¡QUÉ HORROR! 2019

Candidate #14

OVERLORD

(September 2018)

“This is war, ja? People die in many unfortunate ways.”

In a world where the trailer, one sheets, and other marketing material for Overlord did not exist, you’d be forgiven if you thought that for its roughly first half, the film was merely a specimen of the contemporary World War II film**, with its narrative lens filtered through the blood and grit of the “War is Hell” aesthetic (as opposed to the glorified nature of conflict in old school WWII cinema).

There’s a fleeting glimpse of a “sick” woman and a passing mention of “tar” with “some kind of a power” at about the 30 minute mark, but it’s only at nearly its halfway point that it takes the in-your-face plunge into a strain of pulp horror tragically rooted in the real life atrocities of Nazi medical experimentation.

It’s that plunge that gives Julius Avery’s sophomore feature (from a screenplay by Billy Ray and Mark L. Smith***) leave to gradually show its true colors.

“Does somebody wanna tell me what the f*ck is going on here?!”

True, there’s a healthy amount of action in Overlord, but it’s again that pulp horror portion of its cinematic DNA that makes it prime ¡Qué horror! material.

Think of it as the genre-infused prequel**** to Saving Private Ryan, where we get to see a mission that was instrumental in paving the way for Tom Hanks and company to storm Omaha Beach.

What’s also notable about Overlord are the brief moments it takes to subvert old school WWII cinema.

“… the Nazis are rotten sons’ a b!tches! And rotten sons’ a b!tches will do anything they have to to destroy everything that is good in this world!

“That is why we have to be just as rotten as they are!”

It’s the kind of film that casts Wyatt Russell in a role that would be the film’s nominal lead if this were an old school Hollywood WWII film, as a man of action and few words, a character that gets the job done, whose driving motivation is the capital M-“Mission.”

A character that brooks no deviations from the Mission, and is willing to unleash violence to achieve his goals, an exemplar for the ideal of the all-American can-do brand of machismo that was the stock-in-trade of the WWII cinema of yore.

Given the way the narrative unfolds, you can virtually see where the character arc of Russell’s Corporal Ford will end up.

There’s also a moment that involves Grey Worm himself, Jacob Anderson.

It’s a moment that brutally punctuates that, in the end, no amount of words can encapsulate the horrors of war, where any individual soldier is not a person with hopes and dreams, but rather just grist for the mill, expendable units ready to be jotted down as an “acceptable loss” on the road to victory.

The script also ensures the only prominent female in the narrative (Mathilde Ollivier) gets her own Moment or two, as she endeavors to help the American soldiers complete their all-important Mission.

“A Thousand-Year Reich needs thousand-year soldiers.”

But in the end, of course, this is not meant to be an accurate depiction of World War II, nor a complete deconstruction of WWII cinema, nor an existential war movie in the vein of Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line.

This is a more or less straightforward war movie that’s got action and some horror mixed into it. It’s genre infused cinema produced by J.J. Abrams, so settle in for a wild and bumpy ride.

“How does it feel, the blood of Eternity flowing through your veins?”

**  Granted, of course, that you were willing to suspend your disbelief long enough to accept the possibility of a desegregated military unit four years before President Truman signed Executive Order 9981.

*** Billy Ray (to whom a Story By credit is also given) co-wrote the screenplay for E. Elias Merhige’s Suspect Zero, while Mark L. Smith penned the script for Nimrod Antal’s Vacancy.

**** Because, hey, as proven by everything from Batman (the wrapping-up Gotham and the upcoming Pennyworth) to Breaking Bad (Better Call Saul) to The Big Bang Theory (Young Sheldon) to Game of Thrones to Star Wars, prequels are apparently the new sequel…

(Overlord OS’ courtesy of impawards.com.)

EDEN LAKE
(Review)

Like Ils, Vacancy, and The Strangers, Eden Lake follows the travails of a couple who run afoul of violent and murderous rascals, who terrorize and stalk their hapless prey to a bloody end.
Unlike Vacancy though, this one doesn’t wuss out at its climax.
And of all the films mentioned above, though Eden Lake is closest to Ils, writer/director James Watkins has made it a point to provide his work with a thematic backbone which serves as a subtle commentary on today’s youth and their relationship to violence.


Kelly Reilly and Hunger’s Michael Fassbender are Jenny and Steve, the unlucky couple this time out, who plan to spend the weekend at Slapton Quarry, before it is shortly to fall prey to real estate development, and become part of the gated community, Eden Lake Executive Homes.
It’s a simple and familiar set-up, which soon takes a turbulent turn, as Steve and Jenny realize that they must fight for their lives if they intend to make it back home.


What makes Eden Lake stand out from its ilk is our view of the couple’s stalkers, allowing us glimpses into the possible roots of the violence we see unfold onscreen.
And while the inexplicability of the events in Ils and The Strangers may heighten the thrills and tension, Watkins’ script takes the time to illustrate how the young really are sculpted by their environment and upbringing, infusing Eden Lake with an additional layer of relevance absent from its cinematic brethren. (The fact that this was released in England in 2008, where there was a rash of murders involving young perpetrators, is also a gruesome footnote to its chilling narrative.)


If I haven’t quite made it clear, allow me: Eden Lake doesn’t pull its punches.
While it may not reach the bizarro heights of certain examples of French extreme horror (at the moment, no one’s doing it quite like the French are), Eden Lake is still a particularly brutal bit of horror, which takes place in a world where justice—worldly or cosmic—does not seem to exist, and where the comeuppances happen to those who, arguably, deserve it the least.


Parting shot: Reviews of Ils, The Strangers, and Vacancy can be found in the Archive.

(Eden Lake UK quad and images courtesy of shocktillyoudrop.com.)

VACANCY
(Review)

As if to pay homage to the granddaddy of all “loony in a motel” films, Vacancy opens* with what can be viewed as the 21st-century descendant of the Saul Bass-designed title sequence from Hitchcock’s Psycho, a sequence which coolly segues into the license plate of the car of Amy (Kate Beckinsale) and David Fox (Luke Wilson), a couple under the strain of an impending divorce.
It’s late, they’re lost, and the car’s beginning to look like it could be trouble. After apparently getting some help from a mechanic (Ethan Embry, goofy stoner Mark from Empire Records and the Jennifer Love Hewitt-yearning Preston from Can’t Hardly Wait), the Foxes eventually end up at the Pinewood Motel, overseen by its weirdo manager, Mason (Frank Whaley, fantastic in Keith Gordon’s A Midnight Clear and Thomas Carter’s Swing Kids).
They’re forced to spend the night at the ratty Honeymoon Suite, and when David can’t find anything on TV, he sticks in a VHS tape.
That’s when the fun starts.

Much as Eli Roth’s Hostel did, Vacancy uses the idea of torture and violence as a commercial venture as the springboard for its plot, and succeeds in giving its audience a tense and engaging thriller.
This is doubly interesting to me, as the film’s central idea is also a reflection on the fact that this kind of horror film (alternately called “torture porn”—from a phrase coined by New York Magazine’s David Edelstein—or my personal preference, “gorno”) is proving very profitable for Hollywood.
If the baddies of Hostel and Vacancy can make a quick buck off the misery and torture of hapless innocents, than why can’t Hollywood rip off audiences the world over with shrill screams and fake blood?
For any of you out there though who may take offense at anything called “torture porn,” let me assure you, Vacancy’s on-screen gore quotient is minimal in the extreme. There is violence of course, but not the sort of splatter movie violence where we see dismemberment and eye gouging and disemboweling. Vacancy is more thriller than gorno, and it’s a taut little bugger too.

What makes Vacancy even more effective is the fact that you become embroiled in this sullen, largely toxic relationship between husband and wife, played effectively by Beckinsale and Wilson. You feel the tension and the regret that this couple share, and you sense the spectre of the love that was once there.
You sympathize with them so much, that when the fit hits the shan, it’s actually a relief that they don’t devolve into hysterical recrimination. (After all, isn’t the fact that your lives are in danger far more important than anything else?)
It’s also a relief to see Beckinsale in something other than body-hugging black leather making out with Ben from Felicity, so if just for that, Amy Fox is a singular triumph.

If Vacancy has a weakness though, it can arguably be found in an ending that both soft pedals what came just before it, and perhaps in striving for realism (no protracted “psycho gets up after being stabbed/shot/mortally wounded to relentlessly stalk his victim” sequence here), director Nimrod Antal (Kontroll) and writer Mark L. Smith wind up crafting a climax that feels somewhat truncated.
That last shot had a feeling of: What?! That’s it?
Still, all in all, the ride getting to that final shot is worth it.
And if you’re not gonna give me much more than a good story about people in extreme, life-threatening situations (ie. no social or political commentary amidst the grue), then I’d much rather see an effective, if somewhat flawed, thriller than scene after scene of pointless blood and gore.

* It’s a savvy title sequence that’s one of the most interesting I’ve seen this year. (And that one sheet just slays, too.)

Parting shot: I love the conflation “gorno” (gore + porno), as it has that sleazy vibe to it, and a majority of the sub-genre’s titles strike me as violence for violence’s sake.
Don’t get me wrong, I love me a good horror film. Always have, always will.
But once you’ve seen Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chain Saw Massacre or Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes, seeing other films of extreme violence (or, Heaven help me, seeing remakes of these classic films of extreme violence) just seems rather pointless, if they have nothing much more in their celluloid beyond the gore and grue.
Unless the point is to make a ton of money on a relatively low budget, which seems to be the case a lot of the time.
Now, when the film is a Hostel or a Saw, then I get it, and these are two of the films that give gorno its good name.
But when it’s a Turistas, or a Saw sequel, or a Texas Chainsaw remake (or prequel), or a Hills Have Eyes remake (or sequel remake), then these are the sort of films that give gorno its bad name.
And as you can see from the above sampling, they outnumber the goodies, believe me.

(Vacancy OS courtesy of wildaboutmovies.com.)