I decided to go with a WTF List instead of a regular review because I know most horror fans have seen this movie already. I'll admit, the promotion for this flick had me scratching my head. I figured it was a Blair Witch meets The Exorcist ripoff. Sure it had Eli Roth's name attached to but I figured it could wait.
Well the wait is over.
The Last Exorcism is one of the best horror movies of 2010 by far. Not because it had elements of Paranormal Activity or exorcism scares, but because somehow the mockumentary feels as real as real could be. Evangelism is clearly a scary thought in general, but when you you see how real the fakery can be and how people will believe in "the show", that's what's truly scary. The Last Exorcism amplifies this horror wise but the foundation is not without a chill to the bone factor as well.
The shot on video POV should have jumped the shark here but didn't. It reminded me of Lake Mungo, which is on my top 10 list as well. When done well these fake docs somehow get the jumpy jumping. It's a smart mock and I liked the mockery of religion. Sure it got a little cliched towards the end though it ended cleverly, it's a haunting feeling nevertheless.
On to the list!
1.) Our scammy Reverend is clearly an anti Father Merrin. 2.) Religion is really magic and banana nut cake. 3.) Cotton is clearly a vampire slayer 4.) You may be part Sweetzer and not even know it. 5.) I'm 100% sure a crystal meth tweekers killed those animals...or Chupacabra 6.) Nell looks like she drank too much Four Loko 7.) All magic has fishline in some way or another 8.) The camera guy actually does a decent job of pointing the camera to where I WANT him to point the camera 9.) But he keeps doing damn reaction shots..STOP IT! 10.) I tell ya, any girl wearing Doc Martens becomes 10x more hotter
11.) Jump scare, BOO scare, dark scare, BOO scare 12.) Sorry I don't bend that way 13.) The lack of CGI is giving me a happy 14.) You don't wanna hear it, but I think America has an incest problem 15.) The film likes to play with your belief vs science struggle. If you're acting crazy, your freakin crazy. For 90% of the movie you feel she's just mental. And that 10% makes you think. Though 9% of me still think's she's looney. 16.) Nothing ever good comes out of a bonfire and people dressed in cloaks and funny hats 17.) I'm one of those people that gets dizzy when the POV goes into nauseous mode 18.) Poor Cotton. He should have called the Vatican 911. 19.) Well he'll never be ahead of a corporation 20.) They don't even try to go all found footage. Imagine this was on A&E or Bio and portrayed as real. 40% of Americans would BELIEVE THIS IS REAL. Seriously...right?
The Last Exorcism is so bumping another flick from my Top 10 list. Dammit. I now have like 3 cinema verite flicks on my top 10. Somehow this feels wrong. But you gotta give credit to where it's due. The Last Exorcism is scamtastic heavenly fun.
Look what I got for free at work! Probably the worst screener in the history of screeners.
Born is some sort of Rosemary's Baby straight to DVD ripoff. It stars Alison Brie from Mad Men (I've never watched this show) and Kane fuckin Hodder.
In all honesty, I knew I wouldn't be able to come up with a regular review so I am going to attempt my first picture plus funny comment review. I've seen a lot of picture reviews on other horror blogs but I've never actually tried it before. This should be quite enjoyable for you and for me.
Seriously, don't worry. Go ahead and read the post. You're never going to see this movie...ever. And you really wouldn't want to.
So without further ado, here we go. Some the pics are NSFW!!!
Boring Plot-O-Matic
Mary Elizabeth goes to bed alone one night, still a 21 year old virgin, and wakes up the next morning...pregnant. Possessed by the demon fetus growing within her womb, Mary Elizabeth obeys her homicidal cravings to kill...for the sake of her unborn spawn. Mary Elizabeth's dark transformation, controlled by her unborn demon child, is driven by it's dark cravings. Once the child is born there will be hell on earth. From this apparent immaculate conception comes edge of your seat terror.
Awesome Picture Review-O-Matic
Look! It's Kane Hodder looking like he just got out of prison (he just told a psychiatrist he's a demon) Good one Kane!
Meet the family. Dad (seen here smoking) OMG Is that Denise Crosby! Yes it's Tasha freakin Yar! And there is our fearless virgin soon to be bearing a demon child, May Elizabeth. BTW her mommy died :-(
She's so distraught by her mommy's death, she starts seeing hot blondes in Victoria Secret lingere. I wish that would happen to me when I'm sad.
In the cemetary, she gets impregnated by demon lightning! Fake CGI lightning at that.
After her lightning sex, she's rescued by a crazy albino that looks like Dr. Evil. Lets call him Evil Albino guy.
Insert gratuitous nudity. Look its stunt double boobies!
Holy twinkies! Mary Elizabeth just woke up pregnant...right her sis Catherine tries to drown her in the tub. I think that happened in Juno too.
Here her dad goes all gynecology on his daughter.In some states this is illegal.
In order to feed her demon child, she has to go all killer insane. In this scene, the little tyke wants a closeup look as mommy electrocutes some poor schmuck. I saw this same thing happen on Jon and Kate plus 8.
Wow she's totally evil now. She even decaps and rips this poor guy's heart out. Good times.
It's bad enough with the fake CGI lightning but here they outdo themselves with a fake CGI sonogram. It's the cable access fetus channel!
What happens when you get a craving for a late night snack? Raven's blood of course! The late night snack of the netherworld.
Soon after, Mary Elizabeth goes all Natasha Henstridge in Species and starts getting horny. She books a gigolo date and they go on a extreme grunt-a-thon. If you're a Deuce Bigalow, I think you should avoid servicing pregnant demon chicks. It just leads to a loss of Mr. Willy.
So how do you top that? Add a lesbian scene of course. Seems Mary Elizabeth has been imprisoned in her house by her sister and she decides to get her groove on with her friend.
But that of course leads to kissing her baby bump which of course enables her demon kid to kill her by oral fixation. The best part is when they had horrible fake CGI blood come 3D-ing straight at the screen. George Lucas. Hire these guys immediately!
Oh that awesome sonogram machine. Check out baby demon smile. Isn't he the cutest little thing you ever did see. He's got mommy's eyes and daddy's horns and tail. Awwww. Coochie coo.
So after finding out she's carrying a devil spawn and battling the internal cravings to kill, she has her dad try to perform surgery to kill this unholy fetus. Doesn't it look like the baby devil spawn is taking a dump? A very satisfying #2.
"Yo wuz up grandpa? WTF homey, I wasn't ready to come out yet, you know what I'm sayin? Fuck y'all. I'm gonna bust a cap in your ass."
It's the twist! Catherine and Evil Albino are doing the bidding of Kane Hodder. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank you if you've made it this far in reading this review. Your next purchase of any Raven's Blood is on me.
The hot, blonde Victoria Secret models are back.And now their naked! This is the epitome of gratuitous nudity.
This is an actual line from the movie uttered by Mr. Hodder: "I'm the torturer of the 13th level of hell. I fuck with people. That's what I do."
Decapitated heads and pentagrams. You gotta love your Satanic rituals complete with nude models. So 80s! The heads also start talking for no apparent reason because that's normal.
Kane Hodder starts to bleed inexplicably for no reason. Seems the psychiatrist was the devil and took the baby to be the anti-Christ. Seriously it doesn't really matter.
Let's look at the blonde, nude models holding a baby to end this. Seems only appropriate.
Well that's it. Born was the perfect movie to make fun of. Has been stars, over the top acting (Alison Brie talking to herself as she played good Mary vs evil demon baby is freakin hilarious) and one of the worst CGI I have ever seen.
Denise Crosby will act for food. So will Kane Hodder. If MST3K was still around, this would be perfect (ahem Rifftrax anyone?). Also it was 147 minutes long. Jeezus, it takes that long to have a baby on film??
The worst part is at the end of the movie they hinted towards a sequel!
Well I hope you enjoyed my first picture review. I'm sure there will be more of these in the future if I can get my hands on some B movies to review. Born should have never been born. But it was, so at least this awesome review came out of it. Coochie coo.
0 Spinkicks
If these picture snapshots weren't enough for you check out the trailer below.
It's very odd that this decade, the 2000s have all been a haven for the throwback, remake or homage movie. We get sentimental for different decades, the 70s and 80s we deem as the golden age sometimes. This very much is the case within horror.
I am not a child of the 70s, but I did watch the cinema of the time. When I first got into horror, I figured I should self-educate and watch the best of the best. The Exorcist, Rosemary's Baby, The Omen, etc. And after watching all these movies, I never knew why people were so obsessed with the occult and the Satanic worship at the time.
But Ti West wants you to get reacquainted with that devil fear all over again. With The House of the Devil, he basically takes that slow burn, jump scare and evil Satanic worshipping frozen dinner and reheats it for you, complete with the side of gory red pudding. West does nothing new to this genre of film, but instead adds some gorehound delights and nostalgic 80s soundtrack to complete a good homage, nothing more and nothing less.
The House of the Devil is a throwback glimpse into a plodding pace that is all atmosphere based which eventually leads to an over the top, metal music cacophony of chaos ending. If you you remember these movies fondly, you'll love this movie. If you're a tween or were born in the 90s, this is a movie where may you spontaneously develop ADD.
I found myself caught in the middle. And I'll tell you why.
Boring Plot-O-Matic
In the 1980s, college student Samantha Hughes takes a strange babysitting job that coincides with a full lunar eclipse. She slowly realizes her clients harbor a terrifying secret; they plan to use her in a satanic ritual. Awesome Review-O-Matic
Let's just start off with what I liked. I loved the vintage 80s opening credits, from the fonts to the freeze frame credit sequences. West spares no expense to get you back into acid washed jeans and Charlie's Angels hair. The soundtrack keeps this going with very montagey music that blends into the film. As Sam blasts her oversized Walkman, we hear music from new wave to metal (thank the Gods of Fire for that). Later, we even get a gratuitous 80s montage set to "One Thing Leads to Another" by The Fixx. It's all these things that gave me a happy because nostalgia is an intoxicating drug for any movie fan.
Here is where we go grey. Sam (Jocelin Donahue) is that everyday poor, struggling college student. She's got a horny, slobby roommate which is the reason she decides to move off campus. She soon takes a babysitting job located in backwoods, USA and she and her friend Megan are off to meet the lovely but ultimately evil Mr. and Mrs. Ulman.
Act 1 is all set up as we play meet and greet with our heroine Sam. Donahue looks like a cloned Danielle Harris. West allows us to see her uninteresting life in the most aggravating of ways. Scenes of watching Sam walk from place to place, with juxtaposition closeup shots of a clock tower followed by more long walks and scary payphones. I have totally forgotten how yawny boring these long shots and scenes of nothing can be. (Can somebody tell me if this is how these 70s/80s Satanic movies were filmed back then? I honestly don't remember. But I get the feeling West makes sure we get the same feel as those movies. The mega slow burn is in effect. You better drink a Red Bull.)
Act 2 begins when Sam decides to take the babysitting job which turns out to be not a babysitting job. Mr Ulman (Tom Noonan, who does a decent job as the creepy undertaker-like guy) explains the rules and coerces her with more money.
We the viewer get painstakingly a collection of scenes of Sam snooping all over the house. Some scenes (especially shots of her through a window are glorious throwaway shots of old). But more so, we get Sam being scared of her friend's answering machine (complete with that 80s pretend voice message), Sam scared of the pizza guy, Sam scared of the bathroom, Sam scared of the creepy attic. West spares no expense who amp up the bass to get you to jump out of your seat. Think of the "Don't!" trailer and this sums up Act 2.
Check out an example of the slow burn suspense in this clip below.
Act 3 which takes about an hour and 10 minutes to get to is filled with bloody uber chaos. Motive is explained by our diabolical couple and their homicidal son tries to go, well homicidal on Sam. Satanic rituals are in effect with that Satanic star, that Satanic animal skull and that Satanic blood drinking and human sacrifices. In all these movies, they end one of two ways. Somebody gets shot or jumps off the roof of the house.
Like I said before, West throws in more gore and splatter than these movies usually have. Gore-ipedia includes a very stellar gunshot to the face, ocular trauma, sliced throats and a headshot. It's top notch FX and I couldn't help but applaud the effort.
However, at the end of the day the movie is a wicked slow slow slow burn. It takes so long to get to the nitty gritty that no Red Bulls were helping to keep me awake. I understand it's suppose to be this way but Satanic and occult movies are my weakest link within horror and I'll admit, I do not like style over substance. The House of the Devil is filled with these cliches of BOO! scares and unseen carnage. Though as an older horror fan, I am not easily scared as I use to be and as the jaded viewer, I demand to see something substantial and not the repackaged same old same old. That's not to say the film isn't effective in what it was trying to do. Kudos to West and the entire cast for pulling off an impressive homage to the girl meets devil genre. It's brilliant in bringing back that longing for a movie you'd see at 2am on Channel 11 (WPIX in NYC).
So with that, it's a touch of grey for The House of the Devil. It's got its moments and it's got its long moments. Like a magic eye painting, you'll be waiting for the blurry mess of color to turn into a sailboat. Some people will focus and see the sailboat. Others, like myself wait for hours for that damn sailboat. Hell, sometimes you don't see a sailboat at all.
Nude-ipedia
Nada. These aren't the droids you're looking for.
WTF moment Gunshot to the face. Didn't see that coming.
The Jaded Viewer's Final Prognosis
Going back on the metaphor I mentioned before, The House of the Devil is a reheated frozen dinner. You've eaten it before and it pretty much tastes the same. But sometimes, if you haven't had that same meal in a while, it tastes a little better. Right? Know what I mean?
The House of the Devil comes out on October 30th in a limited release. You can actually watch it on Amazon.com Video In Demand right now.
I decided to go with a WTF List instead of a regular review because I know most horror fans have seen this movie already. I'll admit, the promotion for this flick had me scratching my head. I figured it was a Blair Witch meets The Exorcist ripoff. Sure it had Eli Roth's name attached to but I figured it could wait.
11.) Jump scare, BOO scare, dark scare, BOO scare
Posts
