Onibaba (1964)

Director: Kaneto Shindo
Writer(s): Shindo
Starring: Nobuko Otawa, Jitsuko Yoshimura, Kei Satô, and Jûkichi Uno

Kaneto Shindo’s Onibaba features many similarities to his later work, and first one of his that I ever saw, Kuroneko: Both center around a mother and daughter-in-law awaiting the return of a son and husband who is off fighting a war, both detail the struggles of women during wartime, and both feature landmark visuals, among other things.

But whereas Kuroneko focuses on a love story, using haunting visuals only to help the story along, Onibaba seems focused more on nurturing an atmosphere of primal terror. Thanks to its simultaneously gorgeous and eerie photography, it does an admirable job, though I would say that it falls just a tad bit short of attaining “classic” status for me.

Nobuko Otawa and Jitsuko Yoshimura play the mother and daughter-in-law, respectively, who "earn a living" by killing passing samurai and exchanging their possessions for food. To dispose of the bodies, they toss them down a deep hole. The women are awaiting word on the fate of Kichi, the son/husband, when a neighbor, friend, and fellow war comrade, Hachi, returns to the village alone. He comes bearing bad news—Kichi was ambushed during battle, and killed. The mother (neither of them are ever identified by name) demands to know how Hachi managed to survive, and then automatically presumes that he did not do enough to help her son. I expected this to be a talking point, or some kind of plot device, but just as quickly as the accusations begin, they stop.

Adding to the awkwardness, Hachi doesn’t even give the family time to mourn before immediately hitting on Kichi’s now-widowed wife; while the mother is appropriately angered, the wife seems to forget her dead husband pretty quickly, and before long, the two are engaged in a passionate affair. The daughter-in-law waits for her mother to fall asleep at night, then runs through the tall susuki grass to Hachi’s nearby hut to engage in some frivolous fun. It doesn’t take long for the mother to find out.

One night, as her mother is preparing to follow her daughter-in-law to her secret meeting place, she is stopped by a samurai wearing one of the most impressive, chilling masks in cinema history. I must confess that it would have been even more impressive, had a simple search on a popular internet search engine of simply the film’s title, not revealed dozens of pictures of it, thus eliminating the element of surprise. But no amount of pictures can do it justice quite like seeing it on the screen for yourself. Even though the same mask is used in every shot, Mr. Shindo brilliantly utilizes light and shadows to give the impression that the mask is moving to convey the samurai’s emotions—it’s an astonishing effect that has to be seen to be believed, and the scenes involving the mask really do manage to be frightening.

Anyway, the masked swordsman is merely lost, and at first asks the mother to help him find his way out of the seemingly neverending maze of susuki grass that surrounds their home. The mother declines the request…at least, until the samurai threatens her with death if she does not comply. Reluctantly, she agrees. Along the way she asks him why he wears the mask, to which he replies that he is so handsome, people cannot stand the sight of him. She asks him to show her his face in exchange for leading him out to the main road, but ends up tricking him into falling down the hole.

Eager to see his true face, she rappels down the hole herself, and eventually manages to rip the mask off, only to discover it’s the face of a normal-looking man, save for the bits of his flesh that have been torn off, along with the mask. Not really curious as to why, or how, a mask would get so stuck on someone’s face, she begins using it to scare her daughter-in-law as she treks to Hachi’s house…

What we get with Onibaba is certainly great, but my mind was awash with everything that we don’t get. Given its reputation in some circles as one of the scariest movies ever made, I anticipated a certain level of mystery and intrigue—for example, I was expecting the identity of the masked swordsman to play a more crucial role, or to at least build suspense (is he the murdered son looking for revenge on his wife and friend?; an actual ghost or demon?), but it’s never really allowed to. In fact, everything is so…straightforward…that it’s somewhat disappointing that the story cannot even come close to matching the dreamlike visuals. Did Hachi have anything to do with Kichi’s death, in an intentional bid to close in on the wife? Such questions, which really could have added some depth to the story, go unexplored; yet given the actions of the characters, could be legitimate concerns.

Despite my feelings of being a little under-satisfied given its immense reputation, Onibaba is still an excellent horror picture, and one that any true fan of horror cinema should check out. Even if you’re not a fan of foreign movies, you can simply pop it in, mute the TV, turn off subtitles, and just get lost in the film’s stunning black and white photography. But if you don’t mind a few subtitles and want to immerse yourself in the full experience, Onibaba will certainly deliver, though one can't help but feeling that it could have delivered a lot more.

RECAP: Rife with haunting, and sometimes terrifying, imagery, Onibaba is great for what it is: a straightforward horror tale. My biggest complaint is that it’s too straightforward, with many potential subplots, which could have provided both some added scares and depth, ignored. That being said, the mask is one of the scariest ones ever used in a horror movie, with director Kaneto Shindo cleverly utilizing camera angles and lighting to give the insinuation that it’s continually moving. It falls just a bit short of being a horror classic for me, but there are no doubts in my mind that it should be required viewing for all fans of the genre.

RATING: 8/10

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We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011)

Director: Lynne Ramsay
Writer(s): Ramsay and Rory Stewart Kinnear, from a novel by Lionel Shriver
Starring: Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly, Ezra Miller, and Jasper Newell

Films about evil children are nothing new—in fact, such stories tend to be a fallback for the horror genre, with one, it seems, opening in theaters every month, or going direct-to-video every week. It's a popular storytelling device, perhaps mainly because of the success of The Omen franchise, but also because there's immediately a built-in relation for the audience: parents can imagine if their child(ren) acted this way, how they would cope; expectant mothers can get a tinge of fear just from the mere thought that the child they are carrying may be the devil himself; even those without children can still identify, because we were all children once, and generally put our parents through moments of sheer hell without being the spawn of Satan...imagine how much worse it would be if we were! The whole mother-child bond is the strongest in the world, with the father-child bond generally close behind, and so there's the automatic potential for response from the audience, because we've all experienced it in some way or another.

It is also the focus of Lynne Ramsay's We Need to Talk About Kevin. But while it may deal with very common themes, it is not your typical “evil seed” film; in eschewing the “normal” causes of fictional wicked boys, Ramsay has created a chilling work that lays much of its foundation in reality. An exorcism won't save Kevin, because he's not possessed by anyone, or anything; he's just inherently evil, and makes it his life's work to psychologically torture his mother any possible chance he gets.

The film is interestingly told in a freewheeling, almost dreamlike manner; the effortlessness with which it works makes me wonder why more films, especially horror ones, don't attempt it more often. We cut back and forth in time frequently, with “present” events involving Eva Khatchadourian (Kevin's mother, and the object of his hatred) giving way to specific, painful memories of her past. It is in this fashion that the entire story is told. It might sound confusing, and it is at first, but it's done in such a manner that within just a few minutes, it becomes second-nature, as clear and concise as a standard narrative.

Through fragments, we follow Eva and her husband, Franklin (journeyman John C. Reilly, who can't seem to turn down a role) as she learns she is pregnant with Kevin, a development that she clearly isn't interested in. Is it because she has a feeling that her son will be an emotionless ball of hate, or is her reservations toward motherhood partially responsible for making him the way he is? Once he comes out into the world, things do not get better for poor Eva: her (forced) attempts to bond with him are met with disinterest, even from a very young age. As Kevin gets older, his “disinterest” grows with him, into complete contempt: his mother may tend to be the focus of this, but it is also clear he has a disregard for just about everyone around him.

Then Eva learns she is pregnant again, and this time, with a girl. The hope is that having someone to play with will turn Kevin into a good person, but the new family member seems to have no effect on his mean-streak—within moments of her birth, he's sprinkling water on the newborn baby's face, making it cry. Time does not seem to tame his violent tendencies, and he makes life miserable for his sister, culminating in a tragic “accident” that leads to her need for a glass eye.

Now a couple of the holes start to show in an otherwise tight script, because Franklin continues to side with Kevin at all costs. In the beginning, it makes sense, as Kevin does go out of his way to show his father he loves him, while remaining cold toward his mother. But fifteen years later, and the father still can't see the evil that surrounds his son? This gives way to another tired contrivance: Franklin thinks all of Eva's complaints are in her head. If we, as the audience, are also supposed to question her sanity, the film never bothers to make that clear for us—what is made abundantly clear is that Kevin really is a contemptible child, and despite her best (half-assed) attempts, Eva can never penetrate through the emotionless shell that is her son.

These individual scenes lead up to one catastrophic event that ruins everyone's lives; it is an event so horrific, that random passersby still randomly smack Eva out in public, and vandalize her property, excoriating her for something that she had nothing to do with. I understand in this society, parents are generally blamed for the actions of their children—sometimes accurately, oftentimes not—but the level of scorn that she faces is completely over-the-top. At first, it creates sympathy for Eva, which I think is the point, but as the ridicule continues, she just comes off as an idiot for not escaping a town that makes it painfully obvious that she is unwelcome there.

When all is said and done, We Need to Talk About Kevin is nevertheless an effective slice of evil child horror, offering up a difficult scenario that offers no easy answers. It is frequently confrontational and more than a little disturbing, relying on solid writing and a dread-filled atmosphere to keep the viewer interested, rather than resorting to gore or cheap shocks. It also functions as an eye-opening counterattack to those that frequently hold parents accountable for the violent actions of their children, positing the uncomfortable notion that some children, despite their surroundings, are simply born to hate.

RATING: 7.5/10

As a side note, the film version curiously seems to want to make Kevin's crime a secret—if you want it to be, don't read the single-sentence synopsis for the novel, which plainly states what it is. I made that mistake during a break in the movie (dog had to be let out), and while I can't say it ruined anything for me, I would have rather found out during the course of watching it.

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Witchboard (1986)

Director: Kevin S. Tenney
Writer(s): Tenney
Starring: Todd Allen, Tawny Kitaen, Stephen Nichols, and Kathleen Wilhoite

My God, Tawny Kitaen is ridiculously hot. I'd heard the name before, and saw this movie several years back, but she has a natural radiance that just draws you in...add to that my fully-developed love for redheads (after all, I married one), and watching her here came close to making me feel the way I did about my pre-teen television crushes. Adding to the attraction is her talent: she's not the greatest actress in the world, but she's also not some bimbo hired simply to pose and look good in front of the camera. She's required to go through a range of emotions here, and manages to pull everything off rather convincingly, or at least, on a level equal to what the material deserves.

I don't usually get caught up in the looks of an actress this much, but she ends up being the saving grace of Kevin S. Tenney's Witchboard, the most uniformly average film I think I've ever seen. It perfectly toes the line of mediocrity from beginning to end in such a way that its consistency must be admired: it never dips to the point of being boring, but on the other hand, it also never rises enough to be all that interesting.

Kitaen is Linda Brewster, a beautiful (have I made that point clear yet?) woman who lives with her boyfriend, Jim. Linda seems to be a rather dumb woman, inviting her ex-boyfriend, Brandon, to a party thrown at their own house—unsurprisingly, Jim and Brandon don't seem to get along all that well, which is also perfectly understandable given the circumstances. The two spend most of the evening exchanging barbed one-liners with each other, while Linda seems to get a little too cozy with Brandon. Then Brandon pulls out a ouija board, informs everyone at the party that they've been pronouncing it wrong (it's “wee-jah”), and selects Linda as his “partner” to speak to the ghosts, on the grounds that she is “pure” and doesn't smoke or drink, unlike Jim.

As dumb as the invitation sounds now, it gradually starts to make a little more sense as the backstory is slowly revealed: Jim and Brandon actually used to be the best of friends growing up, but started to drift apart after Brandon blamed Jim for stealing Linda away from him. On those grounds, maybe Linda invited her ex hoping the two would set their differences aside and become good friends again, but it doesn't end up working out that way: the night ends when Jim pisses off “Dave”, the ghost of a ten-year-old boy that Brandon frequently talks to. In response to this “Dave” pops Brandon's tire. When Jim asks why didn't he pop his tire if he was the one provoking his anger, Brandon tells him that he was the one operating the board, so he is the one responsible for anything that happens during the “visit.”

In all the chaos of the popped tire, Brandon forgets to take home the Ouija, leaving it at Jim and Linda's house. But while Jim is clearly the skeptic, Linda starts to believe in the board and its powers. She apparently also doesn't have a job, because once she starts using the board alone, she can't seem to stop—it's as if its powers are drawing her in. Soon, she passes the point of obsession, talking to “Dave” every chance that she gets, and trying to form a bond with the dead child.

I will say in exactly one instance Witchboard throws us a bone, then cleverly veers off into an unpredictable direction: Early on, during the Ouija session at the party, Brandon lets the partygoers in on a little secret: That the spirits trapped in Ouija boards believe in reincarnation, and can pick the parents they want to be born to. Lo and behold, Linda finds out that she is pregnant, and even asks “Dave” to be her new child, to which the ghost replies with disinterest. But there is another catch to the ghost-human relationship: Brandon tells us the ghosts frequently lie. So is “Dave” really planning on entering her womb and being her next child, or is something else underfoot?

Before we veered off into the bad Rosemary's Baby knockoff I was anticipating, that whole subplot is wisely thrown out the window. As it turns out, she was not pregnant after all, a nurse explains. But Linda's health is rapidly deteriorating the more time she spends with the Ouija. To make matters a little more interesting, several people who are close to Jim end up dying. Is this just a coincidence, or is “Dave” trying to send a message from beyond the grave? Or is “Dave” even the ten-year-old child that he's been pretending to be...after all, the spirits have been known to lie...

The whole project has the feel of “Beverly Hills 90210” meets The Exorcist, especially in the early scenes, where the love triangle is the main focus, and this awkward combination of soap opera-meets-the-paranormal hinders it more than it helps. The “chemistry” between the two old friends is standard stuff, as Brandon's belief in the supernatural clashes with Jim's skepticism, providing some additional push-and-pull that is central to the story. Of course, as the bizarre events mount, Jim starts gradually opening up a little bit more to his old friend, and before you know it they're rehashing their old friendship, and having manly heart-to-heart talks that never happen in real life.

Also central to the story is Jim's relationship with Linda, which seems to be a painfully one-sided affair. Linda is a very good-looking woman, so why does she insist on staying with a man so scared of commitment, that his response to Linda telling him she loves him is, and this is a direct quote: “I know you do.” This angle of the story is rather frustrating—why would such an attractive woman, or any woman for that matter, put up with someone who clearly doesn't return their affections—but its inclusion all makes sense later on, as Linda's mental stability rapidly starts to spiral out of control, leading to a scene that's delightfully cheesy, in the worst way possible.

And that line sums up most of Witchboard: Overall, it's so terrifically lame that it's both impossible to hate and impossible to like, all at once. It never once even approaches the realm of scary: Linda's descent into madness is standard horror stuff, as is Jim's gradual acceptance of the possibility of the supernatural. It all plays out like it “should”, leaving only a couple of slight surprises along the way.

On to the production side: I do have to say that the writing is pretty good for a low-budget horror film, and it features some wicked one-liners. The characters are fleshed out well enough, though there really isn't all that much depth to any of them; still, Jim comes off as the lovable, sarcastic asshole that they were going for, with the rest of the characters displaying understandable annoyance at him. The acting is also above-average, with Todd Allen (Jim), Stephen Nichols (Brandon), and Kitaen all turning in good performances (also note that's journeywoman actress Kathleen Wilhoite, who played Patty Spence in "Cop Rock", among many other credits, as crazy psychic Zarabeth!).

Now that I think about it, I will grade it as ever-so-slightly above average, simply for its technical strengths...it's very competently made, which can be a pleasant surprise as far as low-budget horror is concerned. Director Kevin S. Tenney would go on to helm the cult-crowd pleaser Night of the Demons just two years later, before being relegated to mostly grade-Z, direct-to-video schlock. I guess that's the double-edged sword of the movie industry; all it takes is one misstep to take you from promising up-and-coming talent, to no-name nobody with the odds stacked entirely against you.

RATING: 5.5/10

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Carrie (1976)

Director: Brian De Palma
Writer(s): Lawrence D. Cohen, based on the novel by Stephen King
Starring: Sissy Spacek, Piper Laurie, Amy Irving, and William Katt

For some reason I've never really been keen on seeing Carrie. Part of it no doubt has to do with the fact that I have a problem with most films that have been relegated to the status of “classic”, because I find most of them undeserving of the title; it's like they are passed down from generation-to-generation, much like a family heirloom, with no one daring to question their appeal, or to critique them with an open mind. In my mind, for a film to truly be a classic, it must stand up to the times; such a film must age with grace, and stay relevant decades after its release.

I finally caved in, though, because I was going through a Brian De Palma phase, and what examination of the director would be complete without including Carrie? It's arguably the film that put him on the map, at least for good, and is an adaptation of a Stephen King novel that even the legendary author himself approves of (to put this comment in perspective, and to buck popular opinion, he has been a vocal opponent The Shining ever since it was released); to ignore this would be to ignore perhaps the biggest reason for his success.

Sure enough, I am baffled as to the following that it still has today. It's a good film, don't get me wrong, but it's too patchy and uneven to be considered a great one; the first feeling that I had after the viewing was over was just how pointless the entire thing felt. It's basically a high school melodrama for three-quarters of its length, with batshit religious saga filling up most of the rest; then, there's the ending. The ending that gets all of the attention, and rightfully so, because it's the only point in the film that anything actually happens. The rest just feels like a big lead-up to that climactic scene, chugging along at just the right pace to keep you from falling asleep, just so it can finally unleash Carrie's unbridled fury.

Carrie White is played by Sissy Spacek, in the role that helped to launch her career; just that she manages to keep a straight-face in scenes involving her mother should have been enough to earn an Academy Award nomination. She would be your typical high school teenager were it not for her religiously-obsessed mother, who refuses to at least warn her of things that pubescent girls go through...like getting their periods, for example. Imagine the terror Carrie faces when, in the shower after gym class, she starts bleeding from her crotch. And then just imagine the bemusement the other girls in the class must feel, when she emerges from the shower, in a fit of hysteria, believing that something is wrong with her and that she is dying. Already the awkward, bullied social outcast, this outburst certainly doesn't help matters any, and she finds herself to be the butt of jokes even more frequently.

She does have some allies, most notably in gym teacher Miss Collins (Betty Buckley), who feels sorry for her and takes her under her wing. She gives Carrie an entire week off from gym, and spends that time punishing the girls of the class with strenuous exercises. Most of the class slowly starts to understand the error of their ways (or at least pretend to, for the sake of getting off easier), but not Chris (Nancy Allen), a cocky little wench who has always hated Carrie for no reasons specified, and vows to make Carrie's life a living hell. As if it isn't already.

Sue (Amy Irving), a popular girl and one of the students in Miss Collin's class, has a change of heart, and decides to have her popular boyfriend Tommy (William Katt) take Carrie to the prom. While this can be seen as a genuine act of kindness—and that is how it's meant—it's also preposterous and, in a way, even kind of evil. So this popular guy is going to take Carrie out for a good time, be nice to her, shower her with attention, after which she'll inevitably have feelings for him since she's so sheltered and has no other male contacts, and then he'll just dump her and go back to Sue like nothing happened?  Sounds like just the thing she needs.

Carrie reluctantly accepts Tommy's invitation—she's been bullied long enough to know that it's probably just a setup to a cruel joke, but her mother's coming toward the door, and Carrie doesn't want her mother to even see a boy anywhere near the house. You see, her mother, known as Margaret, has some pretty extreme religious leanings and tends to treat her only daughter as a prisoner, moreso than a daughter.  She also believes any form of sex is a sin, even during marriage...we're talking a class-A nutcase right here.

At first, her mother refuses to let her go to the prom. Carrie expected this, and cements her opinion by using her telekinetic powers to slam all of the windows in the house shut. This mainly just convinces her mother that she's a witch, but also gets her to back off enough to let her go, finally realizing that her influence can only go so far. Before we know it, it's the night of the prom...

Margaret's religious ramblings do tend to border on the comical, so much so that even the actress that portrayed her, Piper Laurie, thought that she was too over-the-top fanatical to be taken seriously. These scenes, while not laugh-out-loud funny, sometimes succeed in diluting the mother-daughter relationship: we are supposed to feel pity for the way Carrie is constantly bullied, but hearing Margaret regale Carrie with the story of the night of her conception is more awkward than anything else, and kind of helps to undermine some of the terror we are supposed to feel from her.

As I alluded to earlier, the pacing is somewhat an issue, with large fragments of the movie focusing on people other than Carrie, to the point that I would sometimes forget that she was even the focal point. I did appreciate that her telepathic powers are kept to a bare minimum, as we only get a few glimpses of them leading up to the finale. Most of them used in just an innocuous kind of way (flipping over an ashtray, or breaking a mirror, for examples), so we really don't understand the true extent that she is capable of until she can no longer hold it in, which is a nice little touch.

But take out the telekinesis angle and you're left with a relatively uneventful, slow-moving coming-of-age tale, though one that's thankfully helped along by great performances and earnest direction by De Palma. The strength of its reputation no doubt hinges on that final sequence, and as brilliantly-executed as it is, it just isn't quite enough to absolve the remainder of the film completely of its sins.

RATING: 6.5/10

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The Dead Next Door (1989)

Director: J.R. Bookwalter
Writer: Bookwalter
Starring: Pete Ferry, Bogdan Pecic, Michael Grossi, and Jolie Jackunas

For whatever reason, J.R. Bookwalter's The Dead Next Door was a mild obsession for me when I was still in high school, and that was before I'd ever even seen it. All I remember was that I was going through a zombie-movie phase (this was back in the late 90s or early 2000s, a few years before Hollywood got hold of the undead and ruined them forever), and would constantly visit the official website in my ninth grade keyboarding class. I honestly don't even remember how I initially heard about it, but I was a wannabe amateur filmmaker at the time, and so it wouldn't surprise me if I took to it because of its humble origins, as well as its ties to my home state.

The Dead Next Door was produced over the span of four years (also the timeframe it took for Peter Jackson to make Bad Taste) in Akron, OH, which is about two hours northeast of Columbus, the state capital and also the city in which I was born. It is known as one of the most expensive home movies ever made, a title it received because it was shot on Super 8 cameras, which were strictly consumer-grade, with director Bookwalter estimating that the total budget was a whopping $125,000 (a high figure, no doubt, but also kind of misleading, as it was raised in small increments over that entire span, so he never had more than a few thousand to work with at any given time). But what it lacked in financial resources, it made up for in sheer ambition: the film features an incredible 1,500 Ohio residents playing the part of zombies. That's pretty epic for what amounts to little more than an amateur film.

It also has some pretty great special effects, but the two footnotes to this claim are: 1.) it also features some terrible special effects, and 2.) a majority of the better ones are used up within the first thirty minutes, meaning there's a dwindling amount of reasons to keep watching as the minute count goes up. However, it's still amazing to see what Bookwalter was able to do with such a subpar video format, as well as very limited resources—some of the effects, especially the neck bites, still look impressive even today, and were pulled off by a special effects team with no notable names (at least none that I recognize).

Well when you're working with a shortage of resources, there has to be a trade-off somewhere; in other words, for every area that excels, chances are there will be more that suffer. In the case of The Dead Next Door, it's everything else. I had always had fond memories of this movie (which I bought on VHS when it was released) thanks to the copious amounts of bloodshed, and vaguely remembered the acting was bad, but I didn't remember just how shoddy all the other areas are: the story is rambling and pointless, biting off more than it can chew; “bad” doesn't even begin to describe the performances, which were worse than I remember, and range from terrible to positively atrocious; and no time or effort went into developing any of the film's many characters—even most of their names are simply plucked from the last names of popular horror film directors (Raimi, Commander Carpenter...you get the point).

I do feel kinda crass rating this on the same level as a polished feature; it's like trying an immature 12-year-old as an adult for a crime that he didn't even commit. But a bad movie is a bad movie no matter how it looks, or how epic the production might have been, or how ambitious the original idea was; and let's be honest here, The Dead Next Door is a godawful film. When blood isn't spurting, when the movie actually starts to believe that the story it's presenting us is one that's actually worth presenting, it's almost terminally-boring. Seen through these eyes—that even if the budget was tripled, or quadrupled, it still more than likely would have sucked—certainly makes me feel like less of an ass.

If this were a straightforward zombie film, where most of the budget was spent on the blood and gore effects (all of the “actors” worked for a deferred salary) we might have been on to something; for the first thirty-or-so minutes, that's essentially what we get, as members of the local “Zombie Squad” drive around, and attempt to thwart zombie attacks on the living. The leader of the gang is Raimi (Sam, the real-life namesake and director of the Evil Dead trilogy, was also the film's main financier, using his compensation for Evil Dead 2 to fund this one), who is supposed to be a no-nonsense tough guy, though his acting makes it hard to tell for sure. The other “ground members” are Mercer, Kuller, and Richards—during a routine call, Richards ends up getting bit, and so the crew is suddenly down to three.

There are other members of the squad: the scientists that are hard at work trying to figure out a way to kill the zombies. See, the undead here are rather unique in that: a.) they can run, and b.) they are impossible to kill. Now, “unique” here is used as a synonym for “uncommon”, because, like many facets of the film, it's an idea lifted directly out of another zombie feature: in this case, Return of the Living Dead. Still, it's a fascinating decision that gives Bookwalter and Co. the opportunity to try some pretty advanced effects; as I alluded to earlier, they don't always look convincing, but got to give them some points for trying. So the scientists, lead by Dr. Moulson, finally create a serum that speeds up the zombies' decomposition process, thus effectively killing them within a couple of hours.

Now here's where things really start to go a little overboard: Mercer is bitten and is used as a test subject for the new serum by Moulson. The problem is, Mercer isn't quite dead yet, so instead of decomposing him, it turns him into some sort of vengeance-seeking super-zombie; he can't run like the rest, but he can speak. This is a decision that once again bears problems for the production, because his voice is so low that it's often impossible to decipher his words, at least without cranking up the volume, which we never bothered to do. On top of this, there is a cult, lead by a Reverend Jones, who believes that the zombie invasion is God's will, and they will stop at nothing to put a stop to those, like the Zombie Squad, who are attempting to get rid of them. Even within this convoluted framework (another thing to keep in mind: all of this has to play out within a scant 78-minute duration), there are other subplots, like the paternity of one of the cultists, and frequent mention of a Dr. Bo, who created the zombie virus for reasons unknown, before being killed by his very creations.

It's all a hodge-podge of half-baked ideas, which is really what does the film in: not enough time is spent focusing on any of the major plot points, meaning the story just feels like an improvised, careless mess. Add this into the myriad of other problems that I have mentioned, and that means large portions of The Dead Next Door are dull. If it would have had the presence of mind to at least lessen its grand visions in one category, it would have been, at the very least, a serviceable film. Unfortunately, sometimes less really is more, and in the case of The Dead Next Door, more is unequivocally infinitesimal.

RATING: 3/10

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