Review: Occupant (2011)

Occupant (2011)

Director: Henry Miller

Writer: Jonathan Brett

Stars: Van Hansis. Cody Horn, Thorsten Kaye

Occupant begins with the death of an old woman in her apartment. She shakes around, gasps, coughs, and finally kicks the bucket.  We have our title and credits on display and the movie begins to chug along.  The scene isn’t particularly frightening, in fact, it's pretty goofy. 

The setup goes as such; the old woman’s grandson, Danny, arrives to confirm the death of his long estranged grandmother.  When, at her apartment, he discovers that it's rent controlled on the lease and obscenely cheap, considering it has 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, living room, dinning room, and a kitchen.  Or, we’re told that’s how big it is; we hardly see more than 4 rooms the whole time.  

The, at first, apprehensive and grumpy Danny is told that if he can stay in the apartment for 12 days without leaving he becomes the lease holder in the eyes of the law and it remains rent controlled.  Once he finds out… he still doesn’t seem to really give a damn.  Until the aggressively friendly doorman and lawyer convince him he should stay… hell they even make arrangements for him, deliver his food, and help him avoid being kicked out.  The entire plot relies on a New York doorman and a New York lawyer selflessly trying to get a 20 something guy a nice apartment on the cheap.  Next time I go house hunting, I want that kind of representation.  Yet this guy kind of treats them like shit anyways.  He’s such a passive character he even starts painting the apartment and stops after like 3 minutes, leaving a few red blotches for the whole movie, which makes it just that much more a chore to get through.

- Sir anything you need, I will get you.

- Hey f*ck off man, don’t be pressuring me into the best situation ever.

Danny’s also got himself a sexy, blonde, web stalker, she first appears when Danny’s on the way to his grandma.  She videotapes him and follows him around a bit before they flirt.  She comes back again, because we need a female presence in the movie, saying she tricked the doorman into letting her in. It’s not creepy because A. She’s hot.  B. She has whiskey.  They hang out, have dinner, have sex, and then she films herself going through all his stuff, for her “stalk blog.” She treats it like an episode of “MTV Room Raiders” but… it’s not his stuff… it’s his dead grandmother’s…ok.

           

- Hey how’d you know where I lived?

We only met once, when you told me you run a “stalk blog.”

- Don’t worry about that, I’m pretty.

I’m just here to judge you based on this dead lady's stuff.

Occupant sets up a lot of potential scares and even more possible resolutions as Danny slowly goes unhinged.  Is the building owner trying to scare him away?  Is the doorman preparing to kill him?  Is it all a plot by stalker-cam girl? Is there a monster in the closet?  Is the apartment haunted? However, what the movie fails to see is setting up all these scary possibilities doesn’t actually make it scary.  Especially when the protagonist has no desire to actually do anything.  It would be scarier if something started to actually happen. Instead, we have a repeat of the stalker girl set up.  Someone comes to the door, we build to a scare, and we cut away to the next day. 

Sure, there are a few good moments. A dark figure standing in the background here or there is actually pretty spooky. Watching a totally unhinged Danny build death traps near the end is pretty fun, because he is actually doing something proactive.  The atmosphere built in the apartment is decent, and the film is shot better than it has any right to be.  There’s just barely enough good to make you sit through it thinking there will be a decent pay off.  But… no… they even tell you the ending right as Danny starts to hit on his stalker girl.  Sadly. It turns out Danny was just crazy!

I don’t know why I even bothered to think otherwise.

After Danny’s suicide by a door filled with nails… yeah that happened and it was hilarious and awful. We watch a new family move into the apartment.  We can only assume that it’s no longer rent controlled.  A little kid finds stalker girl's camera (which was left there because?) and watches the footage and what he sees is terrifying.  No, it’s not the sex tape they made. Just footage of Danny killing and hiding the girl’s dead body!  Then the door buzzer rings and the kid looks at the door in fear.  We close the movie. 

The movie leaves so many unanswered questions, sets up so many cool little things, and then fails to deliver on any of it.  Outside of a few cool shots and the doorman’s funny facial hair there is nothing redeeming about this movie.  Just skip it.

Hello, I’m your friendly doorman… and this is my mustache. 

- Will Woolery

Review: Annabelle (2014)

Annabelle (2014)

Director: John R. Leonetti

Writer: Gary Dauberman

Starring: Ward Horton, Annabelle Wallis, Alfre Woodard

Annabelle is full of cheap jump scares but still delivers creepiness that stays with you long after you leave the theater.  As a spin-off from The Conjuring franchise, it stands on its own two feet very well, almost too well, part of me wanted reappearance's of Vera Farmiga and other cast members.  Regardless, it’s a fun Halloween time horror film that’s worth the money, more than things like Dracula Untold, also out now.

For the first time since Child's Play we get a real look at how an evil doll actually becomes an evil doll.  However, the results are a bit confusing due to a less than stellar script.  We're told at the beginning that the doll is named Annabelle because it holds the spirit of a girl named Annabelle, who was mixed up in a crazy murder cult.  Later, we're told that the killings committed by Annabelle and her boyfriend were to summon a demon of sorts.  Then when we see manifestations of the doll we see Annabelle, but we also see a demon pulling the strings of the whole operation.  It’s just a tad bit confusing. Is the doll possessed by a demon? Is it possessed by Annabelle? Is Annabelle now a demon? Both the Demon and Annabelle are visually gruesome and terrifying regardless of the confusion. Scenes featuring the demon are actually a highlight and probably the scariest of the film.  

Overall, Annabelle is a serviceable and adequate horror film that suffers from script issues and pretty bad casting choices, I'm looking at you Annabelle Wallis.  Luckily director John Leonetti has the chops enough to make the movie look good, even if it looks a lot like Rosemary's Baby, and build the tension up to a great degree.  There's nothing new in Annabelle.   Everything in the film is impersonating other styles the 70s pale olive color scheme to the not subtly named protagonist: Mia after Mia Farrow and John for John Cassavetes the stars of the Rosemary’s Baby. The scares and visuals are all redoes from much better movies, but the mix and match of 70s horror tropes and homages works exceedingly well.  This is regardless of the plot and character issues.   You know a horror movie's working when the theater going audience actually starts to scream "NO" at certain shots.  Namely, the horrifying image of the all-black demon stalking Mia through the apartment building.

If you're bored this Halloween season, Annabelle is definitely worth a look to get your scare fix especially with such few other offerings this year. 

- Will Woolery

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Review: Demons 2 (1986)

Demons 2 (1986)

Director: Lamberto Bava

Demons is probably one of the best pieces of gory grindhouse ever, and mostly because it ended with a bang.  The hero Samurai-Sword fought demon zombies to the sound of 80s rock, before having to kill his new girlfriend, on the back of a jeep, while escaping an overrun city.  What better sequel setup could you ask for?  Demons 2 could feature a whole world overrun by demons and a few select survivors trying to live through the last hours of an apocalypse.  That’s not what Demons 2 does though. 

Demons 2 follows the “give’em more of the same!” tradition of sequels. While the first movie was a bunch of people stuck in a movie theater, being threatened by a demon zombie plague, the second one features a group of people stuck in a large apartment building.  The events of the first Demons are slightly referenced in yet another ‘movie-within-a movie’ narrative device.   This time they push the angle, that these monsters come from the film you're watching, in a much bigger way.  Even as far as to show the first major demon coming out of the TV to attack an unsuspecting viewer.

Wait so… what?  Oh, screw it… whatever I didn’t come here for this to make sense.

If you’ve read my review of the first movie, you know I’m in love with it.  Everything from the goofy acting, the crazy pimps, and demon puss pimples, fills me with glee like a 9-year-old boy.   That love floods over to this sequel as well, but only a little bit.   Demons 2 takes the building blocks of the first and tries to do the same thing, but with just a little extra. It sadly misses its mark.  We spent just too much time making back-story for characters we know are going to die.  We have subplot after subplot in different locations in the building.  They all have their so-bad-its-funny sort of charm, there’s just too many though.    We have body builders fighting demons, a house party turned into ground zero, a pregnant couple, an old lady with a dog, and a child left home alone. 

Luckily Tony the Pimp is back too… but with a different name and an obsession for fitness.

Sure, we get the more of the great creature effects, like the demon baby, but we also have the horrible demon dog, which starts with promise and eventually just turns into a dog with a mask on.  It’s all still gory fun, but it's not as much gory fun.  If you liked the first one, you’ll stand to get a kick out of this, but it doesn’t have nearly the same amount of heart.  I will give it credit for killing both the dog and the kid; two characters you always just assume will live.

           

Then there’s the whole meta-plot ‘movie within a movie’ stuff.  It’s ultimately pointless and hard to follow. So, was the first movie just a movie IN this movie, and they are watching the sequel while we’re watching them in a sequel?  Is the movie from the first Demons in any way related to the movie in the second Demons?  Are the events in the movies within the movies, real life? Is this like The Ring where if you watch the movies, you die like in the movies? Why the hell would you show this movie on TV? What about the mask in the first one? Why is demon blood acidic now? Those questions alone made my brain explode a little bit.  We’re not supposed to worry about that stuff in a cheese-ball gore fest like this. My best advice is to just turn off all of your brain, every brain cell, you just need to destroy it. 

Still, it’s a decent movie to watch at 3 in the morning, when you come home intoxicated, but it’s not good for much else.  Basically, if you like Demons, you’ll at least get a kick out of Demons 2.  If you didn’t like Demons, you should just step back and leave it be. 

Now, just don’t get me started on the rest of this franchise's supposed sequels.

Jesus… I can’t… I just won’t. 

- Will Woolery

Review: The Brood (1979)

THE BROOD (1979)
Director: David Cronenberg

From the first scene in David Cronenberg’s ’79 effort The Brood, the viewer is made uncomfortable. We watch in horrified anger, much as the film's protagonist Frank Carveth does, while the process of a new psychiatric procedure called psychoplasmics is exhibited for an audience. A grown man whimpers in front of the audience as the bizarre and explosive Dr. Raglan verbally abuses him and likens him to a little girl, while play-acting as the man’s father. Once he hits the breaking point, the patient rips off his shirt and reveals several red welts and growths have formed through his therapy, like his insecurities and instabilities have started to fight their way out of his body.

Exposition goes as such, Frank Carveth is in the middle of a custody battle for his daughter. Carveth’s wife Nola is in intensive therapy with Dr. Raglan, using the dangerous new method of psychoplasmics, after abusing her daughter, when strange murders start to occur. Child-sized creatures start killing various people that might keep Nola away from her daughter. Frank is forced to investigate and fight, at first for his marriage, then for the custody of his child, and then for the lives of his family.

The Brood shares a few tonal similarities with the last hour or so of The Shining (released a year later). Every part of it feels very cold, rooms are sparse and all very similar, and often in the windows you see a snowy Canadian background reflecting a pale light into the rooms. This could be due to the low budget the film had, but it feels very deliberate. And much like the Shining, the uncomfortable and eerie feel of the movie comes just as much from the subject matter as it does its spooks and ghouls. At its heart, the movie is about divorce, a gory Kramer vs Kramer of sorts, and the slow realization that the person you loved isn’t REALLY that person anymore at all. While The Shining focused on a husband’s decent into madness, The Brood focuses on the discovery that everything in the husband’s life has gone out of his control. It seems like our protagonist blinked and his whole world turned upside down. It’s pretty obvious that Cronenberg was going through some shit when he wrote this.

A quick bit of internet creeping shows he was in fact getting divorced from his wife the same year the movie was released. “He first married Margaret Hindson in 1972: then his seven-year marriage ended in 1979 amidst personal and professional differences. They had one daughter, Cassandra Cronenberg. Now he is married to Carolyn Zeifman, production assistant on Rabid. They have two children, Caitlin and Brandon.[24] In the 1992 book Cronenberg on Cronenberg, he revealed that The Brood was inspired by events that occurred during the unraveling of his first marriage, which caused both Cronenberg and his daughter Cassandra a great deal of turmoil. The character Nola Carveth, mother of the brood, is based on Cassandra's mother. Cronenberg said that he found the shooting of the climactic scene, in which Nola was strangled by her husband, to be "very satisfying."—Wikipedia, David Cronenburg

It's amazing that a movie can start as a very well-done drama/thriller about divorce, loss, and madness and then slowly twist into the body terror Cronenberg is so well known for. The Brood has everything from midget monsters pummeling pretty schoolteachers, to death in front of children, to a woman licking the afterbirth from her a-sexually produced spawn, to oddly disturbing shots of milk and orange Juice mixing together on the floor, and that’s still only part of what’s so scary. You’d think the evil doctor was the big bad from the beginning. While yes, he’s totally evil; he’s also not the most evil or even most dangerous monster of the film.

The make-up effects are terrific, even if they are hidden for the most part. The film slowly shows more and more of its monsters as it goes on. First, you’d only get the hands of the child-like brood, then you see only glimpses of them running and attacking. It builds and builds until you see everything. You know how they die, how they look, and in the film’s most famous and harrowing sequence, you see how they are birthed and just what the biggest side effect of psychoplasmics is.

Warning: side effects include constipation, nausea, a brood of asexually produced demon children, and dryness of the eyes.

Overall, The Brood is a terrific mix of gore and psychological horror and one of Cronenberg’s best films, right up there with The Fly, Videodrome, and even his more ‘serious’ dramatic efforts like History of Violence and Eastern Promises. All the actors bring in great performances, the story eases you in with relatable and real drama and adds some honest, touching, human moments before letting the monster movie madness go insane. The imagery is gruesome enough to stay with you long after you stop watching. Just the over-the-top and wild-eyed performance from Oliver Reed, as Dr. Hal Raglan, is worth the price of admission, but The Brood keeps giving you more.

- Will Woolery