philosoraptor42

Once again, working from bad to less bad, counting down towards the number 1 spot.

24. Manhunt (2008)

Plot Synopsis: A group of friends on holiday end up getting kidnapped and dumped in the middle of the woods. They then find themselves being hunted for sport.
The Sweet: Initially I thought there was a lot of potential in this Norwegian horror movie. The characters have some interesting interactions and seem to get properly fleshed out. There's a boyfriend character who is irritable and rude, but his girlfriend feels that he is just misunderstood. I was particularly interested to see how that would play out, since it seemed like he would either prove himself better than he'd been given credit for or would end up betraying the lot of them in some way. The four characters pick up a hitchhiker who seems a little desperate and things seemed to be getting interesting. Unfortunately this is where the whole film goes downhill.
The Sour: Of our initial five characters, two are instantly killed off. That's before the "manhunt" part of the film even gets started. That leaves us with just three of the characters getting dumped in the middle of the woods. So what, eh? Still plenty you can do to develop three characters. Yeah, but they don't do that...
Our three remaining protagonists get split up pretty quickly and very little of the rest of the film pays any attention to the character-building which made the film seem so promising at the start. The main source of tension is a few scenes where the bad guy runs a knife along the skin of his victims and it is admittedly pretty unnerving. However, it goes on forever and when the exact same trick is used later on it gets quite dull. Also there's a lot of inconsistency in the characters, with hysterical screaming one minute and careful stealth the next. Also with careful use of resources in one scene and then bizarrely running off completely leaving all potential weapons behind the next.
This is a film which thinks that pure shocks and gore is enough to make an interesting horror film. They are wrong. Character building is not something you do at the beginning of a horror film to waste time. It should carry on through the rest of the film and early interactions should foreshadow later developments. If they'd bothered to do that, this could potentially have been a good movie.

E+

23. The Haunting (1963)

Plot Synopsis: A group of people are expected to stay the night in a haunted house to check the supposed supernatural phenomena. One woman is provided with an invitation because of an experience she had with the supernatural when she was younger, but her interest is far from academic. She desperately needs a new life and this is a way to run away from her old one...
The Sweet: The beginning apes Hitchcock, which I suppose is pretty cool. Perhaps there could have been rather less voiceover and a bit more actual stuff happening on screen, but if you are going to steal - steal from the best (as they say). The characters are distinctive and some of the dialogue is quite cool. The way the fear of a banging behind a door is conveyed is done really well.
The Sour: Unfortunately I've got problems with pretty much everything I just mentioned. Sure, the characters are distinctive, but the female protagonist is so wet! I think we are supposed to join her in neurotically panicking, but I just wanted her to grow the hell up. Meanwhile the guy running the experiment keeps on waxing lyrical about what the supernatural is like in a way that kind of got on my nerves. Sure, I can accept characters believing things that I don't, but when the movie is essentially expecting me to sit through a lecture on the medical benefits of snake oil, I find myself getting a little resentful. This condescending figure going into details about how we ought to think of the supernatural didn't impress me, to say the least. Also, the banging on the door, while great the first time around, is just done to death. While the characters are terrified of something bursting through the door, I wanted to reach into the screen and pull the blasted door wide open. Perhaps the 'expert' who is so keen to study the supernatural could have the guts to open the door and take a closer look? Please?

Sorry, this is supposed to be a classic ghost movie? I never really felt much of an atmosphere. Thoroughly unimpressed.

E+

22. The Orphanage (2007)

Plot Synopsis: A woman who grew up in an orphanage decides to return to that orphanage (now disused) in order to convert it into a care home for disabled children. Her husband and adopted son are getting used to the place. Her son appears to be developing large numbers of imaginary friends.
The Sweet: This is well filmed and well acted. There's no doubt about that. There are also some fairly clever scenes which build up teension. Things develop in a fairly logical fashion. I definitely felt attached to the characters.
The Sour: Feeling attached to the characters so much, it's perhaps rather sad that I ended up feeling disappointed overall with this movie. Finally I think this is a ghost movie that I can point to in regards to my problems with ghost stories in general. I was okay with "A Nightmare On Elm Street" having a villain that can seemingly do anything he wants, though technically that's not a ghost story. I was okay with "Poltergeist" where the ghost(s) seemed to have pretty extraordinary powers. I was even okay with "The Innkeepers" with what was essentially a haunted house story. Yet "The Orphanage" really hit all my anti-ghost-story buttons.

Okay first of all, big issue. Why do you get superpowers when you die? Ghost stories often seem to suggest that death is a bad thing and that ghosts are in an unfortunate tormented situation, but often it seems like dying was the best thing that happened to the ghost. They get to live forever with superpowers. Pretty cool, eh? No surprise here: the "imaginary friends" are essentially ghosts. And *groan* they have 'unfinished business' (a term I first remember being used liberally in the movie of "Casper"). Eventually there's some revelation which explains what has happened to the ghosts and how their issues can be resolved somehow (sort of) and I'm sorry but *bleurrrgh*. I just cannot feel sorry for the plight of people who are dead. I'm worried about the living and ghost stories often seem oddly cold to real life issues. As much as the ending to this movie might tie up loose ends, it left me entirely cold. And endings of movies are important to me, so my score for this film is dragged violently down by this issue.

D-

21. Ghost Ship (2002)

Plot Synopsis: A salvage team are given a tip about a massive ship abandoned in the middle of the ocean. But DUN DUN DUN!!!! The ship is full of GHOSTS! *gasp!*
The Sweet: The really good bit in this film is basically the first scene. It's utterly ridiculous but in a fabulously entertaining way. We see in the foreground that someone is tampering with some wires, while meanwhile tons of people are on deck dancing to music. Something snaps and the wire goes buzzing across the deck slicing every passenger in half. We have that silly oh-I-didn't-realise-I'd-been-sliced-in-h

alf effect once again and then everyone slides in to pieces. Limbs are still flailing and one passenger even seems to be trying to reorganise their now-disconnected upper and lower torso. Of course, this whole scene is utterly ludicrous. If you have your spine severed, that kind of damage to the nervous system (not to mention the shock and pain) will inevitably knock you out. Still if the film could have remained entertainingly ludicrous I'd probably have liked the film rather more.

The Sour: Anyway Quinn from Dexter turns up to ask Nurse Hathaway from ER, plus Gabriel Byrne, Karl Urban, Isaiah Washington and some other guy who I don't recognise at all, if they are interested in salvaging this massive ship and making a huge fortune. When they get there, ghostly stuff starts and things don't look right. We have ghosts with superpowers again. At one point we hear that the ghosts want the ship fixed, but these are the same ghosts that can fill up an empty swimming pool with blood and can make a gas cannister open by itself. With that kind of ability, why don't they just fix the ship themselves. After all, these aren't confused mixed up spirits. They are practically Caspar style people-who-happen-to-be-ghosts. They talk quite candidly with the salvage crew at times and are able to explain precisely the situation they are in. If you want a "haunted ship" movie, I would personally suggest you try out "Triangle" instead. Much more fun.

D-

20. Saw II (2005)

Plot Synopsis: A detective is named in one of serial killer Jigsaw's clues and despite his own reluctance, he ends up being pulled into one of Jigsaw's games. Meanwhile a group of people in a random disused building are waking up. In the room is a recorder and when they play the message it informs them that they have been breathing in a deadly nerve agent. However, if they play the game they can earn themselves an antidote. (Yes Jigsaw IS a killer. In both the first two movies you get someone saying that he's not, but that's nonsense. If you leave a bomb somewhere then someone could disarm it, but if it goes off and kills people then you are guilty of murder. Similarly if you strap a device to someone's head and it crushes their skull you are a murderer. It doesn't matter if there was a key hidden somewhere in the room, it's still murder. Even if they find the key and remove the device it's still "attempted murder".)
The Sweet: The traps are sometimes quite inventive. The overall game is a little more consistent this time around. Tobin Bell gives a great performance as Jigsaw.
The Sour: Tobin Bell is pretty much the ONLY person who gives a good performance here, though to be fair the other actors don't have much to work with. The characters are fairly bland and any more extreme character traits (like the one brash violent guy whose response to everything is to panic and start lashing out and break things) are never really given much depth. One of the people caught in Jigsaw's trap this time is the girl who beat his test in the previous movie. She openly announces that she was tested by Jigsaw before (and that it got her off drugs - I mean seriously wtf is it with these writers?) and yet nobody seems inclined to grill her on this. The youngest captive asks her some questions and gets some short cagey answers, but I cannot help remembering the movie "Exam". In "Exam" one of the applicants is believed to be a mole entered into the exam room to monitor them or influence them in some way and that applicant ends up being savagely interrogated. Yet here we have a character who admits previous knowledge of the mastermind behind this twisted kidnapping and whose first line in the film seems to be to criticise someone for calling Jigsaw a serial killer, yet no one thinks she's worth interrogating at all? There's not really an interesting plot here, but do you know what the real problem with this film is? Unlike in the first film (which I felt was at least entertainingly cheesy and stupid) this one does not have Danny Glover. I'm afraid that's a deal-breaker...

D-

19. Critters 4 (1992)

Plot Synopsis: Charlie wakes up in a pod with the last remaining Critter. He discovers that after accidentally becoming sealed in the pod it is now the distant future.
The Sweet: Ugg returns and there's nearly some interesting expansion of the relationship between Ugg and Charlie. Nearly...
The Sour: We have an over-long set-up where under-used awesome actress Angela Bassett randomly gets naked. Brad Dourif is remarkably boring in his role here. The eventual awakening of Charlie is marks an upturn in proceedings, but in the end that's not enough to make this a good movie. The Critters eventually disappear into a lab where it looks like all hell is about to break loose, but after that the Critters are very nearly forgotten about for the rest of the film. This is such a sad way for the Critters franchise to end. It tries to put a dark spin on the happy ending of Critters 2, but it's just so poorly handled that it just feels like a cheat. Admittedly this film is a big improvement on Critters 3 and there are some pretty fun moments, but overall the plot just goes nowhere and any attempts to make a good movie here are recognisably compromised - most likely by budget limitations.
D+

18. Zombie Holocaust (1980)

Plot Synopsis: A group of scientists investigate the source of some recent cannibal murders by going to a set of random islands. Only when they get there most of them get eaten by cannibals! (Who'd've thunk it, eh?)
The Sweet: To be honest, I was hoping for zombies. There are some, but they don't really play a big part in the film. However, the cannibals are admittedly rather good. The scenes with the cannibals are gory and horrible (though extremely low budget), but they succeeded in shocking me which was clearly the intention. There's also a rather neat creepy scene involving surgery (dammit I've already said too much). The film is pretty silly, but it's actually pretty well paced considering how simple the plot is and I never got too bored.

The Sour: On the subject of the aforementioned surgery scene. The surgeon explains each stage of the operation as he goes through it, but normally this is done either for a record of the surgery session or to help ensure that those assisting the surgery know what stage they have reached. This guy is making no kind of recording of the surgery and is performing the procedure entirely alone. Also, and I feel this is important, YOU CANNOT REMOVE VOCAL CHORDS WITH TWEESERS!

It feels like there's an odd sort of racism implicit in the film, with the savage asians from the island and the local asians who accompany the team inevitably always being the first ones to die. Also, typical of a video nasty, the main female blonde character seems to regularly get naked so the camera can linger on her. I guess you've got to expect stuff like that from this sort of movie.

I don't feel bad for having watching Zombie Holocaust and it could certainly have been a lot worse. In a cheesy silly way it was kind of fun. I certainly don't recommend it, but if you feel like checking out an entirely stupid video nasty about cannibals this probably isn't the worst choice.

D+
17. I Spit On Your Grave (1978) *This review is potentially triggering. Trigger warning.*

Plot synopsis: A writer goes to the country to get some peace and quiet away from the hustle and bustle of the city. However, local thugs start showing an interest and finds herself being sexually assaulted. However, when she survives the ordeal she has plans of her own.
The Sweet: Well to be quite frank, after "Last House On The Left" this felt like a masterpiece. The acting isn't any better (though its hardly any worse), but there are definite moments of tension and atmosphere. After the first assault on the woman (because yes, she's sexually assaulted more than once) she runs into the trees only eventually to come across one of the members of the same group of thugs. What is he doing? He's calmly playing the harmonica while sitting on a rock. There's a moment of calm in the film here where we just know that things are about to get really bad at any moment and we are just forced to wait. This is REAL horror.
The second kill in the movie (since I've already noted that the protagonist does not die, you can tell this comes later) is kind of haunting. Unfortunately the final kills somewhat pale in their shock value by comparison.
As much as the prospect of a movie which features regular sexual assault sounds kind of horrible (and absolutely, if you are triggered by this content steer well away), the camera is always directed straight at the assailants (generally from the victim's point of view) and the camera angles on the victim tend to avoid showing off her body during these particular scenes. There's no suggestion that the filmmakers are getting off on the violence they display and the horrifying nature of these crimes is made very clear.
The Sour: The quality of the film footage is pretty horrific in places. There are many parts of the film where the sound is muffled and dialogue can often be inaudible. During an early scene showing the various thugs acting like ordinary (albeit somewhat obnoxious people) sitting by the side of the lake chatting I have very little idea about most of what they discuss. The picture quality is pretty poor for a great deal of the film too.
Another issue is that some of the revenge killings involve sex, which seems particularly strange after the earlier sexual assaults on the protagonist. While the filmmakers didn't show off the protagonist's body too much during the sexual assaults, they seem to be making up for lost time in this latter half and it kind of undermines any attempts to claim that this film represents any kind of "female liberation". This is, when it comes down to it, a rather twisted exploitation flick - whatever the best intentions of the male director might have been. (Apparently the director was inspired to make this after witnessing the horrific treatment received by a rape victim at the hands of the police.)
I'd also note that the version of this I watched was definitely a cut version. I heard in some discussions that a bottle in one of the scenes ends up getting used in the sexual assault and I am very thankful that my version missed out that bit. I think this film has gained more attention than it might have otherwise by being amongst those films banned as a "video nasty" particularly when the film is clearly making some efforts to highlight the horror of rape. However I don't think anyone really wants to see an entirely uncut version of this.

D+