"Tucker and Dale vs Evil"

Over the weekend I saw what was, at first glance, arguably the stupidest movie I’ve ever seen.

“Tucker and Dale vs Evil” is a horror movie parody about a pair of blue-collar aAppalachianites who have just bought a new vacation cabin which had, unbeknownst to them, previously belong to a family of serial killers.  Both comedy and tragedy ensue when they cross paths with a group of overtly stereotypical college students who happen to mistake them for “Deliverance”-esque sadistic rapist killers.

Wikipedia defines ‘parody’ as a ‘work meant to mock, comment on or trivialize an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of satirical or ironic imitation’

Wikipedia also defines ‘horror’ and ‘terror’ as two aspects of a horrifying experience; ‘terror’ being the dread in anticipation of the event, and ‘horror’ being the revulsion in reaction to the event.

Parody is a cornerstone of comedy, and has been a part of literature nearly as long as there has been literature; a part of theatre nearly since the first actor stood on stage to recite words as an actor; a part of film nearly since the first camera rolled.  In fact, much of the early days of comedy in film were parody; from the Keystone Cops to Buster Keaton’s “Sherlock Jr.” to Charlie Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator” (one of many acts to parody Adolf Hitler).  These and many more parodies from this era are regarded as some of the most popular and renowned comedies of all time, including Abbott and Costello’s ‘Who’s On First’ and many of the works of the Marx Brothers, namely “A Night in Casablanca” and “A Night At The Opera”.

Horror has also always been a part of literature since Cain killed Abel; a part of theatre since  since Oedipus learned the truth of his fate; a part of film since Count Orlock rose to walk the night.  The earliest horror films were stories of ghosts and monsters; adaptations of literature which the world knows as ‘gothic’; the nineteenth century creations of Stevenson and Doyle, Shelley and Stoker, Poe and Wells.  Many of the films that we think of today as artful classics, including “Dracula and “Frankenstein”, are horror movies.

Almost as traditional is the act of combining these two, applying comedy in the face of terror, horror and tragedy, known as ‘gallows humor’.  In “Hamlet”, Shakespeare presents the gravedigger’s conversation as comic relief from the string of deaths which plague the play. In film, the very same monsters which permeated horror cinema in the early days of the silver screen are, not long after, lampooned by sharing that screen with comedy greats Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. Some of Bob Hope’s earliest films would include horror comedies “The Cat and The Canary” and “The Ghost Breakers”. Even the aptly nicknamed ‘Master-of-Suspense’, Alfred Hitchcock would use comedy throughout his films, particularly in “Rear Window”, but most heavily in “The Trouble With Harry”, which is a movie about a small number of people in a small town who each think that they are responsible for the death of the title character, and who continuously and inadvertently counter each other’s efforts to dispose of his body.

In recent years, horror comedies and horror parodies have gained popularity.  As with any genre, there are, as George Carlin would say, “a few winners, a whole lotta losers”.  Most are the direct-to-dvd efforts of “National Lampoons” wannabees, but a few, like “Scream”, “Tremors”, and “Cabin In The Woods”, are not only very funny, but are solidly frightening and entertainingly clever as well, each sending up different subgenres of horror, and each in very different ways.

“Tucker and Dale vs Evil” falls into this company. While you might expect it to send up “Deliverance” and other, more brutal 70’s horror films, such as “I Spit On Your Grave” or “The Hills Have Eyes”, the movie instead lampoons a particular cliche of horror movies which I would call ‘stupid teenagers going camping’, which is a staple setup for numerous horror films and horror film franchises (“Friday the 13th”, “Sleepaway Camp”). Movies of this genre often sought to serve as cautionary tales, pointing out ‘this is what you don’t do’, yet showing no causal relationship between having sex, smoking pot and drinking beer and getting eviscerated by an axe wielding, hockey mask wearing undead psychopath.  “Tucker and Dale” follows these standards of horror, albeit this time with tongue firmly planted in cheek, and this time illustrates causal relationships between being stupid when you’re camping and getting killed.

It teaches important lessons, like ‘Don’t dive headlong at someone standing in front of the business end of a woodchipper.’, ‘Don’t look down the barrel of a gun to figure out why it won’t fire’, ‘Don’t run a chainsaw through a bees nest’, or (and I cannot stress this one enough) ‘Don’t throw moonshine on a fire’.  The movie also offers some fun asides, like “He’s heavy for half a guy”, and one-liners, like “I shoulda knowd that if a guy like me talked to a girl like you, somebody’d end up dead.”

The end of the second act drags a little, with the twists and turns at that point feeling a little forced.  But the third act is solid, with a lead-in that feels a little like the ‘Groovy’ scene from “Evil Dead 2”. In all, I have very few complaints.  However, be prepared for an over-abundance of stupid from the teenagers as well as the titular characters.

If you can get past that and just enjoy it, “Tucker and Dale vs Evil” is a very funny movie and a lot of fun.

"Looper"

If you could go back to any point in history, what would you change?  How would you do it?

What if it was the other way around; if you were faced with someone telling you that you were going to damn the future?  What would you do?

A few days ago, I wrote a post about “Primer” and about the different types of time travel stories. One aspect of time travel stories that I neglected to acknowledge was that of perspective.  The time travel aspects which I mentioned in that post all had the same perspective: the time traveler is the protagonist. However, there are a whole set of stories, few as they may be, where the time traveler is the antagonist. They’ve come back in time to change history, reshape it the way they want, and the protagonist is the one who has to stop them from hurting those who get in their way.

Prior to “Looper”, the two notable films of this type are those in the “Terminator” franchise, and the latest “Star Trek” film. In the “Terminator” films, a series of successively more sophisticated robot assassins from a post-apocalyptic future controlled by machines are sent back to kill the leader of the future human resistance at different points in his life. In the second of these films, we find that scientists who had found the technology left after the first assassin’s destruction are now developing the science which will eventually lead to the future from whence it came.  In the latest “Star Trek” film, when the last survivors from the destruction of a planet are pulled back in time by the technology which was intended to save it, their very presence alters the timeline irrevocably, altering the destinies of the series’ characters along with an entire race.

With “Looper”, filmmaker Rian Johnson brings an original aspect to this type of story:  What do you do when that threat from the future is you?

“Looper” is the third film to be written and directed by Rian Johnson.  Johnson debuted in 2005 with “Brick”.  “Brick” is a revelation: a noir mystery thriller in the best style Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. Joseph Gordon Levitt plays the sleuth; a student with a talent for getting information and solving problems at a high school embroiled with drugs and crime, enlisted for help by an old flame who then goes missing. The story is a complete noir world with all the best earmarks of the genre, including the raffish sleuth, the arcane crime boss, the relentless tough, and the duplicitous femme fatale, but set (and by set, I mean embedded tightly) in a high school, and with a clever slang all of it’s own, giving this film a style all it’s own. Johnson could not have shown more potential as a new filmmaker; he had created a world in the film.

In his followup film, “The Brothers Bloom”, Johnson delves into a different type of noir film: the caper. For the uninitiated, the caper is the story of the committing of a crime.  The most critically acclaimed of these is “The Sting”, and the most widely known currently would be “Ocean’s Eleven”. In a caper, a band of thieves, con artists and other disreputables conspire against a whale and/or a heavy, to take the whale’s money and to at least embarrass or, more often, get out from under the thumb of the heavy. In the two aforementioned films, the whale and the heavy are one and the same; a power broker against whom our rapscallion heroes seek to make a retaliatory strike with the reward of long money. However, in “The Brothers Bloom”, our merry band of miscreants are the titular brothers, Stephen and Bloom; grifters of literary esteem and endowment; the whale is a charmingly whimsical and bubbly millionaire heiress shut-in; and the heavy is the nefarious ‘Diamond Dog’, world-renowned thief, con-man and criminal mastermind who wants the boys either dead or back in his fold, but who Stephen wants to see dead and Bloom just wants to be out from under.  Stephen is the orchestrator, writing his cons “with thematic arcs and embedded symbolism and shit” with Bloom as his ever-suffering sidekick, unable to have any sort of real life, wanting out.

With Johnson’s latest film, “Looper”, his penchant for noir falls second to a story of time travel, and, therefore, of regret. However, the story is original on multiple fronts. In this film, Johnson’s noir considerations take the form of a mob story, a tale of drug addicts turned into assassins, brought into a ‘family’, given one extended contract: eighty-six whoever they’re sent at a given time and place. Just so happens they’re being sent from 30 years in the future. They’re sent their kills with their payment and, after enough, they’re sent one last job: their future self, and get paid enough to be set up for the next thirty years. They’re called ‘loopers’ because, when they do their last job, they’ve ‘closed their loop’.

Joseph Gordon Levitt and Bruce Willis both play Joe, a looper. Levitt plays the young Joe, before his loop has closed. Willis plays old Joe, who, when he gets taken to be ‘closed’, fights back, and goes back anyway, hoping to change things, make them better; to take down the tenebrous overlord who has degraded the future in which he’s grown old. When Old Joe gets away from his younger self, Young Joe is on the lamb from the ‘family’ and chasing after the old man to close his loop and get back in.  Meanwhile, Old Joe is tracking down his mysterious enemy; a talented and dangerous telekinetic who is, in Young Joe’s time, no more than a child, and taking on the ‘family’ at the same time.

“Looper” is part “12 Monkeys”, part “Terminator”, part “Fugitive”, part “Pulp Fiction”. Like “Brick” and “The Brothers Bloom” before it, the characters play like a Chandler or a Hammett or an Elmore Leonard. The continuities and causalities are brilliant, they would make even H.G. Wells’ or Einstein's head’s spin.

What is most impressive is the scale.  As incredible as “Brick” was, it was very small; a few small sets, basic locations, small cast.  “The Brothers Bloom” was not much larger, however, it did boast some beautiful locations.  This is his first ‘big budget’ film: futuristic settings, superhero effects, incredible stunts.

And to whoever it was that made Joseph Gordon Levitt up to look like Bruce Willis did it perfectly.

"One for The Money"

I do not consider myself to be exceedingly intelligent. I am not a member of MENSA. I have no access to state secrets or privileged information (other than my own). I am not, nor do I pretend to be, a prognosticator of any degree or talent. I have no knowledge of the inner workings of Hollywood politics. There are a great many things that I do not know, but only one of them haunts me.

How, for . . . How does Katherine Heigl keep getting work?  Please, someone explain this to me. End my sleepless nights.

I recently watched “One For The Money”, the film adaptation of the Janet Evanovich novel of the same name.  In the movie, Heigl plays Evanovich’s popular sleuth, “Stephanie Plum”.  I say plays, as though Heigl were capable of some sort of acting range. What really happens (and anyone who has seen “The Ringer”, “Knocked Up”, “27 Dresses”, ”The Ugly Truth” and “Killers” can testify to this) is that Katherine Heigl keeps the same character, and that that character is uptight, condescending, obnoxious, snide, inept and phony.

In her earlier movies, it wasn’t quite as noticeable or detrimental. In “The Ringer”, Heigl’s character seemed like more of an afterthought; a romantic interest for Johnny Knoxville’s character whose presence was meant to be a distraction for Knoxville and to create an internal conflict for him.  In this movie, Heigl plays a coordinator at the Special Olympics where Knoxville, pretending to be developmentally disabled, has entered as a contestant to pay off his gardener’s extensive medical bills.  The movie, however, focuses very little on the potential or would-be romance between Knoxville and Heigl, and much more on Knoxville bonding with the other contestants.  Both of these aspects are meant to make him feel guilty about what he’s doing (which he already does from the beginning) which leads to him eventually confessing.

In “Knocked Up”, Heigl plays a woman who gets pregnant from a one-night-stand with a nearly-unemployed slacker played by Seth Rogen.  The bulk of the movie is fairly predictable, going through the motions of these two people, who would never have been brought together were it not for random chance and too much alcohol, following through with a decision that, clearly, neither of them want to, pretending the whole time that it’s what the want, and trying not to resent each other for any of it.  Any resemblance between this movie and romance or comedy is purely coincidental.  The only comedy to be derived from this movie is from the supporting cast, which, for all the very funny people involved, should be more.

“27 Dresses” is nearly unwatchable, and had almost ruined Elton John’s “Bennie and the Jets” for me until I saw “Gnomeo and Juliet”.  In it, Heigl plays a character who has, (and I cannot emphasize this enough) voluntarily, been the maid-of-honor and organizer of 27 different weddings for different friends, and then spends the rest of movie demanding that everyone else feel sorry for her that she hasn’t been married yet, particularly when her sister starts dating her boss, for whom she (Heigl’s character) has had a secret crush.  It is the most predictable and unoriginal story, full of unlikeable and unsympathetic characters, with lame jokes and unnatural dialog. The only redeemable quality this movie is a (mostly) decent performance by James Marsden.

“The Ugly Truth” breaks new ground of predictability as Heigl plays an uptight producer of a morning news show who hires the cable equivalent of a shock jock to boost ratings, then lets herself be convinced to take his advice to better her chances with some other guy.  He (the shock jock) then proceeds to fall for her.  This is yet another version of “Pygmalion”, which was the basis for “My Fair Lady”, and every version which has proceeded it has been more original, less predictable, better performed, more sympathetic, more likable, and generally more stomachable.  This is even probably the worst performance I’ve seen put forth by Gerard Butler.

In “Killers”, Katherine Heigl is back to being the only unlikeable part of the film, when she marries a man, played by Ashton Kutcher (“That 70’s Show”, “Two and a Half Men”), without knowing that he’s a secret agent, and she doesn’t find out until people start trying to kill them.  It starts out as a solid film for Kutcher before he falls into old habits of being over-the-top in order to be more funny, but once he’s rolling, both he and Heigl quickly become insufferable.  This is also yet another film which teaches the lesson of “just because you cast a bunch of comedy actors, doesn’t mean you have a comedy”.

As bad as all of these films were that came before, “One for the Money” is even worse.  Instead of getting someone who could actually carry the roll, like Mila Kunis or Rachel Weiss, they take Katherine Heigl, dye her hair brunette and have her try to speak in a New Jersey accent, which just ends up sounding caricaturish.  Everything Heigl does in this film plays as phony.  The character of Stephanie Plum is supposed to not know what she’s doing, but the way Heigl plays it, it’s as though she’s pretending to not know what she’s doing, and she’s hamming it up for the camera, the way she always does.

I feel I need to acknowledge those parts of the film which actually pass muster, but I with the caveat that it is in no way a recommendation for this film.  Debbie Reynolds shines as she always does as Stephanie Plum’s grandmother.  Jason O’Mara turns in an adequate performance, and his accent is more subtle, but I’ve seen him do better.

However, making this film a Heigl vehicle has done it’s damage.  I now have less interest in the works of Janet Evanovich than I did before.  If you want to see a decent movie about a woman learning how to be a badass bounty hunter, rent “Domino”.  If you don’t want to see yet another wretched Heigl performance, then save yourself the $1.30 at Redbox and the two hours.

Also, I want to ask the people who make the trailers for her movies one question: To what demon in hell did you sell your soul to be able to keep convincing me to see her movies?

"The Hole"

If you find a large, old creepy square door bolted to the cement floor of your basement which is locked by six padlocks, just move out.  Get out of the basement and don’t ever go back.  Don’t ask questions.  Don’t bother to call your Realtor until you’re safely in another timezone.  Only pack what you absolutely need and will fit in your car.  Just get out of the house and as far away as you can.  Whatever else you may do, do not, ever, under any circumstances, take the locks off.  Do not ever, EVER, open it.

Do not ever open the large, old creepy square door bolted to the cement floor of your basement which is locked by six padlocks.

I know that I’ve said before that what makes a good horror movie is also what makes a good movie, but I’ve forgotten that the directors of some of my favorite films from when I was a kid also made some of the scariest horror movies ever. Joe Dante is the only director I know who could do both with the same movie.

I don’t know who’s more sick, me or him.

Joe Dante got his start in the 70’s working under Roger Corman.  In the 60’s, Roger Corman was a cottage industry for making the worst movies in history including “X: The Man With X-Ray Eyes”, “The Creature From The Haunted Sea”, and the original “Little Shop of Horrors”.  He also made a series of highly regarded adaptations of the works of Edgar Allan Poe.  In the 70’s, though, Cormon founded “New World Pictures” whose purpose was to produce and distribute smaller films that larger studios wouldn’t, particularly independent films, and mass distribute foreign films to US audiences for the first time, including the works of Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini and Akira Kurosawa.  From this time forth, Corman made a life of shepherding and mentoring young filmmakers.  He has influenced the careers of directors, producers, writers, and actors alike, such as Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard, Peter Bogdanovich, Jonathan Demme, James Cameron, Curtis Hanson, John Sayles, Jack Nicholson, William Shatner, Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Talia Shire and Robert De Niro.  So Joe Dante is in good company.

My first exposure to the works of Joe Dante was “Explorers”; I was seven. “Explorers” is about a three boys who build their own spaceship out of a 'Tilt-A-Whirl'. When you’re seven years old, what’s not cool about that? Dante’s best known film is “Gremlins”, but his career, which began in the 70’s with “Piranha” and “The Howling”, has included “Innerspace”, “The ‘Burbs”, “Twilight Zone: The Movie”; all of which blending Looney-Tunes-esque comedy, an eye for terror and suspense, and a sense of the fantastic and ridiculous into very fun films which pay solid tribute to Roger Corman. In the early 90’s, Joe Dante went one step closer to paying tribute to Roger Corman and his contemporaries, such as William Castle with “Matinee”, a period drama about what happens when a big name monster movie director comes to a small town to host the release of his latest film at the height of the red scare. Dante’s career in the late 90’s / early 2000’s took a few missteps with “Small Soldiers” and “Looney Tunes: Back in Action”, but now, with “The Hole”, hes back.

“The Hole” starts out simply enough with a mother moving her teen and preteen sons into a new house in a small town (next to a cute girl, of course, which is just prerequisite). While playing, the boys find a door (just as I described at the beginning of this review) in the floor, and, of course, they open it. Weirdness ensues, but in a much more original way than the opening or credits might imply.

"The Hole" stars Chris Massoglia ("The Vampire's Assistant"), Teri Polo ("Meet The Parents"), and features cameo appearances by Joe Dante alumni Dick Miller ("Explorers","Gremlins") and Bruce Dern ("The 'Burbs").

As the film progresses, Joe Dante is in full form and more. There are elements from a number of his previous films, including "The 'Burbs", "Gremlins" and "Twilight Zone".  There are also elements which show influence from other sources as well, such as Asian horror cinema, like "Ringu" or "Ju-on", which integrate well to build a highly creepy atmosphere and an overall scarier movie.

The most impressive part of the film, however, is the rating. "The Hole" is rated PG-13. There are very few horror movies which manage an R rating, and fewer still which manage to be actually scary.  Most horror films tend to be, to some degree or another, over the top, which means death, blood, gore, violence, sex, drugs, swearing, and pretty much anything else which will get the MPAA’s ire up.  Making a horror movie without any of these things also tends to be extremely difficult, as it depends entirely on the director’s ability to create atmosphere.  Fortunately, Joe Dante’s skill at this has never abated.  The ending doesn't disappoint, either. While inevitable, even predictable, the ending corresponds perfectly to the setup.

Two lousy efforts and a six year absence are enough to put any director off his game, but Joe Dante has come back with all his old tricks and even some new ones.  I hope we’ll be seeing more from him soon.

"Brave"

I just got done reviewing a couple of horror movies, so now lets do a nice family film.

“Brave” is one of those movies that I got done watching and thought, “Hrm, is that all there is?” (I had the same experience with “Primer” recently).

Until now, I have unabashedly loved every movie that Pixar has made since Toy Story in ‘95, for a multitude of reasons.  For fifteen years, Pixar raised the bar in filmmaking (not just animation).  With each new film, they have set a new standard for storytelling in film, whether redefining film classics like “The Magnificent Seven” (with “A Bug’s Life”) or “Chinatown” (with “Monsters Inc”), or reinventing the superhero or spy mythos (“The Incredibles”, “Cars 2”), or creating out-rightly original stories (“Up”, “Wall-E”).  

But what Pixar has done best is create stories of unprecedented creativity with serious stakes and honest heart, particularly with a degree of emotion and complexity of character normally only seen in serious dramas, and rarely seen in a “family” films.
In “Finding Nemo”, Dory’s monologue takes the audience by surprise, as does the opening where Marlin has to face the loss of his wife and all but one of his unborn children.  In “Toy Story 3”, the characters are forced to face not only the loss of their closest friend, but, in an unexpectedly dark turn, their own mortality.  The opening scenes of “Up” tell a wonderful and heartfelt love story in five minutes without a word spoken, and that’s just the opening of the story.

However, “Brave”, while showing it’s own degree of imagination and heart, lacks the degree to which Pixar has produced consistently for a decade and a half. On the other hand, (and this is where my frustration comes in) what “Brave” does best, better than any movie before it, is reinvent the idea of the “Disney Princess” movie. The idea of the “Disney Princess” has been a staple of Disney marketing for over a decade, all based on a number of films which Disney has made since Walt’s first feature film, “Snow White”, which are all based on fairy tales, and which all involve a prince and princess falling in love and ending up together at the end. The marketing side seems to be the natural (used loosely) outgrowing from the Alan Menken Disney musicals of the early 90’s (“The Little Mermaid”, “Beauty and the Beast”, “Aladdin”), which, in a matter of four years carried the number of “Disney Princesses” from three (the other two being “Cinderella” and “Sleeping Beauty” to six.

While none of these movies seems to have been made explicitly with the “Disney Princess” marketing in mind, once the marketing ploy began, it has glommed on to every film of this paradigm that Disney has produced.  However, from the late 90’s to the mid 2000’s, quality in Disney animation production (with the few exceptions of “Treasure Planet”, “Lilo and Stitch”, and “Atlantis”) dropped as remarkably and quickly as Pixar’s reputation grew.  So, in 2006, Disney made John Lasseter, who was then the head of Pixar, the chief creative officer at Disney.  Lasseter, who had been directly responsible for numerous projects at Pixar, including “Toy Story” and “Cars”, has, in that time, worked to influence change in Disney animation productions more in line with Pixar.

Since that time, Disney has produced two more of the “Disney Princess” films: “The Princess and The Frog”, and “Tangled”, the latter of which being Disney’s version of the story of Rapunzel.  These films have both strongly reflected Lasseter’s influence, reinventing numerous defining characteristics of the “Disney Princess” paradigm, making for stronger characters and more complex stories.  However, none of these films has yet challenged the one staple of the “Disney Princess” stories, namely, the need for a prince.

This is where “Brave” succeeds.  Far from following the standard paradigm, “Brave” doesn’t have a prince.  Actually, it has three, and, far from being handsome or charming, they’re all goofy and awkward.  In the story, Merida, who is required by tradition (and her mother) to choose one of these ridiculous suitors to be wed, decides, instead, to break and challenge tradition, and refuse.  From this, the conflict between Merida and her mother divides them and leads to Merida inquiring after a witch she meets accidentally for a potion to ‘change’ her mother.  Her mother is changed . . . into a large black bear.  Now, Merida must learn to change her mother back before her mother is found, mistaken for the killer black bear Mor’du and killed.

The course of this story is, for a “Disney Princess” movie, unlike any other before it.  Merida’s mother isn’t evil, far from it; she just wants what she believes is best for her daughter.  The witch Merida finds isn’t evil, either. She’s not very good . . . that is to say, she’s rather mischievous, but she’s not pushing for some great evil scheme, dark purpose, or all consuming want, she’s just trying to make a living.  Merida herself is shown to be her father’s daughter, brash, loud, daring, tough, and a little foolish.  Overall, where numerous previous films have broken with convention here and there, but “Brave” breaks all conventions for a “Disney Princess” movie, which is, in turn, one of the themes of “Brave”: break convention, break tradition; a powerful lesson for anyone, especially Disney animation.  Also a powerful lesson for Disney marketing.

In all, even after writing this review, I’m still conflicted over my feelings about “Brave”.  It’s a good movie: heartfelt, imaginative, and fun.  I’m just not sure that it is up to Pixar’s usual standards.  For Disney Animation, it’s a victory.  For a Pixar movie, its mediocre.  For a “Disney Princess” movie, it’s a revelation.

"V/H/S"

The Random House dictionary defines an anthology as “a book or other collection of selected writings by various authors, usually in the same literary form, of the same period, or on the same subject”.

Anthologies are not, however, simply restricted to written works.  Anthological series have been a staple of television since there was television, and, before that, radio.  The most well known of these are, of course, “The Twilight Zone”, “The Outer Limits”, “Alfred Hitchcock Presents”, and “Tales From the Crypt”. Often, an anthology may also contain a host, narrator, or ongoing set of characters or story which acts as a bookend for the individual stories.

Anthologies in film, however, are far more rare.  With the exception of the Neil Simon “Suite” movies, most of them tend to fall into the horror category.  In the nineties, a number of independent films were made that are often mistaken as anthologies, but anthologies are, by definition, completely autonomous.  Films like “Pulp Fiction”, “Go”, and “Four Rooms” are episodic, but not anthological.  Anthological films also tend to be adapted from either tv series, like “Twilight Zone” or “Tales from the Darkside”, adapted from print, like “HP Lovecraft’s Necronomicon” (which is nearly unwatchable), or made to emulate an external source, such as “Creepshow” 1 and 2 (which I’ll get to later).

But recently, I found a rarity, the thoroughly original horror anthology, “V/H/S”. Not only that, but “V/H/S” is the first anthology film I know of to be shot in the first person.

First person films have grown in popularity over the last half decade.  The movement began with “The Blair Witch Project”, but has been gaining in popularity films like “Cloverfield” and “Chronicle”, and with the works of Oren Peli, the man behind “Paranormal Activity”, “The Chernobyl Diaries”, and the tv series “The River”.

However, “V/H/S” is unique in being the first film to fall into both of these narrative types, and does so remarkably well.

The premise of “V/H/S” is that a gang of four punks who are being paid to make videos of committing pranks and vandalism are hired by their unknown benefactor to steal a video tape from a private home (while filming the theft).  When they break into the home, they find a whole collection of tapes, and don’t know which one it is, so they start watching tapes to find out which one it is.  This, of course, gives the vehicle for the anthology. What follows are a series of five short films, each one shot in the first person, with scenes of the initial story interweaved.

The only two things that all of these short films have in common is that they are all horror shorts, and they are all shot in first person.  Other than that, the stories, characters, situations, and tones of each short could not be more different.  This is one of the earmarks of a well-assembled anthology.  Rod Serling would be proud.

The bookend story (titled “Tape 56”) sets itself, along with the general tone of the film, up well (I’ve already noted how they justify the filming by stating that they are paid for it).  It does a nice, even natural, job of setting up the presentation of the other shorts, as well as taking advantage of the breaks to progress both it’s own story and the general feeling of dread and uneasiness throughout the film. The twists and turns of the story work really well, and make what is already a shutter-fest even creepier.

The first short, “Amateur Night”, is about a couple of douchebags and their hapless geeky sidekick, who they’ve armed with an eyeglasses camera, trying to pick up girls so that they can record themselves having sex with the girls.  This is one of the best in the batch.  The filmmakers flaunt their creativity and attention to detail well, not only in the course of the story as a whole, but in their consistency with maintaining the idea that the camera is in the one characters glasses: he takes them off, cleans them, sets them down, puts them on again, even drops them, all compounding to keep the audience in the world of the short.  The filmmakers also deserve recognition for their use of physical and makeup effects over CGI, giving the film a much more tangible and visceral feel.

The second short, “Second Honeymoon”, was actually rather disappointing and much less original than any of the other shorts.  This was, in fact, barely a horror story, and more a suspense story, derivative of “Dead On” (1994) and the American version of “Diabolique” (1996), both of which no film should ever want to be associated with.  It also suffers the fatal flaw which tends to befall first person films, which is the question “Why the hell are they filming this?”

The third short, “Tuesday the 17th”, was, as you can guess, also associates itself with less-than-reputable fare.  However, not in a derivative way, but as an interpretation of that data-oriented franchise who shall not be named.  It does this, though, in a way which is both original, and ties itself back to the general concept.

The fourth short, “The Sick Thing That Happened To Emily When She Was Younger”, is, in my opinion, the most creative story in the anthology, and one of the most creative horror stories I’ve ever seen.  Instead of someone filming with a camcorder of some kind, the entire film is seen as the desktop of someone’s laptop during a series of video chat conversations between the two main characters, one of whom (“Emily”) thinks that her house is haunted.  The way in which the story is revealed and progresses uses this medium perfectly, and the twist is both brilliant and disturbing.

The fifth and final short, “10/31/98”, about four guys trying to find a halloween party, and, instead, stumbling into an exorcism in a haunted house, is the most fun of the shorts, and rounds out the anthology well.  The filmmakers of this, in also being the cast, bring a degree of silliness to their story that lacked in any of the others.  This is evident from the first moment of the short, where the character doing the filming, who must be at least 6’ tall, is dressing up in a giant teddy bear costume with the camera strapped to his head to be (as he later explains) a nanny cam.  However, once the foursome enter the house, all bets are off.  The effects are, unfortunately, uneven, as some of the CGI effects are more obvious and look less real than others; not to the point of being distracting, but noticeable.

Over all, “V/H/S” while being highly original, calls back to an era of horror filmmaking almost (but hopefully not) long forgotten that was fearless and bold, unforgiving and unrelenting.  An era which birthed the careers of Wes Craven, Sam Raimi, and, lest we forget, Steven Spielberg.

More new horror films could take a few notes from “V/H/S”.