Shocktober Review: We are Still Here

 Sometimes the tricky thing about your reaction to a movie is timing. For example, if I had chosen to watch We are Still Here before I watched Spring - a movie I'll be reviewing in a few days - I feel like the response to the film would be more favorable than it is. Which is not to say that We are Still Here isn't a good horror movie. It is, but at the time I was still quite impressed with Spring, and by comparison We are Still Here felt a little more, not to be unkind, but run of the mill. It's a ghost story that gets a little too busy towards the end, one that starts out strongly and crescendos into a grand guignol finale without really feeling like it needed to. I've seen a number of really positive reviews for it lately, as well as talking to people who liked it a lot more than I did, and maybe I'm just not giving We are Still Here a fair shake. Well, I'll make my case and let you decide - it still comes recommended and I'm certainly open to revisiting the film.

  Anne and Paul Sacchetti (Barbara Crampton and Andrew Sensenig) are moving into a quiet country home outside of Aylesbury, Massachusetts. Still raw from the death of their son Bobby, Anne is convinced that the house is possessed by his spirit. There are unexplainable events early on, like a photo that he never liked being turned over in the night, or a presence in the basement that takes his baseball mitt. Paul doesn't give it much credence, instead attributing her reaction to grief, and is more concerned when he discovers why this house was so inexpensive. When their only neighbors, Dave and Cat McCabe (Monte Markham and Connie Neer) drop in late one night, they explain that the house once belonged to an undertaker who stole bodies and sold them, before he was forced out of Aylesbury. Paul doesn't put much stock in it, but when a repairman (Marvin Patterson) is seriously injured trying to fix the unreasonably hot basement, the Sacchettis become more concerned that there might be more going on than just a broken furnace.

 Anne invites Jacob and May Lewis (Larry Fessenden and Lisa Marie) to the house, along with their son Harry (Michael Patrick), who was Bobby's roommate in college. Harry and his girlfriend Daniela (Kelsey Dakota) are arriving later, but Anne is hoping that May will be able to contact the spirit in their house and determine if it's Bobby or not. Despite his good natured appearance, Dave McCabe seems to know more than he's letting on, and Cat tries to warn them to leave the house before they make a hasty exit, mid-cocktails. Paul isn't particularly fond of Jacob and May - they're too "new age" and he doesn't approve of Jacob's fondness for marijuana, but he's willing to go along with it if Anne can find some closure.

 If We are Still Here was limited to what was in the house, I might have found it more admirable in its focus. Setting the film in 1979 - although it's really not clear that's the case until well into the film - is an interesting decision on the part of writer / director Ted Geoghegan. It only really settles one question, which is why Harry and Daniela don't make an effort to find their parents or the Sacchettis once they arrive. They find a note and decide to stay at the house, which of course ends as one might expect in this film. Without cellphones, it's obvious why May and Jacob don't investigate much into their non-arrival, but beyond that the film seems to be a throwback mostly for aesthetic purposes. It's not unlike The House of the Devil, but in the ensuing years, making films set in the late seventies or early eighties is suddenly "in vogue." I'm not really holding it against We are Still Here, but at this point I'm not convinced that it services the story in any way.

 To say much more about the plot means going into SPOILER territory, so consider yourselves warned. I can't really get into the (mostly minor) issues I have with We are Still Here without discussing the spiritual activity, and the other part of the film, so SPOILERS FROM HERE ON OUT. You have been warned.

 So, it turns out that it's not Bobby's spirit, but that of the Dagmars, the undertaker's family who weren't so much run out of town as burned alive in their home by the townsfolk. The Dagmars aren't even really behind the evil, because the house was built over an ancient evil that requires a sacrifice every thirty years or all of Aylesbury will fall into a state of plague. We learn this when Jacob decides to hold a séance without May (she's in town with Anne) and he's possessed by the spirit of Dagmar, which leads to one of the most distracting performances from Larry Fessenden I've seen. From the moment I first saw him in We are Still Here, I wondered why Fessenden was making a conscious effort to physically resemble Jack Nicholson in The Shining. It turns out that's because once he's possessed by the house, Fessenden goes full on Jack Torrance for the remainder of his time in the film, and I'm not convinced that's for the best. He's reasonably subdued earlier in the film, as is the almost unrecognizable Lisa Marie, who I hadn't seen since Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow. But once Fessenden's resemblance to a famous horror performance becomes a channeling of Nicholson, it began to chip away at the film.

 More of an issue is that not only does the house require a sacrifice, but the whole town knows it, and when our central protagonists are in Aylesbury proper, everyone other than the duplicitous Dave McCabe is so hostile towards them that it's impossible not to know something conspiratorial is shaping up. Still, I didn't expect an all-out assault on the house by the townspeople in the climax of the film, which turns We are Still Here from people vs ghosts to people vs people vs ghosts. It's not hard to guess how things are going to play out as a result, but I'm still a little iffy on the confrontation between Dave and Dagmar. What gets lost, mostly, is the significance of the house, and instead the focus shifts to whether the Dagmars (who I thought were supposed to be representing the spirits that require a sacrifice) have some sort of agency to punish the townsfolk for something I thought they wanted - to become part of the house. The whole sequence unnecessarily complicates the lore of the narrative, so while the extra (some might say excessive) gore is appreciated, I think We are Still Here would have worked just as well without the histrionics.

 And yet, for the first 2/3rds of the film (at least up until the first séance), I enjoyed the atmosphere of We are Still Here. It loses steam in towards the end, but the slow build up and mystery about what's going on (admittedly spoiled by any synopsis you can find online, including IMDB) is worth investing time in. Crampton, Sensenig, and Lisa Marie are quite good, and Monte Markham seems to be having a great time as the duplicitous McCabe. His scene in downtown Aylesbury with Lisa Marie and Barbara Crampton later in the film is great, and even when things fall apart at the end, he almost holds it together. Since you can see it just about anywhere at a very reasonable price (to rent or own), it's hard to not recommend it, with the caveat that I really only enjoyed the setup. Not so much the payoff. Sometime in the near future, I'll give We are Still Here a second chance, without the unfair comparison to a film I found much more satisfying, and perhaps I'll come around. This has been a good year for horror films flying under the radar, and for that alone, We are Still Here is worth your time.

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 Review: Blood and Black Lace

 Blood and Black Lace might not be my favorite of "Super" Mario Bava's films, but I can certainly acknowledge its place in Italian giallo films. If, on the off chance, you haven't heard of giallo or the long shadow it casts on American slasher films, it might be surprising to discover that they're less strictly horror films and more like police procedurals, punctuated with "murder set pieces". A masked killer will stalk someone (usually a lovely young woman) in the dark, scare them a bit, and then kill them, often with increasingly unique or cruel implements as the film goes on. What distinguishes it from slashers is the balance of screen time devoted to a local detective or member of the police, who is desperately trying to catch the killer before they kill again. In the case of Blood and Black Lace, the ending is also more conventional than modern horror audiences might expect, but still effective.

 The Christian Couture Fashion House of Rome has its share of secrets beyond its latest designs, and a masked killer is taking out models one by one, beginning with Isabella (Francesca Ungaro). After she leaves on a dark and stormy night, Isabella never makes it home, instead strangled to death near a tree. Police Inspector Silver (Thomas Reiner) begins his investigation, but neither Christian Couture house owner Contessa Cristina Como (Eva Bartok) nor her business partner Massimo "Max" Morlacchi (Cameron Mitchell) know anything that would help him. The other models, including her roommates Peggy (Mary Arden) and Nicole (Arianna Gorini), seem hesitant to say anything, and the discovery of Isabella's diary sends ripples throughout the house. What secrets was she keeping, and who was implicated? Who could the killer be? Max? Designer Cesar Lazzarini (Louis Pigot)? Aristocrat Ricardo Morellin (Franco Ressel)? Antique Shop owner Frank (Dante Di Paolo)? Or is it groundskeeper Marco (Massimo Righi)?

 If you're accustomed to slasher films, the procedural elements of Blood and Black Lace might come as a surprise - they significantly diminish the tension you might be used to. When the killer is about to strike, Bava ratchets up the tension considerably, and many of the murders are (for 1964) pretty gruesome. With kills that include and antique spiked mallet, a drowning disguised as a suicide, and one of the models getting up close and personal with a very hot wood stove, I don't think you're going to be disappointed in that department. That said, if you've seen Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samouraï, the back and forth structure between cops and criminals will be familiar (and yes, Blood and Black Lace came out first, but I use Le Samouraï as a good example, particularly in reference to the "lineup" scene in the police station).

 Despite the grounded, procedural elements, much of Blood and Black Lace has a dreamlike, slightly surreal quality. As with much of the Mario Bava films I've seen, tone is key, and while almost everything is strictly grounded in reality, the camera movement and shot composition lend the film a sense of being unreal. When Bava transitioned from away black and white, he adopted to strong, lurid color scheme of deep reds that borders on expressionistic. While set in the real world, Blood and Black Lace has the heightened quality of a dream world, and the influence of his vivid colors on Dario Argento (especially in Suspiria) is evident. There's a floating, POV camera shot towards the end of the film that moves through the fashion house that reminded me strongly of Suspiria. The camera moves between (or sometimes knocks off) wire-frame mannequins, bathed in red for no apparent reason, as it moves towards someone in the darkness. While what follows is almost too conventional for many horror fans - the ending wouldn't be out of place in a film noir - Bava sets it up as though the supernatural were intruding on the story.

 While I won't delve into SPOILERS, it is worth mentioning that you can easily surmise who the killer is just by looking at their face in the mask. There's a split-second reveal of the face during the stove scene, in which the increased clarity of Blu-Ray can confirm your suspicions (you don't even need to pause it), but the mystery of who the killer is ends up being only half of the equation. There's a "twist" to speak of, one that was borrowed decades later by Wes Craven, one that's instrumental to disrupting the "procedural" portion of the giallo. While other directors would take up the giallo over time and sometimes improve on it, there's something to be said for Mario Bava, who created it with The Girl Who Knew Too Much and laid most of the groundwork / rules in Blood and Black Lace. I might prefer Black Sunday and Planet of the Vampires, but there's something to the way he balances tonal dissonance in Blood and Black Lace that's admirable.

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: Cooties

 Give Cooties this: it brings an approach to horror comedies that hasn't been done to death before. In fact, it might even be novel in the "evil children" subgenre, because of the way the menace is presented. If you want to call it a "zombie" movie - and I don't, for reasons I'll get to shortly - it's been since Dawn of the Dead that I can really remember a movie that featured undead children attacking adults. But then again, since I'd say this is a little more 28 Days Later than Dawn of the Dead, we'll have to put that to the side. Also feel free to school me in all of the "zombie children" movies I am forgetting. The point is that premise-wise, Cooties feels like a breath of fresh air. It's just a shame that so much of the film is uneven, ruining the fun.

 After having a go as a writer in New York, Clint (Elijah Wood) is taking some time to focus in his hometown of Fort Chicken. In a twist, he's living upstairs, and not in his parents' basement, but it's littered with geek friendly posters and toys, presumably when he was younger. Clint is working on his novel, about a guy who buys a killer boat (as a character points out later, "so it's Christine?" and Clint replies, "well no, this is a boat"). Honestly, the book sounds awful from what we hear him working on, but it's supposed to. To make a little money, he signs up to be a substitute teacher at the same elementary school he went to, and on his first day he meets a slightly less than welcoming faculty: P.E. coach Wade (Rainn Wilson), alarmist Rebekkah (Nasim Pedrad), science teacher Doug (screenwriter Leigh Whannell), and, uh, whatever Tracy (Jack McBrayer) teaches. Vice Principal Simms (Ian Brennan) confiscates his phones ("if the students can't have them, neither should we") and crosswalk guard Rick (Jorge Garcia) mistakes Clint for his drug dealer.

 The only person who seems happy to see Clint is Lucy (Allison Pill), who it turns out he knew taught there. They went to school together, and she's very impressed that he's been living in the big city. She's also dating Wade, who introduces himself to Clint by parking him in with a huge truck (there's a running joke about Wade being unable to say "dual rear wheel"). He's hostile to Clint, but he might have a good reason, since Clint is clearly flirting with Lucy, and she's flirting back. But then it's time for classes, and elementary school is not how Clint remembered it. The first student he runs across is named Patriot ("born on 9/11") who wrote "Eat a Cock" on his window and still has his phone. The other students are even less polite, except the girl who has some serious boils on her face. And her hair falls out. Then she bites Patriot on the cheek.

 It turns out she ate a tainted chicken nugget, one we saw during the opening montage, and as Doug surmises later, the disease infected her brain, turning her into a zombie-like rage monster. Doug does imply their brains are dead and turning to mush, but considering how much of Patriot's personally exists throughout the movie, you're closer to Return of the Living Dead Part 2 "zombie" territory (see, I remembered another one!). I'm still of the mind it's more 28 Days Later, and this is a live virus - traditional zombie rules don't apply. Head shots are not necessary, just violence against children.

  The teachers are trapped inside, while Rick sits in his van tripping on mushrooms. The police are no help and the only parent who arrives at 3:00 is quickly dispatched of, thanks to her inattentive use of phones and tablets. They have to navigate the corridors, and when Patriot lets the infected inside, their options are limited to a Die Hard inspired trip through the air ducts. While Clint and Lucy are trying to get Wade's keys, Doug discovers that the disease only infects children who haven't reached puberty yet, which is why Clint's bite only made him very sick for a few hours.

 Cooties suffers from an unusual tonal dissonance, but not necessarily from the plot. The film itself is more or less a straight up horror comedy, deriving most of its laughs from a combination of vulgarity and extreme violence directed at the children. Where it stumbles is the characters, and it's not clear if that's because of the decisions made by the actors or if it was inherent in Whannell's screenplay. Half of the cast makes a concerted effort not to be stereotypes: the man-child, the meathead coach, the "kooky" science teacher, and the other half just embrace their one note characters. Wilson tries very hard to keep Wade from being the character we immediately expect him to be the moment his truck parks Clint in, but it takes most of the film before there's any kind of validation that he's not just a stock "type".

 I understand that there's a separate, infected / zombie children story and that you need to put things in order, but Clint, Lucy, and particularly Wade aren't fleshed out until late in the film, at which point the scene in the library feels like it's disrupting the narrative, rather than serving it. Compare it with a throwaway line from Doug, given in the middle of explaining what they're up against, that contextualizes his character without a long conversation over walkie-talkies. It's not unwelcome to have a horror comedy that makes the effort to establish its characters a little bit, but the it happens in Cooties is uneven at best. That also, unfortunately, applies to the structure of the film, particularly its third act.

 By necessity, I'm going to have to enter SPOILER territory to discuss the end of the movie, so be warned. Skip down a few paragraphs if you just want the wrap up. SPOILERS AHOY!

 While I can understand the decision to leave the school for the last act, I'm not convinced it was a good idea. The mad dash out, coupled with leaving Fort Chicken, introducing Danville, the next town over, covering the spread of the epidemic, and creating a new "you're doomed" scenario happens within the span of about ten minutes. In a lot of ways, it removes the tension of the confined space while Clint and company are in the school. It also unsatisfactorily resolves the Patriot story line with an almost perfunctory scene between towns. Yes, Clint has a great callback line and the kill is a good one, but there's something about the sudden change in scenery and the fact that it's resolved so quickly (Wade's truck does all of the work) that renders it less significant than it was built up to be.

 I honestly wouldn't have minded if where they were going had any relevancy other than to demonstrate the virus had spread, but it doesn't. There's a half-hearted attempt to put Doug in the same place as the tainted nuggets, but it's more in the service of getting them into another "oh shit" scenario. The reveal of where they ended up - a Chuck-E Cheese-like indoor playground - is a tense moment, but that too is disrupted almost immediately by the surprise return of the not dead Wade who somehow figured out where they were and is now in Rick's van. (His explanation that "I always know where my truck is" doesn't really give them a pass). Everything is resolved so quickly that there's not really time to appreciate that Wade just immolated an entire jungle gym's worth of infected kids. Again, I appreciate the idea behind it, but the tonal and spatial shift don't really jibe with most of Cooties.

 (HERE ENDETH THE SPOILERS)

 Character development bumps aside, there are a lot of things to like about the cast of Cooties. Leigh Whannell, in particular is a lot of fun as the "not quite there" Doug. He's introduced in the teacher's lounge reading a book called How to Talk Like a Human Being, and the payoff for why he's so off-kilter is actually a good one. Novel even, because I can't recall many characters who seem that gimmicky to have such a logical explanation why. Elijah Wood and Allison Pill ground the movie, even if Clint and Lucy are more of a collection of "character quirks" than anything cohesive. Once we finally get to know Wade - two thirds of the way into Cooties - Rainn Wilson has the opportunity to make him memorable and not just stereotypical and runs with it. They fare better than McBrayer, Pedrad, and Garcia, who have pretty much one note to play throughout the film. There's nothing necessarily wrong with their performances, but I doubt you'll remember much about them once Cooties is over. It's a bit like when you realize the (one) police officer who shows up is the guy who played Badger on Breaking Bad: funny for a minute, but quickly forgotten.

 Cooties is a little too lopsided as a horror comedy - it's only really funny towards the end, but when it is, I fully admit that it can be very funny. That is, provided you have a particularly misanthropic streak towards children. There's some tension in the first half that sustains the build up of the "zombie" plague, hampered a bit by character beats but ultimately effective as long as they're in the school. Things kind of fall apart in the last act as the film jumps around, tonally and visually, but in the end Cooties is amusing. Perhaps not memorable, but a fun trifle if you're looking for a decent horror comedy with an ensemble that came ready to play. In that regard, I suppose it's fitting I saw it on VOD: not to denigrate the quality of the "On Demand" movement, but I'm more forgiving of Cooties' problems than I would be having seen it in theatres.

Shocktober Revisited: The Final Terror

There's no certainty that people would even know that The Final Terror existed today, were it not for the fact that most of its cast of young stars went on to bigger and better roles a few years later. In fact, The Final Terror was shelved in 1980 and not released for another two years, and only then because it suddenly had "name" talent in it. It's not hard to see why producers might find the film hard to sell - it just barely qualifies as a "slasher" film - but there's a scrappy, underdog quality to The Final Terror that makes it worthwhile. Coupled with some soon to be well known names was director Andrew Davis, who these days is probably better known for The Fugitive, but back then still had a keen eye for visuals, which is important considering the entire movie takes place in the woods.

 Forest rangers Mike (Mark Metcalf), Nathaniel (Ernest Harden, Jr.), Boone (Lewis Smith), Zorich (John Friedrich), and newcomer Marco (Adrian Zmed) are heading up for a weekend of clearing brush and river rafting in the Pacific Northwest*. Against the advice of their mechanic, Eggar (Joe Pantoliano), they decide to bring along some girls: Windy (Daryl Hannah), Melanie (Cindy Harrell), Margaret (Rachel Ward), and Vanessa (Akosua Busia). They also choose one of the most remote paths back to where Eggar is going to take the bus, and during campfire storytelling, Boone shares the story of a crazed old woman who escape from the local asylum and lives in the woods. But it turns out that might not just be a story...

 There's actually nothing supernatural about The Final Terror (which is pretty ambiguous based on its poster what the "terror" is supposed to be - aliens?), and by the twenty minute mark, before anybody's been killed (although Marco goes missing) we have a general idea who the backwoods slasher is or is going to be. You can actually guess even earlier than that based on clues that are not so subtly dropped on the way to the woods, or the fact that one character is clearly more deranged than everyone else. Still, Davis does a good job of misdirection throughout the movie, causing you to wonder if Boone's story is entirely accurate, or if there's a Psycho-esque angle at play. And when the kills do start, they are pretty brutal. There's actually a pre-credit double kill of two unrelated characters that Davis shot when producers informed him the body count (three) was "too low" for a slasher film.

 The Final Terror is nevertheless more "survival horror" than "slasher film," and it hews more along the lines of Walter Hill's Southern Comfort than something like The Burning. Most of the movie is spent with our protagonists trying to outrun the killer and make it back to the bus (their alternative is a 45 mile hike), with military enthusiast Zorich becoming the de facto leader and resorting to survivalist tactics. The end of the film is more or less a showdown in the middle of the woods that, in the ensuing three decades, is unfortunately going to remind a lot of people of Predator, even though The Final Terror had it beat by six years. Aside from a few tense sequences on the bus and a few good kills early on, you'd be hard pressed to really include The Final Terror in the "classic" slasher era.

 On the other hand, you probably noticed in the synopsis just how many names you recognized, even if vaguely. After Zmed's career took off with TJ Hooker and Daryl Hannah figured prominently in Blade Runner (and would make it big with Splash the following year), The Final Terror was deemed worthy of cashing in on, but they're far from the only recognizable names. Joe Pantoliano would appear in Risky Business the same year, and go on to memorable roles in The Goonies, Midnight Run, The Matrix, and The Fugitive (again directed by Davis). Rachel Ward had already appeared in Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid and Sharky's Machine, and would star opposite Jeff Bridges in Against All Odds the following year. Mark Metcalf might not be a name you recognize, but he was both Niedermeyer in Animal House and The Master on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Even less familiar names, like Ernest Harden, Jr. went on from The Jeffersons to The Final Terror and would pop up in White Men Can't Jump and J. Edgar. Lewis Smith who, coincidentally, joined the cast of Southern Comfort after filming this, would go on to make North and South and appeared in Wyatt Earp.

 In that regard, it's fun to watch The Final Terror and see so many people on the cusp of stardom or, barring that, recognize-ability. It's similar to The Burning, which was the film debut of Jason Alexander, Holly Hunter, and Fisher Stevens, although the end product is perhaps less memorable. I don't want to give the impression that this film is a long lost gem (although it has been MIA for a while) - at best it's a pretty good thriller / suspense film with some horror elements. It's well shot, has a pretty good pace, and an ending that doesn't disappoint, but I'd hesitate to leapfrog The Final Terror to the top of my "horror" list. Still, I'm glad I got the chance to check it out, and if you've seen everything under the full moon, this one is worth seeking out for a throwback to when "slasher" was a little more nebulous in its formula.




 * I don't recall if it's specifically stated in the film, but The Final Terror was shot in Northern California and Oregon.

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: It Follows

For at least the last decade, there seems to be a concerted push to anoint one horror movie as the next "classic": the genre reinventing, flying-under-the-radar take that will usher us out of this endless trend of remakes and PG-13 zombie/vampire/werewolf teen-friendly tripe. Sometimes, the hype is justified (The House of the Devil, The Cabin in the Woods), sometimes not (Hatchet, Behind the Mask*), but I think it's safe to say that we're not going to get rid of the PG-13 horror trend any time soon. In fact, there was a trailer for the Ghost House Pictures remake of Poltergeist in front of the movie we'll be discussing today. It Follows has been riding on a groundswell of praise from horror fans, and Radius / TWC is finally listening to audiences and putting the film in theatres, as opposed to dumping it on VOD. By the time the Cap'n heard about it, It Follows was already being labeled "this year's The Babadook," and I was a little worried about going in with heightened expectations, so I just stopped reading about the film. Does it live up to the hype?

 (if you really don't want to know anything else, skip to the last paragraph, but the short answer is "yes.")

 Jay Height (Maika Monroe) is a college student living at home with her mother and younger sister, Kelly (Lili Sepe). She's been on a few dates with Hugh (Jake Weary), and is thinking about taking things to the next level, but Hugh's behavior is a little strange. He seems to see people that Jay can't, and is always in a hurry to leave wherever they're settling in. But she decides to sleep with him, and as she's relaxing in the back seat of his car, Hugh knocks her out with a rag and chemicals. She wakes up tied to a wheelchair in the abandoned remains of a hotel, with Hugh pacing the building, looking frantically for... something. There's something following him; it's slow, but it's not dumb, and it's going to kill him, so he passed it on to Jay. If she wants to live, she has to pass it on to someone else, or it comes after him. It can look like anyone, but if it's feeling cruel, it will look like those you love most. She's tied down to prove that he's not making this up, and before long, someone - or something - slowly walks up to where she is...

 We already know what the "It" is capable of from the opening sequence, which also establishes writer / director David Robert Mitchell's visual style: long, unbroken takes, using the most of the wide screen composition. If it helps, think of Halloween, and understand that I know how lofty of a comparison it is to make. Mitchell walks us through the moment of panic for "It"'s last victim - Hugh's first attempt to pass it on? - as she tries to escape from her house, to drive to the beach. And then a smash cut to the next morning. The stakes are established. Once Hugh explains the rules, we know what Jay is up against. We'll learn a little more about the "It," but not directly from the characters. It Follows is a film heavy on inference, on visual clues rather than exposition dump scenes. What you take away from the film depends heavily on how carefully you're paying attention.

 Mitchell packs plenty in the frame to pay attention to, as Jay and her friends Yara (Olivia Luccardi), Paul (Keir Gilchrist), Kelly, and neighbor Greg (Daniel Zovatto) try to find Hugh, who rented his place in Detroit under a fake name and presumably skipped town. When the threat could be anything, it's a demented version of "Where's Waldo" in the frame - who's really a person? Who is it? Early on, Mitchell makes it abundantly clear, but towards the middle of the film, he starts playing with the audience. Much later in the film, "It" takes the form of someone we've only seen in photographs, and he relies on the viewer to have been observant. You don't need to know who it is - or was - but it's a bonus that weighs in It Follows' favor.

 There are many things about It Follows I'd like to talk about, but would risk SPOILING plot points. Boiled down to its core, the film is a very straightforward variation on the horror trope of "Sex = Death," one that's been analyzed ad nauseum in college courses the world over. It Follows will likely join those thesis proposals, in part because Mitchell takes a very ambiguous approach to how and what we find out about the threat. They "why" is abandoned, strictly speaking, which distinguishes the film from many of its modern brethren. A reductive reading would call it "The Ring as an STD," but remove all of The Ring's second half - there is not history here. Jay only traces it as far back as Hugh (real name, Jeff, at home with his mother) - he got it from "some girl at a bar." We have some idea of what happened to Annie (Bailey Spry), the girl from the beginning, after Jay's attempt to pass it on goes horribly wrong, but it's only in flashes. What it wants is up to us to decide, and why the rules are the way they are is similarly up to interpretation.

 Instead of devoting most of the film to monster lore creation, Mitchell spends almost all of It Follows dealing with Jay's fragile emotional state, as she struggles with how to deal with her state. It's a curious wrinkle that all of the sex in It Follows is consensual, and yet Jay is clearly left violated in every situation (one in particular is left to the imagination, only holding on her face before and after she swims out to a boat). Does she want to pass this curse on to someone else? Does she want to die? There seems to be no way to stop "It," and only the "infected" can see it. "It" can see them once they've passed it on, but it isn't interested. Not yet, anyway. You can drive and get ahead for a while, but it will always be right behind you, walking slowly, emotionless.

 The inevitability of the threat could be a detriment to It Follows: in a more conventional approach, like the Final Destination series, it simply becomes an excuse to put Grand Guignol kills on display, character development be damned. But the death toll is relatively limited in It Follows, and they both count, emotionally. One sets the tone for the film, another gives us a vague insight to the first death, although what you take away is largely a matter of interpretation. I give the lion's share of the credit to the cast, although Mitchell certainly gives them plenty of time to breathe and to exist on screen. As a matter of fact, it's refreshing to see a group of young actors who don't look like the Hollywood Casting Template for Horror Films (see anything released by Platinum Dunes), and instead a cast that look like normal teenagers, that act like normal teenagers.

 I say this knowing full and well that I just saw Maika Monroe in The Guest, playing a character just a little bit older than Jay is. I saw her in The Bling Ring, too, but didn't remember he when I saw The Guest. Monroe, like the rest of the kids (adults don't factor into It Follows in many ways, aside from two, meaningful moments involving the "It") is totally believable as Jay, a young woman thrust into a situation she doesn't understand and forced to cope with it. She doesn't magically become Nancy Drew or Buffy when "It" appears. She gets frightened, panics, makes bad decisions, and when she tries to help it doesn't always work. Likewise, Sepe, Luccardi, Gilchrist, and Zovatto aren't just assigned "types." They're Jay's friends, and despite the fact that Mitchell sets Greg and Paul against each other, the end of the film still isn't as apparent as I thought it would be.

 Arguably the film's weakest moment comes from Paul's plan to stop "it" by electrocution in a public swimming pool they all went to when they were younger. The plan doesn't really make sense - the pool is too big, for one - but they aren't aware of what Jay and the audience know. We know that when she tried to shoot "it" (and as she just learned how to fire a gun a few hours before, she's a terrible shot), that didn't work. Mitchell foreshadows their plan with a shot that seems to be out of place in the film - the smaller pool out back that Jay enjoys swimming in, inexplicably ripped open - but it makes sense only in retrospect. That might have worked, but in their desperation, Paul's plan backfires and it ends up hurting more than just Jay. The only thing that works in the scene is the final shot, where Jay looks into the swimming pool and sees something the others can't, an image left open to your own interpretation.

 The pool sequence is a minor stumble, but one I feel like I should point out. Mitchell and It Follows bounce back with a less conventional, more ambiguous ending that left some of the audience disappointed. Then again, I made the deliberate choice to see It Follows with a more conventional audience just to see how'd they would react. I could have seen the film at a smaller, art house theater with a more enthusiastic crowd, but it seemed like this would be an interest test case to see how the multiplex crowd reacted to less mainstream horror. They liked it while the film was going on, but seemed dissatisfied that it didn't end on some grand show down, the kind I imagine the remake of Poltergeist will (their enthusiastic reaction to the trailer was also telling).

 But here's the truth about the internet hype machine surrounding independent horror: it only works for people who are seeking out the kind of movies that are like It Follows. The buzz is not going to change the minds of people who get impatient with something different from the formula, or something as stripped down as It Follows. And that's great. It really is, because I wouldn't have known about It Follows otherwise, and I will see it again. I want to see it again, because there's so much that Mitchell packs into the frame that I know I missed some of it. I want to pay closer attention to the forms "it" takes, because they're careful hints about the creature's history. Or maybe not - it's clear halfway through the film that "it" can and will take the form of a previous victim. I want to see if I somehow missed something that led to the pool in the backyard being torn open. The sign of a great horror movie (or any movie, for that matter) is that you're thinking about it after the fact. That you want to watch it again, to dig through and pick up pieces you missed. It's what distinguishes It Follows from the more basic "Sex = Death" movies that are enjoyable, but disposable.

 I also have to point out how amusing it is to have Yara reading Dostoyevsky's The Idiot on a clamshell phone, which is a minor subplot in the film. Nice touch.

 So if you're reading this review and wondering "should I see this or is it all sizzle and no steak?" the answers are an emphatic yes and an emphatic no, in that order. If you think you'd like It Follows, then yes, see it. If you liked The Babadook - which It Follows has a tonal connection to, particularly in how it ends - or You're Next or The Cabin in the Woods or The House of the Devil, basically anything that flew mostly under the radar as horror goes, go see it. I think you're really going to like it. Sometimes the hype is justified. That doesn't mean that It Follows is "game changing" or "genre redefining," two terms overused to help sell movies of this ilk. Much like Starry Eyes, another independent horror film that's flying under most people's radars, It Follows takes a concept you're familiar with and tells it in a unique way. I don't want to undersell this film, nor do I want to oversell it, because your mileage may vary. Don't seek out spoilers. Try to see it with limited knowledge. Which, uh, means not having read this review, I guess. Oops.



 * I realize this is going to be a difference of opinion, but I found nothing in either movie worth watching: Behind the Mask either doesn't understand or chooses to misrepresent slasher movie "tropes" in order to advance its narrative, and the first Hatchet film has extreme gore and nothing else going for it. I have not seen Hatchet II or III, but have yet to see a review that made me want to.

Shocktober Review: The Dorm That Dripped Blood

 The Dorm That Dripped Blood (aka Death Dorm aka Pranks) came out relatively early in the "slasher" craze (1982), which is why it's often lost in the shuffle. While rough around the edges, first time writer / directors Stephen Carpenter and Jeffrey Obrow do include a few story elements that, even for the time, are novel enough to recommend the film. It's not an excessively violent film, so gorehounds might be frustrated at the amount of time between slashing, but many of the kills are vicious, which makes up for the relatively low body count. Its surprisingly bleak denouement has been repeated, to better effect, in the ensuing years, but it does stand out among its contemporaries for going in a different direction.

 On the eve of winter break, students are throwing a party at Dayton Hall, a dormitory designated for conversion into an apartment complex. Once everybody leaves, it's up to a small group of volunteers to inventory, move, and clean up Dayton: Joanne (Laurie Lapinsky), Craig (Stephen Sachs), Patti (Pamela Holland), and Brian (David Snow). Debbie (Daphne Zuniga) was supposed to help out, but her parents are picking her up early. The foursome is staying in Dayton while they clear the desks and furniture out, to be sold to wholesaler Bobby Lee (Dennis Ely). Unfortunately for them, there's also a mad killer somewhere in the building, who we see hacking up some poor guy's hand at the beginning of the film. Could it be the janitor, Bill (Jake Jones)? Could it be major sleazeball Bobby Lee, who tells Joanne he likes to drive by the dorm at night? Maybe it's John Hemmit (Woody Roll), the wiry haired weirdo that digs through garbage and stares at them through windows at night. What's he even doing on campus?

 The killer takes advantage of the vast space in Dayton Hall, which is several stories, and the small group's inability to search all of campus at any one point. Debbie (SPOILER) gets knocked off when she finds her parents dead in their car, but since she's leaving, who's going to know anyway? What is the killer after, and who will survive until the end? None of this is really reinventing the wheel for a slasher movie, but Carpenter and Obrow get a lot of mileage out of the seemingly abandoned college campus. The students are basically on their own, and because they've volunteered to handle the busy work of cleaning Dayton Hall out, other than Bill, there's nothing resembling an authority figure to be found. Police aren't a factor until late in the film, in part because the killer is careful who to pick off so that their absence won't be missed. They're also pretty sure that it's just Hemmit, who doesn't speak to anyone and might just be playing pranks.

 The Dorm That Dripped Blood specializes in misdirection, although not always to its benefit. There's a lot of time devoted to setting up one story thread and then heading in another direction: at the party in the beginning of the film, we learn that Joanne is hesitant to take her relationship with Tim (Robert Frederick) to the next level. She sidesteps his offer to move in, and has clearly prioritized Dayton Hall over going skiing with Tim. It's not long after this that we meet Brian, who she spends most of the time hanging out with. Is there romantic entanglement? Well, not actually, because it turns out that Patti has a crush on Brian, and Joanne knows it. Where does that leave Craig? Not really clear, but he's kind of the clown of the group, so I can understand why Patti's not that interested. He is the kind of guy who puts a plastic bug on their eggs while Joanne is cooking.

 At the risk of going full on SPOILERS, I think it's fairly obvious to most seasoned horror fans that John Hemmit is a red herring, although the degree to which Carpenter and Obrow push him as the killer goes well beyond suspension of disbelief. It's fine to have him in the same room with Brian's body and for Joanne to assume he killed him, but to reduce Hemmit to being unable to even finish a sentence so late in the film is pushing a bit too far. Even though it adds up who the real killer is if you think about it, it's clear who it isn't, and they just keep trying to sell it. Similarly, Bobby Lee isn't just a red herring, he's almost a superfluous character: he makes an inexplicable decision to leave his girlfriend in bed at 2 in the morning to drive to Dayton Hall, for what turns out to be a plot convenience that makes the end of the film possible. He's the perfect scapegoat for the killer, who didn't even know he was coming, but who knows the police are on their way.

I will give The Dorm That Dripped Blood a lot of credit for the way the film ends (SPOILERS, again): while Final Girl theory was still in its evidence gathering stages in 1982, Carpenter and Obrow head in a completely different, more nihilistic direction with their film. It's in keeping with the brutal ways people die in the film - a drill to the head, spiked baseball bats and machetes to body parts, a garrote to the throat, running over people, or boiling them alive - but the brazen way the killer fakes being a victim in order to finish the job is particularly cruel. Joanne does her best to stay alive, so to be knocked out and stuffed into an operating furnace is especially dark. Worse still, the film closes with the still oblivious police commenting on the smell coming out of the furnace. Ouch.

 The pacing is, at times, a little lopsided, and the low budget creeps through a few times during The Dorm That Dripped Blood, but overall the Cap'n would put it in the higher end of mid-tier slasher films. It doesn't quite have the atmosphere of a Halloween, or as many inventive kills of something like The Prowler. Its twist isn't as good as Friday the 13th, but the ending is more bleak and downbeat, and it's not as much of a slog as Splatter University or Final Exam. You might even care about the uncharacteristically non-sexualized protagonists; I certainly felt bad when they started dying. It's weird seeing Spaceballs' Daphne Zuniga in her first role, and even though it's clear she won't last long, how she goes is pretty rough. The Dorm That Dripped Blood won't vault itself into your favorite slasher movies, but if you're in the mood to dig deeper into the subgenre, this is a good flick to start with, and a great kick-off to Shocktober.

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