The McPherson Tape

A Grey In The Life

The McPherson Tape
aka UFO Abduction
USA 1989 Directed by Dean Alioto
AGFA/101 Films Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Some spoilers here.

I’m not sure how I feel about The McPherson Tape, which started off life as UFO Abduction... I’m still trying to figure out whether I actually liked it or not. Maybe by the end of writing this review I’ll have figured that out (although I’m not holding my breath on that count).

Very simply, it’s a found footage movie, allegedly the first ever (if you knock Cannibal Holocaust out of the running for, apparently, not really sticking with the found footage idea). So, yeah, this technically predates The Last Broadcast mockumentary by nine years and The Blair Witch Project by ten so, until some other movie comes to light, this is the first one and I guess it should be respected for that. Although, alas, it never really got a proper release at the time. I’ll come back to that in a minute.

Okay, so the film is found footage and, depending on your definition of horror, it possibly falls into that category too. It’s all shot in one take (although some deliberate jump cuts to slight time shifts were edited in later, by the looks of it) and concerns various members of the Van Heese family (or Van Hesse because, the end credits are really inconsistent with how the last names of all the characters are spelled) and it all takes place in a few hours one night as the family have a small, intimate 5th birthday party for the youngest daughter. The mothers of various couples are also present so we have three generations represented in this small gathering.

And then the power goes off (goodbye to anything but candle and torch light for the rest of the movie’s short running time... of just over an hour). When three of the guys, including a cameraman, go to investigate outside, they see a red flash in the sky and follow it over to a spaceship where they see three aliens (the grey, Zeta Reticulan kind most abductees describe). They are observed and so the guys make a run for it and return home but, they were followed and the rest of the evening becomes a waiting game of, mostly hysteria, as the family get divided and ‘taken’ by the three greys.

It’s kind of uneven. It starts off with a bit of text about Project Blue Book and then relies on a skeleton of a structure which the main actors can improvise around. And, the actors were very good and all very natural although, I have to say, some of the improvised dialogue didn’t really make it for me. However, the one advantage of this technique is that everything seems very real because of that improvisations and so, although I decided I didn’t really like most of the family, it does start to get unsettling as the film wears on. At which point I should probably qualify what I mean by that because the film really didn’t work in one specific way for me...

That way being... I didn’t find it scary but I really should have. Long term readers of this blog may remember I spent a good few years researching UFO encounters and alien abductions in my spare time, sifting through enough written ‘evidence’ and logical deduction to the point where I had to stop looking at the stuff... too many sleepless nights. Consequently, films dealing with this subject matter, especially when they feature the common ‘greys’, really tend to push my buttons hard and terrify me. Which is where this film let me down quite a bit. It just wasn’t in any way scary to me. That being said, because the acting is very naturalistic, I did find it a little disturbing... mostly because the family dynamic, where everyone is just acting hysterically and shouting at each other rather than rationally deciding on the most logical course, was winding me up quite a bit as various people had the worst ideas possible for trying to get through the situation. So, yeah, there’s that.

Now, the film cost something like $6,500 to bankroll... real microbudget stuff but, as I looked at the movie, I couldn’t even figure out where that money went, to be honest. But the air of realism in the actors improvising, well, almost against each other, is where the tension and interest in the film begins and ends for me. I guess, I did get something out of it... I just didn’t get any kind of terrifying experience out of this one.

Now, the film is fairly blurry and there’s a reason behind that. The film has been restored by the director from missing elements and brought to light by the team from The Bleeding Skull books and AGFA (American Genre Film Archives) and the Q&A session included as an extra on the Blu Ray is really kind of interesting and worth the price of the movie, in the end, to my mind.

Okay, so Dean Alioto made the film, UFO Abduction but couldn’t get it distributed. Then finally he got someone interested in putting it out but, before the film got a release, a warehouse fire destroyed the original master tape. So it never got a release (for almost thirty years). However, though the director didn’t realise this for around ten years after the fact, bootleg tapes of it started showing up on documentaries and so on about UFOs. A version without the front and end credits was being used and various ‘experts’ from the military and what have you were pretty convinced by the movie, thinking it was genuinely real ‘found footage’ of an abduction incident. And things started to snowball from there, with the director being accused of deliberately trying to hoax people at one point. Things continued from there and here we are today, able to see this thing on the best format possible. A format which really wasn’t designed to convey fuzzy, VHS quality playback but, hey, I’m still just grateful to have stuff like this rescued from slipping between the cracks.

The title, The McPherson Tape, is what it’s come to be known as from those UFO days... there are no McPhersons in this, although the director did do a bigger budget remake in 1998 entitled Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County which, is also sometimes known as The McPherson Tape to some and is often (including on the IMDB, if I’m not mistaken) confused with the original version of the film. But then again, UFO Abduction is also probably not the best title for the film since, you know, no UFOs are actually abducted either (Ha! I’m totes hilar!).

And that’s me kinda done on The McPherson Tape. I found it interesting rather than totally entertaining, it has to be said. The improv actors are all good and, if I was revisiting the genre of ‘found footage’ for anything then I would probably take another look at it. It’s certainly not nearly as interesting as a lot of the found footage phenomenon post-Blair Witch though... although it certainly sticks to its guns on what it is more than a couple I’ve seen in the last 6 months, which seemed to forget they were found footage at all in the occasional shot (thus invalidating their entire movie).

As for AGFA? Well, they’re a partner label to the US label Vinegar Syndrome and I’m sure they’re doing well in the US. I never took a punt on them before because of the crippling cost of postage for a film I might not like but, very recently, 101 FIlms in the UK have picked up some of their titles for release over here and this is one of the first four they released. I can’t see them doing that well in terms of sales on a small island like this but, fingers crossed for them because it means I can afford to pick up one or two of their releases on occasion, at far less expense. So I’m very much hoping that the relationship between the two distributors lasts for a while.

Late Night With The Devil

The AI Is
In The Detail

Late Night With The Devil
Directed by Cameron and Colin Cairnes
Australia/United Arab Emirates
2023 Shudder
UK Cinema Print

Warning: Some slight spoilers waiting to possess you.

Well this is pretty good but, before I get into the review proper, I want to address an issue with Late Night With The Devil which has caused a bit of a furore on Twitter the past week or so. The film has TV chanel card style intertitles throughout to signal ‘commercial breaks’ and other things which were designed by AI. Now, they don’t last very long and they’re kind of incidental so... I doubt they’ll spoil the enjoyment of the film for anyone who doesn’t know how that artwork originated. However, I can completely understand why people want to boycott this movie. It’s still taken away a job from at least one human and, frankly, the creative realm (and the political realm, for that matter) is not where AI should be used, no matter how responsibly. Stick to using it as a tool to help with medical breakthroughs etc... don’t let it anywhere near art, would be my take on this. I don’t care whether it fools you or not. I don’t care whether it’s soulless or not (it is). It’s basically wrong... stop it already.

Right, having said that, this is a really great film. Set in 1977, it focuses on an unctuous late night TV show host, Jack Delroy, brilliantly played with gusto by David Dastmalchian (who was also brilliant as Polka Dot Man in The Suicide Squad... reviewed here). In a last ditch ‘save the show’ ratings bid, he asks various guest onto a special Halloween edition of the show dealing with the occult.

The film, we are told, during an extended introduction sequence narrated by the voice of the great Michael Ironside, is the original master tape of the show (along with the behind the scenes sections during the various commercial interruptions). The way this format is presented on the picture is the actual TV broadcast sections are in colour in a 4:3 aspect ratio and the ‘cameras rolling behind the scenes while the commercials play’ are in widescreen black and white. Which is nice visual shorthand and works really well.

Now, if you’re thinking this sounds like a modern day equivalent of the brilliant 1992 British TV broadcast Ghostwatch (reviewed here) then, yeah, you’d be dead right (even though the writers haven’t mentioned it in anything I’ve read about it but, honestly, I can’t believe that wasn’t the majority of the inspiration here). And, without having the trick of appearing as an actual live broadcast on TV to spark the nationwide panic which I remember from when people just happened to tune into it at the time, then it seems, on the surface, like this is kind of a bad idea of a movie attempt. But... you’d be wrong. This movie is actually quite special and I am definitely going to pick up the Blu Ray (if it’s around by Halloween) to show my folks later in the year (that’s the plan, anyway).

Okay, so among the guests on this edition are psychic Christou (played wonderfully by Fayssal Bazzi), the conjurer turned professional debunker (played by Ian Bliss), plus young satanic cult survivor Lily D’Abo (played absolutely brilliantly by Ingrid Torelli, giving a really unsettling performance of a character who knows exactly which camera is on her at any given moment) and her psychiatrist/therapist/guardian Dr. June Ross-Mitchell (played by Laura Gordon). Things go disturbingly wrong for Christou the psychic early on in the show and then the debunker sets himself up as, pretty much the ‘human’ villain of the piece. Then we have the doctor, who is pressured into allowing Lily to ‘let out’ the demonic spirit, Mr. Wriggles, to the audience briefly. And then things go very wrong indeed.

And that’s both the blessing and the curse of this particular film. It’s great when  all hell breaks loose in the TV studio (and presumably into the TV audiences homes... just as it did in Ghostwatch) with the film makers really going for it with the various gore effects and disturbing images. It’s great but... there’s a point where it should have stopped (at the first ‘technical problems’ card) because the impact of the sequence when ‘Mr. Wriggles’ returns to the studio, is absolutely brilliant and ‘good horror’. The creature manifested reminded me a lot of one of the original theatrical posters which were put out for Dario Argento’s early 1970’s giallo Four Flies On Grey Velvet (reviewed here) which was also, presumably, the ‘inspiration’ for the theatrical poster for Berberian Sound Studio (reviewed here) but neither of those films, to my memory, had any such manifestation of a certain ‘splitting headache’ person on screen and, frankly, the way they picture what Lily becomes the second time she is channelling her possessor is... pretty incredible.

Now, I think the film goes on too long because, after this scene which was the perfect ending, there is another extended sequence of fragments of horror which, I think, just detracted too much from the power of what preceded it. But, it’s still pretty good and I’m happy to buy into certain moments on it, even though the way Jack Delroy ends up on stage is pretty obviously telegraphed.

And that’s all there is to it other than to say, I suspect one of the musical compositions by one or other of the co-composers, Roscoe James Irwin or Glenn Richards, sounds suspiciously like it was inspired by the Scorpio killer theme from the original Dirty Harry (review coming soon). It’s good stuff though and would love it if a CD release was produced. And there are a lot of other visual and script nods to things like The Exorcist too so, I really have no problem with the legacy of the scoring, either.

And that’s all I have to say about Late Night With The Devil, I think. An almost perfect entry that, just about, makes its way into the subgenre of horror known as ‘found footage’. I really loved it and can’t wait to show other people the movie at some point. Cracking stuff.

1974 - La posesión de Altair

 





The Altair Limits

1974 - La posesión de Altair
Mexico 2016 Directed by Victor Dryere
Cauldron Films Blu Ray Zone A

Warning: Some minor
spoilers here to set the scene.

1974 - La posesión de Altair is a film which was completely off my radar until Cauldron Films, in the US, released a Blu Ray of it recently. In fact, my only reason for buying this release was because it was bundled with the CD soundtrack to the movie and proper CDs are becoming scarce in the phase of music business ignorance we all find ourselves in at present. So I pre-ordered this and finally it’s here and, much to my delight, it’s a great little horror movie lurking within the box.

Well, I say horror but, that’s actually a hard call, to be honest. A couple of decades ago, when I first saw the giallo All The Colours Of The Dark, I was watching it and wondering why the hell people thought it was a giallo when it was obviously a horror movie all the way through until, in the last ten minutes or so, the rug was pulled and it turned out to be a giallo after all. Well, without giving anything away, 1974 - La posesión de Altair has a similar moment, or set of moments, leading up to a similar theme of subverting the genre somewhat but, I think when all is said and done, the use of horror tropes in this one is totally justified and, as far as I’m concerned, it still functions under the genre of horror movie... albeit not the kind I was expecting. Which is also great, of course. I do have one caveat but I’ll get to that in a while.

Okay, so briefly, the film tells the story of a young Mexican couple, Altair (played by Diana Bovio) and Manuel (played by Rolando Breme) after they move into a nice, big, somewhat secluded property. The film is a found footage horror and starts off with black and white interview footage of the aftermath of the events of the film from a TV news broadcast to give foreshadowing, before going into the full colour story proper through the traditional, ‘film everything that happens to us’ route of the found footage movie. Basically, shortly after moving into a new property, Altair starts talking to an ‘angel’, unseen by Manuel and the audience and, not long after, starts acting both withdrawn and crazy. For instance, she has been told by the angel to build two, black painted brick ‘doorways’ in both her bedroom and the basement and, though she doesn’t order the materials, the bricks and black paint arrive in the garage for her the next day. Lots of the usual sound design scares and the old birds flying into the house tropes are involved but also a moment when the new puppy, Carlo, who has been lost for about a week, turns up again as a much older dog. Manuel enlists the aid of his best friend (to document the strange phenomenon) and also Altair’s sister... and they try to get her some help from out of her past and figure things out.

The film doesn’t show a lot of gore (although there is some, such as Altair bleeding from the eyes in a kind of stigmata moment... an image used on the trailer and marketing for the movie) and instead, the majority of the scares come from the camera anticipating what you don’t see (even providing a couple of nice jump scares at times) and the strong ‘sound design’ style soundtrack from composer and sound designer team Enrico Chapela and Uriel Villalobos. In addition to the CD soundtrack of this, there’s a short but sweet extra giving an insight into the ‘score’ (I still maintain ordered noise is music... because it is) and how instruments were disguised and disturbing sounds like babies crying and cats mating were sonically transformed into something less recognisable but equally unsettling. And, as far as I’m concerned, it all works very well.

There are some clues about the nature of Altair’s possession dropped through the narrative and, I have to say, I did get there just 20 minutes or so before certain chilling events take place... but that being said, the film really delivers the scares and explores a cross pollinated concept which I’ve only personally seen done once before so, yeah, I thought this one was brilliant.

There’s also some room, given the found footage nature which would almost eliminate this, for some nice moments of shot composition. For example, when Manuel’s friend Callahan (played by Guillermo Callahan) is filming an intimate conversation between Manuel and Altair, where Manuel’s face is more prominent in terms of facing towards us, Callahan pans the camera around to a mirror mid conversation so we get almost a reverse shot. Which actually perhaps stems from this character’s hastily established love of cinema. Both the main male characters are cineastes with Bergman and Hitchcock’s names being invoked at various times. Also, despite being listed as an anachronism on the IMDB,  Callahan’s penchant for mathematics and his recent trip to Budapest justify, to some extent, his possession of a Rubik’s cube, which was invented that same year but wasn’t actually on the market yet.

My one problem with the film was the found footage nature of a movie being set in 1974. The whole thing is supposed to be shot on Super 8 film (and this is indeed how the director shot the majority of it) but I really don’t think the average man on the street would have been wasting expensive Super 8 film to record everything on. I get it that the character is a stop motion animator working from home and so he has drawers full of the stock but, yeah, you would get through so much more of it that it would cost a small fortune. Back in the 1970s, when my family had an old Super 8 cine camera, I think we only got about six or seven reels shot because, yeah, this stuff was expensive. You certainly wouldn’t have wanted it to go wandering around the house shooting off film as you go.

However, that being said, it does give the film a nice ambience it might not have had, albeit that nothing that happens in the story necessitates the need for a period setting at all (but that’s another story) and, if you can get past the more modern attitude of people filming everything, then it’s all fine. And as it happens, I had an absolute blast with 1974 - La posesión de Altair and would recommend it to all my horror loving friends. I wish it had got a proper cinema release in the UK so I could have experienced the film properly but, who knows, one day we might get the opportunity. One of the better of the found footage movies and now I’m off to listen to the CD.

Blair Witch

Heather Report

Blair Witch
2016 USA Directed by Adam Wingard
UK cinema release print.

Warning: I’ve actually opted for spoilers in this one because I want to talk about specific aspects. If you don’t want to know this stuff then don’t read.

This film, directed by Adam Wingard who made the excellent The Guest (reviewed here), was originally called The Woods when it was being shot and then trailered. I remember seeing the trailer for ‘The Woods’ a few months ago and thinking... “Wow. This looks like a remake of The Blair Witch Project”. Not more than a couple of weeks since I saw that trailer, it was revealed to the public at large that The Woods was not really the title of the film and that it was, indeed, to be called Blair Witch. The first thing I thought of was how perfectly appropriate it was that someone had managed to make a sequel in secret, given the way the original movie was initially marketed as a ‘real phenomenon’ documentary.

Now, I remember the buzz surrounding the original movie because, around about the same time, somebody at my work place had asked me to be one of two test subjects to spend time looking around the internet, getting familiar with it and trying to figure out if the internet and emails were something which would be worth getting for the business. I remember reading about the initial viral campaign and then, when all was revealed that The Blair Witch Project was just another horror movie... but extremely low budget and extremely scary... my interest was piqued. I remember one reviewer coming out of a screening at Cannes or Sundance or somewhere like that and she was visibly shaking because the experience had been so scary for her.

The film didn’t exactly start the found footage phenomenon in the genre... that claim probably, if memory serves, belongs to Cannibal Holocaust... but The Blair Witch Project did, indeed, popularise the technique for horror film audiences and it’s a style that certainly hasn’t gone back out of fashion in the 17 years or so since its cinematic release. There are loads of these found footage horrors made every year, it seems to me.

Adam Wingard’s new movie slyly sidesteps the horrendously disappointing first sequel, Book Of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, without actually contradicting events in that story, from what I can remember of it. Instead, what  he’s done is to have one of the new crew of forest explorers leading an expedition because he is the brother of the lead protagonist of The Blair Witch Project, Heather Donahue, originally played by... Heather Donahue. Yeah, I know... it seemed to be a part of the first movie’s viral campaign that the characters were indistinguishable from the actors who played them. So, following the trail of some new footage found of the incident (which makes no sense to me), Heather’s brother James takes his friends out there, to hook up with the people who found the new footage and try to find the house that Heather and the others ended up in at the conclusion of the first movie.

And then, of course, when they all start camping in the forest the first night... things start to go wrong for them.

Now, I have to say I have a lot of respect for Wingard after The Guest and so, before I go into what some people may say is a weakness of this movie, I just want to say that I had an absolutely terrifying time watching this at the cinema, as my adrenalin levels rose and fell at every shadow and scream. So, in many ways, it’s the equal of the first movie in terms of being a scary experience but...

... I’d also have to say that it’s practically a repeat of that first movie. Which, in all honesty, is exactly what I was expecting from it after seeing the trailer for both The Woods and Blair Witch, at different times. It’s all in colour this time because most of the cameras used are high tech ear cams which the actors wear themselves. They also have a drone with a camera attached to it and all kinds of other things like satellite navigation. Of course, as you would expect from a film set in the Burkkitsville Woods of the first movie, none of this stuff is working properly for very long and even watches and mobile phone alarms are shown to be alarmingly off track when it comes to giving our hapless victims any help whatsoever in somehow managing to find their way out of these woods alive.

So... yeah, it’s also a lot less subtle a movie than the first one was. In the first one, the divide and bewilder routine worked over a series of nights, on a slow build, with lots of daylight conversations highlighting the fraught victims... and that became the main narrative anchors to stabilise the audience between scares. In this one, we have the first day, the first night, what’s left of the second day after some strange, time shifting stuff, and then we’re already on the second and, what appears to be final, night of the film. So the characters spend much less time walking around the forest trying to either find their way out or looking for a lost member of their party and much more time running in blind terror from actual seen, physical attacks on the group. Well, seen in the sense that you see things moving around by themselves and hear giant footstep sounds giving chase etc.

The film also spends a lot longer on the inevitably climactic scene in the house at the end of the movie... as various characters are chased around by a, mostly, unseen terror... although Wingard has also opted for brief glimpses of the witch this time as a malevolent, supernatural (almost parody of herself) creature. The back story of her death is elaborated on earlier in the film, as the witch was tied to a tree and left exposed to the elements with weights hung from her limbs creating a makeshift rack as her punishment and execution. Here, the smartly considered “blink and you’ll miss them” moments where you get an impression of her, match the idea that she has very long, extended, spindly arms and legs as a visual echo of her original fate at the hands of the community she was at odds with. Luckily, the director and his team are smart enough to not let you get too clear a look at the witch herself and, like the rest of the movie, it’s pretty much all done with sound and constantly shifting, moving camera shots. It’s actually very effective.

The performances are what you usually get from found footage productions... very naturalistic and believable. This kind of movie making definitely seems to bring out the best, to an extent, in an actor and, if this is the kind of feel they want to create, then the cast here all do an admirable job. As does the director, who succeeded totally in making me clutch the arms of the cinema seat on this one. I think people have been a little rough on this film, judging by some of the tweets I’ve seen over the last few days. I understand how people are going to latch onto the fact that it’s almost a straight remake of the first in tone and content but... I can’t help but think that, for the first Blair Witch film in an incredibly long time, many of those same people might have complained if it was significantly different or progressive from the first one. Either way, as far as I’m concerned, Blair Witch is a big recommendation from me for all those of you who like horror movies and especially if you like the first movie in the franchise. I won’t be going into the woods alone for a while after this, I can tell you that.

Paranormal Activity - The Ghost Dimension 3D

Wheatley Hell’s 
Going On Here?

Paranormal Activity - The Ghost Dimension 3D
2015 USA
Directed by Gregory Plotkin
UK cinema release print.

Regular readers will know that I have a soft spot for the Paranormal Activity films. The first of these (reviewed here) was not really all that scary but fits into my realm of 'comfort horror'. Paranormal Activity 2 - 4 (reviewed here, here and here)  were pretty scary and, as each new film was released, they added another compelling puzzle piece to an overall  back story arc that has been used to drive the franchise on, pretty successfully, since the first installment. At this point I should probably point out that I don’t include the original sequel to the first Paranormal Activity film, the Japanese horror movie Paranormal Activity 2 - Tokyo Nights because, amazingly, the producers have done a really good job at suppressing a release of that, now unofficial, sequel over here or in the US and I still haven’t been able to get my hands on a copy with English subtitles. it follows a completely different plot avenue from the US Paranormal Activity 2 and I really want to see what the Japanese did with it. I shall keep looking out for it though.

The US films are not set in a chronological order but, as the story unfolds, you realise that there's a good reason why this is so, especially with the inclusion in the fifth installment, the dreadful Paranormal Activity - The Marked Ones (reviewed here) of the concept that various characters in the Paranormal Activity universe can travel back and forth in time. Now this is interesting because, as far as I can remember, the release of Paranormal Activity - The Ghost Dimension was stalled for a couple of years to make way for the shooting and release of The Marked Ones and it seems to me now that the only reason this could be so, was that test audiences (be they members of the public or part of private studio screenings back in 2013) may have been confused by the time travel element in this movie but, honestly, although I originally assumed that this was why that fifth film was needed, I can honestly say that you’d have to be... well...  really not very smart if you couldn’t work that out for yourself by the things which are happening in this one, since the film straddles mostly just two realities (or three if you count the titular plain of existence) - that of the year when Katie and her sister were taken in by ‘the coven’ in the past and also the current part of the story playing out, the year 2013... which gives me further circumstantial evidence that this was, at least in part but probably in whole, in the can by the original projected 2013 release date.

Now, the thing which was driving me nuts about this one before I went to see it was that it’s being presented in 3D. What the heck? Now you have to think about this. The movies are found footage horror films making use of whatever camera technology they are purportedly being recorded on... mostly VHS in this one because it includes the identity of the finders of the tapes which you saw being discovered in the opening of one of the former episodes... I forget which one. So how do you get away with justifying a 3D release of a Paranormal Activity film when the whole point of these things is they’re supposed to look like they are documentary style found footage recorded on the hoof?

Well, as it happens, I forgave them almost immediately because, like the majority of the series, this film brings in a slightly newer element which elevates proceedings just a little more than the last one and, in this one, it’s the discovery of a souped up camera which has twice as much innards as it’s supposed to have and which seems to have been specifically created to capture things happening in a spirit realm, invisible to the naked eye or a normal camera, superimposed over the real world images as they manifest themselves. So think shots of eerie ectoplasm beings appearing whenever the films ‘star demon’ Toby comes out to play, so to speak. So most of the footage in the movie is still flat but, whenever The Ghost Dimension starts manifesting whenever it’s this particular camera picking up the footage, the ghost parts are actually projected on a 3D layer... accompanied by some appropriate sound design to heighten the audiences awareness that something spooky is about to happen while simultaneously conditioning the audience, Pavlov style, that whenever they hear these sounds or see these ectoplasmic 3D black shapes... something awful could happen, so be afraid! Of course, all this would have gone down a lot better if it had made its original 2013 release date, when 3D hadn’t totally lost the popularity Hollywood wants it to have, in order to justify the ticket price hike but... at least the team behind the film have gone to some lengths to find a decent spin on the gimmick for this movie... which I think lets it off the hook somewhat.

It doesn’t hurt, either, that this is a real return to form for the series after that last, plug in installment. This one has a group of characters consisting of people who you really can sympathise with again and who you can hope make it through the film fairly unscathed... rather than the bunch of foul mouthed  street thugs you just don’t care about in The Marked Ones. Of course, I’m not going to tell you if everyone or, indeed, anyone survives this installment but... it’s a Paranormal Activity film. What do you think? You need to go find out.

The film is somewhat formulaic, it has to be said, following the slow burn format of the previous installments with the scares getting increasingly more alarming and violent as Toby and the gang ramp up to a finale where all hell breaks loose... almost literally in this case. There’s also a nice return, in this one, to the old Dennis Wheatley school of horror... which manifests itself when a local priest gets involved with the family and friends who are trying to protect their Toby-obsessed daughter. So, yeah, you get the old chalk symbol circle sequence where everybody has to stand in said circle and must not... whatever they hear or see... leave the circle which protects them from the demonic forces at work.

Okay... so how do you think that ones going to work out in a Paranormal Activity movie? Someone always leaves the circle of protection in a horror tale, right?

Let’s just say that the final confrontation between the priest and Toby, kickstarts the usual chaotic and scary concluding sequences of the film and, I have to tell you, the writers/producers/director goes way past the level they usually do at this point in these movies. You will, finally, get some good glimpses of Toby and the demonic deaths of any/all/some of the characters in this one (like I’m going to tell you) are all done in a much more over-the-top fashion which, in a lot of cases, makes full use of the 3D format. It possibly gets a little silly in this final pièce de résistance of the movie but it’s swings and roundabouts averaging out between the “blimey, that scared the pants off me, I did not expect that” moments and the “okay, 3D demonic impaling... whatever” moments and I can really forgive the film-makers any indulgences with the last quarter of an hour of this movie because it’s just so much scary fun.

The creator of the franchise, Oren Peli, has gone on record that this will be the last in the series but... hang on, you can’t stop it here! The final message we take away from this one is pretty grim and I really do want to see more of this franchise. I don’t think the story is done here and I would so much like to see a good guy/gal ‘anti-coven’ group of heroes go into a final showdown with Toby, the coven and, presumably, the devil made flesh etc. This is like where they left it at the end of The Last Exorcism Part 2 (reviewed by me here) and I was pumped up to see where the next one would go... which didn’t materialise. I want to see this series’ equivalent of the original Omen trilogy’s The Final Conflict (reviewed by me here) where there’s a huge showdown between the forces of darkness and light, over one or two movies. I don’t even care who wins... I just want to see it. I think this film needs to maybe make a heck of a lot of money and wipe out the bad box office of the unnecessary fifth installment to somehow give the studio a hand in reconsidering their options at this point.

The one thing that I found maybe dissapointing is that this is the first of the movies not to feature an adult version of the Katie character and played by the original actress. We certainly hear about what she’s been up to in 2013 and we certainly see a lot of her as a young ‘un... but no actual appearances in her adult guise in this one, I’m afraid to say. Which would have been a nice touch when all hell starts breaking loose in this one, I feel.

Regardless, my final words on Paranormal Activity - The Ghost Dimension are... this is another great entry into a seriously cool set of movies which actually make full use of the, possibly overused, modern cliché of the ‘found footage horror’ movie. It’s scary, heart racing fun for people who like to go to see these kinds of films and if you’re a fan of the Paranormal Activity series... essential viewing. If you got disheartened after that last movie in the series, you don’t have anything to worry about here... it’s back on track and is especially well worth a watch at the cinema in 3D because it’s used to enhance a plot point. And, like I said, I really hope this one does the numbers because I really want to see another sequel. A truly great movie, too, to spend this Halloween at the cinema with. Go see it soonest.

The Gallows

Happy Ever Rafter

The Gallows
2015 USA
Directed by Travis Cluff & Chris Lofing
UK cinema release print.

Okay... I really didn’t know what to expect from The Gallows before I went in and all I really knew for sure was that it was a found footage horror movie, which immediately gives one certain expectations as to the style of filmmaking on offer. The only other things I had to go on were the trailer... which is more of a teaser and is therefore quite effective... and a very short review from a newspaper which was tweeted online and which pretty much condemned it as a boring concoction with extra loud sound design.

Well all I can say to that is... loud sound design, perhaps. Boring... perhaps not.

It’s certainly as clichéd as you would expect a movie in the ‘found footage’ sub-genre of horror to be these days. However, like I’ve said in the past, when it comes to fulfilling one of the main goals of the modern horror film, namely scaring the pants off of the audience (as opposed to a porn movie, which is more about slowly getting the audience to pull their own pants off), then running with clichés can really work well... either as a fulfillment of the that cliché or as a way of setting up certain expectations before pulling the rug out from under said audience.

I’m delighted to say that, while The Gallows resorts to all of the tricks you would expect that this kind of movie would run with, it redeems itself somewhat by setting up a certain amount of suspense/tension with the camera work which allows the directors to make you jump loads and get the blood pumping. This is achieved by having a camera eye that constantly swoops around rooms as any of the four main characters take the primary recording device for the majority of the action to use it as both a light source and a way of trying to see around corners while, obviously, deliberately making other areas of the frame where you would want to see what’s going on... shadowy and somewhat impenetrable.

The plot is a little reminiscent of Michele Soavi’s Stagefright (aka Stagefright: Aquarius) in that it’s prime locations are theatrical in nature and revolve around the future performance of a play. However, where Soavi’s film is a giallo and is therefore about a human killer - and I don’t think I’m spoiling anything that you won’t find out in the set up to this movie - this one is much more of a horror film in its ingredients. The story focuses on a play performed in a high school theatre which went wrong when the lead actor was accidentally hung for real, instead of just faking it for the play. 20 years later a girl called Pfeifer, played by Pfeifer Brown, is attempting to restage the play, titled The Gallows, to honour its past and the man who lost his life performing in it. However, the new lead actor Reese, played by Reese Mishler, is terrible in the role and is only appearing in it to impress Pfeifer. So the night before the performance takes place Reese, along with his friend Ryan (played by Ryan Shoos) and his girlfriend Cassidy (played by Cassidy Gifford), sneak into the building via a “broken door which is always unlocked” to vandalise the set, anonymously, so the play can’t go through and Reese is spared the very strong possibility of being ridiculed by his peers. When they get in the building and make a start on this less than brilliant plan, they are startled by Pfeifer herself who has been lurking in a back room. Then, as you would expect in a film of this nature... all the doors are locked, there’s no way out and... something is stalking them.

Okay, so once again we have a horror film where the majority of the teenage characters are... well they’re just not very nice. Ryan is particularly obnoxious and certainly not someone you’d want to have hanging around. His girlfriend Cassidy is equally less than charming and, while Reese is a little more sympathetic than these two, he’s still not so great in making certain decisions. Pfeifer is probably the most sympathetic character of the lot and that’s a good thing when you eventually see how this film goes down. When you think this movie is over... make sure you stay for the final coda just before the credits start to roll... it’s an interesting ending which enforces the denouement you just saw and makes another connection to the origins of the spooky hijinks in the locked theatrical department.

Now, I’m pretty sure a lot of people are going to switch off in this movie due to the overabundance of these kinds of films on the marketplace in recent years. I think if this had been released back when The Blair Witch Project repopularised the found footage horror genre for a new generation, then this film would have been an all round smash hit. Unfortunately, it’s probably going to go under most people’s radar and that’s a shame because, midst all the clichés, there are some nice things going on here. A scene with a cell phone is something I never expected... it’s not overwhelmingly brilliant or earth shattering in its conception but it was slightly unexpected and, in this kind of movie, that’s always a good thing. There’s also a nice “moment of choice” for one of the characters which both allows that character to redeem themselves a little in the eyes of the audience while also condemning themselves to a nasty death. Actually, there’s a twist of irony in this moment as will be revealed at one point as that death is happening but... I really don’t want to reveal that here. I suspected it at a moment much earlier in the film and then dismissed the notion, so it’s good that the directors still snuck it in at the end.

Another cool thing is that two of the characters end up as an echo of a rehearsal of the play, The Gallows, as seen earlier in the film. They are saying the same dialogue but, due to the way the characters have bonded throughout the course of the story, the stakes involved by this pont in the movie ensure that we actually get to see a part of the play performed properly, for once, as an update of a scene from near the start of the film. There’s a pretty nice moment of realisation at this point.

Other than that, there’s not a heck of a lot I can say about The Gallows. There are a few genuinely spooky moments and lots of jumps and scares because of the deliberate lack of adequate camerawork... rather like a person on a roller coaster might tilt his head to anticipate where the next plunge might be coming from. I found it almost unbearably jumpy in places but I know a lot of people are immune to those kinds of cheap tricks so I think this one will have a split audience. It’s not as scary or as well put together as some recent found footage horror movies but it’s a heck of a lot better than a fair few of them, it has to be said. It’s not one I’d go out of my way to watch again straight away although, after seeing the end of the movie, there’s an added dimension to the proceedings which might reward second time viewers, I suspect (or would hope). It’s a bag of horror tricks but it’s certainly a competent bag of horror tricks and I think a fair amount of scary movie enthusiasts won’t come away too disappointed. I’m pretty sure there are going to be some people out there who will really love this one. Possibly one to check out at Halloween, if you don’t fancy a cinema trip now.

V/H/S

Taped Heck 

V/H/S
2012 UK
Directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, David Bruckner, Tyler Gillett, Justin Martinez, Glenn McQuaid, Radio Silence, Joe Swanberg, Chad Villella, Ti West, Adam Wingard
Momentum Blu Ray Region B

I remember wanting to see this movie when it did the festival circuit a couple of years ago, despite seeing some pretty mixed word of mouth, so to speak, on Twitter. Ultimately, it’s a movie which seems to doom itself to failure in some ways, fairly early on in the game but, at the same time it’s certainly a nice idea to present an old style horror anthology by using the, relatively, new popularisation of the old found footage variation of horror film. And, it has to be said, there are some fairly bright moments in the movie that make it worth persevering with through the negative stuff and I can certainly see why a couple of more enthusiastically received sequels have already been made in what is now a strong, found footage franchise.

The film is all shot on VHS tape... well, probably not actually, it’s probably shot on something much better and visually downgraded after the fact. This becomes especially apparent in the last story of the movie where some interesting CGI stuff is utilised throughout yet another “shaky cam” sequence. This, of course, allows for the various crews getting away with all kinds of bad camera work and not having to think too much about the design of any particular sequence in terms of framing... other than the details of the set or location dressing, of course.

The framing story starts off really quite badly by inviting us to follow a bunch of thugs who have been hired to steal a specific VHS tape from a house. Unless you are some kind of hoodlum yourself, you will find yourself having absolutely no sympathy whatsoever for any of the characters and will want to see them all die in as horrible a way as can be conceived, right from the outset. Now, while this may well be the tactic being deployed by the filmmakers here, for me this just didn’t work that well. If I can’t sympathise with any of the victims then I’m really not going to invest enough emotion in them for the scenes of suspense to work on me and while the director was taking great delight in showing little, telling details unheralded in a corner of a frame, such as a corpse vanishing, for instance, this stuff really didn’t get the heart racing as much as I’d hoped a horror movie might.

The idea is that while the hoodlums are going through the house, one of them starts watching the various other “found footage” VHS tapes in the TV room and we watch these along with him... and it’s here that the film threatened to lose me on two counts.

The first problem is that the group of characters in the next found footage film are basically... another bunch of hoodlums not much different from the ones in the framing footage and who have absolutely no sympathy from me when they start dying. The other problem is, and this should really have been a no brainer of a mistake not to make, is that we are no longer watching the video footage we were watching... somehow, each of the miniature found footage stories are now directly on our screens. So that completely kills that concept then... did someone splice these onto one long tape in just the right places so that the framing story can then take over again in between each segment? This makes absolutely no sense and it was just about now that I kind of gave up on the film inside my head for a bit.

Luckily for me, the first story has an enthralling femme fatale, lets call her the “I like you” girl, in the form of British actress Hannah Fierman and it was her that got me interested again. Now it’s obvious, right from the outset, that no good is going to come out of the main protagonists hooking up with her at a party (yeah, good, they all deserved to die for their thuggish behaviour anyway) but it’s such an old school dose of clichéd but classic sexual horror that I was enchanted with it in some ways... primarily, I suspect, because the actress I just mentioned had such an interesting screen presence.

After this segment, the film becomes a bit of a hit and miss affair, as would be expected in these kinds of anthologies. The majority of the scenarios presented to us are nothing too new but, in some cases (the well made ones), this really doesn’t matter. There’s a nice “haunted apartment” section, for instance, which turns into something else and which, while not altogether unsurprising, has enough in terms of the writing and performance that, if anything, it leaves you feeling the segment was just a little too short. The down side of that, however, is that it’s not actually pseudo-VHS footage... it’s pseudo-Skype footage... which, of course, makes even less sense when you consider it in the context of the found footage framing device... what, somebody transferred their collected Skype conversations to VHS tape. Why?

Another segment is a “final girl” story with a nice “Predator-like” killer who can only be seen on video and with a main protagonist who is using her companions as bait to catch him... which could have been quite refreshing and is relatively well done visually but which has a script and story that really lets it down. Seriously, if you’re going to go hunting a killer, you take weapons with you and not rely on setting traps which it’s obvious couldn’t have been made and prepared in the ridiculously short amount of time played out via the footage. No matter how unintelligent the characters are in horror films, sometimes as a necessity, this one really takes the cake for a person going in completely unprepared and needlessly. So the twist in the tale in that one was tempered by the quite extraordinary lack of brain power of the person who sets events in motion in this one.

There are around six stories in the film in total and, while some of them do hold your interest... and some of them do finally have some characters who are at least a little sympathetic... it’s not exactly the best set of horror shorts I’ve seen although, the last story with it’s Dennis Wheatley style shenanigans is quite nicely done with some well executed special effects. There was an alternative ending on this sequence which I’m glad the director didn’t go with but, strangely, this story marks the end of the film. The framing story is, surprisingly, already played out by the time this last segment appears with, pretty much, no context... so it was a bit of a jarring ending in some ways.

Ultimately, although I was disappointed with a lot of this film, it’s still a nice idea and, like I said earlier, you expect anthology format kinds of films to be a bit hit and miss. This one is mainly miss for me but there were enough interesting spins on old classics to keep me interested... once I’d gotten past the first quarter of an hour. Due to the nature of the beast, I can’t say it’s not worth watching because I expect everyone is going to have their own specific hits and misses among this lot so, if you’re a fan of horror, and found footage shaky cam horror in particular, then you could do a lot worse than to spend an evening in with this movie, of you can rustle up a cheap copy. I’ll certainly be checking out the sequels at some point... when the price is right.

As Above, So Below

Hell Low There

As Above, So Below
2014 USA
Directed by John Erick Dowdle
UK Cinema release print.

As Above, So Below is a found footage horror film that... woah, wait... don’t go away.

Look I know these “found footage” horror movies are all a bit cliché and done to death at the moment but, you know, you don’t see people complaining about other kinds of cinematic techniques in relation to a specific genre, do you?

The fact is, found footage horror is as legitimate a sub-genre as any other, you are going to get good ones and bad ones and you’ll just have to do what you always do with every other movie you’re faced with in the course of your life... just give it a try.

Now I went to this film knowing it was already getting bad word of mouth on my timeline on twitter but I wanted to persevere with it anyway, since I’d kinda liked the trailer and it looked like a new spin of the old “Gate to Hell” plot which used to get a lot of play in movies, especially in the 1980s if I recall correctly.

So I went and sat down in my allocated seat in the cinema, only to find that the only other person in the cinema had chosen the seat right next to mine to be allocated. Which was interesting actually because the guy was a lot younger than me and had a passion for horror and action movies. It gave me another perspective to look at when I was chatting to him about recent movies he’d seen down my local. Kinda interesting and he seemed pretty cool and genuinely enthusiastic about film, which was a good thing.

Okay... so back to where you came in then...

As Above, So Below is a found footage horror film that follows the exploits of a young, amateur (or at least roguish) archeologist who has recently just gotten over the death of her father. She illegally enters some underground cave systems in Iran, just as the government there is about to bomb them to bits, to explore the archaeological findings there and, within the first five or ten minutes of the film, she already discovers a kind of occult version of the Rosetta Stone, which gives her a clue of where to find the Philosopher’s Stone which she is looking for. Already within these early sequences the director, who also directed Devil (reviewed here), is piling on the tension and suspension. Throughout the sequence, a siren is constantly sounding, which seems quite clear is a countdown to the detonation of the cave system our young protagonist finds herself in and, as she tries to flee and survive the explosion, she catches a glimpse of something which, if you’re paying attention as an audience member, you will immediately figure out will be used as repeat imagery in the later parts of the movie.

After this, we are introduced to our main protagonist formally and are with her as she gather’s her former friend (and reader of Aramaic) and then garners the service of some “guides” as she embarks on a journey through (and beneath) the tunnels of Paris in her quest to find knowledge and truth. And its in these early scenes that the director/writer gets two very important things right.

Number one is... pretty much all the main protagonists are likeable people who you wouldn’t mind spending time at a bar with. This makes a change to various recent movies such as V/H/S and Into The Storm (reviewed here), where you don’t care about being around the characters at all and wouldn’t fear for them when they get into the kinds of situations our heros here find themselves in. So it’s a big bonus, especially in a horror movie, when you find yourselves in the company of people who you care about enough that you don’t want to see them die.

The other big plus here is that you see that every member of the “expedition” is fitted with their own headgear which is a torch/video camera... so we can happily follow different people around via head-cam without worrying about the source of the shifting POV shots used to build the movie. Neither do we, in fact, have to worry about the fact that the various shots have been edited together but... I don’t really want to highlight why because that might constitute a spoiler later on down the line.

Of course, from here on in it all becomes one big, claustrophobic, shaky cam romp through darkly lit tunnels and grim, uneasy and sometimes even fairytale-like horror imagery. There’s a slightly false note early on in the “run around in fear” shenanigans where I believe the director was trying to pay homage to the famous “phone ringing” moment from Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker but, because he doesn’t have the same kind of slow pacing to build it up (as you would expect from this kind of movie), it doesn’t have anything like the same kind of impact this early on in the proceedings and it does kinda fall flat at that point, for a few heartbeats.

However, this doesn’t stop the rest of the movie from being a scary and suspense filled prospect as the characters slowly descend to, and then take a tour of, some kind of low budget rendering of Hell. The film isn’t as jump scary as something like, say, Neil Marshall’s The Descent, although I’m pretty sure there is a definite homage scene to this film in here too, but it is still quite expertly handled and certain moments even made me jump... I’m happy to say. There was even a moment where the director deliberately sets up your expectation of where a certain scare is going to come from and just basically uses your awareness of a very vivid presence in a room to distract you from seeing where the real scare is going to come from.This is impressive in itself but, when some of our surviving protagonists come across a similar place later in the movie, with exactly the same visual set up (a dead knight that looks like he’s stepped off the set of Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade), Dowdle manages to repeat the exact same trick and sucker you into checking out the wrong parts of the screen again. So I was really pleased about that.

One of the reasons this movie works so well is that the main cast are... all of them, every man and woman of them... giving fantastic and naturalistic performances. I already said that the characters are all quite likeable but they’ve also got a kind of innocent, naiveté about them, which is of course a good thing to exploit in a horror movie, and they can all make a really credible job of “losing it” when the tension gets too unbearable for the characters...  and possibly some of the audience members too.

The other reason is because the sets and sequences are littered with little details and almost dream/nightmare-like flourishes which are pitched in the backgrounds or sides of a shot. Little things which are tailored to catch the eye and dwell on the scary part of your brain while you watch our motley crew either miss them completely or spend time reacting to what they thought they saw. It’s good stuff and it all pulls together well, with some good editing, into a neat little “found footage” horror opus which I was very happy to be watching and which delivers some nice little twists and touches, not all of which are as easy to see coming as you might at first think (although some of them obviously were).

This is all supported with some really fear inducing sound design in subtle and, lets face it, some far less subtle but chillingly effective passages throughout the movie... more so than in a lot of horror movies which tend to employ the same tactics these days. It’s got some nice audio self referencing in it too... for instance in the constant soundings of “the trumpets” in Hell which become a regular pulse in an echo of the siren countdown in the tunnels in Iran at the start of the movie.

There’s a shot right near the end, it’s the second from last shot of the movie in fact, where it could be said the director fumbles the ball and we are confronted with a trick shot that, while giving the UK movie poster its relevance, also manages to negate the logic that it’s a found footage film. However, by this point I was happy to forgive the director for this because the lead up to this sequence was pretty amazing and there have been a lot worse mistakes recently in films of this nature and this one pretty much misses all of the traps it could have fallen into. I was also pleased that the movie didn’t just end in the way I’d expected it to. Instead, taking me to a place which I certainly didn’t see coming and this, if you are familiar with my writings here, is no easy thing to pull off.

Now I don’t know why this film has had such a lacklustre response, although I know people do seem to be having a kind of knee-jerk backlash kind of reaction to horror films using found footage as a method of delivery at the moment. All I can do though is call them like I see them and this is a movie I will be picking up on blu ray (when it hits the sales) and which I would recommend to any of my friends who like horror movies. It’s not a “scary as hell” kind of movie, although it does have its moments, and I suspect one or two people might want to put this on their “comfort-horror” list... but all I can say is that I really enjoyed my time with this one and it’s something I would love to see a sequel to at some point in the future. Not that I expect there to be one, to be honest.

Into The Storm

Dumb With The Wind

Into The Storm
2014 USA
Directed by Steven Quale
Cinema release print.

You know, I rarely ever go and see disaster movies. They’re just not my cup of tea.

I might occasionally get a hankering to watch something like The Poseidon Adventure or The Towering Inferno again but... that’s usually just so I can remind myself how Johnny Williams’ scores work within the context of those movies. And not even that justification can bring me to look at Earthquake again... although, I have to say, now I contemplate that thought, I realise I’ve not seen that since I was, like, five years old. So maybe I should remind myself about how awful that is again sometime.

The only disaster movies I’ve seen at the cinema in later years have been 2012, which I thought was a bit rubbish and The Day After Tomorrow, which I found curiously watchable. I’ve certainly not seen any of the big “windy” movies of our time like Twister or... I don’t even remember the names of the other ones to be honest. The last film I saw which had a tornado in it was when I was in my pre-teens and Judy Garland was whisked away to Oz inside it.

So, having now sited my credentials as being the absolute worst person to have any kind of perspective on whether or not this is a good disaster movie, let me try and win you back in the hopes that sheer common sense will carry me through as to my evaluation of this film. I don’t know why I wanted to go and see this one but I think it was just because the trailer managed to appeal to me for some reason. Those big passenger aircraft being picked up by the wind and the noise and fury of the hurricanes in the trailer looked like it was the kind of escapist fare I could get behind every once in a while.

Alas, although the film isn’t actually a disaster of a movie, as opposed to being very much a disaster movie, it also isn’t that great on certain things... so let me try and get the balance right here.

Okay, so the film seems like it’s 95% consisting of various camera records of the “events that take place” in almost the kind of “found footage” format that plays so well in popular horror movies at the moment. I say “almost” because there are shots and points of view in here which are... in no way... a found footage thing. Also, everything is edited together into a neat bundle and there is Brian Tyler’s excellent, but barely heard above the windy din, score playing throughout. Now I have to say, to their credit, at no time in the proceedings do the film-makers ever once say that this is a found footage movie... but most of the time it’s clear that the source of the shots used is either coming from any of a number of camera sources that one or more of the characters is holding or from surveillance footage.

It’s certainly not trying to be a blatant found footage movie, to be sure... but it does mean there’s almost 100% hand held shaky cam present as the main style of this movie and it does give a certain voyeuristic feel to the way the footage is captured and presented. On the few occasions the film shifts perspective from being filtered through a story-based source, it still keeps the style of filming and doesn’t jar with anything else before or after it. So that’s quite technically competent at the very least.

Now one of the reasons I did not have a good time with this film for something like the first 20 - 30 minutes of the running time, where all the situations are being set up for the audience, is because most of the characters here are totally unsympathetic. It’s like the accountants are trying to pitch the film at the “youngest audience with wallets” possible and, since they see young people behaving so recklessly and pointlessly through their daily routine, they maybe think we are able to sympathise with brats or thrill seeking, unemployed hoodlums. So for a while there, I was having a hard time finding anyone in the movie who I didn’t want to see sucked up into a violent and disorientating inferno of windy death... I certainly didn’t care if they all died.

That being said, there are moments in the film where certain characters do get your sympathies and it is, in some cases, almost like you go on a journey to find out what various people’s personal redemption story is. So there is some subtlety in places and the film does work as an ensemble piece as far as the acting goes... but it takes a while to get to the point where you are fearful for the characters and, for the most part, it’s kinda dumb and flimsily handled. Some people would argue that it’s necessary to go through the long and winding set up to be able to get to the point when the various character gears shift but, personally, I think I needed to be nearer to these people from the outset. Although the dumb hoodlum thrill seekers I could really have done without all the way through.

On the other hand, the special effects of the various hurricanes depicted in this movie are absolutely stunning and it's made even more astonishing when you realise that this is all that much harder to do when you’re filming with a “shaky cam” approach. I guess you have to track each frame’s displacement into the camera somehow and then allow for that as you’re putting the special effects on. That must be a fairly gruelling process, methinks. However, the spectacle is more than worth the time it takes (especially if the box office hits big numbers for the studio involved) and I was quite fascinated by the awesome sense of raw power you get from the artificially rendered “mother nature has a tantrum” in this film.

As a result of these effects and some of the characters beginning to grate a little less on the nerves (and common sense), there are some genuine moments of suspense and tension, especially in the last third of the film, which becomes all about rescuing two people who are trapped in a hole under a fallen building which is slowly filling up with water. There is a real sense of camaraderie from most of the players towards the end, as everyone (apart from the two hoodlum thrill seekers) pulls together and braves the danger of the multiple “tornadoes of terror” which are being constantly generated before they merge into one giant hurricane thingy, bigger than anything ever seen before (well this is Hollywood, after all).

Then, once it’s over, it’s over. There’s no sense, at the end of Into The Storm, that either of the possible girl/boy relationships hinted at and exploited to get your emotional invovement in the movie come to any fruition and you don’t feel like anyone’s really learned anything from the events they found they had to endure. At least I don’t anyway. It seemed kinda like a quick wind up for me. So as far as recommending this movie, I’m not sure what to say. I know many of my friends would not thank me for pointing them in the direction of Into The Storm and that’s probably about right. However, if your'e a fan of special effects and how these kinds of disaster movies can work in a cinema then you might find yourself having an okay time with it. Either way, the choice is yours. The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind.

The Quiet Ones

Sugar Free Quiet

The Quiet Ones
2014 USA/UK
Directed by John Pogue
Playing at UK cinemas now.

The Quiet Ones is the latest British horror movie from the company who bought up, and have been trying to resurrect, the brand name recognition of Hammer Studios, best known worldwide for their cheesy but influential and, often, ‘rollicking good fun’ films in the horror genre. The new version of Hammer have either put together or distributed a number of productions over the past few years but inevitably, as with all film companies, their product has been a bit hit and miss, at least for this particular audience member.

The Quiet Ones is one of their more self aware and smarter movies of recent years and, although the last 25 minutes or so of the movie stray into the “decidedly cheesy” area of the genre, this does at least harken back to their days from their 20th Century incarnation and, overall, I’d have to say that this movie definitely falls into their ‘hit’ camp.

The film purports to be a true story (which I don’t think it is) of events which took place in Oxford in 1974, even going so far as to show still photographs of the original participants in the events to get people thinking over the end credits... which is good showmanship, to say the least.

The story follows a small cell of people conducting an ‘experiment’. They consist of a Professor, played by Jared Harris (son of Richard Harris) and some volunteer students, headed up by new cameraman Brian, played by Sam Claflin, who is called in to continue documenting their work after the last cameraman got cold feet (aka got scared off by spooky events). Their research, which they continue as a kind of outlaw band, moving to a new and, frankly, scary location after their funding is cut, involves the study and hopeful cure of a ‘possessed’ young lady called Jane Harper (played by Olivia Cooke). It is the Professor’s belief that the various, terrifying manifestations which plague the characters and which come from a malevolent child spirit called Evie are, in fact, nothing more than Jane Harper’s externalisation of her own personal trauma. The theory is to force her to manifest the ghost-like shenanigans to a point where the externalisation of these things can be yanked from Jane’s body, thus curing her.

Yeah, okay, it’s a shaky theory but, you know... go with it. We all know there’s something much less internal to Jane going on, right? It’s an interesting entry hook into a story of thumps, knocks, bruises, bites, fire, strange ectoplasmic manifestations and all the other things a good ghost story/demonic possession movie needs to start scaring the pants off the audience. And... up to a point, it’s quite successful in evoking that gold mine, pants free environment in your local dodgyplex.

One of the reasons that this is so successful, in fact, is because the film attempts something that a couple of horror movies have attempted in the last few years, usually unsuccessfully. That is, they try to maintain a “have your cake and eat it” approach to combining standard third person storytelling and mixing it up with “found footage” style first person shooting. Normally this really doesn’t work but, with a movie such as this, which makes no pretension at being a “found footage movie”, the two different techniques being utilised, when cut together, succeed admirably where most others fail. When used properly like this, and knowing how far to push the “camera eye” footage before they need to ground it in the external context again, it adds an extra kick to the film and definitely an extra appreciation of the scares which the production team cook up for us. Yes, this does use every tried and true, hackneyed technique in ‘horror movie syntax 101’ to achieve its purpose, of scaring you silly at certain points, but its done just right and with such a deft hand in most places that, when it does go a little wrong and into full cheesy mode for the over-the-top end set pieces, you can kind of forgive it that indulgence... especially when it fits in with the classic old Hammer modus operandi so neatly.

The film has a curious double ending, before the credits roll, and one almost brings to mind the very last shot of Hammer’s runaway smash version of The Woman In Black (reviewed here). I don’t want to spoil it but it leads very nicely into a second ending which is, in some ways, a little more uncomfortable and which references something which has been used as a shot transition, punctuation mark throughout the movie... that of a hand clapping against another, used as an impromptu human clapperboard. I won’t tell you the context of the last time this is used, because I really don’t want to give anything away, but it does make a nice little coda to the film, at least in terms of the cinematic language used throughout, and the consequences of the arrival to that particular scenario is something you are left to ponder at the end of the film. A haunting aftermath, so to speak.

The performances are all pretty cool, which I would expect from somebody like Jared Harris but which extends to the entire main cast in terms of excellence. Also nice is the evocation of the style of the time with the make-up, hair style and clothing which lend the film a certain air of authenticity for any claims that it’s based on a true story, by layering it with a sheen of yesteryear... which gives it a certain charming historical credence, so to speak. It certainly reminded me of my childhood, in some ways.

The music, too, does its bit. And I’m not talking about the song choice for certain scenes but of the underscore... which manages to walk that common but effective modern day horror music tightrope of sound design metamorphosing into something which operates on an almost subliminal level, walloping into atonal shifts of all the colours of the dark when required. Good stuff and I look forward to picking up the soundtrack CD if there is one.

All in all, The Quiet Ones does get a bit ridiculous in the end but, it’s carried across with such style and conviction by the time it reaches its denouement, that you can certainly have a good time with this one if horror movies are your thing. Definitely one of the better horror movies of recent years... not the best but certainly beyond the competent and into something a lot more effective than much of the lesser product on the market. I’ll certainly be watching this one again when it comes out on Blu-Ray.

Devil's Due

Deviled Egg

Devil's Due

2014 USA

Directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin & Tyler Gillet

Playing at UK cinemas now.

You know, I nearly didn’t venture out to see this film because of a) very bad word of mouth and b) the popular perception that it’s a straight remake of Rosemary’s Baby. 

Well, to address the second point first... Get a grip, people! It’s not a straight remake of Rosemary’s Baby. It’s certainly an homage in terms of how most of the story (what there is of it) turns out but, frankly, there have been so many books and movies on this specific subject... the birth of the antichrist... or in this case... an antichrist... that you really can’t go out and say it’s a remake of that specific film. It’s merely part of that same sub-genre of horror that Rosemary’s Baby, The Omen, Holocaust 2000 etc all belong to. It doesn’t quite wander into It’s Alive territory but... yeah, I was kinda hoping it would, actually.

To address the first point... the bad word of mouth? It's seriously not a terrible movie. It’s not a particularly good one either and the fact that it’s found footage... well... not even “found” footage... in fact... oh heck, let me get to the negative stuff a little later. First, let me hit you with a few positives.

It’s actually quite scary in places. Not the slow, creeping horror kind of dread I personally prefer, where the cold hand of the supernatural grips you on the shoulder and turns your spine to jelly. More the current “jumpy” kind of horror, which can be fairly effective if executed with the right kind of timing and conviction and certainly, these types of scenes worked perfectly fine here. I know they must have been working pretty well because one of the guys in a group of two thirty-something couples who was sitting next to me was saying “oh no... no .. no ... oh no” and covering his head for support during some of the more intense scenes in the picture. Actually, it truly wasn’t that scary but, I guess maybe if you’ve never seen this kind of stuff before, it may have been. I thought he was going to have a heart attack or something.

The acting was all pretty naturalistic and that’s kind of what I expect from a so-called “found footage” movie. Which serves the story well and since, in this kind of film, acting works better as an invisible art, I would have to say that the performances in this movie... all the performances... were pretty good.

Another positive is the set design. Found footage movies like this can’t set up elaborate shot designs and necessarily reveal certain nuances of emotion with the camera on an actor due to the shackles of the format. That being said, you have to be very expressive with your set design to push concepts through and this was all good here. The “nest” at the end of the movie through which one of the main protagonists is wandering to get answers, is pretty nicely designed and the house in which most of the film is shot is kinda interesting too.

Thus ends the positive things about the movie. Here are my main problems with it... 

The pacing was terrible. It starts of with a quote which leads to an ending which is trying to be a twist ending but which doesn’t succeed (more on that later). It takes too long to get going, considering the timing of the supernatural elements of the film and then, when it does, things just seem to keep coming in a rush. Some sequences worked fine... and most of them, to be honest, were executed with a certain degree of skill. However, the way they were edited into the main thrust of the picture felt ill timed and ultimately, had me thinking way too much about the movie I was watching rather than just pulling me in and letting me watch it.

The other thing which just doesn’t work in this thing is the “found footage” pretension. The footage is taken from multiple sources such as hand held camera, adventure camera, various surveillance systems including major ones set up by the antagonists in the film... so who is, in fact, editing all this together for us to watch other than, you know, the actual film-makers? It makes no sense and there is no text at the start to explain why we are watching this curious mixture of multi-sourced footage and for whom this edit would have been produced. 

And, a point for the writers. If you’re going to make a movie featuring edited together real life footage, and the actual footage goes missing halfway through the movie, then that really only leaves you with two options which make no sense at all. If the footage the character is watching has just disappeared, then we wouldn’t have been able to watch it after the fact either. If, however, as is possibly implied, the antagonistic “devil maker” group who have been watching the main protagonists’ house have taken it, then why would they be editing all this muti-sourced stuff together in the first place? Who the heck is their audience? And, also, if you’re going to do that, why end your presentation with the particular ending you have here? They already know this stuff. 

This is just plain dumb and an insult to the intelligence of pretty much any audience who’s going to spend time with the film. You have to build a modicum of credibility around these kinds of media devices otherwise the internal logic of the film just falls flat on its face... like it does here.

When all is said an done, Devil’s Due is a relatively scary but ultimately unsatisfying take on the satanic anti-christ genre. I can’t really recommend this one to anyone except those audience members who like to study the way the fear button is pushed in the human mind. Most horror movie watchers will probably find themselves having a less than impressive time as far as I can see.  Maybe stick to Rosemary’s Baby after all. 

Paranormal Activity - The Marked Ones

Marking Bad

Paranormal Activity - The Marked Ones

2014 USA

Directed by Christopher Landon

Playing at UK cinemas now.

Warning: There will be some spoilers in here.

Okay... so if you’ve been reading my blog for a while you’ll probably know that I adore the Paranormal Activity films, at least the ones which were made in the USA... I’ve not been able to get a subtitled copy of the Japanese sequel to the original movie, Paranormal Activity 2: Tokyo Night due to, presumably, the Hollywood studios suppressing a release in English speaking countries (I can only, at time of writing this article, track down versions with Italian or French subtitles... so please let me know if you have any leads to picking up a decent, English subtitled DVD of the same).

This sixth (depending on how you choose to count them) entry into the series is a sideways swipe of a movie, shot as a fill in to bridge the release gap between Paranormal Activity 4 and the next one in the series, erm, Paranormal Activity 5... although my understanding is that Paranormal Activity 5 was done and in the can before this one was even made. Is that correct? Maybe the producers don’t have much confidence in it.

Anyway, up until now, although I loved the first in the series... I always considered that movie to be the weakest of the films, not because it wasn’t any good - it was. It’s just that the first one wasn’t scary like the other ones turned out to be. However, now I’ve seen this installment, I’d have to say that this is now my least favourite of the series, not because it isn’t scary... it really is. Scary as hell. The usual high blood pressure and heart attack inducing shenanigans ensue, especially if you are going to see this in the company of a young, impressionable audience at the cinema. However... I did have some really big problems with this movie too.

My biggest problem, though, is that I didn’t sympathise with any of the main protagonists of the movie and, frankly, I didn’t care what happened to them. One of the two main guys is fresh from his College graduation and, frankly, I just assumed that a lot of his time before the spooky goings on were happening, and all through the film, would be about getting himself a job and becoming an upstanding, working citizen.

Nope.

He and his friends are just, basically, thugs. Lazy teenagers who just seem to think its fine loafing around, acting goofy, playing mean pranks and doing nothing to help themselves. Seriously, this lot are worse than the kids in Attack the Block but, whereas in that film the issues inherent in the chemical make up of the so-called “heroes” was addressed at various times in the movie, here it’s just accepted that these are typical teenagers somehow... and presumably the film’s primary target audience of cinemagoing teenagers is supposed to identify with them. Lord help us if they do!

Another big problem is that the found footage style of film-making, which has served the series so well right from the start of the franchise (before they even figured out this would be scary, cheap and profitable enough to be a franchise) is adhered to as it should be... but with absolutely no apparent reason for this to be the case. Seriously, at least the other films in the franchise made a passable effort to justify the use of found footage media. Using surveillance cameras and switching to different sources to build a picture where the use of video of camera equipment would be justified. Here the main protagonists don’t even have a camera fetish like a couple of the characters in the past films. Here they just seem to be intent on recording stuff when they obviously are not interested in the camera in the slightest and will even remember to pick up the camera when they are running for their lives.

Seriously? The producers expect us to believe this?

The actions by various characters in this film defy credibility and that means I didn’t buy into it the way I would in a film where that layer of super-realism was deliberately used. I would have thought this is something the film-makers would have realised. The [REC] films abandoned this style a little way in to the third entry in that series and, although I didn’t agree with that departure from the format myself, if the writers couldn’t have written what they wanted to show credibly within that found footage format then you can see why they decided to rid themselves of those shackles. Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones is a good film to use as an example of why you wouldn’t continue with that format if you can’t write convincingly for it.

There are some good moments in this one though. The scenes where the old hand held electronic game Simon, which was popular for a year or two in the late 1970s, is used as a variation of a ouija board, is fun but, this also brings problems of its own. If this film is aimed at teenagers, and I’m pretty sure it is, they’re probably not going to remember an old toy which was briefly popular nearly 40 years ago. So... nice idea but maybe a little too low tech for the teenage audience Hollywood producers tend to target.

There are also a fair few cameos from previous episodes in the series, which is nice, including the surviving daughter from Paranormal Activity 2 and, most interestingly, Katie (a regular character in all the US installments in the franchise) and Micah, her husband who was killed at the end of the first film.

Wait? What?

The film is set in 2012... so how does this happen?

Well, if you’re paying attention during one of the “young thugs doing research” sequences of this one, you will hear references to time travel, when talking about the demon spirits and, presumably, the witch army we have seen the coven recruiting for in previous episodes. And, yeah, there’s a sequence right at the end of this one which dovetails straight into the first movie, via time travel. And I have to say that this is the tackiest writing choice I have seen in the franchise. Also a self defeating one because, if you’re building a demon army, you might as well do it in the past and there you go, it’s already done before you know it. Yeah, I know. First born sons etc need to be waited for... but then they can be whisked back in time and still exist then, I would guess... whether they were born or not. In fact, if that’s the case then the demons already know the outcome of their work, surely? It’s all very confusing and I think this element is something which is going to trip the franchise up later on down the line. But they’ve committed to it now so there’s not much anyone can do about it. Kind of a hard element to overlook in the grand scheme of things.

And that’s about it as far as Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones goes. As you would expect, the film is well acted by all the performers. Yes, acting really unsympathetically most of the time but at least you can kinda believe in them. I do think the franchise has taken a bad step with this one though. Of course, if you’re into these films, you really do need to see this one as it’s another jigsaw piece of the overall story... but I’m hoping the next one is better than this mess of a movie. The first “not so good” entry in the series.