Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (2010) Be Nice To That Mall Santa

You see Santa Claus everywhere this time of year.  The old guy's fixture in malls, town squares, television shows...hey, I've even played the joyful old elf.  The modern version tends to be a gentle soul but what if he wasn't always that way?  Much like many legends, what if Santa had a darker past?

Directed by Jalmari Helander, the Finnish film Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale explores the older, scarier version of Santa seen in European legends.  I mean, hey, the Dutch version is a good guy, but he also beats naughty kids with a willow stick.  He also arrives by a steamboat from Spain, so you can also see Santa's a little different wherever you go.  I saved watching this film until this time of year, but hoped it wouldn't be too dark or mean-spirited; I just haven't been in that kind of mood lately.  What I got was a beautifully-filmed, fun little movie with a smart protagonist and an interesting twist on the Kris Kringle mythos.

An American-funded excavation on a lonely mountain near a small Finnish village uncovers something strange:  a layer of sawdust surrounding a larger area buried deep within the hill.  It's not a natural mountain after all, they figure.  It's a burial mound.  Young Pietari and his older friend Jusso overhear the conversation, and it shakes Pietari.  He researches the Santa Claus myth to discover a belief in a monstrous creature that punishes naughty children in pretty un-holiday-ish ways.  This is what he thinks is there, but no one believes him.  When the highly-anticipated reindeer harvest - the main way the town earns its revenue - yields only a handful of animals, an investigation quickly turns up over 400 slaughtered and eaten reindeer.  Pietari's dad, Rauno, joins the others in believing it was a pack of wolves being forced onto their land by the mountain excavation - which has recently gone oddly silent.  Pietatri knows what's up.  The kid's pretty smart and he recalls a local legend of "Santa" being captured and buried by a local tribe ages ago.

Shortly, Rauno captures a strange, naked old man in one of his traps and, thinking him dead, prepares to get rid of the body.  Oddly, the old man is still alive and soon recovers from his wounds.  Pietari sees him and proclaims that this is the Santa Claus that's been buried in the mountain.  But things are, shall we say, less than festive.  Kids have disappeared from the village, as well as heating elements like ranges and hair dryers.  The old man bites off a villager's ear and is in the possession of items from the now-abandoned excavation, including a radio.  Hoping to swap "Santa" for the money lost from the slaughtered reindeer, Rauno concocts a plan that just might work...except the exchange reveals that not everything is as it seems, and that's when the snow hits the fan.

Nope, not going to tell you how it ends.  Things get even weirder, and young Pietari demonstrates why he's the smartest, bravest kid in the room.  It's a bizarre tale, to be sure, but it's actually short on scares.  That's not a bad thing - it's meant to be more of a Christmas-time adventure, really.  The countryside of Finland is a character unto itself, gorgeous mountains and snow-blanketed land are featured pretty prominently.  The characters are fairly basic, but again, not a bad thing.  The true focus of the movie is idealistic and smart Pietari.  We see most of everything through his eyes, including his strained relationship with his father and his belief in the old legends.  He believes he's naughty because of clipping a hole in a fence (that he thinks let in wolves) but he's truly the top of the nice list.

So if you want something a little more bizarre, yet not totally nihilistic, for your holiday horror viewing, you might have fun with this truly twisted Christmas tale that will make you think twice about making fun of that Santa you see in the mall.

Until next time, everyone, have a wonderful holiday and be sure to treat each other well!

Now watch the hilarious, tongue-firmly-in-cheek trailer!

Vampires (2010) They Can Be Dysfunctional, Too

I'm not big on vampires. It's not that I don't see their value in the history of horror film and literature. I like a lot of vampire mythos. I think it's because they've been unjustly thrust into a new segment of pop culture. You know what I'm talking about. It involves sparkling and brooding, and it shall not be mentioned here. I prefer the horrifying portrayals of the bloodsuckers like Salem's Lot or 30 Days of Night or the fangless biters in Near Dark.  Hey...maybe I am big on vampires after all.

While I love for my vampires to be scary, if they can be presented as funny in the same vein...ha!  Vein!  Get it?  Anyway, if they can be presented as scary and funny, that would intrigue me.  A film falling in that category comes to our shores from Belgium, as writer/director Vincent Lannoo brings us Vampires (not to be confused with the 1998 John Carpenter film of the same name).

Filmed in "faux documentary" style, Vampires is the apparent third attempt by a documentary filmmaker to record the daily lives of affluent vampire families in Belgium.  The first two film crews didn't quite make it, but an understanding allows the director to settle in with a friendly albeit dysfunctional vampire family. They're the average vampire family with a bit of money and prestige.  They enjoy meals provided by their "meat," a runaway former prostitute who willingly offers her blood for their dinner.  They have a couple older vampires who live in the basement, disgraced by their lack of children.  There are strict rules for vampire families, including the "children equal prestige" rule.  Thanks to these rules, vampires exist - albeit with some disdain - alongside humans, several of whom aid in their fanged neighbors.  Georges, the head of the family, is married to the flighty Bertha with which he has two children - who are likely not actual relatives.  Sampson, the older brother, is rebellious and impetuous.  He's also getting down and dirty with the community leader's wife, a huge taboo despite the fact that otherwise, vampires can pretty much do the squelchy with anyone they wish.  And I do mean anyone.  The daughter, Grace, longs to live and die as a human to the point of wearing pink, having a human boyfriend, and practicing suicide so that she can even pretend to feel like she's dying.

The documentary crew follows the nightly life of the vampire family, and their normal is quite literally the flip side of our normal, despite the common ground of family dysfunction.  Things grow complicated when Sampson is caught messing around with the wife of the leader (who himself is an old vampire soul in a 12-year-old body).  Facing execution by sunlight, Sampson arranges for his family to flee to Canada, which they view as below their station.  As they adjust to their new life, some enjoy it more than others.  Georges is miserable and Sampson loves singing songs for money and dating a Canadian human.  The most intriguing and most poignant storyline involves Grace, as she falls "ill."  Her final fate is both silent and quite moving.

I wasn't expecting a darkly funny film with its own mythology - the "rules" - but I found myself enjoying Vampires quite a bit.  The actors playing the toothy family pull off the myriad of personalities with skill, behaving and sounding a lot like a typical family.  Only with more bloodshed.  There are genuinely funny scenes, such as when Sampson gushes about his new life in Canada.  Some horrific scenes as well, such as when the vampire society has a "dinner party."  And as I mentioned, the most poignant and heartfelt scene involves young Grace as her fate is revealed.

Sure, I'm not someone who's much into vampires - I seem to be more of a zombie/ghost/possession kind of horror fan.  But I'm open to anything good.  I thought Vampires was good.  The only real issue I had with the film was how abruptly it ended, as if the filmmakers had a deadline they realized with twenty minutes to go and decided to trim about fifteen minutes from that.  Other than that, the comedy and horror mix subtly and it plays like an informative documentary about family life.  Or un-life.

Until next time, dear readers, just be careful if you're backpacking in Europe and someone invites you to their brownstone for a bite.  The old joke might come true...

Atrocious (2010) The Windup, And...Well, The Pitch

I really wanted to love Atrocious.

Honestly.  Instead, I just kind of liked it.  It built itself a nice little foundation.  You know, like in baseball, a really good windup.  Then the pitch just sailed in at a nice velocity, but was a little flat.

I miss baseball already.

Atrocious, the Spanish film written and directed by Fernando Berreda Luna, is a found-footage style film (an increasingly popular subgenre) set in the Spanish countryside concerning a family that has been found horribly murdered.  When the viewer begins the film, it's as if they're part of the investigative team reviewing the evidence.  A jarring sudden rewind flashes some telltale near-subliminal images until it starts at the beginning. 

The Quintanilla family heads to their old country home for the first time in a very long time, and siblings Christian and July intend to film the entire thing for their online paranormal investigation webcast.  They're specifically excited about a local urban legend about the ghost of a girl named Melinda.  Christian insists on filming everything while July joins him in exploring the creepy labyrinth outside the house.  Soon after opening a locked basement, where they find old family artifacts, including an old TV and tons of old VHS tapes (including some Dario Argento selections), things get spooky.  Strange sounds at night seem only a little odd, but then the beloved family dog disappears.  Events take a turn for the frightening when they find the poor thing dead at the bottom of a well in the labyrinth.  The ol' family vacation ain't what it used to be.  The climactic scene finds the youngest brother missing and a frantic mother desperate to find him...in the dark labyrinth.  The father and the family friend are conspicuously absent, but the resulting stumble through the dark with Christian's camera is jarring and ultimately reveals an ending you might not see coming.

I wish the ending hadn't fallen short of what I was expecting (or rather, hoping for), but that's not to say it wasn't decent.  Maybe you, loyal readers, will get more out of it.  The tension leading up through the entire movie was very well played out, to where we didn't really know what would be in front of the camera at any given time.  But I think the movie got caught up in the atmosphere and somewhat, I don't know, lost itself.  I wasn't blown away by the ending, instead saying "oh" out loud.

But I will say this:  the ratcheted-up tension built at a really good pace.  You really do end up wringing your hands over what you think might happen, and that's good by me.  I just wish I hadn't felt so "meh" as it came to a close.  Anyway, judge for yourself. 

It appears that found footage (or first-person, or cinema verite, whichever term you please) is a subgenre here to stay.  I'm mostly good with it, although for every Trollhunter or [REC], there might be a Monster.  Thankfully, Atrocious, for all its faults, isn't lumped in with the latter.  Keep an eye out, fellow zombie apocalypse survivors, as I'll have more found footage film review on the way.

For now, have a gander at the trailer for Atrocious:

Trollhunter (2010) Norway Has A Giant Pest Problem

You have a problem with cockroaches or ants, maybe mice or termites?  It should be easy to find an exterminator in the yellow pages or online.  You have a problem with trolls knocking down your trees or eating your livestock?  Might be a little more difficult.  But if you live in the more remote regions of Norway, you just might be able to get some help from a troll hunter.  Getting a hold of him, however...that's another story.  You're probably going to have to deal with the enormous pests on your own.  But if you get a camera, you could film it and put it on the big screen, a plot device central to the wacky offering from Norway, Trollhunter (aka Trolljegeren).

I say "wacky" because honestly, this is a film about trolls.  Not dinosaurs, not overgrown Sasquatches, not Blair Witches.  Trolls.  There's the potential there for this to really fall flat on its celluloid face.  And yet it never does.  It maintains a deadpan expression as it presents the possibility of these mythical, semi-humanoid, giant creatures as being real.  It's tongue-in-cheek, yet never becomes a parody of itself.

Filmed in "found footage" style (although written and directed by André Øvredal), a bunch of college filmmakers set out to make a documentary about an area of Norway that is suffering from a rash of bear attacks and get wind of a poacher named Hans (Otto Jespersen).  He's a odd sort of fellow and the film crew grows more intrigued with him, making several attempts to interview him.  One night, they follow him into the deep woods only to be caught in the middle of a troll hunt, leading to a frightening confusion that leaves the students' vehicle destroyed and their leader, Thomas (Glenn Erland Tosterud) bitten.  Hans finally relents and allows the students to follow him as he does his thing, and they're made aware of a deeper conspiracy regarding these mythical creatures.  Hans allows it as he's done doing the government's dirty work, possessing scars that run deep about his role in the co-existence of humans and trolls.  The film crew continues to follow Hans as he hunts down the source of the recent bold migration of various trolls, one gigantic troll that may actually be rabid.

Rabid trolls.  It's actually scary if you think about it.

Trollhunter is alternately serious and straight-faced funny but doesn't make the difference between the two over-wrought.  The trolls themselves are pretty sweet effects, especially as you get towards the end of the film.  The ending has the same problem that most found-footage films have in that it seems like they're not quite sure how to end it and on what note.  It's fine for what it is, but the ending didn't leave me breathless or laughing or wanting more.  Jespersen, the very controversial Norwegian comedian, plays Hans very understated and as I described before, scarred.  He's been through some things you don't expect, and is ready to retire...or something more permanent.

It's a fun movie...not really a game-changer, but something of a blast nonetheless.  I'll tell you, Norway is really making some waves in the horror genre (and with monsters, this can be classified as horror) with this and the energetic zombie film, Dead Snow.  Should be interesting to see what comes out of Scandinavia next.

Until next time, friends, be glad there aren't zombie trolls...yet.

Tucker And Dale Vs. Evil (2010) And A Classic Is Born...

I remember reading somewhere - it may have been Stephen King's fantastic dissection of horror, "Danse Macabre" - that horror and comedy were the two most difficult genres to write.  Combining the two is like doubling the difficulty level.  Combining the two successfully takes some real skill.

Over the years, I've placed some horror-comedy hybrids very high in my pantheon of films:  Shaun of the Dead, Zombieland, and Evil Dead II:  Dead By Dawn just to name a few (all of which I haven't reviewed...yet).  Easily joining that pantheon of yuks and yucks is the 2010 film Tucker And Dale Vs. Evil.  Not since the most recent of those horror-comedies, Zombieland, have I doubled over laughing quite like I did during the adventures of lovable, misunderstood hillbillies Tucker and Dale.  Snappy dialogue, memorable characters, and an absolutely classic twist of perception and mistaken identity made this film a true party, a blast while watching and over far too soon.

Written and directed with admirable skill and timing by Eli Craig, the film follows the titular Tucker (Alan Tudyk of the Firefly TV series) and Dale (Tyler Labine of the Reaper TV series) as they joyfully travel to their "vacation home," a rundown, deserted house that may or may not have been the home of a serial killer (animal bones and articles about murders adorn the walls).  Tucker is the obvious leader, always admonishing the good-hearted Dale for not standing up for himself and believing that he is good enough to talk to pretty college girls like Ally (Katrina Bowen).  Already spooked by their appearance, the college kids all believe Dale is certifiable when he approaches Ally to strike up a conversation (while holding a scythe, incidentally) and begins laughing nervously.  They nervously leave, led by hotheaded, asthmatic, and somewhat psychotic Chad (Jesse Moss).  The fun really starts after Chad tells a campfire story about murders that had happened in the very woods in which they're camped.  As usual in a horror film, the kids decide to go swimming in a nearby lake...a lake upon which Tucker and Dale happen to be fishing.  Ally sees them and, startled, falls into the lake, hitting her head on a rock.  Dale clumsily, but successfully, rescues her.  However, the college kids think the two buddies are kidnapping her.  Tucker doesn't exactly help things by calling out, "hey, we have your friend!"

What follows is a hilarious and twist-filled love letter to all the tropes of an 80's teen horror movie.  It takes those tropes - kids in the woods, deranged hillbillies, a past history, among others - and turns them completely around.  All Tucker and Dale want to do is make sure Ally is okay and return her to her friends, but Chad is out for blood.  Why he is so gung-ho is one of the many neat surprises in the film.  But the real highlights are the side-splitting misunderstandings that almost make you question those "killer in the woods" horror films so prominent in the 80's.  For example, when Tucker saws into a log filled with bees, he panics, running away with his chainsaw swinging wildly.  What do you think that looks like?  Leatherface, anyone?  It just works so perfectly.

And the characters...this is one of those rare occasions in which I really hope there are sequels.  The take-charge, more pessimistic Tucker is such a great companion to lovable, low self-esteemed Dale, who only wants to fall for Ally, the smart and sweet therapist-in-training.  Chad starts as an egotistical "frat boy" (popped collar and all) who relies on his puffer and bullies his friends, but he ends as a one seriously messed-up young man.  Even the "cannon fodder," if you will, were tropes in themselves, providing some good laughs during their fatal misunderstandings. I even loved Jangers (Weezer), Dale's dog who is just like his owner:  a big, friendly lug.

Writer/director Eli Craig hit one seriously funny home run with his feature film debut.  The film just flows from one event to the next, telling one story while building one just under the surface.  It never lulls, never skimps on the body count yet never overdoes the bloody bits, and definitely never lets up in the laughs and character development department.  It was truly one of the best horror-comedies that I've seen, and a film that I hope is the start of a successful and hilarious franchise.

By all means, see this film.  If you haven't been able to tell until now:  I loved Tucker And Dale Vs. Evil.  Welcome to my list of favorite horror-comedies, you well-meaning, charming hillbillies.

Now here, enjoy the official website and the trailer to prepare you for the fun times:

I Saw The Devil (2010) Blurring The Lines

When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

That's the quote that kept running through my mind as I watched the profoundly disturbing, deeply stirring Korean film I Saw The Devil.  Those words sum up exactly what the film was about.  What makes a monster?  And do you have to become a monster to do battle with one?

Directed by Jee-woon Kim (A Tale of Two Sisters) and starring two brilliant actors in Choi Min-sik (Oldboy) and Lee Byung-hun (The Good, The Bad, The Weird), I Saw The Devil is the story of one man's angry descent into that abyss in order to do battle with a man already entrenched there.  These are two men who excel at what they do:  one, a good man and a secret agent of the country, and the other man, an experienced serial killer with practically no fear.  It takes an innocent woman's death to slam their worlds together and begin the downward spiral.

A young woman awaits help in her car one snowy night when she's approached by Kyung-chul (Choi Min-sik), who offers to help her.  She refuses politely, but is brutally attacked anyway.  Kyung-chul takes her to his lair, where he systematically murders and dismembers her.  Her fiance, Soo-hyun (Lee Byung-hun), is devastated by her death and swears to hunt down the man responsible.  After viciously cutting a path through suspects, he finds clues that point directly at Kyung-chul, and the game, as they say, is afoot.  Soo-hyun thwarts Kyung-chul's attempt to make a young schoolgirl his next victim, beating the living hell out of him, then forcing him to swallow a transmitter.  In a compelling and strange journey, Kyung-chul sets out to get his wounds treated.  By "compelling and strange," I mean his odd and eventually violent taxi ride with two other insane gentlemen.  He threatens the doctor who treats him and begins assaulting the nurse, only to be interrupted by Soo-hyun, who leaves him with a severed Achilles tendon.

Kyung-chul holes up with a buddy from  his circle of psychotic murderers, a cannibal who lives with his complicit girlfriend.  Soo-hyun follows his prey to the house, where he engages in another insane battle with not one but all three nutjobs in the house.  All three are taken to the hospital, and it is here that Soo-hyun's overconfidence and rage - coupled with his underestimation of Kyung-chul's own craftiness - cause his own downward spiral.  The people around Soo-hyun, his friends and colleagues and his fiancee's grieving family, all warn him against pursuing Kyung-chul for reasons other than apprehending him.  And it is here in the hospital that Kyung-chul is given an opportunity to turn the tables on his vengeance-seeking hunter.  The battles of wills begins in earnest here, and never lets up until the undeniably sad conclusion...a battle and conclusion you really need to see for yourself, trust me on this.

The chemistry between Choi Min-sik and Lee Byung-hun is electric and dynamic.  Whether they're on-screen together or in separate scenes, their performances are like dances or a battle.  They're matched up perfectly as villain and hero, and as a duo whose methods become eerily similar.  Soo-hyun has looked in that abyss - a dark canyon in Kyung-chul - and it stared hard and defiant back at him.

Kyung-chul is no ordinary villain.  He is relentless, remorseless, cunning, and a force of nature.  And guess what?  Those exact traits can be applied to Soo-hyun, who is no ordinary hero.  Their motives are different, but both have become monsters.  Director Jee-woon Kim leads the two in a duel for the ages, down and dirty, gritty and bloody, framed with beautiful photography.  All the pieces just fit.

Two moments stick out in my mind as I write this.  Two character moments that simply summed up each man.  One, while Kyung-chul sits with his cannibalistic friend for dinner (during which he refuses to eat the "house special"), the friend cracks a joke about Kyung-chul, who quietly stares down his host.  The friend goes from "oh, come on, I'm just kidding" to fearful for his life to tearful relief.  Kyung-chul's unspoken reputation, which we already know is pretty sick, snowballs to frightening size.

The other moment belongs to Soo-hyun and it comes during the final shots of the film.  When the realization hits him regarding what he has done, how far he has gone to get it done, and the prices he has paid to get it done...it's a punch in the gut to both him and the audience.  His cold, expert expression finally melts and he weeps uncontrollably in the middle of a street.  He knows what he's done and it's too late to go back.  Far too late.

As you may guess, I highly recommend I Saw The Devil.  If you have a weak stomach or have a low tolerance for cinematic brutality, you may want to steer clear.  But the violence isn't gratuitous.  It is an important key to the story.  It is about that abyss and its question to you:  "what would you do?"  It is disturbing and gritty and unflinching.  It is also compelling and exciting and a story very well-told.

Just be sure to remember Nietzsche's words...

Rammbock: Berlin Undead (2010) Short Movie, Short Review

Clocking in at just over an hour, the German infection horror offering Rammbock: Berlin Undead offers some really good moments in what turned out to be a mostly decent little horror flick sponsored in the United States by the wonderful horror news website Bloody Disgusting.  It's a pretty straightforward story with basic undertones of longing and lingering loyalty.  No frills, as the story takes place in one location, an apartment building in Berlin that falls under attack by victims of a mysterious illness that causes them to become raving, mad-dashing, bitey zombie-ish thingies.

Milquetoast Michael is in Berlin to return keys to his very-recently-ex-girlfriend Gabi, who isn't home when he arrives.  He meets young plumber's assistant Harper just in time to witness the plumber working on Gabi's apartment turn into a frothing-at-the-mouth nutjob with milky eyes.  They get out of that situation, but quickly realize it's not just one rabid dude teeming with infection, but all of Berlin.  They hole up in Gabi's apartment, with Michael worrying about his ex - who hasn't returned his frantic phone calls - and Harper worrying about his family.  From the window, they watch as those in the courtyard are slaughtered, and meet other survivors through their own windows.  Michael sets about finding a way to a man's apartment after the man offers food in trade for some sedatives for his infected wife. This begins an odyssey through the next apartment and into the attic, where Michael finds one thing he's looking for, but it's not what he had hoped.  The rest of the movie is not only the struggle for survival, but Michael's own transformation from a relative wimp pining for his ex-girlfriend to a resourceful hero for those he meets on his journey to escape.  Not going to spoil it here for you, but the movie ends on a bittersweet note.

There's nothing fancy about Rammbock: Berlin Undead.  It tells its story, and tells it better than some vehicles for infection horror.  There's an air of urgency and hopelessness laced throughout, with signs of hope just enough to not make it a total downer.  As anyone who reads this knows, I liked to see the scale of devastation in these movies, even for a glimpse.  The scene where Michael casts his eyes on Berlin from a rooftop, as shown in the American movie poster, sums up the insane odds against anyone surviving the plague.  The infected - not sure if calling them undead is accurate, since we never really know if they die and come back - are of the fast-running, rabid variety, as seen in 28 Days Later and [REC], only with eyes that film over when infection fully occurs.  I found the characters intriguing from the main characters to the brother/sister across the way (a scene where she cries on the balcony is heartbreaking) to the silent tattooed man with what appears to be a bite on his arm.  The man who offered food and his infected wife have a particularly tragic scene.  While Rammbock didn't offer me anything new, it was tried and true, and sometimes that's just fine.

Honestly, it's not all that bad of a way to spend an hour if you're in the mood for some of your basic flash mob zombies.

Until next time, fellow survivors...no more flights to Berlin for a while.  Let the infection blow over.  Here, enjoy the trailer:

Insidious (2010) I Blinked And They Switched Movies

You know those dreams where in it, you're on a wild rollercoaster, twists and turns, dips and peaks, the best rollercoaster you've ever been on...and suddenly the dream switches, and you're in a bumper car far too small and you're the only one there not a unicorn driving the cars?

Or is that just me?

That's how I can describe my experience with 2010's Insidious, from the writer Leigh Wannell and director James Wan, the team that brought the world the very original Saw.  I was watching one movie when suddenly it switched to another, and I swear I only blinked.  The first three-fourths of the film was a creepy, atmospheric, and quite excellent haunting story built on the strong acting of Rose Byrne and Patrick Wilson.  The last act was, for me anyway, like that unicorn bumper car dream.  It seemed somewhat related to the rest of the movie, but didn't seem to fit.  Suspense and tension seemed to give way to super-powers and demons from the fringe of Hell.  Don't get me wrong:  combining super-powers and demons would make for a sweet movie, but it didn't seem to gel here.  Take those two elements, make two films featuring those traits, and you've got the potential for two outstanding movies.  As it is, Insidious combined the two and made one mostly good movie, in my opinion.

Josh and Renai Lambert (Wilson and Byrne) have moved into a new house, when strange things begin to happen:  weird noises, their oldest son Dalton being afraid of things in the house, and so on.  Dalton falls off a ladder in the attic while exploring and encounters something frightening.  The next morning, he doesn't wake up and even the doctors are puzzled, as all his tests are normal.  He's in a coma, but not any coma they've ever seen.  Three months pass and mysterious events happen again, increasing in intensity until Renai has a horrifying encounter with what can only be described as a ghost.  She insists they move, and they do.  However, the bizarre spirits follow them.  This time, Josh's mom (Barbara Hershey) calls in an old psychic friend Elise (Lin Shaye) to help determine not only why this is happening, but how it relates to Dalton.  Turns out Dalton's got himself a little super-power:  the ability to project his astral self with ease, and he's been lured too far from his physical body, leaving it open for bidding amongst the restless spirits.  I won't spoil how the rest of the movie goes, as secrets are revealed and a showdown with those spirits takes place in a netherworld known as The Further.  Needless to say, it's an abrupt change from the rest of the film, the way I saw it.

Now before anyone assumes I thought the whole thing was a mess, let me say this:  overall, it was not a bad film.  The acting is very good and the chills through the wonderful first three-quarters of the movie are genuine and well-executed.  The clues leading to the climax were placed well, and we're given great examples of foreshadowing and flashback.  The score by Joseph Bishara consists of both traditional music and jarring noises that lend an unsettling air to the proceedings, and "unsettling" is a good thing to shoot for in this style of film.  I pay attention to how the titles look, and I loved the old-school lettering of the title card.

There were some moments that seemed borrowed or meant as a tribute to other movies, such as Poltergeist (which I'm sure the movie has been compared to, and that's not entirely fair to it) and The Haunting.  Something that struck me was the world of The Further.  I was often reminded of the bleak afterworld glimpsed at the end of Lucio Fulci's The Beyond (see my review of that film here), but with a little less light.  A character hurrying through The Further, lantern in hand, and seeing a house shrouded in pale light and fog reminded me a great deal of the video game series, Silent Hill.  These reminders may not have been intentional on the filmmakers' part, but I couldn't help seeing those other images in my mind as I watched.

Insidious was alright, and I urge people who have been wanting to see to go ahead and see it.  This is just one man's opinion, and really, I didn't hate it.  As I always say, judge for yourself.  Maybe you'll like it, maybe you'll hate it.  That's the beauty of individual tastes:  we all like things to different degrees, and it can make for healthy discussion.

Until next time, enjoy the trailer, and don't wander too far if you're good at astral projection.

Stake Land (2010) Quality Over Quantity

Everyone knows I love me some infection horror, from Dawn Of The Dead to the [REC] series.  I know that technically, vampire movies can be classified as "infection horror."  One bite (or more, depending on the mythos) from a vampire and it's all over, much like a bite from the undead.  Vampire flicks, though, are usually lumped into their own genre, a rich, traditional genre that has its roots in the forever-creepy Nosferatu and has been somewhat co-opted by the Movie-Franchise-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named-But-Has-Sparkly-Bloodsuckers, which dilutes the potent potion with a strong history behind it.

Stake Land made me love the genre all over again.

From the people who brought you the underrated Mulberry Street comes this truly creative and compelling take on a world decimated by a vampiric plague.  Director Jim Mickle and co-writer Nick Damici took a small budget and loads of passion, mixed it up in a big bucket marked "good stuff," and threw it on film as Stake Land.

It goes something like this:  It's a world where vampires have taken over.  Considered a plague, it spreads fast, causing people to become mindless, blood-craving killers.  No one knows how it started, and much like George A. Romero's Dead movies, the origin is left a mystery.  Fine by me, since the origin's not the story here.  We are introduced to Martin (Connor Paolo), a teenage boy preparing to escape with his family.  When he witnesses them all - mother, father, and infant sibling - slaughtered by a vampire, he's saved by one bad-ass vampire killer simply known as Mister (Damici).  Mister takes Martin under his wing as they battle their way towards New Eden, a supposed vampire-free area in Canada.  Along the way, they run afoul of the dangerous, militant religious nutjobs called The Brotherhood, led by Jebedia (Michael Cerveris of Fringe).  See, Mister rescues a nun from what turns out to be Jebedia's son and a buddy, and Mister tends to play for keeps, human or vampire.  The nun, known as Sister (Kelly McGillis of Top Gun), joins them on their journey before they're set upon for the first time by The Brotherhood.  Eventually, Martin and Mister reunite and meet a couple more friends along the way, the pregnant Belle (Danielle Harris of the Halloween films) and former Marine Willy (Sean Nelson).  Sister rejoins them, and it seems like the perfect family unit, heading straight for the border.

But it's never that easy.

Not everyone is safe, not even ones who traditionally are safe in movies like this.  In one of the most well-done and heartbreaking scenes, you're witness to just how far The Brotherhood will go to not only get to Mister, but simply sow terror and fear, something they'd apparently done on a large scale.  It's during a moment of rest, of happiness, in an idyllic militia-protected town that The Brotherhood does the unthinkable, and something entirely original:  they airdrop vampires.  Airdrop.  Vampires.  Yeah, that's right.  Think about it.  A simple night of neighborly goodwill, toe-tapping music, and most of all, rest for our by-now beloved characters.  Then it happens.  It happens and in the short time for the carnage to unfold, you really want to get your hands around the necks of The Brotherhood.  It's chilling, and it breaks your heart.

So who makes it to New Eden?  What happens in the cold hills just miles away from this alleged haven?

I'm not going to spoil it for you.  The ending is ambiguous, as it should be.  No one is truly safe in the reality of Stake Land.  It's an ending that makes sense and even though it is left open to what happens to the remaining characters, it doesn't leave you saying, "Whaaaat?"  It ends, but only the way you believe it ends as the credits roll.

The acting is wonderfully sound.  Only Jebedia is portrayed a little over-the-top, but he's an effective villain nonetheless:  you WANT to hate this religious fanatic.  And you do.  Damici is grizzled and understated, no-nonsense in his role, and much like his character Clutch in Mulberry Street, he's someone for whom you can really cheer.  Paolo is fantastic as Martin, a young boy thrust into becoming a man in the worst possible environment.  He's both tough and awkward, vulnerable and still possessed of great inner strength.  I cannot take away from the others in the group, as Harris is immensely sympathetic as the young mother-to-be and Nelson is solid as the ex-Marine.  McGillis is a real standout, as the nun struggling with traditional faith and the new necessities of the world.

Like all great infection horror works, the characters are the focus, but there is an underlying theme tying them together.  A theme of faith rings both loudly and subtly through the film.  The Brotherhood represents the current state of "mob religion" in the world, people who would use faith as a weapon or an excuse to hate.  Look around.  It's everywhere you look today.  The traveling band of heroes represent the true, inner faith of people who only want to survive and only want to do good for each other and themselves.  The Brotherhood are those loudmouth, ignorant people who demand you think they way they do, like those Westboro nutjobs.  The heroes are that pastor who greets others at the door of his modest church with a friendly "all are welcome."

Also, let me get one thing perfectly straight:  the similarities between Stake Land and the wonderful Zombieland end with the names.  I've heard people say, "oh, so it's Zombieland with vampires."  No.  It is not.  Stake Land  has not a lick of comedy in it.  The world is bleak, it is dying, and it will never be the same.  Don't let the title throw you off in the slightest.  We're talking two different movies here.

Stake Land might be hard to find at the moment.  It's not playing on that many screens, although check your on-demand features with your local cable company.  That's how I saw it.  It's well worth the hunt and it stands head and shoulders above most big-budget horror fare in that it's an honest, passionate, creative movie.  One that actually tells a tried and true story (getting safely from point A to point B) without a hint of stagnation.

Well, I've gushed enough for now.  Go judge for yourself, and I sincerely hope you find it as fulfilling an experience as I did.  If you don't like it...oh, well.  I won't hold it against you.

Until next time, dear readers, don't stay out when the sun goes down.  It might be a little bitey out tonight.

Now enjoy the trailer...

La Casa Muda (The Silent House) (2010) Bad Things Happen In One Take

From the moment La Casa Muda (a.k.a. The Silent House) begins, the camera eye never blinks.  That was the drawing point in the advertising for the Uruguayan suspense offering:  for 79 minutes, there is one long, continuous take.  The real draw is the tension it creates and ultimately the part it plays in the actual story, a minimalist take on madness, fear, and possibly ghosts...with a twist...all based on a true story that occurred in the 1940's.

Laura (Florencia Colucci) and her father, Wilson (Gustavo Alonso), arrive at a rustic, out-of-the-way cottage owned by family friend Nestor (Abel Tripaldi) with the intention of getting it cleaned up to sell.  Nestor gets them set up, warning them not to go upstairs due to the precarious nature of the stairs.  He leaves them to turn in early as dusk sets in. It isn't long before Laura hears noises upstairs and begs her father to check them out.  There are sounds of a struggle, and Laura is frozen in fear before she carefully explores the old house. Her father returns, bound and bloodied, and Laura is sure there is someone else in the house, stalking and taunting her.  A little girl appears out of the corner of the camera eye several times, but something even more sinister seems to be closing in on Laura.  After a run-in with her mysterious antagonist, Laura runs outside to see the girl for the first time, but also meets a returning Nestor.  Nestor investigates the supposed noises and intrusion, disturbed that Laura went upstairs, but then disappears while he and Laura check out an upstairs room.  Laura loses her source of light and relies on an old Polaroid to take strobe flashes of the room to see where she is, ratcheting up the tension.  The little girl makes an appearance in one flash, as well as someone who appears to be Nestor advancing on Laura.  She escapes the room, and makes a strange discovery in another room:  hundreds of Polaroids showing Nestor, her father, and herself, as well as other young women.  Some seem innocent enough, but others...something a bit...off about them.

Laura finds Nestor bound and bloodied soon after, and from here, the movie takes an interesting sharp turn.  The dialogue changes tone, Laura's emotions change, and certain truths come to the forefront.  When it happens, and for the rest of the movie, it's no surprise that the viewer might be confused.  Hell, I was.  But things make sense the more you put the pieces together.  All the clues are there.  I won't give much away, but I can say the following:  what you see for the first 70 minutes or so is not really what you might think it is - it's not as cut and dried as one might believe.  Listen to what Laura says towards the end, pay special attention to the Polaroids during the credits, and wait for the mid-credits epilogue.  Put those clues together and you'll get exactly what happened.  Wow, a movie that makes you do some of the detective work?  Yes, please.

La Casa Muda is full of quiet tension, where every noise counts.  The camera never shies away from Laura, and in that, buries the mystery deeper and deeper.  By the end, you'll ask yourself, "but how can that be?" but if you look at the clues, you'll see.  The dialogue is sometimes so quiet, though, that you'll strain to hear it even though you'll have the benefit of subtitles.  It could be because I saw it on-demand, so it could be Xfinity's problem.  But the camera moves fluidly through the house with Laura, and I imagine a choreographed dance as the cameraman must know exactly where Laura is and is to be through the entire 79 minutes.  I don't imagine that would be very easy, and I wonder how many times they had to start from the beginning to get it just right.  I can just see them getting right to the end, and someone trips..."Aw, crap. OK, cut! From the top!"  That's scary in itself.

It was a good movie, with some fine acting by the few actors involved.  The shots were set up nicely, considering the difficulty of shooting one whole take.  And everyone knows I love the use of low ambient music to create deeper tension.  It's not a perfect movie, but it was well worth the price to pay for on-demand.

But now I don't want to renovate an old cottage.  Or own an old Polaroid.

Check the official trailer:

Double Dipping: Friday the 13th and Pirnaha (The Remakes)

I seem to be steeped in remakes right about now. Last week, I presented my thoughts on the very good Let Me In - a remake of Let The Right One In - and today, I bring you not one but two looks at recent remakes: 2009's relaunch of the Friday the 13th franchise, and 2010's jaunty remake of Joe Dante's Piranha. Both movies are modern updates of two drive-in-style features from roughly the same period in time, with the original Piranha coming out in 1978 (a great year for horror movies) and Friday the 13th coming out in 1980. Both had their fair share of energy and a certain freshness, which brings about mixed results with their younger descendants.

Let's start with Friday the 13th, originally brought to us in 1980 by Sean S. Cunningham (with writing credits going to Victor Miller). It was a campfire tale brought to life: young, pretty, devil-may-care camp counselors are systematically murdered by the mother of a child that drowned several years before. Boil the story down to its essence, and it truly is one of those flashlight-under-the-chin spooky stories that have been told for generations. In the original, it's given a fleshed-out story, and if anyone remembers, the killer juggernaut Jason Voorhees was not in the first movie, at least not as a the horror icon. He didn't appear until the second film (which I actually find to be the better one).

2009's version, produced by Michael Bay and directed by Marcus Nispel, starts where the original ends: unhinged old lady tries to murder the last teenage counselor, but is given the business end of a machete. Like the beginning of the second film in the 80's, we learn Jason witnessed his beloved but insane mother bite the dust, or mud in this case. Many years later, he takes out his deep-rooted psychological problems on an admittedly annoying group of pretty post-teens out near Camp Crystal Lake geocaching for a secret garden of Mary Jane. A few weeks later, another group of pretty college students heads to the summer home of one of their number and meets Clay (Jared Padalecki of TV's Supernatural), who is still searching for his missing sister, Whitney (Amanda Righetti). Turns out Whitney wasn't killed by Jason in the beginning, as he spared her due to her resemblence to his mother - but he still keeps her chained up in an underground tunnel. It doesn't take long for Jason to start doing his thing to the new group, dispatching them in brutal ways before being defeated by Clay and Whitney in a classically ambiguous ending.

While this remake isn't horrible, I wasn't overly impressed with it either. It's somewhat entertaining, but doesn't have the wild abandon that the original series - despite its shortcomings - possessed. An intriguing change is the no-nonsense body language of Jason. He doesn't lurk for long, instead coming right at victims like a raging hockey-masked rhino. The only time he really "lurks" is when he's stalking Chelsea (Willa Ford) on the lake, and that's just because she's in the water and he's not, which subtly plays into his probable fear of water. It's in the mythology that he was presumed drowned, or was damaged by prolonged time in the water. Anyway, the movie itself was a quarter-pounder, good enough to snack on, but not great as a meal.

Trying to segue deftly from the food analogy of my previous paragraph, I give you Alexandre Aja's Piranha (usually with "3-D" attached to the end), which was a whole different experience. It's based loosely on Joe Dante's (Gremlins) film of the same name, which in itself was a loose sendup of Jaws. Lending itself to the recent trend of homaging grindhouse films, Piranha doesn't have any illusions about itself: it's got boobies and gore, and lots of them, combined with silly lines and situations, and WTF-style cameos that make you say, "wait, he's in this?" I mean, seriously, it's such a rollicking cast. You've got Elizabeth Shue, Ving Rhames, Jerry O'Connell, Paul Scheer, Adam Scott, Ricardo Chavira, Dina Meyer, Richard Dreyfuss, Christopher Lloyd, a couple of genuine porn stars, and a cameo by horror director Eli Roth. It's like one of those Airport movies of the 70's. Only with hungry fish.

It's another basic plot: we meet a fisherman (Dreyfuss) who may or may not have triggered a deep tremor by losing his beer bottle while hauling in a fish. The tremor opens up a vast underground lake that's been covered up since the time of the dinosaurs. Out come the fish and of course, it's spring break time in this sleepy little Arizona town. That means a steady diet of alcohol-infused dudes and chesty trollops, along with a few people who don't even deserve it. There is family drama involved as the sheriff (Shue) not only has to deal with the massive carnage at the center of the festivities (which results in a few yuks, both gory and funny) but has to rescue her kids and some others, who are trapped on a porn mogul's (O'Connell) boat. There is, of course, the "gotcha" ending and many 3-D-ready tricks that were pretty much lost on me, watching it in good ol' 2-D.

Piranha is a wacky, toothy good time. Check your brain at the door; you won't need it. And every so often, what's wrong with watching a movie like that? It didn't say, "oooh, look at me, I'm all serious with my mean fish and artsy nudes." No, it said something more along the lines of "dude, check this out and here, pull my finger." It moves along quickly, no one seems to be safe, and you get to see Elizabeth Shue be an action heroine. A movie made just to be fun wink and nod to movies from the tail-end of the grindhouse era. Well, how about that.

And hey, fun fact: the original Piranha had a goofy sequel, Piranha II: The Spawning featuring piranhas that could fly. That film's director, making his feature film debut?

James Cameron.

Until next time, fellow survivors, it's back to the chopper for me.

Let Me In (2010) Remake Done Right

Maybe...maybe remakes have gotten taken a few too many blows to the head.

Maybe some of us, especially those of us who study film or have discerning film tastes have been too harsh on remakes. After all, not all remakes have been eye-rolling groaners. I mean, sure, once you've seen the original French Martyrs, the resulting facepalm upon hearing news of an American remake is perfectly natural. But look at 2004's remake of Dawn of the Dead. That was good. That was very good. And, hey, 2008's remake of The Crazies was also really quite good.

I think a lot of us don't want the original experience of a film - especially a beloved classic or a visceral, gut-punching breakthrough - to be diluted or, worse yet, dumbed down. We fear the home-cooked recipe will be processed to death.

2010's Let Me In, a remake of 2008's Swedish original, Låt den rätte komma in (aka Let The Right One In) is really another adaptation of Swedish author John Ajvide Lindqvist's novel of the same name. Writer/director Matt Reeves (Cloverfield) carefully crafted an equally beautiful film that even with some significant changes, doesn't dumb down the first film's unique outlook. The changes from the first film are pretty noticeable, but they work, and that's what counts.

The story is pretty much the same: in early-80's New Mexico, troubled and bullied Owen (Kodi Smit-McPhee) lives a bleak and constantly frightened existence with his mother (Carla Buono, whose face we never see) at an apartment complex. Mysterious new neighbor Abby (Chloë Moretz of Kick-Ass) moves in with what appears to be her father (Richard Jenkins). The two loners become friends, despite Abby's strange behavior and the scary voices coming from her apartment. The "father" sets out at night to attack local young men and drain them of their blood for Abby, but age - and possibly a lack of motivation - is catching up with him. He becomes sloppy, and in one case, fatally careless when he's involved in an accident and is forced to disfigure himself with acid. A police detective (Elias Koteas) begins putting the pieces together of this strange case after the "father" throws himself out of a hospital window.

Meanwhile, Owen and Abby's relationship grows in parallel with the increasing brutality of the bullies' attacks on Owen. Owen, on advice from Abby, finally stands up to the bullies, splitting the leader's ear with a pole during a skating session on a nearby lake. At that point, a jogger that Abby had fed on turns up in the same lake, adding more pieces for the detective. When Owen tries to make a blood pact with Abby, she reverts to vampire form and runs away, attacking another neighbor in the complex before being chased off. Much like in the first film, this woman survives long enough to turn into a vampire herself before the morning sun hits her in the hospital and she bursts into flame.

The detective finally figures it out and pursues Abby in her apartment, but makes the cardinal error of waking up a sleeping vampire. After feeding, Abby tells Owen she has to leave, sending him into a deep sadness - his first true love is a vampire and has now run away. Those are some deep issues, kid.

The climax is similar to the original, enough that you know what's about to happen if you've seen the first, yet you're still glued to it to see how it will be done. It's very much the same, and it's done well. The ending shot is also very much the same, but none of the sweetness is lost.

Yeah, it's a remake. Yeah, it's got a lot of the same elements and some things have been altered. Doesn't make this a bad film. In fact, this movie is very good. That same atmosphere, the haunting nighttime of winter in New Mexico, the old trappings of the 1980's, the slow and deliberate way Owen and Abby's scenes unfold - it's all there, and done quite well in Reeve's hands. One of the biggest changes - a revelation about Eli in the first film - isn't present with Abby in this one. That was a big element in the Swedish version, but its absence here doesn't take a single thing away. I won't spoil what it is here, but once you've seen both movies, you'll know.

Smit-McPhee and Moretz are absolutely fantastic in their lead roles. Each exudes a serious vulnerability that is vital to the story. Their chemistry is perfect: they are two innocents at heart (even though one has to guzzle blood to survive). Reeves has crafted a movie here, not just churned one out. It looks good, it's haunting, it's heartbreaking, and as remakes go, it's right there at the top of ones done right.

So, until next time, my fellow survivors, see Let Me In. Until you get your mitts on it, though, here's the nice little trailer:

Paranormal Activity 2 (2010) More To The Story

A couple years ago, a little low-budget movie about a couple harassed by an unseen evil shot into the public consciousness, spreading virally, like that video of a cat playing keyboards. It was Paranormal Activity (my review is right here) and although fans and bloggers alike would be split on liking it, no one can deny the publicity machine that surrounded it.

Before the movie is barely born unto the world, a sequel is announced. I tell you, they're announcing sequels sooner and sooner these days. The success of the first film warranted a second, which, of course, is a tried and true Hollywood formula. Paranormal Activity 2 was released in 2010, this time with a different writing team (Michael R. Perry, Christopher B. Landon, and Tom Pabst) and a different director (Tod Williams), as original writer and director Oren Peli fell back into producer duties. While Paranormal Activity had its super-happy-crazy hype machine, the sequel had what seemed to me a lot less shouting. Sure, it had its share of viral videos and weird websites - in fact, the trailers and interactive website were downright creepy. But I either didn't feel or was subconsciously resistant to the hype surrounding the sequel.

Now, before there's a collective "aw, man, sequels" groan, let me say out of the gate that I found Paranormal Activity 2 to be quite interesting, holding my attention for the entire film. It's the same formula as the first movie: normal family, weird happenings, cameras documents, weirder happenings, get-out-of-the-house-NOW finale. Sometimes you just go with what worked before. What I found most interesting was how it intertwined with the story of the first movie.



The story begins with the arrival of baby Hunter (William and Jackson Prieto) into the Rey family, consisting of papa Daniel (Brian Boland), his daughter from a previous marriage Ali (Molly Ephraim), and his second wife Kristi (Sprague Grayden). We discover very quickly that Kristi is the sister of Katie, one of the stars of the first movie - and those who have seen it suddenly realize the time frame is very important. Reprising their roles as Katie and Micah are Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat, appearing at various points throughout the story. As you soon find out - and this is no spoiler - Paranormal Activity 2 is essentially a prequel. Sort of.

After some small incidents, followed by a ransacked house in which only a necklace belonging to Kristi was stolen, the Reys install cameras throughout their home. We're privy to their life with a growing child in what is, by all accounts, a normal, happy existence. But like Katie in the first movie, Kristi is deeply affected by the strange happenings: voices, footsteps, pots falling off their hooks, Ali relating a feeling like the place may be haunted. In fact, Ali thinks it's "cool" at first, but deeper research into ghosts and demons quash her enthusiasm reeeeal quick-like.

The strange occurrences get wilder and more malignant until Kristi is at the center of a particularly violent episode. Finally wanting to do something about it, Daniel takes matters into his own hands with the help of the nanny he fired earlier (Vivis Cortez), someone who seems to know a little about keeping bad spirits away. I'm not going to get into the climax, denouement, and snap ending of the movie. Don't want to spoil it, although through logic, you may already have guessed the outcome. Still, there are story elements that add some spice to it, and for that, it made me want to keep watching.

I can safely say I thought Paranormal Activity 2 was pretty good. I know that notion will be at odds with some, but hey, variety's the spice of life. The use of deep ambient tones as a score was effective, and I believed Ephraim and Grayden's performances were especially good and quite believable. Like I said, I rather enjoyed the intertwining of the stories.

That said, I didn't come away from the movie feeling like I watched something special. It was entertainment, and that's it. That's fine, believe me. But for me, it didn't affect me like some films can. The ending was abrupt, which kept with the formula, but I did utter out loud, "oh, I guess that's it." Don't ask me what could have made it meatier. I've had pizzas that didn't satisfy me, but I couldn't tell you how to make them better. I'm just happy that I didn't waste my time, and that I can relate my opinion that I thought this movie was pretty good. I'm actually OK with Paranormal Activity 3 being made.

Now just make sure you've installed cameras, my friends...never know what they'll capture...

Monsters (2010) Is There Beauty In The Beast?

If there's anything I love in the realm of film, it's when filmmakers use every single cent of a tiny budget and make something look like a few million bucks.

Enter 2010's Monsters, written and directed by Gareth Edwards. I knew it was low-budget, but that phrase doesn't scare me away. You can have low-budget that's really bad, but then you have low-budget where it looks like the people involved really went out and tried to make something special. Whether they did or not doesn't really matter, actually. The passion and creativity are there, and that's what important...and maybe leads to bigger and better things.

The story is your basic road story with twists appropriate for the genre. Scoot McNairy and Whitney Able, a real-life couple at the time, play world-weary photographer Andrew Kaulder and Samantha Wynden, daughter of Kaulder's boss, a magazine magnate. Kaulder is tasked with getting Samantha out of Mexico after a disaster destroys her hotel. Oh, and the disaster? A very large, spider-octopus-lookin' thing that could easily have been a star in an H. P. Lovecraft story.

Seems that six years before the movie begins, a probe was sent into space. It crashed back to Earth carrying something...well, many somethings...that grew into these destructive creatures. The new residents of our world are contained in an "infection zone," right about at the border of Mexico and the United States. And, before you start reading political undertones into the movie, Gareth Edwards has stated that there were no such undertones - it's simply where the story is set. So get any political mumbo-jumbo out of your head right away. Some of us watch movies to be entertained, not comb through them for liberal/conservative "secret agendas." Simmer down.

Now, Samantha's dad hired Andrew to get her out of there, but complications arise. Ferries to and from the coast are shutting down due to the creatures' migration patterns. Tickets cost $5000 apiece. Andrew loses Samantha's passport. The only way home is straight through the infected zone.

The film chronicles their journey from the heart of Mexico back home to the United States, and the perils in between. They have several run-ins with the creatures, including one that kills or chases off their armed escort. On their own, and bonding closer and closer along the way, they reach the US of A, only to find the border wall is wide-open, and towns in Texas are being evacuated. They hole up in a gas station and come to terms with their personal lives: Samantha is engaged to someone she doesn't love, and Andrew has a son at home that he loves, but isn't allowed to be his father.

The gas station sequence is really something I enjoyed. Two creatures arrive and after a tense moment, the main characters watch - mesmerized and brimming with emotion - as the two enormous "monsters" communicate and gently caress each other, biological electricity flashing through their bodies in the night. It's a well-done scene, meant to be beautiful, and I imagine I would have the same reaction if I saw something like that at night near my corner gas station. Lucky me, I usually get to see the oblivious schlub picking his nose while he pumps mid-grade.

Monsters is very low-key. It's narrative is slow and deliberate, not meant for shocks and thrills. The "monster" scenes are meant to be tense, but it's never jump-out-of-your-seat stuff. The acting is natural, never forced - Andrew and Samantha come across as real, average people. Everyone else is pretty much an extra...seriously. They used people who were right there to play people...um...right there.

I wouldn't call Monsters scary, but I'd call it a damn fine effort in making a low-budget, good-looking film.

Oh, and pay close attention to the very beginning and the very end of the movie. Neat little storytelling device there...

Until next time, fellow survivors, pray our own "border walls" hold - the undead are getting pretty relentless...