31 Days Of Horror: Day 17: Wrong Turn

(Warning: Movie not as cool as foreign poster)

I never saw Wrong Turn, despite it’s minor cult following and Stan Winston effects. It always just kind of seemed like a minor movie made at the tail end of the second slasher boom.

But I’ve heard the good things about Wrong Turn 2, and fearing that I would miss the deep threads of narrative and thematic material the two would certainly share I decided to watch Part one first.

It turns out it is a minor movie made at the tail end of the second slasher boom! Though albeit one with some cool special effects by Winston, and blessedly free of CGI gore.

The problem with Wrong Turn is it’s just kind of there. It’s never bad, but at the same time it’s not particularly good. It’s not really that tense (aside from it’s admittedly ingenious opening scene), that funny, or that gorey. It’s just a programmer, without even that sense of craftsmanship you can get out of a really good programmer to recommend it. It’s basically a duller less creative version of Aja’s The Hills Have Eyes remake.

The only thing that makes it stand out is its vaguely hilarious gender politics. Wrong Turn definitely wants to have its “Eliza Dushku is a strong female protagonist” Cake and eat its “Now watch her get tied to this bed and get molested by Drooling hillbillies” too. Mostly she just kind of seemed bored. Giving the kind of performance that serves as a reminder of why her performance in Dollhouse was such an effective shock.

Wrong Turn follows a young medical intern, who unwisely takes a detour and ends up stranded with a group of campers. Soon the unlucky trio come across a pack of deformed hillbillies who bake them a cake try to kill and eat them. Much running and screaming ensues. As well as an unexpected slasher version of the tree fight in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.

Things progress at a pretty good clip, and the not final girl proves herself to be annoying. No seriously annoying. Like she deserves to be mentioned alongside the likes of Shelley and Franklin bad.

There are a few clever gore shots (I did mention Stan Winston produced this right?) and in all fairness I can understand why this movie has wormed its way into the heart of more then one horror fan. It’s old school, but in a very specific way. It doesn’t feel like a conscience throwback to the slasher genre like The Screams and Urban Legends of the world did. It just feels as if the genre never ended.

But call it over saturation, call it being a cranky old man. But this time I just couldn’t get myself that excited for more of the same.

31 Days Of Horror: Day 16: Let Me In

Confession time. I never really “got” Let The Right One In. Oh it was very pretty and austere looking, but it didn’t touch me viscerally or emotionally. It was just a reasonably clever reworking of the vampire mythos.

Let Me In is the equivalent of a fantastic cover song, that brings forth the values and qualities inherent in a work, but makes them visible in a way they simply weren’t before. This is the “Hurt”, of movies, Let Me In is simply put, a phenomenal piece of work. I had an argument with a fellow member of the message board, who fairly argued that just because Let Me In was clearer then Let The Right One In, didn’t make it better. Normally I would agree, I would point out though, that narrative clarity and thematically ambiguity are two different things. And Let Me In is articulated in its themes in a way that Let The Right One In just wasn’t.

Let Me In, is of course the story between a young boy, Owen and a vampire… well “girl”. The boy is picked on at school, and is being torn apart in a custody battle between an Alkie mother and asshole father. The relationship between himself and a centuries old bloodsucker ends up being the healthiest Owen has. He’s a monster in utero, saved and damned by a monster incarnate.

Of course that relationship exacts a terrible toll. One we don’t fully see in the course of the film, except etched on Richard Jenkin’s face. His haunted eyes and hangdog features have seldom been used to better effect. And whose garbage bag mask is one of the creepiest things I’ve seen in a horror movie in a long while.



Of course it’s Kodi McPhee Smith and Chloe Morentz who have the key roles here. Morentz, is fantastically believable both in her bloodlust and sorrow. McPhee has a fish faced strangeness and innate sweetness, that serve him ably, both as victim and enabler. He's less sociopathic then Oscar in In. More understandable in his desperate need to be liked by somebody. Hell anybody. The film is shot in a wintry haunting hush. The snow creating a haunting Sepulchral silence that I never would have thought Matt Reeves capable of.

I try to think of a single scene that works better in the original then in the remake, and my mind draws a blank. The hospital combustion. The tunnel scene. The pool scene. The revelation of Abby’s gender, played on a long unblinking shot on Owen’s face, rather then a gratuitous crotch shot. None hold up.

Hell the scene in which Richard Jenkin’s takes the longest car ride of his life, alone is now worthy of Hitchcock. Up to and including a car wreck so disorienting and jolting I find it hard to believe it’s not the best I’ve seen filmed.

Even the decisions I don’t understand like why it’s a period movie really really work. (Also when did “They Don’t Write Them Like That Anymore" become the song for 80’s throwbacks. I mean yeah it’s a good pun but lets not over milk this one)

There are a few flaws in the film. Though the practical makeup and effects are absolutely top notch, the CGI that augments the attacks is near bargain basement. It’s purposeful, to make Abby seem otherworldly. But in this it succeeds too well, making her look like nothing so much as the world’s most malevolent Stretch Armstrong Doll.

Still these are minor quibbles, if this is where the new Hammer horror is going, bravo. And if this indicative of what Matt Reeves (who I’ll admit I wrote off as a one hit wonder following Cloverfield) is capable of, then he is a filmmaker worthy of considerable attention.

Let Me In, is horrific and achingly human. That Abby’s love is very much real makes her more, not less monstrous and terribly pitiful.

It really hammers home the terrible nature of what’s happening in a way the original doesn’t. There’s no happy ending here, in fact same thanks to Jenkins, we know exactly how unhappily this story is going to end.

After all “Eat some now, save some for later.” Who’s to say who has the worse fate?

TTDS EXCLUSIVE: First Review Of The New Dennis Lehane: Moonlight Mile

As any reader of this site knows I’m a big BIG Dennis Lehane fan. And the Kenzie and Genarro series is my favorite series period. Any genre. Any era. Any medium.

So when I opened up my box and found Moonlight Mile waiting for me a full month and a half before I could reasonably respect it to… Well “Freaking the fuck out.” And “Completely lost my shit” Are such overused terms. But they fit. Picture my insides as Abagail Breslin finding out she’s going to Little Miss Sunshine and you’re half way there.

But after the shock wore off (It took awhile) I found myself gripped with a deep and wholly unexpected fear. Fear I could trace to three sources.

1) Dennis Lehane is a vicious bastard. Did I really want to give him another crack at hurting these characters after they had escaped relatively unscathed? The characters, particularly the secondary characters, Bubba, Oscar and Devin live violent lives. What guarentee was there that they would survive the interval? Much less the actual events of the novel. (The last two ended up riding into the sunset in what is probably the closest to an unqualified happy ending a character in Lehane is likely to get.)

Who knew what shape they’d be in when the book opened, let alone when it ended?

2) By now it was common knowledge that Moonlight Mile was a direct sequel to Gone Baby Gone.

Even in a series direct sequels are tricky prospects (There’s a reason everyone remembers The Last Picture Show, and few Texasville) let alone a direct sequel to one of the most perfect and ambiguous endings in crime fiction history…

3) I hated Prayers For Rain.

I don’t think I was even able to admit to myself how much I disliked that book until I actually held Moonlight in my hand and eliminated it from the realm of theoretical.

But I can admit it now.

Prayers hummed along admirably for about a hundred and fifty pages. Until for reasons I still cannot fathom, Lehane basically decided that he always wondered if Gerry Glenn, his ultimate terrifyingly empty avatar of evil in Darkness Take My Hand, would had been scarier if he knew Kung Fu and lived in the lair of a James Bond Villian.

It was stupid.

Very stupid.

I hated it as a book, and hated it even more as an ending to my favorite series. And while Lehane’s post Kenzie and Genarro books were great. I was more then a little concerned that he may have lost the thread.

I needn’t have worried.

Moonlight Mile finds Kenzie and Genarro (or is it Kenzie and Kenzie now?) and for that matter Lehane are all back in full force.

They’re older, sadder and have more to lose then ever before. But they’re still their smart assed, fearless, fiercely moral, lovable selves.

Moonlight Mile opens with Kenzie compromising his values as much as we’ve ever seen him do so. In a twenty page scene that blends comedy, tragedy, a great plot twist and a bitch of tease so masterfully that any doubts I had vanished in an instant with this masterful vignette.

Not only is it an entertaining, occasionally howlingly funny scene, but it does a truckload of character and more difficultly thematic work.

Everyone in Moonlight is still reeling from the fallout of Gone Baby Gone. A fallout that exists because Patrick refused to compromise his moral code, no matter the consequences. Now he’s compromising himself to keep out of trouble.

Everything you need to know about who Pat has become in those last ten years is summed up there.

Unfortunately the consequences of that last moral stand remain. And they’re all about to bite him in the ass. All at once.

I’ll say no more about the plot itself. I have no desire to spoil the surprises of what Kenzie And Genarro have been up to in either the novel of the interim.

I will only say that Lehane’s preternatural vividness with setting and character, and dry ruthless wit remain perfectly intact. He even finds the time for a Casey Affleck Joke.

It’s not exactly perfect, a plot involving an ancient cross smacks a bit too much of Sacred’s pulp plotting, except even more conspicuous since it’s both A) completely extraneous and B) sitting smack dab in the middle of a plot about fifty times darker then Sacred. Also there’s a plot hole that is well, pretty fucking big.

But that doesn’t matter. It’s not a perfect book, but it is a perfect ending.

I was originally going to end this review with a joke, saying that if Lehane made me wait for another eleven years for a Kenzie and Genarro Book one of us would get hurt. As I rounded out the last fifty pages, I thought, “Well maybe if he wanted to let the story end here that wouldn’t be bad.” And then came those final ten pages and all I can say is, on the off off chance that Mr. Lehane reads this; if one day you come up with a story for these guys that just seems too good to be true. One you just can’t resist…

Don’t you dare write it. Let this be their end. Let what Kenzie throws in the Charleston stay there. God knows they deserve it.

31 Days Of Horror: Day 15: The Mist

Frank Darabont just plain gets it. I’m not just talking about Stephen King, though I’d be hard pressed to name a filmmaker who gets King's particular style better.

But even outside his work with King, Darabont is just one of those filmmaker who I trust intrinsically. I may not like every movie Darabont has been involved in. But I know at the very least there will be more thought and care in each one of his films then there is in the average Hollywood quarter. In other words I may not like ever Darabont film. But I respect every one of them.

And there’s not a one I respect more then The Mist. Both as a superb piece of craftsmanship, and the fact that it exists at all. It’s an old school movie in the best sense. Taking it’s time to develop it’s characters and tension. Disturbing in its implications, ruthless in its execution.

It's fitting that I spent the first week of this 31 Days covering John Carpenter, as The Mist reminds me of nothing so much as The Thing remade as one of Carpenter's siege flicks. Indeed I'd argue any day that it's the best straight up monster movie since The Thing.

And you all know how much I love The Thing.

The Mist of course is the Stephen King story about a small town supermarket grocery store that is cut off from the rest of the world (assuming the rest of the world still exists) by a supernatural mist. Though the monsters that prowl in the mist are threats, it’s the human cast put under pressure in a confined space that are the true threat. It takes the same basic formula as King’s great "Under The Dome". Take a group of people. Eliminate hope and escape. Watch them eat one another.

The focus is on Thomas Jane, as a father desperate to protect his son, by any means necessary. And Marcia Gay Harding as a crazed church lady who makes Piper Laurie look like a disinterested Protestant, and whips the survivors into a frenzy. There was some controversy over the treatment of her character. Particularly since Darabont’s script changed her more general “Crazy Ass Old Backwoods Lady” archetype to a “Crazy Ass Christian Archetype”. But unlike Laurie’s performance in Carrie, the film humanizes Harding and one can’t say the satire isn’t unearned. In one of the films most effective moments, the yokel who initially disparaged Harding the loudest is shown praying most fervently out of her congregation. The target of the satire isn’t so much Christianity, as the way that when people are truly desperate for an answer, they aren’t too particular about what that answer is.

The film is a master class in structure, slowly building it’s chacters and tension, and filled with tension like the devastating, perversely beautiful, hypnotically paced final drive through the mist and pitiless end twist that are simply unforgettable.

The Mist was made on the cheap. And in the weightless CGI it shows. Sure it perhaps can’t create the world’s most realistic looking monsters. But its uses the power of suggestion to scare. And the behavior of humans to terrify.

And yet thanks to Darabont’s skill, his limited means never once feel like a detriment. The film’s most effective scene uses the simple jerking of a rope to suggest unimaginable horror. The second most effective involves some Spider webs and the types of fake limbs one sees at a community theater’s haunted house. You want to talk pure cinema? The Mist is pure cinema. Every moment that works (AKA most of the movie) in it is a testament to how well Frank Darabont understands how to make movies.

31 Days Of Horror: Day 14: Carrie

It’s a shame that the King didn’t think up the title Misery until Fifteen years after Carrie. It would have fit perfectly.

Adolescent rage was King’s first subject matter (predating even Carrie with the novella “Rage.” Which is now virtually unavailable after it was pulled in the wake of Columbine for... well... predicting it. The curious can find it in the old paperback versions of “The Bachman Books” Though beyond morbid curiosity there is not much to recommend it) and in an many ways it has served him the potent. It’s something that has powered book after book.

Everyone knows the story of pitiful Carrie White. That poor hopeless girl, who marked as an outcast from day one, and preyed upon by her peers until beaten down resentment gave way to, well their deaths and in the book the deaths of half the town.

It’s a story that I think, has the best chance out of King’s canon to be damn near eternal. Because as long as there are high schools there are those who are going to know what that furnace of rage that grows in your belly can feel like. And those who imagine what it would be like if they just let it explode (Or implode. Am I the only one to notice that the only difference between the rash of teen suicides that swept the country recently and the rash of school shootings that happened about twelve years ago is that this time the kids are turning their guns on themselves rather then others? I don’t know what this generational shift means. Or if it can even be termed as a generational shift. I just know that either way it saddens and disturbs the hell out of me.)



The point is that King has told a story, hell let’s call it a cautionary tale, that looks like it will sadly never be out of date. And De Palma matched him beat for beat. The difference is that King’s book is as blunt as the sledgehammer Billy Nolan brings down upon the pig’s skull, and De Palma’s film is as subtle and deadly as the invisible force Carrie creates.

Of course Sissy Spacek deserves as much if not more credit, for the way she brings the role of Carrie to life with such wounded pitifulness, that she instantly brings a whopping dose of humanity to the film. Erasing, along with Amy Irving’s benignness (no matter how badly it blows up in her face) the traces of the erector set clinicalness that infects some (not all) De Palma films.

Piper Laurie as the most seriously freaky Church Lady of all time (“And The Raven Was Called Sin” Jesus lady) though Marcia Gay Harding in The Mist sure gave her a run for her money (Hmm… now what to close out Stephen King Week with tomorrow?) One of the things that has always set De Palma aside from his New Wave contemporaries like Scorsese, Coppolla, Friedkin and even Altman, is here is a man with absolutely no love nor nostalgia for the Catholic Church. It’s not the last bastion of moral clarity; it’s a breeding ground for lunatics.

I’d argue that never before or since has De Palma’s virtuosity blended so unobtrusively with his subject matter.

Take the infamous split screen finale. What has to be the best use of split screen in De Palma’s career (and thus by extrapolation, maybe the best use of the split screen ever). Here he turns it into a kind of cinematic meat grinder. A meat grinder that runs on for a subjective eternity before it finally ends. Perhaps the finest thing I can say about it, is that I always forget that it is inter cut with non split screen shots until I actually watch it.



And that’s just one of the film’s set pieces. Think of any of them, the impossible dance, the closet, the cruifixition, the pig’s blood falling, falling, falling. All of these as hyper stylized, melodramatic and self aware as anything De Palma shot in a film like Dressed To Kill or The Fury.

And yet not once does it distract from the film. Carrie is as perfect a wedding of emotional, thematic, and stylistic content as I know.



One thing that King notes about DePalma’s version of Carrie in his utterly essential story of the horror genre "Danse Macarbe" (Seriously, if you don’t own it. Buy it. Now.) Should be very interesting to DePalma fans. Keep in mind, this is written pre Dressed To Kill. The accusations of misogyny that would dog De Palma for the rest of his career hadn’t even been articulated yet.

“ … in its film incarnation, Carrie belongs almost entirely to the ladies. Billy Nolan, a major- and frightening- character in the book, has been reduced to a semi supporting role in role in the movie. Tommy, the boy who takes Carrie to the Prom, is presented in the novel as a boy who is honestly trying to opt out of the caste system. In the film he’s little more then his girlfriend’s cat’s paw, her tool of atonement for her part in the shower room scene.

“I don’t go around with anyone I don’t want to,’ Tommy said patiently. ‘I’m asking because I want to ask you. Ultimately, he knew this to be the truth.”

In the film, however, when Carrie asks Tommy why he is favoring her with an invitation to the Prom, he offers her a dizzy sun ‘n’ surf grin and says, “Because you liked my poem.” Which, by the way, his girlfriend wrote.

The novel views high school in a fairly common way as that pit of man- and woman-eaters already mentioned. De Palma’s social stance is more original; he sees this suburban white kid’s high school as a kind of matriarchy. No matter where you look, there are girls behind the scenes, pulling invisible wires, rigging elections, using their boyfriends as stalking horses.

Against such a backdrop, Carrie becomes doubly pitiful, because she is unable to do any of these things- she can only wait to be saved or damned by the actions of others. “

I’ve always thought that DePalma’s reputation for Misogyny is half earned at best. Setting aside for a moment the question of whether DePalma’s violence against women is exploitative in itself, or a commentary on exploitative violence against women. I think if you chalked up scene for scene all the violence that occurred against women, with occurrence’s against violence against women in other director’s careers, Francis Ford Coppola’s say, to choose a contemporary. I’m be pretty sure that they come up just about dead even. Like violence in general DePalma is penalized for doing it well.

Furthermore I don’t think any true misogynist could ever have made Casualties Of War. If there is a movie that portrays violence against women in general and rape in specific as a more cowardly and despicable action, then I guess I can only be grateful that it has escaped my knowledge.

DePalma really does get in some fantastic satire about the battle between the sexes. Most in small grace notes tucked away in the scenes. Note the nonchalant way an oblivious Ms. Collins says, “It was just her period for God sakes.” After the principle has just reacted to the menstrual blood on her shorts in roughly the same manner that Frankenstein reacts to fire. Or just look at the way a clever cut juxtaposes the way Sue Snell gets a favor from her boyfriend, with the way the odious Chris does. Or the way Sue hardly allows her boyfriend to speak an entire sentence in their talk with Ms. Collins.

But at the end of the day as incisive as it might be, the gender studies portion of the film, is just window dressing. Carrie speaks for everyone who have ever been an ostracized outcast.

I know she spoke for me.

And that should scare the hell out of people more then any psychic powers ever could.

31 Days Of Horror: Day 13: Misery

This is going to be a much shorter review then normal.

Not because the film, doesn’t warrant a long and dedicated review…

But here’s the thing, I have mild, very mild claustrophobia. It doesn’t crop up often in my day to day life, where a fear of heights is much more likely to make me its bitch. But like my weirdly specific OCD involving using cleaning products (If I don’t wash my hands the second I’m done with them I get the screaming memes. Don’t ask me why) it does crop up…

Particularly when it’s represented in fiction, either literary or cinematically.


Ah, you see where this is going now don’t you?

It’s the reason I didn’t go see Buried. It’s the reason that why, though I like and respect both Danny Boyle and James Franco I will not be seeing 127 Hours. Because although it will be part of the cinematic conversation I’m fairly sure the other theater patrons wouldn’t take kindly to the sounds of me alternating between sobbing and screaming.

It’s the reason that significantly Misery is the one Stephen King novel I have never been able to finish.

And it’s the reason that though I sat down to view Reiner’s respected adaptation with the best of intentions. Ready to praise James Caan and Kathy Bates for their committed performances, and Rob Reiner for his creative dynamic use of a limited mise en scene. My brain instead just started to emit a high pitch wailing keen when the movie started that didn’t subside until several hours of laying awake in bed afterwards. And which sounded a little like this

“OhGodwouldn’tthatbefuckawfulpleaseohpleaseneverletanythingremotelylikethateverhappentomeawfuckthehobblingsceneisherealready?I’veheardrumorsANDAAAAAAHHHH”,

Which doesn’t make for the most insightful of criticisms.

So there you go. When I’m brought before St. Peter in Horror Heaven and have to account for the movies I couldn’t take, it won’t be Reogarrio Deodato, Jorge Buttgeriet, or John McNaughton who takes the honors.

No, it’ll be Rob Reiner. The man behind The Bucket List, Rumor Has It, and The Story Of Us.

Well played sir.

31 Days Of Horror Day 12: 1408

All right, let’s get this out of the way…

“I’m tired of all these Motherfucking Ghosts IN MY MOTHERFUCKING HOTEL!!!



1408 stars Cusack as the author of a series of gimmicky haunted house books, the type seen at every book store impulse rack. When he’s tipped to the haunted room 1408, he pulls some serious strings to get there, and very quickly wishes he hadn’t.

1408 is a pretty great little horror movie, well structured and paced. Taking time to build tension and character. The rumor of 1408 is allowed to build gradually. It’s nearly fifteen minutes into the film before the room is even mentioned. Forty before anything untoward happens. 1408 uses this time to build characters who you actually care about, and would like to see not die. I know crazy right? It also actually build it’s tension rather instead of dissipating it at every possible opportunity with cheap boo scares. Bizarre.

This technique climaxes with the conversation Cusack and Jackson (at his best and most understated. Only giving it the full "SAMUEL JACKSON" once) have in Jackson’s office. It’s a top notch piece of work. Exposition as entertainment in a way you rarely, if ever, see. By the time Jackson leans in and gravely intones “It’s an evil fucking room.” It’s like reaching the peak of a roller coaster and feeling a rather agreeable turn of the stomach as we wonder if the drop is really as far down as it looks.

Like Secret Window it practically becomes a one man show (Len Cariou also carries over in an effective one scene role). And Cusack proves more then up to the task. And he’s given very good material to work with. Able to work in his trademark dry humor and charm, whilst still freaking the fuck out.

While Pet Semetary took a book with an angry core of grief and loss and drained it of all it’s richness. 1408 takes the opposite approach and takes a story with virtually no subtext and fills it with an aching human core. The Short Story "1408" collected in "Everything Is Eventual", is a efficient, functional little ghost story. But doesn’t really rise above OK. It was originally a few disconnected passages used as an exercise in "On Writing". And it’s the result more of King hating to leave stuff half done then any real passion for the story. There's is little to recommend it past the neat central conceit that the haunted room is not a den of vengeful spirits, but a kind of temporal venus flytrap.

1408 isn’t just creepy it’s creative, never resorting to boilerplate haunted house imagery, instead coming up with sickly personalized ways to torment Cusack. Both as a character and an actor. In the film’s most darkly funny moment, a hotel created doppleganger gets to employ that Lloyd Dobbler puppy dog sincerity based charm that has so long been his bread and butter for a remarkably sinister effect. Hell we’re talking about a film that makes the Carpenter’s "We've Only Just Begun" creepy (one can imagine some maid with a transistor radio pushing past 1408 and the haunted room thinking “Bloody hell. That’d be Perfect!”)

Look 1408 isn’t what you’d call traumatizing, no one’s ever going to confuse this for Martyrs. But sometimes you don’t need that. Sometimes what you need is a little, but genuine, scare. And 1408 more then fits the bill. 1408 isn’t just one of the better Stephen King Adaptations, it’s one of the few that actually improves on it’s source material.