Saw III
The first Saw picture actually had an idea behind it, to say nothing of the ingenuity of its low-budget production; making a silk purse out of a bloody, maggot-ridden human ear, as it were. With Saw III, the franchise pretty much settles into gore for gore’s sake, as it explores newer and better ways to traumatize the body–and the audience. Events from Saw II are sewn up at the beginning of the film, and a detective on the trail of mad killer Jigsaw is quickly trussed up and subjected to one of the villain’s sadistic games (this one has escape possible only by means of a key sitting in the bottom of a beaker of acid). Then we catch up with Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) himself, as he awaits death from his debilitating illness; once again he’s tended by helper Shawnee Smith. The movie follows parallel plots: Jigsaw blackmails a doctor (Bahar Soomekh) into keeping him alive, and tortures a vengeful soul (Angus Macfayden) into recognizing the futility of revenge. Original Saw creators James Wan and Leigh Whannell worked on the script of this one, and it fully buys into the series mythology, referring backwards to previous events and, for all we know, preparing us for future installments. But if future installments are as pointlessly repugnant as this one, there’s not much to look forward to.
See No Evil
Produced by World Wrestling Entertainment mogul Vince McMahon, See No Evil a standard-issue death-fest designed for maximum gross-out appeal, and in that sense it delivers the goods with crushed heads, multiple eye-gougings, throat-rippings and other grisly fates that gore fans will want to discover for themselves. If your idea of a good time is watching a mangy dog urinate into the vacant eye socket of a corpse, this is just the movie for you! In an attempt to create a new horror icon like Freddy Krueger or Jason Voorhees, former porno director Gregory Dark and less-than-stellar screenwriter Dan Madigan have dreamed up a routine plot that’s hardly original, but deviously addictive to anyone who digs this kind of stuff: Eight troubled and not-very-bright teens, fresh out of a detention center, are given a second chance when they’re taken to the decrepit, filthy Blackwell Hotel and told to clean the place up so it can be turned into a homeless shelter. What they don’t know is that the hotel hides a secret, axe-wielding resident named Jacob Goodnight (played by WWE superstar Glen “Kane” Jacobs) who’s got a knack for plucking the eyeballs from his hapless and ill-fated victims. He’s basically an evil kid in the hulking body of a wrestler (call it type-casting, if you will), and See No Evil is more sick than scary as Jacob does his handiwork, which includes the rather hilarious and grimly ironic dispatch of an animal rights activist, to name just one item in the movie’s smorgasbord of splatter. At a brisk 85 minutes, the movie’s over before you can work up any genuine terror. Still, a sequel seems likely (even if it’s straight-to-video), and devoted horror fans will want to check it out.
Wolf Creek
Wolf Creek, written and directed by Greg McClean, is the Blair Witch Project of the Australian outback. Capitalizing on the human fear of becoming lost in the wilderness, in this case a desert crater called Wolf Creek National Park, this graphic horror film exploits the handheld camera to capture the grotesque actions of Mick Taylor (John Janatt), a sadistic serial killer. When a hip twenty-something guy, Ben Mitchell (Nathan Phillips), and two hippie-ish girls, Cassandra (Liz Hunter) and Kristy (Kestie Morassi), take a road trip and their car breaks down, they have no choice but to accept help from Mick, an eccentric rural Aussie, who, like a spider, tows them into his nightmarish lair. Mick hunts kangaroos and hates tourists, translating his fetish for knives, shotguns, and other torture devices into a need to kill humans as if they’re vermin infesting his majestic landscape. Ample blood and gore leave the viewer feeling nearly as sick as the girls who are forced to watch each other die. Like Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs, Mick Taylor is a savvy, calculating killer, despicable but psychologically fascinating.
Night Watch
Night Watch is that rare film that–like The Matrix–is not only visually dazzling but creates an intriguing, seductive, and thrilling alternative world. A young man named Anton, after dabbling in black magic to bring back the wife who left him, discovers that the world is populated by fantastical Others (vampires, shape-shifters, witches, and more) who have chosen sides–Light or Dark–in an epic battle. A truce has been declared; both sides watch the other to ensure the truce is maintained. But a prophecy has predicted that a powerful Other will tilt the balance, and Anton–who is himself an Other–finds himself crucial to the prophecy’s fulfillment. There’s no question that Night Watch has weaknesses. Numerous plot holes get glossed over by pell-mell pacing, the visual conception of the apocalyptic battle between Light and Dark is curiously pedestrian (a bunch of knights fighting a bunch of guys in fur with swords–what happened to their various powers?), and more–but, much like similar problems with The Matrix, it doesn’t matter. The alternative world Night Watch presents is so rich with possibilities that it takes on a life of its own, both as an imaginative universe and as a vivid metaphor for the moral complexities of our own lives–for example, though the forces of Light claim to be good, their often brutal actions call their virtue into question, and the forces of Dark make some compelling moral arguments on the topic. The movie is so overstuffed with ideas that many don’t get fleshed out, but that only contributes to the sense of vitality and unexplored dimensions. Even the subtitles are used creatively. The impending sequels (this is the first film of a trilogy) may–like The Matrix–take all the stimulating possibilities Night Watch raises and drag them into the toilet, but for the moment, this is the sort of electric excitement that blockbuster movies promise but so rarely deliver.
The Devil’s Rejects
Homicidal maniacs have a field day in Rob Zombie’s The Devil’s Rejects, an ultraviolent spin-off from Zombie’s critically reviled 2003 debut, House of 1,000 Corpses. As Zombie continues to cultivate his name-brand variety of extreme horror and splatter-film homage, he definitely takes his place among connoisseurs of carnage. In the case of The Devil’s Rejects, several characters from 1,000 Corpses return for another marathon of mayhem, as the murderous Firefly family (led by Sid Haig as the maniacal “Captain Spaulding”) turn their bloody wrath against hostages in a fleabag motel, while the local sheriff (William Forsythe) plots revenge against them for the killing of his brother. Before their inevitable showdown, Zombie has plenty of fun–perhaps a little too much fun–indulging his penchant for sick, sadistic humor and gruesome atrocity. Clearly, Zombie fancies himself as horror’s answer to Quentin Tarantino, but he lacks Tarantino’s gift for riveting plots and escalating tension. Instead, The Devil’s Rejects is just raw, rampant excess from start to finish, paying visual tribute to gruesome classics from the ’70s and guaranteed to earn the cult status that Zombie is all too obviously aiming for. He’s an unabashed horror buff who’s carving a niche in the genre he loves, shamelessly satisfying a small but loyal audience of sicko-phants.
Silent Hill
A lot of movies can be described as “dripping with atmosphere,” but in the case of Silent Hill it’s literally true. Faithfully adapted from the Konami video games by French director Christophe Gans and Pulp Fiction cowriter Roger Avary (both self-confessed video game addicts), this dark and grisly horror-fest is nothing if not a triumph of cinematography and production design, consisting of a minimal and mostly incoherent plot propped up by a mysterious maze of sets that literally seep, drip, and ooze with the atmospheric evil of past misdeeds. Welcome to the abandoned and perpetually foggy ghost town of Silent Hill, where grey ash falls like snow, a devastating coal-mine fire still burns in a hellish underground, and demons of various shapes and sizes make your worst nightmares seem like a walk in the park. It’s here that distressed mother Rose (played by Pitch Black heroine Radha Mitchell) has taken her daughter Sharon (Jodelle Ferland) in hopes of discovering the source of Sharon’s sleepwalking nightmares. What they find instead is a burned-out legacy of unspeakable evil, as Silent Hill’s dark secrets are revealed. As opposing denizens of Silent Hill’s meta-morphing underworld, Canadian actresses Alice Krige and Deborah Kara Unger seem to be the only ones who recognize this morbid mess as campy comedy; Gans (who established his visual flair with The Brotherhood of the Wolf) and Avary take it far too seriously, and the entire movie is utterly devoid of any emotional hooks or plot logic that would make us care about anything that happens. In crafting a loyal big-screen rendition of Silent Hill and its Playstation sequels, they’ve forgotten that movies play by a different and more demanding set of rules. As a result, they’ve made an impressive-looking but ultimately hollow horror film that only Silent Hill game-players can truly appreciate.
Shaun of the Dead
British horror/comedy Shaun of the Dead is a scream in all senses of the word. Brain-hungry zombies shamble through the streets of London, but all unambitious electronics salesman Shaun (Simon Pegg) cares about is his girlfriend Liz (Kate Ashfield), who just dumped him. With the help of his slacker roommate Ed (Nick Frost), Shaun fights his way across town to rescue Liz, but the petty concerns of life keep getting in the way: When they’re trying to use vinyl records to decapitate a pair of zombies, Shaun and Ed bicker about which bands deserve preservation–New Order they keep, but Sade becomes a lethal frisbee. Many zombie movies are comedies by accident, but Shaun of the Dead is deliberately and brilliantly funny, while still delivering a few delicious jolts of fear. Also featuring the stealthy comic presence of Bill Nighy (Love Actually) and some familar faces from The Office.
The Amityville Horror
Most horror movies establish an atmosphere of normalcy, which they gradually rupture with spooky or creepy or stomach-churning images. The Amityville Horror–a remake of the 1979 movie about a possessed house that torments the family that moves into it–tosses normalcy out the window in the first five minutes, unleashing a nonstop barrage of unsettling camera angles, decaying wood and stained wallpaper, half-glimpsed shadows in motion, fast edits of grotesque ghosts, and dozens of other horror-movie devices. Whether you like the movie will depend on whether you like feeling slightly nauseated and cut off from any semblance of reality–for many people, that’s why they go to horror movies. Others won’t be able to suspend disbelief that anyone but an actor would spend the time necessary to develop Ryan Reynold’s insanely buff physique, prominently displayed as he runs around wearing nothing but a pair of loose-fitting pajama bottoms. In addition to Reynolds (Van Wilder, Blade: Trinity), the movie also features Philip Baker Hall (Magnolia) and Melissa George (Down With Love).
Disturbia
Alfred Hitchcock fans may experience déjà vu upon exposure to this voyeuristic thriller. That’s because director DJ Caruso (The Salton Sea) and co-writer Carl Ellsworth (Red Eye) use Rear Window as a jumping-off point before cherry-picking from more recent scare fare, like The Blair Witch Project. In the prologue, 17-year-old Kale (Shia LaBeouf, Holes) loses his beloved father to a car crash. A year passes, and he’s still on edge. When a teacher makes a careless remark about his dad, Kale punches him out, and is sentenced to house arrest. After his mom (Carrie-Anne Moss, Memento) takes away his Xbox and iTunes privileges, the suburban slacker spies on his neighbors to pass the time. In the process, he develops a crush on Ashley (Sarah Roemer, The Grudge 2), the hot girl next door, and becomes convinced that another, the soft-spoken Mr. Turner (David Morse, The Green Mile), is a serial killer. With the help of the flirtatious Ashley, practical joke-playing pal Ronnie (Aaron Yoo), and an array of high-tech gadgets, like cell-phone cameras and digital camcorders, Kale sets out to solve a major case without leaving his yard (a feat that would prove more challenging for a less affluent sleuth). In the end, it’s pretty familiar stuff, but there are plenty of scares once Turner realizes he’s being watched, and rising star LaBeouf, who next appears in Michael Bay’s Transformers, makes for an engaging leading man–despite his character’s propensity for slugging Spanish instructors.
Dead Silence
Billy in Dead Silence inevitably recalls other possessed dolls such as those in Devil Doll, but he is an entertaining dummy nonetheless. As a variation on evil-doll films like Child’s Play or Puppet Master, Dead Silence stars a dummy who isn’t a killer himself but a vehicle for a vengeful ghost. Previously owned by Mary Shaw, a ventiloquist who was murdered by local Ravens Hill villagers for kidnapping a boy to turn him into a human puppet, Billy houses Mary Shaw’s spirit while she gets revenge on all those who killed her. Jamie Ashen (Ryan Kwanten) unravels Billy’s mystery after Billy is delivered to his door to claim Jamie’s wife’s life, since she is pregnant with Jamie’s son. Mary Shaw aims to obliterate his entire Ashen clan, since they were partially responsible for her death. Plot, from there, teeters on the ridiculous, as Mary (via Billy) rips peoples tongues out left and right. Jamie’s futile attempts to stop Shaw’s ghost result in his discovering a gruesome secret about his brutal, abusive father. Writer Leigh Whannell and director James Wan, of Saw, made this almost comical film about 101 dummies, all relatives of Billy’s, who are slaves to their sadistic creator. With many direct references to ’80s horror films, and a soundtrack theme song almost exactly like Phantasm’s, Dead Silence’s charm banks on its lack of computer-y special effects rather than its originality. Billy’s sly violence is creepy but funny, making for a relatively lighthearted horror film that won’t traumatize as much as it makes one chuckle.
