House of the Devil is a movie that is completely unashamed of what it is. It is also uncompromisingly straightforward in its premise. In fact just knowing the title of this movie will give you a pretty good idea about what is going to happen in this film. However, despite this, or maybe because of it, House of the Devil is a fantastically frightening and fun film to watch.
Immediately one will notice when watching House of the Devil that director Tai West has made a conscious decision to set this film in the 80s in a homage to many of the classic horror and slasher flicks of the era. While some movies such as Machete or Planet Terror utilize the grind house aesthetic in a tongue and cheek manor, House of the Devil plays it much more straight by setting the movie in an era that evokes the feel of older horror movies without trying to engage in parody.
The film begins with a college student, Samantha, attempting to get a side job as a baby sitter so that she can move out into apartment and escape her obnoxious room mate. She lands a gig at an isolated mansion deep on the outskirts of town. Her job is to baby sit a mysterious man’s elder mother. The movie follows the events over the course of the night as Samantha finds more than she bargained for at the house.
This is a movie based on slow tension and anticipation on what will happen next. Samantha is a likely character played excellently by Jocelin Donahue. This great, since a large portion of this movie is nothing but long shots of her alone in the mansion, as she explores and begins to unravel what is going on in the house. As the movie progresses your really start to feel some apprehension for what is going to happen to this girl. However, when everything goes to hell at the end of this movie (literally), it is like a punch in the gut, all leading up to a masterfully executed abrupt ending that is classic horror.
House of the Devil is one of the best horror films I have seen from 2009. Some may criticize this film for being too uneventful or lacking substance, but this movie does everything it sets out to do, and does it with a slick retro style. It is definitely a movie worth seeking out and is great for Halloween.
9/10
Monday, October 18, 2010
October movie Marathon Part 3: Dead Snow (2009)
Nazi Germany was one of the most brutal and terrifying regimes of the 20th century. The Nazis have made for menacing foes in plenty of movies over the years, from Indiana Jones to Schindler’s List. So how do you make Nazis an even more dangerous threat? You make them into Zombies! The Norwegian horror film Dead Snow does just that.
The film is set in the mountains of Norway as a bunch of medical students head out to an isolated cabin for a fun weekend full of drinking and snowmobiling. However, once in the cabin, they encounter a mysterious hiker who recounts a tale of German soldiers who occupied the area during the war, and subjected to the local population to unspeakable atrocities. Apparently, as the war ended these soldiers were murdered by the local population who rebelled, when the soldiers attempted to steal their precious gold. The man claims an unspeakable evil lurks in the mountains, and pretty soon the students face a horde of undead zombies who are out to reclaim their lost gold.
Dead Snow plays almost like a remake of Evil Dead set in Norway, and the movie pays direct homage to other classic horror films like Dead-Alive. You can expect the same kind of horror action that straddles the line between goofy and gross that was found in those movies. I felt like the movie was maybe a little too aware of this by going to the lengths of including a nerdy film buff character who constantly references movies. At a point in the movie I started to feel “Yeah we get it, you like old horror movies.”
However, Dead Snow does have some great gore and action scenes toward the end of the movie as the characters engage in all out battle with the Nazi Zombies. There are plenty of decapitations, disembowelment, and characters being ripped limb from limb in this film, and a lot of this happens in broad daylight, so don’t expect too much suspense or scares in this movie. The characters decide not to run from the zombies, but face them head on. This leads to the movies best scenes, including a character mounting a German MG-42 machine gun to his snowmobile and mowing down dozens of Nazis. The movie tries to give the characters Bruce Campbell style one liners thought the film, but most of these fall kind of flat, partly because of the subtitles and partly because they are just plain bad.
Perhaps, the most surprising problem with Dead Snow, is just the lack of creativity. I never really felt that the movie took complete advantage of the excellent premise of having Nazi zombies. There is plenty of rich lore and stories about the Nazis associations with the occult and black magic, or their experiments with eugenics and fringe science. Either of these could have been exploited, and made for a rich and compelling plot. Instead the explanation for the zombies is vague and generic. The film seems too comfortable walking the same well trodden ground of other horror films, and I would have liked for it to try to be its on thing.
Dead Snow isn’t the best zombie film ever, and probably isn’t even the best Nazi zombie film ever. Check it out if you like the Evil Dead films, but keep in mind you won’t be seeing much new here.
5/10
The film is set in the mountains of Norway as a bunch of medical students head out to an isolated cabin for a fun weekend full of drinking and snowmobiling. However, once in the cabin, they encounter a mysterious hiker who recounts a tale of German soldiers who occupied the area during the war, and subjected to the local population to unspeakable atrocities. Apparently, as the war ended these soldiers were murdered by the local population who rebelled, when the soldiers attempted to steal their precious gold. The man claims an unspeakable evil lurks in the mountains, and pretty soon the students face a horde of undead zombies who are out to reclaim their lost gold.
Dead Snow plays almost like a remake of Evil Dead set in Norway, and the movie pays direct homage to other classic horror films like Dead-Alive. You can expect the same kind of horror action that straddles the line between goofy and gross that was found in those movies. I felt like the movie was maybe a little too aware of this by going to the lengths of including a nerdy film buff character who constantly references movies. At a point in the movie I started to feel “Yeah we get it, you like old horror movies.”
However, Dead Snow does have some great gore and action scenes toward the end of the movie as the characters engage in all out battle with the Nazi Zombies. There are plenty of decapitations, disembowelment, and characters being ripped limb from limb in this film, and a lot of this happens in broad daylight, so don’t expect too much suspense or scares in this movie. The characters decide not to run from the zombies, but face them head on. This leads to the movies best scenes, including a character mounting a German MG-42 machine gun to his snowmobile and mowing down dozens of Nazis. The movie tries to give the characters Bruce Campbell style one liners thought the film, but most of these fall kind of flat, partly because of the subtitles and partly because they are just plain bad.
Perhaps, the most surprising problem with Dead Snow, is just the lack of creativity. I never really felt that the movie took complete advantage of the excellent premise of having Nazi zombies. There is plenty of rich lore and stories about the Nazis associations with the occult and black magic, or their experiments with eugenics and fringe science. Either of these could have been exploited, and made for a rich and compelling plot. Instead the explanation for the zombies is vague and generic. The film seems too comfortable walking the same well trodden ground of other horror films, and I would have liked for it to try to be its on thing.
Dead Snow isn’t the best zombie film ever, and probably isn’t even the best Nazi zombie film ever. Check it out if you like the Evil Dead films, but keep in mind you won’t be seeing much new here.
5/10
Thursday, October 14, 2010
October Movie Marathon Part 2: Frozen (2010)
On a weekend ski trip, three college students find themselves stranded on chairlift, and forgotten by the staff of the resort. With the resort closed for the next week and no hope of rescue the trio must figure a way out as a winter storm closes in.
Frozen may stretch the genre boundaries for my October movie marathon a bit. There are no supernatural elements, no monsters, and no serial killers. It might be considered more of a thriller than a horror film. However, I think the movie fits the bill of horror quite well if only for the sheer plausibility of concept. Like the film Open Water, Frozen excels at taking a common place experience, and attempting to show how it can quickly turn into a terrifying one. It is this juxtaposition that fills you with an intense feeling of dread and hopelessness, as the characters of this film are put in an increasingly more desperate position, and you find yourself imagining what you would do in that situation.
A good portion of the horror is psychological, as the characters movie must deal with their deteriorating physical condition and the deaths of their friends, and there is a surprisingly low body count and use of gore, but this only serves to heighten the visceral impact when violence does occur. This movie has plenty of cringe inducing moments. Director/writer Adam Greene does a great job setting up the characters and their relationships in the first twenty minutes, so that you really feel for them with things start falling apart, and they are thrust into life a life death situation. I don’t want to ruin the film, but I felt the climax of the film could have been a bit better thought out and constructed. You don’t really feel like the solution to the conflict in the film feels earned by the characters, but maybe that is just part of the realism that the movie tries to go for.
Frozen is a fun little film that is totally worth a watch. At just under 90 minutes, the length of the film is perfect, and although the concept is limited, the movie does not overstay its welcome. However, do the nature of the plot and action of the film I don’t see me rewatching it very often. If your looking for a horror movie that goes in a bit more realistic direction, then Frozen solid bet.
7/10
Frozen may stretch the genre boundaries for my October movie marathon a bit. There are no supernatural elements, no monsters, and no serial killers. It might be considered more of a thriller than a horror film. However, I think the movie fits the bill of horror quite well if only for the sheer plausibility of concept. Like the film Open Water, Frozen excels at taking a common place experience, and attempting to show how it can quickly turn into a terrifying one. It is this juxtaposition that fills you with an intense feeling of dread and hopelessness, as the characters of this film are put in an increasingly more desperate position, and you find yourself imagining what you would do in that situation.
A good portion of the horror is psychological, as the characters movie must deal with their deteriorating physical condition and the deaths of their friends, and there is a surprisingly low body count and use of gore, but this only serves to heighten the visceral impact when violence does occur. This movie has plenty of cringe inducing moments. Director/writer Adam Greene does a great job setting up the characters and their relationships in the first twenty minutes, so that you really feel for them with things start falling apart, and they are thrust into life a life death situation. I don’t want to ruin the film, but I felt the climax of the film could have been a bit better thought out and constructed. You don’t really feel like the solution to the conflict in the film feels earned by the characters, but maybe that is just part of the realism that the movie tries to go for.
Frozen is a fun little film that is totally worth a watch. At just under 90 minutes, the length of the film is perfect, and although the concept is limited, the movie does not overstay its welcome. However, do the nature of the plot and action of the film I don’t see me rewatching it very often. If your looking for a horror movie that goes in a bit more realistic direction, then Frozen solid bet.
7/10
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Horror Movie Review Marathon Part 1: Lets Scare Jessica To Death (1971)
1971’s Lets Scare Jessica to Death deals with a woman who is attempting against all odds to hold onto her sanity in the face of a supernatural horror.
The film begins with Jessica being released from an institution after suffering a mental breakdown. It seems that Jessica is plagued by strange voices and visions of a mysterious woman. In order to help rehabilitate her, her husband and a friend take her to a small backwater Connecticut town. There they purchase an isolated house, and apple orchard, and plan to work the land and hang out and play acoustic guitar. Oh, and they happen to drive a hearse… for some reason.
When they arrive at the house they are surprised to find Emily, a free spirited hippie squatter living on the grounds of the estate. The group inexplicably takes in Emily and allows her to stay on the farm, but soon strange things start to occur. Jessica’s strange voices start coming back in her head, and she gets a sneaking suspicion that Emily is having an affair with her husband. Jessica also discovers that things are not quite right in town, as the entire population seems to be comprised of middle aged men who are mysteriously bandaged. Then Jessica finds that a woman mysteriously drowned on the houses property decades earlier, and legend has it her spirit still haunts the area.
Due to the questionable psychological state of the main character, you never really have a lot of certainty as to what really happens in this movie. The movie has a strange dream like quality that is highlighted not only by the mysterious voices and visions that Jessica experiences, but also by the irrational and sometimes quite silly actions of the main characters. It seems like these characters take bizarre happenings in stride, and don’t seem to mind the series of inexplicable events that happen in the plot. This would be fine, but I wish that the film had taken some time to get to know the characters better.
We find out very little about the characters and their relationships in this movie behind the basic back story, and this makes it really hard to figure out what we are really supposed to take away from what is shown in this movie. If you don’t like ambiguity, then stay far away from this movie. Things are not helped here by what is also a very thin plot. There is basically an hour of slow build up followed by about 30 minutes of action, and to be quite honest I didn’t feel like the pay off of this movie justified the first hour.
I do have positive things to say about this movie. The music, directing, and cinematography add up to a very creepy experience. It is interesting to note, that I found most of the creepiest scenes were the ones that took place in broad daylight, such as when Jessica comes face to face with ghostly figure emerging from a lake. There is some great imagery in this film. Also, when things do pick up toward the end, the film is pretty well done and entertaining.
I can appreciate this films attempt at slow paced psychological horror, but I wish the film had a more unexpected pay off and better developed, interesting characters. It lacks both of these. If your’re looking for some eerie early 70s horror film making you might enjoy Lets Scare Jessica To Death, but I found myself wishing there was a bit more substance behind all the creepiness.
5/10
The film begins with Jessica being released from an institution after suffering a mental breakdown. It seems that Jessica is plagued by strange voices and visions of a mysterious woman. In order to help rehabilitate her, her husband and a friend take her to a small backwater Connecticut town. There they purchase an isolated house, and apple orchard, and plan to work the land and hang out and play acoustic guitar. Oh, and they happen to drive a hearse… for some reason.
When they arrive at the house they are surprised to find Emily, a free spirited hippie squatter living on the grounds of the estate. The group inexplicably takes in Emily and allows her to stay on the farm, but soon strange things start to occur. Jessica’s strange voices start coming back in her head, and she gets a sneaking suspicion that Emily is having an affair with her husband. Jessica also discovers that things are not quite right in town, as the entire population seems to be comprised of middle aged men who are mysteriously bandaged. Then Jessica finds that a woman mysteriously drowned on the houses property decades earlier, and legend has it her spirit still haunts the area.
Due to the questionable psychological state of the main character, you never really have a lot of certainty as to what really happens in this movie. The movie has a strange dream like quality that is highlighted not only by the mysterious voices and visions that Jessica experiences, but also by the irrational and sometimes quite silly actions of the main characters. It seems like these characters take bizarre happenings in stride, and don’t seem to mind the series of inexplicable events that happen in the plot. This would be fine, but I wish that the film had taken some time to get to know the characters better.
We find out very little about the characters and their relationships in this movie behind the basic back story, and this makes it really hard to figure out what we are really supposed to take away from what is shown in this movie. If you don’t like ambiguity, then stay far away from this movie. Things are not helped here by what is also a very thin plot. There is basically an hour of slow build up followed by about 30 minutes of action, and to be quite honest I didn’t feel like the pay off of this movie justified the first hour.
I do have positive things to say about this movie. The music, directing, and cinematography add up to a very creepy experience. It is interesting to note, that I found most of the creepiest scenes were the ones that took place in broad daylight, such as when Jessica comes face to face with ghostly figure emerging from a lake. There is some great imagery in this film. Also, when things do pick up toward the end, the film is pretty well done and entertaining.
I can appreciate this films attempt at slow paced psychological horror, but I wish the film had a more unexpected pay off and better developed, interesting characters. It lacks both of these. If your’re looking for some eerie early 70s horror film making you might enjoy Lets Scare Jessica To Death, but I found myself wishing there was a bit more substance behind all the creepiness.
5/10
Horror film review marathon
In order to celebrate the month of october and halloween I plan on watching and reviewing thirty one horror films. One for each day of the month. Stay tuned for the first installment coming soon...
The White Ribbon (2009)
After thoroughly, enjoying his 2007 shot for shot English remake of his own film, Funny Games. I found myself eager to check out some other films in director Michael Henneke’s filmography. And what better film to start with than his recent Oscar nominated film The White Ribbon?
The White Ribbon provides snapshot into a small agricultural village in 1913 Austria on the eve of the First World War I. At first things seem idyllic, and perfect, but a series of nefarious occurrences start to occur revealing a dark underbelly to the town, exposing profoundly flawed society. First, the town’s doctor is injured when his horse trips on a wire stretched across the entrance to the town, then there occurs a tragic accident at the town’s saw mill, and town Baron’s son is found beaten. As suspicion and paranoia grow in the town, the town school teacher believes he may know the answer to who is causing these events.
I was a bit worried that I would not enjoy The White Ribbon, as it is more of a period piece and lacks some of the horror and thriller genre elements of Funny Games. But I was totally drawn into the mystery of what was happening in this town of right from the beginning. Henneke’s direction shows a lot of restraint, with a lot of deliberate long takes, and the black and white style gives the film a very ominous tone. The plot is also very deliberately paced, with the viewer slowly learning more and more about the characters in the village and their relationships. Certain things you take for granted or assume at the beginning of the film will be turned upside down by the end, making the film ripe for multiple viewings.
In a way The White Ribbon does to turn of the century German society what a film like American Beauty does to turn of the century American suburbia. Check out the White Ribbon if you are looking for a good foreign film.
9/10
The White Ribbon provides snapshot into a small agricultural village in 1913 Austria on the eve of the First World War I. At first things seem idyllic, and perfect, but a series of nefarious occurrences start to occur revealing a dark underbelly to the town, exposing profoundly flawed society. First, the town’s doctor is injured when his horse trips on a wire stretched across the entrance to the town, then there occurs a tragic accident at the town’s saw mill, and town Baron’s son is found beaten. As suspicion and paranoia grow in the town, the town school teacher believes he may know the answer to who is causing these events.
I was a bit worried that I would not enjoy The White Ribbon, as it is more of a period piece and lacks some of the horror and thriller genre elements of Funny Games. But I was totally drawn into the mystery of what was happening in this town of right from the beginning. Henneke’s direction shows a lot of restraint, with a lot of deliberate long takes, and the black and white style gives the film a very ominous tone. The plot is also very deliberately paced, with the viewer slowly learning more and more about the characters in the village and their relationships. Certain things you take for granted or assume at the beginning of the film will be turned upside down by the end, making the film ripe for multiple viewings.
In a way The White Ribbon does to turn of the century German society what a film like American Beauty does to turn of the century American suburbia. Check out the White Ribbon if you are looking for a good foreign film.
9/10
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