Visiting Hours (1982)

* * * *

Highly Recommended

There are numerous examples in film history of very similar movies coming out around the same time. Antz and A Bug's Life is a very recent, famous example. I watched Visiting Hours within days of watching Eyes of a Stranger, a movie released just a year earlier. Both movies deal with female news anchors who attract the ire of very deadly, very misogynistic serial killers, but Visiting Hours was an incredibly pleasant surprise, especially when it came to the treatment of its main characters.

In Visiting Hours, Deborah Ballin (Lee Grant) is an outspoken news anchor who launches a media crusade intended to help a woman who is on trial for murdering her abusive husband. Deborah argues fiercely, on air, that the woman is being railroaded and that the years of domestic abuse should be taken into consideration during the trial. Her vehement, and off-script, rants upset her producer/boyfriend (William Shatner in a surprisingly subdued role), but they utterly enrage viewer Colt Hawker (a hulking and terrifying Michael Ironside). Hawker, whose own family history was rife with abuse, fixates on Deborah and he attacks her brutally in her own home. When Deborah survives the attack, Colt races to kill her before he can be caught, a plan that involves infiltrating the hospital where Deborah is being kept.

Screenwriter Brian Taggart and director Jean-Claude Lord save Visiting Hours from being just another piece of nasty exploitation by focusing the brunt of the movie on three central female characters: Deborah, her nurse, Sheila (Linda Pearl), and Lisa (Lenore Zann), a woman with low self-esteem who suffers a frightening night of abuse at Colt's hands after he picks her up at a bar. The three women, in their own separate ways, put together a picture of who Colt is and what he's after, but by the time the connect the dots it may be too late for all three of them.

The movie plays on both the vulnerability and the independent strength of all three of its female protagonists. Deborah is severely injured in Colt's first attack, yet she is determined not to be silenced. Though she is told over and over again that there is no way that Colt is in the hospital (even though he is), Deborah remains wary and refuses to be placated. Similarly Sheila, who is a single mother, must find a way to protect both Deborah and her own children when she accidentally puts herself in Colt's sights. Lisa, who seems like a throwaway victim from her first appearance, manages to bounce back from her ordeal and provides a critical piece of the puzzle at the very end of the film.

Balancing out the strong female characters, Michael Ironside does more than his share of the heavy lifting as the warped and seething Colt. Most of his time on screen is spent in quiet moments, such as when he sits and watches television with his invalid father, or when he picks up Lisa merely with a significant glance in her direction. When he explodes into violence it is truly terrifying, but the movie also makes the most of Ironside's imposing presence. Director Lord uses camera angles and perspective to turn the five-foot-ten Ironside into a hulking and menacing figure. In one scene in particular (pictured above) he appears to tower over Lenore Zann's Lisa. While Ironside is in reality about six inches taller than Zann, the angle suggests that he might have a full foot of height advantage over her. By shooting Ironside in this way, his character is imbued with a menace even (and perhaps more so) when he is still.

And what's the deal with Colt? It seems that he grew up in a house with an abusive father. In one flashback, Colt is being severely beaten by his father. When his mother intervenes, the father turns his rage on her. Colt's mother defends herself by splashing her husband with a pan of boiling oil, and the flashback ends. What followed this scene? Did Colt's father later kill his mother? We never find out what happened later that night, but it is an odd testament to the warped power of abuse that Colt appears to identify with his father. Quite significantly, and intriguingly, Colt seems more hesitant to actually kill the women who really anger him (Deborah, Sheila, and Lisa) than he is to kill those people who get in his way (such as an innocent hospital patient and a hospital orderly). Despite what seems to be just a straightforward case of woman-hating takes on more interesting and ambiguous layers as the movie proceeds.

Despite being elevated by its fresh take on both the victims and the bad guy, Visiting Hours is not without its flaws. The movie can sometimes seem disjointed as it jumps between characters. And if you believe that Colt actually wants to kill Deborah (something that I actually doubt a little bit), then it can seem a little absurd how many times he gets within striking distance only to retreat. Based on a scene late in the movie in which Colt infiltrates Sheila's home I am more convinced that Colt himself is a little confused about his desires, but his repeated forays into the hospital under different guises would seem a little silly if you believe that killing Deborah is his main objective. There is also a very, very large coincidence that brings two of the main characters together, and it was a little hard to suspend disbelief on that point.

Overall, Visiting Hours gets a lot more right than it gets wrong. Colt's attacks in the film are nastily realistic, and though one scene edges toward exploitation, the victim has a nicely barbed retort when she later talks about the attack. "He did this to me because he can't get it up." The commiseration between the various female leads is a refreshing counter-point to the scenes in which Shatner's character (and several other male authority characters) try to convince Deborah that she is being paranoid. As a thrilling and fun take on the 80s slasher genre, Visiting Hours is Highly Recommended.

Five Across the Eyes (2006)

* * 1/2

Not Recommended

There's nothing quite as satisfying as discovering a low-budget masterpiece, and I'm sure that it is the dream of every low-budget filmmaker that his/her movie will be discovered and adored by a cult audience. This kind of groundswell audience is easier to come by as sites like Hulu and Netflix provide low-cost access to growing libraries of movies. You can tell from the star rating at the top of the page that Five Across the Eyes is not such a masterpiece, but it is certainly worth discussing as an interesting failure.

The movie is filmed in a "real time" style, with a single digital camera. We follow a mini-van full of teenage girls who get lost on their way back from a high school football game. The movie does get some points for assembling and costuming a cast that actually resemble teenage girls, even if a few of the actresses look like they've been out of high school for a few years. The girls stop at an isolated store to ask for directions and, while fooling around, hit a parked SUV, smashing its headlight. Worried that they'll get in trouble, the girls take off down dark and twisting back roads. Before long the one-eyed SUV appears in their rear-view mirror and the chase is on.

What I liked most about Five Across the Eyes was the pretty realistic set-up. The way that the girls end up hitting the SUV was incredibly plausible--the kind of teenage goofing around that is very believable. Similarly, their panicked decision to leave the scene of the accident makes a lot of sense. This isn't the kind of thing where they are leaving a dead body in the road; the driver of the mini-van, Isabella, doesn't want to lose her license over a fender bender. The area in which the girls are lost is appropriately back-woodsy, with paved roads that turn sometimes into dirt roads, a setting that, again, seems plausible enough.

All in all, I really enjoyed the first third of Five Across the Eyes due to the naturalistic way that the girls behave and speak, and even the mounting tension as they realize that they are being followed. Everything seems spookier at night, when you're alone, and the movie milks that tension as the girls try to gauge just how scared they should be about the SUV following them. As the viewer, you know that the SUV spells doom, but there's a nice tension as you become aware that by not overreacting the girls are actually under-reacting.

A turning point in the movie comes as the girls are finally cornered and attacked by the driver of the SUV. *mild spoilers to follow for the rest of the review*.

One of the more interesting elements of Five Across the Eyes is the villain: she is a crazy woman who looks to be in her mid-to-late 30s. She is never given a name or a back-story (she is credited on the IMDb only as "The Driver"), though bizarre hints about her mental illness/history emerge as she rants and raves at the girls. She wears an ill-fitting man's suit, implying that there have been other victims. Her first attack on the girls is explosive and savage and her lack of motivation (aside from the smashed headlight) is frightening. The girls manage to escape the driver, but not without injury, and the chase is still on.

It is at this point that the elements that had formerly elevated Five Across the Eyes actually begin to work against the movie. Most of the movie becomes the girls frantically driving along back roads, occasionally stopping to argue about where to go or hide. A good chunk of the movie consists of the girls talking/arguing in the van. Their dialogue and delivery is still fairly natural, but they are given a lot to talk about that doesn't seem like something these girls would really talk about at such a moment. The digital camera inside the van with the girls begins to call attention to the fact that the van's interior light is on at all times, even when the girls have gone to great lengths to hide the van. Why is that light on? Little quibbles like this distract from the tension and make it feel as if the girls are making stupid mistakes simply to move the plot forward.

As the movie grinds on, the narrative arc is too predictable to enjoy. Because the villain is given no motivation aside from "crazy," there is nothing for the girls to do but find a way to fight back. It becomes a matter of waiting out repeated frenzied attacks, holding out for the moment when they will get the better of their tormentor. Along the way there are a variety of degrading and violent assaults on the girls: fishhooks, gunshot wounds, pulled teeth, and a (thankfully off-screen) sexual assault. The most compelling element of the last half of the movie is the ramshackle triage that the girls perform after each attack, using only the resources available in the van.

The movie manages to end in a satisfactory way, with the villain never losing her startling intensity each time that she appears on screen. It is a shame that the movie meanders so much in the middle section, dragging out what could have been a very effective short film, or a more dynamic full-length film if the camera had been willing to leave the comfort of the van. Five Across the Eyes has some interesting ideas, and it makes a strong case that the woman-on-teenager dynamic could be a very compelling plot to explore. The film as a whole, however, is simply too bloated and same-y in the middle to recommend. For anyone but a real horror-completist, Five Across the Eyes is Not Recommended.

Isolation (2005)

* * * 1/2

Recommended

 “Didn’t you hear all the mooing . . . and screaming?”—My question to my mother when she responded incredulously to my claim that I watched a killer-cow movie the night before.

Isolation is a horror movie that dares to take seriously the premise of mutant baby cows as bloodthirsty, conniving killers. Amazingly, this low-budget (in numbers but not in appearance) Irish farm-horror manages to get a lot of mileage out of its deadly bovines. But while the gore and atmosphere are masterfully orchestrated, the movie falters in its final act as characters go through the motions of doing slightly foolish things so that they can be picked off one by one.

The movie begins as veterinarian Orla (Essie Davis) arrives at Dan’s (John Lynch) dairy farm. Dan shows Orla into a barn where a pregnant cow is sequestered. Orla gets intimate with the creature as she reaches into the womb to check on the progress of a growing calf. Suddenly the cow startles, and Orla cries in pain. When she withdraws her hand from the cow there is an inexplicable gash on her hand. She and Dan are both mildly freaked out, but Orla insists that she is fine. When Dan expresses his worries about what is happening to the cow, Orla defensively asserts that she is “just the vet.”

Meanwhile, down the road, Dan discovers Jamie (Sean Harris) and Mary (Ruth Negga) parked in a camper van. He warns them to be gone by the next day, and it is clear that the two are on the run from something . . .

Later, a car arrives and the man who emerges, John (Marcel Iures), is every inch the Awful Movie Scientist. As the man who does know what is happening to the cows, John is dismissive of Orla’s concerns, and similarly brushes off Dan’s worries about “the experiment.” Both Orla and Dan complain that they have yet to see any of the money promised them, but John also shrugs off these complaints with an off-hand remark about money needing time to work through the system. John performs a sonogram on the pregnant cow and declares everything to be normal. It is clear that Orla and Dan are unconvinced on all fronts, but they back down for the time being. John leaves, but Orla and Dan have one final argument, an argument that stays on topic, but nevertheless makes clear that there is a history between the two.

That night, Dan is awakened during a rainstorm by a loud mooing from the barn. He finds that his cow is giving birth, but the calf is stuck in the passage and he cannot pull it free. Dan runs inside to phone Orla, but the phone is dead [Note: Though this may seem like a plot convenience, I happen to live somewhere where the phones go out 80% of the time if there is lightening—this is a rare movie that didn’t raise my hackles with the whole dead-phone business]. Dan works at the calf with a hand winch, but the calf remains stuck. Desperate, Dan runs to seek help from Jamie and Mary. The two refuse at first (and are shocked at Dan’s bloodsoaked clothing), but after Dan goes back to the house, Mary passively convinces Jamie to go and help. Together Dan and Jamie pull the calf free. It isn’t breathing, but Dan revives the creature. When he reaches into the calf’s throat to clear it, though . . . CHOMP! The calf takes a good chunk of Dan’s finger. Refusing to seek professional medical care, Dan bandages his hand and sends Jamie and Mary (who came along to find Jamie) back to their van.

The next day, Orla arrives and Dan shows her to the calf. He tells Orla that he’s had to isolate the calf from its mother because “it bites her.” When Orla opens the calf’s mouth, she discovers a vicious, pointed tooth in the center of its top palate. Declaring that the calf is “wrong,” Orla decides to put the animal down. Thus begins what, for me, was the most difficult part of the movie. Orla loads the bolt stunner, but as she fires the device the cow jerks and Orla blasts off the top of the calf’s head. As the animal screams in distress, its mother forces her way over the fence, landing hard on her back. Orla is forced to put down the mother. As she is about to put another shot into the calf’s head, the animal dies.

Together, a shaken Dan and Orla take the calf’s body to a table where Orla begins to dissect it. She notes, first, that the calf’s organs are all oversized, something that is a genetic anomaly. Then she pulls several white sacks from the calf’s belly. In horror, she slices them open and out tumble malformed calves—six of them. They are deformed and wear their skeletons on the outside. “They could never have lived,” whispers Orla, moments before one of the creature writhes on the table. Orla is shaken by what she has seen, and Dan accompanies her out to her car. Shaking and looking very ill, Orla tells Dan to isolate the other pregnant cow, for fear that the calf’s disease could be contagious. “Contagious?!” cries Dan, but Orla snaps, again, that she is “just the vet.” No one is in the barn to witness a single fetus wriggle its way off of the table.

From there the movie picks up the pace, but also loses some of its coherence. A police officer arrives to ask Dan about Orla’s whereabouts—it seems that she has disappeared and her car was found some way up the road from Dan’s farm. The officer also tries to intimidate Jaime and Mary into leaving, but the two have been helping Dan on the farm and he defends their right to stay. While out doing chores, Jamie is bitten in the foot by something that is hidden by dirty water. When John arrives at the farm he is horrified at the state of the dead calf. After a quick look under a microscope, he determines that something is very wrong with the dead calf’s cells. He admits to trying to create a cow that would breed quickly, but that something has gone awry.  When they go to put down the other pregnant cow, they discover that she is already dead and that she has already given birth.

The fetus, meanwhile, sneaks into the camper van and tries to attack Mary. The four then begin a hunt for the fetus and the newly born calf. John warns of the need for isolation—intoning that even one escaped fetus could spread the population across the country in an epidemic that would make the Mad Cow outbreak look like nothing. It isn’t long, though, before John’s need to control the group becomes an issue equal to the escaped animals.

Isolation held my interest to the end, but it was an ending marred by characters acting in sometimes-foolish ways. At several points my sister and I asked each other, “Why did he do that?”—we literally had no idea why a character had just acted a certain way. This is frustrating because the characters in whom we are invested don’t quite seem like themselves for the last 15 or so minutes. There is a gruesome unpredictability to the final act, as characters die suddenly and without warning. Some are victims to the creatures, but others are victims to each other.

Much of the goodwill that I felt toward Isolation came from the central performance from John Lynch as Dan. He completely sells his character as a man who cares deeply for his farm and his livestock. His pain and sadness when his animals are hurt or killed is palpable. You can believe that this man values and respects his animals, and that makes all the more powerful his regret for having agreed to participate in the experiment. What’s more, the experiment never even yields him the money that most certainly played a large part in his participation. There is a nice, non-romantic chemistry between Dan and Mary because they are very similar personality types, and even in their brief encounters Dan almost becomes a father figure to Jamie.

The atmosphere of the movie is also well-realized. The farm is muddy but not dirty, and yet it can be very menacing in the dark. Until the very end, the movie never leaves Dan’s farm, and you do get a sense of the isolation in which he lives.

Usually when I’m not satisfied with the way that a movie ends, I have very specific ideas of what I would have wanted instead. I don’t really have that sense with Isolation. I do know that I found the first half far more powerful than the second half. The unknown inside the cow is far more frightening than the calf-monster that is (wisely) mostly kept off-screen. Ultimately, it felt like a disservice that the last chunk of the movie fell into such a storm of quick betrayals, sudden deaths, and inexplicable character choices. One of the deaths was nicely shocking, but I was left unsatisfied by the others. It also didn’t help that about halfway through the movie I remarked “I hope the movie doesn’t end with [my prediction]” and then that is exactly what happened.

As a horror fan, I’m very used to movies that start out well and then falter in the final third. Isolation is by no means a bad movie, but it feels like it fell a little short of what could have been. The movie has nice gore effects, solid performances across the board, and a shiver-inducing setting. It might not have gotten everything right, but it did enough to be Recommended.

The Wild Hunt (2009)

* * *

Recommended

It’s a tricky thing to make a movie about a subculture, especially a culture so associated with geekdom as LARPing. For anyone who is not familiar with this particular practice, LARPers (Live Action Role Players) are folks who get together and role play characters in the fantasy/Arturian model. Feasts, competitions, and all-out battles are par for the course. Wild Hunt, a Canadian drama-thriller, takes place at a sprawling, week-long LARPing event in an isolated wooded area outside of Toronto.

The story is told in a series of back and forth cuts. Erik (Ricky Mabe) has just experienced a bitter parting of ways with his girlfriend, Lyn (Kaniehtiio Horn). Erik’s brother, Bjorn (Mark Krupa, who also co-wrote the film), takes Lyn along to an elaborate role-playing event where she indulges in some escapism, playing a Viking princess who is kidnapped by an evil shaman, Murtagh (Trevor Hayes). Unwilling to concede that their relationship is over, Erik follows Lyn to the event where he must participate in the fantasy in order to have the chance to win Lyn back.

It does not take long for real-life tension to enter the game, as Erik and Murtagh engage in a competition for Lyn’s affections. Bjorn, who immerses himself in his role as a Viking king, is also put under stress as an angry Erik calls him out for using the role playing as a way to escape his responsibilities as a son. Erik and Bjorn’s father is dying and it seems that Erik is often left to care for him while Bjorn runs off to role play.

Things finally come to a head as Murtagh’s band of men (“living dead”) break from reality completely and go on a real-life rampage modeled after a fantasy game called the “Wild Hunt.” Suddenly foam swords and retracting knives are replaced by clubs and rocks; the game has become real and blood is shed.

When I attended Grinnell College in the early 2000s, there was a sizable group of LARPers (they called themselves “Dag”). On the one hand, I didn’t really have much of a desire to be involved in role playing—it just wasn’t my thing. But it was very obvious how happy it made its participants and also how strong the community was. Watching their battles in the middle of our campus always made me really happy.

The role players of Wild Hunt bear little or no resemblance to the people I knew in college. Sure, you get the sense that many of them are outsiders, but there is a pettiness to the characters that didn’t really ring true for me. Bjorn is the closest thing to what I am familiar with, but he seems to be held up as an anomaly—he is kind of naïve and clueless, unwilling to face up to the fact that the game has become corrupted.

My main complaint as I watched Wild Hunt was that I did not really connect to any of the characters. The movie did not seem to want to mock people who participate in role playing (and movies like Role Models have shown that they are very, very easy to mock), but neither does it seems willing to delve into why they play out their roles with such intensity and desperation. Across the board, the characters came off far too one-dimensional. This could maybe be excused in some of the secondary characters, but even Erik and Lyn are frustratingly undeveloped.

Why were they a couple? Why did they break up? Was it all because of the strain of Erik caring for his father? I’ll be honest: I found both characters pretty annoying. I knew why they were behaving the way that they did, but I never saw in Lyn something that made me understand Erik’s love for her. And while I could appreciate Erik’s dry sense of humor and his reactions to the absurdity around him, I felt like I didn’t know much about him except for the fact that he is overwhelmed by his father’s illness.

One thing that the movie really gets right is atmosphere. The woods are spooky, and the medieval village is constructed in a way that hangs just perfectly between real and fake. The movie is lit primarily by bonfires and torches, adding to the sense of isolation and foreboding. As the tension ratchets up, each scene becomes progressively richer with the possibility that someone is going to lose control. In setting the stage with men and women who wield swords, knives, shields, and maces, there is a sort of vivid dread as you watch the movie play out. It isn’t clear who will cast the first stone, but it is obvious that once the dam breaks all hell will break loose.

I think that where Wild Hunt ultimately missed the boat for me was in its portrayal of the role playing community.  A lot of time is given over to Erik and Lyn, but their scenes are mostly uninvolving. I think that the more powerful arc is the way that the role players essentially allow one romantic relationship to sway and ultimately destroy an elaborate and sprawling community. It is, ironically, just the kind of Helen of Troy type thing that would happen in their role playing, only it is happening in real life. If we had seen more of the way that the role players acted before the drama, it would have packed much more of a punch when they begin actually stabbing and beating each other. From the beginning, though, the role players seem surly and snippy. None of them seems to be having fun. There is a difference between taking something seriously and being a wet blanket, and the role players shown in the movie seem to be a surprisingly bitter, petty group.

It is a shame that the Erik-Lyn-Murtagh triangle is so underwhelming. The setting is well-realized, the direction is solid. The acting is fine, and I particularly enjoyed Mark Krupa as Bjorn, a man who is desperate to hold onto his fantasy life even as it crumbles around him. There were plenty of quality elements to Wild Hunt, but it ultimately did not come together for me in a satisfying whole. On the basis of some entertaining moments and eerie atmosphere, Wild Hunt is just barely Recommended.

Dolls (1987)

* * * *

Highly Recommended

I don't exactly pine for the days of VHS like some horror aficionados.  Sure, you’d have to pry my VHS copy of Monkey Shines from my cold, dead hands, but generally I have embraced the era of DVDs. The thing that I miss most about going into our local video store back in the late 80s/early 90s were the covers of the movies in the horror section.

We were never allowed to browse that section—oh, no. But the horror movies sat on a shelf tantalizingly opposite from the children’s section. So as I perused the various iterations of My Little Pony and Strawberry Shortcake tapes, my eyes would always wander to the lurid, color-rich covers of movies like Dead Alive, Ghoulies, and Zombie. Nestled among those titles was a copy of Dolls.

Even now, looking at the cover, I still feel that part of the appeal is that the doll itself is not very frightening, even with her eyeballs in hand. I’ve always imagined a rich inner-life for my toys and dolls, and so I felt a kind of strange sympathy and even liking for the doll who is, no doubt, intended to be creepy and unnerving. The expression on her face is so kind that I always imagined her to be something of an anti-hero. I was delighted to find, on viewing Dolls for the first time, that my predictions from so long ago were actually somewhat accurate.

The movie begins by sparing no time in establishing a deep cannon of unlikeable characters. Young Judy sits in the backseat of her stepmother’s car, pigtailed and clutching a stuffed bear. The stepmother, Rosemary, is a caricature: dressed in an absurd turban and sunglasses, an outlandish fur coat, and a very 1980s “power” suit, she openly berates Judy and snips at her husband, Judy’s father. Almost hitting a pair of “punk rock” hitchhikers, she sneers “Should I go back for a second try?” Judy’s father, David, initially seems a more sympathetic character, but it isn’t long before he, too, cruelly tells Judy that he’s had enough of her imagination and that he wishes that she were still in Boston with her mother. He’s barely finished expressing this thought when he becomes concerned about some storm clouds up ahead.

Within moments, the family is caught in a powerful thunderstorm. The car becomes mired in mud and David insists that the family set out for a house just a few hundred yards away. They set off, Judy clutching her teddy bear, but Rosemary gleefully throws the bear away into the woods. In a sudden, bizarre scene, Judy fantasizes a life-size version of her bear emerging from the woods, ripping open to reveal a werewolf inside, and killing her parents. Judy is snapped out of her reverie by her parents, who drag her to the house.

Breaking in after no one answers their knocks, the family is confronted by Gabriel and Hilary Hartwicke, the aging owners of the property. The couple is taken by Judy, and invites the family to stay the night. As they sit down to the dinner table, another set of guests arrives: man-child Ralph and the two hitchhikers who he has picked up.

After an awkward few minutes of conversation (in which Rosemary and the hitchhiker's compete for "most horrible person in the room") Gabriel and Hilary settle their guests in for the night, giving David and Rosemary their own quarters. In a sweet scene, Gabriel shows Judy and Ralph his doll-making workshop. Ralph recounts his love for toys, and the kind way in which his father taught him to tame his imagination. Judy is given a Punch doll for companionship and makes her way to bed.

Not everyone, however, is ready to turn in for the night. One of the hitchhikers, Isabel, is determined to steal from the Hartwickes (she’s interested, in her own words, in their “anti-cues”—“antiques?” Hilary clarifies). She sets off into the dark house in search of plunder, little knowing that she is being watched by many eyes.

The movie makes the wise decision to minimize the amount of times that dolls are actually seen moving on screen. It often milks effective chills by showing, for example, a pair of dolls perched on a mantle who then, after the character turns away for only a moment, vanish. After building tension for several minutes, Isabel is ambushed in a quick and vicious attack. She manages to crawl out into the hallway, where a stunned Judy watches in horror as Isabel is dragged away by unseen hands.

From there the story moves along at a quick and effective clip. The movie is absurd and goofy, but it goes about its business with an endearing sincerity. Judy tries to tell her parents about what she’s seen—a story not helped by her insistence that the house is full of “elves”--, but they are bluntly dismissive of her story. David even moves to strike her, but Rosemary stays his hand, worried that if they hit the child they might be forced to pay more in child support. With nowhere else to turn, Judy awakens Ralph who, seeing blood on Judy’s slippered feet, agrees to help her look for the missing girl. The two follow a trail of blood into the house’s dark attic. In a nicely spooky scene a brief flash of lightening shows the viewer that a bound and gagged Isabel is sitting mere feet away from Ralph and Judy who are oblivious to her presence. Leaving the attic, Ralph is bitten by what he thinks is a rat.

After failing to find Isabel, Ralph and Judy return to the main floor, where Ralph is immediately accused (by Enid, the other hitchhiker) of murdering Isabel and (by David) of pedophilic intentions toward Judy. Angry at her father, Judy runs off into the house. David pursues her, but both Enid and Rosemary huffily lock themselves in their bedrooms. Ralph goes to the kitchen where he meets up with Judy once again. As the two talk, Rosemary has a close encounter of her own with the “little people.” As the dolls methodically pick off the obvious targets, the main tension comes from the question of what will become of Judy and, to a greater extent, Ralph.

Dolls indulges gleefully in overacting and barely stops to take a breath from beginning to end. It is hokey, but never boring. I won’t reveal the truth about the dolls, a nifty little twist that also explains the gruesome special effects that we see when the face of one of the dolls is shattered. The explanation at the end left me with a few questions—to keep it vague: what’s in it for the dolls?—but it turns into a satisfying pseudo-morality lesson that doesn’t hang around long enough to reveal many plot holes. I imagine that if I went looking for other reviews of Dolls I’d find a lot of complaints about the character of Ralph. The character is certainly just one step removed from being a human Cowardly Lion—moaning, pulling bedsheets over his head, reacting to danger with wide eyes, etc. But I ultimately liked his character if for no other reason than the fact that he is legitimately a kind person who takes Judy’s safety very seriously when all of the other adults are neglectful and dismissive. He is a good friend to her and his character earns a moment later in the movie when Judy defends him against the murderous dolls. It’s a little dismaying that a character who is supposed to represent being a child at heart had to be written so broadly as a buffoon, but Dolls isn’t exactly a movie that trades in subtlety.

If you’re looking for a fun horror movie, something with a few scares but also a welcome dose of humor, you should definitely check out Dolls. Short, sweet, and not a single wasted moment, Dolls is Highly Recommended.

Someone's Knocking at the Door (2009)

* *

Not Recommended

I've watched quite a few low-budget horrors over the last few weeks. I've watched good (Make-Out with Violence), bad (Bane), and ugly (the first 15 minutes of Demon Seduction--which it turns out is less horror movie and more awkward soft-core porn). Someone's Knocking at the Door doesn't quite hit the lows of Demon Seduction, but it does somehow manage to drag painfully despite an outlandish premise and a short running time.

The plot is at once simple and somewhat confusing and much of it is revealed via flashback. The movie begins with a cold open in which one member of the group, Ray, opens his door to a stunning and very naked woman. Not bothering to ask who this woman is or why she is so determined to bed him, Ray dives right into the carnal festivities. Unfortunately for Ray, it isn't long before the naked woman becomes a frightening (and still very naked) man who then, and there is no other way to describe this, rapes Ray to death. (I should mention here that one very huffy Netflix reviewer complained that he didn't realize that it was going to be men who were getting raped to death, as if that's what pushes this movie into icky territory). The scene is a little too bloody and loud to be taken completely as a joke, but at the same time it is far too absurd and confusing to work as straight horror.

From there we meet Ray's peers, a group of medical students with distinctly unlikable personalities, and follow along as two baffled detectives try and solve the mystery of Ray's murder. As the detectives interview the students, they finally learn that the group, high on drugs, broke into a records room at the hospital where they are studying and dug up the case file of a murderous couple, John and Wilma Hopper. After listening to a disturbing audio recording of the couple taunting and then murdering a psychiatrist the students have been systematically both haunted and now murdered by the deadly duo in absurd acts of fatal sexual violence.

This is obviously not classy movie watching. I put on Someone's Knocking at the Door as late night, can't sleep so might as well put on a slasher, entertainment. At a paltry 80 minutes, all I wanted was an efficient bloodbath with a few flashy kills and some of the "depraved," "brilliant", and "vicious" content promised to me by the cover. Now, make no mistake: when a movie loads up its own cover with such hyperbolic "praise", you can pretty much count on the fact that the movie makers are out to shock as their main goal. It might seem like such a goal would never result in a good flick, but Peter Jackson's Dead Alive more than showed that a movie can flaunt poor taste and wallow in gore and still be entertaining at the same time.

Sadly, Someone's Knocking at the Door moves along at a snail's pace. The characters of the medical students (Justin, Annie, Meg, Joe, and Sebastian) are an annoying, amoral bunch of jerks, and the movie devotes far too much time to sitting around and watching them be awful. Did we really need the scene at the party where Joe gropes an unconscious woman on a couch while Justin (the protagonist by default) barely manages to work up the energy to admonish his friend over the assault? Or the dull-as-dishwater conversation between Meg and Justin as they lie in bed?

The centerpiece of the movie is obviously the series of flashy, sexed to death scenes of murder and mayhem, but even here the movie is a let-down. I don't know if the scenes were marred by limited special effects, by the squeamishness of the actors, or what, but most of the kills are over in the space of about 30 seconds. No build up, no tension; just "Oh, he's going to get killed . . . and now he's dead." The scenes are also shot with multiple cuts and severe angles, so that it is sometimes hard to understand what is even happening. Given that there is very little rhyme or reason to explain the murders in the first place, the kills have almost no impact despite the fact that describing them on paper would make them sound horribly scandalous and gruesome. I can't say that I admire the filmmakers for their concept, but it is pretty clear that they were going for a kind of over-the-top, gore-filled movie that would make the viewer's jaw drop in disbelief. With a little more character development OR with better pacing on the kills, the moments of violence would have made a much stronger impression. At one point I paused the movie and saw that it had been over 30 minutes since the last action sequence--aside from the opening kill nothing had happened.

The movie does have decent performances and occasionally interesting directorial flourishes. There are some stylistic tics that foreshadow a major twist at the end, and there are some nifty moments of sound editing that create a very creepy vibe. In one scene, Justin dreams that he is standing in front of Ray's dead body and Ray's mouth moves in speech but there is no sound. It is a nicely spooky touch, and it's a shame that there weren't more of those little moments scattered throughout the movie. And despite the fact that the the scenes of gore fly by so quickly, the prosthetics and make-up used are very effective and nicely rendered.


Unfortunately, the bright points of the movie account for very little of the overall viewing experience. Too much of Someone's Knocking at the Door is spent waiting for something to happen and then being let down when the big moment finally arrives. With better pacing and more energy, this could have been a Henenlotter-esque exercise in trashy, exploitative entertainment, but there is very little entertaining to be had in this flick. Even as late-night movie junk food this one doesn't pass muster. Not Recommended.

Make-Out With Violence (2008)

* * * 1/2

Recommended

In my post about Arang, I grumbled about the not-entirely-successful meshing of two different genres: the police procedural and the supernatural thriller. Well, Make-Out with Violence, a unique, low-budget, labor-of-love zombie movie goes one step further, blending a zombie-thriller with a teen romance. The only thing more surprising than the fact that someone actually made this funky genre mash-up is the fact that the directors (who are also half of the writing team) almost manage to pull it off.

The story (aside from one plot gap that bothered me throughout the movie) kicks off in a fantastic fashion. Carol and Patrick Darling (Cody DeVos and Eric Lehning) have just graduated from high school, but their summer is marred by the mysterious disappearance of their classmate, Wendy (Shellie Marie Shartzer). Wendy's disappearance has sent shock waves through the brothers' small group of acquaintances, including Wendy's boyfriend, Brian (Josh Duensing), Wendy's best friend, Addy (Leah High), Patrick's best friend, Rody (Jordan Lehning), and the brothers' younger sibling, Beetle (Brett Miller).

Even as her friends make their way to her funeral, the camera leads us to a river bed where Wendy's body lies dead on the shore. Dead, but not completely dead (must . . .resist . . .Princess Bride joke). With an eerie, juddering motion, far superior to any CGI effects that could have been used, Wendy's body becomes animated and she chows down on an unfortunate canine. After the funeral, Carol takes Beetle out to a field to look for cicadas. Beetle wanders off, but soon comes screaming back to his brother's arms. Beetle leads Carol into the woods where Wendy's body is tied, at the wrists, between two trees. Inexplicably, despite seeing her move, Carol decides to load Wendy into the trunk of his car and take her home.

This decision, though necessary for the rest of the plot, needled me for the whole running time of the movie. For all Carol and Beetle know, Wendy could have been being held hostage and is in need of medical attention, yet no one even mentions calling the police or taking her to a hospital. We are shown that the brothers are an odd trio, but certainly not that odd! It is almost as if the writers, realizing that it is such a glaring oddity, decided that the best strategy was to have none of the characters bring it up, ever.

Once Carol and Beetle get Wendy home, they are discovered by Patrick. A quick flashback sequence reveals that Patrick has been in love with Wendy for the last year, and he quickly develops a plan to keep Wendy hidden away. Under the cover of darkness, the three brothers sneak Wendy into Rody's house. Rody's parents are away for the summer and Rody, immediately following Wendy's funeral, has taken off for an unknown destination, leaving the house in Patrick's care. The brothers deposit Wendy in the second-floor bathtub and, well, wait. Their plans are almost spoiled by their acquaintance, Ann Haran, who harbors a crush on Carol.

What follows is a truly bizarre mix of undead thriller and teen summer romance. Carol, who has long been in love with Addy, finally decides to pursue her in earnest. Addy, though, stricken by Wendy's death, is turning to Brian for comfort. Brian and Addy, the two people who were closest to Wendy form an uncomfortable but intimate duo as they each treat the other as a surrogate for their lost loved one. While all of this is going on, Patrick becomes obsessed with the maintenance and ownership of Wendy. Wendy will only eat living things and has the empty eyes of a dead fish, but Patrick increasingly treats her like a living doll, dressing her up and applying her make-up even as her inhumanity becomes more and more apparent.

There is a kind of slick parallel between Carol and Patrick as each becomes unhinged under the pressure of their relationships (a term used loosely in the case of Patrick and Wendy). There is an almost funny contrast between the two brothers as their own sense of morality gets tested by their frustrations. In on scene, Patrick suggests that Carol should "sleaze comfort" Addy, taking advantage of her grief to get her in bed. Carol protests, saying that he wants Addy, but "not that way." The entire conversation takes place, however, with Patrick sitting on a bed to which Wendy is tied. Carol's concerns about his relationship with Addy utterly pale in comparison to the fact that Patrick seems only a few creepy steps away from getting it on with the undead body of his former crush, yet the movie remains far more focused on Carol's relationship than Patrick's increasingly grotesque treatment of Wendy.

In some ways, this is to the movie's advantage. The story of Carol pursuing Addy could almost be its own movie: an alternate version of the film where Wendy's body is never found and we simply watch her peer group fumble and churn as they try to adapt to a rather large hole in their social fabric. Cody DeVos, in the role of Carol, and Leah High, playing Addy, seem most assured out of all of the actors. Their scenes together play out very naturally and believably, and their characters are given the most development in contrast to the others who are mostly developed via exposition and flashback. Even Carol's somewhat callous treatment of Ann Haran, who he uses as a decoy to make Addy jealous, feels like something that a nice, but self-involved, teenager would do.

The weak link, sadly, turns out to be the half of the plot that deals with Patrick and Wendy. The movie has some stand-out sequences from their interactions, but they never cohere into a satisfying whole, and Patrick's story arc is far too simplified to be very effective. Wendy's body movement, whereby her body lurches like a puppet but her head hangs limply back, is creepy every time it is utilized. A scene where a curious Patrick tests Wendy's pain response by pushing a needle under her fingernail is gruesome and yet perfectly sums up the instability and disconnect that the character suffers. He later uses the same needle, along with some thread, to patch up a wound on Wendy's back. Despite these interesting moments, Patrick's overall story is too easily telegraphed: he is clearly becoming more and more delusional about Wendy, imagining that there is an affection between them. The end of Patrick's storyline is inevitable: his complete immersion in the delusion and the devastating consequences that will be the result.

As for Wendy, well, I'm of two minds about the way that she is handled. Much like the superb Australian thriller Lake Mungo, Make-Out with Violence does a nice job of establishing Wendy's personality through flashbacks. The flashbacks err on the cutesy, quirky side, but given that we see them through the eyes of the other characters, this makes sense. And while I don't mind a little ambiguity, I was ultimately disappointed that none of what happened to Wendy is ever explained. We never discover who murdered her (though I think that the movie dropped a significant hint about it); we never find out who tied her to the trees (and if it was the same person who killed her or someone else); we never discover what has brought her to her undead state. In one scene, her dress falls back to reveal a very nasty bruise creeping up her inner thigh, but it is never mentioned again. The way that her head flops suggests a broken neck, but there are no other signs of violence on her person. I understand that Wendy functions more as a catalyst than a character, but it is still frustrating to have so many questions go unanswered. Look again at that sepia image at the top of the page: I absolutely love it. Spooky, haunting, and beautiful at the same time. I had really high expectations for how the movie would use Wendy, and it was disappointing that, in the end, she was little more than a prop.

For all my criticisms, though, I was impressed with what the filmmakers did on a clearly limited budget. They show in several scenes that you can tell a lot by showing a little and letting the viewer's imagination do the rest. The relationship between Carol and Addy was a compelling subplot that really held my interest. I wish that the relationship between Carol and Patrick had felt stronger in the beginning so that their increasing distrust and anger at each other would have been a more compelling contrast to what came before. There are several scenes that slip from "quiet" to "muted" to, well, not dull, but empty. Instead of feeling like things are going unsaid, it more feels like there is nothing to say.

So poor Wendy. I wish that this movie had been made either without her undead presence, or with a far better use of her battered body. I will admit, though, that the movie never lost my interest. I also enjoyed the soundtrack very much and was surprised to discover that many of the songs were co-written by Jordan Lehning (who played Rody) and Eric Lehning (who played Patrick). This was the kind of film where you see the same names over and over in the credits--very much a dedicated group of creative people working hard to make a unique film. Make-Out with Violence didn't quite come together well enough for me to love it, but I enjoyed watching it and admire its willingness to try and create an original take on the zombie genre. For its boldness and the successful Carol/Addy subplot, Make-Out with Violence is Recommended.