Mommie Dearest

There are real monsters,  and then,  there are REAL monsters.

Jennifer Kent’s haunting and poignant The Babadook (2014) dresses up in  a cookie cutter costume. It sets up to be a boogeyman tale, spooks in the closet, a young boy terrified of monsters we cannot see. But in his world, living a broken life with his widowed mother (Essie Davis) clearly at the end of her rope, Samuel (Noah Wiseman ) has the ultimate villain to face.

Mom Amelia’s husband died in a car accident on the very day Sam was born.  Amelia struggles to make ends meet and keep life together amidst her obvious grief and depression. Sam is a troubled boy, prone to tantrums and outbursts,  serving to further alienate this family from others. The pair lose increasingly more sleep as Sam’s anxiety mounts, and he invades mom’s space and privacy endlessly.

Then a storybook appears as if from nowhere. A nightmare tome called The Babadook. Eerie monochromatic pictures illustrate a violent tale in which a looming figure seeps into your home, into your life, and into yourself. ‘You can’t get rid of the babadook’.

Sam freaks out, and his terror takes over the duos lives, isolating them even further.

But strange noises,  peculiar dreams, hallucinations of a haunting creature, clothed in black mount, and before long, the babadook is something that even Amelia can’t ignore.

The Babadook, though rife with metaphor, gives viewers a ‘real’ monster to fear, one looming in the shadows in menacing wait. The classic and valuable horror elements; gloomy tone,  suspense,  dark corners and heart pounding music. There IS a typical storyline here, but what makes it so unusual is the way in which fantasy and reality are entwined,  making you wonder was it ever a fantasy at all?

The real monsters? Grief and fear, anxiety and desperation.  A broken woman trying to raise a child while drowning in her own pain and inevitably dragging her son down with her.  A mother out of options, struggling to maintain some semblance of a life. But anger and resentment begin to build, to grow,  to evolve. These emotions overtake her, they become something more, something much more sinister.

Horror fans have grown comfortable with seeing a parent turn on a child, but commonly, we see fathers inhabited by demons, Jack Torrance parading after his family with an axe.

But mother is so often our sanctuary. She is the safe zone, t he voice of reason,  the ultimate good.

Perhaps this is what makes The Babadook a film that will get under your skin on more levels than one.

Rife with symbolism, beautiful set design and excellent acting, The Babadook is a horror like nothing we’ve seen in recent years. It has heart and horror,  and an evil we can all relate to.

After all, we all have demons, but for the most part  they’re ‘quiet today’.

 

What’s in the BOX?!

The Possession  (2012) is stylish, well acted and oozes with dramatic, booming score. The film seems to have the required components to make a solid and memorable film,  but somehow,  it feels subdued, slow and underwhelming. Have we been saturated with possession tales??

The story centers on a broken family.  Mom (Kyra Sedgwick ) and dad (Jeffrey Dean Morgan ) share custody of their two girls amidst the inevitable bitterness of divorce.  It’s no wonder little Emily is acting strangely.

Or, maybe it’s that bizarre wooden box she picked up at an evil yard sale. The one with the ancient hebrew scrawled on it. You know, the one that contains a pile of knick knacks that combine Pandora’s box with Boo Radley’s tree treasures.

You guessed it, the box contains a demon. In this case, a Dybbuk (an ancient Jewish box demon that looks like a second cousin of the Fiji mermaid.) The snippets of lore, myth and religion that filter into this fairly run of the mill tale are pretty much the only thing that sets this film apart.

Otherwise,  we get rolling eyes, inexplicable gagging, swarms of bugs, pale kids in nightgowns contorting themselves. We’ve seen it before, and while The Possession doesn’t resort to cheap jump scares, it just doesn’t have anything terribly memorable to offer.

Director Ole Bornedal makes a solid effort,  and combined with an uncomfortable score manages to project a fairly chilling image. Young girl being tortured and twisted,  downright infested by demon? Creepy shit. But it’s not new. Perhaps the lore of the Dybbuk was a tempting story to tell, but our director fell flat by pouring it directly into the old familiar mould.

What's in the booox? Oh. Evil.

Think outside the box, next time.

Ha!

Life lessons:
1. One man’s trash isn’t always another man’s treasure.
2. Stay together for the kids!
3. Turn on some lights once in a while, why don’t cha?
4. You’d probably feel better if you just stopped giving a shit.
5. A boat’s just a boat,  but the mystery box can be anything! ! Even a boat!

 

Slice and Dice

Color me cliche,  but Netflix runs my life, and it informs me the series Scream commences now. I am forfeiting nap time to watch what I fear will be a ridiculous abomination instead of a solid horror movie.

Mistake?Am I sacrificing day one of horror marathon? Perhaps, but I’m a sucker and I can’t resist.

Initial thoughts: most of these teens are thirty, and I can barely tell them apart.

Let the slashing begin.

 

Youth is a Dream

It was at the impressionable age of 11 that I saw Scream (1996). I’m not proud of it, but Scream changed my horror loving life. And, sadly, in my twisted little mind, I developed a huge crush on rat faced Skeet Ulrich. Oh, the joys of youth.

Credited with revitalizing Wes Craven’s career, Scream brought back the slash and stalk horror films of the 70’s and 80’s and made the idea fashionable again. And boy did it. Suddenly Scream costumes were everywhere, and they still remain on Halloween shelves every year, far beyond the point that children of trick or treating age would possibly know what the costume is in reference to.

Scream has a sense of humor, and pays repeated homage to other horror films, with references ranging from blatantly obvious to deliciously subtle. Scream also offers a few memorable scenes that have somehow managed to stick it out after all this time (yes, nearly 20 years, good god do I feel old). Who among us didn’t cringe a little when Tatum (Rose Mcgowan) was crushed in the garage door? When Casey (Drew Barrymore) is seen hung from a tree with her ‘insides on the outside’. When Randy (Jamie Kennedy….remember Jamie Kennedy?) outlines the rules of survival in a horror film.

Some magical chemistry of actors, music, horror references and general silliness put Scream on the map and managed to spawn a number of terrible sequels (and reportedly, an upcoming TV series…..how indeed). There’s a reference to the sequels of A Nightmare on Elm Street, a dig to all of those terrible films, as Wes Craven sold the rights to the film following the original. Perhaps this indicates that he takes no responsibility for shitty sequels, but anyone who’s seen the following few Screams knows better.

I know more about this film than I should share with you here, and if you ever get the chance to watch it with me, don’t. I know all the lines and I incessantly spout them off at inopportune times, ruing the entire vibe.

The acting is passable, if forgettable. The story is fairly lackluster, but that hardly matters in the grand scope of things.Scream remains a classic, and it hardly seems worth dissecting. Just let it live. Enjoy the cheese and the handful of genuine scares (there’s no longer a fragment that scares me, but 11 year old me was another story) and the general fun. As I’ve said, Scream has a sense of humor, and it truly doesn’t take itself too seriously. If you go into it feeling the same, you walk away satisfied. Scream seems like just the ticket to transition your tween daughter from frightened scattered childhood memories of The Exorcist to full on horror fiend. Not scary enough to scar, but scary enough to leave you asking for more.

Oh, the good old days.

“Youth is a dream, a form of chemical madness.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald

 

Life Lessons:(I admittedly didn’t have to fish very far for these gems.)

1. Never drink or do drugs. (You’d better not kid.)

2. Never have sex. (till you’re thirty).

3. Never say ‘I’ll be right back.” Because you won’t.

4. Never ask, ‘who’s there?’. Come on, Casey, you should’ve known better.

5. Don’t investigate strange noises.

Bonus: Don’t run up the stairs when you should be running out the front door.

 

 

When You’re Strange

Some very bleak moments having little to do with the supernatural are what remain after Deliver Us From Evil wraps up, whether that is what director Scott Derrickson intended or not. Otherwise, this cop-horror-thriller-supernatural-jambalaya is nothing to write home about.

Centered on Sergeant Ralph Sarchie, played skilfully by Eric Bana (who knows better, really), the film leads us into the heart of darkness that is police work. Sarchie works the beat in New York, with his partner, played by Joel McHale (yes, of Community, and yes, it feels odd to have him in this role. I suspect he was cast based on arm circumference.) After a blip of a scene featuring soldiers in Iraq stalking into a cave and presumably uncovering some unspeakable evil (not so much is said, but does it have to be?), the film connects with Sarchie as he holds a dead baby found in a dumpster. Yikes. Sarchie tries to disconnect from his job, often overcome with anger and emotion. The entire film works to convince us of this fact, though this opening sequence does the trick without any dialogue, making some of the drama feel a little redundant.

Sarchie walks us through a day in the life, dumpster babies, domestic disputes, whackos running around the zoo, insect riddled corpses in possessed basements…..crucified cats. Something spooky is afoot, though Sergeant Scully doubts anything amiss beyond the evil of the people. The connection between all the craziness is a photo of three soldiers in Iraq. Familiar? They’ve all been dishonorably discharged for attacking a priest. What did they uncover far off in the sandy depths of darkness? (The Exorcist, anyone?).

In the role of rough around the edges Father Karras is Edgra Ramirez as Father Mendoza, a character with a deadpan attitude towards all things eveil, or perhaps it’s just Ramirez himself, trying to disconnect from this film. Mendoza stumbles into Sarchie’s path in an effort to help one of his whackos (a highly unnecessary character named Jane who serves mostly to stare buggy eyed at the camera and creep and crawl about in the shadows). The man of God meets the man without faith. Ah, the staht of a beautiful friendship (does my New Yawk accent translate?).

The pair, accompanied by McHale, who, at one point, gets held up on the stairs behind a stuck piano or something (what kind of gimmick is that?) investigate the soldiers and their craziness. This tale is spliced in with some cheap tricks of Sarchie’s family and the desperate creep out scenes of toys moving of their own accord and scratching sounds in his little girl’s bedroom. Wife Olivia Munn is projects her own anxieties and is certain that lil Susie is just expressing her need for her Daddy to come home, no help there. Poor gal is stuck in her haunted bedroom waiting for the film’s finale.

And it comes with a tired exorcism scene that offers little that we haven’t seen before. The power of Christ compels you, spooky overlapping voices, Latin, yaddah yaddah. Toss in the constantly flickering lights, because, of course, lights don’t work in the presence of evil, and you’ve got a nice little cliche stew.

So, to summarize, a trio of soldiers uncover SOMETHING, bring it home to New York, pass it on to a handful of people, inspire weird scratching fits, Latin graffiti, poltergeist like toy animation, and bone smashing suicides. Why? Who knows? By what exactly? Who knows? How does Sarchie seem to have this ‘radar’ for evil? Pfft, no answers on that one. The film stirs up a story that might have a few creepy images (yes, Jane crawling towards the screen spattered with blood and the sudden, jarring jump scares that pop up from time to time are unnerving) but falls flat with shockingly little depth. In the grand scheme of maniacal goings on in New York on a day to day basis, this small handful of weirdos seems to be pretty minor. I mean, for god’s sake, we’ve already found a baby in a dumpster and heard the tale of a child molester and killer who dumps a little girl in a garbage can. These stories might linger, but the possession tale feels less than original, and the junction with the haunted kid feels like a far reach to try and incorporate the kind of cheap horror tricks that sell a film in the previews.

Life Lessons:
1. Get an office job, police work seems less than fun.
2. Buy LED lightbulbs.
3. Do not buy into ‘based on a true story’. Do your own research.
4. Don’t marry a cop. He’ll be out all night, leaving your house susceptible to spookiness.
5. People are strange.

 

I Got Fev-ah!

So, the thing about Cabin Fever 3 is that if you can read the title, and are smart enough to discern that the film is about contagion, you don’t need to see the first two. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen Cabin Fever, and I’ve got a real soft spot for it, masking that true underlying fear of disease (lets not discuss Ebola just now). There’s a sick humor to the film, and a delightful campiness that is clearly intended. If you have the stomach for a skin loosening good time, check it out.

As for the third in the trilogy (I’m using that term loosely), Cabin Fever 3: Patient Zero, we stumble into some sort of mysterious underground lab. A Zach Galifinakis lookalike is weeping in the restraint of some hazmatted fellows. ‘Zach’ is patient zero, an unbelievable doctor tells us. Accompanied by his pornographically shaped nurse, he gives us very little information except to say that our patient is asymptomatic. Perhaps he is the answer to the cure! Now, Zachs not pumped about being captive, and moans and groans, eventually slicing his hand and splattering blood on the techs. Ah, bloody revenge! Cut to nurse science boobs getting blood vomited on, stripping her clothes off to jump hysterically in the lab shower. Well, we all know she’s dead.
The story is spliced with another, a group of greasy young guys and one sleazy gal escape pre wedding festivities in a tropical setting to head out to the third world version of a cabin in the woods, a deserted island. Wait, is that a building in the distance?? Our Spanish speaking boat captain offers no help, except to say, see you mañana, amigos! No matter, smoke some weed and snorkel amidst the ….dead and rotting fish? Curious. Soon enough, symptoms arise, boils and scabs and bloody wounds. Tents are painted with blood and a pathetic underlying love triangle is forgotten. There is an obligatory disgusting sex scene. Because why wouldn’t you calm down your feverish and oozing girlfriend by getsin down?

As the threat posed by the fever becomes rapidly apparent, the two healthy castaways search for the structure they saw coming in. Amidst a good deal of slime and slop, the stories converge in a slightly nonsensical way ( let’s face it, this movies not amazing).

Needless to say, Cabin Fever 3 follows all the patterns of the first, it hits all the necessary high points we expect, but doesn’t have the humor of the original . It’s not great, it’s not even bad great, but it is predictable fun and boy, is it gross. So if you’re in it for fun and splatter, go crazy, but don’t seek this one out, it’s not worth your time. Watch the first one instead.

Non horror loving husbands review: no thanks, I like my skin where it is.

Life lessons:
1. If you’re going so far from civilization that you come in contact with deadly diseases with the power to destroy the world, just in the name of partying, you’re going too far. At least the diseases at the bar can be treated with penicillin. ( you, daughter, will always be innocent and lovely and will never party of course.)
2. If there’s an option to bed someone who, though attractive, is being rapidly covered with boils and sores, maybe you can do better.
3. Learn Spanish.
4. The sluttier you are, the faster you die. Keep it in your pants.
5. For gods sake, don’t drink the water!