Shocktober Review: Deathgasm

 Deathgasm is far and away the best discovery of Shocktober movie coverage. It's a scrappy, low budget film from New Zealand that wears the influence of early Peter Jackson on its blood-soaked sleeves. It's the second film I've seen this year about a metal band that uses cursed music to bring demons to Earth - the first was MegaMuerte - but of the two I think I'm giving Deathgasm the edge. MegaMuerte gets a lot of points for creativity, and for bringing back puppet monsters, but Deathgasm has such an infectious sense of fun, of not caring about who might be offended, that I can't wait to share it with friends.

 Brodie (Milo Cawthorne) is a young metalhead who finds himself dumped in Greypoint, New Zealand with his fundamentalist Uncle Albert (Colin Moy) and Aunt Mary (Jodie Rimmer) after his mother has an unfortunate incident involving methamphetamines and a mall Santa. Transplanted to a small town that sees him as a total outsider, Brodie is tormented by his cousin David (Nick Hoskins-Smith) at school, but strikes up an unlikely friendship with Dion (Sam Berkley) and Giles (Daniel Cresswell), two Dungeons and Dragons fans who share a similar "outcast" status. Things brighten up for him when he meets Zakk (James Blake) while browsing the metal section at the local music store / fortune teller. Zakk and Brodie share a love of raising hell, listening to brutal metal, and when they break into the legendary Rikki Daggers (Stephen Ure)'s place to try to steal one of the 666 existing copies of HaxanSword's first album, the boys end up with crudely handwritten sheet music instead. Since they're forming a band that Zakk has determined will be called Deathgasm*, it only makes sense to play the music, right?

Well, maybe they should have boned up on their Latin first, because with a title like "Vocavitique Rex Daemonia Virtutem Fortuna Hymnus Nigrum"**, they probably should have considered translating it first. Brodie eventually does, and it says "Summoning the King of Demons, A Black Hymn for Gaining Power and Fortune" (or, The Black Hymn for short), but they decide to play it anyway. That's after the first attempt, when Uncle Albert begins vomiting blood and the boys nearly pass out. The second time, everyone in Greypoint begins vomiting blood, and the boys do pass out. When they wake up, half of the town have become minions of the King of Demons, also known as The Blind One or Aelos (I think - you don't hear the name clearly). Summoning The Blind One is exactly what a nearby cult was looking for, which is why its leader, Aeon (Andrew Laing) sent Vadin (Tim Foley) to kill Rikki Daggers and steal the music. He failed, so he loses his head and bleeds all over Aeon's custom rug, much to his displeasure. His second-in-command, Shanna (Delaney Tabron), doesn't seem to notice, for reasons that are better for you to find out yourself.

 Brodie has problems beyond raising The Blind One, as David's less conventionally metal-oriented girlfriend, Medina (Kimberly Crossman) takes a shining to him. That doesn't sit well with David, but it gets even more complicated when Zakk inserts himself into their relationship, promising to act as an intermediary when Brodie ends up on the wrong side of a beating. Dion later refers to Zakk as "chaotic neutral", which is probably appropriate, since he intentionally misleads Brodie about Medina and then meets up with her, explaining that Brodie's not interested. It's not the last time that Zakk conveniently removes critical information, but he also comes back to help at a crucial point. The son of a mechanic, Zakk really doesn't seem to care about anybody but himself, so he alternates between good and evil throughout the film. It may be a nerdy descriptor, but Dion's mostly right.

 Deathgasm is, not surprisingly, a very violent movie, one where swords, daggers, chainsaws, axes, Incredible Hulk gloves, twenty sided dice, and musical instruments are used to provide maximum gore as our unlikely heroes try to stop the mess they started. Its sense of humor is, to put it mildly, juvenile, but frankly I don't find that to be very surprising. Writer / Director Jason Lei Howden had been working on visual effects for The Hobbit films, and Deathgasm is very much in the spirit of early Peter Jackson. May I remind you that "I kick ass for the Lord" is still one of the most quoted lines from Dead Alive. With that in mind, it should hardly come as a surprise that Brodie and Zakk battle the possessed Albert and Mary in what amounts to a dildo fight. They are, after all, teenage metalheads, and on the off chance you've never met one, this is fairly representative of their sense of humor and level of maturity. Your mileage may vary as to whether you want to watch an entire movie loaded with dick jokes, rampant profanity, and crude humor, but I find it in keeping with the scrappy, low-brow comedy of Bad Taste or Meet the Feebles. In that respect, it's also similar to MegaMuerte, which has roughly the same plot up to a point, but that film pushes into more twisted directions, including necrophilia. Deathgasm has what is perhaps the only time I've heard someone say the name of the band Anal Cunt out loud in a movie. So, pick your poison?

 I'm not quite convinced that the subplot with the cult is necessary - it actually tends to distract from the main story. Aeon is in what amounts to two scenes before (SPOILER) he's murdered by Shanna, who hopes to become the vessel of The Blind One, and she (BIGGER SPOILER) is subsequently murdered by Zakk who, in true "chaotic neutral" fashion (EVEN BIGGER SPOILER) becomes the embodiment of Aelos. I mean, who didn't see that coming, though? The point is that you could excise the cult subplot, just have Brodie / Deathgasm play The Black Hymn, and have roughly the same story without cutting away from them for characters who barely figure into the film. I guess it does give you an extra beheading plus gratuitous nudity, which in retrospect there's less of than you think there would be in a movie called Deathgasm.

 Other than that, I had a great time watching Deathgasm, perhaps even more so than MegaMuerte. Its tongue-in-cheek, don't-give-a-shit attitude and inventive use of gore (seriously, why did it take this long to use car buffer to tear someone's face off?) make for an infectious sense of fun. As long as you don't mind low-brow humor, and to be honest, I don't when used as earnestly as it is in Deathgasm. Sure, it can be dumb, and clearly I've seen a movie with almost the exact same premise earlier this year, but Deathgasm is highly entertaining. It's one of several New Zealand horror comedies I've seen lately (Housebound, What We Do in the Shadows) that find just the right tonal balance. Also, it's quite gory, and a lot of it looked to be practical, which is sadly lacking in horror these days. If Peter Jackson isn't going to be New Zealand's goremeister anymore, I'm glad that a new generation are picking up the mantle and running wild with it.





* In one of many instances of characters breaking the fourth wall, Zakk literally grabs the camera to keep it from panning back and forth between him and Brodie and insists that his band name is what they're going with.
** Forgive any misspellings, I'm transcribing as closely as I can to the handwritten words on the sheet.

Shocktober Revisited: Galaxy of Terror

 In my continued efforts to turn left when you're expecting me to go right, I have opted to review Galaxy of Terror (aka Planet of Horrors and Mindwarp: An Infinity of Terror) instead of Ben-Hur. It is true that I watched them back-to-back, and just like you got a write up for Lockout instead of The Cabin in the Woods, we're going to focus on the much schlockier part of a double feature again. The good news is that you don't have to be drunk to enjoy Galaxy of Terror, a Roger Corman produced flick that's just barely different enough from Alien to not be a ripoff.

 The funny thing is that the presence of James Cameron as production designer and second unit director actually lends credibility to the case that Aliens is a ripoff of Galaxy of Terror. It's not a case many people are making, but I'll explain what I mean in a bit. Corman commissioned Mark Siegler and Bruce D. Clark to create a movie about a mysterious planet where something sinister (alien perhaps?) has wiped out an expeditionary crew and is now preying on the rescue team. It's not exactly Alien, but if you were to say "give me a movie that's like Alien but isn't Alien," you might end up with Galaxy of Terror.

 When he loses contact with the last ship sent to the planet Morganthus, the Planet Master (SPOILER HIDDEN) informs Commander Ilvar (Bernard Behrens) that the Quest will be dispatched to discover if there are any survivors. The Planet Master assembles a hand-picked team to land or Morganthus: Captain Trantor (Grace Zabriskie), the lone survivor of an older disaster, Baelon (Zalman King), her first officer, Cabren (Edward Albert), Alluma (Erin Moran), a pyschic, Dameia (Taaffe  O'Connell) and Ranger (Robert Englund), engineers, scientists, and medics for the team. Also along for the ride are Quuhod (Sid Haig), a weapons expert who specializes in crystal throwing stars, Cos (Jack Blessing), a rookie, and Kore (Ray Walston), the cook. They find what remains of the crew on Morganthus, as well as a mysterious pyramid that hides their deepest fears inside...

 So the first thing I think I should mention is the cast. If you were reading the synopsis and saying, "Wow! He's in this? She's in this? Holy cats, they're all in one movie?" the answer is yes. It's a who's who of "Hey, I know that actor / actress," including people who would become Freddy Kreuger, Captain Spaulding, Sarah Palmer, and the creator of The Red Shoe Diaries. Or, maybe they'd already been Joanie Cunningham, My Favorite Martian, one of Blansky's Beauties, or uh, Eddie "Green Acres" Albert's son. It's an eclectic cast for a film that's best remembered for a woman having sex with a giant meal-worm.

 Actually, for a film made with very little money (somewhere between 700,000 and 1 million dollars), it has a ton of production value, a pretty good story, some interesting (and gruesome) death scenes, and despite the Giger-esque pyramid design, some neat designs. While Cameron was heavily involved in the look of Galaxy of Terror, I don't want to overshadow other Corman team members: Robert and Dennis Skotak, Alec Gillis, Al Apone, R. Christopher Biggs, Brian Chin, Ron Lizorty, Randall Frakes, Tom Campbell, and Rick Moore. It's interesting that some of the people involved in Galaxy of Terror would go on to work on effects for Aliens, because while Morganthus is supposed to be reminiscent of Ridley Scott's "alien" landscape, it looks much more like Cameron's vision of LV-426 from the 1986 sequel.

 Watching Galaxy of Terror, all of the exterior scenes, either mixed with models, rear projection, or both, is eerily reminiscent of the film Cameron would make five years later. While the interior of the Quest looks like a budget-modified version of the Nostromo and the pyramid has designs "inspired" by H.R. Giger (and, at times, Forbidden Planet and The Black Hole), the exteriors of Morganthus are going to seem more like a dry run for the "game over" scene in Aliens. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but it is an amusing parallel considering that Galaxy of Terror was conceived as a way to cash in on the success of Ridley Scott's Alien.

 Now, it is fair to mention that this is a movie where a giant maggot strips down Taaffe O'Connell, lubes her up, and then has sex with her (and they both seem to be enjoying it). It's a movie undercut by comical sound effects (especially during Bernard Behrens' death scene) and even though the story is more interesting that just being stalked by an alien, the ending is abrupt and anticlimactic. There's a character that, despite clearly still being alive, just disappears before the final confrontation, never to be heard from again. This is, make no mistake, still an exploitation picture, so most of the more intriguing concepts from Siegler and Clark tend to get swept aside for gore and (sporadic) nudity. Corman famously shot most of the "rape" scene because Clark refused to, and both director and writer objected to its presence in the film. In the end, it's such a bizarre scene that I had a hard time being disturbed by it, something I was expecting coming into the picture.

 Galaxy of Terror is a gory, schlocky, occasionally impressive slice of exploitation best enjoyed late at night, after a few beers (well, maybe you do need to be a little drunk) in the company of friends who don't mind their science fiction / horror on the cheap side. It's the kind of movie I'd imagine people who would come to Cap'n Howdy's Blogorium would watch, because why not? Between this and Lockout, it's not even a discussion. Bring on the space monsters!

Shocktober Revisited: The V/H/S Series

 editor's note: the following reviews originally appeared during coverage for Horror Fests VII and VIII, along with the 2014 Year End Recap.

 We decided to kick off Horror Fest with something I've been wanting to see for a while now, the "found footage" anthology film V/H/S. Normally the Cap'n isn't a fan of the "found footage" genre - the only two I've really enjoyed were The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield - but I thought the premise sounded interesting and one of the directors involved was Ti West. As you know, as a fan of The House of the Devil and The Innkeepers, I'm on board with anything West has a hand in directing. Also, the Cap'n is a sucker for anthologies.

 The film is broken up into five segments, with a wrap around story that actually advances as the film goes on (which isn't often the case in anthology films):

 "Tape 56" - from director Adam Wingard (A Horrible Way to Die), a group of hooligans who like to videotape themselves exposing women and vandalizing property are hired to break into an old man's house and steal a videocassette. The only problem is that once they get there, the old man is dead and they don't know which tape to steal, so they watch the following stories:

 "Amateur Night" - from director Dave Bruckner (The Signal), three friends head out for a night of drunken sex with camera glasses in tow, but when they bring the wrong girl back to their motel room, the party takes a dark and twisted direction.

 "Second Honeymoon" - from Ti West (The Roost), a couple is sightseeing in Colorado and Arizona when a strange woman begins following them around, and eventually visiting them in their motel room, while they sleep...

 "Tuesday the 17th" - from Glenn McQuaid (I Sell the Dead), a young woman brings her friends up to a lake she visited last year, but her plans may not be as innocent as partying and smoking pot...

 "The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily when She was Younger" - from Joe Swanberg (LOL), Emily and her husband are separated while he's in medical school, but she's having trouble dealing with noises in her apartment and a strange bump on her arm...

 "10/31/98" - from Radio Silence (Mountain Devil Prank Fails Horribly), a guy dressed as a nannycam bear and his friends arrive at the wrong house for a Halloween party, and instead find something more disturbing in the attic. When they intervene, they realize what they stopped wasn't the worst thing that could happen on Halloween...

 I'd heard positive and negative reactions to V/H/S, and I guess I can understand both. People prone to motion sickness from "found footage" movies may as well steer clear, as you'll be ill from the opening shots and it's not going to get any better. The ways that the stories use videotaped footage are, for the most part, clever, although I'd love to hear anybody's explanation of who would videotape a Skype conversation using a camcorder so that the wraparound story characters could watch it. But, if you're willing to overlook certain logical inconsistencies, I guess that for the most part they work.

 The "video glasses" in "Amateur Night" are probably the most successful because they limit our perspective in such a way that the ending is a surprise and it generally explains the age-old "why don't they just turn the camera off" question. This also works in "Second Honeymoon" and "10/31/98"'s favor, and "Tuesday the 17th" relies on keeping the camera rolling to reveal the killer. It's really just the Skype gimmick in "The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She was Younger" that strains logic.

 Like most anthologies, there are a mixture of good segments, weaker sections, and one or two really impressive moments that help others to stand out. The ending of "The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily" manages to elevate the story beyond a retread of Paranormal Activity territory. The fact that the characters in "Tape 56" are all loathsome assholes is overcome with the slow realization that watching these tapes are causing them to disappear one by one (although the reason isn't necessarily clear until the end), and great makeup effects and a gonzo ending help "Amateur Night" overcome its otherwise uninteresting protagonists. It will also make you second guess any girl who ever tells you "I like you" after a few drinks...

 I suppose that while I didn't necessarily like how lopsided "Tuesday the 17th" was in setting up the story before becoming an all out gorefest, the way the killer is handled was inventive and made the best use of the "videotaped" gimmick.

 Of all of the segments, "10/31/98" was probably my favorite, which is appropriate as they save it for last, after even "Tape 56" reaches its conclusion. When things move from suggested creepiness to all out special effects bonanza (handled really well considering it needed to be integrated with camcorder level video images), the segment earns the aimless first section, and the conclusion is satisfying and appropriately dark.

 Oddly, while West's "Second Honeymoon" suffers from the least motion-sickness inducing camerawork, it may be the most abrupt story conclusion and compared to the other entries is possibly the least satisfying. The "home invasion" elements are quite creepy, and West builds tension in appropriately slow pace, dropping hints about what's coming, but even more so than in The House of the Devil and The Innkeepers, the conclusion is too rushed to be satisfying. I understand what he was trying to do, but the twist comes about so quickly and ends immediately afterward, leaving little time to digest what just happened. It doesn't seem unfair that the guy watching that tape says "what the hell was that?" when it ends.

 Is V/H/S going to be for everybody? Probably not. It is a better-than-average anthology movie, which I count as a plus, and as I said mostly makes the best of the "found footage" gimmick, but not all of the segments are good enough to sustain the runtime, even if some of their conceits help keep audiences engaged. I can't really say that it transcends either the "found footage" or anthology subgenre, and it's going to make some of you feel very queasy well before "Amateur Night" kicks into high gear, so consider this a conditional recommendation.

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V/H/S 2 is a marked improvement on just about every aspect of V/H/S, and this is coming from someone who enjoyed the first film. It’s a weird point of cognitive dissonance for me, because I love anthology films but mostly hate “found footage” films, so V/H/S had to overcome its conceit with interesting segments and succeeded half of the time (I largely prefer the first and last entries in the film – the bat-creature and the haunted house). That said, it was too long, stretched the “frame” story too far, and is something I “liked” more than really “enjoyed.” I haven’t seen it again since last year and don’t know that I will any time soon.

 On the other hand, I've already seen the second film twice this year; V/H/S 2 drops the segments, cuts down on the length, and provides a more satisfying overall experience, which is critical for any anthology. The “frame” story, “Tape 49” is more focused and streamlined while still loosely tying in to the first film, and three out of the four “tapes” are winners, with the other one an inspired effort. Let’s take a look at how the film breaks down:

 “Tape 49” – from Simon Barrett (the writer of You’re Next), follows a dubious private investigator and his assistant as they break into the house of a missing college student, only to find a familiar setup involving VCRs and TVs in the living room. A laptop video from the missing student suggests that playing the tapes “in the right order” will change you, and they seem to be having an odd effect on the investigator’s assistant.

“Phase I Clinical Trials” – Adam Wingard (The ABCs of Death) directs and stars as an accident victim who receives an experimental artificial eye which is, for research purposes, filming everything. Things seem to be going well until he notices strange goings-on in his house, and a stranger turns up to warn him that the longer he can see dead people, the more they can interact with him. How does she know? Her cochlear implant has the same effect, and it may already be too late for both of them…

“A Ride in the Park” – from Eduardo Sánchez and Gregg Hale (The Blair Witch Project), a biker has plans for a nice ride through the woods when he runs into a familiar horror monster, and thanks to his helmet camera, takes us on a first-person journey through the “eyes” of the undead.

“Safe Haven” – from Gareth Evans (The Raid: Redemption) and Timo Tjahjanto (The ABCs of Death), a documentary crew is allowed access to the compound of a cult promising “Paradise on Earth.” Little do they realize that their spy cameras will do more than expose what’s going on behind closed doors – their arrival signals the beginning of the end…

“Alien Abduction Slumber Party” – from Jason Eisener (Hobo with a Shotgun) comes, well, exactly what it promises. Teenagers put up with their obnoxious preteen brothers and friends, until invaders from another world decide they want everybody, including the dog.

 The “frame” story benefits from stripping down the main characters to two (there were too many people in the first film) and keeps the in-between segments shorter and to the point. While you might miss it the first time, there are quite a few references to the first film and the “mythology” behind why somebody would collect these tapes. I would imagine this will expand as the series goes on (it’s hard to see why there wouldn’t be more), so it doesn’t feel intrusive and people who hadn’t seen the first V/H/S didn’t feel lost in the meantime.

 Every one of the entries is an improvement over the first film, not simply because they’re shorter (“Safe Haven” is the longest of the four and deservedly so). While it’s still hard to argue why anybody would transfer this footage tape, let alone circulate bootlegged copies, there’s nothing as credibility straining as the “Skype” segment from V/H/S. “A Ride in the Park” manages to take the overdone (if still wildly popular) zombie story and present it from a perspective you haven’t seen before and mixes in other camera angles in a fairly clever way. “Phase I Clinical Trials” makes good use of a limited perspective “first person” camera and builds some tension with creepy imagery.

 If there’s a weak link in the lot, it’s probably “Alien Abduction Slumber Party”, and mostly because it comes after the truly fantastic “Safe Haven.” Evans and Tjahjanto’s tour-de-force is an almost impossible act to follow, and “Slumber Party” is good, even when you consider that Eisener breaks three cardinal rules of movie-making (don’t work with children, don’t work with animals, and don’t kill either if you do). His novel use of the camera attached to the dog makes the frenetic chases near the end more interesting and explains the “why are they still filming this?” problem inherent to “found footage.”

 The undisputed winner is “Safe Haven,” for reasons I don’t want to spoil for people who haven’t seen V/H/S 2, because you should see the film if for no other reason than this segment. It’s an ominous buildup that turns into a rollercoaster of “holy shit!” with a perfect final line that’ll make you chuckle. I didn’t even realize I’d missed the last line until the second time I saw it, which caps off an already impressive exercise in ratcheting up the stakes for a film crew in far over their heads. The rest of V/H/S 2 is icing on the cake, which is not to diminish Eisener’s effort or the conclusion to “Tape 49,” which is more satisfying than the end of V/H/S.

Before we watched V/H/S 2, the Cap’n screened “Incubator,” a short I saw last year at Nevermore, and “One Last Dive,” another short from Eisener that shows just how much you can do with one minute. While I enjoy Hobo with a Shotgun to a degree, Jason Eisener has to this point really impressed the Cap’n with the short films he’s directed, edited, and produced. Not to bag on his feature length endeavor, but he really knows how to pack a punch in a short film.

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Remember how V/H/S was too long and only had a few good segments, but the frame story was fairly interesting even though why would you tape a Skype conversation and put it on a tape? And then V/H/S 2 was a marked improvement in every way, because it was shorter and the vignettes were more concise and creepier, even if the frame story was kind of a mess? I guess when the time came to make V/H/S Viral - which might as well be "3" based on the end of the movie - everyone involved from the producers to the writers and directors forgot that.

 The wrap around story makes almost no sense until the very end, and aside from an amusing cookout gone wrong, there's nothing but gore for gore's sake until the mysterious van that causes people go turn violent is shoehorned into the V/H/S mythos (such as it is). If clips from the first two films weren't crammed in as cutaways, you wouldn't even know it was supposed to be part of the same series. The "tapes" are abandoned completely, leaving us with a combination documentary / found footage story of a magician whose cape gives him real powers, a trip into another dimension that, initially, looks like ours but really, really isn't, and twenty minutes with the most obnoxious skaters you're likely to meet, who are eventually killed by zombies or eaten by a demon the zombies are summoning.

 Of the segments, the second one - "Parallel Monsters" - by Nacho Vigalondo (Timecrimes) is the only one worth watching. That said, it's so over the top that you're liable to start laughing at the "reveal" of how the alternate universe is structured. The Day of the Dead / Skater video only gets remotely interesting near the end, when it's clear they can't kill the cult members in Tijuana. Everything else is an absolute waste of time, and I worry that trying to turn the series from a Videodrome-like vibe to a "viral video" ending (think The Signal or Pontypool, but much worse) isn't going to serve V/H/S well.

Shocktober Review: Unfriended

 So let's get this out of the way at the outset: yes, Unfriended looks like a terrible movie. A social media-only "found footage" horror film about a ghost that haunts people through their computers. That's it. That's the entire movie. I'm not going to pretend that it's anything other than a bad idea, with obnoxious teenagers yelling at each other, cursing, and (thankfully) being killed off one by one. When I saw the trailer for the first time - in front of It Follows, which has to be one of the worst ideas a studio programmer could think of - my friend leaned over and said "you have one new movie for next year's Bad Movie Night". I can't pretend that Unfriended is in any way a horror movie that's worth your time. And yet, it wasn't as unwatchable as I expected. It's not good, but it was kind of fun, and a little better put together than I'd expected.

 I'm going to tell you right now that I didn't care enough about the characters to remember their names. They're all horrible human beings, broken roughly into the stereotypes of The Girlfriend (Shelley Hennig), The Boyfriend (Moses Storm), The Drug Dealer (Will Peltz), The Slut (Renee Olstead), and The Fat Kid Who Is Inexplicably Making Salsa in His Bedroom (Jacob Wysocki). I think there's also The Girl Who Gets Pulled into the Chat That No One Likes (Courtney Halverson), so someone can die before the other idiots we don't like. They're all having a Skype Chat, along with a mysterious person who is a (SPOILER) g-g-g-ghost! Specifically the ghost of Laura Barns (Heather Sossaman), who killed herself after a video of her drunk and passed out and maybe soiled herself or having her period was leaked online. I wonder if one of these assholes did it?

 Tell you what, SPOILERS from here on out. Unfriended is not the kind of movie I feel deserves to maintain a mystery. Of course they were complicit and of course that's why her ghost is cyber-haunting them. There's even a website that Boyfriend sends the main character about how you don't want to be haunted online. Laura forces all of them to kill themselves in thankfully brutal ways (oh, he's making salsa so he can put his hand in the blender!), and let's be honest, they deserve it. Look, the Cap'n is something of a fuddy duddy who still write a blog and can sometimes construct complete sentences. So yeah, internet and texting slang is not my thing. I won't turn this into a "all Millennials suck" thing, but can we address the central premise of Unfriended here?

 I guess this is supposed to be the horror equivalent of "cyberbullying going wrong" because not only does the video of Laura passed out leak, but so does her suicide video, which some piece of shit not only filmed with their cellphone, but also put online. Maybe that's how she cyberhaunts them, I neither know nor care. (Did you know the original title was Cybernatural? I am not making that up) I'd like to address the reaction to the first video, which we see in pieces throughout Unfriended. It starts with the suicide video, because, why wouldn't it? But the video itself, uploaded to YouTube, is okay, drunken and embarrassing. It's a mean thing to do because teenagers are horrible and should be murdered by cyberghosts but most of them grow up to be crushed by life and are therefore less rotten. Not all, but most. Still, the reaction to the "Laura Barns" video on YouTube is, shall we say, excessive.

 "OMG Kill Urself" seems to be the primary comment she got, which is really a big leap to make for a video of being passed out and soiled / bloody. Sure, it's not the best way to look online, but to leap to "you should kill yourself because ha ha look at that just go ahead and commit suicide" stretches the already tenuous credibility of Unfriended. And yeah, I realize I'm talking about a movie called Unfriended which takes place entirely on Girlfriend's computer screen and has Facebook and YouTube and Spotify and Skype and who knows what else I'm forgetting. Yes, I realize the premise is inherently ridiculous, but do teenagers really leap to "Kill Urself" as the only viable option to being ridiculed online? If there was going to be a "straw that broke the camel's back" in the verisimilitude of Unfriendm that would be it. I can't believe I just typed that sentence.

 But here we are, and that's just one of the dumb things these morons do prior to being killed off one by one. My other favorite example is when Girlfriend makes her whole screen visible to everyone else and never turns that function off, but continues having private messages with Boyfriend. I mean, she makes a big point of "sharing" the screen and then never turns it off. They can all see what you're typing, idiot. Of course, so can the audience. I'm not really sure how being a ghost on the web translates into being able to cut off the power in their houses, or to plant a webcam in someone's ventilation, but whatever. At a certain point you just go with it.

 I know I said that Unfriended wasn't as terrible as I thought it would be, and even as mean as mean this review is turning out, I'll give director Leo Gabriadze (Unfriended 2*) and writer Nelson Greaves (Sleepy Hollow) some credit. They do manage to set everything up early on, from the ways that characters are going to die to flat out telling you who was responsible for the video when Girlfriend tries to report Laura's Facebook page (gee, I wonder who shot the video?). When Girlfriend goes on ChatRoulette to get help (no, really), it's a pretty funny reflection of how hard it would be to get someone to take you seriously. I suppose the game of "Never Have I Ever" that's the climax of the film has what passes for tension in Unfriended. The very end of the movie - which is the only time the camera isn't focused on a computer screen - is arguably one of the better "jump scares" I've seen in modern horror. It at least reinforces the idea that we've been watching the entire movie from first person perspective. So, uh, good job?

 Let's be honest here: Unfriended is not the kind of horror movie you're going to watch seriously. I can't fathom having seen this in a crowded theater without everybody erupting into laughter. Its "R" rating means that the entire target audience for this film couldn't go see it, which is both good and bad. Good that there's an R rated horror movie, but bad that it's this. I can't imagine a room full of adults wanting to subject themselves to Unfriended without copious amounts of alcohol and or drugs (drugs are bad, kids, mkay?), so it's not really clear who this was for. Now that it's on video, I would expect a lot of people are watching it ironically, which might be the best way to watch it. I'm not going to pretend it's a "guilty pleasure" because I didn't really like it. I doubt I would ever watch it again, but I guess it wasn't awful. Just bad in a kind of fun way. That said there are so many better options for "so bad it's good" out there that Unfriended should be reserved for one of those "oh, that's all that's left on Redbox / Netflix that we haven't seen" weekends. Make sure you have plenty to drink.



 * Yes, I just looked this up, and because I don't know what Lucky Trouble is (Milla Jovovich is in it), I will announce to you at the tail end of this review that somehow Unfriended is already on its way to having a sequel. So, uh, thanks, me.

Shocktober Revisited: Death Spa and Killer Workout

 editor's note: this review originally appeared as part of the Summer Fest 5 coverage.


For whatever failings Prisoners of the Lost Universe has (and there are many), Death Spa and Killer Workout were the palette cleanser we needed to get back on track for Saturday. While it is rare that I'll program one movie, let alone two, sight unseen*, I had enough faith in the slasher movies of the 1980s not to let me down and went in blind. And I'm glad I did.

 Death Spa is not in the traditional sense what one would call a "slasher" movie, although it shares a similar structure. It also doesn't actually take place in a spa, necessarily, which disappointed one attendee who looked forward to "killer facial peels" and other "spa"' related kills. Nevertheless, while it commits two cardinal sins of "false advertising," the movie is bizarre enough and and of itself to compensate.

 If I were to compare Death Spa to anything, I guess you could call it a spiritual successor to Death Bed: The Bed That Eats. It isn't quite as formless as Death Bed, but amidst the three or four competing plots in Death Spa, there's definitely a "this gym / health center / indoor swimming pool is haunted and is killing people." A ghost is using the totally automated system against people who go there, seemingly at random. To say much more about who the ghost is or what it wants would spoil parts of the movie that generate the most "what the hell?" moments.

 Fortunately, there's a bunch of other crap in Death Spa I can talk about that's just as weird. Like the group shower scene where the spa shoots tiles at naked ladies, or the killer fish (yes, a killer fish in a gym). There's the package loading ramp at the bottom of the stairs in the basement that serves no purpose, or the "Parologist" (I'm assuming he studies haunted rocks) hired by the owner to investigate the haunting. There's the conspiracy to shut down the gym before the big Mardi Gras party (no amount of killings will close this Death Spa!) and the question of whether the place is haunted or if somebody is killing people in order to make it look like it is.

 SPOILER ALERT: It's both. Yes, on top of the ghost, there are people also killing random gym members to make the owner look bad. And the owner's brother-in-law has an, um, "unhealthy" relationship with his dead sister. The dead sister who set herself on fire after a miscarriage left her wheelchair bound (the flashbacks to this are unto themselves strange enough to recommend Death Spa).

 There's so much going on in Death Spa that I can't possibly cover all of it, and yet it manages to hang together well enough that you want to know how the hell it's going to resolve them. And it does. Well, kind of. But even that's fun to watch too. Also, Ken Foree (Dawn of the Dead, From Beyond) has an extended cameo where he only has to appear at the beginning and the end of the movie and gets to live (SPOILER).

---

 Killer Workout (Aerobicide) is, by contrast, a more straightforward slasher movie, but one with its own particular set of charms. It follows an extremely basic structure: a long montage of an aerobics routine featuring some, *ahem*, chesty ladies (sometimes also a morbidly obese guy in overalls riding the exercise bike), then a conversation with owner Rhonda Johnson (Maniac Cop's Marcia Karr), and then somebody being murdered, usually with gym equipment. Although not always: sometimes the killer uses and over-sized safety-pin (shades of Student Bodies).

 There's some procedural work done by Detective Lieutenant Morgan (David James Campbell), and an undercover agent posing as a new employee (Uh, I forgot his character's name and IMDB isn't helping), but mostly it's a slasher movie from the 1980s, which means some creative kills, a twist-y backstory for the killer, and lots of nudity. Actually, not as much nudity as you'd expect, and a lot less than Death Spa, but there's MUCH more time devoted to the aerobics routines Jaimy (Teresa Vander Woude) puts together, many of which appear to offer no exercise value whatsoever. So while you don't get as much nudity, there's a lot more jiggling.

 But don't worry, ladies, there's also a lot of guys in impossibly short shorts too. This unintentional recurring motif of Summer Fest was perhaps never more in evidence than during Killer Workout.

 What really helped Killer Workout as a companion piece to Death Spa was the weird touches, like David James Campbell's unfortunately high-pitched voice, one that in no way matches his imposing physical presence. It made it nearly impossible to take him seriously, all the way up to his final scene that must have, in some abstract way, inspired the series Dexter. There was also the guy we nicknamed "Johnny Pervo" with his pervo mustache that we later realized was two different characters that just looked alike and both happened to be sleazeballs.

 And then there's the "twist" of the film, which the Cap'n will immodestly admit I called twenty minutes in, about who the killer is. What I didn't realize until the "reveal" was it tied into a prologue most of us had forgotten about involving a tanning bed accident. Unlike Death Spa, Killer Workout doesn't have a supernatural angle, but it does have what one viewer described as "pudding tits."

 The two films do share some interesting connections, though: both Death Spa and Killer Workout close on freeze-frames of the villain, implying that both of them secretly won (well, in Killer Workout, it's flat out saying they did). And in Killer Workout, the reputation for murder makes the gym a target for vandals, one of whom spray paints "DEATH SPA" on the window... interesting...

 Up next is a blast from Horror Fest past with the return of Kingdom of the Spiders!



* Not since the Matango / See No Evil debacle at Horror Fest IV.

Shocktober Revisited: Don't Go In the Woods

 M. Night Shyamalan once famously tried to "re-brand" The Happening as a "B Movie" after audiences (and critics) had a chance to see how terribly inept it was. At one point, I had to prove to a friend of a friend that it wasn't the case by showing them the special features on the Blu-Ray, which has Shyamalan lauding his cast and crew on what a terrifying thriller they were making, one that would open people's eyes. Now, I suppose, it's possible that when he saw the finished cut, he revised his strategy, but given his typical stance of believing his turds are golden eggs, I think it was studio pressure to salvage his eco-disasterpiece. But that's just my theory. The Happening does all of the heavy lifting by itself - you decide if this was supposed to be schlocky or just ended up that way as a result of gross incompetence.

 What bearing does this have on Don't Go in the Woods (sometimes with "...Alone!" at the end)? As I learned after watching this 1981 slasher movie, director James Bryan intended the film to be a comedy, and not just a "me too" entry into the subgenre. That would put the film in the same company as Student Bodies, but the problem with this characterization of Don't Go in the Woods is that it's almost impossible to tell while watching the film. Bryan seems (well, seemed - I won't pretend I'm familiar with his filmography) to lack any basic semblance of pacing, editing, or sensible shot composition, and somehow makes a movie that's barely 81 minutes feel twice that long. It doesn't work as a comedy or as a slasher film, and yet, is oddly appealing in fits and (blood) spurts.

 One wouldn't be mistaken in assuming there's no plot to be had during the first twenty minutes of Don't Go in the Woods, as Bryan haphazardly jumps from one hastily cobbled together "kill" to the next, in rapid succession. Other than the fact that someone - or some thing - is hunting anyone who wanders into the forest outside of Park City, Utah, there's no connective tissue whatsoever that can be identified. Bryan's notion of setting up a "kill" is to throw a character on screen, without any sense of context, cut to hand-held "POV" shoots of the murderer, and then go straight for the gore. If you get a kick out of seeing the camera run into branches, lose balance, and then unexpectedly cut to a guy losing his arm, Don't Go in the Woods has you covered. We eventually learn that he was an ornithologist (McCormick Dalton), which is relevant in no real capacity, but that is the only one of Bryan's procession of victims we have any sense of back story for.

 Also wandering around in the woods, presumably just to be murdered, are a girl running around (Alma Ramos), a newlywed couple in their customized shag van (pun intended) (Carolyn Braza and Frank Millen), an artist (Cecilia Fannon), a tourist (Dale Angell), his mother (Ruth Grose), a fisherman (Hank Zinman), and a guy in a wheelchair (Gerry Klein) who is, inexplicably, slowly rolling himself up a dirt road. His struggle, including at least two times when his chair tips over, are agonizingly cross-cut with the final showdown between our heroes, the police, and the killer. For the record, my favorite theory about the killer prior to discovering it was just a Killbilly was that it was a "bear with a knife," which is really what it looks like when the artist dies and her toddler-aged daughter disappears.

 Yes, I did mention "heroes," didn't I? Eventually, in the midst of all of this random killing for killing's sake, we do actually meet the four twenty-somethings that one expects to find in a slasher movie: Craig (James P. Hayden) Ingrid (Mary Gail Artz), Joanne (Angie Brown), and Peter (Jack McClelland). Craig is leading the expedition out to a cabin in the woods - relax, we never see it, and it is never mentioned again once the killer shows up - with the rest in tow. He's the natural leader, Boy Scout type, and Peter is the "tenderfoot" who makes mistakes and resents Craig. Ingrid and Joanne are, um, the girls. One of them has short hair and the other one doesn't. To be honest, without looking at them in the movie, I can't remember which is which, but I think Ingrid is the one who lives at the end (SPOILER). Since I'm SPOILING, this breaks with the at-the-time nascent concept of "Final Girl" theory by also having Peter survive, but Craig and Joanne are long dead. Like the rest of the murders, there's no real rhyme or reason for this decision.

 I should mention that in the midst of hiking to a cabin, they spend the night in the woods twice, despite the fact that the cabin is close enough to walk to "by mid-day tomorrow." The killer isn't even stalking them at that point - he's instead murdering another group of campers (Leon Brown, Jr. and Linda Brown, although I could have sworn there were more people). It might have been a clever "bait-and-switch" if it were possible to tell what the hell was going on in Don't Go in the Woods. By that point, Bryan is stretching the story out in all possible directions, also including the morbidly obese Sheriff (Ken Carter). He's responding to the missing ornithologist report, until he just decides to give up in the middle of flying over the woods. No, really, that's what happens. He requests a plane to fly over, in the hopes of seeing, um, something, and then tells the pilot they'll never find the guy, he probably went home. But don't worry, the police and a local militia will be back for the "big" finale.

 Perhaps Bryan's notion that Don't Go in the Woods being a "comedy" comes from the sensory overload of ridiculous, bloody murders that make up the first half of the film. If so, he failed miserably, because there's nothing particularly comical about having the tourist's dead body lying on a rock just above two frolicking teenagers - a shot he returns to after killing the mother. There's nothing particularly tragic or ironic about it, either, because the composition is so in-artful. The closest thing to outright comical happens during the honeymoon - and honestly, you can't even tell they're married until you see it on the side of the van - when, after the couple is slashed thoroughly, the killer decides to flip the van over, into a ravine. And it explodes. I laughed at the audacity, and again when somehow nobody noticed that this happened, despite what is clearly a crowded forest.

 To be fair, I go into most slasher films with a healthy suspension of disbelief. The ridiculous nature of murder set pieces were part and parcel of the subgenre, even in 1981. I can even put up with sometimes amateurish execution, as long as the payoff is worthwhile. What's difficult to reconcile about Don't Go in the Woods is the stunning lack of tension. We barely have time to register that someone is on camera before they're being stalked and summarily slaughtered, and none of it is done with any degree of flair. There's no suspense in the film because there's no sense of geography for the characters, or any attempt to set up anything. If you'd like to make a case that the killer's M.O. resembles the Texas Chain Saw Massacre (and his cabin is clearly designed to) and therefore is somehow meant to make it "random," I'd listen, but then you'd have to explain the ending as something less coherent than "repeating the cycle." What begins as a slasher film slowly devolves into a mishmash of The Hills Have Eyes, but with random asides not unlike the police subplot in The Last House on the Left. And I somehow doubt that Wes Craven or Tobe Hooper would be happy to have their films compared to Don't Go in the Woods.

 And yet, I did say I kind of enjoyed it, didn't I? Well, that is true. It's an excruciatingly boring movie from the halfway point onward, but the random killings at the beginning are amusing in and of themselves. It's a little bit like that DVD, Boogeymen: The Killer Compilation, which was just clips of famous monster movies without any semblance placement within their respective films, crammed together. It's not the ideal way to watch a slasher, but the sheer willingness to throw narrative away and just randomly murder people with no rhyme or reason is amusing. And I reiterate: whether intentional or not, the fact that the killer pushes a van off of a cliff (sideways) is humorous. Some of Don't Go in the Woods is so stupid that you can't help but chuckle. The "score," by H. Kingsley Thurber (Frozen Scream), is a synth-heavy cacophony of "was that the right choice?" Every now and then he provides the punch line for a joke, which is funny in all the wrong ways, especially for the musical "fart" that accompanies Peter soiling himself.

 So, in fairness, while Don't Go in the Woods is frequently an interminable bore, there are moments of sheer stupidity, of incompetence in the direction and writing (how could I leave out Garth Eliasson, he who wrote the story and the script?), that will make you chuckle. If it had, oh, a sense of pacing, let alone a better sense of one, I would be inclined to recommend it, because some of the kills are decent, and before you know what the killer is, there's a sense of baffling confusion. As it stands, I would only recommend it to slasher die-hards who have exhausted most of the better offerings. Don't Go in the Woods isn't bottom of the barrel - it is watchable, if nothing else - but you might find yourself struggling against seeing how much time you have left.

Shocktober Review: Satan's Blade

 Satan's Blade is, hrm... it's tricky to really describe this movie because it's not exactly a slasher movie. For most of the mid-section, it follows basic slasher rules, but the beginning and end of the film have this "throw it at the wall and see what sticks" quality. Is it a crime movie? A demonic possession movie? Maybe a "crazy killer in the woods" movie? At first, I thought it was just going to settle down and be a slash and stalk kind of horror film, but then there's an out of left field final scene that confirms a backstory we only half heard, leading to one of the strangest last shots I've seen in a while. It's almost Death Bed-esque in the "what the hell?" randomness. And that's not even taking into account the beginning.

 We don't actually start Satan's Blade in the ski lodge where most of the film is set, but instead at a bank somewhere back in town. Two masked robbers force their way in at gunpoint, make the tellers give them all of the money, sadistically cut their clothing off (gotta get in that gratudity early), and then shoot them. It's more than a little unseemly and misogynistic, but oh wait, what a twist, the bank robbers are WOMEN you guys! They go check into the lodge and hide their ill gotten gains, and while they're waiting for "George," their accomplice, it's time to strip down. There's some betrayal, and then a mysterious stalker kills them both and paints a symbol on the wall using their blood. (It does turn out at the end that the hidden money isn't just a MacGuffin, although I won't tell you who comes to collect it).

 After that lovely prologue, we meet our overstuffed main cast, consisting of two groups: a group of sorority sisters looking to relax and two couples celebrating one of the husbands passing the Bar Exam. The girls are there to party, the couples are there to relax, maybe do some fishing - it's a slight contrast of age, intermingled with some sexual tension. Oh, plus the story of a  giant mountain man who killed people with a weapon from the "evil spirits of the mountain" to kill anyone who came to the mountain, and also kill his family. He had an evil blade and maybe lives in the lake as a monster. But let's not scare the tourists. Also, one of your cabins is where the women from the prologue were killed, but we did our best to clean it up. Enjoy your stay!

For a while, Satan's Blade transitions into a pretty standard slasher, cutting back and forth between the two cabins (well, it might have been one cabin redressed, considering this was a pretty low budget affair). The guys decide to prank the college girls, then they get drunk while their wives justifiably grouse about them hitting on younger women. There's a dream sequence to add an extra level of kills to the proceedings, and also so horror fans don't get too bored while director L. Scott Castillo, Jr. spends a lot of time developing various characters. Did I mention that, not counting the police or the criminals in the prologue, there are 9 protagonists? The lion's share of the storyline is spent with the couple, but you can't wipe out all of the college girls (SPOILER) except one without at least spending a cursory amount of time getting to know them. Of course, the deaths happen in such rapid succession that they barely register. Satan's Blade is the sort of movie that crams in a bunch of kills at once, builds a little bit of tension and then does it again. It's not really surprising that the dream sequence happens, and it actually ends up being more memorable than when they actually die.

 Kudos to you, by the way, if you happen to remember the prologue after all of this mayhem, because the "George" - who does comes to pick up the money - is (SPOILER FOR THE END OF THE MOVIE) the Sherriff's Deputy who is also the killer. Yep. Let that sink it, because this is when Satan's Blade also gets even weirder. He's too young to have been the original killer, and the Sherriff was a deputy when the murders happened the first time, but there's an explanation! The story the old lady told is true, and the knife he's using (*coughtitleofthemoviecough*) is possessed, or something. He kills the Sherriff, goes stumbling around in the woods for a while, washes his bloody hands off in a creek, and then throws the knife into the lake we saw earlier. Then, a hand raises up from under the water, holding the knife, and throws it back. It lands in a tree where some unwitting hiker is passing by, who sees the knife and decides to touch it. The cycle begins anew? Uh, maybe?

 The demonic possession angle is so briefly touched upon during the Lodge Keeper's story that you wouldn't be blamed for missing it, because it really just seems like a "guy who went crazy and killed everyone, including his family" story. But nope, possessed demonic blade that turns you into a killer with an Excalibur-esque delivery system. It's introduced so quickly and with so little fanfare that my honest first reaction was "what?" To be fair, it is so unexpected that this one plot twist makes Satan's Blade more memorable than it would be otherwise. Between the stilted line delivery and many dead-end subplots, I'd almost forgotten the whole "evil spirits gave him a blade" part. After all, the killer doesn't seem supernatural, just pretty good at slashing. In fact, he tries to keep the murder scene "shut down for a few days" as deputy, presumably so he can get the money and run. So why is any of the "possessed knife" part necessary? It wasn't until I watched the lodgekeeper's mother tell the story again that, oh yeah, I guess they did lay it all out. It's just that Satan's Blade is weird and  meandering enough that you'll totally forget it has a plot to begin with.

  That and the open-matte Blu-Ray, which about halfway through the film becomes a game of "spot the boom mic". If nothing else, I would recommend Satan's Blade for its inexplicably disjointed twists and turns, held together by only the barest of threads. If you're looking for gore or gratuitous nudity, this is probably not going to scratch your itch. Having a set of (comparatively) older protagonists is a nice contrast to the usual "nubile young college girl" trope, but it doesn't amount to much. Really, it's the last ten minutes that leave you scratching your head giving Satan's Blade an edge over more conventional slasher fare.

Shocktober Revisited: Spider Baby

Jack Hill's Spider Baby, or The Maddest Story Ever Told is one of the more unusual films I think I've ever seen. That has to say something, as the Blogorium has seen its share of the strange and "off the beaten path" cinema. It's more coherent than Death Bead: The Bed That Eats, and less hyperbolic than Blood Car, to be sure, but there's something about the tone of Spider Baby that resonates well after the film ends. Lurid? Yes. Graphically violent? At times. It meets most of the check-marks for "low budget shocker" from the 1960s, but Spider Baby is nothing like the two most famous titles from that era: Night of the Living Dead and Carnival of Souls. It's so weird that the film often makes Freaks look tame by comparison, if only in how nonchalant everyone seems to be about the Merrye family.

 Somewhere in the hills of California (?) is what remains of the Merrye Mansion, a place nobody wants to go anymore. Its only inhabitants are Elizabeth (Beverly Washburn), her younger sister Virginia (Jill Banner), and their older brother Ralphie (Sid Haig), under the care of the family chauffeur, Bruno (Lon Chaney Jr.). Well, there might be a few odd uncles and aunts in the basement, but that's Bruno's business. The Merrye's have a unique affliction: a genetic disorder that causes them to "regress" as they grow older, mentally at first but eventually physically as well. Virginia believes that she's a spider, and eats bugs, along with anything (or anyone) she catches in her "web." Elizabeth dresses and behaves like a child and wants nothing more than for Bruno to hate her sister, to the point that she allows Virginia to kill the mailman (Mantan Moreland) early in the film. Ralphie? Well, it might be better to think of him less as a person and more like a dog - he's in the late stages of "Merrye Syndrome" and is basically feral.

 To Bruno's great dismay, the mailman (who was dead when he got home, to be fair) is delivering notice from the niece and nephew of "The Master" of the Merrye Estate, Emily (Carol Ohmart) and Peter (Quinn Redeker) Howe, who have come to take control of the manor and assume custody of the children. Emily brings along her lawyer, Mr. Schlocker (Karl Schanzer) and his assistant, Ann Morris (Merry Mitchell), with hopes of cashing in on the estate, but what they find is a very different matter indeed. The children trust Bruno and they do their best to appear "normal" for their extended family, but it's only so long before their natural tendencies surface...

 Originally titled Cannibal Orgy, the film begins with a kooky animated credits sequence, accompanied by a song about the story to come, sung by Chaney. If you didn't know what you were getting into, this sets the tone right away, and Mantan Moreland's jittery mailman give a clear sense that Spider Baby teeters on the brink of "camp" territory. Not intentionally, mind you, but the bizarre display of "Merrye Syndrome," and Elizabeth and Virginia in particular are a template for the sorts of characters who populated John Waters films in the 1970s. They just don't know any better - it's how they've always lived, with Bruno keeping a close eye on them and the rest of the world shut out.

 For the Merrye family, it's perfectly normal that Ralphie uses a dumbwaiter between floors of the house, and while Emily is appalled at their lack of "manners," Peter takes it all in stride. He accepts them as they are, a choice that makes Spider Baby all the more unusual; the film doesn't revel in how bizarre the Merrye's are (and they certainly are), but takes them at face value and presents the intruders as the "strange" ones. At no point in the film is the audience ever sympathetic towards Schlocker or Emily, and the emerging romance between Peter and Ann seems to exist so that Virginia's affections toward him go unrequited. That they're family only seems to go noticed by Peter, but he's so accommodating of the girls that in more lurid hands, who knows where the story may have headed...

 I'm almost positive that Spider Baby is a direct influence on Rob Zombies' House of 1000 Corpses, particularly on how the presentation of the Merrye's mirrors the behavior of the Firefly clan. It's not just that Sid Haig is in both films, although that certainly doesn't hurt the case that Zombie has seen Spider Baby and borrows from it (in particular, watch the dinner scene and compare Baby on the couch in Corpses with Virginia and Peter in the "web" scene). The difference that makes a difference between Spider Baby and House of 1000 Corpses is that the former was intentionally designed to be a comedy and the latter resembles a grab-bag of "grindhouse" tropes in the guise of a horror movie. (In the interest of full disclosure, the Cap'n is not a fan of House of 1000 Corpses).

 We're meant to laugh at the arch behavior and the unexpected resolution to the Ralphie / Emily "romance" - if you want to call it that - in the same way that Bruno's admission the family is "vegetarian" at the dinner table. The concession to this rule is that Virginia eats bugs and Ralphie is allowed to eat whatever he "catches," which includes the cooked cat on the table. Only Peter seems interested in partaking, mostly because he assumes it's a fox or something of that nature.

 The distinction that Spider Baby is a comedy - a very, very black comedy at that - is often missed by people who discover the film. Hill, who made his feature debut with Spider Baby, lost the film in a series of tangled rights issues following the producers going bankrupt, delaying its release for the better part of the 1960s. When Cannibal Orgy finally made its way to theaters, it was unusually paired with biker films (Hells Chosen Few) or horror anthologies (Dr. Terror's House of Horrors). Given that sort of pairing, it's understandable that Spider Baby remains largely unknown to this day. I had heard of it, but had never seen a copy of the U.S. DVD, and ultimately came to the film through the Arrow Video Blu-Ray release, which does look fantastic for a 50 year old film that only made it to drive-ins. It existed on the margins of cult cinema for so long that even Jack Hill is surprised by the affinity its fans have for the film. He seems puzzled to be remembered for this over Switchblade Sisters or Foxy Brown, but for a young filmmaker working on a low budget, it's a very assured debut.

 Part of the appeal was seeing a younger Sid Haig, and also Ohlmart (memorable as Vincent Price's venomous wife in House on Haunted Hill), but chiefly I wanted to see Lon Chaney, Jr. in one of his better later roles. Unlike Alligator People or Hillbillys in a Haunted House, Chaney wasn't consigned to the "drunken caretaker" role, and is instead the surrogate parent for the Merrye children. He has quite a few tender moments with the girls, particularly when Virginia does something unforgivable and Elizabeth desperately wants him to shun her for it. He tells them that he could never hate them, and does his best to manage an untenable situation when Emily and Peter arrive. His sense of resignation about the real world colliding with the fantasy world of the Merrye "children" keeps Spider Baby from simply being a freak show. Tonally speaking, Chaney is what makes Spider Baby such a strange film, in that he simply refuses (as a character and, presumably, as an actor) to treat this madness as anything other than "par the course."

 The big surprise, at least for me, was Jill Banner as Virginia. I knew almost nothing about her going into the film, and only found out after the fact that she had been developing scripts with Marlon Brando prior to her untimely death (car accident). While Beverly Washburn has the more "camp" performance, Banner is mesmerizing as the titular character, who seems totally disconnected to reality in any form. Her fascination with "Uncle Peter" is both creepy and sweet, although her intentions always lead back to playing "spider" with a pair of kitchen knives for fangs. It's a shame there isn't more of Banner to see on-screen, but as first impressions go, she makes the most of hers.

 (SPOILERS AHEAD) I do have one minor point of contention for the film - the original title, Cannibal Orgy, doesn't actually make much sense until the very end of the movie, when the completely devolved "relatives" in the basement are revealed. To that point, we're only aware that Bruno and the girls put the bodies of the mailman and Schlocker in the dumbwaiter and send them to the basement, but it's not clear that the "uncles" and "aunts" are eating them. Furthermore, it's hard to tell exactly what Elizabeth eats other than moss and mushrooms, and Virginia only eats bugs and cuts up people - she keeps the mailman's ear in a box, but never makes any overtures that she'd eat it. Ralphie eats other animals, and Bruno doesn't appear to have any cannibalistic tendencies. I understand that the title is lurid and grabs your attention, but in this instance Spider Baby may, in fact, be the better choice, even if the opening song specifically references cannibalism.

 It's a minor quibble, I admit: Spider Baby is a film that deserves to be better known than it is, but if you like hunting out on the edges of cult classics, I think you'll find it is every bit as deserving of your attention as Carnival of Souls or Night of the Living Dead. Possibly as influential, albeit to a different group of filmmakers. And don't worry too much about the goofy prologue with Peter that sets up "Merrye Syndrome" - the closing bookend wraps it up well (or does it???).  Spider Baby is the sort of low budget exploitation that sneaks up on you, and continually surprises, confuses, and amuses you. I wish I'd have seen it sooner, but even a Cap'n can be late to the party some times. Come over some time and I'll be happy to show it to you, but do watch out for my web. I get to eat what I catch, you see...

Shocktober Revisited: The Mutilator

 editor's note: this review originally appeared as part of Horror Fest 7 coverage, but as the film is scheduled for release later this year, it seemed appropriate to include it.

 So... The Mutilator. What the hell was that?

 I don't know if you remember Sleepaway Camp, or have even seen Sleepaway Camp (which you clearly should, if you haven't), but it has a prologue and some really bizarre flashbacks during the movie that slowly hint that Angela is in fact a dude (SPOILER), something revealed at the very end of the film.

 Nothing that outlandish happens in The Mutilator, but it does have an opening every bit as inexplicably odd and an ending that's up there with Pieces in the "Wait! That can't happen! What the hell?" category. Also, I guess it might help to have seen Pieces so that the last sentence was in any way relevant to what I was talking about. Oh well, if you'd been at Horror Fest V, you would have seen Pieces, and if you wanted to watch Sleepaway Camp I can only assume you would have already. If not, I guess you could watch them and then read the rest of this review, even though I'm not really going to mention either film again.

 So The Mutilator (written and directed by Buddy Cooper) begins with young Ed Jr. (Trace Cooper) and his mother (Pamela Weddle Cooper) getting ready of Jack Sr. (Jack Chatham - and I know that should say Ed Sr, but I'm sticking with what IMDB says)'s birthday. Ed Jr. decides he's going to clean all of his father's guns while his mother makes a cake, and like the genius he is he also pulls the trigger, accidentally killing his mother. Oh sure, technically it's his father's fault for keeping a loaded rifle in an unlocked cabinet where his kid could accidentally kill his mother, but Ed Jr. is clearly an idiot.

 Anyway, so Jack Sr. comes home, tries to kill Ed Jr., then drags his dead wife into the study where his guns are, pours himself a drink, and then pours a drink for his dead wife. He also tapes the "For Your Birthday, All Cleaned By Me" sign that Ed Jr. put on his gun case to her body. Just because, I guess. And then we hear police sirens while the kid stares on (did he call the cops?).

 From this promising beginning, we leap forward ten years or so, when college-aged Ed Jr (Matt Mitler) is sitting in the local hangout arcade / pizza joint with his friends, deciding what to do for Fall Break. When his father inexplicably calls him AT THE arcade / pizza joint, to tell him that he has to come to Jack Sr.'s beach condo to "close it up for the winter," Ralph (Bill Hitchcock), Sue (Connie Rogers), Mike (Morey Lampley), and Linda (Frances "related to Claude" Raines) talk him into letting them come along to party for Fall Break. They also bring along Ralph's girlfriend  Pam (Ruth Martinez), so everybody can pair up and have sex. Well, almost everybody, anyway.

 When they arrive at the beach condo (in Atlantic City, NC, which means the college is probably ECU since they complain about not being close to the beach and they have southern accents that come and go) it's already unlocked. Little do they know that Jack Sr., aka "The Mutilator" is planning on killing all of them, and pretty much anybody else.

 This begs the question: was he just planning on killing his son and it's just a bonus that Ed Jr. brought five friends, or was Jack Sr. just insanely over-prepared for his murder rampage. Considering that he never says a word to his son, or really anyone else ever (including at the beginning of the film), it's hard to know what his motives are.

 The condo is filled with his trophies of previous kills and Ed Jr. mentions he's hunted everything except for humans (foreshadowing) so we can kind of guess what Jack Sr. is planning, especially since it's not long before we see him hiding in the garage downstairs, cradling his battle axe and dreaming about murdering his son (as a child). He is, however, not much of a mutilator, although there's a reason for that I'll get to in a moment. See, Jack Sr. does drown somebody, and he uses a motor boat to rip someone's guts out, and he also decapitates a police officer ("special appearance by" Ben Moore), but it isn't until much later in the film that he does anything that would qualify as "mutilating." That said, when he does it's a real doozy. I mean, I've seen some creative kills with a hook before, but this one takes the cake by a long shot.

 So I mentioned the whole "mutilator" thing, in part because the title of the movie wasn't The Mutilator until it came out on VHS. Prior to that, it was called Fall Break, which explains the lengthy title song that plays over the credits while the gang is driving from unnamed college (ECU) to unnamed beach (Atlantic City, NC) which is also the least slasher movie theme song you're ever going to hear.

 So I guess by 1985 maybe Buddy Cooper and company decided that Fall Break wasn't a sufficient holiday to make the title of a slasher flick, so the film was renamed The Mutilator. I can't say for certain whether one is better than the other, but it's a weird movie indeed. In addition to all of the strange dialogue ("you're more likely to get struck by lightning on the beach" while the moon is visible in the background) or the fact that these wild college kids spend most of their time playing Monopoly and a version of Blind Man's Bluff that looks suspiciously like Hide and Seek mashed together with Sardines, interspersed with some gratudity and a killer that unlocks the door to the kitchen so he can sneak back into the condo he has the keys to later that night... look, a lot of The Mutilator doesn't make any sense. And that's part of the charm, even if it isn't very good. I found it strangely entertaining in the same way that Splatter University is. Now that doesn't make it good, but it makes it watchable, and I'll take watchable over Moontrap any day.

 Also, the killer is cut in half at the end but still manages to stay alive long enough to chop off a cop's leg before dying, just for kicks. Spoiler.

Quick Review: Fantastic Four

 This one has been a tough nut to crack: on one hand, I really don't want to pile on to a movie almost everybody has been tearing a new one. Because, yeah, it's a mess. Most of it is pretty bad to really, really bad. Some of it is okay, maybe even pretty good, but then structurally it collapses again. On the other hand, there's almost something worth mentioning in Josh Trank's Fantastic Four that I've seen mentioned offhand in a few reviews, but that most people haven't picked up on, or at least discussed in depth. This isn't the first superhero movie that's dipped its toe into Cronenbergian "body horror," but in whatever it's original incarnation was - more on that in a bit - Fantastic Four is definitely the first mainstream comic book movie to have tried to specifically approach an origin story using that pervasive sense of dread.

 It's just too bad that we'll never see that movie, if it was ever finished. We will probably never know, at least until an "unauthorized" book comes out in a decade or so. Actually, blog post. I keep forgetting that's the world we live in now, where a book like The 50 Greatest Science Fiction Movies Never Made would now just be a series of articles on some geek friendly site. Anyway, the post-mortem on Fantastic Four is going to make for fascinating reading someday, more so even than the movie that came out of it. Which is, let's be fair, not worth seeing. I'm sorry, but even given what I'm going to tell you, the end product just isn't worth your time. It's not bad enough to be entertaining, and what few moments of interest it has don't amount to enough to make it worth your time.

 Without getting into the salacious details of what the director did or didn't do on set, or how Fox rushed Fantastic Four into production so as not to have the rights revert to Marvel, let's just say that the production of this film was haphazard. And it shows. If nothing else, there are clear markers of what scenes were reshot because Sue Storm (Kate Mara)'s hair color changes due to a comically mismatched wig she's wearing. It's more prominent later in the film, but you'll see it sprinkled throughout the first half as well. Apparently - and again, other than a deleted tweet from Trank and rumors, we have no real confirmation - Fox saw the completed footage and were shocked that the director of Chronicle was less interested in making a Marvel Audience Pleaser movie and was much more interested in a psychological exploration of what super powers do to the human body and mind. They also allegedly claim the film didn't have an ending, which might explain the embarrassingly bad one cobbled together from every other Marvel film, whether Fox owned the rights to them or not. There is a marked shift from the first half of the film, which at least looks like it was shot in practical locations, to the last 15 minutes, which were clearly shot on a green screen, in order to have a showdown with our heroes and the barely established Dr. Doom.

 As I said, that's not really what I found interesting. The final showdown with the giant beam in the sky that manages to steal from X-Men, Thor: The Dark World, and The Avengers (actually, both the first one and Age of Ultron, not that I think about it) is kind of par the course for Marvel movies now. To the point where a comparably small scale fight in a little girl's bedroom makes Ant-Man* a refreshing change of pace. But I digress. Back to the only thing about Fantastic Four that's vaguely worth discussing. There is a moment, in the middle of the film, when Reed Richards (Miles Teller), Johnny Storm (Michael B. Jordan), Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell) and Sue Storm (Mara) are in Area 57, a top secret military facility. They've been exposed to the green goop from Planet Zero, which also swallowed up Victor Von Doom (Toby Kebbell) after they got drunk and used the Quantum Gate to visit the other dimension. It's a long, dumb, story, but basically Government Man (Tim Blake Nelson) wants to take the project away from Dr. Franklin Storm (Reg E. Cathey) and send NASA to the other side. Anyway, I guess it's less dumb to go Ninja Turtles than "Cosmic Radiation".

 So they're in Area 57, and Franklin has been given access to visit them. When we first see our heroes, they're in separate, dimly lit rooms, strapped down and totally unable to control their powers. Reed's arms and legs are extended and he can't move his fingers. He doesn't even seem to be aware what's happening. Ben is screaming for help from his darkened cell, embedded in strange rocks from Planet Zero. Johnny uncontrollably bursts into flames, and Sue phases in and out of invisibility. Trank films these scenes to appear as disturbing as this sudden change would be - Reed is sweaty, distended, and horrified. Ben is a giant rock monster, and he's alone with no one to talk to him. Johnny is dangerous to the lab technicians - during a nightmare, he overheats and blows out the glass window they're watching him from behind. For a change, our young protagonists behave the way someone might actually behave if they experienced a radical change to their bodies, and while it might not be what audiences expect from a Fantastic Four movie - let alone Marvel in general - it's a refreshing take on comic book adaptations. This is a far cry from discovering you can stick to walls, or many of the "discovering your powers" montages from other comic book movies. This is all of Brundlefly, all at once - the power and the rotting fingernails. The fear, the loathing, alongside a perverse fascination. Trank does an admirable job of mimicking Cronenberg's fondness for shots that linger on "new flesh," so to speak. For a moment, I thought this might be a movie worth watching.

 And then that all falls apart, because of an unusual choice to cut ahead "One Year Later" after Reed escapes, where we're given quick exposition on what their powers are and how they work. The Government has been conditioning their powers to use in combat situations - Grimm first, but they're grooming Johnny to also be a weapon. Were it not handled so poorly, this might be an interesting extension of the creepy shift in approach to being a "super hero," but instead it's underdeveloped, like everything that follows. It's the first hint of the Scanners-like finale we might have seen (again, we'll never be sure), but once they rebuild the Quantum Gate and find Doom is still alive (albeit fused to his suit and glowing green), things quickly collapse. Most of this happens in the last twenty minutes and is rushed, to put it mildly. I'm not sure what part of Doom's powers made him a scanner, but he absolutely walks through the facility making people's heads explode. It's surprisingly violent for a PG-13, even when the lights conveniently cut off.

 This extension of Cronenberg inspired body horror is, however, quickly abandoned in favor of a much more conventional "fight it out" ending on Planet Zero with the punching and the fireballs and the invisible force field blah blah Doom sucked into his own portal whatever. Victor Von Doom goes from being a fairly interesting human character - albeit one that resembles the comic book version in no way shape or form - to being evil C-3P0 with scanner powers who decides to destroy Earth so that they can't exploit Planet Zero. We get that from two lines of dialogue before he pops Government Man's head like a zit with brain powers. I'm not honestly sure that Trank's take on the Fantastic Four could have worked for the entire film, or even how he had planned to close out his version of their origin story, but it was different. Admirably different, even: I had heard it was "dark and gritty," which is not exactly something I'd associated with The Fantastic Four, but it's not "dark and gritty" in the way that Batman v Superman looks. Instead, it's psychologically traumatic, drawing from The Fly and Rabid and Videodrome more than Spider-Man or any of the X-Men films.

 And yet, we're left with the mess that is Fantastic Four - one pretty good ten to fifteen minute stretch couched between a fairly stupid beginning (really, Dan Castellaneta was somehow Reed's science teacher in elementary and high school?) that cuts ahead to bored actors - Teller and Mara particularly seems disinterested the entire film - and peters out at the tonally incongruous coda. I wouldn't be the least bit enthusiastic about the further adventures of this foursome, even if Bell brings pathos to Ben Grimm / The Thing that makes a talking rock monster not inherently comical. That's an impressive feat, but it's one of a small handful of moments that make Fantastic Four that much worse. Because if it was just awful, like Terminator Genisys, I might even consider recommending it. But instead, there are some tiny, neat, ideas rolled up into a patchwork mess of a movie, one that's just going leave you dissatisfied. So stick with the real Cronenberg, and I guess if you need to see that world collide with comics, there's always A History of Violence...




* Speaking of a movie with its own sordid behind-the-scenes history, albeit one whose seams are much less apparent, and with a much more enjoyable end result.

Blogorium Review: Lost River

 Now it might just be the Cap'n against the critical community here, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Lost River is getting pummeled less because of what's in the movie than because of who made it. That's not to say that Lost River isn't a mess - and at times a hot mess at that - but it's a far cry from the disaster you'd think it would be reading the Rotten Tomatoes reviews*. It's somewhere between the two: a stylistic, albeit sloppy exercise in mood over narrative, with a very good cast that keep things from falling apart. Most of the time, anyway. If you choose to buy into the "urban fairytale" perspective, some of the logical ellipses are less problematic. As a directorial debut, Lost River isn't a disaster for internet meme Ryan Gosling, but there are some areas he could work on before (or if?) he makes another film.

 Before I jump into the movie, let's juxtapose Lost River with another actor-turned-director debut from not long ago, Joseph Gordon-Levitt's Don Jon. I mentioned the "internet meme" adjective(?) before Gosling's name because by and large, that's how people think of him. He's an actor who was making fairly bland romantic comedies or dramas and was considered harmless enough that there are hundreds of "hey girl" memes out there devoted to his inoffensiveness. Hell, I made a few of them, based on the juxtaposition between his "romantic" phase vs. the newer, indie-er fare. The transition from The Notebook to Only God Forgives seems to rankle some folks, and I guess that's how we ended up here. It's funny, because Gordon-Levitt is considered more "likable" - for whatever that's worth - or is more favorable, so when he made Don Jon, it received mostly positive marks. Kind of a "wow, good for him" vibe.

 And don't get me wrong, I like Don Jon, both as a movie and as a directorial debut. It gets a lot of mileage out of Gordon-Levitt's charisma, and that helps smooth over the fact that the flashy beginning fades away into a wholly conventional conclusion. Gosling isn't on camera in Lost River, but a few people he worked with before are, specifically from his "serious" phase: Christina Hendricks (Drive), and Ben Mendelsohn and Eva Mendes (The Place Beyond the Pines). Also along for the ride are Ian De Caestecker (Filth), Saoirse Ronan (The Grand Budapest Hotel), Matt Smith (Doctor Who), and Barbara Steele (Black Sunday), although her role amounts to little more than a glorified cameo, as she's mostly catatonic during the film.

 In the town of Lost River, everything is falling apart. Literally. Buildings that aren't being demolished are crumbling, abandoned, as residents pack up and move out. Billy (Hendricks) lives in her grandmother's old house with Bones (De Caestecker) and Franky (Landyn Stewart). Bones has been stealing copper from abandoned buildings in order to sell it to fix his car, but he won't leave without his mother and little brother. Billy won't leave, even though she's three months behind on the mortgage and the bank marks the house for demolition. Stealing copper has put Bones on the bad side of Bully (Smith), a vicious thug who claims to "own" any abandoned territory in Lost River. Bully's violent predilections threaten to affect both Bones and Rat (Ronan), a neighbor who lives with her Grandma (Steele), who only watches videos of her wedding from decades ago. Rat and Bones discuss the origins of the town's name after Bones discovers streetlights leading away from Bully's hideout into the water. The old town was flooded in the 1960s, and Rat believes that Lost River is cursed. In order to set things right, Bones takes a particularly unusual reading of "kill the dragon" literally and heads underwater, even as Bully closes in on him.

  I've seen quite a few reviews compare Lost River to David Lynch (often unfavorably), which is odd to me, because it seems like another example of "tie something to David Lynch because it's 'weird'". If you really want to throw lofty comparisons out there, the beginning of Lost River is reminiscent of The Tree of Life, both in Gosling's focus on the children, but also his choice of camera angles. In reality, I'm much more inclined to say that if Lost River resembles any other films, stylistically, it would be fair to say that Gosling picked up a lot from Nicolas Winding Refn and Derek Cianfrance, who he's been working with recently. There's a heavy does of Only God Forgives' fluorescent lighting clashing with the natural ambience of The Place Beyond the Pines, somewhat uncomfortably, to be honest. It's hard to tell what the geography of Lost River is, because Gosling filmed in Detroit (it's fairly evident when you watch the film, especially if you've seen Only Lovers Left Alive or It Follows), but where Billy's house is in relation to the city or how far Bully's hideout (an old zoo) is from Rat's house is really unclear. You have to take a car or a taxi to get from where they live to downtown, but Bones can walk unfettered between apartment complexes and the woods where the river is.

 The most "Lynch-ian" element would be, I suppose, the "club" that Dave (Mendelsohn) operates in Lost River. He's taken over as the manager on foreclosures at the bank, and whenever he moves into a town, Dave sets up a club catering to fans of Grand Guignol enthusiasts, where women entertain the audience before being brutally murdered. That's how Billy meets Cat (Mendes), the star attraction of Dave's show. She's friendly, blasé about the bloodletting (it's all for show, anyway), and at Dave's behest, offers Billy a job to help pay that mortgage off. She also shows Billy the "downstairs" section, which involve private rooms and some sort of device the girls can "lock" themselves into while clients... do something. It's the most abstract element of an already abstract narrative, and other than bringing Dave and Billy's relationship to its logical conclusion, serves little purpose other than to be menacing and slightly weird. Far more interesting are the girls routines, particularly Billy's. I'm not sure if the acts are meant to be some kind of magical realism or simply artifice, but I seriously doubt she could put together hers in three days. It's grotesque, but a highlight of the film.

 Matt Smith is easily the other high point of Lost River; as Bully, he's a true threat to anyone and everyone he comes into contact with. Long before we see what he likes to do with his scissors (and, believe me, if Billy's act doesn't scare away the squeamish, what he does to his sidekick Mouth certainly will), we know to fear him. Bones drops all of the copper he's found the moment he sees Bully waiting outside of the school he's been pillaging. If you only know Smith at the Eleventh Doctor, you're in for a real surprise. He's terrifying without having to say a word, using his lanky frame to impose, his face twisted, capable of snapping at a moment's notice. Even when he's being nice (as he seems to be while driving Rat home), there's a palpable tension. This man is Evil, and you should not upset him.

 Likewise, but to a lesser degree, people who only know Hendricks as Joan from Mad Men or De Caestecker as Fitz in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. will be pleasantly surprised to see them in different sorts of parts. Although, I'd hesitate to say there's much in the way of "characters" to speak of: the fact that many of them don't have names should be an indicator of just how closely Gosling hews to the "fairy tale" aspect of Lost River. Bones and Rat are more or less thinly sketched out collections of "traits," and Bully is, strictly speaking, just the monster. Dave has a bit more nuance, only because there's so much we don't know about him during the film. Unfortunately, while nobody really has a character arc to speak of, Dave gets the most build up for a quickly glossed over moment of dramatic irony (tied to the fact that he continually mentions being deaf in one ear).

  Only the legendary Barbara Steele feels wasted, spending most of the film sitting in a chair, a funeral veil covering her face. She only has a moment or two with Ronan onscreen, when the tape stops playing and Rat finds her cowering in the room, unsure of what to do with herself. Other than being a sort of jumping off point for exposition - how Rat would know what she knows about Lost River - Steele serves little purpose in the film, and it's debatable that just having her there at all is more important than not having that character. Billy is underdeveloped, which wouldn't matter as much if the middle of Lost River didn't shift so heavily in her direction. Gosling seems to be unclear whose story the film is: Billy's or Bones', so he alternates, haphazardly, between the two, without ever really bringing them together at the end.

 The issues with who (or what) Lost River is about are indicative of the overall sloppy nature of Gosling's writing and direction. As a mood piece, the film is certainly worth seeing. As a film, it falls short of the mark and is often too confused about where it was aiming for in the first place. But as I stressed at the outset of the review, it's nowhere near the disaster that critics claim it is. It's appeal is limited, yes, but there's enough to appreciate about what Gosling was trying to do that I can think of a few people I know who might enjoy it. I've heard the phrase "overindulgent" lobbied at Lost River, and while I don't necessarily agree with it, there is an at times deliberately obtuse way in which Gosling presents information.

 His visual metaphors are obvious, but their purpose is often times unclear, or at best poorly conveyed. There's a continued through line of juxtaposing fire and water, which seems to relate to his uncomfortable shoehorning of "slaying the dragon" into the narrative. It's introduction into the film is more problematic than how Bones finally "lifts" the curse on the town, and I give Gosling credit for finding an arresting image on which to close out the film. On the other hand, the resolution of Dave and Bully as alternate antagonists feels rushed, as though an afterthought. Bully, in particular, exits the film in such an anticlimactic manner that you might miss what's actually happening to him - the shot preceding his last moment is a perfect example of the "fire / water" theme, but it's barely onscreen long enough for it to resonate. There's also a questionable issue of geography (again).

 And yet, despite all of this, I kind of liked Lost River. I would certainly be interested in seeing what Gosling the director does next, although Gosling the writer could use some fine tuning. Many of the films problems are less on what's on screen than in the translation from what they were supposed to mean. If anything. To suggest the film might be "Lynchian" in the sense that what's on screen was never meant to refer to something specific, or to defy conventional explanation might be fair. But by the same token, Gosling is utilizing well worn themes and archetypes in ways that conform to traditional fairy tale structures. It's a combination that could work, but doesn't necessarily in this case. That said, there are many striking moments and visuals in Lost River, enough to keep adventurous viewers engaged between scenes of leaden exposition. If nothing else, it's a real showcase for Matt Smith, who makes the strongest impression with a character we barely know. His feral performance kept me invested for most of the film. Lost River, while not an unmitigated disaster, is a curio: a rough draft, a sketch of a mood piece, that maybe needed more refining. That's not what we got, and your mileage may vary about whether it's worth seeing, but don't (necessarily) believe the hype. A noble failure might still be a failure, but it's not a train wreck just because the director is easy to ridicule.






 * I realize that this shouldn't be used as the sole barometer of the quality of a film, but the site does give you a good idea of what a wide swath of critics think about a movie.