Here is what I am watching (so far) during the quarantine for COVID-19
This will be my last "COVID Diaries" entry, as I am now vaccinated and look forward to getting to see movies in the theatres again! However, the multiple-reviews-in-one-post format is incredibly useful, especially given how many movies I tend to watch. I might keep doing it, but change the title to "Movies I've seen lately" or "Movies I watched in [month]". We shall see. Until then, enjoy the final chapter of The COVID Diaries.
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The House on Haunted Hill (1999)
I saw part of this late-90s horror schlockfest when I was in my mid-teens and it scared the absolute bejesus out of me. I remember a scene where a ghoul walks in a funny manner, and creepy things/people walking funny one of the scariest things you can show on screen (see: basically all Japanese horror movies).
So when the film, starring Geoffrey Rush, Famke Janssen, Taye Diggs, Chris Kattan, Ali Larter, and many other 90s-era celebrities (Lisa Loeb has a cameo!), made its way to Shudder, I figured it was time to face my fears and give it another go. And I'm so glad I did because The House on Haunted Hill is not scary at all and is, in fact, a shit movie.
The only good aspect of this film, which is a loose remake of the 1959 William Castle movie starring Vincent Price, is Geoffrey Rush's over-the-top performance as Steven Price, an amusement park mogul who loves two things: scaring people and fighting with his wife, Evelyn (Famke Janssen). For Evelyn's birthday, Steven invites a bunch of randos to a supposedly haunted insane asylum and tells them that anyone who makes it through the night...alive...will win $1 million dollars.
But, wait...Steven didn't even *these* specific people (he had a different guest list), and neither did Evelyn (ditto). So who...or what...brought this gang together? SpOOoooPy!
In classic horror movie fashion, these geniuses all end up deciding to go into the basement where all the old medical devices are and they see a bunch of ghosts! Whatever is haunting the place starts picking them off, one by one, and tensions are ratcheted up higher and higher. If my description makes you think "wow, sounds like a solid haunted house movie", well...your mileage may vary. I found The House on Haunted Hill to be ridiculous, boring, and eye-roll inducing. But it could serve as a decent "bad movie night" film. Or it might scare the hell out of you. I guess you'll have to watch it to find out...
Grade: D
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Stoker
Park Chan-wook's English language debut realllllllly wants to be a good and interesting movie, but it's an overheated, perverted (but not in a fun way) mess. It's basically "what if Tennessee Williams, but too much?"
Starring Mia Wasikowska, Nicole Kidman, and Matthew Goode, Stoker follows 18 year old India Stoker, whose beloved father has just passed away. At the funeral her estranged uncle, Charlie (Goode), shows up and offers to live with India and her mother, Evelyn (Kidman), to help out while the two adjust. Evelyn takes an immediate liking to Charlie (maybe...too much of a liking?), but India is skeptical of her smirking uncle.
Things get weird...and then they get REAL weird. I can't say much without giving it away but if you're thinking "Ok, does the movie go there?", then I can tell you that yes it does. Sort of. This movie was directed by the same guy who directed Oldboy, so....
While the imagery is very beautiful and gives Stoker a poetic, artistic feel, the plot (and acting) doesn't live up to the cinematography. This movie truly does feel ridiculous, like we're watching a pulp novel come to life. That might sound intriguing to you, and to be fair the film is divisive in that many people really enjoyed it--and you might be one of them! But I found Stoker to be surprisingly boring for a film where a predatory uncle puts the moves on his niece.
Grade: B-
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The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It
Stop it, Counjuring Universe. Just stop it. We've had enough! The first Conjuring was excellent, and is one of the films I credit for kicking off my horror habit. The second one was just ok. Then we got all the Annabelle business and Nun business. And now we have a movie called "The Devil Made Me Do It", which could be the excuse the producers give for making this movie...only we all know it's money, not the devil, making them "do it". And by "do it", I mean keep churning out shit like this.
Once again, we drop in on the adventures of Ed and Lorraine Warren, the married scam artists demon hunters who have helped many a family possessed by demons or haunted by ghosts. We open in the middle of an exorcism in which young David Glatzel is possessed by a demon making him contort like a Cirque du Soleil performer. David's sister's boyfriend, Arne (Ruairi O'Connor), grabs David at one point and tells the demon basically to pick on someone its own size, and the demon takes Arne up on his offer, leaving David's body to possess Arne.
A few weeks later, Arne kills his landlord. And he says the demon made him do it. This is a true story, by the way! The rest of the movie follows the Warrens (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, with their game faces on as always) as they try to figure out the nature of this demon and what it wants in order to get the demon to leave Arne, but also to build his defense case. The actual case is more interesting than the film, and I encourage you to look it up.
The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It is yet another ridiculous film, and it's not even that scary. Ed and Lorraine Warren were interesting people, and far be it from me to sit here and tell you that demons and ghosts don't exist because hell if I know! There's a lot of crazy shit that exists, and while I think the vast majority of hauntings and possessions have rational explanations, there are just some things that happen that we simply don't have the scientific knowledge to understand quite yet. If people who worked with the Warrens genuinely feel that they were helped, then good on the Warrens. But also maybe they don't need their own film franchise? Also, the Conjuring movies are not-so-secret Christian propaganda. Which is fine I guess? But American Christians really need to shut the fuck up for a while and ponder their sin of voting en masse for a goddamned rapist, racist narcissist and stop trying to convert good, decent people into their death cult. (btw if you're a good Christian and you're reading this, I see you. Jesus is just alright by me).
Grade: C-
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Irréversible (trigger warning for THIS REVIEW--rape, violence, homophobia, general fuckedness)
Y'all are going to think I'm nuts for considering a movie that features a 9 minute rape scene, a scene of a guy's head getting bashed in, and endless homophobic slurs better than The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It. But what can I say? It's just better. Not that it's a contest--all movies should be judged on their own merits.
Irréversible is infamous. Directed by provocateur Gaspar Noé, the film is controversial/notable for a number of reasons:
1) It is shown in reverse chronological order. Meaning that in the world of the film, the last thing that happens is shown first. This is incredibly disorienting since we see the aftermath of a beating, then the beating itself, then men trying to find the guy they want to beat up, etc.
2) When the movie was shown in theatres, Noé used a very low frequency sound in the first hour of the movie, which induced nausea and made people barf and faint during screenings. You kind of still get that feeling while watching it at home, but not to the same extent as you would in a theatre, since those frequencies literally cause your body to vibrate in a theatre setting.
3) The rape scene. Widely considered one of the most disturbing scenes of sexual violence in a mainstream film, this scene is usually said to be 9 or 10 minutes long, but that's the *entire* scene from start to finish. The actual rape is closed to 2 or 3 minutes. But, I mean, it's still fucking disturbing and very, very violent. If you are offended or upset by rape scenes, don't watch this movie because you will 100% regret it.
4) The part where the guy's head gets bashed in with a fire extinguisher. I definitely was watching through my hands, but if you're a fan of gory horror, you've probably seen similar or worse.
5) The homophobic slurs, and general homophobia of the film. Well. The bad guys are gay or bi. The rapist is a man who fucks men, women, and trans people. So the boyfriend of the raped woman and his friend seek out the gay sex club the rapist is known to frequent to get revenge and of course, they use the British term for cigarettes a lot. There's also a really not cool scene with a trans prostitute where her genitals are shown in a very degrading way. I can't really defend the movie other than to say that this is the world in which the characters live. This is how the characters would indeed behave. I'm not saying it's ok, or it's excusable, and I have no idea if Noé is homophobic or transphobic, but this is an intense, hard-R film about a violent rape and the aftermath, and I was not surprised to see such language being used.
Irréversible is undeniably one of the most intense movies I've ever seen, personally. It is violent, it is disorienting, it is ugly (until the last third, which is actually quite nice). And...in my personal opinion...it is art. There is a bigger question here about whether offensive or disturbing films have any "value" in society, and I don't know how to answer that other than to say that even if we censor movies like this...the shit we see in the movie will still happen in real life. So maybe it's better to be able to show disturbing stuff in order to be able to talk about it and face it head-on rather than looking away or avoiding thinking about it. I don't think this movie glorifies or glamorizes rape and violence. I think the point of a lengthy rape scene isn't to be edgy, but to say "hey, this is what rape really looks like" (sometimes...rape can look non-violent too), and I kind of appreciate the director's honesty in this regard, while also acknowledging that the vast majority of rapes don't occur like they do in this film (i.e. with a stranger attacking a person out of the blue).
Do I recommend Irréversible? No. Not unless you're already the kind of person who knows what it's about and knows you can handle it. I personally avoided this film for years and when I finally saw it, I thought "wow, it's actually a good movie!" Art comes in many forms. Sometimes art is a Rococo painting of a beautiful woman lying in a meadow, and sometimes art is a crucifix dipped in urine. So while I don't *recommend* Irréversible, I do think it's a good movie.
Grade: A very cautious B+
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Wolf Creek
Wolf Creek is a very straightforward horror film based loosely on the true story of the "Backpacker murders" that took place in Australia in the late 80s and early 90s.
English tourists Liz and Kristy join their Australian friend Ben on a road trip down the Great Northern Highway in Australia. They make a stop at Wolf Creek National Park and when they try to leave, realize their car won't start. They flag down a trucker named Mick Taylor (John Jarratt, who plays a very entertaining psychopath here), who offers to tow them to his camp and fix the car. Since it's already dark, the trio will have to spend the night in Mick's camp.
The next morning, Liz wakes up bound and gagged. Though she is able to untie herself, she hears Kristy screaming before she can run away from the camp and decides to rescue her. Sure enough, Mick is a serial killer who especially delights in torturing young women--and even has the remains of the last unfortunate woman to run across Mick hanging in his shed!
The women manage to escape, but are pursued by Mick. Is there a happy ending? Hahaha, you'll just have to watch it to find out!
Wolf Creek is good, but not great. It's pretty much a typical slasher and I didn't find it to be anything special, other than the fact that the killer sounded like Crocodile Dundee. It did contribute to my "reasons to never visit Australia" list though!
Grade: B
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