 | |
| |
Sunday, October 11th, 2009 • Horrorthon Posts
I’ll get back to reviewing when I return to the city this evening. In the meantime I’ve just got one thing to say (in the spirit of the “best of Horrorthon” awards discussed earlier):
Scariest Movie to Think About While Trying to Fall Asleep In a Small Cottage in the Woods:
The Strangers
Saturday, October 10th, 2009 • Horrorthon Posts / Horrorthon Reviews
(2008) ****
At what point does a trend in the arts become a full-fledged sub-genre or even a “movement”? Manifestos can be written (the Bauhaus; Dada; Dogma) or critics can invent names for what they see (like Clement Greenberg coining “Abstract Expressionism” in the ‘Fifties). I’m not sure whether I’m looking at a trend, or a sub-genre, or a dogmatic movement, or what you’d call it, but I absolutely love what I see; after four (or five) excellent examples, the “found footage” movie is emerging as one of the most exciting, promising and effective techniques I’ve ever encountered. It’s especially interesting to me that the technique in question is so profound (involving a fundamental rethinking of the basic apparatus of movies themselves) and is connected so firmly to horror movies. It almost suggests that horror is intrinsically more “filmic” than any other type of story, which is an idea I like very much.
The “found footage”/”pseudo-documentary” format began in earnest ten years ago with The Blair Witch Project (1999) and continued with Cloverfield (2008). When no less impressive a figure than George A. Romero (himself the sole creator, arguably, of a horror movie sub-genre) decided to try it (Diary of the Dead in 2007) I realized that this was no fluke, but a genuine aesthetic form being born; the cinematic equivalent of the epistolary novel. Having just watched Quarantine (2008), I’m convinced that this technique is one of the best things to happen to movies, and horror, in decades.
[NOTE: As has been discussed elsewhere on Horrorthon, Quarantine is a remake of [Rec] (2007), a Spanish movie I have not seen, which apparently is an even better example of the “found footage” form. Obviously I can’t make comparisons until I’ve seen both of them, but I get the sense that the remake is unusually faithful and is respected by fans of the original. I watched this one first because I wanted to; sue me. I’ll see the other one later.]
I love “found footage” movies, because I think they’re a groundbreaking innovation (see below), but I especially love them because they’re all horror movies (they have to be). Stuff like Bob Roberts (1994) and This is Spinal Tap (1984) is totally different because those movies are made to resemble completed documentaries with editing, titles, music etc. It takes a horror-movie situation to generate a “found footage” movie because that’s the only reason to be watching raw footage: something interrupted the attempted journalism; something went terribly wrong, and the cameras were found later. (This is consistent across all the movies I’ve mentioned). The unaccompanied assembly of ersatz film or video is the essence of these movies (or, the first “rule” you’d list in the manifesto, if you wrote a “dogma”-style manifesto). Next is the fact that the footage is unadorned; there’s never any music, crossfades, superimposed titles, or anything beyond the “retrieved” sound and image. The third rule is that there must be one camera, and the camera must (of course) be part of the story; at every single moment there must be a legitimate reason for the filming or taping to be taking place. (The Blair Witch Project and Diary of the Dead break this rule, introducing more cameras, but Diary only does so in a tiny handful of scenes, and Blair Witch gets special dispensation.)
Making a horror movie with no music and only one camera (the presence of which must always be explained and justified) is a very demanding challenge, but I’m amazed at the heights of creative excellence that this challenge has already led to. I wrote above that “found-footage” movies are profound, and I mean that the technique re-arranges and re-invents the whole concept of movie storytelling so completely that its effects run far deeper than merely allowing new kinds of scares; it’s (dare I say) a whole new way to conceptualize how movies work; how scenes flow together, how events are presented and how meaning is conveyed to the audience. The “found-footage” technique is not without its detractors, who generally mount the same two objections: 1) you get nauseous (because of the endless bobbing and weaving of the handheld camera and 2) the ending is always unsatisfying (which is a charge leveled against all four of the movies I’ve mentioned; I don’t think that’s a coincidence). I can’t speak to the nausea; it is what it is. But the “ending” argument is more interesting, and I simply feel that audiences must (and soon will) get used to a different set of conventions about how stories end, as always happens whenever there’s a formal shift like this.
With Quarantine, it’s clear that the form is coming of age. Only certain stories lend themselves to this technique (all horror stories, as I wrote above) and the events in Quarantine fit the bill perfectly: an isolated time and place (the interior of a Los Angeles apartment building over approximately five hours); a legitimate reason for the camera to be there (a local television news reporter shooting a human-interest feature about the local fire station) and an in-your-face fatalism about the outcome (nobody survives a “found-footage” movie; that’s why we’re watching their found footage). Quarantine is spellbinding for all of these reasons. The music-free ambient soundtrack is a symphony of muffled and distorted slams and thumps, echoing footprints, distant sirens and helicopters; a dense tapestry of urban noise that serves the story with a nuance and subtlety that beats anything you could do with music. The performances (especially by Jennifer Carpenter, Hostel’s Jay Hernandez and Ally McBeal’s Greg Germann) are excellent examples of the kind of demanding hyper-naturalism that this sort of movie requires. (Carpenter has several great moments reminiscent of Heather Donahue’s famous confessionals in The Blair Witch Project.) The visuals are extremely good; the constant tricks with the camera just missing what we’re supposed to see, and the constant blurs and video cutoffs and static that interrupt the image, create a raw, beautiful flow of painterly grit and noise that enhances the story tremendously.
There’s business with a planted microphone that was so clever and exciting I was chuckling to myself, but on the whole I was frightened the entire time. That’s the great thing about “found-footage” movies (I’m already sick of this name; I’d welcome a better one): they’re scary as hell! I remember coming out of Cloverfield feeling like my mind was blown; I was looking around at the intact, sunlit New York as if I’d just come down from an acid trip. Blair Witch gave me nightmares that had me awakening in a cold sweat. Quarantine is no exception; I had the lights out while I watched and had that great “horror movie” chill down my spine the whole time. I really think “found-footage” is a genuinely new approach to storytelling, impossible in any other medium, and bursting with potential both for beautiful sound and image and for profound examinations of reportage, narrative self-awareness, and the glorious dance of systems breaking down, of order giving way to chaos. If you have any doubts about how awesome these “found footage” movies are, Quarantine will make you a believer.
Thursday, October 8th, 2009 • Horrorthon Posts / Horrorthon Reviews
(1976) **
In 2006, when the remake of The Omen was released on June 6th (and titled The Omen 666, just in case anybody missed the point), the reviews argued that there was no reason to remake the “classic” Omen beyond the 6/6/6 date gimmick; the consensus seemed to be that the original was a renowned, well-regarded example of ‘Seventies horror (like The Exorcist, Halloween, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and all the other landmarks from that decade that have served as bottomless wells of remakes and sequels) and that knocking off another 21st Century copy was the epitome of crass commercialism etc. I didn’t see The Omen 666 (for many reasons, not the least of which is my dislike of Liev Schrieber, a man whose career success baffles me), but I decided to give the first one another viewing for Horrorthon. Why not sample the original, well-regarded vintage of wine?
The thing is, I’m sorry, but it’s just awful. I know this is blasphemy, sacrilege etc. in horror movie circles, but I was actually kind of astounded at how bad a movie it is. There are some positive elements (and I’ll get to those below) but, for the most part, The Omen seems to bring together every weakness of ‘Seventies Hollywood filmmaking along with every lame element that gives the horror genre a bad name amongst mainstream moviegoers who don’t like it.
Maybe I’ve seen this particular kind of material (Biblical prophecies, evil children, curses) done well too many times to have any patience with the weak tea being served by Richard Donner (making his first blockbuster) and writer David Seltzer (whom IMDB reveals as having a fairly mediocre resume). And, I might be improperly respectful of the historical position this movie occupies as the first of its kind, etc. But I don’t think so, because it’s conspicuously not the first of its kind; even back then, I was vaguely aware of The Omen as the latest in a Hollywood trend that includes Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist, which are vastly superior films made by supremely talented directors and writers. (William Friedkin had won Best Director for The French Connection, the 1971 Best Picture Oscar winner, and Roman Polanski…well, let’s quickly change the subject.) So I can’t even give The Omen credit for “inventing” anything (except for the really scary teaser poster campaign, which freaked me out in Manhattan subway stations for months before I even found out what the posters were advertising).
So what’s wrong with The Omen? First (or, at least, most conspicuously), there’s the major problem of Gregory Peck. Yes, he’s Atticus Finch, and yes, he’s very good looking in a stolid, Jimmy-Stewart-crossed-with-George-Clooney way, but he’s just a miserable, miserable actor. He’s one of the last of that breed of antique non-actor matinee idols (along with John Wayne and Cary Grant) to stagger forward into the ’Sixties and ’Seventies. past the revolutions in method acting and naturalism and the French New Wave, bringing their broad, anachronistic theatrical styles with them. The equivalent phenomenon today (‘Seventies icons like Al Pacino and Christopher Walken appearing in modern movies) is vastly more flattering to the veteran performers; nobody from 1940s movies was going to come across well in the decade of Sidney Lumet and Martin Scorsese. But it’s worse than that, because Peck was just always bad; he ruins Hitchcock’s Spellbound and he ruins John Huston’s Moby Dick, and he’s not even a good Atticus Finch, when you really scrutinize the performance. He’s like a guy with the flu—he can’t talk or emote because his sinuses hurt; he just wants to go lie down.
Then there’s Damien, the Antichrist. In any ranking of frightening threats, “The Antichrist” would obviously be close to the top of the list; this is somebody you want to regard warily, to say the least. It’s such a scary concept, in fact, that it propels the viewer through two hours of exquisite mounting fear in the vastly superior Rosemary’s Baby without the titular baby even once appearing onscreen. But this time, the apocalyptic child is directly in front of us in many, many tight close-ups, which is why he’s such a letdown. Damien doesn’t do anything, ever, throughout the film (except have a badly-dubbed and chaotically-photographed hissy-fit inside a limousine, which comes across more as “bratty kid” than “Spawn of Satan”). As in Rosemary’s Baby, the danger comes from elsewhere; from the shadowy figures in Europe and America who are charged with protecting the Antichrist, so that he can grow to manhood undisturbed. This is a great concept, but in this movie it translates into a bunch of Italian monks chewing the scenery and a smirking, glowering nanny in black clothes whom any reasonably alert person would have fired the same day. (Rather than by a reasonably alert person, the household is run by Lee Remick as another in the thankfully-obsolete series of moron Hollywood housewives photographed through diffusion filters).
I mentioned The Omen’s saving graces, above, and there are a couple. David Warner (as a photographer picking up Kirlian emanations in his pictures, and going bananas trying to figure them out…in the end, he’s sorry he asked) brings some much-needed energy to the movie, and his scenes are pretty good; through those sequences (mercifully distant from the inert kid and the nanny’s Disney-level mugging) we get an interesting window into the Satanic rituals and inverted Biblical rhetoric that would surround a modern fulfillment of a millennia-old prophecy. Jerry Goldsmith’s Oscar-winning score isn’t bad, and Donner provides some evidence (some meager evidence) of the snappy visual skills he would bring to bear later, starting with his very next picture (Superman). And the business with the nanny hanging herself is legitimately shocking and effective. But in general, The Omen is a big dud. When people who don’t know any better complain about the tackiness of the ‘Seventies, they’re talking about stuff like this.
