Ghastly Door – Horror Review Of Film

Horror Review Of Film

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March 20, 2010

Machete Moonlight Reviews

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Weird Town

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I’ve known Shaun Hammel for over a year now. Whenever I read anything he’s written, short or long, I’ve known immediately it was him. He has a style that’s instantly recognizable, cutting-edge and crystal-clear.

Shaun’s fiction writing skills will be on display here soon enough. He’s set to appear for the Horror Short Story Of The Week in the near future. Right now, we get to enjoy his unique interpretations of some of today’s most relevant horror films.

Shaun authors his own highly respected web presence. Please visit him, if you want more:

http://alcoholicnightmare.blogspot.com/

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Now let’s get on to the good stuff. Grab you pop-corn, grab your hatchet, and settle in for an unstable ride in a freaky abandoned carnival…roll ‘em!

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rust ride

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Sleepless, Dario Argento (director)While not his best giallo– it’s several marks under his better ones, like Deep Red, Tenebre, Phenomena, Four Flies On Grey Velvet– this movie entertained me and gave me a few chills and cringes. The murder scenes are not particularly original, but they are definitely cringe-worthy. A face gets smashed over and over again against a wall. A woman gets repeatedly stabbed in the mouth with an English Horn. Etc.Max Von Sydow, as the retired and senile homicide detective, is a bit of a quirky character but I didn’t find him wrongly cast here, as one reviewer stated on Amazon. I enjoyed his odd one-sided conversations with his pet bird, Marcello.While I was 90% certain of who the murderer was early on, there was still enough ambiguity in the characters to throw some doubt there. His camera work was, as is typical for Argento, inventive and phantasmagoric. The camera swirls in and out, revolves around scenes, moves in and out. The lighting is also strategically dim in all the right places.

The ending was a bit goofy, and the murderer’s tell-all confession before his death reminded me of a bad impression of Matt Damon for some reason. Bad dubbing and sometimes silly dialogue, almost a trademark of Argento films, didn’t distract me enough from the interesting mystery story involving a murderous dwarf obsessed with a nursery rhyme and plenty of believable red herrings.

And a nod for Goblin’s score as well. Personally I rank this score in the top 3 scores for Argento films, after Deep Red and Suspiria.

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Christian Amusement

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REC, Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza, (directors)

First off, I’m one of the people who side with Blair Witch Projectbeing an excellent film. The first time I watched I was genuinely chilled and on edge throughout. The second time, it did lose a bit of its punch. The ending was a bit too vague and senseless, but in my mind the best horror film ever shot entirely from the perspective of a camera crew.

The second best is the one I just got through watching, REC. It is one amazing thrill-ride. The last 20 minutes or so are harrowing, mysterious and just plain intense. It even ended on a big time horror movie cliche, where the victim gets dragged by the evil thing away in the darkness, but I didn’t mind that so much. And kudos for using a substance that actually looked like real blood. It really helped to highlight the rawness of this film.

This movie is done by people who are steeped in the genre. There are hints from their influences throughout. There’s Blair Witch, obviously, a bit of 28 days later(the rage virus and the plague in the apartment building are similar in effect, if not similar in origin) and Session 9 (the secret recordings found that clue us in on what’s going on underneath the surface of the film).

One complaint I do have is the sudden and out of the blue connection between the virus, the little girl, and devil possession. It just leaves too many questions. So many that it seems a bit contrived and unfulfilled. Another quibble is, even though RECclocks in at a swift 75 minutes, it still could have been shaved down. A few of the early scenes seemed superfluous and easily axed without harming the integrity of the film. Obviously some of the slower scenes help to give depth to the characters, make them all the more human, etc, but still there was a bit too much of it, in my opinion. It was almost as if a nearly flawless short film was stretched out as far as possible in order to make it a feature length film..

There are of course the same logic problems Blair Witchhas when making movies from the perspective of a hand-held camera. One being, at some point, when the terror and panic reach a certain level, it seems highly unlikely the cameraman is going to continue filming. But REC for the most part, and in some scenes ingeniously, by-passes this flaw.

All in all, a pretty darn pleasing and effective horror film.

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abandoned-roller-coaster

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The Wicker Man (1973 version), Robin Hardy (director)

There is just something about this film. I know that’s corny and a cop out, but if the Farrelly brothers can get away with it (regarding Mary) then I suppose I can too. There is just something about Sergeant Howie. There’s just something seriously weird and addicting about this movie.

The music is odd and light, airy, yet mysterious. My favorite song is, not surprisingly, “Willow’s Song”. A lovely, slightly melancholy lilt to it. Made more so by Sergeant Howie’s torturous few minutes fighting those deep dark urges that momentarily consume him, bringing out a full sweat as he is drawn to the wall opposite Willow’s room, where she sings her song and dances in the buff.

Without the consummate acting of Edward Woodward, this movie might not have worked, at least not as well. When he finally realizes he’s been duped the whole time, and sees, and I mean, really sees, The Wicker Man– he exclaims, “Oh Jesus Christ!”. It is a really powerful moment. But he only gets that faceless tower of wood staring blankly down at him, and the uniform gaiety– a hallmark of all that are blindly and wholly swayed by any religion– seen on all the dancing faces of the townsfolk during their demented May Day celebration.

Best Hammer Film? Quite possibly.

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Ferris

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Frontiers– This film’s strength ended up being it’s major weakness: it’s unflinching violence. At some indefinable point, well into the second half, the plot went from intriguing, fun and somewhat horrifying, to stale and predictable and cheesy in about as much time as it takes to snap an Achilles’ heel with a pair of giant forceps.It basically became a version of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” set in the French countryside, although about ten times bloodier. But the movie is not all bad, most of the acting is top-notch and there are several great chase scenes between the young thieves and the weird Nazi clan. Unfortunately the last twenty minutes were just plain predictable and seemed to rely on the old horror/revenge/gore film paradox, whereby we are supposed to believe what is happening in the film with the strictest of logic but at the same time everything that transpires seems cartoonish and full of logic holes. Somehow, just somehow, we just have to believe that our “heroine” will make it through, no matter what the odds. Schwarzenegger would be proud.And the last five or ten minutes were just intolerable, with the blood and muck drenched heroine shaking and barely able to walk from shock (kudos for attempting to get that close to reality), after being beaten severely by a rifle butt and the hands of several very well-built men, yet still somehow, miraculously, survives that and a fierce gun battle against two women, with one even packing a machine-gun. All for the sake of what? To end their movie on the most over-used cliché in film history? “The good guy must prevail.” Although they did tack on a swell little irony with her getting caught by the police at a roadblock. A little too late to save the film for me.Enjoyed the set up, was mildly intrigued by the weird Nazi clan, and was totally let down by the ending. All the hinting at the malformed children in the mine shaft ended up being a total let down as well. What could have been a very interesting plot device, similar to what was used in a far better film, End of the Line, was all lost here for a bland and painfully rhapsodic revenge trope.

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March Humpty

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AntiChrist–

Interesting that they dedicated the film to Tarkovsky, I thought of his films immediately when first watching. Ultimately, this movie ends leaving me with more questions unanswered than answered, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The use of the slow-motion scenes and the surreal dissolves are simply, absolutely brilliant (in the American sense of the word, meaning sparkling genius). But was Gainsborough’s character a witch all along? Or perhaps just simply insane. You simply can’t explain away the events in a linear and non-abstract Sherlock Holmes kind of way. There are too many scenes containing outright supernatural or magical events. Was Dafoe’s character the AntiChrist? And it took these occasionally incoherent and brutal events to transpire before he could fully realize it? I may be missing a back story; I’ve simply not researched the movie at all.

The first hour of the movie is beautiful filmmaking. I wouldn’t describe anything here as “tabloid sensationalism,” as someone critical of the film suggested. It is very raw and powerful and real emotion, grief. Interspersed are the surreal and unnerving scenes that make you at once cringe and want to know more. The unusual camera work doesn’t seem contrived or unduly egocentric to me at all. I think it really enhances the overall bleak and emotional raw mood of this movie.. An argument could be made that the director perhaps owes a bit too much to Tarkovsky or Bergman, but I don’t think so. I think he rather beautifully crafts his unusual shots, the plain amazing and beautiful ultra-slow motion scenes especially. nd they’re not just there for show. He intricately places these. Some of the wildly spinning shots of the forest are also quite disturbing.

In the second half is where things get a bit fuzzier, while at the same time acutely more hideous and violent. This is some of the most cringing, bold and never before seen violence in Horror film history. It isn’t at all artful, as say the violence in Dario Argento’s films. And there isn’t a whole lot of it, but what’s there is pretty brutal. And the fact that there really isn’t much of it, makes what’s there even more darkly poignant. We see a woman cut off her clitoris with a pair of scissors. We see the woman jerk off her husband and cumming blood. It’s pretty sinister. I absolutely don’t see it in the realm of so called “gore porn” whatsoever. Whether she is falling under the spell of “Satan’s Church” or just going insane, her acts of violence actually fit perfectly, in that they seem bizarrely random, with little or no meaning. Random, bizarre acts of violence perpetrated by those with severe mental illness very much mirror her acts as well, using items within reach. I honestly didn’t find any of the scenes of violence or sex gratuitous. The theme of sex is very prominent as well in the movie, and could be further explored.

Yet there are a number of pesky problems in the plot. The last half, and ending of the movie relies too much on impressionistic hinting rather than actual exposition of a plot. Is there a plot? I haven’t researched the possibility of a back story here that I may be not aware of.

So, overall, I have to say, I’m impressed with this movie. There were some truly disturbing scenes for me. Any mad woman with scissors in her hands, always raises a hair on my neck. That one scene with the mutilated fox actually speaking, saying something like, “Chaos Reigns”, was a tad corny, and I laughed my ass off. The director probably could of left that scene out.

My only complaint is, does any of it make any real sense? But this movie has a lingering quality and will certainly make me think longer about certain themes in it. The rational vs irrational/dream mind, the “evil” qualities of nature, the beautiful transforming into the hideous. The artificial chapters in the movie, to make it like a dark fairy tale, really don’t do the movie any justice. There are really only two parts, the first half, and the second. The beautiful and the hideous. And the epilogue, which is either release, or recognition (if in fact Dafoe’s character is the Antichrist).

Well, that’s all I can blabber about this movie right now..

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March sculpt

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Horror Review Of Film