I absolutely hate it when a horror movie SEEMS to be going excellently, playing off of some largely-unknown fear or antagonist, only to royally screw up the second half of the movie or such by revealing what the plot is essentially about behind the smoke and mirrors and shadows is something utterly stupid. Some movies are just better without knowing the full story; a Lovecraftian point countless filmmakers could learn but would still never put to use. Audiences by and large are idiots, and idiots HATE to think, almost as much as I hate them. So many goods stories squandored for the sake of crappy closure or answers that you wish you didn’t knwo once you do.
Dreamcatcher, the movie based on the Stephen King book of the same name, comes to mind. I love the setting; a snowy, isolated area of woodlands largely, where vision is obscured and conditions are a threat in of themselves. There was some cool, creepy scences in the first part of the movie, and I was really into it actually. Or I was until it was revealed the creatures of the feature incubated in, and originally crawled up, peoples’ asses. What. The. Hell. How stupid and incapable of being taken seriously. They even coined some dumb phrase in the movie for them, though I thankfully can’t recall what it was. I lost all interest in the film after that.
I recently watched Pontypool, a Canadian movie with a similar setting to the previously discussed piece. White-out conditions, The Thing has taught me, are ripe for great horror. The tension builds throughout the first half or so of the movie as the characters, people running a morning radio show in the tiny town of Pontypool, receive bits and pieces of information building up to something very odd going on with the residents of the town, driving them to act a s mob of raving cannibals. Cool, zombies, I thought, and I like the way they turn this typical morning into something else very smoothly, giving only bits of information at a time. I love to be kept guessing. Or rather, I love to be kept guessing if the answer is worthwhile. In this case, no, it was not. Certain words in the English language had been “infected” and turned people into the zombie-esque things, so once those key words were spoken it spread to someone else. I still was into it, kinda off putting though that is, until the “cure” is revealed to be babbling the word that infected someone until it losing meaning (much like repeating a word over and over but also equating it to a similar sounding word.) For example, “Kill is kiss. Kill is kiss.” After forever of frantic annoyng lines like this the two characters say “Kill me.” and kiss. The way it’s delivered, and the babbling that ensues as the radio jockey gets on the air to tell people what to do made me shake my head shamefully. Silly Canadians. They took an interesting and different concept and made it silly and unable to be taken seriously with really crappy dialogue and methodology.
This is one many will agree with me on. I LOVED The Village. I loved the creepy hinting going on, the musical score, and acting. When the “big shock ending” was revealed, I facepalmed for days. It striped all the terror and intrigue away that I adored. I am of the belief that this film marked the steep cinematic-downfall of M. Night Shamalyan, and he deserves it for ruining a great movie (not to mention making all the other pieces of rot he churned out after this one) which ACTUALLY leads me a twofer for M. Night: The Happening.
The violence was hilarious and well done. The sense of paranoia was well-built upon. However, when it was revealed it was TREES and FOLIAGE making people kill themselves, and Mark Walberg ends up yelling at a fake tree and then cracking a joke that made the entire audience chuckle, I felt like following the example of the victims in the movie. Not only was it a thinly-veiled environmentalist infomercial that lasted nearly two hours, the “humor” in the movie ruined any last bit of stability the film had. Screw you, Shamalyan.
So in the end, some stories are best left unfinished. Our imaginations are much better at scaring us than a poorly thought-through ending/story cooked up by someone either trying to be diffrent, which at least bears fully good intentions, or someone who just can’t write/direct/edit.
Let-downs in horror
One Reason I Hate People
I’ve known people to be shallow all my life, but one of the aspects of this world-wide human failure is how people apply their level of physical attraction to their preference of media. When you hear some random girl go, ” Oh I LOVE that movie/band; so-and-so (some person in the band) is so hot!” that is a prime example of what I’m talking about, and it’s pathetic, considering I see people of all ages doing this.
One hears most about this shameful act of human nature from visual media; movies and such. I know people that have mile-long lists of actors/actresses that they wet themselves over. I’m not even going to approach how this ties in with a certain awful vampire-romance series. I’m so tired of hearing about certain movie personnel I could shoot myself, such as Christian Bale, Johnny Depp, Robert Pattinson, Keira Knightley, Seth Rogen, and others. Are we in high school, people? Can’t you occupy your time over physical matters with people in your life; people you see and talk to and not those behind the camera you drool over?
When this is done with music it hurts the worst, because it either means the idiot in question is encouraging/forcing others to listen to god-awful music simply so they can hear the “talents” of some douche they get off to. You can pick this instance out pretty easy by seeing if the person mentionning the band/musician constantly talks about how they look, and not about the music. They are the people that usually prefer youtube to the mp3 they have already because they can’t see the failure they’re listening to. No one cares how “hot” the vocalist or bassist is, except for their fellow morons. Prime examples of bands/musicians that have gotten by on the media attention from slobbering fans of a hollow-brained nature are Fall Out Boy, N’Sync (or any boy band for that matter), Garbage, Blue October, Nekromantix, Incubus and Bring Me the Horizon. There are countless others. Why can’t people just appreciate music for the notes comeing out of the instruments?
Some people do this more than others, long after it’s acceptable to do so because they are in the grip of teenage and pre-teen stupidity, and that is just horrifying. It demonstrates of lack of real emotion; something developed beyond the hallways and backpacks of school. It’s only one segment of being shallow, which is something people are largely great it as I’ve always seen. I swear sometimes if everyone were blind we’d be better off.
Overseas cinema woes
I’m currently quite pumped for couple of foreign-release movies. I’m impatient (very, in fact) by nature, so having to wait for them to be released in their native country and THEN released over here just does not sit right with me. Accessing them via semi-legitimate (or not at all) sources online proves difficult too, because without proper subs, I’m in the dark on what the people on-screen are screaming as they run for the their European lives.
[REC] 2, the sequel to the amazing handheld-perspective Spanish film that the bastard film Quarentine was based off of, has been out in Spain for some months now, but all viewings of it online are sub-par cams without subs, which es no bueno, as they say. I’m checking weekly now, desperate to see a better version somewhere, because how terrible can a cam OF a cam movie be? Quite, I imagine.
Another movie of similar taste (zombies), from France, La Horde, has had my attention for a few months now, after seeing a trailer for it via Fangoria’s website. The cinematography looks like the Dawn of the Dead remake, so it looks great. It’s very action-oriented it seems, and right up my alley. The generic, blah title makes it next to impossible to find stuff on viewing-wise. I honestly don’t recall when it was supposed to be released, but not soon enough, for sure. 
Cinema Staples…to the head.
Pointless romance sup-plots in EVERY corner of the media just piss me off. No matter what the show, movie, book or whatever is about, there is almost ALWAYS a boy-meets-girl type story squeezed into the plot. It’s too often cumbersome and awkward and painfully predicable to see among all the otherwise (potentially) interesting stuff going on.
Do we NEED a played-out plot device like this every time? I don’t even really get why they’re there 95% of the time, except maybe as a feeble and pathetic attempt to draw in more female audience members, as that’s often something thought to appeal to those of the ovarian persuasion. I really hope for the sake of humanity this isn’t as accurate as marketing devils would believe. Would a female go see a movie having nothnig in it they are interested in except for a “cute-looking couple/guy?” I know people that have actually.
I don’t give a shit that the random chick the character hated before the aliens invaded/zombies overran the city/war broke out/earthquake hit/family reunion went to hell said something funny to them in one scene right before something interesting happened. I know that I wouldn’t remember a damn thing somebody said to me right before an asteroid hit, or a monster tore down a building. Please stop wasting my time with budding relationships that will clinch the ending in a death-grip and squeeze every last bit of life out of the plot. If you are making a horror movie, and your final scene involves a couple embracing/kissing, 99% of the time you need to rewrite that ending, because it probably sucks like a black hole.
I understand pre-existing relationships; dynamics between characters and such will be different potentially drive the plot. I’m not complaining about that.
While I’m on the subject of useless stuff planted like landmines of suck and fail throughout a plot, why, why, why have an awkwardly-placed, obviously pandering sex scene? Is it supposed to strenghen the characters’ bond and resolve through the coming events because they fucked? ”Oh no, I’m about to die, but I’m going to run even FASTER because I want to hit that again!” Yes, I know it is part of human nature to turn to physical involvement in certain times of great stress, but not a majority of the time. These scenes are made a pander to the lower-level male crust, just like the awkwardly-sewn in romance sub-plots are for the women. Generalizing, I know, but still all-too correct. It kills me that peopele are thought of so predictable and simple, and that it is, in fact, TRUE.
Not all movies/books do this, just the great majority, so bravo to plots to riddled with “Kiss-&-Tits” bullet holes.
A Zombie Film By Any Other Name
A lot of people have complained the past few years that zombies have been altered or changed too much in cinema, or that the label “zombie movie” has been applied too liberally to films in which there are no technical zombies. People that throw out these accusations are indeed correct as far as the term “zombie movie” being applied too much, but only if you think of zombies as the traditional reanimated corpses a la H.P Lovecraft’s “Reanimator”, Romero’s “Of the Dead” movies and similar spawn. I feel as if a zombie movie can contain absolutely no corpses returned for a snack and still contain all the tenants, plot-points, typical characters and other archetypes of Romero of Fulci fame.
“28 Days Later” is one of the first films in this trend; a film that portrays the legions of the mad as “infected” by a virus, and are still living beings that must eat to live or risk starving, as demonstrated towards the end of the movie as a jet sweeps over the countryside. The camera shows a weakened group of infected people; skeletal and weak from lack of the only food they want for. The sequel, “28 Weeks Later” is the same way.
The French “Mutants,” released just this year, is very similar the “28 ___ Later” franchise in that the hordes are fast, very vocal in such as screaming/shrieking, and covered in blood/bile/who-knows-what. They are clearly NOT dead, just mutated (as the title blatantly states). In this case their eyes change color, skin changes color/texture to a slick almost amphibian-like quality and their nostrils reshape/half close up.
What these media examples have in common is the world in which they take place is still in a state that of which Romero builds for his famed movies. The world comes undone by the hordes and civilization hangs on in small bands of survivors striving to live one day at a time. Government is no more, and the normal structure of society and social setups are gone. People largely turn to savagery in order to survive/cope with the horror of the world. Several character types are observed in these situations. The leader-type, who acts for many, the wounded burden that seems to always symbolize the party’s ability (or inability) to let go of the past, the antagonist who betrays/goes against the group/the villain(s) who are worse threats than the hordes, the child/innocent who shows the price/burden of holding onto the ways precious, and so on.
Sociology can be studied in zombie media greatly. How people react to their situations and each other can be compared to how groups react/live within war zones and great stress/peril in general. Since it’s typical of a greater human villain to rise in zombie stories, and the comparison is often shown between humans and zombies in the vile things they do, we can almost always count on the living/healthy being monsters themselves. Many of the most frightening characters in zombie movies are human. The mad scientist in Day of the Dead that is the ruin of the group through his experiments, Herbert West of “Reanimator” for similar reasons that show his lack of humanity even compared to his creations (who hold a very human sense of justice/revenge) and the military fiends near the end of “28 Days Later” that threaten rape/imprisonment/murder more dismal than infection/death at the hands of the great majority; all these people enjoyed quite a bit of dread in me upon viewing. The things that we do to each other are more horrifying than anything an animalistic creature can, because of human intention/knowledge.
All these films, undead or infected or whatnot, all play upon the common human fear of being eaten alive. It’s a fear on a genetic level for us, just like the dark and being confined are. They all also play off of a sense of being isolated/alone, also a very common fear for people.
They same effects are achieved, the same lessons learned/taught, the same showcase of social degredation, so truly undead corpses or not, I still label this recent trend “zombie” movies, just as many are now. I still recognize the difference between the archetypes, but what I truly love, and what I feel is truly important and special about zombie films is still intact no matter what, so why complain? Sit back and enjoy the violent eye candy and mental delights.
