Showing posts with label Mini-Review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mini-Review. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

The Chaos Experiment (2009)

Video Updates would like to welcome filmmaker extrodinare and newest contributor, Greyduck.

Whereas terminal disease guy in the Saw movies traps his victims in elaborate torture devices to make them value their lives, James Pettis (Val Kilmer) traps his victims his victims in a sauna to make them feel like what global warming might be like someday.

His 6 victims (who include Eric Roberts and Patrick Muldoon) introduce themselves in one of the most pretentious, of many pretentious sequences, showing them through a dense yellow filter, in split screens that dissolve over more shots, that dissolve over even more shots. Needless to say, this overwhelming presentation doesn’t really leave us caring much about the characters or their fate. There’s angry Brooklyn guy, slightly older sagely guy, other guy, shy girl, seemingly normal girl, and skanky girl who walks around with her top off, while “Bolero” by Ravel booms on the soundtrack. Yes, we get it. It’s very warm in there.

We find out they’re all in the sauna as some part of dating service, although none of them seem particularly interested in making a good first impression.

Meanwhile...

Pettis goes to some talk to a guy with the press and a police detective about his little scheme with the people in the sauna, who will eventually be slowly steam baked to death and he explains he will only let them go if the paper publishes his findings on global warming, which of course will be unbearable in 2012. So Val is playing so sort of evil, insane Al Gore.

The folks in the sauna bicker. Val as Pettis continues to ramble, and the movie randomly cuts to shots of him alone on a spinning carousel, starring off blankly. I think this is supposed to re-iterate the fact that he’s crazy with a capitol C.
Here’s where I take an extended phone call from a friend I haven’t heard from a while. I come back to find that not much has changed, and Val has gone from crazy to insane, or insanely constipated, judging by the way he’s biting his lip and twitching.

I’ve got to say, Val in this movie is just terrible, mostly due to the poor writing and directing, which is unfortunate, since he’s great in “The Doors”, a favorite film of my teen years, And I’m sure he’ll be good in Werner Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call, New Orleans (although, movie titles should never have semicolons in them... ever) Steam Experiment was certainly directed by no Werner Herzog, but by Philepp Martinez, who’s previous works include a Jean-Claude Van Damne movie, which is always a bad sign.

I digress. Anyway -SPOILERS ahead. Very lame ones.

Nails shoot through the door to the sauna, the people in the sauna get freaked out, and become more angry (hot under the collar, if they were wearing collars), and as Pettis’ theorized, begin to fight amongst each other. Shy girl slits her own throat, other die due to barely motivated quarrels, somebody gets a nail gun to the head. It's a whole-lotta chaos going on.

As Pettis continues to look more constipated and ramble on, the detective decides he’s just totally bananas and the “Steam Experiment” is just something he made up in his head to get attention and the people in it don’t actually exist. Exit detective.

The twist isn’t that they are all in his head, (for that movie, see Identity AKA “The 3”) the twist, I guess, is that Pettis’s mental ward doctor guy is also sorta crazy and is in on the experiment. He’s the the one who shot the nails through the door with a nail gun. Seemingly-normal-girl survives the experiment and we find out that she is the psychologist’s wife. Why did she participate? We’re not entirely sure. Why did his doctor help set up the experiment? We don't know. Pettis goes back to the the mental institution and lies around looking beardy. Is he crazy? Cut to him spinning around on a carousel again by himself... OK, yep = crazy, in case we forgot.

Roll credits.
I'm not really sure what the film was trying to say. Probably check the history of any dating service you sign up for, and don’t let them convince you to start your date with a bunch of strangers in a creepy sauna.


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From the desk of GreyDuck at 12:37 PM 3 comments
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Monday, November 2, 2009

Mini Review: Population 436 (2006)

Three word review: Population Shit Sandwich

In all seriousness, the movie is pretty terrible. I decided to watch it on a Netflix Instant whim, and while it wasn't bad enough to get uncerimoniously turned off (a nice benefit of instant viewing), I in no way recommend or endorse seeing it.

The premise is tantilizing in its vagueness: a census worker investigates a remote hamlet that's population has remained at the exact same number for a century. A good writer could take that sentence and go nearly anywhere with it. The problem is that Population 436 (spoiler alert) takes it somewhere in the general vicinity of nowhere. The town ends up being a rather benign religious cult that assigns special theological importance on the number 436 and strictly maintains its population at that number. Unexplained supernatural forces make sure that women always go into labor whenever someone is about to kick the bucket. Those same forces supposedly also prevent anyone who spends the night in town from ever leaving. When someone new arrives from the outside world, however, the supernatural takes a bit of a vacation, leaving the townspeople to choose who to kill Lottery style.The above description actually makes the film sound significantly more awesome than it is. For the most part, nothing happens. The census worker, played by the always adequate Jeremy Sisto, spends most of the film wandering about town, getting weirded out by the townspeople, and otherwise laboring through a rip off of The Wicker Man nearly as bad as that film's infamous remake. (And that one at least has Nick Cage randomly beating the shit out of women.)
Just swap Cage for Sisto, and 'punching' for 'talking'.

Often misclassified as a horror film, Population 436 is better described as a 'tragic bro-mance' between Sisto and the #1 reason why I should have been smart enough to not watch the film: Fred Durst. That's right, the Limp Biskit frontman and proud illiterate has a full on supporting role as the town's simpering vagina of a sheriff's deputy. (I actually had to double check which character he played on IMDB, as it turns out I don't recognize the dude without his trademark baseball cap and douche goatee. In all honesty, he's not that bad of an actor.) The two men become fast friends over some back-forty target practice. (The audience knows this because Durst awkwardly proclaims it after they spend less than a day together.) Of course, Sisto has to go and totally ruin things by scoring with the town's single hot chick, who the terminally shy Durst happens to be pining for. Their afternoon long friendship shattered, Durst almost gives in to the town elders' wish for him to take Sisto out, but their man-crush is too strong and he ultimately lets the outsider go at the film's comically overwrought emotional climax.
I wish I could quit you.

So our hero rescues the town's lone sane person (a little girl) and rides off into the sunset. Right? Who cares that absolutely nothing gets explained or resolved? Actually, an anti-climax isn't enough for Population 436, it boasts an anti-deus ex machina (diablous ex machina? crepusculum plaga ex machina?) where the strange green filtered dream the protagonist has been having turns out to be a prophetic vision of objects in his escape vehicle. These objects then distract him from the giant oncoming truck.

Damn it! Fred Durst didn't even die! That was the only way I rationalized watching a film with him in it: "It's a horror film, so he'll probably die. Seeing Fred Durst die should make up for having to see Fred Durst act."

Movies to watch instead of Population 436:
Hot Fuzz
The Wicker Man
Children of the Corn
The Wicker Man again
The Wicker Man remake
C.H.U.D.

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From the desk of Frank White at 7:50 PM 3 comments
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Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Mini Review: Suspect Zero (2004)

Suspect Zero is the most disappointingly adequate movie I've ever seen. Its miserable scores on Metacritic and RottenTomatoes create no illusions that it's an overlooked gem, but I was sorely mistaken in assuming that the hostility and vicious snark was indicative of the epic failure requiring the full Video Updates treatment. It even has a place in infamy next to Larry the Cable Guy and Uwe Boll films in the Onion AV Club's Commentary Tracks of the Damned column.

The level of review bile contrasts sharply to the extraordinary promise once shown by the career of director E. Elias Merhige. Originally a pretentious art filmmaker, Merhige first emerged with his 1991 experimental feature, Begotten. Shot with the distinct texture of hyper-grainy, ultra high contrast reversal film, it tells a metaphysical horror tale of violence, resurrection, and suicidal gods. It's sadly difficult to get a hold of in a proper viewing format, (I'm stuck with a nigh-unwatchable bootleg, myself) but the striking imagery eventually landed its creator a shot at 'real' feature film making. The result was 2000's sublime Shadow of the Vampire, a dark comedy starring John Malkovich and Willem Dafoe as the director and 'real life' vampire behind the original Nosferatu.Suspect Zero would be Merhige's second and (so far) final studio film. In spite (or because) of a formidable ad campaign, the film hit theaters with an awkward clanking noise; like a broken alarm clock casually tossed into an empty meatlocker. It certainly didn't help that the film reeks powerfully of Se7en copycat syndrome, or that its 'twist' was given away on nearly every marketing material in a desperate attempt to cover the odor.

That twist is the use of 'remote viewing,' but it only counts as a twist if you haven't seen the trailer, official website, majority of reviews, Wikipedia page, or beginning of this sentence. Also you have to be too stupid to figure out the reason for all the sudden, artsy camera angles that Ben Kingsley keeps sketching in his seedy motel hideout.The main subject of this psychokinetic spying is disgraced FBI agent, Aaron Eckhart. With a small sampling of the Matrix films' supporting cast at his side, the future Harvey Dent slowly unravels a string of murders committed with the intent to get his specific attention. (I guess it takes more than creepy faxes to get an FBI agent's attention these days.) The clues eventually lead to Kingsley, who turns out to be a borderline psychotic veteran of the government's defunct psychic detectives program. He was trained to tune into the mental frequencies of killers, but snapped under the pressure and began hunting the perps down on his own.

None of this sounds particularly new or interesting, and it isn't. The cast is serviceable, the script is a bit of a mess, but the cinematography and direction keep the affair floating an inch or two above absolute mediocrity. It certainly doesn't deserve the heaping piles of scorn provided by mainstream film critics. (Personally, I believe their perspective is warped by this bizarre focus on "good" movies.)The main problem I have with Suspect Zero is in its treatment of the eponymous character. I understand that the spoiler free audience members are supposed to spend portions of the film wondering if Kingsley is the titular suspect, a theoretical serial killer that can never be caught because no pattern connects his murders, but the film never sets that particular red herring in stone. His slaughters have a clear pattern (killing killers) and he is never connected to the sinister black 16-wheeler menacing the film's scene transitions. To everyone outside the film itself Ben is clearly not SZ, so when Kingsley and Eckhart join forces to take him down at the end of the film, I had every reason to believe that he would be a total scary badass, possibly played by an A-list actor, with a cool monologue and a cooler death.It turns out he's just some guy with a trucking job and a bunch of obvious corpse mounds at his desert ranch. He gets neither lines nor a close-up, and does absolutely nothing except run away and get his head smashed in. I know the drama is supposed to be between the two tortured leads, but since no one actually gives a flying fuck at this point, the lack of a sweet villain basically cuts the film's heart out; a far more brutal and tragic death than any portrayed within the narrative.

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From the desk of Frank White at 9:19 PM 0 comments
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Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Mini Review: The Red Shoes (2005)

I'm a real sucker for Asian horror (J & K mostly, C & T should probably stick to martial arts movies) but like the slashers and 'torture porns' of the West, a solid decade of profit-minded genre strip mining has boiled things down to the stale mush of familiarity. By now the tropes are just as well established as the horny teens, final girls, and creative kills of the Friday the 13th franchise. Pale, creepy-eyed spirits with long black hair over their faces float around uncomfortably close to terrified faces, while jump scares accompany every reflective surface and cramped, over-the-shoulder camera angle. The plots inevitably drift towards either traditional ghost-story spookiness, or 21st century techno-terror of the viral variety.

2005 Korean creeper, The Red Shoes, waffles a bit between the two story types for variety, but in spite of being a technically solid entry in the classification, it never emerges from the shadows of the superior films it seeks to emulate. Ostensibly based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale of the same name, the film follows the hapless exploits of saucer-eyed beauty Sun-jae (Kim Hye-su) who walks in on her philandering husband one day and ends up in almost the exact same situation as the heroine of J-Horror standard Dark Water. (Becoming a single mother with a shitty apartment.)After an eerily effective pre-credits sequence (which later gets shoehorned into the main story, tearing open a massive, unexplained plot hole) and the aforementioned familial strife, the shoe obsessed Sun-jae discovers an enthralling pair of pink high heels abandoned on the subway and claims them for herself. It becomes quickly apparent that the shoes have supernatural powers, causing the various women who come into contact to become unnaturally obsessed. Almost immediately, Sun-jae's daughter Tae-soo falls under their spell, and the two girls bicker viciously over the pumps' ownership. To make matters worse, the various secondary characters who steal or otherwise wear the shoes begin meeting horrific, foot amputation related deaths.

If you are already an Asian horror junky, or if you want to dive into the genre from a different spot than the crowds, you could do far worse than The Red Shoes. It boasts decent acting and effective scare sequences. The cinematography is fair to excellent, with lots of blues and grays for the evil fuschia footwear to 'pop' against and very liberal use of CG depth of field effects. Locations are also excellent, contrasting the sterile, vaguely futuristic Seoul subway system with the lead's dilapidated apartment complex.

The problem is that almost everything in the story can be traced back to a better (or at least earlier) film. It's got a Ring-esque cursed object that supernaturally spreads itself through the population, the previously discussed marital and maternal difficulties, and thanks to the increasingly exploitative Ju-on series, it is now nearly impossible to think of original ways for the pale skinned, black haired ghosts to sneak up on people. (Don't take Japanese/Korean elevators at night, kids.) Even the fugue state twist at the end is straight out of A Tale of Two Sisters, Spider Forest, or anything by Charlie Kaufman's fictional brother.

It's on Netflix Instant Watch, so it's not like you have anything to lose. Watch it here.

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From the desk of Frank White at 12:59 PM 0 comments
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Thursday, May 7, 2009

Mini-Review: The Wisdom of Fear Dot Com

Did I say wisdom? I meant facepalm inducing idiocy. Enjoy these notes I scribbled while "drinking until the movie gets good."

- If nobody bothered to study diseases and come up with cures, illness would just run wild. No shit.

- Having your police station as creepily lit as possible saves energy and helps reduce global warming.

- Seriously? Characters are going to talk about the weather in this movie? Did the screenwriter not even bother to google "screenwriting tips"? Did he think that the audience wouldn't understand why it was raining in the next scene if we didn't set it up with dialog?

- Ha! Your bouncy ball and palette swap can't fool me, little girl from The Ring.

- What sort of crazy-ass German exchange students record video of themselves surfing the internet, and why do they have the camera positioned so that we cannot see the screen? Were they making a 2 Girls 1 Cup reaction video?

- Wait. So is the site evil, or just run by a serial killer?

- So it's two different sites? It would be less confusing if everyone stopped interchangeably referring to both as "the fear site."

- When a creepy dude offers you an audition and the location turns out to be an ultra creepy abandoned warehouse, don't go looking for him inside. Otherwise, you might as well have "serial murder victim #X" tattooed on your head.

- Is the creepy, round, art deco haunted house room supposed to be the computer lady's apartment or office?

- Hemophiliac children should be allowed to romp around the abandoned steel mill down the street. Smart parenting.

- Okay, so the site was created by the ghost of one of the internet serial killer's victims, and it is killing everyone who sees it with a 48 hour window of creepiness until someone appeases it by taking out the serial killer. Do I have that right? Doesn't seem like the most efficient revenge scheme, but when you are a haunted website, you probably have nothing but time on your hands.

- I'm impressed that www.feardotcom.com (that is one "dot com" too many) is still operational. The Warner Brothers ads and prompt to download flash sort of suck the fun out of it.
Ahhhh, my eyes!!!!!!

- Also, did anyone who worked on this movie have even the faintest idea of how the internet works? What the hell is this browser everyone is using with creepy fonts and the "hotbox" in which they type in URLs and chat with the evil website ghosts. Let's try this out: ask me a question by typing it into your location bar.




Wha!?!?! So is your momma, you sick son of a bitch!

Huh, it works. I would have thought you'd land on a 404 page, or at least get redirected to a bunch of stupid ads.

- I am shocked to learn that this movie was made after the millennium. This is sub The Net understanding of, um, the net.

- How did Jeffrey Combs make it to the serial killer's hideout before everyone else? They just called him and he's already been murdered, hung up on the wall, and forgotten about.

- Stephen Dorff can survive for a surprisingly long time after being shot at medium range in his exact center of mass.

-Ebert recommends turning the sound off:
"If the final 20 minutes had been produced by a German impressionist in the 1920s, we'd be calling it a masterpiece," he says.

-Ebert lies. The idea that the climax could work out of context as some sort of experimental film was what tricked me into watching this fetid garbage. Yeah it gets a little whacked out as the ghost finally takes revenge on Stephen Rea, but I've seen better. Hardware for instance, or any number of music videos, or anything and everything by the Quay Brothers.

Wow. Fear Dot Com is so mind bogglingly derivative that it can't even keep the films it is ripping off straight. One moment it is an overly production designed Se7en wannabe, and the next it is shamelessly mining the depths of J-Horror cliché hell. To top things off, the serial killer subplot absolutely reeks of Silence of the Lambs.

Also, nothing at all that happens makes anything even remotely similar to "sense." Let's start with the haunted website. In Ringu, the little dead psychic/magic girl burns her evil images into the magnetic tape of a VHS cassette, which is an analog format. In Pulse, the evil spirits have saturated the entire power-grid and network infrastructure, so they can attack the end user directly from his computer. Sure these examples are fraught with holes in their logic, but they at least have faint wisps of plausibility. The existence of Feardotcom.com within the movie only raises endless questions that the film isn't even remotely interested in addressing.

-Did the ghost have to register its domain with GoDaddy?
-Where is the site hosted?
-Who'd it get to do the flash animation?
-How does the ghost market the site?
-Does the site work with different browsers? Would I be safe using Opera?
-What does the html source code look like?
-What happens to Google when it crawls the page?

Once the site targets you, you spend the next 48 hours being haunted by the ghost's little girl form (why would someone who died as an adult haunt people as a child? I guess it's creepier that way) before being killed by your greatest fear. The audience knows this because a character flat out explains it. How she came to this conclusion is a mystery; with the exception of the girl who dies via cock-a-roaches and a clumsy reference to another character's fear of car crashes, the deaths lack stylization. I guess the German exchange students greatest fears were drowning in the bath and mysteriously dropping dead for no reason, while Udo Kier must have been terrified of getting hit by a subway train. (If that was the case, why the heck did he climb down onto the tracks in the first place?)Do you want to know why the site kills you with your greatest fear*? Of course you do. It's also woodenly explained, despite there not being any real way for the characters to have deduced it. Apparently the ghost (in her pre-death days) was a hemophiliac and thus had an intense fear of knives, which are the torture implement of choice for web-cam owning serial murderers. This raises the question: how did the killer manage to torture her if any minor cut could cause her to bleed out? That sounds like an annoying day for any psycho-killer. Qu'est-ce que c'est?

Also, who swims for several meters through the flooded basement of an abandoned steel mill just because some hobo told them to? I think that might be my greatest fear, and no one who has the cojones to do that in order to drag a rotting corpse back to civilization should ever get "paralyzed with fear" as horror heroines are want to do when confronted with serial killers and computer ghosts.

If I didn't know better, I would swear that this movie was specifically made for people to get drunk and play MST3K with. Stephen Rea's creepily affectless monologues as seen through dirty CRT monitors are totally sweet, but everything else in the film seems tailor made for wisecracks at its expense. It's almost too easy.



*Greatest fear not available in all deaths. See your evil computer specter for details.

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From the desk of Frank White at 11:22 AM 5 comments
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Thursday, April 30, 2009

Swine Flu and the Slit Mouthed Woman

It's a gray, chilly spring here in Minnesota and now that we have a possible case of the media's latest darling, Swine Flu, there is already at least one lady with a surgical mask walking around town. I saw her in line at a packed Chipotle over my lunch break; apparently her paranoid fear wasn't strong enough to overcome her ferocious burrito lust.

While my gastronomically occupied compatriots had a crumb spewing giggle at her credulous and likely ineffectual accessory, my immediate reaction was: "Holy shit, dudes! The slit-mouthed woman has escaped Japan! Nobody talk to her!"

Not being Japanese, it was highly unlikely that the flu fearing female was actually a Kuchisake-onna, but when you've damaged your brain with as much Tartan Asia Extreme as I have, these are the things that first spring to mind. (You should have seen the look on my face when, during the course of an old job, I stumbled upon a half open door in a creepy basement that had been previously sealed with red duct tape.)

The slit mouth woman was an urban legend that sprang up in Japan during the late '70s. Apparently inspired by an older folk tale, it revolves around a mysterious woman who roams the streets in a surgical mask. Instead of protection against SARS or bird flu, this mask hides her gruesome Glasgow smile. (Think Ichi the Killer or Heath Ledger's Joker wounds if his cheeks never sealed back up.) She confronts random strangers to ask them if they think she is attractive. Unfortunately, the Japanese word for 'pretty' sounds a lot like the 'to cut', so if you answer incorrectly (and which answer is correct depends on what version of the legend you heard) you get to see her ghastly visage and/or get sliced up yourself.

Aside from obscure references in manga, the kuchisake-onna doesn't have much reach into the Western world. The best she gets is Carved: The Slit-Mouthed Woman, a decent J-Horror also-ran from 2007.

Stick to Wikipedia if you are looking for real info about the legend, as in order to flesh things out to feature length, the film plays fast and loose with its mythology. Instead of a mysterious ghost/psycho, the cinematic slit-mouth woman appears to be some sort of demonic personification of child abuse. She takes possession of hapless mothers, who are struck with a wicked coughing fit before becoming a long-haired yūrei with a trenchcoat and some badass scissors.

The resulting movie is an odd sort of mishmash of J-horror and slasher film tropes, in which the characters overcome personal demons in order to solve the mystery of the child snatching murderer's identity, while never capitalizing on convenient opportunities to run the hell away when the next female character starts hacking her lungs out. Killing her just results in the death of her host, so the good guys nearly get a bigger body count than the villain by the end.

Even the original legend's ghostly homophone is bastardized into (a point totally lost in the English translation) "Aim for my neck" being mistaken for "Am I pretty."

It makes for a pulpy companion film to the more intellectual exploration of child neglect, Dark Water, but I'll still never look at a silly flu germ paranoid the same again. (At least the chicks; I just snicker at the dudes for not manning up and getting themselves a full on gas mask.)


I'll try to get an English Sub'd trailer up in the near future.
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From the desk of Frank White at 11:45 AM 2 comments
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Monday, April 13, 2009

Mini Review: His Name Was Jason: 30 Years of Friday the 13th (2008)

With the Friday the 13th reboot kicking around theaters and two actual Friday the 13ths in recent memory, it only makes sense that the gears of low hanging fruit (Which I am calling as a band name right now. Dibs.) should grind into motion. The epically titled result: His Name Was Jason: 30 Years of Friday the 13th.

I was aware of the existence of this feature length documentary, but hadn't paid any attention until it recently popped up on Instant Watch. Having some free time that I didn't want to waste on being productive, I gave it a go. The intro, which is functionally indistinguishable from an EPK for the new Friday movie, wasn't promising.

I only made it about a third of the way through before drifting off into a pleasant, Sunday afternoon nap, so everybody feel free to viscously attack me in the comments if the movie suddenly changes course at the halfway mark. Otherwise, HNWJ:30YF13 is a terrible sham of a documentary, which is saying a lot for a genre currently dominated by the likes of Michael Moore and Ben Stein.

It's a huge mass of talking heads: actors, producers, makeup artists, and directors of completely unrelated slashers for some reason. Yes it is great that you made Hatchet, how does that make you relevant to this documentary? Everyone regurgitates glib, shopworn factoids that any F13 fanboy worth his salt could have already told you. Oh wow, Part V doesn't actually have Jason in it? I didn't know that from having already suffered through the film. Anyone who doesn't already know this crap probably has no interest in watching a Jason Documentary.

The general slasher documentary, Going to Pieces was already pretty mediocre, but it looks like The Thin Blue Line compared to Jason. Another big red flag: Sean S. Cunningham, the creator of the Friday franchise and therefor a major subject for any documentary, is an executive producer. Hey! You can't make documentaries about yourself. That's cheating.

I wouldn't expect hard hitting journalism from a doc about a psychotic, hockey mask wearing pop culture icon, but it would be nice to see an outside perspective rather than a feature length DVD special feature. Hell, I would have probably enjoyed it as a free bonus with a real movie, but as a standalone movie I want something deeper than a cross section of the horror film community falling over each other to stick their tongues up the ass of a fictional character.

A fictional character who would rather fillet than get fellated, anyway.
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From the desk of Frank White at 4:47 PM 2 comments
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Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Bonus Killer Mutant Mammal Movie: Isolation (2005)

As I mentioned yesterday, there is no rule that your Killer Mutant Mammal has to be ferocious in its non-mutated state. In the vaguely titled Irish horror film, Isolation, a shockingly massive amount of terror is wrung from the premise that a mad-ish scientist, attempting to engineer cows that can mature to steak-dinner readiness extra fast, unleashes the horror of spiky, highly infectious, killer mutant cow embryos.


(Hmm, according to Dead Rising, that scenario should have resulted in zombies controlled by killer bees... somehow.)

Isolation hits all the standard KMMM beats: genetic engineering creates an implausible threat, the story takes a while to get going, characters make face-palmingly stupid decisions, and the ending is left wide open for a sequel.


Despite all this, the movie is frankly.... good. The scientist mostly keeps mum about his atrocities, rather than spewing forth with unceasing bad science and poorly reasoned explanations. The acting, pacing, and production values are all miles beyond what "killer mutant cow embryos" would require. Even the stupid decisions seem to come from genuine motivations, rather than because the filmmakers needed a kill or a scare at a particular moment.

Plus, its most brutal scene comes not from a monster attack, but the difficult birth of a calf. I don't know how realistic it is, but I know how expensive cattle are, which adds a layer of desperation to the poor farmer's plight. Unlike the characters in The Rats, who live quite comfortably in between eradicating mutant rat colonies, the hero of Isolation gets to see his meager livelihood dismantled even before his life is threatened.


Sadly, this is one film that will likely never get the recognition it deserves. The poor-to-nonexistent marketing provided by Lion's Gate hasn't helped, either. Just check out this misleadingly action-packed trailer:



The movie's greatest strengths aren't in any of these trailer bullet points, but in the film's low boil tension and creepy backdrop. I often like to ponder what Tarkovsky would have produced if someone talked him into doing a horror film, and except for the works of Kiyoshi Kurosawa (and, to a lesser extent, Kubrick) this is about as close as I've yet to see. (Though I doubt Tarkovsky would approve of all the shaky-cam.) Tense, somnolent, gritty, and relatively intelligent, this film deserves better than to be dropped into the bargain bin and yawned at by the "watch anything" horror junkies. Perhaps a rerelease with a new title and cover artwork would help; I've seen three different poster/covers for the flick, and none of them have thrilled me.


Do yourself a favor, go pick up a copy, watch it, and cook yourself a nice juicy steak right afterwards.
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From the desk of Frank White at 1:46 PM 2 comments
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Thursday, January 15, 2009

Basement Cinema - Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky


It's Thursday night and the stars have aligned properly, which means it is time for Basement Cinema, a hyper-elite, micro-scale, (literally) underground film screening. Originally started in the basement of UW-Milwaukee's Mitchell Hall, "famous" as the stomping grounds of Mark Borchardt in American Movie, Basement Cinema has since died an ignoble death, then risen from its grave to spread across the mighty Mississippi. Previous screenings that I've attended have included Jack Frost (not staring Michael Keaton), The Stuff, highlights of Turkish cinema, The Found Footage Festival, Deadbeat at Dawn, Blood Freak, and an entire evening of tool themed slashers.

Tonight's film was Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky, the completely unhinged, kung-fu gore masterpiece that you most likely know of as the movie with the sweet head crushing scene that they constantly showed on the Craig Kilborn era Daily Show. It takes place in the distant, dystopian future: the year 2001 AD, where title cards inform us that corporations run everything as businesses, including prisons. (Jennifer Government this ain't, as the corporatist premise is basically never mentioned again.) Riki-Oh is a new arrival to the high-tech ultra prison, having been convicted of manslaughter for taking revenge on the man responsible for his girlfriend's death. For most people, this would mean a lifetime of dropping the soap and/or a brutal death, but Riki-Oh is not most people. Flashbacks inform us that, thanks to a weird sensei who liked to hang out at the local cemetary, he is extremely good at kung-fu. Gravestone smashingly good, even.


Here is some easy math for you: Corrupt Ultra Prison + guy who can focus his qi until the laws of leverage no long apply to his strength = totally sweet.

Sure, there is some "plot" nonsense about Riki's sympathy for his downtrodden fellow prisoners, poppy cultivation on the prison grounds, and the warden's fat, man-child son, but that really doesn't matter in the face of a hero who can block a punch by counter-punching his attacker's fist so hard that the entire forearm splits open like a ripe banana; plus villains who will commit seppuku in order to strangle you with their own intestines.


It's Enter the Dragon by way of Dead Alive, and It. Is. Glorious. I lost count of how many times Riki punches completely through someone. Limbs are removed, eyballs are knocked out, skulls are crushed, and gimmicky "mini-bosses" are dispatched with intestinal flair, all in anticipation of Riki's final confrontation with the evil warden, who looks like a Chinese Hunter S. Thompson and can mutate himself into an eight foot tall monstrosity at will. Their climactic battle takes place in the kitchen next to a giant meat grinder, and, needless to say, someone (actually several people) gets grinded ground.

So go out and rent a copy of Riki-Oh: The Story of Riki, consume a large amount of psychotropic substances, and (for an extra layer of madness) leave the awful English dubbing on. Most likely you will melt like a Nazi opening the ark of the covenant.

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From the desk of Frank White at 10:53 PM 1 comments
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