A Rundown of the 13 Best, Most Recent Horror Movies I’ve Seen
[3 of 13]
THE SIGNAL (January 2007)


In an age where the information stream has become a veritable deluge—where television continues to blare out what we need to buy and how we need to look; where the latest celebrity meltdown (and its attendant freight of all-too-real human misery) is considered news; where the ubiquity of the Internet, with its digital morass of truth, emotion, rancour, rumour, and outright lie churning 25/8—The Signal as a whole is also a potent metaphor for how man as a species struggles daily to process all that stimuli; how we, as a people, exist under the post-millennial burden of maintaining our mental health while under incessant media assault.

Read the entire review here.

(The Signal OS courtesy of impawards.com [design by Mammoth Advertising].)

THE FALL
(Review)


All right. Full disclosure.
I love Tarsem’s The Cell. It has its flaws, yes, but it’s got a whole lot of amazing, noteworthy stuff going for it.
There’s Howard Shore’s score, there’s Eiko Ishioka’s costumes, and of course, Tarsem’s very particular visual flair.
So it was that in the wake of The Cell, I began to actively track his possible feature film work. There was a moment in time when his name was associated with the then-in development Constantine, though that ultimately didn’t happen, due, in part, to what he fondly calls “this autistic child of mine,” The Fall.
And now, here we are, some four years and 24 countries later (the story behind the making of the film is equally as interesting as the film itself), and that “autistic child” is now ready to receive guests…


Following a haunting opening credits sequence in which many clues to the subsequent narrative may be found, we find ourselves in Los Angeles, once upon a time (or the early 1920’s, take your pick), as the paths of 5-year old Alexandria (an impressively unaffected Catinca Untaru) and injured Hollywood stuntman Roy Walker (Pushing Daisies’ Lee Pace), cross due to a misdirected message.
What follows is a tender friendship born out of necessity, a poignant celebration of the power of storytelling, and a breathtaking display of Singh’s artistry and passion.
Those who may have mistakenly written off the baroque imagery of The Cell as a barrage of hollow, MTV-styled trifles, would be well-advised to seek out the heartbreaking wonders of The Fall.


Helping Tarsem author this astounding piece of cinematic wonder are a returning Ishioka (who first impressed me deeply with her work on Paul Schrader’s Mishima, and then blew me away with her Oscar-winning efforts on Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula), first-time feature cinematographer Colin Watkinson, editor Robert Duffy (who’d also worked on The Cell), production designer Ged Clarke, and composer Krishna Levy (also responsible for the music of François Ozon’s Huit Femmes).
And of course, the central performances of Pace and Untaru, which anchor the narrative in a very human space, giving the film and its fantastic visuals, the beating heart any good story requires.
Many of today’s crop of feature directors with their roots in music videos and adverts seem much too preoccupied with framing the pretty pictures without paying enough attention to the narrative. With The Fall, Tarsem safely joins the likes of Mark Romanek, David Fincher, and Spike Jonze, as directors who are as much storytellers as they are visualists. (Incidentally, Fincher and Jonze are producers on The Fall, “presenting” the film to us, its eager audience.)


With his autistic child, Tarsem took home, not only a Crystal Bear from last year’s Berlin International Film Festival, but also the award for Best Film from Sitges, considered by some as the Cannes of genre film.
The Fall is a moving, breathtaking tale about the unbridled, impressionable imagination of the young, and how reality and fiction can bleed into each other in a child’s mind.
It’s also about stories, as both lifeline and currency. It’s about their mutability and elasticity, of their organic nature; how the listener can shape the story even as it unfolds. How, in the end, the story is as much the listener’s as it is the storyteller’s, and how the listener can, in influencing the story, also influence the storyteller in turn.
It’s a daring and wondrous piece of work, The Fall, and anyone who loves stories (as any film geek should), really does need to see this.


Parting shot: The Living and the Dead’s Leo Bill is here as Charles Darwin, as you’ve never seen him before…
Really.

(The Fall OS courtesy of impawards.com [design by The Arterie]; images courtesy of moviereporter.net and premiere.com.)

A Rundown of the 13 Best, Most Recent Horror Movies I’ve Seen
[2 of 13]
JOSHUA (January 2007)


… if you like your psychological horror undiluted by any modern Hollywood safety standards, Joshua’s the boy to see.

Read the entire review here.

(Joshua 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.)

FEAST II:
SLOPPY SECONDS
(Review)

So if you’ve read my review of John Gulager’s Feast (in the Archive), you’ll know that I absolutely loved it, and was really looking forward to the DVD sequel, Sloppy Seconds.
And now that I’ve seen it… well… urm…


This one is initially propelled by the vendetta Biker Queen (Diane Ayala Goldner, a.k.a. Gulager’s missus) goes on upon finding the remains of her twin sister Harley Mama at the Bear Tavern.
She finds out from Bartender (Clu Gulager, a.k.a. Gulager Senior) that the guilty party responsible for Harley Mama’s unsightly condition is one Bozo, who lives in a nearby small town.
And when Biker Queen and her gals get to Smalltown (yes, it actually is called “Smalltown”), itching to blow Bozo’s a$$ wide open, they soon hook up with a group of its survivors, then must do all they can to stay alive, while the savage, horny beasties roam the streets.
And, oh yeah, Honey Pie (Jenny Wade) also happens to be in Smalltown as well…


If you’ve seen Feast, you’ll know that when I say Sloppy Seconds is even more improper and rude, you may doubt my word.
Well, it is. This one’s got dogs, and cats, and babies, and grandmas, and just when you think, Oh no, they wouldn’t… they do.
And it isn’t that heightened level of un-PC humour that rankles; I mean, I loved the original, so I knew what to expect.
No, it’s more the fact that Sloppy Seconds just isn’t as funny, nor as thrilling, as Feast was.


We get a bunch of new characters, among them, used car salesman Slasher (Carl Anthony Payne), his The Secret-fixated, cheating wife Secrets (Hanna Putnam), and midget… errr, little people wrestling brothers Thunder (Martin Klebba, whom you may remember from the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise and Hancock) and Lightning (real-life luchador Juan Longoria Garcia).
Sure, they’re all quirky, but somehow, we don’t get the spark that was so evident in Feast; though we do get a number of moments in Sloppy Seconds, none of these fresh characters pop they way those in Feast did.
And yes, they brought back Honey Pie, but it just seemed to be for the sole reason of putting her through a hellish wringer for her desertion in the original.


There are certain elements in Sloppy Seconds that just seem hobbled and don’t quite work the way they should.
There’s a dissection that starts out well enough, but then devolves into a protracted scatological SNL skit on crack. There’re the rooftop sequences that are shot against green screen, making them terribly distracting. There’s even some gratuitous topless/stripping action that just seems tired and self-conscious.
Even the introductory bits for each character aren’t as wildly hilarious as Feast’s.


I’m honestly not sure what went wrong here.
Did the work scriptwriters Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan do on the Saw franchise affect their work here? Did they spread themselves out too thinly?
Is the cast here just not as solid as Feast’s?
Did all concerned go just a tad overboard with pushing the PC envelope?
Maybe it was a little bit of all of the above.


All I know is that Sloppy Seconds wasn’t as wildly satisfying a ride as Feast was, which makes me a bit dubious now about the third chapter, The Happy Finish.
Presumably that one will pick up right at the cliffhanger where this one leaves off, but will it be more of the same?
Hopefully, it’ll get back the sense of humour and crackerjack pacing of the original. After all, it wasn’t the rudeness and the impropriety of Feast that made it such a winner, but rather, the cheeky inventiveness of it.
Just like the gorno schtick of the Saw franchise, there’s only so much horny monster grand guignol I can take before things get stale and boring.
Here’s hoping The Happy Finish slips back into the fluid-lubricated groove Feast had so much fun in, and turns out to be exactly that.


Parting shot: In keeping with the nepotism of the original, director Gulager’s brother Tom is here as Greg Swank, and the aforementioned Baby is played by yet another Gulager, Clu Mosha (John’s nephew).

Parting shot 2: Just so you know, one of the best (and most gonzo) bits of Sloppy Seconds sees the welcome return of Judah Friedlander as Beer Guy…

(Feast II: Sloppy Seconds DVD cover art and images courtesy of bloody-disgusting.com, fangoria.com, and shocktillyoudrop.com.)

THE MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN
(Review)

Down the subway steps, token in hand. Through the automatic gates. The smell of the tunnels was in his nostrils now. Not the smell of the deep tunnels of course. They had a scent all of their own. But there was reassurance even in the stale electric air of this shallow line. The regurgitated breath of a million travellers circulated in this warren, mingling with the breath of creatures far older; things with voices soft like clay, whose appetites were abominable. How he loved it. The scent, the dark, the thunder.


So, for whatever reason they may have had—petty studio politics, or a conscious attempt of a studio to move towards more mainstream fare—this one was screwed by Lionsgate in the US, dumped into a pitiful 102 dollar and second-run theatres simply to fulfill contractual obligations.
I can only hope that this finds blazing life on DVD, because it certainly deserves it.

Based on Clive Barker’s short story from his landmark Books of Blood collection, Ryuhei Kitamura’s The Midnight Meat Train finds struggling photographer Leon Kaufman (Alias and Kitchen Confidential’s Bradley Cooper) on the brink of staking out some wall space at a group exhibit by noted art dealer Susan Hoff (Brooke Shields); all he needs is to “capture the heart of the city.”
But what happens when a city’s heart isn’t exactly pure?
We all know what Nietzsche said about staring into abysses, yes?

New York was just a city.
He had seen her wake in the morning like a slut, and pick murdered men from between her teeth, and suicides from the tangles of her hair. He had seen her late at night, her dirty back streets shamelessly courting depravity. He had watched her in the hot afternoon, sluggish and ugly, indifferent to the atrocities that were being committed every hour in her throttled passages.


It’s Cooper’s portrayal of Leon—in tandem with that of Popular’s Leslie Bibb (who plays Leon’s supportive girlfriend Maya)—that serves to ground this dark tale of servitude and ritual and death, as the photographer finds himself spiraling into the shadows of the inner workings of the vast metropolis, where people go missing every day, some never to be found again.
The chemistry between Cooper and Bibb brings a warm and tender life to the couple, making them genuine and real, thus making the inexorable slide to the film’s brutal climax all the harder.
The horror in Midnight Meat Train can be found just as much in Leon’s descent into obsession and the gradual fraying of his relationship with Maya, as it can in the spectacularly over-the-top gore, delivered on-screen by a silently scowling Vinnie Jones, who plays the butcher Mahogany.

Another reason why I so looked forward to this adaptation was because Jonathan Sela was the cinematographer on-board, and though I do feel he captured more striking and riveting imagery in The Omen remake and in Rohtenburg (review in Archive), Sela’s contribution here is nonetheless undeniable.
Kitamura—who brought us Versus and Azumi—is the kind of director who needs a great cinematographer to bring his wild visions to the screen, and Sela certainly does that.

“We are the City fathers,” the thing said. “And mothers, and daughters and sons. The builders, the law-makers. We made this city.”
“New York?” said Kaufman. The Palace of Delights?
“Before you were born, before anyone living was born.”


If there’s somewhere Midnight Meat Train falters, it’s in not quite living up to the portrayal of New York-as-moral cesspool that Barker nailed down so eloquently with his brilliant prose in the short story; the setting doesn’t quite crystallize into its own seedy character here.
There’s also the climax, which doesn’t manage to convey the awful breadth and enormity of the horror that lies beneath the streets of New York, Leon’s “Palace of Delights.”
It’s as if, post-9/11, the thought of emphasizing the depiction of the city as something built on the foundations of an ancient—and on-going—inhumanity seemed in, ahem, bad taste.

Whether or not that was part of the reasoning behind screenwriter Jeff Buhler’s choices when he adapted the short story, it’s ultimately still an aspect of the film that doesn’t work as well as I’d hoped.
Which is not to say the final stretch of the third act goes all pussy on us, mind. There’s still some wild bits in there; it’s just not as potent as the source material.
Sadly, we also don’t get that chilling “original American” moment…

Beyond its ability to successfully capture certain aspects of the short story, there’s also the matter of the underutilization of Roger Bart, who doesn’t really do much here.
I’m also not quite sold on the film’s use of CGI, particularly in the train bits…

The meat of her back had been entirely cleft open from neck to buttock and the muscle had been peeled back to expose the glistening vertebrae. It was the final triumph of The Butcher’s craft. Here they hung, these shaved, bled, slit slabs of humanity, opened up like fish, and ripe for devouring.


Still and all, The Midnight Meat Train is worth a look-see, whether or not you’re a Barker fan.
It’s also a very promising sign for the upcoming adaptations from the Books of Blood collection, Anthony DiBlasi’s Dread, John Harrison’s Book of Blood, Pig Blood Blues, and The Madonna (the last two still without attached directors, as far as I know).
After that initial cinematic flurry back in the day which included the first two Hellraiser films, Nightbreed, Candyman, and Lord of Illusions, Barker’s name has been mostly absent from big screen horror. (Yes, he produced the excellent, Oscar-nominated Gods and Monsters, but that wasn’t a horror movie.)

Barker’s inactivity on the film front is a crime as far as I’m concerned, considering all the blackly wondrous sights he’s brought to the screen in the past, whether as director or as the writer whose work has been adapted.
I’d still like to see that Director’s Cut of Nightbreed, or actually have Barker in the director’s chair again (though he’s gone on the record to say that this isn’t anywhere on his to-do list at the moment), but barring that, excellent adaptations of his fiction certainly sound delectable to me.
Yes, there have been some less-than-thrilling ones: Rawhead Rex, anyone? But when it’s a Candyman, how can you argue with that?
And yes, I’m still waiting for that Thief of Always adaptation…


There was a horrible familiarity about this ritual. It rang a bell—not in Kaufman’s conscious mind, but in his deeper, older self.
His feet, no longer obeying his mind, but his instinct to worship, moved. He walked through the corridor of bodies and stepped out of the train.

(The Midnight Meat Train OS and images courtesy of shocktillyoudrop.com.)

(All italicized quotes by Clive Barker, from “The Midnight Meat Train,” Books of Blood Volume One, 1984.)

FRINGE
Season 1 Episode 1
Pilot
Written by J.J. Abrams & Alex Kurtzman & Roberto Orci
Directed by Alex Graves
(WARNING: SPOILERS)

When Fringe was first announced by the trades, I had a number of reservations:
One: though J.J. Abrams’ name was attached, I can’t say I love everything he’s worked on.
If you’ve visited the Iguana before, you may know that I’m a big Lost fan, and I was also a fan of Felicity. And Cloverfield was brilliant.
But I never got into Alias, and I wasn’t that thrilled with Mission: Impossible III either.
Two: the other writer/producers announced were Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, whose scripts for M:i:III and Transformers didn’t inspire much confidence.
Three: the supreme hurdle for the show, as far as I was concerned—the premise sounded terribly X-Files-ish.

So how could the show get out from under that daunting shadow? And could the Pilot, at the very least, win this X-phile over?
I think I’d have to say the answer is a qualified “Yes.”


First off, the Pilot has a very effective pace, keeping the narrative engine going at a fast clip, while allowing time for involving character bits.
We have FBI Special Agent Olivia Dunham (Australian actress Anna Torv), whose very personal stake in the preliminary case is telegraphed well, her desperation and anxiety palpable without being overpowering.
Then there are the father and son issues between underachieving genius (IQ 190) Peter Bishop (Dawson’s Creek’s Joshua Jackson) and his mentally unstable father Walter (played most excellently by mad King Denethor himself, John Noble, incidentally also Australian).
Oh, and the case—which will require the expertise of the elder Bishop, institutionalized nearly two decades ago, and the younger Bishop, who must serve as his father’s guardian—involves the very messy deaths of all the passengers and crew on an international flight which lands at Boston’s Logan Airport on auto pilot. (I was hoping it would be an Oceanic flight, but alas, no such luck…)

Is there, perhaps, a smidgen of convenience in the speed at which matters are expedited on the Pilot? Maybe.
But I’ll let it slide, as it is, quite literally, a life-or-death situation, and the fact remains that the Pilot never drags, and it’s a great opener that’s got the thrills, the laughs, and the requisite Abrams air of mystery to make it eminently watchable.


Clearly, this is the first Orci-Kurtzman script that’s kept me attentive and absorbed, and all involved lucked out with their casting of Noble as the certified (and certifiable) genius.
Noble delivers a portrait of tragic intelligence, laced with an unnerving air of potential lunacy, the kind of brilliance fueled by an unfettered mind. And what is more freeing, after all, than insanity?
Plus, Walter gets the best lines, and Noble delivers them with a grand, understated flourish. (The LSD bit is priceless.)

If there’s anyone in the cast who still hasn’t completely won me over by the Pilot’s end, it’s Jackson, who, unlike Noble, doesn’t quite emanate “genius” (unstable or otherwise) from his acting pores. Sorry, but at the moment, Peter just doesn’t seem to scream “190 IQ.”
We’ll see though. Still early in the game…


Getting back to the pluses, the mystery throughline for the show—“the Pattern”—is introduced effectively in the Pilot, a hook which is central to Fringe’s viral marketing, complete with the show’s catchphrase: Find the Pattern.
There’s also a megacorporation—Massive Dynamic (“Your World Is Our World.”)—that figures into the narrative goings-on, has a connection to the elder Bishop’s past, and whose motivations are, to say the least, shadowy.
Oh, and their equivalent of the on-screen text to establish setting (ala X-Files) is a neat visual which takes a page from Heroes’ chapter titles. (I particularly love the bit in Iraq.)

Now, all indications seem to point to the show being more episodic, as opposed to the heavily serialized nature of Lost.
Given though that there is “the Pattern” to contend with, I imagine Fringe may follow the lead of—and yet again, the comparison arises—The X-Files, which was largely episodic in nature, with the mythology episodes popping up over the course of its run.
Or, perhaps the template here will be more akin to Alias, as I can’t imagine Fringe will have out-and-out comedic episodes as The X-Files did.


Regardless, the show owes much to Chris Carter’s pioneering work, as well as all the test driving the post-X-Files shows of this stripe managed over the intervening years.
While it understandably took stretches of The X-Files’ freshman season for all involved to work the kinks out of the show (after all, there wasn’t really any precedent as far as the kind of series it was aiming to be), the Fringe Pilot is pretty much a fully-formed, ably constructed entity.
Not as audaciously slap-in-the-face as, say, the Lost Pilot, or, going back further, Twin Peaks’ opening salvo, mind, but effective and involving nonetheless.

So consider me hopeful and strapped in for the ride, though I will admit to still having some reservations about the upcoming experience.
Colour me cautiously optimistic over this one.


(Images courtesy of impawards.com [Fringe OS, design by FOX IN], latimes.com, tvweek.com, fringetv.blogspot.com, and fringetelevision.com.)