A pile of stuff.

Okay, let's get into it -



First of all - I got an email from Dan Riesser about a week ago alerting me to the fact that Night of the Punks was up, in its entirety, on the web.  You can find it here:



https://vimeo.com/38694638



It is very much worth sitting down and taking a look at.  Here's hoping Dan has more for us soon.



---



Next, I'm editing a feature right now - that's scene 39 in the photo up there.  Scene 39 is a bear, let me tell you, but it's coming along.  I put together a team of three other editors and we're tackling the hell out of this.  It's not horror, though, and it's not my full time job (hence the three other editors).  But it's good, which is rare enough, so I'm counting that as a victory.  Expect more posts about that process.



---



The movie I worked on last summer as the acting coach to a bunch of cool kids and, for a much shorter time, as a 2nd unit director, finally premiered at SXSW a few weeks ago.  I want to talk about film critics and how they review movies.  Some of it will be me being sore that they didn't like the movie sometimes, but some of it is about how I judge the movies I watch myself, so I think it's interesting.



Here are a few snippets of reviews:

Imagine a remake of "Meatballs" or "The Bad News Bears" with the raunch quotient dialed up a few spins and you're ready for "Nature Calls," a brazenly foul-mouthed but ultimately soft-hearted comedy of bad manners that could forage for respectable theatrical biz before enjoying heavy rotation as VOD, vid-rental and pay-cable staple. Some may complain about the pic's frequent tactic of trolling for laughs by unleashing F-bombs and similar vulgarity around young children. But then, it's doubtful that too many of the easily offended will wander unawares into this untamed territory in the first place. - Joe Leydon, Variety

Which is great!  But then Drew McWeeney at HitFix sez:

Both of these recent films, "Catechism" and "Nature," are built on strong simple ideas that easily could have been used in a big-budget mainstream comedy.  They're both driven by character-driven comedy and blatant absurdity, and there's definitely a consistent voice from film to film.  I like his sensibilities and there are many things in both of the films that made me laugh.  But both films also strike me as deeply undercooked in some essential way, like we're watching a rough assembly instead of a finished edit.  They are shaggy to the point of sloppy, and I feel like one more pass at each of the scripts might have teased the great ideas into an actual great execution.

Which isn't so great.  And the internet being the internet, you can bet things got even nastier than that.  Regardless, we'll talk about this later.



I hope everyone is well - everyone who hasn't abandoned this site, anyway.  Much more soon.

It Was a Devil House and It Was Very Scary

Hey, Merry late Christmas and Happy New Year, everybody.  Here's a quick follow up to last month's American Horror Story post and then we'll see if we can't get a little more than one post a month going on here, yeah?



Beware if you haven't seen the full season.



THERE BE SPOILERS HEREIN.



So - the first season of American Horror Story.  Took some nice turns, stayed true to itself, and Jessica Lange will probably have bits of scenes between her teeth for the rest of her life.  I think at some point it kind of veered away from being a horror show and becoming more of a gorey drama.  I guess it was always on that track, one way or another.  Everything has to have some amount of soap opera to it, I guess, if it's not on the premium channels.  And even then, I guess there will usually be the standard melodrama.



But still - some real nice twists, probably the best of which being that Violet killed herself.  It wasn't just a nice twist in that it was set up well and I never questioned it.  It was an emotional twist.  I liked Violet, you know?  It wasn't even a terribly scary thing so much as a sad one.  It added a good layer to the story, just another enjoyably dark thing going on.



And was there a character on TV this season that was as purely hatable and somehow lovable as Tate?  Well, lovable is a strong word really.  But what character did bad things to the extent that Tate did and you didn't yearn for his death?  Did it make you feel gross that you had sympathy for a rapist who murdered a ton of innocent children, etc.?  Because sure, he did that.  But he loves Violet!  So much so that he will kill a kid who might be suitable boyfriend for Violet so that she won't be lonely.  That's kind of terrifying and endearing.  But then... rape and murder.  Yeah, lovable is way too strong a word, but the line that this character walked was probably the best of anybody on the show.



And then of course, there's the fact that, yet again, the whole family dies.  Normally you'd expect that the stars of the show are going to be the ones that overcome the evil or whatever.  I guess if anything that keeps AHS from going too far into soap opera territory?  The house stayed true to its nature, in that it fucking kills everyone.  There was never any indication that these folks were going to be special in that capacity.



A few things, though - Ben dresses up in the suit that Tate raped his wife in and pretends to be the same rapist?  I mean, gosh.  That's a bit of stretch, no?  I mean, ghost Ben now has the ability to pretend his guts are getting spilled all over the place.  Does he really need to dress up in the rubberman suit? That seemed dumb.  And also - why wait so long to terrify the new home owners?  Why not terrify the shit out of them the day they walked in?  Why let them buy the place and then scare them?  Now they have to sell the joint.  Or did I miss something here?  Is there some sort of annulment equivalent when it comes to house buying?



And then.... and then... why not just burn the place to the ground?  You know you can do it, ghosts.



I guess what I'm saying is - the final episode left me pretty cold.  Even the last minute or so, of the reveal of the little boy killing the nanny - yeah?  So?  Didn't we all know he was evil already?  Were we wondering if he was going to be evil?  Because that was never a question in my mind.



And this brings up a larger question that should maybe be a post in itseld - what's the deal with season finales being lame?  I noticed this mostly with True Blood, back when that was good, and you'd go through this whole season and then things would seem to wrap up in the first ten minutes of the finale and then the rest of the ep would be set up for the next season.  That's what this one felt like to me.  It felt like there were three or four endings in this thing.  How about the whole episode is Ben trying to escape the house with his wife and daughter helping him fight these asshole spirits?  And where were his wife and daughter, anyway, dang it?  Why'd they let him get hanged?



So, yeah - not such a great season finale, but overall a welcome horror themed show.  Interested to see how they handle season 2.  I keep figuring there's a larger force keeping all the ghosts in line, but that's pure conjecture.  Is the house something worse?  Anyway, interested.

That Thing Where Horror Comes Back to TV.

I somehow managed to worm my way into working two jobs at the same time - as a freelancer, I have trouble turning down offers when they come in - and because I was planted in front of the computer, watching renders render, I was able to finally check out 'American Horror Story' on the Hulu.



I was kind of dreading it seeing as how horror on TV had broken my heart so many times over the past few years.  But it's not like it could possibly go unwatched by me.  This show couldn't have a more attractive title than if it was called 'Craig Watch Me'.



[WARNING TO ALL: If you're actually further behind on this show than I am, there will be spoilers for the rest of this sucker.]



So - there I was, Hulu fired up, After Effects renders rendering, and ready to just get it over with.  How many times would someone's cell phone battery die when they needed to make a call?  How many times would a music cue telegraph the axe murderer's entrance? How many times would a cat jump out of the closet?



Well - not very many times, really.  I mean, yeah, sometimes the show will fall back on a crutch like  the ol' something just moved across the screen while the main character's back is turned bit.  But most of the time, I gotta say, I don't feel like I've seen a horror show like this on TV.  The pilot opens with two kids being murdered.  Children, we're talking about.  You're going to open a brand new series and in the cold open, two kids are killed.  One clearly has his throat slit and the other is clearly doomed to a similar fate.  The Walking Dead has more gore, sure, but I thought this was a much bigger stride.  CBS shows have gore now, for pete's sake.  But AHS is a horror show that's going for at least some form of real subversion.



Not that they've left all their morals behind, which is kind of a problem.  Even these two young kids who die in the opening, they still take the time to establish themselves as douchebags.  Not necessarily douchebags who deserve to die, but it's certainly not like the show has punished two angelic tow-heads.  In fact, they were redheads.  Which just ups the evil factor by 10, right?



And there's plenty of other aspects obviously cribbed from other sources, though the cribs seem to serve as reference points rather than creative crutches.  For instance, the credits owe a lot to Se7en, which as a crib is pretty stale.  I mean - what 'dark thriller' in the last 15 years hasn't had credits that look like Se7en's?



But then there's the music cues, many of which (if not all?) are taken from horror classics.  At the very least I've heard the score from Psycho a few times.  Regardless, I'm surprised by how much I like this choice.  It's something that would infuriate me if it was on a lesser show.  And I'm assuming just about every piece of it is taken from the horror/thriller genre of the last 60 or so years and put in a blender. Vivien's pregnancy is Rosemary's Baby, probably, considering that sex dream was basically straight out of Polanski's movie.  And the fact that she tells an hypnotized Ben that she loves him just after?  Creepy.



Ben's affair has some ingredients of Fatal Attraction.  The kids showing up to re-ennact a murder had echoes of The Strangers.  The basement full of experiments has stuff from just about every horror movie ever made.  It's like the creators decided they wouldn't be able to avoid the clichés of the genre, so they made all these old tropes a strength.  And so far I think it's working.



I'm only three episodes deep, though, so there are plenty of ways to go wrong.  For instance, I've heard there's a rule that the ghosts can't leave the house except on Halloween, which would seem to have already been broken.  Unless they can hang out on the grounds around the house, in which... okay, I could see that.



Anyway - anybody else been watching this?

'The Catechism Cataclysm' and the film critic.

I want to talk about this movie 'The Catechism Cataclysm'.  Maybe you've heard of it.  It got some real nice coverage in the horror press over the last year, after premiering at Sundance last January.



First, it's damn good.  Damn good.  And it's not a horror movie, really, except maybe in its soul, in which case it is very much a horror movie, dealing with possibly the most horrific horror you could plausibly face in real life.  It's got stunningly good performances from Steve Little, he of 'Eastbound & Down' fame, and Robert Longstreet, he of 'Titles too numerous to mention and you need to pick up on this guy before you're the last kid on your block to do so' fame.  The supporting cast is nothing to sneeze at either.  Nor the the tech credits.  As Variety might say - Pic hits dick with stick!  Yeah, I don't know.  Variety doesn't make sense, is what I'm saying.



Now - I'm tangentially connected to this movie, in that my wife & I loaned our camera to the production so that it might get shot.  So you might think I'm biased.  And you'd be entirely right.  I'm quite good friends with portions of the creative team and those portions I'm not friends with I have a feeling I'd like a lot.  I was around when the idea for this was first hatched, a number of years ago, and I was also there when it premiered at Sundance earlier this year to a nearly frozen, somewhat drunk, and entirely entertained crowd.



And - being biased, I'm pretty disappointed in some of the dismissive, half-baked reviews that have come out for this movie.  This is my wont, as I feel protective of my friends and I have more than a little insight into where this movie came from.  But really - folks have been pretty harsh toward this old girl, with comments ranging from jabs about its 'quirkiness' (which is the laziest of criticisms, a shorthand for 'I didn't get it and therefore it is ungettable'.  But I ask you - if a movie has no quirk, can it possibly be entertaining?  You might as well say 'I wish this movie didn't have so many differences from other movies.  What were they thinking?') to out-and-out barbs about it being racist.  Racist.  Granted, as far as I know there was only one person who felt this way and, once confronted, had nothing concrete to back up his claim.  But still.  That the idea was even out there was kind of infuriating.



But - again, these are friends.  No one can tolerate smack talk about one's friends.  But I think it also opens my eyes to how shitty film criticism can be.  I mean, I've enjoyed a good drubbing of plenty of movies I thought were bad.  And the harsher the review the better!  What entertainment!  Until I read a review about this movie, built on the blood, sweat, and tears of a group of very talented friends whose aim was but to enlighten and entertain.  And so they get called quirky racists for their trouble.  Thanks, people who get paid to watch movies for a living.  You've failed.



This is not to say that anyone who doesn't enjoy the movie is wrong.  I can see how this might be an acquired taste for some.  But any movie with this many rewards and such a sweet heart at its core deserves criticism that's a little more thoughtful.



But then - how thoughtful are my thoughts about movies, generally?  How thoughtful was I after seeing Transformers?  How thoughtful was anyone?  Is there any reason to be upset at all if someone is unfair about a movie that I like?  The answers to these questions is - inconsistently thoughtful. Not very.  Probably not very.  And yes.  Because I care about movies.  And I care a little extra about small movies that have to fight hard to get seen.  But still - definitely inconsistently thoughtful.



Anyway - here's the trailer.  Despite a choice of music at the top that really doesn't represent the movie in any way, it's a pretty good sampling of what's inside:







But don't take all my words for it.  'Catechism' is rentable on iTunes and Amazon.com right now, and even on VOD in certain markets.  And it may even come to a theater in your town.  If you get a chance, I urge you to check this sucker out.  I guarantee you haven't seen anything like it.  And if you do see it, I hope you'll throw some comments my way, positively or negatively thoughtful.

Before We Get Back to Your Regularly Scheduled Program...

Hello, anyone reading this blog.  There's been a bit of a lull here, obviously.  But I was actually working on a movie, you know?  And that is kind of one of the missions of this blog and everything.  But still.  It's not the best excuse to stop writing and thinking about movies, really.



But before I get back to writing and thinking about movies, I wanted to drop this idea to any bloggers out there who aren't aware of Project Wonderful.  It's a site wherein you can post your site and have people bid on ad space, thereby earning money.  I've been using them both as a publisher and as an advertiser (I have a bit of music that I'd like to get out there) and I gotta say I love it.



You'll need to 30 or more posts, I think, for them to accept your site.  And the application process is super easy and quick.



But wait a second, you're saying.  That Project Wonderful ad box you've got there doesn't have an ad in it! Well, it might not right now.  And that's my fault.  You let your blog go fallow for too long, advertisers will see the lack of activity.  But that being said?  I'm STILL getting bids on that space from time to time.  So really, it's not a bad idea.  If you're getting between 30 and 100 hits a day?  You'll be good to go.



That link would be:



https://www.projectwonderful.com/?tag=39796



It won't put a Ferrari in your garage, most likely, but who wants a Ferrari, anyway?  Overpriced go carts is all they are.



Enjoy.



And much more soon...

Safe to Remake: The Walking Dead

I know there are a ton of fans of this show, but I was not one of them.  And therefore, I will pretend that we are in an alternate universe where 'The Walking Dead' was roundly scorned for being a lazy mess.  An alternate universe... inside my brain.



Boy - was there anything more disappointing than 'The Walking Dead' last year? I'm not sure there was. After all the build up, the incredible hype, even though it fought against that voice in your head that said "Why is everybody pretending like a zombie story is a fresh idea?" - you got sucked in, didn't you? Not you - me. I got sucked in. It was on AMC, for crap's sake! The home of Mad Men and Breaking Bad! If anybody was going to bust through with something completely original, it's those dudes. And based on that comic? With these folks behind the camera? Behind the make-up??? This is going to blow everybody's MINDS.



Or so I thought. And then I watched it. And pretty much every minute of it was a confirmation that nothing new was going to happen.  And the more I talked to folks, it became clear that the only thing anyone was excited about was the level of gore.  And while it is impressive, it would be even better if there was a good show wrapped around it; if we had characters that were more than stereo-types - the true-hearted sheriff, the lovable old coot full of comfort and wisdom, the insanely mean and clearly 100% evil racist man who we are supposed to feel sympathy for later... jeez.  And boy oh boy - the crying.  So much crying.  So much manipulative crying every time somebody dies.  Cry cry cry.  Hey, Frank Darabont, how is the audience supposed to feel during this scene?  I'll take care of that - all of the actors will be crying.  Genius!



And also - we live in a post-'28 Days Later', post-'The Road', post-'Lost' society.  So if your story is going to cover the same ground, you need to be extra sharp about what you're doing.  It's not good enough to say that the comic was written however long ago so it's not a rip-off.  I'm not saying it's a rip-off.  I'm saying it's stale.



And that is why I'm declaring 'The Walking Dead' safe to remake.  Because really - it does have a pretty great premise and even a super good idea, but AMC's execution has been middling at best.  And I think it's because Frank Darabont isn't your gutsiest filmmaker and maintained a death grip on the comic that killed anything exciting that could've happened.



SO -



First, let's go in and jettison anything that smacks of '28 Days Later'.  Really, it seems like anyone with a modicum of sense would've done this at the outset.  The first 20 minutes of the premiere just wallowed in things we had experienced before.  I know that's how the comic did it and when the comic first came out, it was a great idea.  But in this case - is there anything crucial about this guy waking up in a hospital?  No, not really.  And is it even plausible that everyone else in the hospital would be toast except for him?  Not credibly.  So get rid of that whole idea. We'll need something pretty gangbusters in its place - how about starting off with Rick Grimes in mid-flight from a horde of zombies, something just ridiculously harrowing, watching people get killed right and left, then he finds a place, a storm shelter maybe, barricades himself inside and waits it out. Bam. Done.



Next - let's redo this cast.  Let's find people who are actually from the South, at least, if not Georgia.  Because friends, playing a character from the South is more than just putting on your best drawl.  You know how people in 'The Wire' really seemed to be from Baltimore?  Well, a lot of them WERE from Baltimore.  They were so much from Baltimore, some of them are getting arrested in drug stings right now.



I'm talking about unknowns, with just one fairly known dude in the lead role.  So - as Rick Grimes?  Walter Groggins from 'Justified'.  Man - that dude will be amazing! A guy who can handle some serious complexity - a guy you're never really sure is gonna go right or left. Yes!



Now - who should oversee this?  How about somebody who writes complex characters, who knows how to be gritty, who won't let everything devolve into zombie soap opera?  Well heck, I think I just described David Simon.  Maybe it's because I've got 'The Wire' on my mind, but hey, who would get deeper into life in zombieland than Simon and Co.?  And then just put it on HBO so everybody will shut up about how amazingly gory it is.



Guh-bang!  There you go.  You're welcome, Hollywood.

The Movies of 2010.

I know what you're wondering - you're wondering what the top horror movies were that I saw in 2010. Not necessarily the movies that came out in 2010, but the movies that I happened to see.



Well, you're in luck friend. Because here they be, in order from worst - and I do mean WORST. Jeez, I watched so much horrible crap this year - to the best.

29.PARANORMAL ACTIVITY (2009) - While this one does serve up a couple of scares as it goes along, this movie has been overhyped to the point of offensiveness. It feels like something grown in a test tube in the basement of a studio exec. Dirt cheap, no stars, no effects, crappy photography, no script, A BAZILLION DOLLARS AT THE BOX OFFICE! It's sequel just did the same thing, which I guess means we're in for a bunch more. Great. Which makes it worse than...

28.A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (2010) - If this one didn't look so slick, it would be battling it out with 'Paranormal Activity' for the lowest of the low. Again, it's a movie set in people's dreamscapes and can't scrape together the average imagination of a typical Yo Gabba Gabba episode. It's script is poor and it's acting is so-so, but what makes it so bad is that it's a big wasted opportunity, another piece of roadkill on the studio remake highway. Which makes it worse than...

27.ALONE IN THE DARK II (2009) - What puts this one third from the bottom is that it's so bad it's not bad. While you wouldn't enjoy the other two in a room of friends, this one would probably get everybody laughing. Its plot is almost incomprehensible, characters do inexplicable things in every scene and the FX are pretty sad. Nothing here will blow your mind, but I can't say you'd totally feel ripped off, either, under the right circumstances. Which makes it worse than...

26.CROPSEY (2010) - The makers of this one are pretty silly, but mostly pretty, acting as if their situation is super stressful, etc., and all the while you just want them to shut up and show more Geraldo footage. In fact, watching the Geraldo Rivera footage they use would be ten times scarier and more rewarding than being in the same room with this doc as it reaches for significance and when significance is dropped in its lap, ignores it. Frustrating. Which makes it worse than...

25.THE STEPFATHER (2009) - A bad remake of a seldom seen movie. The edges have been sanded. The camera lens has been polished up. It looks real nice. It looks kind of like a CBS Movie of the Week, but with less blood than CSI. And about a third as good as The Good Wife (no seriously. The Good Wife is really good.) There's nothing here to be surprised by or startled by. It's a horror movie you can nap to. Which makes it worse than...

24.SPLICE (2010) - Again, a pretty timely movie, all things considered. I guess maybe I was hoping for something more like a Cronenberg movie or something and this just doesn't approach that level of creepy. Not that it has to, of course. It's pretty lazy to say I didn't like this movie because it's not a Cronenberg movie, right? I mean, all I gotta do is reach up on the shelf and grab a Cronenberg movie. Problem solved. But I didn't. Anyway, again, I feel like the message got in the way of the movie here. I got less and less involved in the characters and more involved in what the makers were thinking, the big thoughts, the big ideas, and that didn't bring me happiness. So there you have it.

23.GHOST MACHINE (2009) - Straight to video movie about people fighting a ghost inside a video game. As I write that, it makes me want to move this one up the list. It's pretty stupid, but in a fun way. And if you're going to make straight to DVD movies - and this one, production wise, is surprisingly solid - you might as well make something that is stupid and fun. And man - a ghost that, in essence, has hacked its way into a computer? It makes absolutely zero sense. And as near as I can tell, there's no larger allegory that helps it along. These dudes set up a computer game in an old abandoned building, there's a ghost there, it gets inside the game and voila. Anyway - it'll stay here, thanks.

22.THE FINAL DESTINATION (2009) - I've got a soft spot for this series, I gotta tell ya. I think the basic premise is perfect for a sort of neo-slasher movie. And the OCD in me loves the sort of organizing effect of checking off each victim as they die in the order they should have. It's great! But they went 3D with this one and while they didn't shy away from getting gross, they did shy away from quality. I can't say too much about it because, well, large chunks of it are disappearing from memory. But from what I remember, it was a pretty loud blur of wasted time and sorry scripting. Stick with parts 1 and 3. That's where the magic is.

21.LET'S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH (1971) - Slow. Voice over.

20.PHENOMENA (1985) - This was a hard one to get my head around - because, really, for so much of it you're amazed at how bad it is. It's hard to imagine flatter acting or more awkward dialogue. And then there's the rest of the movie, which barely hangs together - it's a story about the daughter of a movie star who goes to stay at a girl's school in the midst of a serial killer scare and, oh yeah, the daughter communicates with bugs telepathically, though that only comes in handy a couple of times and really it isn't quite as handy as the fact that she has a friend who is a monkey. I'm gonna leave it at that because I think the only way to really explain the movie is to describe every scene. AND YET - I'd still watch it again. ALSO - the music is brilliantly out of place. BUT - it's still not good. Which makes it worse than...

19.THE COMPANY OF WOLVES (1985) - First things first, this is an original story, which is great to see in general. But it was sort of sold to me as an horror take on Little Red Riding Hood and if that is true, then somebody messed up. There's precious little horror to speak of here, though there's plenty of sexual frustration and fakey sets and overacting. There are some great, if also fakey, werewolf transitions - I mean, after a while you start to realize that's all you're going to get - but jeez, this sucker takes itself pretty seriously. And what's with that ending. I mean, yeah, it mostly takes place in a dream. And I would assume the ending symbolism has to do with the main girl's loss of innocence or being on the cusp of that - her dream is basically a sex dream, the most chaste sex dream involving wolves you can imagine. I don't know. This one needed more of... something. Which makes it worse than...

18.THE CRAZIES (1973) - A good movie that wears its incredibly low budget on its sleeve. How it manages to never completely strike out, I'm not sure. I mean, dude, the lead actor has a unibrow. For reals? As usual, Romero is pissed of about, you know, war or something and so all of this hangs together because of that anger. Really. Because it's really not a well made movie, production-wise. At all. Not at all. In fact, it actually feels like a step down from Night of the Living Dead in a lot of ways. Which makes it worse than...

17.THE ENTITY (1981) - So this is kind of a hard one to get a hold of. Starts off as sleaze - a ghost repeatedly raping a woman - then slips into a movie about dueling sciences - psychology vs. parapsychology - and eventually leaves you with no ending. I mean, it ends. But there's not an ending. In fact, just when I thought the final battle was going to go down, woman vs. entity, the credits started rolling. Definitely some effective scares, a neat glass-smashing soundtrack to underscore those scares, and some interesting drama between schools of science. But I don't know - maybe I'm a big softy, but watching a woman get raped a lot is sort of not what I'm into. Which makes it worse than...

16.THE BOX (2009) -So far, all of Kelly's movies are like half trips to somewhere. With plenty of really neat junk that you'll probably remember for a really long time, but nothing that actually affects you. Bro has a big head filled with cool ideas. He needs someone to come along in the writing stage and focus it. For realz: The Box has about 10 great starts to 10 great movies. But sadly, for all the subtle CG and thinkering that was thunk, he didn't manage to improve one iota on the original Twilight Zone episode this was based on. Which makes it worse than...

15.ISLE OF THE DEAD (1945) - A movie based on a painting, one way or another. Boris Karloff trapped on an island with a bunch of weirdos, talking about death, plague, superstitions and changing winds. I'm pretty sure there was something here I was missing, but boy, even at just an hour and change, this seemed to take a while to get through, which makes it worse than...

14.THE TOOLBOX MURDERS (1978)* - Which was an old school exploitation movie and has all the bad acting, bad dialogue and bad effects you would expect. But of course that's it's charm. You can feel the sleaze just dripping off of it. When the insanity really hits the fan, though, this Texas Chainsaw knock-off takes it up a notch. Definitely not a fine film, but there's plenty here to like. Which makes it worse than...

13.THE DONNER PARTY (2009) - A solid movie coming out of nowhere, starring Cripsin Glover and that guy from '24'. You might expect this to be a gutmunching cannibal orgy, but it's actually played as a drama, which works. Though, it still does end up feeling pretty dry for a movie about killing and eating your neighbor, which makes it worse than...

12.ZOMBIELAND (2009) - A zombie comedy that starts off really fun and smart, and very slowly goes downhill. Not all the way downhill, but there are a series of decisions in the third act that nearly kill this movie. Really - two of the smartest characters are required to make three really dumb decisions in order for script conventions to take over and give us our "satisfying" ending. It's very nearly as bald as that. But there's plenty to like, too, and the way the movie stops for a while in the middle for that cameo is awkward, but really fun, too. Which makes it worse than...

11.BIGGER THAN LIFE (1956) - A movie about the dangers of... Cortisone? Mason as a real bad inflamation of the arteries and if not treated he'll be dead in a year. But not if he takes Cortisone! Unfortunately, Cortisone abuse could lead to psychosis! Which of course it does, because what's the point of watching a movie about Cortisone where everything is fine? You kind of chuckle through a lot of this, though the last fifteen minutes or so? Forty some years old and pretty chilling, especially given similar instances of the same thing happening in the US in recent years. That's worth a look right there. But up until then, it is awfully corny. Which makes it worse than...

10.TRIANGLE (2009) - Here's a nice surprise - an original horror story made by virtual unknowns that is pretty damn good. It won't change your life, but there are at least a couple moments in this story that surprised me, that showed me something I hadn't seen before. It even got to a certain traumatic plot point before Leo DiCaprio did with both his movies in 2010, though I saw this one third, so I kind of figured that's where things were going. And I'm not sure the logic here works out exactly. Which makes it worse than...

9.THE ROAD (2010) - Easily the best thing I saw all month, and man what an intensely depressing story it is. When the happy ending consists of an orphaned child being picked up by roving band of dirty apocalypse survivors who may or may not be good people, you know you've been to a dark place. It's pretty good stuff, though, about a man and his young son wandering through a land of total destruction, meeting up with every depraved form of human impulse that the collapse of society could bring. A father fighting to keep his son safe and to remain a good man himself, etc. And all the times he has to consider killing his son and then himself before a harsher fate befalls them at the hands of some band of lunatics? Gosh. So yeah, very very good, but sometimes the crushing sadness of it puts you at a distance, which makes it worse than...

8.SHUTTER ISLAND (2010) - I'm all over the map with this one. Love the jump cuts, the small scenes, even the overbearing score. Didn't love the unanswered questions, the way the script sorta treads water in the middle, and the anagrams. And I like DiCaprio, but he still seems like a kid in grown-ups clothes to me. I can't shake that. And I love how almost everything in the movie is almost comically SUPER INTENSE LIKE THIS throughout and even over-explained at the end, like something from the 50s, but then those moments don't always jibe with everything else that's going on. So, sadly, this one only gets about halfway to greatness and stalls out. Which makes it worse than...

7.JENNIFER'S BODY (2009) - Man, this movie tanked pretty hard last year, but I don't know what the problem was. I liked this just about as much as I've liked any horror movie I've seen lately. Even with Cody's seriously self-conscious dialogue, she writes believable if not realistic teens and she knows the world. Certainly a whole lot better than whoever is really responsible for this year's 'Elm Street'. A dark sense of humor, Megan Fox in some underwear, and Satan-worshipping rock stars. What's not to like? Well, the ending is a little soft, as I'm pretty sure I was promised a big bloody extravaganza. Which makes it worse than...

6.THE CRAZIES (2010) - Romero's original, while clearly a force to be reckoned with in terms of cult status, really never put its best foot forward on the acting or effects front. Or the general pacing or believability front. It's best front was its idea and how fervently Romero pushed that idea. Breck Eisner's update loses a lot of the idea-ness of the movie, but makes up for it with good ol' visceral action and gore. This one's a lot of fun to watch, though it's ending depends somewhat on a wholely contrived decision that is completely illogical. Which makes it worse than...

5.BAD RONALD (1974) - So this is a 1974 TV movie, kind of a soft horror thing. It's about this kid who accidentally kills another kid and his mother decides to hide him in the walls of their house until they can sneak away and get out of town. But mom is sickly and dies and a new family moves in. And Ronald goes nutso in the walls and starts hurting people. There's barely more to it than that, but damn if it didn't have a germ or two about it that I really liked. It can't really go all the places it needs to go, being on TV and all, but it's also kind of amazing that this was on TV in 1974. The whole concept seems too subversive for such times. Very good stuff, if not 100% scary. Which makes it worse than...

4.THE FLY (1958) - Now this a strange bird, this is - arguably a horror classic, starts off with a pretty strong darkness factor for 1958, then goes on for a bit as soap opera-ish deal, with a brother dead, the other brother in sort-of-love with his sister-in-law. She's maybe guilty of murder, maybe she's crazy. Finally a flashback to what happened - her scientists husband, his new invention, on and on and then finally you get the the more monstrous aspects of the movie. And when that happens - as medium shot and stilted as it is, it's still pretty creepy, with the husband lurking in the basement with a black cloth over his head, his hand always in his pocket. And however it is he eats the food his wife brings him. It's certainly no thrill ride and none of it will give you a sleepless night, but it's a good story with a nice sick twist at the end. Which makes it worse than...

3.PIRANHA (1978) - Joe Dante, John Sayles, 1978, and Roger Corman's man-eating fish. There's no way this could wrong and it sure didn't. ISo many have done so much less with so much more. Really - a low-budget movie with an underwater ending? Kevin McCarthy? Dick Miller? Gratuitous nudity? Man, how do I sign up for Roger Corman's team? Still, it's not big in the emotions department, which makes it worse than...

2.HOUSE OF THE DEVIL (2009) - After a really strong start - a start that takes up the first 2/3 of the movie, this one turns around and gives you just exactly what you figured was going to happen all along. It's got a great 80s atmosphere and a really creepy tone about it, but once everything is revealed, there isn't nearly the tension of a 'Rosemary's Baby', let's say. Which makes it worse than...

1.LET THE RIGHT ONE IN (2008) - This is how my April started off and thank Yahveh it did. There's not a vampire movie that's come out in twenty years that holds a candle to this one. But is that really saying anything? Not really, I guess. But still - this movie will surprise you in ways you didn't even think you needed to be surprised. It's not as much a horror movie as it is a coming of age story and vice versa. In a perfect world, this would've been Twilight and made a bajillionty dollars. But then again, I don't want to see a sequel (or remake) of this one. Perfect as is, thanks. This was the best horror movie I saw all year.

No Budget Horror Trailer Thursdays: The Oregonian

Well, okay okay - this one maybe has a budget. I honestly don't know. What I do know is that I can't wait to see this thing at Sundance in a couple weeks. If you haven't seen any of Calvin Reeder's shorts, Google that shit and check it out. You will soon be a big fan.



In the meantime, here is the trailer for his upcoming first feature: The Oregonian.