FILM SPOT - The Ward (2011)

So, Halloween is upon us, it seems only right I review a horror film and so here is The Ward, a return to films by John Carpenter who after the disastrous Ghosts of Mars (2001) took a great deal of time off. This time he partly spent directing episodes for the Masters of Horror series, an occasionally hit and miss anthology of horror stories that seemed to get him back to basics with the whole horror thing. For those who saw any of these episodes, you can definitely see shades of them in 'The Ward', particularly the episode 'Pro-Life' which was set in an abortion clinic. The Ward concerns Kristin (Amber Heard), a young woman who torches a farmhouse to the ground and is then put into a psychiatric ward. As she adjusts to life there, she becomes aware of disappearances and strange happenings in the night. It becomes pretty obvious to her that nobody leaves the ward, and she starts to work out why. Now, the refreshing thing about this film is that it is relatively free of shoddy CG effects and is stage-managed extremely well by Carpenter. The jump scares actually work, and there is a very disturbing atmosphere to the whole piece. Now, I am a huge John Carpenter fan, and you can see his auteur fingerprints all over it. The pacing is superb, and he manages to suffuse the film with a dread that hangs on even as the numbers start dropping, something which a lot of modern horror films are unable to do. This may sound like it is leading up to a point, and yes I have been skirting around the matter of the script for a reason. Specifically, that the script itself is actually quite disappointing. It isn't that it is badly written per se, I have seen badly written horror films and this is not one of them. The problem is that it becomes far too 'been there done that' for its own good. The twist of 'The Ward', and I will not reveal it for spoiler reasons managed to galvanize a single reaction out of me.

'Is that it?' 

Amber clearly just saw the Human Centipede.

                                   
 It's just a rather banal explanation, which while explained well, has never worked in my opinion. It didn't work when Identity (2003) did it, and it will not work now. It's an intriguing idea that nobody can execute because it feels like the 'It was all a dream' twist of horror films, i.e a great big fat Deus Ex Machina to explain and resolve plotlines. I will also briefly mention the performances. They are largely fine, although I have to be honest; how on earth is Amber Heard quite this prolific? She isn't a bad actress, but I would hardly describe her as the next big thing so it is a surprise to see her in so many films at the moment. Her performances are largely functional, and her mechanical performance in this is kept on the rails pretty much by John Carpenter's assured direction. There is little point mentioning character development, as their lack of 'character' or histories is somewhat tied in to the big twist which again somewhat disappoints me and leads me unable to say much more about it. Overall, it's a good bash at the horror film but I would have expected more. It does cheer me however that John Carpenter has not lost his touch, and perhaps gifted with a better script, he could be right back at the top of his game again.  

DVD REVIEW - Lake Mungo (2008)

Where do we find the line between grief and horror? At which point does our mind decide to accept something and yet find a credible explanation within the incredible? This is something very much woven into the texture of Lake Mungo, an Australian documentary-style horror that follows a family, the Palmers, following the loss of their sixteen year old daughter Alice. The film's narrative shows how they deal with the bereavement and the impact this loss has on the family unit, and how the aftermath is messier than the event itself. If this only makes it sound like a rather maudlin melodrama about death and loss, that is to misrepresent this film. What we have here is a genuinely spooky film, which will at times make you extremely uncomfortable and, bets of all, makes you afraid of what is not there. The age old adage of 'the less you see, the scarier it is' applies rarely as well as it does here. The film tackles the subject of ghosts sensibly, letting us doubt the truth as to the presence of supernatural forces instead of forcing us to assume their de-facto presence immediately, as can often be the problem of horror films. As the family starts to come to believe that their daughter is somehow appearing to them, and her communications start turning up shocking revelations about her life, the film gets creepier and more skin-crawlingly disturbing as it reaches its climax. There are several twists that are far from easily spotted, and the film performs some excellent acts of misdirection and cinematic sleights of hand that prevent the obvious explanations from surfacing.

                                

The film's balance of cynicism and belief is evenly balanced; the characters are rational and believable, and for once does not immediately throw the 'woman believes, man scoffs' chestnut at us. Everybody here is confused and suspicious as to what is going on, which makes Ray Kemeny (a medium) a fascinating presence as nobody really believes he is attempting to help anybody. His eventual connection with the family is quite touching, but is earned by his virtues as a man rather than decided through his role as a spiritual medium. Probably the most frightening aspects of Lake Mungo are what turn up in the found camera footage. While the idea of the son being a major film buff and having loads of cameras does feel a bit crowbarred in so we can get this footage in the first place, it is the only viable explanation as to how it is present in the movie at all. It does however, provide considerably more scares than Paranormal Activity does; especially when one of the film's finest moment, in which we are shown an old piece of footage in a new light that changes the truth we have established so well that it genuinely shocks you. Dissecting the film too thoroughly will ruin the surprise, but let us just say it uses the documentary format well and ultimately produces one of the most frightening horror films of recent times. It also manages to unleash a cavalcade of horrifying revelations that make the skin crawl. The possible reason for this is the realism of the whole thing. It starts off as that most nightmarish of situations, in which a girl is missing and her whereabouts are unknown. Except instead of being reassured with a simple truth of death, and the ability to grieve and then move on, the story of Alice gets longer, more sinister and complicated and it begins to deeply affect the characters of the film. The first two acts are bad enough but the final third is just devastating, and contains perhaps one of the single most disturbing twists I have seen a horror film. Believe me, Blair Witch's kid-in-the-corner has nothing on Lake Mungo's final storytelling flourish.

Let us try to wrap this up by reasoning why Lake Mungo is as frightening as it is. Films about demonic possession have scared people for years, but these days, the demons are tangible entities usually rendered as special effects - we know it is fake and very little the filmmakers can do convince us otherwise. With teenagers becoming more of a mystery to the previous generation however, a terror of pedophiles lurking around around every corner and our own fascination with macabre secrets, it is clear that our fears have shifted. The monsters no longer have big teeth and claws, but disarming smiles and hidden basements. Lake Mungo taps into these deepest darkest fears, and runs amok with them. Disturbing, ghostly, frightening and never pulling a single punch, Lake Mungo is one of the best horror films of the year, if not the decade.

FILM SPOT - A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)

Oh, god. Oh god oh god oh god. Could this have been done with any less care? Or with any less respect for the film it's based on? I seriously doubt it. Platinum Dunes, the production company of satan himself (Michael Bay), tend to specialise in taking other people's ideas, making photocopies and doodling penises on them. Their most recent product to hit the cinemas is a remake of Wes Craven's seminal 1984 feature about a group of teenagers being killed in their sleep by a mysterious dream stalker called Freddy Krueger. The first was a film made by a man who understands horror aesthetic, horror logic and creating suspense, whereas this one was made by Samuel Bayer, director of Nirvana videos, a man who understands how to make Kurt Cobain look good with wet hair. Both films have the exact same premise, and yet could not be more different. The problem is, that the first one is such a good template that this version felt it had to rewrite the rules in order to produce something different. Its attempts to be 'different' do not work on any level.

Let's analyse this logically, and try not to compare the remake to the original every five seconds and explain why it just doesn't work as a stand-alone film, let alone a remake. I will mention however that in the original, the entire premise is explained clearly, creepily and within about 10 minutes. You understand what is going on, why and yet enough is not explained to keep you interested. The remake fails to establish the characters to a point that I wasn't aware one of the leads actually turned up in the prologue. She was that important, apparently. After introducing this mish-mash of people, the film unleashes Freddy and the dreams upon us. Now, the tension of the original was the 'oh god, don't fall asleep! Don't fall asleep!' aspect of things, and there was a genuine sense of horror pervading. In this one, the kids fall asleep with such monotonous regularity that you'd think they were all narcoleptic, and there is a new concept of 'micro-naps' that renders all tension pointless. We're told it's basically sleeping for a microsecond, so you sort of dream while awake. Oh, brilliant. So they're unsafe awake and sleeping. What's the point in having a serial-killer whose whole mandate is that he can only kill you in your dreams if he can kill you awake and asleep?

'Bayer! See me after class!'

So as well as this total misunderstanding of what made the original work, there is also Freddie himself to consider. Jackie Earle Haley is a good actor, and I think he's an interesting piece of work – but this was not a good franchise for him to choose. It's not that the performance is bad, but it's the wrong kind of performance. A lot of critics praised the decision to turn Freddy into a malevolent nasty old man as opposed to the rather wicked and twisted dream demon from the original franchise, which after six sequels was pretty much driven into the dirt. His wicked old man routine unfortunately is not scary. I was never at any point scared of him. He was just...a big ol' perv, really.

The backstory is supposed to enhance Freddy, but it is used totally inappropriately and the big 'revelations' and 'shock twist' we're supposed to experience are totally undermined by our experience of what came before it. Eric Heisserer and Wesley Strick wrote this, so be sure to hunt them down and throw bricks through their windows. The film's pace is jumbled, constantly flip-flopping between dream states and reality with little care or interest. To say the dreams feel like 'filler' is perhaps to understate the issue. One girl, Chris (Katie Cassidy) dreams that she goes into the attic, looks around and goes back to her bedroom. Seriously. The best dreams are actually pretty creepy...oh sorry, I just gave the filmmakers too much credit. They're all stolen from the original but not done as well.

With the exception of Clancy Brown ('MEDIC!' guy from Starship Troopers) and Haley, nobody else seems to be making any effort at all. The teens all look bored as hell, with the kid from Haunting in Connecticut, Kyle Gallner, basically just looking exhausted (and not in a good way) and Rooney Mara as Nancy looks as if she'd rather be in another film. Some of the age casting is pretty stretched too. Katie Cassidy and her mother look barely two years apart in age, and she's supposed to be in high school. High-school for god's sake!

Stupid teenagers: Getting slaughtered for your pleasure since 1979.

Visually, the film is a write-off too. It's all ugly linoleum and vomit green, and the cutting is flat. One other thing: orchestral stings should be used sparingly for scares. In order to guarantee making us jump, the filmmakers have shoved in orchestral stings every time anything happens. It makes you jump, yes but so could suddenly turning up the television volume. It makes you jump, but it isn't scary.

Rounding up, the film is a disaster. A careless knock-off of a brilliant horror film. I guess all we have to do is wait to see just how badly they do The Birds. I for one am assuming a crash position now.

TV SPOT - Rock of Love

For the first of my 'highlights of television' segments, I am going to focus on a show that encapsulates perhaps the worst of what MTV has given us. I could have started with 'I Love New York', but I'm saving that for another time - much in the way that when a man needs to visit the toilet, he will inevitably go again later on once he has eaten jalapenos and spicy salsa dip.



No, this time, I will start with the Bret Michaels vehicle 'Rock of Love', a three season reality show which garnered some of VH1's highest ratings, with some episodes attracting American audiences of up to 5.4 million viewers if you can believe that. The show revolves around this man...

Pure manliness.

...searching amongst women who look like this...

This is looking good, huh?

...in order to find true love. That's right, yeah. True love. We're not messing around here. Bret isn't looking for a crush, he wants true love. A fact he interminably wishes to remind them of at the beginning of every single episode. Now, let's start with the obvious bit: Who the hell IS Bret Michaels? Well, ol' Bret is the frontman for Poison, an old fashioned 80's rock band whose best days were probably over when I was learning to ride my tricycle for the first time. It makes sense that he'd want to start his search for true love on television, following a template that has spectacularly not worked for every other inverted-commas celebrity who has tried it. 'Flavor of Love' (the progenitor, in which Flavor-Flav tries to find true love) is now in its fourth season, showing that happily ever after seems to exist as long as MTV don't need a new season on air.

'This time it's forever, yeah?'

While I missed much of season one, it seems to have been near identical to Season two except with more psychopaths and more strippers (probably at the demands of Bret, who seems to have a minimum requirement of strippers in each batch of contestants who end up on the show) who all look like the lady who appears just below the Bret Michaels picture in this very blog. That lady in question is Daisy La Hoya, who lost out to the lady in the above picture, Ambre. The season ran like this: each week, Bret would set the girls tasks to test how much they 'loved' fame-sorry, I meant him (Gosh, what a mistake to make). Thence, a girl would be eliminated each week so that by the final episode, there were two girls duking it out for his affections. Of course, in between, there were antics and kerr-azy goings on that kept the show, for lack of a better word, interesting. Challenges such as being put into teams and then sent off around a roller-skating track with a baby-version of Bret in a stroller, while being pursued by a group of borderline psychotics hell bent on wrecking the baby stroller. No, I don't know which Freudian nightmare Bret entered into to conceive of this particular challenge either, but the fact stands it is still a challenge on the show.

Oh dear god.

If this sounds like lowest common denominator television to you, well, that's because it is. It's horrifying to watch, but like watching a gazelle being torn open by lionesses, you can't turn away. Like some perverse voyeur, we see him cackling from the sidelines issuing lines of wisdom such as this:

"There's something about girls on rollerskates that's just hot"
"Girls fighting over me is just hot"
"It's dangerous - but it's hot"

These are not verbatim quotes you understand, but this is pretty much all he says in his one-to-ones with the camera which are supposed to illustrate his current thoughts on the competition and the girls involved. Which I suppose they do. By now, if you hadn't guessed it, this show is almost unrelentingly sexist.

My god, surely not!

Like you hadn't guessed that was the case anyway. Part of you wonders if you should call some sort of abuse helpline, based on the stuff going on in the show. Admittedly, the girls don't do themselves any favours. They are nearly all fame-hungry slappers who turn on the waterworks the moment they are threatened with elimination, and some are stupid on levels incomparable to human physics - such as in Season Three, in which a drunk girl by the name of Ashley declared that 'parsley was stupid' - but then Bret rides in, and we just end up feeling sorry for them. Bret Michaels is no misogynist, don't get me wrong. He's just a big pervy neanderthal who spends the whole first episode taking photos of the girls taking off their clothes.

Bret Michaels: Amateur photographer

Yes, you did read that correctly. He spends a good half an hour 'introducing us' to the girls by dint of 'photography'. I chose to invert the commas around this particular word since watching Bret use his camera is a little like watching video evidence of a man on the sex crimes register hard at work. This is true of all the seasons. You start to feel unclean as the episode progresses, and even as the bubble brained girls all cheerfully introduce themselves you find yourself very much aware that you are essentially watching a television show disturbingly landscaped around the bizarre and narcissistic mind of Bret Michaels. Season Three showcases this in perhaps the most disturbing way: after his relationship with the Rock of Love 2 winner Ambre, broke up, he decided to change the format of the show. What did he do? He put them all on a tour bus and dragged them around the US with him. This was because he felt the main problem with the previous shows were that it wasn't a realistic setting - although realism doesn't really enter into the situation when you have a dating show set in a luxury mansion which is based around a bunch of plastic surgery rejects fighting for the attentions of a caveman with hair extensions.

The irony being that it didn't really change the shows. It was still the same thing, just with crazier and crazier girls. Then of course, came the dreaded elimination round of every episode. The eliminations were strange affairs, with a soft-voiced Bret telling the losing girl just how she wasn't good enough for him. There were tears, god, but were there tears and each one professed how he was making a mistake and how it was them he really wanted. But hey, it wasn't meant to be.

The one one the left didn't win.

So, you get the idea. However, I do hear you cry 'Why the hell did you watch it if you hated it so much?' Well, apart from the fact it makes me feel better about myself as a human being that I am none of the people involved with this particular series, it also reminds me that television is becoming a scary, scary thing and that in a way, it's good to watch bad television to remind you what good television is like. Believe me when I say this show isn't the worst of it. Bret Michaels maybe a faintly concussed rock has-been, but compared to some of his rival shows he might as well be Bruce Campbell. Will I cover those horrifying shows? You bet I will....until then, enjoy this group shot of good ol' Bret with season two's contestants.


And I still don't know who to feel more sorry for.