Cabin in the Woods (Friday, May 11, 2012) (47)

We've reached a point where sarcastic horror movies (like the Scream franchise) are no longer interesting and gonzo sick ones (like the Saw movies) are no longer serious enough to gain much traction. Now we're into a world of post-modern horror movies -- thinking man's films that are deconstructionist (like Derrida with crayons) and meta and self-referential. The Cabin in the Woods is such a movie. It's fun and funny and silly, with as many jokes about the horror process and rules of the game as it is a spectacle. 

As the film opens we see two office everymen (Bradley Whitford and Richard Jenkins) at their job. They're talking with one another and with their colleagues about seemingly innocuous stuff, something about the failures of the Japanese office and something with needing to close their deals today. We then cut to the typical prologue to your average slasher flick: a bunch of college kids (a cute virgin girl, a beefy jock, another guy and girl couple and a weirdo) are going to the cabin in the woods owned by one of their cousins. 

On the way to the place, they stop to get directions and a creepy gas station where they're scared by the creepy old man who works there. As they leave (having not been killed) we cut back to the desk jockeys once again, this time upset that the group of kids got away. It seems these guys in the office have some control over the world of the kids. 

From here forward we see a clever interplay between the office guys laying traps for the kids and the kids falling into them (and dying in ever more exotic bloody ways, natch) or narrowly escaping through their wiles. The stakes seem to get higher and higher as the office clerks seem to have pressure from "their boss" to end the charade and kill all the kids with their available resources (zombies and madmen with cleavers and meat hooks). As we start to worry for the lives of the kids in the cabin, we also worry that the office dudes will get in trouble if they don't succeed in their task. This split interest is rather ingenious and fresh in this, or any other, genre. 

I like this movie, though after all the very elegant twisting and turning, the pay-off is a bit medium. I feel writers Joss Whedon (yes, that guy again) and Drew Goddard (who also directs here) get a bit lost in the weeds and don't deliver as strong a finale as the build-up requires. What we get at the end is a bit cheesy and random, rather than arch and self-aware like the tone in the rest of the film. Ultimately the film devolves into mediocre explosions and blood, a disappointing conclusion to an otherwise smart movie.

Stars: 2.5 of 4

Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 (Friday, November 25, 2011) (107)

What is there to say about Twilight Part 4 Part 1? It's a movie about vampyres who fuck teens, but only after their married in special Mormon ways. Then it's about how those teens get preggers with monster babies (hello, Rosemary!) who eat them from the inside out. Then there are some werewolves who want to kill the vampyre family because they're really a cult (they are!) and broke the hymen of that teeny girl. Then the teen girl gets all rexy and gray-green-toned. Then one of the wolves decides to fight his brother dawgs because he really likes skinny girls, even tho she's a fang-banger.

Somewhere in there there's a lot of really bad acting. I don't know what you call what K-Stew, R-Patz and Tay-Lau are doing onscreen, but it's ain't acting. They each have reach the bottom of their tanks and are just saying words and looking sweaty. I hope none of them is still doing that stuff in ten years.

Bill Condon has a great inside joke in one scene where people are watching the Bride of Frankenstein, which is a film directed by James Whale, a homosexual and the subject of a biopic he made a few years ago. That split-second moment was the best part of this movie.

Stars: 1 of 4

We Are What We Are (Friday, February 25, 2011) (9)

A few years ago I was really impressed by the Swedish film Let the Right One In, a vampire movie like I had never seen before then. The melancholy of modernity and the sadness and isolation of a vampire girl's life, come together for a sympathetic and interesting tale that would be considered a horror movie in most situations. But it is not really horror, it's the shell of the genre with the guts of an interesting think piece about being a kid, having hopes and desires and being in (puppy) love.

We Are What We Are is very similar to Let the Right One In both in style and look as well as what it is trying to convey emotionally. This is not a horror movie, really, but an interesting look at Mexican culture and the craziness of the urban setting (in one of the biggest cities in the world). Writer-director Jorge Michel Grau does a good job showing us an interesting view of modern life, but his script is too crowded with unnecessary junk to be as good as it could have been.

The film opens with an old man walking through a shopping mall and falling over dead. When the police do an autopsy on him they find inside his stomach a human finger (with painted finger nail). Back at his house his family is wondering where he is. They are cannibals and he has been out looking for food - that is, another person they can cut up to eat. Once they find out he is dead his teenage kids (two sons and a daughter) and his wife must go out to hunt for their next human meal. They have to figure out if they will continue to live the way they do or if they want to give it up and become 'normal' people.

They try to get prostitutes back to their place (which had always been a go-to method the father used), one son goes to a gay bar to pick up a kid to bring back to the house. At some point the police catch on to what's going on and try to stop it.

There is a lot of interesting information here about the roles of fathers and mothers in Mexican families and how the father never showed his kids how he did what he did with luring the people back their house to be killed. Once he's gone, the mother gains power and standing in the household and has to fight against her sons to keep that status. The cops move slowly but effectively through the investigation, ultimately finding out what is going on.

The overly complicated script is the worst part of this film. At some point there were about three possible victims in the house, the cops were on their way and there were a few prostitutes angry with what had happened to one of their prozzie friends earlier. Considering the basic story is simply that four people go out to find a person to kill, then kill that person and then the cops come, there are too many other layers that complicated the impact of the story. I appreciate the subtext of the son's homosexuality (is he really gay or does he just use it as a way to get young men to follow him home?), but as a plot tangent it is a bit unneeded. The story is paced so slowly, also, that it's hard to pay attention to what is going on, because it's rather dull through the first act and a half.

The look of the film is very nice and rather reminiscent of Let the Right One In. Every interior shot is filled with stuff and there's constant noise and commotion from the outside world. There are few pretty and easy shots in the film - almost everything is difficult and dirty. Just as George Romero used zombies to criticize our culture in his Living Dead movies, cannibals seem to have a symbolic meaning here. I'm interested in how they can represent the roles of consumerism, manufacturing and big business.

I particularly like that this movie uses the "cannibals-live-next-door-to-us" story as an entrance into an examination of modern culture. There is blood and violence here, but it's not really about this gore. It's about fairness and decency in society.

Stars: 2.5 of 4

The Best Worst Movie (Friday, December 31, 2010) (170)

Troll 2 is considered by many to be the worst movie ever made. It was a 1989 passion project of Italian fimmaker Claudio Fragasso and was never released in theaters, but became a cult classic on VHS and cable. This documentary shows the current state of cult fandom and how the cast and crew react to the film and the national success it is having now.

Most of the film follows George Hardy, a dentist in Alabama who was the lead in the film. He did the acting gig knowing only that he was working with an Italian director and figured it was going to be a serious movie. It was only after he got the VHS tape of the film and watched it that he realized how bad it was.

Hardy's story is similar to most of the cast. They did the film in earnest, knowing it was a horror piece, but thinking it might be OK. When they saw the final project they realized what they had done. Some laughed it off and forgot about it, some had to deal with it haunting their careers for years to come.

Fans today flock to midnight screenings of the film because it is so incredibly bad. It seems to be something like The Room or Birdemic... although the daddy of those (with Plan 9 From Outer Space the grandaddy of them). One thing this doc doesn't do well is tell us really what the movie is about... so as a neophyte, I have no idea what they're talking about. This is a shame, because I really don't want to rent and watch this film... ugh.

It is funny to see how most of the actors have grown to embrace the terribleness of the film, but some, like Claudio Fragasso, still think it's a serious, brilliant film. What's sorta uncomfortable is that audiences love the film and laugh at it, but they also embrace the shitiness of it. When we see Fragasso watching it at a screening with fans, it is not clear that people are laughing at him. This is sorta upsetting.

This is a fun documentary, though it probably should have been a short, as it really loses steam in the last 30 minutes. I think it would have been much better at around 45 minutes. It's something in the vein of Winnebago Man or The King of Kong. Lots of fun.

Stars: 2.5 of 4

Let Me In (Saturday, October 2, 2010) (127)

Let Me In is film mysteriously set in Los Alamos, New Mexico - yes, that Los Alamos that you think about when you're looking for a really cold and snowy place. It apparently is pretty cold and pretty snowy, but why this film is not set in Minnesota or Wisconsin is totally beyond me. Sure there are beaches in Alaska, but would you set a Spring Break movie there?

The film is based on the Swedish book Let the Right One In, which was made into a very good film in 2008. The story transcends the vampire genre. Owen is a 12-year-old kid who has no friends and is the main target of the school bully's cruelty, both physical and psychological. His family is broken and he lives with his mother in a sad apartment complex. One night when he is sitting on the jungle gym outside of the apartment (in the snow - because when it's cold and snowy outside it's totally normal to sit outside) he meets Abby, a strange girl who doesn't wear shoes and immediately tells him that they can't be friends, "because that's just how it is."

It turns out that she's a vampire and the older man she lives with kills people to harvest their blood to keep her happy and healthy and protect her from her own nature. When he's unable to get the blood, she goes wild and attacks people like a demon. Of course she keeps this all a secret, but slowly we discover this as she and Owen become friends.

She is a source of happiness in the middle of his lonely life. She helps him stand up to the bullies in school and respects him as a friend - becoming his only friend. The problem, of course, is that she is not a girl and she doesn't live a normal life.

Most of the scenes in the film take place at night, and many of them are outside in the snow. This lends a sense of peace and beauty, despite the violence that underlies the story. The only problem is that writer/director Matt Reeves uses a score (by Michael Giacchino) that is constantly present in every shot of every scene. In moments of calmness and docility, we always hear music, as if we need reminding of the quietness of the scene (rather than just letting us have silence). In scenes with more drama, the score is also there, as the tools of the genre dictate. This is just one example of how Reeves has the opportunity to make a film that is truly beyond the slasher genre, but falls back into the bloody hole of the style dictates time and time again.

I would have loved a movie about a real-world vampire girl who has to live and move around in the real world. The setting for the film is totally real-feeling and seems like a place we might remember (from the 1980s). The problem is that when she sees blood or needs blood, her eyes become cat-like and yellow and her skin gets gray, transforming the sweet girl into a horrible monster. This comes down to just schlocky slasher-flick crap and it totally doesn't fit in with the tone of the film. There are about three scenes that are significantly more bloody and gory than they need to be - again because Reeves is happier to give the blood-thirsty audience something to hoot about rather than something that would fit in well with the film.

The acting throughout is very good. Richard Jenkins plays Abbby's older man friend/father, a man who loves the girl and can't get out of his bizarre relationship with her. Chloe Moretz (who was previously in Kick-Ass) is Abby and is very good as is Kodi Smit-McPhee as Owen (who was previously the boy in The Road).

There are a lot of silly things in the film as well as some things that are simply unnecessary. Owen's mother's face is never seen as she is always shot out of focus in the distance or from behind. I guess this is supposed to lend a sense of isolation and alienation - and underlines the messed-up nature of his family - but it's way too heavy-handed (we could have had the mother talk like Charlie Brown's teacher and it would have been about the same result). In one scene with a woman who has become a vampire, she is seen sucking her own blood. I guess that could happen in some weird, kinky vampire circles, but it would seem to be outside of the general vampire mythology. (Mostly this whole sequence with the other vampire is just an excuse for more blood and gore - but is totally separate from the Owen-Abby story.)

I guess it's fair that Americans wanted to re-make a successful movie - or re-adapt an interesting book about vampires (they're so hot now!), but I don't think this does enough different from the first to be totally worthwhile. I have not read the book, but just comparing this film to the last, it seems to me that it's basically the same (it even looks the same - and I'll forgive the fact that Los Alamos in the winter is not as cold as Sweden in the winter) with a lot more blood and violence. In fact this film is much less sympathetic and psychologically connected than the first one was. I think this is a shame as it was those elements that made the first one stand out among other vamp fare.

Stars: 2 of 4

The Human Centipede (Saturday, May 29, 2010) (47)

The Human Centipede is one of the most shocking and disgusting movies I've ever seen and at the same time, one of the most elegantly conceived and presented films of recent memory. It is a disgusting thriller, and not for the timid, but it is much more than the typical gross-out blood-and-guts horror flick you might find at the local cineplex.

The story begins typically with two young, hot American sorority girls on vacation in Germany. One night they go looking for some hot dance club, when their car breaks down on the side of the road (of course). They go searching for help and come to a beautiful modern house set in a remote forest. Inside is a crazy doctor, a surgeon who spent his career separating conjoined twins, who now is looking to spice up his life by connecting three people ass-to-mouth in one long "human centipede". The idea is totally gross, yes, but it is presented with respect and a bit of a wink.

Of course the two women are imprisoned in the doc's basement laboratory along with an equally unlucky Japanese man. When one of the women tries to escape, she is caught by the doctor and told that she will be the "middle section" of the centipede - unable to escape because she has one person on either side of her.

The film is beautifully directed by Tom Six and shot by Goof de Koning (both Dutch, I think). (Six's IMDb profile is hilarous, saying he collects AK-47s, eats curry every day and loves Klaus Kinski). The house is stark white and off-puttingly modern with a lab that is antiseptic, medical and isolated.

More than anything is the wonderful horror created by the situation. Not just is it shocking to think of your mouth connected to someones anus (so you have to eat their shit), but then, what happens if they die and you're suck to the ass of a dead person. OK, this is clearly something that normal people don't think about, but it's hilarious and shocking in the context of the film nonetheless.

Despite its Dutch/German production, most of the film is in English (with the two girls speaking English and the doctor speaking English to his three captives). Brilliantly, the head of the centipede is the Japanese guy, so he is able to scream and cry in his own language, making the film marketable in Japan, where gross-out horror is super popular.

By far the worst part of the film - the most unfortunate part - is the silly American slasher opening 15 minutes. It begins exactly like any other dumb American slasher flick would open (with two hotties getting into a bad situation). One could argue that Six is merely starting with something that we know in order to twist it into something we don't know - but I think it's just simply dumb. The elegance and respect throughout the rest of the film make the first few scenes seem especially silly.

Stars: 2.5 of 4

Orphan (Thursday, July 30, 3009) (101)

I'm not really a fan of slasher/horror movies because I think they are either entirely hackneyed or so post-modern, self-aware and *different* that the story gets lost in the middle of the formal acrobatics needed to avoid banality. Of course what makes these later movies different boils down to more dullness - as if the writer/director is pulling ideas out of a hat and keeping the ones that are the most unusual. You end up with stories that are so far fetched they're totally stupid; where the audience laughs at the movie and somehow that's a sign of genius. I don't get it. Orphan is one of these post-horror pictures that maybe has the most insane story I have ever seen in a movie.

One other classic device used by horror film makers is to distract people with layer upon layer of hum-drum details that they then forget all the holes in the story. In Orphan we are told that this wife and mother of two is a dry drunk who gave up the sauce when she had some accident involving falling in an icy pond with her deaf daughter when she was pregnant and was rescued by her husband. (I'm already lost.) So she lost her baby (I think) and for some reason they decide to adopt a girl to take the lost daughter's place (because the two kids they already have are not enough, I guess). So they go to the orphanage and find the creepiest girl in the house and bring her home.

Esther is an amazing 9 year-old. She was born in Russian and speaks perfect English with a vocabulary that would make a college professor jealous; she is fluent in American Sign Language and communicates flawlessly with the deaf daughter; she is a genius naive artist whose work is reminiscent of Henri Rousseau and Modigliani; she has a Victorian sense of style, which for unknown reasons is never questioned by the mother and father. Oh - and she wears ribbons on her wrists and neck and insists on bathing and changing in a locked room with nobody around - both totally normal. Whatever.

As the story unfolds, we see Esther being more and more bizarre and everyone slowly realizing it other than the father who thinks she's totally normal. Maybe I'm being too dense here, but this mostly created frustration for me. It would be one thing if the girl was doing evil things and they couldn't get rid of her (like the Exorcist or even Friday the 13th), but to accept totally messed up stuff as normal just served to alienate me from the dad. It's not really *dramatic irony* when we see the same stuff he sees and then he comes to a different, stupid conclusion. I think things like this are the foundation of the genre, but they're banal and useless as a device.

OK - so I've tried delaying it for awhile now, but here it is: SPOILER ALERT!! (Sorry - I have to tell the big reveal to continue this. The rest of this post will be a spoiler.) It turns out that Esther is a 33 year-old 'proportional dwarf' who was in a mental hospital in Estonia (you see - Estonia, not Russia! aha!) and somehow hurt her wrists and neck on her straight jacket (huh?) and then escaped and is playing a 9 year-old girl because she's a sex addict and likes seducing and sleeping with men who are her adopted fathers. Then she kills the people and burns their houses down. Got it?

So I have a few questions that I'll ask, risking being accused of having no sense of humor and not being able to suspend disbelief or something (and I won't even get to the elephant in the room about the proportional dwarfism). What happened to the third baby who was stillborn and why can't they try to have another kid rather than adopt? What is the point in the young daughter being deaf? Why does it snow every day in Connecticut and does it really ever get cold enough there to freeze a pond? If you were am Estonian proportional dwarf, why would you pretend to be 9 and not 14 (at least then you would be honestly sexual and not pre-sexual)? For a 33 year-old, isn't Esther still massively talented? What's the point of showing a gun (in Act 2) if it really doesn't ever go off? If you're a proportional dwarf woman trying to sleep with men, why would you pretend to be their daughter and not, say, their next door neighbor girl? Don't men normally shy away from sex acts with daughters (adopted or genetic)?

I don't know - I guess I have no joy in my life or something. Sure - it was fun to watch to see how ridiculous the movie was turning out to be - but that was more of a 'laughing at it' rather than 'laughing with it'. Even considering the gigantic leaps of logic in it, the dialogue was almost entirely wooden and tired. Ugh. Who cares?

Stars: .5 of 4 (It gets a half because it is about a crazy Estonian proportional dwarf girl who sexually seduces adopted fathers and is an art genius.)