31 Days of Halloween

31 DAYS OF HALLOWEEN CONTINUES...


VAMPIRE IN BROOKLYN (1995)




Some people don't value the importance of a good story. Vampire in Brooklyn isn't technically a bad movie. There are some funny scenes, especially when Eddie Murphy is playing multiple roles, and there are some good horror scenes directed by Wes Craven. But the story is so bad that none of that matters. It's about an African vampire, with some history in the Caribbean, who travels to Brooklyn to find and seduce the half-vampire daughter of a former colleague. It's an interesting tweak on a familiar premise but the script does nothing with it. It's just a plain, by-the-numbers, story of a vampire trying to find a mate. And yet, it's better than most of Eddie Murphy's movies from the 21st century. That's kind of sad when you think about it.

C-


THE FACULTY (1998)




In 1996, Scream re-energized the horror genre by infusing it with meta-comedy and making the characters aware that they're in a horror movie. Unfortunately, you can't say the same about The Faculty, which is by the same screenwriter. If you remove the self-referential humor from Scream, you're left with a standard slasher film about two crazed high school students killing their classmates. Sorry for the spoiler. But if you strip The Faculty from its cozy shell, you're essentially left with a rip-off of two classic science-fiction AND horror movies. Basically, The Faculty is about a high school that's over-taken by alien impersonators and few remaining students who are still human can't trust each other in fear that they might have been replaced by aliens. It's a combination of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and John Carpenter's remake of The Thing with no room for originality whatsoever. Worst of all, it's directed by Robert Rodriguez who at the time was put on a pedestal because of the success and acclaim from El Mariachi, Desperado and From Dusk till Dawn. So, The Faculty was his sell-out project. With the exception of Sin City in 2005 and Planet Terror in 2007, Rodriguez has mostly wasted his talents on questionable movies ever since he agreed to direct The Faculty. I almost feel like he sold his soul to Harvey Weinstein and ended up destroying his promising career.

"D" because I'm being generous today. It should really be an "F" for foolish career choices.


CURSED (2005)




If the GIF doesn't work for whatever reason, it's a werewolf giving the middle finger.

Yeah...

After the success of Scream in 1996, many people tried to replicate Kevin Williamson's formula of meta-comedy and teen horror, but no one was able to pull it off with the possible exception of Urban Legend in 1998. And Wes Craven, despite his history of cheap and overrated horror movies, became the perfect collaborator for Williamson. Craven doesn't get in the way of the humor. Instead, he makes sure the horror is effective. And 2005's Cursed is a good example of their teamwork. By this point, it's obvious that Williamson was burned out and his script is very weak. It's about a young woman and her teenage brother, played by Christina Ricci and Jesse Eisenberg, who are turned into werewolves by silly Hollywood people. The comedy is mostly random and the Los Angeles setting doesn't really work. But Wes Craven is so good at creating memorable horror scenes that the flaws in the story and characters almost come across as the movies charm. Cursed is such a distinctively Williamson and Craven movie that fans of the horror genre will be oddly amused by it.

C

"No."
- Dracula

29. King Kong (1933)



I saw this film while in 9th grade, but don't think I was ready to fully appreciate such an old film. Watching it now, I realize how great this is. This is a genuinely very exciting and fast paced adventure film. The characters are memorable and the themes of both directorial vision reaching insane heights along with the "civilized" world's exploitation of foreign lands come through. Also, the special effects used to bring Kong and the other monsters to life are amazing. They may look dated today, but they're still a huge breakthrough and there's a real artistry to them.

There are certain things that come with the territory of early 30s sound pictures that you have to roll with. The storytelling early on is a bit rushed, some of the blocking is awkward, and there's even some racial insensitivity, but even with those elements, King Kong is still an awesome film.

A

30. eXistenZ



In the future, organic virtual reality games have become a divisive product; some worship the makers, others rebel against them. The world's most famous game developer is targeted by a rebel group and goes on the run, but soon finds she and her accomplice must play her new game in order to save themselves.

I'm a big fan of David Cronenberg's work, but this movie never really did it for me. It has some interesting ideas and some cool visuals, but the story never really took off and I found new reason to care. I'm not really sure what anyone was trying to accomplish and the film never fully explores its concepts, even though there are some interesting details throughout. I will give the film credit for a very good ending. It isn't entirely unpredictable, but it's well-executed, helps clarify certain elements, and is nicely ambiguous. It's a good scene, but it isn't enough to really elevate eXistenZ.

I forget should also mention the excessive sexual imagery. Sex is a major theme in Cronenberg's work, but here it's just silly and a distraction.


Edit: In the months since seeing eXistenZ, the film has stuck with me. I'll probably give it another look at some point.

I really enjoyed The Ninth Gate.

You're saying it isn't?

Fair enough.

Film Thirty: Repulsion (1965)

When I first saw Repulsion I wasn’t terribly impressed with it, but as the years went on I started to see its influence in a lot of other movies like Black Swan and had been meaning to revisit it. I even went so far as to pick up the Criterion Blu-ray, and I’m glad I did because upon a second viewing the film’s importance is a lot more apparent to me. Now, some of the weakness are still there too. I think most of the supporting performances are kind of weak, and while Catherine Deneuve’s physical performance is quite good I think some of her line-readings are a bit off. This was Roman Polanski’s first English-language film and I’m not sure he quite had an ear for the language at this stage in his career (his next film, Cul-De-Sac has similar problems). Also, it has something of a slow start, but one that I think was probably necessary. Beyond that though I think this is a very effective and quite innovative psychological thriller that gets into the head of a disturbed person and really conveys their isolation and paranoia. It also has some material that must have seemed really shocking in 1965, it may have just been the first movie to take Psycho’s lead and bring the genre to the next level. This is Polanski at his rawest and needs to be watched with certain expectations, but I definitely “get” it this time around.
***1/2 out of Four

The Wicker Man





More of a mystery than a horror movie, though it gets darker than that near the end.  I really liked this.  It was certainly an intriguing mystery  surrounding this island pagan cult.  As a mainland police officer investigates a missing girl, he finds no one will admit she's missing.  A neat way to start things off.

The story of The Wicker Man and the cult intrigue really drew me to this classic, but there were other things which didn't strike as much of a cord with me.  Mostly the music, which kept repeating this highland tunes which I didn't feel contributed positively to the atmosphere.  I also wish that this would have been... well, scarier doesn't seem like the right word, since I don't want to sound like one of those punks who brags about old films not being scary.  But I do wish that the overall tone would have been just a little creepier and more off-putting somehow.  I think that would have pushed this up to one of my greats in the horror category, but instead its just one that I really liked.
8/10

To make it so that I could officially say for certain that I’d seen every one of the Friday the 13th movies I needed to tackle the 2009 remake. This was of course made during the endless wave of horror remakes that emerged during the 2000s (which finally seems to be receding now), and while most of those remakes were dumb and misguided, I always thought this one had some potential. Unlike Halloween and A Nightmare on Elm Street, the original Friday the 13th is kind of terrible and there are definitely ways to improve upon it. Indeed, this probably is one of the best Friday the 13th movies if only because it actually has some decent production value, but that isn’t really saying much. The best thing about the film is probably Jason himself. He feels more like a human killer here than a lumbering zombie and I like the way he moves quickly and kills mercilessly. Beyond that though, this movie suffers from most of the same problems Friday the 13th movies usually suffer from. The characters are horrible and unlikable, the actors are second-rate, and the whole thing is just incredibly stupid and uninspired. I was also kind of annoyed by how dimly lit the whole thing was. Obviously you’re trying to set a mood with this sort of thing, but you shouldn’t actively make it hard to see what’s going on. Also there’s this weird sub-plot where Jason has a woman tied up in his lair, which seems… out of character. Not sure what was going on there.  Anyway, this could have been a great opportunity to do something new and better with with the series and they chose not to.  What a waste.

So, now I’ve seen every damn Jason movie ever, what’s the takeaway? Well, I don’t think they’re very good… at all. I don’t think I’d even call a single one of them “good” except maybe Freddy Vs. Jason, but then again that one was basically a Freddy movie that happened to have Jason in it. Honestly I’m not sure why this series became so famous. Yes, Jason in the hockey mask is a fairly iconic image, but there were a ton of slasher movie villains with better costumes that didn’t take off. In general they just seem like a lot of very cheap and very basic movies and you’d think people would have gotten sick of them sooner than they did. Just the same, I somehow don’t regret having seen them all. I don’t know, it just feels like some sort of accomplishment for some reason.
*1/2 out of Four


So, now that I’ve seen every Jason movie, every Freddy movie, and every Halloween movie, I need a new set of bad horror series with millions of sequels that I can slowly watch in October over the course of years. There weren’t really any other good options from the 80s or 90s so I guess the trick is to go with movies from my own generation. The Saw series is an obvious go-to, then there’s the Final Destination series I suppose. I would make Paranormal Activity the third, but I’ve actually been keeping up with that one… oh, oh god no, anything but… the Resident Evil movies. Yeah, I’m going there. The success of these Resident Evil movies has kind of baffled me over the years. The trailers have made them all look not just stupid but also kind of inept, they just look poorly produced. However, they keep making these things and they keep getting theatrical releases so somebody must like them and besides, I’ve certainly come to like the video games they’re based on so at the very least I’ll get some neat references to them.

Alright, so, my expectations for this were so low that anything short of this being in the top ten worst Hollywood movies I’d ever seen would be something of a pleasant surprise… and indeed, it isn’t that bad. I think why this series has succeeded (financially at least) where other video game adaptations have failed is that it is largely unbeholden to the specific plot points of the games but is very interested in representing the various images and action elements as faithfully as possible. The zombie dogs and the licker are very similar to their game counterparts, but the characters are all completely different. In fact the film is in many ways a lot more video-game-like than the actual games. They abandon whole “haunted masion” thing pretty quickly and go straight into a science-fiction laboratory for most of the film and fill it with things like laser traps. Hell, the actual zombies almost seem like an afterthought. I’ll also give it this: Milla Jovovich is actually a pretty decent screen presence for how underwritten her character is. I think Ms. Jovovich’s career would have turned out a lot better if she hadn’t tied it to the likes of Paul W. S. Anderson and his ilk. Michelle Rodriguez also does a pretty good job of giving the audience what they generally expect from her.

However, the rest of the cast is absolutely horrible and for that matter so is most of the film. Despite its zombie theme this isn’t really a horror movie at all, it’s more of an action/survival movie along the lines of Deep Blue Sea or Dante’s Peak or something. These action scenes aren’t really anything to write home about either, most of them have a distinctly direct-to-DVD feel and the CGI has not aged very well for the most part. Make no mistake, this is a bad movie, but there are reasons why it’s held in slightly higher regard than the kind of dreck Uwe Boll makes. Take that backhanded compliment for what it’s worth.
*1/2 out of Four

Well, there are about fifteen minutes left in October and I just made it... wow.  Last year I got distracted by a video game (Grand Theft Auto V) and abandoned the whole thing after about seventeen films and this time I made it the whole 31 days and then some.  Got to say, I'm kind of surprised I did.  Anyway, I don't know whether or not I'll try it again next year, but I certainly had fun this year.  This is the only time of year when I really let loose and just watch a lot of terrible movies and don't really feel bad about doing so.

Well done, everyone.