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intertribalI managed to see three - yes, THREE - horror movies last Sunday. It was a crazy day. And now I shall write belated, sloppy reviews of them.
1. The Burrowers: I rented this from Netflix on pgtremblay's recommendation. And it was sitting on the microwave unwatched when my mom said, "I'm going to start putting dates on how long you can not watch these..." (it wasn't disinterest! but sports have been intense lately, and that tends to put a damper on watching DVDs) so I put it in. The Burrowers sets itself apart from a lot of horror in a few ways: a) an Old West setting (specifically, the Dakotas in... um... the 1800s), and b) quite an artistic little camera. Moody looks through the grass, sensitive and subtle flashbacks. All very nice. And when the monsters first show up - it's "burrowers" killing and kidnapping settlers, not Indians - they are very creepy. They've got an unusual hunting style and an interesting ecological history, and they've got people pretty much outsmarted. The melancholy, brooding-in-the-wilderness tone persists until the final act, when the filmmakers remembered they were making an action-horror movie and went all SciFi Saturdays on me. Suddenly this clever little gem is making two big mistakes: a) showing the monster full-on when the movie did not have Jurassic Park's budget, and b) making the monsters VERY easy to kill. That said, this is an atypical horror movie - it is very unkind to its characters (especially the sympathetic ones). I actually felt it was so nasty to these people that the ending felt abrupt and unsatisfying. I know, I know. I usually reward bleakness in horror movies. Maybe the risk/reward ratio in this one was too high; or maybe the characters were well-developed and real enough that I felt bad for them being sloughed off by the narrative for no apparent reason.
2. Sorority Row: I went to see this with friends later that afternoon. I had very low expectations for this one. But you know, it surprised me. I mean, the acting was pretty bad. There was, of course, gratuitous sorority-related near-porn. I found the initial set-up - sorority sisters trick another sister's ex into thinking his roofies killed the sister, while the prank's still on he kills her for real, they dump body down a mine shaft - damn ridiculous. The murderer, who runs around silently in a hood, is pretty generic and stale. But the sisters are actually pretty entertaining - a nice blend of bitchy and justified - and aren't nearly as annoying as you would assume they'd be. In order to explain what made this movie so different, however, I must supply spoilers - sorry. The killer isn't a victim. The killer isn't out to revenge some wrong. All the bad guys here are male. We've got: a) the original guy who killed his girlfriend - the fact that he thought she was already dead makes his stabbing her through the chest even more psychotic, b) the snotty and artificial senator's son, who berates and cheats on and hits his girlfriend (who finally realizes it's not worth marrying into this family), and c) the valedictorian and main character's boyfriend, who's the real killer. He's just trying to keep his girlfriend away from her trashy sisters, and is furious when she chooses "her girlfriends" over him. I won't say this is a feminist tract, because you know, it's not - but I do appreciate the Hos Before Bros gesture (so to speak), and the fact that all the "psycho killers on the loose" here are the people with all the privilege.
3. Clive Barker's Book of Blood: Apparently this is a movie-that-never-found-a-home that eventually got aired by SyFy, based off "The Book of Blood" in Volume 1 of Books of Blood, and some other "postscript" story in Volume 6. I haven't read the second story, so suffice it to say I was totally confused by the fact that this movie - which should have been a 30 minute Tales From The Crypt episode - was 2 HOURS LONG. They dragged the first story out to about 90 minutes, embellishing wildly and adding unnecessary subplots and taking away scenes they didn't want to try and film, and then added another 30 minutes that looked like pure overkill. Apparently the extra 30 minutes is truly based off of "On Jerusalem Street (a postscript)." I kind of can't believe Clive Barker wrote this unnecessary addendum to the first story, but I guess I can't fault the movie producers for that one. The thing is, I don't think even "The Book of Blood" is THAT great of a story. It's about how this one house is a big intersection of the dead, so it's filled with ghosts, and the ghosts are all about telling their stories - on whatever surface they have. It all just feels kind of pointless and even contrived. Clive Barker's opening for the whole volume is way better: "we are all books of blood... whenever we're opened, we're red." That's all you need. You don't need two hours. You especially don't need two hours of weak characterization and painfully slow and laughable ghosts (a park fountain of blood, with blood ghosts a la The Invisible Man dancing ring around the rosy? really?).
1. The Burrowers: I rented this from Netflix on pgtremblay's recommendation. And it was sitting on the microwave unwatched when my mom said, "I'm going to start putting dates on how long you can not watch these..." (it wasn't disinterest! but sports have been intense lately, and that tends to put a damper on watching DVDs) so I put it in. The Burrowers sets itself apart from a lot of horror in a few ways: a) an Old West setting (specifically, the Dakotas in... um... the 1800s), and b) quite an artistic little camera. Moody looks through the grass, sensitive and subtle flashbacks. All very nice. And when the monsters first show up - it's "burrowers" killing and kidnapping settlers, not Indians - they are very creepy. They've got an unusual hunting style and an interesting ecological history, and they've got people pretty much outsmarted. The melancholy, brooding-in-the-wilderness tone persists until the final act, when the filmmakers remembered they were making an action-horror movie and went all SciFi Saturdays on me. Suddenly this clever little gem is making two big mistakes: a) showing the monster full-on when the movie did not have Jurassic Park's budget, and b) making the monsters VERY easy to kill. That said, this is an atypical horror movie - it is very unkind to its characters (especially the sympathetic ones). I actually felt it was so nasty to these people that the ending felt abrupt and unsatisfying. I know, I know. I usually reward bleakness in horror movies. Maybe the risk/reward ratio in this one was too high; or maybe the characters were well-developed and real enough that I felt bad for them being sloughed off by the narrative for no apparent reason.
2. Sorority Row: I went to see this with friends later that afternoon. I had very low expectations for this one. But you know, it surprised me. I mean, the acting was pretty bad. There was, of course, gratuitous sorority-related near-porn. I found the initial set-up - sorority sisters trick another sister's ex into thinking his roofies killed the sister, while the prank's still on he kills her for real, they dump body down a mine shaft - damn ridiculous. The murderer, who runs around silently in a hood, is pretty generic and stale. But the sisters are actually pretty entertaining - a nice blend of bitchy and justified - and aren't nearly as annoying as you would assume they'd be. In order to explain what made this movie so different, however, I must supply spoilers - sorry. The killer isn't a victim. The killer isn't out to revenge some wrong. All the bad guys here are male. We've got: a) the original guy who killed his girlfriend - the fact that he thought she was already dead makes his stabbing her through the chest even more psychotic, b) the snotty and artificial senator's son, who berates and cheats on and hits his girlfriend (who finally realizes it's not worth marrying into this family), and c) the valedictorian and main character's boyfriend, who's the real killer. He's just trying to keep his girlfriend away from her trashy sisters, and is furious when she chooses "her girlfriends" over him. I won't say this is a feminist tract, because you know, it's not - but I do appreciate the Hos Before Bros gesture (so to speak), and the fact that all the "psycho killers on the loose" here are the people with all the privilege.
3. Clive Barker's Book of Blood: Apparently this is a movie-that-never-found-a-home that eventually got aired by SyFy, based off "The Book of Blood" in Volume 1 of Books of Blood, and some other "postscript" story in Volume 6. I haven't read the second story, so suffice it to say I was totally confused by the fact that this movie - which should have been a 30 minute Tales From The Crypt episode - was 2 HOURS LONG. They dragged the first story out to about 90 minutes, embellishing wildly and adding unnecessary subplots and taking away scenes they didn't want to try and film, and then added another 30 minutes that looked like pure overkill. Apparently the extra 30 minutes is truly based off of "On Jerusalem Street (a postscript)." I kind of can't believe Clive Barker wrote this unnecessary addendum to the first story, but I guess I can't fault the movie producers for that one. The thing is, I don't think even "The Book of Blood" is THAT great of a story. It's about how this one house is a big intersection of the dead, so it's filled with ghosts, and the ghosts are all about telling their stories - on whatever surface they have. It all just feels kind of pointless and even contrived. Clive Barker's opening for the whole volume is way better: "we are all books of blood... whenever we're opened, we're red." That's all you need. You don't need two hours. You especially don't need two hours of weak characterization and painfully slow and laughable ghosts (a park fountain of blood, with blood ghosts a la The Invisible Man dancing ring around the rosy? really?).
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Date: 2009-09-25 11:04 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2009-09-26 02:15 pm (UTC)