Tag: horror

Review: Malignant

On By E. A. SolinasIn reviews, UncategorizedLeave a comment

“Malignant” is one of those movies that is… hard to judge. It’s hard to judge because the intent of it is not entirely clear, and so you’re left unsure whether the filmmaker responsible for it was successful in their ambitions.

Specifically, it’s hard to tell if it was meant to be funny or not.

In the broadest sense, “Malignant” is a horror movie, by the current king of horror, James Wan. And for the first two acts, it serves as a perfectly serviceable buildup to some kind of horrifying revelation, with distinct overtones of the gothic and giallo. Then… the third act happens, and somehow the drama, the absurd action and the bizarreness of it all splatters across the screen like so much CGI blood. It’s absolutely gutsplitting.

When her abusive husband cracks her head against a wall, pregnant Madison Lake (Annabelle Wallis) locks herself in her bedroom. But she’s woken in the night by the murder of her husband – and an attack by a mysterious figure with long hair over his face, which leads to her losing her baby. Detectives Kekoa Shaw (George Young) and Regina Moss (Michole Briana White) investigate, but the only evidence to be found is bizarre and inexplicable, so they suspect Madison.

Upon returning to her home, Madison begins having visions of the killer hunting down and murdering other people – and it turns out that yes, her visions are coming true. The problem is, it’s all tied up in Madison’s mysterious childhood, before she was adopted by her parents… and she can’t remember that. To find out who “Gabriel” is, and how to stop him before he murders again, Madison will have to uncover a horrifying truth about herself.

I’m going to be blunt about this – “Malignant” is not a good movie. It has plot holes up the wazoo, a massive plot twist that can be easily figured out in the first ten minutes, and countless unanswered questions. For instance, why doesn’t Madison have a scar? How is Gabriel able to control electricity? Why does he wear a leather coat? Why does he have superhuman agility? All of these questions will not be answered, because the plot comes unraveled like a cheap sweater when you think about it for more than a few minutes!

But at the same time, there’s something strangely lovable about the movie. It has the innate drama and striking, haunting visual artistry seen in old giallo movies, right down to the copious gore, mingled with a kind of bad 1990s horror-movie aesthetic that just isn’t seen anymore. The opening sequence alone is a block of pure cheese, and it’s beautiful.

This gives the movie a rather inconsistent tone – during most of the police work and Madison’s daily life, we’re given a fairly realistic, subdued directorial style from Wan. Then Gabriel appears, and suddenly everything is crashing lightning, gothic castle-hospitals, and medical awards being used to brutally stab people to death. And of course, there’s the third act, where everything is dialed up to eleven – the sentimentality, the cheese, the bizarre plot twists.

This includes a scene that seems like it was made to be hilarious, but I honestly can’t tell if it was – a scene in which “Gabriel” carves his way through the police station, with superhuman acrobatics, snapped spines and rivers of gore… all performed backwards. James Wan, what exactly was your intent here?

Annabelle Wallis is merely passable as Madison – she’s okay when the role demands she be scared, and her crazy-eyes stare is pretty solid, but most other emotions just make her look like she has a stomachache. Maddie Hasson gives a pretty good performance as Madison’s younger sister, and Young has a striking presence as the police detective who looks beneath the veneer of the obvious to find out what is happening.

If nothing else, be glad that James Wan got the chance to make “Malignant” – an original horror movie that isn’t part of a glossy franchise, and which wears its niche influences like a badge of honor. It’s not a good movie, but it is an entertaining and memorable one.

Review: Hellboy (2019)

On By E. A. SolinasIn reviewsLeave a comment

From its very first opening moments, the 2019 reboot “Hellboy” shows us exactly the kind of movie that it is – with a bird eating the liquefied eyeball of a rotten corpse, and Ian McShane throwing a gratuitous F-bomb.

Specifically, it’s the kind of movie that a 13-year-old who thinks he’s edgy would make – lots of swearing, lots of characters being obnoxious, lots of extremely graphic violence shown in lovingly-framed detail, and so on. “Hellboy” seems to aspire to be kind of like “Deadpool” in its mixture of comedy and bloody violence, but the meandering, overstuffed storyline and unlikable lead characters make it a chore to sit through.

After killing a B.P.R.D. agent who had been vampirized, Hellboy (David Harbour) angsts about his status as a monster, and what that means to an organization dedicated to stamping them out. He’s then sent to help the Osiris Club in England with exterminating a trio of giants… only for the Club to try to kill him because he’s destined to bring about the apocalypse. If you’re wondering what all this has to do with the main plot, the answer is: very little.

The actual villain of the piece is Nimue (Milla Jovovich), the legendary sorceress, who was chopped into six pieces by King Arthur and sent to six different parts of England. Not the world. Not Europe. Just England. Now the pig-fae Gruagach (Stephen Graham) is reuniting her various body parts – and if she is fully restored, she will bring down an apocalyptic plague across the entire world, wiping out humanity.

Hellboy is soon called on to stop Nimue, along with ghost-punching medium Alice Monaghan (Sasha Lane) and surly B.P.R.D. agent Ben Daimio (Daniel Dae Kim). But Nimue quickly decides that she wants Hellboy as her king, since she knows of his apocalyptic destiny and wants him her to rule over a new world at her side. Unfortunately for the current world, Hellboy seems quite tempted by the offer.

“Hellboy” was already facing an uphill battle, given that the character’s previous appearances were directed by the beloved Guillermo del Toro. But even if one appreciates it entirely on its own merits, the movie is still pretty terrible – and only part of that is due to the relentless swearing and hyper-graphic gore, which feel like a teen boy’s idea of what an R-rated movie should be like.

One of the big problems is that the story is an overstuffed mess, with subplots unrelated to the main plot. Whole chunks of the narrative could have been easily streamlined out, such as Hellboy’s fight with the giants, which feels like a side-quest in a video game. The cinematography is pretty ugly and grimy, the special effects range from acceptable to “how did this get released in theaters?”, and the dialogue is bad more often than not (“But it’s not going to work, you know, cause I’m a Capricorn and you’re f***ing nuts!”).

It also has a wealth of characters who exist entirely to vomit exposition. Baba Yaga, for instance, is a character who exists entirely to tell people to go places, rather than having any real impact on the plot. Or consider the blind woman with precognitive powers, who is just there to recount baby’s Hellboy’s entry into our world, a bizarre scene that is somehow sidetracked by the appearance of Lobster Johnson. “Who?” you may be asking. The answer: nobody who matters to the plot, so it doesn’t matter.

Of course, the main characters aren’t much better. It’s worth noting that no criticism should fall upon David Harbour, who gives as good a performance as anyone could possibly give. The movie fails him, not the other way around.

Specifically, it fails him by making Hellboy a whiny, passive-aggressive brat who is easily swayed by Nimue and gripes about his father constantly. His angst over monsters not getting to live in the open seems rather hollow as well, considering that we see virtually no monsters who aren’t actively harmful to humans… and since Hellboy himself is hardly a secret, since he goes on a days-long bender in a Mexican bar.

The other characters aren’t particularly likable either – Alice tends towards being smugly annoying, and Daimio seems to be stuck in a combatively bad mood with no particular reason or resolution. No, being revealed as a werejaguar does not count as an arc. The closest to a character who actually feels three-dimensional is Ian McShane’s Professor Broom, although even he isn’t a terribly likable person.

The 2019 reboot of “Hellboy” stumbles badly in its attempt to give us a darker, grittier portrait of our demonic hero – mainly because of the sloppy plot and painfully clumsy script. Stick with the comics or the earlier films.

The Mummy 2017 and Sexism

On By E. A. SolinasIn random, ruminationsLeave a comment

One of the many changes made to Mummy lore in the Tom Cruise movie The Mummy is that it focused on a female mummy rather than the traditional male ones. Despite Twitter’s beliefs that all gender/race flips are greeted with sexist racist fanboy hatred, the viewing public did not have a problem with gender-flipping the mummy, especially since she was played by the wonderful Sofia Boutella, who gives the character a real sense of wiry, acrobatic physicality.

Unfortunately, the movie sucked for myriad reasons. Among the reasons: the crushing lack of research, the lack of Egypt, Tom Cruise’s midlife crisis, the need to shoehorn a S.H.I.E.L.D.-like organization into the story, the script full of holes, the blatant ripping off of An American Werewolf In London, and so forth. It’s not a good movie, and I didn’t enjoy it.

But the thing that really stuck out to me is that despite deciding to make the mummy female… the movie is actually rather sexist towards her. This is best highlighted when you compare the 2017 mummy, Ahmanet, to her male counterpart in the 1999 movie, Imhotep. And two things really stuck out at me.

One, Ahmanet is weak. I don’t mean she’s weakly characterized – although she is – but that she’s not very powerful for an undead mummy powered by divine sponsorship. About midway through the movie, she’s captured by the troops of Prodigium (the monster-hunting equivalent of S.H.I.E.L.D.). Do they use magical tools and amulets? Do they somehow neutralize the power of Set, rendering her helpless? Do they use centuries of research and knowledge and technology and the supernatural to overwhelm this godlike figure’s godlike powers?

Nope. They use ropes and hooks to catch her, then chain her up with a mercury drip. It isn’t even hard for them.

If that doesn’t sound weak, stop for a moment and remember Imhotep from the 1999 movie. Imhotep was powerful. Ridiculously so. He had his weaknesses (like kitties), but it’s hard to imagine him being completely incapacitated by some guys with ropes. Yet the female mummy is weak and gets taken down almost effortlessly.

And you may be thinking, “Well, it’s to show how amazing Prodigium is! They’re so capable and strong that they can stop a god-powered mummy!”

But no, that isn’t the case. Because that is the second time that Ahmanet is taken down by mere mortal schlubs – the first time was in ancient Egypt right after she murdered her family, and she was newly juiced-up with Set’s power. Not only were the people who caught her ordinary people, but they didn’t have technology, centuries of organized study and gathered magical power. They were just people. Not only did they catch her, but they successfully mummified her alive (which is not possible, incidentally) and transported her to another country before properly imprisoning her in a neutralizing element. That is, for a mummy, quite weak.

For the record, Imhotep also was caught and buried alive by ordinary humans… but that was before he had most of his powers. So it made sense that the Medjai could catch him!

The other part of Ahmanet that struck me as sexist is her ultimate goal. Her initial goal seems to be to rule Egypt, because she apparently was raised with the belief that she would be the queen regnant when her father died, but then his wife had a baby boy so she was knocked out of the succession. For the record, pharoahs had many wives, so the chances of a pharoah having only two children in twenty years is… very unlikely. That’s a more medieval-European trope.

Anyway, she was so upset about not becoming queen that she summoned the god Set, and he gave her… skin text and four pupils, and a knife. So she wandered off and killed her entire family, baby included, and then decides to bring Set into a mortal man’s body because she’s in love with him. When she revives in the present, her motive does not change – she wants Set to incarnate in Tom Cruise’s body.

Now, let’s again compare her to Imhotep.

Imhotep also had romantic love as the centerpiece of his quest. He was the secret lover of the pharoah’s mistress (why not a lesser wife or concubine? Again, very medieval-European!), until she committed suicide so that the Medjai wouldn’t capture Imhotep. So his goal was to bring her back to life. He was captured and sealed away under a magic spell, and when he is revived as a mummy, his ultimate goal is also unchanged – once he has his body restored, he wants to bring his lover’s soul back in Rachel Weisz’s body.

Similar motives, similar goals, similar story progression, yes?

Well, no. Like I mentioned before, Ahmanet’s goal is to revive an evil god, so he can rule the world. She wants to be his queen, not a queen regnant. She even explicitly says this, and she acts like a lovesick fangirl for most of the story.

Imhotep, on the other hand, never gives the impression that he’s going to be subservient to any person, and at no point do you imagine that his lover is going to be the one sitting up on the throne while he’s just the arm candy.

I don’t know much about the production of this movie, but I will say that this motivation feels a little like it was shoved in there. It may be bad writing giving the character inconsistent or poorly-explained motives… or it may be the obviously-insecure-about-his-age Tom Cruise insisting that all women in the movie must be dazzled by his toothy charm. I don’t know.

But either way, the handling of the female mummy was not good, and they should have simply followed this rule: if it isn’t something you can see Imhotep doing, leave it out.

Recommendation: Ghost Hunt

On By E. A. SolinasIn recommendationsLeave a comment

Like many people, I like anime. I’m not one of those people into super-obscure or niche stuff, but I enjoy anime like My Hero Academia, Bleach, Inuyasha, Fruits Basket, Fairy Tail, etc. I used to be into Naruto and Dragonball, until I realized that both of them were ass-numbingly long and I didn’t really like the characters very much.

And one of the lesser-known anime I love is Ghost Hunt, a series that adds a more professional, sometimes more factual aspect to the usual supernatural shenanigans of Japanese urban fantasy. It gets a little silly towards the end (one of the final episodes has a Catholic priest PUNCHING GHOSTS), but it’s an overall enjoyable series that mingles urban fantasy, horror, and a hint of romance.

It follows a young girl named Mai, who accidentally runs into a supernatural detective agency who are investigating a supposedly-haunted building at the school she attends. She accidentally wrecks some of their equipment and injures the assistant, so she ends up working for the paranormal investigator Kazuya Shibuya, whom she nicknames “Naru” because she thinks he’s a narcissist. There are also three other exorcists called in: the not-very-monkly Buddhist monk Hosho, the rarely-successful Shinto shrine maiden Ayako, and the perpetually mellow Catholic priest John Brown. Oh, and there’s a TV medium named Masako, who’s condescending and nasty and can’t take a hint that a man is disinterested in her, and Naru’s assistant Lin, who’s kind of weird and distant from Mai.

As a group, they investigate a number of paranormal cases, including a haunted doll and a child being terrorized, the seemingly-haunted school, a strict school where a girl threatened to curse people, a school game with potentially deadly consequences, a labyrinthine house, and a family being haunted by ancient spirits. There are also some slightly lighter stories, one of them about a child’s spirit possessing Mai, and a ghost that splashes water on couples. The last one is more funny than spooky.

Be forewarned: this series is in fact quite horrific at times, ranging from merely being uncomfortably eerie to having bloody ghosts emerging from walls in a cursed mansion. It’s also a slow-burner for most of its run, with long stretches of talking about equipment, psychic phenomena (and sometimes the fakery of it), psychology, Japanese folk magic, and so on. It’s not boring – there are strange occurrences fairly frequently, and the banter between the characters keeps the energy moving – but it’s not a big splashy anime. It takes its time, as it is a mystery show of sorts.

A paeon to Tucker And Dale Vs. Evil

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WARNING: HERE THERE BE SPOILERS

For some reason, horror movies seem to be particularly susceptible to parody and tongue-in-cheek deconstruction. I haven’t seen as many parodies of action movies or romances. Even sci-fi movies haven’t had as many parodies or deconstructions as horror. Maybe it’s because there’s tension both in horror and comedy, leading to sudden releases.

And people might point to Cabin in the Woods (Joss Whedon is an overrated ass) as a primo example, or the Scary Movie movies, or Young Frankenstein for a classic… but in my opinion, one of the greatest is Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil. This is a parody of slasher-killer/killer-hillbilly movies that also just happens to be a really good movie.

The reversal of the hero/villain dynamic is the most obvious way of lampooning the genre — in this, the protagonists are the hapless hillbillies who just want to go hang out at their decayed vacation house, catch some fish, and fix their new place up. Tucker and Dale could not be more amiable and down-to-earth, and the only reason they ever come across as creepy to anyone is A) Dale’s social awkwardness, and B) the college kids’ preconceptions of hillbillies as dangerous, disgusting and amoral.

Conversely, the college kids — usually depicted as hapless victims in horror — are mostly morons who accidentally kill themselves by doing things like leaping into wood chippers or splashing paint thinner on a fire. The antagonist, however, is one of these college kids, a psychotic hater of hillbillies who decides to declare war on Tucker and Dale after the two rescue the girl he’s hoping to molest.

So the subversion of horror is pretty well handled in its own right — it takes the stuff we’re familiar with and flips it on its head. But the movie wouldn’t be as excellent as it is if it were just “haw haw, it’s funny because they’re dying due to their own stupidity rather than because of killer hillbillies! It is funny because that usually doesn’t happen in horror movies!”

Because… the characters are almost all really good and well-handled, and everything that happens more or less organically flowers from who those people are. Even the less developed characters (such as the various college kids) have fairly consistent and sensibly-drawn characters (despite the blonde girl who’s dressed very badly for a woodland camp-out). Except for the psychotic guy, they all behave like… real people. Sometimes not very smart real people, but real people. For instance, one guy decides “screw this, I’m finding the police” and does just that. It doesn’t turn out well, but he does do the sensible thing.

And there are character arcs (Dale having to develop self-confidence and strength), developed character relationships (both romantic and platonic), several Chekhov’s guns (I won’t mention what they are, because some are spoilers), and it ramps up the tension gradually, punctuated by some hilarious accidental deaths.

I won’t go into too much detail about Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil, but I will say that I really don’t think it would be as effective a horror-comedy/deconstruction/parody if it didn’t have such well-developed characters and such a solid plot.

Oh, and it’s insanely funny as well.

Review: Hellboy Animated

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Folklore and legend are rich with plenty of ghouls, gods and monsters that fit nicely into the “Hellboy” universe. And “Hellboy: Sword of Storms/Blood & Iron” deals with some of the supernatural nasties in a pair of animated spinoff adventures. These two stories are solid if not brilliant, and they have plenty of Hellboy quips, weird creatures, and a healthy splattering of gore, fire and magic.

In “Blood and Iron,” the BPRD is asked to investigate a haunted mansion, and Professor Broom insists that Liz, Hellboy, Abe and himself go on the mission. Though the hype-happy owner is only interested in using the investigation to make money, the place is really haunted — bluish ghosts drift around, statues weep, and a witches’ magic circle is on the floor.

It soon becomes obvious that a pair of harpy-witches are trying to resurrect the evil Erzsebet Ondrushko, a horrendous vampire who was abducting young girls so she could bathe in their blood. Decades ago, Professor Broom defeated her and seemingly killed her. Now with Abe captured by the hags, Liz and Broom are in a race against time to stop the vampire’s resurrection — and even if they succeed, there’s still their witch-goddess Hecate, whom Hellboy must somehow stop.

And in “Sword of Storms,” first the team ventures into a green, slimy, root-filled underground temple, where they must battle an ancient bat-deity and a small army of Aztec mummies. Then to the main plot — a history professor receives an ancient scroll that tells the story of the demonic brothers Thunder and Lightning, and a doomed love between a princess and a young samurai. And when the professor finds the samurai’s sword — surprise! — he gets possessed by the demons.

But when the BPRD is called in, Hellboy touches the sword as well — and is sucked into a bizarre otherworld full of monsters, ghosts and magical creatures. In the meantime, Abe and Liz are caught in a typhoon that strands them in the middle of nowhere — and it turns out that dragons are on the way. To save civilization, Hellboy must not only escape from the otherworld of Japenese legend, but also deal with the demons and ghosts….

“Hellboy: Sword of Storms” and “Hellboy: Blood and Iron” are somewhat different beasts from the movies made by Guillermo del Toro — they have some characters and plots that were from the original Mike Mignola comics, and the art is more reminiscent of those. They’re fun additions to the Hellboy mythos, but they do have some flaws in there (the pallid ghostly romance in “Sword of Storms,” which is utterly unegaging because we don’t know or care about these people).

They are also quite different from each other — “Sword of Storms” is a very straightforward and simple storyline that travels along two parallel paths, while “Blood and Iron” branches out into multiple storylines (and even goes backward!). And they have plenty of dark facets — gore, slime, thunderstorms, creepy forests, haunted mansions and the various monsters that arise, ranging from harpies to headless goblins. And the writers do a pretty good job adding in that little humorous edge to the stories as well (“He really likes cucumbers… WHAT IS YOUR NAME?!”).

Ron Perlman’s vocals make this Hellboy absolutely perfect — he’s sarcastic but good-hearted (“You’re lucky we let you be seen with us!”), practical, and usually ends up dealing with all the messy stuff. Doug Jones provides an intellectual slant as the resourceful, mellow fish-man Abe, and Selma Blair has a little trouble bringing the sharp-witted pyrokinetic Liz to life. And John Hurt gets to be the star of “Blood and Iron,” where Professor Broom comes face to face with an old nemesis.

“Hellboy: Sword of Storms/Blood and Iron” have a few flaws, but they are solid animated adventures with plenty of monsters and dark twists. Just remember: These are definitely not for kids.

Review: Meridian

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If Laurell K. Hamilton ever wrote a straight romance novel, it would probably be something like “Meridian” — lots of flowing shirts, rape… and sex with a furry werewolf.

And if you aren’t a fan of those things, then “Meridian” won’t have a lot to recommend itself. This movie tries to be both a sexploitation movie AND a “beauty and the beast” gothic romance, but just ends up being painfully slow-moving and incoherent. Not to mention that the constant rape and furry sex completely neutralizes any hint of actual sexiness to be found.

The story follows Catherine Bomarzini (Sherilyn Fenn), an American art student who returns to her family castle in Italy. Then her idiot friend Gina (Charlie Spradling) invites a troupe of wandering magicians to dinner at the castle, led by the arrogant Lawrence (Malcom Jamieson). Then the troupe drugs the two women so Lawrence can rape them, followed by him handing off Catherine to his twin brother Oliver (Jamieson again).

Apparently we’re supposed to view THEIR sex as being real lovemaking, but she still seems rather dopey. Oh, and Oliver turns into a werewolf while raping Catherine.

The following day, Catherine begins seeing strange visions from the past — a dead girl in a flowing white dress, a werewolf (guess who it is!) and a secret passage filled with red light. She also begins to figure out that there is a longtime curse associated with her family, and that Oliver (whom she thinks is the same person as Lawrence) can only be freed by her.

The first half of “Meridian” is pure sexploitation (rape, boobies, Sherilynn Fenn naked), with every possible excuse to show boobs bouncing out of tight shirts. But after our first glimpse of the werewolf, director Charles Band starts trying to turn it into an atmospheric gothic romance with curses, a werewolf, a tormented Byronic hero in flowing white shirts and a mysterious painting. It fails. A lot.

The movie sludges along at a painfully slow pace, with awful dialogue (“I have no world without you”) and a lot of things that are never explained (that giant secret passage leading directly into a bedroom? Never explained). It drapes itself with scarlet velvet, moonlight, silver jewelry and shirts straight off of a romance novel cover, but Band can’t hide the wretchedly contrived story.

And the climax is fascinatingly ludicrous: a werewolf holding a crossbow is thwarted by a whip-cracking dwarf in Elizabethan garb. I felt like someone had slipped drugs into MY drink.

One of the biggest problems is the rape. Not only does the villain date-rape the heroine and her friend, but it’s shot in a slow-motion, erotic manner, as if Band was trying to make it alluring. And it’s made even worse because the HERO also rapes her. Yes. While the heroine is meant to be coming out of her drugged stupor, her lack of reaction to having sex with a werewolf shows she was still pretty out-of-it.

Oh yes. There is sex with a werewolf in full furry form, and we’re supposed to find it erotic. It’s not erotic. It’s actually rather grotesque to those without furry fetishes, and it negates any slight hints of sexiness that the movie might produce.

And despite Fenn’s decent acting, the characters are just awful. Catherine is a walking blank who reacts instead of acting, and Spradling’s entire purpose in the movie is to clean a painting and pick up a crossbow. As for Jamieson’s double performance as Lawrence and Oliver (oh, cute), he’s a little too excessive as both the evil mustache-twirling rapist and the brooding sad-eyed woobie.

“Meridian” is a disaster in every way — a rapey sexploitation movie that tries to transform itself into a gothic romance. As anything other than a showcase for slow-motion boobs, it fails.

Review: The Mummy (2017)

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Since every movie franchise now has to be a cinematic universe, Universal decided to dig up up all their old movie monsters and fling them into new, flashier films.

And their most recent dead-on-arrival attempt to revive their shared universe was “The Mummy,” a remake/reboot-but-not-really of previous films about an undead horror rising from the tomb… except they pretty much abandoned any actual material from those movies except “there’s a mummy, and a giant screamy face.” Instead, they present a mass of action cliches without a hint of irony, dressing it up with a “sexy” mummy and a crammed-in starting point for the Dark Universe.

During an airstrike, soldier-of-fortune/looter Nick Morton (Tom Cruise) accidentally uncovers an Egyptian tomb buried under a town… in Iraq. Even the movie is aware of how strange that is. They just happen to have an archaeologist (Annabelle Wallis) on hand, who discovers this was the tomb of Ahmonet, an Egyptian princess whose lust for power caused her to sell her soul to Set, murder her family, and be mummified alive for her crimes. Never mind that the process of mummification would kill you.

But things immediately start going wrong — the plane carrying her sarcophagus crashes, Nick temporarily dies, and then he is haunted by visions of a bandaged woman stalking him through the mist. He’s been cursed by her, and she wants to use him as the vessel for Set. And even when Ahmonet is captured by a Super-Sekrit Organization (like S.H.I.E.L.D., but less competent), Nick finds that he may have no hope of escaping her grasp.

“The Mummy” is very much a MOAR action movie. Moar mummies. Moar crashes. Moar fistfights. Moar ‘splosions. Moar attractive women. Moar boogity-boo scares. Moar moar moar. This movie feels almost like a parody of a Hollywood action-horror movie, ticking off all the cliches and never bothering to do anything that we haven’t seen before… but without a sense of humor or self-awareness that everything in its story has been done before.

Instead, we’re pelted with so many cliches that it feels like the studio raided TV Tropes. And as a result, its massive, bombastic nature seems like a storm conjured up to try to hide the fact that the plot is as thin as papyrus — and it’s definitely not scary, or as funny as it thinks it is (haha, Nick is naked!). There are a few spooky moments here and there, mostly when we see Ahmanet scuttling around in her undead state, looking like an arthritic Gollum. But more often we just careen from place to place, following Nick and Boring Blonde as they lurch from one crisis to another, building up zero momentum as they go.

And as if to show the lack of care that went into it, there are also blatant fails at Egyptian mythology (Set as the god of death), ancient Egyptian culture, etymology (Jekyll claims “Satan” is an alternate name for Set) and history (what would the Crusaders have been doing in what is now Iraq? Being horribly lost?).

Tom Cruise is… Tom Cruise. Despite playing a looter, liar and thief, we’re clearly meant to be charmed by his roguish one-liners and occasional moments of not-totally-self-centered-ness. But when you boil him down, there isn’t really anything about the character to like or be interested in, which makes Wallis’ Boring Blonde’s transition from contempt to love seem even more ridiculously artificial. And Russell Crowe plays a woefully unimposing Dr. Jekyll, who predictably transitions into a ludicrously unscary, scenery-chewing Mr. Hyde.

Sofia Boutella does an excellent job with what little material she has; she seems to have been hired mostly because she can scuttle, scamper and bend a lot. Unfortunately, she’s simply not frightening here — her version of a mummy is too wriggly, weak and ALIVE to ever be a properly undead fright. She looks and acts more like a gymnast in a mummy-themed unitard.

“The Mummy” has a few good spots that haven’t been totally dried out, but the withered hulk is just a standard Hollywood blockbuster — lots of sound and fury, signifying that the Dark Universe was dead on arrival.

Review: Psycho

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“Psycho” is one of those rare movies that needs no introduction, by a director who also needs no introduction.

It’s one of the greatest horror movies of all time, and it deserves to be. Alfred Hitchcock’s magnum opus is a clean-cut, low-budget affair that lulls you with its slow, uneasy pace, only to shock you with bursts of bloody violence that practically make you jump out of your chair. And the acting — especially by Tony Perkins — is absolutely brilliant.

Secretary Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) is entrusted with $40,000, which she’s supposed to deposit in the bank for her employer. Instead, she steals the money for her impoverished boyfriend, Sam Loomis (John Gavin). She ends up staying overnight at a remote motel, where the only other people are the owner Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) and his crazy invalid mother.

Then someone kills Marion in the shower. Believing his mother is responsible, a desperate Norman cleans up the crime scene and hides the body.

Meanwhile, Marion’s sister Lila (Vera Miles) is doing her best to find both her sister and the $40,000, hiring a private eye and trying to figure out where Marion went before her disappearance. Teaming up with Sam Loomis, she begins seeking out whoever saw her last — but neither of them are prepared for the true horror of Bates Motel.

The biggest problem with “Psycho” is probably that, like most legendary movies with a twist, the brilliant twist ending is so well known that its impact is lessened. Pretty much everybody knows what’s going to happen and what is going on, so it isn’t as shocking as it probably was back in 1960. It’s sort of like “I am your father” or “You blew it up!” — everybody knows the twist.

But that doesn’t mean that “Psycho” isn’t still freakishly scary and beautifully-made. Hitchcock’s direction is clean, smooth and elegant, painting the screen with light and shadow like a master painter. He fills every scene with a slow-building sense of unease, even if nothing bad is actually happening at the moment. It’s quiet, restrained…

… until suddenly a shadowy figure lunges out and starts stabbing somebody, while the screeching violins stab right along. The violence isn’t very graphic, but it’s incredibly shocking.

As Norman Bates, Tony Perkins gave one of the greatest performances you’ll ever see in a film — he comes across as shy and boyish, with an ineffable charm. He comes across as a harmless momma’s boy who’s probably never even talked to a girl before. But even from the start, there are hints that he can abruptly transform into something dark and twisted.

In fact, his is probably the only performance you’ll truly remember from the movie. Not that the other actors aren’t good — Miles and Leigh give brilliant low-key performances as a pair of desperate young women — but Perkins is just SO perfect and chilling that you can’t get over him.

“Psycho” doesn’t need a recommendation from anyone at this point — it’s one of those brilliant movies that has achieved a mythic status. Go see it. Now.

Review: The Thing

On By E. A. SolinasIn reviewsLeave a comment

Imagine that you’re in a remote Antarctic outpost, locked in eternal icy winter, with little to do and only a few people to spend time with. Now imagine that a screaming, fleshy alien horror infiltrates your base, turning everyone it touches into extensions of itself – and if you don’t stop it, the entire planet will be destroyed.

That’s the premise behind “The Thing,” a haunting 1982 horror movie by masterful director John Carpenter. And this classic cult film is a prime example of science fiction at its most terrifying – it’s a slow-burning, claustrophobic film filled with psychological dread that periodically erupts into tentacular, flame-filled warfare. This is no jump-scare-filled schlock movie, but a finely-crafted nightmare.

A seemingly ordinary sled dog runs into an American station in the Antarctic, pursued by a crazed screaming Norwegian with a gun, who is quickly shot dead in self-defense. Helicopter pilot MacReady (Kurt Russell) and Dr. Copper (Richard Dysart) venture to the Norwegian base, and find that someone has burned it down. Everyone is dead and burned, frozen or both… and they find the remains of a horribly malformed, inhuman creature.

Well, they find out what happened when the Norwegian dog is kenneled with the other sled dogs: it starts absorbing them into one grotesque tentacled mass. Only fire kills it. The Americans soon realize that it’s an alien organism from a nearby crash site, which can perfectly mimic other organisms – so perfectly that no one can be sure who is really human, and who is part of The Thing. Even worse, it could assimilate all life on Earth in a relative short time, if it ever got out of the frozen wasteland of Antarctica.

So, unsurprisingly, there’s a lot of paranoia and suspicion among the Americans, especially after Dr. Blair (Wilford Brimley) sabotages their vehicles and destroys their communications equipment. Deprived of sleep and not knowing who to trust, MacReady and the others must discover who is a Thing before it’s too late.

John Carpenter produced a number of outstanding classic films like “Halloween,” “The Fog,” “They Live,” “Big Trouble in Little China,” “Escape From New York,” and so on. But “The Thing” may be Carpenter’s finest hour – it’s one of those carefully-cultivated, intricately intelligent movies that has pretty much no flaws. The acting, the writing, the atmosphere, and the feeling of all-consuming, gnawing paranoia right to the very final seconds of the film.

Carpenter’s direction here is mostly a slow-burn, building up a tripwire tension that permeates every scene… until, without warning, flesh starts stretching, tentacles whip out, and strange fluids pour out. The nightmarishness of the whole claustrophobic experience is only heightened by the way the movie makes you feel for the characters. You feel the horror of being surrounded by people who might not even be human, of being too afraid to sleep, of being surrounded by a wasteland of snow and burned remains.

And a lot of the movie’s effectiveness comes from its special effects. These are some of the most convincing practical effects ever captured on film – they’re fleshy, dripping with fluid, twisting and gnarling into something bloated and grotesque. And yet, for all the giant grainy teeth, oozing fluids and spider-legs, the most horrifying moments of The Thing’s presence are when it looks just a little too much like something ordinary and living, such as the giant screaming snarling dog-Thing. There’s almost a sense of cathartic relief when the humans fry one of the Things, just because something so profoundly wrong and horrifying is now dead.

The acting is also absolutely top-notch here, with Russell taking center stage as MacReady. The character isn’t really a hero – he’s just a guy who flies helicopters, who finds himself in the unenviable position of saving the world by whatever means necessary. He may be less educated than many of the other people in the outpost, but he’s undeniably intelligent, cunning and resourceful. But Russell is bolstered by some excellent supporting actors, including Brimley, Dysart, Keith David, and… well, pretty much everyone. The dog isn’t a bad actor either – its unnatural silence and calm is an early clue to what it truly is.

It may not have gotten the love it deserved when it was first released, but “The Thing” has proven over time that it is a true horror/sci-fi classic. Absolutely masterful.