The Devil Inside was released on Jan. 6th, 2012 in the US. It's a possession horror movie written by Matt Peterman and William Brent Bell, and directed by William Brent Bell. The duo's only prior collaboration was 2006's "Stay Alive", which is a bit of a guilty pleasure movie. It, like many other horror movies, failed because it didn't quite figure out how to integrate technology into a horror story. Horror as a genre hasn't quite figured this out, so I don't really blame this on them. I just bring it up to lend some context to saying I think Stay Alive had interesting visuals and concept but was pants-on-head retarded. It's very into the bro-horror idea that horror is sometimes funny because it's bad. With that, I find it very impressive that The Devil Inside is very much the opposite sort of movie.
The Devil Inside generally plays itself as a straight faux-documentary, using a seasoned professional cameraman as an excuse for multiple cameras. You can see them discussing setting up the cameras, and also they do interviews with various people they're following around. The director also records himself, which seemed a bit odd in the context and I could've done without those bits.
The basic premise here is that 20 years after her mother went insane and killed several members of her church congregation during a botched exorcism, Isabella Rossi travels to Rome with a documentary film maker to reconnect with her mother and attempt to understand her condition. We go with Isabella to an exorcism theory class at the Vatican, to a mental hospital run by the church, and to the apartment of 2 young priests Isabella befriends after the exorcism class. The class and the interviews with the 2 priests, Ben and David, are used to explain the rules of the movie's possession mythology.
Ben and David have actually gone rogue and are performing exorcisms on victims the church officially won't authorize an exorcism for, arguing that the rules make it impossible to prove possession without attempting an exorcism but preclude an exorcism without proof. We go with them to see an actual exorcism in progress on Rosalita, where they explain how they use medical science to track the symptoms of possession and progress of the exorcism. I thought that bit was very interesting, and I don't think I've seen a single other exorcism movie where the religious figures attempt to integrate and benefit from science. This is also probably one of the best scenes in the whole movie. They made a real smart decision to cast either a gymnast or contortionist in the role, and the positions her body contorts into are just unnatural. This is aided primarily by some pretty good practical effects, and one very short shot of CGI. There is another scene later where they attempt an exorcism on Isabella's mother that is also very good and tense but not as visually uncomfortable as Rosalita's exorcism.
After the unauthorized exorcism attempt on the mother the characters go into panic mode for a bit and begin to show signs of stress and uncharacteristic behavior. Even though the pace was good I didn't like this bit because it seemed like the movie had gone off the rails. Towards the end of the sequence the story's protagonist shifted from Isabella to Ben, but the documentary framing device remained on Isabella. I like that in principle, since they didn't compromise the character motivations for simplicity's sake. However, they never explained why they decided to do that.
I've previously expressed my annoyance at movies that try to be mysterious or edgy by not neatly tying up their plot threads at the end but actually just end up deliberately introducing something in the middle of the movie and never explaining why it's important. This movie is guilty of that to a minor degree, but it may be a casualty of the abrupt way they chose to end the movie which they may have done in hopes it would drive traffic to a website they advertise before the credits which probably extends the story. I haven't checked the site so I'm not sure if it was successful at all.
All in all the movie isn't nearly as bad as people seem to be saying it is. It does a lot of things right and delivers a pretty interesting story. It doesn't get so caught up in trying to be realistic and character based to be visually creepy. The ending was a bit of a disappointment, but I thought it was really entertaining. Nowhere near as good as Exorcism of Emily Rose, but way better than The Last Exorcism.
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
The Beerening: Scotch Ale + Brown Ale brewday
Scotch Ale Tasting:
Initial tastings of the ale are downright offensive. It tastes like cat urine. The first bottle is acrid, and burns all my senses. It's pretty awful. After a few weeks it's managed to upgrade itself to "bland", which still isn't too great to drink but at least isn't as awful as it used to be. Moving on from that, it went through a stage where it smelled really yeasty but didn't give up a lot of hints regarding the beer itself.
I was originally shooting for a very low level of carbonation to approximate English pub ales. After the first few tastings I decided to try to re-carbonate to a higher level of carbonation to attempt to make the flavor a bit less bland. I tried to add additional carbonation using pre-measured conditioning tablets. I opened every bottle, added 2 tablets, and quickly recapped using sanitized caps. I had a few gushers, which is probably similar to the mentos+coke effect and could have been avoided by putting all the bottles into the fridge for a few hours first. CO2 dissolves better in cold liquid.
After a week it was more carbonated, which helped the blandness but still tasted the same. Another week or so after that something odd happened...the flavors "rounded out", for lack of a better term.
What used to be really thin and sharp flavors, not metallic but with a bit of that character, became much warmer and everything seemed a lot more cohesive. It almost feels like I can actually judge it as a beer and not just relegate it to the bin of things that taste awful. I can't quite identify everything in it, which is still troublesome but I can definitely pick out a light maltiness with a toffee like body. Something in there is very similar to Werther's candies, but not quite as buttery. I definitely didn't manage to get the fruity yeast esthers I was trying for, which might have helped this beer a lot.
It's still a very light beer, which disappoints me because I really wanted something with more character and complexity, but it's actually shaping up to be something quaffable. I've learned a few things from this, even if the beer is less than stellar:
#1 I tried too many new things. All-grain, decoction, Belgian Aromatic Malt, brown sugar. I tried a lot of new stuff and I don't know what's making up the flavors I really don't like.
#2 My ability to hold a mash temp is freaking terrible. If I were to shoot higher to begin with or take more intermediate steps to maintain a temperature, I might do better.
Brown Ale brewday:
Moving on from that, I decided to step back and make a really simple beer to try to refine my technique. I also bought the Beersmith software, since I figure it could help me with some mash calculations.
I decided to shoot for a Brown Ale using only 3 malts, 2 hops, and a basic yeast I've used before.
This time, to try to mitigate that I wrapped the bucket tightly in a blanket. I also told Beersmith I was using plastic, so it could take the thermal properties of my mashtun into account while calculating my strike water temperature. Since the Scotch Ale was so bland and light bodied I decided to mash a bit higher as well.
Unfortunately, I'm still trying to figure out Beersmith's interface so I screwed up and misread the temperature and used a strike temp that was way too low. I wound up in the high 140's instead of the mid 150's, and realized I'd screwed the pooch. I pulled off a bit of my mash immediately and also added some additional water from the tap, totaling about 1-2 gallons of water, and boiled it. As soon as it was boiling I poured it back into the mash and stirred up, which got me to a lot more respectable temperature.
Even with the wrapping I still lost a decent amount of heat so I might need to upgrade to actual insulation, or just sack up and do an actual Coleman Cooler MLT conversion.
I just let the mash rest, and then lautered to another bucket. I managed to get about 1.062 gravity from my first "gyle". I added my sparge water and let it sit, then lautered again. According to my refractometer readings of the runnings, at 1.020, I could have kept going but I had way more wort than I'm actually capable of boiling so I decided to leave it be. Generally you can lauter all the way down to about 1.008 before you start extracting tannins. In all I collected 5.5 gallons of wort with a combined pre-boil gravity of 1.052.
In the past I've topped up my boil kettle during the boil to maintain volume, so I have to top off less once the wort is in the fermenter. This time I knew I had too much wort and wasn't going to boil off enough over the hour, so I got the 2nd largest kettle in my apartment and filled that with wort hoping the extra boil off would let me use all my wort. I followed my hopping schedule as advertised, with the only real exception being I tossed a few pellets into the secondary boil, which I started a little earlier than the primary boil.
Prior to this brew I'd built my own immersion wort chiller, basically following what this guy did:
It's really easy and really cheap, there is pretty much no reason not to do it.
I chilled with that, and it took about 15 minutes to get to a pitchable temperature.
Post-boil I had 4 gallons of wort and topped back up to 5.5 gallons and pitched yeast. My Original Gravity was 1.048
I actually brewed this on Dec 5th, it's taken me this long to get around to writing this. The beer is about ready for bottling, so hopefully this goes better than the last. The krausen has fallen, and I hope to get around to bottling this weekend.
--PXA
Initial tastings of the ale are downright offensive. It tastes like cat urine. The first bottle is acrid, and burns all my senses. It's pretty awful. After a few weeks it's managed to upgrade itself to "bland", which still isn't too great to drink but at least isn't as awful as it used to be. Moving on from that, it went through a stage where it smelled really yeasty but didn't give up a lot of hints regarding the beer itself.
I was originally shooting for a very low level of carbonation to approximate English pub ales. After the first few tastings I decided to try to re-carbonate to a higher level of carbonation to attempt to make the flavor a bit less bland. I tried to add additional carbonation using pre-measured conditioning tablets. I opened every bottle, added 2 tablets, and quickly recapped using sanitized caps. I had a few gushers, which is probably similar to the mentos+coke effect and could have been avoided by putting all the bottles into the fridge for a few hours first. CO2 dissolves better in cold liquid.
After a week it was more carbonated, which helped the blandness but still tasted the same. Another week or so after that something odd happened...the flavors "rounded out", for lack of a better term.
What used to be really thin and sharp flavors, not metallic but with a bit of that character, became much warmer and everything seemed a lot more cohesive. It almost feels like I can actually judge it as a beer and not just relegate it to the bin of things that taste awful. I can't quite identify everything in it, which is still troublesome but I can definitely pick out a light maltiness with a toffee like body. Something in there is very similar to Werther's candies, but not quite as buttery. I definitely didn't manage to get the fruity yeast esthers I was trying for, which might have helped this beer a lot.
It's still a very light beer, which disappoints me because I really wanted something with more character and complexity, but it's actually shaping up to be something quaffable. I've learned a few things from this, even if the beer is less than stellar:
#1 I tried too many new things. All-grain, decoction, Belgian Aromatic Malt, brown sugar. I tried a lot of new stuff and I don't know what's making up the flavors I really don't like.
#2 My ability to hold a mash temp is freaking terrible. If I were to shoot higher to begin with or take more intermediate steps to maintain a temperature, I might do better.
Brown Ale brewday:
Moving on from that, I decided to step back and make a really simple beer to try to refine my technique. I also bought the Beersmith software, since I figure it could help me with some mash calculations.
I decided to shoot for a Brown Ale using only 3 malts, 2 hops, and a basic yeast I've used before.
12 lbs. US 2-rowSince one of my major problems has been holding a mash temperature I decided to use the same basic technique as last time and improve upon it instead of trying something totally new. In the Scotch Ale writeup I mentioned using an "improvised mashtun" but didn't really go into detail about that. My improvised mashtun was a ginormous nylon grain bag in my bottling bucket with a spoon wedged inside between the bag and the inside opening of the spigot. Even with the top on, the plastic is just too good at giving off heat to hold the temperature for the length of the mash.
2 lbs. Briess Special Roast
.5 lb US Chocolate Malt
1 oz cascade @ 60 minutes
1 oz cascade @ 30 minutes
1 oz glacier @ 10 minutes
Yeast: Wyeast 1272 - American Ale II
This time, to try to mitigate that I wrapped the bucket tightly in a blanket. I also told Beersmith I was using plastic, so it could take the thermal properties of my mashtun into account while calculating my strike water temperature. Since the Scotch Ale was so bland and light bodied I decided to mash a bit higher as well.
Unfortunately, I'm still trying to figure out Beersmith's interface so I screwed up and misread the temperature and used a strike temp that was way too low. I wound up in the high 140's instead of the mid 150's, and realized I'd screwed the pooch. I pulled off a bit of my mash immediately and also added some additional water from the tap, totaling about 1-2 gallons of water, and boiled it. As soon as it was boiling I poured it back into the mash and stirred up, which got me to a lot more respectable temperature.
Even with the wrapping I still lost a decent amount of heat so I might need to upgrade to actual insulation, or just sack up and do an actual Coleman Cooler MLT conversion.
I just let the mash rest, and then lautered to another bucket. I managed to get about 1.062 gravity from my first "gyle". I added my sparge water and let it sit, then lautered again. According to my refractometer readings of the runnings, at 1.020, I could have kept going but I had way more wort than I'm actually capable of boiling so I decided to leave it be. Generally you can lauter all the way down to about 1.008 before you start extracting tannins. In all I collected 5.5 gallons of wort with a combined pre-boil gravity of 1.052.
In the past I've topped up my boil kettle during the boil to maintain volume, so I have to top off less once the wort is in the fermenter. This time I knew I had too much wort and wasn't going to boil off enough over the hour, so I got the 2nd largest kettle in my apartment and filled that with wort hoping the extra boil off would let me use all my wort. I followed my hopping schedule as advertised, with the only real exception being I tossed a few pellets into the secondary boil, which I started a little earlier than the primary boil.
Prior to this brew I'd built my own immersion wort chiller, basically following what this guy did:
It's really easy and really cheap, there is pretty much no reason not to do it.
I chilled with that, and it took about 15 minutes to get to a pitchable temperature.
Post-boil I had 4 gallons of wort and topped back up to 5.5 gallons and pitched yeast. My Original Gravity was 1.048
I actually brewed this on Dec 5th, it's taken me this long to get around to writing this. The beer is about ready for bottling, so hopefully this goes better than the last. The krausen has fallen, and I hope to get around to bottling this weekend.
--PXA
Saturday, October 29, 2011
October Horror 2011 - Post-season - Greatest hits 2009
I didn't originally write anything about the first October Horror Viewing season in 2009, but we watched some really good movies that year. So the first entry in the post season is this writeup of the entirety of the 2009 season.
That year we had simple categories since we were just starting: Zombies, Slashers, Hauntings & Exorcisms, and Scifi Horror.
Zombies week: Shaun of the Dead, Zombieland, Night of the Living Dead, 28 Days Later, Quarantine, Dead Snow, Braindead.
All these movies were pretty solid. Shaun and Zombieland are zombie/comedy classics and are very funny. Dead Snow was really fun to watch because of the novelty of the concept of Nazi Zombies and the balls to film zombies in bright daylight in the snow. Definitely a highlight and something I enjoy watching again from time to time. Although we originally watched the sub'd version I have a dub now which is much more fulfilling. 28 Days Later is a modern classic for being one of the first movies of the current zombie cultural resurgence, and also for the unapologetic fast zombies. Quarantine deserves special distinction since it was so unsettling it took me 3 tries to watch to the end. Braindead is an early Peter Jackson movie and is just weird. I don't know what to say about it, it's beyond messed up. I think my favorite of the week, horror wise, was Quarantine. In general I liked Shaun of the Dead the best since it is REALLY funny.
Slashers: Halloween, Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, Cut, Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2004), Saw, Prom Night (2004)
Prom Night was also on this year's list, partially because we either never watched it in 2009 or just didn't remember watching it in 2009. Halloween, Friday the 13th, and Nightmare on Elm Street are all huge classics. I probably liked Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street the best. Friday the 13th has pretty excellent kills and the twist killer reveal absolutely floored me the first time I saw it. Nightmare of course put Robert Englund's Freddy on the map, and I really like him as a character because of how bizarre and manic he is while still being half a second away from killing you dead. I think Cut deserves special mention for being quite fun to watch with a pretty novel concept. It's a little silly, but hey...Molly Ringwald in a horror movie.
Hauntings & Exorcisms: The Unborn, Rosemary's Baby, The Omen, 1408, A Haunting in Connecticut, The Amityville Horror, 13 Ghosts.
Exorcism movies are some of my favorites. The Exorcism of Emily Rose is probably #1 on my list of scariest movies ever. I watched it at 2 in the afternoon, with all the lights on, in a dorm room, with the door open, on a green tinted 15" CRT monitor and it still scared the crap out of it. Personally the least solid movie in this week was Rosemary's Baby. I just didn't think it aged well and it was kindof weird and boring. The Amityville (remake) was decent, although a little visual at the expense of personality. The Omen (remake) was also fun, but a bit silly. It was just a bit too easy to mock. 13 Ghosts is one of my favorite movies, but not particularly scary. It's a very original concept and the execution is wonderfully stylish. The Unborn is also very stylish, with some excellent jump scares and a few genuinely creepy moments. 1408 is also very creepy, but feels a little rushed and frantic. They probably didn't want to run out of things to do since the movie was set in a single room. A Haunting in Connecticut is probably my favorite horror movie out of the week. Pretty much everything it does is perfect.
Scifi Horror: Pulse, The Mist, Dreamcatcher, The Thing, Doom, Event Horizon, Aliens.
Aliens was a poor choice, as it much more action focused than Alien. Doom as well, I honestly don't know why we put it there. I guess it had some horror moments in the middle. Dreamcatcher is another great movie that has a lot of fun moments, it's just a bit more disturbing than creepy. Still well worth watching. The Mist was a great tense movie, but the ending is very polarizing. You either really love it or you hate the death out of it. It gets a major thing right that a lot of monster movies just forget: The monsters are scarier the less you see of them. Pulse is a guilty pleasure for me. It never seems to get a lot of respect and the sequel was horrible. It's got a lot of plot holes but I just love the concept and the execution is competent enough to make it interesting. Event Horizon is a modern horror classic, as far as I'm concerned. It's scary, it's gross, it's bizarre. The concept is innovative and the execution is horrifyingly tense. It's also one of my favorite scary movies and does pretty much nothing wrong.
--PXA
That year we had simple categories since we were just starting: Zombies, Slashers, Hauntings & Exorcisms, and Scifi Horror.
Zombies week: Shaun of the Dead, Zombieland, Night of the Living Dead, 28 Days Later, Quarantine, Dead Snow, Braindead.
All these movies were pretty solid. Shaun and Zombieland are zombie/comedy classics and are very funny. Dead Snow was really fun to watch because of the novelty of the concept of Nazi Zombies and the balls to film zombies in bright daylight in the snow. Definitely a highlight and something I enjoy watching again from time to time. Although we originally watched the sub'd version I have a dub now which is much more fulfilling. 28 Days Later is a modern classic for being one of the first movies of the current zombie cultural resurgence, and also for the unapologetic fast zombies. Quarantine deserves special distinction since it was so unsettling it took me 3 tries to watch to the end. Braindead is an early Peter Jackson movie and is just weird. I don't know what to say about it, it's beyond messed up. I think my favorite of the week, horror wise, was Quarantine. In general I liked Shaun of the Dead the best since it is REALLY funny.
Slashers: Halloween, Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, Cut, Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2004), Saw, Prom Night (2004)
Prom Night was also on this year's list, partially because we either never watched it in 2009 or just didn't remember watching it in 2009. Halloween, Friday the 13th, and Nightmare on Elm Street are all huge classics. I probably liked Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street the best. Friday the 13th has pretty excellent kills and the twist killer reveal absolutely floored me the first time I saw it. Nightmare of course put Robert Englund's Freddy on the map, and I really like him as a character because of how bizarre and manic he is while still being half a second away from killing you dead. I think Cut deserves special mention for being quite fun to watch with a pretty novel concept. It's a little silly, but hey...Molly Ringwald in a horror movie.
Hauntings & Exorcisms: The Unborn, Rosemary's Baby, The Omen, 1408, A Haunting in Connecticut, The Amityville Horror, 13 Ghosts.
Exorcism movies are some of my favorites. The Exorcism of Emily Rose is probably #1 on my list of scariest movies ever. I watched it at 2 in the afternoon, with all the lights on, in a dorm room, with the door open, on a green tinted 15" CRT monitor and it still scared the crap out of it. Personally the least solid movie in this week was Rosemary's Baby. I just didn't think it aged well and it was kindof weird and boring. The Amityville (remake) was decent, although a little visual at the expense of personality. The Omen (remake) was also fun, but a bit silly. It was just a bit too easy to mock. 13 Ghosts is one of my favorite movies, but not particularly scary. It's a very original concept and the execution is wonderfully stylish. The Unborn is also very stylish, with some excellent jump scares and a few genuinely creepy moments. 1408 is also very creepy, but feels a little rushed and frantic. They probably didn't want to run out of things to do since the movie was set in a single room. A Haunting in Connecticut is probably my favorite horror movie out of the week. Pretty much everything it does is perfect.
Scifi Horror: Pulse, The Mist, Dreamcatcher, The Thing, Doom, Event Horizon, Aliens.
Aliens was a poor choice, as it much more action focused than Alien. Doom as well, I honestly don't know why we put it there. I guess it had some horror moments in the middle. Dreamcatcher is another great movie that has a lot of fun moments, it's just a bit more disturbing than creepy. Still well worth watching. The Mist was a great tense movie, but the ending is very polarizing. You either really love it or you hate the death out of it. It gets a major thing right that a lot of monster movies just forget: The monsters are scarier the less you see of them. Pulse is a guilty pleasure for me. It never seems to get a lot of respect and the sequel was horrible. It's got a lot of plot holes but I just love the concept and the execution is competent enough to make it interesting. Event Horizon is a modern horror classic, as far as I'm concerned. It's scary, it's gross, it's bizarre. The concept is innovative and the execution is horrifyingly tense. It's also one of my favorite scary movies and does pretty much nothing wrong.
--PXA
Friday, October 28, 2011
October Horror 2011: Day 28 - The Last Winter
The Last Winter, released in 2006 was directed by Larry Fessenden. It stars Ron Perlman and Connie Britton.
As the final movie of the official horror viewing season this year I was really expecting something fun, especially with Ron Perlman in the lead role. Unfortunately the movie ruined itself in the last act deciding to be preachy instead of just presenting a cool story with the message they wanted. I'm aware it's a bit of a hot-button issue, but they could've taken the high road and just presented things without the soap box.
The basics here are that an American oil company is trying to build an ice road to a remote spot in the arctic circle so they can open a well. The oil reserve they're trying to tap is apparently large enough to secure U.S. energy independence for quite some time. The project leader, played by Ron Perlman immediately begins butting heads with the environmentalist who's been assigned to the base to report to the government with environmental impact assessments. Effectively, the government sold the land to the company under the condition that they operate an environmentally sound operation on it. The environmentalist won't let Ron Perlman build the ice road because it's not cold enough for the road to be safely built, but Perlman's character just doesn't care and is going to find a way to get this oil.
The movie itself is actually really good for the most part. The characters are pretty genuine, if a bit difficult to distinguish. Ron Perlman's character is a bit one note and inappropriately angry, which plays into the obvious preachiness because he represents the company and we're supposed to hate him. Everyone else seems like real people just trying to do their jobs in a stressful environment. What they really do well here is that the tension is mostly accomplished through the behavior of the characters: They act strange, they don't quite behave normally or as they used to. It's very unnerving. This is amplified by how isolated the cast is to begin with, and then by how much time each of them spends alone. You hear things happening off camera, the characters see things that the camera doesn't show and since no one else is around to verify you just don't know if it really happened or if it was in their head. The tension is supremely built for the first 80% or so of the movie.
Then in the middle of the 3rd act they start showing us far too much. Instead of leaving it nebulous, they make it obviously clear what's happening, and what's happening is just stupid. If you can forgive Larry for hopping on the soapbox right at the end there it's actually a pretty good supernatural suspense movie. If you can't, it's still a good movie that got ruined at the end by obnoxious moralizing.
With this, Horror Viewing Season 2011 is over. We only planned 28 movies instead of 31 since it's easier to divide into 4 categories and also for a bit of buffer. I may fill the remaining 3 days by adding some additional movies I liked or really good movies from 2009's crop.
--PXA
Thursday, October 27, 2011
October Horror 2011: Day 27 - Cry_Wolf
Cry_Wolf is a 2005 American movie directed by Katie Couric's nephew and stars Not-Thora Birch, Jared Padalecki, and Jon Bon Jovi.
It's a pretty interesting premise: Owen is the new guy at a preparatory high school in Australia and falls in with a group of students who break out of their dorms at night and gather in the school's chapel to play a game they call Cry Wolf. The game is a sociology game where one member of the group is designated a Wolf, and nobody in the game knows who. Each "night" the Wolf "murders" someone. This is followed by a round of accusations and the townsfolk eventually "lynch" whoever they think is the Wolf.
After a girl is murdered in the nearby woods the students invent a serial killer called The Wolf and write an email to the student body describing the kills he makes as he works through a school. They design the kills after members of their own group. As mass hysteria grows they revel in how they're causing it all, until Bon Jovi discovers the fraud and threatens to expel Owen. I don't remember exactly why they let him stay.
Owen begins receiving threatening IMs and messages from the Wolf, as if he was suddenly a real person. Paranoia among the group builds and Owen is attacked by someone dressed exactly as the Wolf they made up. There's a double and triple twist, which aren't actually horrible.
It's a pretty decent mystery/thriller sort of movie, with a fairly inventive story. It fails to hold attention at points and it's sometimes difficult to follow who the female characters are. I don't think I would watch it again, but it was actually pretty fun the first time around. It felt a bit like a late 90's teen slasher movie, just a bit more intelligent.
Horror Season 2011 concludes tomorrow with: The Last Winter, set in the Arctic.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
October Horror 2011: Day 26 - Shutter
Released in 2008 Shutter is an American remake of a Thai film of the same name from 2004. The remake stars Joshua Jackson in the lead role.
The story is that an American photographer who previous lived in Japan has moved back to the states for a period of time. He eventually gets married and accepts a job offer to move back to Japan. From the honeymoon onward it seems some spirit is stalking the newlyweds mostly manifesting as distortions in photographs. As the haunting intensifies the spirit manifest as hallucinations and then is able to manifest in the physical world just enough to kill some people until they die. The nature of the haunting is revealed, then re-revealed. The film closes with Josh Jackson in a mental hospital in a catatonic state with burns on his neck and face.
The movie is well developed, although not very creepy. It is fairly suspenseful. What drags it down a bit is the characters. Namely, I want to punch most of them. Josh himself isn't bad, but a bit dismissive and and makes some dumb moves. In the end it turns out he's a big huge asshole, but it just doesn't make sense. His wife has an unfortunate tendency to go wife-rage jealousy on every single woman who wanders within 4 feet of her husband. The other characters are mostly superfluous.
The end is actually pretty damned creepy, with the final photo taking being just really messed up. The film is a bit lackluster as a whole, but everything in it is pretty good. It's worth watching because it is suspenseful and creepy at points, but probably not worth rewatching.
With the larger continents done, we move to Australia for: Cry_Wolf.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
October Horror 2011: Day 25 - Dominion
Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist was released in 2005 on the coattails of Exorcist: The Beginning. It could almost be classified as a remake.
Basically in 2004 Paul Schrader was hired to film a prequel to 1973's The Exorcist with a story written by Caleb Carr and William Wisher, jr. Schrader had essentially finished his movie when the studio decided it wasn't to its liking and hired Renny Harlin to refilm the movie. The resulting movie, Exorcist: The Beginning, was released in 2004 to poor reception on the part of audience and critics alike. Since the version the studio liked was doing poorly they decided to give the version they didn't like a chance and threw Schrader a few thousand dollars to finish his movie, which they released in 2005 with the name Dominion: Prequel to The Exorcist.
It's really interesting to compare both of those movies since they have the same story and effectively the same plot, with different direction, and slightly different screenplays and cast. The movies are so vastly different that the author of the original Exorcist story describes The Beginning as his most humiliating professional experience while saying that Dominion is "Handsome, classy, and elegant".
Both movies tell of Father Lankester Merrin's first encounter with the demon Pazuzu prior to the events of The Exorcist. The events depicted vary quite wildly from the flashback sequences of those events from Exorcist II: The Heretic. The basic premise is that after suffering a crisis of faith during World War II, Father Merrin takes a leave of absence and joins an archeological expedition to East Africa which uncovers an early Christian Church that was built on the ruins of an older pagan temple dedicated to Pazuzu. The demon possesses a local pariah and does spiritual battle with Merrin. The encounter reaffirms his faith and Merrin dedicates himself to the exorcism of demons and eternal battle with Pazuzu.
Dominion is a profoundly subtle and uncomfortable film, favoring atmosphere building and story to creep out the audience over grotesque visuals. It's a movie that's difficult to look away from. When it's not showing something designed for obvious shock, it's building an atmosphere saturated with cultural tension between African natives and British military forces. The story evolves slowly, as Merrin is forced to confront the demon with the aid of God. Even though the final transition involves Merrin regaining his faith and using it to save the woman who he can no longer be with because of that faith, the movie doesn't harp on a religious message. It's a personal struggle of Lankester Merrin to believe in God despite the overwhelming presence of evil and wider mentions of religion are only really used to establish a context or contribute to the tension.
The demon and the evil events in Dominion are much creepier, while The Beginning winds up being far more typical of supernatural horror, and as such far less creepy.
Both movies are worth checking out to compare with each other, but if you were to only watch one of them Dominion would be it. It's a much creepier movie across the board with better developed characters and thick layers of tension. It's subtle without being tied to the idea that subtle means that nothing happens, and has great lulls between tense moments. Comparatively, The Beginning bashes the audience over the head with important points because it doesn't trust them not to miss those points, and panders to an "EVIL MUST BE SICK" mentality to the point where it does the story a disservice. Dominion, as Ebert put it, takes evil seriously.
Next up, Asia with the Shutter remake.
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