Carnography

Of Unknown Origin (1983)

In the last millennium, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth and VHS was the (only) way to watch your movies at home, I spent a lot of my summer holidays helping out at the TV repair and video rental shop of one of my cousins, where I was both fascinated and terrified by some of the videos he had available to rent there (I was in single digits during my 'terrified' phase). Some of the titles that caught my attention the most included Matango, Fungus of Terror, The Last Horror Film, Spasms and Of Unknown Origin, purely because of the video sleeves. Well, recently I managed to get hold of one of those films, and so now it's time to see if it was worth walking past the display with my eyes closed for months on end by watching Of Unknown Origin.

Bart Hughes is a happily married man living in New York. He has a beautiful wife, a young son, and he is successful enough in his job as a banker that he is a near shoe-in for a promotion if he is able to show his bosses what he can do. When his wife and son go away on vacation in Vermont with his wife's family, Bart stays behind in their brownstone - that he has only recently finished renovating himself -  to work on the project that will assure his promotion. His work is interrupted, however, by a large rat that has decided to make his walls and air ducts its home, and starts chewing through wiring, tubing, walls, metal, and anything else it takes a fancy to. At first, Bart just lays out traps for the rat, but when the rat proves to be smarter and more vicious than that he is forced to ramp up his efforts to catch it. His obsession with killing the rat grows and grows, interfering with the rest of his life, until it becomes an all-out battle between man and rat...

Well then. I can safely say that Of Unknown Origin is nothing like how my eight-year-old self imagined it to be. I mean, look at that poster! That image implies something very different than what the film actually turned out to be - ie. a rat about the size of a chihuahua making its home in a man's house and then getting a serious nark on when the Man objects to this. Even the title implies something more than the reality, like an alien rat or possibly a precursor to those mutant ratmen from Mulberry Street, when it actually refers to a subtitle in a book Bart reads about rats, where rats are said to be "of unknown origin". Quite frankly, I feel that after 30 years of wondering anticipation, I've been more than a little let down.

Actually, that's not entirely fair on Of Unknown Origin, because once you get past its misleading poster/video cover (and the trailer, which paints the rat as supernatural in origin), it's quite an interesting little thriller. It's clearly got themes of obsession running throughout, although the movie does beat you about the head with it a little too much by having Bart reading Moby Dick at one point and watching The Old Man And The Sea at another. We watch as Bart's obsession with the rat leads him to neglect other aspects of his life, most critically his job, and he becomes more and more psychotic in his determination to kill the rat, which by the end has probably ceased to be a rat and is now the earthly manifestation of all of his worries, fears and obstacles in his life, as he swings around a baseball bat with nails hammered through it, utterly destroying his renovated brownstone - the material proof of his success and upward mobility.

It's Robocop Vs Giant Rat, except not literally because if it was Robocop the battle would have been over significantly quicker (although probably with the same amount of property damage). Of Unknown Origin was Peter Weller's first lead starring role in a film after about ten years of stage and TV roles, and he received the Best Actor award at the Paris Film Festival for his performance as Bart Hughes, and I have to say it's not undeserved. He doesn't become as scenery-chewingly psychotic as, say, Michael Keaton or Jack Nicholson or even Michael Ironside might have become in the same role; his obsessional madness is a more quiet and determined, but no less unnerving, type. Another way to gauge his madness might be to look at the traps he uses to try to kill the rat; he starts off with regular wooden ones (that the rat just chews through), then moves on to metal-jawed things that probably have a name like Rat Mutilator 3000, and by the end of the film it's a baseball bat with nails in.

We don't really get many full-on glimpses of the invading rat throughout the film; mostly we see its teeth, eyes, or tail as it scurries, chews and stalks its way around the house. Mainly our experience with the rat is seeing the damage it does, including the sad aftermath of rat Vs cat at one point, to hammer home the point that this is no ordinary rat (we don't see the cat actually being killed by the rat, just its corpse, and while this is a little upsetting it's also rather predictable narratively and also not in violation of the Carnography Rule of Animal Deaths in Film because it serves an actual purpose beyond just being a cheap way to shock and/or upset the audience, but be warned regardless). Since the rat is meant to be at least partly allegorical though, not getting a full look at it makes sense (and also I suspect a clear view would have revealed its almost certainly-animatronic nature and spoiled the effect). So in the end, while Of Unknown Origin might have turned out to be nothing like I imagined it to be, it's still an interesting film, and possibly easier for many of its audience to identify with, with its themes of obsession and control over one's life and home.

 

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Halloween (2018)

My carpets have been fitted, and so I can finally move everything back into place and get back to some semblance of a schedule. And just in time too, as today is the release of the long-awaited Halloween movie - released exactly 40 years after the very first one came out and invented a whole new horror subgenre. This new Halloween is a sequel only to the very first movie, throwing out such things as Michael and Laurie's familial relationship, the existence of his niece Jamie and, to the relief of many, Halloween: Resurrection. But is this movie worth all the anticipation?

40 years after his last escape and murder rampage through Haddonfield, Michael Myers is still being held at Smith's Grove Sanitarium, and he's spent those four decades not making a sound or reacting to very much at all. Shortly after a couple of podcasters visit him and show him his old mask, however, Myers is put on a bus to be transported to a new secure mental facility, whereupon he promptly escapes, gets his mask back and heads back to Haddonfield to deal with some unfinished business. That "unfinished business" is, of course, Laurie Strode, who has spent the last 40 years preparing for the possibility that Michael might one day escape again and come back to try to finish the job he started on Halloween 1978, including having enough guns for an NRA convention, a panic room in her basement and a wrecked relationship with her daughter and granddaughter as a result of her obsessive Michael-prepping. With Michael stalking the streets of Haddonfield once more, will Laurie be able to protect her family and stop Michael once and for all, or will Michael receive some help from unexpected places?

The opening credits of this new Halloween movie are deliberately designed to call back to the 1978 movie, complete with the same font and a jack-o-lantern on the left side of the screen. Only this time the jack-o-lantern starts off squashed and obliterated, and slowly reinflates during the course of the opening credits. I like to imagine that this is some sort of reference to the franchise being somehow reinvigorated by this new entry after previous entries (*cough*Halloween: Resurrection*cough) reduced it to little more than squashed... squash. It's far from the only callback to previous films in the series though - even Silver Shamrock gets a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo while the children of Haddonfield are out trick-or-treating. The movie still makes it clear, though, that the only canon it's following is the events of the first film, so no Strode family revelations, no Mark of Thorn, and no druids. We're back to Michael Myers just being a pure psychopath, killing pretty much for the sake of killing, with no explanation as to what drives him whatsoever.

And boy, does Michael kill a lot of people in this film! No-one is safe either, as Michael goes just about anyone who crosses his path or looks at him funny, be they man, woman or child. The deaths are a lot more varied than the traditional kitchen knife stabbing he's become almost synonymous with after all this time, as he uses his bare hands, a hammer he randomly picks up and even his feet during the course of the film. Clearly, he's been spending his time thinking about what he'll do during those 40 years at Smith's Grove - which must also have a first-class exercise facility when you consider that Michael is now around 61 and still keeping up with his victims, getting up from being shot and even at one point being run down by a car. Some things, at least, never change.

The evolution of Laurie Strode as a character is also an interesting thing. She's gone from being almost the archetypal Final Girl in the 1978 Halloween to taking on the role of the Woodsman, of Dr Loomis (side note: I'm not sure I liked the voice of the person they brought in to "voice" Loomis since Donald Pleasance is sadly long-departed), who is there to warn everyone of the threat and come in to save the day at the end, and it's good that there was no question of her filling that role. Laurie could easily join a support group for survivors of nightmareish stalkers out to kill you and everyone you love (founding members: Sarah Connor and Nancy Thompson). She's there to shoot Michael first and repair her relationship with her daughter later, and that's all there is to it.

There are flaws, though. The first act or so of the film felt less like it was setting events up and more like it was giving the audience the Cliff Notes of what happened in the first film - stating events a little too pointedly in case there were people out there who'd never seen, read or heard anything about the first Halloween (although to be fair, there probably are people out there now who might never have seen it). The two British podcasters/"investigative journalists" got on my nerves about as much as the loud idiot in the cinema with me who kept a running commentary on the film's events, and I really couldn't wait for their usefulness (a way to get Michael his mask back) to come to an end so they could die as the trailer promised us. And yes, the trailer does manage to give several key moments away, although they do manage to restrain themselves enough to not give everything away for once.

People are already talking about whether or not there will be another entry in the series after this one (not giving anything away, but if you know anything about slasher movies you know that masked slashers are like 1960s TV Batman in that if you don't literally watch them die they're going to pop back up at some point) but I really hope they don't. This was a good film, and it would be a good ending for the Halloween franchise... if they can just let it die.

 

 

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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The Love Witch (2016)

Two days into October and I'm already throwing my carefully-planned-out schedule (I practically colour-coded it and everything) right out the window because I decided to watch films out of order (because I was too lazy to get up off the sofa). But since nothing is date-sensitive, it doesn't actually matter so let's get on with today's review, The Love Witch.

Elaine is a beautiful young woman who moves to the town of Arcata in California after her husband's sudden and apparently suspicious death. Elaine is also a practising witch, and rents a room in the house of her mentor Barbara as well as joining the coven in the town. Elaine has some rather odd, and even traditional views on relationships and how women should cater to mens' fantasies and that the most important thing they can do is love them; she is also constantly hoping to meet her true love, who she imagines almost exactly as a knight in shining armour from a fairy tale. To that aim, she performs a ritual - a "love spell", if you will - to find her true love. Unfortunately, every man she meets and captivates becomes obsessed with her or cannot cope with the feelings she brings out in them, eventually causing them to commit suicide or pine away when she loses interest in them. When Griff, a police detective starts to investigate these mysterious deaths he meets Elaine, and the two quickly start a relationship. Elaine believes she has finally found the man of her dreams, but will that still be the case if Griff discovers her involvement in the deaths of her previous lovers?

My gods, but Elaine - or more specifically Samantha Robinson, who plays her - is beautiful. I mean, really, utterly, stunningly, elegantly beautiful. You look at Elaine and you find yourself wondering why she could ever have any problems finding a man to love her - but of course, that's (one of) the point(s) of The Love Witch, I think - Elaine wants to find a man who isn't just captivated by her looks, but who wants her for her entire being. Love versus desire. It's clear that many men desire her, but she does not reciprocate the attention for most of them - we see the uncomfortable looks on her face whenever the male leader of the coven attempts to get close to her or touch her, for example. Elaine also has created such an idealised portrait of her ideal man in her mind that, inevitably, no man will ever be good enough for her - even Griff, her "white knight" is doomed to eventually disappoint her as we hear his internal monologue stating that he does not truly believe in love.

As you might have suspected, The Love Witch is a feminist film, and so there's a fair bit of gender politics in the film. On the surface, Elaine might seem to be rather anti-feminist, considering her views on how women should fulfil the fantasies of their men, but at the same time, she is the one doing all the pursuing and enforcing her will and power (in the form of her love spells) onto the men she desires. At one point in the film, we watch as Elaine hears the male voices of her past berate and demean her for not being good enough for them, and it's clear that these past events have driven her to become what she is now - a woman who wants to be loved, but is also determined to never again be objectified or belittled for what she is. It's pretty obvious that she's a sociopathic serial killer, but even then she's not so much an antagonist as she is an anti-heroine - you can't help but feel for her even with everything she does.

Something else that's beautiful in The Love Witch is the cinematography. It has a very 60s and 70s aesthetic (so much so that, when the film started, I had to check that it wasn't set in that period rather than the present day), and the colours are all so very striking and lush. They might not be at quite the level of saturation as The Neon Demon or Dario Argento's Suspiria (two other films that also deal with women's power), but they still work together to create a sort of otherworldly atmosphere to the film that works so well with the magical themes within. Things like the Victoriana tea room also feed into the idea of female fantasies - or rather, the feeling that so much of this is just dressing up and playing out your fantasies for Elaine.

If you're looking for a traditional and/or gory horror movie, then The Love Witch probably won't meet your expectations. There's very little gore, and Elaine is far from the "traditional" horror movie villain or slasher. Similarly, if you don't like mixing your horror with your gender politics, then you might find this film difficult to get through. But if you like thoughtful films, with beautiful cinematography and leading actresses, and can enjoy playful, subtle satire, then you should give it a look.

 

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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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The Bay (2012)

It's the last day of my unofficial found-footage week, and we're finishing off with another standout from the subgenre. And while Barry Levinson of all people might not have been someone you might have expected to make a horror mockumentary, you do have to admit that his film, The Bay, is definitely effective.

The Bay purports to be a documentary about the events that took place in the town of Claridge, Maryland during their July 4 celebrations in 2009. Events have been pieced together with the use of various pieces of footage shot by townspeople, doctors, local authorities and news reports shot by a junior reporter, Donna Thompson, who was there covering the July 4 event. The day starts off normally - and happily - enough, with a crap-eating contest and a dunk tank among the festivities, but the mood quickly changes as people start to suffer from painful rashes of boils and lesions springing up on their bodies. These rashes quickly spread and, as more and more people start to become ill, doctors discover that people are literally being eaten from the inside out by some sort of parasite. It becomes a race against time to try to find a cure before it's too late, as well as try to get the truth about what caused all of this out...

So, those isopods that are the (utterly horrifying) monsters of this film. They're real. More commonly known as the tongue-eating-louse, they've occasionally turned up in cans of tuna or ready-made supermarket fish dinners - and I admit to some small amount of glee when telling people about these news stories and then showing them footage from this movie. One has to get their pleasures where they can. In reality though, sea live do not grow to the sizes they do in The Bay, nor do they prey on humans... yet.

The Bay was made after director Barry Levinson was approached to make a documentary on the environmental problems in the Chesapeake Bay. He studied the bay's problems and watched another documentary on the topic, and realised that, as important as the subject was, people just weren't going to to watch yet another straight-up documentary on eco-disasters and pollution as it would be boring. So he decided to make it a horror film instead, making The Bay a speculative "what if?" mockumentary that took the existing facts of the pollution problems and environmental issues facing the Chesapeake Bay and tweaked them just enough to make it a freaky, attention-grabbing body- and eco-horror movie.

The Bay is therefore just the right side of plausible (Levinson once noted that the film was "80% factual information."). The idea that water is the medium that the killer mutant sea lice are transmitted really hooks the audience because, hey, we all drink, wash, use or otherwise come into contact with water at some point every day (I myself always have a bottle of water on hand, for example... which only made writing this review while feeling unwell all the more worrying). Suddenly, drinking water, or washing your car, or running through a sprinkler takes on a whole new level of terror because it might make you break out in horrific, agonising boils and by eaten from the inside out. And of course we all know about all the pollutants and other crap that gets flushed into the water table all the time.

Because The Bay is set up to be a professional documentary (put out by not-Wikileaks) it gets to have bigger production values than your average found-footage/mockumentary film. This includes things such as a narrative voice-over and captions to explain other events, as well as having several different sources for the footage that makes up the film. There's the footage shot by the reporter and her cameraman, mobile phone and camcorder footage shot by townspeople - first as they're just celebrating the day, and then later as a kind of dying record of what has happened to them - police dashcam footage and recordings of Skype calls between the hospital and the CDC as they attempt to work out what has infected the town and how to cure it. It's an effective way of telling several stories in one film, all woven together into one overreaching narrative.

If there's a problem with The Bay, is with the plot contrivances. The mutant killer sea lice have clearly been lurking in the bay for several weeks now, so what are the odds that absolutely no-one showed any symptoms or became infected until July 4, when all at once most of the town comes down with a bad case of carnivorous internal parasites at the same time, and the whole life cycle of the infection takes only a few hours? Still, it's a plot contrivance with a point, as a long drawn-out infection would kill most of the tension and horror of the situation. The inclusion of the young couple and their baby visiting the town was also clearly only dropped in to give us an emotional hook to raise the stakes some more - oh no, will the baby be eaten by sea lice? Will we care about it any more than we care about any of the other 6,200 townspeople having sea lice chew their way out of their bodies? It's a bit of cheap emotional manipulation. But I'll forgive it because the rest of the film is so gripping and memorable.

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Found Footage 3D (2016)

I originally had a different film planned for today, but when I saw that this was available on Shudder I knew I had to change my plans. After all, in what has turned out to be a week of looking at various found-footage films, it would be remiss of me not to cover the first 3D one, so here we go with Found Footage 3D.

(Just to note; yes, I watched the 2D version of this film. Partly because that's the only version currently available on Shudder, but also because of my inability to perceive the 3D in 3D films without severe migraines. So if you want to know if the 3D is any good, you'll have to wait for the 3D version to be released and see it yourself. Sorry.)

Filmmaker Derek is about to start production on his first film, Spectre of Death, a found-footage horror movie. He's written (most) of the script himself and is playing the lead role - Derek, a workaholic filmmaker on a vacation with his wife; he's hired a director and a sound man; he's "hired" a girl he met at a party to be the PA; and his brother Mark is filming the behind-the-scenes documentary. Oh, and his ex-wife Amy is acting alongside him as his character's long-suffering wife and their marriage is at the make-or-break point. Derek has also had an idea to make his film stand out from all the other found-footage movies that get released every year - his is going to be in 3D! Filming starts and tensions are soon running high on-set, between the love-hate relationship between Derek and Amy, Mark's obvious feelings for Amy, Derek's flirting with the PA and his constant micromanaging of the direction... Oh, and there's also the issue of the isolated cabin they're filming at being actually haunted by an angry spirit. Film and reality start to blur together as the spirit insists on having a role in the film as well, whether the cast and crew like it or not...

Going for a meta-narrative, especially so blatantly in a film, is always going to be a bit of a risky move. If all goes well, you've got your Blazing Saddles or your Peeping Tom. If it doesn't go well, you're getting something like Scream 3 instead. Thankfully, Found Footage 3D manages to pull things off successfully - an impressive feat when you consider that even the meta-narrative of "film crew finds that what they're faking is in fact real" is a common narrative in found-footage films in general.

Another thing that makes the film work is the amount of dark, tongue-in-cheek humour it has, as you would probably expect from a film that seems to be not-so-subtly poking fun at the found-footage and 3D fads. Mainly it comes in sly little digs at some of the most common plot devices or tropes of the found-footage subgenre, including Derek's complaints about not wanting shaky cam in his film and why everyone has to die at the end of a found-footage movie (because everyone usually does die). There's also the absurdity of shooting a found-footage film in 3D to begin with (I know I laughed when I first heard about it). There's also one wonderfully sneaky dig at a certain film that had a certain map that got kicked into a certain creek, and the Scott Weinberg cameo lends another level of dark, knowing humour to it all.

I will admit, when I first heard of Found Footage 3D I didn't think it was going to be a good film. I figured it was just going to try coasting on its 3D gimmick, but it surprised me by actually being entertaining. The filmmakers certainly know their genre, which helps, and it's well-made and doesn't look cheap. There's also little-to-no night vision, hurrah! I obviously can't speak as to how good the 3D effects are, but the 2D versions of them were perfectly fine - simple, yet effective.

There are a couple of scenes where the acting seems a bit forced, but really the only major problem I found I had with Found Footage 3D is that Amy didn't really feel like a fully-developed character; instead, she felt more like a plot device to create tension and move parts of the film forward, and for Derek and Mark to fight over. Derek treats her like crap, while Mark alternates between obviously pining for her and practically White Knighting her. It just didn't feel to me like she had much individual importance beyond that. But apart from that, Found Footage 3D was a surprisingly good - and fun - little film, and is worth checking out.

 

 

Saw IV (2007)

We return once again to the Saw franchise, where we've now reached the fourth film in the series; the appropriately-named Saw IV. But at the end of the last film, Jigsaw and his apprentice Amanda both ended up very dead, so where can the series go now?

John Kramer, the Jigsaw killer, is dead. We know this for certain because we get to see his autopsy right at the start of the film. But if Jigsaw and his apprentice Amanda Young are dead, then who is the wax-coated tape found in his stomach for? And just who is orchestrating the new tests? This time around SWAT commander Lieutenant Rigg (who we've seen in both Saw II and III) is our protagonist being tested, as Jigsaw and/or his mystery successor try to impress upon him the importance of not rushing into things and that he can't save everyone (an odd lesson to try to teach a police officer). Connected in some way to this is Detective Eric Matthews, still alive after six months being held by Jigsaw and now placed in a new trap as part of Rigg's game. At the same time Detective Hoffman (introduced in Saw III) and two FBI agents are investigating Detective Kerry's death (which also happened in Saw III) and come to the conclusion that there was another person involved and therefore that Jigsaw has another assistant, but as the FBI continues to investigate Hoffman also finds himself trapped with Matthews. As all these games and investigations become more and more entangled we also learn more about John Kramer and the events that led him to become Jigsaw, and that nothing is what it seems...

Now this is where things really start to get complicated, both in terms of plot twists and moral philosophy. The idea that Jigsaw had more than one person helping him isn't all that surprising when you think about it for more than a couple of minutes, but at the same time, it's all muddied up by the fact that there are a lot of suspects. The only thing we can be sure of is that it's most probably someone we've already met, because to introduce an entirely new character into the mix and make them a key player at this point in the series would be an egregious narrative sin and would rightly cause much popcorn to be thrown at the screen. The revelation that most of the events of Saw III and IV are happening at more or less the same time also serves to make it hard for us to untangle all of this.

(Of course, if you've followed the series before then you already know who the "new" Jigsaw is, but for the sake of this review series let's keep pretending that we don't know for now.)

The moral messages in Jigsaw's games and indeed the Saw movies, in general, have become increasingly more defined and specific by Saw IV as well. In this film, possibly more than the others, there's a very clear theme of crime and punishment running through it, and it's rather a draconian theme as well. There's also more of the Darwinianism we've seen running through the entire series - for the most part, the people in the traps have to save themselves in order to survive; to prove that they are strong enough to be worthy of survival/that they can accept their punishment and move on. There are other things to be noticed as well, however. Remember in the Saw III review, when I mentioned John Kramer's slight hypocrisy in the case of Jeff Denion. The whole point of his tests for Jeff was to teach him to move on from his son's death... and yet in this movie, we see that Kramer's first victim is, in fact, the man responsible for the death of his unborn son. (More evidence for my, "It was the brain tumour causing him to do these things," theory.)

Another thing that's become increasingly clear (to me at least) is that Jigsaw's lessons don't actually seem to work. Amanda, his first apprentice, couldn't follow his philosophy. Eric Matthews couldn't stay calm and control his temper (twice). Jeff Denion learned nothing about forgiveness and letting go. And Rigg is supposed to learn patience and that he can't save everyone... so what do you think the outcome of his test will be? Basically, what I'm saying is that Jigsaw might have been better off doing motivational seminars instead of death traps.

And of course, there are the traps. As ever, they're the usual mix of cringe-inducing body horror and "gorn" - someone has to stab their own eyes our or be ripped limb by limb; someone else is nearly scalped - that watchers of the series have learned to expect from the Saw movies. The traps are now very much setpieces in the movie that the rest of the film gets to work around, but they are impressive and well-thought out enough that those who are watching for the most cerebral elements aren't really going to be too bothered. Saw IV still manages to surprise people by coming up with a way to continue the series even after its antagonist is well and truly dead.

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Grave Encounters (2011)

In my review of Noroi: The Curse yesterday, I mentioned that a lot of found-footage movies in recent years follow the same basic formula - a team of paranormal investigators head in to a haunted hospital or prison or mental asylum or shopping centre to film an episode of their paranormal TV show, and soon find themselves in way over their heads. So today I figured I would look at one of the better entries in that sub-subgenre, Grave Encounters.

We start with an executive producer giving us a brief history of the ghost investigation TV show, Grave Encounters, which was abruptly cancelled after the cast and crew all disappeared while filming the sixth episode. Their footage was eventually recovered, however, and edited together for us to watch now. So we see the investigation team, including host Lance Preston, "occult expert" Sasha Parker and "medium" Houston Grey, investigating an abandoned mental asylum that has a history of sadistic doctors, unnecessary surgery and now paranormal activity. Everything starts out much as you would expect from this kind of show, with a lot of nothing much except for a few ambiguous events, but when the ghosts start to get a little too physical they decide they're done with the investigation and pack up to leave. The asylum isn't done with them, however, and Lance and his team find themselves unable to leave - time seems to trap them in an eternal night and all the asylum's exits become sealed up or loop back on themselves, making escape impossible. After that, the asylum ghosts really start having fun with the helpless living people...

I have a theory about the apparent popularity of this sub-subgenre of horror (ie. the "paranormal investigation show gone bad" story archetype) and it centres around the concepts of hubris and schadenfreude. The hubris part is more or less drawn from one or two of the Jungian Seven Basic Stories (either Rags to Riches or Voyage and Return), but different in that our protagonists go into the situation with a surfait of cockiness, and then the plot elements waste no time in bringing them down a peg or five. And of course hubris is connected to schadenfreude, because it is always satisfying to see cocky people being brought low. Particularly fake mediums. I mean, I'm sure that the actor who played Houston Grey is a very nice person in real life (and he's had a very successful career since), but I could watch Houston Grey the character being bounced off the walls by angry ghosts all day.

I think one of the other aspects that makes Grave Encounters a success is that it doesn't rely on just the usual bag of found-footage tricks. Yes, there's jump scares and sudden noises and night vision everywhere (and that's an especially egregious sin for this movie; I think well over half of it is green), but it also does things with labyrinths and impossible space and the warping of time and space itself - things I've only really seen before in things like The Blair Witch Project and the ergodic literature novel House of Leaves. The dread that comes from being in a place that seems to be alive and actively preventing you from leaving; somewhere that dangles a possible escape in front of you and then drops you in an endless loop instead is, I think , far worse than the fear caused by your regular jump scares and similar tricks.

Grave Encounters is also one of the first films (I think; going by my own recollections here and sometimes films blur together a little) to utilise the CGI "ghostface" look - not connected to Scream's Ghostface - for its ghosts. You know the look I'm talking about - black pits for eyes and a too-large mouth with an elongated jaw, usually used to roar at the protagonists/camera. It's an effective look because it falls on just the wrong side of the Uncanny Valley and thus gives viewers the creeps, but I also think that, now in 2017, it's become a little overused. Some other old tricks include someone being perched halfway up a corner of a wall like a spider monkey and the ever-popular dramatic irony of the audience seeing things moving around that the characters do not.

In the end, Grave Encounters is definitely one of the better found-footage horror movies out there. It's not perfect by any means (too much night vision; a slight over-reliance on jump scares at points...), but it's still good. It also isn't afraid to try new stuff out to creep out and/or keep its audience's interest, and fresh ideas are probably needed in the found-footage subgenre more than in others.

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