We Are What We Are (2013) Now I'm Hungry

Yeah, I'm hungry, but I may never look at stew the same way again.

Let me just say that I'm increasingly impressed by director Jim Mickle. I first saw his work on the daring zombie-rat thriller Mulberry Street, then in what I believe is one of the very best vampire movies I've ever seen, Stake Land.  Mickle and co-writer/frequent star Nick Damici add another quality entry onto their resume with We Are What We Are, a remake of the 2010 Mexican film, Somos lo que hay.  Mickle and Damici go in a somewhat different direction and the result is a quietly creepy film that is photographed beautifully and well-crafted with suspense and some genuine chills.

The matriarch of a small, unassuming family (Kassie DePaiva of TV's One Life To Live...don't ask me how I knew that) suddenly dies one rainy day, and the family is consumed with grief.  They're a bit of an odd family, the girls (Julia Garner and Ambyr Childers) pale and soft-spoken, but very close with each other and their younger brother (Jack Gore).  Despite the death of their mother and through the kindness of the town (especially the motherly neighbor played by Kelly McGillis), the father (Bill Sage) insists that they will go ahead with some kind of ritual that their family has observed for decades.  While the father is very spiritual, the ritual is less religion than it is tradition.  In the meantime, a local doctor (Michael Parks) stumbles across a finger bone after the rains and is determined to find out its origins.  He's got the extra added motivation of having had his teenage daughter go missing - maybe this is her?  It's not a total spoiler to say that the Parker clan's ritual involves dining.  Missing people + a dining ritual?  I think you can put two and two together here.

The girls, Iris (Childers) and Rose (Garner) struggle with the idea of the ritual, wondering if they should rebel against their quietly firm (but simmering with rage) father.  Iris wants to act on her attraction to the deputy (Wyatt Russell), a former high school crush.  Rose wants to get their brother out of the house and away from the ritual.  Meanwhile, Doc Barrow (Parks) is closing in on the truth about the Parker clan and what may have happened to his daughter.

I won't spoil the ending, but it takes an intriguing strange turn that doesn't really seem out of place at all, despite what happens.  We Are What We Are is a beautiful-looking movie, with a structure and frame that really speaks to the telling of a story.  Director Mickle can put another knot in his success belt, in my opinion, as he tells an atmospheric, steadily-building story that has its abundant quiet moments coupled with scenes of meaty gore and bloodletting.  The acting was really good all around, with Sage showing understated menace, Garner and Childers showing a struggle with innocence, and Parks as a sad, hopeful, and vengeful father.

Now, while you wait for dinner, enjoy the trailer...

Stoker (2013) Hitchcockian Heebie-Jeebies

OK, this will be the first blog entry that I've written that will take time over two years to write.  Well, not really.  I started it on New Year's Eve, 2013, and hopefully will finish it in 2014.  The way I've been blogging lately, I can't seem to guarantee that.

Nonetheless, let me tell you a little about what I thought of 2013's Stoker.  The movie, written by Wentworth Miller (one of the stars of TV's Prison Break) and directed by Park Chan-Wook (the original cult film Oldboy), pays tribute to the great Alfred Hitchcock without ever really ripping him off.  Miller stated in interviews that he was inspired by Hitchcock's Shadow Of A Doubt, and I do see a touch of Hamlet in the basics, but the finished product here completely stands on its own.

The story follows India Stoker (Mia Wasikowska) who both celebrates her 18th birthday and mourns her father (Dermot Mulroney), who dies in a car accident.  A quiet, awkward young lady (who is also a crack shot thanks to hunting trips with her late dad), she's torn apart, but keeps her feelings quiet.  Her mother, Evelyn (Nicole Kidman) unravels and barely holds on to any form of stability.  Enter India's uncle, Charlie (Matthew Goode), a charming and charismatic fellow who's been traveling the world, living adventures that the sheltered India can only dream about.  Right away, you know there's something not quite right with Charlie, but hey, there's something not quite right about the entire Stoker family at this point.  Despite protests from other family members, Charlie insinuates himself into the Stoker household.  And what's not to like when you first meet Charlie?  He's eloquent, refined, plays piano, and has a sweet ride.  Still, he's pretty creepy.  Not uncle-falling-asleep-on-the-recliner-in-his-tighty-whities creepy, but don't-turn-your-back-keep-him-in-sight-at-all-times creepy.  No spoilers here, but the movie hurtles quietly towards a collision between the truth about Charlie and India's painful coming of age.  What intentions Charlie has and how life will unfold for India are things you'll just have to check out for yourself.

The movie is well-paced and beautifully shot, as Park Chan-Wook comes from the recent wave of Korean directors who paint lavish pictures on film.  Each shot is carefully crafted, guiding you by the eyes.  Miller's story is compelling and mysterious, pushing more and more tension on you until the final moments, including the little twist at the end.

Stoker showed up on a lot of top 10 lists for the year, and I can see why.  There are no supernatural elements here, but yeah, that creepiness factor is ratcheted up a few notches thanks to Goode's performance.  I mean,  he was measured and deliberate in Watchmen, but really carries that over to this role.  Wasikowska and Kidman are equally great as daughter and mother, struggling with age and responsibility as well as mourning.

So until Uncle Charlie shows up on your doorstep, take a peek at the trailer right here...

The Pact (2012) A Study In Suspense

Sometimes, just a well-placed shadow and a dark room can be just enough to get your heart racing.

Yeah, I know gore makes the headlines but a good suspenseful, creepy atmosphere can reach further into your soul and run it through a blender.  And most recently for me, The Pact was that blender.

Written and directed by Nicholas McCarthy, this sweet little thriller doesn't employ colorful special effects or a cast of pretty semi-teens to get its point across.  Instead, it draws you into a confined space and deftly hides things until it decides to show them to you in some pretty unique ways.  Seriously.  There are a couple moments when you might say, "That was different."

On the heels of her mother's death, Nichole (Agnes Bruckner) argues via phone with her estranged younger sister Annie (Caity Lotz) before saying good-night to her little daughter, Eva (Dakota Bright), who is staying with her cousin, Liz (Kathleen Rose Perkins).  There...right there, you've got the family unit, which is an underlying theme of the entire film.  Nichole disappears while investigating a strange noise in her late mother's home.  When she doesn't check in, Annie meets Liz and Eva there to prepare for the funeral, sure that former drug addict Nichole will eventually turn up.  During the night, weird noises ring out and the lights flicker as Liz disappears while Annie and Eva escape the chaotic house.  Annie goes to the police, and the only one who will believe her is Detective Creek (Casper Van Dien).  They investigate the house together, and find that there's more to it than meets the eye.  While Annie sees strange, terrifying apparitions, and witnesses a strange freakout by a local psychic (Haley Hudson), she and Creek begin piecing together the mystery of the house and what happened to Nichole and Liz.

The answer came out of left field, yet made perfect sense.  As is my practice, I'm not going to spoil it here, but I can tell you that you may not see the resolution coming.

The Pact, despite the minimalist title, really delivered for me.  McCarthy's plot and direction, with its genuinely interesting and surprising twists, was well-paced and well-choroegraphed.  Like I said, things happen and they may catch you off-guard.  Some will have you nodding in agreement and others will have your jaw being scraped off the floor.  The effects are bare-bones, but this isn't an effects-driven film.  The effects that are employed are pretty jarring.  You'll never look at Google Maps (or a film version of it) the same way again.  Shadows and space are used to their utmost, guaranteeing at least one instance of the viewer peering through their hands in fear.  Give me a shadowy atmosphere over computerized gore any day.

The acting is top-notch.  In her short time on-screen, Brucker sets the story's table with a solid performance as Nichole.  Van Dien has come a long way from Starship Troopers (which I really dug) - he's older and definitely more sure of himself as an actor, and his character wasn't a cardboard cutout of a sympathetic, grizzled police detective.  I really enjoyed Hudson's blind psychic Stevie:  rather vacant yet insightful, a wisp of a girl uncovering something very sinister.  Living up to her billing as lead, Caity Lotz turned in a stellar performance.  Her Annie is afraid yet strong and determined, her will to find her sister and cousin - and solve an old mystery - beating out her fear of the unknown surrounding her.  And boy, does it surround her.

The Pact is available on some on-demand services, so check around and see if you can find it.  It's worth it. 

Now check out the trailer:

We Need To Talk About Kevin (2011) Some Are Born Bad

Disquieting.  Disturbing.  Non-linear.  Tense.  Realistic.

While I wouldn't exactly call Lynne Ramsay's 2011 thriller We Need To Talk About Kevin a horror film, there are plenty of aspects about it that are truly horrific, not the least of which is its main premise:  a helpless mother deals with a son that is psychopathic right out of the womb.  Based on Lionel Shriver's 2003 novel, the film takes a winding path towards an incident that is slowly peeled back, onion-skin style.  We, the audience, get clues as to what's going on, but we don't get the full story until near the end.  By that time, though, you'll pretty much guess how the movie will pan out, and it will leave you feeling uneasy and sad.

 

Eva (Tilda Swinton) gives birth to little Kevin, who doesn't seem to bond well with his mother.  She's not exactly Mother of the Year, though, as she is constantly impatient with the odd child.  As an infant, he never stops crying when she's around, but clams up when held by his father, Franklin (John C. Reilly).  At one point during a walk in the city, she pauses for a long while near a jackhammer just to drown out Kevin's constant bawling.  When Kevin gets older, he's a constant challenge, and that's putting it nicely.  He refuses to potty train, and soils his diapers on purpose to tick off Eva.  Fed up, she wrongly throws him against a wall, breaking his arm.  Kevin doesn't tattle on her, but already his manipulative nature kicks in and he lords the incident over Eva.  Eva and Franklin have another baby - unplanned, as the cracks in the marriage continue to widen - but the little girl, Celia, is sweet and every bit the cute kid Kevin isn't.  "Inspired" by a story read to him by Eva, Kevin takes a keen interest in archery, becoming quite adept at it as he grows into a teenager (played with cool evil by Ezra Miller).

 

 

Even years on, Kevin harbors a psychotic disdain for his mother.  Eva feels helpless, as no one, even Franklin, will believe what kind of darkness inhabits Kevin.  Just how dark that abyss in him is grows evident throughout the flashbacks and flash-forwards:  Kevin is imprisoned for something that doesn't come to light until the final act.  Let's just say you don't put a bow and arrows in the hands of an ultra-intelligent, sociopathic teenager with Mommy issues.  The movie slides into this final act with no hint of "surprises" or "twists"...you know what's about to happen, and just like Eva, there's nothing you can do about it.

We Need To Talk About Kevin is like a sneaky nightmare.  It creeps up on you and fills you with dread through the entire film.  It's not a horror film, per se, but what happens in it is horrific and that suspenseful dread I mentioned permeates the whole story to the point where just like Eva, the viewer isn't allowed to feel anything good in this twisted, dream-like world directed with great skill by Lynne Ramsay.  Swinton and Miller are utterly fantastic as mother and son, the helplessness and mental sickness coming out in droves through their expressions.  I should also mention the tremendous job done by Jasper Newell as the younger Kevin.  He effortlessly shows the remorseless and purely psycho leanings of Kevin as a still-diaper-wearing-at-six kid.

Make no mistake:  We Need To Talk About Kevin is not a feel-good movie.  I would say those seeking a hip-hip-hooray movie (or moms-to-be, for that matter) try something a little less bleak.  But still, this is a fine piece of filmmaking that is a study in the building of dread over a ninety-minute span of time.

Next review, I'm writing about something a little less dreary!

Now here's the trailer, which is pretty intense itself:

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.