Wisely Follow Ray To A Dead End

In Dead End, a disfuntional family are taking a shortcut to 'grandmas' when strange happenings cause them to die, one by one, while the deserted forest road on which they're travelling sees no sign of ending.

This could have been a disaster waiting to happen. After all there's only so many things that could happen on a straight road to seemingly nowhere. There's a mysterious woman and a scary hearse the appear from time to time...but for the most part its just Mom, Dad, Brother, Sister and Sister's boyfriend. Driving. Stopping. Driving. Stopping. Dying. Then driving some more. But the script is witty as hell, the cast perfect, from the slowly deteriorating Ray Wise to Lin Shaye's mumsy matriarch. It crackles with fun banter as the family under siege try to endure their predicament.

The ending is obvious from the events in the first 10 minutes. But the fun of Dead End is in the journey, not the destination.

Kidnapped Green Chick vs Nicholson's Eyebrows

P2 refers to 'underground parking level two' in a New York office block. Poor Rachel Nichols (the green chick from Star Trek) leaves work late on Christmas eve and gets kidnapped by car park security guard/nutter Mad Wes Bentley. Cat and mouse antics follow with a little bloodshed to keep us amused.

This one works quite nicely but never really soars like you feel it should. It's produced and co-written by French horror-meister Alexandre Aja and so explores the horror concept, the environment in which Ms Nichols is trapped, and the lead characters to the extent you'd expect from such a talent. The direction is solid too (from Franck Khalfoun), with a style bordering on the Euro-confidence we'd expect from Aja...but not quite.

Nichols aquits herself well, while Wes comes across as a bit of a twat. Take the voice of Joshua Jackson and the face of Tobey Maguire...with the transplanted eyebrows of Jack Nicholson and you have Mr Bentley. Yes he's as sleezy, irritating and disturbed as you'd expect from a stalker loony...but he never really convinces (or scares) as an unhinged wacko. Worth a look.

Because it's set in an office building on Christmas eve you can't help but think that Bruce Willis, all barefeet and vest, will come running to the rescue at some point!

All The Boys Love Amber Heard (Including Me)

Perhaps because All The Boys Love Mandy Lane was trailered at the cinema for what seemed like year, I was bored with the images to such an extent that I was reluctant to watch this teen slasher pic. Sadly, if I'd have watched it earlier I'd have got to experience this intelligent horror movie a little sooner.

Mandy Lane is a beautiful, but aloof and distant high school girl who the other girlies get along with and all the boys want to be with. A year after falling out with her male best friend she gets invited to a country house for a weekend break with the cool kids. Then a nutter takes them out one by one. Script wise the plot is obvious...so obvious that the killer is wisely revealed quite early on leaving a later plot twist to wrap up the movie (which is itself something that hovers as an obvious route for the story to take).

What saves the movie from overwhelming predictability is the unforced, realistic performances from the cast, some indie favoured direction and a subtle layering of psychological subtext; that we all project a persona and who not who we appear to be. The film has split audiences and critics down the middle, mainly down to it's ambiguous ending. I must admit, I was a little confused as to what to make of Mandy Lane hersef, beguilingly played by Amber Heard....Why did she do the things she did? Why did she change her mind? What did she really think of this person?

And then, in the middle of the night, it occured to me. Mandy's friends never got the opportunity to understand her...and neither do we. Because we, the audience, have become a character in the movie, experiencing the same confusing relationship with her that her friends did too. Mandy'a allure and mystery remains intact, right to the end credits. Nice one Miss Lane.

My Bloody Headache

The modern slasher film checklist:-
1/ Your masked killer must have an iconic costume (see Michael Myers, Freddy Kruger, Ghostface, Jason Voorhees) like mining overalls, helmet and gas mask. A weapon of choice is needed too...like a pick-axe.
2/ Cast your movie leads with impossibly good looking twenty somethings that will be called upon to play school-age teenagers.
3/ Cast the remainder of your movie with familiar character actors. If possible hire ancient horror icons like Tom Atkins (Halloween 3, The Fog).
4/ Your movie must be set in small town America. The older townsfolk are curmodgenly redneck inbreds while the majority of youth are dumb, barbies or arrogant jocks (apart from your heroes).
6/ The sheriff of the small town MUST participate. Try and make him the father of your heroine. If not marry him to your heroine.
5/ The death scenes must appear regularly and be gory (if you can obtain that elusive R rating. Shooting in 3D will help lure unsuspecting moviegoers into watching the film in the theatre and make your movie appear better than it actually is.
6/ The masked killer must be linked to a tragedy in the towns past...as must the hero or heroine.
7/ A shock revelation must form part of the climax.
8/ A scene showing the masked killer has survived must be tacked on to the final moments of the film.

I'm sure there are many other rules but I can't be arsed to sit here and think them up. Patrick Lussier's My Bloody Valentine follows all these to the letter, with no added wit, intelligence, style, originality, inventiveness or creativity thrown into the mix. God help us, this is the man charged with delivering Halloween 3D.

Stalk n slash by the book. Please feel free to add a few more....

Treated To This Trick

Looking at the release schedule for October 2009, it appears there is a deluge of horror movies due to be released into movie theatres...providing me with the opportunity to see a horror movie on the big screen on a weekly (sometimes twice weekly) basis, should I so wish. With a backlog of horror movies to watch on DVD, many of which my friends have been urging me to see for a long time, I thought I might devote this month to the genre of scares, gore and political incorrectness.

First off, then, is Trick r Treat, a movie produced by Bryan Singer's production company and directed by Micael Dougherty (the Superman Returns co-writer). Having now seen this often delayed release I find it bizarre that distributers Warner Brothers sat on this excellent release for so long, as it does so many things, so very right.

Dougherty is either a talent to watch or there's a touch of 'Poltergeist' going on here as the direction is confident and assured...perhaps too assured as the economic framing and long dolly shots smack of Singer's influence...we'll see. Regardless, the result is a fun, event filled ride as the clever, tightly weaved script tells five interconnected stories that all take place in the same American town on Halloween night. All the tales are different enough to stand apart, but the script smartly overlaps the timelines, so events in one story are referenced in the others.

The best aspect is the tone of this movie; it's fun. It doesn't adopt the serious thriller vibe of most modern horror films or play the wacky, self-referential, post-modern card of From Dusk Til Dawn, Scream or Evil Dead 2 (non of which are bad things by the way). It has a refreshing, old-fashioned, 80's feel that kind of recalls an Amblin produced film or a Robert Zemekis movie...a film not skewed to one particular age, taste or sensibility...just committed to telling a really good story.
Which it is.

Oh, and the iconic Pumpkin masked kid that adorns the poster. Freaks me out.

A Restless Slumber On Elm Street

With the Platinum Dunes remake on the horizon, I fely compelled to revisit the original which I'm disturbed to see is now a quarter of a century old. While I have fond memories of Wes Craven's classic, I've never felt it was a "horror great" as Wes Craven simply isn't the most talented director on the block (my favorite Elm Street movie is still Dream Warriors, directed by Chuck Russell, the helmer of The Scorpion King!!).

So how does it stand up 25 year later? Pretty good actually. The core concept of a child molester killing teens in their dreams, causing them to die in real life is about as strong a story concept as you're gonna get. As with all good horr movies, antagonist Freddy Kruger stays in the shadows and is much nastier and disturbing than he appeared in the sequels. In Freddy, Craven creates a pop culture icon...both in the way he looks (the fedora, red striped jumper, and the razor glover is a genius master stroke) and in Robert Englands gleeful performance. The script explores and expands on the concept as it progresses, delivering a series of simple but memorable set-pieces.

On the downside, lead teen Heather Langenkamp is wooden as heroine Nancy. But you can see it runs in the family genes as her parents are played by the emodiment of corniness John Saxon and the 'carved from giant redwood' Ronnee Blakley...a woman so wooden, nothing on her face emotes when her lips flap. An impossibly young Johnny Depp is there to try and distract us...until he's dispatched, of course. Wes Craven goes through the horror motions trying to create atmosphere and generate scares...but it rarely suceeds. Craven is a hack, and scares have always been out of his grasp...but the film works out of the cleverness of the script, not due to the talent of the director. The score is hideously out-dated, although the main theme and child chanted 'Freddy nursery rhyme' still resonates.

So, despite the flaws, this is one horror that still works, as the pluses outweighs the negatives. The remake could be well placed to better this but they're gonna have to work hard to better Mr England and his freak-show of fellow cast members. A lot of them might be crap, but they sure make Elm Street 1984 one to remember.

Haunted By Zombie's El Superbeasto

This is a call out to the people of the world; to individual and collective nations... CAn anybody tell me what the hell was going on in Rob Zombie's animated feature The Haunted World Of El Superbeasto?

This, quite simply is bizarre, as if Zombie collected all the things he was interested in seeing on screen, and which he couldn't produce as a live action feature (bloody ultra-violence, boobies, satan, werewolf women of the SS) and combined them in a movie length format that reminds me of a kids Saturday morning cartoon. It follows the adventures of wrestling,sex-obssessed, mega-star El Superbeasto and his super-spy sister Suzi X. as they battle arch nemesis Dr Satan in his bid to do something...

It plays out like a twisted episode of Ren & Stimpy only with more swearing, animated gore and nudity. It's rarely funny..except in that 'I can't believe what I'm watching' kind of way. You can take that either way...but it's never boring, especially when surreal musical numbers punctate the score with songs like "Why'd You Have to Rip Off Carrie?" and "It's Okay to Jerk Off to Animation".

So, if anybody can let me know what the hell was going on in this trippy, f~~ked up freak show...I'd appreciate it. I'm still trying to process this one myself.