Tag: horror

John Erick Dowdle’s No Escape

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

There may not be much of a, shall we say, culturally tactful or sociopolitically subtle premise behind No Escape, but I’d be lying if I said that this isn’t an almost unbearably suspenseful, purely nightmarishly effective thriller. Owen Wilson and Lake Bell play a wealthy American couple on a business trip to some unnamed southeast Asian country that is going through kind of a rough patch, politically and economically. When the hotel they are staying in is stormed by a citizen’s army of ruthless, barbaric rebels staging an infrastructure-shattering coup, they are forced to flee through the dangerous streets of the city with no law enforcement or anyone to help them, save for one British intelligence agent played by Pierce Brosnan, an undercover operative who does his best to help them amidst the chaos of a country turning itself inside out. Now, I see from this director’s filmography that his work is almost all in the horror genre so far, which makes sense because this film is so punishingly, exhaustively suspenseful and tense that it could almost be classified as horror itself. The rebels are a terrifying, almost inhuman threat around every corner and are both willing and capable of inflicting frightening atrocities, as this family dodges them at every turn. If I were this director though I would have mayhaps lent my talents to a better, more tasteful script though, and here’s why: Wilson and his kin barely register as characters of their own, but rather blank, terrified chess pieces being frantically shunted across the board of pre-constructed dangers with no real agency or unpredictability of their own. The rebels are a faceless army of homicidal, rape inclined psychos and we get zero grasp on their cause or agenda beyond hunting this family down at al costs. The city they’re in doesn’t even have a name, and that’s how much this script cares for specificity or nuance. The only believable, well rounded character is Brosnan’s guilt ridden agent, he brings an obligatory Bond-esque charisma to the role while retaining this sort of haggard, world weary resolve too and is actually quite good. But his character and the unbelievable talents of the director in generating horrific suspense could have been put to use in a much better setting, premise and story beyond ‘white American family is brutalized by savage Asians in a crumbling third world.’

-Nate Hill

White Noise 2: The Light

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

It can be jarring when horror sequels do something almost entirely different with their concept but still use that same franchise name as the first one, it either means bravely pioneering new ground or gravely deviating from an already solid blueprint into a morass of sideshow muck. In the case of White Noise 2: The Light I couldn’t tell you which of those two categories it fits into because it was such a confounding, nonsensical story I really didn’t make too much sense of any of it, so I suppose the second one if I had to say. Following the exploits of the excellent first film in which we saw Michael Keaton communicate with the dead, including his wife, via spooky VHS tape static, this one goes in a drastically different direction. Nathan Fillion plays a guy whose wife and child are murdered in the opening scene of the film by a disturbed, gun wielding maniac (perennial UK tough guy Craig Fairbrass) before the man blows his own head off. Lost in a pit of despair, Fillion attempts suicide himself and has a brief trip to the afterlife (cue the XBox 360 cutscene effects) before returning to make it a near death experience and discovering he has certain… abilities. Premonition, foresight, the power to sense impending catastrophes and save those in their path and the clairvoyance to know when certain seemingly benign people are going to perpetrate horrible acts of their own, kinda like the guy… well you can see where this going. He meets a friendly nurse played by the wonderful Katee Sackhoff and I must admit that their pairing is pretty much a casting match made in Heaven and the best thing the film has going for it, even if the script doesn’t do all that much with them together. The cast beyond them aren’t people I recognized except for a hilarious early career cameo from Jared Keeso, who Letterkenny fans will be just tickled to see here and may even do a double take. The film is set in Vancouver again and as always it adds a lot of atmosphere, but you can only do so much for a story that’s told as loosely and unconvincingly as this. There’s no real reference to the first film or it’s premise, this for sure didn’t even need to be called White Noise at all, it’s more a sequel to that Sandra Bullock flick Premonition than anything resembling a tie-in to the Keaton one, and it’s just not gripping, interesting, scary or affecting enough to recommend whatsoever. If you must give it a look to see Fillion and Sackhoff gently flirting for a few scenes then go for it, I don’t blame you, but just don’t expect anything close to an involving thriller here.

-Nate Hill

House Of Wax (2005)

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

It amazes me what a dismal critical reception that House Of wax got because to me it’s a treasured horror film and one of the most disturbing, freaky ass experiences my stoned 14 year old ass ever had as an introduction to the genre. Just to prove that I’m not wistfully beefing up a mediocre horror flick through the treacherous prism of teenage nostalgia, I recently revisited it and it *still* just absolutely slaps, so I’m not sure what bone the critics had to pick with it other than it being a horror remake and having to face the unfair bias and hostility of being saddled with that yoke right out of the gate. So it’s the classic scenario where a bunch of reckless, impossibly sexy teens end up in some godforsaken county with a dried up town full of spooky abandoned buildings, menacing inbreds and a dark history. They’re played by people like Chad Michael Murray, Jared Padalecki, Elisha Cuthbert and Paris freakin Hilton, which is more pedigree than these horror flicks usually get to boast. They discover that a creepy old wax museum isn’t as derelict as outward appearances may suggest and that it’s demented curators never really retired, and have taken up a, shall we say, disconcerting brand of human ‘Wax-idermy’ as extracurricular activities in their spare time. They now find themselves on the run from these whack jobs and fighting for their lives to not be turned into living human wax dolls, or simply hacked to pieces by these crazies. This is one fucked up, super gruesome flick and the refreshingly practical effects are truly some brain melting, squirm inducing eye candy. They must have had to hire a ‘wax wrangler’ just to keep all of their production design materials in line because once they get deeper into this museum and the narrative overall, there are some genuinely nauseating, profoundly disquieting and altogether impressive visual gags and set creations on display. Don’t let anyone ever tell you this movie sucks or is anything other than an absolute banger, because they have no idea what they’re talking about. It’s sweaty, greasy, spooky, waxy, sleazy, trashy, shameless and wonderful in all the best ways a slasher can be. And for the record, I have seen the original, it’s cool, but for a kid my age it’s dated and creaky and something as balls out and energetic as this is just always going to take top spot. Great film.

-Nate Hill

The Chronicles Of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay & Assault On Dark Athena

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

I’m a huge fan of the Riddick films, I love the mythology, world building, alien anatomy and general vibe, and while the film trilogy is amazing there are also all kinds of other bits of lore to be found in other arenas including comics, animated shorts and two spectacular video games that I got a chance to view entire walk-throughs on YouTube the other night. Now, these aren’t just cheap promotional ‘tie-in’ games that are rushed into production to be released alongside the film for no other purpose than cash, they are deep, important chunks of Riddick’s story with integral character beats, wonderful stories and jaw dropping set pieces all their own. They’re also great because Vin Diesel did the voice and motion capture work for Riddick, which has to be the lynchpin role of his career and he’s supported by a galaxy of star talent and cult actors in voice roles.

The first game is called Escape From Butcher Bay and it sees Riddick and his perennial bounty Hunter nemesis/best pal Johns (Cole Hauser) arrive at the titular penitentiary, a grim institution lorded over by preening Germanic warden Hoxie (Dwight Schultz) and brutally kept in check by his corrupt head guard Abbott (rapper Xzibit). It’s here that Riddick must fight his way through hordes of feral inmates and descend deep into the bowels of the prison to find a way out and discover pieces of his mysterious identity. He participates in a gruesome fight club run by Centurion (Michael Rooker), fights alongside exiled gang kingpin Jagger Valence (Ron Perlman) and runs afoul of many other creeps voiced by awesome folks like Tony Plana, the late William Morgan Sheppard, Stephen McHattie and Joaquim De Almeida. Deep in the heart of the facility he encounters half undead deformities and meets a shadowy subterranean prophet called Pope Joe (Willis Burkes) who operates on him and first gives him his ‘sight in the darkness’ eyes. Along with these eyes come haunting visions where Furyan spirit Shirah (Kristen Lehman) speaks out to him from his ancestral past and guides his eventual path towards destiny that we see unfold in the films.

The second game is called Assault On Dark Athena and while not as mythologically rich as Butcher Bay it has the advantage of being made a few years later and so the graphics, cutscenes, fighting styles and visual aesthetics are far more polished and impressive. It picks up right where the other left off, as Riddick and Johns approach a mammoth slave ship ruled by aggressive tyrant Revas (Michelle Forbes), where he must fight and outwit his way to find intel and weaponry deep within the giant floating prison. He’s aided by former military man turned inmate Dacher (Lance Henriksen, superb) and he forges a deep bond with a little orphaned girl roaming the craft, a relationship that reminded me very much of Ripley and Newt from Aliens and provides Riddick’s arc with pathos and poignancy. I can’t speak for the actual gameplay, controls or anything on the ‘hands on’ aspects of these games as I essentially watched them as you would a movie, but in that sense they are absolutely terrific stories and more than essential to the Riddick canon and lore. Spectacularly violent, gory and hard-R like these stories were always meant to be, a beautiful fusion of poetic deep space atmosphere and kinda steampunk/mecha/convicts in space aesthetics and a wonderful pair of expansion stories on Riddick’s exciting, moving, imaginative, immersive and artistically spellbinding voyage through galaxies to find his identity, history and change the course of the universe’s future. Highly recommended, whether you want to get an old console and play them as games or hop on over to YouTube and view them as films.

-Nate Hill

Carl Strathie’s Dark Encounter

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

You can do pretty amazing things with lower budgets if your heart, storytelling technique and ambitions are in the right place and Carl Strathie’s Dark Encounter is a glowing example of that. This is a wonderful, emotionally devastating amalgamation of classic alien abduction/UFO stylistics and deeply heartfelt interpersonal family drama that wears its influences (everything from Nolan’s Interstellar to Spielberg’s Close Encounters) lovingly on its sleeve. It tells the story of a large family sometime in the 60’s or so who get home one night to find their young daughter missing. Flash forward one year later, they are still grieving her loss and trying to deal with the lack of closure, and as they all gather at her parent’s place to try and heal, strange things begin to happen. Lights in the sky and in the forests around their property, massive flocks of birds vacating the area en-massé, and mysterious spacecrafts hovering over their abode. Was their daughter abducted by aliens, who have now returned to torment the rest of her kin? I won’t say another word about the story beyond that except to say that at this point things get *really* interesting and completely unexpected. This is a beautifully made film full of unbelievably innovative special effects when you consider the budget, everything from iridescent strobe lights emanating from the floorboards to haunting points of light dancing on the edge of the forest’s horizon to a jaw dropping immersive sequence where our POV zooms out for a breathtaking visual voyage into the far reaches of the cosmos, a journey both inwards and outwards that reminded me, in spirit, of both Kubrick’s 2001 and Malick’s The Tree Of Life. I have to warn any viewer that this is a gut punch of a story that deals in subjects matter both tragic, disturbing and is tough to watch, but the process, execution and artistic forces at work are remarkable. The film’s score might be the best I’ve heard in a long time, an expansive auditory soundscape that encapsulates everything from the eerie to the experimental to the emotionally orchestral that digs your heartstrings right out of your chest. The cast are all perfect, with Laura Fraser and Mel Raido giving soulful work as the girl’s tormented parents, and an appearance by the always awesome Vincent Reagan, this role being perhaps the first time I’ve ever seen him in cinema without a sword in his hand. This is a fantastic film for anyone who appreciates spooky, atmospheric UFO themed storytelling, very well acted family drama and an unexpected, highly affecting narrative that I promise you will not guess ahead of time. Great film.

-Nate Hill

Brea Grant’s Lucky

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

I struggled with Lucky, a new horror film billed as innovative and groundbreaking and yes it’s well made, yes it’s themes are incredibly important but you have to fashion a story that makes sense and draws you in around said themes or all you’re left with is abstraction without any proper narrative tissue to cling to. This is written by and stars Brea Grant, an actress whose work I loved in Rob Zombie’s Halloween II and some of the later seasons of NBC’s Heroes, where she played the Quicksilver proxy. Here she plays a suburban woman who is attacked one night in her own home by a masked man. She wounds the guy and he runs off, but the next night he shows up again. And the next night again. And again, and so on. When she tells her husband he more or less shrugs it off with a non-reaction. Her friends and the police seems to have the same lukewarm indifference so she’s stuck in this surreal twilight zone where she’s the only person who finds it concerning that the same intruder comes back night after night to torment her, no one in her life properly believes, listens or takes her seriously and she feels alienated and outmatched by both her attacker as well as the people and support systems in her life that are supposed to care. See where this is going? It’s a fabulous concept for a film and the fear, panic and paranoia is well executed on top of a terrific performance from Grant… however… the script does absolutely *nothing* to explain this concept from a story/script point of view beyond “she’s attacked every night by the same dude, no one really believes her and she’s basically on her own in fighting back.” Then, it starts happening on a mass scale all throughout the city like some kind of violent epidemic and everyone who is not the attacker or the victim seems to just carry on like nothing much of anything’s happening. The film makes absolutely zero effort to explain this beyond simply showing it happening, and as a result it completely tanks itself, and doesn’t work whatsoever as anything close to a coherent narrative. Now, this is a tricky one to review because of the subject matter itself so let me spell it out clearly: there is no doubt in my mind whatsoever that these themes are incredibly important, that violence/assault towards women is a very serious matter that needs to be addressed both in art or society, and so too the endemic indifference and non-believing nature of others in their lives who either turn a blind eye or don’t care. It’s so important. However: these filmmakers made their story *purely* from an abstract, allegorical point of view and didn’t mesh in a storytelling device or proper narrative to support it, and that to me felt lazy, incomplete and incoherent, and I disliked the film. Anyone out there hollering “you just didn’t get it because you’re a man and this film wasn’t made *for* you” into the echo chamber can stop right there. I succinctly and pristinely understood these themes, and understand how important they are, but that doesn’t change the fact that the film itself, as a piece of art, was not a successful endeavour and my saying so in a review doesn’t immediately imply that I’m discrediting anyone’s experiences or these social issues overall. I shouldn’t have to explain this so in depth but some people out there really seem to struggle with it, so there it is. Well made film from a technical standpoint, an absolute knockout of an original score by Jeremy Zuckerman, fantastic performance by Brea Grant and very important themes… but ultimately it falls flat on its face.

-Nate Hill

Álex de la Iglesia’s Perdita Durango

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Even if I told you to picture a Mexican version of Natural Born Killers starring Rosie Perez and Javier Bardem with shades of voodoo mysticism, tons of pulpy brutal violence, transgressive taboo vibes and shades of From Dusk Till Dawn it wouldn’t prepare you for the visual audacity and narrative viscera that is Álex de la Iglesia’s Perdita Durango, a scrappy mid 90’s bit of cult nihilism based on a book by Barry Gifford. Gifford, you may recall, also wrote the book that David Lynch based Wild At Heart on so many of the same characters appear here for a kind of fascinating “Lynch/Gifford extended universe” vibe. Rosie Perez is Perdita Durango, a vivacious wayward outlaw girl who hooks up with Bardem’s Romeo, a psychopathic, voodoo practicing criminal who has been hired by evil crime kingpin Marcelo ‘Crazy Eyes’ Santos (Don Stroud) to facilitate the black market delivery of stolen human fetuses for cosmetic industry (I swear I’m not making the shit up). The two of them hook up along the way and get up to all sorts of lurid shenanigans including kidnapping a teenage couple (Harley Cross & Aimee Graham), raping them both and forcing them to tag along on their bloodthirsty swath of carnage and mayhem across Texas and the Mexico border. James Gandolfini shows up as a dogged DEA agent hellbent on stopping them and nailing Santos, and he hilariously gets hit by multiple speeding vehicles only to keep on truckin with a neck brace, then a leg brace and so on. There are also scattershot appearances from musician Screamin Jay Hawkins, filmmaker Alex Cox and a young Demien Bechir as a Vegas crime kingpin who meets a spectacularly gory end at the hands of Bardem. He is unbelievable as Romeo, I didn’t think I’d ever see a film where he has a more ridiculous haircut than his mop in No Country For Old Men but it happened, he looks like a an angry tumblr maven with his hyper cropped bangs here, and he tears into the role with a kind of unhinged ferocity and rambunctiousness I haven’t seen before in his mostly restrained career so far. Perez is like a Latin Harley Quinn as Perdita, all pissed off fury and sudden violent sexual energy in a total tour de force. This film won’t be for everyone: it’s incredibly subversive and deranged, there are explicitly shown instances of human sacrifice, rape, child abuse and domestic violence, not to mention the overall dose of supremely bloody gun violence and just a generaly lurid, deliberately unsavoury tone that stems from Gifford’s often shockingly tasteless yet somehow captivating work. But it’s a lot of fun too, there’s heaps of hilariously subtle dark comedy thrown in, a ballistic firestorm of a soundtrack, a host of deliriously over the top performances from the excellent cast and all manner of bizarre, arbitrary, surreal and eclectic sideshow-freak elements that make this an eccentric trip to hell with two demented individuals who you can’t decide whether to run from in horror or party with as they’re that much fun.

-Nate Hill

Rachel Talalay’s Ghost In The Machine

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

What if like, a serial killer committed suicide, but not before making sure that his soul would be uploaded into a computer server through some pseudo hacker wizardry, leaving his essence free to roam throughout entire systems of data and machine control, manipulating everyday household items into deadly weapons of murder? It sounds ridiculous and it is but it’s also a lot of fun, an old forgotten cyber horror flick called Ghost In The Machine. Now, obvious comparisons might be made to another 90’s cyberpunk SciFi/horror called Virtuosity with Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe but besides having a way lower budget, scrappy feel to it, this film is about a serial killer who was already human and then died and went into cyberspace vs the other way round. The killer here (played by Ted Marcoux) is just a nondescript, nasty piece of work dubbed the “address book killer” for his arbitrary, imagination deficient mode of picking victims. One night he deliberately totals his car off a cliff and kicks the bucket, only to resurface in cyberspace to hunt a young mother (Karen Allen) and her kid using everything from toasters, home entertainment systems, crash test dummy courses and basically anything electronic he can posses using his weird supernatural hacker magic. Their only hope is a super hacker of their own, (played by Chris Mulkey aka Hank from Twin Peaks) a good natured dude who once embezzled a million bucks from the IRS and gave it back to the people. This is fairly lowbrow, schlocker type entertainment with really, really cheesy 90’s virtual reality effects in the vein of something like The Lawnmower Man, but it has a certain viciousness and violent edge that I appreciated. Several murder scenes are pretty jaw dropping including one where the killer turns the entire interior living room of a dude’s house into an irradiated microwave zone and lets him literally fry to death, or an instance of electricity induced spontaneous combustion that is genuinely jarring in its sudden gruesomeness. Rachel Talalay the director also did the criminally underrated cult classic Tank Girl so she has a flair for the bizarre punk sensibilities that come across here. If you like retro SciFi goofiness, grisly slasher aesthetics and just a cheesy, lovably VHS feel, you’ll get a kick here.

-Nate Hill

The Poison Rose

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

You would think that a film noir headlined by John Travolta and Morgan Freeman would be a surefire winner or at least something moderately stimulating, but The Poison Rose is just a lazy, watered down, lethargic, empty, nonsensical and just plain fucking boring film. The first five minutes show the faintest beam of promise as we see hard-luck ex football pro turned private investigator Carson Phillips (Travolta) running away from vicious loan sharks while carrying his cat in a carrier. It’s a fun bit, followed by a nice opening credits sequence where he hits the road and drives it from Cali to his hometown in Texas to take on the case of a missing woman and for a hot second the film feels like it could actually go somewhere… and then it just viciously, thoroughly and embarrassingly flatlines. Travolta narrates the proceedings as if he’s in his nightgown and favourite La-Z-Boy chair about to nod off and who can blame him with a narrative this thin and scattered. The search for this girl leads him to a few of his old high school pals including a shady businessman (Freeman, barely raising a pulse) who owns half the town, a slightly corrupt sheriff (Robert Patrick) an ageing hipster (Peter Stormare) and an old flame (Famke Janssen) now wedded to Freeman’s sinister magnate. Brendan Fraser shows up to give quite possibly the weirdest performance of his career as a psychiatric “doctor” who looks like he could use a stay in the institution himself, garbling out his lines in a syrupy lisp under a dying combover and really looking like he’d rather be anywhere else. Now, this is one serious lineup of actors, like if this thing were made in the 90’s with a better script, director and when all these wonderful actors had more energy it could have maybe been something good, but they’ve squandered a dream cast on toilet water material, dumpster diving level production value and a story that is so clearly, derivatively, unapologetically DULL that I can’t let this review go by without a serious verbal lashing. There’s just no excuse for this kind of mediocrity in any echelon of film or art, it just rests somewhere between being dimly engaging and outright terrible and they’ve just limply thrown in the towel, and added an wet blanket overtop of it. There’s a scene where Travolta says “everything in moderation, including moderation.” One thing I could use in moderation, or simply not at all, are these uninspired, flaccid dicked, direct to video embarrassments of once great stars/actors. Piss poor excuse for entertainment.

-Nate Hill

Robert Zemeckis’s The Witches

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Robert Zemeckis is a perfect director to tackle one of Roald Dahl’s books; he’s got an inspired mastery over cutting edge CGI, a talent for dynamic visual storytelling and a genuine sense of the macabre, this willingness to be honest about the darker aspects of real life and include them in a story geared towards children, which is an attribute that he directly shares with Dahl himself. His crack at The Witches is an admirable, mostly successful, visually stunning and opulently stylish bit of devilish fun and although obvious comparison will be made not only to Dahl’s book (which simply cannot be topped) but also to Nicolas Roeg’s brilliant 1990 take on it. Zemeckis definitely takes the more playful route and while still injecting palpable dread and menace into the proceedings, his version isn’t quite the prosthetic soaked nightmare Roeg offered. The setting here is switched up from the UK to Deep South Alabama where a young boy and his grandmother (Octavia Spencer) encounter a coven of nasty real life witches holding a convention at a swanky bayou hotel. Anyone who has read the book knows that these witches are all about murdering children in frighteningly inventive ways and are led by the preening, aristocratic and supremely evil Grand High Witch, here played by Anne Hathaway in a performance that has to be seen to be believed. In the book the character is mean enough, in the 90’s version Anjelica Huston gave her a kind of.. ‘dark empress socialite’ vibe but Hathaway just grabs the script in her jaws like a dog and runs off with it. Sporting snowy blonde hair, a jittery Norwegian accent and mandible modifications that would make the vampires in Blade 2 shudder, she devours scenery, steals every scene and annunciates every syllable with the force of a snake sinking its fangs into someone. She truly makes this character hers, it’s the most impressive work I’ve ever seen from her as an actress and is by and far the best thing about the film. Even Stanley Tucci, who is usually the life of the party in any film, stands back in restraint as the hotel’s fussy manager and gives Anne a wide berth for her typhoon of a performance to unfold. The special effects are wondrous creations and I can’t figure out why anyone would bitch about the CGI on display here (it’s always inevitable I suppose) because it looks and feels incredibly tactile and terrifying. Zemeckis takes liberties with the witch anatomy that Dahl never dreamed of but they are righteous departures in style that make sense and add to the mythology nicely. Chris Rock narrates the film vivaciously as an older version of the young boy, and I never thought I’d say it but he has an uncannily perfect way with Dahl’s passages that had me wishing for a ‘The Witches audiobook as read by Chris Rock.’ My only one complaint is that it feels too slight in the latter half and I would have appreciated more of a runtime, but what they do give us really is a treat. Solid, comprehensive storytelling from Zemeckis, audaciously beautiful costume design, a gem of a score from Alan Silvestri and one unbelievable banshee howl encore performance from Hathaway who is truly having a blast.

-Nate Hill