Session 9

Session 9
Starring: David Caruso, Paul Guilfoyle, Josh Lucas, Peter Mullan.
Directed by: Brad Anderson

Style: Psychological Thriller
Blood and Guts: 2
Fright Factor: 4
Laugh Factor: 0
Weapons of choice: Everyday items
Overall rating: 5 out of 5

When kids talk about what they want to do when they grow up, tearing down old wards for the mentally insane is not usually near the top of the list, much like being a junkie. However, there are always hard working people who are willing to take those jobs. Unfortunately, these people also have to deal with whatever happens to currently be inhabiting these old insane asylums. In this case, Gordon (Mullan) and his team find that a former patient at the asylum, Mary, had multiple personality disorder, and her other personality Simon was both murderous and sinister. Soon after this discovery, members of the team start disappearing. Everyone's a suspect, including the distinct possibility Simon has not vacated the premises.

One of the biggest strengths of this film is the atmosphere it creates. Part of tearing down such a large building involves having the crew operating various machines alone for long periods of time. This feeling of isolation is then tainted by the sheer creepiness of the building. Old chairs with straps, gurneys, and other medical bric-a-brac is everywhere. The entire building is in a state of decay and plays out like a place of nightmares. There is also little music, and the tapes of the little girl talking about the crazed personality Simon is haunting. Finally, the movie never really shows too much of what happens to those people that disappear. Up until the end, when the killer is revealed, they just turn to see someone approaching and then are never heard from again. It adds to the paranoia, and soon the audience is wondering if they are seeing things as shadows scuttle around corners.

All of the actors do an excellent job of not playing up the disappearances too much. Because of the isolated nature of the job, there is never a sense that something happened to the people, only that they went missing. Everything plays out very realistically, and the final moments of the film hits with a force rare for horror movies made in a time of jaded audiences. The entire movie plays out as a horror film that isn't trying to be a horror film, and its success leads to the audience being dragged along for the ride.

In the end, this film shows just how flexible the horror genre can be in finding ways to give the audience shivers while still telling an excellent story. It is differnet than most horror films you will see, and rather than being the same crap that comes out of "independant" horror, this film is a worthy addition to the genre.

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.

Quarantine

Quarantine
Starring: Jennifer Carpenter, Steve Harris, Jay Hernandez
Directed by: John Erick Dowdle

Style: Undead Plague
Blood and Guts: 3
Fright Factor: 3
Laugh Factor: 1
Weapons of choice: Biting
Overall rating: 3 out of 5

Reporters have an easy job. You go to a scene after everything bad has happened and tell people what happened. However, you could decide to tag along with people who handle terrible situations, thus putting yourself more in harm's way and ultimately tempting fate into showing you the error of your ways. Angela Vidal (Carpenter) chooses the latter, tagging along with the late night fire shift to a routine emergency call. However, things get ugly quickly when the medical call turns out to be a quarantined apartment building. Soon, the government won't let them out, and the infected won't let them live.

Quarantine is a remake of the Spanish film Rec, a film nobody has seen because the studio bought the distribution rights and kept it from hitting America until after their film came out. Therefore, I can't really compare this one to the original. However, despite having the possibility of having a very creepy atmosphere and enough scare tactics to take the audience on a thrill ride, Quarantine devolves into a pretty generic zombie picture once everything hits the fan for our characters.

The film does a good job of setting up our characters as actual people, with the first 20 minutes of the film being an introduction and lead up to them actually going to the apartment building. However, the movie never really does anything with those characters, save for Carpenter's reporter who has a few conflicts of morality throughout. Thus, instead of having a good build up, the film instead looks like it is stalling to fill out the movie to feature length, particularly because the film could have cut 10 minutes off of the end of the movie. I'm not spoiling anything by saying the last 10 minutes attempt to explain the disease long after it becomes pertinent to anyone, especially because the explanation is more of a half-explanation that doesn't connect to anyone we've really met.

The main problem with Quarantine is that it fails to uphold the basic necessities to make a movie scary. It makes attempts at building suspense when the characters are more likely to be extremely cautious and paranoid, leading them to do things that have the audience screaming "Stupid!" After a resident goes crazy and attacks people, there are still two more occasions when people approach residents with the exact same symptoms and try to carry them to help. Suspense is more effective when people are forced to deal with infected or when they do not know where the infected are. Once you introduce what happens, using that same scenario twice more is predictable. Also, several of the scenes are very reminiscent of 28 Weeks Later. Now, rage zombies can be used and still not be a rip-off, but there are a few very moments that seem pulled almost directly from it. Very little of this film feels new, and that hurts a film trying to scare you senseless.

Overall, this film had the potential of being as tense as High Tension or other classic white knucklers. While there are a few good moments, usually with the cameraman trying to creep quietly down the hall without knowing what is in the room, the film has too much that feels reused, and the last 10 minutes seem to take forever after the conclusion is foregone. Finally, spoiling with your trailer is unforgivable. This may be a good midnight movie good for a few cheap thrills, but it should have been so much better.

Chopping Mall

Chopping Mall
Starring: Kelli Maroney, Tony O'Dell, Russell Todd, and Karrie Emerson
Directed by: Jim Wynorski

Style: Killer Robots
Blood and Guts: 3
Fright Factor: 1
Laugh Factor: 3
Weapons of choice: Items found in a mall
Overall rating: 2 out of 5

If you are a teenager, your life revolves around the mall. Unfortunately, there are things outside The Steak Shack that could kill you. That's right: security robots. In yet another foolhardy move to trust robots with our safety, Park Plaza Mall installs high tech security with low tech lightning protection, leading to the robots chasing down teens who just want to sneak into the mall and party all night. The robots must be stopped to make the world safe again for trespassers of the world.

This movie falls into the classic conventions of 80s horror: teenagers threatened by things outside the realm of reality. It's not intended to have real fright connotations and instead is supposed to fall into the category of cheap thrills with some comedy to boot. The trouble with this formula is that a lot of the 80s horror films are interchangeable, distinguishing themselves more with their villain than with the movie itself. This movie is no exception, to the point that I remembered it for a long time as "that mall robot movie" before I learned it was called Chopping Mall.

A lot of this film will be forgotten, and the performances are passable but are nothing special. Where this film fails is that the death sequences aren't even that interesting. If you are going to forgo quality on everything else, you still need to have interesting death sequences. This movie tries a few things that fail to impress, leaving the audience to wonder why they didn't rent something better.

As a result of the generic tone of the film, I'm kind of left with little to say about this movie other than to call it run-of-the-mill late-night fare for television. If it's on and you're bored, you'll watch it. otherwise, no real reason to seek it out.

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.