You're Next Is One Twisted Laugh Riot

Last night I was fortunate enough to snag a pair of last-minute passes to an advance screening of You're Next, the latest effort from Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett. I have to say, I went in with the expectation of watching The Purge again, but with less sociopolitical commentary and more gore. I was pleasantly surprised to find myself watching a deliciously tongue-in-cheek, fucked up black comedy that went far beyond any plot twist hinted at by the trailers. Having premiered at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival, this little gem is finally seeing a well-deserved wide theatrical release on Friday.

You're Next sets a pretty dark tone from the get-go, with the opening sequence showing the graphic deaths of two neighbors, a middle-aged rich guy and his young trophy wife. Soon after, the Davisons pull up to the door of their country home, next door to the two corpses, and begin preparations for what will naturally be a very tense reunion of their four children and their partners. As the family members arrive one by one, their every move is watched by anonymous villains hiding in the trees. But the Davisons, squabbling over trivial things and rehashing old family arguments, remain oblivious to the eyes on them. Only the sister's boyfriend, independent filmmaker Tariq (played by Ti West in an amusing cameo), notices the movement in the woods outside, and when he approaches the window to get a better look, he gets an arrow to the head.

The next twenty minutes of the film play out much like a standard home invasion thriller, with the family hysterical and running around in circles, making the worst possible decisions about their own survival. After a couple more deaths, we meet the Davisons' anonymous assailants - the men in animal masks so prominent in the film's marketing campaign. The violence escalates gradually, as the Animals come after them with crossbows, machetes, razor wire, and more. But what The Animals didn't bargain for is Aussie hottie Erin (Sharni Vinson), girlfriend of brother Crispian Davison, whose survivalist upbringing make her the perfect final girl for this unconventional slasher tale. Erin is the voice of reason, keeping the family members away from windows, contacting the police right away, and setting gruesome traps for the Animals. The second half of the film consists largely of Erin kicking ass and owning the Animals in a hilarious gorefest. That, and, of course, the answer to the film's big question: who are the Animals, and why are they doing this to the seemingly innocent Davisons? You'll have to buy a ticket and go check out the film for that one.

This is a film with a huge amount of atmosphere, having been shot entirely on the premises of one large, remote old house. From the Davisons' perspective, we see out the house's many windows into the dark of night in a heavily wooded area, where anything could easily hide. Every so often, the camera changes hands, and we see into the house as the Animals, tracking the Davisons from room to room as they move in the lighted windows. The film makes great use of some slasher film tropes and traditional jump scares, because as much as the avid horror fan may seem them coming, it just wouldn't be as fun without the face under the bed, or hiding behind that open door.

I found one scene in particular to be especially gorgeous and well-executed. Erin, hiding in the basement and unsure of who might be left alive upstairs, springs a trap for one of the animals who has pursued her downstairs. She sets up a camera to illuminate her assailant, shocking him into blindness as he crosses the room. The camera flash repeats at intervals, breaking the darkness into quick shots of light. Not only was it a clever device for our crafty heroine to utilize, but the visual effect was unique and stunning.

The entire cast gives great performances as a family with a lot of skeletons in their closet. There is a genuine quality to the familial interactions - the competitive siblings, doting parents, and nervous significant others come across perfectly. Joe Swanberg shines as the most irritating and condescending of the brothers, and he is gifted with some of the film's most hilarious lines of dialogue. A.J. Bowen, on the other hand, gives an endearing performance as the academic black sheep of the family, whose professional failures are irresistible to his brothers and father. Barbara Crampton plays the drug-addled and somewhat tragic matriarch in a very classic style.

You're Next really does have something for every horror fan. Lovers of everything from The Purge back to John Carpenter's Halloween will find something to enjoy, as will fans of the Evil Dead films and Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror. Without revealing too much and spoiling the juicy twists and turns of a really solid film, I absolutely urge you to check this out when it opens Friday. Support horror releases from major studios like Lionsgate, and we'll continue to see quality work like this make it to the big screen.

On a side note, the final installment of Edgar Wright's Blood and Ice Cream trilogy, The World's End, also opens this weekend. Check out my review here.

The Purge: What Would YOU Do?

Earlier this summer, Blumhouse Productions (Paranormal Activity, Sinister) released James DeMonaco's second major directorial effort, dystopian horror thriller The Purge. The film performed well at the box office, but received mixed reviews from critics, with Entertainment Weekly saying that it 'clearly has a lot on its mind, but it never really manages to express it.' However, a lot of the questions The Purge asked its audience to ponder were never really intended to be answered by the film's resolution. The Purge simply chronicles one family's horrific night as the government sanctioned Purge makes its way into their home, and forces audiences to ask themselves: What would YOU do if there were absolutely no consequences?

 The Purge is set in the not-too-distant future, when American's 'New Founding Fathers' have instituted an annual 12-hour 'Purge' in which all crime is legal and Americans can exercise their aggressions. The film focuses on a wealthy suburban family, the Sandins, who have made their fortune selling security systems to other wealthy suburbanites since the Purge was conceived. Every year, at 7:00 p.m., the Sandins lock down their home for 12 hours along with many other families who do not wish to participate in the violence, but support the event nonetheless. But this year takes a turn for the dangerous when their young son, Charlie, hears cries for help in the street, and opens the doors of their house to a homeless African-American man pursued by sinister gang of masked marauders. The family faces a difficult decision: uphold the right of every American to Purge and surrender the homeless man, or protect him and risk their own lives?

The film plays out like a good old-fashioned home invasion thriller, with a very normal family that audiences grow to like over the 85-minute run time. Charlie is the most compelling, a technological wiz-kid who has built a remote-controlled spy camera to give him eyes around the large house. It is also Charlie whose dialogue prods at the film's larger themes, like when he asks his father why the homeless man deserves to live any less than they do. And another interesting side plot revolves around teenaged daughter Zoey, whose romance with an older boy seems lighthearted until boyfriend Henry uses the Purge as an excuse to go after her disapproving father. Ethan Hawke delivers an earnest if rather bland performance as the patriarch of the Sandin family, and his staunch support of the Purge results in an interesting conflict with his otherwise kind nature. But it is mother Mary Sandin, played by Lena Headey of Game of Thrones fame, who ultimately holds the family together and stands up in support of nonviolence (though not before committing a grisly act with a letter opener).

The mask is a time-honored horror device, and The Purge makes excellent use of some very creepy grinning ones. Other than their so-called 'Polite Leader' (Rhys Wakefield), the murderous gang threatening the Sandins do not remove their masks as they commit brutal, terrible acts against their captives and gleefully destroy their home. This lends a surreal effect to the climactic scenes of the film, and underscores the notion that these violent young people represent every young American who has ever felt a surge of aggression and had a dark fantasy about letting it out. Because ultimately, The Purge is a film that seeks to set you, the viewer, in a stranger's shoes, and leave you wondering if you would do the things that they do, if there were truly no consequences. If you would stand up, like the Sandins, to defend not only your family, but also an innocent stranger. Or if you would seize the opportunity to harm others with impunity, out of unchecked aggression, envy, or just pure hatred.

The film also touches on some themes relating to racism and classism that strike a chord in today's economic climate. Early in the film, a voice over on a television news broadcast describes how The Purge came about as a way for Americans to purge their aggression, but is in fact regarded by many as purging society of its weaker members, those who are unable to defend themselves, or can't afford a safe place to wait out the 12-hour event. The masked people continually dehumanize the homeless man by referring to his as 'The Swine' or 'pig,' and espouse the belief that people like him can only be useful by serving the group's need to Purge. We also see in the film's first scenes that the Sandins' neighbors have no love lost for the family, when neighbor Grace Ferrin jokes with Mary that the neighborhood's security systems paid for the Sandins to put an extension on their home. The envy of the neighbors has festered for some time, and rears its head in the film's final scenes.

Whether or not its themes resound with you, The Purge is a fun little thrill ride in the dark, and will certainly make excellent fodder for this year's Blumhouse Halloween Attraction, The Purge: Fear the Night. The live, interactive experience, which starts September 27th and runs through Halloween week, will put attendees in the shoes of the New Founding Fathers of the dystopian future depicted in The Purge. Tickets are available now at PurgeLive.com.

The Purge comes to DVD October 8th.

V/H/S/2: Found Footage Never Looked This Good

Back in 1999, Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick's The Blair Witch Project used a cutting edge online marketing campaign to successfully dupe many viewers into believing they were watching actual footage of three young people's supernatural experience in the Maryland woods. The manner in which the movie was filmed supported this conclusion: shaky handheld camerawork and a documentary-style narrative all contributed to a very real atmospheric horror film that went on to gross almost $250 million. Given that the film was purportedly shot on a budget of about $25,000, The Blair Witch Project popularized a style of filmmaking that although not entirely new (Ruggero Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust pioneered the style almost 20 years earlier), promised to turn record profits for filmmakers and production companies.

Fast-forward to the present day. The found footage style of filmmaking is everywhere now, most common to the horror genre, but directors of science fiction and a couple other genres have also used the style to great effect. Films like the Paranormal Activity franchise, Cloverfield, and Jaume Balaguero and Paco Plaza's REC series have seen enormous popularity, high critical acclaim, and have performed remarkably well at the box office. But with the popularity of found footage has come a fervent backlash amongst many genre fans who don't find the style effective, are put off by the often shaky and intentionally amateurish filming style, or have begun to feel the concept is overdone. Personally, I've sat dozens of friends down to watch The Blair Witch Project, turned the lights off for atmosphere, and insisted on absolute silence to try and make them see what I find so deeply unsettling about the film. Over time, I've come to accept that found footage just isn't for everybody. Some people don't have the patience for the slow burn. They like their horrror overtly terrifying, fast-paced, and splattered with gore. For those people, Bloody Disgusting and The Collective have teamed up to bring to the screen eleven of the best short horror films showcasing the found footage style, in anthology films V/H/S and V/H/S/2.

V/H/S/2 hit VOD June 6th of this year, saw a limited theatrical release on the U.S. last month, and is set for release on Blu Ray, DVD, and of course VHS September 24th. Though this second installment features a new group of directors, I found a lot of similarities between the stories in both, and a great continuity between both films' narrative frameworks.

Similar to the first film, V/H/S/2 begins with a pair of private investigators who are searching for a missing student, and stumble across a collection of VHS tapes that chronicle many different horrific occurrences. First comes Adam Wingard's contribution, Phase I Clinical Trials, starring the director himself as a rather unremarkable Los Angeles man who lost an eye in a bad car accident. Lucky for him, a local doctor has set him up with a false eye that will communicate visual stimuli not just to his own brain, but to a video feed that scientists may watch to get a sense of the implant's functioning. But when the patient gets home from the doctor's office, he starts to notice strange things almost immediately. The artificial eye has endowed him with a second sight he doesn't want, and it soon becomes clear that he is not alone in his own house. What I found most effective about this short was the use of distorted artifacts on the screen which appeared whenever an entity was present in the patient's line of sight. I was reminded of Glenn McQuaid's segment for the first V/H/S film, Tuesday the 17th, in which a murderous figure in the woods is continuously obscured on screen by video tracking errors.

Next comes Eduardo Sanchez and Gregg Hale's A Ride In The Park. I found this segment to be the most light-hearted and funny out of the entire film, featuring three bicyclists in a state park who are attacked by zombies and join the mob to march on a child's birthday party nearby. Shot from the head-mounted camera of one of the zombified bikers, viewers are treated to the first-person perspective of a zombie lurching through the woods, devouring intestines, and getting bashed in the skull by frightened victims. It's obvious that the team had a lot of fun filming this one, and a comedic undertone runs throughout as, for instance, our zombie hero attempts to eat a victim's wallet, then tosses it aside with a 'blech' of disgust.

The fourth segment, Gareth Huw Evans and Timo Tjahjanto's Safe Haven, was in my opinion the strongest of the entire film, and possibly the best out of both V/H/S anthologies. A documentary film crew is invited to film inside the compound of an Indonesian cult in which the leader, known as 'Father,' cleanses the impurities of his flock through sinister and questionably legal treatment of young girls. But the darkness in Father's compound runs even deeper than the film crew imagines, and soon the three young men and one woman are trapped in a ritual nightmare there's no escaping. The short is brutally violent, depicting the Jonestown-esque mass-suicide of the cult, as well as some really horrific supernatural happenings that I would hate to spoil for anybody. The acting is superb, especially on the part of Epy Kusnandar as the magnetic and ultimately psychotic Father. And viewers get a few glimpses of some really fun creature design toward the end of the segment that would not be out of place on a Black Sabbath album cover.

The conclusive segment of V/H/S/2 come courtesy of Jason Eisenberg, the man behind 2011 exploitation comedy Hobo With A Shotgun. Titled Slumber Party Alien Abduction, viewers know exactly what they're getting into, and Eisener delivers. The short begins as the raucous account of a teenage boy and girl whose friends come over for a party whilst the parents are out of town. But the sexscapades and back-and-forth pranking turn dark when the arrival of terrifying creatures from the sky interrupts their shenanigans. Filmed from the perspective of the family dog, who has a camera strapped to his back, the story dissolves into chaos as one by one the teenagers are taken up by the thin, grey men. Creature design is excellent, showing us just enough glimpses of the creatures to create terror, and sympathy for the naive and innocent kids strikes an emotional chord throughout.

Even if you think found footage isn't for you, the producers of the V/H/S films have done a spectacular job gathering some of the greatest minds of independent horror today, and these anthologies have something for everyone. Look for the DVD-Blu Ray-VHS three-pack this September.

American Mary: Sexy, Insane, Surreal, Feminist Body Horror

Canada's Soska Sisters, Jen and Sylvia (also known as the Twisted Twins), burst onto the film scene in 2009 with their sardonic exploitation debut Dead Hooker In A Trunk. The writer-director duo have since continued to splatter the festivals red with a series of well-received shorts, and last year's feature-length American Mary, starring Ginger Snaps' Katharine Isabelle as the titular heroine. In a genre dominated by male screenwriters and directors, the Soska Sisters are blazing a trail for a new brand of scream queen, and doing it in stilettos, no less.

Mary Mason is an extremely bright but timid surgical student, finishing up her coursework and soon to go into her residency and begin a promising career in medicine. Financial desperation leads her to peruse the same online ads many young women are drawn in by, offering plenty of cash for the small price of one's self-respect and modesty. But Mary's 'interview' to become a dancer at the Bourbon A Go Go takes an entirely unexpected turn when the club's bouncer brings in a bleeding man who will die without immediate medical attention. Unwilling to take the man to a hospital, club owner Billy offers Mary five-thousand dollars to stitch the man up in the basement, and Mary hardly hesitates before agreeing.

Recovering from the previous night's harrowing experience in her apartment, Mary is then visited by another of the Bourbon's employees, the otherworldly Beatress, who has paid thousands of dollars to discrete surgeons to be made in to a living Betty Boop. Beatress entices Mary to a veterinary clinic after hours with the promise of a couple grand easy money, where she reveals her mission to help a friend, Ruby Realgirl, become as anatomically incorrect as a doll. Mary complies, earning a tidy ten-thousand, and returns to her residency shaken but more determined than ever to begin a successful surgical career. But all that is derailed when her mentor, Dr. Walsh, invites her to a surgeons' party that is not what it seems. Mary is brutally sexually assaulted by her own professor, a Dr. Grant, and returns to the Bourbon A Go Go disillusioned with the medical world, and plotting a grisly revenge.

There's no doubt that American Mary is not for those with weak stomachs. This is skin-crawling body horror at its finest, but with strong themes of female power and sexuality that make it unlike anything David Cronenberg could come up with. Is Mary Mason the first 'strong female character' in the horror genre? Of course not! Despite being mostly a boys' club, the horror genre has produced plenty of female heroes, final girls, and villains over the years worth writing about. What sets American Mary apart is the fact that we see a strong woman whose fate has been written by women, and is as flawed and complex as a real woman would be. Is Mary an intensely ravishing sex symbol? Absolutely. But not in the sense that female sex symbols are typically cast by male directors. Mary's character is strongly sexualized throughout the film, but not because she is objectified by the men of the story. Mary stands in a position of strength and power above the men in the film, from those who she punishes for doing her wrong, to club owner Billy who holds her in his mind as a paragon of untouchable femininity.

The film also plays in a more surreal realm than most mainstream horror, injecting elements of the bizarre one by one into Mary's world until the whole thing has unraveled. We get a strong sense early on that something is not right with the professors and doctors at Mary's school, such as an early scene in which Dr. Walsh describes to Mary 'the adrenaline rush you get when you slice into a human being...' The sinister undertones of these respected surgeons reach a zenith when Mary arrives to the strange party and meets a Dr. Black, who will reveal nothing about himself. She is then taken aside by Dr. Grant, who tells Mary some of Dr. Walsh's more disturbing proclivities. By then, the drug in Mary's drink has taken its effect, and it is too late to change her own fate. As the film goes on, more and more of Mary's former life erodes, and is replaced by the strange characters of the body modification world, from living dolls to the Twins (played by the directors themselves) who wish to exchange arms surgically.

Yes, American Mary is a touch gory. But with the film's surgical subject matter, one can't say that the Soska Sisters go over the top. Key scenes have all the building tension of films denounced as 'torture porn,' but without the grisly and overblown effects of unnecessary violence. Many of the most gruesome parts happen off-screen, and are aided by beautifully subtle sound design. The slicing and tearing off flesh off-camera has a much stronger psychological effect than buckets of Karo syrup on-screen would.

The Twisted Twins have a lot to offer the ever-changing horror genre. Fascinating, three-dimensional characters inhabiting bizarre fantasy worlds make for a much better film all-around than a slasher chasing victims around for ninety minutes, or extended scenes of torture meant to make you shut your eyes. That's not to say this one doesn't offer plenty of well-appointed gore - I tried eating lunch while watching this one and instantly regretted it.

As of January, American Mary is in wide release on DVD and Blu-Ray.

The Child's Play Saga: What Can We Expect from Curse of Chucky?

By now, we've all seen the trailer for Don Mancini's upcoming sixth installment of the Child's Play franchise, Curse of Chucky. Out October 23rd on DVD and VOD, Curse of Chucky is being promoted as a return to the straight-up horror style of Child's Play 1-3, and a departure from the satirical, meta-horror approach taken by Bride of Chucky and Seed of Chucky. To stave off my own impatience for the new film's release, I decided to sit down and re-watch all five existing films in succession, and share some of my thoughts about the progression the franchise has taken thus far, and where it sounds like it's going.

Mancini has said that his initial idea for Child's Play was to comment on the influence that advertising has on children. In the first film, our young hero Andy begs and begs his hard-working single mother to get him a Good Guy doll just like the ones on TV, but the two get more than they bargained for when Andy's mother brings home the very doll that plays host to the soul of serial killer Charles Lee Ray, voiced by Brad Dourif. Despite a somewhat silly premise (Ray uses a voodoo incantation to move his soul into the doll when he is mortally wounded in a police firefight), this first film spawned a genuinely frightening and enduring villain, and what was originally intended as a stand-alone film grew into a blockbuster franchise. What makes Chucky the killer Good Guy doll such a spectacular horror antagonist? The first film achieves great effect by placing an innocent child in harm's way, a device used so well in classics like The Exorcist and The Shining. The viewer's care for the welfare of the character in danger leads to a deep emotional connection for viewers. The adults in the child's life write off the horrors he is experiencing as products of an active imagination, which is frustrating and upsetting to watch as the film goes on. This level of attachment to the character of Andy continues as the doll follows him to a foster home in Child's Play 2, and to military school in Child's Play 3. 

In bringing the character of Chucky to life, Mancini also had great success playing on the fan following of A Nightmare on Elm Street villain Freddy Krueger. Krueger's smart-assed one-liners and snide attitude toward his victims made him completely unique to the slasher genre, and coming just a few years on the heels of Elm Street's inception, Child's Play created a similar comedic killer. Brad Dourif delivers Chucky's lines with a trademark gravelly tenor, and his characteristic laughter as he commits horrific murders brings glee to his legions of morbid fans. Effects designers did a brilliant job of underscoring the change that Chucky undergoes when he switches from his Good Guy doll appearance into full Charles Lee Ray. His smiling doll features twist into a grotesque grin, and his voice drops from a sweet, high-pitched boy's to a deeper and much more sinister man's. The juxtaposition of a lovable child's toy with the personality of a ruthless serial killer converges into one of horror's most iconic slashers.

With 1998's Bride of Chucky, the franchise took a turn toward the ironic meta-horror style popularized by the Scream films, and followed up on its success with the 2004 Seed of Chucky. Both films gained another great comedic role with the addition of Jennifer Tilly as Chucky's bride, Tiffany, and then as herself, playing the role of Tiffany in a film-within-the-film. The classic slasher film elements of the first three films gave way to slapstick comedy, plenty of adult humor surrounding Tiffany and Chucky's relationship, and a self-referential tone designed to appeal specifically to die-hard horror fans who had already seen it all.

Watching the five Child's Play films again, I was struck by the consistency of the character of Chucky, and I think that Brad Dourif's continued involvement in the franchise is the glue holding it together. Despite changing directors for each successive film, the most memorable character has remained just as well-written and portrayed, and that makes for an enduring franchise. So what does Mancini have in store for Curse of Chucky? We can certainly expect darker plot elements, as the official synopsis includes the detail that the protagonist will be dealing with the recent suicide of her mother. While the link between the first Child's Play film and this one remains ambiguous, we've been told that Chucky intends to settle a score from more than 20 years ago, which suggests a full-circle reckoning to the original backstory of Charles Lee Ray. And as far as character design goes, the Chucky depicted in the official trailer has been returned to his original, brand-new Good Guy look, the stitches and scars of the last two films having been removed.

Don't let the straight-to-DVD release of this film turn you off from giving it a watch. For fans of the original Child's Play film, Curse of Chucky should prove to be a well-executed return to form, and bring Chucky back to life in a more terrifying form than ever before.

BANNED in New Zealand: What Makes Franck Khalfoun's Maniac So Twisted?

While I may be a little late to the party on this one, I finally got around to watching Franck Khalfoun and Alexandre Aja's remake of the 1980 slasher film Maniac, starring Elijah Wood, which made the festival circuit last year and saw a limited theatrical release earlier this month. I was finally spurred to check this one of the long, long list of films I've been meaning to see by the news circulating this week that New Zealand's Office of Film and Literature Classification had banned the film from being screened outside of film festivals or academic study. And while I do not in any way whatsoever condone the banning of films or other artistic materials, I wanted to take a minute to examine some of the things that set Maniac apart from other violent and disturbing horror films, and look for some insight into why the OFLC chose to keep this film from the eyes of New Zealand's viewing public.

The shooting style of this film makes it unlike any other in that nearly the entire film is shot in first-person perspective through serial killer Frank Zito's eyes. This is of course a very literal interpretation of an effect that many directors try to achieve through storytelling, and it takes some getting used to in the beginning of the film. However, the murders and violent mutilations that Frank performs on his victims become that much more disturbing up close from his perspective, and the effect achieved as the women look into the camera with pleading eyes, attempting to fend off attacks coming from the viewer's perspective, is genuinely disturbing. Being quite literally inside of the killer's head also helps lend a sympathetic bent to his character, as we see through his own eyes flashbacks to his childhood, and watch his mother bring strange men into their home and her bed.

And the particulars of the violent murders depicted in Maniac are definitely outside the parameters of what the modern horror fan has seen a hundred times. As in William Lustig's original, Frank's signature when killing is to remove the women's scalps, which he then affixes to his collection of mannequins to create lifelike companions. Outside of the 1980 Maniac, the only other film with a scalping scene that immediately comes to mind for me is Rob Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses. The idea is certainly not done-to-death, but what really made these scenes difficult for me to watch was the speed at which the act was shown. Modern horror leans a lot on quick slicings and dicings with giant arcs of blood spraying all over. However, Frank performs his scalpings slowly and with great care, in order to keep his trophies intact. Thick, dark blood pools slowly around the skull as he delicately peels the scalp away, and the viewer is forced to watch the surgery right up close until he is squirming in his seat or averts his eyes.

There is absolutely no Hollywood style or flash to this film, other than perhaps the beautiful minimalist soundtrack. There is a poignant sadness to Frank Zito's insanity and the manner in which he kills that feels so much more real than the gleeful axe-wielding psychopaths we horror fans are accustomed to seeing, and it stayed with me much longer than usual. Watching this film made me feel intensely connected to its main character, and really left me feeling unclean afterward. Bearing that in mind, the New Zealand OFLC's ban comes as no surprise from a country known for censoring both games and films, the most recent of which being the 2006 documentary The Bridge, which dealt with suicides at the Golden Gate Bridge.

All that being said, I would encourage readers from countries in which the film remains widely available to give this one a watch. Khalfoun has achieved a level of emotional depth seldom found in a slasher film, and Elijah Wood gives a deeply troubling performance in a role that is sure to land him plenty of future roles in genre films.

We're Not Using the Zed Word: Edgar Wright's Blood & Ice Cream Trilogy Comes to an End

Monday evening saw the Bay Area premiere of The World's End, the final installment of what has been dubbed the Blood & Ice Cream (or Cornetto) Trilogy, by British director Edgar Wright and starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. Beginning with the cult favorite zombie comedy (zom-com?) Shaun of the Dead in 2004, the team grew a strong following in the U.S. despite low theatrical earnings, and followed up with the equally under-appreciated spoof action film Hot Fuzz in 2007. The trilogy will come to a close when The World's End hits U.S. theatres August 23rd.

Tracie Chang's glorious poster designed just for Monday's event

Thanks to San Francicso institution MiDNiTES FOR MANiACS, now in its twelfth year, I was fortunate enough to attend a triple-feature screening of the trilogy in its entirety Monday, at the AMC Metreon. Watching the three films one after the other not only gave us lucky 200 audience members a chance to revisit everything we found brilliant about Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz the first (and second, and third) time around, but it also underscored some of the thematic elements holding the trilogy together, and what I have come to see as Wright's overarching 'message.' Read on for my own attempt at a scholarly examination of the films, and a mini-review in which I will attempt to amp you up for the release of The World's End without spoiling the big, secret twist! Here goes nothing...

A romantic comedy. With zombies.

Every time I sit down to yet another viewing of Shaun of the Dead, I fall in love all over again in the first five minutes of the film. First, you're treated to a deliciously clever opening credit sequence, in which the masses of people on the streets of London go about their morning routines, effectively zombified by boredom and banality. Shortly thereafter comes a beautiful long shot that follows our hero all the way from his front door, down the block, to the corner market in one extended pan. The quick, frenetic camerawork throughout the film keeps you on your toes as things go from mundane to insane, and Shaun and his friends go head (or, rather, cricket bat) to head with the walking dead. 

"I've got things I wanna do with my life!"

Shaun of the Dead was conceived, filmed, and released when Wright, Pegg, and Frost were all in their late twenties to early thirties. Not only is it remarkable that a team of such relatively young filmmakers were able to create something so original with such lasting appeal, but the themes of the script really represent their particular stage of life at the time. Shaun, stuck in a thankless sales job amongst gum-smacking teenagers, is at a crossroads where he must decide who he wants to be, in a larger sense, and his girlfriend Liz is there gently, then not-so-gently, urging him on. Only when the undead threaten the lives of his loved ones does Shaun find that the ability to step up and become a hero was always within him, and not only saves but also wins back the girl of his dreams.

When the heat is on, you gotta call the fuzz.

Hot Fuzz brings Pegg and Frost back together on screen in yet another vignette of the life cycle of the average man. In this second installment, Pegg plays star police officer Nicholas Angel, who has a stellar arrest record, commendations coming out of his ears, and is set up for a nice promotion. He has put years of tireless effort into establishing himself in a career, and when he is transferred to a small, sleepy village in the countryside, he begins to see that he is missing the other aspects of a full and happy life. With the help of his bumbling partner, played by Frost, he works to uncover the truth behind a series of murders disguised as accidents, and in uncovering a vast Neighborhood Watch conspiracy, he finds it in himself to let go a little and toss the hard-and-fast rule of law aside in the name of what is right.

"My discounts are... criminal."

It wouldn't be right to discuss Hot Fuzz without a nod to some of the spectacular supporting performances by some really big British names. Jim Broadbent gets plenty of screen time as the benevolent but ultimately twisted Chief Inspector of the Sandford police, and as he loses his grip on sanity in the film's final scenes, he really steals the show. Timothy Dalton menaces from his first scenes as the sinister owner of the local supermarché. And early in the film, Bill Nighy, Martin Freeman, and Steve Coogan all flit across the screen in a brief comedic turn as Angel's superiors.

Good food. Fine ales. Total annihilation. 

So having paid brilliantly clever homage to the horror genre, and then to the action-cop films of the eighties and nineties, what ground is left to be covered? Some readers will be thrilled to learn that Wright's latest, and the conclusion of the trilogy, runs in the vein of science fiction, playing on the clichés and tenets of alien classics like Invasion of the Body Snatchers. But The World's End is more than that - it's a film from the perspective of a writing team entering middle age, and beginning to look back on the accomplishments, mistakes, and missed opportunities of youth. Pegg's character, the antihero of our story, is the Gary King, once the ringleader and Casanova of his pack of school chums. In the present day, he is a train wreck - he is unmarried, childless, by all evidence jobless, and struggling with substance abuse. In an attempt to reclaim the glory of the day he graduated from school, Gary reunites his four old friends (played by Nick Frost, Martin Freeman, Eddie Marsan, and Paddy Considine) and convinces them to grudgingly join him in completing a twelve-pub crawl through their hometown. But things aren't as they used to be in the town of Newton Haven, and the five soon find themselves not just fighting to reclaim their youth, but fighting for the future of the entire human race.

In the last film of this epic trilogy, Pegg and Frost both give truly spectacular performances, both in and outside of their respective comedic wheelhouses. There is a poignant sadness to Pegg's portrayal of the wayward Gary King as he puts on a brave front for his old friends, that reminded me strikingly of Richard E. Grant's performance in Bruce Robinson's 1987 cult classic Withnail & I. (Of course, it could just be both characters' trademark trench coats.) And Frost is deadly serious as Gary's former best friend Andy, a complex relationship that is illuminated as the film moves forward. In the post-screening audience Q+A, Pegg described himself as a teen:

"I was a goth, I watched a lot of Sisters of Mercy videos. That was my thing when I was sixteen to eighteen. I wanted Gary to be like I was when I was sixteen, only trapped in amber."

When asked about some of the more trivial connections between the three films, Wright shed some light on his inspiration for The World's End, as well as the overall them of the Cornetto Trilogy.

"Growing up in a small town, you start to imagine what's going on between closed doors. I think it made me more of a daydreamer. I can remember saying to my friends, 'every time I come back it feels like Bodysnatchers,' and there's a film in that!"

In my own view, which you may of course take with the proverbial grain of salt, all three films touch on some sort of "zombie" collectivism. In Shaun of the Dead, the outbreak is literal, and our heroes struggle to retain their individuality rather than succumb to the zombie virus. In Hot Fuzz, the danger is in a collective pursuing an ideology that has been twisted, perhaps a small-scale allegory for some of the political strife of the last several centuries. Sgt. Nicholas Angel must stand up for goodness when the easier choice might be to do nothing and let evil rule. And in The World's End, fucked up Gary King makes one last stand for the uniqueness of every human that makes our race beautiful, and resists joining the collective Network of dull perfection.

Wright elaborated on this homogenizing of human life:

"When we made Hot Fuzz, which was shot in my hometown, when Nicholas Angel is riding down the high street on a horse, I had to digitally erase a Starbucks. It's like the high street virus has spread everywhere, and everything's the same."

The World's End will make you laugh, cheer, and maybe even cry, and if you're anything like me, some of the themes will resonate with you long after you've left the theatre. Again, the film hits U.S. theatres August 23rd, and it's going to be a hell of a lot more bang for your buck than a certain Seth Rogen film of a similar title... Trust me. 

Lili Taylor Goes Full-On Linda Blair in The Conjuring

Hey there, welcome to Notes From Room 237! Glad you could make it! Have a seat right over here, don't mind the brains all over the wall.

You've stumbled across the inaugural blog entry by me, a lifelong horror geek gal, looking to add my two cents to the global conversation about gore, guts, ghosts, and other ghastly things. I'll be reviewing films, new and old, breaking down industry news, railing against the use of CGI in creature films, and hopefully getting down to the funny bone once in a while.

So without further ado, today's rant is brought to you by James Wan's latest: The Conjuring, starring Lili Taylor, Ron Livingston, Vera Farmiga, and Patrick Wilson. I was lucky enough to snag the last pair of passes to an advance screening Wednesday night and I have to say, this one is worth the ever-increasing price of admission.

I have to give credit to the Warner Brothers reps for making an effort to set the mood before the screening started. On the way in to the theater, they gave each audience member a little 'Demon Protection Kit' to take in, which included a glow-in-the-dark rosary (great for kitsch value alone) and a small plastic bottle of 'Holy Water.' (My immediate reaction was to shake some of the contents of the bottle into my mouth and taste it. Is that sacrilege?) Naturally some of the younger members of the audience immediately starting flinging the water around, so a rep got hold of a microphone and made a quick little speech about how it was cool if not everyone was a believer, but if we didn't want the holy water, to please return it after the film so that it could be donated back to the Church. Which got me thinking, are there novelty companies running kind of a disrespectful racket selling regular ol' water in holy water bottles? Or do they get a priest to mass-bless some water and actually sell it in cheap plastic bottle form? Anyway, I digress.

Warner Brothers also got some real-life paranormal researchers to come out and speak to the audience, but at 12:20 a.m. after waiting in the theater lobby for 3 hours, we were getting pretty squirmy, so that was that. Incidentally, if you're in the Bay Area, check out Alameda Paranormal Researchers, based out of the haunted USS Hornet aircraft carrier, they seem legit and like they do fun work.

The Conjuring, in case you live in a remote cave and haven't caught a single trailer, tells the story of a happy, carefree, bell-bottom wearing seventies family that moves into a foreclosed house, and the evil that terrorizes them from that point on. But this is not your standard haunted-house flick, despite what you saw in the trailers. No, it's going to get a lot worse for the Perron family than a few slamming doors and weird reflections in mirrors, and fast.

Enter Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga), the husband-wife demonologist team of Amityville notoriety. In a bizarre turn for anyone keeping up with A&E's Bates Motel, Farmiga plays the sweet-natured, loving, and fragile wife to the ever-hunky Wilson. The two have just given a Demonology lecture at the University of It-Isn't-Relevant-To-The-Plot when Carolyn Perron (Taylor) approaches them for help with the spooks that are keeping her five daughters up at night.

But of course, it isn't spirits that haunt the Perrons. The movie adeptly shifts gears from haunted house to demon possession, one of my personal favorite sub-genres. And Lili Taylor gives an incredible performance as her mind and body are racked by something so malicious, it makes The Exorcist's Pazuzu look like Yogi Bear. Oh yes, Taylor goes FULL ON Linda Blair, thrashing around to the point of physical harm, foaming at the mouth, and licking her lips lasciviously as the demon seeks to destroy her family and the Warrens with them.

While The Conjuring owes a lot to films that have come before it, James Wan brings his own distinctive style to the based-on-true-life material. With a return to the long, panning handheld camera shots that made Insidious so tensely engaging, Wan follows the horror visited upon the Perrons at just the right pace. But for those who felt Insidious was a little slow-moving, he's really stepped things up with The Conjuring. There's a scare a minute, and evil around every corner.

The Conjuring is in theatres next weekend, and I'm going to urge you to shell out the twelve bucks to see this one on the big screen. I'll even go out on a limb and suggest that James Wan may be the hero that modern horror has been waiting for, delivering chills to the moviegoing masses in a big way, minus the cheeseball goofiness that has characterized the best known titles of the last couple decades.

Before there was Amityville, there was Harrisville. And it was more sinister than you could possibly imagine.