Knives & Claws & Demons & Cots

Having been through a certain amount of medically inevitable pain and discomfort involving some bloodletting, I decided to catch up on some horror movies that would provide me with some sort of catharsis. It was a mostly misguided attempt, driven by a weakness for the genre, even though I’ve sworn off most horrors on the basis of their exploitative dynamics and lack of taste – consider the creatively bankrupt torture porn movies. The first film reviewed below runs close to the depravities the latter offers.  

Darren Lynn Bousman’s Mother’s Day is another unsuccessful and completely unnecessary remake of a 1980s cult favourite (I hesitate to use “classic”). Starring a fierce-eyed Rebecca De Mornay as the titular character, the film provides her with a follow-up performance to her 1990s domestic threat film The Hand That Rocks The Cradle. Sadly, Mother’s Day is a waste of time for all involved, and its overall and ever present badness is probably the main reason why the film hasn’t found an American distributor yet, at least not to my knowledge. 

As bad weather threatens a small American town, a group of friends (including Shawn Ashmore, Briana Evigan and Kandyse McClure) gather in Beth (Jaime King) and Daniel Sohapi's (Frank Grillo) house to have a party in the couple’s outfitted cellar, which provides liquor, pool and music. While the party kicks off, three brothers break into the house. Having just pulled of a robbery, one of the brothers is slowly and painfully dying from a gunshot wound. The elder brother, Ike (Patrick John Flueger), phones their sister to tell their mother to come on over to the house. It doesn’t take long for someone to realise that the noises upstairs aren’t just mating raccoons, and before you know it, the friends are all hostages in an increasingly bloody and boring situation. Cue multiple opportunities for many characters to be tortured, humiliated and murdered. 

We’ve seen it all before, and better. Mother’s Day is a dull, over populated film that would have benefited from a better screenplay and fewer characters. Characters do things that do not flow naturally from a given situation, and instead of being shocked by what I saw, I was left scratching my chin as to how anyone would believe that an audience would buy into certain scenes. For example, there is a scene that involves an ATM, Ike and two teenage girls. Ike gives them certain instructions to carry out, or risk certain death. It’s a terrible scene, indicative of the poverty of the writing and vision of the film, that uses a familiarity with moral choice horrors (Saw, WAZ) as a cheap and unjustifiable thrill. 

Meanwhile, De Mornay’s mother is menacing at first until she too collapses under the weight of bad dialogue, flat one-liners and unimaginative plotting. Mother finds out all sorts of stuff about the friends all the time – people she’s only just met – on the basis of her being so perceptive and intelligent, I guess. But it gets so convoluted that I kept waiting for her to quote Horatio Cane’s tired ‘witticisms’ from CSI about people, murder, betrayal and suffering. 

Don’t be fooled by the drooling, wide-eyed festival responses to Mother. She’s over the hill, tired and barren. 

On the other hand, I was surprised at how good Scream 4 was. To qualify: I heard that it was a horrible film, a tedious and predictable cash-in on a franchise that, in movie economics, is considered long forgotten. I found it to not be that bad, although admittedly it’s faint praise. One of the film’s main marketing points was that it bought back the original trilogy’s director and screenwriter, Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson. While Scream 4 isn’t at all a waste of time, it’s possible that a different creative team could’ve delivered a more inventive film overall. 

Set many years after the initial murders, Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) returns to her hometown of Woodsboro to visit with some family (Emma Roberts) and for the launch of her first book. The book, she says, is her way to finally lay the past to rest. But familiar faces are all around her to remind her of what had happened, such as Sheriff Riley (David Arquette) and his wife, former celebrity reporter Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox). There are also new characters that (1) see Sidney as a celebrity and (2) were put in place to help drive what the producers hoped would be a new franchise. (The film was seen as a box-office disappointment, so a sequel is unlikely). Soon people are dying left and right as clearly Sidney’s homecoming has triggered some sort of imitation killer. Of course, the infamous mask featuring the elongated white face is back, as is the franchise’s self-awareness. 

Whereas the previous Screams were both effective genre films as well as playfully self-aware meta-movies, Scream 4 wants to be too clever for its own good, and shoots itself in the foot. The knowing nodding and winking in the direction of the audience gets tired while you wait for the next murder. The film explicitly references Shaun of the Dead, which simply makes you want to watch a top-notch self-aware horror comedy instead of the film you’re currently viewing – it’s never a good idea to invite comparisons between your film and a superior genre classic. 

To be sure, the opening scene works: it makes you very aware of the fact that you’ve entered a cultural contract with a horror film while foregrounding the first films and simultaneously setting up some suspenseful scenes with well known actresses. Scream 4 sustains continuity with the previous films, which I liked, and manages to deliver more or less what’s to be expected from a Scream sequel. It doesn’t do any more than that, but really, the vitriol spewed at the film is unnecessary. Stab 4 looks better though. 

To matters of a more manifestly 'spiritual' nature: Mikael Hafstrom’s The Rite is a well crafted if predictable and limited exorcism movie featuring Anthony Hopkins in a performance tailor made for him, and that he never should’ve committed to. In The Rite, a doubting young priest, Michael Kovak (Colin O'Donoghue) is sent to Rome to attend on a course in exorcisms. You know these classes are to be taken seriously because the lecturer is played by serious-faced Cirian Hinds, who recognises that Kovak might need more evidence of the existence of the devil than class notes and slides can provide. (No, the students are not shown Devil.) So the young priest ends up with Father Lucas Trevant (Hopkins), a Welsh expat and something of an exorcism expert, the type of person that could make for an interesting guest on Sunday night 702 Talk Radio. Fr Levant is also well liked by the local feline community. If you’ve seen the trailer, you know what happens next, and it’s here where Hopkins goes off the rails and drives head-on into self-parody. 

The Rite is very different from the father of the subgenre, The Exorcist, and it is as unfair as it is inevitable to compare any exorcism film to the iconic 1970 pioneer. The Rite has many of the same aspects, including the priest who is uncertain of what is real and what can be believed in, as well as prolonged exorcism scenes. But William Friedkin’s film is much more successful in not only demonstrating the dynamics of possession but also the anguish of those who falter in faith while ostensibly in service of it. Come to think of it, the more recent Exorcism of Emily Rose was also better at playing with the ambiguities of truth and reality, leaving it to the viewer to decide whether Emily was possessed by the devil or in need of psychological intervention. 

The Rite is a decent supernatural horror with some beautiful shots of Hungary, where it was filmed, but it tackles complex issues with too much narrative and thematic simplicity. 

One of the horror genre’s stalwarts is the haunted house trope. Consider the success of the most recent ultimate haunting movie, Paranormal Activity, as well as the seminal 1970s haunted house-in-space horror of Alien. A haunted house turns the idea of houses as a signifiers of safety and familial stability on its head and to a great extent James Wan’s Insidious, written by Saw front man Leigh Whannell, makes the most of dark corners, doors closing and opening and movements behind the window. Indeed, the first hour of the film makes for a suspenseful horror experience that understands the power of suggestion. 

The Lamberts, mother and songwriter Renai (Rose Byrne) and father and teacher Josh (Patrick Wilson), live in a large suburban house with their family. One day, their son Dalton (Ty Simpkins) climbs up into the attic where he hurts himself; soon after, he falls into a deep coma. Three months later, there’s no improvement on his condition and a series of increasingly bizarre happenings terrorise the family, especially Renai who works from home. The film details the parents’ attempts to save their son while dealing with presumably supernatural presences. 

Insidious’s problems manifest in the film’s second half, which I cannot discuss in detail; some scenes and locations look cheap (the film did have a tiny budget) and clichéd instead of sombre and scary, with some Alan Wake thrown in. Here the film’s debt to Poltergeist also becomes too clear, and anyone who has seen Insidious but not Tobe Hooper’s outstanding haunting classic is advised to seek it out. Last year I reviewed a Spanish film called The Orphanage, which approaches a specific scene with greater sophistication and sensitivity than Insidious demonstrates. After the first half of the film, the feeling of terror crawling from beyond the film frame makes way for some spooky candyfloss. 

For some reason, many horror movies feel that they must end with an unexpected open ending that opens up sequel possibilities and gives the audience a final jolt. There is too little back story to validate how Insidious pulls this off, and you get the feeling that if you start pulling at one loose end, the whole film will unravel. Still, if other options aren’t available, you could do worse than Insidious. Then again, you could do better. Have I mentioned Poltergeist? 

All that glitters

The 84th annual Academy Awards are over. The Artist dominance was there in the major categories, but not as much so as I'd anticipated. Artist and Hugo split 5 each; Hollywood clearly loved celebrating the movies that celebrate film. This I understand, and while I cannot speak for Artist, Hugo is far from the revolutionary medium-invigorating family fantasy that many claim it to be. 

The year was disappointing also because of the numerous titles missing from major categories. Much has been said on the omissions of Drive and Melancholia, and although the majestic Tree of Life scored some big nominations, it was clearly a courtesy call - "thanks for coming Mr Malick, but your film is too divisive and we don't know what to do with it". The existential epic even lost out on what I thought was a done deal, the Best Cinematography award. This, too, went to Hugo. Let me be clear: what Tree of Life achieved with its evocative and poetic imagery functions on a much higher level than Hugo's cute camera-going-through-the-clock-now-the-floor-now-it-spins cinematographic digital choreography. 

And then Viola Davis lost Best Actress to the much loved and over rated Meryl Streep. Meryl Streep. She was fantastic in Doubt not too long ago, where her character had to be contained; then again, Davis was superb in only a few minutes of screen time in that same film. That Streep won for The Iron Lady is saddening, and from all I've heard and read it should not boost the hearts of her fans to know that their dancing queen won an award for this film. In all honesty, this was a "thank you for 30 years of your life" award. Keep in mind that more than half of Academy voters are middle aged white males. 

What made me happy? An eccentric green lizard named Rango, in a classically told 2-D animated film that won Best Animated Feature. The Film Editing win for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Also, Angelina Jolie's right leg. 

No invention for Scorsese

Martin Scorsese is seen by many as the greatest living American filmmaker. Not only is he much respected as a filmmaker and storyteller, he is also involved in numerous film preservation projects. It makes sense that Scorsese would be interested in adapting Brian Selznick’s charming children’s book, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, a charming simple story that happens to be about preserving the cinematic past and not allowing it to go to ruin or oblivion. It is in this light that the resulting film, the multi-Oscar nominated 3-D family drama Hugo, is generally highly recommended viewing for film fans; after all, a master filmmaker (The Aviator, Shutter Island, The Departed) is making a film about (his love for) cinema itself. What a pity that Scorsese’s film ends up being nothing more than an average family drama about belonging. Anyone who maintains that Hugo is about the art of film itself should admit the film we’re watching contributes very little to the art form other than recreating some familiar images from the cinema of the past. My suspicion is that many people revere Hugo simply because of its content, and not because of innovative filmmaking, of which it demonstrates despairingly little.

The story is rather charming: an orphaned boy, Hugo (Asa Butterfield, who recently signed on to star in the forthcoming Ender’s Game adaptation) lives in the Paris train station circa 1930. He makes sure that all the station’s clocks are running on time and lives from scraps of food that he steals from vendors spread around the station. Once his work is done, Hugo focuses his attention on fixing some sort of invention that his late father (Jude Law) had left him. Desperate for parts he can use to bring the invention to life, he is caught stealing mechanical bits and parts by the local toy shop owner George (Ben Kingsley). George’s granddaughter (an impressive Chloe Grace Moretz) takes a liking to the wide-eyed, blue-eyed Hugo and undertakes to help him in his quest and in a sense protect him from the rather unfriendly George. They uncover a secret past long thought buried that can possibly revitalise not only the grumpy George but many others as well.

Meanwhile, Scorsese creates a wonderfully inhabited train station with some colourful secondary characters, my favourite of which is Sasha Baron Cohen’s station master. The actor displays some brilliant comic timing in his few scenes, and his attempts to clumsily woo Emily Mortimer’s flower seller are sweet and convincing.

Those who want to go into the film completely cold should stop reading now. To you I say: watch Hugo, expect little, and enjoy. The 3-D is rather good but, as usual, not necessary to tell this particular story. Hugo is good family entertainment but is otherwise a minor work for Scorsese at best; considering his oeuvre, this is the director at his most visually conservative, reigned in and just plain average in over fifteen years.

Now, some spoilers (I suppose).

It turns out that toy shop owner George is none other than French formalist, magician and fantasist George Melies, a filmmaker famous for A Trip to the Moon and many other silent shorts that remain visually impressive. I was fortunate enough to attend a screening of several Melies shorts last year at Open Window, and Melies emerged once more as a film pioneer. Where the Lumieres were content to put the camera down and record whatever was happening in front of it, Melies preferred to create the content of the films himself. The filmmaker ended up being one of the first filmmakers to cut trailers for movies, and in his joyous inventiveness even faked news ‘programmes’ to show to astonished audiences.

In making a film about such a creative force, Scorsese had to not only recreate some of Melies’s professional history but also imbue his own current project with an inventiveness and energy similar to what the earlier master exhibited. Scorsese pays great attention to the recreations and the details of the period, and they are little pleasures in their own right: one often hears the story of the audiences panicking at the arrival of a train on a big film screen, but it is quite lovely to see them duck as the train pulls into the station. Scorsese is clearly passionate about the period and its cultural outputs, going to great trouble to recreate some of the images now immortalised in film studies.

But recreation only gets you so far, and Hugo is an assortment of lengthy stretches where nothing significant happens (except in the plot itself) interspersed with fleeting moments where Scorsese’s genius is in full display. The shots of the City of Lights as seen from Hugo’s window are beautifully rendered, while my favourite shot in the entire film has to be when a famous art work is explicitly linked to film as an art of life and creation.

These moments are too few and over too quickly to compensate for the rest of the film, which is rather slow and plain. Poor Hugo isn’t much of a hero, and Butterfield doesn’t have to do much more than run, tear up and stand with his mouth agape. And if one should encounter the argument that Hugo is actually Melies’s story, why is the film named after the young orphan? (Note: it makes sense in the book.) There are many great films that are about the love of film as envisioned by master filmmakers: consider some of the films of Kiarostami and De Palma. And, of course, Bill Condon’s affecting Gods and Monsters, featuring the best work Brendan Fraser ever committed to screen. Hugo is not to take its place alongside these great films. It is an unexceptional film executed as straightforward entertainment and lacks any emotional or intellectual staying power. 

It would be a shame to see Scorsese accept an Oscar for such (by his own standards) pedestrian work.

Hero in a Half Shell

In a small lakeside village in present-day Japan, 35-year old Asuka (Swaw Masaki) works at a fish factory. Unaffected by some of the younger girls working at the factory call her “old”, Asuka seems content to work with the fish and rinse out fish baskets, and is engaged to her boss, Hajime (Mutsuo Yoshioka). One fateful day she discovers a live fish in a basket and decides to save it. She rushes to the lake and releases it into the water, and that is when she spots the kappa (Yoshiro Umezawa). (Aside: a kappa is mythological creature that is half man, half turtle.) The kappa speaks to her, seems to like her and as it turns out is named Aoki, a familiar from Asuka’s high school days. The story suggests that Asuka and Hajime are surely not meant to be, and that there might be some inkling of romance between her and Aoki. In between the characters’ discoveries about themselves and each other, one of Asuka’s colleagues makes a play for the kappa’s affections, and another mythological creature makes an appearance. 

Shinji Imaoka’s Underwater Love is a bittersweet take of the supernatural, unreciprocated love and mortality. There’s also some light humor, as when Asuka asks of Aoki what his business in the village is, and the creature replies in a deadpan manner: “Stuff”. Note that the title is misleading: there are no scenes of underwater love in the film (it’s not Uncle Boonmee).

Also, please note that Imaoka’s light, short romance (87 minutes) is a soft core porn movie. More accurately, Underwater Love belongs to the Japanese pink film genre, movies with thin (and often very odd) storylines that rarely run longer than an hour and feature soft core sex. Japanese soft core is different from American soft core and those expecting writing and moaning in soft lighting set to some indiscriminate piano tune will be sorely disappointed. While Underwater Love is actually rather light on the sex, what sex is in there is rather odd and only at one stage semi-explicit, depending on your views on turtles. Watching the film, you’re faintly ware that what you’re seen is more than slightly bestial, and yet the kappa make-up is so clearly a mask and some skin paint, you can’t help but think of Aoki as a man-in-suit for the entire film.

I haven’t mentioned that Underwater Love is also a musical. It’s a Japanese musical pink film, where chirpy characters burst into songs about death and death. There is some dancing to go along with it, though it’s of the “a little to the left, a little to the right” variety and looked very strange to my Western sensibilities. (Something is certainly lost in translation.) These musical interludes are mercifully short. The film has a distinctive look courtesy of renowned cinematographer Christopher Doyle (Rabbit-Proof Fence, Hero, Lady in the Water and frequent Wong Kar-wai collaborator), whose introduction of the kappa in the film’s first scene is breath-taking. 

Surely Underwater Love will not appease all tastes; I doubt that I will seek out more pink films, as this film is reportedly one of the best of its kind, but it has a unique charm and a strangely affecting climax (not counting the very final scene, which is another musical number, Slumdog Millionaire-style). For all its pink aspirations, including a pink background in its opening credits, Underwater Love is a rather benign creature with a soft heart, and I’d much rather return to this oddity than watch truly offensive tripe such as Stoute Boudjies again.