31 Days of Hallowe’en 2017, Day 12: In the Night [short] [2015]

I’ve been cheating with shorts lately, and heck if I’m not behind on the actual posts. But I decided to venture into bite-sized horror nuggets because my anxiety has been starting to get out of hand, and I’d been looking at some 4am snoozes (if I slept at all).

Much like I feel my life is as of late, In the Night is a slice of existence that passes the time, but doesn’t quite go anywhere. It could have been a two-man radio short, a student play, or something else that makes up a sentence with a third item for better reading flow.

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31 Days of Hallowe’en, Day 31: The Stomach (2014)

It’s it! I did it! The final film of this year’s marathon!

[I’ve a feeling you’ll likely see more horror posts from me before next year]

I cheated again this year – another short! And what a short. Writer-director Ben Steiner‘s The Stomach is equal parts bleak family fable, gritty neo-noir and grisly body horror. Packing two hours’ worth of backstories and interpersonal relationships into just 15 minutes, it’s no surprise that a feature-length is in the works – yet it never feels rushed or overcrowded.

Unlike Frank (Simon Meacock)’s stomach. The poor man, a medium who literally goes with his gut to talk to those in the afterlife, is ready to give up his gift. The work has taken its toll – physically and mentally – but his brother Tom (Ben Bishop) begs him to finish the day’s sessions before they agree to get Frank an operation that will replace his stomach. But back comes Mr. Pope (Peter Marinker), a recent client who’s not pleased with his service…

For such a short film, I genuinely cared about what happened to these characters. It’s a bittersweet fraternal story: the brothers have such chemistry and Frank looks so close to death, it’s hard not to feel for them both. It’s also a tension twofer, between the rough and grimy threat of Mr. Pope and the unpredictable forces of the ghostly beyond. Which, given that the tension starts straightaway, it’s probably a relief that it only lasts a quarter of an hour.

4.4/5

And that’s it for this year’s horror-a-thon. See you next year!

31 Days of Hallowe’en, Day 30: The Undertaker and His Pals (1966)

Things I learnt from watching The Undertaker and His Pals:

1. An opening trippy, wavy-visualled montage does not mean you’re getting a surreal film.
2. Women look incredibly sexy when being knifed. But to avoid tastelessness, just expose their bra (make sure it’s a push-up; they’ll be lying down)
3. Any victim will scream and shriek with uninterrupted rhythm and pitch when being pinned down and literally having their intestines poked by a number of gloved hands.
4. Despite spending their day with unengaging corpses, undertakers can be stylish, too.
5. There’s always a market for gourmet meat but, as always, the younger the better.
6. Grinding a meat grinder is as easy as flipping a needle on a record.
7. Beatnik music never gets old.
8. Motorcyclists make the most durable serial killers because they always wear a helmet.
9. Male can shriek just as good – if not better – than their female counterparts, if only to cause others to drolly utter the line ‘He made quite a noise.’
10. T.L.P. Swicegood is a wonderful film director’s name.
11. Some statues just had it coming.
12. The humble rooftop plus a serial killer’s apparent dyspraxia can save a Final Girl’s life.
13. If a movie is bad in most other respects, if the players themselves are having believable, chemistry-ridden fun, then on balance there’s enough enjoyment to have it on in the background of a Hallowe’en party.

3.6/5

31 Days of Hallowe’en, Day 29: I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in The House (2016)

What a pretty little bit of visual poetry. Like a visual novel. It’s honestly not what I would have expected, given that, from writer-director Oz Perkins, I’ve only seen a botched version of his script for mediocre slasher The Girl in the Photographs. But this – Netflix’s I Am The Pretty Thing That Lives in the House…is something different entirely.

Lily (Ruth Wilson) is a live-in nurse caring for an elderly, retired horror novelist Iris (Paula Prentiss). Soon after she moves into the house, she begins to suspect that one of Iris’s most famous stories is based on a real murder that occurred in the house.

It’s not a slasher. Neither is it a creature feature, psychological thriller or a possession melodrama. It’s a simple, impeccably shot and gracefully acted one-woman show from an always-compelling Wilson. Narrated by her (with a shaky American accent) as the titular pretty thing, the story is a bare-bones peek behind a series of increasingly creepy doors, book-covers and stairwells.

It’s all very highbrow atmosphere, with a flurry of beautiful frames and crisp, clear audio melancholy, but there isn’t much else. I can see why some have been disappointed; this is Netflix’s first original horror production, and it’s a deliberately muted, skeletal sketch of a ghost story. Given its length and repetitively gothic minimalism, the pace drags; it would have been far more chilling as (even a longer) short film, but it’s a quietly elegant viewing experience if you know what style to expect.

3.6/5

 

31 Days of Hallowe’en, Day 27: Cub (2014)

In my opinion, there can’t be enough movies about sad, bullied children going into the woods when they know they shouldn’t, because there’s a nightmarish legend called Kai stalking the lands.

Cub (or Welp) wears its many flaws on its fur. It isn’t an expensive film, nor one made with experienced players (what is it about this year’s horror-a-thon and directorial debuts?), but it’s far better than it looks on paper. Echoing the childhood abuse issues and dark fairytale motifs of Pan’s Labyrinth, this Belgian tale from Jonas Govaerts doesn’t waste any time with the unpleasantries. On a woodland retreat, twelve-year old cub scout Sam (Maurice Luijten) is bullied daily by his fellow scouts, and even his scoutmaster Peter (Stef Aerts). Once the asshole kids cause the group to get lost in the mountains, Sam buggers off and runs into a creepy-looking feral boy he identifies as the urban legend werewolf Kai.

Up until that moment, it’s some slow, bleak Lord of the Flies shit, but after this first-act twist, it’s some bleak, disturbing, melancholic shit – including the taboo of killing children without a shred of humour or facetiousness. It’s an engaging story the further it plays out, and I appreciate seeing this kind of fable from a child’s point of view. But the film suffers from dreadful pacing in its first half, awkward tension build-ups, and one or two wooden performances. Despite this, on balance, it’s an enjoyably creepy and atmospheric slasher.

3.6/5

31 Days of Hallowe’en, Day 26: Kaboom (2010)

This is embarrassing, because I genuinely, for some idiotic reason, thought that Gregg Araki was the guy from Heroes. Fucking Greg Gundberg. I’ve seen Nowhere! And I loved it! I so adored how horrifying it was that I patently refuse ever to see it again.

source: imdb.com

Kaboom is an attempt at more of the colourfully trashy same, featuring a crowd of young, attractive, laconic hipster college students sexually experimenting with each other with little regard for feelings or consequences. Smith (Thomas Dekker) and Stella (Haley Bennett) start having a series of odd dreams after one-off dates with people with red hair or who are called Thor. The story is mostly vignettes of how pretentiously tedious their romantic encounters can get, before there’s some climax with a trio of masked weirdos who may or may not be witches.

I stuck with this one on Shudder because the two mains are genuinely compelling with some fantastic chemistry, but it’s more of a prettily-shot dark comedy with sci-fi elements than any kind of horror.Honestly, the supernatural element feels like an afterthought, and it’s a bit insulting. Shame on you, Shudder.

1.7/5

31 Days of Hallowe’en, Day 25: Fear, Inc. (2016)

When a trailer slams giant text across the screen from a review saying that their movie was ‘tailor-made for genre junkies’, it’s a red flag for me that it’s already unreasonably high praise. Welcome to setting your audience’s expectations too high.

Meh, whatever. Fear, Inc., another FrightFest 2016 entry I missed, is a home invasion thriller comedy that openly admits its influences. Horror geek Ben (Lucas Neff) is living a good life in Los Angeles on his bride-to-be’s (his real-life wife Caitlin Stasey)’s family dime. Noticing he’s having some bored fun, a schlocky haunted house employee slips him a business card for a company called Fear, Inc., an entertainment service purveying high-end, custom scares (yes, as one of the characters points out, is just like the movie The Game).

Ben phones the company to find out more, but is abruptly told they’re ‘sold out’ before being hung up on. Thinking nothing of it, he preps a small dinner gathering with his BFF (Chris Marquette) and his wife (Stephanie Drake). But then shit goes down, the power’s cut, and the group are in danger. Or are they? Or are they not? Or really, are they?

That’s the gist of this film, but it’s a fun, simple ride. It’s somewhat plausible: these kinds of companies could very well exist, and have the good intentions of being innovative and fun – but in a world in which we have the likes of Black Mirror, how horribly wrong does this have the potential to go? And if these experiences are so professionally done that that they’re mind-bendingly immersive, what are the pitfalls of putting yourself in a situation designed to make you question whether or not something is real?

Those are some deep questions for a horror comedy, and it’s almost a shame that it went the yuk-yuks route, particularly as most of the film’s early humour comes from Ben’s constant Scullying of the film’s tense moments. But once the uncertainty kicks in, so too does the tension of the possibility of a series of devastating outcomes. The mildly shit performances and constantly flip-flopping ending both let the film down a little, but the inventive gore, cast chemistry and even just the concept alone are all enough to make up for it.

3.7/5

31 Days of Hallowe’en, Day 24: The Greasy Strangler (2016)

What can one say about The Greasy Strangler? Jesus fuck.

Imagine if Wes Anderson decided to have a go at making a gross-out movie. Deliberately-framed, static master shots, everyone in vintage pastels and talking out their lines at each other, a pervasive font type throughout. But then add references and jokes to poop, farts, semen, lard, and genitals. And, speaking of genitals, if you don’t think you can stand the sight of elephantiasis-ed old-man penis, go watch The Conjuring 2 or something, because this ‘little mouse’s head’ is its own character in this beautifully disgusting, surrealist shitpost of a film.

From its repugnantly stylised beginning, it becomes clear that we’re not to know what to expect from Brit director Jim Hosking‘s film debut. Nobody in this film is recognisable or experienced – our two main characters, a father and son played respectively by two people with the actual names Michael St. Michaels and Sky Elobar – have just a string of background parts between them. If those roles had been filled by the likes of Robert DeNiro and Aaron Eckhart, would I have seen the things on screen that I can’t erase from my mind? Fucking hell no. About as unlikely as anyone wanting to eat butter after this kind of viewing experience.

And it’s character-based – a series of vignettes with no signposted direction that leave you unsure just exactly what the fuck is going to happen next. All bets are already off. The father, Big Ronnie, and his son Big Brayden (fucking hell if I know) are already at odds; Ronnie is borderline emotionally abusive (that border gets gradually erased with the film’s running time), and constantly berates Brayden for his incompetence in greasing their food.

Along comes Janet (Elizabeth DeRazzo, one of two players to have a Wikipedia entry), a customer of Ronnie’s fraudulent, lie-peddling ‘history of disco’ walking tour company. Her fledgling relationship with Brayden starts to bring the latter of his shell, but Brayden finds his newfound idyll and confidence threatened when his father starts to move in. Also, Ronnie periodically slathers himself in what must be the galaxy’s thickest grease, then prowls the city for deserving necks to strangle to Troma-like effect. You’ll never look at ping-pong balls the same way. Or car washes.

your face after watching this film.

You’re not here to give much of a shit about any of the characters, save for the perpetually subjugated, beaten-down Brayden. Dressed in matching neon towelling tracksuits and sporting twinned bald-patched almost-mullets, the Gross-out Grey Gardens pair spend the better part of 90 minutes shouting ‘bullshit artist’ at each other, misadventuring sexually, and refusing to do any dishes or laundry, which why the hell not, because everything is challenged to have more grease to it anyway. It’s as if everybody in the film is determined to be so morally, physically and intellectually repellent. Which is why you should watch it immediately.

3.4/5

31 Days of Hallowe’en, Day 22: Black Mirror; Season 3, Episode 2: Playtest

With all the horror I’ve consumed lately, a concern has been festering in the back of my mind: what if nothing scares me anymore? A message board post I recently read admitted that the author felt sad that he can’t enjoy horror movies the way he used to, because of this very reason. Maybe, like my recent favourites Don’t Breathe and Train to Busan, I can appreciate the tension those two use that is usually reserved for action movies and thrillers, rather than the lingering dread that the monster might crawl out of the screen and follow you home. Or, with my 2016 favourite The Windmill Massacre, perhaps I can just appreciate the creature’s design, the well-paced story and the creative gore.

I just won’t be scared.

But now, on the trotting heels of its prophetic Prime-Minister pig-fucking nostalgia, along comes Netflix’s Season 3 of Black Mirror. Hoorah! The show that I’d been forcing everyone under the sun to see finally has a third season on the bingewatching mecca of the interwebz.

Given the length and utter mindfuckedness of past episodes, I’d actually recommend against binging. Each episode follows you around for at least a day or two, and your brain needs time to push it back out. This one, based on Reddit comments, is one that requires just such a moratorium. (For me, it was Episode 3).

“Playtest”, Episode 2, plays with the very idea of what fear is, and how far it can be pushed to commodify it. Wyatt Russell (a curiously watchable genetic mesh of Kurt and Goldie) plays Cooper, a young American backpacker. Low on funds, he  answers an ‘odd job’ ad to beta-test a well-known company’s augmented reality game – which concerns itself with pushing the limits of fear.

In my trademarked quest to avoid spoilers, I can only say that of course it gets more twisted from there. Prepare to be suitably unsettled.

It actually throws some good bits of tension at you before the inevitable ‘nothing could possi-blye go wrong’ trope’. But from there, it genuinely gets terrifying to the point of downright uncomfortable. I can’t remember the last time I gasped out loud at a screen. This is some fantastic storytelling. The fright in any episode of Black Mirror is the unease around seeing your contemporary surroundings on screen, with just one small element futurised, amplfied, and cloaked in gloom. It’s very possible that these things could happen. And, unlike a surprisingly creative serial killer or unbeatable ghoul, the ‘villains’ in Black Mirror aren’t a single entity – it’s a plausible concept spun out of control in its influence and potential to devastate. And isn’t that just some eye-watering, spine-tingling, stomach-sinking beautiful mindfuckery?

31 Days of Hallowe’en, Day 19: Channel Zero (Episodes 1 & 2)

It’s OK. I didn’t need sleep.

With their TV shows, miniseries and original films, SyFy had always let me down in a very formulaic way. There would be an intriguing premise, and a seasoned actor or two with past-proven chops. But it would inevitably fall apart into plodding storylines, cringeacting and barf-inducing attempts at VFX, all with a prominently shite, signature SyFy sheen on it. And then, owing to a lack of self-awareness, they would just churn it out again and again.

So understandably, I was put off by SyFy, a channel that chose to start spelling its name incorrectly, slapping its stink over its latest offering, Channel Zero. And I was tempted to write off a show that some commenters insisted ‘wasn’t as good as Stranger Things‘ – a show whose hollow, ’80s trope-scrapbooking I was unable to worship (aside from its spine-tingling theme tune).

From its opening sequence, it’s clear this show is a game-changer for the channel. Child psychologist Mike Painter (the reliably grounded Paul Schneider) is being interviewed in a TV studio. He’s asked about his book, his work, the disappearance of his identical twin brother when they were both 12. Everything about the scene, from its lighting to to its editing and photography, instantly draws you into a sense of dread that something is not quite right. And, in spite of SyFy, it’s remarkably subtle.

Mike visits his mother (played with perfect American-accentedness by a wonderful Fiona Shaw who came out of nowhere), who is happy-but-not-happy to see him. His childhood home has no photos of Mike or his twin brother, whose body was never found after a series of murders. Their conversations are warm but muted. Backstories unfold through one to two-second bursts of chilling, silent flashbacks over people talking in the present. It’s both otherworldly eerie and real-world bleak.

And we haven’t even gotten to the show within the show yet.  At a dinner with old schoolfriends who stayed on in the town, Candle Cove – a children’s puppet show from their youth – is brought up in conversation. They reminisce about how creepy the show was in retrospect, and how odd that nobody could ever find copies of it or information on who made it. On his way back from the bathroom, Mike notices his dinner host’s daughter transfixed by an episode of Candle Cove, which has mysteriously resurfaced.

So far, two episodes have aired. There’s enough contemporary mystery and both vintage and recent backstories to keep things interesting, and so far the show is building its dread with economical pacing. Absolutely no element of this show is boring; its layers of inferred backstories are a lot to absorb, and the restrained performances and lingering shots give you welcome room to do so.

They’ve not held back on the scares, either. There are jumpscares, but they’re not cheap. On paper, they’d seem laughable, but that’s why they work – taking something innocuous and deforming it into an surreal, bizarre, effective ghoul is no mean feat. I also feel stupid for being scared by a a bargain-bin-skull costume in a forest. But it IS creepy, goddamnit, and if you were alone and you saw it then you, too, would run screaming through a trail of your own piss.

The fact that it’s adapted from a Creepypasta (and with proper credit) is refreshing. Even if you haven’t browsed the insanely popular horror microfiction site, you’re likely to have heard of one of its first legends, the tall, faceless, suited Slenderman. And while the related attempted murder has since rendered that character outmoded, why not mine such a well-trafficked site for a decently-budgeted horror show?

Just try to sleep after watching a snarling, crackling, eyeless, voiceless monster made out of teeth.

4.5/5