Review: Ichi the Killer

Before Saw, there was Ichi the Killer; a Japanese film based on the manga and anime, stretched the boundaries of what cinema could get away with.
Taking place in Japan's gangland society, the story follows two unique but equally sadistic individuals. One is a pain-relishing torturer who has a distinct pre-Leath Ledger's Joker vibe going on, especially the scars extending from his lips (only this guy takes his torture far beyond pencil tricks). The other character is a young man plagued by memories of being bullied, whose rage and fear magnify him into a deranged murderer.
The film begins with a quite interesting credit sequence, and then continues to become a jarring and extravagant exposure of hyper-violence, gore and sex.
Yet the Japanese are always masters at taking such sadistic material and adding black comedic moments throughout. One such moment sees our torturer character cut his own tongue out to apologise to his superior, only to immediately have a phone conversation (the boss's terrified reaction is priceless).
As with quite a lot of manga adaptations, this film is a little too weird for me, especially with its ending. I suspected a twist and I got one, but it was more than I had bargained for and left me feeling a little disappointed. There is also a truly surreal moment with a heavy dose of cg composition... which does not work.
If you like your Japanese horror, torture and black comedy, I'd say check it out, even if its just to see the bizarre Japanese answer to the Joker.

Additional Marshmallows: Ichi is directed by Audition's Takashi Miike.

Review: Switchblade Romance (aka High Tension)

I cannot think how long its been since I watched a solid slasher movie that kept me guessing almost throughout. Bless these Europeans and their grasp of good film making.
Switchblade Romance, otherwise known as High Tension, follows Alexia, a young girl visiting her parents' rural house with her friend Marie. But upon their first night there a sadistic serial murderer breaks into their house, kills the family and kidnaps Alexia. It is up to Marie to give chase and rescue her friend from the mysterious killer.
The film begins with very loose characterisation; the two girls are reasonably standard protagonists, while the family are virtually expendable (I would have liked a little more from them) but the movie rather teasingly jests with generic slasher movie false-scares initially. Not in the way a spoof does, but in a genuine "friends goofing around" sense, and trust me after seeing so many horror movies recently, this was a fantastic change of pace!
There is gore by the bucket load, and some extremely unpleasant murder scenes. There's good pacing throughout, frequently tensing into cat-and-mouse scenes. Marie is an intense character; someone with intelligence and integrity who might actually be the single wisest female in any slasher movie! She's only outdone by the killer's own unsettling intelligence.
Better than I expected. If you like a good slasher movie that stands out from the crowd, I'd give it a watch.

  

Banter: There is Nothing to Fear, but Fear itself

I have just completed playing one of the creepiest video games ever made: Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Yes, yes, I will maintain banter about film, but the game's incredible ability to invoke fear has me thinking about movies and fear. Tis the season after all!
Growing up I loved intense movies, as a kid I wanted to see Aliens and Terminator, in early teens I watched The Fugitive and Burton's Batman movies. But there were some things that scared me.

Yeah, you know what that is don't you. I must've watched Terminator 2 when I was about ten or eleven years old. It took me a while before I watched this terrifying sequence. Brain numbingly good physical effects...

And the face on the right should look familiar to a lot of people; it's the "face" that can be seen on the surface of Mars. However, it was the template of the X-Files episode Space, and despite how outdated the effects look now... I still remember that episode freaking me out so badly. Actually... I still have trouble looking at that face... why did I put that in the blog...?
...
(Focus! It is only a mountain with a shadow! Only a mountain.... only a mountain....)


Fear is quite subjective; some people find things scary which others might call laughable or entertaining. Some people fear ghost stories, possession, aliens, spiders, or even simply darkness.

Movies have intense ways of burning images and sounds into our minds with fear, and I believe (in my opinion) that the best scary films are those that give you very little. The films that makes your mind fill the gaps; to make you terrify yourself.

I believe this image from Paranormal Activity is burned into my mind (and hopefully not my retina too). Unlike its sequel that moves the viewer's eye about and somewhat gives them breathing space in doing so, the original movie keeps this single shot permanently. The effect? You are hypnotised by watching it. Seconds move agonisingly slowly as you find yourself too scared and anxious to look away, compelled to watch it. Every time this image appeared for the last twenty minutes of that film, my heart sank in dread; what was going to happen next?

What did happen? A fantastic use of shadows, subtle gestures to downright savage, sudden explosions of movement, yet more often than not the film used eerie sights and quiet sounds... Footfalls on distant stairs... footfalls that approach and stop... floorboards creaking, your mind works overtime against your will to imagine what's happening. Yet nothing's there!

The video game I mentioned, Amnesia, works in a similar way. It deprives you of options and puts you directly in harm's way (like Paranormal Activity's frozen perspective) and mercilessly torments you with sounds, sounds and little more. Your mind incubates and develops its own fear.

A great definition of this is comparing the film The Haunting (1963) and its 1999 remake. The remake is a garbage pile of bad acting, shameful CGI nonsense and even a literal Hell. The original shows you nothing; it plays with sound, shadows and unsettling camera work to unnerve you psychologically.

Now... I express my own opinions here about what scares me. The unsettling, disembodied sounds, the grey-black shadows of unfamiliar (yet real) places, the abnormal and terrifying manifesting in recognisable or subtle ways.
What can I say about the "horror" movies that do not scare me? How about Saw for an example.
Saw is not a film gauged for invoking fear... Saw is sickly and gross, and the terms torture porn and "goreno" have been wisely applied to it. Similar to exploitation movies of the 70s, you have to wonder who decided to conceive these scenarios (I'm looking at you too, Human Centipede) or those who buy them to watch repeatedly.
They aren't scary, they are grotesque examples of physical special effects (impressive nonetheless it should be said) and little more, at best forcing you to turn your head in disgust. If I want that... give me the nail-pulling scene from District 9 any day, or Old Boy's tooth-pulling extremes.

But tell me... isn't fear that feeling of helplessness, of being at the mercy of some unseen force, the unknown, the mysterious?
I think so.
And a film that can do that, has mastered something indeed, and while the fright might never be as strong a second time, the sensation lingers...

Sleep well.

Review: Rosemary's Baby

I knew next to nothing about Rosemary's Baby going into it, but I knew it was acclaimed for its haunting atmosphere. While it does still have that, the film feels a little dated.
A young couple move into a new apartment (and they aren't afraid of its unpleasant history of deaths) to bring up a family. At first they are a regular man and wife settling in, but when Rosemary becomes pregnant their eccentric and nosy old neighbours seem to take a great deal of interest.
The film has a strong, unsettling atmosphere running throughout - and religious messages that surely shook audiences back in the 60s - a lot of this is due to the film's exceptional ambiguity. Everything is from Rosemary's perspective, making for anxieties to either be real or part of her own delusions. Mia Farrow certainly puts her heart and soul into the part.
As for the rest of the cast... I am not so certain. While they perhaps have the hardest role to sell, its pretty obvious what is going on, and while the lack of actual scares empowers the ambiguity (and is welcome!) the other characters behave so oddly that something has to be wrong. I certainly couldn't bear the old neighbours for more than a few minutes, let alone most of the film!
The ending felt a little unsatisfying. I imagine it was done for controversy sake, but for me I felt it should have ended differently.
It is a very slow, very atmospheric film about an anxious mother-to-be, who finds everyone around her to be against her and her baby. Guaranteed to scare the wits out of any other mother-to-be! For me... it was a little too surreal, a little too slow starting.

Review: Frankenstein (1931)

Nope, I had yet to see the original 1931 Frankenstein, but having watched the 1931 Dracula last year, I should watch another one of Universal's monster movies.
These films have such a delightful charm about them; their exaggerated use of shadows and their quirky but unique set pieces, but most captivating is the fact that they are the original templates for such classic monster imagery.
The genius scientist Henry Frankenstein has found the secrets of life and death, and vows to prove it to his disbelieving mentor, fiancée and best friend by bringing life to a creature he created, regardless of dangerous consequences.
The film opens with a now humorous warning that the film "may horrify" you, and throughout the film this charm remains. While indeed it was barely the 1930s, the exterior scenes are showing their age; the sound design does little to disguise that they are on a stage with reverberating sound. There are also glaring continuity errors and editing issues (such as a character falling onto their back, only for the following shot to show them lying face down).
But the positives remain with the acting. Colin Clive as the intense, mad Doctor Frankenstein is a joy to watch even to this day, and the immortal lines he speaks upon giving the monster life still give genuine shivers, regardless how many times we have heard them spoken since. Truly the original and best Frankenstein.
The film ends a little bluntly, I could have used more to tie up the characters than was given, and I think I preferred 1931's Dracula, but it was still an enjoyable piece of classic cinema.

Review: Slither

From the director who would later go on to make Super, comes a quirky little gore movie that surprised me with its likeability!
Some of that likeability may come from Nathan Fillion (from the cult TV show Firefly) in the lead role.
In a small, quiet and quirky American town a meteorite crashes and releases a fierce parasitic lifeform, it infects and possesses a husband whose wife then teams up with the local police chief and others to stop an alien takeover!
The film's labelled as a horror-comedy, and while it got a chuckle out of me a few times I have to say it could have done with some wittier dialogue, especially with Fillion on board. I was most impressed with the physical and special effects involved! Great comedic splashes and gushes of blood and bile, along with leech-like slugs and tentacles.
It is very predictable, with classic bodysnatching scenarios and zombie clichés, but it is a very fun gore movie that I imagine is quite underrated.
Decent acting all around too; there is a nice chemistry between our leading stars, and certainly a good looking cast too with Elizabeth Banks and Tania Saulnier (nope, can't say I've heard of them before now!)
It has some good funny moments, I'd recommend it for any fans of Shaun of the Dead and gore movies in general. Short, simple, quick and entertaining.

Review: Saw VII (aka Saw 3D)

Saw finally (supposedly) bows out with the least amount of dignity and superficial conclusions I have ever seen in a long time.
Now I am not a fan of the Saw movies generally, but I stuck with them for two reasons. One, they have built a plotline from nothing and two, Jigsaw is an interesting character. So I was hoping for a conclusion that was somewhat clever or genuine, but I suppose I was too optimistic; the writers have become so blinded by their hack writing so far they forgot how to conclude it.
So in this "final chapter" we follow an author who supposedly survived one of the Jigsaw traps, and his bid to restore confidence in other survivors. Meanwhile, our two villains from the previous films seek to end their own battle.
The film is two parts for me. The story of the survivors, and their new lease of life, is fascinating; this is what Jigsaw's intention was, to show people the errors of their ways and renew themselves. However because this is a Saw film we can't just have that, we need another endless onslaught of traps and characters we don't know or care about.
I've talked about lack of characterisation killing Saw's torture scenes before, and here its only part of the problem. The real problem is how this final act completely cleanses itself of every development in the last six films with a tacked on "twist". There were ways to end this story with more dignity, even the twist could have worked had its inclusion not debunked everything that had happened previously!
Ultimately, this film proves the writers had no idea what they were shooting for; six films, that's nearly a day of footage (good god) to set that decent twist up... But no, they just admit that everything was completely pointless.

Additional Marshmallows: They couldn't even maintain their titles. I, II, III, IV, V, VI, 3D. Really, you really are that shallow huh. At least Lovefilm listed it at VII.

Review: Don't be Afraid of the Dark (2011)

Don't Be Afraid of the Dark is quick to remind us that it is a retelling of a teleplay by Nigel McKeand, but is also a remake of a 1973 movie. Pleasantly however, this remake proves to be the right calibre of scares!
Any fan of Guillermo Del Toro will see the similarities to his other works, the film itself rests neatly between The Orphanage's haunted visuals, and the more magical, otherworldly elements of the superior Pan's Labyrinth.
The film starts by showing us it means business; a man is seen bringing a chisel to a woman's teeth! This is easily the goriest the film gets, but it sure does jolt the audience.
Years later, a father, working as a restoration official, moves into a newly renovated mansion with his daughter and his new partner. While the inquisitive young girl broods after her parents' divorce, she uncovers a dark secret within the house; a horde of small vicious creatures that can only survive in the dark.
The film played out like a classic haunted house movie, full of Gothic imagery, deep shadows, curving stairwells and enchanted gardens. While it may not bring many original ideas, it still brings a good scare here and there without too many cheap shots.
The acting from our protagonists is decent. Our young heroine proves to be independent in her actions and this is successfully maintained throughout, even as things become too much for her, you still believe it. Katie Holmes too gives a good performance, while Guy Pearce is positively irritating as a career blinded douche of a father!
The creatures themselves are enjoyably scary, keeping mostly to the dark initially allows for their CG reveal to be less awkward (cool trivia: Del Toro provides some of their voices).
Give it a watch, the film shows there's still plenty of life in the old Haunted House story.

Review: The Human Centipede - First Sequence

Well friends, family and welcomed viewers, I have sacrificed a small part of my mind to give you my impression of a film that has single-handedly defined a generation of movie goers' limitations... A film I was genuinely afraid of watching and took a day of mental preparation for.
What do I think? Surprisingly underwhelming... in a gross way.
I will get the worst part out of the way first: the premise. Two girls find themselves abducted (along with a very angry Japanese man) by a deranged German surgeon who has a sick fascination with "the human centipede"; a surgical experiment that links three or more people via their digestive tract... Yes, the film goes that far.
Now... my telling you this is really the worst thing about this movie, and will decide if you want to see it. The premise is unspeakably gross and inhuman, yet the film itself is... visually sparing of details. For example, I knew the worst aspect for me would be the "cutting of knee tendons, the removal of teeth and" errr... attachment. Yet this part is barely worse visually than any of the Saw movies. I'd probably say Saw is gorier to watch and personally Oldboy had a worst tooth-removal scene (and I love that film). The actual "centipede" is just weird to see, and the "connections" are obscured by bandages, sparing the viewer of the truly hideous visuals.
Do I therefore recommend it despite people's fear of it? Absolutely not. I wouldn't suggest anyone watch it without a very clear understanding of what's involved. The film is a mental barrage, it is quite poor in actual quality or storytelling; falling into typical slasher horror clichés. The two girls were pretty pathetic, while the surgeon had the only interesting presence.

And two cups of cocoa does not mean I liked it that much. It has two since its well... unusual and bold in its own sick way.

Review: Paranormal Activity 2

More things go bump in the night with this sequel that pleasantly surprised me!
I really enjoyed Paranormal Activity, a lot more than I expected and it became something of a cult movie in my mind, so when a sequel was announced (and without the original director) I was immediately sceptical. Add to the mix a bigger cast, bigger locations and multiple cameras... yeah, I was expecting a flop.
I really like films that have small casts and limited locations. Paranormal Activity 2 has whole family moving into a giant house: parents; a daughter; daughter's boyfriend; dog; baby; nanny and a menagerie of baby toys, all to be used to mess with our heads as an unseen spectre roams freely.
But while the expanded setting may dilute the eye-watering intensity the first film gave, here we do have a more believable setting. Gone is the douche running around with a camera all day, even the security cameras are explained reasonably well, and while we still aren't sure what jobs these people have to acquire such a place, it is somewhat explained and isn't as glaringly obvious even if it hadn't been.
The scares are still spine tingling, if a little predictable in light of the original's... well... originality. The use of sound is still excellent, and a gripping "Oh wait a second..." moment near the end properly joins the film with the original, which is near enough genius.
Surprisingly faithful, and a decent scare romp, though I think I still refer the fixed-camera from the first film; it racked up tension far, far more effectively.

And because you are awesome and reading my blog, I want to give you my old review of the first movie too! :)

Geez. I watched this at the right time of day, in the pitch dark and silence of night.
Now I didn't like this film's marketing campaign... theatres full of screaming, leaping Americans... so I was reserved but hopeful for a scare or two.
It starts out, like many do nowadays, with the usual hand-held amateur video theme. A young couple are experiencing strange events in their home, and decide to try and record them.
The setup was a little dodgy at times. I'd love to know what jobs these apparently jobless individuals have to own such a beautiful house! While the boyfriend is a complete douche; running around with a camera every second, regardless of his girlfriend's mounting anxieties. But, these are acceptable clichés as the film builds like an unrelenting storm.
The last... forty minutes are horribly suspenseful, each recorded night becomes more unbearable than the last. The film works incredibly well with little more than quiet sounds and subtle movements, often nothing happens at all for agonizing seconds, your eyes unable to tear away. The fixed camera perspective demands you watch things unfold.
Admittedly some will hate it, it is very much like The Blair Witch Project; it relies on suspense and builds tension without action, blood or gore.
I'm so glad I chose not to watch this in a cinema; it is best watched alone or with a friend/partner, in the dark of night.

Paranormal Activity 3 is already in production, am I concerned? A little bit. But I can see it working as a trilogy now, provided the final chapter is executed with extreme care. The sequel filled in a lot of gaps very nicely, hence the kudos I gave it, but a third part would have to be careful not to get singled out as being unnecessary or unbelievable.


Now... I am going to try and sleep...

Banter: I don't hate *everything* related to Saw

A great little video uploaded by VersusTvigle. You should check out their other videos, but I think this is a great idea for a Saw film!


(also, I thought the first Saw film was the best of the bunch)

Review: Saw VI

So it's that time again.
Admittedly I saw the end of Saw 6 while I worked at the cinema, but, if you can't see were Saw's narrative structure leads then you've obviously not seen many films...
So the legacy of Jigsaw's morally grey-area murders continues, now with two equally sick minded practitioners attempting to continue it. Jigsaw's widow, intent on finishing his dying wishes, and a corrupt cop who we met in the previous instalments.
While Saw 6 most definitely feels like the franchise is running out of steam, especially with Jigsaw's insane ability to predict several people's motives over a lengthy time frame (months, years?). They did establish, very briefly, that that is what he does... but... there's a limit being breached now.
But unlike some of the previous Saw films, six at least tries to make you feel some connection with the victims, this time Jigsaw's medical insurance company who had unfairly judged the man himself (while he was alive, of course). What bothers me is... why didn't Jigsaw go after these people first??
Otherwise, yeah people die bloody deaths etc, it looks and acts the same as the previous films, and I am just waiting for the day I run out Saws to watch.

Review: Rubber

You know... sometimes as a reviewer a film comes along and challenges your ability to think and write cohesively because what was witnessed was so completely random.
Rubber, follows a sentient killer psychic tyre, that wakes up in the American scrub-lands only to start popping small animals and people's heads. Believe it or not people, this is the part that makes sense! 
The film begins with a desert road covered in chairs, and a man holding fistfuls of binoculars. A car drives and hits every chair before stopping, only for a sheriff to climb out of the boot and begin to explain to an audience of people watching, the things in life that have "no reason" for happening. 
Yes... this film is self-aware of its oddity, and what proceeds is a weird snuff movie with an audience watching through binoculars and a sheriff who thinks he knows why everything's happening.
It isn't horror, as it prefers to be bewildering or straight up comical. Gory yes, but the film moves at a gentle, sombre pace and actually has some decent photography of dusty, wide landscapes (and regular framing of circular objects).
I... don't even know how to rate this; its self-awareness and humour saves it from being hopeless, but... what even is it?? I didn't think much of it, but I didn't exactly hate it either.
"Wait, it isn't the end; its been resurrected as a tricycle!!" - I never thought I'd hear that spoken.