Knife Edge

KNIFE EDGE

A slow-paced and boring haunted house film from 2010, Knife Edge follows a woman named Emma who moves into a sprawling country home in England with her five-year-old son (Thomas) and husband (Henri).  Thomas develops a relationship with an “imaginary” friend called Tobias, and Emma has strange visions involving acts of violence in the house.  Meanwhile, Henri’s photography business crumbles, and he plots a way to gain control of his wife’s family’s trust money.  Emma’s sister researches the house and discovers that two people were murdered there three decades earlier.  The plot becomes increasingly convoluted until the final twist reveals an unexpected villain among Emma’s associates.

Knife Edge features characters who behave in ways that seem to lack motivation.  When Emma and Henri first arrive at their new house, they inexplicably instruct Thomas to wait by the car while they go inside (thereby allowing Thomas to wander outside and get into mischief).  At one point Emma seems to hear strange noises upstairs, then before investigating them she takes a detour outside and for no apparent reason reaches into a hole at the base of a tree trunk.  Thomas falls asleep in the middle of a conversation.  The sum total of all this odd behavior is a sense that one is watching a poorly-told tale.

The movie’s strong points are its original music (composed by Guy Farley) and fine locations.  The house has great atmosphere, particularly when the power goes out during a storm.  Atmosphere and music are not enough to balance out a crummy plot, though, and Knife Edge sadly is poorly-paced and has a rather passive protagonist with no clear goal.  I’m a sucker for good ghost stories, but this one’s forgettable. 

Fragile

FRAGILE

A 2005 film that was only recently released on DVD in the USA, Fragile follows a night nurse named Amy in a hospital that’s on the verge of being shut down.  Most of the patients have been transferred to another facility, and only a few children remain.  When unexplained ghostly happenings occur, Amy grows to believe that the hospital is haunted.  Some of the kids report seeing a “mechanical girl” named Charlotte.  Amy gradually pieces together information about the hospital’s history (and the mysterious long-shut-down second floor) that seems to reveal who the ghost could be and what she wants.  There’s a twist surprise I won’t spoil here about the nature of the haunting.  The film ends on a mildly depressing note.

Fragile has decent atmosphere and a couple of good frightening scenes, but the protagonist is a generic and forgettable character who stumbles upon fountains of exposition at just the right moments to keep the plot moving forward.  If you’re in the mood for an original ghost tale, Fragile will pass the time but won’t necessarily stun you with brilliant storytelling.

Madman

MADMAN

A slasher film from 1982, Madman features a simple tale that seems to be missing a third act.  The narrative ends abruptly with a brief epilogue after the final murder with no resolution about the fate of “Madman Marz” (the killer of the piece).  The project opens with some camp counselors and their charges sitting around a campfire.  Max, the head of the camp, tells a story about the former inhabitant of a nearby dilapidated house.  Seems the fellow went mad one day and killed his family with an ax.  A lynch mob tried to hang him, but his body was missing the next day when they went to cut him down.  Legend has it that if you say his name above a whisper, he’ll find and kill you. 

Naturally one of the campers bellows “Madman Marz” and throws a rock through the window of the “abandoned” house.  The rest of the film consists of a handful of kill scenes strung together by typical “life at camp” moments (counselors having sex and such) as Madman Marz goes on a murderous rampage and picks off some victims one by one.  At the end, one counselor (Betsy) gets all the campers (except for one who has been wandering in the woods all night) onto a bus and sends them to the police station while she stays behind to check for survivors.  Check out the final minutes of this movie if you must know what happens next.

The Overlook Film Encyclopedia of Horror describes Madman as “well-photographed, reasonably suspenseful, and boasting good special effects.”  That’s a fair assessment.  I don’t know if the abrupt ending was meant as a setup for a sequel.  The actress who played Betsy has a unique face and eyes.  The concept of a killer in the woods stalking camp counselors is not unique, but Madman has a certain charm as a representative slasher from the early eighties.  Some of the deaths are unique (one counselor is decapitated by the hood of her vehicle as she checks the engine), and the special effects are indeed above average for a low-budget piece.  Madman does not demand repeat viewings, but it’s worth a look on a chilly October night.

The Final

THE FINAL

A ballsy project in this post-Columbine environment, The Final is a harrowing and haunting film from 2010 in which a group of outcasts trick all the bullies from their high school into attending a costume party at an isolated house and then drug and torture them. 

Many of the actors playing the outcasts give outstanding nuanced performances (Lindsay Seidel as Emily is particularly good).  Judging from reviews and comments at The Internet Movie Database, I seem to be in the minority when I assert that this project has a smart script and clever directorial choices.  The early scenes depict realistic examples of the cruelty some teens inflict on others, and the later scenes show the dire consequences that such bullying can evoke.  The movie’s narrative builds at a steady pace and hooks the viewer with anticipation as soon as one realizes that the outcasts are plotting some form of revenge. 

“There are more like us out there,” the final outcast tells police moments before he shoots himself.  Indeed, I fear that this tale is a reflection not only of events that have already transpired in our society but also of things yet to come.

Pontypool

PONTYPOOL

A 2008 film that has many vocal fans and supporters on the message boards of The Internet Movie Database, Pontypool is a zombie film of sorts that takes place almost entirely within a small-town radio station while something anomalous occurs in the community.  The tale follows a morning-shift disc jockey (Grant Mazzy) and his producer (Sydney Briar) and an assistant (Laurel-Ann) as they go about what begins as a routine day getting local news and traffic reports on the air.  Soon eyewitnesses begin contacting the station to report some sort of mob event outside the office of one Dr. Mendez.  A correspondent for the station gives a harrowing account of seeing the mob pulling two people out of a vehicle – and then biting them.  Dr. Mendez himself shows up at the station, realizes that Laurel-Ann is “infected,” and ushers Sydney into the soundproof broadcasting booth with Mazzy.  He explains that Laurel-Ann is now “hunting,” and indeed she slams herself into the booth’s windows repeatedly in an apparent effort to get at those inside.  Mendez says something about how the infection spreads through language, and thus they should probably stop talking.  Zombies swarm into the station.  Mazzy distracts them by looping an audio recording on a speaker over the station’s front door.  When it begins to appear that Sydney may be infected, Mazzy somehow cures her by repeating “kill is kiss” over and over (thus short-circuiting the language-based infection).  The story ends with apparent military intervention and what may or may not be the destruction of the radio station.

Pontypool begins quite well.  The actor playing Mazzy (Stephen McHattie) has a marvelous voice and was totally believable as a disc jockey, and the early scenes establishing the group dynamics between Mazzy and his producer and the assistant had me hooked.  Somewhere around the middle (and more so toward the end), the story lost me.  The narrative grows confusing as Dr. Mendez presents what should be clear exposition about the nature of the zombie infection.  The zombies never seem like an actual threat to Mazzy and his producer (except for one moment when an infected child lunges forward after the two leave the safety of the booth).  I also wanted more sense of narrative resolution: what sparked the outbreak?  Was Dr. Mendez involved in causing the initial infections?  What happens in the world outside the radio station?  None of these questions are answered.  Pontypool is an interesting attempt at a unique zombie story in a confined setting, but it left me more frustrated than scared and awed.