Popcorn Kernels: We're Five College Students On Our Way To An Old Abandoned Cabin In The Woods

For this round of mini reviews, let’s get back to basics by trekking to a secluded area where there’s no cell phone reception. It’ll be just like the olden days! I hope our car doesn’t break down.

The Cabin in the Woods

Year: 2012
Director: Drew Goddard
Cast: Kristen Connolly, Chris Hemsworth, Anna Hutchison
Run Time: 1 hour 35 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

For our podcast episode, featuring an in depth review of Cabin in the Woods, click here.

Five college students vacation in a secluded cabin where they are beset by a zombie redneck torture family.

The Cabin in the Woods does for cabin in the woods movies what Scream did for slashers, although it flips the script. Where Scream was funny because the hip 90’s teens were aware they were in a horror flick, the bronzed babes of Cabin in the Woods are funny because they have no idea they’re in the middle of a movie. If you’re not into midway spoilers, here’s where you jump ship. You see, the horror movie scenario is being manipulated by office workers intent on making sure everybody but the virgin perishes.

The humor comes from the absurdly casual manner that these men and women orchestrate teen destruction as if it were a pencil pushing day job. Unfortunately, though the teens are entertaining thanks to a snappy script co-written by Buffymeister Joss Whedon, this renders the actual horror story pretty rote and pointless. Every time we return to our campers (including a pre-Thor Chris Hemsworth sporting the best hair of his career), the sparkle fades somewhat until we can return to what really drives the narrative.

However, a dimmer glimmer is still a glimmer, and Cabin in the Woods never stops being a fun tromp through the flattened brush of the horror genre. It’s far more comedy than horror, but a few atmospheric scenes do send a tingle down the spine. But where the movie really triumphs is in neither scares nor laughs, but rather sheer cleverness. The construction of the film is so elaborately detailed that it’s hard not to just sit back and marvel at its postmodern perfection.

This is one film that certainly demands a second viewing, because the flavor of the first half changes tremendously given the context of the finale. In essence, The Cabin in the Woods is two different films, with more subtleties emerging from the woodwork upon rewatch. And depending on how much moral fiber is in your diet, you might just switch sides. In a way, CitW is like a football game or a Twitter feud, with equal fun derived from rooting for either team.

I do wish the zombified antagonists were a little ore interesting and the deaths a little less indifferent ,but these complaints are heartily addressed (and then some) by a gonzo finale. It’s just plain an exuberantly fun movie, no two ways about it. While I’m certainly a little perturbed by the movie’s eagerness to indict horror viewers for not abhorring the violence of the genre, it’s nevertheless an infinitely witty twist on the genre that pushes meta horror to the next level. I’ve vacationed in this cabin many times before and I wouldn’t hesitate to do it again.

Rating: 8/10

Cabin Fever

Year: 2003
Director: Eli Roth
Cast: Jordan Ladd, Rider Strong, James DeBello
Run Time: 1 hour 33 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

Five college students vacation in a secluded cabin where they are beset by a nasty flesh-eating virus.

I genuinely liked this movie for about five minutes, which is a pretty decent record for an Eli Roth picture. The characters seemed vulgar but kind, the humor was licentious but fun, and the zany atmosphere was settling in nicely. Then Eli Roth remembered who he was and the whole thing went straight to hell in a severed hand basket.

Above all else, Roth has a talent for writing venomously irritating douchebags, a skill he displays right from the get-go. Once you have a chance to get to know them, the characters populating Cabin Fever are downright nauseating. Their already trite dialogue (“safe sex” is a quip that wouldn’t pass muster in a Leprechaun movie, a franchise that had two straight entries that took place “in da hood.” And those were the better ones!) quickly runs out of steam, mutating into a sick competition to see who can pointlessly shout the F-word more times. It’s not a script so much as a laundry list of groundless obscenities. Not a single conversation can go by without somebody bursting into a rage and calling somebody a slut, whether they’re talking about killing a man or debating their favorite beer brands.

Look, I’m no Puritan about language. I’ve seen The Big Lebowski, I can handle a little cursing. Hell, that film is a monument to the four-letter word. But there comes a point when the cussing drowns out the script, the result of an amateur director looking to shock but never really understanding why. It’s like a smoke alarm that needs new batteries, dutifully shrieking with brainless devotion. Instead of being fun, it’s just immensely frustrating. When your viewers only continue watching because they’ve succumbed to exhaustion and no longer have the energy to reach the remote, you’ve got a problematic film on your hands.

A lot of the film’s failures can be chalked up to a first-time filmmaker. Abrupt fade-outs and jarring edits suggest that the coverage wasn’t quite what he wanted it to be, and the slapdash experimentation with color and alternative POVs show a Raimi-esque ambition but none of that master’s innate flair for the macabre. In fact, Cabin Fever is largely composed of material regurgitated from other classic films like The Last House on the Left and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, with a sizable dollop of Friday the 13th. This kind of construction is typical for a neophyte, but the personality sprinkled atop that amateur framework is one that will haunt Roth throughout his career.

No matter how far you run, you always bring yourself along for the ride, and that’s why Cabin Fever’s major flaws are just as unforgivable as those that riddle Roth’s films a decade down the line. He might get more experienced, but he’s still stuck with himself. Because, wonky construction aside, this movie really just isn’t very good at all, which is a shame considering its truly solid potential.

Unbearable characters with microscopic motivations (including a cop who must get a dollar for every time he says the word “party”) rattle around a pinball machine of effective but hardly revolutionary gore (the standard tune of my Roth reviews, or so it seems), plus Roth himself steps in with what is unequivocally the most grating, soul-suckingly unfunny cameo in the history of cinema. Armed with a soul patch and a sub-par Zoolander impression, he stabs the movie in the heart and leaves it to die.

The one bright beacon of hope in this incessantly boorish film is the convenience store, the location of the film’s two best scenes, as well as its most haphazardly iconic. Here, largely thanks to the unforgettable, breathy performance from ingenious unknown Robert Harris, the film’s intention shines brightest and it briefly becomes the palatable, silly horror venture it constantly wishes it could be. Cabin Fever is a major disappointment, but these scenes prevent it from being utterly contemptible, which Ii admittedly rare with this particular director.

Rating: 5/10
Word Count: 1242

Fright Flashback: Teen Adaptations

Welcome back to Fright Flashback, where every week until the end of summer we will visit an older horror film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to an upcoming new release. This week we are anticipating Paper Towns, this summer's hipsterbait John Green adaptation  In celebration, we'll be revisiting I Know What You Did Last Summer, the 1997 Kevin Williamson slasher based on the 1973 suspense novel by Lois Duncan.

Year: 1997

Director: Jim Gillespie

Cast: Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Freddie Prinze, Jr.

Run Time: 1 hour 40 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

You and I have spent so much time poring over slasher dreck from the 80’s, it’s easy to forget that there’s actually been a great deal of cinema history between 1989 and now. I know, right? So between the recent reignition of my Scream marathon and this Fright Flashback entry, I’d like to give you a quick crash course on what it meant to be a horror flick in the late 90’s.

Once 1989 hit and the slasher market crashed for god, horror was in a tough place. Direct-to-video dreck like the Leprechaun sequels were still sticking to the bottom of the genre’s shoe, but true classics like Candyman were few and far between. Then Scream went and changed everything in 1996. All of a sudden, horror was marketable again. All you needed was a cadre of teen stars in tight tops, a handful of self-knowing jokes, and – if he was available, and he was – Kevin Williamson. The floodgates opened, sending films like Scream 2, Halloween H20, Urban Legend, and The Faculty spinning out into the market.

At the forefront of this trend was a little film called I Know What You Did Last Summer, based on a slasher script that was penned by Williamson before Scream but snapped up like a prize piece of sushi following that film’s success.

And buoyed to box office dynamite by Jennifer Love Hewitt’s ample cleavage.

IKWYDLS tells the tale of a group of graduating seniors in Southport, North Carolina. Barry Cox (Ryan Phillippe) is a privileged dick, as either of those names might have proven to you; Helen Shivers (Sarah Michelle Gellar) is his beauty queen girlfriend with dreams of stardom; Julie James (Jennifer Love Hewitt) is her best friend, a down-to-earth (Final Girl), straight-laced Final Girl), straight-A student (Final Girl); and Ray Bronson (Freddie Prinze, Jr.), is her boyfriend, who is less privileged than the rest of them, which means that his perfectly bleached tank tops are an inch looser than Barry’s.

Life is hard below the MTV poverty line.

The friends spent the night partying at the beach after the annual Fourth of July celebration and during the drunken ride home they accidentally hit someone. After some frantic arguing – Julie wants to call 911 because Final Girl – they decide to dump the body into the ocean and take this secret to their graves. It turns out that that won’t be too difficult, because the very next summer a psycho in a rain slicker brandishing a hook begins threatening them with notes that read “I Know What You Did Last Summer” and bumping them off one by one. During the year, Julie and her friends have become estranged, but now they must work together to solve the mystery and discover the identity of the murderer… before it’s too late.

Spoiler alert! It’s stupid.

If we’re speaking to the film’s raison detre: namely, delivering prepackaged babes straining at the seams of their crop tops before safely kicking the bucket so that blood drips pretty from their pouty Dawson’s Creek 3-episode-arc lips, IKWYDLS is a sterling success. As a bona fide slasher whodunit flick, however, it does have its flaws. Against all odds.

Having been written before Scream, the film largely lacks the arch-ironic spin that characterized most of the slashers of this period. That isn’t necessarily a liability, but it does leave it ill-equipped to process the layers of urban legend that penetrate the central story or engage with it at any level other than face value. Not to be outdone, that exact goal would be fulfilled by the Jared Leto slasher Urban Legend the very next year, but IKWDLS wastes too much potential on an underexplored premise that leaves it stuck with a killer who looks alarmingly like the Gorton’s fisherman.

I know what you breaded last summer.

On top of its generally thinner screenplay, the core mystery is insipid gruel, hopelessly extending the run time with its watery trivialities. When the film takes a break from terrorizing its teens to let Julie put on her Nancy Drew knickers and galumph around sleuthing in backwater townships, the pacing grinds to a screeching halt. Although these scenes introduce us to Anne Heche, who delivers the most nuanced, dependable performance of the lot, the plot they serve is an uninterested, nonsensical slog. And I do realize it’s difficult to provide decent motivations for the sorts of body counts we’re used to looking at in slasher flicks, but SPOILERS [isn’t it more satisfying to get revenge for your murder if you’re actually been… you know, murdered? It seems a bit beside the point if you’ve actually been alive the whole time. Water under the bridge and all that.]

And of course, existing as it does smack dab in the middle of the Teen Soap slasher trend, the actual horror in this horror film is remarkably tame. The stalk sequences aren’t particularly well thought-out (run perpendicular to the car chasing you, Ryan Phillippe! Did that shower you just took fog your brain up as well?), the killer obviously attended the Jason TakesManhattan School of Teleportation, and there’s nothing particularly gory worth mentioning beyond the first kill. There are a handful of surprisingly nifty jump scares, but mostly the film is content to be blandly functional.

It’s so hard to stay friends after high school.

But it ain’t all bad. Though admittedly not all of this may be on purpose, IKWYDLS can still be a pretty fun teen romp when it wants to be. 90’s garbage punk blares on the soundtrack, Jennifer Love Hewitt’s breasts enormous breasts threaten to swallow every gaudy necklace she wears, Ryan Phillippe’s shirts get bigger with every passing scene like he’s the Incredible Shrinking Man, and Kevin Williamson’s arch dialogue reminds you of just how smart you and your friends thought you were in high school.

And, hey. It’s trying. There’s only one truly memorable shot (the killer viewed upside down from a victim’s perspective) amid the generically slick cinematography, but somebody obviously fought to include it. And the idea of Freddie Prinze, Jr. in abject poverty might be laughable but the idea of class disparity isn’t just a throwaway line. It’s about as sincere as an Oscar acceptance speech begging for world peace, but at least it’s trying to open a dialogue. In a slasher movie! You gotta have a little respect for the sheer mad audacity.

Of the core teen cast, only Sarah Michelle Gellar turns in a performance worth truly commending (Love Hewitt seems to be attempting to blink her lines in Morse code and I’m fairly certainly Prinze, Jr. forgot to take out his retainer before shooting), forming some genuine chemistry with her castmates, but they all make for a believable bunch when it comes down to brass tacks. At least they all seem to appropriate age within a reliable margin of error, which is more than I can say for even the best of the 80’s slashers.

At the end of the day, I won’t be popping this flick into my DVD player every time summer rolls around. It’s not eminently rewatchable, like even the worst of its Scream brethren. But every now and again, it’s a decent frothy 90’s delicacy, as long as you can survive the fiddly mystery bits. Watch it at a party so you won’t feel embarrassed taking over it.

Body Count: 5

1. Max is hooked in the chin.
2. Barry is slashed to death with a hook.
3. Policeman is hooked in the gut. 
4. Elsa has her throat slashed with a hook.
5. Helen is slashed to death with a hook. 

TL;DR: I Know What You Did Last Summer is empty-headed, but benign.
Rating: 6/10
Word Count: 1378
Reviews In This Series
I Know What You Did Last Summer (Gillespie, 1997)
I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (Cannon, 1998)

The Biological Clock

Year: 2009

Director: Jac Schaeffer

Cast: Emma Caulfield, John Patrick Amedori, Michelle Borth

Run Time: 1 hour 39 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Since Valentine's Day is coming up, why not toss caution to the wind with a review of a rom com? On the actual holiday you can be sure to expect the usual Popcorn Culture gold standard fare of blood, bondage, and hearts in candy boxes, but why not stray from tradition and go mainstream for a second? Not that 2009's TiMER is mainstream by any definition of the word. But there's not a drop of Karo syrup on set and that's good enough for me!

Presumably there is blood inside of these people, but we don't get to see it. Alas.

TiMER is a high concept indie sci-fi romantic comedy, and the more words you need to use to describe a thing, the better it tends to be. Think about it. Would you rather watch a Western or a space zombie Western musical? Anyway, the film tells the story of Oona O'Leary (Emma Caulfield of Buffy the Vampire Slayer), an unlucky-in-love girl in the not too distant future. She is a lonely neurotic who rushes into relationships, causing them to crash and burn. 

But here's the twist: in this not too distant future, a tech company has created a device called the Timer, which is a clock implanted into your wrist that counts down to the day you will meet your soulmate. The second you lock eyes with them on the proscribed day, your timer will go off and you two will live in eternal bliss. It "takes the guesswork out of love."

Or it's supposed to. Oona's timer has never switched on, which either means that her One hasn't gotten his ass a timer yet, or... maybe she doesn't actually have a soulmate. Her already relatable neuroses are kicked into overdrive by this little blank gadget, a constant reminder that there's a potential for her to never have the happy ending that she's always dreamed of. No, it's not subtle. But it doesn't have to be. It's a fun, lighthearted comedy, dang it!

Side note: I really dig touting movies that nobody would ever expect me to love.

The best thing about TiMER is that it really puts effort into exploring the implications of its central invention on the dating lives of its participants and the world around them. The opening credits show a montage of how the device is incorporated into pop culture including sitcoms and the nightly news, and the rest of the film provides endless scenarios depicting its effects on race, class, sexuality, family, and friendships.

It's not often that a comic romance blends with soft science fiction, but it's downright statistically impossible for it to be such a successful combination of the disparate genres. There's even different models of timers depending on the period in which each character would have gotten theirs. There's not much else to the film outside of the timer and its immediate effects on the dating world, but when the topic is so a captivatingly original and comprehensively expressed, it's hard to complain.

After Oona meets a cute musician/bagboy named Mikey (John Patrick Amedori) with a timer reading four months, she begins to question her devout deference to the gadget's accuracy and begins a torrid romance despite her presumed knowledge that he will soon be meeting his true soulmate. Over the course of the film, Oona learns about life, love, messy reality, and the joy of taking detours.

And - oh my god, there's a clock. I see what you did there.

TiMER is unrelentingly sweet and sincere, operating in a low-key register that won't earn any hard-won fans, but never fails to charm. The film is full of tiny, scattered comic gems that brighten up the story like a 90-minute Easter Egg hunt. The tone is a perfect match for its budget: none too challenging and delightfully off-kilter.

After a while the dearth of budget does begin to wear on you (the timer makeup is never quite right and there is a preponderance of fade-outs), but TiMER makes up for it with a spunky, no-holds-barred approach to its material. Many of its central themes are surface-level, but it never shies away from staring down the audience and asking them the questions that really count.

Should we trust technology as implicitly as we do? Can we trust it to smooth the wrinkles out of life or are humans too complicated for that? Is there one fate for us? One love, one path, one true romance? Is life worth it without the mystery or is it better with a guarantee? And, most importantly, would you get a timer?

The film gets down on its knees and begs, implores you to ask these questions of yourself. It may not be the most subtle kid on the block (neither is Jenny, but y'all love her), but it successfully integrates ideas about our developing technology with some sunny comedy for flavor. The only other film to come close to truly tackling that subject in the way that it deserves was Her. Spike Jonze's film did it slightly better and more notably, but it's never quite as much fun as this quirky little lark with a spark in its eye.

By the way, this is Mik- hey look! Another clock. I'm onto them...

TL;DR: TiMER is a low-key, low-budget, high concept, weird little gem of a romantic comedy.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 918

Come Back To Texas

Year: 2003

Director: Marcus Nispel

Cast: Jessica Biel, Jonathan Tucker, Andrew Bryniarski

Run Time: 1 hour 38 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

In the past decade, the horror community has been inundated with remake after remake after remake. These types of films have always been around, even in the 50's and 60's and back, but since the mid-2000's there has been an overwhelming glut of the tepid things. Just on this blog, I've covered a small army of them including Carrie,  Evil Dead, Fright Night, The Last House on the Left, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Prom Night, and The Wizard of Gore, and there's easily ten times that amount on the market today.

With most cinematic movements, it's hard to tamp down a true ignition point. There tends to be several films around the same time that coalesce into the beginning of a new wave of filmmaking, like how the proto-slashers The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Black Christmas came out within weeks of one another in 1974. Luckily for us, the remake boom has one clear culprit.

In 2003, Michael Bay's new production company Platinum Dunes released their first of many many many low budget remakes - The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. As if you couldn't have guessed that already. 

I really shouldn't bury the lede in reviews where I stick the poster on the top.

The film was such a sterling success that other studios immediately hopped on the bandwagon and began pumping out updates on their long dormant horror franchises, prominent and obscure alike (and if anybody has any insider information on how the hell Mother's Day got remade, please contact me immediately). What most of them seemed to miss was the fact that Texas Chainsaw was actually pretty good.

But we're not here to talk about the tsunami of crappy remakes. We're here to discuss their pretty good progenitor and the influence it has - for better or for worse - over the narrative and aesthetic stylings of the ensuing decade.

The first of these is immediately apparent. Though the characters in this film have no obvious analogue with the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre, they are exponentially more attractive. In fact, if we view beauty as the equation x=log2(3^10) with x being the proportional attractiveness of the current cast over the classic cast, the results would be math.

Sexy, sexy math.

Our Meat for the evening, and by any definition, the film doesn't view them as more than that, are Morgan (Jonathan Tucker, also from The Ruins), a sexy nerd-stoner who combines the most annoying traits of both stereotypes and whose every line of dialogue sounds like vomit dribbling from the gaping maw of a mad drunk; Andy (Mike Vogel, the sexy outlaw from Under the Dome), the sexy rebel - a real stretch, performance-wise; Pepper (Erica Leerhsen of Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2), a sexy hitchhiker whose thirst for Andy rivals Leatherface's thirst for blood; Kemper (Eric Balfour of the first episode of Buffy), the sexy hick with a chip on his shoulder; and Erin (Jessica Biel of The A-Team), the sexy girlfriend of said sexy hick - soon to be his sexy fiancée if he has anything to say about it.

The kiddos are driving through the countryside to a Skynyrd concert in Dallas. As if that wasn't tip-off enough, Texas Chainsaw is set in 1973, the same year as the original film. On their way they pick up another Hitchhiker (Lauren German), who blows her head off after shouting about her friends all dying. They pull off at the nearest gas station and are sent to a mill to await the Sheriff. As they wait and wait, they soon realize the nearby house will become their final resting place as Leatherface (Andrew Bryniarski), the Sheriff (R. Lee Ermey), and their family send them one by one to the basement workshop to be chainsaw massacred.

To be fair to them, how could this lovely home seem like there might be killers hiding inside?

The great thing about The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is that it can be taken on its own. Its plot intersects with the plot of the original at so few points, it actually becomes a distinctly separate movie. This is greatly to its favor, because comparing any single horror film to Texas Chain Saw is like flinging spaghetti at a dartboard and hoping for a bull's eye.

And there are even some cases where the film - I wouldn't say "improves on," but it... extrapolates certain sequences from the Chain Saw structure to great effect. It is debatable whether this film's increase in gore improves the horror (I personally don't find it to do so - it's suitably disgusting and wet, but I find the whole film to be a little too slick to get under the skin), but something must be said for a girl watching a hulking killer attack while wearing her boyfriend's face. And a sequence with a meat hook and a piano is delightful in a sickening kind of way.

The film isn't afraid to up the ante and in today's world of anonymous studio horror, that is a quality to be much admired. Texas Chainsaw allows us to explore the entire deranged town, visit the nearby slaughterhouse, and see just how far gore prosthetic technology has come since the last entry in the franchise in 1994 (or 1997, once Matthew McConaughey got his way).

This gleeful excess is mirrored in the deliriously drippy and wet production design, which seems to have been inspired by that time I walked to class on a rainy day and forgot an umbrella. That or the filmmakers' fervent desire to keep Jessica Biel as soaking wet as possible. It's hilarious. No matter where she goes it rains on her, whether it be literal rain or the inexplicable flooding of Leatherface's workshop. At one point she manages to find a refuge but Leatherface triggers the fire sprinklers because the teen boys in the audience would likely implode if she spent one second without her sopping bosoms flapping about.

And yet this guy keeps his shirt on. Wasteful.

Joke all I might, I do enjoy my share of needlessly exploitative horror. It's always delightful to watch the filmmakers' obvious desperation to sexify even the most harrowing of scenarios. There's enough hot dudes around to not feel particularly misogynistic. But let me expound my theories on sexuality and exploitation in its own essay, I don't want to bog down this post like so much rainwater.

Here comes the part in the positive reviews where I dump all the negative things I have to say. Because, succeed as it might in distancing itself from Texas Chain Saw, this film is a remake and is thus beholden to comparisons. I've already mentioned the movie's distancing slickness, but the cold grey "gritty" aesthetic just doesn't do it for me in terms of this franchise's narrative universe. I associate Texas Chainsaw with oppressive heat and claustrophobia and that is just not the feeling this film gives off.

It's altogether shallow, and the film follows suit. Gone are the first films intensely angry political sentiments. It's understandable. 2003 was a wildly different societal climate than 1974, though the original time period has been needlessly retained (in fact, Erin's irritating moralizing stances, the fashion, and speech patterns actively disagree with the time period). 

There's more gore but less personality, and it's not necessarily a lesser movie because of it. It has different aims than the decades-gone original. But it's certainly a more superficial one.

But in spite of these shortcomings, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is certainly worth its salt. Its ability to be genuinely tense and creative paved the way for the battalions of remakes to come. Unfortunately but predictably, other studios followed the route of "slick and grey is cool" rather than "good horror movies make money" but what are you gonna do?

Watch Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The rest, as they say, is history. Let it confine itself to the books while you enjoy one of the most interesting reboots modern cinema has to offer.

TL;DR: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is obviously not as good as the original, but is wonderfully intense and fast-paced.

Rating: 7/10

Body Count: 8

1. The Hitchhiker shoots herself through the head.
2. Kemper is hit in the head with a sledgehammer.
3. Pepper is sliced with a chainsaw.
4. Andy has his leg sliced off, is hung on a meathook, and stabbed in the chest.
5. Morgan is hung on a chandelier and chainsawed in the crotch.
6. Sheriff Hoyt is run over with a police car. 
7. Officer #1 is killed with a chainsaw offscreen.
8. Officer #2 is killed with a chainsaw offscreen. 

Word Count: 1449

Reviews In This Series

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Hooper, 1974)
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (Hooper, 1986)
Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (Burr, 1990)
Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (Henkel, 1994)
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Nispel, 2003)
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (Liebesman, 2006)
Texas Chainsaw 3D (Luessenhop, 2013)
Leatherface (Bustillo & Maury, 2017)

Fright Flashback: Parodies

Welcome to Popcorn Culture's newest feature, Fright Flashback! I'm trying to really get going on this whole "blogging" thing by watching at least one new 2014 movie per week for the rest of summer. Alongside this, every week I will be reviewing an old horror movie that shares a theme or genre with the week's big release, a sort of spiritual predecessor. Yes, I'm reworking an idea from Tim Brayton over at Antagony and Ecstasy, so don't say I don't cite my sources.

This week's new release is the Amy Poehler/Paul Rudd romantic comedy parody They Came Together. It's certainly not a huge wide release, but there's no way in hell I'm going to see Transformers: Age of Extinction of my own volition. As the first entry in this new feature, I will be reviewing a horror parody - Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th, because there's even less way in hell I'm subjecting myself to Scary Movie again.

Year: 2000

Director: John Blanchard

Cast: Harley Cross, Simon Rex, Tiffani-Amber Thiessen

Run Time: 1 hour 26 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

I've made a huge mistake. Anybody who willingly picks up a copy (or, in my case, loads on YouTube) of a movie with a title like this knows what they're in for. After being inundated with film after film of joyless "parody" the likes of Scary Movies 1-5, Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans, Date Movie, Vampires Suck, Disaster Movie, Ad Nauseum Movie, as well as A Haunted House and its sequel, it's not difficult to ascertain the quality of this film and its humor.

These kinds of dirt cheap pop culture-laden "comedies" pop up on Netflix and RedBox a couple times a year to cash in on whatever the latest craze at the time happens to be. Unfortunately, as long as we keep giving them money, they will continue to thrive, multiplying and choking out other, better comedies like a kudzu vine.

There are only two of this entire mass of films worth noting at all in any capacity, however negligible. Sure, a film like Scary Movie has the historical value of being more or less the first of its kind (crappy pop knockoffs, not parodies) and the beginning of a long and unhappy franchise, but that doesn't mean it's valuable or deserving of note. In fact, it's quite emphatically not, an almost shockingly useless movie that would be reprehensibly offensive if it had any real personal influence over viewers aside from sucking in their money like a collapsing star.

The best of these, in my humble opinion, is 2001's Not Another Teen Movie, which had moments of genuine satire spliced in among the (sometimes literally) explosive amounts of scatological humor. The second best is the one we are here for today. Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th was produced around the same time as Scary Movie and as such is free of its mostly toxic influence. This doesn't mean the two films aren't similar in several very important ways, but the comedy here is much less mean-spirited and tends to fall on the "Oh, Grandpa" side of bad joking rather than the "I'm seriously considering scratching out my eardrums" bad humor of the Scary Movie franchise.

(I understand that there were and continue to be many fans of the Scary Movie franchise, to whom I impart no judgement. There is a way to enjoy just about anything, I just do not possess that capability with this particular set of films.)

There is, however, an easy way to enjoy this film.

SIYKWIDLF13 (holy crap, this is gonna be a rough ride) tells the story of Dawson (Harley Cross), a new student at Bulimia Falls High School. He quickly makes friends with a ragtag band comprised of Slab (Simon Rex, who got his start - and middle and end - in the gay porn industry), a dumb jock; Barbara (Julie Benz, who also played Darla in Buffy and Angel), the Sarah Michelle Gellar type popular girl; Boner (Danny Strong, also of Buffy and - holy crap this is the guy who wrote The Butler and is working on the screenplay for Mockingjay how did he get here), the sexless nerd; and Martina (Majandra Delfino, who continues her career in terrible comedy to this day, having appeared in the quickly aborted Van Der Beek sitcom Friends With Better Lives), who is about as clear an analogue to Clea DuVall's The Faculty character Stokes as a person can be without actively being in that movie.

A mask-wearing killer begins to strike down local teens (well, he tries, but dagnabbit if they always seem to die accidentally before he can get to them) and a hawkish reporter (Tiffani-Amber Thiessen) descends on the scene looking for the inside scoop. Obviously, much like Scary Movie, this film makes the incredibly strange decision to parodize Scream, which was already the sharpest horror satire of the 90's. Luckily the plot is hung on a Scream-like structure, but the jokes are all aimed at the more general 90's horror scene and especially the oeuvre of one Kevin Williamson.

They were more thorough in satirizing his entire career than he was in creating it.

Let's stay on that for a second, because that's where this film rises above all its brethren. While there are plenty of pop culture references in this film, they are much less odious than the "cram whatever movie is out right now haphazardly into a gag" mentality of those other films thanks to being unified under the umbrella of the remarkably prodigious Williamson. The best jokes arise naturally from this well of content (including, by the year 2000, Halloween H20, Scream, Scream 2, The Faculty, and I Know What You Did Last Summer) as well as the general slate of Scream knockoffs that dominated  the horror of the decade like a militaristic tyrant bent on demanding the sacrifice of scantily-clad starlets.

Aside from this, SIYKWIDLF13 has nothing exciting to offer. The performances are exactly what you'd expect from the direct-to-video crowd, although the level to which the actors aren't taking their roles seriously adds a little bit of texture and a sense of what I hesitantly call "fun." It rather feels like a movie I could have made with my friends in high school, had I gotten into the horror genre much earlier than I did. Which, incidentally, was only about three years ago. I work fast. Go hard or go home, as my grandmother always says.

So, yes. This film is not without its merits, although for obvious reasons these don't serve in any way to make it operate on a level that could quite be considered Good or Funny in any traditional sense. All I can say is that despite clumsily handled jokes about domestic abuse, homosexuality, and molestation, this film is much less tawdry and offensive than it could have been and for that it's worth the relatively high stature of second best.

When you check out the score, you'll see that's not exactly worth much, but hey. It's better than a swift kick in the groin.

TL;DR: Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th isn't good at all, but at least it's not Scary Movie.

Rating: 3/10

Word Count: 1218

Women In Horror: Evil Queens

I'm comin' at you again straight from Venus with more of Women In Horror Month! In a genre that has been decried frequently as misogynistic and exploitative (for several very good reasons), it is good to step back and appreciate the positive influence of the many Final Girls and strong female characters that seek to combat the deeply rooted sexism of the film industry.

This kind of change always comes about from fringe movements and what is horror if not fringe?

But power goes both ways. Final Girls are a force for good but evil has strength too. Sure, it's terrible to portray women as villains because of some misogynistic reason like "hysteria" or "periods" but in the interest of equality, it is important to explore the dark sides of all human beings: male, female, or otherwise.

It is with that in mind that I bring you the

TOP TEN FEMALE HORROR VILLAINS

#10 Katie (Paranormal Activity, Paranormal Activity 2, Paranormal Activity 3, Paranormal Activity 4, Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones)

Played By: Katie Featherston

What began as a cheap found footage shocker quickly became a genre mainstay on the strength of its ridiculous budget multiplying powers. Katie Featherston, though the protagonist of the original film, has been the only returning cast member to appear in all four sequels (because let's face it, The Marked Ones was a sequel). Her parts are usually in the final ten minutes, aka the scariest and most ridiculous parts. And hence, she ends up on the list! I love dumb horror franchises! Thank you Katie for being compelling enough the first time around!

#9 Kayako Saeki (Ju-On, Ju-On 2, The Grudge, The Grudge 2)

Played By: Takako Fuji

If I had no restraint, this entire list would just be J-Horror ghosts. It's some scary crap, man. And although the Ju-On/Grudge series was frequently haphazard and repetitive, the scare scenes always pack a punch thanks to Kayako, the ghost of a murdered wife who seeks revenge on all who enter her house. I always end up thinking about the final scene in Ju-On at the most inopportune times, like when I'm walking to my car at midnight or climbing up the dark stairs to my apartment.

#8 The Flesh Eating Mothers (Flesh Eating Mothers)

Played By: The Director's Neighbors, Probably

I just had to. Flesh Eating Mothers is one of those terrific bad movies that nobody seems to have heard of, but I think its definitely worth a look for any connoisseur of the form. Mothers are infected with a virus that makes them eat their children in the most hilarious way possible. Check it out. Nobody likes kids anyway.

Maybe they're the heroes.... Something to think about.

#7 Mary Lou Maloney (Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II)

Played By: Lisa Schrage

Burnt up prom queen? Reminds me of something, but I can't quite put my finger on it.

The one place you'd never expect that plot element is in the Prom Night series, which set off to be a totally run-of-the-mill slasher franchise. However, it was quickly derailed by the gorgeously evil majesty that is the ghost of Mary Lou. She sent the franchise shooting off in a wildly different direction that makes it one of my favorite minor slasher series to this day.

#6 Mrs. Voorhees (Friday the 13th)

Played By: Betsy Palmer

Played to the nines by a woman who only agreed to be in a movie she thought was a piece of crap so she could afford a new car, Mrs. Voorhees is the woman who is responsible for the entirety of Jason Voorhees' career. The original villain of Friday the 13th, she breathed life into a dull third act with her soap opera caliber histrionics and her utterly terrifying schizophrenic taunts and wails.

#5 Angela Baker (Sleepaway Camp, Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers, Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland)

Played By: Felissa Rose, Pamela Springsteen

Psssh. Sleepaway Camp. Obviously a rip-off of my beloved Friday the 13th, right? That's what I thought at least. But it's so much more. I'm not really a fan of anything but the ending of the first one, but the sequels mine some really solid and delirious slasher territory and are fairly unique in that there is never even a shred of doubt about who the killer is. The tension is always about what the hell she's going to do next. And how poorly she will be acted. Good times.

#4 Annie Wilkes (Misery)

Played By: Kathy Bates

You knew this was coming. Kathy Bates has nailed a wide variety of roles, but one of her best is Annie Wilkes, the obsessive recluse who traps her favorite author in her secluded home and forces him to write another sequel. So, basically, what any of my peers would gladly do to J. K. Rowling.

#3 Sadako Yamamura (Ringu, Ringu 2)

Played By: Rie Ino'o

The ghost of a young woman with telekinetic powers who was drowned in a well, Sadako does super cool and exciting things like terrorize people who watch her magic tape and crawl out of TVs. I love J-Horror, you guys. I have yet to see it, but I'm very excited to watch Sadako 3D, where she haunts YouTube. Sounds like a good time for the whole family.

#2 La Niña Medeiros ([REC], [REC] 2)

Played By: Javier Botet

Unfortunately, this terrifying vision was played by a man so she doesn't quite deserve the top spot despite being the single most terrifying thing I've ever seen in the most terrifying scene of my favorite horror movie in the entire universe. But she couldn't not be here, as anyone to whom I have shown [REC] (which is everyone) could attest.

#1 Drusilla (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel)

Played By: Juliet Landau

The Medeiros girl had to be bumped, but there's nobody in the world who could take her place but the magnificent Drusilla. Played to the ends of the Earth by Juliet Landau, Drusilla is an utterly sympathetic character driven to insanity by Angelus, the dark side of Buffy's hunky vampire boyfriend. And despite being lovably addled, Drusilla is made of white hot evil, even more pure than her punk boyfriend Spike. She ends up dominating every episode she stars in, so much so that they had to get rid of her lest the show solely revolve around her exploits.
Word Count: 1065