Jigsaw (2017)

OCTOBER 25, 2017

GENRE: SERIAL KILLER, SURVIVAL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (PREMIERE SCREENING)

Not for nothing, but when I asked anyone who'd listen (OK, let's be honest: I just complained on Twitter) to make another Saw movie, I thought it was understood that I wanted one that resolved Hoffman's fate, showed how Gordon would carry on the legacy, etc. Indeed, the original title for Jigsaw was "Saw: Legacy", which seemed to point in that general direction, though I knew it would likely be more accessible to new fans given the seven year gap since the last one (in fact, the time between the original Saw and its "Final Chapter" was less than the time in between it and this next installment). A blend of easy to follow continuity payoffs and a standalone story would seem to be the best way to go if they wanted to revive the series while also satisfying the fans who wanted it in the first place, right? Alas, they leaned very heavily toward the "standalone" part of the formula, offering a decent enough entry with regards to "A bunch of people in traps get killed while the cops solve a mystery" sort of stuff, but a crushing disappointment when it comes to how it fits in the overall story.

Note that I will be getting into spoilers later in the review, but for now I'm only going to talk about the basic plot. I'll warn you again when the real spoiler-y stuff comes up.

As we all learned in the trailer, a new game has seemingly started, and it all points to being the work of Jigsaw. But they tell us he's been dead for ten years, and everyone has modern cell phones and such, so we're dealing with a present day story as opposed to one that picks up right where the last one left off, which has always been the series' forte. We're also dealing with an entirely new cast of characters - the first time since the original Saw that every single person on-screen was a stranger to us, as opposed to a returning favorite or ongoing sub-villain like Amanda or Hoffman. Again, I knew it wouldn't be super continuity-heavy, but I was legitimately stunned at how disconnected everything was from the ongoing saga, to the extent that when they actually do mention another character (Jill, to be exact) I felt like cheering. Not keeping up with the later entries or having an iron-clad memory of their revelations is one thing - this movie doesn't require you to have seen any of the films at all, even the original. As long as you understand the basic idea (a guy named John "Jigsaw" Kramer places flawed/bad people in death traps and tasks them with earning back the life they've wasted) you're as caught up as you need to be; even the mention of Jill won't confuse anyone - the entire reference is something like "Jill Tuck - you know, Jigsaw's wife? Her family owns this place."

"This place", by the way, is a farm that is housing the current game. It's part of what is actually one of my favorite things about the movie - it's the most visually distinct entry in the series, as it has a number of exterior scenes (always a rarity in these films; some of them never step outside at all), and rarely lets its characters wander around grimy dungeons. The barn setting also allows for different kinds of weapons/tools for the traps - such as two characters who are trapped in a silo that is rapidly filling up with grain, and then things like hoes and metal rakes are dropped on them for good measure. It's also got one of the more nerve-wracking traps in the series: a sort of razor sharp spiral that our victim is being lowered through in order to get the key to his escape, forcing him to refrain from the slightest bit of shifting or else he'd get sliced apart. All this stuff works well; it's very reminiscent of Saw V (their first trap is so similar looking that I thought it might end up being a point of some sort), but the new setting and less hateful characters make it an easier sell. And they're not as self-serving, either - when one person figures out how to bypass the first trap (with shockingly little harm required), she runs around trying to help the others succeed as well, rather than just leave them to rot as some of her trapped predecessors might have done in the past.

As for the other plot, we are introduced to a cop named Halloran (Callum Keith Rennie), a sort of "breaks the rules to get the job done" kind of guy not unlike Erik Matthews, who gets involved early on and shortly thereafter is alerted to a body that seems to be the first victim of the game that's under way inside the barn. The thing is, the body that has evidence on it suggesting that John Kramer is the killer - but he's dead (right?), so Halloran starts trying to figure out who the real killer is. For reasons that escape me, he instantly zeroes in on Logan, the coroner who inspected the body - I assume the thinking was that Logan lied/faked evidence to pin it on Kramer in order to cover his tracks, but that's never actually suggested aloud. Halloran just instantly suspects the guy and his partner Eleanor (Hannah Emily Anderson), with her being under suspicion because it turns out she's a fan of Jigsaw's work. It's one of those things that inorganically happens in movies, where they just need to get to that point and they skip over any meaningful logical path to get there. Anyway, the movie more or less unfolds like all the others, cutting back and forth between the cop-driven mystery and the game that's slowly but surely killing off the cast members, building toward the point where they converge and we get a twist.

If you grew weary of the series' increasingly complicated mythology, and/or bailed before the "final" entry, but enjoyed the general idea, then you're the ideal mark for this particular installment. It's basically a greatest hits album in movie form, taking ideas from the other entries (I, II, and V mostly) and offering them up in rapid succession to maximize the audience's potential for enjoyment. But like a greatest hits album, it lacks the soul that makes that band's actual albums so essential - the movie doesn't really offer anything we haven't seen before on a narrative level. Sure, the "There's blood under the fingernails that matches John Kramer" kind of stuff is interesting, as we've never really seen how this world moved on from Jigsaw as an ongoing threat (as Hoffman and co. kept his games running without pause), but who could possibly believe that Kramer really might be alive? Saw IV's opening was seemingly designed to beat us over the head with the idea that he was definitely not faking his death, so barring some sort of supernatural hooey (or worse, a twin brother) we know it's not that simple and that someone is pulling the strings in his name.

This is where the film's insistence on being a coherent entry point for newcomers sort of handicaps it, as the film only has so many suspects and we can't count on any of our old pals to be involved. I was hoping for something along the lines of Curse of Chucky, where it seemed like a soft reboot for a while only to reveal its ties at the top of the third act, allowing the likes of Hoffman or Gordon to enter the picture (given the film's secretive shoot and the fact that we were the first audience to see it as they didn't do public test screenings, anything was possible), but after a while it became clear that they really did not want to risk alienating anyone by requiring them to... uh, be Saw fans. And if you know how these movies work, you can probably figure out what's really going on long before it's spelled out, and even if you don't it likely won't really shock you when they do. In the earlier entries, I was almost never able to get ahead of the characters, but here I just kept waiting for them to get on with what I already suspected (and then confirmed, albeit in a slightly different manner at least). I mean, it's not the film was bad or poorly made or anything, but after seven years, I just feel they could have come up with something better than this. It's just too safe.

And now we're gonna get into spoilers, so back out now if you don't want the twist ruined for you! You've already gotten more than you need to know to decide if you want to check the film or not, so the rest of the review is specifically for those who are just curious, or have already seen the film and want my take on it!

I'm warning you!!!

OK now that it's just us, let's talk about how the twist not only makes zero sense in the context of the film, but also how the big reveal bites off more than it can chew with regards to the series. At a certain point near the end of the farm-set game, with only two players left, a Pigman enters the scene and fiddles with some shit, then takes off the mask/hood to reveal... John Kramer! Alive and well, and giving the audience reason to let out a big cheer. Again, this is not a supernaturally based series, and even they can't be so dumb as to pull some twin brother shit (they almost seem to be trying to get us to think that, with the minor reveal that John has a nephew), so anyone with a good sense of these things would probably understand right away that this game has been set in the past, seemingly even before the one we saw in Saw II (with Tobin Bell having naturally aged nearly ten years since, it's hard to tell based on his appearance where in the timeline it might be, which was usually how we could more or less place the flashback scenes in the overall chronology). But wait, how can Halloran and Logan be finding their bodies in the present day (established beyond a shadow of a doubt) if this game is at least ten years old? Wouldn't the corpses be pretty rotted out by now?

Turns out, the corpses that are being found in the present day are just more or less freshly killed "stunt doubles" for the original victims in the barn. When the bodies are found, they're all mangled up, so the viewer doesn't notice anything is different and goes along with it just fine. But here's the problem: no one is monitoring the game, and therefore no one involved with finding/inspecting these bodies has any idea of what the original victims looked like (as those original bodies are still just collecting maggots and dust in the barn). So it's basically a cheat for no other reason than to trick the audience, whereas the best twists in the other films always made sense for our characters as well. The closest exception would be Saw IV's reveal that it was taking place at the same time as III, but that wasn't something that any character would have a reason to comment on, and best as I can recall there was never an attempt to make us really believe otherwise - it was just a "hiding in plain sight" thing that didn't really have much of a bearing on anything. When the characters are setting complicated plans in motion for no other reason than to trick the folks on the other side of the fourth wall, I can't help but bristle a bit (another example would be The Village, where the characters inexplicably didn't have medicine on hand for their children, despite the fact that they would have no reason to believe medicine wasn't a thing that existed "yet"), and I expect better out of these movies.

Anyway, by now we know that Logan is yet another one of Jigsaw's apprentices, and has been engineering all this stuff in the present to ensnare Halloran the dirty cop (they really blew it by killing off the series' longtime coroner in Saw 3D - if HE turned out to be one of Jigsaw's guys, it have been a fun little ret-con, plus given the film a much-needed tie to the others). Even if you ignore the idea that Jigsaw had yet another person helping him out (he apparently helped to create the first bear trap, if I'm following one climactic scene properly), there's still the question of what exactly he's been doing all this time. We've seen Gordon, Amanda, or Hoffman setting up pretty much every other trap in the series thanks to the various flashbacks along the way, so what exactly Logan brought to the tabel is a mystery, as is why he apparently waited ten years to spring into action and take down this cop that he had a vendetta against. Yes, I know Jigsaw II: Saw IX can answer these things, but that's a bit presumptuous for an attempted revival of a series that only stopped in the first place because of dwindling grosses. If you're going to rewrite history once again, you gotta shine a light NOW on how some of it changed what we already knew, while leaving a few things left open for the next film. This might be part of the problem with having an entirely new creative team (this is the first time in the series that neither Leigh Whannell nor Dunstan/Melton had any involvement with the script), because those guys could plant things in one movie to answer later, knowing how it would work, but that's not an option here. Hell they don't even answer the questions we still had (i.e. is Hoffman alive?), let alone find a way to successfully meld their own reveals with the others.

The word I keep coming back to is "lackluster". It's not a bad movie, really - I just can't see anyone being excited by it, fan or not. Besides the spiral slicer the new traps aren't really all that memorable, the twist is equally obvious and overly complicated (Logan explaining the dummy bodies is possibly the clunkiest exposition this series has ever offered), and I just spent too much of the movie thinking "is this it?". Not the entire time, mind you; I got real excited when the (really kick-ass!) new version of the main theme kicked in (Charlie Clouser joins editor Kevin Greutert as pretty much the only holdovers from the other films, besides the producing team), and it was fun to be back in this world for a while. But once the novelty of "Yay! A new SAW!" wore off, I found myself less and less invested in the film's storyline, ultimately just kind of waiting for it the obvious twist out of the way in optimistic hope that there would be another that was more worthy of the series and more satisfying to the hardcore fans that live for the silly ret-cons. Alas, that better twist never came; the movie ends exactly like Saw V (albeit with a new tagline) and sitting through the whole end credits will only tell you what its MPAA registration number is. As a revival attempt, it's as safe as you might expect - but this is a series that lived by its surprises and ability to trick its fans, so when it fails to do that, what's the point of it even being a Saw?

What say you?

P.S. Despite the ads having a more playful vibe, the film isn't really any more "fun" than the others, and one of the victims' backstory involves rolling over on a newborn in the same bed and suffocating it, which might be the most upsetting thing in the entire series. Just fair warning in case you thought this might be less grim than the others.

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Leatherface (2017)

OCTOBER 23, 2017

GENRE: SURVIVAL, THRILLER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

When I realized I would be out of town when Leatherface screened at Screamfest, I was devastated, as I pride myself on my occasionally preternatural ability to see the franchise films in theaters even if they're being cast to VOD (have YOU seen all six Wrong Turn movies on the big screen?). However I was misinformed, and this past weekend the film was indeed released theatrically - only twice a day at an expensive theater I haven't been to in years, but still. I hadn't heard anything good about the film and had its "twist" spoiled for me already, but I had to see for myself and keep my streak going - the only film in the Texas Chainsaw series I haven't seen theatrically is that terrible one with Matthew McConaughey, and I'm perfectly fine with letting that stand (though, I know me a bit too well, and I'm sure if it showed at the New Beverly or whatever I'd sigh and buy a ticket).

As it turns out, it's really not that bad of a film - it just has no business passing itself off as a sequel (or prequel, I guess - let's just go with "installment") in a long running series. Apparently learning no lessons whatsoever from the unsuccessful, not well-loved The Beginning from 2006, we have another prequel designed to tell us how Leatherface came to be a guy with a chainsaw and a mask made of human skin, as if there was any need to know this. Maybe Leatherface was awesome because we didn't know anything about him? Has one single "horror hero" series benefited from filling in its villain's backstory? Pinhead, Michael Myers, and Freddy were all but destroyed when they started getting too much into their "origins", forcing reboots to the series (or, in Pinhead's case, such a lack of further interest that it went direct to video), so why they thought Leatherface would be any different is beyond me. When it's someone like John "Jigsaw" Kramer, the mythology is part of the fun of the series anyway, so it works - there is no mythology to speak of in this particular series.

My article for BMD this week gets into this a bit more if you'd like to check it out, but the long and short of it is that this series is too much of a mess for a prequel to have any weight to it. Say what you will about the Star Wars prequels, but there is some value in seeing how Darth Vader went from an innocent boy to the dark side - because he redeemed himself at the end of Return of the Jedi, thus restoring the humanity we had never seen before. Likewise, Obi-Wan dies halfway through his first movie, so it was nice to see him actually doing the things that made him such a legend. Not every decision they made worked (cough, Boba, cough) and yes the overall quality was much lower than the original trilogy, but functionally it made sense to try. That is so not the case with this series, as Leatherface has had no consistency as a character - his look changes drastically, his family members rotate every time, etc. It's possible that someone might watch this movie without even knowing which film its prequelizing (the name they give him - Jedediah - was also used for one of the family members in the Platinum Dunes films), which is a pretty big problem.

For those unaware, it's from some of the same producers as 2013's Texas Chainsaw 3D, and thus it's tied to that film as well as the 1974 original, making it the first time in this eight-film series that three films were in one timeline (part 3 ignored 2, part 4 ignored 2 and 3, the two Dunes films are on their own, etc.). So now the chronological "canon", for lack of a better word, is Leatherface > TCM '74 > Chainsaw 3D, with the other films no longer existing as far as anyone behind these entries is concerned. However, while Chainsaw 3D made some decent effort to truly tie it into the events of Hooper's film, even going so far as use footage from it as padding for an intro set the next day, this one doesn't go to those lengths, making it feel more stand-alone than any prequel should. And the ties are pretty flimsy - Stephen Dorff's character is the father of the sheriff we met in Chainsaw 3D, for example, and we get some insight as to how the Carson family ended up with the Sawyers. You'd think they'd follow 3D's lead and actually recycle some footage - maybe end this film on the group propping up that corpse we see in the original film's intro, or maybe Leatherface watching Sally and her friends pull up to the family gas station. In other words, do anything to set in stone that it's supposed to be all part of the same continuity for once, but nah - you'd need to remember everyone's names from 3D to make much of a connection to anything at all. Leatherface as we know him is barely even in the film - he only makes his mask in the film's final seconds.

(Yet they call the movie Leatherface.)

So what's it about? To be fair, the concept is actually fairly interesting - we meet a group of young mental patients, with the understanding that one of them will grow up to be Leatherface - we just don't know which one it is. Again, I don't see how this can be at all engaging from a franchise perspective, as Leatherface is just some mute guy in a mask killing people, not a character with levels that we might want to see peeled back, but a "whodunit" structured as a "who WILL do it" is kind of a fun idea. However it might be better in a novel, where physical appearances don't give it away - or force the filmmakers to cheat. One of our young psychos is a giant hulking brute, just like Leatherface! But with the identities being withheld, it's obvious that this guy isn't really him, because if so there's no reason to hide that fact from us. So by trying to not being obvious, the filmmakers make it painfully obvious which character it is, and while it's occasionally interesting to think "Huh, he used to speak!" or "Huh, he was kind of handsome!", it doesn't really matter to anything that happens later. As dumb as The Beginning was at times, there was at least some goofy joy to discovering that, say, Monty's legs were sawed off by Leatherface himself, but none of what we see here will change how you look at the 1974 film (or even 3D, really), rendering it a largely useless prequel.

Plus, again, Leatherface is only as interesting as the people around him. Granted, they try to recapture some of that dysfunctional family spirit by having him on the run with three other wackos (plus one hostage), but as these people are obviously goners there's no reason to get invested in their insanity like you would for Chop-Top or whoever. Again, when you're dealing with prequels, there's already a big disadvantage for the writers as they are writing toward a set in stone ending (the beginning of the next film, more or less), and it's even worse when we're talking about doing it 40+ years later with an entirely different crew. Tobe Hooper and Kim Henkel didn't write their film to be the middle chapter in a story, so everything we see here is being reverse engineered without any of the original resources to give it weight. I'd be more interested in seeing the Sawyer family in the days leading up to the slaughterhouse closing, if they absolutely had to make a prequel for whatever reason, as that would at least show us what the hell Edwin Neal's hitchhiker character was like when working a (relatively) normal job. Imagine that dude in the breakroom?

But if you ignore its ties to a series, the Badlands meets Devil's Rejects concept kind of works, and held my attention on that level. Dorff is basically the same as Bill Forsythe in Rejects, a lawman who had a vendetta against this family and manages to seem like more of a villain than they do, and it's interesting that he racks up as many cold-blooded kills as Leatherface throughout the film. It gets a bit repetitive with regards to their hostage, a nurse from their hospital named Lizzy who tries to escape every 10 minutes only to be stopped by one of the quartet, but the scenery changes, there's a diner scene that invokes Natural Born Killers, and even though I knew damn well he wasn't Leatherface I kind of loved the big lug guy, who acts as a sort of bodyguard for every other character at one point or another. And Lili Taylor shows up in a few scenes as the matriarch of the Sawyer clan, giving the series one of its rare female villains that do anything besides sit in a chair speaking gibberish.

However, it suffers from a painful lack of true suspense or terror, regardless of its ties to one of the scariest films ever made. Lizzy is the only heroic character in the film, so there's a considerable lack of people to worry about, and with "Leatherface" still not in villain mode all of our kills come from either Dorff or the Mickey/Mallory (or yes, Kit/Holly) types who he's on the run with, murdering people who we meet roughly three seconds before they're shot or stabbed. It's violent enough, sure, but considering the film was directed by the Bustillo and Maury team that gave us Inside - one of the most suspenseful horror/thrillers of the '00s, hands down - it's almost puzzling how flat it is in that department. I got more tensed up with one of the trailers before the movie than I did with any scene here, which is a big problem. Apparently the film was recut and reshot by another filmmaker (I have a guess, since there's a prominent one listed as an "Executive Producer" who has been brought on to other films to fix them in the past), so I'm not willing to cast the blame entirely on them, but if the producers were trying to make it scarier with their reworking, they failed miserably. There's a slightly unnerving scene early on involving a kid in a pig mask, but otherwise even the comically minded TCM2 managed to be scarier.

So I'm kind of at a loss here. On one hand, a reportedly troubled production shows no overtly noticeable reworking (though the opening titles are very awkwardly inserted, something even some friends noticed - it's not just my title-creating mind complaining this time!) and held my attention for ninety minutes. It's well shot and edited, and the Bulgaria shooting location isn't really as bad of a fit for Texas as I feared (it's actually a more believable Texas than the previous film, which was shot in Louisiana). On the other hand, it's rather alarming how un-suspenseful it is, and its main thrust - showing how Leatherface turned from a normal killer into the skin-wearing one - doesn't really work as well as anyone presumably thought it would. And it's almost certainly the last we'll see of this particular incarnation of the character/storyline, so it's hard to recommend tracking down "if you're a fan of the franchise", because it'll just be yet another narrative dead end in a series that already has too many of those. Your call.

What say you?

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Happy Death Day (2017)

OCTOBER 16, 2017

GENRE: SLASHER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

Full disclosure: my friend was a co-producer on Happy Death Day. Fuller disclosure: I was so tired when I watched it that I actually forgot about that until it was like halfway over, and I was already a big fan of what it was doing by then. But still, I usually avoid reviewing anything that my closer friends worked on, and I'd follow suit here if not for the fact that HOLY SHIT A SLASHER MOVIE IS NUMBER ONE AT THE BOX OFFICE! I mean, every third review I write probably has some kind of reference to a slasher movie that I love, because let's face it: it's my favorite kind of horror movie, and it's not often my needs are being served by Hollywood these days. The last original slasher film (no sequels/remakes) to come out in wide release from a major studio was My Soul To Take, all the way back in 2010 - that's far too goddamn long (and that one was so crazy it was easy to forget that it was indeed a slasher at heart).

So if you think I'm biased or whatever, too damn bad - I'm too happy to have this kind of movie again and I don't want my raves about it to be limited to a few tweets. It's not a perfect film, but it gets so much right that it barely matters, and that they do it with the limitations of a PG-13 rating is just gravy. Hilariously, I rewatched Friday the 13th: The New Blood a few days earlier and was once again aghast at how bloodless the movie is (thanks to the MPAA), and so when watching this I couldn't help but chuckle that it actually has more on-screen impact wounds and blood - with a PG-13 rating by design - than the *still R rated* bloodless Friday the 13th movie (no actual nudity in New Blood either, for the record - I think it might actually get a PG-13 in its current form if not for a few F bombs). For all the complaints about how these movies *need* to be R rated, it's really just a lot of crap - as long as the killer has a good look (check), there are a number of kills (check, albeit with an asterisk, as I'll explain later), some suspense (check!) and a character you want to see survive (check x2), there's no reason they can't serve their purpose just because the murder scenes lack bloodspray.

Of course, it helps to have a hook to make up for it, and that's where the film really shines. Yes, it has a timeloop gimmick that is identical to Groundhog Day's, albeit with a few key differences - one being that our heroine Tree (Jessica Rothe, who will be an A-lister in 2-3 years if this is any indication) doesn't have infinite lives like Phil Connor did. As she learns after four or five deaths, her body is retaining the trauma of whatever killed her (just as her brain is retaining the memories of what happened) and weakening as a result, so eventually she will shut down for good. Also, we don't see anything of her life prior to the loop day - the film opens on her waking up on that day, whereas Groundhog Day gave us a good 10-15 minute glimpse of Phil's life and demeanor before the first time we heard "I Got You Babe". So while the mechanics are the same, there are enough differences to the presentation to justify borrowing the concept (which is not exclusive to Groundhog Day anyway - it was first done in the story "12:01"), and as a bonus someone even points out that Tree's dilemma is a lot like the movie.

But like Phil, she is also someone who is kind of an asshole and seemingly has to become a better person if she wants to actually see tomorrow. It doesn't take long for us to see all of her faults as a human: she's a drunken mess who looks down on most of the people around her (she's a sorority sister, if that helps clarify what we're dealing with here), treats her roommate like shit, sleeps with her married professor, ignores calls from her dad, and mocks one of her sisters' choice of lunch foods. Basically, in slasher terms, she's the girl you want to die first (and will usually die last; since we've already mentioned New Blood, she's basically Melissa), and the thrust of the movie is split between her trying to solve her own murder, but also learn to become more like a Final Girl. It's kind of genius when you think about it (at least if you're a slasher aficionado who understands and embraces these archetype roles) and Rothe does a terrific job at finding that balance - she has to do terrible things in her first day (or two) but without ever crossing the line into full blown monster.

Another smart move on screenwriter Scott Lobdell's part is to mix up the other deaths so that Tree (which I think is a nickname for Theresa) is the only one we see die multiple times, keeping the body count "high" even though no one dies permanently. So on the first day it's just her, but on the second day she lives a bit longer because she knows when to run in the opposite direction, which allows the killer to off someone at her next location before killing her again. Then on the next day she does a lot of things differently, and someone else gets killed. And so on and so on, so that by the end of the movie we've seen just about every single character get killed - as you would in a straightforward slasher - but without it being part of the repetition. Since the killer is seemingly only after her, only offing other people who happen to get in the way, we are spared any sort of "Tree has to figure out how to save each victim in time" kind of video-gamey scenario (think Bill Murray realizing he's running a few seconds behind and needs to run to save the kid from falling out of the tree on that day). That's a big part of the movie's success, I think, as it allows for constant new developments as opposed to getting a pretty rigid day "right". It also allows the deaths in the third act to have more weight, as Tree is closer to getting it right and thus runs the risk of letting someone die permanently in order to keep herself from inching closer to death by letting herself die again in order to save them.

Unfortunately this results in one of the movies' few blunders, in which a major subplot is introduced too late into the proceedings, severely crippling its ability to look like anything but a big red herring. Seems there is a mass murderer in the hospital that Tree ends up at a few times, and for a bit she believes he is in fact the masked killer who is after her. But since the story was so hastily introduced, no intelligent audience member could possibly believe that this guy might be the killer, as it would be too much of a cheat and writers will know better by now than to pull a Friday the 13th (or I Know What You Did Last Summer) and make the killer in this whodunit someone we hadn't even really met. No, without spoiling anything I can say that the killer's identity is a satisfying one, and it's a shame they couldn't introduce this red herring character earlier/more gracefully so that we might actually buy into the idea for a while. In fact I pegged one character as the killer fairly early on (what can I say, I'm really in tune with these kinds of movies) and the introduction of this generic villain did absolutely nothing to change my original theory, which is a clear sign that it's not really working as intended. Then again, I suppose some of the teenagers in the audience who aren't even aware of the existence of things like Prom Night and Night School, let alone seen them, would be able to spot these "tells" as well as seasoned slasher fans, so maybe it worked like gangbusters on them.

Tree also utilizes a Sherlock Holmes-ian level of deduction on a few occasions, which seems not so much like a character trait but merely the writer wanting to move things along and having no better way of doing it. Luckily, such bumps in the road are instantly paved over by Rothe, as well as Israel Broussard as Carter, the owner of the dorm room that she wakes up in every day with little awareness of who he is at first. Seems she got super hammered on the never-seen previous day and he ended up taking her back to his room, but nothing sexual happened - he's a nice guy who let her stay in his bed while he slept in his roommate's. By the 3rd or 4th day she realizes he's a good guy and tells him about her predicament, but of course he can't remember anything once the reset button occurs. It's through their relationship that you can really see her grow as a person, as she goes from yelling at him and telling him that he isn't allowed to tell anyone that she was there to warmly welcoming him in front of her sorority sisters after six or seven cycles (and of course, he is reset every day and barely knows her beforehand, so none of her behavior seems out of character to him as she always gets a blank slate to start the day from). Lots of slasher films (hell, horror films in general) end up pairing off the Final Girl with the male survivor, but it's rare that you actually see their romance blossom in a believable fashion - it's usually just "well we're both alive so let's kiss" as opposed to the natural progression of two people getting to know each other. How often do you get to say a slasher film is also kind of adorably sweet?

But fear not - it passes the most important test of a slasher (for me anyway), which is simply "Would you want an action figure of the killer?" The answer is yes, I very much would - the school mascot mask (some kind of man baby?) is a perfect fit for this goofy horror blend. And yes, "goofy" is what I'm going with; I wouldn't go so far as to say it's a "horror comedy", as it's dealing with some grim material and rarely opts for jokes or sight gags that might make you laugh out loud, but there's an underlying breeziness and even a few weird moments that make it more than just a teen slasher with a twist. If anything I'd kind of liken it to Princess Bride, of all things, in that it manages to satisfy fans of a number of genres at once (horror, romance, sci-fi of sorts, and coming of age drama) without ever leaning too far in one direction. The few hiccups are of no real consequence in the long run, and I suspect Tree will be a favorite Final Girl among the younger generation the same way old farts like me embrace Ginny from F13 Part 2 and Nancy from Nightmare on Elm Street: proactive and smart, but not so mousy that girls wouldn't want to be just like them (I mean, I love Laurie Strode, but who is like "Yes! I want to be the one all my friends use so they can have fun!"). It's also another win for Chris Landon, who directed the last decent Paranormal Activity movie (The Marked Ones) and the uneven but better than its reputation Scout's Guide To The Zombie Apocalypse, which also offered a surprisingly winning "the hero has to mature" story in the middle of horror carnage. Here's hoping he sticks around in the genre, but I pray neither he or anyone else messes things up with "Happier Death Day" or whatever.

What say you?

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New Beverly All Night Horrorthon (2017)

OCTOBER 7, 2017

GENRE: EVERYTHING!
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REVIVAL SCREENING)

For the past couple years I've written up my New Beverly All Nighter experiences for BirthMoviesDeath, but I had to post something else this week and HMAD's been getting neglected so I figured I'd bring it back here for a change. It was a fitting one to do it with - for the first time ever, I had seen every film that they showed, which I attribute to truly HMADing it all those years ago (i.e. not the couple times a month thing I do now). Four of the movies indeed have HMAD reviews tied to them, and the other two I had seen before I started the site; I was legit kind of stunned that Phil Blankenship and Brian Quinn - who go out of their way to find rarely shown stuff rather than expected "draws" - didn't find anything even I had never unearthed. I assume that it will never happen again, so let me pat myself on the back a bit for this one-time achievement.

Of course, regular readers know how much I "love" to fall asleep during the movies, so thankfully I didn't miss anything I hadn't seen before when I inevitably dozed off. A couple of the films they've shown in the past were so rare that you can't really find them (such as Screams of a Winter Night, which Amazon doesn't even stock on used VHS, let alone DVD or whatever), making my naps frustrating as I can't see what I've missed, but this year's crop, while obscure (and largely to my liking), have all been released on DVD, some even on Blu-ray. But as they assumed, I had never seen any of them on 35mm before, and given that they played one of my all time favorites on what is said to be the only surviving prints, I have no complaints about the lineup overall. Nor did the crowd, it seemed - only a small handful of people left during the evening, a far cry from years' past where the (always sold out) theater would be only about half full by the end.

This is, of course, due to the secretive nature of the marathon, as we are not told the titles of any of the films that are playing. It's only when the title (or, if you're a credit junkie like me, the "So and so presents" card) appears on screen that you know what you're about to watch, and so it's hard to justify leaving when you could be denying yourself the chance to see a favorite film on the big screen, possibly the only chance you'll ever get to do so. Sure, you can leave when the 6th film starts if it's not to your liking, but there's always a reward for staying and they tend to be worth waiting another 90 minutes to obtain, in addition to the bragging rights. So what did we see this year? What was our prize? Read on to find out!

4:40pm - I leave my house. I wanted to leave earlier, but my wife had things to do and I was watching our kid. Luckily my friend Jared, as always, got there insanely early to tough it out (it was 90+ degrees that day - October in Los Angeles kind of sucks) and ensure we got our preferred seats in the second row, which has slightly more leg room than the other rows - a godsend for me as I broke my big toe (the right one) the other day and was not particularly comfortable, so every little extra bit of room I could get, I wanted. There was some attempt at a "no seat saving" system where people got numbered tickets to file in, and those people could only save one adjacent seat, which was stressing folks out as we waited outside. I don't think it's particularly fair to try to break friends apart when they might be unable to get there as early (would they rather people cut the line?), especially when so few seats open up during the evening, but I can see how people saving excess number of seats until the minute it starts would be a problem. Hopefully they can rethink this process and do it fairly for future events.

6:15pm - The doors open and the numbered folks file in, but the system kind of falls apart and we all get to sit together anyway, and everyone else seemed to be happy with their seats as well (nor did anyone ask "Are those free?" for the two or three seats that were vacant as other friends were still waiting to get inside). Had the system worked as intended, I might have been stuck far away from my friends all night, which sucks when I was the one who secured our damn tickets! But whatever; it all worked out - no harm no foul! For the next hour and change we just yak about the usual stuff: what will show? When should we get pizza? How often am I going to fall asleep? I also buy two holiday themed sodas: a pumpkin cola and a ginger beer that had a werewolf on it (I no longer recall what the werewolf had to do with the ginger beer part of it). I decided that I would refrain from sugary stuff this year as it tends to give me a little energy boost but then crash, increasing my likelihood of falling asleep, but I can't pass up a pumpkin cola. Plus I knew I'd be getting pizza later and ain't nothing tastes better with pizza than a cold soda, dammit.

7:30pm - Phil and Brian take the stage for their intro. They promise that one of the prints that will be playing had never been shown anywhere before, and that the others probably hadn't played since their original release. They also note that they have a cutoff date of ten years, so if a film had played around 2007 or later, it would be ineligible. Since that's when I started going to the theater a lot, that dramatically increased the likelihood that I hadn't seen any of the films on 35 before, as they rarely show the sort of films I would have been able to see in my multiplex back in the day.

7:37pm - The lights dim for the first time and we are treated to an insane Disney short about the history of Halloween, hosted by a mushy pumpkin puppet and peppered with clips from Mickey cartoons, The Headless Horsemen, the Haunted Mansion ride, etc. It was ostensibly meant for kids, but I suspect any 4 year old watching it would have nightmares and/or hate the holiday as a result, since it actually goes into its Druid origins ("DRUIDS!!!" the narrator bellows at you) and warns about poisoned candy. As an adult? It might have been my favorite thing of the night, because it was so misguided and insane (like some of the films were) but also MEANT FOR CHILDREN.

7:45pm - Trailer reel #1! Traditionally, the trailer reel hints at what the movie will be, though it can be tough to decipher the clues as it could just be that a star from the trailer is in the movie, or they have similar settings, or were just also out during the same year - or a combination of those things. Inexplicably, I had a guess after the first trailer (April Fool's Day) because it was another movie from 1986, but then the next few trailers were sorority slashers (House on Sorority Row, Sorority House Massacre, Hell Night) and I started doubting my first choice, although I couldn't think of anything else that would fit. But then the trailers ended and the title came up - and I was right! Somehow from "also 1986 slasher" I managed to guess...

7:55pm - KILLER PARTY (1986)
Turns out the 1986 thing was a coincidence - the trailer was included because both films are set on, you guessed it, April Fool's Day, an element I had forgotten as I hadn't seen Killer Party in about twenty years. All I really remembered is that the film had a double fakeout opening (it starts on a scene that turns out to be a movie someone is watching, and then it turns out that someone is the star of a music video that our heroine is watching), that the killer wore one of those Bioshock-style diving suits, and that Paul Bartel was in it. Things I didn't realize then and was delighted by now: it was written by Final Chapter's Barney Cohen (who named Bartel's character after TFC director Joe Zito), the requisite nerdy guy was played by Ralph Seymour from Fletch, and it was shot at the same college used for Urban Legend.

It's also a total blast; the pacing is a bit wonky but there is plenty of humor (intentional and not) to keep things lively in between kills, and it's got a great inversion of the usual "Final Girl" stuff as the one you expect to take on that role ends up being possessed and offing everyone (though two people die before the possession happens so I'm not sure who killed them). It's got some Porky's/Police Academy level pranks that an uptight blogger might refer to as "problematic" today because they don't understand that attitudes change over time, but thankfully the New Bev crowd has an open mind and is largely intelligent enough to put a thirty-plus year old film in its proper context instead of judging it by today's less cavalier attitudes. That said, it's also a product of the time when the MPAA had no tolerance for blood, so the movie often feels like a TV edit - but in a way it kind of adds some mystery to the movie. Given the April Fool's setting and off-screen kills, it's possible to suspect everything is just a big prank, and then be surprised when it turns out that our heroine really did just murder like ten people because she was possessed by some vengeful ghost.

9:25pm - The movie ends with rapturous applause. In retrospect, it was probably the winner of the night, as it was one of the least seen movies out of the six and it was arguably the most crowd-pleasing, as the others lacked the comedic angle that made Killer Party such a great way to kick off the festivities. At this point I order pizza with some friends, and miss part of the trailer reel to run across the street and pick it up. In keeping with my "no sugar" rule I skip the dessert pizza for the first time ever, but I do get the garlic knots. I ain't kissing anyone, so whatever.

9:45pm - Trailer reel #2! I missed most of it, but it was H-Man, Frankenstein 1970, Konga, and Incredible 2-Headed Transplant (I walked in during the tail end of Konga). Since movie #2 was always a black and white film, and I missed the first couple of "clues", my only guess from Konga (a simian) and Transplant (mad science) was that it was The Ape, a dreadfully slow poverty row thing with Karloff that I watched on one of my budget packs, but it turned out to be...

10:00pm - THE MANSTER (1959)
I was close! It was another mad scientist movie I saw on a budget pack, though it was much better than The Ape. I forgot how much I loved the film's protagonist, an average Joe who is injected with a drug that not only turns him into the titular monster, but also loosens his inhibitions and leads him to start boozing it up and cheating on his wife. The "highlight" is when his wife, who expected him to return home by now (he's an American working in Japan), shows up and tells him to choose her or his girlfriend. He walks up to his wife, seemingly ready to apologize, then turns to the mistress and snarls "Come on, let's go find someplace and finish the evening!" I also loved how the actor was my age but looked way older (and said he was only 35, which brought the house down even though it was pretty close to the truth), and the abrupt ending is even funnier with a crowd. I dozed for a little chunk of the middle and missed my favorite line, however (click on the full review for the explanation, I hate repeating myself) so that was a bummer.

11:15pm - The movie ends and I take one of many trips to my car to get another bottle of water, as I will be skipping the usual coffee this evening as well. I realized last year that it's pointless - I fall asleep anyway, but then start feeling weird because of all the extra caffeine in my system (we get free refills all night - I usually partake two or three times). I figure water is healthier, and then leaves my system free of caffeine so I can actually drink a cup at the normal time in the morning.

11:30pm - Raffle time! I don't win anything.

11:40pm - It's tradition to show more than just movies, and we get one such extra now: a 1983 short film named Disciples of the Crow, based on Children of the Corn, making it a "dollar baby" I believe. It's pretty faithful to the story until the ending - Vicki and Burt are not killed, but drive off (albeit with an overheating car), hoping to find rescue. It's basically how The Mist story ended, actually. I guess it was released on VHS with some other dollar babies, and you can see it on Youtube if you're interested - it was fun to see it adapted without all of the padding that the two feature films had added (King's story is only like 20 pages), but the abrupt ending was disappointing.

12:00am - Trailer reel #3 kicks off with Madman, relieving me as that meant the movie would not BE Madman, which I have little patience for. It's followed by Pranks (aka Dorm that Dripped Blood) and I realize that they're both slashers from 1982. I have a guess, but it's too good to be true and I've never considered myself that lucky. Then we get Visiting Hours and The Slayer, both also from 1982, and I start getting hopeful as 1982 wasn't a huge slasher year and there aren't a lot of options. Then Without Warning comes up, showcasing Jack Palance and Martin Landau, which all but confirmed I was right and we were about to see...

12:10am - ALONE IN THE DARK (1982)
Yes! YES!!!! I love this movie and always requested it for HMAD screenings, but a print could never be found. Phil finally dug one up, and while it wasn't exactly pristine (faded and scratched - though no disruptive damage except around the tails) I was beyond ecstatic to finally see it on the big screen. I was actually just talking about it a few days ago with Eric Vespe ("Quint") as it was on TCM or one of those and he was taking shots at Valentine for stealing the nosebleed thing (and I of course had to defend my boy Jamie Blanks, who freely admitted he was paying homage to the film, rather than pretend it was a coincidence as some filmmakers do), but didn't even dare assume it might show up at this or any other screening since the prints were apparently impossible to find. Oddly, I could have seen Erland van Lidth ("Fatty") on the big screen twice this week, as he also appeared as Dynamo in The Running Man which showed at Beyond Fest, but I bailed after Predator (it was a double feature with Arnold Q&A) as my foot was hurting real bad and missed out. Didn't realize he had passed away, making Phillip Clark (The Bleeder himself) the only surviving member of the four psychos that terrorize the Potter family. Donald Pleasence is gone too, of course, so they better get cracking on a special edition of this underrated gem before there's no one alive left to talk about it.

1:40am - The movie ends and I go to my car to charge my phone, as it's nearly dead by now and I need it to keep track of the times for this very article. I lucked out this year and got a spot on Beverly a block away - I'm usually way down on one of the side streets, which would have been a nightmare with my foot making me hobble around. I think this is when I took all the pictures too.

1:55am - Trailer reel #4 has Demon Seed, Rosemary's Baby, The Brood, The Seventh Sign, and Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child. I guess Manitou early on, and kept holding out hope even though I knew the evidence was starting to point directly at...

2:05am - IT'S ALIVE (1974)
Hadn't seen this one since I reviewed it, which was long before I had a kid of my own. So now I totally get the dad trying to save the thing at the end of the movie, and felt horrible for the poor "baby" when it howled or whatever. It's crazy how I take completely different things away from some films when I watch them as a dad, and I hope time allows me to revisit others in the same vein, as it might be worth writing about in some fashion. Anyway, the print was a bit faded, but it was a great find and turned out to be the last movie of the evening that I saw more than I slept through (I went out for about 20 minutes in the middle somewhere).

3:45am - The movie ends and as has been tradition for the past couple years, a large supply of donuts are delivered to give everyone a sugar high to power through the final two films, which will be presented without intermission. I am tempted, but I stick to my "no sugar" rule and settle for a now-cold slice of our pizza. I retrieve my phone, which didn't charge up as much as I wanted (turns out I still had a few apps running in the background, slowing its ability to recharge) and send out my last tweet of the evening, as I'm too tired to bother until later. From here on the times are VERY approximate as I was also too tired to keep notes.

4:00am - Trailer reel #5 kicks off with The Dead Are Alive, followed by The Blood Drinkers, Dracula Has Risen from the Grave, The Rats are Coming! The Werewolves are Here, and The Werewolf vs The Vampire Woman. I had guessed it was a Paul Naschy film from Phil and Brian's intro (promising an international horror icon whose films don't show here all that often), but I was so tired I couldn't remember his name, coming up with a jumbled version of his Waldemar Daninsky character ("Vladimir Pazinsky", I think) instead. Jared reminds me of it when I say "They did a Scream Factory boxed set this year", though since he has so many films I was not expecting it to be one of the films that was actually on that set, namely...

4:10am - NIGHT OF THE WEREWOLF (1981)
This print was actually titled The Craving, as it was the US release that was also slightly cut from what I understand, though hell if I know what was missing. This is one of his slower paced films, but they usually like to show such fare in this slot in case people WANT to take a nap, and many do. At one point in between my own frequent dozes (I had just rewatched the movie when the boxed set came out) I looked around and except for Jared, everyone I knew was asleep. It's a pretty good movie, and I was very happy to see the lovely Azucena Hernández on the big screen (not to mention my first time seeing a Naschy film on 35), but it's just not the sort of thing any reasonable person could stay engaged with at 4 o'clock in the morning. If you were there and hadn't seen it before, give it a shot under more suitable conditions!

5:50am - Trailer reel #6 offered Dr. Giggles, Lawnmower Man, Candyman, Dead Alive, and Army of Darkness - all films from 1992 (yes, pedantic people, Army of Darkness came out in 1993, but it is listed as 1992 on IMDb due to festival appearances). Our only other clue came earlier from Phil, who told us that the film had only made $5,000 during its theatrical run. I couldn't guess for the life of me; the only thing I could come up with was Popcorn, but I seemed to recall that it made a lot more than that (and it turned out it was from 1991 anyway), but Jared, soundtrack expert that he is, heard maybe three notes of the opening theme and correctly identified...

6:00am - THE VAGRANT (1992)
Oof. I was NOT a fan of this one when I watched it in 1995 or 1996, despite the starring trio of character actors I loved (Bill Paxton, Michael Ironside, and Marshall Bell), and while I was curious about a revisit, I dozed through two big chunks (including the ending) so I can't provide a reasonable "second look" opinion. I can say that for the first 30-35 minutes I saw before falling asleep the first time that I was still baffled as to who exactly the movie was aimed at, as it was a horror-comedy without any real scares or funny jokes. Bell's makeup as the title character is outstanding and it's fun to see Paxton as a beta male, but it felt like one of those movies that got made without anyone giving the script a second draft. Scream Factory recently released the film on a pack with a few others, so I'm sure I can borrow it from someone to see if what I missed will make the movie click for me, but I wouldn't hold my breath. Just watch Of Unknown Origin instead - it's similar (yuppie white collar guy sees his house torn apart by an unwelcome guest, becomes unraveled) but doesn't feel like it came out of the oven before it finished baking. I should have left, but I wanted my prize, dammit!

7:30am - Vagrant ends and we are treated to a typically insane Woody Woodpecker cartoon where he attempts to murder a witch who stiffed him 50 cents on broom repair, followed by the National Anthem (no one makes any kneeling jokes, that I heard anyway). We pack up our things and head to the lobby, where we are gifted with... pint glasses commemorating the event! I recently acquired a love of vanilla whiskey mixed with ginger ale, and the glass is perfect for such a concoction (I down them while playing Friday the 13th - JGrayland23 is my PSN name if anyone ever wants to try to play) so I was very glad I suffered through what I saw of The Vagrant instead of heading home earlier. Normally everyone takes a picture in front of the marquee but in a span of ten seconds I saw most of the people I was sitting with walk off in different directions, so I shrugged and headed for my own car, taking solace with the thought that I'd be getting that much more sleep when I got home.

As I get older it gets harder and harder for me to stay awake for any reasonable amount of time for these things, but I'd rather die than keep trying. It's just too fun overall to decide to skip it just because I end up unconscious for sizable chunks of it (and really, with a 40 minute drive home after, it's really for the best that I am not trying to do it when I've been awake for what would be nearly 24 hours at that point). Even if I've seen every movie, it's been on VHS or DVD and probably by myself - ever since they switched to an all secret lineup there has only been a single film that I had seen on the big screen before (Messiah of Evil in the 2015 edition, which I had seen at another repertory theater seven or eight years prior). As time goes on that could change, as they might start showing films I managed to see during their original run (I wouldn't be surprised to see something like Tales From The Hood or Man's Best Friend show up in the lineup someday), but thankfully Phil and Brian's tastes (and collections) are too eclectic to predict, and I highly doubt there will ever come a day where I have no reason to be excited about their selections. And if my kid ends up liking horror movies, maybe someday I can take him, so I have even more reason to want to see this tradition continue. As the show literally sold out in two seconds it seems to be popular enough to sustain (though as rental fees and the like go up, I'm not sure how profitable it is compared to showing a single film), so hopefully it continues until we're all dead in 2046.

What say you?

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Flatliners (2017)

SEPTEMBER 30, 2017

GENRE: SUPERNATURAL, THRILLER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

Full disclosure, right off the bat - someone pulled a fire alarm during my showing of Flatliners and we had to file out with about twenty minutes left in the film. As I was not particularly enjoying it to that point, the idea of going back to watch it all again just to see what I missed seemed absurd (especially at this time of the year), so I had someone fill me in on how it ended up. If that means you cannot accept my opinion of the film, then feel free to shut the page now. But don't tell me I'm being "unprofessional" - I paid to see the movie and since the whole theater had to file out there were like 1000 people waiting for their complimentary tickets, and I had less interest in waiting in that line than I did in seeing the rest of the film. The following critiques are still valid, and seeing the ending instead of having it described in detail would not have made a difference.

Anyway, your guess is as good as mine as to why Sony opted to remake Flatliners, of all the things in their library. I know they've pulled some questionable moves in the past, such as with Total Recall, but at least that was a much bigger hit in its day, had room to explore (it was based very loosely on a short story, so they could have tried a straighter adaptation), and if nothing else could let Len Wiseman do his action thing with a big budget and appealing cast. Flatliners, on the other hand, was a minor hit from that same year (the Total Recall remake was five years ago already, if you can believe it), so it doesn't have the same longevity or name value. All it really had was the hook - med students purposely dying to see what's on the other side, then being revived to share their experiences - only they all bring back the ghosts of their haunted pasts. A great concept to be sure, but not one that needs to be retold in a PG-13 manner (and, curiously, on an even lower budget, which has to be a first for a studio remake).

In fact I wouldn't have even bothered with it at all if not for the fact that it was actually designed to be a stealth sequel of sorts to the original, as opposed to a traditional remake. Kiefer Sutherland was cast in the film as the same character (Nelson) he played in the 1990 film, so I found that to be an interesting angle and figured it was worth a look on the strength of that alone. He appears a few times as the Chief of Staff (or whatever, I'm not good with job titles - a guy in charge at any rate) that's guiding our new heroes through med school, but I kept waiting to see when he'd be like "Hey, you guys are hacks - me and my friends did this 27 years ago!", as there was seemingly no reference to his past or even that their experiment had been done before. It wasn't until Monday morning that I got my answer; apparently, test screening audiences found the connection too confusing (apparently he didn't make his history clear until the end of the film, which even I have to admit is a bizarre approach to take), and so it was dropped. I believe someone refers to him as Nelson at one point, but I might have just misheard as he is credited as Barry Wolfson (and that's the name on his labcoat), so let's just assume I heard it wrong and that they have successfully scrubbed the final cut of any connection to the original, making it the straight up remake I didn't want to see in the first place, with Sutherland's casting now just appearing as a gimmick, like Andrea Martin playing the house mother in Black Xmas, or Sean Connery showing up as the King in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.

So now it's just a remake, and a rather dull one at that. As with the original, the students are all plagued by visions of people they've wronged in the past when they come back from the dead, though they're at least slightly different stories (and the characters themselves are different, though Diego Luna's character never flatlines, much like Oliver Platt's in the original). However, the changes aren't really that drastic; there's another bullying incident, but this time it was cyber-bullying where one of our heroes shared nude photos of a rival classmate in order to humiliate her. And instead of one guy losing his fiance due to his sexual habits, our William Baldwin stand-in is wracked with guilt over one of his many one night stands resulting in a pregnancy that was aborted (and he was too chicken to even go to the clinic with her). Julia Roberts blamed herself for her father's death, and here it's Ellen Page blaming herself over her sister's death. The only exception is Nina Dobrev's character, who screwed up at the hospital one night and killed someone by giving him the wrong medication, and I can't help but wish they tied ALL of their regrets into their life as med students, as it would help differentiate between it and the original.

Another big change is that when they come back they've also unlocked parts of their brain a bit. Page's character is able to recall everything she's ever learned, Kiersey Clemons' character becomes uninhibited, and another guy starts being more intuitive and "seeing" people. But then they inexplicably drop this idea once everyone starts having their visions, and it ultimately has zero bearing on anything. It reminded me a bit of the Rob Zombie Halloween in that way, where even if it wasn't all working they were at least trying something new, but seemingly got cold feet and decided to just copy the original more and more as the film went on. There is one major change (spoiler ahead, but without specifics!), in that one of them is killed for good at a certain point, whereas all five of them survived in the original, but while it's a good shock when it occurs, as with the "unlocked brain" stuff it fails to have any real weight on what happens after.

But don't worry, if you haven't seen the original or completely forget it*, you'll just be merely bored by the damn thing. It's not even really a horror movie for the most part; they have some freaky visions in the back half but there is very little immediate danger, and there's a disconnect that makes some of the scares just a total cheat. For example, the guy haunted by his cowardice re: abortion is haunted by the ghost of that one-time lover, and at one point she stabs his hand - but later we learn she's not even dead, so I'm not sure how she has a vengeful ghost to chase him around (or, exactly why it came back when he flatlined). Dobrev gets the bulk of the scare scenes since her visions are of someone who is actually dead and has a reason to be mad at her, but they're all the generic kind of modern studio horror scares where a creepy person will suddenly appear next to our hero and then disappear again - it gets tiresome, even in a movie that has limited such occasions. In fact many of them seem like they were just added in to give the trailer editors something to work with.

The acting is equally inconsistent; Luna's character is all "We must stop this, this is insane!" one minute, and then laughing/dancing with the others to celebrate the latest successful flatline the next. Though that might be the result of what seems to be a hasty post-production and/or reshoots, as they obviously had to tinker to remove the sequel aspect to it, and there are other signs of sloppiness - there are at least two scenes where the aspect ratio changes a bit, as if they forgot to apply the same masking to every shot. There's also a sixth med student, Brad, who seems like he was supposed to play a bigger role at one point, but disappears for so long that I forgot who he was when he briefly reappeared in a later scene. Maybe for Blu-ray they will have a longer cut or deleted scenes that flesh out some of this stuff, but I don't think it will be enough to save it.

Then again maybe there isn't anything else except for Kiefer's reveal. The trailer doesn't have anything that didn't end up in the movie (almost a guarantee for such occasions - see Diego Luna's last big film - Rogue One - for an example), so it's very possible that the script (by Ben Ripley, who wrote the engaging and entertaining Source Code) was more interesting at first and it got rewritten to the point of having no identity by the time they started shooting it. Either way it's a shame; the cast is good and even if he's not exactly an iconic character it would have been cool to see how Nelson was living his life all these years later, but for whatever reason, the film we got is the worst kind of remake: there's not enough difference to justify its existence, and everyone's too competent to make it an entertaining fiasco. It's just THERE, as indifferent as the audience who barely seemed to care when they were asked to leave before it limped to its conclusion.

What say you?

*I'm not a huge fan of it either; it's fine, and the dead kid beating the shit out Kiefer scared me a lot when I was eleven, but I've barely thought about it since.

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Eyeball (1975)

SEPTEMBER 27, 2017

GENRE: GIALLO
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REVIVAL SCREENING)

Usually, the first movie at a New Beverly double feature is the one people would really want to see, followed by a second, lesser film that plays for the die-hards while everyone else goes home feeling that they got their money's worth. But last night they started with Autopsy, a decent but not particularly exciting thriller where almost nothing happens onscreen, following it with the far more crowd-pleasing Eyeball, which had the gloved killer murder scenes and rampant silliness (including an all timer entry for the Baffling Giallo Motive Hall of Fame) that Autopsy didn't bother with. Had the order been swapped, I probably would have just went home when I inevitably started dozing off during the second film, but instead when I woke up I stood in the back for a while to make sure I stayed awake for the rest, not wanting my "Cinesomnia" to make me miss another minute.

Luckily, someone had the movie on Youtube, so I was able to watch the 10-15 minute chunk I missed when I went home (wasn't much; just a random murder that barely got mentioned again - if you've seen the movie, it's of the girl that gets killed near the pigpen). But even if I never woke back up it'd be enough to know this was much more to my liking than Autopsy (which was fine - just nothing I'd ever bother with again), and it even had a more slasher-y hook - our victims weren't all related to some crime that occurred or being offed for an inheritance (as was the case in Autopsy), but a group of strangers on a sightseeing tour, with someone getting killed pretty much every time they stopped somewhere. This keeps the scenery changing and obviously provides plenty of variety for the kill scenes (many of which are outside, in potential view of any number of witnesses), but the main bonus is that the red herrings aren't extraneous.

In any whodunit (slasher or giallo) you end up with people who enter the movie for no reason other than to be sneaky, like Sykes in Prom Night or the overly aggressive real estate guy in Phenomena, but here everyone's around for the whole time - we pretty much meet every character in the first ten minutes, and throughout the movie we get reasons to suspect any of them (the priest, especially). The chance that it all adds up to total logic once the real killer is identified is doubtful, but it's fun to have your suspicions cast upon someone you've been with for a while as opposed to someone who just showed up an hour in with a sneaky look on his face. And a lot of the shady behavior is ultimately explained; the men are all kind of assholes (it's a '70s Italian movie, so that's to be expected - upstanding male characters are as rare as unicorns) and therefore they aren't murderers, but they DO hate their wives or whatever and will go after anything that moves (like the aforementioned pigpen murder victim - one of the "innocent" guys hits on her and she scratches him, something he confesses with his wife right next to him). It's kind of Clue - you get the sense they could have revealed anyone as the murderer and it wouldn't exactly be dissatisfying, even if you had your heart set on one particular person.

The motive, however, is just divine. I won't say who the killer is, but their reason for murdering people and taking their eyes is: "I was like you... before this friend of mine ripped out my eye playing doctor with me... leaving an empty socket!" That's it. We don't even get a flashback to this event, which is a damn shame as I would absolutely love to know how these people play doctor where such ocular catastrophes would be possible. And if I'm following the sentiment correctly, the person is now killing people and taking out their eyes because they lost theirs? There's no other real reason for it? It delighted me for two reasons: one, it reminded me of the Clickhole article "When Doctors Told This Woman She’d Never Walk Again, She Made It Her Mission To Ensure No One Else Would Either", and two, the killer's connection to other character(s) was kind of a coincidence, I guess, because the motive had zero to do with their relationship.

The silliness isn't limited to the motive, thankfully. The tour guide, who drinks in between "On your right you'll see..." kinda stuff, has a tendency to practical jokes on one of his unsuspecting tourists, such as a fake spider that he lets loose when she's trying to eat. After his pranks go off he laughs hysterically, and the editor violently cuts to the next scene before anyone can ask why a grown man is so entertained by this nonsense. Later he's potentially fingered as the killer because of his pranks, which is a bit odd, but it's the closest thing to a payoff for this baffling little running gag. I also love the obligatory "a photo holds a clue" scene that we get in every other giallo, because instead of something like a shadow or maybe someone standing in a dimly lit window, we get a full focus shot of the killer in broad daylight, holding the knife in their red-gloved hands!

And yes, red-gloved. Red is like a whole motif in the movie, putting even Sixth Sense to shame with how it's used very specifically to tie into the killer. They also wear a red raincoat (it's another of the movie's goofy moments - everyone on the tour gets a standard "one size fits all" raincoat, but later the police make everyone try them on to see if one belongs to the killer), and then we see red flowers or lights or whatever whenever a killing is about to occur. It's nothing unique, but I like how overboard they go with it; even in this rather faded print (it was an original from 1975) it really popped. That along with the music made it a must-see for giallo fans, even if they couldn't get on board with the "silly even for a giallo" reveals. But if you're like me and think the insanity adds to the entertainment value, this is an ideal one to watch; I especially like the flashbacks where a guy realizes his wife is left handed, like it was something he never noticed yet has distinctive memories of her opening mail and lighting a cigarette.

The film was directed by Umberto Lenzi, who did a number of gialli but I seem to have missed just about all of them, as I only know him from his '80s stuff like Nightmare City and Cannibal Ferox (and from using my dad's name, Bob Collins, as one of his pseudonyms). I feel I really dropped the ball on bulking up my giallo intake for the site (in my defense, Netflix and Blockbuster didn't exactly have bountiful stock of such fare, and the site's "budget" didn't allow for blind buying anything all that often, let alone obscure Italian flicks that might not even be uncut and/or anamorphic), which is why I try to always make it to the Bev when they're showing some, as it's pretty much my only source to catch what I missed. I'm sure there are dozens that never even got US releases, so it's a good thing Quentin is a fan and is sure to program them fairly often, as I'd hate to go through life without experiencing that out of nowhere "playing doctor" line simply because a proper Blu-ray of the film never found its way into my home. Support your local giallo-loving repertory theater, if you have one! Or just move here and come with me to these things, because I usually sit by myself and thus don't have anyone to wake me up when my usual 4-5 hours sleep proves to not be enough and I start dozing during a movie I am enjoying.

What say you?

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Jeepers Creepers 3 (2017)

SEPTEMBER 26, 2017

GENRE: MONSTER, SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

Much like Cropsey, the Creeper is a cool villain that deserves better vehicles to show what they can do, as Jeepers Creepers 3 continues the series' tradition of being better on paper than in execution, forever trying to recapture the magic of the first film's first act. That 30-35 minute stretch of the original, where it's mostly just the two kids in their car being pursued by the Creeper, is nearly perfect, but the next hour, and its first sequel, are handicapped by weird narrative choices, clunky pacing, and an abundance of characters. For a while, it seems like the 3rd film would stick to what worked about the original and deliver on the promise (to the best of the filmmaker's abilities when working with a lower budget this time around), but alas the usual issues start rearing their ugly head.

All except for one, which I might as well get out of the way now - it's thankfully not as skeevy as the other two, or the director's other films that I've seen. No shirtless boys, no gross metaphors (I'm still somewhat repulsed by JC2's "he can get in through the backdoor!" sequence), etc. An early cut of the film apparently included a brief reference to the heroine being abused by her stepfather (and another character saying something like "Can you blame him?") but thankfully they were excised (the backstory was changed; the stepfather is now said to have disliked the girl, prompting to her to live with her grandmother instead), leaving the film free of anything that would remind you of the filmmaker's abhorrent past. And on that note, as always I will simply remind you that he plead guilty and was imprisoned for a while (unlike some others who deny their crimes and walk free), that many people who have worked with him since have sworn that there was nothing uncomfortable about their production(s), and that he is but one of the many people who worked on the film and deserve to see their hard work recognized. I don't condone what he did, but I'm not going to take it out on, say, Jonathan Breck (the Creeper), either. I matched the cost of my ticket to support the GoFundMe for his victim, who is trying to spread awareness of what happened to him and child abuse as a whole - I urge you to support him as well if you have the means to. It's also worth noting that he volunteers at a workshop for juvenile sex offenders, encouraging them to do as he does and work his issues out through creative means - i.e. going out and actually working on problems, as opposed to just tweeting how much you don't like that they exist.

If you care about the film at all you probably have heard by now that it takes place in between the first two films, which has two benefits for the production: they don't have to make it look like the future of 2024 (now a lot closer than it was when the first two films were released) and they didn't need to bring back Ray Wise and (likely) kill him off in order to explain how the Creeper got away from the makeshift prison he was in when we last saw him in JC2. But I figured it'd take place on some random day in the middle of that 23-day spree, so I was surprised when the film began (after a 1978 prologue that I'll talk about in a bit) right at the end of JC1, with the surviving cops regrouping and trying to figure out what the hell just happened after Darry (Justin Long's character) was taken from their "protection". Only one cast member (besides Breck) really returns, Brandon Smith as Tubbs, the high-strung desk sergeant who spent most of his screentime in the first film just kind of growling and muttering at the psychic lady - but he was the only one of the cops that had a distinct presence so I doubt anyone will notice/care that his fellow officers aren't the same, and it's pretty admirable to do the "immediately picks up" sequel thing for a movie that was made sixteen years later.

As for Gina Phillips as Trish, she's top billed on IMDb, but it's practically a spoiler to announce that she's in the movie at all, since she doesn't appear until the film's closing shot, in an epilogue not unlike JC2's: she's basically waiting around to fight the Creeper when he returns in 2024 (I'm not sure what year her scene takes place in - she has a modern laptop, so I'm guessing it's just some form of "present day". The slow pan up to reveal her face is treated as a major surprise, so I don't know why they announced her return for what's basically a twist cameo (oddly, another sequel coming around soon did the exact same thing with its most famous survivor, but knew better than to put that person on the damn cast list), but hopefully no one was only interested in the movie to see her grand return, as it seems we will have to wait for Jeepers 4 to see what Trish has been up to all these years. Unlike Smith (already an older guy) there's no way Phillips could pass for her 16 years younger self, and thus it was obvious that she wouldn't be in it all that much once the 2001 setting was established, so hopefully the next film finally cuts to the Creeper's next spree so she can take an active role in the proceedings.

Speaking of the timeline, as I mentioned the film opens with a prologue set during a different Creeper spree - 1978's, to be exact. At first I figured it was just a way to get a kill in the movie, but not only does the victim have a role in the main part of the film (as a ghost/hallucination/whatever), but it's also a fun little bit of connective tissue - it's the victim that Darry and Trish talk about in the first film, when she realizes they're on the same road as "that old story". It's a throwaway detail that doesn't mean anything, but it's a nice little nod to the first film that registers as the kind of thing you'd never get in a series that kept changing hands like the Friday the 13ths, where such world building is a total mess due to people coming in without respecting what came before. Using the whole buffalo is always a surefire way to win me over, and I like that it's a little detail that won't bother anyone who doesn't remember or never even saw the original. This is the best way to do a callback, in my opinion - it's fun for the people who'd notice, but doesn't hamper the ability for a newcomer to enjoy it.

Unfortunately, the flipside of the "in between" approach is a major one - you're watching the whole movie knowing that the Creeper won't be killed or even stopped for any meaningful amount of time, as he's up and about in Jeepers Creepers 2. I mean it's not like I ever think Jason or Freddy is truly dead at the end of their films (even in the ones that promise as much), but there will at least be the catharsis of seeing the heroes triumph over them and walk away thinking the nightmare is over forever (and those guys are usually down for some time - Jason was in the bottom of Crystal Lake for at least a decade at one point). It's practically a guarantee from the start that the movie won't offer that, and (spoiler?) it doesn't - I'm still not even sure how to describe the Creeper's final moment in the film, and the heroine never gets any major victory over the damn thing. At one point she uses one of his own weapons against him (a very crowd-pleasing moment, actually) but it barely even phases him - he's after her again moments later, so it's about as much of a victory as Laurie stabbing Michael with the knitting needle.

The other big problem is that the movie is very disjointed. There are basically three separate plotlines going on, two of which would be perfectly enjoyable if fleshed out to their own movie, but hurt by the constant cutting around as they very rarely intersect. One is basically a redux of the original - two teens (potential lovers this time, not siblings) have caught the Creeper's eye, and he's going after them. After the usual setup stuff they find themselves trapped under a car as the Creeper stalks/kills a few people around them, and later the girl is trapped inside the Creeper's trademark "BEATNGU" truck (p.s. we learn that his license plate is a homemade one, killing sixteen years of "Creeper at the DMV" jokes), giving it some claustrophobic flair that recalls the best moments of the first sequel, and here's where the prequel element also pays off somewhat - we're never sure that she's "safe", as she isn't around in the "next" installment, giving the director license to kill her off (not unlike Platinum Dunes' Chainsaw prequel). Their scenes are the best in the film, and mostly why it's overall at least on par with JC2, making me wish that they just stuck to them the whole time - it might come off as a remake of the original with such a limited cast, but at least it would be focused and suspenseful, and a marked improvement over the other followup.

The second storyline revolves around Tubbs and a group of hunters led by Stan Shaw, who is basically just Creighton Duke with a team. These guys have apparently been tracking the Creeper and have professional versions of the truck-mounted weaponry Ray Wise used in the other sequel, but given the low budget there is precious little time devoted to them actually doing action-y things. Worse, those scenes suffer the most from the film's bad CGI - the Creeper himself always looks great, but his weapons look like cartoons in some shots, particularly these Mario Kart-esque bomb-shell things that he shoots from his car and can apparently track their targets. My friend said they looked like the Langoliers from the miniseries, and it's pretty apt - plus the fact that the Creeper now apparently has Thor-like powers over his weapons (at one point he literally has his axe fly from the ground into his hand as if by telekinesis), something I don't recall in the others. His truck is also booby-trapped, which results in a few interesting moments, but again is one of those things that makes me wonder why he didn't use them the day before - the harpoon that can puncture vehicles would have been handy all those times he was chasing Darry and Trish, no?

The third subplot involves Meg Foster, who plays yet another crazy old lady that lives in this town. Her son is the guy who dies in the prologue, and his ghost keeps coming back to tell her to get out of town because the Creeper is coming to get "it" back and kill anyone nearby. After a while we finally learn what "it" is - one of his old hands, which is buried in a pot in her field. When someone touches the hand they will spazz out and see the Creature's origins, I guess? Anyway, it's a subplot that's just as interminable as it is goofy, and it doesn't even have a payoff - the Creeper finally comes across it near the end, but he doesn't need an old hand (he's already grown a new one), so he just crushes it and howls at the moon, as birds drop from the sky around him. I don't know what the point of any of this nonsense is, but I DO know if it was all cut from the film it would barely make a difference, and seems like it's there only to keep the director's tradition of including goofy, unexplained supernatural subplots in his films. As a result, Foster's role is limited to either screaming at a ghost (we occasionally see it from other people's POV, showing her yelling at nothing) or standing around watching people touch the hand or whatever. She's the grandmother of the girl that's trapped in the Creeper's truck, so I kept hoping she'd mount a rescue or something, but alas - the two barely ever interact in the entire film, adding to the disjointed feeling.

But for a movie that was practically willed into existence after a number of false starts over the years, the fact that it's decent is kind of a miracle. The budget is lower but not to the extent that it can't deliver what fans want (in fact, I think we see the Creeper more than ever), and while it eventually loses its luster, it's interesting to see how much of the film is set during broad daylight. With some tighter editing (the director's usual editor Ed Marx, who has cut all of his films dating back to 1999's Rites of Passage, did not return this time) it could have worked fairly well, but the jarring shifts between characters who rarely interact, and the fact that you know the movie is building toward an anticlimax (though there is a nice little twist that ties into JC2) is something the movie never fully overcomes. It's worth a look for series fans, for sure (and you can get another chance on October 4th if you missed this "one time" screening), but don't expect to be converted if you weren't on board with those.

What say you?

P.S. I left his name out on purpose. People are on a witch hunt this time for some reason, and I don't get why since it's not exactly a secret and has been widely known since Powder (before the internet), but I'm not in the mood for a bunch of anonymous assholes to blast me - a father, by the way - for "lining the pockets of a monster" after finding this review by searching for his name (I can't very well leave the name of the movie out, alas). Does me seeing the film mean it's more likely he'll make another film? Maybe. I don't think it means he'll go out and hurt someone else, though, and besides, the kid's mother has said she has no problem with him continuing to work, so I don't see why I should feel any different than her. At any rate, comments are moderated (as they always are for every review) and won't get posted if they're vile, and if you're so offended by me seeing the film I encourage you not to yell at me on social media, which does nothing (except raise more awareness of the film's existence - several people told me they only knew it was playing because of tweets blasting the filmmaker), but instead match my $12.50 ticket price to RAINN or a similar organization, or donate to the GoFundMe I linked above.

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