¡Qué horror! 2015

Candidate #9

THE VOICES

(January 2014)

"I don't have to listen to you. You're just a cat."

"Well, a cat that can talk and reason, that’s a miracle for the ages.”
"So what?”

“But a guy who talks to his cat, well that’s one step away from the loony bin. Find someone else, kill them, and you’ll discover what it feels like to be truly alive.”

Jerry Hickfang (Ryan Reynolds) is the “new guy in Shipping” at Milton Fixture and Faucet International and outwardly, he seems the likeable sort. He lives alone above the shuttered Mellow Lanes bowling alley, and he’s doing “a great job” at work.

The thing is, he’s not taking the meds he’s supposed to be taking, and, as a result, he’s hearing the titular voices, apparently coming from his pets, Mr. Whiskers (the mean and nasty cat), and Bosco (the gruffly positive and supportive dog).

And, as you can probably tell from the above lines of dialogue, Mr. Whiskers starts telling Jerry to do some very dark and morally questionable things…

Marjane Satrapi, whose entry into the feature film world was via co-directing the adaptation of her own graphic novel Persepolis, takes the Black Listed screenplay by Michael R. Perry* and gives us what is, by and large, a very black comedy shot through with some dreadful, horrific moments, and some potent emotional weight.

And that’s all topped off with a pretty gonzo climax which segues into a pretty gonzo (yet oddly moving, given the context) end credits sequence.

Reynolds (who also provides the voices of Mr. Whiskers and Bosco, among others) does an excellent job at portraying a troubled yet sympathetic character who, over the course of the film, does some very dark and terrible things. And he’s backed up by a commendable supporting cast that includes Gemma Arterton, Anna Kendrick, and Jacki Weaver.

Oh, and props go out to Cairo and Hamish, for embodying Mr. Whiskers and Bosco.

As with many a ¡Qué horror! title before it, The Voices is not for everybody, but if you like your horror laced with some strong black comedy (or vice versa), then you should really check it out.

“The medication, it smooths things out, and that’s okay, right? But even though there are bad moments…”

“Very bad moments.”

“Very bad. There are also moments of inspiration and beauty, when all the world makes sense, and the elegant secret mechanics of Man and God are revealed in their many dimensions, and the universe is laid out before mine eyes and it is a blessed place.”

“You totally stopped taking the pills, didn’t you?”

“Totally.”

* The Voices took the number 3 slot on the 2009 Black List, a mere two votes behind Aaron Sorkin’s screenplay for The Social Network. (For the uninitiated, the Black List is an annual year-end rundown of the most notable as-yet unproduced screenplays as voted for by a variety of executives in the Hollywood film industry.)

(The Voices OS’ courtesy of impawards.com.)

THE NIN9S
(Review)

A MAN’S HAND unwinds a short length of green string. We’re extremely close, with a shallow, blurry focus. It’s like the first moments after a dream—just fragments.
Scissors cut the string. The man wraps it around his left wrist. A loop. A bracelet.
We see the man’s teeth, the edge of his chin as he pulls the knot tight.
His fingers pull against the string. Solid. It won’t break easily.

FADE OUT.

John August is a screenwriter who can come up with scripts like those for Doug Liman’s Go! and Tim Burton’s Big Fish (two personal favourites), then can go all the way to the far end of the spectrum for McG’s Charlie’s Angels movies.
Now that’s displaying a range.
With The Nin9s—which has the structure of Go! (three discrete yet inter-connected sections) and the thematic complexity of Big Fish—August broadens his range even more, by not just delivering another intricate and ambitious screenplay, but by directing it as well.

Gary Banks (Ryan Reynolds) is the star of the hit police procedural Crim9 Lab (“This fall, Mondays are killer.”), who has a minor meltdown as a result of having his heart broken by a woman. A baggie of crack later and he’s under house arrest (in a house that he claims is haunted by a “zeitgeist”), and in danger of being written off the series by its showrunner.
Or is he?

If you’ve seen the trailer of The Nin9s, it’s pretty evident that this is the sort of film you can’t really talk about lest the cat prematurely get out of the bag.
What I can say is that this is another fantastic script by August, and his handling of the intricate and delicate material displays a steady and confident directorial presence.
He also gathers a great cast for The Nin9s, starting with Reynolds, who shows a sharp versatility here I’ve never really seen before; usually he gets to play variations of his wise-a$$ sitcom self, as in Blade: Trinity. Here, he’s given the opportunity to inject nuance and a certain amount of subtlety in his performance, and he doesn’t disappoint.
He’s then supported by Hope Davis (always a treat to watch) and Gilmore Girls’ Melissa McCarthy. Like Reynolds, McCarthy’s another eye-opener, as not only is she allowed to make a departure from her Sookie TV persona, she also gets a chance to play herself.
(E.R. fans should also note that Dahlia Salem is in here too, also as herself.)

There. I may have already said too much.
Let’s just leave it at this: if you like your cinema complex and layered, The Nin9s should be on your radar.
At the very least, you’ll learn something really, really interesting about koala bears.

Parting shot: Reviews of Blade: Trinity and The Amityville Horror, in which Ryan Reynolds also appeared, can be found in the Archive, as well as a Tim Burton retrospective, where Big Fish is mentioned.

(The Nin9s UK quad courtesy of impawards.com; DVD cover art courtesy of amazon.com; image courtesy of lookforthenines.com.)

(The italicized first section of the review is from John August’s final shooting script for The Nin9s.)

reVIEW (35)
BLADE: TRINITY

And, on the heels of my Blade II review (to be found elsewhere in the Iguana’s Archive), here’s one of Blade: Trinity, back from the boneyard.

Okay. First, score card.

Based on the adventures of the Marvel comic book vampire hunter, Blade was written by David S. Goyer and directed—using the term very loosely here—by Steve Norrington. For my money, the only saving graces of the film were Udo Kier and Stephen Dorff.
Then Blade II came along, and Goyer wisely wrote a script that allowed Wesley Snipes to do what he does best: kick a$$.
What’s more, as film is, in the end, a director’s medium, Blade II was fortuitously blessed with the presence of Guillermo Del Toro—the man behind Cronos, El Espinazo Del Diablo (The Devil’s Backbone), and most recently, the Oscar-nominated El Laberinto Del Fauno (Pan’s Labyrinth)—who filled that canvas chair admirably, serving up a popcorn horror film smothered in butter, blood, and adrenaline.
And, along with a host of talented artisans, Del Toro had artist Tim Bradstreet—who worked on, among other things, a role-playing game called Vampire: The Masquerade—along for the ride as Vampire “Look” Consultant. With that much brilliance in its corner, Blade II pretty much hit the bull’s eye dead-on.

Then there was Blade: Trinity, with Goyer returning, not just as scriptwriter, but as director as well.

“In the movies, Dracula wears a cape, and some old English guy always manages to save the day at the last minute with crosses and holy water. But everybody knows the movies are full of sh!t.”
-- Hannibal King

That little bit of voice-over opens Blade: Trinity, and ironically enough, truer words were never spoken.
The plot (such as there is) involves a group of vampires led by Parker Posey’s Danica Talos, who have just discovered the progenitor vampire (TV’s John Doe, Dominic Purcell, currently on Prison Break), who has gone by many names in his long existence, including… Dracula.
They’ve woken him up from his self-induced slumber to, 1) hunt and kill Blade (the raison d’etre of the Bloodpack in Blade II), and 2) perhaps make them able to walk abroad in daylight as well (Deacon Frost’s motivation for hunting Blade in the original film).

Kick-starting their anti-Blade campaign by framing the vampire hunter for a crime he mistakenly commits, Posey and her Fang Gang manage to place Blade in a dangerous position, where even the government and local authorities are actively seeking him out as a menace to society.
This might have been an intriguing angle from which to approach the story, if it hadn’t turned out to be a mere plot device to introduce Hannibal King (Ryan Reynolds, from the TV series that began life as Two Guys, A Girl, and A Pizza Place) and his Nightstalkers, most of whom, predictably enough, turn out not to be characters at all, but rather, motivation for Abigail (Whistler’s daughter, played by Seventh Heaven’s Jessica Biel) to continue her vampire hunting.

Thus armed with a script that freely ransacks elements from his own closet of already-produced ideas, Goyer ends up giving us a film that serves generic, by-the-numbers action, when it should be knocking our proverbial socks off.
There is no sense of the frenetic movement Del Toro brought to Blade II here in Trinity, and even the action sequences, normally a trademark of a Blade film, seem half-hearted, as if they’re there precisely because they’re expected, and not because there’s anything particularly new or even worthwhile to put on display.

Additionally, any film of this sort needs a good, charismatic villain. We had that in Blade II’s Damaskinos (Thomas Kretschmann) and Nomak (Luke Goss), and as I mentioned earlier, Blade’s only good points were Kier and Dorff as baddies.
Trinity’s Drake hardly registers as a character, much less an antagonist to be fearfully respected, or the ages-old bloodthirsty creature he’s supposed to be. He’s simply there, and it’s not just the performance that’s lacking; the script really doesn’t give him any sort of presence.
As it is, Posey’s Danica is a far more amusing (and engaging) villain to watch, thus making Drake’s final confrontation with Blade obligatory, rather than something the audience looks forward to with relish. Even Wesley Snipes, who has always brought a raw physicality to the role of Blade, seems abstracted here, as if he’s not all there, as if his heart isn’t really in it this time out.

To be perfectly honest, after having seen the not-too-thrilling Trinity trailer, my biggest motivation for actually watching it boiled down to Parker Posey. (What can I say? I love her.)
Even then, we hardly see enough of her in the film, as a significant portion of screen time is handed over to Biel’s Abigail, the oh-so-cool-I-listen-to-hip-music-on-my-iPod-while-vampire-slaying hunter whom Marvel is hoping will beget a spin-off, as Jennifer Garner’s Elektra did from another woeful Marvel production, Daredevil.

Having mentioned Posey, it’s interesting to note that it took two of indie film’s best and brightest, Posey and Natasha Lyonne—who plays blind Nightstalker Sommerfield—to offset one WWE superstar (Triple H, as vampire Jarko Grimwood, who follows in the footsteps of fellow wrestlers The Rock and Rob Van Damme, in making a bid for big screen stardom).
Two-to-one. Sad, but true.

Ultimately, Blade: Trinity joins two of my personal lists.
It settles snugly beside Scream 3 and Josie and the Pussycats, on my list of Films Where Parker Posey Is One Of The Few Saving Graces, and joins the ranks of Bad Comic Book Films, where I’ve relegated other Marvel movies like Daredevil and Ghost Rider.
To make matters worse, Trinity is also a stake in the heart for vampire movies as well. (Or maybe just a crapload of garlic.)
Sadly, it may take a while for me to wash the taste of stale blood from my mouth.

Parting shot: Reviews of Blade II, Ghost Rider, Elektra, and Guillermo Del Toro’s El Laberinto Del Fauno (Pan’s Labyrinth) can be found in the Archive.
Reviews of Hal Hartley’s Fay Grim, which stars Parker Posey, Mike Mendez's The Gravedancers, which stars Dominic Purcell, David S. Goyer’s recent film, The Invisible, and Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins, for which Goyer wrote the screenplay, are also in there somewhere.

(Blade: Trinity OS’s courtesy of impawards.com.)

(The above is a slightly altered version of a review originally published under the title, “Stale Blood, Rusty Blade.”)

reVIEW (30)
THE AMITYVILLE HORROR

At best, I have vague recollections of the Jay Anson novel (creepy) and the 1979 film adaptation (not so creepy) starring James Brolin and Margot Kidder, so the 2005 remake of The Amityville Horror is going to be judged pretty much on its own merits, as it should be, without comparisons to either of its previous incarnations.
Produced by Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes (who also produced the remakes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Hitcher), and helmed by first-time feature director Andrew Douglas (whose previous film was the documentary Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus), this version sees Ryan Reynolds (Blade: Trinity, Van Wilder: Party Liaison) and Melissa George (Mulholland Drive, TV’s Alias, and the upcoming 30 Days of Night) as George and Kathy Lutz, the beleaguered couple allegedly driven out of their home by demonic entities a mere four weeks after moving into their new Long Island residence.

Like the Platinum Dunes remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Amityville Horror is clearly of that slick (and slickly-edited) breed of Hollywood horror movie that isn’t necessarily horrifying. The script (by Scott Kosar, who also retooled the Massacre script) doesn’t really help either, giving us no real sense of character deterioration on George’s part. One minute he’s fine and they’ve just moved in, then he sees the ghost of a little girl, and the next day, he’s doing a Jack Nicholson in The Shining, all dark and moody and borderline psychopathic.
To be perfectly fair, Reynolds does a creditable job of channeling his dark side, effectively erasing his hokey comedic TV sitcom self, but the problem is, he’s like a light switch: outside the house, he’s fine; in the house, he’s definitely not. We get no sense of any sort of encroachment on George’s personality, say, as he drives up to the house. All we have is Good George, and Bad George. The script shows no finesse when it comes to this aspect of the story.
The sense of the house as an entity onto itself, the true brooding monster of the piece, influencing and tainting those within, is also decidedly absent. There is no sense of the house as the source of the evil, of the house as a separate, sinister character. It’s just there, for the quick and the dead to run around in.

And though the young cast members, Jesse James, Jimmy Bennett, and Chloe Grace Moretz, as Billy, Michael, and Chelsea Lutz, respectively, are capable young actors, none submit any breakthrough performances, and character actor Philip Baker Hall (The Talented Mr. Ripley, Gus Van Sant’s colour remake of Psycho, and TV’s Millennium) is seen too little of, as Father Callaway, who does a bad job of blessing the haunted house and is chased off by a horde of flies for his troubles.
As a result, the film becomes a series of scares (some passably effective, some not) that not only doesn’t cohere properly, it also doesn’t seem to build up towards the film’s climax. We jump from Day 1 to Day 15 to Day 28 (or at least, that’s what it feels like).

Strangely, the scenes that seem to work the best are those that don’t involve scares per se, but those that have Bad George terrorizing his stepchildren, actions that tread the thin line between discipline and abuse. These scenes are scary in an entirely different way than flitting ghosts or bleeding walls.

Sadly though, when all is said and done, The Amityville Horror doesn’t really add up to a whole lot, and is yet another black mark on the score card of Platinum Dunes’ horror film remakes.
Even worse, Bay and company have more remakes in the pike: Near Dark (which originally had Heroes’ flying Petrelli, Adrian Pasdar, and an Aliens contingent consisting of Lance Henriksen, Bill Paxton, and Jenette Goldstein) and The Birds.
You’d think that Bay would steer clear of Hitchcock, but the man apparently has titanium balls and an ego the size of Texas…

(The Amityville Horror OS courtesy of impawards.com; DVD cover art courtesy of amazon.com.)

(The above is a slightly altered version of a review originally entitled “Another 28 Days Later.”)