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1408 – Review

reviewed by hallo
directed by Mikael Hafstrom, 2007
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1408 is a film based on the Stephen King short story of the same name found in the audio book collection “Blood and Smoke” and in the written form collection “Everything’s Eventual.”  The movie boasts of being on the same creepiness level as the immortal classic The Shining and certainly shares some similar themes with the iconic King masterpiece.  1408 is a visual playground of supernatural and “evil” activity that, although stunning and entertaining, could unintentionally mask the true power of the film’s core message:  The love of family.

The story follows Mike Enslin, an author who specializes in the supernatural genre, specifically writing of his experiences staying in  “hotels with spirits” and other alleged haunted vacation spots.  Despite his above average success as an author, Mike is a skeptic and does not truly believe in ghosts or spirits, making his work a daily battle of drudgery.  We discover throughout the story that Mike is separated from his wife and has lost his daughter Katie to cancer, only adding to his pessimistic and, at times, offensive attitude toward nearly everyone he encounters.  Mike receives a random postcard from the “Dolphin Hotel” with a simple but chilling message on the back; “don’t enter 1408.”  Attracted to the postcard, which offers something more enticing than the mountain of hotel brochures he received, he gives the Dolphin Hotel a call to book a room in 1408, only to be turned down at every request.  After learning from the legal department of his publishing agency that a hotel cannot refuse a room to anyone if it is vacant, Enslin returns to the Dolphin with more power in his punch and is eventually granted access to room 1408.  However, he is not given the key before being urged by the hotel manager Gerald Olin, played beautifully by Samuel L. Jackson, to change his mind.  Olin tries everything imaginable to convince Enslin to stay away from room 1408, from offering him a Penthouse suite, Knicks tickets, and the like.  He then pulls out an archive of the multitude of people who have died in room 1408.  The more famous stories Enslin had already researched, but he is taken aback when he learns of the 40-some odd people who died of “natural causes” in the room that never made the local paper.  Still yet, Enslin is determined and eventually secures the key and makes his way to the 14th floor.

From this point, the room, which Olin refers too simply as “an evil room”, begins to work on Enslin’s mind.  First, subtle occurrences happen like chocolates appearing on the pillows and the toilet paper being folded and replenished.  But quickly more alarming and disturbing events take place, such as Enslin slicing open his hand when the window randomly shuts, ghosts walking across the room and throwing themselves out the window, and most horrific, Enslin begins to hear and see images of his daughter.

The madness continues until we finally reach a place of sensory overload – the room is being flooded with water from a painting of a ship that hangs on the wall, the temperature goes to below freezing and the room fills with snow and ice, and the walls begin to crumble and bleed.  Enslin is near insanity when he finally is able to make a connection on his laptop computer through Yahoo messenger and a webcam to his wife.  Although she is reluctant at first, she eventually tells Enslin that she will “be right over.”   The movie has one “false ending” where it appears that Enslin’s experience was all a dream (thankfully it wasn’t).  Finally, Enslin decides that the only “real” thing he knows of for sure is fire.  So, he sets the room on fire in hopes of destroying it once and for all, taking himself down if need be.  Enslin ends up surviving and is reunited with his wife.  The film ends with Enslin listening to the tape recorder he was using to record his thoughts throughout the night.  On the recording both Enslin and his wife hear their daughter, Katie, talking with Enslin.  And the movie ends.

1408 spoke to me on a level that was rather gut wrenching – not so much because of the scares or imagery, but because of the true horror hidden away in Mike Enslin’s heart; the death of his daughter.  Room 1408, although certainly scary and menacing on its own, showed its true horrific nature by the way it brought to the forefront of Enslin’s life the absence of the thing he most desperately wants – his family.  In an even deeper sub-theme, Enslin is wrestling with the legitimacy and effectiveness of how they treated Katie during her last days.  They affirmed Katie’s questions about being with God and an afterlife, assuring her that “they would see her again” and so on.  Now that Katie is dead, Enslin is bothered by their lack of encouraging Katie to fight for her life, instead of filling her head with “pipe dreams.”  The performance by John Cusack is so well done that I was driven further into his sorrow and guilt than I was deeper into the concerns of room 1408.  Whenever a horror movie, while watching it, causes you to reflect on your own life without worrying too much about the on screen carnage, something special is happening.  The look of contentment on Enslin’s face in the last few seconds of the film when he audibly hears the voice of Katie perfectly sums up the entirety of the movie.  Enslin finds at least a modicum of peace in life because he knows Katie, in fact, lives on.

The direction, cinematography, and sound of 1408 were all brilliantly done.  If I were looking for any negative criticism, I would offer two small points:

1.  I felt the “evil” of the room was a bit exaggerated in its visual telling.  In other words, it was just a little too much.  Although creative and very well done from an effects standpoint, I think it could have been dialed back a few degrees and been even more effective.

2.  At the end, Enslin decides rather certainly that fire is the only “real thing.”  Why?  He has experienced everything under the sun, from heat to snow and ice to crumbling of walls.  Why is fire the one things he knows is real?

It doesn’t matter though because the movie is so well acted and directed that the “escape” of Enlsin from the room takes second place to the emotional heartache he has endured.  This is a very good movie.  Take a look.

Click Here to purchase 1408

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Black Swan – Review

reviewed by Danny
directed by Darren Aronofsky, 2010
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For my money, the most disturbing horror sub-genre has always been body horror.  Many of the most indelible images from my thirty-plus years of consuming horror literature and film come from works of body horror.  Belial raping Duane’s love interest in Basket Case, Jeff Goldblum as the disintegrating Seth Brundle in Cronenberg’s The Fly, the “prick” test in Carpenter’s The Thing, Billy Halleck wasting away in King’s Thinner—all of these and more are perma-burned into my brain, and I haven’t even got around to watching The Human Centipede.

Black Swan, the first horror film nominated for a major Academy Award since Silence of the Lambs in 1992 (or Jaws in 1976 if you are one of “those” people) takes the abuse that ballet dancers put themselves through on a daily basis, adds to it a Poe-like protagonist whose mind is degrading alongside her body, and finishes it off with a dash of Grand Guignol moments that would make Argento proud.  It is a heady piece of work.

The film is the story of Nina Sayers, a ballerina finally getting her shot to dance the lead role in a New York ballet production of Swan Lake.  The pressures of the job and extra stress heaped upon her by an overbearing mother and a conniving dance troupe member begin to chip away at what appears to be her already tenuous grip on reality.

She starts imagining things, or are they actually happening—at first there is some question.  Lily, as the whore to Nina’s Madonna, provides the film with a worth while antagonist who may, or may not, be trying to drive Nina crazy.

As her psychosis builds, we are exposed to many horror tropes and, surprisingly, a handful of attempts at “gotcha” kind of scares.  There are some great moments throughout and I’m loathe to spoil them here, but I will say that her eventual transition into the titular black swan is simply beautiful.  There, as throughout, the make-up, physical and digital effects are top notch, as we have come to expect in Aronofsky’s films.

Effects aside, the core of the horror in Black Swan is anchored in realism.  We witness the tremendous stress and injury that goes with the day to day activity of ballet.  It is a good thing the film is rated R.  If too many young dancers got a peak at the film, it would be hard to cast all those Nutcracker mice for the coming holidays.

For some reason, the image that affected me most was a simple one late in the film.  Our protagonist, after a hard day of practice, takes off one of her pointe shoes and reveals a bruised foot and toes scrunched together like a clenched fist.  She takes off the second shoe and we get a full-on horror shot of that foot with all the toes fused into a single mass.  I’m not sure the more realistic reveal isn’t the more horrifying of the two.

There will be some argument among horror fans and critics as to whether Black Swan is really a horror film.  I’ll let them hash that out for themselves.  For me, it is a nearly perfect example of body horror, and it is the best horror film I’ve seen since Let the Right One In.

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The Morgue – Review

reviewed by hallo
directed by Halder Gomes and Gerson Sanginitto, 2008
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I dialed in The Morgue knowing absolutely nothing about the film other than the title and 2 sentence synopsis offered by my Comcast On-Demand service.   The movie centers around Margo, a young college girl who is making ends meet by working the night clean up shift at a morgue.  Her only companion at night is George, the alcoholic night watchman who has apparently turned to the bottle over grief of losing his daughter.  The beginning of the film shows us Margo’s nightly routine, from vacuuming the office to scrubbing the bathroom, including her failed nightly attempts to clean off a blood soaked portion of the bathroom where a mysterious robed mortician apparently committed suicide (we never learn why or how that fits into the story).

One night, things get crazy.  Margo is interrupted by a family consisting of a mother, father, and little girl.  They ran out of gas and are trying to find a phone or lift to the nearest gas station.  Then, out of nowhere, two guys come crashing into the office, one of which is hurt very badly, bleeding from head to toe.  As the night moves on, all the characters begin noticing strange things happening and that their very lives are in danger from hooded figures.  Getting away from the morgue proves to be impossible as all roads lead right back to the front door.  This kind of chaos continues until the sun rises the following day.  The movie then takes about 10-15 minutes to explain itself, trying its very best to do a M. Night Shyamalan “gotcha” ending.  Come to find out, ala Sixth Sense, all the characters except George were already dead, having been killed in a car accident.  Their near death experiences at the morgue that night parallel the kind of wounds they inflicted in the car wreck.

Horrible.  I just can’t think of another word to do justice to the overall quality of The Morgue.  The first 20 minutes of the film, which were establishing the routine of Margo, were filled with double exposures, quick cuts, slow motion, and every other lame effect you can think of to let the viewer know that things are a bit off.  Yep, we got the picture after the first thousand attempts.  I felt like the film editor was sitting down in front of his editing software for the first time and was excited to play with the effects.  Some of the scenes designed to make us think, like the appearing of different mops and brooms in the storage closet, just didn’t make any sense with the ongoing theme of the film, except again to warn the viewer that things are not so normal in this morgue.  The performances were sub-par and I found one of the most annoying aspects of the film to be the extreme delay between the character’s “shock” at seeing something and the camera allowing us to see it.  There would be a reaction shot to something apparently horrific that stayed on the characters for upwards of 30 seconds before we get to see what awful thing they are looking at.  It just got old after about 5 times.

Then, the absurd attempt to make some kind “twist” ending was pretty noticeable from the beginning of the film.  The explanation of the “twist” went on for way too long and I found myself longing for the movie to be over.  More than once during the film I was toying around on my Android phone because I felt like I had nothing better to do.

I think the only redeeming value of the film was the attempt to work in a religious sub-plot, which really proved to be ineffective on all grounds, but at least they tried.  The notion of purgatory, a primarily Roman Catholic understanding of the state of the dead before heaven or hell, is what these characters were experiencing.  We are privy to that information thanks to one quick sentence by Margo early in the film, and then it is repeated at the very end.

Stay away from The Morgue unless you are celebrating “boring day” and must find a movie to coincide.

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The Collector – Review

reviewed by Danny
directed by Marcus Dunstan, 2009
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With a box that boasts that it is from the writers of Saw IV, V, and VI, The Collector pretty well announces who its target audience is.  I knew going in that I wasn’t likely part of that target group, but, even though “torture porn” isn’t my favorite sub-genre, I can usually get enough thrills from a well-made example to make it worth a rental (or, in this case, a used DVD purchase).  For about forty-five minutes, The Collector delivered enough of those thrills to keep me interested.  Unfortunately, things go pretty far downhill in the last half of the movie.

The Collector is primarily the story of Arkin, a locksmith, safe-cracker, and ex-con who, in a desperate attempt to help his ex-wife pay off a loan shark, accelerates a scheduled burglary.  In the first of what will become many coincidences, that night also happens to be the night that “The Collector,” a vicious killer and Rube Goldberg enthusiast, has picked to capture and torture the family that lives there.

When Arkin arrives, he finds himself trapped in a house that has been booby-trapped with the most elaborate, physics-defying, and deadly traps ever seen outside a Dungeons and Dragons adventure.  Many of the traps truly are ridiculous and require incredibly specific things to happen before they would actually work.  Still, they all work just fine, except for the one that the plot needs not to work.  That one, which at one point activates on the villain, is a simple pulley and needs only gravity and the collective pokiness of a chandelier made out of blades in order to work.  It, of course, does no damage to the bad guy.

From the first moments in the home, The Collector establishes a pretty depressing structure.  Arkin discovers a family member, tries to rescue them, and, often through no fault of his own, gets them killed in the process (via the elaborate traps).  When he heads back in to the home near the end of the movie to rescue the young girl he had bonded with over a tea party during one of the film’s two unnecessary prologues, I couldn’t help but think that she might be better off on her own.

As silly as the film is, it has its moments.  The creepy opening features a “what’s in the steamer trunk?” moment that reminded me of one of the best moments in Audition.  Arkin is played well by Josh Stewart, who shows no sign that he knows how ridiculous the film’s plot is.  The gore is vast and well-done.  I’m sure special effects guys love working on films like this.  Where else can you show off your ability to make it look like a man is chained to the wall using fish hooks?  The editing and cinematography are likewise excellent.  Still, none of these high points make up for the giant pile of absurdity that is the plot.

As silly as things eventually got in The Collector, it became impossible for me to continue to invest any real emotion in the film.  When the “surprise” ending finally came around, I could not have been less surprised or more disinterested.

So, is The Collector beneath any recommendation?  Maybe the answer is, yes.  But, I suppose the kills themselves are enough to interest those that mainly watch horror for the gore.  Also, anyone who has the ability to suspend his or her disbelief no matter how ridiculous a movie is could maybe find some interest in Arkin’s plight.  As for me, I don’t regret watching the film, but I won’t be lining up to rent the inevitable, The Collector II.

Click Here to buy The Collector

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Jenifer (Masters of Horror) – Review

reviewed by Hallo
directed by Dario Argento, 2005
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Jenifer is one of the two short films directed by the “Italian Hitchcock” Dario Argento for the Showtime television horror series “Masters of Horror.”  I have reviewed his other film, Pelts, here.  Between these two offering by Argento for Showtime, Jenifer is clearly the stronger film and provides a great experience on multiple levels.

The story is about a married cop, Frank Spivey (Stephen Webber), who is taking a break with his partner during their beat to eat some Chinese food in their car.  After exiting the vehicle to use the bathroom, Spivey notices a crazed-eyed man dragging a bound and helpless blonde down to a deserted area by some water.  Just as the man is about to decapitate the lady with an ax, Spivey shoots him.  The last words uttered by the dying man to Spivey were simply, “Jenifer.”  When Spivey turns his attention to the battered girl, he is shocked to notice her face extremely deformed and disgusting.  Instead of trying to describe her deformity, I have simply provided a picture of her below.  After getting over the initial disgust, Spivey carries the lady back to his car and to the police station.

For whatever reason, Spivey is unable to get Jenifer off his mind.  His wife and son suddenly become uninteresting to him and his mind is occupied with the images of this girl who is beautiful in all ways other than her deformed face.  After learning that they sent the girl to a mental institution because she was “retarded”, Spivey shows up and checks her out.  The only place he can take her is home.  Jenifer is unable to speak, but shows her appreciation to Spivey by licking his hand, a gesture that weirds out the cop, but intrigues him at the same time.  From there, things get crazy.  After Spivey’s wife demands that Jenifer be taken somewhere, he unsuccessfully attempts to find a home for her.  Discouraged by his lack of success, he pulls the car over and stops to think.  Jenifer takes advantage of the pause and makes her move on Spivey, an advance that he is willing to accept.  The two become intimate in the vehicle.  From this point, Spivey is hopelessly lost in Jenifer’s trance.  Soon, the girl starts doing very strange things, like eating the cat and even killing a local child and using her organs for dinner.  Although this disgusts Spivey, he cannot bring himself to desert Jenifer.

Finally, Spivey takes Jenifer to an isolated cabin in the woods where he hopes she can’t hurt anyone.  His has lost his position on the force and takes a minimum wage paying job cleaning up a gas station.  When Jenifer lures the gas station son into the woods and kills him, Spivey snaps.  He binds Jenifer and drags her by the hands into the woods.  Just as he is about to kill her, a deer hunter shoots Spivey.  His last words to the deer hunter are, “Jenifer.”  The movie ends with Jenifer rubbing the hand of her new hero.

By far the best part of the movie was the incredible nod given to the original classic Frankenstein when Jenifer kills the local child.  The kid is playing in a puddle of water and Jenifer is shown watching her with great interest from behind.  It was a beautiful scene.  The movie is downright creepy and even scary in parts as Jenifer’s presence provides an ongoing sense of uneasiness, never knowing exactly what she is going to do or what her motives are.  She never turns on Spivey, even up to the very end, but instead ruins every part of his life and things he cares for the most.  In this way, Jenifer represents a multitude of desires, different for each one of us, that can consume us and drive us away from the things we love the most.  This is particular interesting to me as a pastor since it tells the ongoing struggle as portrayed in the Bible for all people – Romans 7 says, “the evil I do not want to do, this I keep on doing.”  Spivey is aware that this relationship is destroying everything he loves, but he is unwilling to break away from it.  As is typically the case, Stephen Webber provides a strong performance and the film looked wonderful.

The film, of course, is not without its faults.  The most blantant being predictability.  I am not a very good “figure the movie out” person, in part because  I don’t try to figure movies out, I just enjoy them.  But I had this one pegged from 10 minutes into the film.  Although the specific actions of Jenifer were intriguing and unpredictable to a degree, the overarching plot and ending were obvious.

Coming in at 53 minutes, Jenifer is certainly worth the time to watch.  It is nice to see Argento continue to provide some quality material and the movie speaks to an inner demon living is us all.  Sin.

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The Human Centipede – Review

reviewed by hallo
directed by Tom Six, 2009
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Some films are promoted and sustained by the high level of extravagant shock-value offered through its imagery and motif.  The Human Centipede (first sequence) is the definition of such a film.  Directed by Tom Six, who promises an even more graphic version with his “second sequence” to be released in 2011, relies on the horrid theme of the movie to expunge it of a host of problematic issues, such as acting, editing, and musical score.  None of those typically important aspects of a film are why any of us who are depraved enough to watch this movie dial it in.  We want to see if this film really delivers on the absurd and grotesque plot on which it is based:  a brilliant but crazy doctor who decides to create his own “human centipede” by surgically attaching the mouth of one victim to the anus of the next, making a three person centipede sharing one digestive system.  It really is hard to believe that anyone would watch this garbage.

It was about 30 minutes into the film that I realized I was watching something that had absolutely nothing to offer beyond disgust.  I am not of the camp that believes a horror movie always has some redeeming value simply because it succeeds in repulsing you.  I do believe for all of us horror fans, we enjoy a good kill scene or a great working of gore, but for the most part just shocking the audience with brutal images does not get the job done at the end of the day.  I finished this movie, just barely, realizing that I was in no part the better for watching it at any level.  And in fact, the reverse could be true.  I was thankful when the images were out of my immediate conscience.

Now, having said that, let me say this.  The movie is not near as graphic as one might think.  This is why Tom Six “held off” on the real gruesome stuff for the “second sequence.”  He wanted to get people used to the idea of a human centipede before showing more of what he really wants to show.  Due to the bandages that are used in the operation, you really never see much of the actual surgical point of contact between the parties.  It doesn’t matter though because the human mind is capable of filling in the blanks and mine did so all too well.  Case in point, the first time the “head” of the centipede has a bowel movement, nothing is shown except for the look of terror and disgust in the “second” part of the centipede.  Yet, it was at this point that I was tempted to turn off the movie.  And I probably should have.

So, all I can say about this movie is, well, not much.  I have at least now reviewed it as best I could for TheBlackestEyes, but that is all I really know to say.  I can’t recommend it, nor can I advise you to stay away from it.  Although if you were on middle ground, probably the former would be wise.

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