Genre: Slasher Director: Aharon Keshales, Navot Papushado Country: Israel Availability: DVD
As the very first horror movie to come out of Israel, Rabies (or Kalevet), has been highly anticipated in the horror community since it's extremely successful debut at the Tribeca Film Festival last year. And there's so much shit clogging the horror pipes these days that I get extremely excited for any flick that's well reviewed, so my expectations were high. However, I didn't know this was a slasher movie going in, and with a name like "Rabies" I was expecting some kind of virus movie. Boy, was I wrong. The movie is essentially about various normal people who get stranded in the same area of woods, which we soon discover is littered with active mines, and they all make really poor choices which mostly end with Murder Death Kills.
The movie is actually quite strange at times. It's kind of all over the place and while you keep waiting for the other shoe to drop you're surprised that when it does, it wasn't exactly the shoe you were waiting for.
The actors were all very good and I was pleasantly surprised (as I always am when I make this observation), that the script was very well written with moments of bizarre conversation, humor and heart. There are small side stories that we glimpse of but never explore, and a supposed serial killer who we never actually see kill anyone. And whereas in most horror movies the line is clear between the good guys and the bad guys, here the lines are blurred so it's strange when you're not actually for or against anyone.
The one real complaint that I had with Rabies was that I thought it ended abruptly. I guess I just felt there was still more story to tell and was disappointed by all the unexplained motivations of certain characters.
Still, Rabies was a fun little blood-fest, so grab some friends and a bottle of wine and mock the inexplicable reason for a group of tennis players in uniform to be lost in the woods.
Genre: Zombie Director: Nick Lyon Country: United States Availability: Netflix Watch Instantly
I'm actually quite conflicted on 2012: Zombie Apocalypse. There are so many redeeming elements to this low-budget zombie feature that they almost make up for the really bad elements - which are mainly really shitty zombies and the casting of Taryn Manning, who is fucking horrible.
We'll start with the good so I can sufficiently get your hopes up, and then end with the bad so I can adequately squash any dreams you may have of there finally being another good zombie movie out there, because naturally you dream of such things, as do I.
The movie starts with a thorough playback of the fall of the world due to a virus that turns every living thing into, that's right, (really shitty) zombies. These quick snapshots of a world falling to pieces gives us a solid feeling of desolation and despair. We're then quickly introduced to our main players, first to the three individuals who have spent the last 6 months in hiding and who are ill-equipped to deal with defending themselves against zombies, and then to the four individuals who swoop in and save their dumb asses. The story continues like most zombie apocalypse stories do, the group of survivors band together and travel the dangerous roads on a mission to find that "safe zone" that everyone hears rumors of. They take refuge in various abandoned buildings, some of our players die and we're introduced to new players, and there is always the scene where their beloved friend turns into a zombie and someone has to shoot him in the head, female crying ensues.
The casting of our characters was actually solid picks, these actors work hard to pull their weight in the face of some truly dorky dialog ("There was a zombie, so I killed it.") and of course there's Ving Rhames (wielding a sledge hammer for the whole movie, which he only puts down once in order to wield a fucking CHAINSAW) who should be in every zombie movie ever made. Ever.
The wide shots of the city our characters are travelling through is actually quite effective in helping the perception that the world as we know it is dead and gone. The city that they show is grey and abandoned, smoke hangs in the air everywhere from the fires burning out of control in various neighborhoods. There's no sound, no movement... just a stillness that is only broken with, ZOMBIES!
The script actually introduces us to some fun zombie labels, some of them we were already are privy to thanks to the Dawn of the Dead remake, like "runner" and "twitcher", and others have been used in the likes of The Walking Dead comics, like "packs" and "hordes", but the few I hadn't heard before were "newborns", "rotters" and "burners" (zombies you set on fire that then attack you, so now you're not only still being attacked by a zombie but now it's a zombie on fire).
There were nice homages, a strong black female character wielding a samurai sword (The Walking Dead), a zombie cheerleader still holding onto her pom-pons (Romero's Land of the Dead), a mention of a dead guy named Kirkman (creator of The Walking Dead), the concept that the zombies are learning (Romero).
But have I mentioned the zombies are shitty? They SO are. First off they are completely inconstant with each other in terms of appearance. I'm pretty sure they had an open casting call for zombies and told everyone that they were in charge of their own makeup. Some of them look like their faces are covered in white paint with some blood around the mouth, some of them aren't in any makeup at all and just have blood around the mouth, and some of them are in like, monster movie style "What the hell is that thing supposed to be" kind of makeup. They don't even resemble zombies, they just look like fucked-up creatures who look like they're either burn victims or demons going to a KISS concert. And none of them act like each other. Some of fast runners, but like normal chasing your dog down the street kind of running and not like, I'm going to eat your fucking brains kind of running. And others, I shit you not, act like gorillas. Some are doing that lame limp and drag your leg thing while others are just slowly lumbering with their arms outstretched like they're The Mummy. This movie was in desperate need of a Zombie Coordinator because the zombies, well, they're supposed to be the best part. Their name is in the title. Their name is the name for an entire genre of movies. Without them, it's just people running around an empty city looking for something to be afraid of.
Speaking of being afraid, this movie was not scary at all. The kill scenes looked like they were happening in a video game - completely fake CGI awfulness. The movie takes place mostly during the day and mostly out in the open so you rarely ever have that claustrophobic feeling of being trapped with zombies and no way out. And for a world overrun with zombies there are surprisingly few of them when, for 80% of the movie these people are walking the empty streets of a city and no zombie is in sight. The zombies don't wander off alone so you never have just random zombies filling up the background, instead they're always in hordes and they're always attacking you like some crazed football team, running together full charge ahead. Ooooh, scary.
But! The end is pretty amazing in a so bad it's good kind of way. "Here kitty, kitty."
Despite my better judgement I still liked 2012: Zombie Apocalypse and recommend it to any of you who are hard up for a zombie movie. But it's not a good movie. And it's got really shitty zombies.
Genre: Slasher Director: Tobe Hooper Country: United States Availability: DVD
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre - for a film that is now 38 years old its reputation for being brutal and horrifying still precedes it. The history of the horror movie genre is just as long and as rich as any other genre in movie making. There have been scary movies that have tested the tolerance of its audience since the silent film, and the controversies surrounding their violence, gore and gratuitous sex and nudity are just as old still. Thousands of movies have been made under the blood-soaked umbrella of the horror genre and yet to this day there remain very few that are remembered past their shelf life. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is one such movie.
The first scene that we're introduced to is completely surreal. We're forced to look at a decaying, gooey corpse posed awkwardly atop a tombstone in midday as we listen to a radio broadcast play. The unsettling part comes in when you realize that you're so caught up with listening to what the broadcast is saying about the recent brutal murders and the discoveries of bodies that you forget that you're staring at this horrifying, unwavering statue of death and decay for over a minute. And for all of you horror movie buffs out there you'll note that the opening sequence of the photographs being taken introduce us, perhaps for the first time ever, to that creepy camera sound effect (later to be reused in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake as well as other slasher flicks that follow).
The movie setup is one that is tried and true - a carload full of friends on the road to somewhere end up in the middle of nowhere and soon after tragedy befalls them one by one. The characters aren't particularly remarkable, nor is the dialog, but the places where TTCM shines makes all the difference - like the gritty home video feel; the complete helplessness and clumsiness of the wheelchair-bound brother; the utter unpredictability of the hitchhiker; the atmosphere of all of the buildings and so forth. And that's all before we even get to Leatherface. The terror truly starts when Leatherface makes his first appearance, bursting through the rusty metal door like some faceless Frankenstein's monster, swallowing you up before you've even had the chance to scream. The violence starts from there and while it's horrific it's practically bloodless, your terror is born with the endless screaming and flailing and running and ... screaming. There is a lot of screaming. Let's talk about the screaming.
The performance given by Marilyn Burns, who plays Sally - the main female character, is unrelenting and intense and one of the most remarkable elements of the movie. She goes from zero to one hundred in moments and never stops, never lets up. Her fear and her reaction to that fear just grows and becomes more manic and desperate, in the end she more resembles a tortured, mad, blood-soaked wild animal than anything resembling a person. And the final scene is so iconic in horror movie history that even if you haven't seen TTCM you're probably familiar with the image of Leatherface standing in the road, chainsaw raised over his head as he spins wildly in circles. To this day, 38 years later, TTCM is still regarded as one of the most important and influential horror movies ever made. And having only just seen in for the second time in ten years, I might just have to agree.
Genre: Vampires Director: Kathryn Bigelow Country: United States Availability: Amazon Instant Video
It seems like every time I watch Near Dark I have a completely different opinion about it. The first time I saw it, some 7 or so years ago, I actually turned it off about an hour in - I was bored and the movie was terrible. I gave it a second chance last year and I think my expectations were so incredibly low that I actually found myself enjoying the movie and walked away giving it four stars. Having recently purchased Near Dark I was looking forward to rewatching what I remembered to be a gritty, gory vampire movie that lacked all of the cheesy romantic melodrama that most vampire flicks drown themselves in. Before I go any further let it be said, here and now, that I have a terrible, terrible memory when it comes to movies. It's one of the reasons why I tend to rewatch them so many times because I genuinely don't remember much about them.
So imagine my surprise when my expectations were yet again thwarted and I found myself, mouth agape, at the absolute horrific dialog and over-the-top acting and ridiculous plot. Once again, like in so many movies that want to fit a romance into the story but don't want to dedicate the time to make it realistic, a boy and a girl meet and fall in love in a matter of hours. She turns him into a vampire and he doesn't want to be one. Then her crazy friends come into the picture and things go from bad to worse. And by worse I mean Bill Paxton. I don't doubt than sometime in the 90's Bill Paxton hired an acting coach and became somewhat competent at his craft, but in the 80's he had the power to single-handedly ruin an entire film just by being in it (see Aliens). Then add that dorky strange kid from Teen Witch, Joshua Miller, and you have downright unwatchable scenes throughout much of the movie.
Vampire movies tend to run in trends. Right now the trend seems to be smart, sleek, dangerous and gory. The trend in the 90's was sex, lust and partying. The 60's and 70's seemed to be gothic, mysterious, frightening and ... lesbianism. But the trend in the 80's? Awful. We had vampire comedies and rebellious, rowdy vampires. But what The Lost Boys got right with their rowdy vampires, Near Dark got all wrong. These vampires are not only rowdy, they're obnoxious. They're the loud frat boys at the party that you're constantly muttering "douchebag" to behind their backs. They aren't funny or sexy or charming. In fact most of them don't seem to shower. They're like a pack of wild dogs eating and humping their way across the land. And what's with them constantly losing track of time and then having to race against time to beat the impending sun rise? Seriously, after being alive for hundreds of years you'd think these guys would get their priorities straight and invest in some serious timepieces. And the ludicrous ending was just the icing on the roadkill.
One of the fun things to come from Near Dark (aside from my constant heckling) was that during the bar scene I noticed what eerie similarities there are between The Vampire Diaries vamps Damon and Stefan and the Near Dark vamps Severen and Caleb.
Genre: Vampires Director: Ted Nicolaou Country: United States Availability: DVD
Subspecies is one of those horror movies that is beloved by all who saw it as a kid, and bemoaned by those who see it for the first time as adults. Unfortunately I am of the latter camp and therefore this review will be decorated with words like ridiculous and silly.
I am actually quite the fan of ridiculous and silly and my tastes walk a fine line of the qualities that those words often times possess: sword fight between ugly vampire dude and hot vampire dude in a dank castle with babes in nightgowns fighting each other with fire - awesome ridiculous; girl gets a cut on her arm and is henceforth thrust into a constant fevered sleep which allows ugly vampire dude to feed on her undetected - dumb ridiculous. The movie is rife with examples like those - there are awesome tiny claymation demons that are created by the severed fingertips of the ugly vamp dude, a bloodstone that looks like a bleeding teet that all the vampires suckle from, the aforementioned sword fight, a captive chick with her boobs hanging out of torn clothing, and the burgeoning love between a beautiful woman and a hot vampire guy who share not only passionate kisses, but also the same hair cut.
Subspecies could have been gold if not for the mundane scenes that take up most of the movie. Too much screen time is devoted to the three, rather uninteresting women who serve as the movie's vampire fodder. Still, the lovely scenery and atmospheric castles add a lot of weight to the authentic feel of the movie. The evil vampire serves his creepy role well (though admittedly a bit too silly to be taken completely seriously - he kind of looks like Robert Smith from The Cure) but for a movie called Subspecies (named for the demonic claymation creatures) there was a woeful lack of them.
Surprisingly, there are a total of five Subspecies movies - all which continue to revolve around the main female character and the dorky bloodstone - I may just be convinced to give the second one a try...
Genre: Slasher Director: Tom DeSimone Country: United States Availability: Netflix Watch Instantly
Hell Night! An 80s' slasher flick about sexy teens partying in a supposedly haunted manor starring Linda Blair! What could possibly be bad about something that sounds so awesome? Well, let me tell you...
Linda Blair cannot act. Sure, she was terrific as Regan - the demon possessed little girl in The Exorcist - but maybe it's easier to act like a demon than it is to convincingly portray a regular teenage girl. A few months ago I had the misfortune of seeing her in an atrocious movie called Roller Boogie. And while it was clear from that movie that her abilities must have not made it past the age of 14, I had high hopes for Hell Night bringing Blair back to her horror roots. Not so.
Alas, Linda Blair's performance was not the only element making Hell Night a ridiculous bore to watch. The script was obviously written by a 12 year old boy, "Scott: What a little twat. We should have left her behind.
Peter: Why? Her behind is the best part. We should have kept her behind and left the rest of her." Oh yeah, the movie is full of gems like that. As well as gag scares, quick kill shots with little to no gore, an over-the-top end chase scene and extremely cumbersome and killable killers. Despite all of this, the movie could have been salvageable if not for the dull "character building" scenes that dragged out the middle of the movie. The very last shot of the movie was pretty terrific though and it made me sad that any potential that Hell Night had was squandered by its creators.
Genre: Ghosts Director: Ti West Country: United States Availability: In Theaters
Ti West immediately won me over with his brilliant House of the Devil, a loving tribute to the 70s' and 80s' style of horror movie that we rarely see today. So, naturally my interest and expectation of Ti West's new film The Innkeepers, was extremely high. And while the characters are likable and fleshed out, and the script was sharp, in the end The Innkeepers failed to deliver a punch. First off the movie was much too slow. Many of the scenes are simply of the two characters hanging out and talking about ghosts. When we finally do get to witness their "investigation" of the supposed haunting at the inn it lacks in suspense and reward. The story of the haunting itself is pretty basic, but what's frustrating is that aside from rumor and heresy the major story elements - the reasons and whys to the haunting story - were never explored. Apparently the entire idea for The Innkeepers was born through Ti West and his film crew actually staying at the Yankee Pedlar Inn (the inn in The Innkeepers), while they filmed House of the Devil. They learned that the inn was supposedly haunted and thus it became Ti West's new movie. And while the critics seem to be applauding West's recent effort loud and clear, this horror movie fan was hoping for something a little more compelling.
