Friday, January 27, 2012 20:44

2011: The Pick of the Year

January 1st, 2012

As always when I come to reflect on the year in horror, and for whatever reason, my first thought is -’ [insert year here] was a bit of a slow year’, and this year was no exception – that’s exactly what I thought about 2011. On any closer inspection at all, 2011 was a very good year for horror – it’s just that 2011 has seemed very long indeed, and a great deal has happened. The festival circuit (at least here in the UK, where I’m based) is healthier than ever, perhaps even a little too thriving, and sadly it’s almost inevitable that a few of the newbies are going to go to the wall just due to the fact that so many fests fall within a short period of time, namely the Halloween season – but it is brilliant to have so many to choose from in any case, and all of the folk involved with the newer small festivals are doing what they do for all the right reasons. I’ve reviewed more indie films than ever before for the unholy trinity of Brutal as Hell, Sex Gore Mutants and – my blog host site – Horror Extreme, and there’s been a proliferation of print media of varying quality as well, both new mags and those which have returned from the dead, like The Dark Side. We even now have an academic horror magazine in the UK – Diabolique – which I hope gets the recognition it deserves. Despite a bunch of idiots torching all their stock during the London riots, horror and sleaze enthusiasts like Arrow Video continue to issue lost classics and glorious revamps, and long may it continue.

Still, it’s not all good news for horror fans; the BBFC, perhaps as a way of re-establishing their authori-tay at the time of their centenary, have come in like hawks on a number of films such as The Human Centipede 2 and The Bunny Game, and grossly missed the point on each of these – that the first is choc-full of sly humour and the second is a blistering story of personal vindication, not a foray into sexual violence for its own sake. We have also had films which, at least to my mind, cynically seek to establish themselves in a crowded indie movie market by baiting the censors on their flashpoint issues, such as sexualised violence, just in order to garner the attention their product might not otherwise get. We’ve also had a glut of prequels, sequels and remakes which have been passable at best, and film studios seem to be getting more and more cautious about green lighting anything which seeks to be truly original because they’re worried about their profit margins. This is not healthy, not for horror and not for cinema at large.

So much for the overview. Let’s talk about the films, because there has been some truly excellent cinema this year – some of it spine-chilling, some of it sickening, some of it darkly humorous, and some all three in one go! Here, then, is my Obligatory Top 10 Films of 2011:

10) The Perfect Host

Warwick Wilson (played with relish by the excellent David Hyde Pierce) is the consummate good host; everything has to be just so. The wine has to be of a good vintage, the lighting and music perfection itself, the meal memorable. With all of this to plan, it’s hardly surprising that the arrival of fleeing burglar John Taylor at his des-res – when Taylor tricks his way in by pretending to be a friend of a woman whose name he sees on a postcard addressed to Wilson – has to potential to really derail his evening. Gradually, it dawns on Warwick that his unexpected guest is not who he thinks he is, but John is not as much in control as he thinks he is, either.

The whole film is a masterpiece of wit and pacing, with Hyde Pierce really getting his teeth into a meatier role than we’re used to seeing him play in the sitcom Frasier. He manages to be prim, proper and completely unhinged, while the savvy career criminal goes from sneering confidence to wide-eyed confusion. It was never easy to guess where the plot was going, either, and the balance between humour and edge-of-seat tension was impeccably done.

9) Cold Fish

Shion Sono’s warped urban tale of just how easily a humdrum life can be utterly derailed absolutely belongs in my top 10 this year: in Cold Fish, a family teetering on the edge of disfunctionality is given the push by a chance encounter with what at first seems to be a blessing. Do you want a quiet life? Then be very careful who you accept favours from, as devastatingly shown in the story of the placid, unassuming Shamoto (Mitsuru Kukikoshi), a tropical fish salesman who lives with an unhappy younger wife, Taeko, and a petulant brat of a teenage daughter, Mitsuko. When Mitsuko is caught shoplifting one evening, the universe throws Shamoto a bone in the form of the gregarious, influential Mr. Murata, a rival tropical fish merchant, who smooth-talks the security guard into dropping the charges and even offers Mitsuko a live-in job at his store. Once Murata has a foothold in the lives of these unhappy people, however, his cheerful facade is dropped, and he sets about unpicking the fabric of the family’s lives in a series of grotesque ways. The mistreatment of a quiet man to the point of devastating his character is classic Shion Sono. You can check out my full review at Brutal as Hell :

http://www.brutalashell.com/2011/05/dead-by-dawn-review-cold-fish/

8 ) Red, White & Blue

Let me tell you, it is fucking rare that a movie gets right under my skin and stays there, a sort of weight around my sense of wellbeing, but Red, White & Blue did just that. It pre-empts its jaded audience, an audience by now well used to seeing all sorts of depravity, and gives us one of the most ultimately jaded protagonists ever seen – Erica (Amanda Fuller), who cares about very little in life. She lives out of one room and amuses herself by fucking guys she doesn’t care about – including musician Franky (Marc Senter), and his friends too. Whatever. It doesn’t matter, they don’t matter. The friendly overtures of her neighbour, returned war veteran Nate (Noah Taylor) are mostly ignored too, but these people’s lives are on a tragic collision course and the way in which it plays out really did shock me. This is a gruelling slice of Americana from the talented British director Simon Rumley, and with a due sense of caution I recommend you see it. My full review can be found here:

http://flowersoffleshandblood.horror-extreme.com/?p=404

7) The Village of Shadows

The Village of Shadows (Le Village des Ombres) was one of those films which came as a complete surprise; I hadn’t heard anything about it and I had no prior knowledge even of what type of horror it was before attending a screening at the Abertoir film festival in Wales. I was delighted to see that it was a move away from endurance style horrors – fine in moderation, but rapidly saturating the horror market – and a deliberate nod to supernatural horrors such as The Haunting, only with far more finesse than lazy, cheap ghost movies like the Paranormal Activity films. The Village of Shadows is very promising as a first feature, and crafts an interesting story with period elements, good performances and well-executed creepy moments.

In the movie, a group of friends are heading out for a short break at the village of Ruiflec, in rural France – but Ruiflec has a sinister past, which is steadily revealed during the course of the film. The young people who find themselves stranded there all have their own back stories, too, and these affect how and what the village seems to ask of them. It’s a well-wrought ghost story which was one of the surprise hits of the festival. Fingers crossed that The Village of Shadows reaches a wider audience, because it definitively deserves to be seen.

My full review of the movie is available to read over at Brutal as Hell:

http://www.brutalashell.com/2011/11/abertoir-2011-review-village-of-shadows/

6) Masks

When I heard talk of a German giallo homage, and saw the gloriously-lurid stills from director Andreas Marschall’s feature Masks, I was initially reserved about it. I’d made the mistake of getting very excited to see the previous year’s Amer, a film with undeniable aesthetic prowess but even less cogency than the films it was trying to emulate, and there’s only so much marvelling at the visuals you can do. A film is not a painting, and so you need to have more going on than that. Well, thankfully, Masks is that film. The influence of Argento (in particular Suspiria) may be evident, but this is not a basic retread through old ground. Masks has its own character and weaves its own warped, grisly tale out of familiar elements.

When aspiring actress Stella (Susen Ermich) gets offered the chance to join a mysterious method acting school on the outskirts of Berlin, she jumps at the chance; Stella is ambitious and motivated, and she is assured that she will be given the chance to shine. But the Matteusz Gdula Institute has a troubled past; suicide and disappearances dogged the school back in the 70s, and rumours are rife about just what the special methods involved mean for those who still want to try them out…

Not just pretty to look at, Masks carves something original and engaging out of familiar turf and builds up to a staggeringly good crescendo. Check out my complete review of the film over at Brutal as Hell:

http://www.brutalashell.com/2011/11/abertoir-2011-review-masks/

5)  Some Guy Who Kills People

2011 has been a bumper movie for horror-comedies and amongst the very best of these, and of all the films released this year, is Some Guy Who Kills People, a testament to what strong writing and a real sense of pathos can do for a film -not to mention the strengths of the right cast.

Ken Boyd has had a lot of shit in his life, including a stay at the local mental hospital but – now that he has been released – he is content to do nothing to rock the boat. He has an awful job and a worse boss, lives with his mother (the indomitable Karen Black) and only seems to enjoy his art. It almost seems like a burden to him when, out of the blue, his eleven year old daughter Amy turns up in his life, at around the same time that a woman takes an interest in him – but perhaps things are on the up for Ken. Just maybe…

…And then people start turning up dead. has Ken’s troubled past finally found an outlet, and what does this mean for the new people in his life?

Warm, funny and touching, Some Guy Who Kills People balances the comic with the sympathetic just about perfectly. Please check out my full review, oh – and, if you’re the dickhead who ripped a version of this film to a torrent site, I hope you die in a freak laptop accident because you utterly, utterly suck.

http://www.horror-extreme.com/movies/horror-reviews/some-guy-who-kills-people.aspx

4) The Enemy (Neprijatelj)

After all the, in my humble opinion of course, Emperor’s New Clothes-style discussions of the powerful symbolism of A Serbian Film which we had in 2010, I cannot tell you how delighted I was to encounter a new Serbian film which outstrips its more notorious predecessor on every level. There is no real comparison between the two beyond that, though: The Enemy begins as the last Balkan War ends, with a group of Serb engineers in charge of removing landmines along their border. It’s isolated, painstaking work, exacerbated by the presence at their camp of a mysterious man, whom they found walled into a nearby factory. is all as it seems with this man? A group of Bosniaks they encounter seem genuinely afraid of him, and question why the hell they let him out. True enough, he seems to exploit the cracks in the relationships between his soldier-hosts, and seems to know a great deal about them…

Subtle, brooding and effective, The Enemy plays with theological ideas but never loses sight of the very human relationships at the core of the story. A host of believable, albeit ambiguous characters and the starkness of the location makes this one of the most memorable films I have seen in a long time. A complete review (complete with me quarreling with a commenter) can be found here:

http://www.brutalashell.com/2011/11/abertoir-2011-review-the-enemy-neprijatelj/

3) Troll Hunter (Trolljegeren)

Altogether now – “TROOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLLLL!”

Another film on my list which isn’t strictly a horror film, but one of the most fun films I have seen in a long time, Troll Hunter marks the welcome arrival on-screen of Nordic mythology the way it was supposed to be. Here, the trolls aren’t benign entities who sit on top of pencils, they are huge, stupid and fearsome entities who would crush your skull without batting an eyelid. The Norwegian government know this, and this is why there is a top secret governmental body dedicated to stopping the brutes from getting too close to human settlements, and at the helm of this organisation is the world-weary huntsman, Hans, who allows a student film crew to follow him in his work after they spot him at several places where ‘bears’ have been responsible for mayhem. So, yes, there is a lot of handheld camera work here, but it isn’t obtrusively done, and it does allow for some brilliant, funny scenes throughout. There’s also some real love for Norway – for the mythology, but also the beautiful country itself, and Troll Hunter doubles up as a Norwegian tourism advert – well, providing you stay out of the way of the trolls.  I really loved this film, and I am looking forward to revisiting it soon! Here’s my full review:

http://flowersoffleshandblood.horror-extreme.com/?p=462

2) Harold’s Going Stiff

The ‘zombified state’ has been used and abused by countless filmmakers over the past few decades, often by first-time filmmakers who simply want to do a horror on the cheap and in these cases, it always shows and it usually sucks. However, there is hope for the zombie genre yet, because I never expected to see it used in such an original, heartwarming way as it is in Harold’s Going Stiff, where it is ageing and loneliness which are explored through the theme, and touchingly so. See, Harold Gimble (Stan Rowe) is an elderly man with more than just aches and pains to worry about. A new disease seems to have originated with him, and doctors are calling it Onset Rigours Disease – a painful condition which limits mobility, but in the other men it affects (for it affects only men) it triggers mindless, violent behaviour. So far Harold hasn’t been affected this way, but no one knows if it will. In the meantime, a nurse called Penny is sent to his aid, and the two form an unlikely, but wonderfully-realised friendship, as the condition affects more and more people around them. This is no full-blown zombie apocalpyse. This is Barnsley, South Yorkshire, and most of the rest of the world carries on as normal, but for Harold, his life cannot be the same again.

One of the stand-out films of 2011′s Dead by Dawn Festival, this film deserves to do brilliantly. My complete review is available at Brutal as Hell:

http://www.brutalashell.com/2011/05/dead-by-dawn-2011-review-harolds-going-stiff/

…and so we come to the best horror of the last year.

1) Stake Land

Here is a film which can never be done justice on paper; Stake Land sounds so familiar. In fact, and I know I’m not the first person to notice this but, for all intents and purposes, like the comedy Zombieland with one subtle difference, that the baddies here don’t eat brains, but drink blood instead. How different can two post-apocalyptic horrors be, with such similarities in plot? – very, very different, that’s what. This is an incredibly dark tale, where families have been ripped apart, names don’t matter anymore, and people use religion to justify their baser urges and power-hunger in ways which would surprise even us, with our perspective of the twenty-first century where this shit is just still refusing to go away. A teenage boy, Martin (Conor Paolo), who has just seen his parents and baby sibling killed by a bloodsucker (in a startling opening sequence) has no choice but to throw in his lot with a menacing and nameless drifter, Mister (Nick Damici) in order to save his own life. The two are heading North; in situations like this, people always need to believe that just over those hills, there is hope. Gradually, a bond forms between Martin and Mister, and they find themselves trying to help others they find along the way. And it’s not just the dead they have to worry about; an organisation called the Brotherhood are still men, but they’re corrupt and dangerous, for all their talk of God and redemption.

A film with no heroes and no neat answers, Stake Land shows that you can be original without reinventing the wheel – it’s all in how you combine and recombine your horror elements with the right atmosphere, tone and stand-out performances, all of which Stake Land does. This is hands down the best horror film I saw in 2011, and one which definitely merits a rewatch…

http://flowersoffleshandblood.horror-extreme.com/?p=371

I had it in mind to finish this post with a ‘sin bin’ of some of the worst movies of the year but, do you know what? I’m done with them.  They’ve had enough of my time already. I want to end this on a high note, and say instead that I am looking forward to what 2012 has to offer – and so that is exactly what I am going to do.

So long then, 2011, and let’s see what this year has to offer.

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Book Review: the Killer of Little Shepherds by Douglas Starr (2011)

December 18th, 2011

 

I’ve just completed this thoroughly engaging book, one which manages to sustain the weight of humanising its key players as well as providing an in-depth history of the state of play of criminology at the turn of the twentieth century. This is no mean feat, but Starr does it very well, interweaving the particularities of the Vacher case into a wider narrative of the times.

Joseph Vacher is often known as the ‘French Ripper’ – his case came within easy memory of the Jack the Ripper murders in London, and the ‘ripper’ epithet has been beloved of tabloid journalists ever since, so it’s not hard to see why the term came to be coined for Vacher. The son of a farmer, Vacher didn’t follow in the family footsteps but joined the local regiment, where he soon became renowned for erratic, violent behaviour and was roundly avoided by most of his peers. When a local maidservant, Louise Barant, refused Vacher’s advances, he decided to shoot her in the face (she survived) and then to attempt suicide (he also survived, albeit living out the rest of his days with a bullet lodged in his head.) This landed him in the asylum at Dole and thence at Saint-Robert where, a mere ten months after trying to murder someone and kill himself, he was pronounced ‘cured’ and released. When he was released, he started walking – sometimes seeking work as an itinerant – and wherever he walked, he started to murder, typically young shepherds, but anyone young, isolated and unfortunate enough to cross paths with him.

As the book recounts how Vacher was cutting a swathe across the French countryside, from Normandy to Lourdes and everywhere in-between, it alternates chapters on his exploits with chapters which more generally discuss the state of play in criminology and forensics at the time. It’s a simple enough structure, but it allows the reader to relate a single case to a much broader picture. The life and times of Dr. Lacassagne, the prolific criminologist who eventually tested his wits against Vacher, features prominently throughout the book: I got the distinct impression that Starr has an admiration for the doctor, although to be fair to the author, he presents a very balanced view of everyone he describes, including Vacher. There is no moralising here, and when it seems that Starr is going to join the consensus which proclaims Vacher sane and fit to stand trial, he presents an alternative view, one which makes a powerful case for Vacher’s insanity. The overriding sense given is how damn difficult it can be to call these things, especially when the price for getting it wrong is death by guillotine.

As well as lots of detail on the case and on important figures in the field (such as the slightly barmy but incredibly dogged Cesare Lombroso), Starr broadens his scope, discussing everything from France’s ‘vagabond problem’ to the role of true crime in the press and entertainments, the treatment of the mentally ill, and the competing theories on what made people commit criminal acts – heredity? Environment? Much of this is done by giving people their own voices in the book, and Starr draws upon the masses of documentation and correspondance left behind by the figures he discusses. An interested but largely neutral voice organises an exhaustive amount of material into a very readable, intriguing study of how one serial killer case illustrated a great deal about the state of play in France at that time. It never feels too weighty, and it’s cleverly done. Thoroughly recommended.

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5 Films Which Genuinely Disturbed Me

October 12th, 2011

When it comes to what’s shocking and what’s not, the process of desensitisation for film audiences has been fairly rapid. That’s not to say shock and disgust doesn’t occur – as an example, anyone following the fate of Lucky McKee’s The Woman this year will probably be aware that there was an irate episode at the Sundance screening of the film – but, and particularly for horror audiences who are forever being invited to be horrified and usually aren’t, the sensations have become surprisingly rare.

That’s not to say horror as a genre particularly owes us these feelings, of course. It’s just one facet of everything else it can throw at us, but yet horror still has its capacity to disturb, and for me there is a hardcore of films which have never lost that power. Interestingly, none of these films are younger than thirteen years old; this may point to me growing increasingly jaded as I rack up more and more viewing hours/miles on the clock, or it could be that the direction now being taken by cinematic auteurs with the most clout just doesn’t particularly move me. This is also a fairly mixed list – some of the films are supernatural horrors, some are not, and although there are some consistencies, it seems like a variety of films have made their mark in different ways. In any case, here are five films which made an indelible impact on this blogger…

5) The Blair Witch Project (1999)

…and I’ll just hand in my imaginary horror blogging credentials at the imaginary door, shall I? The thing is though, if I’m being totally honest, BWP…scared me. It’s nearly impossible to go back to it now and watch it as the anomaly it was at the time; although it didn’t invent ‘found footage’ by any stretch, the format was unusual back in the late 90s, and whilst the online interest was unprecedented, it all completely passed me by as it was before I was internet-savvy in any proper sense. I went to see the film on Halloween, expecting very little, knowing less, and came out – like a huge proportion of the rest of the audience – spooked.

The organic character development within the film worked really well, and these weren’t fully scripted, rehearsed characters either – the main players went by their own names, and were authentically miserable, confused and scared as the film progressed. It shows. That famous shot of Heather with snot and tears running down her face has been parodied to death now, but by fuck, that girl was really afraid, and we were effectively there with her, understanding no more than her. Everything was refracted directly through the group’s video footage; it was the only thing which came between us and whatever supernatural was out there in the dark, Jungian expanse of the woods. We – and they – could never get a handle on what it was because it was always off-screen, out of eyeshot, and superior to us. We didn’t understand the significance of the piles of stones, or the effigy hung up on the branch, but whatever-it-was did, and one snare operated after another…

BWP took a rational fear – getting lost – spliced in something sinister yet understated, and left three twentysomethings to burn through their optimism and enthusiasm in a disorientating environment. Hiding behind their cameras didn’t make their ordeal any less real but, back in ’99, it made their ordeal much more real to me. I’ve never revisited this film because I just know, especially in light of how endemic ‘found footage’ has become, that it would never match up to the first viewing…

4) The Shining (1980)

…but here’s one I’ve rewatched several times, and always come out the other side feeling that this is one of the most terrifying stories ever committed to celluloid. The Shining exhudes a leaden, poisonous atmosphere which has often been copied, but never bettered.

Kubrick’s spin on Stephen King’s original novel – a film in which King was heavily involved too - did what should have been impossible: it managed to be even more frightening than the book, and it did this by giving us a complete package of sound, aesthetics, and performances. Nicholson seems genuinely possessed during the course of the film, and his (minimal) supporting cast look just as genuinely uneasy…the garish modern touches to the Art Deco finery of the The Overlook Hotel are distinctive and create a strange backdrop for the demonic presences therein, but perhaps most importantly there’s a pervading sense of doom to all this. The glimpses you get of the…other residents are so surreal and sinister that my skin still crawls.

The Shining draws me in every time and feels exactly like a nightmare. To this day, it’s untouched in terms of the unease it generates.

3) Guinea Pig 1: Devil’s Experiment (1985)

Rather than the ‘Flowers of Flesh and Blood’ episode of the oddball Ginî piggu series, it’s the first film – and the first of the films which I saw – that I count amongst my disturbing Top 5. When I got hold of a very grainy copy of this on video in the mid-nineties, it was purely down to the death metal fanzines I was reading at the time: if you know anything at all about death metal, then you won’t be surprised to know that devoted ‘zines gave a fair few pages to ‘the most graphic’ or gory horror movies as well as the predictable most graphic/gory band-names, lyrics and covers. I’d spotted a few mentions of GP1 and, knowing nothing of Oriental cinema, decided it had to be tracked down.

As with many films whose veneer of creepiness has been destroyed by modern digital remasters and cleaned-up prints, GP1 looked a damn sight nastier on a foggy VHS…through the grain, my eyes could just about pick out a young woman. She’s nameless,  remains nameless - just like her attackers, who we never fully see - and she is slowly, methodically tortured in a number of different ways. Each of her ordeals is simply signposted by a black screen and a single word – be it ‘hit’, or ‘kick’, and we then get an episode of that treatment and that treatment only. It’s all very regimented and neat, which only seems to showcase the cruelty. I had no idea what I’d just seen at the time, but the motiveless, targeted mistreatment of a young woman definitely got under my skin. In the year I was starting school, the Japanese had not only mastered ordeal cinema (note I’m shying away from the dreaded ‘torture porn’ label), but they’d rendered it down to its most repugnant component parts - tormenting and killing, just for experiment’s sake.

2) Men Behind the Sun (1988)

Repugnant component parts…tormenting and killing, just for experiment’s sake…well, regardless of how affecting I found the murky world of The Devil’s Experiment, being confronted with a film its equal in terms of cruelty which has an actual historical precedent was always going to stay with me. This it has; Men Behind the Sun is one of the most upsetting things I have ever witnessed, and – as documentation from Camp 731 continues to emerge – the experience surpasses being ‘just a film’, something you can forget or dismiss.

731 was, by the way, the equal (and forerunner) of the European concentration camps, although on a smaller scale; it practiced the dehumanisation of the Han Chinese and other non-Japanese allies in the name of making warfare more efficient, and Men Behind the Sun is its zenith in terms of dramatisation. The film follows the fortunes of a group of (very) young Japanese recruits who arrive in Harbin, China to work in the camp. They are encouraged to regard the Chinese prisoners as ‘marut’, experimental fodder, no better than rats – in the process of this victims themselves, although it is the Chinese who physically suffer most. Depictions of experiments in this film are horrific, and unforgettable – as is the disposal of people killed along the way.

Just in case you forget you are watching a film based on historical events, the film provides you with an epilogue, revealing what happened to the key players in the story and their ‘work’. Oh, and there is rumoured to be real autopsy footage in the film too. Men Behind the Sun is far too close for comfort, but it deserves to be seen and to disturb.

 1) Aftermath (1994)

Think you don’t care what happens to you after you die? I mean, if you don’t believe in an afterlife, then you have nothing to lose – and if you do, then you’ll have transcended all the nasty biological stuff. Right? Right?

Aftermath takes the miserable given fact – that we will all, eventually, and in a way we don’t yet know, shuffle off this mortal coil – and makes it all seem so much worse. It has the capacity to make you feel afraid about the postmortem state, rather than about the process of dying itself, and in a sense renders dead flesh uniquely vulnerable.

Its premise is very simple, and the film itself only lasts thirty minutes; a (nameless, largely faceless) mortician, left alone at the end of his shift, begins to inappropriately touch the corpses – specifically the remains of a young woman who died in a car accident. Soon he isn’t just fondling her dead body…and after a brutal sexual attack on her (because, through his actions, she less like an inert corpse and more like a real, victimised character) he mutilates what is left of her. The upshot of this mutilation renders her down to component parts again in a twisted sequence; this dehumanising mutilation is a theme which evidently bothers me on a lot of levels, incidentally, as it’s true of several of the films I’ve mentioned here, as is an anonymous attacker.

Aftermath hasn’t finished, though. Having shown us this girl as dead flesh, we’re briefly reminded, in a neat and understated few seconds, that this was a person after all. It’s a horrific half an hour, with no dialogue, no names, just an undefended form trapped in a stark blue-lit hinterland between existing and not existing. As films go, it’s one of the bleakest things I’ve ever seen.

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Troll Hunter a.k.a. Trolljegeren (2011)

September 16th, 2011

Monster films, welcome back. We’ve missed you – or at least, I speak for myself here, because as much as I get a lot out of psychological horror, hauntings, and even more gritty fare, I was raised on Ray Harryhausen films. Jason and the Argonauts (1963) was one of my favourite things ever, as were any depictions in film (or of course literature and folklore) of weird creatures…it almost goes without saying that a new movie which makes the most of Scandinavian folklore as the basis for its creatures is really going to have to go some to fuck things up. Rest assured that Troll Hunter (Trolljegeren) doesn’t fuck it up – this is a film which finds fun in going to the distinctly non-sanitisied origin of Norwegian troll legends and giving us an up-to-date run in with not just a troll, but different species of troll. Don’t know your Tosserlads (heh) from your Mountain Kings? Look no further.

When a group of student filmmakers set about tracking what they suppose is an illegal bear hunter (Norway has tight restrictions on how many bears can be killed and by whom) they follow him out one night to see what exactly he’s doing. Turns out his name is Hans, he isn’t an illegit hunter, and he’s actually working on secretive government business (with the appropriate forms to prove it). This cynical bunch might not have believed him, had they not seen what he was doing with their own eyes…

Having got this far, Hans begrudgingly agrees that they can keep on filming. He’s sick of the dirty, difficult work and fed up of the secrecy, so he offers for them to get as much footage as they need to prove that trolls exist. All they have to do in return is follow all his instructions. This footage comprises the film itself…

The ‘found footage’ idea is definitely blooming in cinema these days – look anywhere and you’ll see people moaning about it as well, so filmmakers opting to use this format might want to tread carefully if they don’t want to lose their potential audience from the offset. In Troll Hunter, thankfully, it isn’t too obtrusive. Yes, you get people running and plenty of footage of their shoes, but by and large the film is easy to watch and not migraine-inducing through overusing the worst element in found footage - wildly-spinning cameras. It helps that the characters are good, there’s a firm sense of fun (plus that subtle Norwegian sense of humour) and – best of all – the creatures themselves are brilliant.

Director André Øvredal knows just how much to reveal and when to use suggestion, darkness and motion, but don’t take that to imply that you never see the creatures – you do, and hallelujah, CGI is finally starting to get to the point where it really works well. If this film was made on hand-held cameras simply to blow the budget on the effects then I think it’s more than justifiable. Added to this is a genuine sense of pride – expressed in a light-hearted way, but pride nonetheless – in Norwegian folklore. You can often see the point at which indigenous national/local culture and storytelling became demonised by the arrival of Christianity in any given place: in the United Kingdom, lots of standing stones became ‘Devil’s Needles’ or petrified circles of witches to absorb them into the Christian idea of good/evil and castigate the old beliefs which preceded the new religion. Troll Hunter has a lot of fun with what must be a Norwegian equivalent – that trolls are especially cruel to Christians and loathe Christian music – and turns it into a game where the religious come off worse. Not a huge political point, but it was nice to see it in there. Also, Hans (and the veterinary team supporting his work) might be hunting them, but he has a certain level of respect for these creatures, and would never go after them were it not made necessary by them falling sick or straying too far into human-inhabited areas. There’s a healthy distaste for bureaucracy in here, too…

The final thing to say on this film is, trolls or not, this is the best tourism video for Norway I could imagine, and the backdrop of this strikingly-beautiful country has just made me feel more than ever that I need to see it for myself. It’s a nice secondary note for this gratifying creature feature, one which is definitely worth a look. Also, see this version: Hollywood will get its greasy mitts on this soon and bring out an inferior rehash because people can’t manage bloody subtitles…it’s a Norwegian film set in Norway about Norwegian folklore, and as such this is the real deal.

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The Human Centipede 2

September 10th, 2011

It’s difficult to know what director Tom Six is going to pull out of the bag for The Human Centipede 2; so far, we have only stills of the protagonist…who certainly looks creepy. Creepy, then, but perhaps oddly familiar?

Why is he somehow familiar, then? He definitely is familiar but – how? From TV?

That sitcom! - Waiting for God! The priggish character, Jane! They’re devilish alike…

Ah, right so far! But – Heaven forfend – there’s more to it. There must have been a mate. Who was that mate?

It’s the funny clay businessman from the Tool video for Parabola! Problem solved, then. 90s non-funny UK sitcom + 00s prog metal promo video = upcoming banned horror protagonist, apparently. Who knew?

No wonder the BBFC put their foot down…

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Kuroneko (1968)

September 4th, 2011

In recent years, the Far East (particularly Japan and South Korea) has provided Western audiences with a previously-untapped wealth of folklore, culture and story-telling which quickly formed the bedrock of a new horror genre. Rue Morgue magazine coined the term ‘J-horror’: whatever you want to call it though, the opening of these floodgates meant that what was at first fresh and interesting soon became rather stale and formulaic, at least in part because we saw so much of it so quickly. But then, we were seeing a lot of second-rate derivative material – no film industry is immune to lazy opportunism – and we shouldn’t forget that when Far Eastern horror is good, it’s very good. Its popularity has probably also helped us gain access to otherwise-unknown gems such as Kaneto Shindô’s Kuroneko, a subtle and atmospheric ghost story.

The film takes place in the troubled Sengoku period in Japan’s history: during this time the country was in a constant state of flux and conflict, with rival daimyo (barons) seeking to extend their influence over one another. This led to a serious need for samurai, and young men – like Gintoki (Kitchiemon Nakamura) – being forcibly removed from their homes to go and fight. When Gitoki is taken, it leaves his mother Yone and his young wife Shige unprotected and alone. The women (in an understated but powerful sequence) are then raped and killed by a group of samurai.

The women – dying in a state of anger and fear, which modern audiences might recognise as a plot motif from The Grudge (2002) – return as vengeful revenants which seem to have no direct equivalent in Western folklore. They’re phantoms, but they exhibit vampiric behaviour too as they fulfil the conditions of their eternal life: they must kill samurai, and they do it by charming, seducing – and then draining the blood from their bodies. However, when Gintoki returns from war as a fully-fledged samurai, the female creatures reveal that they have human consciences too. They still love him, but he now belongs to a social class they exist to destroy. Gintoki himself has been charged by his daimyo with ridding the town of the murderous spirits who are murdering his best men. An encounter is therefore inevitable…

This is an immensely artistic piece of cinema, with atmosphere in abundance. From the archaic costumes and interiors (which reminded me in places of kabuki theatre) to the use of shadow, pitch-black darkness and transparent/opaque fabrics, this is a film in which every scene looks carefully constructed and balanced. The fact that it’s shot in black and white adds a starkness to the appearance of the film which works very well. The women themselves balance beauty and creepiness, appearing like demure dolls out of the groves but communicating purpose and menace with a simple look. There’s a depth to these characters too because they are ambiguous; despite being dangerous, they retain their human feelings and remind each other that they are obliged to act the way they do by a ‘contract’, something which causes Shige in particular great pain. Yet, they will defend themselves if challenged with a display of their supernatural power, and they dispatch samurai savagely. These aren’t simply two-dimensional villains. The arrival of Gintoki renders things more problematic for them, and drives the film towards a tragic conclusion.

Ultimately, this is what I found so affecting about Kuroneko: although this is a fantastical, theatrical piece of cinema, at its heart it’s a deeply sad story of war, alienation and loss. The fact of its being a supernatural yarn never detracts from that. Behind the – genuinely creepy – haunting there is context. With its blend of harsh imagery and tone with real aesthetic brilliance, I’ve never quite seen a film like Kuroneko. I will definitely be seeking out Onibaba, a film by the same director.

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The Dark Photography of Amanda Norman

August 7th, 2011

If you like your horror filled with jump-cuts, torture, torment and gore, then look no further…

No, really. This isn’t the place for you.

UK-based photographer Amanda Norman has something quite different in mind for her work, drawing her artistic inspiration from the more sumptuous, supernatural scares of classic horror cinema. “No one will forget the shadow of Nosferatu climbing the stairs,” Amanda explains of one of her favourite films: she prefers the aesthetics and atmosphere derived from “a sprinkling of smoke and good creepy locations like old Gothic mansions and creepy graveyards…modern horror is lacking that psychological fear of the unknown.  Good original classics are based on the unknown and that’s what I love most about them.”

A completely self-taught photographer, Amanda was clear from the beginning about the style she wished to work in, and she didn’t waste time cutting her teeth on material which she didn’t find interesting. “I don’t plan my shots either.  It just comes together, but in the back of my mind I’m always thinking of classic horror movies and sometimes I’m doing it without even realising.” One aspect of this can be found in Amanda’s ‘dark portraits’, portraiture which moves away from making the sitter look their pedestrian best, instead aiming to capture something more ghoulish in their appearance – sometimes people are portrayed as zombies, sometimes vampires and sometimes something else entirely…


The type of portrait which emerges, Amanda says, depends entirely on “how the lens sees the sitters: I try to make the sitting a fun experience by getting the model to relax and have a laugh at pulling horror faces.  The outcome is most definitely what the lens sees.  If a model requested to be a vampire, then I wouldn’t be able to achieve that.  It’s all about the model and the pose they make.”

The end results speak for themselves, but is there anyone Amanda would like as a subject for her portraits? “My first choice is Christopher Lee as I’ve admired him since being a young teenager and I used to fantasise so many times about him appearing beside my bed to turn me into a vampire.  I wonder if he would still have that charm now.” She adds, “Now of course, these were innocent fantasies!”

The Gothic good looks of Hammer Horror’s best years have had a formative influence on countless horror fans through time, Amanda included, and Amanda is clear about the ‘Gothic’ elements in her photography. Gothic can be a tricky concept to pin down, though, and means different things to different people. I asked her how she’d define the Gothic which she loves so much.


“When I think of Gothic, I’m thinking of the Victorian era, how they celebrated death with their fancy mourning jewellery, black lace, black horse drawn carriages and of course the elaborate stone work in the cemeteries.  I also love Gothic architecture,” she explains. Amanda’s ultimate Gothic image from her own work?  This great dark portrait of her daughter, Kerry:


In a horror scene saturated with remakes, rehashes and a refusal to leave much to the viewers’ imaginations, it’s little wonder that some fans are looking to older films and styles: Amanda Norman’s work captures that spirit, bringing us imagery which would be more at home in the cinema of Universal and Hammer. If you have a place in your heart for old-school scares – the haunted graveyards, the old dark houses, the dimly-lit landscapes – then Amanda has such sights to show you…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For more information:

 http://www.amandanorman.com

 http://www.gothicjewellerybox.com/shop 

http://www.classichorrorcampaign.com
 

Many thanks to Amanda Norman

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Red, White and Blue (2010)

July 9th, 2011

To attempt to deliver a linear plot synopsis of Simon Rumley’s Red, White and Blue (2010) would be to heavily misrepresent the film. To do it, you’d have to impose a regular viewing experience onto an irregular one, and to make this possible, you’d have to fill in a lot of gaps. Some of the information you’d offer may be surmised. You may even find your version of events doesn’t tally with the extrapolations made by others, even people watching the film at the same time as yourself.

I don’t say any of this to denigrate the film – far from it. Red, White and Blue is bold in its execution and its unusual format utterly drew me into its tragic course of events.

Bearing in mind, then, that I am rendering an unorthodox film down into an orthodox review, the basic plot of the film is this: Erica (Amanda Fuller), a rootless young woman, divides her time between no-strings fucking and undertaking crappy work to keep her rented room. She keeps people at a distance, and only reluctantly allows a near-neighbour called Nate (Noah Taylor) to fix her up with a job at a local hardware store. Although Erica is a cold character, we start to see evidence of an emotional life behind that facade, but before she and Nate can get beyond that, their lives collide with the life of Franki (Marc Senter), one of Erica’s previous one-night stands. The chaotic ties to the past which this illustrates throws each of the characters into turmoil – and turmoil is what this film specialises in.

That inescapable storminess is communicated first and foremost by the film’s structure: Red, White and Blue uses very short takes which move along rapidly, episodically. Sometimes future on-screen events mingle with current events – Erica is standing in her shower before we know she has arrived home; Erica is leaving an apartment before she has got what she went there for. This leads to a feeling of being whirled along, of events (literally) overtaking our characters. Days pass in a blur.

The snappy, episodic format leaves little time to ponder what motivates our characters here, but the interest they generate is intense. This is a credit to Rumley’s direction and writing; with deft moves which are only on-screen for a heartbeat, you see enough to be given evidence of a trait, and these traits hint at more going on in the background without simply describing it or spoon-feeding the audience.  In terms of focus, the film scans Erica, then Franki and finally Nate to reveal how the lives of these people are set on a collision course. Everything’s cut down to a bare minimum – and that includes dialogue – but you don’t feel that there is less of a story in this film, even though elements of it are withheld until the last scenes, and some are deliberately left out. Yet, even without spelling out the sort of detail you’d usually find in a narrative, none of our characters are represented as morally superior or inferior. They all variously act cruelly, but they are not by nature cruel. I’d even say that each of the main characters is sympathetic: we know that their worst excesses are driven by the pitiless indifference of the world they’ve known.

It’s not a flawless film: some of the later scenes began to look less distinctive, echoing a lot of other horror movies of recent years. However, these scenes do at least make us wonder what is permissible in order to defend honour, friendship and love. Stellar performances – especially from Taylor, as a timebomb with a sensitive side – against a background of lurid colour and an atmosphere of tremendous fever-heat makes Red, White and Blue an oppressive, and a deeply sad viewing experience. Vengeance isn’t pretty.

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The short films of Grzegorz Jonkajtys

June 23rd, 2011

If you’re someone who goes to a fair amount of film festivals, you’ll get to see a lot of high quality short films as well as feature-lengths; shorts often surpass features in terms of standards, demonstrating imagination and vision which can evidently get lost along the way to a more standard ninety minutes, so it is heartrending that so many of these films disappear without a trace. The decision to make your film public access on a site like Youtube must be a difficult one in many ways, but I am always glad when I track down a short film which I loved on the big screen One of these is The 3rd Letter, directed by Grzegorz Jonkajtys.

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere on this blog, the most frightening dystopian futures are, for me, the ones we recognise. Soylent Green is so effective because we know those overcrowded streets, understand the concept of wide-scale corruption and exploitation. The 3rd Letter (2010) takes an incredibly bleak future as its setting but it, too, is recognisable: it is a world of health and safety announcements and promises of ‘building a better future’.  It is a world of late bills, dreadful jobs, broken homes and the isolation of anonymity, but here, when you can’t get the voice recognition software on the end of the phone to understand your requests, you are in real danger of having the insurance policy which controls your pacemaker battery terminated.

Our protagonist, Jeffrey Brief (Rodrigo Lopresti) seems to be on the edge of his sanity throughout the short time we know him. He says little, but when he does speak he is on the brink of collapse. He interacts with no one face-to-face, except the thuggish landlord who comes for his overdue rent, and when he wants to speak to someone on the phone he is thwarted twice. With just little touches, Brief’s loneliness and state of mind come across, and the pathos in the film is not developed in tried-and-tested sentimental ways.

The ambiguity of the film’s ending is, for me, very affecting – and the overpowering musical score binds this nightmarish piece of film together well.

I understand that Jonkajtys works in visual effects, and has worked on blockbusters like Sin City (2005) and the brilliant Pan’s Labyrinth (2006). It is his work as a director which interests me most, though. A quick search of Youtube turned up some more short films: the 8 minute Arka (2007), an animated film, came as a complete surprise to me, although it plays with some of the same themes as The 3rd Letter does – with a male protagonist, similarly shut out from the world around him. The ending of the film was a clever sleight of hand – and again, deeply sad.

Oh, and don’t even think about trying to assuage that loneliness, either, as the earlier film Mantis (2002) demonstrates:

Jonkajtys may be successful in other aspects of his career, but I would love to see him do more directorial work. His spin on a cold, unwelcoming world-to-come is aesthetically pleasing and engaging: by doing comparatively little, he manages to craft effective stories and characters. Would this translate as well in a feature film? That I cannot say, as not all directors can keep intact what makes their short films so good when they make that leap but, without doubt, his short films deserve to be seen more widely and not to languish in the ‘where are they now?’ category. All these films are compelling cautionary notes from a future we know already, and they’re really rather beautiful.

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The Nebulous Nanny State: the BBFC and The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence)

June 18th, 2011

“Whilst respondents had very mixed ideas about film classification they agreed with two key principles; that films should continue to be classified and that there should be no censorship of film in a free and democratic society. In short, there was a great deal of support for the premise that adults should be free to choose their own entertainment, providing it is legal.”

(BBFC Guidelines, last updated June 2010, p. 38)

“After careful consideration, it was judged that to issue a certificate to THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE 2 (FULL SEQUENCE), even if statutorily confined to adults, would involve risk of harm within the terms of the VRA [Video Recordings Act, 1984], would be inconsistent with our Guidelines, would be unacceptable to the public and could be in potential breach of UK law.”

(BBFC Statement regarding the denial of certification for The Human Centipede 2, last updated June 2011).

Spot the difference? The self-same (independent, non government-affiliated) organisation whose own consumer research supported anti-censorship in film intended for over-18s has…just effectively banned a film intended for over-18s. The only inconsistency with BBFC Guidelines I’m seeing here is coming from within the organisation. Within the space of one year, the BBFC has performed an about-face, and – as anyone following the debacle surrounding A Serbian Film will be aware – it’s starting to look worryingly as if they’re trying to flex their muscles again.

Not only has the BBFC disregarded its own research, but its own Mission Statement too: that is, its responsibility for “classification of the moving image into advisory and age-related categories” and to “give the public information that empowers them to make appropriate viewing decisions for themselves.” When it comes to horror cinema or cinema otherwise tailored towards an adult audience, the BBFC self-declare that one of their key aims is to “respond to changing social attitudes”.

Responding to changing social attitudes? Fat chance, even when popular opinion seems to be largely against their decisions to maul or reject films. A mere handful of complaints from residents in the London borough of Westminster prior to the FrightFest showing of A Serbian Film notwithstanding (complaints from people who themselves couldn’t have seen the film and didn’t have to go and see the film, lest we forget), people plain do not wish to have their viewing choices prescribed for them. As some of the respondents in their Guidelines say, we do not live in a ‘Nanny state’ and in any case, the potential to access material online makes such action seem redundant anyway.

So why do it? A cynic might suggest that so close to the centenary of the organisation, the BBFC are just as vulnerable to attention-seeking as the HC2 director Tom Six is alleged to be. After the glory days of their influence post-Video Recordings Act in 1984, and their gradual reconsiderations on practically all the films they once deemed to be ‘harmful’, they have, by and large and for some years, stuck to their Mission Statement: detailing the content of films and allotting an age-relevant advisory certificate. Now things are changing, and the reasoning behind this is, by being so nebulous, very difficult to dissect.

The justification given in their statement about the ban on HC2 gives a vague nod to the film being ‘in potential breach of UK law’ (emphasis mine). Why aren’t they certain, since this colours their decision-making in such a concrete way? Quite simply, it’s because the law they have in mind – the only law they could have in mind, according to their website – is itself vague. The Obscene Publications Act, originally instituted during the Victorian era to destroy a burgeoning printed pornography industry, was last updated in the 1960s, and hangs on in there, the last resort of any public figure or body with enough clout (and imagination) to implement it. It concerns itself with banning anything deemed “obscene”. If that word in itself wasn’t woolly enough, it, ahem, clarifies that by explaining that ‘obscene’ relates to anything which could “deprave or corrupt”, and this in turn means whatever could ‘make morally bad’ a “significant proportion” of those who came into contact with whatever-it-was. The novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover fell foul of this Act – you can now pick it up in any bookshop in the country and wonder at what the hell all the fuss was about.

Let’s break it down, then. A film has been banned because it might potentially be in breach of a law which deals in debatable abstractions, but ultimately only holds fast if it can be shown that a “significant proportion” of the audience (i.e. consenting adults) could be “morally worsened” by their experience? Basically the BBFC, if they chose to do so, could pass this film with an 18 certificate because there is no way on earth that such a hazy, outdated law with its foundations so firmly built on sand could ever stand up to scrutiny. It could as easily be applied to other horror films – as an example, the Saw franchise which the BBFC dealt with in a sensible manner – but it was not. And after all, the BBFC has no responsibilty for the guardianship of the morals of adults: they said so themselves. Not even the outraged babblings of the Daily Mail could make it so.

Ultimately, if an adult is influenced by something as simple as a film to re-enact what they see on screen, then their problems already exist, and go far beyond the remit of the BBFC. The rest of us know that horror films will contain horror, and although I think we would all support the BBFC’s work in certificating a film which reserves it for adults, beyond that lies only interference and what-ifs. If the BBFC begins to belie its own aims in order to ban or heavily censor material, perhaps to remind us all that they can, then they ought to remember that these are not the days of the Video Nasties. Films will be driven online, uncertificated, and their wish to provide age-appropriate guidelines to the viewing public will be steadily undermined. I would strongly advise the BBFC to stick more readily to its own current principles and the consensus of its respondents, before fretting over the impractical application of an anachronistic law.

Let’s remember, though, that the BBFC cannot stop films being shown if local councils decide to ignore them. Even the local councils and the BBFC combined cannot stop free showings of films by invitation, either, as happened with A Serbian Film at Riverdance. Perhaps Human Centipede 2 could be shown at festivals by invite for a small donation? Either way, the viewing public must not allow a regression to the spectacular BBFC mismanagements of the 1980s. We’ve moved on.

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