Carnography

A Quiet Place Part II (2020)

As of today, I've temporarily exhausted all the films I'm willing to see at the cinema for the time being (unless I get a case of cabin fever and decide to see Cruella, aka The Devil Wore Dalmatian). And today's film, A Quiet Place Part II, has certainly been anticipated for a while now, having been originally slated for release just before covid-19 took over the world, everything shut down for a year and I personally got a new appreciation for the self-confidence one can get by wearing a face mask everywhere. The question is, was it worth the wait?

We open with a brief flashback to the day the aliens that are 66% ear canal and 33% teeth arrive on Earth, showing how quickly they turn up out of practically nowhere and just start ripping apart our protagonists' home town. After that, we skip forward to right after the events of the first film, as the surviving Abbotts (mother Evelyn, son Marcus, daughter Regan and newborn baby who we shall call Millstone) have to leave their now-destroyed home and find a new shelter. Armed only with a shotgun and a hearing aid attached to a guitar amplifier to create the feedback that hurts the alien monsters, they head out towards a distant fire in the hopes of finding other people. They end up finding Emmett, a former friend of the family, hiding in an abandoned steel factory after the deaths of his own family and who has mostly given up hope. When Regan sets out to find the location of a mysterious radio broadcast in the hopes of using her hearing aid to broadcast the feedback on a larger scale, Emmett goes after her and together they face not only the aliens but also that other traditional post-apocalyptic enemy - other humans. At the same time, Evelyn and Marcus have to survive when another of the aliens makes its way into the factory they're sheltering in...

So, if you remember my review of the first A Quiet Place (and if you don't, don't worry - I had to look it up too), you'll remember that one of my biggest issues with the film was that it had non-diegetic music in places, which I felt was somewhat wasting the opportunity of having a film where all the sound is entirely in-universe. Well, sadly the filmmakers aren't reading this blog, because the mood music is still in this movie - in fact, I think it's even more prominent in the sequel, with grand orchestral swells at key points during the film. I mean, it's not bad music per say, and still nowhere near the levels of orchestra abuse that other films stoop to, but... It's just a disappointment, really.

As for the aliens... they're still used pretty effectively throughout the film. Their ability to just dive into frame and onto a hapless victim out of nowhere is still an effective natural jump scare - particularly in one scene where one just comes through a hidden door like the Kool-Aid Man as imagined by HP Lovecraft. There's also not a veritable swarm of them - I think the most we see in one place is maybe three or four in the flashback at the start of the film - which really does emphasise how effective they are at hunting and killing since they've whittled down the human race so much. Of course, that does also beg the question as to how they've apparently had no resistance until now - it's the same problem as I pointed out in the first film; I cannot believe that no-one in the world's military or scientific community discovered that the aliens that are mostly ear canal are hurt by certain sounds until One Suburban Dad With One Weird Trick came along.

Oh, and it turns out that the aliens have another weakness as well: [SPOILER] they can't swim (insert Swimmer's Ear joke here). So we get a nice little isolated island community having BBQs and letting children play outside for a bit, until one of the aliens inevitably gets there and goes on a rampage and taking Djimon Honsou out of the film before he's even given the dignity of a name (also, about that... there's two scenes in this film where a black nameless character sacrifices himself for our white protagonists to survive. I'm not saying the film is being deliberately racist or anything, but... little bit awkward when you realise it). For non-alien threats, we also have a brief encounter with some leperous-looking fishbillies who have a distinct rape-y air about them, and the ever-present threat of everyone dying of tetanus before they get to broadcast the alien-killing feedback on the radio (seriously, why is no-one wearing shoes?)

Cast-wise, everyone's still pretty good, in particular Millicent Simmonds playing Regan, and Cillian Murphy as our new bearded dad-substitute. I did feel a little sorry for the actor playing Marcus, mainly because until the very end of the film he might as well have been named Useless, as he functions mainly as a prop to cause further problems for the other characters without getting to do much himself for about 90 minutes of the film's 100-minute runtime. In the end though, I have to say that A Quiet Place Part II isn't quite as good as its predecessor - it's still got the same plot holes as before, and adds in a couple more for good measure. And the mood music... sigh.

3.5 out of 5.

 

Spiral: From the Book of Saw (2021)

Let's be upfront here: this review will contain spoilers. The biggest spoiler of all is that yet again I am disappointed and Spiral: From the Book of Saw does not involve a Jigsaw apprentice Battle Royale (I imagine it would be like Robot Wars/Battlebots but with a lot more blood). But dammit, we fought through a global pandemic and waited a whole year for this film to finally come out, so maybe I might lower my expectations a bit for this Saw-spinoff from the mind of none other than Chris Rock.

Detective Zeke Banks is a cop who doesn't like to play by the rules, and since he doesn't trust any of the other cops in Homicide (they all hate him because he turned in a dirty cop) he doesn't want a partner either. But his Chief insists, and so he gets a rookie detective, William Schenk - just in time to start investigating a series of murders of cops in gruesome and highly inventive ways. Taunting videos and clues left at the crime scenes lead Zeke and the other detectives to believe that the killer is another copycat of John Kramer, the original and now long-dead Jigsaw killer... but that doesn't get them any closer to discovering the new killer's identity. As Zeke continues to investigate, it becomes clear that events from his past are somehow key to the killer and may reveal their identity, but can he discover it and stop them in time before someone close to him dies?

Oh boy. Oh boy oh boy oh boy. A lot of us were a little bit worried when the news broke that Chris Rock had had an idea for a new Saw film, but I have to say that the basic idea behind this movie isn't half bad. The original theme running through the Saw movies (and John Kramer's twisted philosophy) was to punish those who had squandered their lives or hurt/abused others, and so the idea of a new Jigsaw killer going after corrupt cops works well. And hey, who doesn't like seeing crooked cops suffer? But somewhere between concept and execution, things went somewhat sideways, it seems, because this film is kind of a mess.

It starts early in the film, with the character of Zeke (played by Chris Rock) apparently channelling the entire book of Loose Cannon Cop cliches - but I guess he has a lot to live up to seeing as his father is Samuel L Jackson, so we'll excuse it. Still, it feels obvious and, well, cliched. The scene where we're introduced to Zeke, undercover with a drug gang, also feels like it's trying way too hard, with several minutes of dialogue about Forrest Gump which just screamed out, "We're trying to write dialogue like Quentin Tarentino!".

But the first alarm bell started to sound for me when the cops watch the first video from the new "Jigsaw", and see a red spiral painted on a wall. "It's the symbol of the Jigsaw killer," one cop states grimly. Uh, unless I hallucinated seven of the previous films, the "symbol of the Jigsaw killer" was a puzzle piece, hence the name Jigsaw. The spiral really only featured in the last film, Jigsaw, as part of the "Human Cuisinart" trap (technically the "Cycle Trap" but that sounds so boring). It should also be noted at this point that the other writers on Spiral were Josh Stolberg and Pete Goldfinger, who were also the writers of Jigsaw, so...

Alarm bell number two started ringing shortly thereafter, when a cop states, "But Jigsaw never targetted cops!" Well, apart from David Tapp from Saw (and the video games),  Eric Matthews in Saw II and Daniel Rigg in Saw IV, that is. And maybe this wouldn't be too big a deal, if not for the fact that the director of Spiral is Darren Lynn Bousman - who also directed Saw II, III and IV. This bothers me because I think it shows a distinct lack of care about things like series continuity or even basic details about the previous films - especially when you've got the same director involved. It's not (just) me being overly pedantic over continuity; it feels like no-one really cared about any of the films that had come before this one (and hey, maybe that's not a 100% bad thing, but...)

The third and final alarm bell, complete with "lazy writing" klaxon, came when [SPOILER] it seemed like rookie detective William Schenk had become another victim of the new Jigsaw killer... only we never see his body, just some skin with a ridiculously prominent tattoo on it, so it's made abundantly clear that he's the killer. After that, the only mystery left in the film is the why, and since every other dead cop has been seen to clearly be corrupt, it's an easy bet that it has something to do with that.

What else is there? Oh, the traps. They're pretty original, although requiring such a level of ridiculous planning that it would probably make John Kramer or Mark Hoffman take a step back and go, "Now that's a bit extreme..." They're very cinematic, and bloody, and thematic (especially the last trap, dodgy SWAT team reactions aside). If you're there purely for the traps, then I doubt you'll be disappointed (unless you think too hard about the setup for some of them). And the movie is clearly setting things up for a potential sequel, because by gods, we're going to keep milking this franchise even after bits have started falling off.

Just leave me imagining Drs Lawrence Gordon and Logan Nelson watching their morning news and doing simultaneous spittakes when they see the story about the new "Jigsaw killer", before sighing and getting out the box full of disturbing engineering schematics, because as a continuation of the Saw "legacy", this film is pretty disappointing. It had promise, but a whole lot of lazy writing wrecked all of that.

2.5 out of 5

 

 

The Seventh Curse (1986)

I will be the first to admit that, as much as I might try to broaden my horror horizons, quite often I’ll fall back into old/bad habits – and genres – if given half a chance or if I’m having a bad day. Or it’s Thursday. Certain things – like zombies and found footage – are just like comfort food for me. So if it had been 100% up to me I probably would never have chosen to watch The Seventh Curse myself – which is why I’m very glad that a friend streamed it for a bunch of us a while back, because this film is completely and utterly bananas.

Dr. Yuen has a problem. A year previously while in Thailand, he rescued a young woman from being sacrificed, and as a result was cursed by the leader of the Worm Tribe. Now the curse has been activated and will kill him in a matter of days unless he returns to Thailand to defeat the evil Worm Tribe once and for all. With the help of his pipe-smoking friend Wisely, an ambitious young reporter called Rainbow, and Bachu, the woman he saved originally, Yuen will battle evil sorcerers, kung-fu Buddhist monks, and demons as he seeks the cure for his deadly curse.

The Seventh Curse is based on the Dr. Yuen novel series by Hong Kong-American writer Ni Kuang (I can’t tell you if it was based on any one specific novel out of the 300 novels Ni Kuang has written because I can’t find any English translations of the titles, but it’s probably a safe bet). Yuen’s friend Wisely, who he goes to for advice when the titular curse kicks in – by making his leg swell up and spray blood everywhere – also has his own series of novels, and is played in this movie by none other than Chow Yun-fat. I actually went looking to see if any of these books were available to read, but sadly the answer appears to either be, “No,” or, “Only if you read Chinese,” which is a shame because I’d totally be up for reading Wuxia James Bond fighting cults and demons.

“Wuxia James Bond fights cults and demons” is probably the most succinct description of the film as well – although it still somehow manages to downplay just how seriously barking mad the film is. Dr. Yuen is a doctor… but he’s apparently also some kind of supercop, because at the start of the film he’s called in to help deal with a hostage situation in an office building. After that, he gets home and finds a mysterious stranger is his apartment who, after a quick kung-fu fight, reminds Yuen about his curse and tells him not to have sex as that will speed the curse up (No prizes for guessing what Yuen promptly goes and does, and what happens as a result of it). After that, it’s a quick trip to Wisely’s house, who smokes a pipe while Yuen recounts/flashes back to the circumstances that led to his curse (which he had apparently forgotten about until now), and then it’s off to Thailand to sort this all out. We are barely one-third of the way through the film at this point.

And things don’t slow down or get any less insane for the rest of the film either. Some of the other features of The Seventh Curse include: a bunch of children kidnapped and fed into a giant stone “juicer” for a ritual; a demon-worm-fetus thing made from the blood of the aforementioned juiced children; a genderfluid evil cult leader; another demon, this one apparently called “Old Ancestor” who starts off as “just” an animated skeleton but inflates or ‘roids up for battle after snacking on fresh spinal fluid; and a kung-fu wire fight where Dr. Yuen and one of his companions fight a bevy of armed Buddhist monks while climbing a giant Buddha statue. I’d say that you couldn’t make this stuff up, but someone clearly did and the world is clearly the better for it.

As I said earlier, because all the Dr. Yuen and Wisely novels are written in Chinese and I can’t find any translations, I can’t say for certain whether all of this craziness comes solely from the novels or if any of it came from the mind of the film’s director, Ngai Choi Lam, who also directed such films as Erotic Ghost Story and the infamous Story of Ricky aka Riki-Oh. Looking at his filmography (hell, just at Riki-Oh) the guy definitely has a thing for ridiculously over-the-top stuff.

Alas, the film isn’t quite perfect in its absurdity. The character of “Rainbow” (seriously, that’s her name in the dubbing at least) is apparently only in the film for three reasons: to be annoying; to get captured/get into trouble as an added incentive for the protagonist(s) to sort things out (as if the deadly curse on Yuen wasn’t incentive enough); and to be a red herring love interest. Chow Yun-fat as Wisely also feels a little underused as well – some of that probably comes down to our being used to seeing him in bigger (later) roles in films like Hard Boiled and The Replacement Killers, but his role here also feels more than a little deus ex machina – especially at the film’s climax, where he quite literally turns up with a rocket launcher to solve any unresolved problems. It just doesn’t feel like there’s any real danger with Wisely around, like an eight-year-old with an Everything-Proof shield. Perhaps that’s part of the film’s charm though – it’s so gloriously and unashamedly crazy that it can get away with things like this.

3.5 out of 5.

 

 

Exists (2014)

Exists is a 2014 found-footage, lost-in-the-woods-with-Bigfoot horror film from Eduardo Sanchez, which means that any jokes I could make about maps being kicked into creeks or people looking for Josh in the darkness would just be the lowest of the low-hanging fruit. So let’s see if we can avoid that Blair Witch Project-shaped pitfall in this review.

Brian and Matt are brothers heading out to their uncle’s isolated cabin in the wilderness of East Texas to shoot some extreme biking videos for YouTube. Also with them are Matt’s girlfriend Dora and their friends Todd and Elizabeth. Driving there at night, they appear to hit an animal with their car, but dismiss it when they find no evidence at the scene. Over the following couple of days, however, the group find themselves stalked and threatened by a large, strange, hairy and – most importantly – very angry creature. Its attacks against them increase in frequency and ferocity until the group are fleeing for their lives against this enraged Bigfoot…

This movie has one of those one-word titles that is just begging for a bad joke. “Exists? It definitely does!” It’s also one of those films made in the 2010s, when there was a sudden and inexplicable glut of found-footage Bigfoot films – and unlike the similar situations with the Amityville and Paranormal Activity franchises, there doesn’t appear to have been any big or even medium-budget catalyst films to kick the knock-offs off. Perhaps it’s just a case of filmmakers (budding or otherwise) realising that, when it comes to found footage movies, the two cheapest filming locations are usually abandoned buildings and isolated woodlands, and since you generally need a permit for the former…

In typical found footage fashion, there is of course a “Hud” – that one character who keeps on filming everything no matter what, usually with the excuse/vague justification of, “We have to document everything!” or “No-one will believe us otherwise!”. In the case of Exists, this role falls to Brian, who is by far the most annoying character in the film (and not just because of the camera). Brian is loud, obnoxious, dumb as a box of rocks, and yes, he doesn’t let go of that camera for anything. Cabin under siege by an angry Bigfoot? Brian’s filming it. Looking for his missing brother? Filming. Trapped in a camper van that’s been thrown down a hill by the aforementioned angry Bigfoot? You guessed it. Begging for his life? Got to document everything, bro! And the worst part of this is that [SPOILER] Brian is the only survivor by the end! He doesn’t even have the decency to get killed by the avenging Sasquatch like everyone else for the sin of continuing to film in the face of everything that happens. [SPOILER END.]

Now, I know I said at the start of this review that I was really going to make an effort to stay away from all my usual Blair Witch Project-esque jokes that I make in found-footage reviews, but… See, at one point in the film, Matt volunteers to try to cycle away to escape the angry Sasquatch and get help (or at least a decent mobile phone signal), only to get clotheslined off his bike and carried off. Later that night, while trying to escape themselves (and while using night vision on the camera because it’s probably a law of filmmaking or something at this point), the others hear Matt screaming for help, and so we end up with a scene where characters are looking for another character, at night, while shouting things like, “Tell us where you are, Matt!” Talk about writing what you know, Eduardo Sanchez.

Exists does get a couple of points for not falling back onto the crutch of CGI (with the exception of the digital camera glitching and tearing effects, which are fair enough), and also for getting actor Brian Steele to play the Bigfoot. Who is Brian Steele, you might be asking? Well, he’s the 6’ 7” guy who played friendly Bigfoot Harry in the 90s TV series Harry and the Hendersons, and so there’s a nice touch of irony there (He was also one of the Predators in Predators and the – uncredited – “Creature” in Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones, among many other monster roles). That’s all the leeway I’m willing to give it, however.

The problem with Exists is that it doesn’t bring anything new to the table. Cardboard, unlikeable characters; endless shakycam to cover up the fleeting glances we get of the antagonist/threat; wafer-thin plot with no real resolution… We’re 15 years on from The Blair Witch Project (yes, I know, but I’m making a valid point here), yet we’re still running around lost in the woods and screaming for help while something just off-screen menaces us. This stuff is bad enough when new filmmakers fall into these bad habits. It’s worse when it’s from someone who’s had 15 years to learn and improve on things.

1.5 out of 5.

 

Child's Play 2 (1990)

The first Child's Play made $44 million on a budget of just $9 million, and so it should come as no surprise to learn that a sequel was given the green light almost immediately. A change in studio ownership put things on hold for two years, however, when the new company in charge of United Artists decided that they didn't want to make horror films (they collapsed in 1991, which should really be an object lesson as to where the quick cash was in Hollywood at the time). The movie rights hung in limbo for a while then, until Universal acquired them with the help of none other than Steven Spielberg, and so Child's Play 2 was released in 1990, exactly two years to the day that the first film had been released.

Two years after the events of the first film, Andy Barclay is now eight years old and living in foster care, his mother having been committed to a mental institution for sticking to the story about the murderous doll possessed by a dead serial killer (the cops who also saw all of this decided not to back up her story). He is taken in by new foster parents Phil and Joanne Simpson - Joanne seems nice enough, but Phil seems rather irritated by children and is very strict to Andy and their other foster, teenage girl Kyle. Andy is also sticking to the story of Chucky being alive and evil, which causes some problems at first when he finds a Good Guys doll in his new room, but he tries to move on for the sake of his new foster parents. Unfortunately for all concerned, the company which made the Good Guys dolls managed to get hold of Chucky's mostly-destroyed doll body and rebuilt it, to try to stave off shareholder concerns and bad publicity, and the moment Chucky is fully rebuilt he's straight back to killing people and searching for Andy so they can finally play that game of "Hide the Soul". With no-one believing Andy's claims that Chucky alive and trying to possess him and kill everyone, how will Charles Lee Ray be stopped this time?

I find myself questioning whether or not it was originally meant to be a whole two years since the events of the first film in this movie. It feels much more like it was originally meant to only be a few months, but with the rights limbo and everything things got stretched out and when they were finally able to start shooting they decided to try to keep things in real time - something which was totally disregarded in the next film but we'll get to that tomorrow. Regardless, events in Child's Play 2 take place over roughly the same time period of the first movie - about three days. That might seem like a pretty compact timeline, but remember, most of the Friday the 13th and Halloween movies take place in one night, so Chucky's still doing things at quite a relaxed pace for a movie slasher.

I think this movie is also where Chucky's status as a horror movie icon is solidified as well. Chucky gets to be a lot more creative in this movie, both in kills and in one-liners, and of course Brad Dourif gets to screech, cackle and generally chew up the scenery despite not being on set for the film because he recorded all of his lines ahead of time so that they could match the doll's animatronics to the words. I also noted that nearly all of the people Chucky kills this time around are pretty unpleasant people - particularly the school teacher, which seems worse than what's actually shown because of the way its shot, with the camera pulling away from the window as we see Chucky's hand coming down repeatedly to beat her to death with the ruler; and Phil, whose understated death, even with Chucky's laid-back quip of, "How's it hanging?" seems quite deserved - which probably also did its part to help turn Chucky into an iconic killer a la Freddy Krueger or Jason Voorhees.

The film's climactic act in the toy factory also feels incredibly appropriate given the subject matter of the film overall, and in fact writer Don Mancini had originally wanted this to occur in the first Child's Play, but it got cut from the final script. It just makes sense to defeat an evil possessed doll in a toy factory that's mass-producing hundreds of him. I personally also found the death of the worker via plastic eye placement to be a particularly creepy image, akin to what you might think Judge Doom from Who Framed Roger Rabbit? might look like if he hadn't been melted with turpentine. And of course, there's Chucky's protracted and surprisingly graphic death, where he ends up looking like what Fisher-Price might put out if they made a preschool toy of the alien from The Thing.

Child's Play 2 is more of a horror-comedy than its predecessor, which pretty much played it straight for most of the film. This time around Chucky gets to grow more as a character, via quips and some creative killings that we'd see more and more in the later films. The tension is lessened, at least partly because this time around we know exactly what's going on with the Good Guys doll, but the film is still solidly entertaining, as well as being very much a film of its time period (late 80s-early 90s, that transitional period when horror films were still good, but just before a lot of the straight-to-video dreck of the 90s started coming out).

3.5 out of 5.

 

 

Child's Play (1988)

July has rolled around again, and this time it was a lot easier to pick which franchise to review. After all, with a remake/reboot/reimagining having just been released, it would probably be a crime not to look at the Child's Play franchise - a franchise featuring a killer doll that was not written, directed or produced by Charles Band (although he was interested in directing at one point early on, before going on to start his own Puppet Master franchise, which also continues to put out sequels to this day). So let's start things off at the beginning, as we should, with the 1988 Child's Play.

Six-year-old Andy Barclay really wants a Good Guys doll, the latest toy on the market in the Good Guys range. He already has nearly everything else with the Good Guys band on it - cereal, dungarees, shoes, and knows all the episodes of the Good Guys TV show - but his mother Karen wasn't able to get him the doll on her budget. Her luck seems to change, however, when she finds a homeless man selling a Good Guys doll outside the department store where she works for a very cheap price, and she quickly buys it and presents it to Andy, who is overjoyed with his new friend, "Chucky". What Karen and Andy don't know, however, is that the doll came from a toy store that was hit by lightning and burned to the ground on the same night that serial killer Charles Lee Ray was shot and killed there - but not before performing a Haitian Voudo ritual on a Good Guys doll. People soon start dying around Andy and Chucky, and while Andy tries to tell everyone that Chucky is the culprit, the police don't believe him and consider him their prime suspect. Can Karen get to the truth of things, and is her son in danger from the seemingly innocent doll?

When I rewatched Child's Play for this review, one of the things that struck me the most was how well the movie captures the relentless marketing of kids' toys and anything else they could stick a toy brand on that went on pretty much non-stop during the 80s (I myself was a slave to the Transformers marketing machine growing up). This aggressive consumerism was one of the inspirations co-writer Don Mancini drew on when he came up with the idea for the movie and for future cult horror icon Chucky - his other influences were, somewhat obviously, the 1975 horror anthology Trilogy of Terror and the 1963 "Talky Tina" episode of The Twilight Zone, both of which also focused on evil killer dolls. The absurd popularity of the Cabbage Patch Dolls and the My Buddy toy line were also influences - and unfortunately the latter toy never quite recovered from its connection with Chucky.

The other thing that struck me was just how impressive the animatronics were in the film. For the first half of the film, everything is kept quite ambiguous as to what exactly is going on with Chucky and Andy (although we the audience have an inkling, having seen Charles Lee Ray's ritual in the toy store at the very beginning), and Chucky is just a plastic doll with a (mostly) fixed facial expression. Originally, the plan was to have "Chucky" be the embodiment of Andy's unconscious anger and rage towards people, with it all starting when Andy mixed his own blood with the "fake" blood of the doll, but they eventually went with Chucky being outright possessed by Charles Lee Ray. And when the revelation that "Chucky" is, in fact, Charles Lee Ray's soul in the body of the doll (and if that's a spoiler, congratulations on coming out of your 41-year coma) finally occurs, we see the doll's bland plastic face twist and contort into an angry, psychotic rage and even though you know it's coming, it's still jarring to see it happen in real time. According to Wikipedia, "The animatronic's face was controlled via remote control through a rig that goes on one's face and captures facial movement," and it works really, really well. Practical effects win again. And once the film has revealed the truth about Chucky, it has no reason to hold back any more and so Chucky gets to really go to town - slashing, stabbing, snarling and more as he attempts to get to Andy so he can play "Hide the Soul" with him (and I'm pretty sure the sinister double entendre was entirely deliberate there, as Chucky's early entreaties to Andy do read as pointers straight from a grooming manual). 

Of course, the other reason Chucky became such a recognisable horror icon was his voice. Brad Dourif played both Charles Lee Ray and the voice of Chucky, and while he had played several disturbed, eccentric or downright psychotic characters before - Piter De Vries in Dune, Billy Bibbit in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest - I don't think it's too far off to say that his performance in Child's Play cemented him in people's minds as the guy to get if you needed someone to play crazy really, really well.

There was controversy surrounding Child's Play, as some people felt that the film would cause children to become violent, and there were some demonstrations outside MGM studios after the film's release. In the UK, it was also linked to the torture and murder of a teenage girl, Suzanne Capper, in 1992 - although what was reported and inferred by the media was rather different than the actual facts of the case. The timing of the murder trial also coincided with the other major case that cast blame on the Child's Play movies - but we'll be getting to that in a couple of days. But despite all of this, Child's Play - and Chucky - have gone on to become cult horror household names, spawning a half-dozen sequels, an in-development TV series and now a remake/reboot. Not bad for an 80s horror with a budget of $9 million.

3.5 out of 5

 

 

Suspiria (2018)

I admit, when I originally heard that they were doing a remake of Dario Argento's Suspiria, one of my favourite films of all time, my reaction was a little like Donald Sutherland's at the end of the 1978 Invasion of the Body Snatchers - ie. I might have pointed and screamed inhumanly. But what sort of internet review would I be if I didn't at least give the remake a fair shot, so after waiting for far too long to actually get hold of a copy (because guess what never got a cinema release within 50 miles of me), here is my review of Luca Guadagnino's Suspiria.

Berlin, 1977. American Susie Bannion has travelled from her Amish/Mennonite community to West Berlin, to audition at the world-famous Helena Markos Dance Company. Although they are initially sceptical, Susie's raw talent and passion win the instructors there over - particularly Madame Blanc, the academy's director. Blanc quickly takes Susie under her wing and begins grooming her for a protagonist role in an upcoming performance the academy is putting on. Sinister things are going on behind the scenes, however, as the academy's instructors are actually a coven of witches who are planning to transfer the essence of their leader, Helena Markos, into an unwitting Susie's body...

The Carnography Rule of Remakes goes a little something like this: A remake can only be considered necessary or "valid" if either enough time has passed that technology and/or special effects have advanced enough that they would make a significant difference to the film; there is sufficient interest from a new generation; or there is a new direction or theme that the film can be taken in. In the case of this Suspiria remake, it's the latter category that applies, as where Argento's original version was bathed in vibrant reds, blues and greens and felt very much like a dark fairy tale, Guadagnino's 2018 version is a much more grounded affair, taking place in divided Berlin during a time of great political turmoil and having a considerably more muted colour palette to both go with the time period and to be a background counter to the supernatural goings-on behind the scenes of the Academy.

If I'm being honest, this washed-out, muted and considerably more down-to-earth setting didn't really grab me at first when I watched this new version of Suspiria. Sure, dramatic licence and prior knowledge assured me that something sinister was going on at the Markos Dance Company, but the movie seemed to be in no real hurry to get to any of that. I just wasn't being drawn into the film in the same way I had been with the original, that had lead me to breathlessly describe scenes to a friend (who didn't get my excitement, sadly) the following day after seeing it. And then came the scene where Susie unknowingly becomes a human voodoo doll - as she dances passionately, almost frantically under Madame Blanc's instruction/thrall, the body of another dancer trying to leave the academy, elsewhere in the building, is forced to twist, contort and eventually break, in perfect yet horrific synchronicity with Susie's movements. This scene instantly made me sit up and start paying proper attention and let me know that this remake was indeed worth watching.

Now, there were still parts of the film that I didn't particularly enjoy. The climax involved more CGI blood than I would have liked (always a disappointment), and I personally thought that the whole subplot with the elderly psychotherapist was given rather too much screentime and didn't really add anything to the primary narrative (also, I could tell it was Tilda Swinton in prosthetics the moment I first saw the character, and I'm pretty certain that this would have been the case even if I hadn't already known that she played this role as well. I think it was the eyes that gave it away. Although fair play to Swinton for doing it, prosthetic penis and all). I also managed to watch a version that didn't have subtitles for the German portions of the script, and as most of my German comes from watching episodes of The A-Team in German in my teenage years, I can't help but wonder if I missed anything there. But these things were balanced out by the intensity of the dancing and everything leading to the film's bloody and surprising climax.

Motherhood is, of course, a key theme running through this Suspiria - although not always in the ways you might expect, especially at the end. Although I was also reminded a little of The Neon Demon in the way Susie comes to the Academy from nothing, and quickly catches people's attention and rises to a coveted position while seeming both innocent and slightly sinister at the same time. Themes of corruption and abuses of power also run through the film, with the goings-on at the Markos Dance Company being mirrored in the divided Berlin, and the terrorism of the Red Army Faction that goes on in the background (and not the Royal Air Force, which confused me for a bit because that's what I'm used to RAF standing for).

In the end, I enjoyed this new version of Suspiria and I'm glad I saw it. It took the story and concept of a dance school run by witches and went in a very different direction than Argento did with the original, and for the most part, it worked. Not 100%, alas, but more than enough worked to make this remake stand out on its own merits without the need to endlessly compare it with the original.

4 out of 5.

 

 

Castle Freak (1995)

We've had several of sci-fi, horror and Lovecraft director Stuart Gordon's films on this blog before - From Beyond, Dagon and (non-Cthulhu related) Dolls - and so I think we can safely say that he's one of the few directors who really "gets" Lovecraft's work and filming the so-called "unfilmable". So when he tackles another of Lovecraft's short stories, The Outsider, in the Full Moon film Castle Freak, you know you're in for something special.

Recovering alcoholic John Reilly, his wife and teenage daughter arrive in Italy to move into an old castle that John has inherited after Duchess D'Orsino, the previous resident and John's relation, dies. Things are very strained between John and his wife Susan, since when John was still drinking he caused a crash which blinded daughter Rebecca and killed their young son JJ. Also in the castle but unbeknownst to anyone else, there is a freakishly deformed man who was kept chained up in the castle's dungeons and tortured by the Duchess until she died. Now free from his chains, the "castle freak" searches for food and, after watching John having an encounter with the local prostitute, he starts kidnapping and killing people in an attempt to mimic what he saw. John is blamed for these disappearances and deaths, but can he clear his name and uncover the truth?

Castle Freak came about because of a poster. Director Stuart Gordon was in the office of Charles Band - the owner of Full Moon Pictures and of the castle that the movie was shot in - when he saw a poster titled "Castle Freak" that featured a deformed man chained up and being whipped by a woman. Gordon asked about it and was told, "Well, that's a castle and there's a freak." Gordon was then free to make whatever kind of film he could come up with from that poster, just as long as there were a castle and a freak in it. So there's an origin story for you. In the end, The Outsider ended up being more of a starting inspiration than a full-on adaptation, as the only thing that connects the short story and the movie is a scene where deformed Georgio sees himself in a mirror and realises how disfigured and horrifying he looks - after which he starts wearing a bedsheet to look like someone combined Mahatma Gandhi and Zorro.

Georgio, the titular Castle Freak, is actually quite a sympathetic monster. We see from the very start that he's been kept chained up, mutilated and tortured for nearly all of his life, and all of his human contact has been violent and hateful (and from someone who should have protected him at that). He has no idea how to be human, really, and the acts he commits are borne out of hunger, desperation and confusion - at first, at least. That being said, he does still kill and eat a cat (who was only trying to help him!) and his attack and murder of the prostitute are particularly graphic and unpleasant to watch (as they should be). Georgio also develops an obsession with blind daughter Rebecca, which results in her being menaced in just her bra - another rightfully uncomfortable scene to watch. Among the people who created the special makeup effects for Georgio was the late John Vulich, who also worked on TV shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Babylon 5 and the X-Files.

John, meanwhile, goes through several arcs during the course of the film. The biggest and most important one is his quest for redemption, of course, as he desperately seeks his wife's forgiveness for the drunken crash which killed their son and blinded Rebecca. As the film progresses and that arc becomes entwined with his quest to prove his innocence over the murders Georgio committed and save his family, you become aware that his story will probably not have the happiest ending, but things do get resolved by the end of the film. It's perhaps unfortunate that, since most of the film is from his perspective, that Susan, played by Barbara Crampton, is relegated somewhat to secondary character status - and something of a shrewish one at that. It should be perfectly understandable that she is still angry at her husband for what he did, and yet the audience is encouraged to feel sympathy for him when she pushes him away (another question would be why she came with him to Italy if their marriage is so bad, when surely it would have been easier for everyone concerned for her and Rebecca to stay in the States, but I guess we wouldn't have had our movie if they hadn't come).

Castle Freak has something for most horror tastes. It's got gore, it's got a monster, it's got a gothic atmosphere, it's got some Lovecraftian origins, it's got some vague giallo hints (an American arrives in Italy, gets involved in murder, has to uncover the truth himself), it's got some women in underwear - uncomfortable as those scenes may be - it's got some great genre stars in Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton and it's got a climactic fight on the roof of a castle in the middle of a thunderstorm. What more could you ask for? It's well worth a watch.

3.5 out of 5.

 

 

Children of the Corn: Runaway (2018)

It's the last day of February and also the final entry in the Children of the Corn series, praise be to Eris and to He Who Walks Behind The Rows (it never helps to hedge your bets, that's all I'm saying). And of course, the franchise decided to wait until its (current) final instalment to have its most explicitly direct-linked sequel in Children of the Corn: Runaway.

Ruth and her 13-year-old son Aaron live their lives as drifters, never spending long in one place and most of their nights sleeping in the bed of their old truck. Ruth has a good reason for all this - she was one of the Gatlin children all those years ago, except that after her boyfriend and Aaron's father (Malachai) was made to sacrifice himself to He Who Walks Behind The Rows, she set fire to the cornfields while all the other kids were in them and went on the run with her newborn son. When they end up stuck in a small town in Oklahoma though, Ruth decides to try to settle down, even getting a job as a mechanic thanks to a sympathetic garage owner. But something strange is going on 0 Ruth keeps seeing and hearing crickets and then falling into fugue states, and she keeps seeing strange children around the town and dead bodies that may or may not be flashbacks to her own childhood in Gatlin. Oh, and a small blonde girl is apparently going around the town and killing people. Has the cult of He Who Walks Behind The Rows returned for Ruth and Aaron?

Children of the Corn: Runaway was written by Joel Soisson, who was the director of Children of the Corn: Genesis, a producer on Hellraiser: Revelations and the writer for Hellraiser: Hellworld, among other sins. On the other hand, it was directed by John Gulager, who created the Feast trilogy and also directed the very tongue-in-cheek Piranha 3DD, and so I had some hope that this film could somehow climb above the dross that's been the later chapters of this series. Also, as I mentioned above, Runaway is actually a direct sequel to the original Stephen King story (and the 2009 remake, as the Ruth in the 1984 version was far less inclined to set fire to any cornfields), and if you've read the story or seen the 2009 film you'll remember that it ended with Ruth's vision of burning the cornfields and He Who Walks Behind The Rows in retaliation for forcing Malachai and the others to sacrifice themselves early. I'm a sucker for actual continuity being carried through from one film to another, as people here regularly should know by now.

So I went into this film with a modicum of hope that things would be better than, say, Revelation or Genesis, and for the first half of the film things did indeed seem to be looking up. Ruth is a sympathetic protagonist who's been through a lot, and you can understand that she's got some PTSD from the events of Gatlin that make it difficult for her to settle anywhere or trust anyone. At the same time, she's also tough and independent and takes no crap from anyone, even getting that mechanic job as much through a mix of her own skills and stubbornness as from Carl the garage owner's kindness to her and Aaron. So when she starts to see signs that the children in the town seem to be falling under the influence of He Who Walks Behind The Rows, we feel for her and understand her panic and determination to keep her son safe from it and not let what happen in Gatlin happen anywhere else. A redemption arc, basically.

And then, at about two-thirds of the way through the film, I started to get suspicious. (And from here on, there are some pretty big spoilers, so proceed at your own risk.) Runaway drops some pretty heavy hints as it goes that what Ruth is seeing might not actually be happening, what with her fugue states and obvious hallucinations of past murders, and those points and a couple of others strongly suggested that things weren't going to turn out well for Ruth in the end. At the same time, however, we've got this diner waitress called Sarah who acts really creepy towards Aaron, to the point where it becomes very clear that she's down with that Babylonian corn god who forms the backbone of this franchise. This creates a problem narratively speaking: either Ruth is crazy and it's all in her head, or He Who Walks Behind The Rows really is back. You've got to choose one or the other - having both just destroys any impact your climax/denouement could ever have. And guess what option Runaway takes? Ruth's entire journey through the movie, no matter how tragic it becomes, is unbearably cheapened by the "revelation" that, yeah, it was all in her head and that she was the murderous little blonde girl all along, but that He Who Walks Behind The Rows is back anyway (and it's never explained how or why he's in or using Sarah, another full-grown adult) and is there for Aaron to start the cult back up again.

A perfectly good psychological horror, if a little hokey and obvious, is ruined by the need to shoehorn the supernatural Big Bad in at the last minute (and believe me, I never thought I'd be complaining about the inclusion of He Who Walks Behind The Rows, especially not after Genesis). Ruth's journey and struggle were far more interesting than retreading the old "evil child preacher" plot once more, and bringing it in so abruptly after building up Ruth's story for 70+ minutes literally made me write, "Fuck this film," in my notes when it occurred on-screen. Really, that could have been my entire review, except I try to explain why I like or dislike something and because I do try my hardest to keep this as close to PG-13 as possible.

So there you have it. The Children of the Corn series ends not with a bang, or a whimper, but with a dollop of wet slurry that smells strangely like processed cheese. At least now I can delve into some films I really want to review.

1 out of 5.

 

 

Children of the Corn: Genesis (2011)

It's been a while since my Catholic school education and my Christian Theology A-Level, but I am reasonably sure that Genesis comes before Revelation. Quite a fair bit before, in fact. Perhaps the bible of He Who Walks Behind The Rows does things in reverse though, because here we are with Children of the Corn: Genesis, a whole two movie after Children of the Corn: Revelation.

Tim and Allie are a married couple who have broken down in the middle of the Californian desert. With no other way of getting help, they knock on the door of the only house around to ask if they can use the phone. The old man who lives there, apparently known as Preacher, is cold and unhelpful to them at first but softens when he learns that Allie is pregnant. He allows them to use his phone and even stay overnight when they cannot get immediate help - although he cautions them not to go wandering around his property at night. It turns out this is because he has a small child chained and locked up in a building outside - a child that appears to have strong psychokinetic powers. Between that and the strange behaviours of Preacher and his Ukranian wife, it's clear that something sinister is going on there - but is it what Tim and Allie think it is and will they be able to escape it?

What is it about the later chapters in this series that somehow attracts decent and well-respected actors that end up being criminally under-used? We've had David Carradine, Michael Ironside and now Billy Drago. Although I guess in Genesis' credit, Drago does get more than a token couple of scenes as he plays the mysterious Preacher, whose connection to He Who Walks Behind The Rows is never really explained. In the opening scene, a young soldier returns from Vietnam in 1973, just in time for the children of Gatlin to ruin his homecoming party, and we later learn that Drago's Preacher is the old man version of this soldier... but since the titular Children were trying to kill him in that opening scene, it's not at all clear how he ended up in the California desert, running a (spoiler) mother-and-baby group for He Who Walks Behind The Rows. I know I say this a lot in these reviews, but it makes no sense.

then again, when you look at it this entry in general has only the loosest connection to the franchise's canon so far. Aside from the opening scene being set "20 miles from Gatlin, Nebraska" in "September 1973" the only other connection to the Children of the Corn canon is a single mention of He Who Walks Behind The Rows by Preacher during a rambling attempt to explain what's going on. Yeah, there's a child with supernatural powers locked in a shed, but we get two or three explanations as to how he got those powers and the kid doesn't even get any lines. He just throws a guy into the air (a trick he might well have learned from Toby circa Paranormal Activity 4), causes a Final Destination-esque car crash and spears someone through the back with a pitchfork. Oh, and apparently runs about the house at one point, leaving little bloody footprints for no reason and having a poltergeist temper tantrum whenever Tim and Allie discuss getting the hell out of there.

I was left with a lot of questions after watching Children of the Corn: Genesis - the most prominent of which was probably, "Why do I keep doing this to myself?" but others included, "Why are there now adults involved in this killer child cult?" "Why aren't we in Nebraska any more?" and "Does this even count as a Children of the Corn sequel?" That last one is because, if you removed the opening scene and the single solitary mention of He Who Walks Behind The Rows, you wouldn't even be able to tell it was part of the franchise. It would just be a generically bad thriller about a creepy old man running a cult for... reasons. It doesn't even have much of a body count, and the very few deaths we do see are CGI and unimpressive - which, considering the film comes from "Dimension EXTREME", makes me question the usage of the word "EXTREME". It's just dull and confusing all around. And the title doesn't even make any sense.

0.5 out of 5.