A Rundown of the 13 (+1) Best Horror Movies I've Seen in the Past Year

[5 of 13]

MANIAC

(May 2012)

While Elijah Wood returned to the hobbit thing in An Unexpected Journey, he also revisited the whole serial killer thing in Franck Khalfoun’s redo of William Lustig’s 1980 slasher, Maniac.

Written and produced by Alexandre Aja (with help from frequent collaborators Grégory Levasseur and Maxime Alexandre), this one has some brutally effective kills courtesy of the awesome Greg Nicotero and Howard Berger of KNB EFX, plus it’s largely presented to us from the POV of Wood’s Frank Zito, the titular psycho.

As far as content and narrative elements, this is certainly not the most original of this year’s rundown (it's the only feature remake on the list), but it’s definitely got a bunch of things going for it.

There’s that tricky POV cinematography (from the aforementioned Maxime Alexandre), a score by Rob* reminiscent of Georgio Moroder’s work for Paul Schrader’s Cat People remake, and an excellent callback to two of Jonathan Demme’s films. (Note: Playing what has become the signature theme to The Silence of the Lambs’ Buffalo Bill may not be the smartest choice for a music cue after you’ve just invited a virtual stranger up to your apartment.)

* The Maniac score is available as a limited vinyl release from Mondo with "variant white vinyls randomly inserted."
How awesome is that?!

(Maniac UK quad courtesy of impawards.com.)

¡Qué horror! 2013

Candidate #9

MANIAC

(May 2012)

While Elijah Wood returned to the hobbit thing in An Unexpected Journey, he also revisited the whole serial killer thing in Franck Khalfoun’s redo of William Lustig’s 1980 slasher, Maniac.

Written and produced by Alexandre Aja (with help from frequent collaborators Grégory Levasseur and Maxime Alexandre), this one has some brutally effective kills courtesy of the awesome Greg Nicotero and Howard Berger of KNB EFX, plus it’s largely presented to us from the POV of Wood’s Frank Zito, the titular psycho.

As far as content and narrative elements, this is certainly not the most original of this year’s ¡Qué horror! candidates thus far, but it’s got a bunch of things going for it.

There’s that tricky POV cinematography (from the aforementioned Maxime Alexandre), a score by Rob* reminiscent of Georgio Moroder’s work for Paul Schrader’s Cat People remake, and an excellent callback to two of Jonathan Demme’s films. (Note: Playing what has become the signature theme to The Silence of the Lambs’ Buffalo Bill may not be the smartest choice for a music cue after you’ve just invited a virtual stranger up to your apartment.)

* The Maniac score is available as a limited vinyl release from Mondo with "variant white vinyls randomly inserted."
How awesome is that?!

(Maniac UK quad courtesy of impawards.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.”)

reVIEW (37)
THE SKELETON KEY

Iain Softley’s The Skeleton Key is the story of Caroline Ellis (Kate Hudson), a caregiver who, disillusioned with her job at a New Orleans hospice, finds work through the classified ads at a rambling antebellum home in the Louisiana swamps, caring for Ben Devereaux (the impeccable John Hurt), who apparently suffered a stroke in the home’s attic.
Cue strange goings-on, and bang, we’re right in the middle of the latest Hollywood offering where things go bump in the night, and the audience is expected to scream shrilly and jump in their seats.

Now, to be fair, The Skeleton Key is far from horrible. It’s evident what Ehren Kruger (who also penned the scripts for the terribly flawed Arlington Road and Scream 3, as well as those of the English-language remakes, The Ring—which was disappointing—and The Ring Two—which was brilliant) wanted to do in The Skeleton Key, and the effort is admirable, though the story’s pacing could have done with a little more tightening, a problem also evident in Kruger’s script for The Ring.
Even though the question “So if that was the whole point of the exercise, why didn’t all this happen as early as Day 1?” is answered neatly and effectively by the film’s climax, the plot still manages to leisurely stroll through a languid Louisiana afternoon, when it should be walking at an ever-increasing clip (then breaking out into a good old-fashioned run for dear life) through alligator-infested swamps.
As with The Ring, the sense of a threat lurking ever closer doesn’t come completely through.

On the plus side though, as I said earlier, Kruger’s effort is admirable. Yes, there are ghosts (of a sort) in this tale of terror, but they are thankfully not of the recent Hollywood variety, rotting and moldering, yet still managing to look very slick and oh-so-MTV, all jerky and quick-cut.
And there is an attempt to mask the truth of the final reveal (you may or may not figure it out, in its bits or its entirety, depending on how involved you allow yourself to be, and how shrewdly observant you are), which turns out to be a whole lot more effective than some of the more recent Hollywood horror efforts like Hide and Seek.
It also helps that it isn’t painful to watch Kate Hudson, who, though not an exceptional actress, still manages to avoid the sort of performance one gets from a Julia Roberts or a Sandra Bullock. Caroline also just has enough psychological baggage to make her more than the usual one-dimensional cutout that sometimes populates this sort of film. And, as I said, John Hurt is impeccable. (The last time anyone made the most of what could potentially have been a non-role was when Glenn Close did the coma thing as Sunny von Bulow in Barbet Schroeder’s astounding Reversal of Fortune.) Additionally, Gena Rowlands is also effective as the prickly Violet Devereaux, Ben’s wife.

Sadly, though Iain Softley’s direction is certainly not flat, it still does not quite attain the level needed for the audience to actually feel, taste, and smell the locale, the kind of level that produces atmosphere, that makes us feel the cloying humidity of Louisiana; the kind of level achieved by Alan Parker in Angel Heart, or Paul Schrader in his remake of Cat People.
If memory serves me right, it was Schrader who said that he decided to set his redux of Cat People in New Orleans because it was the sort of city where strange things could be believed to be possible.
And yes, we are treated to certain facets of hoodoo, enough to make us shiver a bit, but far from enough to actually leave us marked, or, to use hoodoo parlance, “crossed.” So it’s sad that the setting isn’t fully exploited, given the eerie richness of New Orleans and the surrounding bayou country.

Ultimately, The Skeleton Key (like Softley’s “is Kevin Spacey an alien or not” effort, K-PAX) is a film that clearly wanted to be something a little off the beaten track, but in the end, turned out flawed and vaguely dissatisfying.
Still, though The Skeleton Key may not open all of its doors satisfactorily enough for the discriminating viewer, it is nonetheless an interesting space in which to move around.

(The Skeleton Key OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

(The above is a slightly altered version of a previously published review entitled “That Hoodoo That You Do.”)