Eyes Without a Face (Les yeux sans visage) (1960)

Director: Georges Franju
Writer(s): Pierre Boileau, Thomas Narcejac, Jean Redon, and Claude Sautet, with additional dialogue by Pierre Gascar. Based on the novel by Redon.
Starring: Pierre Brasseur, Alida Valli, and Juliette Mayneil

Every genre of film is susceptible to an abundance of movies with recycled plots--take a little bit of plot A, sprinkle in some plot B, and climax with a touch of plot C, and voila!, you have your very own movie--but of all of them, horror seems to suffer from this the most.  This is most depressing, because it should be one of the most versatile of them all.  Instead, we horror fans are treated to countless direct-to-video borefests and tired franchises that are usually DOA before the second or third movie hits store shelves (Saw and Paranormal Activity…I’m looking at you).

That’s why I get a certain kind of satisfaction just from reading a plot synopsis that promises to deliver something new; Eyes Without a Face is just that kind of movie.  Even its basic storyline, that a doctor will stop at nothing to repair his daughter’s disfigured face, is a thing of beauty—dig in a little deeper and it goes from intriguing, to chilling.

So obsessed with finding a suitable facial replacement is Doctor Genessier, that he has his secretary, Louise, lure women to his grandiose villa, where they are drugged.  It is there that he surgically removes their faces, completely against their will, of course, and attempts to graft them onto his daughter, Christiane, whose own face was disfigured in a car accident caused by her father.  So here we have an emotional connection to the proceedings, which alone takes it above standard genre fare—this isn’t a man simply killing women because he can; he’s doing it out of love and concern for his daughter.

In the meantime, the doctor urges his daughter to hide her hideous face with a white, featureless mask, one that would go on to influence John Carpenter and an entire series of slasher films.  The mask’s effectiveness is much greater here, as Christiane spends most of the film’s running time wandering through the villa, her thoughts and emotions hidden behind the plain disguise that she is more or less forced to wear. 

But therein lies a problem:  As the well-respected doctor continues to fail, Christiane becomes more and more disillusioned with her situation, and more and more doubtful that her father can do anything to help her.  She starts to feel for the victims, often sneaking in and watching them as they lie unconscious on the operating table.  So the line between two realities are blurred:  Does the doctor really have his daughter’s best interests in mind, or is he merely obsessed with perfecting the operation simply for the fame it can award him for completing a surgery that hasn’t been done before?

It’s certainly an intriguing premise, and cinematographer Eugen Shuftan does an extraordinary job setting the visual tone for the film: the outdoor shots feature leafless trees and thick fog, when paired with the black and white photography, makes for an excellent atmosphere.  Eyes Without a Face looks gorgeous; in fact, the visuals are the main reason this movie is held in such high regard, and rightfully so.

The problem is, to simply base the movie’s power on its visuals is to completely ignore a couple of its major flaws: Exhibit A, the terrible score.  I’m surprised more people give this a pass, because I can’t think of a more misplaced set of music to an otherwise good film.  The main motif, which starts just as soon as the film’s opening credits, reminds one of a carnival, or perhaps more accurately, the intro theme to the show “Curb Your Enthusiasm”.  Either way, it’s definitely not the most striking way to start a story that’s supposed to be frightening.  Only, it gets even worse:  It’s the same track used during all of the “stalking” scenes.  So here we have playful, happy music over sequences that are designed to heighten tension.  This idea can, and has been, used to excellent effect in movies before, but if that’s what they were going for here, it fails miserably.

Exhibit B is its often plodding pace.  There are long stretches where nothing really happens, or where the camera feels like it needs to be somewhere else, rather than where it is at the moment.  The best example of this is right after we meet Christiane.  After Genessier and Louise leave her alone, she walks through the house for about three full minutes, and we follow her every move.  Only, there’s no payoff, and it doesn’t do anything to advance the plot (well, the end of that scene does serve a purpose, but there’s no need to drag the buildup to such a minor plot advancement out for so long). 

True to many movies from the same time period, the effects are rather hit-or-miss, though I was shocked that director Georges Franju even showed as much as he did.  For example, he goes out of his way to avoid showing Christiane’s face for much of the film--a smart choice--only to inexplicably reveal it later on (granted, it is kind of blurred, but the camera lingers on it for so long that you can still see just how cheesy the makeup effects are).  However, there is a rather graphic surgery scene that, for the most part, holds up well even today.  The ending also features a quick shot of a corpse that had to have been alarmingly graphic for the time period, and still quite shocking today—how it made it past censors back then is beyond me.

Speaking of the ending, I have seen some speculation as to Christiane’s true motives for doing what she does, but it completely worked for me.  I won’t reveal exactly what happens, but I felt there were enough hints given throughout that the ending felt pretty natural, rather than the shocking diversion some make it out to be.  In fact, it’s probably one of the most satisfying scenes in the entire movie, and most definitely a perfect note to end the movie on.

RECAP: I am recommending Eyes Without a Face, but not with the same unreserved enthusiasm as most critics. It’s too slow and meandering in some places, and while many critics have praised Maurice Jarre’s accompanying score, I thought it was hilariously out of place.  Still, the photography is astonishing, the special effects are mostly good, and I thought the ending packed a pretty solid punch.  Also of note for being the film that inspired Michael Myers’ faceless white mask.  Pretty much required viewing for horror fans, and a “recommended, with caution” for everyone else.

RATING: 6/10

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They Came Back (Les Revenants) (2004)

Director: Robin Campillo
Writer(s): Campillo & Brigitte Tijou
Starring: Géraldine Pailhas, Jonathan Zaccaï, and Frédéric Pierrot

If you’re thinking about heading into a viewing of They Came Back based on the quotes on the outside of the box, then just save yourself the time and don’t bother watching it.  In fact, if you’re planning a viewing of it as a horror fan, just stay far, far away.  The packaging is misleading, with the studio clearly latching on excitedly to any mention of the word “zombie” in any review for this film, in a desperate attempt to cash in on the current trend.

But those are just the sign of the times.  Zombie movies, once my favorite of all horror subgenres, have become so corporatized and overplayed that I can’t even enjoy them anymore.  Once the walking dead trend caught on so badly that they started being bastardized in mainstream media, being used to sell everything from cars to chain restaurant junk food, I just tuned them out.  I can’t even watch a show like “The Walking Dead”, simply because I’m completely sick of them and all that they have come to represent (though this hasn’t ruined my love of older zombie movies).

This is precisely why I wanted to see They Came Back from the moment I heard about it—it takes the basic principles of a “walking dead” movie, and has the balls to eliminate almost all of the horror elements, instead presenting it as a drama.  That isn’t to say that They Came Back can’t appeal to the horror crowd—there are many haunting scenes, and a palpable sense of dread throughout a majority of its existence—but in order to truly appreciate it, it requires one to go in with an open mind, and quite a bit of patience.

Interestingly, the movie wastes absolutely no time in setting up its story: the opening scene depicts hundreds of normal-looking people walking out of a cemetery.  The corpses in They Came Back aren’t driven by an insatiable hunger for brains, but rather a need to incorporate themselves back into a society that has erased almost all memories of their existence—the jobs and relationships that they left behind have long been filled, and loved ones have finally moved on from mourning their loved ones.  But how is one supposed to react when they find that their loved one isn't dead after all?

Wisely, the reasons why they come back are never explained, or really even explored.  Why they have returned doesn’t matter, especially when there are plenty of other aspects to explore.  Instead, of the thousands of returnees (we do learn that a majority of the returnees are old, and all of them have died within the past ten years), we focus on three: Mathieu, who returns to his widowed wife Rachel; six-year-old Sylvain, who returns to his parents, Isham and Veronique; and elderly Martha returns to her husband, who is the mayor of the unnamed city in which all of these events unfold.

It slowly becomes evident that something isn’t right with the dead, as by nightfall, their calm demeanors change: Martha keeps trying to climb the fence behind her home, forcing the mayor to lock her in the bedroom with him; Sylvain spends hours knocking on the wall, as if trying to catch the attention of someone; and Mathieu sneaks off at night, to partake in mysterious meetings with several other members of the newly-resurrected living.  What could be the cause of their bizarre behavior?

When all is said and done They Came Back is a fascinating failure; it never commits to one single angle of the whole situation, instead biting off little pieces of several different ideas until none of them are ever given a chance to fully develop.  Is it a film about the nature of grief?  Maybe for a couple minutes, until it loses interest in that and moves on to the next idea.  What about a meditation on the nature of loss, and what the dead leave behind?  An interesting parable on mental illness (not surprisingly, the returnees are described as being much slower, both mentally, and physically)?  It’s all of these things, and none.

This becomes the movie’s biggest problem: It doesn’t seem interested in answering the questions that it poses.  It doesn’t even feel the need to end the movie on any kind of usable note, instead opting for a finish so ambiguous, that I wasn’t even clear on what the possibilities were.  This is a shame, because through all of its hits and misses, it held my attention—I was legitimately unclear on where it was headed, and was completely enthralled in all the potential outcomes.

The terrible ending didn’t sour me on the rest of the movie, however, and I’m still recommending it to those that think they might like it.  The truth is, the story is quietly haunting; there are no jump scares, nor is there even a drop of blood, yet the way Campillo still manages to create an unnerving tension, while still balancing it out with scenes of genuine poignancy and sadness, is pretty impressive in and of itself.  Not all of it works, and it does ramble on for a little longer than it needs to, but when it does work, They Came Back is a refreshing, melodramatic take on the “dead returning” theme that fascinates even as it slowly loses steam.    

RECAP: Ignore the packaging, and any review you’ve ever read about this, because contrary to what the studio will have you believe, this is not a “thinking man’s zombie movie”, or anything of the sort.  Sure, the dead have returned to life, but these are simply people that want to return to the way things were before they died, leading to scenes of surprisingly effective emotional resonance.  Unfortunately, some of its forward progress is derailed by a director that seems to be so overwhelmed with the possibilities of the material that he jumps from one theme to another, barely scratching the surface while never digging deep enough to provide us with anything meaningful.  Even despite this, and a terrible ending, They Came Back is an interesting semi-failure that those with an affinity toward slower-moving horror movies or dramas should find intriguing.

RATING: 6.5/10

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Sleep Tight (2011)

Director: Jaume Balagueró
Writer(s): Alberto Marini
Starring: Luis Tosar, Marta Etura, and Alberto San Juan

I actually stumbled on Sleep Tight through an online streaming service, completely by accident; its front cover suggesting it was nothing more than an uninspired direct-to-video snoozefest.  For whatever reason—I normally do not pay attention to movies like this—I happened to click into it, figuring I would get a laugh out of its terrible plot or chuckle at its terrible cast of grade Z actors.  Instead, what I found is this was actually a critically-acclaimed horror film from the director of [REC], and it was at that very point that I knew I had to check it out.

The brief plot outline is a thing of terrifying beauty: Cesar is the doorman of an apartment complex.  Unbeknownst to its tenants, he also happens to be a depressed sociopath whose sole means of happiness is causing those around him to be miserable.  The entire movie, from the first minute, on through to the final frame, focuses on his attempts at breaking the spirit of Clara, a vivacious young woman who lives in apartment 5B.

It sounds like too simple a concept to work, but writer Alberto Marini, and director Jaume Balagueró cleverly imbue the film with almost non-stop tension; most surprising of all, they avoid taking things too far beyond the realm of implausibility, unlike most films of its ilk.  For a few fleeting minutes, I even felt a little sorry for Cesar, and I honestly can’t remember a movie that made such an intensely unlikable character into a victim.  Of course, it’s only a matter of time before he crosses the line into “irredeemably bad person”, but the ease at which Balagueró tosses our emotions around is nothing short of impressive.

His attempts to torture his victim start off minor:  He puts additives in her skin creams that cause her to break out.  When that doesn’t achieve his desired results—when she just callously tosses it aside as a minor allergy—then he goes back to the drawing board, coming back with something even more despicable. But Clara is different.  His “attacks” seem only to be minor annoyances to her, instead of the life-altering torture that he wants them to be.  He gradually realizes that he must pull out all the stops if he is to ruin her.

Just when we think this formula has run itself into the ground, Marini throws us another twist--the little girl across the hall who sees Cesar leaving Clara’s room in the middle of the night and knows something’s up, or the surprise appearance of Clara’s out-of-town lover—that forces Cesar to adapt his plans, sometimes on the fly.  We know it’s only a matter of time until he gets caught, and for poor Clara’s sake, we hope it’s sooner rather than later, but even as the proverbial noose seems to tighten around Cesar’s neck, he always has a cool-headed exposition that explains everything away. 

At its most chilling, Sleep Tight sometimes comes off as companion piece of sorts to Paranormal Activity, whose tagline “What happens when you sleep?” could also be a very apt slogan for this one.  Only, instead of an unseen entity, the “monster” here is someone with whom you come into contact with on a daily basis, who knows all about your life, but whose interactions, you assume, are merely friendly banter; who, like you, is all too human.  Alas, Cesar keeps his own “black book”, though instead of the names and numbers of potential suitors, this one holds notes on all of the building’s tenants.  Is the owner of apartment 3A going to be out of town for a week?  In the book it goes, providing him with something to do, presumably just in case he gets bored, or his thoughts of suicide become too much to bear.  

The most frightening thing is that the demented person here is not some cheap genre stereotype, but rather a living, breathing human being that could just as easily be you, or someone very close to you.  About the only fault I can find (and its minor) is that there is no motive given; how did Cesar come to be the way he is?  Alternatively, that can also be a strength—at least we aren’t given some cheesy backstory, or simple “he was abused as a child” copout—but given how adept Balagueró is at characterization, it could have been interesting to see them add even more layers to Cesar’s depth.

Still, if you like your horror firmly rooted in realism, Sleep Tight is not a movie you should miss.  It tells a simple story extraordinarily well, and is fundamentally gripping from the beginning all the way to the end.  I hesitate to call any movie that’s only four years old a “classic”, but it will be interesting to revisit it in a decade or so to see where we stand.  Does “potential future classic” sound better?

RECAP:  It tells a simple story, that of a doorman whose sole purpose in life is to make others miserable, but does it with an atypical gusto missing from most modern horrors.  The acting is solid all around, and the story, which sounds like it would get old after a little while, is kept emotionally gripping throughout its entirety.  If you like your horror grounded in reality, you simply cannot miss Sleep Tight; if you like horror movies, period, then you simply cannot miss Sleep Tight, either.  We’ll check back in a few years, because this may be a new classic of horror.

RATING: 8.5/10

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As Above, So Below (2014)

Director: John Erick Dowdle
Writer(s): Dowdle and Drew Dowdle
Starring: Perdita Weeks, Ben Feldman, Edwin Hodge, and François Civil

Scarlett is an explorer, and of course, the focus of a documentary, so we can have lots of shaky camera footage.  She’s looking for hidden treasure deep under Paris, hidden inside a series of tunnels known as The Catacombs, where millions of people are buried.  She asks for help from her friend, George, and then tracks down a local who’s familiar with the underground system.  A bunch of them die, a couple of them live, and the movie is over.

Does any of this sound familiar?  Unless you’ve never seen a horror movie before, it should all sound familiar.  This is just another tired entry into the “found-footage” craze, made popular thanks to the runaway success of The Blair Witch Project.  Only that was sixteen years ago…shouldn’t it be about time for Hollywood to find the next fad, instead of continuing to beat a horse that’s been long dead for at least five years now?

The first half of the movie features a lot of talking, as Scarlett rambles on incessantly about the aforementioned treasure.  You can skip all of this part; it’s neither fascinating, nor necessary to understand the rest of what goes on, being thrown in simply for the movie to have a rationalization, no matter how thin, for multiple characters to go deep underground.  It also goes on far too long; by the time the “scares” started happening, I was almost asleep.

And when the “scares” (term used in the loosest sense of the word) finally do arrive, the movie takes on the feeling of those haunted houses you pay to go in at Halloween; it’s just one predictable jump scare right after another for close to thirty minutes.  There’s no imagination, or any effort on the part of the filmmaking team to toss us anything original, which is the worst kind of movie; it caters to the lowest common-denominator, assuming its audience are complete morons that need our frights spoonfed to us.

Which I guess they’re probably right:  Even though this movie shows us nothing new, it probably made a ton of money, taking advantage of an American public that revels in watching the same stuff over and over again.  How else can you explain how people still voluntarily pay to watch this asinine drivel?  I borrowed it from the library, but had I paid even a dollar, I would have felt like I got ripped off.  If you’re over the age of 15, there is absolutely nothing for you to see here.

RECAP: Absolute garbage, from start to finish.  The scares are predictable, and when they finally start happening, which isn’t until somewhere near the hour mark, are just one lazy jump scare right after another.  As Above, So Below, despite its cool title (which is the sole reason it receives a point), is the worst kind of movie; one that doesn’t even strive to be anything more than mediocre drivel, yet can’t even reach those lofty heights.  It doesn’t try to show us anything new, or give us any reason to like it; instead, it’s a product manufactured solely to rob people, mainly teenagers, the only demographic that will get any kind of thrill out of a by-the-numbers junkfest like this, of their hard-earned money.  Don’t fall for it.

RATING: 1/10

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