September 13, 2007
A defense of Rob Zombie's "Halloween"
*** Contains Spoilers! ***
Critics have been slamming this film, and so have die-hard John Carpenter fans. Since I'm sick to death of remakes, and loathed Rob Zombie's film "House of 1000 Corpses", I expected to hate it, as well. But there seemed to be an odd disconnect between what the critics were saying and the box office figures, which are decent, if not stellar. Also, users on rottentomatoes.com and IMDB are rating the film moderately highly.
So I went to see it yesterday. And I loved it.
Certainly, the film has flaws, but many of the so-called criticisms I've heard turned out, in my opinion, to be the film's strengths. About half of the film takes place BEFORE the events depicted in the original 1978 film, showing us Michael Meyers as a young boy and his descent into becoming a psychopathic killer. While this seems to be the main point that fans of the original film hate -- and I do mean HATE -- many of those who like the film (myself included) consider it to be the most interesting part of the film.
Yes, I'm a big fan of the original. I've been re-watching the classic horror films lately, being disappointed in the dreck Hollywood has been putting out, and "Halloween" is one of the few from that time period that I think really still stands up to serious scrutiny. (How anyone ever thought the original "The Hills Have Eyes" was frightening is completely beyond me.) But I don't worship Michael Meyers. I don't lay awake at nights, fearing that someone will create a movie that "ruins" him. All of this "destroying an icon" crap that people keep wailing simply irritates me.
Seeing the origin of Michael Meyers was, to me, fascinating. I went through a phase of being fascinated with serial killers when I was in college, and read a lot about Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and the like. And what I read convinced me of one thing - serial killers are not made. They are born. The early history of many of them shows them to be disturbed at a very young age, often torturing and killing animals in secret as young children. Yet, they frequently have siblings who are raised almost exactly the same way, yet these siblings exhibit none of this behavior. Yes, they might have family troubles - abusive parents, perhaps (although often not), difficult childhoods (although divorce and family arguments are hardly adequate explanations, in this case) - but millions of other kids grow up in similar circumstances WITHOUT become psychopathic killers. Upbringing isn't the whole puzzle.
Similarly, I don't think Rob Zombie's depiction of Michael's troubled childhood is an EXPLANATION of what he later becomes. Michael is clearly psychotic from the first moment we meet him. He simply APPEARS to be an innocent child. His home life is pretty awful, and he's bullied at school, but this is not adequate as an explanation. It simply serves as background detail.
When young Michael crosses the line from killing animals to killing his first human being, it is truly horrifying. The scene is the best in the film, depicted with stark brutality, in an incredibly realistic fashion. Not gory - the critics who lamented the gore in this film were apparently so shocked by the brutality of some of the killings that they saw something that isn't there. This film is bloody. We see gallons of it. But very little else. (I think there was one decapitation scene.) What is shocking is hearing this ten-year-old boy screaming in rage, as he hacks over and over again at someone with a knife or a branch or a baseball bat.
After killing a nurse in the asylum (which always seems oddly empty of anyone but Michael, Dr. Loomis and a few guards), Michael withdraws completely and stops speaking. As he grows older, he becomes obsessed with hiding his face behind masks, and he is allowed to wile away his time making disturbing masks reminiscent of Leatherface. Unfortunately, as Michael stops speaking, he becomes less interesting. By the time he escapes (in a rather implausible scene), the film has descended into the standard slasher film formula.
Another element of the story that is upsetting fans of the original film is that Michael Meyers occasionally shows elements of humanity, even as an adult. Admittedly, not much. But when he kills his family, as a child, he spares his mother, who treats him kindly, and his baby sister. And when he returns to his childhood home, now abandoned, to seek out Laurie Stroud, we discover that she is his baby sister. After his mother committed suicide, she was adopted by the Stroud family. And when he first kidnaps her, Michael is tender towards her - until she screws it up by stabbing him. (Although you can hardly blame her.)
This variation of the original film storyline has fans frothing at the mouth. Frankly, I don't care. Within the context of the Zombie film, it works perfectly well. (Although how he managed to track her down is completely glossed over - presumably, he simply recognized her somehow.)
As we plod through killing after killing in the second half, the film does get a little tedious. I happen to believe this of most slasher films, but that's beside the point. John Carpenter did handle this part of it better. But the ending, I think, redeems the new film. After Laurie is trapped in the empty swimming pool behind the Meyer house, in a scene which I think is suspenseful, despite rants that Rob Zombie was able to elicit no suspense in the film whatsoever, we go through a fairly stock crawling-through-the-walls-as-the-villain-breaks-holes-in-it sequence (I can't remember the first time I've seen this, but it doesn't provide much punch for me), ending with Laurie and Michael plummeting out of the upstairs window together.
I won't completely ruin the ending, except to say that the last minute or so made the movie for me. (Well the first murder was pretty memorable, too.) It's the most realistic reaction to being chased and tortured all night by a psychopath that I've ever seen in a slasher film, and I think it's perfect.
I don't think the film is fantastic, but it's pretty good. The hand-held camera work is generally very effective, although it often started to give me a headache, when I was watching it. And it had an intensity which too many horror films lack these days.
Lastly, the film struck me as sexist, with women's breasts everywhere and not a single naked man in sight. I appreciate that Zombie is a heterosexual male and this is what heterosexual males like, and it's also a staple of slasher films. But there were at least two or three scenes in which men and women were having sex - together, in fact - and the camera really seemed to be going to great lengths to AVOID showing us any male nudity, so we could focus on the women. That's the point at which it gets silly, to me. If two people are having sex in a scene, they should both be naked. Even if you assume (wrongly) that no gay men will be watching the movie, a good percentage of the audience is female, so why be so one-sided?
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June 26, 2007
A review of "1408" and comments about horror movies in general
Everyone in the country appears to love this movie and think it's scary. I guess I'm too jaded - I thought it was a string of tired movie cliches that made little sense. Sure, it had it's moments and a few really made me jump, the cinematography worked well in places, and the acting was good (don't even get me started about the crappy CGI, though).
But on the whole, it wasn't very scary. For the most part, I kept waiting for the REALLY scary things to happen...and they never did.
I've begun to notice that the major difference between American horror and Japanese (or Asian, in general) horror, which I often find very scary, is that American horror likes to shock you with something jumping out at you, accompanied by a loud noise (this actually works well for us in "The Sacrifice" - most people love the "zombie hands" scene, even if they don't care for the rest of the film), whereas Asian horror likes the idea of something nasty slowly walking or
crawling across the room towards you.
They have their own cliches, which are getting a bit tiresome - long black hair creeping out of things, ghosts walking (or crawling) with disjointed or jerky movements, pretty much the same blueish ghost make-up on EVERY ghost we encounter - but I have to say I find Asian horror to be much more frightening than American horror. I'm often squirming in my seat, as the horrid thing on screen slowly inches towards the camera,
wanting to get away from it as much as the cast of the film does.
Something jumping out at me gets my heart racing for a second, and there is a certain amount of tension that builds up, because you don't know when the NEXT thing is going to jump out at you. But too frequently, what jumps out isn't all that frightening, after all - it's the jump and the loud noise that the filmmaker is counting on to scare me, and I no longer really fall for it.
I also found it disheartening that so many fans attacked the few critics who seemed to notice that "1408" makes no sense, insisting that movies about the paranormal don't HAVE to make sense. Huh? Good movies make sense, even if they're cryptic upon first viewing - "Donnie Darko", "The Shining" (the Kubrick version), these movies make sense, when you really look at them. Even if you never feel that you quite get it, you should at least feel that there is something there to get - something hiding below the surface that may be eluding you, but that you feel is there, nonetheless.
Note that these fans weren't defending "1408", saying that it DOES make sense, on some level - they were defending lazy filmmaking. They were, in essence, saying that they were perfectly willing to slap down their ten bucks for a film that's badly structured and make excuses for the writer and director, rather than demand better films. It's horror. It doesn't have to be good - it just has to have things jumping out at us.
Ugh.
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December 30, 2006
New Canon XL2
We've acquired a new camera! Not that I'm not still in love with the Panasonic DVX100, but we got the opportunity to pick up a Canon XL2, nearly brand new, for a significant discount.
This thing is huge! It's nearly twice the size of the DVX100, and looks much more like a professional TV camera. It has an adapter, so it can be lugged around on your shoulder, although I pity anyone who has to do that for any length of time - it weighs almost eight pounds! It does, of course, fit on a tripod, as well.
I'm not convinced that the image quality is any better than the Panasonic, but one big improvement is the zoom. The DVX100 has a 10x zoom on it, but the Canon has a 20x zoom, which enables it to get close-up shots that are impossible with the DVX100. (This has been a source of frustration on "For A Small Fee", and I've been anticipating problems with some of the shots I have planned for "Resurrection".)
The other improvement is interchangeable lenses. The DVX100 only has one built-in lens, but the lens on the Canon can be swapped with other lenses. How much of an improvement this will prove to be, in practical terms, remains to be seen. I've looked at some other lenses on the market for the camera, and they don't look like anything I'd need. But it might prove useful, in the future.
At any rate, we now have two cameras. So if one breaks down, we'll have a back-up and won't have to bring production to a halt - something that's been a source of considerable stress for me.
We'll also have an easier time filming dialog scenes and stunts, since we'll be able to catch the action from two angles at the same time, rather than have to do it twice. (Not that this will eliminate the need for multiple takes, of course.)
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July 17, 2006
New horror short project
We've experienced some delays with the costumes for "For A Small Fee", which we're none too happy about. While we're straightening out that issue, though, we've been given the chance to enter a short horror film competition!
The 2006 Eerie Horror Fest wants people to submit 1 -2 minute short horror films that somehow promote their festival. They don't want out-right ads, but just short films that feature their title or logo in a prominent place, at some point.
I've written a screenplay that I think is pretty good, and David Snyder (in the lead, this time) and Rob Kersey will be starring in it, with Corey Reed Smith starring as...well, a dead body.
Erich and I have already scouted our locations and picked up all the props we'll need (except for one that I have to get made up this week), and filming will take place two weekends from now, weather permitting. (If it's pouring, I may very well work it into the film.)
I've also ordered a crane for the camera. It fits on the tripod and should give us a smooth range of motion from ground level up to about 11 feet or so. Not high enough for some shots I want to do in "The Resurrection", but good enough for a lot of shots.
In other news, the second draft of "The Resurrection" is finished, but I'm immediately plowing into a third draft. It's at least a half-hour too long. But otherwise, it's coming along nicely.
IMDB has added all of our cast to the database (
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0818620/ ), and I'm now credited as the writer and director. We're still waiting for some of the crew to be updated. But we have three great user reviews posted!