Tag Archives: horror

Doom 3

So, after that long Half-Life detour, I finally did get around to playing Doom 3. And then came a very frustrating interlude this morning when, less than 10 seconds from victory, my wireless/optical mouse crapped out and I had to start all over. (Well, okay, just the last battle all over. Still, though. It was stressful.) In any case, after a 20 minute struggle to fix the mouse and a 2 minute struggle to replay that end bit, I have now finished.

Was it exactly the same as Doom and Doom 2 and Quake and etc.? Well. It still didn’t have a story the way Half-Life does. I mean, it has a story, and a pretty good one. But it’s basically the story of everything that led up to the endoomening. Space marine wandering around the planet Mars shooting demons, that part is identical, but now it has prettier graphics and a backstory. Which is to say, the fun in the game is seeing the graphics, but not in seeing how it turns out. Still, the backstory part is an improvement over the original Doom. I’d compare it to Doom 2 as well, but that would require me to remember anything, anything at all about that game that would distinguish it from the original. As for the Quake comparison, well, Quake sucks as a single player game, so this is much better than that. So, to answer the actual question: it’s different, but only cosmetically.

That’s okay, though. Going into Hell with guns blazing to save humanity is its own reward. On top of that, the graphical and auditory enhancements have made it pretty spooky. Okay, there’s no good reason in-game why you can’t have the flashlight and a weapon out at the same time. But it would ratchet the tension way down, and the whole point of the Doom franchise is to be twitching around at every noise afraid of being blasted into a lava pit by a giant beholder (which we call a cacodaemon, because this isn’t Dungeons and Dragons, but I think I know a beholder when I see one, thanks). It succeeds masterfully at this aspect, and the backstory-gathering is all gravy on top of that.

I hope they wait for Doom 4 until we’re at another full leap forward technologically, because otherwise they’re really going to have to write an engrossing plotline after all, and id’s only real innovative strength (at least, that others don’t do as well at or better) is the iconic shock image, eg Doom’s missile-launching minotaur or Wolfenstein’s power-armored Hitler. Good Stuff, yeah, but only so good when games that are chock full of plot are in the same place on the store’s shelf, for the same price.

Constantine

When I first saw the preview for Constantine, with the hot Mummy chick getting pulled through a building and Keanu chasing after her, I really thought they were making another Matrix movie for some reason. This guess is not as far off the mark as you might think. It made about as much sense as Matrix Revolutions, but I feel better about it because of differing expectations.

Keanu’s acting worked pretty well for me in the John Constantine character, bearing in mind that I come to the movie untainted by the comic. Basically, his acting in any role (leaving aside the Theodore Logan aberration) works well, as long as the character is a cipher who never gets angry. He can emote detachment quite well, but detached shouting is oxymoronic. You may claim that ‘detached’ is not an acting skill, but there are a lot of characters in Hollywood with that as the defining characteristic, and actors have been filling those roles for all the years they’ve been written, some of them quite well. See also Charles Bronson.

Except for the part where lots of things were stated but not really backed up (Why is Constantine of so much interest to hell? What’s so special about this particular time that the neutrality thing is being breached?), the story was sufficiently comic-y to make me happy on that count. Also, Keanu has that look. Really tall, really thin, he just looks like a comic character. I’m sure a big part of that was the cinematography and wardrobe choices, but it was well-done enough that I want to emphasize it. For your comic movie to work, at least someone should look like a comic character.

Anyway: story, schmory. It had a good look, the Hell sets were really cool, and lots of demon-fighting. This is plenty to keep me happy with a February movie. Also, in a bow to gratuity, hot Mummy chick stayed soaked for the final half of the movie. That’s just good directing.

Bubba Ho-tep

Sure, there are lots of mummy movies. Like the one with Brendan Fraser and the one with Abbott & Costello. And there are lots of JFK movies, like the one with Martin Sheen and the one by Oliver Stone. And there are lots of Elvis movies, like, um… y’know, it’s weird that people don’t make Elvis movies, but I guess there’s still Jailhouse Rock and the one with the clambake.

My point is, this ground is well-trodden. What you don’t see very often is any two of them in the same place. And all three? Unheard of! Except, obviously, not anymore. That’d be pretty weird, if I was just blathering on about things that don’t go together, randomly. But I (unlike previously) digress. The point of all this is that a movie pitting the elderly and retirement-homed King of Rock & Roll and most recently assassinated President (or so they would have us believe, to the point of dying him black to further the cover-up) against a redneck mummy out to steal their souls was made a few years ago, receiving a limited theatrical release and the beginnings of a cult following on DVD.

The story is simple. Simple enough that what I started to write would be a restatement of what I already just said, so I’ll skip that. What makes it good is the mood and the leisurely pacing. It’s easy to get lost in the sad lives of these men, sad because they believe they’re really Elvis and Kennedy, sad because they believe they’re saving their fellow inmates from a soul-sucking mummy, and sadder by far if they really are who they say they are. I’m making it sound depressing, and it is, but it’s also not. It’s hilarious, at times a little scary, and the melancholy mood lends it enough gravitas that it doesn’t turn out to be the cheesy B-movie it so desperately wants you to believe it is. Instead, it’s a story about heroes who still have legitimate heroism left in them fighting against a villain who isn’t just robbing them of their souls, but of what little dignity they have left.

For a movie that is about, well, you know, it has a great deal of heart to it. On top of which, it’s very, very funny. I can’t really think of a reason for anyone not to watch it.

Alone in the Dark

The first good thing I can say about Alone in the Dark is that, not ever having played the games it’s rumored to be based on, I can only see the faint outlines of the travesty that has been visited on the series, rather than being forced to embrace it in all its horror.

The next good thing I can say about it is that it doesn’t have a whole lot of needless plot getting in the way of the story. In fact, whenever plot does crop up, it is handled by Exposition Lad, a spirit that roams freely throughout the movie, initially possessing a museum security guard but willing and able to leap into any warm body as needed. This leaves Christian Slater free to brood, Tara Reid free to pout and take off her sweater, and Stephen Dorff free to shoot at things which are, as you might expect, in the dark.

The final good thing I can say about the movie is that it was absolutely snarktastic. Exactly bad enough to make mocking easy for the whole family, while at the same time just engaging enough that it’s more fun to wait for the next snark than turn it off and go on about eating your popcorn in the dark.

Problems: The two lead males did fine, but the rest of the acting was terrible. Terrible. Laylah speculates that Slater only took the role for a free grope at Tara Reid, and… well, it would explain a lot. The directing was also bad. Uwe Boll, who brought you the absolute worst sequence I’ve seen on celluloid in his first video game adaptation, House of the Dead, … I need to pause and paint this picture.

The House of the Dead is the first of a series of arcade and now console games where you have a gun instead of a joystick and shoot at zombies on the screen. You know the type, with the “reload” warning sound and you shoot off the screen to get more of an endless supply of bullets? So, there they are, the characters that haven’t had sex yet, shooting at all the zombies on the cursed island. This Boll guy, he thinks that, maybe in order to emphasize the game roots to his movie, he thinks that a good idea would be to edit in multiple animated screen shots from the game to intersperse with his actors woodenly marching forward and shooting at the camera. Seriously.

So, yeah. Mr. Boll has bettered his skills only by comparison here. The fact that he’s made a trademark out of blaring techno music while characters with guns shoot at hordes of evil things in incomprehensibly edited montages would be really funny, if he wasn’t listed for three more videogame movies over the next two years.

Really, though, without that two minute sequence, the rest of the movie was about as good as any other generic horror, not good enough to convince people to see who wouldn’t have gone anyway, bad enough to be fun without being depressing. My remaining complaint may be a spoiler, but it’s the kind of spoiler that people need to know when making up their minds, so here it is.

At no point in the film (and believe me, I was watching for it) was Christian Slater alone in the dark. It was a middle finger raised to the genre. Like setting Deep Blue Sea in the pool at the YMCA or Halloween in mid-April. Uwe Boll is fired.

P.S. If anyone actually sees it after reading this, a couple of things to watch for: The broken generator scene that was clearly put in as an example to film students of when a sequence serves absolutely no purpose, and the big scary payoff scene where the much-scarier-than-what-we’ve-been-fighting-all-along monster is revealed to be… well, I shouldn’t ruin it completely.

Hide and Seek

The thing is, this was a good movie. Several inevitable games of Hide and Seek, of course, but even those managed (for the most part) to be tense and creepy, rather than like the lame repetitive device they could have been.

Anyway, plot: Robert De Niro’s wife thinks their marriage is irreconcilable, and then suicides herself in the bathtub. Daughter Dakota Fanning (who is a beautiful little girl; just ask anyone in the script) goes a little bit insane. After a poorly defined period of time, De Niro takes his daughter to a gigantic house in upstate New York, so that she’s not surrounded by memories. Instead, she’s surrounded by an empty house, a creepy-looking cave in the woods, and De Niro’s hands off parenting approach, learned, apparently, through years of careful psychologist-being.

Naturally, she has no choice but to invent an imaginary friend. Except, the friend starts creating lots of scary mayhem, leading the audience to wonder: is the little girl doing all the stuff she blames on Charlie? Or is it the creepy neighbor? The meddling real-estate agent? A giant lovable-but-without-social-graces bear who lives in the cave? A hillbilly with only three teeth, who lives in the cave? Whoever it is, good camera work and acceptable child-acting keep the tension and the mysteriousness high, so I’ll say no more lest I give it away. (It’s not the bear, though.)

I think it’s because it worked so well that the flaws grate on me. Elisabeth Shue wanders in and out of the movie as the aunt of young Dakota’s would-be local townie friend, who seems to maybe want to date De Niro. And he seems maybe to want to date her too. It’s played too low key to understand, and it doesn’t help that it feel like his wife has been dead just a handful of months.

The final act drags on for an eternity beyond the (very-well played) climax, removing a lot of the goodwill I had toward the film. And then, even worse, the final two scenes both contained pointless groaners that could easily have been avoided. My recommendation: See it. Good mood piece, decent creep factor and the thing where they make you want to know what’s actually going on. But after the climax (you’ll know it when it happens), move on to something else. Whatever ending you make up in your own mind will be superior.

Ginger Snaps Back

MV5BMTg1NTg3OTI4N15BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwNDAxNDYwNQ@@._V1__SX1859_SY847_It’s a rare movie (or book, for that matter) prequel that can be watched prior to the original story without ruining the narrative flow, or at least spoiling the plot. Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning is such a film, which makes it all the more the pity that it was so superfluous. Purporting to provide the origin tale of the werewolf-y menace that led up to the surprisingly good Ginger Snaps and its sequel, it instead tells the same story from Ginger Snaps all over again, only without the clever puberty metaphor and with a tie-in to the old wendigo legend that, frankly, doesn’t really fit.

Sisters Ginger and Brigitte are back for an old-school battle against the werewolves that are terrorizing a trading company’s fort in 1815 Canada, with a conspicuously missing explanation for how they arrived on the scene or why their dialogue sounds so modern compared with the members of the fort. With the setting and cast list out of the way, the plot follows its predictable (to anyone who has seen the original, and generally speaking, you really should) arc into the final act, which ought to have had real dramatic tension. Unfortunately, as a prequel, the outcome was basically pre-ordained.

This is why I say it would go better as the original film of the trilogy. The only problem being, it’s not nearly as good as Ginger Snaps, and deciding to give that film a miss based on it being the sequel to a fairly iffy movie would be in the same ballpark of unfortunance as skipping multiple seasons of television goodness because you were turned off by Ben Affleck’s film debut.

Piñata: Survival Island

One of the draws of horror movies, I think, is the predictability. You know that when the group of college greeks heads to the mysterious island to have a contest to see who can find the most pairs of underwear that have been scattered about the place while handcuffed to each other in boy-girl pairs, certain things are assured to result.

One: There will be a deranged madman / terrifying alien creature / evil spirit trapped inside a cabin / thousands of years old spacecraft / clay statue.

Two: Someone will find a way to set loose said terror upon the unsuspecting teenage wasteland. Usually in the completely unrealistic expectation that they are actually finding alcohol, drugs, or possibly a place to have pre-marital sex.

Three: The remaining teenagers will be hunted down, often for crimes similar to the ones perpetrated by whoever did the releasing. Except for the hero and/or heroine, who has what it takes to save the day. Well, for themselves.

The point is, you go in with those expectations, and you deserve to have them met. Are Nicky Brendon and Jaime Pressly adding nuance to their tropes by *not* liking each other? Fine, variety is the spice of life. Does the piñata creature have randomly different forms that don’t seem to have any reasoning behind them? As long as he isn’t faster than the teens running away, who cares? Is Ensign Harry Kim going to make an appearance? The more the merrier, I say.

The problem with Piñata: Survival Island is that, after a promising opening act full of marijuana, Playboy Playmates pretending to be actresses, and lengthy exposition about the history of Cinco de Mayo, the film just plain failed to deliver the goods. Sufficiently menacing evil? When his trademark weapon is a shovel, um, no. Believable ending? I quote myself here, while watching: “That is their big plan?” Naked chicks to distract from the lack in other areas? You know how I mentioned Playmates in the cast earlier? Yeah, well, still no. Inexcusable!

So, to anyone who nearly watched it with me last Halloween? You were right, I was wrong. My bad.

Still, it was pretty funny, for a while.

Seed of Chucky

This happens to me all the time. I’ll go to a theater, get in right on time or a smidge early, and the place is empty. Then, before the end of the previews, or even a few minutes into the movie, a handful of other people show up and my dreams of having the place empty are crushed. Who are these people with no interest in previews? And especially, who are these people who don’t mind missing some of the movie? I mean, if it was a kid movie and they’re bringing the five year-old and the infant, okay, no big. It’s hard to run on time under circumstances like that. But for quality slasher horror, I just can’t imagine the excuse. Unless you’re bringing the five year-old and the infant. Obviously, that would be different.

Speaking of confused kids with terrible parents, I got out to see Seed of Chucky tonight. Which is nice, because now there are only four movies I need to see but haven’t yet. Five if you count Alexander, which I of course do not, because nobody who’s seen the preview for that could possibly believe it will be any good. Stupid Oliver Stone. Ahem. Back on track, then.

So, Seed of Chucky is the story of Glenn, voiced by Billy Boyd, as he and his family (composed of a pair of serial killers who died and later demonically possessed a pair of Cabbage Patch looking toy dolls) try to find their place in the world. They must face down such challenges as finding new bodies to inhabit, cutting back on that nasty murder addiction, and artificially inseminating Jennifer Tilly. I think we’ve all been there. Haven’t we, Gina Gershon?

And, in the case of Billy Boyd, the challenge of finding a new agent. Don’t get me wrong, I loved this movie. It had multiple beheadings, spurting arteries, boobies (both real and plastic, and not in the way you think I mean), lots of good pop-culture jokes, and a brilliant casting couch line, “What do I have to do to get you to see me as a virgin?” So, what has Billy to complain about? Quite simply, that while his summer job was voicework for a sexually confused and genetically psychotic (if very Burtonesque) doll, fellow hobbit Dominic Monaghan has landed a plum role as Driveshaft’s bass guitarist on ABC’s brilliant Lost. What’s a Scotsman to do?

Well, setting a personal assistant on fire isn’t a bad start.

I Am Legend

Several weeks ago, a friend of mine recommended a horror author I’d managed to never hear of, Richard Matheson. I found a copy of A Stir of Echoes in my local Half Price Books, and I later read it all in one afternoon, while I was stuck at home watching the floor guy take up all of my downstairs linoleum. I’d seen the movie, and the book was largely the same, but just different enough to keep the mystery in real doubt all the way through. In any case, I enjoyed myself. Part of it was reading a book in one day, something I haven’t done in, well, I sincerely cannot remember how long.

In any case, I finally got to a better stocked HPB and found several more of his books, mostly in Penguin-sized short story collections. The one I’d been looking the most forward too was I Am Legend, the story of the last man alive in a world full of vampires. As it happens, the copy I got is about half that, and about half several more short stories, which I have yet to read.

Good story, though. In addition to Matheson’s drive to find a scientific explanation for every vampire characteristic, he explores themes of isolation in familiar but well-written ways and themes of identity in ways that I hadn’t considered before. What makes a man good? What makes a vampire bad? Is it possible to cross those lines? Is it desirable to?

I know that I just said it was cool to read a book in a day (and I could have done with this one, although I did not), but the one weakness I found was that I was never able to get all the way into the head of the main character. The whole story was from his point of view, and I didn’t really feel like I knew him any better by the end than I did in the first ten pages. He was an excellent means to Matheson’s multiple ends, but I’m not convinced he was more than that. I actually felt more for the three main ancillary characters than I did for Robert Neville or his (expired, at the opening of the story) family.

For now, though, I have all those short stories left to read.