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Archives Movie Reviews Posts

You’re Next

Well, hellelujah Baby Jesus! We have ourselves another pro-female horror movie that is just the bees knees. “You’re Next” , from the minds of Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett is a first class horror joy ride.

The film centers on the secluded Davison family home: Mom and Dad are celebrating their 35th anniversary and all of the kids are coming to celebrate and they’re bringing their respective partners with them. Among this group is Erin, played expertly by Sharni Vinson, the younger girlfriend of Crispian. Initially, Erin is treated with a combination of amusement and disdain. Being the former student of your older boyfriend is not looked upon kindly in this family. It’s immediately clear that this family is not the happy unit that they would like everyone to believe they are and the family dinner quicly resorts to an argument. This fight is broken up when a dinner guest is shot in the forehead with a crossbow. The house is under attack and only one person is keeping their cool and making sure everyone survives:Erin.

This is when the movie turns from just another home invasion movie into something else. This movie doesn’t leave you feeling violated (I’m talking about you, Funny Games) but, rather, invested in the survival of the characters and Erin’s ability to fight back. Turns out Erin grew up on a Survivalist Compound and is more than equipped to go toe to toe with these animals. As everyone else succumbs to their panic, Erin is looking for weapons and making booby traps. This girl is amazing because she’s not just a Final Girl, she’s a badass who doesn’t need to advertise this fact. She just is. People who are genuinely tough don’t need to showcase it all day; they simply know that if the time comes, they will be able to rise to the occasion. What a novel, fun characteristic to see in a female lead.

“You’re Next” is smart, witty and fun. The jump scares are predictable, yet effective, and it has just the right amount of humor in it. The kills elevate from realistic to wonderfully absurd. (Seriously, have we seen a better use of a blender since Gremlins?) Watching Erin evolve from girlfriend to family protector is exhilarating. You never once question if she would be capable because we’ve never seen her character as anything other than an intelligent, independent woman. “You’re Next” truly is an original, “good time” home invasion thriller. The fact that the hero is a woman, just makes it that much more exceptional.

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Archives Movie Reviews Posts

American Mary

American Mary is brought to us by the lovely Soska sisters, Jen and Sylvia, who wrote and directed this little gem of a movie. In the spirit of Women Of Horror Week, this review will be lengthy and have spoilers. So, if you haven’t yet seen American Mary I suggest you rectify that immediately.

Mary Mason, played with both apathetic and tortured precision by Katherine Isabelle, is a surgery student finding it extremely difficult to keep up financially. We are introduced to her as she practices sutures on a turkey, while we listen to a loose version of Ave Maria. Mary’s instructor, Dr. Grant, pulls Mary aside to tell her that she is one of his most promising students and she needs to stop messing about because “surgeons don’t make mistakes’.  After squabbling with a bill collector on the phone, Mary pursues the personal ads and responds to a job offer at a strip club. This is when we are introduced to Billy, the proprietor of Bourbon-A-Go-Go. During the interview Billy is called away and when he returns, he asks Mary if she wants to make $5000, no questions asked. Reluctantly, Mary agrees out of financial desperation and is visibly shaken after she finishes the job;she returns home and cries.

Just when she finds out she has lost her waitressing job, Mary receives a call from Beatress Johnson. Beatress is a living, breathing replica of Betty Boop. She works at Billy’s club, learns of Mary’s medical skills and requests Mary to perform a procedure on a friend. Beatress explains that her and her friends are trying to make their outsides look the way they feel on the inside:this particular sentiment comes up quite a bit in the movie. As Mary begins taking on patients who desire unconventional procedures, she learns of the body modification community. Members of this community want nothing more than for their outsides to match their insides in whatever way that entails (i.e.) implants, teeth filing, genital modification, voluntary amputation, etc.

Ruby Realgirl is Mary’s first major surgery. Ruby explains that she wants to look like a doll because dolls can be naked and never feel shy, or sexualized of degraded. I cannot speak for all women, but it’s hard not to feel that way when you’re clothed,much less naked, so this statement really resonated with me and made me look a little deeper. During this surgery, we are treated to Ave Maria again, but it’s a bit more polished than the version at the opening of the movie. Only the Soska sisters could have made a surgery where a woman loses her sexual identity look so tender and graceful. Mary takes great care with Ruby and it’s truly beautiful.

Dr. Grant and his colleague, Dr. Walsh, invite Mary to have drinks with them and some other surgeons that evening; Mary is so pleased to accept this invitation. Wearing a stunning emerald green dress given to her by Ruby Realgirl, Mary enters Dr.Grant’s apartment and is immediately handed a drink. It is brought to Mary’s attention more than once that she has, obviously, found a way to make good money. Essentially, the Dr.’s have assumed that Mary has turned to prostitution, which is why they have invited her, drugged her drink and believe they are allowed to violate her. As Dr. Grant videotapes himself raping Mary, it’s striking how this particular rape scene is  traumatizing in a truly visceral way:it’s tragic, but not gratuitous and violent. The Soska sisters have managed to film an ugly, yet beautiful, rape scene:it’s emotionally haunting, but doesn’t leave a mental scar. When Mary wakes up next to Dr. Grant and realizes what has occurred, we watch her humanity die as she rides the elevator down from his apartment.

Mary requests for Billy and his thugs to bring Dr. Grant to her apartment. Mary turns on some smooth jazz and then proceeds to practice body modification surgeries, sans anesthesia, because “surgeons don’t make mistakes”. The camera turns away from the actual violence which is, really, more effective at making you cringe. Mary quickly becomes a popular surgeon within the body modification community. We are even treated to a lovely cameo by the Soska sisters as two of Mary’s patients. The more Mary detaches herself from what she’s doing, the more distant and hollow she becomes;she’s merely a shadow of who she was. The people around her are scared of her and don’t believe that she has feelings. When visiting Dr. Grant, whom she is keeping alive in a storage unit hanging from hooks with no limbs and his mouth sewn shut, she is found by a security guard. Mary literally beats the life out of this poor security guard and everything goes downhill from here.

Wearing the only white you will see in the movie, Mary meets her demise at the hands of Ruby Realgirl’s husband. He is not pleased with his “new” wife and decides to wait at Mary’s house for her and proceeds to stab her. Mary manages to kill him and as she drags herself to her surgery room, Ave Maria starts again. This time, it is an exquisite version playing over the image of Mary in her white dress, on a white floor, surrounded by a pool of her own blood as she stitches herself up. Stunning.

On a practical level, American Mary is a great horror movie with it’s own unique esthetic and really intriguing subject matter. As a woman I was really struck by the story of a woman trying to succeed in a, decidedly, man’s world. It’s the men who chip away at her little by little and, eventually, consume her. All of her clients just want to look the way that they feel and not be judged for it:this is something we can all identify with. Women seem to be particularly judged by their looks in our current society. Women are no longer allowed to age and they certainly aren’t allowed to enjoy food or dress as though they’ve matured past the age of 19. In a Rue Morgue interview Katherine Isabelle has been quoted as saying, “As a young, attractive female, I now have to sell a brand, I have to have a definable style;it’s annoying. Being a girl is time consuming and boring and annoying, when it comes down to having to do your fucking hair and your makeup and your outfit and everything. It’s suffocatingly dull.” Society has simply put a lot of demands on women today, some of which are just ridiculous, and American Mary explores this is a very unique way. As her world spirals out of control, Mary looks more and more put together. She puts on her armor of makeup and clothing to deal with the world externally in a successful manner, but internally she is failing miserably. Ultimately, Mary succumbs to the world that she has put herself in, but she goes out her way, on her terms. This movie is a breath of fresh air for women in horror. The lead is flawed, but not helpless, confused but not weak, put upon by societal standards but not beaten down by them. Mary Mason is a flawed heroine and it’s gorgeous.

 

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Archives Dracula 3D Movie Reviews

Dracula 3D Movie Review

This movie was awful. I won’t even waste time writing a full review for it. Instead, I’ll list things I’d rather do than watch this movie again.

 

Watch Soul Plane. Twice.

Watch myself get castrated without a numbing agent. Twice.

I would rather take an acid bath. I would rather have somebody inflict multiple paper cuts on my body and then jump in a pool of vinegar.

I would much rather have somebody cut my arm open and stitch a McDonalds french fry inside the wound(They’re the saltiest things I could think of)

I would rather engage in consensual intercourse with Leatherface. Twice.

I would rather lose the ability to see, hear and touch. I would rather never listen to music again.

I would trade any of my body parts to never have to watch this again. I would very much rather get shot in the gut and die slowly while people laugh at me in a circle. These people may also throw things at me if they wish, I don’t care.

As some of you may know, I don’t do letter grades, stars or number grades. This will break my rule

Letter Grade: F——-

Number Grade: -36 out of 10

Stars out of 5: Not only does this movie get no stars, I am automatically subtracting 10 stars from the next 5 Argento movies I watch.

Thank you for reading and don’t watch this movie.

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Archives Evil Dead (2013) Movie Reviews

Evil Dead 2013 Movie Review

Description from Netflix:

When a group of friends vacations at an isolated cabin in the woods, they discover an evil Book of the Dead – and unwittingly release a swarm of bloodthirsty demons in this spine-chilling remake of Sam Raimi’s classic horror flick.

 

My thoughts:

I should probably stop using the Netflix recap as a starting point.  I feel like I’m correcting it half the time.  Including this one.

The friends were not so much “vacationing” as they were “helping a friend who was trying to break her heroin addiction.”  Same thing, really.

I really liked the heroin angle.  It gave all the characters a reason to be there.  It also gave the characters a reason to write-off the initial craziness of the possessed Mia.  “So she’s talking in weird voices, pacing in the driving rain and talking about seeing strange girls in the woods?  Big deal.  She’s trying to quit heroin cold turkey.”  In that sense, it was kind of brilliant.

The only thing that could’ve made that set-up better was if we, the audience, were also in the dark about it.  I didn’t love Lovely Molly, but I liked how it kept me in suspense.  Was she possessed, or was she just messed up by her drug use?  With that movie, it was never really clear.  With this movie, we already know she’s possessed.  There’s no ambiguity, and that tension is lost.  Not that it’s a big deal, really, but it was hard not to watch this and not at least think about Lovely Molly.

(Allow me to make this perfectly clear: this movie is much better than Lovely Molly.)

 

All that aside…

I loved this movie.  It wasn’t without its problems, for sure.  The acting was uneven (at best).  The script left quite a bit to be desired.  Some of the actions of the characters – especially Eric – ranked up near the top of some of the worst decisions I’ve ever seen any characters make.  In the scene where he actually unleashes the demon from the Necronomicon, he makes a series of terrible decisions.  Here are those decisions, in order:

1. When they find the book, they had just walked through a basement full of hanging dead cats.  The book is wrapped in a black garbage bag, then wrapped in barbed wire.  WRAPPED IN BARBED WIRE.

2. After Eric cuts through the barbed wire, he looks at the book.  (In the original Evil Dead, the book was bound in human flesh.  I don’t remember them specifying the binding in this film, but it certainly looked like it could be flesh.)  There are numerous warnings written in large letters throughout the book.  My favorite being the all-caps “DON’T SAY IT DON’T WRITE IT DON’T HEAR IT.”

3. Of course, he picks that page to stop on and start reading.  I take that back.  He doesn’t start reading.  Because the words that need to be read to summon the demon can’t be seen clearly.  So he takes a piece of paper, places it over the raised letters, and starts scribbling.  Like Lebowski finding a pornographic drawing.  Except with demon-summoning.

4. As he finds the words, he says them out loud.  To no one but himself, the twerpy little wannabe professor says them out loud.  Which, of course, summons the demon and gets poor Mia possessed.

5. After he does all this, and after he sees Mia behaving in a way that no one – not even a recovering heroin addict – would act, he still doesn’t say anything about the book until more people are infected.  And dead.  Because Eric is the worst.

 

That’s just one string of terrible decision making by one character.  This movie was full of them.  (Although, to be fair, this was the absolute worst of them.)

 

Still, despite these issues, I really, really loved this movie.  It was pretty tense throughout, and had quite a few legitimate scares, as well as a few jump-scares that got me.

And the gore.  Oh man…the gore.  On top of the crazy amounts of fake blood used (“Why do you guys have buckets of blood?”), they also did a great job working in some incredibly gruesome scenes (hacking off limbs, bashing in heads with sinks, cutting tongues in half with box cutters, etc.).  It’s all a bit crazy, and definitely not for the feint of heart.  But I felt that it worked really well within the movie.  This wasn’t torture porn.  This wasn’t cutting people up just for the sake of showing people getting cut up.  This gore was all within the context of the film.  And it was beautiful and terrible.

 

What I really loved about this film was the fact that, while this was a dark & twisted movie, it also seemed like the filmmakers really had fun making it.  There was definitely a sense of devilish glee that ran throughout.  I could almost hear them giggling as they figured out more ways to dump massive amounts of blood on our heroes.

 

I also really loved the subtle nods to the original.  There were plenty of scenes that were pulled directly from the original (not a surprise, seeing as how it’s a remake), but they also sprinkled in a lot of smaller references.  These are some of the ones I caught:

1. When we first meet Mia, she is wearing a MichiganState sweatshirt.  In the original, Linda was wearing a MichiganState sweatshirt.

2. When we meet Mia, she is sitting on top of a car that resembles Sam Raimi’s famous 1973 Oldsmobile Delta.

3. Mia’s brother (David) gives her a necklace that vaguely resembles the necklace Ash gives to Linda.

 

I’m sure there were more (and, like I mentioned, a lot of them were more obvious and built into the story), but I thought these three little scenes were a pretty cool subtle homage to the original.

 

A couple more small movie references from me:

Eric – the high school teacher who seemed to fancy himself a college professor – really took a beating in this movie.  I didn’t like him at all, but I started to feel bad for him after a while.  And yet, he kept coming back.  In that regard, he reminded me a little of Red from Pineapple Express.  Sadly, there was no mention of a Daewoo Lanos.

 

Possessed Mia said some terrible things to her brother about what was happening to the soul of his actual sister (since a demon now possessed her body and all).  A lot of what she was saying seemed to come almost directly from The Exorcist.

 

I would be remiss if I ended this movie without giving props to Mia.  Because this is a remake, it would’ve been very tempting to just dump a guy into the Ash role.  Grab some dude with a prominent chin and a sense of humor and start rolling.

It would’ve been equally as tempting to throw a girl into the role of Ash.  The character wouldn’t necessarily need to change, even if the sex does.

Instead, they switched it all up.  Mia is Ash.  But Mia is also the demon.  Mia is a drug addict.  Mia is a sister who loves her brother, but blames him for abandoning her and their family during a very difficult time.  Mia is loving and supportive.  Mia is loved enough by her friends that they will take a weekend (a week?  As long as it takes?) and lock themselves in a cabin with her for the sole purpose of getting her clean.  She is strong in her fight against demons, but weak in her fight against heroin.  Mia is amazing.  She is perfect and she is flawed.

In a movie full of bad decision making and shallow characters, Mia is the most interesting character involved.  We’re rooting for her, but we’re also rooting against her.

 

Overall, I really loved this movie.  It’s definitely not for everybody, but I thought it was terrific.  I wouldn’t be surprised if it ends up being my favorite movie of the year.  Granted, it’s still pretty early in the year (and I really loved Mama, as well), but this movie was fantastic.  While it’s hard not to compare it to the original, I didn’t find myself holding it up to the original.  It stands on its own as a great horror film.

 

Rating: 5/5

 

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Archives Black Rock Movie Reviews

Black Rock Movie Review

Brought to us by the husband and wife team of Mark Duplass and Katie Aselton, Black Rock is a lean, taught thriller about three childhood friends who believe they are alone on an island camping trip. Abby (Aselton), Sarah (Kate Bosworth) and Lou (Lake Bell) have been friends since the age of 10;Sarah has brought the tree of them together in the hopes of resolving a disagreement between Abby and Lou.

The three women are startled by the appearance of three men,Henry, Derek and Alex, who are also camping on the, otherwise, isolated island. Lou recognizes Henry from childhood and the six of them gather around a campfire and get to know one another. While Abby and Henry are in the woods, Sarah and Lou learn that the three men were “disarmed and discharged” from the army 18 days ago. When Abby and Henry disagree about what kind of “fun” they will be having, an unfortunate accident instigates a battle of survival between the sexes.

It’s interesting to see the men’s obvious PTSD manifest and inform their behavior while the women must find their “inner cavewoman” if they want to leave the island alive. The script is bare bones and the movie has been attacked for it’s simplicity, but that’s it’s main charm. No fancy gimmicks, no ridiculous backstory, no CGI gore, no gratuitous violence against women:just a simple, basic thriller.