31 Nights Of Terror! Jeepers Creepers

On the heels of the fact that I had unexplainable dreams last night, probably thanks to my bazaar choice of A Snake in June as part of 31 Nights of Terror, I thought that it might be better to bring things down one notch and rent a more commonplace ‘scary’ movie, which brought me to the 2001 film Jeepers Creepers. I wasn’t expecting a great deal from the movie, I just assumed it was another teenage fright film and if you are looking for a logical reason why I chose this one over another I hate to disappoint, but I don’t have one: I rather just listened to a little voice inside of me which seemed to feel that this film wanted to be watched which is proof that that little voice is a sadist and wants to see me suffer.

Watching the first scene of Jeepers Creepers reminded me a lot of Hitchcock with a wide shot full of mystery lost somewhere in what looked like the southeastern United States and for a moment I thought I was going to be in for a pleasant surprise until the 1200^th frame flickered before my eyes and I realized that I was doomed. In lieu of living my fifty four second experience of hope and despair, you can watch the first five seconds of the trailer, which is taken from the opening scene and I think sums my experience up fairly well.

There needs to be a new category of dialogue created because to call it childish here would be inaccurate- I’ve worked with enough teenagers in my time to know that they don’t speak anything like that. The attempt to bond our characters is worse than horrible: the dialogue between Darry Jenner and his sister Patricia is painful and I was tempted to change the soundtrack over to Spanish so that I wouldn’t have to suffer the pain of knowing what half-baked sentence fragments they were spouting.

Which brings us to the plot, which you might not think there is much to be said about because it is a horror film and I thought we could all agree on some solid fundamentals: a bunch of people, probably mindless teenagers, find themselves somewhere they shouldn’t be and disturb an evil they shouldn’t have found and get picked off in lottery format until only one survives. Amazingly, Jeepers Creepers even managed to screw this up: the film begins with our two protagonists, the aforementioned Jenner siblings who, honestly, because of their being all alone in the middle of nowhere and paper-thin personalities I thought were going to be killed off in the first five minutes- sort of the first scare meant to draw you in, but alas, they are our heroes.

Since when does a horror movie have only two heroes? That’s ridiculous! You know they’re going to survive at least a while because someone has to keep the story going. Which brings me to another point: the pace of this movie is like trying to race wheelchairs down cobblestone- scenes are glued together uneventfully in such a manner that the word ‘filler’ kept appearing over and over again in my mind. Horror movies are perhaps permitted a few obvious plot devices because the evil part of us wants the front door to be locked or the boozing police officer to have fallen asleep because it endanger our hero but there are limits and there is nothing interesting let alone scary about the same car stalling, working at the last moment, stalling and then working again ad nauseum.

Character choices are illogical and horribly annoying to the point that it actually takes you out of the film, if you were ever getting into it to begin with, because you are reminded it must be fiction or the human race is doomed because people of such intelligence levels would most likely drown trying to drink a glass of water.

I suppose the problem is that the powers that be don’t believe there is an older demographic that would be interested in a solid horror film and so they feel obliged to aim towards a younger audience, an audience which, for all of their millions of dollars of research they seem to know nothing about. But wait a minute, actress Gina Philips was thirty years old when she made this movie. I’ve heard of older actresses taking on younger parts but this is bordering on comical, which may or may not have anything to do with her age and rather the fact that she is the cherry on the top of this bad-acting cake.

The direction in this film is all over the place: cut scenes, fading and slow ‘window cam’ angles are creepy and set a mood which could very well have drawn me in but they are broken up by comically bad moments like the opening chase scene which is shot, cut and scored like it belongs to a Loony Tunes clip.

I couldn’t help but wonder what the film would have looked like if it had been more Hitchcock in nature, with logical dialogue and character development that would lead to understandable actions and reactions as opposed to ‘I’m too young to have a brain.’ What is really strange is that by trying to imagine these scenes in their new ‘improved’ Hitchcock-like way, I almost scared myself but unfortunately the film was quite successful in bothering me while I was pondering ways to make it better.

Every now and then there is a glimmer of decent film making and I was going to make a long and drawn out comment about director Victor Salva and how he probably did his best with a script that was most likely forced down his throat against his will until I looked it up to discover to my biggest moment of horror for the entire evening that HE WROTE THE TRIPE HIMSELF.

31 Nights of Terror! A Snake of June

I think there must be some kind of mistake because when I found A Snake of June, it was in the horror section of the TLA next to some better known Japanese classics of the genre such as The Ring and Pulse so I wasn’t entirely out of my mind to assume that this film was going to follow in a similar vein, which I thought would be perfect to help diversify my 31 Days of Horror countdown to Halloween. What I got this evening, very much to my surprise, is what I could best describe as ‘artsy horror’, which despite not being what I had in mind is fine by me and, in any case, I am relatively sure that this site has already been condemned as ‘artsy’ anyway.

A Snake of June can not be directly compared to any film I can think of and thus can hold the proud rare title of being truly original. I suppose the easiest way to describe my experience in this film is that it is what Hostel would have looked like if it had been a good movie, which is a rather funny comparison considering that A Snake of June has literally no more blood than a nose bleed in the entire film. Director Shynia Tsukamoto executes to almost perfection the extremely difficult task of making sexuality uncomfortable without going to extremes by the way of Salo; rather, he is able to take us on a journey into a nightmare –like fantasy which will make you squirm in your seat at times.

In short, Rinko and Shigehiko are a seemingly happily married couple save for their sexuality, which will be brought into question upon the arrival of a stranger who interrupts their lives via a telephone he mails to Rinko. If you are thinking Eyes Wide Shut by this point, you aren’t off track, but be careful to rent this film if you think you are going to fall on an erotic descent into people’s dark and sexy fantasies because where Kubrick’s masterpiece can be seen as an exposé of sexuality to the backdrop of a fairly realistic New York City, Tsukamoto’s A Snake of June chooses a much darker tone mixing surrealism with sexuality.

The background to this film is one of its many qualities, the entire film is set to the back drop of a mysterious and never identified Japanese city where it never seems to stop raining and the entire population exists in an almost dream-like state. Couple this heavy atmosphere with the choice to film the entire movie in a monochrome blue and you have the stuff bad dreams are made of. Some of the set pieces are also astoundingly impressive, where most of the horrific sadism takes place- terrible to look at but only because you can feel your ego and superego tearing at your brain in a battle for how to react creating a discomfort which is difficult to explain. I find this point particularly interesting because the movie is, of course, rated R; but according to the MPAA this is only because of some nudity and ‘violence’ to which I can only reply ‘what violence?’ This film is as calm as a kitty cat and yet showing so little has caused us to feel so much that it seems we can only define it as ‘violence’.

This is the exact reason why Tsukamoto deserves so much praise here: cinema is a visual media, designed to show you things and if in traditional horror the ultimate compliment is to make you turn away in fear or disgust, I am not sure what kind of film you are trying to make because accomplishing that goal seems relatively simple. What Tsukamoto does so well is make us feel the conflict of wanting to turn away but feeling somehow unable to do so.

A Snake In June is also pleasing in a number of other ways: the character development is spot on and the villain has a perfectly reasonable logic which ultimately makes you sympathize with him if not flat out feel kind of bad for him at the end, blurring the almost always crystal clear line of good and evil in a film of this genre, and the ending has a surprisingly touching conclusion which is redeeming though at the same time wonderfully open to interpretation.

The acting is air tight, the music works for the little bit that it is there and, on a final note, sound effects get little credit these days but it should be said that they keep the atmosphere where it should be in this film and if you are into those sort of things, this is a great example of a film that uses the ‘little details’ to accomplish its desired effect.

I originally was going to say that A Snake of June was a good film though perhaps not exactly a Halloween film but upon further reflection, if Halloween is supposed to be somewhat about dabbling in the dark side, with things that go ‘bump’ in the night, and coming face to face with our fears, I don’t see why this movie couldn’t qualify. When I think of my worst dreams from a bad day in hell, I remember them in Tsukamotovision.

Either way, A Snake In June is a solid film and should not be missed.

Paris

The movie Paris teaches us an important lesson in the life of the everyday Frenchman: contrary to what we might think from afar, it is perfectly reasonable to live in an apartment large enough to house you, your sister and her children all comfortably on the top floor of the building with a balcony and a beautiful view of downtown Paris in which you live all without working and in fact being quite ill. As if you needed to be told, I have friends living in Paris who would be happy to confirm that this is complete nonsense and thus Paris has broken a cardinal rule of realism in my book, that of respecting reality when attempting to be ‘realistic’. Seriously, go watch the trailer and check out the view from this guy’s apartment, I’ll wait… … you see! Tell me that you can take that seriously. Paris is by no means the first film to be so absurd with the treatment of living conditions, the good Lord knows Woody Allen seems convinced that everyone can afford to live in New York regardless of what job they have (see Anything Else if you don’t believe me) and Paris certainly won’t be the last film to do so in something that might be defined at the Friends syndrome.

Seeing as the central character of Paris is guilty of this crime against realism I was already predisposed to being disappointed with a film that proclaimed to be the film about the ‘city of a thousand tales’ and I was prepared for the entire movie to annoy me with little illogical inconsistencies and they are indeed abound, though to what extent this will annoy you depends on what kind of person you are. Now I can see the appeal of this kind of story telling, especially if one likes to romanticize far off cities of Europe and fantasize what it would be like to live in one and perhaps in this way the film works- after all, there is nothing wrong with a slightly embellished coup de vie including tales of love and friendship as a sort of delicious icing over the already tantalizing cake of romantic France. If, however you have ever been to the city or know anything about its culture, it is much more likely that you will find the film to be little more than another exercise in the French attempt to solidify the exclusively Parisian belief that Paris is indeed the center of the entire universe.

It isn’t so much that I didn’t like the film as much as it is that it simply bored me; the dialogue is forgettable, the attempt to underline ‘life in Paris’ as some kind of social studies project is predictable and uninteresting and the characters are bland, barely cracking the second dimension which I suppose is a compliment because I am talking about the ones I liked. Every time Mélanie Laurent is on screen I want to shove popcorn into my eyes and ears to ensure a total blackout of sight and sound lest I be forced to ask myself why a university professor would run about madly in love with her and yes, I am not an idiot, I get it: he is in love with the idea of being young not the girl herself but that’s not an excuse for her being the most annoying character in the film. And I take personal issue with Laurent ruining that part of the story because it was for some reason or another the only one which seemed to keep my attention and make me want to see the film to the end because I like Fabrice Luchini and I wanted to see how things would pan out for him.

For what it is worth, this is the one point which I will give to Paris and it is that it succeeds in keeping everyone’s attention exactly because it spreads out its longer-than-welcome two hours and ten minutes over a number of stories within which even I will admit there is something for everyone that can at least keep them in their seat. Ultimately, however, Paris falls short of any real praise because it is quick, forgettable and quite uninspiring with an ending that I think was supposed to be a cliffhanger leaving us to wonder what ultimately happened to our hero. Who knows? Who cares? You can play all the Coldplay tracks you want in the trailer, it still doesn’t move me.

If you want a cute and heartwarming group of stories in a semi-realistic Paris to go with your steak and chips, go rent Amélie.

31 Nights of Terror! Nightmare of Elm St.

I have to admit that I never watched any of the Nightmare on Elm St. films, in the first part of my life because my highly religious parents thought that it might have something to do with the inevitable moral corruption that ultimately befell me anyway and in my post-pubescent years I had found better things to do with my time than watch almost-made-for-TV horror. With that in mind I thought that on October first, the nearly-arbitrary date I have selected for my countdown to Halloween I would finally have a look at this so-called classic of the golden age known as 80’s style horror.

Now as I mentioned before I grew up with a fair amount of sheltering so films like this, cartoons like the Simpsons and He-Man and even boxing were forbidden in my humble upbringing and despite all of this even someone like myself knows the basic plot of Nightmare on Elms St. so you really have no excuse to claim ignorance on this one. Nevertheless let’s go through it just in case: Nancy Thompson has been having bad dreams which always involve the same strange man who is burnt to a crisp, likes Christmas sweaters and wears kitchen appliances on his hand. It turns out that her friends have all been having the same strange dream and in no particular order the mystery man begins to pick them off one by one.

There are two ways you can go about looking at the originality of this story: either by thinking about it as a self-proclaimed critic in 2009 or by trying to place one’s self in 1984 upon release- which strangely, by the way was in November, after Halloween. It is probably not an enormous stretch of the imagination to suggest that in 1984 the twist was original. Unlike other psychopaths , this one kills people in their dreams and there is no chance of defending yourself save for having someone else waking you up, and I dare go as far as to say that, at least for someone who never got into these films earlier in life, it not only worked then but it works now.

Wes Craven was a genius in his time and perhaps remains somewhat remembered because there have been so few visionaries in the genre after his time. Aside from a handful of names, who primarily come from the same period, it would appear that Hollywood fell rather quickly into the trend of sequels, prequels, homegrown remakes and remakes of imports to the nth degree. What truly makes Wes Craven stand out from the rest is the impressive fact that, aside from the fact that all of the characters look like they were dressed by a Sears catalogue from a time shamefully forgotten, the film stands up to even today’s competitors.

To that extent I was surprised at how much of this film worked for me: the lighting, the atmosphere, the music- which albeit retro at this point- has obtained a near-cult status as a semiotic switch for terror and the acting to some extent even feels real. I commend the actors of this film because to be honest I decided near the beginning that I was certain none of the actors would be any good in this film and it would be funnier to try and determine if I could see the sign of things to come in a young Johnny Depp who, of course, made his debut in this film. There wasn’t, but to my surprise, however, most of the acting worked; it wasn’t anything to write home about but it was certainly on par with the film and it carried through quite well.

Everyone felt their age, the film knew what it was and ran with it and no one tried to show the bimbo-of-the-week’s tits gratuitously plastered all over the poster, front and back of the DVD box and title screen because the film is too busy killing people.

The film has style, narration, pace, character development, coherence and every now and then I could have sword I saw the glimmer of depth off in the distance, though I appreciate that at this point what I am doing is exactly what frustrates people about us artsy people being too artsy and trying to apply art to everything just for the sake of being artsy; but shy from it or not the film feels like it was loved and that someone took time to put it together, which is more than can be said of others from the same genre.

There are some genuine scares in Nightmare on Elm St. and thought certainly they come from the old ‘scared because I want to be scared’ approach to watching cinema I ultimately liked the film though I am somewhat hesitant about the subsequent sequels. This movie is the perfect way to get in the mood for Halloween and even better when watched after dark with a bowl of popcorn and the holiday spirit of wanting to raise the dead.