My Little Eye - Shocktober #6

When I do my rewatches every Shocktober, I look at my DVD shelf to things I haven't checked out in a while. I purchased my copy of My Little Eye when Hollywood video went under for a few dollars and haven't put it in since my first watch, but wanted to give it a revisit. 

There are two things to know about this film, released back in 2002; Firstly, its a post Blair Witch Project found footage film. I don't hate found footage as a concept and really enjoy Rec, Cloverfield, and especially Chronicle. My Little Eye does answer one of the main issues with found footage in genre films which is when things get weird, why oh why are they still filming? 

The general plot is as follows; five strangers are starring in a web based reality show where they have to spend 6 months in an isolated location. There is a nightly curfew and if any of them are not in the house or grounds after that time, they lose out on a one million prize split five different ways. There are a wide range of  (granted, outdated and quite large ) cameras throughout the house and director Marc Evans uses a combination of these cameras to film the majority of the action. 

The visual style of the movie, constantly inter cutting between the cameras in the house and more traditional camera setups, gives the film a very creepy voyeuristic vibe. This movie gets a lot of mileage with eerily quiet snowy exteriors and unsettling interiors. The green "night vision" shots make the houseguests look unearthly with glowing eyes. The score is menacing without being too obvious and creaky noises and whirring cameras set up a sense of unease that lingers throughout. I am personally a huge proponent  of the concept that nothing is scarier, when filmmakers forgo a masked killer or CGI monster and instead let our imaginations fill in the gaps. 

Now this is not a flawless film, and has some issues. First and somewhat bizarrely, we join the action in the final week of the competition, which means the prior six months feel pointless. Feeling that the end and the prize money is within reach, the contestants begin to get stir crazy, either from paranoia, revelations (that have only surfaced in the last week!) or seeming manipulation from whoever is controlling the “game. Each of the characters are slowly picked at and chipped away, with reasons to leave the house coming into play. 

The ongoing issue with this as the characters comment on is that they are playing a high stakes reality gameshow. Given Survivor and Big Brother were both huge hits when this movie came out, the blurring of the line as to whether the game is real or these people are being played is a constant theme.. 

The competitors themselves fall just shy of a host of paint-by-numbers cliches, although in a post Cabin the Woods landscape, you have the archetypes present. There is the mysterious handsome one (Sean CW Johnson), the bizarre nerd (Stephen O’Reilly), the snarky creep (Kris Lemche), the promiscuous outgoing female (Jennifer Sky) and the intelligent, uptight innocent (Laura Regan). It makes for some interesting dynamics and the scenes where their pasts start to come into play make for some of the better aspects of the movie.

 The direction it goes in is also as dark as you would hope although with a tease and a build as good as this, it is a shame that the finale falls flat. Despite a late cameo by a current A lister who's star has born a lot brighter since this film, the revelation of what is actually happening and the eventual outcome doesn’t match what has gone before. It makes logical sense but didn't satisfy for me given the supremely creepy buildup. There are a lot of good ideas here but it fails to deliver something as unique as the initial concept.

In the end, My Little Eye suffer from a combination of writing the characters into a bit of a corner as well as the third act being a lot more standard for the genre. I do appreciate movies with a strong opening so this one still holds up fairly well although it just can't stick the landing. I give it a reasonable 6.5/10

The Prowler - Shocktober #5

First reboot of the Halloween season and I went back to an underrated gem. After Halloween (1978) and Friday the 13th (1980) became huge hits relative to budget, a glut of copycat slashers hit theaters in the early 1980s. My Bloody Valentine and Prom Night garnered remakes in the mid to late aughts craze of (remake all horror originally released between 1975-1985). However, everyone seems to have forgotten the Prowler (and unlike the  similar The Burning, no Seinfeld cast members debut here) but to me, its worth the time.

The film begins with a length prologues set 35 years earlier featuring soldiers returning from World War 2, with a dance at the local town hall. A pair of partygoers are gruesomely murdered and the annual dance is banned for 35 years. Enough time has passed so that the ban is lifted and a cadre of 80s teens are prepping and decorating for their big dance. The sheriff goes on his annual fishing trip just as its revealed that two young girls were murdered nearby. The young deputy and one of the students have to stop... the Prowler!. 

Now you are looking for originality, there's not much here, in fact, the movie ticks every box in terms of the 80s genre staples. However, instead of just ticking them, in a few places it completely surpasses them. The killer's look is a World War II era soldier and Iike the  gimmick, the killer’s disguise pretty effective. His calling card of leaving a rose by his victims is creepily effective and there’s a great moment towards the climax where he offers it, almost romantically, to the final girl

The film was directed by Joseph Zito and its the direction that sustains an awesome amount of suspense during the first half, which works, because even when not much happens, we are kept fully aware that something could at any moment.Other parts of the film equally excel in their technicality with some beautiful photography and a focused score. I especially liked the staircase stalking sequence, which I believe led to Jamie Kennedy lampooning victims making terrible decisions in Scream.

Vicky Dawson makes for a classy final girl and she works well in partnership with the deputy played by Christopher Goutman (who has a weird William Fichtner/young Chris Walken vibe) For relatively inexperienced performers, they carry the picture comfortably and they deliver only one or two weak moments. I thought Dawson was unfortunate not to have built a longer career in cinema, because much like Amy Steel in Friday the 13th 2, she offers a sweet and alluring naivety, but shows brave independence when left alone to face the prowler. Laurence Tierney (the crime boss from the end of Reservoir Dogs) is in the film in a strange brief extended cameo, his character is barely used to much effect.

The true star of the film is Tom Savini’s amazing practical effects. In an era of CGI blood and fakery, the real life gore is stunning. The Prowler is one of the most brutal killers of this genre and at times the kills get almost too realistic. The standouts being a shower scene with a buxom co ed and another student who decides to take an ill fated late night swim. 

Now onto the problems with The Prowler. It is nail-bitingly tense in places, but has some serious problems with its pace, including that the killer spends equal time slowly prowling and killing (get ready for a long of close ups of army boots). It seems that the studio insisted the movie be 90 minutes and we have 89 minutes including credits. There are some really pointless diversion, including the Deputy repeatedly trying to reach the sheriff, that should have severely edited down. In fact, after the swimming pool sequence, the film really grinds to its last act. 

Despite that issues, this is still one of the best non franchise slashers. It does drag a bit in the development of the plot, but the excellent kill scenes and two likable leads more than make up for it.  Joseph Zito was widely tipped to be a future horror maestro after his work on this and Friday the 13th The Final Chapter (one of the better sequels of the series). When horror  began to lose its way towards the second half of the decade, he moved over to action-orientated flicks, which didn’t give him the same chances and his career unfortunately faded. 

If you want to go back in time to the days of a masked murderer annihilating teens who are doing drugs and having pre-marital sex, its worth a watch. A solid 8/10 

The Ritual - Shocktober #4

I try to go into newer movies completely cold and sometimes with zero expectations, I get very pleasantly surprised. The Ritual is my favorite film of Shocktober so far.

The plot is very simplistic: four college friends in their thirties go backpacking in the wilds of northern Sweden, ostensibly in honor of a fifth member of their group who was killed six months earlier in a convenience store robbery. An attempt at making a shortcut off the marked trails and through a dense forest soon gets the men lost, and as they begin to suffer from frightening dreams and come upon strange artifacts, it’s not long before they realize that something is actually out in those woods...

It’s nothing particular original, and in a post Cabin the Woods film landscape, difficult to be scary without being meta or referential. To me, this is the movie that I wished the Blair Witch Project should have been and combines that movie with a little bit of Wicker Man and touch of the independent horror film Wendigo. Now as mid thirties weekend warrior backpacker, this movie is right in my wheelhouse. I personally appreciated how it treated the forest itself as a presence of enigmatic silence, enormous age, and does have sort of awe of the ancient and unknowable. 

Director David Bruckner makes his feature debut here after directing segments in some of the better recent horror anthologies like V/H/S and Southbound. After a quick trip down memory lane (and a Wiki search to remember which segments he directed), Bruckner seemed to have a definite style of coarseness, raw and explicit violence. The Ritual, although definitely having some violent moments, is more of an atmospheric piece. 

I really appreciated (and will) that instead of a CGI fest, that the horrors are out of frame, focus, and sight. Also I was stunned that the movie was shot in the Romanian mountains instead of Sweden, but as I have seen both in movies and real life a variety of forests, the location scout found a uniquely dense, oppressive, and even a bit claustrophobic setting for film. I will lastly point to an excellent combination of natural light and shadow, creepy sound design,and handsome cinematography for a smaller budgeted film of Andrew Shulkind.

The four men, led by Rafe Spall (last seen as the villain in Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom) as Luke, are all in fine form, even if there’s less character development for the other three (played by Arsher Ali from Four Lions, Sam Troughton and Robert James-Collier) than Spall. A lingering tension is established among the quartet because Luke was in the store when Rob was murdered and froze in fear, unable to act and possibly save his friend. Resentment over that comes boiling to the surface, of course, with Spall in particular conveying a real sense of grief, anger and guilt. The friends do not fall into the usual tropes as there is no comic relief or smart expository character and do seem like a real group of friends. A big point that the movie doesn't let go is that these people have not been connected for a while and have grown somewhat apart, with the trials in the woods forcing them back together.

A different film and genre with this cast and setting could delve into an interesting look at the dynamics of male friendship. Instead, the film (at a crisp 93 minutes) winds up going for all-out horror, piling on well-worn but still reliable tropes like a spooky cabin, secret cult, ancient rituals, and supernatural powers. Spall and the others navigate it all believably, with one or two of them making sensible choices for the group but sadly another one enacting the inevitable dumb decision that gets them into even worse trouble than they were in. 

Without getting into spoiler territory, the look and final reveal of the creature is the highlight of the film. The design is one of the most striking and eerie that I have seen in horror films, not to the iconic level of the Xenomorph from Alien or Pinhead, but firmly in the Relic/Pumpkinhead group of memorable monsters. I can definitely see a lot of discussion and legacy of the Ritual being this antagonist.

Similar to Hush last year, The Ritual was released streaming on Netflix without a U.S. theatrical release (it did show up in the UK theatrically). Given the deluge of Netflix content, I personally worry that this film will be lost in the shuffle. For a spooky, intense and unsettling ride this fall, it's definitely worth a stream. I'd give it a solid 9/10 

Happy Death Day - Shocktober #3

Knowing that Shocktober is coming I try to save most of the year's horror/genre movies for October viewing. In 2018, I did catch a Quiet Place earlier in the year, but realized that a couple of the 4th quarter 2017 releases were forgotten. So I finally got around to Happy Death Day

If you have seen the trailer or even marginally aware of the premise, you would be aware that Happy Death Day is the horror/slasher equivalent to the Harold Ramis classic Groundhog Day. I came into this Blumhouse picture with zero expectations. Blumhouse, if you are unaware, produces the Purge and Paranormal Activity series and acts as a distribution center for any horror movie as long as the budget stays low (typically under 5 million). Other than the original Insidious, Sinister, and last year's terrific Hush, most of the Blumhouse catalog has been pretty mediocre to bad.

Happy Death Day I am happy (hah!) to report is funnier and smarter than it has any right to be. Definitely leaning into the comedy of the source material of Groundhog Day, the film takes a certain satisfaction in puncturing every mean girl stereotype . That it actually works is fairly impressive given the concept of watching a conceited blonde slaughtered again and again could go sideways real fast. Appropriately beginning on one of the most miserable of collegiate experiences, particularly for women, Tree Gelbman (Jessica Rothe) is forced to make the dreaded “walk of shame” across her quad ad infinitum. 

A reigning sorority empress with a nasty streak, Tree doesn’t have time for the nice guy freshman in whose dorm room she keeps awakening from, Carter (Israel Broussard), nor does she care about her Greek house’s queen bee Danielle (Rachel Matthews), whose ideal boyfriends Tree keeps sleeping with. She won’t even take a bite of the birthday cupcake that roommate Lori (Ruby Modine, from the show Shameless, and by all accounts the only cast member with a significant role outside of this) made for her. It’s her birthday, and she’ll celebrate it how she want, by blowing off her father who arranged a lunch so as to snuggle up to her married professor (Charles Aitken), all while avoiding the attentions of ex-boyfriends.

In other words, Tree is the lady version of Bill Murray’s character who is completely unlikable, needs to grow up, and has a lot of comeuppance en route. The main difference, however, between Death and Groundhog Day, is that there is a killer intent on ending Tree's birthday the same way every single time. To Tree’s increasing horror and delirium, no matter what she does or who she confides in, the babyfaced killer and a litany of fairly creative weapons find her and makes sure she doesn’t survive. So in addition to becoming a better person by reliving the same day (because the apple does not stray far from the tree as far as plot), Tree is going to need to figure out who this psycho stalker is if she ever gets to wake up without a crippling hangover and a memory of her last slaughter.

As a concept, Happy Death Day is unapologetically derivative, and that works to its advantage. Moving with the same kind of frisky mischievous of otherwise dumber 80s slashers, this high-concept horror from director Christopher Landon is a delight. It is also aided immensely by Rothe who gives a winning performance as a character who traditionally would be one of the first to go in a genre movie and turns her into a survivor without losing the sarcastic tone.

After the first one, I would say that all of Tree’s demises are played for humor, as opposed to exploitation and outright gore. My biggest problem with the movie is that it is PG-13 and we could have an Alexandre Aja or even a cartoony Sam Raimi or early Peter Jackson sort of splatter violence. Instead, the vast majority is just off camera. It is still primarily successful, in a beguilingly dopey way, due to a screenplay by Scott Lobdell, which is the antithesis of original but nevertheless gets the job done by straddling the line between subversive and dimly whacky. 

There are quirky encounters and strangers on Tree’s repeated walk of shame and itst amusing to see what she does throughout the day. There's even the trope of the montage where the time travelling protagonist goes through increasingly silly versions. These are all again aided by Rothe, who gives enough of a star turn to sell the desperation and resigned bemusement of her predicament. The script also gives its best shot at crafting Mean Girls or Heather style one-liners for the sisters living on repeat. Some are groaners, but that only adds to the movie’s affectation. Also, I won't spoil things, but the final reveal, although clever, is also very dumb, but somehow I didn't care so much because being a comedy, its a tough movie to really nitpick apart.

Its not a classic by any means but for people who don't want another Conjuring spinoff and go in understanding its all comedy and not scary in the least, I'd say its worth a watch. It was enough of a hit, grossing 122.7 million world wide (55.7 million domestic) on a 4.8 million budget, that we are getting a sequel, Happy Death Day 2U, in 2019. I give it a solid 7/10. 

Hold The Dark - Shocktober #2

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I tend to watch films from a wide range of quality during the Shocktober month, but when I learned that Hold the Dark was getting released on Netflix, I had to catch it out. The third film from Jeremy Saulnier (who made the amazing indy revenge film Blue Ruin and the super intense grimy Green Room) isn't exactly horror, but definitely one of the bleakest and most suspenseful dramas that I've seen. 

I went in with the basic plot summary that seemed like a combination of Wind River and The Grey; a hunter is brought in to rescue a missing child who has been killed by wolves. I really can't describe the twists and turns this story goes into, but I'll run through the main players:

We have an Alaskan mom played with a haunted emptiness by Riley Keough (pretty great in American Honey) who hires a wildlife writer (Jeffrey Wright at his most vulnerable and haggard) to kill the wolf. Things pretty much go off the rails from thers with Wright’s past his prime reluctant hunter out of his depth in a mess of local superstitions, Keough’s damaged soul looking for all kinds of awful ways to escape, James Badge Dale as the local sheriff trying to sort through the chaos, and Alexander Skarsgård’s psychopathic war vet stalking everybody else through the snow (doing his best combination of Dan Stevens from the Guest and a famous John Carpenter antagonist)

I thought for a long time of a "well its this kind of movie" to attempt to give a one sentence summary and the best thing I could come up with was a film blessed vintage John Carpenter direction and written by the Coen Brothers in serious "No Country For Old Men" mode. 

The tone veers wildly and wonderfully from psychological horror to grindhouse thriller and art-house drama. There are some slow, quiet, long stretches with quiet dialogue that then pivots 180 degrees to tough, bleak and nasty acts of violence. Its a hard movie to recommend because I can see action fans being bored with the more abstract vignettes (the movie at times almost seems like a short HBO miniseries) while more sensitive souls will find the unsettling punches of brutality off putting (there is a terrific action scene about half way through that drives the latter sections).  I'll say that you have seen Saulnier’s other films, he isn’t exactly afraid to get dirty and visceral with the tone and gore.

With that disclaimer, this isn't a grindhouse thriller in production value, in fact the movie is extremely pretty to look at. I typically don't comment on camera and shot design, but this was shot by Danish cinematographer Magnus Nordenhof Jønck who treats the snowy Alaskan wilderness (the film was shot near Canada doubling for the Arctic) like a western, giving Saulnier an open canvas to work on after the claustrophobia of Green Room. Still, the real meat of the film is pushed back into the small, dark spaces; bedrooms, cars, and a very creepy cave and brings menace and a sense of dread in the more sense moments. 

Keough and Skarsgård work perfectly in opposition to each other, given the ongoing theme of wolves, they are the hunter and prey in an odd way. If you loved him in his more emotional moments in Westworld  Wright carries the weight of the film. Instead of a macho hunter/hero, he is anything but. Playing the lead with a combination of melancholy, damaged and physically sick at times, he is driven by the same kind of nihilistic sense of duty that hangs heavily over everyone in the film.

To try and wrap things up, Hold the Dark is far from a feel good time and values tone and mood over plot. It’s admittedly uneven, messy and I'd go as far as to call bloated (it runs at two hours five minutes and spends a lot time with the ensemble) Saulnier with a script by Macon Blair (who does appear in a small role late in the film) weaves through several different genres, swerving the script away from all safe places and conventions. I really wish more films took risks like this one, that were contemplative, existential, and definitely stuck with you. I'd give it a 9/10, definitely the best Netflix original film, and although it isn't the sort of movie to get Academy Award buzz, hope that someone mentions Wright's performance and the cinematography at year's end.

Unsane - Shocktober 2018 - #1

Steven Soderbergh has tackled many genres in his long and often pioneering filmmaking career, but oddly he’s never made a full-on horror movie (the excellent and frightening epidemic thriller Contagion has come perhaps the closest until now). Unsane is Soderbergh’s take on horror and if you have hear of the movie, the one thing that every review (and thus this article) that he shot the movie entirely on his iPhone. Using his phone as his camera has mixed results: a lot fish eye lense look and a brown/grey asthetic, but the weirdly intimate nature of the phone’s images somehow make the story more personal.

The story Soderbergh has chosen to tell is that of Sawyer Valentini (Claire Foy from The Crown), a young woman who has relocated from Boston to Pennsylvania to start her life over after being traumatized for two years by a stalker. Realizing that she’s still suffering psychologically, she goes to see a therapist at the Highland Creek Behavioral Center and soon finds herself a patient inside the facility after she inadvertently signs herself up for an initial voluntary 24-hour commitment that soon extends out.

Unable to leave on her own, Sawyer is befriended by a recovering opioid addict named Nate (Jay Pharaoh in probably the first dramatic role that I've ever seen him in) who helps her understand why she is there and how she can ride out her stay. But Sawyer’s plans are disrupted by the appearance of a night orderly named George Shaw (Joshua Leonard), who she is convinced is the same man who terrorized her back in Boston and has somehow followed her to Highland Creek.

That's the first act set up and in this one, the first salvo is where  there’s a certain surreal nature to the course of action that lands Sawyer in the hospital that feels both horrifying and also eerily plausible. Soderburgh obviously is culling from the headlines of current events and playing on the culturally ingrained sexist attitudes about crazy women. 

However, the failings of the movie occur after the first act ends and I don't want to discuss plot specifics without completely spoiling the movie. In summation, the basic set up/mystery; Is the main character who has been incarcerated in a mental hospital against their will crazy or not? is answered in a fairly pedestrian way in the second act. The finale veers into pretty standard horror tropes/territory. Soderburgh is a good enough filmmaker that at least things are shot well, but at a certain point, there is an inevitability that sinks into the climax. 

On the bright side, as the lead, Foy makes Sawyer resilient and fairly savvy the complete opposite in many ways of the hapless victims that characterize these sorts. Josh Leonard, first noticed from the Blair Witch Project, is fairly compelling in a tricky role. We get Juno Temple as one of more disturbing other patients. I googled after the movie was over and saw Sawyer's determine and sympathetic mother was played by Amy Irving (the surviving high school student from the original Carrie) and lastly, one of Soderburgh's former high profile contributors has an amusing but somewhat distracting cameo as a police detective. 

All in all, Soderburgh put together an interesting concept,  but the movie remains somewhat clinical (at no point was I scared) and remains true to the tropes inherent in the story, the Iphone gimmick only goes so far, and the third act just falls flat. I'm interested to see how Foy portrays Lisbeth Salander in the upcoming Dragon Tattoo remake, but this movie to me warrants a "eh" 5/10. 

Shocktober #2 The Void (2016)

If the Void was released in the 1980s, it would be a cult gem well thought of by genre aficionados of 2017. As a modern release, the Void is throwback to decades before found footage, home invasion, and torture porn flooded the horror market. The Void lacks sophistication and any of deep meaning or resonance, but makes up for it with a stark atmosphere, buckets of gore, and a script that jams as many horror standards as it can for 82 minutes before the credits roll. 

Aaron Poole, who I've never seen before, stars as a small town cop whose relatively quiet overnight shift takes a turn when he discovers a crazed blood-soaked man (Evan Stern) in the middle of a country road. Carter takes the man to the local emergency room, conveniently staffed by Carter’s ex-wife Allison (Kathleen Munroe), two other nurses and an older doctor (Kenneth Welsh, the only recognizable face, notable from Twin Peaks). Things take a bizarre turn, however, when two men burst into the hospital looking to kill the man Carter brought in, while outside the building is suddenly surrounded by a horde of ominous white robed cultists. 

To say anything else about the plot would completely ruin whats to come, so suffice it to say that the Void piles on well worn tropes. We have some disgusting zombies, a death cult, an otherworldy being speaking from another dimension, some pregnancy related body horror, and Lovecraft/John Carpenter's the Thingesque beasts rampaging around the hospital. The movie becomes a cinematic soup blending together Hellraiser and The Beyond with Assault on Precinct 1s. Writers/directors Steve Kostanski and Jeremy Gillespie, a make-up artist and visual designer respectively (notable works from the pair includes makeup and art from Pacific Rim, It, Suicide Squad, and Crimson Peak), throw pretty much everything at the wall here and surprisingly make most of it stick, letting the thick atmosphere, sober tone and truly gonzo visuals carry the film even while their script doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

My big problem with the movie is the mythology and story. I enjoy cosmic Lovecraftian horror that doesn't make much logical sense, but this really seems like a greatest hits collection from other movies. I was never really sure what the cult and the portal and the monsters  all have to do with each other. The third act also features a Pinhead knockoff who shows up solely to deliver some clunky exposition to tie things together. But where the story lapses, the first time directors make up for it with swift, clean editing and jaw-dropping practical gore and creature effects. I really truly appreciate that in an age when even blood is CGI I was given visceral practical effects. A minor quibble is that the editing was a bit slower in some scenes where it’s a bit hard to tell what is doing what to whom, but that may be due to budgetary limitations and not wanting to overexpose the latex creatures.

As it stands, the Void does not pulls the overarching mythos together into a coherent whole, while at the same time giving the small and over-matched band of refugees so many connection points that it straddles the line of being contrived. Nevertheless, the leads have enough charisma and charm that I was rooting for them to escape, with Poole giving a warm performance as a fairly milquetoast cop who must rise to a decidedly unprecedented challenge  Kostanski and Gillespie pay homage to nostalgia without resorting to cheap copycat tricks; as a result, I recognized the homages throughout without shaking my head. The all-out mash up and lack of a coherent story will likely keep it from classic status (this isn't a Babadook or It Follows), but it’s still 82 minutes of mayhem that embraces its genre with relish, respect and style.

6/10