Halloween Review: Trick 'R Treat

Well, I couldn't very well allow Halloween to go by without a review. In building up to this I had to ask whether I wanted to treat this like a Wednesday review, or one of my more standard, analytical reviews. On the one hand, this is a film I've seen many times, and know intimately. On the other hand, it's also a film most of my readership is likely to be familiar with. To the outside world Trick 'R Treat is a cult film, but to horror fans it's the holy grail of 21st-century horror.

I came down more on the side of the Wednesday review, mainly for practical reasons. There are so many characters, and so many plot threads in this film, that I hate the thought of trying to deal with them all, especially for a rare movie where I can sincerely find nothing to criticize. I don't claim the movie to be without fault, simply that it's so strongly to my taste that I'm not the person to find those faults. That said, to set a precedent for distinguishing Halloween reviews from Wednesday reviews, I've chosen to also discuss the history of the film.

In any discussion of this film I think it's important to acknowledge the uphill battle it had to notability. It had the bad luck of being completed during the Saw era of horror, when Jigsaw's draw at the Box Office was so powerful that other horror movies were being moved to August to avoid competing, and put on DVD in October. Obviously, for a film set at Halloween, this strategy would make no sense, so the film's release was delayed for two years, and it was eventually dumped on DVD by executives who likely expected to never hear from it again.

Despite such a low profile release, this film has become a hit through grassroots support, and word-of-mouth. This is a movie that has been on DVD shelves every Halloween ever since. This is a film that has mushroomed from an obscure cult phenomenon, to virtually inescapable on any horror fan community on the internet, especially in October. Sam has become an icon.

I think lightning struck with this movie because so many factors came together perfectly, walking so many tightropes. It isn't a remake, but yet it remains timeless without direct references to the year. It doesn't pull punches, but it also doesn't include unnecessary gore or torture porn. It embraces comedy, but without disrespecting or undermining the horror.

The thing that sets this movie apart from most horror anthologies is that the stories all take place on a single Halloween night, in a single town. The stories are presented anachronistically, and often cross-over. They're also all united by the character of Sam, a mysterious trick-or-treater with a burlap sack over his head, implied to be the guardian of Halloween customs, punishing those who disrespect the spirits, or fail to show hospitality.

The film is usually said to have four stories, but I'd likely place the number at six. The four count excludes two short scenes that I count as independent stories. One is the opening sequence, in which a woman is punished for disrespecting the holiday. The second is a short scene involving a “vampire” attacking a woman at a Halloween parade. The vampire eventually shows up in one of the main stories, while tying into another, but his initial attack doesn't really relate to either story, and could stand independently of them.

Of the four main stories, each seems intended to show a moral about the nature of the holiday. All horror is fundamentally about sin and punishment. Either punishment comes to the sinful, or punishment comes to the innocent. In this film, the punishment always inevitably comes to the sinful. Whether their sins are fully deserving of the punishments they receive varies from story to story, and can even come down to audience interpretation. The real horror, however, is simply that there are no innocent characters. Everyone has been cruel, and everyone will face their punishment.

“The Principal” overtly states the traditional Halloween rule of “always check your candy,” while arguably also being about greed. In “The School Bus Massacre Revisited” a group of bullies meet their fates when they fail to accept someone different from them. In “Surprise Party” we learn that stranger-danger isn't just for kids. Finally, in “Meet Sam” an old man learns the importance of generosity...then gets a reminder of School Bus Massacre lesson. All of these stories feel somewhat like a modern mythology, designed to instill morality in the people.

The film also stands out because of it's aesthetics. We live in a day when many horror films shy away from bright colors, while Trick 'R Treat makes heavy use of the reds and oranges of fall. The soundtrack is effective as well, perfectly evoking excited yet nervous feelings of Halloween. The movie makes no apologies, it's about Halloween.

For some time now this has been my favorite movie. Sam is an icon, the stories are both scary and hilarious, and the writing and directing are both excellent. In the off chance anyone hasn't seen it, watch it. If you have watched it, go watch it again.

100 Scariest Movie Moments: #69 Re-Animator

I find it interesting that Re-Animator has never been, as far as I’m aware, a particularly controversial film. Interesting, but not inexplicable by any means. To attack such a film for its content would be like complaining that Soldier of Fortune has a right-wing bias. That is to say, those who care have bigger fish to fry, and those who would care to consume the material knew exactly what they were getting themselves into, and thus can hardly complain.

The character of Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs) is one that I’ve always found truly fascinating. Most Anti-Heroes are driven by some sympathetic desire. That desire could be to help people they care about, or simply to have peace. In West’s case however, his driving force is simply the pursuit of knowledge. He’s hardly the first mad scientist in the history of fiction to have such a desire, but most have at least some remote sense of an end-goal. Even Frankenstein talked of bringing loved ones back from the grave as they were in life.

Not so with West, who seems to revive the dead solely to satisfy his own morbid curiosity about the nature of life. It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to say that Stuart Gordon intended some sort of Religious commentary. West as a completely indifferent being, who is almost all-powerful in any environment which he enters, and is completely uninterested in the affairs of humans. As a result, he brings conflict among those who seek to understand and use his power for their own ends. His very mind appears to be a force of nature

Beyond West, the plot of Re Animator is wonderfully insane, but of little consequence. By the end of the movie, there are many gory dead bodies that have been brought back from the grave, and a woman has been raped by a headless corpse. The other characters are interesting, but I personally feel that Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott) is of more consequence in Bride of Re Animator. In this film, he serves primarily to give us one character who can play the hero.

Doctor Carl Hill (David Gale), on the other hand exists primarily to give us a generically evil scientist villain whose only role is to be actively malevolent, thus technically making him worse than West by default. He wants to steal West's work, and take the credit and the power for himself. His existence allows West to take the designation of “Protagonist,” simply because West, if left to his own devices, would at least be limited to a fairly small number of re-animated corpses, with no sinister intent.

It would seem that a movie with a protagonist so evil that he could easily serve as a moustache-twirling villain in almost any other film would be too depressing to bother with. But I find Re Animator to be truly fascinating, for its mixture of carnage, characterization, and comedy.

I’m not sure what it says about this film that I find West to be easily the scariest aspect. While his persona is more malevolent, West has what could easily be described as a Hannibal Lector vibe. He’s smarter than everyone around him. And while he may be distinguished from worse villains by lack of malice, he’s also distinguished by the absolute certainty that he will not lose.

If you can’t deal with blood or gore, skip this movie. But if you can, watch it, period.

Wednesday Review: Crimson Peak

Some critics have been saying that Crimson Peak was mis-marketed. I was a bit wary from Chris Stuckman's review, which seemed to imply that the movie was more of a romance than a horror movie. Jeremy Jahns went as far as saying that the ghosts could have been edited out of the film entirely without affecting the plot.

I don't disagree with this assessment, but I can't really imagine a better trailer for the film. The film seems to be a mixture of a mystery, a ghost story, and a romance. The most intense, trailer-worthy scenes of the mystery would be major spoilers, and marketing the film as a ghost story, or a romance would both result in calls of mis-marketing. I suppose they decided to at least make it clear that what they were selling was a ghost story, which really isn't under dispute.

The movie deals with an American heiress and aspiring writer marrying a poverty-stricken English aristocrat, and moving in with him and his sister in their run-down manor. Our main character, Edith, seems to be at least a bit psychic, seeing ghosts from time to time throughout her life, and far more prominently once she moves into the house. She knows that bad things have happened there, and spends much of the movie trying to piece together the house's bloody history.

It's true that the ghosts don't do a lot to influence the plot of the film, but that doesn't mean that they're not significant. They serve to create a real sense of dread, and the visuals are absolutely fabulous. Anyone familiar with Del Toro's views of the afterlife, as displayed in both this film and The Devil's Backbone, is likely to be even more disturbed by the implications of ghosts.

I will note that the movie is slow to get started, but I never really minded. The actors are just fun to watch, and they have a good rapport. The plot is fairly predictable, but it plays out naturally enough. The twists are logical, and there are a few times when my guesses were partially right, but the twists turned out to be more complicated.

At this point I suspect that Tom Hiddleston is just biding his time until he hits his 50s, and the Academy is ready to give him his Oscar. There's absolutely no question that he's one of the finest actors alive, and that shines through here. In lesser hands many of his scenes would be downright dull, but he turns on the charm and keeps us interested.

I think this movie is proof that Guillermo del Toro is incapable of directing a bad film. The visual are beautiful, the cast ideal, and the story intense. I don't know if this movie will be a big hit on it's initial release, but I suspect it's a film that will have a following for many years to come, and may grow on people over time. But, if you think it sounds interesting, I would certainly recommend catching it in theatres.

100 Scariest Movie Moments: #70 The Stepfather

The Stepfather is based on a true story. The details are highly embellished, but the basic idea is in fact true. A man named John List actually butchered his entire family, having made preparations so thorough that no one noticed for a month. He then assumed a new identity and found a new family. However, this film makes him a serial family killer, who has done it before and fully intends to do it again if his new family is anything short of perfect, while the real man did it only once and for much simpler reasons (he lost his job and refused to feed his family with welfare).

I find it strange that with all of the tension surrounding this possibility, the scene that's often highlighted as the scariest is the one in which the Stepfather, under the name Jerry Blake (his real name is never given), played by Terry O'Quinn, goes down into his basement and starts talking to himself, yelling somewhat incoherently. The things he says imply that he was abused as a child. I fail to see what's frightening about this, but that might just be because I talk to myself when I'm alone. Hell, I'm even reading this out loud as I type it. So, someone going downstairs to yell when he's upset makes perfect sense to me.

The actual storyline is surprisingly complex as we follow several threads, with the Stepfather trying to ingratiate himself into his new family and his new wife Susan (Shelley Hack), working as a realtor, his stepdaughter Stephanie (Jill Schoelen) trying to convince both him and her mother that she should go to boarding school, and the brother of his murdered former wife (Steven Shellen) trying to track him down.

The added complexity of the story may be an unintentional side-effect of the subplots. The primary purpose of the subplots seem to be to give us more action in a storyline that requires the primary action to come at the end of the film. After all, Jerry can't attempt to kill his family until the final act of the movie, so something else has to happen.

In fact, there's a murder at almost exactly the half-way point of the film, just to remind us that he's a killer. Stephanie's psychologist (Charles Lanyer), trying to talk to the Stepfather about letting her go to boarding school, pretends to be an interested customer who is house shopping. The Stepfather falsely believes him to be an investigator searching for “Henry Morrison,” and kills him.

Beyond this, the actual murder attempts come so late in the film that they seem like an afterthought. I'm uncertain if the line “Who am I here?” was originally used to promote the film or was simply used later for VHS and DVD covers, but it is a chilling turn in the movie. The Stepfather calls himself by the wrong name, tipping off his wife, and beginning his next rampage.

Of course, plot contrivance is at play. He knocks his wife out, merely making preparations to kill her rather than getting it over with. At the same time, Stephanie is coming home. And of course, his former brother-in-law chose that exact moment to discover his true identity and race to the rescue.

Despite being so formulaic (the brother-in-law provides another body), the last fifteen minutes are carried primarily by O'Quinn's performance. They remain scary because he provides a bizarre mixture of chaos and order. He's losing control, but he's doing so in a methodical way. This serves to remind us that he's done this before, and if he gets away he'll do it again.

To me, the single most frightening moment in this film is also the single corniest. The three living people in the house, the Stepfather, his wife, and Stephanie, are all wounded to the point at which they can only crawl. The wife has a gun, but it's out of bullets, and she is too far away to interfere. So he and Stephanie both have to crawl towards a knife to try to finish each other off. The wife even conveniently yells “Stephanie, the knife!” just to let the audience know that yes, a mass-murderer getting to a knife before his intended victim would be bad. The scene reminds me of The Strangers in the sense that both are proof of how a movie's quality has little to do with its capacity to induce fear.

I strongly recommend this movie, if only to see Terry O'Quinn in something other than Lost. It's a lot of fun, and despite the implausibility of some events, it's never truly stupid enough to make you feel guilty for liking it.

100 Scariest Movie Moments: #71 The Sixth Sense

To summarize the inevitable attacks that are raised against this movie, as well as against anyone who likes it: the twist makes no sense, Shyamalan is a hack, and it shouldn't be on a list of horror movies because it isn't scary. Personally, I have a theory on how the metaphysics of this universe work, but explaining it would waste several paragraphs. So instead, I'm simply going to boil it down to “it makes sense to me.” I don't hate Shyamalan as much as most people do. He's pretentious, and many of his films can be boring, but I consider The Last Airbender to be the only unforgivable atrocity he's committed.

For the final issue, whether or not this is a horror film, I would personally say that it is. It simply isn't the type of horror that people went into it expecting to see. It doesn't matter how friendly the ghosts are, the idea of being the only person who could communicate with ghosts who didn't even know they are dead is scary. And facing a world that would inevitably think you're crazy if you told them the truth makes it doubly so. This isn't a traditional “ghost story,” this is a psychological horror story about a small boy facing a harsh reality.

The twist at this point is extremely well known. Bruce Willis plays Malcolm Crowe, a psychologist trying to help a troubled boy named Cole (Haley Joel Osment). He discovers that the boy is able to talk to spirits, and it's eventually revealed that Willis' character is himself a ghost, and died in the first scene of the film.

Unlike a number of Shyamalan's later films, the slow pace works here. We're not dealing with problems that are quickly solved. The slow, meticulous dialogue makes it clear that Cole is a very intelligent child, opening up to the situation in a cautious manner. He knows that he has to deal with the fact that he can see ghosts, but doesn't know the appropriate reaction, or what he's expected to do with this knowledge.

The movie plays around with the traditional structure of the horror movie, which could contribute to why people deny it's a horror movie at all. The most frightening parts are towards the middle of the film, with the horror gradually fading towards the end. The structure, even if it's unusual, is logical. Early in the film we're dealing primarily with Malcolm's perspective, who can't see other ghosts. Towards the middle of the film, we get an increasing amount of Cole's perspective, allowing us to see the ghosts. And by the end of the film, we've come to terms with the fact that the ghosts, while often disturbed, are not particularly dangerous.

The thing that fundamentally separates this movie from many of Shyamalan's later films is that it doesn't drown in its own mythology. The exact mechanics of how the universe works are less important than the human relationships within the universe. That's what makes the movie so impactful, comparing it to Lady in the Water, which spent far too much of its runtime dissecting the mythology, rather than letting characters react to it.

I'm probably the last person left hoping Shyamalan will somehow, some way pull his career out of a tailspin. I doubt that he'll make another Sixth Sense, nor should anyone expect him to. I'd settle for another Devil, which I think is a film that doesn't get nearly enough love, or a version of Wayward Pines that doesn't ruin ten great episodes with a Godawful final five minutes. That said though, this is an awesome movie.

Wednesday Review: Goosebumps

There are a ton of topics I want to cover in this review. To keep myself from getting too disjointed, let me get a few out of the way in bullet-points:

• I read a few of the Goosebumps books as kids, but I was and remain far more familiar with the television series.
• I was excited many years ago when this movie was originally announced as an anthology, featuring multiple original Goosebumps stories. While I know horror anthologies have always been a hard sell, I personally would have preferred that route.
• Would anyone be satisfied with a Harry Potter movie that consisted of Harry coming out of the books and having an adventure with J.K. Rowling? Then why is it a suitable way to adapt Goosebumps?

Those out of the way, however, I liked this movie far more than I expected to. I was surprised to realize that somehow this movie managed to get all of Goosebumps' usual weaknesses right, while completely dropping the ball in the areas where the series usually shines. The protagonists were spunky and likable, and the plot fairly straight-forward, and devoid of any plot-twists that were face-palmingly stupid. However, the villains really suffered from all being crammed together into a single story-line, with most of them barely squeezed into the background.

The story-line, for those of you who missed the trailer, is that a boy named Zach believes that his neighbor's daughter is being abused. Breaking into the neighbor's house, Zach discovers that the neighbor is none other than Goosebumps author R.L. Stine, who has gone into hiding because his monsters were coming to life, and he was forced to trap them in their original manuscripts. Zach accidentally releases Slappy the Dummy, who begins releasing other monsters, burning their books so that they can't be recaptured.

Jack Black as Stine really steals the show. Black has said that he met with Stine, but decided that the real Stine's personality wouldn't work for the film, so he just fictionalized the character. I suspect he may have been inspired by Garth Mereghi's Darkplace and it's titular character. He hams it up and has the time of his life.

Zach and Hannah are both active, brave protagonists, and the cast is rounded off by Zach's friend Champ, a nerd with extensive knowledge of Goosebumps. They handle their scenes well enough, and all of the protagonists contribute to the narrative effectively. They can't compete with Black, but they still make even the scenes without him entertaining.

As I said, however, the villains do suffer. Nowhere is this more evident than Slappy. Firstly, Slappy now seems to have the ability to teleport, and for some reason all the other monsters accept him as leader without question. Powering him up does not make him scarier, since he no longer has to be clever or cunning.

I'd even say that the move completely misses the reason Slappy was scary. In the film he has a singular goal: kill Stine so he can't lock the monsters back up. In every Slappy story I'm familiar with he was focused on enslaving humans, specifically children. Slappy actually gets scarier as you get older, and realize the sexual undertones of the character. This Slappy isn't a pedophile, he's just a generic evil Mastermind.

Overall, I say see it. It isn't especially scary, but it isn't the cash grab everyone was expecting either. It's clear that everyone involved in this project gave their best work. I suppose I'll just have to hope the film leads to a revival of the show, so I can't get some new stories. And if it did, I would love to see Black hosting it.

100 Scariest Movie Moments: #72 Them!

I was initially going to open this review with a discussion of how the level of trust shown in the Government makes this film dated and a product of it's time. I was going to say how, if the movie was made today, it would clearly show the Government as being far less competent. But then I remembered the recent Godzilla remake which showed the Government acting in a rational manner to protect its citizens, and decided that maybe this example of “dating” doesn't really apply to giant monster movies. Apparently people do trust that their leaders would put petty politics aside and do the right thing if a major city was being ripped apart by a creature the size of a skyscraper.

This is generally regarded as the second Giant Monster movie, the first being The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. So it was presented to an audience that didn't really know to expect an army of Giant Ants seeking to spread and destroy all of humanity. This makes the opening much more subtle. Although many later movies about Giant Monsters hide the monster for some time, this film still opens by showing you the damage it's done to build up the scare factor. However, in Them! we see two police officers finding a ransacked trailer and a little girl who is too scared to talk beyond yelling the film's title, all alone in the desert. Obviously, to filmgoers not yet familiar with the genre, the implication is that one or more perfectly human, or perhaps super-human, villains were at fault.

If there is a distinction other than special effects between the monsters in this film and modern Kaiju it's that there's a real sense of awe that such creatures exist. They're only 8-foot, quite small by Giant Monster standards, but still shocking to the characters. Once again, I find it useful to compare it to the recent Godzilla remake. Because while in that movie, the main characters find out that giant monsters exist by sitting down in a meeting room and being told, in this movie, they encounter one, and still have trouble believing that such a thing could exist, even when the first one has been killed and is literally lying there in front of them. This does seem the more believable reaction. I know if I was there I would be screaming “How the hell can is legs support it's body? Cut them open, we need to know what in the hell they're made of! Titanium?”

I won't act like the performances aren't hammy. It's a monster movie from the 50s, but generally, they work, and the actors seem to be trying decently. It also helps that this is the rare monster movie which doesn't try to make the monsters invincible. Gunshots at their antenna kill the first one encountered almost immediately, and poison and fire are able to kill them as well. They're not a danger to humanity because they can only be killed by a super-weapon or another gigantic monster. They're a danger because of the risk that they could spread and establish additional colonies.

If this movie has a weakness, I would say that it's the simplicity. There's a general assumption that 8-foot long ants will still behave in exactly the same way as their smaller cousins, despite having clearly mutated a great deal. Beyond that, while I don't claim to be an expert on the 1950s US military, the soldiers who assault the ant colony seem to be going in quite light, wearing no armor other than their helmets. I find this a bit unlikely, given that they're carrying rocket launchers and flamethrowers that they fully intend to use. But, I really can't call a movie out on such points in the days of Michael Bay, who would probably end the movie with a one-on-one duel between Optimus Prime and the Queen Ant.

The ants making noise is actually a case of science marching on since the movie was made. There was an ongoing debate at the time concerning whether or not ants could make noise, as microphones sensitive enough to tell had yet to be invented. Either way though, the filmmakers made the right choice. The sounds made by the ants is otherworldly, and I imagine I would be terrified by anything chasing me which made that sound. The fact that they don't make sounds in the real world matters very little to me.

Is this movie going to scare you? Probably not. To a modern viewer, it's in the same category as Universal Monsters, perhaps a rung below Frankenstein. However, it's fun, and it definitely deserves its status as a classic.

100 Scariest Movie Moments: #73 Blood Simple

It seems to be a staple of the Coen Brothers that the expectations of the audience can never be fulfilled. Instead, they must give the audience something even more interesting. In the case of The Big Lebowski this was used for great comedic effect, because no two characters could seem to agree on just what movie they were in. In Blood Simple however, it's used to greatly disorient the audience; creating discomfort as we're genuinely unsure just what in the Hell is about to happen.

The whole film revolves around 4 characters: Julian Marty (Dan Hedaya), the jealous husband, Abby (Frances McDormand), his wife, Ray (John Getz), her lover, and Visser (M. Emmet Walsh), the private-investigator-turned-assassin who is hired by Marty. The relationships seem to indicate to the viewer that the plot will mostly revolve around the first three, with Visser as a second-banana to Marty. To reinforce this, Visser is presented to us initially as a drunken baffoon. So, imagine our surprise when Visser reveals himself to be the true villain, easily killing Marty.

I had trouble understanding Visser's motivation. He had been hired by Marty to kill Abby and Ray, and instead, doctored photos to make it appear that he had, then killed Marty after being paid. As far as I can tell, he killed Marty simply because he decided that taking Marty's money and framing Abby was easier than dealing with Abby and Ray's bodies. Marty had made it clear that he would retaliate if Visser attempted to trick him. However, a series of miscalculations requires Visser to attempt to kill the couple anyway to retrieve some pieces of evidence he left behind.

This type of thinking actually makes Visser a much scarier threat than Marty. While Marty was motivated by rage, Visser thinks so little of human lives that he'd happily end them simply for momentary gain, or because they pose an inconvenience to him. Furthermore, over the course of the movie no single character ever has a full understanding of what has happened. However, Visser is clearly the closest, generally being aware of who his targets are and why, while they both seem to believe that Marty has returned from the grave to haunt them.

The decision to have characters act on such incomplete information is a choice that few filmmakers make, since scripting out appropriate actions for each character is more difficult. But it does create a good experience for the viewer, with a storyline that can be watched more than once and still enjoyed. The most obvious example of this is that Ray ends up disposing of Marty's body (...while Marty is still just barely alive), thinking that Abby shot her husband, while Abby continues to be unaware for some time that Marty is even dead. This puts them into conflict as they interpret each others' statements and actions differently. The final line of the movie, while revealing nothing new to the viewer, is a shocking swerve to the final surviving character. Abby finds out that the man hunting her wasn't even Marty, but a complete stranger (Visser), whose motives she didn't even know, just as she finishes him off.

I definitely recommend this movie. It's bloody, and down-to-earth in a way that makes many of the events feel extremely real. It's harsh, brutal, and amazing.

100 Scariest Movie Moments: #74 Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

I approached this film thinking that it would be another movie in which I understood the fear aspect, but didn't personally frightening. I think when I was a child, my interpretation of Gene Wilder's Wonka was always that he was a troll. He's such a technical nut that he's filled his factory with safety precautions and knew the kids were in no danger, so he enjoys watching their parents flip out. That said, as an adult he comes across as far more of a creep, seemingly trying to feel up each of the children when they're coming through the gate.

I also find Grandpa Joe (Jack Albertson) to be creepy. A man who can't get out of bed to actually work and support his family, but can get out of bed to escort his grandson to receive a fabulous prize, comes across as unbelievably sleazy to me. Also, his decision to give up tobacco to buy Charlie a chocolate bar comes across not so much as the act of a loving grandfather, but rather of a compulsive gambler feeding his addiction. That might actually help to explain just how his family ended up so goddamn poor in the first place.

The scene that's typically highlighted as being the most terrifying is the scary tunnel in which Wonka sings a bizarre song while lights and strange images surround the boat the children are on. I don't find this scary though. It simply looks like a fair ride to me. Relative to everything else in the film, it seems fairly tame; nothing more than lights and images on a wall.

I think the connection to Hansel and Gretel is fairly obvious. Wonka built a gigantic factory full of amazing delights which children can't resist, and then punishes them for failing to resist. Effectively, he punishes children for being children. Yes, they're bad behaved children, but it's not really their fault they have terrible parents, and the lessons don't really serve to teach them anything.

One interpretation I've heard of the ending is that Wonka never intended to give any of the children his factory, and made up the lie on the fly when he realized that he'd failed to break Charlie (Peter Ostrum), who he expected to eliminate with the Fizzy Lifting Drinks. It makes a disturbing amount of sense, because this way, he could have access to Charlie 24/7 to tempt him until he eventually succumbs. Charlie won't give in for personal gain, but he will certainly do anything if he feels it will benefit his family, so bringing them to the factory would be the next logical step in destroying Charlie.

I have yet to see the remake, so I can't really comment on Depp's performance. I can only say that Wilder is creepy as Hell, as is Grandpa Joe, and “Slugworth” (Gűnter Meisner). I literally don't think Charlie meets a single trustworthy adult who has his best interests in mind in this entire film. And yeah, that creeps me out. The real horror of this film is that Charlie is simply a tool in the games of adults that he can't yet understand.

100 Scariest Movie Moments: #75 Candyman

Candyman...Candyman...Candyman, Candyman, Candyman.

After being underwhelmed by three of the last five movies on this list, it's nice to go back to a tried-and-true classic. While the titular character lacks the level of public exposure enjoyed by Freddy and Jason, his status as an icon among horror fans at least is undisputed. When I strike up conversations with my co-workers about horror films, oftentimes they will not have seen such films as The Evil Dead, or The Shining... but everyone has seen Candyman.

Tony Todd plays the Candyman, an urban legend; the son of a slave who impregnated a rich white planter's daughter who he was hired to paint. He was murdered horrifically. The movie makes it pretty clear that whether or not this story is true is completely irrelevant to the Candyman's continued existence. He is powered purely by people's belief in him, which is thrown into danger when a young grad student named Helen (Virginia Madsen) does a study on urban legends, calling their veracity into question.

I recently read the short story on which the movie is based, “The Forbidden” by Clive Barker. Suffice to say that the setting and a number of plot points are different, but much of Candyman's dialogue seems to be taken directly from the original story. The dialogue remains creepy, as virtually anything by Clive Barker always is. Seriously, I think that the man could write a cook book and people would shit their pants trying to make it through his recipe for key lime pie.

I'd say there are two significant changes that were made between the original story and the adaptation which need to be addressed. The first is that Candyman was changed from a racially ambiguous character (yellow skin and blue lips), to an intimidating black man. The second is the added plot point of Helen being attacked by a gangster posing as the Candyman (Terrence Riggins).

The first change can likely be associated with the move from England to America. The implication is that the horror created by the American collective unconscious, being tinged with more racism, would obviously be a scary black man. I believe that his association with the poor might also play in with this, as he's an urban legend primarily in poverty-stricken neighborhoods. So “black” in this film is code for “poor.” This fits in with the original story, in which Helen was studying graffiti in a poor neighborhood.

The second change, while it obviously exists to allow us drama in the time building up to Candyman's appearance, could also be said to exist to make Helen a more innocent character. In the original story, it was strongly implied that the murders attributed to Candyman before her arrival never happened. They were the collective fantasies of people who wanted to believe them. Candyman was obligated to actually come and kill someone only when his existence was called into doubt, making Helen responsible, because she questioned him. (Yes, the religious commentary is there, but it’s not what I choose to dwell on.) In this version, it’s implied that the murders did indeed happen, but that Candyman only carried them out by proxy through another agent. It was Helen's attempt to stop these, and destroy the mystique of Candyman, that summoned him to take a direct role.

When he finally does arrive, the effect is intense. Bees and a bloody hook are window dressing on Tony Todd's performance. He actually makes you believe that he's less of a human than he is an embodiment of your fears. I place the Candyman up there with the original Terminator in terms of an actor embodying a truly inhuman character.

I don't think there's a single frame of this film that doesn't work. Tony Todd is the head of a small army of talented actors, and never once do any of the actors seem to be phoning it in; a rare occurrence for horror movies. The eventual payoff is also fully satisfying, and makes sense in terms of what's come before it. I highly recommend this film.

Wednesday Review: The Green Inferno

Supposedly, the tribe in this movie has never been filmed before. Eli Roth claimed that he had to introduce them to the concept of cinema by showing them Cannibal Holocaust. According to Roth the tribe thought that a movie about cannibals in the Amazon was hilarious. So, I can only presume the tribe felt they were making a comedy.

They're not far from the truth, however. Much of the violence in this movie is so over-the-top it's hard not to laugh, and the tribe constantly ham up their performances. Many scenes look like the villagers are just barely keeping a straight face. One scene even features the cannibals getting high on pot. This seems like a good thing for the prisoners, until they get the munchies. Many of the failed escape attempts are also downright comical, showing the tribe as capable of an almost godlike level of vigilance. It's like the prisoners are trying to get away from a cannibalistic Bugs Bunny.

Above all, what surprises me about this film is that it actually seems smart. The last thing I expected from an Eli Roth film was a degree of intelligence, and I'm still not sure that it wasn't accidental, or perhaps left-over from Cannibal Holocaust (which I still have yet to see in it's entirety). Halfway through the film we're told “it's all connected, the good guys and the bad.” As I watched, I realized this was a driving theme of the film: the savage, selfish nature of humanity. In the end, you just have to decide who you're going to screw over, not whether or not you're going to screw people over.

The movie also comes across as a giant middle-finger to paternalistic Western views about other cultures. The villagers of this movie, while coming across as basically human, are just as brutal and savage as the corporate forces that want to destroy them. Some people are already trying to call racism, but to me the movie is about the entire nature of humanity, not about the evil of any one group.

The premise of the movie is that a group of activists go to the Amazon to sabotage a Natural Gas company attempting to wipe out a local tribe. They succeed, and then bribe the officials who arrested them into letting them go. However, their plane ends up crashing near the village, and the cannibalistic tribe captures the villagers, and begins eating them one-by-one.

Despite the humor, I will definitely say that this is a movie that deserves a trigger warning. Anyone who has an issue with sexual violence in particular would likely be bothered by one or two scenes. To Roth's credit, the sexual violence is the one part of the film that isn't remotely played for laughs. It's just horrifying.

That isn't even going into the gore which, while unrealistic, is still quite brutal. I could deal with it, but I can deal with a lot of things most people can't. If you get squicky, this is not the movie for you.

I'm quite surprised that this movie has gotten such a low rating from critics. As of this writing it's Rotten Tomatoes score is 39%. Certainly it's not for everyone, but judging it for what it is the movie is excellent. It's a film about white people being eaten by cannibals, what did you expect?

100 Scariest Movie Moments: #76 The Evil Dead

In the event that a classic movie has a sequel that even remotely lives up to the original, there is unquestionably going to be a debate over whether or not they form a single film together, or are better viewed as separate entities. This is doubly true when the original ended on a cliff-hanger and the sequel picks up from there. ‘…Was the cliff-hanger more interesting than the resolution?’ This is true of both Halloween and The Evil Dead. However, I personally come down on opposite sides of the two debates. For Halloween, “He's still out there” was an ominous send-off for the film. And the follow-up, although good, could never really live up to that dread. In the case of Evil Dead on the other hand, the sequels expanded on the original in a way that formed thematic perfection.

Some time ago Sam Raimi said that if you removed the beginning and end of Evil Dead 2, you could splice Evil Dead, Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness together to form the single film he’d originally envisioned, which grows ever more comedic as Ash (Bruce Campbell) goes mad from the horrors that he's facing. A few years ago, I did actually splice the films together in precisely this manner and watched them with some friends, and I was impressed. At no point during the four-and-a-half hour viewing did I find myself bored, nor did I feel that the shifts were abrupt. (The Cabin isn't ripped apart anymore? Clearly the Deadites put it back together to trap the next group!)

So in only reviewing the original Evil Dead, I find myself feeling quite limited, as this journey into madness was only made evident as the series went along. Still, there is a horrifying quality to this film not often found in modern horror films. First and foremost, there's only a single prominent scene of a cast member being attacked while alone, and it doesn't end in her death. (Yes, I'm referring to the infamous “tree rape.”) Rather, the evil wants to attack them all together, to induce fear as they watch their possessed friends fall to it.

The fact that the movie actually takes time to let us get to know that these are not complete jackasses is probably why it resonates so much more than many modern slasher films. These are human beings with relationships to one another, and friendships, who are being tortured. And none of them ever do anything to become particularly unlikeable.

Better yet is the fairly limited knowledge of the rules by which the Evil is playing. Right up to the final moments of the film we don't know the Deadites true weaknesses or what their limitations are. Granted, there are moments when they don't seem all-powerful, but a strong argument could be made that they're trying to infuse their victims with a false sense of hope. They certainly seem to be at their most powerful when their victims are actively trying to flee, and we're never even shown (in the original film, at least,) the means by which their final assault on Ash is carried out. As far as we can tell they got tired of playing, and just decided to finish him off.

I feel as though any discussion of this movie has to bring up the line “You bastards, why are you torturing me like this?” It's bugged the living hell out of me every time I've seen this film. Given that the vast majority of the movie has fairly subdued performances by the standards of the rest of the series, and this particular line seems to almost be written and acted as if its a parody of terrible movie lines. I have absolutely no idea what Sam Raimi or Bruce Campbell were going for. It's almost as if it’s a line from Bruce Campbell's later career as the King of Ham.

Is Evil Dead the best horror film? Or even the best of its own series? Far from it. However, on the scale of quality, it falls well above most of its genre, and there was actual talent and effort put into it. No nerd could possibly be complete without having seen this film.

100 Scariest Movie Moments: #77 Signs

Everyone remembers how stupid the aliens are in Signs. They attacked a planet that is 70% covered with a substance deadly to them, while naked an unarmed. Let me give an interpretation of the film I picked up on the internet to deal with this issue… The characters incorrectly believed them to be aliens when they were actually demons. Mel Gibson's character, being a priest, blessed the water, so they were harmed by holy water. There we go. The movie makes sense now, which is why I've come to adopt that theory.

Resolving that issue is the single easiest part of analyzing this movie. All of the dialogue and human interaction is so unbelievably awkward and stilted that I have no idea what anyone involved in the project was going for. It's not bad though, simply bizarre.

The film has a certain uncomfortable, dream-like feel to it, created by the awkward interactions. But, the effect is periodically broken by characters commenting on how ridiculous the dialogue of another character is. There's even a scene where Gibson's own facial expression indicates his character knows he said something absurd.

“The police are here and I'm with them. I'm a police officer.”

Beyond “there's an alien invasion, and Mel Gibson and his family are under siege in a farm house,” I have no idea what to describe about the plot. Graham Hess (Gibson) was a priest, until his wife died in a wreck, and she said some strange things that turned out to have been a vision of the invasion. Other than that, I have absolutely no idea which parts of this movie are supposed to be significant, and which parts are merely weird dialogue intended to establish characters.

The most notable thing about the movie is the score. The music is legitimately unsettling, and helps to back up some fairly creepy imagery. Even with the explanation of demons however, the ending does come across as quite anti-climactic. The movie attempts to become heartwarming instead of frightening, and ruins what was otherwise a decent (if awkward) setup, with the aliens/demons being defeated with little effort and the protagonist regaining his faith in God.

I don't hate Shyamalan the way that many people do. I feel that he can make good movies, when he makes them for his audience instead of himself. Hell, I thought The Happening was enjoyable, if only for morbid amusement of watching mass suicides. This movie however, I put in the same category as The Village and Lady in the Water. It's boring, and feels the need to constantly remind you of just how important the things you're watching actually are.

As with some other movies on this list, I wouldn't really discourage anyone from watching it. The experience is certainly interesting. But you might find yourself staring at the screen for five minutes afterwards, wondering what exactly you just saw.