uwantme2killhim? (2013)

"A teenage boy's descent into the dangerous world of the Internet and the harrowing consequences of his actions. A true story."

Based on a news story originally published by Vanity Fair, "uwantme2killhim?" is the off-putting txt-speak title of Andrew Douglas' somewhat flawed dramatisation. It's written like that for reasons which will become obvious (except that spaces are used in the chat room scene), but those of us of a certain age who have never succumbed to typing like an idiot are more likely to pass this movie by as something which is meant for teenagers. That's a real shame too, since there's a semi-decent psychological thriller lurking within.

It's not the best movie in the world (it looks like a cheap British soap opera), but "uwantme2killhim?" tries hard to present a true story which is far stranger than fiction in an entertaining manner. Artistic licence intentionally prevents you from seeing the whole picture until the end, and depending on how much you think the story could have been more realistic, you will probably still agree that it's quite cleverly done. For anyone taking the movie at face value, however, the ending will feel like an enormous cheat.

The biggest problem though, other than changing the names, ages, and location to protect the not-so-innocent, is that the characters feel "wrong" in every scene. It's not just the clichés, everything they do and say reeks of fakery. To some extent it's intentional, but a lot of it is simply because the casting is questionable and the acting stinks. Not knowing how much is meant to be one way or the other until after the movie ends would be metafiction genius if handled better, but it's more likely to throw you out of the story than draw you in.

Who cut your hair? Dewhursts?

It isn't an issue that the characters talk to their computer screens as they type their words into a chatroom, we've all done that before. One character uses speech recognition software anyway, but it's easy to accept the movie convention when the others are clearly not using Microsoft NetMeeting or the yet to be invented Skype. I remember using Microsoft NetMeeting and a webcam at the end of the '90s, so the use of 2003 technology is spot-on otherwise. If you're feeling nostalgic for 2003, this is about as good as it gets without watching a movie which was actually made then.

Similarly, the school scenes may seem contrived and particularly horrible, but they are awkwardly realistic and familiar too for some bizarre reason which I can't quite put my finger on. Maybe it's because I've tried to forgot what it was like to be a very British teenager. The sad truth is that we're all complete dicks between 14-18 (and older!) with no exceptions, and I can recognise a lot of myself and my former school friends in the characters. Not that we were teenagers in the 2000s, but some things are universal. For the sake of not committing libel, all I can say is that we were some vile and immature little buggers.

While Channel 4's much shorter docu-drama version, "Kill Me If You Can" (2005), is slightly better overall, "uwantme2killhim?" isn't a bad "remake". Andrew Douglas' "The Amityville Horror" (2005) wasn't as strong as the original either, but as he's hardly a prolific director, maybe it's too early to say if there's a pattern forming.

The Eves (2012)

"A Spring Break beach trip turns into a waking nightmare in this indie shocker based on true events. When car troubles lead a group of students to seek shelter in an abandoned lodge, dark forces emerge and blood is spilled."

Ever watched a horror movie just because of the picture on the DVD cover? Yeah, me too, all the time. That's how I ended up watching "The Eves" after promising to only watch good movies from now on. Oh well, as far as slasher clones go, it's not that bad. At least the scene with the shotgun-toting blonde occurs eventually.

Thus, although I was expecting something more like "High Tension" or even "Baise-moi", I ended up with yet another bunch of teenagers breaking down in the middle of nowhere and falling foul of a serial killer (or two) in a movie which shamelessly borrows from "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" (1974) and every slasher made since. Presumably, that's how it's "based on true events".

All the usual clichés are ticked off including cell phones not working, teenagers with entitlement issues getting drunk, doing drugs, and having sex before being murdered one by one, and of course, there's the inevitable twist which I have to admit is nicely done here and not predictable at all. It's not overly original either, but it works.

The funny thing is that I actually enjoyed "The Eves", albeit not entirely in the way it was intended. I've never liked the original version of the "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre", and if it wasn't for R. Lee Ermey as Sheriff Hoyt in the remake and its sequel, I wouldn't have watched those. I'm glad I have though, because it amused me to see the same setup being used again by one of these so-called "groundbreaking and innovative" indie horror movies, and my cynicism was constantly being justified.

To give credit where it's due, the acting in "The Eves" is more than acceptable considering that the characters are quite poorly differentiated. Out of the teenage guys, there's a serious one, a quiet one, an even quieter one who looks identical to the previous quiet one, a prankster, a smartass, and all of them are assholes. The three girls are basically two slutty ones (a blonde bimbo who shows her boobs and a kinky brunette who doesn't) plus a more serious blonde who is as normal as any of these stereotypes can be. What their names are doesn't even matter until near the end.

I like the pretty girls.

As in all modern slasher movies, there's exactly enough shown of the potential victims to make you hate them but not enough to allow you to sympathise with them, and then the lacklustre killing spree begins. In fairness, the kills are more realistically handled than having blood spurting everywhere or intestines wriggling all over the place, and the make-up/effects are okay, but there's nothing memorable about them in and of themselves either. The blinding scenes only made me feel a bit bad because they reminded me of a recent news story from China which I wish I'd never read about. "Man's inhumanity to man" is often much worse in real life than anything you'll see in a silly low-budget horror movie although a similar scene at the start of "Borderland" (2007) is just as gruesome.

While "The Eves" isn't particularly scary, some of the scenes manage suspense competently and the background music which accompanies them is complimentary. Unfortunately, nothing here is likely to get a hardcore horror fan's pulse racing. Considering that I am an example of that aforementioned "hardcore horror fan", I watched this movie calmly and patiently without a flicker of emotion whatsoever.

A casual viewer or someone new to the genre might get a kick of "The Eves", but he or she would have to be American and around the same age as the victims to avoid feeling alienated. When all's said and done, "The Eves" is just a cookie-cutter teen slasher aimed at cookie-cutter teenagers rather than someone like me anyway.

The Conjuring (2013)

"Paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren work to help a family terrorized by a dark presence in their farmhouse. Forced to confront a powerful entity, the Warrens find themselves caught in the most terrifying case of their lives."

I've finally done it! I may be two weeks behind everyone else in the world, but I've now seen "The Conjuring"! I even managed to avoid all the spoilers on Twitter and Facebook beforehand, which wasn't easy considering how overhyped this movie has been.

Supposedly based on a previously unpublished case file from paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, who I've never actually heard of before, "The Conjuring" starts off like an episode of "Friday the 13th: The Series", turns into a clone of "The Amityville Horror" for an hour, and ends up as a twenty minute version of "The Exorcist". As you can imagine, I was not impressed.

In fact, I was so disappointed with "The Conjuring" that I was tempted to only write the following for my review:

BORING CRAP!

If someone perusing the aisles next to me in a DVD store were to ask me what I thought of "The Conjuring", those two words would be the most honest initial reaction I could come up with other than adding whichever choice expletive I might deem appropriate to the situation. I'm not saying that this has happened, although it certainly has done with other James Wan movies in the past, and the response of the person asking has also been equally negative. I'm sure that similar conversations have transpired between other people in various locations.

Maybe I live in my own sheltered little bubble where everyone shares the same good taste, but I've never known of a director other than James Wan whose movies are so consistently underwhelming apart from Christopher Nolan. Even Zack Snyder has double the amount of good movies on his résumé. I'm not going to acknowledge Dario Argento, Uwe Boll, Lloyd Kaufman, or Ulli Lommel because, let's face it, all their movies are guaranteed to be crap from the get-go.

A metaphor just waiting to happen.

The reasons why "The Conjuring" is such boring crap are very easy to list. For a start, the story is unoriginal and clichéd, and it's a messy fusion of far better films that came out over 30 to 40 years ago. We've seen it all before ad nauseum. "The Conjuring" brings nothing new to the table and doesn't even present what it has got in an entertaining manner for adults.

Thus, the second huge problem with "The Conjuring" is that it might as well be a PG-13. How and why it got an R-rating is beyond my comprehension. There's no nudity, no swearing, no sex scenes, no gore, and it's not scary in any way. So how the Hell did it get rated as an R? "R for Rubbish" is my assessment although I'm betting on failed bait and switch shenanigans behind the scenes with the MPAA just to get asses on seats in the movie theatres.

The big giveaway that the target audience was initially meant to be braindead teenagers is the amount of grammatical errors in the script. Both Lorraine and Ed get away with saying "hung" instead of "hanged" without anyone correcting them, and if that's not bad enough, there's Ed's immortal triple-negative, "We ain't never seen nothing like this!" which you can see in the trailer along with all the other "good bits". The terrible dialogue is almost as bad as the "I'm gonna do what I'm gonna do" line in the shitty "Evil Dead" remake. No wonder the mumble-mouthed younger generation are the way they are!

Thirdly, there's no characterisation whatsoever. I couldn't tell you the names of any of the characters even though they were given, what they might be interested in other than ghost hunting or being the victims of a demonic haunting, or any details that would make them more than two-dimensional. The best I can come up with is that "The Conjuring" stars Patrick Wilson with sideburns, Vera Farmiga looking far more beautiful than I've ever seen her look before, the Peter guy from "Office Space", the plain-looking girl who played Nell in "The Haunting" remake whose name I always forget, and a bunch of other people who I've never heard of poncing about in a badly maintained American house. If you think I'm joking, try telling me the names of the family members without looking them up on the IMDb. While you are at it, what are the names of the cop or the Warren's assistant? No idea? Case proven.

Without characterisation, what's the point of a horror movie? If you can't identify with the protagonists, empathising with their situation and feeling the catharsis when it's resolved is completely lost, isn't it? Or is this something that kids today just don't care about? As much as anyone born after 1989 is likely to be a complete moron in my estimation anyway, there are exceptions who must have left the cinema as disappointed as us older guys. Even the ones who only went to see some scary effects must have felt cheated of their $10.

Vera Farmiga is so hot in her granny clothes!

I wish I could find something good to say about "The Conjuring", but it's a typical James Wan movie. There are a couple of overloud jump scares which don't work, the usual creepy dolls which aren't creepy at all, some guy in a latex witch mask which is supposed to be scary, horrible shaky camerawork (but with lots of zooming this time just to be very '70s!), irritating child actors, poor CGI effects, plotholes everywhere, no atmosphere, no tension, total chaos at the end with a lame resolution, and nothing original whatsoever. The tongue-in-cheek acknowledgement of Blumhouse Productions' formulaic style of composition when the family mentions birds hitting their house (as in "Dark Skies") is realised when the birds repeat their kamikaze attack near the end, but you can't make in-jokes like that when you do the same damned thing yourself!!!

I suppose the period setting in 1970s America is well done, but that's not exactly a difficult thing to achieve. Apart from the cars, America looks much the same as it has done since the 1920s when it comes to the crappy wooden sheds which people jokingly refer to as houses. Every house in my town looks like the one in "The Conjuring" only in an even worse state of disrepair! Forget nostalgia, these firetraps need to be knocked down and replaced with some proper bricks and mortar! I'm sure that I've mentioned that several time before on this blog though.

I'm not happy about James Wan using a cover version of "Sleepwalk" with lyrics either. The original Santo & Johnny instrumental from 1959 which is such a signature feature of Stephen King's "Sleepwalkers" (1992) just doesn't belong anywhere else! The guitars in "Sleepwalk" even sound like cats meowing for God's sake! But, in spite of having a witch in the story, there are no cats in "The Conjuring"! There's a collie dog called Sadie who meets her maker off camera, but no cats! Oh, that makes me so angry!

The word on the street is that James Wan is giving up horror movies now to make the next homoerotic installment in "The Fast and the Furious" franchise. I wish him the best of luck, but after "The Conjuring", I can't say that he will be missed.

Devil's Pass (2013)

"Five young filmmakers retrace the steps of a doomed group of hikers in pursuit of an unsolvable mystery."

Also known as "The Dyatlov Pass Incident" (or "Devil's Ass" in my house), Renny Harlin's latest movie dredges up the faux found footage subgenre yet again and sucks almost as much as all of his other movies (apart from "Die Hard 2" and "Cliffhanger") combined.

Using a famous Russian mystery, "Devil's Pass" is just another "Blair Witch Project" clone which has been bookended with the "based on a true story" gimmick. The real story is far more interesting to read about than watching any part of this movie, and I say that as somebody who doesn't like to read anything if I can possibly help it. At least it gets a decent mention here, but don't expect any answers in this film or from anywhere else.

It's no secret that I hate "found footage" movies anyway so, of course, I'm biased. But even if "Devil's Pass" was universally acclaimed as "the best found footage movie ever made", I'd still be able to point out the errors of its ways. Basically, if a movie looks cheap, doesn't make a whole lot of sense, its characters are irritating, and it's boring to watch, what use is to to anybody? There's no entertainment value in something like this for me.

Fortunately, "Devil's Pass" hasn't been universally acclaimed as anything other than a load of sci-fi crap with lots of shakycams, loud, gung-ho Yanks getting their comeuppance in the Urals, and horrible CGI monsters at the end, so I can loathe it as much as I want. I even watched it twice just to hate it more!

Do not want!

Could characters be more stereotypically WASPish and alienating than the ones in "Devil's Pass"? Call me grumpy, but I think not. I've had it up to here (imagine me reaching above my head) with these overprivileged, studenty idiots in movies, and I really don't want to see any more of them. What part of "If you're a coddled American, please stay home because you'll cry like a baby and die horribly if you go abroad!", don't they ever understand?

The most interesting part for me was the mention of "The Philadelphia Experiment". I don't know what the true story is there (because I don't read), but I love that movie and the sequel. Once all the time-travel and "mutations from radiation" nonsense kicks off, it's time to call it a day with "Devil's Pass" though because you know no good can come of it. Let's face it, no scares or tension are possible with the ending of any found footage movie being a foregone conclusion, so what's to like?

"Devil's Pass" hasn't even been released theatrically in English speaking countries yet, but it's already been leaked to the internet by Russians, so make of that what you will. Personally, I think that they disliked the usual Hollywood Russophobia and the disrespectful way the movie dealt with one of their most financially lucrative mysteries.

My advice? Pass this one by.

Ghost Stories for Christmas - Part 8

The Mistletoe Bough



The Mistletoe Bough, a ballad by Thomas Haynes Bayley and Sir Henry Bishop, was published circa 1830.

The mistletoe hung in the castle hall
The holly branch shone on the old oak wall.
The Baron's retainers were blithe and gay,
Keeping the Christmas holiday.

The Baron beheld with a father's pride
His beautiful child, Lord Lovell's bride.
And she, with her bright eyes seemed to be
The star of that goodly company.
Oh, the mistletoe bough.
Oh, the mistletoe bough.

"I'm weary of dancing, now," she cried;
"Here, tarry a moment, I'll hide, I'll hide,
And, Lovell, be sure you're the first to trace
The clue to my secret hiding place."

Away she ran, and her friends began
Each tower to search and each nook to scan.
And young Lovell cried, "Oh, where do you hide?
I'm lonesome without you, my own fair bride."
Oh, the mistletoe bough.
Oh, the mistletoe bough.

They sought her that night, they sought her next day,
They sought her in vain when a week passed away.
In the highest, the lowest, the loneliest spot,
Young Lovell sought wildly, but found her not.

The years passed by and their brief at last
Was told as a sorrowful tale long past.
When Lovell appeared, all the children cried,
"See the old man weeps for his fairy bride."
Oh, the mistletoe bough.
Oh, the mistletoe bough.

At length, an old chest that had long laid hid
Was found in the castle; they raised the lid.
A skeleton form lay mouldering there
In the bridal wreath of that lady fair.

How sad the day when in sportive jest
She hid from her lord in the old oak chest,
It closed with a spring and a dreadful doom,
And the bride lay clasped in a living tomb.
Oh, the mistletoe bough.
Oh, the mistletoe bough.

The Possession (2012)

"A young girl buys an antique box at a yard sale, unaware that inside the collectible lives a malicious ancient spirit. The girl's father teams with his ex-wife to find a way to end the curse upon their child."

Even though I watched this a few days ago, I thought I'd better wait for the whole week since its release to pass just to give you all chance to see it before I mercilessly ruin it for everyone with spoilers.

The thing is, with a formulaic horror film like this which was put together with so much contempt for the audience, why should I even care if I give away all the details and help to deprive it of a few overpriced cinema ticket sales? Obviously, I don't.

So what was "The Possession" really about? Was it simply the fictional story of a dybbuk who looked like Gollum from "The Lord of the Rings" or was any of it based on the true story of a possessed item bought from a yard sale? I have absolutely no idea, but I do know that this was yet more lazy filmmaking which created a product designed to appeal to stupid teenagers with more money than sense.

There were two huge warning signs for this movie which I chose to ignore. The first of these was that it was yet another Sam Raimi produced "Ghost House" picture. Has there even been one film carrying that label which was half-way decent? I think not. The second was that it had a PG-13 rating. Although it's completely possible to re-rate an older scary movie as a PG-13 and retain its scariness, modern filmmakers are physically incapable of creating anything which we could call "horror" when restricting themselves to the whims of the MPAA. What the hell is the point of a PG-13 horror movie anyway? What do you expect to see in it apart from a CGI monster? Or do you just want to be jolted awake by an obnoxiously loud jump scare which drowns out all the texters and chatters in the cinema?

When I saw that the director was none other than Ole Bornedal, who had a minor success with the original Swedish version of "Nightwatch" (1994) but less so with the 1997 remake starring Ewan McGregor, I was still prepared to give "The Possession" a chance. Even though Ole Bornedal's "Nightwatch" wasn't a patch on Timur Bekmambetov's fantasy movie of the same name (which has created a lot of irritation for me when I've been trying to buy memorabilia from eBay over the years), I let that pass. I shouldn't have forgotten about the other kiddie-friendly movie which he made for "Ghost House Pictures" called "The Substitute" (2007), but anyone who has the courage to put the gorgeous Lene Nystrøm from Aqua in a horror film, such as he did with "Deliver Us from Evil" (2009) still deserves some respect even if that thriller wasn't very good either.

Of course, the other big draw for me was the chance to see Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who I only know as the "Comedian" from "Watchmen" (2009), in something that had the potential to stretch his acting muscles a bit more. I had no idea he was also from that lame horror TV show for girls, "Supernatural", or that would have been the deciding factor in favour of not watching "The Possession" at all. Alas, it wasn't the only mistake I made this week, as you know.

I've chosen the picture above as typical of everything that was wrong with "The Possession". It had children in it, stupid CGI effects, adults who were looking the other way most of the time and who couldn't see the obvious until it was right in front of them, and, basically, it was totally ridiculous.

Although it started off well with all sorts of domestic situation problems which promised to be interesting later plus some quite likeable characters, everything took a turn for the worse when the father, who was named after Clint Eastwood's monkey, decided that the most fun thing he could take his daughters to was a yard sale. What did they buy there which little girls would love to have? An iPhone? A rare Barbie? Justin Bieber CDs? No. Instead, the littlest of the little girls decided that she wanted a crappy old wooden box with Hebrew inscriptions all over it. This was based on a true story, right? Oh, yes, I can see how all this really happened. Not.

It's not that I haven't heard of possessed items being bought from yard sales or thrift stores before. I once heard a story on "Talk Radio" (back when it was good and wasn't "Talk Sport") about someone who bought a haunted chest of drawers which made everyone feel suicidally depressed. I've even seen cursed lamps, dollhouses and mirrors bought from yard sales at Amityville, but, of course, the latter were all in crappy horror movies too.

One thing I'd never heard of before "The Unborn" (2009) was a "dybbuk" (or "dibbuk") which, apparently, thanks to "The Possession", I now know can be banished into a box just like an evil genie into its bottle (provided, of course, that you know its name which is hidden behind a mirror in the aforementioned box). A dybbuk is therefore a djinn without any of the three wishes fun and games. Thanks for that, Sam Raimi.

I also now know that if you want to get rid of a dybbuk, traditional Jews won't help you but their rebellious popstar offspring will. I must admit that I thought Matisyahu as Tzadok was pretty great in his role, and I just loved his impersonation of a drinking bird toy from the '70s when he was exorcising the dybbuk.

Let's face it, this film was utter trash. It stole all of its ideas from older exorcism movies including the big one, "The Exorcist", with everyone trusting in the psychology crap followed by an MRI and all that other nonsense instead of just believing in the supernatural like any normal person would. When Clyde, who, to his credit, was the first to believe, offered himself to the dybbuk in place of his daughter, I could see William Friedkin and William Peter Blatty spinning in their graves, and neither of them is even dead yet.

And what about that hospital? Would you ever want to be in a hospital where someone could make that much noise, scream their lungs out and smash the place apart without anyone coming to see what was going on? I know it was an American hospital and medical care in the States is non-existent unless you pay $1,000,000 an hour for it, but this was just bullshit. Oh, I forgot for a second there that this was based on a true story.

Possibly the only part of "The Possession" which was true was the ending. Yes, you probably will die if you are talking on your cellphone instead of concentrating on driving, and I'm sure I could find some statistics to prove that it has happened to thousands of people already if I could be bothered. Whatever, just don't do it.

So what do you think my rating will be for "The Possession"? It's not even out on DVD yet so I can't physically throw it into "The Dungeon". But, since this is the internet and I can cast this dybbuk-filled mess into any virtual box I like, that's precisely where it's going. True story.