Still, despite its often obvious jokes and annoying characters, Asylum Seekers is a very unique and occasionally very funny film. Its beautiful sets and cinematography and weirdo sensibilities make it ideal for anyone looking for something very different from typical genre fare. Hopefully Ajami can remove her next film further from her stage roots, as she is clearly a talented filmmaker. I will certainly be keeping an eye out for whatever she does next.
Atrocious (2010)
Originally published on Film Monthly 24 October 2011
There are so many lackluster takes on the concept of the “found footage”/”handheld horror” movie that it’s easy to forget what made the whole idea compelling in the first place. Many of these films seem unable to stick to the rules of the style and insert annoying soundtrack songs and sound effects, and in general a reliance on loud noises is sadly prevalent among most entries in this subgenre. It gets so numbing that it’s a genuine pleasure when a film like Atrocious comes along and actually brings the tension and scares back to what is becoming a very crowded field of lazy “found footage” horror movies.
Cristian (Cristian Valencia), his sister July (Clara Moraleda) and their friend David (Sammy Gad) are three teenage friends who do a web series on urban legends. When Cristian and July are dragged on a family vacation, they borrow David’s camera in the hopes of finding interesting stuff to shoot around the old family home where they will be staying. At first things seem promising: the house they’re staying in is old, huge and creepy, and there’s a labyrinth adjoining the house through a rusty old gate. Too bad their parents strictly forbid them from going back into the labyrinth and demand they shoot only inside the house.
So naturally, they wait until Dad has to go back to the office due to a work emergency and Mom is sleeping to go back out into the labyrinth. Hoping to find a tie between the creepy labyrinth and a local legend about the ghost a girl named Melinda who appears to assist people who have lost their way in the woods, Cristian and July delve deeper and deeper into the labyrinth. The further they go, though, the more things fall apart at home, until one night they are awakened by their panicked mother, who can’t find their little brother Jose (Sergi Martin). They set out into the labyrinth at night to find him, and things go quickly downhill from there.
The setup is that Atrocious is edited together from evidence found at the scene, over “37 hours of recorded evidence” that Cristian and July shot while on vacation. As with pretty much any “found footage” movie, the first two acts are mostly setup for the action in the final act. The action in Atrocious is all build-up to a lengthy, intense chase through the labyrinth at night using the cameras’ night vision and a weak flashlight. Imposing during the daylight scenes, the labyrinth becomes terrifying at night, with fleeting glimpses of foliage and ornamental urns, columns, and other things less immediately identifiable. This segment of the film takes up most of the second half of the running time, and it manages to sustain a high level of tension for quite some time.
Atrocious is a great example of “found footage” horror done well. Clues to the solution of the mystery at the center of the film– disappointingly, it is clearly spelled out by the end– are planted throughout the opening series of “home movies” and debut feature writer/director Fernando Barreda Luna ratchets up the tension nicely. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel or anything, but Atrocious is the best “handheld horror” film to come down the pike in quite a while and is well worth a look.
Attack of the Moon Zombies (2011)
Originally published on Film Monthly 1 June 2011
In 2006, Wisconsin-based filmmaker Christopher R. Mihm released his first feature film The Monster of Phantom Lake. A loving tribute to the 1950s creature features Mihm grew up watching with his father, Mihm’s first film established the blueprint for his subsequent oeuvre: low-budget black & white features shot on the cheap that aim not to ironically appropriate the look and feel of 1950s genre cinema, but to actually replicate that look and feel as an end in itself. Each of Mihm’s films– with titles such as Cave Women on Mars and Terror from Beneath the Earth– build on and add to an overarching mythology and world that has been earning his work a cult following of like-minded fans who grew up on and love the same b-movies that inspired him. Mihm’s latest film, Attack of the Moon Zombies, is no exception and may also be his most technically accomplished film yet.
In the not-too-distant future on the Jackson Lunar Base, Dr. Vincent Edwards (Mike Cook) is on the eve of retirement. While training his young replacement, Glen Hayes (Michael Kaiser), the two men find a long-dormant plant hidden in a cave on the lunar surface. They return it to the laboratory of the Base Botanist Dr. Hackett (Shannon McDonough) and report the find to Base Administrator Ripley (Sid Korpi). Once removed from the lunar surface and its deadly radiation, the plant springs to life and the scientists learn the hard way that the plant’s spores cause paralysis and death in short order, followed by reanimation as a plant-like zombie! Soon the Moon Zombies have overrun the Base, constantly thwarting Dr. Collins’s (Douglas Sidney) attempts to propose to Dr. Hackett and resulting in the shutdown of radiation shields over two-thirds of the base. A small group of survivors must figure out a way to reach the shield controls and wipe out the Moon Zombies in time for the next supply ship to arrive and take them home. Too bad the base is absolutely crawling with monsters and time is running out– can our heroes save themselves and end the Moon Zombie threat?
Shot in “era-appropriate black & white” on digital video, Attack of the Moon Zombies looks a bit sharper than Mihm’s other films, but that may be because it’s almost entirely shot on sterile interior sets. The Lunar Base is all white walls, plastic lawn chairs and automatic sliding doors, probably making lighting a bit easier and more consistent than in the outdoor locations that make up much of Mihm’s previous films. The cast is mostly made up of alumni from Mihm’s previous films (and includes his wife Stephanie), and the lo-fi sets, costumes and monster make-up all add to the film’s considerable charm. The Moon Zombies themselves are perfectly realized, looking exactly as cheap as they should (they appear to be masks and gloves) without being too goofy to generate some genuine tension.
Mihm absolutely nails the tone and dialogue of his 50′s inspirations, and the game cast does a great job across the board. Aside from the crisp DV picture, the only tip-offs that the film isn’t from the same decade as It Conquered the World are the sly pop culture references (be sure to note all the characters’ names!) and the use of some simple CG animation early in the film instead of cardboard-tube space ships and Christmas-light stars. While Attack of the Moon Zombies may be most fun for “Mihmiverse” converts– it really does pay to watch all the films and pay careful attention– any fan of classic sci-fi and horror films will find a lot to like, and this is a great introduction to Mihm’s work.
Australia (2008)
Originally published on Film Monthly 2 December 2008
Australia is the kind of film that you’re basically on board with before you even see it or you’re not at all. It’s a sweeping epic (which means it’s 165 minutes long) that takes place in a land of thick accents (but no subtitles!) and concerns a grand romance between two incredibly attractive leads (Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman, apparently still fresh from making Wolverine movies). Also, it’s a film by Baz Luhrmann, who is perhaps best known as the director of 2001’s hyperkinetic musical Moulin Rouge!, which is just about as divisive a film as you’re ever likely to come across. I suppose there are people for whom Luhrmann’s name is enough to either a) send them to the theater post-haste or b) prevent them from ever seeing more of Australia than they can help. That would be a shame, though, because while the opening half-hour or so of the film feels somewhat similar to Moulin Rouge!, Australia soon settles into a less frantic, more traditional style.
The film opens with titles explaining how many mixed-race children were taken from their families and placed into state custody. These children, who often had white fathers
and Aboriginal mothers, were called the Stolen Generations. In short order, we are introduced to one such child: Nullah (Brandon Walters) is the child of white ranch hand Fletcher (David Wenham) and one of the young female servants of Faraway Downs, a remote outpost deep in the Australian outback. Faraway Downs is owned by Maitland Ashley, whose wife Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman) tires of his adventuring and flies to Australiato convince him to sell the land and return to England. Unfortunately, Maitland is killed just before Sarah arrives, and the murder is blamed on Nullah’s grandfather King George (David Gulpilil). Rather suspiciously, however, Maitland was the only person standing between beef magnate King Carney (Bryan Brown) and a total monopoly that would force the Australian army’s hand into an unfair deal for cattle to feed their troops.
Lady Ashley decides to finish her husband’s job and, with the assistance of the reluctant Drover (Hugh Jackman) and a ragtag group including Nullah and boozing accountant Kipling Flynn (Jack Thompson), begins the arduous task of driving 1500 head of cattle across the Outback to Darwin, a port town where an Australian army supply ship waits. The drive across the Outback is beautiful and often thrilling; the fact that it’s only about the first half of the film is a bit of a shock. It’s perhaps not overstatement to say that Luhrmann was aiming to make the Australian equivalent of Gone With the Wind— which, in this case, also includes a strong helping of WW II action as well. Luhrmann addresses a lot of history in this one film, so much that it feels a little overstuffed and awkward. It’s a lot to take in.
Unsurprisingly, Australia is absolutely gorgeous, which helps things along. The film uses a stylized visual shorthand in the early going that’s reminiscent of Moulin Rouge!‘s repeated quick-zooms, but once the characters and setting are established the rhythm of the film becomes more conventional. And “conventional” seems like the right word here, but that’s not a knock against the film at all. Luhrmann wants to make big entertainment pictures in the grand Hollywood tradition, and he succeeds spectacularly. Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman are excellent as the leads, as glamorous and bigger than life as any of their counterparts in epics of Hollywood past. Luhrmann crams enough into the film’s nearly three-hour running time to keep it from ever being dull, even if a lot of the action is highly predictable.
Still, it’s not unpredictability that the film aims for. It’s a big, sweeping, slightly awkward romantic adventure epic that includes breathtaking scenery and astonishing set pieces while addressing part of Australia’s past that many audiences will find fascinating. With Moulin Rouge!, Luhrmann created a spectacle that invigorated the concept of the movie musical, mixing a good old-fashioned “cast of thousands” mentality with very modern filmmaking techniques. With Australia, Luhrmann has created a film that is a tribute to the great widescreen epics he no doubt grew up on instead of a reinvention of them. In short: if you wish they still made ’em like they used to, you’ll probably appreciate Australia’s spectacular (and familiar) charms.
The Babysitter (1990)
Originally published on Film Monthly 28 August 2015
1990s nostalgia has been growing in popularity over the last several years, which is a pretty weird thing for anyone who lived through that decade. Aside from a number of films specifically referencing 90s culture (Joseph Kahn’s Detention springs to mind as a prime example), there have been new home video releases of numerous overlooked 90s films. Olive Films has been giving many obscure movies their first turn on Blu-ray recently, and one of their latest might be one of the most inexplicable studio films of the decade: The Babysitter. Released in 1995 at the height of star Alicia Silverstone’s popularity, The Babysitter promises titillation but delivers something else entirely.
The Babysitter (Silverstone) has been hired by regular customers Harry and Dolly Tucker (J.T. Walsh and Lee Garlington) to watch their three kids while they attend a party thrown by their friends Bill and Bernice Holsten (George Segal and Lois Chiles). While the Babysitter hangs out at the Tucker house, her high-school athlete boyfriend Jack (Jeremy London) is being harangued by his former friend Mark Holsten (Nicky Katt) into visiting her on the job. Mark has his own agenda, though, hoping to seduce the Babysitter and teach Jack a lesson. At the Holsten’s party, Harry and Dolly get increasingly drunk, leading to some severely awkward situations with the other guests. Before the night is over, all these characters will tragically collide at the Tucker house.
The marketing for The Babysitter pitched it as a sort of erotic thriller, but that’s highly misleading. Hardly anything actually occurs with the Babysitter until near the end of the movie, but a good chunk of the film is made up of the different characters’ fantasies about her. Harry Tucker fantasizes about giving her a ride home and taking “the long way,” and later about walking in on her in the bath. Imaginary Babysitter actually spends a lot of time in the bath, with virtually every character imagining walking in on her there. And in at least one unsettling case, they walk in on her dead. Tellingly, while we spend a lot of time in the fantasies of other characters, we never get a direct look at what the Babysitter herself is thinking. Silverstone does what she can to convey what the Babysitter is thinking and feeling, but the character is an object to be acted on by the other (mostly male) characters more than anything.
Unsurprisingly, the constant switches back and forth between fantasy and reality become quickly tiresome. Even trying to figure out why a few of the characters’ fantasy worlds seem to somehow overlap occasionally can’t hold the viewer’s interest forever. After a while, the fantasies start to feel like a desperate stalling tactic to prevent the story from getting to its climactic showdown. Even worse, it’s hard to engage with any of the characters as they’re virtually all selfish, awful people. The stakes already feel pretty low, but when there’s nobody on the screen to care about, the film becomes an endless slog through a lot of material that other films have covered in a much more compelling fashion. Getting all the way to the end credits feels like a chore, but Silverstone’s appearance has virtually guaranteed the film a cult following. Any non-fans will probably want to give this one a pass.
Olive Films released The Babysitter on Blu-ray and DVD on 25 August 2015. This new home video release of The Babysitter represents a significant upgrade from the previous DVD version, which was released way back in 2002. The new transfer looks nice, especially on Blu-ray. Although the new release doesn’t have any special features, fans of Alicia Silverstone and this film in particular will find it a worthwhile purchase for the enhanced audiovisual presentation alone.
Babysitter Massacre (2013)
Originally published on Film Monthly 10 October 2013
Like the immortal anti-heroes starring in the subgenre’s biggest franchises, the slasher film refuses to die. The main reason for this is probably because it’s always been a good way for low-budget filmmakers to make something marketable without going bankrupt. This is even more true today in the era of cheap, high-quality digital video cameras that allow microbudget filmmakers to shoot decent-looking footage with consumer-level technology. However, there is an art in making a slasher movie that’s actually interesting and that will satisfy the hardcore fans of classic 80s slasher films, and no amount of tweaking in an independent filmmaker’s editing software of choice can save a dull slasher knock-off from a weak script, bad special effects and even worse acting. The pile of low-budget slashers grows alarmingly every day, and it’s rare to find one that truly lives up to the early-80s “golden age.” Babysitter Massacre is one of those rare films that delivers, and then some.
It’s Halloween, and the seventh anniversary of the disappearance of April, a young girl who was a member of a junior high babysitters club. Her friend and neighbor Angela (Erin R. Ryan) is having a party and inviting all the old crew in hopes of renewing their friendship and making Halloween fun again instead of a night to dwell on the past. Unfortunately, the killer has returned and is intent on dispatching all the members of the babysitters club, finishing the job he started all t
hose years ago and totally ruining Angela’s party. One by one, he murders the babysitters and sends pictures of their bodies to Angela, who just thinks her friends are particularly into the Halloween spirit this year. She invites her friend Bianca (Marylee Osborne) to the party, despite the fact that she was with April when the killer took her, and some of the other babysitters blame Bianca for not saving April. Sure enough, when Bianca shows up, spiteful Arlene (Tara Clark) immediately starts trying to pick a fight.
Bianca leaves the party and sees what she believes is the killer at the town’s big Halloween party. As she tries to figure out what to do, the killer tears his way through what has to be a good percentage of the town’s college-age population on his mission to eliminate all the babysitters. Meanwhile, Angela, Arlene and Lucky (Joni Durian) try to make the best of their party by draining several bottles of wine and dressing up in lingerie left in a box on Angela’s porch that Arlene believes was left for them by her (currently ex-) boyfriend Dave. Arlene has dumped Dave yet again, and she believes he is trying to woo her back by re-enacting Sorority House Massacre II. Probably thanks to the wine, Angela and Lucky are easily talked into going along with her, but as the night drags on and the body count rises, how long will it take for the killer to show up at Angela’s door?
The Unrepentant Cinephile Page 5
