Don't Breathe (2016)

2016
Directed by Fede Alvarez
Starring Jane Levy, Dylan Minnette, Daniel Zovatto and Stephen Lang

Let's run down the various "eras" of this great, grand horror genre in the 21st century.  And boy, have they been some prestigious ones.  We started off the '00s still in the post-ironic Scream-inspired teen flicks with lots of hot actors and witty dialogue.  Then we got a massive load of Japan-style ghost thrillers in the wake of The Ring.  From there came the double-dose of suck that was torture porn and every single slasher film from the '70s on getting the remake bastardization to the point where we haven't had any movies with Michael, Jason or Freddy in six years now, although (supposedly) there is a new F13 coming out in the not-too-distant future, but I digress.  And, finally, we had more ghost movies brought to us by James Wan and all of his Wan-ton (HA!) followers, a trend that I actually LIKED at first but grew tired of in due time.  It should also be noted that this can be said for ALL of the above listed trends!

Folks, Don't Breathe is just the movie that we've been waiting for to break us out of these doldrums.  Presented by Sam Raimi's Ghost House production company, this film was directed by Fede Alvarez, the guy responsible for the Ghost House Evil Dead remake.  This dude intentionally went out of his way to craft something that (a) wasn't a remake, and (b) did not contain a single supernatural aspect.  Couple that with some absolutely kickass execution of its amazingly simple premise and you've got a slam-bang thriller that, while it isn't QUITE up to the poster's bost that this is THE BEST AMERICAN HORROR MOVIE IN 20 YEARS, I would say that it's the best in, oh, maybe five.  If it sounds like I did not study or research that last statement in the least bit, you're a very astute reader.  I haven't seen his version of The Evil Dead, but if this flick is anything to go by, Alvarez is somebody to follow from this point forward.  Enough waxing.  Let's get to the flick.

What we have here is a study in simplicity.  The four actors listed above are pretty much all we get for the VAST majority of the running time, and the first ten pages of Alvarez' script introduces us to three of them.  Meet Rocky (Jane Levy), quick-witted female thief who is flanked by two dudes of varying morality.  There's her boyfriend Money (Daniel Zovatto), the kind of dude who has a punchable face and is given dialogue to match.  And then there's Alex (Dylan Minnette), the trio's requisite "nice guy" who is able to help out in all kinds of ways due to the fact that his dad is some kind of security chief with passkeys to every house in town.  I honestly can't remember what city this movie took place in, but it isn't a big one.  All three want to escape this deadend life and need a big score...and that's when the big tip comes in.

Said big tip is a doozy.  The kind of thing ripe for the picking for three young kids just trying to make it out of their humdrum lives in Jerkwater, USA (thank you to Colonel Sam Trautman for that one).  It seems like there's a single, solitary ex-soldier living all by himself with no neighbors.  Said soldier is in possession of $300,000 in cash after a wrongful death settlement involving his only daughter.  After some lovely bits of character building and making the characters of Rocky and Alex more likable, they head out to the house.  And then all bets are off.

See, the soldier - named Norman Nordstrom in the characters' dialogue but known only as "The Blind Man" in the script - is just that.  A soldier who is blind.  But this dude is superhuman in pretty much every other aspect, and it doesn't take long for the home invasion to go wrong and Money to wind up dead.  Oh yeah, spoiler alert.  The blindness angle works to this flick's advantage, as it's a little bit easier to buy the Blind Man's ability to track these people down with some Rusev-level savagery.  Stephen Lang, though, makes this character COMPLETELY believable.  This is one of the best horror movie performances I've seen in quite some time.  He doesn't have much dialogue, but when he does speak, it counts.  His ACTIONS, though, are something else, and this character is just a badass, along with being completely detestable. 

From here, the movie turns into a very cleverly-paced and plotted game of cat and mouse, with the Blind Man boarding up his house to prevent the two remaining thieves from escaping.  There are a few close calls with death, but for a few brief moments, it looks like Rocky and Alex have managed to find themselves in a secluded part of the house.  And, amazingly, this movie is about to throw us a major curveball as to who this guy really is and what motivates him that makes the final trimester of this movie some pretty sick/awesome stuff.

The three longtime readers of this here blog know that no movie is perfect, and there were a couple things here that prevent me from QUITE going the full Dave Meltzer New Japan match verbal orgasm on this one.  For starters - the character of Money.  Just, the whole character.  I don't fault Daniel Zovatto in the least bit, as I'm sure he performed the lines and actions he was written with plenty of chutzpah.  But he's just SUCH a prick, and not in the good way.  You know how I spoiled his death earlier?  Don't be mad - the second this guy is onscreen, he screams "KILL ME" from the word go.  In addition to this doofus, we also get the return of a current cool trend in many films that I hope dies a death sooner than later, with the director showing us a brief scene from the END of the film before launching us into the beginning.  Which wouldn't be a big deal if it didn't spell out some major plot spoilers for us, except it kinda does.  So word of warning there.

/ end brief bitching

I suppose I should also say a few words about Jane Levy, the lead actress in this film.  Believe it or not, the Pervy Paragraph is getting a one-week reprieve.  However, I can't say enough good about the job she did in this flick.  She's tough, resourceful, and likable as Rocky, and I really felt for her character as the movie built up to its ultimate climax.  She also starred in the Evil Dead remake, but again, I haven't seen it - having nothing but this to go on, she's really good at what she does.  So I'm quite certain that she's destined for non-stardom hell for the remainder of her career.

I also need to confess that I didn't really find this film scary in the traditional way, meaning that I was able to go to bed afterwards and sleep like a baby.  But I DID think about parts of it the next day.  It's not a movie that's going to make you piss yourself in terror, but it IS powerful and disturbing.  And there is one scene in particular that is GUARANTEED to make you gasp and recoil in what could potentially happen.  I'll leave that up for you to discover. 

*** 1/2 out of ****.  This flick was creative, original and boasted a pair of tour-de-force performances from Jane Levy and Stephen Lang.  And if this one launches a new era of "human monster" movies, I promise I won't be sick of it for at least two years.

Christmas Runs Red: Five Essential Yuletide Horror Flicks

Oh yeah - poster spoiler alert for one of the selections. ;)

Folks, the horror genre is all about holidays.  New Year's Evils, Valentine's Day Massacres, the whole Halloween...thing.  Even Thanksgiving has a gigantic killer turkey dude in a movie that, amazingly enough, has a huge anti-drug message.  And the name of that masterpiece is Blood Freak, which was reviewed in a little write-up called "Horror Movie Reviews: The Fun-Sized Edition" by this guy, and it's all right here on the Lick Ness Monster blog! [/shameless self promotion)  But of all the holidays out there, I dare say that none has MORE horror movies devoted to it than the one that we're just days away from kicking off. 

I don't know what it is about Christmas, but it just lends itself so well to scary stories.  And so many VARIED horror stories.  Christmas has slasher flicks, ghost movies, straight-up schlofkests and even a few anthology pieces to its name.  Couple these movies together with twinkling nights and the very natural horror that goes with family gatherings and it's easy to see why there are something like 17 new Christmas-themed horror flicks that pop up on store shelves and online lists every year.  I own something like 10 myself.  In my entire horror DVD collection, I think that total is surpassed only by the number of times that I have purchased the Friday the 13th series, which currently stands at three.  Kids, you don't want to turn out to be me.

But enough waxing.  This Christmas, if you get tired of watching that annoying brat wishing so desperately for his BB gun and all the superfluous crap that happens in between, track down these five flicks and pop 'em in the ol' DVD player because they're guaranteed to liven up any office party or family gathering.

(1) Gremlins (1984)
The first movie that I remember watching, this is one of those rare movies that manages to achieve near perfection with everything that it's trying to accomplish.  Big budget, big stars and the biggest producer who ever lived in Steven Spielberg are all on display here as Billy Peltzer is given a cute, furry and mysterious pet for Christmas and promptly breaks all the rules of handling it, leading to all kinds of chaos as a horde of gremlins invades this idyllic little town.  Stripe, the leader of the gremlins, is just pure badass personified and a creature that has TONS of personality for an inanimate puppet.  Really, though, everything about this flick works.  Absolutely chock full of classic characters and scenes (love that gremlin in the microwave!), and a genuinely HILARIOUS script make this one of the most entertaining movies of all time.  Plus, how can you not love any movie with Phoebe Cates AND Dick Miller?

(2) Black Christmas (1974)
Ladies and gentlemen, it's time for everyone's favorite segment: LICK NESS MONSTER OGLES THE WOMEN OF HORROR FILM HISTORY.  This week's subect: Olivia Hussey.  She's always been a great actress, but she is also insanely hot and this did not change in later years in things like the Mel Gibson Hamlet and as Norman Bates' mother in Psycho IV.  Here, she's the leader of a group of sorority sisters who find themselves trapped and terrorized by a killer with an insanely awesome telephone voice over the Christmas holiday break.  Olivia alone is reason enough to check this out, but it's also a lesson in horror film history.  There are a lot of people who actually consider this to be the FIRST slasher film in existence.  Having said all this, stay miles away from the godawful 2006 remake.  I don't know how you make a movie with Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Katie Cassidy, Lacey Chabert and Harriet the Spy suck, but they did it.

(3) Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984)
I don't know if it's fair to call this flick a "dark horse" candidate for a list like this since so many horror fans are familiar with it.  But Silent Night, Deadly Night is a film that everyone should check out at least once in their life.  Gloriously low budget and delightfully sleazy, this is the tender, tragic saga of Billy Chapman, troubled orphan who once witnessed his parents being killed by a killer dressed up as Santa Claus.  He is then raised in a convent and grows up to have a seething hatred for all things Christmas.  The cherry on top?  His job as a toy-store Santa Claus.  Oh, the irony.  This movie definitely ain't high art, and it might not even be technically a "good" movie, but it's a must-see for just how earnest they were with this material and how INTO the role Robert Wilson was as Billy.  Also, check out the sequel.  Why? It has this.

(4) Tales From the Crypt (1972)
Everyone in my age bracket knows about the awesome TV series of the same name that dominated HBO airwaves in the '90s.  One of my favorite episodes of that series was "And All Through the House," the story of a housewife who murders her husband on Christmas Eve only to be stalked and terrorized by an escaped mental patient in a Santa costume.  Little did I realize at the time that this was actually the SECOND time this particular story had been filmed.  Amicus Productions' Tales From the Crypt anthology flick features "And All Through the House" as the second of its five segments, and I actually consider it BETTER than the TV episode.  Joan Collins is simply aces as the murderous wife and mother who desperately cordons herself off from the killer.  In addition, the segment boasts really effective use of "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" and a final twist that's simply horrifying.  Fun for the whole family!

(5) Santa's Slay (2005)
Every list of great Christmas horror movies needs to have one intentionally awful film on it, and I can think of no better example than this cinematic masterwork from 2005.  I remember seeing this beauty on video store shelves when I was in college, slightly stunned that EVERY SINGLE COPY was checked out and wondering what all the fuss was.  Then I rented it, and something like 150 minutes later myself and a small group of friends all had huge smiles on our faces.  The reason it took that long to watch?  We kept rewinding various bits to laugh.  The story here is simply legendary.  You know Santa, the big guy you all love?  Well, he's actually been forced to be good for all these years after losing a curling match bet to an angel.  Only now he's free to kill again.  And Evil Santa is played by WCW/WWE wrestler Bill Goldberg.  Sound like fun?  Believe me, they top everything you would expect.

Well, if you're a longtime reader of this here blog, you all know that I'm not one for poignant wrap-up paragraphs after lists like this one.  This one isn't going to be any different.  So Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, Delightful Life Day...whatever, just have a happy horror season.  See you all in 2017!

Some Kind of Hate (2015)

2015
Directed by Adam Egypt Mortimer
Starring Ronen Rubinstein, Grace Phipps, Spencer Breslin, Lexi Atkins and Sierra McCormick

I may or may not have mentioned this before, but here goes again: I'm just really, really not enthused about the current generation of movie "stars."  And going by box office numbers, I'm far from the only one.  It's a big problem that the movie industry at large is facing these days, as they have found no new crop of actors to replace Brad and George and Julia and Will and the Toms.  Now, there are some that I do like.  A great deal, actually.  Bradley Cooper, for starters, who I think truly is someone that is worthy of paying money to watch because he projects himself like a superstar.  Chris Pratt is also all kinds of kickass, and Emily Blunt is probably my favorite of the new bunch of leading ladies, as she can be tough or a girl-next-door with equal ease.  Aside from them and a few others, though...yikes.  Overall, I just think this generation of thespians comes across as way too nonchalant/emo to be taken seriously as stars.  Even worse, I think there have been a lot of missed opportunities when it comes to some of the actors coming up.  Seriously - why isn't Miranda Cosgrove in multiplexes right now?  She's got it all - looks, acting ability, relatability, and comic timing.  But nope.  TV hell with you, young lady.

Which brings me to the movie in question today, Some Kind of Hate.  In a swerve that is probably a little unexpected, this horror flick has better acting than any scary movie I've seen in YEARS.  We've got a crop of good, motivated young actors giving this material their absolute best, including a couple Disney Channel starlets like you've never seen them before.  And it makes me sad that pretty much everybody in this movie is going to be banished right back to the nothingness where we'll pretty much never hear about them again.  Even better, this movie is legit thought-provoking and disturbing at points.  Not SCARY so much, but it does stick with you and powers you right over.  THIS is what horror should be all about these days; it hits home with a story that any teenager could find themselves in (although not QUITE in the setting that this movie chooses, but we'll get to that in a moment), and it's that kind of investment that's missing from this day and age of horror TV shows continually patting themselves on the back for how self-aware and nerdy they are.  American Horror Story and Stranger Things, I'm looking at you.  Anyway, let's get to the movie.

The flick starts off with cruelty and shame, as high school student Lincoln Taggert (Ronen Rubinstein, who I really hope to see more from - he's dynamite) faces the wrath of his alcoholic biker dad (played by Andrew "Lattimer" Bryniarski in a cool little cameo) before heading off to school and facing the wrath of his bullies.  These scenes always get me in movies, although they're almost always exaggerated and it's no exception here, but bear with me.  Long story short, Lincoln - a cool dude who listens to heavy metal practices the "less is more" approach when it comes to dialogue - lashes back at one of his attackers.  With a knife, no less, and it's a move that lands him in reform school as the opening credits roll. 

So, a few words about this school.  If such a place actually exists, I would genuinely be surprised, and it's probably the weakest part of the script (by the amazingly named Adam Egypt Mortimer, who also directed).  The school is located in what seems like the middle of the f**king desert, with not a soul around for miles.  It's run by a couple of guys who operate more like cult leaders than teachers, along with a scorching hot sidekick/aerobics instructor of sorts played by Lexi Atkins.  Without looking up any of the other reviews of this movie, I'm going to go out on a wild limb and say that a fair amount of reviewers have probably napalmed this aspect of the movie, as such a thing is pretty unbelievable.  If you can accept this setting, though, hang on, you're in for a treat. 

Shortly after arriving at the compound, Lincoln - who continues to maintain his stoic demeanor - meets a new friend in geeky tech prankster Isaac (Spencer Breslin) and runs afoul of a new local batch of bullies.  A good portion of the first trimester of the flick consists of Lincoln's periodic verbal and sometimes not-so-verbal sparring sessions with this new bunch of assholes.  The leader of them in particular is a thoroughly dislikable prick, and while these actors aren't quite worth mentioning by name or putting in my handy-dandy pre-review facts rundown, they all do a decent-enough job acting douchy that y the time the s**t goes down a couple of their deaths are stand-up-and-cheer moments.  Of course, there's also a hot student/love interest for Lincoln here in bad girl/ex-cheerleader Kaitlin.  And Kaitlin is played by Grace Phipps.

Time for everyone's favorite section of Lick Ness Monster Reviews: SKEEVY PARAGRAPH TIME.  People...I absolutely adore Grace Phipps.  I have ever since I found myself watching Teen Beach Movie one night out of sheer boredom (don't judge me!) and she was, by far, the most entertaining thing in that piece of drek.  She's hot as liquid magma, she can sing, she can perform, and she has charisma in spades.  Which means, of course, that Hollywood doesn't want to put this beauty in anything big, but that's just fine.  More fun for us horror fans.  From the few things I'd seen her in before, I didn't know if I would buy her in the "dark" role of Kaitlin, but nope, she vanishes into this character like a glove.  When combined with Lincoln, this movie has a one-two punch of characters that we legit pull for.

You might be wondering how this is a horror movie.  Well, I'm glad you were wondering.  After a particularly nasty fight with the bullies, Lincoln runs off to a deserted part of the school and awakens a kindred spirit.  Folks, Some Kind of Hate is a movie about a ghost.  A real nasty ghost named Moira, with the power to kill people.  Moira is played by Sierra McCormick, and she's AWESOME in this role.  The bullies start to die, but Moira doesn't stop there.  She wants acceptance, and she isn't leaving. 

I've seen something like 50,000 horror movies in my life.  As such, I occasionally feel all hoity-toity like I've seen it all and know what's going to happen before it does.  I'll admit that this flick threw me for a loop on multiple occasions.  Since I compare almost every evil ghost movie to Ju-On and the similarities were there, I thought it was going to play out like that with everybody dead.  Nope.  Then, I thought it was going to be like Let the Right One In, with a slow burn leading up to an emotional climax.  Nope.  From the time Moira shows up, this movie is just balls-out ballistic, and everyone must pay.  There's a couple of not-so-surprising surprises in relation to HOW she died here that I won't spell out, but it's addressed.  Even better?  This movie is GORY.  Yeah, baby. 

If there's another complaint I can level at the movie, it's that Lincoln kind of fades into the background a bit once Moira shows up.  The story becomes more about the ghost and his tortured, tragic girlfriend Kaitlin.  It's a shame, because Rubinstein really is something else.  I could see this guy playing great everyman heroes, and unlike Shia LaBeouf, watching him onscreen actually makes me want to do something other than stab out my own ears with scissors.  Really, though, this entire cast was hitting on all cylinders, and you can tell that everyone involved - from Rubinstein to McCormick to Breslin to the red-hot Phipps - truly believed in this material and it shows.  It's kind of an EASY subject to tackle as bullying is such a hot-button topic these days, but it's never presented in a way that takes you out of the action.  And the action in the final trimester here is bats**t insane.

*** 1/2 out of ****.  Check this one out, especially if you're a teenager.

Windows (1980)

1980
Directed by Gordon Willis
Starring Talia Shire, Joseph Cortese and Elizabeth Ashley

Alright, kids, time for a quick detour.  Unlike a lot of my boring reviews, I'll try to make it short.  There are a lot of directors and screenwriters that I admire a great deal, but over the past few years I've become a HUGE fan of Joe Eszterhas. Well, everything pre-Showgirls, anyway.  That flick is unsalvageable.  The "erotic thriller" genre owes a huge debt to this guy, and I genuinely can't believe that there aren't more of these that pop up these days.  There was that one with Will Smith and Margot Robbie that billed itself as such, but it also looked terminally boring.  Why this is, nobody knows.  Well, maybe a quick Google search does.  But sex sells, and nobody did it better than Joe E.  So three cheers to this guy.  Obsessed fan confirmed.

With that verbal orgasm out of the way, allow me to introduce you to the amazing film that is Windows.  Released in 1980, this was a piece of Joe E Murderotica that had everything but the world's coolest Hawaiian shirt-wearing bearded guy penning the screenplay.  It might be more of a thriller than an out-and-out horror film, but the flick was designed to scare audiences.  And it's my blog, so it's going in here, dammit.  The film was directed by Gordon Willis, the guy behind the camerawork of some of the greatest films of all time (anyone with the Godfather films on their resume can safely lay claim to this).  It had Talia Shire, fresh off the mammoth success of the first two Rocky flicks and pretty much at the peak of her popularity and hotness.  So where did it go wrong?  Well...it's cheesy.  Like, really, really cheesy, with writing choices that would make M. Night Shyamalan blush.  Sound enticing?  Read up.

Ladies and gentlemen, it's Lick Ness Monster ogles the women of cinema history time.  This movie stars Talia Shire...and oh man.  She's such an amazing actress, and in 1980, I dare say that few women on the planet were more attractive.  Not so much from a physical standpoint, but she had this amazing girl-next-door vibe.  And I'll cut myself off there.  In this movie, she has a role that's tailor-made for her talents.  Emily Hollander is recently divorced, all-kinds-of-vulnerable, and living alone in the big frightening city of New York.  She also has a stuttering problem to make her relatability quotient radiate all that much more.  As such, I was almost immediately in love with her and instantly drawn in when the movie wastes no time hitting us with a right-handed wallop in the form of the creep who breaks into her apartment.  Folks, you've never seen an assault movie like the one this one has, as this big dude holds a knife to her throat.  But he doesn't want rape - he just wants her to moan.  I swear on the church, this actually happens.  There's Adrian Balboa, making orgasm noises onscreen for all to enjoy.

If you want to know what the hell the plot of this movie is, we're getting there, believe me.  Of course, this incident devastates Emily.  And then comes the arrival of Andrea Glassen, her helpful new neighbor who provides her with a shoulder to cry on.

I think any casual observer who has never heard of this movie knows where this is going.  But the EXECUTION of this material is...well, it's something else.  Andrea, played by Elizabeth Ashley like a cross between a 7-years-too-early "Fatal Attraction" villain and the stereotypical romantic comedy BFF character, is utterly obsessed with Emily.  Who wouldn't be?  This is Talia Shire we're talking about.  It turns out that she was the one who paid the burly cab driver to break into her apartment and force her to make throes-of-passion noises, attaining a tape recorder of the incident that she repeatedly plays back for her personal enjoyment.  I'll give Ashley credit for diving into this role wholeheartedly.  The scenes where she listens to the tapes are comedic gold, mostly due to her insane level of overacting.  When held up next to the scenes involving her character and Shire getting to know each other and becoming friends, it results in this flick being a pretty jarring experience.

It's also where things start circling the drains.

See, this is about where the police detective in charge of the case enters the fray.  He's played by Joseph Cortese, he's very early '80s Italian dude, and he's the new love interest for Emily.  As you can imagine, certified wackjob Andrea isn't too happy about this.  Time for the script to start amping up the eyeroll-worthy stuff, including this one scene where Emily finds herself getting a cab ride from the same dude who broke into her apartment from before.  This scene is followed by the cops giving her what has to be the worst advice I've ever seen law enforcement give in any movie...ever.  And THIS is followed by an ending sequence that must be seen to be believed, and not in the good way.

Windows is a flick that almost nobody has seen, let alone heard of.  It was a flop then, and unless you were able to buy a copy from a video store's going-out-of-business sale like I was 10 years ago, it's pretty hard to find these days in places other than YouTube.  A huge money loser, this was the first and only movie that Gordon Willis ever directed, and (I believe) the last time that Shire ever got top billing for something other than the Rocky series.  And the PC police circa 1980 didn't like it, but you don't come to the Lick Ness Monster blog for information about stuff like that.

It really is a shame, because unlike the vast majority of critics, I think this story actually had some promise.  The two female leads are great, with Shire in particular able to get the audience on her side better than 99% of the lifeless pieces of cardboard you see in multiplexes these days.  And Ashley is just an insane cartoon character as Andrea, for better or worse, but I always dig it when somebody just dives right in to a crazy villain role and just goes totally over-the-top.  The bit with the staged rape and the audiotape is a creative setup.  As such, it really sucks that Act II veered so completely into the laughable.  So with all of that said - how about a remake, Hollywood?  Give a movie that WASN'T amazing to begin with another shot!  Sooner or later, this WILL happen, and it's going to be glorious.

** out of ****.  The first act hooks you right in and then we get a hard right turn into hilariously bad territory.  There's definitely worse ways to spend a night.  Check it out if you can find it online or for cheap somewhere.