October Horror 2014: 7 - Silver Bullet

The Stephen King adaptation is a mainstay of any good October marathon.  This year's is the Werewolf-themed Silver Bullet.  This was the directorial debut of veteran TV director Daniel Attias and stars Gary Busey and Corey Haim.

What's going on here is that a small town in Maine is suddenly terrorized by a series of bizarre animal attacks.  A paraplegic boy becomes convinced that the attacks are made by the town's preacher, who is a werewolf.  He enlists the help of his sister and his alcoholic uncle Red to get proof and eventually kill the wolf.

The werewolf transformation is pretty cool, but a standout is a middle sequence where the Reverend begins hallucinating during a service because of his wolfyness.

Some of the acting is actually pretty nice, but then there's also Gary Busey.  Now he's not really bad so much as has a completely bizarre character.  Busey apparently acted each scene as scripted then did additional takes where he ad-libbed all his lines.  The producers liked many of the improvised scenes better, so the performance in the movie is mostly ad-libbed Busey.

The things that fall down the most are the bits Stephen King weirdness.  I don't really think that having the protagonist in a wheel chair was used to advantage at all.  Midway through the movie Red gives the kid a custom-built, motorized, wheelchair that they call the Silver Bullet so they can give the title a double-meaning.  But now he's basically rolling around on a motorcycle so when he has to run away, he's faster than a person on foot would be.  His only problem is running out of gas.

Regardless of any Stephen King-ness it was a pretty fun movie.  The werewolf design was a bit meh, but the transformation was good, the story was decent, and there were some good moments around the preacher's mental state.

Next up, Home Invasion week begins with Funny Games.

October Horror 2014: 6 - Werewolf Hunter: The Legend of Romasanta

Also known as Romasanta: The Werewolf Hunt this 2004 thriller/historical fiction is based on the 1850's account of mass murderer Manuel Blanco Romasanta who claimed at his trial that he committed the murders because he was a werewolf.


It's a really interesting movie to watch, it does delve into the supernatural aspect a little bit.  I would've liked a bit more on that, mostly since a huge part of werewolf films is the transformation scene and this one was a little dull.

Another tenant of werewolf movies is the struggle against the animal nature of the wolf, but this character doesn't seem to have that.  He's a little sad about it, but doesn't really seem to struggle until the end when he's claiming the woman he was with helped him overcome it.  Which is doubly odd considering he seemed to be embracing his animal passions in their scenes, if you catch my drift.

Anyway, I'm writing this weeks after watching it so my recollection is getting foggy but here's the takeaway:  It's a decent movie.  Pretty well made with some good effects, though I wish it had more.  It mixes in a nice subtle amount of supernatural to play with the drama and make it a bit more "What-if".  Worth watching.

Next up: Silver Bullet

October Horror 2014: 5 - Transylvania 6-5000

I first heard of this movie on a list from Obscurus Lupa of some of her favorite ridiculous genre movies, so when it also showed up on some site's list of werewolf movies I figured it'd be a good way to get something I'd been meaning to watch off the list and fill in one of the marathon's weeks.

I'm not really disappointed by this movie, but it's only barely got a werewolf in it.  It's an offbeat comedy about a town in Transylvania that is obsessed with shedding the reputation of "Spooky Transylvania" to become a modern tourist town.  To that end the Mayor has opened a lavish full-service hotel and is actively covering up any sightings of monsters.

However a Frankenstein's monster sighting gets out and a tape is sent to a state-side tabloid.  The magazine send the owner's son/toady and Jeff Goldblum to Transylvania to uncover the monster.  However, the Mayor views it as a sale's pitch for his new hotel.

A lot of the comedy is pretty awkward and strained.  Some of the jokes do land, but there's a lot of trying too hard.  It's also got a super cheesy everyone-is-happy heartwarming ending, but for the type of comedy it is, it sort of deserves it.  I don't particularly recall what was said about it, but it was an inoffensively bad horror/comedy.  Anyway,

next up? Werewolf Hunter: The Legend of Romasanta

October Horror 2014: 4 - Skinwalkers

Skinwalkers is a movie I was originally interested in since during a round of IMDb surfing I found out it was co-written by James Roday, who plays Shawn Spencer on the show Psych.  As the show is really funny, in part due to the grasp of the character Roday had from his audition reel onward.  So I was curious to see if his writing chops matched up.


However at this point I hope he didn't have too much to do with the movie since it was kindof a mess.
As near as I can gather, the movie's about rival werewolf clans who fight over the realization of a prophecy.  There's a half-breed child born to a human mother with a werewolf father who will end the curse of all werewolves when he turns 13.  He's protected by one clan who keeps their nature secret from both him and his mother, and hunted by another clan who wants to kill them because they like being werewolves.  If that sounds like an interesting setup, it kindof is.  However the movie tries to make itself more interesting by never really being clear about what's going on, instead dropping the audience into the middle of things with no explanation of even the characters.  I still don't know some people's names.

About midway through after a lot of really confusing running around and some context-less character death, one of the characters drops a plot dump on the mother and the whole thing lurches into the final act.  Elias Koteas and Kim Coates are woefully underutilized because the movie would prefer to spend time with the "Prettier" characters, unfortunately Elias is the one with most of the plot information.  And I almost don't want to mention the perfunctory sacrificial Indian they included so they could make some sort of tangential connection between the modern werewolf curse and the original "Skinwalking" ability of the native tribes.  See what I did there?  Title drop.  Awww yeah.

It's just really a lazy and very thin story with a thin veneer of Werewolf draped over it that just doesn't work.

Next up: Transylvania 6-5000

October Horror 2014 - 3 - Ginger Snaps

Ginger Snaps was released in 2000 and has gained significant reputation among horror fans as a very creative Werewolf movie.  Also, as an obvious allegory for puberty and menstruation.


Ginger Snaps stars Katherine Isabelle and Emily Perkins as heavily emo sisters.  Obsessed with death and suicide, the sisters are constantly antagonized by more "normal" teens at school.  Ginger often defends her sister who is clearly far more awkward.

One night they sneak out of the house to steal another girl's dog as revenge for attacking them during gym class.  While out, they're attacked by a massive wolf-like creature and Ginger is badly injured.  Surprisingly she heals quickly and after a few comatose days is not in full health but is far more lively and social than she used to be.  This begins to drive a wedge between her and her sister who feels the new "popular" Ginger is a betrayal.  She begins to realize the changes aren't late-blooming puberty but is actually Ginger becoming a werewolf and enlists the help of the local *cough*herbalist to try to find a cure and save her sister.

All told, it's a good movie and definitely deserves its reputation as a very creative take on werewolves.  The sisterhood and puberty themes are simultaneously beyond over-the-top and understated, with the superficial aspects taking front and center but the more subtle character beats just being.  Also the creature effects are pretty damned good.

The movie has two sequels that came out in the same year as each other.  The leads both return, which is nice.  But given that Ginger Snaps 2 and Ginger Snaps Back came out within a few months of each other, I don't have much confidence in either of them being much good.

Next up: Skinwalkers

October Horror 2014: 2 - Red Riding Hood

Red Riding Hood, re-imagined as tween girl supernatural romance.  Directed by the director of Twilight and starring Amanda Seyfried, Max Irons, and Gary Oldman.


Actually the cast here has a lot of recognizable faces.  Shiloh Fernandez makes an appearance, as do Billy Burke, Lukas Haas, Michael Hogan, and Michael Shanks.  And unfortunately, at least in the case of Hogan and Shanks, act way below their ability.  Max Irons seems drunk the whole time, too.  That's not to say the movie is bad, oddly.  The sets and are really good and for all its obligatory "supernatural teen romance" tropes the story is competently put together.  Even the mystery is decent.  Gary Oldman is entertaining and wonderfully hammy.

It really seems like it was a movie that had all the potential to be a good but unremarkable lazy day movie but got kneecapped by shoehorning in a bunch of romance tropes.  Ironically what held it back quality-wise probably made it infinitely more marketable.  Though spending so much on name actors and marketing probably reduced the effects budget to the point where the CGI wolf looks pretty asstastic, but the practical work was good.

All in all, it was alright.  Better than I was expecting.

Next up: Ginger Snaps

October Horror 2014: 1 - Dog Soldiers

Dog Soldiers is the 2002 feature debut of director Neil Marshall, starring Sean Pertwee and Kevin McKidd.  The film is about a military unit on exercises in the forest that gets attacked by werewolves.


Marshall has made a pretty big name for himself as an action director with titles like The Descent and Centurion, as well as two epic battle-centric episodes of Game of Thrones.  And you can see the beginnings of his style here since the action scenes are really fun.  There are rough bits that feel like 90's XTREME, but there's still a lot of great action.  And there's a lot of humor in the action which serves nicely to keep things going.

The movie seems built on references.  There are characters named Bruce Campbell and Harry G. Wells.  Also a "Witherspoon" character nicknamed "Spoon" that seemed to exist so that the line "There is no Spoon" could be used.  There is a character named Cooper who could be a reference to the Cooper character in Event Horizon, which also starred Sean Pertwee, though that's a bit of a stretch.

As a final note, the creature effects are pretty damned impressive, relying mostly on suited actors to play werewolves rather than CGI.  Towards the end when the faces are focused on more often it gets a little lame looking since the expressions are baked in, but on a whole they're great.

The story got a little weird to follow towards the end when they introduced some twists, but the action sequences were still great fun.

All in all, a damn fine action/horror and a nice chance to see a great action director starting out.

Next up: Red Riding Hood

Horror Off-Season: Wolf Creek

I originally wasn't going to write up Wolf Creek because it's a few years older than what I normally hit during the off season.  But the more I think about my own reaction to the movie the more I feel I owe it to fairness to write it up here.

Released in 2009, Wolf Creek is an Australian horror film written and directed by Greg McLean and stars John Jarratt as Mick Taylor.  McLean is a member of a loose and unofficial group of filmmakers called the "Splat Pack" along with Eli Roth, Alexandre Aja, and Darren Lynn Bousman who are all known for making realistic and brutally violent thrillers.  Sort of like an international version of the New French Extremism.  Though I really think Bousman's true calling is deranged punk musicals.

Part of the reason I wasn't going to put this up initially was my known distaste for these types of movies.  I've hated every one of them I've seen:  Asylum Blackout, Martyrs, The Loved Ones, etc... I'm not a huge fan of anything like Hostel and that ilk, but I found that at least inoffensive.  And Wolf Creek is one of those exact types of horrible, bloody, depraved, torture filled jaunts I'm wont to rage against.  However, Wolf Creek is actually a fairly decent movie and that is just damned interesting.  Beware, there be spoilers here.

The film itself is about three young adults that are backpacking around Australia.  While the characters fall into asshole horror film character stereotype a little bit during the opening but they never go full jackass.  When they're offensive it's usually because they just don't think or know better.  Otherwise they try to be nice and welcoming kids instead of confrontational jerks.  After trekking around with them for a bit and getting some exposition on who likes who, they decide to go visit a meteor impact crater, the eponymous Wolf Creek Crater.  This is a real thing, google it...it's pretty huge.  However, their car breaks down and they're forced to spend the night when they run into helpful (if strange) outback denizen Mick Taylor who tows them back to his camp where he drugs them with plans to torture and kill them, one-by-one.  However, one of the girls manages to escape, then springing the other they lead Mick on a merry chase.  The guy of the group is pretty much a non-entity for almost the entire 3rd act and only reappears briefly in the final reel to wrap up the story.

What I think this movie has that so many other "torture porn" entries seem to lack is a sense of interest and pacing.  Mick Taylor is mustache-twirlingly evil and he loves it that way.  He seems to be aware on some level of how insane and depraved he is and just hams it up.  All too often these movies tend to feel like they need to make their serial torturer super serious and dark because if you're that evil you can't have fun, or give them some sort of sad past backstory so that they're delusional and think that what they're doing is OK or that they don't have a choice.  This sort of joyous sadism really elevates Mick as a horror killer to a level similar to Freddy, in early installments of the series anyway.

Another point was pacing.  Less enjoyable movies will continually bombard you with horrific images, feeding you endless carnage so that you can't stop to breath and let anything have psychological weight.  Wolf Creek is pretty brisk, but it varies things up tonally.  Rather than an assembly line of wounds inflicted on characters you don't care about, Wolf Creek gives us disturbing torture, Mick being gleeful, the characters getting the upper hand, hiding tensely, almost getting away, thinking they're safe, realizing they're not, etc.  What this does is prevent audience burn out from too much of a single pitch and also let moments of torture marinate into fear and despair, which is how torture should work in a movie.

So take that for what it is.  I'm still not a fan of these absurdly gory movies and I'll take my supernatural stuff over it any day, but when they're done well torture flicks can be nice movies.  And this movie was actually decent to watch.  Also, if you can score the DVD version there is an absolutely hilarious deleted scene you should check out.

G'DAY!

--PXA

Horror Off-Season: Deliver Us From Evil

It's been a really long time since I've reviewed "Based on a true story" horror.  The last one was probably The Possession though I'd put dollars to donuts that I've hit something else in the interim.  Anyway, Deliver Us From Evil is a major horror film directed by Scott Derrickson, written by Derrickson and Paul Harris Boardman, and starring Eric Bana and Joel McHale.  Released in July 2014, the movie is based on the accounts of NYC police officer Ralph Sarchie as written in his book, Beware the Night.

The book details several mostly disconnected paranormal investigations conducted by Sarchie who was, at the time, splitting his life between traditional police work and working on spiritual cases.  To adapt it to a movie, several events from the book have been worked into an overarching narrative.  Also interesting is that while the actual Ralph Sarchie is both a cop and devout believer in the supernatural, in the movie he's been split into 100% cop Sarchie and the believer side is taken care of by unconventional priest, Father Mendoza.

The long and short of it is that I don't like this movie.  Now, I try to keep most of my write-ups on the shorter side and this is quite a bit lengthier than the others, but this movie is almost 2 hours long and just felt like it missed the mark so many times that I can't let it go.  I've even left a few points out because they don't fit and are pretty minor.  That said, there are good things; individual scenes here and there...makeup effects are good, and the acting was good to me.  I loved Joel McHale's character, and though Bana's accent seemed a bit over the top having listened to the actual Ralph Sarchie he emulated the real guy pretty well.

The basic premise is that while in Iraq, three marines find a doorway to demonic possession in a cave.  They bring this possession back with them and several years later NYPD Sergeant Ralph Sarchie gets involved in several seemingly unrelated cases which all lead back to one of the possessed marines.  In order to defeat evil he must conquer his own personal demons and ally himself with an exorcist, finding his own spirituality.

Conceptually, this movie is all over the place.  There's a possession story, a semblance of a cult story, a man haunted by his past story, and an ancient demonic story; all framed in a procedural cop drama.  It's like they made several movies with the same cast and decided to edit them all together into one movie.  Ideas and plots are hinted at then dropped, things happen with very little explanation...it just feels overstuffed.

From what I can gather, Derrickson and Boardman had begun working on an adaptation of the book set to be produced by Screen Gems, however Jerry Bruckheimer had also been working on an adaptation of the book being written by David Ayer, Bryan Bertino, and Bruce McKenna.  Some months after Derrickson and Boardman started their script, Jerry Bruckheimer's film production company partnered with Screen Gems.  Of the Bruckheimer writers only one of the three had ever worked on a horror movie before (Bryan Bertino wrote and directed 2008's The Strangers).  David Ayer had written Training Day, End of Watch, and S.W.A.T. and Bruce McKenna had written episodes of Band of Brothers and The Pacific.

I feel like each production company had begun writing very different movies and when they combined forces they mashed the scripts together, resulting in casualties.  Even at 2 hours long, the movie sprints so quickly between points that it never settles down to let any tension develop.  On top of that some of the dialog is so comically bad it completely breaks the sense of realism the movie seemed to be going for with the "based on a true story" presentation. Ralph Sarchie apparently hates cats, because every time there is any sort of feline on screen he can't stop himself from delivering a totally out of place line about how bad he thinks cats are.  Could be a house cat, could be a goddamned lion.  Doesn't matter.

Even with the story in shambles, I think it could've been at least a passable though meandering horror movie if it was visually more fun to watch.  Major problem being how dark the movie is.  It's almost like Derrickson got upset at people complaining about how dark Sinister was and decided to light half his movie with a cell phone flashlight just to show us what dark actually looked like.  Except since the pacing was so hurried these scenes weren't tense so much as frustrating because I couldn't see a damned thing.  There was some really uncomfortable gore at a few points, but that was about as effective as it ever got, visually.

Another thing that upset me was the really cheap scares.  Now, I don't necessarily mean jump scares.  I consider these quick startling shocks to be a valid tool, and like any other tool can be misused.  What I hated here was the screamer, which is done exactly like the flash video screamers.  Sarchie and his partner are watching security camera footage from the zoo when the bloody and beaten face of some guy appears on screen with a bit soundtrack sting.  This is the face of a child killer that Sarchie beat to death several years ago, and he is haunted by his guilt over the incident.  Later on, Sarchie is in his daughter's bedroom to the overused sounds of detuned Pop Goes the Weasel when he bends down to pick something up.  When he stands he sees that guy's gruesome nastiness leering over his daughter's bed.  Exact same scare, except it works better this time because there's some atmosphere and build up to the scene.  It was still kindof corny because of the soundtrack, but it was better than a screamer.

Then there's also the heavy handed use of The Doors, the band, to represent evil.  The possessed people repeat lyrics, songs kick onto the jukebox, etc.  Sarchie keeps hearing snippets of song and asking people if they heard it.  Like, half a dozen times.  I feel like in any other movie Sarchie's friends would've staged an intervention or convinced him to take some vacation time with how often he asks them if they've seen or heard something.  Some of the hallucinations are part of the haunted-by-his-past subplot but some are just The Doors, because the movie needs to make sure you understand that the spells written on the walls open a doorway to possession when read.

Finally, the paint-by-numbers exorcism upset me.  It didn't seem like there were any stakes to it when it happened in the movie.  The priest just outlines the simple, named steps of the exorcism and then they go through them one-by-one.  At some steps the demon makes token callbacks to Sarchie's and Mendoza's backstories to try to break their stride, but they get over it within like 30 seconds and go back to the exorcism.  I wasn't thrilled with it when I was watching the movie, but at least it was fairly well done visually.  But then I learned that Derrickson directed this, I was more disappointed because of how good Emily Rose was.  It's like he knew how to do it well, obviously, but he just wasn't on his A game.
Sorry for going on so long, but I just felt like this movie could have been good if it wasn't so unfocused and heavy-handed. Missed potential irks me more than straight up bad movies.

--PXA

Horror Off-Season: Afflicted

Afflicted is a 2013/2014 found footage movie written and directed by Derek Lee and Clif Prowse, who also star as Derek and Clif.  Woah!

I don't want to risk spoiling this too much, but I don't think any of this synopsis will be surprising.  The movie was originally conceived as a real-world horror web series similar to EverymanHYBRID or MarbleHornets, except without Slenderman obviously.  With the feature film landing as legitimately found footage to fill in events that would be intentionally left out.  This idea was dropped, probably due to inexperience with the found-footage format and the effort it would take to manage the smoke screen.

The film is presented as the travelogue "Ends of the Earth" being filmed by lifelong friends Derek and Clif, who've decided to leave their mundane careers behind and travel around the world together.  Clif, being a filmmaker, has decided to produce a documentary/video blog site about their adventures.  Added poignancy is delivered by the reveal that prior to leaving, Derek was diagnosed with an AVM, a malformation of blood vessels that could cause a cerebral hemorrhage and kill him at any time.  Despite a strong possibility of death if ever further than 20 minutes away from a major hospital, Derek feels he has to go on this trip with his friend.  It's super bro-tastic.

Just a few days into the trip, while in Paris, Derek attempts to hook up with a French girl named Audrey and brings her back to the hotel he and Clif are staying in.  Some time later, Clif and two friend they were traveling with decide to attempt a "Turkish Cockblock" on Derek, only to discover he's passed out and bleeding from the eyebrow and arm.  Despite this, Derek insists on continuing the trip and he and Clif travel to Italy.  From there Derek begins exhibiting symptoms of a bizarre illness and then things go totally wayward and wrong, while Clif insists on filming all of it and posting to the blog.

Without going any further into detail I feel like the reveal of Derek's illness is handled really cleverly.  At under 85 minutes the whole movie is very tight with very little cruft, the whole thing is super streamlined.  I think as part of that it comes off as slightly utilitarian to the story; spending only as much time as it needs to establish each point, which I don't actually fault in a found footage movie.  A real person filming real events would not flounder around establishing "mood" or creating artistic and visually stunning atmospheric shots.  I think this was part of the reason Mr. Jones was held back in my eyes: that started from a found footage perspective then dropped it for dream logic while still maintaining that it was footage rather than dropping the pretense altogether.  Afflicted never falls into this and maintains not only its found footage style but also keeps the video blog site in the mix the whole time due to Clif's compulsive filming and hands-free camera rigs.  It's really one of the finest explanations for why all the footage exists that I've seen yet.

Also, the characters of Clif and Derek are wonderful and their friendship, though bro-tastic, is very deep and manages to drive the movie; resulting in a lot really effective and touching moments.  While no single scene is stand out, there is one that felt like it missed the mark a bit in tone.  The concept of it doesn't really bother me, just the way that it was handled felt like it was too "epic" for the rest of the movie which was really character driven. The scene in question is a confrontation between Derek and Audrey towards the end of the movie. See, Derek is a vampire and Audrey is his sire. Derek has been tracking her, convinced she somehow holds the truth to how to cure or kill himself. Turns out Audrey isn't too happy with being reintroduced and has an epic vampire fight with Derek involving a lot of environment destruction and epic wind-up punches. In fact, this fight is such a big deal it's the only time the camera is actually damaged. Even a drawn out battle with an entire SWAT team didn't put a single nick in the lens. But it just felt like too much of a stock action beat with major destruction rather than a realistic fight or even just a heated argument which could've sufficed.

As one final odd bit of continuity:  Derek, as a vampire, beats up and then bites Clif and drinks his blood. Despite not meaning to and also being totally in the thralls of feral vampire bloodlust where you'd think he'd drink as much blood as possible, this does not kill Clif. Though much of the film after this involves Derek's guilt over killing Clif, his friend actually comes back after his burial. However, lacking a friend in Derek and the subsequent pep talk by Audrey, Clif doesn't understand how to handle his vampirism and goes completely feral à la Daybreakers. This is only shown in a mid-credits scene. Given that Derek did not intend to create a vampire and also would've drank his fill rather than leaving some amount of blood behind, which is another common way of creating a vampire, how easy is it to accidentally create a vampire in this world? Derek has a confrontation with a French SWAT team where he kills several of them, many by bites. Did he just create a vampire SWAT team? What about Feral Clif? If Derek accidentally sired Clif while feral, how many of Clif's victims become vampires themselves. At the end, Derek becomes an avenger only drinking the blood of "evil" people who murder others or hurt the helpless...how many of those become vampires?

Afflicted is a good movie, no doubts.  It's pretty cheap on Amazon Instant streaming right now.  Worth the watch.

--PXA

Horror Off-Season: Mr. Jones

Mr. Jones is a 2013 found footage movie written and directed by Karl Mueller, starring Jon Foster and Sarah Jones.  It's the director's feature debut, having previously written and directed a short film called Widow.

Mr. Jones follows a young couple, Penny and Scott, who move from the city to a gorgeous cabin in the mountains of California.  Penny has left her burgeoning career as a photographer to support Scott's dream of becoming a documentary filmmaker by filming nature documentary.  Unfortunately for their relationship, Scott didn't really think through what the point of said documentary was.  After several aimless weeks Scott stumbles onto the "studio" cabin of an art community myth/folk tale...the eponymous Mr. Jones.

Overall, I liked the movie, but I feel like it hit points where it became a little too abstract to really communicate the interesting ideas about the nature of dreams it hinted at having.  But then despite dropping the ball somewhat on getting through with conceptual ideas the final reel is really, really heavy-handed with making sure the audience grasps what literally happened.  Well, as much as the word "literally" can be applied to what happens in the 3rd act, with as symbol/dream logic/metaphysics heavy as it was.

I think a lot of the dialogue between Penny and Scott is improvised, which tends to result in a lot of their dialogue being talking over each other and shouting their names.  Further, this drags down the opening act of the movie because not much is happening yet, and it's mostly the characters talking to each other and setting up why they dive so hard into the Mr. Jones story.  Fortunately the middle parts work really well, where Penny and Scott are split up because Scott is interviewing experts on Mr. Jones in NYC and Penny is taking photos and stalking the guy through the woods.  It's really effective at building the mythos of the character and making him seem creepy, not really because of any malevolence on his part but just because of his unknown motivations and the odd and unnerving effects that follow around people who receive his artwork.

The final act is visually interesting, but incredibly confusing.  The fluffy visual aspects that don't really serve the plot drag on a good amount but the important points blast past so quickly I almost didn't notice them.  There's also something they hint at during the NYC interviews that gets worked into the dream world portions of the finale, but is so heavily emphasized it loses its original nightmare connotation and becomes silly. For anyone wondering, in an interview a guy who burned his Mr. Jones piece becomes plagued by a nightmare in which he's chasing himself to the point where he can no longer tell the dream from reality. This manifests in the finale by a hooded figure dressed exactly like Scott chasing Scott and Penny around while holding a camera to his face. It was cool, but then became heavy handed. Then the final resolution is also an interesting twist, but is reiterated by an extended closing narration.  It lent a symmetry in that a narration from Scott bookends the movie but it felt a bit heavy handed.

So my final verdict is Mr. Jones isn't a bad movie by any stretch, it's just undeniably weird.  So weird it does seem to distract from what I thought the feeling and themes of the movie were.  It could have been better but I feel like it could have been significantly worse.  I was able to take the moments I enjoyed and ride out the weirdness of the end and by the time the narration was explaining the ending I was already checked out, but nothing really bothered me.  If you spend too much effort trying to understand it or getting deeply into the movie, it might annoy you.  But as it stands it's good light viewing.

Interesting note, all the artwork in the movie was made by a Halloween artist named pumpkinrot.  His galleries are amazing, I'd love to find this guy's yard and wander through the fog with this stuff.

--PXA

Horror Off-Season: Oculus

At this point, there's no denying that I love Mike Flanagan (See exhibits A, and 2).  However, I was a bit anxious of what he'd do when partnered with a studio and given a budget.  Would the studio stomp on his Flanagan-ness?  Would he go crazy with the money and throw in a bunch of pointless effects?  Would telling an old story again make him just give up and get boring?

Well, he didn't.  Let's get that out of the way.  Oculus the feature is the same as Oculus the short, except it's totally different.  What we get here is a really logical expansion of the original story.  The backstory, which previously had only small hints and references, gets completely fleshed out in a way that makes total sense with the original story and fits in the context of the feature without seeming like a stretch.  All the new characters work and the twists are nice.  I liked just about everything about this movie.  It was just as scary, familiar but fresh and not predictable...just...really well done.

Being based on the original short, Oculus is about an attempt to objectively prove that a demonic mirror named the Lasser Glass is responsible for a string a murder/suicides going back over 100 years finally culminating in the deaths of the parents of the lead character(s).  However, being feature length enables the movie to spend a lot more time with everything and elaborate on the background of its extended cast.  The two biggest changes are the location and the lead character.  In the short it was only Tim Russel, but in the feature the lead character is actually Tim's sister, Kaylie.  Also, instead of the experiment taking place on what is  assumed to be neutral ground (the white room), the mirror is taken back to the Russel's house and placed back on the office wall where it previously hung.

The film itself takes place in the days following Tim's release from the mental hospital he's been undergoing treatment in since the incident with his parents.  Kaylie managed to avoid institutionalization and has been working for an auction house where she's tracked the mirror.  Tim's release happens to coincide with the auction sale of the mirror, and Kaylie seizes the opportunity to experiment on the mirror during the few days it will be allowed away from the auction house before being delivered to the next owner.  She convinces Tim, who is reluctant because of his therapy, to stay with her during the experiment.  They then repeat the setup of the short almost verbatim.

Intercut with the present day experimental footage is flashback footage of the family originally moving into the house and slowly deconstructing due to the mirror's influence.  What's interesting is that the present day sequences have much more of a subtle, vaguely uncomfortable, supernatural feel like Flanagan's previous work, while the flashbacks have a more visceral feel with gore and disgusting things.  The balance is great, especially because the creepier and more character driven present day scenes provide a great contrast for the bloody dementedness that eventually happens and makes that have a real impact.  I actually need to buy this on Blu-Ray when it comes out if for no other reason than there are bits I straight up did not see because it was so uncomfortable I had to look away.  Loved Ones, Asylum Blackout, and Martyrs all couldn't pull that off. 

Katee Sackhoff does an excellent turn as mother Marie Russel, though I would've liked to see her turn to a paranoid jealous wife a bit slower.  Rory Cochrane as Alan unfortunately never seems to sell the caring father portion either, his delivery through most of the movie is fairly deadpan.  Brenton Thwaites was a pleasant surprise as Tim.  Guy is so damned pretty I wasn't sure how well he'd be able to pull off a horror movie and emotional sibling drama but he actually did really well.  Karen Gillan performed admirably well as Kaylie.  Unfortunately, I feel like neither sibling really shined and the present day scenes really felt less interesting somehow than what was going on in the past, until the end.  They were good and they carried it well, but their scenes didn't pull me in as much as the scenes with their child actor counterparts.  I don't know if it was just Flanagan really getting into the opportunity to flesh out the world of Oculus or if the kids were just really good, but those scenes were really enjoyable.

The effects they use on the mirror ghosts as well are particularly nice and something I don't think I've seen much before.  Very creepy touch.  And I thought the direction at the end was just really compelling and totally sucked me in.  In fact, the only thing I think I was disappointed in was the big line in the original short ("I've met my demons and they are many, I've seen the Devil and he is me.") wasn't nearly as scary in the way it was delivered here.  That, and the lack of the gorgeously deranged "Finger LICKIN' GOOD!!!" line from the answering machine in the original.

To a minor spoiler:  I still dislike how quickly the experiment fell apart.  In the original it made sense despite being ultimately disappointing.  Being alone in a room with an evil demonic looking glass can be a somewhat taxing experience.  It kindof makes sense that Tim would fall asleep.  But in the feature no one falls asleep.  They just watch video of weird things, hallucinate, and then watch plants die without doing much of anything about it.  And finally, in the feature the glass suffers minor damage due to Tim shooting his insane father in front of the mirror and the glass cracking a piece off when Alan's body hits it.  The glass normally deflects attempts made to harm it fairly dramatically but it couldn't do anything about the body hitting it.  In the finale of the movie Tim activates the dead man's switch, not realizing Kaylie was standing in the way due to the mirror making him see things.  This causes a boat anchor to swing from the ceiling and hit Kaylie, killing her and smashing her into the mirror.  Given the force of a swinging boat anchor, especially one with additional weight on it, how did this not break the mirror further?  Kaylie demonstrates the pointy anchor going almost all the way into the wall behind the mirror.  It's not a light touch.  I would've loved to have seen the mirror effectively suicide itself.

--PXA

Horror Off-Season: The Quiet Ones

The Quiet Ones is a new horror release from the resurrected Hammer Film studio.  It's director John Pogue's 2nd feature as director.  John also served as a writer on the 2nd draft of the script, originally by Tom de Ville (who served as writer on episodes of Urban Gothic and Lexx), alongside Craig Rosenburg (The Uninvited) and Oren Moverman (Rampart).  It is sometimes worrying when a script has this many hands involved.  A single writer or a pair with solid history seem more likely to produce a horror film with common vision, while multiple writers tend to work by committee which results in a film that ultimately relies more heavily on well-worn tropes in order to keep everyone in agreement.  At least in my experience.

Set sometime in the early 1970s the story is told through an interesting combination of Found Footage-style and traditional omniscient camera.  It centers around an Oxford professor played by Jared Harris, 2 student researchers, and a student cameraman recruited through his class on the paranormal.  Dr. Coupland believes there is no supernatural and the paranormal is just science we've yet to understand.  He believes there is no such thing has haunting or possession and that these are just deep psychological conditions that can be cured through extreme therapy. Initially describing a failed attempt to cure a young child referred to as "David Q.", he then tells the class about his current experiments on a young amnesiac foster child named Jane Harper (Olvia Cooke), who claims to be possessed by an entity she calls "Evey"

In some strange combination of The Philip Experiment and Psychoplasmics from The Brood he hopes to deprive Jane of sleep and subject her to hypnotism sessions and isolation in order to expose Evey as some sort of secondary personality or hallucination and allow Jane to confront and get rid of her.  After being evicted from their original location near the university and having the experiment's funding cut by Oxford, Coupland takes his students and Jane to a house in the country where they'll be able to continue their work.  This is where the bulk of the action takes place.

I do want to go over the end and some, but that will be a spoiler tag so I'll just give my impressions.

This movie is pretty good.  I'm not as impressed by it as I was other Hammer Revival flicks like Woman in Black, but I consider this solid and I'm glad that Hammer is back.  That said, I have some criticism:  Despite having a cast of only 5 characters, there are some who are so poorly developed I feel like the movie could have done completely without them.  The non-camera students, Harry and Krissi, seem incredibly superfluous.  They deliver lines, yeah, and things happen to them, but I don't think a single thing they do is integral to the main plot.  They reveal no information and only seem to serve a b-plot that contributes nothing to the main one.  Also Coupland's character is just confusing.  We get some reveals during the ending sprint that do help to explain some of his motivations, but there's a lot he does that makes no sense.  And his continued insistence on following the preordained path of the experiment despite mounting evidence of occult involvement makes him a crappy scientist.  And I know it's petty, but the bit of dialog where they name-drop the title of the movie makes about as much sense as nipples on a duck.

I feel like the movie could've also added some psychological weight to its action to up the creep factor, and favor slow-burn lead ins more.  In the hypnotism/seance scenes, it would've been incredibly unnerving to have long, slow shots of unbroken dialog with creepy shadows and unexplained noises instead of short lead-ins to jump scares.  A final weird point is the use of a train-chugging sound effect.  It had a few points where it was effective at tension-building, but it wasn't related to anything...it just happened to be a tense and driving sound effect.

I know it sounds like a lot but everything I just talked about I felt would have made the movie better, not were needed to make it good.  It doesn't do anything egregiously wrong in my book and does a fair amount right, it just missed some opportunities to do some things really right.

That out of the way, on to the ending:

I feel like I "got" the majority of the ending, but there are a few sticking bits.  The way I took the story of the movie, as revealed by the final act, was that it's not really the Philip Experiment at all despite the face-value similarity and that lots of other reviewers mention it.  The key to the Philip Experiment is that the spirit they conjured through seances didn't exist at all, he was a complete fabrication.  However, in The Quiet Ones, the experimenters don't invent Evey, they basically prod Jane until she invents Evey.  Also, there is evidence that Brian finds of Evey actually existing when he researches the occult symbol that burns into Jane meaning that unless the power of belief retcons the spirit into existing, Evey can't be a fabrication.  After the final act reveal I think it's very clear that what actually happens is that Evey Dwyer was a real little girl who is in some way a conduit for a cult's deity/demon.  This is a bit of theory, but I think the original attempt to manifest the demon fails due to some part of Evey that was not willing to be sacrificed.  This persona becomes Jane, the amnesiac.  However, the experimenters torture and break down Jane until she loses the strength to control Evey and Evey re-asserts by re-branding Jane.

When the experimenters move out to the country and Jane reveals the name Evey, she's gathered 4 other people in a single house who believe in Evey and want her to become manifest.  She's effectively recreated the original cult, this is further evidenced by the cult mark being burned into all the experimenters during the final act.  Then Dr. Coupland kills Jane, and Brian resurrects her causing Evey to be fully reborn.  Evey, rid of Jane's persona, self-immolates which gives birth to the demon.

What I don't fully understand is why the demon/fire deity now requires possess of Brian at the very end of the movie to begin the Apocalypse.  If the demon simply needs a body, why not use Jane/Evey's?  Maybe it needs to destroy the original body to be manifested but then needs another body to work?  That just seems counterproductive.  Frankly, I feel like the whole thing is derailed by the stinger at the end that shows Brian being interrogated for the murder of Jane and the rest.  If that wasn't there the movie would've ended with the demon breaking out of J'Evey at the camera, presumably to kill Brian and wreak its havoc.  So maybe one of the several writers felt like they needed the stinger, and wanted to have the cool similarity of using the clap gesture Brian used as the camera man to begin the movie to call the end of the movie, but then never answered the questions it raised?
--PXA

Horror Off-Season: Haunt

Haunt is another 2013 movie that hit VOD in early 2014.  It's also another debut, this time of director Mac Carter who's previous directorial work had been on a documentary.

Haunt as a film is a good old fashioned ghost story.  Something you'd expect to hear around a campfire or from some old lady at midnight at the local social lodge (Those are things, right?).  I enjoyed it, it wasn't bad, but I feel like it missed in a few ways.

First, the story (which I liked plenty), is about a house.  A haunted house.  In the mid-80's a couple, both successful doctors, moved their family into a large house.  In 1984 almost the entire family died tragically:  The son died in a car accident at 16, then the youngest daughter drowned, followed by the eldest daughter committing suicide, and finally the father in a mysterious incident at the house.  Fast forward a few decades and a new family, the Ashers, is just moving into the house.  The teen son of that family, while out for a walk, befriends a local girl named Sam and the two become involved quite quickly.  While their relationship blossoms, increasingly odd things happen around the house, culminating in the two of them delving into supernatural investigation.  Since it is a fairly straight and folksy ghost story I do want to try to stay away from spoilers so that's about all the detail I'll go into.

On to the odd: During the film the behavior of the Asher parents struck me as strange.  They seemed to be the most accepting and trusting parents ever portrayed.  As an example, one of the first few nights the Asher's son, Evan, meets Sam she follows him home.  Not wanting to go back to her house she sleeps the night in his bed.  In the morning he just brings her down to the family who had no idea she was there and they were completely unperturbed by it.  Everyone's cool with strange girls following their son/brother home and sleeping in his room.  Not this is really a bad thing that detracts from the story, but it just seemed so odd.

There are two more aspects I feel like they also missed with, and they're both part of the visual aesthetic of the film.  First off, a lot of lower budget supernatural horror movies seem to feel like they have to compensate for being a slower creepshow by nature and find ways to up their pace.  So when things that should be low-key and creepy happen, these movies try to amp them up and make them more intense.  Specifically what I'm talking about are shots where, because there's a ghost around, the movie will drop frames, random frames will be zoomed in and grainy or with weird color effects.  Basically this technique where they decide to make their movie resemble a mid-90's alternative rock music video.  I dislike this.  I feel like it cheapens the effect of supernatural elements.  The House at the End of the Street did this a lot, and it didn't even have any supernatural elements to its story, it was just being weird.

Second, I think ghost effects in movies tend to follow whatever precedent was set by the last really successful ghost movie regardless of their own aesthetic or what would actually look good.  The Ring ensured that every ghost story would have frame-skipped jerky moving ghosts for years.  I think Haunt is taking its cues from Mama, which featured a fast moving but very smooth ghost with lots of floating whispy strands of hair and clothing.  And while I adore Mama, I don't like this in Haunt.  The design of the ghost is very sensible.  It relates to the backstory, it looks creepy...it's a totally competent ghost...but then in post they made it all floaty and it has those whispy bits around it which makes absolutely no sense.  Considering the ghost isn't actually on screen in full view very much, this is a really minor gripe...but it really just rubbed me the wrong way.

That aside, it's got some fairly chilling implications and I really did enjoy the story teller narration that bookends the film.  It's not really great by any stretch but I would definitely call it good enough and nothing about it is particularly objectionable so Haunt gets a "well done".

--PXA

Horror Off-Season: Devil's Due

Devil's Due was released in early 2014, directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett who did one of the more fun shorts in V/H/S, it's writer Lindsay Devlin's debut film.

It's a found-footage movie focusing on newlyweds Zach and Samantha McCall, who become pregnant after their honeymoon.  The initial camera is a small handheld bought by Zach so he can document their new life together, but is then upgraded to a multi-camera setup hidden throughout the couple's house.

Before I dive in, I should say that this should probably be read with a spoiler warning in effect.  I don't know how much of this movie was intended to remain a mystery since the trailer was pretty front-and-center, but I don't want anyone mad I spoiled this so...be warned.

What goes on in this movie is basically: While on honeymoon in the Dominican Republic, the aforementioned newlywed couple wind up in an underground party where they're taken and some ceremony is performed on the wife.  Waking up with severe hangovers they assume they partied too hard and hurry to make their plane home.  A few weeks later Samantha discovers she's pregnant.  Strange things begin to go on and she has a lot of issues somewhere between "rough pregnancy" and "insane demonic possession things are not alright why am I carving symbols on the floor and beating up my cousins?".  As things progress, a cult inhabits the abandoned house at the end of the street and places multiple hidden cameras in the McCall's house to monitor Samantha as they wait for her to bring the anti-christ to term.


In a lot of ways I feel like Devil's Due is like a modernized, really crappy take on the Rosemary's Baby-type story.  The found-footage aesthetic being one of the things most responsible for bringing down the movie.  All the individual pieces feel like they could have come together into a decent story.  The Rosemary's Baby story is a really good place to start from for a horror movie because it is an alien and scary thing.  You'd need to trust people who've done this before, but what if you feel like they're not on the level?  Devil's Due does get points for a minor plot element where the original OB/GYN is replaced after the first appointment.  While it's cheese stuffing added to the cult plot, it definitely ramps up the wife's paranoia and it's nice to have a reason for the woman's increasing paranoia in a horror movie.  Some of the character and relationship beats are a bit over the top, but it doesn't stick with me nearly as much as the execution.

All the elements present are pretty stock and glossy, but it feels like the movie was never planned to be a found-footage movie, or at very least whoever decided to do it that way didn't really feel committed to it.  The problem is that found-footage movies, when they work, work by bringing the audience into the small world of the characters.  You stay set in a smaller location...a room, a single house, maybe the town.. When it feels natural that this could be someone's home movies happening to catch something going horribly wrong, found-footage works.  This is why Cannibal Holocaust worked, this is why Paranormal Activity worked, why Europa Report worked, etc.

When found-footage doesn't work, more often than not, it's because something's broken immersion.  This tends to be the "Why is he filming that?" or "How is he still holding the camera up?" moment where you tend to wonder why any rational person would film certain really uninteresting or awkward things, or you're amazed at this person's dedication to holding a camera up at eye level and facing forward while running for dear life.  Also, found-footage movies almost always have some pretext under which the footage was actually found.  However, in Devil's Due the footage comes from wherever it needs to come from without rationalization.  The footage sources in this movie are:

• Husband's camera
• "Adventure Camera" mounted to husband's chest
• Hidden cameras placed in the house by the cult
• Security camera in a grocery store
• Interrogation camera in a police department
• Some random kids' camera
• Another vacationing couple's camera

And there might even be another I'm forgetting.  So how did we, the audience, get to see these?  Who found them?  Did the cult collect it all?  If they did, how did they get the police department footage?  Do they have agents there, well that doesn't make sense since the cult is implied to move around following whoever their target couple is.  And at that, even though I gave them points for it if the cult just follows couples around...how did they manage to plant a doctor in a hospital so quickly?  What about the grocery store security footage?  The cult is really crappy about spying inconspicuously so how would they even have known something weird happened at the grocery store?  At one point in the movie they stole all the husband's camera's footage up to that point, but what about everything he recorded afterwards, or on the adventure cam?

All the questions just make it feel like they were lazy and wanted to do it as found-footage because it's cool and not because of any of the advantages the style gets you.

Makes me sad.

Horror Off-Season: Oculus: Chapter 3

Ok, so the Oculus short hit my radar a few years ago when I first saw Absentia.  Director Mike Flanagan had mostly focused on character dramas until that point, though he had dabbled in horror before.  First as DP on 2004's amazing cult cheesefest Chainsaw Sally, and then again as writer/director in 2006 with his own short film Oculus: Chapter 3 - The Man With the Plan.

Originally planned as a 9 part short film anthology focused on the film's Lasser Glass mirror, only Part 3 was made due to budgetary constraints.  Following the success of Absentia, Flanagan was able to direct a feature length adaptation of the story.  That version premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in Sept of 2013 and Relativity Media secured distribution rights for an April 2014 US release.  Unfortunately, that deal seems to have included pulling sales of the original short, which I feel is a tremendous missed marketing opportunity but rumor mill has it that the short will be included as bonus material on the DVD/BD release of Oculus.

Filmed for about $2,000 over the course of 4 days as primarily a monologue and clocking in at roughly 32 minutes Oculus: Chapter 3 is an amazing example of a less-is-more horror ideology.  And beyond that, it's goddamned scary.

The film is set entirely in a single, white room with a small table and a battery of cameras on tripods at one end and an easel at the other with the very imposing mirror on it.  The single character, Tim Russel (played by Scott Graham), wears jeans and a grey baseball collar t-shirt.  To say sparse would be an understatement.  Tim is here because his father was one of the previous owners of the Lasser Glass and also its most recent victim.  Tim believes the mirror is haunted/possessed/evil and somehow compelled his father to kill his mother and himself.  He's set up an experiment to prove the mirror has supernatural powers in order to clear his father's name.

During the run of the movie Tim explains the nature of the experiment he's running as well as external controls and checks.  A system he feels will protect him from falling victim to the mirror as well.  He also recounts the mirror's bloody history and the tragedy that fell on each previous owner.  These are simple stories, but quite eerie.  As the experiment goes on Tim becomes increasingly erratic, losing time, yelling at his friend on the phone, rambling, etc.  The cameras in the room are all hooked to monitors on a table, and the perspective jumps between them and an omniscient camera leading to great creepy shots where Tim is in frame and a monitor doing something different.  It throws into question assumptions of truth...which image is real?

Flanagan relies fairly heavily on his tight depth of field and editing to obscure elements making what really should be dumb instead very scary due to context and execution.  Both tricks he would also use in Absentia to make the not-very intimidating Daniel Riley freaking frightful as the gape-mouthed ghoul.  The final sprint is an absolute bedlam of amazing that begs me to never look at alarm clocks the same way, and the repeating line from the trailer ("I've met my demons and they are many, I've seen the Devil and he is me...") is really disturbing when it finally appears.

It's not a great looking movie, which isn't surprising given its budget and time.  But it looks good for what it is, and the execution is stellar for a scary movie.  The compressed insanity at the end left me actually speechless for a bit after the short ended, it was kindof a drive-by.  Though it is very tight, I feel like bits could have been shaved off earlier in the movie to make Tim's decent a little less breakneck, but it still works very well as is.

That said, there's very little wrong with the movie and I'd highly recommend it.

--PXA

Horror Off-Season: Banshee Chapter

Banshee Chapter is a late 2013 independent horror movie with a somewhat Lovecraftian bent that just recently got a limited theatrical release.

We grabbed this from Amazon Instant because the theatrical release was only in the Hollywood area.  We start with archive footage from the disclosure of some of MKUltra, but quickly switches gears to a young investigative journalist being filmed by a friend so as to have an accurate record of his activities while tripping on a special kind of DMT, which is in some way related to secret government experiments.  He's more or less unaffected until he starts hearing a radio and begins to get increasingly paranoid and uneasy.  He continues to claim that "they" are coming and want to wear him and the cameraman, at some point he vanishes from view until bumping back into the cameraman as a ghastly black-eyed monstrous version.

And now the movie switches off of the found-footage angle and goes to an omniscient camera as we start tracking another journalist who's pursuing the story of the special DMT and the death of the first journalist, who was a classmate of hers while in college.  After an initial encounter in the desert, she gets involved with then enlists the help of a Hunter S Thomson-like figure played by Ted Levine.

The story is very close to Lovecraft's "From Beyond", however it's the DMT itself rather than any wave-generation machine that allows the other side to sense and interact with our side of reality.  It's a little confusing regarding the origin of the compound, but the twists are interesting enough.  There's a little of it that reminds me a bit of John Dies at The End, which makes sense given that JDaTE is basically Hunter S Thompson + HP Lovecraft + Poop Jokes.  Banshee Chapter is obviously much more serious, but Ted Levine's character keeps it somewhat light.

While having a lot of very nice moments of creepiness and tension, I feel like it may have been a bit rushed or at least poorly allocated.  The nice scary parts seem like they go past very quickly while less important character interactions linger, leading to an ending sprint that is crammed and maybe a bit too much of a sprint.  Sitting with some of the revelations from the climax before the actual climax would've probably made the whole thing feel a bit weightier.

That said, I really enjoyed watching it and have given some thought to renting it again, or claiming a more permanent copy.  So if a decent adaptation of "From Beyond" with colors of "Fear and Loathing" sounds interesting, check it out.

--PXA

Horror Off-Season: Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones

And we're back.

And also back with a new Paranormal Activity.  The to-beat yearly October released franchise for the past several years running had missed its traditional window this Halloween season.  Maybe that's why I found this recent year a bit disappointing when it came to new releases hitting theaters in October, but I digress.  What's being considered a spin-off to the original series, The Marked Ones, finally hit theaters in January.  Confusingly enough, Paranormal Activity 5 will still release in October 2014 and be the 6th film in the franchise.

I'll come right out and say that I did enjoy this movie a lot.  It wasn't as great as the first time watching the original Paranormal Activity, but it was still quite good.  They've gone back to world building, which is one of the reasons I think 3 did as well as it did.  They're able to find new things to explore and add to the mythology instead of just have the same old things go bump in the night.

The Marked Ones' story is concerned with a small group of friends in an Hispanic community in Southern California.  The protagonist, Jesse, graduates from (I believe) High School and begins to film his antics with his friend, Hector, using a camera his father bought to film the graduation.  There is a lot of random delinquent bullshit that goes on before the story really picks up when Jesse and Hector go to set off a firework behind their apartment complex and are interrupted by Oscar, their class Valedictorian, running away from what they discover is the crime scene of the shooting murder of their creepy neighbor, Ana.

My main problem with this movie is what seems to plague a lot of found footage horror.  There's never a really good answer for: Why the hell are you taping this?  Admittedly, I can see some of it being answered by the generational desire to record and catalog our lives, but certain things like...riding bikes to the nearby park to play basketball?  After the game of basketball, walking over to a vending machine to buy some snacks?  Why would you film that...it's just buying snack food?  It had to happen in order for a specific scene to be caught, but in-story it seems a bit weird.  And especially a lot of what happens during the lengthy climax...why are you taping that?  And even more amazing you're holding the camera upright, about eye-level, facing forward.  While running like hell.

One of the things I really liked in 1 & 3 were the static cameras, that don't really exist here.  However, the action I feel is the best and the scares and creeps that were delivered best were done when the camera either wasn't being held or was held very very still.  And I think this is where The Marked Ones shined:  It managed to put the camera down and deliver some very nice, tense moments punctuated well by slowly sneaking moving scenes with jumps.  Another thing is that this is much more of a possession story than previous PA's, apart from 4.  What this does more successfully than 4 is that this movie abandons the vast majority of the haunted house, bump-in-the-night, trappings that 4 tried to balance and focus almost entirely on the possession.

That said, the original demonic slant and demonic torment and possession of the young girls seems to be becoming more and more distant from the core of the franchise, which is now focusing more on the coven's actions to facilitate the possession of young men...something that seems to originate with PA 4.

For my money, PA 3 is still a better entry into the franchise than The Marked Ones, and the new mythology elements this adds are actually a bit silly.  But this is a nice off-shoot from the franchise that feels very thematically consistent and has a lot of interesting references to the timeline, characters and events of the original 3 movies (4 seemed absent for some reason).  Very well done, especially refreshing after the mess that was PA 4.

--PXA

October Horror 2013: 14 - The Howling

This is a short recap of movies watched during a weekend trip in which I wasn't able to write more full reactions in a timely fashion:

The Howling is a 1981 Werewolf movie directed by Joe Dante and based off a 1977 book of the same name by Gary Brandner.

The movie was, seemingly, an attempt to modernize the werewolf movie as by the 80's the Universal monster movies had taken a back seat for some time and the Slasher was just beginning to rise as a popular force in horror.  I assume it succeeded due to its place on this list of ultimate horror movies.  The movie I thought was alright for the most part, not great...a little silly at times though the many nods to classic werewolf movies were fun more than obvious.  Probably the strongest thing, conceptually, was the very end during the news report that Karen gives when returning from The Colony.  Werewolves tend to make better supporting characters than stars, though I really did enjoy An American Werewolf In London (Though I'd argue that the ghosts and the human form of the lead were more main characters than the werewolf form).  I wouldn't say it's a bad movie, just a bit dull and missing the man-vs-man's animal nature character battle that really should be a part of the werewolf genre.  Incidentally, this is played really well by Sam Huntington in the US Being Human (not to snub the UK's Russell Tovey in the werewolf part, I just think Sam does a better job at the more extreme ends of the emotional range).

The remake/re-imagining The Howling: Reborn is a bit more fun, and the effects are better...but it is quite silly.

October Horror 2013: More Haunted houses: Screamer's Hollow & Fright Nights at the Fair

Screamer's Hollow
Screamer's Hollow is an outdoor park-style attraction with a loose "Village of the Damned" theme that is staged on the grounds of the Sterling Renaissance Festival.  Though most of the festival grounds are roped off.  They've got a maze, a walk-through, and a hayride through the nearby apple orchard in addition to the base "Village of the Damned", with the walk-through being the weakest thing and the hayride being surprisingly fun.  The maze was very intense and though sparsely populated, very effective at being scary.  I think one of the standout parts was the Village itself.  During the night, they use the stages around the grounds to set cute little Halloween themed plays and tell ghost stories around campfires.  I wish they did a little more with haunting the festival grounds, and had a few more actors wandering around the Village part to make it feel a bit more village-y...fog machines wouldn't go amiss either.  But all in all, very good.

I originally wanted to go to Halloweekends at Sylvan Beach, but due to my inability to read both Screamer's Hollow and this were only available Saturday night.  So as consolation on Sunday we went to:

Fright Nights at the Fair
This is a small haunted park in the New York State Fair fairgrounds, specifically a small building near the farm expo portion by the parking lot.  It was pretty cheap looking and had the traditional midway food trucks. They had 5 walk-throughs of various themes and a 3D hayride.  All the walk-throughs were actually surprisingly scary, making tremendously effective use of non-shouty actors and strobes of differing frequencies to keep things scary and tense and only startling at a few times.  The hayride, however, was crap.  It was a short, well-lit, ride in a tractor-pulled trailer where the seats were all facing inward around a few of the extra buildings with panels with those diffraction 3D neon painted panels.  At random points small groups of masked actors would board the trailer and shout at someone, stand around awkwardly, then jump off.  I think they could've made it work even with limited actors and the well-lit setting if they had made actual sets there instead of panels, worked in a good story, and rehearsed their actors a bit better.  As it stood, it was pretty lame and I actually entertained the notion of jumping off the trailer and wandering back to the main building so the ride would be over quicker.