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The Last Exorcism – Review

reviewed by Melissa
directed by Daniel Stamm, 2010
(read Skot’s review here)
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The Last Exorcism is directed by Daniel Stamm produced be Eli Roth and stars Patrick Fabian and Ashley Bell.   It is the story of a disillusioned preacher who has decided to do a documentary showing how exorcisms can be faked.   The movie begins with Reverend Cotton Marcus being filmed for a documentary exposing exorcism hoaxes. Cotton has done over a hundred exorcisms and has decided to prove that they are a hoax after reading about a boy that was killed during an exorcism. Patrick has gathered a film crew for one last exorcism to expose how he fools people into believing he has exorcised a demon.

Cotton randomly picks a letter he has received about a girl who is possessed named Nell Sweetzer. Patrick and the crew go to the Sweetzer rural farmhouse where the sixteen year old lives with her older brother and father. Once they arrive Cotton realizes that Nell has problems. Having lost her mother to cancer she seems to be suffering psychological issues and is killing the family livestock, though she has no memory of these acts.   Cotton does a fake exorcism and then tells the family she is fine and leaves to go to a hotel for the night. Nell shows up at Cotton’s hotel room that evening in a catatonic state. Cotton and the film crew take Nell to the hospital and then back home. The next day Nell attacks her brother Caleb which prompts the return of Reverend Cotton and the film crew.

The remainder of the movie takes place with Cotton and the film crew trying to talk Nell’s father in to the fact his daughter needs counseling and her father convinced she is possessed by a demon.  While this debate is going on Nell is spiraling out of control with devastating results.

I was incredibly excited to see this movie and the first 80 minutes of it did not let me down. From the opening scene with Cotton I liked him. He was a fraud but I took to him and he made me laugh. He does seem to care about people and this is why he is out to expose exorcisms as hoaxes. He has lost his faith but through out the whole movie I was cheering for him and hoping he regained it.

I thought the cinematography was engrossing and felt like a documentary. I felt like I was watching something on the Discovery channel. The camera did an amazing job of searching out the rooms and catching a glimpse of what was going on beyond the camera lens. I would hear noises and was afraid what the camera was going to find, and there were really no cheap shocks in the entire movie. I also thought the movie built at a very good pace. I felt engrossed with the characters and I was involved with the plot. The movie kept building and building at a steady pace to the climax. That is where the movie takes a turn for the worse. The last 10 minutes of the film disgusted me as all this incredible build up was destroyed in one cheesy conclusion. I say that because I loved the film up to that point and was very involved, then they tied up the story line in 10 minutes and it was uninspired.

The movie was ruined for me with the ending but it is worth a see because Patrick Fabian and Ashley Bell do an outstanding job and the cinematography helps to propel the storyline.

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Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter – Review

reviewed by hallo
directed by Joseph Zito, 1984
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The formula for a successful Friday the 13th film had been firmly established by the time part 4 (The Final Chapter) graced the silver screen in 1984.  It was established so well that the film, intending to be the last in the series, grossed enough money to make Paramount Pictures rethink killing the franchise.  Obviously, they decided to bring Jason back – time and time and time again.

So, The Final Chapter is a classic Friday the 13th film, filled with a bunch of silly young people who get knocked off one-by-one by the maniacal and revengeful Jason Vorhees.  The fun part of this particular film is a young Corey Feldman playing Tommy Jarvis, a character that will be reprised in two more films.  The character and personality of Tommy Jarvis fit the style of Corey Feldman quite well and the character is actually believable, unlike virtually every other character in the film who simply exists to be creatively killed.  Death scenes include a corkscrew to the forehead (of Crispin Glove, AKA George McFly), a couple of impalements, a harpoon to a crotch, a nasty collision with some shower tile, a finger through the eye, and an axe to the head.  Nice.

The ending of the film is the best since the original.  Tommy Jarvis ends up shaving his head to resemble a young Jason Vorhees.  The ploy works long enough to distract Jason so that Tommy’s sister, Trish, can get the upper hand.  Tommy eventually flips out and ends up taking a machete to the corpse of a presumed dead Jason about fifty times.  It is actually a pretty freaky little scene to see Tommy with a shaved head going crazy on Jason yelling “Die Die Die” the entire time.  This whacked out ending will be used in part 5 to explain the thrust of that film’s plot.

This one is probably the best since the original or at least a close tie with part 2.  That, of course, is a relative statement and remains a pretty bad horror movie.  But as I have said all along through this series of reviews, if you like slasher films and don’t mind the same, tired formula, then it is hard to go wrong with a Friday the 13th film.  This one is no different.

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Piranha 3D – Review

reviewed by hallo
directed by Alexandre Aja, 2010
(to read Danny’s review of Piranha 3D, click here)
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Anytime the initial scene of a horror movie reveals someone hanging out in a boat in the middle of a seemingly deserted lake, you can bet your bottom dollar that extreme campiness will follow (Lake Placid, Hatchet).  Piranha 3D keeps that tradition alive.  After a small earthquake creates an opening to a separate underground lake that had been sealed off from the main Lake Victoria for millions of years, a deadly species of piranha, presumed to have been been extinct for years, are now able to make their way to Lake Victoria.  The arrival of the flesh-eating fish is ill-timed since it is spring break week and thousands of hormone filled young people are enjoying their free time on the lake.  The stage is set for hardcore carnage.

The movie follows the plight of young Jake, a teenager still living at home under the care of his mom, who is also the town sherrif, played wonderfully by Elizabeth Shue.  Instead of fulfilling his obligations as a babysitter to his younger brother and sister, Jake sets out on a boat with a small crew from a “Girls Gone Wild” rip-off as their “location scout.”  While on the lake, the piranha discover the buffet of people available to them and the crystal clear water soon turns dark red.  Lots of blood and lots of body parts make up the rest of the film.

A quick perusal of RottenTomatoes.com will show a “fresh” rating of 81%.  What is interesting about the reviews, however, is that many critics associated with RottenTomatoes.com echo sentiments similar to Beth Accomando who says, “The new Piranha 3D lived down to my absolute lowest expectations and I say that with nothing but gleeful affection.”  I, unfortunately, agree with her assessment but cannot agree with her conclusion.  Despite some strong performances and a few effective death scenes which I will mention below, the film falls woefully short.

The primary reason for my disappoint with the film is its ridiculously over-the-top sexual exploitation.  Whereas many horror films effectively utilize sexuality to improve the telling of the story, Piranha 3D simply needed something for the viewers to watch in-between kill scenes.  That something was a bunch of sex-starved college students going a step beyond the antics of Mardi-Gras relocated on an otherwise serene lake.  A few times during the film I was embarrassed to be in the theater even though I was by myself.  I am also getting a bit weary of movies doing a rip-off of “Girls Gone Wild” as a main part of their storyline.  It was just too much.

I was also disappointed with both the 3-D filming and the underwater struggles with the piranhas.  Many times, thanks to a massive amount of blood and the lack of clarity with the 3-D, much of the action was unrecognizable.  You couldn’t really make out what you were watching much of time during underwater scenes.  Add to that the reality that Piranha 3D has absolutely nothing to say about anything (by design no doubt) and I am left underwhelmed.

Nevertheless, the film does have its bright spots.  Elizabeth Shue is wonderful, as always, and brought a much needed serious tone to the film.  Her performance was especially interesting after recently podcasting on the topic of whether or not horror movies are misogynistic.  Richard Dreyfus, who is the unfortunate soul to first meet the piranhas, was fun to watch although he reminded you how much better Jaws is than this film.  For me, the highlight of the movie was a brief appearance by Christopher Lloyd as the old scientist who correctly identified the species of piranha unleashed in the lake.  It was as if Doc Brown had shifted his scientific prowess from a time travel expert to an ichthyologist.

Amid the mostly disappointing and convoluted kill scenes were a few memorable ones.  The best by far was the burrowing of a piranha into the stomach of a helpless lady only to explode out of her mouth a few moments later.  There was also a nice scene of a boat line falling down and slicing a young lady in half – Aja allowed 5-6 seconds of time to elapse before showing that she had been cut.

Overall, I am glad I saw the movie.  It is certainly possible that my expectations for the film were way too high.  I can’t fully recommend it and would heavily caution parents before allowing young people to see this film.  Yet, it is fun in parts, there is a great cast, and every now then you will find yourself smiling.  I guess that is more than I can say for a lot of horror films out there.  Proceed with caution.

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The Walking Dead – First Look

This is pretty sweet.  Someone filmed the exclusive 4 minute trailer at Comic-Con of The Walking Dead, soon to be on AMC.

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Diary of the Dead- Review

reviewed by hallo
directed by George Romero, 2007
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“Are we worth saving?  You tell me.” – Debra Moynihan

With those concluding words of narration, Diary of the Dead rolls credits.  It is a question that permeates the brilliant storytelling of famed horror director George Romero in this 5th entry of his critically acclaimed Dead series.  A struggle for power, an insatiable desire to fulfill a perceived life purpose, and a misunderstood destination of safety all provide a thought-provoking 90 minutes of zombie mania.

Diary of the Dead is not a typical sequel in the Dead series, but rather documents a separate story during the initial outbreak of the original Night of the Living Dead movie.  In other words, the timeline follows the same chronology of the original 1968 film even though the immediate setting of Diary of the Dead is in the 21st century.  As this group of young people are struggling with zombies and one another, we can imagine a boarded up house on a farm somewhere in PA where Ben and Barbra are fighting for their lives.  Several references to the original film are made, including the reuse of the original newscast from NOTLD.  Romero himself called this entry a “rejigging of the myth.”

As always, Romero is masterful with zombies and remains in this reviewer’s eye the heavyweight champion of all things zombiefied.  This particular story follows a group of young Pitt film students who are creating a horror movie when the outbreak strikes.  Since documentary is Jason Creed’s first love, he decides to carry his trusty Panasonic camera with him at all times and capture the events of the developing real life horror story.  Along the way, another camera is picked up allowing for two different camera angles of the action.  We learn at the beginning of the movie that Jason’s girlfriend, Debra, compiled the film together so that people would know the truth.  Oh, she also added music and sound effects because she “wants you to be scared.”  Unfortunately, the film at times loses its grip because of the consistent and occasionally tiresome use of the documentary style.  That is one of very few complaints I have with the movie.

In typical Romero fashion, we are immersed in the struggles of the core group of people as they in turn are struggling with survival.  Deeply embedded in DOTD is the universal desire to fulfill our life passion, which almost certainly involves a certain amount of assumed power.  For Jason, the consuming desire to capture the “real” story of the outbreak is convincingly explained to Barbra as the only way they might be able to save lives.  However, Jason’s true motives are revealed when he repeatedly refuses to put down the camera in times of desperate need, choosing instead to film the ending of human life at the hands of the zombies rather than save a human life, which is of course the explanation he provided for the filming in the first place.  In this way, Jason is no different than the living dead.  They know only one thing – to seek out and consume living human flesh.  Jason’s passions close his mind to any reality other than getting the shot on film.  Romero once again reminds us that the line between zombie and human is not as broad as we might think.  Debra, during her overdub narration of the finished documentary, blatantly explains this truth by asserting, “it is us vs. them.  The problem is that they are us.”

Another interesting sub-theme that was consistently placed throughout the dialogue was the realization of the supernatural in the chaotic events.  At one point, a character sarcastically screams that unless you are Jesus Christ you “don’t stand up and walk around after you are dead.”  Another use of narration by Debra insists that “God had changed the rules and we were following along.”  The movie makes clear that a world beyond mere materialism is known by all people in all places, yet even that inner knowledge cannot keep us from pursuing the riches of materialism.  At one point the group seeks refuge in a large garage where a band of friends had looted the entire city and hauled it all to one central location.  Proud of their accomplishments and their acquisition of stuff, they were unwilling to even let the group fill their tank completely with gas.  Finally, they were able to say “look at all the stuff we have.”

In the last 2 minutes of the movie, as the remaining 3 characters are talking with one another, an older professor looks in the mirror as the sun is rising.  The dialogue that ensues is wonderful:

Debra:  Things always look better in the morning.
Andrew:  Not to me. Mornings bring light. I prefer the darkness. It’s easier to hide in the dark.
Tony:  You know, Professor? I actually get the… the mornings. They show you for what you are, instead of what you think you are.
Andrew:  Inelegantly phrased, Mr. Ravello, but accurately put. Mornings… and mirrors. I despise them. Mornings and mirrors only serve to terrify old men.

We all prefer the darkness, it is indeed easier to hide.  On this point of dialogue, it is hard to imagine that Romero did not have John3 in mind:

“This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.  Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.  But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.”

Are humans worth saving?  Absolutely.  And yet because of our own love of darkness, not all will be saved.

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