High Tension

So, I had heard about this movie before, and it occurred to me that the movie aficionados of the internet seems to have some sort of bizarre hate-love thing going on for this one, a bit like me and several filmmakers that shall remain unnamed in this post, lest we get derailed. But ok, I'm told, even by those who do not like it, that it's a fairly atmospheric movie that has quite a bit of tension to it, so I figured it'd be worth a shot. Plus, it has Muse on the soundtrack, and I'm willing to forgive a lot when my British Alt-Rock friends are involved.

Forgiving this, though? No can do

So, High Tension, or originally Haute Tension, or "Switchblade Romance" as it is known in the UK and Scandinavia (now that's a lot of titles,) is a fairly basic slasher story from France. The story is about two college girls, Marie and Alexa, who goes to visit Alexas parents, only to have their rural calm and relaxation ruined by a passing trucker who thought killing everyone in the house and anyone else he might encounter would be a decent form of recreation. There's also a twist near the end, but I'm going to get all the other stuff I want to say about this movie, because that twist is spoiler-tastic, and very instrumental to my overall impression of this movie.

So, in my big Slasher Movie Taxonomy, I'd place High Tension somewhere between The Strangers and some of the middle Friday 13th movies. It's a bit of a strange place, but it'll do. There's a couple of frankly insanely gory fatalities (such as the "Cupboard Decapitation" and the oldie but goodie "Axe To The Torso,") while the main focus being our heroine running around, hiding while being scared pretty much shitless by a murderer that appears to be lurking ''just'' outside of view most of the time. I personally found some of the gore effects a little ridiculous, but I'm not a huge gore fan, so there's me.

Now, as I mentioned, there's a lot of panicky running and hiding in this movie, and this could be pretty boring, but it works, partially because our hero actually has a reason for not booking it, which adds to the aforementioned tension. The more I think about it, the more this reason ties into the twist, but I shouldn't get to that just yet.

Let me just talk about the titles for a little bit. High Tension is a pretty ok title, but it's awfully generic, like how Scream was supposed to be called "Scary Movie" (yes, really,) I guess. I actually like the alternative title better, it has a vaguely unnerving ring to it, although I can't really remember much switchblade useage, which is a shame, because switchblades are cool, in a "this thing is ridiculously dangerous"-kind of way. The second half of the title, though? Maybe more relevant, but I'll get to that. BLUH BLUH, HUGE SPOILERS below.

Alright, it's finally twist time. So, as the movie progresses, it's revealed that the trucker is Marie... well, an alternative personality of hers anyway. Ostensibly, Marie has gone mad with lesbian lust towards Alex, and when I say mad, I mean PROPER mad, "chase the object of your affection through the woods with powertools"-mad. Now, that's a bit weird, to say the least, and there might be some other explanation than that, but if so, it's pretty well hidden. Also,  there's plot holes the size of caribou in this thing now. Every time the trucker did something off screen while Marie was on-screen, we're left with a bit of a conundrum, especially when our two heroines is in the back of the killer's truck, while he's driving it... yeah, that doesn't quite fit with the trucker really being Marie, now does it? 

Ok, I will be fair, if this whole thing is from Marie's point of view, she could be seeing and hearing things that isn't so, but there's still logistical problems up the wazoo, requiring our villainous protagonist to be at least two places at once, and you can explain a lot by a degenerating grip on reality, but there should be a limit here somewhere. I mean, at some point you have to show how this is supposed to work. All in all, the twist left me thinking about the movie after I finished it, which is a good thing, but it left me thinking it was actually pretty dumb, which isn't quite as good.

Maybe I'm just being unreasonable, though, because the journey up to the point of the spoiler is fairly good as far as slashers go, although it's far from dethroning The Strangers as my favorite straight slashers.

Before And After II: Insidious Part The Second

There are definite advantages to being a pessimist, you can safely avoid a lot of disappointment that way, but that said, there are few feelings sweeter than having something actually turn out as good as you expect. If there was any doubt, I liked Insidious.

So, the story is pretty much what it says on the tin. This couple starts experiencing weird shit after their son ends up in a coma, the circumstances around said coma also being in the "weird shit"-category. Eventually, they discover that their son has managed to astrally project himself on to way too deep astral water, and now all manner of undead dicks want his vacated body, and the evilest of these, some sort of demon, being the closest to manage this. Needless to say, this would be bad, for more than one reason.

There are a couple of things with the story that I found, well, rather refreshing, for the lack of a better word. For one, yes, the wife is the one who discovers weird shit going down first, as is customary for these films it would seem, but when she confronts her husband about it, he's initially skeptical, but actually agrees to move out of the house, something that, in most Haunt-movies would solve the problem entirely. This movie, though, is similar to Paranormal Activity, in that it's actually a person who's haunted, rather than a location. This, for obvious reasons, makes this gesture rather pointless in the large scope of things, but still, he seems like a more pleasant guy than a lot of ghost movie fathers, so that's something.

Of course, this sympathy towards the father becomes very important near the end, where the dad enters the shadowy dark world that is The Further. It brings to mind how that Silent Hill movie got a lot of flak for turning the main character into a woman, the implication being, the critics claimed, that males could not go through hell for their offspring, that it was "a chick ting" if you will. Well, insidious doesn't do that, although I do see the more practical reason for the father to be the one with talents in Astral Projection, but that's a little too spoilery even for me.

Now, to the important stuff. The scares. Insidious brings the good stuff in this regard too. The scares are fairly low-key, not relying on the obnoxious jumpscares. One that works especially well is just past the halfway point, when the mom wakes up from some nightmare or other, and we see someone walking outside her window. Initially, I was in full "OHSHI-"-modus, but nothing was made of it, and it wasn't until whoever it was passes again, and she asks if it's her dear hubby I relax, only for the thing, a ghost if you were curious, teleport in and start being unpleasant. The timing is part of what makes it work, together with a lack of over the top orchestral stings and other silliness. The part in The Further is also pretty well done, it's rather subtly unnerving in a very "Ghost House"-kind of way, and although it does get kind of hectic after a while, it still feels rather subtly unnerving in the "less is more" way that oh so few horror movies seem to be able to do.

In summation, Insidious is a pretty good horror movie. Nothing brainmeltingly original or genre-defining like Saw I, but considerably much more scary, possibly a bit of a Paranormal Activity light for those who can't stand Found Footage films, or just a good film in its own rights, for that matter.

Before And After II: Insidious

Alright, after April passing like a blur of coffee and sluglines in my participation of Script Frenzy, I never really got to do any blogging, but now that I have finished my horror spec script, I'm ready to get some work done, well, blogging work. This time, I'm going to do a B&A of a horror movie called Insidious.

This one appears to be a bit of an oldschool ghosty-type flick. The IMDB synopsis reads "A family looks to prevent evil spirits from trapping their comatose child in a realm called The Further." That sounds kind of promising, and I'm kind of curious of the nature of The Further, so I guess the Elevator Pitch, if nothing else, is well-crafted. The poster's kind of cool and ominous, not something I'd be in any kind of a rush to put on my wall on sheer artistic merit alone, but it does the job nicely. "Here be scary" it proclaims, and I hope the movie can follow up.


As for the talents involved here, we have a little Saw I reunion going on here as the movie's written and directed by James Wan and Leigh Whannell, who both worked on the story and screenplay for the first three Saw movies. I'm not crazy  about the second and third one, but I maintain that Saw I is both better and more cleverly written than the movie who gave birth to the modern Gore And Nothing Else film has any right to be, so this could be a good sign. They also did Dead Silence, a movie I wasn't crazy about, but at least it had a certain charm to it.


Now, for my personal thoughts and expectations for this movie, I'm hoping it's a good one. The "Haunted House/Haunted Family"-sub-genre is one that has for the longest time been limping along with very few new and fresh ideas, more or less entirely leaning on people feeling sympathy for a family in peril, while falling back to some oddly specific scares, the bathroom mirror switcharoo, rapidly rotting food, closet doors being manipulated and of course our dear friend Mr. Jumpscare O.B.E. I'm hoping Insidious manages to try something new, potentially exciting and/or terrifying.

Marble Hornets: Season Two

So, I did write about Marble Hornets a good while back, and the series came to a subtly disturbing, but somewhat unsatisfying end end. I thought that was  it. Sure, we didn't learn that much, and the ending sorta came out of the blue and more or less relied on us piecing together just what happened, but this being an ARG, that was pretty much to be expected.

That was before season 2, of course. This time, we follow the uploader of tapes/investigator of things that be spooky, Jay, as he wakes up in a hotel with no recollection of how he got there and a camera strapped to him. The hotel is mostly empty, except our hero and  a new arrival, a girl called Jessica, who we eventually learn is going through some of the same things as Jay. Now it's time to try piecing together what happened in the seven months Jay has absolutely no recollection of. Amongst others, we meet Alex, the director of the titular indie film, again, and although nothing's made explicit thus far, it would seem the guy might not be amongst the forces of the good and sane any more. Also, creepy video auteur totheark and the odd masked man is still at large, and of course, our friend sans the face, the Slender Man.

This season, if you can call it that, is a little more character driven than the first one, what with Jay actually being a character more than an audience stand-in, although I guess he still does that too, given the series' first person nature. Also, he interacts with another character, Jessica on a fairly regular basis, which is definitely interesting, since it becomes rather obvious that they're both hiding some sort of slendy-related secret. Also, Alex gets some more screentime, and he's actually pretty subtly creepy in a way that makes it ambigous to which degree he's insane or the only one with the know-how to survive the Slenderman's... well, whatever he's doing.

Scare-wise, the show has improved, I feel. Sure, season 1 was plenty scary, but I feel the dread is just continues building in S 02. It does help that Jay finds himself in a mostly empty hotel, I guess, given my highly irrational fear of hotels, but there's still chills and thrills galore. One could argue some of the subtlety has been lost, since we definitely get less "Slendy just standing there, or is he?" and more actual sightings, but I guess the show has evolved past it's larval stage in a way, don't get me wrong, though, we get some rather tasty play with paranoia and long periods of build-up, some of them building up to nothing. These buildups to nothing could be annoying, see that godawful Alone In The Dark movie, but in Marble Hornets, it kinda works, creating an oppressive atmosphere that underlines that whatever you're dealing with doesn't like you and probably got at least one law of nature under his thumb.

I'm excited to see where Marble Hornets goes from here, as it is one of my favorite running horror series. I'm considering checking out other "slenderblogs," but that probably won't be this month, more details on why on Thursday.

Off Topic Thursday: My Favorite Movie

Being the resident "film guy" in pretty much every group of friends I have, there's one question I get a lot, namely, "What is your favorite movie?" For the longest time, this question was the most surefire way to get me stuck in some sort of mental 20 goto 10 loop, but luckily, I seem to have found a way to escape that one. How, you might ask? I have decided my very favorite movie, and unless something changes, I now have an answer. So, my favorite movie? 12 Angry Men from 1957.

12 angry men is the story of twelve men on jury duty as they try to reach a consensus in a case where a young boy from a bad neighborhood is accused of murdering his abusive father. At first, the vote is 11 for the boy being guilty, but Juror #8, played by  Henry Fonda, is not so sure. Slowly, but surely, he convinces his fellow jurors that the case is more complicated than they assumed, and that there's room for reasonable doubt. Maybe one of the most interesting thing about this movie is how it's set almost entirely in one small room, the juror's room. As one might be able to glean from my posts about Devil and Buried, I find the thought of movies set entirely in one set to be fascinating, if nothing else for the sheer skill it takes to make a coherent, exciting story without being able to cut away, not to mention the challenge to all involved to make the thing interesting both story-wise and visually.

12 Angry Men delivers everything I require in an one-set film in spades, the dialog is informative and engaging without being on-the-nose, and the exposition is presented more as a puzzle than a laundry list of what happened, and that's possibly the thing that makes this thing tick, we're not as much told what happens as much as we experience the main characters going over what they know and trying to judge the value of the evidence and witness statements, it ties the plot regarding the crime together very well although, of course, we never get any definitive proof that the rising theory, that the boy is innocent, is correct, and he could, in fact be a murderer for all we know, but since there's reasonable doubt in the case now.

Another thing I love about this movie is the characters. Granted, not all of the 12 jurors are all that fleshed out, but we still have some very memorable characters. There's Juror 8, of course, our hero, a strong-willed man that resists peer pressure in the name of justice, Juror 3, the most obvious antagonistic character with some unresolved family issues clouding his perception of the case, Juror 4, who remains calm and analytical to the end, and actually presents a coherent and logical case for the boy's guilt, Juror 9, an elderly man who sides with 8 early and provides the final clue, actually, I realize most of the characters are interesting, although there are one or two that at least aren't very prominent.

Before And After I: Amnesia: The Dark Descent (After)

It might have been a bad idea to chose a game as my first B&A, considering how you usually have to spend longer time on a game than a movie, if nothing else because the game takes longer time to complete. So, no in-debt review from me, but a suitable first impression? Probably.

Anyway, I learned two things while trying out this game, one, my general lack of courage in video games might make testing this game more difficult, and two, this game is downright fucking terrifying, but we'll get back to those points in time. First, some gameplay thingies. The whole thing is in first person, almost ridiculously first persony, actually, considering you push & pull objects with your mouse, allowing you to pretty much pick up anything you want, throwing it around is also an option. It really does wonders for the immersion, not to mention the soothing feeling of being able to do a little property damage when the going gets a mite too tough for you.

Another large part of the game is light and darkness. You see, being in the dark damages your character's sanity, causing his vision to blur and distort and creepy noises to be produced, or at least I think the noises was due to the sanity loss. For us Lovecraft fans, the concept of sanity-drainage may not be alien, but something as relatively simple as darkness provoking it? I guess our hero is afraid of the dark. To combat the darkness, you have two tools at your disposal, a lantern, which needs to be resupplied with oil fairly regularly, and tinderboxes, which you can expend to kindle a light source, providing a somewhat more permanent light to a small area. I guess it's somewhat hypocritical of me to lambaste the main character for getting freaked out in the dark, considering how much I used the lantern, but hey, it was partially to prevent the poor sod from going insane, too.

To get back to the story, very briefly, I did not learn all that much more in the relatively short time I played, but what I got sounded good, there was the amnesiac getting a letter from himself to go kill some old guy who he apparently used to dislike before he amnesiaed (probably not a word) himself, but there's also references to an archeological dig that apparently didn't go quite as planned and an ancient godless that I'm willing to bet, dollars to doughnuts, is more or less eldritch and unpleasant, Cthulhu-style. All in all, it very much seems like something Lovecraft himself could write, except excessive amounts of racism and cascades and cascades of purple prose, neither of which I miss to any degree, so it's good so far.

It's time to get back to the horror aspects of the game, and boy, does this game not pull any punches. From the first minute, you find yourself in this spooky castle, completely empty save for yourself, or at least so you're fairly certain. Sure, there's the odd warm-up scare, like the wind blowing open a door, or blowing out a torch you lit with one of your precious tinderboxes, but it all ties together, giving the impression that there's some malignant intelligence out there that's pretty determined to make your day worse. Combined with eerie audio flashbacks and the occasional vaguely ominous sounds from distant rooms and corridors that does not exactly invite curiosity, it's a pretty eerie and atmospheric trip. Of course, the subtle ambient music doesn't help either, it's very obvious the makers of this game did not want people skipping around, thinking about puppies and rainbows.

One particular horror beat that got my heart racing was when I, fairly early on, investigated some sort of library, only to be confronted with two puzzles in a row after which... well, I'm not certain what it was, but I'm pretty sure something snarled in the next room. At this point, I booked it. This scene is interesting, because if this had been your typical game, I'd probably be investigating, safe in the knowledge that I could fill whatever was snarling in the next room with bullets and probably find some more lead, ready for delivery into the brainpan of some monstrosity, in the very same room for my troubles. In this game, though? Fuck that noise, although if I get brave, I might test out throwing books at the whatever-they-ares, but not today.

Before and After I: Amnesia: The Dark Descent (Before)

Decided to try out something new. In these B&A segments, I'll be writing about something I'm watching, reading or otherwise enjoying, in not too long. I'll inform you of what I think about the hype, the trailers, preview, sales blurb, whatever I've picked up that might shape my expectations. This is partially to make myself aware of how my perception of a work changes based on my preconception, and partially to be entertaining with my insistent backpedaling or snarky "I told you so," whatever works.

The first target is something as unusual in this blog as a horror game. This game is called Amnesia: The Dark Descent, produced by an indie company called Frictional Games, who as far as I can tell are Swedish. Now, Scandinavian Pride being what it is, I'm pretty much obliged to give this one a try, since it's produced by Norway's nearest neighbour cum sitcom nemesis. This is, of course not the only reason I've decided to try this game, no, one will find no small amount of praise for this game on the internet.

One of the things Amnesia gets a lot of praise for is how scary it is. For various reasons, I never really got into horror games, mostly since most horror games also has some variant of the Shotgun, which mitigates the horror of nameless uglies somewhat. Sure, horror movie protagonists are occasionally armed, but for one, it seldom does them any good, and secondly, the whole movie is seldom (with some notable examples) centered around this having and using of guns. In games like Doom or Dead Space you might start out with a dinky pistol against the forces of The Adversary, or Space Satan or whatever, but by the end, you're pretty much shoved so full of guns that your fart bullets, and the feeling of dread usually goes out of the window, the game twiddling it's thumbs and providing the occasional JUMPSCARE to pretend it's still horror, which is the horror equivalent of making an inane pop culture reference every once in a while and pretend you're comedy (looking at you, Seltzerberg.) I've heard the Silent Hill series is better in that regard, but I currently do not own a Playstation 2, so I haven't tried them myself.

But to get back to Amnesia again, from what I'm told, this game is different, in that you do not have weapons of any kind and, unlike Penumbra, also made by Frictional,  you can't even McGyver yourself something resembling an instrument of murder. I'd say it says some dodgy things about the games industry when a game that does not involve grievous bodily harm (to others, anyway) is something extraordinary, but that's a whole other chestnut, and probably a topic for a OTT some day. So, with no weapons and, I assume, something shambling around, trying to eat you, or worse, the only alternative would be to run and hide, so here's hoping the game handles stealth in a way that does not make it hair-tearingly frustrating, as a lot of games do.

Storywise, I don't really know much. You play as a guy with amnesia, no big shock, perhaps, who finds out that prior to this, apparently self-caused, amnesia, he wrote a letter to himself, stating that he had to get to this other guy in this creepy old castle-thing and kill his ass. That's about it, though, although I assume that at some point, this plan will be complicated by some sort of monster or monsters, and also, probably puzzles. Doesn't look like it'll blow my mind, storywise, but as long as it tells the story it has in a sufficiently skillful way, I'd say it does it's job admirably.

So, let's see how this turns out. Part 2: After will probably be up some time this week, but I'll have to see how much I need to play to get a good impression of the game.