150 Days of Halloween: Insidious

Falling a bit behind, and that's because my insomnia is pretty bad this week. Haven't slept much at all really, and its eating away at me. So tonight I will only review Insidious, and tomorrow I will double review to catch up. This may end up a bit short, which is a shame really, because the movie is beyond excellent, but sleep has to be my primary concern today.

Insidious is the ghost movie to end all ghost movies. It does everything right and better then its been done before, its incredible. Music sets you up and then just leaves you all alone, primed for the scares. Things slink around out of focus in the backgrounds, sounds whisper in your ears, and whenever things get dark the movie pulls you in as you lean on the edge of your chair. It has been years since a movie has actually made me feel dread and horror, to actually increase my heart rate. Its that well done.

Now to try and not spoil the scares via images!

The movie even cuts my normal haunting movie complain off at the pass. Traditionally I enjoy haunting movies, but moan and yell at the people in the house. Just move already! Get a new house and let the real estate company worry about it. The family in this movie does that in the first act, they aren't your typical horror movie protagonists. This movie isn't driven by bad decisions that the plot needs characters to make! This is practically unheard of in the haunted house section of the horror world.

I will give you an ever so brief idea of the plot, because if you like horror in anyway, then you owe it to yourself to see Insidious unspoiled, alone, and in the dark. Headphones makes it an even more imposing experience, so it gets a vote for that as well. Before the movie even gets started the opening credits manage to provide a creepy and foreboding entrance to the experience, something I always appreciate in a good movie. Set the tone before you even start the show.

The only Google Image of him that doesn't spoil a scare. Enjoy the armchair.

We open with a family moving into a new house, looking for a fresh start and a space that will inspire them and make them happy. They settle in, getting used to the new house, and life resumes save for a few strange occurrences that everyone writes off. Until one of the children falls and hits his head, and the next morning is in a mysterious coma. Then the dread really begins to mount, and the movie makes excellent strides in these moments, making the first half of the film near flawless in tension building and scares.

They, as I said, soon move to avoid the horrors of the house they fear to be haunted. They soon learn however, that the house isn't haunted. Their comatose son is, and unspeakable things are trying to use him as a means of accessing the world of the living. The second half of the movie still nails the mounting dread of the film and the fear of what could be around any corner, but does drop off some from the excellent first half. They couldn't hold that high forever, and needed to drive the story somewhere, so its understandable in a way. Little can compare to that first hour of the film.

The best child actors are the ones in comas.

Despite the dip for the second half, its still a great time and expands the world built up in the first, and while some may not like the direction of the second half, I absolutely loved it. It helps that the things they go into absolutely fascinate me, the nature of dreams and out of body experiences. The very climax of the film almost feels like some horror version of an intense car chase, as we are thrust into a completely new setting with no certainty and a very dire time limit.

If you are fascinated by ghost stories and love the feeling of creeping doom, then see Insidious. It drips with foreboding atmosphere and manages to evoke the most chilling nightmare in its best moments. Its a proud addition to the horror genre, and shows that you don't need a shaking camera or buckets of gore to tell a truly frightening story. Which is ironic in a way, as it was made by people involved in Saw and Paranormal Activity.

Good, now you won't be ready for when things freak you out.

As always, please check out The 150 Days of Halloween for the full schedule and for links to past reviews. Coming up we have The Blair Witch Project which I haven't seen it was in theaters, so that will be a bit of a time warp. Now to get some sleep and try my best to resist the siren call that is Steam's Summer Camp event.

150 Days of Halloween: Hour of the Wolf and The Howling

At first glance these two titles seem to imply a double review of werewolf movies, but you would be wrong! One is a surrealist introspection in personal demons, and the other is... about werewolves. So one of them is about werewolves, so what! I will also briefly talk on Cars 2, the Pixar movie the internet loves to hate right now, while forgetting that, "comparable to a Dreamworks outing," doesn't mean a 40% rating. Anyway, onward to our first movie. These may be short, as I have only slept a very little these past few days and have been fairly busy. Hence the double review! Kill me!

Hour of the Wolf is a strange experience, lets get that out of the way now. Unlike in your namby pamby Hollywood ventures, this movie won't ruin the fun and come out and tell you who is crazy, who is real, and who is a vicious externalization of ones inner most demons. It makes for a rather interesting viewing experience.

The movie is presented as a true account, the movie opens with the sounds of a camera crew setting up over black, and eventually cuts to a woman recounting an experience while directly addressing the camera. The fourth wall, thusly obliterated, will no longer be around to help you when a character decides to peer directly at you, despite being in the retelling portion of the film. You are on your own.

I know. I told you it was weird.

The story recounted is that of a wife regarding her husband. He is a tortured artist, plagued by an insomnia I can relate to and hounded by strange persons who may or may not represent his own inner shames and hatreds. That last part I worry about relating to one day. His wife, meanwhile, wants to be by his side through these times, staying awake with him when he can't sleep, and often reminding the viewer that couples who grow old together grow to act and look alike. This foreshadowing can get a bit heavy handed at times, seeing as how she manages to mention it several times.

As the story progresses, so too does the look into this mans slipping grasp on reality. At the open of the film, we are told of these people that haunt him so, he shows his wife drawings of them even, though we are never privileged to see those pieces. Interestingly, we never get a direct look at his finished works, only glimpses of whatever is under his arm or half finished in the background. Soon enough though, they begin to hound him in earnest for us to see, never really sure if they are real or not at this juncture.

No wonder he sees things. Stop that!

This becomes increasingly disconcerting as the encounters become more unhinged and violent, with our tormented artist murdering a child he believes is one of the demons. We, like his wife, have no idea if this was murder, or a violent episode of his degrading mind. It makes for a very effective exercise in mounting dread. Never being sure if the events are actually transpiring or not, who is actually being harmed. The images of the placid island go from beautiful to isolated and foreboding as we watch things decline.

Its not for everyone, certainly, but its an interesting peek into madness and self loathing. If one stops to consider the movie carefully, each character encountered can fit nicely into some aspect of the husbands past and mind. Budding sexuality and curiosity, despair, pompous artistic integrity, and many more. Each one is reacted to in a different way, each a shard of a broken mirror cascaded on the floor.

"Shit, I dropped a contact up here."

If you like Ingmar Bergman, then you would of course like this movie, plus have the added interest in how this relates to the director. If you don't mind surreal and disturbed portraits of mankind, then give it a go. If you prefer a nice linear plot with clear motivations and outcomes, then like Picnic at Hanging Rock, you may want to pass on this. Though you are missing out if you do. Now for our second movie.

Ah, the werewolf myth. The classic tale of man's inner animal, the evil we try to mask through society. Every culture has a myth like it, from skin-walkers to the classic shape-shifters, its one of out oldest legends regardless of where you are. Its natural story fodder, being a part of the collective unconscious as it is, and thus you can find countless movies about it. Such as The Howling!

I too fear large walls of paper.

The Howling is a bit heavy handed at times regarding the nature of the myth, with characters constantly mentioning the inner animal. That's fine though, this isn't exactly an exorcize in subtly here. Its just a good old romp with monsters eating people, and we shouldn't fault it for going through the trouble of adding some story. Even if it drops various threads along the way.

Initially the movie is about a reporter hunting down a serial killer who eats parts of his victims. This of course draws parallels to cult like behavior and the werewolf myth, as well as a clever little moment where someone mentions our societies fixation with violence. Something that was constantly in the news when 80's horror films like this were the big societal scapegoat, after comics got de-fanged. The serial killer is the focus, and with his body vanishing from the morgue, its assumed his werewolf self would play a major role.

Suddenly the sex scene is awkward for everyone.

Well, the writers disagree, and instead we get a whole colony of werewolves! The colony that our poor reporter is sent to as a way of recovering from her PTSD after her encounter with the killer. So, while our serial killer drops from the limelight and is officially the first werewolf to die, that's alright since we have about 15 more to work with. Its a fun, entertaining werewolf story. It sets up more plot threads and themes then its able to actually address in anyway, but that doesn't stop it from being a good old 80's horror experience. Sometimes that's all someone wants. The plot turns are expected, but no less exciting, and we have plenty of hammy actors having fun with the roles. Oh, and the director was Joe Dante, who you may recall from earlier in the list with The Hole. So good times all around.

While this certainly isn't the best werewolf experience, that comes much later in my schedule, it certainly does have some damn good effects for the time and budget. Making liberal use of air bladders under foamed latex appliances, skin bubbles and crawls all over the place. Skin rips open, bones snap and warp, and everything is visceral and immediate. Few cuts, and some clever use of time shifts make for some very nice transformation scenes. Although some of the puppet work once they finish transforming makes it look like an aggressive Muppet doesn't understand how hugs work at times. For me, this is less a detracting from the experience, and more a happy perk. Something to laugh at besides the useless female lead hugging the silver bullet loaded rifle as opposed to firing it.

Aw, look! Hes happy!

If you enjoy campy, bloody, and oft times goofy horror, then watch it already. Its a good time, and a great choice come Halloween. It manages to evoke a tense and creepy atmosphere at times, but also breaks its own spell with hammy goodness enough to keep it a good party movie. Well worth watching alone or with friends.

"Hugging! HOW DO I DO IT?!"

Only 4am and here I am wrapping this up! I may not die today! Well, tomorrow, which is today, is another day, despite really being today. That means another movie! The Howling eased us out of our older movie streak, and tomorrow's The Loved Ones firmly returns us to modern horror for awhile. After that is Insidious, which made lots of waves this past year at festivals and among horror bloggers. So I'm looking forward to the next two days for sure.

As always, check out the full 150 Days of Halloween schedule for future movie dates and previous review links. Hope you didn't mind the slightly delirious tones these revie-OH! Almost forgot about Cars 2!

Cars 2 - A danger to our children?

The internet angry men who review movies have gone feral and now foam at the mouth over how bad Cars 2 is. Lamenting the lack of emotion or soul that we have come to expect from Pixar. They rant about having the redneck tow truck as the focus point, and that its too James Bond, with enemy cars dying left and right. They then give it abysmal ratings, but not before saying its on par with Dreamwork's movies.

That last bit is what annoys me. They give Cars 2 a 30% or a 40% which is a pretty abysmal score, but the average Dreamworks outing in mediocrity gets a 60% or 70% instead. I can promise you that Cars 2 is disappointing when held up to previous Pixar movies, but when you hold it up to Megamind, or Mars Needs Moms, or so many other movies that scored better, Cars 2 is the clear winner. People are skewing the score board HARD for Cars 2, making what is an average movie out to look like some kind of abomination. It's not, its just average. Hell, its slightly above average considering the talent involved.

See it for this short. DO IT.

It's fun for kids, and if you just want to watch some James Bond knock offs that are living cars blow shit up, then hell, your in for a good time. If you want to be emotionally moved in some way, re-watch any other Pixar movie. They didn't hit a home run, doesn't mean we need to beat them to death with the bat for it.

Really done now. No, I won't proof read it at 4:30am. Suffer grammar nazi's!

150 Days of Halloween: Picnic at Hanging Rock

First, an unrelated announcement. For those of you who are on Steam and were curious as to what Capsized is like, I reviewed that sucker over on Nightmare Mode. Spoilers: I liked it. Check at the review here if you are interested.

Beautiful game.

If you don't like movies being spoiled, then don't read any further then this. The movie is a strange one, and nothing is clearly offered up to the viewer. For this reason, speculating on its meaning and events requires I reveal aspects of the movie, including its ending. If you don't mind, then read on, otherwise see the movie first. Its a strange one, and doesn't follow many conventions we expect in a movie. This is less a review and more my open musings on the movie, what it meant to me and what i thought of various decisions it made.

A bit of plot for you before I dive into the surreal movie that is Picnic at Hanging Rock. The movie follows the students of an all girls school in Australia in the 1900's. At the open everyone is getting ready for a picnic at the titular mountain, save for one girl who is told she isn't permitted to attend. So everyone piles into the carriage and they head off to for the day. When they arrive everyone discovers their watches have stopped at noon, but their musing are cut short by four girls who ask to strike out to see the mountain better. As the four climb higher they become more and more detached, save for one complaining girl who wants to go back. The higher they go, the more dreamily they talk about life and human purpose, removing stocking, shoes, and corsets as they go. At one point they all silently lay down on the stone to nap in unison, and upon waking three silently climb higher, and the fourth runs off screaming.

Also Beautiful, but a movie.

The screaming girl returns, but can't remember where the other three went, but remembers seeing one of the teachers climbing the mountain as well, but she wasn't wearing her dress anymore. Unable to find them, they return to the school to alert everyone of the missing girls, and the manhunt begins. Among the searchers is a British boy who saw the girls head off to climb the mountain, and becomes obsessed with finding one of them, much to the annoyance of his Australian friend and servant who helps him. The boy is unable to locate any of them, being unable to climb high enough, but his servant isn't as hampered and does manage to locate one girl just above where his friends strength gave out.

The girl, of course, remembers nothing. The school meanwhile is losing students due to the incident and things begin to fall apart. I'll discuss the rest of the movie after we talk about the tone, ending, and story.

A unified nap among lizards and stones.

Picnic at Hanging Rock is a strange movie. Generally speaking horror movies have active antagonists, a man with a knife, ghosts, monsters, aliens, and all other manner of dynamic forces seeking to harm the protagonists. A smaller amount make the protagonist into an antagonist, who, through madness or bad choices manage to drive the horror. This movie lacks both of these aspects, its unclear why the events happen as they do, and little explanation is ever offered up.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing either, although for some viewers this can be frustrating, some would even feel its pointless. Some people don't like a lack of closure, and without a proper ending, will often feel the movie was a waste. For me, however, that's not the case. I'm more about the journey then the destination, stories don't necessarily need resolution for me, which may be why I enjoyed this movie.

Never seen such a haunting movie.

The journey of this movie is a study of unease. Sounds are prominently used to un-center the viewer, clocks ticking and then stopping, strange and otherworldly sounds echo down the mountain side, and sometimes the pleasant soundtrack will just abandon you. The characters who will come to vanish in the mountains each have strange moments, of low spoken monologues about the nature of the mountain, wistfully talking about someday leaving, and other moments that displace them from the cheerful classmates around them.

The cheerful, and not so cheerful classmates at times appear to be the true story being told despite the focus being on the search for the missing girls. If you ignore the surreal moments atop the mountain, the real conflict being explored is classicism in 1900 Australia. Everyone is treated well at the all girls school save for one, notably the only Australian girl among a school full of British students and instructors. Besides her friends and one teacher, who is French, the girl is looked down upon and denied a chance to join her friends on the picnic. After her best friend vanishes on the mountain, she gets no consolation or comfort besides being told her tuition wasn't paid, and she is to be returned to the orphanage.

The poor Australian girl trapped in an English hell.

On the other end of the classicism spectrum we have all of these posh British people in the outbacks of Australia. They build homes that stand out in stark relief in the environment, they explore the mountain sides in corsets and proper dresses, they are like a well dressed infestation on the wilds of Australia. It seems as if the country itself was driving events of the movie, the British boy couldn't climb high enough to find the girl, but his Australian friend did. The girl who ran screaming complained the whole way, and the one girl who didn't remain vanished but was found remarkably unharmed after a week in the wild is the only one who expressed concern for the complainer. The other three, and the teacher, were all seen as having reverence for the mountain in some way, and were seen stripping themselves of class before silently vanishing into the mountain.

Back at the school, the poor Australian girl is tormented by everyone but the servants and the French teacher, no one having any pity for her. The girl who returned from the mountain is accosted by her peers who demand to know what happened to their classmates, she has been tainted in their eyes. This ostracizing of the Australian girl would drive her to suicide, unable to take being confined in the small bubble of upper class Britain. As the school falls apart in her hands, the head of the school would later die attempting to climb the mountain that ruined her, she would be found dead and broken at its base.

The man who fails to find the girls or tame the land.

The missing people are never found, not even signs of where they went, no explanation is ever offered up to us or the people of the movie. My speculations are just that, my own interpretations into the movie, largely informed by assumptions I have on Australian feelings toward a colonial England. The movie is beautifully shot and well acted, and many scenes seem pregnant with meaning that I'm not aware of. I'm still not sure what the movie is about, or what it was trying to say. I enjoyed it, certainly, but I also feel like I need someone who is more knowledgeable in the location and time period to explain it to me. I would certainly encourage you to see it, if only so you can also muse on what you have seen.

Tomorrow we return to Sweden, but in 1968 and directed by the esteemed Ingmar Bergman. Hour of the Wolf is notable for being the auteurs only venture into Gothic horror. If you want to know what comes after that, or want to read previous reviews, then check out The 150 Days of Halloween schedule.