Survival – Page 22

Don’t Blink (2014)

If I ever needed a lesson in cinematic contrast, a whiplash-inducing transition from sublime to sucky, it could be had in seeing this Nothing Burger after my epiphany experience with The Babadook. “Nothing” is our word for the day, as in, “There is NOTHING happening in Don’t Blink and it has NOTHING to recommend it.”

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Ten reasonably attractive friends arrive for a Rocky Mountain winter holiday at a tacky, pressed board condo that looks like it was built from a kit an hour before filming started. There is no one around to meet them. The loser lodge is a veritable Marie Celeste, with meals left half-eaten on the table. And they can’t leave because all three cars are almost out of gas.

One by one, the vacationers start to vanish. Once that happens, you can choose your own adventure, and it will undoubtedly be a big improvement to the dramatic course charted by writer/director Travis Oates.

Don’t Blink stinks. It stars Brian Austin Green and Mena Suvari and is easily one of the most half-baked, pointless exercises I’ve seen this century.

The Babadook (2014)

Not to put too fine a point on it, but The Badadook is one of the most emotionally devastating horror movies I’ve ever seen.

It’s quite a brilliant film that manages to be both a dark, heroic fairy tale and a grimmer-than-grim slice-of-life family drama about an overworked mother who tries, but can’t cope with her eccentric son’s disturbing behavior anymore.

It’s also about a terrified young boy who’s mother might be going insane.

Amelia (Essie Davis, who shines like a young Jessica Lange) is the harried widowed mother of Samuel (Noah Wiseman), a clever but damaged young boy who doesn’t fit in at school or with friends. Amelia’s husband died in a car accident on the way to the hospital the night she gave birth, so she too has a dark cloud of unresolved issues that follows her around like a nervous dog.

Mother and son clearly love each other, but their life is difficult, to say the least. One night, during the evening bedtime story, Samuel selects the wrong book and an evil spirit is loosed in the house.

As if they didn’t have enough trouble…

The combination of Amelia’s waking, working nightmare of a life, and the additional strain placed on her by the malign presence that’s settled in her home creates an unrelenting pressure cooker that would crumble a commando.

The Babadook is without gore and very little violence, yet it’s brutally draining, recalling both Polanski’s Repulsion and William Friedkin’s The Exorcist for its merciless plunge into the sea of madness.

Australian writer-director Jennifer Kent presents us with a tale that cuts uncomfortably close to the bone, because she had the nerve to invent two characters who are believable, likable, sympathetic—and profoundly haunted.

True, in the past, I’ve griped about movies that waste time on character development when all we really want is mayhem. The Babadook is exactly the opposite. It’s a realistic character-driven story in which we hope that misfortune can be averted because we’ve grown emotionally attached to the protagonists.

The bottom line, that bad things happen to good people, is more horrifying than a thousand dead campers.

Grizzly (1976)

The trouble with being a middle-aged horror fan is never being able to quite remember where you heard something about a certain movie. I knew at one time, but now… that bit of data is gone forever, swallowed up by a sinkhole full of quicksand in my head that’s growing larger every day. (I would estimate it to be roughly the size of Rhode Island, at the moment.)

Anyway, I’d like to have a word with whomever advised me that Grizzly was “Jaws with a bear,” and “a classic gore-fest.” Sure, there’s blood and a respectable body count, but nothing that compares with Ben Gardner’s head floating out of a hole in the hull of his boat. Plus, Jaws had Spielberg, Richard Dreyfuss, Roy Schieder, and Robert Shaw. Grizzly has to make do with director William Girdler and a cast of ham-and-eggers.

So there’s a grizzly bear running amok in a Georgia state park and it’s up to a chain-smoking park ranger (Christopher George), a goofy naturalist who dresses in animal furs (Richard Jaeckel), and a cynical ‘Nam vet helicopter pilot (Andrew Prine) to stop the beast. l

This arduous task takes up the entire running time of the movie, which is stone-cold boring except for periodic bear maulings, and frankly, they’re no great shakes in the blood and guts department.

Despite the fact that I found Grizzly on Hulu Plus under the designation “Classics”, I would hesitate to put it into any special category other than “Ho-Hum & Hokey.”

A much better film of this type is John Frankenheimer’s Prophecy, about a pollution-spawned mutant grizzly on the rampage. Go find that one, instead.

See No Evil 2

In which righteously indestructible maniac Jacob Goodnight (wrestler Glenn “Kane” Jacobs) rises from the ~~grave~~ morgue to massacre another troop of ~~teens~~ late twenty somethings who can’t keep it in their pants.

As you may recall from the first See No Evil, Goodnight continually feels the shame of his lustful adolescent urges, and painful memories of the puritanical punishment dished out by his psychotic mother have become his default setting.

Hail the avenging prude!

As directed by the Twisted Twins, Jen and Sylvia Soska, who brilliantly helmed American Mary, See No Evil 2 is a perfectly acceptable hack and stack with an exemplary cast.

The incomparable Katherine Isabelle (American Mary, Ginger Snaps) is certainly one of the most compelling actresses in the horror genre, and she brings oodles of panache to the part of Tamara, a charmingly depraved ~~vixen~~ victim of the rampaging Goodnight.

Dependable Final Girl Danielle Harris (The Hatchet trilogy) also acquits herself nicely as morgue assistant Amy, the secret object of affection of fellow cadaver cutter Seth (Kaj-Erik Eriksen).

Not that being somewhat virtuous will save anybody here from a seven foot tall, one-eyed gorilla armed with all sorts of nasty looking sharp things.

If I had to gripe about anything, it would have to be a shortage of stylistically memorable mayhem. After all, the Soska Twins are responsible for the dazzling American Mary, one of the most original and provocative horror movies of the last few years.

See No Evil 2 seems a bit perfunctory in comparison, but given the nature of indie cinema these days, filmmakers with artistic inclinations are often tasked with creating conventional fare, in order to earn a payday that will result in something more profound and personal.

I believe that to be the case here.

Willow Creek (2013)

Comedian-turned-director Bobcat Goldthwaite has proven himself to be a thoughtfully provocative filmmaker; first with the Robin Williams tragi-com World’s Greatest Dad, followed by the let’s-shoot-all-the-douchebags black comedy God Bless America.

So what does Bobcat bring to the table with Willow Creek, his found-footage fright flick about a yuppie couple in search of Bigfoot? A legitimately scary movie with a harsh message for dilettante daytrippers, and that also happens to mirror the narrative structure of The Blair Witch Project.

Jim (Bryce Johnson, a poor man’s Matthew Modine) is a Sasquatch enthusiast who’s keen on visiting the Willow Creek wilderness where the famous Bigfoot footage was shot by Roger Patterson in 1967. Jim’s girlfriend Kelly (Alexie Gilmore) is along to keep him company.

After interviewing some folks about the legendary creature, the curious couple is strongly advised to abandon the project by two different locals. As it turns out, this was excellent advice that should have been taken to heart.

The whole trip is treated as quite a merry lark until the 42-minute mark when Jim and Kelly find that their campsite has been ransacked. It is at that point that Kelly sensibly says, “I want to go home.” This is followed by a long and harrowing night sequence with the frightened couple trapped in their tent as something roars and stomps around right outside.

The protagonists in Willow Creek, while basically decent and likable, are in no way up to the task at hand, namely, confronting the unknown. Most of the blame goes to Jim, an irresponsible man-child who carelessly follows his whims without a second thought. Kelly, while more of a pragmatist, is too self-absorbed to recognize what a dangerous situation they’ve stumbled into. They’re nice enough, but they reek of frivolous bourgeois entitlement.

Ultimately, their flimsy relationship falls apart in the face of a challenge that they were stunningly unprepared for. To be fair, though, being menaced by a howling legend in the Forest Primeval would test the mettle of even the most devoted couple.

Shrooms (2007)

If you can get past the movie’s ludicrous premise, Shrooms is actually a fairly tight little thriller about another camping trip gone to hell. But that premise is a real whopper. Allow me to vent for a moment.

WHY THE HELL WOULD A GROUP OF FRIENDS WANT TO TRAVEL ALL THE WAY TO IRELAND—where five out of the six have never been—TO PICK MUSHROOMS AND TRIP BALLS? EVEN BETTER, THEIR GUIDE TAKES THEM TO A BLIGHTED WILDERNESS THAT’S INHABITED BY TRAUMATIZED FORMER INHABITANTS OF A HOME FOR WAYWARD YOUTH THAT WAS RUN BY A CRACKPOT RELIGIOUS SECT THAT TORTURED AND ABUSED ITS INMATES? AND NOW, IT’S RUMORED TO BE HAUNTED BY THE GHOST OF A SADISTIC MONK AND THE LITTLE SACK-HEADED FERAL CHILD WHO TRIED TO KILL HIM. WHY, THAT’S PERFECT! THAT’S EXACTLY WHERE I WOULD WANT TO CHOW DOWN ON HALLUCINOGENS, ALONG WITH MY BEST BUDDIES THAT I DON’T REALLY LIKE AND WHO DON’T LIKE EACH OTHER. SHEESH! WASN’T THE HAUNTED ABATTOIR AVAILABLE? OR A REALLY VENGEFUL AMERICAN-INDIAN BURIAL GROUND?

To their credit, director Paddy Breathnach and writer Pearse Elliott deliver enough shocks and shivers to keep us on full alert. But this trip was doomed from the get-go and this little troop of backpackers never stood a chance.

The Battery (2012)

I suppose The Battery qualifies as a zombie movie—but just barely.

Until the finale, you can count the number of undead appearances on one hand. First and foremost, it’s a post-apocalyptic road movie that owes more to Samuel Beckett than it does George Romero.

Gorehounds with ADD are going to hate this film because it’s slower than a senior citizen square dance and probably a lot less bloody. It’s also an extremely frugal production. Seriously, the budget was probably less than what I have in my checking account.

I am currently unemployed—thanks for asking!

Even with so many things stacked against it, I have to give an admiring thumbs-up to The Battery and to writer, director, and star Jeremy Gardner, who bravely ran with the idea of having very little money at his disposal, and used that freedom to create something unique: a bleak, absurdist buddy movie about two minor-league baseball players dodging the dead on the backroads of Connecticut.

After months on the road, our two main characters have become a study in contrasts. Ben (Gardner), the team’s catcher, is a bearded outdoorsman, a brawny survivor-type who does most of the heavy lifting (hunting, fishing, zombie-killing) in the relationship.

Mickey (Adam Cronheim), a relief pitcher, is a sullen romantic who spends most of his time lost in thought with a pair of headphones fixed over his ears. Despite the presence of the jovial and optimistic Ben, Mickey is depressed and desperately misses his old life.

One fine day, the pair pick up a stray communication on their walkie-talkies, leading them to believe there is a fortified community in the area. Ben, who is content with camping and living outside, wants to steer clear. Mickey wants a home. A bed. A roof over his head. And maybe a girl.

This is the doomed conflict at the heart of The Battery—the terrible necessity of freedom, as personified by Ben, who refuses to be trapped in any situation, and Mickey’s need for comfort and security.

In the end, freedom trumps comfort, as one might expect given the dire circumstances. But Gardner’s languid, lengthy scenes of Ben and Mickey brushing their teeth, playing catch, listening to music and generally farting around, imply that it takes two souls to make a life worth fighting for.

Positive and negative, yin and yang, pitcher and catcher.

Fun Fact: “The Battery” refers to the pitcher and catcher in ye olde baseball vernacular.

All the Boys Love Mandy Lane (2006)

On the surface, All the Boys Love Mandy Lane looks like a fairly typical stalk and stab adventure.

You know the drill: a passel of comely teens in a rural location begin to notice that attendance is dropping sharply. But director Jonathan Levine and writer Jacob Foreman make a number of astute moves that raise the quality level significantly.

Levine proves himself to be an able visual stylist; his lingering shots of young faces smiling in the sun give Mandy Lane an almost languid European sensibility—which enhances the impact of sudden violent interludes.

Characters are a bit more evolved (and less annoying) than the usual doomed-camper stereotypes, and the yearning desire that they feel for the dream girl in their midst is perfectly understandable.

Finally, the absence of supernatural elements makes the ensuing murder spree grimly realistic and even more disturbing.

The titular maiden (Amber Heard) is a seemingly unattainable innocent beauty that stokes the collective fire of her lusty classmates. When the subject of Mandy Lane comes up various boys call “first dibs” as if that will help their cause.

A clutch of her school chums finally prevail on Mandy to spend the weekend partying at a remote ranch owned by Red’s (Aaron Himelstein) family. The concept of summer fun is quickly quashed as a string of murders leads to a very ambiguous conclusion.

Some of the plot points are easy to figure out and some are not, but Levine uses the accelerator sparingly and lets the action play out in a naturalistic setting.

True, some viewers may experience a twinge of boredom here and there, but danger, in the form of a psycho in a hoodie, is never far away.

Recommended.

Black Rock (2012)

I must admit I had some misgivings during the credits of Black Rock when I saw that it was written by Mark Duplass (Jeff Who Lives at Home, The Mindy Project, Safety Not Guaranteed) and directed by his wife Katie Aselton (The League).

I happen to be a fan of all the above, but I was worried that a movie billed as an escape-and-survive thriller about three childhood friends camping on a secluded Maine island would evolve into some kind of lightly comic, ironic commentary on the genre.

As it turns out, I was in good hands all along.

Sure, a camping trip! Nothing bad ever happens on camping trips! Sarah (Kate Bosworth) is attempting to reconnect with her lifelong chums Abby (Aselton) and Lou (Lake Bell) by arranging a weekend of drinking and roughing it on Black Rock, a remote island that served as their idyllic childhood playground—which is an important plot point.

Lo and behold, the gals bump into a trio of poachers, one of whom (Will Bouvier) is a distant acquaintance from their youth. Not wishing to appear standoffish, Abby invites the hunters to share their campfire since they have “a shitload of booze.” A series of unfortunate events take place, and soon the ladies are fleeing for their lives.

Make no mistake, there are jarring scenes of naked brutality in Black Rock. But Aselton and Duplass avoid the well-trodden path to mere exploitation taken by so many in the “trespassing strangers” genre. The hunters here are not a bunch of degenerate hillbillies who want to take the women home and make ’em squeal like pigs.

The steps leading to one group in pursuit of the other are a combination of misunderstandings and bad luck, as was the case in Eden Lake, another contemporary thriller that got a rave review here.

Black Rock is fascinating, fraught with tension, and not lacking in white-knuckle moments. It also manages to be, um, uplifting thanks to the desperate heroism displayed by some very flawed characters whose survival depends on burying longstanding enmity and banding together in the face of a common enemy.

Axe Giant: The Wrath of Paul Bunyan (2013)

Will you think the less of me if I offer modest praise for Axe Giant?

Hell, I don’t care.

I’m obviously going soft in the head, but this movie never promises more than it can deliver. I am aware that the CGI effects are one notch below cable access and the acting ranges from incompetent to hilariously hammy.

Even so, director/cowriter Gary Jones has devised what amounts to an intriguingly twisted tall tale that’s awash in guts and gore.

Nutshell: Five snotty adolescent offenders are transported to the Middle of Nowhere Mountains (filmed on location in Ohio, Michigan and California) under the supervision of Sgt. Hoke (Tom Downey), a militaristic hard-ass who undoubtedly has a picture of R. Lee Ermey next to his bed.

Hoke’s mission, to kick their criminal butts toward responsibility, is interrupted by the arrival of the legendary Paul Bunyan, who has an ax to grind (see what I did there?) with whomever desecrated the final resting place of his best buddy, Babe the Blue Ox.

The cast gets whittled down to a paltry few, including Meeks (Joe Estevez, from the famous Estevez/Sheen clan) a mad mountain man with a soft spot in his heart for the rampaging giant. Given such a juicy part, Estevez chews the scenery like it’s his last meal.

The giant’s origin is explained by way of an 1894 backstory that stars ol’ Grizzly Adams himself, Dan Haggerty. I don’t mean to be unkind, but he has not aged well.

In this version of the tall tale, Bunyan turns out to be a massive man-child with a ridiculously long lifespan and a talent for felling trees. He also bears a slight resemblance to a Tolkien troll.

The sympathetic brute even inspires a catchy Seeger-esque (Pete, not Bob) ballad that accompanies the credits, sung by Hick’ry Hawkins!

You’ve got to admit, an effort was made.

It’s 90 minutes of jolly crapola, but Axe Giant is at least swiftly paced pandemonium, as the titular lumberjack keeps busy making bloody cordwood out of the supporting cast.

It’s got a few laughs and even a brief nude scene. Folks, you could do a lot worse.

I must point out one recurring trend that left me smh. The giant is apparently stealthy! Have you ever heard of such a thing? Bunyan constantly creeps up on his victims and somehow gets the jump on them.

You’d think the approach of a 20-foot dude might snap a few twigs, but these soon-to-be kindling campers are self-absorbed to the point of oblivion.

Perhaps since he spent his life in the woods, Bunyan learned to tread lightly. Just a theory.