Whatever Container It's In

Year: 2017

Director: Guillermo del Toro

Cast: Sally Hawkins, Octavia Spencer, Michael Shannon 

Run Time: 2 hours 3 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Guillermo del Toro is one of the few visionary directors we have on hand today, but he’s also one of the most inconsistent. I tend to abide by the rule of thumb that his Spanish-language work is stronger than his English films (Pan’s Labyrinth and The Devil’s Backbone are masterpieces, whereas Crimson Peak or Pacific Rim are pretty but a bit empty-headed), but I was greatly intrigued by The Shape of Water, his quasi-remake of The Creature from the Black Lagoon. I must say that rule of thumb still applies, but it’s certainly an interesting beast that I’m excited to discuss.

And if there’s one thing del Toro knows a lot about, it’s interesting beasts.

So, the plot. Elisa Esposito (Sally Hawkins) is a mute cleaning woman who works at an aerospace institute in a fairy tale vision of 1960’s Baltimore. When the scientists at work bring in their newest asset – an amphibious sea creature from South America (Doug Jones, who is not the Alabama senator, though I’m sure he wishes he had that on his CV instead of The Bye Bye Man) that they’re hoping will help them make major steps in the space race once they figure out how its breathing apparatus works – she begins to teach it sign language and they become fast friends… and maybe more.

When the Evil Scientist Richard Strickland (Michael Shannon) decides to vivisect the creature, Elisa must face the loss of this new relationship with a creature that makes her feel less alien and alone in this world of people who look down on her, either for her lack of speech or the fact that she’s a woman. She is supported by her coworker Zelda (Octavia Spencer) and her aging painter neighbor Giles (Richard Jenkins), but she might just have to take action.

And I mean “action” in every sense of the word.

I don’t know what it is about this Oscar season. Normally I’m not a huge fan of big awards contenders in general so it shouldn't be surprising that I'm not feeling into it, but this slate of flicks seems tailor-made for my tastes. A non-AIDS/death related gay romance? A romance starring the Gill Man? A film bringing to life the story of The Room?! Don’t mind if I do! And yet I’m liking these films even less than normal. OK, I don’t think I’ll ever dislike anything as much as The Revenant or Birdman, but this year I’m kind of longing for a Her, or a Brooklyn, or even a The Descendants. Just something that doesn’t promise high genre heights yet still manages to evoke something quiet and engrossing. Meanwhile I’m stuck with empty promises of things I’ll love that end up delivering something messy and flawed, ultimately redeemable but impossible to fall head over heels in love with.

I at least enjoyed The Shape of Water more thoroughly than Call Me By Your Name, because del Toro is a consummate entertainer even when he’s operating in a lower gear. But this film fails so hard at delivering most of what it promises that when it hits one of its many truly great scenes, it just doesn’t have the punch you wish it did.

I think my biggest issue is that The Shape of Water is just a little bit – I hate to say it – twee. The easiest comparison that comes to mind is Amélie, another film that spins a grand fairy tale fantasy out of regular life. Del Toro has proven himself adept at that kind of thing before, but Pan’s Labyrinth is no Jean-Pierre Jeunet romp. The particular register he’s working in feels utterly alien, and the central romance suffers because of it.

Fairy tales have the ability to smooth the edges off the snags and quibbles of real life love (Prince Charming hardly ever knows the Princess for more than a week before they’re hitched), but del Toro’s instincts toward blending the epic fantasy with gritty, violent reality hobble his ability to do that.  And despite the stellar performances of both Hawkins (who whips up a dazzling internal life for a character who doesn’t speak a word) and Jones (whose posture is so utterly alien that you don’t for a second remember he’s a man in a suit), the script underserves them. Their romance is too rushed-through to evoke the huge swell of emotion the movie clearly wants you to feel toward the midpoint, and the characters are too whimsical to really take the stakes seriously, even when they are raised through the roof.

The amount of time it takes you to look at this caption is about the time the script devotes to their chemistry before tossing them into another movie entirely for about forty minutes.

But let's not pretend that there is not some terrific material at work in The Shape of Water, it just tends to be in the stuff circulating around the central relationship. The lead actors might be great, but their supporting players are even better. Well, I mean Octavia Spencer is doing her Octavia Spencer thing, and that's just dandy, but Richard Jenkins and Michael Shannon are pure magic.

Michael Shannon has made a habit of getting accolades for movies I don't really care to see, but he has more than won me over to his side here. The metaphor about his character (a white man with a hilariously perfect 50's suburban family) being the true monster here isn't particularly subtle, but boy does he sell it by being f**king scary. Every second he's onscreen pulses with nerve-shattering tension, and he has the audience wrapped around his little finger within two frames.

And then there's poor Richard Jenkins, who digs deep to unearth some raw loneliness in character as a gay man who has allowed himself to grow old hiding in the shadows and regrets letting his life and potential love pass him by. His character is probably the funniest, warmest presence in the film, but every three scenes or so he gets it into his head to rip out your heart with his bare hands and play the strings like a maestro of human misery.

The Shape of Water has a lot to say about alienation and loneliness, and those themes live and breathe in the performances even when they aren't present on the page. This is probably the best ensemble of the year, and the fact that they get to act out a story this weird on sets this sumptuous in their grotty glory, with cinematography this sleek and stunning is a small miracle. It doesn't come together quite enough for me to give it a wholehearted recommendation, but god damn can it draw some real beauty from its murky depths.

TL;DR: The Shape of Water is a gorgeous, well-acted film with clumsy script execution.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 1165

Popcorn Kernels: Mexico Bárbaro

A set of mini-reviews covering Mexican horror films discussed during the first half of month 4 of the Scream 101 podcast.

Satánico Pandemonium (For our Scream 101 review, click here.)

Year: 1975

Director: Gilberto Martínez Solares

Cast: Enrique Rocha, Cecilia Pezet, Delia Magaña

Run Time: 1 hour 29 minutes

MPAA Rating: N/A

A nun is tempted by the Devil to perform perverse and violent acts in her secluded convent.

Exploitation filmmakers do love themselves some nuns. The built-in purity of a woman in a habit provides a quick and dirty entry point into the “corruption of innocence” plot that softcore horror directors like so much. But while the industry has access to a surplus of busty women willing to don a habit, they tend to greatly outnumber the talented directors working in the genre. Now, I won’t say Gilberto Martínez Solares is an untalented director, but I will say he directed 9 movies in 1979 alone, so his attention to detail might be a little lacking.

Now it might surprise you, but the technical quality of a movie isn’t necessarily a dealbreaker for me. As a connoisseur of trash cinema, for me the biggest sin a movie can commit is being boring. And because Satánico Pandemonium commits as many sins as it can get its hands on, why not toss that one onto the pile? In between its many scenes of orgiastic violence and star Cecilia Pezet in various states of undress, there lies an interminable array of nuns walking down stone corridors, across fields, or down staircases in what feels like real time.

Maybe the idea was that the audience should pay penance for the sin of watching this blasphemous film, and that penance is built directly into the film in the form of excruciating tedium. The scenes of sex and violence are decent enough in their own 70’s low budget way (I’ve never seen a more obvious retractable knife in a horror film), noncommittally titillating with softcore sex and vaguely bloody violence. The occasional startling image will crop up and succeed in creating some kind of atmosphere, but for the most part, these scenes are not worth the price you have to pay to reach them.

I will give Satánico Pandemonium this. There is actually a powerful subtext buried deep (very deep) within the film about how it’s not the Devil, but the harsh restrictions of the church itself that drives a person to sin. The repression of the convent, one of the most outwardly pious institutions in the world, has led our heroine to her outbursts, expressing extreme sexual desire and becoming uncontrollably violent when she is denied what she wants. This is the best horror movie link between sex and murder that I’ve seen in a long time, explicitly because it takes place in the milieu of the Catholic church.

I can’t recommend Satánico Pandemonium, but I respect it for its message and its attempts at being a bonkers sadomasochistic horror movie. And the special effects are at least slightly redeemed by some incredible smoking hands midway through. So… great. Maybe still don’t watch it though.

Rating: 4/10

Cronos (For our Scream 101 review, click here.)

Year: 1993

Director: Guillermo del Toro

Cast: Federico Luppi, Ron Perlman, Claudio Brook 

Run Time: 1 hour 34 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

An antique shop owner dissevers a mysterious device that grants him eternal life but curses him with a thirst for blood.

We all gotta start somewhere, and Guillermo del Toro started with a movie about an alchemical vampires with a clockwork scarab licking blood off a bathroom floor. There have certainly been worse debuts, because although Cronos lacks narrative clarity, it reveals the strength of vision he director had even at a young age.

Although del Toro would better achieve almost every element in a later film (Crimson Peak has his best mysterious mansion, Pan’s Labyrinth has a better child element, and so on), Cronos still has an indelible personality that is distinctly itself. Perhaps the most directly Cronenbergian film he ever made, it has a terrific blend of the mechanical and the biological, the sheer wrongness of such juxtaposition fueling its sense of creeping dread.

The special effects and make-up certainly help in this regard. Although they show their low budget seams (del Toro’s ideas are just too big to fit in the realm of microbudget horror), they create sticky grotesqueries that shred your nerves more than any jump scare could.

Unfortunately, these triumphs are housed in a narrative that doesn’t make a lick of sense. His flawless blend of realistic drama and horrific fairy tale hadn’t yet developed, so the dramatic elements that the movie spends most of its time on are severely anemic. You don’t really get a sense of the old man’s personality or home life before his transition, so it’s difficult to connect with how far he has fallen. And honestly, his resistance of the vampiric curse it too complete. He never becomes truly monstrous, and there’s never a sense that he has any particular struggle avoiding his craving for blood.

He’s housed in a meandering plot that just sort of happens around him, though at least that plot contains Ron Perlman (working with del Toro for the first and certainly not last time) hamming it up as a hyperbolically acquisitive villain.

But while the plot and tone of Cronos are iffy, it remains an unassailable triumph of design, from the Cronos device’s clockwork mechanisms to the cruelly antiseptic villain’s lair. If you don’t mind a 90-minute slew of confusion and revulsion (which, really, is a good thing for the genre), check out Cronos. Otherwise, stick with his more established works like Pan’s Labyrinth or The Devil’s Backbone.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 943

Clay Achin'

Year: 2015

Director: Guillermo del Toro

Cast: Mia Wasikowska, Jessica Chastain, Tom Hiddleston

Run Time: 1 hour 59 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Guillermo del Toro is such a visionary that his name is spoken with hushed tones in optometry circles. His Spanish language films are characterized by a lush etherealism that starkly contrasts with the frequent brutality of the “real” world. The genre he creates in his films like the widely renowned Pan’s Labyrinth and the tremendously underrated The Devil’s Backbone is utterly distinct and can only be described as horror fantasy.

And then he made Pacific Rim. Now, I’m not saying that del Toro’s American films are bad, but they certainly lack that ineffable quality that defines his foreign works. However, this Halloween saw a near perfect marriage of the disparate halves of his career: the gothic ghost romance Crimson Peak combines the best of his Spanish aesthetic and the narrative paucity of his Hollywood flicks.

Generic ghost stories are real. This much I know.

In Crimson Peak, Edith “Not Peter” Cushing (Mia Wasikowska) is a young American writer. She’s penning a novel that’s not a ghost story, but a “story with ghosts,” a dangerous portent for the thrill-seeking teenyboppers in the audience. She falls madly in love with Sir Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston), a mysterious stranger who came to her father in search of funding for an invention of his, to be used to plumb the depths of the red clay mine beneath his English manor. 

After her father’s untimely death by murder, she marries Sharpe and is whisked off to live with him in England, along with his hawkish and brooding sister Lucille (Jessica Chastain), much to the consternation of her suitor, Dr. Alan McMichael (Charlie Hunnam, again cruelly forced to adopt a stilted American accent despite the fact that three-quarters of the film tajes place in his native Britain).

The Sharpe manor, Allerdale Hall, is in a startling state of disrepair (much like the Sharpes’ finances). The entire property is sinking into the clay mine, and liquefied red clay bleeds from the walls as leaves and debris cascade continuously from the holes in the ceiling. Pretty much immediately, Edith begins seeing CGI ghosts who warn her of a terrible secret hidden within the house.

[SPOILERS] It doesn’t NOT have something to do with Tom Hiddleston’s bare ass.

If you tossed Jane Eyre, The Haunting, The Devil’s Backbone, Flowers in the Attic, and The Turn of the Screw into a blender, you’d come up with a story that is almost, but not quite, entirely like Crimson Peak. It’s fundamentally predictable, so much so that the dialogue could have been “lorem ipsum, etc…” and be just as effective. It’s just a heap of thinly veiled metaphors delivered in Masterpiece Theatre accents slathered liberally over a routine gothic mystery.

Crimson Peak is just a pile of gently steaming boilerplate. That is, if you’re watching it with your eyes closed. The narrative might be peaky odds and ends, but the storybook environment and pure stylistic enthusiasm blast through the picture like a mighty geyser. After less than a minute, you feel like you’re watching the film while strapped into one of those Clockwork Orange viewing devices, unable and unwilling to peel your eyes away from the screen for even a moment. Handfuls of popcorn are missing your mouth completely and about sixty percent of your fact is slick with misapplied Chapstick, but to look away for even a second would be tantamount to rank betrayal, like Eve biting into the apple.

Crimson Peak is much like 2013’s Stoker in that it takes a well-worn family drama and transforms it into a sumptuous visual feast. And Mia Wasikowska is there. It has its imperfections, like some CGI-laden ghosties that probably have beers after work with the pixelated monstrosity from Mama, wacky transitions that might have impressed at the Johnson Family Annual New Year’s Slideshow Barbecue 1998, and an obnoxious font that announces locations with the garish lettering of a local mini-mart, though thee are but the pettiest of complaints.

Except for that ghost thing. More on that later.

The audacious style of Allerdale Hall and its ensigns is like an architect enduring a bad comedown from his first acid trip. There is beauty and splendor in the manor’s decrepitude, pulling designs, colors, and shapes from a dark place far beyond the human imagination. The walls are slimy, shimmering visions of flowing red clay, a bloody brilliant element that gives the house sickly life and informs the color scheme of every set. Red never dominates a scene, but it punctuates every moment with vivid splashes of color. And the constantly fluttering stream of leaves and snow through the Hall’s blasted-out ceiling completes the property’s impression of constant, surreal, gorgeous motion.

Equally sumptuous is Crimson Peak’s sound design, which begs to be heard in theatrical surround sound. The sense of Allerdale Hall as a living, all-encompassing space owes a great deal to the efforts of its audio technicians, who create a richly textured portrayal of not only what’s in the house, but where it is at all times.

And let me tell you, if I come across this place in real life, I would not be included on that list of what’s inside. Woe to their local milkman.

Guillermo del Toro’s brutal realism also makes its way to Crimson Peak in some gruesome sequences that achieve the difficult ideal of hyperreal fantasy. There are no over-the-top head rippings or de-limbings at play here. Every gory moment is an intimate, personal horror that gets under your skin and flays you from the inside out.

It’s just pity the story containing all these stunning elements is so milquetoast. I wouldn’t say that what Crimson Peak needs is more ghostly action (del Toro has conclusively proven in Devil’s Backbone that he is capable of deftly handling a ghost story where the spooky supernatural presence is far fro villainous.), but there is a certain lack of luster to Edith’s visitations. This is frustrated even more by the fact that the phantasms could be lifted from the plot entirely without making the slightest mark on the film.

Plus, the ghosts themselves, while boasting stupefying designs, are rendered silly by too much FX processing. The buildup to any haunting (when actual physical objects are being manipulated) are far more intense than the cut-and-paste apparitions that follow. The ghosts are far from the only thing to be afraid of, so this isn’t a film-busting flaw, but it’s hard not to feel slightly disappointed by the ghosts’ lukewarm portrayal.

Boo Hoo Hoo…

Speaking of portrayals, Jessica Chastain swallows her role whole, swooping around the manor like a majestic heron. The rest of the cast is also suitable, though a wonky accent yet again unmoors Charlie Hunnam. Oh, when will producers stop being cruel to him?

At the end of the day, Crimson Peak is a film worth experiencing. Is it for teen Halloweeners looking to get their hearts thumped? Certainly not. Is it for haunted house fans looking for their next great classic? Unfortunately, no. but is fit for people who deeply, truly love the art of cinema? That answer would be an emphatic yes.

TL;DR: Crimson Peak is a gothic romance that values style over substance.

Rating: 8/10
Should I Spend Money On This? Don't go in expecting intense scares, but if you see it you absolutely must do so in the theater.
Word Count: 1245

Mexico Star Theater

Year: 2014

Director: Jorge R. Gutierrez

Cast: Diego Luna, Zoe Saldana, Channing Tatum

Run Time: 1 hour 35 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

Hollywood is making a change. Because it's Hollywood, it's not an enormous change and it's more than a little half-hearted. Because it's Hollywood, the change is driven by utterly mercenary motivations. But also because it's Hollywood, it has stumbled across a realization that, with a little polishing, could change the world of media as we know it.

That world-changing discovery seems like a simple one and it is: Latino people go to the movies. In fact, they go to the movies a lot. Not surprising, considering just how diverse the American population is, though Hollywood prefers to ignore this fact. But studios have finally begun to take notice of this heretofore unplumbed demographic, making movies that cater to - get this - audiences who aren't just white people.

One of the first truly high-profile movies with this demographic in mind was Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones, the Latin-American spin-off of the decade's most popular horror franchise. But behind this film lie many others that have slowly been shifting the tides. Which now brings us to one of the first wide release Latino-themed kids' movies - The Book of Life.

Where was this guy when I was doing my Sexiest Animated Characters list?

Book of Life begins with a framework narrative that's essentially useless, but as it informs the aesthetic of the entire film - and oh, what an aesthetic it is - it's only fair to begin there. Mary Beth (Christina Applegate) is a puckish museum docent who takes a gaggle of detention kids on a field trip to a special secret room containing the Book of Life, which is full of stories and legends about Mexico. She uses a set of dolls to tell the kids one of the stories, so the bulk of the film is animated like wooden puppetry - more on that later.

SPOILERS FOR THE FIRST ACT - IF YOU SAW THE TRAILER YOU'RE FINE The chosen story centers around two mythical figures: La Muerte (Kate del Castillo) and Xibalba (Ron Perlman) - the rulers of the two underworlds, the Land of the Remembered and the Land of the Forgotten respectively. On el Día de los Muertos, they make a fateful wager. Xibalba is desperate to escape the realm of forgotten souls, so he proposes that each of them place a bet on Maria (Zoe Saldana), a young girl in the nearby town with two best friends/suitors. Xibalba bets on Joaquin (Channing Tatum), a cocky explorer who lives in the shadow of his valiant father, and La Muerte vouches for Manolo (Diego Luna), a sensitive musician whose father expects him to pick up his family's bullfighting legacy.

Although Maria is clearly smitten with Manolo's fumbling charm and put off by Joaquin's egocentric antics, she'd really rather hang out with her pet pig. But Manolo proves his worth, not quite soon enough after Joaquin proposes. After Xibalba pulls a devilish trick, Manolo is sent to the Land of the Remembered and must find his way back to the land of the living and reclaim his true love.

Although he did snag a great look just in time for Halloween so it's not all bad.

It's a children's film and a legend-based tale so once it settles in, it's quite simple to follow. Parents want their kids to be something other than their dreams, but individuality wins out and everyone learns the importance of being themselves. Boilerplate kid movie stuff, really. It's everywhere but the plot that Book of Life rises above the average family-friendly fare.

I've already mentioned the film's Latino themes, but the truly astonishing part is that it depicts a culture with customs, music, legends, values, and aesthetics much different from our own without being hideously offensive! There are some dubious elements that squeak by (including having only two actors of Mexican descent in the lead cast, a smattering white-culture signifiers for Mexico, and the fact that the entire story is framed by a puppet show put on for some dumb-ass white kids), but overall the film shines as a beacon of cinematic diversity with Mexican director Jorge Guiterrez and producer Guillermo del Toro preventing things from getting too out of hand. 

And even those rough patches are smoothed over with an ample supporting cast including Cheech Marin, Danny Trejo, and Plácido Domingo, along with strong cultural musicality combining banda and mariachi styles with modern pop-musical lyrics and themes. I can't tell you how refreshing it is to see a film presented by somebody other than fussy old white dudes. Their contributions are numerous, it's true, but it's time to let somebody, anybody else take the stand.

And now for something completely different: Protagonists who don't have the delicate complexion of a glass of skim milk.

OK, now that we have the boring but vastly important stuff out of the way, let's focus on how utterly fun this movie is. Regular kiddy movie tropes (an animal sidekick; a Greek chorus) are turned on their heads (an adorable pig is the sidekick; the chorus is a group of hilarious nuns), boisterous characters burst with vividly colorful life, and the music doesn't suck! The great thing about the soundtrack is that it so easily could have drained the vigor from the film but instead injects it with energy. 

The Book of Life tends to parlay in anachronisms, a risky venture that works more often than it should. A mariachi Mumford & Sons cover? Strange but it works perfectly. Acoustic Elvis on a Mexican guitar? Lovely. A Radiohead song? Not so much, but it made sense at the time. The three original songs likewise manage to match this tone of marrying children's musical standards with Mexican instrumentation to blissful perfection. On top of it all, Diego Luna's voice - while a tad rough around the edges - provides the perfect DIY kick to these lovably offbeat arrangements.

All of this rolls into a film that's tirelessly heartfelt and kooky while at the same time buoyantly reveling in Mexican culture to its fullest extent. This is portrayed nowhere better than the animation itself, which depicts rickety wooden figures with grace and artistry, pumping them full of vibrant, colorful, joyous life. The film's portrayal of the endless fiestas of the Land of the Remembered is an explosion of brassy, rich, eye-popping technicolor dreamscapes as far as the eye can see.

And the attention to detail in unmatched in modern computer-animated film. Once you notice how Xibalba's pupils are little skulls or the way La Muerte's candles delicately float around the train of her dress, the film will have you in its thrall completely - assuming you have the capacity for childish wonder necessary to take it all in.

And compared to Reel FX Animation's last feature film - 2013's Free Birds, the step up here is about the height of the Tower of Babel.

And the acting is top notch, especially Diego Luna with a brave, limit-stretching vocal performance and Tatum in yet another pristine comic role and WHY AREN'T WE LETTING HIM DO MORE COMEDIES! Personally, I could do without Ice Cube in a comic relief part, but it's not as intrusive as you'd think.

All said, The Book of Life would be an utter masterpiece if it weren't for just a few minute stumbles. As I stated before, the story is a bit too wooden, overusing hoary thematic tropes. And the post-Frozen quasi-feminism doesn't ring as true as it could considering that Maria still tends to be a damsel in distress. But all in all, in the field of children's animation as well as that of 2014 cinema itself, you can hardly do better than this vivid multi-cultural extravaganza.

TL;DR: The Book of Life is an eye-popping experience of grandiose proportions that doesn't mistreat its cultural heritage.

Rating: 8/10

Should I Spend Money On This? Absolutely yes. Don't give Ouija the satisfaction.

Word Count: 1328

Challenge Accepted

I was patrolling the blogosphere when I checked out the newest post on Freddy in Space, a blogger I definitely want to be friends with. Some girl on Twitter created this challenge, and I'm gonna follow in his footsteps and fill it out too! Ten questions at a time, now, this ain't a Tolstoy novel.

My only rule for myself was that I couldn't use the same movie twice, and I mostly managed to avoid using multiple movies from the same franchise. Here we go!

1. Scariest Kid Character: Santi (Junio Valverde)

Horror is full of kids that scare the living bajaysus out of us, but the one that most frequently sticks in my mind is the ghost Santi from Guillermo del Toro's The Devil's Backbone. Santi isn't necessarily an evil character - he's the ghost of an orphaned boy who was killed by the caretaker of a Spanish war shelter - but for the first half of the movie, before we learn his intentions, he is a truly terrifying specter. In life, Santi was shot in the head and drowned in a pool, so his ghost is doomed to spend eternity surrounded by a haze of water, blood swirling up out of his wound. It's... unreal. Del Toro's second tier visual effects masterpiece, right behind Backbone's sister film - Pan's Labyrinth.

2. Best Sex Scene Murder: Twitch of the Death Nerve (1971)

A classic is a classic. This is the scene that inspired many a Friday the 13th. Two randy teens sneak into an empty house and get it on in a stranger's bed, only to be speared mid-coitus, forever locked in an embrace of death. Or, you know, boning.

3. Creepiest Dead Body: Creepshow (1982)

After Upson Pratt's apartment is overrun by vermin, leading the villainous businessman to an untimely death, we get a skin-crawling close-up of cockroaches pouring out of his mouth, then bursting out of his skin. I just... I can't. Moving on.

4. A Horror Musical You Enjoy: Evil Dead the Musical

With slapstick comedy, gory zombie mayhem, and peppy musical numbers all rolled into one, Evil Dead The Musical is right up my alley. In fact, I don't think anything in the world is more up my alley than this show. I had the privilege of getting to see this show with some friends of mine in Las Vegas last October, and it was akin to a religious experience (much like when I went to see The Exorcist at the Geffen Playhouse with Cassidy). We sat in the VIP Splatter Zone and got covered in sickly red Kool Aid blood during one of the most fun nights of my life.

5. Funniest Horror Movie Character: Reg Morgan (Damon Herriman)

As the snivelly little brother of the Morgan Organic duo in Australia's 100 Bloody Acres, Damon Herriman creates a character that is simultaneously unwittingly dangerous and uncommonly adorable. Somebody buy me a DVD of this movie.

6. Favorite Woman in the World of Horror: Jamie Lee Curtis

I refuse to believe that anybody out there put any other actress as an answer to this question. Jamie Lee Curtis is the scream queen. The daughter of Psycho's Janet Leigh, she found her first movie role as the virginal Laurie Strode in John Carpenter's Halloween. She made mistakes (don't drop the knife, Jamie!), but she clawed, stabbed, and fought her way through the film and two more sequels. She found success in the horror genre and made her way through Prom Night, Terror Train, The Fog, Halloween II, and Halloween H20, becoming a massive star along the way, both within the genre and without.

7. A Horror You'd Be In: Scream franchise

Ask any of my friends, they'd say the same thing. With my knowledge of horror movie trivia, my keen awareness that my life is a slasher film, and my infinite supply of sarcasm, I'd be a perfect fit for this franchise. I could get in on the next sequel as Randy's counterpart, and I'd definitely live to see Scream 6. No promises beyond that though.

8. Favorite Alien-Related Horror Movie: The Thing (1982)

John Carpenter's film is scary for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which are some utterly grotesque practical effects. A team at an arctic facility discover an alien space ship buried in the ice, and soon realize that they're not alone. A shape-shifting alien creature has taken up with them, masquerading as various members of the crew as it slowly devours them one by one. Who is the Thing? Who isn't the Thing? A classic paranoia thriller that I'm sure is a metaphor for the Cold War or something smart like that.

9. Best Horror TV Series: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997 - 2003)

Possibly the gayest thing horror has to offer. Buffy is tough, she's spunky, she's fabulous. With a crew of wisecracking friends (God, I'm making this sound terrible), Buffy battles vampires, demons, and even the manifestation of Evil itself. Featuring one of TV's first lesbian couples and a bevy of strong female characters, Joss Whedon launched a new wave on onscreen feminism. Hush, The Body, and Once More With Feeling are three of the best hours television would ever see.

10. A Serial Killer You Hate: Jigsaw

The one subgenre I have absolutely no patience for is torture porn and Saw is responsible for the worst of it.

Word Count: 901
Reviews in This Series
Horror Lover Challenge Part 1 (August 16, 2013)
Horror Lover Challenge Part 2 (August 25, 2013)
Horror Lover Challenge Part 3 (August 28, 2013)

Welcome to the Shatterdome

Year: 2013
Director: Guillermo del Toro
Cast: Charlie Hunnam, Idris Elba, Rinko Kikuchi
Run Time: 2 hours 12 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13

If you'll allow me to name drop for a minute, I had the unspeakable pleasure of attending a Q&A session featuring Guillermo del Toro himself and it was very clear that Pacific Rim was a product of love. He didn't discuss it so that he could sell it - he couldn't care less if we saw it, just that it was made to the best of his ability. Now, it's certainly not his best film by any stretch of the imagination, but all that time in his childhood spent avidly watching Japanese imports paid off.

Not content with just making a movie about giant robots punching big monsters in the face, del Toro has created a world that has grown accustomed to monster attacks, something which hasn't really been thoroughly explored. After a series of attacks on major cities by ravenous Kaijus (in Japanese - "strange creatures"), humanity dropped their disputes and banded together against the common enemy. The invention of the massive monster-fighting machines called the Jaegers (in German - "hunter") has allowed the world to carry on as normal. By this point in 2020, the monsters are a normal factor of life. Kaiju figurines fill toy store windows, Jaeger pilots are worshipped like rock stars, and Kaiju bone powder makes entrepreneurs a fortune with its Viagra-like qualities. There is even a slum in Hong Kong built inside a massive ribcage.

Humanity has grown confident in their abilities to beat back the Kaiju menace (they appear through a portal at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean about once every six months) but things have begun to change. Kaiju attacks are getting more frequent and the monsters are becoming more powerful.

Commander Striker Pentecost (Elba) rallies all the remaining Jaegers to launch one final defense of humanity. There are four; Cherno Alpha, a Russian behemoth operated by a husband and wife team (hooking a single person up to the machine proved too much for the human brain's capacity, so Jaeger pilots hook their brains together and work in tandem); the Crimson Typhoon, operated by a set of Chinese triplets; Striker Eureka, the most advanced model to date, run by an Australian father son team; and Gipsy Danger, an American Mark 3 model without a pilot.

Pentecost brings in the only living Mark 3 pilot, Raleigh (I could have sworn the said Riley, but IMDb never lies) Becket (Hunnam) and assigns his top agent, Mako Mori (Kikuchi), to find him a new partner. He is still traumatized by his brother's death five years ago. They were in the Jaeger with their brains hooked together and he could feel his brother be torn apart, which left him understandably a little shaken.

There's actually even more plot than this (it's two and a half hours, a lot happens), but I'll leave it at that for now. This is a good point to bring up the characters anyway. Every one of the mains and most of the supporting characters have a backstory that provides a motivation for their participation in this final showdown, like revenge for their family, duty to their culture, or even unbearable cockiness. Maybe the characterizations aren't as deep and complex as some of del Toro's artier Spanish works, but their backstories all resonate in the same simplistic, primal way as the monster fighting and as such, are a good tonal fit with Pacific Rim.

And of course, this being del Toro, there are some parts that generate actual feelings in the audience. Several scenes brought me close to tears, even. In a monster movie! With whatever flaws the movie had (including being far too long), it always had a solid emotional foundation to fall back on. It proves that although it can be tremendous fun to watch a monster level an entire city, human lives are ever expendable.

And yes, unfortunately, there are several flaws. While we're used to our giant monsters looking kinda fake (come on, Godzilla was a guy in a suit), there is something a little shabby about the CGI here that necessitates most scenes being shot at night so it's harder to notice.

This is one of the few daylight(ish) scenes and... well, it leaves something to be desired. 

Really, this isn't a huge complaint because, again, we don't honestly expect our monsters to look hyperrealistic. And how could a monster look real anyway? We don't actually have any to compare the Kaiju designs to. There's just something inescapably computer generated about them that you stop noticing after a while, but it is worth mentioning.

But hey, things get crushed, robots punch them in the face, and everything is fine. 

Let's talk about Charlie Hunnam. To my (and many people on tumblr's) astonishment, the lead character is played by the same guy who played the British womanizer Lloyd in Judd Apatow's 2001 college sitcom Undeclared, and boy has he grown. How a man could go from this...

to this...

is one of the great mysteries of the world, but I thank the Nondenominational Gods every day for it. Perhaps you've noticed that he's a British actor playing an American. Frankly, it shows. Many of his lines sound like they were spoken with a mouth full of dental instruments. But hey. You won't catch me complaining.

And that brings us to the other Charlie. It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia's Charlie Day plays a neurotic scientist bent on discovering the secrets of the Kaiju anatomy. It's a comic relief role, yes, and he plays it well. But his character is given much more importance than that and his dramatic scenes are incredibly credible. This isn't Oscar-worthy acting by any means, but I'm pretty impressed with Day's range.

So. Robots punching monsters. Mostly human characters. Actual emotional moments. Guillermo del Toro. It's just a popcorn movie, but it has enough of the good stuff to be a step above the rest of the box office bait out there at the moment.

TL;DR: Pacific Rim is fun, creative, and has emotional resonance despite some shaky CGI work.
Rating: 7/10
Should I Spend Money On This? You already know if you are going to like this movie, you don't need me to tell you.
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