Wes Craven: 1939-2015

True story: Wes Craven was responsible for my first-ever horror movie-related bad dream.

Now, I was born in 1983, and thus I'm JUST young enough that I wasn't comprehending the majority of the period when Freddy Krueger ruled the Earth.  I mean, I knew who he was.  It was hard not to.  The guy's face was everywhere; on posters, album covers, t-shirts, TV ads, even music videos.  And just like Jason Voorhees, his omnipresent...um...presence fascinated me to no end.  Well, sometime in 1991 that curiosity got the better of me and I caught the beginning of Nightmare on Elm Street 4 on TBS. 

Note that I said beginning, because I didn't make it very far.  Within the first 20 minutes, one of the movie's characters wakes up in in a junkyard of cars.  He sees the corpse of Freddy Krueger reanimating, and then there's this long lead-in shot of the dude's shadow first before a gravely voice says "You shouldn't have buried me.  I'm not dead."  And that was all the longer I made it into The Dream Master, not to be seen in its entirety until I bought the whole series blind eight years later.  But that night, and many nights thereafter, the guy with that big, bad glove cropped up in my nightmares, just as I'm sure he did for many people in my age bracket.

Time for another blanket statement: if it were ONLY the creation of Freddy Krueger, one of the preeminent Unholy Trinity of modern horror villains, Wes Craven would be thought of as one of the big-time luminaries of the horror genre.  But when you factor in the guy's whole career, spanning over three decades of screams, nightmares and stage blood, I believe that he occupies a spot on the Mount Rushmore of horror along with John Carpenter, Vincent Price and a toss-up between Terrence Fisher and Dario Argento.  Classically educated, possessing of a highly literary mind and with a big-time love of stage blood, it's hard to argue with the dude's filmography.

Read off the highlights, his movies are like a who's who of horror movies throughout the latter half of the 20th century.  Last House on the Left, The Hills Have Eyes, Swamp Thing, Nightmare on Elm Street, People Under the Stairs, Scream...and those are in chronological order, off the top of my head.  He was directly in the thick of two of horror's great revivals, in the prime of the '80s slasher boom with the original NOES film and ushering in the more self-aware age with Scream.  After one "WTF?" sequel to his signature creation, he co-wrote the script for Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors - for my money, one of the best MOVIES of all time.  Yeah, I said it.  Along the way, he branched out into other genres, trying his hand with basic thrillers (the woefully underrated Red Eye, featuring Cillian Murphy in a performance that makes me wish that Craven himself had been more directly involved in the Nightmare remake and suggested this dude as Robert Englund's replacement), drama (57 Violins) and comedy-horror (the Eddie Murphy vehicle Vampire in Brooklyn).

That's a lot of italicized words in one paragraph, isn't it?

And those were just the greatest hits.  Every horror fan has their favorite big-time Craven movie, but it's when we get into the other stuff that things get really fun.  Because some of Craven's misfires were just as fun - sometimes for the right reasons, and sometimes for the wrong ones.  It's 1985, a mere one year after the release of Nightmare on Elm Street, and how does he follow this up?  Why, with a movie about a teenage robotics wizard using machines to revive his dead girlfriend, of course.  Then, in the wake of Red Eye, the next project is a movie where we get to see Jesse Eisenburg performing pro wrestling moves on his high school bully and a truly Wayne's World-esque "Mega Happy Ending."

And there's one movie that I have intentionally left out of this little bit of sentimentality until now.  Folks, if you haven't seen The Serpent and the Rainbow, Joe Bob says check it out.  For my money, this is the single scariest zombie movie of all time.  It's not about post-apocalyptic settings, it's not about an annoying bunch of survivors, and it contains no mentions of "brain-eating."  This movie is as REAL as it gets, an adaptation of Wade Davis' (nonfiction) book about a trip to an underground section of Haiti where the art of reanimating corpses with potions and chemicals is a way of life.  And that scene where Bill Pullman gets buried alive while under a paralyzing spell with a tarantula crawling around in the casket with him...Jesus.

I'll close this out by stating that Craven was also known as an insanely nice, accommodating person to both horror fans and the press.  A frequent guest of horror conventions, a proud ambassador for horror every time he spoke, and someone who is just a joy to listen to in the various documentaries and audio commentaries that he has been a part of.  And while there are directors who I technically like better, Wes Craven's movies have been playing in the cineplex of my life for 20 years. 

RIP, Mr. Craven.  Screams and nightmares.

Haunter (2013)

2013
Directed by Vincenzo Natali
Starring Abigail Breslin, Peter Outerbridge, Michelle Nolden, Stephen McHattie and Samantha Weinstein

The hot streak is over. 

Released in 2013, Haunter was one of those movies that executives had no idea how to market or, for lack of a better term, push.  It's not your typical haunted house movie, but at the same time, I can't blame executives for not seeing the commercial appeal in the premise of a movie where your star (in this case, the super-talented Abigail Breslin) plays a ghost creeped out by the spirits of the LIVING, or some such metaphysical mindf**k.  Thus...it was limited theatrical run followed by the virtual shelves of Netflix time.  Having just sat through this flick, I can report that it's middling at best and drags at its worst.  While that premise certainly is intriguing, it's definitely not enough to sustain 97 minutes.  On with the story.

The flick starts off as kind of this very strange version of Groundhog Day, with Abigail Breslin in the Bill Murray role.  That's gotta be the only time in the history of cinema that this particular sentence could be typed.  Breslin (as always, likable to the core) is Lisa Johnson, punkish 15-year-old one day shy of celebrating her birthday who goes through the same routine every day with her family.  Unfortunately, the people playing said family aren't quite as engaging.  The actors do a decent enough job with their tropes, and the quirky kid brother who loves Pac-Man (tip #1 as to the flick's twist) is only moderately annoying, but the characters themselves are milquetoast to the core.  I don't know, maybe I just wasn't in the mood for family haunted house hour.

The creepy in Haunter comes from Lisa's gradual discovery as to her predicament.  After being scared by a few loud noises and voices calling her name in the middle of the night, she begins investigating the house more in-depth.  She finds a door behind the washing machine that alays seems to close by itself and wanders inside.  If only Mr. Tumnus could have been contained within that door.  Her investigations seem to have a strange effect on the other members of the household, as her father (Peter Outerbridge) sudenly turns very abrasive and abusive.  The daily routine changes, and then a disquieting phone repairman shows up at the door.

Played by Stephen McHattie (a.k.a. the psychologist who realized that Crazy Joe DaVola didn't have his medication), this dude is essentially your star villain.  A vicious serial killer in life, he managed to keep that ability beyond death and remains an evil entity who has the ability to trap the souls of those who died there.  Somehow.  The physics of this situation are a little foggy to me, just like most of what is to come.  Try to stay with me.

See, McHattie is after the family that currently lives in the house.  He accomplishes his post-death kills by possessing the father and icing the rest of the residents (this is what happened with Lisa and her family, natch).  And this is where the movie turns pretty baffling, as Lisa goes through all of these hoops, tunnels, and strange journeys to contact the house's living teenage daughter and convince the souls of everyone else that McHattie has killed to "wake up" in some sort of effort to escape the prison that he has concocted for them.  Because this guy has magical powers that rival anything Mr. Mxyzptlk has to offer.  Again, the whole thing is pretty foggy, and the climax doesn't exactly come off as emotionally cathartic as it should. 

Mainly because I had stopped caring.  If you get the impression that this movie was a little boring, you're right, hence why I tried to burn through this review in as short amount of time as possible.  There are virtually no scares to speak of, the characters (aside from Breslin's Lisa) are incredibly "just there," and the emotional investment factor is virtually nonexistant.  I can commend screenwriter Steve Hoban for trying something different with the haunted house formula, but the execution is just sloppy as all hell. 

* 1/2 out of ****.  Way too many alternating timelines and "WTF" moments contained for any sustained level of enjoyment.  Avoid this one.

Oculus (2013)

2013
Directed by Mike Flanagan
Starring Karen Killan, Brenton Thwaites, Rory Cochrane, Katee Sackhoff, Annalise Basso and Garrett Ryan

In a word - wow.  I'm still trying to wrap my head around this movie three days (and two viewings) later; I thought it was THAT good.  Taking its premise of a haunted mirror to the nth degree, writer-director Mike Flanagan managed to craft a real jam-up thriller here that really does encapsulate pretty much everything I look for in a horror flick.  It's slick, it has pacing on its side, it has genuinely likable characters, and it's really f**kin' creepy in the way that I wasn't gut-wrenchingly tense WHILE I was watching the film but I thought about it tons afterward.  Those don't come along very often.

The premise that Mike Flanagan doles out here is a simple one: a cursed mirror with the ability to induce hallucinations in anybody within a certain radius.  Another simple setup was "cursed house that kills anyone who enters it," and I see more than a few similarities here between Flanagan and Takashi Shimizu's Ju-On series.  Both started off as short films that got expanded to a full-length treatment, both have ace villains, and both pack one hell of an emotional wallop at the end of said theatrical film.  But I digress.  Flanagan deserves a ton of credit here, both for his hand with horror but with how deftly he handles the emotion of this story.  With that, let's get right to it.

Oculus is a movie that takes place over two different time frames.  In the present, Tim Rusell (Brenton Thwaites) is released from a psychiatric hospital, immediately reconnecting with his older sister Kaylie (Karen Gillan in a performance that makes me really want to see her in more horror films).  The relationship here is very close with hints of strain underneath the surface, particularly when Tim lets Kaylie know that he wouldn't allow her to visit him for the past several months in order for him to gain his release.  Hey, fair tradeoff, if you ask me.  Kaylie, meanwhile, is an employee at an auction house who uses her position to acquire an old antique mirror.  Cue creepy music.

The mirror, dubbed the "Lasser glass," is your star villain of the film.  Yes, folks, an inanimate object, but trust me - it's way more compelling than that.  A good portion of the first trimester of the flick focuses on Kaylie trying to get Tim to live up to the promise that they made as kids, and flashbacks have already begun to kick in showing these events.

The movie starts to bob and weave its timelines here, and the past segment also has its own introduction as Tim and Kaylie's father Alan (Rory Cochrane) buys the mirror and plants it in his home office.  Almost immediately, the weird incidents begin to pile up, as Alan's wife Marie (Katee Sackhoff) has visions of her body decaying while Alan is seduced by a ghostly woman from the mirror named Marisol.  To say nothing of the kids.  The child versions of Tim and Kaylie get a LOT of screentime here as they watch their parents' marriage deteriorate as a result of the mirror's influence, with Alan slowly going insane, Marie's paranoia overcoming her, and a series of surprises that eventually results with Alan chaining Marie up in a bedroom and attempting to murder the entire family. 

Annalise Basso and Garrett Ryan deserve a TON of credit for their work as the child versions of the main characters, because, again, kids in horror movies are always a dicey prospect with me.  As much as I enjoyed last week's flick The Babadook...the kid was occasionally pretty grating.  Not so here.  At times, they're even more emotional and resonant than their adult counterparts, so here's hoping we see these two in stuff for years to come.  Anyway, all of this leads up to the promise, as everyone realizes that the mirror possesses demonic powers, and as they are led away by the police, Kaylie and Tim swear that they will destroy the mirror as adults.

And we see this play out in the present day.  Tim no longer believes in the power of the mirror, his years of psychiatric care having convinced him that there were logical explanations for everything that happened to him as a kid.  Kaylee, meanwhile, has spent her young adult years researching the history of the mirror, finding out that it is responsible for an unholy amount of deaths over the years.  She places it under a "kill switch," a booby trapped anchor that will smash it unless a timer is reset every 30 minutes.  But she wants to document its power first with a whole host of electronic gadgets.  My friends, that's mistake number one, and it doesn't take long for the mirror's influence to start workings its magic.

There are a couple things that really did a number on me in Oculus.  One was the relationship between the siblings, which was powerful in both the child and adult forms.  But the power that the mirror has, the ability to get into people's minds and make them see...whatever the hell it wants (just like the poster says) is ingenious.  From that simple setup, Flanagan manages to mine tons of situations and genuine surprises.  In addition to that, every character death (and there are four) really packs a punch and are infinitely more than just body count.  When the movie hits its money sequences, with the mirror pulling out every trick in the book to avoid its death sentence and keep Kaylee and Tim inside their childhood house, it's chilling and emotional at the same time.

And then that ending.  Oh my. (/Michael Cole)  Dark, surprising, and heartbreaking all at the same time. 

With that, here is the highest praise that I can give Oculus...it actually left me wanting a sequel, for reasons that I won't get into because it would involve some pretty heavy spoilers.  I don't know how many other people would connect with this movie to the point that I did, but if you're willing to suspend a little disbelief and tolerate just a couple cheap jump scares, Oculus will run you right over. 

Rating time.  Get ready.  **** out of ****.  I can't remember the last film released chronologically that I gave that rating to, but suffice to say, it's been a while.  My absolute highest recommendation. 

The Babadook (2014)

2014
Directed by Jennifer Kent
Starring Essie Davis, Noah Wiseman, Daniel Henshall and Hayley McElhinney

When I first hit the various subscribe buttons on my TV to sign up for Netflix, this movie was one that immediately caught my eye.  A few people in my daily life and a whole lot of people online had excellent things to say about The Babadook, a 2014 piece of creepy that damn near every critic jizzed themselves over upon its film festival blitzkrieg tour.  And...I can pretty much report that they're correct, in as much as "correct" means "I agree."  This IS a really good horror flick.  It doesn't rely on jump scares, and it admittedly had me a little unsettled when I shut the TV off and tried to go to sleep.  And while I didn't enjoy it in the way that I necessarily want to watch it again (it's just too angsty), this is definitely a movie that every horror fan should check out. 

For the vast, VAST majority of the running time, this is essentially a two-person story.  Essie Davis stars as Amelia, a relatively young widow who lives in a big house with her son Samuel, played by Noah Wiseman.  This kid puts in one of the better child performances I've seen a horror movie.  Generally, I'm not a fan of the "creepy kid" trope, and it's got its hiccups here, but the script goes above and beyond in regards to the Samuel character.  He's a very creative kid, a wannabe magician who likes to carry weapons around with him in a strange game of "kill the monster" that he is very committed to.  No doubt foreshadowing for later.

Amelia is a very tired individual.  Her husband died driving her to the hospital during labor, and Samuel's strange behavior has definitely taken its toll on her.  She's a former writer who now makes a living calling bingo numbers and cleaning up after the elderly at a retirement home, the humdrum existence of her daily life compacted by her life with Samuel.  The kid is a constant tax on her soul, his eccentricities carrying over to school as he likes to tell stories about smashing monster's heads in while using the various gadgets that he creates on his classmates.  One of the early scenes sees school administrators essentially expelling Sam from their school, and while everything is bubbling under the surface at this point, the sheer exasperation that Amelia feels for her son is definitely there.  Davis does an admirable job portraying all of this to the audience; it IS subtle at first without projecting it in advance, and she comes across as JUST relatable enough that the movie's eventual "shit hits the fan" section really packs a wallop.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  Amelia reads Samuel a story every night before bed, and one night a mysterious book appears on his shelf.  Titled "Mister Babadook," it seems innocuous enough at first but quickly turns sinister.  Sinister enough that Samuel is terrified by it and the dark figure that the book depicts hovering over beds and making vague threats.  Begin slow burn.  At this point, the movie takes a small dip in momentum, as we get a few predictable twists involving the book turning up again after Amelia destroys it (this time with some new pages added depicting Amelia killing the cute family dog and then slicing her own son's throat.  Of course, she thinks it is a stalker, running off to the police to file a report - only to see the book's "Babadook" cloak hanging on a coat rack. 

This isn't a movie that is going to floor you with endless twists and turns.  It's a straightforward three-act masterwork, where we are (1) introduced to the characters, (2) given complications, and (3) thrown into the fire with them.  And folks...you have no idea how much of a boner that gives me in this day and age of $200 million blockbusters that slather on the false climaxes until I just want all the CGI crap on the screen to die.  Yes, there are one or two sections of this movie that drag, but they are very brief, and it's done for a purpose.  That purpose being the final showdown between Amelia, Samuel and the mysterious Babadook itself, the symbolism of which can be interpreted in any number of ways.  Like, we're talking Freudian here.  The final 20 minutes of The Babadook is some of the most creepy, disturbing and downright tension-filled stuff I've seen from a horror movie in a long time, and it's accomplished largely because we've invested so much time in these characters and their strangely relatable life situation.

Now, there ARE other characters in this movie apart from Amelia and Samuel, but they're largely window dressing - a dude who works with Amelia and the kindly elderly next door neighbor who watches Samuel when Amelia is at work.  This movie is all about a slow build to a riveting climax, and when it comes to that, few movies that I've seen have done it better.  And make no mistake, people...this is a horror movie, with a few sequences that will leave you a little unnerved when the movie is over and you're in an empty house.  Well, that's assuming you're like me, and have no wife and nothing else to do on a Saturday night, but I digress.

*** 1/2 out of ****.  Check this one out, kids, the hype is deserved.

Running and Violins: The Five Best "Friday the 13th" Final Girls

Back to happyville for this week's post.

Yes, folks, it's another week on the 2015 35th anniversary Friday the 13th Countdown of Countdowns.  So far, we've looked at the best anciliary characters, trailers, locales, and hot girls of the legendary horror franchise.  I saved that last option for last, because this time we're looking at something that the series is known for not-quite inventing but definitely perfecting - the art of the "Final Girl" surviving heroine who comes face-to-face with the big bad and emerges triumphant.  And no, you won't find any of the women who were on that list on this one, and it's fairly safe to say that this isn't coincidence.  The Final Girl is about resourcefulness, and while a few of them definitely qualified as good to look at, generally, their sexuality was downplayed.

The "Final Girl" is one of the defining qualities of the franchise, and, I think, a lot more important than people give it credit for.  When I was a kid watching these movies, they were a big part of why I enjoyed them so much.  And keep in mind that I was 10 years old, and thus way too young to be getting a funny feeling looking at hot women up on the screen.  Nope, I was into these characters because I was genuinely INTO their characters.  A majority of the Final Girls seemed to be like people I wouldn't mind having as a camp counselor if I was ever able to accomplish my lifelong dream of being like the people on Salute Your Shorts and attending a summer camp.  It's a sentiment that still holds true to this day.  Sometimes quirky, sometimes deadly serious but always fun to watch - that's the mantra of the Friday the 13th Final Girl. 

Of course, the absolute BEST ones were the ones who could also hold their own during each flick's respective money sequence - the third act chase, with Jason (well, 93% of the time it's Jason) doing everything he can to catch up with the remaining survivor while the heroine uses wits and resourcefulness to survive.  This is where the best Friday the 13th movies truly shined.  Believability is a big factor in horror, or at least as believable as a movie about an undead guy in a hockey mask with supernatural powers can be.  I suppose that's enough pseudo-philosophical jibber jabber.  On with the countdown.

Oh, and lastly, whoever made that poster up above, 10,000 likes.

5.  Chris Higgins from Friday the 12th Part III
This is a character that I have really come around on in recent years.  As a kid, she was the one that I actually hoped Jason would catch.  Now, as a slightly smarter adult, I've come to appreciate Dana Kimmell's portrayal of a fragile, mentally unbalanced heroine, definitely an interesting contrast to the normal horror movie heroine tropes that populated the landscape at this time when slashers ruled the Earth.  I also like that this was one of the very rare movies in the series where our heroine had a history with the monster, as evidenced by that legendary "kinda flashback" backstory monologue.

4.  Tina Shepherd from Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood
Everyone knows the story by now.  This movie was originally supposed to be Freddy vs. Jason.  Money got in the way, and instead we got Jason vs. Carrie.  They definitely could have done worse than the character of Tina Shepherd, a girl with a tragic back story and that oh-so-convenient power of telekinesis.  Lar Park Lincoln was definitely up to the task of making her part in the flick work, and that final showdown - with Kane Hodder taking perhaps his best licks ever as a stuntman as Tina throws everything she can at the unstoppable attacker - is truly a sight to behold.

3.  Megan Garris from Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives
A quirky heroine for a very quirky movie.  Boring Jon Lickness trivia fact for the day: this was the last movie in the classic 8 franchise that I saw, and thus, I've only been an adult with the character of Megan Garris.  Jennifer Cooke takes on the role of Megan, the town sheriff's daughter who is part rebel, part sexy blonde, and has plenty of good, sarcastic lines to throw back at leading man/love interest Tommy Jarvis.  The thing I dig about Megan the most is that she holds her own with Tommy, an iconic character with Friday fans, and that we're just as invested in her survival as his.

2.  Alice Hardesty from Friday the 13th
It's hard to top the original.  Now, screenwriter Victor Miller says that he shamelessly aped Halloween when it came to the scripting of that film, but I think Adrienne King gives out an entirely different vibe from Jamie Lee.  She's a bit less bookish and has just the slightest amount of edge underneath her mousy exterior.  Alice is a character with some quirks, an aspiring artist who may or may not be romantically linked with swarthy camp owner Steve Christy and has some survival skills.  Skills, mind you, that are so epic that she creates the best door barricade in the history of film.

1.  Ginny Field from Friday the 13th Part II
Here we go.  Not only the best Final Girl in the Friday franchise, Ginny is one of the Top 3 horror movie heroines EVER, period.  The casting was perfect with Amy Steele, and she was more than game for this role that called for long shoots, performing her own stunts, and talking down a raging maniac while wearing his mother's sweater.  I love the character's feistiness and sense of humor, in addition to her personal background in child psychology that makes her the ideal foe for the ultimate homicidal Momma's boy.  In short, utter perfection, and Ginny Field is a character that pops.

You know the drill.  No closing paragraph necessary, and we'll see you shortly for another list in the Countdown of Countdowns.