Attack the Block begins with a bunch of teenage miscreants mugging a young woman named Sam (Jodie Whittaker) at knifepoint in the a London street. During the altercations, an alien shoots from the sky, whereupon the kids beat the thing to death then parade it around on a stick. At this point, you’re pretty much thinking, great, I hope this alien’s friends fly down and kick the shit out of all these kids and claim the tall flats they live in as their base. I, for one, welcomed our new alien overlords.
But then you end up following these kids through their incompetent attempts to defeat the sudden influx of aliens and, dammit, after a while you don’t want them to die after all. Led by moodily attractive teenager Moses (John Boyega), the gang come across as quite threatening to begin with until you realise that actually they are all pretty incompetent because they are, well, yoof. It’s Guy Fawkes Night, and they were out to create havoc and striving to be part of the gang led by the block’s main criminal mastermind, Hi-Hatz (Jumayn Hunter). Just as they finally strike it lucky enough to actually be on their path to, well, jail, more aliens rain down on them and everything changes, seeing the gang on the wrong side of everyone, from the police to Hi-Hatz to an irate Sam.
Having kids be the protagonists for a horror/sci-fi movie is pretty interesting, especially when director Joe Cornish chooses to be open about the facts that not all accidental alien-hunters are going to be as skilled as the team from Predators. These are kids who don’t have guns or fighting skills, but instead heed the call to arms with baseball bats, firecrackers, kitchen knives and false bravado. When shit gets real and they finally twig that they’re out of their depth, they can’t call for help because they’ve all run out of mobile phone credit; when they speed down staircases on their pushbikes they inevitably crash into the ground because they are not bicycle parkour enthusiasts. Despite the fact that the majority live quite standard home lives, getting told off by their mothers or told to keep out of trouble by their nannas, they’re all too desperately rough to turn to the grown-ups when being chased by deadly critters. And that’s the other thing, with them being kids: even though the movie is kind of funny, it’s not a balls-out comedy which makes it all the more surprising when you realise that not all of the teenagers are going to live out the film.
The film briefly touches on the state of British youth, when Moses speculates that the aliens have been sent by the Feds to kill the African-British because “we’re not killing each other fast enough”. It’s a nice try, but the fact that the kids, apart from Moses himself, seem to have fairly happy upbringings and some kind of self-awareness of what they’re getting into, means the movie doesn’t go far enough down that path, and you’re not even sure if any of the gang have learned a lesson by the end of it.
Nice touches are the aliens themselves: neon-fanged black holes of colour with no depth, like an orang-utan shagged a yeti in a dark cupboard using a glow-in-the-dark condom with a hole in it. The idea that colour shading would be different on a different hadn’t occurred to me and I thought it was really interesting, to be honest; it makes them shadowy and creepy even when they’re in a brightly-lit flat. It isn’t laugh-a-minute funny (which, as it’s from the writer of Hot Fuzz and stars Nick Frost, I was expecting), but it’s pretty amusing and the dialogue between the kids (who are also great actors) can be pretty hilarious at times. The two nine-year-old boys looking up to the gang are probably the comedy relief, flinging around tough phrases in high-pitched voices. It passes the Bechdel Test and the women in it—Sam, an elderly neighbour, and the girls the gang are all interested in—are pretty kick-ass, either physically or verbally.
Nick Frost’s high billing probably has to do with his star power more than his subdued role as a stoner in the only “safe house” in the building, though he and befringed try-hard Brewis (Luke Treadaway) smoke their way through some fairly funny moments. It was a fun movie that somehow missed a vital point with me, though I can’t think exactly what; I’d recommend it happily, even though it wasn’t quite cranked up all the way on either the funny, poignant, sci-fi or horror dials.
I give Attack the Block seven out of ten rows of glowing teeth. Because rows of teeth are SCARY.
It may be a remake of a 1973 film, but it’s a good title, isn’t it? Of course we’re afraid of the dark; most scary movies would be nothing without shadows for bad guys to jump out of. And these bad guys are smaller than the ones you’re probably used to being scared of: tiny, withered monsters, freed from the grate of a basement. (These movies always make me glad that I’ve never been in a house with a basement, surely why Australia constantly tops “Liveable Country” Lists.) To be honest, this is pitched more at a younger market so most adults won’t be scared to go to the car in the dark after seeing the movie, but there’s a few scenes of genuine terror that might scare your kidlet out of losing the nightlight for, oh, fifteen years or so.
The central character of Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark’s all-round excellent cast is headed up by Bailee Madison as Sally, a young girl shipped from her mother’s possibly-over-medicating arms to her architect father Alex (Guy Pearce, not quirky for once), who is working on restoring an enormous mansion in Rhode Island. She’s instantly miserable, especially when she realises that her mother got rid of her indefinitely rather than briefly and that Alex’s girlfriend Kim (Katie Holmes, mostly dressed in sacks) is going to be sticking around. Just when living in a gigantic, beautiful mansion with two people who love you and a maid who makes apple pie seems like it couldn’t get any worse, the family uncover a basement hidden under the house, and unleash a tribe of stabby little gremlin-type monsters who love to feast on people. Well, specifically, people-bones. But will anyone believe a kid with a history of hardcore sulking? I mean, what would you believe if your clothes were found cut up: that it was your angry stepdaughter, or monsters that eat teeth?
Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark is getting some pretty bad press but it’s not really a terrible movie. Like virtually all recent horror flicks, it has a lot of flaws, but you could do worse than seeing this at the movies one night when you’re bored. The set design is amazing, the house’s landscape beautiful (with touches of Pan’s Labyrinth, thanks to the obvious touches from producer Guillermo del Toro) but unfortunately under-utilised. The actors, mostly Australian, are top-notch (and include, peripherally, Garry McDonald, apparently finally broken by his Mother & Son matriarch; Nicholas Bell as a greying therapist; Jack Thompson as the cranky but wise gardener), including Madison, who is an absolute treasure, delivering glares like a seasoned child-of-a-divorce but who ultimately just wants to be loved. (Aw.) A grotesque opening prologue delivers some serious cover-your-eyes squick straight away, and, as with all these types of films, it is endlessly frustrating yet understandable when people—especially adults—won’t believe you when you tell them there’s monsters out to get you. And these monsters are pretty damn icky, perfectly rendered special effects-wise with not a moment when they don’t seem physically there. They are revealed early and come out in dim enough light to be seen pretty clearly; they hold up in the light but as with many monster-flicks lose something in the reveal. The ending, as well, is a shock when you are hoping for the happy-la-la ending of many teen-aimed horror films. One thing absolutely worth mentioning is that it passes the Bechdel Test repeatedly, with women talking a lot about a variety of things, and that I was unexpectedly thrilled to see that when the family got around in a car, Kim did all the driving and Alex sat in the passenger seat.
On the downside, the tension isn’t directed all that well; you’ll be nervous, but not scared. The creatures can take on a grown, ragey man but when confronted with a sobbing nine-year-old swipe at her without making contact just long enough for her to be saved. When people fall, it’s always right on their head so they get knocked out. (Why is this? Do they not know that if they stay unconscious more than a few seconds it usually means some serious brain damage? Pretty much everyone gets tripped/falls and bonks their head instead of breaking their outstretched arm like a normal person.) Not enough is made of Sally’s mental state; she turns up to the house on Adderall and a comment is made on her past, but instead of making this an interesting discussion about child mental illness they brush it away, assume the medication isn’t necessary and even after a violent incident, suspicion doesn’t fall on her (or anyone, even when the particular incident is clearly not self-inflicted. It’s actually really frustrating.) Kim comes across as pretty selfish at the start, which makes her hard to relate to; also, she and Alex have inappropriate conversations that Sally overhears at more than one different moment, the repetition of which which cheapens Sally’s initial hurt through the amazing power of cliché. Important moments become plot holes—why does Sally not point out the twitching critter arm to a crowd after she victoriously squashes one? Why do critters that like to eat children’s teeth NOT ONCE get referred to as Tooth Fairies? And to top it off, the survivors’ underwhelming reaction to the horrific ending left me full of a rage I dare not elaborate upon, because, well, spoilers.
It’s not excellent but not appalling, well produced and quite a pretty film. I wouldn’t take anyone younger than, say, twelve to see it, but it might really hit the mark for a youthful audience. Don’t avoid it, and don’t be afraid of it. I give it eleven out of twenty baby teeth.
Back in the best year of all, 1982 (three guesses when I was born, folks), a movie came out known as The Thing. With the release of 2011’s The Thing, 1982’s The Thing has been referred to frequently (well, by me at least) as The Original The Thing, though people have been saying there’s an Even More Original The Thing that came out in 1951. But that was called The Thing From Another World, so I’m going to continue by calling John Carpenter’s smack-down-great movie The Original The Thing and Matthijs van Heijningen Jr’s new actually-pretty-good-prequel The New The Thing. Though it’s set before Carpenter’s. Ahem.
For those who have seen The Original The Thing, you’ll know it starts with two Norwegians in a helicopter chasing a dog at the South Pole, and the subsequent shitstorm that follows, because aliens. The New The Thing tells the story of how things got to that point, and luckily, it’s not really a spoiler to know the beginning of The Original The Thing.
The Norwegian base camp at the South Pole has made a discovery: there is an alien structure beneath the ice, one dated from a very, very long time ago. And alongside this structure, something else is found: the inhabitant. It’s the most important discovery in science, and the Norwegians need to assemble a team to make sure everything goes according to plan. [insert scoff here].
The worry of creating a subtitled Norwegian blockbuster is neatly sidestepped by hauling in a bunch of Americans to help solve the problem, and then making everyone speak English about 80% of the time. It’s corny, but better than hiring A-list actors to pretend to be a certain culture and then failing miserably (I’m looking at you, Scottish lead of 300.) Norwegian scientist Dr Sander Halvorson (Ulrich Thomsen) brings his research assistant, Adam Goodman (Eric Christian Olsen, one of my favourite people: he played both Vaughn in Community and Austin “Jakey Jakey about to make a big...mistakey” in Not Another Teen Movie) who then suggests his friend, palaeontologist Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who will forever be known to me as Ramona from Scott Pilgrim). Helicoptered over to the South Pole by able pilot Sam (Joel Edgerton), tensions arise early between sensible Kate and Sander, who is making rash decisions out of excitement. Her cautiousness is proved right when the alien, brought in a block of ice to their base, thaws out and instead of sitting down for a cup of tea and a chat about interplanetary politics, goes on a murderous, stabby, regenerative rampage—because it’s a creature who can take on the form and nature of those it imbibes.
It’s the are-they-aren’t-they tensions that make these movies so fun: who has become The Thing and is hiding it behind their poker face, and how can the others figure it out? Scenes in The Original The Thing involved an excellent tense moment when blood was tested, and because that scene is so grand I’m pleased they didn’t recreate it, and instead went for a punchier version, opined by Kate, whose know-how and level-headedness almost instantly sees her grab control of the situation. This upsets some—namely Sander, who clearly has issues—and mutiny is afoot, like they don’t already have enough damn problems.
The New The Thing is a good prequel to The Original The Thing because it could have easily been terrible—many, including myself, adore John Carpenter’s version and were hesitant to like anything new. But it’s got a cracking pace, good effects, hair-chewing tension, and a woman with a flamethrower. It also passes the Bechdel Test, admirable considering there wasn’t a single female in The Original The Thing. Kate is the Ripley of this piece, taking charge and rightly so and saving cowering menfolk from getting dead. It’s quite inspiring.
Alas, there really isn’t enough character development in this—to have enough characters to be able to (not really a spoiler) kill a bunch of them off, you’ve got to care somewhat for everyone, which you do, at the expense of caring particularly hard for anyone. There’s a hint of a romance between Kate and Sam, and some clear friendship lines that, when broken, make you sad, but that’s about all they give you. There aren’t any of the mindblowing set monster pieces from The Original The Thing—walking head, anyone?—but it more than adequately steps up to the monster plate with some pretty gross stuff. Otherwise, my only real issues were a pixelated spaceship drive that does not at all look like it’s there, and the 1980s costuming that is basically nonexistent—not a mullet or a teased fringe in sight, and Adam dresses about the same as a 1980s scientist as he does a 2011 hippy, though with, sadly, less nipples showing.
I give it five out of eight disgusting stumpy limbs.
What better film to return to blogging after an unplanned (and mostly inexcusable apart from my distractingly entertaining pregnancy) hiatus than something less needing of a review than Final Destination 5? If there’s any film franchise that is as steadily predictable and passable as the FD series, I don’t know it. But with everything else out this week—The Help, One Day—being a bit too schmaltzy for my tastes, it was really all I could do. And it’s in 3D. How was I supposed to resist?
As per the other movies in the series, Final Destination 5 starts with a set piece in which all the major characters are killed off swiftly and bloodily—in this, our main characters are on a bus on the way to a work retreat, when the suspension bridge they are crossing collapses. As they escape the bus, they meet their ends in a variety of ways you wouldn’t even know were possible. Then it turns out the collapse isn’t real at all, just a vision of our main character Sam (Nicholas D’Agosto), who then manages to flee the bus before the bridge actually collapses and saves a bunch of his co-workers in the process. As is to be expected, the invisible hand of Death isn’t happy that this pack of one-note characters didn’t die as planned, and picks them off one by one thereafter in tense and theatrical ways.
3D is used to such effect in this movie I feel like it should only be used in schlocky horror films from now on. Intestines fly at the screen; blood coats the camera; bones stick out through skin right in your face. It’s glorious. The very first death in the film, as the camera follows a body as it falls towards the water but then encounters an unexpected obstruction, was so violent and bloodthirsty and surprising that the entire cinema audience fell apart with shock and glee, thereby setting the tone for the movie. The outlandish premise is enough to have you enjoy the film without ever thinking it’s real enough to get upset about. And the way all the deaths are set up—with the camera panning over every dangerous device in the room, which it turns out, is basically everything—makes for such exquisite tension as to what is actually going to cause the upcoming carnage that I occasionally had to close my eyes and pretend I was somewhere else so my heart didn’t burst out of my chest or I didn’t go into spontaneous early labour.
It doesn’t take itself too seriously, but luckily, the cast themselves do. Played by a bunch of up-and-comers who frequently look a lot like someone more famous, they are given all of their development time at the start of the film as they meet up to get on the bus for their trip. Sam (D’Agosto, looking like a sibling of Andrew Garfield) is a friendly office worker who really wants to be a chef; his girlfriend Molly (Emma Bell, from the excellent creepy movie Frozen) has reconsidered their relationship; Peter (Miles Fisher and quite possibly the love child of Christian Bale and Tom Cruise) is the high-flying crisply-suited hard-worker; his girlfriend Candice (Ellen Wroe, with a cutesy Ginnifer Goodwin vibe) is the peaches-and-cream gymnast with a slightly nasty personality; Olivia (Jacqueline MacInnes Wood, a blend of Megan Fox raunch and Jennifer Keyte primness) is the punk-rocker quick with a curse word and struggling with her eyesight; Nathan (Arlen Escarpeta, familiar from bit-parts on countless television shows) is the recently-promoted man trying to prove his worth to the factory workers who don’t like change; Isaac (PJ Byrne, similarly snivelly in Horrible Bosses) is the self-absorbed stalker-type creepy enough to be the one guy you actively hope dies; and their boss, Dennis (perfectly-balding David Koechner, from just about everything, most recently Paul) is satisfyingly passive-aggressive and full of his own self-importance. Rounding out the cast is the deep talking wise man coroner Bludworth (Tony Todd, who played the man-of-my-teenage-nightmares Candyman) and the policeman on the case Jim Block (Law and Order stalwart Courtney B Vance).
The two-dimensional aspect of the characters is a flaw in the film, but barely a concern in the scheme of such fun, especially when you consider the extra dimension they are otherwise seen in. The only real problem I had was that when characters started to die, the first people on the scene, called by police or our heroes themselves, seemed to be our friends the co-workers—what, no parents, no siblings, just call the office and get everyone to come over? The lack of the other people was unrealistic, but adding them would probably have detracted from the lightness of the film and made you feel emotional towards the families when really you didn’t have the time or inclination to actually care.
Happily, Final Destination 5 ends with not quite a twist, but a surprise for sure—especially when you consider the others don’t finish with anything like that at all. It’s an ultimately thrilling finale that makes you reflect on the whole film differently, but probably not enough to have to suffer through the death of Candice again (by far the one that scarred me the most) to see if it’s actually obvious and we just completely missed it.
I give Final Destination 5 four out of five poles through the head.
It’s not often you see a schlocky horror movie and think to yourself, “Those poor murderers, they’re so gentle and misunderstood.” But after seeing Shaun-of-the-Dead-esque Tucker & Dale vs Evil—a movie with a lot of gore that is still a comedy—you may see all horror movies from now on and think “but is the devil really possessing this person to torture them? Is the backwards head and biting just an attempt to say ‘hello’ and reach out to humanity?”
Tucker (Alan Tudyk) and Dale (Tyler Labine) are two men—mostly referred to in the film as hillbillies, which makes me feel bad but does give you an idea of the truck-drivin’ overall-wearin’ folk they are—are going to Tucker’s newly purchased vacation home to do it up into the holiday house he’s always wanted. At the same time, a group of attractive college kids have taken a parents’ van to the same destination, where they plan to camp, eat, skinny-dip, and do whatever else kids of today do when they camp. (Play Cut the Rope on their iPhones?)
From the moment they pass each other on the road to their first contact at a gas station, the college kids have Dale and Tucker pegged as backwoods creeps. But Tucker’s a charmer and Dale is a man with low self-esteem who instantly sees one of the college girls, Ally (Christine Taylor lookalike Katrina Bowden), and wants to go say hi. Tucker convinces him that he’s not as horrible as he thinks, and Dale approaches the kids—with six-foot scythe in tow—and terrifies them immediately. It’s a bad start to the holiday, but they head to Tucker’s run-down, dangerous, possibly-previously-owned-by-a-murderer cabin in the woods by a lake.
When Dale and Tucker save Ally from drowning in the lake and take her to their cabin to heal, they start a chain of hilarious and gruesome accidents that lead the kids to believe Dale and Tucker are serial killers, and D&T themselves to think that the college kids are embarking on a suicide pact. While our heroes do their best to protect Ally and save themselves, the kids, at the behest of crazed jock Chad (Jesse Moss) take it on themselves to rescue Ally, refusing to listen to the voice of reason that is Mitch (I think—the kids all looked equally floppy-haired and I got confused.)
T&DvE is actually super entertaining, with your cynicism towards annoying fucking twenty-somethings who get murdered relentlessly on film being finally justified. Not all the kids are evil—they’re mostly sheep following Chad—but they are flat-out stupid and the accidents that befall them are really just kind of funny no matter how gross they get (and don’t worry, if you’re looking for some flat-out horror, they seriously do get gross.) Dale is ridiculously endearing, a font of useless (though occasionally handy) information, and trying only to make friends and be nice to everyone—a great example is the scene where Ally wakes from her accident and screams when Dale comes in with pancakes, where he automatically assumes she’s yelling because she hates pancakes and goes to make her bacon and eggs instead. Tucker is the alpha male in their relationship, jealous of Dale and Ally’s growing friendship and aware of how the continuing accidents would look to police. Katrina Bowden does an excellent job of making Ally convincingly amicable, a girl who makes the best of her situation and tries to reason with a whole bunch of people with preconceived notions. It’s pretty much flat-out hilarious; the music is great, adding violin-string-tension to moments that aren’t actually scary to remind you that in other films, the moment could be alarming; Chad uses his asthma inhaler like a cigarette and blows the smoke out of his nostrils to be cool; the phrase “you’re half hillbilly!” may be laughed over forever.
T&DvE does not pass the Bechdel Test, though Ally is at least a fairly empowered character. In a satire like this, it’s hard to tell whether some tropes—blonde girl gets her cans out, black male makes declarations like “damn” “shit” and “that is whack!” (okay, so I’m paraphrasing here)—are actually deliberately there to make a point. I’ll presume yes because it’s a spoof, but it’s worth mentioning just in case it’s not. The dubbing was out in the second half when I saw the film; not the movie’s fault, but it annoyed me a little. I would also have liked a touch more of Dale and Tucker’s background—are they work friends? Do they work? Where do they live?—but I can’t bring myself to care that much, because it’s just funny and entertaining and I would heartily recommend it to anyone who can stomach someone going head-first into a woodchipper.
Four out of five amputated fingers.
One of the first things you’ll notice about Insidious is the DRAMATIC VIOLINS that accompany the title, where the word INSIDIOUS is in POINTED CAPITALS that are somewhat ON FIRE. It’s a melodramatic beginning but makes you think yes, I am in for some down-home scares in this film, and people will scream. And both of these things are true. But what this film also has is Australian comedians and terrible makeup and a ghost dancing a jig. It is both a scary movie and a parody of a scary movie, but not like Scary Movie or even like Scream, but like if the movie’s makers—Australians-behind-Saw Leigh Whannell and James Wan—were writing a genuinely scary script, stopped halfway through to watch some Comedy Central, then forgot what the first half of the script was about. Which, you know, I’ve been guilty of before in my writing, but that’s why I haven’t made any movies yet. Because I hear movies are hard to produce when all you have in your pockets is $3.80 and five hair ties.
Musician Renai (Rose Byrne) and schoolteacher Josh (Patrick Wilson) are a young and attractive couple moving into a new house with their three young children to try out a different scene after some nameless stress plagued them beforehand. The house is lovely and big, but has an attic, which really, people in horror movies should think twice before acquiring. After an accident in said attic leaves their son Dalton in a coma that doctors can’t explain, things in the house start to move, creepy voices are heard on the baby’s walkie-talkie, and then, there are ghosts.
There are some seat-jumping moments, with faces appearing one moment and gone the next, an atmospheric house full of doors and creaks, and a sound engineer who knew how to make you tense. But after the introduction of Leigh Whannell and Angus Sampson as Specs and Tucker, two paranormal investigators who work for wise medium Elise (Lin Shaye), then whole film turned into a quirky comedy, where Elise works using gas masks and ridiculous contraptions that look like they were bought at Toys r Us’ baby section, and Tucker and Specs constantly bickering in the background. They were genuinely funny and the idea of comic relief at that time was welcomed, but it never really regained serious momentum afterwards. I stopped giving a crap whether anyone lived or died because it stopped being serious and dangerous, and I failed to be scared in any scene from then on because of that.
The ghosts themselves were chilling when they were just glimpses here and there, but then it wasn’t long until they became real, corporeal things and also lost their scariness because of that. One scene that actually started out amazing, with someone walking past Renai’s window then suddenly appearing in her room in a scream-inducing way, ended with the stringy hair and pancake makeup of the monster/ghost/demon completely removing me from the movie despite the fact he actually physically attacked Renai and I should have been legitimately scared for her. When you got close-up looks at the demons they all had too much makeup on and not enough RAWR I ARE DEMON, and that, coupled with the rollercoaster tone of the movie made it impossible to regain chills. The one creature they bothered to add special effects to—creepy fingers and the ability to climb walls—looked exactly like Darth Maul, thereby looking like a cosplayer who stumbled into the auditions on his way to a sci-fi convention.
One good thing: while the husband (it’s always the woman who sees the monsters and weeps, isn’t it? Jesus) doesn’t believe wifey that there are monsters in their house, when she says she wants to move he does it to make her happy. While there’s a few avenues they didn’t take (why doesn’t he suggest a therapist, too? I mean, we know the demons are real but he doesn’t at that point) it’s a relief that for once the non-scared partner just goes along with requests instead of insisting that the clearly upset partner suck it up. Still, his late nights at work are annoying. What a jerk.
In summary: Below Expectations. There are scares and you’ll scream and the guy sitting next to Chris jumped even at the end when I spent most of the movie rolling my eyes. Maybe you won’t be as cynical as me, but if you are, you’ll be let down by the bad guys being too physically present, too powdery of face (even in the part when it’s purposefully done, which was a confusing scene anyway) and not doing enough hiding behind curtains. Too much of a change from serious to ridiculous caused a rift in the character investment. Despite all this, it’s still better than Scream 4, so if you’re at the cinema and have to make the choice...go see Thor.
If there’s one thing Australia can do well, it is: be scary. International folk think we’re a hotbed of spiders, snakes and drop bears, and that we’re liable to get kicked in the face by a kangaroo as soon as we walk out our front doors. What The Loved Ones shows is that it’s not the wildlife we should be afraid of, but also teenage girls who like to wear pink. Though I could have told you that years ago.
Teenager Brent (the preppily named Xavier Samuel, who was vampire ringleader Riley in Eclipse) is living a typical schoolkid existence: he motorboats his girlfriend Holly (Victoria Thaine) in her Volkswagen Beetle, listens to hard rock, and fights with his mum. What is less typical is that he’s trying to cope with the car accident that took his father’s life six months before, and in that respect, he resorts to cutting, and spends his afternoons either in the darkness of his room, or searching for release in the dangers of the Australian landscape. When he is asked to the school dance by the slightly awkward Lola (Robin McLeavy), he turns her down; he’s kind enough, but it wasn’t the answer she wanted. And as Brent listens to his iPod and broods in the bush with his dog, Lola’s dedicated dad (John Brumpton) does what any father of a slighted girl does: he knocks Brent out, chucks him in the back of his ute, and hoofs it back to his place so Lola, decked out in a pink frock and matching shoes, can get the night she wanted so badly. And while Brent’s best friend Jamie (Richard Wilson) enjoys a typical dance with the hottest black-wearing girl in school—the glum Mia (Jessica McNamee)—by smoking a buttload of pot and embarrassing himself trying to impress her, Brent himself is dealing with drills, knives, hammers and the very real chance of a lobotomy, all underneath a disco ball in the kitchen of one of the creepiest families you’ll ever see on film.
It’s an authentically Australian movie without being throw-another-shrimp-on-the-barbie ocker. The landscape is that kind of local country you could find just at the end of the train lines; the house interiors could be any of your friends’ homes; when in the school grounds, the lockers could be yours from year eleven, all scratched up from your combination lock grating against it. I am obviously biased in this sense, being from Victoria where this was shot, and possibly even in the neighbourhood—the end credits thank the Whitehorse City Council (where I live now) and the Yarra Valley City Council (where I used to as a kid.) Heck, when the credits rolled, I realised I actually knew two people in the crew as well. The Loved Ones portrays Australian life convincingly without being cheesy or overdone. (Though when Lola’s father hammers one message home to Brent, he does snarl, “That’s for the Kingswood.”)
Half of the movie is spent in Lola’s kitchen, claustrophobically trapped by her and her father, surrounded by glitter and sparkle, and with Brent attached to a chair and wearing a snappy suit. Those scenes are truly, utterly scary. The two, and a very quiet third house guest, are so completely unnerving with their insanity that they’ll undoubtedly be haunting my dreams. Lola, brought up by a father whose is clearly unhinged, has no moral issues with what she is doing. Her father is doing everything in his power to keep her daughter happy. There is a deeply disturbing undercurrent (actually, maybe just a current) of attraction between the father and his “Princess”, which will keep you just as squicked out as the mild torture-porn they inflict on poor emo Brent.
The other half of the movie takes you out of the devastation of the home and into the lives of others: Brent’s mother, as she waits for news of her son; Holly, as she waits in her party dress for her beau to come home; Jamie, as he bumbles his way through the night of his dreams. Jamie is really just there to alleviate the mood; one of the hardest scenes for me to watch was immediately followed by a riotous bit of slapstick comedy from the clumsy Jamie that literally had the audience coughing on their popcorn and laughing well into the next (probably inappropriate) scene. Rather than detracting from the tone of the film, it made it a much more enjoyable movie. There was a lot of humour for a horror movie, with Lola’s tantrums and glee overdone to the point of hilarity, while still—admirably—remaining scary. As the film goes into a glowing slo-mo play of Lola being crowned the queen of the dance with a pink paper hat from a cracker, it is an amusing yet chilling look into the headspace of poor deranged Princess.
The acting is top-notch, with the everyday teenagers spectacularly natural even as they are damaged; Brent bears his torture with the appropriate amount of screaming; Princess is bonkers but had you feeling sorry for her at the start of the movie, and survived her many close-ups looking perfectly like a five-year-old who didn’t get a lollipop at the supermarket; her father, flitting between proud, overprotective, eager to please and Candyman-scale terrifying, will have you scared of meeting any potential in-laws for decades to come. The sound engineering was so convincing in parts I wanted to cover my ears and run out screaming; composer Ollie Olsen’s metal soundtrack was also a perfect backdrop to the piece.
In summary: Meets Expectations, because I’d read a whole pile of glowing reviews and expected it to be good. It really is. The only things I didn’t like about it were that Princess looks alarmingly like the girl who does my eyebrows, and that everyone who was playing high school kids were all the same age as me, though I was completely convinced they were seventeen. But that’s just wrinkle-induced jealousy.
I’m all about investment. Not the financial kind, despite the fact that The Passage is, at 766 pages, value for money, (*cough*and at the special price of $29.95 here*cough*) but character investment—where the people you’re reading about become important to you, their hopes and dreams something you are utterly involved in. And with this, the first in a now eagerly-anticipated trilogy, I was totally and utterly invested. I was trying to create extra hours in the day where I could read it: balancing it precariously on my knees while I was picking the sultanas out of my muesli, bringing easier lunches to work so I’d have less sandwich-building to do that ate into my reading time, and experiencing excitement instead of dread at the idea of catching public transport.
It’s a tale of journeys, starting with Professor Jonas Lear deep in Bolivia trying to find the rumoured cure for illnesses and old age. When he does, in a bloody and alarming fashion, it starts a new quest—one for people to act as guinea pigs to see if what was found with the horror in Bolivia can be turned into something viable for the human race. Brad Wolgast, devastated at the loss of his daughter and the separation from his wife, is a member of the FBI and sent out to recruit people, those with no hope for the future and no ties to the past: criminals on death row. When the virus works—but not as expected—they need someone younger, a child. When Wolgast is asked to collect a girl called Amy, abandoned by her mother at a nunnery, his conscience gets the better of him. But with the secluded government lab slowly losing control and the infected amassing power, he is running out of time.
Nearly a hundred years later, the world has become very small for one group of people. Peter Jaxon is waiting at the walls of his fortress home to kill the brother he loves, the brother who has been taken by the virals—the monsters the criminals became and turned others into. Virals will always come home, and so Peter waits for his brother, while the village he has lived in all his life starts to disintegrate as time and doubt get the better of them. Someone is certainly coming for Peter, but it is not his brother. For Peter, his journey is just beginning.
While vampires seem a little overdone now after so much media attention, this is an excellent representation of the horror genre. They are only vampires in a loose sense, as while they don’t particularly like sunlight, are strong and resilient and do like to consume people, they don’t sleep in coffins, you can’t have a dignified conversation with them and you can’t keep them out of your home simply by not giving them permission to come in. These monsters aren’t sparkling or cuddly—they are horrific creatures and managed to instil genuine thrills of terror into this cynical reviewer. The book is a nail-gnawing narrative of excitement as Wolgast evaluates his options and Peter discovers a world even more large and terrifying than the one he already knows.
Justin Cronin has rendered a simply amazing new world, from Wolgast’s near future (Where Dubya’s daughter Jenna Bush is, terrifyingly, governor of Texas) to Peter’s insular world, full of altered vernacular and a way of living that never leaves the four walls of the compound and is geared solely towards the inhabitants’ survival. The landscape is ravaged by the passing of time and toothy bad guys, and the world is utterly convincing.
I started The Passage apprehensive at the length, and finished it wailing with anger that it wasn’t three times the size. Not unlike Stephen King’s beautifully constructed epic stories like The Stand, I could have lost myself in Cronin’s written words forever. The characters are real and immediate, the story detailed and elaborate without being confusing, the language clear but not simplistic. I can barely wait for the sequels, and just to get more, I’m even open-minded about the Ridley Scott movie on the horizon. Run to get your copy of The Passage like there’s a convicted and infected felon on your tail. It’s simply that good.
F
or some ridiculous reason, these past few weeks I have found myself looking scary stories up online, hiring horror movies and being held in thrall by Chris’s enormous memory for urban legends. I’m fairly pragmatic about these kinds of things; I don’t believe in ghosts, or demons, or monsters, or possession, though the jury’s still out on aliens. (I don’t believe we’ve encountered them yet, but it’s a big universe out there and it feels a bit egocentric to assume we’re the only living things around.) Despite my disbelief, I’m a fairly easy person to instil terror in and I’m always up for an opportunity to scare myself stupid, even though it is usually followed by regret and nightmares.
Suffice it to say that when we were offered the chance to see the movie Paranormal Activity I said a big fat terrified yes. This decade’s Blair Witch Project, the whole thing was made for about four dollars twenty and has grossed a ridiculously large amount of money already, and hasn’t even been released beyond preview screenings in Australia yet.
Micah and Katie are a young couple living in a big house, disgustingly in love with each other. University student Katie has a problem, however: ever since she was young, she has been haunted by something. It follows her wherever she goes, and gives her occasional reprieves. Now, however, this haunting has returned. Micah, her no-nonsense and slightly disbelieving partner, acquires a video camera so he can record these haunting for posterity. The whole movie is then told through this video camera as the pair drag it around with them through happy and frightening times. It builds up a nice little montage of sunshiny moments between the couple; Micah follows Katie around with the camera wanting to record how pretty she is, the two laugh and splash about in their backyard pool. Micah sets the camera up at night angled towards the bed and the hallway. The night passes harmlessly until you hear it—a thump here, a creak there. Whispers in the night. Shadows in the hall.
I’m not going to say too much here, as I am delirious with anger when scares are ruined for me. You’ll spend a lot of the movie looking around and waiting for things to move, and if anyone sitting next to you coughs during a night scene you’ll jump four feet and be grateful you brought a change of trousers. A scene with a Ouija board brings about as much creepiness as you would predict, if not more. The movie does a good job of not dealing you many false scares—expecting a monster behind you that turns out to be the other person, and so on—and keeps most of your fear in the anticipation of what is about to happen. The hauntings progressively become scarier, the couple more tense, as Katie pleads for help and Micah vows to protect her himself. His arrogance can be a pain during the movie—honestly, the first time you threaten the haunter with violence and things go wrong should probably also be the last—along with one thing that often annoys me during movies, which is when people live in houses that seem much bigger than they could afford. Sure, a one-bedroom apartment would make the movie much more cramped, but how many one-income couples do you know live in two-storey mansions with convertibles, swimming pools and a television the size of my lounge room? (Perhaps this is just on my mind at the moment because we are looking to buy a little bit and I am upset that we personally can’t afford anything to live in anything bigger than a shoebox in someone’s cupboard.) Micah claims to be a day trader, sure, but I don’t know anything about day trading, and therefore am correct in my assumptions. Micah also apparently knows all about audio, as demonstrated in a scene where he is listening to a late night whisper on his computer: “This isn’t any language I’ve ever heard!” Bleurgh. Still, despite a couple of corny moments mostly supplied by Micah’s attitude problem, you do feel a lot for this cute young pair and the terrible sleep patterns they must be experiencing. It’s a creepy movie, no doubt about it, and better than many more expensive horror films I’ve seen. I hear tell there are three different endings being shown, and just hearing about the others gave me chills. I am also happy to report that despite seeing this at ten o’clock at night in an apartment overlooking a dark city alley, then driving home and making our way through the dark side streets near our home and into the flat where the cat is available all night to knock things over unexpectedly at two in the morning, I didn’t have any nightmares. I can’t guarantee the same for you.
