Cult Movie Review: Paranormal Activity 3 (2011)

I finally screened the inevitable Paranormal Activity 3 (2011) and aside from a few quibbles about the authenticity of the setting and milieu (VHS), I felt it was a more-than-serviceable entry in the series.  This new edition of the “found footage” franchise comes from directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, the masterminds behind the brilliant is-it-or-isn’t-it-a-documentary Catfish, which I reviewed here. Paranormal Activity 3 is not in the same class as the powerful, surprising and emotional Catfish, but the jump scares, at least, are splendidly choreographed.  There’s a visual ingenuity behind this installment of Paranormal Activity that the other series films lacked, and which provides a modicum of originality.

Paranormal Activity 3 escorts viewers back to late 1988, a span during which Katie and Kristi – the two women “haunted” by a demon in installments one and two – are little girls.  Their new Dad, Dennis (Chris Nicholas Smith) is an underemployed wedding videographer.  After making a sex tape with his wife Julie (Lauren Bittner), he unexpectedly spots something unusual in the footage: dust landing upon what appears to be a ghost…and being shaken off by the nearly invisible presence.  This creepy incident spurs Dennis to set up video cameras around the house and stage an around-the-clock, day-after-day vigil.  What Dennis ultimately sees happening to his step-children, their babysitter and his own assistant videographer, Randy, drives the family out of the house in a panic…and into the loving arms of Grandma Lois (Hallie Foote), who boasts a few secrets of her own…

The most significant problems with Paranormal Activity 3 are ones of presentation authenticity.  The footage we see in the film is widescreen in format, thus clearly not originating from a video camera in use circa 1988.  The aspect ratio should be 4:3 (like it was in The Blair Witch Project), and the makers of this film could certainly have mirrored the grain and blur of old videotape without completely sacrificing watchability. So if you’re a stickler for details like that, Paranormal Activity 3 doesn’t pass muster. If you ever shot a home video in the late 1980s or early 1990s, you realize the footage doesn’t look anything like what we view in this film

And despite a guest appearance by the once-popular talking teddy bear Teddy Ruxpin and a mention of MacGyver, Paranormal Activity never really feels as though it is occurring in the 1980s.  The house where most of the action occurs looks too big and open to be a house of that time period. To see what expensive, middle-class homes looked like in the 1980s, I would refer you to Risky Business (1983) or Sixteen Candles (1984).  But the home featured here, with its wide open spaces and vaulted ceiling very much looks like 21^st century McMansion chic.  I’m not saying no houses like one this existed thirty years ago, only that the setting contributes nothing to the feeling that we’re watching something that occurred in the last months of Ronald Reagan’s presidency.  The fashions and haircuts don’t look right either.  A babysitter shows up and appears as though she’s dressed for a sock hop in the late 1950s, not the late 1980s.

In visualization, I would compare Paranormal Activity negatively with Apollo 18(2011), a much-derided found footage film that actually did a more-than-admirable job of recreating 1970s technology and detail, but which people hated anyway.  Paranormal Activity 3 can’t compare so far as visualization, or in the capturing of a specific decade in recent American history.

But probablythat kind of thing doesn’t matter to most viewers.  What Paranormal Activity 3 does possess in spades are some of the scariest and most inventive “jump” moments in the franchise thus far.  About mid-way through the film, Dennis sets up a video camera on an oscillating fan, so it can ping-pong from a view of the kitchen to the foyer and back again.  Standing right in the middle of the frame — between rooms – is a structural column which obscures a critical part of that interior landscape.  One scene mines this set-up perfectly, as a mysterious figure under a sheet slowly approaches an unawares babysitter.  The reveal in this scene is breathtakingly scary, made more so by the predictable but ultimately unrevealing movement of the camera.  And this isn’t the only moment of genuine terror in the film.

Another moment of throat-tightening tension and horror emerges as little Katie (Chloe Csengery) and the videographer’s assistant Randy (Dustin Ingram) stand in a small upstairs bathroom and play a game of Bloody Mary in the darkness while facing a wall-length mirror.  The scene escalates and escalates, until your anxiety is palpable.  Part of what sells this scene so effectively is the performance by Ingram.  He’s the only adult in the house at this point, and he has a child to protect.  But he also experiences something absolutely horrifying.  How his voice and behavior shifts from outright panic to false reassurance, for Katie’s sake, is nothing short of brilliant.  This moment may represent the finest scene in the film, and it’s because we sympathize completely with Randy’s situation.  He’s got a child to protect, but on the other side of the bathroom door – the only escape route – all hell is breaking loose.

One of the unintentionally funny aspects of the Paranormal Activity film series thus far has been the dramatic over-use of wire work.  Main characters are suddenly pulled and yanked down stairs, out of houses, and across rooms by an invisible demon.  The effect has been so overdone that it has lost its impact.  Paranormal Activity 3 dials these “demon yanks” down to an absolute minimum (just once, I believe), and  charts horror in more unusual and creative set-ups.  One such set-up is the final straw that sends the family fleeing their home  It occurs in the kitchen, and involves the oscillating fan/video camera set-up again.  Once more, I’ve got to give this devil his due: this moment is splendidly vetted, and absolutely unexpected, a cascade of terror that will scare the hell out of you.  Once more, the trick comes in the clever mining of expectations.  The droning oscillation, back and forth, has become predictable and anticipated, but in the span of one ping pong, something totally amazing – and horrific – occurs.

I was agnostic about Paranormal Activity 2 because it employed what I termed in my review the Michael Myers principle.  In other words, the film began to add meat to the bones of the franchise story arc, much the way Halloween II (1981) introduced the notion that Laurie was actually Michael’s sister, and that he was killing his family members.  It was an explanation, sure, but did we really need an explanation for the Shape, for the Bogeyman?  Knowing why he killed people just took away some of the terrifying ambiguity of the character.  Similarly, in terms of  the hauntings in Paranormal Activity 3, do we really need to know all the details of why a nasty demon, here an imaginary friend called Toby, is menacing Katie and her sister, Kristi?

In this case, however, Paranormal Activity 3’s many additions to franchise lore and the larger story are undeniably effective. The characters are paper-thin in concept, background, and development. Therefore, any deepening of them, even if it mitigates, overall, the franchise’s sense of ambiguity, is likely a good thing.  With this film, you get a pretty good sense of where Katie and Kristi came from, how evil came into their lives, who summoned it  and how it was wed to Katie. Literally.

I can’t argue persuasively that Paranormal Activity 3 is anything deeper than an entertaining and scary movie, but even on those limited terms it is possibly the best of this particular franchise.  Like the other two entries, the film must devote a lot of time and energy to justifying its own existence and appearance.  When Julie, Dennis’s wife, gets upset about the video cameras running all the time, for instance, she says “This ends tomorrow!”    Tomorrow?!  Why not right now?  Well, because the video cameras must be running for one, more, creep-filled night, of course.  Therefore, Julie’s dialogue provides the screenwriters some wiggle room.  Also, Dennis and Randy garner evidence of malevolent entity activity early in the film, and delay from telling Julie – or even seeming worried – for far too long.  Beyond all reason, in fact.  The film kind of cheats about that point, and doesn’t really grapple with the fact that Dennis is playing Russian Roulette with two little girls’ lives.

Not all the plot-lines are developed well, either.  In one early scene, Julie’s mother complains (before the recording camera) about Dennis’s lack of significant income.  She’s pretty hard on him.  Now remember, Dennis is reviewing all the footage every single day, so – of course – he would see this conversation.  You might think he’d have an opinion, or confront his wife about it.  But the movie never even makes clear that he’s seen it.  It’s just a dropped thread.

As I wrote in regards to Paranormal Activity 2, the one thing I appreciate most about these films is how they linger in that potent idea of sleepy twilight, of being awake at 3:15 in the morning, and not quite having an accurate sense of what is going on.  That’s a scary, confusing time to be awakened, when a strange bump in the night can really get the adrenaline going.  Paranormal Activity lives in that realm too, and quite successfully so.   The world is asleep, or should be, but something unsettling lurks just at the edges of perception.  I think we’ve all experienced this feeling, and can relate to the characters’ situations.

In the past, I have been tough on the Paranormal Activity franchise  because of what I perceive as its over-eager desire to please and satisfy.  For instance, I absolutely hate the final shot of the first film, where Katie’s face morphs into that of a demon right on screen, so no one can complain (a la The Blair Witch Project) that they didn’t’ get their money’s worth, that they didn’t see the monster.    Nope, we get a perfectly framed, perfectly clear close-up!  But this time around, I noticed that in some weird way, the Paranormal Activity movies — and this one especially — may be working overtime to increase the attention-span of the average movie goer.  So much of this film’s running time is devoted to the routine panning back and forth, or the quiet recording of (apparently) empty rooms.  This technique not only generates suspense, it encourages one to look closely at absolutely everything, to make a mental snapshot in your head of what item is where, what light is turned on, and what, if anything, is moving in the frame.  Sure, this technique may be the cinematic equivalent of “Where’s Waldo?” but it nonetheless encourages an engaged, active audience.

If you’re a regular reader here, you know how I prefer horror movies that speak to matters of philosophy and offer social commentary.  I gravitate towards genre films that give me something to think about and chew on.  I can’t really claim thatParanormal Activity 3 – unlike Catfish – really includes that sort of material.  In terms of plot, it also plays a lot like the (much superior) The Last Exorcism.  But nonetheless, the film’s 84 minutes pass quickly, every jump scare actually works pretty successfully, and some of the “scare” set-ups are nothing sort of genius in terms of choreography  That’s enough for at least one viewing, I reckon.

With Paranormal Activity, the third time is definitely the charm…

Movie Trailer: Paranormal Activity 3 (2011)

Television and Cinema Verities: In the Words of the Creators #7

“Horror is always the same.  It just changes with the culture and changes with the technology.  The stories are always the same.  There are just two basic stories in horror, two simple ones – evil is outside and evil is in here [pointing to his heart].  That is basically it.”

- Director John Carpenter discusses the nature of the horror genre in an interview from 2010 at Icon vs. Icon.

CULT MOVIE REVIEW: The Innkeepers (2012)

The Innkeepers (2012), the newest horror movie from director Ti West, combines the world view of Kevin Smith’s landmark working-class comedy Clerks (1994) with the precise visuals of Stanley Kubrick’s glacial, blood-freezing The Shining (1980) and emerges, rather commendably, as a new genre masterpiece. 

West’s previous film, House of the Devil (2008) was one of the finest horror films of its year because West slowly, methodically, and determinedly generated an atmosphere of escalating, suffocating tension and anxiety.  He repeats that accomplishment to great effect in The Innkeepers, unexpectedly transforming what could easily be a shaggy dog story into an impressive character piece that reminds the audience of the fact that we’re all connected, and that death is inevitable.

Kevin Smith’s brilliant freshman film, Clerks, might best be expressed quickly by its funny ad line: “Just because they serve you doesn’t mean they like you.”   As you no doubt recall, the film involved two convenience store employees, Dante and Randal, who were smart and savvy enough to write their own tickets in the professional world and yet, for some reason, couldn’t seem to leave their extended adolescence and low-paying work behind.  The low-budget film remains something of a Generation X touchstone, and one of my favorite films.

That very vibe has been picked up, developed, and updated well in The Innkeepers, particularly in the depiction of the two lead characters: hotel clerks at the soon-to-be-closed Yankee Pedlar Hotel.   Sara Paxton plays Claire, a fetching young woman of admirable intelligence and wit who is nonetheless wasting time at a dead-end job.  She tells a guest in the house she is “between stuff,” and that description suits the character and her ennui perfectly.  Claire could indeed write her ticket, if she so chose, but seems to be waiting for something…for a signal, perhaps, that her life should begin in earnest.  Her cohort on the job is laconic, vaguely hostile Luke (Pat Healy), an anti-social geek who spends his spare time looking for ghosts in the hotel, and designing a web site related to paranormal activity.  Luke has a crush on Claire, even though she is a good deal younger, and is also totally uncommitted to the job at hand.

The Innkeepers does a good job of charting the exigencies of life in the Yankee Pedlar Inn. One scene has Claire wrestling a recalcitrant garbage bag, trying to get it inside a dumpster on the street.  The scene might as well serve as a metaphor for life and its inherent frustrations.  At times, we all feel like we’re the ones hauling around that messy garbage bag, and not quite getting it where it’s supposed to go.

Other scenes explicitly involve Luke’s anti-social nature. He’s the more distinctly “Randal” component of the duo.  He can’t seem to remember to bring his guests their towels, no matter how often he is asked.  And worse, he actively insults the guests, revealing his true contempt for them.

Throughout the film, these two clerks banter, drink, and occasionally search for the ghost of Madeline O’Malley, the spirit believed to be haunting the premises.   Claire relates to the myth of O’Malley more than even she fully understands.  “Imagine how she feels, being stuck here forever?” Claire asks at one point, drawing an explicit comparison between her dead end job and O’Malley’s dead-end afterlife. 

What could be worse than spending eternity in the place you died?  Perhaps spending eternity in the low-paying job you absolutely hate…

Soon, an element of the unknown enters the clerks’ lives when a new guest, played by Kelly McGillis, stays at the hotel on closing weekend.  She’s a dedicated psychic medium, one who believes she can contact the spirit world.  More than that, she informs Claire that there is no present, no past, no future, and that all humans — throughout time — share a membrane of connection.  Rather dramatically, this psychic, Leanne, reveals to Claire that there are actually three spirits inhabiting the hotel, not one. 

She also reveals, incidentally,  that Claire should – at all costs – stay out of the basement…

Naturally, since this is a horror movie, Claire does finally go down into the basement, and her decision to defy the medium’s instructions presents the film it’s hair-raising, spellbinding and absolutely scarring climax. 

The last ten minutes of the movie are wholly terrifying, and they actually troubled my slumber the night my wife and I screened the film.  I’ve heard some people describe the film as boring, but what this comes down to, I suspect, is the kind of horror fan you are.  If you’re in it just for the kicks and the gore, The Innkeepers won’t be your cup of tea.  It’s too deliberate, too precise (like The Shining) to appeal as a visceral thrill-fest.  Oppositely, if you’re into the horror genre because you appreciate a slow burn and spine-tingling suspense, I guarantee you won’t be disappointed.  This film delivers.

From The Shining and Kubrick, Ti West adopts much of his visual template.  The Innkeepers is dominated by long, slow, quiet shots of empty hallways, dark corridors, and vacant rooms.  West patiently erects a sense of suspense around these still moments so that when the ghosts “appear” (and boy do they appear…), the feeling of shock is palpable.  Also, West breaks up his narrative into separate, almost self-contained  ”episodes” (The Long Weekend, Madeline O’Malley and The Final Guest), much in the way Kubrick broke up segments of The Shining to present a sense of routine and boredom; a distinct contrast to the film’s final, violent action.

As much as West masters the inner-space of the gloomy, creepy Yankee Pedlar Hotel, he likewise masters the psychology of his lead characters.  Right now, we seem to be on the cusp of another “lost generation,” especially given the Great Recession and the slow recovery.   

If you think about it, Clerks really did emerge from an analagous  historical context, only there it was the Recession after the first President Bush, rather than the Recession after the second President Bush.

Accordingly, The Innkeepers plays in the uncomfortable terrain of economic uncertainty: of hotel closings and dead-end jobs that you don’t dare quit…because you know there’s nothing else out there.   The narrative deals with people who have changed careers (Leanne used to be a TV star), who are losing their jobs (the hotel is closing) and are looking for a second or third act (Luke, with the webs site).  The uncertainty of our times plays well with the uncertainty of the film’s text, and you must assume this is exactly what West intended.

Sara Paxton, Paul Healy and Kelly McGillis all do extraordinary jobs of creating quirky, intriguing and most of all, real people in this all-too-familiar context.  Paxton and Healy also share some great chemistry, and their scenes together are alive with wit and humor.  These clerks of The Innkeepers are – like the immortal Randal and Dante —  two people you feel you already know in your life.

Which, of course, makes their ordeal in the film all the more harrowing, and affecting.  As it should be.

I would like to write much more about The Innkeepers, but I really shouldn’t.  The film’s conclusion is so intelligently wrought, so perfectly executed, that I don’t wish to do the film (or West) the disservice of over-explaining or over-analyzing before many people get to the chance to see the thing.

Suffice it to say that Ti West’s The Innkeepers unfolds with a sense of  inevitability that is, simply, mind-blowing.   The Innkeepers is a triumph, one of those rare and wondrous horror movies that you must watch twice just to pick up all the clues, and to see how everything holds together.   This “ghost story for the minimum wage” impressed me on every level, and and makes me look forward to West’s next film with tremendous excitement.

Movie Trailer: The Innkeepers (2012)

CULT MOVIE REVIEW: Frozen (2010)

It’s an understatement to declare that I didn’t care much for director Adam Green’s first feature, Hatchet (2007).  In fact, I called it a “hack job.” 

In short, I felt Hatchet was a poorly-executed skit involving the slasher film paradigm, a one-dimensional, tongue-in-cheek exercise that never managed to establish, even minimally, a legitimate sense of place despite being set in a picturesque Louisiana bayou.  The film never offered a compelling or believable reality and instead seemed like an overlong and obvious joke.

But today, I’m singing a (happy) new tune regarding Adam Green’s work because I just screened his extraordinary 2010 horror film, Frozen.

Unlike Hatchet, Frozen settles down immediately in a well-drawn locale, and Green here reveals  a fine eye for detail, nuance, and character.  In the first fifteen minutes alone, the director imbues his film with an authentic sense of anticipation and dread.

More than that, this inventive horror movie doesn’t attempt to be cute or precious by directing audience attention to familiar genre conventions.  Instead,  Frozen dramatically eschews all such post-modern trappings and depicts a simple, harrowing narrative of survival in a fashion that — as the title indicates –makes your blood run cold. 

In Frozen, three college students, Joe Lynch (Shawn Ashmore), Dan (Kevin Zegers) and Dan’s girlfriend, Parker (Emma Bell) take a weekend ski trip to Mount Holliston.  Then, as the sun sets, they decide to make one last night-time run on the slopes. 

Because of a simple misunderstanding and shift change, however, the employees at the lodge shut off the ski-lift while the threesome is in mid-passage to the distant summit.  The machine grinds to a halt, and the three students become trapped on the lift. 

At first, Lynch, Dan and Parker try to dismiss the gravity of their situation high above the mountain, in hopes that they will soon be discovered and rescued.  Before long, however, the college students realize that it is Sunday evening, and that the park doesn’t open again for five days…until Friday. 

Worse, a storm is coming.  If they don’t find a way down from the immobile air-lift (where they sit side-by-side like sardines), they are certain to freeze to death.

What follows this grim realization is roughly forty five minutes of pure, gut-wrenching terror as one attempt after another to reach safety goes horribly, wretchedly awry.  Challenges and dangers lurk everywhere.  On the ground, for instance, hungry wolves soon begin to gather.  And high-up, ensconced on the lift, Parker develops a bad case of frost bite. 

Dan suggests jumping to the ground far below, but that avenue carries significant risk of grievous bodily harm…

Soon, Frozen’s protagonists make fateful decisions in an attempt to stay alive, and survive the increasingly unfriendly elements.

So forget the colorfully-named Three on a Meathook (1973), this is Three on a Ski-Lift. 

While watching  Frozen, I was pleasantly reminded of Open Water (2004), another take-no-prisoners horror film about unlucky people attempting to survive in an inhospitable location, in that instance the deep blue sea.  

Both films represent the brand of horror film I really and truly admire the most: those which deal explicitly with the cruel application of random fate.  As if to suggest the wheels of fate or destiny forever spinning, Green commences his film with close-up views of the ski lift’s whirring, over sized gears.  These gears work efficiently and endlessly,  but also without consideration for human concerns, these compositions appear to assert. Much like Mother Nature herself.

To put this bluntly, Frozen revolves around the big, unanswered questions of our human existence (and the reason why so many people seek the comfort of religion):  why do terrible things happen to us , or to the people we love?  How can a seemingly perfect day turn on a dime and become a horrible nightmare?  What does it all mean?

Likewise, in Frozen, the three intelligent and likable protagonists could not — at the beginning of the day – have possibly imagined where they would be at the end of the same day.  They embark on a rather terrible “wrong turn” and must suddenly reckon with their very mortality.  Their previous concerns, which include Joe acquiring and remembering a girl’s telephone number, suddenly seem incredibly trivial.  This is a reminder that we take our lives pretty much for granted every single day.  We go about our tasks and our hobbies without real regard for the fact that, out of the blue, it could end.  The shadow of death is upon us, whether we see and recognize it or not.

As Dan, Lynch and Parker grapple with their rapidly worsening situation on the ski lift, drastic measures eventually become necessary, and it’s fascinating — and terrifying — to watch as they broach such life-and- death decisions.  For me, this aspect of Frozen represents the very beating heart of the great horror movie aesthetic.  When you separate the genre from its mitigating and ameloriating fantasy elements like vampires, monsters or aliens, this is precisely the equation you’re left with: a palpable recognition and fear of impending death. 

The battle for survival is all, and intractable, uncaring nature itself is the enemy.  All along, watching a film such as Frozen, the audience meaningfully ponders the idea “there but for the grace of God go I…” because any one of us, could, reasonably speaking, end up in a similarly dangerous situation, forced to make painful choices. 

Who is going to live and who is going to die?  Is there a pecking order in terms of survival?  Who should be the one to jump from the chair? 

Even, how am I going to take a piss up here?

One of Frozen’s best and most moving moments involve a character’s final act as he is set upon by a pack of very angry-looking wolves.  Without a word, this character pulls his hat down over his eyes so he can’t see what’s coming, and the simple gesture feels very, very real.  There’s little else to do in that moment, but to look away from the inevitable.  Frozen is unblinking about death, but the film’s human protagonists, appropriately, are not.  Again, this gesture is pretty darn metaphorical: we all pull the hat down over our eyes in regards to the fact that we don’t really control nature.  Or the fact that one day, for each of us, this ride towards an unknown summit is going to come to an end.

So make no mistake, in reckoning with all of  this existentialist angst, Frozen is unrelentingly grim. 

The characters in the film inevitably debate the worst way to die, and then even discuss the traumatic horrors of 9/11. 

By film’s end, the same characters are contemplating the fact that their pets could very well starve to death if they don’t get down from the lift.  It’s not exactly a mood lifter.

The cast in Frozen is pretty terrific, but Shawn Ashmore as Lynch is the stand-out.  Early on, we can see that Lynch feels guilty as the “odd man out” when the threesome must decide who should jump from the lift.  He doesn’t want to be the one to jump, but it’s clear to him that he should, morally, be the one to do it, since he is not part of the “couple.”  This doesn’t mean he does the right thing.

Later, Lynch deals with recriminations over his actions (and lack of action) and recounts some humanizing stories about the lost opportunities in his life.  Rarely, if ever, do these revelations feel like the machinations of a writer, but rather like real life human expressions of regret as the end, inevitably, nears.  Green utilizes a lot of close-ups to tell his tale which is an appropriate tactic for fostering empathy.  We’re clearly meant to sympathize with these protagonists, and  Lynch, Dan and Parker are not extraordinary in any particular way.  They aren’t heroes and they aren’t assholes who “have it coming.”  Instead, they are just like you and me: people who are living their lives, not really thinking about matters such as life and death. 

As you probably know by now, I often very much enjoy films that accomplish a lot with only a few resources.  The low budget Frozen is basically a three person show occurring in just one setting.  But it’s never dull, the ending is never pre-ordained, and Green masterfully sustains tension throughout the full hour-and-a-half running time.  This is no small challenge, but Green, in vetting his story well, reminds the viewer how all our lives hang by a thread (or a metal cable, perhaps).  Sometimes, we don’t realize that fact until it’s too late.

A note to the squeamish: Frozen is pretty gory.  There are only three primary characters, and one scene of intense gore proved so disgusting and upsetting that my (patient) wife actually leapt up from the sofa and refused to sit back down.  I had to freeze the movie and literally talk her back down. I had to convince her to watch the rest of the movie with me…and — believe me – it wasn’t easy.   My wife’s reaction was absolutely appropriate, of course.  Something so awful happens to a truly likable character here that you’ll be tempted to tune out and say “enough’s enough.”

But of course, the chareacters in the drama don’t have that out, do they?  Instead, they have a front row seat to a friend’s horrible and violent death, with no opportunity to protest the absolute unfairness of the situation.   In exploring that situation — that human truth about our mortality – Frozen proves damned serious business.

After the film, my wife and I debated it rather heatedly.  She said Frozen was depressing because it was just about watching nice people suffer and die.  I countered that I never find a well-done horror movie about the human condition depressing, because at least it’s about something important: how we face existence and its inevitable end.  The films that I find depressing are the ones that don’t mean anything at all; that just waste my time (like Hatchet). 

Frozen definitely won’t waste your time.  It won’t exactly make you happy, but it won’t waste your time, either.

CULT MOVIE REVIEW: Scream 4 (2011)

The third sequel to 1996′s box office juggernaut Scream works far more effectively as an amusing and trenchant social commentary than as a straight-up, frightening horror film.  However, perhaps at this juncture in the continuing Ghost Face saga, that development is  inevitable.

Creatively-speaking, it grows exponentially more difficult across the  long years, to make the same, familiar Bogeyman scary, and so horror franchises routinely lean towards comedy.

The good news is that as observational, gadfly commentator on the Facebook Generation, Scream 4 indeed impresses. 

In fact, the psychologically-depraved climax of the film – which features the immortal line “I don’t need friends…I need fans!” – involves the most amusing (and most committed) talking killer in the franchise since Stu and Billy took turns stabbing each other. 

Thus the old sting-in-the-tail/tale cliche (in which the killer just…won’t….die) gets resurrected and drawn out to ludicrous extremes here, and — literally – it becomes electrifying.  Between the dedicated commentary on a narcissistic youth generation in love with its technological reflection, some timely jokes about celebrity-for-the-sake-of-celebrity (think: The Jersey Shore, Real Housewives, and Paris Hilton), and the audacious, viscerally intense final moments, Scream 4 ends at least, on a high note of ingenuity and wit.

Jauntily constructed by Kevin Williamson and capably directed by one of the undisputed greats of the genre, Wes Craven, Scream 4 boasts a surfeit of funny jokes, and also spotlights a copious amount of gore (more than any of the other sequels, in fact). And yet to the movie’s detriment, it never truly proves emotional involving or very surprising.

The pace really flags in the film too, in part because Williamson’s “next generation” of victims – a tally that includes Hayden Panettiere, Emma Roberts, Marielle Jaffe, and Cory Culkin – doesn’t get the screen time that Matthew Lillard, Jamie Kennedy, Rose McGowan, Neve Campbell and Skeet Ulrich did back in the original.   As you might guess, this group scares center stage with Cox, Arquette and Campbell, and the final mix is somehow unsatisfying.

On one hand, seeing the hold-overs in action one more time will satisfy long time fans of the franchise.  On the other, it doesn’t necessarily bode well for the future of the Scream films, which need fresh blood.  By the end of the movie, we’re essentially back to square one, spending time with the exact three survivors we anticipated at the beginning of the film.  By the next sequel (if there is one), the events of this movie will be rendered pointless.

Scream 4 also makes relatively poor use of Dewey, who is so late for all the film’s deadly action – even after notified of an attack by phone — that you’ll want to hurl your remote control at the screen.  Comic ineptitude is one thing, but Scream 4′s killer endures for so long mainly because Dewey is conveniently M.I.A.   Some folks may also complain about the fact that imperiled teens constantly text and phone one another when they should be focusing on escaping Ghost Face.  I don’t necessarily have a problem with this aspect of the sequel, however, since we live in a culture in which people text while driving. 

Texting-while-dying is merely the next logical step.

The central conceit underlining Scream 4, and the quality that makes this entry smart enough to pass muster, is that this movie has arrived in the age of horror remakes.  So just as Scream obsessed on 1980s slasher movie references and Scream 2 involved the rules of sequels, Scream 4 notes, depicts, mocks and plays with the various and sundry rules of horror genre remakes.  The conceit is a good one, and the narrative focuses on a murderer (or a team of murderers) intent on “recreating” for a new generation the famous Scream (or Stab) crimes.

Specifically, just as Sidney Prescott (Campbell) returns to Woodsboro to promote her new self-help book and autobiography Out of Darkness, the Ghost Face killings resume.  For Gale, who has spent a decade absent from the limelight, the murders present an opportunity to once more become a star author.  With the help of two high school movie geeks who apparently live-stream their entire lives, Gale begins investigating the crimes.  She does so over the objections of her husband, Sheriff Dewey Riley. 

Meanwhile, Sidney’s cousin, Jill, looks to be one of the prime targets of the tag-team killers this time around.  Could the culprit be her on-again/off-again boyfriend? A movie-obsessed geek? A new female deputy with the hots for Dewey, or some twisted combination of all of the above?

The Scream films are renowned for their bravura and dazzling opening sequences.  Drew Barrymore and Jada Pinkett headlined in previous first sequence gambits, and Scream 4 gives the audience a doozy (or five…) starring the likes of Kristen Bell, Anna Paquin and Aimee Teegarden. 

The film’s opening salvo, however, illuminates both Scream 4′s virtues and weaknesses.  It is amusing, inventive, and dead-on accurate in its observations about the state of the genre in 2011, and yet each character presented in the ever-escalating sequence talks in exactly the same voice and intonation, which quickly proves distracting. 

Then, when the actual story proper begins, the characters in that drama also express themselves in the exact same way. 

This famimliar banter may indeed represent the snarky, trademark and staccato back-and-forth of Kevin Williamson’s canon and yet here — with “film within a film” moments coming hot and heavy – the movie simply doesn’t play fair with its surprises. 

If every character speaks precisely the same way, dresses precisely the same way, and inhabits the same world of upscale, designer homes, even, how is it even remotely possible to guess which scene occurs in Scream 4 and which is happening in Stab 6 or 7? 

Also, it’s worth remembering that the Drew Barrymore scene in Scream was deeply terrifying as well as amusing.  Wes Craven generated enormous tension and escalating terror from the familiar scenario of a girl at home alone in her house at night, stalked by an obscene phone caller…Ghost Face. 

The movie-centric riffs — what’s your favorite scary movie? — during that Barrymore sequence did not undercut the suspense or horror in any way.   We were convinced of Casey Becker’s reality and the reality of her world, and the horror movie references proved delightful.

By contrast, the rapid-fire scene changes in the opening of Scream 4 (showcasing moments from multiple Stab movies) actively prevent audiences from investing in any one particular character or any one particular horror scenario.  Again, you can commend the film for its abundant cleverness while simultanously regretting that it did not set out, once more, to really scare its viewership.

Despite the amped-up levels of gore in the film (a reflection, according to the dialogue, of the “torture porn” age), Scream 4 also noticeably lacks the killer instinct when it comes to the disposition of its long-standing and beloved characters.  The film would have been edgier, more unpredictable and perhaps a gerat deal scarier had Craven and Williamson set out to violently and permanently eliminate at least one of the film’s three hold-over stars in the manner that the franchise eliminated Randy (Kennedy) back in 1997. 

Now, I love and enjoy Gale, Sid and Dewey as much as the next Scream fan (and yes, I am a Scream fan…) but this new sequel, despite the gore, doesn’t feel as dangerous as perhaps it could.  At their best, the Scream movies are cynical, wicked, calculating and heartless.  Scream 4 is cynical, wicked and calculating but has too much heart.   Bring on the slice and dice!

I must admit that as a longtime horror aficionado it’s almost silly to criticize Scream 4 too deeply, however, because it is,  after all, a  pretty solid “fourth” entry in a long-lived slasher franchise. 

And truthfully, how many of those have we gotten over the years? 

(The answer: almost none).

Halloween, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street and just about any other horror franchise you care to mention certainly couldn’t keep their franchise continuity straight throughout four films, or otherwise maintain film-to-film quality, either.

In other words, Scream 4 is definitely more of the same, but not a blatant or brazen cash grab.  With Scream 4, the franchise remembers its history and its metaphorical raison d’etre (social commentary on the rapidly-changing pop culture landscape), even if it doesn’t make a rousing or dedicated effort to keep Ghost Face terrifying.  Still, at least one quirky  death scene involving a police officer, a knife to the head, and an unusually lengthy duration of survival is probably worth the price of admission for the horror faithful.

In terms of the Scream series, Scream 4 is much better than Scream 3 (2000), but not as good  as Scream and Scream 2.  “One generation’s tragedy” is not exactly “the next generation’s joke,” to misquote Scream 4, but I’m not certain that this acceptable-but-not-always-inspired sequel will necessarily stand the test of time, either.

CULT MOVIE REVIEW: Insidious (2011)

Produced on a budget of under two million dollars, James Wan’s Insidious is a horror film that truly lives up to its title.  The word “insidious” is defined as “proceeding in a gradual way but with harmful outcomes,” or, simply, “crafty” and “treacherous.” 

In very large measure, that definition (and therefore the title itself) explains perfectly how the movie proceeds, both narratively and in terms of effective film techniques.  Particularly, this horror film’s “stealth” villain is one who clearly — and malevolently — boasts a plan to achieve a wicked goal.  In making the movie’s form echo its content, Wan and writer Whannel work patiently and assiduously, though with abundant twists and turns in the mix, to generate an aura of escalating terror and suspense.

Although Insidious’s last act is shockingly and brazenly derivative of Tobe Hooper’s Poltergeist (1982) — right down to the presence of two comedy relief parapsychologists and a female medium — the movie still largely gets under the skin.  Insidious does so, in large part, without benefit of expensive special effects, instead opting for a patient, slow-build approach.  Insidious climbs to a highly disturbing climax, and as much as I felt  that the movie’s slavish copying of the Poltergeist aesthetic was distracting, Wan’s film nonetheless achieved its “insidious” goal: it successfully troubled my mind, and even my slumber.  The night I watched this motion picture, I felt deeply unsettled and anxious.  Despite the life force it clearly appropriates from Hooper’s classic supernatural thriller, Insidious still terrifies.

Insidious dramatizes the frightening story of the Lamberts.  As the film begins, this harried middle class family has moved into a new home, and almost immediately, the audience detects that something is deeply amiss.  Books fall off the bookshelf of their own volition, and at night strange noises waken the family.  Then, young Dalton (Ty Simpkins) is injured in the attic and falls into an inexplicable coma.  His concerned parents, Renai (Rose Byrne) and Josh (Patrick Wilson) struggle to deal with this tragedy, but the night terrors don’t cease.  Fearing the home is haunted, the family moves to another home…only to see the strange incidents resume.

Then, one day, Josh’s mother, Lorraine (Barbara Hershey) shows up and reveals that she knows the reasons behind Dalton’s coma and also the strange phenomena.  She brings in a parapsychologist, Elise (Lin Shaye) who reveals that Dalton and Josh are both — unwittingly — accomplished “travelers.”  In other words, during sleep hey can “astral project” out of their bodies. 

However, during these out of body experiences, there’s always a risk of traveling too far, and getting lost.  That’s precisely what has happened to Dalton.  He has trespassed into “the further,” a world beyond our own and populated by the tortured souls of the dead.  And a dark figure there — one who once sought to control Josh — now seeks to control Dalton, and appropriate his body.

Desperate to save his son, Josh risks an astral projection to retrieve Dalton…

Insidious quickly proves itself an interesting blend of popular horror sub-genres.  For instance, the film commences as if a traditional haunted house movie, with strange phenomena roiling a busy suburban family.   Intriguingly — and perhaps as a reflection of the hard times the middle class is now facing in America — there’s no “honeymoon” period here in the new house.  In most haunted house films, there’s an early period of “euphoria” for the tenants  in the new home before the terror begins.  Here, scenes of domestic pandemonium occur virtually immediately, intercut with scenes of growing supernatural pandemonium.  The impression is of a family overcome from all sides.  Early on Renai complains to Josh about their marriage/life and says “I just want things to be different in this house,” suggesting a troubled history.  “I’m scared nothing is going to change,” she admits.

In raising but not overtly exploring this troubled background, Insidious begins from almost frame one to suggest a amorphous anxiety plaguing the Lamberts; a kind of siege mentality hovering over theim like a gray cloud. 

“I feel like the universe is just trying to see how far I bend before I break,” states one of the characters, and again, that’s a sentiment that a squeezed middle class — dealing with foreclosures and unemployment — can largely sympathize with.  In a country where families can’t hold onto their houses or their jobs, Insidious suggest that malevolent forces are even after our bodies.

After the “haunting”-styled first act of Insidious, the films then shifts to a “possession”-type horror film, raising the dread that Dalton has been possessed by a demon or other supernatural creature.  Again, this set-up is undercut when we learn that he is not possessed at all…simply gone to “The Further.”  And it is here, in this final reckoning that the Insidious, finally, disappoints by almost mindlessly, greviously aping every aspect of the Poltergeist screenplay. 

There, as you may recall, Dr. Lesh (Beatrice Straight) and Tangina (Zelda Rubinstein) helped the Freeling family to recover its missing youngest child, Carol Anne (Heather O’Rourke) from a hostile spiritual realm where she was being kept by an evil, avaricious spirit.  After explaining that realm in riveting detail, the parapsychologist and medium then sent the matriarch of the family, Diane (Jobeth Williams) to retrieve Carol Anne. 

In Insidious,  Elise plays the roles of Lesh and Tangina and provides all the necessary exposition about “The Further,” and then sends family patriarch, Josh, off to retrieve his son.  It’s so obvious and derivative a formula (down to the selection of shots in some cases…) that you get the feeling Insidious took the Poltergeist script and just performed a find and replace for character names and supernatural concepts.  Again, I can’t be too blunt about this aspect of the film.  If you go back and watch the Lesh scene in Poltergeist and then the Elise scene in Insidious, you’ll see for yourself just how uncomfortably close these moments truly are.   

In Hollywood, of course, this isn’t called “stealing” or “copying,” it’s called homage. And in point of fact, the filmmakers could probably erect a good defense on such grounds.  For instance, Barbara Hershey appears in the film as a woman also targeted by supernatural forces, and this role clearly harks back to The Entity (1983), another great supernatural thriller that starred Hershey.  

Similarly, Elise’s last name is “Rainier,” a selection that suggest the original, true-life case upon which Blatty’s The Exorcist (1973) is based.  In particular, a boy in 1949, living in Mount Rainier, was believed to be possessed by a demon.   Despite such reflexive touches, one still wishes Insidious could have found a way to dramatize its tale without so overtly aping Poltergeist’s last act. 

Given this creative dilemma, why does Insidious work so well, overall?   Well, for one thing, the depiction of “The Further” is very well-done, and deeply unsettling.  There, lost souls wander the firmament and relive distorted, surreal “memories” of their lives.   The characters you see dwelling in “The Further” are eminently creepy and disturbing.   Furthermore, the film’s stealth villain, an Old Crone, is deeply, monstrously frightening.  The film builds to a terrifying crescendo as the specifics of her “plan” fall into place, one rung at a time, and we detect how easily the Lamberts have been led astray. 

In other words, Insidious really creeps up on you, not truly revealing the villain’s hand until the last act.  James Wan is well-known to genre fans as the director of Saw (2004), which sent horror films off in a particular direction that is often condemned as “torture porn.”  Much has been made of the fact that Insidious is something of a corrective, relying on suspense rather than gore to horrify audiences.  I personally don’t object to the Saw films — any more than I disdain the slasher films of the 1980s — but it’s true that Insidious rewards patience and generates an atmosphere of authentic terror.  As much as my intellect had some deep reservations about the film, particularly the deeply nihilistic ending, my senses responded to Insidious precisely as the director wished.  I was deeply unsettled, and actually had trouble sleeping that night.   That’s a nice sweet spot for any horror film to occupy.

Perhaps I felt so unsettled because the film’s final twist — so dark and hopeless — mirrors, again, the feelings of many of Americans about the future right now. What malevolent forces are working against us while we’re occupied trying to get the kids to school safely, or focusing on our careers?   While appropriating clearly and brazenly Poltergeist’s essence, Insidious also ably and relentlessly charts this post-Great Recession Zeitgeist.

Poltergeist knew “what scares us” back in 1982, and Insidious updates that dynamic well enough for 2011.  How far can we bend before we break?  Does an angry, avaricious universe want to know the answer? 

Muir Book Wednesday: Horror Films of the 1990s

Very shortly now (in just days, I hope…), my book Horror Films of the 1990s will be published. If you’ve followed my work in print, you will realize that it is the long-awaited follow-up to my earlier texts, the award-winning Horror Films of the 1970s (2002) and Horror Films of the 1980s (2007).

Like its two predecessors, Horror Films of the 1990s is a seven-hundred-or-so page survey of a wide swath of scary (and not-so-scary) films. Over three-hundred films are reviewed in detail in the book, and I also contribute a lengthy history about the decade and the particular events that shaped the genre cinema from the years 1990 – 1999.

Basically, the thesis of all my “Horror Films of…” books is that art universally mirrors life, and that you can better understand the horror films of any particular epoch by learning more about what was occurring in the culture at the time. In other words, I write a great deal about context. Therefore, Horror Films of the 1990s gazes at quite a few historical trends, and how those trends found voice, sometimes surprisingly, in the horror films of the day.

Two important nineties “Zeitgeist” touchstones involved the Human Genome Project and the Internet, for instance. Many films in the decade looked at this scintillating notion of a new Pandora’s Box being opened, either in terms of genetic science or computers. Films such as Jurassic Park, Mimic, The Island of Dr. Moreau and Deep Blue Sea focused on Frankenstein-like genetic horror, while films such as The Lawnmower Man, Brainscan, and Ghost in the Machine reflected fears involving new technology. Both trends were really expressions of our culture’s long-standing fear about “science run amok.”

Horror Films of the 1990s remembers other trends in 1990s horror films too. Another notable shift from the 1980s involved the “morphing” of the famous faceless slashers (like Jason) into “Interlopers,” murderous and dynamic individuals who insinuated themselves into the lives of average Americans and American families. Films such as The Hand That Rocks The Cradle, The Guardian, The Temp, Single White Female and Cape Fear are notable examples of this particular trend.

This same decade was also very much about the “homogenization” of horror, as studios made genre films their A-products: beneficiaries of big budgets and more well-known casts. But with greater costs involved in production, horror films also had far less room to transgress, and that proved a problem for a genre based on the foundation of shattering moral decorum and tradition.

Another notable difference: In the 1970s, we saw films with titles such as I Spit on Your Grave and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. In the 1990s, we got films with generic-sounding titles such as Scream, Mimic or The Temp. So-called “brand name terrors were also produced with easy identification in mind, and for quick sale on the home video market.  The “Grim Fairy Tale” trend was one example of using famous historical myths or cultural icons (Leprechaun, Rumpelstiltskin, Uncle Sam, Jack Frost, etc…) to quickly and effectively capture audience attention.

In general, the 1990s aren’t considered a particularly good time in horror film history. Many of the films produced in this era don’t stand up well next to the films of the 1970s or 1980s, for instance.

And yet I came away from my experience writing the book appreciating the good horror films of the Clinton Era all the more, perhaps, since they were fewer and farther between than in the previous decades I’d investigated.

So if you’re a fan or follower of this blog and my books, I hope you’ll seek out Horror Films of the 1990s, and let me know what you think of the book.

You can order Horror Films of the 1990s at Amazon, or through the publisher, McFarland.  Also, if you get the chance, you can see me discussing Horror Films of the 1990s at my author’s page on Mahalo, here.  

I appreciate all your support!

Mahalo Author Series Video Posted

If you feel like listening to me talk about film and television for forty minutes or so (!), Mahalo has now uploaded the long-distance video interview they did with me a week ago, wherein I answered twenty reader questions.  I really appreciated being included in this Author’s Series, and hope you enjoy the video.

The audio is somewhat variable at points, but check it out: http://www.mahalo.com/john-kenneth-muir/