Category: B Calm

A place where the undermined genre of B horror movies shines.

Categories
B Calm Female Horror Netflix Original

Lights, Cam, Action

Isa Mazzei’s debut film hit Netflix in November of 2018. Cam is full of sex positivity, female empowerment, and terrifying online doppelgangers that take over your identity and ruin your career. The protagonist of the film Alice, played by the extremely talented Madeline Brewer who some of you might recognize as Mercy from Orange is the New Black, is a strong and ambitious cam girl who is desperately trying to work her way to the very top.

Camming, for those of you who might not be familiar with the term, is a type of live sex show put on by both women and men. Typically, the performances are solo, but there are often collaborations between two or more performers as well. As the viewer watches her story unfold it is easy to forget that Alice is not an average woman with a run-of-the-mill job who has the drive and desire to be top of her field. While a movie about a cam girl may make many horror fans take pause, Mazzei herself worked as a cam girl for many years and was ready to craft a narrative that shines a positive light on the profession.

In an interview on the podcast Switchblade Sister’s Mazzei delves into details about the autonomy Brewer was given over her own body during filming. While it’s inevitable to have nudity in a movie about sex workers, it becomes clear very quickly that this is not a movie made for straight men to sit on their couch with a bottle of beer and ogle the actresses while ignoring the larger plot. Brewer was in complete control of when she was and was not naked on set, and her comfort is evident in her performance.

Horror fans are no strangers to the allegations of misogyny and sexism within the genre, and there is of course truth to that stereotype. However, the same can be said about comedies and dramas and science fiction. Cam is a shining example of how horror can be utilized to completely flip stereotypes on their head and use them to the advantage of, in this case, women. Alice is a complex and three-dimensional character, with a family she is scared of disappointing and a career goal that so far seems completely unattainable.

Meagan Navarro discusses the ways in which horror fans, particularly female horror fans, are looked down upon by much of society because of the stereotype that horror is inherently sexist in her article for Bloody Disgusting “In Defense of the Modern Slasher Film and Female Horror Fans”. Cam, while not a slasher film, takes the power and gives it all to a female protagonist much like the “final girl” in the slasher genre. The concept of the final girl has gotten a bad reputation, Navarro points out, even though in films like Halloween, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and the more modern Happy Death Day our hero is the female protagonist who triumphs in the end.

Cam is not here to give viewers a cautionary tale about premarital sex like many early horror films delivered, but rather quite the opposite. Alice and the other women in the film are sexually liberated and in complete control of their performances. The major condemnation is of the men that come to these sites and leave thinking they have some sort of ownership over the performers simply because they, at one point, have paid them for a service. With these nuances Mazzei adds to horror, Alice is fast on her way to joining the ranks of such horror icons as Lauri Strode, Sally Hardesty, and Nancy Thompson as an icon of the horror genre.

You may be asking yourself: “Okay, but where’s the scary?” The horror of Cam comes from the look-a-like Alice awakens to find taking over her channel one day. She is perplexed by why and how her exact duplicate has taken over, and is now far surpassing her in, everything that she has spent her time working so hard to achieve. Alice is tormented trying to get to the bottom of what sinister entity is lurking within the cam site where she has built her career, and the film works its way to a shocking and frenzied ending.

For fans of horror and female empowerment, Cam is worth the devotion of 1hr and 34mins of your life. And if you’re anything like this horror fan, you will go back for a second, third, and maybe fourth viewing.

Cam Trailer 

Cam IMDB

Cam Wiki

Madeline Brewer IMDB

Isa Mazzei IMDB

My Article in This Wonderful World Magazine 

 

 

Categories
B Calm Female Horror The Horrors of Life

The Art of Revenge

Revenge*Trigger Warning: Discussions of rape and sexual assault*

I’ve never been into rape revenge films.

Sexual violence has always been the one thing that I can’t stomach in movies. From a purely horror story standpoint, I’ve always thought of rape and sexual assault as the lowest hanging fruit that a writer/director can use to scare their audience. As women we already have to go about our daily lives with the very real understanding that, quite literally at any moment, we could be raped; therefore, I don’t like to spend time consuming media where that is the driving force behind the entire story.

But then Shudder added their exclusive film, Revenge, and I was intrigued.

The synopsis of the film was vague enough that, while I knew the implication was rape, it drew me in. Director Coralie Fargeat talked about the film in an interview with Mick Garris on his podcast Post Mortem. In the interview Fargeat and Garris both agreed that the traditional rape revenge formula of 90+ minutes of the female character being tortured with 10-20 minutes at the end of her getting payback is a lot to stomach. That’s where Revenge deviates from the beaten path.

The main character Jen, played by Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz, arrives in a remote and unnamed desert to spend a long weekend with her married lover, Richard who is played by Kevin Janssens. When her Richard’s friends arrive for their hunting trip early things take a turn for the worst. After one of the friends assaults Jen, a chase ensues through the dessert that will keep you on the edge of your seat the entire time.

The thing that I really admire about the way that Fargeat handles the assault and the subsequent chase does not make the viewer feel worse at the end. The amount of pure torture most women in rape revenge sagas go through is hard to stomach, and tend to just leave me feeling dirty and gross by the end.

In Revenge the audience is introduced to Jen as a stereotypical horror movie floozy. She’s sleeping with a married man, she wears risque clothing, she flits with her lover’s friends, and uses her sexuality to her benefit. However, the moment the viewer can tell the assault is coming, she is thrust into our sympathies. It’s one of those moments that you really don’t want to watch, but you can’t look away from. We get a brief couple of scenes in which Jen has to deal with the aftermath of the assault; we watch as she lays in bed, staring blankly ahead of herself, unable to wrap her head around what happens.

Our sympathy for Jen quickly turns into murderous rage for the three men whose mercy she is, seemingly, at. Her lover returns back to the house, and finds out what has happened, he rages at the man who has raped Jen but refuses to let her go home. Instead of truly taking action, he offers his mistress a large some of money. After Jen refuses and threatens to expose their affair, Richard slaps Jen and she runs away as the three men chase her.

That, in my opinion, is where Revenge truly begins.

The cat and mouse game in the dessert devolves into a bizarre and almost fantasy like sequence as Jen deals with bodily injuries, dehydration, exhaustion, and emotional trauma while trying to get back at the men. The social and gender commentary in this movie are beautifully incorporated into a nail biting epic as Jen becomes a proverbial superhero out to save herself.

One of the most poignant and stomach churning scenes is the conversation that leads up to Jen’s assault. The man who rapes her tells Jen that she was coming on to him earlier in the weekend, and that she clearly wants what is about to happen. This is an all too familiar excuse used in rape and sexual assault cases all the time. Everything from “If she didn’t want it she wouldn’t dress that way” to “If you hadn’t been drinking so much it wouldn’t have happened.” Women have always been blamed for their own rape and sexual abuse, and Fargeat does an incredible job of taking that horrible reality and flipping it onto the men who truly deserve what they get.

I highly recommend this film to those that are able to stomach a brief scene of sexual violence.

 

Revenge Wiki

Revenge IMDB 

Revenge Trailer

Categories
B Calm Blood-n-Guts Old vs. New

Cabin Fever Needs a Vaccination (spoilers, kind of)

Let me start this off by saying I am NOT an Eli Roth hater: on the contrary, he has been my favorite director for several years now. If Eli Roth is attached to a project, I WILL watch it. So it truly pains me to say that the remake of Cabin Fever was one of the worst movies I’ve seen in a long time. If you’ve seen the original film, then there isn’t much to spoil, but if you haven’t and don’t want key plot points ruined come back after you’ve watched the 2002 original.

The new filmmakers used the exact script from the original, 2002 Roth film and it was more or less a shot for shot remake. We all know we are living in a time of remakes: Evil Dead, Pet Sematary, Child’s Play. Reboots and remakes are everywhere you turn, but Cabin Fever – in my opinion – did not need a remake. For starters, the film was not even 15 years old at the time that it was redone by director Travis Z. Second of all, it was 95% a shot-for-shot remake of Roth’s original teen horror film.

I’m well aware that shot-for-shot remakes can, and have, worked. However, the brilliance (and absurdity) of the original Cabin Fever was the way in which Roth constantly shocked the audience with the frantic pace and bold body horror. The film worked because of its originality, and a exact remake is anything but original. Remakes like Evil Dead or The Thing took brilliant pieces of original cinema and made enough changes that they felt fresh and inventive to both new fans and fans of the originals.

Obviously I can’t speak for people coming to this movie without having seen Roth’s original movie, but I’m not even sure a new viewer would enjoy this movie. The pacing seems off from the very beginning, the actors don’t deliver the dialogue in a convincing way, and the beloved comic relief sheriff was changed to a blonde sex pot whose laugh lines feel forced and uncomfortable.

The thing that I have always admired about Roth is that he doesn’t hold back in his film making. The point in his movies is often how much can you watch before turning off the TV? With an exact remake the fans have already experienced everything there is to experience from that story. The shock and the rush viewers got that first time watching Cabin Fever is gone.

The few things they did try and do different did not add anything better to the plot, just made things more unrealistic and corny. The main character Paul, played by Samuel Davis, finally gets a shot with his childhood crush only to find out she has gotten the flesh eating disease ravaging the small community. By the end of the movie Karen, played by Gage Golightly, has barely any skin and has been attacked by an infected dog. She is laying in the boat house where they quarantined her begging for Paul to kill her. Paul stands there for far too long dealing with his inner struggle. When he finally decides to put Karen out of her intense agony the gun won’t fire, so Nick takes a shovel and shoves it into Karen’s mouth and severs her jaw which, shockingly (that’s sarcasm), doesn’t kill her. He then SETS THE SHED ON FIRE AND BURNS HER ALIVE.

The original Paul, played by Ryder Strong, also chooses a shovel to help end Karen’s misery. However, rather than stab her in the face with the shovel he bludgeons her with it. Bludgeoning is still a pretty nasty way to end someone’s life, but at least Paul 1 didn’t set her on fire. The remake of Karen’s death scene is frankly one of the strangest scenes in a movie I have ever seen. The pacing is awkward and weird and you just wind up feeling sick in the worst way for this poor girl who keeps begging for him to kill her.

Roth endorsed this remake, and for that reason alone I wish I was able to say I enjoyed it. I think everyone who is a hardcore Eli Roth fan can admit that Cabin Fever (2002) has its own problems. It is a clear debut film, but it was a debut film that set him on a trajectory within the horror community that everyone was dying to see. He followed it up with films Hostel, Green Inferno, and Knock Knock all of which kept on the same path of “how long can you watch” as Cabin Fever.

I don’t really like to write negative reviews like this because in most situations I want to credit artists for their creation rather I like it or not. In this situation, however, with it being a shot-for-shot remake I don’t feel nearly as bad saying this: Do NOT waste your time on this remake. If you want to watch a remake of a classic go with Evil Dead instead: even more blood and a fantastic amount of originality. If you’re in the mood for Roth-like body horror just watch the original Cabin Fever (and the original has added bonus of Ryder Strong and his face). But I’d strongly recommend giving the new Cabin Fever the pass the next time you’re ready for some gore.

*Also, Eli Roth’s History of Horror is absolutely incredible. If you don’t have a Shudder subscription it is worth the 4.99 a month alone.

Cabin Fever (2002)

Wiki

IMDB

Trailer

Cabin Fever (2016)

Wiki

IMDB

Trailer

Eli Roth

Wiki

IMDB

Categories
B Calm Blood-n-Guts

The Neon Demon burned into my mind (SPOILERS!!!)

The Neon Demon.jpgSo since this is my first post since returning to the life of blogging I need to tell you there are going to be some changes in some of my posts.  Before I attempted to keep them spoiler free so that you would be compelled to go watch the movie, but there are just certain films that I just can’t possibly give you my full impression of without giving some spoilers.  So I’m giving you ample time to click away and go watch The Neon Demon staring Dakota Fanning, form your own opinions, and then come back over here and hear mine.

Here we go:

5…

4…

3…

2…

1….

Okay if you’re still around, thank you and hello!

The Neon Demon is a horror thriller from Nicolas Winding Refn who you may know from his 2013 film Only God Forgives and it focuses on 16 year old aspiring model, Jesse played by Elle Fanning, who is fresh off the bus to Los Angeles from Georgia after her parents die.  Sounds cliche, I know, but I promise you the tropes end there.

The film is beautifully shot from start to finish.  It opens with Jesse lying on a couch staring blankly at the camera, her throat appears to be cut.  At first it’s unclear if Jesse is, in fact, dead or not.  The shot pans out to reveal it’s merely a photo shoot, and we’re quickly introduced to three of our major characters: Jesse, Ruby (Jena Malone), and Dean (Karl Glusman).  It is clear from the beginning that Ruby, who is a makeup artist, is sexually attracted to Jesse.

She goes to meet with a prestigious modeling agency where we get the first glimpse at the horrifying world of being a professional model.  There, she meets with Christina Hendricks.  Jesse is instructed to tell people she’s 19 if asked, despite the fact that she has yet to even hit 17.  As she leaves the modeling agency, we see Hendrick’s character send a young girl away without even so much as meeting with her.

Here’s the deal, I am very against the modeling industry in general and this movie did absolutely nothing to change my mind.

Jesse is portrayed to have some sort of alluring quality that juts seems to radiate from her.  It is unclear if there is some sort of other worldly quality or something supernatural, but what is clear is that nobody can resist her and no other model can like her because she overshadows them.

Ruby takes it upon herself to take care of her, and through her Jesse meets two other models Gigi (Bella Heathcote) and Sarah (Abbey Lee).  The two automatically have animosity toward her because of how quickly she is progressing in the modelling field, and how old the two of the are considered for models.

There is a lot that happens between the meeting of the two other girls and the climax.  Including Jesse listening to the owner of the motel where she’s staying, played by Keanu Reeves, brutally rape the 14 year old run away living in the room next door and not calling the cops, to Ruby essentially attempting to rape Jesse herself, to Ruby having sex with a corpse at the morgue were she works while thinking of Jesse.

Now let me tell you, this is one of the first movies I’ve watched in a long time that at the end I sat in silence for quite awhile and just thought: “What the f@#& did I just watch?!”, but when I was researching afterwards and realized that this movie was in part inspired by Elizabeth Bathory. If you aren’t familiar with this particular piece of history here’s a really quick, terribly simple rundown: Elizabeth Bathory was a countess in 14th century Hungary who decided that in order to stay young she needed to bath in the blood of young girls. Gruesome, I know. Bathory has been an inspiration for a lot of stories throughout horror history, including Bram Stoker’s Dracula himself.

The Neon Demon is a heavy handed, disturbing, graphic cautionary tale about the dangers of our cultures obsession with youth and beauty. Jesse suffers a horrific fate at the hands of women who are, probably, only ten years her senior who are so jealous they are driven to murder, and the ultimate crime of cannibalism (if you weren’t convinced of how f***** up this movie was before, I’m sure you are now).

Overall, The Neon Demon is worth a watch if you can handle gore and utter hopelessness. I haven’t been able to stomach a second viewing, though it’s one that might leave you needing a second to fully form an opinion for yourself.

The Neon Demon IMBD

The Neon Demon Wiki 

The Neon Demon Trailer 

Categories
B Calm

Jug Face pours out creepiness

Jug FaceOK, so let me tell you why I decided to watch this movie in the first place.

STORY TIME!

This movie was on Netflix for quite some time, and I looked at it over and over again trying to decide if I wanted to give it a chance or if it was something that would really appeal to me. I decided to hold off until I had some time to look into it more and the story-line and really see what I would be getting myself into. Unfortunately, I waited just a little too long and it was taken off of Netflix and I honestly forgot about it.

But then something absolutely fantastic happened.

During our CMA Edu event with Scott Scovill I got the opportunity to talk with his personal assistant, Katie Groshong, who is an actress/producer who runs the small production company GypsyRoot with writer/director/cinematographer Jeff Wedding. We were talking about horror films and she was writing a list of movies her company had made and that she had acted in and guess what movie was on that list…

That’s right!

Jug Face!

(I hope that was the conclusion you got since that’s the film this entry is about.)

Katie was one of the actresses in this film, and that was enough to get me to check it out. Unfortunately, as I mentioned before, it was taken off of Netflix and I was forced to rent it on AmazonPrime. I guess this is a prime example of “You snooze you lose”, don’t you think?

I suppose I should tell you about the movie in this film instead of just talking about how I have met one of the actresses, and sounding like I am bragging.

So, Jug Face is a fantastic example of Southern Gothic horror. The basic plot of this movie is creepy enough without any of the actual conflict. The movie follows a Southern backwoods community that has some sort of magical pit (there may or may not be some sort of creature living in it, if there is we never see it) as their god. Ada, played by Lauren Ashley Carter, is a young girl who we quickly find out has a sexual relationship with her brother.

Ada is arranged to be “joined” with the son of another family, but she finds out that she is pregnant with her brother’s child.

Gross, I know.

Meanwhile we have the story of the jug faces slowly being revealed to us. Dawai, played by Sean Bridgers, is a member of the community who is spoken to by the pit. He creates the jug faces which reveal of a face of a member of the community who is to be sacrificed to the pit. One day Ada goes to visit him, and before going in she retrieves the latest jug face from the kiln which, to her horror, is her own face staring back at her.

What would you do?

Well, she hides it.

And then all hell breaks loose.

This movie couples the creepy feel of cult life with the actual imminent danger of a very real threat within the pit. Director/writer Chad Kinkle does a beautiful job of making the audience feel conflicted about whether or not Ada is doing the right thing. Since she has angered the pit, it begins to take the lives of other members of the community while she has visions of the gruesome deaths. We are stuck in a place of complete understanding and irritation at her selfishness.

I haven’t seen a lot of Southern Gothic horror films but this definitely has me hooked and I can’t wait to watch more.

On a side-note I would like to share something with you having to do with Katie Groshong, the actress/producer I mentioned earlier.

In July I will be interning with her production company while they film their newest horror film. I am ridiculously excited about this amazing opportunity to no longer just be a viewer of a horror film, but to be able to be a part of the process of making it come to life.

Have you seen any good Southern Gothic films? What is your opinion about the genre if you have? How do you feel about the cult type creepy that is used?

Jug Face Wiki:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jug_Face

Jug Face IMDB:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2620736/

Jug Face Trailer:

Categories
B Calm Bumps in the Night

Forget Me Not will not be forgotten

If you like watching former Disney kids doing the complete opposite of evForget Me Noterything we came to know and love them for, then this movie is for you. OK, OK, so there are only two of them and they are from completely different generations of Disney channel, but it was still intriguing to see people I grew up watching in less than G-rated situations now in R-rated ones. It also really has nothing to do with the plot of this movie at all, and I’ve officially crossed the border into ranting, so I digress.

(I’ll leave you wondering what Disney kids went bad in this movie for a little longer.)

Let me just get this out there right off the bat so there is no confusion over what you may be getting yourself into if you sign up to watch this movie: Forget Me Not is a stereotypical teen horror flick when it comes to the old tropes they use.

Girls in bikinis? Check

Underage drinking? Check

Sexual exploits of minors? Check

Vacations to remote locations that lead to bad news bears? Check (kind of)

You would think that this whole movie would just be something that is overplayed and stale. But despite the utilization of all the cliches in the book, the monotony ends there.  The entire concept that Forget Me Not is built around is an extremely fresh and unique idea that really caught me by surprise.

I watched this particular movie on Amazon Prime, and the synopsis left a lot to be desired, so I was more or less going into it blind.

The premise is this:

Sandy, who is played by Carly Schroeder, aka Melina from Lizzie McGuire, is that girl at their high school.  She is smart and beautiful and has a large and tight knit group of friends that most people are never lucky enough to find in high school.  Her little brother Eli, who is played by Cody Linley, aka Jake from Hannah Montanna (that’s right, ladies, Heartbreak-Jake is playing a dorky little brother and does an amazing job of mixing adorable and awkward), is a boy genius who skipped a grade, is graduating a year early with his big sister and is valedictorian of their class.  Cue-bad boy boyfriend of Sandy who is the son of the town sheriff and has a little sister who needs some serious behavioral therapy, throw in a couple more hot girls and a cheating boyfriend and you’ve got the perfect summer chick flick, right?

Wrong.

The conflict really arises when the group decides to go to a local graveyard and play a game that is very reminiscent of the old gym-class game that we all used to play in school, Ghosts in the Graveyard. A mysterious girl shows up and requests to play with them, stating it is her “favorite game.” The game springs into full effect and results with our mystery character winning. When Sandy runs after her and announces that she is the winner, the girl asks, “Do you remember me?” when Sandy does not tell her yes, her reply is “You will” before diving off a cliff.

Suddenly Sandy’s friends begin to die off (in true teen horror-flick fashion), but there’s a catch: Sandy is the only person who remembers her friends ever even existed after they’ve died.

I will end my own synopsis there before I give too much more of the film away, and I will tell you what I thought about it.

Despite the cliches and tropes they used to try and pull people into this movie, I thoroughly enjoyed it for what it was. I was not going into it expecting to see something amazing or to find my new favorite horror movie, but I was pleasantly surprised by what I did find. It wasn’t as scary as I would have hoped for, but the ghostly apparitions of their dead friends that appear right before another one is killed off were creepy enough to stick with me when I was falling asleep alone in my dorm before my roommate got back. Director Tyler Oliver married the cliches well with the unique premise he and the writers developed.

I think that this is a horror movie that even some of you who don’t enjoy horror movies could get on board with.

What do you think about the utilizations of cliches and overused tropes in the horror movies? Do you think it can work? What movies have you seen that do this well?

Forget Me Not Wiki

Forget Me Not IMDB

Forget Me Not Trailer: 

Categories
B Calm Bumps in the Night

The Diabolical-ly misleading synopsis

I’m going to be completely honest with you and tell you that I decided tdiabolicalo watch this movie because of the fact that the lead actress is Ali Larter, an actress I adore. For those of you who were fans of Heroes back before the failed reboot may know her as Nikki/Jessica/Tracy/a whole other slew of characters or, for those fellow horror buffs out there, as Clear Rivers from the first two Final Destination films. I went into this expecting a poltergeist-fueled horror film with things that go bump in the night and voices coming through the TV.

I did not, however, get what I was expecting at all. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure what to even say about this movie. I think my main issue with this movie was that I got something completely different than what I was expecting, so I can’t even judge this with an unbiased view point. As it turned out, this was not a horror film at all, but a science fiction film.

Once I realized that I had actually gotten myself into a sci-fi film, I seriously considered turning off the movie and starting another one, but at that point I had only 20 minutes left in the film and I had committed far too much time to just give up.

The film starts out intense enough with our main character Madison (Larter) waking up to a noise in her house after falling asleep at the dining room table. After checking things out very briefly, she sits back down to continue the work she was doing on her laptop only to be interrupted by a disgustingly gruesome apparition that looks like a combination of a grown-man-sized newborn baby and a burn victim. To me this boded well for this movie.

I was severely mistaken.

We find out that Madison is a single, widowed mother of two who has been trying to figure out what exactly has been terrorizing them for some time now. She has brought in paranormal investigators, priests, clairvoyants and paranormal psychologists, to no avail. It quickly becomes clear that her children are also aware that there is something unnatural going on in their home.

Her son, Jacob (Max Rose), has been in trouble for beating one of his fellow classmates unconscious, and it becomes increasingly clear that Jacob has severe anger issues that he is unable to control.  It is alluded that his father also had problems with rage, and hints at him being abusive to Madison. Jacob has been receiving tutoring–presumably because he was suspended from school for his outburst–and we quickly find out that Madison is romantically involved with his tutor Miguel (Wilmer Calderon).

I will say that when I was still under the impression that this was a horror movie about poltergeists rather than a sci-fi movie about teleportation, I was excited at the prospect of a horror movie actually addressing the theory that poltergeists are not actually ghosts or spirits at all but are a form of negative energy. There are so many possibilities to marry sci-fi and horror with the actual lore of poltergeists. This movie, however, did not quite hit the mark.

If you like sci-fi (which I normally do), it is worth a watch.  The acting was very impressive, and I assume that if you go into it knowing more of what to expect than I did, it is a pretty good movie. For the sake of this blog, however, it was a dud.

What are your opinions on the mixing of sci-fi and horror? Are there any movies you’ve seen that have done it well?

Categories
B Calm Blood-n-Guts

Fear Contracted from new zombie flick

CONTRACTED_Poster_web.jpgContracted is one film that I can, without a doubt, say has not attracted nearly enough attention from the general public. This film, written and directed by Eric England, was released in 2013 and was originally viewed at the Neuchatel International Fantastic Film Festival on July 7; it was later released in theaters and on demand. I discovered this film while searching through the horror movies on Netflix for inspiration for this very blog.

Now if you’re anything like me, you probably think that the zombie genre has been completely overplayed within the last few years with popular film and television such as The Walking Dead and World War Z, bringing the genre more into the mainstream than it ever has been before. I find it hard not to roll my eyes when there is a new zombie film announced.  Let’s be real with each other; there are only so many ways that you can re-wear the same old hat before it gets stale and unimpressive.

Contracted was a pleasant surprise for me.

I seem to be in disagreement with a large number of other critics out there (link to Rotten Tomatoes //www.rottentomatoes.com/m/contracted/) in my opinions on this film, and if you are can stomach the gruesome transformation our poor main character takes from ordinary girl to flesh-eating zombie then you may have to simply watch it and make the decision for yourself.

Not unlike the last movie I reviewed for you all, Hellions ( https://wickedlittleblog.wordpress.com/2016/02/19/hellions-aka-children/ ), this film starts off with an ill-advised sexual experience for our main character Samantha (Najarra Townsend) with a stranger after a fight with her girlfriend.  Unfortunately, a night without a condom leads to something far worse than the STD’s we learned about while blushing through our high school health classes.  When Samantha wakes up the next day, she has dark, spidering veins that often are associated with some sort of blood infection spreading across her skin, and it only gets worse from there, my friends.

This movie is a far cry different from most zombie flicks as it follows the three days leading up to what causes the massive out-break that is mapped out in the sequel Contracted: Phase 2 (review to come).  We still don’t know who our “patient zero” is, but we see the devastating transformation of this girl as she spirals mentally, emotionally and physically into the “life” of a zombie.

As much as I enjoyed this movie, I will say that it is not a film for those of you out there who like only fast-paced, action-packed films that are a non-stop thrill ride from start to finish. The pacing is what makes this movie for me. England knew exactly where and when to put things in the timeline of this movie to pack the most punch.  We weren’t forced to accept that this girl had unprotected sex, contracted a zombie STD, and within the week was a flesh-eating monster all within the first ten minutes of the film.

It was not an A-to-Z type of jump.

There was plot.

It was well-developed, which is something that I think has been severely lacking in the horror genre over the last couple of decades.

If you are a zombie fan who has the patience for well-thought-out, well-written plots, then this movie is absolutely worth every bit of your time.

What do you think? Are zombie movies old-hat? Are horror movies losing their use of plot and relying on mindless gore and violence? What do you think about the unique nature of how the disease is spread in this film?

Rotten Tomatoes: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/contracted/

Contracted Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chqtOlOEdsY

Contracted IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2281159/?ref_=nv_sr_1

Contracted Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contracted_(film)

 

 

Categories
B Calm

Hellions aka children

HellionsI tried desperately to come up with some sort of catchy and quick-witted line to open this entry with. I could not, however, come up with a satisfactory line to describe my mix of feelings about the Canadian horror film Hellions.  Director Bruce McDonald makes a lot of decisions that you don’t expect to see in the horror genre that, at times, took the film to the next level and at other times left me confused and anything but scared.

The movie starts out scary enough with the announcement that our main character, Dora (Chloe Rose) is pregnant. Teen pregnancy, however, is not the most disturbing thing about this movie. It’s Halloween night, and Dora decides to stay home rather than go to a party with her boyfriend or accompany her mother and brother trick-or-treating.

I mean, would you want to go out and party it up when you’ve got to figure out how to tell your boyfriend he knocked you up?

Dora decides in the end to go to the party with her boyfriend and dresses up in an angel costume (which seems symbolically fitting, don’t you agree?) and waits for him to arrive.

Except he never shows up.

The only visits Dora gets are from some of the creepiest trick-or-treaters you will ever see, and they want a lot more than candy.

This movie, without giving too much away, left a lot to be desired in my opinion. Don’t get me wrong–McDonald plays the creepy-child card very well, and for the first half of the movie my skin was crawling. Then things get a little iffy, and he lost my faith.

I’m all for artistic films and pushing the boundaries, but there are just certain places that artistic liberties are not needed or wanted, and one of those is horror films of this type. There is a way to push the boundaries in horror, which typically include questions like: “How much blood can we get in this film without the studio labeling us NC-17 (shout out to the Evil Dead)?” or “How long do you think a person could reasonably live without his or her extremities?” or “Do you think that sewing people together to make a giant human chain will go over well?”

This movie didn’t ask those types of questions.

Granted, there was a disturbing scene of Dora hallucinating herself eating a fetus, and the children’s masks are the things of nightmares, their boundary-pushing questions seemed to be more along the lines of: “How many random and unnecessary cut scenes can we put in before our audience is so confused they’re not even sure which way is up?”

I don’t know the exact number, but I can tell you they achieved it.

I got hopelessly lost within the plot, and just when I thought they were bringing things back to some sort of sense and order, something else would happen that would confuse me even more. They would give me just enough time to get pulled back into the action and the horror, and then I’d fall back out of it, or rather be pushed.

As someone who fancies herself an amateur writer, I can tell you one thing I’ve learned that remains true in every genre: There has to be rules.

It doesn’t matter if it’s fantasy or sci-fi or horror; the world you are creating has to have rules and parameters so that your audience can understand what the conflict is. Without rules there is no way of understanding motivation.

Overall, if you aren’t already a big horror fan, don’t waste your time on this film. If you’re a film buff who loves cinematography or a horror fan who just loves to watch any and everything, it might be worth one watch through.

What do you think about horror films that get a little too artsy?  Do you think that it takes away from the purpose of a horror film?

 

Hellions IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3305844/?ref_=nv_sr_1

Hellions Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellions_(film)

Hellions Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUwxpVhpFHU