Horror Movie Horrors: The Perfect Host (2010)

Some movies you turn on really anticipating a positive experience. I went into The Perfect Host completely blind - having seen no trailers or hype for it and read no reviews. I turned on this Netflix listing simply because I like David Hyde Pierce.

Pierce: The Face of Horror.

And seriously, a horror film with David Hyde Pierce? The man I would cast to play Food Network's Alton Brown? I've always had an inkling that his acting ability far outweighed the parts I had seen him play, but I was understandably skeptical about seeing him in a horror movie role.

To be fair, The Perfect Host is much more of a thriller than a horror movie - and it is one of the best thrillers I've seen in recent years. It's subtle when it needs to be and does a wonderful job of slowly peeling back the layers of the story, providing a great number of twists and turns without giving you much in the way of exposition.

It's hard to summarize the plot without giving anything away. A fugitive, having just completed an armed robbery, is on the run when his identity is splashed all over the local media. Injured and needing a place to hide, he cons his way into a man's home (played by Pierce) as he prepares for a dinner party. Not all is as it seems, though, and he quickly finds himself regretting his choice of hide outs.

There is so much more going on in this plot. Wanting to avoid spoilers, I can't really elaborate further, but this film does a lot of "turning the tables" on it's characters. Unlike a lot of Hollywood twists, these aren't unbelievable events that come out of nowhere and really don't mesh with the plot. Instead, newcomer writer-director Nick Tomnay does a brilliant job in the planning and execution of this plot. You can tell that he carefully deconstructed his overall story and sprinkled those plot points like bread crumbs for the audience to pick up on. There is very little flat-out exposition. Instead, the audience is given all of the pieces they need to understand what is going on without anyone having to spell it out for them.

I definitely recommend this film. It's strange and mysterious as you learn more about Pierce's character, whom he plays perfectly. They leave a lot of questions unanswered in the end, but in a good way.

Horror Movie Horrors: The Inheritance

I stumbled across this movie when it was added to Netflix a little while ago. Seeing a few names I recognized (and the fact that I would enjoy just listening to Keith David read the phone book to me), I added it to the queue for a rainy day. Well, it's not quite rainy, but I do have a rare day off with nothing in particular to do, so I decided to check it out.

When the final credits rolled, I decided to check out some of the reviews for the movie (something I can't do when on my Xbox, which is how I access Netflix 90% of the time) and was kind of surprised. With every horror movie, you expect to see a lot of low ratings. Part of this is because horror movies tend to be crappy, but it can also be attributed to the fact that people can be incredibly picky about what they're looking for in a horror film. Some are looking for extreme gore and they don't care much about the plot, others look for compelling writing and performances, while still others are just looking to have the pants scared off of them. With a fairly broad scope of points to hit, it only makes sense that horror movies tend to get lower ratings.

Also, horror films tend to be shit.

But I was seeing review after review saying that this was the worst movie ever.

A short list of some horror movies that are worse than or equal to The Inheritance, limited by what I have personally viewed: 

Redneck Zombies
American Psycho 2: The All American Girl
Manos and the Hands of Fate
Gamebox 1.0 (which I've been meaning to write a review for)
Ticked Off Trannies with Knives (still trying to figure out how that got a high rating)
RoboGeisha (it's more of an action flick, but it has enough gore to be labelled horror)
Cabin Fever
Deadgirl
Transylmania
Satan's Little Helper
The Sitter
After.Life
Tooth and Nail
Any number of films featured on MST3K 

And that's not counting the number of films I've seen detailed reviews for that look 10 times worse. You want to call The Inheritance the worst movie of all time? Go watch some of the films reviewed by The Cinema Snob and then we can talk.

Now, I won't make any claims that I was watching this film with a serious critical eye. Today's movie choice was a film turned on as background noise while I spent some quality time beading.

Diet Coke helps the creative process.

But I will at least say that for a genre that is filled to the brim with stereotypical and formulaic slashers, this film was trying to do something a little different.

The story starts with a family reunion - five "cousins" from five close-knit families are called up to the old plantation where their ancestors were once enslaved for a get-together with their Elders. There was some confusion of people writing reviews thinking it was weird that two of these cousins were in a relationship, but they establish that these five are not actually related. Back in the days of slavery, there was a mysterious African shaman who was lynched but survived. He ensnared five slave families with promises of freedom, power, wealth and prosperity if they made sacrifices to him. Agreeing to do so, these families have stayed incredibly close to one another throughout the generations, considering themselves different branches of one spiritual family.

As far as these young people are concerned, it's just a weird family story. The real purpose of them meeting up with their Elders is so they can ask for some financial help.

In my opinion, the premise had promise. It kind of ties together the tropes commonly found in both witchcraft ritual horror and slasher films and it's interesting to see the concept of "evil ancient African magic" from the perspective of a film with an all-African-American cast (except for two out-of-place white people... guess who dies first?)

The performances were solid, but the script was really weak. The characters are put into an inescapable situation far too early in the film and don't make many intelligent attempts to save themselves, despite an obvious desire to. Toward the end, it seems that they wrote themselves into a corner: characters who know they have no chance of getting out of there simply jump into danger as if the writer didn't know how else to get rid of them. Because of this, the film doesn't really have an ending, which is it's biggest flaw.

Do I recommend this movie? Not really. It isn't great. Hell, it isn't even really good, but it fell into the following criteria:

1) I made it through to the end credits.
2) I didn't regret watching it.
3) I've seen a hell of a lot worse.

So, no. Sorry Netflixers. It's not the worst movie ever. It had the potential to be something much better, with a really strong cast, some good visual effects, and an interesting story idea. The script and storytelling was too weak to save it from being a 2.5 out of 5 in my book.

Horror Movie Horrors: Fright Night (2011)

 The Fright Night remake wasn't really on my radar as far as must-see-movies were concerned. I have a long standing love of the vampire genre, but most of the films tend to disappoint me. From the trailers I saw (which, granted, were brief and infrequent) it looked like your oh-so-predictable teen flick that I felt I could summarize without even seeing: the virgins and/or drug users will get killed, the kid will find out about a vampire but no one will believe him, his parents will be unwitting obstacles to what he needs to accomplish, he will seek advice from an unwilling or unreliable Van Helsing, his girlfriend will be in peril and he'll figure out a way to save the day. Roll credits.

And this is without having seen the first film.

The first act of the film unfortunately played into my expectations - it seemed incredibly slow because I knew what was most likely going to happen and therefore no tension was built up. It wasn't bad, I just felt like I was watching an episode of a tv show I'd seen before.

Yes, I'm talking about you.

If I wasn't a fan of the genre and hadn't seen many films like this, the first act probably wouldn't have bothered me. It really establishes the main characters and the environment they live in. I just felt that, at times, the pacing was a little slow because I was waiting for the main character to know what I was already told in the trailer: Your neighbor is a vampire, try not to get eaten.

But things really picked up for the better in acts two and three. Without giving too much away, it was refreshing to see a vampire really take initiative and really pursue those who pose a threat to him rather than do nothing while the main characters stew and fret over the situation. The way the main character's mother was written was also a nice change. At one point, she is put into a situation in which she is asked not to answer the door. She has no reason to believe that she shouldn't, but because her son pleads with her to trust him and do as he says, she leaves the door unanswered. Rather than falling back on the same-old-same-old storytelling of automatically pitting the skeptical parent in the way of the teen protagonist, they subtly showed that their relationship is more realistic and complex than the average cardboard cut-out that we often get as parents in a teen flick.

Without gushing too much or going too fan girlish: this was the main reason I saw this film:

Totally going to be my new desktop wallpaper.

To anyone who doesn't recognize him: that is David Tennant doing his best Russel Brand impersonation. I really have to give both him and the screenwriter credit for how his character is introduced: as our unwilling Van Helsing, he initially comes across as shallow, selfish, and a bit of a prick. However, while our main character gets his first chance to talk to him one-on-one, he slowly sheds the physical facade of his stage persona: he removes his wig, fake piercings, and starts wiping away the "tattoos" that cover his neck and chest. I could be reading into this, but it really seemed like a brilliant but subtle way to tell the audience that Peter Vincent is a more developed and meaningful character than your first impressions would indicate. (Note, the following clip is trimmed down for time.)

I felt like everyone gave great performances in this film. It wasn't campy like I'm told the first Fright Night was, but the film didn't take itself too seriously. It was very genuine about the whole situation: what do you do if you're put in such an unbelievable situation - especially when lives are at stake?

It doesn't over-romanticize vampires: there is definitely a sex factor to Colin Farrell's character, but sex and attraction is used as a ploy to lure in victims. The film consciously responds to the Twilight version of vampires and makes it clear that this is taking us back to the vampires that made you hide under the covers as opposed to the ones who just stand there and watch you sleep because they're possessive  obsessed  "romantic".

Speaking of sex, I also liked how teenage sexuality was represented here. Rather than having the hot girl who wants to have sex be represented as a slut, talking about whether or not to have sex is simply a part of being a teenager in an intimate relationship. There isn't really any pressure whether or not to have sex- it's expressed at one point as just a "let's get under the covers and see what happens" situation. And when sex is going to occur for the first time, talking about whether or not they really want to is represented, albiet briefly. I just feel like this is more realistic and therefore makes it seem more genuine. From personal experience, and what I've heard from just about any one else I've talked to about sex, many teens/young adults feel they were a bit duped by how people fly passionately into each other's arms and sex simply happens rather than a couple deciding, whether through a long conversation ("Do you really feel you're ready for that sort of thing?") or a short one ("Wanna have sex?" "Sure.").

Given how much praise I have for the screenplay, it should have come as no surprise that it came from Marti Noxon - a writer/producer who I've loved for quite some time for her work with shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and others. Also, for her cameo in the musical episode "Once More With Feeling":

All-in-all: Go see Fright Night. It's well written, well directed, and the performances are more than you would normally expect to see from your average teen horror flick.

X-Men: First Class Review (w/ some spoilers)

I posted this video on Youtube after the film came out - but considering the subject, I figure it makes sense to share it here:

Some light film analysis. More serious content to follow.