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

[11 of 13]

13 SINS

(March 2014) 

"... Great wealth is within your grasp. 36 hours from now, you can be a very rich man. All you have to do is complete 13 challenges.”

The last time Daniel Stamm was hanging ‘round these parts was for the ¡Qué horror! 2011 candidate, The Last Exorcism.

This time out, he barges into the Final 13 by helming the English language remake of Chukiat Sakveerakul’s 13 Game Sayawng, where a grotesque game show gradually turns its contestants into savage cutthroats, all for that next bit of green.

“I will dance with the Golden Toad.”

Not only is the action relocated to New Orleans, but the stakes are amped up considerably for the film’s protagonist, Elliot Brindle (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World’s Mark Webber): he’s got a pregnant soon-to-be wife (True Blood’s Rutina Wesley) and mentally disabled brother (Devon Graye, who played teen-aged Dexter Morgan) who are depending on him.

And while there are certain elements from the original which have been excised (thankfully, the awkward tonal shifts and, less so, the active female supporting role), there are also welcome additions: among them, a deeper glimpse into the game’s backstory, and some familiar genre faces (Ron Perlman and Pruitt Taylor Vince).

Plus, George Coe (who currently voices Woodhouse on Archer) doing the “Game Voice.”

“So says the Golden Toad: ‘A brave arm makes a short sword long.’”

The changes from the original (which include the specifics of most of the game’s challenges) serve to tighten the narrative’s plot and thematics, and also serve to foreground the dark empowerment and paranoia that engulfs Elliot as he gets further along in the game.

Ultimately, 13 Sins is not only a more refined and polished version of 13 Game Sayawng, it’s also a harder-hitting and more emotionally potent piece.

“Try to think of this in the most positive, empowering way as a gun pointed to your head.”

Parting Shot: This could actually make an interesting double feature with Cheap Thrills...

(13 Sins OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

¡Qué horror! 2014

Candidate #14

13 SINS

(March 2014) 

"... Great wealth is within your grasp. 36 hours from now, you can be a very rich man. All you have to do is complete 13 challenges.”

The last time Daniel Stamm was hanging ‘round these parts was for the ¡Qué horror! 2011 candidate, The Last Exorcism.

This time out, he’s helmed the English language remake of Chukiat Sakveerakul’s 13 Game Sayawng, where a grotesque game show gradually turns its contestants into savage cutthroats, all for that next bit of green.

“I will dance with the Golden Toad.”

Not only is the action relocated to New Orleans, but the stakes are amped up considerably for the film’s protagonist, Elliot Brindle (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World’s Mark Webber): he’s got a pregnant soon-to-be wife (True Blood’s Rutina Wesley) and mentally disabled brother (Devon Graye, who played teen-aged Dexter Morgan) who are depending on him.

And while there are certain elements from the original which have been excised (thankfully, the awkward tonal shifts and, less so, the active female supporting role), there are also welcome additions: among them, a deeper glimpse into the game’s backstory, and some familiar genre faces (Ron Perlman and Pruitt Taylor Vince).

Plus, George Coe (who currently voices Woodhouse on Archer) doing the “Game Voice.”

“So says the Golden Toad: ‘A brave arm makes a short sword long.’”

The changes from the original (which include the specifics of most of the game’s challenges) serve to tighten the narrative’s plot and thematics, and also serve to foreground the dark empowerment and paranoia that engulfs Elliot as he gets further along in the game.

Ultimately, 13 Sins is not only a more refined and polished version of 13 Game Sayawng, it’s also a harder-hitting and more emotionally potent piece.

“Try to think of this in the most positive, empowering way as a gun pointed to your head.”

(13 Sins OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

I did this first quite a while back, compiled a list of the best and most recent horror movies I’d seen. I always meant to do it again, on a regular basis, but never quite got around to it.
Now though, I’d like to change that.

To commemorate Halloween ’08, here’s a baker’s dozen of the most effective horror titles in recent years, one a day, till we get to October 31.
Note that since what’s key here is most recent, this is in no way a countdown towards the best contemporary horror movie. As we get closer to Halloween, we’ll just be moving forward in time, till we reach the most recent noteworthy horror film I’ve had the opportunity to see and review here at the Iguana. (Dates indicated are the film’s official premiere, as per imdb.com.)

I should also point out that I’ve yet to see some key foreign language horror entries that have generated a fair amount of buzz in the past months, including Jaume Balaguero and Paco Plaza’s [REC], Tomas Alfredson‘s Lat den ratte komma in (Let The Right One In), and Ole Bornedal’s Vikaren (The Substitute).
It’s entirely possible that this list would look a tad different if I had. (At any rate, there’s always next year’s list.)

For now though, here’s #1…


A Rundown of the 13 Best, Most Recent Horror Movies I’ve Seen
[1 of 13]
THE LAST WINTER (September 2006)


The Last Winter (co-written, produced, edited, and directed by Larry Fessenden) is an absorbing piece of environmental horror that paints a sinister portrait of nature turned vicious, as it strikes back at the species that has systematically plundered it for its resources, unmindful of the consequences.

Read the entire review here.

(The Last Winter OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

HELLBOY II:
THE GOLDEN ARMY
(Review)

If you give the Iguana a visit every now and again, you’ll most likely know that I love me my Guillermo del Toro.
The initial blush of curiosity with which I greeted his odd little vampire tale Cronos, has over the years blossomed into a reverent admiration for his exquisitely-told tales of dark, macabre fantasy.
The thing of it is, though, the original Hellboy holds the dubious distinction of being the film I least like in del Toro’s oeuvre. The clunky, ill-paced script and the disappointing, anti-climactic wrap-up, left me with a cinematic experience that suffered terribly when put up against his other popcorn effort, Blade II. (Even del Toro’s first Hollywood foray, Mimic, compromised as it was, was still a lot more fun than Hellboy turned out to be.)
Thus, coming into Hellboy II: The Golden Army, all I really hoped for was that it would at least be better than the original.
Thankfully, it is.
On the downside though, it displays some of the same problems Hellboy had.


Unlike the original (which was adapted from the Hellboy comic, Seed of Destruction), The Golden Army springs from a script penned by del Toro, centering on the Elven Prince Nuada (Blade II’s Luke Goss), who seeks to wage war on humanity by loosing the titular, purportedly indestructible, army upon the world.
The problem with del Toro’s script isn’t its premise though (which is serviceable enough), but rather the manner in which its myriad parts—most of which work rather well, I should note—interact with each other.


The action set pieces—particularly those which feature the bada$$ Nuada—are certainly better than those in the original.
The character bits are—again, as with the original—the best sections of the entire film.
Even the climax, which turns on a decidedly emotional pivot, works far more effectively than Hellboy’s.
But as much as most of the individual narrative pieces do their work, del Toro never quite finds the right rhythm to make the whole a smooth, flowing ride. Comedic bits—a few, sadly strained—blunder into character moments, which then bump up against explosions and fisticuffs.
The erratic pacing of the whole then results in a two-hour running time that ultimately seems longer.


Script problems aside though, The Golden Army is still a worthwhile cinematic experience, and there’s a number of folk that need to be commended for that.
First, the familiar del Toro stalwart, cinematographer Guillermo Navarro (who shot the original Hellboy, as well as Cronos, El espinazo del diablo, and El laberinto del fauno, for which he took home an Oscar, as well as a whole bunch of other honours), who captures all the wonder evident in the costumes of Sammy Sheldon (who also worked on Stardust, V For Vendetta, and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), and the production design of Stephen Scott (also on the credit roll of Hellboy).


Secondly, there’s the supremely kick-a$$ fight sequences, courtesy of Jackie Chan cohort, Bradley James Allan, who also choreographed The Chronicles of Riddick.
Here, Allan’s work manages to give Blade II’s fight sequences a decent run, while avoiding any overt CGI flourishes (which slightly mar some moments in Blade II).
And hey, Allan also did stunt double duty on the Chan-produced Dak ging san yan lui (Gen-X Cops), so that’s a doubleplusgood in my books.


Thirdly, there’s the amazing creature work by Mike Elizalde’s Spectral Motion, who likewise did time on the original Hellboy (and whose work can also be seen in Monkeybone, Altered, and Lady in the Water, as well as the upcoming Seventh Moon and the live-action Blood: The Last Vampire adaptation).
Realizing in practical terms creature designs which originated from del Toro’s sketchbook, Elizalde supplies 15 creatures for The Golden Army (as compared to the mere 5 for Hellboy), including the incredible Angel of Death.
With the astounding work done here Elizalde proves that genuine characters may be found in the midst of latex and animatronics, and with the effects legend Stan Winston recently departed, it’s comforting to know there are others who can fill the void of his passing.


Giving invaluable assistance in the discovery and realization of those characters, we should also note the contributions of Doug Jones, whose physical performances do much to inform the costumes he wears with a vital and potent substance, and Family Guy/American Dad creator Seth MacFarlane, for bringing bags of amusing levity as the voice of by-the-books BPRD operative, Johann Krauss.
Sadly though, while Goss once again brings a palpable level of pathos to his character, as he did in Blade II, Anna Walton, who plays Nuada’s twin, Nuala, isn’t given much to do beyond looking suitably princess-like. Worse, the script stymies her character on occasion just to get to the next action set piece, or to move the narrative along. If she’d only immediately said, “You should really stop that jumping bean from reaching water,” or “Oh, by the way, since Nuada’s my twin, he can find me wherever I am,” then the film’s characters would have been spared boatloads of grief…


Ultimately, what The Golden Army seems to prove is, if del Toro must do a popcorn movie, then he really should be kept away from the script, or at the very least, have a co-writer by his side (Blade II was written by David Goyer, and Mimic was co-written with Matthew Robbins, who also penned Dragonslayer and *batteries not included).
It seems as if del Toro’s storytelling is better suited to films like El espinazo del diablo or El laberinto del fauno, where action set pieces aren’t required to punctuate the narrative, and the only real fuel that’s needed is his rich and seemingly boundless taste for the fantastic.

Parting shot: Reviews of del Toro’s Blade II and El laberinto del fauno can be found in the Archive, alongside reviews of Mutant Chronicles and The Last Winter (which star Hellboy himself, Ron Perlman).

(Hellboy II: The Golden Army OS [design by BLT & Associates] and Angel of Death character OS courtesy of impawards.com; images courtesy of latimes.com [Guillermo del Toro and Mike Elizalde, photos by Egon Endrenyi]; kungfucinema.com; mtv.com; and shocktillyoudrop.com.)

Thanx to Rej and MeAnn of New Worlds, for the cool headgear, the reading material, and of course, the tickets to the Troll Market, and to Jeb, for coming along for the ride…

THE LAST WINTER
(Review)

“Alaska, vast wilderness of the north. Land of great natural beauty and diversity. This is rugged country, land of black gold.”
-- North Industries company video

The land is changed... the biosphere turned, become unfamiliar and erratic. I would say vengeful, but nature is indifferent to us. We fight for our survival, not nature’s.
There’s a fierceness in the wind I’ve never felt before—something is being unleashed from the softening permafrost.
-- An excerpt from James Hoffman’s journal

Two decades after a test well was drilled into a section of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, North Industries (“Trust. Risk. Results.”) stands poised to begin an earnest push towards erecting drill sites and pipelines, with an eye towards discovering more oil deposits as the U.S. stubbornly marches towards its goal of “energy independence.”
They just need the thumbs up from the “greenies,” environmental experts who can determine whether the move will impact adversely on the land.
But something is happening at the North Industries base camp. Something whose epicenter seems to be that test well. Something that will brutally remind the North Industries team that the human race doesn’t call the shots.


The Last Winter (co-written, produced, edited, and directed by Larry Fessenden) is an absorbing piece of environmental horror that paints a sinister portrait of nature turned vicious, as it strikes back at the species that has systematically plundered it for its resources, unmindful of the consequences.
The struggle between those who would continue to simply take and those who would prefer circumspection is solidified in the persons of company man Ed Pollack (Ron Perlman), who leads the North Industries team, and James Hoffman (James LeGros), one of the two on-site “greenies,” who senses the wrongness in the air, but cannot quite pin it down, initially focused as he is on numbers and measurements.
It’s the tension and debate between these two characters—and the excellent performances by the actors—that anchors The Last Winter, even as the on-screen events serve to unravel the tight community of the North Industries team.


With a premise that contains much of the action within the confines of the base camp, the scenario is one we’ve seen in cinema before, of comrades co-existing in a claustrophobic space, cut off from civilization, in a situation where the stresses are monumental, and the individuals’ mental health is always placed in a questionable light.
It’s the scenario of Ridley Scott’s Alien, Wolfgang Petersen’s Das Boot, or, more to the point, John Carpenter’s The Thing.
The Last Winter is, in fact, the first time since Carpenter’s classic remake that the scenario has been so bloody effective.
Fessenden’s script and steady hand, coupled with G. Magni Ágústsson’s excellent cinematography and the rest of the commendable cast, rams the situation home, not only in the slow and steady build-up, but also in the chilling desperation of the film’s third act.


The atmosphere of tension and uncertainty Fessenden captures, where everything—even the swerving and gliding camerawork of Ágústsson—becomes suspect and worthy of fear, is all-encompassing, a shroud of unease which blankets the audience for a majority of the film’s running time.
Even in the face of M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening—which engenders its own air of suspense and paranoia in relation to nature’s cruel charms—Fessenden’s achievement in The Last Winter still remains cinema’s most effective environmental creepfest of recent memory (and without Shyamalan’s bad case of miscasting).
It’s this sense of nervous anticipation which permeates The Last Winter—of what could be just around the corner and in the next few minutes of running time—that keeps the film tight and riveting during the deliberately paced first act.


I’d be remiss if I didn’t also make mention of the pair from Friday Night Lights: Connie Britton (who plays Abby Sellers) and Zach Gilford (as the youngest member of the team, Maxwell McKinder, son of Pollack’s close friend).
I may not have gotten into the show, but these two are also a large part of what makes The Last Winter work. There’s a quiet, yet solid strength to Britton’s Abby (who is also simultaneously an ambiguous figure whose true motivations aren’t readily apparent), while Gilford’s Maxwell is the first to twig to the nature of exactly what is out there in the ice and snow—the bit with the camera in the dead of night is a fantastic sequence—his performance largely understated, yet hauntingly effective.


The Last Winter is the kind of horror film I love, the kind that unsettles and disturbs and actually says something in the process.
Yes, there are montages and stock footage that serve to drive Fessenden’s point home, but there are also more subtle and devious bits to keep the audience unbalanced: disquieting shots of bleak fields of ice, the stark whiteness broken by lone objects. Footprints that stop dead in the snow. Scrawled journal pages. A pair of boots, abandoned.
There’s also that damned killer tease of a final shot.
And there’s Tom Laverack’s “Running Out of Road” (with Fessenden on sax and backing vocals), a post-millennial dirge to the planet we’ve systematically destroyed, and the dead end we’re still careening towards; the film’s final grace note, that turns the expertly sustained horror of The Last Winter into a wracking grief for all that we’ve lost, and all that we still stand to lose.

The world we grew up in is changed forever.
There is no way home.
-- An excerpt from James Hoffman’s journal

“I really think that the best horror is derived from real life and the fact is, real life is filled with issues. I don't know if they need to be partisan issues, but they're political and that there are solutions and there's debate as to how to address things.
“In the case of The Last Winter, we can disagree all we want about how to solve problems, but the problems don't change. They can get worse and worse and you can keep arguing all you want, but the f*cking world can collapse around you. You can do something or not, but the world ain't waiting for us to come up with solutions. It's going to do what it's doing and it's moving in a very scary direction.”
-- Larry Fessenden

Parting shot: A double bill of The Last Winter and Davis Guggenheim’s An Inconvenient Truth should scare the living daylights out of its audience.
Throw The Happening in there and turn everyone into instant Greenpeace members…
Or at the very least, make them check out this section of the world wide web…

(The Last Winter OS courtesy of impawards.com; images courtesy of glasseyepix.com and shocktillyoudrop.com.)

MUTANT CHRONICLES
(Review)

“The Chronicles foretell of the release of the enemy, the ruin of the world, the final days of our age. But, they also prophesy the survival of Man. That Nakhdan the Deliverer, shall walk reborn among us, and deliver us from destruction.
“It is in the service of that prophecy that we are now irrevocably bound.”

Following an introductory sequence that establishes the nature of the film’s threat (an apparently alien machine which first landed here at the end of the Ice Age), we are quickly thrust into the middle of Simon Hunter’s Mutant Chronicles:
The year, 2707; the earth is ruled by four corporations—Capitol, Bauhaus, Mishima, and Imperial—massive entities who wage an endless war over what little natural resources are left on the planet.
But something is about to awaken that ancient, extraterrestrial machine, and only in the face of this all-consuming threat, will mankind unite, in a desperate bid to save the planet, and the entire human race.


The set piece that kicks off Mutant Chronicles—a border skirmish between Capitol and Bauhaus—effectively mires the audience, along with the suffering soldiers, in the brutal conflict that holds the world in a death grip.
Utilizing a grungy steampunk milieu for this particular future, Hunter (working off a script by Philip Eisner, who also wrote Paul W.S. Anderson’s Event Horizon) presents this section of the global conflict as World War I trench warfare revisited.
The explosions, the screams, the lethal gas, it’s all here, depicting war in a horribly intimate and visceral light.
There is nothing of today’s video game warfare here, with smart weapons launched remotely from locations insulated and far removed from the battlefield. Instead, this is the brutal combat of the early 20th century, where the blood, the sweat, and the dirt, are all too real.
But this mayhem pales in comparison to the bloodshed which ensues once the alien machine is set in motion, and implacable, inhuman hordes are loosed upon the already ravaged world.


Enter the squad of military personnel—which includes The Mist’s Thomas Jane, Sin City’s Devon Aoki, and Speed Racer’s Benno Fürmann—and the suicide mission that is quickly cobbled together by Brother Samuel (Ron Perlman), who represents the Order of Nakhdan, and is guided by the writings in the sacred Chronicles, an ancient tome protected by the silent Guardian, Severian (Perlman’s co-star in Hellboy II: The Golden Army, Anna Walton).
It’s in the hands of this tiny band that the final hope of the human race lies.


What is perhaps the most commendable trait of Mutant Chronicles is, it’s the sort of film that valiantly works around its budgetary limitations.
What we have here is an ambitious genre production that dares to tell a sweeping, wartorn tale of faith in the face of adversity, on a far humbler budget than your average Hollywood tentpole.
There’s quite a lot of green screen, CGI, and other assorted effects work here that, yes, look rather dodgy, but they’re in service to a narrative that boasts subtext, however fleeting, which is more than can be said for any number of big budget Hollywood monstrosities.


At its core, Mutant Chronicles is about how faith can thrive in even the most bitter and desperate circumstances, and that all will turn out right in the end, though perhaps not the way we may anticipate.
Given another pass at the script, a more dynamic action coordinator, and a Hollywood-sized budget, Mutant Chronicles could have stood a chance of turning out to be a genre classic.
As it is, despite its flaws and shortcomings, it’s still nonetheless an interesting, imaginative, and worthwhile watch.


Parting shot: It’s too bad that we see too little of Sean Pertwee and Shauna Macdonald, and John Malkovich’s role here is all but a blip on the film’s running time.

Parting shot 2: The film is loosely based on the Mutant Chronicles RPG originally published in 1993.

(Images courtesy of omelete.com.br [Mutant Chronicles OS and film images] and aintitcool.com [Mutant Chronicles quad].)

AFTERTHOUGHTS (92)
MAKE A DIFFERENCE



What more is there to say?

(Banner courtesy of hetfet.org.)

AFTERTHOUGHTS (90)
“RIGHT THERE! RIGHT THERE!”

And more fun with Chuck…



(Video courtesy of youtube.com.)

AFTERTHOUGHTS (89)
“WHAT’S YOUR FAVOURITE WORD?”

More fun with James Lipton…



(Video courtesy of youtube.com.)

AFTERTHOUGHTS (88)
“LATINO!”

Big Red auditions for Yasmine and Crash…



(Video courtesy of youtube.com.)

AFTERTHOUGHTS (87)
“AND YOU DON’T WANT TO GET ON THEIR BAD SIDE…”

A great PSA from Big Red…



(Video courtesy of youtube.com.)

AFTERTHOUGHTS (86)
“THAT’S WHAT YOU GUYS DO TOO?”

Okay, this is more like it…
Following the slight hiccup that was the American Gladiators cross-over, here’s Big Red comparing notes with Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson…



(Video courtesy of youtube.com.)

AFTERTHOUGHTS (85)
“COOL!”

Okay, this one’s the shortest spot so far, and the first one that kind of left me going, “Meh…”
At any rate, a few more cross-overs are rumoured to be on the way, presumably before the July 11 opening of The Golden Army.
Till then, here’s Big Red again…



(Video courtesy of youtube.com.)

AFTERTHOUGHTS (84)
“BOOYAH!”

And I thought Chuck vs. Hellboy was cool.
Now Big Red takes on… James Lipton!



(Video courtesy of youtube.com.)

AFTERTHOUGHTS (82)
“LUNCHBOXES!”

While we’re waiting for Mr. Bartowski’s return this fall, here he is, with… ummm… Hellboy.



(Video courtesy of youtube.com.)

reVIEW (34)
BLADE II

With Guillermo Del Toro’s Hellboy II: The Golden Army coming rapidly down the pike, I thought to look back at his immensely enjoyable Blade II.
And as an added bonus, I’ve also resurrected a review of Blade: Trinity, which is somewhere in the Archive.
Sorry, but I’m not enough of a masochist to actually endure Steve Norrington’s Blade again just so I can write a review of it. That’s for far braver souls than I.

Now if you’re a regular ‘round here at the Iguana, you’ll know that I love me my vampires, so I’m rather picky when it comes to my suckheads.
Well, I was pretty underwhelmed with Steve Norrington’s stab at the genre with the original Blade. Though it did have Stephen Dorff and Udo Kier in it, the movie itself was fairly unimpressive.
Not so with Guillermo Del Toro’s Blade II.

To begin with, this sequel’s actually got a director behind the wheel, someone with a clear and focused vision of the film he wants to make, and the skill and creativity to bring that vision to celluloid life.
That director then has a script by David S. Goyer, who, apparently realizing that a Blade movie is, in essence, a Wesley Snipes action vehicle, throws out all that bush league vampire politicking from the original, and serves up a high-flying, kick-a$$ ride, with crateloads of crazy, wonderful toys that make nasty undead meanies go boom.

Aside from Del Toro and Goyer, there’s a whole bunch of other key personnel involved that make Blade II have the big, sharp, and formidable teeth that it does.
There’s the triple threat of cinematographer Gabriel Beristain (The Ring Two and The Invisible), long-time David Cronenberg collaborator, production designer Carol Spier (who also worked on Christophe Gans‘ ultra-creepfest, Silent Hill), and costume designer Wendy Partridge (who also dressed up the bizarre residents of Silent Hill, as well as the weirdoes on Del Toro’s Hellboy).
Then there’re artists Tim Bradstreet, who serves as Vampire “Look” Consultant, and Mike Mignola, who serves as Visual Consultant. (Mignola would, of course, collaborate with Del Toro again for the Hellboy films.)
Tippett Studios (founded by special effects wizard Phil Tippett) then provides creature effects, bringing the film’s Reapers—vampires who feed on other vampires—to hideous, hellish life.
With all this top caliber talent behind the camera, Blade II looks effin' fan(g)tastic (sorry), and feels like you’ve walked straight into a Vampire role-playing game, with a whole lotta guns and testosterone, of course.

And in front of the camera, you’ve got the one-two Big Baddie punch of Thomas Kretschmann and Luke Goss, as vampire ancient, Overlord Eli Damaskinos, and Reaper Jared Nomak, respectively. This pair bring the necessary gravity to their antagonists’ roles that make the film’s bad guys substantial and worthy opponents, with a presence that cannot be ignored nor dismissed.
Kretschmann would, of course, go on to appear in Roman Polanski’s The Pianist and Peter Jackson’s King Kong, while 80’s music junkies may—or may not—recall Goss as part of the duo, Bros. (Goss returns to Del Toro-landia as Prince Nuada in Hellboy II: The Golden Army.)

Anther key performer is Ron Perlman, as Bloodpack member, Reinhardt. Perlman had previously worked on Del Toro’s debut feature Cronos, and would, like Mike Mignola, re-team with the director for the Hellboy films. As part of the Bloodpack, Perlman’s Reinhardt has been training two long and hard years to take down Blade, only to have to work alongside him, to deal with the Reaper problem. The macho antagonism between Reinhardt and Blade make for some interesting and amusing moments in Blade II.
Among the Bloodpack, you’ll also find Donnie Yen, as Snowman. Yen, is of course known for his work on the Hong Kong martial arts scene. On Blade II, Yen also handles the martial arts choreography, resulting in some awesome fight sequences, the best in fact, in the Blade trilogy. (Yen would subsequently be seen as Sky in Yimou Zhang‘s visually ravishing Ying Xiong (Hero). This year he headlines Wilson Yip‘s Dao Huo Xian (Flash Point), and next year, Gordon Chan’s highly-anticipated remake of the supernatural thriller, Painted Skin, which revolves around “a vampire-like woman who eats the skins and hearts of her lovers.” Yum.)

But for all those impressive pluses, there is a rather glaring minus, in Leonor Varela, who plays Damaskinos’ daughter, Nyssa. At this juncture, I’d like to point out that in the old tongue, “Nyssa” means “She Who Does Not Know How To Act.”
It’s sad that Varela is given one of the bigger supporting roles in Blade II, as her performance is far from convincing. Kretschmann and Goss manage to emote far better from beneath Nosferatu-like make-up appliances than Varela does with her flawless, God-given skin.
Still, even with that drawback—and some sequences where the CGI isn’t quite pixel-perfect—Blade II is still light years better than either Norrington’s original, or Goyer’s Blade: Trinity.

That singular moment, early on in Blade II, when Snipes leaps off a rooftop, and the camera twists and turns along with him in his rapid descent to the street below, then tags along with the bullet as it speeds towards an escaping vampire, is the moment when it all fell into place for me. In that bravura, CGI-assisted move, Del Toro pulled me onto the kinetic ride that is Blade II, instantly imparting an instinctual knowledge that I could trust him, because he knew exactly what he was doing.
And he did.
This is one of the few Marvel movies that actually has the brazen and ballsy energy of the best comic books out there, and in this day and age, should serve as an important touchstone, when audiences seem content to allow limp entries like Ghost Rider and the Fantastic Four films to actually turn a profit.
Thus far, this also remains Del Toro’s best Hollywood movie to date. We will, of course, have to re-evaluate after Hellboy II: The Golden Army, but until then, you’d do well to take Blade II in, ‘cause Del Toro slathers enough butter, blood, and adrenaline on this popcorn movie to make it all worth your while.

Parting shot: Reviews of Blade: Trinity, Ghost Rider, the Fantastic Four movies, Guillermo Del Toro’s El Laberinto Del Fauno (Pan’s Labyrinth), the Hellboy animated film, Sword of Storms, as well as Hideo Nakata’s The Ring Two and David S. Goyer’s The Invisible (both of which were shot by Blade II cinematographer Gabriel Beristain), can be found in the Archive.

(Blade II OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

MASTERS

OF HORROR
Season 2
Episode 5

“Pro-Life”
Written by Drew McWeeny & Scott Swan; directed by John Carpenter

This could very well have ended up the worst episode of MoH Season 2, if not for two things: Ron Perlman, one of those genre faces who always delivers the goods, and some great creature effects by KNB (regular fx wizards for MoH, and purveyors of some of the most memorable effects in the history of cinematic horror).

Dwayne Burcell (Perlman) is a religious fanatic whose daughter (Caitlin Wachs, little Chloe Waters from TV’s Profiler, all grown up now) ends up in an isolated abortion clinic, pregnant with something that doesn’t seem entirely human.
Now although that premise sounds promising at first, in getting this to the small screen, Carpenter seems to just end up rifling his own Assault on Precinct 13, as well as filching a visual gag from his remake of The Thing.
This one doesn’t seem inspired at all, and the third act is so clumsily cut together, it’s little more than a mish-mash of senseless gore, gruesome violence, apparently central characters who go MIA, and an anti-abortion rant coupled with some torture porn lite.
Much of the fault though lies in the script, which populates the screen with far too many characters, some of whom have little more to do than stare down birth canals and have their faces sprayed with goo.
Even Burcell is presented as the stereotypical unstable religious nutjob, gullible enough to be deluded by the baddie. I mean, would God’s voice really sound like some guttural growling sent through a voice distorter? And for a father concerned that sinful things are being perpetrated on his 15-year old daughter, he seems to have enough time to engage in a little bit of torture-disguised-as-poetic-justice. I’m sure he thought he was doing God’s will.
And since I’ve mentioned Him, I should point out that God’s name is so often taken in this episode, it’s alarming. If God had any sense He’d steer clear of this terrible mess, as Carpenter should have.

And perhaps the most disappointing thing about “Pro-Life” is that it’s Carpenter taking the piss again, after he seemed to be getting back on track with his much-better contribution to MoH Season 1, “Cigarette Burns” (incidentally, also written by McWeeny and Swan).*
It’s unfortunate that when Carpenter gets it wrong—as he also did in Vampires and Ghosts of Mars—it is so wrong, it’s criminal. If there’s any justice in the world, he should get a life sentence for this one, and put up for parole only when it becomes clear that he once again knows what the word “horror” means.

* To Drew and Scott: I love your work on aicn, guys. For a film fanatic like myself, the site's indispensable.
So I was really hoping I’d like “Pro-Life” enough that I wouldn’t have to say anything too negative, since this was your baby (so to speak), as well as Carpenter’s.
But I honestly think “Cigarette Burns” was far better. (In fact, I thought it was one of Carpenter’s best after a really long, long time, thanx in no small part to your script.)
“Pro-Life” was just a little bit too messy…

("Pro-Life" DVD cover art courtesy of filmjunk.com.)