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The Amityville Horror: Review

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The Horror of Amityville

How many of you liked the Marcus Nispel remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre? All of you, great. Well, you were probably thrilled to see that the same folks who brought that movie to you would also be bringing the remake of The Amityville Horror, using the same gritty and grainy visuals used in that chainsaw movie. And with Ryan Reynolds in the lead, how can you go wrong? The trailer was pretty scary, or at least it was to the 8 year old in the front row. It had to be good.
Well, yes and no.
amityville.jpgThe premise of the film (actually the book) is based on the pseudo-true story of the Lutz family and their 28 day stay at 112 Ocean Avenue, a house in which Ronald DeFeo killed his entire family on a dark and stormy night less than a year earlier. Naturally, as with all houses in which six family members of the house are shotgunned to death, 112 Ocean Avenue comes complete with pesky flies, a ghost girl named Jodie who seems to want to kill people so she can have playmates, and the annoying tendency to wake up at 3:15 every morning. So begins the adventures of George Lutz (Ryan Reynolds) and his crazy adventures.
Whether the story is valid or not is a moot point. The question is, is this movie good or even scary? Honestly, the first two thirds of the film are well done and purposely manufactured for scares. Like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003), the visuals of Amityville are crafted with a very dirty, old fashioned, and disorienting grain with heavy contrasts and great attention to lighting. It is a very good, unsettling effect that is most equatable to looking at old fashioned photography. The story itself is a refreshing take on the haunted house routine and does it much, much better than any movie has in the last few years. The only time the scares fall flat is when we are shown, through visual trickery, the unseen enemy. I’d say the moment the movie starts going downhill is when they show the ghost girl being held up to the ceiling by a bunch of hands. Just the sheer amount of CG work that had to go into that, combined with the way it just hits you in the face, is enough to already give the film an A-. But the points just get subtracted from there.
The final act of the film is the textbook example of what NOT to do in any film: do not rip off other movies of the genre. The last act makes a radical departure from the book by trying to fix the mystery of the house in its own way: hey, guess what, it’s actually built over a secret room in which some dude liked to kill people! So we’re treated to 40 minutes of the greatest rip offs of all time, including The Shining, Poltergeist, and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle. Originality is thrown out the door in favor of a lame excuse for a plot resolution. The film would have been sufficienty creepy if we were to just assume that it was a house with bad stuff inside and that no one should live there, but no.
For what it’s worth, the film does have good intentions and is not totally doomed. But we’ll have to wait for the next remake to see if changes can be made.
Grade: C-

Return of the Living Dead: Review

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“Doooo ya wanna paaaarty!? IT’S PARTY-TIME!”
Yes, yes I do. There are some zombie movies which are “essential viewing” for any fan of the genre. Romero’s Dead Trilogy, The Beyond, Creepshow, Dead/Alive, and you guessed it, the original Return of the Living Dead.
Return of the Living DeadThis movie is both a brilliant parody of the zombie genre and a genuine, heart-pounding installment at the same time. The movie is chalk-full of some of the funniest, sharpest dark comedy you’ll ever see, but never let’s itself get TOO absurd. Likewise, it’s chalk-full of some of the most memorable, gruesome and standard-setting scenes in any zombie film, but never takes itself TOO seriously. It hits that balance dead-on and never loses its footing even once.
And when I said standard-setting, I meant it. This is the movie that began the whole “Braaaaaiiiiiinsss”-thing you’ll see in pretty much any zombie-parody and is a recognizable trademark of the genre, even if it is on the silly-side. But the movie even provides an explanation as to why zombies are obsessed with eating human brains in one of the film’s darker moments.
So what’s the plot? Not much. Missing canisters of 245 Trioxcide wind-up in the basement of a medical supply warehouse for a few decades. What the employees of the warehouse don’t know is that inside those canisters are the preserved bodies of zombies rounded-up by the Government back in the 60’s. Well, you can guess what happens next. Some moron accidentally bursts open one of the cans and a zombie escapes (the classic Tarman, the mascot of the franchise, makes his debut!). The gas from the canisters causes all the corpses in a nearby cemetery to rise from their graves and the cast of teenagers suddenly find themselves on the menu.
As mentioned before, the Tarman is not only one of the most memorable parts of the movie, but one of the finest examples of zombie design you’ll ever come across. This movie also pioneered the idea of “running zombies”, decades before the Dawn of the Dead remake came under severe criticism for it. And whether you like the concept of running zombies or not, you can’t help but enjoy the sequences featuring them.
There aren’t too many dark comedy zombie movies out there that manage to find the perfect balance that Return of the Living Dead does (Shaun of the Dead coming closest in recent memory). The story, characters, effects and music will keep you locked in your seat all the way until the hilarious-yet-depressing ending.
This movie earns itself an A. It’s not “the Perfect Zombie Movie”, but it comes mighty close.
Grade: A

Basket Case: Review

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The Basket Case trilogy is one of the most underrated collections of horror movies you’ll ever encounter. I mean, just listen to the concept set-forth in the first installment:
Duane, a shy but friendly young man, carries a wicker basket with him wherever he goes. No one is sure why he does, or even what’s in the basket, but what they DO know that whatever it is, it growls and eats hamburgers. As it turns out, the thing in the basket is really Duane’s amputated Siamese-twin, Belial, who is nothing more than a blob-like head and torso with claws and very sharp teeth. Duane and Belial spend the bulk of the film seeking vengeance on the doctors who separated them.
How can that NOT peak your interest? The movie is very low-budget, but the poor quality of the picture and sound lends it a gritty atmosphere that makes the scares all the more effective. Belial-himself remains a creepy mystery within the wicker basket for the first half of the film, only being seen as a pair of eyes peeking out through the lid, or as a disembodied ruckus of growling and screaming.
Basket CaseThe movie’s major moment of questionable quality, which takes it from “frightening” to “hilarious” in under a second, is when they finally show you Belial in all his stop-motion…uh…”glory”. And my god is it some terrible stop-motion. The Saturday morning adventures of Gumby and Pokey are more technically sound than the sequence in which stop-motion Belial starts throwing chairs around. Thankfully, the stop-motion was limited mostly to just that scene, and Belial is seen through the rest of the film as a gruesome puppet, tearing out people’s throats.
Another interesting thing to note about this movie: Ugliest Collection of Human Beings on the Face of the Planet. At least outside of a leper colony, anyway. Seriously, it’s like the cast was assembled from the ugly kids that were in your high school drama class who had dreams of Hollywood stardom but you KNEW they’d never make it because they were too ugly. And you probably laughed at them. Well, that’s what these people are. Sure, they can act pretty good, but some of them are about as grotesque as the screaming blob in the wicker basket.
But then, that also adds to the “grittiness-factor” and what-not. And this film is DAMN gritty-looking. You might need a shower afterward.
Anyway, Basket Case has a clever concept, some truly frightening-looking people, a fantastic atmosphere and (when he’s not arm-wrestling the Sumatran Rat-Monkey for stop-motion dominance) Belial is one of the better horror movie monsters out there and the series is an entertaining alternative to the more mainstream franchises. Truly an underrated classic.
I give it a B-. The sequels were equally good in different ways (though remarkably more tongue-in-cheek) and had better effects to boot. You’ll want to check them out, too.
Grade: B-

Final Destination 3

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A Co-Op Critics Review!

Player 1: OnePumpedNinja

With a self-contradicting title like Final Destination 3, there is little more to expect than what you expect to expect from the expectations of the previous films. It’s the same old tale with fresh new faces to get smoked in the most morbidly creative ways imagineable on film.
It is the same plot as before: a group of high-school teenagers celebrate their seniority at an amusement park and something goes terribly wrong with the roller coaster. The yearbook photographer Wendy (Mary Winstead) and a couple of students escape death thanks to a premonition of things to come. As before, the Grim Reaper is seriously pissed that those pesky teens escaped his ingenius death trap and hunts the survivors down in the order of departure that they were supposed to be in.
I am assuming that you have seen this film (or are going to see it) because you like horror and not because some jerk boyfriend or freaky girlfriend is going to drag you to see it. In that case, we can forget the question of “is it scary?” and head to the meat of the film: the deaths. The appeal of watching any of the links in the Final Destination chain is that the setup for each cannon fodder teen’s demise is an elaborate, dark contraption reminiscent of some diabolical version of the board game “Mouse Trap.” The more creative, the better. Not that I am advocating torture and death as acceptable (though the killing off of two bimbettes in tanning beds is grimly funny), but in the context of these films it is obviously intended to be dark humor. Final Destination 1 had its plane crash and Final Destination 2 had its interstate pile-up. Here, we have a haywire roller coaster and yes, people get flung off. There’s a guy who dies by weight lifting and those tanning bed chicks I mentioned awhile ago. Need I continue? It gets mind-numbingly entertaining when you consider the fact that these kids know that the Grim Reaper is after them and still place themselves in stupid situations like operating a nail gun and skill saw. The film is as entertaining as a dumb kid who touches the stove even when his mom tells him not to.
Final Destination 3If you’ve seen the first two, you will not be disappointed. If you’re new to all this, you’ll either be terribly offended or guiltfully amused.
Final Destination 3: Not as fresh as Saw, but more entertaining than Hostel.

Player 2: DrSpengler

If there is any horror franchise that could conceivably continue onward into the distant future, it is Final Destination. The concept is fresh, unchallenged by knock-offs (so far, anyway) and so long as the sequels fulfill the requirements of the franchise, you’re guaranteed an intensely entertaining horror film. Maybe nothing that will ever escalate to “classic”-status, but something fun, gory, surprising, intriguing and satisfying all the way around.
The concept of the Final Destination franchise is constant through-out all the films; a group of people survive a horrible demise because one of the would-be corpses foresees the event, freaks out, and accidentally saves them all. However, you can’t cheat death no matter how hard you try, and one-by-one the survivors perish in gruesome, ironic “accidents” in the exact order in which they would have died earlier. And in the case of Final Destination 3, a group of annoying teenagers survive a nightmarish rollercoaster fiasco only to fall prey to Death-itself shortly afterward.
The concept is interesting enough, but that’s not what makes these movies so entertaining. It’s the WAY these people die that either shocks the crap out of you or leaves you in stitches. The deaths rely on a series of coincidences to cause more coincidences which eventually end with the designated teenager meeting a spectacularly painful demise. The coincidences build-up and build-up, for minutes at a time, leaving you hooked to see how one affects the other. The only comparison that can be made is to a Rube Goldberg Device. You know, like when a bowling ball falls onto a scale, the scale tips and the elevating tray taps the tail of one of those drinking toy birds, the bird dips into a bowl of water, the ripple causes a tiny toy sailboat to float to the end of the bowl and bump into a piece of cheese that was sitting on the table, the cheese falls to the floor where it intrigues a mouse, the mouse goes to the cheese but also has rabies and bites you in the leg on its way toward the cheese. Then on your way to the doctor you get hit by a semi.
Something like that only way cooler with ten times the gore and violence.
And Final Destination 3 provides lots of gore. I don’t want to ruin too much for you, but the brutality of the deaths surpass those in the first two films. Particularly what happens to the roid-raging black dude. In your FACE!
As far as a grade is concerned, on The Relative Grading Scale of Inappropriate Cartoon Snowmen, a BAD grade would be…ohhh…”Slushy the Slush-Packer”. However, since this was a GOOD movie, it rates a “Frosty the Pedophile”.
So if you want to see a horror movie that fits all the criteria to be entertaining, but isn’t anything that’ll make the history books, then check this movie out. It’s original (or as original as a sequel can get), gory and very fun to watch.

The Exorcism of Emily Rose: Review

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Exercising With Emily Rose

Exorcism is one of those delightful dinner-table subjects that the whole family can enjoy. It is also one of the most widely misunderstood and ridiculed subjects in the post-modern world, incompatible with today’s notions of civilized society. Many television specials have covered “live” exorcisms performed by ministers and self-proclaimed healers on supposedly possessed people who, to the intelligent viewer, are simply histrionics, epileptics, or outright crazies. It makes religion, and Christianity in particular, look stupid.
The problem with exorcism is at its core rooted in where to start. Do we look at exorcisms performed by Presbyterians? Methodists? Buddhists? To gauge the validity of exorcism, people tend to be aversed to look at the source: Roman Catholicism, which has been the crowd-pleaser and leader of mainstream concepts of exorcism since 33 A.D. With the Ritual Romanum in hand, the Catholic Church has set the standard on performing exorcisms with meticulous precision. Protestantism has since developed its own fractured forms of diabolical removal but without the flare or authority that the world sees in Rome.
A brief understanding of Catholic exorcism is necessary to appreciate the movie from a more precise perspective: Catholic exorcisms are rarely performed relative to the days of old and are not implemented unless the supposed possessee has passed a review by medical examiners ruling out a conventional, medically sound answer to explain the person’s behavior. This includes strange acquisition of foreign languages, vomiting of alien objects, contortions, and supernatural levitations. That is when the holy water comes out. No exorcism is allowed to be filmed or sensationalized, which is one reason why you never see Catholic exorcisms on Dateline (and one reason why most people think that the Church has something to hide). The Church intriguingly merges theology and science in its combat of demonic forces and provides a very positive opportunity for science to step in.
Exorcism of Emily RoseWhich is the prime reason for why The Exorcism of Emily Rose is such a success. Part courtroom drama, part horror movie, part educational, and all suspenseful, The Exorcism of Emily Rose is a carefully filmed movie that takes a provocative and thoughtful look at exorcism while still taking subtle cheap-shots at trying to scare the crap out of you. The story is loosely based on the case of Anneliese Michel, a German girl who did not survive a Catholic exorcism and whose exorcists and parents faced jail time for negligent homicide (prompting the Catholic Church to put even stricter regulations on its physician verification prior to performed exorcisms). The events in the movie take great liberties with the actual tale but that’s not really the point: the point is the present to us, the viewer, a fictionalized exorcism in as “true to life” a view as possible by clever use of flashbacks, replays, and scientific evidence (or counter-evidence).
The movie only slows down, ironically, when it feels the need to provide an even-handed point of view from the “exorcisms are crap!” and “exorcisms are some real sh*t!” crowds. How does it manage? Well, you throw in some shots of Father Tom Wilkinson seeing a shadowy fellow who may be the devil. Then you throw in some shots of the prosecutor being a complete ass. Then let’s have the hot lawyer start sensing something amiss in her apartment at 3:00 a.m. Then let’s show the prosecutor… well, keep being an ass. And so forth and so on.
But this volley of the spirtual versus the religious, faith versus rationality, and where they interact is what makes the movie so enjoyable from both a random viewer and intrigued religious perspective. We are finally shown Linda Blair unmasked and on trial, exposed and vulnerable. And at the same time, we find ourselves prey to the old addage: “if you cannot show them God, show them the Devil.”
Grade: B+