Movie Review—VHS 2

This is a weird year for me and the Seattle International Film Festival. Normally, there's about 15 to 20 movies I want to see, and I know I won't have time to see that many, so I'll pare it down to 6 to 10 movies and still end up having to miss at least one for some reason, because the festival always seems to time itself for the Gen Con rush and Paizocon, and deadlines wait for no film festival.

So I was pretty excited this year that our Gen Con rush hit a month early, and when Paizocon was a month later than I expected it to be, because that more or less left me with a pretty open schedule to see movies at SIFF.

And then, the schedule came out, and something strange happened. There was only one movie I really wanted to see. It was the least interesting SIFF I've seen. Usually there were a lot of cool horror, sci-fi, fantasy, and action movies to choose from, and then in wading through those options I'd find other cool movies outside of my favorite genres to see as well. This year... no luck.

I saw the first VHS last year at SIFF and was quite delighted; it was my favorite movie of the festival. This year, I saw VHS2, and it was my favorite movie of the festival THIS year. And not only because it's the only movie I'll be seeing at SIFF. It's actually as good as the original. Better in some ways, worse in others, but overall a delightful entry in the found footage category.

As with the first one, the framing story has some investigators discovering a strange situation in an apparently abandoned home revolving around a creepy stack of VHS tapes, and it's the contents of those tapes that make the movie. It's a found-footage anthology movie, and one thing that always seems to happen with anthology movies is that there's one good or really good segment, but the others are varying degrees of mediocre or outright bad. Creepshow dodged this problem, and so did both VHS movies.

Sometimes you can tell when a scene in a movie is about to get pretty violent.

Whereas the 1st one had 5 shorts, this one only has 4, but each one is better than the worst one from VHS. Here, we've got victims dealing with a state-of-the-art cybernetic eye that lets you see more than you probably should or certainly want to see, a mountain biker out on a trail eager to try out his new cameras and who rides smack into the midst of a zombie apocalypse, a team of documentary filmmakers investigating a creepy cult compound on what's destined to be the most important day in said cult's history, and a group of kids fooling around while the parents are out of town but a singularly spooky set of visitors from far, far away happen to be IN town.

I liked the third one the best—the idea of having a film crew on-site when a cult prepares for the end of days and things suddenly spiral out of control is in and of itself fascinating... especially when it turns out the cult leader might actually be on to something!

V/H/S/2...

• ... never quite equals the greatness of the first film of the first movie, but it's good all the way through.
• ... does some things with the zombie movie genre I've not yet seen done before, and that kind of surprised me in a pleasant way.
• ... isn't the goriest or most violent found-footage movie I've seen (that award ties for Cannibal Holocaust and Cannibal Ferox), but it's a lot more entertaining than the goriest or most violent found-footage movie I've seen.
• ... has me ready to see VHS 3 next year at SIFF. Hopefully I'll be seeing more than that though!

Grade: A

Movie Review—The Frankenstein Theory

It always kinda weirds me out when I see a movie that I actually quite enjoy, then head on over to IMDB for my post-viewing "would you like to know more" surfing, and then see that the movie's gotten terrible reviews. That happened recently with The Frankenstein Theory.

Now, granted, it's a found footage movie, and that means that it's super-effective against me. And on top of that... some of the acting is a bit dodgy. But some of the acting is really quite good (particularly Timothy V. Murphy as rugged local guide Karl), and the landscapes of the deep wild of northern Canada are never anything less than beautiful.

The movie itself has a pretty interesting plot—what if Frankenstein, the original story, wasn't fiction... what if it was based on a series of real-world experiments, and what if the real monster was really created and is still up there, lurking in the arctic wastes? It's a pretty cool concept. The movie even flirts with shifting from found footage over to mockumentary (an equally compelling style of movie making), but never quite decides to make that shift entirely.

In the end, there IS a lot of people walking around in the dark or the wilds continuing to film things even as they fall apart. People who don't like found footage will certainly find no shortage of things to be annoyed by in the movie. But if you like the genre, and you like movies about isolation and arctic survival, check it out!

I'll catch your Frankenstein for ya!

The Frankenstein Theory...

• ... isn't nearly as bad as the internet thinks it is.
• ...would have been better had it embraced the mockumentary angle instead of the found footage angle, I think.
• ... would also have been better had Karl been in the entire movie from the start.
• ... kinda spoils the end of the movie in the trailer, so be warned if you watch the following link! Or if you DO watch and want to avoid the spoiler, stop watching at about 1 minute and 20 seconds in. You'll get the idea for the movie by then anyway.

Grade: B –

Movie Review–Hollow

And so here's more proof that I'm a sucker for the old found footage genre. About 4 minutes after I posted my review of "Grave Encounters 2," I was back on my couch firing up another one.

"Hollow" is a movie that I'd been looking forward to for a while; I saw its trailer last year and was intrigued by the fact that it featured a spooky looking tree. I'm pretty sure that anyone who grew up in the woods like I did understands what I'm saying here... some trees just look evil.

The movie is about two pairs of friends—one about to be married, and one not quite yet a couple. They get together to head up for a relaxing weekend in a remote village in the rural England countryside... of particular note is the fact that the village they go to visit is Dunwich. Of course, this is the real-world Dunwich in England, so there's not any Yog-Sothothery going on here, but the movie DOES have a pretty creepy Lovecraft vibe to it. Actually, strike that... it's got more of an Algernon Blackwood vibe, or maybe an Arthur Machen vibe. Whatever vibe it's got... it's a good one.

Anyway, the couple heads up to this house in rural England for a relaxing weekend, and since this is a found footage horror movie, things are anything but relaxing. And while the last 10 minutes of the movie are pretty intense, it's also another one that does the slow burn. You see, one of these four people has some psychological damage, and the movie doesn't really come out and explain it via dialogue. Instead, you see it in the way this character films things with his camera, how he obsesses on a fly trapped against a window, or becomes so interested in the weird nooks and crannies in an old ruined monastery, or sneaks around in the house after dark filming the woman he'd rather be up here with, but who is instead here with her fiance.

Did I mention there's a creepy evil looking tree in a field nearby? A tree that seems to have an unusual number of suicides involved with young lovers who hang themselves from its gnarly, twisted branches? A tree that some local legends say is a place where, if you hang yourself there, the ghost of a monk who served in the nearby monastery will give you absolution so that you'll still go to heaven, but which some other local legends say that the "monk" is not a monk at all, and those who end up hanging in the boughs are hardly suicides?

Or that there's rusty chains wrapped around the tree trunk?

See? Evil.

Aside from a little bit of gore, there's really no special effects in the movie. It's very understated and deliberate in its pacing, and when it's over, it leaves a lot of what actually happened up to interpretation. But the atmosphere of tension and dread that it builds as it goes makes it all quite worth it... especially if you look at it through the eyes of Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, or Lovecraft.

Hollow...

• ... is very much a minimalist horror movie. Don't check it out if you're expecting big special effects scenes, spooky music, or anything like that. But if you like found footage movies and think the Wicker Man's a great movie and don't require answers to all your questions, you can do a lot worse.
• ... is one of the few found footage movies I've seen that concedes that video cameras run on batteries, and even better, makes the draining battery on that camera into a plot point.
• ... will have you straining to see if there's something in the shadows of the footage while simultaneously trying not to stare too hard just in case there's a jump cut or a jump scare about to strike.
• ... incorporates a pretty creepy and classic urban legend into the plot.
• ... gets creepier the more I think about it.

Grade: B+

Movie Review—Amber Alert

I've got a fair number of movies languishing in my Netflix queue. At current count, I've got 170 lined up in my DVD/Blu-Ray queue, and a mere 107 in my instant queue. Yesterday, I saw "Dredd," and it was REALLY good. Much better than I'd anticipated it being. And that's more or less what got me thinking about doing movie reviews on my blog.

So here I am. I'm starting with movies I've seen today, so as good as it was, "Dredd" won't be the first review of the year. But do yourself a favor; if you like action-packed violent movies, check it out!

Now, on to THIS review.

"Amber Alert" is about a group of three college students who are out on the road, filming themselves having fun for an audition for a reality TV show. Which show doesn't really matter, because not long after the movie starts, they spot a car that's been tagged by an amber alert, and decide to follow it. And since it's a movie... things pretty quickly get intense and out of control.

"Amber Alert" is a found footage movie, which is perhaps my favorite type of movie these days. I don't care if the movie's great (like "Paranormal Activity") or terrible (like "Paranormal Activity 4')... I'll eventually see the movie. Mockumentaries are a close second here, but the full-on found footage format just, for whatever reason, quite pleases me.

Pardon me... are you making a mediocre found footage movie about me in there?

Even when the movie doesn't.

"Amber Alert" is far from the worst found footage movie I've seen, but it's also not even close to being the best. The majority of the movies in this type I've seen have been horror movies, and while there's some horror in this one, it's more accurately categorized as a thriller. Nothing supernatural going on here, no gore to speak of, but the central conceit of three young people chasing after a car that may or may not belong to a child molester is pretty horrific and spooky.

Unfortunately, the acting was a bit uneven. Found footage movies really need a naturalistic and believable style of acting to work right, and when it's off... even just a little, as in this case... it can undo the movie. A lot of found footage movies also feature a lot of arguing and screaming and the like, it seems, and "Amber Alert" certainly delivers there. The ending was satisfying, but the drive felt a bit long getting there.

Amber Alert...

• ... features a car that apparently gets hundreds of miles to the gallon. Sure, the characters in the movie could have stopped to get gas at some point between cuts in the filming, but the move's pretty insistent that they're on a tight time schedule.
• ... has a reason for why the characters are filming everything—they're hoping to be able to turn the tape over to the police as evidence once they find proof that the amber alert was for real.
• ... has a surprisingly small amount of profanity, considering how much of the movie is footage of stressed out people arguing.
• ... makes driving 100 miles per hour look like a stately 40 miles per hour.
• ... like many movies, has a trailer that makes it look far more exciting and action packed than it actually is.

Grade: C