Hide and Seek (2005)

Oh boy, here we go.  I distinctly remember seeing the ads for Hide and Seek and being quite excited about the prospects.  A horror/thriller film starring one of the legit three best actors of all time and a very talented rising young star whose sky was the limit?  And bonus Famke Janssen and Elisabeth Shue boner fodder?  Count me in.

Alas, the reality of the movie was far from the holy grail of coolness that I had pictured in my head.  What I got was a pretty by-the-numbers mystery flick with a pretty ridiculous slasher movie-style ending.  While it might have been far from the first movie to suffer from "M. Night Shyamalan" Syndrome - the much-maligned aftereffect of the dude who was ever-so-fond of Vince Russo-ish swerves, wherein damn near every thriller movie since he hit the scene has to have some wackamaroo twist ending - it might have arguably been the most annoying, as it demolished a movie that boasts some pretty impressive acting and turned it into an eye-rollingly stupid ride. 

Having said that, the movie was a huge financial success, so huzzah for horror in that regard.  On with the show.

PLOT:  Following the suicide death of his wife, psychologist David Callaway (Robert DeNiro) heads out to the country with his daughter Emily (Dakota Fanning) to start over.  Par for the course, said country house is one of those interminably creepy places with nooks and crannies in every crevice (redundancy alert).  Even better, it's got a HIDDEN CAVE located on the premises.  Man, I would have killed for one of those as a kid.  While David gets a little chummy with neighbor lady Elisabeth (Shue), Emily begins playing with an imaginary friend named Charlie.  Things escalate quickly, as angry messages written on the wall leads to the death of the family cat - all of which the child blames on the eponymous Charlie.  Any fan of horror movies should know where this is going due to all the ominous synthy music that this movie throws at you.  Eventually, Charlie's actions escalate to the point of murder, leading to a final act consisting of some of the most baffling and unintentionally hilarious scenes I've ever seen.
PLOT RATING: * 1/2 out of ****.

CHARACTERS AND ACTORS:  It goes without saying, but DeNiro is an awesome actor.  The guy really does throw his all into every movie role, and this is no exception.  Even during the third act when the movie flies off the rails, he's 100% invested and convincing.  For a brief period of time in the mid-oughts, Dakota Fanning really did seem like she was on the verge of becoming a major star, then summarily dropped off the face of the Earth once her advisers told her that filming the controversial-just-for-the-sake-of-controversial indie film Hound Dog was a good idea.  A shame, really, because she has charisma and likability in spades, both of which are well on display in this film.  In addition to Shue, we've also got Famke Janssen as a family friend and fellow psychologist who periodically shows up to be an endearing mother figure to Emily.  In short, while the characters occasionally veer into laughable territory, the movie is populated by some very talented people who give this very suspect material their all. 
CHARACTERS AND ACTORS RATING: *** 1/2 out of ****.

COOL FACTOR:  Hide and Seek isn't a body count movie, or a ghost movie.  That's all well and good, because some of the coolest horror movies of all time fall in the horror/suspense/thriller subgenre (Silence of the Lambs, anyone?).  Unfortunately, there isn't much to remember in Hide and Seek.  The movie's "money" death scene (and I'll leave it up to you, loyal reader, to figure out which character of the ones mentioned above is the most disposable) comes out of nowhere to the point where it prompts laughter instead of sympathy, and the final chase sequence feels like it belongs in another movie.
COOL FACTOR:  * out of ****.

OVERALL RATING:  This is a starnge beast of a movie.  I will admit...it sucked me in the first time I saw it, and while I was able to call the character that would bite it first, I was very emotionally invested in the two lead characters (especially Fanning as Emily) and very intrigued by the prospect of this "Charlie" character and the various directions that screenwriter Ari Schlossberg could have gone with it.  Instead, we get what is BY FAR the least interesting thing that could have come from the concept, and it's because of this decided lack of payoff that the "Plot" and "Cool Factor" ratings took a big hit.  Because, you know, my three-point rating system is very scientific.  I don't think there is much more to say about this movie, except that shovels are a motherfucker.
OVERALL RATING: * 1/2 out of ****.  A promising start leading to a trainwreck of Gigli-esque proportions.

Brides of Dracula (1960)

1960
Directed by Terence Fisher
starring Peter Cushing, Martita Hunt, Yvonne Monlaur and David Peel

The few people who actually follow my writing likely know about my various obsessive fandoms.    Friday the 13th and Ju-On definitely rank at the top of the list.  It's hard to argue with watching something over and over for six months and writing goddamn fanfiction and say that you're anything other than a sad-sack obsessed fanboy.  But what many don't know is that I hold the Hammer Studios Dracula films in almost as high of a regard.  For my money, Christopher Lee is the definitive version of the character.  Yes, he's less talkative than Bela Lugosi (at least as much as I remember).  Yes, he may not be the Daniel Day-Lewis-annoying level method actor that Gary Oldman was.  But when it comes to being sheerly menacing and memorable, this guy has it all covered.  And he's badass enough to refuse to say lines that are too cheesy - a true story in several of the later films in this very series.

So yeah, I love the Hammer Dracula films.  The first movie Horror of Dracula is my personal favorite adaptation of Stoker's original novel and was inducted into the Registry back in the day.  The third - Dracula: Prince of Darkness - is an epically gory (for the time) and satisfying sequel that was reviewed on the blog during my Halloween Scare-a-Thon in 2011.  What many people don't realize is that the movie that took place between them which did NOT feature Christopher Lee (or even the character of Dracula himself) is also pretty damn good in its own right, and that's the film we're looking at today.

PLOT: The movie first introduces us to Marianne Danielle (played by the gorgeous Yvonne Monlaur), a schoolteacher en route to a new position in Transylvania.  Which, of course, sounds like a Sunday afternoon in the Park that Van Halen themselves would be damn proud of.  After her traveling caravan abandons her, she is taken in for the evening by the mysterious Baroness Meinster (Marita Hunt), and it is in her castle where Marianne runs across the vampire leader for this particular go-round of Hammer Stake-and-Crucifix goodness.  It seems that the Baroness' son is a vampire that the mother has kept locked up for years, encouraging the townspeople below to believe the rumors that he is dead while she sneaks a constant supply of nubile wenches for him to feast on.

Before you know it, the younger Meinster is free, prompting a very rousing game of cat-and-mouse between the small but expanding cult of vampires and the guy who has made it his life's mission to stamp out vampires.  And he's damn better at his job than Hugh Jackman.  If you can't tell by now, Brides of Dracula is a simple story with a great three-act structure - the opening where the evil is sprung free, the middle where the evil grows, and the ending where the evil is defeated.  Color me a big fan.
PLOT RATING: *** 1/2 out of ****.

CHARACTERS AND ACTORS: One of the hallmarks of Hammer Studios was their ability to craft memorable heroes and villains and find just the right people to play them, and this film is no exception.  Hunt is sheer perfection as the Baroness Meinster, finding just the right balance between unnerving presence and friendly host.  Monlaur is both scorching hot and infinitely likable as the main heroine Marianne.  David Peel takes on the main villain role of the Baron Meinster and enjoys going completely batshit crazy in the final trimester just as much as Christopher Lee.  Andree Melly and Marie Devaureux are quite awesome as the two main conquests of the Baron (and the titular "Brides," if you want to get technical).  If there is one thing I can complain about, it's Freda Jackson as Greta, the keeper of the Meinster family who serves as the main "human" villain in the film, but it's a minor complaint.  You won't find a much better group of 19th century protagoists and antagonists than the one you've got here.
CHARACTERS AND ACTORS RATING: *** 1/2 out of ****.

COOL FACTOR: Of course, there is one key guy that I haven't even mentioned yet.  I am a huge fan of Peter Cushing and his portrayal of Abraham Van Helsing in these films - in fact, I enjoy the role and the actor just as much as Lee himself.  Cushing is without hyperole a fantastic actor; when he launches into various soliloquys dealing with the weaknesses of the vampire and tells various disbelieving characters about the spread of this strange cult that any sane person would shake their head at, you completely believe him.  When he's required to be a man of action, he is also quite kickass - which is a pretty tall orer considering that his age was already fairly advanced at the time of this flick's 1960 release date.  In between the scenes involving Van Helsing tracking down the cult of vampires and cutting his vampire slayer promos, there's plenty of good scary goodness to be had in the form of the Baron Meinster seducing his victims.  Fonzie-esque coolness in this movie all around.
COOL FACTOR: **** out of ****.

OVERALL: This film isn't quite the universal classic that Horror of Dracula is; while Marianne is an excellent heroine, she can't quite compare to the excellent trifecta of Michael Gough, Melissa Stribling and Carol Marsh in that film.  That, along with the actress playing Greta, are my only bitching points with this film.  That should be enough to satiate all those people who still continue to hurl the "contrarian" complaints at me (the GALL, I tell ya!).  Terence Fisher was a master of both atmosphere and getting the most out of his actors, and both of those traits are well on display in this flick.  Oh, and it's got a final trimester to die for.
OVERALL RATING: *** 1/2 out of ****.  Highly recommended for horror fans at large, and an absolute must-own (along with the rest of the "Hammer Horror Series" 8-movie DVD set that my copy came from).

The Exorcist (1973)

1973
Directed by William Friedkin
Starring Linda Blair, Ellen Burstyn, Max von Sydow and Jason Miller

Now here's a review that I've been very dubious about for a long time.  You know, there are people on this great planet of ours who have the gall to suggest that THIS GUY (*the douchebaggy thumb gesture returns*) is a contrarian just for contrarian's sake.  GALL, I tell ya.  My favorite horror movies of all time are Carpenter's Halloween, the Ju-On series, Jaws and Suspiria, and I think it's safe to say that all of those things qualify to being as close to "universally lauded" as you're going to get.  I love Steven Spielberg and Alfred Hitchcock just as much as all the snooty film profs do.  But when it comes to the movie in question today...

In the event that you peruse a couple dozen of the literally thousands of reviews of The Exorcist, the 1973 film based on William Peter Blatty's novel, you're likely to read several phrases over and over.  "Scariest movie of all time," "harrowing," "seminal," the list of superlatives, big words and flat-out verbal orgasm that reviewers spew out about this film is staggering.  It was the first horror movie to be nominated for Best Picture, it grossed the GDP of a small country and - most impressively - it's one of the very few horror movies out there that seems to be okay for "normal," non-horror-mutant people to like.  Now is about the time when you can call me an annoying contrarian, because I've just never seen what the fuss is all about with this flick, hence why I rarely talk about it and why it was never inducted into the Registry here on the blog (a fact that, amazingly enough, a couple people actually noticed).

Hopefully, this review gets a few people talking and elicits some Prince-style controversy because, quite frankly (/Stephen A. Smith), it's January in Minnesota and I'm really freakin' bored.  But not as bored as this film makes me.  *rimshot*

PLOT:  Little Regan McNeil (Linda Blair) begins showing some very strange behavior.  Frequent swearing, abnormal strength, vomiting pea soup...all slightly off.  Regan's mother, a famous actress (Ellen Burstyn) living in Washington, D.C., spends a good portion of the opening third of the film getting Regan tested, but as the girl becomes more and more afflicted by whatever is wrong with her, the agnostic actress begins to take heed to the suggestion that her daughter may be possessed by a demon.  We also periodically get glimpses into the life of Father Karras (Jason Miller), a Priest who has lost his faith in God after the death of his mother.  As fate would have it, it's Father Karras who is called to the case when the time comes for Regan to be exorcised of her demon, leading to a final showdown of epic proportions in the final trimester.

This aspect of the film actually works for me.  It's a classic setup of skepticism vs. religion on many fronts, as Burstyn's character is an avowed Agnostic who takes all of the "demon" talk with a grain of salt...initially.  When your daughter starts masturbating with a Crucifix, it's always time to start taking those words a little more seriously.  The film is also a good example of classic three-act structure played out and written very well, and if there's one thing that I mark the hell out for in this day and age of 57 false climaxes, it's three-act structure.  See?  Little things can impress me.
PLOT RATING: *** out of ****.

CHARACTERS AND ACTORS:  I've always responded to the story arc of Father Karras the strongest out of any of the threads of this movie.  Miller is aces as the troubled Priest who goes back and forth about just what he believes.  Of course, Blair is also pretty damn memorable as Regan, and since I've conscientiously avoided the sections of onlne reviews that delve into the backstage happenings of this film, I'm guessing that this could not have been an easy role to play. 

The remaining characters are played by very talented people.  This is doubly true for Father Merrin, another Priest brought onto the case by a local Bishop when it becomes clear that Karras is in over his head.  Merrin is played by Max von Sydow, an esteemed and venerable (because vocabulary words are impressive) Swedish actor who has appeared in no less than 11 films directed by Ingmar Bergman in addition to one the slam-bang true-life serial killer film Citizen X - one of my favorite movies ever.  Unfortunately (which is rapidly becoming a constant word in this section of my reviews), I'm just not into all of the other characters in this film.  Burstyn's Chris comes across, to me, as clueless and not very sympathetic, while Merrin is cold and unrelatable.  Or maybe I'm just a moron.  I will state, however, that the opinion isn't uneducated, because I have also seen not just one but two crappy prequel films that delve into the epic backstory that is Father Merrin.  Since this guy is present for most of the movie's money scenes...it just falls flat for me.
CHARACTERS AND ACTORS RATING: ** 1/2 out of ****.

COOL FACTOR:  Sometimes, life can be funny.  After watching Sleepaway Camp for the first time, getting sucked in to its admittedly cheesy story and fun atmosphere only to be shocked into oblivion by THAT ending, I had trouble sleeping.  And had nightmares.  For whatever reason, I can watch this movie - a movie of infinitely more artful execution and sharp storytelling - and sleep like a baby immediately afterward.  The strange thing is I really can't explain why, which is pretty much sign #1 that I'm not an esepcially good reviewer. 

By all accounts, The Exorcist SHOULD frighten me.  A good online friend once told me that the frightening power of this film comes from how religious the viewer is, and that because many of the film's original viewers in 1973 were devoutly religious people, this film was repulsing and disturbing to them.  Hopefully saying this in a public forum doesn't piss people off (and I don't think it will), but I am a VERY religious person.  Hell, I'm the only person I know in my age bracket who attends an organized Mass every week.  As such, I'm extremely wary and scared of demons and demonology, and yet, this film does nothing for me.  Maybe it's the fact that the styles of the film are so jarring; the slow pacing of the scenes with Karras followed by such deliberately over-the-top theatricality with Regan's various disturbing incidents (and her voice, no less).  That's as good an explanation as I can think of for why I do not find this film particularly frightening.  But then again, I'm a devoutly religious guy who loves stage blood.  Much like the British Bulldog, I'm BIZARRE!
COOL FACTOR: * 1/2 out of ****.

OVERALL:  I don't know what else to add to this section, other than just sum everything up.  The story of The Exorcist is one with a great setup ut one that falls flat with me for several reasons.  The acting is great but the characters are one-note; the scare scenes are visually appealing but trite and over-the-top; the ending, while emotional, smacks of "poetic just for poetic's sake."  Amazingly enough, one of this very film's SEQUELS manages to do this story infinitely better - the creepy, atmospheric and genuinely scary Exorcist III, directed by William Peter Blatty himself and based on his novel Legion.  It should also be noted that this film has the single greatest scare in the history of scares - type "Exorcist III nurse station scene" into Youtube and get ready to jump. 

This film, however, is instant Nyquil for yours truly.  

*takes breath*

Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking ot it. (/Colin Quinn)

OVERALL RATING: ** out of ****.  Well-directed and acted, but ultimately a flick that isn't all that effective.

Poltergeist (1982)

1982
Directed by Tobe Hooper
Starring Craig T. Nelson, "Smokin'" JoBeth Williams, Heather O'Rourke, Dominique Dunne, Oliver Robins and Zelda Rubinstein

Here's another one for the "can't believe I've never reviewed before" file.  I've had a DVD copy of Poltergeist sitting on my shelf for no less than seven years, dug it out for a few sporadic watches and discarded it without a second thought.  Time to exorcise this demon once and for all.

Maybe it's because I've just assumed that everyone else has already seen and formed their own opinion of this movie, because this is a flick that as undoubtedly huge in its day.  It was released in 1982, being one of many, many, many motion pictures at the time to have some Steven Spielberg connection.  Except, in this case, the term "connection" might be a bit too vague, because there is quite the debate to this day about just how large of a role he played in the production of Poltergeist.  Technically, he was the producer and cowriter, but according to some film theoreticians (and a few people on the set), he actually directed the movie.  Amazingly enough, the guy getting the director credit for this very large budget ghost flick is Tobe Hooper, the guy behind several "so cheap that I'll just film this snuff-style" epics including The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Eaten Alive.  Having seen how professional some of his later films without Steven frekin' Spielberg's name attached to it look (including TCM 2 and Lifeforce), I have to call bullshit on this theory.   

What else is there to share?  Well, not much.  The basic premise behind Poltergeist is your basic conventional haunted house film, except with a much bigger special effects budget and with some very, very big names attached to the production and screenwriting units.  Oh, and JoBeth Williams is all kinds of MILF-tastic.

PLOT:  Meet the Freelings, family just like yours who have just moved into a new house in suburban America.  There's dad and real estate agent Steven (Craig T. "Coach" Nelson), homemaker wife Diane (Williams) who also enjoys pot-smoking in her off time, teenage daughter/skank (seriously, there's like three different not-so-subtle jokes that poke fun at her promiscuity) Dana (Dominique Dunne, who tragically died shortly after filming this movie), Star Wars-obsessed son Robbie (Oliver Robins) and blonde little girl/"They're Here" sayer Carol Anne (Heather O'Rourke, who amazingly enough also met a premature death in 1988, adding to this film's legend as a "cursed movie").  They live in a house that looks just like all of their neighbors' residences, but it doesn't take long before it becomes apparent just how different the new Freeling home is.

The first act of this movie concludes with Carol Anne (who has been communicating with mysterious "TV people," who seem to be much more fascinating than my own TV people as a child who consisted of Gilbert Gottfried and Garfield) being abducted by shadowy ghosts living in the house.  The Freelings call in a troupe of parapsychology experts to deal with the abduction/weird shit going on, and it all builds to what is admittedly a pretty cool third act where Diane comes face-to-face with the very pissed-off evil ghost that lords over the house and wants to claim Carol Anne as its own.  There's nothing fresh here in terms of story, but it's all executed well-enough.  And it's got an occasionally daisy duke-wearing and underwear-clad JoBeth Williams to gawk at.
PLOT RATING: *** out of ****.

CHARACTERS AND ACTORS:  When I was watching this movie as a kid, I really identified with the character of Robbie.  Pointless background information: I was a massive scaredy cat as a child, to the point where I interpreted every suspect noise in my bedroom as a single-digit-age-person eating helldemon bent on wrecking my shit up with a vengeance.  Looking back on it, I still connect with Robbie the most in this movie, because while the actors give it their damndest...the Freelings are a pretty vanilla bunch, with the exception of the "'60s rebel, dude" cliches that the writers gave the parents.  Since Poltergeist is rated PG, we're also not getting any deaths here, but if we were, the group of psychic researchers who almost ransack the movie halfway through might as well have had "CANNON FODDER" written in block letters on their foreheads.  One of them, however, does have a pretty neat special effects sequence involving hallucinatory face melting.  So there is that.
CHARACTERS AND ACTORS RATING: ** out of ****.

COOL FACTOR:  Amazing information that even the most casual of movie fans already knows - Steven Spielberg is pretty much the man when it comes to making his movies feel like a big deal, and Poltergeist is no different.  The budget punched in with a final number of a little over $10 million, which was absolutely ginormous by 1982 horror movie standards, and it's safe to say that you can see every dollar of that money on the screen here.  At a time when most horror flicks were decidedly slashery, low-budget and bathed in fake blood (not that there's anything wrong with that), this movie was slick, well-produced and very professional.  There's plenty of great camerawork, nifty visuals and Industrial Light & Magic animation to be had here, although (as aforementioned) you won't get any cool deaths.
COOL FACTOR: *** out of ****.

OVERALL:  Over the years, I've come to have a deep appreciation when I see a classic three-act structure in a screenplay.  These days, this is practically a lost art, as it seems that almost every drama/thriler film I've seen in the past five years or so is obsessed with throwing in hackneyed twist after hackneyed twist while action movies have been busy Peter Jackson-ing themselves into oblivion (read: false climax after false climax).  Poltergeist has none of that.  It's an event movie with clear-cut beginning, middle and ending sections, it's got a few classic scenes (particularly Carol Anne's abduction and the ending chase with Diane and the Beast), and it's very well-made.  In this day and age of blockbuster movies that outright insult moviegoers' intelligence, this flick is a revelation.  It's got its flaws, but for a haunted house that managed to be a big deal fairly quick (much like Alberto Del Rio), there's plenty of entertainment value here.

OVERALL RATING: *** out of ****.  I wouldn't quite call it a "classic" like many critics have, but it's a fairly good fun time.  How's that for vague copout statements?

Shutter (2008)

2008
Directed by Masayuki Ochiai
Starring Joshua Jackson, Rachael Taylor and Megumi Okina

I've recounted the story on a few occasions that the 2006 remake of Black Christmas is the only movie that I've ever walked out of in theaters, but the movie in question today came close a little over a year later.  I don't know quite what it was about the stateside version of Shutter, whether it was the acting or the tone or the fact that there were two bastard kids thundering up and down the aisles throughout the duration of the flick's brisk 85-minute running time, but watching this movie was an incredibly taxing experience.  Much like last week with my Texas Chainsaw Massacre redux viewing, I decided to give this flick another shot.

Lo and behold, it's a little better than I remember, and certainly better than the reception that this movie got at the time of its release (myself included).  Folks, this movie got a 7% on Rotten Tomatoes.  7%.  That's the type of rating that should be reserved exclusively for the cinematic works of Friedburg and Seltzer, right there, not for a clear cash-grab remake that nonetheless is occasionally creepy and occasionally pretty tense.  It also probably helps that I've never seen the Thai original, and thus won't be making any annoying extended comparisons between the two versions like I did last week.  I will, however, point out that this movie was produced by Taka Ichise.  I'm a pretty big fan of Taka, all things considered, seeing as he produced Ringu, Ju-On, and their prospective American remakes.  Put him slightly ahead of Michinoku as far as coolest Japanese men named Taka.   

PLOT:  Ben Shaw (Joshua "I don't want to wait for our lives to be over" Jackson) and his wife Jane (the certifiably hot Rachael Taylor) have just moved to Tokyo, where Ben has an oh-so-convenient job as a photographer.  Upon arrival, their car hits a local woman wearing a dress in the middle of nowhere, only for the police to turn up no body, no blood, and no evidence of any vehicular manslaughter.  Not soon afterward, strange things start a-brewing within Ben's photos, not the least of which being several large, mysterious lights, and it isn't long before the "spirit photography" aspect of the movie begins.

As it turns out, the spirit in the photos is Megumi, ironically enough played by another Megumi.  Yes, folks, it's Megumi Okina, the star of the first theatrical Ju-On film (a.k.a. the greatest horror movie ever made).  The CHARACTER Megumi (confusing, I know) once dated Ben but eventually became obsessive and clingy after the death of her father.  The origin scenes of the ghost combined with what is admittedly a few very tense scenes after we learn what the f**k is going on is enough to make this a fairly interesting story, even if it occasionally treads into predictability and hokiness.  Not quite as hokey as the deer attack scene in The Ring Two, but close.
PLOT RATING: *** out of ****.

CHARACTERS AND ACTORS:  Rachael Taylor is really, really, really great to look at, but unfortunately that's about all I can say for her.  Her character is meant to be the center of the film, the new woman who has replaced Megumi in Josh's life and thus the source of much harassment and potential audience sympathy, but unfortunately, she isn't able to get it.  This is where the movie falls short, and it's a damn shame, because Jackson was all kinds of aces as the (eventually) douchey Ben, and Okina...you know, I saw the movie in theaters before I became borderline obsessed with the Ju-On/Grudge series, and I really looked at her character differently this time around with that additional knowledge.  She was without a doubt one of the five best horror heroines ever in Ju-On and loses none of her vulnerability or likability here despite the fact that she's supposed to be a quasi-villain.  There's a whole lot of other inconsequential characters (Ben's assistant and his college friends who help him in the heinous plot to ditch Megumi that shockingly goes awry after she enters her "clingy girlfriend" phase) who aren't worth wasting valuable typing energy on.
CHARACTERS AND ACTORS RATING: ** out of ****.

COOL FACTOR:  There's actual a couple cringe-inducing death scenes in this movie (and I'll leave it up to you, loyal reader, to figure out the identities of those two deaths from the "Character and Actors" section), and a few very good scenes as Megumi begins torturing Ben and Jane.  Overall, the character of Megumi is definitely not the standard bearer for coolness that Kayako Saeki is, but she has her moments.  In between, the movie has its fair share of tedium, but the ending that just might stick with you for a few days after watching it almost manages to make up for it.
COOL FACTOR: ** 1/2 out of ****.

OVERALL:  Shutter is a movie that I like to call a "half-asleep masterpiece."  Namely, if it's on TV, you're tired and don't feel like paying too much attention to what's onscreen, it'll do wonders to lull you into a further zombie state yet also, amazingly, not put you to sleep.  That's bound to happen when you've got a gang rape scene seemingly out of nowhere that occurs midway through your movie.  Spoiler alert.  I honestly can't remember if this movie came out before or after the American remake of One Missed Call, but this is a movie that actually gets a little bit better - and less generic - with repeat viewings.  That, and there is one scene (that I remembered from the theatrical viewing, by the way) that manages to be gut-wrenchingly tense without a single drop of blood being spilled.  Just remember what I told you about dark rooms and humming women.  Anyway, not a great film, but give it a shot.

OVERALL RATING: ** 1/2 out of ****.  Which means, ultimately, thumbs down.  But with the exception of Rachael Taylor, this is actually a pretty enjoyable little flick.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)

2003
Directed by Marcus Nispel
Starring Jessica Biel, Jonathan Tucker, Erica Leerhsen, Mike Vogel, Eric Balfour and R. Lee Ermey

This fact is very surprising to yours truly, but the original, 1974 Tobe Hooper Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a very polarizing movie.  It's very much a "love or hate" thing, with members of one camp believing it to be some sort of depraved, debauched masterpiece of macabre film-making and the other just finding it lame as all get out.  Color me in with the former group.  Maybe it was the sneak viewing of it that I pulled in my parents' basement circa 1995 (when I was 12 years old, for those counting), but this is a movie that got under my skin immediately and still gives me a case of the skin-crawling willies when I dig it out for a biannual-ish watch.

More than anything else, the original TCM was a movie that, to me, just felt real.  For starters, it was a movie that was filmed on a budget that I can't even use my standard "filet-o-fish value meal" punchline for, and I had to believe that filming a straight-up snuff film where all of this stuff was actually happening was cheaper than doing whatever Hooper did to try to fake it.  And then there was Marilyn Burns.  For as much as Leatherface and his ilk disturbed me as a kid, it was Marilyn Burns and her constant soul-wrenching screaming toward the end that haunted my dreams for days on end in my fifth grade summer.

Which brings me to this movie.  Released in 2003 by Michael F**kin' Bay's Platinum Dunes production company, this is arguably the movie that ushered in the "let's remake every popular horror movie from the '70s and '80s" tilt that continued for years unabated and has only recently died down ever-so-slightly.  But that's another story.  You kow, they tried.  I can't fault Bay and his proto-manservant Marcus Nispel for not giving it their damndest with this flick (which is more than I can say for some of their other efforts, not the least of which being A Nightmare on Paint By Numbers Street), but the whole essence of the original TCM is something that can't be duplicated, no matter how much bronzer Nispel slathered on his camera lenses or how much dirt he threw on his cast of hot young actors. 

I suppose that's enough rambling.  Let's get down to business.

PLOT:  If you've seen the original film, you know the basics.  Group of 1973-era college kids find themselves taking a VERY wrong turn at Albuquerque and wind up at the residence of a group of cannibalistic meat salesman, the lead killer of which being a very beastly man wearing a mask made of human skin.  That much is kept intact in this version, and it's a perfectly good, classic setup.  Of course, that's based on the assumption that you're (a) into this stuff, and (b) have a pretty strong stomach.  It's where this movie differs from the original story-wise that it unfortunately falls very flat, mostly because for much of the movie's running time we're blessed with this guy as a sort of secondary villain.

Yup, that's R. Lee "Private Pyle, whatever you do, don't fall down" Ermey himself, playing Sherriff Hoyt.  This was the aspect of the movie that stuck out in my mind the most from that theater viewing many moons ago...and it's still the movie's defining characteristic, for better or much worse.  Hoyt is the man called to the scene when a hitch-hiker picked up by the college kids offs herself in the back of their van.  I remember being very uncomfortable watching the scenes with Ermey in the theater, as the audience laughed at this dude's lecherous overtures and the eventually completely unsurprising surprising twist when this guy turns out to be one of the Hewitt family members (renamed from the original films' Sawyer clan).  If Ermey had scaled back the skeeviness by 15%, this might have been a significantly better movie.  Alas, he plays Sherriff Hoyt in full-on Vince Vaughn Norman Bates mode, and it derails the movie the second he shows up.
PLOT RATING: * 1/2 out of ****.

CHARACTERS AND ACTORS:  So far, we've only mentioned Ermey's Sheriff Hoyt by name, and a lot of the others in this movie don't need mentioning.  Unfortunately, that's my job, so what do we got?  Well, there's Jessica Biel, who was at the peak of her post- (I think) 7th Heaven young hottie phase as one of the young college partyers whose name I can't be bothered to look up.  She's the only member of the caravan that we can't immediately single out as future Leatherface fodder, and that's pretty much all you need to know.  The only other cast member I recognized was Erica Leehrsen, the star of the godawful Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (how bad? it's worse than her other horror credit - the masterpiece that was Wrong Turn 2).  The characters, by and large, are annoying and unsympathetic, and while that can be a good thing if you've got a likable final girl, that's not the case here.
CHARACTERS AND ACTORS RATING: * 1/2 out of ****.

COOL FACTOR:  I remember reading a report before this movie's release that Nispel was going to be shooting for a "more suspenseful, less shocking" approach with this movie, or something else with equally flowery dialogue.  I think it's safe to say that he failed big time in that regard.  For a movie called The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the original film was actually pretty damn bloodless.  Compare that to this movie, which featured gore and grue by the bucketload, including one wholly unnecessary scene near the end where Biel helps one of her fallen compatriots, alive and impaled on a meat hook, commit suicide.  The scene is admittedly uncomfortable, but not in the good way - it's more like watching a Ryback match where he botches move after move and damn near kills the dude in the ring with him.

Finally, I have to do some commenting on the big guy himself.  The character of Leatherface, overgrown man-child villain who wears the skins of his victims, isn't a horror villain that lends itself to gaining rooting interest (Jason) or cracking jokes (take a guess).  He's always been more about unnerving viewers.  I can't fault Andrew Bryniarski for his aplomb in taking on the 'Face, as he was more than game for what it entailed.  But he is onscreen MUCH more than Gunner Hansen's legendary version in Hooper's movie and doing much more murdering.  Time to bring back one of my annoying personality traits and say "less is more," because he's just not a particularly scary or memorable villain in this go-round.  Mystique goes a long way, people.
COOL FACTOR: * 1/2 out of ****.

OVERALL:  I remember acutally being very stoked to see this movie in theaters back in Halloween season of 2003.  It seemed like the dawning of a new age - a movie that I grew up loving that most sensible adults told me was dumb and/or depraved was getting a slick modernization seemed like a justification for my own geekiness.  Instead, what we get with TCM 2003 is everything that I've outlined above - a professionally made, polished horror film, no doubt, but one that ultimately does away with damn near everything that made the original film stand out from the pack (and this is a trend that Bay and his goons Andrew Form and Brad Fuller would continue as they worked their way through slasher icons like a cheap hooker and left their own special brand of VD on each one).  There's no gritty, drawn-out "dinner" scene, no skull-bashing, no creepy "family member" hitch-hiker.  Instead, we've got R. Lee Ermey and a really dumb ending where wispy, model thin actress Jessica Biel managed to hack off Leatherface's arm with a meat cleaver, thus making any direct sequels pretty much null and void in the process.  Oh yeah, spoiler alert.

OVERALL RATING: * 1/2 out of ****.  I was hoping that another viewing of this movie would be a little bit more enjoyable than that rather drab, weird experience in theaters more than ten years ago, but alas, it's just as excessive and disappointing now as it was then. 

American Psycho (2000)

2000
Directed by Mary Harron
Starring Christian Bale, Willem Dafoe, Jared Leto, Josh Lucas, Samantha Mathis and Reese Witherspoon

Right before the dawn of the '10s, I made a list somewhere giving my completely fabricated top 10 horror movies of the 'ought decade.  This flick was on that list.  I'd like to say it was #5, but that whole time period is a little fuzzy.  The only other thing I remember about that list was that it was one of an astounding TWO American films to grace the top ten, the other being the criminally underrated Lucky McKee disturbo-fest May.  But that's another review for another day.

Anyway, American Psycho was essentially the movie that made Christian Bale a name actor.  He'd done a few things before, and it obviously wouldn't be until Batman came along that he became a legit superstar, but Patrick Bateman will forever be where this dude's bread is buttered.  What?  Not enough background information?  Well, it's also the film version of the Bret Easton Ellis novel of the same name, one of only two horror novels that I have ever been unable to finish after reading some of the debaucheries contained within.  Fortunately, this movie does not contain some of the more stomach-churning stuff from that tome.  Think female anatomy and rodents.  Yeah.  With that, on with the show.

PLOT:  Welcome to Manhattan in the late 1980s.  For much of the firt half of this movie's brisk running time, we get to know Patrick Bateman through a combination of looking-glass footage and what is admittedly very clever use of narration - normally a plot device that I'm not a fan of.  He's very concerned about appearance, male fashion, dining out, the music of Huey Lewis and the News and Genesis...we learn quite a bit about the guy.  Oh yeah, and he's very into serial murder.  Sometimes, he targets homeless vagrants.  Sometimes it's prostitutes.  And sometimes it's business associates who happen to have the misfortune of having a better business card than him.  The stakes effectively raise when Detective Donald Kimball (the always great Willem Dafoe) begins investigating Bateman in the disappearance of coworker Paul Allen ("HEY PAUL!"), beginning the slight-but-not-grating "police procedural" aspect of the film.  It's slightly comedic, it's slightly dramatic, but rest assurred, this is a horror movie, and the movie gives us something very wince-worthy every 15-20 minutes.
PLOT RATING: *** 1/2 out of ****.

CHARACTERS AND ACTORS:  People who follow my reviews very closely (and I'm fairly certain that this number rests comfortably at zero) might have noticed that I've dropped a few potshots at Christian Bale over the years.  No, I'm not a particularly big fan of the guy or his films.  You know, the one where he plays a dark, grizzled tough guy who is emotionally cut off from those around him.  Oh wait, that's damn near all of them.  This film, however, is a completely different story in my book (and this is my book, so suck it).  He fits the character of Bateman like a glove, and in this rare chance to show a manic, lecherous, over-the-top side, he nails it with aplomb.  You'll be repulsed by Bateman, but you also won't forget him.  This movie also has plenty of name actors in supporting roles (the aforementioend Defoe, Reese Witherspoon as Bateman's girlfriend, Chloe Sevigny as his secretary/would-be side love interest).  These midcarders are nowhere near as fascinating as the main eventer, but they do their job very nicely to move the plot along in the rare scenes where Bale isn't front and center.
CHARACTERS AND ACTORS RATING: *** 1/2 out of ****.

COOL FACTOR:  On one hand, you won't find many horror movies that are more quotable than this one.  I can still recite Bateman's rants about his favorite bands like the back of my hand as well as the entirety of the business card comparison scene.  On the other hand, this definitely isn't the fun, happy kind of horror movie, and there are more than a few scenes that drag in between some of the more memorable bits with Bateman.  I don't know if the addition of a perfectly mopped chainsaw can make up for occasional boredom.
COOL FACTOR: ** 1/2 out of ****.

OVERALL:  As this movie unspools, we pay witness to several of the atrocities that Patrick Bateman commits in his off-hours away from the exciting world of investment banking, and Bale was definitely up to the part of making this guy a completely detestable slimeball who deserves to get his comeuppance.  As such, this is a movie that has an absolutely dynamite beginning and middle chapter, but unfortunately, for me, it kind of flies off the rails in its final trimester.  Maybe not completely; consider it more of a hitched derailing.  Nonetheless, this is still a movie worth seeing more than once for the dialogue alone, because this stuff is just incendiary.

OVERALL RATING: *** out of ****.  Definitely one of the best original horror flicks of the '00s, and Bale's performance alone is worth the price of a cheap Amazon buy.