Horror Nerd Cinema Bonus: "Fright Night"

Ever walk out of a theater completely and utterly at a loss of what to think about it? That's the feeling I'm getting with this particular movie. Right now, I'm just in that very bizarre place. You know the one. It's usually reserved for Takashi Miike flicks or pretty much every other Friday night having not slept in over 20 hours. If you're expecting coherent thoughts with this review, don't expect it - I've been running on empty for well over an hour now and might not even make it to the finish line.

"Fright Night" isn't a terrible movie. Not by a long shot. In fact, there's quite a bit to admire in the flick. The performances are absolutely spot-on, especially Colin Farrell's modern-day vampire Jerry Dandridge. After seeing this guy in two excellent roles this summer (the other being a similar dislikable prick - although maybe not QUITE as malevolent as he is here - in "Horrible Bosses"), it's safe to say that he's found a pretty nice career revitalization. With a more "serial" version of the character, Farrell is able to make quite an impression and even be intermittently scary as the classic "vampire out of water in suburbia" character, so huzzah for him.

If you've seen the 1985 original, you're more than familiar with the rest of the plot, but here goes for anyone who isn't hip to the scene (and add that phrase to the list of things that anyone reading this is permitted to shoot me for EVER typing again). Nice guy Charley Brewster (Anton Yelchin, a decent enough actor but one that I hold some immature level of hate for as a couple people have actually told me that I look like the guy) and his insanely MILF-ish mom (Toni Collette, best known for "The Sixth Sense" but most appreciated by this reporter for her unbelievable nude scenes in many other fine motion pictures) live seemingly normal lives in a suburban neighborhood where every house looks the same and the streets are perfectly symmetrical. Things especially look up for Charley, as he has managed to leave his dorkish friend Evil Ed (McLovin' himself Christopher Mintz-Plasse) behind and attain an insanely hot girlfriend (Imogen Poots).

This is definitely a movie that wastes little time to get going. Within ten minutes of the opening credits, a mysterious string of disappearances in Charley's high school presents itself. Ed has ascertained that Charley's creepy new neighbor who is conspicuously never seen in the daylight hours is an honest-to-christ vampire, and convinces his former friend to snoop around one of their missing classmates' homes for clues. Not soon after, Ed is chased down by Jerry and quickly turned into a vampire, at which point he summarily disappears for the next 75 minutes of the film.

You know, there was a time in my life when I scoured the internet for all the latest news, buzz, clips and other spoilers for upcoming movie projects. It's not a practice that I partake in anymore, as it effectively killed the enjoyment of a lot of theater experiences. Thus, I had no clue what to expect from the Peter Vincent character in this update, and...it's alright. Don't get me wrong - David Tennant does just fine with the role, and making the character a vampire-obsessed magician seems like a clever idea on paper. For whatever reason, the character just doesn't pop like it's supposed to.

Which is really the problem that I have with the entire movie. It's competent. It's skillful. It's occasionally tense and well-performed. The final act is even one of the most surprisingly well-done finales I've seen in any horror flick in a long time. What it lacks, though, is the "it" factor that the truly immortal movies have (with the POSSIBLE exception of Farrell), that certain extra something that make audiences want to see a film in theaters more than once and buy a DVD. You know...like the 1985 original.

Admittedly, I can't claim to be any sort of expert on the old-school "Fright Night" film. It's been a long time since my last viewing; six years would be my best guess. But everything about that film has stuck with me to this day ever since my first experience with it on TNT MonsterVision. The completely goofy, off-the-wall version of Evil Ed. The geekier version of Charley Brewster, wonderfully played by William Ragsdale, infinitely more relatable and likable than Yelchin comes across in this film. And, of course, Roddy McDowell as the horror movie luminary version of Peter Vincent, deliverer of this classic line in the era when slasher flicks ruled the world: "Apparently your generation doesn't want to see vampire killers anymore, nor vampires either. All they want to see slashers running around in ski masks, hacking up young virgins." This new iteration of an '80s classic doesn't feature that line, although it does recreate a couple others in nice nods to any fans of the 1985 film. The thing is, however, that the lines feel forced and out-of-place in this film, whereas they felt perfectly natural in the original.

In the summer of 1985, "Fright Night" became a surprisingly big hit, grossing more than any horror film that year with the exception of "Nightmare on Elm Street 2" (and being EASILY the superior of the two films in that regard) based on the strength of its goofy charm and its likable leads. And that brings me back to the missing "it" factor - "Fright Night 2011" features neither of those; there are attempts at humor, but they don't pop out of the screen, eliciting little more than a few pleasant chuckles from the theater audience that attended my screening, and the Yelchin-Poots pairing is nowhere near as likable or engaging as Ragsdale and Amanda Bearse were in the original.

Oh, and there's also a car chase scene where Collette tries to make a call to the police, but can't because of the "damn desert" and poor cell reception. God, I hate that plot device. Remember back in the good ol' days when screenwriters didn't have to explain how the cell phone that could be used to erase the problem couldn't be used? Pepperidge Farm remembers.

Overall, I actually recommend checking this movie out in theaters. The effort that Farrell and Tenant put into their key parts are definitely worth seeing on the big screen, as well as the only occasionally cheesy but otherwise fine effects work and stylistic action sequences. If you're like me, though, and like some emotional investment along with your flash, don't expect to remember much about this remake two days later. ** 1/2 out of ****.

Scary movies. Like, really. Scary.

We live in an age where just about anything can become an internet fad. If you would have asked me ten years ago that freakin’ Rick Astley would be a pop culture phenomenon again, I would have laughed in your face. I don’t know if any of you have ever heard of the term “creepypasta” before, but suffice to say, it’s one of the best damn things to come out of internet culture. Even better, it’s most definitely not a fad, and has been around for as long as the internet has existed.

For the uninitiated, the word refers to retelling of a traditional paranormal scary story updated to modern times. As an added bonus (redundancy alert), they often take place within the realms of things that we’re VERY familiar with, and bring a lot of popular bastions of pop culture into their canon. As an example, one of the freakiest things I’ve ever read on one of the many creepypasta archive sites out there is a story called “Squidward’s Suicide” about an intern on "SpongeBob Squarepants" who is handed…quite the interesting tape to review. And I’ll just leave it there. If you’re curious as to how it turns out, google it and get ready for the nightmares.

The true purpose of any horror story is to scare an audience, and that’s most assuredly what a good portion of these stories do. Apparently, I’m not alone. Several of the message boards that I frequent have posted appreciation threads for this particular form of horror story, and while there are always a few Debbie Downers piping in with “omg these thingz are so gayz!!” comments, almost all of the conversation is of the very rare positive variety, an incredibly rare thing on the good ol’ interwebz in this day and age. Going by the strength in numbers principle, I’ve come to the sad realization that these internet stories written by amateur writers are scarier than a lot of modern horror films.

‘Cus nothing screams terror like this guy. Having said that, his voice can make grown men weep.

Way back when I reviewed a Japanese film called "Marebito" (and if you ever want to be scared out of your wits and simultaneously mindf**ked to oblivion, look no further than this flick), I wrote that people watch horror films for different reasons. Mine has always been the same – the enjoyment of being scared, because being scared makes you feel alive. At the time of that writing, it didn’t happen often. At least when it came to the domestic United States releases that everyone is familiar with. Now, in August of 2011, that feeling is damn near nonexistent.

The reasons for this are numerous. For starters, the horror film – and pop culture in general – have turned almost completely over to the Vince Russo booking philosophy of storytelling. Car crash rules the day, with “all payoff, no build” being the primary result of this mindset. Most often, this rears its ugly head in the much-maligned “sound scare stinger” method of attempting to get a rise out of an audience.

Take a firecracker. Light it. Sneak up behind someone and hold it over their ear. Watch said person jump. Now, was this person scared? In a way, yes. They were startled by the sudden loud noise. Their pulse quickened and their breathing picked up. In a minute, will the person even care that this occurred? Probably not. So it is with many modern “scary” flicks at the multiplex, which are short on likable characters and disturbing ideas, but very long on that sudden “GONG” musical stinger accompanied by something rushing in front of the screen ever so briefly.

Extrapolating the car crash theory even further, sometimes films go with the other sensory extreme – the visual equivalent of the sound scare, often manifested in copious amounts of gore with little rhyme or reason attached to it. This reporter witnessed the fifth chapter in the "Final Destination" series last weekend, with a lasek machine run amok, a sickening gymnastic stunt gone awry and a cringe-inducing acupuncture-related stunt being among the flick’s more impressive visual set pieces in the fifth-go-round for the “grim reaper coming to get you” film franchise. Was it a fun movie? Yes. Loads of it, in fact. But was it scary? No. Not in the least.

Ladies and gentlemen, the most sound scare-ific horror movie of all time – the Platinum Dunes-ified version of "Friday the 13th." Sitting in the theater, I counted no less than 17 of them.

Secondly – and this is partially due to the homogenization of film as a whole - many modern horror films just don’t spend a whole lot of time on mood and atmosphere, two things that cannot be emphasized enough when it comes to how effective a horror film is in regards to how much it gets under the viewer’s skin. I’m often asked what the scariest movie I’ve ever seen is. Invariably, it’s always "Suspiria," Dario Argento’s 1977 masterpiece about a young American ballet dancer at a prestigious German dance academy, and finding out that said academy is really a gateway to hell. Plot and script-wise, the flick is definitely no labyrinthine maze, but director Argento gives the school such a dark, foreboding air (coupled with a soul-destroying score by Italian rock band Goblin) that watching the film is a tense, gut-wrenching experience. In a good way, I promise.

Thirdly, I’m sure you’ve all heard my endless diatribes about the remake trend by this point, but here we go again – these are remakes. They’re remakes of something we’ve seen before, and seen done WELL, more often than not. Thus, we’re familiar with it, and we’re not surprised. Even when said remakes are done with plenty of reverence for the source material and shot and scripted skillfully, it’s difficult to have any sense of dread, because we know what’s coming. A good example of this is the TV movie version of Stephen King’s "Carrie" (and the upcoming RE-remake, which may possibly star Megan f**king Fox). We know what happens at the prom. We don’t care.

Sometimes, familiarity isn’t enough, either. Sometimes, the victim characters are also so g***amn annoying that it’s impossible to be scared. But that’s another rant for another week [/foreshadowing]

Take some lessons from creepypasta, supposed horror auteurs in la-la-land. Beauty in simplicity. Less is more. The things that scare us the most are often the simplest ideas given just the slightest touches of complication. Being shown a graphic suicide. The end of the world. Getting a new job and finding out that one of your co-workers is a psychopath (and not in the fun way). The teachers at your college/academy are really witches (and that would be the amazingly simple hook of "Suspiria," which if you’ll recall is the scariest movie I’ve ever seen). All base ideas, but all base ideas that have been fleshed out to perfection. Rather than being immediately forgotten after being blasted in a theater’s Dolby Digital 600 channel sound, these simple ideas crop up in your mind at all the worst moments. And make you feel alive.

Horror Nerd Cinema Bonus: "Final Destination 5"

No matter how many "Final Destination" films they eventually make, the series will always hold some level of nostalgia for me for one reason and one reason only: August 28, 2009. A DAY WHICH WILL LIVE IN INFAMY for horror fans everywhere, as it was not only the release date for "The Final Destination" (Part IV in the series), but also the date that Rob Zombie's Unholy Sequel That Shall Not Be Named was unleashed upon an unsuspecting populace. For no other reason than to stick it to the Z Man, I drove 90 miles to the closest 3D theater showing the former film, and while nothing about that particular movie sticks out with me to this day, I remember it being a damn fun time in theaters but that it likely wouldn't hold up for home viewing.

Well, it's more of the same for "Final Destination 5." Lots of cool, flashy visuals and intricate death trap kill scenes, but a plot and characters that are wafer-thin and - advance forewarning - WILL struggle to hold your interest in the scenes where they're not barely skirting death with seventeen moving parts coming together to insure as gory of a death as possible. Hell, the characters in this bunch were so generic that I didn't even bother to learn their names, referring to them as "Kinda Slutty Girl," "Generic Blonde," "Generic Main Guy," and "Tom Cruise." And thank the heavens for that last guy. Seriously, the dude who portrays the hero's best friend looks, acts, and even TALKS like the couch jumper so much that it's downright uncanny, and every time he's on screen you'll be wildly amused. Hopefully. At least I was.

Anyway, plot wise, if you've seen even one "FD" film, you know how this one goes. Begin with a catastrophic event where group of characters we are introduced to horrifically dies, flash back to reveal that said catastrophe was a vision by main character, main character saves core group of friends' lives, death comes back in a whiplash effect claiming these lucky survivors for "cheating the system" and beating death. This time around, the opening is some pretty kickass awesome stuff - a collapsing bridge, made all the more horrific since I'm from Minnesota where the I-95 bridge in the Twin Cities collapsed a few years back, and I saw some of this very same stuff on the news. Yikes. On the whole, this first act money scene is also a tad less hokey than that racetrack trip of doom from the previous film, which always helps.

The characters for this go-round are all employees of a paper company on a weekend retreat. Their boss, by the way, is played by David Koechner, who is aces in everything he's in, from Saturday Night Live to Out Cold, and is the only cast member that I know by name other than Tony Todd, who does his usual bit as the foreboding Coroner to perfection. Who they are isn't important. As I said before, all the stuff that they do in between the death scenes is barely significant.

In other words, you know the reason that you go to "Final Destination" films - fantastically staged and awesomely gory death scenes. That's what sells the tickets, and it's a formula that's worked well for this series that continues to make loads of cash on relatively modest budgets. And this batch doesn't disappoint; not in the slightest. Three of the deaths are downright cringe-inducing, and and succeed in doing what the true purpose of any horror movie is. Namely, make the audience wince in advance. The gymnast scene is masterfully drug out, with a couple false finishes thrown in before the big finale, while the laser eye surgery bit is the first thing from a horror film I've seen in a LONG time to make me literally close my eyes and turn away.

These things, fellow horror fans, are what this movie is really all about. Since the movie works on its intended level, I'm giving it a positive review, although if you're looking for anything more than that, don't expect it. This flick is loads of fun in a theater, and that's really where you must see it, just like any film in this franchise. The home experience just doesn't do it justice.

*** out of ****.

Back to the Future

“Man, how many of these things are there?”

If you’re a horror fan, you’ve no doubt had to deal with this question before. Hell, this reporter had to deal with it twice in the last seven days. So take it from someone who’s an expert in the field – there are two ways you can go about this:

(1) The decidedly non-stellar route that I always take. Namely, listing every freaking movie in the series and expounding on the crossovers and remakes. To be sure, this is a move that not only overwhelms the unfortunate sap that you’re talking to, but virtually insures that you will never – ever – be laid by any female that said person happens to know.

(2) The following sentence, which you should all laminate, put in your wallet, and memorize: “As many as you want there to be.”

When it comes to long-running horror series (and, by extension, the genre itself), most people already have their minds made up. Anything that goes on this long, and with that many roman numerals after the title, just can’t be good. And you know what else? Any type of story that would allow that sort of thing to happen sucks.

Sadly, based on the evidence that I’ve gleamed from the 21st century, it’s hard to disagree with them.

When the "Friday the 13th" and "Nightmare on Elm Street" franchises exploded in popularity in the early ‘80s, it was the dawn of a new age for horror films. Regardless of the up-and-down quality of the individual movies in these franchises (and some of them are indeed spotty at best), I have a hell of a lot of respect for these two notches in movie history. And don’t laugh, stuffy English major; Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger (that’s hockey-masked psycho and burn victim razor-glove killer to some of you) are important pieces in movie history. They weren’t just place filler; these two villains and their respective movies took the horror genre by storm, competing with each other for supremacy during much of the golden age of the slasher flick but doing something much more vital in the process.

Like presenting the above moral. Yikes.

You see, before F13 and ANOES came along, the long-running horror series were focused almost entirely on literary villains. Dracula and Frankenstein ruled the roost. As a result, the settings were centered around Victorian times, European countries, and other far, far away places. Then came Jason and Freddy, and horror came home. Right to modern times, right to kids on the screen who seemed a whole lot like ones you might have known, right to your own backyard. "Friday the 13th" and "Nightmare on Elm Street" (and, to a lesser extent, the "Halloween" series, whose long-lasting appeal was a direct result of the success of the two stalwart franchises) dragged horror forward where it needed to be and, in essence, out of the dark ages.

Despite every critic in the world hating these films, and even despite the true purpose of the two franchises (produce movies on the cheap and make loads of cash doing it), Paramount Studios and New Line Cinema showed true chutzpah by giving these movies wide releases. In turn, the films themselves – seemingly never-ending stream of sequels included – possessed true courage and, even at their worst, always gave us some classic moments that are still talked about endlessly by nerds like myself and…fellow nerds like myself.

Diving even deeper into the abyss, they even brought something DIFFERENT to the table with each film, for the most part. The "Nightmare" movies would turn Freddy Krueger from near-silent serial killer to legit pop culture icon, and (for better or worse) giving him a personality that Frank Gorshin himself would envy. Meanwhile, the "Friday" flicks, while featuring the same killer in (almost) every chapter, was able to lure in directors who each took their own turn handling the admittedly simple setup, with entries ranging from straight horror (Part II) to all-out gorefest (Part IV) to slasher satire (Part VI).

So ends the rah-rah cheerleading portion of this essay. Now, are you ready for some good old fashioned Jon Lickness negativity?

While the "Scream" franchise of the late ‘90s was a brief blip on the radar (to say nothing of the extremely disappointing "Scream 4" released earlier this year), the long-running horror series has taken a big – no, scratch that. The long-running horror series has taken an EPIC hit in quality, memorability, and guts in the ‘00s, while simultaneously forgetting to add new wrinkles to the recipe throughout the franchise running length. But don’t take that bold blanket statement’s word for it – it’s time for another tale of the tape, complete with ALL-CAPS-HEADING-FOLLOWED-BY-RANTING OF DOOM:


FINAL DESTINATION
I figured I’d lead off with this one considering that we’ve got movie #5 headed to us in a scant 12 hours or so. On some level, I find it amazing that a movie that was originally written as an "X-Files" episode has managed to spawn five feature films, but that’s what we’ve gotten. While the first movie is good, goofy fun, the sequels are the equivalent of the Greek restaurant SNL skit. No one would ever confuse "Friday the 13th" for a dynamic series experience, but at least the Jason films had varying shifts in tone and a phony killer along the way. Arguably the most redundant film series I’ve seen, and that’s saying something.

SAW
First, I have to state that I’m VERY impressed that an October is approaching and we’re not getting yet another entry in this confusing, convoluted series. Much like "Final Destination," the "Saw" series (which focuses on a cancer patient who invents horrific death traps for people to solve a “game” with which may or may not lead to their redemption) gives us a first flick that deserves its instant classic status. Almost everything that comes after is masturbation and a veritable geek show where the only fun to be had comes from watching whatever other crazy contraptions the Jigsaw killer has in store for a few possibly deserving sickos. Of course, this is also the movie series that launched the separate "Hostel"/"Turistas"/whatever “torture porn” craze of the mid-‘00s, so make of that what you will. Of course, it’s also the movie series where the main villain is dead (and not in the Jason Voorhees “undead zombie” way, either) for the final four films in the series, yet somehow had the foresight to plot out approximately 98,000 additional traps for his endless series of “apprentices” to carry out in advance. Oh yeah, spoiler alert.

The "Saw" series would eventually come RIGHT AT US!! IN 3D!! Sadly, the series ended before we could get the obligatory “in space” entry.

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY
Oh boy…it appears that this right here is the new "Saw," and when you’ve already exhausted pretty much every story avenue in your first two films, you’re asking for trouble. "Paranormal Activity" is the movie that almost singlehandedly resurrected the “first hand camera” genre (well, along with "Cloverfield," anyway), and as its name suggests, it focuses on ghostly demonic phenomena and all the things that go bump in the night that are associated with it. Unlike a lot of online horror fans, I’m actually a supporter of both films already in existence (although the second one is much less effective than the first, which I saw in a theater 40 miles away from Horror Nerd H.Q., and then had to drive 40 miles in damn near pitch blackness through the middle of nowhere while my mind played tricks on me the whole way – that was a fun trip). However, even THIS GUY (*douchebag thumb gesture time*) knows that there’s nowhere else to go but further back, not forward.

And where are Freddy and Jason now? Michael f**king Bay owns them both.


Thus concludes the Generation Y American Horror Franchise Handbook (I should trademark that).

Looking back at what we’ve been given in these offerings ever since the heyday of the Friday/Nightmare period of dominance, it’s leapt out at me that with the exception of the "FD" films, the modern horror series (and film, for that matter) just takes itself too damn seriously. The definition of horror is different to every viewer; mine is “campfire scary story where there is also the morality tale of ‘be a good person or else bad things will happen to you.’” (I should trademark that, too). Put more simply, I’d rather be entertained by a good scary story with likable characters and a scary villain than be ham-fisted some twisted “moral message” about pain and redemption (that’d be "Saw"), or have my sole motivation for watching being the anticipation of different Goldberg variation-style reactions leading to impossibly gory deaths (take a guess).

So where do we go from here? We need several things to happen. Firstly, we need a producer/director/writer/what-have-you to have a fantastic original scary idea, and to be willing to drive the truck for the long haul through many sequels. Secondly, said idea needs to be something with the ability to MORPH and transform with the fears of society.

This is really the key; a good example of an awesome modern horror franchise is the Japanese "Ju-On" series. The idea is a simple one (enter a cursed house, you die), but the way that Takashi Shimizu managed to take the idea and turn it into new things (with one of the victim characters actually becoming the ultimate victim in the third film, and the series’ main villain being “reborn” in an immortal birth scene in the fourth before the series focused on two different stories entirely in the fifth and sixth entries) was downright ingenious. What was more, it was rooted in perhaps what we are most afraid of now – the breakup of our own admittedly fragile lives. The curse in these films begins with a jealous husband murdering his wife and child, thus turning them into Ju-On – vengeful spirits with the ability to follow and kill any living human being they see as a means of retribution for this injustice.

The result? Lo and behold, while there are six of these movies, they never feel like “same old s**t.”

And the moral of the story is…don’t murder your wife or she’ll turn into an evil helldemon and f**king KILL you.

One would think that some like-styled stuff (in theme if not story, at least) in a country with a 50% divorce rate would be some damn scary, relatable, and SUCCESSFUL stuff that hits REALLY close to home. And we might not have to deal with any more of the “huh, how many of those damn things are there?” morons.

The world could use an "X-Files" reboot

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