Saturday, August 24, 2013

Dark Water (2002)

HIDEO NAKATA

DARK WATER

JAPAN, 2002,

7/10

"I'm sorry, honey...that we can't be together."


**There are spoilers in one (small) section of this review, but they are marked as spoilers so you can avoid them**




Yoshimi Matsubara is in the middle of a divorce and custody trial with her husband. She has custody of her daughter for the time being, but the final decision hasn't been made yet, when they go looking for an apartment to live in. They come upon a slightly run down yet livable apartment that is a good size for the two of them and affordable for their lifestyle as well. Goody. Of course, eventually everything slowly starts falling to shit, and that all begins with a water stain appearing on Yoshimi's ceiling. Really, you can't make this shit up.

Despite the semi-laughable premise, Nakata does a pretty good job with the film. There are lots of very beautiful shots (but the yellow tint of the flashback scenes looks pretty cheap and irritating), and while it can be a little slow at times, the pacing is generally pretty good. Like many other J-horror, the villain is a young girl with long, black hair, similar to Nakata's other, and superior, film, RINGU (1998). At the beginning of the film, I found Mitsuko (the young girl) pretty scary, but by the end of the film I was tired of her as every scare felt familiar.

The actors all do a very good job. It's a bit harder for me to judge acting when they aren't speaking English because I have no idea what words are getting inflection, but they all seemed decent enough to me. The actress playing Yoshimi was a bit over the top at times, but it's clear that that's how her character would react in stressful situations.

**SPOILERS START**

I think a problem with this film is that Nakata aimed to make his audience jump more than he wanted to creep them out. The scene where Yoshimi climbs the water tower and hears faint knocking, due to the fact that Mitsuko drowned in there, is incredibly creepy, but the second the knocks grow louder and they dent the water tower, all the tension is lost. Same with the bathtub scene that's going on simultaneously. Ikuko (Yoshimi's daughter) just saw the bathtub fill itself up and inside there is, you guessed it, dark water. She leans over the bathtub and we see air bubbles come up, but instead of doing a magnificent and suspenseful scene like the amazing television scene in RINGU, we get a cheap jump scare of Mitsuko's hands coming out of the water and grabbing Ikuko's head.

**SPOILERS END**

Despite the cheap jump scares, there are a couple of amazing scenes in the film, mainly the last one, which left the viewer with a very haunted feeling and ties everything up quite nicely, but there are just too many mindless, formulaic jump scenes for me to give this film anything above a 7/10. Overall, this is a slightly overrated yet still pretty effective movie. It's not nearly as good as RINGU was, but it's definitely still worth watching.

Friday, August 23, 2013

The Birds (1963)


ALFRED HITCHCOCK


THE BIRDS

USA, 1963

9/10


"Can I bring the lovebirds, Mitch? They haven't harmed anyone."
"Oh all right, bring them."


**Slight spoilers below**




Alfred Hitchcock is my all time favorite movie director, and so when he worked in my favorite genre, the horror genre (which he only did twice in his career), the product is outstanding. This film is fantastic, it's really only 9/10 because it's not as good as some of his other films. The movie follows Melanie Daniels as she pranks a man she met in the pet store to a small town where he spends the weekends with his mother when the house and the rest of the town become under attack by various kinds of birds. That's basically it for the plot. That's why I believe that no director other than Hitchcock could have been able to pull this off as well as he did. 

Something that is curious about the film is its complete lack of a soundtrack. The closest thing we get to music in this film is when Melanie is outside the school, listening to an almost never ending refrain that the school children are singing as a flock of birds grows larger and larger on the playground behind her. This is probably one of the most suspenseful scenes I've ever seen in a horror movie. The complete silence of the attack scenes, save for sounds of screaming people and the cries of the birds gives an incredibly creepy realism to them, and it works brilliantly in this film.

The beginning of the film is strangely light-hearted. It follows Melanie as she attempts to deliver some lovebirds to Mitch without him seeing her deliver them, and even after that, life continues on normally until Melanie attends a birthday party, along with the first (organized) bird attack. I say organized because of mentions of smaller, one-bird attacks (like the bird that hits Melanie on the boat) that aren't on the scale of the later attacks. The rest of the film carries on with bird attacks, followed by peace, only to be followed by more bird attacks, until Melanie and the Brenner family lock themselves in their house. This reminds me of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968) because while they feel safe for the moment, both the audience and the characters know that this peace can't last forever, and that the birds will eventually attack. This plot, due to its feeling of being completely spontaneous, shouldn't work very well, but Hitchcock pulls it off masterfully.

Another thing that Hitchcock pulls off brilliantly is the huge mystery of the film. We never really find out why the birds are attacking, only some different, and probably not accurate, guesses made by various characters throughout the film. This will no doubt annoy some viewers (especially the younger ones), it still works very well in the film. The final shot of the family riding off into the horizon, once again the feeling of current peace yet impending doom, may also annoy viewers, but it works extremely well in the film.

To make some more comparisons to NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, this film is a very character driven one, as there is a lot of down time between the bird attacks where we learn about the various relationships between characters. It is always tricky to do this because if the characters are written with not enough complexity then it's boring, and if they don't respond realistically, it's not scary. However, like NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, all the characters are interesting, believable, multi-dimensional ones. But just because some of the film is focused on the interactions of the characters doesn't meant that there aren't good bird attack scenes, because there are. There is an amazing scene where Melanie stands in a phone booth to escape the birds, and since Hitchcock films this scene from within the booth, we feel just as claustrophobic, exposed, and caged as Melanie does. This is just one of the many superb attacks done by birds throughout the film. The effects in these scenes, while they have aged, are done very well, especially considering the time period they were created in.

All in all, THE BIRDS was a pretty risky film to make. It is extremely character driven, and it is a subject that is pretty difficult to make scary (you have to admit that if you just hear the synopsis, the film sounds a bit silly). Yet Hitchcock manages to pull it off brilliantly in the way that only the Master of Suspense could.

Thursday, August 22, 2013

Cannibal Holocaust (1980)

RUGGERO DEODATO

CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST

ITALY, 1980

8/10

"Keep rolling! We're gonna get an Oscar for this!"



**This review contains many spoilers, even though this is honestly a film that can't be spoiled**
The magnum opus of the short lived cannibal sub genre, CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST (1980) is probably one of the most talked about horror movies of all time, and is definitely the most controversial. This film, one of the earliest found-footage films, follows a professor as he attempts to find traces of a group of four people who ventured into the Amazon to film a documentary about the tribes of cannibals which reside there. Nothing could prepare him for what he discovered on the tapes. The film is famous because when the film was released in Italy, Deodato, the director, was believed to have murdered his cast and that this movie was actually a snuff film. He had to bring all the actors in and show how the magnificent impaling effect (pictured above and in the poster) was pulled off. It is also infamous because Deodato murdered actual animals for the movie (they were later used as food for the native actors, but it's still probably the most controversial aspect of the movie). The animals that are killed include a coatimundi, a turtle, a spider, a snake, two squirrel monkeys, and a pig. It is possible, if you own some of the DVDs, to watch a shorter version with the violence against animals removed (I know the Grindhouse release has this option, I'm not sure which others do, though).

When I watched this film for the first time a while ago, I was honestly expecting a mindless splatter fest but was pleased to find an actually thought-provoking message questioning how just how barbaric culture in the "modern world" is today. That's not to say that the film isn't disturbing, because it really is. The rape of the tribal girl in the last half of the film remains one of the only scenes in a movie that upsets me to the level of having to avert my eyes, the hut burning scene was incredibly upsetting for me, and the Last Road to Hell segment contains footage of actual human executions (they weren't filmed specifically for this film, Deodato simply used already filmed footage of real like executions), all in all this is a film that is pretty difficult to get out of your mind after the credits roll. Because of this, I honestly can't recommend this film, as it will be very, very hard to watch for anyone who is upset by violence, rape, anything really. The movie starts off slightly tame (the first half does have some violence and a pretty graphic rape scene, as well as some of the aforementioned violence against animals, but it's not nearly as upsetting as the last half), and it almost lulls you into a false sense of security. Then, the professor discovers the team's tapes, and that's when the film really begins.

This movie has an amazing soundtrack. The calming, peaceful theme is in direct contrast with the disturbing, grisly nature of the film. Yet underneath that light score, you still feel something wrong with it. It was this piece of music that made Faye's rape and the hut burning scene probably the two most memorable scenes in the entire film. The acting is probably the weakest part of the film, but it does improve throughout the film, especially once the characters view the found footage, so the portion of the film involving the documentary crew is quite believable. The direction is great, the camerawork does make it seem like what we're viewing is actually happening, but it doesn't have BLAIR WITCH PROJECT (1999) levels of camera shake, or it's at least not as obvious. The story, while incredibly simple, is fantastic and executed perfectly.

I have only seen this film twice (once a while ago, I don't remember how long, and another just last night), so it's obvious that, while I do like it, it's not the kind of film I wish to watch again and again, as it can get hard to watch. While I gave MARTYRS (2008), another talked about and disturbing film, a higher rating, this movie is definitely the more upsetting/disturbing of the two. Yes, it does have its fair share of set backs, but it's an incredibly influential movie and is such an important part of the genre that it should be seen by everyone who can stomach it.

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Carnival of Souls (1962)

HERK HARVEY

CARNIVAL OF SOULS

USA, 1962

8/10

"It's funny... the world is so different in the daylight. In the dark, your fantasies get so out of hand. But in the daylight everything falls back into place again."



The film opens on a sunny day as two cars are side by side, stopped at a light on an otherwise deserted road. The occupants of the car begin a drag race, neither of them seem officially in the lead until the two cars reach the bridge, where one of the cars loses control and flies off the bridge, landing in the water. Three hours later, the car is still being searched for when one woman, Mary Henry, rises from the water. This is how the semi-forgotten cult classic, CARNIVAL OF SOULS (1962) begins. Many have compared this film's tone to an episode of the Twilight Zone extended to feature film length (well, 84 minutes) and because of this, there are times when the film seems to drag a bit. But this isn't a movie that focuses too much on the plot. More than anything else, it's an atmosphere film. Now, it doesn't have BLACK SUNDAY (1960) (review here) levels of atmosphere, but it still works very well in the film.


In fact, this movie does a pretty good job considering the fact that it had a group of local actors who, on the whole, lacked experience, a budget of only $30,000, was filmed in only three weeks, and a crew of only six people. The acting, while nothing to write home about, is not horrible, but there are moments when it gets a little cheesy. The ghoulish make-up is pretty effective, I found myself creeped out every now and again, especially during the film's climax. The director (who has never made a feature film besides this) actually does a very good job with the film. In the quote above, the protagonist says how the world seems different in the daylight, and the director takes this quote and runs with it. The things that seem innocent in the daylight, such as where Mary stays, or the carnival where she feels drawn, or the church in which she plays the organ, suddenly change in the dark and become threatening. Of course, they physically look the same no matter what the time of day is, but the atmosphere the director builds really does make it seem that these safe and pleasant locations mutate into alarming sights of horror in the dark. Many have commented on how good the soundtrack is, so I will not linger upon it, but it honestly is very good. A lot of it is played on the organ, which makes sense because Mary Henry is an organ player. 

This film was originally ignored by critics and audiences alike, but has gained a cult following throughout the years through late night television screenings and a Criterion release. This film is probably not for everyone. As I mentioned before, the plot is slightly slow moving, yet I was still intrigued and interested for the majority of the film. In fact, there isn't much of a plot at all. It relies almost exclusively on its atmosphere to evoke a feeling of dread and horror. Not to say that there are no jump scares, because there are, but they obviously take the back seat as far as priorities go, and there is no violence, gore, or sex to speak of throughout the film. Instead everything simply feels wrong and uneasy, and throughout the picture we, the audience, get a growing sense that something is wrong, beyond the demon-ghoul thing. The twist ending, while semi-predictable, is still good and allows the viewer to be able to analyze and re-watch the film multiple times. I do recommend that you go into the film without knowing the ending, even if, like me, you guess it about halfway through the movie.

Watching this film, it's pretty easy to see how it may have inspired David Lynch or George Romero, so I definitely recommend that fans of their work check this movie out. All in all, this is a very impressive, yet still modest, piece of low budget horror. Genre fans looking for semi-forgotten treasures (I say "semi-forgotten" because over the years it has gained increasing levels of fame, yet it's still not particularly well known) should definitely check this out. It may not have the best acting, plot, or script, but it does have a great atmosphere and does deliver a couple of rather good scares. It is in the public domain so you can watch it for free online, even though if you're a fan I recommend the Criterion release. Highly recommended.