The Creeps. I Has Them.

You know, I saw "From the Producer of Paranormal Activity and Insidious" on the poster for Sinister and I was ready to write it off.

DO NOT WRITE THIS MOVIE OFF!

I do not get creeped out often and this one was literally a white knuckler.  I have a crease on my ass from the edge of my seat.  I could not take my eyes off of the screen and I'm not sure I blinked for a while. 

It's good enough for me to use awful clichés.  Does this tell you anything?

This is not to say that it doesn't have problems.  I mean, it does follow a pretty traditional haunting/search for lasting fame/author searching for the book of a lifetime places himself and his family in danger plot so it's almost predictable.  The twists, though...  Oh, boy, the twists.

Chubby Checker, you asshole.

I'm gonna try not to spoil anything here, but basically, the story goes like this.

Author dude Ellison Oswalt (Ethan Hawke, looking suspiciously like one of the Dillon brothers) moves his family into murder house unbeknownst to his family (until later in the movie which causes issues) because he wants to write the bestest true crime novel EVER.  Ellison finds a stack of 8MM snuff films in the attic that show a series of murders going back to 1966.  He enlists the help of the local deputy to help him make the connection.  In the films, though, is a creepy dude who it appears is some kind of pagan child-eater-god named Bagul that uses images as a gateway to his victims and he's placed his family directly in its path..

Keep lookin'.  He's comin' for you next.

Now, I understand that a modern audience may not like or get this movie but fuck them.  This movie has classic horror written all over it.  From the first frames where we watch the death of the family into whose home the author has moved to the utterly inhuman noises coming from the eldest child in the middle of a night terror to everything that happens afterward (although I wish the commercials hadn't given away some of that), this is fresh and, even given it's almost predictability, exciting.

And the lawnmower.  OHGAWDTHELAWNMOWER!!

Seriously, the only question I left this movie with is "Why the hell doesn't this asshole turn on the damn lights when he's investigating strange noises in the house?"

Sorry, but if I hear stupidness in another room, the lights are going ON.

Fuck you pagan child eater god.

 

Infant Immortality Rate Shot To Hell

THIS!  The Sleepover.  Is the most awesomest short film I have ever seen... until tomorrow when my ADHD kicks in and I find a totally NEW most awesomest thing I have ever seen.  But for now, THIS is the most awesomest thing I have ever seen!

SEE IT!


THE SLEEPOVER!!

And Your Little Dog, Too.

In case you haven't guessed, I am what the old queens call "A Friend of Dorothy".  Sadly, the 2010 indie flick YellowBrickRoad makes me want to hunt her down and stab her in the face for being SO FUCKING BORING! 

Seeing as how the movie has absolutely NOTHING to do with The Wizard of Oz and there's no mention of Dorothy in there ANYWHERE, it disturbs me to report that stabbing Dorothy in the face STILL MAKES MORE SENSE THAN THIS MOVIE EVER DID!  Hell, the fact that the title is all one word makes more sense.

I mean, it starts OK, with this legend about the entire population of Friar, New Hampshire leaving everything behind, including pets, guide dogs, food, clothing, etc. to follow a path into the forest for utterly unknown reasons and the government finally disclosing the location of the trail.  YAY!  Now, we have mystery!

ADVENTURE!!  Only not really.

So, yeah.  In true horror movie fashion, an idiot research/film crew decides they want to follow this trail.  Research is fun, right?  RIGHT?

Yeah, that's about where the fun stops in this movie.  The next hour and a half is "psuedo-creepy-but-not-really" local girl-guide, hiking, looking at kinda-sorta-scientific instruments, strange voices in the forest coming from loudspeakers because of who-knows-why and the least exciting slides into madness ever witnessed.

This piggie?  Much crazier than this movie ever gets.

Yeah, there's violence but it's disjointed and pointless and less gruesome than a chicken nugget.  Come to think of it, there's more spice in a chicken nugget.  I actually DID keep watching this one but only to prove to myself that there actually IS something more boring than watching paint dry.  At least the paint gives you interesting patterns occasionally and the fumes can be fun.

Do I really need to tell you to skip it?  This one has no redeeming qualities, whatsoever.  Go watch grass grow.

World War Zzzzzzzz

Before y'all go jumpin' my shit, let me say that I LOVED the book.

World War Z was one of the most innovative pieces of writing I'd ever come across and Max Brooks will forever be enshrined in the horror hall of fame for it but this?

This looks like any other action movie Brad Pitt has ever done with more corpses.

Sorry.  I'm just not sure about this one.

In the meantime, read the book.  Reading is fundamental.  Reading about zombies is just plain awesome.

A Cuddle And A Kick

What do I say about Kill List?  Hmm.

Kill List is another "kind of brilliant" British multi-genre shocker that makes me think.

It makes me think "What the Hell did I just watch?"  It makes me think "What is up with the British obsession with contract killings?"  It makes me think "Can I get away with slapping Guy Ritchie around for introducing the "British mafia" genre to the world even though he has nothing to do with this movie?"

Above all, though, it really does make me think about morality and the choices we make and the extent to which can we be manipulated.

PINNOCCHIO LIED!!  No strings, my ass...

Kill List is one of those movies you have to see to believe and I did like it a lot.  It just takes patience to watch.  Much like A Serbian Film (which I do not recommend after a meal), Kill List takes us through the irredeemable fall of a once-reformed, for lack of a better word, "sinner".  A "sinner" who believes he's doing the right thing by his family when he returns to a life of contract killing.  He's ALMOST right when it turns out that his victims are pedophiles but then things go South.

Hmm.  Hell has penguins.  Who knew?

About the strangest thing I can say about this movie is that it flips through genres like turning the pages of a children's book.  You know how I feel about multi-genre films but Kill List doesn't try to meld them together.  It finishes with one and moves to the next.  Personally, that's the best way to handle these things.  Because then you don't end up with a confusing pile of crap.
 

I can't really tell you more without spoiling it but I CAN say that this movie is kind of an emotional roller coaster.  It is, by turns, stark and funny, calm and cuckoo, as tender as a mother's kiss and as cruel as the desert sun.  It really does bring back the British horror of the late 60s/early 70s but gives it a modern edge.  The cinematography is fully designed to capture the mood and it is keenly felt.  It is gritty and it hurts to watch but in a good way.  

Ultimately, Kill List is this generation's Wicker Man only without that asshole Nick Cage and the dentures he shares with Ellen Burstyn.

I think I need to dig up Witchfinder General, now.  A little Vincent Price never hurt nobody.

Can't Sleep... You Know The Rest.

Did you know that fifteen percent of the world's population suffers from Coulrophobia?

That's right.  About one of seven of us are deathly afraid of clowns.

SWEET MERCIFUL CRAP!  KILL IT WITH FIRE!

There's a number of reasons behind this.  Pediatric research at the University of Sheffield and at California State University, Northridge found that even as kids, we hate clowns.  We hate clowns, we hate clown decor, we hate pasty white faces with permanent grins when we can SEE the actual emotion behind the makeup and we hate seeing a familiar shape with an unfamiliar face. 

A lot of this has to do with what filmmakers and scientists call the Uncanny Valley.  When a human figure looks and acts almost but not quite human, we get repulsed by it.  This is one of the reasons Blade Runner Replicants don't exist, CGI hasn't replaced real actors, and The Polar Express continues to haunt the nightmares of millions of children.  The problem here is that you've got a person who is not only painted in such a manner that their face is not recognizeably human, their body shape, while definitely humanoid has usually been altered by clothing and props to not fit into a general "human" mold and they're behaving in ways that a normal human would not.

Plus, they breed in the sewers.

Given the above, it's really not hard to see why clowns, mimes and ventriloquist dummies are, as TVTropes puts it, the "trifecta of vaude-villainy".  There's just something about someone forcing that unmoving grin at you that's creepy when you know that there's something lurking behind it that isn't quite right.  Intellectually, we know that it's just a dude in face paint.  Emotionally, though, this asshole's got something to hide and I don't like it.

Horror LOVES this trope but it doesn't have a clear origin.  The Man Who Laughs (1928) is probably the first instance approaching it on a film level and the DC Comics villain The Joker was based on Conrad Veidt's performance but the film is actually a romantic melodrama.  No, the trope really took off thanks to serial killer and rapist, John Wayne Gacy.  He was known for performing at children's parties in his persona of Pogo and was referred to by the media as "The Killer Clown".  And I'm sure that much therapy has come from that realization. 

26 bodies in the basement.  Just sayin'.

But here's WHY horror loves this trope.  Not only do you have the "seemingly innocent with something to hide" angle but because you're covering something up anyway, why not make that "something" completely and utterly evil.  As pictured above, Pennywise (from Stephen King's IT and played BEAUTIFULLY by Tim Curry) appears as a clown to children because that is what children's minds want him to be.  In reality (and do NOT bitch about spoilers, here, the book is 25 years old), Pennywise is a Lovecraftian cosmic horror that lives on fear. 

Now, I don't know about YOU but I'm pretty sure that any parent that hires a clown for their child's birthday party is doing one of two things. 

A) They're actively working to ensure years of tears, nightmares and therapy because torturing children is fun and makes them stronger people (or so Grampa says).

or

B) They are fattening children up with cake and ice cream for sacrifice to the great Clown God, Bozothulhu who requires massive amounts of sugar to keep him from destroying the world with madness and balloon animals.  Party games just make them too tired to resist.

It's a close call.  What do YOU think?

PA4. No Words. Wait. I Lied.

I hurt.  Deep within the very core of my being, I hurt.  And it's all Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman's fault.

See, they've decided to extend a movie franchise WAY past its freshness date and we got stuck with the science fair cheese project that was lost behind the purple stuff and the Sunny D.

I wanted to like this one, I really did.  The first in the series was fresh and new and even though it was a found footage film it wasn't utterly painful to watch except for those ten minute stretches of silence but that's OK because they were integral to the plot and built suspense.

Plus, the first one gave you three endings to choose from.  Granted, two of them sucked donkey balls but at least there were options.

If you see this, you're watching the wrong ending.  Run.

By now, we all know the formula.  Weird shit is happening and they caught it all on tape.  In the previous 3 movies it was all about Katie and, to a lesser extent, her sister and her nephew, Hunter.  This time, we've got a totally unrelated family.  Nice family.  Maybe too nice.  Because for some completely unknown reason, they decide to harbor the creepy kid across the street for a few days when his mom "gets sick" even though they have never met this woman and the two young children have never even spoken to one another, let alone had a play-date. 

(Is that what they're calling those these days?  That's what I keep hearing on the television.  I'm not a parent and, frankly, I'm all about casual sex and that's what I call my dalliances so I didn't know if we were jumping on some kind of "let's piss off parents" bandwagon or not.  Meh, I'm sure I'll hear about it sooner or later.)

Although, let's be honest, my play-dates end with cupcakes, too.



So, anyway, the daughter, from whose perspective we're seeing the story unfold, wants the creepy kid to die in a fire, and, really, so do we all.  Because he's creepy.  Approaching "Danny Torrence" creepy and he doesn't even have the decency to talk like a 90 year old emphesemic through his index finger.  Not only that but his creepy is apparently contagious because her little brother starts acting all weird, too.  Of course, that doesn't really start until she finds creepy neighbor kid drawing magic symbols on him with a Crayola marker. 

I KNOW, right?  Don't they make those washable, now?  It shouldn't be a huge deal but girly gets all "Take a bath, young man.  I think your creepy little friend needs to go home. "  Of course, she gets freaked out by what was drawn on him.  A circle within a triangle.  As her psuedo-boyfriend states, "They're SHAPES," but noooo.  She has to go diggin' around the internet.  Any Harry Potter fan would have been able to tell her that he was a straight line away from the Deathly Hallows.

Green magic marker just does NOT capture its majesty.

Did we mention that his "mom" is Katie?  Did we have to?  Did we mention that he is NOT Hunter?  Wait, what?  Creepy kid is NOT Hunter.  Where the hell did Not Hunter come from?  Is she all Samantha Eggar in The Brood, now?  Where the hell did the new crotch-dropping come from?

Xavier Roberts you lyin' sack o'shit...

About the only cool thing about this movie is the effect they get when they film the room with the Kinect in it (fucking product placement) in the dark with the night vision on the camera.  It's almost like Paranormal Activity in the Matrix and it DOES let you "see" some stuff that is almost scary but not really.

See?  What'd I tell ya?

But, getting back to business, this movie was supposed to explain everything.  Well... explain everything more that the third one did and that one was about as clear as coal.  It didn't.  Nothing was answered.  No further information was given.  I was left as lost as I was at the end of PA3 and it seems that this was made just to give people outside of Katie's family the wiggins.  It's really not worth the time and it reinforces my thought that Hollywood really needs to step up to the plate when it comes to originality because eventually people are going to lose faith in the studios if they can't give us actual entertainment for our 9 bucks plus popcorn and a bladder-buster.

It DID explain that I have an unfortunate addiction to sequels, however, and that I should probably seek professional help.  More help than I'm already getting, anyway.

Is there a 30-day chip for that?

More Breaking News: SQUEEE!

John Dies at the End is one of the most awesome-est books ever written and you should all read it right now.  But, in the meantime, HERE'S THE TRAILER FOR THE MOVIE!!

No, wait... HERE it is.

Breaking News! Santa is PISSED!

Yeeessssss, my precious.  Soon we will have the big-budget remake of Frankenhooker and my life will be compleeeete. 

SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT SEQUEL TRAILER!  W00T!

Christmas is coming.  Tell it to clean itself up when it's done.

Vacation Plans, RUINED!

Let's get right to this shall we?

In 'The Bay', Barry Levinson, Director of Wag the Dog and that unsung masterpiece Young Sherlock Holmes (I'm serious.. stop laughing at me...) brings us on a journey.

A journey through sight.  A journey through sound.  A journey to...

Maryland?

OK, so, this one isn't going to be an Oscar™ contender anytime soon.  Particularly not since Cloud Atlas has been released and everybody loves a good allegory for gender transition.

You go, girl.  

I'm starting to get the feeling that Hollywood is churning out found footage flicks to rake in the cash.  No, wait, I lie, I KNOW that Hollywood is churning out found footage flicks to rake in the cash.  Because that's what they do.  OK, well, you got my five bucks, where's my entertainment?

I'll tell you where it is.  It's hiding in a found footage movie that actually has some great practical effects and some fair to middlin' CGI and tells us the story of a town ravaged by a parasitic infestation through its own missteps.  And by "fair to middlin' CGI", I mean CGI that almost blended into the scenery but was still very obviously CGI which was distracting but not to the point of making me want to strangle a coder.  While this is not a great movie by any stretch of the imagination, it's still enjoyable.

But you're not here to hear that. 

No.  Just no.

First off, the voice-over by Kristin Connolly, while somewhat helpful, sounds like someone let a hive of bees loose in my head.  I liked her much better in Cabin in the Woods.  Just FYI?  Droning is not an effective way to pass on information.

Second, this movie is about as clear as mud until it comes to its anvilicious environmental message.  Yes, yes, we know that growth hormones and mass chicken farming is bad but, seriously?  They threw every environmental problem AND the kitchen sink at us.  Hormones, chemicals, desalinization plant, chicken shit, hormones AND a nuclear reactor leak? Step off, hippie!  The choir.  You preach to it. 

The only thing we're missing is kittens.  So, here's some kittens.

I'm not against a horror movie having a socio-political message.  Night of the Living Dead was a subtle jab at 60's Cold War politics and domestic racism.  Dawn of the Dead was a less subtle jab at crass consumerism.  Romero did it RIGHT, though.  The message was there but Romero didn't treat it like a sack of nickles and my psyche didn't leave the film feeling like it had been raped by Al Gore.

Third, and finally, can you PLEASE hire some decent actors?  I realize that you had to cast an entire town but if you're gonna give people lines, please make sure they can say them and make us believe it.  Every single one of these background people went to the William Shatner school of acting.  "I can't.  Find my.  Husband.  Take me to.  The hospital, I'm.  So scared."

Now, I WILL tell you that this movie veers into cryptid territory which is actually creepy and why I didn't completely hate this movie BUT the animal on which the infestation is based is very, very real.  No, I am not shitting you.  They are real.  They are aggressive.  They are pale.  So very pale.

Licky-Boom-Boom-Down.  Oh, wait.  Screw you, Canadian Hip-hop.

Cymothoa exigua, owner of the creepiest Snidely Whiplash mustache in all of the animal kingdom, is a type of oceanic louse that gets into a fish by the gills and then proceeds to remove it's hosts tongue before hunkering down in the new tongue socket so it can enjoy a hearty meal of blood and fish mucus.  Eew.  They CANNOT, in case anyone is wondering, get as big as the movie claims.  There are some isopods, Bathynomus giganteus, that DO get to be a couple of feet long, but they aren't the "tongue-eating" variety.  They're the "dead whale at the bottom of the ocean eating" variety.

Or the wily and elusive "Dorito eating" variety.

I, for one, will never look at those tiny pill-bugs in the garden the same way.

Back to the movie, all-in-all, the PREMISE of this movie is pretty fuckin' rad but the execution was lackluster.  I'd even go so far as to say bland.  I say check it out and make up your own mind but I think it could have been great if someone had spent some time tweaking it instead of being all "MAKE PEOPLE GIVE ME THEIR MONEY" about it.

Edit:  To make this absolutely clear, since I have been informed that people don't know whether or not I like this movie, This movie is OK.  It's not great.  It's not a game changer.  It's an OK way to spend a couple of hours but ultimately, BECAUSE I find it to be all bland-like I can't tell you whether to like it or not.  It's really one of those movies that I'm not sure people will remember but I do encourage you to make that decision yourself.