The Bell Witch Haunting (2013) I Tried, I Really Tried

Well, that was something.

Ah, The Bell Witch Haunting.  I should have known better.  Those rascals at The Asylum got me again, this time with a Paranormal Activity copy that had some accidentally decent scenes, but was mostly filled with surreal, head-scratching moments that made you wonder if you were watching the pre-editing version.

There are no credits.  Before and after the movie, there are no credits.  Not even an "Alan Smithee."  The movie just kicks right in, and it's pretty straightforward.  In fact, you've seen it before with Paranormal Activity.  Family buys a house in the Tennessee town where the original Bell Witch hauntings happened.  Strange things begin to happen.  People die.  Stranger things happen.  More people die.  Family decides to have the house exorcised.  Really bad things happen.  A showdown in the woods and local caves leads to an abrupt and confusing ending.

That's pretty much the plot.  I mean, if you want details, I can tell you that it's a family of four, with the daughter recording things during her "fashion blog," and the brother interested in making a movie about the weird things happening around him.  So, yeah, it's a found footage film.  About a haunting.  With ambient music building to warn you when something is about to happen.  Pretty much Paranormal Activity.

But...but the logic-defying things that happen.  Forget about the ghosts and demons and poltergeists.  There's a whole laundry lists of things that I just can't explain, and they're scarier than the movie.  It might help to ease the pain if you read the following questions in the voice of Jerry Seinfeld:

*  If the movie takes place in Tennessee during January, why are they having pool parties and dressing in shorts?  I've been stranded in that great state during blizzards in January, and I only wished I could have a pool party. And what the hey, palm trees?

*  A couple dies under mysterious circumstances after leaving the pool party at the beginning.  Why aren't they ever mentioned again?

*  The house seems to be in a suburban area, with lots of neighbors.  Why are there suddenly woods everywhere?  I can accept that the house sits on the edge of a wooded area, but when one girl wanders off by herself, suddenly they're in the deep woods.

*  And speaking of the neighborhood, why did they move next door to a junkyard?  Oh, wait, that's property formerly owned by the elder Bell back in the 19th century.  Okay.

*  I think they could have expanded on the father's power of premonition.  He has a bandage on his forearm, then he doesn't, then he suffers an injury to that forearm, then he has the bandage back.  He should have known.

*  The kid is so excited to document things happening in his house and to his family, so why doesn't he review his tapes?  All it would take is a "here, check this out" and that family would be outta there.

*  All these objects moving, strange voices, electricians getting zapped, friends and neighbors dying, and the family is most concerned with...unpacking.

*  Proofreading?  "January 21th"?  The mom's name changing from Jeanette to Martha?  I...I...I think my brain is crying.  So much more...so, so much more.

OK, so you know me, I'll try to find something good even in movies that I just didn't enjoy.  So, here goes:  the actors are trying.  They are doing exactly what they're supposed to be doing.  The daughter, Dana, played by Cat Alter, stood out.  Her character suffers the brunt of the hauntings, and she does play the materialistic and ultimately frightened young girl very well.  There are a couple of decent jump scares as well, and those two factors saved it from being a total loss.

It blatantly copied Paranormal Activity and did so pretty boldly.  That low hum of ambient music is the most telling.  It just wasn't my cup of tea, but it did make me pine for a Mystery Science Theater 3000 version of it.

Still, it was no Hardly Working.

Here's the trailer if you're so inclined to view it:

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.

1408 (2007) The Overlook Was Scarier

As my friend Rick over at The Paradise of Horror can attest, I am a very big Stephen King fan. I may have mentioned that I read The Shining in two days on summer vacation as an innocent, fresh-faced thirteen-year-old. The Stand changed my entire way of looking at writing and stoked my flames of love for apocalyptic fiction. King is my single biggest influence when it comes to creating stories. Sometimes movies based on his stories work (The Mist, The Green Mile, The Stand miniseries) and sometimes they don't (Maximum Overdrive, The Mangler). 1408 falls somewhere in the middle, with elements that really worked wrapped in a final product that just didn't stand out for me.

So you've got this guy, paranormal travel writer Mike Enslin (John Cusack), who really doesn't believe in ghosts, but wouldn't mind seeing one. He's the classic Stephen King "tortured writer," a character that indeed works because...well, King would know how rough it is to be a successful writer. He gets a line on an apparently very haunted hotel room in New York City's Dolphin Hotel, the titular room 1408. Of course, he has to check it out. This is curiosity I can appreciate.

The hotel manager, Gerald Olin (Samuel L. Jackson), warns Enslin not to do it. Enslin takes advantage of a state statute that forces hotels to rent out any available room and, despite intense pleas and solid information from Olin, settles into the room. Tiny things begin to happen at first, but when the clock radio (constantly blaring The Carpenters' "We've Only Just Begun" - shades of Christine) begins a countdown of sixty minutes, Enslin is really in for it.

He starts experiencing little things. Almost polite things. Mints are left on pillows. The toilet paper is folded neatly. The HORROR! Enslin is a little creeped out, but intrigued. Now he's experiencing something that's weird, but he thinks still explainable. When he starts seeing ghosts (that look oddly like weird TV transmissions) reenacting their suicides, that's when he realizes the game is afoot.

In one of my favorite creepy parts, he tries signaling in desperation to a gentleman across the street. The guy stands up in shadow and not only imitates Enslin's every moment, but mirrors them. When light settles on the fellow, we see it's Enslin himself. Hardly a moment to take it in, when a crazy-eyed Clint Howard-esque maniac swings a hammer at the "reflection." Enslin turns to see the maniac in his own room advancing on him before disappearing:


It wasn't Clint Howard, but rather in an odd little role, former super-badass martial artist Benny "The Jet" Urquidez. The Jet does a lot of stunt work and extra work now, but back in the day, he engaged in what was considered one of the greatest fight scenes ever caught on film, battling Jackie Chan in 1984's wonderful Kuai can che otherwise known as Wheels on Meals:



If Cusack and Urquidez had broken out into that kind of fight, this movie would've become my favorite movie of all time.

Enslin's visions get more and more intense, and more personal. He sees "footage" of he and his estranged wife Lily (Mary McCormack) and his daughter Katie (Jasmine Jessica Anthony), who died some time ago of an undisclosed disease. This life incident has caused Enslin to lose faith in everything, yet hold onto the notion of an afterlife. It becomes clear that the room seems to have it in for him, and is not going to let him leave. He tries going out the window onto the ledge, through ventilation shafts...nothing. The room forces him back every time.

Enslin manages to contact Lily via his computer, begging her to send help before his aforementioned escape attempt through the ducts. He manages to get her again after his failed attempt and discovery that Room 1408 is now my old hometown in winter. The room takes over his chat avatar and convinces Lily to join him in 1408, as the real Enslin screams in protest.

At one point, the room even convinces Enslin the whole thing was a dream during his surfing accident at the beginning of the film. But, like all evil rooms, it brought him right back to the madness. It even throws what might be a ghost of his daughter at him, before yanking the rug away on that, too.

Enslin discovers that 1408 won't outright kill him, but offers him the choice of reliving the hour of insanity over and over, or taking the "express checkout": suicide. Enslin, in a moment of clarity, fights back, lobbing a Molotov cocktail into the wall and setting fire to the room. At the last moment, he's rescued and reunited with Lily. Maybe the whole thing was a way for him to remember the good in his life and for unicorns to prance lovingly through the meadow in slow-motion. Maybe it was all in his head. Well, the last scene would probably dispel that.

1408 is clever in its own way. When the clock radio starts counting down from 60 minutes, it really is 60 minutes to the end of the movie. Lots of Easter eggs concerning the number 13. According to IMDB, the standard version's runtime is 104 minutes and eight seconds. But I found it relatively uncreepy. It wasn't a waste of time, but I didn't instantly add it to my Amazon wish list. It seemed to me to be a whole lot of bluster, but weak on the follow-through. Still, Cusack's acting is a real bright spot. He's given a chance to be in - for most of the movie - a one-man play, and he delivers. There could be a movie of Samuel L. Jackson standing there waving for 90 minutes, and I'd probably see it. He has a small role, but it meshes well with Cusack's. I wouldn't turn anyone away from it - it's not a bad one, just not as scary as I'd hoped.

Well, fellow zombie apocalypse survivors, if you find yourself at a hotel, make sure you stay off the ground floor to avoid the biters and out of room 1408, especially if you have a guilty complex.

"Stay scared." ~ Mike Enslin, 1408 (and also George A. Romero)