Dread

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Dread marks another powerful entry in the fourth Horrorfest. Note that I chose that word carefully, though. See, there are these college art students[1] who want to do a study on fear in peoples’ lives. What do they fear, what is their earliest memory of fear, how does it affect them? And all of this goes on camera in first-person interviews that, though wholly unrelated to reality TV, would not be at all out of place there.

And of course there are revelations among the main characters that push boundaries and change relationships in unexpected and frequently awkward and unsustainable ways, but that wouldn’t be enough to make a horror movie. It’s when someone decides to change the rules and force people to start facing and overcoming their fears that things take a turn for the ugly. And even then, it’s closer to tragedy than horror, I think? But either way: quite powerful, and quite disturbing.

[1] I’m pretty sure they were art students rather than psychology students, since one of them paints a lot of nudes (though he may technically not have been enrolled) and another was I think a film student, but maybe I imagined that? I suppose it bears pointing out that even the fact of them being involved in the college was only an excuse to have a few dorm shots and a ready supply of subjects, so the lack of clarity on this point isn’t really a big deal.

The Final

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Okay, with only two movies left, I’m caught up again. It is convenient that after burning through several movies in a row, the most recent one is also the one I’ve liked best today. Playing on the fears (and in some cases, almost certainly the fantasies) of a post-Columbine public, The Final presents a group of high school misfits led by the President of Holden Caulfield’s fan club who hatch a plot to get all of their tormentors together at a weekend party for a series of deadly lessons on the nature of being pushed too far.

Other than a subplot about a racist Vietnam vet, pretty much every character in every scene is filled with pathos and well-presented anger in equal measure, by the end of the movie if not in any given scene. There are a few good guys, but nearly everyone is a bad guy at some time or another, and that part of high school doesn’t show up on the screen very often. Still, the plot was mostly predictable once all the characters were set in motion by the middle third of the movie; the real joy here was the acting. I may or may not have liked Kill Theory better, but this is certainly the only one so far I’d recommend to anyone else.

The Graves

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Question: what do you get if you combine the most egregious misuse of Tony Todd in the past decade with a supernatural slasher flick and lead characters whose best talents are contained in their tank tops?[1][2] Answer: The Graves.

[1] I feel like I should have had more to say about the movie, but, well. I mean, it was only so good for making fun of in the first place, and I don’t have a good way to express that part here.
[2] That sounds terrible, perhaps? If it had been only slightly less true, I would have been able to keep myself from saying it. But, yeah, wow. On the bright side, part of the issue is that the tank tops did in fact hold treasures. (My good friend Jez wishes to add an additional drunken / unfortunately true declaration: “Her boobs look better with a shirt on.”)

Lake Mungo

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Lake Mungo was the obligatory documentary ghost story. See, there’s this Australian family on Christmas vacation, and after their daughter drowns in a local lake that you would erroneously think is named Mungo, an unlikely series of twists, backtrails, and switchbacks unfolds around her haunting of her family and the area. The acting was fine, and the story was fine, but… I dunno, I think it was just a little too long. Not that this movie was the worst offender of the weekend, but I think it was the most disappointing about it, because the premise would have worked so well if they had been willing to be just a little less impressed with their cleverness.

ZMD: Zombies of Mass Destruction

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I have watched a lot of movies already today, so these are probably going to go kind of fast. The first such was a political comedy about a viral terrorist attack on American soil in the wake of 9/11. Zombies of Mass Destruction is a lot higher on concept than plot, but that turns out not to be wiener a complaint, because the concepts, in execution, are pretty much hilarious. Whether it be churchgoers versus gay dudes, the NRA versus hippies, or rednecks versus hot Persian chicks, every scene is full of a) things I found funny and b) zombies.  So, y’know… that’s cool?

I can’t figure out what else to write, there are too many drunk people being distracting around me. Maybe I’ll be better next movie?

Hidden (2009)

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You know what Hidden reminded me a lot of? Well, okay, I don’t either, so give me a second to figure it out. I mean, I know, I just can’t remember the title yet. But it was the Russian movie from the first Horrorfest[1] where the lady gets trapped in physical manifestations of her past (or psychological manifestations of them that are sufficiently convincing to serve the same purpose) when she returns home, the place that of course you can go to again, contrary to the proverb. You just shouldn’t.

Anyway, this movie is Norwegian instead of Russian, but the primary concept where the main character comes back home and weird things occur? Yes, that. In this case, there’s a murder mystery, identity confusion, ghost manifestations, and almost certainly more things? The truth is, I was fuzzing in and out after about the first third of the movie, so I got a sense of it, but the specifics remain locked on the disc, forever out of my reach. Oh, well!

[1] Oh, right, The Abandoned.

Kill Theory

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I have surely mentioned, at some point, that I missed one of the Horrorfests due to a proximity failure caused by its gradually shrinking sphere of influence. But I’ve finally found a way to correct that oversight, via a cleverly scheduled weekend of DVD watching. Not quite the same as a theatrical experience, sure, but quite a bit cheaper and probably more comfortable overall. And the first film of the festival did not disappoint!

Kill Theory starts off with one of the standard tropes of the slasher genre, a van full of teens on their way to, well, it doesn’t really matter where they’re going, does it? It only matters that the place will be high on dangerous empty spaces and short on other people. And the teens all have trope personalities, to boot. There’s the annoying fat kid who is single when everyone around him is paired off[1], there’s the girl who takes off her shirt, thus ensuring a first reel murder scene, there’s the couple who are having problems because neither of them brought everything to the table when they decided to pair off, and that fighting inevitably spills into everyone else’s good weekend. Well, I suppose the guy who came to make them all dead also affects the weekend’s mood?

That guy? Instead of just killing everyone, which would have been more than enough to satisfy me after the fifth horrorfest’s mostly lackluster series of plots, he actually improves on the entire concept of slashing a vanful of teens. See, he was a rock climber who had to cut the belaying line and watch his friends plummet to their doom, because the alternative was for him to die along with them. And now he needs to prove to his therapist and/or himself that he’s not an aberration, by getting these teens to kill each other to save the one of them who will remain; if not, he’ll just kill them all. So, on top of being the perfect palate cleanser to the weekend, it actually managed to provoke thoughts about morality in its absolute and situational forms, and you can’t ask for a whole lot more than that from any film in any genre.

[1] He’s neither in a wheelchair not even half as annoying as the guy in Chainsaw who created that particular trope. But nobody else ever should be, as some molds can’t be matched.

Your Highness

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Stoner comedies, right? They vary wildly between the kind of thing only stoned people can enjoy and the kind of thing everyone should ought to dig, even if the stoned people will laugh harder. (I’m thinking here of Pineapple Express, which is apropos, since this was made by and stars many of the same people.) The point of all that, of course, is to allow me to place Your Highness onto that scale, right? Well, it’s somewhere in the middle, and while that’s not was I was hoping for, it’s not a terrible place to be either. (Although I should also say it’s kind of misframed by the title and previews and may not be a stoner comedy at all.)

The bright side, though, is that it’s really quite good as a fantasy adventure movie, enough so to surprise me. James Franco is an infinitely likable hero-type who must ride forth to rescue his girlfriend from the tragically underused wizardly nemesis, with the help of his jealous brother Danny McBride[1], his brother’s manservant, and also warrior-small-p-princess Natalie Portman, who really has been in a lot of movies this year. There’s a prophecy, a magic sword, a ton of cool special effects, and a standard yet well-presented story of personal growth.

I guess my point is this: if you are looking for a decent-but-not-brilliant fantasy movie that is frequently funny to boot, this is that film. If you are looking for a full-fledged comedic send-up of the swords and sorcery genre, you’ll probably have to wait for Simon Pegg to write one.

[1] You’ve seen him in stuff even if you don’t know it yet. This may not be his break-out lead role, but I expect he’ll have one such any time now.

Marvel Zombies 3

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At some point, the continuity in which Marvel superheroes were infected by the Hunger, a flesh-craving virus that specifically targets “capes” and “masks” because of their facility with destruction[1], has become its own relevant parallel universe. Not as important as the one that started in the ’60s, not as important as the Ultimate Universe, but probably more important than any of the other parallels that have come and gone.[2] For evidence, I present Marvel Zombies 3.

Featuring a significant number of secondary heroes and villains I’ve only recently become aware of in my original-Marvel readthrough (currently February 1975), the book brings the Marvel Zombies (well, those who aren’t on a 40 year tour of their local galaxies) to that main Marvel continuity, circa 2009. Being over 30 years behind means they had characters I’ve never heard of (including the prospective heroes of the piece, Machine Man and Jocasta), but seeing the highly regimented post-Civil-War-era regular Marvel characters deal with the Zombies? Pretty cool, nonetheless. It was like giving myself odds and ends of spoilers. I wonder if that made it cooler than being only 20 years behind (or, dare I say, caught up) and catching more of the references would have been?

[1] It occurs to me that a virus that is trying to destroy all life doesn’t seem to have a very good evolutionary endgame. I wonder if a) a writer didn’t think it all the way through, b) the virus was created by someone with a larger goal and that backstory is yet to be revealed, c) it’s not a virus at all, which, to be fair, it’s not like the very few people still “alive” are good at science anymore, or d) other?
[2] I’d say that, though, wouldn’t I? After all, how many of them am I really aware of? But still.

Oldboy

MV5BMTI3NTQyMzU5M15BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMTM2MjgyMQ@@._V1__SX1859_SY893_This movie night thing I mentioned, it seems to be real. At least, I’ve already been to it again and seen another movie, which is a pretty good sign. Then again, if it burns brightly and flares out, I won’t be offended by that either. In the meantime, it gives me the chance to catch a few things I missed or wouldn’t have known to look for, and in a setting where I can focus on my thoughts and perhaps give each film its due. (Horrorfest kind of kills me each year when it comes around, for true. At least next weekend, I can maybe take notes or even dash out a quick review between each entrant to the festival?)

But enough of that, it’ll be focus enough when it gets here. The night’s movie was Korean, which I assume to mean South Korean since there was no point at which the Glorious Leader was praised, nor did he descend upon a golden rainbow to render judgment or justice. Oldboy follows the tale of a gravelly-voiced narrator who, in diction rife with significant pauses[1], tells a tale of his horrible fate. He was kidnapped off the street, stuffed into a sealed-up hotel room, and kept there for fifteen years. He spent this entire period going gradually insane and/or training for his shot at revenge, with a side dose of tunneling his way to an exit. But on the very night that he broke through the wall into open air, he is suddenly released and given the wherewithal to divine and then hunt his antagonist in a brutally disturbing game of cat and mouse.

Or the whole scenario is a total mindfuck. Or both! All I can say for certain is that it was too engaging to turn away, and I don’t mean that in the train wreck sense.

[1] So, I’m sure this was dubbed instead of filmed in English, and it’s kind of unfair for me to judge a movie based on something that isn’t the original version. All I can say is this particular dub artist made the role his own, whether by entering the original voice or choosing a new one.