The Possession of David O'Reilly (2010)

Directors: Andrew Cull, Steve Isles

Writer(s): Cull

Starring: Giles Alderson, Francesca Fowler, Paul McGuinness, and Zoe Richards

I don't think, in the entire history of cinema, that there has ever been a horror film where so little happens over the course of 85 minutes than in The Possession of David O'Reilly. It feels like an eight-year-old was given a video camera and three adults and told to make a movie that's scary; but in this scenario, it would be forgivable if the youngster failed. What's not so forgivable is this is the work of not one but TWO grown men, who have whittled the horror film down to a series of characters who seem to do nothing but scream and run. Also, don't pay attention to the title, because the only thing it delivers out of it is a character named David O'Reilly.

Alex and Kate are a couple living together in an apartment. One night, a man named David arrives. He is distraught, having just discovered that his girlfriend of several years was cheating on him, and didn't have anywhere else to go. He and Alex, you see, were old college buddies, and have remained good friends since then (he and Kate actually hung out with David and his now-ex girlfriend just two weeks prior, and note that everything seemed fine). Kate goes to bed early to let Alex and David have some alone time. The two of them spend a couple hours drinking and unwinding. David wants to tell Alex the story of how he discovered the affair: he was going through her things, looking for an address, when he saw lewd pictures of her that he never took.

Soon, Alex goes to bed, but David can't sleep. He thinks things are following him, and if he goes to sleep, he will allow these “creatures” to enter the house, where they will overcome him. So he spends most of the rest of the movie staring out windows and peering through doors, looking for things that only exist in his mind. If we're "lucky", we get to see some of the creatures he “sees” (the first one, which looks like something out of a “Silent Hill” game, is actually really creepy and well done; the rest are stupid as shit), but most of the time, he is just waiting for things that never arrive. Just like viewers who are watching this expecting some "entertainment".

Apparently, Alex and Kate can't hear their guest opening and closing doors all night, because the first night he's left alone to his own devices, David just moves around the unfamiliar house as loudly as possible. In the morning, David asks Alex if he heard anything, but Alex didn't. Way too gradually, Alex and Kate start noticing David's increasingly-erratic behavior, which was clearly irrational from the very beginning. Then a formula emerges: He sees something, and Alex thinks he does, too. They run and scream. Kate asks Alex what he saw, but Alex isn't sure that he even saw anything. The whole movie makes it pretty clear that everything merely exists in his head, because no one else ever sees or hears anything for sure, which kind of eliminates the need for a viewer at all.

Dialogue mainly consists of David saying, “They're trying to get in,” or “They're in the house,” or some similar variation involving “they” being somewhere close to “them”. Tensions flare. A random pregnant girl who lives upstairs makes an appearance for no reason, and then dies a grisly death, again for no reason. It's as if the filmmakers know they've made a shit film and are trying to keep the audience awake with random violence. It doesn't work. Meanwhile, David opens and closes a few more doors.

Finally, everything boils over, and that's when, instead of watching characters open and close doors and get frightened about nothing, we get to watch them scream and run from nothing, something made even more agonizing because David looks incredibly stupid when he screams, his large, gaping mouth seemingly open wide enough to swallow a watermelon whole. Kate constantly asks Alex what he saw, and Alex constantly says he doesn't know. Lights go out. Fuck it, I'm done.

I made a vow to reserve the “zero” point rating solely for films that, in my eyes, have no redeeming value whatsoever. For example, ones that feature graphic gore solely for the sake of gore, and have absolutely no artistic merit. So far, the only film that (I have reviewed and that) has met my criteria is A Serbian Film. I hate this film every bit as much as I hate that one, but in sticking with my own rules, I have to at least give it half a point for that cool first monster. And that's all it gets, because the experience of watching this movie—something I have done twice, including once in a theater—is an experience no one should have to suffer through at all.

You know, I give the film industry a lot of shit for allowing mediocre directors undeserving of attention the opportunity to thrive, often while ignoring the talents of truly great filmmakers. But when I see that Andrew Cull and Steve Isles, the two co-directors responsible for helming this worthless garbage, haven't written or produced another project since...well then I have to acknowledge that at least every once in a while, the industry gets something right.

RATING: 0.5/10

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A Horrible Way to Die (2010)

Director: Adam Wingard
Writer(s): Simon Barrett
Starring: AJ Bowen, Amy Seimetz, and Joe Swanberg

Adam Wingard is a terribly overrated filmmaker. Part of it—maybe a lot of it—no doubt has to do with the friend/partnership between himself and Brad Miska, who founded the horror news website Bloody Disgusting back in 2001. Since then, he has gone on to produce several of Wingard's films, while simultaneously overhyping the hell out of them on his own website (he called his forthcoming film, The Woods, which turned out to be a half-remake half-sequel to The Blair Witch Project “one of the scariest movies ever made” months before it came out; it opened to below-average reviews). Other genre sites also seem to be latching on, with Dread Central also lavishing constant praise on him; even the UK-based Independent referred to him as a “horror saviour” (cutesy English spelling intact) in a write-up for The Woods trailer.

I can't help but think conspiracy theory here: We all know how far contacts can take you in any industry, so just how far of a reach does Miska have? It seems every one of Wingard's releases are subject to a heavy build-up that most other horror filmmakers don't enjoy, but it all comes off as paid-for propaganda rather than legitimate praise. Hey, I could understand it if he showed a particular kind of prodigious filmmaking talent, or even had some kind of knack for a certain area of film (directors are often known for great cinematography, lighting, gore effects, etc.), but all of this praise is willfully ignorant of the simple notion that he has not only never made a great film—I have yet to see him make even a passable one.

Amy Seimetz is Sarah, a recovering alcoholic who attends weekly AA meetings. It is there that she meets Kevin (Joe Swanberg), an awkward but outgoing guy who seems to be smitten with her. She is hesitant to give in at first—she has just been through a rough relationship—but his cringe-inducing dialogue finally wins her over, and in Kevin, she finds someone that she thinks she will be able to trust again.

Around this same time, a serial killer named Garrick Turrell breaks out of prison, after a security guard has him strip down, but doesn't realize that he's concealing a razor blade. You would think checks like that before moving a prisoner would be pretty thorough and routine, but the officer must have just been having an off day. Maybe he just found out his wife was leaving him, or something, and it put his mind in a bad spot...you know, these things happen. Garrick kills the two cops, and escapes back into the real world.

The pieces to the puzzle sloooooowly start to come together. Garrick is the cause of Sarah's broken heart—the two were a couple, until she discovered that he wasn't being completely honest with her, so she put an end to the relationship. By that, I mean she found out he was a sadistic murderer (the idiot was constantly leaving the house in the middle of the night—yeah, that won't arouse suspicion) and had him put away for a long time. Only now he's out, killing people that are close to her as if trying to send a message—but also killing others that just kind of annoy him. Outside in a parking lot. Because, you know, the easiest way to get away with being a wanted fugitive whose face is plastered everywhere is to kill people in public—that's the golden rule.

Sarah never watches TV or reads newspapers, so she doesn't even know that her ex-boyfriend has escaped, until she discovers he killed one of her co-workers. Uh oh, better watch out, because Garrick is not a happy camper that she put him away, even though he seems very calm and composed and never seems like he hates her...wait, why is that? Could we maybe be in for a twist ending that I called a mile away; a twist so ignorant and implausible that it makes a shit film even shittier?

Even for Wingard, A Horrible Way to Die marks a complete regression: this movie is almost painfully bad. The cinematography appears as if they paid a ten-year-old $20 and told him just to “wing it”: I don't have a problem with the shaky style that dominated films for a while, but several shots give the appearance that the camera operator fell asleep during the scene. I'm not exaggerating—it will literally face the ground, or some item that has nothing to do with anything, while the characters continue to talk in the background. This was probably conceived as some intentional, artistic decision to create a more “intimate” bond between the viewer and the characters, but here, all it manages to do is frustrate.

Some are praising it for its “slow burn” attitude, and its focus on characterization over blood and guts, but for this to be effective, that would require there to be some kind of payoff; aside from the embarrassingly miscalculated twist, there isn't one. And, as hard as they try, there just isn't any depths to these characters; sure, we gradually learn about Sarah and Garrick's past, but we don't buy them as anything more than actors playing their parts and reciting pre-scripted lines in a D-grade horror film. There's no dimensionality to the roles. And it's one that will only be an effective film to those with the patience of a saint, or in the case of many reviewers, those that get paid to help spread the word of what a great asset Adam Wingard is to the horror genre.

How anyone could look at this and think anyone involved is the future of horror filmmaking, I have absolutely no idea, but if it ends up being true, then what I do know is that we are watching the slow, agonizing death of the entire genre.

RATING: 1.5/10

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Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (2010)

Director: Jalmari Helander
Writer(s): Helander, based on an original idea by Helander and Juuso Helander.
Starring: Jorma Tommila, Peeter Jakobi, Onni Tommila, and Tommi Korpela

The blending of horror and Christmas really isn’t anything new: from Bob Clark’s Black Christmas all the way back in 1974, up through the Silent Night, Deadly Night slasher series in the ‘80s, there have always been movies that have treated the holiday as just another day to kill unsuspecting college students.  Much in the way chocolate-covered pretzels work by blending salty and sweet, so to does the horror/Christmas connection—why not take the happiest day of the year (for many) and turn it into something horrifying?

Enter Rare Exports, a Norwegian film that not only aims to prove that Santa exists, but that, rather than rewarding the good, he and his elves instead spend Christmas Day punishing the naughty ones.  It’s a bizarre idea, to be sure, but it’s handled with enough tongue-in-cheek moments that it’s obvious the filmmakers aren’t taking much of this seriously, either.

Pietari is a young boy who lives in the mountains of Finland along with his father Rauno.  There, they eke out a tight lifestyle, with Rauno making his money by slaughtering and selling animals.  Then Americans show up, with the intention of digging deep into the mountain, hoping to strike it rich off any riches that the mountain holds.  When a hole in a fence leads to dozens of dead reindeer, the Finnish townsfolk immediately suspect the Americans were behind the vandalism, which allowed wolves to enter into the reindeer pen to finish them.  They head up to confront them, only to find that no one is there, and that they “must have left in a hurry”.

To protect their own home, Rauno sets up a wolf trap.  Pietari notices that the bait is gone, and the trap has been activated.  But what Rauno sees is not a wolf at all, but a fragile, old naked man.  After a little while, they come to realize that it’s Santa Claus, and Rauno’s eyes light up with dollar signs.  But Santa has different ideas, and soon his elves close in, and they will stop at nothing to free their master.

The film’s biggest transgression is that it never really “takes off”; it always hints at things grander than what it is willing to achieve.  There were several moments during Rare Exports that I started to get noticeably excited in anticipation of a scene’s climax, but it was never as thrilling as we were lead to believe.  Don’t misunderstand me, there are plenty of good ideas here as is, but many of them are never given enough time in the spotlight to bloom into anything special.  The lack of suspense is also a killer—every single plan Pietari concocts (another annoying trait: a kid character calling the shots in a decidedly non-children’s movie) seems to work without a single hitch.  It all just feels too neat and tidy, without ever really putting the character’s in any kind of immediate harm.

I also wasn’t a fan at all of the ending; it’s supposed to be “happy”, because it gives the main characters everything they’ve been looking for, yet it honestly felt kind of cruel to me.  I can’t really reveal anything about it without giving it all away, but I was expecting a detour toward more of a poignant ending, which is hinted at for a few moments, before evaporating.  Having such a finish wouldn’t be a stretch, either, as director Jalmari Helander allows several moments of genuine emotion to seep in, though like everything else, they are never given any time to truly resonate.

To be fair, there are plenty of clever scenes at play here, even disregarding the obvious change of Santa Claus from lovable bringer of presents to punisher of naughty children.  For example, one of the villagers complains that someone has entered into his barn and messed with his potatoes—as it turns out, whoever it was left all the potatoes, but was merely interested in stealing dozens of burlap sacks.  We soon find out what they’re being used for (though it doesn’t take much to guess), and despite the general obviousness of it, it’s still pretty genius.  Santa Claus is also surprisingly, genuinely terrifying—the evil looks that he gives Rauno and the local villagers plotting what to do with him are eerily excellent.

Now that I think about it, the movie this really reminds me of is Trollhunter; both films feature people searching for mythical creatures, and both are very similar in tone.  But comparing them side by side reveals just how unsatisfactory Rare Exports is as a feature length film; Trollhunter (which did admittedly have a slightly higher budget) isn’t afraid to take chances, and to even let some surprising emotions into the mix, nor did it shy away from awe-inspiring effects that honestly took me back to when I was a kid watching Jurassic Park for the first time in a theater.  Rare Exports, while never taking itself seriously, also rarely manages to be that much fun.  

There are some hailing this as a new Christmas tradition, in the same vein as A Christmas Story and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.  As for me, watching this once per lifetime was plenty enough.

RECAP: It hints at great things that it never even attempts to achieve; Rare Exports is a film with great potential that squanders it at almost every turn.  There aren’t many laughs, and the ending just feels downright cruel, a direct contradiction to the almost lighthearted hijinx throughout.  Effects and acting are good, and it certainly held my attention, but it ends up feeling like one anti-climactic letdown after another. For a movie with a similar tone done right, I’d recommend Trollhunter.

RATING: 5/10

A Serbian Film (2010)

Director: Srdjan Spasojevic
Writer(s): Spasojevic and Aleksandar Radivojevic
Starring: Srdjan Todorovic, Sergej Trifunovic, Jelena Gavrilovic, and Slobodan Bestic

There are generally two kinds of horror movies I like to watch:  Those that are scary, and those that are gory, which I guess kind of summarizes everyone who enjoys watching horror movies, except that I search for the most extremes of each kind.  The only caveat:  My gore movies have to have some kind of redeeming quality, which is why I stay away from straight-up gore films, like Faces of Death, or August Underground, or Slaughtered Vomit Dolls.  Hearing that A Serbian Film was insanely gross, but at least had some artistic merit and was well-made, I excitedly popped it in the DVD player.

Following along is very simple:  Milos (played by Srdjan Todorovic) is a retired porn star who is eventually talked into making one final film, by creepy film director Vukmir (Sergej Trifunovic).  He is told it will be an “art house” film, though it doesn’t take long for Milos, or the viewer, to realize that something is not quite right.  It starts off when he is forced to brutalize a woman while ejaculating in her face…and then it’s even further downhill from here.

Co-writer/director Srdjan Spasojevic is content with spending the entire running time throwing one poorly-conceived, juvenile gross-out scene after another at the audience.  It truly has the feel of two high school kids trying to come up with the sickest things they can, in an attempt to outdo each other.  Only, instead of staying in the back of a classroom, it’s up on a screen for all to see.  However, the cumulative effect of the constant string of shocks wore off for me about midway through, until the whole thing just became laughably atrocious.  By the time the infamous “newborn rape” scene rolled around, the movie had completely lost me; it had lost its power to provoke, or shock, and I actually laughed at the ignorance required to even think of including such a scene, not to mention the awkward staging of it.  There’s no build-up or lead-in (besides watching the woman give birth to it moments prior)…it’s just there.  Which aptly explains the whole existence of this movie in the first place. 

Ditto for a sequence near the end in which Milos and his brother are raping two hooded people…if you are seriously caught off-guard by the big reveal in this scene, as many people seem to have been, then you must not have been paying attention; both my wife and I called the victims’ identities way before they were revealed.  Who knew entering the mind of a hack could be so darn easy?

Of course, Spasojevic takes the easy route by claiming this is an allegory for political unrest in Serbia, and claims that by watching this movie, you feel how Serbs feel every day that they live in their country.  Political statements have long been used to explain difficult films; the other most notable example (at least off the top of my head) is Salo, directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini.  As difficult as that movie is to stomach, it wouldn’t be far-fetched to believe that there may be political motivations behind it; after all, Pasolini was known for making political statements, both in his own life, and in his movies.  Even the mysterious events surrounding his death, which went in the books as a romantic rendezvous gone wrong, have been described as an assassination.

With nothing else in Spasojevic’s filmography to go off of, it’s hard to give him the benefit of the doubt.  Of course, any movie scene can be spun to fit any agenda, but the only feeling I got from the frames of “A Serbian Film” was desperation; it has only a desperate need to shock and provoke.  Once that wears off, about thirty minutes in, all you're left with is the exact type of movie I was trying to avoid; one that has nothing to say beyond the shallow violence it depicts on the screen.

RECAP: A shallow movie with nothing to offer besides scenes of violence that get gradually worse and worse as the movie goes on.  However, by the halfway point, you’ll not only be one step ahead of director Srdjan Spasojevic, you’ll also be laughing hysterically at his inability to leave a scene on the cutting room floor, no matter how juvenile and unnecessary it is.

RATING: 0/10

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Dream Home (2010)

Director: Pang Ho-cheung
Writer(s): Ho-cheung, Kwok Cheung Tsang, and Chi-Man Wan
Starring: Josie Ho, Juno Mak, Norman Chu, and Eason Chan

I am not at all a fan of the typical American “slasher” film.  There’s just something about the vast majority that leaves me unsatisfied.  My problem is that most of them feel like those pornos that try to have a plot…is anyone really following along with that?  You know everyone is fast forwarding through the talking just to get to the “action” scenes.  Same with slashers.  Why waste 75 minutes of screentime watching usually amateur actors struggle their way through poorly written lines (and clumsy sex scenes), just to get to 10 minutes of generally unimpressive deaths?  While I understand the concept (people like sex and violence and they generally do big business), I’ve never understood why so many films in this subgenre manage to be so bland and lifeless (pun not intended).

Other countries seem to understand the potential, though.  Enter Hong Kong’s Dream Home, directed by Pang Ho-cheung, a film that delivers everything the standard slasher movie requires, while simultaneously turning the subgenre on its ear.  In this case, the killer is not some indestructible masked maniac who kills teenagers in tired ways—it’s Cheng Lai-Shung, a petite woman who dreams of owning a flat with the perfect view of the sea…and will stop at nothing to get it.

The deaths are prolonged, and incredibly violent; they have got to be some of the most realistic murder sequences I’ve seen.  Characters don’t just get stabbed once and then fall to the ground motionless, or get strangled for five seconds before succumbing; in real life, the body is very resilient, and will attempt to do whatever it takes to survive, a notion that’s sometimes chillingly realized here.  Characters survive for minutes after being disemboweled, a pregnant woman is suffocated for what feels like an eternity in the most heinous way imaginable, and there is plenty more where that came from.  I’ve always wanted to make a standard slasher where the only difference is the deaths are agonizingly drawn-out lifelike; my point being to cross a standard form of entertainment where we are basically encouraged to cheer on death, only taking it so far that there’s no “entertainment” left.  While this is not the point of Dream Home, it’s certainly the closest a movie has ever come to reaching that plateau.

But there’s also substance to go along with its graphic style:  Dream Home jumps around chronologically, almost Tarantino-style, to gradually reveal her reasons for the murders, as they are playing out.  We’ll watch Cheng kill a person or two, then flash back to reveal another tidbit of what eventually drove her to such an uncontrollable rage.  I’ll admit that, in the beginning, it really kind of makes you feel for her; by the end, you’ll gradually start understanding just how one-dimensional her murder spree really is.  I also appreciated the decision to make her every bit as vulnerable as her victims, who are usually bigger and stronger; when her element of surprise doesn’t work (or wears off), she’s susceptible to taking damage herself.  I thought this was a welcome change from the norm. 

While the film is also marketed as a black comedy, and I guess there’s just enough of it to keep it from being a completely ugly film (thematically; visually, it’s very well-shot), just an advanced warning that there is nary a single likable character.  While this certainly doesn’t justify the murders (nor do I believe that is its intention), it manages to make an already dark film feel even more pessimistic and cruel.  We may hate Cheng, but we don’t really have anyone else to latch on to, either.  That being said, it never even comes close to reaching the depths of depravity of a film like, say, Salo does, but there are times when it seems entirely focused, hellbent even, on crossing lines to make the viewer feel uncomfortable.

But in the end, isn’t that what these types of movies should be all about?  In some ways, “horror” feels to movies what “punk” is to music; a genre that’s all about breaking rules and making people uncomfortable.  Dream House certainly does both of those things, with such a reckless abandon that it becomes nothing less than admirable.

RECAP: It’s endlessly dark (save for some minor humorous bits), and ridiculously violent, but I loved Dream Home for taking the basic slasher movie, and singlehandedly rejuvenating it.  There are no indestructible madmen offing campers with absolute ease; instead we have a vulnerable, petite woman, obsessed with purchasing a specific apartment, killing neighboring tenants in unflinchingly graphic fashion.  Its jumpy presentation (frequently switching from past to present) will no doubt confuse and/or annoy some, but I thought it was a great addition.  If you love slasher movies, you owe it to yourself to give this one a shot, but be forewarned; much of the violence blurs the line between “mindless entertainment”, and “shocking realism”.

SCORE: 8.5/10

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