Creep

Creep 

USA. 2014.

In English
Directed by Patrick Brice and Mark Duplass

Starring Patrick Brice and Mark Duplass

I return to Maison, finally learning to embrace it in all its messy glory. Dust itches and trails on my sweaty neck, but I ignore it and press onwards . As I wash my hands, my thoughts linger over my life as a younger creep and horror aficionado...

Only three movies have ever truly scared me. The last made me, a college senior at the time, cower in fear in my bed and sleep with a light on for a week. In the years since, it has garnered wider attention and praise in the world of horror  cinematography, reviving the found-footage medium from long-disuse after the explosive Blair Witch Project. 

I'm speaking of course of 2008's Paranormal Activity, a movie that so thoroughly burrowed its rotten, wormy way into my head that I couldn't take a shower or walk alone at night for weeks without frantically looking over my shoulder at regular intervals. 

Paranormal has inspired innumerable copycats in the 7 years or so since its inception, with the usual range of good, bad, and ugly you would expect from such capitalization. Unfortunately, Creep is one such clone that fails mostly into the second group. 

Creep is a 2014 film by writers/directors/actors Patrick Brice and Mark Duplass. Its premise is simple- a young amateur filmmaker is hired by a dying man, Josef, who wants to record a memoir for his unborn child who he'll never meet. The filmmaker, Aaron, travels to the mans' secluded house and agrees to the project, even though Josef demonstrates obsessive, eccentric behavior. Unfortunately for Aaron, it becomes rather clear that Josef's eccentricities are more sinister than they initially appear. 

The first two-thirds of Creep become frustrating to watch as Josef turns more and more sinister, and Aaron blithely accepts it all. It's the kind of situation where you spend about fifteen minutes silently screaming at Aaron to run away, but after so many boneheaded decisions, you eventually abandon the character to whatever fate his foolishness brings him.

This changes a bit, however, during the last third of the movie, with a well-placed narrative switch. We regain a bit of interest in Aaron, and the drama runs at a faster, more enjoyable clip. The drama is capped by another perspective shift towards the end. These narrative shifts are what elevate the movie from copycat status and make it worth watching for its own sake. 

All-in-all, I'll give this a 1/5 for gore, a 2/5 for scares, and a mixed recommendation for you, my Scarers. If you do give it a try, don't be too thrown by the first half, and stick it out until the end!

On a side note, if you're looking for another found-footage recommendation, check out recently released The Visit by M Night Shyamalan, for an engaging, mysterious ride that will keep you guessing until the very end.

Stay scary,

AC

Absentia

Absentia

USA, 2011

In English

Directed by Mike Flanagan

Starring Courtney Bell and Katie Parker

Greetings, Scarers,

I've returned to a Maison choking on dust and mildew, moldering in disarray. Gauzy sheets obscure thoughts, and rotting boxes full of ideas cover the floors. Years have passed since I last visited, and the house is foreign and unwelcoming to me after my long, neglectful Absentia. My own recent state of being is reflected in this 2011 film by Mike Flanagan. Let's pull off the sheets and see if any ghoulies are hiding underneath.

Absentia is an ambitious little spectacle. A prodigal sister, Callie, allegedly swearing off drug use, arrives at the home of her sister, Tricia, who is filing for her husband's "death in absentia" seven years after he vanishes.

Both sisters have disconcerting encounters with mysterious figures- Tricia is haunted by the shade of her missing husband Daniel from every dark corner of her house, and Callie encounters several strangely behaving people in a mysterious underpass nearby. The house and sisters are soon under siege by odd forces, but do their supernatural adversaries exist in the real world, or are they simply the products of stress, depression, and hallucinogens?

The film disappoints only by coming so close to brilliance, and not quite delivering. Some excellent moments will surprise as the denouement approaches, and several fierce little twists in the end will force their tendrils into your mind, but the truly original nuggets become eventually root-canal bare due to classic "discovery" monologues that pander too much to an unsophisticated audience.

I award the movie 2/5 for gore, and 3/5 for scares- the latter because after I watched it, on my trip to the toilette, a shadowy figure crossing my path caused me palpitations as I swore and grabbed the wall, before I realized it was a cat, not a many-legged hellspawn.

Thus ends absentia. The wind howls through Maison near twilight as I pause to mop a cold sweat from my forehead. My neck prickles guiltily as I feel the glare from the other blackened boxes littering the floor. As my dread intensifies, I feel the grip of ancient terrors take hold me again, and I'm not sure if I'll be leaving Maison any time soon....

Cube

Cube

Canada. 1997.

In English.

Directed by Vincenzo Natali 

Starring Nicole de Boer, Nicky Guadagni, David Hewlett, Andrew Miller, Wayne Robson, Maurice Dean Wint

             As a relatively tall person, at times I suffer from claustrophobia. One memorable occasion happened years ago, when I began a long summer road trip in the back of a full fifteen-passenger van. After a mere ten minutes of creeping out of the city in typical July traffic, the air conditioning stalled. The rising heat and the tight quarters began to bleed together swelteringly for me, and I panicked. With a sudden burst I trampled, knees and elbows, over the sweaty people next to me and clawed my way to the front of the van where I remained for the following two weeks of travel.

            If you feel similarly when trapped in close quarters, Cube may send you sprinting away from your TV in a flash. A twisty nail-biter with its fair share of gory surprises, Cube is an A-movie concept on a B-movie budget. SIX…..strangers awaken and discover they’re trapped in a shifting construct of cubic rooms, a random number of which contain deadly traps. Paranoia, blame, and plenty of violence follow as the characters work together…or not…to escape.

Cube is a long-time favorite of mine. Yes, it is extremely low-budget, but the traps are still gruesome and original, and the creators work extremely well with what they have. And yes, the acting isn’t fabulous, but the characters’ detailed back-stories are good compensation. Will we see a Hollywood remake anytime soon? I haven’t heard any rumors, but there are a sequel and a prequel.

For those of you who prefer a more intellectual horror over the crap-syour-pants variety, this one is for you. The producers even hired a mathematician to provide that the numerical concepts presented in the film (Cartesian squares, anyone?), are indeed correct. And aside from the occasional glimpse of gory traps and violence among the characters, the movie isn’t overwhelmingly gross or scary. I give it 2/5 for both gore and violence.

Well, for my part, my body has adapted to the terror produced by tight quarters over the years, mostly by allowing me to fall asleep wherever I am. If you’re a fellow claustrophobe, you’ll have to find your own coping mechanisms, especially after you watch Cube. Good luck!

Intruders

Intruders

Spain.

2011. In English and Spanish.

Directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo

Starring Clive Owen, Izan Corchero, Ella Purnell

Beloved Scarers and Screamers,

            When I’m not watching or writing about horror movies, I’m constantly reading horror literature for maximum inner turmoil. I just recently discovered the Penpal series by Dathan Auerbach (free to read on Reddit, or buy in paperback), in which a young man pieces together a series of uncanny events that terrified him for a decade of his childhood. My satisfaction with the story was well worth the subsequent night I spent sleepless, shuddering under the covers with the light on.

            It was in fact the first such night I’d had in a long time. When I was very young and yet unused to all the dark dementias I now adore, I was often scared to sleep at night, so I enlisted a stuffed dog and bear as my nocturnal vanguard. And nevertheless I continue to find myself drawn to the sick and weird. It’s to be a lifelong journey of inexplicable emotional masochism. The compulsion to seek such scares clearly means something is woefully amiss with my psyche. Oh well, à chacun son truc. :-)

            Intruders concerns two similarly fright-filled children, Mia and José, who become obsessed with writing about the dark being that haunts their bedrooms nightly. How exactly the same specter, Hollow Face, comes to menace these children, one in England, the other in Spain, is a mystery that Intruders takes its time to reveal. And for how long can Hollow Face be written off as a figment of a scared child’s imagination when Mia’s father and José’s mother are attacked as well?

            The film borrows something from J.A. Bayona’s Orfanato (2007), in its emphasis on story over scares. Its haunting, lyric plot is the movie’s biggest strength, winning your emotional involvement early on. The relationship and camaraderie between Mia and her father becomes deeply absorbing and at times alarming, and is another highlight. Intruders is a slick film that is at times unnerving, though never overly grisly. I give it a 3/5 on the Scare-o-meter, and a 1/5 on the Gore-o-meter. Without giving much away, the movie’s denouement is a just and settling conclusion to a masterfully told story. I highly recommend Intruders, although you may just want to dig out your own dog and bear before you watch it tonight.

Peace, love, and screams,

AC 

A Tale of Two Sisters

**Scarers, welcome to the new design of the MdS site. A depart from the previous hacksaw of a page, the new razor wire aims to sharpen visual clarity. -AC**

A Tale of Two Sisters (장화, 홍련)

South Korea. 2003.

In Korean.

Directed by Kim Ji-Woon

Starring Im Soo-jung and Moon Geun Young

Dear Scarers,

            This blog has always essayed to discover and review movies that would remain otherwise obscure to the average viewer. Voyaging through Japan, Thailand, France, Denmark, we’ve accumulated quite the passport of horror over the last year of MdS. Today we’ll add another stamp to our collection, from South Korea.

Now, if your first thought of Korea is of pop stars dancing in glittery stables, know this: the country’s spookiness might just be its most underrated “style.” A Tale of Two Sisters is a take on a traditional Korean ghost story (Janghwa, Hongryeon—the original Korean title of the movie) involving two sisters facing off against their evil stepmother.

The story is equal parts beautiful, frightening, and heartbreaking. After a visit to the psychiatrist, Su-mi returns home to her twin, Su-yeon, her father, and her stepmother, Eun-joo. A ghostly apparition visits the sisters as Sun-joo becomes increasingly violent towards Su-yeon. Su-mi becomes frantic trying to convince her oblivious father to stop the abuse, until the violence between the women hits its apex in the twisting finale.

Kim Ji-Woon expresses remarkable restraint in teasing out the film’s plot, compelling each turn and ambiguity to be slowly puzzled out by the viewer. A Tale of Two Sisters is sumptuously slow-paced and lusciously filmed. Although it shares these stylistic themes with Antichrist, Tale eschews the violent sexuality of von Trier’s work in favor of an atmospheric ghost-house vibe. The movie doesn’t just want to scare you; it lures you in with its gorgeous visuals before it shatters your heart. The chemistry between the sisters, played by Im Soo-jung and Moon Geun Young, is powerful and effective in driving the movie.

In regards to the ratings and Hollywood, I give the movie a 3/5 on the scare-o-meter, and a 2/5 on the gore-o-meter. It is reasonably scary, but not overwhelmingly so, and not very gory at all. Hollywood did feel the power of Tale and released a remake in 2009, The Uninvited, whose 33% score on Rotten Tomatoes wasn’t motivation enough to track it down and watch it.

All-in-all, A Tale of Two Sisters is a movie to wrap yourselves up in if you’re spending some time inside, due to, say, a blizzard. It is a beautiful, well-acted, and powerful story.

                                                            Stay warm, Scarers,

                                                              AC

Raison D'Etre

As much as I love Freddy, Jason, Pinhead, and the rest of the gang (and believe me I do), there's a whole lot of terror to be had outside of Hollywood.

The mission of Maison du Scare is simply this: To introduce you, my dear Scarers, to some non-Hollywood horror movies, and to discuss them. I'll choose movies from all over the globe, including some American (but not big box-office-y) ones.

Why do all this? Because the only thing I love more than scaring myself silly is doing the same to other people!

Each movie discussion will include the following topics:

-- What is this movie about?

-- If foreign, would Hollywood go for it?

-- What concepts does this movie introduce to the genre (or subgenre), if any?

-- How scary is this movie, really? ( from 1-5)

      1. Watch it with grandma next time.

      2. This isn't PG-13?

      3. Solid. Creepy.

      4. Holy cannoli that's scary!

      5. GET THE NIGHT LIGHT.

-- How gory is it?

      1. Not at all: The inside parts stay inside.

      2. Meh- like that time I broke my toe.

      3. Ew! Now that is gross.

      4. Ok I actually feel kinda sick.

      5. I just vommed in my popcorn.

I forewarn you, dear Scarers, that I have no fancy degree in film critique, just a weird, morbid love of all things terrifying.

Stay Scary,

-AC

Book of Blood

Book of Blood

UK. 2009.

In English.

Directed by John Harrison     

Starring Sophie Ward, Jonas Armstrong

One of the most disturbing and original authors I’ve ever had the pleasure of discovering is Clive Barker. This twisted maestro, who wrote the stories behind the films Hellraiser, Candyman, Midnight Meat Train, and Book of Blood, possesses a boundlessly depraved imagination. As an awe-struck fan, I mean that in the best ways, of course. In fact, Hellraiser might be my all-time favorite movie, certainly if you count by times viewed. When I’m sad, sick, bored, or need a general pick-me-up, nothing beats the threat of soul-rending pain and suffering for motivation!

It was therefore with great excitement that I discovered Book of Blood. The film brings to cinema the frame story from the eponymous six-volume collection of short tales by Barker. In it, professor of the paranormal, Mary Florescu* enlists the aid of her allegedly psychically gifted student Simon McNeal* in her investigations of a house with a history of ghastly murders. Her intentions are as unprofessional as his are dishonest, and as their relationship unfolds in the house, the rift separating our world from the “highways of the dead” beings to close in dramatic fashion. We’re told the story from Simon’s perspective after he is caught by a bounty hunter looking to remove his skin, which becomes uniquely marked by the dead.

As far as horror movies go, Book of Blood is on the less-traumatizing end. I say a 2/5 on my scare-o-meter. There are a few great jump moments as the ghosts become increasingly aggressive, and I give it a 3/5 on the gore-o-meter for some gruesome scenes of ghostly murders. The movie’s production quality and casting ably carry the story along, and I’d consider re-watching it if I felt the need for a solid haunting.

Since this movie is based on a short prologue story in a collection, there isn’t a whole lot of new ground introduced here. However, I do wholeheartedly recommend giving Books of Blood a read-through if you’re looking to really screw yourself up. Hey, it worked for me!

Stay Scary, Scarers,

AC