New Review: The Tunnel

This peculiar subgenre of found footage films, really kicked off with the supremely creepy The Blair Witch Project, and popularized later with the Paranormal Activity films, seems to have replaced zombie movies as the go-to for folks looking to make a splash in the horror scene.  Unfortunately, that water seems more and more shallow these days.

Despite being a found footage film at heart, The Tunnel, the latest entry into this subgenre, wraps a documentary vibe around the shaky-cam madness, reminiscent of the far spookier Lake Mungo.  Under the guise of a movie chronicling the events of a journalistic team investigating a potential government cover-up, The Tunnel introduces us to the ambitious Natasha (Bel Delia), who is having a hard time making a name for herself at a new television station.  Her producer, Pete (Andy Rodoreda), is yanked off a story that would send him and his creative team, soundman Tangles (Luke Arnold) and cameraman Steve (Steve Davis), to China in lieu of reporting the drippy, dank, less China-like underground realm.

It appears as if New South Wales, in the midst of a water shortage, may have found a solution to their problems in the form of underground lakes in abandoned train tunnels.  The media covers the possible solution with great fanfare until, mysteriously, the government stops talking about it.  Then, rumors emerge of homeless people using the tunnels for shelter going missing, and, you know, that's never a good thing.  Natasha ambushes the Minister of Water or something, who declines to comment and, when she calls an old friend for a permit to explore the tunnels, she gets further stonewalled.  So, what does she do?  Sneaks into the tunnels with her producer and crew, of course!

When they go deep down, Steve explains in a post-tunnel interview that he filmed everything because he didn't want to be blamed if they were caught and arrested.  Good enough.  And, in the dark, the camera lights become even more useful.  So, the cameras do make some sort of sense here, but one wishes they would do something more fun with this setup.  Make the cameras more a part of the story.  But, you get the idea: cameras, tunnels, something eating homeless people (the official GOP line on the homeless, by the way), film crew in the dark banging off walls and yelling.

There's some more subtle work than usual regarding a possible relationship between Pete and Natasha, as well as some nice work by Steve Davis who really sells his part, but all the actors are good enough to create the illusion of reality more often than not.  The real drag of The Tunnel is that it doesn't do anything new or bold with the format, and plays like a watered-down version of better films, with fewer chills and the fleeting moments of monstrosities are dim and unsatisfying.  Couple that with a repetitive score, uninspired set-ups and a resolution that doesn't shed light on anything we didn't already know and you have a slightly sub-par to average film with little to recommend it.

One note on the movie - the distribution of the film has been a favorite story of mine, with the producers agreeing to release the movie as a torrent along with the DVD release.  Additionally, individual frames of the film are being sold to support the effort.  While I can't recommend the movie, I hope that this distribution model proves profitable.  I love the democratization of art, and the more filmmakers who can put together an indie project with the release being immediately available to anyone with a computer and the profits determined by viewer response... well, that seems okay by me.  I'd still rather throw this movie a few bucks (which I did and you should, too, here) than support another Pirates sequel or Final Destination iteration.

New Movie: Bloodrayne: The Third Reich

 

So, after two movies, Bloodrayne gets around to a story that is similar to the actual video game it was based upon.  Below is the official press release and, guess what?  Clint Howard is in it! 

Infamous director Uwe Boll’s (Postal, Alone in the Dark) latest cult-classic is the third in the notorious Bloodrayne film series, based on the popular video game character. The film stars Natassia Malthe (Elektra, DOA: Dead or Alive), Clint Howard (Frost/Nixon), Michael Paré (The Lincoln Lawyer) and Brendan Fletcher (Freddy vs. Jason). The DVD and Blu-ray are packed with special features including the making of Bloodrayne: The Third Reich, a writer-director commentary, an interview with the writer and more!

Half-vampire, half-human, Rayne (Malthe) hides in the shadows slaughtering vampires and those that get in her way. In 1943 Europe, during World War II, Rayne faces her greatest foe, a growing army of undead Nazi soldiers led by Ekart Brand, a top Nazi official turned day-walker. Rayne must team up with a group of resistance fighters to defeat Brand and his vampire army before they reach Berlin to grant Hitler immortality.

You can find the Twitter feed here, or hit them up on Facebook here.

Bloodrayne: The Third Reich hits store shelves on July 5th.

Also, behold, the trailer!

Review: Primal

We are all beasts at heart.  No matter how we may try to subvert our basest instincts, whether trough intellectualism or spirituality or simple self-awareness, we cannot deny that simple part of the brain.  We still "see red," the moment when pure anger clouds our senses, we are still subject to sexual urges that rule us.  It is with that notion in mind that I approached Primal, the Australian horror film that deals with these ideas - a film about how we cannot escape our animalism, that we are forever subject to an evolutionary lingering.  Sign me up!

Primal begins in the past as we get a glimpse of a primitive man creating cave paintings to warn others against the area, only to be murdered by something with very sharp teeth.  Flash-forward to the modern day and we find ourselves in the company of six young, pretty friends on their way to explore and document the cave paintings and surrounding area.  Anja (Zoe Truckwell-Smith) is the timid one, afraid to cut through a tunnel to get to the cave paintings due to her neuroses.  She drives around while the rest take their shortcut, leaving a little blood behind in the tunnel due to a minor accident.

Mel (Krew Boylan) takes the opportunity later that night to do a little skinny-dipping, a whim that results in sickness.  See, the water had gone all dark and icky, and now Mel is having fever dreams and losing teeth.  Never a good sign.  When she begins to grow all new ones and munch on the dead rabbit near the camp, the rest of the crew gets a little nervous.  It seems Mel has been infected by a malady that causes her to get all shark-faced and start hunting the rest of the gang, usually by jumping high off of something onto them and getting all bite-y.

While the rest of the group holds Mel off with torches and the like, others get infected, or become food for the new hunters, culminating in a desperate dash into the tunnel to avoid a similar, or worse fate.  Anja must learn the secret of this infection while not succumbing to it, lest she wind up getting all cannibalistic, too.

Did I say I was into the idea of this one?  It all smacks of horror at its best, using the medium and genre to describe an aspect of the human condition we either choose to deny or find, at worst, unspeakable.  Primal doesn't appear to have such lofty aims, however.  Writer and director Josh Reed prefers to approach the film from more of a hunter/hunted angle, trying to wring some suspense from the notion of having something in the dark hunting you rather than from the premise, which I find to be very disappointing.  There is so much to say about our less-civilized tendencies, but Primal insists on being a film about monsters trying to eat us, and it succeeds reasonably well on that front. 

The make-up effects are passable, and Reed has a keen eye for shot composition, with no fear of negative space.  Primal is, at least, pretty to look at.  The pacing is also quite good, kicking into gear in a hurry and keeping the action, and occasional eviscerations, rolling for most of its run time, and even manages a nasty little surprise in the third act that recalls one of the more disturbing moments from the original Evil Dead. 

The movie can't shake the what-might-have-been however.  as it takes the path of the monster chiller rather than the allegory.  That's not to say it isn't an enjoyable time, but it also feels like an opportunity wasted.  if the premise of the film appeals to you, by all means check it out.  And may you come away with it a little more satisfied than I did.

Why Slashers Can't Scare Me: Horror Grows Up

You know the drill.  Car/van/bus full of nubile kids gets stranded/goes somewhere they shouldn't and ends up being stalked and killed by guy in a mask/chainsaw aficionado/hillbilly cannibals.  Usually, one of them survives, the virgin more than likely.  The rest of the pot-smoking, sex-having, danger-ignoring teens get killed off, paying for the sins of sex, drugs and irreverence.  It's a formula that's been with us since at least the 1950s, when greasers at Lookout Point would find some monster that hunted them like the nubile prey they were, honed to knife-edge precision in the late 1970s as Jason, Leatherface and Michael took to the screen.  But what is so compelling about a bunch of kids getting hacked up?  Why not senior citizens, or even middle-aged adults more concerned with mortgages and raising kids than with smoking weed and fornicating?

It's been discussed by the like of John Carpenter and Tobe Hooper before, as well as the literary master of horror, Stephen King.  This fixation on youth cut short speaks to the essence of horror - death.  Every slasher film can be boiled down to a central denial of the invulnerability of youth.  If the killer is speed-walking after grandma, it's just not as affecting.  Grandma's lived a full life.  She's expected to die soon, even if it's a natural death.  As for Mom and Dad, well, they're sort of in the same boat, aren't they?  They have outlived their youth, and may be struck down by cancer, aneurisms, heart attacks... their deaths don't mean as much because death is such a real possibility.  It's a function of life at a certain point, the recognition of the reality of mortality.

But these teens, with their fresh bodies, unwithered by age, unmolested by the ravages of the decades to come - they are beautiful, perfect representations of how we like to see ourselves.  They are the youthful ideal, and in today's American culture, what is more worshipped than youth?  We inject ourselves with Botox, get implants, exercise, eat healthy, all because we know we are going to die, that youth has fled us and we long desparately to cling to that youth.  But these teens, that's some distant future, some reality that doesn't exist yet.  Death is no more a reality than life on Mars.  It may happen, but it's not happening now, and the now is the only thing the teenager can process. 

But it's not only teens watching these movies.  We see our own youth in these characters.  We are given the opportunity to lie to ourselves and say that we are still young, not much different from the teenage men and women on the screen, and share, for a time, their denial of the grave.  Then, when they are mercilessly hacked up/eaten/chainsawed, we can say from the safety of our seats, these kids had it coming, because we ALL have it coming.  As an adult, these movies speak less to the sense of a life cut short and more to our newfound sensibilities.  Death comes to us all, so why should these people be any different.  I would argue that there is a morbid sense of justice in the adult perspective on the slasher.  While a teenager may subconsciously register these films as a way to see death presented to them, and then be allowed to safely walk away, having flirted with oblivion, but easily dismissible, the adult sees them as confirmation of the dark knowledge that we all die, it's only a matter of when, where and how. 

Adult horror tends to be more associated with the Cronenberg school of horror, of desecration of the flesh, or losing a child, or helplessness, or paranoia.  Slashers aren't made for adults, because their central notion of the loss of youth has already happened.  Mortality is.   The youthful fear of the unexpected death when the bloom is still on the rose has no relevance anymore.  We know we will die and, therefore, our fears must be different.  Death may still scare us, but it's inevitability takes away some of the terror, like being terrified of that other inevitability, taxes.  And that's okay.  It's okay to release the slasher as an irrelevant horror experience.  There are plenty of fears out there, plenty of things far worse than death.  Let the kids have their masked monstrosities wielding axes and chainsaws.  Those can't scare me anymore.  Show me the handful of dust, and, like Eliot, I will show you real fear.

New Movie: Yellowbrickroad

  

Got word yesterday of a new film opening June 1st at several AMC Theater locations.  Here's the official press release:

Bloody Disgusting and The Collective invite you to walk the YELLOWBRICKROAD at an AMC Theater Near You JUNE 1st, 2011.

No, not that yellow brick road... 

This YELLOWBRICKROAD: 

In the Fall of 1940, the entire population of Friar, New Hampshire—all 572 of them—abandoned their homes, their possessions and their lives and walked up an ancient trail, never to be seen alive again. Their fates remained a mystery for over seventy years, until a team of researchers discover the trailhead and attempt to retrace the path the doomed citizens of Friar took. A few among them believe they will find something terrible in the forest. But it is the forest that will find something terrible in them

YELLOWBRICKROAD was an official Slamdance selection, and played at The Atlanta Film Festival and Screamfest to critical and audience acclaim, and won best feature at the New York Horror Film Festival.

Directed and written by Andy Mitton and Jesse Holland; produced by Eric Hungerford; starring Cassidy Freeman (SMALLVILLE), Anessa Ramsey (THE SIGNAL), and Lee Wilkof (BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOUʼRE DEAD).   

You can find the official website here, or watch the trailer here. 

Also, here's some info on the Bloody Disgusting Slelects Program for your eyeball pleasure.

Review: Zombies of Mass Destruction

 Man, do I love a good zombie movie.  Some of my favorite horror films of all time come from this decaying subgenre, including the original Dawn of the Dead or the ferocious and funny Return of the Living Dead or even the Italian Zombi 2, complete with eyeball-popping goodness.  Sadly, the subgenre has fallen into disrepair of late, as every knucklehead with a camera and a dream seems to have decided they can make their own zombie film.  This leads to movies like Zombies, Zombies, Zombies or those godawful Return of the Living Dead sequels, movies that one strains to defend on even the basest, most prurient level.  So, it's nice to see a zombie film come along like Zombies of Mass Destruction, which, at least, one can defend on thematic grounds.

Set in the remote town of Port Gamble, ZMD weaves together the story of American-born but foreign-looking Frida (Janette Armand) and newly-returned Tom (Doug Fal), who has arrived with his boyfriend, Lance (Cooper Hopkins) in an effort to come clean with his mother about his sexuality.  Other stories rear their heads, like a mayoral battle between hippie-ish Cheryl (Cornelia Moore) and the more conservative Hal Burton (James Mesher), as well as the inner working of the Frida-obsessed Brian (Andrew Hyde) and his neo-con family.  On this day, family dramas and back-handed xenophobia are the least of the town's problems as the dead have risen and are, as usual, intent on eating the living.

As you might have guessed, ZMD uses the backdrop of the zombie outbreak to comment on modern American politics, whether it's the knee-jerk belief that the zombies must be borne of a terrorist threat, or the implication that Tom and Lance must be "cured" of the homosexuality lest they become zombies themselves.  It's nice to see that this movie has something to say, and my own politics align neatly with those of the film.  For conservatives among you, you may bristle at the cartoonish depiction of Brian's father, Joe (Russell Hodgkinson), who instantly believes that, not only is the zombie outbreak the result of terrorism but that Frida must know something about it she's not saying, or the super-fundamentalist church doctrine presented in the film.  I would point out that the more liberal characters are equally cartoonish and broad, particularly the depiction of Tom's boyfriend, Lance. 

The film aims for comedy, and occasionally lands a good joke (one of my favorites being Joe's assertion that he isn't Canadian anymore when his patriotism is questioned), but a lot of the jokes land flat on their rotting faces.  And, though I do agree with the message of the film, the politics of the movie often feel so blatantly represented, one wonders if a brochure handed out in the East Village wouldn't have been more subtle.  Still, it is a movie of ideas, and there is something o be said for that.  The zombie effects are middle-of-the-road, serviceable but nothing that's going to leave you scratching your head over how they accomplished anything. 

Zombies of Mass Destruction is a great attempt at what makes zombie movies good in the first place - a chance to comment on modern life by highlighting the best and worst of ourselves during such an extreme situation.  Unfortunately, some of the acting, the effects and the over-generalizations weigh it down from being the movie that it wants to be.  Still, for those who enjoy the zombie film as allegory, this is worth a look, if only to see the glimpses of the movie that might have been.