The First Three Final Destination Films

FINAL DESTINATION

A film from the year 2000 in which death chases seven individuals who got off an airplane minutes before it exploded, Final Destination has a couple of clever death scenes and a visually-interesting finale (followed by a brief epilogue in Paris) but has little else going for it.  The story follows Alex, a high school student about to embark on a class trip to France.  After he boards the plane, Alex has a vision of the vehicle exploding shortly into its flight.  Alex freaks and gets off the plane.  One of his classmates (a girl named Clear Rivers) follows his lead.  Four other students and a teacher exit the plane and don’t re-board it only to see it explode in the air shortly after takeoff.  The FBI takes an interest in Alex’s tale of having a vision of the plane blowing up and investigates him.  Death, it turns out, does not like to be cheated, and soon one of Alex’s classmates (a fellow named Tod) dies in his bathroom through a most unfortunate accident that causes him to be strangled by cords in the shower stall.  Another survivor of the plane debacle gets run over by a bus.  Alex concludes that death has come back for those who escaped and will pick them off in the order they would have died on the plane.  The teacher bites the dust, and the remaining teens nearly get run over by a train.  One of them is decapitated shortly thereafter when a metal shard gets caught in a blast of wind.  Alex thinks he’s figured out a way to cheat death for good, but will his plan succeed?

The subplot about the FBI investigation of Alex goes nowhere and seems to exist just to pad out the movie’s running time.  Also, the story structure feels off with the plane exploding a full 18 minutes in.  I’d rather have seen the setup occur a lot faster, with the airplane disaster happening around ten minutes in and the first death of a survivor at the eighteen-minute mark instead.  Final Destination is really just a string of set-pieces designed to be entertaining and original death scenes.  If that’s enough for you, check it out.

FINAL DESTINATION 2

The first sequel in this franchise features deaths that are generally more over-the-top and spectacular than those in part one, though the plot doesn’t make any more sense this time around.  A young woman named Kim has a premonition of a major highway accident (the best set-piece in the picture) and (by blocking the on-ramp) saves the lives of several motorists including a cop.  After one of the survivors dies in a freak accident, Kim begins to seriously compare the situation of the saved motorists to that of the survivors of Flight 180 from the first film.  She seeks out Clear Rivers (who voluntarily lives in a padded sanitarium room) for advice.  Clear is inspired to help Kim and the others attempt to defeat death.  A couple more people die, and then Kim apparently finds a loophole by drowning herself and being revived by a doctor.

The writers went to great lengths to tie this narrative to the first film (going so far as to make Clear Rivers a major active character and establishing that all of the survivors this time around had some sort of connection to those from the original story).  This struck me as unnecessary.  Wouldn’t it be enough just to keep the formula of disaster survivors being stalked by death in the order they were supposed to perish?  Another returning character from the first film (a mortician) spouts some nonsense about how only new life can interrupt death’s design.  Like the first Final Destination, this project is essentially a set of clever death scenes strung together by a plot that doesn’t necessarily hold up under scrutiny.

FINAL DESTINATION 3

In the third installment, a high school senior named Wendy has a premonition that saves several roller coaster riders from a fatal accident.  As in the first two films, death stalks the survivors in the order they were supposed to die.  One fellow does some web research and learns about Flight 180 from the first movie.  From that point on, Wendy attempts to figure out a way to cheat the grim reaper.  In an epilogue, Wendy has another premonition (this time while riding a subway), and the implication seems to be that she will not survive.

Again, this project is a series of set pieces in which assorted teens die in unique ways (two are trapped in tanning booths and burn to death, one gets hit in the head repeatedly by a nail gun, etc).  Again, the plot is pretty thin, and the first Final Destination is referenced gratuitously.  If you just want to spend an hour and a half watching a few clever deaths, this film might sate you.  I’d advise steering clear of the franchise as a whole.

The Slumber Party Massacre Trilogy

SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE

A fun slasher film from 1982, Slumber Party Massacre has a pretty basic plot (The Overlook Film Encyclopedia of Horror describes the project as “virtually plotless”).  A high school student named Trish throws a party for some classmates.  Trish invites her new neighbor (Valerie), who declines the invitation.  An escaped mental patient named Russ Thorn crashes the party and picks off a few of the teens (and a neighbor guy and a pizza delivery man), generally by using a power drill as a murder weapon.  Valerie and her younger sister (Courtney) investigate the happenings next door.  Ultimately some of the would-be victims fight back, and Russ Thorn ends up on the wrong end of a machete. 

I’d never seen Slumber Party Massacre before, and I’m sorry that it slipped under my radar until now.  There’s a lot of wicked humor (some subtle) woven into the teens’ dialogue (which is sharp and realistic) and their actions (which start as believable and become less so once the group realizes there’s a killer lurking outside).  For fans of the slasher sub-genre, the film includes the usual staples: lots of gratuitous nudity and teens smoking pot, drinking, and making out.  These elements are woven into an entertaining tale about a murderous rampage and the ultimate survivors thereof.  The gore is minimal.  The early eighties were a wellspring of stalk-and-slash fare.  Slumber Party Massacre is one of the better offerings from that golden era.

SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE 2

The middle film in the trilogy flat-out stinks.  This time around, the protagonist is Courtney (Valerie’s younger sister in the first movie) five years after she helped to kill Russ Thorn.  She’s now one of two guitarists in a four-piece all-girl band, and one of the members has a father who has agreed to let the girls use his new condo for a weekend getaway.  The band members (with three guys in tow) party hard, but nightmares plague Courtney.  One night while she’s making out with a fellow, the killer from her dreams (a greasy-haired leather-clad fellow with a huge drill-necked guitar) seemingly emerges into reality and kills Courtney’s boyfriend.  The Overlook Film Encyclopedia of Horror describes the killer as “an Eddie Cochran-style rock demon with a quiff and pointed leather boots who sports an outrageous drill at the end of his guitar and commits his murders while performing rockabilly numbers.”  The killer stalks the young adults (sometimes pausing to sing and dance – seriously) and picks off a few until only Courtney remains.  Courtney lights him afire and sends him plummeting off a roof.  An epilogue suggests that most or all of the movie was a dream within a nightmare.

This project runs only 72 minutes before the end credits roll, but even so feels too long.  I liked the idea of following a survivor from the first movie, and at first she seemed like a realistically-traumatized character, but simulated reality is at a minimum by the end of the narrative.  At some point I realized that the events I was watching were not meant to depict a literal reality, but I was hoping the explanation would be more sophisticated than just “it was all a dream.”  Avoid.

SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE 3

With a plot unrelated to the first two installments, part 3 is not as awful as part 2 but not nearly as clever and enjoyable as part one.  In this one, a young adult named Jackie throws a slumber party with a gaggle of female friends while her parents are out of town.  Some of their guy friends crash the party.  Another (Ken) is invited over.  Turns out that Ken is an impotent psychopath who uses a phallic drill as a weapon to pick off the partygoers one by one.  The identity of the killer is kept secret for awhile with a few suspects in the mix (including an unusual neighbor across the street and a “weird” guy who stalks the girls after seeing them on the beach).  In the third act, some of the girls fight back, blind Ken with bleach, shoot him in the leg with a harpoon gun, and smash things over his head.  Jackie finishes him off with his own drill.

Now that I’ve seen the whole series, I’d recommend checking out part one and skipping the sequels. 

Eyes of Laura Mars

EYES OF LAURA MARS

I’d been curious about this film for years due to John Carpenter’s involvement as the original writer of the screenplay, but I was uncertain how much of the final film reflected Carpenter’s original intent.  The official credits go to Carpenter for story & Carpenter and David Zelag Goodman for writing the screenplay, but other cooks were in the kitchen: interviewer Gilles Boulenger (in his book “John Carpenter The Prince of Darkness”) quotes Carpenter thusly: “[Columbia executives] brought eight other writers to rewrite my screenplay.  Then they handed it over to David Zelag Goodman, and I think he gave them what they wanted.  As for me, I couldn’t deliver it, I couldn’t change my style suddenly…”

The story in the final film (which was directed by Irvin Kershner of Empire Strikes Back fame) follows a controversial but successful female photographer (the titular Laura Mars) who abruptly begins to have brief spells during which she sees through the eyes of a killer who murders her associates one by one.  The first vision comes to Laura as a nightmare, but the next occurs while she’s fully awake.  She goes to the scene of the second murder and tells a cop that she saw the crime.  She later gives a full statement to the police about her seemingly psychic experience.  One cop named Neville takes a particular interest in Laura’s case.  Despite the piling up of dead bodies, Laura continues with her photo shoots, which involve having scantily-clad models doing violent things in unusual settings.  Laura’s ex-husband shows up (perhaps to have another suspect in the mix) with a connection to one of the victims.  Laura’s agent (Donald) has a birthday party, and Laura’s driver (another suspect, Tommy) drops her off for the celebration.  Laura receives a phone call from her ex-husband (Michael) saying he needs her help.  Laura opts to go to him, but to do so she must ditch her police protection lest she lead the fuzz straight to Michael, who is a person of interest in at least one of the murders.  Donald distracts Johnny Law long enough for Laura to get to her car, but while she’s driving, Laura has a vision of the killer’s point-of-view as he kills Donald in an elevator.  Laura (blinded by her vision) crashes the car but is uninjured.  Neville learns of fresh evidence in the case and confronts Tommy with it: a playing card from the deck Tommy is known to carry around and fidget with was found in the elevator under Donald’s corpse.  Tommy flees from the police, and one cop shoots him dead.  Neville (who has begun an out-of-the-blue romance with Laura) phones Laura to tell her that the killer is dead, and she should pack her bags so he can take her away on a vacation.  When he arrives at Laura’s pad, he reveals that in fact he is the killer.  Apparently he has a split personality, and one of his personas believes that Laura’s photographs immorally commercialize death.  Laura shoots Neville. 

The romance between Laura & Neville was written into the screenplay post-Carpenter, and the killer was originally a stranger.  This information comes from the Boulenger book in which Carpenter states: “I was trying to make a thriller, and I certainly didn’t want to tread into the kind of melodramatic body-stripping romantic stuff they were looking for.   It was a story problem.”  Boulenger then points out that “in Eyes’ original screenplay the Skid Row Slasher was not the heroine’s lover.”

The final film is a mixed bag that doesn’t work on all levels.  Laura Mars is a unique and memorable protagonist, but too often in the narrative she vanishes while the audience follows Neville.  The love story comes completely out of nowhere: Laura and Neville fall in love after barely knowing each other.  Also, I expected the people close to Laura to grow increasingly paranoid about their personal safety as the bodies of her associates pile up, but nobody seems too freaked out.  I’ve searched high and low for a copy of Carpenter’s original screenplay (titled simply Eyes) and would love to see what his original story involved.  I recommend the film with reservations.

Kill Theory

KILL THEORY

Kill Theory is a 2009 poor-man’s riff on the Saw formula: a killer traps a bunch of college kids (plus the stepsister of one fellow) in an isolated house.  The young adults have from 3 am – 6 am to kill each other, according to instructions on a video recording.  If only one individual remains alive at 6 am, he or she will go free.  Attempting to leave the property will result in death.  Tensions mount as one by one the characters snap under the pressure of their situation and take action to survive.  A brief prologue and epilogue offer insight into the motivation of the mastermind, who has a deep Jigsaw-like voice.

Kill Theory is okay.  It suffers from a lack of sympathetic characters (I didn’t especially care who lived or who died, though the stepsister was at least moderately quirky and interesting).  It runs 85 minutes with end credits, so if you’re looking for a quick film with an interesting premise that’s competently made, Kill Theory might pacify you.  It’s not particularly memorable, but nor is it so bad as to warrant a “steer clear” warning. 

Dark Corners

DARK CORNERS

A 2006 film that follows a woman named Susan who frequently dreams about being a different woman named Karen, Dark Corners includes some imagery that was so disturbing I had to look away from the screen during three different scenes.  The plot’s ending confused me at first, but I’ve since read some interpretations on discussion boards at the Internet Movie Database that make sense.  Susan is young and married.  She and her husband want to have a child.  They live a fairly idyllic life in upper-class suburbia.  Susan’s existence is soured only by her nightmares in which she is a dark-haired mortician’s assistant.  She goes to see a hypnotherapist who temporarily vanquishes the dreams about Karen.  (Karen, by the way, dreams about being Susan.)  Susan becomes pregnant but begins having nightmares again.  A serial killer known as the Night Stalker murders one of Susan’s co-workers.  The lines between the dream reality and Susan’s “actual” world begin to blur, and ultimately Susan too is murdered (I won’t go into detail about her death scene lest I spoil some of the imagery that’s open to interpretation as far as what the ending of the film implies).

Dark Corners has a lot going for it: a subtle musical score, an intriguing story that makes the viewer wonder almost immediately what the relationship is between the two realities, some surprisingly nuanced performances, and those dark and disturbing images that made me look away from the screen.  I found the finale confusing, but upon reflection and reading some theories online I do believe that the denouement makes sense and isn’t totally out of left field.  Here’s a fairly recent original horror project that’s not bad at all – enjoy it at your leisure.

The New Daughter

THE NEW DAUGHTER

A 2009 film that was based on a short story, The New Daughter begins as a realistic drama about a family of three (father John, teen daughter Louisa, and seven-year-old son Sam) relocating to a new house after the mom abandons them to be with her lover.  The house comes with a sprawling back yard that includes an ancient Indian burial mound.  Louisa spends increasing amounts of time outdoors and disobeys her father’s directive to be inside before dark.  John befriends and sort of dates Cassandra, a teacher from his kids’ school.  John discovers that his new land may have a dodgy history, and he leaves the children in the care of a babysitter one evening while he tracks down the previous owner, who spouts some exposition that I’ll leave out of this summary so as not to spoil the tale for any who want to sit through it.  Meanwhile, the babysitter gets locked out of the house, and something kills her (the body later turns up in the Indian burial mound).  A professor and his teaching assistant, drawn by photographs of the burial mound, show up and spew even more exposition.  The police investigate John, who takes it upon himself in the final sequence to tunnel into and presumably below the burial mound, where it turns out monsters lurk.  John attempts to destroy the creatures and their lair with fire, but a deliciously dark final image suggests that he apparently failed.

That final moment was one of the highlights of The New Daughter for me, but I can’t say it’s worth watching the whole film just to get there.  The project is well-acted and looks great in terms of cinematography and direction, but the story itself becomes increasingly unrealistic, and the ultimate revelation about the monsters living in and under the burial mound is plain silly.  Hats off for attempting an original horror project, but this one didn’t do much for me.

Immortality

IMMORTALITY

Alternately titled The Wisdom of Crocodiles, Immortality (a film from 1998) follows a fellow named Steven who needs to ingest blood from a loving human once every few weeks lest his body break down and stop functioning.  He never refers to himself as a vampire, and he can walk around in daylight, but he is a blood drinker and a killer.  He has a pattern of picking up women, seducing them over time, and ultimately drinking their blood and disposing of their bodies.  When one corpse turns up, a police investigation seems likely to hamper Steven’s style.   The bulk of the story is about Steven’s relationship with a structural engineer named Anne.

Immortality has a promising premise and begins interestingly enough, but the middle drags on with one too many talky scenes of Steven yammering with a cop, and the ending feels anti-climactic.  For better or worse, sympathetic or unsympathetic, Steven is the protagonist of the story, and he wants to drink blood to survive.  After spending so much time watching Steven infiltrate Anne’s world, I wanted to see the protagonist get what he wants.  He does not.  In the final sequence, Steven bleeds to death from a small wound in his hand (his body by then so fragile from not drinking blood that such an injury could do him in). 

I give props to screenwriter Paul Hoffman for attempting a unique take on a tale about a blood-drinker, but Immortality sadly ends with a whimper and not a bang.

Fade to Black

FADE TO BLACK

A 1980 film about a movie buff’s descent into homicidal mania, Fade to Black features a nuanced performance by Dennis Christopher as Eric Binford.  Eric lives with his overbearing aunt (later revealed to actually be his mother) and is constantly strapped for cash.  He escapes from reality by immersing himself in movies.  One day Eric crosses paths with an aspiring model who bears a resemblance to Marilyn Monroe.  Eric gives her a lift to her workplace, then manages to snag a date with her for eight o’clock that night.  She stands Eric up, and shortly thereafter Eric snaps and kills his “aunt” (whose death is ruled an accident).  Soon Eric starts dressing as movie characters and murdering people.  His crime spree comes to an end when he’s riddled with police bullets atop the Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard.

Fade to Black’s story doesn’t quite hold together (I’m not sure how exactly the cops investigating the murders come to the conclusion that Eric Binford is their prime suspect, and at one point someone references “the Dracula murder” when there were no eyewitnesses to see who the killer was dressed as that time around).  Despite these flaws, it’s an entertaining and well-shot story about the revenge of an underdog who has snapped under pressure. 

Fade to Black has a fantastic soundtrack by Craig Safan (I’ve had the CD of the music longer than I’ve had the DVD of the film). 

Vernon Zimmerman wrote and directed the project.  Vernon was my UCLA Professional Program in Screenwriting workshop instructor in the spring quarter of 1999, but I only just now got around to checking out his cult classic movie.  I’m glad I finally did.

Frailty

FRAILTY

A thriller from 2001, Frailty has two twist endings too many but otherwise is worth a look.  The story is told in non-linear fashion with an unreliable narrator and sometimes features flashbacks within flashbacks.  The tale begins with a man telling an FBI agent that his brother is a serial killer.  From then until the final couple of sequences, the narrative alternates between the present “guy telling a tale to an FBI agent” scenes and flashbacks to the guy’s childhood with his father and brother.  The father seemingly goes mad gradually, claiming that God has chosen his family to destroy demons.  He ropes the kids into helping him kidnap and murder these “demons” (an angel visits him and provides a list of names).  One brother believes in Dad’s mission, while the other does not.  To say much more would be to spoil the better surprises.

Frailty delves into unbelievable territory at times (an FBI agent working alone takes a witness/suspect to the middle of nowhere late at night with no backup) but is generally an engrossing and enjoyable film.  Screenwriter Brent Hanley also penned an excellent episode of Masters of Horror titled Family.  Frailty grows increasingly horrifying as the father progresses from a belief in a divine calling to full-blown ax murder in front of his children.  I’m sorry that Frailty slipped under my radar until now.      

Parasomnia

PARASOMNIA

One of the worst films I’ve ever seen, Parasomnia (from 2008) has such a ridiculous and convoluted premise that it’s difficult to summarize concisely.  Essentially, a fellow named Danny kidnaps (from a hospital) a girl named Laura who suffers from a condition that causes her to sleep most of the time.  Danny’s actions provoke the wrath of a serial killer hypnotist who wants to possess Laura.

Parasomnia’s script is absurd, and the special effects (specifically those in Laura’s dream sequences) look like poor live-action/cartoon hybrids.  Seriously, if the folks at Cinematic Titanic ever opt to riff on recent movies, Parasomnia would be a fine choice.  The script presents a wholly unrealistic tale in which the following events occur: Laura wakes up outside of her hospital room and grants consent for Danny to take her to his home.  The serial killer (Byron Volpe) communicates with Laura in her dreams.  Volpe also can hypnotize people and compel them to commit murder with just a glance.  Danny continues to obsessively protect Laura even after she kills a cop right in front of him.  Danny and Laura proclaim their love for each other after having known each other ever so briefly.  There’s a subplot about Danny’s desire to own a rare piece of vinyl that has nothing to do with the primary story.  The tale ends with Danny and Laura (he comatose, she asleep) afloat in a tank full of liquid with breathing apparatuses stuck in their mouths while a doctor observes them and gushes exposition to a fellow who has no business knowing any of it.

If you crave crap in high-definition, check out the Blu-ray of Parasomnia.

Ghost Ship

GHOST SHIP

A 2002 picture about a salvage crew that sets out in a tugboat to recover a derelict ocean liner, Ghost Ship opens with a fantastic prologue set in 1962 but rapidly devolves into mediocrity after the “present day” scenes begin.  The plot grows muddled as members of the salvage team encounter strange happenings aboard the rusted-out vessel but don’t communicate about them with each other (Maureen Epps, the protagonist, says nothing after she has a full-blown conversation with the ghost of a little girl who warns her to get off the ship).  The nature of the true antagonist is convoluted and just plain silly (I won’t spoil the third act by getting into specifics).  When the tugboat’s engine room explodes (at the midpoint) while the bulk of the crew is aboard the ocean liner, no real sense of panic or trauma radiates from the characters who are now stranded with naught but maggot-invested canned goods for food.  I’m always up for a great tale of supernatural happenings at sea, but Ghost Ship’s story is neither great nor even very good.  The best compliment I can muster about this project: the sets looked pretty cool.  Steer clear.

She Creature

SHE CREATURE

A 2001 project with a promising premise, She Creature begins in Ireland in 1905 where a fellow named Angus (played by Rufus Sewell of Dark City fame) runs a sideshow with attractions that purport to be an actual zombie and a real mermaid.  The “zombie” is an employee of Angus named Bailey, and the “mermaid” is Angus's girlfriend Lily.  One night a fellow named Mr. Woolrich attends the show and protests when he discovers that Lily is not an actual mermaid.  He gets a lift home from Angus and Lily, then invites them inside and gushes some exposition about the nature of actual mermaids (somewhere there are Forbidden Islands that the mermaids call home, and the lair has a Queen Mermaid).  Woolrich then shows Angus and Lily an actual live mermaid that he keeps in a tank.  Later that night, Angus and a couple of his men break in at the Woolrich house and steal the mermaid along with a journal that Woolrich’s late wife kept about the creature.  Angus plans to take the mermaid to America and become rich and famous.  The bulk of the story takes place on the ship that Angus, Lily, Bailey, and a fellow called Gifford take across the ocean.  Turns out mermaids have a taste for human flesh and the ability to psychically control some people.  The mermaid compels the captain to re-route the ship to the Forbidden Islands.  Once the ship crashes, the mermaid assumes her true form: a fearsome fish-creature who is Queen of the lair.  She makes quick work of the ship’s crew, and she ultimately kills Angus but allows Lily (who she’s somehow impregnated) to escape. 

The last fifteen minutes of She Creature are quite cool, like a riff on Alien but with a large fish-monster aboard an early-twentieth-century vessel.  The journey to this sequence, however, is not especially engaging.  Some of the Irish accents were so thick that I had to watch the whole film with subtitles on.  Most of the deaths occur off-screen.  Some conflicts between Angus and Lily seem dragged-out to pad the movie to its 89-minute run time. 

I would’ve liked to have seen the story structured so that the ship arrives at the Forbidden Islands much sooner, say at the midpoint or even at the end of the first act.  The tale then could’ve been about the ship’s crew struggling to survive while hunted by flesh-craving fish-beasts on their own turf.  I imagine that version would require a much larger budget.

She Creature boasts fine special effects from Stan Winston’s company but sadly hasn’t got a plot worthy of such visuals.

The House of the Devil

THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL

In this film from 2009, a college sophomore named Samantha pursues and lands a babysitting gig only to discover that instead of a kid she’ll be staying with an elderly woman.  At a large and isolated country house, Samantha explores without ever actually laying eyes on her charge, who allegedly keeps to herself upstairs.  In a closet, Samantha finds a photograph that suggests the people who hired her might not be the actual homeowners.  Samantha eats some apparently drugged pizza and passes out.  When she comes to, she discovers the true nature of her employers.

House of the Devil reminds me a bit of John Carpenter’s Halloween in terms of its pacing: the first three-quarters of the story gradually introduce the characters and world, and then the final quarter has the viewer biting fingernails and sitting on the edge of the couch while glued to the screen hoping that the protagonist will survive.  Unlike Halloween, however, House of the Devil has a terribly unsatisfying finale.  I can’t get into specifics without spoiling the plot, but the last twist of this project packs none of the punch of the moment in Halloween when Dr. Loomis realizes that Michael Myers is not laying in the grass downstairs.  House of the Devil looks and feels like a horror film from a bygone age, and indeed I believe it’s meant to be a period piece though the exact year in which the tale takes place is never stated.  If you’re willing to sit through about ninety minutes of terrific suspenseful filmmaking to get to a letdown of a denouement, House of the Devil may be for you.

Vampyres

VAMPYRES

This 1974 film opens with a prologue in which a gunman kills two lesbian lovers.  For reasons not explained, the women become vampires.  They shack up in a sprawling dilapidated house with a well-stocked wine cellar and pose as hitchhikers to lure various victims to their abode.  Fran (who appears to be the alpha vampire) for some reason keeps one fellow alive over several nights and days, while Miriam prefers to kill her blood sources quickly.  A man and a woman camping nearby observe the house and speculate about whether or not anyone lives there.  Eventually, the guy Fran kept alive escapes and drives off.  Not much else occurs in this story.

Vampyres suffers from the lack of a clear single protagonist with a goal the viewer hopes he or she will achieve.  The narrative focus meanders back and forth between Fran and the campers with Miriam sometimes popping up.  The plot, such as it is, seems mostly like an excuse to string together some bloody images of the vampires feasting along with several nudity-heavy sex scenes.  The musical score is awesome, and I love the location (the house looks exactly like the sort of place lesbian vampires would exist), but the tale itself ends with no sense of resolution and never gripped me, filled me with tension, or made me wonder what would happen next.  Vampyres has fine atmosphere but a paper-thin plot.  Don’t waste your 88 minutes.

Imprint

IMPRINT

The 2007 film Imprint is a Native American ghost story that follows a lawyer (Shayla Stonefeather) as she convicts a possibly-innocent young man of murder, then returns to her parents’ home to help her mother care for her ailing father.  Shayla hears noises and eventually (just beyond the midpoint of the movie) sees shadowy apparitions.  Is she being haunted by the spirit of the man she convicted (who was shot while trying to escape custody), or is something else going on?  Shayla formulates a theory that involves her missing brother, but a twist ending turns the story on its ear.

Imprint is incredibly slow-paced and may not be to the liking of all viewers.  I was pleasantly surprised that the project turned out to be much more than just another “restless ghost wants the protagonist to uncover the truth about his death” tale.  If you’re patient and sit through this one, you’ll get to see some innovative low-budget special effects.  My primary complaint is that Shayla begins as a rather cold and unsympathetic character.  I recommend this movie only to those who can tolerate slow-developing narratives.

Darkness

DARKNESS

A film that premiered in Spain in 2002 but was not released in the United States until 2004, Darkness boasts a downright Lovecraftian ending and a story that blends aspects of the haunted house genre with a drama about a nuclear family of four that spins into dysfunction when the father becomes mentally unstable.  A teen girl (Regina) moves to an isolated house in Spain with her younger brother (Paul), her mother (Maria), and her father (Mark).  Regina, who has befriended a local fellow (Carlos) during her first three weeks in her new home, regularly swims at a community pool.  Mark (like Jack Torrance in The Shining) grows irritable, unpredictable, and eventually violent.  Meanwhile, Paul repeatedly draws six children with red slashes across their throats, and he sees kids in the darkness and develops bruises on his neck.  Regina (for no discernable reason) begins to suspect that the house is somehow causing all of her family’s problems.  She and Carlos research the house, visit its architect, and follow a trail of clues that lead them to conclude that the place was the site of an attempted occult ritual forty years earlier, and that someone is about to attempt the ritual again because a certain type of eclipse that only rolls around every forty years is about to occur.  The ritual involves seven children having their throats slit “by loving hands.”  I can’t summarize the plot any further without spoiling the best parts.      

Though flawed in some ways, Darkness contains plentiful spooky imagery and a unique enough story to make it worth a watch.  The tale includes some narrative hiccups that made me laugh (like when Carlos fails to mention to Regina that he developed a photo of her and saw children in the background who were not present when he snapped the picture and when Regina and Paul escape from the house where all hell is breaking loose and leave their mom to fend for herself).  Also, there’s a scene that involves research at a library in which Regina and Carlos track down information about the occult ritual in quick and convenient fashion.  There’s a subplot about Regina’s hobby of swimming that goes nowhere (I assumed that in the third act Regina would have to swim somewhere other than a pool).  Despite these complaints, I liked Darkness overall.  Original horror movies with disturbing endings are rare.  This one’s worth a look.

Deadly Friend

DEADLY FRIEND

A dark and subversive take on the “people with their own sentient robots” type of film (like Short Circuit), 1986’s Deadly Friend includes some wildly entertaining moments. You just have to exert tremendous effort to suspend your disbelief. The story follows Paul Conway, a young college whiz kid who studies the human brain and has built an intelligent robot named BB. Paul and his mom (with BB) move to a new neighborhood, where Paul swiftly befriends the local paper boy (a high school sophomore named Tom) and the cute girl next door (Sam, who has an abusive and controlling father). One night Sam’s father knocks Sam down a flight of stairs. She hits her head at the bottom and goes brain-dead. Doctors intend to remove her from life support after 24 hours pass. Paul goes all Frankenstein and concocts a plan to insert a small computer (which he calls a pacemaker for the head) that he salvaged from BB into her brain. With the help of Tom, he actually executes this scheme – with dire consequences. Cyborg Sam sets out to exact revenge on all those in the neighborhood who have wronged her, including her father and the mean old lady across the street (whose death scene, which involves a basketball, is one of the greatest ever filmed). Paul’s efforts to control Sam mostly involve locking her in different places (like her old bedroom and the attic). Ultimately Paul’s mom and later the police come face-to-face with the new Sam, and a cop’s bullet ends the cyborg’s deadly rampage. A brief epilogue makes no sense in hell unless interpreted as a nightmare.

Screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin (who also wrote Jacob’s Ladder) penned the screenplay for this project (based on a Diana Henstell novel called Friend), and Wes Craven directed. Though the source material sometimes veers into silly territory, the filmmakers successfully construct an engaging tale that evokes both chills and laughter. You know you’re watching a unique story when at one point you realize that the protagonist has slipped his mother a mickey so that he can sneak out of the house to perform unauthorized experimental brain surgery on the gal from next door. The tale is only ninety minutes long and absolutely worth sitting through to get to that death-by-basketball scene. Deadly Friend isn’t a realistic yarn, but it’s damn entertaining.

The Orphanage

THE ORPHANAGE (EL ORFANATO)

A Spanish-language film from 2007, The Orphanage is a ghost story that traces the journey of Laura, a woman who returns to the orphanage where she lived for part of her childhood.  Laura and her husband (who have an adopted seven-year-old son named Simon) intend to re-open the facility as a home for special-needs children.  Simon chats with imaginary friends and even invites home a new one that he “meets” on the beach.  After Simon vanishes without a trace, Laura grows to believe that the orphanage may be haunted and that the ghosts have knowledge of Simon’s whereabouts.  Laura sets out to make contact with the spirits as she desperately searches for her missing son, who is HIV-positive and requires daily medication.

I wanted to like The Orphanage more than I actually did.  I don’t mind films with “down” endings, and The Orphanage does become quite sad in its closing scenes, but the journey to the finale has to be entertaining.  The Orphanage elicits a couple of good scares along the way (one of which seems like a variation on the “whose hand was I holding” scene in the 1963 version of The Haunting) but never fully gripped me and got under my skin the way some haunted house films do (such as The Others from 2001).  The aspect of a child going missing in the context of ghostly happenings seems derivative of 1982’s Poltergeist.  I’m always on the lookout for a good haunted house movie, but The Orphanage disappointed me. 

Two Adaptations of Stephen King's Carrie

CARRIE (2002 NBC made-for-TV version)

Based on Stephen King’s debut 1974 novel but set in modern times, the NBC adaptation of Carrie premiered in November of 2002 and is available on DVD.  The project is feature-film quality and is rather edgy for made-for-TV fare.  The plot follows the life of Carrie White, a high school student who lives with her abusive Christian mother (a zealot who frequently forces Carrie to pray in a closet).  Carrie (a social outcast) realizes that she has telekinetic powers that enable her to control matter with her mind, particularly in times of extreme stress.  Some of Carrie’s cruel peers concoct a plan to douse Carrie with a bucket of pig blood at the prom.  After they execute their plan, Carrie lashes out with her powers, psychically holding all the school exits closed.  Carrie kills off the majority of her classmates (mostly by setting off the sprinkler system and then bringing some electrical cables crashing down, thereby electrocuting them) in a gripping fire-filled sequence.  Carrie’s rampage continues in town before she ultimately heads home and climbs into the tub, where she later (when her mother finds her) cannot recall what happened.  Her mother (convinced now that Carrie is a witch) attempts to drown Carrie, who uses her telekinesis to induce a heart attack that kills the older woman.  Sue Snell (one of the popular girls from Carrie’s school) finds Carrie and saves her life with CPR.  For reasons I don’t understand, Sue and Carrie essentially fake Carrie’s death and then head for Florida in a strange alliance.  The main story is intercut with scenes of police questioning some of the surviving students about the scheme to humiliate Carrie as they struggle to piece together what happened.

There are a couple of lengthy dialogue scenes in this tale that stretch on a bit too long (like when Sue helps Carrie pick out lipstick in a store), but this is a minor complaint.  The 2002 version of Carrie is dark, disturbing, and generally excellent.  The ending (a serious deviation from the source novel) with Sue and Carrie en route to Florida puzzles me, but the journey to the finale is worth taking.  The project features three of my favorite actresses: Katharine Isabelle (who somehow looks younger here than she did in Ginger Snaps) and Emilie de Ravin (who later played Claire on Lost) plus an award-worthy performance by Angela Bettis as the titular tortured teen.  Quality adaptations of Stephen King stories are rare – this one is absolutely worth seeking out.   

CARRIE (1976 version)

Screenwriter Lawrence D. Cohen and director Brian De Palma follow the basic spine of Stephen King’s novel: a tormented young woman named Carrie develops telekinetic powers and uses them to exact revenge against her high school classmates after pranksters douse her with pig  blood at the senior prom.  After her rampage, Carrie returns home and bathes.  Her overly-religious mother (who perceives Carrie as a personification of sin) stabs Carrie in the back.  Carrie, in her final moments of life, uses her powers to send various sharp kitchen implements into her mother.  Carrie causes the house to burn and collapse all around her.

The first ever adaptation of a Stephen King novel, Carrie holds up well decades after its release and has just enough humor woven through its beginning and middle to balance out the horror of its ending.  From the moment the bucket of blood dumps over the protagonist until the time the credits roll, Carrie is a wild ride.  De Palma uses his trademark split screen to interesting effect here, sometimes showing Carrie on one side and what she’s doing with her telekinesis on the other. 

Perhaps the most disturbing epiphany I had after watching both the 1976 and 2002 versions of Carrie is the realization that tales about school bullies and revenge of the disempowered seem timeless.

Two Adaptations of Dracula

DRACULA (1979 version)

Very loosely based on the Bram Stoker novel, this interpretation of Dracula begins with a shipwreck off the coast of England. A young woman named Mina finds the only survivor (Count Dracula) on the beach. Mina’s friend Lucy happens to be engaged to Jonathan Harker, a lawyer who purchased a sprawling old house on Dracula’s behalf. Dracula attends a party thrown by Lucy’s father (Doctor Jack Seward). Shortly thereafter, Mina mysteriously dies with two puncture marks on her neck. Her father (Professor Abraham Van Helsing) comes to town and consults with Dr. Seward, who examined Mina’s body. Van Helsing grows to suspect that his daughter’s death was caused by a vampire, and he convinces Seward of the validity of this theory moments after one of the more disturbing images I’ve ever seen on film: when Professor Van Helsing comes face-to-face with his undead daughter. Van Helsing discovers who the Alpha Vampire is when Dracula confronts him. Van Helsing and Seward rope Harker into an alliance to try to save Lucy, who falls deeper and deeper under Dracula’s spell. Harker and Van Helsing pursue Dracula and Lucy to a ship bound for Romania. There the heroes attempt to vanquish the vampire once and for all, though whether or not they succeed may be open to how one interprets the film’s closing images.

How have I gone my whole life without ever enjoying this version of Dracula (which features a score by John Williams and a performance by Donald Pleasence as Jack Seward)? I’m glad I finally got around to checking it out. Though the filmmakers take tremendous liberties with the Stoker source material, the movie is totally engaging. It’s worth watching just for the scene (which takes place in an old abandoned mine beneath the cemetery) in which one gets a clear look at Mina after she’s transformed into a vampire – I got seriously creeped out by the imagery. My only real complaint is that some shots of a flying bat look sub-par. That aside, this might become my favorite adaptation of Dracula.


DRACULA (1931 version)

The old black-and-white Universal version of Dracula opens with one Mr. Renfield visiting Dracula in his Transylvania home, initially filling the Harker role from the Stoker novel by sealing a deal for Dracula to obtain a home in England. Renfield quickly falls under Dracula’s spell and becomes his bug-eating slave. Dracula and Renfield take a ship to Whitby Harbor. Dracula sets up shop in his new home and swiftly infiltrates the lives of Dr. Seward, his daughter Mina, and her fiancé (John Harker). Van Helsing (an associate of Dr. Seward’s) grows to suspect that a vampire is operating in the area given the way in which Mina’s friend Lucy suddenly died (massive blood loss with two puncture wounds on her throat). Van Helsing realizes that Dracula is the vampire when he notices that the Count casts no reflection in a mirror. With his cover blown, Dracula wages all-out war on his new enemies. Will Van Helsing, Seward, and Harker be able to save Mina from becoming undead?

Sadly, the 1931 interpretation of Dracula is rather slow-paced, boring, and tame by modern standards. It’s not without its charm, but it’s difficult to sit through even with a running time of just 75 minutes. The “special effects” of a flying bat are just sad. If you want to check this one out due to a curiosity about the history of Hollywood cinema, fine, but don’t expect a riveting fast-paced tale.