HORROR WEEK: Paranormal Activity

When something happens five times, is it still technically classified as “paranormal?” Well, no matter whether it’s original or not, it’s still pretty fucking scary. After the enormous success of The Blair Witch Project, directors everywhere decided that the next frontier of horror lay in the world of found-footage films. Some were shoddy reproductions of the original-- in fact, all of them were. But some of them did it right. Paranormal Activity is one of those special few which actually put some effort into their scares, story, and effects, making it one of the best horror movies of the past decade. But remember... that’s not saying much.

Following in the footsteps of classic horror movies such as The Exorcist, Paranormal Activity is about a malevolent demon that stalks and haunts a girl named Katie and (after she moves in with him) her boyfriend Micah. This premise is far from original, but wonders are done with it. Not many movies are actually capable of making a moving door scary. There’s a lot of scenes in the movie where literally nothing is happening at all, yet the suspense and terror is no less palpable. Sure, there are jump scares, which I regard as being the lowest form of horror, seeing as they’re a cheap and easy way to scare the viewer. But even in between the sudden noises and things that go bump in the night, the movie never lets up the gut-wrenching suspense.

Paranormal Activity is famous for its camera format, in which it uses a typical video camera to tape the events as if it were being filmed by an amateur. However, this concept (as it always does) leads to a lot of problems. Although it does feel more realistic, it also forces the hand of the scriptwriters to write in reasons for the video camera to be present at all times. The result are thousands of throwaway “Put away your stupid camera” lines, which feel increasingly repetitive and out of place. You’d think that eventually, the guy would have the sense to... I don’t know... PUT THE STUPID CAMERA AWAY. Also, it’s pretty easy to tell right from the get-go that none of the cameras used are actually $400 camcorders-- In fact, they’re often some heavy-duty shit. The zoom-ins, framing, and quality are just too precise to be a cheap camera from Best Buy, as the filmmakers purport it to be.

The acting isn’t much to speak of, but then again, nobody really cares about acting in a horror movie. Micah’s character mostly consists of being aloof and self-centered, which really is nothing new to the genre. There’s always the skeptical character who, of course, is eventually proven wrong as the supernatural occurrences become more numerous and frightening. Meanwhile, Katie is pretty generic as well, and all she really has to do throughout the movie is yell “MICAH MICAH I’M SCARED, MICAH OH PLEASE MICAH COME BACK TO BED MICAH.” Sure, looking terrified is a big part of acting in a horror movie. But I really can’t commend the performance of someone who is given so little to work with.

But Paranormal Activity is really at its best when presenting the audience with some of the simplest scares ever crafted. There are extended shots of a door moving, a sheet rustling, footsteps, and a slightly ajar attic door. And I’m not going to lie-- it’s not very involving. However, once you turn off the movie and go to bed, and start hearing strange noises outside... you won’t be able to control the terror. I can’t say much for Paranormal Activity as a filmmaking achievement, but when a movie’s main plot point is the scariness of randomly moving household objects, and it succeeds in scaring the crap out of the viewer, you have to admit that it has some merit.

Final Score for Paranormal Activity: 6/10 stars. It’s pulse-pounding, scary, and involving entertainment, and even though the camerawork is shoddy, the fade-outs are lame, the dialogue is bad, and the acting is even worse, I can’t deny the fact that it actually scared me a bit. And since that’s the one goal of horror movies, well, mission accomplished. It does what it sets out to do-- scare the pants off of people using a minimal budget and random noises. There are plenty of cliches (people being dragged down the hallway is a classic horror effect), but demonic possession never gets old. However, I don’t intend on watching the sequels, as the creators undoubtedly used the ideas that weren’t good enough for the original in the subsequent installments. It’s not that the series is bad... it’s just inevitably repetitive. They should have left it off on a high note and kept the activities paranormal.

HORROR WEEK: Suspiria

Continuing horror week, we now have a film that, I am happy to say, is the outlier of the pack. Suspiria, Dario Argento’s deranged horror classic, is such a breath of fresh air for the genre that I almost want to stop my Halloween horror marathon now in order to leave off on a high note. Doing for the horror genre what Star Wars did for sci-fi, this visually spectacular film revolutionizes practically everything I thought I knew about horror. At its core, it’s what 2013’s Only God Forgives wanted to be-- A visually superb, thinly scripted drama that succeeds due to its spellbinding cinematography and outright lunacy. Thank God at least one of them accomplished this.

Suspiria is, no doubt about it, a surreal film. In fact, this is just as much a piece of surrealism in art as Salvador Dali’s melting clocks. When one watches a movie like this, they shouldn’t expect anything more than to be visually dazzled but deeply confused. As long as they know what they’re getting into, the film should not disappoint. It’s not horror in the conventional sense, but that’s part of the problem. Horror movies should be like this. In the genre, constant suspense is a lot greater asset than the momentary terror of cheap jump scares. And Suspiria keeps the viewer on the edge of their seat.

Suspiria is about Suzy Bannion (Jessica Harper), a young American ballet student who travels to Germany to attend a dance academy. Sure, this premise sounds like a romantic comedy, but when the blood starts flowing (within the first five minutes, no less), you forget about the somewhat tame premise and become immersed in the world that the film creates. After a series of deranged and imaginative sequences involving maggots and an epic roof-hanging noose-death, Suzy begins to suspect that something is wrong with the school. A little research reveals that the academy was founded by a witch, and that a coven of witches (the teachers) continue her legacy to this day.

It’s a silly premise, but it definitely works, mostly thanks to the elaborate set design and spooky lighting. Every scene is awash in primary colors, making it beautiful viewing. Long, dark hallway corridors and effective cinematography add to the suspense. Really, if it weren’t for the camerawork and lighting, this wouldn’t be a very scary movie, seeing as most of its premise is ludicrous and none of it makes any sense. But this is a movie that aspires to make sense not to the mind, but to the eyes. It’s one of the few films I’ve seen in which visuals can actually carry weight. There aren’t any spectacular special effects, there aren’t any explosions... but the claustrophobic feel of the movie is incredibly powerful.

Another part of the film’s success is due to Jessica Harper, who has an old-Hollywood feel to her that makes her a very likable character. Her facial expressions convey a lot more than the dialogue she speaks, which is a feat that few actors can accomplish. Even when the story is at its silliest, she still manages to hold it together with a look of pure terror that can frighten even the least energetic moviegoer. It’s not TERRIFYING, but it’s still disconcerting in a very deep way. Somehow, the movie comes off as both uncomfortable yet hugely enjoyable viewing. You could watch this deep into the night with the lights off and enjoy it while seeing it, yet as soon as you turn on the lights, you’ll be terrified.

Final Score for Suspiria: 9/10 stars. This is a great movie, one that defined its genre... or should have. It’s unfortunate that movies like Friday the 13th cater to the larger horror fan base, seeing as they are the anus of cinema. The best horror films are like this one-- tight, tense, strongly written, concise, and visually epic. After seeing teenagers get killed in a cabin for the 9,000th time, you might want to turn to something a little less mindless. This is a horror film that engages not only your adrenaline, but also your mind. What a pleasant surprise.

HORROR WEEK: Scream

When directors take a stab (pun intended) at the horror genre, certain things should be expected of them. Firstly, a little creativity must be involved in the making of the movie, as horror fans have gotten tired of seeing the same old plot played out over and over again. Secondly, attention should be paid to the actors and dialogue, two things that are often neglected in the genre. And finally, the deaths need to be fun. It pains me to say that Wes Craven, the hit-and-miss director who has in the past given us A Nightmare on Elm Street and Deadly Friend, hits only one of those high points with the derivative and boring Scream.

Retelling the classic (or as I like to call it, recycled) story of the small community terrorized by a serial killer, Scream stars Neve Campbell as Sidney Prescott, a teenager whose friends begin dropping like flies after a mysterious killer surfaces in her town. After doing in Drew Barrymore in an iconic sequence, the killer (known as Ghostface) goes after Sidney. Now, here’s the thing: Rotten Tomatoes calls this movie a comedy, but there’s nothing funny in it. Sure, there are plenty of cute nods to horror fans, with references to Halloween and some of Craven’s own films, but there’s nothing about a girl being hung from a tree in front of her parents and disemboweled that one can really find humorous. Sorry-- but the movie just isn’t funny. In fact, I don’t even know if that was its intent.

What is probably Scream’s greatest asset soon becomes its worst affliction, as the in-jokes with slasher fans become so numerous and tongue-in-cheek, the casual viewer will want to slit their wrists. The horror genre has become so self-referencing and self-deprecating, it’s nearly impossible to take seriously. Even Scream, which some call a spoof, was in turn spoofed by the even less entertaining Scary Movie. It’s a never-ending cycle of stupidity, emphasized by franchise-blending movies such as Freddy VS Jason. It’s almost as if the genre knows how dumb it’s become, and has decided to accept its fate and live out the rest of its decidedly numbered days as an ever-spinning wheel of bad pop culture references. What a disappointment.

The characters in this film, as if it needed to be said, are one-dimensional and utterly uninvolving. Clearly, this was intentional, as nobody creates characters this badly without knowing what they’re doing (unless they’re Tommy Wiseau). But contrary to popular belief, when you make a crap movie and you KNOW that it’s crap, that doesn’t make it any more of an ‘art form.’ It’s still crap. Perhaps slightly more clean-cut, but crap nonetheless. The dialogue is atrocious, stilted, and annoying. And even the camerawork, which features a ‘spooky’ atmospheric that seems to bend the shape of the lens, is distracting and uninventive. This movie isn’t merely conventional-- it’s aggressively average.

And yes, horror fans, before you lose your minds over my lack of respect for this movie, I understand that it’s supposed to be self-referencing, unimaginative, and an affectionate look back on teen exploitation flicks of old. It holds such campy, bad horror in reverence. But here’s my problem-- Why couldn’t it revere the GOOD ones? Instead of reusing every single horror cliche in the book, why couldn’t Craven (a man who has proven himself time and time again to be very creative with the genre) think of something new to bring to the table other than this lackluster and banal exercise in dreary camp? How depressing.

But for all its flaws, Scream does deliver some good scares, some ridiculously over-the-top deaths (one even involves a garage door), and a damn good plot twist at the end. Although it’s not good by any means, the movie still was able to cohere a story that should keep less demanding horror fans watching. And although the dialogue is bad, the acting is worse, and the whole thing is one big amalgam of ideas stolen from other, better films... it’s still a far better movie than Friday the 13th.

Final Score for Scream: 3/10 stars. This is pretty lenient, but I suppose that I had a fun time with the film at the end of the day. If you’re willing to set aside more interesting horror movies for a while, turn off your brain, and watch something with absolutely no redeeming qualities other than pure and unbridled entertainment value, you won’t be disappointed. I just hope that this obnoxious exercise in pop crap is just a momentary detour from the genre. Because as the number of horror films I see for horror week gets higher... so do my standards.

HORROR WEEK: American Psycho

Good news, drama fans-- Social commentary is alive and well in the world of cinema. It’s not often that a director can blend horror and scathing humor in such an effective way as in American Psycho, but it’s definitely pulled off here. One doesn’t usually look for biting wit in a horror movie-- especially not one about a psychopathic Wall Street partner who murders people in his spare time-- but the beauty of American Psycho is that you don’t even have to look for it. It hits you over the head with the bludgeoning force of pure insanity.

American Psycho stars Christian Bale as Pat Bateman, a well-off member of the creme de la creme of Wall Street. He has a corner office, a hot secretary, a fiance, and a beautiful penthouse with an epic view. However, he also has a crippling addiction to murder. Firstly, let me say that I loved how well the film plays off of horror movies of old, giving Psycho a fresh and undeniably entertaining twist, while still being original enough to have merit of its own. Instead of presenting us with the typical horror tale, it puts a twist on everything, making the killer the lead, and in the process forcing the audience to become accomplices to his killings. Undoubtedly, those watching it will feel the same malice that Bateman does when murdering innocent people. Which is unsettling... but that’s the point.

Before seeing American Psycho, I was under the impression that Bale was a bit of a bland, boring, and overrated actor. His performances in The Dark Knight trilogy and Rescue Dawn were overrated at best, and his line delivery (especially if it sounds like he has throat cancer) is weak. However, this performance blew me away. Never before have I seen the character of a serial killer tackled with such precision, intensity, and outright glee. He injects an incredible amount of energy into an otherwise one-note character, and the result is some truly classic scenes. Bale has never been more entertaining to watch, and if for nothing else, see American Psycho for him.

The dialogue is spectacular for the most part, but the haphazard scripting is often saved by Bale’s giddy insanity. Coining such seemingly innocuous (yet, in context, extremely creepy) lines such as “Do you like Huey Lewis and the News?” the movie trucks along at a mile a minute, keeping the audience riveted. When one makes a shock/thriller like this, they are forced into outperforming themselves in every scene as the movie progresses, so as not to let up on the suspense. But American Psycho will keep asses in the seats... provided that the audience members don’t have weak stomachs.

But although American Psycho definitely deserves commendation for its epic scripting and memorable performances, it can’t help but be a little scattershot. At the end of the day, the movie boils down to a series of well-done yet emotionally empty scenes that have little weight to carry. It’s pretty haphazard, but as long as you don’t expect it to be very coherent, you’ll have a good time. And really, it’s hard to be picky when you get to see Christian Bale axing a guy in the forehead yelling “TRY GETTING A RESERVATION AT DORSIA NOW, YOU FUCKING STUPID BASTARD!!!”

And really, American Psycho is a horror/thriller, but it’s also a commentary on the mentality of Wall Street, capitalism, and society in general. There are scenes that borrow heavily from horror classics, sure. But the movie is at its best when it shows the insanity of the banking world as crazier than Bateman himself. One scene, in which Bateman and his friends sit around a table comparing each other’s business cards and sizing the competition up, speaks a lot more about the world of money than the world of serial killers. Not only is it entertaining, but those who have soul-crushing jobs in the industry should take away a lot from it.

Final Score for American Psycho: 8/10 stars. Not only is this film terrifying, it’s terrifyingly ACCURATE. It portrays a man who is crazy in two ways: For power and for blood. And surprisingly, the time when he is craziest is when he is leading a normal life, pretending to be a whole person. “There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman; some kind of abstraction. But there is no real me: only an entity, something illusory. And though I can hide my cold gaze, and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable... I simply am not there.” I couldn’t have said it better myself.

HORROR WEEK: Friday the 13th

For the past decade or so, there’s been a visible decline in the overall quality of the horror genre. Most horror films made since 2000 have been remakes, re-hashes, and gag-inducing sequels. The once-promising genre seems to be dying a slow and painful death, and a lot of people look back on the ‘glory days’ of horror, back in the 70’s and 80’s, as a time when the genre had some merit. However, movies like Friday the 13th should make people remember that even back then, the genre was crap. Sure, there have always been some outstanding additions to the horror film canon, but those are most certainly outliers. As a rule, horror movies are bad. And this is one genre where if something’s bad... it’s REALLY bad.

Friday the 13th is a perfect example of this. Supposedly a ‘slasher classic’ (as if there were such a thing), this monotonous, repetitive, and boring movie tries and fails on multiple levels to grip the audience, but can’t muster so much as a decent scare or good line of dialogue. Few movies are actually inept on every level, but this certainly takes the prize-- it has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. It features the classic horror plot (which at this point deserves to be called ‘recycled’)-- a group of young twentysomethings go out to a cabin in the middle of nowhere, and are subsequently attacked by a mysterious killer. How original.

The movie was clearly made for shock value and nothing else, seeing as no effort was put into the characters or plot. But even the deaths are lame. Horror movies are made to be scary, but I wasn’t scared once throughout this entire movie. There wasn’t even a decent jump scare, for God’s sake. And that’s not something that’s hard to do. Usually, when horror directors aren’t very good, they ratchet up the suspense not through consistent, palpable terror, but by utilizing sudden noises and unexpected deaths to make the audience members jump out of their seats. But Friday the 13th couldn’t even accomplish that. Pathetic.

Seeing as this so-called “horror” movie doesn’t have any actual “horror” in it, that should really speak volumes about how inept the rest of it is. Normally when a movie is bad, you can tell that all the effort went straight into one aspect of it, while the filmmakers neglected the rest of it. Michael Bay pays a ridiculous amount of attention to explosions, and none to the characters. Nicolas Winding Refn spends all his time getting intricate lighting and camerawork, but forgets to actually write a script. Meanwhile, Friday the 13th director Sean S. Cunningham spent absolutely no time on every aspect of the movie’s creation. The gore is unrealistic, the scares are nonexistent, the dialogue is atrocious, the plot is repetitive, and the acting absolutely REEKS. “If you were a flavor of ice cream, what flavor would you be?” Holy good God! Did the writers actually think that real people in REAL LIFE TALK LIKE THAT? I hope not. It’s like pod people trying to emulate human small-talk, but coming off as robotic and generic. It’s inexcusable.

I could overlook a few minor flaws in plot points when it comes to the horror genre, because everything we see nowadays in horror has been done to the death (no pun intended). But when a movie hits every trope, idiom, and lackluster scene that makes the genre the laughingstock of cinema, it’s hard to ignore it. This movie is so generic it hurts. From the crazy old coot who warns the group about a “death curse” to a retarded twist ending that will have people slapping their heads over the idiocy of a reverse Psycho rip-off, this movie is truly the ultimate grab-bag of lame horror cliches. I want to cut it some slack because most horror buffs call it a ‘classic,’ but when the scariest moment in your horror film is a snake, I see no reason to.

Final Score for Friday the 13th: 1/10 stars. This is not only the anus of horror movies, it’s the anus of cinema in general. It has horrible acting, reprehensible dialogue, and takes a good forty minutes to even ATTEMPT to deliver a good scare. The horror genre has a lot of potential, and I wish that better horror films were made nowadays... but movies like this not only make me lose hope for the genre, they actually give me a newfound respect for horror of today-- Even Resident Evil 5. Because even though most horror films today recycle old ideas, at least they’re original enough to stand alone. If only the same could be said for Friday the 13th.

FILM REVIEWS: Prisoners

If there’s any moral to the story of Prisoners, it’s that a bad ending can absolutely destroy an otherwise great movie. If you’ve heard anything about the final twist of this film, you have probably heard that (in short) it sucks. But Prisoners represents one of the biggest challenges in making a movie. After building up consistent suspense throughout, how do you end your film? Other movies have squandered their potential with flimsy and poorly-constructed final acts, but few have been as good up until that point as Prisoners. In fact, if it weren’t for that last twenty minutes, this would easily be my favorite film of the year. What a disappointment.

Prisoners is a film about how a person, under enough emotional strain, is capable of doing horrible things for the betterment of his family. This is a theme that seems to be popular nowadays, with the great TV series Breaking Bad coming to a close, and Luc Besson’s Taken slowly becoming a franchise. Stories of men who do whatever it takes to provide for or defend the ones close to them resonate powerfully with a wide audience, as most people are easily sucked in by an everyman who, when put in an unusual situation, must do whatever it takes or pay the price. However, Prisoners and Breaking Bad go a little deeper than most, as they show the initially sympathetic main character’s slow and gut-wrenching spiral into insanity and/or evil, all the while daring the audience to continue rooting for him. As the mistakes and evil deeds of the lead character pile up, the audience must then question their own morals and how far they are willing to follow the character into the dark.

This phenomenon is incredibly powerful, and most movies that attempt to make the audience look within themselves deserve immense praise. If only Prisoners had done it a bit better. Hugh Jackman and Cuba Gooding Jr. star as the fathers of two girls who go missing on a rainy day in suburban Appalachia. The only lead is an RV (Walt and Jesse’s, maybe?) that was parked outside the house and vanished with the girls. A detective (Jake Gyllenhaal) finds the RV and arrests its only occupant: A mentally handicapped man played by Paul Dano. Dano steals the show among some seriously accomplished actors, and that’s saying a lot. He works with society’s inherent mistrust of the mentally ill, and Hugh Jackman’s violent reactions to his complacency are pretty shocking.

Jackman kidnaps Dano, brings him to an abandoned building, and torments him in various brutal ways in order to discover where his daughter is. As his methods of torture become more and more visceral and cringe-inducing, the audience is forced to wonder whether or not Jackman is right. Because even though all the evidence points to his claim, it’s impossible to think that his inhuman cruelty to Dano is somehow defensible. I refuse to spoil this aspect of the film, as it forces the audience to choose a side-- Are Jackman’s actions justified or reprehensible? The choice that the viewer makes speaks more about his perception than it does the movie. It’s incredibly amoral, but it gets the point across.

However, as I don’t want to spoil this film, I can’t reveal the twist ending. But I can reveal PART of it. So, the person doing the kidnapping (Dano or not) did it because he/she wanted to “Wage a war with God” for the loss of his/her son/daughter/nephew/niece/uncle/aunt/father/mother (just trying to cover everything here, people, it’s not easy to avoid spoilers). It seemed like a massive letdown that catered to people who wanted to be let off the hook for the cognitive dissonance brought up in the previous paragraph. Also, it smacked a little too much of a stereotypical horror movie-style cliched ending. I’m sure that the director had a big vision for the end of this movie, but I’m also sure that it got lost somewhere along the way.

The acting, fortunately, is enough to hold up the flimsy plot. Jackman makes an epic transformation from an average redneck father into a soulless madman hell-bent on the preservation of his family and the integrity of his position as the head of the household. Gyllenhaal, meanwhile, is just as good as he’s been in some of his other best movies, from Donnie Darko to Source Code. He has a huge amount of range as an actor, and he delivers a great performance here as the voice of reason and moral center of the movie. If it weren’t for his grounding performance, the film would probably feel unrealistic and impossible to connect with, as all the other characters are so over-the-top and unrelatable. But fortunately, he creates a character who is not only easy to relate to, but extremely well-written.

Final Score for Prisoners: 8/10 stars. It’s well-written, well-acted, and will have you gripping the edge of your seat even as the credits roll. It’s definitely not perfect, but it certainly outperforms a lot of the emotionless, unoriginal movies masquerading as dramas that have come out recently. In a year that has been polluted by special effects extravaganzas, shitty sequels, and horribly pretentious indie dramas, Prisoners and films like it are the saving grace. I’ll gladly take a great showcase for Jackman, Gyllenhaal, and Dano if it means that I have to suffer through the occasional Movie 43.

THE BLOODSTAINED LION: Promotional Posters