Ghosts – Page 8

Barricade (2012)

In which the hunky star of Will & Grace (Eric McCormack) gets the opportunity to go all Jack Torrance while snowed in at a remote cabin with his two nervous children. However, instead of chasing his kids around with an axe, he attempts to prove his mettle by protecting them against ghosts—and a really nasty case of the flu.

Terrance Shade (McCormack) is a recently widowed MD who’s never really bonded with daughter Cynthia (Conner Dwelly) and son Jake (Ryan Grantham). After his wife’s unexpected demise, he decides to take his estranged offspring to an isolated mountain cabin for Christmas. On the Bad Idea scale, this rates near the tippy top, because, as the kids remind Pops again and again, he’s not handy, hardy, or even barely competent at wilderness survival. The whole Shade clan comes down with a bug courtesy of the town sheriff/shopkeeper/landlord (Donnelly Rhodes), and Terrance begins to see and hear things that cause him to come unhinged in a big way.

The crux of Barricade becomes readily apparent all too soon: Is Terrance hallucinating or is there an actual evil spirit loose in the house that’s causing them no end of misery? Why does Terrance keep flipping in and out of consciousness? Are the family members being haunted by their own sense of loss and guilt over the death of the wife/mother?

It’s not really much of a mystery, but director Andrew Currie and writer Michaelbrent Collings make sure that the atmosphere is suitably tense and claustrophobic throughout, and McCormack delivers a first-rate performance as the hapless patriarch trying his best to keep his children out of harm’s way. A very watchable little fright flick.

The Task (2011)

Filmed in Bulgaria masquerading as upstate New York, this faux reality-show-set-in-a-haunted-prison feature is severely lacking in just about every department.

From a generic, no-name cast to a predictable fake-out finale, The Task is a starvation diet of style and tension. And with precious little blood and guts—and no nudity—to distract our attention, the overall cheapness and absence of fresh ideas dooms the production from the get-go.

An assortment of reality show hopefuls are kidnapped and taken to an abandoned prison with a sinister reputation. Formerly under the rule of a sadistic warden who tortured and starved his inmates, the rambling edifice is rumored to be haunted, and the unlucky contestants must spend the night, completing a variety of unsavory tasks, in order to win $20,000.

Though the prison is wired with cameras, props, and spooky audio effects, the presence of a legit ghost throws a wrench into the works.

The Task is a total dud, no matter how you slice it. We’re never given a reason to care about any of the characters—and we don’t. If they were faced with an awesome battery of mind-bending horror and derangement, the blandness of the characters wouldn’t have made any difference.

As it stands, the stakes are never enough to draw anyone into the low-voltage narrative of The Task. As my former editor would say, when presented with uninspired copy, “It’s awfully so-whatty.”

The Eye (2008)

Though it pales in comparison to the Pang Brothers’ original from 2002, the American remake of The Eye with Jessica Alba is better than I thought it would be.

I’d even declare it passable entertainment.

But be warned, it’s another one of those movies that depicts ghosts as peripheral static; a blurry strobe image that flickers in and out of the material plane in annoyingly herky jerky fashion.

Who decided that this is the way that ghosts manifest themselves? It’s become another tiresome horror movie cliche and it’s really starting to annoy the shit out of me.

The lovely Sydney Wells (the lovely Ms. Alba) is a blind concert violinist who regains her sight after a cornea transplant. Sadly, her field of vision now includes the spiritual world, so she spies recently deceased dudes all over the place; trapped fearful souls that are having trouble moving on to the Happy Haunting Grounds.

With the help of a handsome eye specialist with the world’s worst bedside manner (Allesandro Nivelo), she figures out her new peepers came from a young Mexican woman with the power to see into the future.

And now Sydney, like Johnny Smith in The Dead Zone, is seeing impending disasters at every turn.

Some scenes are lifted practically verbatim from the original, like the pants-wettingly scary elevator sequence, but the frights are diluted here since we know Sydney will never succumb to the malign forces around her.

1. She’s Jessica Alba, the star of the movie.

2. Her character is practically a saint.

The ghosts simply don’t pack the eerie punch that characterized the earlier film.

My biggest complaint with The Eye co-directors David Moreau and Xavier Palud is their insistence on casting the always watchable Parker Posey as Sydney’s concerned sister Helen, a totally nothing part.

Helen isn’t funny, smart, or interesting. Why would you want an actress of Posey’s caliber to play such a one-dimensional character?

Smarten up, you guys.

The Attic (2007)

I haven’t really watched Mad Men, so actress Elisabeth Moss is kind of a revelation to me. If you haven’t seen her in the miniseries Top of the Lake, directed by Jane Campion, I suggest you do so, because it’s totally brilliant, and so is she.

In The Attic, a younger Moss portrays Emma, the increasingly delusional protagonist in a rural-goth take on Polanski’s Repulsion. Wait, did I say delusional? Perhaps she’s just a curious insect that’s wandered into the wrong fly trap.

Emma lives in a house near the woods. Her father (John Savage) and mother (Catherine Mary Stewart; who could ever forget the classic Night of the Comet?) are hopeful that she’ll finally want to go to college, but Emma prefers traipsing around the house in her nightie or exploring the creepy attic with her developmentally disabled brother Frankie (Tom Malloy, who also wrote the script).

A psychiatrist (Thomas Jay Ryan) is called in by the parents, but Emma proves to be a patient with more layers than a blooming onion.

Moss is riveting as Emma, an unmoored girl in the wrong place at the wrong time. Is she going insane? Has she been possessed by a malevolent house spirit? Are Mom and Dad conspiring against her?

Like Rover with a new soup bone, you’ll be chewing on the possibilities for a while. That said, The Attic is by no means perfect: Director Mary Lambert (Pet Semetary, lots of Madonna videos) definitely built this one to be a slow burner—rich in atmospheric dread but with the action (and bloodletting) more strategically rationed.

Twixt (2011)

Distinguished filmmaker (and winemaker) Francis Ford Coppola returns to his horror roots!

As we all know, one of his first films was the 1963 gothic thriller Dementia 13 for Roger Corman’s American International Pictures.

And like his earlier film, Twixt is an eerie, dreamlike story with revolving color/black and white scenery, and a narrative that shifts gears between reality, dream world, and the mind of a desperate writer trying to get in touch with his long-lost muse.

Hall Baltimore (Val Kilmer), described by one fan as “a bargain-basement Stephen King,” is out on an aimless book tour for his latest hack-job horror novel.

He rolls into Swann Valley, a sleepy little California community, and is immediately pounced upon by wannabe writer and town sheriff Bobby LaGrange (Bruce Dern), who wants to collaborate on a new book. “The whole town is haunted!” he tells the writer with glee.

Baltimore is an alcoholic, an indifferent husband, and a grieving father who’s clearly at the end of his rope, so he agrees to let the loony lawman show him the town.

And soon a new story is born, featuring a corpse with a stake through its heart, the ghost of Edgar Allen Poe, a dangerously pale girl with braces, a haunted hotel, and a clock tower that’s inhabited by “the devil himself.”

Obviously, Twixt is not on a par (or scale) with Coppola masterworks like The Godfather or Apocalypse Now. Plot points come and go, some resolved, some disappearing like lint in a stiff breeze.

But it’s a consistently intriguing little flick that’s both a horror whodunit and a tale about a tapped-out artist who needs to reconnect with his talent in order to survive.

For rabid cinephiles, the movie includes appearances by the likes of David Paymer, Joanne Whalley (Kilmer’s wife), Don Novello (a.k.a. Father Guido Sarducci!) and Elle Fanning, not to mention an introduction read by Tom Waits.

Ultimately, though, it’s Coppola who makes all the right moves, perhaps signaling a return to more creative endeavors than stomping on grapes.

The Conjuring (2013)

The most recent production from Saw-teur James Wan reaped over $130 million at the box office—and with good reason.

The Conjuring is a ripping ghost yarn that is subtle and suggestive in its creepiness and, when necessary, opens the taps into a full-tilt Good vs Evil battle royal (in the Judeo-Christian tradition) culminating in a no-holds-barred exorcism showdown.

It also re-introduces fright fans to Ed and Lorraine Warren, a formidable tag-team of real-life ghost-busters, played here by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga.

This particular haunted house party takes place in 1971, in the 19th century Rhode Island home of Roger and Carolyn Perron (Ron Livingstone and Lili Taylor).

The Perrons and their five daughters get tossed around by sinister forces, necessitating the intervention of the Warrens, who set up cameras, tape recorders, and other vintage ghost-hunting paraphernalia.

Lorraine deduces that the central spook is a witch that tried to sacrifice her baby to Satan before hanging herself some 150 years prior, and whose modus operandi is to possess the mother and compel her to kill her child. In this case, Carolyn Perron has five to choose from!

The Conjuring doesn’t break new ground, but it serves up all your favorite ghost tropes piping hot, with top-notch special effects, a great cast, and expert escalation of terror. Here, the haunting is like a vicious tar baby, ensnaring any poor fool that comes along.

Even the Warrens, who are professionals and should know better, get swept up in a Satanic tsunami that poses a direct threat to their own daughter, who the couple left at home in the care of Grandma.

Speaking of which, the Warrens’ story is worth investigating. They’re the founders of the New England Society for Psychic Research, and claim to have been involved in “10,000” haunting adventures.

Old Sharky says check ’em out!

The Uninvited (2009)

Based on the 2003 Korean ghost story A Tale of Two Sisters, The Uninvited is a taut, effective spook show that’s told with admirable restraint and subtle finesse, with an ending that will likely pull the rug out from under you. Yes, you’ll be able to figure out some of the plot twists, but probably not all of them.

Traumatized teen Anna (Emily Browning, who’s excellent) is released from a mental hospital almost a year after the night her bedridden mother died in a fire at the boat house of her family’s ocean-view estate. Upon her return, her older sister Alex (Arielle Kebbel) fills her in on current events, namely, that their writer father Steven (David Strathairn) is knocking boots with Mom’s former caregiver Rachel (Elizabeth Banks). The sisters suspect Rachel had a hand in their mother’s fiery demise, and set about proving it, before the wicked nurse can become their wicked stepmother.

There’s nothing revolutionary going on in The Uninvited; it’s an Asian-flavored family fright-fest that never bogs down. The ghosts are suitably frightening, the actors tackle their roles with bravado, and in the end we’re left to piece together a tragic story that’s considerably more than meets the eye. It’s old-school scary and a good choice for a mixed audience of genre diehards and those who under most circumstances don’t dig the whole “horror thing.”

Munger Road (2011)

Let’s give credit where credit is due. Writer-director Nicholas Smith has quite a pair of balls. Anyone who has the nerve to invite me back for “Part 2” after boring the shit out of me for 87 tension-free minutes, is not lacking in confidence. Does he even know what a horror movie is? Surely no one with any understanding of the genre would so blatantly string us along without anything resembling action or plot development, only to ring down the curtain with “To Be Continued.” Let me guess: somebody’s check bounced.

Smith seems to be under the impression that having film veteran Bruce Davidson (Willard, Dead Man’s Curve, X-Men) stumbling around several poorly lit locations in suburban Illinois in search of an escaped killer and some missing dull teenagers is sufficient to entice the viewer to return for the second chapter of this magnum dopus. How dare you, sir! Munger Road is the facade of a movie that never happens; a shell, a sham, a shame.

7 Below (2012)

A lukewarm, paint-by-numbers haunted house entry mainly notable for the presence of Ving Rhames and a doughy Val Kilmer. Rhames tries his best, but 7 Below never really heats up.

After a bus accident and the threat of bad weather, seven uninteresting people take refuge with the mysterious Jack (Rhames) in a house where 100 years ago an evil little boy sliced and diced his kinfolk.

It’s slow, contains little gore and no nudity, and by the time the final scene washes up on the beach, just barely alive, you’ll probably have switched it over to ESPN.

I watched so you don’t have to. You’re welcome.

Beast Beneath (2011)

Another case of the cover art being scarier than the film.

If you’re in the mood for a low-budget, slow-paced monster matinee, I guess you could do worse than Beast Beneath. But you’d have to try pretty goddamn hard.

Seated beside a campfire, a father tells his bored teenage son the true (?) story of Griffith Park (their present location) in Los Angeles. Seems the family that once owned this prime piece of real estate was cheated out of it by a trio of unscrupulous douches.

The offenders and the land itself are cursed, and now the ghost of the family patriarch and his demonic dog haunt the premises. Sounds good on paper, but Beast Beneath never transcends the restraints imposed by its humble budget, and instead of inspired amateurism, we merely get amateurism.

Of note to followers of “Where Are They Now?” trivia. Jimmy Buffet-esque one-hit singer Bertie Higgins (“Key Largo,” 1982) cowrote and stars in Beast Beneath. His son Julian is the director. Hope they didn’t sink their own money into this project.