Tag Archives: Horror

Tusk

23 Sep

By Tom Meek (Paste Magazine)
September 22, 2014  |  8:20pm

 

<i>Tusk</i>

The latest from Kevin Smith signals something of a return to form and a bit of a surprise. After all this was the man who felt so dejected by the film biz that he pretty much checked out after his mixed, “self-published” effort, Red State (2011), and retreated into various cultish, fan-adoring safe havens—podcasts and AMC’s tediousComic Book Men. Of course, Smith’s sloppy commercial outings preceding Red State—Cop Out and Zack and Miri Make a Porno—probably had something to do with it, too. That all said, the one thing about Smith that’s always been consistent beyond his whiny mewling, has been his snarky resilience—and that’s a good thing, because Tusk, despite being the WTF film event of the year, pays dividends for those with acquired tastes.

The film, a hefty slab of comedy atop a serial killer thread, alleges to be based on “actual events.” Those being that Smith got his hands on a posting by a lonely older seafarer in Canada who was offering free room and board for anyone willing to hang out and wear a walrus suit for a few hours a day. On-air, the quirky post got spun into a plot brainstorming session which in turn launched the social media campaign, #WalrusYes. The response not only birthed Tusk, but, purportedly, a whole True North trilogy to go with—or offset—Smith’s breezy Jersey assemblage (Clerks, Mallrats and Chasing Amy).  Continue reading →

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Only Lovers Left Alive

25 Apr

‘Only Lovers Left Alive’: Vampire lovers don’t come any cooler, but still need blood

By Tom Meek 
Friday, April 25, 2014

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In Jim Jarmusch’s quirky “Only Lovers Left Alive,” vampires Skype, take selfies and book their midnight flights through priceline.com or the like – really getting at the complexities of being a vampire in the 21st century.

042514i Only Lovers Left AliveGoing back to “Stranger Than Paradise” and “Mystery Train,” Jarmusch characters have always been victims of ennui and complacency. That holds true here as Adam (Tom Hiddleston, Loki in the “Thor” and ”Avengers” movies), is a “suicidal” vampire living on a desolate street on the fringe of Detroit, composingindustrial rock operas and nipping at vials of black-market blood he gets from a compliant lab worker (Jeffrey Wright). He also has a loyal gofer in Ian (Anton Yelchin, Chekov in the new “Star Trek” series) and a far-flung wife (Tilda Swinton) biding time in Tunisia.

Adam’s weary and bored. He’s lived hundreds of years, and the implication is that he’s had his hand in most major musical movements going back to Bach and Beethoven. Eve (Swinton) is a much livelier sort, hanging out in hookah bars with Christopher Marlowe (yes, the guy who went toe-to-toe with Shakespeare, played by a gaunt and game John Hurt). Even though it’s clear their love is palpable and eternal, their interests have them in sort of an undead long-distance relationship.

The arc of the story pretty much has one paying the other a visit. Troubles arise when the supply of platelets and plasma runs dry and Ava (Mia Wasikowska), an impish succubus who doesn’t play by the rules, shows up.  Continue reading →

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13 Sins

19 Apr

By Tom Meek
April 19, 2014

Published in Pate Magazine

<i>13 Sins</i>

“The devil made me do it,” might be an apt response for some of the mayhem and mischief that goes on in 13 Sins, but greed and desperation are more to the point. The film, directed by Daniel Stamm and based on the Thai film, 13 Games of Death, rides a one-trick-pony for all it’s worth. It might not be original, or superbly cut together, but it does pay dividends as it the scale of sociopathic doings becomes ever more satanic.

After a baroque opener that has an elder gentleman in a suit and tie launch into a four-letter-word fit at a podium only to perform impromptu digit surgery on a beloved one once he’s arguably calmed down, we meet Elliot (Mark Webber) who’s having the day from hell. His mentally impaired brother (Devon Graye) needs expensive meds, he’s expecting a child with his fiancée (Rutina Wesley), and with all the downward financial pressure, he gets tossed from his job by a patronizing ass of a boss, and we haven’t even gotten to his drunk, racist dad (Tom Bower) who needs to move in with them, and drops a few N-bombs on his African-American daughter-in-law-to-be just to let everyone know exactly what he’s thinking.

So it’s fortuitous, or ominous, when Elliot gets a call from a random avuncular soul who tells him, that if he kills the annoying fly buzzing about in his car, he’ll get a thousand dollars. At first, Elliot looks around to see if he’s been punked, but then complies. Boom, the money lights up in his account. (Smart phones are such great plot accelerator for rote horror films) and then he’s told, that if he then eats the squashed bug he’ll get three thousand more.

Continue reading →

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Under the Skin

11 Apr

‘Under the Skin’: Scarlett Johansson drags us to dark territory of otherworldly novel

By Tom Meek 
April 10, 2014

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Jonathan Glazer, whose brief cinematic résumé began with “Sexy Beast” and includes 2004’s “Birth,” purportedly spent nearly a decade trying to bring Michel Faber’s otherworldly novel to the screen. The wait is well worth it. Glazer spins rapturous scenes that will be hailed universally as Kubrickian – and rightly so – but in the process also concocts an eerie, wholly unique experience that will resonate deep within viewers’ bones.

041014i Under the SkinIf you haven’t read Faber’s novel and have no discerning of its plot, educate yourself no more; going in less educated will yield you a better viewing experience. Glazer’s arcane imagery and Mica Levi’s all-consuming score forge an indelible confluence that is not your typical cinematic fare. Sure, there are arguably three acts, but it’s more a washing over than a sum of parts with a resolution; when “Skin” does subscribe to these traditional framework devices, that’s when it starts to loose its sheen and transcendent allure.

As strange as it may sound, American starlet Scarlett Johansson plays a taciturn female entity who patrols the weary streets of Glasgow in an austere white minivan. The credits identify her as Laura, but I’m not sure she’s given a name during the film. In any case, she’s not human. What she is and how she comes to be is part of the film’s pleasurable mystery; to tell you any more or to compare and contrast elements of Faber’s novel would be to do you and the film a disservice. Continue reading →

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We Are What We Are

12 Oct

‘We Are What We Are’: Family secret eats away at a town where people go missing

By Tom Meek
October 11, 2013

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Human consumption (as in flesh of, not spending habits) onscreen isn’t so disturbing when it’s a vampire or a werewolf gnawing on a fellow being as an hors d’oeuvre, but bring that in a little tighter to where man’s dining on man for sustenance and it becomes downright creepy. Even the understandable plight of the “Alive” survivors, who chomped on frozen stiffs to keep themselves going while stranded in the high Andes, educes a shudder, like lingering reports of ritual cannibalism among remote tribes in Borneo. But what if it were next door, not something perverse from a sick mind such as Jeffery Dahmer, but a long-standing family tradition executed in the name of God?

101113i We Are What We Are

Meet the Parker family. They feel like lost cast members from “Little House on the Prairie,” yet live in the modern suburban remotes of upstate New York. Mom (Kassie DePaiva) handles everything culinary, from the ritualistic harvesting to the careful trimming and lengthy rendering  process, that results in a savory stew. But right off the bat mom has a seizure in the middle of a flash storm, heaves up blood and is gone. Her grisly duties fall to daughters Iris (Ambyr Childers) and Rose (Julia Garner), though after the death their father (Bill Sage) declares a period of abstinence that allows for the macabre outer sheen of the film to fade and the edgy backstory of how the Parkers came to their generations-old practice to come to the fore. The girls struggle to come of age (a time of sexual awakening for Iris) and dad goes through maniacal mood swings and Parkinson’s-like fits.  Continue reading →

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You’re Next

23 Aug

‘You’re Next’: Yuppies face some cuts in dark and funny indie horror

By Tom Meek
August 23, 2013

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A bunch of well-to-do yuppies head off to a remote manse for a family reunion of sorts. Dad’s recently retired and made millions as the head of marketing for a defense contractor (isn’t the market the government?). The renovation of the aging structure is supposed to be his golden years’ project, but things in the woods aren’t so idyllic. His eldest sons, the uber-yup (Joe Swanberg, whose upcoming directorial effort, “Drinking Buddies” is an indie must-see) and the doughy academic (A.J. Bowen), are continuously, and ideologically, at each other’s throats. Along too are the younger sister and brother, and all have wives or SOs, but they mostly don’t matter – they’re all primarily fodder for a group of animal-masked marauders who mysteriously show up and pick apart the family one by one, starting with the opening salvo of crossbow bolts.

082313i You're NextCellphones naturally don’t work (though the reason why is solid) and each swing of a creaky door yields either a booby trap, knife-wielding psychopath or false alarm gasp from the audience.

As boilerplate as the plot is, the sense of dread and the motive why drives the film. The production values are low and the acting flat with the exception of Swanberg and Sharni Vinson as the prof’s demurring tag-along who grew up in a survivalist compound in Australia. She’s a can-doer and the wrench that puts a grind in the killers’ grand scheme. The script by Simon Barrett (of the cult-horror collaborative “V/H/S”) offers some dark and funny barbs, both at the dinner table as siblings feud over trite matters and at the moments of macabre demise. The direction too by Adam Wingard (another “V/H/S” alum, along with Swanberg) is competent and boosts some adroit twists, but as with most slasher fare, there are plenty of WTF moments.

“Next” isn’t on par with the original 1972 “The Last House on the Left,” which is still the gold standard in home-invasion thrill-kill rides, but a cut above most. Sometimes DIY love on the low trumps a studio hack, especially when it’s a film about hacks.

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The Devil’s Rejects

20 Mar

THE DEVIL’S REJECTS

Rob Zombie, Haverhill native and former White Zombie frontman, again roils in ’70s slasher gore with this sequel to House of 1000 Corpses. Serial killers Captain Spaulding (Sid Haig), Baby Firefly (Rob’s wife, Sheri Moon Zombie), and Otis Driftwood (Bill Moseley) — all variations of names in Marx Brothers films — are dislodged from their dilapidated abattoir by Sheriff Wydell (William Forsythe), whose brother was offed in Corpses. What ensues is a cop-killer grudge match with some binding, torturing, and killing of innocents along the way. Rejects is an upgrade from Corpses. For one, it’s coherent, and despite the clichés and the profanity, there are some hilariously wicked moments. The biggest snag in the gritty homage is that Zombie’s heroes are cold-blooded killers. Oliver Stone tried the same trick with Natural Born Killers and almost succeeded, but even The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Last House on the Left hung on the promise of victim survival and justice.

BY TOM MEEK

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The Machinist

20 Mar
THE MACHINIST

Brad Anderson, the local wunderkind (he now lives in New York) who made a splash with the romantic comedy Next Stop Wonderland, follows up his 2001 psychological thriller,Session 9, with this gripping ordeal about a drill-press operator who hasn’t slept in nearly a year. When we first meet Trevor Reznik (Christian Bale), he’s your typical strung-out Joe: emaciated (Bale lost 63 pounds for the role), disconnected, and running from his past, but just what haunts him is unclear — and that’s the mystery that propels the film. By night, Trevor soaks up his endless existence with a slice of pie at an airport diner, post-coital interchanges with his regular call girl, Stevie (Jennifer Jason Leigh), and futile attempts to plod through Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot. Then Ivan (John Sharian emulating Marlon Brando), the amoral arc welder/specter with a mangled hand, starts popping upeverywhere and things go sideways. As moody as The Machinist is (the Bernard Herrmann–esque score and pallid, blue texturing go a long way in that regard), the final kick is manipulative artifice and predictable to boot. Nonetheless, Bale’s complete immersion into Trevor’s afflicted soul and Sharin’s southern fried freak make the descent into paranoia worth the journey. (102 minutes)

BY TOM MEEK

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Ghosts of Mars

20 Mar

GHOSTS OF MARS

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GHOSTS OF MARS: Natasha Henstridge and Ice Cube exchange views on the latest from Jay-Z.

Director John Carpenter returns to his slash-and-squirt roots with this Martian horror thriller. On the surface it’s derivative of many a deep-space chiller (think Alien 3, Event Horizon, and Supernova), but it’s really a retooling of his 1976 cult classic,Assault on Precinct 13.

The year is 2176, and Mars has been turned into an atmospherically correct mining colony. Lieutenant Melanie Ballard (Natasha Henstridge, who does the Sigourney Weaver bit in her undies and tiny tank T) leads a crew of rogue and rookie cops on an extradition mission to extract notorious murderer James ” Desolation ” Williams (Ice Cube) from a remote outpost. When they arrive, they find all the inhabitants either missing or butchered in the most unspeakable fashion; yet hanging tight in lock-up are Desolation and a few other wayward souls. In a flash, cops and cons are thrown together as a ghoulish horde of miners turned punk-rock marauders launch a gory and never-ending onslaught. How and why the sadistic berserkers came to be is pure cockamamie, but that doesn’t detract from the campy fun of seeing Henstridge’s babe commando hold Ice Cube’s bristling thug under her thumb while doing battle with the minions of a bloodthirsty incarnation.

BY TOM MEEK

Issue Date: August 30 – September 6, 2001

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Event Horizon

20 Mar

Event Horizon

This dark, eerie, genuinely creepy outer-space thriller is hardly original, yet director Paul Anderson manages to blend the archetypal elements of horror and science fiction into a stomach-fluttering experience that maintains its suspenseful edge from the opening thump to the final ka-bang.

It’s set credibly in the near future, with Sam Neill starring as the creator of the Event Horizon, a spaceship equipped with a gravity drive designed for interdimensional travel. The ship has been absent for seven years, so when it resurfaces, Neill requisitions Laurence Fishburne’s deep-space search-and-rescue unit to aid him in his Ahab-esque quest. At the far recess of the solar system, they encounter the Event Horizon, crewless and dormant. But something unfathomable has returned with it. First apparitions appear and rattle the team’s sanity — imagine The Exorcist or The Shining remade on the set of Alien. Then, after more inexplicable goings on, the carnage begins. The why and what of the destructive force is never quite explained, which is annoying, but this film is really about mood, set design, and crisp editing, all of which Anderson achieves with a master hand. Nothing too inspirational here, just plenty of well-orchestrated frights.

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