The Channel

TITLE: The Channel
RELEASE DATE: 2016
SCORE: 0 out of 4 stars


Uuuggh this movie is terrible. Terrible acting, terrible characters, terrible dialogue; most of it is terrible. Shot from what appears to be a handycam with a few artsy filters this movie fails at the most basic level. It just isn't put together properly -- scenes meander one after the next with little to no connection, filled with shitty characters portrayed by shitty non-actors with frequent monologues about god and fate and demons and stuff written with the depth and maturity of a junior high student. I find it hard to believe that actual adults created this. Writer/director Tom Lewis has big list of credits as a "production attorney," which he should clearly stick to doing, and never ever be allowed to make another movie.

So... we have Cassie, who was with some drunken party people, driving around, when they hit some other girl, named Katie, and Cassie survived but only after being legally dead for a few minutes. Then she's at school, then she's outside with the her friends, then she's at home... it goes on like this forever. There's absolutely no sense of sequential time. Who knows when this stuff is taking place!

There's some "dramatic" tension between Cassie and some popular boy who kinda likes her, but she is a "freak" and he is pressured by his peers to totally diss her. Cassie is obviously supposed to be a goth, with really overdone make-up, but she also has a really deep tan. The actress is, well, highly unpleasant to look at. I've seen photos of the actress, Kristen StephensonPino, and she's not actually an ugly person, just in this movie, I guess.

I guess they go to a catholic high school, because one of their classes is taught by a priest who talks about demons. I don't know if that even happens at Catholic school... Then Cassie thinks her house is haunted, so the booze crew do a seance. Maybe something shows up? Its vague. The big baddie is some sort of ghost or demon shadow-person type thing, the particulars are explained by a tweaker who comes out of nowhere to tell Cassie he sees it too and that the demon tortures him and the only release is through cutting and self-harm. Great stuff.

Everything is so grating on the nerves; the acting, the writing, the lighting (ughhh!), that this has no chance of being suspenseful or scary, its just a bunch of dumb scenes strung together. Every fucking line read is just shockingly bad. When its not that its high pitched whining noises and Cassie's shrill screaming. Cause, ya know, she's being mentally tortured by the demon. But really, its the audience that is being tortured.

Oh, and then there's all these scenes of her with shitty psychiatrist who tries to convince her its all in her head. So, there's also some real half-assed attempt at a psychological thriller angle mixed in. And Katie's mom also gets involved to harass Cassie, and I think she beats her up at one point, but that might have been the demon again.

 So, its like -- the priest stuff, the popular kid, the party krew, Katie's mom, the demon screeches, the psychiatrist; these all come and go in a revolving, unconnected set of scenes that add up to one big pile of shit. I mean, yes, it does eventually lead towards something, but the path there is like a Hanna-Barbara animated chase sequence.

And it's no short & sweet 90 minutes either. Oh no, this thing is an hour and half long!

My recommendation: burn all copies you encounter of this.

The Abandoned

Title: The Abandoned
Release Date: 2015
Rating: 2.5 out of 4


A fitting title for this post, the first in over two years! Oh well, they are still making horror movies, so I guess I'll still review them.

This is a good example of poor pacing, with fits and stops, slow lingering shots of nothing, and then lots of action all at once. I think the screenwriters stuck to one of those formulas they talk about in How To Write Screenplays books, and it just doesn't work to this film's advantage. Instead of feeling like a roller-coaster it's more like a stationary booth that occasionally shakes around.

I saw some good acting from Jason Patric, and some middling to poor acting from Louise Krause. The whole film is basically these two actor's characters as they spend their time doing security for a big opulent yet empty building overnight. Its a great premise, but on execution its much less spooky than it sounds. Krause plays "Streak," who's having her first night on the job, overseen by her counterpart Cooper, a sexist alcoholic with a good heart buried underneath a rough exterior.

Streak uncovers a portion of the building that is "off limits," and ignores that and delves right in. That's when ghosties (or are they hallucinations?) start to creep around and the suspense picks up. Honestly, its a real slog with just enough interesting moments to keep you watching until the end.

I have to say, however, the last 5 minutes, where the twist is revealed, I found to be very fulfilling and well-done. It breaks through its chains of psychological thriller cliches and ends up being something refreshing, and even, dare I say it, original.

I want to see more from the filmmaking duo Eytan Rockaway and Ido Fluk, but I want to see something bolder, less hemmed in by conventions and formulas. I am convinced they have it in them to do better.

Shadow People

TITLE: Shadow People
RELEASE DATE: 2013
SCORE: 3.5 out of 4

I am getting really tired of the "fauxumentary" style. By this I mean a film that splices regular movie footage in with obviously fake "documentary" footage. It takes you out of the film and unless you film the regular movie specifically like a TV-movie and have "reenactment" warnings at the bottom its totally incongruous.

I guess some filmmakers feel that it amps up the suspense. Using low-fi video and handcam for select shots does indeed have a tendency to build suspense, but that is just using the techniques of a documentary film to make your film more realistic, and thus scary. Unless its specifically a found footage movie and plays by all the rules of one, adding actual documentary-style scenes into a fictional film is ridiculous and confusing, and this movie suffers from this heavily. Its torn between being a found footage fake documentary and a regular feature film, this confuses the audience member and is distracting (especially when they're different aspect ratios -- yeeesh!!)

Aside from its narrative troubles, this makes for a tight and taught little thriller. "Shadow people," of course, have existed in popular urban lore for a few decades now -- something other than ghosts and demons, those beings that seem to exist just out of the corner of your eye and disappear quickly when looked at head on. At least, those are what shadow people are in the real world; in this film they are much more malevolent paranormal beings - in fact they KILL PEOPLE!!!! Ahhhhhhh!

These shadow people conform much closer to "the watchers" that people report during incidents of night terrors and sleep paralysis -- beings present in their rooms, eerily watching over them. But then they also stalk them during the day like a vengeful spirit or perhaps an MIB would... this film is very novel in its approach to a boogeyman that already has some mythos built up in the real world. I have no doubt that this film could have real impact on the kinds of things people actually report going bump in the night.

Humorously it also parallels the very real success of radio legend Art Bell, who's Coast to Coast show was primarily politics-based until the Oklahoma City bombing, when classic anti-government rhetoric became unfashionable, he started shifting his show to the paranormal, with a handful of topics being classic staples of discussion - including shadow people! This shift in formats led to a major rise in listeners and propelled the show into mainstream American consciousness. Unlike the character in our film however, Mr. Bell did not become personally obsessed with the subjects of his late night talk show.

Our main character, Charlie Crowe, is more like a John Keel type -- someone who stumbles onto a dark mystery and can't let go, letting the mystery consume his whole life. Of course, Mr. Keel makes a very good living writing his various scary books on possibly real things -- which is another problem of this film. Let me explain...

When you use a documentary style, you bring the film into our world - the real world of consensual reality. And here we have a fairly common paranormal phenomena and our film is devoid of any Brad Steigers, Whitley Striebers, Nick Redferns or or John Keels here. Just some dusty notes from an old sleep disorder study and the diary of a teenager to tie this whole thing together. Yet this revolves around a late night talk radio show -- where are the paranormal investigators?! If this were a straight film we might suspend our disbelief and be happy to think "in this movies' universe, this is a new phenomena," but we aren't afforded such a luxury.

But for its faults it is a very entertaining film and it does its job on the horror side of things - it left me feeling spooked and unsettled. Like many films I review, I wish this had been given another editing once over before  it went out for release. However it does have snappy dialogue, exposition that doesn't bog down too badly, and without need for a lot of splatter the minor effects present in the film are very very effective. There's also very little lag or pacing problems.

Still makes no sense that a wannabe Fox Mulder doesn't show up on the scene though, or why seemingly real footage is mixed with obvious film footage without any explanation... This is why I feel like I have to detract points.

Psych: 9

 

TITLE: Psych: 9
RELEASE DATE: 2010
SCORE: 1.5 out of 4

This film straddles the line between psychological thriller and supernatural thriller, but its perch is precarious.  The obviousness of the later reveal renders large portions of the movie as tedious set-up to what you know is going to be a grim and meager payoff. Then the movie forgets itself and tries for something half-clever, but leaves us with a muddled ending that tries for ambiguous and lands somewhere short of comprehensible.

The plot is basic, and lifted from countless predecessors (such as Session 9, a movie with a nearly identical set up and many other obvious similarities): a young single white female starts a job doing tedious filing work for the psych ward of a hospital which has been closed down. She thinks this will be relaxing but actually the spooky setting and long hours alone start to fray her nerves. She picks up smoking again, her marriage starts to deteriorate as does her mental health as she becomes plagued by paranoia and nightmares. Slowly her past is unraveled as she begins to have therapy sessions with a psychiatrist who is occasionally around, apparently tying up loose ends or something...

This character study is "added" to by a serial killer subplot which acts as the catalyst for the final, and not quite understandable, denouement. The film presents two mutually exclusive possibilities for the events that unfold before us, but these possibilities are also each internally inconsistent and don't hold up to scrutiny. The third possibility is so vague and barely realized that I'm not sure I even know what it might be.

Its not a stinker; the production values are fairly high and the acting is good for indie horror standards. Unfortunately, the film also suffers from some of the common afflictions that come with a small budget - a cast of six characters, a total of four sets, hardly any establishing shots, and so on. I think a really good film will transcend its budget - and tell a story where these things don't really factor in at all; in fact many of the best horror films have had notoriously tiny budgets and its because of being innovative with constraints its part of the art of film-making.

All in all its mostly a retread of very tired psychological thriller tropes, lacking any spark of originality, done cheaply without much concern for artistry or cinematic depth. There's just barely enough meat on its bones to make it not terrible, but obviously that's not much of a recommendation.

Circle of Eight

 

TITLE: Circle of Eight
RELEASE DATE: 2009
SCORE: 1.5 out of 4


First and foremost there is the fact that the studio that made this is named "Mt Dew Green Label Studios" and that Paramount is most likely just distributing this film. Not knowing what to expect from this film at all, I begin worrying I am about to watch an 83 minute Mountain Dew commercial repackaged for my consumption as "horror." How horrifying! Well, as the Dew is extreme, so is this movie - which remains unrated (as far as I can tell).

The first few minutes of it happen to be a sort of music video -- and a terrible one! Jessica, while adequately performed by Austin Highsmith, is still a weak and hackneyed Mary Sue character in which to project all our fears and anxieties on to, with little or any actual personality of her own. She soon meets her neighbors when she moves into a new apartment on New Year's Eve. Oh, and the apartment complex has a "file room" no one is allowed to go in to. And, you guessed it, all the neighbors are crazy (and there's eight of them)! Or is Jessica the crazy one? Who knows? Who cares...

No one knows anything, everyone is an unreliable narrator/crazy person and no one is very likable, so the emotional commitment I had for the characters was less than zero, I definitely rooted for all of them to die. The dialogue is atrocious and delivered with all the ability of high school drama team flunk-outs. I expect this out of a low-budget horror film but this really stood out to me.

The film is an utter pain to watch; its a dismal and unconvincing drama followed by some tiresome and unfunny comedic scenes followed by psychological "twists." This is a movie that trades in a brisk pace for an attempt at building suspense and mood, and it utterly fails. The mood is irritating rather than entrancing and the suspense is sporadic rather than building. Throughout the second half a bunch of random bonkers stuff happens, so at least that's kind of entertaining.

The pitiful twists and turns are as predictable and tame as a Made-for-TV movie. Perhaps it was, the production value is certainly no higher than one (a cheap one). You should all go rent Shredder Orpheus, its a cheap movie that rules. Its nothing like this movie, but for some reason I was wishing I was was watching it the whole time I was watching this fairly unenjoyable film.

Triangle

TITLE: Triangle
RELEASE DATE: 2009
SCORE: 1 out of 4

I didn't know what to expect from this film, but I had hoped it was going to be about the Bermuda Triangle and full of creepy ghost-ship suspense. This movie is kind of like that, I guess, if you have no idea what the words creepy or suspense mean.

I hate it when weird shit is constantly happening around a set of characters and none of them acknowledge that said weird shit is happening. And it all happens so quick as well -- the entire cast is dead except for the Single White Female (with bonus Autistic Son back home) within the first half hour of this movie. A horrendous situation for a slasher flick, but then the movie just switches gear into a psychological thriller with "mind-bending" (poorly fleshed out) time travel stuff. Still - I always maintain that it's a good idea to at least have one other guaranteed living character around to make things slightly interesting. An unreliable narrator is great and all, but if that is the only person in the film it kind of needs to be spectacularly written and directed and acted - and this movie is certainly not. The end is not satisfying, and it is not clever.

This movie really seems to be made up of several different coherent ideas for a movie that were then slammed together to make a complete pile of shit. It is not a movie that frightens you, it is a movie that angers you by being so stupid and slap-shod.

Honestly, Hot Tub Time Machine might provide the audience with more sensible temporal distortion plot line. It might have more thrills, too!