Tag: films

The Sentinal: A Review by Nate Hill 

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

The Sentinel is one of the weirdest thing you’ll ever see. It’s less of a horror and more just a parade of bizarro world situations strung together loosely by a vague haunted apartment story. A young model (Christina Baines) has found a sweet deal on an uptown flat, inhabited by only herself and a blond priest (John Carradine). It’s just too bad that when a deal seems to good to be true in these kinds of movies, there’s almost always some kind of sinister agenda behind it. It’s not too long before spooky stuff comes along, starting with strange physical problems, creepy encounters with her odd lesbian neighbors, flashbacks to her attempted suicide and psychic disturbances that can’t be explained. She soon realizes that she has been brought to this building for a very specific and decidedly sinister reason. The way I described all that sounds kind of routine and pedestrian, but trust me when I say that there’s nothing generic or run of the mill about this absurdity of a film. Everything has a very disconcerting and surreal feel to it, particularly in a whopper of a climax where a portal to hell is opened and all sorts of babbling loonies pour out, deformed, whacked out and adorned in some of the most creatively gross practical effects that will give your gag reflex a solid workout. The film also speckled with a diverse group of actors, some of them quite young looking when you remember that this was 1977. A chatty Eli Wallach shows up as a detective, with a youthful Christopher Walken in tow as his partner, Ava Gardner of all people has a cameo, and watch for Burgess Meredith, Jerry Orbach, Beverly D’Angelo, William Hickey, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Dreyfuss, Chris Sarandon, and Tom Berenger in what must have been one of his very first gigs, a literal walk on part. Very distinct and memorable film, one that pushed the boundaries considering the time period, and never let’s the weirdness mellow down for a single minute. 

Paul Verhoeven’s Hollow Man: A Review by Nate Hill 

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Paul Verhoeven’s Hollow Man is one of the most scummy, awful, overblown ridiculous shit masquerading as a movie that I’ve ever had the misfortune to see. It’s also entertaining on a level that suffocates you with unpleasantness and knowing stupidity at every turn. Verhoeven has taken what could have been a fascinating and suspenseful premise and turned it into a one note, bottom feeding genre pile of piss that is pretty hard to sit through. Scientifically inaccurate (not that that matters in this terrain) relentlessly unpleasant, super awkward and an all round disaster, it’s still pretty compelling to witness, like a school bus on fire. It’s a wreck to be sure, but there’s plenty of glee to be found, if you’re feeling masochistic. Kevin Bacon has laid down a path of many asshole characters over the years, but Dr. Sebastian Caine just takes the cake. He’s an egotistical, psycho sexual maniac in charge of an underground research lab, working on a brand new cheeseball formula to make the invisible man. He’s creepy and possessive with his girlfriend  (poor Elizabeth Shue) callous to his lab staff (Josh Brolin included, before his second coming, as well as Kim Dickens) and an all around jerk off. But that’s really nothing compared to what happens when the formula works, effectively turning him invisible, with a few nasty side effects. He goes from a nasty dude to an all out monster as he starts to arbitrarily prey and perv out on his co workers in their underground bunker, going full on Lon Chaney with a side of Ted Bundy in a grating performance that is a career sinkhole for Bacon. I read Ebert give golden praise to the special effects in a scene where he teansforms from visible to invisible, but i have no idea what he was smoking that day because they are an abysmal effort. Verhoeven always has a sort of knowing layer of hedonism blanketing his work, but this one takes it to a whole new level. Hey, at least there’s a cameo from the always welcome William Devane! The rest is just a vomitorium. There’s a sequel floating around out there with Christian Slater, I’m curious but have never have come across a copy. 

Absentia: A Review by Nate Hill 

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

You’ll think twice about taking that shortcut through through the tunnel on your way home from work after watching Absentia, a spooky little indie with its heart in the right place and the filmmaking talent to back it up. There’s a tunnel that’s home to some unspeakable scuttling fiend in a local neighborhood, and two sisters who live nearby, as well as a few unfortunate other folks, stray directly into it’s path. Pregnant Tricia (Courtney Bell) and her younger sister Calley (Catherine Parker) are just trying to get by, literally and figuratively, but every routine trip into this hellish part of the neighborhood ends in disappearances, freaky apparitions from a spindly Doug Jones, this time not playing the monster, and tragic loss of life. I won’t give away what the threat is or what it even looks like (you’ll piss your pants), and such is the beauty of a minimalist scarefest like this. You go in not knowing much beyond the hype or word of mouth, and have your pants scared off. There’s a wonderfully atmospheric score at play here, no psycho strings of operatic swells, the film instead favoring a quiet, emotional melody that contrasts the extremely bleak story arc and grim happenings rather nicely. Jones is the only prolific actor we see here, but his work amounts to not much more than a cameo anyway, the brunt landing on our two protagonists, and a local detective (Dave Levine) who assists them, and they all give very solid efforts. The tunnel is a pure unbridled nightmare though, the fates of those who wander in something that you pray never happens to anyone ever, as you cling to whoever is closest to you on the couch (or bed, preferably). Horror should illicit some empathy from viewers as well as scare them, which will in turn be more disturbing for all. This little baby does just that with it’s characters, truly making you feel sorrow and dread for these poor people and their predicament, adding to the creep factor. A gem. 

Hush: A Review by Nate Hill 

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Hush is a pulverizing little exercise in extreme suspense. I’m not talking about this year’s Hush, a sleek little home invasion shocker that’s worth your time too. No, this Hush is a little seen British flick from back in 2008, and it’s a proper nerve jangler. In the tradition of Duel, The Hitcher, Joyride and others, it takes place on a bustling motorway somewhere in great Britain. A young couple trundle through the night on a highway, and find themselves behind  a great big creepy semi truck. In one split second, the doors of it’s trailer come unstuck and open just a crack, allowing the to see what’s inside. It’s only a glimpse, but it’s unmistakable: a girl, badly hurt and tied up, screams for help before the motion of the vehicle causes the doors to slam shut again. What would you do? This couple bravely pursues the truck and it’s villainous driver across many miles of road, trying to rescue the girl inside, avoid getting killed themselves and put an end to whatever is going on. It’s one merciless ride into gut churning suspense, and I marveled at the film’s ability to keep such high tension up for a streamlined ninety minutes of pure horror nirvana. It’s not too lenghthy, never sags or drags and always keeps the vibe as taut as the ominous chain holding those truck doors in place. Swift and sensible in resolution, stylish as all hell and scary in spades. Any horror fan owes it to themselves to take a look. 

Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead 2: A Review by Nate Hill 

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead 2 is similar to Robert Rodriguez’s Desperado in the sense that it takes what was already there, in this case Evil Dead, and tells the same story once again, simply smoothing out edges, ramping up certain areas, using more money than it had before and generally giving the story a tune up. It also gets quite a bit funnier than Evil Dead, which although schlocky was pretty much outright horror. The sequel emphasizes comedy far more, and is the more definitive of the two in terms of the franchise’s legacy. The story is more or less the same: Ash (the eternal Bruce Campbell) and a group of friends venture to that creepy, archetypal cabin in the woods and foolishly set loose a rambunctious horde of unholy demons, zombies, cackling fiends, rapey trees and a mountable deer head with a disconcerting case of the giggles. This marks the first time Ash donned his now iconic chainsaw hand and picked up that ol’ boom stick to give the nasties a good whupping. And whup he does, like the smooth talking badass that he is. I love the aesthetic in these films; the monsters all have a devilishly mischievous attitude that provides endless laughs, always trolling, taunting and teasing the poor victims. Nothing beats the sight of Ash’s severed hand flipping him off before it scuttles off into the corner like an angry facehugger. That’s one key element which the 2013 remake ditched: I liked what they did in terms of special effects, but the pissy humour wasn’t there, the decayed, sarcastic ADHD madness that I came to love so much was replaced by something far too grim and somber. Bad move. No, kids, this is the ultimate Evil Dead flick, the most complete and entertaining entry into a franchise that has influenced every facet of the horror genre for decades. Ash is now a household name, a beloved halloween costume, a celebrated pillar of pop culture and still one of the most enjoyable protagonist’s to spend time with, as we now get to see with Starz’s terrific Ash Vs. Evil Dead. The original Evil Dead spawned it all, but this baby turned the dial up past eleven, tossed on the buckets of gore and has more than earned it’s place both in our hearts, and horror infamy. 

Neill Marshall’s The Descent: A Review by Nate Hill 

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Don’t watch Neil Marshall’s The Descent if you suffer from claustrophobia. Just… don’t. This film does for caves what Alien did for derelict space stations and what The Ring did for videotapes. Cleverly combining close quarters panic, the gnawing fear of losing your way in a near infinite set of tunnels and some visceral, throat ripping terror, it’s one horror package that will leave you reeling. I believe this is the one that put Marshall on the map, and since then he’s been doing mostly medieval style action adventure (he helmed the pilot for Game Of Thrones). This is his first, and most effective outing in a really solid career. The premise is simple: a group of girls decide to go on an excursion deep within a cave system in Eastern Europe. They run into a string of bad luck though, as they first find themselves hopelessly, sickeningly lost. Then the real fun begins as they realize they’re not alone down there, and that something is hunting them. Terrifying subterranean creatures emerge like Gollum on bathsalts, fast, wiry, agile terrors from the deep that know the system inside out and prey on these poor girls one by one. Once they show up its a chaotic bloody free for all that will shred your nerves, but I almost found everything leading up to that even more scary. The slow buildup where they realize they are just so lost and may be stuck down there forever just puts a knot in your stomach and instills a hopeless dread that can’t really be equalled by any monster or gory scene. Still, those things are pretty gnarly and provide more than a few wicked scares, especially when the girls first catch fleeting glimpses of them around corners and between cracks, dismissing them as tricks of the light. Marshall also employs cunning narrative tricks to perpetuate the lack of any kind of way out, one in particular that just curdles the blood in its ruthless, resolute sense of doom. The scariest film you will ever see set in a cave, and one of the premier fright fests ever made.  

Mark Pellington’s The Mothman Prophecies: A Review by Nate Hill 

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Mark Pellington’s The Mothman Prophecies takes a harrowing look at a curious set of events that did indeed occur for real in the rural West Virginia area. Now, just how much of what we see in the film actually happened is eternally unclear, but I’ve read up on a lot of it and there’s enough testimonials, independent of each other, to both justify the film and shiver your spine. A myriad of unexplainable phenomenon plagued those poor people for some time back then, including visions, eerie phone calls and a mysterious red eyed creature in the shape of a giant moth. Businessman Richard Gere and wife Debra Messing come face to face with what appears to be this entity one night on a lonely stretch of highway, causing a grisly car crash and leaving Messing in a dire psychological state. With the help of a local policewoman (Laura Linney), Gere unwisely tries to figure out this terrifying mystery by putting himself way closer to the occurances than I would ever go, experiencing the stuff of nightmares along the way. Pellington comes from a music video background and as such he is incredibly adept at creating style and atmosphere (his opening credits for Arlington Road are almost as foreboding as anything in this film), two key elements in successfully telling a tale such as this. Gere wanders around in a daze most of the time, distraught over his wife’s condition and obviously influenced by forces unknown. Whatever is out there remains blessedly unseen save for a few hurried glimpses, say, behind a tree or at a kitchen window momentarily, spurring heart attacks from both audience and the poor sods stuck in this brooding bad dream. Rounding out the cast is Alan Bates as the obligatory historian who has seen this all unfold previously in some far corner of the world, and an excellent Will Patton in a frightening turn as a rural farmer who comes who becomes tragically influenced these dark forces. No one plays disturbed quite like him, a jittery, resolute calm always playing around in his eyes, the perfect presence to set anyone on edge. The finale sort of emerges from the chrysalis of dark atmospherics into large scale disaster mode, a choice which didn’t really work for me. I would have preferred to have it kept intimate and creepy right up until some kind of moody end, but they went with fireworks instead. Not enough to hurt the film of negate what came before though, it’s just too good of a time in the haunted house to be dragged down by anything, really. Chilling stuff. 

Cherry Falls: A Review by Nate Hill 

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

The slasher genre never got a tune up quite like it did with Cherry Falls, a tongue in cheek satire that while hilariously high concept and silly, can actually be pretty frightening, especially during it’s intense climax. Here’s the premise: Cherry Falls is a small town in Virginia that has fallen prey to a masked serial killer. The twist? Said killer is only targeting virgins, which causes quite the uproar. As the high school kids all scramble to get laid before they get laid six feet under, the prudish townsfolk become unhinged and disgusted by the whole affair, and a decades old secret involving some of the town’s best and brightest comes to light, a scandal to rival tr sleazy parade of flesh this murderer has set into motion. Young Jody Markum (Brittany Murphy) has yet to have her cherry popped, and fears for life in between bouts of teenage angst. Her father (Michael Biehn), who also happens to be the town sheriff, wrestles with demons in his past, as well as his own. A schoolteacher (Jay Mohr) scours the town archives for clues before it’s too late. And every horny adolescent tries to desperately get their freak on, providing some of the funniest moments you’ll see in a fright flick. Gymnasium orgies, rampant fornication and all kinds of naughty antics ensue. Nothing beats the faculty meeting where parents violently argue as to who has the sluttiest offspring. Full of in jokes, innuendo and sly sexy humour, this is one of the great overlooked horror comedies out there. 

Dario Argento’s Trauma: A Review by Nate Hill 

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Dario Argento’s Trauma is simultaneously one of the most loopy and coherent efforts from the maestro. Most of his earlier work is pure sensory and atmospheric bliss, detached from things like logic and story. While this one does in fact have a discernable narrative to go along with its giallo splendor, it’s still as whacked out as anything else in his ouvre. This was the first of many times he would cast his exotic beauty of a daughter Asia in a lead role, here playing troubled Romanian teenager Aura Petrescu, on the run from dark forces that seem to plague her family. Her lunatic mother (a terrifying Piper Laurie) has her commited and examined by a freaky Doctor (Fredric Forrest in a glorious train wreck of a performance), meanwhile a mysterious serial killer called the headhunter is out there somewhere, decapitating people with a piano wire. It all gets a bit overwhelming for poor Aura, and she runs off, straight into the protective arms of an ex drug addict (Christopher Rydell) who becomes her guardian and eventual lover. Argento is terrific in the role, exuding dark beauty and burnished resilience in the face of many terrors. Brad Dourif has an intense extended cameo as a doctor with icky ties to the origin of the headhunter as well, adding a welcome bonus horror flavor. Also watch for another intense actor, James Russo, playing a police detective determined to nab the killer for good. As far as Dario’s stuff goes, this is about as complete and cohesive a narrative as you will find. Granted it’s not the garish psychedelia of classics like Suspiria, Phenomena and Inferno, but a little more subdued and clinical, a dark fairy tale that gets geniunly scary in several excellently staged scenes and provides loads of uneasy atmosphere. 

Balto: A Review by Nate Hill 

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Anyone remember Balto? I remember Balto. Pepperidge Farm remembers Balto too. How can you not, when it was one of the most charming, beautifully done non Disney animation films we saw as kids. I think the fact that it was not made by Disney threw it into obscurity a bit, but there’s the odd copy floating around out there in the Arctic snow. It’s an underdog story (built in pun there eh) about half husky, half wolf Balto (Kevin Bacon having a blast) who hangs around Nome, Alaska and is ridiculed by the local sled dogs for being a mudblood. Every dog has his day though, and Balto gets his when a deadly epidemic breaks out in town during a storm, and he courageously volunteers to make the perilous journey to a far away outpost that has the required medicine. Joining him are his lovable goofy goose friend Boris (Bob Hoskins trading in his jovial cockney accent for a jovial russian accent), ant two adorable polar bears called Muk and Luk. Watching out for him is the only purebred dog in town who cares about him, Jenna the husky (Bridget Fonda), determind to muster a rescue party when he gets in over his head. Balto must brave raging blizzards, treacherous fellow sled dogs and the world’s biggest grizzly bear (seriously that thing is like 15 feet tall) to save the town’s population, and he does it all with bravery, charisma and a winning attitude that’s essential in any animated film. His sidekicks are endearing, his efforts intrepid and the film a winner.