A Rundown of the 13 Best Horror Movies I've Seen in the Past Year
[6 of 13]

THE AUTOPSY OF JANE DOE

(September 2016)

"Mommy told me something a little girl should know.
It’s all about the Devil and I’ve learned to hate him so.

She said he causes trouble when you let him in the room.

He will never ever leave you if your heart is filled with gloom.”

--“Open Up Your Heart”

The body of an unidentified young woman found under strange circumstances is brought in to the Tilden Morgue & Crematorium, where father and son Tildens, Tommy (Brian Cox) and Austin (Emile Hirsch) set about to uncover cause of death.

But this is far from a cut and dried post mortem, as the Tildens soon discover…

The Autopsy of Jane Doe is a rousing “Welcome Back!” for director André Øvredal (who was last seen ‘round these parts in the 2011 ¡Qué horror! rundown, with Trolljegeren).

This time though, there are no amusing, humorous chuckles to be had. This is dark and disturbing stuff, courtesy of a script by Ian Goldberg and Richard Naing, which is, honestly, a welcome surprise.

Familiar with some of Goldberg’s work on Once Upon a Time and Dead of Summer (for which Naing also wrote an episode), I hadn’t expected him capable of horror of this grimness. I’m glad to be divested of that impression.

So effective is the film that no less than Guillermo del Toro (“A fun, stylish, beautifully built funhouse of horror!”) and Stephen King (“Visceral horror to rival ALIEN and early Cronenberg. Watch it, but not alone.”) have sung its praises.

¡Qué horror! can do naught but agree…

“Whatever the hell happened in here… we are way past possible.”

(The Autopsy of Jane Doe OS’ courtesy of bloody-disgusting.com & mondotees.com.)

¡QUÉ HORROR! 2017

Candidate #13

THE AUTOPSY OF JANE DOE

(September 2016)

"Mommy told me something a little girl should know.
It’s all about the Devil and I’ve learned to hate him so.

She said he causes trouble when you let him in the room.

He will never ever leave you if your heart is filled with gloom.”

--“Open Up Your Heart”

The body of an unidentified young woman found under strange circumstances is brought in to the Tilden Morgue & Crematorium, where father and son Tildens, Tommy (Brian Cox) and Austin (Emile Hirsch) set about to uncover cause of death.

But this is far from a cut and dried post mortem, as the Tildens soon discover…

The Autopsy of Jane Doe is a rousing “Welcome Back!” for director André Øvredal (who was last seen ‘round these parts in the 2011 ¡Qué horror! rundown, with Trolljegeren).

This time though, there are no amusing, humorous chuckles to be had. This is dark and disturbing stuff, courtesy of a script by Ian Goldberg and Richard Naing, which is, honestly, a welcome surprise.

Familiar with some of Goldberg’s work on Once Upon a Time and Dead of Summer (for which Naing also wrote an episode), I hadn’t expected him capable of horror of this grimness. I’m glad to be divested of that impression.

So effective is the film that no less than Guillermo del Toro (“A fun, stylish, beautifully built funhouse of horror!”) and Stephen King (“Visceral horror to rival ALIEN and early Cronenberg. Watch it, but not alone.”) have sung its praises.

¡Qué horror! can do naught but agree…

“Whatever the hell happened in here… we are way past possible.”

(The Autopsy of Jane Doe OS’ courtesy of bloody-disgusting.com & mondotees.com.)

VIKAREN
(THE SUBSTITUTE)
(Review)

Ole Bornedal first came to my notice with his 1994 thriller, Nattevagten, which I heard good things about back then, and which he then remade three years later as the English-language Nightwatch, with Ewan McGregor, Josh Brolin, and Patricia Arquette.
Having missed the original, I made it a point to check out the redux, and found it to be an interesting, but flawed effort. It felt compromised, which happens quite often with English-language remakes, even if the original’s helmer is still in place.
After 1997, Bornedal fell off my radar, till he screeched quite forcibly back with 2007’s Vikaren (The Substitute). Following a bunch of students who suddenly discover their teacher is an alien, Vikaren sounded, at first blush, like Robert Rodriguez’s The Faculty.
So here I was, with a film that not only brought my attention back to Bornedal, but also potentially felt like a vindication of the “my teacher is an evil alien” idea, which was largely squandered by The Faculty (a double disappointment, since it was a tantalizing team-up between Rodriguez and screenwriter Kevin Williamson).


Vikaren is perhaps most interesting in that Bornedal (with co-writer Henrik Prip, who also plays inept school psychologist Claus) chooses a tone which successfully mixes horror, black comedy, and bizarre humour, to produce an entertaining hybrid that’s miles better than The Faculty, and yes, is indeed a vindication of the “my teacher is an evil alien” idea.
Said evil alien is one Ulla Harms (Paprika Steen), who goes down as one of the most gonzo, politically incorrect, apparently hormonal substitute teachers in film history. A significant portion of the film’s humour stems from Steen’s performance, as she essays this inhuman entity who’s heretofore only known violence, but has arrived on Earth in order to learn about love.
Yes. Love.
But, being an evil alien, Ulla naturally just goes about things the wrong way, almost instantly alerting her students to her otherness, and ultimately uniting these misfits long enough to take her extraterrestrial a$ on.

Another refreshing tack Vikaren takes is to have a bunch of young kids (as opposed to horny teenagers) as our protagonists. Trapped in a world of mostly clueless and ineffectual adults, who never listen when he really needs them to, Carl (then-newcomer Jonas Wandschneider) not only has to deal with a recent family tragedy, but also bring his classmates—some of whom don’t particularly like the “weird” kid—together to stop the alien’s insidious plans.
And while the film buckles in certain portions of its tail end (sudden leaps in logic and editing; a missed opportunity to highlight the class as a cohesive, empathetic unit), it’s still very much a wild and welcome ride that’s not quite like anything out there that comes readily to mind.
It’s oddball, yes, but it isn’t really the horror-comedy of titles like Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead or Christopher Smith’s Severance.
Actually, this feels closer to David Lynch territory. Sort of.


What must also not go unmentioned is the fact that, since the protagonists are essayed by child actors, the performances aren’t uniformly laudable.
There are some rough patches here, but nothing that can be considered a major stumbling block.
After all, Vikaren is all clearly in good fun.
Though I expected it to be more deadly serious than it turned out to be, Vikaren is nonetheless a title to be checked out.
At the very least, it’s loads better than The Faculty. (Yes, even without Famke.)

Parting shot: Almost as if to make The Faculty link even more overt, Vikaren also employs Faculty composer (and frequent Wes Craven collaborator) Marco Beltrami.


(Vikaren DVD cover art courtesy of wordpress.com; images and The Substitute DVD cover art courtesy of shocktillyoudrop.com.)

reVIEW (38)
FALLEN

“There are moments which mark your life. Moments when you realize nothing will ever be the same, and time is divided into two parts: before this, and after this.”

A bit of voice-over narration that sounds suspiciously as if it was lifted from Rosellen Brown’s excellent novel, Before And After, and a good case in point of what’s wrong with Gregory Hoblit’s Fallen: there is nothing original here.
A convicted serial killer named Reece (Elias Koteas) is executed for his crimes, but somehow manages to wreak more havoc on the innocent. Let’s see: Shocker, The First Power, The Horror Show.
Early on in the film, we are also shown that there is actually an entity that jumps from body to body, and it’s actually this entity that’s behind the murders. Ummm… The Hidden? Even Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday used this tack.

Now, one may argue that in this day and age, nothing is original anymore; Shakespeare’s done it all.
At the very least though, one can still give old material a new spin and come up with a good (or at times, great) piece of work: Ridley Scott’s visionary Alien reworked the Ten Little Indians scenario, gave us a haunted house in outer space, and produced a sci-fi/horror classic.
Sadly, Fallen doesn’t aim very high. It fails to do anything innovative with the material, and worse, doesn’t even succeed in giving the audience a thrill-packed ride.

“Cops are chosen people, Lou.”
-- Hobbes

The fault lies in Fallen’s script; written by Nicholas Kazan (who penned the riveting Reversal of Fortune for Barbet Schroeder), the screenplay is amazingly flat, a tension-free exercise in by-the-numbers suspense.
Denzel Washington (as Detective John Hobbes), though bringing a certain sensitivity and sympathy to his character, doesn’t get much to work with. And though I’m always glad to see Donald Sutherland (as Lt. Stanton), he isn’t given much to work with either, and ends up underutilized and wasted.

It seems a mystery why setting up the entire scenario for Hobbes and his adversary Azazel, takes a full hour, considering that anyone who’s seen the film’s trailer knows what Fallen is about.
Then, just when you think there could be a promising direction for the narrative to take—when theology teacher Greatta Milano (Schindler’s List’s Embeth Davidtz) mentions a possible source of help—Kazan’s script seems to just disregard the avenue completely, leaving the audience to languidly follow in the movie’s footsteps (or rather, bound two or three steps ahead, waiting impatiently for the film to catch up).
And though the squad room banter is snappy and commendable, one doesn’t really sign up for Fallen to see Hill Street Blues on the big screen either.

Of course, the film isn’t helped any by Hoblit’s matter-of-course directing.
Let’s face it—Hoblit’s Primal Fear wasn’t anything to write home about either; the only noteworthy thing about Primal Fear was Edward Norton’s stunning performance. (Well… okay. Laura Linney was good too.)
Sure, the Azazel POV shots in Fallen are interesting, but Michael Wadleigh did it in Wolfen, as did Paul Schrader in his remake of Cat People.
Save for a couple of intense body-jumping sequences about halfway through Fallen, most of the time, the audience is left with idle moments, allowing their minds to wander freely (much like the disembodied Azazel) and predict what’s going to happen next.
Ultimately, you just know how the film will end, including whose body Azazel will occupy in the final battle of wills with Hobbes.

“I have so many, many ways.”
-- Azazel

Curious, this penchant Azazel has for singing; I have yet to come across any reference to indicate Azazel has some musical bent (unless I’m reading the wrong books). The only link I can find (and it’s a long stretch, tenuous at best) is in the original Greek root for the word “tragedy.”
Or maybe Azazel just picked up the habit recently, in karaoke bars…
But I digress.
Going back to Fallen, ultimately we’re left with a drab film that doesn’t break any new ground, and spending two hours to find this out is, to my mind, not a very productive way to pass the time.
Not even the “surprise” concerning the voice-over bits (which are quite frankly annoying and intrusive) does much for the film.
Which all leads me to one inescapable conclusion: if you aren’t going to say anything new, then what’s the point?
As good old Jack once said in As Good As It Gets, “If you can’t at least be mildly interesting, then shut the hell up.”
A rather apt quote for this film, I think.

(Fallen 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, “Fallen Flat On Its Face.”)

SUNSHINE
(Review)

Before I wrote this review, Danny Boyle had only ever really disappointed me one time, with his disastrous adaptation of Alex Garland’s The Beach. He bounced back though, with a bloody-minded vengeance, with 28 Days Later (from a script by Garland), and followed that up with the charming curve ball, Millions.
Boyle then re-teamed with Garland for Sunshine.

Now, Boyle’s disappointed me one and a half times.

The Icarus II is on a mission.
Our sun is dying, and so is our planet. Following the failure of a previous mission (thus, the Roman numeral), Captain Kaneda (Hiroyuki Sanada, recognizable from the Ringu films) and his crew are presently in transit, with the payload that will signal a literal dawning of a new age on Earth, should they succeed.
The mission: to detonate a stellar bomb the size of Manhattan Island, in the sun, and thus, re-ignite it, giving humanity a second chance.

We’ve all seen this one before: the very survival of the human race in the hands of a crew on board a spaceship. (Sadly, we all still remember Armageddon and Deep Impact, don’t we?)
Now, not only is Sunshine a film from the Save the Planet from Destruction school, it’s also that particular sort of sci-fi film that seems to be an exercise in giving the Ten Little Indians a remedial course in Murphy’s Law.

We all know that in the course of completing their mission, the crew will make a singular, catastrophic decision that will then become the crux for the entire film’s narrative.
This will occur because, A) the decision was inherently the wrong one to make in the first place (see Alien), or B) human error will bollocks the whole thing up.
In Sunshine’s case, it’s B.
Fit will then continue to hit the shan as the story unfolds, repeatedly proving Murphy’s Law to the audience’s satisfaction, as the Indians drop like flies.
All the while, completion of the mission parameters will look increasingly bleak, till the last minute, when the day will be saved by the remaining crew members. (Survival of said crew members by end credits roll, uncertain.)

The reason Sunshine doesn’t do it for me is precisely because Boyle and Garland never seem to successfully transcend the confines of this type of sci-fi film. The structure of the film’s narrative is pretty much as outlined above, so the proceedings get pretty by-the-numbers in very short fashion.
Additionally, in a set-up like this, the characters aren’t usually very deep. The performances can elevate the material though, and supply us with subtext, with the impression that these people have lives beyond this ship, and have real relationships between each other. (Again, see Alien.)
Now, there aren’t necessarily any outright terrible performances in Sunshine. Most though, are serviceable, and not much else. Perhaps the only actors who manage to deliver something noteworthy are Cillian Murphy (as Capa; Murphy’s worked with Boyle and Garland before, on 28 Days Later), and Rose Byrne (as Cassie; Byrne was in Sofia Coppola’s brilliant Marie Antoinette, and incidentally enough, in the upcoming sequel, 28 Weeks Later).
Murphy is the only one whose character we really see in some significant personal private moments (sending off a message to his parents Earthside, for one), while Byrne’s Cassie brings a much-needed level of humanity to the crew (she’s the only one who seems to really give a damn about her other crew members, as opposed to blindly chanting the “complete the mission” mantra).

Beyond the fact that Sunshine isn’t as horrible as The Beach (and it’s certainly better than either of the asteroid movies), there isn’t much else I can say in its favor.
It’s serviceable sci-fi, but certainly not great. It does benefit, however, from Boyle’s sharp visual stylings, which go a long way to making the film an agreeable viewing experience.
Admittedly, Sunshine does have its moments.

Thus, it’s only a half-disappointment for me.
I mean, this is the writer-director team that gave the zombie film a welcome do-over with 28 Days Later, so when I first heard they were tackling science fiction, I got excited. So that’s months and months of anticipation, and now that I’ve seen it, well, Sunshine just doesn’t cut it.
Which is sad. I wanted to love this movie. I wanted to sit there as the end credits rolled and have that same rush I had after I’d seen 28 Days Later, that rush of having just experienced excellent cinema.
All I thought after Sunshine ended was, “Well, at least it wasn’t as bad as The Beach.”

(Sunshine OS courtesy of worstpreviews.com.)