It's Halloween, Isn't It?

Last night, Rachael and I watched quite a bit of Signs, which (like hundreds of the discs piled up behind me right now) I hadn't seen since I first bought the DVD. Not that I want this observation to reflect badly on the film, mind, because there's some brilliant, brilliant stuff in there. The scene in which Graham and Merrill run around the house shouting is particularly great, and if I'd have written and directed as much stuff like that as Shyamalan has I'd probably suffer from ego problems myself. (Come back in a few years to check on my progress in this regard).

We didn't make it to the end of Signs, however - perhaps it would have been more appropriate for tonight, the one night of the year Rachael seems more susceptible to scary fare. I even got her two thirds of the way through Dawn of the Dead a couple of years back (but how she ended up watching Hostel with me on Valentine's day, not to mention walking out of it before it was over, is another story altogether).

So, today being what it is, and all, the horror films are out in force. 30 Days of Night hits the UK today; Saw IV has been around since last weekend and is doing very well, it seems; the BBC are trotting out Carpenter's Halloween once again tonight - though I bet they ingratiously crop it down to 16:9, so don't bother - put the DVD on instead; and there's even a new, splattery clip from Aliens vs. Predator Requiem up for grabs. If you want to download it directly, I can offer you a WMV version, or my preferred Quicktime encode. Exploding heads and acid spurts to the face abound - and this version doesn't have th annoying IGN badge.

Paul W.S Anderson's involvement in this film has probably put most people off, and indeed, I'm epxecting little or nothing from the film. I certainly didn't think much of the first. I've gone into some detail about my feelings for Anderson already, and they haven't changed: he's a pretty capable hack who sets fairly easy targets and hits them sort-of-squarely most of the time. And that's not a bad thing, really - it just isn't a particularly good thing. While I haven't seen There Will Be Blood, I've seen all of PT Anderson's other features and I'll stick with his schlockier namesake, if I may - a fraction less ambition, a great deal less botchery.

I saw the third Resident Evil a week or so ago, and I did enjoy most of it, if only at a pretty low register. The odd bit here and there was even very interesting - the opening sequence that sets an Alice clone loose into a recreation of the first film's opening riffs quite enjoyably on the videogame mechanic of multiple lives/continues and repeatable levels (things we take for granted, they're so commonplace in games - but they didn't have to be). I liked the wireframe transitions from location to location again, which reminded me of nothing so much as negotating the map screen on a latter-day Metroid game. And the end of the film, which saw multiple Alices, ready to awaken and each try to defeat the evil Umbrella Corporation across the world seemed resonant with the myriad players of the games, globally controlling their identical avatars in identical missions.

Probably the film that best speaks to my experience of playing videogames in eXistenz, though this Resident Evil run a fairly close second (though, obviously, in this one respect only - I'm definitely not comparing Anderson to Cronenberg on any other terms).

So, I briefly mentioned the box office success of Saw IV. Looking at those opening weekend grosses, I'd say that every dollar over 20 million was worth another hearty laugh at Nikki Finke and her delusions of having halted the commercial success of so-called torture porn. That's over 11 million laughs, and I'll join you in every one.

On the other hand, each of those dollars is also worth a tear. How can a spiritless film like a Saw be so massively outgrossing Hostel Part 2? It was the angriest, smartest, most worthwhile horrror film since... er... well, at least Hostel Part 1 and it's getting trumped by the latest repetition of boring, witless carnival show.

And here's my prize Halloween link: The living horror of the looming strikes has studio execs and producers running hither and thither trying to put together their slates and sharpish. Variety's round-up does a good enough job of explaining which studio pictures are set to roll in time, so I won't paraphrase it here. Of specific interest to long time film ick readers, however, might be that Wolverine is getting a rewrite from Jamie Vanderbilt and Scott Silver. I say good. Very good. David Benioff's original script was as bad a script as I've ever read. I was concerned about this one because I've really been enjoying Gavin Hood's work so far - Tsotsi and Rendition - and now I'm just glad he looked past Benioff's, ill-structured, cliche stricken, senseless draft in order to sign on to a basic set-up that could so easily soar.

And..er... that's that. That being my first attempt at finding a new way to do this.

Ghost House

[EDIT: Some of the links below are hard to see. If you want to watch any of the films discussed, click on the first occurence of their title in their own paragraphs. Or swing your mouse about and keep a look out for the cursor changes. Apologies for any inconvenience]

I have a confession to make. I am a movie wimp. Horror movies leave me sniveling and whimpering like a baby.

It’s not the gore. My parents let me watch Temple of Doom before I was even in school, so blood stopped having an effect on me very early on. It took Braveheart to really make me physically ill. After that, all bets were off and everyone looks a bit frightened when I applaud a good beheading in 300. But ghosts, aliens, monsters under the bed, the occasional knife-wielding maniac--you’ll find me curled up in a ball on my theatre seat. It might be due to early trauma—my parents also let me watch Poltergeist when I was roughly the same age as Carol Anne and it’s a wonder I sleep at night. Occasionally, I don’t. Signs kept me awake for two weeks straight and my friends and family knew the way to freak me out was to come up behind me and do a clicky alien sound. Let’s not even talk about what they did to me in a corn maze one Halloween....

But when my dear editor sent me these horror films to mini-review, I blew it off. Whatever! They won’t be scary. 3 minutes, what could possibly happen in 3 minutes? They’ll all be zombie flicks and zombie flicks are just silly.

I watched the first one, Caller Unknown. I rolled my eyes because it featured that horror movie cliché, the blonde bombshell in a bikini. Her phone rings with an incoming picture. Uh oh. Telephones scare me as a rule (I’ve worked too many receptionist jobs) and how freaky would it be to receive a picture from an unknown caller? I’m not going to spoil it for you, but this director made a tense use of their 3 minutes. Yes, there’s more than one cliché here, but it’s self-knowing without verging into Scream territory. When combined with a new device like the cell phone camera, the blueprint works well. Of all four, Caller Unknown could probably be adapted into a feature length and be a lot of fun.

I stopped whimpering and thought “Bah!” This one just got to me because I’m scared of telephones. Let’s try the next one. I got roughly 30 seconds into watching Night Waking when I decided watching these little things at 2am while alone in the house wasn’t such a good idea.

I returned to them in the daylight. It didn’t help. Night Waking also features a common horror movie device—the babysitter. Sharp filming angles prevent you from seeing anything and as every good horror director knows, that’s where the true horror lies. The sound effects are particularly good in this one. Don’t bother to yell at the screen—the babysitter does it anyway....

Oddly, the next two try harder to look professional with title cards and actor billing, and yet come off a bit more amateur. Mouse Trap is a bit reminiscent of Stephen King’s Cat’s Eye and works pretty well into the last frame. But the initial “Oh, sick!” jump is quickly replaced with a bit of eye-rolling because of the cheap gore.

Saving Face falls into the same pitfall. If you watch all four of these in a row, you’ll start picking out horror movie patterns. Horror films of all subjects, lengths, and budgets rely largely on people creeping along a wall. You know it, and yet it doesn’t stop you from sitting on the edge of your seat. Saving Face knows it, and relies mainly on a girl tip-toeing down a hallway and into a bathroom. You know she’s going to find something awful there, but it doesn’t stop you from getting a good jump. (Shame on Ghost House’s website for the major spoiler on the site—these guys have 3 minutes to scare you, don’t take away their money shots!) Unfortunately, like Mouse Trap, the director didn’t subscribe to the same “less is more” philosophy that the first two so effectively did. The glimpse of the villain is scary enough. Showing everything veered it into low-budget slasher. There should be a golden rule to low-budget horror--if you can’t afford the make-up, stick to the psychological, or at least do some quick edits of your gore to hide your peeling latex.

Overall, these little films are worth a watch the next time you need to jumpstart your heart. As I mentioned earlier, my tolerance for horror is low (send someone creeping down a hallway and I’m peeking through my fingers) but I think they are all remarkably effective. Whether they are about ghosts, serial killers or aliens, horror movies rely on a lot of build-up for their scares. These films have only a few minutes to accomplish that. All four films do and deserve praise for their tight shots and creaking floors. Sure, they all have plot holes, but horror movies are built on improbability (“Hey kids, we burned the school janitor alive and now he haunts your dreams, crazy, huh?”). I would genuinely like to see what any one of them could do with two hours and a budget.

Visiting The Green Planet

I haven't been able to get my hands on a copy of M. Night Shyamalan's Green Planet script myself - though, if you can help me out, just drop me a line - but I have tracked down somebody who has read it. They wouldn't tell me much, but they told me something, and to be honest, my interested was only increased.

Apparently, the plot details the emergence of a New Eden when our flora and fauna come under the influence of something alien and make moves to take back the planet. The deforestation of the rainforests starts running backwards and even a humble potted plant would become a target of suspicion and fear.

I asked if the script is at all Triffids-y and, apparently 'it isn't really', and furthermore any comparisons to Signs are apparently most unfair, as the general imperative isn't one of Don't-Go-Into-the-Cellar supsense at all. The script describes a number of cultural paradigm shifts, detailing with a sort-of-plausible reality what would happen in such a situation - think The Day After Tomorrow with more smarts, a more clear (yet more subtle) mission statement and a strange, upside down way of looking at ecological destruction.

Well, it sounds good to me. Somebody, anybody get me that script. I want to see this with my own two eyes.