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2008: The Year in HORROR
For me 2008 will be remembered primarily as the year the Fright Site almost died. I won’t go into the details (they’re not that exciting anyway) except to say that I was down and now I’m back, and stronger than ever. This means that for those of you who thought you were rid of me, sorry, but I’m still here, and plan to be around for some time.
The above also explains why the following list, the latest edition of my annual survey of the best and worst horror movies of the past year, is shorter than usual. I’ll confess I missed some important films, including THE MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN, THE SUBSTITUTE and THE SIGNAL, and some not-so-important ones like THE EYE, THE X-FILES: I WANT TO BELIEVE and TWILIGHT (which truth be told I’m not exactly broken up about).
My thoughts/conclusions about the movies of 2008? Most are contained in my essay “A Look Back in Horror,” although one I didn’t include therein is the surprising fact that my opinions were (for once) largely in accord with those of most critics and audiences--albeit with two noted exceptions (BLINDNESS and DOOMSDAY are good movies, goddammit!). Make of that what you will.
My self-imposed rules, as always, stipulate that only those horror-themed films released within the US theatrically, on DVD or both make the cut. This means no film festival releases, critics-only screenings or home movies. Also like always, I’ve included recommended non-horror and DVD releases in between the Best and Worst lists.
So without further ado...
The Best:
1. INSIDE [A L’INTERIEUR]
Easily the most talked-about
horror movie of recent years, and for once all the chatter is fully justified.
INSIDE, hailing from
(of all places!) France, is simply the finest genre picture I’ve experienced
lately, with a bold narrative and a real sense of style. Of the many
American-modeled horror fests to emerge from Eastern Europe in recent years
(HIGH TENSION, THEM, SHEITAN), this is easily the stand-out. A stunningly
brutal account of a recently widowed pregnant lady (Alysson Paradis) terrorized
over the course of single evening by a deranged scalpel-wielding woman (Beatrice
Dalle), INSIDE is profoundly bloody, but it also contains a subtle, creeping
menace of a type that isn’t supposed to be able to co-exist with extreme gore.
The two leading ladies are unusually strong and convincing, yet the filmmakers
don’t waste a lot of screen time with extraneous character development. The
running time is a brisk 82 minutes, most of it taken up with action and
bloodletting. And I assure you that bloodletting is potent and disturbing--the
proceedings WILL make you flinch whether you think you’ve “seen it all” or not.
What I’ve written thus far may make the film sound like an exercise in highbrow
shock along the lines of
IRREVERSIBLE, but that’s not the case at all. INSIDE may bring up
many provocative issues (the horrors of pregnancy foremost among them), but it’s
actually a straightforward, unpretentious exercise with one overriding
objective: to scare the living fuck out of its viewers. And it succeeds!
2. LET
THE RIGHT ONE IN [LAT DE RATTE KOMMA IN]
A really, really good Swedish
import, LET THE RIGHT ONE
IN is the story of Oscar (Kare Hedebrant), a lonely, wimpish pre-teen
who’s bullied incessantly. In the midst of a chilly winter Oscar runs into Eli
(11-year-old Lina Leandersson, who seems both young and old), a young
vampire who’s moved into the apartment building where Oscar lives. Several
brutal murders occur in the area and Eli is directly responsible for some of
them. Oscar learns her secret when he cuts his hand--and Eli ravenously laps up
the blood! An interesting film: the tone in one sense is sweet and uplifting,
with two young outcasts finding solace in each others’ company. There’s even a
happy ending of sorts, in which love (quite literally) conquers all. But
director Tomas Alfredson favors disorientation throughout: his style is
disarmingly intimate, with an emphasis on extreme close-ups and very deliberate
focus pulls. The film gets into trouble only toward the end, when the
proceedings grow increasingly effects-heavy. A scene where a vampire woman is
attacked by CGI cats is a definite mood-breaker, and the one point in which
Alfredson loses control of his material. Otherwise, though, the film is a
flawless evocation of the supernatural.
3.
THE LOST
This truly mean,
traumatizing film was adapted from Jack Ketchum’s 2001 novel of the same name,
and fully captures Ketchum’s hellish universe. This makes for a strictly
not-for-the-squeamish experience, but those who can take it will find a canny
and intelligent film that defiantly follows its own rules. Director Chris
Sivertson (I KNOW WHO KILLED ME) has turned in a lively and stylish piece of
work galvanized by a terrific lead performance by Marc Senter. He plays Ray Pye,
an Elvis-obsessed sociopath who in the opening sequence senselessly kills a
lesbian couple. From there the drama takes an unexpected turn, becoming a
dark-hued character study--we see Ray in his native element as, years after the
killings, he romances several teenage girls, including the alluring Robin Sydney
as a flirtatious young woman to whom Ray reveals his dark secrets. There are
also two cops looking to take him down, and are about to get their chance, as
Ray is dangerously close to snapping. Inevitably he does go over the edge in a
climax of stunning brutality. Sivertson presents the violence of the final
scenes in unflinching yet tasteful fashion, delivering an unforgettable capper
to an unforgettable film.
4. CLOVERFIELD
A blast! While it
has some problems, this film succeeds in breathing new life into the giant
monster movie. I AM LEGEND, the Steven Spielberg WAR OF THE WORLDS and
INDEPENDENCE DAY all look stodgy when compared with
CLOVERFIELD,
which has energy and resourcefulness in spades--and a cool monster to boot! The
critter can be viewed as the Godzilla of our time, or at least a very Godzilla-esque
stand-in for the real-life horrors of 9/11. In this respect the movie’s conceit
of having the action viewed entirely through a wobbly camcorder works quite
well, as for most of us our sole exposure to the events of 9/11 was through
shaky digital imagery very much like that on display here. Of course none of
the characters are terribly interesting, and nor is a would-be love story that’s
so perfunctory it barely registers. It’s best to simply bask in all the
superbly evoked mayhem, depicted without compromise or apology.
5. THE
FALL
It feels wrong to scold a
movie for being too ambitious, but it’s a fact: this movie is too ambitious. I
enjoyed it immensely, though, as an unfettered hallucinatory spectacle.
Director Tarsem (THE CELL) has pulled out all the stops in creating a dark
fantasy along the lines of PAN’S LAYBRINTH (the two films were made around the
same time, so plagiarism isn’t an issue). It has a precocious Indian girl (Catinca
Untaru) falling under the spell of a crafty American stuntman (Lee Pace) in a
convalescent hospital. In an effort to get the girl to steal morphine for him,
the man plies her with wild Eastern-flavored fantasy-adventure stories, which we
see enacted in heavily stylized, surreal fashion--think ARABIAN NIGHTS
visualized by Salvador Dali. Of course there’s much more to the film, including
several underdeveloped subplots involving the hospital’s other residents, lots
of kid movie mawkishness, some disturbing Luis Bunuelian surrealism and a
puzzling CINEMA PARADISO-ish coda. Tarsem has clearly bitten off far more than
he can chew, but what he’s accomplished is more than most modern moviemakers
would dare attempt.
6. THE RUINS
Scott Smith’s 2006
bestseller THE RUINS
seems unlikely material for a successful horror movie, but this adaptation is
among the creepiest, ickiest, scariest movies I’ve seen in some time. Kudos to
first-time director Carter Smith, who creates a gripping and gruesome scarefest.
As in the book, we have five college pukes vacationing in Mexico who become
trapped on a Mayan ruin, where they’re menaced by killer vines. That pretty
much sums up the narrative, which has been condensed and streamlined from the
excessively drawn-out novel. There are some guaranteed lunch-loser scenes,
including a leg splintering and amputation that’s every bit as pleasant as it
sounds, and an extremely gory bout of self mutilation. The CGI vine effects are
well pulled-off and the performances of Jena Malone, Jonathan Tucker and
especially Laura Ramsey--who’s both hissable and heartbreaking as an airhead
manhandled in extremely uncomfortable fashion by the vines--are uniformly
top-notch.
7. THE
DARK KNIGHT
First things first: this
latest Batman movie, monster success or not, is overlong and has too many
characters. While I’m at it, I’ll also complain that the action sequences are
choppy, repetitive and filled with distracting continuity errors, and at least
one major role (Maggie Gyllenhaal as the “beautiful” Rachel) is totally
miscast. But where the film goes right, and very much so, is in Heath Ledger’s
overpowering turn as the Joker. Ledger’s Joker isn’t the wisecracking goofball
we’ve come to expect, but an out-and-out criminal psychopath whose antics are
so nasty they darken the movie’s already grim palette considerably. This is
the closest any BATMAN movie has come in tone and style to Frank Miller’s
seminal graphic novel THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, which alone makes it worthwhile.
8. RED
The third film adaptation of
the work of Jack Ketchum, RED
isn’t a horror movie per se, but a dark character-based thriller. Out fishing
one day with his dog Red, the sixtyish Avery Ludlow is confronted with three
teenage punks, one of whom kills Red. Understandably upset, Ludlow tracks down
the boy’s father, a rich shithead named Michael McCormack. McCormack blows off
Ludlow’s claims, but Ludlow continues pushing the issue for personal reasons.
The dispute grows increasingly violent, which drives Ludlow to a final desperate
act: confronting McCormack and his son on their own doorstep with Red’s
maggot-ridden corpse. Despite being helmed by two directors--MAY’S Talented
Lucky McKee and Trygve Allister Diesen--RED is a fully unified and cohesive
piece of work. McKee and/or Diesen do frequent and distracting battle with eye
(or axis) lines, but the film is otherwise quite impressive from a visual
standpoint, with a spare and compact grace that perfectly compliments Jack
Ketchum’s stripped-down prose. It’s an extremely faithful adaptation of
Ketchum’s text, which
is a large part of why the film works as well as it does. And Brian Cox, one of
the most formidable actors on the scene, provides RED with a sturdy and
compelling anchor.
9.
TIMECRIMES [LOS CRONOCRIMENES]
An unusually clever and
nimble but also extremely dark time travel thriller from Spain. It’s headlined
by Hector, a seemingly unflappable yuppie. One day he spies a dude with a
bloody bandage wrapped around his head canoodling with the apparent corpse of a
naked woman. Before the film is done the bandage head’s identity will be
revealed, Hector will travel through time on (at least) three occasions, and a
number of murderous surprises will become apparent. It would be unfair to
reveal much more, as the film’s charm is in its consistently evolving plot. The
opening scenes, in the manner of quite a few time travel movies, initially seem
dull, but are vitally important in setting up the succeeding twists. Think of
TIMECRIMES as a dark
variation on BACK TO FUTURE (in particular the sequence in which Michael J. Fox
witnesses himself going back in time). It possesses about as much depth as that
film, but also contains an abundance of energy and inspiration, which in this
case is reward enough.
10.
DOOMSDAY
I really don’t understand the
chilly reception this film got by critics and audiences. Sure, it’s mindless,
trashy and derivative, but it’s also quite entertaining--and isn’t that the
whole point? DOOMSDAY
is the third and most monumental feature from Britain’s Neil Marshall (following
DOG SOLDIERS and THE DESCENT). It has a hot chick entering (ESCAPE FROM NEW
YORK like) a quarantined area in a post-apocalyptic Britain to find a cure for a
virus ravaging mankind. Innumerable fights, shoot-outs, a medieval-style joust
and a MAD MAX-esque car chase ensue. The action is all-but nonstop, and
generously spiced with over-the-top gore (more so, obviously, in the unrated DVD
version), making for an unforgettably nasty and energetic testosterone-fest.
11.
BLINDNESS
This
Canadian-Japanese-Brazilian production, about a mysterious disease that renders
nearly everyone blind, was one of the year’s oddest releases. Set in an
unidentified Latin American city inhabited almost exclusively by English and
Japanese speaking residents, it begins as a Kafkaesque allegory, morphs into a
drearily realistic look at societal breakdown, and concludes with a hippie-esque
hymn to communal living. None of this makes it a bad movie, mind you, although
most critics felt otherwise. It’s overdirected, certainly (every other shot, it
seems, is through a window or mirror), but the same is true of Fernando
Meirelles’ previous effort THE CONSTANT GARDENER. I’d say BLINDNESS is a better
film overall, with a compellingly dark, ominous aura and an uncomfortably vivid
portrayal of a world gone mad. It’s that latter aspect that appears to have
turned off most critics. So too Meirelles’ bold genre-hopping, a mainstay of
Latin American literature of which Jose Saramago’s source novel was very much a
part. Ironically, that novel received near-universal acclaim upon its
appearance in English; I feel this film might have too, if it were shown in a
foreign language and subtitled. It might also make for an interesting double
feature with the Spanish flick
THE PEOPLE WHO OWN THE DARK, a more
conventional horror-themed account of people struck blind and the chaos that
ensues--BLINDNESS, however, outdoes it in literally every aspect.
12. TEETH
To my knowledge,
this is the first-ever movie to deal substantially with the age-old vagina
dentata myth--which, for those who don’t know, refers to a vagina with
teeth. It could have easily resulted in a substandard Troma-worthy yukfest, but
writer-director Mitchell Lichtenstein has taken a more thoughtful approach,
resulting in a touching and absorbing look at a teenage girl with a most unusual
affliction. Of course the film contains a definite streak of black
comedy--there’s really no other way to depict a vagina biting guy’s dicks off
and then spitting ‘em out--but it has a real gravity to it. That’s largely due
to the extremely winning lead performance by Jess Weixler, who undergoes a vivid
onscreen transformation from virginal waif to castrating femme fatale, and
renders her vaginal troubles startlingly immediate (I should add here that this
is very much an I-can’t-believe-it-got-an-R-rating movie).
13. STUCK
This is about as dark as
comedy gets, and no wonder: STUCK is a Stuart Gordon movie, and though not
explicitly horrific, it’s as gross and aberrant as nearly anything he’s made.
It begins with hospital worker Mena Suvari leaving a night club and hitting a
homeless man (Stephen Rea) with her car. Rea doesn’t die but becomes stuck in
the windshield, and Suvari, for reasons that are never made entirely clear,
simply leaves him there. That may sound outrageous, but it was inspired by an
actual incident. The difference is that in reality the stuck man died, whereas
here he manages to hang on, leading to an escalation of hysterical nastiness,
all of it extremely well-handled by Gordon. STUCK is Gordon’s first film in
some time that doesn’t play like his usual straight-to-video fare, but as an
honest-to-goodness big screen spectacular. It isn’t perfect, though: the comic
inspiration peters out well before the end, leaving us with a rushed and
unsatisfying wrap-up.
14.
FEAR(S) OF THE DARK [PEUR(S) DU NOIR]
I really wasn’t expecting
much from this animated French anthology, and so was pleasantly surprised. Its
horrors are strictly of the low key, or “quiet,” variety, with little in the way
of gore. Of course, it being a French film there are numerous annoying poetic
interludes, with a woman’s voice pontificating over a series of discordant
shapes (I guess the filmmakers were worried it might otherwise be taken as
“just” a horror movie). But when it gets down to the scary business FEAR(S) OF
THE DARK is quite fine, particularly in the wraparound segment, about a pack of
ravenous wolves used by their mean-old-man owner to kill anyone he doesn’t
like...until they inevitably turn on him. I also liked the third part, a manga
inspired creep-out bolstered by genuinely nightmarish imagery. Equally
memorable is the last segment, about a man trapped in a haunted house, which
works largely because of the ingeniously minimalistic animation style, being
very likely the starkest evocation of black and white I’ve ever seen.
15.
SUKIYAKI WESTERN DJANGO
In this film Japan’s foremost
cult auteur Takashi Miike pays surreal tribute to the Spaghetti Westerns of the
sixties, particularly Sergio Corbucci’s DJANGO. The results are surreal, filled
with over-the-top splatter and certifiably nutty from start to finish. In other
words, the film is vintage Miike. It’s set in “Nevada” yet features an
all-Asian cast (speaking in heavily accented English) and comes complete with
varying film stocks and speeds, copious flashbacks, an anime sequence, a buried
treasure, a schizophrenic sheriff who talks to himself in different voices, and
Quentin Tarantino in an extended cameo. There’s also a plot in there somewhere,
but the whole thing is so campy and outrageous it barley registers.
16.
PHILOSOPHY OF A KNIFE
One of the most ambitious
films of 2008, a history of Japan’s notorious Unit 731, a WWII research facility
that meted out horrific torture to hundreds of Chinese and Russian prisoners.
This film, lasting a full four hours, mixes documentary and staged footage into
an utterly unique whole--though not an entirely successful one, I’m afraid.
Russian filmmaker Andrey Iskanov, who wrote, directed, photographed, edited and
designed the film himself, did extensive research, so much so that Iskanov was
detained for five days in June of 2008 and interrogated by the FSB (formerly the
KGB) as to the documents he used. The problem is that viewing this film I
couldn’t help but flash back to MEN BEHIND THE SUN, a more modest Japanese-made
treatment of the crimes of Unit 731 that packs a far greater punch. It worked
because of the straightforward simplicity of its horrors--PHILOSOPHY OF A KNIFE,
by contrast, is excessively labored and overdone. Taken as a whole, however,
it’s a remarkable evocation of pure insanity, made all the more disturbing by
the fact that it’s all based in reality.
17. THE
MOTHER OF TEARS
The third entry in Dario
Argento’s Three Mothers trilogy, and far and away the least of the bunch--matter
of fact, I’d venture to say it’s total crap. But this film does provide loads
of dumb fun, with Asia Argento running into a madness epidemic on the streets of
Rome, interacting with the ghost of her dead mother (played by Asia’s real-life
ma Daria Nicolodi), getting chased by three punked-out hags, and delivering one
of the worst performances of her career--although in all fairness, the dialogue
she’s given to deliver does her no favors. SUSPIRIA and INFERNO, the earlier
films of the cycle, remain among Dario’s finest work, with scenes of
over-the-top carnage alternating with passages of surreal beauty. They’re among
the most potent combinations of art and exploitation I’ve ever encountered--THE
MOTHER OF TEARS, on the other hand, contains an abundance of the latter element
and next to none of the former. But where else can you find gratuitous
lesbianism, a woman strangled with her own intestine, a river of severed body
parts, a baby tossed off a bridge, a trip to budget-lite Hell, and a
hammier-than-usual Udo Kier in a single movie? Stupid as shit this film may be,
but boring it’s definitely not.
18. AMERICAN ZOMBIE
This witty faux-doc
presents a fun twist on living dead lore. The first 45 or so minutes feel like
a real documentary, and a pretty boring one at that. Director Grace Lee, who
also plays a fictionalized version of herself, made honest-to-goodness docs
previous to AMERICAN ZOMBIE, and evidently knows the format in and out. Thus we
have lots of rambling interviews with several LA folk who’ve died and come back
to life; they work menial jobs and one runs an anti-zombie defamation league,
all the while trying to keep their flesh from rotting and staving off bigotry
from the living. But then about halfway through Lee and her film crew
investigate an outdoor concert for the living dead (sort of a zombie Burning
Man) and the proceedings grow far darker--and hence more compelling. Sure, I
would have liked this film more if I hadn’t already seen SHAUN OF THE DEAD, FIDO,
THEY CAME BACK and
the film outlined below, but AMERICAN ZOMBIE stands out nonetheless.
19. DIARY OF THE DEAD
George Romero’s
latest is a mock-doc purporting to be a video diary made by film students caught
up in a zombie conflagration. It had the great misfortune to be released
alongside the similarly-themed CLOVERFIELD, which I feel
is the better film.
That’s not to say DIARY OF THE DEAD is bad. On the contrary, it’s clever and
imaginative, with the protagonists running into a gallery of memorable
eccentrics and getting splashed with a ton of gore. Romero, as is his custom,
has come up with some great “gags”: my favorite was the guy jamming a machete
through his own head and that of the zombie devouring him. But I never
entirely bought into the video diary angle, which Romero would have us believe
was reedited by one of the protagonists to include surveillance camera footage,
montages, flashbacks and a music track. I’ll also have to complain about
the political angle, which is laid on thicker than in any of Romero’s other
films--every other line, it seems, is a sociopolitical screed, which severely
cuts back on the entertainment value.
20.
HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY
I’ll give this supremely
self-indulgent HELLBOY sequel a heads-up, largely because it’s mighty fun to
watch with its mind-numbing profusion of weird creatures. But it’s far from a
good movie. In following up the masterful PAN’S LABYRINTH, Guillermo Del Toro
did what many moviemakers do in the wake of a big success: he went berserk.
This film contains a much higher-than-average amount of CGI (much of it quite
shoddy) and an inventive but wildly undisciplined narrative. What’s missing is
old-fashioned craftsmanship, with action scenes utterly lacking in tension and a
sense of danger, be they two-person fistfights or an apocalyptic duel with a
giant plant creature. The characterizations also leave much to be desired, with
Hellboy getting surprisingly little screen time and the Golden Army of the title
only showing up near the end, and then not for very long.
21. NIGHTMARE DETECTIVE [AKUMU
TANTEI]
To think, I’d nearly
convinced myself that, with the spare and contemplative VITAL, Japan’s Shinya
Tsukamoto was maturing beyond
early freak-outs like TETSUO. His latest film
proves otherwise. The digitally lensed NIGHTMARE DETECTIVE features Japanese
pop star Hitomi in her acting debut as a young detective (in a wildly
inappropriate miniskirt-and-high heels wardrobe) investigating a rash of
apparent sleep-induced suicides. She ends up consulting a dark-coat wearing
freak who can enter peoples’ dreams. The two track down the culprit, a psychic
vampire (played by Tsukamoto) who devours people’s souls while they snooze. The
film isn’t nearly as kinetic as the filmmaker’s early work, but it’s far from
contemplative. What it is, despite some heavy talk about destiny and mortality,
is blunt and excessive, and best viewed as a wallow in hallucinatory excess by a
guy who really knows how to do such stuff.
22.
WANTED
I’ll give this frothy
concoction a pass, even though I’ve got some pretty severe reservations. WANTED
was adapted from an allegedly popular comic I’m not familiar with. I am
familiar, however, with THE MATRIX and FIGHT CLUB, and it’s impossible not to
spot their echo in this account of a working shlub called upon by some
prearranged destiny to ditch his dull existence and join a band of
supernaturally endowed assassins whose ranks include Morgan Freeman and Angelina
Jolie. The narrative runs out of steam quickly, but director Timur Bekmambetov
clearly has little interest in telling a story anyway. As in Bekmambetov’s
previous works (the Russian NIGHT
and DAY WATCH movies)
the emphasis is on sensationalism and jazzy visuals, and on that level--and that
level only--this movie works.
So ends my Best-of list. Of course there exist many non-horror films that
I feel deserve your attention, hence the following...
Other Recommendations:
RAMBO
This latest entry in Sly Stallone’s
kill-happy franchise has a down-and-dirty aesthetic that favorably recalls
classic pastaland potboilers by
Deodato, Dawson, Castellari, etc. In other
words, I liked it lots!
BOARDING
GATE
For much of this bloated
Euro-thriller’s running time the “Bore” in the title is all too appropriate.
Worth seeing, though, for the galvanizing lead performance of Asia Argento,
who’s at her most seductive and least inhibited.
MISTER
LONELY
A new film from nutcase
moviemaker Harmony Korine (GUMMO) that features a society of celebrity
impersonators and a band of sky diving nuns. Totally batshit from start to
finish!
MY
WINNIPEG
One of the best-ever films by
Canada’s fiercely idiosyncratic Guy Maddin, this is at once an eccentric
autobiography, a nostalgic travelogue, a goofy old movie parody and a cockeyed
exercise in sheer weirdness.
MONGOL
A Russian epic about Genghis
Khan, and an extremely good one--violent, romantic and boasting many well-staged
battle scenes.
AMERICAN
TEEN
Here’s real horror for
you: a (supposed) documentary look at modern teenagers! Compelling and
insightful, even if it is essentially a feature-length variant on MTV’s REAL
WORLD.
BURN
AFTER READING
The new Coen Brothers comedy
is quintessentially Coen: laugh-out-loud hilarious yet also violent and
cynical--and quite unique.
ASHES OF
TIME REDUX [DUNG CHE SAI DUK REDUX]
A “redux” of Wong Kar Wai’s
arty martial arts classic ASHES OF TIME. I prefer the original cut, which while
raggedy around the edges remains an invigorating concoction. But the film is
required viewing in any form.
STRANDED
The first-ever feature
documentary about the Uruguayan soccer team whose plane crashed in the Andes
back 1972, with starvation and cannibalism the inevitable outcome. As harrowing
as movies get, though the subdued tone puts the horror at something of a remove.
WHAT JUST
HAPPENED?
Another film that got an
unfair critical drubbing. Sure, this comedy about making movies in Hollywood,
adapted from veteran producer Art Linson’s book of the same name, is pretty glum
overall, but that’s the price it pays for its staunch realism.
SYNECDOCHE NEW YORK
The directorial debut of
screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, ADAPTATION). Seemingly eons
long, it’s a delirious mind-boggler positively bursting with ideas, any one of
which could fuel an average movie.
THE
WRESTLER
An admirably tough,
straightforward look at a has-been wrestler, superbly directed by Darren
Aronofsky and starring a never-been-better Mickey Rourke.
CHE
A Steven Soderberg directed
4½ hour Che Guevara biopic, with Benicio Del Toro wowing as Che. Best viewed in
the full “Roadshow” version rather than the two separate showings currently
being exhibited.
I’d be lax if I didn’t mention some worthwhile DVD releases from 2008. The section highlights old films newly released on DVD, of which there appear to be an inexhaustible supply. No, I don’t indicate whether the following are available on Blu-Ray, although since most were put out by independent outfits you can safely surmise they’re probably not!
Recommended DVD Releases:
LOST HIGHWAY
It took eleven years, but we
finally have a letterboxed version of this 1997 David Lynch classic. Alas,
there are no extra features to speak of...but Rome wasn’t built in a day.
LOVE ME
DEADLY
One of those fascinating
seventies-sploiters I love digging up. Don’t view it, though, if you’re the
slightest bit offended by graphic depictions of casual murder, mutilation or
necrophilia!
YUKOKU
[PATRIOTISM]
A Criterion edition of Yukio
Mishima’s magnificently disgusting ode to suicide. Vastly overrated by some,
but still well worth a watch.
VAMPYR
More fun from Criterion: a
jam-packed edition of Carl Theodore Dreyer’s hallucinatory classic. I guarantee
you’ll have a hard time finding another film like it.
WHITE DOG
Yet another essential
Criterion acquisition, this is Sam Fuller’s powerful study of racism in the form
of a “White Dog” trained to attack black people.
SALO: THE 120 DAYS OF SODOM
The year’s ultimate Criterion
release, a new and very likely definitive edition of P.P. Pasolini’s legendary
gross-out masterpiece. It’s been called the most offensive film ever made, and
with good reason!
THE QUEEN
OF BLACK MAGIC
Indonesian flicks are always fun,
and this one, featuring gore, obscure incantations and a flying head, is no
different.
THE
WARRIOR
Another delirious Indonesian
horror/fantasy extravaganza, THE WARRIOR features Barry Prima and a mind-bending
mélange of spurting blood, flying limbs and hilariously primitive special
effects!
VISIONS
OF HELL: THE FILMS OF JIM VANBEBBER
If you ask me this is something we
all need, a box set of the films of Jim VanBebber. Included are his features
DEADBEAT AT DAWN and THE MANSON FAMILY, and several shorts, including the
wrenching “Roadkill: The Last Days of John Martin.”
It’s time now to unveil my Worst-of list, which is thankfully much shorter than my Best-of list. That doesn’t make the following films any easier to bear, however...
The Worst:
1. THE
HAPPENING
Fact: Only an uncommonly gifted
filmmaker could pull off a film this unspeakably awful. That filmmaker is M.
Night Shyamalan, who’d better watch out, as after little more than a decade
making movies he’s already coming to resemble Hitchcock in his later years--that
is to say a parody of himself, and a pretty pathetic one. THE HAPPENING was
supposed to be Night’s comeback after the embarrassment of THE LADY IN THE
WATER, but it makes that much-derided mess look like a model of intelligence and
restraint. The concept? Some sort of suicide plague emanates from plants, but
evidently only those located on the upper east coast. It seems to strike large
groups of people...or maybe not. You won’t find any answers in the film, which
labors under a fatally misconceived script that wouldn’t pass muster in a first
year screenwriting course. Nobody seems to have clued M. Night in to the fact
that wind is not an inherently scary element, and nor is it possible for people
to outrun it. And I’m all for Night ditching his usual PG-13 fare in favor of
an R rating, but that doesn’t mean he needs to indulge in wholly gratuitous
shock tactics like the killing of two kids (a scene that serves no dramatic
purpose that I could see other than to keep viewers awake). As for Mark
Wahlberg in the lead, I can only assume he was aware of how utterly ridiculous
the material is, and so pitched his performance accordingly.
2. PROM NIGHT
The original PROM
NIGHT really wasn’t much, meaning the makers of this remake had plenty of room
for improvement. Guess what? They’ve improved nothing, turning out an
unadventurous, by-the-numbers PG-rated cliché fest. I might have found this
film passable had I never seen another horror flick, but I have. Director
Nelson McCormick apparently hasn’t, though, and uses quite a few moldy gags from
horror movies past, including the age-old
guy-who-looks-like-he’s-sleeping-only-to-be-turned-over-and-revealed-as-(gasp!)-dead
(McCormick apparently likes that particular cue so much he uses it twice)! A
complete waste of time.
3.
MIRRORS
This film has one of the
coolest opening credit sequences in recent memory...but otherwise MIRRORS is a
huge yawn, laboring under a scatterbrained narrative constructed around the idea
of evil mirrors. This makes for some interesting CGI sequences portraying
errant mirror images, and lots of “creative” gore effects, but none of them had
any impact since virtually every other element is so crushingly inert. That
includes the lead performance of Keifer Sutherland, shamelessly recycling his 24
shtick, and the extremely bad actors who play (I use the term loosely) his wife
and children.
4. DEATH
RACE
Yet another utterly
pointless, wasteful remake. For the record, I’m not among those who think the
original Roger Corman/Paul Bartel DEATH RACE 2000 is some kind of
masterpiece--in truth, I’ve always found it half-baked and a bit of a missed
opportunity. But DR2K did have a cool premise involving a futuristic auto race
whose participants receive points for running down pedestrians. The remake’s
writer/director Paul W.S. Anderson has kept the idea of the race but jettisoned
everything else, leaving us with a big So What??? There’s also the fact
that the races were evidently filmed in what looks like a small portion of a
Long Beach shipping yard, so they all look the same. And another thing: this is
the first movie I’ve seen to carry a disclaimer at the head of the end credits
advising viewers not to try any of the preceding car stunts themselves. Putting
aside the political implications (which are pretty chilling), the big question I
have is why the Hell would anyone want to replicate this movie’s lame
stunts? See DOOMSDAY instead.
5. NAKED
BENEATH THE WATER
A shot-on-video take on the
reality TV trend, with a man lured into appearing on the depraved reality
program Public Enemy Number One. The show is about people who film
themselves murdering others; as for the protagonist, it seems he’s lucked out in
a sense, as he’s the designated victim in a contest being held by past
contestants of the show looking to prove who the best killer is. The film is
fairly slick overall, particularly in the cleverly executed Public Enemy
segments, but it’s also agonizingly slow-moving--and, surprisingly, not all that
gory. It seems writer-director-star Sean Cain was trying for some
honest-to-goodness social commentary here. Fine and good, but that doesn’t make
up for the fact that NAKED BENEATH THE WATER is essentially a 30-minute short
stretched to feature length.
6.
QUARANTINE
Another Hollywood remake I
might have enjoyed more had I not seen the original version first. In this case
that initial film was the 2007 Spanish freak-out REC, an ingeniously pulled off
faux-documentary account of a contagion that turns the residents of a big city
tenement into fast-moving zombies. This version follows the original fairly
closely, but lacks its tightness and mounting intensity. Unlike REC, QUARANTINE
has little forward momentum, consisting of a series of more-or-less
interchangeable attacks that peak after about twenty minutes. I will, however,
say this: DEXTER’S Jennifer Carpenter is surprisingly effective in the lead
role, fully convincing as a smarmy TV host driven to near-psychotic heights of
fear.
7.
LAKEVIEW TERRACE
I really hate comparison
reviews, wherein a film is critiqued by equating it with another, but in this
case I can’t help myself. Viewing the middling LAKEVIEW TERRACE I found myself
continually flashing back to 1992’s UNLAWFUL ENTRY. As you might recall, that
Jonathan Taplin directed production was a trashy exploiter with Ray Liotta as a
psycho cop who befriends then terrorizes a nice suburban couple. It was a
product of a subgenre popular during the time, characterized by the likes of
PACIFIC HEIGHTS, SINGLE WHITE FEMALE and THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE.
LAKEVIEW TERRACE closely follows the particulars of that cycle--and Taplin’s
film in particular--in its utterly predictable account of a biracial couple
moving into a hilltop suburb next door to a cop portrayed by Samuel L. Jackson.
Jackson seems like a nice guy, but eventually reveals himself as a psycho who
makes life hell for his hapless neighbors. The film’s innate distrust of cops
is quintessentially nineties, as are the incendiary racial overtones; both
elements seem informed primarily by the 1991 Rodney King beating. Thus we have
a film that might have once seemed topical and provocative, but which turned up
at least fifteen years too late.
8. THE
STRANGERS
A home invasion thriller
pulled off with great skill, but it just needs...more. It is in many
ways an uncredited remake of the ’06 Belgian flick THEM, which was a lightweight
concoction that nevertheless contained an excess of energy and invention. Those
things are sorely missing from THE STRANGERS. First time writer-director Bryan
Bertino does a fine job building suspense in this relentless account of three
masked lunatics terrorizing a young couple over the course of a night, and the
lead actors Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman are both game, but the proceedings are
agonizingly repetitive. The sight of a suspicious figure staring in through a
window who is nowhere to be seen in the succeeding shot can only be used so many
times before losing its power. The same can be said for the film as a whole,
which initially had me riveted but by the end elicited little more than tired
laughter.
9.
CTHULHU
Director Dan Gildark and
writer Grant Cogswell deserve credit for coming up with an audacious take on H.P.
Lovecraft’s “Shadow Over Innsmouth,” but their film is fatally disjointed and
uninvolving. The protagonist, played by Jason Cottle, is a gay man who returns
to his estranged family’s home, located in an Oregon coastal community. But
Cottle quickly discerns that a weird Cthulhu worshipping cult is afoot, and that
his relatives are part of it. There’s plenty of striking imagery, including an
amazing wide shot of dozens of fish people emerging from the Pacific Ocean, and
the filmmakers’ gay-themed take on Lovecraft’s mythos is inspired (although it
will doubtless piss off Lovecraft devotees). But I think the material was
better served by Stuart Gordon’s kicky and exploitive
DAGON, which was not a complete success but is
still a far more cohesive work.
10.
FRONTIER(S)
More French horror...and yet
another TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE variant. It has the expected group of
young people stuck in an out-of-the-way inn, run by a family of freaks who
torture their charges in various unspeakable ways. Writer-director Xavier Gens
tries to add some real-life drama by injecting footage from the recent riots
that tore apart France, but the film is still extremely silly, derivative and
predictable (you can be sure that when a young woman escapes from her captors
her freedom won’t last long!). That’s really too bad, as Gens clearly has verve
and energy to spare, and provides an all-stops-out final third that’s about as
intense as anything I’ve seen.
11. REPO!
THE GENETIC OPERA
A made-to-order cult film
closely patterned on THE ROCKY
HORROR PICTURE SHOW. I’ll confess to having enjoyed parts, but it’s
pretty staid overall, being a musical with really bad songs. It’s set in a
future world overrun with plastic surgery where repo men are dispatched to steal
the organs from patients who can’t pay their bills. The extremely involved plot
features a corrupt executive (Paul Sorvino) and a haughty plastic surgery freak
(Paris Hilton, unfortunately). There’s also a repo man and his sickly teenage
daughter, who’s inherited some bum genes. All the actors wear extremely gaudy
outfits, in the evident hope that people will want to show up at theaters
dressed like characters from the film (as many patrons reportedly did at the
premiere). REPO! has in its favor a compelling dark hued look and enough gore
to fill several SAW movies. Again, though, the music is horrendous, and the
campy aura isn’t exactly original.
12. FUNNY GAMES
I was never too
impressed with Michael Haneke’s upscale psycho-thriller FUNNY GAMES in its
initial incarnation, as a 1997 Austrian production, and this scene-for-scene
English language remake hasn’t improved things overmuch. It has suburbanites
Tim Roth and Naomi Watts vacationing with their young son in upstate New York,
where they’re terrorized by a pair of tennis outfit-wearing yo-yo’s. The early
scenes, of this disarmingly refined psychopathic duo worming their way into the
protagonists’ lives, are promising, done with a streak of pitch-black comedy
that suggests a Thomas Berger novel. The nastiness that follows is flawlessly
carried off for the most part, with a Hitchockian flair for suspense. Acting
honors go to Michael Pitt as the head psycho, who’s as dangerous and charismatic
as Anthony Perkins ever was, and Watts, whose stunningly toned body is
generously displayed throughout. This of course heightens Haneke’s intent to
implicate his audience in the madness; unpleasant though all this is, I was
not averse to seeing Naomi Watts undressed. Haneke goes wrong, though, with
a ridiculous post-modern twist--Pitt, you see, knows he’s in a movie and
directly addresses the audience on several occasions--that exists to set up to a
thoroughly misconceived climax which played like a bad joke in the 1997 version
and continues in that vein here. Blah!
And with
that, the year 2008 is (for me) soundly put to rest. But before I go I’d like
to highlight some films set to premiere in 2009, including the long-awaited
WATCHMEN, based on the pioneering graphic novel; a new version of THE WOLF MAN,
which with Benicio Del Toro in the lead at least stars a great actor; the French
MARTYRS, which is said to outdo both INSIDE and FRONTIER(S) in nastiness;
HEADER, a highly praised, long-in-the-works adaptation of a novel by Edward Lee;
OFFSPRING, the fourth Jack Ketchum adaptation; ...OF THE DEAD, a new zombie epic
from George Romero; and KING SHOT, a brand-new feature by
EL TOPO’S elusive Alejandro Jodorowsky,
produced by David Lynch.
All those films sound promising--let’s hope they
deliver! You can be sure that I’ll be back around this time next year to
deliver my verdict. See ya then!
--1/13/09