Carnography

The Devil's Doorway (2018)

Welcome to December, the time of year when I really ramp up my efforts to see as many 2018 films as I can before the end of the year. Unfortunately, unless the Cinema Fairy visits my local multiplex(es) and sprinkles enough magic dust to make them show Suspiria and/or The House That Jack Built, those films are out of the running, but not to worry! There's still plenty of films from this year that I should have seen before now! Which is why I'm starting with a random pick - the Irish found-footage film The Devil's Doorway.

In 1960, priests Thomas Riley and John Thornton are sent by the Vatican to a Magdalene Laundry in Northern Ireland, to investigate an apparent miracle there - a statue of the Virgin Mary has allegedly been weeping blood. The older Father Riley is cynical and disbelieving of the events he is sent to investigate, while the younger Father Thornton, who is filming their investigation on a 16mm camera, is much more eager and willing to believe in the supernatural. Father Riley is also concerned with the conditions at the asylum, where "fallen women" are sent to be used as unpaid labour by the nuns who run the facility as "penance" for their perceived sins. During their stay there Father Thornton starts to experience paranormal phenomena and comes to believe more and more, while Father Riley is more concerned with what is going on in the Laundry. Things come to a head when they discover a young girl, pregnant and chained to a bed in the basement of the asylum, in a room whose walls are lined with crucifixes. What is the real reason that the two priests have been called to the Magdalene Laundry, and what is the truth of the terrible things that are happening within its walls?

The Magdalene Laundries is one of Ireland's biggest scandals (although the Laundries weren't just in Ireland - there were also Magdalene Laundries in places like England, the United States and Australia, among other places.). They were institutions for "fallen women" - theoretically prostitutes, but in practice, any girl or young woman considered promiscuous or difficult, or the mentally disturbed, could be sent to one of these places. There they would be forced to work unbearably long hours, usually doing laundry by hand, and were usually mentally and physically abused by the nuns who ran the Laundries. Many were also sexually abused by visiting priests as well, and in recent years there has been proof of mass infanticide discovered at the sites of some former Laundries. They were terrible places and to its credit, The Devil's Doorway does a good job of showing this - even if it does place at least some of the blame on distinctly non-Catholic forces by the end of the film.

And about that... We've got an old priest and a young priest, and a young girl kept chained to a bed in a room with crucifixes lining the walls (who all inevitably become Petrine crosses at one point in the film, of course); she speaks languages she shouldn't know, self-mutilates with a crucifix, causes a nun to do some extreme yoga and levitates off the bed at one point. Hmm, all this reminds me of something but I just can't quite put my finger on it... The film also starts with one character (the young priest) running around some basement ruins with his camera and calling out for the other priest before being ambushed by someone (it's a flash-forward, of course), and I was listening carefully to see if I could hear any echoing cries of "Tell us where you are, Josh!" And this, I feel, is one of the main failing points of the film - it's way too obviously derivative.

I also feel that the film should have had more courage in its convictions. From almost minute one we're shown that the Laundry is a terrible place and that the women there are being terribly mistreated by the nuns, and that the Mother Superior in her little frilled bonnet is a really evil piece of work hiding behind the shield of religion. It would certainly have then made perfect and poetic sense for the holy statue to be weeping blood in a sort of outrage of how the women were being abused. But then we veer off into occult rituals, baby sacrifices and the nuns all being secret Satanists, and I've got to say, that disappointed me. It felt like a cop-out; we know just how bad these places were both from our own knowledge and what the film has shown us, but at the very last minute the blame is shifted somewhere else.

There was also one technical aspect that confused me. Several times during the course of the film, the camera being used to film everything would "blink" - ie. go black for a second, usually while something tense and supernatural was going on; often when they/we were following said supernatural event. Now I don't know if old 16mm cameras in 1960 did that, but it felt much less like an actual technical issue and more like a device to heighten tension - especially since it didn't happen all the time. As I said, it seemed to happen whenever they were chasing a ghostly child down a corridor or some stairs (oh yeah, there are sinister ghostly children in this as well, mainly for the purpose of jump scares), possibly to hide their movements so they could appear and disappear at will (and for the jump scares). Filming the whole film on 16mm was certainly a bold move though, and impressive in itself. It's just a shame they didn't feel they could be a little bolder and more original.

 

 

Absurd (1981)

Here's some advice. Don't schedule a carpet fitting the same week as getting a Smart Meter fitted in your home, and only weeks after getting a complete house cleaning (which went so terribly, terribly wrong to boot). Don't do all this especially in the same month as you're trying to do 31 horror movie reviews, as you'll quickly realise that there are going to be some double review days in your future. It's all really quite absurd... which leads cunningly into today's review, Absurd (see what I did there?) - also known as Antropophagus 2, Monster Hunter, The Grim Reaper 2, Horrible and (for some reason) Zombie 6: Monster Hunter.

A priest chases a man through a wooded area until the man tries to climb a set of railings and ends up disembowelling himself, spilling his guts on the doorstep of a nearby house. The man is taken to hospital and operated on; he recovers remarkably quickly and escapes, killing a nurse with a medical drill along the way. The priest who was chasing him explains that the man, Mikos Stenopolis, was experimented on by the Vatican and has been given regenerative abilities; unfortunately, he was also driven insane and is now a homicidal maniac, and the priest is seeking to stop him and kill him via the only method that will work - "destroy[ing] the cerebral mass". Meanwhile, at the home that Mikos turned up at, the Bennetts are preparing to go to a nearby friend's house to watch the Super Bowl. Their daughter Katya is confined to bed and in traction due to a deviation in her spine, and her nurse Emily is due to stay the night to take care of her but gets delayed because of events at the hospital. The babysitter Peggy taunts the family's young son Willy by telling him that the man at the door was the Bogeyman and that he will eat Willy if he misbehaves, not knowing that Mikos is making his way back to the house with murderous intent...

From looking at some of the alternative titles of Absurd, you might think that it has some sort of connection with Anthropophagus, that 1980s film about a cannibal with a dreaded skin disease running amok on a Greek island, and you'd be half-right. Director of both, Joe D'Amato (here under the pseudonym Peter Newton) wanted to make a direct sequel to Anthropophagus and asked George Eastman to take part. Eastman, however, didn't want to do a sequel and agreed to only act; however, when he saw the script he felt it was so bad he decided to re-write it into "one of those American thrillers, Halloween style" (and did so under the name John Cart). And like Halloween it is, what with the stalking killer and references to "the Bogeyman" and even a stand-in for Dr Loomis chasing the killer throughout the film. Of course, it's not actually set at Halloween, lest they be accused of taking imitation a step too far - instead it's set on Super Bowl weekend, which also gives the opportunity for lots of filler scenes with a group of people dressed up far too well for watching a game on TV and snacking on pasta.

Absurd is also quite the who's who of Italian exploitation cinema. As well as George Eastman/Luigi Montefiori as Mikos, we have Annie Belle (The House on the Edge of the Park) as the quite saintly nurse Emily, Charles Borromel (one of the dubbing voices in Don't Torture a Duckling), an uncredited Michele Soavi (Stagefright) and Edward Purdom (Don't Open Till Christmas), just to mention a few. If I was playing Italian exploitation bingo, I think I'd have easily won with this film. Just about the only thing missing is Bob from The House by the Cemetary or Manhattan Baby in the role of Willy - instead, we get a dark curly-haired moppet for the cast to have to try and rescue, although he is still dubbed by an adult trying to do a child's voice.

For the most part, Absurd is pretty uninspired as far as early-era slashers go, not really bringing anything original to the table. The exception to this is the character and arc of daughter Katya, who spends the first two-thirds of the film confined to bed, and strapped down to boot. the scenes when she is desperately attempting to unstrap and unhook herself from the bed and traction machine as Mikos chases Willy and Emily around the house are really quite tense considering what they are (someone trying to undo leather belts without being able to see them), and when she inevitably becomes the Final Girl and has to face down Mikos she is really quite resourceful, using a drawing compass, loud music and eventually the axe from a convenient suit of armour to great effect.

Absurd was one of the "video nasties" in the UK, as one of the DPP's 39 titles successfully prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act. While the film is full of heads being drilled, heads being bisected by butcher saws and heads being impaled with pickaxes, the scene that most probably got it into trouble is the one where Emily is caught by the killer and has her head forced into a gas oven which is then turned on. We then get to watch as, over several minutes, her face is slowly cooked by the heat - with the camera "inside" the oven for that nice close-up view. It's hard to explain that away as anything other than an exercise in torturing a woman for the enjoyment of the audience and goes on for far longer than is necessary.

 

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Dagon (2001)

!Yeah, let's just go and throw that schedule right out the window, shall we? I'm completely off my plans now and pretty much making things (or at least what movies get reviewed next) up as I go along. So let's take a look at a movie I managed to catch last night with a bunch of other horror movie fans, Stuart Gordon's Dagon.

Paul Marsh, his girlfriend Barbara, his friend and business partner Howard and his wife Vicki are holidaying on a boat off the Spanish coast, celebrating the success of their company being floated on the stock market, although Paul is troubled by recurring dreams of a beautiful yet strange woman with a mouth full of sharp teeth. When a sudden storm crashes the boat against rocks and traps Vicki's leg, Paul and Barbara set off to try to get help from a nearby fishing village they sighted from the boat. The village, Imboca, seems to be at first deserted - when the two finally do find some of the village's inhabitants, they seem strange in both behaviour and physical appearance. Paul and Barbara are separated and Paul is sent to Imboca's dilapidated and damp hotel, where he dreams of the strange woman again before having to flee from the townspeople, who have apparently formed a posse to hunt him down and kill him. Coming across the town drunk, Ezequiel, who is also the only other "normal" person in the town, Paul learns the horrifying truth  - that decades ago, the town of Imboca turned to worshipping the ancient deity Dagon, who offered them gold and fish in return for human sacrifice and the town's women to interbreed with. Will Paul and his friends be able to escape Imboca and its distinctly slimy inhabitants, and what do Paul's strange dreams have to do with all of this?

In case you hadn't already guessed from the Stuart Gordan director credit (and Brian Yunza as one of the producers), Dagon is an HP Lovecraft movie. It's based on the Lovecraft novella The Shadow Over Innsmouth - "Imboca" being a Spanish adaption of "Innsmouth". In it, a man travels to Innsmouth to research the town's history and discovers the town's horrific secret as well as terrible revelations about his own family, and the movie Dagon follows that plot relatively closely (so, you know, spoilers if you've only seen or read one so far). Interestingly, there's also a certain resemblance to the video game Resident Evil 4 - the isolated "European" village full of hostile and deformed locals, and a distinct similarity between the merchant in the game and some of the Imboca residents, looks-wise (RE4 came out four years after Dagon, so it's pretty clear who probably influenced who).

Because it's Lovecraft, there's of course a lot of hinting rather than outright showing, at least for the first half of the movie when it's still not clear what's actually going on in Imboca and the town's inhabitants could just be "regular" deformed, inbred murderous locals. People who know their Mythos will easily be able to spot the early clues, however - the slimy pallor, unblinking eyes and awkward gait that indicate that someone is a Deep One - and as more is revealed, little by little, we see webbed hands, gills and that what we had thought were just crippled or missing limbs are in fact tentacles growing in the place of arms and legs. By the end of the film, the townspeople have abandoned all pretence of pretending to be "normal" and at that point, all bets are off and people are growing tentacles from just about everywhere.  For the most part, the effects are all practical as well - there are two moments in the film where CGI is used, and they look exactly as dodgy as you'd expect the CGI in a 2001 low-budget horror film to look - and they're all suitably slimy and unnerving. Special mention, I think, has to go to the character of Uxia, whose top half is really quite beautiful (if a little too much with the stare-y eyes), but whose bottom half is... well, I'm sure you can all guess.

Unlike other films in Gordon and Yunza's repertoire (*cough*Re-Animator*cough*), Dagon isn't filled with wall-to-wall gore, although there are a few moments that are quite jarring - Ezequiel's fate being chief among them. There's also a fair amount of rape threats to helpless women, including a protracted scene where one is tortured before being chained and hung naked over a pit as a rape sacrifice to Dagon that's almost certainly meant to be as uncomfortable to watch as it actually is. For the most part, though, the horror in Dagon is of the bodily variety - the horror of transforming into something inhuman, whether willingly or unwillingly, and of discovering certain unpleasant truths about oneself (the game is perhaps given away a little early in the film when Paul mentions offhandedly that his mother refused to even let him learn Spanish growing up) - as well as the traditional Lovecraftian trope of ancient gods and entities manipulating humans and sending everyone who sees and/or interacts with them stark raving mad.

It all becomes rather mad and overwrought by the film's climax, and the character of Paul might be seen as a low budget and nerdier (if that's even possible) version of Herbert West/Jeffrey Combs who's not the easiest protagonist to root for, but there's still clearly a lot of love for the subject matter in Dagon, and that enthusiasm and energy can make up for a lot of shortfalls elsewhere in the film. Iä! Iä! Cthulhu Fhtagn!

 

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[rec]: Genesis (2012)

Goodness me, is it October already? That means it's time for the October Horror Movie Challenge once again. Last year I managed to get halfway through the month before it all went pear-shaped; let's see if I can beat that record this year. And of course, we'll continue the tradition of the previous two years by starting the month off with the next movie in the [rec] series - [rec]: Genesis.

Clara and Koldo are getting married, and today is their wedding day. The wedding goes off without any problems; however, Koldo's uncle was bitten by a certain dog at the vet's clinic where he works the day before - the dog being the one from the apartment building where the "demonic rabies" outbreak of the previous two films took place. At the wedding reception, taking place at a large country estate, the uncle starts to show symptoms of being infected and attacks the other guests, infecting them in turn and causing a panic on the dancefloor. At the same time, the police and the GEO arrive to put the estate into quarantine. The newlyweds Clara and Koldo, and a rapidly-dwindling group of survivors have to fight to survive the night and make sure that they do not become infected so that they can escape the quarantine...

[rec]: Genesis starts off in the familiar found-footage, cinema verite style of the previous two movies (and it even references the latter description), with the footage being shot by the wedding photographer and Koldo's cousin Adrian. However, 22 minutes into the film, when one of the filming characters is asked what he is doing and gives the stock answer of (paraphrased), "I'm filming everything so that people will know what happened here," the camera is promptly smashed and the rest of the film - aside from some CCTV shots - proceeds in the more traditional third-person perspective. I guess I understand why this was done - by 2012 found-footage was starting to lose a lot of its allure, and its very nature limits how many characters the film can focus on (they all have to be with the person doing the filming), and I guess I get why the film starts off making us think it's going to be found-footage like the previous two films before swerving and switching to third-person with a sly little dig at the genre to boot... but I can't say I like it (nor am I the only one with this opinion). The previous two [rec] films were so successful and extremely tense because of the first-person perspective - we didn't know what was happening elsewhere, or even behind us because all we had was the camera to show us. A "God's-Eye" view takes much of that away. Not to mention that the first [rec] gave the found-footage genre a much-needed jolt of adrenaline when it seriously needed it. To disregard something the series was known for seems counter-productive, at least.

Another problem that [rec]: Genesis has is a wildly inconsistent tone. Sometimes it's a straight-up zombie/infected/viral possession splattery horror, sometimes it's a horror-comedy and a couple of times it's even a rom-com. Now, at any film set at a wedding you expect there to be some elements of romance, and despite the fact that the only rom-coms I've ever actually enjoyed were Shaun of the Dead and Bridget Jones' Diary I'm certainly not hating on the genre (and Clara and Koldo are a pretty kick-ass couple), but I found the switch between these themes felt awkward and jarring, not to mention lessening the impact of the film's actual horror moments. Oh, the French girl is light-heartedly called a slut for hooking up with another wedding guest! Please stop making me laugh, my heart can barely take it.

The religious themes of the previous films are back again, continuing the idea of a demonic possession that is passed on via physical infection, and they form a few key points in the film - one of which is actually one of the better moments in the film. At one point a large mirror reveals that several of the "infected" all have the reflection of "Patient Zero", Tristana Medeiros, and while it's only brief it's quite the striking and effective shot. Slightly less effective is the scene where a group of survivors discover that the infected cannot enter the old chapel on the estate grounds, and someone mentions that they also cannot stand holy water being thrown on them. Now I admit that I've never been in a situation that would necessitate it, but I can't see myself throwing holy water on zombies just on the off chance that they might not like it, not unless I knew more of what was going on than I should have. And despite having this sanctuary that the infected can't get into, they decide to leave it anyway. Sigh.

One of the key images of [rec]: Genesis is of a woman (Clara) in a torn and bloodstained wedding dress wielding a chainsaw, and while it is a pretty cool image. I almost get the idea that the image might have been conceived of first and then the rest of the film built around it. Combine that with one or two other moments in the film (spoiler: someone has to chainsaw their arm off after being bitten), and I can't help but wonder if Evil Dead 2 was in the filmmakers' minds as well while they were making the film.

In the end, [rec]: Genesis does an adequate job of being a parallel story to the events of [rec] and [rec]2, and of filling in more of the mythology of the infected... but it's not as good as the previous two films. It's not as tense, not as innovative, not as attention-grabbing. We'll have to wait until next year though to see if [rec]: Apocalypse can bring any of that back to the series.

 

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Dead Snow (2009)

I think, after the last couple of films reviewed nearly scared me into total insomnia, that we need to look at some lighter horror fare. So, of course, my mind goes straight to zombies - and Nazi zombies at that. Today we're taking a look at Norwegian Nazi zombie horror-comedy Dead Snow (or Død snø in the original Norwegian).

A group of medical students head into the snowy mountains of Norway to spend their Easter break in a cabin owned by one of the group. The group includes Hanna and her boyfriend Martin, who is haemophobic; Erlend, who is a horror movie geek; and Vegard and Sara, the latter of whom owns the cabin they are staying at and who was supposed to be meeting them there. Unfortunately, Sara has already been killed by a group of Nazi zombies who roam the area according to a passing stranger the group briefly meet. During World War 2 the Nazis, led by "Colonel" Herzog, occupied the area and tortured and killed the locals for three years before looting their valuables near the end of the war, but they were attacked by the townspeople and either killed or froze to death in the mountains. Unfortunately for everyone, the Nazis aren't quite dead enough, and when the group find an old box filled with gold underneath the cabin the undead Herzog and his men return to reclaim their cursed loot, and they're more than willing to tear the group apart to get to it...

If you're bitten by a Nazi zombie, do you become a "regular" zombie or a Nazi zombie? One day a movie might appear that tackles that philosophical question that also compares extremist political ideology with a communicable rabid disease, but Dead Snow is not that movie. Which is a bit of a shame, as there could be some comedy in that and Dead Snow is a horror-comedy. It's also another one of those movies that's a love letter to various horror movies that have come before it, not the least of which include Friday the 13th, Night of the Living Dead, Braindead and the Evil Dead (but again, minus any tree rape). There's a Crazy Ralph-type character, for example, whose sole purpose is to be creepy, provide exposition, and then die - he doesn't quite say that the place has a death curse, but he comes close. It's also an unashamed splatter movie, with chainsaws, axes, sledgehammers and even a snowmobile employed to turn the Nazi zombies into so much mulch, and it's all a lot of fun to watch - and of course since it's Nazi zombies on the receiving end, there are no worries that the audience will have any conflicting sympathies for them.

Very technically, the Nazi zombies are more draugr than the traditional modern zombie - Scandinavian undead who guard their often-stolen treasure and punish those who trespass on their burial sites - although the movie never makes this distinction and it matters little for the plot of the film anyway. This little bit of Norse folklore in interesting to note, though, because one of director Tommy Wirkola's other works is Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters (remember Chekov's Convenient Diabetic Coma?), and so it's pretty clear that he has an interest in these old stories.

There's a couple of flaws in Dead Snow, although neither of them are really immersion-breaking. Vegard is just a little too competent a survivor and badass Nazi zombie fighter to survive in a movie like this; he's good-looking, sporty, resourceful and takes on several Nazi zombies by himself, but it's when he sews up his own neck wound with some handy fishing line I realised he was probably not going to make it to the end of the film (sorry). Horror comedies like this need more slapstick and pratfalls than Big Damn Heroes, and we have them in spades with Martin and Roy, who moments after Vegard finishes his self-surgery, are seen setting the cabin they're in on fire because they can't throw a Molotov properly, but I just didn't find them as engaging as Vegard. They were no Bruce Campbell, that's for sure.

The other problem I have with Dead Snow... Well, there's a scene in the movie where one character goes to the outhouse to do his business, and one of the women follows him and they have impromptu sex right there in the outhouse. The guy then goes back inside while the woman uses the toilet, whereupon the Nazi zombies drag her through the toilet and kill her. And I can't help but think that's rather meanspirited and unpleasant, and somewhat at odds with the more lighthearted tone of the rest of the film (as lighthearted as Nazi zombies can get, at any rate). I don't think it's actually misogynist, or at least not deliberately so, but covering a woman in poop and then killing her, straight after she's had sex, just strikes me as a little darker than the rest of Dead Snow wanted to be and so sticks out for the wrong reasons.

But these aren't major issues by any means. Dead Snow was clearly made by someone who loves all those splattery movies from the 1980s and beyond, and that love shines through in the film. It's an entertaining, funny, splattery romp through bloodstained snow, and while it's not an intellectual powerhouse of a film or one that's going to make you check behind your doors or keep the lights on all night to ward off creepy clowns or ghosts, it's still a lot of fun to watch.

 

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The Windmill Massacre (2016)

This review got a little delayed, because while I watched The Windmill Massacre a week or so ago, all the detailed notes I made on the film for the review got "accidentally" thrown away during a rather botched house cleaning (along with the DVD case for the film and a large number of my DVDs and Blu-Rays, picked apparently at random). So it's taken me a bit of time to get my head together again and remember enough about the film to be able to write a proper review of it, albeit slightly later than originally planned.

Jennifer is a young Australian woman living and working as a nanny in Amsterdam, who is also on the run from a traumatic event in her past. When her employer discovers that she is in the country illegally she flees before he can call the police, and ends up hiding on a tour bus that is visiting various windmills in the country. Also on the bus are a Japanese tourist, Takashi; a French photographer and former model, Ruby; Nicholas, a doctor; businessman Douglas and his son Curt; soldier Jackson; and bus driver Abe. Partway through the tour, the bus breaks down after Jennifer sees a figure standing in the road, but when they check there is no sign of anyone. Jennifer and Jackson head out to try to find help from a nearby windmill they spotted, but Jackson starts to see images and mementoes of a prostitute we saw him accidentally kill the previous night in a PTSD-flashback before he is abruptly attacked and killed by a demonic figure wielding a scythe. Jennifer tries to tell the others back on the bus what happened, but they dismiss her as being mentally unstable and accuse her of killing Jackson instead. When a further accident knocks the bus into a river and injures Curt, the group have no choice but to head to the windmill for safety and to try to get help. As the group continue to experience strange visions of their past, it becomes clear that not only do they all share a common secret... but that the windmill has a horrific past that still lingers to this day...

I was honestly not expecting to enjoy The Windmill Massacre as much as I did. I picked it up on the basis of a trailer I'd seen on YouTube way back in 2013 (and which was very different from how the film eventually turned out), but I was still expecting it to be little more than typical low-budget, B-movie fare that relied mostly on the gore factor to get noticed. Don't get me wrong - it is most of those things, but as we all know by now that's not necessarily a bad thing, and it actually has a clever little plot hiding in there underneath all the splatter, and it really did impress me.

You can probably guess what the "dark secret" all the tourists share is - I'd pretty much figured it out before we'd got ten minutes into the film, and the brief journey into Jackson's life before he gets on the bus pretty much confirmed it - but the film still puts an interesting twist on it that managed to surprise me. Personally, if it had been me making the film I'd have had a "Seven Deadly Sins" theme rather than the way they went, although if you squint you can see hints of at least Lust, Pride, Avarice and Wrath at least in most of the tourists on this ill-fated trip. This is actually the film's biggest flaw - most of its plot developments are pretty easy to see coming, and while that doesn't necessarily ruin the film, it does take some of the wind out of its mill blades, so to speak.

On the other hand, the film's villain - a miller who sold his soul to Satan for the secret of making his mill blades turn without wind, is quite the original antagonist and considerably more original than all the backwoodsmen killing off campers or masked psychopaths stalking babysitters that make up a lot of the slasher genre, and his kills are, for the most part, sufficiently wet and gruesome enough to satisfy any gorehounds watching. There are digital blood effects, and they are noticeable as such, but they don't stand out so much that they break immersion or ruin the rest of the film. Another thing I particularly liked about the film was how, despite the story of the demonic miller being explicitly Christian in origin, he/it could also be held at bay by a non-Christian - in this case Shinto - prayer ritual. It's little details like this that show that real effort went into the making of the film, so that it would stand out from all the other splattery horrors churned out every year.

The Windmill Massacre might not ever be as good as some of the films it's been compared to (The Abominable Dr Phibes, films from Brian De Palma and the works of Agatha Christie, most obviously Ten Little Indians/And Then There Were None) but it still manages to have more splattery originality than many of its peers, and is therefore worthy of a watch for that alone. Just pretend to be surprised by the plot twists.

 

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Don't Torture a Duckling (1972)

It's been a while since we've done a giallo on this blog, hasn't it? Yes, Dressed to Kill certainly had some giallo elements, between its black-gloved killer and its very stylish imagery, but I'm talking a proper Italian giallo. And I just so happen to have one by Lucio Fulci, of all people, from way back in the 70s when the giallo was king. So before I say "giallo" too many times so that the word starts to lose all meaning for me, let's take a look at Don't Torture a Duckling (also known as Non si sevizia un paperino and Don't Torture Donald Duck - that's the literal Italian translation, according to the IMDB).

In the small, isolated Italian village of Accendura, someone is murdering the young boys of the village. The suspects for these crimes include Giuseppe, the local peeping tom and village idiot; a Gypsy woman known as La Magiara (who the audience has already seen performing voodoo-esque rituals with wax dolls and pins); and Patrizia, the daughter of a wealthy man who has come to the town after being involved in a drugs scandal in Milan and is considered a "slut" by most of the village because of her provocative dress and flirtatious behaviour. As young boys continue to die, Patrizia and a journalist arrived in the village to cover the story, Andrea Martelli, team up to investigate the murders in a parallel investigation to the village police chief. But will they be able to discover the murderer's identity before anyone else is killed in the village?

If you come to Don't Torture a Duckling expecting levels of gore on par with Lucio Fulci's other works, you might come away being disappointed as the film is actually quite restrained. The murders of the young boys, for example, are for the most part quite restrained, with them mostly being strangled to death. There's certainly no eye-gouging or enucleation. that's not to say that there's no gore whatsoever in the film, as there are two scenes that are very Fulci - one involving someone being whipped to death with chains and the other involving a character falling from a cliff and getting their face torn off on every jagged rock they hit on the way down. But for the most part, Don't Torture a Duckling focuses more on the whodunit, police procedural and suspense aspects of the giallo - as well as the problems of religion and superstition in small communities.

It's the latter topics that actually got the film in some controversy when it was first released in 1972. Because of its criticism of the Catholic Church, Don't Torture a Duckling was actually blacklisted and was not even released in the US until 2000 when Anchor Bay got hold of the rights and finally gave it a full release. As well as the religious aspect, the film also treads some... interesting ground with its depiction of young boys attempting to spy on couples having sex. In a couple of other scenes, Patrizia teasingly flirts with two of the future victims, once while completely naked (and gosh, Barbara Bouchet is an attractive woman in this film).

Don't Torture a Duckling is beautifully shot, and Fulci himself considered it to be his personal favourite of all the films he made in his career. There are lots of long, distant shots of people walking alone in the Italian countryside, emphasising the isolation of the village and the people despite it being close to an apparently busy highway. The highlight of the film, I think, is the aforementioned scene where a character is beaten with chains though. The characters involved all move so slowly, as though it's all happening in a dream, and it's set to two radically different pieces of music - a rock and roll tune and a slower, more haunting melody that both play on a car radio as the events of the scene take place.

As I mentioned above, Don't Torture a Duckling is perhaps slower-paced than some of Fulci's other, better-known works, and that might put some viewers off. The film is much more about atmosphere than action and gory effects (although, as I said, there are some in the film if you need that itch scratched. It looks at some controversial topics that are still relevant today, and it does so in a thoughtful, not cheap, way. And by the end of the film, even the literal Italian translation of the title makes sense.

 

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The Ritual (2017)

Here's another film that I wanted to see when it came out last year, but in their infinite wisdom my local cinema chain decided not to show it and so I had to wait until Netflix started streaming it... and then wait a little longer because UK Netflix apparently wasn't included in that. Eventually, I just went and bought a physical copy, supporting the British Film Industry, and then I had to just get round to watching it. So finally, here I am reviewing The Ritual.

Four 30somethings  - Luke, Phil, Hutch and Dom - are on a hiking holiday in Sweden together. It isn't the first choice any of them would have made for a holiday together, but they're making the trip to honour a fifth friend, Robert, who had suggested the trip but was recently killed in a robbery gone wrong. When Dom falls and injures his knee, Hutch suggests they take a shortcut through some woods to get back to their lodge quicker. This plan turns out to be a very bad one, as the woods are much larger than they appeared to be from the outside, and when they are caught in a rainstorm they take refuge in an old wooden cabin - which just so happens to have Norse runes carved throughout it and a strange effigy with antlers for hands in an upstairs room. Just being in this cabin seems to have a bad effect on them all, as they all suffer nightmares and bizarre sleepwalking events that night, and when they set out again the next morning it seems that someone - or something - is stalking them through the woods. With tensions running high and the group doubting their own perceptions, will the four of them find their way out of the woods and escape whatever it is that's tracking them?

Sometimes, when I'm watching a film I'm reminded of other films at various points throughout. Usually, this is a bad thing, because it's reminding me of other, better things I could be watching. In the case of The Ritual, however, the comparisons are much more favourable. The two films that came to mind for me were The Blair Witch Project and The Wicker Man, and in both cases, I felt that The Ritual went in some interesting and quite compelling directions with elements similar to both films. There's the element of being lost in unfamiliar woods, with tensions running high within the group, for the Blair Witch comparison, but the tension comes from things far more sensible and realistic than a map getting kicked into a creek. For The Wicker Man, the strange wooden effigy is the clear comparison, but again, The Ritual takes that and goes in a very different direction than that classic film, and this is a good thing indeed.

The Ritual is based on the book of the same name by Adam Nevill and is directed by none other than David Bruckner, who directed the "Amateur Night" segment of the first V/H/S anthology (which you might remember me lavishing quite a bit of praise on). Bruckner is definitely good at creating an atmosphere so tense you could cut it with a chair, not to mention his skills at depicting monstrous creatures (that may or may not be real, as the film keeps that card very close to its chest until the last possible second, leaving us wondering if we're just watching one man's psychotic break in the middle of some woods in Sweden) in brief but tantalising glimpses. The quite minimalist cast all do excellent jobs as well, from Rafe Spall as protagonist Luke, who's wrestling with a massive case of Survivor's Guilt throughout most of the film, to Sam Troughton as the passive-aggressive Dom, who ends up getting a lot of the best, blackest humour lines. They're relatable, even when they're being annoying to each other.

If I had managed to see The Ritual in 2017 like I had originally hoped, the theoretical knife fight for spots on my Top 5 that year would have been at risk of becoming a battle royale, because it is really, really good. There are gore scenes dotted throughout the film, but it doesn't rely on them for the scares of the film. It cranks up the tension that starts with the mundane fear of being lost in the woods in a strange country and then cranks it further with the supernatural events that start to slowly creep in. Perhaps even better, it even manages to tie things up by the end in a satisfactory manner, that doesn't dangle the potential for a needless sequel in front of us at the end.

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Veronica (2017)

I've spent the past several weeks coughing stuff up that wouldn't have looked out of place being chased by Kurt Russell, armed with a flamethrower, around the Antarctic, and as a result, my movie watching and reviewing has taken a bit of a dive. So to get back into things, I'm easing myself back into reviewing with a film I watched on Netflix after seeing people left, right and centre raving about it, Veronica.

It's 1991 in Madrid, Spain, and 15-year-old Veronica is more or less the primary carer for her three younger siblings. Her mother works long hours in a bar to support the family, and her father has recently died. This latter event has made Veronica decide to experiment with an Ouija board with two of her schoolfriends - during a solar eclipse as it's said that eclipses are good times for summoning supernatural beings - in an attempt to contact her dead father. They appear to contact something with their seance, but it doesn't appear to be who - or what - they wanted and Veronica soon starts to experience strange and dangerous phenomena around her and her siblings. Fearing for the safety of her siblings, Veronica seeks out the help of her friends but they refuse, telling her they are too scared to use the Ouija board again after seeing what happened to her. The only person who seems willing to help her is an old, blind nun from her school, known as "Sister Death", who claims to be able to see the spirit tormenting Veronica and tells her that she needs to send the spirit back by "doing right what she did wrong". As the attacks on her siblings and herself increase in ferocity, Veronica attempts to hold another seance to finish it properly and send the spirit back where it came from before it is too late...

Veronica is another "based on a true story" movie. In this case, it's based on a Spanish police report into the mysterious events and death of a teenage girl in 1991 in Madrid, Spain, where the police claimed to have witnessed paranormal activity in the home and recorded it officially. So in "true story" terms, it's actually got a better pedigree than many of the other films that claim the same thing, at least... but in the end it's still going to be a "your mileage may vary" thing when it comes to how much of the "true story" you actually believe.

Veronica is also a film from director Paco Plaza, whose previous directing credits include [rec] and [rec] 2 (and [rec] 3: Genesis, but we shan't hold that against him here), and if you've read my reviews you'll know that I'm quite the fan of the first two movies. So I was genuinely interested in seeing what he had done with Veronica, even after - or perhaps despite, because I'm finally starting to learn my lesson there - all the hype that surrounded the film. And the film certainly has several of the same plot points that [rec] and [rec] 2 had - the supernatural/religious element; the majority of the action confined to an apartment and its twisting corridors - but it's a great deal more subtle than the [rec] movies (obviously). It's also shot in the traditional manner rather than in a found-footage/shakycam style, so those of you who hate that subgenre can at least breathe a sigh of relief there.

After all the hype about this film being "the scariest ever made" and that people were becoming so scared by it that they weren't able to finish it, I was slightly surprised at first to see that actual opinions were somewhat divided on it. While a lot of people did enjoy it, there were also quite a few people who claimed to hate it or found it "boring". After seeing Veronica myself, I think this came down to the fact that the movie was subtle in its portrayal of the supernatural events seemingly plaguing Veronica. Without going too far into SPOILER territory, there's a certain amount of ambiguity as to whether there really is a supernatural presence in the apartment, or if poor Veronica is perhaps just having a breakdown from the stresses she's under as a teenage girl with too many responsibilities and undergoing a late puberty. At least, that's how I read it, and I appreciated that ambiguity. As I've said many times, and no doubt will do so many more, horror isn't just about blood and gore and things leaping at the screen - it's also about creeping terror and not being able to trust your own mind or senses, and keeping your audience on the edge of their seat without drenching the set in blood and dramatic irony.

 

 

[rec] 2 (2009)

During last year's attempt at the October Horror Movie Challenge, I reviewed the Spanish-language found-footage [rec], which I personally think was pretty bloody good. So it makes sense to review the first sequel in that series, [rec]², this year.

We start off exactly where the last film ended, with reporter Angela Vidal being dragged off into the darkness by... something. We then meet some of our new characters for this movie - a four-man SWAT team and a doctor, Owen, from the Ministry of Health. They're being sent into the quarantined apartment building to find out what's happening in there, since they lost contact with the last team who went in 70 minutes ago/in the last movie. The building seems deserted, but things soon go all pear-shaped when one of the SWAT team is attacked by an infected resident and turned. Dr. Owen then makes some startling revelations - the people in the building aren't infected with a normal rabies-zombie virus, but one that stems from demonic possession. Furthermore he isn't actually with the Ministry of Health, but is actually an agent of the Church, sent in to try to contain things and find a cure. Meanwhile... at roughly the same time things are going on inside, three teenagers decide to follow two men they see breaking the quarantine and entering the building from the sewers because they think it will get them some good footage, thus making things even worse for everyone involved...

...Okay, [rec]², I'm willing to see where you're going with this. Demonic possession as the origin for a rabies-like zombie virus certainly isn't common in zombie cinema, and with all the bitching and complaining I do about horror movies not being willing to try anything new it would be severely remiss of me not to give it at least some kudos here. It's just... it's a bit out of left field, isn't it? And you have to question just how far ahead the demon possessing young Tristana (and there's a name that made my gamer brain do a double-take) Medeiros planned ahead for this, or if all of these events were just a load of bad luck and coincidence? (Apparently, it was the latter, which doesn't exactly make the demon seem too smart) But still, it is an interesting idea and the film does do its very best to keep things new without becoming too silly.

The Plot Contrivance Fairy certainly took the time to visit the set of [rec]² though, particularly when it came to the various cameras used to film all the action. Every single time the camera the main characters have been using runs out of battery power, or breaks after being used to beat someone to a bloody pulp, another one is miraculously brought to the survivors. The final camera is, of course, the most important one as well, as it is the one with the magical night vision mode that allows is to see Tristana Medeiros (who is played by Javier Botet, who also played the Leper in IT and Mama in Mama), and all her home improvements (I'm not going to think too hard about that aspect). But at least the film has again made an effort to come up with good reasons for the characters to keep filming throughout the life-threatening chaos and for the existence of night vision mode full stop.

As you might have figured out by now, [rec]² is also a found-footage movie, and so if you're prone to motion sickness from watching the screen flailing around wildly while characters run around screaming, then this film might not be your cup of tea. Something else that the filmmakers added with the camera was the idea of having a gun barrel at the bottom of the screen during some first-person scenes, so there are several scenes that are effectively FPS-esque in the movie. Some people may enjoy that; personally I found it unnecessary - I was unnerved enough in the scenes where they were looking back and forth along long empty hallways or up and down the stairwell when we, the audience, have the dramatic irony of knowing the building shouldn't be this deserted and I didn't need a gun visible at the bottom of the frame to make it more tense.

In the end, [rec]² is a good movie. It's more of the same stuff that made [rec] so pants-wettingly tense, but with enough new ideas to turn things on their head and make the audience stop short and think for a moment - all the better for then throwing a screaming, bloody infected in their face straight after. Some of the characters were a little too annoying for their own good - the teens in particular - and one character gets the Scatman Crothers Special, but for the most part everyone acts in ways that make sense and there's enough good stuff in the plot to make you decide to just go along with it all.

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