David Dubrow

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Friday Links: Bad Apples, Baked Apples, and The Duke of Burgundy

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Last week’s Friday Links had to be canceled due to multiple family engagements, so I’m making up for it with an extra special Friday Links, just for you.  Yes, you.  Let’s get after it:

  • It’s been all Bad Apples all the time this week at Nev Murray’s Confessions of a Reviewer!!: “So it’s my turn to confess. I have had this on my Kindle since it was released last year and have never gotten around to reading it. I am slapping the back of my hand as I type. Know how difficult that is?”  Read on to find out!
  • Continuing our apples theme, Ghost Hunting Theories showed us some very neat things to do with everyone’s favorite fall fruit.
  • The Horror!? delved into early 80’s nostalgia by discussing the slasher film My Bloody Valentine: “George Mihalka’s Canadian slasher is one of the handful of entries in the sub-genre I truly love, so it’s no surprise finally getting around to watching the uncut version of the film doesn’t change much about my opinion.”
  • Sean Eaton analyzed Edmond Hamilton’s The Earth-Brain at his always readable, always trenchant R’lyeh Tribune: “In The Earth-Brain, adventurer Clark Landon has become a human epicenter for unusual earthquakes and seismic activity wherever he travels in the world.  He avoids the interiors of tall buildings and keeps far away from mountains to avoid avalanches.  Cities in Newfoundland, Norway, Russia, Egypt, Italy and other places are ruined as he travels through them, and thousands die amidst the rubble.  He is wracked by guilt and terror—cursed for an act of sacrilege committed a couple of years before.”
  • At Jim Mcleod’s Ginger Nuts of Horror, Alex Davis tackled the horrific film Aftermath: “The visuals leave little to the imagination, but one thing that is effective in the first half of the movie – and even more so in the second – is the use of sound. The music in the film is used very sparingly, so what we mostly have is a funereal silence (not a word of dialogue spoken by any of the characters) punctuated by the crunching of bone, the squelching removal of organs and the insidious sound of saws and knives cutting through flesh.”
  • The Ringmaster’s Realm reviewed Wyrmwood – Road of the Dead: “Recently, I have been staying far away from the zombie genre, as many of the films that have been coming out lately seem tired and played out. Fortunately, I am glad that I picked this one, because it took an interesting route outside of the box and created something rather original.” (Interested readers can check out my review of Wyrmwood here.)
  • At Zombos’ Closet of Horror, Zombos presented the Jungle Woman pressbook, which demands your attention.  Note the name of the actress playing the titular character.
  • The bizarre movie The Duke of Burgundy was an interesting topic of discussion at The House of Self-Indulgence: “I liked how the relationship in this film was two women, as opposed to a man and a woman. What I mean is, I’m glad it wasn’t a man dominating a woman; I can’t stand maledom. And while it’s true, I do prefer femdom. The relationship depicted in this film can’t really be classified as “femdom,” as it doesn’t properly identify who the dominate party is, and both parties are women.”
  • Here, I talked about a very good bad guy and described that careful face people sometimes put on.
Illustration by Earl Geier for Call of Cthulhu’s Blood Brothers 2 supplement.
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Two Minute Movie Review: Wyrmwood

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How many more zombie apocalypse movies do we need?

At least one more.  Wyrmwood is it.

Spoilers abound. Read at your own peril.

It’s fun, it’s loud, it’s gory, it’s funny, it’s violent.  The budget might be low, but you wouldn’t know it to watch the film.  The cast does a great job with what they’ve been given, and even the more mediocre performances were leavened by great lines.

The movie is not without its flaws, but they’re easily overlooked.  A big example is the roving experiment truck: if the zombie apocalypse just occurred, how did they get up and running so quickly?

Brooke was a frightening character from beginning to end: physically strong, mentally tough, clever.  The filmmakers were smart, however, by not making her a woman who acts like a man to survive.

Barry did fine; if you’re looking for a lot of character depth in a zombie apocalypse film, you’re likely going to be disappointed.  Still, he pulled off his role without flaw.

As is usually the case in films like this, the best, most interesting characters never survive; it’s how we are made to feel bad about their exit from the film.  Benny was a worthy comedic character, though his delivery at times seemed a little flat.  Frank elicited pathos just before his end, which worked.

The two most interesting concepts: zombies as petrol and Brooke’s ability to control zombies, were weird but somehow fit, probably because it’s Australia and we automatically assume that an Aussie film is going to have its own brand of strangeness.

Compare this movie to The Walking Dead, with its endless, heavy, humorless drumbeat of loss and despair and interpersonal conflict.  I’d rather watch a zombie apocalypse show like Wyrmwood that doesn’t take itself quite as seriously and includes some fantastical elements.

Four out of five stars.

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Movie Review: The Babadook

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I’d read nothing but good things about The Babadook, so when it became available for Netflix streaming, I couldn’t wait to see it.  It had been hyped as a terrifying, low-budget horror story that apparently scared the hell out of William Friedkin, director of The Exorcist, so it had to be awesome.

It wasn’t awesome.  But it was really good.

This review will contain spoilers, so if you haven’t seen it yet, go see it before reading.

  • slasreveR eloR: A great strength of the film is that you weren’t ever sure who the true antagonist was until the end.  Samuel started out as the obvious antagonist, and everything Amelia did made her the victim of his mood swings until she wasn’t anymore.  Over the course of the film, her anguish made her the actor instead of the acted-upon.  It was only at the climax, when the Babadook manifested itself as an external expression of Amelia’s grief, that the antagonist could be defeated.
  • Samuel: Some of the earlier scares surrounding Samuel were blunted somewhat by his general unlikability.  The actor did an extraordinary job of portraying a disturbed child, a performance made even stronger by the film’s ending, when you finally begin to sympathize with him.  At the beginning of the film’s final act, when you weren’t sure if there actually was a Babadook or not, Samuel transformed effortlessly into the hero.
  • Amelia: One of the film’s more effective subtleties was that Amelia didn’t have an obvious mental condition to blame for the Babadook’s presence.  She was grieving and at loose ends with a difficult child, but who could blame her?  There was no one triggering event that manifested the Babadook; it just sat within her until it was time to come out.  Don’t forget, though, that she wrote The Babadook book, and even added pages to it until she cooked it on the grill.  Despite everything, she was (and probably still is) mentally ill.
  • F/X: The Babadook has been labeled a low-budget movie, but it didn’t look that way.  There was no CGI and very few actual sightings of the eponymous monster, which worked very well.  The filmmakers did a great job with the budget they had, and there was little reason for the audience to walk away from the film unsatisfied.
  • Whither the Babadook?: Samuel’s gadgets at the end seemed a little reminiscent of Home Alone, but they worked well enough to exorcise the Babadook from Amelia.  Allegorically speaking, I think that the film is telling us to try to make peace with our demons, but it’s a bit muddled.  If you can’t keep the Babadook down, how long will it stay in the basement, eating worms?  Can Amelia write a new ending for it, finally banishing the monster forever?

A bit long, a bit thematically muddled, but definitely worth watching.  Four out of five stars.

(I’m also looking forward to the sequels: The Baba Ghanoush, about an Arab family dealing with a childhood monster, The Gabagool, about possessed Italian cold cuts, and Baba Black Sheep Squadron, about WWII U.S. Marine pilots fighting off a clawed black monster.)

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Movie Review: Truth or Die

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Truth or Die is a movie that is extremely English insofar as the characters all have very stiff upper lips and, like an afternoon tea, there’s nothing in it to particularly discomfit or terrify you.

Which is unfortunate, because it’s supposed to be a horror film.

There are some interesting bits in it, including a fairly horrible death scene, but for the most part it’s pedestrian, boring, and not worth your time.  It suffers from the problem plaguing many horror films: bad things happening to unlikable people, so it’s hard to care about any of it.

  • The Bad Guy: I’m one of those people who almost always roots for the bad guy in movies.  Pleasantly, the best thing about Truth or Die was David Oakes’s portrayal of antagonist Justin, a psychopathic military veteran.  Creepy, physically strong without being infallible, he managed to bring both menace and a tiny bit of humanity into the role.  You want him to see his work done, you want him to win, but unfortunately, that didn’t happen, which was disappointing.  Someone like him shouldn’t have been vanquished the way he was, but the movie had to have a happy ending, of sorts. A shame, really.
  • Whodunit: That was a bit of a surprise, which made it enjoyable.  The problem was that the rationale for sending the postcard, while plausible, seemed very last minute.  The character gave no indication of feeling that way earlier in the film, which made it too sudden, too sloppy.
  • Stiff Upper Lips: Paul, Chris, Gemma, and Eleanor were all quite tough.  Paul’s gunshot wound didn’t seem to pain him as much as being kneecapped might a normal person, and the defiance all four seemed willing to give to Justin would have been admirable if it wasn’t so unbelievable.  None of them panicked.  They all found incredible steel inside of them when it was needed.  I didn’t buy it.
  • Femme Fatale: Eleanor proved to be at least as psychotic as Justin and twice as tough, which didn’t make sense outside of a writer or producer’s requirement to have a super-strong female character.  Didn’t like her, didn’t find her sexy, didn’t find her interesting, didn’t find her believable.
  • The End: The rationale behind Felix hanging himself was way too complicated.  Did they really need that much backstory, with corporate intrigue, blackmail, gay sex, and a bizarre family code of honor to uphold?  Especially when it’s all just spat out at the last five minutes?

Truth or Die gets two stars out of five.

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Friday Links: Horror Monsters No. 9, Quonset Huts on Mars, and a Pernicious Review

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Some pretty neat and bizarre things were uploaded onto the internet this week.  Here are some of the more interesting pieces:

  • Monster Magazine World showed us what lay in the pages of Horror Monsters No. 9, published in Fall of 1964.
  • Terrorphoria reviewed Acid King’s album Middle of Nowhere, Center of Everywhere: “A few noticeable departures from past albums. Lori’s vocals are more sparse. She really does a good job of giving the music an epic amount of space, and you’ll ride through waves of riffs for up to a few minutes before she punctuates them with her recognizable style.”
  • At Ginger Nuts of Horror, Paul M Feeney interviewed Tim Dry: “To be totally honest my true calling is whatever I’m passionate about and excited by at any particular time. In the 70s it was painting and mime, in the 80s it was rock ‘n’ roll, performance and music and in the 90s it was photographic art, acting and more music. Now I find that writing is the sole medium that does stimulate and inspire me. One of the reasons is that I don’t need anyone else to help me create something. Everything comes from the right side of my brain onto the page and if all technology went tits up tomorrow I could still do it!”
  • Sean Eaton’s perspicacity was in full display at The R’lyeh Tribune: “Hamilton’s graphic descriptions of the hazards on board a primitive rocket as it takes off from Earth and lands on the treacherous surface of Mars closely resemble the dangers on a battlefield, including the terrible casualties among the men. The soldiers live in Quonset huts on Mars, and the noisy claustrophobic spacecraft resemble the innards of battleships and submarines.  Hamilton’s intent is to deglamorize spaceflight, and metaphorically, the war.  Haddon has nightmares about what he saw and experienced on the expedition, and the sounds of airplanes bring back vivid, terrifying memories.  The narrator’s symptoms are identical with what we now call post-traumatic stress disorder.”
  • Nev Murray reviewed The Seance by Jack Rollins at Confessions of a Reviewer!!: “The descriptive writing makes it very easy to slip into the times. The clothes the people wear, the language they use and the settings and surroundings totally take you back in time, really making you believe you are living in the past. This makes the horror aspect of this book ten times more powerful.”  Also, check out this good news from Nev.
  • Maynard’s Horror Movie Diary reviewed Pernicious, a low-budget horror film directed by James Cullen Bressack: “‘Pernicious‘ is far from being original and borrows/steals a bit too much from other films, especially from classic J-horror flicks like ‘Ju-On: The Grudge‘ or torture porn classics like ‘Hostel‘ – but due to Bressack’s spot-on direction, I ended up enjoying this little low-budget flick a lot.”
  • Adam Millard wrote a tribute to the late, great Terry Pratchett at This Is Horror: “Pratchett, a hero of mine since the first time I picked up a copy of The Colour of Magic as a teenager, was knighted for services to literature in 2009, around the same time he publically declared his wish to die by assisted suicide before his disease rendered him unable to make such a crucial decision. And yet, despite all of this, Pratchett continued to campaign, to raise money, and to write like he had never written before.”
  • Here, I analyzed the movie Event Horizon, talked about myself a little, and linked to a review I wrote of Ian Jarvis’s Dark Equinox.
Illustration from Call of Cthulhu’s Cthulhu Classics supplement.
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Analysis: Event Horizon

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On the heels of my analysis of Omen III: The Final Conflict, I have decided to write a little bit about another Sam Neill film: Event Horizon.

Despite it being 18 years old, the movie holds up well.  It uses gore, shocks, and a genuinely disturbing idea to produce a combination of good science fiction and great horror.  The defining theme of the film is perception, specifically sight, and uses a gothic palette to paint a gloomy, almost steampunk aesthetic.

What Philip Eisner the screenwriter didn’t count on was the direction modern culture took between 1997 and 2015, focusing inward rather than outward.  After the credits, the first words we see on the screen are: “2015 – First permanent colony established on Moon.”  We are nowhere near that now, and not likely to be there within the next several decades.  The drive toward risk and exploration is gone, unfortunately, and can only be found among a few wealthy entrepreneurs.  While this takes us out of the film a bit, it’s a temporary departure: we’re immediately thrown into Dr. Weir’s nightmare of the Event Horizon afterward.  Grim, derelict, with a floating, eyeless corpse.  The camera takes us through the corpse’s screaming mouth and into Weir’s eye.  In fact, it’s the first we see of Weir: an extreme close-up of his eye.

The Event Horizon itself has become possessed by Hell, literally, and everything we see of it shows how it’s been poisoned.  The viscera splattered about the interior from the bizarre orgy captured in bits and pieces by the ship’s log is disturbing, more so because nobody from the Lewis and Clark  bothers to clean it up or even mentions it.  From the ship’s cruciform shape to its head-shaped bridge, we’re meant to know that the Event Horizon’s possession represents the fall of both God and Man.

Spiked, opening and closing like a massive, fearsome eye, the heart of the Event Horizon is the gravity drive, a device that folds space.  It’s only accessible through a long hallway rigged with explosives and a shorter corridor that spins in a disorienting fashion.  Hell, literal Hell is in that gravity drive, waiting to be released.  From the spikes inside the chamber to the bizarre engraving on the drive itself, there’s no mistaking that this thing is evil incarnate, which is one of the film’s weaknesses: didn’t anyone take a look at this thing during the architecture phase of the FTL project and go, “Yeah, that’s messed up.”?  Are the humans of the future that blase?  The crew of the Lewis and Clark was appropriately disquieted, at least.

Most effectively, the film’s theme, sight, puts the viewer in the role of an honorary crewmember of the Lewis and Clark.  After all, what do you do with a movie except watch it?  The villains all had their eyes ripped out, from the doomed captain of the Event Horizon to Weir, who blinded himself.   Weir’s wife Claire, when we see her outside of flashbacks, is also missing her eyes.  Justin, who had been briefly swallowed up by the Hell beyond the gate, made an unsuccessful suicide attempt by jettisoning out into space without a suit and lost his eyes as a result (the blood squirting from his face in zero-gravity).  Peters falls to her death as a result of following a ghost that only she could see; her own vision killed her.  When Miller asks Weir, “What happened to your eyes, doctor?” Weir responds, “Where we’re going, we won’t need eyes to see.”  And at the end, when the possessed Weir has Miller at his mercy, he shows Miller horrible visions of grotesque brutality, all the while asking him, “Do you see?  Do you see?”  Perception, in Event Horizon, is reality.  The possessed ship can make you see what it wants you to, and when it’s finished with you, it takes away your eyes so that you’ll see nothing else except the appalling torment it has in store.

Obviously, the film isn’t perfect.  The Lewis and Clark suffers from the unimaginatively grungy look that many seem to think future spacecraft will invariably possess, and the characters play to type without developing in any way, shape, or form.  Nevertheless, it’s a great way to spend 96 minutes, and it’s currently available on Netflix.  Watch it (again).

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