101 Reasons Why Deep Sea Drilling is a Bad Move (aka Cloverfield: the Rewatch Review)

If you don’t understand what this title has to do with Cloverfield, shame on you.  J.J. Abrams spent ridiculous amounts of time on viral marketing campaigns and ridiculously convoluted back stories that never make it into the movie; the least you could do is google “Slusho”.

This has nothing to do with any of my points. It was just a really awesome moment.

I kid…sort of.  The whole viral thing is still kind of weird to me.  Generally it provides me about 5 minutes of moderate interest (“huh…interesting”) before I just find an article written about the viral marketing scheme, skim it, and never look at any of it again.  But I am definitely digressing here.  I had the pleasure the other night of rewatching Cloverfield.  Yes, I certainly was one of those who flocked the theatre for an opening weekend(ish…I can’t remember if I hit opening weekend exactly…) viewing.  I enjoyed it very much, didn’t get motion sick, and wrote the movie off as a “no rewatch value” type flick.  I mean, intellectual, it is not.  It’s about the creative use of the camera as a character, first person type shooting, and shock value scares – what could be good about a second viewing?

Answer, TONS apparently.  Rewatching Cloverfield was actually incredibly enjoyable.  For one thing, it is a movie where the size of the screen definitely makes a difference.  If you’re one of those people who gets horribly motion sick from films like this, it might help in this case to do a small screen viewing.  The motion was much less bothersome I think mainly because my eye was able to actually take in what was going on rather than just knowing something dark, scary, and blurry had just walked across the right hand corner of the screen.

It's only there for a few frames, but it's there!

There was a plus and a minus to this.  On the plus side, I definitely felt like I saw more of what was going on, which was sort of interesting.  I caught things I didn’t the first time, such as the couple frame splice of a still from King Kong when the helicopter is batted down over Central Park.  Or, more mundanely, just being able to pay more attention to the bridge collapse, the effects of the bites from the little spidery dudes, etc. – things that, the first time, I was too caught up with what was going on to really take note of.  Surprisingly to me, those elements held up really well under scrutiny.  No, it’s not a masterpiece of intellectualism, but it’s a well crafted monster tale that stands some inspection.

On the negative side of things, I definitely saw more of what was going on.  If you don’t know already, I don’t like any horror movie that shows the monster too soon.  What you don’t see is always scarier than what you see.  Frankly, the only true exception to this, in my opinion, is Alien.  The fucker is scary as shit even when you do finally get a full body view.  But unless you’ve created the awesomeness of monsterhood that was Alien, don’t show your monster too soon.

Did the little things on the side of his head remind anyone else of those stress toys where the eyeballs pop out when you squeeze?

Now, in Cloverfield, in my first viewing, the only time I felt like you really got a good look at the monster was at the very end.  And it killed me.  The monster SUCKED.  The lungs coming out of the ears? What was up with that?  Seriously.  After a long debate, I conceded to my boyfriend that I could have maybe tolerated if it was a) super blurry or b) reallllly fast, but even then I’d be shaky on that.  As it is, with the slow pan up the monster, focus on the face (NOT SCARY), and then pause – majorly crappy and semi-ruining of the whole movie.  However, I somewhat forgave it because the monster was shown so few times before that.

This was actually one of the more "obscured" shots - it's a fairly clear view of the body

MAN was I wrong.  The monster, almost in its entirety, is shown pretty clearly several times in the movie.  I don’t know if I just was out of it during my first viewing not to notice, but I think it was the whole big screen mind fuck effect that got me.  With my eyes more able to focus and process on my rinky TV, I caught a lot more views of “Clover”. On the one hand, it’s pretty clever that it was shot/animated so that on a large screen, the monster looks a lot more obscured than it actually is – that we aren’t as able to take it all in as easily.  On the other, it made me sort of want to tear my hair out.  I’m sorry, but “Clover” is not scary.  At all.  Like…at all at all.  Seeing more of him earlier on really didn’t inspire more fear in me.  It actually detracted.  Which did make me sort of sad I’d rewatched.  I had originally walked out going “wow, they showed so little of the monster except for that travesty of a reveal at the end”; this time I walked away going “WHY DID THEY SHOW HIM SO MUCH???”

Overall, though, I am glad I rewatched.  It was as much fun to watch the second time as the first.  Scary or startling at all? No, the scares don’t hold up.  But really entertaining and interesting?  Definitely.  If you liked the film the first time, I’d really recommend doing a second/home screen viewing.  It’s worth seeing the differences…and spending the 5 minutes we did to find that stupid King Kong shot with the crappy DVD functions available on a PS2.

Terrifying TV

And now a break from our regularly scheduled movie reviews, TELEVISION REVIEWS (thanks to one of my loyal fans for saying I should write some about the somewhat horrorish elements that grace our TV sets ) Ok, ok, so…television? Not so much the biggest venue for horror.  Once in a while, a decent horror miniseries will come along.  In the past, a few shows such as Tales from the Crypt and Are You Afraid of the Dark? (dude, the clown from that show’s intro still freaks the fuck out of me) are allowed to air.  Once in a while a show like Scare Tactics will show up and be one of the meanest things on television.  Mostly, though, horror on television is limited to shows that are sort of sci-fi-ish and have some pretty dark, disturbing undertones to them – basically, shows that have horror elements to them.  Unfortunately, today, not many of those exist.  I’m sorry, I refuse to include any crime drama within that category (ok, exception – I haven’t seen Dexter.  I know I’ve heard it’s awesome, but I’ve yet to watch it…so…I won’t comment on that); bloody CSI investigations =/= Horror.  Which leaves us, in my opinion, with really two shows left on TV that even slightly can satisfy a horror lover’s craving for some good spine chilling.

1) Dollhouse

Now, I will admit that for much of the first season, Dollhouse was very slow and the only horror aspect of it was Eliza Dushku’s acting (sorry, the girl’s gorgeous but…no).  I blame most of this on reports that Fox had very specific rules on how they wanted the first season to play out – ie, be very episodic rather than building strong story arches.  The shining moments of the season came in the last episodes with the Alpha storyline.  Alan Tudyk was, as usual, awesome, but here’s where a glimpse at the darkness of the dollhouse started to come out – effects that the mind control can have on people, using wiping minds as a weapon, plain ol’ psychopathic insanity.  Yes, it was all TV dumbed down to an extent, but it was still pretty awesome and creepy.

But when the DVD came out and I saw “Epitaph One” was when this series proved to be one of the most creepy, disturbing ideas on television.  If you haven’t seen it, PLEASE please, just read a summary of the rest of season one and then WATCH THIS EPISODE. From the creepy little girl who’s actually a doll, to the haunted house appearance of the dollhouse, and then especially to the flashbacks of horrible things happening to the characters we know and love (or love to hate), a future where everyone is a doll and can be wiped at any time is truly horrifying.  Joss didn’t let up on the horror either; it’s dark, it’s cold, it’s brutal…AND IT’S AWESOME.  Season 2 really looked as if it were going to follow the same path.  To an extent, it had to; we know the future of the dollhouse is bleak as hell, so there needs to be some indication of that happening now.  Sure, we got some episodes that had Dushku featured and fell flat and sure we got some that seemed a little to pandering, but we also got some like “Belonging” in which Priya/Sierra ends up actually killing someone and forced back into the dollhouse to save herself.  While Dollhouse isn’t traditional horror, the disturbing ideas that it has are more horrific than many a modern “horror” film I’ve seen (seriously…Saw movies are NOT scary…they’re just gross and uncomfortable).

Unfortunately, Dollhouse is officially yet ANOTHER Joss Whedon show that has been killed by Fox.  The lessons here are: 1) Fox sucks, 2) Joss, stop working with Fox, and 3) SyFy, if you’re looking for a show now that Battlestar is done, PLEASE TALK WITH JOSS.  My only hope is that Fox let Joss do whatever he wanted for the episodes and that the last few episodes of the show are as deliciously sinister as “Epitaph One”.

2) V

Aliens have to be somewhat horror, right?  I think it’s a law.  V is a show I’m extremely conflicted about.  I will right off say I didn’t watch V as a miniseries; I wasn’t born when it first aired and I didn’t want to be constantly making direct comparisons so I didn’t watch when SyFy (you know, I HATE that name change…it’s fucking stupid…it makes me angry every time I type it) re-aired it right before ABC premiered their series.  But, you know how I feel about remakes in general: bad idea.  Then you add to it that it feels very…ABC.  Not that ABC shows are all bad – I’ve admitted I watch Grey’s, I am slowly working through Lost and I’m a cautious fan of FlashForward.  But all ABC shows have this look and feel that’s just very…ABC.  I’m just unsure if it’s too polished/pretty/neat/family friendly to actually tackle an alien invasion in any real compelling and challenging way.  Horror, especially science fiction horror, is often messy; I don’t know if V will actually deal with the mess.

Yay! They followed one horror rule - never show your whole monster too early.

On the other hand, this show definitely has some creepy aspects that I’m looking forward to.  I already really enjoy the idea that the Vs have been here for a long time and that there is an insurgency amongst Vs.  It makes the creepy/evil/controlling vibe all that more powerful to know that some of their own people wanted to get the hell out from under it.  I also very much enjoy Morena Baccarin

Because this is not threatening at all...

(on a side note: does every sci-fi show these days need at least one Firefly alum to at least cameo?  Seriously, Alan Tudyk was on Dollhouse and V, Morena Baccarin on V, Gina Torres on FlashForward, and Nathan Fillion had an episode on Lost back in season 3).    She’s beautiful, yes, but she is a little weird/alien looking.  The change in her demeanor between her public appearances and her private ones is unnerving, and the most recent episode where she infected the Vs with some weird happy glow seemed a bit too much like getting them to drink the Kool-Aid, if you know what I mean.  It’s unsettling.

To me, though, the most horror aspects of the show so far (well, in this case besides Elizabeth Mitchell) are the Vs individual plans.  The healing centers: here, we have a little bit of a horror mystery building and I love it.  What is happening in there?  Brainwashing? or just out-and-out replacing people with V clones (they have the technology to do it).  Also, what do they want with the kid (Tyler) and what’s their plan for humanity?  It all seems to be creeping slowly towards a horror place, which I like.  I’m just very worried that it will become super milquetoast and generic.

ANNNNND that’s it.  That’s really all that’s making a showing for horror on TV right now.  I suppose some arguments could be made in favor of FlashForward but it’s really not that horror, when it comes down to it.  And, besides those three shows, it’s all cop/fbi/cia dramas and medical dramas.  I’m not saying horror and television are a perfect blend of mediums but I would be an advocate for some more horroresque shows if only to break up the monotony of what is on television.  In the meantime, I’m sure I’ll post at least once about how Dollhouse ties up and if I haven’t lost interest in all my ABC shows during the super long hiatuses they’re taking (seriously? no FlashForward until MARCH?)

Mini-Rant: VAMPIRES

I love vampires.  Love them.  Think they are one of the cooler horror monsters. I love the idea of their origins – the whole twisted interplay of sexuality and fluids exchanging.  I love their ambiguity – and yes, I do think they are often remarkably ambiguous characters.  Sure, there are purely evil vampires. However, many seem to just want to exist.  Their existence, unfortunately, consists of them having to consume human blood which makes their relationship with humans, by its very nature, a bit antagonistic.  But, other than that, they’re not out there to kill everyone in sight.  I like when villains and monsters are so clear-cut.  It makes life interesting.  They’re these amazing liminal characters that can fit into so many allegories and walks of life and…just…great great stories.

You know what I don’t love?  Vampires today…TWEEN vampires.  I stumbled across an article today that I think accurately summed up what’s so awful about vampires today:

I'm so...TORMENTED

“Vampires — once among the great villains of literature and motion pictures — are no longer scary. In fact, they’re every bit as whiny, self-absorbed and impotent as any human being.”  That’s right, folks.  Vampires are now…EMO.  They are the whiny, annoying, OMG FML MYLIFESUXXXXXX texting, moping, poetry writing, bad music listening, tween idiots that we all look back at mere years after we’ve been those assholes and go ” what the HELL was wrong with me?”  We went from Dracula…to Edward.  Downgrade.  Down…effing…grade.

It’s all rather sudden too.  Vampires have always been a rather popular form of horror, but now it’s like…a fad.  South Park spoofed kids being “vampires” vs. “goths”.  When South Park spoofs it, it’s a major fad.  And it really is.  Twihards are insane.  Twilight: New Moon got 29% on rottentomatoes.  Not that that site is the end all be all in movies, but that’s still really pathetic.  And yet, it made some obscene amount of money not just in its opening weekend, but in its opening night.  I mean, it made more money than the Harry Potter movies and while I’ll gladly admit that some of those are pretty bad (ie, Goblet of Fire…hmm…also with Robert Pattinson…coincidence?), they aren’t THAT bad.

We're so...DEEP

And now we’ve also got The Vampire Diaries to deal with.  I watched the first episode of this, out of pure morbid curiosity.  It was the most melodramatic, overdone, trite drivel I have seen on TV in a long time – and I watch Grey’s.  It was that bad.

It really makes me wonder – what happened?  I mean, the vampires I “grew up” with were modernized, yes, teen trendy often, yes, but still somewhat edgy.  Buffy and Angel both had very dark sides to them – no one can tell me seasons 6 and 7 of Buffy were actually “light” for the majority of them.

Oh Joss...why do all your shows keep dying?...sigh...

And while Angel was about as emo as they come, it was a running joke of the show that he was – THEY MADE FUN OF HIM FOR BEING LIKE THAT (I would comment more but I have yet to make it through all of Angel…I know…Bad Mistress! But I’m working on it).  The Lost Boys was all about teenagers and, yes, is very 80s, but still had some bad-ass mixed into it.  In the book-into-film world, Anne Rice’s vampires were no slouches.  Sure, Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise were beautiful and vain, but they did also manage to make a little girl into a little demon – pretty damn evil and awesome.  Even the crappier Anne Rice movies were still not so…tween and emo.

In my humble opinion, what we need is a vampire film that violently goes against everything that is the Twilight reign.  Something dark, liminal, sexual (like…Dracula sexual…not a 300-year-old teenager whining over never getting laid), horrifying and compelling – something that will remind the world what a real vampire is: a scary ass  mofo who will kill you and then EAT YOU…and make you want him as he does it.  Maybe then people will stop falling all over themselves for this degradation of what was once a great horror theme.

The Smell of Beer, Sex, and Rotting Flesh (Review of Zombie Strippers)

When people are upset about something bad happening in their lives, some eat, some fast, some go out with friends, some curl up into a ball and cry.  I rent amazingly bad horror movies.  I’m not talking about terrible horror movies, like, say, the remake of Halloween or Alien vs. Predator (or God forbid whatever the hell the SEQUEL to Alien vs. Predator was).  I’m talking about a movie that can trace its origins back to Dead Alive, Evil Dead, Killer Klowns from Outer Space, etc.  They make me happy.  The ridiculousness, the gore, the campy lines, the campy delivery of them…it all just makes me very very happy.  So, I should note that when I watched Zombie Strippers, something very bad had happened in my life and Zombie Strippers made me (at least temporarily) happy – which means it added some to my love of this movie.

And, yes, I loved this movie.  It’s terrible.  It’s awful.  It actually has the line “They’re zombies.” “No! They’re Strippers!” “NO! They’re Zombie Strippers”.  It’s amazingly stunningly campy bad horror.  And it’s hilarious.

Freddy! You look good when you're not burned!

For one thing, the cast is very enjoyable.  Robert Englund is seriously hilarious.  As a true horror fan, I have a healthy amount of love and respect for him simply because he is the Kruger.  But, I was very much impressed by his comic timing and great character of a smarmy, weasel-y strip club owner.  Jenna Jameson works in the role in that’s she’s dumb and has ginormous knockers…other than that, let’s just say her acting skills are

Rule number 10 for surviving a zombie apocalypse: always accessorize

probably not what has made her famous.  This woman to the right…no idea who she is, but she was effing hysterical.  Seriously.  Possibly the best part of the movie.  Beyond that, there’s really not too much to say.  I mean, it’s pure awful camp, but it’s HYSTERICAL.  Some may argue, but I think they knew it was a terrible movie and decided just to go with it and be a truly awful yet amazing film.  Which I appreciate.  If you’re going to be a bad horror, go whole hog.

The only critique I guess I had I almost feel silly making because, again, super enjoyable BAD movie.  But I’ll make it anyway.  Did they really have to make the girls look so fug as they got all zombified?

Sexy...kinda...

I mean, yes, rotting flesh=unattractive, but one of the whole premises of the movie is that the zombie strippers are like super strippers.  I’m sorry, I realize they’re dancing all crazy and stuff, but they were seriously UNATTRACTIVE.  My boyfriend didn’t even quite want to watch they were so grossed up.  It’s just kind of hard to believe that men would find women that gross and rotting appealing.  I think they could have conveyed the whole “zombie” thing while still making them look like super hot strippers.  It’s possible.   Not quite sure how but…hell, if you can make a movie about zombie strippers and have it be really enjoyable, it’s possible.

Overall, though, if you like campy bad horror, rent this film.  It’s hi-freaking-larious in my opinion and definitely satisfied the good bad horror craving I’ve had for a while.

Birth Control 2.0 (Review of Grace)

Blood: it does a body good

Grace is one of those films that I knew I had to check out as soon as I saw the trailer for it.  I’m sure it’s pretty clear from my other postings that I’m not a big fan of the blood guts and gore = OMGSOSCARED films that seem to have become the new definition of horror in our generation (seriously, CGI is ruining cinema…but that’s another story…and it’s called Avatar…).  I like subtlety.  I like films that have some depth.  Maybe the horror won’t make you jump out of your seat or be looking over your shoulder for monsters, but it will make you think, make you realize the horror in a situation and brood on it.  At it’s very best, it will make you subconsciously terrified as hell (like, in my opinion, a film like Rosemary’s Baby does, or even, in more modern blockbusters, The Ring did on many levels, once you scraped away the external elements of Naomi Watt’s blank stare and the CGI girl walking out of the TV).  Grace looked to be one of those films.  From the preview, you can’t quite tell what’s going on – is it real?  Did this stillborn child really reincarnate through some sacred (or, more aptly, unholy) magic?  Or did a woman on the verge of desperation retreat into insanity when faced with inconceivable tragedy?  Plays on psychosis and supernatural evil are delicious to me; they toy with your mind until every instant in the film becomes suspicious and unnerving.

Unfortunately, whoever directed the preview for Grace could have made a hell of a lot better film than the actual filmmaker.  Ok, I’m being slightly unfair.  It wasn’t *bad*.  That’s the problem though.  It wasn’t bad but it also definitely wasn’t what I’d call good.  It was just sort of weird and meh.  I think the most positive thing I can say about the film is that it should be shown to middle schoolers to teach them not to have sex or, at the very least, make sure they’re on every type of birth control known to man.

Why did they color all the blood brown in the previews?

It’s hard to bug me gore wise and while this isn’t overly gory, some of the birthing/mothering scenes even started to get me a bit squicked out.  In case you haven’t put two and two together from the preview and the poster WITH A BOTTLE FULL OF BLOOD, the stillborn and then reincarnated Grace has the nasty little vampiric habit of subsisting only on blood, preferably human.

When teething goes wrong...

THIS is the part that got me.  When little Damien-ette started gnawing on mom’s breast, I started to get a little squeamish.  I mean, it wasn’t gory or gross, but it just looked like it seriously hurt.  I mean, really…that’s a sensitive area.  If the baby needs blood, can’t it just get it from somewhere else?  Like…Mom’s wrist?  Nice juicy vein there!  And HEY, won’t make every woman in the audience slowly cross her arms and go “Ohhhhh…” (for guys, it’s the same sort of reaction you have when you see someone get kicked in the nuts in a film).  I’m not anti-baby in my future (quite a ways in my future), nor will I be against breast-feeding, but this film certainly turned me off of the whole “having a child thing” in a SEVERE way and I expect it will for quite some time.  So, filmmaker, if that was your goal: well done, mission accomplished.

I mean, ok, I’ll acknowledge that there were some other cool aspects to the movie.  Not that many that really stand out, but some, such as the little signs that Grace was not normal or was somehow corpse-like:

When your baby attracts more flies than your dumpster, it's time to call the doctor

The hair falling out, skin seeming to peel off, and flies surrounding Grace so much that Madeline (mommy dearest) has to put up a mosquito net are all rather creepy and made me, for the first half of the film, at least somewhat intrigued to see where things went next.

Unfortunately, the creepiness sort of ends there.  The rest of the film just sort of…falls flat.  It lacks all of the subtlety and intelligence the preview promised and throws together a bunch of muddled ideas.  Besides the birth control vampirism, the rest of the subplots were just…bizarre (not that a vampire corpse baby isn’t bizarre but…you know what I mean).  Bizarre can work but it needs to be well thought out bizarreness: even if the audience isn’t quite getting why something’s in a film, they should be able to feel like they know it’s there for SOME reason.  So many things in this film, I had NO idea why they were there:

1) The whole lesbian lover sub-story between Madeline and Patricia (the midwife).  While I’m not against the idea of exploring a relationship where one member of the partnership breaks up with the other to at least attempt heteronormative life, including the whole children thing, this just seemed thrown in there.  There wasn’t any intelligence behind the relationship, no real delving into it, no real drive.  It seemed as though the part of Patricia could have easily been converted into “Patrick” with almost no thematic changes.  So…why have it be a story of lesbians who broke up to be heteronormative – just trying to be “edgy” are we?

As if that smile weren't creepy enough, she forces herself to lactate again by getting her husband to suck her nipples...yeah...ew...

2) Mother-in-laws gone wild.  The whole subplot of the mother-in-law trying to take Grace away because she thinks Madeline is unfit and crazy, while meanwhile she’s cooking up her own batch of nut job by turning herself into a lactating surrogate mom is just wrong.  It’s not scary.  It’s not disturbing.  It’s just ugh.  Seriously.  Maybe there’s not enough psychology built up behind it or something…or maybe we’re just never meant to see a 65-year-old woman getting it on with her husband in an attempt to start lactating.  It’s just gross.

3) The ending.  The ending, to me, almost felt like a bad punchline in a really long joke.  The lesbian lovers are together, hitting the road, with Vampira the baby; Madeline, showing us a badly mutilated boob, informs us that “she’s teething”.  RIMSHOT!  Even for a movie this confused and muddled, that seems like one of the lamest endings anyone could think of.  EVER.  I was already pretty confused and annoyed by the fact that the film had totally let me down, but this ending actually made me pause in stunned silence and then actually say, “what? SERIOUSLY?”  It was awful.  Period.

I apologize because I feel like this blog has been very disjointed.  Perhaps it’s still a hangover of too much turkey, wine and delicious food that I enjoyed over the weekend.  More likely it’s the fact that I don’t know if there’s a coherent way to write about this film.  The film itself is too incoherent.  I really can’t understand why it got so many accolades at Sundance.  Again, it’s not awful – I didn’t walk away from it ranting about how it was one of the worst movies ever.  But it just really wasn’t good.  It was bizarre and kind of gross and had no pay off.  If you’re intrigued, eh, go ahead and see it.  You won’t be enraged that you spent the $5 on the rental.  But, really, you don’t have to bother because you won’t be satisfied afterwards either.  It’s just sort of not worth it.

Merry Satanmas! (Review of House of the Devil)

While I may have been shirking my writing duties as the Mistress, I have not been shirking my watching duties.  I actually have three films I’ve been wanting to write on, not to mention another sitting at home from Netflix and another next in my Netflix queue.  Might as well start with the best of this bunch: The House of the Devil.

I will admit I was incredibly excited for this film.  Not just intrigued by it and drawn to it because I’m pretty much intrigued by and drawn to 90% of horror films that are released.  But because of this poster.  Stupid, I know, but it was so deliciously retro I couldn’t stand it.  It reminded me of the artwork for Rosemary’s Baby somehow.  Or basically of any horrors from the  70s or possibly 80s, which, in a lot of ways was a much better era for horror, if you ask me.  Plus, I’m a huge sucker for the Satanic.  Became a mistress writing about it and all, kind of have a soft spot for it.

Generally, when I am anticipating a film to be enjoyable, I’m disappointed.  It’s a rare find when I’m actually super excited for a film and walk out of the theatre just as excited; I was with The House of the Devil.  To begin with, it was a breath of fresh air of SUBTLETY in a genre that is, these days, so in your face (ie Saw 1 through  Saw “for the love of God please stop making these damn films”).  A majority of the film is based on atmospheric creepiness.

Vincent Price's dream home

Take one large and creepy house set in the middle of no where.  Make sure it’s owned by some wealthy eccentrics who just seem somehow a little…off.  Also make sure they are unnervingly tall.

This job posting is very legit looking. It in no way looks like you might get killed by taking it.

Find one young college coed who is amazingly innocent and attractive.  Leave her alone for a certain number of hours in said creepy house, warning her only not to go into one room of the house because “Mother doesn’t like being disturbed” (come on, people, didn’t Psycho teach us never to trust people who keep talking about a mother you never see).

Red moon at night, sailors...kill a bunch of people?

Add to that a rare lunar eclipse that everyone keeps mentioning incessantly on the news and in the said creepy house by the creepy owners of the house.  Make sure that the audience is thinking “Satanist” from the start by placing a placard at the front of the film giving some information on Satanism in the US. Pray your audience will be able to draw some connections between “rare eclipse” and “Satanism” on their own.

Weirdly enough, the friend I saw this with sort of looks like this guy

Throw in a sprinkle of creepy bearded guy, and you’re good to go.  Just let these ingredients simmer, old school horror style, for a good hour or so and then let shit really get crazy.  Now, some people have complained that the film drags.  Is it slow? Yes, it’s extremely slow.  It’s a film that hearkens back to an older style of horror where the horror is created by camera angles, creepy settings, and a slow feeling of foreboding that eventually takes over the film and turns into full-blown terror.

For most of the film, I’ll give you that nothing seems to actually be happening.  But the feeling, the atmosphere is crafted so well that you are unsettled from nearly the first moment.  The camera work in this astounded me.  Having now seen so many horror films and studied it academically, I notice things like camera angles and how that affects the film.  In some ways it’s sort of obnoxious actually.  But in this film, I loved it; nearly every angle we were given in the house was slightly off.  Walls weren’t shot head on, rooms were shot through doorways, so we only got a partial view, shots seemed slightly skewed and off-center.  The effect is subtle but powerful; as you watch, you become almost physically unsettled.

For once, I actually don’t want to spoil a movie too much in reviewing it.  Perhaps it’s because the movie is so well done and clever that to even begin to tell certain details would take away from it; the details would seem insignificant and cheap whereas in the context of the film, they’re brilliant and chilling.  I will give a couple quick other pluses to the movie, in addition to the wonderful handling of a slow burn horror itself.  The film fit into its era really well; set in the 80s, the filmmaker really committed to that idea, down to the smallest detail.  Of course, the costuming, setting, and actual look of the movie (the sort of film used and the like) set it firmly in its era.  But, even the opening and closing credits are crafted in a very 80s way – freeze frames, large title cards, cheesy music.  Being an aficionado of older horrors as well as modern horrors, I loved it.  I felt like I was being treated to an heretofore undiscovered Hammer film or something.

On the negative side of this film, I will say it isn’t the most earth shattering idea ever.  It was fairly careful not to delve into concepts of Satanism too deeply as to not require a whole lot of research on the topic.  It’s very intelligently made and shot but the intelligence is somewhat lacking in the actual basis of the story.

An Orc!...oh wait...

Also, much to my dismay, the film wasn’t able to completely ignore the lure of the modern effects and makeup.  In the climactic last minutes of the film (which were very well done for the most part), this bitch shows up.  The makeup was very skillfully done, but it looked painfully, obviously modern.  It LOOKED like a makeup job done in 2009, not one done in 1981, like the rest of the film looked.  And it completely took me out of it for a few moments.  I mean, it worked when it was all strobe-y and unclear, but when I got a clear shot of it?  Ugh.  While I get that audiences today expect this, I hate it.  It’s not always necessary to be shiny and new.  It can work to use older techniques which, yes, may look a little outdated, but will get the same effect across and not look like “OOOO lookey what I can do!”.  It wasn’t a big deal, but it was a bit of a thorn in my side as I walked away from the film.  Especially considering it was at SUCH a vital part of the film.

Overall though, if you can find this film, WATCH IT.  It was great.  Nothing more to be said.  A great slow burn horror – one of the best in decades – that will chill you and leave you smiling.

The Week in Previews – 11/23/2009

Before I begin in on this round of previews, I would like to heartily apologize for having been MIA of late.  Unfortunately, there are two problems with being a mistress.  1) It’s not my entire life.  Sometimes real life stuff gets in the way of my wonderful world of horror consumption.  A whole effing bomb of real life exploded this month.  2) Being the Mistress of Horror is not actually a full-time job.  Shocking, I know.  While I would gladly accept a competitive salary to do this full-time (if anyone wants to offer), in the meantime, I must make money to subsidize my horror habits.  Sometimes, that money-making job takes up a fair bit of time.  All that being said, I will try not to be so remiss in the future and will carry on with your regularly scheduled horror snarking.

Evil Weed

I am a sucker for bad horror.  I’m not even ashamed of it.  There is something deliciously amazing about horror movies that, trying to be good or purposely trying to be awful, make you laugh in pity and amazement at how truly unscary and funny the scenario is…especially if there’s a lot of gore.  Evil Weed can’t be a good horror movie.  I mean, just watch the trailer and look at the title and the tag lines (“Don’t Inhale” and “They’re having a weird reaction!”), and you know this is going to be a bad horror movie.  And it looks like it could be, in some ways, full on awesome.  Exhibit A:

Actual deposition footage never looks this good. Trust me.

The preview features, among the flashes of scantily clad 20-somethings in bathing suits, a girl sobbing to the police that “The weed…it’s tainted”.  That’s just awesome.  Seriously.  There is NOTHING scary about that unless you are a 1950s housewife who still believes that Reefer Madness is true.  However, it did make me snort quietly in laughter.  I give it a thumbs up.  Exhibit B:

Dude, I just cleaned my lens!

When fake blood ends up splattered across the camera, there is going to be ridiculous gore galore.  Ridiculous gore + bad horror = amazingness.  In fact, it made Peter Jackson’s career (Dead Alive – look it up – the most ridiculously absurd gorefest I’ve ever had the pleasure of watching).  Plus, from just this shot, I can tell this dude is a hilariously awful actor.

However, I’m still a bit scared.  Anyone see Shrooms?  Anyone else wish they had never even HEARD of Shrooms after seeing it?  Yeah, me too.  Is this Shrooms part two? Because if so, I don’t want to even go there.  It makes me very nervous.  But I think I’ll still try to snag a copy somewhere.  It looks too ridiculous to at least give a shot to.

The Fourth Kind

I’ll go ahead and say it: since Alien (and heck, I’ll throw in Aliens) I haven’t seen a good alien based horror that actually had some interesting substance to it.  I’m a sucker for the jump moment and will admit that there have been several movies that have made me jump, cringe, and flinch, but ones that have actually made me go, “you know?  That was a damn good Alien horror movie”…I can’t think of nary a one.  I *want* The Fourth Kind to be that film.  I really do.  I find alien abduction theories incredibly interesting and I think it’s a story that hasn’t been tapped in an intelligent way nearly enough.

However, I hate…HATE…movies that try to trick you into believing things are true when they aren’t.  I’m discounting from this Blair Witch, Paranormal Activity, and Cloverfield, films of that ilk, because a) if you’re not a complete freaking moron, you realize those are totally fictitious, and b) it’s sort of necessary to the structuring of the fictional narrative to claim that this is all “OMGTRUESTORYCAUGHTONTAPE”.

Remarkably good camera work for a random Alaskan psychologist

But with The Fourth Kind, I see absolutely no reason why they should play the charade of saying this is all based on real footage they have.  For one thing, I just don’t buy it.  For another, if they had this amazing real footage of alien abductions that is so shocking and amazing, why not just make a documentary about the incident?  It would be totally more interesting and probably get a lot more respect, credibility, and attention.  Thus, I’m not buying the real footage thing.  You know, I could have even dealt with the

Since when the FUCK is your name pronounced "YO-va-vich"?

whole opening of “I’m a famous actor portraying a real person that went through these incidents”.  I mean, I wouldn’t have really liked it, but it wouldn’t have bugged me that much.  But…the fake “real” footage really turns me off.  That, and I’m sorry, the only thing I ever thought Mila Jovavich was really good in was The Fifth Element where she played someone who was hot and barely coherent when talking…I think that says something.

On the positive side of things, I’m probably going to end up seeing it at some point.  It’s sheer existance as a film trying to treat alien abduction with some sort of gravity (even if it is fake gravity) is compelling to me.  Also, I’m sure I could have found this out from doing a simple google search, but I never have known what a “kind” of encounter is.  I am deeply indebted to the editors/producers of this preview for clearing up for me what a close encounter of the third kind actually is.  I was beginning to expect it was just something Spielberg had pulled out of his ass.

Also, this owl is AWESOME.  I’m unsure what it has to do with anything, but I like it.  I like it a lot.

Coolest...animal...EVER

Tucker and Dale vs Evil

This is without a doubt the horror film I am most excited about in the coming months.  This looks incredible.  Could we just add up the elements of awesome horrorcom that are being shown in this trailer?

1) Hot, dumb 20-somethings

Because hot blonds often take road trips to sketchy backwoods areas in cutoff shorts

A horrorcom without hot, dumb 20-somethings is like a day without sunshine: just that much sadder.  Sticking HD20S’s in a cabin together in the middle of nowhere always has great results, as we have often learned in the past, and the hotter and dumber they are, the more hilarity can ensue.  This batch looks prime for the picking.

Mom told you not to run with scissors...or...giant tree branches...

2) Creative and ridiculous ways of killing people.  Horrorcoms have a long and revered history of thinking up insane ways to kill people.  In Evil Dead, there’s the famous tree rape.  In Shaun of the Dead, the killing zombies to Queen scene.  In Dead Snow, a chick getting murdered on a toilet.

Warning Label: Don't dive head first into the woodchipper until you have turned off and unplugged the machine.

Even if the preview of Tucker and Dale is showing us the highlights of the death scenes,I’m still excited, because you could go a pretty large step down from these deaths and have some pretty funny ways of knocking people off.

3) Ridiculous gore:  See my above comments in Evil Weed on how ridiculous gore can aid horror films, especially if they’re bad or intentionally funny.  I think we got that one covered here.

Her dry cleaning bill is going to SUCK

4) ALAN TUDYK.

Wash! You're not dead!

If you do not know who Alan Tudyk is, please take the following steps.  First, smack yourself because you’re an idiot.  Second, go rent Firefly; revel in his amazingness.  Third, rent Serenity and Death at a Funeral; continue to revel.  Fourth, repeat step 1.  Alan Tudyk playing a crazy, clueless hick just looks like it’s going to be comic gold.  There’s nothing else that needs to be said.  He’s going to rock it.

In all seriousness, this looks like a horrorcom worthy of some praise.  It seems to be totally aware of the genre and is taking all of that and, by repeating it, turning it on its head.  In my opinion, self-aware horrorcom along the lines of a Scream or a Shaun of the Dead is almost always the best.  It has the required intelligence to keep the movie going at a good pace while allowing itself to fall into the comical pitfalls and, in many cases, the tried yet true scare points that make a great combination of the genres.  While this looks like it’s almost verging on slapstick, I think the subject matter alone will put it as, in my book, a gem of the horrorcom genre.  I can’t wait.

That’s all the previews I’ve got for you today.  I’ll keep you posted as I get more.

The Week in Previews – 11/02/09

So, given that the Mistress actually has to have a job (lame, I know) sometimes watching tons of horror all the time doesn’t work out.  However, luckily, God created these beautiful little things called previews.  Basically, they’re 2 minute movies that we can watch and then instantly judge what the real 120 minute movie will be like.  Brilliant.  It’s like watching a real movie except quicker and possible to do on lunch break.

In order to prevent this post from being epically long, I’ll split up all the films I’d like to review into two posts.  I know you’ll be awaiting the next one with bated breath; I’m such a tease.  Overall, I must say, if you’re a horror fan, there’s actually a fair amount out there right now to look forward too.  There’s also a fair amount to avoid like the plague.  I’m sorry, but I refuse to touch The Box, Halloween 2, or Saw VI with a ten-foot pole (unless I decide to go on a tirade on why the Saw series sucks at life at some point in the near future).  The Wolfman I may touch on at some point but I’m still trying to formulate an opinion on that one, so that can neatly wait a bit longer, methinks.  But I digress: onto the previews.

Antichrist

I am very puzzled by this film.  The preview sits there blaring all the amazing reviews it got at Cannes, which, I know, is supposed to make me begin to drool but…I don’t know.  Ok, look, it is beautiful.  I will not deny that.  The look of the preview alone kind of makes me want to watch it solely for cinematography:

Dude...it's called a tan...you shouldn't be luminescent

And for the fact that Willem Dafoe is a) creepy as hell without trying, b) a really talented actor to boot, c) apparently able to make rock rain slow motion from the sky:

Where the HELL is my umbrella?

But beyond that, it all looks rather stuck on itself.  Being as satanic horror is a bit of a specialty of mine, I don’t really relish the idea of having to sit through another self-important film that thinks its making much more of a statement about religion/the soul/evil/Satan than it actually is.  From the preview, I have no idea how this will actually relate to any sort of Satanic lore or story, except for the weird flashbacks to To The Devil, A Daughter that this shot gives me,

Alright, who's disembodied hand is that?

and, frankly, I’m not quite sure I care.  Not a good sign when someone who spent her entire thesis obsessing over Satanic horror is “meh” about a Satanic horror preview.  I’m sure I’ll find my way to seeing eventually, but fortunately for my wallet, it isn’t playing anywhere near me in the foreseeable future, so I’ll have to wait until Netflix gets it.

Carriers

Is anyone else who’s seen this preview getting a really strange sense of deja vu?  Like, perhaps we’ve seen this concept recently?  Except funnier and with Woody Harrelson?  Strange illness creating zombies, a list of how to survive…seriously…this IS Zombieland: The Serious Years. You would think that after the people creating this preview saw the Zombieland preview, they  might have at least gone, “Crap, let’s at least try to make it look like it’s not the same freaking movie.”

It's Mick Jagger!

I mean, yeah, the mask idea is kind of creepy with the whole connection to people wearing them for swine flu and the weird designs drawn on them.  And, I will admit, in comparison to recent zombie movies, the zombies/infected/carriers/whatevers do look pretty cool.

Dude...wipe your nose at least! geez...

But, I HAVE SEEN THIS MOVIE BEFORE.  Could someone please at least attempt to make an original zombie film?  Or maybe even just try to do a retro style zombie film, perhaps drawing from the original Haitian myths?  Something to change it up from “weird infectious disease BLAH”.  It’s really just getting old and uncreative.

Oh, and I’m fairly certain the last shot of the preview gives away a major plot spoiler.  I’m not sure…but I think so…go watch the preview and see if you’re thinking the same thing I am.  I’m not going to say what I’m thinking yet, I’m just curious to see if anyone sees what I’m seeing here.

The Crazies

A remake of a Romero film…a Romero film which I have not seen (I know…I hang my head in shame).  Remakes?  Generally a bad idea.  Romero?  Generally a good idea.  Sure, he gets a bit ham-handed about beating his political and/or social method into your skull but he does have some damn good films.  Remakes of Romero films?  The juries out on this.  I actually really did like the Dawn of the Dead remake.  It had some good moments, handled the whole fast zombie craze fairly adequately, and left me satisfied.  With this, I’m thinking I may have to break out a double feature weekend when it comes out – rent me some classic Romero and then watch the new one.  Because, while, yes, I’m slightly annoyed that it is yet ANOTHER FREAKING VIRUS CREATING ZOMBIE-ESQUE CREATURES movie, it has some cool elements.

You have killer zombie death virus; take two aspirin and call me in the morning

1) The seeming connections to an Invasion of the Body Snatchers-like change in characters. I am seriously hoping they have more scenes like this one appears to be where the doctor realizes her patient is somehow…not right.  I loved that in the original Body Snatchers; the doctor slowly realizing his patients are right when they say their loved ones aren’t their loved ones.

When headlights come towards you, MOVE, IDIOT!

2) Cool looking deaths.  Chicks getting run over by industrial farm tools in the middle of the night and completely out of it, zombified fathers barbecuing their families are always a fun addition to any horror night.

Whoever did the makeup for this should TOTALLY have worked on the new Krueger

3) Fairly badass looking zombies.  While I’m not a big fan of the whole “special effects=good horror” movement that has taken over modern horror, this guy is pretty awesome looking, I gotta admit.  I’m not against the use of new makeup techniques to achieve a purpose as long as it’s not at the expense of story.

That being said, Romero has some sort of special magical power where he can absolutely bludgeon you bloody over the head repeatedly with his theme and you can still enjoy the movie.  Most filmmakers don’t have that magic.  In fact, I’m not sure if I know anyone who can be so magical about that as Romero.  I am super afraid, especially given that movies these days are already all about “OMFG LOOK HOW THIS IS LIKE US IN IRAQ”, that this is going to just become annoyingly didactic and poorly handled.  In fact, I think it’s probably more than likely that the film WILL be didactic and poorly handled.  Still…it’s got some things that are intriguing me so I’ll probably bite and go see it.

Daybreakers

I love vampires.  Seriously.  Had I not done my graduate research on religious/Satanic horror, I would have been very tempted to delve into the world of vampirism.  I love lore that originates in the past from a certain  set of social fears and mores and somehow manages to be pertinent and frightening hundreds of years later.  It’s just incredible to me.  What I don’t love is the emo, pseudoerotic vampire obsession of Twihards and the preteens of America.  Seriously, my generation had Buffy.  Buffy kicks Twilight’s AND The Vampire Diary’s asses.  But I digress.  My point here is that I think I’m somewhat more inclined to be pro-”non-crappy teen vampire” movies than most.  Yet, Daybreakers?  Daybreakers puzzles me.  On the one hand, you  have a pretty awesome cast of characters.  I have liked Sam Neill since his Jurassic Park days, Ethan Hawke is, in my opinion, one of the more sorely underused talented leading men in Hollywood, and, again, Willem Dafoe=badass.

Crossbows...always a classic anti-vamp weapon of choice

Vampires: Now with Creepy Glow-In-The-Dark Cat Eyes!

The look of the vampires is also pretty cool, what with the crazy glowing eyes and all.  I don’t believe the preview shows what they look like when they vamp out, which is always pretty crucial, but I like the look so far.

Unfortunately, almost everything else in movie kind of makes me cringe.  The whole farming humans for blood is very Matrix to me.  And I’m not saying The Matrix was an epic movie that cannot be challenged or mimicked but it seems to me like they could have at least designed the human sucking chambers to look at least *slightly* less reminiscent of The Matrix.

Plus, I have to say the whole “surviving humans seek out the one person who can help them repopulate the species after the invasion of the vampires” reeks of a crappy rip off of the film version of I Am Legend, which was totally a crappy rip off of Richard Matheson’s novella, I Am Legend, which means this will just be crappy.

Moreover, there’s the problem of this:

CHEEEEEEEEEEEEESE!

What the crap is that?  From the preview it seems like somewhere in this harvesting humans for blood after vamps took over, a crazy super vampire that the regular vampires don’t like has appeared and is attacking vampires.  Confused yet?  Really really bothered by how annoyingly bad that supervamp looks?  Wondering why on God’s name this movie went from “hmm, ok, sweet, vampire movie” to “no…seriously…NO”? I know I am.  I may end up seeing this just because…well…it’s me – I honestly may end up watching all of the Saw movies one day, you never know.  But, from this preview, I’m betting we’d all be better off just watching “The Wish” from Season 3 of Buffy.

That’s all for tonight the previews for, kiddies.  More next week.

Beer and bitches and blood, oh my! (Sorority Row review)

I am unashamed to say that I was anxiously anticipating the release of this movie for about 3 months.  I was introduced to the trailer on Apple and could not stop laughing.  It looked perfect: stupid, overly gorey, lots of screams, stupid girls – everything you could possibly want from a terrible slasher movie (and trust me, I love terrible slasher movies).

I mean, let’s look at the ingredients here:

1) Half naked B-List celebrities with fake tits screaming

Clearly, they were chosen for their...ahem...acting abilities

I mean, really.  The cast consists of a girl from the Real World (yes, I had to google it because I knew she was vaguely familiar from somewhere):

Remember me? I was sort of marginally famous once!

And Audrina Patridge from The Hills, who thankfully for all of us, just has to play her usual role of being dead:

This is her showing emotion...scary, huh?

2) Awesomely absurd death scenes

There's a reason mama told you drinking is bad

Honestly, if a drunk sorority girl dies from having a bottle shoved down her throat, I really don’t think I need much more persuasion to see this movie.

3) Carrie Fisher…with a shotgun

I have a bad feeling about this...

Don’t lie…your inner fanboy/fangirl is drooling right now.

4) Oh, and it’s about a freaking sorority getting murdered for screwing up a bizarro sex prank.  It’s just set up for awesome badness.

Sadly, I was somewhat disappointed.  How?? you may ask, given all the amazing ingredients and the fact that I was totally primed for a terrible and amusing horror experience.  Well, because some people thought this film could actually have been good…and they were right.  The writing in Sorority Row is surprisingly intelligent for a lot of it.  The writers knew how satirical they could make this, squeezed in some awesome one liners, and came up with some appropriate and interesting ways to kill people.  Besides the ending (more on that fiasco soon), most of the writing really pleased me; my only other big disappointment was that no reference to Star Wars was made.  Come on, the film’s just dying for a “I have a bad feeling about this”!

But I digress.  The problem with the intelligence of the writing is twofold.  First of all being that no one else in the movie knew that the writers were intelligent.  Most of the actresses are acting their hearts out (really, REALLY poorly).  They actually think they’re doing a serious horror film.  They have NO IDEA how ridiculous it all is.  So the jokes fall flat; in fact, they backfire.  Instead of being witty and sharp, they just seem kind of sad and pathetic.  Because of that, it almost seems like it would have been better if the writing had been as bad as the acting; then at least the audience can be cruelly amused at the badness instead of kind of annoyed that some of the good lines are just being lost.  That and the writing didn’t seem to mesh with any other aspect of the film, which is problematic in and of itself.

However, my bigger problem with the writing is that it felt like the writers gave up in the last 15-20 minutes of the film.  Ok, so Sorority Row is a slasher.  As we know from Scream, there are certain rules that any good slasher must follow.  If you don’t follow those rules, you really should have a good reason (like it’s actually an intelligent movie that has something creative at the end).  Sorority Row decided to do something different but in a really really DUMB way.  I’m sorry, there’s no other way to put it.  It was just stupid.  Out of all the possible options they could have gone with, even a supernatural “OMG she, like, totally came back from the dead” option which didn’t fit in with the film but still would have been better, they went for the “let’s come out of left field and have the character be a killer with a really weak motive, nothing interesting about him, and about the least scary human being alive” ending.  On top of that, he was fairly ridiculously easy to kill, and he didn’t even come back to life so he had to be killed a second time or so that we’re unsure if he’s alive or dead at the end (SERIOUSLY – just watch Scream – Randy even says “Careful.  This is the moment where the supposedly dead killer comes back to life, for one last scare”.  It’s all there – you don’t even have to READ to get the rules).  I have never been so disappointed at the end of a slasher.  Even when the killer is the super predictable option, it’s more satisfying then this was because it’s usually laughable predictable.  This was so bad it wasn’t even funny.

OH, and THEN (yes, folks, it got worse), the last scene of the movie MAKES NO SENSE.  We see a character who was killed earlier in the film and find out he wasn’t really dead…ok, fine, so he has some issues that he might want to resolve with some of the people involved in the story.  But he’s A) not enough of a character that we give two shits, B) not well enough explained (I didn’t get that it was him at first), and C) totally overshadowed by this strange thing where the sister of the girl who got killed in the first place is apparently all up in the business of the sorority that KILLED HER SISTER.  What…the hell?  No explanation given on that either.  I mean, I get that they’re trying to set it up for Sorority Girls 2: More Titties So Give Us More Money but is this supposed to be creepy or just incredibly confusing?  Or is it just scary because when I walked out of the film I was so clueless as to what just happened that I think I knew what the type of sorority girl depicted in this film feels like on a regular basis?  It was just…bad…

And it was all so disappointing for that reason.  I went in expecting deliciously bad horror, the kind that you walk out of knowing it was complete and utter crap, but for some reason you loved it.  Instead I got a film that had some promise but completely and utterly sucked in the end.  Not cool…not cool at all.  I mean, I would say see it if you like bad slashers.  It really does have some priceless lines in it where I laughed out loud.  And again…Carrie Fisher…SHOTGUN…it’s really as awesome as it sounds.  But…don’t expect too much or you really will get let down.

Invasion of the Booby Snatchers (Jennifer’s Body review)

I will admit that when I first saw the preview for Jennifer’s Body, I thought it looked awful.  Not awful in that good way but awful in a “if I ever somehow become delusional enough to spend 10 bucks to see this crap, shoot me in the face” way.  I mean, I saw it in an audience for Sorority Row and the audience was laughing at it not with it; that’s low.  Luckily, I managed to get into a free screening of it.  Now, being delusional enough to waste a Saturday night in seeing an awful horror movie is kind of my MO.  A Saturday wasted by horror, even horrible terribly no good very bad horror, is ok by me.

So imagine my surprise when the film was actually…good.  No, not the best piece of cinematic invention in quite some time and definitely nothing that I would necessarily tell people to go spend theatre money on but definitely rental worthy.  The acting was, amazingly enough, not bad.  Megan Fox actually fit the role rather well and played it compellingly enough (given that none of the characters had more than a thimble-full of depth), and I managed to not get skeeved out by her toe thumb for the majority of the movie.  The film was campy as hell, sure, but it bought into its own campiness.  It didn’t care that the story was weak, the demonology was weaker, and the acting was over the top – it loved itself for all of that.  If a film truly allows itself to be campy and loves itself it, it can work.  Look at classics such as Dead Alive and, of course, Evil Dead.   Most amazingly, I didn’t even mind that the “monster” (aka Megan Fox’s cgi demon face) was shown very early in the film.  Now, usually in my horror bible, the monster needs to be kept out of view for most, if not all, of the film.  The unseen is scarier than the seen, and I’m sick of crappily done CGI aliens/demons/monsters taking all of my spinal chills away.  However, somehow, Jennifer’s Body was so much about the campiness and insanity of what was happening that seeing the contortions of Fox’s face actually added to the moment.  We knew what was hiding beneath the beauty queen and we loved it.  In all, my attention was captured for the entirety of the film and I walked out smiling…so…mission accomplished, right?

Eh…wrong…Jennifer’s Body has some SERIOUS serious problems, thus not getting the distinction of being a “go see it in the theatres film”.  The first problem is that apparently Diablo Cody can do no wrong and no one needs to edit her work.  Or, rather, she thinks that.  Don’t get me wrong: I loved Juno and I think that Cody has talent.  But editing = love.  Within the first five minutes of the film, I had heard enough made up language cutesy-isms to last me a lifetime.  Every other freaking word out of Megan Fox’s mouth was not an actual word.  I realize this is sort of Cody’s shtick but it needed to be toned down a lot.  When your audience is sitting there annoyed so much by overuse of made up language that they aren’t paying attention to your film, it’s a problem.  Sure, through in neologisms here and there, create a world within your film where “this is how people talk”, but reign it in a bit.  If someone doesn’t tell Diablo Cody how to speak actual American English soon, I may not be able to watch any more of her films.

The other major problem with Jennifer’s Body? It doesn’t know what the hell it is.  Is it a horror?  A comedy?  A satire?  A horror-com?  A combination of all of them?  I’m not saying every single film in the world needs to be clearly defined into a genre and then a subgenre so it can neatly be catalogued and boxed.  However, a film needs to know what it itself is.  It needs to know what tone it wants to set, what message or effect it wants to give – basically, what the hell it’s doing.  Jennifer’s Body flip-flopped between tones and ideas so much, I got dizzy.

1) On the one hand, it was clearly trying to at least somewhat be a horror.  Not every film/tv show/book based on the supernatural and occult has to be, but the way Jennifer was filmed added to the jump moments specked throughout the story showed that there was at least some horror going on.  But the tension was never maintained adequately to make the jump moments have any lasting anxiety.  It was like every time the film started to get a bit scary, we were completely pulled out of the moment.  Not in a horrorcom, “make them feel good so you catch them off guard” way, but in a “oh, wait, nevermind! Don’t be scared!” way.

2) The film was clearly set up to be a satire.  The whole juxtaposition of evil high school girl versus demonically evil high school girl was evident from the beginning.  The protagonists epitomize their respective high school castes – the nerd and the hot/sexy/easy chick.  The placement of these opposite characters as both friends and now enemies sets up an obvious parallel to social high school battles.  …ok…and now what?  Besides the set up, no parallels were actually drawn, no evidence was given for the audience to draw their own parallels, no larger statement was made.  Maybe the film just wasn’t intelligent enough to start making some deep social commentary, but it just didn’t get there.  It was like this giant structural framework was laid and then no one knew how to build an actual structure on top of it.

3) As for horrorcom, this film just lacked foundation on both sides.  There wasn’t enough horror for the comic moments to be chillingly hilarious and there wasn’t enough straight comedy for the horror moments to be surprisingly scary when they hit.  Horrorcom requires a very delicate balance in order not to fall into the realm of straight horror or straight comedy.  Jennifer’s Body certainly didn’t fall into either of the previous two categories, but it fell somewhere that certainly wasn’t the horrorcom middle ground either.

Given the lack of direction, I felt confused.  I felt like I was watching something incredibly half-baked.  I actually walked out of the theatre wondering if there was some reason a studio had rushed making this that they’d botched it so bad.  And, frankly, I felt disappointed.  The film had some really good elements, but it just waffled so much that it destroyed itself.  The problem with doing a campy film is that commitment is key.  Yes, the camp worked in this because it committed to the camp, but it also destroyed it too.  It had no serious writing/acting/filming to fall back on when it’s waffling ways kicked in (like, in my opinion, the French horror Martyrs did – great film in a lot of ways, but the story was half-assed.  Luckily, it was so well done that it managed to dupe a lot of people).  If it had picked what it was, whatever that thing that it wanted to be was and just stuck to that 110% it would have worked.  I would have been writing a review where I totally ate crow for so harshly judging the previews.  As it stands, I’m very meh on it.  It definitely killed my extremely low expectations but…eh, still not a great film.

Summary – see it if you find it on tv/video/redbox, but don’t go overly out of your way.  It’s a fun one for a beer and a saturday night but not worth it if you want any quality or coherent filmmaking.