Shelter a.k.a. 6 Souls

Adam, a young psychiatric patient with multiple personality disorder, seems to be exhibiting personalities of those who actually lived - all murder victims.  As his doctor, Cara Harding, digs into his pasts, it starts to appear less psychiatric and more supernatural...

This film was made in 2008, released in Japan in 2010 as Shelter, then released in the U.S. in 2013 as 6 Souls.  Apparently it was considered so bad that a name change was warranted before release in its home country.  I agree.

Shelter a.k.a. 6 Souls
2010, 112 minutes, directed by Måns Mårlind and Björn Stein

Welp (Cub)

Scouts, in the woods, but there's something out there...

There's something weird about society.  No, it's not the existence of a cub-scout-themed horror film.  It's the fact that, of all the deaths in the film, it's the dog's death that makes the audience uncomfortable.

Welp (Cub)
2014, 85 minutes, directed by Jonas Govaerts

The Green Inferno

I wouldn't see a cannibal horror survival film voluntarily.  No, this was of course a classical Fantastic Fest AICN secret screening.  Activist college students travel to South America to stop the destruction of native tribes, not realizing exactly what it is they were protecting.  It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be; it was clearly made for its R rating, which means that while parts were suitably disgusting, other parts of it were kind of watered down and lame.  Still, I have no interest in ever seeing it or anything else by Eli Roth ever again.

The Green Inferno
2013, 103 minutes, directed by Eli Roth

The tribe where they filmed is in Chile, and are peaceful farmers.  They'd never seen an ice cube before and didn't understand the concept of video; Eli brought in a television and a projector and showed them Cannibal Horror, which they thought was a comedy.  It might seem like exploitation, but while they were filming a particularly gruesome scene, with heads on spikes and body bits on display, a few boats of Texas Christian missionaries sailed up and were shocked with horror.  Having Eli Roth convert the natives first almost makes it worth it.  (As payment for their acting and use of their village to film, they also built metal roofs on all the huts, replacing the leaky thatch roofs the tribe had before.)

You're Next

I missed this at Fantastic Fest a few years ago - it showed once and then disappeared from the schedule, one of the legendary screenings that got away.  Now it's back in all its glory.  A family gathers for reasons both complicated and unknown, while masked terror lurks.  When the horrors unleash, a family guest reveals her true nature.  It's pretty damn awesome.

You're Next
2011, 95 minutes, directed by Adam Wingard

La Memoria Del Muerto (The Memory of the Dead)

Three films in one day?  Why yes, it is the start of another Fantastic Fest!

As the director puts it, La Memoria Del Muerto (The Memory of the Dead) is not a horror film; it's a love story.  Or, as I see it, a story of horrible love.

Five friends of Jorge reunite with his widow to remember his life.  And when the dead start to return, it seems the reunion is something more... Be prepared for emotional scars to be ripped off and eaten as the guests reunite with the ghosts of their pasts.

La Memoria Del Muerto (The Memory of the Dead)
2011, 89 minutes, directed by Valentín Javier Diment

V/H/S

Five short horror stories are tied together loosely by a sixth, centered on the theme of "found footage" shakey-camera work.  I wasn't as impressed as I'd hoped to be.

V/H/S
2011, 115 minutes, directed by Adam Wingard, David Bruckner, Ti West, Glenn McQuaid, Joe Swanberg, and Radio Silence

Modus Anomoli

I really got angry with the protagonist of this outdoor survival horror. Carrying around a flashlight when being hunted outdoors falls in my stupidpeople category. There's a full moon. Do you have no night vision?

In the end, though, they explain everything, albeit in a way that leaves me baffled for an hour until it clicks. If you start to watch this definitely see it through.

Modus Anomoli
2012, 87 minutes, directed by Joko Anwar

Sinister

SXSW's not-so-secret screening was the first public screening of Sinister, exactly as everyone thought.  While I appreciate all the effort they went to for the film to screen here, it just didn't work for me like I'd hoped.  Ellison (Ethan Hawke) is a true-crime writer seeking his second Big Novel, having suffered several unspecified failures.  He moves his family - wife Trace (Juliet Rylance), son Trevor (Michael Hall D'addario), and daughter Ashley (Clare Foley) into the house of his latest focus, a family of five where four members were hung from a tree in the back yard, and the final member, a daughter Stephanie, disappeared.

Very quickly the scope of the crime grows when Ellison finds a box of "Home Movies" in the attic, along with a Super 8 film projector.  The first film shows the murder of the family - a film the police never found.  The other four films show the deaths of similar families, each killed by a different method, each in a different state, and each (as he later learns) with a missing child, stretched out over the past 45 years.  At the same time the supernatural events in the house lead him to believe that maybe the killer never left...

I didn't think Ellison's actions were plausible, something admittedly I can overlook (as I often must) for horror films.  The real problems though were in the ending.  I have BIG SPOILERS below the film info below.  Read on only if you have seen the film or have no intention of doing so.

Sinister
2012, directed by Scott Derrickson










THESE ARE SPOILERS!  Things that just didn't work:
1. The biggest problem is the slow, all-cards-on-the-table ending.  We just didn't need everything spelled out like that in passionless film.  First the kids should not have already been mindless automatons when they killed their families.  It would have been better if they were doing it scared shitless and crying, while being forced to by the Boogie Man.  And what Ashley does after Ellison dies seems redundant.  Who cares that the kids live in the film?  The movie should have ended the instance Ellison was killed, his family dying first.
2. When Ellison learned that one dead family previously lived in a home that was itself the scene of an earlier film, it was obvious the same would be true for all the other murders.  It also meant that "family piles into the car and flees" would never be a suitable ending.  Either they'd need to fight and win, or they wouldn't make it.  That's all fine, except that the phone call from the deputy at the end where he explains all of this is completely pointless.  I got it already, thanks, don't slow things down.  Maybe the only useful bit is the deputy's comment that his action might have "accelerated the schedule" which was somehow true but really never explained.  Why'd they need to die the day they moved?  The other families clearly lived at least a little while in their new homes based on the films.
3.  Why did the Boogie Man switch to Super 8 in the 1960s?  Was that when he stopped using photographs?  During the course of the film - which could also double as an Apple product instructional video - Ellison proves the editing superiority of digital cameras and a computer.  I think it would have been more satisfactory somehow if Ashley was filming on her dad's digicam at the end, with a USB stick dropped in the Home Movies box if that clip isn't cut (as it wouldn't be I guess if they want a sequel segue.)  The Boogie Man needs to keep up with the times or else he'll be stuck with a family that doesn't even know what the Super 8 projector is.

Paranormal Activity 3

I saw the first installment of this franchise at Fantastic Fest back in 2009.  It was formulaic and clinical in its execution, which left me wanting more.  Alas, this was not it.  (I never saw the sequel.)  This wasn't nearly as frightening as the first film.  All the setups are now so obvious.

It was really strange watching commercials for this over the next few months and thinking to myself, "Wait, that scene wasn't in the film!"  Yes we were told that the version we watched wasn't 100% done, but seriously half the scenes in the commercials weren't in the movie itself.  Either they used cutting-room scraps to promote the piece, "not 100% done" meant "half the scary bits aren't in yet", or, just maybe, they read bad reviews like this one and choose to spruce it up with the more mildly frightening bits.  It's unlikely I'll ever bother to watch it again to find out if any of that extra film made the final cut.


Paranormal Activity 3
2011, 84 minutes, directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Shulman

Before the film began, I had a brief one-on-one conversation with Elijah Wood which went something like this:
Me: "Glad you came this week and glad you stayed.  Usually the stars all leave."
Mr. Wood: "Fuck all that."

Awesome

Urban Explorer

Double tap, damnit.  Stupid people.

Urban Explorer
2011, 88 minutes, directed by Andy Fetscher

El paramo (The Squad)

This was not what I expected.  When I think "military squad" and "horror" images of Predator waft through my mind.  Instead of a murderous rampage with an alien/occult foe, The Squad is very close up, very suspenseful, very introspective.  If such a film sounds appealing, look for this in 2012.

El paramo (The Squad)
2012, 107 minutes, directed by Jaime Osorio Marquez

Director Jaime Osorio Marquez of El paramo.  My sister-in-law called him "hot".

The director during the Q&A.  He sat near us during our subsequent screening, but my sister-in-law wouldn't go talk to him.  Not that he spoke English...

Director BenDavid Grabinski of "Cost of Living", a short film that played before the feature.

"Cost of Living" production crew.

A Film Unfinished

Found reels of a propaganda film from Nazi Germany show contrasting scenes of staged prosperity with real poverty in the Warsaw ghetto, May 1942, not long before it was destroyed and most of its inhabitants sent to their deaths.

But this isn't shown in isolation.  To complement, contrast, and counter the propaganda film, the documentary producers use the incredibly-detailed diaries of the Jewish superintendent of the ghetto, as he was ordered to take part in and witness filming.  They also include comments from survivors viewing the film (and recalling the filming), German reports and records, and even transcripts of testimony of one of the cameramen, the only one of the filmmakers ever uncovered.

With the film never finished, the purpose of the contrasting scenes may never be known, but the film nevertheless gives vision to the final days of a half million Jews starving in the three square miles of the Warsaw ghetto.

45 years later, an outtake reel was found, with repeated takes of "documentary" scenes until the Germans considered them realistic enough, along with images of the cameramen caught in each others' lenses.

You should see this.

A Film Unfinished
2010, 88 minutes, directed by Yael Hersonski

Resident Evil

Having no history with the game series, I don't mind any discontinuities or breaks from lore that might disturb long-time fans.  Furthermore, I can tolerate the budget allocation typical of survival horror.  What I dislike, though, is poor casting - with several characters just plain wrong for their role - and Michelle Rodriguez cast solely for her ability to roll her eyes up into her head.

Still, the rest of the series awaits...

Resident Evil
2002, 101 minutes, directed by Paul Anderson

28 Weeks Later

I really wanted to like this.  The first film was a notably different take on zombies, and I thought a sequel could further explore the premise.

Instead the writers decided to use heavy-handed oafs from the U.S. military to do stereotypical, stupid, blundering U.S. military things, while the protagonists are slowly picked off one by one.  What a waste.

28 Weeks Later
2007, 99 minutes, directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo

Outcast

This Irish/Scottish occult film is trying to imply a mysticism much larger than the film, but as often occurs, they do so by intentionally confusing the audience.  And then there's a directorial mistake that gives away part of the big mystery early in the film.  Still, the story is sound and it would make a solid rental.

Outcast
2010, 93 minutes, directed by Colm McCarthy

I'll note what I think was the big mistake in a comment.

Salvage

This dark and gory film doesn't need aliens or zombies or demons to show the depths of human depravity. Some horrors could be entirely man made...

Salvage
2009, directed by Lawrence Gough

[REC] 2

Having seen the first installment just last week, I was frightened to think of the many ways that the writers/directors of this film could screw it up in a sequel. But I have to say that I am almost entirely satisfied with the premise, the mechanics, and the twists it takes to continue telling the same tale. Although it picks up five minutes after the conclusion of [REC], with the same first-person camera work, the film has a very different feel while being part of a small, happy family. I do just wish this second installment had the decisive conclusion of the first so it didn't feel quite as made-for-sequel ready.

[REC] 2
2009, 85 minutes, directed by Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza

[REC]

As usual I neglected to plan ahead to see my Fantastic Fest prequels via Netflix. I expected to find only the U.S. remake Quarantine at the local Blockbuster, but to my surprise they had not just one but two copies of [REC].

This is a delightful low-budget shakey-cam survival horror flick. I quite recommend it in its original version and native tongue, as the actual low-quality tape (instead of the via-special-effects fake stuff that Hollywood would use) and low-budget effects leave room for the imagination to take over.

Next week, we'll have to see how much I like the convoluted plot they'll have to use to make a sequel...

[REC]
2007, 78 minutes, directed by Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza

Pontypool

When our very words have been infected, what can one radio man say to save the world?

I'm amazed at the vivid imagery produced by this film, despite the lack of many special effects and, indeed, any images at all of the horrors described. It's a slower apocalypse horror film with little on-screen violence, but see it with a strong recommendation.

Pontypool
2008, 95 minutes, directed by Bruce McDonald

I'm drawn to think about how Cloverleaf, a film I didn't particularly dislike, had to use so much imagery to create the same kind of story that Pontypool did with so little.

Feast 2: Sloppy Seconds

I'm hesitant to say something bad about low-budget film. I know that a director has to work with what he's given, and in this case he was given half the money of the first film to make two sequels. But... I'm just disappointed. Feast was really good. This just wasn't.

The first movie was a great splatterfest, with a reasonable plot and special effects that were surprisingly good. This time they didn't try as hard. The first film established that the monsters wear skulls and skins to hide their appearance - which also helped carry the suspense. This time, there were just too many "beasts" walking around in rubber suits. Come on guys, slap on the furs and skulls and it would look better and fit fine.

Then, a splatterfest needs to have, you know, deaths. The first movie started out by killing the first "main" character in less than a minute. This time too many survived. Sure there was splatter - plenty of arterial blood and goo and gore and other body fluids - but the characters just got up and kept going. It wasn't realistic even for a low-budget alien-invasion horror film.

I'm glad I saw Feast 1, because after watching this I never would have rented the first.

Feast 2: Sloppy Seconds
2008, 90 minutes, directed by John Gulager