Event Horizon

Event Horizon
Starring: Laurence Fishburne, Sam Neill, Kathleen Quinlan, Joely Richardson
Directed by: Paul W. S. Anderson

Style: Haunted Ship
Blood and Guts: 4
Fright Factor: 4
Laugh Factor: 1
Weapons of choice: One's Own Sanity
Overall rating: 4 out of 5

The worst part of space exploration, besides the fact that the smallest of errors can result in horrific deaths for you and your crew in the frigid void, is that it is far larger than we can even comprehend. The most horrific thing ever thought by the most twisted minds ever to exist is mild compared to what mathematically is probably out there waiting for us. Sanity would dictate that the easiest way to avoid that is to not visit these places. Instead, the ship Event Horizon is sent out to see what it can find. With the ability to bend space, it can visit anywhere instantaneously. In 2040 it disappears without a trace. In 2047, it returns, seemingly empty. You know, the type of seeming of a demon that is dreaming. Logically, we send a crew to investigate what happened. What they find will haunt them forever, and their only hope is to escape and live to tell about it.

At its core, Event Horizon is the classic haunted house story placed in an environment where there is no escape. Everyone always wonders why nobody just walk out of a house where the walls bleed. Here, there is nowhere to go. Predictably, the rescue ship is damaged, leaving only the haunted ship as inhabitable while repairs are made. This is a prime example of how Event Horizon operates. It will takes the horror conventions, things any horror fan has come to expect, and still injects enough surprises into that framework that the audience will be white knuckled. There are some distinctly creepy moments, such as the discovery of the old crew's video and the suicide attempt, each designed to ratchet up the tension. With haunted house movies, one's own sanity is in danger, so anything could conceivably happen at any time.

All of the actors, particularly Neill and Fishburne, do an excellent job of portraying people whose concept of reality has just been changed. They feel like people who don't believe in monsters and ghosts and yet now have to face real ones, and that acting draws in the audience. A horror audience doesn't really believe in what it is watching, and so when the characters convincingly don't either, it makes the situations more engaging because they are like us, the audience. Both Fishburne and Neill also capture the slow erosion of sanity excellently, something that is never easy in horror. Without such strong characters, Event Horizon and all of the tension it has would never have worked.

It should be said that if you really do not get into supernatual horror, this movie may not really get under your skin. The twist that comes in the last third of the movie about what has really happened to the ship is borderline ridiculous if you haven't bought in to what came before it. Also, because the film's structure is built like other horror films, some of the occurances are predictable, though the way in which they happen still has an underlying intensity.

In the end, this film is a solid thrill ride best watched in dark places. Before the studio made Anderson cut it down, it was apparently much more dark and violent. One has to wonder what would have happened if they trusted that vision.

Terrible Thursday: The Happening

The Happening
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel, and John Leguizamo
Directed by: M. Night Shyamalan

Style: Unexplained happenings
Blood and Guts: 4
Fright Factor: 1
Laugh Factor: 4
Weapons of choice: Anything nearby to the afflicted
Overall rating: Terrible

Philadelphia has never been a wonderland of joy ever since Benjamin Franklin robbed that cobbler for the Washington Elite series clog. However, Elliot Moore (Wahlberg) finds himself having to flee the city after New York is hit by some sort of attack when people outside suddenly all kill themselves in whatever way happens to be handy. Soon, other cities and towns are affected, targeting smaller and smaller groups of individuals. Where can you escape to, if you can't go outside?

There are several fundamental problems with this film. Many people criticize its ridiculous nature, which Shyamalan has countered by saying he was making a B-movie. This seems like an excuse, but let's approach the film as a B-movie. We'll even ignore that the marketing department in that case mispromoted the heck out of that, because that's not Shyamalan's fault.

Firstly, Shyamalan took the completely wrong tone to his film for it to pass off as a B-movie. Yes, all of his actors are ridiculously over the top, from Wahlberg doing his best Napoleon Dynamite impression to Zooey Deschanel having moon eyes the entire film to Betty Buckley showing up as an batcrap insane recluse, everyone is hamming it up. Where this tone fails is that at no point does the movie insinuate that it is purposefully bad. There is no subtle wink to the audience. Combine this with the fact that the rest of the production strives to be realistic, down to graphic death scenes, and you have actors who look out of place rather than ones who are laughing it up.

Next, you have the fact that Shyamalan does not know how to do violence. In interviews he gave about this film, he talks about how he wants to break all conventions and hit audiences with things that they felt they would be safe from. This translates to I am going to kill kids in the film, and you'll never see it coming. Except for the fact that it happens when they are trying to break into an inhabited house and suddenly go from normal character kids to hooligan tactics. Not two minutes before, they were waxing philosophical about respect and relationships, and then they are trying to kick down doors. In fact, the first violent deaths occur about 2 minutes into the film, and the convention is set that when things go wrong, people will kill themselves. Knowing that convention tips his hand, and from then on, nothing we see will shock us as much because it's is completely and utterly expected. By the time you get to the lawnmower incident, the part of the trailer that people found most shocking, it is a ho-hum effect.

I'll skip the ridiculousness of the science in the film, because it is B-movie, so it doesn't matter, but what this film comes down to being is a very boring, rather uninventive movie about the possibility of humanity ceasing to exist. It's not fun, unless maybe you are very drunk. It's not exciting, because everything is telegraphed. And it's not scary, because nothing sneaks up on them. They are chased by wind in a scene reminiscent of when frost chased people in The Day After Tomorrow. So what is it then?

Terrible. Just terrible.

Midnight Meat Train

Mirrors
Starring: Bradley Cooper, Leslie Bibb, Roger Bart, and Vinnie Jones
Directed by: Ryuhei Kitamura

Style: Psycho killer thriller
Blood and Guts: 4
Fright Factor: 4
Laugh Factor: 0
Weapons of choice: Butcher's Mallet, Knives
Overall rating: 4 out of 5

Trying to get ahead in the world of artistic photography is tough. Everyone is always looking for the newest thing, but nobody ever knows what that new thing is going to be. That is the problem facing Leon (Cooper). He takes great photographs, but they are not cutting-edge great. That is, until he foils an assault on a woman in the subway, only to have her go missing the next day. Doing a bit of investigation leads him to discover there is a butcher (Jones) who boards late trains and butchers the passengers. The trouble is, the police don't believe him, and now the butcher has taken an interest in Leon.

Midnight Meat Train is not the type of film that will win over its audience with subtlety. Every moment in the film follows a predictable trajectory that many killer movies have followed before it. Instead, this film will win its audience based around the sheer unnerving situations that occur. People on the trains get killed. There is no surprises there, but putting characters in the line of danger and then just letting the scene run for minutes at a time causes these great moments of being on the edge of your seat even though you can see the killer coming a mile away. Combine that with a few decidedly strange goings on and a performance from Vinnie Jones that feels as if he can see the audience as he stares right out at you and you have a really taut thrill ride.

There are a few moments in the story that don;'t make sense. There is a growth on the butcher that they never fully explain, nor really a sickness he has for one scene, and Leon's psyche crumbling away happens far too quickly. As a subplot, the idea of having difficulty separating oneself from one's art is interesting, and approached with gusto by the script before being thrown into overdrive. However, the pace of the movie is what the director was clearly aiming for, so those oversights can be forgiven at the end of the day. The ending feels a bit tacked on but is true to the themes the movie plays with. Really, the focus of this film is Vinne Jones as the butcher, and every scene he is in is practically dripping with menace despite only having one line in the entire film.

This is the type of film that thrives on being a midnight showing at the local theater. It's short, hard hitting, and will give the audience a thrill. And, at the end of the night, some of us still have to take a train home.

Mirrors

Mirrors
Starring: Kiefer Sutherland, Paula Patton, Amy Smart
Directed by: Alexandre Aja

Style: Supernatural Haunting
Blood and Guts: 4
Fright Factor: 4
Laugh Factor: 0
Weapons of choice: Sharp objects
Overall rating: 4 out of 5

In New York City, the historic Mayflower department store remains as just a husk of its former glory. After a horrible fire, years go by as the building sits idle under the hopes that it will be renovated. However, no horrific incident slips by without horrific aftermath. Ben Carson (Sutherland) , on leave from the police force after accidentally shooting another officer, takes a job as the nighttime security officer while trying to regain control of his life and the trust of his wife with whom he is separated. On the job, he discovers the mirrors show him people burned alive from the fire. What's worse, the images have the power to alter reality, making what seems to be happening actually happen. Now Ben must find how to make the mirrors stop and save his family before it is too late.

As with Aja's previous movie High Tension, the power of the story comes from excellent sound work. A lot of tension is provided by distant wails, atmospheric background sounds such as doves and grit on the ground at the Mayflower, and subtle scoring. There is much less of the cheap jump scares and more of a sense of impending doom. Having mirrors stare back at people as they leave the room is creepy, yet Aja does not overuse the technique so that we become accustomed to it. Also, there are only a few moments of violence, which are harrowing and quite brutal, which means the audience never becomes overly sensitized to the gore.

A lot of criticism of the film has revolved around Kiefer Sutherland's acting. While he doesn't offer anything new other than his standard repetoire of muttered lines and cold-eyed stares, he does fit the need of a recovering alcoholic whose life has fallen to pieces. Paula Patton is excellent as his wife and mother of his children who slowly realizes that the madness her husband is talking about is real.

I also credit the story for how well it is crafted. All of the moments lead into each other, so that everything comes into focus piece by piece, and while the audience may be ahead of the characters by a few steps, it still manages to lead the audience places rather than having everything guessed out beforehand. I personally would have liked to have more made of the fact that the mirror world is backwards, especially when it comes to the key word that the entity in the mirror seeks. However, that is not anything major that detracts from the film.

Overall, this a solid horror film that should keep most of the audience on the edge of their seats and maybe even inspire a nightmare or two. A few more movies like this and High Tension and Aja may make a run at being one of the better horror film directors of all time.

I Know Who Killed Me

I Know Who Killed Me
Starring: Lindsay Lohan, Julia Ormond, Neal McDonough, Brian Geraghty
Directed by: Chris Sivertson

Style: Cryptic Kidnapping
Blood and Guts: 4
Fright Factor: 2
Laugh Factor: 1
Weapons of choice: Dry ice, glass knives
Overall rating: 1 out of 5

New Salem is being terrorized by a brutal serial killer who abducts and tortures young women, holding them captive for weeks before murdering them. Aubrey Fleming (Lohan), an aspiring writer, becomes his latest victim when she disappears without a trace during a night out with her friends. Days later, she shows up missing an arm and leg, having apparently escaped the clutches of the killer. However, she has no memory of her life, insisting that she is Dakota, a stripper who came to town after he hand mysteriously started disintegrating. Now, the FBI and family try to make sense of it all while Dakota/Aubrey continues to have nightmares that the killer isn't finished with her yet.

My main problem with this film is that it looks and feels like it was made to be this cryptic puzzler of the horror movie, keeping the audience in the dark as the tale unravels a bit at a time. Instead, the movie is so overt with its metaphor and symbolism that half the time it feels like you aren't even watching a story but a representation of a story. Lohan is decent, but the script never really sets any pace that can drive the film. There are too many facts being tossed around in the hopes of keeping the audience guessing. Instead, I just stopped caring what was happening. The ending appeared obvious, but I was wrong. That is, until I found out that the original ending had been that, but test audiences said it was too predictable, so the film chopped off the real ending. As a result, we get another horror film that just ends suddenly with several unresolved issues.

Horror movies also need to come to the realization that they either have to run in the land of realism or push the fantasy they are creating. If you try to throw a fantastical concept into a film pushing itself as reality, the audience scoffs at you. Without giving away the plot, I am referring to how Dakota / Aubrey loses her hand. Also, never introduce a robotic arm and leg unless you think you are being funny or know how to maintain tone. This movie does not.

Another unfortunate consequence of the director thinking he is the next Fincher or Lynch is the very overt use of red and blue throughout the entire film. Every scene has several objects almost glowing by the mere fact that everything else is so drably colored. The audience in my showing started calling out "Red" and "Blue" to mark just how much it was happening.

This movie is bad. It has potential, but the director and screenwriter do not have the talent to make anything of this very sloppy movie. Surprisingly, I don't blame Lohan for anything other than wanting to be more of an adult actor, so she chose the stripper movie. It's destined to be reshown at many late night crap fests for years to come.

Altered

Altered
Starring: Paul McCarthy-Boyington, Brad William Henke, Adam Kaufman, Michael C. Williams
Directed by: Eduardo Sánchez

Style: Alien revenge
Blood and Guts: 4
Fright Factor: 3
Laugh Factor: 0
Weapons of choice: Firearms, teeth
Overall rating: 4 out of 5

Most people are suckers. Aliens abduct them in the dead of night, do all sorts of unspeakable things to them, drop them off again, and nobody ever does anything about it but whine and complain and try and convince others that it will happen to them. This is not the case for this group of four friends. Instead, they plan how to capture one of the creatures that abducted them years ago. Once it is captured however, none of them quite know what to do next. More importantly, none of them can foresee just how grave the repercussions of their actions will be.

Altered showcases how an independent little horror film can be better than many feature films. All of the characters are well fleshed out, allowing us to care about their fates and how the story plays out. The direction is also well done, allowing the tension and, at times, suspense of the scene to do the work rather than cheap camera tricks. The special effects are are well-used, with quite a bit of violence happening but all appropriate rather than excessive.

What makes this film work is that it isn't trying to be the greatest horror film you have ever seen. It is straight forward, simple, and sets out to tell you an interesting story. It never tries to be more than it is by utilizing outlandish or inappropriate effects, and all of the actors and crew work as if they are committed to the telling this story. The alien doesn't try to be outlandish and instead is actually very intimidating, especially when it is revealed what happens when it bites you.

If I had one criticism of the film, is that it overuses its darkness a bit too much. There are some effective shadows, but the entire film feels like it was soaked a little too long in the dark. It's the one film contrivance that feels forced, trying to impose an atmosphere rather than letting the story, the environment, and the actors do that naturally.

I would recommend seeing this film if you're looking for a different kind of horror film, one that uses story and character to chip away at your nerves before letting a vicious alien loose on all of it. It probably has better acting than you'll see in most studio pictures, and even more rarely, actually knows what it is doing.

Diary of the Dead

Diary of the Dead
Starring: Joshua Close, Scott Wentworth, Michelle Morgan, Joe Dinicol
Directed by: George A. Romero

Style: Zombie Horror
Blood and Guts: 4
Fright Factor: 3
Laugh Factor: 0
Weapons of choice: Firearms, biting
Overall rating: 4 out of 5

We all know how it starts. The dead return to life and start treating the living as one big buffet table. The living, at first, think it is some kind of plague. It's still people, right. Finally, after things go beyond control, then people realize that it is in fact a zombie outbreak. This story follows a group of college students caught out in the forest filming a horror film. Upon returning to campus, they find it deserted and the walking dead roaming the streets. Not knowing where to turn, they decide to drive around in their RV hoping to find a safe place in a town that may have none left.

I was thrilled to find out that George Romero was releasing another zombie film. He always has a unique approach to the genre, and even when the films are not that good, they still offer up something that is entertaining and different. Diary of the Dead is admittedly not one of his best offerings. However, I think people have been harsher critics of the film than I think is deserved.

The entire film plays out like a grassroots horror film, with everything filmed through the view lens of two video cameras the characters carry at all times. All of the dialogue is a bit trite and bland, but I attribute it to being much more reminiscent of the YouTube generation of people who no longer need to be articulate and clever. This stems from the movie being much more of a social indictment of the cultural phenomenon of everyone wanting to record everything and post it online. One of the main characters even talks about how, in our rush to all be known, the truth is watered down, as everyone claims expertise but nobody knows who is actually right. As with the Blair Witch Project, the main character continue to film as it allows a distance from the horrific events that occur. I mean, how many times do you see people with cell phone cameras at the scene of an accident? In that regard, I think Romero is spot on.

The pacing is tight and all of the moments well filmed. There are several tense moments, and enough funny or darkly funny ones to really engage the audience. My favorite moment involves a scythe to the head, but there are also a few choice dialog moments too. The entire film is very successful in its tone and quality, though you need to accept going in that you are seeing a large scale YouTube movie with quality effects and an outstanding director.

There has been criticism about the plot and how you don't really get to know or care about the characters. While this is true, I don't think that this movie necessarily warrants that. We are supposed to see what it is like first hand to be in the beginning of a zombie outbreak. By doing so, the filmmaker is able to (sometimes a bit heavy-handedly) discuss the role of media in our lives and also where our society might turn if everything goes bad.

Overall, it is an excellent film to see, if only as the experiment that it is. Once again, Romero has proven that he doesn't make zombie films. He makes films of social commentary that happen to involve zombies.

Pathology

PATHOLOGY
Starring: Milo Ventimiglia, Michael Weston, Lauren Lee Smith, and Alyssa Milano
Directed by: Marc Schoelermann

Style: Murderous Psychological Thriller
Blood and Guts: 4
Fright Factor: 3
Laugh Factor: 0
Weapons of choice: Medical paraphernalia
Overall rating: 4 out of 5

Ted Grey (Ventimiglia) is one of the brightest pathologists out there, and he knows it. Graduating from Harvard Medical School and now joining one of the best Pathology programs in the country, he has the world at his scalpel tips. However, he soon discovers that a few of his fellow doctors have taken to testing each others genius. Bodies start rolling in, and the after-hours club takes to trying to construct the perfect murder, one that cannot be solved by forensics. Social boundaries are crossed, limits tested, and Grey quickly discovers that there is a fine line between genius and madness.

I qualify this film as a horror film solely on the basis of the actors conviction in the roles. They portray the psychological distancing perfectly, each showing how they have lost all connection with reality. The conversations between Dr. Grey and his rival, Dr. Gallo (Weston) provide some truly unnerving face-offs. While there is a lot of blood and guts tied around dissection and a few messed up murders, all of the violence stems from the nature of the characters i.e. doctors, so it is almost never gratuitous. Hence, all of the terror comes from just how real the actors make these actions seem. We glimpse the rationalization of madness, which is what some of the very best horror films do.

Ventimiglia does a great job with moral ambiguity, where we can tell that being better than everyone else guides his actions, even when getting out of the game, as it is his way to prove to himself that he is better than the animal Gallo has become. His fiancée returning becomes his game, his ability to have done these horrible things and get away scot free. It is less that he truly cares for her, but rather she is status and a trophy to prove his superiority.

This movie hits all of the right notes and manages to be a rather gripping thriller. The plot never really deviates from the standard fare for these types of movies, so there isn't a whole lot to discuss about it afterwards. Its strength, however, lies less in surprising us and more grabbing us by the spine and pulling.