Horror Reviews! 2 "Death Note" movies, "REC 3: Genesis", and "We Are What We Are"

[philosoraptor42]

Death Note (2006)

My impetus for checking this out was hearing that Shane Black is going to be directing an American re-adaptation of the manga series. (I'm hoping that's not a re-adaptation like "Let Me In" was supposed to be. About the only changes made in "Let Me In" were making the vampire unambiguously female, introducing some suspicions about satanism, and suggesting that the male child protagonist was being groomed as a new guardian. All of these were ideas you might come up with watching the original movie, but which were pretty much entirely ruled out if you ever read the book.) However, Shane Black's plans to make a "Death Note" movie have been put on the back burner now that he's making "Iron Man 3" which is a pretty good choice since he essentially started the whole Robert Downey Jnr revival thing with his hilarious movie "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang"

As it turns out, even though "Death Note" is a film about a magical notebook which can kill anyone once their name is entered in it, a good sense of humour is a vital. The book is given to the protagonist by a "god of death" who ends up strangely becoming a figure of fun, not least because this rather creepy supernatural character is keen on apples.

We start the film getting some idea of what positive use the power to kill might be. A hostage situation being a rather cool example. The protagonist (or "anti-hero") who owns the Death Note is called Light, but his public persona is "Kira". When the intelligence agencies in Japan decide they will attempt to capture Kira, Light starts getting desperate and finds any kind of code of honour he might have had is compromised. And the stakes rise even more when a mysterious figure known only as "L" announces his intention to identify Kira.

Even though I'd rather there'd been rather more exploration of what the power of the Death Note can do, every new element introduced was really interesting and the reveal of what "L" is really like in person was a pretty awesome moment too. I felt that the plot became a little overly convoluted for the climax of the film, but there were all sorts of interesting new developments at the end. While this is clearly only the beginning of a longer story it was all very good fun. I wonder whether the actor playing Light hasn't been chosen rather more because he looks like an anime character than because of his acting talent. There's not a great deal of subtlety in his performance. But overall this is a good little film and the inventiveness makes it even better. And the icing on the cake is the great sense of fun.

B+

Death Note 2: The Last Name (2006)

All the convoluted aspects that started towards the end of the first film suddenly became pretty much the entire plot. A spanner was initially thrown in the works when a pop star who idolises Kira gets a second Death Note, but once she falls head over heels for Light, she goes from being a new source of comedy to being generally frustrating to watch. Initially she's a wild card in the pack, but when she's Light's loyal puppy dog that interesting element just disappears and the film goes back to 'business as usual'.

The biggest problem is that there's nothing terribly new to be revealed. All the creativity of the first movie is lacking here because all the elements have already been introduced. Meanwhile the mind games between Light and L just weren't interesting to me this time around. By this point, Light isn't even remotely sympathetic anymore and I just wanted him to get caught. The film seemed to rely on me caring about not just his actions, but whether he gets caught or not. I cannot help but feel that they should have made "L" the real protagonist this time around.

The worst thing about this film is the ending. There seems to be a pattern in anime and other Japanese media to spell out moral issues in overly blatant detail in spite of the moral ambiguity of the film as a whole. Heck, even the movie "13 Assassins" seemed to suffer from this. When a series of films about a book that you can use as a weapon, having people getting outraged about Light's choice to murder people at the end felt a little cheap. It felt like there were more apt responses to Light's claims that he was helping the cause of justice than those put forward. Still even as the human characters were making me groan, the god of death's contribution at the end was as great as ever. Unfortunately that was too little too late and this film was mostly a pretty joyless experience.

D-

REC 3: Genesis (2012)

I loved "REC" and now that I've had a bit more time to think about it, I think I was a little harsh on "REC 2". However, one element that made those films work so well was the atmosphere caused by the found footage style. There have been many pretenders to the throne in this genre, but no one has managed to use the style to build up atmosphere quite like the "REC" films. "REC 3" is unfortunately filmed like a normal film. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, so long as there's a new interesting direction to make up for it.

Sadly, REC 3 feels very similar to a lot of other horror comedies and doesn't really have the laughs or the creativity to justify it. There's one scene where the lead actress has a chainsaw and that really is an awesome moment, but the rest of the film doesn't really live up to it.

Interestingly, the subtitle "Genesis" isn't because this is the origin of the virus. We already heard the origin of the virus in REC 2 and that does not sound like it would work very well as comedy at all. However, apparently a character from this film is to make a re-appearance in "REC 4: Apocalypse".

This film was directed by Paco Plaza, so many believe that the real talent in the joint-projects REC and REC 2 was Jaume Balaguero who will be directing REC 4. I don't think REC 3 works very well overall. It had a lot of unmet potential, but what we actually get isn't all that bad. Hopefully REC 4 will be a lot better and when I'm doing a REC franchise marathon in later years, this will be a fairly inoffensive bridge between films 2 and 4. There are still funny bits, there are still a few interesting shots, and there are still parts which are genuinely shocking.

As a fan of the REC series myself, I am telling you right now that this is only really a film for fans of the REC series. For those of you who meet that description, give this a try, but don't get too excited. It's not bad.

C+

We Are What We Are (2010)

This had an interesting premise. A family is left in chaos when the head of the family dies. He had been "going to whores" we are told and then, before anyone in the family knows that he is dead, the younger of the two sons has already managed to get them both barred from their watch-fixing stall in the market by responding violently to a customer. With the father gone, the mother is disinclined to accept the eldest son as the new head of the family and all the while there a sense of urgency because the family needs to perform "the ritual".

In fact, this family are all cannibals. It's rather annoying though that we see very little sign that they actually eat people. We see them catch a few potential victims, but the mother keeps insisting that the victims are somehow unsuitable (so it's almost like she's choosing an appropriate person for her children to marry rather than to eat). The tone of the film often makes it seem like the family simply have bizarre customs rather than like they are vicious man-eaters.

In the end though, there's rather too much mystery. It's often unclear why events unfold the way they do, the pacing is slow, and there were points where I'd rather have had the situation explained explicitly rather than being expected to interpret what I'm shown on screen.

At the closing scene of the film the filmmakers suddenly seem to want us to be shocked by the cannibalism. However, we've been expected to treat the cannibalism as just "the way they are" for so long that expecting us to be shocked at the last minute seemed ill-timed. In the end, I wasn't really sure what the film was trying to say. This was certainly different, but it wasn't good.

D-