Halloween Horror Watch-a-Thon

No scary stories this Halloween, but I figured that since I've been watching a lot of horror just recently, it'd take me ages to cover all in my regular fashion, so therefore, it's time for the One Paragraph Review... thing. Yeah, I don't have a better word for it, but let's get this thing rolling, shall we?

Ginger Snaps

Teen horror coming of age story with werewolves, where lycanthropy is used as a metaphor for puberty. No, really. Anyway, this is the story of the two sisters Ginger and Birgitte, who are morose outcasts of the sort I personally have never seen outside of American (or in this case Canadian) movies. Ginger is bitten by a werewolf on the first day of her first period, so she slowly turns into a werewolf, growing sexier and more primal on the way, until the "sexy" part kinda takes a drop... unless you're into that sorta thing. The relationship between the two leads is really good, although it gets a little uncomfortably incestuous at some points, still, it makes you care for the main characters, and that's something a lot of horror movies seem to forget you actually have to do. The makeup and the effects are pretty good, but not mindblowing or on An American Werewolf In London-kind of level. Still, very watchable, even for us guys.

Event Horizon

It's Hellraiser.... IIIIIIIIN SPAAAAACE. Seriously though, the titular ship has suddenly reappeared after it's sudden disappearance. A team is sent to investigate the now derelict ship that was the first ship using experimental Faster Than Light travel technology. Hoh yes, I can't see this going wrong at all. On the expedition we also get the Event Horizon's designer, Doctor Wier, who has some guilt issues that eventually turn him into the anthromorphic representation of the now evil as hell ship, because faceless evil doesn't sit well with western audiences, I guess. Got some good scares, but a bit of a Jump Scare addiction as per usual, and the brief, and not so brief, flashes of hellish torture we get are properly fucked up. Probably a bit of a guilty pleasure, but it's one of the better space-horrors since Alien.

David Cronenberg's The Fly

Oh dear. When Cronenberg's involved, you know you're not in for a happy fun ride. Scientist Seth Brunden has invented a teleporter, but when he tests it out, a lone fly in the teleportation chamber leads to what can easily be described as a genetic mashup with the worst thinkable consequences. Seth becomes some half-human half-fly abomination, and his girlfriend is starting to wonder if the child she's carrying will have a similar genetic problems. It's a rare movie in that it happens to be both heartbreaking and quite stomach-churning, sure. Sure, we see the protagonist hurl acidic vomit at both food and... somewhat more sentient targets, but we also see his girlfriend who's simultaneously be worried for and afraid of her increasingly mutated love. I would say the movie's just a little less disturbing than Videodrome overall, but that's mostly because it's fairly straightforward. It pretty much crushes Videodrome under it's heel what emotional investment is considered, though.

Carrie

Halloween's apparently my "catch up with horror movies I should have seen"-holiday. Works for me. This flick follows the titular character, a naive outcast, who gets invited to the prom by a popular guy. What could possibly go wrong? In a nutshell: Pig's blood, psychic powers and religious guilt and paranoia implanted by a crazy abusive christian fundamentalist mother. Oh yes, this one is a bit light on the horror, like a lot of Stephen King stuff is want to do, but once it cracks up, it cranks up on high.

Zombieland

I figured I could end this on a lighter note. Don't get me wrong, death, pain and universal brouhaha is all nice and well, but once in a while, I want to see a movie with zombies, gore, ludicrous gibs, and all the main characters surviving. Four survivors traveling through zombie-infested America, searching for home, a theme park and a twinkie. It's a fairly clever zombie flick, maybe a bit of a reconstruction of zombie movies. Fun, awesome, and kind of heartwarming, talked about it before.

The Happening

Oh M. Night Shyamalan, where did you go wrong? The Sixth Sense was great, several bricks were shat, and the twist ending is right up there with "The Narrator is Tyler Durden" and "Rosebud was his sled" as far as fame goes, and well deserved, it was one of the twists that really changed the movie upon rewatching it. Sure, some of the later movies didn't quite live up to the greatness, Signs, The Village, Lady In The Water, these weren't great, in retrospect they were pretty shit, but at least the two former had some scaryness going for it. Lady in the Water had... uh... I'll have to get back to you on that one. Annoying strawmen of people criticizing the director? Anyway, despite my vitriolic attitude towards his works, it wasn't until I saw this film that I realized just how far the mighty hath fallen. Spoilers as usual.

So, The Happening. This story follows Eliot Moore and his incredibly creepy wife, Alma, who, despite being unsettling enough for a horror film on her own, and possibly a few sequels, apparently isn't supposed to be creepy, as they flee from the titular... well happening.

The happening is people going suicidal due to a neurotoxin that causes people to kill themselves. Now, this being a Shyamalan film, there's also a very prominent B-plot, to the point where I'm considering if maybe the whole "suicide plague"-thing is the B-plot, where Mr. and Mrs. Moore are growing distant, their marriage slowly disintegrating. The twist, or what goes for a twist in this movie, is that the plants have had it with humanity's shit, and is now releasing the neurotoxin whenever there's larger groups of humans around. Apparently, their chlorophyll rage can be quelled by either the power of love or exceedingly suicidal idiocy, but I'll get back to that later.

Scary, no?

So, what's the problem with this, movie? I'd say there's several, but it'd help if the man playing the main character, Mark Wahlberg, formerly of Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch fame, could... you know, act. Seriously, this man has all of one expression, one tone of voice. Oh yes, it's Dull Surprise all the way, sure, he's not quite as bad as the actor playing his wife, but she's not the main character, and as such, it's not as catastrophically bad for the movie. Seriously, there's one line in the movie, where Elliot tries to be diplomatic with a potted plant, only for it to realize it's a plastic plant. This could be pretty hilarious. Just the slightest hint of deadpan, or exasperation, hell, just a relatively minor change in tone could make this scene funny, as I'm pretty certain it was supposed to be.

The Silver Screen cannot contain the raw emotion of Mark Wahlberg

Also, I'm pretty sure this is just a problem with my twisted sense of humor, but this movie's attempts at being frightening also falls flat. Seriously, large parts of the population is killing themselves, this should be scary. Instead, most of the deaths feel like a parody. One memorable kill is when Mark Wahlberg is left looking in... well... dull surprise as a survivor starts up a big-ass lawnmower before laying down in front of the thing. Judging by the music, this is supposed to be scary. Needless to say, it really doesn't work.

Speaking of things this movie doesn't do well, let's talk about the science, although it's more appropriate to talk about it's attitude towards science. I'm not fanatical about it, but I'm of the opinion that the scientific method is quite solid as far as getting answers about the universe goes, and the philosophy behind it is quite solid. Therefore, I find it infuriating when the movie opens with Mark Wahlberg's character, a science teacher, having a long speech about how science is pretty much useless, and nature does shit that nobody can explain because... nature did it, I guess. I just can't get over that. Had he been an English teacher, or a social studies teacher, or any other sort of a teacher, it could make sense, but a science teacher telling people that science can't explain shit? Jesus and a half, Shyamalan, I'm getting the impression you want to make a point here.

Again, as a Shyamalan movie is want to do, the climax of this movie is a little odd. To be specific, our two main characters end up sitting in the dark, talking about their relationship. Yeah, not surprising, pretty much every Shyamalan film I've seen, sans Lady In The Water, I think, builds up towards the climax like this. It seems to point towards Shyamalan preferring to do drama, despite never really doing any straight dramas. Anyway, large talky bits pass, it's difficult to care, since the acting's wooden and the writing artificial. Then comes the part that slays me. Our heroes are caught in separate buildings, with murderous plants separating them, but when they work out their relationship problems, they decide they'd rather die together, and they go out in the meadow OF DEATH.

Not pictured: Death

You'd think that this would be the end of our heroes, but for some reasons they are unaffected by the neurotoxin. Not quite sure why. Either, their love stopped the plants, their apparently suicidal stupidity made the plants realize there wasn't much more to be done, or they just got stupid lucky. I kinda get the feeling the "power of love"-thing was supposed to be the subtext, but it's so... disappointingly lame. I mean, I'm sure a talented director could make this work, but Shyamalan just ain't it.

So, in a nutshell, The Happening might be one of the most unintentionally hilarious films that was ostensibly supposed to be scary I have ever seen . I'm thinking someone should have a nice sit-down with Shyamalan and tell him that despite The Sixth Sense being quite good, him being a part of a movie's production doesn't automatically make it good. Luckily, the next few movies I plan to cover is somewhat better. Also, Halloween's coming up, so I guess something should be done with that.

ZOMGbie Part II: The Requiem of Vengance

It seems people keep comming up with new and exciting ways to get zombies into a story. The triggering case for this observation is that the good dudes and dudettes over at Shocktillyoudrop writing about a movie called Cockneys vs. Zombies. I'll give you a second to absorb that title. To my understanding it's kind of Snatch/Lock, Stock meets George Romero, or possibly 28 days later, you know how it goes.

That's one thing I love about zombies, they're like cheese. And by that, I do not mean that their quality increases over time, nor that they're what sweet dreams are made of (think about it.) What I mean is that you can add zombies to damn near everything. Of course, it might be silly, but in some cases, it might be good, or possibly even awesome to the point of awesomeness.

In closing: Zombies are like cheese.