One-Star Wonders

SHARKNADO and THE INVOKING

What do you say about a film that is so bad it leaves you speechless? After having two bad movie experiences in a row, I began to grapple with how to approach reviewing them. Finally I decided that for films this bad, it would be best to create a whole new category.

I rate films on a five star basis. Generally speaking, 2 stars are allotted for Story: Does the film have a strong narrative foundation? Does it develop in an interesting way? Then there are 2 stars allotted for Plot: Is the story presented in an interesting way? Is there anything particularly attractive about the aesthetics/cinematography? And lastly, since these are horror films, 1 star is reserved for the film's scare (or thrill/fun) factor. On that note....

Presenting the first instalment of One-Star Wonders, a segment reserved for films that are so bad they do not meet any of my criteria in full.

*****

Up first, Sharknado, which manages it's one star based on story alone - surprisingly, it does have one. It's just not very good.

In all fairness, if you have a fear of sharks, or live by an ocean I may be inclined to accept an argument for 1.5 Stars. The story focuses on a ocean-side bar owner. When the news reports begin warning of a vicious tornado flooding the city and carrying dangerous sharks into homes and streets, he decides it is his heroic duty to get to his ex-wife and daughter. 

Bad acting (mostly Tara Reid... go figure), Bad CGI, and very questionable understandings of physics, mechanics, and sharks. It was almost bad enough to enjoy laughing at - it would have been much more fun to watch if it didn't insist on taking itself so seriously.

Next up, The Invoking, which gets half a star for plot in regards to cinematography (the beautiful landscape photographs nicely and this is taken advantage of), and half for its scare factor.

This is the story of Samantha Harris who inherits a house from a family she never knew. Having been adopted at a young age, Sam is a little out of her element and brings three friends along to the secluded cabin for a weekend of what she hopes will be fun. But what one might expect to be an emotional experience quickly seems to drive Sam certifiably insane as the past begins to take her over and she loses her grip on reality. Oh, and the young guy who claims to remember her from their childhood has a definite Bates-thing going on.
I can admit that there is potential here, so much so that I remained hopeful while watching. But the end was clearly rushed and anywhere it seemed to be going was disrupted in favour of a "twist" (if you can call it that). Although the film was low budget, only one person's acting was unbearable (Andi Norris as Caitlin), but since she had a big role it was a BIG damper on everything.

*****

THE PACT (2012) and the New Direction of Horror

Family can be a real burden...

3.5 Stars

Is it just me or have the countless horror sub-genres been becoming more and more indistinguishable? Since the 90s, horror has been being discussed by academics as apocalyptic, reactionary, postmodern, transgeneric, etc. But lately I have been wondering if the diverseness of the American horror is withering, if the genre is not in some kind of melting-pot phase within which desperate attempts to be original only spawn convoluted plots. In the days of black and white, Universal monsters like Dracula and Frankenstein’s Creation used to clearly represent the threat of the Other in relation to race/class. And of course there were also the brilliant suspense films, specialized in by the unmatched talent of Alfred Hitchcock. After Psycho and into the 70s and 80s came the modern Slasher flick which by the 90s had taken form as a who-dun-it mystery, maintaing its dedication to blood and nudity. Ghost movies were always popular, but the paranormal phase has definitely reached a new level of demand with the recent craze for the “found-footage” film. So what now? 

It seems a lot of horror filmmakers have taken to the art of trickery; betraying the viewer. Horror films are getting more and more difficult to define, label, or even explain - how many times have you tried to talk about a movie and said “it’a kind of a ghost story, but...” ? 

I have been saying that quite a bit lately. So, The Pact - It’s kind of a ghost story, but... There is also a flesh and blood bad guy. 

And this is pretty much the direction horror has been moving in. This week alone I have witnessed it in this film, Haunter, and The Invoking, all of which are releases from the last year or two. Generally speaking, this blending of horror elements does make for pretty perplexing plots (convoluted, as I mentioned earlier), but this doesn’t mean they can’t come together nicely by the end. The Invoking does not, so don’t waste your time, but The Pact really does do a pretty good job at making the pieces fit.

Resisting the return home for her mother’s funeral, Annie finally gives in to her sister’s guilt-trip, only to find the house is empty; her sister has vanished. Convinced the stress of their mother’s death and revisiting painful childhood memories has simply pushed her sister back to drugs, Annie remains in the house awaiting her return. Only she won’t return. This becomes clear when what seems to be a malevolent spirit attacks Annie and leaves her no choice but to investigate her mother’s past - she could leave, but then she’d be giving up on her sister and failing her niece.... plus, the movie would be over pretty quickly.

Even though the story puts itself together quite slowly and in something of a roundabout manner, the film has some great moments in terms of creepiness and surprises. And the closet scene is a nice nod to Halloween. 

So while I'm unsure of what to make of this new direction, I can appreciate it when it works.

SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE (Amy Holden Jones 1982): Successful Parody, Or Just Redundant?

Suggestive... That’s an understatement.

4 stars

No doubt this film is cramming slasher conventions down our throats. We have:

Unsupervised teens

Sexualizing of young girls/nudity

Breakdown of communication (this always carries fatal ramifications)

Suburban setting (in the tradition of Black Christmas or Halloween)

Inept Authorities

Bloody murders

But the question is, is this film actually parodying these conventions? Notoriously this has been considered a feminist slasher because of its parodic tone and the “masculinized” girls who are all on the high school basketball team. More significant perhaps is that it was written by a famous feminist Rita Mae Brown, and directed by another woman, Amy Holden Jones. The women have repeatedly defended the film as poking fun at the misogyny of the slasher genre. Suffice it to say then, if you read the slow pan across the naked bodies, slumber party antics, and drill wielding killer as crude, you have missed the point. Well, that or your standards for irony are much higher than Brown’s and Jones’s, which would also be fair. 

MINOR SPOILERS BELOW

I’ve watched this film a few times, and as much as I enjoy it, my opinion of it has often flip flopped. I recognize and appreciate the effort, but sometimes I feel like it fails to deliver its message. In trying to point out how silly these conventions are, SPM is often just as guilty of them. Much of the film is still ridiculous, and making the girls athletes hardly detracts from the fact that their running around the house half naked. I mean really, who are you trying to impress in that lingerie during your casual girls night in? 

It’s clear that Brown had a bone to pick with the genre, but it doesn’t seem like she knew exactly how to convey that bone. So maybe it is a parody, but it’s not as thought-provoking as she likely wanted it to be. Still, even after over-using every convention, the film does have a great finale. 3 Final Girls! I did not see that coming. Most people, even today, expect one girl to live and maybe even defeat the killer while she’s at it. But, especially in the 80s, three is a real shocker. The final girl convention is arguably the genre’s most valuable asset, no one tires of it and yet when it gets played with, everyone gets excited. In SPM, not only do three girls live, but one in particular kills the assailant... But not before castrating him...

Ok, ok, she only chops his drill in half - but come on, close enough!

I may not be able to decide how successful this film is at parodying, but I can say with certainty that it’s always fun to watch it try. Even while exaggerating conventions, it still manages to have surprisingly fresh moments. And if you are NOT tired of slasher conventions, there are ton to indulge in here.

THE AWAKENING (Nick Murphy 2011): Chills, But NO Thrills

That I want to like this film should count for something, I guess. 

2.5 Stars

I don’t believe there is much to say about this movie. Thematically, it shares some similarities with one of my very favorite ghost movies, The Others (Alejandro Amenabar 2001). It also seems to take some cues from a British classic, The Innocents (Jack Clayton 1961).  Come to think of it, the rather unexpected ending of Murphy’s film does not even seem entirely different from Amenabar’s nor Clayton’s endings. And this explains why I certainly wasn’t blown away by its capacity for originality (although I suspect the writers expected me to be). But the fact is, this movie is lackluster. By the time it picks up I’m hardly relieved, since I’ve already settled into not caring. 

To be fair, I did immediately love Rebecca Hall’s character, Florence. The film opens with a group of people gathered for a public seance. These were actually quite a popular form of entertainment as far back as the mid 19th Century, especially among the rich and famous. 

Abraham Linclon and company

Of course, sometimes they were more serious than others (Lincoln's wife for instance did mean to contact a very missed loved one). By 1920 though, many professionals had debunked mediumship, exposing its fraudulence. But the showmanship associated with it remains captivating to many. And then of course there are still believers who perform seances as part of religious ritual. But Florence will have none of this. An avid non-believer, and taking on a role similar to Joseph McCabe, she has dedicated her life to "ghost hunting" as a means of exposing the truth. She has even written a book. Florence storms in on the seance in the opening and hurries about the room, smugly revealing the trick behind each "miracle". She is strong and witty, but after waiting around for her story to develop, I suddenly realized I was over it. I was then let down to find everything I liked about her could be stripped away by a semi-creepy, ill-explained doll house, and a few other strange events. 

How can a film with such a strong start falter so quickly?  It really is frustrating. Furthermore, the “jump scares” really only create a chilling atmosphere, suited to the beautifully cold landscape and color pallet. That is, I’m never actually scared.

I can’t ignore how aesthetically beautiful this movie is, nor how boring. To quote Roger Ebert in his own 2012 review of it, “Whatever. The Awakening looks great but never develops a plot with enough clarity to engage us”.

PEEPING TOM (Michael Powell 1960): THE FIRST SLASHER

Misogyny, Sexual Anxiety, and Daddy Issues... Big Surprise. But Hey, It’s a Classic.

3.5 Stars

Carol clover writes, “Horror privileges the eyes because, more crucially than any other kind of cinema, it is about the eyes”. Peeping Tom is exemplary of this. Despite Michael Powell’s assertion that his film is not a horror, but rather a film about the cinema from 1900-1960, Clover rightly describes the film more specifically as a “horror metafilm”. 

Produced the same year as Psycho and exhibiting stunningly similar themes, it is the story of a young man named Mark who is psychologically damaged from growing up as the subject of his fathers intense voyeurism. Subsequently he finds himself suffering from “scoptophilia”, which the film describes as “the morbid desire to gaze”. To satisfy this desire, Mark obsessively carries a camera with him everywhere, secretly recording women until he can get them alone, at which point he murders them. His weapon of choice is the sharp end of a tripod, which he stabs women with while recording their reactions. Worse, he attaches a mirror to the camera allowing the women to watch themselves die as well. 

Arguably, this film does not strictly adhere to the conventions of the stalk n’ slash, which were not defined until the 1970s. But it is an important predecessor with its focus on the stalking of women, the objectification of women, and a serial killer who targets sexual transgressors. 

The film has been accused of copying Psycho despite its being released simultaneously (and first in some cities), but what really strikes me as different is Mark’s inability to “keep cool”. For all his creepiness and mental instability, Bates is actually quite suave. A twitch here and there alerts us to his weaknesses but overall he is convincingly normal when he needs to be. This is his strongest quality, it is what makes him him. But it is a quality that Mark desperately lacks. To all of his victims, the prostitute, the model, and the aspiring actress I say, “seriously! you’re going to be alone with this creep?!” 

If I learned anything from this movie, it’s that stranger danger is real. I admit, Mark is something of a sympathetic monster, because (like Norman) his issues stem from his childhood, and run deep. But, that does not mean I would let this guy, or his camera, anywhere near me. I shudder at the thought. No, I’ll just feel bad for him from a far thank you.

It’s all a little pop-psychology, but Powell still does a nice job of creating a well-rounded killer. His strengths and weaknesses are all carefully presented and the juxtaposition of point-of-view shots and close-ups all work to create a very claustrophobic atmosphere that is representative of how this guy experiences the world. Plus, its own appreciation for cinema is quite beautiful... in a totally uncomfortable and dark way.