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Fright Night (2011)
Horror is a genre that’s been notoriously cannibalistic, especially as of late. I don’t mean flesh-eating, I mean the glut of remakes that has polluted the horror market in recent years. After remakes of Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the Thirteenth, The Hills Have Eyes, House of Wax, Prom Night, My Bloody Valentine, The Amityville Horror, The Fog, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Black Christmas, Sorority Row, Dawn of the Dead, The Crazies, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, I Spit on Your Grave, Last House on the Left, The Thing, and scads more, you’d be forgiven for believing that the remake of 1985’s Fright Night would be another soulless cash grab. It turns out that it’s way better than even the original and quite an entertaining movie that got lost in the shuffle.
In a quiet little suburb outside Las Vegas, students are going missing. Ed (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) suspects that there is a vampire in town. Ed’s former friend, Charley Brewster (Anton Yelchin), dismisses this idea, especially since the would-be vampire in question is his new neighbor, Jerry (Colin Farrell), a home construction worker who seems to work at night mostly. But lo and behold, after Ed goes missing, Charley concludes that his old friend was right all along. Jerry has his eyes set on Charley’s single realtor mom, Jane (Toni Colette), and maybe even Charlie’s sprightly girlfriend, Amy (Imogen Poots). The only ally Charley can muster is a drunken Vegas magician in the Criss Angel tradition. Peter Vincent (David Tennant) has been studying vampires for years due to his tragic personal connection to vampires, notably Jerry.
Fright Night finds that horror sweet spot, equal parts scary and funny. Credit screenwriter Marti Noxon who cut her teeth on TV’s seminal show (yeah, I said it) Buffy the Vampire Slayer; there’s even a reference to a “Scooby gang” for we Buffy fans. Noxon does a terrific job of establishing a suspenseful situation and then developing it nicely, teasing it out. There’s a sequence where Charley is trying to rescue a neighbor lady that just involves a series of hiding places but uses a simple setup of ducking around corners so well. When our plucky protagonist checks in with Vincent for some assistance, we’re introduced to an array of exotic vampire-hunting weapons and artifacts that the Vegas magician has under glass. With a setup like that, you better believe we’re going to be using those weapons later, and how. The character development is richer than most teens-battle-monster genre films. The relationship between Charley and Ed, and the awkwardness and resentment of two friends growing apart, feels rather believable even dropped into the middle of a vampire adventure. The standard girlfriend role is given a bit more weight, as she’s the one who feels confidant and aggressive. She knows what she wants, and as played by the adorably named Imogen Poots (Solitary Man), you want to be what she wants. Seriously, this actress is striking in her Grecian features and I like a woman who knows how to handle a mace. There are also small touches that I really enjoyed that helped round out the movie. At one moment, a woman is being fed on by Jerry and she spots Charley hiding behind a door. Rather than cry out for help, she carefully draws a shaking finger to her mouth, wishing him to keep quiet and not to save her. The resolution of this rescue attempt is shocking in all the right ways. It’s a surprise that feels completely within reason, and organic twists and turns are always the most satisfying.
Noxon’s script continually surprises even when it starts to follow a by-the-numbers plot. Instead of an axe lopping off a vampire’s head, it just goes about halfway through thanks to the rigidity of bone. That’s a nice touch, but then when that same vampire tries to bite our hero and can’t move his fairly severed neck closer, then that’s when Noxon has capitalized on her cleverness. And she capitalizes often enough for Fright Night to be a real step above most vampire action flicks. Noxon also finds clever spins on vampire mythos; to get around the whole can’t-enter-without-an-invitation rule, Jerry just attempts to blow up the Brewster’s home to drive them out (“Don’t need an invitation if there’s no house”). There’s a particularly ingenious method to light a vampire on fire. And the entire character of Peter Vincent, played brilliantly by Dr. Who actor David Tennant, is a hoot and a great addition. He’s a riot as a cynical, profane, and selfish stage performer. His character is such an enjoyably comic foil, and Tennant plays him with aplomb, that you almost wish for a Peter Vincent spinoff movie.
Director Craig Gillespie shows that he is shocking adept when it comes to staging a horror film. I would not have expected this level of competency from the director of Lars and the Real Girl. It embraces its R-rating and the bloodshed is plentiful though the gore is restrained. Gillespie draws out scenes with judicious editing, letting the dread build steadily. The tension of something simple like Jerry standing in a doorway, waiting for any verbal slipup to come inside, can be terrific. Gillespie also has some nifty visual tricks up his sleeve to complement Noxon’s crafty screenplay. There’s one scene where Jerry walks into a hotel lobby and is confronted by a security guard. The camera pans over a series of security monitors that do not pick up Jerry. Then in the background we see Jerry hurl the guard to the ground to bite him and in the foreground we see the security footage minus Jerry. There’s an ongoing tracking shot inside a fleeing minivan that’s not exactly Children of Men but still a good way to feel the fever of panic. The final showdown between Charley and Vincent versus Jerry is suitably climactic and rewarding, nicely tying back elements that were introduced earlier and giving Poots an opportunity to vamp out, literally and figuratively.
Farrell (Horrible Bosses) is a charming, sexy, alluring menace as Jerry, which is exactly what you’d want in a vampire (sorry Twilight fans). Vampires are supposed to be seductive; they’re inherently sexual, what with all that biting and sucking and sharing of body fluids. If Jerry is going to be dangerous, he also has to be seductive, and Farrell is exactly that. With his swaggering walk, with his pose-worthy stances, with his grins, he’s a great ambassador for vampire kind. But this guy does more than preen; he’s also a credible threat. He’s the bad boy that is actually quite bad. Farrell’s enjoyment of his villainous role is noticeable. Jerry taunts Vincent: “You have your mother’s eyes.” He shoots and misses the big bad vamp. “And your father’s aim,” he add, chillingly. Having a strong villain can do wonders for an action movie, and Jerry is a formidable foe played with great relish by Farrell.
Not everything goes off without a hitch. The special effects can be dodgy at times, especially when Jerry goes into full CGI vampire face. The vampires tend to look like shark people, with long exaggerated jaws and rows of gnarly teeth. It’s not a particularly good look. While Noxon’s script excels in most areas, there is still enough dangling plot threads. Charley’s mother is really never a figure of significance. Her potential romance of her neighbor/vampire is a storyline that is never capitalized upon, oddly enough. That seems like the kind of storyline you’d build a whole movie around. She’s written out of the movie in hasty fashion, immediately going from a sequence of driving to being unconscious in a hospital bed. How did that happen exactly? After the Brewster house explodes, nobody seems to make a big deal out of this, like it’s just some regular neighborhood occurrence. What kind of neighborhood watch is this?
Fright Night is just a fun night out at the movies. It’s got plenty of laughs thanks to Noxon’s clever script, plenty of scares thanks to Gillespie, and plenty of sex appeal oozing from Farrell (though “sex appeal” and “oozing” don’t sound like an advisable linguistic match). It’s not much more than a vampire action flick but it’s a really good vampire action flick, clearly a cut above the dreck that usually just relies on its audience’s understanding of genre convention to cover up for its shortcomings. There’s no reason you cannot be a good movie with this genre, and Fright Night is proof of that. Convincingly acted, cleverly staged, and surprisingly well-executed, this is one genre movie that hits the right vein.
Nate’s Grade: A-
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The Grey (2012)
I’ve always been fascinated with survival thriller/horror, where we think step-by-step with the characters through an unlikely scenario. I greatly enjoyed Frozen, a horror movie about three teens stranded on a ski lift, and Buried was in my top ten list for 2010. I enjoy the thought exercise and find the scenarios easily empathetic as long as people don’t make boneheaded decisions. Director Joe Carnahan has been paying his bills as of late with stylized, overdone, and generally overblown action movies like Smokin’ Aces and The A-Team. I would not have expected Carnahan to deliver anything that could be described as nuanced or meditative, but lo and behold The Grey is a survival thriller that’s as thoughtful and emotional as it is viscerally exhilarating. The Grey is the first great movie of 2012 and I’m astounded that it was released in January, the dumping ground for cinematic dreck.
We follow a group of grunts working on an oil pipeline way out in the northern Alaskan territory. They’re heading south for some R&R when their plane crashes due to electrical issues. Ottway (Liam Neeson) and seven other men are the lone survivors. While checking for supplies, they discover a pack of wolves feasting on some of the choicer corpses. Ottway is a wolf expert, hired by the oil company to patrol the grounds and hunt antagonistic wolves. He explains that wolves have a hunting radius of 300 miles and a kill radius of 30 within the den. It is uncertain where these men find themselves, so they bundle up and head south, hoping to escape the predators, find food and water, and discover a way to help.
The Grey is a harrowing, haunting, and intense thriller, masterfully played by Carnahan. The threat is real and brutal, enough that it convinces the men to leave the safety of the plane wreckage to possibly escape the wolf kill radius. We’re told that wolves are the only animal that will kill out of vengeance (look out Sarah Palin). The attacks are vicious and the violence is bloody and occasionally shocking, though it never seems gratuitous. The special effects and canine animatronics are seamlessly integrated. The sound design for this movie is exceptional, probably the best use of sound to fashion anxiety since 2007’s No Country for Old Men or even Spielberg’s War of the Worlds. The sounds of the wolf pack echo around the theater, completely keeping you off guard, disorienting the audience. Carnahan creates such a vivid picture of dread that we’re convinced that the wolves could sic at any moment. And when they do the editing becomes chaotic, mimicking the ferocity of the animals and depicting the frenzied fear of the attacked.
I was a terrible bundle of nerves throughout most of this movie. The plane crash is an exemplary sequence of terror, capturing the terrifying moments from Ottway’s limited point of view. The rest of the movie doesn’t get any less tense just because they’re on stable footing. There’s one scene where the wolves attack a guy who has fallen back from the group. Carnahan brilliantly captures the helpless reality by showing the men trying to race back in knee-high snow. They can only stomp so far while the man is ripped apart in the background. The action sequences, though to be fair they’re really more suspense pieces, are the most nerve-wracking I’ve endured since the brilliant Best Picture winner, The Hurt Locker. Of course these being life and death stakes, there is plenty of death, as the men are generally picked off one by one, though not all by the pack of wolves. The frigid elements are just as dangerous as the killer wolves. The men could just as easily freeze to death. The need for shelter and food is dire (the men even joke about the famous cannibalism from Alive). One of them is suffering just from his brain being unable to acclimate to the elevated attitude. That’s almost enviable considering the doom that constantly hangs over the other survivors.
Naturally there’s some friction between the survivors as far as the best course of action. Ottway has assumed Alpha dog status thanks to his expertise on wolves and the Arctic climate, but that does not mean that the rest of the men follow lockstep. Give the alarming situation, it will be in these men’s best interest to work together for survival. Some of the men chafe at being what to do but the movie doesn’t drags out this conflict, thankfully, because jockeying for power positions seems like an absurd waste of time. There are heavier issues at play. The impact of the movie would be blunted if the characters came across as one-dimensional; then we wouldn’t care about their fate. Carnahan and co-writer Ian Mackenzie Jeffers, based on Jeffers’ short story “Ghost Walker,” find creative ways to enrich and reveal the character of these lone men. They feel believable and their reactions to the implausible dangers seem plausible, keeping us invested. Ottway keeps flashing back to an image of his wife (Anne Openshaw) for strength, this angelic brunette telling him not to worry. It’s what he has to hold onto, though when we learn more about the context of this image it becomes even more meaningful. One character has had enough struggling and has no will power to continue. He argues that whatever life he may return to is no reward.
The thrills and scares are what are to be expected, but The Grey is also a much more thoughtful and intellectually stimulating picture than you may have hoped. Carnahan’s script covers a wide array of survival tactics without breaking from the reality of its premise. It’s just interesting to watch a group of men use their wits to make best use of their dwindling supplies and dire situation. It becomes a game that the audience plays, systematically judging every choice and assessing if we would follow suit. Beforehand, the men engage in a theological discussion regarding the existence of God, faith, the belief that there is a divine plan. The men are fighting for their survival but having an existential crisis all the same, trying to supply meaning to the horrific, find reasons to keep fighting. “We crashed going 400 miles per hour and we survived. That has to mean something,” one of them reasons. Or it all could just be very bad luck. Ottway at one point, an admitted non-believer in a higher power, bellows to the sky for something, anything. His desperation is effective and turns what could have been trite into a nice character moment. One of the men shares a memory of his daughter, who would wake him up by gently dangling her hair in his face. It’s a touching moment and when that same character meets an untimely end and is helped to the other side by a vision of that same daughter, it becomes profoundly moving (the quick snap to reality is a jarring point for grisly comparison). The Grey has plenty more on its mind than making an audience jump. It also wants to make the audience think and, in the end, feel genuine emotion.
The ending may rankle some who felt, especially with the advertising, that the film was going to be a two-hour Neeson ass-kicking vehicle, but for me it was fitting and the only way this story could have ended. Though let me advise all potential ticket-buyers to stay during the end credits for a small bit that offers a tad more resolution, though still leaves as much to be determined by the viewer. It’s not exactly ambiguous considering how things are left.
Neeson (Unknown, Clash of the Titans) has settled nicely into his newest incarnation as middle-aged ass-kicker, such an odd path for the man who famously portrayed Oskar Schindler. At some level, it’s below an actor of Neeson’s standards to be running through such genre frills, but it’s also a joy to see someone who can really, truly act give gravitas to his men of action. After he delivered his warning in Taken, I was completely on board and ready to watch this man bust some skulls. Beyond the physical challenges, the role really puts Neeson through an emotional wringer and the man gives a strong, stirring performance. You’d be glad to have this man in any predicament. The rest of the cast fill out their parts well, with Dermot Mulroney (The Family Stone) making the best use of his time onscreen to create a character.
The Grey is a startling movie; horrific, jolting, thrilling, moving, beautiful, philosophical, and extremely captivating. Carnahan has crafted an exciting movie that transcends genre. There were moments so tense that I was chewing on my knuckles. There were moments so intense I felt like I had to look away. And there were moments so poignant that tears welled up in my eyes. I look forward to watching this movie again and finding even more at work. No grey area here, this is one truly excellent movie.
Nate’s Grade: A
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Final Destination 5 (2011)
If there was any cosmic justice the Final Destination franchise would have been KO’d by death a long time ago. The initial interest of bizarre, fiendishly clever deaths and the constant macabre misdirection was fun, but now, after five movies, feels creatively exhausted. Once again a group of unremarkable characters survive a remarkable disaster, this time a collapsing bridge. And once again we have to follow them figuring out the rules of the movie series and that they’re all marked for death. The in-between stuff is some of the worst drama ever captured on screen. It makes you impatient for death to get off its duff and kill more teenagers so I don’t have to listen to their whiny, unrealistic problems. Coming off a limp fourth installment that was the highest-grossing one yet, the filmmakers once again turn to 3-D as their savior, which does not play well at all on your TV (a sailboat mast becoming an instrument for impaling?). It’s more annoying than anything. But the real draw of this movie is the gruesomely elaborate deaths, and they’re probably the weakest of the series (a gymnast’s body practically exploding once she hit a padded mat seems absurd even for this movie). There is one sequence that freaked me out but that’s because I’m quite squeamish when it comes to eye trauma. What ends up slightly redeeming Final Destination 5, as far as cheap horror movies go, is a surprising third act that breaks from the doldrums of the franchise formula. For once, the people decide to take life to save themselves when death comes calling, and they set their sights on each other, resentful that one of their own survived in the premonition staple. I think this horror franchise took a turn for the worst when it gave into its target audience’s cynical bloodlust, and I doubt there’s anything “final” about this series. At least the Saw franchise had the merit to die.
Nate’s Grade: C
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Immortals (2011)
Director Tarsem Singh has only made two movies but is widely regarded as one of the finest visual artists working in the film medium. He’s made tons of commercials, which is apt because his first feature, 2000’s The Cell, felt like the world’s longest perfume ad. While amazing in its design, the movie was incredibly stupid. I haven’t seen his other feature, the more personal work The Fall, a movie that nobody wanted to make. It’s probably because they regrettably saw The Cell. Now the guy seems downright prolific, with a Greek mythology action movie in release and next year an update on the Snow White fairytale, the first shot in the Great Snow White Duel of 2012 (Kristen Stewart stars in the other, next summer’s Snow White and the Huntsman).
In 1200 B.C., King Hyperion (Mickey Rourke) is marching an army across Greece, laying waste to city after city. He’s looking for the mythical Epirus Bow, believed to be the only weapon capable of unleashing the titans, who were imprisoned after a war with the Olympian gods. Mankind’s only hope is Theseus (Henry Cavil), a strapping young lad born into low class. His real father is Zeus (Luke Evans) who keeps tabs on his spry son by posing as a wise old man (John Hurt). Phaedra (Freida Pinto) is a virgin oracle, a priestess who has been granted prophetic visions. Theseus rescues her and other prisoners of Hyperion. Together, they must find the bow and convince their countrymen to fight against the overwhelming forces of Hyperion. In the meantime, Zeus has sworn death to any god who interferes in the affairs of man and helps Theseus on his important quest.
One word I feel accurately that sums up the experience of watching Immortals is… “viscera.” This movie is obsessed with filming the destruction of human bodies in the most gloriously beautiful ways possible. The violence and gore are given an intensely operatic boost. One moment involves a god zips around the slow-moving mortals, smashing one head after another with his humongous war hammer. The scene plays out at a slower speed, allowing the explosions of glistening blood and skull to fill the screen, each a mesmerizing fireworks display of human goo. The visuals are often a balletic, phantasmagorical, Grand Guignol display of human carnage. When you watch this at home, you may need a squeegee to clean your TV. It’s mesmerizing to watch, getting lost in the painstaking yet sumptuous visuals, even when it’s buckets of spaltterific gore. There’s one scene involving a sledgehammer that’s guaranteed to make every male in the theater uncomfortably cross his legs. The final image is also memorably striking – the sky filled with thousands of battling titans and Olympians, suspended high in the air and hacking and slashing away (Grecian weather report: 50 percent chance of blood showers. Bring an umbrella).
Tarsem never skimps out when it comes to the look of his movies. Immortals looks like a living Renaissance painting; the director of photography should be credited to Caravaggio. Unlike Tarsem’s earlier films, this movie does not take place within the realm of imagination, but that doesn’t hamper the movie’s aesthetics. Taking a cue from the golden-hued Greek/Roman epics of recent year, notably Zack Snyder’s 300, the film exists in a heightened reality. We’re dealing with mythology after all (more on the specifics of that later). The iconic imagery of Greek mythology is all there, stunningly realized in lavish CGI and a production design that is frequently jaw dropping. The action sequences are resolutely exciting, with special mention for the climactic gods vs. titans battle. The gods, decked out in spiffy gold armor and capes, bounce off the walls aided by Matrix-style moves and slice and dice their wicked immortal brethren in creatively gruesome ways. It’s a thrilling sequence that almost makes you forget the movie’s catalogue of sins.
The movie plays fairly fast and loose with the Greek lore. The Theseus of legend was mainly known for slaying the ferocious Minotaur, the guardian of a great labyrinth. His father was Poseidon, not Zeus. Some versions even have Phaedra falling in love with Theseus’ son from his first wife (Theseus was a busy boy, taking after his father). These details, and more, may seem inconsequential but if they’re going to be so loose in the adaptation, why even bother keeping the name Theseus? Immortals does have an interesting albeit brief bit where the Minotaur is seen as a human warrior wearing a bull mask made of barbed wire. Short of the gods and titans, there isn’t any depiction of the supernatural occurring on Earth. The monsters and mythic creatures are absent, leaving some Greeks to question the validity of the gods. The movie takes an unexpected twist early by declaring, in a self-serious tone, that immortals can… die. It seems that the gods just discovered one day that they could kill each other. I would have liked to be there for that discovery (“Yeah, go ahead and lick that electrical socket.”). The film lays out that the titans and the gods were one in the same, it’s just that the winners of the battle of the heaven called the losers “titans.” If they’re the same then why do the titans act like feral monkey creatures and look like ashen, Hindi gods (no disrespect, one billion Hindus)? Have they simply gone wild after being locked away in such a unique prison? When they fight, the titans move at the speed of mortals, not gods. I also believe the titans were supposed to be considerably larger.
But as enchanting as the visuals are, there are still the other senses that are criminally malnourished. The screenplay by brothers Charlie and Vlas Parlapanides is about as bare-bones as you can get. It’s your basic hero’s quest, trusting young stud Theseus with finding a magic item and stopping a bad man. If that sounds plainly generic then congratulations, you’ve seen more than one movie with men in togas (Animal House does not count). Mysterious parentage? Check. Close relative that dies early to spur vengeance motivation? Check. Noble sacrifices by members of his team? Check. Eventual intervention of the gods? Check. What I just described could also have been the plot for 2010’s joyless Clash of the Titans remake. What’s up with Zeus and these noncommittal gods? He refuses to get directly involved in the affairs of man, but if King Hyperion releases the titans (should have gone the long route and unleashed the Kraken) then the Olympians are jeopardized. It seems like they have an interest in giving Theseus a mighty assist. The magic item, a bow that creates unlimited arrows when plucked back, is pretty much a forgotten relic. It gets used, I kid you not, exactly three times in the entire movie. All of this fuss over a super weapon that the characters can’t be bothered to utilize. They’d rather fight it out with a traditional bronze sword. What exactly does it mean to be immortal when even the gods can die? King Hyperion says he’ll be immortal by essentially raping a nation of women, keeping his bloodline alive for centuries (the Genghis Kahn defense, your honor). But if having kids is being immortal, I think we’re setting the bar pretty low.
The Phaedra character is so underwritten that she almost comes across as a parody of the role of women in these guy-heavy action spectacles. As portrayed, Phaedra is the definition of convenience. She doles out a prophetic vision to save the day, provides some grade-A eye candy thanks to the splendor of Pinto (Slumdog Millionaire), and even casually slips into Theseus’ bed for a deflowering (sorry guys, it’s clearly a body double). She will be haunted by visions of the future until the moment she loses her virginity. Let’s stop and think about this. Having one member of your team be able to SEE INTO THE FUTURE seems like a decisive tactical advantage. I understand the lure of a naked and willing Pinto, but Theseus needed to think beyond the needs of his little Greek. In an abrupt and off-putting turn, Phaedra is never really dealt with in any capacity after this seismic bout of lovemaking, nor do she or Theseus talk about what has transpired. She just provided some casual sex while the hero was recuperating and then checked out. Her major prophetic vision of Theseus and Hyperion joining sides is also just forgotten, turning out to be a letdown.
The actors were basically hired for their visual appeal, and to that end they succeed. Cavill (TV’s The Tudors), tapped to wear Superman’s cape in 2013 by Zack Snyder, is suitably buff and hunky. His performance is rather flat, no matter how many times he makes his eyes go big with anger. In contrast, Rourke (Iron Man 2) will chew whatever scenery he can find. His flamboyantly costumed villain at one point seems to wear a lobster claw on his head. He wants to punish the gods because they refused to intervene when Hyperion’s wife and child were slaughtered. When the gods do intervene to save Theseus, that’s when the character should go off the rails. Rourke just plays it in the same sleepy menace. Pinto gets to stare off into the distance regularly and pray. It’d be a stretch to say that the material challenges any of these actors.
Immortals is a testosterone-soaked action movie that feels like it minored in Art History. The production design, CGI, and practical special effects, all attuned to the extraordinary vision of Tarsem, makes for a brilliant looking movie with several sequences of memorable carnage. But we entered the age of “talkies” since 1927, and Immortals suffers when it concerns dialogue, story, characterization, and acting. The movie is a pretty loose adaptation of Greek mythology, falling back on a rote hero’s quest and leaving plenty of narrative dead spaces for the visuals to fill in the interest. Even a movie as visually resplendent as Immortals can only go as far as its story will allow. In this case, Immortals might just be the best-looking piece of borderline mediocrity you’ll ever see in your life.
Nate’s Grade: C+
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Chillerama (2011)
Chillerama is the latest ode to the drive-in B-movies of old. Like the higher profile 2007 Grindhouse, this movie is a series of short films from four different filmmakers celebrating the exploitation spirit of schlock cinema. Cecil B. Kaufman (Richard Riehle) is closing his drive-in theater, and for the final night of operation he’s showing four movies never before seen: the killer sperm movie “Wadzilla,” the unexpected lycanthropy romance “I Was a Teenage Werebear,” the black-and-white monster movie “The Diary of Ann Frankenstein,” and a final fecal-filled adventure into the abyss, “Deathication.” However, during this final night the drive-in is also ground zero for a new zombie outbreak, a disease spread through sexual fluids. Tobe (Corey Jones) has to navigate through the sex-crazed corpses to save his crush, Mayna (Kaili Thorne), and escape the drive-in- of death and maybe lose his pesky virginity.
Given its vignette nature, not all of the segments will be equal in quality. The absolute highpoint is indisputably “The Diary of Ann Frankenstein.” I laughed long and hard during this clever, cock-eyed satire. The absurdity of its premise and the assured demented sense of comedy of its creator, writer/director Adam Green (Frozen, Hatchet), had me laughing until I was in physical pain. The Frank family (formerly Frankenstein) is found by none other than Hitler (Joel David Moore, embracing the silliness with gusto) who dispatches them and steals the family journal. In one of the movie’s funniest lines, Hitler tosses a journal to a Nazi cohort and instructs: “Here, write some depressing stuff in this. We’ll say the girl wrote it and make millions after the war.” Hitler creates his own Jewish Frankenstein-like creature, though a missing film reel reveals his true motivation for reanimating this corpse (and he sings!). Green’s sense of comedy is evident in the pacing, construction of layered jokes, and genre spoofing. There’s one point where the monster is locked in the laboratory and just walks around the set, breaking down the fourth wall. Green even has the entire segment subtitled, though if you listen closely you’ll notice only about 10 percent is German. At one point Moore is screaming “No!” for a solid minute but he says a different word or phrase every time, including “Goldie Hawn!” at one point. The segment is so good that you may not even notice that joke at first glance. “The Diary of Ann Frankenstein” is wickedly hilarious and too tacky to be taken as a serious offense.
The other vignettes falls somewhere in the middle. “Zom-B-Movie” is the slickest looking movie, set in the present, and is a lot of fun. It adds a twist to the crowded zombie genre by adding in a sexual element, making the zombies a sex-crazed orgy (expect nudity that makes you feel funny). There are plenty of solid gross-out effects, and several sequences of penile endangerment, and there are some ingenious camera angles to match the segment’s electric energy. It’s the most self-aware segment, as characters openly discuss horror movie conventions and their own place in the movie Scream-style (“I’m the Final Girl,” one guy declares). A good percentage of the dialogue is comprised of movie quotes and catch-phrases brilliantly placed in this incongruous setting. During the climax, Riehle (Office Space) shoots round after round into the bands of zombies, ripping off like 20 anachronistic movie quotes as if they were action movie quips (“Nobody puts baby in a corner!” he yells and then shoots a zombie in the crotch). I was flabbergasted that the segment actually quoted Billy Madison, and well. The self-aware humor and the overall feverish energy, plus some characters we’ve been investing with in between the earlier segments, makes for a fun and satisfying sendoff for the whole trashy enterprise.
The first two segments rely more on base humor and seem to run out of gas midway through. “Wadzilla” is a one-joke segment about a man whose single sperm grows to monstrous, man-eating size. The cartoonish tone and low-rent visuals feel like a Joe Dante (Gremlins) homage. The segment does feature one truly inspired, wacked-out image: the giant sperm fantasizes the Statue of Liberty stripping out of her cloak and shaking her green goods (I think this segment just gave birth to a brand new fetish). But the overall concept is weak and the segment relies far more on shock value than wit. It’s more like a rejected Troma flick, though helped immensely by the presence of Ray Wise (TV’s Reaper). “I Was a Teenage Werebear” takes the 1950s beach blanket bingo teen films and gives it a gay twist, and to boot it’s a musical (territory covered well in Psycho Beach Party). The storyline of guy-meets-werebear doesn’t provide enough material to hold together the segment. Many of the actors cannot sing either, which adds to the joke but also makes the film more punishing to watch. The pacing is poor and the gags feel like they were the first things conceived. There’s not enough thought on display; the segment just peters out and becomes tiresome. The fact that Chillerama opens with “Wadzilla” and then “I Was a Teenage Werebear” makes it harder to appreciate the finished product.
Chillerama is certainly going to have a restricted audience interested in campy homages celebrating the trashy nature of cheesy low-budget, exploitative B-movies. Unlike Grindhouse, this collection lacks big names but it makes up for it with a cracked sense of humor. The segments all run about 25 minutes in length, which means even if you dislike one it’ll be over soon enough. The four segments vary in quality, though each has its moments. “The Diary of Ann Frankenstein” is easily the standout of the bunch, elevated by droll, absurdist, demented humor that’s skillfully constructed and deconstructed. “Zom-B-Movie,” the culmination of the film’s connecting characters, is a fun blast to conclude with. Chillerama is a messy, uneven, crude, occasionally brilliant, but most of all it’s a great way to spend a Saturday night with some friends and a supply of popcorn. Just watch out what’s in that butter topping.
Nate’s Grade: B
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The Thing (2011)
Has any modern filmmaker endured more crappy remakes of their films than John Carpenter? The man has suffered through remakes of Halloween, The Fog, Assault on Precinct 13, and now his 1982 creep-fest The Thing, itself a remake of the 1951 Cold War allegory, The Thing From Another World, gets the same awful treatment. This new Thing is some hybrid of remake and prequel, because it’s set before the events of the 1982 film but it pretty much follows the same overall plot. Once again a group of scientists (this time they’re Norwegian!) on a remote Antarctic outpost discovers an alien body buried in the ice. Once again the alien breaks loose and can assume the fleshy form of man. But this new film forgoes the rampant paranoia and rising tension of Carpenter’s film for cheap Boogeyman thrills. The alien monster is introduced early and the rest of the film succumbs to people looking around pensively, afraid it will jump out and attack. This alien creation is an odd quirk of evolution; a species that seems to be made of nothing but gnashing teeth, spindly legs, and vaginal imagery. How these things built and fly spaceships, I have no idea. Some of the gore effects are crafty and stomach-churning, but nothing is as memorable as the practical effects used sparingly and to great effect in the 1982 flick. This Thing is too much of a familiar monster to make an impact.
Nate’s Grade: C
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Attack the Block (2011)
Attack the Block is the hip new sci-fi comedy/thriller from across the pond. The Brtis know a thing or two about elevating genre movies to an art form. While not rising to the same level of executive producer Edgar Wright’s oeuvre, this is one of the most fun experiences I’ve had in a movie theater all year.
On New Year’s Eve in a South London ghetto, a very different kid of firework is lighting the moonlit sky. An alien race is crashing to Earth as fiery meteorites, which the kids of the neighborhood term “Gollums.” Moses (John Boyega) is the leader of a group of teenage wannabe hoodlums. Their crazy night begins with mugging Sam (Jodie Whitaker), a nurse who lives in the boys’ apartment complex. Moses and his crew later run into Sam and need her help when one of their own is injured. The alien monsters have descended upon their block, scaling the apartment building looking for easy prey. Moses and other block residents band together to battle a common foe, the outer space monsters, which have the misfortune of trying to invade the wrong neighborhood.
Attack the Block is a refreshing spin on a genre that seemingly had covered every ground. But lo, it never covered the modern urban landscape, or, as the tagline succinctly puts it: inner city vs. outer space. It’s not long before you realize that writer/director Joe Cornish (writer of the upcoming Tin Tin flick) is the real deal. The camera angles are lively and inventive, without crossing over into self-infatuation for style’s sake. The cinematography by Thomas Townend is delightful to look at, often making our own home feel like an alien landscape with harsh color tones. The movie has the slick look we associate with music videos and commercials, but never does the movie let the visuals overwhelm the story. The edits are crisp and quick, packing a lot of material into a small 99 minutes and doing well to quicken your pulse during several iterations of the alien attacks. But most of all, the film is completely, unabashedly fun with a capital F. It has a swagger to it, adopting the same cocksure attitude of its main characters. The accents and the breathless jargon take some adjusting, but by the time we’re running from aliens you’re pretty much at the same pace of astonishment with the characters, forgetting the language barrier. I was quickly sucked into the world of this movie, able to enjoy the depth of skill by the invisible technicians. There’s an immense sense of satisfaction watching this crew band together to take out superior numbers of baddies, some of them even Earthlings. Cornish confines his narrative focus to one apartment building over the course of one night, setting up our orientation to the building so that when we have characters running back and forth, and various storylines criss-crossing, we are kept in the loop. As people start becoming monster chow, the stakes get even higher.
The dialogue is regularly clever without having to stoop for self-aware gags. This is not a genre spoof. This is played relatively straight, just with amusing characters (“You’d be better off calling the Ghostbusters, love.”). One of the kids, who is on a pay-as-you-go cell plan, breathlessly says, “I only got one text left. This is just too much madness for one text!” Attack the Block is the right combination of scary and funny, the same fine line that its forebear, Shaun of the Dead, so successfully walked. This is the kind of movie that genre fans tell their pals about in breathless declarations of awesome before falling over dizzy. Nick Frost, star of Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead, even has a minor roll as the neighborhood pot supplier. While Block doesn’t approach Shaun’s utter genre-spoofing greatness, there is enough of squandered potential in Cornish’s script, particularly how the various pieces ultimately stack together for its standard but effective fist-pumping climax, to keep Block from being crowned an instant genre classic. The characters remain little more than types, distinguishable by the few traits thrown to the actors like meager breadcrumbs (kid with glasses, angrier kid, white kid, etc.). If you’re a fan of Shaun of the Dead, and witty, bloody sci-fi, then you already know that Attack of the Block is destined to beam into your home.
The aliens themselves deserve a special mention since they break away from the traditional mold of cosmic movie monster we’re familiar with. These minimalist aliens look more like giant yeti creatures that run on all fours. They’re all black, like inky black hole light-cannot-penetrate black, which is scary but also a clever way to hide the shortages of a limited budget and the reality of people in suits. The only thing that stands out is a set of fluorescent blue jaws that snap wildly. It’s like the monsters ate a can of glow sticks. This aspect is smartly used at points to pump up suspense. It’s a novel approach that veers away from the H.R. Geiger (Alien) stuff that’s been copied and recopied to death for the last 30 years. These aren’t smart aliens. They’re more like rabid beasts overwhelmed by their biological impulses. These aliens don’t come across as organized as other movie aliens. It seems like they’re just floating around through the void of space waiting to land on the right rock and multiply.
The musical score is greatly enhanced through the talents of Felix Buxton and Simon Ratcliffe, better known to big beat electronica fans as Basement Jaxx. The musical duo provide a score tinged with their famous electronic mélange of sound, including pieces that sound like retro video game sound effects (Space Invaders?), 1950s sci-fi movie scores thick with Theremin use, and an ongoing sludgy beat that weaves in and out of the picture. Working with Steven Price (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World), traditional rousing musical pieces are enhanced with the Basement brothers’ dubsetp influenced bass and drum lines. The score perfectly matches the frenzy of what’s happening onscreen, evoking a fuzzy mood. I have been listening to clips of the Attack the Block score for days. It’s not as integrated and essential to the film as Run Lola Run’s famously kinetic electronica score (the standard bearer of all electronica-enhanced scores), but I was delighted every time it remerged. With the Chemical Brothers score for Hanna and Oscar-winner Trent Reznor’s score for the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo later this year, this may be the best time yet for film lovers that enjoy toe tapping to some electronic beats. These kinds of scores age so much better than synth scores, one of the absolute worst things ever to happen in the history of movies (Apocalypse Now is almost unmatchable thanks to its dreadful synth score).
Of course your level of enjoyment is going to severely rest upon whether you want the main characters to survive or get eaten. Attack the Block begins with an empathy deficit, meaning it puts its hoodlums immediately in a hole that they might not get out of. Our first introduction to Moses and the gang is watching them mug Sam. Later on one of the guys says the knife that was bared was just for show, and that the boys were just as scared as she was. I doubt that. When you’re on the receiving end of a weapon, and outnumbered, and surprised, it sure seems like you got it worse. The movie then spends the rest of its running time with these wannabe ruffians, and we do get to know them slightly better but really only slightly. Some of the kids have absentee parenting situations, which isn’t too shocking, and occasionally a character will take a moment to reflect, thinking beyond the situation, blaming the government in a fit of paranoia for being behind the alien nasties. One kid even makes a curt remark when he finds out Sam’s boyfriend helps impoverished kids in Africa. “We don’t got poor kids here that could use some help?” he comments. Well, kid, I wouldn’t dismiss the magnitude of systemic poverty in the African continent, but you could have made your point without seeming like a dick. And these are our characters. They blather a lot; in fact they rarely stop talking. Eventually they do apologize to Sam for mugging her and Moses does take the mantle of hero to redeem himself. However, by that time some audience members may have checked out. Attack of the Block is decidedly less fun if you don’t give a fig for its wannabe thug figures.
Attack the Block is like a delirious head rush, witty, full of energy and style to spare, and an infectious attitude that washes over you. The movie delivers what Super 8 promised, namely the bond of kids coming together to thwart an alien invasion on their home turf. This is a high-energy flick that succeeds as a comedy and a thriller, with a few nasty splashes of gore thrown in for good measure. It has some issues that keep it from the pantheon of genre greatness, but I won’t quibble the movie to death. Not when I get something as deliriously entertaining as Attack the Block.
Nate’s Grade: A-
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Drive (2011)
Driver (Ryan Gosling) is a Hollywood stunt driver who has a lucrative side-project. For the right price, he can be hired as a personal driver. He gives the client a five-minute window. Whatever happens in that window, he’s their driver no matter what. Miss it and he’s gone. As you can imagine, this kind of job offer is mostly filled with getaway driving duties. Driver takes an interest in his apartment neighbor, Irene (Carey Mulligan), a young mother. Her husband (Oscar Isaac) has just been released from prison and already feeling heat to pay his debts. He gets winds of a pawnshop holding a million in cash. Driver offers his services to square the guy’s debt and to keep Irene and her son safe. But of course things go wrong, as they tend to in these sorts of pictures, and Driver is left with a sack of money and two very angry gangsters. Nino (Ron Perlman) and Bernie (Albert Brooks) would like the money back and to eliminate the number of people that know about their involvement in this scheme.
Drive is being sold as one kind of movie, a high-octane action thriller with plenty of car chases, when it’s really a European art-thriller paying fawning homage to those kinds of movies. That means that Drive plays out much more placidly and contemplatively with sudden bursts of gruesome violence. My audience seemed to grow restless with the purposely plaintive pacing so when the violence exploded they would laugh or cheer, happy that something of conventional entertainment value was finally occurring. I was growing restless myself, not with the infrequent appearances of genre action or the artistic flourishes, but just with the prevalent pauses. Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn (Bronson) will have his camera hold onto a scene for several seconds longer than what feels necessary, or he’ll shoot dialogue between actors and Gosling will pause a full 20 seconds before answering. I understand that Refn is establishing a stoic loner akin to Clint Eastwood’s celebrated stable of strong silent types, a modern American cowboy. I’m sure that you could cut 10 minutes of out the film just from snipping these extended pauses and overlong shots, moments that seem to be filling time and giving the audience an opportunity to step outside the movie. I doubt that was ever the intent but it’s certainly the effect. When a scene or camera shot holds on longer than it should, we can feel it, and when it keeps going we start to wonder why, and when an answer is absent then we start to snicker or second-guess the artistic choices. I’m sure audiences that watched Drive will probably be scratching their heads wondering why there isn’t more, well, driving.
The action that does appear onscreen is extremely well choreographed. The car chases thrill and the edits allow for full audience orientation. You know what’s happening and you know what’s at stake. And we care. A car chase after a botched robbery is particularly exciting when Driver starts driving backwards to block his opponent’s view of the road. The opening chase sequence is notably almost an anti-car chase. Driver is listening to a police radio and choosing when to duck around side streets and wait out the patrolling cop cars. The tension isn’t watching one car chase another, it’s watching one car idly sneak away. What I’ve described, however, is about all the movie offers for car action, though Driver does ram one motorist off a ravine later.
You can tell Refn is a fan of Hollywood genre films, and Drive takes typical thriller tropes and puts them through an art-house prism, bringing a near Kubrickian level of beauty to the violence. Drive is a gorgeous movie to watch; the shot selections, the chiaroscuro lighting, the use of the 80s style Euro-synth score by Cliff Martinez (Traffic, Contagion), it all coalesces into a near hypnotic blend of visual and sound. It’s a beatific landscape even when horrible things are going on. There’s a sequence where Driver, Irene, and one of Nino’s thugs are in an elevator together. Driver notes the imminent danger and slowly motions Irene behind him. He then turns and kisses her, and while he does this the elevator lighting seems to brighten and darken, like it too is being charged through the power of a kiss. And then Driver sharply pivots, blocking the thug’s attack, knocks the guy to the ground and stomps on his head until it bursts. The looming violence is teased through slow motion, and then it hits with the power of a crescendo. The violence is always looming, always seeming to be just on the cusp of an explosion. But under Refn’s direction, the movie fulfills that audience bloodlust in unexpected ways. Instead of a big fight, Driver casually drowns one of the toughs in the surf of a beach. Instead of a brutal elimination, Bernie dispatches someone with what can almost be described as compassion, slitting a major artery and whispering, “It’s done. It’s all over. There’s no pain. Just let it happen.” Even the big showdown between Driver and Bernie plays out with flash-forward edits, giving the meeting an extra level of gravitas knowing what awaits when they leave the table.
Refn has created a beautiful movie, it’s just that it has so much empty space pretending to be nuance. And that’s the rub. I appreciate an art-house sensibilities elevating and celebrating classic American genre pictures. I though Joe Wright did an excellent job of this with Hanna earlier this year. However, Refn shortchanges his actors. The script by Hossein Amini (The Four Feathers) is light when it comes to character detail. Again, this might be because Refn wishes to make a statement on genre films by having his movie populated with genre types and sticking to this limited route of characterization. Whatever the rationale, it makes for some pretty elusive one-note characters. Irene is less a character than a symbol of innocence. It doesn’t help matters that Mulligan has little chemistry with Gosling. Nino and Bernie are interesting characters who have such unspoken histories. They’re mid-level criminals stationed out of a cheap pizza joint in a strip mall. Nino is tired of the criminal higher-ups always disrespecting him. Bernie used to be a movie producer in the 80s, and may have bankrolled something like Drive. He hates getting his hands dirty but he shows an eerie talent for violence. These small glimpses are hints at something more, but that is all Hossein and Refn leave us with.
Gosling (Crazy, Stupid, Love) has very little to say in the film. He probably only ever speaks 80 words, but brevity does not mean he’s just sitting around. Gosling goes for understated in a genre known for histrionics. He plays things very close, a taciturn mystery man. The existential drifter. Gosling sure knows how to hone his flinty stares. Mulligan (An Education) gets very little to do in the film, so it’s another round of her crinkling her pretty face and blinking those glassy eyes. Christina Hendricks (TV’s Mad Men) also appears as a third wheel on the pawnshop scam. The real surprise is Brooks (The Muse). The famous comedian is shockingly believable as somebody you don’t want to cross. Even when he’s trying to be cordial there’s a veil of menace. If only there was more to his role. I would have loved to see him regrettably step back into his past, taking care of business with ruthless yet disdainful efficiency.
Drive is an action thriller that’s more a Euro-infused commentary on the genre. Fans of Hollywood action will likely be put off by the elusive characters, the sluggish pacing with numerous pauses, and the overall art-house nature of the finished product. Refn’s movie is beautiful to watch, with intricate precision taken to making the imagery and sound design mesmerize. If only that same level of care was paid to character and plot. We’re dropped into this criminal scenario and left to flesh out the characters given the hints and nods we accumulate in 100 minutes. I don’t need to be spoon-fed but I’d like my movie to have better attention to character than ambiance. Drive is a beautiful looking vehicle that just doesn’t have any particular place to go.
Nate’s Grade: B
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Hobo with a Shotgun (2011)
Consider the ultraviolet, gleefully vulgar movie Hobo with a Shotgun is the SECOND feature-length film that began life as a fake trailer for the 2007 exploitation opus, Grindhouse. Except this film began as a fan-made trailer to win a Grindhouse contest. Director and co-writer Jason Eisener’s winning entry followed a homeless defender of the streets, a hobo who found himself thrust into greatness thanks to oen fortunate shotgun. The two-minute fake trailer became a viral hit, was even attached to Canadian prints of Grindhouse, and Eisener was asked to extend his bloody trailer into an actual movie. He scored Rutger Hauer (Bladerunner, The Hitcher) as the star. finally, an actor from the 1980s who begs for change – on purpose! Hauer’s hobo rides the rails into a very Canadian city (the hookers say “aboot” – it’s cute) discovering an urban landscape overrun by scum. Drug dealers, gangs, pedophiles, crooked cops, all under the thumb of crime boss, the Drake (Brian Downey) and his two sons, Slick and Ivan (Nick Bateman and Gregory Smith). Can one hobo, shotgun in hand, inspire a city to stand up?
Hobo with a Shotgun is a movie that lives up to its very title. It’s a gleeful, jubilantly violent, colorfully over-the-top genre exercise that doesn’t push your nose in its campy excesses. But it is excessive, and to what effect? If you stop to catch your breath, you’ll start to realize that there isn’t a whole lot holding the film together. It barely covers 80 minutes and that’s with a lot of wheezing to get to the finish. The plot is mostly a series of beheadings, stabbings, and, of course, gunshots. Sure it’s a fun throwback and meant to be entertaining due to its homage to awful exploitation films, but it’s a one-joke movie that’s pretty hollow at its center. He’s a hobo, he’s dispensing justice (“one shell at a time” a newscaster reports), that’s about all there is, not that I expect a film with a title like Hobo with a Shotgun to tackle weight philosophical topics (the titular hero seems like a figure that would give Ayn Rand fits). If somebody wants to go to the effort of making the hobo some metaphorical everyman, lashing out at a society he feels impotent and angrily displaced by, then by all means. This is not a film with commentary in its blood. It lacks the creative consistency of a Black Dynamite or the narrative pulse of a Planet Terror, or the genre-rattling re-purposing of a Tarantino effort (have your pick). But the violence is often brutal and sickeningly clever, sating base appetites.
This is a movie chiefly about grotesque characters, grotesque violence, and grotesquely dark and demented laughs. Luckily, the film has a finely attuned sense of humor that elevates what otherwise might be static genre exercises. The film is fully aware of its outrageousness. One of the Drake’s thuggish sons literally walks around with ice skates on before confronting the hobo of fame. He declares somebody’s going to be “skate raped.” He then uses these unorthodox shoes as an unorthodox weapon. A hooker (Molly Dunsworth) with a heart of gold saves the hobo. He remarks, without a hint of irony: “You’re smart. You should be a teacher.” He then refers to her as a teacher for the rest of the film. They develop a bizarre relationship that involves the shared desire to see a bear in a zoo (no joke). A cop reasons, “Well at least he’s only shooting the dirty cops,” in reference to the hobo, to which the chief responds, irony-free, “We’re all dirty cops!” A pedophile is dressed up as Santa Claus and abducts children, including one who bangs on the back windshield of a car as it drives by our hobo. The fact that it happens not a second later than two or three other incidents of crime, creating a melange of overrun criminality, made me giggle. And some of the jokes in this movie are dark; I’m talking scorched earth dark, but I was howling throughout. Now you know where my sense of humor lies. The newspaper headlines decrying the vigilante uprising have a frenzied penchant for rhyme and overly serious statements that are often hilarious (“Hobo Refuses Money, Demands Change”).
Eisener takes care to make his film look like a relic from the 1970s, from the low-budget mayhem, to the ominous synth-laden score, to the highly saturated film colors that advertise being phony “Technicolor.” His camera is antic, constantly swooping to find its intended target, and the cinematography feels grimy, constantly lit by strong neon colors like Joel Schumacher was a paid consultant. Eisener would do best to settle down a bit at times. His direction is a little too erratic, a little too antsy, like he’s constantly afraid that his audience will turn on him. Hobo with a Shotgun is a loving yet messy and uneven homage to the schlock movies of old, and your enjoyment level of this flick will depend greatly on whether or not you appreciate movies aim low on purpose. The crazy nature of the film, its frenetic pacing, and its strong sense of humor will delight fans of trashy cinema. The rest of the audience will probably just view it as trash.
Hauer is a classic movie tough that actually has a bit of a soul inside those steely blue eyes. He’s an actor that’s been giving small, quietly menacing performances over the last decade. He plays the character completely straight, which makes him far funnier and even somewhat surprisingly sympathetic and less sociopath than a Travis Bickle-esque figure that wants to cleanse society through blood. His dream is to own a lawnmower, which he loftily dreams of opening his own lawn care company. He’s spat on, beaten, and treated without a shred of respect. To many, the hobo is just a nuisance at best and a subhuman lecher at worst. Hauer doesn’t even have to say a word, just hang onto his weary grimace and it says enough about the character. The hobo character makes for an interesting dispenser of justice, though the character is little more than a concept with legs. However, Hauer makes this hobo one for the ages. Way better than the creepy magic hobo from The Polar Express.
The movie is more fun than it should be and at the same time the movie is nothing more than the power of its admittedly awesome title. This seedy, blood-soaked is destined to be an acquired taste for a select few, however, I doubt anyone will randomly stumble into something as provocatively titled as Hobo with a Shotgun. This is a self-aware B-movie celebration of the grindhouse canon while giving is a gentle parody nudge; enough to capture a wink without going into camp. It has enough of a chaotic energy and cracked sense of humor to make up for its narrative deficiencies. Hauer somehow finds a soul inside his cartoon hobo, which is more than I can say about any of the other actors. But when you’re in a movie with burning school children, pedophilic Santas, oddball lines like, “When life gives you razors… make a baseball bat filled with razors,” and a hero who dreams of owning a push mower, well, you’re not expecting Shakespeare.
Nate’s Grade: B
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Saw 7 (2010)
The story behind Saw 7 (or as presented in theaters, Saw 3D) is more intriguing than anything you’ll find in this lackluster chum bucket of guts. The director of Saw 6, series editor Kevin Greutert, was all prepared to go off and direct the sequel to the surprise smash, Paranormal Activity. The folks at Paramount even penciled in a Halloween release date, long the fertile ground for the annual Saw sequels. It seemed like Paramount was rubbing in the fact that they now had the more exciting, buzz-worthy franchise and they would tap dance on the grave of Saw. Well the studio suits didn’t take too kindly to this broadside, so they activated a clause in Greuter’s contract. The man was legally required to leave the Paranormal Activity 2 project so that he could direct a seventh Saw film. Because nothing says “work of art” like forcing your director to make a movie by threat of legal action.
Saw 7 is billed as the “Final Chapter” but it doesn’t feel like a satisfying conclusion, more like an overdue mercy killing. It’s no secret that the Saw franchise has been flailing and sputtering for quite some time, with the bizarre exception of Saw 6 (my friend Eric proudly deems it the “Godfather II of the Saw franchise”). It was because of Saw 6, a fascinating return-to-form by tackling the topical issue of health care reform, that got my hopes slightly renewed for the franchise’s finale. Having health insurance employees as the victims gave the franchise some much-needed populist anger, a renewed morbid fascination that was surprisingly enjoyable. Imagine Saw 7 taking on the extension of the Bush tax cuts? Alas, my fledgling hope was for naught.
Part Seven follows a self-help guru Bobby Dragan (Sean Patrick Flanery) who talks about surviving a Jigsaw death trap as a spiritual awakening. Except that he’s a fake; he’s devised this phony survival tale as a scheme to get rich. Naturally Jigsaw (Tobin Bell, as always, in flashback) doesn’t take too kindly to this misrepresentation. Dragan would seem like a prime candidate for the haunted warehouse of horrors that Jigsaw usually specializes with, except that Jigsaw has been dead for four films now. His second apprentice, Hoffman (Costas Mandylor), is wanted by the police and FBI and even Jigsaw’s own widow (Betsy Russell), who unsuccessfully tried killing Hoffman with one of the series’ infamous bear traps masks. So let’s stop and think this out. Hoffman, who is on the run and established as a serial murdering fiend, still takes time out to set up a warehouse full of death traps for Dragan to fulfill his late employer’s wishes. If it’s not obvious now let me make it pointedly clear – in whatever city these murders, take place, it has the most incompetent police force in the history of the universe. Did they literally hire the Police Academy crew? That would make for an entertaining diversion that might reboot two franchises.
As always, the sinister death traps are the real draw of the franchise, and these convoluted killing devices have been getting less inspired from each shallow sequel. These contrived contraptions always bothered me in their uniform intricacy. The franchise began with some pretty simple scenarios: crawl through barbed wire to reach an exit, while covered in kerosene hold a candle to see a written combination, saw off your feet if you want to escape a filthy bathroom of doom. Then in order to top the previous film, the death traps got more contrived and involved a lot more engineering muscle. The more complex they got the less interesting they became. Now with Part Seven, some traps include a three-headed saw with each member of a love triangle in its aim. Two guys, the boyfriend and the “other man,” have to overpower a saw or they can relax and let the woman that’s come betwixt them lower onto a saw blade. This opening trap is the start of some dubious misogyny even for a genre as female punishing as horror. There’s a gauntlet of grisly horror in store for a bevy of female characters, usually involving something sharp penetrating them. But for the lone man who falls into a Jigsaw trap he meets his death by… hanging. Yes, a simple almost merciful hanging compared to the gruesome fates the women encounter. I’m not seeking feminist sensibilities from a genre that profits from their half-naked terror, but Saw 7 is even sicklier because of the undercurrents of misogyny. The traps in number seven aren’t memorable, interesting, and they feel like they’ve been done before in some earlier incarnation (a woman being “smoked” in a mechanical pig does seem to be different).
The biggest problem with Saw 7 is that it doesn’t feel like anybody gives a damn anymore, including the filmmakers and actors. The production values seem like a world away from other movies in the series. The entire affair reeks of “direct to video” even though it was shopped as a 3-D theatrical experience. As you can imagine, because of the gimmicky 3-D, the movie is filled with plenty of pointy objects pointed at the screen. When watching in traditional 2-D, it gets fairly tiresome. Also because of the 3-D presentation, the filmmakers had to compensate for how dark the 3-D glasses make the movie. That means that the spurts of blood are in a rather unrealistic pink lemonade shade, like the retro blood from 1970s exploitation flicks. Without the glasses, as most will view the film at home, it further cements the overall cheap atmosphere. The production design, cinematography, and editing all feel like the Lionsgate intern team performed them. Every technical aspect feels more than sub par, it feels like no effort was exerted whatsoever. Sure it got finished, but finished and complete are different.
The Saw franchise has always been built around the craft death traps and a last-second twist ending accompanied by a barrage of scenes given new context. This formula has been repeated with each installment, so I expected nothing more and “nothing more” is what I received. Saw 7 thinks its audience demands to know its convoluted back-story, which gives way to all sorts of behind-the-scenes flashbacks that are always retroactively changing and channeling the timeline of events and participants. I think it’s all frightfully boring. I don’t care who screwed what bolt into what. I’m not watching Saw for realism (hence why the police NEVER think about tracking what vacant warehouses are sucking down gads of electricity). But at this point, with the thrill of the death traps long beaten into a bloody submissive pulp, I don’t even know what I would watch this series for. The appeal seems to have died along with its boogeyman, Jigsaw, four films back. The subtitle “The Final Chapter” seems like a promise destined to be broken. In the annuls of horror, any successful franchise will live on forever with cheap made-for-DVD sequels. Saw 7 just feels like the first made-for-DVD sequel, except it got a theatrical release as one final gasp at cash. Just wait twenty years and the whole thing will be rebooted as some sort of prestige picture that speaks to man’s inhumanity to man circa 2030.
Nate’s Grade: D
nathanzoebl 
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