In the early 1970's, there was a massive explosion of Italian horror films known as Giallo. Building on the work of great Italian horror director's like Mario Bava, these films were a combination of horror and crime thriller that were very unique and a joy to watch. In Gialli, the visuals were more important than anything. Story was secondary. Casting was secondary. Getting good actors didn't even matter because all films were dubbed over (poorly) anyway. Gialli tried to find the most beautiful way to murder people, and the single-minded focus to that bizarre desire is what makes the films so interesting to watch today.
No film exemplified these qualities better than Dario Argento's Suspiria, which was odd because Suspiria isn't really a Giallo at all. It didn't have the mystery element that was a hallmark of the Genre. What it did have was the extreme focus on visuals over everything else. It had the same slick style. It certainly had all of the same problem's the other gialli did, right down to a pretty poor dub job. Yet it wasn't a Giallo. In many ways, Suspiria is a hard film to classify.
When I decided to count down the best
horror films of the decade, I ran into a problem ranking #1. Should I
do the scariest movie of the decade, which would probably be Inside?
Or would it be better to do the best movie in the horror genre, which
is Pan's Labyrinth. Eventually, I decided on a compromise: The #1
movie would be the most flawlessly made terrifying horror movie. That
honor goes to Rec.
Rec is a simple story, well told.
Angela Vidal (Manuela Vascal), a reporting, is recording for her show
in a local fire station, when the firemen get an emergency call.
They head out to an apartment complex to help an injured woman, only
to be attacked by her. She turns out to be a zombie The complex is
quarantined, and Angela and her cameraman are trapped in with the
rest of the residents. At first, they try to document everything that
is going on, to show the people on the outside just how unjust the
quarantine was, but as the zombie virus begins to spread they start
becoming more and more concerned for there own safety.
This film is a found footage film, and
it really utilizes the style. The film opens at the fire station,
with Angela interviewing the rest of the cast. She is completely
adorable in these scenes, and it really helps build her character and
the audience's sympathies towards her. Then, after the initial
excitement happens, she takes time out to interview everyone. This
slows the film down, which sets us up to be even more shocked by the
next big scares, while giving us an opportunity to meet everyone else
in the apartment complex. They are all interesting, and it is quite
funny watching them awkwardly try not to look stupid on camera. It
makes them all feel like real people.
This makes it all the harder to deal
with them all becoming zombies. That is one thing I can appreciate
about the 28 day's later fast moving zombies: if one zombie is a
credible threat, then you are a lot more open to make a film with a
small cast of character's that turn into zombies. Sacrificing the
scope of the zombie attack actually increases the tragedy, because
the only people affected happen to be the only people we care about.
The film's final act is perfect. The
character's manage to escape the immediate danger of the zombie
attack by hiding in the supposedly abandoned penthouse apartment. It
quickly becomes apparent that the penthouse was quite recently
occupied. They slowly search each room, coming up with more and more
disturbing things each time, until eventually they stumble upon
patient zero. She is corpse-thin, decrepit, and absolutely
terrifying. It is one of the most pulse-pounding climaxes to a film I
have ever seen.
Rec is a film that should not be
missed. The director's, Paco Plaza and Jaume Belaguero, have earned
my respect and admiration with this film. Unlike most found footage
films, where the camera feels like a hindrance, this film feels
perfect. The story they are telling is small enough to be told with a
single camera, the demands for pacing work with the narrative, which
only work with the single camera. It all fits together perfectly. I
dont understand why the things that don't work in other film's are so
spectacularly successful here, but I know that they do. Rec is a film
that can't be missed.
French actress
Béatrice
Dalle scares
me. Of all of the slasher film serial killers, she plays the most
terrifying one, the nameless antagonist of Inside. She breaks into an
extremely pregnant women's house and tries to steal her unborn baby.
The whole time, she is freaking out worse than the protagonist is.
Her drive is insane, she wants to steal the baby for reasons that are
completely unfathomable to anyone else but her. She is convincingly
unstable and constantly unnerving.
The
main character of Inside is Sara Scarangelo (Alyson Paradis), the
aforementioned pregnant women. She is still mourning the death of her
husband, and she isn't ready to take care of a baby on her own. That
is basically the entirety of her character. She is the perfect
helpless victim. While there isn't a whole lot to her character,
Alyson Paradis plays her quite well.
There
are basically no other character's in the film. People keep going
into the house to wish the mother well, and they keep getting
murdered. For the most part, they are your standard slasher fare.
Nothing too remarkable here. They all die incredibly brutal ways.
One
of the first things people here about Inside is how gory the film is,
but that isn't quite accurate. The film is gory, yes, but not as much
as a film like Cabin Fever or Hostel. The reason the film feels so
much worse is how the director, Julien Maury, handles the gore. He
gives each injury a lot of weight, so even scenes that aren't that
gory feel like the nastiest thing you have ever seen. Part of it is
the way he shoots it, part of it is that we actually care about the
protagonist.
From
a story perspective, the film is completely unremarkable. The main
character spends about two-thirds of the film's running time locked
in her bathroom, and the villain spends most of the time trying to
break through the door. People come in, people die. Rinse and repeat.
It is the basic slasher setup done insanely well. People who enjoy
horror movies with strong narratives need not apply.
No,
Inside really only does one thing well: terrifying the audience. For
horror movies, that is one of the trickiest things to pull off, and
probably the most important. Between Beatrice Dalle's absolutely
insane performance and the way the killings are handled, the film
does a great job of creating a sense of fear. There is not a single
moment where you feel safe, even when our hero breaks out of the
bathroom and starts kicking ass. It doesn't have the same vibe as the
final girl showdown does in other slasher's: there is a real sense of
desperation, made all the more striking when you realize that the
final girl's in other slasher's are fighting seven foot tall hockey
mask wearing immortals, and Sara is fighting Beatrice Dalle, a women
barely as tall as her.
This
film is probably the scariest film of the decade.
American remakes of foreign films are
usually terrible. They are the most sleazy kind of cash grab, taking
a great movie that isn't widely seen in America and trying to make
lightning strike twice. The people assigned to make the movies are
usually poorly equipped for the job, people who don't understand what
made the original so unique in the first place. So, when I heard that
the director of Cloverfield made an American remake of the incredible
Swedish vamprie romance Let The Right One In, I immediately wrote it
off as one of “those films” and didn't bother going to see it in
theaters. That was a mistake.
Both films are amazing. They both tell
the same incredible tale well, in their own unique styles. The
director of the remake, Matt Reeves, stunned me with his great
directing. He kept in nearly everything that made the original unique
while presenting it in his own unique style.. Let Me In has humbled
me.
Both films star a 12 year old boy who
is constantly bullied and dreams of revenge. He manages to be both
endearing and creepy, a tragic character. In time he befriends a
young girl who moves in next door, who is also endearing and creepy.
And a vampire, as it turns out. In time, they grow closer and closer,
until they eventually fall in love.
But this isn't like the teen vampire
romance stories that are popular right now. The inherently disturbing
aspects the concept, the things the other films shy away from, are
embraced in this film. The vampire character is eternally 12 years
old, rather than 19. She comes off as alien and creepy, possibly even
manipulative. The vampire rules she has to follow are portrayed as
mysterious and dangerous. We don't really know anything about her for
sure by the end of it. But you still like her.
That is what this film does so well, it
pits you against yourself. Intellectually, you might know that the
She is dangerous and bad for our main character, but watching the two
of them together makes you hope that they work out. The main
character's might creep you out in one scene, but in the next you try
to forget about that as you watch their story unfold. You wish for a
happy ending when you know no happy ending is possible.
The main differences between the two
versions are stylistic, while the plot and dialogue is nearly
identical in both versions. The new version, Let Me In, does shy away
from a few plot points the original mentioned, while emphasizing
others. But they are minor points in the grand scheme of the film.
The real differences come in with the camerawork. Let Me In's camera
is hyper-focused. It really shows you the world from one character's
perspective, and it is extremely effective. You feel like you are
right there with the character's as they go about their day. The
directing of Tomas Alfredson is more traditional. It was competent
but unremarkable. In the end, if you really despise subtitles, you
can watch Let Me In without missing out on much. If you can stand
subtitles, however, then I would recommend that you watch the
original.
Then watch the new one afterward.
They're worth it.
Brief Aside: Ironically, the freedom Matt Reese had
in this film allowed him to make the film even more claustrophobic
and personal than his last film, Cloverfield, even though that film
was shot in first person perspective (which really makes me question
why found footage films exist in the first place)
The spiritual sequel to The Devil's
Backbone, Pan's labyrinth is even better than its predecessor. Taking
place after the end of the Spanish Civil War, the film focuses on
Ofelia (Ivana Barquero), a young girl using her imagination to escape
the bleak world around her. Her mother married a terrible man,
Captain Vidal (Sergi Lopez), and is sick with his baby. Ofelia sneaks
around, constantly hearing whispers of the big nasty world around
her, but being unable to do anything to help.
So Ofelia makes her own world. She goes
and visits with faeries and fauns. She is a hero, who can do anything
that is required of her. She is a princess, working to win back her
throne and escape her life forever. In her world, anything is
possible. When her mother is sick, she can heal her. She is in
control there. The tale is told from Ofelia's perspective, so it is
often jarring to see her behavior from the perspective of one of the
adult's. In Ofelia's head, it all makes sense. Objectively, it is
absolutely bizarre.
Just as The Devil's Backbone was about
helplessness, Pan's Labyrinth was about hopelessness. The war was
already over. The “freedom fighters” fight for vengeance, not
freedom. Every death was unnecessary, all the suffering was for
nothing. If The Captain died, he would be replaced by a different
captain. That is what struck me the most about this movie; there was
nothing worth fighting for anymore, but people kept fighting and
dying for nothing. No wonder Ofelia dreamed of a better world.
The Captain is another one of Guillermo
Del Toro's trademark scummy villains. He is obsessed with honor and
the family name above all else. He desires order and obedience from
his servants and family members, and nothing else. He is cold and
uncaring towards his wife, and he only seems interested in his son to
keep up his legacy. He has no feelings towards Ofelia at all, unless
she misbehaves. Add on to that that he is a war criminal working for
a fascist regime, and you have a great bad guy.
But the true star of the show is
Ofelia. She is perfectly acted. You feel her earnestness and her
innocence. You see her happiness and her desperation. She loves her
baby brother and is scared for her mother. You want to protect her,
but it is clear that no protection is possible. One by one, the
people who are supposed to keep her safe fail her.
Pan's Labyrinth is probably the darkest
fairy tale you will ever see. Even Ofelia's imaginary world isn't
nice, with nasty beasts waiting, hungry and anxious. It really
hammers home that there is nowhere safe.
Between the eerie Faun and the
monstrous child eating Pale Man, Ofelia's world is a reflection of
her surroundings.
After watching the film, I am tempted
to imagine just as she did. I want to believe that what she saw was
real. That magic exists, and she escaped the mortal world to live
forever as a princess. I wish I could believe it.
I'm not sure I have ever described a
horror film as delightful before, but Trick R Treat is absolutely
delightful. A horror anthology in the vein of Creepshow, focusing on
the best night of the year, October 31st. It combines a
sense of fright with a sense of fun. This film channels the spirit
of Halloween effortlessly. Its like the horror A Chrismas Story.
In the world of Trick R treat, everyone
has a dark secret, and nothing is what it seems. All of the customs
we observe for Halloween aren't just for fun, but are also for
survival. Creatures stalk the night, and if you break the rules you
will fall prey to them. The film is almost reverent of Halloween. It
has a lot of respect for the holiday and it's history, the old
tradition's and what makes it still popular today.
The film is excellently plotted. Rather
than being a traditional anthology, all of the stories are
connected to the others in some way. It gives the world a sense of
discovery, seeing references to the other stories, and having
character's from both stories cross. Some of them are extremely
subtle, to the point where you only notice them after repeated
viewings. The stories are all connected through a central character,
Sam, the spirit of the holiday. Sam watches everyone as they go about their business. As long as they uphold the tenants of Halloween, they are free to do whatever else they want.
All of the stories focus on common
themes, but shift dramatically in tone. The first, the tale of a
sadistic principal who kills people with poisoned Halloween candy, is
darkly comic throughout. A lot of the Principal's action's are over
the top to the point of hilarity. The next story is genuinely creepy.
It is the tale of a group of kid's visiting an allegedly haunted
quarry. A flashback sequence features kids in the most inexplicably
terrifying costumes I've ever seen. The third story is interspersed
between the others. It's the tale of a group of teenage girls going
to a party and having fun, and trying to get their friend laid. They
leave her alone to find a date, and she is stalked by a mysterious
stranger. The final story is the tale of an old, bitter man who is
does not respect the Holiday. He is haunted by Sam, who turns into a
genuinely disturbing villain in this story. All of the main
character's in these stories have dark secrets, and watching them all
twist and turn around each other is an absolute blast.
This film is an absolute joy to look
at. The special effects are all unusually good for a direct-to-DVD
film. One transformation sequence in particular is probably my
favorite transformation sequence of all time. The final scene with
Sam is incredibly engaging. Sam fills staircases with candy. Marbles,
and glass. He writes creepy messages on the walls, fills the yard
with jack-o-lanterns. It is really beautiful. Even the more grounded
stories are well-directed.
It takes everything that is great about
the holiday and encapsulates it. Watching this film makes it feel
like Halloween. It touches the slightly demented child in all of us.
Is it scary? Not really. And yet, that doesn't matter. Sliding this
DVD into my player is a Halloween tradition for me, just as much as
passing out candy and carving jack-o-lanterns.
The Others has one of the best horror
premises for a horror movie I've ever heard. Nicole Kidman plays
Grace Steward, an extremely strict and protective mother of two
children. The children in question suffer from a severe allergy to
sunlight, so they must be kept in near complete darkness all the
time. They cannot leave their house, and an incredibly complex series
of rules is maintained to keep them in near perfect darkness at all
times. The children are worried that their mother is going mad, and
the mother is worried as well. Meanwhile, the house is being haunted,
and they can't leave.
This is the greatest setup I have ever
seen. There is huge conflict from without and within. There is the
question of what is and isn't real. The classic problem of film's
being scariest in the dark when the vast majority of people's time
spent awake is during the day: Solved. The eternal question “why
not just leave the house if it is being haunted?”: Answered. It
would take a considerable amount of time and work to make a film like
this bad, and the people who made the film used that time to make it
amazing instead.
Nicole Kidman's character is really put
through the wringer in this movie. Her husband had just died in the
war, and now she keeps hearing things in their house. The new
servants she hired seem to be up to something, but she had no
evidence but her sneaking suspicions. She has no one to talk to, she
can't leave her children alone. They even seem scared of her, because
she lost her temper with them once or twice. She can't hide behind
her rigid facade forever, something has to give.
This really is a film all about its
main character. Yes, there are sneaky servants and nasty ghosts, but
it is Grace's reaction to these events that make the movie. Her
melancholy infects the rest of the film, giving it a grimness that it
would not otherwise have had. Strip it of all its supernatural
elements, and you have the story of a mother who has to take care of
children even when she can't take care of herself. That is as
compelling and unpleasant as the ghosts themselves.
When the film finally get's going, it
goes off in a completely unexpected direction. When they finally give
an explanation for all of the supernatural goings-on, it is not at
all what you expect. But it is the perfect twist: shocking yet
inevitable. After having seen it, I could not imagine the film ending
any other way. This film manages to be even more powerful each time
you watch it, and a lot of that comes down to the ending it has.
The Others took a great premise and
went off in a completely different direction. A character driven
ghost story, light on frills and thrills. A spellbinding look into a
state of mind most people would rather not see. A meditation on duty
and dependence. A slow-burning, creepy, dread-filled, tragic,
subdued, and, most of all, smart supernatural thriller.
People often remember childhood as the
best day's of their lives. It was all just running around carefree
and playing. Every day was adventure, and the worst conceivable
atrocity was sitting in school on a nice day. Whatever problems you
had seemed trivial looking back through an adult's eyes. In the
Devil's Backbone, Guillermo Del Toro tries to remind us all just what
it feels like to be a child.
The film takes place near the end of
the Spanish Civil War, in an orphanage for the children of dead
soldiers. In the center of the orphanage is a bomb that had failed to
go off. Carlos (Fernando Tielve) is left there by his mentor (for his
own safety, but from a child's perspective it feels like being
abandoned). The other kid's start picking on him, and every night he
sees the ghost of a dead boy trying to scare him off. None of the
adult's will believe him, and none of the children like him enough to
care one way or the other.
The Devil's Backbone focuses on one
aspect of childhood that is rarely shown in film: powerlessness.
These kid's are pushed and pulled by adult politics they have no
influence over. They barely understand what is going on. There is
nothing they can do to prevent what is happening. And it's not just
the children that are powerless. The adult's of the orphanage are on
the losing side of the war. If they were discovered, they and the
children they are responsible for would be shot as traitors. They are
pushed and pulled by national politics that they have no influence
over. The world of The Devil's Backbone is one of helplessness and
dread.
The film never shies away from the
wrongness of its premise. Children die. The first shot of the film
is the death of a child and the hiding of his body. When he comes
back as a ghost, the makeup effects only serve to make him appear
more childlike. They act like kid's act and talk like kid's talk. The
film's ending evokes William Golding's Lord of the Flies, with the
children's innocence lost.
The thing that really makes the film
work is how good the adult character's are. Dr Casares. (Federico
Luppi) is a simple man of science who doesn't believe in any of that
superstitious nonsense. He is fiercely dedicated to the children and
his wife. He is the clever and inspiring and protective, the perfect
father figure for all of these children. Then there's Jacinto
(Eduardo Noriega), who isn't so perfect. In fact, he is absolute
scum. He might be the antagonist who has angered me personally on
this list. He is a man who never grew out of bullying to get his way,
stuck raising orphans for a lost cause. He becomes increasingly
deranged and desperate as the film goes on. Just when you think he is
as bad as he could possibly be, he becomes much worse.
Guillermo Del Toro is a complicated,
almost paradoxical director, and this film is the perfect example of
that. A bleak story told stylishly. The film at times is genuinely
beautiful, which makes the rest of it even more disturbing by
contrast. He makes you care about the people, but then does horrible
thing's to them. His horror film's feel more like Greek tragedies
than the exciting, frenetic slashers you so often see from other
filmmakers. That's what makes them so compelling.
Paranormal Activity is a found footage
film without all of the baggage that has traditionally become
associated with the style. For the majority of the film, the camera
is mounted on a tripod, looking over the film's two reasonably
interesting character's. There is no anonymous cameraman, no
pointless shaky-cam footage, and no filler footage of people running
from place to place. Even more important than that, things happen in
this movie. Rather than the camera spinning around furiously trying
to catch shadows of something on film, the stationary camera catches
all of the events as they occur.
The film spends most of its time on one
image that has since become synonymous with the film: the camera
dutifully watching over our main character's as they sleep. That
stationary shot builds a tremendous amount of tension even when
nothing remotely scary is going on. When a camera lingers on
something, it is universally understood that that thing is important.
This camera does nothing but linger on things, we are absolutely
ready for something exciting to happen throughout the entire film. It
gets to the point that the door creaking is just as terrifying in
this film as a serial killer running in with a machete would be in
any other.
But the film doesn't stay at the doors
creaking stage for long. Before too long, bangs, loud noises and
moving furniture become the norm. We see ghostly footprints,
unnatural fire, and even possession. Originally, the thing seems to
be a simple ghost, but as the film goes on it becomes more and more
clear that it is a demonic entity. Rather than simply haunting a
house, it is after our main character, and it has been for a long
time.
The main character's in question are
fairly well done. There is Katie (Katie Featherson), a superstitious
but otherwise extremely likable person who basically drags her
boyfriend (Micah Sloat) into her quest to prove the house is
haunting. I particularly liked Micah's story arc, the boyfriend who
goes along with all of the paranormal stuff to protect his
girlfriend's mental well-being, until he realizes it is her physical
well-being that he needed to be protecting.. The character's are
simple archetypes, well done, which lets the film focus on all of the
supernatural elements.
It is not an exaggeration to call this
film the next Blair Witch Project. Both film's are simple stories
about thing's that go bump in the night. Both film's made legendary
profits off the backs of interesting marketing gimmicks. Both
reinvigorated the found footage genre when they were released,
spawning hordes of imitators. Both give hope to young genre
filmmakers everywhere, standing tall as proof that you can succeed
without a budget.
The only difference between this film
and Blair Witch was that Paranormal Activity was actually good.
I wouldn't go so far as to call Rob
Zombie's first film, House of 1000 Corpses, good, but it was quite
entertaining. A family of serial killer's having fun doing what they
do best. The entire film looked like an album cover with it's use of
intense colors and imagery. It was a popcorn flick, something to
stick in the middle of a horror marathon to lighten the mood a bit. I
was surprised to learn it had a sequel, and even more surprised by
what the sequel ended up being.
The Devil's Rejects takes the family
from House and throws them harshly into the real world. The opening
scene really says it all: a massive police renders almost half of the
family dead or captured in the first ten minutes of the film. After
the rest of them escape, the police search the house. They discover
cages filled with people, bodies in varying stages of dismemberment
pretty much in every room. The film cuts to a news station covering
as bodies begin being pulled out of a mass grave. The opening makes
one thing abundantly clear: this film was going to have a completely
different tone from the first.
The thing that makes this film stand
out is how tight the focus is on the villains. The film follows the
rest of the family and never tries to make excuses for them. They
don't just steal a car because they are desperate to get away they
gleefully murder the car's owner first. They need a room to stay in
for a while until they can escape, so they talk their way into the
first room they can and immediately start tormenting the people there
in any way they can. These aren't desperate criminals struggling to
survive, they are sadistic killers who don't care if they get caught.
They're like a Manson family Bonnie and Clyde.
But by the end of the film, you are
rooting for them. The supposed good guys are just as bad, just as
sadistic. He wants to give the family their just desserts. And you
can't stand him. You love baby (Sheri Moon Zombie) and Captain
Spaulding (Sid Haig). You even grow a soft spot for the way Otis
(Bill Mosely) bickers with the rest of them. They are a close family
that you don't want to see torn apart, even after they start skinning
peoples' faces off to make face-masks. Seriously, it is hard to
describe just how messed up these guys actually are. It is hard to
make you genuinely care about likable character's, and this film has
you feeling afraid for a family that calls themselves the Devil's
Rejects.
Technically, the film holds up well.
Rob Zombie shows a mastery of using the soundtrack to show theme and
setting. He seems to understand the mechanics of horror film; he
knows the reasoning behind convention and he knows when to break it
(and, almost more importantly, when not to).
The film ends in basically the only way
it could have, but it is somehow completely alien. The events that
happen are basically the events you would expect after the film's
opening, but the way you feel about it has completely changed. It is
us, the audience, who changed from the events in the film, rather
than the character's themselves.
