Haunter

"Haunter" (2013, Vincenzo Natali, Wild Bunch, IFC Midnight) is a haunted house story with a slant.


Lisa (Abigail Breslin) is a teenager in 1985. She's also dead. Lisa 'lives' in her house with her mum (Michelle Nolden), dad (Peter Outerbridge) and little brother, Robbie (Peter DaCunha) who appear unaware that they are also dead. Lisa's stuck in a Groundhog Day-esque timeloop of the same day; the car is always broken, the laundry is always needing done, dinner is always the same...


When Lisa becomes aware of her predicament, she tries to highlight it to her family but they seem to be oblivious to their situation. Lonely and angry, Lisa begins to try to find out what is going on. She starts to find clues and discovers that she is the ghost haunting the teenager, Olivia (Eleanor Zichy) now living in her room in 2013. To add to this, there may be a sordid history in the house and many other ghosts trapped there... Can Lisa stop it before Olivia's family are doomed to be next?!


A fun little film with a good performance from all of the cast, but especially from Breslin who is a sympathetic protagonist but also a strong character. She manages to walk the line of moody teenager and girl-in-peril without coming across as whiny or overbearing.


While the plot is fairly straightforward and the antagonist suffers from some confusing scenes throughout; the overall film is entertaining and creates an engaging atmosphere. The repetitive nature of the timeloop is something that has been done extremely well before (the previously mentioned Groundhog Day) and since (Happy Death Day). "Haunter" manages this timeloop fairly well also, with slight tweaks in the loop to show progression and just enough repetition to highlight what's going on. It also captures some elements reminiscent of the Amityville House.


"Haunter" nicely tells the tale from the ghost's perspective without getting too caught up in the ghost mythos, and delivers an intriguing little mystery. It's fairly light on the scares, however.

[Image: IFC Midnight, et al]

Hani

Jacob's Ladder

"Jacob's Ladder" (1990, Adrian Lyne, Carolco Pictures, TriStar Pictures) is a psychological horror.

Jacob Singer (Tim Robbins) is a Vietnam war veteran living in New York with his girlfriend Jezzie (Elizabeth Peña) and working as a postal worker. We see glimpses of his experience during the war where his unit came suddenly under attack but also started acting very strangely with some going into violent seizures and others turning on one another.

Jacob is haunted not only by his past as a soldier, but also by his past as a happy husband and father of young children, especially his youngest, Gabe (Macaulay Culkin), who had died before the war.

Everywhere Jacob goes he sees strange apparitions of faceless men and monstrous creatures and he begins to lose time. He attempts to find help from his former platoon mates, but everywhere he turns people seem to be plotting against him or being plotted against themselves... What is going on?

A feverish film filled with intrigue and deeper messages. Jacob's journey is fractured, as are his memories and the audience follow him along this strange tale trying to fathom out the real from the hallucinations. By the end we learn the truth and the journey makes sense in a satisfying but melancholy way. A truly fantastic film filled with effective imagery and certainly one to have on your movie bucket list.

[Image: Carolco Pictures, et al]

Hani

Gothika

I decided to give this one another shot as part of my Robert Downey Jr. appreciation 'month' (this has so far lasted 3 months and looks not to be ending anytime soon. That man is a gift.). My first and last viewing of this film was at a house party in 2005 and I remember being pretty unimpressed at the time. But I was a cocky 17 year old, so lets see how it fares this time:




"Gothika" (2003, Mathieu Kassovitz, Dark Castle Entertainment, Warner Bros. Pictures, Columbia Pictures) is a film about a psychiatrist who wakes up to find herself a patient in the mental hospital she works at.


Dr. Miranda Grey (Halle Berry) works at Woodward Penitentiary as a Criminal Psychiatrist. She is working with several disturbed and violent women including Chloe Sava (Penélope Cruz). She's also the wife of Dr. Douglas Grey (Charles S. Dutton) who runs the facility, and has an apparent friendship-but-nothing-more relationship with her colleague Dr. Pete Graham (Robert Downey Jr.) - much to the latter's disappointment.


On a stormy night, Dr. Grey crashes her car on a bridge while narrowly missing hitting a young girl standing in the road. When the Dr. approaches the girl to check if she's ok she bursts into flames. Miranda doesn't remember anything else until she wakes up as a patient at Woodward herself and Pete breaks the news to her that she apparently went home and brutally murdered Douglas.


Miranda spends the rest of the film slowly piecing together her memory with the help of a vengeful spirit and some pretty inefficient security in the hospital. What she finds out shakes her worldview and it's probably for the best that she'd already dispatched of Douglas.


The film suffers from a lot of things that aren't its fault. The main one being it's just another early 2000s teen-aimed horror with that annoying blue tinged hue over every scene. But there remain some gaping plot holes (really? Pete just pulls some strings and she's kept at her previous place of work? I don't think so) and just too much going on in the plot. It's like they made a few storyboards and decided to mash it all together; crooked cops, crooked doctors, malpractice, ghosts, murder, torture porn, revenge, amnesia, sexual deviants getting access to patients without (supposedly) anyone knowing, misrepresented mental health patients.... you name it, it's in here. It's a bit of a mess plot-wise.


One of my main gripes with the film is its criminal(-ly insane) underuse of its talented cast. Halle Berry as the protagonist gets a fair share of screen time but most of her time is spent screaming and/or being sedated so her character isn't given much depth outside of her initial intro as overworked psychiatrist who likes to swim. As the film moves on she gets to deliver a more proactive role and starts to do her own sleuthing, but ghostly possession, or not, I doubt that she would be set free at the end of the film, having, you know, murdered a guy! RDJ manages to inject some depth into the character of Pete through that amazing ability he possesses to humanise all of his characters, but essentially Pete is just there to be a hindrance to Miranda's escape and doesn't actually get to do much of note from a plot perspective except moon over Miranda and then act as jailor. Cruz' character is probably the most interesting of the film with a pretty sad story arc but she's more of a plot device than a main character.


But it's not all bad. The film remains watchable, and although it doesn't fit into any good-bad-cheese list it's also not so terrible that you can't sit through it. Whether  you'd actually want to is another question entirely. I can imagine the trope-laden, well trodden ideas behind the film still seeming fresh to the young and uninitiated, and it could certainly serve as a gateway to youngish, thirsty horror fans in the making who haven't yet been enticed by the pleasures of 2001's "Thirteen Ghosts" or 1999's "House on Haunted Hill" which, in my view, deliver a much better late 90s/early 2000s horror vibe.


What can I say? I came for the RDJ factor... and I pretty much stayed around for that, too. It seems 17 year old me and 31 year old me aren't so different after all.

[Image: Warner Bros., et al]

Hani

The Endless

"The Endless" (2017, Justin Benson, Aaron Moorhead, Snowfort Pictures, Love & Death Productions, Pfaff & Pfaff Productions, Well Go USA Entertainment) is a sci-fi thriller about two brothers who escape from a cult only to be tempted back years later. It is the sequel to 2012's "Resolution".


Justin (Justin Benson) and Aaron (Aaron Moorhead) receive a video cassette in the post and, after hunting for a way to play the damn thing, discover that it is from Camp Arcadia; a commune they were part of as kids/young adults.


It turns out the boys have completely different recollections of the their time at the Camp with Justin remembering a dangerous UFO death cult and Aaron only remembering a friendly group of hippies getting back to nature. The brothers decide to venture back to the camp to see how everyone is doing. Just for one day.


They reach the camp to warm welcomes but something is not quite right about the campers; they look exactly the same as they had a decade earlier... As the boys spend more time with their old comrades they start to notice other peculiarities about the camp and the surrounding area... Something is there and leaving might not be an option...


A fun and intriguing film that kept me engaged throughout. It starts off relatively slowly and the plot slowly drip feeds a sense of dread and uneasiness through excellent use of slightly 'wrong' things happening on screen. As the wrongness intensifies we are introduced to other characters outside of the cult (some of whom you might recognise if you've seen "Resolution") who are experiencing some grim and unsettling effects of the 'presence' surrounding the camp.


A bizarre story that is told in an effective and sober manner which further adds to the overall strangeness of the tale. With a lot of Lovecraft inspiration felt throughout, a hint that the plot might be a commentary about audiences as a whole, and rounded but not overdone characters; The Endless is a very enjoyable, thoughtful and robust piece of film. A somewhat sudden and ambiguous end leaves the viewer wondering if there's still more to come in a third film.

[Image: Snowfort Pictures, et al]

Hani

The Perfection

I seemed to be in the mood for watching films about cellists this weekend as I checked out "The Perfection" on the back of watching 2009's "The Soloist". I can confirm that this was completely incidental and both film's could not be further from one another in plot and genre. But it did make for good viewing. Since this is a more horror/thrilller aimed blog, however, I guess we should focus on "The Perfection"...

"The Perfection" (2019, Richard Shepard, Miramax, Capstone Film Group, Netflix) is a horror about the dangers of aiming for perfection at all costs based around a prestigious music school.

Charlotte (Allison Williams) is a talented cellist who was forced to give up on her dreams of becoming the protege of her teacher and head of the Bachoff music school, Anton (Steven Weber), when her mother became terminally ill and she was needed to care for her. Upon the death of her mother some years later, Charlotte reaches back out to Anton and is invited to be a guest judge on a panel judging some promising young cellists in China hoping to win entry to the Academy along with Anton's current protege, and Charlotte's replacement, Lizzie (Logan Browning). Although reluctant at first, Charlotte and Lizzie strike up a friendship (and then some) and decide to spend a couple of weeks together off the beaten path in China. Things do not go to plan... or do they?

An engaging film that kept my attention throughout the full run time due not only to good story telling and excellent acting, but also some nicely spaced out and visually pleasing gore.

I was not sure what I was in for in this film and went in essentially blind, having only heard that it was "up my street". I can confirm that I found it to be an extremely entertaining 90 minutes with a few plot twists that kept the pacing lively and some really gruesome effects. The first twist caught me completely off-guard and really grabbed my attention.

I enjoyed the way the film managed to get me to flip-flop between loving and loathing different characters as each piece of the puzzle was unveiled and both Williams and Browning give great performances throughout.

Fairly gripping and delivering more than I went in expecting, this one is certainly worth your time.

[Image: Netflix et al]

Hani

Monkey Shines

"Monkey Shines" aka "Monkey Shines: An Experiment in Fear" (1988, George A. Romero, Orion Pictures) is a film about a killer Capuchin monkey and one man's life changing.


Allan (Jason Beghe) is an active man with a seemingly idyllic lifestyle. Alas, things change for Allan when he is involved in an accident, rendering him quadriplegic. With his life forever altered, his girlfriend leaving him for his Neurosurgeon, John Wiseman (Stanley Tucci), and his meddling mother (Joyce Van Patten) and rough nurse (Christine Forrest) on the scene controlling his every move, Allan is beginning to feel that death would be a simpler solution.


In a morally questionable attempt to help out his buddy and also protect his human brain tissue/monkey injection research from his sneaky boss, Geoffrey (John Pankow), a scientist friend of Allan's, decides to have his best monkey specimen, Six (Boo) trained by Melanie (Kate McNeill); a specialist in quadriplegia and a trainer of helper monkeys for the disabled. Melanie renames Six Ella and trains her up.


Soon Allan is finding a new lease on life again with both his helpful little monkey pal and with Melanie. Unbeknownst to them both, however, Geoffrey is still injecting Ella with his serum in an attempt to increase her intellect to human levels. As time progresses and Allan's bond with Ella increases, it becomes apparent that things are getting creepy. Especially when things and people that upset Allan suddenly wind up dead at very small, somewhat hairy hands...


A fun but clunky piece that does not feel like any other Romero movie. However, being his first studio film, this may be the main reason why and the odd outcome seemed to disenchant Romero with studio films completely as he soon returned to independent films which gave him more creative freedom. The monkey is adorable, there's one or two jumps and the film approaches themes of romance with a disabled character with a fair amount of class and a fairly x-rated scene. Overall it is a  fairly enjoyable film, however, it suffers from pacing, a lot of studio changes that make it feel unstructured and a decidedly odd feeling ending.

[Image: Orion Pictures]

Hani



Pet Sematary

"Pet Sematary" (2019, Kevin Kölsch, Dennis Widmyer, Di Bonaventura Pictures, Paramount Pictures) is the second film adaptation of Stephen King's haunting novel of the same name. My thoughts on the 1989 film can be found here.

Dr. Louis Creed (Jason Clarke) moves from Boston to the small town of Ludlow, Maine with his wife, Rachel (Amy Seimetz), young daughter, Ellie (Jeté Laurence) and toddler son, Gage (Hugo and Lucas Lavoie). The point was to get away from their hectic and busy lives in the city, but after a student called Victor Pascow (Obssa Ahmed) is killed in a traumatic accident things begin to get strange for the Creed family. The deceptively quiet country road right by their house turns out to be treacherously busy with fast moving, large trucks and their elderly neighbour Jud Crandall (John Lithgow) knows one or two local secrets more than he should maybe share. Including, the mystery of the pet cemetery in the woods and... what lies beyond...

An interesting retelling that stays true to the spirit of the novel whilst making some key changes. I don't dislike the changes and found them to add a new dimension to the plot. As a big fan of the novel and the 1989 film, I hadn't really known how I would feel about this version, but I found it enjoyable overall.

The film offers a few jumps and jolts throughout and I found the development and reveal of the scenes with Rachel's sister Zelda to be a well realised. The local childrens' tradition of burying their pets in the 'sematary' in creepy masks had a nice Wickerman feel to it which I felt complimented the plot overall.

Clarke and Seimetz give good performances as the Creeds, however, it's hard to contend with Lithgow's Jud who really steals the show. Even as a die hard fan of Fred Gwynne's famous take on the character, I really enjoyed Lithgow's performance. His regret was palpable by the end of the film. Jeté Laurence really shows her stuff as sweet little Ellie... and then some! And Obssa Ahmed gives a nicely creepy, and somewhat less sarcastic, performance as Pascow. The makeup for Pascow is also very juicy... mmm, exposed brain.

The effects are overall very good and the film enjoys some good pacing. The strangest thing for me was the cemetery and burial grounds themselves which felt very much like a movie set and didn't show the depth and realism I was anticipating.

Louis' spiral in his despair and his desperation to get his family back is, as ever, sad and extremely dark. Overall, I felt the changes in the plot in this respect were a refreshing option and allowed us to experience a more talkative and grim analysis of human beings' inability to accept death. Church (Leo, Tonic, Jager and JD) was also extremely well realised.

For me the ending was even more haunting than both the novel and the initial '89 film and worked very well.

Overall, it hasn't dislodged the 1989 film from its pedestal for me, but it was entertaining and dark. While some of the changes didn't quite hit home, and some of the scenes felt like they had not been taken to their full promise, the overall film was an interesting take on the novel and an entertaining retelling.

[Image: Paramount Pictures]

Hani