The Neon Demon (2016)

"When aspiring model Jesse moves to Los Angeles, her youth and vitality are devoured by a group of beauty-obsessed women who will take any means necessary to get what she has."

Imagine, if you will, "Zoolander" without the intentional comedy, or "Starry Eyes" without the horror. Got those fixed in your mind? Good. That's pretty much what "The Neon Demon" is, but it's not as good as either of them. In fact, it's just not good.

There are two major problems with "The Neon Demon" which render it absolutely worthless even for the Millennial dripsters who would normally gush over similar products. First, it's slower than molasses going uphill in January. Second, Elle Fanning has neither the looks, height, or demeanour to be a fashion model. The latter would make the whole movie unintentionally hilarious, but for the fact that it's also tedious as shit.

If this movie is really supposed to be a horror movie, Nicolas Winding Refn has no idea what a horror movie should be. Granted, it's a horrible movie, but there are no scares, no surprises, and not really much of anything of interest once you take out the mildly titillating lesbianism and necrophilia.

While boobs and blood used to be all that was needed for a movie to qualify for the genre, things have moved on a bit in the rest of the real world. Audiences now like subtle things such as a compelling story and decent characterisation too, neither of which you'll find here.

As "The Neon Demon" is contrived to be very Elle Fanning-centric, it's a pity that she doesn't have the "X Factor" or any screen presence whatsoever. As a girl-next-door type, I'm sure Elle has her devoted, horndog fans, but based on her performance in this movie, I'm not likely to ever be one of them. It's hard to tell if her acting is good, bad, or horrendous because every character in "The Neon Demon" is unlikable and seems to be affected by some kind of Asperger's Syndrome anyway.

Keanu Reeves stands out in his two minutes of screentime, but he's last-billed for good reason. In what can only be described as an extended cameo where he's still channelling John Wick, he's not much more than a miserable so-and-so, albeit with all the best lines. I would say more, but I've already written more words than his character has. If you're a big Keanu mark and want to see "The Neon Demon" purely because he's in it, be prepared to be disappointed.

If you're looking for a movie which satirises the fashion industry, you would obviously be better off with "Zoolander" or even the unfairly maligned "Zoolander 2" (which is almost as great as the first one). Sadly, "Showgirls" did all the seedy stuff better many years ago, and both "Eat" and "Starry Eyes" did the horror properly.

I was asked if I had seen this movie last night, and my reply was, "Seen it, hated it." That doesn't make for much of a critique, but it's all that really needs to be said when anyone mentions this pretentious arthouse crap in future. I wasn't even going waste my time reviewing it because, like most new movies, it's not worth the effort of sitting through in the first place, but I suppose I've done it now. "The Neon Demon" is complete and utter shit.

Coffin Baby (2013)

"Hollywood, California is turned upside down by a series of strange and horrific murders creating chaos and turmoil in tinsel town. One particular victim is kidnapped, held captive and subjected to witness the torture and murder of numerous other victims. It is by her will, strength, and faith that she must survive the ordeal. Her escape seems hopeless and only worsens when outside supernatural forces become more difficult to contend with than her captor..."

To be honest, I didn't think this was going to be any good, and I only watched it because of the Lianne Spiderbaby plagiarism scandal. According to the IMDb, Lianne Spiderbaby has a bit part in it as "Samantha's sisters [sic] double", but it's only a "blink and you'll miss it" moment.

For anyone else who cares, "Coffin Baby" is supposed to be a follow-up to Tobe Hooper's "Toolbox Murders" remake from 2004. Most people thought that the project was abandoned a long time ago, but apparently not. The "rough cut" version is now floating around the big name video streaming sites as a dubious freebie.

Based on this allegedly incomplete version, I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised by the opening scene. I have no idea who the gorgeous blonde is, but the tension and cat scare really did it for me! No, I'm kidding, the cat scare is as clichéd as the acting is abysmal. But damn, the gore which ends that scene is lush!

Unfortunately, it takes almost another 20 minutes before the meaningless plot gives way to more gory goodness. In that time, you have to put up with a badly handycam-filmed police investigation full of non-actors. I swear that if I didn't know any better, I'd assume that the camera was covered in butter so that it kept slipping out of the cameraman's hands, or he had some kind of seizure. Nothing else could explain the poorly framed shots and constant movement when there needn't be any.

Chauntal Lewis is hawt! Miserable-looking here but usually hawt!

Chauntal Lewis, playing the sister of the first victim, is extremely attractive and seems to be able to act a bit, but her character soon becomes as irritating as everyone else. Excessively loud American girls who don't follow instructions from authority figures are torture porn fodder just waiting to happen! To give credit where it's due though, Chauntal does provide a credible performance as a "scream queen". She definitely has a fine pair of lungs on her!

Once she's been kidnapped by a Dr. Phibes lookalike (I have no idea what the character's real name is) and locked in a cage, Chauntal is mostly tortured by having some kind of henna tattoo or supernatural branding burnt off her right forearm. I can't say that I disapprove of Dr. Phibes' actions because tattoos on women are absolutely disgusting anyway, but I assume it's all about either removing or invoking the power of magical sigils. Why? I haven't got a clue.

Roughly half an hour in, things change for the worse when what can only be described as a car full of wannabe "gangstas" and Elissa Dowling turn up to provide some unnecessary comic relief before getting killed in various brutal ways. Not to be mean about it, but I've never seen Elissa Dowling in anything decent, and I'm constantly amazed by how she keeps getting employed. Actually, I think I may have just answered that question for myself. There are some horrid practical effects and a lot of wish fulfilment in this scene, but it's still only filler.

"They see us rollin', they hatin'."

Between Dr. Phibes killing a random blonde, feeding Chauntal with popcorn while forcing her to watch a crappy movie, and hosing her down erotically, a police team led by Brian Krause from "Charmed" interrogate the sisters' joint boyfriend to create more padding. Somewhere in this mess, the story of their ménage à trois and their murdered baby comes out for what seems like absolutely no reason whatsoever.

Then it all starts to get even weirder as, after 10 days, Chauntel eats a cockroach, gets given an orchid because Dr. Phibes now loves her, and feasts on cooked human flesh from another blonde victim who looks just like the one who was killed earlier but with her previously sawn-off leg intact again. Hmmmm, so the Monty Python sketch about legs growing back is true after all!

At this point any attempt at maintaining the daily chronology or creating a logical plot goes right out of the window. There are more victims of the killer's toolbox (including the serial sister-shagging boyfriend), lots more blood and guts (plus a heart), Dr. Phibes gets an incomplete backstory about his dead mother in a coffin, and Chauntal starts to go through bouts of Stockholm syndrome as she's tortured into madness. This may only be a workprint, but there's no way it could ever be recut into something that makes sense.

"Love means never having to say you're ugly."

Rather than spoil any more of this utter crap for you by retelling the entire story like one of those lame "Women in Horror" bloggers who doesn't know the difference between a review and a synopsis, suffice it to say that things do not improve. I couldn't tell you if any of what happens with a little girl ghost and a cameo from Bruce Dern as a preacher is supposed to be real or an extended dream sequence anyway. It's all too muddled with zombies, ghosts, and decomposing corpses everywhere.

Somewhere along the line, writer/director Dean Jones obviously couldn't decide whether to go for a "They're all in Hell" cop-out ending or remake "Unborn Sins" (2005), so he did both and wasted several beautifully choreographed action sequences in the process. The abortion now known as "Coffin Baby" is the result.

By the way, I think Lianne Spiderbaby was a double for the first blonde victim in the bag rather than being Samantha's sister. At least I've cleared that up.

Hidden in the Woods (2012)

(AKA "En las afueras de la ciudad")



"After their abusive father is jailed, two sisters being raised in a remote area of Chile find they have to answer to their uncle, a drug kingpin who wants his missing product back."

Yeah, I'm back again but only briefly. I've had another non-eventful birthday (apart from James Herbert dying on it!) last week, finally figured out how to turn off all the annoying random characters that were being added to the names of the images I uploaded to Photobucket, and I've been spending way too long playing on Twitter. Let's face it, as much fun as Twitter is, I'm primarily a blogger so I can't be confined to 140 character limits forever.

Anyway, I missed out on Patricio Valladares' "Hidden in the Woods" last year so I watched it yesterday. I can't say that I was overly impressed although it's certainly gory enough for most people and has a couple of nice-looking Chilean girls in it.

Thanks to "Hidden in the Woods", I had to look up where Chile was on the map. I always thought that Chile was an island somewhere near Portugal rather than a long, straggly country in South America so I learnt something. Geography has never been my strong point, but I had to Google where Chile was after watching this film so that I never accidentally go there. It's probably a great country, but this film makes it look like a horribly uncivilised place to be. There are too many trees and violently insane people living among them for my liking.

Siboney Lo as Ana

The real trouble with "Hidden in the Woods" though is that despite all the shock scenes and gore, it isn't so much a horror movie as just another rape-revenge, "faux-grindhouse", exploitation movie with a ludicrous crime story forced into the mix. I'm not a big fan of this subgenre and always fail to see the joke. That's assuming that this was put together as a bit of fun and not meant to be a serious drama. "Inspired by true events" doesn't seem that likely unless Chile really does contain so many rapists in its sylvan areas or have police even more useless than the ones in "Inside".

Paradoxically, acting and filming wise, "Hidden in the Woods" isn't a bad movie as such. It's obviously ragged in places, but it doesn't reek of someone trying to intentionally make a "so bad, it's good" abomination (although a few comic touches particularly during Ana's short career as a prostitute may make you wonder). I liked the gore effects and almost got into what Patricio Valladares was trying to do about two-thirds of the way through, but by then, it was too late. Homaging dozens of better horror movies (including "Spider Baby", "The Hills Have Eyes", "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre", "Frontier(s)" and even "The Woman") isn't so clever when there's hardly any originality used elsewhere.

Having willingly suspended my disbelief during the schizophrenic tonal changes and poorly realised plot, I can't easily put my finger on why the story didn't work for me except that the lead female characters were either too flat or too inconsistent and didn't really evoke any kind of sympathy. It's pretty hard to sympathise with an inbred family of hillbilly cannibals anyway even if you imagine that the girls might clean up rather nicely. The men in this film are all one-dimensional and despicably vile as well.

Carolina Escobar as Anny

Basically, "Hidden in the Woods" is a misogynistic tale of murder, rape, incest, prostitution, cannibalism, drug dealers, torture, and even more rape and murder. If any of those combined elements interest you then knock yourself out. If you want to actually feel something for the victims in a mean-spirited movie then I recommend watching something else such as "I Spit on Your Grave" or "The Last House on the Left" (either the originals or the remakes). Even "A Serbian Film" has more pathos than "Hidden in the Woods".

The "Reservoir Dogs" ending just ruins any time invested in trying to get involved with the characters, thus leaving the experience unsatisfying and forgettable. In fairness, the characters are such damaged goods that no happy ending is possible, but it still feels like a cop-out especially with the clunky twist during the end credits.

Inevitably, there is already an American remake planned which will, surprisingly, also be directed by Patricio Valladares. With a few changes, it might be okay, but I highly doubt it.

Offspring (2009)

"Survivors of a feral flesh-eating clan are chowing their way through the locals. Amy Halbard and Claire Carey strive to survive their abduction by the cannibals and save their children. A subplot involving Claire's despicable husband, Steven, gives an opportunity to cleverly compare predatory civilized folk to the appetite-driven primitives."

There's usually nothing like watching the first film in a potential trilogy after the second one to really mess things up in my head. Fortunately, both Jack Ketchum's "Offspring" and "The Woman" work perfectly as standalone stories so it wasn't so much of a chore.

I intentionally skipped "Offspring" when it first appeared due to my healthy dislike of most of the crap on the "Ghost House" label but, due to having nothing else worthwhile on Netflix, I decided to finally give it a go.

Let me just tell you, before I begin my usual rambling, that both the Netflix and IMDb ratings are way out of sync with how good "Offspring" actually was. You probably already know that I barely even trust the IMDb for a plot synopsis anymore and certainly not the ratings or reviews there. In fact, on my blog, the only person whose critique of a movie counts is my own and that's the way it's always going to stay.

Even though "Offspring" seemed to be more of a crime drama than a horror story at first, it didn't stay that way. While there were certainly a load of cops in this film of various abilities, it became a reverse "Wrong Turn" (2003) or "The Hills Have Eyes" (1977) quite quickly. Here the cannibalistic feral tribe were nomads who preyed on the outskirts of rural civilisation rather than just lying in wait for victims to come to them.

I thought it was a very interesting idea and it prompted me to look up the inspiration for the story, the legends of Sawney Beane and Christie-Cleek, immediately afterwards. As much as the Scottish legends probably had about as much truth to them as this completely fictional movie update, they were quite fascinating to read.

Of course, what I liked most about "Offspring" was that it didn't pull too many punches with the violence or gore. While it was far from being the most graphic nastiness that I've ever seen, there were still enough moments to satisfy most lesser gorehounds and a surprising amount of it was done either by or to children.

I make no secret of the fact that I absolutely cannot abide kids so the more of them who I see getting shot, stabbed or eaten in a horror film, the better, especially if they all look like that little freak from "The Road Warrior" (1981) which these indeed did.

A couple of questions which were tied up for me, due to watching "The Woman" (2011) previously, were the first appearance of the titular feral leader played by Pollyanna McIntosh and the possible origin of the blind "dog-girl". Having never read any of Jack Ketchum's novels, I didn't even know that "The Woman" was a sequel to anything when I saw it. I'm awaiting an answer from Jack Ketchum (via Twitter) concerning the dog-girl which hopefully might clear things up further.

As for "Offspring" itself, there were a few flaws which some people have made too much of concerning the editing and/or pacing but I really didn't notice much wrong. Maybe I get a bit soft on the technical stuff when I'm actually interested in a story but that's actually a huge credit to the writer (Jack Ketchum) and the director (Andrew van den Houten) since, as I often quote from Aristotle, "Art is best when hidden". If I didn't notice it, then it was clearly okay.

Since I'm English, I didn't notice any of the geographical mistakes either but I'm sure there were some. It's still quite jarring for me when I remember David waking up in a hospital 200 miles away from the Yorkshire moors in "An American Werewolf in London" (1981) so it must be much the same for Americans who notice similar things. Having been all over the eastern side of America, it still all looks much the same to me but I've never been to Michigan where this was filmed nor do I even have a clue where it actually is.

I've got to say something about the acting though as it wasn't fantastic. It was borderline adequate and varied. Since I have absolutely no idea who any of them were without looking up their IMDb profiles, I'm assuming that they were mostly TV actors and not very famous ones at that. I didn't hate any of their performances but nobody really stood out apart from Pollyanna McIntosh.

Anyway, hopefully I haven't given away any spoilers as "Offspring" is probably one of the few horror movies on Netflix which I would actually recommend. It's slightly below average in some ways but still great entertainment for a rainy afternoon.

The Woman (2011)

"When a successful country lawyer captures and attempts to civilize the last remaining member of a violent clan that has roamed the Northeast coast for decades, he puts the lives of his family in jeopardy."

I really don't know where to begin with reviewing "The Woman" because, although it's quite unlike anything that I've seen before, it's still somewhat derivative of a lot of other dysfunctional family stories in places.

With anything written by Jack Ketchum, you know it's going to be a little bit "out there" and, by having Lucky McKee direct it, it's likely to be even more so. Paradoxically, everything is extremely very well reigned in here and doesn't ever become bizarrely unrealistic or comical. I find that to be a very welcome and refreshing change.

Now as much as I want to say that "The Woman" is unique, it isn't. If you've ever seen "The X-Files" season one episode called "Jersey Devil" then the idea of a feral human being won't be much of a surprise to you. It was even done more recently in "Shiver", a Spanish film from 2008.

Demented, dysfunctional families aren't all that new either. You only have to look up "Spider Baby" (1968) to see how that all began. But, as I've said, "The Woman" is no comedy or, at least, not a comedy that I can categorise as one. It's amusing in places but there really aren't any major chuckles to be had out of it unless you are as sick and twisted as I am.

Combining the two elements by having a dysfunctional family kidnap a feral woman, and then to have their characters being further revealed by their interactions with their captive, is an ambitious idea which actually works fairly well. Of course there are flaws and quite a few moments which are too reminiscent of Dario Argento's "Jenifer" (from the "Masters of Horror" series) for comfort.

One thing which I'm puzzled over is whether or not "The Woman" is a kind of feminist movie or a totally misogynistic one. I wondered the same thing about Lars Von Trier's "Antichrist" (2009) although I gave up ever trying to analyse that director's mind a long time ago.

If I had to pick a side, I'd say "The Woman" is very feminist yet it shows misogyny in all its ugliness. I'll leave all the stuff about whether the message of the film is that women can only survive against men by reverting to their animal natures to people who actually give a damn plus I don't want to give away any spoilers.

For me, the nudity, torture and gore are far more important when rating a horror movie plus the effect that the characters have on me. "The Woman" isn't the most brutal movie that I've ever seen but the effects are certainly worthwhile and the acting is pretty decent too.

Angela Bettis stands out (as she always does when directed by Lucky McKee) but Sean Bridgers isn't too shabby either. Think of "The Stepfather" (1987) but take it up several notches and you have Chris Cleek. Although none of the characters are very much more than caricatures, it's how the full extent of their relationship is slowly revealed that makes the drama so engrossing.

The star of the whole thing though is, of course, Pollyanna McIntosh as the nameless feral woman. She may not look as pretty here as she did in "Exam" (2009) but she certainly knows how to pull off a purely animal look. Getting to see her completely nude is a bonus too.

Neither Pollyanna McIntosh or Angela Bettis are the best looking women in this film though. That honour belongs to Carlee Baker whose acting, unfortunately, is so bad that she can't even pronounce her own character's name properly. You never know with Lucky McKee so the bad acting and mispronunciation may well be intentional.

If you've already seen "The Girl Next Door" (2007), "The Lost" (2006) or "Offspring" (2009), Jack Ketchum's style will be quite familiar. Although I don't think that "The Woman" is nearly as controversial as any of those, it still continues the same style of dealing with taboo subjects in a more horrific format than some people will be used to.

You can read as much or as little into "The Woman" as you like but it won't change the fact that it's an immensely satisfying experience.