The Hills Need Glasses

This is a "reprint" of an article I wrote for Ultimate Gore-a-Thon a while ago.  Sit back.  Relax.  Feel the snark.  BE the snark.  Let the snark wash over and through you as we dive into Alexandre Aja's remake of The Hills Have Eyes...

So, we fans know the story.  A family is on a road trip.  They show us a fairly standard amount of dysfunctionality which is to be expected when you're trapped in a gigantic moving trailer for days on end.  I consider myself lucky that my dad never got a Winnebago.  I have 4 siblings.  If we had a camper, at least one of them would have be dead by now. 

They're bickering their way through the desert and they stop for gas.  Shady gas station dude tells them to take a shortcut.  Why do they always take the shortcut?  The shortcut leads to the painful stabby death, people!  NEVER take the shortcut.  If you have to WALK a hundred miles out of your way, and there's a shortcut, you better start hoofin' it.  Shortcuts bad. 

Look at you, Buffalo Bill.  All sassy and shit.  Tryin' to take a shortcut.  Dumbass.

Yeah, so, in the course of the ill-advised shortcut, they hit a strip of tire spikes which just about kill the family as the Winnebago comes to a screeching halt.  Uh-oh.  Family be boned.

Dad leaves to get a tow truck.  They're not THAT far from the gas station, I guess.  Everybody else just gets comfortable and waits.  One of the dogs gets loose and the son has to chase it.  When he finds the dog's gnawed carcass (because that's the BEST kind of carcass), he tries to run back but slips and falls because in every horror movie, ever, somebody has to fall and leave themselves vulnerable to the stabbiness.  Oddly, though, there is no stabbing.  Just Ruby, one of the mutants that live in the hills (heretofore referenced as “hill mutants”... because what the fuck else are you going to call them?), looking at him bemusedly while her brother has a Scooby-Snack.  Yes, I meant he was eating the dog.

Never trust the innocent looking hill mutants.

In the meantime, Dad gets to the gas station.  Shady dude is having a conniption and Dad gets, rightfully, freaked out.  Shady dude ends up killing himself and Dad gets captured by the hill mutants.  A little later, one daughter is almost raped, Bob is tied to a tree and set on fire, then daughter DOES get raped, Mom gets shot, other daughter gets... nursed?  Really?  Dang.  There's some fetish-y shit right there. 

Anyway, after the nursing, she gets all self-defense-y and stabs one of the mutants with a screwdriver and gets shot and her baby gets kidnapped.

I could go on, but, really?  The fans have seen this already.  Unless you are one of those people that is going to completely toss a remake out on its ear BECAUSE it's a remake, in which case, I don't feel bad for you.  This is a lesson in taking any film and judging it on its merits and this film is kind of amazeballs.

Aja knows his shit.  Even his cheesy-ass remake of Pirahna was hilarious and that's because he meant it to be.  He's a fan who made it big and, as such, is a force to reckon with.  He gave us a polished version of Wes Craven's original vision and, while I'll always love Michael Berryman and his creepiness, there's a whole lot more to these hill people than meets the eye. 

As we all know, cannibal clans are relatively well-received in horror pop culture and they have been for centuries.  They've been used in films from the original The Hills Have Eyes, to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to Chernobyl Diaries.  In this vision, they represent that asshole-ish kind of Tea-Party, anti-gubmint, “ain't nobody can take my land” sort of American that has become a farce and is basically the reason that every other country in the world hates us.  I swear, if Canadians weren't drowning themselves in poutine and maple syrup and being all polite and shit, we'd have a problem.

And that's what some of us would love to do to Sarah Palin.

The transformation of the Son-in-Law from hippie to warrior to protect his family is indicative of the rest of us trying to save the country from Tea Party extremism.  'Cause those guys just suck.

That's what it looks like to me, anyway.  But, then again, I could be talking out my ass.  All this symbolism could be me trying to attribute art to b-grade schlock but your mileage may vary.  I'm what you like to call an “insufferable know-it-all”.   It comes in handy when you spend a good portion of your day giving your opinion to people. 

Some people want to call this “torture porn” and to those people I would like to say this.

FUCK YOU!

You have obviously never seen a torture porn flick if you think this is torture porn.  This is a monster movie all the way.  Just because the monsters are supposedly human doesn't make them any less monstrous.

In any case, I enjoy how the action's been ramped up.  I like how the monsters are engines of violence mimicking the violence that created them.  I like how Ruby is the black sheep, actually kind of caring for and protecting these new people and not wanting them to get hurt.  I like how this ends up being the team-building exercise from Hell and I like how Aja presents it to me.

Wes Craven chose well. 

So that's my two cents.  I welcome yours.  Mostly because I'm broke.

A Distinct Lack of Magic Munchkins

Now, you all know how I feel about remakes.  I've said it before and I'll say it again.  Remakes, in and of themselves, are not a bad thing if they treat the original with the respect that it deserves.  This brings us to today's post.

#notthis

1982's Poltergeist is an amazing film that STILL frightens me.  This new one?

So, the dealio is these folks have to move into a new house but because he just got laid off, they have to take the best one available which, frankly doesn't have a damn thing wrong with it  except for the fact that it's near power lines (and was built on top of a cemetary, duh...) Oh, did I spoil that for you?  Seriously?  Because you watched this one without watching the original and didn't expect that?  Poor you.  Have some gummie bears.

Sam Rockwell hates spoilers.  He gets pouty and makes impulse purchases.

So, within the first week that they're there, they find the one place on the bannister that always give you an electric shock, a box of creepy-ass clown dolls (because one just wasn't enough), a squirrel in the attic bedroom (where they put the boy who's consistently frightened of EVERYTHING because childhood trauma puts hairs on your chest and, seriously, he's terrified because his mom lost him at the mall... I don't believe in bullying but I really do think that some "buck up, soldier" is kind of called for, here) and a human vertebrae.  They aren't even unpacked yet when the boy has ghosts making card castles out of his comic books, the eldest sister is almost sucked into the basement floor and the Carol Anne analog (because they had to name her "Madison") gets sucked into the closet to talk to us through the TV.

Hello, Duggars.

Cue the paranormal investigators.  One of them is the dude with a TV show who just happens to be a real psychic.  Woooo.  Oh and he's the college investigator's ex husband.  Wooooo. That's actually scarier than the ghosts.  Wooooo, alimony and half-assed "I used to sleep with you" jokes.  Fuckers.

Now, I'm not going to say this is a bad movie because it isn't.  What I WILL say is that it is not a GOOD movie and it's a piss-poor attempt at recreating Tobe Hooper and Steven Spielberg's almost literal magic.  They left out a lot of the stuff that we liked in the original.  A lot of that touching, heartfelt humor is gone.  Now it's just a family in a haunted house.

With this thing, but still...

They didn't leave ANY of the mystery.  Just because there's technology now that COULD allow us to "see the other side" doesn't mean we should actually USE it.  In the original, we had a rope and a mother's love.  In the remake, we get a remote control drone with a fucking camera.  There's no PASSION in this film.  There's no real sense of danger.  In the original, we had a physical scary tree that required an actual fight to rescue the boy.  In the remake, we get cheesy CGI and the boy just falls out of it with the worst fucking video-game ragdoll physics programming ever written.   We don't even get the damn steak scene, we get ghosts who know how to use a fucking power drill.

You missed.

So, while this is NOT a bad movie and would probably be fine for someone who has not seen the original, I would hope that it would inspire them to go and watch the original which is a far superior film.  I was SUPREMELY unimpressed.

Fuck you, Sam Raimi.

And This is Why I Don't Trust Homeschooled Kids.

WHEW!  Life got busy all of a sudden.  Busy and scary.  But you're not here for that.  Let's just jump right back on in, shall we?

Somewhere along the way some idjit decided that "spooky" and "heartwrenching" belonged together.  This is not a new thing but it's not something I normally look for in my horror movies.  Despite my disgust for the sob story (because I like to pretend that I have the emotional range of a pencil even though I'm the guy that ends up with sinus issues for a week when I watch Rankin-Bass Christmas specials), occasionally one comes along that works.

And that's where 2013's We Are What We Are comes in.

A remake of the Mexican film, Somos lo que hay (2010), the film follows two VERY sheltered teenage girls, Iris and Rose, and their father, an extremely religious man after the death of their mother who has a seizure on the way home from the grocery store in a downpour..  From that point forward, the girls are expected to carry on their mother's religious duties.

Sounds all drama-riffic, right?


Yeah, no.

Gosh, CHEST freezers come in handy...  Yes, I know it was bad.  Sue me.

So.  The family is a cannibal clan.  It's not even subtle about it.  I'm sure the kids have known for years that long pig barbeques nicely.  And now they're all, "Y'know?  Maybe I don't WANT to have to butcher the butcher or skin the schoolmarm to get a decent meal.  Can't we just go to Mickey D's?  Seriously, there's one right down the street."

But noooooo.  Dad has to be all, "I'm the head of the household and your religious leader so you're gonna fast until it's time for the slashy-slashy."

This guy?  Collateral damage.  And the local deputy.  And boinking a cannibal.

This is a GOOD movie though so you're not getting any more out of me on it.  You'll have to watch it for yourselves.  It's a SLOW burn, so be prepared for that.  Like, stock up on munchies BEFORE you sit down because putting this on pause for a minute makes you miss details.

Seriously, though, this one is dramatic without being melodramatic and it could have easily crossed that line. You feel for the girls even knowing what they are and knowing that THEY know what they are.  They want to get out of the life they were handed and it comes down to some pretty drastic measures.   Even the smaller parts have some sympathetic qualities.  The little brother they want to protect.  The local boy that Iris has a crush on.  The neighbor (Kelly McGillis) who offers a vegetarian meal (HA!).

Does it LOOK like we want your damn 5-bean salad?

And the tension builds throughout.  It doesn't peak and valley, it crescendos. You come out of this one satisfied, you really do.  It takes a while to get where it's going but from there it takes you to some awesome new places that seem familiar but really aren't.  I thoroughly enjoyed it and I think you will, too.

Bill Cosby Can Eat a Dick.

As an avid fan of 50s creature features and monster movies, my 15 year old self was THRILLED in 1988 to discover that Chuck Russell was remaking The Blob because fuck if it didn't need dusting off and parading around like an inexpensive sex-worker with the rent due (and, seriously, needs it again because I loves me some killer Jell-o™).

Don't get me wrong.  The Steve McQueen version was fuckin' awesomesauce but there's something about the 88 update that is near and dear to my heart.  It could be that it was one of many things that I could share with my mom (who is totally a gorehound) or it could be that violent pudding is just fuckin' cool.  I don't know and I don't particularly care.  The 1988 Blob is the shit and I'll cut anybody that says otherwise.

Or feed them to the sink.  I haven't made up my mind, yet.

This is not to say that the movie doesn't have flaws but I'll get to them, later.

So, like with any movie that has to do with gruesome goo (and I think The Blob started that trope, for realsies), some asshole has to go poking meteors with sticks.  Seriously?  Really, Billy Bob the Hobo?  We step down from the trees and gain the ability to use tools and you want to revert to prodding the scorching hot rock from the sky KNOWING, after a few decades of b-grade horror cinema, that the minute you poke it you're going to die horribly?  Step away from the Sterno, dude.  It's fucking up your head.

You asshole.

So, yeah.  Hobo McGrimypants ends up with a handful of space goo and manages to get picked up by three high school students who give him a lift to the hospital.  How nice of them.  Good Samaritans all.  Small-town America at its finest.  Well, except for Brian (Kevin Dillon, complete with a radical 80s mullet and motorcycle-jumping action).  He's a dick.  Meg (Shawnee Smith), though, is America's fucking sweetheart.  All cheerleader-y and dating the nice boy and coming home on time and watching out for her baby brother and she makes my pancreas want to shrivel up and die she's so damn sweet.  Her steady, Paul, is Mr. Football Hero and you expect him to totally save the day but this is The Blob and it totally lives up to its "bad boy makes good" roots.  Wait for it.

Anyway, the doc gets a little busy and Paul checks in on the homeless dude and finds this:

This is what you get for being stupid.

And, then, after being suitably spooked, poor Paul gets a face full of space goo.  Thanks to the joys of 1980s Hollywood special effects, Meg gets to watch Paul get partially digested and, because she's our heroine, she tries to pull him out of the gelatinous mass but she misjudges the power of the Blob and Paul's arm comes out of the mess all by its lonesome and Meg knocks herself unconscious as the goo slips off into the night finally worming its way into the back seat of the local Lothario's date.  No, really.  Bitch gets hollowed out like a fuckin' piñata.

And this is what you get for serving roofie-coladas.  Date rape is never funny.

Now, because cops are fucking useless and they, apparently, hate all teenagers, ever, Meg meets up with Brian to discuss the Blob which they totally both saw and nobody believes them because they're idiot teenagers and they know nothing about how the world works, silly children.  And, of course, it's during that time that the kitchen help gets sucked into the drain.

I heart green screen... only not...

 Meg and Brian escape into the walk-in freezer where they discover that the space goo is vulnerable to the cold.  After the Blob moves on, they meet up with a federal team of scientists that have come out to investigate.  Oh, and they've quarantined the town.  Brian, of course, runs off but Meg is taken to her parents

In the meantime, Meg's little brother gets a wild hair up his ass and sneaks out with his buddy to see the new horror show down at the local theater.  I like this kid.  Of course, the theater is has a big old target on it and gets attacked mid-showing.  The kid's friend gets dissolved.  Suffice it to say that people end up in the sewers and that's just never pleasant.

And you thought YOUR movie theater's floors were sticky.

So, it turns out that The Blob (in this version) is a mutated virus that was meant to be used as biological warfare.  BAD GOVERNMENT!  BAD!  No cookie for you.  You're in time out, mister.  Now you go to your room and think about what you've done.

Do government agents ever survive?

 And that's where we stop, kids.  You know how this goes.  The first taste's free.  You want to know how this ends you have to watch it yourself.  Far be it from me to ruin the cheesy adorableness that is The Blob.  Go on.  You have time.  If you don't have time, MAKE time.  This is one of those movie's that's awesomely bad.  But it's not even bad.  It's... awesomely mediocre.  I mean, you KNOW this isn't going to be winning any Oscars but for the time it was AMAZING!  I mean, everybody knew that blue/green screen was used because, frankly, everybody was using it.  What it gave us, though, was deft use of latex, silicone, and strawberry yogurt alongside some strong acting from some undersung actors.

On the other hand, I had to look at Kevin Dillon's ugly mug for an hour and a half and that made me sad on the inside.  Seriously, he has a bat nose and it disturbs me.

But, no, really.  If you've never seen this, this is one of those movies that makes a positive case for remakes.  No, I don't expect a remake to ever replace the original and this one did not.  I DO, however, expect that remakes will enhance the original in ways we often don't expect and THAT was definitely achieved, here.

Now, go get yourself a pudding pop and poke meteors with sticks.

Like He's Never Slashed Before

Ooooooooh, I been WAITIN' for this one.  The fuckin' French got this a year ago.  Damn French.  With their Eiffel Tower and their baguettes which, let's face it, are only good as weaponry.

ANYWAY, 1980's Maniac is considered a seminal grindhouse horror film.  2013's Maniac, directed by Franck Khalfoun, takes away the grindhouse and cranks it to eleven.

The movie starts with Frank Zito (Elijah Wood), the titular maniac, in his car, stalking a girl exiting a club.  But there's a twist.  We're watching it through his eyes.  We'll go over that later.

So, it turns out that Frank spends a lot of time on dating websites and just, y'know, trolling the streets for girls.  Yes, that's as creepy as it sounds and the reason why is creepier. 


See, his mom, who ran the mannequin restoration business that he currently owns, used to moonlight as a hooker and, occasionally, would take him along for the ride.  So, now, because he's so traumatized, he keeps trying to find girls that, like Psycho, will please dear, old mom.  But because lugging a body around would be cumbersome and draw attention, he just scalps them and be-wigs the mannequins in his collection with them.

You, ahhh... got a little somethin', there.

And then he meets a girl that he doesn't want to kill.

 

Awwww... She's all sweet and virginal and stuff.

 

Because this is so new, that's all you get.  Sorry.  Hate to be a buzzkill but this technically hasn't released to the American audience, yet, so I gots to keep my trap shut.  You understand, don't you?

 

Awwwww, now don't be that way.

 

I WILL say that by removing the suspense of "where's the killer", we, as the audience are forced to look at horror in a whole new way.  Yeah, the trick has been used before in films like Black Christmas but never to this extent.  Other than a few key scenes, the entire movie is shot from Frank's point of view and the madness that taints it is supremely evident.  And the movie isn't so much about seeing the killer, it's about hearing and feeling him.  Connecting with him on a level that film-goers rarely do.

The happiest day in a girl's life...

The one thing that will disturb audiences the most, though, is the choice of Elijah Wood as Frank.  Wood, throughout his career, is pretty much a "good guy".  Other than his voiceless role as Kevin in Sin City, Wood has always been "wide-eyed innocent" and Khalfoun uses that to creepy advantage.  Frank is still, in a shattered kind of way, an innocent.  It's even implied that he's a virgin.

I will warn the movie-going audience.  This is NOT a standard horror film.  It is a slow burn and it is, in its way, beautiful and dream-like.  Yes, there is gore and a lot of it but do not expect it to be a slashfest like, say, Texas Chainsaw.  This is more along the lines of American Psycho only there is no "is it happening only in his head" factor.

Highly recommended, this one.

We're Gonna Get You...

One of the advantages of living in a college town is that we get some cool shit.

And sometimes that cool shit includes ADVANCED SCREENINGS OF EVIL DEAD!

That's right bitches.  I saw the Evil Dead remake last night it was GLORIOUS!!!

I went to this movie with horror movie veterans and we screamed and laughed and "oh shit what the fuck"ed our way through the whole damn thing!

Now, because this is a remake, I'm going to assume, since you're reading this blog, that you've seen the original.  That being said, this is a fairly true remake with some updating and, sadly but not too sadly, a removal of a lot of the humor that was present in the original (and the sequel/first remake... Evil Dead has a strange history).  That's mostly because the plot in the first one was "two couples and one dude's sister go camping".  This one is "two friends take a third, somewhat estranged, friend's little sister to the woods for a cold turkey detox session and big brother's ditzy fuck toy comes along for the ride". 

We know how this works.  Even the commercials give it away to those who never saw the original.  The kids get to the run-down cabin and discover a book of vile darkness in the basement.  Like idiots, they read the book and unleash unspeakable evil.  This evil inhabits their bodies, in one case via the auspices of tree-rape (what have I told you about going into the woods, kids?), and makes them do things that normal people wouldn't.  Like, oh, I don't know, carving open their faces with shards of mirror.

You can't see it but half of her face is on the floor.

Attacking their loved ones with syringes.

That is a hypodermic needle.  Under his eye.  eeeeeeeee...

Locking their possessed sisters in the basement where they can toss Exorcist-like insults at you, drag you in there with them and bite your hand so you have to cut off your arm with an electric knife to stop the evil from spreading.

 Soooo many screams at this one.  College kids are fuckin' wusses.

Oh.  My.  Gawd.  This was INTENSE!  It was a BEAUTIFUL gore-fest.  It wasn't deep, but we don't want deep with our Evil Dead.  It was a hell of a lot bleaker than the original but I'm OK with that.  It had SOME humor to break it up but it still left me holding my gallon of Diet Coke with a vice-like grip.  I loved every fucking minute of it.

Of course, there were a LOT of shout-outs to the original which, seriously, is a hallmark of any good remake.  Mia, the lead girl, is found sitting on the car from the original series.  There was a fight scene in the flooded basement reminiscent of the fight in the well in Army of Darkness.  The barbed wire wrapping the book in this film makes a shape like the face on the original book.

There are twists, though, that I think even the fans of the original will be happy with because, seriously?  Big brother is an idiot and Ash in the original series is a smarmy ass.  Love you, Bruce Campbell, but even you have to admit that Ash isn't exactly likeable as a human being.  Fede Alvarez isn't afraid to switch things up and he does it RIGHT.  Not only right but RESPECTFULLY.  Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell chose their new director wisely.

One of the cool things about this is that there is NO CGI in this movie.  None.  At all.  Not even for missing limbs in summer dresses.  I want to see a "making of" feature on this because DAMN!  Pure, gory, gorgeousness.

Ubiquitous chainsaw.  WHEEEE!

I really think that THIS is the film to make remake-haters eat their words.  And I want to be there when they do it.  To smack them with a Hello Kitty ankle sock full of nickels for being idiots that don't rate movies on their own merits.

April 5th, kids.  Go.  Give me a call.  I might go see it with you because it deserves multiple viewings.

One... Two... You Know the Rest.

In my continuing defense of remakes, I feel I must address the 2010 remake of A Nightmare On Elm Street.

Because I liked it.  Probably more than it deserved.

Just a quick recap of the story, kids have killer dreams about murderous, knife-glove wielding child molester who is seeking revenge on the parents of said kids who torched him in a boiler room for... y'know... molesting their kids.  Kids are dropping like flies in their sleep (although it really doesn't look like they just passed on quietly considering the gaping wounds and all) because if you die in your sleep, you die for real and it's up to Nancy to stop the Kentucky Fried Fiend.  It's the circle of supernatural death!  WOOHOO!  Somebody needs to get National Geographic on this, y'all!


NOTE!  This is NOT, by any stretch of the imagination, a reduction of the value of the original because Wes Craven is a fucking master and Robert Englund will ALWAYS be Freddy Krueger. 

That said, a whole lot of people absolutely hated this movie.  Personally, I'm blaming it on that cultural zeitgeist called "I hate remakes".  I really don't think people sat and judged this on its merits because, other than the MTV quick-cut editing, this was a great movie. 

SCREEEEEEE!!! Take that, assholes.

For one, as I always say they should, Samuel Bayer DID treat the original series with respect.  Even though he most definitely went darker and edgier with it, he left in enough humor to make it bearable.  They didn't want Krueger to be all wise-cracking and goofy and I appreciate that.  Seriously, Freddy got to be a bad joke by the end of Englund's run.  Frankly, I think they could have left out a lot of the background stuff and given us better chases but I get what they were trying to do.  They did make the punishment of Krueger AND the burn-scar makeup more realistic, though, and that was kind of awesome in and of itself.

Next, the acting in the remake is TONS better than the original.  Sorry, Wes, but you were still very much in the throes of "the same diction coach" period of leading ladies when you cast Heather Langenkamp (who was amazing but still felt stiff).  Rooney Mara, in comparison, is an Oscar™ winner (in this role... we know she was a nominee for Girl with the Dragon Tattoo).

Yep.  She sleeps gooooood.

 

Also?  I'm sorry but Jackie Earle Haley was FUCKING PERFECTION as Fred Krueger.  The man has this creepy short-eyes vibe to him in real life that translated note-for-note and the rage that he pulled out as the vengeful Krueger was chilling.  I didn't NEED jokes.  I wanted to be scared and Haley's electronically deepened voice did the trick.  

The movie really did play to the fans by giving us moments that we recall from the original, though.  The wall scene (above), the gooey hallway/stairs and the bathtub scene in particular.

And, apparently, we've found Rooney Mara's "good side".

On top of that, there are little trivia bits through the whole movie, right down to the character's names.  Nancy and Freddy are obviously the call-backs from the original but Jesse is from Freddy's Revenge and Kris is from Dream Warriors and Dream Master. 

It's all of these little bits and pieces that make this a fun flick for me.  

 

You don't have to agree with me.  I'm fully aware that this is a derivative work.  I just don't think it deserves the low opinion people hold of it.