Tokyo Adrift

The Great J-Horrorthon: Part 2

Gakkô no kaidan G

Year: 1998

MPAA Rating: N/A

Alright, this is where things start to get weird. This is the Japanese TV horror anthology in which the Ju-On series got off to its sputtering start. There are 4 chapters to this film, two of which were directed by Takashi Shimizu and contain the nascent seed that would eventually birth a slew of incomprehensible continuations, remakes, sequels, and whatever the heck White Ghost/Black Ghost is. No, they are not good. Neither are the Ju-On movies though, so we can't really blame them for that.

Katasami (In a Corner)

Director: Takashi Shimizu

Cast: Ayako Omura, Kanna Kashima, Takako Fuji

Run Time: 3 minutes 24 seconds

Watch here

A young girl is haunted by the ghost of Kayako Saeki for some reason.

Two girls are taking care of one rabbit over summer because Japan. One girl hurts herself on a clipboard and mysteriously vanishes when her friend goes to find a bandage. Upon returning, she is attacked by the burping ghost. She seems pretty unimpressed and then it's over.

This is where our beloved tale begins, in a cruddy TV spot that would make even some of the blurrier forgotten slashers cringe, looking at the production value. But let us not try to ascribe Hollywood quality filmmaking to a short that was made for the price of a packet of ramen.

Honestly, the woman ghost still proves to be the most effective part of the franchise, even though her presence here (outside of the home where she died) makes no sense in context of either the story or the movies that would carry on its legacy. I'll hold off judgement until Ju-On: The Curse, which I've heard continues some of these oh so tension-fraught vignettes.

Rating: 2/10

4444444444 (444-444-4444)

Director: Takashi Shimizu

Cast: Kazushi Andô, Daiki Sawada

Run Time: 2 minutes 58 seconds

Watch here

A young man gets a mysterious phone call.

A kid rides up on a bike, hears a phone ringing, picks it up. The number displayed is a lot of 4's (as you may have guessed), and here's where it gets lost in translation. In Japan, the number 4 is associated with death. An English equivalent might be 1313131313. Or not. Whatever.

Anyway, he answers the phone and hears a cat mewling. He starts talking to whoever it is, jumping to major conclusions ("Are you here? Are you watching me?") and it turns out he's exactly right. Right next to him is twelve-year-old Toshio who is a cat (?).

This one was actually a little more chilling than the previous vignette, if only because it is so out of left field. I'm interested in seeing if the feature film continuation of these stories somehow makes the cat/not in the house thing make any sense.

My vote is no.

Rating: 3/10

Rasen (Spiral)

Year: 1998

Director: Jôji Iida

Cast: Kôichi Satô, Miki Nakatani, Hinako Saeki

Run Time: 1 hour 37 minutes

MPAA Rating: N/A

The mystery of Sadako Yamamura's cursed videotape is solved in the stupidest way imaginable.

Proving that Ju-On isn't the only film series that can have a mind-boggling sequel timeline, here comes the inimatable Rasen. Produced and released simultaneously with Ringu, Rasen was the original sequel and, though it was based on the next book in the series, audiences hated the direction it took. In fact, the hatred was so intense, the producers decided to make Ringu 2 and pretend this film never even happened.

Just like the best of the best horror sequels (Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers), Ringu 2's title smacks of producer desperation. It's Ringu again! We promise! Love us again!

So you can imagine my excitement when my DVD of Rasen got in the mail. Eager to prove the audience wrong (or dreadfully right), I put on my movie-watching cap (not real) and called up my Sergio (real) and we plunked ourselves down in front of the TV.

Sergio fell asleep within minutes. I envy him.

For, you see, Japanese audiences are evidently more on the ball than American audiences (see box office for Transformers: Dark of the Moon). I will never again doubt that their derision is misplaced. Rasen was, to put it rather elegantly, a boring suckfest.

It begins with the autopsy of Ryûji Takayama (Hiroyuki Sanada), the husband who died in the first film. He is being operated on by an old friend from med school who has a deep connection with him despite an early scene in which he couldn't remember who he was. And within the first five minutes, this movie has already retconned its predecessor to pieces.

Evidently, Ryûji died of a heart attack, not a ghost child crawling out of his TV. That would all be well and fine if that's just what the autopsy showed and the doctors were mistaken, but flashback footage shows us that is not the case. Evidently Sadako's curse is manifested via a virus that is transmitted optically into your eye, which copies the DNA patterns and recreates it inside you, and then you grow tumors on your blood vessels and have ulcers on your neck and have a heart attack and die seven days later and this is BS go away Rasen.

This movie has become a medical drama (replete with soaring daytime soap music), and an excruciatingly slow one at that. It has even more of a procedural feel than the original, and has exactly one scene that even mildly chilled me.

Also Sadako doesn't use the tape or the TV anymore and can show up wherever she pleases.

Also Ryûji has psychic mind-reading powers.

Also a diary written about the events of the first film can transmit the virus.

Also Mai Tanaka, the girlfriend from Ringu, is infected with the virus despite not having watched the tape or read the diary, and gives birth to a Sadako-possessed version of herself.

Also Sadako (Hinako Saeki) is easily ten years older than the last film.

Also we see her face, which so isn't the point.

Also she has sex with a lot of people, replete with cheesy 70's porn music.

Also her womb has magic powers and can resurrect people to the age they were when they died.

Also they killed off my favorite child Yôichi pretty much immediately.

Also, Sadako's plan is to use the virus to spread fear and further human evolution.

F*ck you too, Rasen.

Rating: 1/10


Ringu 0: Bâsudei (Ring 0: Birthday)

Year: 2000

Director: Norio Tsuruta

Cast: Yukie Nakama, Seiichi Tanabe, Kumiko Asô

Run Time: 1 hour 39 minutes

MPAA Rating: N/A

Sadako Yamamura is a young woman haunted by the ghost of herself as a child.

Does the little ghost girl from Ringu still haunt you? You're not alone. Nobody is safe, not even Sadako herself, apparently. 

Ringu 0 is a prequel revolving around Sadako Yamamura as a young woman struggling to make it in her theatre troupe, which would put this film in the same continuity as Rasen. That is a place we do NOT want to be but they put in a great effort to tie it in with Ringu and Ringu 2, and it almost makes sense. 

Which is forgivable, because it's the most sense any of these films have made so far.

Evidently, as a child, Sadako split into two beings, one evil and one good. Her father drugged the evil one so she would stay a child (quite logically, one would suppose. These things do happen.) and the other one grew into a beautiful young lady. Sometimes Sadako loses control of her actions and the little girl version of her takes over and she's moody and nobody understands her. It's basically a Japanese remake of Carrie

It's still more boring than creepy but it's a definite improvement on Rasen, and the final scene is actually pretty intense. Say what you will about the Ring movies, but they sure know how to end a plodding narrative on a high note.

Rating: 3/10


Ju-On: The Grudge 2

Year: 2003

Director: Takashi Shimizu

Cast: Noriko Sakai, Chiharu Niiyama, Kei Horie

Run Time: 1 hour 32 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

A Tokyo scream queen steps foot in the cursed house and her crew begins to die one by one.

The highly anticipated (sic) followup to Ju-On: The Grudge follows the apparent trend of J-Horror sequels, for it is better than both its immediate predecessor and its English remake. Takashi Shimizu returns for yet another round and I'd even say he'd hit his stride. Except for the fact that The Grudge came out a year after this one.

Ju-On: The Grudge 2 follows pregnant horror actress Kyôko Harase (Sakai) after she films an episode of a "Ghost Hunters" type show in the very house that spawned the Curse of the Burping Ghost. She and her boyfriend are driving down the highway when the ghost boy Toshio (Yuya Ozeki) hijacks the wheel and crashes the car. Her boyfriend goes into a coma and she miscarries, only to find out later that she is three and a half months pregnant.

This film wants to bank on its scary pregnancy body horror so Kyôko is actually a protagonist, appearing in every vignette.

Yes, this film is still episodic, but this time it follows a core cast of people - the crew of the ghost show. It does feature some timeline hopscotching and a mind-searingly long labyrinthine dream sequence, but because of all the vignettes being offshoots of one main storyline, it really does make sense, all in all. You know. For what it is.

Also, instead of the "oh god, another one" boredom of Ju-On, it is more of a "oh god, another one" one-two punch of something at least in the neighborhood of terror.

Because of its basic narrative coherence, the creative scare sequences - a staple of the Ju-On movies - have much more impact. Here we have a haunted copy machine, a haunted boom mike, a haunted camera, a haunted wig, and a terrifying spider web of hair. Yup, the Japanese are still wetting their pants over technology. You'd think they'd stop making it.

Anyway, is it not obvious that in the end a ghost crawls out of her womb? It does and it is terrifying.

I don't know what it is about these stringy-haired ghosts. Sadako Yamamura, Kayako Saeki... They look the same, move the same, but in each film they are still uniquely frightening. I guess Japan knows a good thing when they see one.

Rating: 6/10

The Grudge 2

Year: 2006

Director: Takashi Shimizu

Cast: Sarah Michelle Gellar, Amber Tamblyn, Arielle Kebbel

Run Time: 1 hour 42 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

The rage curse begins to spread and Kayako and Toshio make their way across the pond.

Takashi Shimizu is a man with unparalleled levels of commitment. The Grudge 2 is his 8th and final Grudge feature. The film franchise comprises a good 25% of his entire working career. This is both admirable and extremely irritating because everything that made Ju-On and The Grudge so bad just won't go away. It's ineradicable.

Shimizu is no longer content shifting timelines between vignettes. Now he bounces back and forth between four timelines or so simultaneously across four different locales.

Buffy's sister (Tamblyn) is trying to uncover the mystery of the house in Tokyo, three schoolgirls are haunted at a Tokyo school (replete with lascivious butt shots in those Sailor Moon skirts they all have), a sick mother languishes in Pasadena, and a Chicago family is haunted by the ghosts next door.

Again, the scare sequences are too good for the surrounding film, and I really wish someone could just compile all the good parts of these movies and synthesize them into one behemoth of a J-Horror picture.  Although Toshio's presence is at a low ebb (the actor playing him was getting much too old at this point and he's viewed mostly blurry and from a distance), there are some really chilling moments and at one point my spine literally tingled, which has never happened to me before. I'm inclined to blame the temperature because this movie doesn't really deserve such a distinction but the fact is it happened.

So it's not a total waste of time.

Also thrown into the mix are a haunted payphone, another haunted cell, and a girl vomiting milk into  gallon jug and drinking it again.

Shimizu pulls out all the stops for his grand finale and it never quite lands (despite the film's extended run time, it never feels like any character is onscreen for an overall total of about ten minutes), but it revels in the coked out glory that is the Japanese ghost story.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 2069

Reviews In This Series
J-Horrorthon Part 1(June 15, 2013)
J-Horrorthon Part 2 (July 16, 2013)
J-Horrorthon Part 3 (August 15, 2013)
J-Horrorthon Part 4 (April 1, 2014)

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.
Word Count: 1059

Ice Scream

Year: 2006
Director: Roar Uthaug
Cast: Ingrid Bolsø Berdal, Rolf Kristian Larsen, Tomas Alf Larsen
Run Time: 1 hour 37 minutes
MPAA Rating: N/A

What is up with Norway, man? Since the beginning of history, the snowy land has had almost no significant presence in international pop culture but all of a sudden in the mid 2000's, they started producing absolutely stellar horror films out of nowhere. Dead Sno (Død Snø) is a terrific (Nazi) zombie film that got me into this neck of the woods and I have no intention of leaving anytime soon. Norwegian television must play old American horror films on a loop because this slasher films could compete with (and is better than most of) the big dogs.

Cold Prey (Fritt Vilt) is, when it comes right down to it, a fairly routine slasher movie. It doesn't try to put twists on the genre. It knows its place and its goal is to make us fall in love with the characters and enjoy the ride. I know watching characters you enjoy and identify with getting brutally murdered doesn't necessarily sound like a good time, but that's the key to horror. You need to care about the well being of these people or else you'll just end up rooting for the killer. 

Yes, it's fun to watch Jason eviscerate a cadre of douchebags, but he hasn't been scary since Round One. You relate to these people and that makes you fear for them. And that's where Cold Prey does the genre well.

 You care about them, even if they're dirty foreigners.

The movie begins and WHITE. As far as the eye can see. It seems that Norway has a lot of snow and director Roar Uthaug (who sounds like some sort of Bear King from a forgotten Disney film) utilizes this to his advantage, immediately oppressing the audience with a weighty mass of, well, nothing.

It is exactly this sort of nothing that our protagonists wander into, full steam ahead. It seems that Eirik (Tomas Alf Larsen) is somewhat of an adrenaline junkie (flashes of Descent here) and has taken his group of friends to go snowboarding in a remote mountain locale where no tourists will bother them. Or hear their cries for help.

In tow are his girlfriend Jannicke (Ingrid Bolsø Berdal, who was also in the abysmal Chernobyl Diaries but I love her anyway), their friends Morten Tobias (Rolf Kristian Larsen) and Mikal (Endre Marten Midtstigen) along with his girlfriend Ingunn (Viktoria Winge). That was fun to type, let's never do that again.

Anyway, Jannicke is afraid of commiting further to Eirik because she doesn't want them to grow bored of each other. Ingunn is a hot blonde who is head over heels for her beau but worries he just wants her for sex. Morten does just fine on his own, but gazes longingly at Jannicke when nobody is looking. We are allowed to explore these relationships for a good 40 minutes, and while they aren't necessarily more than stock situations, they are rooted in very human characters and it's a pleasure to watch them interact.

When one of their party is badly injured in a snowboarding accident, they hole up in a nearby building which looks eerily similar to the Stage 3 Dream from Inception, but upon closer inspection turns out to be an empty hotel.

The five friends relax, drink, and apply emergency first aid. They make plans to send Eirik out for the car in the morning, but in the meantime they have this whole wonderful place to explore! Upon closer inspection, it turns out this hotel is more like a meat locker than an Embassy Suites. Long stainless steel hallways connect the rooms, lit by a row of flickering fluorescents. Wisely, most of them decide to sleep in the well-appointed lobby.

Mikal and Ingunn have a fight. Nobody wins. Mikal storms off. Ingunn and a mysterious masked mountain man have a fight. She loses. We all lose. The cleaning ladies who'll have to use some extra elbow grease to get the blood stains out of the floor lose.

Surprise, surprise, we're not alone!

The killer begins to hunt them down one by one and they all learn the many wonders that can be achieved with a sturdy pickaxe.

The real kicker - and the most unique element of the film in terms of slasher tropes - is that it doesn't matter how they die. There is no array of edged weapons or hyper-creative Rube Goldbergian kill sequences. If they come against that pickaxe they will die, and Cold Prey uses that knowledge to ramp up the tension and produce a truly scary slasher film, which is no mean feat.

Accompanied by some truly inspired set design, a company of likable characters, and some just plain hair-raising, goosebump-having moments, Cold Prey is certainly a success and the high stakes ending setpiece is the cherry on top of a really terrible night on bald mountain.

Body Count: 4, and as always the slashers with the lowest body count tend to be the most terrifying.
TL;DR: Cold Prey operates within slasher parameters to create a stellar film populated with characters anyone can invest in.
Rating: 8/10
Should I Spend Money On This DVD? I wish more people liked slashers so I could definitively say yes. But yes. Please?
Word Count: 898

Reviews In This Series
Cold Prey / Fritt Vilt (Uthaug, 2006)
Cold Prey 2 / Fritt Vilt II (Stenberg, 2008)

Beat It, Essay: What's Your Favorite Scary Movie?

This is the final essay I wrote for my Media Aesthetics class, and perhaps the one I'm most proud of. I've decided to release it now because I'm going to see a screening of Scream at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery tonight and I am the most excited child.

(Apologies for the formatting in these essay posts. I really don't know what's happening here.)

Prompt: Watch your favorite movie with the sound off and write about its aesthetic attributes. How well are the story and character arcs conveyed visually?

Scream is one of my favorite movies for several reasons. First, it is a witty, sharp, satire of the slasher genre. Second, despite being a comedy, it manages to be a terrifying movie in its own right. Third, the opening scene is one of the most perfect pieces of horror cinema ever put to film. Fourth (and definitely not final, but I don’t want this essay to turn into a laundry list), Wes Craven is one of the few horror directors who knows exactly what he is doing. Craven’s guiding hand is evident throughout, and his skill in directing is unparalleled except in the most classic of horror films.

            From the very first scene, he has such control over mise-en-scène elements, it still manages to be scary even with the sound off. This exercise was a treat for me, because I got a chance to notice how much detail went into the visual storytelling of this film. The iconic opening scene with Casey Becker (Drew Barrymore) is mostly disconnected from the plot proper, but it is a very good place to start the discussion of Craven’s use of mise-en-scène.

            Craven’s subtle use of costuming permeates the film, and in this scene, every single piece of Becker’s outfit foreshadows her imminent death. Her skin is made-up to be ultra pale, imitating the pallor of death, and her flesh-colored sweater and blood red lipstick foresee her fate. Another major element of the film is postmodern meta humor, with the characters aware of the fact that they are actually in a film. This is also subtly implied with a uniquely clever lighting technique. Casey has turned on the VCR to pop in a movie, but never gets to watch it. The blue light of the TV screen fills the room, implying to the audience that the movie is about to begin.

            As she begins to be stalked over the phone by the Ghostface killer, crosscut shots of her forgotten Jiffy Pop on the stove mark the passage of time and frequent shots of the house’s exterior remind us that there is much more in the world outside Casey’s indoor suburban sanctum. Scream’s editing continues on a similar level for the rest of the film, with a particular penchant for the use of smash cuts to crane shots to transition between scenes. This catapults the audience along to the next beat of the story and keeps the pacing feeling snappy despite the film’s two-hour runtime.

            As evidenced by the earlier examples, Scream has an idiosyncratic mise-en-scène style that gives it freshness (and enough steam power to revitalize the entire slasher genre). Another aspect of this style is the use of brightly lit, large suburban setpieces. Wes Craven’s obsession with suburbia was previously explored along the shady lane of Elm Street and continues in earnest here. In his films, people are attacked where they feel most at home and comfortable, and the sleepy homes of suburbia can feel just as intimidating and scary as a haunted castle or a secluded hotel.

            When the killer is in the house, a once large suburban home can seem positively claustrophobic. This sense of claustrophobia is intensified by the use of almost exclusively closed frames. The film is so kinetic that the frames seem like they’re open, but this is an illusion caused by quick cuts. It is very rare to see a character leave a frame, and one begins to feel trapped without even realizing why.

            I was surprised by how much of the plot was still relatable, even when completely silent. What I have just described is more of a broadstrokes vision of the film, but there is much subtlety and nuance in the design, especially in the area of character arcs. For the purposes of this essay, we will focus on three characters: Sidney Prescott (the heroine), and Gale Weathers (the tough-as-nails news reporter).

            Gale is a self-obsessed, muckraking reporter with little care for the impact her yellow journalism has on the lives of those she reports on. Her character is introduced very kinetically – she is running after Sidney’s ambulance in a canary yellow pantsuit. The yellow exudes energy and focus, as do her actions. However, as the film progresses, she gets more involved in the murder investigations for reasons of saving Sidney, not merely getting a scoop, and falls in love with a handsome David Arquette along the way. In her final climactic scene, she is dressed in a brown leather jacket and a red blouse. The red reflects her newfound love and passion for her work and the brown represents the clouding of her focus on her career.

            Sidney Prescott’s clothing is equally symbolic. In her introductory scene, she is portrayed as a pure, virginal, young woman, dressed in white floral pajamas. The white represents purity and the florals represent her youth and innocence. When her friends begin dying one by one and she begins to lose her grip on the world of her innocence (losing her virginity in the process), she can be seen in darker tones, and in her final scene she is covered in blood, which represents the loss of her virginity and the destruction of her innocence.

            Through these details, the tension and overall tone of the movie can be maintained purely through the cinematography, the production design, and the editing. While Craven has weaved a truly spectacular tapestry of mise-en-scène elements, Scream has one major weakness. This movie was very clearly produced in the 90’s and the costume and design pieces have some of that ineradicable kitschiness that was inescapable in that decade, somewhat distracting modern viewers.

            If that flaw is the biggest in the movie, that says great things about the rest of the film, and there’s no question why it’s one of the most influential of Craven’s oeuvre. Scream reinvented 90’s horror, brought postmodernism to the mainstream, and impacted the Halloween market for decades to come and without his careful control over mise-en-scène, Scream would be nothing close to the masterpiece that it is.
Word Count: 1118

The Road to Hell is Paved With Hair Extensions

Year: 2004
Director: Paul Etheredge
Cast: Dylan Fergus, Bryan Kirkwood, Hank Harris
Run Time: 1 hour 24 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

You gotta hand it to a horror movie that has token straight characters.

By far the best thing about Hellbent is that, despite its reputation as the "gay slasher film," it does not use its characters' homosexuality as a gimmick. This is a routine slasher following the tried and true formula that happens to feature a cast of all gay characters. Being gay is a part of their lives and is intrinsically connected with their personalities and behavior. It is essential to the story, and this particular tale of bloody mayhem could not exist in its current state if its characters were anything other than queer.

That said, Hellbent is not a good movie.

Although this screenshot alone guarantees that it's not a 100% bad one.

It is the night before Halloween and two young swains are pulling up to Makeout Point for some steamy action that would make Grindr blush. Before they are too far along however, the night ends just about as poorly as any night of clubbing can with both paramours being decapitated by a sickle-wielding madman in a devil mask.

Yes, he's shirtless. What were you expecting, overalls? He's no basic b*tch.

The next morning, Eddie (Fergus) who is some sort of police intern is sent to put up flyers about the murders in the neighboring village of West Hollywood. He is bumbling and charming and falls madly in lust with Jake (Kirkwood), who he sees outside a tattoo shop on a smoke break between ink stabbing sessions. Ignoring the red flag that he's getting cheesy angel wings on his back, Eddie tries and fails to strike up a conversation. 

His work done for the day, he meets up with his friends at a local diner. At least two of them are his roommates, but the movie isn't too keen on making that clear. There's Chaz (Andrew Levitas) the slut (gotta have one), Joey (Hank Harris) the lovable nerd, and Tobey (Matt Phillips) who uses bravado to hide his insecurities. Now, they are more developed than that, but notice how nicely they fall into our slasher archetypes with Eddie as our resident Final Girl.

They traipse through the West Hollywood Forest (note to self: check to see if this is actually a thing) to get to the Halloween party and discover they are being followed by a mysterious masked stranger. Nothing much comes of it, and they quickly forget about it, caught up in the festivities.

Joey goes after a jock crush of his, bolstered by Halloween Spirits and Chaz's encouragement. Eddie falls in with Jake after winning him over with a personal stories about... well, this is the one spoilery type thing about the movie so I'll give that one a rest. Tobey is left to fend for himself and he learns that it's hard to pick up gay men when dressed as a woman.

Do I even need to say that the Devil Killer begins picking them off one by one?

The enormous phallus of death approaches.

The film doesn't offer much in the way of shocks or gore, although some story elements that come into play are quite unique for the subgenre. Made for pocket change, there's not much in the way of production values but there is one artistic element to speak of - the lighting. Although undoubtedly this is only the case because of the shoestring budget, most every scene is awash in sickeningly bright red light that is reminiscent of Dario Argento's Suspiria. Intentional or not, it draws to mind the characters' descent into Hell from the candy wonderland of a West Hollywood Halloween.

The film is ultimately forgettable, but it is filled with enough silly decapitations, actual character development, and sleazy shots of shirtless men to keep it interesting.

Hellbent is a trashy slashy flick, just like the ones I've come to love. But for once it is populated with characters I can relate to and that's all I ever wanted from it.

Body Count: 5
TL;DR: Hellbent is a bad slasher film, but with gay dudes. This is praise.
Rating: 5/10
Should I Spend Money on This DVD? Naw, you can just borrow it from me because of course I own it.
Word Count: 728

Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, and Something Red

Year: 2011
Director: James Wan
Cast: Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne, Ty Simpkins
Run Time: 1 hour 43 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13

When people find out I'm a horror buff they almost always ask if I saw Insidious, and until now my answer was no. I was much too caught up in the annals of 80's horror to be bothered with the new ones. My movie-watching field has since expanded and I found that I had missed out on one of the essential horror experiences of the year.

Did my experience live up to the hype? Well, yes and no. Insidious is chock full of borrowed elements and visual quotations from much better haunted house movies that were produced decades ago. At times it seemed like the filmmakers had bitten off more than they could chew, just throwing every ingredient in the pot and calling it a stew. Happily, it turns out that they were much more clever than that and even the most far-fetched elements fit into the narrative universe with very little manhandling and quite a bit of subtle foreshadowing.

Likewise, borrowing from other films isn't necessarily a crime. Many famous horror pictures wouldn't exist without standing on the shoulders of giants. And reintroducing classic elements to a modern horror audience was somewhat of a gift in the bland, chalky horror environment of the time. While Insidious didn't necessarily break any new ground, it was a step in the right direction for horror.

But let's throw all that analysis out the window for a moment. The most important thing Insidious does - and does well - is the rather impressive accomplishment of making a PG-13 horror film actually scary.

With frames like this, it's really not all that hard.

Josh (Wilson) and Renai (Byrne) Lambert have just moved into a new home with their three kids. Renai is a stay-at-home mom with dreams of becoming a successful musician, and the move was partially orchestrated so she can focus on her work. Her dreams are dashed for the moment when her son Dalton (Simpkins) falls into a mysterious coma and things start to go bump in the night.

It's easy to dismiss these early occurrences as stress or the house settling or what have you, but when she starts seeing mysterious people infiltrating her kids' rooms, she wisely decides that maybe they shouldn't be living in that house no more. To her dismay, the entities don't give up that easily and she calls in a medium (Lin Shaye) and her assistants (Leigh Whannell and Angus Sampson - who I recently saw in the delightfully wacky Aussie flick 100 Bloody Acres).

The third act is where things start to get a little rocky as the parents try desperately to save their son. The climax is extended far beyond its capacity, the main villain is turned into a mockery of his terrifying self, and Josh exhibits some truly embarrassing Stupid Horror Movie Character behavior. This sequence is repetitive and features numerous false endings which drag the film on a good fifteen minutes longer than it needs to.

It's almost like being in a coma.

Despite the finale's shortcomings, Insidious is a well-crafted thriller that provides a lot of bang for its buck. Cheap haunted house movie scares don't get much better than this, and the red-faced demon that provides the film's major antagonist is unforgettable.

The film works within its PG-13 rating and thus manages to avoid being neutered by it. There's no need for profanity - this is a family with young children. There's no need for buckets of gore - that's not what this domestic horror film is about. It is about the fear of the things that go bump in the night. The fear of those dark corners in a place you know so very well. And the fear that your child has become ensnared by something so sinister that you have no possible way of saving him - whether it be a coma or a cherry red minion of the Antichrist.

Not to mention we are thankfully spared the torture of child actors.Yes, the main victim of Insidious is a young boy, but the film is truly about his parents' relationship and their attempts to save his life. Both adult actors are tremendous in their roles and Josh's fear of being inadequate for his family and Renai's fear of being trapped in her role as a housewife are the driving forces behind the most hard-hitting horror sequences.

This is a horror film populated by uniquely human characters that uses a classic haunted house framework to further explore the dynamics of its central family. It does have some unique spins on the genre tropes, but it mostly relies on tried and true methods to tell a story larger than itself. If it weren't for the ending, this movie would be much higher on my list. But it does have it and while it doesn't diminish the overall effect of a very good scary movie, it does knock it down a peg or two shy of being a modern classic of the genre.

TL;DR: Insidious is clever, insightful, and - most importantly - scary.
Rating: 7/10
Should I Spend Money On This DVD? Yes, this movie is great for slumber parties. Scary enough to have actual impact but not so much that you'll never sleep again.
Word Count: 899
Reviews In This Series
Insidious (Wan, 2010)
Insidious: Chapter 2 (Wan, 2013)
Insidious: Chapter 3 (Whannell, 2015)
Insidious: The Last Key (Robitel, 2018)

In the Dark, Nobody Can See You Scream

For our Scream 101 podcast episode about this film, click here.

Year: 2005
Director: Neil Marshall
Cast: Shauna Macdonald, Natalie Mendoza, Alex Reid
Run Time: 1 hour 39 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

I'm just gonna come right out and say it. The Descent was so terrifying that Henri and I had to watch all of The Truman Show to feel like normal humans again.

This UK film follows a group of thrill-seeking girls who decide to go spelunking in a cave in the mountains of Appalachia. There's Holly (Nora Jane Noone), the bold and experienced (and possibly lesbian? Maybe I just hoped she was) adrenaline junkie. There's Juno (Mendoza), a brash and tactless woman. And there's Sarah (Macdonald), who lost her husband and daughter in a tragic accident, and for whom this trip was orchestrated - in an attempt for her friends to reconnect with her.

Also there's Sam (MyAnna Buring), Beth (Reid), and Rebecca (Saskia Mulder) who share approximately .16 personality traits. One of them is Sarah's best friend and one of them is her sister. And one of them is a nurse, I think it's the sistery one. For the life of me, I could not keep track of them.  It's really not important because the film is less about developing character (for the non-leads at least) than it is about balls to the wall claustrophobic torment. It is a mainstay on many people's lists of "Best Horror of the Decade" and it is plainly obvious as to why.

The girls are nervous but excited when they drop into the depths of the cave, but things quickly start to go wrong. This is a horror movie, after all. After a cave-in separates them from the main cavern, the girls desperately seek an alternative exit as they delve deeper and deeper underground.

I think that one in the front is Beth. Or Becca. Or... screw it.

The movie is hard enough to watch as it is, with the girls crawling through tunnels scarcely wider than their skinny little bodies. Unfortunately, things go from bad to worse as it slowly dawns on the unlucky spelunkers that... They're Not Alone.

I won't give too much away except that the film starts losing it's sh!t at about the 50 minute mark and doesn't take a break. An early scene almost made me fall off the back of my bed, and at one point I even said "holy blap!" because I was too out of whack for real words.

Not only is it like a jackhammer to the spine, it is actually remarkably well composed. Very often, there are shots in which objects in the foreground are juxtaposed with objects in the background to shed meaning on both items in frame. Now, this isn't exactly a groundbreaking concept in film, but for a low budget horror picture, this is Citizen Kane level stuff we're talking about.

There is also a repeated motif about the loss of Sarah's child and it's hard to say more without giving things away, but suffice to say it does make you think, even if its primary goal is to electrify your nerve endings. The sets are stupendous, the darkness is oppressive, and the presence of an overarching theme is enough to launch the film into the upper stratosphere of 2000's horror.

The strength of the film lies in its all-female cast and their interactions shed light on the nature of women's friendships, the morality system of society at large, and just how much butt a single girl can kick. Regrettably, the girls do sometimes fall prey to Stupid Horror Movie Character-itis (for the love of God, stop shouting), but that can all be explained away by extreme claustrophobia, which as explained early on can cause panic attacks and... well, basically everything bad that has ever happened to anyone ever.

I am muzzled by my desire to have people go into this movie with no major preconceptions, but I will end this too short review by saying that I'm jumping on the bandwagon. I absolutely agree that this film is without a doubt one of the top ten of the 2000's, and almost definitely the best horror film of 2005.

TL;DR: In spite of a lack of major characterization for half the cast, The Descent has quite a large amount of artistic merit and will flay the skin from your bones.
Rating: 9/10
Should I Spend Money on This DVD? Yes, please.
Word Count: 735
Reviews In This Series
The Descent (Marshall, 2005)
The Descent Part 2 (Harris, 2009)

CinemaBeach: Never Sleep Again

Slumber Party Massacre II

Year: 1987
Director: Deborah Brock
Cast: Crystal Bernard, Jennifer Rhodes, Kimberly McArthur
Run Time: 1 hour 11 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

What luck! The first slasher film I happened to watch in preparation for this blog was a prime example of post-Nightmare bizarro slasher surrealism.

Let’s start from the beginning: In 1982 the Roger Corman production The Slumber Party Massacre was one of the first slasher films ever to be directed by a woman, Amy Holden Jones. Also featuring a woman screenwriter (Rita Mae Brown), the script had a decidedly feminist bent, something almost unheard of in the notoriously misogynistic subgenre. On top of being a surprisingly good slasher film in its own right, the original film functioned as a feminist satire of the genre, with the killer using a massive phallic drill to murder his prey. The girls fight back, at one point cutting the drill in half, essentially castrating their murderer and saving the day.

So here we have this wonderful feminist satire that is just genuinely a good slasher movie, and they left it at that for quite a while. The slasher film was dying its first death by 1983 and there just wasn’t any money in it until A Nightmare on Elm Street exploded onto the scene, creating a wave of paranormal slasher cash-ins. This tight little flick held out for a while but eventually got caught in the slipstream of revenue and in 1987, the world was exposed to Slumber Party Massacre II.

Exposed is absolutely the right word for this film. Although plenty of topless girls were featured in the original, they were there for a satirical purpose. This film features an actual pillow fight (in which feathers get absolutely everywhere) in which, for no reason, one of the girls takes her top off. This movie is cheesy exploitation cinema at its finest, but it is disheartening coming on the heels of such a genuinely good film.

The film opens on Courtney Bates (Crystal Bernard), the youngest survivor of the first movie, in the middle of a nightmare about her big sister (who has been committed), portentious bloody images, and a mysterious shadowy madman with a drill. Undeterred, she goes to practice with her all-girl rock ‘n roll band and we get to Meet the Meat. Courtney is the lead guitarist, her best friend Amy (Kimberly McArthur) is on rhythm, Sally Burns, the slut (Heidi Kozak of Friday the 13th Part VII), is on drums, and Sheila Barrington (Juliette Cummins of Friday the 13th: Part V and Psycho III), the stuck-up rich girl, is the lead singer and bassist. Despite having such an exciting array of character traits, it is exceedingly hard to tell Amy and Sheila apart, and I’m still not 100 percent convinced that they are different people.

Courtney flirts with the handsome heartthrob Matt (Patrick Lowe, who looks every bit of 30 years old) and, about five seconds after kissing him, they are declared girlfriend and boyfriend. God, I miss the 80′s.

But, lo! The Slumber Party awaits! Mr. Barrington has just bought a new condo in Middle of Nowhere, USA and the girls all travel out to christen it (and invite their beaux along). The girls laugh, drink, dance and screw, but as the party goes on, Courtney is plagued by more and more nightmares that morph into bizarre hallucinatory daydreams.

We’re talking moments so absolutely loco they would give Freddy pause. We begin with a routine “bathtub filled with blood sequence” and charge right on into “eating a hand sandwich.” The only constant in her dreams is the cackling shadowy killer who flirts grotesquely with her and  - I can’t believe I’m writing this – is basically a cross between Freddy Krueger  and… Elvis Presley. Brandishing a guitar with a massive drill bit attached, he menaces Courtney despite being possibly the least scary figure in the history of film.

Although she is scared by her dreams, nothing actually happens and nobody is actually in danger until the 50 minute mark, when the killer shows up in the house for absolutely no comprehensible reason and begins mowing down her friends with his drill. He proceeds along merrily slicing and dicing and (urp) performing an entire rock ‘n roll number about his drill replete with pelvic thrusts, sliding down the bannister, and a “Buzz Buzz” refrain.

The movie abruptly ends 20 minutes later.

We get no explanation as to how this killer got into the house, how he exists, why he’s killing them, how he knows Courtney’s history, why he’s singing, or why his weapon is similar to the dead killer from the original movie. What we do get is a 71-minute exploitation film that not only rips pages from Nightmare‘s songbook, but chews them up, spits them out, draws on them in crayon, and has the audacity to name one of the characters “Officer Krueger.”

That is not to say this movie isn’t fun to watch. In fact, it is one of the most delightfully off-kilter movies in an increasingly inane subgenre. It makes not a lick of sense but it is brief, wacky, and features songs that I will never admit that I enjoy but one might find buried deep in my iTunes library. Also there’s a recurring motif with chickens that I, for the life of me, can’t decipher. The girls wave a rubber chicken out the window as they drive away, they eat chicken sandwiches, a dead dove (not a chicken but still) is given great symbolic close-ups twice to no avail, an evil chicken lives in the fridge, and the feather-filled pillow fight scene makes everyone involved look like poultry.

Make of that what you will.

Killer: The Driller Killer (Atanas Ilitch)

Final Girl: Courtney Bates (Crystal Bernard)

Best Kill: Sally is on one side of the wall, trying to live. Her friends are on the other, trying to use the phone to call 911. The drill pierces Sally, the wall, and the phone altogether, destroying everybody’s plans for the evening.

Sign of the Times: One of the girls asks a friend to get her a Slice. The whole rock ‘n roll thing. They all have that weird half Southern accent that everybody in 80′s movies had.

Weirdest Moment: A tie between two hallucinations – a massive zit making Sally’s head explode and a raw chicken leaping out of the fridge to attack Courtney.

Body Count: 6, all within a span of about 13 minutes.

1. Matt is drilled through the chest.
2. Sally is drilled through the chest through a wall.
3. Jeff is drilled through the back in a car.
4. TJ is drilled across the torso.
5. Sheila is drilled in the chest.
6. Amy falls to her death. 

TL;DR: SPM2 is delightfully weird and is much too brief to be boring.
Rating: 6/10
Should I Buy This DVD? Much like Final Destination, if it's in a triple pack, yes. If it's standalone, no. And it all depends on if you're into this sort of thing.
Word Count: 1177
Reviews In This Series
The Slumber Party Massacre (Jones, 1982)
Slumber Party Massacre II (Brock, 1987)
Slumber Party Massacre III (Mattison, 1990)