The Poughkeepsie Tapes (2007)

The Poughkeepsie Tapes has had quite a difficult time finding a release. Made in 2007, it toured to festival circuit to overwhelming positive reviews and was promptly picked up for distribution by MGM, slated for a 2008 theatrical release. However, Hollywood film studios are fickle mistresses, and PT (as I'm going to be referring to it from now on because 'Poughkeepsie' is hard to spell) found its release date pushed back about four separate times before finally disappearing altogether from company's schedule. While the brothers behind the film, director/writer John Erick Dowdle and writer/producer Drew Dowdle, went on to have moderate levels of success in Hollywood with titles such as Quarantine (a remake of Spanish found-footage film [rec]), the Shyamalan-produced Devil, and the trippy As Above So Below, really nothing more was heard about the feature that brought them to the attention of the studios. From there, its legend, as well as the hype about how disturbing it was, grew and grew for a solid ten years before it finally received an official home video release courtesy of Scream Factory. So, did it manage to live up to a full decade of hype and expectation? Shockingly, for the most part, yes!

The basis of this mockumentary (NOT a found-footage film, but I'll get more into that later) is the discovery and examination of over 800 sequentially-numbered video tapes --the titular tapes of the title-- found in a police raid on an abandoned house in Poughkeepsie, NY. The tapes not only detailed the practices of a killer known in the area as The Water Street Butcher, but proved both he'd been an active murderer far longer than theorized and was even more sadistic than anyone could've possibly imagined. The myriad stalkings, tortures and murders are presented in an upsetting realistic fashion, reminding one of the mysterious side of YouTube and the faux-snuff of the August Underground series, and still manage to be disturbing despite the many years of envelope-pushing content released in the subsequent ten years since its creation.

Presented as one of those 'true crime' docs littering Netflix these days, PT firmly plants itself in the realm of mockumentary (for other prime examples I recommend The Taking of Deborah Logan and S&Man) by presenting a framework of music, titles, and talking head interviews to supplement its POV segments. The acting by the predominately little-known cast is superb and naturalistic, assisting the aesthetic of realism to no end. Same goes for the effects. While there's little on-screen violence, the filmmakers choosing to focus more on mental and psychological abuse which is far more horrifying in this reviewer's opinion, the effects we see are well done if perhaps a teeny bit dull.

Ultimately, The Poughkeepsie Tapes is a well-made film, still powerful and retaining its shock value despite years of hype and a substantial amount of gorier films. Well worth the wait and definitely worth the purchase price.

Gerald's Game (2017)

This is quite a year for Mr. Stephen King, isn't it? Two new novels, Gwendy's Button Box and Sleeping Beauties (co-written by Richard Chizmar and his own son Owen King, respectively); a second, critically-acclaimed film adaptation of It; The Dark Tower finally saw life on the screen, albeit in an abysmal way; and an upcoming film adaptation of novella 1922, from his short fiction collection Full Dark, No Stars. However, the bit of King news this writer was the most excited about was a Netflix-produced film version of one of my favorite of his novels, Gerald's Game; and by one of my favorite directors working in the genre today, Mike (Absentia, Oculus) Flanagan, no less! I have to go ahead and say, this may be one of the best Stephen King adaptations ever made.

Jess and Gerald, a middle-aged married couple in Louisiana, head up to their secluded vacation home in an attempt to save their crumbling marriage by fulfilling a particular bondage/rape fantasy of his. Unfortunately for both, Gerald should've watched his cholesterol levels a little more; he keels over dead after about 10 minutes, leaving Jess chained to the bedposts with all means of escape --phone, keys, etc-- mere inches out of her reach. If that weren't bad enough, she'd come to regret not making sure their front door was fully closed, thanks to a ravenous stray dog, and a "man made of moonlight" who may or may not be there.

If you were to read the 1992 novel --part of King's "feminist trilogy" that also included Delores Claiborne and Rose Madder-- you would notice that roughly 90% of the book is composed of Jess' internal monologue, and therefore, unfilmable. Writer/director Mike Flanagan certainly did, as he has admitted in multiple interviews, which makes his handling of the multiple inner voices our heroine uses to work her way through he situation even more impressive. Instead of doing the cheesy voice-over thing, he chose to make her internal voices external. She hallucinates versions of herself (including one of her as a child), her newly-dead husband, and even her father giving voice to them.

Gerald's Game is practically word-for-word and beat-for-beat drawn directly from the book but with the fat cut out, keeping an impressive pace and palpable level of tension for a story that could very well have been boring if in less capable hands. The acting is universally perfect, and no worries, people who've read the book, they do not hold back on any of the more visceral moments, including THAT solar eclipse flashback sequence. I literally cannot think of a single negative thing to say about Gerald's Game, and while I know that doesn't make for a very interesting review, I couldn't be happier.

The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016)

In 2010 a gaggle of monsters that hadn't been considered 'scary' in a long time came crashing out of Norway in the form of found-footage hit Trollhunter, the most profitable film to come out of that particular frostbitten country in history. It would be a full six years before director Andre "Name With a Bunch of Accent Marks I Can't Replicate Unless I Reset My Keyboard to Norwegian Which I'm Not Gonna Do" Ovredal would release another film, this time in English, and while it couldn't be more different in tone and style from Trollhunter, I'm pleased to say The Autopsy of Jane Doe is just as impressive in it's own right.

We start off following a sheriff arriving at a home that also happens to be the sight of a grizzly triple homicide in which it appears all the victims died desperately trying to leave the house. But that's not the strangest thing; that would go to the partially uncovered body of an anonymous young woman --our titular Jane Doe-- in the dirt-floor basement. She's taken to the local funeral home, run by a father/son combo, both of whom are still grieving from the wife/mother's death two years before, for the procedure of the title. They open her to find shattered wrists and ankles, dozens of lacerations on her internal organs, and lungs like she inhaled enough smoke to smother four or five people, yet there are no indicators of any injury whatsoever outside. Far from it, her skin is alabaster perfection. Then, things start to get weird, with hallucinations, dead animals, and a very clear link to the occult.

Gone is the found footage aesthetic and all it's trappings of Trollhunter (though don't let the found footage thing scare you off from watching that film if you hate that style, because as April Snellings wrote in a review of the film it "owes more to Jurassic Park than The Blair Witch Project"), and in its place is an assured, fluid camera and careful lighting that recalls an antiseptic version of the gothic works of Terrence Fisher. Whereas Trollhunter wanted you to oogle over the titular creatures in all their glory, Autopsy is somewhat secretive, with very few on-screen special effects --except for the actual autopsy stuff, of course.

As far as acting goes, it's actually kind of amazing the best performance in the entire film is given by Olwen Catherine Kelly, who plays the corpse at the center of the mystery. Don't get me wrong, the other actors are fine; Emile Hirsch pulls off the idea of a character who wants to leave the situation he's in but doesn't know how to say it, and, frankly, I might have a little bit of a crush on Brian Cox and think he's wonderful in everything, but there's just some type of magnetism Jane Doe has that forces your eye to her every time. The minute changes to her facial expressions depending on what's going on in the scene make her feel almost more alive than any of the other characters whom are all stuck in the past in their own ways.

I guess what I'm saying is, I'm a fan of this Norse master of genre cinema and you should definable check out both films discussed here.

It (2017)

1986 saw the release a 1,138 page behemoth of a novel by insanely-prolific writer Stephen King titled It, his 22nd novel and yet another New York Times number 1 bestseller --indeed, Publishers Weekly listed It as the best-selling book, both fiction AND nonfiction, in the US for that year. It proved to be so popular, in fact, the story of a group of misfit kids fighting an ancient evil in a small Maine town only to be forced to return 27 years later when it was proved they didn't quite finish the job found its way to television in the form of a 2 part, 4 hour long miniseries in 1990. The series, directed by Tommy (Halloween III) Lee Wallace, is still well-regarded and has become something of a cultural landmark for those of my generation thanks to years of syndication. Therefore, given how iconic the book and the character of Pennywise the Dancing Clown (played to perfection by Tim Curry in the miniseries) have become, you could understand the trepidation when a new adaption was announced. The fact that it took several years to see the light of day after numerous re shufflings in the crew, including multiple changes in writers and directors, didn't help. Luckily, all that worry was for nought!

 Before I go any further, I want to address the red-haired, pasty-faced elephant in the room; the new Pennywise. Like a lot of people, I was unimpressed when the first pics of Bill (Hemlock Grove) Skarsgard's Pennywise, and the thing I didn't much care for was the fact that his makeup and costume seemed so....easy. It was an obvious, Horror Movie Clown (c) type of place to go with it. The thing is, both the book and miniseries clown are visually unremarkable, they just look like regular-ass clowns. The fear was generated by actions, like Pennywise appearing in locations a clown absolutely should not be. By comparison, Bill's Pennywise seemed like he's trying way to hard to look scary. But then, something happened. Randomly one day an interview I read with James Wan popped into my head where he was discussing his film Insidious. He was asked why the Lipstick-Face Demon was smearing the bright red cosmetic on himself, and Wan answered he was doing that in an attempt to replicate the appearance of clown to draw people to him. Suddenly, everything clicked! Pennywise is not a man, he is an entity, and Pennywise is simply its interpretation of a clown. I had the same epiphany when the film started and we finally got to hear the voice Skarsgard went with; it's an utterly bizarre voice, but again, it's an incomprehensible being from beyond space and time trying to replicate human speech, so it makes perfect sense the cadence and whatnot hit the ear wrong.

 And those perfectly sensible changes aren't limited just to the main baddie either, most characters and events in the film differ from their source material in smart ways that brilliantly update the material not just for the late-80s setting but for a 2017 audience. The seven members of The Losers Club, as they proudly refer to themselves, are fleshed out in ways that make them feel more like real characters, as opposed to both the book and miniseries where they're a bit more archetypal, and it's a real delight just watching them interact with one another. It helps that the casting was pitch perfect, of course, and not just when it comes to our young protagonists.

The pace clips along at a nice pace that belays the 2hr 15min runtime, and I found Andy (Mama) Muschietti's direction more palatable here than in his previous works, and considering this movie completely shattered a half dozen box office records I think we'll be seeing his name attached to It: Part 2. Frankly, despite a script that feels a bit shaky at times and a couple other minor quibbles, I think this is a fine updating of a modern classic and I'm excited to see what happens with the second half of the story.

Annabelle: Creation (2017)

2014 saw the release of Annabelle, a prequel/spinoff of the excellent period possession film The Conjuring. For those who don't recall, it was, as they say in Spanish-speaking countries, 'no muy beuno;' boring, uninterested,  needlessly complicated and featuring only one, possibly two, effective and memorable scare scenes, it was unanimously decried as a fairly dull time. Well, it's three years later and Hollywood is so devoid of ideas we now have a prequel OF a prequel to deal with. However, could it be that's a good thing?

12 years after the tragic death of their daughter, dollmaker Samuel Mullins and his mysteriously bedridden wife open their improbably large house (in an improbably idyllic location) to several young girls and their nun caretaker from a shuttered orphanage. Janice, one of the youngest girl and stuck with a leg brace thanks to a recent polio outbreak, finds the normally-locked door of the daughter's room open and finds the doll we all now and love(?) inside a closet plastered with pages of the bible. She soon becomes the major target of a demonic force --is there any other kind of force in these movies?-- that wants her body and soul for its own purposes.

Director David F. (Lights Out) Sandberg lends the film the tension and suspense that was desperately needed in the first Annabelle film, and while there's nothing here you really haven't seen before (this WAS written by Gary Dauberman, after all), the script had a nice amount of character and eccentricity that makes it feel less like a studio flick and more like something the people involved actually gave a shit about. Sure it feels a bit padded at times and the "twist" ending is contrived to the point your eyes might just roll right out of their sockets, but it's leaps and bounds better than the first film. Since they're written by the same person, let's hope the next Conjuring spinoff The Nun is of at least the same quality as this.

The Dark Tower (2017)

When one goes into a theater to see a film adaptation of a beloved book series it's always with a sense of trepidation, some of it deserved and some of it not as there are, without exception, ALWAYS changes made to various aspects of the story. This is especially true of Stephen King films. Sometimes these changes are for the best and end up causing the adaptation to outshine their source material, as in the case of The Shining, Misery, or 1408; every now and then they end up far worse like Night Shift or The Lawnmower Man. Which camp does the adaption of The Dark Tower end up? Well, I'm not entirely sure.

The film centers on Jake, a young New Yorker who's recently been plagued with extremely vivid and realistic dreams that feature red eyes, a tower, children having their brains sucked or whatever, a man in black (Matthew McConaughey, who's been looking disturbing waxy and skull-faced lately. Seriously, did he get surgery to look more like Peter Cushing?), and a dude who's super good with a gun. When the animal-faced creatures known as the Taheen, also featured in his dreams and able to blend in with regular people thanks to highly detailed human flesh masks, come for him, he away from his mother and stepfather and finds a portal to the land of Mid-World in order to find the gunslinger of his dreams and hopefully stop the Man in Black from destroying reality.

I'm a fan of the Dark Tower book series, which spans the years from 1982 with The Gunslinger all the way up to 2004 with the titular Dark Tower (there's also a book titled Wind Through the Keyhole that came out in 2012 that takes place between books 4 and 5 but I don't usually include it since as far as I'm concerned it really adds nothing to the plot nor is it important for character reasons), so you can imagine my excitement when it was announced an adaptation would finally hit screens after more than a decade of  rumors and false starts. Furthermore, I was fully aware significant changes would have to be made as large swaths of the books would be nigh unfilmable, and I'd made peace with that. I'd go so far to say that, and this is a conservative estimate, roughly 75% of what we see in the movie is either radically different or just straight up didn't happen in the book, and even that is ok so long as you can beat the idea that this is more of an "Inspired by" situation than a true adaptation.

However, there's one major change that I had a far more difficult time with. You see, the entire series, throughout all seven books, has always been Roland's --the name of Jake's dream gunslinger-- story. In the film version though, in addition to changing Jake's character from the son of a megaweathly media mogul to a troubled middle-class kid with a shitty stepdad, the narrative focus was shifted to him. Now, I'm not saying I don't get where such a radical change came from (I'd imagine the makers thought it would make such a wild story more relatable), but by doing so, and of course down playing all the gorier and more fucked up aspects of the books, they took a huge scifi/horror/western hybrid epic and turned it into something that is almost indistinguishable from all that YA tripe that glutted theaters not to long ago. Ultimately, The Dark Tower isn't BAD per say, but it winds up being a very underwhelming and somewhat forgettable film of an unforgettable series.

Since this movie flopped horribly, effectively killing the idea of future installments, I'm going to end this review with a list of cool stuff we'll never see visually realized:

--The dead city of Lud and its malicious inhabitants.
--Eddie, a junkie from '80s New York, and Susannah, a legless civil right proponent from the '50s, joining up with Roland and Jake.
--The adorable Oy, a talking mammal that looks something like a dog and a raccoon combined.
--Eddie killing an evil AI named Blaine with bad puns.
--Flashbacks to the fall of the kingdom of Gilead.
--The epic battle between Roland's gang and a group of child-snatching robots in wolf masks.
--The creation of the Tet Corporation.
--The inclusion of a major character from 'Salem's Lot.
--Stephen King playing himself.
--The werespider Mordred.
--And last but not least, Susannah holding a demon captive with her vagina.

47 Meters Down (2017)

Last year around this time a little shark film called The Shallows made its debut and became the sleeper hit of the summer. So given that fact it really shouldn't come as a shock to see another shark movie released this summer in an attempt to capitalize on that film's success. Unfortunately, 47 Meters Deep --previously titled In The Deep-- feels like an Asylum ripoff, except nowhere near as hilarious as those tend to be.

Our story follows the Mexican vacation adventures of sisters Lisa and Kate, played by former pop star Mandy Moore and Claire Holt, respectively. We find out that Lisa's ass has just been dropped like a hot rock by either her husband or boyfriend (I can't for the life of me remember if they actually specified which), and considering she's the type who defines herself by whatever relationship she's in she's pretty broken up by it. We then immediately fly through a whole series of Screenwriting 101 scenes that are cut together so quickly all they would need is a peppy synthpop track to be considered a montage until the girls have met a couple of vacation boyfriends who convince them to come onto their friend's boat for a spot of shark cagin'. Unsurprisingly the winch holding their cage breaks and they wind up 47 meters --or 155 feet if you're American and fat-- under the surface, surrounded by Great White sharks.

So, guys, this movie is horrible. It looks amateurish at best and almost unwatchable at worst, though considering director Johannes (The Other Side of the Door, Storage 24) Roberts has been behind some of the worst horror flicks of the past few years I suppose that shouldn't come as a shock, which really upsets me considering he's been tapped to direct The Strangers 2. And the writing! Oh boy, the writing! You know how Blake Lively's character in The Shallows was a really likeable, interesting, multifaceted character? Well, Lisa and Kate's main character trait appears to be THEY ARE GIRLS, spending roughly 80% of the film squealing and the other 20% fumbling around inane dialogue. Furthermore, considering the sheer amount of time the bends was mentioned, I'm pretty sure Roberts and co-writer Ernest Riera have no idea what the bends actually is. I mean, it's a great album, why is that a problem?

Ironically, it features a song titled 'High and Dry'

All joking aside, considering the sheer speed those woman drop to the ocean floor, twice, and the fact Roberts went out of his way to include a shot of the glass watch face on Kate's wrist shattering, those girls should've been dead right then and their, their newly-liquefied brains leaking from their ears. I'm willing to overlook a lot of shit; I could've overlooked the bland and one-dimensional characters and the myriad plot holes (how many plot holes could possibly be in a movie like this, you ask? Oh my sweet summer child, you have no idea) if the ending worked. It does not. In fact, I haven't been this pissed off about a film ending in a long while. I'm gonna talk about it, so if you don't want to know you should stop reading now, because beyond here there be dragons.

Towards the end of the film, things are looking bad for our mousy friend Lisa. Her leg is trapped between the ocean floor and the cage after a failed rescue attempt left it on its side, her sister was just snapped up in front of her eyes by one of the sharks while picking up some spare air tanks, she even managed to shot herself in the hand with a spear gun. Then, crackling and whimpering over her little underwater radio thingy. It seems her sister is alive! Badly hurt and hiding a ways away between some rocks, but alive nonetheless. She suddenly switches over to total badass! She manages to unstuck her leg using the inflator on her bcd, finds her sister, swims her up to the top using underwater flares to keep the predators and bay, and even gouges a shark's eye out when it bites her pussy! She makes it one the boat, then her vision goes blurry and BLAM!, turns out she's still in the cage, her sister is dead as fuck, and she was hallucinating as a Coast Guard rescue team swims down to her!

W-what? Why!? Why would you do that!? Why would you give us a rad, tense (the only tension to be found in the entire fucking movie) ending where a character evolves and then snatch it away to present us with this uninteresting and, let's just go ahead and say it, misogynist (obviously a woman wouldn't be able to save herself, right?) ending instead?! It added nothing, instead shattering what would've been an interesting, if silly, character arc. I actively hate the two writers for this ending.

So yeah, I really, really, REALLY hated this movie. Shit, I'd recommend Jaws: The Revenge, over 47 Meters Down.

Gotta say, if it were me who'd had to suffer through all that, Matthew Modine's Shark Viewer Inc would be getting a sternly-worded Yelp review. "My sister died due to the Captain's negligence and faulty equipment! However, his prices were reasonable and technically we did see plenty of sharks! 2/5 stars" 

 

Siren (2016)

2012 saw the release of V/H/S, an anthology/found footage hybrid from mumblecore heroes such as Adam Wingard, Ti West, Joe Swanson, and the film making collective Radio Silence, just to name a few. Arguably the best segment --and some could make the argument it's the only decent segment-- is a short about about a trio of dudebros who pick up the wrong girl called Amateur Night, directed by David (The Signal, Southbound) Bruckner. In late 2015 the decision was made by Bruckner and Co, with Dance of the Dead director Gregg Bishop at the helm this time, to create a feature-length film based on the monstrous young lady at the center of the short, and in late 2016 they did just that with Siren. In fact, this could easily be seen as a prequel to Amateur Night.

It's the night of Jonah's bachelor party and his brother/best man (a title given him out of pity as he's the classic "Fuck-Up Brother" archetype) has promised to give him and his two other friends the night of their lives! Sadly, it turns out the reputation of crazy night life of the own brother Mac has taken them to was greatly exaggerated; what's a group of lame 20-somethings to do?! Well, clearly follow the random guy that approaches them in the saddest strip club in the world who tells them he can take them to the real party, duh!

Upon finally arriving at the party --a rundown plantation in the middle of a swamp, natch-- they're greeted by a very dark striptease and introduced to the club's proprietor, Mr. Nyx. He sets Jonah up for a special show with a girl behind a glass partition, the girl from Amateur Night and the titular siren, while the other's enjoy some paranormal cocktails. Well, good guy Jonah becomes convinced she's a sex slave being held against her will and breaks her out, only to discover both her penchant for wholesale slaughter and the fact that she mates for life, and she has her eyes riveted on his junk.

So Siren is kind of a weird movie for me to talk about. It's not a good film, don't get me wrong, but.....that's kinda why I like it. Ok, positives first. There are some CGI elements, but they're used sparingly and hidden in shadow a good percentage of the time. I also like that, despite seeing HOW Lily (the name given to the creature) came to be in our world, we really know nothing else about her, what she truly is, or where she came from. It implies a much larger world that could potentially be the basis for a franchise.

Everything else is pretty much what you'd expect it to be; the acting is simply OK at best, the direction pedantic, and the writing leaves a lot to be desired. Luckily I don't care about any of that. I think Siren is a fun time-waster, silly and cheesy in all the right ways. Give it a watch, couldn't hurt, right?

It Comes At Night (2017)

A mysterious sickness --which is both wildly contagious and fatal in just a couple days-- has ravaged the land and family man Paul, played by personal favorite Joel Edgerton (The Gift, Black Mass), has himself and his wife and son in isolation inside a massive cabin-y house in the mountains. One night a lone man tries to break in, telling a story of a wife and child and a desperate search for supplies. His story is proven true and pretty soon they're all living in that laughably large house together happily, but for how long?

 So it seems the major complaint with the film so far has been the pace; in fact, the pace has proved to be such a problem Cinema Score audiences are currently holding at a solid D! Now I personally don't mind a slow pace, generally speaking, but even I have to admit it really takes its time. Outside of one action beat at roughly the 30 minute mark not a whole lot happens. The title, the trailer (which is seriously one of the best trailers I've ever seen, BTW), and a weirdly-lingering shot of a particular painting all seem to suggest something more along the lines of a creature film when that couldn't be further from the case. The 'It' of the title is largely a metaphor for fear and paranoia destroying a group from the inside out, which is a type of film we've seen a million times. 

None of this makes It Comes at Night a bad film, per say, because there is a lot to recommend here. The acting is excellent, and the writing/direction by Trey Edward Shults are both great, but none of that saves this from being a perfectly skippable film. I liked it, but I don't feel I can recommend it, so make of all this what you will.

Alien: Covenant (2017)

Remember way back in the near-forgotten year of 2012 when we kept seeing all this incredible promotional material for Prometheus and we were all super stoked because Ridley Scott was coming back to the Alien franchise for the first time in 34 year and then the film came out and it was underwhelming at best? On a related not, you ever heard how those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it?

A crew of 15, awoken from cryosleep during a 7-year colonization mission after their ship is damaged by a solar flare or whatever, discover a planet randomly that just so happens to perfectly suit their needs that's much closer than the one they were going to. A majority land on the surface after both to study the ecosystem and to find the source of a mysterious SOS call they've received. A few disturbingly bad CGI creatures later and they come in contact with David, the murderous robot from Prometheus and near-perfect doppelganger for the robot the crew of the Covenant brought with them. Then some more pretentious Prometheus bullshit, like the idea of the xenomorphs being the result of a virus and an entire civilization of Handsome Squidwards, happens.

Show me the person who thinks they can tell these two apart and I'll show you a liar.

In case you can't tell, I was not a fan of this movie. Much like its predecessor, it's riddled with Grand Canyon-sized plot hole while trying to make you think they're there by design and the entire film just feels kinda rushed and amateurish despite the years of experience behind and in front of the camera. The acting runs the shit-scale from dull (is it ironic that the two best performances in the film are being given by a man playing a robot and Danny McBride, or is it just funny) to hysterically melodramatic (I get that the Daniels character is suppose to be sort of this film's Ripley, but I don't recall Ripley blubbering quite that much. In fact, I'm pretty sure she cries more here than Ripley does in 4 entire films). The computer effects are shockingly sub par --including a few scenes where they don't look any better than the CG in Alien3, which you may recall is 25 years old-- and everything has that obnoxious blue patina that every fucking sci-fi film in the last 10 years has.

Overblown, dull, uninteresting, and not even the slightest bit engaging, you'd be better served just watching you Blu-Ray copy of Alien for the 5000th and remind yourself that Ridley was talented once upon a time.

Beyond the Gates (2016)

Once upon a time, in the mid-80s up to the early 90s, there was a popular trend of releasing board game that came with a VHS component. The tapes would function very much like a Dungeon Master in a game of D&D, conveying instructions and directing the players during the game. Most of these were Fantasy/Action games like Dragon Strike and Doorways to Adventure, licensed games based on pop culture like the Star Wars and Star Trek:TNG franchises, or new versions of classic board games like Candyland and Clue, however, there were a substantial number of horror games. Doorways to Horror, Atmosfear, and the very popular Nightmare series (4 of them!) are but a few examples of this forgotten period. Sure, they still release games now with DVD components, but it's not really the same. But indie flick Beyond the Gates seeks to bring attention back to this proud subgenre.

The father of two estranged brothers, the driven working professional Gordon and the lazy bum John, goes missing for 7 months and is declared dead in absentia. After being brought back together to close up his somehow-still running video rental shop they find the last thing he was watching was the tape from a game called Beyond the Gates. They bring it home to their father's home --where they're staying during the cleanup-- and make the unfortunate decision, along with Gordon's wife Margot, to give the game a try. On the tape an entity by the name of Evelyn (played by the genre vet Barbara Crampton) tells the three playing and finishing the game is the only way to save themselves and the father's soul.

Writers Stephen Scarlata and Jackson Stewart (who's also the director of the film) create an atmosphere of familiarity and nostalgia. The film wears it's influences proudly but doesn't wallow in them, creating something that feels old and new simultaneously. If feels like discovering a Full Moon Production from the 90s you've never seen before, just with far better writing and acting of course. The few instances of gore are tow that line of intentionally over-the-top, the look of the film runs a wide gamut from warm and crisp in the "normal" world to a beautifully retro pink and blue color scheme for the in-game world, and the music is fantastic (frankly I'm baffled why it hasn't been giving a vinyl release yet).

While the film is a bit slow at times and could've used a bit of trimming of some slightly redundant scenes, Beyond the Gates is guaranteed to make you feel all the nostalgia feels.  

Incarnate (2016)

Remember just a few short years ago when literally every single fucking horror flick that saw the light of day was a possession film without a single original thought to be seen? That's being a bit harsh, of course. Occasionally a decent film made it through; The Exorcism of Emily Rose, The Taking of Deborah Logan, At the Devil's Door, Eva's Possession, and the Insidious and The Conjuring films (though whether or not those count as possession films is debatable) all manage to excel by being wildly different from the rest. Hell, even trash like The Rite or The Last Exorcism rank higher than most other films of their ilk to me simply for not just being complete Exorcist ripoffs like so many others. Luckily, Incarnate manages to avoid ripping off the Exorcist to much. Instead, it rips off The Cell.

Aaron Eckhart --whom you might remember as a good actor whom use to appear in good movies once upon a time-- stars as our Jennifer Lopez analog as a man who can enter the minds of those possessed and uses his ability in an attempt to find and destroy the demon that causes the accident that killed his wife and son and placed him in a wheelchair. A young boy, the victim of abuse at the hands of his estranged father and living in a brand new apartment with his mother, becomes possessed by that very demon and is in desperate need of the help of him and the part-time Hot Topic employees that assist him.

Writer Ronnie Christensen tried to do something unique with the possession subgenre, but sadly nothing really lands. Riddled with plot holes and inconsistency regarding how the rules of the world of the film works, it wants to be The Cell and The Exorcist but with none of the style of the former or the subtext of the latter. Director Brad (San Andreas, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island) Peyton proves he has no understanding of how horror films work and presents a dull, uninteresting vision. A couple decent performances and a decent idea, however, can't make up for a film that's fundamentally flawed.

The Girl with All the Gifts (2016)

There's a type of parasitic fungus found in tropical climates called Ophiocordyceps Unilateralis, or O. unilateralis for short, that infects a certain species of ant and alters the insects behavior to suit its own needs. It basically, for lack of a better word, zombifies (ugh) them. I bring this up because festival favorite The Girl with All the Gifts is, to my knowledge, the only film wherein zombification comes about do to a fungus in lieu of the usual viral or biochemical explanation.

It's the not-too-distant future, and the world has been ravaged by a fungal infection that transforms its victims into blood-thirsty zombies (here given the adorable moniker of 'Hungeries'). In a secure government facility in the English countryside resides a group of children born with the disease that have the ability to ignore it most of the time --until they're hungry, that is-- and a mixed staff of military personnel, teachers, and a few doctors working on a cure by occasionally dissecting said children. When the fence surrounding the location fails only six people manage to escape; a sergeant, two enlisted men, a teacher, the head doctor (played by 6-time Oscar nominee Glenn goddamn Close!), and Melanie, the titular girl with all the gifts and played beautifully by newcomer Sennia Nanua. Their destination? London and, hopefully, rescue.

 Based on a 2014 sci-fi novel by Liverpool author M.R. Carey, this is the perfect antidote do those who still suffer from something I coined a few years ago as 'zombie fatigue,' which is regarded as a general lack of enthusiasm whenever the word "zombie" is uttered in film, TV, novel or video game. Instead of the same cliched Dawn of the Dead ripoff we're usually stuck with, The Girl with All the Gifts is methodical and thoughtful. The direction by British TV veteran Colm McCarthy is impressive without being showy and the gore, despite being sparingly used, is used well when we do see it.

A new take on old tropes, with flavors from 28 Days Later and I Am Legend thrown in for good measure, The Girl with All the Gifts is not just the best zombie movie, but the best zombie-related thing I've seen in quite some time.

Shut-In (2016)

Man, don't you hate it when bad movies happen to good actors?

You see, I'm a big fan of actress Naomi Watts and I believe she's vastly underrated. Whether she's starring in films by some of my favorite directors like David Lynch (Mulholland Dr., Inland Empire) or David Cronenberg (Eastern Promises), some of the most well-regarded horror remakes of the 21st century like The Ring and Funny Games, or films that snag her Oscar noms (21 Grams, The Impossible), I just dig her. This only makes me angrier at the shit storm that is Shut-In than I might normally be as she struggles to bring the rest of it up to her level. Of course, the same could be said for all the actors involved as they try their best to make you care about a film so god damn boring, cliche, and uninteresting.

My favorite Australian who isn't Paul Hogan plays Mary, a child psychologist still reeling and in a state of mental disrepair after the car crash that killed her husband and left her son Stephen (Stranger Things' Charlie Heaton) a vegetable she cares for in her secluded Modern Horror Movie House. When one of her child patients --who's sometimes deaf and sometimes not depending on what suits the story at the particular moment and a startling step down for child actor and star of last year's Room Jason Tremblay-- disappears from her home after somehow showing up there out of the blue one night, her already fragile mental state crumbles even further. The "riveting" "thrills" are interrupted occasionally be Mary speaking to every Hollywood major studio horror films' favorite new character archetype, Specialist on Skype, courtesy of the super cute Oliver Platt.

Here we see Mrs. Watts desperately searching for some intrigue.

I'd planned a writing a longer, more detailed review, but frankly there just isn't much to say. All of these award-winning actors, despite doing the best they can, are absolutely wasted in a film that commits the cardinal sin of being boring. Watching this I was reminded of a film from last February you might remember called The Boy. Both of these films had promise and a twist that could've been so much more if they'd only gone full tilt with them, but instead things are played safe and the result is two completely forgettable films that just sorta leave you feeling cheated.

Blu Ray Review: Tales from the Hood (1995)

Debuting just three short years after the racially-motivated LA riots of 1992 and perfectly capturing the tensions of the time --and, sadly, the current tensions as well-- EC inspired Tales from the Hood might be my favorite horror film of the 90s (well, that particular battle for the top spot is between it and Candyman).

The wraparound segment of the film involves three gang bangers picking up a shipment of drugs at a funeral home that were supposedly found abandoned in the alley by mortician Mr. Sims, played by the deliciously creepy and over-the-top Clarence Williams III. As he takes them through the suspiciously opulent parlor, he regales them with four tales of inner city violence:

The first segment, Rogue Cop Revelation, is the story that's clearly been influenced the most by the Rodney King beating, as the narrative of a local civil rights leader murdered by three corrupt white cops illuminates the worst fears of African Americans at the time. This is followed by Boys Do get Bruised, a tale of domestic abuse told from the point of view of a child, and features a surprisingly strong dramatic performance from comedian David Allen Grier. Next up, Corbin Bernsen stars in KKK Comeuppance as a former Klansman running for the Senate who makes a former plantation, and site of a horrific slave massacre, his campaign headquarters. While the other segments play their material deadly serious, this voodoo-inflected episode has a healthy dose of comedy thanks to Bernsen playing the character up as the buffoon his type are.The final, and possibly most disturbing, episode, Hard-Core Convert, is a fascinating meditation on black-on-black violence and really puts the kibosh on critics who claim the film (sort of like the recent Get Out) is "racist against white people." Imprisoned gang banger Crazy K is subjected to an experimental rehabilitation technique, Clockwork Orange style, that involves a spinning torture table and a montage of real photos of actual lynchings. The twist at the end is one of the most powerful and depressing in my memory.

As far as the technical aspects, the surprisingly colorful film --I assume the palette is thanks once again to the influence of EC Comics-- practically jumps off the screen, and the sound, including an excellent soundtrack featuring super dark and heavy hip hops acts like Gravediggaz and Spice 1, is great. Special features include director's commentary, a new informative making-of, and vintage featurette. While more would've been nice, Scream Factory put together a nice little package of a severely underrated film.