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Posts Tagged ‘horror’

Pontypool

Tuesday, August 31st, 2010

“Avoid the English language. Please do not translate this message.”

Here’s another movie that pretty much had me from the moment I first heard about it in Mark Kermode’s cryptic review on Five Live. He described it as a zombie movie but not a zombie movie, set entirely within a radio station, where the epidemic has something to do with language… and I’m not sure if I can do any better than that. It’s one of those movies you feel desperate to avoid spoilers on, the kind that makes me just want to write here “just see it,” lol.

What I will say is something about the cast. I’ve never seen any of the three main actors in anything before* (there’s a couple of other roles, but as I said, it’s mostly combined to a single radio studio) but it is simply one of the most perfect ensembles I’ve ever seen. This threesome feels so genuine, and that is about the most important element you can have at the start of a movie like this. Stephen McHattie absolutely revels in his role as the wannabe shock-jock lumbered with a smalltown morning show, just as Lisa Houle relishes being the straighthead reigning him in, just as Georgina Reilly channels early Anna Faris as the sacrificial assistant.

The movie at first, because of McHattie’s character, reminded me most of movies like Talk Radio, and it is simply a joy to sit with these characters on a regular morning for them, some great monologue, gentle ribbing etc – but soon enough stuff starts to get strange, then stranger, then slightly frightening, and finally, without warning, actually kind of hilarious. I think some people will have problems – if they don’t have problems from the start, lol – with the final absurd turn of this movie, but I absolutely loved it. I do think there’s more to be made of what it seems to think it has to say about the nature of words, the dispersal of information etc, but if all you’re expecting from this is a little Canadian horror, then there is so much more here you’ll be in heaven if you’ve got a head.

^*okay, looking at the IMDb, it turns out I have in a few little things, but I didn’t recognise any of them lol – point is they’re not exactly stars.

Tags: horror, indie, language, zombies
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Heartless

Thursday, August 26th, 2010

“The darker it gets the more you see, but it’s got to get a lot darker before you see me.”

I had to watch this again in the end before I felt remotely able to write about it and I’m still unsure of what to say beyond simply knowing this is an incredible movie. This is my first experience of Philip Ridley’s work but on the strength of it I’ll certainly be looking back over his back catalogue, which I’ve heard even more good things about than I did this latest production. When they talked about this movie on the Five Live movie podcast I knew I had to see it because it sounded fascinating… it turned out to be even more so than I even expected.

The most recognisable aspect of the story is the Faust-like “deal with the devil” idea – best done in cinema so far, perhaps, in Alan Parker’s Angel Heart – but to make comparisons between this movie and that is barely touching the surface of the painful depths it goes into with the main character Jamie, played terrifically by Jim Sturgess. Where Parker’s movie blended Faust with film noir, Heartless – with the rest of its cast including the likes of Ruth Sheen and Timothy Spall as Jamie’s parents – feels more like Mike Leigh‘s Faust by way of the recent Harry Brown …and still that doesn’t begin to cover it.

Jamie’s a young man born with a large birthmark on his face that makes him feel like he’ll never be loved as others around him, living in a terror-stricken city that he feels completely unable to deal with. We see scars on his wrists. His father is dead, and in a shocking early scene his mother, too, is taken from him (slight spoiler, sorry; but this is a movie I believe can’t even be spoiled if you’ve seen it 10 times). There seems to be something supernatural afoot, and Jamie in his desperation and sheer loss with the world (Sturgess plays much of his role with an almost bemused expression on his face even at the most horrendous scenarios) finds it all too easy to believe, so when a man steps in claiming he can fix it all with a molotov cocktail, he kinda figures what has he got to lose?

It’s at this point when I first watched the movie that it really and truly grabbed me. For reasons that will be clearer the better you know me, I’m something of a sucker for stories where wishes are granted by supernatural means, and the way Jamie’s “wish” is “granted” here, it’s hard to describe but I believed in it completely. If you hadn’t guessed, his wish entails the good riddance of his birthmark, and the love of an Eastern European girl he met earlier in the movie. If you hadn’t guessed, too, all is still far from as it seems. He gets all that, more, and bizarrely the strange man’s young Indian helper as a daughter… which makes this strange man just a little upset.

This is where I lose my train of thought as to where this review is going, lol. This movie just has so much in it that I won’t even feel like I can adequately sum up my thoughts about it after 5 or 10 viewings. I just know that I will watch it that many times. While the movie is assuredly of the horror genre, and has many spooky, grisly, indeed in places outrightly B-movie outrageous moments, it is also far from – as the title might suggest – heartless. The theme of the movie is torn between the beautiful lyric (from a song sung by Sturgess on the glorious soundtrack) above and the sentiment expressed by Jamie’s new and shortlived neighbour AJ, played by Noel Clarke: “That’s the real bravery. To know nothing means anything and still wanna get out of f**king bed.” The last half hour of the movie changes everything you feel beforehand, and that’s why I needed to watch it again, and I’m still wanting to go back for more. For what it is, it’s a stunning movie, heartfelt, dangerous, and willing to be a little strange. Sturgess is fantastic, and the soundtrack beautiful. You really have to see this movie.

Tags: British, cuties, Devil, fear, horror, terror, violence, wishes
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The Daisy Chain

Thursday, August 26th, 2010

I got wind of this one after someone compared it to one of my faves from last year, Orphan but, like the last few movies reviewed (lol this is turning into a theme), it sat in my collection for what in retrospect was simply way too long considering how much I got out of it when I finally gave it a chance.

What really struck me most about this movie was the atmosphere. As I often do, I tweeted about it while watching, and looking back one of my most succinct comments was that it felt so chilling that a Dementor (those soul-sucking ghouls from Harry Potter) could’ve made it. The movie opens on a young couple relocating somewhere in Ireland, the wife pregnant with child… they should be happy, you’d think, but melancholy hangs like a cloud over every move they make. You can’t help but wonder what darkness lies in their past, nor hope for the best of them in this new life (coupled of course, with the awful knowledge that you’re watching them begin that new life in what you know is to be a horror movie).

The reason they’re so sad is, they’ve lost a child before, but the sadness seems to spread beyond that. It feels utmostly raw in a truly British sense, that these are people kind of living in fear, struggling with life itself, even before any cinematic horror steps in. In other words, it’s the best kind of horror movie. Morton’s character spots a strange child living nearby, and a reclusive old man who damn near physically abuses her. The next thing you know, this girl’s home burns down, and she’s suspected by the community because they believe her to be a fairy changeling…

Morton and husband adopt her, and I think that’s probably as far as I need to go with any kind of plot description, lol. Though I’d agree with the recommendation of this as “a British Orphan”, it’s so much more than that. In Orphan, there’s that element of being slightly on the side of the evil child – at least there was for me, lol, and I don’t think I was alone… there’s something a little knowing, almost trashy there in that movie that brings out your own dark side. Here, the situation is so much heavier atmospherically and the situation that much more doubtful and real. One really doesn’t know what to think of the child here until more is revealed, at which point you feel too desperately for Morton to even question siding against her.

There’s a whole theme that runs right through to the end that makes you long to believe that Daisy is simply different, and victim herself to plain narrowmindedness, which is one the greatest and most common themes in horror itself, but it’s pretty hard to believe as the movie wears on. The climax of this movie is one of the closest things to making me physically look away from the screen that I’ve seen in ages, it’s really that tense. I admit the ending left me slightly disappointed… it’s not so much open as simply unfinished. But I’ll certainly watch this again in the future, and it’s easily one of the better British (ok, Irish, whatever…) movies I’ve seen in the past few years.

I probably don’t need to say how brilliant newcomer Mhairi Anderson is as the eponymous Daisy because in a movie like this I simply wouldn’t sound enthusiastic as this at all if the child actor weren’t perfect… but just for the record, she’s perfect, as are Morton, Mackintosh, and all the rest of the cast. I watched the movie a second time before finishing this review and it was just as compelling, so I feel more than confident in recommending it.

Tags: British, cuties, horror, Irish
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The Wolfman [2010]

Tuesday, July 20th, 2010

This is another, I feel compelled to begin by saying, that I really wasn’t over anxious to see, merely one of the more interesting looking available to me as we approached midyear and I struggled to reach a grand total of 10 in the 2010 releases I’d seen, therefore enabling me to post a top 10 list at last (additional: lol, like I said, I’m a few weeks behind… said list is coming VERY soon I swear…)

This has a hugely excruciating build to anything of note actually happening, I guess you could call it character development but it really didn’t draw me in or attach me that much to the characters. In retrospect I have to kind of admire even this aspect of the movie. It’s extraordinarily classical in its approach and really at pains to revive the old Universal horror “thing” and to me that’s something, even if it fails, that’s worth gambling on especially in as high profile a release as this.

Finally, Del Toro’s first big transformation occurs, and I have to say that at this stage I feared I was done with the movie for it’s not exactly satisfying. Coupled with the slow faux-romantic buildup, I found myself comparing it unfavourably on Twitter (live-tweeting as I often do while watching movies, it’s a nice notepad and now’s a good time to suggest you follow me there for quicker thoughts on what I’m watching!) to the Twilight movies. Like I said there, it’s almost like someone made a movie for people who hate Twilight who still for whatever reason wanna watch Twilight. (If you think that’s bad, read this … lol).

I have to say, the overriding classicism of the whole thing kinda even helped me through this. There’s a real respectfulness to this movie, with the makeup mirroring the original ~~Karloff~~ Lon Chaney Jr. (update: God, so sorry I left that error in here so long…) monster, the deliberation over the build before the storm, Anthony Hopkins being part his own Helsing of Coppola’s “Dracula”, part Oliver Reed in Curse of the Werewolf, part Orson Welles had he ever played such a role late in life. Even Danny Elfman’s score almost deliberately echoes Wojciech Kilar’s “Dracula” score from 1992. Charlie Chaplin’s daughter even appears in a minor role too, just in case you needed further connection to old Hollywood.

It’s after I’d made all these excuses for the movie that the unexpected occurred… a second, serious transformation, in a lecture theatre filled with skeptical scientists and Del Toro strapped to a chair. There’s literally nowhere to hide and the movie explodes right in front of you. Suddenly it’s as gory and brutal as it needs to be and I found myself loving the slow build even more.

I’ll be honest, I’d still prefer to watch Jack Nicholson and Michelle Pfeiffer in the sexy, satirical, but still homage-ridden Wolf. I count that movie in a very special horror trilogy with Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula and Kenneth Branagh’s Frankenstein as almost all the adaptation these classic tales need, and while Del Toro’s more classical Wolfman might seem to fit better in that set than Mike Nichols’ modern take, it really doesn’t quite do it for me. I certainly can’t blame these guys for trying, but it’s something I feel could never really have worked any better than so many things that came before.

Tags: horror, remake, transformation, werewolf
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The Crazies [2010]

Saturday, July 17th, 2010

I have a vague recollection of seeing the Romero original of this and not being particularly wowed, it clearly being nothing compared to his original “Dead” trilogy of the time. Time of course might change that, his further installments of the Dead series not being particularly noteworthy either (though I’ve certainly got a little more out of them than others). It’s likely I wouldn’t have watched this remake were it not for an urge to watch anything from this year even of passing interest in order that I might get a top 10 list up by the middle of the year, lol.

All there really is to say is that I was impressed. This is easily brutal enough compared to so many movies of its kind released recently, and perhaps more importantly than anything has real actors in it in the form of Radha Mitchell and Timothy Olyphant. I remember really enjoying director Breck Eisner’s Sahara some years back and here again he proves himself more than capable of keeping a relatively huge story flowing and interesting. The loop/sequel-baiting ending is bound to infuriate some but, until an inevitable sequel spoils it, I’m inclined to view it favourably as a good old “nightmare without end” closure. I’ll almost certainly watch this again when it hits HD TV.

Tags: apocalyptic, disease, horror
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Survival of the Dead

Saturday, July 17th, 2010

I was still slightly baffled as I sat down to this after months of having it in my collection… while it’s true that his own additions to the original “Dead” trilogy (Night, Dawn, Day) haven’t come close to the greatness of old, it seems to me we should still be excited to have a new George Romero zombie movie coming out. I watched Land of the Dead again a couple of weeks ago and to my surprise had nothing new to add to my original review… it kinda has “something” but overall is dull as hell. I did, however, really like Diary of the Dead which, despite the obvious comparisons to Blair Witch, Cloverfield, etc, still had something genuinely pointed and grim to say about humanity at its close.

For me, Survival falls somewhere between the two other installments in the “new” trilogy. It references both Land and Diary, though mostly continues where Land left off, with Diary being a kind of appendix to the whole thing. The movie opens with some spectacular gore so it had at least one of the primary boxes for this kind of movie ticked from the off. Then it sinks into that same dullness of Land, however. Essentially the USP of this movie (where Night had the originality, Dawn the mall, Day the experiments, Land the sentients, Diary the style) is that there’s a movement to keep loved ones who have become zombies alive – think Nick Frost in the shed at the end of Shaun of the Dead, eg – and of course the only moral way to do that is to get them to eat something other than humans. It’s… interesting, I guess.

What really left me thinking of this movie higher than I otherwise might have is, as with Diary, the really simple summation of the idea that Romero conveys with a single final line and image. It’s the image of two zombies, the leaders of each side of the conflict throughout the movie, against an enormous full moon, approaching each other armed as if to duel. They raise their guns to fire, and they’re both out of ammo. The voiceover explains how when a war rages for so long, it’s easy to forget what we’re fighting over. To me it’s one of those perfect scenarios for a zombie movie which unfortunately the rest of this one doesn’t go into enough. The thing about Romero’s zombie movies is they’re simply about humans losing their humanity, and not only in the physical sense. This one doesn’t go far enough at all, but his heart is still certainly in the right place. I’ll still approach the next one with high expectations.

Tags: horror, sequel, zombies
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The Gingerdead Man

Tuesday, July 13th, 2010

I better write something about this now because it’s unlikely I’ll ever watch it again lol. There’s something about the title here that meant I was always going to be curious about it until I finally took the time to kill the cat… what is there to say. The fact that they actually managed to get a sequel made, coupled with things I’d read about it being a black comedy, actually made me bring higher expectations to it than I might have otherwise. Big mistake lol. If this was actually intended to be a black comedy, it’s still pretty darn lazy. It is basically Child’s Play with a gingerbread man instead of Chucky. I thought I’d tweeted more about the movie as I watched it, but I actually only tweeted the following when I woke up the next day… “I finally watched The Gingerdead Man last night. I swear it had 15 minutes of credits and still was under 70 minutes.” True story lol. I really wouldn’t waste even that much time if I were you. But I probably will have to see the sequel (“Passion of the Crust”) if I ever find myself as I did here with literally nothing better to do LOL.

Tags: horror, trash
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The Vault of Horror

Monday, July 12th, 2010

You’ve gotta love these old Amicus anthologies, and this is one I’d alternately forgotten about or intended to see for years. My favourite of all these that I’ve seen so far is by far Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors and I didn’t expect this to come close to that, but it is easily worth the watch for its stories are, if anything, even crazier than Terror’s.

There are two standout segments of the four for me. In “The Neat Job” Terry-Thomas plays a tidy-obsessed husband who expects his wife to maintain the same standards in the home. She’s so terrified of upsetting him that ultimately she makes even more of a mess than she might otherwise. When he returns home and sees the mess, he rails against her so much that she snaps and… well, I won’t spoil it, but there’s some grisly poetic justice involved in the ending lol. But the segment, or at least performance, that will stay with most after watching this movie is the very last, with Tom Baker as an artist who gains a voodoo power that enables his portraits of people to be mirrored in real life. He gets revenge on dealers trying to rip him off, but of course, as always in these stories, it ultimately backfires on him. Baker is phenomenally mad and worth the whole movie for. The whole thing has that perfect balance of ridiculous and quite genuinely creepy that makes the genre so irresistible sometimes. I’m gonna have to seek out the other ones I’ve not yet seen.

Tags: anthology, horror
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