"The Woman in Black" (2012)

I find it interesting that Daniel Radcliffe, an "actor" of such international fame, chose this movie to make his post-Potter debut. I put actor in quotes not because I don't think that Radcliffe has the ability or that he did a poor job in the movie, I just mean that I don't count Harry Potter as real acting since he got into the role at 12 and rode it for 8 years.

I think that "The Woman in Black" is a pretty good film and Radcliffe, who plays the main character Arthur Kipps, does a decent job as the lead. A friend that I saw it with commented that it was as if the films creators saw "Insidious" and "The Orphanage" and made this movie. I understand that it is based on a book, but I can't help agreeing with that assessment since my first thought was, this is the back story of the old woman in "Insidious".

I was actually impressed with the suspense the film was able to build at times and thought that the idea was solid, a wronged woman is seeking vengeance upon the town where her son was killed by killing children any time she is seen. The unique thing is that she doesn't kill the children herself or make someone else kill them, she makes the children kill themselves. The opening was good with the little girls jumping out of the window and I liked that there was the small glimpse of the woman's veil and the use of sound in this secen and throughout the movie was really good.

If this film did one thing well, it was the way the used sound. There was a lot of silence and a lot of small, creepy house noises. The one problem that I has was the use of loud jump-scares. If you are going to use silence and house sounds to build suspsense, I think it really weakens the film to continue to break this tension and suspense by having a sink loudly spit water or a crow fly out of the chimeny. By then end, I was cringing when things would get silent and still, not because I though something scary was going to happen, but because I was anticipating another loud, irrelevent "scare".  Also, it works well to have glimpses of her dress and veil sliding by in mirrors when Kipps is first in the house and unsure if he is actually seeing anything, but it gets old when the movie goes on and it has been shown that the woman is real and that Kipps is seeing her.

The main flaw with the film was its overuse of themes/images/motifs. The loud jump scares, the small glimpses of the woman's dress, the fact that we verball and visually establish that the woman is making these children kill themselves on more than one occasion. I just felt like they were not giving the viewer any benefit of the doubt in terms of being able to follow the plot which does not bode well for teh quality of what the people making the film are putting out.

Two good scenes with the woman in them were the small moment when she appeared in the window beside Kipps as he was looking out. It was startling and terrifying because, although he obviously "felt" something beside him, she was gone when he looked. Also, near then end when Kipps is enticing the woman to her sons room where his newly found body lays, I liked that as she was coming down the hall blowing out the candles, there was a brief glimpse of her face in the gloom and then she was suddenly in the corner. It worked very well.

The scene that I thought could have made this movie a lot better if it had been done differently was the scene when Kipps falls asleep and the woman starts to creep up behind him. The filmmakers chose to show this scene from the woman's point of view, something I think was a terrible decision. It would have been so much better to have watched her slowly, creepily approach before Kipps was woken up by the barking dog. After this scene, the tension and scariness of the movie was really kicked up a notch. I think this scene could have been a great spring board for the second half of the movie and made things even better.

Overall, decent movie with a good job by Radcliffe in his first post-Potter role. I am excited to see this at home, away from the annoying people in the theater and the over-loud jump scares.

"Children of the Corn" (1984)

Movies from the '80s that spawned a terrible amount of sequels are not uncommon, but looking at franchises like Halloween and Friday the 13th, the first often merits viewing and praise. My hope was that the same would be true of Children of the Corn, a series that has a sequel with the subtitle "Urban Harvest".

Overall, I liked the movie, although it was frsutratingly stereotypical for a horror movie. I don't know how stereotypical it was at the time it came out, but the late '70s and early '80s produced a glut of horror movies with similar themes and motifs.

I enjoyed the beginning a lot. The violence was unexpected and intense and very '80s in the way that all the viewer saw was the movement of a blade across a throat or in a slashing or stabbing motion without any actual violence and only a faint trace of blood left. I loved how there was just a glance exchanged between Issac and Malachai and suddenly all of the kids had weapons and were killing all of the adults.

In many ways, the idea of a small town in which the children follow a crazy religious-zealot-kid in killing all of the adults is intriguing. Could it really work? Could a town be small enough that no one would notice or acknowledge the abscense of the adults? They had control of the gas station attendant and had made the town extremely hard to find by putting up contradictory road signs and growing the expansive fields of corn, so I think that it would be possible to hide this small town in the middle of nowhere. The presence of the "blue man" was problematic for me. His finding the town and trying to intervene there is realistic and helps so that the town is not wholly undiscovered, but the fact that they kids killed him and that brought no other police presence is a little too unrealistic.

My least favorite part of the movie was the douchey male lead. He smoked the kid with the car, found the suitcase with the blood still fresh and was insistant upon going to Gatlin when there is another, much more populated town only 20 or so miles away. Once the corn maze kept leading me away from the town and eventually back to where I started, I would have moved on, but especially once I got through the deserted town unscathed. He just had to stop at that last house and fuck it up for him and the girlfriend.

I liked the two kids who weren't a part of the cult. It was cool that the little girl could draw the future and I liked that they were resisting Issac by playing Monopoly and listening to music.

Also, it was cool to see that "He Who Walked Behind the Rows" was real. I am still not sure exactly what "He" was, but I liked the ground moving like something was currowing underneath it and I loved that the corn both moved to show the douche the way and also tried to smother him and take him into the cornfield. Also, the craziness with the sky was cool, even with the '80s-tastic special effects. Also, I liked that after Issac was rocketed into the air as a sacrifice, he came back and killed Malachai, who deserved it.

I was glad to see the kids and the couple escape to safety, something that I feel is rare in most horror movies. Especially since the girl attacked him at the end, which I thought was going to surprise kill him for sure. I loved that the girlfriend slammed the acr door into her head and they all just walked away as "The End" appeared on the screen.

Good to have this one under my belt. Looking forward to potentially check out some of the sequels.

"Diary of the Dead" (2007)

Zombies seem to be everywhere in the past 5 or 6 years in movies and with the emergence of the Walking Dead comics and T.V. show, they have really taken off. In horror, the "found footage"/ first person camera genre has also really become prominent. "Diary of the Dead" is a combination of these two horror elements.

Basic premise is that there is a group of film students shooting a horror movie when the zombie epidemic hits. They all hop in an RV and head for their homes which are scattered throughout Pennsylvania. The "director" of the movie keeps his camera with them and on at all times and is hell bent on filming everything so they can "show people the truth". This is all taking place with the frame narrative that the girlfriend of the director is editing the "movie" they shot and we are watching that movie, which is called The Death of Death.

As I am writing this, I feel like it sounds a little stupid, but I don't know how else to describe the movie except to say that it felt like a movie. Obviously, it is a movie and the fact that they are shooting a movie comolicates that, but none of it felt authentic. The characters were extremely over-acted, especially the douche and the girl from Texas. I understand having the stereotypical, archetype characters, but these were just poorly done. I can also understand the stress of something as huge as the Zombie apocalypse driving a film student to cling to the one thing he is comfortable with, that is still tangible for him, but Jason, the film guy, isn't frantic or fanatic, he is just annoying. His girlfriend begins to challenge him "if it didn't happen on camera, then it's like it didn't happen". This seems like a premise that the movie ascribes to, but they have some stretches to make it happen, like the warehouse they go to having secutiry cameras that are hooked up to some high-tech wifi so that they can immediately rip the video of their RV enetering the warehouse for the movie.

The only moment where I really believed Jason and his fanaticism was his death scene. Their friend has been turned and he is attacking Jason. Jason is on the ground and he has been bitten, but rather than trying to get away or killing his zombie friend, he is crawling to try to retrieve the camera he has dropped so he can record his own death. That is the level of breakdown that they seem to be saying he has had throughout the movie, how much he is relying on the filming, but this is the only moment where I really believed it.

I had two favorite scenes which are both tied to my favorite kills, in my opinion a must for a zombie movie review. The first of these scenes is when they are at Debra, Jason's girlfriend's, house. Her family is supposed to be there, but no one sees them upon arrival. They are searching the house and find the family car in the garage, but still no people. Upon re-entering the house, Debra's zombiefied little brother jumps on her back and attacks her. She doesn't get bitten and the professor with them shoots the brother in the head with an arrow, pinning him to the wall, which was a pretty awesome kill.

My second favorite scene contained my two favorite kills and probably my favorite character, Samuel the deaf Amish guy. The first kill was with the dynamite. It was so unexpected for him to run into his barn and come out with a lit stick of dynamite to throw at the zombies who were promptly blown to pieces. Later in the scene, after helping out the group, Samuel is attacked. He has a scythe and, after being bitten from behind, he puts the scythe through his head and the head of the zombie behind him. It was a great kill and really the only self-less/brave/smart thing that anyone did throughout the entire movie.

Honestly, I was a little disappointed in this movie, but it had some good moments. If you like zombie movies and have an hour and a half to kill, check this one out.

"Don't Be Afraid of the Dark" (1973)

After a crazy semester and an even crazier Christmas season, things in my life have settled down enough that I am going to give Bleak House another shot. I guess it is a New Year's Resolution of sorts. So, to start things off, I have a post about two movies. The 2010 Guillermo del Toro and the 1973 versions of Don't Be Afraid of the Dark.

Unfortunately, like in all other movie genres, remakes and adaptations are prevalent in the horror genre and Guillermo del Toro's remake of Don't Be Afraid  is evidence of this. So, after seeing the Guillermo version a I got the original version for Christmas watched it within the last few days.

Although this will be more of a comparison between the two films, I haven't seen Guillermo's versions since it opened in theaters so I am a little fuzzy on some of the more particular details, but I think the comparison will still do well. To start with the remake, I liked it. Once you got past the crappy advertising (most of the tags called it "Guillermo del Toro's scariest film yet/ever", which it wasn't), it was a cool, fun, movie that I would categorize more as an adult fairy tale like Pan's Labyrinth. The creatures are pretty wicked, the voices and their appearance are pretty great, but nothing less is expected when Guillermo is behind the movie. I was surprised with how early, often and fully they showed the creatures, but I liked that they weren't something kept solely in the dark until some final reveal. In the original, there is the same concept of the creepy house that these creatures live in, trapped in a fireplace in a barricaded room. In the original, Sally is an adult woman and she and her husband move into the house that her grandmother has left them. In del Toro's version, Sally is a little girl, a change that I understand. At times in the original, it was frustrating to see the lack of belief that Sally's husband and friends had for her, a grown woman who had never shown any signs of psychosis. When Sally is a 8-9 year old, it is almost expected that the adults in her life aren't going to believe her when she says she is seeing little creatures throughout the house.

Although I loved the creatures in del Toro's version, and I think the edition of the Emerson Blackwood back story allowed for the arts department to really show off their work with the creatures, there was something about the fact that these creatures were entirely CGI that made me like them less than the ones in the original. Part of what makes Guillermo's creatures his, what makes them so great is the fact that a lot of it is actual make-up with actors, particularly Doug Jones, playing the creature. In the original, three "little people" played the creatures. The were much more human looking which played a part in making them scary and the fact that they built replica sets to make them look the tiny size that they are supposed to be was surprising to me and made things seem more real.

Now, to the ending. Sally and Sally have mirrored each other throughout the film, but there were some elements that Katie Holmes' character played in Guillermo's version that adult Sally shared with her. Most of these involved adult Sally's interaction with her husband, but in the end, they share the same role as the woman who is pulled down by the creatures. I liked the Guillermo ending for its violence (I defy anyone to say that the leg break didn't make them cringe), but also because it showed her getting pulled in. In the original, Sally screams but the audience does not see her go down at all. Her husband looks into the fireplace but sees nothing and the movie ends there.

The one element of Guillermo's that I really didn't like was Katie Holmes becoming "one" of the creatures and talking with them about waiting for someone new to come. I just didn't like the idea of her actually becoming one of them, but it is in the original with Sally talking with the creatures, so I understand why he did it.

Overall, there are elements of both movies that I love. If you can get over the early '70s make up and technology of the creatures and some spotty dialogue, the original is a good film and if you like Guillermo or a good creature movie then the remake will be right up your alley.