Hellbride

Bling And Die

Hellbride
UK 2007
Directed by Pat Higgins

Okay... so I have a follower on Twitter called Pat Higgins. After a while... quite a few years actually... it finally dawned on me that he is a director of horror movies and I reckon he must have started following me after I gave a fairly favourable review of his film Strippers VS Werewolves (here). So I figured, if the guy is taking the trouble to follow me, I could at least watch another one or two of his movies. I went for the one which had the sexiest cover, obviously (alas, the cover is not all that representative of the content, truth be told but, it more than makes up for it in other ways) and purchased said movie to ‘add to the piles’ of unwatched art in my bedroom.

Then, disaster struck. Turns out the UK Hellbride DVD is in a 4:3 aspect ratio, which didn’t sound right to me and, frankly, I’m not about to turn the clock back to the 1980s and start having to sit through pseudo-representations of films in the wrong aspect ratios. So I jumped onto Twitter to ask him what the ratio was on this thing and... long story short and I won’t go into the details... he kindly made a copy available for me to watch in the correct set up (as opposed to the UK edition of the DVD). So a happy ending all round and... that’s when I really started to worry.

You see... I tend to review every movie I watch but I also tend to be extremely honest. I don’t answer to anyone and that’s partially because I don’t like pulling punches on the reviews I publish too much. So what would I do if I didn’t like the movie but didn’t want to hurt the writer/director’s feelings? That would be a dilemma. As it happens, I didn’t have to compromise myself on this one because, well...

When I saw the reviews of Hellbride on places like the IMDB and Amazon and then found myself finally watching the film, it raised one big question. What the heck were half of these reviewers smoking to have them all turning in such negative comments. I wasn’t expecting a modern masterpiece from this but my expectations were considerably lowered by the poe-faced responses to this one. However, although it maybe has a few minor problems (which I’m sure the director has learned and moved on from and, frankly, who am I to say what the ultimate product was supposed to look like), one of them being that it’s very obviously low budget... well, I think the people making the extra negative remarks were maybe failing to get the tone of the picture, in all honesty.

The film starts off with the history of a cursed wedding ring told through the camera panning and dissolving through a series of illustrations which look a little bit like old woodcuts, while a voice over from someone who later turns out to be a character (during the later stages of the film) gives us the full, fairly embroidered ‘facts’. The thing is, this opening narrative is done with such a relish for campiness and over the top ‘Britishness’ that the tone is set by Higgins to tell you, right from the outset, to absolutely not be taking this film seriously. So that works well for me... here’s a taste of some of the opening spiel...

“So he had the trinket blessed as best he could and stuck it away in his collection, next to the broken voodoo dolls and the badly drawn druid pornography. Eventually he died at a healthy old age of natural-ish causes.”

Come on people! This guy has a flair for comic writing and it certainly brought a smile to my face.

This is followed by a modest but nice typographic title sequence before bringing us into the film proper, with a sequence that shows our hero, one of the two main protagonists, picking out the aforementioned cursed ring at a jewellery shop so he can propose to his soulmate. The hero is called Lee, a stand up comedian played in a likeable manner by James Fisher. His bride to be, who has so much trouble with the spirit of the original owner of the ring in the long line of deaths associated with it, among other things, is called Nicole... played equally charismatically by Rebecca Jaquest.

And then a web of trouble and less than savoury events unfold as Lee, Nicole and their two friends get involved with a prelude to a wedding which ends up being something of an 'event'... more than the wedding itself, that is. Unknown to Lee is the fact that Nicole has been trying to help her dad - who is involved in shady business deals -  cover up the corpse of the guy he shot, who happens to be the beloved son of a powerful crime boss he owes money to. So expecting reprisals, there are a few extra 'guests' at the wedding and, without giving too much away, the end sequence is a three way battle between... Lee, Nicole, the guests and a bunch of ‘good guy’ heavies; the rival gang’s bunch of heavies and, of course, the former owner of the ring and her devilish ‘familiar’. And that’s really all I’ll say about the story content here.

The style of the film is nicely done in places and a mixed bag in others. Like a lot of the elements of the film. For example, the opening establishing shots are achieved in a similar manner as the precredits sequence, with a series of shots in various zooms and angles moving and dissolving into different angles. It’s a nice way of doing things and I’m wondering if this is a revealing signature characteristic of this director or if it’s something he’s moved away from in later works (only one way for me to find out).

Now, one slight problem I had with the movie is that the camera view is quite up close and personal a lot of the time when I would have expected it to pull back away from the people a lot more. The only thing I can think of that this might be a symptom of is that it maybe wasn’t possible to close down certain locations as the filming went ahead and maybe things are deliberately pulled in tight to ensure no extraneous background action is caught in certain places. That’s just a guess mind... it could well be a stylistic choice as far as I know.

There’s some nice stuff in amongst this lot though. Quite apart from loving the director’s dialogue writing, with little asides from characters that drift in and out like amusing non-sequiters (this film is refreshingly different to the way this stuff would be done on a big Hollywood production). I’m wondering if he, hopefully, continues in this vein in his later works now or whether he decided to rein it in at some point but the dialogue is awesome most of the time. I mean, how can you not like throwaway marriage lines like... “You may now kill the bride.”?

There’s also a nice ‘monster’ reveal at one point which, in a film where the horror element tends to take a step back so that ‘comedy horror’ can take over, is surprisingly effective and is also genuinely creepy. It also totally shouldn’t work because it’s absolutely the simplest solution in the world to the problem of a certain shot but... yeah, I kinda liked the bravery of it. I won’t give it away here though. There’s also a really nice, fluid, one shot dream sequence that looks like it’s been filmed in a gutted church which works really well. There are a few dream sequences in the film due to the nature of the horror element in the story but this one is particularly nice.

And pretty much the majority of the characters, although mostly clichés (and there’s nothing wrong with that) are really nicely written. Also, when the leading lady mentions that her favourite death scene in cinema history is Roy Batty in Blade Runner... yeah, you just got me on your side real quick. The acting on display is one of the things which maybe, in some instances, lets the film down a little but, even when the performances seem a little less like they can carry the movie, the dialogue still shines through. Don’t get me wrong, some of the acting in this is just right... in particular James Fisher, Rebecca Jaquest, James Kavaz (as Nicole’s father) and Natalie Milner (as Nicole’s friend Carly). Some of the other performances in the film seem a little more... enthusiastic rather than great acting jobs it has to be said but the film soldiers on and, I have to say, it’s never less than entertaining. I’m really glad I got to see this one (especially in the correct aspect ratio).

And that’s me pretty much done on this one. Hellbride is not the best comedy horror I’ve seen but it’s quite an entertaining film and any negatives in there are certainly swept aside by all the good stuff. Quite a nice movie for fans of the genre and I’d definitely recommend giving this one a go... it will certainly bring a smile to your face. As for me, I’m going to have to schedule some more of this guy's work in at some point soon so, yeah, this one certainly gets a big, unnaturally mutated thumb up from me.

It Follows

Casting The Hormones

It Follows
2014/15  US
Directed by David Robert Mitchell 
UK cinema release print.

Okay then. What we have here is a movie which has been warmly welcomed by afficionados of the horror genre, from its tour of various one off and preview screenings on the festival circuit and the usual venues this kind of movie rears its head at before getting a general release or distribution deal... and it deserves its warm welcome in spades. It’s also been called fresh and original and, there, I think, I’d have to disagree although I will say that, while anything but original, I don’t think it’s supposed to be. I’m sure the writer/director would be the first to point out the postmodernistic references he’s wearing so warmly on his fear tinted sleeve but, even though this film takes no prizes for new ideas... it does do what it aims to do extremely well and, frankly, with a lot of affection towards the genres and styles it’s eclectically gathering together in its warm, parodic embrace.

So lets unmask a little of its historical legacy here and say that, like the title of this review suggests, this is yet another version of the old “pass the curse on” story popularised by writer M. R. James in his short story Casting The Runes. Of course, there have been numerous versions of this story at the cinema and on TV over the years and my readers will probably best remember both the ones that were freely adapted from this tale such as Night Of The Demon (aka Curse Of The Demon 1957 - reviewed here), Casting The Runes (1979 - reviewed here) and probably the modern variants which were, like this one, using the story as a starting point such as Ringu (aka Ring 1998) or just not being very open about their sources, such as the excellent Drag Me To Hell (2009 and with a mini review here).

The basic plot of the original story is that a man puts a curse on a man who will be escorted from this mortal coil by a demon unless he lifts the curse by passing it back somehow within a certain amount of time. In the Japanese movie Ringu (loosely based on Koji Suzuki’s novel, which still very much owes a debt to M. R. James' original short) the curse takes the form of a virus caught by watching a cursed video tape and the way you pass the curse on to another is to copy the movie (thus perpetrating the act of widening the scope of the virus) and then showing that duplicate to another person. In It Follows, writer/director David Robert Mitchell strips out the elaborate ‘cure all’ concept and complications behind said solution that Ringu added to the mix and boils it down to this: you have to have sex with someone to pass the curse on to them. If that person then dies, the demon, if that’s what IT is in It Follows, will then kill the next person back up the line and follow the chain back... so if you are a victim you have to not only pass it on, but convince the next person to pass it on and so on.

Another thing that Mitchell cleverly does here is not bother to explain or enlighten as to the origins of the shape-shifting, relentless and ultimately unstoppable demon in this story. And, similarly, the teenage characters in this one refreshingly make no attempt to try and trace back the history of the curse and to stop it in its tracks. Which is actually fine because, as amply demonstrated with this very smart and self aware genre movie, modern audiences really don’t need to know the origins of a character in a story to be able to reap the benefits of the way that character - hero, villain or thing - interacts with the immediate environment... as long as it does interact in the most entertaining way possible. They just need to know what the rules of engagement are, so to speak, and just leave it at that. Which is something, I have to say, that the makers of various superhero and comic book movie adaptations in the last decade or two still haven’t managed to cotton onto yet... although it’s something horror movie makers have known for quite some time (you’d think they’d share the secret with the comic book people at some point, no?). In this film, the teenage protagonists are going for the short route... lure the thing in and then try kill it. Whether they have any measure of success at that is something I will certainly not spoil for you here.

Now It Follows, it has to be said, gets a lot of things right in its all too brief running time and I’d have to say, in terms of the genre, it’s just about a near perfect example of this kind of movie that you’re likely to get. I think this one is going to be talked about by people and written about in academic studies on sex, gender politics and horror movies, for decades to come... and I’m happy to say that one of the things that the film absolutely gets right is the teenage characters. I’m 47 years old and I have to say, the teenagers in this movie weren’t in any way scripted to annoy the buggery out of me (like a good deal of teenage horror movies are these days... just compare this to the awful Ouija - reviewed here) and I found that I could actually identify with them. Now, part of that may be because the characters aren’t fleshed out to any great detail but the dialogue seems fairly adult and the various actors and actresses cast in the roles, especially the main, cursed protagonist Jay, played very low key and convincingly by Maika Monroe, all knock it out of the park in terms of their performances. This is a smart movie populated by smart actresses and actors, so this is all very good.

The other great thing it’s got going for it is a sense of reverence and respect for the good old mid-1970s to mid-1980s teenage horror flick, and you see it in every frame of the film. Now, I didn’t like a lot of the American horror flicks from around that time (most people my age would have first caught them on dodgy VHS tapes rented out from the local off-licence) but this has a lot in common with the best of them and it seems like the whole movie has been shot through some kind of special lens which gives it a sort of built-in filtered nostalgia for people my age. And I really appreciated that.

It’s not afraid to be silent and reflective, for example. There are lots of quiet patches in this movie where people are just looking or, more often than not, the camera is making voyeuristic passes at the surrounding scenery while the characters are doing their thing off screen. This is epitomised in a shot where two of the main characters go to find out the true identity of the man who passed the curse on to Jay. The two go into an office reception area at a university but the camera stops following them before they reach their destination and, instead, starts doing slow, 360 degree pans around the general vicinity... which is the kind of thing you would probably get a lot more of in European cinema than standard US film-making, at least contemporary US film-making, it seems to me. Of course, what the director is also doing is building tension and milking the suspense by constantly checking out the periphery of the characters... once the audience knows to look out for something, never the same figure twice, the director can start playing with the voyeuristic angle and start creeping out the audience by showing things happening in the background to raise the hairs on the back of the neck before the creature actually, legitimately, arrives... which is what all good horror movies do to a certain extent, of course.

The other thing that helps considerably in this movie is the soundtrack by a group called Disasterpeace, which is also very much feeding off a late 1970s American horror movie vibe. If you think back to scores like Phantasm and, more pointedly, John Carpenter’s great scores to Halloween and The Fog, where rhythms and jarring, jangling effects on repeat mode resembling Bernard Herrmann’s famous Psycho musical stings on acid would key in and inform the ears and heartbeats of the audience, elevating the suspense and fear factor up to eleven, then you’ll get an idea of what this score is like. It’s not just modern, horror movie sound design embracing dissonance. In some sequences it’s quite melodic and its definitely “the real deal” as far as this humble audience member is concerned. And, again to the director’s credit, he doesn’t bury the score in the mix like most modern directors do with their product... he knows exactly what his composers and musicians have delivered to him here and he lets it breathe... pushing it right into the foreground and floating it above the sound effects for a lot of the movie. Such a shame, then, that you can only currently purchase the score digitally as I would really like to get a proper CD soundtrack of this one... it’s a really great score.

And it’s a really great movie.

Horror afficionados of a certain age should get a lot out of this film. Sure it’s filled with clichés but what modern horror movie isn’t... in fact, those kind of key moments are absolutely essential, a lot of the time, to making a genre piece like this work and Mitchell certainly seems to recognise this. The point being, that the rules and tropes of the horror movie are executed absolutely perfectly in this one... so younger audiences should get a good hit off of this movie too. And, of course, since we still know nothing about the creature who is pursing the human chain of sexual encounters, we still have the possibility of sequels sharing that mythology and expanding on it in future versions of a franchise... so that should keep the Hollywood bean counters happy on this one and I wouldn’t be surprised if I am writing the review up on here for the sequel in a couple of years’ time. Either way, this one’s a bit of a masterpiece and I urge anyone who likes a decent horror movie, especially those who have a certain affection for the stylistic leanings of 1970s movies, to give It Follows a look soon. I doubt you’ll regret it.