Scary Movie Month 2015 Day 13: A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master

A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master 

Here's a pet peeve I have about certain sequels: I absolutely hate it when a follow-up kills off characters in the very beginning that spent the entire previous movie fighting to survive. Friday the 13th Part II and Alien 3 are particularly egregious examples of this, and I always feel like it's a lazy, ugly way to start a sequel. Another movie that engages in this awful trope? This one.

And I don't even care.

Like most fans of the series, I grew to care about Kristen, Kincaid, and Joey as they fought off Freddy in Nightmare 3. Maybe it's a function of Patricia Arquette not returning for 4 (handing over the role of Kristen to the awesomely-named-but-not-very-good Tuesday Knight) or Joey not speaking much to begin with, but for some reason it's never bothered me here that Freddy dispatches the three remaining Dream Warriors so suddenly. At the very least, it opens the door to Alice (Lisa Wilcox, who is still more than welcome to move in with me if she's reading this) to quickly step in and take the lead.

I recognize that this is a bad movie. It's lazily written (as evidenced above) and it's the first in the series in which Freddy is nothing but a comedian with a claw, there's not a single moment of genuine menace in the entire movie (while Freddy quipped plenty in 3, he was also still scary. Here the quips are all he's got). There are more than a few weak performances and there are leaps in logic that would give Spock an aneurysm. So....why do I love this movie?

For one thing, there's an energy to the dream sequences that I love (director Renny Harlin is nothing if not flashy) and the makeup and special effects (courtesy of Kevin Yagher, Steve Johnson, and Screaming Mad George, among others) are imaginative, inventive, and twelve different kinds of icky. Robert Englund was still having fun at this point, as the movie was shot right at the height of Freddy-mania, and his enthusiasm is infectious. As silly as the movie gets (and hoo boy does it get silly) I can't help but get caught up in the goofy, bloody fun (actually the majority of the death scenes are less bloody than one might expect, but I digress).

The other reason I love this movie (and if I'm being honest, probably the main reason) is pretty simple: nostalgia. I was 13 or 14 when I saw this for the first time, just as I was really getting into horror. Being a solidly unscary special-effects showcase made this pretty much the perfect movie to cut my teeth on as a nascent genre fan and every time I see it (which is a lot, it's one I put on in the background fairly often as I'm doing other things) it makes me think back fondly to being that age and learning about makeup, monsters, and madmen. Script issues aside (and they are legion) I just have a blast watching this no matter how many times I've seen it, and sometimes that's all that matters. 

Also, did I mention Lisa Wilcox? Because yowza.

Scary Movie Month 2015 Day 12: The Editor

The Editor 

Man, that was incredibly well done. The Editor is basically Black Dynamite for Giallo fans and that's meant both descriptively and as high praise, because I love me some Black Dynamite. Equal parts parody (real parody, not Friedberg/Seltzer referential bullshit) and homage, this was clearly put together with tremendous affection for the genre it's sending up.

For those unfamiliar with Giallo, it's a very specific type of Italian horror mystery of which I am not generally a fan. I liked Bay of Blood a lot when I saw it for Junesploitation earlier this year, but Deep Red, The Bird With the Crystal Plumage, and the other handful of examples of the genre I've seen have mostly left me cold. I was wondering if it was even worthwhile to try watching this without being a fan of Giallo but I needn't have worried, it's a smart, funny, affectionate send-up that works on more than just the one level. That being said, it's jam-packed with all of the extreme gore, tarantulas, eyeball trauma, bold colors, bad dubbing, casual nudity, and Udo Kier that the genre is famous for.

The plot is just as densely packed with complete nonsense as the actual Giallos often are, and at times it's indistinguishable from the real thing (much like if you didn't know any better you might think a scene from Black Dynamite came from an actual 70s blaxploitation movie). The mystery is even pretty engaging and is played somewhat straight. I haven't seen anything else from the team behind this (Aston 6) but I will absolutely be seeking out their other work. This may be my favorite discovery of Scary Movie Month so far, and that's saying something because I really loved Deathgasm too. Between that, this, and The Final Girls it's been a pretty great year for horror comedies. I'm still laughing just thinking about The Editor. It ended about 10 minutes ago and I'm already trying to figure out when I'll have a chance to watch it again. During a month with so many movies to watch, I can't think of higher praise.

Scary Movie Month 2015 Day 11: The Final Girls

The Final Girls 

This was a pleasant surprise. A group of modern-day teens are Purple Rose of Cairo-ed (that's a thing, right?) into an 80's slasher called Camp Bloodbath and have to figure out how to get back home...and how to survive the night.

It's a concept that has been done before, but there's enough enthusiasm and creativity on display that it mostly works. The real surprise is how genuinely sweet the movie is. The Final Girl herself, Max (Taissa Farmiga), is the daughter of Amanda (Malin Akerman), one of the stars of Camp Bloodbath who was tragically killed in a car accident a few years before Max and her friends were sucked into the movie. Max sees this as a chance to save her mother, which may prove difficult as the character Amanda plays in Camp Bloodbath is doomed to die at the hands of Billy, the Jason Voorhees-esque slasher who haunts the camp. While The Final Girls is a comedy first and foremost, it truly does keep the emotions grounded in reality and it's much more effective than one might expect.

The comedy is somewhat less successful. It's more a source of mild chuckles than full-on laughs, but the movie has so much heart that it's easy to forgive the stuff that doesn't really work. The cast is strong (I tend to find Adam Devine more grating than funny, but that sort of works for him here as his character is meant to be boorish) and Farmiga and Ackerman are particular standouts, deftly balancing comedy and sentiment. It's a fun, fast-paced watch that's a nice antidote to some of the grimness on display in so many modern horror movies. A good breather in the middle of Scary Movie Month. 

Scary Movie Month 2015 Day 10: Knock Knock

Knock Knock 

AKA: Bitches Be Crazy: The Motion Picture 

Who can we contact to help Keanu Reeves quit smoking? Because I'm gonna need him to live forever. He gets a bad rap and it's a shame because he's got a presence I love and he's usually pretty canny about choosing his projects. He goes Full Cage here as a happily married husband and father who has a night of indiscretion that turns into a nightmare he may not survive. 

He's alone for the weekend while his wife and kids are traveling, when two women (Lorenza Izzo & Ana de Armas) knock on the door asking to use his phone. They seduce him and he makes the terrible decision to sleep with them (after fending off their advances for a while), after which the shit hits the fan. They refuse to leave, they knock him out and tie him up, and the havoc they wreak escalates from there. 

Reeves has been on a hot streak lately and here he goes mega in a way he doesn't often get to do (maybe Man of Tai Chi was pretty close), he's absolutely the reason to see it. That being said, maybe don't see it. This is the fifth movie from director Eli Roth, and he's still yet to make a movie I like without reservation (I haven't hated any of his movies, but hearing he's attached to a project doesn't exactly fill me with excitement). It seems like he wants to make some sort of statement about gender roles and infidelity here, but much like the social commentary in his other movies (particularly Hostel: Part II) he does not have the ability to make a statement without wallowing in what he's supposedly preaching against. The whole thing just takes on a misogynistic tone that left me uncomfortable, however not in the way Roth intended. 

The movie is a tonal mess, trying to balance tension and comedy in a way that serves neither. For someone who fancies himself a master of horror, Roth shoehorns an awful (key word, that) lot of attempted comedy into his movies. What was quirky fun back in the Cabin Fever days has become grating and unpleasant, and it's a shame. I'm going to keep rooting for Roth and keep seeing what he does because he does appear to come from a place of true love for the genre, but it's getting more and more difficult to hope for the best. At least I can still cheer for Keanu.

Scary Movie Month 2015 day 9: Freddy's Tricks and Treats

Freddy's Nightmares: A Nightmare on Elm Street the Series: Freddy's Tricks and Treats (Season 1, Episode 4)

I know it's Scary Movie Month and this is a TV show, but it's based on a movie franchise and I don't have enough time for a movie today so GET OFF MY BACK. Freddy's Nightmares had a very odd structure in that it was an hourlong anthology show, but each episode consisted of two loosely connected stories, usually with a minor character from the first story taking the lead in the second (though the episodes weren't actually split, it all played as a single episode. Like I said, odd). In the first half, Mariska Hargitay and her enormous glasses star as a college student trying to study for her anatomy midterm while a Halloween party rages on around her. She goes off to study away from all the noise and finds herself menaced by Freddy, making this one of the rare handful of episodes in which Freddy is a character in the story rather than just the Rod Serling-esque host. 

Surprisingly, there are a few legitimately creepy moments in the first half. At one point Hargitay is trying to claw off a pumpkin mask that she can't remove and the fleshy sound of her nails digging into the mask plus the bloody claw marks she's leaving behind makes for a pretty unnerving combination. There's also a moment where Freddy carves the word "BOO" into a medical school cadaver that could easily have come straight out of one of the Elm Street movies.

The second half, as it always does on Freddy's Nightmares, goes completely off the rails and trades the straightforward scares of the first half for a more surreal approach. While that dreamlike quality may fit the nightmare logic of the show, it still deflates what had otherwise been a fairly tense episode. Mariska is still around for the second half, but the focus shifts to her less interesting classmate who uses her for an experiment that allows him to record her dreams on VHS. Despite the weak second half this is still one of the better episodes of what was a pretty consistently lousy show. Freddy fans will almost certainly find something to like here.

Scary Movie Month 2015 Day 8: Poltergeist (2015)

Poltergeist (2015)

The movie opens with no opening credits other than a title card. The title appears off to the side, barely visible in the grass as the Bowen family drives to what will be their new home, as if it's ashamed to be associated with this garbage fire of a movie. Can't say I blame it.

For the record, I don't have anything against remakes and I also don't think Poltergeist is an untouchable classic along the lines of Jaws or Weekend at Bernie's, in theory I have no problem with remaking Poltergeist for a new generation. What I do have a problem with is lifeless, hollow, tension-free horror movies that exist solely to cash in on a title, like this one. 

Sam Rockwell and Rosemarie DeWitt are both very capable actors, and they're also both stranded here with nothing to play that's worth their time and effort. The whole enterprise is a shrill mess full of inconsistent characterization and lame jump scares. 

Often I'll watch a movie and wonder what other movies influenced the filmmakers, but in this case I can't help but wonder if the filmmakers have ever actually seen a movie (and I don't just mean the original Poltergeist, I mean literally any movie). It plays like they haven't, but that they had the events of the original Poltergeist explained to them in a game of telephone. They hit the expected beats like the haunted TV, the haunted tree, "They're here," "this house is clean" (which has been turned into a reality show hashtag in the world of the movie because of course it has) etc. but it's all poorly executed and scare-free. Easily the worst movie of Scary Movie Month so far. Such a wasted opportunity.

Scary Movie Month 2015 Day 7: Insidious Chapter 3

Insidious Chapter 3

I don't generally talk about my personal life on this blog, but suffice it to say that 2015 has been a rough year for me. There have been various trials and tribulations, and when Insidious Chapter 3 was released in August I considered skipping it. I was dealing with a lot at once and it was difficult to find the time for anything else, but as it turned out I was able to go to the preview screening the night before it opened. In all honesty my expectations were pretty low. I liked the first two a lot but the fact that it was a prequel didn't raise much hope and I was so preoccupied with everything else going on that I was just hoping for a distraction at best.

Then, a funny thing happened.

As the film unspooled (yes, I know everything is digital now, shut up) I found myself completely caught up in it. Not just the story but the entire atmosphere...it pulled me in and kept its claws in me, not unlike the malevolent spirits at the heart of the series. I jumped (and there's at least one jump-scare in here that's an all-timer as far as I'm concerned, up there with the hallway murder in Exorcist III), I gasped, and, most unexpectedly, I cried. Part of that was everything I had been feeling before it started, of course, but part of it was also Elise's (Lin Shaye, wonderful as always) story. Returning writer (and first-time director) Leigh Whannell handled her with genuine grace, and cathartically speaking it hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks. By the time the end credits rolled tears were openly streaming down my face and afterward I felt legitimately good for the first time in months, clichéd as it may sound I felt like a weight had been lifted.

So here we are now, a few months removed from that night and that feeling, watching it again in the cold light of day (as cold as the light of day can be in Florida, anyway). In truth, I was a bit nervous to watch it again, not because of the scares (but goddamn that jump at the apartment  window still totally works) but because I was afraid it wouldn't be as effective this time or mean as much to me as it did last time. It turns out I needn't have worried, it still totally worked for me. 

The Insidious movies are funhouses, old-fashioned spook shows that revel in making us jump out of our collective skin. I love that about all 3 of them and Whannell, taking over for longtime collaborator James Wan, acquits himself very well, staging the scares with confidence and glee. That being said, there's a melancholy at the heart of this particular chapter that balances the scares with real emotion that took me by surprise and made this probably my favorite entry in the series. Even more impressive is the fact that that aforementioned melancholy never gets oppressive, there's also enough humor sprinkled throughout (much of it courtesy of Whannell and Angus Sampson, returning as Elise's partners in paranormal investigation) to keep it from being too grim. After all, there's a reason that funhouses are called funhouses, and that spirit is present here just as it is in the other two movies.

I realize I haven't said anything about the plot or much at all about the characters, and that's not meant to be dismissive but it's also sort of beside the point. If you like these haunted house types of movies, there's a better than average chance you'll like this one. If they don't do it for you, then this one probably won't either (though I would still urge you to give it a try because it's all so well-staged). They do it for me, and I can guarantee this one will be entering my regular rotation. A very solid entry in one of the most entertaining horror franchises out there, and a terrific showcase for the always great Lin Shaye, what is there to be afraid of?