These days, my favorite movies to go see are the ones where I have
absolutely no idea whether they're going to shine like the sky or suck
like a suck-monster.
Textbook example: the trailer for The Strangers. Creepy as
hell, yeah, but it also had that scene where the trio of masked
assailants stand over their victims like a posse of J-horror rejects
dressing down their victims about not appreciating their comfy
suburban lives.
Utter scarefest? Or 90 minutes of foolish nonsense? Horror movies
are often so bad hitting the eject button on your remote will spit the
DVD directly into the trash, but sometimes they surprise you. It's
that hunt for the proverbial unopened Ding Dong in that vast landfill
of uninspired horror trash that makes it all worthwhile.
The Strangers' plot is about as straightforward as it gets: on
a late night, Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman head to a rural house.
It's supposed to be a romantic getaway, but their relationship has
just gone on the rocks.
Right before Speedman leaves to pick Tyler up some cigarettes, a girl
comes knocking, looking for a friend who isn't there. While
Speedman's out, someone knocks again. Rougher. Aggressive. It isn't
until several minutes after a hooded man's snuck into the house that
Tyler realizes her cell phone's stolen and that, though Speedman's
still gone, she's in no way alone.
Good Lord, I got creeped out again just thinking about it. The
Strangers is primally, bowels-liquefyingly scary. I don't toss
that out lightly out of the hundreds of horror movies I've seen,
there's maybe five or six that spook me out so bad I spend the next
few nights scared to go outside and thinking, in the few moments I can
spare between glances over my shoulder, about what I would do
if attacked by terrifying monsters and madmen. In real life, of
course, I'm scared by everything from needles to heavy traffic, but as
far as movies go, they rarely drum up the kind of animal terror that
would be embarrassing if it weren't also so damn real.
First-time writer/director Bryan Bertino accomplishes this through
masterful pacing, a minimum of musical cues, and top-notch sound
editing. That, and drawing out the suspense until you twist your
limbs so far into the theater seat's armrests you become
indistinguishable from human ivy.
Yet some people are deriding The Strangers for being an
unoriginal home invasion story. Like that means anything at all if
someone made a movie about the Three Blind Mice, and that movie was so
scary I could no longer see white canes or oversized sunglasses
without dropping a brick out my pant leg, I don't think I'd care if
I'd read something similar when I was six years old. Sometimes it's
not about the story, it's about how you tell it. Bertino's
directorial skills? They pay the bills.
Things do slow down in the chase-heavy third act, though. It's true I
was long out of adrenaline (as well as several other bodily
substances) at that point, but it just doesn't have the same
propulsive terror behind it. And rather than capping everything
that's led up to it, the ending just kind of happens; intentional or
not, that lack of resolution simply isn't satisfying.
Not to say it's a bad ending, only that it doesn't live up to the
sanity-pummeling terror of that first hour. In recent years, horror
directors with a knockout debut have gone on to some pretty shoddy
followups. With any luck, Bertino's going to go on scaring the
bejesus out of us for years to come.
Grade: B+
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Mr. Movie's list of Halloween favorites
Mr. Movie's list of Halloween favorites
I’m going to ramble a bit. Normally when picking a best list you do five or 10. I’m doing six. It just worked out that way.
When you look at my picks you will note I deliberately left The Exorcist off my list. While some think it’s the best horror film of them all, I read the book and it pales in comparison. Other than Linda Blair’s spinning head, lots profanity and vomit, and Mercedes McCambridge’s brilliant work as the dubbed-in demon voice, there isn’t much substance.
I guess at this point you’ve guessed the topic of this post is horror movies for Halloween. You’ll want to get started early. These days they get gobbled up at the few video stores that are left. I know next to nothing about Netflix so I’m not sure what kind of a supply it has for those still doing the mail thing.
'Paranormal Activity 3' back as spooky, gripping
'Paranormal Activity 3' back as spooky, gripping
The first Paranormal Activity was shot for $15,000 by writer/director Oren Peli. Worldwide, it grossed about $193 million.
That's amazing. Right there we have the solution to the nation's ongoing economic swoon. We're going to have to overturn the law against human cloning, but extreme measures must be taken to produce an army of Pelis to work around the clock turning 15 grand into 200 million. In no time at all, we'll be looking at so much money the nation will quickly be replaced by a giant Betty Ford center.
-- Local show times, theaters, trailer.
Big Awful Friday: 'Trailer Park' gory good time
Big Awful Friday: 'Trailer Park' gory good time
People complain about formulas for being rote and boring, but I say they're a good thing. If we didn't have the quadratic formula, how the hell would we solve whatever it is that thing solves? We'd still be hitting each other with sticks here.
Entire subgenres can subsist for decades off of one simple set of rules. Take 2008's slasher flick Trailer Park of Terror , a direct-to-video release that at least gets solid mileage out of its formulaic slaughter of good-looking youngsters one by one.
Years ago, Nichole Hiltz's boyfriend was murdered by her trailer-dwelling neighbors, spurring her to massacre them all, then herself. But when a bus of church camp kids gets stranded at the trailer park, they discover Hiltz is still around -- and so are her wrathful victims.
Don't fret to skip 'Don't Be Afraid of the Dark'
Don't fret to skip 'Don't Be Afraid of the Dark'
Before we consider cutting library funding in this time of fiscal crisis, we should step back, as a nation, and remember that without them, we'll be helpless in the face of any timeless horrors that roll into town.
Think about the last time you got attacked by that Cthulhu. What did you do to defeat it? No, not the bazooka filled with poison candy corn. Before that. That's right, you went to the local library. Specifically, the amazingly complete occult section filled with 14th century Italian manuscripts about head vampires and Moby-Dicks (he was a monster, right?). That's where you learned about the bazooka in the first place. Without the public library, right now you'd be gurgling away in the interdimensional stomach acid of a thing that wears its stomach in its third armpit.
That's what I gather from horror movies, anyway, which as far as I know are a series of documentaries filmed in real-time, Highlander -style. And if you need yet more proof of the crucial role our public library system serves
Big Awful Friday: 'Parents' very strange, very good
Big Awful Friday: 'Parents' very strange, very good
Expectations are a bummer. I'm about to talk up a pretty good movie, raising your expectations for its actual goodness.
Maybe the reality of the movie will not match those expectations and you will be mad at me, which will go nowhere, as I am very far away.
Honestly, it seems like I could make the world a better place by mildly disparaging everything I see. Every good movie would be a pleasant surprise! I could improve the lives of literal dozens!
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