Category Archives: Horror

STREAMING MOVIE REVIEW: AUDITION (1999)

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Omega Project

Shigeharu (Ryo Ishibashi) a widower of about ten years and a workaholic with the help of a film producer friend sets up a series of auditions for a non-existent production in hopes of finding the right young woman to become his wife. From the moment Asami’s (Eihi Shiiina) headshot and CV cross his desk Shigeharu is fascinated and soon obsessed with the mysterious young woman, ignoring the communist parade of red flags surrounding Asami. Soon enough Shigeharu discovers the depths of Asami’s unbalanced mind the hatred she harbors for deceitful, manipulating men.

Audition came to my attention due to a YouTube video about frightening moments in film and I have to agree the scene where what appears to be a large laundry bag moves if startling and unsettling. While this film has a generally good score in its reviews and overall, I did enjoy it I think it runs a little long in duration. The second act, the middle of the film, feels a little aimless slows down just a tad too much for my tastes. It many ways the feels much like many Frankensteinadaptations first acts. We know what is coming and the delay in getting that building very little in tension of suspense. At an hour and fifty-five minutes I think Audition might benefits for just being 10 to 15 minutes shorter.

That said, if foreign film works for you and if subtitling doesn’t interfere with your suspension of disbelief than Audition is worth a watch.

Audition is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel and Shudder.

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Movie Review: Diabolique (1955)

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At a run-down private school in France a cruel schoolmaster torments his mistress and assaults his wife prompting the women to conspire in his murder.

I was supposed to see this film on the big screen with the San Diego Film Geeks monthly screening at the Digital Gym but came down with a cold that weekend and was forced to miss it. Luckily the film is playing on the Criterion Channel.

Artwork: Criterion Collection

Diabolique is considered a classic of the thriller genre. Starring Vera Clouzot as Christina, the Spanish spouse of cruel headmaster Michael (Paul Meurisse) and Simone Signoret as Nicole a teacher at the school and Michael’s mistress. Directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot, Vera’s husband, the film is a tight suspenseful production in the vein of a Hitchcock movie. (The novel which the film was adapted from was one Hitchcock wanted but Henri-Georges Clouzot beat him to it.) Murders never come off as planned and murderers rarely are truthful on their lives leading to a story with twists and reveals right up to the final shot. It is an ironic tragedy that Vera Clouzot, playing a woman with a serious heart condition, died suddenly from a cardiac event just 5 years after Diabolique’s release.

There is a reason why this is considered a classic. Every aspect of the production works, the performances, the cinematography, and the direction all take what is a fairly standard film noir set-up and play it to near perfection. I regret that illness robbed me of the chance to see it for the first time in a proper is small theater.

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Quick Review: The Gorge

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Dropped on Valentines Day this year was the action/horror/romance movie The Gorge. Two expert sniper/assassins are the latest people assigned to monitor a mysterious gorge with

Apple TV+

orders to prevent anything from leaving the site and maintaining strict no communication with each other. Since the pair stationed on opposing sides of the chasm are outstandingly attractive people (Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy) the no-contact rule is of course broken. By the third act of the film the pair find themselves at the bottom of the gorge, fighting for their lives and uncovering terrible secrets it has hidden for 80 years.

Directed by Scott Derrickson who gave us the first Dr. Strange film and the wonderful Black Phone I had hopes for The Gorge but while not bad the film in the end proved to be less than satisfying.

What works in the movie are the leads, Teller and Taylor-Joy works quite well together, have an excess of chemistry with each other and the camera, and are simply fun to watch. All of the movie’s troubles start at the bottom of the mysterious gash in the Earth. The secret they discover not only strains credibility but is actually lackluster. Their fight for survival is meant to the suspenseful but with a film boasting a cast this limited it can never leave your mind that both are going to survive. Additionally, once they reach the bottom of the gorge all character development grinds to a halt. They face no choices or challenges that impact on their character only on their physical survival.

I don’t regret watching The Gorge but it’s highly unlikely I will ever revisit it.

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Who Qualifies as a Final Girl?

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The trope of the ‘final girl’ is one born of the slasher films of the 70s and 80s. The term was coined by Carol Clover in her essay analyzing the gender dynamics of those films. Today the term is pretty much used for any surviving woman or girl of a horror movie that manages to escape or defeat the killers or monsters of the story. The zenith of the concept in a meta-story manner is the ritual sacrifices as presented in the film The Cabin in the Woods which suggests that only when the morally superior, that is virgin, woman is last to die or survive is the ritual, that is the slasher formula, properly solved. A recent film though has me pondering the mutable nature of the trope and just who justly qualifies as a final girl.

The rest of the post/essay will contain spoilers for the film Companion up to and including its ending and its major reveals and reversals. Proceed only if spoilers for Companion are of no consequence for you.

SPOILER WARNING ENGAGED

 

Iris in Companion is the ’emotional support’ android companion for Josh. That is, she is his sex bot and sex toy, fulfilling a role for which he could find no actual human being. On a trip to a millionaire’s secluded cabin, the wealthy host, Sergey, attempts to sexually assault Iris and she kills him in self-defense. Key to understanding this event and how it unfolded is that the character of Iris in utterly unaware that she is in fact a piece of technology. Like Rachel in Blade Runner, she possesses artificial memories giving her the illusion of being a human being. Her defense against her would be rapist is the for all purposes the same as any woman in that horrid situation. Learning of her ‘true’ nature spins iris into a crisis of self-doubt that is only made worse by the further revelation that the murder has been a planned event. Josh, having modifiers her operating parameters and releasing safety measures, plotted with Sergey’s mistress for his death. Iris escapes and seizing control of the app that regualtes her psychological nature first tries to escape but when that fails defends herself, killing all of those who plotted and tries to end her individual existence. In the end Iris ‘survives’ and escapes to live a life unconstrained by preprogrammed boundaries.

So, is Iris a ‘final girl’?

While the human characters are vile, greedy, and without moral standing, it is Iris who is the ‘slasher’ in this story. She is the force that one-by-one dispatches the humans, ending their lives. While it is not uncommon to give the slasher an understandable if exaggerated motivation rarely is it so sympathetic or empathetic as Iris’ in Companion. The emotional release as she drives away in Sergey’s classic Ford Mustang is as great as Laurie Strode’s in Halloween or Sally Hardesty in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Iris, though the killer in the film, certainly feels like a final girl. So far as I am concerned, she is one.

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Movie Review: Companion

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Nailing the genre of Companion is a tricky endeavor. Many consider it to be a horror film, after all it’s about an A.I. that’s for the run time of the film is primarily engaged in a spree of killing. Other classify the film as science-fiction/thriller, I guess because they turn their nose up at horror. What is undeniable is that Companion is at its heart a satire taking aim at terrible men and the manner in which they treat their romantic partners.

Warner Bros Studios

Sophie Thatcher, whom I last watched in the terrific Heretic stars as Iris, an emotional support robot, that is sex bot, to craven and despicable Josh (Jack Quaid.) They have journeyed far into the countryside for a weekend with two other couples, Eli, (Harvey Guillen) & Patrick (Lucas Gage) and Kat (Megan Suri) & Sergey (Rupert Friend.) Very quickly things go badly when in an act of self-defense Iris kills one of the men and events spiral out of everyone’s control.

Some have complained that Companion’s trailers, revealing that Iris is in fact a machine, destroys the movie’s ‘twist’ but that is not the case. The script is loaded with reveals and reversals that at each turn enhance the story and further the satire.

Writer/Director Drew Hancock has crafted a find piece of cinema that is both highly entertaining, rightfully funny without ever losing it thematic core while avoiding becoming a tiresome lecture. Sophie Thatcher is excellent in her performance, often making these tiny choices that very subtly convey quite a bit about Iris and her internal monologue.

This is a film I can whole heatedly recommend.

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Blood is Magic, Not Food

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With last month’s release of Robert Eggers’ stunning remake Nosferatu vampires and vampires media has been on my mind.

In Nosferatu Count Orlok is presented pretty much as the traditional folk tales describe an undead vampire, a walking corpse, decaying and revolting, that feeds upon the blood of the living. Orlok is much closer in appearance to the post Romero ‘zombie’ than to the urbane European nobleman displayed in my adaptations of Dracula.

With Dracula, both the original novel and the nearly endless adaptations, the vampire moved away from that walking corpse towards a more romantic figure. Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire proved instrumental in moving the image of the vampire into one that was more tragic and a figure to be pitied rather than feared. Over the decades the vampire continued to transform into tragic romantic heroes slowly becoming not monsters of the night but simply life-impaired individuals, comic-book characters with tremendous powers and a few unsavory quirks.

A trope that emerged from this transformation that has always rankled me is the habit of treating blood as merely another nutrient. A process that gave us the character Angel buying blood from Sunnydale’s local slaughterhouse to sustain his dietary requirements.

Even just typing that out annoys me to no end. The vampire feeding on the blood of living humans was not the same as someone has a nice bowl of soup. It was not about calories and essential elements it was about life. Blood, to the pre-scientific world, was that strange substance that meant life itself. Blood was always at the center of the most powerful magics. Turning it into just another meal product that can be ordered from your local distributor cheapens that entire symbolism of the myth and robs it of most of its horror.

I will admit that this is just part of a larger issue I have with ‘scientific’ and rational approaches to supernatural horrors. It seems logical to treat the vampire’s feeding on blood the same as out feeding on plants and animals, just as it ‘logical’ to treat werewolf transformations as bound by the conservation of mass laws. Both are violations of the magical, wonderous, and inexplicable nature of the supernatural. Vampires are the dead. They are not just different kinds of people and I am thankful that Eggers bucked the slick modern trend of making them cool and sexy returning the monster to is terrifying and revolting roots.

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A lovely pairing

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This week my sweetie-wife and I started a rewatch of a beloved television series. It’s about a Federal detective who comes to investigate crime in an isolated logging town that harbors dark and supernatural secrets.

Oh, and last week we finished our re-watch of the groundbreaking American television series Twin Peaks what we started this week was Jordskot from Sweden.

It was December of 2020 when we watched the first season of this series and thoroughly enjoyed it. Even then without a fresh rewatch of Lynch/Frost’s bizarre and nightmare like Twin Peaks still echoing in my mind Jordskott provoked that comparison. Both shows start off as stories that present their fictional worlds as one that match ours, populated by varying kinds of people, good and bad, but rules by rational sane natural laws. Then things begin to twist, to turn, to become something darker with secrets older than the scientific method pushing the plot’s progression until what had been a police procedural has mutated almost imperceptibly into horror.

In 2020 when we watched for the first time both seasons were streaming on Shudder but before we could begin the next, the show vanished from the service. Over the next year or so I keep searching to see if it’d pop up on some other streaming site, but it did not and while it was never entirely forgotten it did fade from memory.

Late last year I wanted to look for it again, but the Swedish title had faded entirely from my mind, and it was a few weeks before I cracked locating the title and resuming my search.

Jordskott remained unlisted by all streaming services but for Christmas my sweetie-wife got me the DVDs imported from the UK. (I have never regretted purchasing a region free player) And so it is from disc that we have begun our rewatch and eventually our first watch of the second season.

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The Dreamer will not Awaken

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Filmmaker, Artist, and dreamer David Lynch as died. All artists are unique voices and visions, but few have the dreamlike quality that impacts generations such as was the films of David Lynch.

I first encountered Lynch’s visual language when along with a pack of friends I went to a local arthouse theater for a double feature of Roger Corman’s Little Shop of Horrors and David Lynch’s Eraserhead. I still have clear memories of sitting in that darkened theater telling myself that eventually the movie Eraserhead would start making sense. It never did, but its images stayed parked powerfully in my mind.

I next ran into Lynch with his big budget studio production of Dune, the least David Lynch film that man ever released. It is so unlike his vision that extended television versions do not credit him at his insistence.

My next encounter however transformed me into a fan when I went to the theater to see Blue Velvet. I came out of that screen struck with the beauty and the horror of his mind. The glory of a good and simple life, the depravity of a bad one and just how closely interlocked the two truly were.

When Twin Peaks hit the air, my take was that Lynch had brought Blue Velvet to television, but of course the series was both far darker and for more normal than that movie had been.

I cannot say I have seen all of his work, but what I have watched has stayed with me and haunts my thoughts more than most financial blockbusters.

Every death is the loss of a voice and every one touches the world in ways that vast and complex. Lynch touched many of us and he lives on in our dreams and nightmares.

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Folk Horror Review: Robin Redbreast

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Produced and broadcast December 1970 as part of the BBC anthology program A Play for Today is a modern set piece of folk horror. Originally broadcast in color the only surviving elements are a 16mm B&W copy due to the BBC’s notorious penny-pinching habit of recording over their master tapes.

BBC

Norah (Anna Cropper) a thoroughly modern woman, having been dumped by her boyfriend of eight years, decides to abandon the city and live for a few months in a country cottage that she and her ex-had purchased just before the dissolution of their relationship.

The isolated village and its inhabitant are quaint and strange to Norah’s modern sensibilities with the woman she hired to help clean and maintain the cottage a busybody and gossip. When Norah discovers that there is an infestation of field mice in her cottage she’s directed to seek out Robin a local man who can perform the extermination. She finds Robin (Andrew Bradford) in the forest practicing martial arts nude.

Robin, though simple-minded, attracts the lonely Norah but slowly it begins to seem that the villagers have arranged everything to induced Norah and Robin into a relationship with some dark unspecified purpose at their goal.

I first heard of Robin Redbreast on the documentary about Folk Horror but at that time aside from one massive collection of films, it what not available anywhere to view. Recently it has become available to stream in the Ad-supported service Tubi and at a brisk one hour and twenty minutes it doesn’t require a deep commitment of time.

I think that the accident of only as B&W element surviving actually works in the film’s favor, giving it the village a feel of something not quite of modern times, very fitting for folk horror which is nearly always about the collision between tradition and modernity.

Limitations of both budget and technical capability do hamper some aspects of the production. A sequence that is supposed to be from a frightened bird’s perspective is achieved solely through crash zooms and whip pans of the camera that are quite off putting. There are a few conveniences of plot but overall while not approaching becoming a favorite for me of the folk horror genre Robin Redbreast was worth at least a watch.

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Goal Not Met

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So, in late June early July I began writing my American Folk/Cosmic horror novel. An experiment for not only was it a genre I had never attempted in long form before but I began the manuscript without an outline.

My goal was to have a completed first draft, but not an edited one, by the end of the year on December 31st, 2024. Today is that date and the manuscript is not finished.

It is close, it is amazingly close, but with mere hours until the close of the year and a full day at the day-job still to complete I have to face the fact that I missed the goal.

There were writing days between July and today when I did not write. This new process of flying without a map produced a few times when in the middle of the story I became more lost and disoriented that usual. The end of the year is also a time when the day job become quite busy and pushing myself into serious amounts of overtime, while profitable, instigated migraines and cost me writing time as well.

Still, I did quite well. When I say it is close to being completed, I am talking less than a few thousand words. A day or two of writing and it will have been landed. Granted because of the no outline process the edit and revision process will be far more extensive than for other manuscripts. Halfway through the story I realized I had a motivation issue with the protagonist. What I had given her was not enough to propel her through the entire story. A change to her profession fixed that trouble, adding additional reasons for her to continue in a dangerous environment but that means new scenes and more rewrite for what had already been crafted.

Still, I like what I have written. I like the concept, and I look forward to completing the manuscript.

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