Area 51

If there's ever been a film that represented the true bottom of the barrel for Found Footage, it's Area 51. Oren Peli apparently felt that if the style worked for his first film, it could work for his second as well. However, this is not even remotely the same type of story as Paranormal Activity. A Found Footage film about simple alien abduction might have worked, but when you're dealing with the infiltration of Area 51 you've taken on an entirely different beast.

The film might have worked if we had some truly compelling characters. However, most of the actors spend the movie sounding bored. Our lead character, Reid (Reid Warner, yes characters and actors share names again) is abducted by aliens at a party. He then becomes a conspiracy theorist obsessed with aliens, and tries to talk his friends Ben and Darrin (Ben Rovner and Darrin Bragg) into coming with him on his dangerous mission.

Along the way they pick up Jelena (Jelena Nik), a young woman whose late father worked in Area 51. After his death Jelena kept many of his files in secret, and is prepared to go with them. She believes her father was murdered for asking too many questions.

The only remotely compelling character is Ben, who we gradually learn only went along with the plan because he believed Reid would get over the idea. He has to struggle with the question of whether or not to continue, and ultimately decides that he will drive them, but will not enter the base himself.

The preparation scenes would have been interesting with better characters. I can believe that these are the kinds of preparations you might make when planning to break into a Top Secret Air Force Base, however none of the characters ever seem obsessed enough to go to the lengths we're being shown. Reid in particular should be a loose-canon if he's been so truly affected by his abduction, but he always seems to be just going along with the plan as much as anyone else. I never believe that anyone involved has the level of determination to really make this happen.

Once they're in the base the movie continues to fall apart. Bad CGI is still bad CGI, even if the camera is shaking a bit. We see all the amazing alien technology, and they even get a nice chase scene when one of the captured aliens is set free.

My best guess at explaining the ending of the film is that the aliens intended Reid to break into the base and free their imprisoned companions. Why such advanced aliens needed human help I don't claim to know. The film ends with all of our protagonists abducted, and apparently brainwashed. However, the aliens decide to leave lots of footage, including footage taken aboard their ship, while abducting the human witnesses. “Keep the humans, but throw out their recording device fully intact!”

As with the Paranormal Activity films it's clear this movie lacks any real sense of an in-universe editor. In one scene the characters film a group of strippers without their knowledge or consent. Why would an editor include that footage? Not only does it add nothing to the alien storyline, it opens him up to a massive lawsuit for distributing the footage! In the real world an editor would have, at best, acknowledged via text or voice over that the footage existed, while refusing to show it to the audience for liability reasons.

As for the usual complaint of “why are they still filming?” At one point a character continues to hold his camera at eye level while a soldier points a gun at him and demands he put his hands over his head. Apparently we as an audience are too dumb to figure out what's going on if the camera is pointed at the ceiling for a few moments.

This film is just uninteresting. Try as I might, I find nothing compelling to recommend it. It uses a genre intended to evoke realism, while utterly failing to make anything seem the slightest bit real.

Krampus

Looking back at my original review of Krampus, it's amazing how little has actually changed in my opinion. I no longer dread the movie starting, I'm now filled with excitement. However, most of my major thoughts are still in my original review. I still think the movie is, in an odd way, fully a Christmas film. I also still think the visuals are stunning.

That said, I've now watched the film with a friend who has far more extensively studied folklore. The experience was interesting, because while she enjoyed the movie, she found herself horrified by how much the source material had been altered. She felt that this movie heavily conflates the legend of Krampus with the Wild Hunt. This is an interesting perspective, and I can certainly see her point, however I feel that these are legends that fit together far better than one would expect.

I still love the family. They're all fundamentally good people, who are driven apart by wildly different values. Aunt Dorothy (Conchata Ferrell) is a brutally-honest alcoholic who drives the rest of the family crazy with her lack of tact. Uncle Howard (David Koechner) and his brother-in-law Tom (Adam Scott) have a passive-aggressive relationship based on their wildly different values. Their wives, Linda (Allison Tolman) and Sarah (Toni Collette) are the very picture of sibling rivalry, constantly trying to be polite, while bitterness from years past keeps bubbling to the surface.

Our main character, Max (Emjay Anthony) finds himself the target of bullying from his cousins Stevie and Jordan (Lolo Owen and Queenie Samuel). The whole family relationship is captured in a microcosm there: Max, being an only child, has no understanding of his cousins' teasing as anything other than cruelty. The two of them seem to see Max as a surrogate sibling who they can play their usual games with.

During all of this hostility, Max's sister Beth (Stefania LaVie Owen) and his German Grandmother Omi (Beth Engel) try to keep the peace. His remaining cousin, Howie Jr. (Maverick Flack) is kind of just there...Also, there's a baby (Sage Hunefeld).

It's this family rivalry that eventually leads Max to tear up his letter to Santa, and throw it out the window. With that, Krampus comes, and they begin to get picked off. The action scenes are, for the most part, awesome, and the visuals remain stunning in their use of practical effects. Every character gets at least something interesting to do, and kudos to them for finally making Krampus deal with the situation personally, after his minions have been defeated.

The big reveal of the movie is that Omi had been visited by Krampus previously as a child. I'm curious if this means that Krampus has a particular interest in Max's bloodline, or if it was just an amazing coincidence. The flashback, told as either CGI or stop-motion (I'm still not sure) is stunning, mixing Rankin/Bass with shadow imagery that reminds me of the ‘Tale of the Three Brothers’ from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows.

The plan, apparently, was to leave Max behind as a reminder to keep the Christmas spirit, as Krampus took all the others to the Underworld. However, Max eventually begs Krampus to take him instead, and the entire family appears to wake up in Max's home on Christmas Day, with their spirit newly restored. The final shot of the movie makes it ambiguous if Krampus is still watching them, or if they're now trapped in a snow globe, but I lean towards the former interpretation.

This movie is a new classic. It should be watched every Christmas with the same regularity as It's a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Carol. Krampus is a great character, intimidating and mysterious, but also complex. I really hope he gets to meet Sam someday.

Knock Knock

(Author’s Note: I wrote this review before listening to Eli Roth’s commentary on the film. I feel that Roth does not understand his own movie, and his belief that this is a movie about cheating rather than rape horrifies me. That said, I decided not to update my review, because my feelings are still mostly sincere.)

Knock Knock is a film that makes me happy for my lack of star ratings. It's a film that needs to exist, and tries to exist in the most boundary-pushing manner that our culture will allow. That does not make the viewing of this film a pleasant experience. Furthermore, it says a lot that even a director as sick as Eli Roth was unable to get through this entire movie without coping out.

This is a movie about rape. Let's get that out of the way upfront. Our main character, Evan (Keanu Reeves), is both physically tortured, and sexually violated by two women for sick thrills. I'm glad that this is a subject that can, for the most part, be taken seriously in this movie. That said, I really want to know why this movie is labeled as an “Erotic Thriller.” I don't know what anyone could find to turn them on in this movie, past perhaps the first half hour.

The movie is set in the kind of idyllic family life that absolutely no one can relate to. Evan is a wealthy architect, married to a successful artist (Ignacia Allamand), with two children (Dan and Megan Baily, who I assume are siblings in real life, but can find no confirmation of that). They live in a large, gorgeous home, and the closest thing to conflict in Evan's life is going without sex for the last few weeks because of their busy schedules.

Evan, in a tragic irony, has to stay home and work while his family goes on a Father's Day vacation. That night two girls named Genesis and Bell (Lorenzo Izzo and Ana de Armas) show up on his doorstep, soaked from the rain and claiming to be lost. Evan, being a gentleman, agrees to let them come and until he can call them a car.

Credit to the movie for not projecting the girls as evil upfront. Their introduction comes across as innocent fun. They ask to throw their clothes in the dryer, and Evan is decent enough to provide them with robes. They put on some music, dance, and wish our hero a happy Father's Day, but Evan is careful to maintain his boundaries.

The turn comes when the girls lure Evan into the bathroom, and make an explicit effort to seduce him. The scene is one of several points in the film where I'm not sure how Roth intends for us to interpret Evan. Evan tells them “no” repeatedly, and only gives in when they begin sucking him off without his consent.

The next morning the girls completely change their tones. They vary between hostility and seductiveness apparently based on nothing more than what they think will annoy Evan the most. When Evan threatens to call the police, the girls claim to be fifteen, and threaten him with statutory rape charges. Eventually, after they've made a mess of his kitchen, and drawn on his wife's statue, Evan drives the girls to a suburb they claim as their home, and leaves them.

Of course, the girls break into his home again, knock him out, and tie him up. The remainder of the film is variations of torture and build-up. The girls repeatedly accuse Evan of being a cheater, a bad father, and a pedophile. There are two sequences that I think are worthy of specific commenting.

Firstly, there's a far more explicit rape scene, which is actually quite hard to watch. Bel puts on Evan's daughter's school uniform, and forces Evan to have sex with her in it while she calls him Daddy and apparently relives her own molestation by her father. Not only is Evan tied to the bed, but the girls force him to be an active participant by threatening to show his children video if he doesn’t go along with it. This particularly sequence is really the heart of the movie, putting on display just how sick these women are, and how utterly victimized Evan is.

The other sequence I need to comment on is notable for the opposite reason: how quickly it seems to be forgotten. Karen's assistant, Louis (Aaron Burns) comes over to pick up a statue. He's able to see through the girl's act, and finds Evan tied up, but for some reason decides to fight with the girls over their attempts to destroy a statue, rather than freeing Evan and calling the police. The idiot dies when Genesis steals his asthma inhaler, and he falls over and hits his head trying to get it back. The girls dispose of his body, and his presence in the movie is forgotten.

This is a major flaw, as it's the only time in the film that the girls actually cause a death. It puts them well beyond the point of sympathy, but somehow the movie continues to play with the idea that they're somehow “punishing” Evan for giving into them. In fact, the ending seems to make this idea explicit, completely forgetting that the girls committed a murder.

Specifically, the film ends when the girls getting tired of their games, and leaving Evan buried up to his neck in the back yard, a video of him having sex with Bel now on Facebook, and his wife coming home to find the house trashed. The scene plays almost like a raunchy comedy, rather than the truly disturbing film it's been until this point. The final line of the film is Evan's son saying “Daddy had a party.”

This stands in stark contrast to the original, now deleted ending, available on the DVD. Never have I seen such a blatant example of a film chickening out. In the original version, the movie closes when Evan knocks on the door of Bel and Genesis' next victim. The implication is clear: while we won't be shown it, a gender flipped I Spit On Your Grave is about to take place.

But, apparently Hollywood's fear of showing a man as justified in hurting women is truly unbreakable. Instead, we're left with a mostly positive film that ends with a truly out-of-place joke. Are we really supposed to assume that Evan's wife will blame him for being raped? Even accepting that the first encounter was cheating, there's no evidence of that left. Apparently we're just supposed to accept that an erection is consent.

I don't want to comment on whether or not I recommend the film. My feelings are so mixed that saying yes or no to that question seems like missing the point. I definitely want to see the movie Death Game, which was the basis of this movie, at some point. I'm curious how the 70s might have dealt with this concept differently.

Crimson Peak

Re-watching Crimson Peak on DVD gives me much more mixed feelings than my theatrical viewing. I think the change of format was part of the problem. I don't think I'm able to get the full experience of del Toro's visual style on such a small screen. The ghosts, in particular, no longer look quite as stunning.

This is a major blow for a film this utterly immersed in visual symbolism. An ancient house whose heirs are degenerates is sinking into a clay pit, while also falling apart. As the house sinks, red clay seeps out of the walls, giving the appearance that the house is bleeding. Yellow butterflies are fragile innocence, while black mouths are hardy bitterness. The final confrontation even takes place on top of a field of snow dyed crimson red by the clay. The impression of all of this is deluded in a home viewing format.

That said, the film still holds up. Mia Wasikowska gives a decent performance as Edith, the wealthy heiress who finds herself seduced by Sir Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston). After the “accidental” death of her father (Jim Beaver), Edith marries Thomas and leaves for England with him and his sister Lucille (Jessica Chastain).

The movie makes very little effort to hide the fact that Sir Thomas and his sister want Edith for her money. Their estate is falling apart, and Thomas is desperately working on a clay-mining machine that he hopes might restore the family fortune. Edith, who has the power to see ghosts, is surprised to find a number of them haunting the manor, leading her to realize that Sir Thomas had married three previous women for their money, all of which were killed by Lucille.

The movie likewise makes the “twist” that Thomas and Lucille are incestuous lovers fairly obvious as well. We're eventually told by Dr. McMichael (Charlie Hunnam), Edith's other love-interest and would-be rescuer late in the film, that the two were also suspected of murdering their mother. However, the real horror hits when we're told that this happened when she found out about their incest...when Thomas was 12, and Lucille 14.

This effectively rewrites everything, and makes Sir Thomas the most interesting character in the entire movie. He was molested by his sister at an age when he could not possibly consent, explaining why throughout the film he concedes to almost everything she wants. Even as we see him sincerely fall in love with Edith, it takes tremendous will on his part to even object to her murder, and this eventually causes Lucille to kill him in a moment of rage

Del Toro's goal with this film was to invert traditional gender roles by having a female character save herself, another female character as a “slasher,” and Sir Thomas as an inverted Femme Fatale. Unfortunately, I think Del Toro missed the memo that his subversions come a few decades late. In fact, we're living in a time when Edith's pure “final girl” status is not only a cliché, but a cliché Hollywood started subverting in mass years ago. As for the female killer, see the original Friday the 13^th for more.

That's not to say that these characters don't work here. They definitely do as throwbacks, and it's likely that if this film had been made in the time of the Hammer films it draws inspiration from it would have been far more subversive. However, the only role-swap that really works is Sir Thomas, and not because of his status as a seductive and dangerous man, but because of his status as a male survivor of sexual abuse by a female perpetrator.

The final confrontation between Edith and Lucille is somewhat anti-climactic. Lucille chases Edith, Edith leads her away from the wounded Dr. McMichael. Then, out in the clay-stained snow, the ghost of Thomas distracts Lucille so that Edith can finish her off with a shovel. I think the lack of anything truly sensational is part of the point. Much of the last act is simply a crazy woman running around an old house with a bladed weapon. The theme of degeneracy runs deep enough that I think Del Toro decided that to give Lucille a remotely dignified or dramatic death simply wouldn’t have fit.

The film ends with Edith and Dr. McMichael fleeing into the snow to get away from the house, while the ghost of Lucille plays the piano. She's now trapped forever in her family home, as Thomas appears to have finally passed on. I would love to know what happens to the house.

If I don't seem to have mentioned Dr. McMichael much, it's because he borders on a Red Herring. We're supposed to expect him to save Edith, but his only real contribution is delaying her death when he shows up at their door, and Lucille wants to avoid killing Edith in front of him. If I give him points for subversion, it's that he's saved by an otherwise traditional Final Girl. Usually such characters are forced to save themselves when their men are axed, not forced to protect their wounded men.

It's truly shameful that more people didn't experience this film in the theatre. I do still recommend it. It's a solid throwback to the days of hammer, and a great chance to see Tom Hiddleston in a truly magnificent performance.