While I sit around trying to get an idea jumpstarted, I have had time to do one thing… watch a lot of films. So here’s a quick rundown of what I’ve been watching lately, and my thoughts on them.
The Evil Dead Remake: Saw this at the end of last week. Probably in my top-five movies I wanted to see this year. Like the remakes of Night Of The Living Dead, Dawn Of The Dead, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Hills Have Eyes, it keeps enough of the original to make it a perfectly watchable movie. These movies tend to swap a little bit of substance for style, but there is a guilty pleasure in seeing the effects updated in these films. I watched the original a few months back, and one of the things that hit me watching it again is that the Cheryl character is probably the best acted and most intriguing character in the first film. I could totally see why they would make that character the star of the remake. I like the Ash character, but he doesn’t start to come in to his own until Evil Dead 2. It was also nice to see something so gruesome and bloody on a cinema screen again. In this shitty age where only Michael Bay films, and watered-down, monotonous, horror movies with too many quiet… quiet… BOO! moments make it into cinemas. It was nice to see a movie that didn’t hold back and let the blood-and-guts fly.
The Feast Trilogy: This kind of picks up where my last review left off, but… if you’re a Romero or Cronenberg, and you can use horror themes to make comments on life\society, then great. But if you’re a horror director\writer and you can’t do thought provoking… go trashy. I love Shaun Of The Dead, but I fear the knock on effect of that movie is this… if you were going to make a goofy horror movie in the old days, you may not have had plot or even good actors, but some half-decent gore effects and a little sleaze would take your low-budget horror movie a long way. There seem to be a lot of zom-coms now, where neither the zombies or the comedy are any good. Slacker-types, running around making not very funny jokes. Not very funny jokes and weak gags seems to be the new blood-and-guts and nudity. You’re lucky if these film even make an attempt at doing some live-action, non-CGI gore. I’m not saying the Feast movies are anywhere near perfect (the third one I’d barely class as a film), but at least it’s guys in half-decent monster suits running around with some gore and soft-nudity thrown in. Yeah, they have their fair share of weak-gags in these flicks, which only get worse as the films go on, but they do have some redeeming features. Arse-kicking punk chicks who struggle to keep their clothes on. Character survival gags you truly can’t second guess. Some decent monsters make-up and gore. I kind of think this is a fair enough go at doing cheap horror movies. It’s no Return Of The Living Dead, but at times it has brief moments of coming close. It’s a fair enough swing of the bat, these films.
To sum up… less ‘dude’ humour in horror, please. Less stoner\slacker lazy humour movies pretending to be horror flicks. I’m gonna move on before this becomes a rant.
Room 237: Being 31, I’m sad to say my idea of a good night in now is a really in-depth documentary on horror movies, chips and dips. Tragic, but true. Room 237 is probably the biggest documentary on a horror film in years. The Shinning would probably make most people’s top-ten horror movies list. I think this documentary got a rough ride from some people because of some of the kookier theories people put forward in it. For example, they talk about the fake Apollo 11 moon landing theory far less then some reviews would have you believe in this documentary. I think this film does a good job of giving you both some solid theories on this film, and maybe some not so solid ones. If you like kooky-film theories (which I do. There should be more films like this.), you’ll probably enjoy it. How big is Kubrick’s rep, that even when he made continuity errors, people still think he’s a genius? I’m not saying the guy wasn’t good, but no one’s bullet-proof.
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