari Aster

An excellent horror movie that masterfully blends some of the very best elements of earlier classics of the horror genre.

The story begins with an obituary and funeral service for Leigh Graham, mother of Annie (Toni Collette). Leigh was, by Annie's account, a rather odd, sometimes reclusive, sometimes domineering figure who seemed to have strange plans and goals for her children and grandchildren. With her mother gone, Annie returns to her life as a  professional artist specializing in miniatures, particularly dioramas of homes, buildings, and the people within them. On the surface, Annie seems to have the things that many people would wish for - a beautiful home in a lush forested area, a loving husband, and two children, Peter (Alex Wolff) and Charlie (Milly Shapiro). However, things are far from ideal. Aside from Annie's mother's haunting influence on her life, Peter is a typically frustrated teenage boy, and Charlie is a 13-year old who is oddly detached and seemingly dealing with some sort of intellectual handicap. When horrific tragedy strikes the family, such a short time after Leigh's death, Annie can barely take it. As she tries to keep from losing her grip on sanity, strange things seem to begin happening to her and her family. These events even suggest some sort of horribly sinister conspiracy acting upon all of them.

Though clearly modern in its setting, scripting, and acting, this film is great classic throwback horror. While I'm not an aficionado of the genre, I feel that I've seen many of the classics; in particular, the grittier and more existentially horrifying films that started cropping up in the late 1960s. Hereditary takes the spirit of a film like Rosemary's Baby and updates it masterfully by adding in touches seen in more modern horror flicks like The Babadook. But while the shared elements are fairly obvious, and some of the visual scares are familiar, nothing felt like an outright ripoff. Writer and director Ari Aster does a brilliant job of taking familiar ingredients and working them into something that felt rather fresh and gets back to what I consider genuine horror in more of an H.P. Lovecraft or even Edgar Allen Poe vein. No, this movie doesn't contain some of the wildly fantastic elements of those noted horror writers, but Aster's philosophy of what makes a horror tale is clearly in tune with those early masters.

One of the many excellent aspects of this movie is how it manages to keep you guessing for much of its considerable length. While the movie certainly offers more than a few hints about what, exactly, is behind the dark chaos swirling around Annie, it doesn't fully tip its hand until the appropriate time. And even then, the final ten minutes are bound to shock most viewers - even ones who may have sussed out everything about the plot.

Steve looks over his peculiar daughter Charlie's drawings.
There are plenty of little allusions and pieces of fore-
shadowing all over this movie. But they don't become
clear until it's all steamrolling towards its dark climax.

The acting in this movie is top notch, as one might guess from seeing the top-billed cast. I won't be surprised if Collette isn't nominated for several major awards for this role, despite the movie being in a genre that historically does not get much recognition from the "marquee" award organizations. And the supporting cast is also excellent. Gabriel Byrne, the next most famous actor here, is appropriately muted, but their children played by Alex Wolff and Milly Shapiro are outstanding. It's actually rare to find such consistently excellent performances in such a dark horror movie, but Hereditary found and great cast and got the most out of them.

The visuals are great. They never utilize much in the way of dazzling special effects, but when visual flourishes are required, they are handled deftly. Sure, a few of the scares will seem very familiar to anyone who's ever seen a haunted house movie. But this movie adds elements of the eerie and psychological, adding extra impact to such scenes.

Fans of more graphic, sensational horror will probably see little to like in this movie, which is why I suspect that fan reception has been vastly more mixed that the glowing critical reception. It does ask for patience from its viewers, along with an appreciation for very slow-burn narratives. Being a fan of such things, I highly recommend it to others with similar tastes. 

Before I Die #621: Rosemary's Baby (1968)

This is the 621st movie I've now seen out of the 1,199 films on the "Before You Die" list that I'm gradually working my way through.

Director: Roman Polanski

A horror "classic" that still has some power, though it is considerably faded by age and endless mimicry by countless imitators.

The story follows the titular Rosemary Woodhouse (Mia Farrow), who moves into an imposing and creepy old apartment building - the Bramford - in Manhattan with her aspiring actor husband, Guy (John Cassavetes). Despite the building's dark history of housing supposed witches, and being the setting for some gruesome deaths in the past, the Woodhouses take an apartment. They are soon set upon by a pair of strange upstairs neighbors, the Castevets, an elderly couple who show undue interest in the Woodhouses. Rosemary and and Guy try to play along with the Castevets and several other strange denizens of the Bramford. However, when the young couple express an interest in having a child, things become ever-more bizarre, as the Castevets' interest in Rosemary increases to unnerving levels. On a particularly disorienting night, Rosemary suffers through what seems to be a fever dream wherein she is impregnated by some demonic creature that initially posed as her husband, Guy. After this strange nightmare, Rosemary discovers that she is, indeed, pregnant. the neighbors continue to close ranks around her, slowly attempting to cut off Rosemary's contacts with outsiders. Rosemary begins to suspect that she is at the center of some sort of dark Satanic ritual, and that her baby might just be the child of Satan himself.

This movie made all sorts of waves when it came out, and it's not difficult to see why. At the time of its release in 1968, tales involving Satanism were hardly part of the popular culture landscape. What this movie did was to take such dark subject matter and include it in a relatively mainstream offering. It was such a hit that the idea of a "Satan's spawn" or demon possession has been used over and over, to varying degrees of success, ever since, with 1973's The Exorcist and 1976's The Omen being the obvious standouts. Because of the high volume of imitators, the suspense and ultimate reveal of the story loses its impact.

Another area where age hasn't helped is in the overall writing. The dialogue, which was probably adequate and perhaps even engaging fifty years ago, feels rather clunky much of the time. It's often the sort of cheesy, unimaginative fare that you might expect from classic, prime-time TV dramas or sit-coms. A larger problem is that the Rosemary character is immensely pathetic. This partially fits into one of the grander and still-relevant themes (which I'll cover below), but it can simply be painful to watch the waifish Mia Farrow get buffeted around by forces which she finds too strong to fight, even though there are plenty of more obvious paths of escape to us viewers, if only Rosemary would show a bit more pluck. Fans of strong female characters are likely to be frustrated by this movie's lead. And the grand finale/reveal of the movie can be almost laughably silly, despite the fact that it is meant to be the height of horror.

Ruth Gordon as the garish and eternally nosy Minni Castevet.
Her function as a menacing nuisance is played only too well -
I actually grew tired of her well before the halfway point in
the film, along with a few other characters.

The film still works very well in two main ways. One is the use of the Bramford itself. The eerie old building still has power as an imposing setting for the diabolical machinations taking place within its walls. Far more powerful, though, is the movie's strength as social commentary. The relentless pressure put upon Rosemary by everyone around her - from her obtrusive neighbors to her supposedly loving husband - to get pregnant, see it to term, and raise the child, despite her strong misgivings along the way - all of these still resonate as the types of social pressure thrust upon women to make motherhood their primary focus. The movie takes them to a wild extreme, but this is what successful horror allegories do. Rosemary's Baby still functions well in this regard, even if it often feels bloated and clumsy about it much of the time.

I was glad to finally take in this horror classic which I had somehow never seen before, but I'll feel zero need to see it again. It's strengths in general setting and theme are easily garnered in a single viewing, while its many dated elements quash any desire I would have to sit through the film's 130-minute run time again.

That's 621 movies down; only 578 movies to go before I can die. 

Retro Trio: Talladega Nights (2006); The Conjuring 2 (2016); The Ninth Gate (1999)

Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006)

Director: Adam McKay

My second viewing of this Will Ferrell farce, the first one being shortly after its release 12 years ago. Still consistently funny, though a movie that relies on its cast more than any especially clever script.

To quickly recap, Will Ferrell plays Ricky Bobby, a NASCAR driver born with a desire to "drive fast" and eventually gets his shot on the big stage. He quickly rises to the top of the sport, but almost as quickly becomes immensely arrogant, seeing his success on the racetrack as validating his and his family's boorish behavior. Ricky's world is turned upside-down when he is first defeated at the hands of the gay, French Formula One driver Jean Girard (Sacha Baron Cohen), and the subsequent defeat sees his family and best friend abandon him. Ricky then must rediscover his shattered confidence and put his life back together with the help of his loving mother (Jane Lynch) and his estranged and ever-irresponsible father (Gary Cole).

What can one say about Talladega Nights other than it's certainly a "Will Ferrell" movie. Ferrell has always been a guy who can make me laugh with consistency, even if he's never been an intellectual or overly clever comedian. Virtually every memorable role and character has been the same for him - the obliviously over-confident boor. Thing is, he is so freakishly good at playing this buffoonish role in spot-on deadpan, that he's bound to make nearly anyone laugh at least a few times in every movie. Talladega Nights is no different.

What helps this movie rise above lesser Ferrell fare like Get Hard or Daddy's Home is the comedic talent of the supporting cast. Time-tested comedy pros like John C. Reilly, Jane Lynch, and Sacha Baron Cohen unsurprisingly hit their marks well. But even lesser-known comedic quantities like trophy-wife-playing Leslie Bibb do nice work here. But arguably the stand-out minor character is legendary comedic character-actor Gary Cole, who plays Ricky's transient, rebel-without-a-clue father, Reese Bobby. Many will recognize him as the droning boss Lumbergh from the classic Mike Judge movie Office Space, or more recently as the hilariously dry political analyst Kent Davidson on the HBO series Veep. But here, Cole gets to show off a more dynamic aspect of his comedy game, playing the brash, loud-mouthed father who sparks his son's love of driving as well as his supreme arrogance.

It helped that I watched this movie with my wife, who hadn't seen it. Seeing a goofy comedy like this is always more enjoyable with others, even if it's hardly what I would call an essential classic. Within the Will Ferrell comedy canon, though, I have it up with Blades of Glory as one of his two or three best.

The Conjuring 2 (2016)

Director: James Wan

A step down from the original, though a high-quality version of a mostly by-the-numbers horror flick.

The Conjuring told the based-on-true-events story of a haunting which called on Ed and Lorraine Warren to assist a family with a truly haunted house. After recovering from that harrowing experience, the couple is now asked to help a poor family in London England with strange phenomena in their run-down flat. There, a single mother's children are experiencing moving objects and terrifying visions. Most notably, the youngest girl Madison is seeing and perhaps sometimes being controlled by the spirit of the old man who previously lived in the home.

This sequel was not nearly as satisfying to me as the original. It sticks to the same formula in most ways - use tried-and-true classic haunted house tropes: creaky doors, things jumping out of shadows, eerie sounds and whispers in the night, and so on, and do them well. Director James Wan (who also oversaw the original) is an undisputed expert in this realm, to be sure. The problem is that they lose their effect when one has seen the original movie not long before (I saw it about two years ago). Yes, the jump scares are very effective, but I've always found such a tactic as being ultimately shallow. Fortunately, there are some visual sequences that are more original and nerve-tingling, even before the inevitable jump-scare, such as Lorraine Warren's daydream at home involving "The Nun" (I won't ruin it for those who haven't seen it) and a few others.

I think what stood out to me as being particularly inferior to the original were the non-horror elements. The dialogue was notably bad at times, either from being overly sappy or simply overwrought. While the original movie didn't have stand-out dialogue, it at least wasn't distracting in any way. The sequel, unfortunately, made some missteps by trying to get sentimental or explore more human emotional territory. When highly reliable actors like Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson are having trouble selling the lines, then you know the writing is a bit dubious.

So I obviously did not like The Conjuring 2 as much as the original. Still, it was loads better than the next movie I watched...

The Ninth Gate (1999)

Director: Roman Polanski

Disappointing, even though I pretty much knew to keep my expectations tempered.

All I knew about this movie was that it was about a rare book dealer who is sent to track down an ultra-rare volume reputed to be of particularly demonic nature. As a guy who loves books, used to work in book stores and collect books, and enjoys a good Biblical demon story, I thought there would be enough here to really enjoy. Not quite.

The story follows Dean Corso (Johnny Depp), a book dealer of highly dubious morals who is hired to track down a pair of books supposedly written by Satan himself. The man who hires him, Boris Balkan (Frank Lingella), has one copy of the volume and he wants it authenticated along with the other two. Corso infers that Balkan has been attempting to use the books to literally raise the devil and acquire unspeakable power in the process. Corso goes to Europe, where the other two copies are held. As he gets closer to the books and their owners, however, Corso becomes a person of interest for a few mysterious individuals. When people start to die around Corso and the books, things grow ever-more sinister. Everything culminates when Balkan ends up with the relevant information from the three texts and enacts a Satanic ritual, only to fail horribly and burn himself alive. Corso, who witnesses this first-hand, is then granted his own chance to pass through the titular "ninth gate," and into who knows what sort of demonic powers.

The movie has some solid ideas going for it. Unfortunately, I'm not sure what accomplished director Roman Polanski was thinking as he made this movie. I don't know if there was studio interference here, or if it was just a bad misfire in terms of vision (it happens to the best of them), but the movie never seems to get anything completely right. There are several plot turns which at first are intriguing but then fall flat due to either being unimaginative or simply lacking enough detail to be compelling. Characters act in illogical or wildly inconsistent ways. I often had the feeling that Polanski was trying to be too subtle, leaving the audience to figure something out but not giving us nearly enough clues to do so. What we are left with is a mess of overly vague suggestions that never coalesce into a satisfying narrative.

The acting is just as spotty as the narrative. The veterans like Depp, Langella, and even Lena Olin are fine. They do their typically-solid jobs here. But more than a few secondary characters were downright awful, most obviously "The Girl," played by Emmanuelle Seigner. I don't know any of Seigner's other work, but it looks like she has a solid resume in film and TV. That said, it was simply hard to watch her in this movie. I can only guess at the possible reasons; whatever it was, though, it resulted in line deliveries that were alternately stiff and oddly-stressed. There were also a few other bizarrely wooden actors in lesser parts, which rang of Polanski hiring them for their stunning good looks rather than any trace of acting ability.

This movie is a shame, really. It had the makings of something much scarier and memorable, rather than the frustrating mess that it was. 

Retro-Trio: Hellraiser (1987); Semi-Pro (2008); Flesh + Blood (1985)

Hellraiser (1987)

Director: Clive Barker

Sometimes you feel the urge to go back and watch a highly influential movie you hadn't seen in decades, even if you're fairly sure that it won't hold up well. Such was the case when, a few nights back, I noticed that Hellraiser was available on one of my streaming services. It was late, and I was in the mood for something twisted and dark, so I went for it.

Watching this movie now, 31 years after its original release and probably a good 25 years after I'd last seen it, the strengths and weaknesses are exactly what lay in my memory, even though most of the details had been lost in the interim.

For those who don't know the tale, it is a wildly horrific tale of Julia and the family into which she married. The rather cold, reserved Julia moves into the old, previously abandoned family house of her husband, Larry, and her step-daughter Kirsty. When first seeing the place, they realize that Larry's mysterious loner brother, Frank, had been squatting in the home not long before their arrival, though Frank is nowhere to be found at the time. Seeing his belongings sparks Julia's memories of having an extended, passionate affair with the darkly hedonistic Frank, and Julia even begins to dream about being with Frank again. A few days later, Larry cuts his hand in the home, and the blood trickles into the floorboards of the dank, upper-most room in the house. Slowly, the blood is absorbed and revives some sort of horrific, flayed human, whom Julia discovers to her horror. This creature quickly explains to Julia that he is, indeed, Frank, and that he had transported himself, via a strange black and gold magic box, into a realm of dark sadomasochism ruled by terrifying, demoniac creatures called Cenobites. Frank convinces Julia to lure more victims into his upper floor lair, where she should kill him and allow their blood to revitalize Frank into human form before the Cenobites discover him missing and pull him back into their twisted, torturous realm.

In its day, Hellraiser was one of the most creative, disturbing, and truly horrifying films made in quite some time. Sure, there had been more graphic horror movies. And there had been eerier tales told on film. But Clive Barker's feature film debut was its own stunning blend of modern gothic horror and graphic bloodletting, wrapped in a supernatural tale that hinted at its own almost Lovecraftian-level mythos. The mere conception and look of the Cenobites, tortured and disfigured creatures cloaked in black leather and adorned with various sharp, cutting instruments, was enough to give most of us nightmares. When this was added to the quality special effects that brought the nightmares to life, you had something that made a major impression, grotesque it is may have been. In watching it now, 30 years after its release, I can say that most of the visual effects, especially the costumes and basic set designs, hold up. And the pure horror elements of the story are just as disturbing now as they were then.

The effects in the movie are great, most notably on the
slowly-regenerating Frank. It calls to mind of the stellar
makeup work from Cronenberg's The Fly.

Unfortunately, like most of even the best horror films, the non-horror aspects of the movie are fairly weak. The backstory of Frank and Julia's affair is quite shallow, with Frank being a one-dimensional "bad boy" who literally shows up in a leather jacket on Julia's doorstep, dripping with rain, and giving her the bedroom eyes right from the jump. There is zero subtlety in their lust-filled affairs, and it seems a bit odd that Julia becomes so wildly obsessed with him that she is quite literally prepared to become a serial killer just to revive him - a man who long since abandoned her to go chasing other women and satisfaction of his own carnal lusts through any means he could find. I suppose one could argue that such can be the power of lust, especially lust repressed under a cold veneer such as the one that Julia usually exudes, but this is a bit of a stretch.

The acting is rather inconsistent, too, with a few screen veterans like Andrew Robinson and Clare Higgins doing just fine, but most other cast members appear rather amateurish. It doesn't do any of them any favors that the dialogue is uncomfortably bad, aside from the few memorable catchphrases that Barker puts in the mouths of the Cenobites - "We have such sights to show you," and "We'll tear you soul apart!" delivered in actor Doug Bradley's powerful, domineering voice still resonate as some of the most memorable lines in the history of horror films. But when it comes to the more casual dialogue between the horror scenes, the attempts at humor fall completely flat and any attempt to build any compassion for the characters never materializes.

I recall having seen the immediate sequel, 1988's Hellbound: Hellraiser II, but I've never bothered with any of the seven feature-length follow-ups (several of which were straight-to-video). I can appreciate dark horror, and the more imaginative concepts which Clive Barker created those decades ago are still somewhat compelling, but there was never enough for me to go beyond those first two movies. Real horror aficionados have likely already seen these films, probably multiple times, so it is hard to recommend it to any new viewers. Only if you are a horror fan who is a bit young and never gone back to see this one would I suggest you give it a go - despite its clear flaws, it really is one of the most influential horror movies of all time, with its fingerprints still being seen in horror movies made today.

Semi-Pro (2008)

Director: Kent Alterman

It's a Will Ferrell comedy, alright.

I like Will Ferrell. He's always been good for pretty solid, consistent laughs. I have not, however, ever become a full devotee of the comedian with seemingly boundless energy. As funny as he can be, he rather quickly became a one-note comic act in my view. This is why I've never run out to catch him movies in theaters, often waiting years after their release to watch them; sometimes never bothering to watch them at all. Watching the now decade-old Semi-Pro did nothing to change my feeling about Ferrell, either positively or negatively.

The story takes for its setting the rather low-hanging comedic fruit of the disco era in 1976. Ferrell plays Jackie Moon, a one-hit music wonder who used his lone hit song's earnings to purchase the Flint Tropics - a professional basketball team in the struggling American Basketball Association (ABA). The Tropics are the worst team in the floundering ABA, only keeping their nose above water thanks to Moon's over-the-top promotional antics, including sensational halftime shows and performances. When word comes down that the ABA is going to be contracted and absorbed into the far larger and more successful NBA, the desperate Moon makes a deal to see that his team is one of the four who will make the jump into the big league. The deal requires him to get his squad to climb out of the cellar and attain 4th place in the ABA standings by season's end, no mean feat for the disogranized and talent-bereft Tropics. Hope does emerge when aging former NBA player Ed Monix (Woody Harrelson) is able to lend his veteran knowledge and help coach up talented but selfish young NBA-hopeful Clarence (Andre Benjamin).

While Ferrell's Jackie Moon character isn't exactly like Ron Burgundy in Anchorman or Ricky Bobby in Talladega Nights, Moon does bear the hallmark idiocy, self-absorption, and overconfidence of virtually every character Ferrell has ever played on TV or the big screen. Of course, there is a reason for the typecast - Ferrell is exceptionally good at the role. Despite myself, I can't help but laugh at his line deliveries, facial expressions, and overall body language when playing such over-the-top buffoons. Since Ferrell's shtick alone can become a bit tiresome at times, it helps that there's ample comedy talent around him. Will Arnett is a standout, as the whiskey-swilling, chain-smoking color commentator for Tropics' broadcasts, but there are several others who round out the proceedings well. Woody Harrelson's comedic gifts are mostly underutilized, as he plays the mature role in the film, but he does have a few moments.

As with every other Ferrell-starring film, not every gag hits, and there are probably ten to fifteen minutes of ad-libbed nattering that should have been edited out, but the movie provides frequent enough laughs to justify its purpose. It's a dumb comedy meant to provide some gut laughs. It does that just fine.

Flesh + Blood (1985)

Director: Paul Verhoeven

A rather good, gritty medieval flick with a B-movie attitude by a director who knows how to do entertaining sex and violence.

I picked this one up after seeing it pop up on more than one "underrated film" list. Despite being a true 1980s kid, I had never even heard of it. Now that I've seen it, I understand why. The movie follows a renegade band of mercenaries led by Martin (Rutger Hauer), a highly skilled and dangerously cunning fighter. Martin and his band are first used and then cheated by a regional lord in order to get his castle back from invaders. As revenge, Martin's unruly band stages an attack on a group of the lord's closest associates, including his son Steven (Tom Burlison) and Steven's bride-to-be, Agnes (Jennifer Jason Leigh). Martin's band of marauders steal the goods, only to later discover that Agnes has been hidden away in one of the wagons. She is promptly raped by Martin, although in a way whereby Agnes either does, or at least acts like she does, enjoy being violated by the strapping bandit leader. From this point, Agnes's action become rather difficult to decipher for everyone involved. She is taken with the band to a small nearby castle, where Martin's crew kills the defenders and takes over. Agnes seems to become Martin's willing woman, although when Steven and the regional lord's soldiers lay siege to the castle, Agnes continues to change her allegiances back and forth between Steven and Martin. By tale's end, Martin narrowly escapes his entire band's being wiped out by the plague, and Agnes leaves with Steven. Agnes actually sees Martin escaping, but remains silent rather than alerting Steven's men to the dangerous bandit's survival.

This is a 1980s medieval sword-swinger unlike any other I've ever seen, especially from that era. I always enjoyed the setting and characters in those romantic "Arthurian" type tales, and even plenty of the fantasy tales that were inspired by that sort of setting. Excalibur is still great, and movies like Ladyhawke and Willow always had an appeal for me. Those movies were, though, relatively PG-rated. Flesh + Blood, on the other hand, gets its hands really dirty. The murder and sex are right in your face, and Martin's rape of Agnes is downright disturbing on an original Straw Dogs level. This movie is very much about depicting a band of depraved and bloodthirsty cutthroats in all their viciousness, and it works quite well. They truly are despicable characters.

Martin is more than ready to let Agnes handle his, uh, rifle.
The previously-sheltered Agnes takes to the sex and violence
with disturbing alacrity.

The story of Agnes is also a strangely novel one. There is a bold ambiguity to her motivations, as she plays Martin and Steven off of one another, almost like a cat playing with two mice. Of course, this cat is posing as a harmless kitten, but there is a strange empowerment to her character at times. And the way that the theme of violence is handled puts me in mind of the David Cronenberg masterpiece A History of Violence, in which violence is depicted both as a repugnant aspect of human nature as well as a source of animal magnetism to others. Rutger Hauer's swaggering, bare-chested alpha male Martin is the polar opposite of the learned and thoughtful but also bold and clever Steven. The basic tale of a woman torn between "brawn" and "brains" was not a new one by a long shot, but this movie tackled the subject in a grittier way than any other I know of.

I doubt I'll ever need to see this movie again, but I was glad to have finally gone back and given it a shot. It's not for everyone, as it is a hard-R-rated movie, without a doubt. But it more than held my attention for its manageable running time, and it shed even more light on what an exciting, if uneven, resume Paul Verhoeven has put together over the decades.

Retro Duo: 1408 (2007); War of the Worlds (1953)

1408 (2007)

Director: Mikael Haefstrom

This was my first time seeing this one, which I gave a shot since I was in the mood for a horror flick and had kept seeing it pop up on various lists of "underrated" or "quality Stephen King adaptations." I found it to be compelling and fairly well done, if not as consistently novel or eerie as the creators might have been aiming for.

The story follows Mike Enslin (John Cusack), a cynical writer of travel guides to haunted hotels and motels around the United States. Though he does it for a modest living, Mike has no belief in the existence of ghosts or the supernatural. After receiving a mysterious postcard, Mike checks into a supposedly haunted room at the Dolphin Hotel in Manhattan, specifically room 1408. Despite highly stern warnings from the hotel manager, Enslin goes into the room, where before long reality is gradually turned on its side and Enslin is assaulted by all manner of physical and psychological torture. The room seems to have some sort of evil purpose of its own, hurling Enslin through all sort of trials, never really allowing him to escape, although suggesting that it could all end if he commits suicide. After it becomes clear to the worn down Enslin that no escape is truly possible, he decides to in fact commit suicide; however, he decides to do it by burning himself and the room along with him, so as to prevent the diabolical place from entrapping anyone else in the future. This act of altruism seems to absolve Enslin, and he is pulled from the burning room in time to save his life.

1408 is essentially a redemption story, and a decent one at that. John Cusack does well playing the painfully cynical Mike Enslin, and the narration adequately reveals just how and why the jaded writer became so disaffected. The movie also does a great job building up the mystery around room 1408, thanks in no small part to Samuel L. Jackson's relatively minor turn as the Dolphin Hotel's manager. By the time Enslin is putting the key into the room door, I was itching to see just what might happen.

Of course, the real show is all about what does happen in the room. For the first fifteen minutes or so, I was riveted. In slow, eerie steps, things begin to go awry in pretty effective ways. As the torments grow more intense, though, I found that they started to become a bit more predictable and even slightly redundant. Early on, it is easy to assume that this is a "no escape" scenario for Enslin, so that all of his several attempts to flee the room have completely foreseeable outcomes. And while there are certainly some truly creepy moments to go with a handful of well-crafted jump scares, I found that the first half of the movie was more engaging than the second.

For me, horror movies do not often have a high rewatchability factor, and 1408 is no exception. It was enjoyable to finally see it, but I don't feel any need to ever go back to it.

War of the Worlds (1953)

Director: Byron Haskin

It's easy to see why this movie was a major hit in its day, and even why it became a science-fiction classic rather quickly. These days, though, it doesn't hold up terribly well.

H.G. Wells's original novel has understandably been adapted many times since its publication back in the late 19th century. The tale is one that captures the imagination well enough: beings from the planet Mars send an array of invasion ships to Earth and begin to systematically wipe out all of humanity. Because of their highly advanced technology, no form of weaponry devised by man can so much as damage the eerily silent flying crafts as they devastate human cities and populations with unstoppable heat rays.

This story brought a rather novel approach to the basic human fear of forces so powerful that we are helpless against them. This, combined with the enigma surrounding the actual nature of the Martians are what made Wells's novel so curious, and it is a part of any successful adaptation of the story. The problem with this 1953 film adaptation, however, is the exact same one that can found in the original story, as well as most other adaptations, such as Steven Speilberg's version in 2005 (which did reenact several of the exact same sequences as the 1953 version). The problem is the utterly anti-climactic resolution to the tale. Just as humanity is down to its last few days before annihilation, the alien invaders all simply drop dead due to infection from earthen bacteria. It's the reverse story of what laid low certain indigenous populations during incursions by invaders and conquistadors at various periods in human history. While this is a fairly interesting plot twist from a science perspective, the execution is thoroughly dull and smacks of the lame Deus ex machina cop out that became a tiresome trait way back when the Greek dramatists began to overuse it over two millenia ago.

Aside from that, the 1953 version does have its merit, as long as one keeps in mind the time when it was released. It's not difficult to see how the effects and even certain concepts were ahead of their time. Compared to other films using heavy special effects in the 1950s, War of the Worlds was about as good as one could get. It's also rather commendable that the story doesn't dally too much on extraneous melodrama or atonal, hokey jokes, something that other sci-fi classics like The Forbidden Planet couldn't completely avoid. War of the Worlds didn't hesitate from showing people getting atomized, including a well-meaning minister and other do-gooders. This creates a slightly darker tone than the Technicolor veneer might suggest.

For its time, the effects were cutting-edge for film. Today,
though, it can be hard not to smirk at the rudimentary nature
of the visuals and light effects.

But it is a movie from the early 1950s, and it does include a few of that era's trapping. Most obvious to me was the laughably helpless main female character, Sylvia. Like virtually every star of Hollywood movies from that time (and years afterward), Sylvia's primary purpose seems to be three-fold: (1) serve as a voice for viewers' fears by screaming a lot, (2) provide some sort of love interest for the male lead, and (3) look pretty. Nearly all other characters are equally one-dimensional and uninteresting. This film was clearly made back when science-fiction movies rested entirely on the wonder that the story's premise and special effects provided, not bothering to do anything novel or creative with characters or dialogue.

When one keeps in mind the time and context, it's not at all difficult to see why this movie was, and still is, considered a seminal sci-fi movie. When one simply judges it on its own merits, though, it just cannot stack up to more modern, sophisticated science-fiction movies.

Retro Trio, Halloween Trilogy: Halloween (1978); Halloween II (1981); Halloween III: The Season of the Witch (1982)

I usually don't go into "horror mode" during this time of year, but this autumn seemed to be an exception. Along with other horror flicks like The Babadook and 1408, I've been scratching an itch to watch some horror films, older and more modern, alike. This has included going back and watching the first three Halloween movies, all of which I had seen but not in many, many years.

The "Look out he's right there!!" tactic of suspenseful film
making can be effective for a little while, but I grow bored
with it extremely quickly.

Halloween (1978)

Director: John Carpenter

I'll likely catch some flak for this, but Halloween is just mediocre to me.

If you're unfamiliar with the story, it tracks the disturbing tale of Michael Myers, who brutally and for no apparent reason killed his older sister when he was a mere six years old. After being locked in a mental institution for fifteen years, Myers escapes and returns to his home town, where he begins to act out his dark fixation with his sister's death again, this time on the local high schoolers. In particular, he stalks Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis), a bright and kindly senior who has no idea of Myers's twisted interest in her or his relentless psychopathy. Trying to chase down Myers is Doctor Loomis (Donald Pleasance), Myers's psychiatrist, who feels that Myers in an inhuman monster, completely beyond any sort of rehabilitation.

In watching this movie again, I can't help but feel that time has worn down its effect considerably. In its day, it was a great example of how suspense and dread can be built around a simple idea and some competent direction, despite very limited financial constraints. John Carpenter and Debra Hill put together a screenplay based on the basic premise of a murderous, eerily silent psychopath on the loose in a quiet, tranquil suburban neighborhood. They also used sparing narration about Myers himself, keeping him a nearly complete enigma as to his twisted motivations and homicidal compulsions. The movie also does a nice job in creating the setting, with an authentic small town and fairly realistic, everyday kinds of characters acting the ways that they might in real life, even if the dialogue and acting can be a tad clunky at times. The general feeling, though, does help ratchet up the stakes fairly well.

The simple, non-descript look of the murderous Myers reflects
many of the movie's key components. A killer who is as blank
 a slate as any movie killer has ever been. It also speaks to the
straighforward style of the movie.

All the same, the very simplicity which Carpenter used so effectively also made the movie very easy to mimic in the years to come. By now, nearly forty years later, the concept of the "inhuman, mute psycho killer" has long since been played out. Even this original doesn't offer much by way of explanation of Myers's deeper psyche. Loomis is an effective character in building some sense of Myers's monstrous nature, but I feel that it could have gone even deeper and more disturbing, perhaps through just one or two anecdotes. For me, it's not enough for Loomis just to say, over and over, that Myers is "pure evil." I don't need a complete psychoanalysis of the guy, but at least one or two recollections of what Loomis has seen in his fifteen years working with the killer that made Loomis come to the conclusion that Myers is nto just a hopeless case but a complete abomination.

Then there is the scare factor. I suppose I've never much been one for jump scares, and Halloween relies on this element more than a few times. Admittedly, it does also have plenty of still, creepy imagery, with Myers simply standing in the middle of a street, wearing that iconic white mask, staring at future victims. Or even longer shots of him slowly stalking around the neighborhood. These sequences actually work quite well, though the effect wears of by movie's end. It also doesn't help that this is an approach that has been used, reused, and imitated countless times in the years since Halloween came out.

So the original quite simply doesn't do much for me. I know that this movie still has many loyal and dedicated fans, so there is clearly something still chilling and effective about it for those who keep going back to it again and again. It apparently just is not my kind of horror movie, though.

Most of Myers's many victims in the sequel are devoid of any
real personality to speak of. This keeps the stakes rather low
for much of the movie, with those slain being little more than
cardboard cutouts.

Halloween II (1981)

Director: Rick Rosenthal

Though I wasn't dazzled by my rewatching of the original, I was committed to watching all three of the first Halloween films, so I sallied forth into the first sequel.

Though made and released three years after the first film, the story picks up quite literally where the original stopped. Myers has vanished after being shot multiple times by Doctor Loomis, and Laurie is taken to the local hospital to recover from her injuries at the hands of Myers. While the police and Loomis frantically search for Myers, the killer makes his way to the hospital where Laurie is being kept. As Myers eventually breaks into the hospital and methodically slays the staff, on his way to Laurie, we eventually learn that Laurie is actually Myers's younger sister. She had been adopted after the young Michael had been institutionalized, but now her older brother is after her in an attempt to once again act out his killing of their elder sister fifteen years earlier.

For what it is, Halloween II does just fine. Personally, though, it only served to confirm what I felt after watching the original - that this brand of horror movie just isn't my favorite. I do appreciate that the story adds just a little bit more back story to Myers, without spoiling the enigma of his evil nature with too much information. And the change in setting to a silent hospital ward at night was a wise move, offering a change of pace to the suburban neighborhood.

On the whole, though, the sequel is a slightly paler continuation of the original. It doesn't help that star Jamie Lee Curtis is barely a presence. She's knocked out in a hospital bed for the first hour or so of the movie. When she does eventually become mobile, it is only barely so, making her a forgettable character in many ways. There is also the odd character Jimmy, the handsome young EMT who immediately takes a shine to Laurie, who for whatever reason, quickly returns his playful affections, despite the fact that she is completely traumatized and doesn't know the first thing about him. And Jimmy's reactions to discovering slashed corpses around the hospital is almost hilariously subdued. As if Jimmy weren't enough, we also get his sleazebag partner, Budd, the tactless, oversexed jerk who is all about sleeping with one of the nurses. True to the already-established trope of the genre, these two get killed by Myers the moment they decide to get naked. This was just one of the many "how will this one get killed?" marks that Halloween II uses as its basic formula. Again, this is a type of movie that I lost interest in decades ago, so this sequel did very little to hold my interest.

So on I went to the third of the trilogy. Third in name, though not at all in story continuity.

Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)

Director: Tommy Lee Wallace

In a highly risky and unprecedented move, the third Halloween movie broke completely from the story of the original two and presented its own thoroughly independent tale. It follows Doctor Daniel Challis as he slowly uncovers a hideous plot about to unfold on Halloween night. About a week before Halloween, a raving and injured patient is brought into Challis's hospital, where he is later killed by an immensely powerful assassin who then kills himself. Challis starts doing some detective work, with the help of the murdered man's daughter, and they trace the clues to the Silver Shamrock novelty company headquarters in Santa Mira, California. There, they discover that the town in completely dominated by the oversight of Silver Shamrock's founder, Conal Cochran. They also soon learn that Cochran, inspired by ancient pagan traditions of sacrifice on All Hallow's Eve, has imbued Silver Shamrock's millions of children's Halloween masks with occult magic. This spell will activate when children watch the company's commercial while watching the mask, thus killing them in grisly fashion, even turning their bodies into insects and reptiles. Challis manages to destroy the Silver Shamrock factory and seemingly the sinister Cochran. The film ends with Challis frantically calling the TV stations to get the commercial taken off the air; two of them pull the ad, but the third is still running when the movie ends.

This may be a bit odd, but despite this movie's many obvious flaws, I actually liked it more than the original two movies. The main reason is that I really enjoy the plot, which I find to be a rather creative one with a bit of sly social commentary. I also find the ending highly disturbing, just as a true horror tale should be. When I look at the main story arc, I think the mystery elements were done very well, with the strange deaths and gradual uncovering of clues not all coming together until the final act. Several of the deaths are also quite striking, with the most horrifying being the reveltaion about what the Silver Shamrock masks will do to the children, as we see happen to the young child Little Buddy, who is reduced to a pile of crawling roaches and snakes. I even like the notion of Cochran's button-down army and factory staff being composed of soulless androids. It may seem a bit too science-fiction for a horror tale, but it somehow had a logic that fit within the larger theme.

When we finally see exactly what the novelty masks are going
to do to the millions of children wearing them, it is a
genuinely horrifying scene. There aren't many overly gruesome
deaths in this movie, but a couple of them leave an impession.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention that John Carpenter's music score benefits this third movie as much, if not more than, any of the original trilogy of films. While his score for the first two quickly became iconic, I found his score for this third one just as evocative. Maybe even moreso, utilizing the synthesizer in more subdued ways than the sharp piano picking of the original theme.

The movie does have its obvious shortcomings. The dialogue is pretty awful in places. And the acting is shaky much of the time (although the key roles by Tom Atkins and Dan O'Herlihy are played extremely well). The romance between Dr. Challis and Ellie is completely forced and really had no place in the movie whatsoever, beyond an attempt to appeal to base sentimentality or sexual titilation. And there are a ton of little details, or lack thereof, that one could nitpick. But I didn't find that any of these oversights ever torpedo the main plot or the commentary on consumer culture.

This story probably would have been much stronger if two things had happened: one is that it hadn't presented itself as a "Halloween" movie. A little research shows that this was clearly why a large number of fans and critics back in 1982 had a problem with it - they came thinking they were getting the next chapter in the Michael Myers story, only to get a completely unrelated tale instead. The second is that it would have probably worked better as a 45-50-minute TV show, in the the vein of The Twilight Zone, Tales from the Darkside, Tales from the Crypt or some similar program. If they couldn't punch up the dialogue or iron out the many little plot oversights, then streamlining it would have done the story wonders.

I doubt that I'll be going back to watch any of these movies again, since I didn't find any of them to be spectacular horror films. Still, the third is the one that had always stayed with me since I first saw it nearly thirty years ago, and it is the one which I still enjoy the most.


An Outside Commentary

While doing a bit of research, I came across this little article, published on comicbook.com only about a week ago. It argues that, on the whole, the thing that weakened the Halloween series over time was the presence of Michael Myers himself. I actually agrees with much of what the author posits, especially how Myers's very nature was only going to make him interesting for one or two movies. The thing that makes him a bit compelling - the very mystery around his motivation and the utter lack of a personality - could only carry a tale so far. This is probably why I became rather bored with the movies, though I did so much more quickly than the original two films' ardent fans.