Horror Month: The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982)

                  This movie is creepy, man. I don't consider myself very well versed in classic horror movies so I figured that I had better add the original version of The Thing to my list of films to watch this month. I didn't think it would be really scary due to its age and the fact that most of its scares rely on special effects, but I was pretty wrong. The special effects are realistic enough to still be scary thirty years later and it turns out there are aspects of this film that are far more horrifying than the monster itself.

                  John Carpenter's The Thing is about an alien spaceship that lands in Antarctica. It and its contents freeze solid for an unknown amount of time until it is uncovered by a Norwegian science team. The thing that is The Thing is brought to their laboratory and thawed out. And that's where the figurative excrement collides with the oscillating cooling device. The Thing kills everyone there except for two survivors, takes the form of a dog, and flees to a nearby American science base. None of this is really shown onscreen except the dog running from the two survivors who are trying to kill it in a helicopter at the beginning of the movie. Long story short, The Thing eventually reveals itself, possessing/imitating the men at the American base one by one and forcing them to kill each other. 

                   I like the mystery revolving around The Thing itself. All we really know at first is that it's from space and that it can perfectly imitate any living organism. Once it is imitating someone it's very difficult to tell which people are being possessed, which adds a whole new dimension to the horror. Most of the people in the film are opposed to indiscriminate killing, so they must be absolutely sure one of their comrades is being imitated before killing them. And if they're wrong and kill someone who is actually himself, they just killed a friend and potential ally (or enemy). At first our victims have no clue how to tell if someone is possessed, but eventually develop a test to figure it out. The Thing appears to react very negatively to fire, therefore igniting a sample of each person's blood in turn will reveal which people are not themselves. The whole mystery of who is The Thing and who isn't is one of the most intriguing aspects of the movie, and I found it fairly difficult to guess which characters were infected. And the whole concept of human imitation is really scary as well. The Thing is so naturally good at what it does that for all I know my whole family could be terrifying aliens that want to kill me. Better torch them all, just to be sure. In addition to this, the desolate setting of the movie also adds to the terror. There's pretty much no one in Antarctica, and close to the beginning of the movie our protagonists lose their radio communications. So they're basically thousands of miles from civilization with no way to call for aid. There's no possible way they're going to escape, so their only option is to fight. And as far as the action sequences go, they're very good. The special effects really are remarkable in The Thing. Everything looks incredibly real, the creatures are meticulously constructed and look quite lifelike. Even thirty years later, when computers can create monsters that look almost entirely real, the creatures in The Thing still look awesome. 

                No nightmares were had from this one, but from now on I'll be more cautious of people because of that insanely ambiguous ending. The Thing is probably still out there.

   

Horror Month: Dawn of the Dead (Zack Snyder, 2004)

                   What would Horror Month be without a zombie movie or two? Well yeah, I guess it would still be Horror Month, but there are so many zombie films out there I had to put one or two on the list. Overpopulated as this subgenre of horror is, Zack Snyder's remake of George A. Romero's is a standout zombie movie and one of the best ones to come out in the last decade. It's not overly complex or anything, but it is what it is. And what it is is a mindless but extremely entertaining popcorn film.

                  Meh, Zack Snyder. I can take him or leave him really. His adaptation of 300 was visually gorgeous but kinda dumb, Sucker Punch was visually gorgeous but REALLY dumb and his take of Superman was decent but not really remarkable in any way. As far as the extremely divisive Watchmen goes, I actually enjoyed the movie. I hadn't read the book at the time, and even after reading it twice and watching Snyder's imagining a few more times I still like the movie a lot. It seems to me that Snyder has a fair amount of technical ability, but as a screenwriter he has a long way to go. Still, his movies are entertaining and have been pretty successful financially, and I'd say Dawn of the Dead is one of his best. The opening credits of this movie are really great, one of the highlights of the whole thing. They show red letters evaporating into blood, interspersed with news footage of the zombie outbreak while Johnny Cash's song "When the Man Comes Around" plays. The song is about the end of the world (more specifically the rapture), and fits well with the theme of the movie. It's a really good way to start off a plot that is pretty basic of the genre: zombie plague erupts unexpectedly and a group of people need to survive. Common plot devices are also used, someone in the group gets bitten as always and there's that argument about whether they should just shoot them or wait and let them turn or hope there's a cure. Although this is a remake it really doesn't have that much in common with the original. The only thing that's very similar is that they both take place in a shopping mall. Other than that, it's almost completely different. 

                   Another interesting difference between this and  the original Dawn of the Dead is the zombies. In the original the mall was full of them, but they were very slow and could only shuffle around. In the remake the zombies sprint at any living person they see right away, and the main goal of the characters is to keep them out of the mall altogether. This fits the tone of the films as well, the original is fairly slow paced like its zombies, while Snyder's remake is more action-packed, fast paced and explosive. There's certainly a lot more violence, which is fine because the blood and makeup effects look really good. There's a ton of blood, but it's not excessive enough that it looks campy or unrealistic. There's enough gore to make this not a film for the squeamish. It's quite graphic, which is the way movies like this should be. As far as acting goes, Dawn of the Dead is average. Ving Rhames is really good as Marsellus Wallace a cop who is by far the toughest and coolest guy in the group. And in this viewing I noticed for the first time that there are cameos by a few of the actors that were in the original. Pretty cool.

               I had fun watching Dawn of the Dead again. It's a satisfying film that is exactly what you expect it to be: violent, intense, and exhilarating.

Horror Month: Rosemary's Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968)

                   I was not prepared for this movie. Rosemary's Baby is the first movie that I've watched for Horror Month that actually gave me nightmares, which is something it should be applauded for I suppose. It's atmospheric, creepy, semi-realistic, and extremely suspenseful. I really liked it. Rosemary's Baby is about a couple who move into a new apartment, next to an older couple. From the start of the movie the neighbors appear to be slightly "off" and take a somewhat intrusive interest into their lives. Rosemary and her husband Guy are planning to have a child, and when she finally gets pregnant things take a turn for the demonic. The night her baby is conceived, Rosemary has a very vivid dream where she is surrounded by chanting people while a monster (later revealed to be Satan himself) rapes her. Everyone around her tells her that this vision wasn't real, so she puts it out of her mind. Later on, she is assailed by unending pain for months. Her doctor, who the old couple next door insisted she see, tells her that it's normal, and to keep taking the strange medicine the woman next door is making for her. Rosemary eventually figures out that something is wrong and she tries to escape and consult a different doctor, but she is only kidnapped by her husband, the crazy old couple and her doctor, and confined in her apartment until she gives birth. After waking up, she is told that the child died after being born, but she hears the sound of a baby crying through the wall. Rosemary finds a secret passage to the next apartment hidden in a closet, and then confronts a large group of people including the old people next door and her own husband. It is revealed that they are a satanic witch coven and they used her to birth a spawn of Satan, a child that will wreak havoc on the Earth.

                  Rosemary's Baby isn't a very conventional horror film. It is very slow and deliberately paced, but masterful in its execution and exposition of the plot. I found it to be riveting because for the majority of the movie, you are kept in the dark and constantly trying to figure out what's happening. It's not until the very end that you really find out who these old people truly are, and for much of the movie it is a definite possibility that Rosemary is quite simply insane. I found Rosemary to be very believable and easy to like as well, Mia Farrow's performance is remarkable and consistent. The hallucinatory sequence where Rosemary is raped by Satan is very well shot and quite disturbing, even if at first you don't believe that it's really happening. Another thing I really liked about this movie is how little gore it had. Watching a movie like this, you kind of expect to see a lot of blood and guts, and Rosemary's Baby has very little of that. It's horrifying in concept, and doesn't need to be explicit to get its scares across. It's scary because the fact of the matter is, people have been practicing witchcraft for centuries and some still do to this day. You know this in the back of your mind when watching the film, and although summoning Satan to spawn a child in a woman may be unrealistic, it's still scary and believable because it's the type of thing that witches might do if they could. The ending is scary in itself because at the end of the film, Rosemary and Satan's child is still alive. The bad guys win in this movie, and that demonic baby is allowed to live. It's even scarier 40 years later because that baby would be grown up by now, and who knows where he is or what he's capable of.  It's this kind of lingering thought that makes Rosemary's Baby a successful horror film, and one I definitely plan to watch again.

Horror Month: Videodrome (David Cronenberg, 1983)

                I love Videodrome. It's one of those movies that I can watch again and again, and never get bored of. It's one of my favourite horror movies, and one of the best films by David Cronenberg, who is a personal idol of mine. Videodrome follows the story of Max Renn, a TV producer for a sleazy channel in Toronto that mostly airs porn and violent shows. His search for provocative new material leads him to a mysterious show of unknown origin called Videodrome, which contains realistic torture and murder. His investigation into the origin of this program leads him on a hallucinatory journey through a world of deceit and violence.

               One of the coolest things about Videodrome is its special effects. This film looks so amazingly real. Even though it's over thirty years old the special effects look realistic and appealing to this day. This is one of Cronenberg's "body horror" movies, which means it is a film that deals with the augmentation and deformation of the human body. Everything looks absolutely stunning (especially if you own the Criterion Blu-ray release like I do) and fits perfectly into the web of suspense that Cronenberg weaves. Videodrome is pretty insane as well, the last half of the movie is like a bad acid trip. Max Renn descends into madness over the course of the movie, and we see every frightening hallucination. It's very visceral, and compelling to witness. 

               DEATH TO VIDEODROME. LONG LIVE THE NEW FLESH.

              Watch this movie.

Review: Gravity (Alfonso Cuaron, 2013)

                  Ever since I was a little kid, I've always been fascinated by space. That infinite void we're floating around in that's all around us, yet so mysterious. For the longest time I wanted to be an astronaut. It was a dream of mine, until I looked into all the education and insanely high test scores you need to even begin towards this unique career and realized that it probably wasn't feasible. Even today I still have a desire to go to space, and see what our planet really looks like from out there. So when I saw the trailers for Gravity, a realistic film about astronauts working on a space station, I was naturally excited. When I saw that it was directed by Alfonso Cuaron, the man who brought us the excellent 2006 sci-fi picture Children of Men, I was even more intrigued. The hype for this movie was pretty huge, and now that I have seen it I can safely and confidently say that Gravity delivers and makes good on all of its promises. It's not only a visual and technical masterpiece, but a well written, emotional story with intriguing characters and almost too much suspense to handle.

                Gravity almost exclusively takes place in space, as expected. It is the story of astronauts Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) and Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) and their experience when their mission goes awry. Stone and Kowalski are working on the Hubble telescope, when ground control informs them that the Russians have performed an anti-satellite strike test that has inadvertently caused a chain reaction that may send debris their way. This "may" quickly turns into a "does" and our two protagonists are pummeled by satellite parts, sending Stone spinning off into space. Kowalski rescues her and tethers her to himself, as he is wearing a thruster pack that allows him to move freely. They return to their ship to find it almost completely obliterated by the debris, the rest of the crew dead or missing. Running low on fuel and air, Kowalski and Stone begin a tense journey to the International Space Station to retrieve an escape module and land on Earth. At this point it is revealed that Stone had previously had a daughter, who had died from a head injury. As they are approaching they realize that the one remaining pod's parachute has been accidentally deployed, making it useless for reaching Earth. However, Kowalski insists that it can still be used to reach a nearby Chinese station and acquire one of their escape modules. Landing on the ISS proves difficult, and ends in a heart-wrenching scene where Kowalski cuts himself loose and drifts into space to his death so that Stone can survive. After this Stone makes it into the ISS, detaches the pod by walking out into space to free its tangled cables, and points herself towards the Chinese station.....only to realize she's out of fuel. Here comes one of the most emotionally powerful scenes of the film. Just as Stone resigns herself to death, she hallucinates that Kowalski enters the pod. He tells her how to get a final boost of speed from the pod, convinces her to go on with her life, and then disappears. This motivates Stone to keep on living, and she eventually makes it to the Chinese ship, and lands one of their escape pods safely on Earth.

                 This is one of the most visually stunning films I have ever seen in a theater. In terms of both spectacle and subject matter, I can only compare it to (what else?) Stanley Kubrick's flawless masterpiece, 2001: A Space Odyssey. I wasn't around to see that one on the big screen, but I imagine it would have felt something like this. Gravity is completely riveting from start to finish. The first shot alone lasts several minutes, and has the camera twisting and turning, ducking under appendages of the space station and rotating to give us a jaw-droppingly beautiful view of both our protagonists and the universe. I despise people that talk during movies, but there were several shots in this film that made me just gape in disbelief and say "wow" out loud. One particularly memorable shot is when Kowalski is pulling Stone to the International Space Station, you see them both head on with Earth in the background, and the sun is rising. It's so gorgeous. Another has the sun setting on one side of the planet, while we can see the Northern Lights forming on a whole other continent. Awe-inspiring. Cuaron uses the camera quite effectively to create or relieve tension, and to accentuate the beautiful view from up there. For a lot of the movie you can see Earth in the background, and this is comforting. The planet looms large for the majority of the story, and it sort of grounds us and keeps us mindful of where the action is taking place. The real terrifying scenes are the ones in space where you can't see Earth, and the universe is just a massive, endless expanse of stars. There are also several POV shots of Stone, which really emphasize her panic and how scary everything truly is for her.

                  But while this film is visually astounding, that's not all it is. Gravity has a very emotional and tense story which isn't entirely predictable, but packs a few surprises. The scenes where Stone is suffering, or trying desperately to reach anyone and communicate her situation, are totally heartbreaking. She's all alone up there, and the nearest people are six hundred kilometers below her. She's a very sympathetic character. It was also saddening to watch Kowalski die. He was a very likable character, and had he survived he would have been able to guide Stone to safety easily with his experience and expertise. Something I also noticed about Gravity was its symbols of infancy and rebirth. While working in space, the astronauts are always connected to the space station with cables that look very much like umbilical cords. There's one scene where Stone finally makes it onto the ISS and curls up into a fetal position in the tiny airlock, like a fetus in a womb. A Buddha statue is show on the Chinese station, which could be taken as a symbol of rebirth. When Stone lands on Earth she falls into a lake, and since she is unaccustomed to Earth's gravity she has to claw her way out of the water like some primordial being taking its first steps onto land. Gravity isn't a particularly thematically or philosophically complex film, but these motifs are interesting and definitely add to the experience.

                I loved Gravity. It gave me everything I wanted and more. It's an emotional, gorgeously shot, well scripted and acted film, and it deserves to be seen by everyone. It's best viewed in IMAX 3D, this format makes the massive depth of field in space seem even bigger. This is one of the very best films of the year.

Horror Month: Vampyr (1932)

                  This was a new one for me. I really don't watch enough old films like this. Vampyr is really, really good. It's a very well shot film with a tense, unnerving atmosphere and sublime use of shadows. I found the story as well as the visuals to be very engaging, the protagonist is a student of the supernatural named Allan Gray who travels to a small French village to study and is almost immediately assailed by all kinds of evil spirits and hallucinations. Death imagery runs rampant in the film, one of the very first shots is the picture above, an old man with a scythe. At one point Allan is led to a castle by disembodied shadows that appear to have no human origin, and upon entering he finds a doctor's office full of skulls and skeletons. The entire film has an eerie, almost dreamlike tone, and although this is a sound film there is very little talking. Much of the backstory is developed by Allan or another character reading a mysterious book that is left to Allan about demonic creatures called Vampyrs who feed on human blood and essentially serve Satan. It's quite a bit more dark than most vampire films, vampires are often referred to as demons but this movie deliberately portrays them as servants of the devil. The role of the vampyr in this particular story is to enslave the souls of the living, drain their life force and eventually compel them to commit suicide, delivering their souls to Satan. It's pretty heavy stuff, and the visual aspect of Vampyr reflects this as well. The whole movie just feels like one long nightmare. The tone is dark and intense right from the start, and it never lets up on the suspense until the very end. Many may not appreciate the technical elements that serve Vampyr so well as a horror film, but I would say that this is one of the best and most entertaining vampire movies ever made and anyone who is a fan of these mythical, horrifically evil creatures owes it to themselves to watch it. 

Horror Month: Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979)

            Note: For this post I watched the 2003 Director's Cut of the film. I have found that some of Ridley Scott's films in the past have been much improved by his creating his own version later on. Kingdom of Heaven's extended Director's Cut is a great example of  this, and is exponentially better than the theatrical version. 

             Alien is a fantastic horror film, and one that I've come to appreciate more and more with repeated viewings over the years. It offers a perfect mixture of science fiction and horror, with enough of each to more than satisfy fans of each genre. It truly is a classic of both science fiction and horror, and has been hugely influential in films of both genres in the past 30 years. 

            I watched Alien today for the first time in ages, and was instantly struck by the meticulous detail and eerie yet beautiful aestheticism of the sets. The vast majority of the film takes place on a spaceship, and the environments are futuristic looking yet practical and believable. Some of the hallways and rooms reminded me of Andrei Tarkovsky's 1972 masterpiece Solyaris and there were a few space shots of the ship that I found evocative of Kubrick's 2001. Everything is constructed in striking detail, and the special effects work well with the sets to create an unsettling environment. Strobe lights flash, steam rushes from burst pipes, and the whole ship seems to be a mess of machinery, a labyrinth of human ingenuity. I especially liked the special effects in regards to Ash, the android played by Ian Holm (who will always be Bilbo from the Lord of the Rings film trilogy in my eyes). It is very well hidden that he is not human, right up to the point where his true motives are revealed and he attacks Ripley. When he is killed we see white synthetic blood spray everywhere, and robotic veins and wires all over the place. It looks very real, and was likely horrifying in its time. I really like that this movie was made before CGI was really a thing, and to make something look realistic and believable the special effects team had to work very hard. And in Alien,everything looks spectacular, other than a few artificial-looking explosions. The blood and gore looks very real, and most importantly of all the alien looks very lifelike and menacing. The atmosphere is tense and suspenseful as well. This is another film that understands that the less you show of your monster the scarier it is. We do see the alien onscreen several times, but mostly it is hidden, and even though we can't see it, the audience and the characters know that it is out there just waiting for them to fall into its trap. Interestingly enough, we don't actually see the alien kill any of the crew members onscreen until closer to the end of the film. Until then, the death scenes consist of a character investigating a noise or roaming the ship, when they encounter the alien and the shot cuts away. This leaves the grisly details to our imagination for the most part, which is a smart directing choice by Scott. I also found it interesting that out of all the weapons they could have used, the crew members chose a flamethrower. Fire is one of mankind's oldest inventions, and they were using it to fight a monster that Ash claims is the absolute pinnacle of evolution. 

              I really like Alien. It's a visually appealing, entertaining film with excellent pacing and atmosphere. I could write a lot more about it, and the (mostly sexual) subtexts it presents, but it's three in the morning and I'm falling asleep as I write this.