The Borderlands (2013)

NIGHT 20

     "Don't believe everything you see."

The Borderlands (2013) is a brand new British independent horror film and the first feature of writer director Elliot Goldner.

The film follows a group of Vatican investigators whose job it is to investigate and record miracles and acts of God and weed out fraudulent cases.

I really like the premise of this film. It's super simple and clever that I really found myself in awe of this indie horror flick right off the bat.

I'm really not a fan of handheld "shakey-cam" found footage films like this but I gotta say, I think this was very watchable. I wonder if it has something to do with the fact that the cameras they used were attached to headsets, and since we naturally keep our head upright when walking, I'm thinking this may have helped the watchability of this film quite a bit.

And I must admit I was pleased with the ending. I of course won't ruin it here, but I think it's very original and unlike anything I've seen before in these types of films. Whether or not it pays off for the film is debatable, but it was highly original.

This is already considered one of the most accurate found footage films ever made. And while that is true for the most part (they set up every single camera and use them all), it still makes the mistakes that a lot of these films make, in that they set up unnecessary cameras that would be uncalled for by these characters. Primarily I'm speaking of the CCTV cameras that they set up inside the place they're staying, this is something you just wouldn't film, there'd be no need to do this, from the character's mindset. I think the director wanted it just to give a wider range of shots, which I understand and appreciate but I think he needed to find a better reason to do so story-wise.

The most enjoyable thing about this film are the characters. All of the characters are very interesting on their own and work even better with the characters they interact with. These are very believable and likeable characters that really make the film enjoyable to watch. I found the first act really slow in this film (necessary to seem like every other found footage film, and really pay off in the end) but it was the really interesting characters and some great writing that really makes the first part of this film watchable. There's something really great about these characters and their faith and what they don't believe that they get into a bit also. I love how the most religious people in this film are also the most skeptical and first to dismiss something as a fake.

That being said I think the actors themselves have a lot to do with the believability of these characters as well. All of the actors really do an amazing job in this film and really help to make everything else in this film work as well as it does. Hard to come by in a low budget indie film.

The Borderlands also is just a really good mystery. It builds beautifully with lots of unexpected character turns and keeps building toward a beautifully original pay off in a way that just captivates you, and will have you really on edge and waiting to see what comes next, through the entire film.

The Borderlands (2013) is one of the best recent horror films in years, and in a style I don't even care much for too, so that's saying something!

4.5/5 Stars.

Happy watching!




Tomorrow on the 31 Nights of Macabre Movies we continue with a much older British horror film ;)

Be sure to check out Daimeon's review of this film too!

This film doesn't have an American distributor yet, so I can't share a link with you. But when it does come out, I highly recommend you check it out.

Evil Dead (2013)

NIGHT 19

     "I can smell your filthy soul!" 

 

Evil Dead (2013) is an attempt to remake the low budget, horror film classic The Evil Dead (1981) with a higher budget and more gore. This film is director Fede Alvarez's first feature film and it is produced by the creators of the original film: Sam Raimi, Bruce Campbell and Robert G. Tapert.

Five friends decide to spend the weekend at a cabin to help Mia kick her drug use. All goes to hell though when your stereotypical nerdy guy of the group finds a strange book of the dead and starts reading from it. While this sounds like it could be funny, it's actually completely serious and a return to the series' origins as straight horror.

There's a couple things that this film did better than the original. By way of making the events a little more plot based rather than the madness and haphazard way the events unfold in the original. I liked how in this film you can actually follow the evil possessing each member of the group one at a time. It actually starts with the tree rape scene (which gives that scene slightly more meaning than in the original) and then as Mia gets possessed/infected it slowly passes on to each of the other characters as they come in contact with the gruesome version of their former friends.

I also liked the change to the premise of this film, having all the main characters come to the cabin to help a friend detox is actually a really smart change (and I'm guessing the original pitch that made anyone actually consider making this film) Unfortunately beyond the pitch the film doesn't really do anything with this, it could have been used in a really interesting way through out the film as Mia (the girl who is detoxing) is the first one to get possessed and start acting strangely and they could have carried this into the plot of having the other characters really not believe her and have drugs as a bigger element of the plot (thinking they've all been drugged or something) when shit gets really weird but the film doesn't. Instead it just gives us a little bit of an interesting change at the beginning and then drops it almost immediately after that.

Okay lets talk frankly here for a moment, I understand that to make a film these days it's a lot easier to get financial backing by making a remake or a sequel of something else that was successful. I don't like it, but I understand. That's fine and all all: you're a hot young filmmaker just starting your career and you get the opportunity to make a multimillion dollar film with a lot of hype around it. You have to use the title, sure. But after that you pretty much have free reign to make whatever film you feel like. What I don't understand is why you would literally cling to the events that happened in the original [and the original remake: Evil Dead II (1987)] like they were your bible! Do your own thing! This is a solid example of the worst way to make a remake: by doing everything the original did but trying to make it edgier and more "modern."

Another thing this film does is the "who's the protagonist" game that the original Alien (1979) does but, you guessed it, this film does it far worse. Now lots of people have seen Alien so many times that it's easy to forget (and the sequels don't help) but one of the cool things the original Alien did was one by one start killing off characters until you were left with the most unexpected character as your protagonist. This film tries to do that also, one by one killing off all the characters in attempt to make you guess who is the new "Ash" of our series. The only problem? The first character they kill off is our protagonist! Way to make us care about our character film, kill her off (and make her possessed and evil) very early on so that we automatically don't care anymore! By the time she comes around again, I really couldn't care less about this character.

Okay nit-picky sure, but I hated the design of the Necronomicon in this film. [Oh sorry it's the "Naturom Demonto" in this film because it was called that in the original and this film decided to copy that film down to useless details like this.]  Yes the illustrations were cool, but they surely didn't look like they were etched in blood. And unlike the original, they had what appeared to be English translations of the book all over it, right on top of the pages ...in what appeared to be red ballpoint pen!

Probably the worst thing about this film is the Logic. Everything that The Cabin in the Woods (2012) was poking fun at with the way characters act in horror films, is right here in this one. So much so, that I was quoting lines from The Cabin in the Woods while watching this one: "Ok, I'm drawing a line in the fucking sand here. Do not read the Latin!" The original didn't even have it's characters read from the book, they play a tape of a man reading it! Also the funny thing about having the Necronomicon translated is that you can read ahead to what's coming! But of course, it takes most of the film before the characters realize that the linear events that are happening in real life are also in the book you've been reading one page at a time.

This film has really bad writing, I've briefly mentioned the logic problems, but worse are the characters and the dialogue. Admittedly, this maybe the result of English being the second language for the director, but the actors have as much responsibility to make their lines work as anyone else. Such cookie cutter horror characters, and blatantly obvious mistakes they make really bring this film down big time.

And finally this film has such an excess gore and almost every bodily fluid you could imagine for really no reason. At first I was thinking this was a tribute to the Italian horror flms like the original kind of did, but unlike those this film tried to make all the bodily fluids as realistic as possible? What is the point? Is it really all just for simple gross-out moments? Come on director, you're better than that! On a brighter note, you could probably play bodily fluid bingo with this film and everybody would be a winner! Hows that for a drinking game?

Despite everything else there's a couple of moments in this film that I felt had a really good sense of suspense and horror, but with such bad characters and dialogue it's hard to think anyone would actually be scared by this movie as a whole. It's just super jarring to have such laughably bad lines next to intensely serious moments. Here comes a tangent, but to me this really shows off how good The Cabin in the Woods was, because that film nailed the bad lines next to horror thing. Oh, is it not fair for me to look at The Cabin in the Woods in comparison with this film? They're the ones who decided to make a remake of the original immediately after The Cabin in the Woods was released which literally calls out all the clichés and lesser parts of the horror genre.

Scares aren't the only great thing about this film either, there's some genuinely "cool" moments I found as well (at least as a horror fan). I actually liked how it started raining blood in the third act, and there was this awesome shot at the very end where a body kind of sinks or gets absorbed into the bloody/muddy ground, it's a downright awesome looking visual. All of this kind of depresses me because if this obviously very talented director was given the chance to make his own original feature there's enough here to prove to me that I would have loved it. But instead he jumps on the chance to make a completely unnecessary remake!

Evil Dead (2013) is pretty much everything The Cabin in the Woods (2012) was trying to make a statement and warn against, and yet here it is one year after The Cabin in the Woods was released. Pretty depressing actually if you ask me.

1.5/5 Stars.

Happy watching!




That's it for my Evil Dead streak on the 31 Nights of Macabre Movies, tune in tomorrow for a brand new indie U.K. horror film that is getting a lot of hype, The Borderlands (2013).

But if you want more Evil Dead goodness check out my friend Daimeon's reviews of the the whole Evil Dead series!

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The Conjuring (2013)

NIGHT 1

     "Being possessed is like stepping in chewing gum."

The Conjuring (2013) is a critically acclaimed recent horror film directed by James Wan. The story follows the Perron family who are leaving the city life and moving into an old, large farmhouse in 1971. When strange and supernatural things start happening to select members of the family they seek advice from The Warrens, a husband-wife team of paranormal investigators who decide there is something very wrong with this farmhouse.

The movie does a really good thing where it doesn't show you any real manifestations of the ghost haunting the farmhouse till about halfway through the film. This really does well to echo the Perron family's feelings of weariness in the first half and the supernatural events build in a really nice way so that they start off as things that could not be supernatural at all, and then build to things that are harder and harder to ignore. After the halfway point they revel the awful looking witch though and it's pretty much downhill from there, after that point the movie can't stop showing you all the ghost people that live in the house! And the witch reveal is hilarious, even though I'm pretty sure it's not supposed to be int he slightest.

The big downfall of this movie is that it's story just isn't that interesting. There's nothing original about this premise, but the film tries to make up for that by spinning the plot as this overly complicated mess of different storylines involving creepy demon dolls, Satanic witches, ghosts and Catholic possession. All of which gets explained too simply in a whole lot of exposition. It really doesn't feel like any of these elements actually pay off in the end. At some point you realize the movie is pretty much a less well done version of The Exorcist (1973) down to the third act being a "risky" exorcism done by our protagonist. At least in The Exorcist there's an awesomely chilling ending, this movie couldn't even muster that.

Another problem with this movie is it has way too many characters, or at least doesn't effectively use any of the ones it has. I think the one character I actually remotely cared about was Lorraine Warren, and I think that has more to do with Vera Farmiga's performance than anything that's actually on the page. And what was the point of bringing in The Warrens less-good demon hunting buddies the skeptic cop, and the know-it-all Asian kid? Oh, right. Sequels.

The writing is really atrocious, lots of long exposition to explain things that are either convenient for the movie or pretty common knowledge already (if you've ever seen a horror film in your life). The dialogue is down right horrible: "Being possessed is like stepping in chewing gum; it sticks with you." This is one of the funniest lines I've heard in a long time and I'm pretty sure it wasn't mean to be.

And like most movies these days, this film suffers from an overuse of CG. How hard is it to make a sheet fly through the air or a crucifix fall over? I mean really. When you use CG to do these simple things they stick out to the human eye and are SO distracting. Talk about wasting money.

The film has a truly amazing direction. James Wan knows what he is doing and knows how to scare an audience. There's a couple of legitimately frightening scenes in this movie (the clapping scenes) that make the whole movie worth seeing. They're executed with perfect cinematography and great use of sound to make for a perfectly creepy moment, bravo.

I'm legitimately surprised that people liked this movie as much as I heard they did. Sure the scares are good but when the story lacks, I really can't forgive that. And so much of this movie feels like something you've seen before.

2.5/5 Stars.

Happy watching!





Check out what my good friend Daimeon thought of the film here. The 31 Nights of Macabre Movies is just beginning, we continue tomorrow with the classic Satanic horror film, The Mask of Satan (1960).  

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Oblivion (2013)

"Are you an effective team?"

Oblivion (2013) is the sophomore outing of director Joseph Kosinski following 2010's Tron: Legacy. Oblivion is a post-apocalyptic, conspiracy science fiction film about a man named Jack Harper, who believes along with his assigned partner Vic they are the only two humans left on earth after it was viciously attacked by Scavs and most of mankind was able to escape offworld to Saturn's largest moon Titan, the film starts with only two weeks left in Jack's stay on Earth before joining the rest of mankind on Titan. Jack however is starting to have second thoughts.

Let me start off by saying this is a hard film to talk about without tripping over any spoilers, so I'll do my best to dance around them and in my usual way merely vaguely mention and imply things but if you want the complete spoiler-free experience while watching Oblivion you'd better stop here, and for that matter don't watch the trailer either!

First things first, the music. I'd be lying if knowing the fact that M83 did the score for this film wasn't about 50% the reason I wanted to see it in theaters. (In that one respect, maybe my hopes for this movie were a bit too high!) Thus far I gotta say I really applaud Joseph Kosinski for his music choices of his filmography. The decision to have Daft Punk score Tron: Legacy was like the shot heard around the world, and for the most part Daft Punk delivered. The score for that film was amazing, however nothing like anything anyone really expected. Here again Kosinski picks an electronic band that's never done any kind of film scoring before, but has a rather cinematic quality to their music (much more than Daft Punk even!) Much like Tron: Legacy, Oblivion's score is not what I was expecting.

M83's score is somewhat lost between being too subtle most of the time and what sounds like trying too hard to be Daft Punk's Tron: Legacy score. Now both being helmed by the same director it's possible to assume that Kosinski gave the same direction for both soundtracks or that he is perpetually set on using the same type of soundtrack in his films (god I hope not!) But more than likely I feel like M83 listened to Daft Punk's score a bit too much before taking on this gig, and as a result I have to say, I'm kind of disappointed. Oblivion's score isn't bad even by a long shot and it definitely has its moments, but knowing M83's music... hell go online right now and listen to any tracks (at random!) from their most recent album Hurry Up, We're Dreaming (2011) and I have to say I think no matter what tracks you picked it would have worked better over this film than most of this score.

I can't think of a better word to describe the acting in this film over all than "good." I think my favorite actor in the whole movie is Andrea Riseborough, playing Vic Jack's partner who doesn't want to mess anything up by breaking procedure this close to being done with the mission, even though she's such a tiny part of the whole film. Oh and Melissa Leo as Sally is pretty unmistakably amazing for her small role as Sally, Jack and Vic's only contact to the rest of humankind at the beginning of the film. Tom Cruise kind of seems out of place at the beginning of the film but as the plot unravels and you see the whole picture he works for the role pretty well. But even though Tom is good for this role and really works, it's nothing we haven't seen Tom Cruise do a million times before. Oh and Morgan Freeman is completely wasted in this role. All in all he was fine, I can't help but feel they just needed another big name to put on the posters and sell the movie around the world. Frankly this kind of role is kind of bellow him.

Also much like Tron: Legacy, Oblivion suffers from all sorts of holes, inconsistencies and gaps in logic ranging from small to HUGE. (Warning this is probably the most spoilerish I'm gonna get in this post.)

Let's go through a couple shall we? There's moments where Vic says "don't go there I don't have eyes on you!" and then the next shot is of her watching Jack on a her flat screen from the camera on the Bubble Plane? There's a point when Vic locks Jack outside and he's demanding for her to open the door, next thing you know we cut to him inside with no explination at all. What the heck? Major cut or jumps in continuity like that are completely inexcusable. There's a moment when Jack is looking for a single drone in the vast wasteland, and he even says "it's like looking for a needle in a haystack..." then he switches from flying a jet over to a tiny motorcycle? That makes NO sense even remotely, and just feels like an excuse to show off more technology, also inexcusable. For the first part of the film the "Scavs" wear this supposedly stealth armor technology for the first part of the film because it helps them hide from drone persecution "most of the time" up until they reveal what's actually going on... after that they never put on their helmets (even once!) for the remainder of the film, even when battling what? You guessed it drones! Jeez guys, don't you think those stealth suits would help with what they're made for!? And then there's the whole bit about the ending that pretty much undermines the awesome foe we've spent the whole film setting up. The enemy has pretty much no reason to let the heroes get as far as they do, especially when I'm pretty sure the enemy was just going to kill them anyway! Ugh I feel like I could go on all day with little things this film messes up on!

There's also some very predictable things that occur in this movie, especially if you're a fan of science fiction films. But I gotta say that for the most part I was impressed and when they went down a direction that seemed cliché or rehashed, I was usually pretty impressed that the film chose to turn and go a different way along the way making the story seem just original enough.

I figured going into this film that the visuals were going to be worthwhile. Joseph Kosinski comes from a background in industrial and architectural design, and in my opinion is far better at that than telling stories. I have to say though that I was very impressed with the way this film mixed real physical sets and scenery and CGI. Coming out of a world of Tron: Legacy which is understandably mostly shot against a blue screen I was rather impressed with how much of this movie is actually shot in and against the real world! Kosinki made the right choice in again working with the amazing designer Daniel Simon who was the lead designer on Tron: Legacy and designed this films Bubble ship, towers, weapons and general "sci-fi tech."

Another great choice was to continue working with cinematographer Claudio Miranda who's filmography pretty thus far pretty much only has hits, but also worked on last years Life of Pi (2012) and previously with Kosinski on Tron: Legacy. Miranda really knows how to place and move a camera. I found myself constantly in a state of awe with the simple but effective camera work in this film. Even during interior shots inside Jack and Vic's sky cabin where they live, Miranda always seems to find a new and interesting place to put the camera, which isn't easy if you watch most sci-fi films where the majority of the story takes place aboard futuristic ships.

For what it's worth I gotta say I really enjoyed the story of this film, especially the basic set up. Which is something I gotta say I never thought I'd say. I'm a big fan of Wall-E (2008) and the seemingly identical nature of the setup for this film was almost a huge turn off for me, but I'm glad to say that I think beyond the general similarities the film goes on to do it's own thing. Sure there's references and homages to a ton of other films in this movie but more often than not the film doesn't choose to go down those paths too far and kind of just hints at the homages rather than dwelling on them, which I appreciated.

I found the basic setup captivating and even though it's told in a voice over with lots of exposition, it really drew me into the world and didn't let go. I can't promise this experience for everyone but it really worked for me. And I'm glad the trailer didn't tell any more than it already did.

Lastly I got to say that for every stupid little thing this movie misses, there's just about as many cool little things it does too. For example, I love the way the film turns the initial exposition on its head with an unreliable narrator and by the end of the film what you realize something unexpected about the narrator from the beginning of the film. I like the way the drones are used throughout the film as something cool, and heroic and then gradually very terrifying. In the same way I also liked the way the film used the Sally character initially as this lovable voice of "home" and gradually transforms it into something else completely menacing and unexpectedly sinister.

Oblivion (2013) isn't the most original film ever, but for what it's worth it's a fun ride and a perfect rental or matinee. 4/5 Stars.


Happy watching!





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