And you thought TWILIGHT was Gay...

Hey, I'm all for gay cinema but this Twilight knock off looks limper than a queen's wrist. Let's hope it contains some serious M/M fang bangin'!

Frozen, solid.

Ok, maybe I’ve been a little bar-hum-bug of late, let’s face it, it’s more fun to write a bad review, stick your claws in and draw blood than write “Fuck, that was awesome”. Doesn’t leave much room for any further commentary now does it? Ok, so, while Adam Green’s Frozen doesn’t quite fall into the afore mentioned awesome category, I did really like it. I’d have to say that Frozen also redeems Mr. Green for me. I was one of those who couldn’t see what all the fuss was about with Hatchet (nothing happens for half-the-movie!!!). I liked Frozen immediately, that is, in the first handful of shots. Through images and atmos sound alone, a menace is conveyed in regard to the ski lift at the centre of this story. No words. No exposition. Actual filmmaking. You go Mr. Green! The story is a simple and effective one. People stuck in a seemingly futile situation of which the only escape maybe their death. This, of course, describes the basic storyline of thousands of movies, but it’s what you do with it, how you treat it and your audience that matters. The characters are likable but not twee and their banter is reasonable for their age without being like you know, like totally annoying. The biggest asset this film has is the absolutely inescapable position these characters are placed. Not since Open Water has a predicament been so futile... these characters are fucked! Big time! Throw in some hungry wolves in place of sharks just to make things worse and it’s all practically unbearable. The natural acting from our trio in peril adds greatly, they are all uniformly good. For example: when Emma Bell gives a tearful speech concerning her realisation that if she were to die her dog back home would starve to death. This could have easily been corny, but is delivered so well that you start to get all worried about her dog too. While a small criticism would be that the three characters do spend a little too much time talking about their friendship and it feels like padding, Frozen ticks a lot of boxes.

It's not an SOS, it's a WARNING!!!

Usually I write long, slightly overblown rants about why or why not I liked or didn’t like something but Pandorum is just so bad I can’t be bothered summoning the words to describe it. Please take this as a warning, Pandorum maybe one of the worst films I’ve ever seen. Only watch it if you happen to be wondering what water board torture might be like. The people I really feel sorry for amid the apocalypse that is Pandorum is the design and FX folk who have done a great job. Shame their capable work is housing for a huge stinking cinematic turd.

Shylamalan Made Me Do It!?

Despite some fantastic ideas, photography and music, DEVIL can’t quite escape the unholy touch of M. Night Shylamalan. From the beginning we are treated to the very best and very worst of what this movie has to offer. Over a blackened screen we hear an inane voice over that proceeds to tell us exactly what this movie is about, god forbid anything be a surprise. This is then followed by some of the best inverted city skyline aerials I’ve ever seen and a suitably demonic sounding score. The film continues throughout with this flip-flopping between subtle ingenuity and sledgehammer like exposition. This is where I point the finger squarely at M. Night. He’s last few cinematic abortions have also been crashed under the weight of a director bowing to Hollywood convention, explaining everything away so that the retard in the back corner of the cinema, with his fingers knuckle deep in his girlfriend, completely understands what is happening on screen at all times. Had this film been braver and not stipulated from the very beginning the supernatural undercurrent of the story, DEVIL could have been a modern gem. Sadly, we are given a character (the security guard) whose sole purpose in the film is to make sure we all know that one of the people stuck in the elevator is actually the devil, friggin’ Satan himself. There are some many reasons why this is wrong beyond “How the fuck does he know?” Ok, so said character is given some flack for being a religious nut but the final insult comes when the cop (there to investigate a murder) suddenly, and for no reason, takes on board the security guard’s screwy theory. OMG! Or should that be OMD! It was such a missed opportunity to have not kept the audience in the dark as to the idea that one of the lift occupants could be the devil rather than the reveal relying on who the devil is. Ever heard of the double whammy M. Night? Oh, wait, you have. It’s not the past it’s the present + the town retard is the monster = The Village. Even with this massive and unfortunate handicap (known as Shylamalania) DEVIL has some great stuff in it and even after the reveal of who the devil is, the story continues to surprise with further character revelations. For the most part all the acting is sufficient and purposeful (except that tedious security guard), the photography is clean and classily handled and the music is supportive without being intrusive. It would have been interesting to see if director John Erick Dowdle would have made a better film had it not been under the tutelage of the real devil.

TEETH, TITS & TUNA

The term ‘Guilty Pleasure’ often proves to be a convenient scapegoat when discussing a movie. It’s a little like saying “It’s so bad, it’s good”. ‘Pleasure’ indicates you enjoyed the experience to some measure and ‘Guilty’ obviously indicates you shouldn’t have. Piranha 3D is more like smelling you own farts than eating a second slice of chocolate cake. The ‘Pleasure’ is beyond guilty, it’s practically wrong. Though at the same time, it’s hard to trash something like Piranha 3D that gleefully goes so far out of its way to turkey slap you in the face (in 3D) with its blood-soaked inanity. From it’s under water nude lesbian cavorting to its penis belching titular antagonists, this film is an 80 plus minute parade of the most juvenile sensibilities a major Hollywood release has ever put on the screen. I really wish I could honestly say Piranha 3D was as much fun as it sounds. While there is some genuine humour and some genuine tension, the major flaw of Piranha 3D is the complete dispensing of any story. What we get here is more of a situation, all details are just skimmed over to make way for more boobs and blood. I’d like to say that maybe this was intentional and a subverting of exploitation cinema, and believe me, at first I really thought that’s what we were getting. And where the hell was the third act? Talk about a major prick tease! Maybe a director’s cut will reveal more as the trailer featured several shots that don’t appear in this version of the movie. Even Joe Dante’s Piranha (1978) had more of a story. It’s at this point I’d like to make it clear that Aja’s movie is not a remake, it merely shares the title. Infact, I’d say his movie has more in common with James Cameron’s Piranha II: The Spawning. That movie had its fair share of boobs and a strong willed female protagonist. While horror and humour is something Aja’s film does have in common with Dante’s, for all its gore, Piranha 3D has nothing of the horror and brutality Aja elicited for his Hills Have Eyes remake and his debut feature Haute Tension. Aja’s Piranha is basically a gross-out comedy. Points must be given to Elizabeth Shue for giving us a likeable heroine even if we learn next to nothing about her during our brief seafood dinner date. Like most recent horror fair we are encouraged to hate just about everybody else, they all deserve to be eaten alive. None more than Jerry O’Connell’s porn director. While I see why this should be funny, O’Connell was just so vile, even his over-the-top death scene wasn’t penance enough. And what of the all important 3D? I’d have to agree with the detractors of the format. It has little effect here. You certainly know where the effect should be, but it never has that reach-out-and-grab-you feel, which is a real shame, because it should have worked and I’m sure that’s what Aja had intended. So, what is there to like about this scaly feeding frenzy? The piranha look great and all the gore is handled with aplomb. There is one death involving hair and a boat engine I just can’t get out of my head or for that matter what happens to Eli Roth. Aside from the shonky 3D, the movie is shot well, bright and bold. I can’t keep musing that one day this Piranha will go the way of Showgirls. A shameless dalliance in celluloid depravity that actually gets better the more you watch it and, strangely enough, layers of subtext are revealed you never thought existed or were intended.

Would I watch it again? Yes. Will I see the sequel? Yes. Guilty as charged.

Keep your hands off the screenplay Mr. King! A look back at Pet Semetary.

* Warning: Major Spoilers ahead*
Watching Pet Semetary has made me understand why Hollywood does remakes. While the title has cache as a brand name and clout by association, originating from the pen of one Stephen King, this 1989 creep show is a strong candidate for re-incarnation. Let me just say that I completely understand the rose coloured glasses with which we sometimes remember films first seen in our youth. Even the best examples of horror, (Halloween, A Nightmare On Elm St. and alike) can often look dated, crappy and lame to eyes witnessing them for the first time, many, many years after their release. Sometimes these judgments can be unfair, not considering the time when the film was first relevant. Other times it can give clarity to a film’s short coming and missed opportunities. Now, with my self-justifying out of the way, let’s turn our attention back to Pet Semetary. Adapted from King’s popular novel of the same name, box-office wise this film is probably his most successful page to screen horror adaptation, King even wrote the script. This alone is reason for a remake. It appears as though King may have been too close to the project, as the pace is slow, taking way too much to time to get to the inevitable and the subplots seem pointless. King seemingly didn’t have the objectivity to self edit. The Shining and Carrie, while based on King’s books were written for the screen by other writers, namely filmmakers, who could cut away the fat and get to the guts of the story all the while keeping a visual language in mind. From the very beginning of Pet Semetary we know the cat will die, the kid will die and everything will go horribly wrong for this generic family. It just takes so long to get there. A remake could pace it up, get to the kid dying quicker, which is the real drama of the story, and maybe spend more time with this evil re-incarnated baby. Another thing a remake could address is the numerous subplots. The whole thing about the wife’s complex with death and her strange back story involving a hideously disabled sister can go or be made relevant in some way to the main plot. There’s also the seemingly unnecessary feuding between the father and the wife’s family which comes to a ridiculously over the top head at the baby’s funeral. And what about the freaky house keeper who commits suicide? What was the point of her? Was she some sort of red herring? Perhaps this is all explained and relevant in King’s book, but on screen it really doesn’t work. I also thought that the resurrecting should have taken place in the actual pet cemetery instead of miles away in the sacred Navajo site. Despite rendering the title pointless, it is hard to believe the father could be convinced to trek all the way to this site not being told where he is going and what will happen there, let alone dragging a body with him. Maybe all this could have been made more palatable had the actors been better. While Fred Gwynne (of The Munsters) is probably the best of a bad bunch, the rest are terrible, especially the mother (Denise Crosby of Star Trek the Next Gen.) and who ever the little girl was who played the whinging brat of a daughter, she should have been the one hit by the truck! At the heart of it all I really think there is a good story, creepy, dramatic and full of the kind of conundrums that make an audience think “Would I do the same?” it just deserves to be presented in a more considered and cinematic way.

Unbelievable True Story

According to the logline for ‘The Haunting In Connecticut’ some things just can’t be explain. Well in the course of this film its makers dam well try to explain everything, obliterating any chance the film has of being genuinely scary.
While the story is quite good and apparently based on fact, the way in which it is presented to us as a film works completely against the idea of reality and truth. Rapid cuts, flashes of ghostly figures, sharp stings of music to highlight moments that are intended to be frightening (these are the canned laughter of horror movies) are all very redundant, as the crux of the story is already quite terrifying. A boy with cancer, close to death himself, becomes a magnet for ill-at-ease specters in an old Connecticut home. This film falls folly to the same temptations faced by many modern horror tales, when filmmakers, producers and studios are afraid to take time to tell their story, build gradually to a climax and let the viewers mind imagine how terrifying the situation presented can be. What disappointed me most of all about this film was the over visualizing of the boy’s ghostly visions. They just seemed too detailed and specific, even logical. The filmmakers seemingly forgot that the epicenter of fear is the unknown and unexplainable. Here everything is given a reason and the characters seem to understand exactly who the ghosts are, where they came from and what they want. So the film’s ominous logline is actually a lie. To be fair, this film is a cut above most recent horror fare despite its short comings. What works about the film rides almost solely on the performance of Kyle Gallner as Matt, the boy at the center of all this ghostly attention. Gallner has gone on to appear in Jennifer’s Body and the Nightmare On Elm St. remake, and I’m sure landed those subsequent horror roles because of his turn in this film. If only the same could be said for the seasoned performers that surround him. Virginia Madsen as his mother, Martin Donovan as his father and Elias Koteas as a priest also stricken with cancer, all seem to struggle abit. Unlike Gallner, their performances didn’t seem very real. I know these actors can be good, so I’m putting it down to direction, sorry Peter Cornwell. It’s funny. Recently I’ve been watching a series on Discovery call ‘A Haunting’. Each episode concerns a real haunting and how people deal with the supernatural. Despite often local-theatre-company standard re-enactments this low budget series regularly provides the chills so many films can’t seem to muster.