Horror Movies! Vampires And Found-Footage

[philosoraptor42]

Byzantium (2012)

Recently a lot of people have been feeling a bit vampired-out. It seems like we've seen practically every single possible interpretation of the vampire mythos imagineable. Still one of the most interesting recent takes on the vampire tale was "Let The Right One In" which managed to bring the vampire tale into the modern day in a very genuine way without losing the original sinister side of the vampire.

"Byzantium" follows a similar pattern of making the vampire myth seem realistic without forgetting the vampire roots. There's a great cast here with Saoirse Ronan ("Atonement", "Hanna"), Gemma Arteton ("Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters", "The Disappearance of Alice Creed") and Caleb Landry Jones ("X-Men: First Class", "Antiviral"). There's also an appearance from Daniel Mays ("Vera Drake", "Made In Dagenham").



Saoirse Ronan and Gemma Arteton are on top form. Right from the start it feels hard to understand why these two people would be together or why, as becomes obvious in flashbacks, they should remain so unchanged (not just in appearance, but also in character and behaviour) from centuries past. It turns out that there is a rather clever explanation for this. The vampire lore here is very well thought out while also being suitably enigmatic.

Caleb Landry Jones, just like in "Antiviral", is playing a very sickly character. I was concerned initially that he might be trying and failing to put on a British accent of some sort, but as it turns out, his character's American accent is intentional.



The way the story unfolds, tying together the past and the present and examining the timelessness of the vampires' lives, is quite extraordinary. The relationship element isn't as well fleshed out as in "Let The Right One In", but it makes for a pretty interesting story all the same.

This is a fantastic urban fantasy vampire story from the director of "The Company of Wolves". Excellent casting helps to ensure that this interpretation of the vampire mythos is brilliantly realised on screen. While this is clearly following in the footsteps of earlier vampire stories, it still has a unique feel and is a must-see for fans of urban fantasy like "Night Watch" or "Let The Right One In".

A+



The Bay (2012)

This admittedly had pretty widespread poor reviews, but every now and then I'd hear something semi-positive about it and I became convinced that it must have something good about it. Apparently the science elements have been pretty thorough. However, the inescapable problem is that "The Bay" is supposed to be a found-footage horror movie and it is so horrendously booooring. It is boring as hell!

Found footage movies often have various tricks up their sleeve to make up for a lack of musical score and dramatic music. They have ways of building up mood and tension. "The Bay", however, just feels like one long series of scenes gradually revealing what is causing the catastrophe at the bay. But there's very little to actually get me interested in what is happening.



Pretty much any individual scene is great. There are some great actors here including Kristen Connolly (from "Cabin In the Woods"), Stephen Denham (from "Sound of my Voice") and Stephen Kunken (who I've never seen before, but who is brilliant as the unfortunate doctor who tries to help the victims of the catastrophe). But the film ends up looking like simply what it is: a collection of scenes haphazardly edited together. There's no real sense of narrative to the piece apart from that forced in there by uninspiring narration.



The director, Barry Levinson, is perhaps most well known for his movie "Rain Man" starring Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman. He's clearly a capable director, but this is an experiment which does not pay off for him. I wonder whether it isn't the director's reputation which has kept the Rotten Tomatoes score as high as 77%. But there is no excuse for a film this unengaging, least of all from an accomplished filmmaker who we know can do better.

E-



V/H/S/2 (2013)

I liked the first V/H/S. Sure the middle sections connecting the anthology of short films were dire, but the individual short films themselves were mostly pretty good. There was more to like than not to like and I counted that as a win.

Little did I know that this sequel would absolutely wipe the floor with it. Sure, the early reviews and the trailer both gave me reason to hope, but I always took such claims with a pinch of salt, but I must admit that V/H/S/2 is superior to the original film in pretty much every single possible respect.



There is one less short film here than last time and I suspect that is at least partly because of the length of the segment entitled "Safe Haven" by Timo Tjahjanto, who has worked on a number of small-time horror projects before, and Gareth Huw Evans, who directed the martial arts film "The Raid: Redemption". The 'Safe Haven' short film in V/H/S/2 is definitely the main attraction. It is the story of a creepy cult and when things move in a more Lovecraftian direction it just gets better and better. I wasn't a huge fan of "The Raid: Redemption" because I found the martial arts work became repetitive. Possibly more of a movie for hardcore martial arts fans who can better appreciate the fighting moves on offer, rather than for more general audiences like myself who are looking for an easily comprehensible spectacle (such as is provided by Prachya Pinkaew in movies like "Ong Bak", "Warrior King" and "Chocolate"). Still, there is no doubting Evans' skill and I'd be keen to see him work on horror projects in the future.

'Clinical trials', the first segment of V/H/S/2 is okay. It's a ghost story, but it's effective. Considering that I hate most ghost stories, take that as a compliment. The initial premise is a robotic eye, which doesn't seem that different from the video glasses segment in the last movie or, indeed, from movies like the Pang Brothers' "The Eye". However, when our protagonist specifically asks towards the beginning whether he can turn the camera off and is told emphatically "no", that's your first clue that this particular horror trope is going to be used well. Being forced to see things which shock you is a pretty primal horror trope and this story is given a short period of time to really bring that message home. It does so admirably and makes for a good start to this anthology.



The second short film, 'A Ride In The Park', turns out to be showing us a zombie's perspective. To the filmmakers who made the ultra-low budget "Colin": Take note! THIS is how you do a zombie perspective movie that doesn't bore your audience to tears, okay? Short, effective, brilliant. We start off with an ordinary guy wearing a 'Go' camera strapped to his head, we see what he sees, he gets bitten by a zombie, and from that point on we have a zombie-cam. The film is quite inventive in the scenarios it puts out first-person-perspective zombie through and this was some great intense found-footage horror as a result.

Sadly, V/H/S/2 does not leave the best til last. 'Safe Haven' is the third segment, but the final segment, 'Slumber Party Alien Abduction' , is by far the least impressive of the films here. That being said, this is still good enough to easily compete with the films from the previous 'V/H/S' movie. On the one hand, aliens keep announcing themselves with a foghorn/vuvuzuela noise and it really got on my nerves. On the other hand, we get to watch a lot of the action through a camera attached to a dog and that was a pretty fun idea. The characters in this section are annoying. Still, this is a good fun little short film and as a the runt of the litter it doesn't do too badly. If the whole of V/H/S/2 was this bland, I'd be singing a rather different tune though.



Another rather bland aspect of "V/H/S/2" is the wraparound sequences (known here as "Tape 49"). That's still an improvement on the first "V/H/S" movie since the wraparound sequences were barely watchable in the first film. The final ending is kind of satisfying. Still, V/H/S/2 is, once again, more about the short films than the central narrative tying it together.

Anthology movies are rarely absolutely perfect from start to finish, but for me this is up there with the classic "Creepshow" (though rather more genuinely horrifying).

A+