Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a down and out furniture store manager, discovers a portal in the basement of his store that leads to a mysterious office space that seems to go on forever. His therapist Mary (Renate Reinsve) becomes concerned for Clark's well-being after he leaves her a cryptic message on her answering machine before disappearing. Mary goes to his store and enters the endless Backrooms to find Clark and bring him back. Now they are being chased by Bill Lumbergh (Gary Cole) who wants to make them fill out TPS reports forever and ever and ever...
To say that I was going to enjoy Backrooms (2026) no matter how good or bad of a film it turned out to be is a fair thing to, you know, say. Ever since I was a kid sneaking into construction sites and empty warehouses. Playing video games like Myst and Friday the 13th (the 1989 version); the kind where you end up spending a very long time just wandering around. Then as a young security guard back in the mid-1990s looking after some very empty and truly creepy spaces like an abandoned rehab facility, an unfinished medical building, and an ice cream factory on the coldest night of the year. So yes, I have felt a connection to something akin to what director Kane Parsons has cooked up.
Backrooms is an eerie, claustrophobic, and haunting film that hypnotizes from the moment it starts and put me in a place of unease that lasted long into the night after I left the theater. The film's score by Edo Van Breen (The Monkey and Keeper (both 2025)) and Kane Parsons hit all the right wistful/creepy buttons in my head and I hope I can score a copy for myself sometime. And finding out that Osgood Perkins, my favorite horror director working today, was among the producers that worked on Backrooms made me very happy indeed.
You know shit is gonna be big when my mom, who doesn't give a crap about movies, texted me asking about Backrooms. Bless her. My bud Sam and I had a good crowd at AMC Veterans here in Tampa. Everyone seemed to enjoy it though two teenagers bailed around the 10-minute mark which made me sad.
This happened five years ago. I guess I'm ready to talk about it now.
Before I start badmouthing Tampa Pitcher Show, let me just say that I do think it’s a cool place. Any old theater that still does The Rocky Horror Picture Show on a regular basis has something good going for it. My experience at their Dawn of the Dead screening was embarrassing and mostly terrible. You can probably write all of the following off as a weird old guy who should just the shut the hell up.
I read somewhere that there was going to be a screening of the original Dawn of the Dead (oh, there was a remake?) accompanied by zombie video games, zombie strippers (I didn’t expect this part to be true), and Mike Christopher AKA the Hare Krishna zombie from the 1978 film. I was really, really excited about this event. Seeing Dawn of the Dead -a movie that was hugely important to my development as a horror movie fan- on the big screen was paramount. Of course, I was headed for disaster.
Before we get to the screening, let me share this little story. My first encounter with this classic film was due to this stuttering kid at our school. Seemed like a nice enough chap so I would stand up for him when my loser classmates would make fun of his speech impediment. This kid was way into horror movies or so he professed and I was impressed as hell by his Dawn of the Dead t-shirt. It featured a person's exploding head.
When I asked this kid about what was going on with his t-shirt, he told me that in Dawn of the Dead there were all these zombies. Check! He then told me that the figure on his t-shirt was the king zombie. Um... wait a second. He related to me how bullets wouldn't stop this creature and that the heroes had to use a rocket launcher to destroy it. That's how its head exploded. Holy shit! I wish Dawn of the Dead had that in it! A couple of years later, when I finally watched Dawn of the Dead, I remembered that kid and just felt kind of stupid. In order to make up for his stuttering, he was just a bold faced liar who’d probably never even seen the dang film.
Okay, back to 2010. It was a Saturday night in early January and it was a friggin’ cold night in Tampa. I know what you’re saying, Florida gets cold? It does and when it does, us thin-blooded Floridians are screwed. Lows in the 30s might be nothing to a lot of people but it feels like the end of the world to us keepin’ it real in the dong-shaped state. But more about that later.
I showed up too early to Tampa Pitcher Show due to my unbearable excitement. The ticket window was closed so I went inside. Sherlock Holmes (the one with Harry Connick Jr. and Rufus Sewell) was still playing on their only screen so I had to wait in the lobby for a while. I got something to eat and a soda. There were some teens playing zombie themed video games on televisions around. I didn’t know anybody so I just kind of watched people playing for a while. At some point, the ticket window was open so I went outside and got in line to pay admission.
Right in front of me in line were these two odd dudes. I’m pretty sure they were a couple and it was a May-December thing. The younger guy was skittish as shit and I swear he looked at me about 90 times before he urged his partner to look at me. His request was so urgent that when the older dude turned to look at me, he was immediately confused. He gave his boyfriend a glare as if to say, ‘what the fuck is wrong with you?’ Maybe the younger guy thought I was cute or especially ugly or I had piss stains on my pants, who knows?
When I got back inside, Sherlock Holmes was still playing. The time for the event to start had already passed and one of the employees told me that the previous film had started late. For the next half hour, I sat and watched people playing video games some more. People started showing up dressed as zombie hunters with Nerf guns and plastic swords. I attempted to talk to some folks but I got the cold shoulder. Something was just wrong.
Finally, the auditorium emptied out and I got to go inside. A wave of nostalgia hit me like a ton of bricks. The cheap furniture and the garbage carpeting brought me back to every dollar theater I’d ever set foot in. I felt like I was right at home. Don’t worry, it didn’t last long. I marched right up front to a table, took off my jacket, and flopped down in a chair, giddy with excitement.
Someone rolled out a laptop and a projector and my heart sunk. No fucking way were they going to show Dawn of the Dead with a tiny little projector when they had this huge screen. The urge to bolt was immediately quelled when a bunch of unfunny zombie memes started showing up on the screen. Whew, I thought, that was a close call.
So while these terrible zero cultural farts are just rolling along through a Windows slide show of doom and my intelligence is being zapped from my brain, I notice that I’m sitting alone. Everyone at the theater except for me is sitting in the back. I’m the only person who appears to have arrived alone and the only one who doesn’t know everyone else. That’s when it hit me, I had stumbled into a clique-hole. The Rocky Horror kids wanted nothing to do with me! I was just some uncool dude who was crashing their party. Suddenly, I was very depressed and embarrassed for myself. My body felt as heavy as a stone while a steamroller of social anxiety crushed me down into the filthy carpet.
Then the show started. Some ghoulish rock music kicked in and the zombie strippers came out to strut their stuff. Wow, there really is truth in advertising! Girls in zombie makeup, fishnets, frilly panties, strategically placed electrical tape, and very little else started doing their act. It wasn’t just burlesque bouncing either, they actually had a victim whose guts they tore out. I had to applaud. This was good.
Once the strippers had done their bit, it was time for Mike Christopher to give a little speech. He seemed like a nice guy. He complained about how cold it was in Florida and that got a laugh. It would probably be 80 degrees in a few days. That’s what makes all of us psychotic around here. When he was done, I should have left. I’m telling you, my friends, I should have walked out the fucking door.
So the film starts. They were indeed using the laptop and the tiny projector. This resulted in Dawn of the Dead taking up less than 20% of the available screen. The debate in my mind went like this: Is this an actual print of the film? Hell no. How important is that to me? Moderately. Is this bigger than my TV at home? Yes. Then fine, I’ll stay.
Around this time, I noticed that I needed to put my jacket back on. Tampa Pitcher Show was probably trying to save money by not turning the heat on. The temperature inside the place was starting to plummet. I had a wool cap in the pocket of my jacket. I took that out and put it on. Then I zipped up my jacket. Then I had to put my hands in my pockets. Holy shit, I was cold. Really, really cold.
Then the ‘your virus detection software is out of date’ window popped up over George Romero’s classic with a loud ding that echoed through the theater. My jaw dropped. That’s right, whoever owned the laptop in question was a complete asshole who didn’t know his/her ass from a hole in the ground. I felt so stupid for sticking through this shit show that my urge to weep or start screeching at the top of my lungs in venomous rage was deflated. I just sat there and took it like a grownup, a thoroughly disappointed grownup.
When the film ended, I got up to leave with nothing in my heart but a feeling of profound foolishness and a love for Dawn of the Dead that no crappy night out (and no shite remake) can shake. It was freezing outside. I ran to the car and hopped in. As the heat failed and only cold air was blowing out, I started laughing. It was after 2 in the morning, I was cold as balls, and I’d just wasted 4 hours of my life. I drove home shivering and making a pact with myself to never return to Tampa Pitcher Show ever again.
So in the end, Dawn of the Dead still haunts me. The film is urgently important in my heart. Seeing it when I was 13 and seeing it at that abominable screening were the same. The setting didn't matter. I was creeped out and depressed by the film. Even when I was a kid, it made me morose and I loved it. I had never felt that way from a movie before. It made me listless and thoroughly freaked me out the more I thought about it. The world looked bent, distorted and yet somehow even more real afterward. This is what good horror movies do. Tampa Pitcher Show, leave me alone. I don't want to talk to you right now.
In the fall of 2011, I saw on some website or other that Lucio Fulci’s Zombi 2 (1979) was going to be making the rounds at theaters around the country. This news flipped me the fuck out. The thought of seeing The Fulch on the big screen really had me chomping at the bit. The closest that Fulci’s classic was playing to LeEtta and I was in St. Petersburg at a place I didn’t even know existed called the Beach Theatre (now closed, apparently). It was our anniversary so we decided to take a couple days off and stay at a hotel near the theater as well as attend the screening.
We arrived at the Beach Theatre about 5 hours early for the show just so I could scope the place out. I was a nervous wreck just expecting the whole night to be a disaster so this was the only way I could calm down with so long to wait for the movie. Then LeEtta found a little German restaurant that was completely empty save for us. The sole waitress was really confused by our presence and handed us the menus with much trepidation. We made her at ease once we started ordering some of the more traditional German items off the menu. The poor thing was probably hoping we’d bail after getting a look at the selections. We had a great time.
Even after eating our scrumptious meal, there was still a lot of time before the movie so we walked around St. Pete and hit up an ice cream store as it was closing. Outside the theater, I saw a guy in a horror movie t-shirt and started up a convo with him. He was a really nice guy and I feel kind of bad because I can’t recall his name. Sorry, duder. Message me!
When it was time for the film to start, we went in and I was a little bummed that the whole event wasn’t better attended. Don’t get me wrong, the Beach Theatre (which opened in 1940) couldn’t have held a massive crowd but only about half of the seats in the theater were filled. We picked our seats and we were immediately struck at what terrible shape they were in. The armrest between LeEtta and I broke off and she spent some time trying to put it back into place.
The moment that made me realize that the year was 2011 and not 1979 was when the movie started on the big screen but it was over a minute into the film. The projectionist tried to start the film over and that’s when the Blu-ray player’s menu flashed on the screen. My heart sunk. I guess you could call me naïve but I was pretty shocked that I was going to be seeing Zombi 2 from a goddamn Blu-ray and not on actual film. All bitching aside, the movie looked AMAZING on the big screen and this is one of the moments that convinced me to buy my first Blu-ray player.
The crowd was pretty sedate. No one dressed up like zombies and no one came in smoking pipes full of maggots or anything. There was one guy who showed up drunk with his lady friend. He was tall and lanky and made a big public display of affection for his poor companion as though someone there was questioning his sexuality. They served beer at the Beach Theatre and he was partaking.
When the big splinter to the eye scene happened, this loud goofus started cheering and drunkenly clapping. He was actually offended when he looked around and no one else was going along with him. It just wasn’t the crowd for that and I didn’t hold that against him. Before the end of this movie, he had to leave very quickly nearly falling over several times while his girlfriend ran alongside trying to steady him. I’m probably lucky that he didn’t puke or fall right on top of me.
When all is said and done, seeing Zombi 2 on a big screen with a modest-sized crowd was a huge deal even taking my minor complaints into account. Much like my lame Dawn of the Dead experience, the use of a DVD or Blu-ray for a film screening seemed like this huge letdown at first. But you know what? The power of the films I love transcend millennial disappointment. The miasma of horror that Fulci has shoved into the eye sockets of film audiences can be delivered by a laser very efficiently.
Here's my old (and 50 pounds heavier) vlog about the event.
Mia Wasikowska plays Edith Cushing, a Turn of the century lady (that's the 19th Century, BTW) who's struggling to be taken seriously as a writer. Her industrialist father (Jim Beaver) entertains a business proposal from Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston), a nobleman who is trying to make his fortune in the mining industry. Edith overhears Thomas's appeal to her father and the board of directors and is quite taken with the man.
As romance blooms between Edith and Thomas, much to the chagrin of Edith's father and Thomas's overprotective sister Lucille (Jessica Chastain), a terrible tragedy "coincidentally" occurs sending her rushing into marriage. At the family home of the Sharpes, Allerdale Hall, all is not well. The place looks like a Charlotte Brontë fever dream only not as structurally sound.
Oh and there's ghosts! When Edith was a young girl, her mother died and came to visit her after the funeral to give her a warning, "Beware of Crimson Peak!" This encounter makes Edith just a tad more open to supernatural experiences than your average person. The moment she sets foot in Allerdale Hall, she is besieged by spirits that are all pretty pissed off. What do they want? Who were they? These questions and more will be answered this season on Crimson Peak!
As the month of October is coming to a close, I realized that I hadn't been to see a horror movie all damn month. And that was probably because everything but this looked like shit to me. I desperately didn't want to miss Crimson Peak on the big screen. Thankfully, the new place around here, Studio Movie Grill, is close to work and the wife and I could easily catch a screening right after work. This place used to be the Regal University 16, the legendary theater glorified in my account of Nafa's and my Halloween II experience back in 2009 (read it here).
I only have two negative criticisms for Crimson Peak; one is rather slight and the other a bit more annoying. Heck, they might even be tied together, at least they are in my deranged mind. The first thing is, I feel like the setup leading up to Edith getting to Allerdale Hall and falling for Thomas Sharpe should have been longer. Period pieces are slow and the good ones are achingly so. Thanks to my wife, I have seen A LOT of Jane Austen adaptations, some of them 4 hour versions and that length lets you settle into a story thus making the small emotional moments have a huge payoff. I realize that asking for a horror movie that is one minute short of two hours goes against every molecule of my being but damn it, this is a gothic horror film and I wanted more.
The second thing is the acting felt pretty stiff in spots. I don't want to harsh on this point too much because I'm hoping a second viewing of Crimson Peak will help me change my mind. Would I have been more invested in these performances had the movie taken it's time a little more? Probably not. I did care what happened to these people and I did get wrapped up in all the gothy melodramatic business but something is nagging at me. The one person who really bothered me was Jim Beaver. His portrayal of Carter Cushing really left me cold. He needed to be a bit more gruff or drunk or pissed off or jolly -shit, I don't care- just more something.
Now that that nitpicking is out of the way (see, only two paragraphs!), let me gush for a bit. Guillermo del Toro has never let me down and Crimson Peak is no exception. This film feels like 1. A love letter to the Hammer horror films of the 1960s, 2. A knowing nod to Mario Bava fans, and 3. A full on manly makeout session with Henry James. I've only read a few of James's works but I get the impression that he liked to kiss dudes, hard. The eerie atmosphere, beautiful set design, and magnificent lighting are paired with surprisingly brutal violence and monstrous apparitions making this a real treat for horror fans.
What makes this some next level shit is that Crimson Peak is kinda smart and it made me want to talk about this movie immediately after it was over. del Toro tells you what is going to happen early on and when it happens, your brain goes, "Damn it! I forgot about that! I'm not as smart as I thought. Blast these spectacles and useless vest!" Okay, maybe that's just me. I notice that this film has a slim chance of making its money back and I really hope it does because I want more classy, lush, and thoughtful horror films like this. Recommended. And -BONUS!- it's a great date movie.
My friend Nafa called me on Saturday and gave me a one word review of this film.
He said: "Kinetic."
I really don't know what to say about The Lords of Salem other than I highly recommend it because I don't want to spoil ANYTHING. Horror fans, if it's playing in your city, check it the fuck out. I think missing this one on the big screen would be a big mistake. Yesterday morning, at the theater, Rob Zombie raped my senses for 101 minutes and I left wanting more. I have been a Rob Zombie fan since Halloween II bashed my face in back in '09 and I had high hopes for this film. This film is a cross between Dario Argento's Inferno, Juan López Moctezuma's Alucarda, The Sentinel (1977), and a Windows 95 screensaver.
This film feels like a companion piece to Ti West's The House of the Devil but it goes way, way out of its way to get under your skin. One thing that Rob Zombie does is try too hard and I appreciate that. Everyone should do that. My best friend Scott once brewed a pot of coffee using caffeinated water instead of normal water. God knows that turned out well. I also noticed a big visual reference to Fulci and some dream logic that would have made The Godfather of Gore and Argento scratch their heads.
I wanted something that wasn't a remake and I got it. I wanted something that wasn't "found footage" and I got it. I wanted something smart, crazy, over-the-top, nauseatingly sexy, and blasphemous. Okay, maybe blasphemy wasn't really that high on my list but I sure as shit got more than I knew what to do with. Like I was saying, RZ always tries too hard and he bends over backwards to offend (as the directors of many a possession/Satanic-themed horror tale have done in the past) devout sensibilities. If you're easily offended by the site of Sheri Moon Zombie's butt then avoid this at all costs.
(This is where it happened.)
It is still hard for me to believe that "select cities" meant Tampa and it also meant, my theater: AMC Veterans 24 out on Anderson Road. It was an overcast and muggy day (unlike the above photo) and it was nice to sit in the cool darkness with Rob Zombie's feverish brain. Hopefully, The Lords of Salem will go nationwide so my homey Brad can go see it. Veterans 24 is an interesting theater. It has the feel of the theaters of my youth but also has the impossible danger of being in the flight path of Tampa International Airport which is disturbingly nearby. Yikes. Thanks to the Final Destination movies, I have some terrible scenarios in my head every time I watch a film there.
So on Saturday I went out to Muvico to check out this prequel dealie to John Carpenter's 1982 classic, The Thing. There were a few douchebagels who showed up but they were quiet enough to not ruin the experience. And I must say, I enjoyed the film. It is suspenseful, well-made, gruesome, and has an excellent score by Marco Beltrami (a duder who is quickly becoming one of my favorite composers). I won't call this 2011 version of The Thing -I can't believe they couldn't think of something else to call it- essential or anything but if you decide to take a chance, you'll be pleasantly surprised that it doesn't suck. My biggest complaints are that the people populating this film aren't nearly quirky or memorable enough and that the practical (I call them analog) monster effects are non-existent. The CGI didn't bother me but don't expect anything like Rob Bottin's magic here.
Anyway, I do have a problem with this prequel. The ending ties in so seamlessly with Carpenter's film that I have to say it kind of pisses me off. Part of what is so great is that in the beginning of the 1982 film, you have no idea what's going on. MacReady and the crew of Outpost 31 discover the what's left of the Norwegian camp and the viewer has to use their IMAGINATION to piece together the horrors these men must have gone through. I know what you're saying: "Duder, it's a prequel. You spent $7.75 to ruin it for yourself." I'm just thinking of people who may watch this The Thing before they watch the original The Thing. I think it is better to see the 1982 flick first completely cold (as in, not knowing a damn thing about it), ponder what may have happened to the posthumous crew, and then watching this prequel as one of the potential possibilities of what occurred.
Don't Be Afraid of the Dark
Directed by Troy Nixey
2010
Starring Bailee Madison, Katie Holmes, Guy Pearce, Jack Thompson, Julia Blake
99 minutes
Even though I wasn't very impressed by the trailers for Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, something told me to get up early enough on Sunday to catch the matinee. I guess what worked was the moment where Katie Holmes rips down a dusty sheet to reveal a mural of some rather demonic-looking creatures with arms outstretched, hands clutching and promising perpetual torment. So yeah, that was enough to make me go 'Oh snap, that's in theaters already? I'm on my way, bitches!' I probably didn't say that in my head or aloud but still, I did go to the movies. As usual, I went to AMC Veterans out on Anderson to catch the show with a small, not very enthusiastic crowd. Shit, at least they were quiet. There was a redneck lady with a baby that came in and I keep thinking that she was dragging it around by the leg like a sack of potatoes. But I might be imagining that...
This film, co-written and co-produced by Guillermo del Toro*, is about a girl named Sally (played by Bailee Madison) who is sent to live with her father and his new girlfriend. Her dad Alex (Guy Pearce) is an architect restoring and living in a place called Blackwood Mansion. His girlfriend Kim (Katie Holmes) is an interior designer helping him out and, you know, having SEX with him. Alex isn't exactly the most attentive father in the world and after being dumped by her prescription-drugs-cure-everything mom at the doorstep of a creepy mansion, Sally isn't exactly the happiest kid in the world. She ignores her father, despises Kim, and retreats into the grounds and the dark corners of the Blackwood Estate.
Almost immediately, Sally begins to hear voices that claim that they want to be her friend. These voices belong to tiny creatures living in the walls of the house. And though they sound benevolent, these diminutive beasts are ancient monsters who must feed every couple of centuries to survive. Oh and they like to eat children's teeth! As more and more strange incidents occur, Alex reacts the way any parent would act and calls in a psychologist to analyze Sally and prescribe something very strong to calm her down. After a trip to the special collections department of the local library**, Kim discovers that Sally may not be going through her tiny-monster-phase at all. Heck y'all, there might just be something to that little whipper snapper's story!
Don't Be Afraid of the Dark is no throwaway summer horror flick. This is NOT some found footage gimmick flick or a Saw clone. It's an old school horror film that is surprisingly well made. The score by Marco Beltrami and Buck Sanders stands out as some of the best horror film music in recent memory. The sets are phenomenal as are the Australian(?!?!) locations which look a lot like freakin' New England to me. The cast is solid with even Katie Holmes in a likeable role (I understand that she is an acquired taste to most movie lovers' fickle palates). And the sense of dread established in a horrifying prologue is balanced with enough childlike wonder to keep the viewer on their toes.
The only things I don't like about this movie are the shrill screams of the little creatures. I know that a small army of evil little gnomes (or whatever they are) could be a little silly as a threat but I wish there had been another way to make them intimidating other than giving them a high-pitched screech. Or perhaps the filmmakers could have used that sound sparingly or in a different way. Keep in mind that this is a coming from me, a guy who digs loud, abrasive experimental music; so you'd think I'd just be snapping my fingers and grooving along every time that sound ripped through the theater. Well, I wasn't! Despite the auditory annoyance, I did really like the design of the creatures.
I am going to go ahead and call this a 'must see' because the thing about Don't Be Afraid of the Dark is that it made me proud to be a horror fan. It is a classy production with excellent atmosphere, a dark fairy tale vibe, and is a film that I predict will age very well. The story is not exactly new (this is a remake after all) but it is told with confidence and for people unlike me, who haven't seen a thousand friggin' horror films, will eat this one up. What was that sentence anyway? Look, go and see Don't Be Afraid of the Dark. It's good, smart stuff and it will very likely give you the heebee-jeebees though I'm not sure that it earns its R rating.
*I read some debate about how much the horror/fantasy director had to do with this film but after seeing it, I have to say that the stamp of del Toro is pretty obvious.
Insidious tells the story of the Lambert family. Josh (played by Patrick Wilson) and his wife Renai (Rose Byrne) recently moved into a new house and of course, strange unexplainable things begin to occur. One morning, their son Dalton won’t wake up. The doctors cannot explain the youngster’s coma-like state. Three months later, more crazy shit happens and it is clear that something supernatural is going on. The family even moves to a new house but the haunting just seems to be getting worse. Josh’s mother (played by Barbara Hershey) recommends that they contact a psychic named Elise (Lin Shaye) to help them through their ordeal. But this ain’t gonna be no cakewalk, my friends, because an evil spirit has evil plans for Dalton.
I really don’t want to say too much about this flick’s plot so as not to ruin it but at the same time I wonder if anyone would care. Insidious is not a life changer but I had a good time. The marketing may be one of the best things about this film. There were many minor flaws but only one that I consider to be a major one (more on that in a moment). James Wan (Saw, Dead Silence) directs this modest budget ($1.5 million) affair with energy and manages to pull of a decent PG-13 spookfest. The threads were showing in a couple of moments especially where one of the sets looked incredibly cheap and the inevitable CGI touches to the film were pretty annoying. The cast is decent. Rose Byrne got on my nerves a bit there as the distraught mother but I still liked her character. Not surprisingly, Lin Shaye (Dead End) steals the show as the psychic.
Once the action gets going, Insidious has a carnival funhouse vibe to it. The whole climax of the film so thoroughly recreates a haunted house at your local high school gymnasium that it’s pretty genius. There is a very odd séance sequence that is totally great and really got my blood pumping. Instead of the usual hand-holding, the medium puts on a bizarre gasmask-like contraption that elicited giggles and WTFs from the audience but made me just nod in surprised appreciation.
And here’s where it gets complicated. As much fun as I had with this film, I was kind of pissed off because there are moments in the beginning where the foreboding is so intense that it’s nearly unbearable. The more of the spirits that we see, the farther and farther away that this great bit of foreshadowing just fades away until it is almost forgotten. It seems like elements of the movie were there because Wan and writer Leigh Whannell think that they have to be there. The evil spirit’s ability to climb on a wall and leave cracks as it goes along is just kind of there. Why?
The biggest problem I had with Insidious, and the film’s major flaw, is that one of the ghosts looks like The Undertaker or an aging Misfits fan dressed as The Undertaker for Halloween. This ghost shows up in the first third or so of the movie and is harassing Renai, and instead of just showing him for a split second (or better yet, making him totally invisible), we see this guy in complete detail for what seems like forever. He’s not scary, he looks totally lame in his calf-length leather jacket, slicked back hair, and skull makeup. He comes stomping right into the room and gets right in Renai’s face. The audience I saw this film with just sat there, silently waiting for this ghost to go away. That scared me. Why did no one burst out laughing and then demand their money back? What was I doing? Oh, I was sitting there like a mindless coward, settling for a mediocre film when I should be at home watching something, anything with Paul Naschy.
I guess in the end, I wish Insidious had left more to the imagination. The potential for a great movie was definitely there but someone was second guessing themselves; whether it was the director, the writer, or the producers, who can tell? Look, people know it’s a horror movie. You don’t need to throw a bunch of horror movie stuff in it just so people don’t start marching out confused about what genre they’re watching. You had some original bits in there so just chill out next time or you’ll fuck it up. Who am I talking to?
When I go see a remake of a film that I really, really liked, I try to think like someone who is seeing the story for the first time, that way I’m not comparing the two the whole time thus ruining the whole experience. The fact is, the trailers for Let Me In looked really good and I wanted to see something horrifying on the big screen. My wife LeEtta also really dug on Let the Right One In so it was easy to talk her into seeing the remake with me. Plus, she’s my wife. She has no choice! Ha ha!
Of course Veterans 24 had to be total fuckups again and instead of Let Me In, we got the opening moments of friggin’ Wall Street 2: Electric Boogaloo or whatever the hell it is. When they finally got the right film started, we were cheated of any horror trailers. So we were barraged with romantic comedies and dull action movie trailers before Let Me In. Lame! This is the second time we’ve had this problem at this theater in two visits. Last time, they tried not to show The Other Guys instead of Scott Pilgrim. To the employees of Veterans 24, get your shit together. It’s a movie theater not a freakin’ hospital. Just because it’s the matinee doesn’t mean we don’t care what movie we’re watching.
Our fellow moviegoers managed to keep their idiocy mostly in check. One sad sack behind us kept burping. A dumb-as-a-bag-of-rocks teenager forgot to turn his stupid phone off and then he couldn’t figure out how to silence it when it started ringing. But worst of all, a bunch of people went bonkers when a certain bloody kiss took place and it made me ashamed to be part of the human race. Despite all these distractions, I’m glad I caught this one on the big screen.
Let Me In is about Owen (played by Kodi Smit-McPhee), a lonely 12 year old kid who gets bullied at school. His parents are divorced and his mother is too wrapped up in her own misery to pay much attention to her son who is quickly getting very close to going off the deep end. One night, Owen notices a girl and her father moving in to the apartment next door. The girl, named Abby (Chloe Moretz), is very odd and tells Owen that they cannot be friends. Despite this proclamation, Owen and Abby do become friends and even begin to develop very deep feelings for each other. She encourages Owen to stand up to the bullies that are making his life a living hell. It’s all rather sweet.
Oh and Abby is a vampire. Her father (played by Richard Jenkins) goes out every couple of nights, kidnaps people, and drains their blood into a jug in order to feed Abby. This gets complicated because he is getting tired of killing people and his work is getting very sloppy. Frustrated and starving for fresh blood, Abby takes to the streets but her bloodlust makes it impossible for her to control herself. To make matters even more complicated, a dedicated cop (Elias Koteas) has been on Abby and her father’s trail for a while now, thinking that he is after a couple of Satanists. As Abby and Owen grow closer, so does the imminent danger of the outside world destroying everything they have.
The love story is quite beautiful and the horror elements are handled very nicely by director Matt Reeves. My list of complaints is very short. Some of the music queues during the scenes between Abby and Owen are a little cloying. I didn’t like the CGI used during the attack sequences; it really took me out of the film. I think that had they done more with a stunt coordinator and a little wirework, things would not have been so cheesy. Luckily, these scenes are brief but come on, this movie is worth the extra work. I don’t care how expensive the CGI was, it looked silly.
What really won me over with Let Me In was the atmosphere and the excellent acting from everyone involved. There was a healthy dash of 80s music to help recreate 1983 but that wasn’t nearly as nice as the nondescript snowbound apartment buildings and the eerie nighttime photography. There’s lots and lots of blood and a quite a bit of tension that explodes in moments of unpredictable violence and terror. Pacing is very good and the nearly 2 hour running time seemed to fly by for me.
So all in all, it’s an impressive horror movie that my wife and I both enjoyed. While not nearly as brilliant or as important as the original, Let Me In is a decent reimagining to suit the American popcorn crowd.
When the American remake of Ju-on came out, I really wanted to like it for some reason. It could be my inexplicable love of Sarah Michelle Gellar (even though I'm not a fan of Buffy in the least). Whatever the reason, I was pretty freakin' pumped when I saw The Grudge the same night I saw the first Saw film. Looking back, it was not a good night for horror. If I'd had a blog back then or Doomed Moviethon had been born a year earlier, I would have given the Ju-on remake a positive review and skewered Saw for its glaring faults (which I'll probably talk about some other time). Now I can't even watch the American Grudge or its sequels without feeling embarrassed.
After re-revisiting the original film and its sequel, I have to say that there is no excuse for me ever liking the remakes. Granted, the Sam Raimi produced versions are not the worst remakes of Asian horror films by any means but the magic of the originals cannot be recaptured, even with the same director, Takashi Shimizu, on board. Now there are some good moments in The Grudge and The Grudge 2 and even some striking visuals but the films almost feel like parodies. Some of the scares are telegraphed and dumbed down for American audiences. That's bad, okay. I've never seen The Grudge 3 but the trailers are laughable.
(Wait a second, why is the American DVD artwork for Ju-on 2 better than the Japanese?)
What's interesting about the first theatrically released Ju-on film is that Takashi Shimizu either takes for granted that everyone has seen the original movies he made that went straight to video or he is simply experimenting with how to reveal the double murder (triple if you include the cat) and suicide that started the curse in the first place. In the 2003 film, the flashbacks are shown in such an abstract manner that you have to use your imagination to fill in the blanks but technically, it's all there. One of the best things about Ju-on and Ju-on 2 is their chapter-like structure. It is fun to put these things together like in your brain.
I've seen the original made for home video films (released in 2000) and they are amazing. The shot-on-video feel adds to the scares immensely. The films feel even more disturbing than their theatrical counterpart. Now that the whole found footage genre is kind of exploding, it is getting harder to appreciate or explain what makes these little cheapies so special.
Shimizu is definitely more hit than miss. He directed what is probably the best (though not my favorite) of the Tomie series, Tomie: Re-birth. It is one of those films that despite its formulaic origins, it goes off on even more disturbing and unique tangents. It features some of the most iconic scenes of the entire series like a mother and her son bonding while they are chopping up Tomie's body with a meat cleaver. It's bizarrely heart-warming and lovely in its gruesomeness.
I was not overwhelmed by Shimizu's 2005 film, Reincarnation, but I know that I need to give it a second look because it felt at the time I watched it like it would grow on me. Marebito is an excellent yet slowly paced film filled with dread and packed with more dark and freaky ideas than scares. It's definitely worth a look. As for his American remakes, they aren't terrible really, I just wish he'd had a chance to make something totally different for American audiences instead of adapting the older material.
Though he has directed a few things outside of the genre, Shimizu continues to work in the horror genre. He has made two 3D horror films, one of which has not come out here in the States and a second one that is still in post-production. These will probably be disappointing on DVD when they finally come out over here if only because 3D doesn't translate so well when it finally hits home video. Hopefully, the stories to these films will be good enough that it won't matter. As for the Ju-on series, I recommend watching the original home video movies if you can find them. I also recommend watching the theatrical films Ju-on and Ju-on 2 back to back. They work very well together even though the second film is a little weaker than the first.
One of the first things I wanted to do before this whole INVASIAN business got started was revisit The Ring and compare it to the original Ringu. I’m sure folks have compared the two movies better than I am going to here but this is my blog and these are my rules! (The only rules I have mostly pertain to the banning of “Seinfeld” from syndication.) As I have mentioned before, The Ring scared the pants off of LeEtta and I when we saw it back in October of 2002. We find out that this evil videotape kills people in seven days and then what happens? They show us the poor audience the tape! Now everyone in the audience is going to die in seven days. Even after we were home safely, my lady and I could still see little Samara lurking in the corners of our minds’ eye(s?).
The Ring was one of the things that helped jumpstart my seriously neglected love of horror movies. That October was when I started to raid the shelves at the video store again for some horror delights. This very profitable remake also helped spark the fiery love I have for Asian horror. So it’s a big deal for me. In fact, it was such a big deal that I didn’t watch The Ring for nearly 8 years. I’ve had the DVD for a long time but I just couldn’t bring myself to watch it.
I don’t know why I did this. I know that it wasn’t because I was too scared. After consuming countless horror movies between 2002 and now, it’s safe to say that I was ready to revisit the flick. Honestly, I think I was just too excited about The Ring to watch it again. Damn, this almost feels like a bad movie confession but The Ring is not a bad movie. It’s just kind of there. I think that it and the Dark Water remake are the best of the Asian horror remakes that have come out thus far. Oh and I liked Mirrors despite its glaring problems: “Stay away from the water, it makes reflections.” I think the remake business got some of my money because when I’m in the mood to see horror in theaters and there’s nothing good playing, I’m going to go anyway and see whatever is playing.
So for the first time in 8 years, I watched The Ring and oh yes, I had some observations. The first thing I noticed is that The Ring is beautifully shot. Yugoslavian-born cinematographer Bojan Bazelli casts the film in muted greens and grays giving it an undeniable atmosphere. There is an eerie tension between the big scares and some fantastically strange imagery on display. And it’s scary. The film is aggressively terrifying and will not let up until the viewer is wrecked and shaky. One little thing that particularly impressed me was the lack of brand names in the movie. The only one I picked up on is when Rachel (played by Naomi Watts) pays for something with her American Express card.
So where does this remake falter? Before I compare this film to the original, there are a couple of little problems here. The filmmakers must have thought only morons were going to be watching this film. There are a plethora of things that could have been subtle nuances or cool little hidden things that are delivered with all the sensitivity of a pulled pin at a grenade factory retirement party. For instance, upon second viewing, the infamous tape that drastically shortens one’s life expectancy is kind of lame. It has a few really dumb little faux-scary things in it like the box of wriggling severed fingers. So spooky! And speaking of not-so-subtle moments, Naomi Watts does gets a little cheesy when, after her son views the tape, the phone rings, and she screams “Leave him alone!” It didn’t hit me the first time but my eyes rolled so hard on re-watching it that I got a little disoriented.
Unlike The Ring, I’ve watched Ringu multiple times over the years. Right away, I can tell you that it’s the better film. Boop boop boop boop boop! Did you hear that? It was an obvious revelation detector going off. First of all, Hideo Nakata’s original masterpiece is just that: A MASTERPIECE! This is a scary ass movie with a whole mess of class, really cool ideas, and beauty packed into its 96 minutes; 9 minutes shorter than its American counterpart. The American version takes longer to tell a more convoluted story while the Japanese one is simpler and all the better for it. Ringu is also quite subtle and leaves a great deal to the imagination of the viewer.
The cursed videotape is much shorter and more direct than in the American version. However, when I add up the lists of what I like about the tape in the American version and what I like about the tape in Ringu, they come out pretty much equal. These lists are secret, by the way. Not really. The tape in Ringu is more functional. It shows more clues to the story than the tape in The Ring does but the tape in The Ring has two or three little jabs in it that make it scarier. The goat with a less than standard number of limbs hopping along and the horses dying on the beach just really freaks me out. Somehow, the mixed up newspaper clipping in the Japanese version just doesn’t send chills up my spine.
While I loved Brian Cox’s short but amazing performance as Samara’s suicidal father in The Ring, the story behind Samara’s parents leaves a lot to be desired. In fact, it doesn’t make much sense. Samara’s history is alluded to and it just kind of paints her as a little girl who may or may not have been adopted and who is just plain EVIL! Nice origin story… Not! In the Japanese version, we are treated to a family of psychics who produces Sadako, a young lady more powerful (and EVIL!) than any of them can imagine. You know, it sounds ridiculous but somehow the latter just works better in my mind.
One thing that my sweet wife LeEtta pointed out during my little comparative experiment was that she now finds Sadako much scarier than Samara. I have to agree. When I look at screenshots of Samara, I’m not really affected by it. However, the longer I look at Sadako, I just feel the hairs standing up on the back of my neck. Jeez! The final scare is certainly more effective in the Japanese version. When Sadako climbs out of that TV, damn it, I still get freaked. When Samara goes after what’s his face, it doesn’t really do anything for me now. It seems as though The Ring is a much better film when it is doing something different. Like that horsey scene on the ferry. Oh man, that still gets to me. When it tries to imitate that last awesome moment, it just doesn’t fare well under scrutiny.
For the longest time, my biggest bone of contention against Ringu was that the corpses Sadako leaves in her wake weren’t as scary as the ones in the American version. Gore Verbinski had Rick Baker doing the makeup and he went with the severely corpselike look which is just plain hard to look at. That moment in theaters (and one that still gets me on the DVD) is when we see the first victim. So we see this putrid looking corpse and it moves. IT FUCKING MOVES! I think about the American aesthetic that Verbinski had to think about when remaking Ringu and frankly, it’s genius. Sure, it is more of a popcorn movie but it worked on American audiences and I know there are other people besides my wife and I who found The Ring to be quite traumatic, especially in the dark confines of a movie theater. When I first beheld the corpses in Ringu, I laughed out loud. They are just actors in a little bluish makeup holding very still. The funny thing is, now that I’ve watched Ringu several times, those pasty frozen faces are starting to get to me.
In the end, I have a very strong affection for both The Ring and Ringu. Hideo Nakata’s film is simply stunning and it is worth a look or ten. Gore Verbinski’s version is a superb translation with only a few flaws. Both films effectively show the horror of the curse of a little misunderstood psychic girl (or young woman in the case of Sadako). The curse’s victims lose their identities –see how their faces blur when you try to take their picture- and then seven days later, they lose their lives. Two final things I must point out: 1) the musical score for Ringu is a million times more amazing than that of The Ring and 2) how the hell did Rachel survive the tumble down the well in The Ring? She even hits her head on the way down! Come on. That is some lame shit.
Okay, I’m not quite done yet. Aidan, the little kid in The Ring, is so much creepier than his Japanese counterpart. And what the hell was Abby from "NCIS" doing in the movie? Okay, I’m trying really hard not to go into a bunch of shit about the The Ring Two. Oh yeah, Margie (my mother-in-law), who joined us for the Ring Comparison Projection 2010, said that she liked the way ending plays out in the Japanese version better. And LeEtta concurs. They both like the idea of the kid's grandfather being the one sacrificed to the tape. Okay, enough rambling.
Before I get started let me just say that I believe I have a pretty (un)healthy obsession with Asian horror films. As anyone who has noticed the path that Doomed Moviethon and Cinema Somnambulist has taken over the years, my focus has almost always been Italian horror and gialli. Running pretty much parallel to that has been Asian horror though I've always had trouble articulating what it is that makes this stuff so great. I was astounded while I was putting this little month long homage together by just how much I’ve already seen. What was even more astounding –no, mindboggling- to me was how much more I have yet to see. I have barely scratched the dang surface.
My love for Asian horror films began as generically as possible. It all started in 2002 with The Ring. And I’m not talking about the original either. I’m talking about Gore Verbinski’s version of Ringu. Mr. Pirates of the Caribbean himself and screenwriter Ehren Kruger were able to take a beautiful and frightening Japanese horror film and crank it up for American audiences. Some of the subtleties of the Japanese film were abandoned for us silly gaijin but the end result was worth it.
My girlfriend, LeEtta (now my wife), and I had just started dating and it was imperative that we go to the movies ALL THE TIME. Some couples get drunk together and some go boogie boarding, LeEtta and I went to the movies. Sure, we saw some terrible shit (Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever) but The Ring was one I did not want to miss. You see, I had no perspective on this film, other than ‘this looks interesting’. All I knew about the film was from the TV trailers. You watch a cursed videotape and then you die 7 days later. Sounded like a pretty awesome urban legend type of flick, so we went. I had no idea it was a remake until a few days after I saw the film.
The horror bug, having been dormant since the 90s, was just about to awaken within. So you see, I wasn’t hip to anything just yet. I wasn’t making my bimonthly trips to the bookstore for the newest issues of Rue Morgue, Videoscope, Shock Cinema, etc. just yet and I was only just beginning to check out some horror movie review sites (mostly for nostalgia’s sake). This is funny to me now. I had absolutely no idea that I would be focusing practically all of my energy on horror movies very soon. The idea for Doomed Moviethon was still a couple of years away.
So the wife- I mean, girlfriend- and I head to the theaters to check out The Ring. It was a packed house which is totally alien to me now. I never, ever go to the movies on a Friday or a Saturday night! Amateurs! So the movie starts and things start getting really scary really friggin’ fast. The moment that had me climbing out of my seat was the dang horse scene on the ferry. Jeez!
I recently revisited this remake for the first time in nearly 8 years and I’ll get into how it stacks up to the original as well as how I feel about it now later this month. Long story short (too late!), LeEtta and I were completely and utterly terrified while we clung to one another in the darkness of the theater. To add to the mayhem, pretty much everyone in the theater was screaming and freaking out. I don't care what anybody says, this is a scary ass movie. Verbinski took a great story, some haunting imagery, and altered what he needed to alter for American sensibilities. It worked.
But wait, wasn’t there something else? Oh yeah, I suppose horror anime did get to me first. The very first anime I ever purchased on VHS was the original Vampire Hunter D back in 1994. I had purchased Appleseed that day and after discovering how horrible it was, I begged the guy at the comic shop to let me exchange it for something else. He agreed and out of sheer desperation, I grabbed Vampire Hunter D. I've never regretted that purchase. Hans from Quiet Cool will be discussing this very film next week. I encountered many horror anime series as the years went by but never once did it ever cross my mind that there might be horror movies from Asia. In my defense, I was also not actively pursuing horror movies at this time. I was all like “Evil Dead and Hellraiser are enough for me!” Silly fool.
My first Asian horror film proper was the splatter/sex/sci-fi epic Wicked City. I had seen the anime years before but the live action version left me so gobsmacked that I didn’t even know what hit me. I thought it was just some fluke, some random Japanese freakout (yeah, I know, it’s a Hong Kong flick). I was kind of dumb back then and not nearly curious enough!
Fastforwarding back to 2002, my friend Nafa encouraged me to check out Kwaidan from the library and it was an amazing atmospheric masterpiece. Aaron of The Death Rattle is going to talk about that one later this month. I also managed to get my hands on a grubby copy of Kuroneko from the library as well. This chilling little tale is about a mother and daughter who are raped and murdered by a pack of travelling bandits. The two return from the grave to get their revenge on samurai who cross their path. Simply awesome.
While the waves of remakes (The Ring Two... ugh) were slowly starting to roll in, I was busting my hump to try and see as many Japanese horror films as possible. This was pretty frustrating and it was before Netflix; so in order to watch decent movies, I had to buy them unseen. Fun! In fact, this was just true for all fans of obscure movies for a long time. I hope all you young whippersnappers out there don’t get all spoiled and shit with the sheer brilliance of Netflix. Being able to get 90% of the awesome and weird crap that’s out there on Region 1 DVD sent to your mailbox is totally insane.
Things changed completely in such a serendipitous way that I can only call it a miracle. After work one evening, I decided to stop off a little videogame store (that used to be on over on 56th Street). They had a decent selection of games and even some anime for rent. On this particular day, I walked in and noticed that an entire section of the wall was dedicated to Asian freakin’ horror movies! I wish there had been a camera recording my reaction because I’m sure it was pretty amusing. There were titles I had never heard of before. And there were Chinese DVDs! Wait a second, other countries besides Japan make horror movies too!?!?
It was then I met Steve of Unearthed Films. He was working the counter and was very patiently explaining to some neighborhood kids how the store’s trade-in policy worked. I waited until he was done and then I exasperatedly erupted. I grilled him about how long had the store been carrying all these great titles, how long he’d been working there, etc. Thankfully, the poor guy didn’t throw me out of the store right then and there. Instead, we shot the shit about horror movies for a while and I rented some films. I think I rented Ebola Syndrome and The Cat (AKA Lao Mao) that time.
With that, I expanded my search to include Chinese horror films. Eventually, I would discover Korean, Thai, and Indonesian horror but first I got a taste of Category III (the Hong Kong equivalent to NC-17) films and the wild and dark territories that leads to. Ebola Syndrome was the first and is still one of the most disturbing films I’ve ever had the happy displeasure of viewing. Other titles like Dr. Lamb, The Untold Story, and Devil Fetus have graced my eyes with their sleaziness and splatteriness. Steve also introduced me to the disturbing Battle Royale and the Evil Dead Trap movies.
In just a few short years, I think that Asian horror became overexposed and (most annoyingly) over-remade here in the States. It was impossible for horror fans not to get burnt out. I know that I started feeling the draw of European and Italian horror even stronger after that awful Pulse remake. Don’t get me wrong, I liked The Grudge remake at first (weird I know but I just really wanted to like it for some reason) but it is nothing compared to the original. And like any genre, there’s going to be mediocre and outright terrible shit that gets big promotion and cool artwork to mislead any unsuspecting horror fan.
I think the craziest thing is that I know I could just dedicate this blog entirely to Asian horror and be done with it. Would I ever run out of films? Hell no! And just for the record, I am going to try very hard this month to just focus on places other than Japan and Hong Kong. It won’t be easy but I think I can manage to give those two monstrously prolific horror hotspots some competition this month.
So I don’t really know what my plans for this month are, really. I always just assume that the immersion process will do all the work. Of course, I could be setting the stage for a magnificent failure but who cares? It's just a blog, right? Anyway, I know I’m going to talk about Asian horror stuff; be it awesome, painfully mediocre, or just plain awful. Of course the best part: I’m going to watch a whole mess of films I’ve never seen before. I have a few amazing bloggers who have agreed to contribute so keep checking up on the old CinSom, I think you’ll have a good old time.
Once again I’ve managed to go and see a horror film in theaters without reading a single review and only watching bits and pieces of trailers and TV spots. When I really want to see something, I go into IGNORANT MODE so I can be as surprised as possible when I set foot in the theater. I was intrigued by The Last Exorcism because… Duh, it’s not The Exorcist. Oh yes, I love possession films so of course, I was down with checking this one out. Oh shit, I just remembered, I still haven’t watched The Exorcism of Emily Rose. I should probably check out that out some time. Anyway, on a windy and hot Sunday morning, I met up with my friends Nafa, Max, and Rod at Veterans AMC 24 to see if this Eli Roth production was worth seeing or not.
The film is about Cotton Marcus (played by Patrick Fabian), an energetic preacher in Louisiana who has been preaching the word of the Lord since he was just a child. He comes from a long line of preachers who have been performing exorcisms for generations to fund the church as well as put food on the table for their families. While going through a crisis of faith, Marcus reads a news story about a young man who was accidentally killed and he decides that it is time to stop performing the rites. He decides to perform one last exorcism in front of a documentary film crew in order to show that his is a fraudulent craft.
Marcus and his crew are called to the Sweetzer farm where widowed patriarch Louis Sweetzer (Louis Herthum) is convinced that his 16 year old daughter, Nell (Ashley Bell), is possessed by the devil and has been killing their livestock. Once all of his tricks are set up, Marcus performs a mock exorcism, collects his money, and leaves. However, at their roadside motel that night, Marcus and the camera crew discover Nell practically comatose in Marcus’s room. They take Nell to a hospital but they can find nothing wrong with her. Things start to go downhill quickly back on the farm and it looks as though Nell might actually be possessed.
I won’t say any more about the plot because I don’t want to spoil anything (until my spoiler paragraph at the end). Despite a few generic ideas and a couple of moments that felt a little familiar, I have to admit I enjoyed The Last Exorcism. It is told in the popular format of the documentary style horror film which is all the rage right now. Personally, I need a break from this style. One thing though, once things got rolling with this flick, my adrenaline shot up and my heart kept thumping until the end. Assuming I don’t have some kind of condition that I should probably be seeing a doctor about, the tale of Nell Sweetzer is a thrilling one.
One thing that Nafa pointed out is the soundtrack. Up until the scary stuff happens, the film has little to no music score. Then some ominous orchestration kicks in. I noticed it but it didn’t bother me. Nafa said that it took him right out of the movie. I must admit that even though I liked the music, the film would have been better off without any kind of music score. The silence to accompany the screaming would have made things much more stark and isolating.
Audience reaction was pretty nonplussed at Veterans 24 and there weren’t any cries for ‘mama’ (Blair Witch Project), people yelling at the screen (Paranormal Activity), or folks running out to puke (Paranormal Activity (though I think that was from motion sickness and not terror). When the movie ended, some guy just went: “Wow.” And that was not a good ‘wow’ either. I hear another lady whisper to her friend: “Well, that sucked!” Most entertaining was this redneck guy there with his mom who was very outspoken. He raised his voice and proclaimed to anyone who would listen that The Last Exorcism is "stupid shit!" and that "The Exorcist was better than this stupid shit!"
In fact, he would get the attention of a female usher to tell her just how he felt about this movie. The sad part is, he left his poor old mother to struggle at getting out of her chair. It took her a big part of the credits to finally bounce her way out of her chair. And this wasn't a big woman either, she just had to use the momentum to get upright. Her stupid son finally got done berating the usher and anyone else in the theater about the film and then said to his mother: "I’ll meet you at the car." What a dick!
The same usher would tell another dissatisfied moviegoer that she wrote and directed The Last Exorcism and that she was personally sorry for it turning out so bad. As for me, I had a good time. Max said he liked it and Rod, well, Rod didn't really say. But I'm sure that he liked it better than The friggin' Collector. Nafa said he thought it was okay but something was definitely missing.
I especially liked Patrick Fabian’s portrayal of Cotton Marcus, the lovable conman preacher who gets in way over his head. Ashley Bell is awesome as Nell Sweetzer. Her performance is quite good, especially when the innocence cracks to show something malevolent underneath. There is a quick shot of her cracking one of the creepiest smiles ever that is just chilling. In fact, there weren’t any bad actors in this movie at all. Louis Herthum also deserves mentioning. The guy nailed the part of Louis Sweetzer, a man torn apart by grief trying to hold what’s left of his family together.
Though flawed, there are other good things going for The Last Exorcism. One is the choice by the filmmakers to keep the CGI down to a nice acceptable level. They could have gone all over the map with blacked out eyes, a mouth stretching open to some unholy, inhuman chasm, and rippling things crawling underneath Nell’s flesh. But they didn’t and that is important. Pacing is good though a couple of the calm scenes felt forced. I doubt that even that redneck duder was fooled by those moments of forced peace. The ending is also a little dicey which I’ll talk more about in the spoilers below. My (almost) final word on The Last Exorcism is that it is not quite as good as I was hoping but it’s very tense, well acted, and pretty damn cool. Don’t expect this to be the scariest film ever made, just enjoy the ride.
I really hope this movie has alternate endings when it hits DVD because the one that played in theaters, though acceptable, has some issues. I don’t think Satanists are scary for millennial audiences. Maybe if this was the 70s or 80s when satanic cults had everybody’s panties in a bunch, this would have worked. Nafa said he immediately thought of the awesome The Devil’s Rain. I, on the other hand, thought of the mostly decent Race with the Devil starring Warren Oates and Henry Fonda. So yeah, I think it was a poor way to wrap things up but it could have worked out better had the ending not seemed so rushed. Truth be told, the more I think about this ending, the more I’m warming to it. I’m going to stop now so you don’t have to read my mental debate.
Wicked City
AKA Yiu Sau Dou Si
Directed by Tai Kit Mak
Released: 1992
Starring Jacky Cheung, Roy Cheung, Leon Lai, Carmen Lee, Tatsuya Nakadai, Michelle Reis
Running Time: 90 minutes
DVD Studio: Image Entertainment
One of my strangest movie theater experiences happened in the mid-90s when saw the animated film, Wicked City (directed by Yoshiaki Kawajiri). It was at the old rundown theater somewhere in West Palm Beach where the Rocky Horror crowd would congregate. Wicked City is an action-packed, gory, and kinky anime with some hilarious dubbing. It was a packed house and a fairly lively crowd until a wee bit of tentacle rape happened. Then we all sat in stunned silence for the rest of the film. I don’t know how many anime fans were among the folks there that night but I’m going to go ahead and guess that most of the attendees had never seen anything like that before.
One night, a couple of years later, I was watching HBO, Showtime, or Cinemax (I don’t remember which) and they announced that they were going to play Wicked City. I decided to watch it again but opted to pass on recording it to VHS. I was pretty sure that one more viewing would probably be more than enough. When the film started, I got a little confused. It wasn’t animated! I had no idea there was a live action version of Wicked City. And it was from Hong fucking Kong! Other than kung-fu films, my only exposure to Hong Kong cinema was John Woo’s The Killer. I was in for another surprise and luckily, there was much less tentacle rape involved.
Tokyo has quite a crisis on its hands. There are monsters disguised as humans walking the streets and there’s an epidemic of people addicted to a drug called ‘Happiness’ which has some seriously bad side effects. Taki (played by Leon Lai) is a member of an elite anti-monster taskforce who has a lot of issues. His partner, Kai (Jacky Cheung), is a half-monster full of angst and his ex-girlfriend, Gaye (Michelle Reis), is a full-blooded monster who is also full of angst. Taki’s boss has put him in charge of capturing Daishu (Tatsuya Nakadai), a monster who he believes responsible for bringing the happiness drug into Tokyo (and who also happens to be Gaye’s lover). All hell breaks loose when Daishu is captured by the anti-monster squad and Daishu’s son Shudo (Roy Cheung) decides to destroy the city. Can Taki and Kai save the day or will the differences between monsters and humans be too much for them to handle?
That is approximately 33% of the plot of Wicked City (or as I like to call it: Wacky City). This movie has so much going on that it still baffles me after multiple viewings. Double crosses and triple crosses and a duder humping a living pinball machine, this one has it all. Director Tai Kit Mak brings us a visionary splatterfest in primary colors that can barely sit still long enough to tell the viewer what the hell is going on. But then again, it’s also childishly simple in terms of character motivations and it’s pretty obvious that the writers (one of which is director Tsui Hark) don’t give a double goddamn about wallowing in the cheese in order to get this wild ass story told.
Oh, this cast is awesome. Leon Lai is great as the conflicted hero and Roy Cheung of Fight Back to School is perfect as the creepy evildoer. Jacky Cheung of A Chinese Ghost Story III gets all mopey and emo (waaa, I’m half monster, waaa!) but rises to the status of hero when the going gets tough. Prolific Japanese actor, Tatsuya Nakadai (Illusion of Blood), tries to steal the movie as the wise and completely bad ass 150 year old monster, Daishu. (But what about those lovely ladies? First up is Michelle Reis (A Chinese Ghost Story II) who kicks 100 different varieties of ass. She makes me want to find my own Happiness-addicted monstrette to call my own. Carmen Lee of Forbidden City Cop squeezes into her tight white dress oh so nicely which is probably standard issue for female anti-monster squad agents.
If you can look past the convoluted plot, great magic that awaits you. The word ‘spectacle’ barely does Wicked City justice. I can pretty much guarantee you’ve never seen anything quite like this before. Wicked City is the bright green mango cherry Slurpee version of Blade Runner. When you need your fix of eye-popping gore sequences and hyperactive fight scenes, give this one a spin. Oh yeah, be sure to watch the dubbed version for even more insanity and I also suggest you watch Wicked City as a double feature with Johnnie To’s ridiculous epic The Heroic Trio.
