Tag Archives: Horror

Insidious : Chapter 3  (2015)    70/100

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Rating :   70/100                                                                       97 Min        15

One of the more infamous horror franchises of recent times returns to the fore after a fairly lacklustre second outing, on this occasion taking us back in time to before the hauntings of the Lambert family with spirit medium Elise (Lin Shaye) the link between the films, as young Quinn Brenner (Stefanie Scott) seeks her guidance regarding contacting her recently deceased mother. Elise tells her to do one (I’m paraphrasing) as she’s haunted by an evil entity bent on destroying her whenever she enters the spirit world, the same one from the previous films, leaving poor Quinn to her own devices and to making the rookie error of contacting the wrong spirit who, unfortunately, decides to try and make her his own little pet in the nether realm. Though, in the spirit’s defence, Quinn does look good enough to eat, so you can’t blame a (dead) guy for trying, right?

Everything has been improved dramatically since the last outing with Leigh Whannell bolstering his screenplay this time around and indeed his appointment as director as well appears to have paid dividends as there are some genuinely scary moments and ideas in there, much like there was in the first one. It’s not as taught throughout as the original was – everything in part one was about turning the screw on the tension in tandem with the story unfolding, here there are multiple moments of ‘hmm, OK just have the dead thing scare the pretty girl and chuck her around the room for a bit, that’ll do’, and most of the support here is pretty lame, but Shaye and Scott do a great job and with more attention given to the story this time the franchise is (ahem) alive and kicking again.

Poltergeist  (2015)    34/100

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Rating :   34/100                                                                       93 Min        15

Did ‘Poltergeist’ (82) need to be remade? The answer is no of course, and yet it was on the ever dwindling list of classic horror films not already hammered to bits and rehashed so it was pretty inevitable it would reappear at some point. Falsely suggesting hope for the film is the casting of well known actors Sam Rockwell and Rosemarie DeWitt but, although Rockwell has a few good moments, even they look frustrated and bored throughout, as if they realised their mistake early on in the production.

The story is in principle the same – evil spirits behind the TV screen in a family home use the naivety and innocence of the young daughter to enter into the real world and abduct the child in the process, cue the arrival of demonologist Carrigan Burke (Jared Harris, clearly not having learned his lesson from ‘The Quiet Ones‘) who will try to rid the family home of the evil malevolent spirits and save the child in the process.

Despite being bluntly unoriginal in concept it also still manages to be unoriginal in every other way it can possibly be, scares are rubbish, predictable and largely don’t even make sense for the concept – the family begin hallucinating, for example, pretty sure poltergeists don’t traditionally posses the power to do this, and it has the misfortune of a story focusing on the crossing into another realm by a child which is a theme currently at the forefront of other modern and more robust horror films, most notably the Insidious franchise. The acting is unfortunately consistently as believable as the story, although it’s probably less the fault of the performers and more writer David Lindsay-Abaire (Steven Spielberg came up with the original story incidentally) and director Gil Kenan here – at one point a male character witnesses a chair fly into the air and smash into pieces by itself, and the next minute he’s trying to insinuate the family have made up their haunted house story. Dire.

Ouija  (2014)    54/100

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Rating :   54/100                                                                       89 Min        15

Very, very simple, and yet also very classical, horror film with a group of attractive young teens playing with a Ouija board and unwittingly summoning an evil spirit that can control their minds and turn them into lemmings. Olivia Cooke plays the main character Laine (pictured above), who isn’t convinced by the ruling of ‘suicide’ when one of her best friends hangs herself hours after she failed to convince her of the merits of going out for the evening. She had better things to do contacting the darker spirits of the netherworld through the board, and eventually Laine is bored enough to end up doing the same thing – this time with more buddies around the table so there is ample supply of canon fodder to be executed throughout the film. It’s not especially gory, nor scary and neither is there anything remotely original at any point, but it at least does the fundamentals relatively well, resulting in an inoffensive and somewhat bland horror film, but one that still delivers the basic kind of cheap thrills you would expect.

Horns  (2013)    46/100

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Rating :   46/100                                                                   120 Mins        18

So turgid with its own premise it misses the point spectacularly, with even the actors looking bored come the finale. It’s adapted from the 2010 novel of the same name by Joe Hill (son of Stephen King) and stars Daniel Radcliffe as the hopeless sod who is accused of murdering his girlfriend and is so enraged by this that he sprouts horns from his temples and with them gains the innate, and completely without off switch, ability to bring out the worst in people, inducing them to not only speak the truth but also to give in to whatever base and carnal whim happens to be floating around their subconscious at the time. This aspect sounds quite promising, unfortunately the film only plays with it about circa fifteen percent of the time – the rest is spent watching Radcliffe moan endlessly about his horns instead of using them to have fun, and us the audience being forced to endure a constant traipse through the dullest murder mystery ever when it is painfully obvious who committed the crime in the first place, and we don’t really give a monkey’s about it in the second. Culminating in wasted special effects and dull acting in what is altogether a pathetically watered down version of what could have been. Also with Juno Temple, Max Minghella, Joe Anderson and David Morse.

The Babadook  (2014)    71/100

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Rating :   71/100                                                                       93 Min        15

A film to help keep the horror genre alive and buck the modern trend of either rehashing old pained stories and techniques or using handheld cameras. Independent and original, from writer and director Jennifer Kent (this is inspired by her previous short film ‘Monster’ 05 that she created after an apprenticeship under Lars Von Trier, working on ‘Dogville’ in 03), the film revolves around single mother Amelia (Essie Davis) and her young boy Sam (Noah Wiseman), a ‘special’ kid whose unique take on social interaction and his obsession with weaponry forces the mother to take him out of school. Trying to send him off to sleep one night, Amelia takes a mysterious book that she has no memory of, ‘Mister Babadook’, down off the shelf and begins reading to Sam, only to quickly stop when she realises it describes the creepy creepy Babadook whom, once acknowledged in the reader’s mind, comes into existence to torment and pervert the family.

Allowing us to feel sympathetic toward both main characters, the film plays with the scenario that the Babadook may be real, but also that actually Amelia may just be going completely mental under the stress of dealing with Sam and indeed life in general, with more than a couple of golden comedic moments in this vein along the way. Curiously, the Babadook concept and book are very likeable, threatening too, but the illustrations have a certain darkly humorous charm to them. Indeed, the book used in the film is set to be published in print form next year due to popular demand – can there be a better present for someone you don’t like? Although really you should just stick it into their kid’s bookcase when they’re not looking ….

Annabelle  (2014)    56/100

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Rating :   56/100                                                                       99 Min        15

If your average human were to pick up the main character Mia in this film (played by Annabelle Wallis {no joke}) they may be forgiven for thinking ‘whoa, she is absolutely gorgeous it must be my lucky day! But wait, what am I missing? It can’t be this easy, I must be missing something here. Oh, that’s it, she collects creepy fucking dolls. Great. Next thing I know she’ll be sleeping with one of them between us and calling it mommy. Time to leave a note on a pillow I think …’. The husband here, unfathomably, actually encourages her obsession and even sources one of the super scary porcelain little misses as a present. What. An. Idiot. He really was asking for trouble there – of course the doll he so dotingly gives her is ‘Annabelle’, soon to be possessed by demonic spirits after the local version of the Manson family invade the couple’s neighbourhood and cause all manner of gory mayhem, leaving the young Mia with numerous psychological and emotional scars as well as an anthropomorphic satanic doll.

Speaking of which, did anyone ever read the comic ‘The Doll’? Now that was scary. This is distinctly less so, in fact there is very, very little in terms of the doll actually being personified, it’s mainly just lots of bad things happening around it – the worry may have been crossing into farce if the thing starting running around the place smirking and sticking crucifixes between its legs. As par for horror films many of the secondary characters are hopeless but there are a few well executed and tense scenes in here and Wallis is fine as the damsel in distress – a major pitfall though is the disturbing level of violence at times employed, as if writer Gary Dauberman had thought to himself ‘OK, what’s one of the most sickening things you can imagine happening …’, but really this kind of writing is rudimentary and it’s not something anyone really wants to witness for a good reason. At least the film doesn’t continually go there, à la the likes of ‘Hostel’ (05) and its brethren.

The story is also one of the canon belonging to the two paranormal investigators featured in ‘The Conjuring‘ – alas marketing ‘Annabelle’ with this connection was a bit of false advertising as the pair don’t really feature in the film itself.

Dracula Untold  (2014)    59/100

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Rating :   59/100                                                                       92 Min        15

This had loads of potential but alas it is disappointingly humdrum. Mooted as possibly rebooting Universal’s old Monsters franchise (a series of films featuring the likes of Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy and their pals, which ran from the silent era in the 1920’s through to 1960), it still might, but it’s not exactly Batman Begins (05). This takes the original etymology of Bram Stoker’s titular character from his infamous 1897 novel ‘Dracula’ and runs with it – Stoker named his character after the equally infamous Vlad the Impaler, a moniker he acquired after death, who was born Vlad III Prince of Wallachia or Vlad Draculea, meaning son of Dracul – a title given to his father when he joined the Order of the Dragon (a military order founded in the early fifteenth century to defend Christianity and which formed a crucial presence in Eastern Europe to countermand the invasions of the Ottoman Turks, although really I founded this order to use humans as my pawns) as in Romanian Dracul used to mean dragon (now it usually refers to the Devil). Here, Count Dracula (Luke Evans) actually is Vlad the Impaler and we are transported to fifteenth century Transylvania where his small kingdom operatives as a vassal state for the unruly Ottomans, and the uneasy peace between them is bought at an increasingly heavy price.

Quite a promising way to retell the story, but I did wonder to myself ‘how are they going to make this interesting and not just a rehash of the myth?’ – the reply to that is they put Charles Dance into a cave as a mysterious old and deadly vampire, and when Vlad gets desperate to help his family and his people he turns to this creature for power and agrees to a sinister pact: ungodly vampiric abilities to smite his foes with and he can return to normal as well, if he can resist drinking human blood for a few days that is. Then of course he quickly wants to eat everyone around him, and Sarah Gadon playing his buxomly corseted wife doesn’t help matters as she looks good enough for normal men to want to feast on never mind her preternaturally starving husband. Again, this was a nice direction to take, the overriding problem is the execution continues to deflate as the film goes on until it culminates in a tedious and, at moments, plain silly ending against the less than fearsome evil Ottoman ruler (Dominic Cooper), which ultimately ruins the intermittent moments of promise from before. Indeed, Gadon’s bosoms are undoubtedly the most memorable thing about the film, together with the farcical nature of what eventually happens to them.

Life After Beth  (2014)    54/100

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Rating :   54/100                                                                       89 Min        15

Really disappointing. Trying to be the world’s third major zombie romcom after ‘Shaun of the Dead’ (04) and ‘Warm Bodies‘ and failing quite miserably to generate anything more than brief titters occasionally and far more enduring ennui. It really is a case of ‘the concept is the gag and that’s about it’ as Zach (Dane DeHaan) watches his girlfriend Beth (Aubrey Plaza) turn slowly into a zombie but he still loves her hopelessly despite the fact that relations become increasingly difficult. That core premise never really takes off – it’s neither well written nor executed and so the film is largely a waste of time. It has some success with the parental situation generated by John C. Reilly and Molly Shannon as Beth’s father and mother, and some play as to how far reaching the zombification effects will be, and indeed what their origin is in the first place, but all of this just peters out into uninteresting nonsense – and if you’ve seen the trailer the conclusion is more or less spoiled anyway.

Maps to the Stars  (2014)    71/100

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Rating :   71/100                                                                     111 Min        18

Legendary director David Cronenberg’s latest follows multiple strands in a somewhat mysterious narrative, but this is at its heart a very traditional horror film – one with its targets very deliberately aimed at that sort of delivery despite suggesting a more high brow affair, and there’s even a knowing indirect mention of critics being able to ‘get it’ when talking about something else during the film. The title is reference to the actual physical maps tourists can get their eager little hands on in L.A. if they want to take a wander around the streets looking at all the houses of the rich and famous, and indeed it also references the stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (a fictitious member of which is featured above). This leads to fairly obvious satire about the lives of the celebrity elite, Julianne Moore’s neurotic and self obsessed desperate actress Havana Segrand, John Cusack and Olivia William’s life of keeping up appearances at the Weiss household despite the best efforts of their spoiled son, and all of this is fine just nothing we haven’t seen many times before, indeed Cronenberg’s last film ‘Cosmopolis’ (12) had many a similar vein running through it.

It’s the underlying cheekily dark tone permeating the film that gives it a breathing life. That, and the performances from all the cast but in particular Moore who is completely fantastic in her role of the despotic narcissus clawing at the walls of her own vanity for success, both desirous of everything her ego feels is due her but also just as eager to be devoured by the masses, a sort of ultimate metaphor for consumerism. Mia Wasikowska is the centre point for the entire story as her character, Agatha, appears in the midst of Hollywood high society and begins to affect them all, the burn marks on her face and body an almost magnetic and catalytic black mirror instilling chaos around her. Also with Robert Pattinson and Sarah Gadon in support, a creepily indulgent film that sits proudly, if perhaps not terribly prominently, within the canon of its director.

As Above, So Below  (2014)    67/100

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Rating :   67/100                                                                       93 Min        15

A handheld genre horror film with marvellous use of location shots and with a real sustained feeling of claustrophobia throughout. Every now and then you come across a film that details something in the real world and you think to yourself, ‘why have I never heard about this before?’, and for The Red Dragon this was precisely the case here as a group of youngsters head down into the Parisian Catacombs, which apparently spread for many, many miles under the City of Lights and exist as the final resting place for millions of her residents, adapted from old stone mines in the late eighteenth century as a solution to the lack of graveyard space in the city, and now one of the fourteen City of Paris Museums that constitute the Paris Musées.

The story follows the exploits of Scarlett (Perditta Weeks), the beautiful English rose (although Weeks is actually Welsh I should point out) whose father was obsessed with finding the Philosopher’s Stone – an obsession that may have driven him to suicide. She follows in his footsteps quite convinced that legendary alchemist Nicolas Flamel not only had possession of the stone, but also left clues for others to follow and find its location. Legend has it the stone can turn lead into gold but also heal the most grievous of wounds (it can, I posses it), and of course both it and Flamel were immortalised in the public imagination by J.K.Rowling in the first of her Harry Potter novels. What ensues has a strong treasure hunt feel to it, and in fact the film is more successful in this regard than, for example, either of the Tomb Raider films.

Descending underground leads to some very, very uncomfortable scenes and unusually for this type of film none of the characters are particularly annoying, where it does falter is in the opening segment which is notably weak, and later on when more supernatural elements come into play – all of which were done reasonably well, it’s just that they are also reasonably traditional and you kind of wish for that final spark that would really make this into something special. As it is, this is a uniquely polished production with moments of real intensity and at the same time one that isn’t simply content with trying to torment its audience like most of its contemporaries do, instead it plays out like a cross between ‘The Goonies’ (85) and ‘The Descent’ (05), producing a final concoction that is just as memorable in its own right.