The (Panda) Tribe Has Spoken

I'm a bit of a softie for any form of game show horror, particularly the reality-themed. Maybe it's my competitive nature. It's one thing to fight for your life, but it's soooooo much better when you have to ALSO fight others.

Quick Plot: Welcome to Furca's House of Fun, a Big Brother-ish live stream filled with 8 attractive millennial D-list celebrities (including one played by Culture Shock director Gigi Saul Guerrero). Their skills range from chess to MMA, with a whole lot of reality TV and social media filtering experience in between. Every few days, one contestant will be eliminated based on popular vote, with the last one winning a $5 million cash prize.

Sounds easy enough, but as you just might guess, Funhouse has a few deadly tricks up its sleeve. Our computer generated panda bear cartoon host might seem cute and cuddly at first, but before you can throw in a convoluted product placement, the real stakes are revealed. 

Yes, it's a murder game, because how can a modern horror movie starring hot people with dubious pasts NOT be a murder game? And you know what: it's kind of a delight.

Written and directed by Jason William Lee, Funhouse is, you know, FUN. It takes just enough time introducing its setup to get us fully ready for the fireworks, and once they start blasting, the movie creates a shockingly human center to hold it up. 

We're so used to our physically perfect, morally gross young horror casts to be empty fodder, and when you throw in a reality competition plot point, it's truly a given. What makes Funhouse such a smart little watch is how it slyly flips that expectation on its hashtagged head. Each individual is introduced with an emoji-filled montage highlighting their less than respectable fame, and early conflicts lead us to expect a whole lot of shouting, with the big reveal being that the REAL monster is their own inability to work together. We've seen it done time and time again.

And that's the beauty of Funhouse. Just as quickly as we roll our eyes over a Bachelorette's failed love stories, we find ourselves incredibly invested in her survival. Lee understands that giving his characters just enough room to react to their circumstances and interact with each other goes a very long way in opening them up to the audience. 

It certainly helps that the cast is so solid. Everyone manages to craft both sides of their character: the annoyingly hamming wannabe star AND the vulnerable human in way over his or her head realizing that death is just a few clicks away. The setting fits the aesthetic you've come to expect from this kind of programming: monochromatic confessional rooms, steaming hot tubs, and an endless well of top shelf liquor. And all it takes is the first elimination round to reveal the utter emptiness of their prison. 

High Points

It's a tricky job to play reality fame vampires who earn audience sympathy, but enough good things can't be said about the cast. Everyone finds the right beats, but it's Christopher Gerard as Headstone who really shines, giving us both the short temper tantrums that would make good TV and shockingly raw moments that show his humanity

Low Points

I suppose our main villain is supposed to be pretty insufferable, but a good deal of his 'let me explain what this all means' monologues feel a bit more on the nose than needed

Lessons Learned

There's a big difference between drugging yourself and being drugged

Even the internet can get bored with boobs

If you don't trust your agent, then it's really your responsibility to read the very fine print

Rent/Bury/Buy

I had an absolute blast with Funhouse. It's streaming on Hulu and well worth your eyeballs, particularly if they've consumed their share of reality competitions. 

Do You Want To Play a Game?

Cheeky dark humor, likable characters, surprising plot twists, badass beheadings, AND Ron Perlman?

Folks, we might have a winner.

Quick Plot: Nice guy Elliot is a few days away from marrying his pregnant fiancee when he loses his insurance sales job for being too nice of a guy. Saddled with the debt of college loans, looming baby bills, and the financial responsibility of taking care of his elderly father and special needs brother Michael, you could say Elliot is having something of a terrible horrible no good very bad day.

It's about to get a whole lot worse.

A WHOLE lot. A whole lot as in 'eating a dead fly is probably the best of it.'

Elliot, you see, has been chosen as a contestant for a mysterious 'game' that makes Fear Factor look like as easy as Wheel of Fortune. A grandfatherly voice on his flip phone assigns Elliot a task to complete. With each successful finish, Elliot earns big money, so long as he completes all thirteen  progressively more challenging challenges. Digesting a household insect makes it a no brainer; making a child cry and sawing off an old acquaintance's arm are no regular Daily Double.

13 Sins is a remake of a very good Thai horror film called, depending on your translation, 13: Game of Death. Written and directed by The Last Exorcism's Daniel Stamm, 13 Sins takes what worked in the original and smartly adds plenty more, taking great care to craft its lead character as a realistic and sympathetic man in way over his head.

Elliot, played by Mark Webber, is easy to root for. The film establishes him very quickly as a good man taxed with big commitments he, like so many of us normal folks, can’t possibly fulfill. I know that it's something of a tradition to cast your token young pretty people in the horror genre, but as I watched 13 Sins a few days after Crowsnest, I was reminded just how hard I hate said tradition. The characters at the heart of Crowsnest (a typical found footage slasher) were early twentysomething upper middle class brats who had no redeeming qualities other than being human beings. 

Elliot is still a young guy, but he's a NICE young guy. A quick scene with his boss establishes, without overly complex exposition, that Elliot doesn't like to cheat people. He kisses his wife goodbye. He cares for his brother. It's not that he deserves to live because he's a human being, but that he deserves to live a happy life because he’s just a good, if not extraordinary man. See, young filmmakers? It's not that hard!

In addition to tweaking its protagonist's family life, 13 Sins also adds an intriguing subplot using the always intriguing Pruitt Taylor Vince and the always excessively awesome Ron Perlman. Vince plays a man whose past experiences with the game have led to an obsessive quest to uncover its secrets and reveal them to the world. It's a fun side story that gives us a taste of just deep the conspiracy runs (hint: it just might involve a grassy knoll). 

You know, I am more than happy to say that I really dug 13 Sins. Much like The Last Exorcism, the film toes a difficult line between comedy, satire, and true horror. It treats its characters like people rather than genre trope roadblocks (ironic considering the film is essentially about the powerful treating the powerless as pawns), making it easy and natural for the audience to be fully invested in the action. Despite being a remake of a fairly new film, it also manages plenty of surprises by altering the material more than enough for the same audience. 

High Points

Any film that begins with an elite benefit dinner being crashed by an honored elderly man's speech turning into a dirty joke and finger severing can't be bad

The original film involved poop eating. This one does not. For that alone, I am a happy viewer

Low Points

MINOR SPOILER!

I like the balanced tone of the ending, but the completist in me is stuck wondering "so what now?" 

Lessons Learned

The more guests you invite to your rehearsal dinner, the more chaos you should expect to unfold at the toasting

Homeless men want nothing to do with ostriches

Shoot first. Ask questions after.

The hotter the nurse, the less effective the local anesthetic 

Rent/Bury/Buy

13 Sins is a fine way to spend 90 minutes of your life. The film manages to balance black humor with real stakes so that even if you might chuckle at the sight of mass decapitation, the fact that your lead character reacts to it like a person helps to ground the story in that very vital humanity. You can find the film streaming on Netflix Instant where it exceeds the quality and depth of most of its breezy peers. 

What Happens When People Stop Being Polite...& Start Getting Dead

It's rare that a game show horror film slips under my all-encompassing radar, but that seems to be the case with 2002's My Little Eye. Thankfully, the wonderful Christine Hadden of Fascination With Fear recently highlighted this little indie for a winter horror special. My completist tendencies paired with the convenience of Instant Watch? Just try and stop me!

Quick Plot: Five twentysomethings are chosen to participate in a 6 month long Internet reality show akin to Big Brother, where they're isolated in a country home with the reward of $1 million...providing all five remain on the property for the program's duration. This being a horror movie, you can bet your Survivor torch that our fame-hungry contestants are going to run into some roadblocks 5 months, 3 weeks, and 6 days after signing their release forms.

Filmed, I assume, on a microbudget, My Little Eye is not a good-looking or perfectly made film. The visual graininess and cheap sound cues are tolerable due to the nature of the film's webcam basis, but the overall effect ends up being rather ugly to look at. Thankfully, My Little Eye makes up for its style with genuinely unnerving and surprisingly fresh substance.

Released in 2002, My Little Eye must have been made in the cultural fervor of early 21st century reality boom. Remember Halloween: Resurrection, where Tyra Banks and Bustah Rhymes produced a Michael Myers-infused web series? Same year. The American version of Survivor was just a toddler at 2, while Big Brother was beginning its world domination plan, making MTV stalwart The Real World feel strangely long in the tooth. Reality TV was no longer a passive activity in which we watched lives get lived; it was a competitive event, one that demanded winners triumph and losers suffer. The Real World might have given prized screentime to its sexy young people's romantic exploits, but Who Wants To Marry a Millionaire?'s sponsors demanded a glitzy wedding and legally binding marriage (that naturally ended in an annulment quicker than a Kardashian affair). 

Though nowhere near as sharp (or funny) as the still-underrated Series 7: The Contenders, My Little Eye is a surprisingly strong entry into the game show horror subgenre. The mostly unknown cast (save for a pre-ubiquitous Bradley Cooper and one of the ill-fated roller coaster survivors in Final Destination 3) manage to pull off the not-so-easy feat of being believable human beings who would put themselves in this kind of situation. The script..... packs some neat twists, toying with the idea of the producers-behind-the-curtain being creative sadists who deliver bricks and a loaded gun in place of food. There's even a slightly new spin on the tried and true prank-gone-bad trope so common in '80s slashers. 

Does My Little Eye surpass the satiric chill of Series 7 or the full blasted awesomeness of The Running Man? Not a chance, but this is a fine entry into a subgenre that has yet to grow old (at least in my I-actually-watch-Love-In-The-Wild obsessive opinion). My Little Eye offers quite a few interesting twists on its straightforward concept, and while the budgetary restraints do keep it far form greatness, this is a strong, intelligent little film that's well worth your time.

High Notes

I love a film that actually challenges its characters to define their sense of morality, and My Little Eye approaches such a quandary with plenty of juice

Low Notes

Pity the financially challenged sound man who has to resort to slow motion deep voice antics. Pity the audience who has to wince through them

Lessons Learned

The Internet = The World Wide Web

You can learn a lot of shit at computer club

Statistically speaking, strangers rarely kill strangers

Rent/Bury/Buy

My Little Eye is a tad constrained by its budget (it looks and sounds like it was made on a teenager's 1990s-era allowance) but so long as you can put aside some polishing standards, this is quite a treat. While I watched it on Instant Watch, word on the Internet Super Highway tells me the DVD includes alternate commentary tracks with actors discussing the 'show' in character. That in itself is groovy enough for me to say buy.

I Liked The Hunger Games. Wanna Fight About It?

According to the rules, there can only be one winner, but that doesn't mean we can't have multiple pieces of film and literature following sadistic reality television programs that pit civilian against civilian in hand-to-hand combat to the death. As The Hunger Games feasts its way through box office records, I'm noticing an irksome fanboy retaliation against a franchise-in-the-making, as if Suzanne Collins were Stephanie Meyers' pedicure buddy. I found Gary Ross's film to be thoroughly enjoyable and when placed in the larger context of its audience, extremely refreshing.

Stop looking at me like that! I saw The Running Man in the theaters when I was FIVE YEARS OLD! I was hyping Series 7: The Contenders before Jeff Probst hosted VH1’s Music Jeopardy. I have watched, read, written about, and invented games for my current ninth favorite film of all time, Battle Royale. In no way does The Hunger Games come close to nipping at its schoolgirl kneesocks.

But for those of you who don't know, I'm something of a cockeyed optimist when it comes to movies. I don't like hating things, and not just because I was raised to not use the word 'hate' at home (we replaced it with loath, which is actually stronger but sounds more elegant). I want to believe in the future of cinema, I want to know that there are original artists out there with brilliance in their path, and heck, even that the occasional unnecessary remake can be handled with cleverness, originality, and understanding. 

Wait, what does that have to do with The Hunger Games again?

Right, genre fanboy snobbery. It’s so negative.

Look folks, The Hunger Games ain’t Battle Royale. It’s a PG-13 rated (but harsh one at that) adaptation of a juggernaut young adult novel primarily aimed at females in the eighth grade. 

And you know what? I think that’s awesome. I think it’s positively spectacular that the most popular teen literature of the day is a dark ride into a terrifying, morbidly fascinating future featuring a powerful female lead. The movie isn’t without its flaws (hey Woody, hope you have enough minutes left on your bill to phone that performance in), but I can think of at least 7 reasons why I rather dug it:

  

1. Further evidence that one should never eff with Isabelle Fuhrman

Don’t you wonder how Jodelle Ferland feels about that OTHER brunette child actress-turned-teen who specializes in playing sociopaths...and playing them better. I dare anyone to pit the blander than rice cakes Case 39 against the trashtacular Orphan. Come now, that’s like betting on the wimpy curly haired kid over the brute from District 1! Or, I don’t know, Ferland’s supporting vampire in Twilight 3 to Fuhrman’s KNIFE THROWING BADASS Clove in The Hunger Games. 

And before you say it, yes, I was happy to see the young Ferland get some decent work in Cabin In the Woods. But it’s rare that I could watch a 15-year-old girl HURL KNIVES and believe it. You can be my cat’s laser pointer that I will never piss off Isabelle Fuhrman. 

2. Not the genetically manipulated bees!

True, The Hunger Games has nothing on Battle Royale’s machetes, axes, crossbows, uzis, or pocket knife deaths but you know what it DOES have? Killer bee thingies. That's groovy, right?

3. Slaughter in 17 seconds

Let me explain something to you: I find the idea of hand-to-hand combat-to-the-death incredibly disturbing. Part of it is my own lack of coordinative abilities, and the rest stems from the simple truth that stabbing or choking a person a person two inches from my own face is simply horrifying on the very most primal of levels. That in itself is probably why these kinds of desperation murder stories make me so uncomfortable. As those pedestal pods rise up for the arena’s opening ceremonies, the threat becomes real: these children are going to have to kill each other with whatever tools are at hand, most of which are muscles or knives. Sure, we don’t SEE much in the PG-13 rating, but implied horror is there, particularly when we get quick glances at scrawny 12-year-olds before never seeing them again...

Because Orphan has knifed them to death.

4. It will forever make Project Runway Innovation Challenges way more intense

Sure, Heidi Klum's fashion-obsessed, quip-forcing slaves have been forced to create beautiful clothing out of garbage, candy, and car parts, but even setting aside the recent all-star blacklight challenge, none of the Project Runway contestants have come close to putting live fire on their scrawny model cutlets. Now that Katniss and Peeta blazed that trail (hehe, pun!), how can future contestants with artificial names and distracting jewelry DARE to play it safe?

5. The Future 1% In Fluorescent

I’m not about to fumble through a political interpretation of the universe created by author Suzanne Collins. I’ll leave that to high school English teachers who should be excited to get their students’ hands on a decently written book that they’ll actually WANT to read. 

Collins and Ross’ universe isn’t the most imaginative place created in literature. It’s a 1984 inspired society that bares a reference to The Lottery, Survivor, The Long Walk, and plenty other sources. But hey: it’s well-crafted and relevant, no matter how simple it is. More importantly, it means we get fashion like this:

So quitcher complaining

6. Best. Facial Hair. Ever.

‘Nuff said

7. It’s not Twilight

What, was that a low blow? Please. Any parent who's been wondering why their daughter has taken to wearing a permanent flannel and fartface should consider the odds forever in their favor if said teen is now braiding her hair and taking up archery. As I've explained before and again, Twilight isn't just bad cinema: it's dangerous. In no way do I believe in the burning of books, but if a local brushfire just so happened to wander into Little, Brown and Company’s warehouse, the future of feminism might be grateful.

See, Katniss, as played exactly like Ree Dolly in the magnificent Winter's Bone by Jennifer Lawrence again, is an admirable heroine. She fights. She thinks. She takes care of herself and actually cares about others. Remember my favorite scene in Twilight 2, where Bella and Edward sauntered past a line of tourists about to be unknowingly devoured by Italian vampires? Bella looked mildlly concerned, but Edward's simple "Move on" had her seeing the sunlight while the audience caught a sample of screaming civilians. Yeah, that's someone to look up to.

One of the main reasons The Hunger Games has (forgive the pun) caught fire with a young audience is, I hope, because Katniss Everdeen is the kind of literary narrator young women want to be, like Nancy Drew, Scout Finch, Cathy Dollanger, Elphaba or a founding member of The Babysitter’s Club (with the exception of Mary Anne; grow a pair girl). In Collins' writing, Katniss is even funny and sarcastic, something that doesn't quite translate on film. I forgive that because, you know, girlfriend is fighting for her life from the likes of these people:

Look: The Hunger Games isn't perfect. It's not necessarily ground-breaking. And yes, it's now become as mainstream as Bella Swan moaning about not being understood. But just because something is popular does not mean that it's not good, or entertaining, or simply much smarter and scarier than legions of pessimists want you to believe. 


Now if you'll excuse me, I have this Pavlovian condition that requires I pop in my Running Man Blu Ray anytime the title comes up in conversation. I'll be back.

Saw Factor

Loyal readers might remember last month’s ill-fated tour into reality TV horror. Safety In Numbers proved to be a slow-moving, poorly made, and incredibly forgettable (so much so that I just stared at my ceiling for two minutes before the title came back to me) attempt to exploit the popularity of Survivor and murder. At the end of its painful barely 80 minute run, I was the one exploited.

Are You Scared* is a slicker take on the game show gorefest, mostly because it combines its simple young-people-hungry-for-15-minute-fame trope with the even simpler let’s-rip-off-everything-Saw-did-with-a-more-attractive-cast trick. Costas Mandylor, start oiling your killing apparatus.

Quick Plot: A pretty young barefoot blond wanders around a dank, broken glass-filled warehouse as her industrial choker flashes like an angry Christmas tree. A gravelly Tobin Bell mysterious stranger instructs her to dip her face in a vat of acid in order to survive “the game.” She does.

Credits! The mere fact that they exist gives us some assurance that we’re not actually watching Saw 8. I’m not saying that’s a good thing--as you know, I rather enjoy watching mentally challenged law enforcement get bamboozled by a smirking Costas Mandylor--but the confusion is natural so good on Are You Scared for trying at least once to differenciate itself from its source material.

Post credits, we get introduced to a hot-headed detective less charming than Donnie Walberg and the criminal psychologist who wasn’t in Starship Troopers so why should I really care? But they kinda do, mostly about this murderer who’s been luring TV-ready faces to terrible deaths that are then broadcast online. I KNOW. It’s positively revolutionary.

Oh wait. No it's not.

Hold onto your seats folks, because things are about to get WILDLY innovative. Our REAL main cast appears, and it’s composed of six attractive twentysomethings that pretty much follow Every Movie You’ve Ever Seen. Observe:

-The Black Guy, whose last memory is smoking a blunt

-The Stoner Dude, who likes to insist the women enter dark rooms first

-The Mousy Girl, who squeaks

-The Blond Brother/Sister Superteam, he of pompousness, she of unhealthy codependence

-The Other Brunette, who has a gender neutral name and sensible wardrobe and who therefore must be our final girl.

What do they have in common aside from good looks and a shared Chinese horoscope? The fact that all once submitted an audition video for Are You Scared, a reality show that pits pretty people against their biggest fears. Oh, and apparently generally ends in the brutal murder of its contestants.

I’ll admit that I got a tad confused by this plot point. While the master villain’s backstory is eventually revealed (hilariously), the television aspect remained murky. Is there a real Are You Scared that doesn’t end in mass homicide? If not, why the hell would you send in an audition tape? I get that fame is a tempting siren, but the end result of every segment of this ‘show’ is that you get your face melted off, body exploded, head drilled in, or shot up by shotguns. At least The Running Man had a prize. 

Then again, I watch America's Next Top Model, where women get into rioting fistfights in order to wear slabs of meat or do fashion shows in Glinda bubbles, so what do I know?

Anyway, as you expect because you’ve seen Saw II, the cast is knocked off one by one until only the obvious remains. The third act involves a Popcorn-ish reveal that...well, whatever. By that point, I was just hoping to see a last minute cameo by Costas Mandylor or at the very least, whatever the poor man’s Costas Mandylor next-best-thing is.

And now I’m left wondering...

High Points

For the first few kills, I was thankful that one of the few things Are You Scared DIDN’T swipe from Saw was the shrill and fast-paced editing that gets progressively more video game headache-making with every kill...

Low Points

...and then someone remembered that THAT’S how the Saw movies stage death scenes, so the screaming! cut! screaming! camera spin (when able)! scream! ticking clock! SCREAM! Cut! Cut! Scream! Cut! Scream! Music go louder! Cut! Scream! rhythm finally kicked in CUT SCREAM!

Lessons Learned

Breaking an entering is called “breaking an entering” (in case you didn’t know)

The typical uniform for a S.W.A.T. team member involves a comfortably loose-fitting t-shirt

A criminal profiler is also known as a ‘head shrinker,’ particular to prickly detectives who DIDN’T ASK FOR THEIR HELP

Drinking Game

You know I always like to aide and abet your alcoholism whenever possible in a creative way. Hence, watching all 80 minutes of Are You Scared can take you to that special blackout place quite easily. Simply take a sip/shot/injection whenever the film blatantly pulls a trick honed by the Saw series. You don’t really need my help on this, but here are a few examples:

-the appearance of a vat of acid

-a character wearing an industrial Rube Goldbergian choker

-the appearance of a surly detective

-the appearance of a S.W.A.T. team entering a cagey warehouse

-a character wearing an industrial Rube Goldbergian choker

-a character being shown an x-ray of his stomach which includes the key to bomb that will kill him in one minute

-two characters forced to choose their own lives or the person they care about

-a character wearing an industrial Rube Goldbergian choker

-a deep-voiced villain asking if his soon-to-be victims want to play a game

-a character wearing an industrial Rube Goldbergian choker

Call To Arms
In Japan, the film’s title translates to Jigsaw: Game of Death. As I tried to urge the producers of Survivor with my review of the far worse Safety In Numbers, Lions Gate: call your lawyer**

Rent/Bury/Buy

I’m being hard on Are You Scared because it’s a terrible movie, but in fairness, it’s far better than a lot of other Instant Watch horror picks. It’s practically The Shining in comparison to Safety In Numbers, and it didn’t make me want to hurt flowers in quite the same way as Nine Dead. Still, it’s a blatant ripoff with little to now charm, so your decision to watch it should lay purely in your taste for watching bland people die horrible deaths or just how much you need a Saw-esque drinking game to enjoy your evening. Personally, I’d rather follow Costas Mandylor’s battles with Hyenas, but the world is filled with choices and that my friends, is a beautiful thing.

*Nope, the lack of a question mark is not the fault of my lazy typing fingers. The movie doesn’t have one. Make of that what you will.

**Ever have a sudden vision of how a company REALLY runs? Just typing the words Lions Gate lawyer made me imagine a dark Jigsaw lair-ish dungeon where a bunch of expensive suit-wearing yuppies are kept in rusted metal restraints until they are activated to make/save the production company a few million or be forced to...play a game.