Horror fix

As per the conditions for being friends with rival blogger and future movie star, K. K., here is my review of “Paranormal Activity”:

“Paranormal Activity” is a movie about Katie and Micah, two witty and likeable people who do exactly what you’re not supposed to do in horror movies: investigate the Strange Noises.  But to be fair, in this case, there really is no choice other than investigating the noises, because the haunting causing them is not connected with the house; that is, they can’t just leave and be done with the whole thing.  Oh no, whatever demon is tormenting them has been following Katie for almost her whole life.  It seems that the beastie has been quiet for awhile, but now he’s acting up again, making inexplicable noises in the night and moving random objects around the house.  And lately, it’s been getting worse.  Micah’s solution to the problem is to try to document all of the weird happenings on camera, and then….and then, I don’t know what, because Micah doesn’t seem to have thought the plan out any further than that. 

Therein is the setup for this film.  I was a little skeptical before seeing it, because it’s already been hyped as “this generation’s Blair Witch” or even “the scariest movie of all time”, claims that just make me roll my eyes and prepare for imminent disappointment.  To set things straight, I think the comparisons between this film and “The Blair Witch Project” are a reaction to the low budget and the filming style, which has the film’s characters doing the filming themselves, resulting in a realistic documentary feel.  Yes, there are unidentified noises and a haunting of some sort, but those things take place in a good number of the horror films churned out every year; some of them are even sort of scary, but nobody goes around squawking about how it’s the next “Blair Witch,” so I can only conclude that all the excitement is because of the first-person camera work.  Now, this style is not new, and in fact has shown up in several films in just the past two years, so I suspect that the hype-masters have not seen “Cannibal Holocaust” (which was made long before “Blair Witch”), ”[Rec],” “Quarantine,” “Cloverfield,” or “Diary of the Dead.”

So, is this film’s style new and revolutionary?  No.  Is it effective?  Hell yes.  To my surprise, I found myself leaning forward on my seat in the crammed movie theater, trying to catch every soft noise and subtle movement, and anxiously awaiting the next paranormal occurrence with the emotion all too rarely evoked by horror films anymore: dread.  It truly is the first-person filming that makes this movie work; it shows you implausible things and makes you say, “Oh God, that is so scary!” as opposed to, “Wow, that would be scary if it were real.” 

Subtlety is key here; you can only see what the camera sees, and sometimes what the camera sees is not entirely clear.  If you’re hoping for balls-to-the-wall chaos and blood and guts everywhere, you’ll be disappointed but you’ll also fail to appreciate the craft of a film that gradually creeps up on you and forces certain emotions on you against your will.  It’s easy to get wrapped up in the marketing hype and the story and the cinematic techniques, but the real art here is the genuine and almost beautiful tension that “Paranormal Activity” is able to evoke in a jaded horror movie-goer, even after the film is long over.

Yes, I know it’s been quite awhile since my last post…so sue me.  Actually, chalk it up to demanding schoolwork, two jobs, and thus, a tragic lack of time to watch movies.  But never fear, I now have one job and slightly less demanding schoolwork — plus, with Halloween just over a month away, it’s time for me to throw myself into the spooky season regardless of whatever other stuff is trying to take up my time.

At the moment, I only have a few minutes to write, so although I have seen a few horror films in the past couple weeks, I don’t have time to post reviews of them just yet.  Instead, for now I will just post a list of the horror-related things that I am looking forward to.  I hope you enjoy, and feel free to comment with a list of your own!

1.  Halloween Horror Nights — see you there on opening night (tomorrow)!  Not crazy about the rather disjointed theme (Chucky, Wolf Man, Saw) but who cares about the theme anyway?  Get me into those haunted houses, pronto!  And I’m sure the Bill & Ted show will be tubular, as always. 

2.  “Grace,” a straight-to-DVD release about a mother whose baby dies during the pregnancy, but decides to carry it to term anyway.  Big mistake, apparently.

3.  “Deadgirl,” another straight-to-DVD release about two boys who discover the body of a dead girl and…I don’t know, shit happens.  If you believe the hype, it’s supposedly the best indie horror flick of the year.  But don’t believe the hype…I’ll let you know once I watch it, and then you can believe me.

4.  “The Haunted World of El Superbeasto,” yet another straight-to-DVD release (detecting a pattern?) of an animated film by Rob Zombie.  I have no clue what the hell it’s about, but it’s Rob Zombie and it’s animated (?!) so I gotta see it. 

5.  The Halloween party a friend of mine is throwing.  I’m working on an idea for a sick costume, so we’ll see how it goes. 

6.  Possibly going to Screamfest, hosted by Spooky Empire.  Somehow, I have never attended this event, so I’d really like to go, but I’m not sure I can spare the time and money for it.  If not, whatever, I’ve missed it before and still survived.  There’s always next year.

7.  I’m going to try to finally read a book that’s been sitting on my shelf for three years, “American Gothic Tales.”  It’s a collection of gothic short stories by writers like Nathaniel Hawthorne, Washington Irving, Ray Bradbury, Joyce Carol Oates, Anne Rice, and Stephen King.  I started it once before and only got three stories in, but the three I read were engaging and definitely set the autumnal mood. 

8.  Digging out my favorite Halloween decorations — spooky little ceramic towns, my tombstone-shaped door hanging, and maybe a few new ones if I’m lucky. 

9.  In addition to the new horror films I want to see, I love rewatching old favorites like “Halloween” (duh), “Phantasm,” “Psycho,” ”Sleepy Hollow” (I know it sucks, but I can’t help it, I just like it), “Nightmare Before Christmas,” “Corpse Bride,” and “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.”

10.  Listening to some fun Halloween tunes, namely the soundtracks for ”Nightmare Before Christmas” and the Disney film, ”The Haunted Mansion.”  I did not see “The Haunted Mansion” but I heard it was just awful; be that as it may, the soundtrack is tons of fun.

11.  Candy!

Yeah, I don’t know what’s up with two werewolf movies in a row, I guess I just had them next to each other on my Netflix queue.  So, sorry if you hate werewolf movies, but don’t worry, “The Howling” and “An American Werewolf in London” were the only ones on the list, so it’ll all be over soon.

In “An American Werewolf in London” (I’ll call it “AAWIL” here), Jack and David are two young American guys who go backpacking through Europe, when they are attacked on the misty English moors by a big, snarling wolf.  Jack is killed, and David is maimed badly enough to land in a London hospital for several weeks.  Jack, despite being dead, manages to visit David a few times throughout the movie, sporting increasing degrees of post-mortem decay.  Jack warns David that, because he was bitten by the werewolf but managed to survive, he too will become a werewolf during the next full moon.  Jack begs David to kill himself so that he won’t kill others, and so that he can break the werewolf bloodline and he (Jack) can stop wandering about in eternal limbo.  Initially, David doesn’t believe him, but before too long, well, let’s just say he has a change of…heart.

This film, which was released in theaters only about four months after “The Howling,” has a very different conception of the werewolf; the latter portrays them as a separate breed from humans, their own brand of evil, like vampires or zombies.  In “AAWIL,” however, becoming a werewolf is a terrible curse endured by normal people, which makes the outcome of this film far more tragic than “The Howling,” and a little closer in spirit to the 1941 Universal classic, ”The Wolf Man.”  It’s true that there are some comedic, light-hearted elements to this film, from the soundtrack (e.g. “Blue Moon,” “Moondance,” and “Bad Moon Rising”) to the very funny dialogue, especially during David’s visits from the recently departed Jack (“I will not be threatened by a walking meat loaf!”).  But on the DVD interview with writer and director John Landis (of note: also the director of the greatest music video ever made, “Thriller”), although he seems very amused by the whole film, he stresses that it is absolutely not a comedy.  The violence here is not played for laughs; it’s graphic, gruesome, and maybe even a little uncomfortable to watch.  And when the final reel delivers its unexpectedly downbeat ending, you definitely won’t be going to bed with a warm fuzzy feeling.

You cannot talk about “AAWIL” without talking about Rick Baker, who won the first Oscar for Best Makeup for this film.  I only thought the transformation scene in “The Howling” was amazing until I saw this one.  Interestingly, Rob Bottin, the special effects wizard for “The Howling”, had previously been Rick Baker’s protege, but the totally homegrown techniques (i.e. no computers, no camera tricks, lots of harsh bright lighting) used to pull off the werewolf transformation in “AAWIL” confirm why Rick Baker retained his status as the grand master of cinematic special effects that year.  Even in 2009, I guarantee that you will watch David’s initial transformation and wonder aloud, “How did they DO that?”  On top of that, David Naughton’s acting is quite good; when watching his portrayal of the physical anguish endured during the metamorphosis, I truly could not help but cringe and hope that that never happens to me.

So, on that note, I’m off to traipse across the dark English moors to the Slaughtered Lamb pub for a pint — who’s with me?

I was pretty confident from the get-go that I was going to enjoy Joe Dante’s 1981 werewolf film, “The Howling,” because it has a lot going for it: first, it’s about werewolves, and that’s always lots of fun.  Second, it was directed by Joe Dante, who also helmed the 1984 classic, “Gremlins.”  Third, the makeup effects were done by Rob Bottin, the dadgum GENIUS behind the special effects of John Carpenter’s “The Thing” remake.  Finally, it stars one of my own favorite scream queens, Dee Wallace, who is probably best known as the moms in “E.T.” and “Cujo,” but has appeared in various other horror films as well. 

The story centers around Karen (Wallace), a news anchor plagued by Eddie, a perverted stalker who finally corners her in the booth of a sleazy peep-show establishment, only to have the police arrive and shoot him dead.  Traumatized afterwards, she and her husband leave town to recuperate at a retreat called the Colony, hosted by her therapist.  They arrive at the Colony to find several oddball characters, and the film might as well run a title card proclaiming, “NO GOOD CAN COME OF THIS.” I don’t think I’m giving away any big secret here when I say it turns out to be a huge fangfest, and poor Karen quickly realizes that she is not any safer here than she was in the city. 

“The Howling” explores relatively familiar themes, particularly werewolfism as a metaphor for sexual appetite; the werewolves in the film are generally portrayed as sexual predators when they are in their human states, and the werewolf state seems to be unleashed simultaneously with sexual arousal.  In fact, the opening scene of the film shows Karen’s psychologist on television, explaining that “Repression is the father of neurosis, of self-hatred.  Our stress results when we fight against our impulses.”  Thus, the tension created between our more primitive nature and the suppression of that nature results in the werewolf state, the only way to “let the beast out,” so to speak.  This has interesting implications for our angel-faced Karen, but you’ll have to watch the movie to see how it plays out. 

All the metaphorical nonsense aside, this is still a werewolf movie, and a fun ride at that.  Tongue-in-cheek wolf imagery and references are sprinkled all throughout the film, from a picture of Little Red Riding Hood being duped by the Big Bad Wolf, to literary appearances by Thomas Wolfe’s “You Can’t Go Home Again” and Allan Ginsburg’s “Howl.”  Rob Bottin’s effects certainly lived up to my lofty expectations — the werewolves are gnarly as hell, and the scene showing Eddie’s pulsing, shuddering transformation really gave me a chill, even almost 30 years after the film’s initial release.  And to be honest, the idea of any kind of monster, whether it’s a werewolf or a sexual predator, masquerading as a human being and living among us — well, it just makes me feel a little less safe.

Hello there to everyone who might be reading this…so I may just be greeting myself here.  Regardless, I am starting this blog to chronicle my love for all things horror-related (mainly films), so if anyone is interested in what I have to say, well that’s swell! 

Like most other horror fans, I had a strong interest in the macabre from an early age, reading the “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark” trilogy in elementary school (GOD, those illustrations were creepy!) and watching “Tales From the Crypt” late at night at my friend Kristin’s house, since I wasn’t allowed to watch it at mine.  However, I had never been much of a movie-watcher, and I wasn’t exposed to many horror films until I was in college – some notable high-school exceptions being “The Shining,” “Candyman,” “Psycho,” “The Exorcist,” and “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre,” all of which are still personal favorites. 

As a result, I’ve really only been hooked on horror films for a few years now, and although I have seen a lot of movies, I certainly haven’t seen nearly as many as those who were staying up late to watch them on TV or sneaking out of the house for late-night showings when they were still kids.  So, the idea of this blog is to keep track of what I watch as I watch it, and maybe someone else who’s giving themselves a horror-film education will find it interesting as well.  Plus, I love to read the reviews in magazines like Rue Morgue (my favorite) and Fangoria (second place), and it would be nice to sharpen my own reviewing skills.   Sometimes I’ll write about new releases, sometimes old classics, sometimes whatever’s in between, but since every film on my Netflix queue is a horror film, rest assured that I’ll have plenty of fodder.

So, I welcome comments on my posts, whether you share my opinions or not, and I’ll try to make it interesting. 

Happy bloodsucking!