Malfoy’s Ghost

Draco Malfoy wears a scarf and summons ghosts in The Apparition (2012), a weak, disjointed horror film from Todd Lincoln.

Your hands….taste…terrible

A group of college kids (including Patrick, played by aforementioned Harry Potter alum Tom Felton, Lydia-Julianna Guill, some guy named Greg who never really resurfaces and Ben, played by Sebastian Stan.) perform some sort of ‘college experiment’ and manage to use some laughable science to summon an apparition. This results in Lydia’s immediate death by……well, being sucked into a wall.

Cut to a few years later, Ben muddles through a job he hates and tries to live a normal life with his girlfriend Kelly, played by Ashley Greene, whose overuse of bedroom eyes becomes tiresome in about ten minutes. Ben and Kelly go about their mundane video game playing, Costco shopping lives until odd things begin happening in their house.

Strange burn marks appear on counters, doors open of their own accord. Dogs randomly die. Nests of mold appear in corners. Ben stabs the mold nest with a broom (yes, really) while Kelly whimpers and glares and offers nothing useful.

Sooner or later the truth comes out that Ben summoned up some ghostly business that ate his ex girlfriend. Kelly’s pissed, Ben’s a moron and Malfoy doesn’t exactly pull off youth with that forehead and receding hairline.

This movie is lame, it offers nothing memorable except maybe a few laughable moments that leave the audience thinking ‘really?! Come on’. The entire thing feels clunky and inorganic. The random images of ghost evidence we are given don’t seem to flow together at all. One minute were focused on a giant mold ball, the next the sheets are attacking the characters, the next, some very pathetic specter crawls out of a washing machine in grey body paint.

Poorly constructed and poorly edited, The Apparition is not going to last in your memory. The characters are unfathomably dumb, the music (yes, I’m complaining about the music) is distractingly overreaching and theatrical, and the story is barely even a story. It’s weak and nonsensical, filled with laughable psuedo science and painfully obvious shots.

Not worth the time. No redeeming qualities, except maybe Ashley Greene in her underwear, if you’re into that.

 

This Is Your Brain on Drugs

Remember when Rachael Lee Cook beat up her kitchen in the nineties, first smashing an egg with a cast iron frying pan, and glaring at the screen, informing us that this mucousy rubble was your brain on drugs?

I’m pretty sure Begotten is as close as anyone can come to living inside a junkie’s drug fueled nightmare.

Dang it, where’s the first aid kit?

Suggested to me by one of the few people I know (in real life) who actually appreciates horror films as much as, maybe even more than, I, Begotten (1990) is a black and white, dialogue free, grainy, shaky mind fuck.

Beginning with the horrific suicide of a shuddering, convulsing, wide eyed being (this is what the description tells me is happening, all I could see was ‘what the fuck is that thing!’), this film is truly like a nightmare. The rough over and under exposure of the film throughout it’s length makes it even more alarming as the audience, this viewer, anyway, is often unaware of the image on the screen. What are we looking at? What is that weird, creepy, ghoulish sound? What is this now? Who’s doing what to where and why is it so awful?

I don’t know what this film is about. The description tells me that it’s some sort of deep statement about life and gods and mother earth and nature and loss, but I couldn’t come up with any of that on my own. From what I can tell, it’s about self-disembowel…ment…..and strangely explicit and confusing sex…..and a lot of blurry nudity and mud and frenzy. And bludgeoning.

Watching this film is like being trapped in a far more obscure version of the murder video from The Ring on an endless loop.

I don’t understand it. I can’t say I like it. I can say with near certainty that you are not going to like it, but this film is effective in creating a lasting impact. It will stick in my head for a while, and even now, more than a year after watching it, the images in my mind are vivid and haunting, though not entirely valuable.

If you have an interest in a pretty offbeat film style and a genuinely disturbing set of images, you can find this film in it’s entirety on here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=455ohZRdbY8

On a similar note, you may want to check out Un Chien Andalou, a 16 minute surrealist film, also available on youtube. It’s eye slicing scene still gives me the shivers.

If you’re interesting in checking out the maniac who suggested this one to me in the first place, you can find his blog at http://doctorhavok.wordpress.com/

 

Popping the Horror Cherry

Tonight I watched The Guardian (1990) for the second time in my life.

I should really get that mole checked out…

The first time I saw it I think I was about eight years old. It was the first horror movie I’d ever seen. I’m not sure how it got picked out at the movie store, I suspect my parents thought it was this:

Maybe just a smidge more family friendly

What I recall of this film, from the hazy memories of childhood are waking in the night being certain there were wolves roaming outside my door, cloaked in mist. I was certain that the woods were hiding trees full of baby souls. When I found it on TV the other night, I was psyched. I recorded it, waiting for a quiet moment to immerse myself in nostalgia. The movie began with opening credits informing me that this was a William Freidkin film. WHAT?! William Friedkin, of The Exorcist fame? That guy’s like my freaking hero, he sure seemed to be influencing my cinematic character. Maybe this movie was better than I recall!

Nope. My fuzzy childhood memories have some semblance of accuracy.

The Guardian is something of a modern fairy tale, an odd, fantastical Hand That Rocks the Cradle. It centers around a couple with a young baby and their brand new English Nanny with her piercing wolfy blue eyes. As the film’s opening prologue (?) explains, throughout history, druids have worshipped trees, even sacrificed lives in their honor. It’s pretty clear right from second one that Camilla, the eerie nanny is an odd duck and is more than likely some sort of tree druid. Naturally.

We get to watch some happy family scenes involving Mom and Dad and giggling baby, Camilla creepily bathing with the baby, unconcerned about being watched by Pop, played by some sort of offspring of Bill Pullman and Bruce Campbell. Camilla takes baby to the woods (where else?) to giggle and fart, or whatever babies do in the woods, and is accosted by a trio of ridiculously animated rapists. These guys might as well have sound effects like boink! and sproing! emanating from them, they are so cartoonish. None the less, Nanny scuttles off with baby, towards her favorite tree, complete with faded baby crying sounds in the air and weird baby faces in the bark. She climbs on up and watches as the tree goes Evil Dead all over them and rapes them right back.

Well, not exactly, but there is some very poorly executed gore and one of the goofy rapists explodes into flames. At least, a straw stuffed dummy wearing his clothes does, anyway.

The Guardian falls flat all over. The acting is mediocre at best, and the most effective acting certainly comes from our villain, though she gets on the nerves pretty quickly. The dialogue is weak and unnatural, Mom tends to be squeaky and ridiculous when she does bother to speak. The effects are downright laughable, I actually, literally laughed out loud. William Friedkin apparently rewrote a good deal of this story, and as much as I support his directing skills on The Exorcist, I hang my head in shame at this festering wound of a film. It’s positively ridiculous, and has so few redeeming qualities.

What would those few redeeming qualities be? There is one glorious scene near the film’s end when the father (Dwier Brown) heads into the foggy, jungley woods with a chainsaw and a look of Ash-like determination. He then promptly sets about slicing and dicing the tree as it writhes and squirms, attacking him with its roots and branches. Blood gushes from the slices in the tree, splattering over the poor guy’s face. The tree gives off distant baby wails into the night.

There is a glorious Evil-Dead-ness about this scene that is hilarious and amazing. Scary? God, no. Not even a little, but it is highly amusing and entirely preposterous.

Ah, seven year old me, you were so afraid that the nanny’s magic wolves would get you and eviscerate you and take you to the land of baby trees. Oh, in the days before The Exorcist, this is what served as scary in the days of my adolescence.I had so much to learn.

 

P.S., Anyone else ever catch the copy of Stephen King’s It in the suitcase, or the radio announcer talking about the band The Triffids? Nice horror nods.

 

Take Me Back to the 90’s- a review of VHS (2012)

Take me back to the 90’s, the days of VHS tapes, the days of static at the end of a movie, the days of skipping film and scratchy picture. Ah, yes, the glorious days of the nineties….

I know that this movie isn’t new, and a sequel has since been released, but I’ll offer up my view on V/H/S, unpopular though it may make me.

 VHS (2012) is a ‘found footage anthology’. Yeah, more ‘found footage’, cause we don’t have enough nauseatingly shaky camera work in horror films yet. I’m not opposed to ‘found footage’, hand held recording with an attempt at a reality feel, but when fifty percent of your entire film is intentional screen glitches and cameramen who are flailing the recorder around like a kite, it gets old awfully fast.

This films centers around a group of delinquents who film basically their every movements, their various exploits of vandalism and sexual assault. These weirdos are being hired to break into someone’s house to retrieve a VHS tape. I don’t have to give you any more than that, because in the course of this ‘film’ we are made to watch five more entire short horror recordings, and if I give any more away, I’ve basically told an entire story.

So, we’ve got the base story, which is sliced up into pieces framing the other films. It’s characters are all terribly unlikeable, and I don’t mean unrelatable, hard to connect with in 20minutes, I mean downright grating. Come to think of it, many of the characters are just awful, and I found myself rooting for their demise. Anyway, the base story is basically just a lot of wandering around with the occasional hint at some type of scare lurking in the dark, it doesn’t really move forward throughout the film so much as occasionally stuff happens, and then stuff doesn’t happen.

I do not get the hype behind this film. Maybe these stories are just not solid enough to be told in such a short time. The first tape we watch is sort of an attempt at a sex tape gone wrong, and it did have it’s moments of gore and ‘what the FUCK’ am I seeing?’, and maybe this is they way all the stories should be, short, sweet, and in need of no explanation. Trying to cram too many elements in a ten to twenty minute skit is asking too much.

The second story, the ‘road trip’ tale, just felt a little boring to me. The third was sort of a twist on the classic kids-in-the-woods horror cliche, and though it was unusual, it was pretty nonsensical and somehow, for such a short story, the pacing was way off, and I sure didn’t get the motives of the most important characters.  The fourth,  I admit I was unnerved by from time to time, particularly by the webcam aspect, where the scares that make you jump are solid. Sadly, the pay off is lacking and the characters seem really idiotic, but I felt this one had some potential. The fifth, a Halloween haunted house feature had a few really eerie moments that had me smirking and expecting a huge scare as those corner of your eye figures appear. The characters in this picture were the least moronic, which I give some credit to. Much of this tale made absolutely no sense to me, but it had a few pretty cool effects that I though were kind of neat.

Essentially, I don’t think this film is worth all the hype that is coming along with it. The stories were all just too short to be fleshed out, or otherwise just didn’t have the potential to carry an audience anyway.  I did get bored from time to time, any footage that doesn’t propel the story forward certainly seems useless in a film like this, where every moment counts to try and pack a punch. It just didn’t do much for me, and I am not entirely certain it deserves all the acclaim I’ve been reading. I can appreciate a bad film, but not an annoying one, which is what the bulk of VHS was to me. Maybe if I liked boobs more I would have appreciated VHS, cause what it lacks in scares, it makes up for in boobs. But, boobs, who needs ’em when you get to see them every day.

 

Vacancy at the No Tell Motel

Vacancy at the No Tell Motel

Everybody’s got a secret.

No Tell Motel (2012) is a glorious little B movie gem with little to no redeeming qualities, and only a tiny dose of undiscovered potential. A fragment, even.

Director Brett Donawho’s secret? He must be afraid of the dark, because the only scare he seems to offer are dark rooms full of dust.

No Tell Motel, filmed ‘in’ Vernon, BC (though, clearly outside, maybe near Barriere? I recognized the dry hills full of charred trees in the opening scene), begins with a grainy, sepia toned scene depicting a sad little blonde girl on a swing, ma and pa lounge about in front of their motel, the Round the Bend Motel, ignoring their little lady, who promptly follows a bunny into the road and SPLAT.  Mom and Pop fall to their knees, weeping in over acted agony.

Cut to the future, a group of edgy teens are heading out to ‘rough it’ in the backcountry. Kyle, played by someone who’s name I’ve forgotten and will probably never need to remember again, reveals to the audience at a gas station that he’s a pill popping junkie, as he scoops mushy spilled pills from the toilet. His girlfriend, Maggie/Megan, buys a pregnancy test. Everyone’s got a secret.

Kyle, in his pill fueled rage manages to flip the vehicle and suddenly the gang is stranded. Nearby they find a crusty, abandoned motel. It’ll do for the night. Maggie takes her test in the bathroom, comes out, shaking and teary eyed, only to be whisked away from the room by her brunette friend who is not Lacy Chabert. I don’t know these actors names, give me a break. ‘Not Lacy’ tells her that she was once involved in a tragic hit and run and has kept the secret until now. Next thing we know, Not Lacy is out on the road in the night alone. She sees a little pasty blonde girl with a cliche ribbon in her hair. She tries to coax her off the road. Blondie turns her heavily made up head towards the screen to reveal a bloody skidmark on her cheek. Gasp. Lacy gets splattered on the highway.

Thus begins the saga of poorly acted secret spilling and a complete lack of terror. Occasionally we see an apparition of the ghostly little girl, sometimes we get snippets of her ma and pa, doing rather odd things in the basement. There is a lack of cohesion in this one, and no one to connect to. The acting is bad, but not as bad as it could be. Not as bad, by far, as the acting in The Fugue (aka Dead Soon, 2012) that I also watched this week. Yikes. But it’s not great, nothing to write home about, and even I was beginning to think Megan’s performance would be improved if she’d just take her top off.

It had potential, it could’ve been just a little more than your average teen slasher flick, ghostly little girl kills off a flock of coeds. It had the aspect of continuous secret reveals, but the script is weak, and the way in which these folks react to said reveals tends to be laughable and in-genuine. There is nothing scary about this film, the little girl roaming the halls is blatantly exposed right from the beginning, she doesn’t hide in the corners and sneak about, but rather sits in the room with you staring back at you, like she’s ready to ask if she can have some juice and a cookie. There’s an underlying story regarding the previous owners of the motel and some dark child rearing activities, but they are weakly portrayed and from time to time I got distracted, would look back and say, what in the hell is going on here?

Good effort, guy, but no such luck. This is no classic. Very forgettable. It feels like a script Donawho wrote in college and finally got the money to make, but maybe only got a c plus on.

 

Snap, Crackle, Splat

Today, I made rice krispies squares and watched Evil Dead (2013). This is what I do with my days off. I’m a different kind of housewife.

This is my second time around with this one. I saw it in the theater and cheerfully munched my popcorn while the rest of the audiences squirmed in their seats and covered their eyes, shamefully whimpering. I’m not going to write a review praising the reboot or picking apart the flaws in the plan. I’ve got nothing to add that hasn’t been said a million times already. I am not going to compare it to it’s mother, The Evil Dead (1981). I don’ even think they are comparable. Apples and oranges, people.

But I will say, if this one’s got anything going for it, it’s buckets and buckets of blood. Evil Dead is probably one of the goriest I’ve seen since Cannibal Holocaust. What a comparison, I know. When you can make The Shining’s elevators of blood seem tame, you have hit a new benchmark.

Does it get to be over the top? Yeah, in about half an hour, I got pretty desensitized to it, but I’ve gotta give kudos to the tactical effects. The blood and gore and dismemberments and what have you are done in a way that has a genuine effect. This doesn’t have that pathetic green-screeny over CGI’d sensation that so many have, it’s got a typhoons of fake blood and guts and prosthetics and all kinds of true horror gold. I have great respect for a serious effort with effects. I’ve gotta credit that to The Exorcist, too. I mean, filing in a freezing cold room to get the image of the actor’s breath in the frosty air? Dedication.

So, Evil Dead. You like a little splatter? Enjoy this baby.

And that thing with the X-acto and Mia’s tongue. Insert Sideshow-bob-esque shudder. That one got to me.

Guess I’ll go peel potatoes or bake a pie or something.

 

Red Blood and a Yellow Raincoat

So, picture this, it’s a dark and stormy night (no, really it was), and thunder grumbled in the distance, the skies darkening, cloaking the house in shadow. Wind whipped past the open windows and flashes of lightning seemed to penetrate the yard from both sides. The thunder escalated to huge, booming cracks and bolts of electricity shatter the skies, striking down in the fields.

Can you believe it only took me eight thousand tries to get this shot?

What more is there to be done than to turn off the lights and watch something scary?

Last night I decided to foray into some retro slasher horror with Alice, Sweet Alice (1976) aka Communion aka Holy Terror.

The film begins centered around a family, a mother and two daughters, Karen and Alice, estranged father (they use this word, not me, I’d’ve used divorced parents, but, hey, times have changed), and family friend Father Tom.  Karen is preparing for her first communion, and Alice, in all her wide eyed, sissy-spacek-esque glory, seems to be nothing but in the way. Where Karen, played by Brooke Shields in her first film role, before she became a spokeswoman for La-z-boy, is a whiny keener, Alice is often dazed, vindictive, and downright creepy. A little whiny, yeah, sure, but I guess it runs in the family.

On the day of the communion, Karen is murdered by someone in a creepy plastic mask and technicolor yellow raincoat. Aunt Anne suspects 12 year old Alice. Never trusted that little weirdo anyway. Morbidly obese neighbour Mr. Alphonse suspects Alice. ‘God always takes the pretty ones.’ he hisses at her, despite his later attempts to get all up in her business.

More attacks occur, and Alice is constantly suspect. her irrational outbursts and whiny emotional instability really can’t be helping. Alice insists her dead sister Karen is the culprit, Alice’s mother and father suspect Alice’s chubby cousin Angela. Mystery abounds.

Alice, Sweet Alice sounds like a pretty typical slasher movie, but the focus on children as prime suspects is a little unfamiliar, not to mention the religious aspects, a lot of weight on the idea of Catholic guilt, an idea that wasn’t exactly popular at the time. (The Exorcist ought to have smashed those ideas right out of the water, but religion is a tough nut to crack. Whew, cliche overload). Our killer seems to be seeking out some specific kills, reflecting some of the 7 deadly sins: envy, adultery, sloth (anyone up for Seven right about now?). Alice touches on topics such as divorce, adultery, pedophilia, and even a fun little nod about menstruation. This movie has got some meat on it’s bones and as often as I thought I knew who the killer was, the film laughed in my face and changed it up on me. I’ll admit, I didn’t see it coming.

Alice, Sweet Alice has intriguing characters and good acting, though I have to admit, Karen? I would’ve strangled her too, yikes, that kid was driving me nuts and she was only in the first 20 minutes. Paula E. Sheppard as Alice steals every scene she’s in with her dead eyes and cold as ice glances. Parents, played by Linda Miller and Niles McMaster, get the job done, selling tension and emotion well. The whole cast tends to overact, but in what seems to be a clearly intentional way, a matter of style.

Direction on this one stands out from the rest with a number of unusual shots and angles (a lot of good use of stairwells, evoking Italian horror greats). Director Alfred Sole has a good grasp on image, shots of knives falling through the air, religious items cloaked in shadow, bright red blood pouring over a yellow raincoat all add to the tone and suspense of the film.

Booming music with what now feels like a dated sound of out of tune piano notes fits perfectly in this one, giving it that gritty feel only accomplished by low budget 70s horror.

Terrifying? No, probably not. Not even while watching in the dark in a thunderstorm. There are some shots of blood and carnage, a bit of bludgeoning for good measure. A little fire damage. Some fun spurts here and there, but not gorey by any stretch. SO, bottom line, is this film truly scary anymore? No. Is it compelling and interesting? Yes.

Alice is worth a watch if you can appreciate all that 70’s horror has to offer, and if you’re not expecting found footage or Evil Dead (2013) blood rain from the sky. I’ll admit I was torn away from my screen by the light show outside, and found myself staring out the window at lightning for hours. I finished this movie this morning in bed, the sun shining outside, cup of Earl grey at the ready, and wrapped up in the husband’s Jedi robe (yeah, we’re pretty cool). But, even in the light of day, Alice has a lot to offer in the way of story and tone. Check it out.

 

Tales from the Underneath

Absentia (2011)

seems like a fun place to hang out

This low budget film from director Mike Flanagan has flown largely under the radar of the public eye.  Despite financial restraints, this film is shot well, the direction is effective and the acting is committed. All of the main actors in this small film are clearly invested in the script, they seem genuine and honest, and there is true depth and meaning in the themes presented.

The story centers around Tricia, seven months pregnant, a woman who is in the process of declaring her husband dead by absentia. Tricia’s husband, Daniel, disappeared seven years ago and she hasn’t heard from him since (Tricia is also six months pregnant, let’s do the math…). With the help and support of therapists, her younger sister Callie (who has something of an implied sordid back story involving drugs) and the lead detective on her husband’s case, Detective Mallory (a man who has come to care deeply for Tricia, wink wink pregnancy?), Tricia is trying to move on. Despite her noble attempts, Trica keeps seeing ghostly apparitions of her husband in the shadows, watching her , mumbling malevolently to her, staring at her from the darkness with a twisted ghoulish face. Once she finally commits to moving on, Tricia and Mallory head out for an evening together. Outside her home, Tricia sees another vision of Daniel, gazing at her from the street. She shakes it off, but Mallory can see him too. Daniel has come back.

A great deal of mystery surrounds Daniel’s whereabouts, he is largely incoherent, disoriented and paranoid. He begins to connect with Tricia’s sister and reveals some of his fears about where he has been, mumbling about tunnels….creatures…..trades…..and ‘the underneath’.

I won’t give away any spoilers. This story has the bones needed to make a compelling tale, but does sort of feel slightly uninflated by the end, leaving us wondering, is that all we get? That being said, director Mike Flanagan knows the value of scares we can’t see. He offers up deeply shadowed scenes, suspense filled moments of cringe worthy tension that had me holding my breath, waiting for something to attack. He preys on our fears of the unknown, the way we deal with loss and with guilt, with unanswered questions and perception. I thought one of the clever details Flanagan inserted into this tale were moments in which the characters considered alternate possibilities, where the images take us on a brief alternate route from reality. And just what, exactly, is the reality here? A subdued film, Absentia has solid acting, highly effective mood and tone, an emotional human aspect to the story, and perhaps a lightly padded supernatural aspect, one that felt a little like it needed more fleshing out. It moves slowly from time to time, but feels solid and honest, and it delves into how grief and trauma alter us all, a tall order for a ‘horror’ film.

There is one chilling scene nears the film’s finale, in which Callie desperately pleads with…something…..to return the missing, to trade. The shock value of this moment is quiet and subtle and ultimately out of focus, blurred, but if you were on the ball, you could catch the implications. A memorable and eerie scene. Check this one out, it is worth the watch.

 

Mama’s Gonna Buy You a Mockingbird

Mama (2013)

I don’t think I’d like to spend a lot of time wandering around in Guillermo Del Toro’s subconscious, or Andres Muschietti’s, for that matter.

Mama is a dark look at the power of a mother’s love and the dangerous territoriality of motherhood. The film is directed by  Andrés Muschietti, though it is ‘Presented’ by Guillermo Del Toro, who’s influence seems pretty strong to me. We follow two young girls, Victoria and Lily, as they are abandoned (in a sense) by their less than stable father in the a rickety cabin in the woods. The girls survive, seemingly on their own, and are discovered by a ramshackle search party years later (search efforts are funded by the somehow made of money Uncle Luke).  The girls have been coasting along in the forest, living on cherries and moths for 5 years. Yum! I can only imagine the writing round table when the idea of the children chomping down on powdery moths, streaks of the insects dusty wings lingering on their cheeks, was proposed.

Victoria and Lily have been reduced to scuttling, feral creatures, lurking in the shadows and mumbling about Mama.

The girls are sent to live with Uncle Lucas and punk rock girlfriend Annabelle ( played deftly by Jessica Chastain, though admittedly this is not her most valuable role). Does it make a whole lot of sense that a child psychologist would send such high needs cases to unprepared non-parents? No, not exactly, but while this film is rife with eerie visions, spectral images, wispy creatures, rapidly spreading wall stains that seem to be alive with menace, it’s attempting to carry too much story, Muschietti seems to be trying to weave a fairy tale, some sort of dark and ominous folklore, but it tries at too much complexity.

Despite this, Mama does have an eerie air of menace, adept directing and some fairly solid acting.   Lucas and Annabelle (whom has a great distaste for parenting) care for the odd little girls, reflecting on how they managed to survive. The girls continue to reference Mama. Mama took care of them, fed them, taught them how to live.

But who is Mama?

And who do the girls seem to be looking at, talking to, listening to, hiding in the closet?  And what’s up with that creepy, smoky, wispy blob of terror that seems to be rattling around in the distant corners of every room?

I’m not gonna give you more than that, you can probably fill in some of the blanks yourself. It’s not a perfect film, it attempts to construct more of a story than is really necessary in a film that essentially needs to be a vehicle for a catalog of nightmare images.

It gets the job done if you’re looking for some jump scares and effective booms of music, but there seems to be so much that is reminiscent of other films, snips and slivers taken from previous scares and churned together here, perhaps in homage. Sadly, it makes this film feel a little like something we’ve seen before, the scares are all too familiar, and if you’re as familiar (read: dedicated) to horror movies as I, you’ll see most of them coming.

There are some interesting ideas to explore, however, such as the concept of the two girls being cared for by a terrifying specter, forming a bond and attachment, and how one of the girls finds herself pushing away from the being while the other embraces their relationship.  Essentially, this film is smattering of Japanese horror, a swirl of CGI, a pinch of Grimm’s fairy tales and a heaping dollop of Del Toro. Ten years ago, it would have stuck in your memory, but now, dark and creepy and slithery though the images may be, it all feels like it’s been done before.

Personal side note, anyone else ever see the crusty old Canadian gem from 1977, Cathy’s Curse? The opening scene involving Daddy angrily scooping his daughters into the car brought it all back to me.

 

The Real Bad Guys

The Girl Next Door (2007)

This movie is probably one of the most disturbing films I have seen in a long time, and I don’t mean in a fun, makes you jump, creepy crawly scare sort of way. The Girl Next Door is a story of hatred, depravity and the evil that can hide at the core of even your next door neighbours.

Horror films, though they make us shake and squirm, hiding a nervous giggle when they manage to evoke a scream, still offer some form of indulgence and escape. The Girl Next Door offers no such thing. This film is a blunt, harsh suckerpunch to the guts. The plot centers around a young boy who discovers that his next door neighbour, Ruth, along with her sons, is brutally torturing and abusing her nieces, who have come to live with her following an accident that took the lives of their parents. Set in a time when a man hitting a woman for running her mouth off isn’t unheard of, this film doesn’t hold back, slapping the audience in the face with utter inhumanity.

Beginning with mild taunting, and a sense of uneasiness, a sense that something is wrong here, The Girl Next Door begins to make your skin crawl almost immediately. Once the reality of the abuse becomes clear, this film is unrelenting, shaking the audience by the shoulders with scenes that you cannot turn away from. The acts of abuse we see committed against these children are made even more shocking and horrific by the fact that they are often perpetrated by children themselves. Ruth’s sons are warped by her insanity, her disgust for herself, and for women in general. As a result, they follow her orders, and even give them, from time to time, committing unimaginable acts upon the girls.

Ruth is one of the most chilling villains I have seen in a movie to date, played perfectly by Blanche Baker, she rarely raises her voice above a dull deadpan, as she orders her sons to cut, burn, and rape her niece. This brings to mind a scene from The Silence of the Lambs, in which Dr. Chilton recalls to Clarice that Hannibal Lecter once ate a man’s face, all while keeping his pulse below 85. This is not ‘torture porn’, like Saw or Hostel, in which gore rules and shock carries the story. This is a film in which a child is brutally exploited, and the camera focuses not on blood or nudity, but zooms in on the pain behind the girl’s eyes (the primary victim, Meg, is played by Blythe Auffarth).

This movie is marketed as a horror film, though it fits none of the criteria usually associated with the genre. That being said, it is truly horrific, and that sense of dread, even of guilt, is made even more prominent now that I’ve done a little research and discovered that this film is based on a true story, and not in Blair With Project sort of way. These stories don’t have to be contrived, because they happen. Evil on this level exists, hiding in the light. I don’t think I’ll ever bring myself to watch this movie again, but it has been effective in evoking an emotional response from me. It sickened me, made me want to cry, made me gasp, made me flinch, made me want to cover my eyes. You will not feel good after watching this film, and it is likely to stay writhing under your skin for a long time.