ALTERED (Review)

ALTERED
(Review)

Brought to us by the Eduardo Sánchez half of the directing duo behind The Blair Witch Project, Altered kicks off with a night-time hunt conducted by three rednecks, who manage to bag their quarry, something that is definitely not a regular animal.
What happens from that point onward, as well as the pivotal event that set all of this in motion, informs the rest of Altered, a very effective, old school, low-budget science fiction/horror movie that, though marginally flawed, plays so much better than Project.
For one thing, we’re actually given real, significantly more substantial characters to consider, and that makes a world of difference.

Jamie Nash’s script (from a story by Nash and Sánchez) effectively paints a group of once-friends, all still tied together by their traumatic past. Think something along the lines of Sleepers, but with a genre bent, with some freakiness and gore thrown in for good measure.
Nash puts together a script that keeps the thrills at just the right pitch, while simultaneously giving us the impression that that singular moment in these men’s shared past has indeed affected the trajectory of their very lives, and is the sole reason that has brought them here, to this night which we see chronicled in Altered.

Additionally, the performances--by Without A Trace’s Adam Kaufman, October Road’s Brad William Henke, Project’s Mike C. Williams, Paul McCarthy-Boyington, and Catherine Mangan--are commendable, more honest and textured than your average genre movie, with the rapport of the principals palpable on the screen.
Sánchez also keeps the mystery intriguing and involving, as the narrative gradually unwinds, slowly letting us in on exactly what’s going on, as well as what went on, a decade and a half ago, that brought us to this very moment. He also gamely proves that he can do wonders with an actual script and not some gimmicky combo of shaky cam and clever marketing.


As much as I enjoyed Altered though, it’s still not all goodness and light.
There are moments when, in the stalwart aim of keeping the tension going, the film’s principal setting--a house--seems to be far larger than it should be, as individuals (and other things) seem to lose themselves for varying stretches of running time.
The narrative also has the annoying tendency of having things go from bad to worse because of dumb-a$$ decisions. Granted, they’re not the sort of decisions made out of stupidity, but rather those made based on emotion, but when they happen repeatedly, the distinct urge to yell at the on-screen idiots is difficult to keep a lid on.

Still, when all is said and done, Altered is a neat little genre trip that’s worth your time and attention, something to perhaps occupy your time while we all await Sánchez’s follow-up, Seventh Moon, starring Amy Smart, and again written by Jaime Nash.

There’s also The Objective to look forward to, the new film from the Daniel Myrick half of Project.
Hopefully, both movies will be as good--or even better--than this one.

(Altered DVD cover art courtesy of amazon.com; image courtesy of blogcritics.org.)

reVIEW (23)
OPEN WATER

Daniel and Susan (Daniel Travis and Blanchard Ryan) are off on a hastily-planned vacation, little knowing that they will face an ordeal that will test their will and resolve, an unpredictable twist of fate that leaves them stranded in shark-infested Open Water.

Shot by director/writer Chris Kentis with a regular camcorder—which gives it the look and feel of a faux documentary—Open Water is a decidedly uncomfortable film experience. Which is not to say it’s a bad film; it isn’t. The performances and the dialogue are rather good, giving us real people to identify with, as opposed to the annoyingly bland ciphers we had to endure in The Blair Witch Project, one of the films Open Water has been compared with. (More on that later.)
It’s just that it’s a film I don’t really care to watch a second time. Now, I’ve watched other films that I feel are far more harrowing than Open Water. Darren Aronofsky’s blisteringly hypnotic Requiem for a Dream and Gaspar Noe’s Irreversible come to mind, but the former is a horribly effective cautionary tale against drugs, and the latter’s storytelling technique (story’s end first, working our way towards the story’s beginning, ala Memento) manages to at least elevate the sordid material. Actually, Requiem also boasts of Aronofsky’s visionary and kaleidoscopic storytelling technique, so I think that’s an important point.
Technique.

Not that technique is totally absent from Open Water, but other than a stand-out sequence as we near midnight (the couple having been drifting for over half a day), most of the film is presented to us in a pretty straight-forward manner, contributing greatly to its documentary feel. Now, some may argue that without fancy camera movements and angles and MTV-editing, we are not distracted from the story. My problem here is this is not so much a story as it is a situation.
At the risk of generalizing, a film can either entertain, or it can actually say something; sometimes, a film can do both. Now, though what is “entertainment” is largely a subjective thing (I may think South Park is entertaining—and I may think it says something too—but to others, it may just be crass and offensive; in the same way, what others may find entertaining could be, for me, some Hollywood feel-good claptrap) but watching the discomfort and agony of two people is certainly not entertainment in my books.
And since the majority of the film is just us watching the poor couple suffer, we are even left with an unwelcome sense of having been a perverse and sadistic voyeur to the proceedings. The fact that the film is based on a real-life incident makes the viewing experience even less savoury: two people really were abandoned out in the middle of nowhere.
Open Water doesn’t seem to say anything either (except perhaps that bad things happen for no good reason). So if it doesn’t entertain, and it doesn’t really say anything significant or profound, then what is it there for? All it really seems to do is document an unfortunate couple’s suffering without leaving any signposts to tell us how this could have all been avoided.

Now, the film has been glibly described by some as “Jaws meets The Blair Witch Project,” which is really doing a disservice to Jaws, still one of Spielberg’s best, after all these years. Open Water though, does resemble Project (but it is a better film, if that’s any consolation). Both are low-budget films that really don’t have a story per se, but just throw individuals—and the audience—into an uncomfortable, tension-filled situation, and let the cards fall where they may.
And though I do believe horror is the great democratic leveler of all, and is there to jostle us and wake us up from complacency, I also want a story as the foundation and framework upon which that horror will be draped, not some situation. (Also one of the big problems I had with The Blair Witch Project.)
In the end though, if you intend to watch Open Water, prepare yourself for an unpleasant experience. And don’t expect any kind of comfort or even sense to the proceedings. This is a document of suffering, plain and simple.

(Open Water OS courtesy of impawards.com; DVD cover art courtesy of amazon.com.)

(The above is a slightly altered version of a previously published review entitled “Terror on the High Seas, Agony at the Multiplex.”)

reVIEW (11) 
SAW

With Saw IV set to open this Halloween, I thought it a good idea to resurrect this review, which was previously published in 2004 under the title, “The Big Blood-Drenched Picture.”

jigsaw n : a machine saw with a narrow vertically reciprocating blade for cutting curved and irregular lines or ornamental patterns in openwork
vt : to arrange or place in an intricate or interlocking way in the manner of the parts of a jigsaw puzzle
adj : suggesting a jigsaw puzzle or its separate pieces

James Wan’s Saw is the cinematic equivalent of a bear trap (to borrow an analogy from the film); once it begins, those rusty, razor-toothed jaws snap shut, and there’s little else you can do but sit riveted to your seat till the bitter, bloody end.
What if you woke up to find yourself chained to a pipe in a decrepit bathroom, without knowing who put you there, or why?
From this seed, the twisted and gnarled script of Saw—written by Leigh Whannell, who plays Adam in the film—grows.
And it turns out to be one of the best, most intense, and most involving English-language horror films made in quite a while.

An excellent marriage of content and technique, Wan’s directing style, modern and yet not too MTV for its own good, complements the non-linear script written by Whannell to a tight tee. In much the same way that the David Goyer-written script for Alex Proyas’ Dark City emulated the structure of a spiral (a central image of the film), Whannell’s script is a jigsaw puzzle, referring to a central story element of Saw. The plot is structured in such a way that events and revelations are parceled out to us like puzzle pieces, for us to feverishly plant in place, as we attempt to make out the big picture. And, deviously, Whannell and Wan give us pieces that can fit into their slot in more than one way, so our perception of the big picture can change in an instant.

Now, a short lesson: the difference between a plot twist, and a plot flip.
A plot twist is a sudden curveball in the story that you don’t see coming: the apparent good guy who turns out to be a baddie; the seemingly innocuous neighbor who turns out to be a government agent. Plot twists in recent films are (spoilers!!!): exactly who the sacrifice is in Darkness, bringing to light just how wise the titular evil really is, or the fact that there is no Totenkopf in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, merely the video ghost of Sir Lawrence Olivier playing God-in-absentia, as his clockwork creation continues to run through its programmed agenda. There is also the last-second revelation that Beatrix’s child is still alive, at the end of Kill Bill Volume One.
A plot flip is a single event or revelation in the story which results in a total re-evaluation of everything that came before it, a pivot point in the story which requires you to see the whole tale from a different perspective. A very popular plot flip is the ending of The Sixth Sense, which forces you to see the whole film in an entirely different light. There is also Neo’s awakening from The Matrix into the real world (though this occurs early on in the film’s running time), or the pair of flips in Janghwa, Hongryeon (A Tale of Two Sisters).

The wonderful thing about Saw is that it has twists and it has flips. Usually, a film will either have a bunch of twists, or one flip; it’s rare that a film will contain both. (The Village is another recent film that displays its fair share of flips and twists.)
In Saw, the twists and flips are sudden and savage, malevolent Jack in the Boxes that spring out with a demonic howl, leaving in their wake a stunned sense of revelation, as we stand in ever-widening pools of blood, for a few precious moments too shocked to move, lest another come leaping out of the darkness (which it sometimes does).

Now, two films Saw has been compared to since its release are The Blair Witch Project and Se7en, Project merely because of Saw’s low production cost (reportedly less than $10 million), Se7en because of its mood and content.
Se7en seems the more valid of the two comparisons, though I will say this: Saw displays genuine malignancy and unease, as opposed to the faux dress-me-up-in-moody-dimly-lit sequences of MTV malevolence that characterizes Se7en.*
While The Blair Witch Project is the resounding triumph of marketing over content, Se7en is the victory of style over substance.
Saw, for better or worse, is the real thing; it’s the Se7en I wish Se7en had been.

Premiering at the Sundance Film Festival last January to sold-out screenings, Saw is currently enjoying box-office success in the US. Clearly, Saw has hit a nerve, and audiences are twitching and screaming and grimacing, fingers slipping on blood-drenched pieces, as they try desperately to put the puzzle together before the clock runs out.

* Just to be clear: I'm not saying Se7en is a bad film. Not at all.
But I strongly feel that whatever's good about it, is all thanks to David Fincher. What I'm saying is, remove Fincher's style from the equation, and there doesn't seem to be too much in Andrew Kevin Walker's script to differentiate it significantly from any other random religion-obsessed serial killer thriller.
Meanwhile, I feel that there's enough in Whannell's script that, even if it had been helmed by a director less inventive than Wan, that the resultant film would have still been an effective one. 

Parting shot: Saw is intense horror, and quite possibly not to everyone’s tastes. A good barometer would be Se7en: if you found that agreeable to your cinematic palette, chances are, you’ll appreciate Saw.

(Saw OS’s courtesy of impawards.com.)