¡QUÉ HORROR! 2011
Candidate # 12

BLACK SWAN
(September 2010)


I truly can’t say enough good things about Darren Aronofsky’s latest, Black Swan. Everything in this-- from the camerawork by longtime collaborator, Matthew Libatique (who’s shot everything for Aronofsky except The Wrestler), to the script by Mark Heyman, Andrés Heinz, and John McLaughlin (from a story by Heinz), to the music, to the cast-- meshes like an exactingly choreographed and executed ballet piece.
It’s about the brittle fragility of bodies and psyches pushed to-- and beyond-- their limits. It’s about desperation and passion and pressure, and about the cruelty of perfection.
And yes, given that this is a horror movie in much the same way a landmark 1960’s film by Roman Polanski was, it’s most definitely a ¡Qué Horror! candidate, an astoundingly strong one, for the record.
Given the manner in which it takes the Swan Lake narrative as well as its motifs and applies them onto the high pressure world of ballet, I’d like to think Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky would appreciate this one.


Parting shot: Black Swan’s BAFTA nominations: Best Film, Best Actress (Natalie Portman), Best Supporting Actress (Barbara Hershey), David Lean Award for Achievement in Direction, Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Editing (Andrew Weisblum), Best Production Design (Thérèse DePrez and Tora Peterson), Best Costume Design (Amy Westcott), Best Make Up/Hair, Best Sound, and Best Achievement in Special Visual Effects; Portman’s win would be the only BAFTA it would take home.
Its Oscar nominations: Actress in a Leading Role (Portman), Cinematography, Directing, Film Editing, and Best Picture; again, only Portman would walk on up to the podium…

(Black Swan OS’ courtesy of impawards.com.)

¡QUÉ HORROR! 2011
Candidate # 11

THE LAST EXORCISM
(June 2010)


Though it’s been awhile since Hostel Part II, Eli Roth hasn’t been idle in the interim; he’s been in front of the camera as the Bear Jew, Sgt. Donny Donowitz, in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, and as director Béla Olt in Fruit Chan’s disappointing English-language remake of Hideo Nakata’s Joyû-rei, Don’t Look Up. Roth’s also been behind the camera, but as a producer, on Daniel Stamm’s The Last Exorcism.
As you may or may not already know, The Last Exorcism is a faux doc following charismatic preacher and exorcist Reverend Cotton Marcus (Joan of Arcadia’s Patrick Fabian), as he takes along a film crew of two to record the titular “last exorcism.”
Previously titled The Ivanwood Exorcism and Cotton* at varying stages of its development, The Last Exorcism succeeds with its low-key approach to the material, depicting the dangers of both an overabundance of faith, and a lack of it.

* For the record, my personal favourite title of the three.

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

¡QUÉ HORROR! 2011
Candidate # 10

DEVIL
(September 2010)


True, M. Night Shyamalan’s more recent output (beginning with Lady in the Water all the way through to 2010’s The Last Airbender) has been… problematic, but his first salvo from The Night Chronicles-- for which he acts as producer and story originator, among other roles-- is a compelling little number.
Hand-picking screenwriter Brian Nelson (who collaborated with David Slade on both Hard Candy and 30 Days of Night) and director John Erick Dowdle (The Poughkeepsie Tapes and Quarantine) to take his tale of “What happens if one of the persons you get trapped in an elevator with happens to be the Devil?” and run with it, Shyamalan has at least proven that he can still come up with interesting and provocative ideas, and that he can pick the right people to bring those ideas to celluloid life.

From the opening, disturbingly disorienting inverted shots of Shyamalan’s beloved Philadelphia, set to Fernando Velázquez’s Herrmannesque cue*, on through to nearly the end of its running time, Devil is an involving cinematic experience, shot by the excellent and experienced eye of Tak Fujimoto, who’s worked with Shyamalan on The Sixth Sense, Signs, and The Happening, as well as with other directors on titles running the spectrum from The Silence of the Lambs, on through to Pretty in Pink and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
This one’s nice-looking and tight, and if you’re not a big fan of elevators and other enclosed spaces, best to stay off it.

* Velázquez has composed scores for such films as El Orfanato (The Orphanage), Bosque de Sombras (Backwoods), and Los Ojos de Julia (Julia’s Eyes). He’s also scored Pål Sletaune’s upcoming thriller Babycall, with Lisbeth Salander herself, the Dragon-Tattooed Girl who Played with Fire and Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, Noomi Rapace.

(Devil OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

¡QUÉ HORROR! 2011
Candidate # 9

THE EXPERIMENT
(July 2010)


“Throw some animals in a cage and you get to find out which one of us is gonna be the lions and which ones are gonna get gut.”
"I like to think we’re slightly higher on the evolutionary chain than monkeys.”
“It don’t matter how evolved you think we are. You lock up any animal long enough and the strong’s gonna eat the weak. That’s just the way it is.”

To make $14,000 in two weeks, Adrien Brody, Forest Whitaker, and Clifton Collins, Jr. (among others) sign up for a behavioural experiment, which places them in pre-assigned roles-- prisoner or guard-- for fourteen days, in a simulation of life within the walls of a penitentiary.
Based on the novel, Black Box, by Mario Giordano (the novel, in turn, based on an actual experiment run at the Stanford University in 1971), and its German film adaptation, Das Experiment,* Paul T. Scheuring’s The Experiment is a largely bleak depiction of humanity that displays how terrifyingly easy it is for us to shirk our morality.
It’s about how power and authority can warp and corrupt, and how the roles society impresses upon us affect the way we act and see ourselves.
With a minimum amount of on-screen violence, Scheuring (who also gave us Prison Break) achieves here what many a “legitimate” horror movie fails to do; affect us on a disconcerting, primal level.

* I once had the opportunity to see Oliver Hirschbiegel’s Das Experiment, but passed on it; I’ve been trying to rectify that ever since…

Parting shot: Interestingly enough, there’s another upcoming take on the subject, The Stanford Prison Experiment, which, as indicated by its title, is based on the actual university experiment.

(The Experiment UK DVD cover art courtesy of amazon.co.uk.)

¡QUÉ HORROR! 2011
Candidate # 8

PIG HUNT
(July 2008)


In 1984, Russell Mulcahy, armed with a script by Everett De Roche, regaled us with the giant killer pig hijinx of Razorback.
Now, Jim Isaac, after the flawed Skinwalkers, returns with Pig Hunt, which features a giant killer pig, amongst other assorted narrative elements, to give us a title that does its sordid, lurid job whilst delivering some welcome subtext (underscored by the Animal Farm quote which closes the film).
Isaac ably captures the backwoods tone as a group of friends go on a hunting trip, only to have things go, yes, very wrong. DP Adam Kane (who also shot Skinwalkers, and who’s directed episodes of Pushing Daisies, Heroes, Kings, and most recently, Haven) shoots Pig Hunt down and dirty, highlighting the mud and the blood that streaks the body of this tale where men are, perhaps, really no better than animals. (It’s a telling point that there are precious few likable characters in this.)
For my money, Pig Hunt is: one, a lot better than Isaac’s previous effort, Skinwalkers, and two, a lot better than the recent Korean giant killer pig flick, Chaw.

Parting shot: Reviews of Isaac’s Skinwalkers and past ¡Qué Horror! title Long Weekend (also written by De Roche) can be found lurking in the Archive.

(Pig Hunt OS courtesy of shocktillyoudrop.com.)

¡QUÉ HORROR! 2011
Candidate # 7

ALTITUDE
(October 2010)


Like John Cassaday before him, Kaare Andrews is a comic book artist whose work I rather like, that’s chosen to spend some time in the Director’s Chair. And while Cassaday’s debut was on the small screen (an episode of Dollhouse), Andrews tackled some shorts before taking the feature film route with Altitude.
Paul A. Birkett’s script for the film is an interesting and curious throwback, with shades of an ‘80’s creature feature sporting generous helpings of The Twilight Zone. It also operates in the area of experiential horror, as, following an initial set-up, the audience winds up confined on a tiny twin prop with five young, fresh-faced pretty things in peril, among them, alumni of primetime TV shows like The O.C. (Ryan Donowho), Degrassi: The Next Generation (Landon Liboiron), 90210 (Jessica Lowndes), and the daytime soap As The World Turns (Jake Weary).
Andrews and DP Norm Li successfully capture the claustrophobia of the cramped cabin of the plane, as first, mechanical failure, and later on, something decidedly inhuman, threatens the lives of Altitude’s protagonists.
And while the film itself is an effective piece, the most significant aspect of it is Andrews’ achievements; I, for one, am certainly curious to see whether he chooses to follow Altitude up with more feature directing.
If he does, rest assured, I’ll be there to check it out.

(Altitude OS courtesy of bloody-disgusting.com.)

¡QUÉ HORROR! 2011
Candidate # 6

LA HORDE (THE HORDE)
(August 2009)


Guns and drugs, blood and guts, adorn Yannick Dahan and Benjamin Rocher’s La Horde, where the unfolding scenario interrupted by the latest zombie apocalypse is a violent vendetta.
And as the running, ravening undead lay siege to a decrepit, condemned building, enemies must enter an uneasy truce to survive the ordeal.
With Alain Figlarz as stunt coordinator (Figlarz also choreographed the fight scenes in Babylon A.D. and Chrysalis and worked on Aurélien Poitrimoult’s Green Hornet short), this one’s a kick-ass, adrenalized ride. Things move so quickly and decisively, that there’s precious little time afforded to question why the dead are coming back to animated life and why their bites are contagious. Of course, given that the main characters of La Horde are cops and crooks, we really shouldn’t expect any lengthy bouts of circumspection regarding the situation they all find themselves in.
For the record, I had more fun with La Horde than the other zombie apocalypse entry currently vying for a ¡Qué Horror! slot next year, Candidate #4, Mark McQueen’s Devil’s Playground.

Parting shot: A review of Chrysalis can be found lurking in the Archive.

(La Horde OS courtesy of impawards.com.)