Movie Review: Paranormal Activity 2

I should start by mentioning that I really enjoyed the first Paranormal Activity but it's standard business for people to not enjoy sequels so that was far from a guarantee that I'd be a fan of PA2. If nothing else, I actually expected NOT to like it. However, I write this review as someone who was pleasantly surprised by how entertaining I found the movie.

I'm going to skip the synopsis, you can find that anywhere. And I'm also going to avoid spoiling anything beyond saying I found it slick how well they managed to tie the first movie to the sequel.

The night prior to seeing PA2 my wife and I went to a local haunted house with some friends just to do something "Halloween-y." That trip did a good job of somewhat reinforcing what was good about PA2. Walking through the intentionally tight hallways with the tight turns that prevent you from seeing anything ahead of you has you constantly on edge and ready to have something pop out at you. You know something is going to jump out at you eventually, it's just a matter of when.

Paranormal Activity 2 is a trip to a haunted house, not an art gallery. During each scene my eyes were scanning left and right and up and down to see if I was missing anything subtle. And there are moments where small things move or turn that are very unsettling if you catch them. And, must as with a well designed haunted house, sometimes the obvious time for a scare is bypassed just to tease the audience.

The scares are good, there could have been more of them and there is an element of "too little" happening going on at times. There are plenty of things to complain about with the movie and I'll reference Anything Horror's review:

As with the first film, some of the exposition feels forced at times, and the use of the hand-held video often seems out of place. Kristi’s step-daughter is a precocious teen who, after a disconcerting babysitting encounter, inexplicably films herself searching the internet for an explanation. Of course, she conveniently finds the perfect wikipedia-like paragraph for what could be happening in the house, and she has her boyfriend read it out loud to her – on camera. It’s fairly lazy writing, but it easily furthers the story and allows us to get back to those highly anticipated night time terrors.

I have no doubt that the fact that movie studios force a yearly schedule for sequels hurts the ability to have a great script. It isn't impossible, but it's difficult and leads to those shortcuts to push the story a bit.

The acting is better in the sequel and the characters are more "real." Which is a relief given how much I HATED the characters in the first movie while still liking the movie as a whole.

Final Score: 3/5

It's not a great movie but it's an entertaining watch that delivers on its promise. That's a lot more than can be said for plenty of other horror movies. A few more scares being delivered would bump this up to a 3.5 but this is still absolutely worth a watch.

Movie Review: Deadgirl

Let me start by saying that actors who are (roughly) 23 and 25 years old really should not be playing 17 year old high school students. There is probably nothing more distracting in the entire Deadgirl experience than having to suspend disbelief enough to go along with the idea of two men who are old enough to have graduated from a 4 year university and had a few years in the "real world" are actually high school juniors.

But we can move on from that horribly distracting mess...for a little while anyway.

Short plot synopsis: Two high school students skip class and wander around an abandoned mental institution only to discover a woman; naked and tied to a bed. One friend figures this is a good chance to get laid (J.T.), the other (Ricky) wants to try to save her. J.T. leaves, Ricky has sex with her and ends up beating her to (what should be) death but the girl continues to function exactly as before. The fact that she is clearly not human leads to a question of if she needs to be treated like one. J.T. goes a bit crazy, spending seemingly all of his time in the room having sex with the "deadgirl." Without giving too much away, it is realized that there is a way to make more just like her despite the fact that she seems incredibly violent when she has the chance to sink her teeth in to someone, or something.

The fact that a site like Bloody Disgusting talks about how the film is similar to Stand By Me is completely absurd. Stand By Me was an outstanding coming of age story grounded in reality while Deadgirl is about the evil "bad kid" and the "bad kid" with a heart of gold and their struggle with fucking a dead girl. Not to say that this means that it can't be a good horror movie, it just means that no matter how hard you want to push an odd similarity with Stand By Me, it doesn't work. Also, it's hard to tell a coming of age story when you're watching grown men who have already come of age. I mean, shit, the main "bully" in the story played a college kid in We Are Marshall three years before this movie came out and looks like he's in his 30's.

I don't think the story is that good, I don't think the acting is good at all and what would at least be an unsettling tale of young high schoolers essentially raping a zombie has its punch taken away by the fact that they're grown men.

I simply refuse to be wowed by a movie for stepping outside convention and being "shocking" in it's subject matter and as such this is just kind of a crap movie.

Final Score: 1.5/5

Movie Review: The Loved Ones

Nothing bothers me more in discussions of current horror movies than the desire to reduce seemingly every movie depicting any scene of "torture" as "torture porn." And that is what many have done with the slick Australian production The Loved Ones.

When Brent (oooh, that's MY name!) turns down Lola for the end of school dance (because he's taking his girlfriend, which seems like a good enough reason) he ends up kidnapped by her father and...well...yes, tortured by the daddy-daughter team. But, let's stop there for a second because if we're going to claim that acts of torture constitute torture porn than we need to lay the inspiration for the sub-genre at the feet of films like Misery and The Marathon Man. And honestly, Misery is a much more apt comparison for The Loved Ones than Saw or Hostel.

I was not a particularly big fan of Wolf Creek and hadn't yet gotten on the Aussie horror bandwagon but this is another beast altogether. Rather than living in a world of harsh brutality and dim colors, director Sean Byrne and cinematographer
Simon Chapman live in the brightly colored world of teenage comedies.

There is a neat, but somewhat unnecessary situational juxtaposition going on during the length of the film where we're not only following Brent through hell but we also follow his seemingly "loser-y" friend while he goes on a first date and seems to have everything go his way. It's funny at times and does add to the "80's teen comedy that lost it's fucking mind" atmosphere to have a completely horrorless subplot taking place. But it doesn't have a whole lot to it and really seems there more to pad the running time than to provide us with anything as viewers other than, perhaps, moments to catch our breath.

There is a wrinkle thrown in late in the movie that certainly changes the tone of things from a standard hostage/torture situation but seems to be well explained and is set up subtly and doesn't go too far in derailing the rest of what has and has not yet happened.

The Loved Ones is well contained, well written, well acted, well filmed and doesn't try to do too much which is astounding to me for a first feature from Byrne. Everything just feels right and fresh from start to finish. And when I say from start, I mean even the opening song is great:



This is, without a doubt, one of my favorite horror releases of 2009-2010.

Final Score: 4.5/5

Movie Review: Frozen

Adam Green became a darling in the horror community with his 80's-esque slasher flick Hatchet. My wife and I went to see Hatchet on our first wedding anniversary and we...well, we did not enjoy it. I have had the DVD sitting on my shelf for a few months now and I keep meaning to give it a second chance but it hasn't happened yet.

But this isn't about Hatchet, it's about Green's most recent release: Frozen.

Frozen tells the story of three young people trapped on a ski resort chair lift. It's a simple enough concept and one that seems hard upon first hearing about to imagine stretched into a full length feature. Amazingly, this is a wonderful picture. It's chilling (pun originally not intended, realized and now fully intended) and incredibly well paced.

The biggest worry with simple concept horror movies like this is that the start will be incredibly slow to build to the "good parts" as they pretend they're developing characters rather than just trying to make sure they hit 90 minutes to make it feature-length. There is a bit of character development early on but it's effective in making you care about what happens to the three main characters going forward.

There are plenty of intensely violent moments making it very much the "modern" horror film. Taking such a simple concept and developing it into such a tense movie that there were many reports of audience members fainting while watching it in theatres really speaks highly of what Green can do when he focuses in on telling a story rather than trying to be clever and "insidey" like he did with Hatchet.

I don't want to go into much detail in hopes that someone who actually reads this blog decides to give the film a watch. Frozen is must watch stuff, it's not perfect but it is one of the most well crafted and simple releases of the past few years in the genre.

Final Score: 4/5

Movie Review: Predators

While Predator is one of those perfect "when I was younger I used to love..." movies the idea of Predators struck me as odd. The idea of bringing the series back with spindly Adrian Brody as an ass kicking lead sounded like an idea destined to fail or, at the very least just be odd visually. I was wrong on that note with Brody pulling the role off quite well. I could do without his gravely attempt at a Christian Bale-esque "Batman voice" but beyond that he plays the role of a no-remorse badass quite well.

This is not a horror movie really, it is more pure sci-fi. I never felt the sense of tension that made the original a classic. In effect Predators is a sci-fi slasher film. We get the diverse (a bit overly diverse but we'll come back to that) group of soldiers dropped into a "game reservation" of sorts where they are hunted so the predators can determine their own weaknesses and correct them. It's a creative idea and one that sets up a minor sense of dread as there is a feeling of no way off the planet.

The group of soldiers represent everything from mercenaries to Yakuza to Mexican drug lord protection to African death squad soldier and so on. I don't know why and as I do this on a site likely to never be read by more than 10 people I don't have to explain it...but the over diversification of the cast bothered me. Also, how you can so badly misuse Danny Trejo I'll never know.

Predators is fun, it's competently acted and really doesn't have any huge problems but it also isn't something that "wows" you. The idea of a sequel where they'll run wild with the "predator planet" is appealing and this will likely be a movie I watch several times in a year when I'm up late at night and it's being cycled on HBO or Starz or whatever. But it's not something I'll ever go out of my way to watch again. It's no Predator, but it's sure as shit also no Predator 2.

Final Score: 3/5

Horror Movie Review: The Collector

The Collector is a 2009 effort written by Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan and directed by Dunstan. The two are responsible for writing Feast as well as Saw IV through the upcoming Saw 3D. There is a real mixed bag of good and suck in there and honestly it's pretty amazing that the same team is writing that string of Saw movies that constantly have to clean up their own mess, but that's another rant for another day.

When I started seeing ads for The Collector I assumed in the current culture of horror that we would be seeing a remake of the 1965 movie based on the novel. That story is a classic psychological tale and the book and film are great. The story also has the morbid twist of being claimed as inspiration for a number of murderers and serial killers. Regardless, the classic suspense story this was not. Instead we had a "trap and torture" movie that just sounded like some Saw writers ripped off Saw (it was originally planned as a Saw prequel) and as such the movie fell off my radar until I saw it was going to be on Cinemax and hit the record button.

IMDB plot overview:

When the Chase family moves to an isolated house in the middle of nowhere in Detroit, Arkin is hired to fix the windows and the doors. Later he meets his daughter and his wife that has a debt with dangerous sharks and needs money, but his week payment is not enough to pay her debts. Arkin plots to heist the safe of Michael Chase during the night to raise the necessary money. However, when he arrives in the house, he finds that a sadistic criminal has imprisoned the family and planted traps everywhere. Arkin seeks a way out of the deadly house to save his life.

After sitting through the full 90 minutes I'm left feeling conflicted. On one hand the movie is tense and good enough on the surface to warrant recommending. On the other hand there are just so many things that bother me about the movie. The loan shark thing comes out of nowhere and I guess the fact that the guy has a family and is supposed to be helping his wife is supposed to make him sympathetic, but he then goes to a guy he served jail-time with previously and discusses their plan to rob this family and make it clear that this is not the first time they've done this. So now Arkin is a thief who has done time and his wife is hitting up loan sharks.

Arkin's "business partner," Roy, also seems to exist for no reason. The two men argue over what percentage Arkin gets and when he gets his money for what feels like forever only to have it never matter again. The entire scene feels like it's only reason for being in the movie is to push the running time a bit.

Also annoying, the traps. I get why they exist in a movie sense, but the sheer amount of them makes no sense. It's the first "goof" listed on IMDB and it's also the biggest in my mind. "The Collector" already has to have had the family kidnapped to have the ability to set up such elaborate traps and if he already had them...why put up the traps? Did he KNOW someone was going to break in and decide to spend hours and hours setting up traps? It just makes no sense.

Since the killer is wearing a mask we can only assume that he'll be unmasked in some surprise twist. And while that does happen it doesn't actually matter because the reveal is more of a "it's that guy you kind of saw for a minute at one point early on" thing. It'd honestly been better to have left him as a John Doe. It'd have probably been the same had they simply left his motives there as well. The brief explanation for why he does what he does is so bland and meaningless that it distracts more than provides glue to the goings-on. The finale is stupid and plays out more like a desperate attempt to ensure that a sequel is lined up...and of course The Collection is planned as a sequel to be shot in 3D.

Things aren't all bad though. The traps are fun, there are a lot of tense scenes and no one is distractingly bad in their role. With some more care they could have put together a very solid horror film. While the majority of reviews seem to want to tie the movie to the "torture porn" sub-genre that does not seem to be the case in my eyes. The focus of torture porn is usually the torture scenes. Dunstan is actually quite restrained in how he holds back from showing the worst of any "torture."

Final Score: 2.5/5

The Collector is entirely watchable, capably acted and generally suspenseful. There are logic flaws galore and when you think about it you really feel like you've been treated like an idiot, but in terms of value as a pure horror film, it's entirely passable.