31 Days of Halloween

Day Fourteen: Ichi the Killer



I'd heard much about the controversial violence of Ichi the Killer and found myself intrigued, a feeling magnified when I realized the director is Takashi Miike, the man beyond the very strong film 13 Assassins. Unfortunately, I found Ichi the Killer to be an extremely unpleasant viewing experience. The story has to do with warring gangs and a mentally disturbed man named Ichi being manipulated to take down both sides. The film has an odd tone in that it is both extremely violent but maintains a sort of wacky comedy style. This never worked for me as the film is too brutal and violent to really be funny, and too silly to be taken seriously as a thriller. Miike really tries to push his style, and while at times it comes off as interesting, more often than not it's just obnoxious. Then we have the film's excessive violence. At times, the set-pieces are inspired and creative, but there often let down by some horrendous CGI.

I did like one thing about the film and that is the character of Kakihara. The guy had a really unique and memorable look, and Tadanobu Asano gives a very cool performance. Beyond that, I found the film tiresome and I was pretty happy when it finally ended.

D-

I was at Wal-Mart a couple of weeks ago when my mother in law was in town and I saw that display. I nearly thought about picking some of them up. I have a few of the "75th anniversary" editions on DVD, but they had several of the classics I only had on vhs.

Day Fifteen: The Phantom Carriage



This silent Swedish film is perhaps most famous for it's influence on legendary fimmaker Ingmar Bergman, but the film also had really cutting edge special effects for its day and an innovative flashback structure. The visuals of the grim reaper are especially haunting, and the ghostly special effects are indeed strong. In general, Victor Sjostrom's visuals are great, as is his performance in the lead role. The flashback structure is also pretty neat, though admittedly it becomes easy to be lost in the flashbacks and lose sight of what's actually going on. If the film has a major problem though, it's that it peaks too early. The highlight of the film, by far, is the legend of the reaper and the early scenes depicting his plight. David Holm's story is good too, but it feels lesser when stacked against the supernatural elements. Still, there is a lot of great stuff here and for a film made in 1921, it feels way ahead of its time.

A-

In the time since seeing The Phantom Carriage, the film has really stuck with me. I might bump my score up.

Halloween (2007) 




I don't care for slasher movies at all.  Halloween, Friday the 13th, Nightmare of Elm Street, who cares?  Apparently a lot people because for some reason you can always find people who take a strange sense of pride in having seen all of them.  Why?  They're all the same.  I keep hearing 'well we just like watching how they kill their victims' or 'they're actually fun to watch.  Are you serious?  'Friday the 13th 5 is the best but 6 and 8 are dumb.'  Huh?  I also don't get how they can keep having villains who are seemingly immortal and unstoppable.  It takes away any suspense, intrigue or wonder.  We're just watching people get killed over and over again.  Not much has changed with Rob Zombie's pointless remake.  It's still killing machine Michael Myers slashing his way through town but this time the execution leaves even less to be desired.  

In this reboot, we're introduced to Michael and get a solid hour of seeing him in his abusive home, abusive school and finally, after a slew of murders, we see him interact in his mental asylum.  Half the movie is dedicated to this which is stuff we don't need to see.  We're supposed to feel sympathetic for Michael but he still winds up being this gigantic murderer.  Are we supposed to feel sorry for him?  If he's still the mute, indestructible slaughter machine then why dedicate half the movie to his backstory?  It doesn't leave much time for him to wander around killing a bunch of horny, high school chicks who for some reason never went to my school.  With its mix of gore, ridiculously high body count and needless rape scenes, this movie is meant to shock more than scare.  Instead we're given a waste, something that doesn't add to the genre, medium or life in general.

It was pretty easy to make fun of this thing before it came out. This is a movie about a haunted Skype call, if that doesn’t sound like a lame attempt to cash in on internet buzzwords and the success of movies like Paranormal Activity I don’t know what does. However, as the movie started to actually get screened a surprising number of critics came out to defend it. Indeed, this movie is better than you’d think and the lowered expectations probably did do it some favors. The movie essentially captures a single computer monitor and up on the silver screen as five teenagers on a Skype call go through a deadly ordeal over the course of an evening when the ghost of a former friend takes over their technology, reveals their deep dark secrets, and kills anyone who dares to disconnect with this doomed communication. To enjoy the film one must overcome two major hurdles: 1. they need to be willing to go along with the whole “haunted internet” concept and 2. they have to be willing to find some empathy for these teenage characters even though they are all awful people in the way that teenagers usually are. To the film’s credit, it seems to be well aware of how unpleasant these people are and actually has a pretty interesting arc in which the main protagonist, who is initially set up to be a sort of innocent “final girl,” slowly comes to realize and admit that she’s not any better than the other teenagers and the whole film is about these people’s awfulness coming home to roost. The movie does start to lose some of its effectiveness after about two thirds of its running time and it does kind of feel almost like a short from one of those VHS or ABCs of Death compilations run amok, but it does have a lot more cred than I expected and its format is novel enough to make it an interesting watch.

*** out of Four

I'm actually pretty interested in seeing Unfriended, mainly because of the style.

Day Eighteen: The Babadook



The Babadook was easily the most praised horror film of 2014, I had to set on the sidelines like a chump because, for some reason, the film never opened in Canada. Thankfully, I was finally able to see this and it lives up to the hype, for the most part anyway. Jennifer Kent, in her freshman effort, shows a lot of promise, exerting a lot of control and building a really tense atmosphere. The film also does a really good job developing it's characters. I really cared about this mother and son (played very well by Essie Davis and Noah Wiseman, respectively) and would have been interested in their story even without the horror elements. On that note, I thought the film did an excellent job portraying what dealing with a special needs child can be like. My little brother is autistic and while he's ultimately very different from the child in this film, I definitely was able to relate a lot of what The Babadook represented to my own experiences. Obviously the literal experiences I've had don't really compare to the content here, and the nature of the relationship is different since I'm an older brother and not a parent, but a lot of the core ideas are similar. The Babadook himself is a pretty frightening entity and the horror set-pieces work really well for the most part.

If there's one thing I really disagree with, it's the people who've been praising The Babadook for its originality. The Babadook is many things, but original isn't really one of them. There's pretty direct influence from movies like The Shining and 1408, and this has more in common with contemporary mainstream horror films like Insidious and Sinister than I expected, though I think it's more interesting and better executed than those two films. Having said that, much as I enjoyed this film, I do think the climax is pretty bloated. The point of it is made early on and from there the film's momentum begins to drain. I'm also not totally sold on the ending, though it is interesting. Still, even with these flaws I did really respond to The Babadook and it is probably the best horror film I've seen in years.

A-

I picked this up a while back when Amazon was having a one day sale.  Every case has the original as well as the sequels.  Even the Abbot & Costello movies are included.  It's got every movie from the Universal Monsters series except for one.  For no readily apparent reason, they omitted the original Phantom of the Opera and instead included the lackluster remake.  Since the original is a public domain film it's easy to find, but that's not the point for collectors!

Film Seventeen: Don’t Look Now (1973)


I think I sort of got off on the wrong foot with this movie when I first saw it, in part because I’d been given the wrong expectations. The movie had been billed to me as one of the greatest horror movies of all time (emphasis on horror) and instead of seeing one of the scariest movies what I got was five minutes of horror at the end preceded by two hours of Donald Sutherland moping around Venice. That was a somewhat immature reaction and I had a much better time with the movie now that I can go in knowing that it’s meant to be this sort of arty meditation on grief that just so happens to have a light supernatural element and one scene of violence at the end. The film’s strengths are readily apparent, the cinematography is really beautiful and there are a handful of real standout scenes like the tragic opening, the famous sex scene, the scene where the protagonist finds himself dangling from a scaffolding, and of course the film’s climax which seems both like a slasher scene but also like a man’s metaphorical facing of his demons. On the other hand, the film stars Donald Sutherland and I really don’t like that guy for reasons that are entirely unreasonable. Dude has a rat-like face and dumb looking hair-doo. Also the film can be a little slow at times and while like the film’s editing a lot it does occasionally go down some odd paths that don’t really make sense to me.

***1/2
out of Four

Day Twenty: It Follows



In the last few years, it seems a lot of the genre films that receive a lot of praise are ones that are self-conscious genre deconstructions. In the realm of horror, the poster child for this is The Cabin in the Woods, but it’s a trend that can be spotted in other films as well and I’m growing tired of. It’s not the deconstruction of genre that bothers me, it’s the smug attitude these films have about pointing out genre conventions which annoy me. Horror’s most recently acclaimed film, It Follows, certainly seems like it could be such a film at first glance. The film certainly plays with conventions of the genre relating to sexual promiscuity, and it’s also a pretty clear throwback to the horror films of the late 1970s and 80s (namely John Carpenter), but it’s not defined a sense of “irony”. Instead, this is an interesting little horror film which chooses a unique angle and is made with conviction.

Jay (Maika Monroe) is a young girl living with her single mother (Debbie Williams) and sister, Kelly (Lili Sepe). Jay has been seeing a boy named Hugh (Jake Weary) and after a few dates the two have sex. After this, Hugh explains to Jay that he has been being stalked by a supernatural entity which can take the form of any human being (someone known or a stranger) which kills by touching the victim. He inherited this affliction by having sex with someone also “cursed”, and the only way to remove it is to pass it to another through sex. Naturally, Jay doesn’t believe him, but it soon becomes apparent is words are true as various forces only she can see have been relentlessly pursuing her. Her options are to flee, or to try and pass it on to someone else.

The exact nature of what has caused or created this strange entity is never revealed, and that’s probably for the best. “It” is a lot creepier when you don’t exactly know what it is. Such ambiguity has also opened the film up to a number of metaphorical readings. The prevailing wisdom is that “It” represents AIDS or other sexually transmitted diseases. It’s certainly a plausible theory given how it spreads, and the fact that those being followed don’t tell their partners can represent how some people with diseases in real life don’t come clean with their partners. However in real life this lack of information comes from selfish desire, whereas in It Follows it stems from basic survival needs. Because of this, I interpret “It” as more of a manifestation of guilt regarding promiscuity and certain societal pressures.

Personally, I really like the fact that It Follows invites interpretation and gives the audience something intellectual to chew on. There’s also something to be said about the fact that teen sexuality is intrinsically linked with the horror genre, and here it’s essential to the plot. However the film doesn’t hinge on a viewer’s ability to read into the sexual politics on display. Those looking for an effective horror film should be satisfied as this is a really neat high concept executed well. Director David Robert Mitchell puts together some really solid horror set-pieces and effectively builds a sense of dread throughout. This is a slow burn, but this really contributes to the atmosphere. The camera work here is also really slick and the visual style well-realized. Mitchell was also clearly influenced by the works of John Carpenter. The suburban setting is very reminiscent of Halloween, the killer that can take on multiple identities can be compared to The Thing, and the idea that only a few can see the creature also reminded me of They Live. These connections are pretty clear to those who know, but I appreciate how the film isn’t trying to be self-aware or wink at these audiences with these references. The score by composer Disasterpeace is also heavily inspired by the synth heavy beats which are so prominent in many of Carpenter’s films. It can be a little overbearing at points, but for the most part it’s pretty damn awesome, and a highlight. The only throwback element which bothered me is that the film can’t quite commit to a time period. There is a lot of 70s iconography which fits the style, but it’s also clear the film is set in modern day.

I do think the writing here can be a little problematic. Much as I enjoy the high concept and think Mitchell builds a number of nice scenes around it, things do start to get repetitive. We get similar scenes involving the gang of kids over and over and while they never become dull, it is noticeable. Additionally, I’m not sure the film ever really hit the highs it could have with the central idea. There just seems to be something missing. It’s also important to note that Mitchell’s roots lie in mumblecore and the more annoying hipster elements of that subgenre do come through a little in the characterization, particularly early on. Scenes of these teens all sitting around watching black and white horror movies on TV or reading Dostoevsky’s The Idiot on a seashell shaped kindle strike as false. Simply put, I don’t really know anyone who actually acts like that. These elements do dissipate once the horror becomes the predominant focus, but they do sneak back in from time to time.

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’ve been underwhelmed by the horror genre for the past few years. A lot of what’s coming out of Hollywood just looks lame and even the horror films I like tend to be with a number of caveats. However I have hope that things are on the upswing. Last year’s The Babadook was an exceptional work and while It Follows doesn’t quite excel at that level (though both are really quite different), this is still one of the strongest efforts from the genre currently out there. The film certainly has problems, but it’s also a stylish and clever work which I enjoyed my time with.

B+