All I Want For Helena Is a Mouthful of Teeth

Evil children, tooth fairies, and Netflix Instant?

JUST TRY AND STOP ME.

Quick Plot: Sophia is a British historian raising her daughter Helena alone in Italy after her carefree husband took off to Cancun. After a car accident robs Helena of a proper first visit from the tooth fairy, the girl becomes obsessed with collecting molars from her classmates to appease the mysterious spirit she claims to be living inside the antique wardrobe recently found in their historically fertile apartment.

Look, when I was a kid, my pals and I traded snap bracelets. The next generation, pogs, later, SillyBandz and so forth. Apparently, teeth gathering just crosses a line.

Soon Sophia is dragging Helena to a psychiatrist who is alarmed by her stories and violent drawings, especially since they seem to demonstrate that Helena has dark knowledge of a terrible crime that took place in their rented home fifty years prior.

The Haunting of Helena has one of those eye-catching covers that Netflix Instant knows how to flash. This is also a Bloody Disgusting release, and while their record is splotchy, I always hold out hope that they'll sponsor another gem like YellowBrickRoad.

In the case of The Haunting of Helena, we're much closer in line to Exit Humanity.

Like that Civil War-set zombie tale, The Haunting of Helena is a solidly made horror film. And like that Civil war-set zombie tale, it's also dreadfully paced and far less involving than it could be.

Here you have a film that opens with creepy video footage and black and white photos detailing a little known period of Italian history wherein Benito Mussolini sent poor citizens to a malaria-ridden no man's land to cultivate a new agricultural resource. That's different, and promising as some form of backdrop for a haunted child film. The problem is that The Haunting of Helena has no real idea how to connect the two. 

Sure, we get plenty of beautiful cinematography that gives us refreshingly new views of Italian architecture, but there are only so many linking shots of a creepy cemetery statue that can keep a script involving. Somewhere along the film's 90 minute running time, we get side-tracked with newspaper articles about long-past wolf attacks on local children and the recurring horror of spousal jealousy taken too far. Also, mosquitoes. Because those connect to malaria and...wolf attacks?

You can see my frustration. Lead actress Harriet MacMasters-Green is appealing enough, but she can only do so much with a 'leave my daughter alone!' character who throws in her own secret halfway through the film, only to have that ultimately mean nothing. Characters seem to enter the film at opportune moments solely to be put in danger one scene later. The timing moves from days to months to days to years, without anything really changing (a woman as stylish as Sophia would probably at least experiment with bangs or hair dye over the course of 18 months). It's like directors Christian Bisceglia and Ascanio Malgarini collected a bunch of tropes from modern ghost films (grayish color palette, old timey flashbacks, worried single mother, big-eyed child), and dropped them in a saucepan heating up Prego. The end result isn't terrible, but it's clearly so far below what it could have been. 

High Points

There's a nice twist tossed in towards the end, but the problem is, it's so much more interesting than the hour that came before it that it ultimately just made me angry to be watching the wrong movie

Low Points

Zzzzzzzzzzzz

Lessons Learned

In Italy, asylums for the mentally ill encourage mingling of all ages from child to disturbed adult

Just because your daughter is going crazy and there's a toothless ghost after you is no reason at all not to let your hair lose its luster

Always listen to your crazy elderly neighbors. Because if you can't trust your crazy elderly neighbors to deliver important exposition, who can you trust?

Rent/Bury/Buy

The Haunting of Helena is certainly stronger than many a low budget horror film floating on Instant Watch, but I found it incredibly disappointing. Like the recent Mama, it feels derivative of too many subgenres without fully understanding just what makes them work. 

Somewhere Beyond the Grave, Dull Stuff Happens

Zombies! Apocalypse! Samurai swords! Magical ear-bleeding harmonicas!

Damn you raised expectations.

Quick Plot: In ‘another time, another place’ (presumably in the future), a dark clad man (known only as The Officer) wanders the post-apocalyptic landscape in search of The Dark Rider, a mysterious, maybe supernatural killer terrorizing what’s left of humanity. The radio bids whoever is still out there to have a nice day, with little optimism that anyone is listening to say thank you. Also in the mix is a trio of bizarro harmonica playing murderers and a small population of the walking dead.

I guess they eat human flesh? It’s never explained, which is actually quite neat. For the first half hour or so of its running time, Beyond the Grave offered something truly refreshing: a different kind of apocalypse. Filmed in Brazil by newcomer Davi de Oliveira Pinheiro, it mixes standard zombies with a sort of free-range magic element set against a rather beautiful (and rarely seen on film) landscape. 

Boy did I want to like this movie.

Much like the Civil War zombie opus Exit Humanity, Beyond the Grave is an ambitious piece of work that combines recognizable horror tropes with a different kind of storytelling. The Officer is a stoic hero (I guess) who gradually amasses fellow survivors, all equally defensive, quiet, and hard to care about.

At a certain point, I realized Beyond the Grave was a story of a man of no words entering dark buildings to investigate weird occult signs while he tells a young teenage couple to wait in a car until something comes up, at which point one of of them runs into said dark building to retrieve said man of no words and they move on.

This happens twice.

Thankfully, we get a minor reprieve when we meet a few more dynamic characters holing up in an old school building. Like everyone else in this movie, we never have any idea how they are related to one another, but at least the man in charge smiles.

In this movie, that’s a feat.

I respect Beyond the Grave quite a bit. It goes for something new and doesn’t back away from doing so without mercy. Unfortunately, it also finds a way to bleed every minute in such a way that makes the experience feel endless. At about the halfway mark, something huge happens that seems to redirect the entire story. It’s fairly awesome in theory, except that a) the movie doesn’t fully follow through with it in any way that seems to make sense and b) there’s still half of a dull movie left to struggle through.

I did not enjoy Beyond the Grave, but I’m hesitant to not recommend it. Much like Exit Humanity, it earns high marks for being different...and low ones being kind of a drag.

High Points

Melissandro Bittencourt’s gorgeous cinematography goes a long way in aiding the unearthly tone of the film’s untraditional apocalypse

Low Notes

While some of the actual zombie designs are interesting enough, close-ups on my 52” screen TV revealed some distractingly wonky detailing 

Lessons Learned

You don’t need bullets to learn how to shoot

Shocking bit of education, I know, but please: don’t put your bare foot on the chest of a man who has incredibly easy access to a samurai sword

When wielding said samurai sword, be wary of walls

Rent/Bury/Buy

Beyond the Grave is worth a viewing, if only to see some genre film from a less cinematically active region. It has a few neat tricks up its sleeve for zombie fans or those with an appetite for unusual horror. But man oh man, it doesn’t make it easy on the viewer. I found Beyond the Grave a sluggish experience, yet I’m still putting director Pinheiro on my radar. He has an eye. Now let’s hope he finds a way to make it work with the rest of his filmmaking senses.

A For Effort. Eh For Execution

I've said it time and time again: setting your genre film in the olden days will automatically make it more interesting. Aside from removing the annoyingly obligatory "No service!"shout-out, a pre-automobile driven society gives way to more tension, more limitations, and an environment even less fit to fight supernatural horrors than the one we all know.

In other words, I added the new Bloody Disgusting release Exit Humanity to my queue because it was a Civil War era zombie film. What could go wrong?

Quick Plot: Narrated by an always welcomed Brian Cox, Exit Humanity is assembled from the diary of Edwin Young (a solid Mark Gibson), a battle-scarred soldier who caught a glimpse of the undead while shooting the other side on the mountains of Tennessee. Six years later, he experiences new horrors when he returns from a hunting trip to find his wife and son zombified, as well as a good portion of the nearby community. Edwin embarks upon his own mission to research and exterminate the new population of flesh-eaters, eventually venturing out to spread his son's ashes at a peaceful waterfall that soothed him during the war. 

Along the way, Edwin befriends Isaac, a fellow zombie hunter looking for his sister, who has been kidnapped by a rogue group of Confederates (led by genre stalwart Bill Mosely) using a tired medic (Pontypool's Stephen McHattie) to work on a cure. Edwin, Isaac, and his sister Emma escape to find solace in a local healer's home (played by Dee Wallace, and yes, the genre cred meter just burst).

Let's examine what we have so far:

-A fascinating and underused time period

-A superb cast of proven horror actors

-Zombies

Mixing these ingredients should yield a pretty delicious pie, right? 

Well...

Written and directed by John Geddes, Exit Humanity is an ambitious film, one that clocks in at nearly 110 minutes and feels determined to make you feel each one. With Jeff Graville, Nate Kreiswirth, and Ben Nudds' soaring score and the sometimes pretentious narration, Exit Humanity is certainly aiming for epic status. But unlike something like Stakeland (which FELT big even on a small budget), the elements of this film never quite add up to something as grandiose as it wants to be. Gibson is a strong lead, but too much of the early scenes are devoted to Edwin screaming at God, while later montage-ish sequences that are supposed to show developing relationships never resonate with any true depth. Though we get some strong zombie chases here and there, the undead seem to randomly fade in and out as an actual threat. Part of what makes a historical-set horror film so effective is knowing that antiquated weaponry and technology might not be advanced enough to handle the threat. But in Exit Humanity, rarely do the shuffling hordes of extras even feel that dangerous.

That being said, Exit Humanity has to be admired for some of its more unique touches. Throughout the film, Geddes interjects expressionistic style animation, presumably as drawings from Edwin's journal. The artwork is quite striking, even if its more modern look never quite gels with the 19th century feel of the rest of the film.

Based on its premise and cast, I wanted to like Exit Humanity and by golly, I just, well, kind of didn't. The film looks quite good, with its woodsy setting never tipping its Confederate hat to reveal a low budget. Lots of credit does go to Geddes for taking his time to create something unique to the zombie genre without ever settling for easy gore. Unfortunately, the incredibly labored pacing just never clicked for me. The sentiment was there, but while the landscape and soundtrack worked so hard to establish Edwin's crew's misfortunes, I just never cared enough about them as individuals to stay involved with the molasses moving narrative.

High Points

Dude: it's the 1870s!

Low Points

...a time when movies took themselves far too seriously

Lessons Learned

There ain’t no cure for monstrous behavior

Leather jackets have always been in style, be it 1987 or 1871

As Cold Mountain already taught us, one could not find better healthcare in the 19th century than in the secluded forest cabin of a female hermit

Rent/Bury/Buy

I don't want to discourage anyone from checking out Exit Humanity. I give Geddes a lot of credit for tackling a tired genre with a fresh approach, and between the surprisingly strong production value, reliable cast, interesting artwork, and an extras-loaded DVD, the film offers quite a lot for horror fans with an appreciation for something new. Overall, it didn't quite work for my tastes, but this is a better than average straight-to-DVD horror movie that could certainly please plenty of viewers. I feel bad not being one.