Shortly thereafter, the Medium (J. Andrew Wilkins) arrives with a mysterious machine that he claims can open the door to the Other Side, but also that he cannot control what comes through it. After an eerie but seemingly ineffective demonstration of the machine’s function, the Medium takes his leave. However, while it seems his machine did little but make strange noises, odd things start happening throughout the house. Has the Medium’s machine indeed opened a portal between worlds, or is something less supernatural but just as sinister happening? As the number of guests in the house dwindles, it’s up to Harlan to keep everyone calm and figure out just what’s going on before it’s too late– if it isn’t already.
Technically speaking, House of Ghosts is about on par with Mihm’s previous features, although he has upgraded to an HD camera for this one. The special effects are as charmingly lo-fi as ever, with some great masks and some hilarious CG-assisted trickery. The cast is all over the place as usual, but it’s nice to see familiar faces return from previous Mihm films playing new characters. The pacing is a little off at first, with the opening scenes front-loaded with a lot of stationary camera set-ups, but once the action picks up after the dinner scene the film moves along at a decent clip and comes in at 77 minutes, which is just about perfect for this type of movie. Fans of William Castle-style 50s and 60s horror films will certainly find a lot to like here, and fans of Mihm’s previous “Mihmiverse” films will appreciate the nods to previous films in the director’s canon. After seven features in as many years, it’s become a welcome tradition to see the new Mihmiverse film and settle in with his familiar cast of collaborators. Here’s hoping we get The Giant Spider on schedule next year around the same time!
House of Last Things (2013)
Originally published on Film Monthly 11 February 2015
One of the horror genre’s longest-standing stories is the “haunted house,” of which there have been hundreds if not thousands throughout film history. Like other genre standbys like vampires and zombies, it is exceptionally difficult to come up with an interesting take on the haunted house story. Recently, a number of super low-budget independent horror films have repeatedly proven that, for example, just making a “found footage” haunted house movie isn’t enough to count as bringing something new to the table. And so it’s a huge relief to stumble across something as unusual as writer/director Michael Bartlett’s House of Last Things. Here is a “haunted house” film that takes its cues from standard ghost stories, but also brings in some interesting concepts for a take on familiar material that feels fresh.
House of Last Things announces its unusual nature right up front with a dialogue-free credits scene taking place decades before the main action of the film. Afterward, the audience is introduced to Alan (Randy Schulman), a classical music critic preparing to leave for an extended trip to Europe with his wife Sarah (Diane Dalton). Sarah is reluctant and distant, even angry, although the source of the couple’s conflict is not immediately apparent. Alan hires Kelly (Lindsey Haun) to housesit for him while he and Sarah are away, and as soon as the couple leaves Kelly’s boyfriend Jesse (Blake Berris) unexpectedly shows up and her brother Tim (RJ Mitte) moves in. Jesse is a selfish, abusive lech who treats Kelly terribly and constantly teases Tim, who suffers from some sort of mild developmental disability. When Kelly tells Jesse he can’t stay, he storms off angrily, but finds himself drawn back to the house for reasons he doesn’t understand.
Meanwhile, Alan and Sarah’s trip is not going well. The stresses that threatened their marriage become magnified so far from home, and the problems they confront are eerily echoed in the experience of Kelly and Jesse back in the house. Tim begins acting strangely, covering up the mirrors in the house, and when Jesse inexplicably brings a young boy named Adam (Micah Nelson) home with him from a trip to the grocery store, inexplicable things start happening in the house. Kelly panics, but Jesse insists Adam is the key to getting everything they’ve ever wanted. As Jesse, Kelly and Tim try to figure out what to do with the child, Alan and Sarah are on a course with a devastating revelation about their past, and the house that ties them all together blurs the lines not only between past and present, but between different characters.
It is somewhat misleading to refer to House of Last Things as a “haunted house” story. There is a house, and it is certainly haunted, but not exactly in the traditional sense. Actions occur and echo through time repeatedly, and the film’s structure mimics the disorientation of the characters as they encounter events in the present, past, and future without order or context. There are some effectively creepy images throughout the film, although some of its recurring motifs work better than others–repeated references to yellow balloons, for example, culminate in a scene more silly than scary. Despite this, writer/director Michael Bartlett plays with some interesting and unique concepts here, and the fact that he is willing to leave the audience to figure out things on their own is a nice change from genre films in which every question is neatly squared away by the time the credits roll. There are some weak spots in some of the performances, and at least one of the characters behaves in a way that doesn’t make much sense, but the fact that Bartlett is able to find a new angle for a “haunted house” story helps make up for some of the film’s shortcomings. Overall, House of Last Things is a solid independent horror film and well worth a look for fans of the genre looking for something unique.
The House with 100 Eyes (2013)
Originally published on Film Monthly 16 June 2015
It’s sort of baffling that there aren’t more attempts to make a “found footage” horror comedy. The found footage style has been seized on by independent horror filmmakers, who have pumped out legions of no-budget takes on the same basic concepts for years. And horror comedy is a popular but tricky choice for many indie filmmakers as well, although it is rarely done well. Horror is popular with low-budget filmmakers because they often think fulfilling basic genre requirements is all they need to be successful, but pulling off a good horror film is tough. Comedy is even harder. So the fact that Jay Lee and Jim Roof’s The House with 100 Eyes takes a stab at being a found footage horror comedy automatically sets it apart from its contemporaries. The question then becomes: how well does it work?
Ed (co-director Jim Roof) and Susan (Shannon Malone) are a married couple who are in the business of making snuff films. They lure victims back to their soundproof, locked-down home, and videotape Ed torturing and murdering people. Ed has more ambition than most people in his line of work, though. He sees himself as an artist, and is determined to push the envelope with his next project: a triple feature. Three victims in one night, released on a DVD with a full slate of special features: director’s commentary, interviews, deleted scenes, behind the scenes, etc. And so Ed and Susan begin trolling the streets of sunny California in their white creeper van (or as Susan calls it, the “mobile casting studio”) looking for two girls and a stud to act in Ed’s magnum opus.
After a few disappointments, Ed convinces a trio of teenagers named Clutch (Andrew Hopper), Jamie (Larissa Lynch), and Crystal (Liz Burghdorf) to come to the house and star in an amateur porn film. Naturally, there are complications. Susan is obsessed with poisoning people, so Ed has to keep constant tabs on her to make sure she doesn’t kill the “material” before he can shoot their footage. Crystal is willing to go with the plan at first, but has second thoughts. And Ed has been keeping a few secrets from his wife that threaten to cause an irrevocable change in their relationship. Who will survive, and will some lawyers have to be called in to deal with a particularly interesting divorce?
The hook of The House with 100 Eyes is that Ed and Susan are from all outward appearances a fairly normal married couple. They are both killers, though, which the film smartly never lets the viewer forget. They talk about their work in the same way any “normal” person would about a job that they enjoy but that naturally has its own frustrations and difficulties. The interplay between Ed and Susan is the anchor for the whole movi
e, and both the actors and the screenplay do a good job of selling the low-key humor of the characters’ comfort with each other. There is a late-film event that changes their dynamic, though, and again thanks to careful characterization it doesn’t seem like a jarring shift so much as an inevitability. The violence in the film is brutal, with excellent and unsettling practical makeup and effects. However, since the film’s humor is grounded both in character and in the bleak certainty of what is going to happen once those kids get into the house, the film does not suffer from the schizophrenic tone problems so often seen in independent horror comedies. The tone is a unique one of jet-black humor, and in fact is somewhat reminiscent of Bob Balaban’s film Parents, another exceptionally dark comedy built on a bizarre husband-and-wife relationship.
As far as its found footage conceit goes, The House with 100 Eyes establishes from the opening title card that it has been edited together from footage sent to the film’s director. This explanation smooths over some concerns over the typical narrative film editing, which includes audio from one source playing while unrelated video is on the screen (usually dialogue used to bridge two scenes) and some frustrating jump scares based on sudden loud noises on the audio track. The latter are very frustrating, given that the rest of the film uses sound design sparingly and features no unexplained soundtrack or score (a common problem in found footage movies). The jump cuts and loud, distorted noises are distracting for the wrong reasons, but they hardly sink the film. Overall, The House with 100 Eyes is an interesting experiment in melding found footage with bleak satire, and is well worth a look for horror fans looking for something different in the increasingly tired found footage subgenre.
The Howling: Reborn (2011)
Originally published on Film Monthly 18 October 2011
Well, 30 years and six sequels after Joe Dante’s original The Howling, someone who owns the rights to the franchise has decided it’s time for the series to get a reboot. With teenagers. The Howling: Reborn is not technically related to the previous seven films in the series, other than that there are werewolves in it. Also, it claims to be based on the novel The Howling II by Gary Brandner (who wrote the book the original film was based on as well), but does not seem to bear any resemblance whatsoever to that book. So, with all that confusion acting as preparation for watching the film itself, how does it hold up? No points for guessing correctly.
Will Kidman (Landon Liboiron) is a high school Senior on the verge of graduating. He has sneaked through his entire academic career on good grades and minimal participation in extracurricular activities– “I see nothing special here,” remarks his principal while looking through Will’s file, which may be honest and correct but isn’t very nice. The day before graduation, Will is invited by his long-time crush Eliana (Lindsey Shaw) to a late-night party to be held in the sub-basement of the school. Once there, Will is inexplicably welcomed by a group of thugs who give him some drugs and Eliana sets to seducing him. The party turns sinister when Will and Eliana leave the main dance floor and are separated, and it seems that Will is being chased by something that he narrowly escapes.
The next day is graduation day, and in this school that apparently means that the school day is out and then a few hours later everyone comes back for the graduation ceremony. There are two big plans that Will becomes embroiled with that will take place during graduation: First, his horror-loving best friend (Jesse Rath) has set up some sort of signal jacker that will allow him to broadcast his “untitled horror film project” on New York TV, and second, werewolves are going to take over the world and somehow Will is set to play a pivotal role in the coming werewolf apocalypse. This is a lot to deal with, and it only gets worse when it turns out those thugs from the party are minions of a deadly “Alpha” wolf with a very special tie to Will.
The Howling: Reborn ironically allows supporting character Sachin to describe what makes werewolves different from vampires: they’re badass, they don’t sit around brooding, etc. Will spends an inordinate amount of screen time brooding and being bummed out about all this werewolf stuff, thereby proving Sachin incorrect. Not much at all happens in The Howling: Reborn, actually, which spends a lot of time developing Will’s paralyzing crush on Eliana and her willingness to be with him if he’d just get up the nerve to do something other than draw endless pictures of her in his notebook. Despite the film’s “R” rating, there’s very little in the way of graphic violence and absolutely no nudity– in more ways than one, Reborn feels like a SyFy Original that had a little extra blood and profanity slipped in for its home video release in order to get the credibility of the “R” rating while guaranteeing it won’t take much work to be “sanitized” for its commercial TV run.
All that aside, the big question is: “How are the werewolves?” Well, they don’t look too bad in the fleeting glimpses we get of them. They seem to have huge legs that make them seem sort of like rabbits, but the glinting fangs and dripping maws all look decent enough. The transformations are a total waste of screen time, taking all of about three seconds of CG animation. There’s nothing here to match the convincingly physical (and painful) transformations of the original Howling or An American Werewolf in London, still unbelievably the best werewolf transformation effects in film 30 years after their original release.
The Howling: Reborn is unquestionably a serious disappointment, and often feels more like a highlights reel from a full season of a teen-centric werewolf television series (One Tree Howl?) than a feature film. Actions that feel like they should have been entire character arcs flash by without explanation for the first half of the film, but the second half settles into a standard (if uneventful) stalk ‘n slash as Will and Eliana try to evade the wolves and Will’s monstrous nature as they run through the dark hallways of their high school. Fans of the series will likely be very disappointed and anyone looking for gory fun will be put off by the film’s straight-faced tone.
The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence) (2011)
Originally published on Film Monthly 22 February 2012
Tom Six clearly believes in giving the people what they want. After causing a sensation with The Human Centipede– a film much more notorious for its bizarre central concept than for what it actually portrays on-screen– Six has returned with a sequel that delivers on whatever anyone may have thought was missing from the first film. There is no question that The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence) is every bit as disgusting and graphic as anyone could ever want, and then some. So the question then becomes: what’s the point of all this nasty business, anyway?
Martin (Laurence R. Harvey), a parking garage attendant who lives with his abusive mother (Vivien Bridson), is a big fan of The Human Centipede. Such a big fan that he spends his entire work shift watching the film repeatedly, frequently masturbating while doing so, and he has scrapbooks filled with images of the film’s stars, posters, etc. Martin has a very unpleasant life: in addition to his hateful mother, he’s haunted by memories of sexual abuse by his father, he has a creepy therapist (Bill Hutchens) who obviously wants to molest him as well, and his noisy neighbors are constantly threatening violence. Into this bleak existence comes The Human Centipede, and with it an idea. Martin will make his own real-life Human Centipede.
This turns out to be a lot easier to do than it might initially sound, at least in Martin’s universe. Armed with a trusty tire iron, Martin knocks a succession of parking garage customers over the head and drags them to a large warehouse space procured in much the same way. That is, by knocking the owner over the head with his tire iron. The film falls into a rhythm fairly quickly: Martin knocks someone out with his tire iron, ties them up and leaves them in his work space, and gets yelled at by his mother. Repeat until the desired number of victims is gathered, and then it’s time to get to business: making a 12-person Human Centipede, mostly with a staple gun.
Although the first Human Centipede exists in Martin’s world, there is no mistaking it for the same universe we live in. First of all, it’s pres
ented in dingy black & white, a distancing device to assure the viewer this is only a movie. Secondly, everyone in Martin’s world is extremely resilient, able to take multiple blows to the head with a tire iron in stride with only a short period of unconsciousness. The film’s inversion of the first film’s tagline– “100% Medically Inaccurate”– is no simple marketing gimmick. These people take more abuse than any human being could reasonably be expected to suffer and still live. The graphic violence is amped up to absurd levels that would be cartoonish if they weren’t so convincingly executed.
Still, the sense that Full Sequence is a cartoon version of the first film is enhanced by the fact that Martin (like, say, Wile E. Coyote) never speaks on camera for the entire film. In one sequence, Martin lures actress Ashlynn Yennie (from the first film, playing herself) into his trap by apparently convincing her agent that she’s up for an audition in the new Quentin Tarantino film. It’s particularly funny since it’s difficult to imagine Martin successfully ordering a sandwich, let alone talking someone’s agent into believing their client is up for a major audition in another country. There is a streak of bleakest, blackest humor running through Full Sequence, although it’s almost completely drowned in blood and other bodily fluids.
Unfortunately, that seems to be how the ever-increasing bro-cult of the Centipede wants it. If Six wanted to punish the audience by giving them what they want, it didn’t work– in this relationship, the fans seem to relish being presented with this kind of (literal) shitstorm. If he wanted to prove that detractors of the first film were overreacting about how disgusting it was, well even the infamous A Serbian Film is only a few notches higher on the scale than Full Sequence. Saying the first Human Centipede is not as gross as this one isn’t really saying much. Maybe the fact that Full Sequence and A Serbian Film were released in the States in the same year is what throws Full Sequence‘s supposedly comic depravity into sharp contrast. Tom Six seems content to use the ultimate gross-out to both fuel and criticize fist-pumping audience reactions rather than address any real issues. Full Sequence seems to exist entirely to comment on its own existence and the existence of an audience who wants to see it. In the end, maybe that’s the real Human Centipede.
The Unrepentant Cinephile Page 35
