Buried

Today's movie is a bit of a rarity, Buried, the 2010 movie staring Ryan Reynolds, and only Ryan Reynolds, directed by a certain Rodrigo Cortés, who as far as I can see have directed only one feature-lenght film before. Also, the whole thing is set in a very restricted location, inside a coffin to be precise. There's several ways a concept like this could go horribly, horribly wrong, but how it fares, I won't get into quite yet. Also, this review will be fairly spoiler free, as I wouldn't want anyone to miss out on the full arc and experience of this 

I like this poster. Probably the best use of Review Blurbs I've seen.

The story is, as one might expect, fairly bare-bones. Reynolds plays Paul Conroy, a truck driver working for some contractor firm who does work in Iraq. When transporting some goods to a school somewhere, the convoy gets attacked and our hero gets knocked out, waking up inside a small coffin under ground with a cellphone, a lighter, a hip flask of whiskey and some other minor items he finds over the course of his stay in the wooden box that, luckily for him, is somewhat larger than a coffin. Over the course of the movie, he gets into contact with both his kidnappers and a branch of the US military that just might help him, however, his prospects are, understandably, rather grim.


In one way, this movie reminds me a little of Dogme movies, as by defined by the Dogme95-movement. I'm not much a fan of that school of film-making myself, but I can definitely see the appeal in ultra low-budget simplistic film-making. Not to go much of a tangent, Buried is very much a minimalistic movie, since the only character we see in the entire movie, with one brief exception, is Paul, and the only set, with no exceptions, is his minuscule prison. That said, Buried does allow itself a couple of luxuries that would not be allowed in a Dogme movie, amongst others some camera tricks. You'd think the camera crew wouldn't have too much of a job in a movie like this, but there's some surprisingly good camera work in there. For one, we have the very handheld, wavy style many of the shots are in, especially after Paul starts going just a little stir crazy, but the most impressive shot, in my mind, was a lingering 360 degree sweep of the coffin that it took me a while to figure out. On the less bright side, there's a couple of kinda immersion-breaking shots that show Paul in the coffin with darkness outside. I'm a bit torn on this one, because I think it works, as the movie is kind of from Paul's point of view, and getting a little artsy to express his emotions is groovy, but especially that shot reminded me that this was, indeed, shot on a set somewhere, but that's enough film student wankery for now.

You'll see a good bit of this during the movie.

...
Oh who am I kidding, the wankery is all I've got. To be honest, Ryan Reynolds surprised me in this. Considering I had only seen the guy in Blade: Trinity, which was pretty much the worst imagenable introduction to the Blade series I could've gotten, with a Reynolds who plays badass about as well as Mark Wahlberg plays... anything, and was relentlessly shilled as a character I should care about, despite being about as interesting as watching painted grass dry, and a couple of comedies of varying degrees of romantic subplotting. That said, I did not make that connection in this movie, oh no, far from it. Thanks to the stark lighting in the coffin and Reynolds actually playing a serious character, it took me a good half hour before I said to myself. "Wait a second, that's Berg." Most interestingly, this did not really ruin my enjoyment of the movie, I guess we'll have to chalk that up to Reynolds actually showing some acting chops here.


Seriously, Paul Conroy is a bit of a tricky character to play, since he's got what I will only describe as several asshole-ish traits, well, maybe that's a little unfair, and he's just a regular guy who reacts poorly to the fresh batch of weapons-grade bad luck that has been dumped in his lap? It's an interpretation thing, I guess, but either way  Reynolds does it really well, he plays a character that supports both these interpretations, and does it so well that I actually felt sympathy for him, lacking this would've been a deathblow for the movie, or at least made the thriller part less potent. Without spoiling too much, the final fifteen to twenty minutes might be some of the most intense movie watching experience I've ever had, and it made me kinda sad I didn't get around to catching it in theaters, because the ability to pause, minimize and in general not have the movie thrust in your face for the full 90 minutes might have taken away from the intensity somewhat. Of course, looking at these last 20 minutes, it might not be such a bad thing to have the impact diminished a little, but there you go, I'm a movie masochist, apparently.


Also, it should really go without saying, but claustrophobic might want to give this one a pass, just like epileptics might want to avoid Irreversible.

The Orphanage

So, in my recent crusade to upgrade from DVD to BluRay, I also acquired a copy of The Orphanage, another Spanish horror hit along the lines of The Devil's Backbone and simialr. For the longest time, I thought this was a Guillermo del Toro production, but turns out he's got little to do with this, except a producer role of some sort. Regardless, orphanages are prime real estate for scaryness, so let's get rolling. 


The Orphanage subscribes to the philosophy that incorporates larger themes than just the pure danger and fear, incorporating more, shall one say, adult fears and concerns into the mix. It's very refreshing when movies do that, because I get the distinct feeling that the filmmakers have a point to make, and as long as they're not blatant about it, I find it a-ok. This movie is about a woman named Laura who moves back into her childhood home, an orphanage, with the intention of starting it back up. In this old building and in the surrounding countryside, Laura's sick son gets a new invisible friend. So, as you might have guessed, here be ghosts, sorta-creepy but benign (?) ghost children, gotta love those.


Now, I'm actually a bit torn regarding what I think about this movie. The drama bits were very well done, with convincing acting and the pacing is fairly satisfying, however, it feels a bit like the movie can't quite make up it's mind if it's going for that whole horror vibe after all. Sure, there's a fairly creepy scene in which a séance is held to try getting to the bottom of this whole brouhaha, but I get the distinct feeling that the horror doesn't quite... blossom, although it could be because the horror is somewhat more subdued. Then again, I've seen good subdued horror too, and I wasn't seeing it in this. Or maybe I'm not getting it, as it were,  it wouldn't be either the first or last time anything like that happened.


Still, this movie's popularity is kind of surprising to me. I mean, it's not bad, nonono, but it strikes me as one of these movies where I go in expecting Paranormal Activity crossed with Pan's Labyrinth, but got something more akin to The Changeling, but with a twist of supernatural (that is uncanny stuff, not the tv show... although I guess...) It's a bit of the same problem I had with Black Swan, although I liked that one better because it, on a certain level, the horror bits it had was better. Also, Natalie Portman was pretty damn good in that movie, but that's a topic for another blog.

Splice

For the longest time, I was planning to not see Splice. The movie I saw laid out before me in the trailer was that of the folly of science, creating a humanoid being that turns out to be a (literally) man-eating seductress who does not let such petty problems as biology get in the way of getting her freak on with the bumblig science guy, and then eat him. Nothing new, nothing really interesting, soft science all around, what has humanity wrought, etc etc.

I am, however, taught, yet again, not to judge a freakish decidedly not-entirely-human humanoid on it's cover, and to sort out my goddamned metaphors, for that matter. What convinced me to give this one a chance was, believe it or not, the director. Vincenzo Natali, the man responsible for both Cube, which is one of my favorite horror movies of all time, and Ginger Snaps, which I wasn't crazy about, but definitely is good, in that "what is it with Canadians and horror" sort of way.

No, no, not like that one .... Rowsdower

I call this movie a horror movie, but I'm not so sure on the definition of that, but I'll get into that after the recap. The movie follows two scientists, Clive and Elsa, played, respectively, by the flaming passion in human form that is Adrian Brody and Sarah Polley. The two find themselves struggling to get continued corporate funding for their genetic research, this sorta degenerates into a B-plot, though, as they create a human/animal gene grab bag which matures quickly into a... being they name Dren.

Actually, most of the movie isn't really about the funding or ethics of the whole thing, although it gets brought up occasionally, and ends up showing a pretty big part of things towards the end, I wouldn't say that's what the movie is about. No, you see, since Dren, the human-esque girl's creation was unplanned, probably unethical and  overall something the bigwigs at Financing IffyMoralsCorp would not approve, our two scientists, who are together, for the record, raise the strange tadpole-scorpion-winged-something as... well, their daughter, and this is where the movie grows interesting. Lurking in the background, we're given more than a few hints that's Elsa's childhood was less than stellar, and that her mother had this whole control issues thing which her daughter may or may not have gotten herself. It doesn't come fully into play before the end, but when it does, it's easily the most unnerving scene in the movie, and better than the quote-unquote climax by far.

As one might glean from the recap, this movie is rather light on the horror. It's more of a Soft Sci Fi story, using this cloning to explore how the characters act around life they, in the quite old-fashioned semi-godlike fashion, created, and how their character flaws end up fucking them all over. Good times. One could argue that Adrian Brody doesn't as much act as he's just... there, but on the other hand, his dispassionate presence sorta fills a role in itself, so I guess it actually works here. I don't know why I tend to notice how hard Brody is not acting, especially how he easily acts circles around... say... Mark Wahlberg, then again, I'm pretty sure a ten-sided die can act better than Mark Wahlberg.

At any rate, what I consider the biggest flaw of the movie is that the ending's sorta... not right. Horror-wise it pretty much does it right, we have a murderous beast with sexual undertones (or overtones, some might argue) chasing people through a forest. However, I just can't get into it. Partially because the tonal shift, the family situation at the scientists' place escalates until Elsa straps Dren down on a table and cuts her poisonous stinger tail off. This scene is easily the most tense and, in a certain degree, frightening scene in the movie. Although it has never been explicit, it's quite obvious that Elsa's mother was, as we say in the business, quite mad,  and it seems that here, Elsa has followed suit. Sure, there's a perfectly good reason for cutting that thing off, it's a goddamn liability on account of being poisonous and deployable like a proper scorpion stinger what speed is considered, but that doesn't change that Elsa dehumanizes Dren, who she up to this point treated like her own daughter. In another movie, this might have been the sign that Elsa saw Dren as the abomination she truly was, but the way it's played, I really think you're supposed to think this was a seriously dick move. Point is, after all that, the actual wham-ending just feels... tame, although that too contains some unpleasantness, including Elsa's "comeupance" if one can say that without sounding like there's some seriously wrong with you, but it just doesn't feel like it's supposed to be scary or suspenseful, it's just to mop up the loose ends after the movie's two big scenes. Which isn't to say that it comes out of nowhere or doesn't do a good job, because it, respectively, is foreshadowed, and does tie off various loose threads to some degree, at least.

All in all, I liked Splice, it was much better than I had expected, and a weak last 5-ish minutes really did not detract from the characters, SFX and just plain copious amounts of thought that was put into this movie. This is probably a good movie to show people who do not like horror movies, although you might not recruit all that many people through this one, as it's fairly open about not being much of a horror movie, when you look away from the trailer, that is.

Norwegian horror spotlight: Snarveien

It's time again, dear friends, to delve into the dark scary forests of Norwegian horror, this time with Snarveien (trans: Detour) Well, if horror movies have taught me one thing, it's that taking a shortcut is never a good idea, and a whole movie set in or around a shortcut is bound to be a bloody fun affair, right?

Well... not quite. This movie is fairly similar to The Strangers, in that it has a very limited cast of characters, admittedly not quite as limited as the above-mentioned movie, and a low bodycount. It does have a few kills, but mostly, it keeps working up the atmosphere. The plotline is fairly basic. Lina and Martin are on their way back from Sweden, where they have bought alcohol for a friend's wedding, shopping east of the Norway/Sweden border is a fairly popular activity in this country, probably on account of the price. However, our heroes take a side road to avoid customs, which most horror fans should tell you is a really shit idea. Just to make it worse, this side road is blocked on account of an accident, and they find themselves taking an inderect route, where they encounter some local color and a car breakdown. In their efforts to getting the car fixed, they manage to stumble over a snuff film streaming operation who, as covert operations is want to do, decide to capture the two Norwegians and torture 'n kill them.

So yes, the story isn't what you'd call amazing, but it's an ok setup. Of course, this basically is Texas Chainsaw Massacre copy number one-hundred and thirty five, with the Deep South is replaced with the westernmost parts of Sweden, and it doesn't really evolve past that, the big plot twist being fairly obvious from the get-go, but it's a slasher, I guess I can't really ask for more. What this movie has, though, is some pretty good scares, especially one point just before everything goes seriously south, where our hero is looking at several monitors, one of them showing a closeup of the back of his head, to turn around to see the one filming him. The fact that this man apparently had a nightvision camera built into his gimp mask does little to alleviate the sheer sinking "oh... shit" feeling, that is, if not entirely on par with Marble Hornets, then at least up there.

One of the many signs your day is going to get worse.

Although this film wasn't bad, I feel it illustrates a decent point when it comes to Norwegian horror. Sure, there's good horror coming out nowadays, and the business is finally going into a track which makes actually getting involved with it seems like an actual option, however, I do think Norwegian horror is taking after some... less charming traits from the big movie machine that is Hollywood. I mean, Fritt Vilt (Cold Prey) pretty much was a straight slasher ripoff, and its sequels more so, but I honestly hoped the Norwegian Slasher would either grow somewhat more unique, reflecting Norwegian tradition and quirks, or phase out when people realized there's made hundreds, probably thousands of those things already, and the minor variations it usually plays around have been tried before. I'm not saying slashers can't do anything new, it's just that minor variations in setting really doesn't make it new and exciting, and neither does stupid twist endings, although those can work too, but I'm getting into a digression in a digression, some real Inception shit.

So, as you might be able to discern, Snarveien wasn't bad, you certainly could do worse than it, since it's clearly made with vigor and a little more inventiveness than what's usual in the genre. It's not going to rock your world, but for a quick, easy popcorn movie, it can do quite well.

Off-Topic Thursday: BluRay

So yes, I figure that while talking about horror movies at my every waking moment is groovy and all, and if I had it my way, this might be how I spent my days, a little variety wouldn't kill me. Besides, I have other stuff to talk about than horror movies, and it'd be a shame for all these lovely words to go to waste, don't you agree? Anyway, the thing I'm talking about that is only tangentially related to horror movies today is BluRay, winner of the war of HD entertainment, forever degrading the HD DVD to the wall of shame together with Betamax and doubtlessly several other formats that time has been even more unkind to than the two aforementioned ones.

My reason for writing about this is that I, finally some might say, have gotten myself a BluRay player for my computer. Installing the thing was a daunting task for someone more used to dealing with software, leaving the hardware to spiral into obsoleteness by itself. I guess years of using laptops will do that to you. Fortunately, the thing wasn't too hard to get installed. Not loving the fact that none of the media players I have seem to be able to play the BluRays, but I feel it's not too horrible, as the standard player that came with the bluray isn't too bad. It gets the job done, can't really ask for more... just yet.

As for quality, it's a step up, and since my computer screen is a nice little 1080p 16:9 wonder, I do get a fairly nice and sharp watching experience. Sure, it doesn't really make the movies any better, craftwise, but holy shit, they're nice looking. And before anyone asks, no this will not lead to me buying Avatar on BluRay, breathtaking visuals or no, that movie just pisses me off. That said, I do tend to seek out films with unique and interesting visuals when I'm buying BluRay discs. Thus far, I've  got  Splice (which I will review at some point) The Orphanage (Same), In Bruges, Paprika, Inception and The Dark Knight, which I probably will make the topic of another OTT.

Of course, this new upgrade in video equipment have left me with some measure of frustration, namely, the selection of BluRays available. See, DVDs had a good thing going now, it had become cheap enough for any two-bit production company to churn out their little disc-shaped nuggets of joy, or bottomless desperation, as the case often was. With BluRay, it has't quite reached this point yet, and thus, some of my weird, obscure movies are kind of tricky, read pretty much impossible to get on the format, which is a bummer, but at least I can look forward to "updated releases", well, if people go for the George Lucas route of film re-releasing, that is. We shall see how it goes.

Devil

So, M. Night Shyamalan, we meet again. It's not surprising, no, not by a long shot. I'm a horror movie fan, and I prefer cerebral horror with at least marginally original concepts, and Shyamalan produces a lot of these types of movies. Of course, the fact that the guy is starting to shape up to be my nemesis isn't helping matters. To be fair, I recognize that my irrational hatred might be a result of The Happening... and Lady In The Water and Signs and The Village... so all of his movies I've seen bar one. Still, it feels unfair to judge the man's new works from that, which isn't to say that I don't. I wish I could say I started this movie with enthusiasm and a positive outlook, but try as I might, I just couldn't get myself to do that. Still, I've been convinced by movies I wasn't crazy about before, so let's see how this one fares.

Now, this isn't really a Shyamalan film, per se, it's directed by John Erick Dowdle, the guy who directed Quarantine... Oh my. He did direct The Poughkeepsie Tapes, which I did like, though, so I guess it, from that could go either way. Still, the story is Shyamalan's, and those who have seen a Shyamalan movie, any Shyamalan movie knows what that means, quiet drama scenes and TWISTS, but I'm getting ahead of myself, let's get the basics down.

The setup is very similar to Blackout, another film I liked. Five strangers find themselves trapped in an elevator, one of them have a dark, deadly, secret. Oh yes, one of the five strangers is in fact, El Diabolo, Old Scratch, The Devil, if you so prefer, and he's out to torture sinners because... uh, he's the devil, and he's vindictive and not very nice and what-have-you. I'm not quite sure how well that fits with Christian theology, but it does sound a little odd. Maybe it makes sense, though, Satan is seldom considered the most rule-abiding and decent of folk. I wouldn't say the story isn't problematic, in itself, but it has a couple of snags that makes me go "Uh... what?"

First of all, there's the aforementioned theological confusion, but I guess I, as a non-angry Atheist, have no real room to complain about this. What I do, however, feel I can complain about is one particular bit of "Uh... wait, what?" logic. Mr Exposition in this case is a Hispanic security guard who also, keeping true to national stereotypes, this is Hollywood after all, is deeply religious, and by deeply religious we mean Catholic, because  that's the only type of Christianity that's sufficiently dramatic for screenwriters, it would seem. He claims the Devil, capital D, is in the elevator, and I hope you're holding on to something because this'll blow your mind like an Illithid hooker, because everything seems to go wrong all on itself. Oh yes, he even demonstrates, by throwing a piece of toast up in the air and observing that it lands with the jam side down. You know, never mind that the side with jam on it is probably heavier, or that... as they say, shit happens.

Or, in this case: THE DEVIL HAPPENS

Now, if you pointed to all the other incredibly lethal accidents that happened around the same time, I might be more inclined to call it an argument that... you know, actually makes sense, but come on, toast? That's like me proving that my dog is Lord Cthulhu of the Deeps because of a coin toss. Of course, nobody else takes him seriously, although he, indeed turns out to be right, as the minority exposition expert is want to do. So, I guess it could be worse, since everybody taking him seriously would cause me to headbutt something.

On the technical side of things, Devil is competently done, but with some odd choices that I feel diminish the overall immersion and at least my enjoyment of the thing. For one, the movie opens with this odd, upside-down pan across the city this thing is set in. I'm not sure what it's supposed to signify, maybe it's a play on that whole thing of an upside-down cross being satanic or something,or maybe there's some absurd bible verse in play here, but honestly, it just looks odd, and not "cool odd" either, just kinda... weird. Also, this could just be me, but I felt the score was way to aggressive on the ominous music. I mean, it's true as they say, scary music can make most anything scary, but when you're playing scary music over pretty much the entire opening without anything even slightly unnerving happening... you're kind of wearing it out.

Scary music will not make this intimidating

Scare-wise, Devil could've done better. Granted, it has one or two moments that's... pretty creepy, but I can't help but feel that Devil squanders it's potential. It's El Diablo we're dealing with here, one would think he could whip up some pretty terrific stuff, or at least be a little... scarier about it. Just such a relatively simple thing as having the lights go out, because the devil always kills in the cover of probably infernally powered blackouts, without anyone dying would be a fun trick, and you could be awfully deceptive as the Big D. Of course, you could be awfully deceptive as filmmakers too, but they seem to not having poured their heart into it. You see, from the basic premise, it's obvious how this was planned to play out, juggling suspicion on all living characters, but sadly, it's pretty straightforward, as they rotate which character is in the suspicion spotlight, and doesn't go back, questioning people who previously was in the spotlight, etc, you know, mindfuck material..

All in all, Devil feels like a big honking helping of wasted opportunities here. Sure, here I go as an uppity film geek telling professionals how to do their job, but I guess it wouldn't be a proper blog if I didn't display a little unwarranted self-importance, or what? At any rate, the movie really doesn't make the most out of it's premise, in that very little time is actually spent in the elevator, which feels like a cop-out to me. Alternatively, maybe it'd be a more interesting movie if you never actually went into the elevator, kind of turning the plot inwards-out. That could create a few interesting scenes, I think, but here's me, art-film weirdoing again. Also, you really don't get any backstory on the main characters, so when they die, or have mind-shattering plot twists that you might see coming if you've seen a single Shyamalan film, I personally found it hard to empathize with them, especially since they're given little more than the one character trait that tells us why the Devil is fucking with them in the first place.

So, all in all, Devil's a fairly disappointing movie, and while I won't say that everything Shyamalan does nowadays end up sucking, it would be a deceptively simple conclusion to make.

John Dies At The End

Every so often, you find a title for a work that really grabs you. You're not sure how or when, but in some way or another, you have to read/watch/listen to this thing. To me, the book John Dies At The End was an example of such a title. It was a ballsy move, I figured, spoiling the ending in the title, but there probably was some sort of postmodernistic point to be made, unless it turned out to be a lie, which I figure it might have been, of course, that'd also be some sort of postmodern brouhaha, so there's little escaping that. At any rate, some spoilers here.

John Dies At The End is about John, whose prospects of the future, on account of the title, are rather grim, and David, two college dropouts who get in way above their heads when they take an odd drug called Soy Sauce. The drug gives them supernaturally keen perceptive abilities and discover that, indeed, there are things that go bump in the night, and a lot of those things want to mess Earth's shit up because, as mentioned earlier, beings from another world are usually dicks.

Maybe one of the most striking things with this book is how it treats humor and horror, two things that not always goes together. Many works of horror takes themselves too seriously, and, has been observed, thus usually become the bigger joke. See 90% of all the slashers in the history of ever. John Dies At The End, though, demonstrates that a work can both be genuinely funny and genuinely terrifying. This is mostly on account of the narrator and the titular character being... well rather funny, and the things they face actually being genuinely terrifying.

Oh yes, we're talking Lovecraftian horror here today, and interestingly enough, the author keeps it varied. Sure, the multiple villains might give the book a bit of an anthology feel to it, but there's several things tying the plot-lines together, amongst others a bit of a murder mystery that I, for one, found very refreshing, although the way it slides into the background kinda bothers me. Then again, you're dealing with dimension-spanning baddies and horrors scarcely describable by us squishy humans, a dead body in your shed isn't your highest priority, although by the end it might have been a good thing to focus on, but that's me.

From what I hear, Don Coscarelli, B-Movie master, creator of Phantasm and Bubba Ho-Tep, is making a movie of this book. I'm not usually optimistic about all that many things, but this could really fit. Phantasm is somewhat similar to JDATE in several ways, sans the fact that the latter sort of made sense in the end, whereas Phantasm made increasingly less sense until Phantasm 3 left me as one big O.o. From what I hear, the fourth one didn't exactly help matters.  So, we'll see at any rate, unless the production goes to shit in style of the World War Z movie, where the studios apparently got nervous when the script was leaked. Kinda odd, since it's based on a book, but there you go.