You really have to hand it to the Weinstein Company. For the last couple of years, they’ve been manning right the hell up, and helping to fill the racks of your local American consumer outlet of choice with UNRATED direct-to-DVD, or damn-close-to-direct-to-DVD, genre flicks.
For some reason, I always find myself a little apprehensive to snag these things up. I don’t know whether it’s the box art (usually some relatively cheapish-looking digital quickie, complete with the aforementioned lurid promise of UNRATED horror festivities inside) offending my fartsy, snobbish sensibilities or what, but I always feel a brief stab of blind panic when I consider watching one. I should add, though, that I have not been terribly disappointed by any of the releases that I’ve checked out. BLACK SHEEP was reasonably amusing, in a desperately early-Peter Jacksonesque sort of way, and I enjoyed DIARY OF THE DEAD and THE THIRD MOTHER, despite my initial misgivings regarding both. Also, The Dimension Extreme NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD re-release that accompanied DIARY to the shelves is pretty much the best transfer on the market.
At any rate (or UNRATE), whatever it was that I might have expected from this update of the 1970 H.G. Lewis splatter classic, about a theater of the Grand Guignol where beautiful women appear to be gruesomely murdered, but then appear not to have been murdered at all, but ultimately turn out to have been gruesomely murdered, what I ended up watching was, uhhh, different, to say the least.
Director Jeremy Kasten and writer Zach Chassle demonstrate, up front and early, that they aren’t averse to remixing the proceedings. Kip Pardue (Victor, in Roger Avary’s 2002 adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’ THE RULES OF ATTRACTION) opens the film by introducing his character, Ed Bigelow, and Ed’s underground newspaper, The Cacophony Gazette. Ed documents the seediest of bizarro club scenes in whatever post-millennial-noir city it is in which he resides with his girlfriend Maggie (Bijou Phillips). From there, the viewer progresses swiftly past a recurring cartoon bunny image, multitudinous naked nubile bodies, a fair amount of bad music, and two of the strangest Brad Dourif and Jeffrey Combs appearances to date. But you haven’t even gotten to Crispin Glover as Montag the Magnificent yet, bitch, so just sit still – he’s up next, and will gnaw on scenery and Suicide Girls alike.
Depending on your tastes, or relative lack of, there are a plethora of potential pros and cons to be found here. The direction and acting are mostly competent, considering the context. Pardue & Phillips didn’t really do much for me, but Combs, Dourif, and Glover especially, are a hoot. The updated thematic elements felt, to me, vaguely late-90’s-ish, with the whole ‘oh-so-dark-and-vaguely-goth-y’ thing, but that may just be me. Gratuitous nudity (female specifically) abounds. Regarding production values, the visual FX are pretty decent compared to some things I’ve seen recently, but the audio FX are truly the piece de resistance, in my opinion. Half the time, I honestly found myself wondering what dude got the dubious honor of stuffing a microphone up inside a nice, fat, uncooked turkey’s ass, before brutally ripping it apart with his bare hands and a set of Klein pliers. Maybe it’s just because I was listening via headphones, but there seems to be some great splattery sound design going on there.
Anyway, in conclusion, while I’m not sure I can comfortably suggest that everyone should necessarily run out and buy this, it may be worth it to check out if you’re a fan of the principles: blood, guts, boobs, semi-surreal nuttiness, and Mr. Crispin “I have a gynecologist’s chair in my living room!” Glover. The DVD includes the usual assortment of commentary, deleted scenes, and behind-the-scenes production docs (one on the film, one specifically on the Suicide Girls), as well as a few other nuggets.
Did you ever watch one of those movies that going into it all you can think is “man this is going to suck, why am I doing this to myself” but then you watch it and shortly find yourself enjoying it? Well that was me and Jennifer’s Body. I went fully in expecting a crappy movie about stupid stuff, and found a rather amusing movie that offers a really unique perspective on the friendships between hot girls and plain girls.
Jennifer (Megan Fox) and Needy (Amanda Seyfried) have been best friends since childhood. As I’m sure you already guessed Jennifer is the hot girl in a Podunk town, which allows her to get away with pretty much whatever she wants to. Needy is her best friend and moral compass, plain and down to earth, she tries to keep Jennifer grounded. Especially on the night that the two go to some dive to watch the band Low Shoulder that Jennifer has been following on Myspace. Jennifer makes contact with the lead singer Nikolai (Adam Brody) and for some reason is totally in his thrall but Needy is on to the fact that they are up to something when she overhears them talking about how Jennifer is “the one” and pegging her for the virgin that they need. Needy tells Jennifer this, and warns her to stay away from them because they are creepy and frightfully androgynous. Mind you that is my own wording because I never trust anything wearing more eyeliner than I do. Jennifer is immediately dismissive because she isn’t even a backdoor virgin and assures Needy that there is nothing to worry about, and then the bar goes up in flames. As the two escape the bar, they find they are the only survivors and then Nikolai appears and whisks Jennifer away in the obligatory black band van. Frustrated and distraught Needy goes home and later on that night a bloody and really freaky acting Jennifer comes to her house. Scaring the hell out of Needy, she now knows that something happened to Jennifer and it is the band’s fault because her best friend puked up a mountain of black goo all over the floor, but Boston Market has that same effect on me too.
Now I am going to depart from the synopsis for a few to claim that I hate Diablo Cody, with a passion. I think she is a hack writer that totally ripped Juno off from the Korean film Jenny, Juno and does not at all deserve the Best Original Screenplay Oscar that she got for it. Now maybe I am the only person that feels this way, maybe I’m not. But it seems a little weird that a movie came out in 2005 that featured a 15 year old pregnant girl who is named Juno, and then two years later another movie came out with the same thing. It seems a little more than coincidence to me and Diablo Cody also strikes me as the lame ass hipster type to watch a foreign film of this nature. Now with that being said I felt that Jennifer’s Body was a complete step up from someone that I feel belongs on the stripper pole they crawled off of. But do I attribute this all to Cody? No I do not. This movie came together largely based on all of its elements as a whole. Writing, direction, casting and location combined made this movie and made it work. Along with other nuances such as ugly Megan Fox, as succubus Jennifer’s energy depleted she got uglier and uglier as the movie went on. However eat a boy and the skin is great and the hair all shiny, which makes me think that I need to try this sometime. Man trapping might be good for my hair too.
A lot of people expressed outrage at the ending too, I saw it as being inevitable. It had to end that way because there needed to be a final straw to push Needy over the edge and face off with her demon best friend. This can also be perceived as a metaphor for when a best friend sleeps with another’s boyfriend and suddenly they aren’t friends anymore. However it also needed to be pointed out to Needy that although Jennifer was her friend, she really wasn’t. Jennifer was nothing more than a spoiled bitch that clung to Needy to make her feel good about herself. Most often relationships between girls are like that too, catfights over dumb crap till the end. Or if it not a catfight it is just tedious passive aggressive shit, that inspires one to get a book on demonology to figure out how to properly spear the hell-bitch.
So overall I really enjoyed this movie. While it does have some flaws the rest makes up for it.
Paranormal Activity was created in 2006 as an indie mocumentary in which a couple, Katie and Micah, chronicle a haunting that is taking place in their home.
The movie starts off at a snail’s pace by introducing us to the main characters of Katie (Katie Featherstone) and Micah (Micah Sloat), by making us spend 40 minutes with these people to only learn that Micah is an oblivious immature dipshit, and Katie is just oblivious. Their plight is that they have been experiencing some strange occurrences in their home. It started out with the usual footsteps, banging and scratching sounds coming from the walls. This prompts the couple to buy a video camera and some digital mini recorders to see what they can catch. However when the activity escalates they turn to a medium to access the type of haunting they are dealing with. He rules out a human spirit and tells them what they are dealing with is a demonic entity. However it is during this meeting that Katie is forced to admit that this is not a new experience for her, and since the age of 8 she had seen a shadowy figure standing over her while trying to sleep.
main con I have with this movie is the character of Micah. Most often in horror movies, you are actually supposed to be in the corner of the main characters, but when the main character is nothing but annoying and abrasive there isn’t much sympathy that you can evoke for them. Now with that being said, who am I supposed to care about while watching this movie? It is most certainly not the idiotic brohab who is going to attempt to chest bump a demon down a hallway while yelling at it to “leave his lady alone”. However part of the charm of this movie is the haunting effects, mainly Katie being drug out of bed and down the hallway. But then I also have to say that they went into overkill with the Ouija board scene, there was so much going on at once that I expected fireworks and fanfare.
This movie has forced me to sit on the fence, because I didn’t like it, yet I didn’t hate it either. However with all the various endings and the scene alterations made just so this movie could get a theatrical release I found that it cheapened the whole thing for me, and just made it seem very silly in the end. I also personally preferred the screener version, to the theatrical release.
Some noticeable differences between the two are the exclusion of story of Diane (screener) to be replaced with the broken picture of Katie and Micah (theatrical), along with the different endings. After doing some research I have found out that there are really three endings to this movie, however one that featured Katie cutting her own throat in front of the camera was only shown once at a public viewing and then was replaced with the ending that was seen in the screener at Screamfest 07 and Slamdance 08.
Overall I think it is a fair thing for me to state that the hype might have damaged this movie for some horror fans. The most common thing I have heard from people is “It didn’t really scare me.”, which I also happen to agree with. There were a few moments where I perked up in my seat and thought “That was neat” but this is really not one of those movies that you have to run out and see at the theatre, unless you really hate SAW like I do.
