A Rundown of the 13 (plus) Best Horror Movies I've Seen in the Past Year
[8 of 13]

The Serial Killer Thriller Runners-Up

DAS LETZTE SCHWEIGEN
(THE SILENCE)
(July 2010)



Twenty-three years ago, an 11-year old girl was raped and murdered, and when another 11-year-old disappears, the tragic event not only impacts on the girl’s parents, but also those personally and intimately involved with the original crime.
As the UK quad below points out, if you’ve seen AMC’s The Killing, you’ll find echoes of that show here, though one must keep in mind that,
A) Das letzte Schweigen was made before The Killing premiered on AMC, and
B) Forbrydelsen, the original show upon which AMC based The Killing, was made before Das letzte Schweigen, and
C) Forbrydelsen and Das Schweigen, the novel by Jan Costin Wagner that Das letzte Schweigen was adapted from, were both released in the same year, 2007.


Just so you know.

AKMAREUL BOATDA
(I SAW THE DEVIL)
(August 2010)

Kim Ji-woon’s one of my favorite Korean directors, alongside Bong Joon-ho and Park Chan-wook, and his Akmareul Boatda is brutal.

Here, frequent Kim collaborator Lee Byung-hun goes all bloodthirsty vigilante on a serial killer (Choi Min-sik, who starred previously in Kim’s Choyonghan Kajok, though is probably best known for his role in Park’s Oldboy), in a film that mashes up the revenge fantasy and the serial killer thriller quite ably.

And like I said, brutally. Be forewarned…

* If you’re also into Kim, you should check out the anthology film, Inryu Myeongmang Bogoseo (Doomsday Book), if only for his contribution, Chunsangui Pijomul (“Heavenly Creature”), where a robot apparently achieves enlightenment.

TSUMETAI NETTAIGYO
(COLD FISH)
(September 2010)
Loosely based on actual Japanese serial killer cases, Sion Sono’s Tsumetai Nettaigyo is an excellent and sordid piece that chronicles the manner in which an unassuming tropical fish store owner is dragged towards dark and violent depths due to a chance encounter with a rival pet store owner.




A HORRIBLE WAY TO DIE
(September 2010)


In the same manner that Gareth Edwards’ Monsters was essentially an indie character piece with alien monsters running all about the place, Adam Wingard’s A Horrible Way To Die is an indie character piece with a serial killer as one of its characters.
The pacing, the narrative structure, the entire general approach to the material is very tellingly from this particular branch of the vast and sprawling cinematic tree, so whether or not you enjoy this film will probably be dictated by where indie character pieces fall on your personal movie tastes barometer.
You’ll either like and applaud the efforts of Wingard and writer Simon Barrett in applying that template onto genre material, or you won’t.

If you do like it, though, you’ll also find some nice performances by Amy Seimetz as a woman recovering from both alcohol and a very bad relationship, Joe Swanberg as a fellow AAer who shows an interest in Seimetz’s Sarah, and the ever-reliable AJ Bowen, who’s continued to impress since I first caught sight of him in past ¡Qué Horror! title, The Signal. Here, he plays Garrick Turrell, the aforementioned serial killer who has “several fan sites on the Internet dedicated to him, and a Facebook fan page with membership in the hundreds of thousands.”

Though I was never really that bowled over by Barrett’s past work on scripts for Dead Birds or Red Sands, I do appreciate what he’s done here, and heartily look forward to his subsequent collaborations with Wingard, which includes the very buzz-y festival darling, You’re Next, which plays an interesting variation on the home invasion template. (The other collaborations are shorts for the anthologies The ABCs of Death and V/H/S.)

(Das letzte Schweigen OS, The Silence UK quad, Tsumetai Nettaigyo OS, A Horrible Way To Die OS courtesy of impawards.com; Cold Fish UK quad courtesy of bloody-disgusting.com; I Saw the Devil OS courtesy of phantomcitycreative.com; A Horrible Way To Die DVD cover art courtesy of shocktillyoudrop.com.)

reVIEW (9)
HIDE AND SEEK

Hide and Seek is the story of psychologist David Callaway (Robert De Niro), whose wife (Amy Irving) loses her life suddenly and tragically, forcing him to not only cope with the loss, but care for their little girl Emily (Dakota Fanning). One move to upstate New York later, and Emily is having visitations from her new friend Charlie, and the expected strange goings-on begin.

The central riddle of Hide and Seek, of course, involves Charlie and his true nature. Is it supernatural, natural, or psychological? The big problem with the film is, the answer is painfully transparent, and the underlying reason for it, ultimately prosaic. To the credit of director John Polson (Swimf@n) and scriptwriter Ari Schlossberg, the clues are present, but there really isn’t much of a mystery here. A senile Angela Lansbury could solve this one without breaking a sweat.
And the red herrings are, at best, negligible. Admittedly, I’ve seen worse: the awkward and obvious herrings of Jane Campion’s In The Cut and Robert Zemeckis’ What Lies Beneath readily come to mind. And though a mystery’s red herring is supposed to distract you from the real solution, the herrings in Hide and Seek are instantly dismissable, as not only do they cross into the too-obvious zone, but the true answer is just so evident, that once you’ve latched onto it, you’ll be like a dog reluctant to give up its bone.

One of the other tragedies of Hide and Seek is that not only is talent of the caliber of a De Niro wasted here, but that of Oscar nominee Elizabeth Shue (for Leaving Las Vegas) and Famke Janssen (who did more as Michael Douglas’ injured wife in Don’t Say A Word than she ends up doing here) as well. Shue and Janssen don’t really play characters; they play plot necessities, the possible romantic interest, and the younger colleague/former student. We don’t really know much about them beyond the barest skeleton of a thumbnail sketch, and their on-screen time is limited, at best, visible only when the story’s events require their presence.
The lion’s share of Hide and Seek is handed over to De Niro and Fanning, which wouldn’t have been such a bad thing, if only De Niro had submitted more than the passably serviceable performance he gives here, and Fanning had done more than just steal a page from Christina Ricci’s Wednesday Addams, looking all gloomy and morose, like a pre-teen believer in heroin chic. One never really gets the sense of the presumably tremendous psychological weight these characters must be toiling under. In the end, everything is terribly mediocre and not very thrilling.

Interestingly enough, the space in which Hide and Seek operates is the same territory masterfully staked out by a certain kind of film from the recent Asian horror cinema boom. However, there is far more style and flair in Kim Ji-woon’s Janghwa, Hongryeon (A Tale of Two Sisters) or Park Ki-hyung’s Acacia, than in this piece of assembly-line Hollywood masquerading as a thriller.
Polson’s direction is casual when it should be taut. There is never any sense of something extraordinary taking place here. Instead, due to the throw-away manner in which the material is approached, it’s almost as if the filmmakers are saying, Nothing to worry about, this happens every day.

Any film should be involving, a mystery perhaps even more so. It should have the ability to suck you into its world, to subsume the audience into its twists and tangles, making you wonder, all the way until the final frame. It should be able to get you to participate in its game, get you to try and solve its riddle, to look as hard as you can for the hidden solution.
In Hide and Seek, with its answer plain to see, Polson and company don’t seem to care, one way or the other, if you choose to play their game. Well, all I can say to that is four simple words: sit this one out.

(The above review was previously published under the title “Sit This One Out.”)

(Hide and Seek OS courtesy of impawards.com.)