IN A VALLEY OF VIOLENCE (US - 2016) Written and directed by Ti West. Cast: Ethan Hawke, John Travolta, Karen Gillan, Taissa Farmiga, James Ransone, Burn Gorman, Toby Huss, Larry Fessenden, Tommy Nohilly, K. Harrison Sweeney, Jumpy. (R, 103 mins) IN A VALLEY OF VIOLENCE is a welcome departure for cult horror director Ti West, the perpetually overrated wunderkind so coddled by bloggers and fanboy scenesters that you'd swear the Make-a-Wish Foundation was bankrolling him. West's slow-burn aesthetic has resulted in exactly one good film--his 2009 retro '80s breakthrough THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL--and a lot of nothing else, regardless of how many accolades are bestowed upon 2011's inexplicably praised THE INNKEEPERS and 2014's pointless modern-day Jonestown Massacre redux THE SACRAMENT (he also contributed segments to V/H/S and THE ABCs OF DEATH). West branches out with the Blumhouse-produced IN A VALLEY OF VIOLENCE, a western shot two years ago but only now getting a VOD dumping through Universal's Focus World division, which started out handling foreign and arthouse titles, but has since become their de facto on-demand division. That's a shame, because this is West's most enjoyable, accessible, and accomplished film to date. Like THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL, it's heavy on homage, but in abandoning the slow burn technique that he frankly ran into the ground in his subsequent films, and choosing to tell a no-bullshit, meat-and-potatoes western revenge saga, he proves himself an exemplary genre craftsman instead of the one-trick-pony that his past films seemed to indicate.
From its opening credits that emulate the spaghetti westerns of the Sergios Leone and Corbucci to the music cues that recall the maestro Ennio Morricone, IN A VALLEY OF VIOLENCE makes it clear from the start that it's wearing its heart on its sleeve and isn't interested in blazing new trails. That's OK, because a good revenge story well told is never not satisfying. In a convincing, committed performance, Ethan Hawke is Paul, a post-Civil War Army deserter trying to make his way to Mexico with his loyal canine companion Abby (played by border collie/blue heeler mix Jumpy in one of the most remarkable animal performances in recent memory). He makes the fateful decision of taking a shortcut through Denton, a once-thriving mining town that's fallen on hard times and is virtually abandoned except for a general store, a saloon, and a hotel with no guests. Stopping in the saloon to get some water for Abby and minding his own business, Paul is harassed by deputy marshal and alpha-male loudmouth Gilly Martin (Hawke's SINISTER co-star James Ransone), a sniveling bully who's putting on a tough-guy act for his trio of sycophantic buddies, Harris (Toby Huss), Tubby (Tommy Nohilly), and Roy (the inevitable Larry Fessenden). For no reason whatsoever, Gilly starts an argument with Paul and challenges him to a fight in the street, calling all the remaining townsfolk out to witness a beatdown. Additional cheerleading and egging-on is provided by his adoring fiancee Ellen (Karen Gillan), who runs the hotel with her 16-year-old sister Mary Anne (Taissa Farmiga), the child-bride of a local who went off to find work and is clearly not coming back for her. Gilly talks (and talks and talks) a big game but promptly gets knocked on his ass with one punch by Paul, who just wants to stock up on necessities at the general store, take a bath at the hotel, and be on his way. He's met by Denton's one-legged marshal, Clyde Martin (John Travolta), who's just returned home and was informed by his deputy--his son--that there's a troublemaker in town. Clyde can tell from Paul's demeanor and his weapons that he's a military man and concludes that he's a deserter. Though he should turn him in, he doesn't want any trouble in Denton and doesn't doubt for a moment that the fight was started by his idiot son. Clyde lets Paul go under the condition that he never return to Denton and the situation between the two of them ends peacefully and amicably. Of course, Gilly isn't the type of man-child to let go of being humiliated in front of everyone, so he and his boys follow Paul and Abby into the desert that night and ambush them while they're asleep. Gilly kills Abby and the others throw Paul off a cliff and assume he's dead.
What follows is a classic western resurrection, with the presumed-dead Paul, already filled with regret over deserting both the Army and his familly, making his way back to town, seething with rage and obsessed with avenging Abby's senseless murder. It certainly sounds like JOHN WICK reimagined as a western, but West had this in production several months before that was released. Put in a position where he has to take on the town, Paul finds just one ally in Mary Anne and lets no one stand in his way, and even though he sympathizes with Paul and blames his son for causing the situation to escalate ("You think because you got a prick and a pistol that you can just go around killin' people?!" he yells), he feels an obligation to protect Denton and a fatherly duty to look out for his son, regardless of how stupid he may be. Hawke is a gritty hero and Ransone makes a loathsome villain you'll love to hate, but thanks to Jumpy (is it possible for a dog to get a Best Supporting Actor nomination?), Travolta can only be the second best scene-stealer here, having a blast channeling his inner Jeff Bridges and hobbling around on a wooden leg. Whether he'd dispensing sage advice or dropping his cane to beat some sense into Gilly, then telling someone "Gimme that cane!" and using it to beat Gilly some more, Travolta dives into this and turns in his best work in years. West also invests the film with generous helpings of dark and quirky humor, whether it's Tubby finally having enough of everyone's relentless fat-shaming or Marshal Clyde needing to keep his badge in his pocket since the pin broke off long ago, a sure indication of Denton's sorry financial condition. There's a trend in today's westerns to subvert genre expectations, as evidenced by S. Craig Zahler's brilliant western-turned-horror film BONE TOMAHAWK and Quentin Tarantino's western-as-drawing room mystery THE HATEFUL EIGHT, but IN A VALLEY OF VIOLENCE avoids the kind of snark and irony that are pitfalls for these sorts of movies, never pretending to be anything other than what it is--a fast-paced, straightforward revenge saga with strong characters, solid performances, and a riveting story. Why is this being relegated to VOD and just a few theaters? This could've been a hit. Look for this one to have a long, healthy word-of-mouth life on steaming and cable. It's the best action genre offering since the similarly VOD-dumped BLOOD FATHER.
ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE (UK/Germany/Greece/France - 2014)
A moody, melancholy vampire film as only Jim Jarmusch could make, ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE has almost no concern with the horror angle or any other genre trends. Jarmusch's centuries-old protagonists--Eve (Tilda Swinton) and Adam (Tom Hiddleston)--have loved one another through time and have been witness to countless historical and cultural touchstones: they knew Lord Byron and Mary Shelley, Adam worked with Nikola Tesla, ghost-composed pieces for Schubert, and was an early supporter of his friend Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. They've drifted apart, with Eve living in Tangier and Adam in Detroit. She passes her days devouring great literature and he holes up in his dilapidated Brush Park mansion with his extensive collection of guitars, recording shoegazing garage rock instrumentals. A limitlessly-wealthy shut-in, he gets his necessities from local rock club kid Ian (Anton Yelchin) and procures blood at a local hospital from hematologist Dr. Watson (Jeffrey Wright). Bored in Tangier, seemingly destined to live forever, and encouraged by her vampire mentor and blood supplier Marlowe (John Hurt), Eve flies to Detroit to rekindle her romance with Adam, but everything gets thrown in jeopardy with the arrival of her irresponsible, hard-partying sister Ava (Mia Wasikowska) from Los Angeles.
Jarmusch tells his tale with a significant amount of dark and deadpan humor that could come across as "cute" in the wrong hands but he plays it perfectly, with everything from Eve and Adam enjoying frozen bloodcicles to Adam sounding not at all like the cultured immortal he is when he expresses his everyman hate for his de-facto sister-in-law and complains that their uninvited, imposing houseguest is "drinking all the O-negative." Jarmusch makes very effective use of Detroit locations, not merely shooting there but incorporating the city's culture, blight, and wasteland-like surroundings into the story. Adam takes Eve on a tour of crumbling and decaying Detroit landmarks like the Packard Plant and the old Michigan Theater, and they serve as metaphors for relics of a long-gone day, much like Adam and Eve themselves. Unlike the misanthropic, dour Adam, Eve sees beauty in the ruins and its cultural significance ("I love Jack White!" she exclaims as Adam shows her the musician's childhood home in a now-rundown neighborhood). Swinton and Hiddleston are excellent in this very offbeat genre piece that's unlike any vampire film you've seen. Like most Jarmusch films, it's extremely slowly-paced, very much the distinct work of its maker, and mostly quite rewarding in the end. (R, 123 mins)
FADING GIGOLO (US - 2014)
An odd, low-key comedy written, directed by, and starring John Turturro, FADING GIGOLO seems like it's going for goofy and raunchy early on, but it settles into a very quiet and leisurely-paced (almost to a fault) character piece. Turturro's film is set in the kind of Brooklyn you don't see much of in the movies anymore, very nicely shot by Marco Pontecorvo, son of legendary Italian filmmaker Gillo Pontecorvo (THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS) and has a definite Woody Allen influence, which even extends to Allen co-starring in one of the rare occasions over his 50-year career that he's acting in a film he didn't write and/or direct (the last were Douglas McGrath's barely-released COMPANY MAN and Alfonso Arau's even less-seen PICKING UP THE PIECES, both back in 2000). Allen is Murray Schwartz, an aging Brooklyn bookstore owner who's closing up shop and in dire need of money. His bisexual dermatologist (Sharon Stone) happens to tell him that she and her girlfriend (Sofia Vergara) are interested in a menage-a-trois, prompting Murray to offer the services of his nice-guy florist pal Fioravante (Turturro). Before long, Fioravante becomes a sought-after Brooklyn gigolo with Murray his unlikely pimp (if this sounds like a nebbishy version of the HBO series HUNG, you're right), but things get complicated when Fioravante develops feelings for a Rabbi's widow (a de-glammed Vanessa Paradis), who's being courted by an angry Hasidic beat cop (Liev Schreiber).
The premise starts out like an R-rated sitcom and has some funny moments from Allen, coming up with would-be intimidating pimp names for himself, such as "Iceberg," and "Bookmaster Moe." But once Fioravante starts pining for the widow, the laughs get dialed down quite a bit and a somber Turturro frequently comes off like a black hole in the center of his own movie, almost like he knew Allen would steal all the scenes, so he's not even going to try. But even some of Allen's scenes don't work all that well, particularly a dreadful sequence where he's hauled off to some Hasidic kangaroo court with his lawyer (Bob Balaban). Fioravante's transformation from shy homebody to sexual dynamo seems forced, as does Turturro casting himself as someone that Brooklyn's sexiest, richest wives can't resist. FADING GIGOLO is a strange film that never settles on a tone and never really comes together, but Allen seems to be enjoying himself, even if this is just a minor footnote to his long and storied career. Allen's onscreen appearances, even in his own films, are a rarity these days and maybe if this was called FADING PIMP and focused on him, it would've been a bit more successful. This ended up being a small arthouse sleeper hit for Cannon cover band Millennium over the spring and summer of 2014, almost breaking into wide release like the company's BERNIE after landing in the top 15 on just 356 screens. (R, 90 mins)
THE SACRAMENT (US - 2014)
Ti West got a lot of attention in the cult horror scene with his impressive THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL (2009), a very creepy and very methodically-paced '80s throwback that seems to have spawned a "slow-burn" movement in the genre: films where long periods of time pass with very little happening. An assured director uses this to ramp up the tension, and while it worked with THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL, it failed with West's follow-up THE INNKEEPERS (2012), an inexplicably acclaimed horror film that was all slow-burn and nothing else. West, in many ways the Wes Anderson of horror, is so revered and coddled so gingerly with kid gloves by both critics and cult horror hipsters that it often seems like his career was granted by the Make-a-Wish Foundation. On the basis of THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL, I want to like Ti West's films (he also directed and disowned the long-shelved CABIN FEVER 2: SPRING FEVER), but I just can't get on the bandwagon. Something's just not working for me when it comes to his films and I don't know if it's the films themselves or that everyone seems to be seeing some kind of magic that's eluding me.
Boasting the opening credit "Eli Roth Presents," which is probably the point where the target audience had seen enough to conclude that it was a new masterpiece of modern horror and the Academy should bestow its first Participation Oscar to its maker, West's latest, THE SACRAMENT, may be the most pointless film of the year. And in using the 1978 Jonestown tragedy in Guyana as the story template, I can't imagine a more dead-on metaphor for the Kool-Aid guzzling, fanboy adoration of West's work. Here we have a film specifically engineered for the uninformed or those younger genre fans who are blithely unaware of anything that happened prior to their lifetime. If you've been waiting patiently for Jonestown recreated as a found footage/faux-doc--and if you have, then you're not quite ready to run with the grownups--then THE SACRAMENT is for you. Sure, it's set in the present day and has two Vice staffers (AJ Bowen and the inevitable Joe Swanberg) tagging along to make a doc with a colleague (Kentucker Audley) whose recovering drug addict sister (Amy Seimetz) has run off with the cult. And yes, it changes the name of the cult's compound from Jonestown to Eden Parish and the messianic leader is known simply as "Father," but he's Jim Jones, right down to the folksy drawl, the black hair, and the dark glasses. Gene Jones (best known as the gas station clerk in the "friendo" coin toss scene in NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN) is OK in the role, but he doesn't do anything that Powers Boothe didn't already do in the then-topical 1980 TV-movie GUYANA TRAGEDY: THE STORY OF JIM JONES or, for that matter, Stuart Whitman as "Jim Johnson" in the spectacularly trashy GUYANA: CULT OF THE DAMNED (also 1980). But everything you know about Jonestown, right down to the cult members being held captive, the brainwashing, the Kool-Aid, the sex, and the drugs, is all here. There's nothing surprising. If you know the story of Jonestown, then you know what's exactly what's going to happen in THE SACRAMENT. So who is this movie for? Why does it exist? Why retell this story now, in this fashion? If West thinks the faux-doc angle with obligatory CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST/BLAIR WITCH PROJECT dropped-camera shots justifies a rudimentary, connect-the-dots, Wikipedia retelling of the story--and even the would-be doc stuff is handled erratically and inconsistently--then I'm calling bullshit on the entire Ti West mythos. In fact, I may even take it one step further and go full ROOM 237 and say THE SACRAMENT is West's confession that he's all smoke and mirrors, that he's been punking us all along, and that there really is nothing there. (R, 99 mins)
Directed by Adam Wingard. Written by Simon Barrett. Cast: Sharni Vinson, Nicholas Tucci, Wendy Glenn, AJ Bowen, Joe Swanberg, Amy Seimetz, Rob Moran, Barbara Crampton, Sarah Myers, Ti West, L.C. Holt, Simon Barrett, Larry Fessenden, Kate Lyn Sheil. (R, 94 mins)
More than any other film genre, horror makes its fans wade through some real shit to get to the worthy offerings. It seems like every other week, Fangoria or Dread Central are hyping some must-see game-changer that's ultimately mediocre, forgettable, and populated with the same cast of interchangeable horror-con fixtures and other perpetual C-and-D-listers. And even the next generation of so-called "great" horror filmmakers mostly seem to be people who are probably a lot of fun to watch horror movies with, but can't resist the urge to get snarky and meta with their own stuff. And God help you if you think "found footage" is the answer to the horror genre's problems. YOU'RE NEXT is finally getting national distribution nearly two years after it played the film festival circuit. It's directed by Adam Wingard, whose name is usually bandied about as one of these "future of horror" guys. He got some acclaim with his 2011 film A HORRIBLE WAY TO DIE and was involved in both V/H/S anthologies as well as THE ABCs OF DEATH. YOU'RE NEXT is easily the defining statement of his career thus far, and if you've suffered through some bad horror movies in recent years, I'm here to tell you that it all pays off with YOU'RE NEXT.
Opening with a couple (the guy is Wendigo-obsessed cult horror director Larry Fessenden) being killed by a figure in a creepy animal mask, YOU'RE NEXT shifts its focus to an isolated mansion a bit further down the road, still in the middle of nowhere. It's the 35th wedding anniversary of wealthy, retired defense contractor Paul Davison (Rob Moran) and his wife Aubrey (RE-ANIMATOR scream queen Barbara Crampton), and they've invited their children and their significant others to a weekend gathering: oldest son Drake (Joe Swanberg) and his wife Kelly (Sarah Myers); college prof son Crispian (AJ Bowen) and his Australian grad student girlfriend Erin (Sharni Vinson); daughter Aimee (Amy Seimetz), and her "underground documentary filmmaker" boyfriend Tariq (Ti West); and youngest son Felix (Nicholas Tucci) and his goth girlfriend Zee (Wendy Glenn). There's hints of typical family dysfunction that explode during dinner when the abrasive, insufferable Drake (who tells Tariq he should consider "documentary commercials") keeps prodding the thin-skinned Crispian about a variety of issues (his relationship with Erin starting when he was her professor; how his round face makes him look fat, etc). The arguing temporarily ceases when one of them notices something outside the window and ends up with a crossbow arrow in their skull. Quickly realizing they're under siege by at least two or three killers wearing the same animal masks from the opening murder sequence (and one of them is already hiding in the house), the family is picked off one by one in a variety of gruesome ways, with "You're next" scrawled in blood on the wall. Luckily for the Davisons, Erin happens to have had a crazy dad who raised her in a survivalist compound in the Outback, which immediately establishes her as the most resourceful of the bunch when it comes to outwitting the killers. Using a variety of impromptu booby-traps that at times bring to mind a stalk-and-slash version of HOME ALONE, Erin proves to be more than the killers were anticipating, but that's only the beginning of the twists to come.
There's several reasons YOU'RE NEXT works as well as it does: Wingard and writer Simon Barrett (who plays one of the killers) know the clichés of the horror genre and, specifically, the home-invasion subgenre, and don't avoid them, instead using them to maximum advantage. Wingard knows how to stage suspense sequences and delay reveals in ways that provide the most tension possible. The film is drawing comparisons to SCREAM, but not in the sense that it's a genre deconstruction, but more in the way that it knows how to use the various standards and expectations that come with the slasher film. With its inferior sequels and the many self-referential, meta films it spawned, it's easy to forget how fresh and inventive SCREAM was in 1996. It's been sequeled and copied and parodied so much that it's common to simply dismiss it outright today, but that's not really fair. It's like blaming PULP FICTION for the flood of Tarantino knockoffs that stunk up the new release sections of video stores throughout the '90s and still occasionally trickle in to this day. YOU'RE NEXT is this generation's SCREAM primarily in the way it reinvigorates a stagnant genre. At the same time, Wingard isn't trying to reinvent the wheel: children of the '80s will love the practical splatter effects and the throbbing synth score that sounds like it wandered in from a never-released John Carpenter film.
Another huge plus working in YOU'RE NEXT's favor: Barrett's mostly unpredictable script (the one weakness: when one character vanishes for a long period of screen time, it's obviously for a reason) is also funny without being snarky or condescending. The characters here never stop to talk about how they're in the middle of a stalk & slash film in an old dark house and they don't have any ironic quips to make about it. The humor in YOU'RE NEXT ranges from smart to dark to outright absurd: Drake still acting like a complete blowhard asshole even with an arrow sticking out of his shoulder for most of the film; needy Aimee fishing for Daddy's validation even as bodies pile up around them ("I can run fast, but nobody ever believes in me!" Paul: "I believe in you, Princess!"); Erin getting the edge on one of the killers and smashing his head to a pulp with a hammer, then asking Felix "Do you recognize this guy?" to which Felix deadpans "It's kinda hard to tell." The performances generally range from functional to decent--several of the cast members (Swanberg, West, UPSTREAM COLOR star Seimetz) are also writers and directors--but a star is born in Vinson's ballsy turn as the tough-as-shit Erin, instantly staking her claim as one of horror cinema's all-time great Final Girls.
For horror fans around my age (40), there's a nostalgia for the movies of our youth that shows no signs of abating. Wingard is in that same demographic. There's a reason he utilized practical gore and a reason he uses Carpenter-esque music cues (plus the creepy utilization of the Dwight Twilley Band's minor 1977 hit "Looking for the Magic"): because he's a fan first, he knows what fans want to see and hear. There's no shitty CGI here. In fact, when one person is stabbed in the eye, there's some very visible latex. Latex! In a horror movie in 2013! The only concession Wingard seems to make to modern horror from an aesthetic angle is using a lot of shaky hand-held in some sequences, but it's done in a way that's appropriate to the film and not simply shaking the camera around to make things look busy. The point is this: it's tough being a horror movie fan today. We long for things as good as the influential classics of our past (of course, everyone thinks "their" stuff was the best, just like our parents thought most of the '80s stuff was too over-the-top) and most of today's horror movies just aren't fun. There's something missing and YOU'RE NEXT is as close as I've seen in a long time to getting it back. They just don't make 'em like this anymore. For once, a buzzed-about horror flick lives up to the hype, and if this came out 25 or 30 years ago, it would be a film that we're still talking about today. I'm sure there'll be no shortage of nitpicky, cynical contrarians who just can't allow themselves to enjoy the hell out of this thing that gives them exactly the kind of entertaining, old-school jolts that they want, but it's the most fun I've had with a horror movie in ages.
There's an interesting concept behind the anthology horror film THE ABCs OF DEATH: producers gave a letter of the alphabet to 27 cult horror filmmakers (the letter "O" is handled by the two-person team behind the giallo throwback AMER), giving each $5000 and complete artistic freedom to do what they want with their letter and make a four-to-five-minute short film that must culminate in death. As with any anthology, it's a wildly inconsistent mixed bag with several standouts and quite a few duds. There's a tendency toward transgression and almost-childish shock value--look no further than the fact that three of the 26 segments prominently feature a toilet, and another has a guy getting his face dunked in a diarrhea-filled bedpan--but there's a few surprising winners spread throughout, often from unexpected sources. The standout is probably "D is for Dogfight," by DEADGIRL co-director Marcel Sarmiento, a genuinely shocking, misanthropic piece about an underground fight club that pits man against dog (among the slobbering onlookers is a cheering toddler wearing just a diaper) with a surprising twist. "Q is for Quack" is a brilliantly-conceived meta piece where director Adam Wingard (A HORRIBLE WAY TO DIE) plays himself, bitching about being picked last for the project ("even after Nacho Vigalondo," his buddy reminds him) and being stuck with the letter Q. "O is for Orgasm" is a color-drenched piece from AMER creators Helene Cattet & Bruno Forzani. Music video animator Lee Hardcastle's claymation "T is for Toilet" presents a truly horrific potty-training incident that avoids the scatological direction of the other toilet-centric stories. FRONTIER(S) director Xavier Gens' "X is for XXL" is a horrifying look at an obese woman who decides to take an electric carving knife to her body fat. "M is for Miscarriage" is the shortest of the segments at around two minutes, but it packs a sick and jaw-droppingly dark wallop and again proves that hipster would-be horror wunderkind Ti West (THE INNKEEPERS) is best when taken in small doses.
There's a lot of DOA material throughout--you can pretty much skip letters F-through-L (starting with Noboru Iguchi's useless "F is for Fart" up to Timi Tjahjanto's semen-drenched "L is for Libido"), and Simon Rumley's "P is for Pressure" is a real disappointment considering how great his extraordinarily unsettling RED, WHITE & BLUE was. ABCs stumbles to its conclusion with a pair of late-in-the-game low points with Joe Schnepp's "W is for WTF?" and Yoshihiro Nishimura's "Z is for Zetsumetsu," but the unlikely Jason Eisener (the terrible prefab cult movie HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN) gives the closing stretch a lift with the revenge tale "Y is for Youngbuck," which gets a hugely catchy soundtrack with "Vengeance" by the synth-rock outfit Powerglove. Other directors include Srdjan Spasojevic (A SERBIAN FILM), MAY star Angela Bettis, Ben Wheatley (KILL LIST), Andrew Traucki (THE REEF), and Jorge Michel Grau (WE ARE WHAT WE ARE). There's some good stuff in THE ABCs OF DEATH, but you have to get around a lot of shit--and other byproducts of the human body--to appreciate it. (Unrated, 129 mins)
NEIGHBORING SOUNDS (Brazil - 2012)
NEIGHBORING SOUNDS, the first narrative feature by Brazilian documentarian and former film critic Kleber Mendonca Filho, is the kind of long and slow-moving film that demands patience and attention but the diligence pays off by the end. The film looks at an ensemble of residents in a changing neighborhood of tower blocks in Recife. One high-rise after another has been constructed as the upper-middle class has moved in, literally looking down upon the lower class at the street level, who will soon be displaced to make room for more towers. Crime is on the increase, prompting Clodoaldo (Irandhir Santos) and a few friends to collect money from the residents and function as the neighborhood's self-appointed security crew. As they establish more of a presence, it becomes clear that Clodoaldo has set up shop here for a reason. We also meet old Francisco (W.J. Solha), a former sugar plantation owner who used to own all of the buildings but has made himself a fortune selling the properties to developers. There's also Francisco's grandson Joao (Gustavo Jahn), who works as the area's leasing agent; his maybe-girlfriend Sofia (Irma Brown), who grew up in a house that Francisco now owns and has just sold to be demolished; Joao's cousin Dinho (Yuri Holanda), the resident car stereo thief; and stay-at-home mom Bia (Maeve Jinkings), who spends her days devising ways to quiet a neighbor's incessantly barking dog in addition to alleviating the boredom by getting high or rubbing herself against the dryer when it's on spin-cycle. Even when very little is happening, the constant presence of Clodoaldo and his "security" team, coupled with the way Filho uses sound, usually coming from just outside the frame, succeeds in creating a profound sense of unease and tension throughout NEIGHBORING SOUNDS (with one shot that provides more of a jolt than any recent horror movie). In a way, this is a very angry film in the way it presents the upper-middle class as living above and being better than those who live beneath and serve them, blithely dismissing them as they live among them in this endless, bitter class struggle, a fact that something Clodoaldo is clearly itching to remind them (and demonstrated in the way a parking attendant keys the car of a rude resident). Almost willfully obfuscating and evasive at times, it isn't until the very end of the film (the next-to-last scene, in fact) that Filho lays all the cards on the table. While some of the plot threads don't really go anywhere (Bia and the dog, for example), they do provide some character shading and a general "feel" for this particular place. Slow but never dull, the beautifully-shot NEIGHBORING SOUNDS very gradually pulls you in, maintaining a very mysterious aura all the way to its surprise ending that expects you to have been paying attention from the film's very first images. (Unrated, 131 mins, also available on Netflix streaming)
WASTED ON THE YOUNG (Australia - 2011; 2013 US release)
This visually arresting and occasionally ambitious debut from writer/director Ben C. Lucas starts as an Australian LESS THAN ZERO with a touch of Larry Clark's BULLY and also flirts with the revenge thriller genre. With its total absence of adults in any capacity (there's no parents or teachers to be found), it functions more as a parable than a plausible narrative (at one point, against an obviously fake greenscreen sky, one character says "This place isn't real, anyway") and contains enough fantasy imagery of school shootings that it's easy to see why this only got a very limited US theatrical and VOD release two years after it made the rounds in Australia. Despicable swim-team god Zack (CHRONICLE's Alex Russell) lords over the students of a posh private school ("When you're above people, you don't have to explain yourself to anyone, for anything") and keeps his bookish, introverted stepbrother Darren (Oliver Ackland) under this thumb, allowing him on the swim team but making him do all of his school assignments. When Zack and his jock buddies see Darren and cute, brainy Xandrie (Adelaide Clemens) hitting it off, they decide to invite her to a party where Xandrie is drugged, raped, and left unconscious on a nearby beach. Darren, under the impression that Xandrie left the party, is unaware of what happened until he tries calling her the next day and finds her phone buried between couch cushions in the basement. When Xandrie reappears at school several days later, Zack and his crew have made sure that her reputation is ruined, that everyone knows she was "asking for it," and that she's just making up stories about Zack because "she regrets sleeping with him."
Lucas' use of color (there's a very striking shot of Xandrie appearing at the top of a staircase that looks like it belongs in an Italian giallo), framing, and creative editing techniques (this mostly unfolds in a linear fashion, but there are some interesting instances of back-and-forth cross-cutting between past, present, and future) are very well-managed by the first-time filmmaker, who gets strong performances from his three leads, even if 31-year-old Ackland, whose perpetual five-o'clock shadow frequently makes him look like he should be Russell's stepfather rather than his younger stepbrother, is a decade too old for his role. Russell manages to make the cocky, smirking Zack truly hateful without resorting to cliches, and the promising Clemens (the Michelle Williams lookalike who's become a bit of a new scream queen with SILENT HILL: REVELATION and NO ONE LIVES) is very good as Xandrie. Sometimes the intentional unreality is distracting from a storytelling perspective (when Darren is caught downloading video files from the laptop of one of Zack's asshole buddies, Zack's blase non-reaction reeks of plot convenience), and the climax gets a little too tech-geeky and ham-fisted in its messaging of social media and the sense of disconnect, but overall, despite a couple of minor rookie mistakes, WASTED ON THE YOUNG is a solid debut from a filmmaker with obvious potential. (R, 97 mins, also available on Netflix streaming).
Some of today's hippest horror scenesters contributed to this found-footage anthology where all of the stories have their moments, but very few, if any, are wholly satisfying. The wraparound story of four small-time criminals hired to break into a house to steal a VHS tape for reasons shrouded in secrecy was handled by A HORRIBLE WAY TO DIE director Adam Wingard. They find a dead body in a recliner that seems to disappear and reappear, and the film consists of some VHS tapes that one guy watches while the others are looking for the specific item in question. The first is from THE SIGNAL co-director David Bruckner, and deals with three hard-partying douchebags who get more than they bargained for when they take a seemingly eager young woman back to their motel room after last call. THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL's Ti West is next with a married couple on a second honeymoon, unaware that a stranger is filming them while they sleep. I SELL THE DEAD director Glenn McQuaid's segment has four college kids on a camping trip pursued through the woods by a bizarrely technological slasher. Mumblecore filmmaker Joe Swanberg (HANNAH TAKES THE STAIRS), who stars as the husband in Bruckner's story, then presents a haunted apartment tale that plays out as a series of Skype sessions between a troubled young woman and her doctor. The closer is from a four-man collective known as Radio Silence, where four guys go to a Halloween party that gets very serious very quickly.
There's some occasionally effective moments--the first "ghost" appearance in Swanberg's short; the whole "glitch" concept of McQuaid's that doesn't really work but it's an interesting idea; and West, possibly the most overrated figure in modern horror (I love THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL, but just admit it, people...THE INNKEEPERS is terrible), gets OK results with his patented "slow burn" technique because he's only got 20 minutes to fill instead of 100. Like most anthology horror films, it knows to finish big, and the last segment is probably the best overall, but all of these stories feel like they read better on the page than seen on the screen. Because the film is made up entirely of people filming everything they do, the result is endless YouTube-quality shaky cam visuals that get to be a bit much at nearly two hours, and the almost all of the characters are annoying assholes. And shouldn't the "wraparound" segment of an anthology be...finished? The established set-up with the break-in for the mystery VHS tape is simply abandoned and the film ends with the closing of the last segment. It's called a "wraparound" for a reason. Other than going for some kind of retro hipster cred, the film doesn't really do anything with the VHS format other than give it an excuse for looking crappy. The guys in the wraparound segment could've just as easily been looking for a DVD or a hidden computer file (which also begs the question of why someone possessing enough tech savvy to Skype is saving sessions on a VHS tape). The web site Bloody Disgusting co-produced, which means it and its visitors have likely already declared V/H/S a masterpiece of horror, but there's very little here worth getting excited about. (R, 116 mins)
SILENT NIGHT (US/Canada - 2012)
The controversial 1984 Santa slasher SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT was no one's idea of a classic horror film, but even it's better than this miserable and pointlessly vulgar remake. Sure, there's no shortage of splatter with its incredibly gory killings, so if that's all you're after, you won't be disappointed. And fans of the original will find a couple of restaged scenes here (no, they didn't forget the antler impaling), but it's so terribly written, directed, and acted that it's impossible to care. There's no scares, and the many snarky attempts at humor fall flat. Jaime King stars as a small-town Wisconsin deputy sheriff in pursuit of a killer Santa on Christmas Eve, the same night that the town has their annual Santa parade and everyone in town is dressed up like St. Nick. The legendary Malcolm McDowell continues to call the need for his ongoing SAG membership into question as the hard-nosed, British-accented sheriff who gets the film's worst lines. I think most of his dialogue is meant to be funny, like the sheriff is overly gung-ho about finally having a real case, but McDowell is so miscast and out of place that the joke, if indeed that's what it's meant to be, falls flat. It's like the filmmakers are trying to make him some kind of David Caruso/CSI: MIAMI quipster, but maybe that's giving them too much credit. Regarding the on-the-loose serial killer, McDowell growls "He can run...but he can't hide." And later, during the parade, he declares "He's a wolf in sheep's clothing...hiding in plain sight." When told his thoughts on the killer's motives don't make sense, he ominously proclaims "Murder seldom does." All that's missing is this. Everything's calculated well in advance and you know who'll get killed. And when one topless woman runs past a conveniently-positioned wood chipper, is there any doubt she'll soon be sprayed out of it? There's a red herring subplot involving a coke dealer and a porn ring that goes nowhere, and Donal Logue is embarrassingly bad as a cynical Bad Santa type who's the chief suspect. Director Steven C. Miller drenches the climax in garish red and green lighting that gives you an idea of what a Dario Argento Christmas special might look like, but it's far too little, way too late. Under the circumstances, King turns in an acceptable performance that seems to belong in a better movie, but aside from her and the brief Argento shout-out, absolutely nothing works in this holiday fiasco. I realize working actors go where the work is, but after this and SILENT HILL: REVELATION, Malcolm McDowell can't possibly be this desperate for a gig. (R, 94 mins)
RITES OF SPRING (US - 2012)
It's not altogether successful, but there's enough promising ingredients contained within this low-budget Missouri-shot indie fright flick to make debuting writer/director Padraig Reynolds a genre filmmaker to watch. There's a genuine unpredictability to the film and it's interesting to watch it play out and see how the seemingly disparate elements ultimately converge. Sure, there's contrived plot conveniences and a couple of plot holes, and an abrupt ending signifies Reynolds' presumptuous intention of making this a franchise, but taken on its own terms, there's a lot more ingenuity going on here than in most slasher films of this sort. Rachel (Anessa Ramsey) and her friend Alyssa (Hannah Bryan) are abducted outside a small-town bar by a stranger (veteran character actor Marco St. John, a longtime fixture in New Orleans-based films going back to his role as the killer in the 1984 Clint Eastwood film TIGHTROPE) and taken to a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, where the stranger has newspaper clippings on a wall detailing area disappearances going back 24 years. The stranger ties them up and drains Alyssa's blood, dropping her into a hidden crawlspace under a barn, while babbling something about how "it must be done...it's the rites of Spring." Meanwhile, a quartet of kidnappers led by the violent Paul (Sonny Marinelli) and the hesitant, kindly Ben (AJ Bowen) barge into the home of rich businessman Hayden (James Bartz), taking his daughter (Skyler Page Burke) and her nanny Jessica (Sarah Pachelli) and demanding $2 million in two hours, and Paul kills Mrs. Hayden (Shanna Forrestal) to prove that he's serious. They proceed to hide out at an abandoned school.
Of course, the two plots will eventually come together, but even more intriguing is the way Reynolds establishes connections between the various parties beforehand. And I haven't even mentioned what's in the barn crawlspace: a monstrous, unnamed killer listed in the credits as Worm Face (Amile Wilson and John Evenden share credit), who ceaselessly pursues the tough, resilient Rachel as she flees the farmhouse and makes her way to...you guessed it...the abandoned school where some serious kidnapping shit is going down. What starts as some sort of WICKER MAN-type sacrifice film becomes a kidnapping thriller and eventually a slasher film as Worm Face chases everyone around the darkened corridors of the empty school, offing them one by one. It's a very effective location and Reynolds does a nice job of keeping the audience on its toes and paying attention for its furiously-paced 80-minute run time. Worm Face is a relentless killing machine and unlike a lot of the iconic slashers of the past, he doesn't play games or walk slowly in pursuit. He appears out of nowhere and barrels into a room at full sprint, decapitating and disemboweling people before they even realize what's going on. Anything can happen and anyone can be killed at any moment in RITES OF SPRING. It doesn't totally hang together (these people live in this town and are unaware of 24 years worth of unexplained disappearances?), some of the performances are shaky (Bartz, in particular, is awful), and Reynolds probably should've been more concerned with making a self-contained, stand-alone film rather than going into it as the first in a series (he even deliberately leaves important plot points dangling--a mistake). But there's an inventiveness to this story and an undeniable panache in the way it's told and flaws and all, it's not one to simply dismiss as yet another slasher movie. (Unrated, 80 mins, also streaming on Netflix)
