Trying to put my finger on quite why I didn’t has increased my confusion. Taking its component parts in isolation, I should at least conclude that it was average. Plot = interesting enough. Cast = Adequate for the task. Script = Can’t really complain. Direction = Nothing stands out as atrociously bad. It’s only when these are gelled together than the flaws emerge, and I think they arise out of Oren Peli’s decision to use the found footage format.

I realise that criticising a horror film for implausibility is akin to criticising an apple for not being an orange, but the found footage genre demands an added level of believability.   By casting the viewer as a direct participant in the story and turning the camera into their eyes, we rightly subject such films to a heightened level of scrutiny. You can forgive flights of fancy when you’re cast in the traditional viewer role of passively watching a story unfold on screen. There the space belongs to the cast and crew, and they can treat it how they like in telling their tale. When you’re brought into the action in the way that found footage films do, you can rightly ask “am I supposed to believe this?”

Paranormal Activity falls down in being implausible within its own terms of reference. We are expected to believe that our protagonists are both terrified but prepared to stay in their house. We’ve all cried out in frustration that victims in horror films never think to call the police when Michael Myers is clearly standing outside or just moved instead of calling in Father Damien Karras. In Paranormal Activity, we’re presented with a young, affluent couple who are prepared to suffer mental and physical harm instead of simply moving. As such, the entire endeavour lacks that credibility that is so fundamental to found footage films.

So we are left with a series of disjointed set-pieces revolving around the recordings taken of the couple as they are in bed waiting for the next attack, without the buttress of a credible conceptual framework. The interventions of a couple of demonologists come across as rather mocking to the audience as a result of this, like those video clips you often saw on old PC games when you progressed to a new level. Absent is any incremental ratcheting up of terror and subtle revelation of the hopelessness of the situation of the type that rightly distinguished Blair Witch. Contrast the scene where Heather breaks down in the tent on realising what was happening and what was likely to happen, to Micah’s synthetic anger at the demon in his house and you’ll realise how far short Paranormal Activity falls in properly utilising the found footage technique.

It never really recovers from those failings, and is ultimately constricted by a format it does not use but cannot discard. It might have been an entertaining enough offering had it done one or the other, but instead it plummets between two stools. The cast, particularly Micah Sloat, fall into a similar trap, having insufficient gravitas to carry the weak format but presenting as too polished to come across as credibly amateur. We are thus forced to endure what becomes a rather sedentary exercise in going through the motions accompanied by a rather unlikeable couple awaiting the inevitable. The resorting to use of a Ouija board midway through suggests that even the crew were getting bored, and has all of the feel of a game of horror film ‘join the dots’.

These flaws may have been ironed out in the sequel, but until then you’re better off looking to Rec if you’re after a decent heir to Blair Witch. Perhaps the nicest thing I can say is that it wasn’t the worst film we saw that night.

When The Eye, the second film jointly directed by Hong Kong’s Pang Brothers, emerged in 2002, it was released into a very different climate to their 1999 debut, Bangkok Dangerous; US studios were hungry for Asian properties that would play well in the West, and to some degree the Pangs seem happy to meet this demand. Essentially, the main problem with The Eye is the nagging sense that it’s continually got one eye (ho ho) on the international market, and as a result the rather promising storyline feels unnecessarily reined in and hampered by the fairly conventional execution.

The plot comes on like an extended episode of Tales of the Unexpected, telling the story of a young violinist who, blinded since childhood, is given an transplant to rescue her sight only to be plagued by terrifying visions courtesy of the mysterious donor. It’s not an unfamiliar setup, but it has the tantalising potential to deliver some truly perspective-bending, disturbing visual madness; sadly the Pangs opt to deliver their scares through a series of wholly conventional, Westernised jumps and crashing noises rather than delving too deeply into Mun’s relative isolation and inner world. It seems fairly clear from the outset to the audience what’s going on here, and so the mystery becomes more focused on Mun and Dr Wah’s investigations into the donor; but sadly this thread falls flat by offering very little in the way of intrigue. The duo’s investigations manage to hit the right track straight off the bat, and from then on it’s a very easy and unchallenging ride to the resolution. The lack of twists or tonal modulation is wholly surprising, and what should be set-piece visual moments – the donor’s world bleeding in and out of Mun’s – are handled without flair, like a poor man’s David Lynch.

That’s not to say that there’s nothing to enjoy here. The Eye is unoriginal, but it’s a slick enough piece of work, with a well-paced story and a sympathetic treatment of its characters by both the Pangs and the cast. Angelica Lee acquits herself fairly well as Mun, and even though Dr Wah comes across as being slightly too credulous for a member of the medical profession, Laurence Chou makes him likeable enough. The film also successfully pulls off an audacious twist an hour through which is beautifully trailed and genuinely had me kicking myself for not getting there sooner. However, much of the disappointment of the film stems from the climax. The Pangs attempt a Ringu-style double ending, which falls flat for two reasons; primarily, the supposed ‘first’ resolution is so low-key as to barely register, while the coda promises spectacle but actually ends up limp and uncinematic. Hideo Nakata’s film succeeded by following a nerve-shredding climax with a moment that managed to top it for nail-biting innovation, but in following a tedious resolve with a botched Hollywood-style blow-out, the Pangs ensure their film end on more of a whimper than a bang.

All of which is not to say I didn’t find The Eye enjoyable enough; it’s undemanding fare that passes 100 minutes pleasantly enough, and as I said earlier, it does have that twist at the sixty minute mark. Unfortunately, it could – and should – have been much more than that. The Pangs clearly have an eye for a story and an undeniable ability behind the lens; if they had let themselves off the leash a little and delved more into the nightmare world they describe this could have been a film to rank alongside the wave of Asian horrors that broke a couple of years earlier. Ultimately, The Eye isn’t nearly disturbing nor – frankly – gory enough to either serve the story it wants to tell nor to differentiate itself from the NC-17 rated mush that’s marked Hollywood’s recent output. Ironically, The Eye is an Asian horror that tries too hard to satisfy foreign notions of what Asian horror is. Given that the film has been re-made in both India and the US, the Pangs have played the market and won, but at the cost of the x-factor that had American execs looking East in the first place.

Largely based on Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, The Innocents veers between taut, psychological thriller and ghost story with such seamless accomplishment that it’s easy to see why the distributors were baffled as to how to bracket it. In the red corner, we have all of the hallmarks of the Poe-esque ghost story: the Gothic mansion, whose beauty and tranquillity is forever stained with family tragedy and shame. Into this is added the external innocent, in our case Deborah Kerr’s Miss Giddens, a Governess who has been sent to take charge of two orphans kept at a distance by their benefactor uncle. At first enchanted with her new life, Miss Giddens rapidly comes to discover that this is a corrupted Eden; stifling under the oppression of a collective and hidden shame, and, perhaps, something supernatural to boot.

If this was as far as it went, The Innocents would still be hailed as a ghost story of stunning execution. Clayton was blessed with seeming to catch a few of his cast and crew at the peak of their game, and cinematographer Freddie Francis was undoubtedly one of them. Much has been written about his pioneering use of hazing and blurring in the scenes involving the apparitions. Rightly so, as without it the latent ambiguity of Miss Giddens experiences would be lost. However, that one aspect of his work has to be set in the context of his genius for giving the entire film an ethereal aura, which is at one and the same time intoxicating and deeply unsettling. He was undoubtedly assisted in this by the wonderfully tense screenplay of, among other, Truman Capote and Sir John Mortimer (how often do you get to write that?). It rockets along, and in avoiding the pacing pitfall suffered by most period piece ghost stories gives The Innocents a very modern feel. By lulling the viewer into this dreamlike state, Clayton has us perfectly positioned to share Miss Giddens’ journey with her.

Which leads us into blue corner; the psychological dissection of our intriguing protagonists. Cinema studies of the human conditions work best when they have a cast decent enough to carry them off. Here, Clayton was again fortunate in drawing a once-in-a-career performance out of Kerr. She wrings out the hidden frustrations, anxieties and desperations of Giddens with an increasingly startling and unsettling intensity, perfectly balancing her position as both victim and tormentor. It’s a testament to his performance that the ten-year old Martin Stephens (he of Village of the Damned fame) provides a perfect counter-foil to an actress at the top of her game. The two of them dominate the screen as they seek to define and determine the nature of their relationship, and through that the truth behind what is happening at Bly House. Descending from sweet playfulness through to mutual (and even paedophilic?) dependency, we’re left with the wonderful frustration of asking whose story has this been all along: his or hers?

Whether through design or default, The Innocents will always provoke debate between those who see it as a ghost story and others who view it as a character study. It doesn’t matter one way or the other; Clayton provides a textbook example of how to do both.

How does Silent Hill fit into this spectrum? I was hindered from the off by the fact that I am completely unfamiliar with the original games, though a cursory trawl through Wikipedia tells me that they’re onto their fifth instalment so must be doing something right. In some ways this could have been an advantage as I was able to judge the film squarely on its own merits rather than constantly spotting the differences between it and the games that spawned it.

This worked out fine to begin with, as the film gently builds in to a naturally engaging plot despite the best efforts of its uniformly average dialogue to induce collective insomnia. Rose’s interactions with her daughter quickly become overly sincere to the point of irritation. It’s not that you want Sharon to be gobbled up by the demons but you ask yourself if you’d really care if she was. By the time we get to the ‘burn the witch!’ towards the finale the tedium is irreversibly established.

This is where the poor job of translating the plot from a computer game to the big screen really shines through. Not enough is made of the fact that Silent Hill periodically reverts into Hell on earth until the final 15 minutes, which probably ties in with how the adventure develops on the game. That’s fine where the gamer has hours worth of interaction with which to frame their experience but it doesn’t hold together in a film of this length. What results is an effort that feels like a botched rush job and an overly drawn out melodrama at the same time. The hesitant feel of the tale also has the original game written all over it. There is some attempt to weave a narrative thread through it by having Sean Bean as an external character who puts the pieces into place but this never really takes off and he seems to be completely forgotten for lengthy periods (which is just as well given his awful American accent). This does little to help the fact that absolutely NOTHING happens for most of the film. There is minimal plot development, almost no engagement with any of the characters and a complete lack of momentum which completely undercuts the attempt at a dramatic finale.

It’s a real shame because the storyline is one that should work on film. The reversion scenes are the undoubted highlights of the film, watching as an already sinister town is unexpectedly punctuated by air-raid sirens and suddenly and inexplicably turns into Hell. You come to look forward to the fleeting moments of engagement they bring in punctuating the vapid and seemingly interminable hunt for Sharon. Even they lose some of their magic when the answers are finally revealed, again in an astonishingly inept way which eradicates what little suspense there is remaining. The mixed morality tale is left far too late in the day to develop any roots and ends up looking like a bad adaptation of The Ring.

With a little bit more thought Silent Hill might have finally broken the mould of poor computer game-to-film adaptations but instead it coasts through expecting its core fans to be content with seeing the characters and places they are familiar with being presented in real life action. To the uninitiated it ends up feeling like a stunted horror version of Groundhog Day, only with none of its positive qualities.

]]> http://www.blacklagoon.info/movies/monsters/silent-hill-2006/feed/ 0 http://www.blacklagoon.info/movies/ghosts/the-pit-and-the-pendulum/ http://www.blacklagoon.info/movies/ghosts/the-pit-and-the-pendulum/#comments Wed, 04 Jan 2006 14:11:37 +0000 Carl http://www.blacklagoon.info/?p=89 It’s always instructive to watch a few movies by the same director in quick succession, so after the joy that is the Masque of the Red Death I was very much looking forward to moving backwards in Roger Corman’s Edgar Allen Poe series to his second offering, Pit and the Pendulum. You don’t watch any of the films in the cycle if you’re looking for a true to the text adaptation of Poe’s stories, and Pit is no different in this respect. In Masque, Corman departed from the story only in order to enhance the movie experience (especially with the brilliant ‘brothers of death’ scenes) to great success. In comparison here he seems almost bored with the story, picking out the bits that seem to fit together well and leaving the viewer to fill in the gaps.

The problem is that they never do seem to fit together. Corman’s usually adept pacing seems to have deserted him here, with one or two early scenes expected to propel the movie through what seems an interminable succession of pointless interactions until we get to the supposed climax. The weakness of the script becomes apparent in these scenes. Any suspense remaining from Poe’s tale is allowed to evaporate before the eye and Richard Matheson, Corman’s screenwriter, puts nothing in their place to ratchet up the tension. The characters seem listless and bored, going through the motions and doing little else. The effect at times conveys the impression of watching a bad school pantomime, albeit one played out on the sumptuous sets that Corman always seemed to muster for his Poe movies.

This is especially criminal when he had a talent like Vincent Price to play with. Sadly, even he has nothing to chew on, and his sporadic appearances don’t bring the usual vitality and zest that you expect from Price. He’s at his best during the flashbacks (another irritant, necessary but badly done) and in the final scenes, moments which are depressingly fleeting. Don’t get me wrong, his individual performance is excellent, brilliantly portraying Nicholas Medina’s descent into insanity. The problem is that he gets no support whatsoever from the rest of the cast so his character seems to dangle in the breeze with nothing much to do. John Kerr is particularly atrocious as Francis Bernard, acting as a talent vacuum in every scene. Though most of the characters are pretty boring but not much else, he brings a special talent to making his both worthless and infuriating. By the end you’ll praying that Price drops the ‘pendulum’ before it’s too late.

There’s something especially disheartening about sticking with an unrewarding film right until the end on the promise that the climax will make it all worth the pain. Again, this is sadly not to be. Due to the crass pacing mentioned above, the end, when it comes, is a hurried affair and really isn’t worth waiting for. In essence, Corman tries to present a revenge story with a twist but succeeds in making us indifferent to the initial grievance, bores us into forgetting who’s doing the deceiving and finally screws up the grand finale.

I can’t hide the fact that I was very disappointed with this film. It’s a lazy, empty effort which is disgraceful coming from someone with the talent of Roger Corman. The script is below-par, he brings nothing new to the story whilst stripping it of its inherent merit and he does nothing worthwhile with Price. Still, everyone has their off-days and the one consolation is that he obviously sat down and actually thought about his later offerings rather than coasting along on making movies-by-numbers.

Unlike Halloween, where the terror is styled as unfathomable and unrelenting, The Fog is presented as a good, old-fashioned ghost story (literally, with a great little camp-fire intro. by Mr. Malten, a sea-dog who could be straight from the ship of the Sea Captain in The Simpsons). This works well though as Carpenter has the good sense to ground his simple tale in a very simple setting. His talent for straining the maximum effect out of his environment is no less obvious here than it was in Halloween, with Antonio Bay and its environs (most especially the lighthouse) appearing instantly as troubled and haunting places, visually stunning yet oppressively confining (think The Wicker Man and you’ll not be far wrong). Once the fog itself descends this fear becomes even more heightened, and though each of the main characters has a car and could thus flee (a rarity in horrors) you just know that the town itself holds them captive as much as the curse which precipitates its downfall.

Perhaps because the visuals and atmospherics are so attuned Carpenter spends less time on character development, which does hold the film back a little. Fans of Halloween will be happy to see several of its stars retained here, with Charles Cyphers and Janet Leigh to pick a couple (Trivia buffs might also note that Tom Atkins – star of Halloween III – is also included). It’s very surprising that more use wasn’t made of Jamie Lee Curtis considering what she achieved for Carpenter in Halloween but as the film suffers from rather two-dimensional characters as a whole then at least she’s not singled out for it.

This doesn’t hold the film back though as the inherent momentum of the plot, coupled with Carpenter’s eye for where a shadow should be placed to derive maximum effect, are enough to keep the viewer engaged. It’s also nice to see the action kick-off almost immediately, with the leper sailors making no attempt to hide in the shadows or subtly stalk their prey (I love the fact that they have the good manners to knock before smashing down the door and killing people). Again, this works admirably when done by Carpenter and it’s quite refreshing after the unbearable twists and turns that Michael Myers takes before lancing his foes. Here it’s not quite Shock Waves but it’s not a million miles off either. I’ve not seen the remake yet and, as a rule, I’m not one to judge before I watch a film. Having said that the original is often overlooked by movie goers because of the success of Halloween, so I’d urge everyone to watch this before rushing out to the cinema to see the new version (even if you are only going to watch the rather attractive blonde from Lost) Stick with this and you even get an excellent early use of the now overutilised stop-start ending. What more could you want from a film?

When you get behind the hype though you’re left with a film of stunning simplicity and astonishing impact. Milking every last drop of potential out of the art of amateur film-making Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez use their meagre resources with a finesse and ease that puts some of recent efforts of the big studios to shame. They aren’t many people around who don’t know the basic story of Blair Witch; a group of friends head out into the woods to investigate a local myth, expedition goes wrong, noises at night etc. The film looks cheap and that’s the secret of its success. By making us think that we’re watching the recovered tapes of the lost expedition Myrick and Sanchez completely erode the barrier between the film and the viewer. By the end of the tale we’re completely taken into the world of Heather, Josh and Michael.

Much of the parodying of Blair Witch comes from the fact that, at times, the acting appears to be melodramatic (think of the scene where Heather is crying into the torch and again how many times you’ve seen it sent up); this misses the point though, and the fact that we view the ‘actors’ as real people adds a real sincerity to their plight. It’s impossible not to recognise in their spiral from cheerful optimism through to an elemental terror something very raw and very human. That our only contact with them is through a shaky camcorder adds to this sense of intimacy and again adds an all too real dimension to their doomed journey. Myrick and Sanchez’s decision to base their story entirely on the ‘amateur footage’ recovered from the woods of Burkittsville also allows them to be quite daring in their direction and pacing, with the need to slot every scene nicely after the preceding one dispensed with. This works very well, with short, snappy shots which at first seem innocuous belaying a hidden depth that dawns on the viewer later in the movie. Blair Witch, more than any other film, proves the effectiveness of the technique and it was to be hoped that more directors would have taken up the challenge of incorporating it into their movies, especially horrors.

It also means that the end, when it inevitably comes, is still something of a shock when viewed for the first time. I cannot speak highly enough of The Blair Witch Project. It’s the kind of movie that you’ll get most from the first time you watch it, lacking the depth and complexity to sustain long-term viewing. This is not to belittle the movie in any way, for in saying that it is one of the finest ‘shocker’ movies out there. It’s wonderfully refreshing when talented filmmakers turn out a product on their own backs which – however temporarily – completely crowds out other efforts and deservedly marks itself out as a unique experience.

I can only assume that the Grudge hype is born more out of the fact that it’s a spooky Japanese horror film rather than anything to do with the film itself. It’s got quite a clever twist; it’s a haunted house movie, but if you come into contact with the house, the ghosts can get you anywhere, even after you’ve left the building. The film is almost an anthology movie, telling the various, intertwining stories of people who become involved in the house (the scene of several nasty murders), from a volunteer social worker to the policemen investigating the strange goings on. I’m all for a non-linear narrative, but the one that director Shimizu Takashi employs here hinders rather than helps the story. The movie is divided into segments each telling the story of a different character, and so the film’s time frame shifts all over the place; unfortunately, the characters are not really interesting enough to warrant this exclusive treatment, and in some cases are utterly interchangeable. It might have been more worthwhile to show us perhaps a day / week / month in the house and all the various comings and goings in that time, as at least it could have lent the film some Ring-style ‘race against time’ pacing; instead, the confusing timeframe saps any energy out of the story, dragging it down.

Even worse, it all looks so sterile. At least when you watch a Vincent Price haunted house movie you get some impressive interiors, but the Grudge house is just painfully dull to watch, with some of the most pedestrian lighting I’ve ever seen. The ghosts add some momentary excitement, but even they are sloppily inconsistent: in the shadows, in full view, going down corridors, passing through walls… Maybe it’s meant to be enigmatic but it feels sloppily thought out. The Grudge may be many things, but it’s not a strong enough film to support an international franchise. The Ring saga may have been milked to death, but at least it had a knockout origin – this doesn’t. And like Hideo Nakata, Shimizu Takashi is starting to look like a one-trick pony; he’s helmed (in various capacities) all the incarnations of this film so far, and precious little else. The Grudge has had premier league status conferred upon it, but it doesn’t feel like the start of a phenomenon – it’s just dull.

Where do you begin with this mess of a film? Primarily, there’s the sense that Nakata and screenwriter Ehren Kruger are making it up as they go along, so listlessly do they pick at imagery and plot points from the previous film(s) before carelessly tossing in new elements. The original was driven by the race against time to solve Samara’s curse before Aidan died; without that countdown, the plot’s almost completely freeform, with Aidan (now apparently channelling Samara) acting as a magnet for all sorts of supernatural phenomena. Cue a CGI deer attack (that’s right) which seems to come from nowhere and head the same way. Frustratingly, this also pushes David Dorfman’s utterly irritating Aidan to centre stage, effectively making this yet another spooky kid movie. Aidan falls ill and is hospitalised, and his mother Rachel is suspected of abuse, until Aidan manages to make his doctor kill herself (in one of the film’s few genuinely shocking moments).

Rachel then decides that Samara’s curse lives on simply because… she just wants a mother who’ll love her. At this point, the movie abandons the Ring story altogether and becomes a complete re-tread of Nakata’s own Dark Water (recently remade in the States… are you confused yet?), complete with spooky running taps and water that won’t behave as it should. Totally illogical, and utterly lazy, Nakata may as well have stepped in front of the camera at this point and apologised for having completely run out of ideas. Anyway, Rachel somehow then finds herself ‘within’ the deadly videotape, complete with pointlessly 2-D surroundings and scanlines, and decides that actually Samara doesn’t want to be loved; she then dispatches her down the well with a single line that brings what remains of the film’s credibility crashing down around its ears. Job done.

Having nailed my colours to the mast as being a devotee of the original film, this film made me reassess my view of Nakata’s work. I still think the original Ring is a visionary, ground-breaking piece, but I’m not so sure about what he’s done since; Dark Water is a great film but very similar to Ring (both in story and style), and the Japanese Ring 2 offered up a reasonably compelling remix of the first film. Ring Two was always going to be a make or break film, and unfortunately he proves himself to be a one trick pony, doomed to retell the same story with diminishing returns (if you include Dark Water, this is the fourth time he’s done it). His boredom is reflected on the screen, and save for a few moments of excitement, is likely to be shared by his audience. Gore Verbinski’s film is way better than this; whether The Ring Two has killed the franchise remains to be seen, but if we get a Ring Three, then some fresh blood is desperately needed.

Inevitably, more people are going to see this remake than Nakata’s original, but thankfully director Gore Verbinski represents him well. Snowblood Apple has a nice comparison of the two versions of the film, and it’s evident that Verbinski really did his homework in capturing Nakata’s visual style. He’s not stupid enough to try and clone it completely, but clearly he recognised that the careful framing of each shot was crucial to the first movie’s atmosphere, and tried to achieve something similar. As such, The Ring is almost as creepy as Ring, which is no mean feat. Naomi Watts gives a great performance as Rachel, the Asakawa substitute, strong where it counts but convincingly terrified when the script calls for it. Many of The Ring’s departures from the original actually work, giving the film its own mythology that never once feels pointlessly tacked on; the horses, for example, are a great touch, and perhaps the most daring departure – the portrayal of Samara / Sadako as a frightened young girl – works brilliantly, thanks in part to Daveigh Chase’s subtle portrayal. It’s refreshing to see a remake take an intelligent second look at the original story, rather than taking a grab-bag of the bits everyone remembers and padding the rest.

Not all of it works. Having gone to great lengths to mimic Nakata’s composition, Verbinski nearly undoes all his good work by swathing the whole thing in aquatic blue filters that feel like a lowest common denominator way of pointing up the spooky bits. The deadly videotape is rather too overtly stylised to give it any real impact – as Noah says, it’s “very student video”, lacking the ‘authenticity’ of the original’s multi-generational static and fuzz. Probably the weakest link is David Dorffman’s frankly horrible performance as Rachel’s son; in fairness to him, his dialogue and characterisation is incredibly weak, turning his character into a cliched, Sixth Sense-esque ‘spooky kid with mental powers’, but there’s only so much of the kid’s middle-distance staring and deliberate pronunciation you can take. Unfortunately, the US follow-up pushed him even more to centre stage.

Amazingly, they also managed to botch Samara’s iconic final attack on Noah (one of the aforementioned “bits everyone remembers”). It just proves you can do too much with special effects; and whilst her flickery, two-dimensional appearance in Noah’s room ties in with the whole videotape concept, it also feels totally unreal and lacks the same punch as a real woman lurching out of the telly. Poor show.

These reservations aside, The Ring honours its heritage in fine style, and it does an extremely good job of translating the original’s appeal for an audience too lazy to read subtitles. Obviously, the Japanese film is better, and is a little more taxing on the grey matter, but Verbinski can hold his head high. Suprisingly (and ironically), this film is also significantly better than Nakata’s own US follow up, Ring Two.