Movie and DVD Reviews

The Strangers (**)

The Strangers begins with that clichéd caption about being “inspired by true events.” Don’t waste too much time pondering this; my guess is that the events that “inspired” this movie are about as tenuous as Wisconsin’s Ed Gein having inspired The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Really, any movie about serial killers could make this claim. It’s either a way for the producers to offer a rationale for making such a film, or else it’s merely a narrative device aimed at drawing the audience in.

Another caption follows, informing us that there are “1.4 million violent incidents in America each year.” And that one reminded me of a similar caption at the beginning of the recent remake of The Hitcher, which noted that there are something like 42,000 fatalities on highways ever year. The point being what? The Hitcher’s really been busy?

What are we to make of this one? Wow, those serial killers must be all over the place. Since this figure undoubtedly includes bar fights and purse snatchings, I fail to see the significance—except, once again, an attempt to get under the audience’s skin before the film even starts rolling. “If violence happens that often, it could happen to me…” What the dubious statistic does not tell us is that, of those 1.4 million incidents, maybe one or two are in any way similar to the events in this film. But it wouldn’t sound as impressive or ominous to say a Manson-like cult family goes on a killing spree once every few years.

Okay, now that I’ve spent three paragraphs riffing on the opening cards, what about the movie? Actually, regarding the hour and a half that follows the opening titles, I can probably say all I have to say in another three paragraphs…

The first thirty minutes or so are pretty suspenseful. The director, cinematographer, and sound person together succeed in making the isolated summer home surrounded by thick woods into a spooky, tense place to be—especially when strange girls are showing up at four in the morning at the front door asking “Is Tamara home?” Followed, not too long after, by pounding. The front door itself becomes the most ominous place in this house: the portal of entry, violated by someone who has no business being here. I mention the sound specifically because sound is used to strong atmospheric effect. The only music is supplied by a scratchy record player, and the record collection consists mostly of spooky folk songs and old country music in a minor key. Diegetic sound (sound within the world of the film) is also effectively employed to up the palpable tension in the atmosphere: bangs, taps, the creaking of an old swing set. When the mysterious man with the sackcloth over his head begins popping up like a ghost, followed by his two female disciples in baby-doll masks, the film delivers some creepy chills.

Then, about the halfway mark, it takes a left turn into “I’ve-seen-this-all-before.” The last third of the film, in fact, is not very distinguishable from Wolf Creek or The Hills Have Eyes or any of the other in the recent spate of “killer-chasing-around-and-toying-with-helpless-victim” movies. I really lost interest when James Hoyt (Scott Speedman) gets hold of a shotgun and fills his pockets with shells. That’s where the movie should’ve been over. At a knife fight, he’s got a gun, but he does the predictably wrong thing with it (I won’t give a spoiler, but I saw it coming a mile away) and proves to be uselessly incompetent. It’s really not that the killers are preternaturally dangerous; it’s that their victims are bumbling mice, who seem to have been fated to do every wrong thing to assure their demise.

Which brings me to the protagonists. When we meet the unlucky couple, Kristen McKay (Liv Tyler) has just turned down Hoyt’s wedding proposal. She’s just not ready. She still wants to get it on, though (no sense wasting the romantic setting, complete with rose petals, candles, and champagne). Will it just be break-up sex? We’ll never know. In fact, we never learn anything more about them. Hoyt seems pretty broken up—“embarrassed”—about being turned down, and that’s as far as character development goes. Was it the filmmakers’ intent to make these two people blank ciphers so that we, the audience, could project ourselves into their places? This is supported by much of the camera work being from the protagonists’ POV, causing us to feel their hemmed-in, disorienting state. But it backfires. When Hoyt gets the gun, I, putting myself in his shoes, know that this turn of events should put an end to the shenanigans. The fact that it does not feels too contrived, and I lose whatever interest I had in these people. In other words: There’s no sense rooting for them anymore, because it’s not the circumstances they’re up against; it’s the script. You could give them a bazooka and night-vision goggles; it wouldn’t make any difference. They are the lambs for slaughter. It is their destiny.

For the record, a much better film with a similar premise is Vacancy. In that film, I got to know the couple, and I rooted for them, and they showed themselves to be resourceful and self-reliant, giving me even more reason to pull for them. They obviously wanted to live. The characters in Strangers were never alive. The film may have been “inspired by true events,” but the people we see on the screen were not inspired by anyone. Like the killers of the title, the protagonists to us remain strangers.

--Nicholas Ozment

The Ruins (**1/2)

The premise is kind of creepy; the threat is unusual; the scenes of horror are gruesomely horrific. What this movie seems to lack is characters. Well, I’ll clarify that: It lacks characters who have any depth, characters who would be of any interest to us apart from the circumstance in which they find themselves.

This is somewhat surprising, considering the source material is the novel of the same name by Scott Smith. Though I haven’t read the book, I assume something has been lost in translation. Yet Smith also adapted the screenplay from his own book, so I’m bewildered. First-time director Carter Smith (no relation to Scott) was a fashion photographer, so maybe he’s to blame for being more concerned with how his protagonists look than what’s going on in their heads.

In a nutshell, two twenty-something couples on Spring break in Mexico decide to take a little trip off the beaten path to see some lost Mayan ruins. These ruins aren’t on any map, avoiding the usual tourist mobs. They are talked into the excursion by a young German searching for his missing brother, who was involved with the archeological team working at the ruins.

Of course, those ill-fated archeologists also found something else, and when our five budding (hey, that’s a pun!) explorers get to the ruins there is not much left of the archeological team but their deserted camp, pitched right atop the vine-covered ziggurat. Also, now they’re trapped, because some of the locals—descendants of the Mayans—set up a parameter around the ruins and, armed with guns and bows-and-arrows, make it abundantly clear that the tourists aren’t going anywhere.

There is a neat revelation as to why the locals are so coldblooded and will not let the pretty young Americans leave. To say anything more about that reason or about the threat contained in the ruins would pretty much give away the plot (although you’d have to have been living in a sensory deprivation chamber not to know: Keep an eye on the plants). Which brings me back to what I can say about the characters: not much.

There’s the whiny “good” girl (Jena Malone) who doesn’t want to leave the comfort of the hotel for places not on the map: she even wears flip-flops to trek through the jungle! Her boyfriend Jeff (Jonathan Tucker), a med school student, is the sober, responsible one of the party. Stacy (Laura Ramsey) is the spunky “girls-just-wanta-have-fun” blonde who has the assigned job of showing off some skin—though later she shows off parts of herself that will cause more queasy audience members to cover their eyes. Mathias (Joe Anderson) is the somewhat cryptic German who serves as tour guide into the unknown. Eric (Shawn Ashmore), looking like Dominic Monaghan in Lost, is a nice guy, but I really don’t have much more that I can say about him, or about any of these people.

My problem is this: we spend two days in a pressure-cooker situation with these characters, two days that for some or all of them (no spoilers here) will be their last. And yet we do not know much more about them at the end of the two days than we did when we first met them lounging beside the pool at their ritzy hotel. For a screenplay written by a novelist from his own book, this is intolerable.

I have said it so many times, but Hollywood lately has had me reciting it like a mantra: an effective horror film’s first and foremost priority is to introduce believable, sympathetic protagonists. We have to invest in the characters to care about their fate. Fully nine-tenths of horror movies I see were made by people who don’t seem to have grasped this.

These hip, educated, twenty-first-century Americans have two days to sit around and reflect on their own mortality. Granted, under the circumstances a good deal of this will be spent alternately plotting the best way to survive (Do we wait for help or make a run for it?) and having hysterical outbursts. But what about some deeper psychological revelations? Where are the trenches-inspired reflections on life and death? The only time any character gets off the subject of the matter at hand is when one of the girls throws a temper tantrum over her mistaken belief that the other gal was getting it on with her boyfriend. The degrees of shallowness these characters reveal is mind-numbing. The iPods, iPhones, Blackberries, and Bluetooths have sucked out their brains long before the plants could do it.

To give the actors some credit, they do play their parts believably. I just wish their parts had more substance to them. When cringe-inducingly violent scenes occur, involving very primitive surgery and plants wriggling under the skin like parasitic worms, we cringe purely from disgust. We should also be cringing because we give a damn about these people.

--Nicholas Ozment

The Eye (**1/2)

Don’t keep your popcorn on your lap during The Eye. It’ll wind up all over the floor.

As a rule, I’m annoyed by spring-loaded cats (when a director plants a false scare like the ubiquitous cat jumping from a closet, accompanied by a sudden spike in the soundtrack that would make anyone but a deaf person jump). Jump-scares seem to be more prevalent in this recent wave of “PG-13” horror, almost certainly because it’s a way to scare young audiences and send them into titters without introducing material that could jeopardize the rating. It’s a cheap tactic and forgotten by the next scene. It’s also a sign that the director doesn’t know how to generate real frisson and genuine terror.

All that said, there are numerous jump-scares throughout The Eye, a remake of a Hong Kong film by the Pang brothers, and many of them are quite effective (though not always as effective as in the 2002 original). More important, they are not false scares—no spring-loaded cats. They are delivered by ghosts that suddenly appear, and the ghosts have a reason in the story for being there.

The reason is a corneal transplant. Concert violinist Sydney Wells (Jessica Alba) has been blind since a firecracker accident when she was five years old. Now she can see again, but her new eyes see dead people—and that’s not all. They also see demonic beings who are always inexplicably on hand to lead newly-departed spirits away to—who knows where, but I hope the deceased don’t have to spend their afterlife looking at those guys. The new eyes also impart other clairvoyant powers, as Sydney begins seeing both events that happened in the past and events that may happen in the future. Soon Sydney is on a quest to find out who the donor was, perhaps thereby finding the key to her creepy peepers. To give much more information than that would threaten spoilers.

One observation many critics have made about American remakes of foreign horror films is that, whereas Asian filmmakers are content to maintain an air of mystery, leaving supernatural events in the realm of the unexplained, American filmmakers feel a need to bring western logic to the events—a bone to the scientifically material worldview. Everything has a cause and follows laws that can be discovered and defined. Thus, in this version scriptwriter Sebastian Gutierrez (who also wrote Snakes on a Plane!) gives us some stuff about “cellular memory.” I have no problem with this: it is a logical place for Alba’s character to go in trying to explain what’s happening to her. She’s trying to convince her eye therapist (Alessandro Nivola) that she’s not crazy.

But introducing such scientific rationales into these movies is a two-edged sword: once you suggest answers and supply motives for events, the aspects that defy logic stand out in sharp contrast and raise all sorts of new questions. For instance, with her new corneas Sydney can now see ghosts, but she didn’t get ear transplants: why can she also hear them? And since newly-departed spirits are immediately escorted away by the creepy, anorexic shadow beings, what is the ghost of the boy in her apartment building doing still hanging around? Did he get overlooked? I wonder, because the guys with scary teeth seem very efficient—they even show up moments before a person is about to die, demonstrating a dedicated work ethic.

This is the second time in four weeks that we have French directors on an American remake of an Asian original. Is this the new Axis of Horror? I hope not, because the end results have ranged from uneven (The Eye) to downright hokey (One Missed Call).

The filmmakers follow the original pretty closely. They deliver a story that is interesting both in its exploration of the unreliability of our senses and its depiction of a woman struggling with horrific visions. The visions could either convince her she’s insane or, if they’re real, possibly drive her insane. Overall, we get acting that is passable but not noteworthy, an intriguing premise and fairly engaging storyline, and some scary scenes. One such chilling scene is the ghost in the elevator—it’s frightening here, but if you really want to be unnerved, see it in the original.

--Nicholas Ozment

Cloverfield (***1/2)

I grew up watching Godzilla movies (still love ‘em!), but not because they were ever for a moment scary. No, by the time I was born the big radioactive lizard had long since devolved into self-parody. People like me watch Godzilla movies because it’s amusing to see guys in rubber monster suits toss each other around while knocking down skyscraper models and swatting toy airplanes.

But watching Cloverfield, I got a sense of what the Japanese filmmakers of the original 1954 Gojira were really trying to convey: The sheer horror of being caught in a wave of brutal, unstoppable, massive destruction…trapped in the epicenter, trying to cling to survival in the face of an event that reduces you to the scale of an ant…as a little boy brings his sneaker down on your anthill.

The problem with previous giant monster movies, even the most well-done, is that the camera pans back and shows us the little boy stomping on the ants—the camera’s omniscient POV turns it into a spectacle. Principal characters may be running around underfoot carrying out subplots, but for all intents and purposes it feels like they’re in a different movie, inconsequential to the real action.

When Godzilla topples a building over, do we give a moment’s thought to the imaginary people inside it? Cloverfield puts us inside the building. It sets us right down in the middle of the street to dodge falling debris and duck rifle shells as mobs flee in panic and the infantry rolls in. It does this, Blair Witch style, by giving one of our characters a camera coupled with the conviction that someone needs to document all this to the bitter end. Our main characters, six Manhattan twenty-somethings, react believably to the mounting horror, knowing as little as we do, capturing scraps of information from glimpses of news reports, overheard conversations of military personnel (who seem to be about as baffled as everyone else), and horrifying firsthand experience. Director Matt Reeves and his cast convey this exceedingly well, especially in the first third of the film, before we ever see the monster.

And yes, we do get to see the monster, notably in one up-close-and-personal shot near the end. But that scene felt almost gratuitous, and I would say unnecessary. Far more disturbing are the fleeting glimpses.

Perhaps Cloverfield manages to tap into some vestige of the terror of those first few hours after the 9/11 attacks, when it was obvious someone was unleashing death and destruction in the heart of America, but nobody seemed to have any idea who it was.

Post-Hiroshima Japan had Gojira. Post-9/11 America has Cloverfield. It’s not just the first giant-monster movie that actually managed to terrify me. It’s one of the scariest horror movies I’ve seen in a long time.

--Nicholas Ozment

One Missed Call (**)

Hello Kitty, it’s yet another Japanese-transplanted horror movie. Going into the theatre, I was wondering how far we’d get before we had our first spooky, pale-faced child and our first scary water…

I didn’t have long to wait. In fact, the very first scene features a scary child’s face in a window. The very second scene features a koi pond, a corpse’s arm rising from said pond, a teen girl, and tragedy.

I’ll diverge from the review here a moment to note that there are certain recognizable traditions in horror. Gothic horror has its familiar tropes: dilapidated castle or mansion, cobwebs, nubile young heroine in a diaphanous gown wandering hallways with nothing but a candelabra to illuminate the darkness. There are zombie tropes, vampire tropes, werewolf tropes, all so recognizable that they easily fall into self-parody and have lost their keen edge to scare us, unless the writer or director finds some clever new twist. I think one reason the first wave of Japanese horror (The Ring, The Grudge) was so effective was because they drew upon a completely foreign set of tropes with which we Americans were unfamiliar. So they were fresh and new and, thus, frightening.

Now that we’ve gotten the sequels and the imitations, the Japanese tropes have become as familiar as the masked killer with a big knife or the ghost with clanking chains. You’ve got the aforementioned child-ghost, the ominous water in a well, a sink, a bathtub (or, now, a koi pond). You’ve got that trick of a shadow flashing across the screen in the foreground, accompanied by a spike in the soundtrack. So when French director Eric Valette delivers an American film based on a Japanese original (Takashi Miike’s 2003 Chakusin ari), the question now becomes, What new is he going to bring to the table? Will he still be able to scare us without resorting to the same old tricks? And, most importantly, will he deliver a story that is not a complete retread of The Ring?

Well, the answers to those questions are mixed. The plot is, indeed, strikingly parallel to The Ring, only death comes via cell phone rather than VHS tape. With the haunted videocassette, you had seven days. The cell phone—reflecting the ever-increasing speed and efficiency of technology, I suppose—is not nearly so lax. It gives you about two days, tops. But it does conveniently give you the exact day and minute you’re going to die. The voice mailbox, you see, shows the date and time from the future. If you’re unlucky enough to get the call, the voice in the message is your own, from moments before your own death. Someone with a sense of humor even to their dying breath might have played with this, saying something like, “Hey, man, you—and by that I mean me—are f****d.” Or “Listen, get ahold of Mom’s credit card and go down to Vegas. Might as well live it up.” But our protagonists are too preoccupied with the fact that they’re about to die to crack jokes.

So, what’s effective in the movie? After getting the call, the victim starts having hallucinations that become more pronounced as death nears. This aspect reminded me of the creepy (and underrated) classic Jacob’s Ladder. Someone passing by on the sidewalk may have a hideously deformed face, or mouths in place of eyes (the image featured on the movie poster). Nauseatingly fat millipedes and centipedes crawl out of unlikely places (at one point, from the mouth of a religious icon). These visions are sometimes disturbingly effective, sometimes less so. Late in the second act, our heroine sees something in a crib that is downright unsettling.

Probably the most interesting and disturbing scene comes when a producer (played by Ray Wise, who always brings high creep-factor to his roles) of a television show called American Miracles gets wind of the alleged curse. He books the latest future-victim on the show for a live exorcism (of the cell phone!) in a Catholic church. Her expiration date happens to coincide with the performance, and all hell breaks loose. Unfortunately, nothing more is done with this plot thread. I was more interested at that point in how the televangelist was going to explain the death of his subject on live television.

As is inevitably the case in these made-for-teenyboppers horror flicks, it comes down to a defiant heroine who rushes against the clock to find answers before her own projected date of death. Played by Shannyn Sossamon, she seems a bit wooden, as if she can’t help but think the whole affair is just a little silly—despite the fact that two of her friends happened to die right in front of her and her number’s up next. She is aided in her search by police officer Jack Andrews, played somewhat more competently by Edward Burns.

Nobody’s going to win any Oscars for this, and it’s pretty predictable. But it does deliver an innocuous chill or two, and since it’s the only horror flick in wide release right now, it will have to do for the horror aficionado looking for a quick fix.

Note: After I’ve finished reviewing a movie, I’m always curious to check out Rotten Tomatoes (a compilation of movie reviews) to see how my assessment lines up with the rest of the critics. For One Missed Call, this is the first time I’ve seen the overall rating of a movie at 0 %, meaning not a single critic recommended it. Well, only a week ‘til Cloverfield…

--Nicholas Ozment

The Orphanage (**)

I had high hopes for this much-lauded Spanish import, executive-produced by Guillermo Del Toro, who brought us Pan’s Labyrinth.

Director Juan Antonio Bayona’s beautifully shot, well-acted ghost tale certainly kept me glued to my seat anticipating its payoff.

Sadly, I’m still waiting.

The story centers on Laura, who in her late 30s buys the orphanage in which she was raised so she can turn it into a home for disabled children. The creepy abode embodies menace in its every nook and cranny, particularly after her adopted son Simon starts hanging out with a few imaginary friends.

Then the ghost of horror clichés appears and you can bet that Simon’s imaginary friends have bad intentions and it may have something to do with events that happened at this very same orphanage many years ago.

Soon, Simon goes missing and a frantic Laura searches the house, and her own memories, for clues to his disappearance.

The film takes its time, way too much time, letting the story unfold and gets bogged down in its efforts to build anticipation. I’m not sure why this was getting so many glowing reviews. Perhaps after a spate of crappy horror films featuring torture, a quiet, thinking person’s fright film was a welcome sight.

There are a few good moments to savor, such as Laura’s first encounter with the creepy child in the burlap mask. But there are relatively few jolts otherwise to keep the audience interested and the story is fairly routine, ending pretty much where you’ll expect it to end.

--Jeff Cercone

The Girl Next Door (*1/2)

Fair or not, this adaptation of Jack Ketchum’s disturbing novel will surely be lumped in with all the torture porn films of recent years, such as Hostel and Captivity. This probably explains why this film was released on DVD, since the popularity of that sub-genre appears to have been snuffed out.

But while this movie certainly involves torture, it doesn’t revel in it. The camera doesn’t linger on the victim. But that certainly doesn’t make it any easier to watch. Ketchum’s novel, set in the 50s, is based on the real life torture and murder of a girl named Sylvia Likens in the 60s.

In Ketchum’s story, the crime is seen through the eyes of David, a young boy living next door to a woman and her three boys. The woman soon takes in her two nieces, Meg and Susan, whose parents were killed in a car crash that has left Susan, the youngest girl, disabled.

Ruth, a woman in her 30s clearly unsuitable for the role of caregiver, is considered one of the guys by the neighborhood kids, letting them drink and smoke in her house.

Ruth, disillusioned with her lot in life and clearly suffering from mental issues, takes an instant dislike to the girls, especially Meg. Her verbal abuse soon escalates into something far worse. As her grip on reality fades, her cruelty increases. But what’s worse is she lets her children, and some other neighborhood kids, in on the “fun.”

While Ketchum’s novel lets the story develop slowly, unfolding through David’s eyes, the film version loses all the nuance of his conflicted psyche. While the acting is decent, Ruth’s character comes across as unbelievable, despite being based on a real woman. The creeping sense of building madness in the book becomes one clinical abuse scene after another on screen.

Meg’s character is much older than in the book, which one assumes the director decided would make the movie easier to get made. But it hurts during one key scene, when David and Meg hatch a child-like plan to escape. In the book you can buy two 12-year-olds making that plan. Here you expect the older girl to tell the boy to go home and call the damn police already.

The Girl Next Door is not an easy movie to watch because of its disturbing subject matter. It’s a tale worth telling (Sylvia’s story is also the subject of the upcoming film An American Crime), but Ketchum did it better on paper. Skip this and pick up the book.

--Jeff Cercone

I Am Legend (***)

In I Am Legend, a cure for cancer mutates into a virus that kills ninety percent of the world's population. One percent of mankind is immune. The other nine percent has turned into a race of angry zombies. It's unclear how Robert Neville (Will Smith), who recites this data, has gathered the information. It's unclear how the cure became deadly. It's unclear why some people have turned into zombies instead of dying like most and why still others remain unaffected by it. It is unclear why Neville believes he is the only remaining survivor of both the epidemic and the cannibalistic zombies, since he seems to have never left Manhattan to look for others.

But we don't go to science-fiction movies starring Will Smith to witness impeccably logical plots. I Am Legend is graver in tone than Independence Day or Men in Black, but it actually is just as silly. In parts, however, it plays like a real horror flick -- grimy and bleak, with menacing things jumping out of the dark. This is something new for our venerable alien-fighter.

I Am Legend is, of course, based on the novel of the same name by Richard Matheson. It borrows from one of the book's several previous adaptations, The Omega Man (1971), as well. But this new take changes, among other things, the setting from California to Manhattan. The bridges to the island have been blown up; the people are gone; the streets, which lions and deer roam, have become overgrown with weeds. I don't think weeds would overtake the blacktop after only three years of depopulation, and I'm not sure where the lions came from (since access to the island has been cut off, they must have already been in Manhattan), but the shots of a deserted New York City are spectacular. I was reminded of the sequence showing a barren Times Square in Vanilla Sky, but the scale is much larger here.

In the daytime, Neville cruises these empty streets in a Mustang. He also exercises with his dog, watches Shrek, converses with mannequins, and conducts experiments to find an antidote for zombie-ism. It is no small feat for an actor to carry whole scenes by himself, and Smith, an actor of palpable confidence and remarkable screen presence, should be commended for it. But it is a lonely existence for his character, who is going mad, and under these grim circumstances, we see little of the Will Smith we know from his previous action movies. What made him such a pleasure to watch in his earlier blockbusters was that, though Stallone and other serious action stars dominated the era, Smith remained the Fresh Prince -- goofy, comical, and charming -- even as he saved the world. He has since proven himself an excellent dramatic actor as well, and he is particularly poignant in one scene whose contents I cannot spoil, but I was a little disappointed to find him too sad here even to utter an "Aw, hell naw!" for the crowd.

At night, Neville hides in his bathtub -- why the bathtub is the best place is, like the rest, unclear -- from the zombies. Apparently the virus that has deprived them of their mental functions and their hair is not all bad: It has, inexplicably, improved their athleticism and durability and altered their vocal cords to give them the ability to roar like Curtis Armstrong when he belches in Revenge of the Nerds. But it is strange that this big-budget picture could not create lifelike zombies. They look like they've wandered into the movie from a video game. The battles between them and Neville are, however, effectively directed by Francis Lawrence.

The finale comes suddenly, and it has an earnest, heavy solemnity that is too much to carry for this movie, which, though frequently melancholy, is, after all, a nonsensical zombie blockbuster. Before the end, however, Neville gets a chance to deliver a monologue about his favorite musician, Bob Marley, which illustrates, quite unsubtly, the movie's main theme, which involves persevering in the fight to save civilization from its would-be destroyers. The speech would probably seem less silly if it weren't inspired by a reggae singer, just as the movie's title seems much better before one discovers that, in this version of I Am Legend, the Legend refers to the popular compilation of Marley's hits.

Yet, despite its lesser moments, I Am Legend is entirely watchable. I even recommend it. There is something disconcertingly appealing about post-apocalyptic movies. Their characters live desolate, shattered lives, but surviving the end of the world has a special allure. When I first glimpsed the sunny, vacant Manhattan of I Am Legend, I couldn't help but think how much I would, for at least a few days, prefer it to the real Manhattan.

--Brett Yates

The Mist (***)

Most Stephen King fans have been anxiously awaiting – and dreading – the big screen version of the author’s classic novella The Mist since it was first published in the anthology Dark Forces in 1980.

Let’s just say that we’ve been disappointed before. For every solid film adaptation (The Shawshank Redemption, Misery), there seem to be twice as many bad ones (Maximum Overdrive, Dreamcatcher, The Mangler, The Lawnmower Man).

So the idea of butchering what is many people’s favorite King story is a terrifying prospect. But you can relax, because fortunately Frank Darabont is a Stephen King fan.

The writer and director of Shawshank and 1999’s The Green Mile, for which he was nominated for two screenwriting Oscars, does King’s apocalyptic tale justice. He’s fashioned a claustrophobic thriller that remains faithful to King’s work, until the end. But we’ll get to that later.

For those unfamiliar with the tale, a freak storm strikes a small town in Maine, knocking out power and toppling trees into houses. The main character, David Drayton, notices a strange mist coming off the lake while assessing the damage to his property with his wife and son, Billy.

David (Thomas Jane) decides to take the boy and head into town for supplies and ends up giving a ride to his antagonistic neighbor, Norton, played by Andre Braugher.

While they’re waiting in line to check out, a bloodied man bursts through the front door, screaming about something in the mist.

The shoppers hear more screaming outside and wisely close the doors as the mysterious mist envelopes the store, which is where the bulk of the story unfolds. Darabont, like in King’s original, takes his time introducing the main players and examining the group dynamics that unfold under the stress of the siege when the mist hits the fan.

The characters are typical small-town types, as in most of King’s work. There’s Ollie, the nerdy but ultimately heroic assistant manager, whose talent for target shooting will certainly come in handy. There’s Amanda Dumfries (Laurie Holden), who becomes a surrogate mother to David’s little boy. There's Norton, the grumpy lawyer whose logical and paranoid mind can't accept what's happening. And there’s Mrs. Carmody (Marcia Gay Harden), perhaps the most memorable character from King’s original.

Harden is much younger than the old lady in the story, but she was a great choice to play the unbalanced bible beater who eventually manages to sway more than half the survivors into her camp with her prophecies of the end times.

Like any good horror tale, the story is about more than cheap scares. King and Darabont are just as interested in showing the dangers of extremism and how easily people are manipulated when they’re scared than they are in showing us monsters.

The film does have its flaws, however, including one I’ve often found in many King films. His dialogue often feels a little forced. On the page, it’s easier to ignore, but in films it often comes across as cheesy, such as when a woman in her 20s who’s desperate to get home to her unattended children early in the story says “Won’t someone see a lady home?” Seriously, do people talk like that nowadays?

But most of us won’t see this movie for the dialogue or metaphors. We’ll see it for the monsters. And Darabont certainly delivers there.

Except for one early CGI misstep when Norm the bagboy meets the first creature in the stockroom, the special effects are pretty amazing, particularly when the group branches out to the drugstore next door in search of medical supplies.

The acting is generally solid, particularly Harden’s Mrs. Carmody. It would have been nice to have a better actor than Jane playing the lead role. His shortcomings are apparent in the film’s shocking finale.

You may remember the ending of the novella, which I will not divulge here. Darabont takes great liberties with it and I was on the fence about whether I liked it for a while. But it was certainly powerful and a bold choice and will linger in your head for a few days. I figure there’s room up there for both choices.

--Jeff Cercone

30 Days of Night (**1/2)

In David Slade’s adaptation of the 2001 graphic novel, the northernmost town of the United States gets wiped off the map by foreigners. These visitors don’t have passports and they don’t have pulses.

Once a year the small town of Barrow, Alaska—eighty miles from any other settlement—is plunged into thirty days of darkness. Most of the townsfolk head for sunnier climes, leaving a skeleton population of 152. As one vampire observes later in the film, “We should have come here ages ago.”

It should be noted that the vampire speaks this observation in a strange language that is a seeming mix of clicks and Klingon. The film helpfully provides us with subtitles whenever the vampires speak, which gives us a distinct advantage over the doomed inhabitants of Barrow, who only know that these newcomers sound funny, look funny, and have a funny way of not falling down dead when they get pumped full of buckshot.

These are not your suave Anne-Ricey vamps with stately canines. These are feral, bat-like creatures with mouths full of razorblades. They howl together like pack animals when one sights in for a kill, emitting piercing shrieks like banshees on PCP. The only one who seems to have any manners is the leader (Danny Huston), but since he considers the human race a plague, he exercises no gentlemanly conduct toward any mortal unlucky enough to cross paths.

These throat-rippers instill some new scares into the tired, old, done-to-death vampire card, much as 28 Days Later rehabilitated zombies. They don’t so much suck blood, leaving two tiny puncture wounds in the victim’s neck, as tear the victim’s neck open. When they feed, gyrating madly as they mutilate their lunch, it looks much more like a 28 Days-style zombie attack than any previous portrayals of vampire-feeding. And for creatures who live on a diet of blood, they sure spill a lot of their food. I kept looking at the buckets of garish grue splattering the snow-blanketed town and thinking, “Unless they enjoy blood-flavored snow-cones, they’re not really stocking up for winter.”

A stranger comes to town, playing the Renfield role, ranting lunatic but fairly clichéd utterances like “Your Death is coming.” He prepares the way, destroying all contact with the outside world (which entails slaughtering sled dogs and vandalizing a helicopter, and also making a bonfire of all the cell phones). It falls to Josh Hartnett, as stoic Sheriff Eben Oleson, and his estranged wife and fire marshal Stella (Melissa George) to gather the eight or so survivors and lead them from hiding place to hiding place, holing up a week here, ten days there, in hopes of surviving until daylight (which has never seemed so far away). Each time they must make a foray out, you just know their numbers are going to dwindle by one or two, in a sort of horror-movie mathematical formula.

When the vampires attack, they move with lightning speed, leaping down from buildings and dragging a victim off by the ankle almost faster than the eye can track. They can also be cunning: for instance, sending out a shell-shocked survivor to stumble down the street crying for help, in hopes of drawing out the survivors while the hunters lurk on the rooftops above the bait.

Thanks to the subtitles, we also learn that the vampire leader is somewhat philosophical, albeit spouting a twisted ubervamp philosophy, the sort Nietzsche might have fostered had he been “turned.” He speaks aphorisms of Evil to his band, like “Everything that can be broken, must be broken.” When one of the human survivors sacrifices his own life to save the others, Papa Vamp observes, ““When a man encounters what he cannot destroy, he destroys himself instead. Humanity. What a plague.” And when it becomes apparent that some residents of Barrow just might survive to tell their story, he warns the other vamps, “We have worked for centuries to convince them we are a bad dream. We cannot let them suspect otherwise. Destroy them all.”

And there’s plenty of destruction, most memorably the aerial view of the first full-scale attack on the town, as people flee the chaos, ineffectually popping off guns, while packs of vampires take down their kills and black puddles of blood spread in grim patterns on the snow.

The humans occasionally find innovative ways to fight back. No wooden stakes here—the only wood to be found is in some of the actors’ performances (heh heh). These vampires are only harmed by decapitation or other traumatic body damage—being sawed in half by a trench-cutter seems to work just fine. Oh, and, of course, sunlight.

But the more thoughtful moviegoer will wonder, for instance, what the vampires are doing during the lulls of several days between attacks. They do have thirty days to kill (heh heh). There are a lot of them, and the town is pretty small—a few thorough, coordinated sweeps would, you’d think, turn up any survivors. There are one or two other questions raised that are never addressed, but I suspect this can be attributed to cuts in the adaptation from graphic novel to film.

I spent the first few paragraphs of this review describing the vampires: That’s because they’re the movie’s main draw. The plot—a handful of survivors band together to survive, isolated from the outside world, hunted down one by one—has been done better many times before, most notably in another snowbound pic, John Carpenter’s The Thing. The fact that films like Dawn of the Dead, both original and remake, 28 Days, and The Thing exist to demonstrate how well this premise can be done, is why I only give Slade’s new entry into the genre 2 ½ stars. It’s a fun one to catch in the theatre in the days before Halloween. But I recommend then renting any one of the movies just mentioned, going home and seeing just how high the bar has been set.

--Nicholas Ozment

Hatchet (***1/2)

With the recent torture porn fad, the horror genre has begun to decline once again. But all hope is not lost. The release of Adam Green's Hatchet is exactly what horror fans have been longing for.

The story: While on a hokey swamp tour in New Orleans, a diverse group of tourists come face to face with local legend Victor Crowley. Victor was a deformed child who was thought to have died from a fire started by mean-spirited kids. However, Victor is alive and out for revenge and he's willing to kill anyone he comes across.

Hatchet is a startlingly refreshing throwback to classic 80's slashers. All of the elements we know and love from the genre are present here.

1. A likeable cast of victims...I mean characters.
2. An unstoppable and truly brutal killer (played by the most popular Jason Vorhees himself-Kane Hodder) that dispatches his victims in cringe-inducing ways.
3. A creepy atmospheric setting (swamp).
4. Superb cameos and main roles from the likes of Robert Englund (Freddy Kruger), Tony Todd (Candyman), and Mercedes McNab (Harmony from Buffy and Angel).
5. A fun ending that sets up the possibility of a sequel.
6. And of course...boobs!

The success of the film can be contributed to writer/director Adam Green. He clearly loves and knows the genre like the back of his hand and it shows. His direction is never over stylish. We never see any headache inducing MTV style quick cuts. In addition, the screenplay is brisk and, more importantly, fun. A proper amount of characterization is given to every character before the chaos breaks out. More horror writers and directors should use this film as an example of what to do. Forget torture porn, flashy Hollywood products, and Asian horror remakes, and get back to the basics!

Run, don't walk to see Hatchet. It is the best horror film to come out in years.

-Nick Lyons

Halloween (**)

Halloween in August. Have you noticed that holiday decorations are coming earlier and earlier each year? Already I’ve spotted jack-o-lanterns grinning at me from store shelves, and not even in a month that ends in “er.” Now the trend has hit the multiplex. (Insider scuttlebutt is that the studio didn’t want to put this one up against Saw IV.)

So, on a sunny summer day, I go into the dark to revisit the legend of Michael Myers, and relive what happened in the town of Haddonfield, Illinois on that Halloween night thirty-odd years ago…

Re-emerging into the light two hours later, I have mixed emotions. I must say that when I first heard of the inevitable remake, I was indifferent. But when I learned Rob Zombie was helming it, I was suddenly intrigued. Here was a true horror aficionado who might be capable of updating the story for the twenty-first century. But Zombie’s approach doesn’t always mesh with the John Carpenter original, and sometimes the attempted synthesis is downright untenable.

The familiar story is here, but it is truncated to the last third of the film. For roughly the first third, we are introduced to ten-year-old Michael and the blossoming of his violent tendencies. A pudgy-faced, long-haired boy, he looks like the grandson of Meatloaf. His white-trash family unit is comprised of a mother who’s a stripper (Sheri Moon-Zombie), an abusive step-dad, a sexually promiscuous older sister, and another sister who is still a baby. He’s picked on at home and at school.

The school principal calls in Mrs. Myers because a dead cat was found in Michael’s backpack. The principal introduces her to a specialist the school has called in, and we meet Dr. Samuel Loomis (Malcolm McDowell). Mrs. Myers is clearly in denial—she doesn’t seem phased by her son carting around dead animals, and is offended that they would suggest her son may not be perfectly normal. But the stack of photos of dead animals the principal produces—also recovered from the budding serial killer’s possessions—shuts her up long enough to listen to what Dr. Loomis has to say. Alas, it’s too late. While the adults are talking, Michael slips away: he has an appointment with the school bully who picked on him earlier, an appointment that involves a big stick that will soon be dripping with said bully’s brains.

Then it’s Halloween night—no, not the one we’re all so familiar with. Michael, in a clown mask, goes trick-or-treating, then comes home and, for a final trick, brutally renders his dysfunctional family into a dead family. His mother, who is out stripping, is spared, as is his baby sister.

The middle third of the picture shows Dr. Loomis’s unsuccessful attempts to get through to the troubled young boy at Smith’s Grove Sanitarium. In his cell, Michael takes up the hobby of papier-mâché, and takes to wearing a mask at all times. Eventually the boy stops talking entirely, and later forks a nurse to death in the cafeteria, but Loomis is a persistent man, and spends the next fifteen years trying to get into the head behind the mask. Cut to Loomis informing Michael—now a hulking brute played by 6’8” ex-pro wrestler Tyler Mane—that he’s finally decided to retire (what he doesn’t tell Michael is he’s hitting the lecture circuit to promote his new book about his infamous client). Shortly thereafter, Michael is being moved—on Halloween, no less. But we all know more-or-less what happens from here. He breaks his chains, takes out the entire crew of armed security guards, and heads off for a family reunion with little sister.

I won’t give a synopsis of the rest of the film, as it fairly faithfully follows the original. What’s different at this point is not the story, but the whole tone and atmosphere. Partly this is because it’s Rob Zombie behind the camera, partly it’s because of the context of everything we’ve just seen. And this is where it becomes apparent that while this is not your parents’ Halloween, that’s not necessarily a good thing.

This incarnation of Michael Myers is certainly the most terrifying on a purely physical level—Tyler Mane, his face obscured by a Cousin-It head of hair and, later, by the famous mask that seems a hybrid of William Shatner and a vampire mime, is an imposing presence. And when he busts through doors, walls, chain-link fences, and anything else that gets in his way, we have no problem believing it. But with all the back story, what we have now is a really big serial killer. What we’ve lost is a sense of the mysterious, of the supernatural—which is, after all, what the holiday, at heart, is all about. Some would argue that Zombie, by deconstructing the character into someone who could potentially exist—in fact, be the next-door-neighbors’ kid—has made him scarier. But no.

It doesn’t work here, maybe because Zombie wants to have his blood-pie and eat it too. The original Michael Myers was an inexplicable force of evil, "The Shape," "The Bogeyman." Zombie naturalizes him into a "normal" psychopath. Which would be okay, except it seems to me that this raises another problem, and it's my biggest problem with the movie. After taking pains to portray Michael as a royally-messed-up, but human, kid, Zombie cops out. With guys like Jason Voorhees and the original Michael Myers, we don't really question how they can keep coming back from the dead and popping up anywhere without warning, because they're somehow other-than-human. But if Zombie's Michael Myers is just an insane guy, how the hell does he know who his sister is and how to find her? How does he get around without drawing attention to himself, and show up when and where he does? Since Zombie's taken pains to "humanize" the character, now we do question such things.

Zombie knows the classic films; he’s worked in homages to them in all his own. Here he has children watching Halloween movie matinees on television, so that we get glimpses of scenes from such classic horror flicks as The Thing from Another World, Dracula, and The House on Haunted Hill. But rather than try to capture some of the eerie atmosphere of those classics, he simply ups the sex and violence quotient. There’s lots of sex, and nude women who are subsequently murdered. In fact, the most persistent image in this movie behind the mask and the knife is probably bloody breasts.

The movie also eschews the suspenseful atmosphere of the “build-up” that the original fairly dripped, in favor of a relentless bombardment of one graphic and prolonged killing after another. Many scenes are quite disturbing, but they never evoke the suspense of “What’s in the closet?” or “Who’s outside the door?” Instead they bust the door down and go straight for the gut. Zombie’s modus operandi seems to be one note: turn the stomach. Stephen King talked about three levels of horror in his seminal book Danse Macabre, noting that the highest and purest level is awed dread. Next down is terror, suspense. Lowest in this hierarchy is “the gross-out.” That one is easiest to achieve, and it’s what too many directors go for these days, in the era of “torture porn.” It may elicit gasps from the audience, but it’s not going to haunt them in their dreams, or when they’re sitting alone in a dark house on Halloween night.

--Nicholas Ozment

Them (**1/2)

Now that the era of torture horror mercifully seems to be coming to an end (well, it’s at least in its last throes, with Saw IV still to come in October), the French film Them is a refreshing throwback to psychological horror.

After a chilling opening scene, where a woman and her teenage daughter are run off the road and soon dispatched by an unseen assailant, we are introduced to a young couple (Clementine is a teacher, Lucas is a writer) settling in for a quiet evening at home in their huge country house in Romania. Apparently real estate is very cheap there, or he’s a best-selling author.

They are awakened in the middle of the night by strange noises outside and discover that someone is in Clementine’s car. The driver speeds off as they investigate and they head back inside, unnerved, but safe.

But that feeling doesn’t last long and they soon find themselves under siege in their own home as something else has entered their dwelling. From that point on, the film doesn’t give the stars, or the viewers, a chance to rest. It is reminiscent of another recent French thriller, High Tension, except without the excessive gore and violence.

We don’t see who or what is after the couple, but we feel their fear as they do what they can to stave off the attack and find a way out of the house. Have you ever had one of those dreams where you’re terrified and running from something, but you’re never quite sure what it is?

Imagine that dream and not being able to wake up and you’ll know what the last half of watching Them is like.

I don’t want to give it away here, but the only thing keeping me from giving this three stars is the ending. The film claims to be based on actual events, and it’s certainly plausible, but it may be a bit of a letdown after the trauma you go through to get there.

The film is out in limited release right now, but if you can’t find it near you, an American remake, The Strangers, is set for an October release.

--Jeff Cercone

Invasion (** 1/2)

The question is raised early in Invasion about whether the human race would be better off without tendencies of selfishness and violence. Humanity obviously also can’t get enough of remakes, this being the fourth screen adaptation of Jack Finney’s 1955 novel Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Half a century later, Finney’s original protagonist, Dr. Miles Bennell, has become psychiatrist Dr. Carol Bennell, while Daniel Craig is her associate, Ben Driscoll. This time, rather than giant plant pods descending from space, alien spores are brought to earth with the crash of a space shuttle.

The human race is quickly infected by the spores which enter the body and are dormant until each victim falls asleep. The virus is further spread when the contaminated humans vomit their spores into other victims. Once infected, the only way to avoid becoming an emotionless and soulless hybrid human/alien is to avoid sleep.

Early in the film, Kidman’s ex-husband (Jeremy Northam) is infected by the spores and drugs their son Oliver (Jackson Bond) to sleep during a visitation period. Although the virus is passed on to the boy, he proves to be immune to the takeover because of a previous illness. The noticeable lack of humanity in the infected humans is discovered by Bennell, Driscoll, and many others, who mimic the lack of emotion in order to avoid detection. But there’s that nasty problem about staying awake, and Bennell’s ex has already regurgitated his “seed” into her mouth.

With the help of laboratory personnel, the military, numerous high speed chases and nearly as many crashes, Bennell stays on the run with her son. Despite chugging pharmacy drugs and Mountain Dew, she falls briefly asleep, only to be revived by her son with an injection to the heart as per mom’s instructions. However, Driscoll has not been as fortunate, and surrounds mother and son with fellow aliens.

One gets the impression that the exhausted Bennell might actually have surrendered to an existence in a less violent and emotionless world. But Driscoll tells her there is no place in the new society for an outcast like Oliver. Blood being thicker than pods, there’s no way the good doctor will abandon her son.

Armed with a handgun, Bennell shoots the others and wounds Driscoll before taking another wild ride through the streets with a horde of aliens clinging to the car.

Overall, the film is an adequate remake, with Veronica Cartwright appearing in the cast in homage to the 1978 version. Also mercifully absent is the screaming of the human/aliens at any detection of the uninfected, as in the earlier versions.

The film ends differently than its predecessors, and a major plot switch is that the infected humans are not disposed of by replicas, but exist in a symbiotic state, in which they are under the control of their “possessors.” Some resolutions came all too easily and conveniently. Kidman’s range of acting is the film’s major plus.

Although entertaining, Invasion will certainly not be placed beside its predecessors in the classic mode. Not to worry, another version will likely emerge for another generation, with a title like Body Snatchers or just plain Snatchers. Or maybe it’s simply time to stop.

--Paul S. Brittain

Captivity (** 1/2)

As those in the busy theater lobby wound into the hallways, the ranks gradually thinned from the many heading to one of 15 showings of either Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix or Transformers. A motley crew of five sporadically entered a 102-seat auditorium for the first of five showings of Roland Joffe’s Captivity.

With the hope that this would be a diamond in the rough, my wife and I took our favorite seats in the center of the back row. One gentleman grabbed an end seat in the same row, but bailed out twenty minutes into the film, leaving us to comprise half of the remaining turnout.

The eye candy of Elisha Cuthbert adequately portrayed Jennifer Tree, a model/actress who is drugged and abducted from a benefit at a trendy Soho night club. Cuthbert has considerable experience in this role from her appearances as Jack Bauer’s daughter on television’s 24. Our heroine awakens hours later to find herself in a deceptive scenario of peace and tranquility that dissolves into a dark prison. At length, her unseen captor has stalked her while plotting the kidnapping, as Jennifer’s image is seen everywhere on billboards, in newspapers and popular magazines.

The film is thick on the obligatory gore, especially in the early going, when the captive is forced to watch prior tortures on film, as well as endure sonic torture and mind games when she isn’t forcibly drugged. Her every attempt to escape is thwarted by the watcher who is always one step ahead. I thought my wife might exit the theater as well at the sight of Jennifer being made to drink a “bloody cocktail,” warning me to let her know when it was safe to open her eyes again. Each time Jennifer awakens from a drug induced stupor, her captor has dressed her into another outfit taken from her massive wardrobe; which in itself reveals that he has seen her up close and personal in the buff. After watching an Internet trailer, I had already guessed one of the films eventual “twists.”

Jennifer eventually discovers that Gary (Daniel Gillies) is another captive held in an adjacent room. As expected, the two emotionally bond, fight for one another, and become lovers. Gary saves the heroine from several harrowing predicaments before further twists and expected developments occur.

As the formula requires, a pair of plainclothes officers arrive on the scene to investigate Jennifer’s disappearance, and are brought to their demise in the usual manner. Jennifer begins to understand the truth about her ordeal, and steps up as a true heroine in a fight to the finish.

The film has been compared to both Saw and Hostel. I haven’t seen Hostel, but I did see Saw (an unavoidable pun). Captivity is similar and yet different in its own ways. Torture scenes are shot in a dark, rapid-fire manner, enhancing an air of claustrophobia. My prevailing thoughts after the film are first, things aren’t always as they seem; second, as always, it’s mom’s fault; and finally, Captivity takes scrapbooking to a new level.

I’m enjoyed the film for the most part, and will likely see it again on video. But judging from the summer competition and low turnout for a first showing, Captivity won’t be in theaters for long.

--Paul S. Brittain

1408 (***)

“It’s an evil f**king room.”

You can guess who speaks that bit of dialogue, since the cast includes Samuel L. Jackson. The room he’s describing is 1408 of the Dolphin Hotel.

Note that a classic, old-style building like the Dolphin does not have a thirteenth floor: floor 14 is, in fact, floor 13. And also note what 1+4+0+8 add up to. That’s all a bit of Stephen King having some fun.

When he wrote the novella “1408” (in his recent collection Everything’s Eventual), I think he sat down to write the scariest haunted room story that he, the modern master of horror, could muster. He partly succeeded, and the movie—being a pretty faithful adaptation—partly succeeds as well. The best part of the movie is also the best part of the story, and that is, in both cases, the buildup. The rest is a bit of a letdown, but the suspense of the buildup is worth it.

We are immediately introduced to Mike Enslin, played perfectly by John Cusack, a writer who has given up novels to make a buck writing ghost-hunting guides. As a paranormal investigator, he’s got all the gadgets and doo-dads for reading thermal prints and temperature fluxes and electromagnetic fields and such. He faithfully investigates the allegedly haunted rooms of every quaint bed-and-breakfast and hotel he stays in, but he doesn’t really expect to find anything. He is a skeptic, and, ever since his young daughter died, an atheist. Yet we get the impression there is some small place in his cynical head that hopes—craves—to find some proof that death is not the end.

This is a King story, so we know that Mike is going to get his wish in spades—if he survives it.

He receives a mysterious postcard tipping him off to room 1408 of the Dolphin, a ritzy old hotel in Manhattan. When he calls to inquire about the room, he gets a reception he is not accustomed to. Most of the hotel and B&B owners he deals with welcome the free publicity he brings, but the manager of the Dolphin declines: room 1408 is most definitely off-limits.

Mike’s publisher calls in a lawyer, and a fancy legal maneuver gets Mike a booking. But when he arrives for his overnight stay, the hotel manager, Gerald Olin (Samuel L. Jackson), is waiting for him.

And this is the best part of the movie: the showdown between Olin, who uses every ploy he can think of to dissuade the intrepid investigator, and Mike, whose interest only grows more piqued. Olin goes through the litany of suicides, which Mike already knows from his research. But then Olin throws him a wringer: “In your research, did you come across all the cases of guests who died of natural causes? Heart attacks, strokes… It brings the number to fifty-six.” You can almost see Mike’s ears prick up. You know he’s thinking, Could this be the real deal? He’s all the more anxious to get into the room, and the suspense for us, the audience, is palpable.

I love Olin’s description of the once-a-month cleaning of the room (though the room is no longer rented out, hotel policy demands that the room be dusted, the sheets turned up—the ghosts aren’t going to do it): the maids always go in pairs, with Olin himself waiting in the hall outside. “We treat the room as if it were filled with poison gas.” This generally works—except for the one maid who was only gone a few moments, got locked into the bathroom, and gouged her own eyes out. When they pulled her out, she was laughing hysterically.

This wonderfully tense conversation comprised something like thirty pages of the story, and it is great reading. It’s also the best reason to see the movie. But of course, the anticipation such a scene builds up is going to be very difficult to live up to. Director Mikael Hafstrom isn’t quite able to do it, though neither was King. The horrors the room throws at Mike are pretty generic—although the Carpenters song that keeps playing unexpectedly on the radio is a nice touch. Who knew “We’ve Only Just Begun” could induce chills?

When Cusack gets into the room, he becomes a one-man show, reacting to the ever-increasing intensity of the mindbenders the room throws at him—many of them dredged up from his own subconscious. It has its moments (the man in the window across the street is the best), and Cusack’s acting is first rate in carrying it off. But there is more psychological tension than outright scares.

Some people have described 1408 as a bargain-basement version of The Shining—instead of a haunted hotel, a haunted room. But like its predecessor, 1408 owes much to Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. It is not, as Olin warns, just a phantom haunting room 1408. This is where we get the classic Jackson line I quoted at the beginning. Like Hill House, like The Overlook, room 1408 is itself a kind of living entity, that seems to psychically feed on guests unlucky enough to enter its belly.

Can I recommend a scary movie that isn’t really all that scary? In the case of 1408, yes. What would be even better (but it would take a remarkable act of will): Watch the first half hour or so, right up to the moment Mike Enslin is about to fit the key into the lock, and then walk out of the theatre or turn off the DVD, and imagine for yourself what is waiting for him in room 1408. Then again, if you do that, you’ll miss a very satisfying final scene.

It is refreshing to see a horror film that goes for spookiness rather than torture and grue to generate its frisson. I hope we’ll see more like this—they’re all too rare.

- Nicholas Ozment

Day Watch (***1/2)

Day Watch, directed by Timur Bekmambetov, is the second of three films of the hugely successful epic Russian fantasy Night Watch series, inspired by Sergei Lukyanenko's novel of the same name.

However, reading the book - or even watching the first movie in the series - is not a requirement for enjoying Day Watch, which screams ahead on its own kinetic, highly visual method of storytelling.

In the Night Watch series, ordinary humans exist as do Others, who can choose to join the forces of either Light or Dark. Centuries ago, following a battle, the forces of Light and Dark struck a truce, with each side agreeing to be policed by the other in order to ensure that everyone abides by the rules. The forces of Light watch the night, hence the first movie: Night Watch. The forces of Darkness watch the day. However, both sides are usually looking for ways to get around the rules. In Day Watch, the forces of Darkness pin a murder on Anton, a Light Other who has until dawn to clear his name and also recover The Chalk of Fate, which allows its bearer to correct their past mistakes, but no one else's. Simultaneously his son Yegor, a Dark Other, is just coming of age.

You get the idea.

The movie version of Day Watch strays frequently from the novel's plot and some of its main themes, as director Bekmambetov has an aversion to magic (a key component of the novel), and chooses to focus the movie more on action over introspection. There are moments when it is not clear why something is being done (or not done), but Bekmambetov keeps the tension so high that such questions can be easily ignored.

The movie avoids repetitiveness, however, by constantly toying with audience expectations, the result being both a fun and highly intuitive film that shies away from outright gore but features plenty of property damage and otherwise excitement. In Day Watch, everything feels alive, and in a sense, it is. The fish carried home in grocery bags are still flopping and gasping for air, the picture of a soccer player on a wall calendar wipes off a kiss from an admiring security guard, and the English subtitles (because the dialogue is in Russian) shake and dance around on the screen in sync with both the dialogue and the action. The movie also strikes an interesting balance between realism and stylization. The Light Others patrol Moscow in grimy old power company trucks, which rocket ahead in turbo-mode during emergencies. Characters with supernatural abilities live in cluttered, cramped tenements, and stand around in their underwear while washing their pants or hiding in someone else's body.

Day Watch, much like its predecessor, is also interesting for the comfortable way it handles Post-Soviet Russian culture, genuinely portraying Russian life without playing it up for sensationalism or shock value, aside from the underlying epic struggle between good and evil. The Russians are compassionate and vulnerable and funny and bleak, but also hopeful. Day Watch gives us people (and Others), who feel like people, not stereotypes. As Anton puts it, in a world of Light and Dark there are shades of grey.

Overall, Day Watch may feel a little disjointed in terms of plot, leaving the occasional unanswered question, or unexplained motivation, but stands as a solid hit for Russian filmmaking.

--Nick Salzmann

Fido (**1/2)

Aside from the occasional masterpiece by George A. Romero, the zombie genre has started to rot. There are only so many ideas one can bring to zombie films. We all know the undead walk slow (or in some cases run), eat flesh and brains, and eventually take over the world. Luckily, thanks to director/writer Andrew Currie and co-writers Dennis Heaton and Robert Chomiak, Fido manages to bring a much needed unique approach to zombie movies.

Set in an alternate 1950's, the film revolves around a world in which a war vs. zombies is taking place. Thanks to a government program called ZomCom, the zombies are under control and are now being used as human slaves. Cut to a suburban family named the Robinsons. They have just adopted a new zombie slave named Fido. He seems like your average zombie, but he turns out to be both a curse and a blessing to the family and the community.

What makes Fido enjoyable to watch is witnessing the "what if?" 1950's Pleasantville-esque world in which zombies co-exist with humans. It's interesting to see how the zombies are used as slaves, how the ZomCom program works, the silly zombie news reel, how regular adults and children's lives are impacted by the zombie crisis. The writers do a superb job of drawing the viewer into this rich world and making it believable to boot. Unfortunately, the scripts' ambitious nature is also its downfall. With the scope of ideas presented in the film, the script has a tendency to instead focus on recycled jokes and character quirks. It's frustrating to watch at times since the film has a lot of potential.

Another problem lies within the child actor K'Sun Ray. It may not seem fair to put the blame on a child actor, but sometimes it can't be helped. Ray is out of place here and has an awkward chemistry with the rest of the cast. Thankfully, Billy Connolly more than makes up for the films flaws. Connolly, the whacky Scottish comedian, is completely unrecognizable as Fido the zombie, which is very much a compliment. When an actor who is as personable as Connolly completely disappears in his role as a zombie with a heart of gold, you can't help but take notice.

While Fido isn't a complete success, it is a welcome and fresh addition to the zombie genre. For those tired of expensive summer blockbusters, you may want to give Fido a watch.

--Nick Lyons

Hostel: Part II (**)

Some sequels are produced because the story isn't complete after the first movie: There remains more to be told. Other sequels are made because a director doesn't have any new ideas, and he knows that the idea he used in the earlier movie is profitable. The first Hostel was about American college students in Europe who are lured into a hostel in Bratislava that is actually a front for a business in which customers pay for the thrill of torturing and killing those whom the hostel has captured. A summary of Hostel: Part II would be exactly the same. In the original movie, however, the students are male; in the sequel, they're female. Can you guess which kind of sequel this is?

It's a pointless movie, filled with pointless happenings. It starts with a silly and disheartening vignette that is totally unconnected to the rest of the movie. Later, we see a child executed for no particular reason. In addition, there are hints of lesbianism between the main character and the femme fatale, which are meant to tantalize the audience but never come to anything. Yet the movie is somewhat entertaining.

2005's Hostel wasn't bad either. It delivered plenty of gore to those who enjoy that. It did not, however, have much of a plot. Rather, it had a concept. Prior to the torture and killing, the movie aimlessly followed its three travelers as they experienced Europe's clubs and brothels; then the torture and killing occurred; the protagonist escaped; and the movie ended. Two events do not make a plot. Hostel: Part II is, in this way, better than its predecessor: It is not quite so sparse. Because we already know the hostel's sinister intent this time, writer/director Eli Roth doesn't try to keep it a secret, so we get to meet and observe the torturers as they bid on their future victims, spy on them, and prepare to murder them. Because the climax of their story isn't sprung upon them out of nowhere but is the culmination of that which came before it, their tale actually resembles a traditional plot. It’s one of the better parts of the movie. Roth seems unable to write convincing female characters, so he resorts to stereotypes: the rich girl (Lauren German), the slutty girl (Bijou Phillips), the nerdy girl (Heather Matazarro). The two guys who plan to kill the girls are more convincing characters. Both are pathetic. Todd (Richard Burgi) is full of excitement; he has deluded himself into believing that, after he has killing someone, he'll warrant respect and fear, and he won't be just another bland businessman. Stuart (Roger Bart) seems too depressed to feel much enthusiasm, and we wonder if his friend has talked him into doing this. But when the time comes, we see that Todd is searching merely for an ego boost, while Stuart's actions come from a deep well of bitterness. Of these two characters, only one has motivation strong enough to withstand the horror before him.

Hostel: Part II has an amount of gore similar to that of Hostel, but because females are now involved and the director is male, the gore has a sexual element that was absent in the first movie. Some may argue that all violence in movies is pornographic, but sections of Hostel: Part II really have the aspect of a bondage film. In Hostel, Jay Hernandez was tortured with his clothes on by a psychopath who also had his clothes on; in the newer movie, Heather Matazarro is strung upside down and nude, while she's cut open by another nude woman, who covers herself with her victim's blood. Shortly after, a woman tears a man's penis from his body.

None of this did anything for me. Moreover, the conclusion sticks too closely to the original's: Revenge follows escape. Still, I derived some enjoyment from this movie. Vera Jordanova, a newcomer to Hollywood, is nice to look at, to say the least (although her plan to lure tourists to Bratislava by posing as a nude model for art students seems unlikely), and Ruggero Deodata, director of Cannibal Holocaust, has an amusing cameo as a Hannibal Lecter type. Furthermore, the xenophobia seems less acute this time around; more time is spent on the depraved American men than on creepy Europeans. Hostel: Part II may not have enough to recommend a trip to the theater to see it, but it will satisfy as a DVD rental.

- Brett Yates

Bug (**)

If you’re reading this review, you’re probably a horror movie fan. And if you go see Bug, it will likely be because you were intrigued by the trailer (or Pirates 3 was sold out). And when you emerge from the theater an hour and forty-one minutes later, you may feel like you’ve been had.

Mr. Movie-Preview Voice says in that, slow, deep, menacing tone, “They live in your blood. They feed on your brain.” The trailer also emphasizes it is from the director of The Exorcist (William Friedkin), and quotes a critic proclaiming, “One of the most disturbing horror movies imaginable.”

Lions Gate’s marketing department has done a bait-and-switch. Bug, though its subject matter is horrific, is not a “horror film;” it is an art-house film, actually a play (by Tracy Letts) adapted to the big screen. If I were reviewing Bug for what it is—art-house fare adapted from a drama of psychological suspense—I might give it a higher rating (maybe another half-star). But I’m reviewing it as a film marketed in a specific genre, horror. This is what Lion’s Gate has geared its audience to expect, and therefore I approach it as such.

The movie opens with a striking aerial shot—one of the few outdoor shots of the whole movie—of a desolate stretch of Kansas prairie, zooming down onto a lone, dilapidated motel in the middle of nowhere. Even this bird’s-eye view of Kansas flatland is claustrophobic, because the motel, surrounded as it is by open plains, feels isolated, enclosed by emptiness. That sets the tone for the film—most of it takes place in a single unit of this “rustic” motel.

We meet Agnes (Ashley Judd), a depressed woman who, when she’s not serving drinks at a sleazy bar, spends most of her time holed up in the motel room that is her home, snorting coke and emptying bottles of wine to self-medicate. Judd makes Agnes, sodden mess that she is, a sympathetic character. She has plenty of reason to be paranoid and depressed: her violent ex has just gotten out on parole, and, we soon learn, she lost her only child ten years earlier in a supermarket. The boy was never found, and of course she continues to carry the guilt for that one tragic moment of inattentiveness with its lifelong repercussions.

When Jerry (Harry Connick, Jr.), the ex, shows up and immediately resumes his physically domineering ways, we fear for her. But another man has entered her life, coincidentally, the night before: Peter (Michael Shannon), a drifter who seems a little off. Never mind, at first I fleetingly hoped Agnes might make a healthy connection with another human being, and one who can protect her from her ex to boot. They make a connection, all right, though it’s anything but healthy. It soon becomes apparent that Peter is more screwed-up than Agnes, a lot more: he’s a paranoid schizophrenic, convinced that the Army did experiments on him, in the process implanting bugs inside him—tiny, burrowing, flesh-eating aphids, to be precise.

Agnes, preferring the man and his bugs to her former loneliness, spirals with him in a One-Flew-Over-the-Cuckoo’s-Nest version of Romeo and Juliet. Pretty soon her apartment is transformed into an anti-bug nightmare of plastic-draped furniture, curtains of dangling flypaper, and tinfoil covering every wall. It is a shared nightmare, but one in which these two tortured minds prefer to be together, rather than sane and apart.

There are scenes that are disturbing and horrific—escalating self-mutilation to remove the egg sacs, for instance—but this movie is, after all, an adaptation of a play. It is a one-room drama that mostly consists of long stretches of talking. As I said, it’s not what most moviegoers are expecting, and most will not be happy about going out for Mexican and being served Mandarin.

To the movie’s credit, if I had seen it at an art-house (or if I’d seen the original stage production), I would have been more affected by the nihilistic tragedy it presents of two characters who respond to an insane world by becoming even more insane. The performances by Judd and Shannon are Oscar-worthy.

But with the deliberately misleading expectations Lions Gate nurtured, I kept being distracted by what this movie is not. I was not alone—the audience I saw it with restlessly fidgeted during the interminable stretches of talking, and laughed at inappropriate moments (especially during scenes when Agnes and Peter are naked—I was acutely aware of being in a theatre full of teenagers in America, rather than Europe where naked people seem to be less of a shocking novelty).

So, will Bug get under your skin? Depends on how you approach it. But given its resoundingly bleak resolution, it may not be the best candidate for escapist summer fare.

- Nicholas Ozment

Wicked Little Things (*)

Director J.S. Cardone and his screenwriters apparently were working from a “Making Horror Movies for Dummies” guidebook when they conjured up this mess. They threw every cliché they had room for into this film, which was part of After Dark film’s Horrorfest last November and is now out on DVD.

At the outset of the movie, a group of children forced to work in the coal mines in Pennsylvania in 1913 are killed during a mine collapse. And of course their spirits are peeved about this and in the grandest of horror clichés have to return to haunt the residents of the small mountain town.

Of course some descendants of the children move to the town. Mom of the year Karen brings her two daughters, grumpy teen Sarah and younger sister Emma, to live there shortly after the unexplained death of her husband. They show up, apparently because of financial troubles, to live in the family house they inherited in the middle of nowhere, sight unseen. The water doesn’t work in the rundown abode. Rats scurry around. Apparently content to live in squalor, they settle in to the somehow already furnished home that hasn’t been lived in for years.

So here’s a quick rundown of the rest of the clichés you’ll encounter along the way:

The creepy clerk at the old corner grocery, who asks where the family is headed, then warns that he doesn’t deliver up there. Check!

The little girl who can see the ghosts that everyone else can’t. She of course befriends one of them. Check!

Conveniently placed old newspaper clippings and photos in the basement to explain to the heroine, and the audience, what is going to happen later and why. Check!

Rich super villain, descendant of the mine owners, who gets his comeuppance. Check!

Disposable characters that exist solely to spill some blood to keep the audience interested. Check!

Cars that won’t start when you’re being chased by someone wanting to kill you. Check! Actually it happens twice.

Vengeful spirits that are a cross between ghosts and zombies. Che…well actually I guess that’s not a cliché. That just doesn’t make any freaking sense. Why the angry children are able to butcher and eat people is never actually explained. I suppose because there really isn’t a good explanation for that.

The film has a few decent moments, but most of the film is shot so darkly that you can’t see what’s happening. At one point, the daughter actually says, “Mom, I can hardly see anything!’’

Not that seeing it would have made much of a difference. I can’t recommend not seeing this movie enough.

- Jeff Cercone

28 Weeks Later (***)

So everyone who knows me knows I’m a sucker for zombie movies. With a summer chock-full of sequels, this is the one I was most looking forward to: the one that would reveal what was happening in the British Isles seven months after the first outbreak of the Rage virus, which had turned virtually every Brit into a bloodthirsty zombie.

Spanish filmmaker Juan Carlos Fresnadillo has taken over the helm in place of 28 Days Later’s Danny Boyle, and he often effectively employs the same frenetic camerawork—all low levels, low lighting, lots of documentary-style handheld shots—to place us right in the midst of the terror. Only the terror this time doesn’t just come from blood-spewing zombies.

Britain, you see, is now completely depopulated. Unlike the Romero-style zombie, which presumably can survive indefinitely, or at least until the last of its flesh falls off, Rage zombies apparently do need to eat, and their ration of fresh blokes has long-since run out.

Enter US-led forces to do some nation-building. We can all guess how this is going to turn out. Several thousand out-of-country Brits have been reintroduced into a controlled Green Zone. Can anyone say Fresh Meat?

28 Weeks Later introduces a compelling premise and some intriguing scenarios, but to my mind many of these remained undeveloped or under-explored, in favor of the last half of the movie devolving into a fairly typical running-around-for-survival-while-being-chased-by-zombies blueprint. Here are some of the effective elements, which I would like to have seen tapped further:

We are introduced to Don (Robert Carlyle), who escaped the first outbreak only by leaving his wife to the zombie hoards. When he is reunited with his two children, he is understandably guilt-ridden, and his children soon learn that he fudged on the details of their mother’s disappearance. This is played for some emotional pathos early on, but soon becomes moot, whereas I thought it would play out more thematically.

A fascinating scene comes early in the film, when we see through the snipers’ sights, which are always trained on the high-rise building where the civilian repatriates are residing. It is reminiscent of Hitchock’s Rear Window, when Jimmy Stewart’s character observes the lives of others transpiring through his binoculars. The squirm-inducing added layer here is that these snipers are seeing the people in crosshairs, and have the power to bring a life to an end with a single squeeze of a finger. Makes one wonder about the cost of protection at the expense of privacy and liberty. This intriguing idea only gets the one scene, though, and is not explored further.

The most frightening, suspenseful moments in the film are when the flesh hits the fan and the Green Zone goes Code Red. Crowds of panicking people are pouring onto the streets interspersed with slavering zombies, and the snipers have to pick the infected from the non-infected. As one GI says over his radio intercom, “This is FUBAR.” More stringent protocol kicks in, which basically translates to Containment=Everyone must die.

I would like to have seen a bit more from the POV of military personnel, especially communication between the acting general and his superiors and subordinates as the horrible decision is made and then enacted. We do get the inner struggle of one GI, Doyle (Jeremy Renner), who disobeys orders and hooks up with some of the civilian survivors. He is another compelling character, and I wish they’d done more with him.

The chief medical officer Scarlet, played by Rose Byrne, also joins this embroiled cadre of survivors, with an ulterior motive that I will not reveal, for it would give away a big secret. She knows the military brass aren’t in a negotiating mood; their modus operandi being something like, “Things have gotten out of control; blow it all up.”

What makes Rage zombies so scary, as everyone will recall from the first film, is that they are not your Daddy’s lumbering undead. Rage zombies really tap into both the zombie and the werewolf archetype: the Rage virus unlocks the feral, rabid beast inside. The means of infection also plays on societal fears. Rage zombies are always vomiting forth copious amounts of blood—which happens to be how real viruses like Ebola affect their hosts and are spread. To understand one salient fear that zombie infestation taps into, you need only recall news footage of crowds of masked people thronging sidewalks in China and Canada during the SARS outbreak.

Of course, the best zombie flicks have always had a socio-political undercurrent, as well. If you’re a Romero fan, I need not belabor here the metaphors of Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead. Another obvious metaphor at work in 28 Weeks Later is how gung-ho good intentions can be so disastrous. Analogies to Iraq are all-too-readily apparent.

28 Weeks introduces another terror as menacing as the zombies: being caught on the other side of the demarcation line when Code Red protocol comes down. The military’s response steadily escalates through the night of horror, from sniper fire to firebombing to clouds of chemical gas—eerily effective as they creep along the deserted city streets, wiping out enemy combatant and innocent (“collateral damage”) alike.

On a tangential note, this makes the second movie in as many months where the blades of a hovering helicopter are used to slice ‘n dice zombie hoards (Grindhouse’s Planet Terror). Which makes me wonder, is this even possible? Would flying a chopper like this, at a low angle with the blades hitting dozens of bodies, cause it to go out of control? Anyone know a chopper pilot who can clear this up for me? An inquiring mind wants to know.

Ultimately, my expectations were colored by having recently read Max Brooks’ awesome World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, which spells out a similar scenario, all the way up to how world governments might deal with such a global pandemic, with frightening plausibility. Perhaps we’ll get something on that scale with 28 Months Later—which this movie leaves the door wide open for.

- Nicholas Ozment

Wind Chill (***)

This film slipped into theaters almost unnoticed and unadvertised in limited release, despite the presence of Golden Globe winner Emily Blunt in the starring role. It’s a shame, because director Gregory Jacobs has crafted a pretty creepy little ghost story.

The movie starts at an unnamed college in the northeast two days before Christmas. Blunt’s character, whose name we never learn (she’s playing the role of Girl in the credits), is seeking a ride home to Delaware for the holidays.

She ends up pairing up with a somewhat nerdy guy (Ashton Holmes) and they begin their journey. The film takes its time establishing strong characters and it’s slowly revealed that the guy who offered the ride isn’t quite who he said he was.

Just as this unsettling fact is discovered, shortly after he turned off the main road to take a shortcut, their car is driven off the snow-covered road by an approaching vehicle and they end up stuck in a snowdrift for the night with a winter storm fast-approaching.

Soon, Blunt has more to worry about than the driver, as mysterious figures start to appear, passing by their car, ignoring her calls for help. Jacobs creates a disturbing atmosphere, with the apparitions often being seen in the distance only by the viewers as the two characters are talking to each other. But eventually one of the ghosts wants to make contact and our heroes must spend the night battling more than the weather to make it out alive.

The film certainly has a few flaws. Blunt’s character is about as cold as the movie’s setting, so it’s a little hard to root for her. And the paranoia Jacob’s set up between the driver and rider could have been explored more. One disappointment was the revealing of key story information through the horror cliché of old newspaper clippings conveniently found in a cabin nearby.

But overall the low-budget movie makes the most of it’s setting and strong actors, even if the story’s reveal isn’t all that ground-breaking. It’s certainly worth adding to your Netflix list.

-- Jeff Cercone

Vacancy (***1/2)

Yes, Norman, the Bates Motel has competition: Roadside motor lodges take another devastating hit in the movie Vacancy.

The opening sequence sets the scene: Late night travelers, forced off the interstate onto a two-lane highway in unfamiliar territory, both lugging around enough emotional baggage to fill the trunk several times over. An act of mercy – in this case, David (Luke Wilson) veers off the road to avoid smearing a varmint all over the asphalt – lands the lead characters in the lap of misery. Though the raccoon survives the encounter, the car limps away critically wounded.

This is the kind of classic backdrop that breeds terror. Take two hapless saps and dump them into a vicious, albeit plausible, nightmare. The centerpiece of this fright-fest is a grimy old motel – the only one around for miles, no doubt – where David and wife Amy (Kate Beckinsale) find themselves stuck for the night. This place is filthy and foul right down to the drapery and bedspread, like the earth vomited ’70s porn-flick décor interred in a nearby landfill. If nothing else, the creepy motel manager (Frank Whaley) should serve as a sufficient omen to unsuspecting guests.

Only after they’ve checked in do David and Amy begin to realize the danger they’re in. David starts thumbing through the video library left in the room only to discover it consists of snuff films – films apparently made in the very room in which they are spending the night.

The adrenaline kicks in immediately, and director Nimrod Antal doesn’t make the mistake of skimping on suspense in favor of gore. Vacancy is a tightly coiled viper, a tense thriller punctuated by well-timed twists and turns as David and Amy try to avoid becoming the next stars in the motel manager’s perverse cinematic catalog.

Vacancy is not the run-of-the-mill mindless slasher escapade. Antal doesn’t dwell on the killers’ method and motivation; in fact, he rarely allows a glimpse of the antagonists if not through the filter of the protagonists’ eyes. This is something that has been missing in horror cinema for decades: It is always more powerful to watch the unfolding events from the victim’s point of view – to share in their fear, their frustration and their inability to fully understand the circumstances.

On the other hand, Vacancy reveals enough to keep audiences intrigued. The number of videos teasingly placed in the room suggests that this depraved little game has been going on for some time. There is a well-timed implication that the motel manager has cultivated a client-base willing to pay top dollar for his authentic films. There’s nothing impulsive about this – the killers are professionals. They have plenty of experience.

Initially, it appeared Antal had made one common mistake. The bickering couple, full of bitterness over a failed marriage, seemed destined to become unsympathetic characters. Horror films prop these up all the time, leaving audience members emotionally unattached and ultimately indifferent to their fate. In this case, though, as their backstory emerges, the audience connects with David and Amy enough to want them to survive.

The only disappointment was that Antal left the audience with an ending that didn’t quite complement the overall intensity of the film. There is a midpoint between cutting off the action prematurely and dragging out a bullet-laden, charred and mutilated butcher for five or six encores. Vacancy unfortunately misses that mark, but it’s still a thrill ride getting there.

-- Lee Clark Zumpe

Grindhouse (****)

The experience collectively titled Grindhouse delivered everything I hope for when I go to the movies, and so rarely get.

Filmmakers Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino love movies—love making them, love watching them, love the whole experience of sitting in a darkened theater and waiting for the magic to unfold on that giant white canvas. And not just posh Hollywood movie-premiere theaters or cookie-cutter chain theaters—they clearly cherish memories of sitting in a sleazy, dilapidated independent theater on the rundown side of the tracks, perhaps slipping a smuggled flask out of an inside jacket pocket to take a swig while trailers full of serial killers, kung-fu fighters, and nymphomaniac women delivered a raunchy preamble to the Feature Presentation: a double feature teaming a movie like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre with some 70s sexploitation flick.

Rodriguez and Tarantino can’t do anything about the theater you’re sitting in, but they have recreated the experience on the screen—or, not simply recreated but re-envisioned it for the film-going audience of 2007. Extreme, over-the-edge, shocking, not just pushing the envelope but setting fire to it—Hollywood mavericks Rodriguez and Tarantino have done this in previous films, but in Grindhouse it is their modus operandi. Low-budget filmmakers of the 60s and 70s had to shock and titillate to draw in audiences. Ironically, it is the names Rodriguez and Tarantino that will assure big box-office draw and the attention of critics for Grindhouse. But the two men have created an homage to those nameless directors while delivering films that are far better than the vast majority of sleaze cinema that inspired them.

Rodriguez’s Planet Terror and Tarantino’s Death Proof manage to shock plenty, but the shocks are done with verve, style, and balls (sometimes literally—gulp!). Each of these directors is a legitimate auteur of contemporary American cinema, though they make no apologies for their subject matter being several levels south of “high-brow.” They are descendants of Sam Peckinpah, and there’s not a squeamish bone in their bodies. I attend lots of horror films, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard so many gasps and groans (the kind you utter when you’re squirming at what’s transpiring onscreen)—followed by titters, of course. The director got you, and you laugh at having been got (and of course your friends laugh at you and tease you about it afterwards).

Here are a few random thoughts on the individual entries…

Planet Terror (***1/2)

I’m a sucker for zombie fests, and this is zombies on steroids. I won’t belabor you with the plot—just take all the plot points of your typical zombie flick, pile them up in the back of a truck, crash it into a gas tank and see where the pieces fall. The zombies here are the ugliest, flesh-dripping, boil-popping deformities of putrefaction to shamble across a screen.

Heads roll, limbs roll, testicles roll (one of the human characters collects the “jewels” of his victims, providing several squirm-inducing moments). Bruce Willis makes a cameo, which has its pay-off when he delivers a little monologue about killing Osama bin Laden and then being infected by an ungrateful Pentagon with the DC-12 gas that turns people into zombies.

Lest you think Rodriguez just uses his canvas to paint an hour-and-a-half of gore and gruesomeness, the man also works in some moving affirmations of loyalty to family and loved ones! Believe it…or not. When things go primitive and the flesh hits the fan, it is your estranged father or brother or lover that you can count on to save you before the zombies eat off your face. I like that in a zombie film.

Coming Attractions (****)

Actually, these are my favorite parts of the experience that is Grindhouse. As I said, the directors have recreated the entire experience, right down to grainy film stock, the celluloid catching and burning in the projector (something that doesn’t happen today with digital projection, in case younger filmgoers are wondering what is up with that), and missing film reels (in both cases right when a steamy scene is about to transpire that the MPAA may have slapped an NC-17 onto, darnit). Another nod to authenticity is the Coming Attractions wedged in before the two main films, and these are absolutely priceless. They were filmed by other directors like Eli Roth and Rob Zombie and feature cameos from the likes of Jon Bon Jovi and Nicolas Cage (as Fu Manchu!). These are previews of sleaze films that never were, but may have been: Machete, Werewolf Women of the S.S., Thanksgiving (a holiday serial-killer parody), and my personal favorite, Don’t, a perfect send-up of those creepy old films like Don’t Look in the Basement. The narrator’s ridiculously staccato delivery of lines like, “If you are thinking about going into this house…Don’t. If you are thinking about opening this door…Don’t. If you are thinking about seeing this movie alone…Don’t” had me almost rolling out of my seat.

Death Proof (***)

Death Proof is Tarantino’s homage to old car-chase films like Vanishing Point and Dirty Mary Crazy Larry, complete with a gut-wrenching car chase. As in past Tarantino films, this features women as victims and women as heroes. Kurt Russell is at the top of his game, giving a threatening, frightening and funny performance as Stuntman Mike. Kudos to Kurt and all the other actors who deliver the goods for Tarantino—there’s a reason this director has revived or rescued so many careers.

Be forewarned. Death Proof also features the most graphic reenactment of a body-blenderizing car crash I've ever seen--replayed from multiple angles no less, in trademark Tarantino fashion."

Rodriguez’s film is a hard act to follow, being ninety minutes of in-your-face adrenaline jolts. Long stretches of Death Proof are vintage Tarantino: that is, characters lounging around cleverly talking about nothing in particular. It’s all enjoyable, but the reactions I overheard from conversations after the movie revealed a general consensus that this was the weaker of the two. I would not compare these films in terms of stronger and weaker. They are more like different courses of a great meal. The main entrée may have stood out more than the dessert, but it wouldn’t have been complete if one of the courses were absent.

I gave neither half of the double bill 4 stars. Considered independently, Planet Terror is not one of the best zombie flicks I've ever seen. Death Proof is nowhere near one of Tarantino's best films. But put them together and spice them up with the fantastic Coming Attractions, and this is definitely a case of the whole being greater than the sum of the parts."

Overall, I think the friend I attended Grindhouse with summed it up best: “Can something this cool really exist?” Thanks to kindred spirits Rodriguez and Tarantino, it does. I can’t wait until it’s playing at the old second-run theatre downtown that serves beer.

- Nicholas Ozment

The Hills Have Eyes II (*)

I should first clarify that The Hills Have Eyes II is not a remake of 1985’s The Hills Have Eyes Part II. It is a sequel to 2006’s remake of 1977’s The Hills Have Eyes, which was based on a Scottish legend. This weekend’s release was penned in part by Jonathan Craven, co-writer of 1995’s unofficial addition to the franchise, The Outpost (a.k.a. The Hills Have Eyes Part 3), and son of Wes Craven, who directed the first two movies and produced both of the new millennium’s editions. It’s astounding that a story as simple as that of this series should beget a movie of such complex genealogy.

But, in fact, although a written preamble makes a point of linking the latest movie to last year’s edition, its ties to its predecessor are tenuous: None of the few surviving characters from the previous film returns, and Martin Weisz has replaced Alexandre Aja as director. Still, the basic plotline remains the same: A family of freaks, deformed by the radiation from the former bomb testing site they call home, attacks a group of average people in the Southwestern desert; blood and death ensue. Last year, a vacationing family served as the prey; this time, the antagonists get a batch of National Guard trainees. For these, the filmmakers borrow military movies’ prepackaged set of characters. There’s the ear-piercing drill sergeant; the woman whose tough exterior hides an internal tenderness; the fat guy; the volatile, headstrong one; and the cerebral misfit. All are played by actors you’ve never heard of; after seeing them here, you won’t feel inspired to learn their names.

Aja’s flick, which closely followed Craven’s original and merely added more violence and higher production values, was more effective than Weisz’s. The latter is similarly sanguinary, but the gore seems less tightly edited and more often pointless. The movie begins with the most graphic childbirth I’ve seen, but neither the mother nor the infant has any role in the proceedings that follow. The makeup artists responsible for the villains have apparently declined even to aim for realism; they look more like monsters from Pan’s Labyrinth than mutated men. (For a human touch, one of them wears glasses, but they only make the viewer wonder where he found an optometrist in the caves of New Mexico.)

Although The Hills Have Eyes II is, unlike last year’s version, a new story, this sequel doesn’t seem any more inventive. For example, Weisz plagiarizes the suicide scene from 2006. And, twice, lurkers jump out at as their targets are using the bathroom: Could any ambush be less creative or less surprising? Dialogue consists first of the lightly humorous bickering that always precedes the horror in bad horror movies. When the horror commences, the speakers switch to trailer-ready catchphrases, never too verbose to interrupt the action. Moreover, while Aja had a visual style, Weisz’s camera subscribes to the jitteriness that characterizes the work of directors who want their presence constantly known but haven’t the talent to stand out.

If this picture is in any way interesting, it’s as an example of the way the Iraqi war now pervades American movies. Hollywood has begun to feel obligated to address it even in stories that take place far from the Middle East. In 300, the protagonists fought the “mysticism and tyranny” of those from the area inhabited now by America’s foes. In The Hills Have Eyes II, our military finds itself pitted against enemies whose weaponry and training fall far short of their own, but the geography favors the natives, who know the desert and caves. Neither 300 nor The Hills Have Eyes II has anything intelligent to say about the war, but perhaps the tendency that these two display will eventually lead to something worthwhile in the hands of a different director.

I still have trouble deciphering why, exactly, the Hills franchise has endured so long. The first movie was an unremarkable cheapie, one of many that featured outland freaks or murderous hillbillies in the wake of Deliverance. It wasn’t novel enough to warrant its own pack of followers, yet here we are. But if anything can convince moviegoers that this series needs to be put to rest, The Hills Have Eyes II should do it.

-- Brett Yates

Masters of Horror, Season Two

EPISODE ONE: THE DAMNED THING

This conventional episode about a murderous unknown creature plaguing a Texas City is everything wrong with “Masters of Horror.” Why can’t writers and directors do more with the freedom they are given? There are a countless number of independent filmmakers out there who could create a masterpiece with the million-dollar episode budget. Instead, director Tobe Hooper opts for an unimaginative creature story. Tobe, if you decide to direct an episode for season three (which hasn’t been announced yet), please find better material. Don’t let your career die out like this. Skip this episode.

EPISODE TWO: THE FAMILY

Along with “The Black Cat,” (Episode eleven), “Family” is hands down the best episode of the season. After the laughably bad “Deer Woman,” John Landis not only resurrects his career, but also directs one of the best films he’s ever made. This creepy tale follows a married couple who move in next door to a serial killer (wonderfully played by George Wendt) who kills certain individuals so that he can have their corpses become part of his imaginary family. The script (written by Brent Hanley) does a superb job of taking us into the mind of a disturbed man who also appears as a seemingly normal guy who wants the perfect family. “Family” is sort of a modern-day “Psycho” set in suburbia. I can’t recommend this one enough.

EPISODE THREE: THE V WORD

One of the frustrating aspects about “Masters of Horror” is when they hire directors who are NOT masters of the horror genre (no offense.) While it may be nice to see talented directors try their hand at an episode, I’d rather see George A. Romero or Wes Craven tackle an episode. Instead, we get directors like Ernest Dickerson (whose claim to fame is the forgettable “Tales From the Crypt: Demon Knight.”). Dickerson’s “The V Word” follows two dumb teens who decide to foolishly break into a mortuary where they become terrorized by a vampire. The story plays like a second rate “Are You Afraid of the Dark?” episode, only more violent. The only redeeming aspect here is veteran actor Michael Ironside as the lead vamp. You can tell Ironside is having a blast in his role and he does the best he can to rise above the mediocre script. A passable episode.

EPISODE FOUR: SOUNDS LIKE

Brad Anderson’s (“Session 9”) ep is criminally underrated. The story follows a man whose career revolves around monitoring quality telephone conversations for a certain business. When he tragically loses his son, the man’s hearing becomes more and more heightened. I’m really surprised this episode did not receive much attention. Not only did the episode utilize some incredible sound f/x, but it was also a harrowing account of a man who is driven to insanity. A brilliant episode with a unique style by up-and-coming director Brad Anderson. See it.

EPISODE FIVE: PRO-LIFE

A story about a girl who goes to an abortion clinic to get rid of her demonic baby sounds like a sure fire hit, right? Wrong. John Carpenter and writing team Drew McWeeny and Scott Swan completely miss the mark with this embarrassingly bad episode. Instead of crafting a thoughtful anti-abortion horror story, the writers resort to needless violence and one-dimensional characters. The only saving grace is a decent performance by Ron Perlman. Avoid at all costs.

EPISODE SIX: PELTS

Along with John Carpenter, Dario Argento also fumbles in his second episode, “Pelts.” Like Pro-Life, this story has another anti-message, only this one concerns racoon fur whose spirit takes revenge on those who wear it. Rather than exploring the theme, writer Matt Venne is more concerned with grossing out viewers with gruesome deaths such as a man ripping all of his own skin off. Revoltingly bad.

EPISODE SEVEN: THE SCREWFLY SOLUTION

The story: A post-apocalyptic tale in which a virus causes the male population to wipe out the female population. With such an engaging premise, I was very saddened to find that this episode was an utter mess. Instead of visualizing the story realistically or logically, writer Sam Hamm goes off into a bizarre and out of place direction that ultimately ends with a horrendous "“A.I.” like moment. It was nice to see director Joe Dante (“Gremlins”) attempt something new. I just wish it had delivered. Don’t bother with this one.

EPISODE EIGHT: VALERIE ON THE STAIRS

Mick Garris’s episode follows a writer that encounters a ghostly woman whose appearance as a muse may be misleading. The episode mysteriously begins like last season’s “Dreams in the Witch House,” only it spirals out of control midway through. The story, by Clive Barker, is an intriguing, albeit flawed idea that doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be about. Not worth seeing unless you are a Clive Barker fanatic.

EPISODE NINE: RIGHT TO DIE

This is what “Pelts” and “Pro-Life” SHOULD have been. Rob Schmidt’s (“Wrong Turn”) episode takes on the anti-euthanasia theme. The story: A husband is forced to decide whether his badly burned, coma-induced wife should go on living. When he decides to get a court order to cease her pain, the wife’s spirit manifests and attacks those who wronged her. Obviously, there’s more to the story than I am revealing, but I’d like viewers to experience this one for themselves. Watch it.

EPISODE TEN: WE ALL SCREAM FOR ICE CREAM

The story: A group of kids known as the West End Bunch wind up killing a slow ice cream truck vendor (who dresses a clown). Years later, the kids have become adults with children of their own. The vendor, Buster, comes back from the dead to seek revenge on the adult’s children. Sound familiar? It’s basically nothing more than an “It” rip-off. Thankfully, director Tom Holland (of “Child’s Play’ and “Fright Night” fame) manages to coax a devilishly great performance out of William Forsythe as Buster. Don’t bother unless you’re a Forstyhe fan.

EPISODE ELEVEN: THE BLACK CAT

Director Stuart Gordon + Actor Jeffrey Combs + Edgar Allan Poe= Classic. Instead of adapting Poe’s story “The Black Cat,” Gordon goes for a different route by giving us a “what if?” story about how Poe came up with the inspiration for the classic tale. Combs gives a tour-de-force performance as Poe. Whether getting hammered, caring for his sick wife, battling illusions and poverty, or dealing with a certain black car, Combs captures the essence of an insane genius. See this one as soon as you can.

EPISODE TWELVE: THE WASHINGTONIANS

When I heard the episode “The Washingtonians” revolved around a discovery that George Washington was a cannibal, I was excited. Here was an idea that could prove to be ridiculous and entertaining much likes “Snakes on a Plane.” Unfortunately, my visions of how the episode would be were shattered when I viewed it. I was under the impression the episode focused on George Washington, but it does not. Aside from a quick flashback, he is hardly seen. Instead, the focus is on a modern day cult called the Washingtonians, who preserve the secret. Yawn.

EPISODE THIRTEEN: DREAM CRUISE

Japanese director Norio Tsuruta (“Ring 0”) directs this tale about a man (Jack) who is invited aboard a friend’s (Eiji) boat with his wife. While out on the sea, Eiji reveals that he knows his wife cheated on him with Jack. Naturally, chaos ensues. There’s also a subplot about Jack’s dark past. “Dream Cruise” reminds me of “Knife in the Water” mixed with “The Grudge.” It’s nothing new, but it’s a solid enough tale that doesn’t sacrifice character for scares. Watchable.

-- Nick Lyons

300 (**1/2)

So…do you like gladiator movies?

If so, then you’re one of the many who have lined up to catch 300, the latest film by director Zack Snyder (Dawn of the Dead remake).

The movie is about the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC, in which 300 Spartan soldiers managed to hold off a Persian army of tens of thousands in a narrow mountain pass, at least for a little while. I’m always up for a history lesson, so I figured I’d check out the film, an adaptation of the graphic novel by the noted historian Frank Miller (Sin City).

So what did I learn? Well everyone in ancient Greece is physically ripped. I tried not to be jealous of all the six-pack abs on the screen as I rested my hands on my keg-like belly.

Also, everyone back then yelled a lot, even when not required. “This is Sparta!” shouts King Leonidas, played by Gerard Butler, who looks so much like Mel Gibson that when he got all crazy-eyed, I expected him to go off on a rant about how the invasion was the fault of the Jews. But instead he just shouted some more words of encouragement to his troops. “Tonight we dine in Hell!” All right, we hear you already.

I also learned that there were monsters back then. I don’t remember anyone mentioning that in school, but the history books tend to gloss over the truth anyways.

The biggest lesson I learned is that no matter how visually stunning a movie is, and this one looks awesome and should win quite a few technical awards at next year’s Oscars, there is no substitute for a strongly developed characters and originality, both of which the movie lacked.

My friend I saw the film with summed it up best, by saying “Eh…” when I asked him what he thought. He also said he felt like he had seen it before.

300 is a mish-mash of several films. The monster-like soldiers are reminiscent of the orcs from The Lord of the Rings trilogy, as is the traitorous hunch-backed shepherd, who differs from Gollum only by…well, his hump. The fight scenes mix a little of Gladiator with the slow motion techniques of The Matrix.

Most of the battle scenes feature the slow motion tactic, which sort of slows things down too much. Snyder goes to this well way too often, because there wasn’t much else going on. There are only so many ways to show a fight scene. Only so many CGI squirts of blood you can spray at the audience. And nothing looks cheesier than a decapitation in slow motion. And we get two of these.

Snyder delivers a good-looking film, but fails to make us care about anyone in the movie. When you don’t care about the characters, there’s no rooting interest. When there’s no rooting interest, the battle scenes are reduced to a bunch of faceless actors and CGI effects.

-Jeff Cercone

How would you rate 300?
Four stars! Great movie
Three stars. Pretty good. Not a classic
Two stars. Meh. I've seen worse
One star. Just putrid

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The Host (**)

What did you think of the Mist's ending?
	Great! I didn't see that coming
	I liked the novella's ending better
	I liked them both

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What did you think of Bug?
	4 stars. A creepy descent into madness
	3 stars. Well-acted study on paranoia
	2 stars. Wasn't quite what I was expecting
	1 star. What the hell was that?

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How would you rate 300?
	Four stars! Great movie
	Three stars. Pretty good. Not a classic
	Two stars. Meh. I've seen worse
	One star. Just putrid

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