In case you noticed a drop in posting frequency here, it’s largely due to the launch of the new website, The Bureau Chiefs, a supplement to the Fake AP Stylebook Twitter feed. I’ve been helping out there, as well as writing a number of short news pieces for them.

The site is also the new home for my trailer reviews, and the latest edition is up right now, with a fancier name than just “trailer reviews.” I’m now tag-teaming the reviews with real-life film-critic Ken Lowery as well, so now you get two loud-mouthed opinions for the price of one.

Horror films are one of the few genres in which nearly as much pleasure can be found in viewing a bad film as a good one (the other major genre would be the sword-and-sandal/fantasy genre, and that’s as much for the man-flesh typically on display).

The Unborn is pretty widely regarded as utterly terrible, but hearing about it piqued my interest, as the subject matter seemed like a refreshing change from the usual God/Satan palaver that preoccupies most supernatural horror. And hey, I sat through Angels & Demons, I can take anything Hollywood can dish out.

At 32 seconds in, we’re not off to a good start, as the first trailer is for a Bring It On film. If that’s the target audience for a “horror” movie, I’m not optimistic.

At 2:00, a Frost/Nixon commercial. Who, exactly, do they think this film is for?

Twenty seconds of scenes from the film before we even get to the menu screen. Why? To prepare me for the Intensity! I’m about to experience?

0:01:30 Oh, horror films? Where would you be if you weren’t allowed to do overheard tracking shots of protagonists at the start? Slightly less cliche, probably.

0:02:00 Yes, I knew going in that this was going to be about a “scary” kid. But I still wasn’t quite prepared for just how close to the stereotype they were going to go with the make-up.

0:02:20 No, I was wrong. That’s pretty fucked up.

0:03:30 The pickled punk opening its eyes probably would have been more effective if her total lack of reaction to spooky-kid turning into a dog hadn’t already signaled us that this was a dream sequence.

0:06:20 “Jambi wants to be born now.” As in the Genie from Pee-Wee’s Playhouse? I suppose I could turn on the subtitles to check, but honestly, I suspect I’m going to be hearing it a LOT in the next 80 minutes.

0:07:30 Underwear shot of the lead. I’m used to this sort of thing in horror films, but isn’t she supposed to be in high school?

0:09:20 Bugs in the eggs. Novel, but I still stand by my belief that insects are not particularly scary.

0:10:00 And we meet the friends who will die to convince the lead that something supernatural is happening to her.

0:10:50 Oh, it’s “Jumby.” Not a particularly scary name. But neither was “Pazuzu” I guess.

0:11:20 Back nudity! So I guess this is teen-friendly horror for boys after all. Instead of the female-focused horror the subject matter would have suggested.

0:12:43 Eye-injury motifs, with a speculum holding the eye-lids open. So we’re back to body-horror stuff, which feels more female. But then why did we get a shower scene?

0:17:05 You hear a knocking from inside the medicine cabinet and you check your bottle of face cream? Not the room on the other side of the wall?

0:17:35 Eh, I’ll take it, if this is all the beefcake I can expect.

0:21:30 This woman is having an awfully severe emotional reaction to discovering she had an in utero twin. Oh, right, horror movie.

0:23:00 Wait, she’s not being haunted by the ghost of her dead unborn twin, but by a kid who died in the Holocaust? Movie, make up your damn mind!

0:25:10 Mystic elderly Jewish lady, how can she have the “manner” of a twin if she just found out she was one yesterday?

0:26:50 “You’re the superstitious one here!” Exactly. And she’s telling you you’re crazy. Film-makers, when even the unrational characters are telling your lead that the plot doesn’t make sense, you may have a problem.

0:27:40 Film projector’s are “not easy to find these days?” Really, movie? Really?

0:28:50 Someone made a grainy black and white film of walking through an empty corridor where nothing happens? Yeah. Scary. Or an art-school project.

0:31:15 Why is there a glory-hole in the ladies restroom?

0:32:20 Yes. Overflowing toilers. Very scary.

0:34:20 Sleeping with scissors under your pillow seems very unsmart, even from a folk magic perspective.

0:37:00 So, she is haunted by the ghost of her unborn twin, who is also the ghost of her grand-mother’s twin, who died in the Holocaust, in a occult Nazi experiment on twins?
Movie, take one plot, and stick with it.

0:43:30 Did she just seriously ask a rabbi if he can read Hebrew?

0:48:25 So if the ghost can possess the creepy neighbor kid, why, exactly, does he need to go after anyone else for a body?

0:55:10 When did crab-walking become one of the filmic short-hands for “possession?” Was it an Exorcist movie?

0:55:45 There are no night nurses or orderlies in this seniors home that provides medical care?

0:59:00 I don’t know what it is, but every-time I see a shot of Gary Oldman in a film, and he’s alone in a building at night, I keep expecting Alfred Molina to show up and beat him to death.

1:00:05 No! Bad movie! Bad! That’s more fucked up than a film of your quality is allowed to be!

1:02:30 And once again we learn that it’s a really bad idea to be a black character in a horror movie.

1:04:10 Why is creepy kid being treated by paramedics when he’s covered in blood and his prints are on the murder weapon?

1:06:30 You know, in real life I appreciate a more than healthy skepticism towards the supernatural. But in fiction, having rabbis and priests dismiss the concept of the supernatural really feels off.

1:07:30 A legal waiver before an exorcism can be performed. Cute.

1:08:20 Performing an exorcism in the hospital where your mother killed herself. Yes, that will help convince people that this is real and not just you having a breakdown of some sort.

1:15:00 I don’t suppose that anyone is actually surprised that an exorcism turned out to be a really bad idea?

1:16:00 And once again, I have to ask, if the ghost can pretty much possess anyone at this point, why does it really care if it possesses our lead girl? I mean, yeah, we got all that mystical hoo-har about twins being special, but, really. It’s “strong enough” to possess anyone now. It’s acting more like an ex that won’t get the message than a demonic being trying to get back into the world.

1:17:30 Oh, please. Everyone it could possess is now dead or unconscious except for the heroine or her boyfriend. It’s so going into the boyfriend now.

1:17:40 Yep, there it goes. Now for Gary Oldman to pull off the last second rescue.

1:18:45 Yep, there he is.

1:20:15 Two survivors out of eleven. Nice to know that Jewish exorcisms have the same success ratio as Catholic ones. I wonder if the Anglican Deliverance rites have a better one?

1:21:20 And our obligatory shock twist ending is that she was pregnant all along. Which really isn’t all that surprising.

Final verdict: Yeah, there’s a reason I usually avoid exorcism themed movies.

Worth Full Price
Red Riding: An epic noir trilogy? Three linked films following a web of murder and crime in northern England for more than a decade? With Paddy Considine, Sean Bean and Andrew Garfield? Oh, yes, please.

Inception: I generally take a dim view of trailers that emphasize visuals instead of story or character, especially when it’s a science-fiction film. Because, silly me, I happen to be one of those lunatics who think that a science-fiction film requires more than just pretty lights to be worthy of praise. But Christopher Nolan has more than earned the benefit of the doubt from me.

Legion: Some movies, you can just tell that they’re not going to be “good.” But they will be entertaining. Every time I see this trailer, a giddy little part of me squeals with joy. It looks like an ideal b-movie, a possible successor to the glory that was Demon Knight.

Clash Of The Titans: Another pointless remake of a film that absolutely did not need one, yes. And Sam Worthington is a poor substitute for Harry Hamlin in a loincloth. But dammit, I love Louis Leterrier and his crazy French action sensibility and want to see what he does with a big American budget.

Iron Man: Proving once again, that all you need to do to make me like a Marvel character is give him a movie with a good cast and a good director. And, apparently, make that cast completely improvise the script because you’re more concerned with making a release date than ensuring that the product is any damn good.
Which explains a lot about all the other Marvel movies, come to think of it.

Robin Hood: I don’t care what anyone says; I like Ridley Scott, I like Russell Crowe, and I like Robin Hood. Putting them together is a no brainer, for me. In fact, I think I just want Scott and Crowe to do nothing but period action films about figures who straddle the line between myth and reality. I want to see Crowe as Roland. I want to see Crowe as Cuchulain. I want to see Crowe as Odysseus. Make it happen, Hollywood.

Date Night: Tina Fey in an action movie? With a bunch of other good comedic actors? Yeah, okay, you’ve sold me.

Worth A Rental
The Red Baron: I wonder if enough time has passed for a film that presents a 20th century German who fought in a World War as a noble figure? Or even a bit melodramatically angsty but still essentially a nice guy. The visuals are pretty, if a bit too obviously CGI in the battle sequences here, giving the unfortunate impression of watching someone else play a video-game.

The North Face: Mountain climbing movies always feel like excuses to indulge in sweeping panoramic views and deeply metaphoric stories of human nature. When you’re not having Sylvester Stallone killing terrorists, or something. Add some Nazis into the mix, and I think we’re looking at some heavy soul-searching and drama here. Which is a shame, because Jason Statham kicking Nazis off of cliffs would be pretty cool.

Terribly Happy: It’s Hot Fuzz! In Denmark! And played straight! Maybe, kinda, sorta. Actually, I think I might prefer it if they were playing straight, but it looks like they’re going for the same sort of absurdist angle that Hot Fuzz did, which only makes the similarities stand out even more.

Green Zone: I’m just going to go ahead and pretend that this is going to be Jason Bourne bringing down Blackwater and Halliburton contractors and Republican political appointees who have been fucking up the Iraq war for profit.

From Paris With Love: Everything about this looks like something I want to see. Except for John Travolta looking even more ludicrous than usual. And by a lot. I mean, Travolta with a goatee would be bad enough, but bald and with a goatee? No, that’s just asking for me to make jokes about Thetans needing more exposed skin surfaces to flee the body.

The Crazies: In general, I’ve lost all patience with horror remakes, especially when it comes to films that were perfectly fine to begin with and very much worked because of their era and budget. I’m also not to fond of “zombies but not” in horror films. Still, Timothy Olyphant.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice: Sometimes you resign yourself to seeing a film not because you think it looks good (I don’t) or because you like the cast (I don’t) or because you think that, despite all appearances, the film may have entertainment value to be had outside of what is presented in the trailer (I don’t), but because you’re in a relationship and you know that your partner really likes Nicolas Cage and anything to do with wizards.

District 13: Ultimatum: More French kickey-splodey films are a good thing, as far as I’m concerned. And there’s something paradoxically beautiful in taking the seeming silliness of basing an action film around free-running and just going for it, completely straight-faced.

I’d Rather Be In A Three-Way With Glenn Beck And Sarah Palin
She’s Out Of My League: Haha! See, it’s funny because he’s a nerdy guy in his twenties and she fits all the accepted societal norms for attractiveness, thus hijinx ensue! Haha! Boner jokes!
Christ…at least studios are branching out past Michael Cera for their “awkward post-adolescent male” roles.

Kick-Ass: Hey, remember how nerds wouldn’t shut. the. fuck. up. about Snakes on a Plane? Remember how film studios and the press mistook nerd chatter online for actual public demand for the film?
I’m getting the oddest sense of deja-vu.

The Bounty Hunter: Hey, a comedy about a divorced couple that beats the shit out of each other for ninety minutes with an incredibly flimsy pretext for the violence to make the film seem less grossly misogynistic than it actually is. How original.

The Karate Kid: You know, I could go for an easy joke about the stupidity of setting a film about a kid learning a Japanese martial art in China…but the real question is, where did all of Jackie Chan’s money go that he’s doing stuff like this and The Spy Next Door?

Despicable Me: I feel sorry for kids these days.

Knight and Day: Ah, Tom Cruise trying to shore up his macho credentials with another action film. And, look, a romcom twist to try and get women in to see it.

Cop Out: I’d be more than happy if a “wacky” comedy about mis-matched cop partners never got made ever again. The only strong sense I get from this is that Tracy Morgan still needs to stick with supporting roles.

Furry Vengeance: I used to be willing to cut Brendan Fraser some slack in his choice of roles. But this film just feels so cynically calculated a gambit to get kids into harrassing their parents into taking them to a movie that I think I’m pretty much done with that. “Miley Cyrus” as a swear-word? Really?

Frozen: Open Water has much to answer for. I eagerly look forward to the horror film about someone getting stranded on a funicular. Actually, “horror film” is being a bit too kind to this genre. I prefer “unsympathetic idiots get killed because they were dicking around film.”

Hot Tub Time Machine: Someone thought the name alone was going to be a selling point, didn’t they? The “dude comedies” are starting to get played out and overly repetitive, with far too much cast recycling. Not to mention that this 80s nostalgia thing has already worn out its welcome.

Shrek Forever After: There is nothing remotely good about this.

Death At A Funeral: The original only came out a few years ago, was in English, and wasn’t very good to begin with. So remaking it with a mostly black cast seems…odd. Unless studios are desperately trying to court that market and don’t feel like, you know…actually crafting films for that market. At least Peter Dinklage gets some money. That’s always nice.

Alice In Wonderland: So, I guess this is Disney’s response to the news that not even Hot Topic can move Nightmare Before Christmas merchandise anymore. Not just garish, but ugly. And the notion of a civil war in Wonderland reeks of fan-fiction attempts to “adult up” the stories in a manner that feels horribly at odds with the Disney brand.

Grown Ups: See, it’s funny because they’re all in their forties but have serious cases of arrested development!

To Save A Life: Oh no! The non-privileged kids in high school are being picked on! Good thing there’s a wealthy white jock who can teach us all an important lesson about taking pity on those who aren’t as good as us!

The A-Team: Oh. They’re playing it straight.
Well then.
Sorry, not even shirtless Bradley Cooper can sell me on the concept now.

Sometimes I live-tweet movies. This is largely a consequence of having wireless in the house and too much time on my hands. Also, being a smart-ass.
Last night, I watched a rental copy of the film adaptation of Dan Brown’s opus Angels & Demons. For those of you who know me, this may surprise you, as I may have mentioned once or twice that the only author that gives Brown any competition for the title of “most successful author least deserving of that success based on the quality of their work” is Ayn Rand. But I watched it anyway. This is the thing; while Brown is pretty much impossible to read, and Akiva Goldsman is responsible for writing the screen-play for some of the worst films of all time, and Ron Howard is at best only a barely competent director…wait…I think I talked myself out of my point.
Anyway, what I mean to say is, the ideas that Brown plays with is stuff that I should like. It’s purely the execution that is absolutely terrible beyond description. So with a film, I can watch it and experience just how bad it can be, without trying to slog my way through some of the most turgid prose in the English language.

So, consider this the “expanded edition” of last night’s tweets, preserved for posterity.

For the sake of Science! I am about to watch “Angel & Demons.” The theory is: you CANNOT make a worse movie than “The DaVinci Code.”
Yes, I misspelled the title.

And we’ve cut from the death of the Pope to the Large Hadron Collider…yeah, may need to live-tweet this.
That really was an abrupt transition. In the hands of a skilled writer, this would have set up a conflict between religion and science. Sadly, we had Brown and Goldsman. So we got a vaguely religious female scientist, Langdon’s casual agnosticism, a supposed enemy in “materialist fundamentalists” and a seemingly hidebound Catholic church. You’d think we’d have conflict, but no…
We’ve also got a scene where a scientist discovers a bloody retinal scanner, a discarded eye-ball inside an airlock, and a mutilated corpse inside the lock room. Because the killer had to get inside the locked room, kill, cut out an eye, and then get out of the room to use the scanner to get into the room…wait…
Brown’s staging needs work.

Tom Hanks in a Speedo. I may not be gay anymore.

I had to go and look up pictures of Jason Statham after seeing that.

He’s an expert on Illuminanti art? Seriously? He got tenure for that?
And he’s supposed to work at a prestigious university as well. I mean, maybe if it was Bob Jones or something, I could understand it.
I wonder what department parties are like at this school…
“So, I just finished a two year study of Dutch Renaissance works that completely rewrites the careers of several masters by proving that many of the works attributed to them were actually done by an apprentice. What have you been working on Rich?”
“I wrote a book about a made up secret society and proved that Jesus got laid.”
“…Right…”

“That cannister contains an extremely combustible substance called ‘anti-matter.’” Really, Dan Brown? Really?
Of all the adjectives that could be used to describe anti-matter, “combustible” isn’t the first one that comes to mind.

Is the physicist making an Intelligent Design argument?
Because her description of the work at the LHC and particle physics in particular sounds like the kind of half-accurate assumptions I usually see coming from that camp. I mean, I know that it’s pulp, and not even good pulp. But of all branches of science to be making that argument, someone whose job is actually researching the Big Bang?

I find it slightly hard to believe that the Pope’s secretary gets to be Pope until a new one is selected. But I was raised Adventist, so…
My religion was founded on getting the date of the Apocalypse consistently wrong and not eating meat…what do I know from Catholic hierarchy?

So the Cardinals won’t evacuate Vatican City, even though there’s an anti-matter bomb in it. THAT I find plausible, cynic that I am.
Even though I know that this wasn’t the supposed anti-Catholic subtext that got far right Catholics in the U.S. riled up…seriously, it should have been. That’s a monumental disregard for human safety.

“English was the language of radicals like Shakespeare and Chaucer.” Really, Dan Brown? Really?
I’ll give him Chaucer. That guy was sneaky and subversive and had a mad-on for the Church that would strike stone dead the people who get mad about Dan Brown books, if they bothered to actually read Chaucer (not that they read Dan Brown, but you know what I mean). But Shakespeare? The guy who wrote propaganda plays to help legitimize the Tudor’s claim to the throne? No, not a radical.

Out of curiosity, are there any GOOD writers in the history/art trivia mystery genre?
I got lots of people telling me “Umberto Eco.” But I’m not learning Italian, and the translations of his work kill me. I’m half surprised no one mentioned Arturo Perez-Reverte. I think the fact taht I specified “good” writers threw people off. I probably should have asked for people “not as bad as Dan Brown.” Or “actually readable.”

Murders based on classical elements? Is Dr. Phibes the killer?
Buried alive. Lungs punctured. Burned alive. Drowned. Earth, air, fire, water. If you don’t get the Phibes reference, go bother Sims.

“I need a map showing all the churches of Rome.” Yeah, that would be called “a map of Rome.”
I lived in Italy for three years as a kid. Church a block, I promise you.

“How would someone create a sculpture about air?” You are a fucking ART HISTORIAN! Dude! How did you get tenure?
And a moment later, he realizes that what he’s looking for is a bas relief. While looking at an intaglio.
Which are not the same thing.
Which are pretty much the opposite, in fact.
This from an art expert. With tenure. At a prestigious school.
(And I suspect he’s actually thinking of a high relief.)

Okay, I think we’ve had quite enough shots of sinister looking Arabic men, Ron Howard.
The crowd scenes mostly stopped after this, but it was starting to get a bit…pointed feeling. Like Howard had no way of instilling anxiety over our hero’s safety other than to show dark-skinned men looking at the camera while foreboding music played. Even though we’ve seen the killer, multiple times, and he’s a white guy.

Locked in an air-tight vault. That was obvious.
You pretty much knew, as soon as the air-tight Vatican vaults, buried underground in a lead-lined chamber, were introduced that someone was going to get trapped inside. But Brown is nothing if not painfully predictable.

That was the least dramatic dramatic reveal in cinema history. Of COURSE the Pope was murdered. That was obvious from the opener.
We open the film with the news that a popular, progressive Pope has died suddenly. Then someone starts killing his likely replacements. Gee, do ya think that the murder mystery might have started with an unsuspected earlier killing? Sure, structurally it’s just an excuse to have the super-secret notebooks disappear, but since that was horribly telegraphed as well…

These are the least armed Italian cops I’ve ever seen. They regularly face Mafiosi, and they’re all taken out by a guy with a hand-gun?
I think we’re mean to be impressed with how super-competent our assassin is. But given that he [SPOILER!] gets blown up by his employer because he was so stupid that he used the employer-provided getaway car, I’m not leaning towards the “competent” theory. Which means that the Italian cops are morons. And, no…not buying it. Carabinieri are hard-core.

Of COURSE it’s all a cover for the corrupt Cardinal to take power. Of course it is.
This was almost a half-way decent swerve on Brown’s part. And then I stopped and realized that the film isn’t even half-over, and the killer is never revealed that early on unless the writer is really good. And we’re talking Dan Brown here.

Langdon is bad luck for Italian police.
Two more cops die while Langdon dithers and holds back from the action. He’s got to be the least dynamic thriller hero ever. Even Pendergast and Holmes mix it up with someone every once in awhile.

Flying an anti-matter bomb away in a helicopter does not sound like the smartest solution to me. Just sayin’.
It is an anti-matter bomb. And helicopters, while they do have an impressive vertical list, max out at 8000 feet. And that’s helicopters built to do that, not ones designed to ferry VIPs between Leonardo da Vinci di Fiumicinio and St. Peter’s.
Again, I know, pulp science. But really!

So the probably gay young priest is the only person in this story with a lick of common sense.
Because he’s trying to move away from the anti-matter explosion. Sure, he’s doing so by parachuting out of a helicopter with a bomb in it…

This is the least likely, most coincidence dependent plot ever.
See if you follow the logic here:
“So, I’ll assassinate the Pope. And if I get away with that, I’ll hire a killer to steal anti-matter, which I’ll turn into a bomb at the Vatican. Then I’ll kidnap the four most likely candidates to replace the Pope and kill them off one by one, but make it look like a fictional secret society is doing it. Then, I’ll make it look like the Swiss Guard are conspiring against the Catholic Church. Then, if the anti-matter bomb is found, I’ll fly it up to a high altitude in a helicopter, but parachute to safety before it explodes. Assuming I survive, the Cardinals will be so impressed with my passion and bravery that they’ll make me the new Pope, even though there is no precedent for that and it actually breaks a bunch of ecclesiastic laws. And then, once I’m the Pope, I’ll start a new Inquisition and bring the forces of Science! to their knees!”
I mean, if I wanted to turn the world against science, I’d just make up some bullshit about vaccines making your kids autistic. So much easier.

And thus dies Obi-Wan.

Final Verdict: as bad as “The DaVinci Code.” The core of the story would have worked in the hands of a good writer/screen-writer/director.
I can’t help but think how the mystery authors I do follow would handle this material. John Connolly and Phil Rickman could make it work, but the supernatural edge to their work might make it feel off. Val McDermid would make it sing. Heck, even Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child could pull it off, and would keep the appealing elements of cheese that seem to be the root of Brown’s appeal.
And that’s really the heart of the matter. Brown has good ideas, but terrible execution. And he’s massively successful because his ideas appeal to people, but they read so little that they don’t recognize how horrendously bad his writing is. That his work flatters his audience by making them think that there’s more intellectual meat to the books than there actually is is just a bonus.

This film and Psycho are pretty much the co-parents of the slasher genre. To be sure, there were plenty of films about maniacs carving up women with sharp implements released between those two films, but if Psycho established the tone of the genre, Halloween polished it into its most recognizable form.
(In this rather strained analogy The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is the creepy uncle.)

Many of the standard tropes of the slasher genre become popularized here. There’s the use of POV shots from the killer’s perspective, a film technique that was lauded at the time but is sometimes criticized now for identifying the audience with the killer. There’s the explicit connection being made between sex and death, with the more chaste a character is increasing their likelihood for survival. And there’s the “final girl” character transitioning from a passive figure that requires rescue to one that fights back. Though, in fairness, Laurie is very much on the line there; she fights back, but she still needs Dr. Loomis to deliver the killing blow.

What I find interesting is, despite how much of an influence this film was on the genre, particularly through the 80s and into the 90s (the genre seems to be strongly in decline now, with the few contemporary films that dabble in it borrowing more from the self-awareness of the Scream franchise), is that so many film-makers seem to have learned the wrong lessons from the film. Even John Carpenter and Debra Hill did, as Halloween 2, and all other films in the franchise, can be safely ignored, and it would be advisable to do so. Chiefly, the ramping up of sex and violence that occurs in other films. Yes, there’s a link between the two here, but later films magnify it in such a grotesque way it’s hard to dismiss the charges of reactionary politics and misogyny that the genre attracts*.

But the big problem, as I see it, is that the imitators came away from the film thinking it was about Michael Myers. It’s not, not really. By design, Michael has no personality, no real face. He’s a blank canvass. There is one, and only one, moment of personality to the character, and that is when he pauses to admire his handiwork in the kitchen. Everything else is projected onto him by the audience. He’s not “real” in a certain sense. Even Loomis thinks of him as an “it,” as a force of evil. But because of his distinctive look, he became the “face” of the film. Which leads us to Jason and Freddy and Chucky and a whole host of horror movie villains that become the “hero” of their films. Which, I admit, I find problematic. It shifts sympathy from the victims; the film becomes about checking out the new and inventive ways in which people are killed. And that eventually just leads us to plotless dead-end films.

I mentioned Halloween 2 earlier, and I think it’s a good example of how the point can be missed, even by people who got it right the first time. The sequel is the film in which various motivations get piled on to Michael. Oh, Laurie is his long-lost sister. Oh, he’s actually cursed by a Celtic demon. Let’s up the gore and the sex and make Michael the focus of the film, because all these people ripping us off are making so much money, we need to hop on that bandwagon too. None of that “extra” information makes the first film any better. It actually hurts the film to watch it with the idea that Michael has been plotting to kill his sister for fifteen years, and has been able to track her down without even knowing what she looks like or where she is (it all becomes a remarkable coincidence). Laurie and her friends were just in the wrong place at the wrong time originally. Now they’re the victims of an orchestrated plot by a cult of evil Irish people? It ruins the drama of the original film.

_{*I don’t entirely subscribe to the idea that horror films are necessarily misogynist. Yes, there are misogynist films in the genre, lots of them. But on the whole I think the genre is less prone to it than, say, action films or comedies.}

And here we are, the masterwork of the modern werewolf film. It’s been written about extensively everywhere, including here in the past, so I’m no sure what more there is to say.
I will anyway, of course.

A big part of why the film works is the focus on the protagonist’s mental state. The film opens with long scenes of empty roads and moors, with only David and his friend Jack’s conversation breaking up that monotony. We’re given reasons to like these kids right away; they’re good natured, if a bit full of themselves, but more importantly they’re likeable. After the attack, the bulk of the film’s shocks and scares are confined almost exclusively to David’s nightmares. It’s not until relatively late in the film that the audience is given any definitive proof that the supernatural is really at play and it’s not all just inside David’s mind. This works because, since we already like David, we sympathize and relate to his suspicion that he’s going crazy. Given the dictates of the genre, of course, we know on an intellectual level that he really is a werewolf, but on a craft level it helps keeps the focus on David as a relatable protagonist.

Which isn’t to say that the film is without flaws. The whole notion of David being haunted by the ghosts of his friend and the people he has killed, while a solution to the necessary exposition dumps, never quite comes off. It feels more like a shoe-horned excuse to bring some more gore into the film, especially when there’s a whole village full of people who know all about werewolves and what really happened to David right there from the beginning of the film…and David’s doctor actually goes there to investigate the original attack.

But apart from that, it is a superlative film. And the sequence where David stalks a hapless commuter in a subway station is easily one of the best horror film scenes ever.

This is one of the two vampire movies I actually like. (The other is this big slice of coded gay panic.) It largely got lost in the shuffle when it was released, probably partly because it was preceded in theaters by the only sort of okay The Lost Boys, and the fore-runners of the Twi-hards were too busy swooning over Jason Patric, Kiefer Southerland and the Coreys to appreciate the brooding intensity of Adrian Pasdar or the under-rated charms of Bill Paxton.

A big part of why the film works for me is that it resists the trends of that era regarding the “classic” monster types. Most monster movies were going for tongue in cheek or dark comedy, reserving real “scares” for the slasher genre. And the Anne Rice-ification of the vampire as tragic romantic figure was coming into full bloom as well. Kathryn Bigelow resists that. The vampires in her film are unrepentant murderers, inhuman monsters, something sickeningly unnatural. And being in that state has warped their minds in indescribable ways. They’re not romantic, they’re not tragic. They’re just wrong. They’re so wrong, there isn’t really a word for them. The word “vampire” never occurs in the film. There’s no garlic or crosses, no niceties about being invited in.

Which is why it’s sort of interesting that so much of the film revolves around adolescent ideas of romance. Farm boy Caleb meets a mysterious girl, Mae, who speaks in cryptic riddles before biting him on the neck and running away. The next thing he knows, he’s been abducted by her “family” who debate how to kill him before realizing that he’s “turned” and is one of them now, whether they like it or not. The next few days of Caleb’s life alternate between falling deeper into love with Mae and trying to somehow survive the horrific violence and carnage her family revels in, before a chance encounter between Homer, the eldest vampire ironically trapped in the body of a pre-adolescent boy, and Caleb’s sister provides Caleb with a chance to escape and the most plot convenient cure for vampirism ever contrived.

Caleb’s love for Mae is adolescent. It’s your stereotypical “love at first sight” and “Rome & Juliet” type of love, the kind of love that only exists in romance stories about adolescents. The conflict this creates in Mae’s family is adolescent as well. Homer “turned” Mae, and is jealous that Caleb is essentially stealing her from him, and the other members essentially bully Caleb in a, well, dickish sort of way. The turning point of the film is Homer’s entirely bizarre and sudden infatuation with Caleb’s sister, which seems motivated more as a means of getting back at Mae than an actual obsession.

In a larger sense the world of the vampires is one of an eternally arrested adolescence. While there is some indication that most of them were probably “bad” people before joining the ranks of the undead, their current motives are as much boredom as anything else. They need to drink blood, yes, but the savagery and ways in which they “play” with their food are borne out of having lived so long that they’ve seemly devolved to a child-like, amoral state. It’s effective because it makes good use of the lack of supernatural overtones to their vampiric state. When a vampire is overtly supernatural, it’s easy to accept that they’re evil just because they’re evil. Here, were care has been taken to make sure that the vampires are as “natural” and “real” as possible, their evil becomes slightly banal and pathetic. Again, appropriate to the tone of a vampire being something wrong and despicable, that line between contempt and pity being thin.

This is one of those very few ghost movies that manages to get everything right. This isn’t really that surprising; the 70s/early 80s was the height of talent working in supernaturally themed films in America. I’m not sure why this particular era was so good for horror films, but it produced too many highlights of the genre to overlook the coincidence.

One of the reasons the film works so well is it keeps the bulk of the hauntings psychological. Much of the film revolves around George C. Scott as a composer whose wife and child recently died reacting to things only he can hear or see. The question is raised as to whether this is really happening or if it’s all in his head. It’s not until he confides in others that the hauntings manifest in an overt enough manner to be beyond question.

Cleverly, the film largely avoids metaphor or symbolism in its use of a haunted house. A parallel is drawn between Scott’s recent loss of a child and the dead child who haunts his house, but there’s no “grieving process” going on here. Instead, the haunting is cast not as an emotional or spiritual problem, but as a mystery. The film is essentially a detective story, with the victim providing supernatural clues as to his identity and the motive for his murder. As the extent of the mystery widens, eventually reaching high political stakes, the power and extent of the haunting increases as well, until the secrets of the past reach an apocalyptic conclusion in the present. Interestingly for the genre, the film also presages the contemporary motif in ghost and haunting stories that, in general, helping a ghost is ultimately the wrong thing to do.

I hate zombies. Even more than I hate vampires. They’re a stupid, derivative and over-used monster that has come to prominence because it’s been embraced by people who watch cheesy 70s Euro-horror films ironically and film-nerds who remember reading an essay once about how the zombies in Dawn of the Dead “were a metaphor for consumerism, maaaan…”
That being said, there are a small number of zombie films I enjoy. Shaun of the Dead, Return of the Living Dead, Brain Dead and this Australian film. Of course, the three things those films have in common is that they treat the subject matter with all the reverence it deserves. That is to say, none.

Undead is another one of those horror films that’s a bit short on plot, but makes up for it in other ways. Most of the characters are one-note, but drawn well and fairly archetypal (power tripping authority figure, bitchy beauty queen, useless boyfriend, terrified rookie). On the surface level, it’s just the story of a woman trying to get out of her stifling small town to start a new life, and the zombie apocalypse that gets in her way. But it’s the complications to that basic plot that make the film interesting, combined with a certain black humor and zeal for the self-consciously “awesome” in a way that Chris Sims would approve of the word. See, it’s not just enough that, following a meteor shower, townspeople start turning into flesh-eating zombies. No, then the caustic rains start to fall. Followed by the alien abductions. And the giant thorny wall that materializes around the town, cutting off all contact with the outside world. And then our farm girl turned reluctant beauty queen turns to a hillbilly gun-nut who knows gun-fu to mentor her in the ways of the zombie fighter.
It’s all just over the top enough to work.

Zombies have become the convenient cypher for horror fiction and films in recent years, a catch-all metaphor for whatever social movement or concern at hand, and this film is no exception. Their use here is actually a bit heavy-handed in that regard, especially when coupled with the giant wall around the town. Our heroine wants nothing more than to escape her old life, but she’s literally trapped, and all the townspeople who were holding her back now literally want a piece of her. And, as she’s reminded by her bitchy beauty-queen rival, taking care of the town’s needs is her responsibility, a point driven home in the now apparently mandatory ironic ending.

But aside from all that, there’s another element of the film that I enjoy, and one well worth mentioning, though it borders on the spoilerish. The zombie massacre, where our heroes rack up an impressive number of zombie killings, is a staple of modern zombie films. It’s expected by the audience. The neat trick pulled here is the dawning awareness in both the characters and the audience that indiscriminately killing zombies is exactly the wrong tactic to take in the long run. It’s the sort of response that people who don’t know what they’re doing and don’t know the nature of the situation they’ve found themselves in would take, because it’s the sort of thing they think they’re supposed to do. It’s the sort of thing that people who watch zombie movies would do, and it only ends up making things worse.

This is truly one of my favorite, under-appreciated horror films. It works beautifully, with an exceptional cast, and a surprisingly subtle, for the subject matter, metaphor at it’s heart. It blends wonderfully different strands of horror themes; ambiguity, the supernatural, isolation, a Cassandra-like hero.

The film opens with disquieting imagery, possibly the most disturbing piece of steak I’ve ever seen, and Captain Boyd, recently promoted hero of the Mexican-American war physically sickened by the sight of his fellow officers eating meat. We soon find out that his revulsion is related to his promotion. Far from being a hero, he pretended to be dead, and the blood of his fellow soldiers dripped into his mouth as their bodies were piled on top of him. When he emerged from the pile, after a sudden burst of strength, he just happened to capture the Spanish commanders. Since exposing him as a coward would be bad for morale, his commanding officer punishes him instead by sending him to a remote fort in the Sierra Nevada mountains, staffed with a skeleton crew for the winter. Shortly a half-starved man arrives at the camp, telling the soldiers the story of his escape from a lost wagon train that has turned to cannibalism and murder to survive. The soldiers go to investigate, only to discover that the strange man was not entirely telling them the truth. From that point on, the story largely becomes a battle of wits and determination between Boyd and the cannibal, with the Native American legend of the Wendigo hovering over them, as it seems that eating human flesh really does make people stronger.

It’s the battle between Boyd and the cannibal that really drives the action. Boyd feels shamed for his cowardice in the war, and the cannibal is a charismatic figure who seems to offer a practical method of dealing with shame by joining with him in a sort of sect, and it is only by resisting the cannibal through an assertion of morality that Boyd is able to ultimately triumph. What’s intriguing about this is, by this point in the film, it’s clear that Boyd and the cannibal are not actually talking about eating people anymore; they’re actually talking about the concept of “Manifest Destiny” and American imperialism. It’s not that far off, as far as metaphors go, as the proposed “victims” of the cannibal’s plots are chiefly planned to be those who are heading over the mountains to California out of a desire to join in the Gold Rush. He plans to live off those whose goal is unfettered capitalism and commodity exploitation. The tone is darkly comic through much of this, very black-humored, and the ultimate resolution is both fitting and somewhat cynical in its acknowledgement that, however the drama between Boyd and his adversary works out, there will always be more men willing to live off their fellows to come along.