Sunday, November 15, 2009
Paranormal Activity
Okay, I was wrong.
When The Blair Witch Project came out, the movie was suitably freaky. The "what if" premise was as much a part of the film's terror as the movie itself. Unfortunately, the hype was as artificial as the movie itself: friends of the producers spread rumors on the Internet that The Blair Witch Project was the scariest movie ever. Sound familiar?
So you can understand my skepticism when Paranormal Activity released in a limited number of theaters, practically begging viewers on its web site to ask to see it. The exclusivity was clearly meant to make people only want to see the movie even more. Considering the numerous first-time posters on dozens of horror forums proclaiming it "the scariest movie ever" and…well, I didn't believe them.
I was wrong. Paranormal Activity, about a modern couple trying to survive a demonic haunting, does everything right.
* It takes the documentary medium a step further than Blair Witch, primarily used the style to make the film feel raw. That unfiltered feel is also present in Paranormal Activity, but the film goes beyond that by playing with time stamps. As the time stamp speeds up or slow down, the producers torque the tension.
* Never has a single open bedroom door been so disturbing. It conveys, by being open night after night, a sense of vulnerability, acts as a gateway between worlds, and symbolizes a violation of sanctuary. I couldn't take my eyes off the door the entire movie.
* Silence. Paranormal Activity uses silence to freak out the audience. Our own fears build and build in the vacuum of sound. In fact, the silence was so deafening that the sound from the movies playing next door and the clicking of the film projector proved a distraction. In that regard Paranormal Activity might be even scarier on a small screen.
* Whether it's propping up the false bravado of Micah or the dire predictions of The Psychic, there are no heroes here. And when someone a solution is finally identified as being capable of helping…it is tantalizingly out of reach.
This movie's plot isn't anything new. The same territory has been covered by The Haunting, Poltergeist, and The Exorcist. Paranormal Activity is simply a terrifying ghost story stripped down to its bare bones.
It may not be the scariest movie ever, but it comes damned close.
When The Blair Witch Project came out, the movie was suitably freaky. The "what if" premise was as much a part of the film's terror as the movie itself. Unfortunately, the hype was as artificial as the movie itself: friends of the producers spread rumors on the Internet that The Blair Witch Project was the scariest movie ever. Sound familiar?
So you can understand my skepticism when Paranormal Activity released in a limited number of theaters, practically begging viewers on its web site to ask to see it. The exclusivity was clearly meant to make people only want to see the movie even more. Considering the numerous first-time posters on dozens of horror forums proclaiming it "the scariest movie ever" and…well, I didn't believe them.
I was wrong. Paranormal Activity, about a modern couple trying to survive a demonic haunting, does everything right.
* It takes the documentary medium a step further than Blair Witch, primarily used the style to make the film feel raw. That unfiltered feel is also present in Paranormal Activity, but the film goes beyond that by playing with time stamps. As the time stamp speeds up or slow down, the producers torque the tension.
* Never has a single open bedroom door been so disturbing. It conveys, by being open night after night, a sense of vulnerability, acts as a gateway between worlds, and symbolizes a violation of sanctuary. I couldn't take my eyes off the door the entire movie.
* Silence. Paranormal Activity uses silence to freak out the audience. Our own fears build and build in the vacuum of sound. In fact, the silence was so deafening that the sound from the movies playing next door and the clicking of the film projector proved a distraction. In that regard Paranormal Activity might be even scarier on a small screen.
* Whether it's propping up the false bravado of Micah or the dire predictions of The Psychic, there are no heroes here. And when someone a solution is finally identified as being capable of helping…it is tantalizingly out of reach.
This movie's plot isn't anything new. The same territory has been covered by The Haunting, Poltergeist, and The Exorcist. Paranormal Activity is simply a terrifying ghost story stripped down to its bare bones.
It may not be the scariest movie ever, but it comes damned close.
Labels: Ghost Reviews
Monday, June 15, 2009
The Grudge
I didn't expect much from the Grudge. Whenever a trailer has difficulty in explaining the plot, I lower my expectations. "When someone dies in the grip of a powerful rage, a curse is born" seems a bit awkward. The "grip" of a "powerful" rage? Not a really bad rage? What exactly is a rage's grip anyway?
This challenge, the failure to explain exactly the plot behind the horror, saps the terror from the movie. I should warn readers now that I'm going to make a lot of comparisons to The Ring, a movie that scared the living crap out of me, because the two have a lot of similarities. We are venturing into Spoilerland.
So let's talk about similarities. Although The Grudge is most certainly not a copy of The Ring, there are enough similarities to make comparisons inevitable. Besides the simplistic titles ("The NOUN, a new Japanese horror, coming to a theater near you!"), both films feature crawling girls with long hair covering their faces, a viral curse, and ghosts that defy the traditional boundary of staying in their respective haunted houses. The climax is even similar: both heroines struggle to save the male love interest before he too becomes infected.
The primary difference between the two films is style. Where The Ring creates a set of rules and then systematically breaks them (or, depending on your perspective, doesn't break them at all but stops reminding you about them), The Grudge isn't encumbered by such rules, to its detriment. This makes the movie hard to follow. In addition, the scenes unfold out of order, explaining what happened to each victim and thereby illustrating the original murder, Memento style.
Here's what I was able to piece together from the deleted scenes: Kayako (Takako Fuji) and Takeo (Takashi Matsuyama) Saeki move into a new home with their son, Toshio (Yuya Ozeki) and his pet cat. While attending school, Kayako becomes infatuated with Peter Kirk (Bill Pullman), her professor. When Takeo discovers her many love notes to the professor, he goes on a berserk rage, murdering Kayako, Toshio, and the cat. Then he kills himself.
The curse kicks in pretty quickly after that. Peter discovers something is wrong and visits the house, only to be infected by the curse, which eventually causes him to throw himself off a rooftop.
Three years later, Karen Davis (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and her pretty-boy boyfriend Doug (Jason Behr) move to Japan as part of an exchange program. Karen is a healthcare worker who specializes in taking care of the elderly. A house now inhabited by the Williams family, including Matthew (William Mapother), his wife Jennifer (Clea DuVall), and Matthew's elderly mother Emma (Grace Zabriskie). When the regular healthcare worker doesn't show up for work one day, Karen is called in to pick up the slack. She's got a new assignment that just happens to be in that Saeki house...
The beauty of The Ring was the development of its characters. It established people who, when faced with spreading evil or the death of their family, gladly chose the greater evil. It dove into the complicated relationship between two parents in a modern age who don't know how to be adults, much less parents. And it peeled away at the voyeuristic core in every one of us, who engages in peeping merely by sitting in a movie theater or watching television...and then punished us for it.
The Grudge is not nearly so high-minded. The curse spreads quickly; so quickly, in fact, that I had a vision of the Japanese National Guard being finally called in to stop the madness when two hundred people are found dead at the Sakei house. Ghosts change form, appear on camera, make weird cat noises, show up seemingly at random, and kill some people quickly but take longer to murder others.
I've never been a fan of Gellar, and her performance didn't change my mind. Karen has no spark with Doug on screen, and their relationship is barely fleshed out. Culture shock is briefly explored in Jennifer's struggle with understanding the Japanese world, but not enough to make us really feel her pain. Not even Jennifer's relationship with Matthew has any real depth. And Gellar seems way too old to be a giddy exchange student.
The only characters that are actually fleshed out are the members of the Sakei family. The deleted scenes make it clear that we're not witnessing one traditional American ghost haunting, but a ghost house of sorts, which utilizes all four bodies (yes, even the cat), to kill its victims. And we come to realize that they are all reenacting their deaths over and over, from the croak of Kayako's severed vocal chords to the shriek of Toshio's poor cat. Unfortunately, critical plot points connecting the first murders with the subsequent deaths were cut, seriously undermining the shuffled scenes. Half the fun is piecing together why the curse took place and connecting the murders to the original event; when you can't make those connections, the film just becomes incoherent.
And that's the problem. With a ghost that can invade your office building, your home, or your bed, we lose all hope that the heroine can even defeat it. The final solution, that the house must be burned to the ground, doesn't seem like a solution at all. When the ghost(s) can look like people you know and call you on your cell phone, the evil seems to have such power that we never believe the heroine has a realistic chance of surviving.
The movie is still creepy. After all, Sam Raimi executive produced. The film is beautifully shot with minimal special effects. The same creepy-crawly stumbling that made Samara so horrifying is in evidence here. The Grudge also makes use of a multitude of horrible sounds, including the aforementioned caterwauling and death-rattling.
Unfortunately, that's not enough to really make The Grudge a scary movie for Western audiences.
The Ring 2
This challenge, the failure to explain exactly the plot behind the horror, saps the terror from the movie. I should warn readers now that I'm going to make a lot of comparisons to The Ring, a movie that scared the living crap out of me, because the two have a lot of similarities. We are venturing into Spoilerland.
So let's talk about similarities. Although The Grudge is most certainly not a copy of The Ring, there are enough similarities to make comparisons inevitable. Besides the simplistic titles ("The NOUN, a new Japanese horror, coming to a theater near you!"), both films feature crawling girls with long hair covering their faces, a viral curse, and ghosts that defy the traditional boundary of staying in their respective haunted houses. The climax is even similar: both heroines struggle to save the male love interest before he too becomes infected.
The primary difference between the two films is style. Where The Ring creates a set of rules and then systematically breaks them (or, depending on your perspective, doesn't break them at all but stops reminding you about them), The Grudge isn't encumbered by such rules, to its detriment. This makes the movie hard to follow. In addition, the scenes unfold out of order, explaining what happened to each victim and thereby illustrating the original murder, Memento style.
Here's what I was able to piece together from the deleted scenes: Kayako (Takako Fuji) and Takeo (Takashi Matsuyama) Saeki move into a new home with their son, Toshio (Yuya Ozeki) and his pet cat. While attending school, Kayako becomes infatuated with Peter Kirk (Bill Pullman), her professor. When Takeo discovers her many love notes to the professor, he goes on a berserk rage, murdering Kayako, Toshio, and the cat. Then he kills himself.
The curse kicks in pretty quickly after that. Peter discovers something is wrong and visits the house, only to be infected by the curse, which eventually causes him to throw himself off a rooftop.
Three years later, Karen Davis (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and her pretty-boy boyfriend Doug (Jason Behr) move to Japan as part of an exchange program. Karen is a healthcare worker who specializes in taking care of the elderly. A house now inhabited by the Williams family, including Matthew (William Mapother), his wife Jennifer (Clea DuVall), and Matthew's elderly mother Emma (Grace Zabriskie). When the regular healthcare worker doesn't show up for work one day, Karen is called in to pick up the slack. She's got a new assignment that just happens to be in that Saeki house...
The beauty of The Ring was the development of its characters. It established people who, when faced with spreading evil or the death of their family, gladly chose the greater evil. It dove into the complicated relationship between two parents in a modern age who don't know how to be adults, much less parents. And it peeled away at the voyeuristic core in every one of us, who engages in peeping merely by sitting in a movie theater or watching television...and then punished us for it.
The Grudge is not nearly so high-minded. The curse spreads quickly; so quickly, in fact, that I had a vision of the Japanese National Guard being finally called in to stop the madness when two hundred people are found dead at the Sakei house. Ghosts change form, appear on camera, make weird cat noises, show up seemingly at random, and kill some people quickly but take longer to murder others.
I've never been a fan of Gellar, and her performance didn't change my mind. Karen has no spark with Doug on screen, and their relationship is barely fleshed out. Culture shock is briefly explored in Jennifer's struggle with understanding the Japanese world, but not enough to make us really feel her pain. Not even Jennifer's relationship with Matthew has any real depth. And Gellar seems way too old to be a giddy exchange student.
The only characters that are actually fleshed out are the members of the Sakei family. The deleted scenes make it clear that we're not witnessing one traditional American ghost haunting, but a ghost house of sorts, which utilizes all four bodies (yes, even the cat), to kill its victims. And we come to realize that they are all reenacting their deaths over and over, from the croak of Kayako's severed vocal chords to the shriek of Toshio's poor cat. Unfortunately, critical plot points connecting the first murders with the subsequent deaths were cut, seriously undermining the shuffled scenes. Half the fun is piecing together why the curse took place and connecting the murders to the original event; when you can't make those connections, the film just becomes incoherent.
And that's the problem. With a ghost that can invade your office building, your home, or your bed, we lose all hope that the heroine can even defeat it. The final solution, that the house must be burned to the ground, doesn't seem like a solution at all. When the ghost(s) can look like people you know and call you on your cell phone, the evil seems to have such power that we never believe the heroine has a realistic chance of surviving.
The movie is still creepy. After all, Sam Raimi executive produced. The film is beautifully shot with minimal special effects. The same creepy-crawly stumbling that made Samara so horrifying is in evidence here. The Grudge also makes use of a multitude of horrible sounds, including the aforementioned caterwauling and death-rattling.
Unfortunately, that's not enough to really make The Grudge a scary movie for Western audiences.
Labels: Ghost Reviews
The Ring is one of the scariest movies I've ever seen. It was a decidedly modern twist on an old horror trope: after viewing a weird black-and-white video tape, the viewer receives a phone call explaining he will die seven days later.
What made the Ring so enthralling is that what could have been a cheesy horror movie became an exploration of psychological terror. Instead of just treating the bizarre tape as a typical horror film foil, the protagonist (Rachel Keller, played by the lovely Naomi Watts) uses all her journalist skills to get to the bottom of the mystery. She investigates the background of tape, has it analyzed and basically does everything a logical adult would do when faced with what's basically a killer tape. Rachel discovers that the tape is actually the psychic death knell of a demonic little girl named Samara Morgan (Daveigh Chase) who longs to escape her physical and spiritual imprisonment at the bottom of a well.
In a rare twist, the more Rachel poked at the tape's mysterious origins, the weirder things got. More importantly, the film kept relentless pace with the tape's countdown of seven days. All of the scares were achieved without blood; water and wet hair have never been so horrifying. When we finally do see Samara crawl out of the television, it's to the film's credit that her appearance is as horrifying as we imagined. At the end of the film, Rachel discovered that her son Aiden (David Dorfman) had watched the tape and that the only way to save herself and the life of her son was by making a copy.
No happy ending. Rachel passed the horrible curse on to someone else. And that was the end of the film. Daring, innovative, and just plain creepy, The Ring made you want to move your TV out of your bedroom. Viewers haven't felt that way since Poltergeist.
Then we have Ring Two.
Studios are beginning to encounter a real conundrum in moviemaking. The Ring had a multitude of web sites supporting it that expanded upon the mythology in the movie, including one on the Moesko Island Lighthouse, whatscaresme, anopenletter, and sevendaystolive. Most of them have since been taken down, but they can all be found with the help of the Wayback Machine (look it up). With the advent of the Blair Witch Project, fans expect a supporting mythology and use it to flesh out the rest of the film's backstory.
All these web sites add up to a lot of detail about what happened to create this monstrous ghost known as Samara. With all this backstory, you would expect the filmmakers to further explore the questions around Samara's birth and death. We know only that Samara's mother, Anna, was incapable of having a child of her own and so she left for Europe, only to return with a child who "never sleeps." Samara's psychic abilities were evil...so evil that eventually Anna felt she had to kill her.
But that's not the story we're told in Ring Two. In fact, Ring Two seems to be hell bent on ignoring the rules that were set up in the first movie. We never see the tape again, although a brief introduction explains what happens if you don't make a copy of it. When that copy shows up in a new town that Rachel moved Aidan to, she burns the tape. And that releases Samara. Mind you, Rachel burned the tape in the first film and Samara was not released.
Samara then decides that she's going to live the life she always wanted, with a mommy and everything. Since Rachel and her son don't exactly have a close relationship (he always calls her "Rachel"), Aidan's possession by Samara takes on a kind of cheerful creepiness. Where Aidan is cold and distant, Samara is clingy and demanding. To Dorfman's credit, the child actor does a suitable job of switching between the two personality types.
Rachel searches for a solution to defeating Samara, only to suddenly stumble upon Samara's real mother (Evelyn, played for five minutes by Sissy Spacek). This fact somehow eluded Rachel in the first movie but is easily discovered in the sequel. Evelyn doesn't provide much insight anyway other than that, "Samara is listening...except when you're asleep."
It seems Aidan has psychic powers too and when he's not possessed by Samara, with a body temperature below 95 degrees, he can communicate with his mother. This bizarre plot device gives Rachel an advantage and she soon discovers that Samara's weakness is water. Which is odd, since that was never mentioned in the first film.
Along the way, there's a particularly creepy scene involving deer that is the high point of the film. Some reviewers have questioned the relevance of the scene, but in a rare nod to the original movie, animals can sense Samara and either run away from her or try to destroy her. In this film it's the latter. Unfortunately, the deer are entirely CGI (they couldn't digitally insert deer into the film?) and it's very obvious.
There's a glimpse of the original film in the finale, where Rachel gets sucked into the well and races to escape the weird, spider-like Samara. It's completely ruined by Rachel's catchphrase, "I'm not your F***ING MOTHER!"
And that's what's wrong with Ring Two. It's not a bad horror film, but it's not of the same quality of the first movie. Characters are introduced with the obvious purpose of killing them off, horrible deaths are telegraphed way in advance, and the heroine turns from a tortured, conflicted soul to a rock-climbing, foul-mouthed superhero straight out of Aliens and Terminator.
With none of the pacing, none of the innovation, and very little of the original plot, Ring Two is torn between staying true to the original and appealing to a general audience. In attempting to generalize the fear and horror, the film loses the spirit (forgive the pun) of what made the first movie so appealing.
Oh yeah. If a ghost popped out of your television, wouldn't YOU get rid of every TV in your house?
What made the Ring so enthralling is that what could have been a cheesy horror movie became an exploration of psychological terror. Instead of just treating the bizarre tape as a typical horror film foil, the protagonist (Rachel Keller, played by the lovely Naomi Watts) uses all her journalist skills to get to the bottom of the mystery. She investigates the background of tape, has it analyzed and basically does everything a logical adult would do when faced with what's basically a killer tape. Rachel discovers that the tape is actually the psychic death knell of a demonic little girl named Samara Morgan (Daveigh Chase) who longs to escape her physical and spiritual imprisonment at the bottom of a well.
In a rare twist, the more Rachel poked at the tape's mysterious origins, the weirder things got. More importantly, the film kept relentless pace with the tape's countdown of seven days. All of the scares were achieved without blood; water and wet hair have never been so horrifying. When we finally do see Samara crawl out of the television, it's to the film's credit that her appearance is as horrifying as we imagined. At the end of the film, Rachel discovered that her son Aiden (David Dorfman) had watched the tape and that the only way to save herself and the life of her son was by making a copy.
No happy ending. Rachel passed the horrible curse on to someone else. And that was the end of the film. Daring, innovative, and just plain creepy, The Ring made you want to move your TV out of your bedroom. Viewers haven't felt that way since Poltergeist.
Then we have Ring Two.
Studios are beginning to encounter a real conundrum in moviemaking. The Ring had a multitude of web sites supporting it that expanded upon the mythology in the movie, including one on the Moesko Island Lighthouse, whatscaresme, anopenletter, and sevendaystolive. Most of them have since been taken down, but they can all be found with the help of the Wayback Machine (look it up). With the advent of the Blair Witch Project, fans expect a supporting mythology and use it to flesh out the rest of the film's backstory.
All these web sites add up to a lot of detail about what happened to create this monstrous ghost known as Samara. With all this backstory, you would expect the filmmakers to further explore the questions around Samara's birth and death. We know only that Samara's mother, Anna, was incapable of having a child of her own and so she left for Europe, only to return with a child who "never sleeps." Samara's psychic abilities were evil...so evil that eventually Anna felt she had to kill her.
But that's not the story we're told in Ring Two. In fact, Ring Two seems to be hell bent on ignoring the rules that were set up in the first movie. We never see the tape again, although a brief introduction explains what happens if you don't make a copy of it. When that copy shows up in a new town that Rachel moved Aidan to, she burns the tape. And that releases Samara. Mind you, Rachel burned the tape in the first film and Samara was not released.
Samara then decides that she's going to live the life she always wanted, with a mommy and everything. Since Rachel and her son don't exactly have a close relationship (he always calls her "Rachel"), Aidan's possession by Samara takes on a kind of cheerful creepiness. Where Aidan is cold and distant, Samara is clingy and demanding. To Dorfman's credit, the child actor does a suitable job of switching between the two personality types.
Rachel searches for a solution to defeating Samara, only to suddenly stumble upon Samara's real mother (Evelyn, played for five minutes by Sissy Spacek). This fact somehow eluded Rachel in the first movie but is easily discovered in the sequel. Evelyn doesn't provide much insight anyway other than that, "Samara is listening...except when you're asleep."
It seems Aidan has psychic powers too and when he's not possessed by Samara, with a body temperature below 95 degrees, he can communicate with his mother. This bizarre plot device gives Rachel an advantage and she soon discovers that Samara's weakness is water. Which is odd, since that was never mentioned in the first film.
Along the way, there's a particularly creepy scene involving deer that is the high point of the film. Some reviewers have questioned the relevance of the scene, but in a rare nod to the original movie, animals can sense Samara and either run away from her or try to destroy her. In this film it's the latter. Unfortunately, the deer are entirely CGI (they couldn't digitally insert deer into the film?) and it's very obvious.
There's a glimpse of the original film in the finale, where Rachel gets sucked into the well and races to escape the weird, spider-like Samara. It's completely ruined by Rachel's catchphrase, "I'm not your F***ING MOTHER!"
And that's what's wrong with Ring Two. It's not a bad horror film, but it's not of the same quality of the first movie. Characters are introduced with the obvious purpose of killing them off, horrible deaths are telegraphed way in advance, and the heroine turns from a tortured, conflicted soul to a rock-climbing, foul-mouthed superhero straight out of Aliens and Terminator.
With none of the pacing, none of the innovation, and very little of the original plot, Ring Two is torn between staying true to the original and appealing to a general audience. In attempting to generalize the fear and horror, the film loses the spirit (forgive the pun) of what made the first movie so appealing.
Oh yeah. If a ghost popped out of your television, wouldn't YOU get rid of every TV in your house?
Labels: Ghost Reviews
Monday, March 2, 2009
Dante's Inferno
In Dante's Inferno, Dante, on his quest to reach Heaven, is thwarted by three beasts. Each beast represents a particular category of sin -- the lion of violence, the she-wolf of waste, the leopard of malice. Finally, Virgil, the famous poet who had also detailed Hell's terrain, rescues Dante from the Dark Wood. He explains that the only way to see Heaven is to go through Hell. Beatrice, Dante's lost love, sent Virgil to guide Dante through the darkness. And boy is it dark down there.
Dante's Inferno has everything. For one, it was written in the vulgar Italian rather than Latin. In other words, it was one of the first dime novels, written with both the educated reader and the novice in mind. Not unlike Shakespeare's approach. This is most evident in the alternating allusions to Roman and Greek history vs. the base (and funny) fart that the malebranche use as a form of salute. Only Dante would create a work where you have to know a vast body of Greek works to truly appreciate the references -- and then conclude it with a devil's fart.
Dante also plays up the base horror factor. In one canto, Geryon comes swooping towards them as a mysterious shape...a cliffhanger! Although Dante is no modern writer, he paved the way for a very modern style of writing.
And oh yeah, all of this RHYMES. Dante rigidly sticks to a particular rhythm; a man truly obsessed with numbers, every line, every phrase, means something.
Are there flaws? Absolutely. Mostly, Dante's knowledge is spotty -- he confuses references to Cassius and other famous characters, although other writers at the time were equally confused (usually, it's a poor translation or another legendary character with the same name that causes the confusion). But we can forgive Dante for all that, because in some sense he's crafting an entirely new mythology. Certainly, Dante shaped the images of hell in modern culture today, be it the joke about the guy who has to stick his head in shit in hell or the idea that hell is a place where everybody burns -- it's all in the Inferno.
One particular passage is especially evocative:
Reminds me of Alien.
Dante's Inferno is a classic. It contains everything from Minotaurs to Medusa, Cerberus to Cocytus, Charon to Dis. It was required reading for my forthcoming Abyss book. But anyone who has any interest in fantasy or hell should take a look.
This version is useful (if somewhat sparse on analysis) because it provides plenty of diagrams.
Dictionary of Angels
Dante's Inferno has everything. For one, it was written in the vulgar Italian rather than Latin. In other words, it was one of the first dime novels, written with both the educated reader and the novice in mind. Not unlike Shakespeare's approach. This is most evident in the alternating allusions to Roman and Greek history vs. the base (and funny) fart that the malebranche use as a form of salute. Only Dante would create a work where you have to know a vast body of Greek works to truly appreciate the references -- and then conclude it with a devil's fart.
Dante also plays up the base horror factor. In one canto, Geryon comes swooping towards them as a mysterious shape...a cliffhanger! Although Dante is no modern writer, he paved the way for a very modern style of writing.
And oh yeah, all of this RHYMES. Dante rigidly sticks to a particular rhythm; a man truly obsessed with numbers, every line, every phrase, means something.
Are there flaws? Absolutely. Mostly, Dante's knowledge is spotty -- he confuses references to Cassius and other famous characters, although other writers at the time were equally confused (usually, it's a poor translation or another legendary character with the same name that causes the confusion). But we can forgive Dante for all that, because in some sense he's crafting an entirely new mythology. Certainly, Dante shaped the images of hell in modern culture today, be it the joke about the guy who has to stick his head in shit in hell or the idea that hell is a place where everybody burns -- it's all in the Inferno.
One particular passage is especially evocative:
"For suddenly, as I watched, I saw a lizard come darting forward on six great taloned feet and fasten itself to a sinner from crotch to gizzard. Its middle feet sank in the sweat and grime of the wretch's paunch, its forefeet clamped his arms, its teeth bith through both cheecks. At the same time its hind feet fastened on the sinner's thighs: its tail trhough through his legs and cloised its coil over his loins. I saw it with my own eyes!"
Reminds me of Alien.
Dante's Inferno is a classic. It contains everything from Minotaurs to Medusa, Cerberus to Cocytus, Charon to Dis. It was required reading for my forthcoming Abyss book. But anyone who has any interest in fantasy or hell should take a look.
This version is useful (if somewhat sparse on analysis) because it provides plenty of diagrams.
Labels: Ghost Reviews
There's a lot of angel books out there, all claiming to give knowledge of "all the angels" that exist (or don't exist, depending on whom you ask). But upon taking a closer look, they're all either viewed from an obviously biased religious view, or a New-Agey view, hinting at aliens and other nonsense. The Dictionary of Angels takes the scientific approach, objectively examining all the sources and contributing little in the way of personal commentary. Whether or not they exist, this reference work has yet to be topped as the guide to angels, fallen or otherwise.
Ghost Rider
Labels: Ghost Reviews
On the surface, Ghost Rider is a cool concept. I mean, a biker that's a flaming skull--the same skull that is on a lot of bikers' belt buckles? How could you go wrong with that?
The thing is, Ghost Rider looks cool, but he's a comic book character, so he needs to be more fleshed out than just an iconic burning skull. That's when things get weird.
I've always been a fan of modern Ghost Rider, but I never knew how wacky his background really is. It involves the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and demons from hell. Surprisingly, the Ghost Rider movie taps into the weirdness and seems to even revel in it.
Johnny Blaze (Nicolas Cage) makes a deal with the devil Mephistopheles (Peter Fonda, the original Easy Rider): in exchange for saving his father from cancer, Blaze's soul is Mephisto's property. Of course, the deal turns sour and Blaze discovers that an interesting quirk of his contract: Since Blaze's soul is spoken for, he's nigh indestructible, a trait that's particularly useful in Blaze's career as a daredevil. Eventually, Mephisto comes calling on his debt, and it's a doozy: Mephisto's son Blackheart (Wes Bentley) is attempting to usurp his father by absorbing a thousand souls. And that's when Blaze discovers he actually bursts into flames, his skin melts off, and he becomes the walking skeleton known as Ghost Rider.
The plot is reminiscent of Blade in that the bad guy is rebelling against his destiny, filled with a grand plan that basically translates to: "I'll do everything the other bad guys do, only ten thousand times bigger!" In Blackheart's case, it's a town that sold its collective souls to the devil in another contract. If Blackheart can collect, it will be enough to help him take over the world. MUAAHAHAHAHAH.
Ahem. Anyway, there are some other characters, like Roxanne Simpson (Eva Mendez, who can rock a dress like nobody's business), and a former Ghost Rider himself, Caretaker (Same Elliott). They're mostly window dressing really for Ghost Rider to strut his stuff. Ghost Rider (actually a demon bound to Johnny's soul, but why quibble) is a CGI marvel of chains, flames, and a demonic motorcycle that defies physics. The Four Horsemen have been replaced with three elemental demons (Gressil, Wallow, and Abigor) instead, who are really just special effects rather than actual characters.
What's interesting about Ghost Rider is that the film takes a leather-wearing bike-riding demon to its logical conclusion, complete with SWAT teams and a shootout in the middle of the city. Then it shifts to a supernatural battle with the demon family, interspersed with Johnny Blaze's comedic struggles with his nightlife. Occasionally, Ghost Rider does that thing that drove me crazy about the Spawn movie - random shots that suddenly appear in the middle of the film, disrupting the flow, just to show a cool shot. In this case, it's the two Ghost Riders (modern and western) riding side-by-side to Ghost Riders in the Sky. Fortunately, it's cool enough to watch that I forgave the director (Mark Steven Johnson).
Cage handles most of the heavy lifting. Next to cage, Mendez just can't keep up. The rest of the crew are interesting, but it's the special effects that really make the film. Unlike the Hulk, the CGI effects are flawless.
Overall, Ghost Rider was a lot more enjoyable than I expected. If you can get on board with the idea of a demonic biker of vengeance working as a bounty hunter for the devil, you won't be disappointed.
F.E.A.R. First Encounter Assault Recon
The thing is, Ghost Rider looks cool, but he's a comic book character, so he needs to be more fleshed out than just an iconic burning skull. That's when things get weird.
I've always been a fan of modern Ghost Rider, but I never knew how wacky his background really is. It involves the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and demons from hell. Surprisingly, the Ghost Rider movie taps into the weirdness and seems to even revel in it.
Johnny Blaze (Nicolas Cage) makes a deal with the devil Mephistopheles (Peter Fonda, the original Easy Rider): in exchange for saving his father from cancer, Blaze's soul is Mephisto's property. Of course, the deal turns sour and Blaze discovers that an interesting quirk of his contract: Since Blaze's soul is spoken for, he's nigh indestructible, a trait that's particularly useful in Blaze's career as a daredevil. Eventually, Mephisto comes calling on his debt, and it's a doozy: Mephisto's son Blackheart (Wes Bentley) is attempting to usurp his father by absorbing a thousand souls. And that's when Blaze discovers he actually bursts into flames, his skin melts off, and he becomes the walking skeleton known as Ghost Rider.
The plot is reminiscent of Blade in that the bad guy is rebelling against his destiny, filled with a grand plan that basically translates to: "I'll do everything the other bad guys do, only ten thousand times bigger!" In Blackheart's case, it's a town that sold its collective souls to the devil in another contract. If Blackheart can collect, it will be enough to help him take over the world. MUAAHAHAHAHAH.
Ahem. Anyway, there are some other characters, like Roxanne Simpson (Eva Mendez, who can rock a dress like nobody's business), and a former Ghost Rider himself, Caretaker (Same Elliott). They're mostly window dressing really for Ghost Rider to strut his stuff. Ghost Rider (actually a demon bound to Johnny's soul, but why quibble) is a CGI marvel of chains, flames, and a demonic motorcycle that defies physics. The Four Horsemen have been replaced with three elemental demons (Gressil, Wallow, and Abigor) instead, who are really just special effects rather than actual characters.
What's interesting about Ghost Rider is that the film takes a leather-wearing bike-riding demon to its logical conclusion, complete with SWAT teams and a shootout in the middle of the city. Then it shifts to a supernatural battle with the demon family, interspersed with Johnny Blaze's comedic struggles with his nightlife. Occasionally, Ghost Rider does that thing that drove me crazy about the Spawn movie - random shots that suddenly appear in the middle of the film, disrupting the flow, just to show a cool shot. In this case, it's the two Ghost Riders (modern and western) riding side-by-side to Ghost Riders in the Sky. Fortunately, it's cool enough to watch that I forgave the director (Mark Steven Johnson).
Cage handles most of the heavy lifting. Next to cage, Mendez just can't keep up. The rest of the crew are interesting, but it's the special effects that really make the film. Unlike the Hulk, the CGI effects are flawless.
Overall, Ghost Rider was a lot more enjoyable than I expected. If you can get on board with the idea of a demonic biker of vengeance working as a bounty hunter for the devil, you won't be disappointed.
Labels: Ghost Reviews
Someone was most assuredly playing Halo one day and then, after watching The Ring, said, "You know what would be cool? If we combined Japanese horror with a first-person shooter!" And thus FEAR was born.
FEAR (First Encounter Assault Recon) is Halo without the power suit and vehicles in tightly confined, spooky urban environments. Your character is anonymous behind his faceplate, like Master Chief, and you possess powers beyond mortal men, including the ability to slow down time in Matrix-esque fashion. The usual weapons of mass destruction are present as well: pistols, sniper rifles, shotguns, rocket launchers, and of course the obligatory futuristic energy rifle.
What makes FEAR different is its adherence to a disturbing plotline. Project Origin has created a series of telepathically controlled clones (think clone troopers from Star Wars). They are the perfect warriors, led by their powerful telepathic commander, Paxton Fettel. Only Paxton has been driven mad by the ghost of a little girl, Alma, and transformed into a cannibalistic mass murderer. Cue our point man (that'd be the player) and the FEAR team.
What ensues is a creepy romp through garbage-filled alleyways, poorly lit warehouses, abandoned office buildings, and weird underground laboratories. We learn the story through more than dialogue alone; there are various opportunities to overhear answering machine messages, slowly unspooling the plot.
FEAR is an interesting experiment in horror. Horror is largely scripted, be it in a novel or script, thereby dictating when and where bad things happen. In FEAR, although events are scripted, they don't necessarily play out the way the creators probably intended. I was often looking the wrong way when a creepy ghost appeared, ruining the effect. Conversely, some creepy moments wear off quickly when you've died twelve times and have to replay the scene over and over again. Nevertheless, the game has its moments, not in the intentionally creepy horror but the subtle: a lone photocopy machine illuminated in the darkness as it photocopies nothing, the rattling of underground pipes ready to burst, and the accidental bumping of debris all kept my nerves frayed.
And there is a LOT of debris. Everything in the game can be hit, bumped, knocked over, moved, and blown up. Except for the cast of characters. This is a bit of a let down when some key cast members (who we just know are BAD (tm)) cannot be harmed with a pistol to the forehead, yet you can accidentally blow yourself to bits by shooting a fire extinguisher from a distance. The game chooses when to be realistic at its creators' whim.
FEAR has one of the most realistic artificial intelligences in recent FPS memory. The clone soldiers work together, throwing grenades at the right moment, looping back around to catch you by surprise, and running and gunning when under heavy fire. They leap over barriers and duck under cover, scream for backup and loudly declare their intentions over their walkie-talkies. In fact they act a lot like...
People. It's so strange that a game fixated on the terror of cloning has the most human-like enemies ever to grace the Xbox 360. The panic in a clone soldier's voice is almost pathetic when you eliminate his entire team: "I can't stop him!" When a soldier thinks he has the drop on you, he swears like a sailor.
FEAR is bloody, violent, and foul-mouthed. Sometimes the cursing seems a little egregious; sometimes it makes you wonder who taught the clones these potty words. But the blood, especially in slow-mo mode, is glorious to behold, especially when a shotgun blast at point blank range tears through a clone soldier and the bookshelf behind him.
FEAR has its flaws. The collision detection isn't always right, snagging your character on strange parts of the board. Bad guys fall all over in rag doll fashion thanks to the Havok engine, but they also sometimes fall in weird poses (on several occasions, a clone soldier fell and hung in mid-air). And the voice acting is so-so.
But FEAR does one thing right, and that was enough to make me play it obsessively until I beat it. You WILL learn the meaning of FEAR.
Hellraiser: Inferno
FEAR (First Encounter Assault Recon) is Halo without the power suit and vehicles in tightly confined, spooky urban environments. Your character is anonymous behind his faceplate, like Master Chief, and you possess powers beyond mortal men, including the ability to slow down time in Matrix-esque fashion. The usual weapons of mass destruction are present as well: pistols, sniper rifles, shotguns, rocket launchers, and of course the obligatory futuristic energy rifle.
What makes FEAR different is its adherence to a disturbing plotline. Project Origin has created a series of telepathically controlled clones (think clone troopers from Star Wars). They are the perfect warriors, led by their powerful telepathic commander, Paxton Fettel. Only Paxton has been driven mad by the ghost of a little girl, Alma, and transformed into a cannibalistic mass murderer. Cue our point man (that'd be the player) and the FEAR team.
What ensues is a creepy romp through garbage-filled alleyways, poorly lit warehouses, abandoned office buildings, and weird underground laboratories. We learn the story through more than dialogue alone; there are various opportunities to overhear answering machine messages, slowly unspooling the plot.
FEAR is an interesting experiment in horror. Horror is largely scripted, be it in a novel or script, thereby dictating when and where bad things happen. In FEAR, although events are scripted, they don't necessarily play out the way the creators probably intended. I was often looking the wrong way when a creepy ghost appeared, ruining the effect. Conversely, some creepy moments wear off quickly when you've died twelve times and have to replay the scene over and over again. Nevertheless, the game has its moments, not in the intentionally creepy horror but the subtle: a lone photocopy machine illuminated in the darkness as it photocopies nothing, the rattling of underground pipes ready to burst, and the accidental bumping of debris all kept my nerves frayed.
And there is a LOT of debris. Everything in the game can be hit, bumped, knocked over, moved, and blown up. Except for the cast of characters. This is a bit of a let down when some key cast members (who we just know are BAD (tm)) cannot be harmed with a pistol to the forehead, yet you can accidentally blow yourself to bits by shooting a fire extinguisher from a distance. The game chooses when to be realistic at its creators' whim.
FEAR has one of the most realistic artificial intelligences in recent FPS memory. The clone soldiers work together, throwing grenades at the right moment, looping back around to catch you by surprise, and running and gunning when under heavy fire. They leap over barriers and duck under cover, scream for backup and loudly declare their intentions over their walkie-talkies. In fact they act a lot like...
People. It's so strange that a game fixated on the terror of cloning has the most human-like enemies ever to grace the Xbox 360. The panic in a clone soldier's voice is almost pathetic when you eliminate his entire team: "I can't stop him!" When a soldier thinks he has the drop on you, he swears like a sailor.
FEAR is bloody, violent, and foul-mouthed. Sometimes the cursing seems a little egregious; sometimes it makes you wonder who taught the clones these potty words. But the blood, especially in slow-mo mode, is glorious to behold, especially when a shotgun blast at point blank range tears through a clone soldier and the bookshelf behind him.
FEAR has its flaws. The collision detection isn't always right, snagging your character on strange parts of the board. Bad guys fall all over in rag doll fashion thanks to the Havok engine, but they also sometimes fall in weird poses (on several occasions, a clone soldier fell and hung in mid-air). And the voice acting is so-so.
But FEAR does one thing right, and that was enough to make me play it obsessively until I beat it. You WILL learn the meaning of FEAR.
Labels: Ghost Reviews
The last movie I saw in the Hellraiser series was "Hellraiser in Space"-Hellraiser: Bloodline. I enjoyed it, mostly because I've never been too attached to the Hellraiser series anyway and the science fiction twist made it interesting. It was especially amusing to see the Cenobites confused by advanced technology (though they catch up fast).
Anyway, although Hellraiser: Bloodline was technically the end to the series, it's obvious we're now in franchise life-support territory. That said, I wasn't expecting much from Hellraiser: Inferno.
The first thing that's surprising about Inferno is that it's a movie that takes itself very seriously. This is not about gore or even physical horror. It's a film noir with a good dash of psychological horror.
Detective Joseph Thorne (Craig Sheffer) is a beetle-browed thug masquerading as a police officer. He sleeps with prostitutes, he snorts drugs, and he frames people who get in his way. He's also a highly effective cop in an underworld gone mad. He has been inexplicably teamed up with Tony Nenonen (Nicholas Turturro), a goody two-shoes partner who is completely clueless.
Thorne has a beautiful wife, Melanie (Noelle Evans) and daughter (Lindsay Taylor, I think). How he ended up with his wife or producing such a sweet child is a mystery. In essence, Thorne's a big jerk and everybody but Thorne knows it. And maybe the writers (Paul Harris Boardman and Scott Derickson).
Eventually, Thorne meets his match in a psychopath known only as The Engineer, who cuts the fingers of a child and leaves them at the scene of various crimes. Thorne becomes obsessed with the fate of this little boy, seeing a reflection of his own family in the tortured child. He's closer to the truth than he realizes.
There are a few other characters, notably Thorne's elderly parents and a police psychologist (James Remar). But in the end, nobody can help poor Detective Thorne...not even himself. Everyone pretty much exists to be gruesomely tortured, so the characters aren't particularly well-developed.
This movie is a lot like Jacob's Ladder, down to the medical practitioner being the symbolic Good Guy. Except Hellraiser is the No Exit version. And the movie ends on a real down note.
The problem is that Thorne's descent into sin isn't really believable. He's already a sleazeball, so it's difficult to feel sympathy for him. Sheffer has such a massive forehead that it seems incapable of conveying much else besides rage and scorn. Unfortunately, the role requires a much wider range of emotions than the actor is able to provide.
The movie's entire premise hinges on a plot twist. Once you figure out the plot twist, it then drags on for another 20 minutes before revealing what we already knew. Sounds great on paper, but it doesn't make for a compelling movie.
And yet, the director (Scott Derrickson) works hard to convey the right mood. Through a lot of green lensing, we know when Thorne is in the underworld. The gore is suitably gruesome, if understated. Derrickson knows that horror is far worse in the mind than on screen and makes a point of providing a ghastly array of sounds, screams, and tortured wails just on the other sides of doors and on videotape to freak out the audience.
Pinhead (Doug Bradley) shows up briefly in a role that can only be described as judge, jury, and executioner. The DVD extras talk about how this is a new role for Pinhead, like it's an Oscar-winning turn for the fictional actor. Newsflash: It ain't.
In the end, Inferno is too long, too filled with self-loathing, and too obvious to really be a great entry in the Hellraiser series. Although it's not a jump-up-and-scream kind of film, Inferno does have its creepy moments.
Gothika
Anyway, although Hellraiser: Bloodline was technically the end to the series, it's obvious we're now in franchise life-support territory. That said, I wasn't expecting much from Hellraiser: Inferno.
The first thing that's surprising about Inferno is that it's a movie that takes itself very seriously. This is not about gore or even physical horror. It's a film noir with a good dash of psychological horror.
Detective Joseph Thorne (Craig Sheffer) is a beetle-browed thug masquerading as a police officer. He sleeps with prostitutes, he snorts drugs, and he frames people who get in his way. He's also a highly effective cop in an underworld gone mad. He has been inexplicably teamed up with Tony Nenonen (Nicholas Turturro), a goody two-shoes partner who is completely clueless.
Thorne has a beautiful wife, Melanie (Noelle Evans) and daughter (Lindsay Taylor, I think). How he ended up with his wife or producing such a sweet child is a mystery. In essence, Thorne's a big jerk and everybody but Thorne knows it. And maybe the writers (Paul Harris Boardman and Scott Derickson).
Eventually, Thorne meets his match in a psychopath known only as The Engineer, who cuts the fingers of a child and leaves them at the scene of various crimes. Thorne becomes obsessed with the fate of this little boy, seeing a reflection of his own family in the tortured child. He's closer to the truth than he realizes.
There are a few other characters, notably Thorne's elderly parents and a police psychologist (James Remar). But in the end, nobody can help poor Detective Thorne...not even himself. Everyone pretty much exists to be gruesomely tortured, so the characters aren't particularly well-developed.
This movie is a lot like Jacob's Ladder, down to the medical practitioner being the symbolic Good Guy. Except Hellraiser is the No Exit version. And the movie ends on a real down note.
The problem is that Thorne's descent into sin isn't really believable. He's already a sleazeball, so it's difficult to feel sympathy for him. Sheffer has such a massive forehead that it seems incapable of conveying much else besides rage and scorn. Unfortunately, the role requires a much wider range of emotions than the actor is able to provide.
The movie's entire premise hinges on a plot twist. Once you figure out the plot twist, it then drags on for another 20 minutes before revealing what we already knew. Sounds great on paper, but it doesn't make for a compelling movie.
And yet, the director (Scott Derrickson) works hard to convey the right mood. Through a lot of green lensing, we know when Thorne is in the underworld. The gore is suitably gruesome, if understated. Derrickson knows that horror is far worse in the mind than on screen and makes a point of providing a ghastly array of sounds, screams, and tortured wails just on the other sides of doors and on videotape to freak out the audience.
Pinhead (Doug Bradley) shows up briefly in a role that can only be described as judge, jury, and executioner. The DVD extras talk about how this is a new role for Pinhead, like it's an Oscar-winning turn for the fictional actor. Newsflash: It ain't.
In the end, Inferno is too long, too filled with self-loathing, and too obvious to really be a great entry in the Hellraiser series. Although it's not a jump-up-and-scream kind of film, Inferno does have its creepy moments.
Labels: Ghost Reviews
Gothika is the latest from Dark Castle Entertainment, specializing in horror movies with updated special effects, including House on Haunted Hill and Thir13en Ghosts, two of my favorites. So I wasn't expecting much, but I figured a movie like Gothika would be, well, gothic. I was not disappointed.
Miranda Grey (Halle Berry) is a monotone-voiced psychiatrist consulting with a patient (apparently, she only ever talks to one), Chloe Sava (Penelope Cruz), in a sanitarium. Chloe believes she is being raped by the devil in prison. Miranda is the wife of Dr. Douglas Grey (Charles Dutton), a blubbery man that you can't believe is married to such a delicious package. Doug is also the mental hospital's chief psychiatrist. When the two kiss, it's squeamishly unnerving-kudos to the director (Mathieu Kassovitz) for telegraphing the awful while filming something as mundane as a spousal embrace.
Miranda works with another psychiatrist, Pete Graham (Robert Downey Jr.), a mumbly, ferret-like character who lusts for her from afar. The three characters casually discuss psychological problems as if they were discussing the weather. There's no warmth in any of the relationships, even though a storm rages in the background, crackling with thunder at appropriate moments.
Then weird stuff happens. Miranda crashes her car in an effort to avoid running over a woman (Kathleen Mackey) she sees standing in the road. The woman touches Miranda's face and the two burst into flames...
Miranda wakes up in the same mental hospital she once worked at. She's now a patient, accused of hacking her husband to death with an axe. Pete is her psychiatrist. And just like that, Miranda's world falls apart.
The movie strains credibility with the absurd notion that Miranda would be placed in the very same mental facility that she worked at. No effort is made to explain this particular plot point, so integral to the horror Miranda experiences. Similarly, Miranda doesn't act particularly professional or even argue her case very well. She collapses into a shrieking mess and pretty much stays that way throughout the film.
Complicating matters is the ghost that haunts the facility. In a refreshing horror movie turn, this is no Capser the Friendly Ghost. She possesses people, she uses said possessed people to do awful things, and beats the crap out of anyone who doesn't do what she wants them to do. In fact, she's so powerful and intrusive that you can't help but wonder why the ghost just doesn't do everything herself.
Unfortunately, there are lots of problems with Gothika. Halle Berry is too pretty for the role and lacks sufficient warmth to bring any real emotion to the screen but shrill hysteria. Pete is so mush-mouthed, so wandering in his conversations, that he seems more like a patient than a doctor at the hospital. But the real villain is the writer (Sebastian Gutierrez), who filled the plot with holes (security guards hand over their car keys to Miranda for WHAT reason exactly?), ridiculous punch lines (think Trinity from the Matrix's maxim "Dodge this" thrown into a movie that's supposed to be all about psychological horror), and awful dialogue.
Gothika is one of those movies that is defined primarily by its lensing; everything is a bluish gray. This is obviously intentional to set the mood of a dreary psychological horror. The relentless blue is punctuated by are occasional flashes of red-red lights, a red nametag, red outfits. But unlike Sixth Sense, the red doesn't have any real symbolism behind it (except, perhaps, "DANGER!"). It's as if Kassovitz liked the idea of putting a blue lens over the film but didn't know what to do with the technique.
And yet, Gothika has genuinely creepy moments that caused my various family members to jump out of their seats. The horror, both of role reversal (the psychologist becomes the patient) and of the capacity of normal people to commit acts if horrible violence, is striking. The insane asylum is its own character, a gaping series of hallways with wide-open spaces and cold glass walls.
Gothika is no Sixth Sense or Stir of Echoes, and a little too slickly produced for its own good. It's hampered by high-minded goals, burdened with a patchwork plot, and really, really blue. But it's just scary enough, just freaky enough, and just interesting enough to make it worth watching.
Spirited Away
Miranda Grey (Halle Berry) is a monotone-voiced psychiatrist consulting with a patient (apparently, she only ever talks to one), Chloe Sava (Penelope Cruz), in a sanitarium. Chloe believes she is being raped by the devil in prison. Miranda is the wife of Dr. Douglas Grey (Charles Dutton), a blubbery man that you can't believe is married to such a delicious package. Doug is also the mental hospital's chief psychiatrist. When the two kiss, it's squeamishly unnerving-kudos to the director (Mathieu Kassovitz) for telegraphing the awful while filming something as mundane as a spousal embrace.
Miranda works with another psychiatrist, Pete Graham (Robert Downey Jr.), a mumbly, ferret-like character who lusts for her from afar. The three characters casually discuss psychological problems as if they were discussing the weather. There's no warmth in any of the relationships, even though a storm rages in the background, crackling with thunder at appropriate moments.
Then weird stuff happens. Miranda crashes her car in an effort to avoid running over a woman (Kathleen Mackey) she sees standing in the road. The woman touches Miranda's face and the two burst into flames...
Miranda wakes up in the same mental hospital she once worked at. She's now a patient, accused of hacking her husband to death with an axe. Pete is her psychiatrist. And just like that, Miranda's world falls apart.
The movie strains credibility with the absurd notion that Miranda would be placed in the very same mental facility that she worked at. No effort is made to explain this particular plot point, so integral to the horror Miranda experiences. Similarly, Miranda doesn't act particularly professional or even argue her case very well. She collapses into a shrieking mess and pretty much stays that way throughout the film.
Complicating matters is the ghost that haunts the facility. In a refreshing horror movie turn, this is no Capser the Friendly Ghost. She possesses people, she uses said possessed people to do awful things, and beats the crap out of anyone who doesn't do what she wants them to do. In fact, she's so powerful and intrusive that you can't help but wonder why the ghost just doesn't do everything herself.
Unfortunately, there are lots of problems with Gothika. Halle Berry is too pretty for the role and lacks sufficient warmth to bring any real emotion to the screen but shrill hysteria. Pete is so mush-mouthed, so wandering in his conversations, that he seems more like a patient than a doctor at the hospital. But the real villain is the writer (Sebastian Gutierrez), who filled the plot with holes (security guards hand over their car keys to Miranda for WHAT reason exactly?), ridiculous punch lines (think Trinity from the Matrix's maxim "Dodge this" thrown into a movie that's supposed to be all about psychological horror), and awful dialogue.
Gothika is one of those movies that is defined primarily by its lensing; everything is a bluish gray. This is obviously intentional to set the mood of a dreary psychological horror. The relentless blue is punctuated by are occasional flashes of red-red lights, a red nametag, red outfits. But unlike Sixth Sense, the red doesn't have any real symbolism behind it (except, perhaps, "DANGER!"). It's as if Kassovitz liked the idea of putting a blue lens over the film but didn't know what to do with the technique.
And yet, Gothika has genuinely creepy moments that caused my various family members to jump out of their seats. The horror, both of role reversal (the psychologist becomes the patient) and of the capacity of normal people to commit acts if horrible violence, is striking. The insane asylum is its own character, a gaping series of hallways with wide-open spaces and cold glass walls.
Gothika is no Sixth Sense or Stir of Echoes, and a little too slickly produced for its own good. It's hampered by high-minded goals, burdened with a patchwork plot, and really, really blue. But it's just scary enough, just freaky enough, and just interesting enough to make it worth watching.
Labels: Ghost Reviews
First, Spirited Away is about a little girl, but it is NOT A MOVIE FOR LITTLE KIDS.
This is something I feel should be stated up front for all the folks (*cough*mundanes*cough*) who think that anything that's animated is for kiddies. It ain't. Welcome to the world of anime.
Actually, let me amend that. There seems to be some anime apologists who are afraid the film will get a bad rap if parents are told that it's not for children. Well foo on them too. This is not a movie suitable for young children. I'll explain more in a moment.
And what a world it is. A young girl named Chihiro travels with her parents to their new home and on the way, take a short cut to what looks like an abandoned theme park. Her parents wander heedlessly into the grounds and find some delicious-smelling food, which they consume.
Then they turn into pigs. It's not a blink-and-you-miss-it special effect. It's a slow, terrifying effect. Chihiro's parents turn into big, fat, squealing pigs. It's horrible -- it's meant to be. Remember the not for kids warning? This is one reason why.
Chihiro is not without her allies. She meets Haku, a river dragon who appears to her in boy form (most of the time). With his help and guidance, Chihiro manages to survive her transition into what turns out to be the spirit world. She makes friends with a moustached, goggled spider-like being who runs the boiler room and finds employment with Yubaba, the domineering old crone who runs the bathhouse.
Being that I've written a few fantasy books set in Russian fairy tales (see Tsar Rising and The Dancing Hut), words like "bathhouse," "crone," and "Yubaba" ring bells. I'm saddened that very few reviewers picked up on the movie's inspiration.
The movie takes many of its cues from Russian myth. Yubaba = Baba Yaga, the infamous hag. Just as Yubaba has a baby she fawns over, Baba Yaga alternately menaces and cares for children. She has a host of young girls working for her in some stories -- in others, she is a cannibal. The parallels are all there.
There's more: Yubaba has a twin sister, Zeniba. In Russian myth, there's typically three hags (all sisters), but the similarity is unmistakable. And of course there's the bathhouse itself. In both Russian and Japanese myth, the bathhouse is a magical place where the spirits take over at midnight. Which is precisely what happens in Spirited Away.
And oh yeah, there's a two-headed eagle (a symbol of old Russia) on Yubaba's tapestry. Of course, nobody pays attention to Russia these days for reasons I can only ascribe to the Cold War.
There are plenty of elements that aren't from Russian myth. No-Face, a strange demon that leeches off of other people's personalities, changes from a benevolent ally to a monstrous thing that tries to eat everyone in the bathhouse. It moans and wails, it eats people, it's really quite gross and scary -- not for kids.
What the movie does have is charm. Love, friendship, trust -- all these things help Chichiro to survive. Her good-hearted actions save her (just like in Russian myth...most of the time) and help her defeat Yubaba at her own game.
The animation is superb. The voice acting (including the dub) is excellent. Disney is giving Japanese anime the respect it deserves. See it.
This movie IS worth seeing with your tween daughter. As in, 10 years old and up.
Comment Comment | Permalink
Chinese Ghost Story III
This is something I feel should be stated up front for all the folks (*cough*mundanes*cough*) who think that anything that's animated is for kiddies. It ain't. Welcome to the world of anime.
Actually, let me amend that. There seems to be some anime apologists who are afraid the film will get a bad rap if parents are told that it's not for children. Well foo on them too. This is not a movie suitable for young children. I'll explain more in a moment.
And what a world it is. A young girl named Chihiro travels with her parents to their new home and on the way, take a short cut to what looks like an abandoned theme park. Her parents wander heedlessly into the grounds and find some delicious-smelling food, which they consume.
Then they turn into pigs. It's not a blink-and-you-miss-it special effect. It's a slow, terrifying effect. Chihiro's parents turn into big, fat, squealing pigs. It's horrible -- it's meant to be. Remember the not for kids warning? This is one reason why.
Chihiro is not without her allies. She meets Haku, a river dragon who appears to her in boy form (most of the time). With his help and guidance, Chihiro manages to survive her transition into what turns out to be the spirit world. She makes friends with a moustached, goggled spider-like being who runs the boiler room and finds employment with Yubaba, the domineering old crone who runs the bathhouse.
Being that I've written a few fantasy books set in Russian fairy tales (see Tsar Rising and The Dancing Hut), words like "bathhouse," "crone," and "Yubaba" ring bells. I'm saddened that very few reviewers picked up on the movie's inspiration.
The movie takes many of its cues from Russian myth. Yubaba = Baba Yaga, the infamous hag. Just as Yubaba has a baby she fawns over, Baba Yaga alternately menaces and cares for children. She has a host of young girls working for her in some stories -- in others, she is a cannibal. The parallels are all there.
There's more: Yubaba has a twin sister, Zeniba. In Russian myth, there's typically three hags (all sisters), but the similarity is unmistakable. And of course there's the bathhouse itself. In both Russian and Japanese myth, the bathhouse is a magical place where the spirits take over at midnight. Which is precisely what happens in Spirited Away.
And oh yeah, there's a two-headed eagle (a symbol of old Russia) on Yubaba's tapestry. Of course, nobody pays attention to Russia these days for reasons I can only ascribe to the Cold War.
There are plenty of elements that aren't from Russian myth. No-Face, a strange demon that leeches off of other people's personalities, changes from a benevolent ally to a monstrous thing that tries to eat everyone in the bathhouse. It moans and wails, it eats people, it's really quite gross and scary -- not for kids.
What the movie does have is charm. Love, friendship, trust -- all these things help Chichiro to survive. Her good-hearted actions save her (just like in Russian myth...most of the time) and help her defeat Yubaba at her own game.
The animation is superb. The voice acting (including the dub) is excellent. Disney is giving Japanese anime the respect it deserves. See it.
This movie IS worth seeing with your tween daughter. As in, 10 years old and up.
Comment Comment | Permalink
Labels: Ghost Reviews
I was prepared to really enjoy Chinese Ghost Story III, understanding that it was essentially a retread of the original two movies. Since the movie takes place 100 years after the second, there's plenty of good reasons for why the Chinese Ghost Story III would be disconnected from its roots.
Unfortunately, Chinese Ghost Story III suffers from exactly the opposite: it's far too much like Chinese Ghost Story II. Even more unforgivable, the actress who played the ghost in the first story (that was saved, to become reincarnated) and who played the physical twin of the ghost in the second story, is ANOTHER ghost in this story. Another ghost, but not the same ghost. Very annoying.
Back too is the villain, the wicked tree hag with the never-ending tongue and influence over tree branches. I don't know about you, but I didn't have a burning desire to find out whatever happened to the tree hag that dove into that hole in the second movie. I mean, really.
The plot is similar - instead of a tax collector seduced by a ghost, we have a monk seduced by a ghost. There's an old mentor who has supernatural powers and there's also a professional demon hunter. The only difference is that the demon hunter in this movie was the student of the old monk in the last movie.
So what does this movie have to offer? Not much. In fact, it's so much like the second movie that the parallels only serve to show just how inferior the second movie is. It's not as scary, not as funny, and not as romantic.
The ending even has a poorly introduced bad guy - the husband to be to the ghost (JUST LIKE THE SECOND MOVIE). In this case, it's the "Mountain Devil." The Mountain Devil is apparently a big puppet, and not in the "hey it's cool cause it's wacky" kind of way. He animates buildings that look like puppet buildings.
On the whack-I-meter, the old monk manages to cover his eyes with his earlobes. And that's about it. Even the sword stunts and magic tricks can't top Chinese Ghost Story II.
If you've seen the second movie, you don't need to see Chinese Ghost Story III.
Soul Survivors
Unfortunately, Chinese Ghost Story III suffers from exactly the opposite: it's far too much like Chinese Ghost Story II. Even more unforgivable, the actress who played the ghost in the first story (that was saved, to become reincarnated) and who played the physical twin of the ghost in the second story, is ANOTHER ghost in this story. Another ghost, but not the same ghost. Very annoying.
Back too is the villain, the wicked tree hag with the never-ending tongue and influence over tree branches. I don't know about you, but I didn't have a burning desire to find out whatever happened to the tree hag that dove into that hole in the second movie. I mean, really.
The plot is similar - instead of a tax collector seduced by a ghost, we have a monk seduced by a ghost. There's an old mentor who has supernatural powers and there's also a professional demon hunter. The only difference is that the demon hunter in this movie was the student of the old monk in the last movie.
So what does this movie have to offer? Not much. In fact, it's so much like the second movie that the parallels only serve to show just how inferior the second movie is. It's not as scary, not as funny, and not as romantic.
The ending even has a poorly introduced bad guy - the husband to be to the ghost (JUST LIKE THE SECOND MOVIE). In this case, it's the "Mountain Devil." The Mountain Devil is apparently a big puppet, and not in the "hey it's cool cause it's wacky" kind of way. He animates buildings that look like puppet buildings.
On the whack-I-meter, the old monk manages to cover his eyes with his earlobes. And that's about it. Even the sword stunts and magic tricks can't top Chinese Ghost Story II.
If you've seen the second movie, you don't need to see Chinese Ghost Story III.
Labels: Ghost Reviews
Take Jacob's Ladder, put some hot chicks in it, some kickin' tunes, a lot of buff guys mumbling to themselves, and you have Soul Survivors. I could just leave the review at that, but for those of you who haven't seen Jacob's Ladder, I feel obligated to explain. This is Spoilerland, so run while you can...
Still here? Sorry to hear that. Okay, well Jacob's Ladder was about the process the protagonist goes through as he dies. In essence, the few seconds as he struggles between life and death are his purgatory. The movie follows the main character living out his life in those split seconds, and characters become symbols of heaven and hell.
Jacob's Ladder had a lot of sneaky hints, like...the guy in white is the angel. He also happens to be a chiropractor. In case you didn't figure it out in the film, the protagonist says stuff like, "You're like an angel."
Have you figured out yet that I wasn't too fond of Jacob's Ladder?
So you can imagine how much I didn't enjoy Soul Survivors, which is a direct rip off of that film. Only there's even more ridiculous symbolism from the school of M. Night Shyamalan - red is the sign of the bad supernatural guys. And yes, white's the sign of good supernatural guys. And there's a lot of sudden cuts and weird animal noises as the film hops around trying to freak us out.
Let me save you five bucks: Cassie is at a party with her other two friends Annabel (played by the I-can't-believe-anyone-hires-her-she's-that-awful actress Eliza Dushku) and Matt (her ex-boyfriend) and her boyfriend, Sean. Cassie gets caught kissing Matt, Sean gets mad, everyone piles into a car and they get into a car accident with two weird guys and a lesbian.
Follow me so far? The rest of the movie is like a funkier version of The Others, only without Nicole Kidman's infernal whisper-acting. There's a lot of confusion, a lot of symbolism, a lot of non-events that are supposed to be creepy but just end up becoming frustrating. After five minutes I figured out the Big Secret.
And the Big Secret is that Cassie's in the purgatory of her mind. Her boyfriend's actually alive (which is why she thinks he's dead) but the ex-boyfriend and girlfriend are dead and trying to drag her with them into hell. Fortunately, Saint Jude intervenes.
That's right. You read that correctly: Saint Jude. I'm not sure why. But he wears white, so we know he's a Good Guy ™.
This movie sucks. It's not as bad as say, Species 2, which was just in poor taste. It's just a poorly directed, poorly acted rip off of a movie that wasn't all that great to begin with. Soul Survivors tries SO HARD that I felt bad for the people involved in it.
And that's pretty bad.
Chinese Ghost Story II
Still here? Sorry to hear that. Okay, well Jacob's Ladder was about the process the protagonist goes through as he dies. In essence, the few seconds as he struggles between life and death are his purgatory. The movie follows the main character living out his life in those split seconds, and characters become symbols of heaven and hell.
Jacob's Ladder had a lot of sneaky hints, like...the guy in white is the angel. He also happens to be a chiropractor. In case you didn't figure it out in the film, the protagonist says stuff like, "You're like an angel."
Have you figured out yet that I wasn't too fond of Jacob's Ladder?
So you can imagine how much I didn't enjoy Soul Survivors, which is a direct rip off of that film. Only there's even more ridiculous symbolism from the school of M. Night Shyamalan - red is the sign of the bad supernatural guys. And yes, white's the sign of good supernatural guys. And there's a lot of sudden cuts and weird animal noises as the film hops around trying to freak us out.
Let me save you five bucks: Cassie is at a party with her other two friends Annabel (played by the I-can't-believe-anyone-hires-her-she's-that-awful actress Eliza Dushku) and Matt (her ex-boyfriend) and her boyfriend, Sean. Cassie gets caught kissing Matt, Sean gets mad, everyone piles into a car and they get into a car accident with two weird guys and a lesbian.
Follow me so far? The rest of the movie is like a funkier version of The Others, only without Nicole Kidman's infernal whisper-acting. There's a lot of confusion, a lot of symbolism, a lot of non-events that are supposed to be creepy but just end up becoming frustrating. After five minutes I figured out the Big Secret.
And the Big Secret is that Cassie's in the purgatory of her mind. Her boyfriend's actually alive (which is why she thinks he's dead) but the ex-boyfriend and girlfriend are dead and trying to drag her with them into hell. Fortunately, Saint Jude intervenes.
That's right. You read that correctly: Saint Jude. I'm not sure why. But he wears white, so we know he's a Good Guy ™.
This movie sucks. It's not as bad as say, Species 2, which was just in poor taste. It's just a poorly directed, poorly acted rip off of a movie that wasn't all that great to begin with. Soul Survivors tries SO HARD that I felt bad for the people involved in it.
And that's pretty bad.
Labels: Ghost Reviews
I don't remember why I decided to rent Chinese Ghost Story 2. It's probably because it's one of the best examples of a martial arts historical fantasy, and I use the word "historical" loosely.
It's hard to sum up the plot because it's a blending mishmash of several other plots. There's the reincarnated former long lost love, the bumbling tax collector, the clueless demon fighter, the grouchy monk, and a whole slew of bandits who dress up as ghosts.
But it wouldn't be called Chinese Ghost Story 2 if it was only about fake ghosts. There are real ghosts too - one is a hilarious big floppy monster with big fangs, big eyes, and big claws. The other is the main bad guy, who doesn't actually appear until the second half of the movie. And what a bad guy he is - a demon in the form of a false Buddha in the form of a giant centipede.
Get the picture yet? How about a freeze spell gone wrong, a guardian warrior who wields five katanas at once, and people flying around on swords like they were surfboards. The most hysterical part of the film is the tax collector's misuse of aforementioned freeze spell, managing to paralyze himself, the demon slayer who taught him the spell, and the ghost they're both trying to kill - so all three stand frozen for hours in a very awkward pose waiting for the spell to wear off. It's funnier than it sounds, trust me.
For all its wackiness, Chinese Ghost Story is serious stuff. Characters sacrifice themselves to save others, two sisters battle for the love of the tax collector, and the false Buddha chortles as he extols the virtues of fooling the peasantry with false deities.
In this movie, no one is who they seem and virtue ultimately rules above all. The tax collector is mistaken for a great sage. The bandit leader is mistaken for a reincarnated ghost. The demon is mistaken for Buddha. Ultimately, it is the measure of a man or woman that ultimately defines who they are, as demonstrated by the warrior who fights to the death to defend the honor of those he wronged.
Unfortunately, the subtitles of Chinese Ghost Story suffers from a lazy and inept translation. The spell chants are never translated beyond "Abracadabra, hocus pocus!" and some of the spellings are simply incorrect. Still, it wasn't so awful that it impaired my enjoyment of the film.
If Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon piqued your interest, this movie is the next step into Wuxia cinema.
Chinese Ghost Story
It's hard to sum up the plot because it's a blending mishmash of several other plots. There's the reincarnated former long lost love, the bumbling tax collector, the clueless demon fighter, the grouchy monk, and a whole slew of bandits who dress up as ghosts.
But it wouldn't be called Chinese Ghost Story 2 if it was only about fake ghosts. There are real ghosts too - one is a hilarious big floppy monster with big fangs, big eyes, and big claws. The other is the main bad guy, who doesn't actually appear until the second half of the movie. And what a bad guy he is - a demon in the form of a false Buddha in the form of a giant centipede.
Get the picture yet? How about a freeze spell gone wrong, a guardian warrior who wields five katanas at once, and people flying around on swords like they were surfboards. The most hysterical part of the film is the tax collector's misuse of aforementioned freeze spell, managing to paralyze himself, the demon slayer who taught him the spell, and the ghost they're both trying to kill - so all three stand frozen for hours in a very awkward pose waiting for the spell to wear off. It's funnier than it sounds, trust me.
For all its wackiness, Chinese Ghost Story is serious stuff. Characters sacrifice themselves to save others, two sisters battle for the love of the tax collector, and the false Buddha chortles as he extols the virtues of fooling the peasantry with false deities.
In this movie, no one is who they seem and virtue ultimately rules above all. The tax collector is mistaken for a great sage. The bandit leader is mistaken for a reincarnated ghost. The demon is mistaken for Buddha. Ultimately, it is the measure of a man or woman that ultimately defines who they are, as demonstrated by the warrior who fights to the death to defend the honor of those he wronged.
Unfortunately, the subtitles of Chinese Ghost Story suffers from a lazy and inept translation. The spell chants are never translated beyond "Abracadabra, hocus pocus!" and some of the spellings are simply incorrect. Still, it wasn't so awful that it impaired my enjoyment of the film.
If Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon piqued your interest, this movie is the next step into Wuxia cinema.
Labels: Ghost Reviews
I don't remember why I decided to rent Chinese Ghost Story 2. It's probably because it's one of the best examples of a martial arts historical fantasy, and I use the word "historical" loosely.
It's hard to sum up the plot because it's a blending mishmash of several other plots. There's the reincarnated former long lost love, the bumbling tax collector, the clueless demon fighter, the grouchy monk, and a whole slew of bandits who dress up as ghosts.
But it wouldn't be called Chinese Ghost Story 2 if it was only about fake ghosts. There are real ghosts too - one is a hilarious big floppy monster with big fangs, big eyes, and big claws. The other is the main bad guy, who doesn't actually appear until the second half of the movie. And what a bad guy he is - a demon in the form of a false Buddha in the form of a giant centipede.
Get the picture yet? How about a freeze spell gone wrong, a guardian warrior who wields five katanas at once, and people flying around on swords like they were surfboards. The most hysterical part of the film is the tax collector's misuse of aforementioned freeze spell, managing to paralyze himself, the demon slayer who taught him the spell, and the ghost they're both trying to kill - so all three stand frozen for hours in a very awkward pose waiting for the spell to wear off. It's funnier than it sounds, trust me.
For all its wackiness, Chinese Ghost Story is serious stuff. Characters sacrifice themselves to save others, two sisters battle for the love of the tax collector, and the false Buddha chortles as he extols the virtues of fooling the peasantry with false deities.
In this movie, no one is who they seem and virtue ultimately rules above all. The tax collector is mistaken for a great sage. The bandit leader is mistaken for a reincarnated ghost. The demon is mistaken for Buddha. Ultimately, it is the measure of a man or woman that ultimately defines who they are, as demonstrated by the warrior who fights to the death to defend the honor of those he wronged.
Unfortunately, the subtitles of Chinese Ghost Story suffers from a lazy and inept translation. The spell chants are never translated beyond "Abracadabra, hocus pocus!" and some of the spellings are simply incorrect. Still, it wasn't so awful that it impaired my enjoyment of the film.
If Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon piqued your interest, this movie is the next step into Wuxia cinema.
It's hard to sum up the plot because it's a blending mishmash of several other plots. There's the reincarnated former long lost love, the bumbling tax collector, the clueless demon fighter, the grouchy monk, and a whole slew of bandits who dress up as ghosts.
But it wouldn't be called Chinese Ghost Story 2 if it was only about fake ghosts. There are real ghosts too - one is a hilarious big floppy monster with big fangs, big eyes, and big claws. The other is the main bad guy, who doesn't actually appear until the second half of the movie. And what a bad guy he is - a demon in the form of a false Buddha in the form of a giant centipede.
Get the picture yet? How about a freeze spell gone wrong, a guardian warrior who wields five katanas at once, and people flying around on swords like they were surfboards. The most hysterical part of the film is the tax collector's misuse of aforementioned freeze spell, managing to paralyze himself, the demon slayer who taught him the spell, and the ghost they're both trying to kill - so all three stand frozen for hours in a very awkward pose waiting for the spell to wear off. It's funnier than it sounds, trust me.
For all its wackiness, Chinese Ghost Story is serious stuff. Characters sacrifice themselves to save others, two sisters battle for the love of the tax collector, and the false Buddha chortles as he extols the virtues of fooling the peasantry with false deities.
In this movie, no one is who they seem and virtue ultimately rules above all. The tax collector is mistaken for a great sage. The bandit leader is mistaken for a reincarnated ghost. The demon is mistaken for Buddha. Ultimately, it is the measure of a man or woman that ultimately defines who they are, as demonstrated by the warrior who fights to the death to defend the honor of those he wronged.
Unfortunately, the subtitles of Chinese Ghost Story suffers from a lazy and inept translation. The spell chants are never translated beyond "Abracadabra, hocus pocus!" and some of the spellings are simply incorrect. Still, it wasn't so awful that it impaired my enjoyment of the film.
If Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon piqued your interest, this movie is the next step into Wuxia cinema.
Labels: Ghost Reviews
International Center for Ethereal Containment and Control | Blogger Templates by Gecko &
Fly.
No part of the content or the blog may be reproduced without permission.
Learn how to make money online.