Martyrs

Where do I even start with this review?  It’s such a complex and twisty movie that there’s no simple way to synopsize it.  So I’ll start at the beginning and we’ll see what happens.

Martyrs starts with a young girl (Lucie) running down the road in a tank-top and her underwear.  She had been held captive and tortured for quite a while (although they make a point to say that she was not raped).  She ends up in a mental institution, where she is befriended by her roommate (Anna).  Lucie is tormented by an emaciated, scarred, contorted woman who shows up occasionally to attack her.

Give us a kiss

We pick up with Lucie and Anna 15 years later.  Lucie enters the house of a seemingly normal family, and proceeds to kill everyone in the house with a shotgun.  She calls Anna, telling her that she has found the people who tortured her.  According to Anna, it was only supposed to be a surveillance mission, but Lucie couldn’t help herself. 

Before Anna can get to the house, Lucie is attacked by the scarred woman.  Lucie says something to the effect of, “I killed them all.  You’re free now,” which leads us to believe that this woman went through the same ordeal as Lucie, and that they were connected somehow.

Anna shows up and helps Lucie clean up the mess.  Eventually the scarred woman shows up and we find out what we assume all along: that this woman is only in Lucie’s head.

From there, the movie takes a number of shifts that I can’t really get into without ruining anything.  It’s kind of amazing how many times this movie completely shifts, and yet it’s completely cohesive.  Throughout the course of the movie, this could be described with these plot points: revenge, torture, sci-fi, religious, psychological thriller and probably a few more that I’m forgetting about.  Some of these blend between genres, but there are also 2-3 massive shifts that completely change the course of the movie.  I can honestly say I’ve never really seen anything quite like it.  From Dusk Till Dawn is the easy comparison, but there’s only 1 major shift in that movie.  It would be like if From Dusk Till Dawn went from robbery movie to vampire movie to slasher movie to buddy comedy, and made it all look seamless.

All that being said, I wasn’t a huge fan of this movie.  Looking back on it, I can certainly appreciate what they did.  It was a unique movie, and it was done very well.  But, while I was watching it, I just felt kind of ill.  It was a dark and brutal movie.  There was a lot of pretty graphic violence against women.  I have seen a lot of movies.  I have a pretty strong stomach for violence and blood.  But this one pushed me to my limit.  After it was over, the only thing I wanted to do was watch a comedy and take a shower.

There were also a couple moments that just left me shaking my head.  Lucie killed an entire family with a shotgun.  Sure, they seemed to be out in the country a bit, but a shotgun is loud.  Wasn’t there a chance that someone heard the noise?  Even if they didn’t hear the noise, isn’t there a threat of an unannounced visitor stopping by? 

My point is, after you kill an entire family, you would think “getting out of the house” would be a pretty good move, right?  Not according to Lucie and Anna.  I don’t know that they ever explicitly say how long they’re in the house, but I have to assume they’re in the house for at least a day.  With blood and dead bodies everywhere.  Even later, when Anna makes a disturbing discovery about the house (one that would lead anyone to believe that there was either someone in the house), she still doesn’t get out.  In the face of all logic and warning signs, Lucie and Anna stay in the house, practically begging to get caught.  I kept saying, “Don’t stay overnight!  Get out of the house!”  They never listen to me.

Overall, I didn’t love this movie.  As I’ve said, I can appreciate it, but I never want to watch it again. 

Rating: 3/5

I'll end with a series of posters, because I came across some pretty cool posters for this film.

Deadly Blessing

I watched this for Final Girl’s film club.  I had actually never heard of this movie before, despite it being an early Wes Craven movie.  This movie came out 4 years after The Hills Have Eyes and 3 years before A Nightmare on Elm Street.  By looking at the cover, I didn’t know what to expect.  Something sexy with Sharon Stone, probably.

I was even wrong on that front.

The basic story is simple.  Martha and Jim live on a farm (titled “Our Blessing”) next to an extremely conservative religious group called the Hittites.  It is said that these Hittites “make the Amish look like swingers.”  (I have been around quite a few Amish in my day, and I don’t believe that statement to be true.  Moving on…) 

One night, Jim hears a noise in his barn.  He goes out to check it out, and is promptly run over by his tractor.  His death is chalked up to an accident.  Apparently tractors often start themselves up and run people over?  Like Christine, but much slower.

The leader of the Hittites (a man named Isaiah, played with crazed fanaticism by Ernest Borgnine) tries to buy the farm off of Martha.  She says no, and he calls her “the incubus” (which he does a lot of in this movie).  He’s very angry and pretty threatening.  It’s clear that we are to believe that he is the killer.

Martha’s city friends (Lana and Vicky) come out to visit/console Martha.  Vicky falls for one of the Hittites (John, who is one of Isaiah’s sons), but it appears to be a lost cause, as he is already engaged to his cousin.  Ah…young love.

El Amor Prohibido

Lana doesn’t have anywhere near as much fun.  She gets trapped in the barn with the killer, has the corpse of Jim fall on her, and has recurring nightmares of having spiders crawl into her mouth (thus the cover, now decidedly unsexy).

Weird stuff happens around the house, and it is clear that someone (or something) is trying to kill them.  Or, rather, trying to kill Martha. 

It has the feel of a slasher movie: a shadowy figure hiding in dark places, stalking pretty girls.  A pretty standard stalk-and-kill movie, but with a slightly different feel.  For the majority of the movie, it was not clear if the killer was an actual person or a supernatural being.  That adds a bit more mystery to the events of the movie.

Overall, I didn’t love this.  It wasn’t overly long (100 minutes), but it was really slow in parts, which made it feel much longer than its actual running time.  The story really seemed to drag at times.  I know there were multiple times where it didn’t feel like anything was happening.  I was bored quite often while watching this.

Still, it wasn’t all bad.  There were a number of entertaining parts: some intentional, some not.  I laughed pretty much every time Isaiah called someone “the incubus”.  I laughed at the ridiculously skimpy outfits that Vicky wore around the extremely conservative Hittites (because when your friend’s husband was quite possibly murdered by an extreme religious group, the smart thing to do is provoke them).  And I laughed at the final jump scare, which seemed out of place but also kind of fitting.

There was one scene that I found really interesting.  Martha is in the bathtub, and the killer releases a snake into the bathroom.  It finds its way into the tub, and, while Martha has her eyes closed, raises its head above the water between her legs.  Craven would use this exact same scene 3 later in A Nightmare on Elm Street.  It is the exact same shot (with Freddy’s claw substituted for the snake, naturally).

I guess I’m glad I watched this, but I can’t say I really enjoyed it too much.  I didn’t hate it, but I wouldn’t choose to watch it again, and I would really recommend it to anyone.

Rating: 1.5/5

Before the Mask: The Return of Leslie Vernon

In case you don't know, I absolutely love Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon.  It's one of my favorite movies to come out in the past 10 years.  It's an amazing mix of horror and comedy, and can almost double as a master class in the slasher genre.  If you have any interest in slasher movies, you really need to see this movie.

The makers of that movie are trying to raise funds to make a sequel (prequel?), titled Before the Mask: The Return of Leslie Vernon.  With 4 days to go, they need to raise around $300,000 in the next 4 days.  It's a long shot, but, if you have the money and time, please head over and check out their Kickstarter page.

Also, if you haven't seen Behind the Mask, please watch that movie as soon as possible.

I just watched The Prowler tonight, so I'll probably be writing about that at some point.  I also need to get a review of YellowBrickRoad up.  And Deadly Blessing.  And Hostel III.  And I'm also planning on re-watching all the Nightmare on Elm Street movies and breaking those down.

The point is, I have a lot of things that I will be writing about.  Hopefully I will actually get around to doing that.

But the bigger point is, please go to the Leslie Vernon Kickstarter page and check it out.

The Loved Ones

Take the magic of prom night and combine it with the family from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and you have an idea of what to expect from The Loved Ones, a terrific horror movie from Australia.

A short synopsis: Brent and his father get into a car wreck and his father is killed.  Six months later we find Brent cutting himself and self-medicating as he deals with the loss of his father, as well as his perception that his mother blames him for the death of his father.  He is also dating a very nice girl named Holly.  Prom is the next night and he plans on attending with Holly.  Another girl in school – Lola – asks Brent to go, but he turns her down (but he’s really nice about it). 

But Lola is insane.  So – nice rejection or no – she has Brent kidnapped and taken back to her house, where she proceeds to dress him in a tux, tie him to a chair, and inject bleach into his throat so he can’t talk/scream.

And you can probably tell where the movie goes from there.  There is a lot of torture.  There are a number of escape attempts by Brent.  More torture.  And Lola being crazy.  Sweet bearded Moses is Lola crazy.  The actress plays crazy so well that I have to assume that she herself is actually a little unhinged.  You can’t play crazy that well without being a little crazy yourself (using this logic, after watching American Psycho, I’m terrified of ever meeting Christian Bale).

This is what I wondered about after the movie was over: how did Lola fit into everyday life?  Was she just the awkward loner in school?  We don’t really see much of her early in the movie, and it’s obvious from the events that take place that she is off-her-rocker crazy (and has been for quite some time).  The kind of crazy that it’s hard to hide.  The kind of crazy that doesn’t know there’s anything to hide.  But she was obviously able to survive in this world by hiding the crazy to some degree.  Still, after watching this movie, I just kept thinking, “How did she hide it?  How did she interact with other people?”   Certainly they had their suspicions that something was wrong, beyond the standard “Well, she’s just a little odd” response…right?  Beyond the whole “crazy torturer” thing, she also has more than a hint of “madly in incestuous love with my father” thing going on, and that kind of thing tends to get noticed, especially in a small town (it is never said how big the town is, but it seems to be pretty small).

This isn’t Dexter Morgan we’re talking about.  Dexter knows there’s something wrong with him, and tries hard to hide that part of himself so that he can fit in.  Lola is the kind of girl who thinks it is perfectly acceptable to walk down the road in a pink prom dress, covered in blood and holding a knife.  In broad daylight.  Lola is a special kind of crazy, and you can’t hide that level of crazy.

I don’t know why, but I haven’t been able to stop thinking about that since the movie ended.  I would watch a 10 minute scene of Lola interacting with people in school, just to see how well she is able to pull it off.

I think that’s about enough of my Lola-musings.

I really loved this movie.  It was a little different.  It was a little disturbing, but not in a “shock value” kind of way.  There was quite a bit of torture, and, while it wasn’t nearly as graphic as Saw, it also wasn’t exactly Saturday morning cartoons, either.  There was a lot of blood.  There were a lot of moments that made me cringe, but there weren’t any sickening moments that made me want to turn it off. 

This seemed pretty “bright” for a horror movie.  While a lot of the movie happened at night, they were usually in a well-lit house (there was another storyline going at the same time as Brent’s torture, involving Brent’s friend and a goth girl at the prom, and those scenes seemed to look much darker than the torture scenes).  And there was also the matter of Lola’s pink dress.  It’s hard for a room to look dark when that pink dress is there…even if the person in that pink dress happens to be holding a drill.

I realize I have brought up “torture” a lot, but this is by no means a torture porn.  This is a well-crafted horror movie with a decent dash of humor (at least, I laughed a number of times.  Not sure if that was the correct response or not).  There were moments that really did remind me of (the original) Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but that might just be my normal reaction when I see a bunch of crazy people sitting around a table.

This also took the idea of the survivor girl and turned it around.  Brent made a tremendous survivor girl.  He did pretty much everything imaginable to escape the clutches of Lola and her maniac father.  He kicks, climbs trees, slashes faces, and a does many more things that I won’t mention for fear of venturing into spoiler territory.  Sure, he gets a little help along the way, but he is most definitely a fighter.

It had a great mood throughout, good characters, terrific acting, and a tremendous soundtrack (they made perfect – and recurring – use of Kasey Chambers’ “Not Pretty Enough”).  You really need to see The Loved Ones.

Rating: 5/5

Pieces

At the beginning of the movie, we see a child murder his mother with an axe for daring to pull him away from a naked-lady puzzle, then gleefully saw her head off and put it in the closet.  He then continues to put together his puzzle because…hey!  Naked lady!  When the cops show up, he hides in the closet and pretends to cry.  The cops – finding the boy in a closet covered in blood – assume someone else killed his mother (probably because the cops in horror movies are usually pretty inept).

 Fast forward 30 years or so.  A killer is running loose at a college, murdering pretty young girls and chopping off body parts with a chainsaw (if I’m not mistaken, the first victim is having a little “picnic for one” and ends up losing her head).  These kinds of scenes are interspersed with the killer putting together the naked lady puzzle.  We quickly realize that he’s putting together a human puzzle from the “pieces” of the women he kills.  A head from one.  A torso from another.  An arm from another.  And so on.  So he’s trying to put together a Frankenstein monster, but without the whole “making it come alive” aspect.  Since he kept his mothers shoes and dress, it seems pretty clear that he’s trying to put his “mother” back together.  Of course, it’s also quite feasible that he just wants a cobbled-together naked lady in his closet.  Whatever works, I suppose.

Apparently the cops in this town are all really busy, so they enlist the help of a college student named Kendall (even giving him access to confidential police files, based on the “he seems trustworthy” logic) and a female tennis pro named Mary (who works undercover with the police, and goes into the college under the guise of being a tennis instructor).  This leads to one of my favorite scenes in the movie, when we actually see her playing tennis.  It looks as though she has never actually played tennis a day in her life.  Unfortunately, I was unable to find a clip.  But I guess that just means you'll have to watch the movie for yourself to see it.  Trust me...it's well worth it.

Mary is also responsible for one of my other favorite scenes in the movie.  Kendall and her – getting ready to play tennis after a long day of not searching for the murderer – find another dead body in the locker room (a girl that was cut in half).  This does not make Mary happy.  Please watch this clip.  Then watch it again.  And again.

Throughout the movie, the police just seem mildly annoyed by the murders.  Even when they find out who the killer is (and they realize that Mary is over at his house), they do an awful lot of standing around when they should be running.  Of course, I guess I shouldn’t be judging their department too harshly.  A police department that brings in a college student and a tennis “pro” on to help with a brutal murderer is obviously hurting for funds.

Also, for some reason, a karate guy in a jumpsuit pops attacks Mary in the middle of the movie.  There really isn’t any reasoning given for this.  Or perhaps there is and I forgot it.  Because “random karate guy” is a lot more fun than “explained karate guy”.

The last scene was tremendous.  I don’t want to give anything away (apparently I’m loathe to spoil the ending of a movie that came out 30 years ago), but Kendall makes this face: 

There were so many fantastic characters (the groundskeeper who gives everyone the stink-eye, the professor with the pencil moustache, Kendall’s nerdy werewolf-mask-wearing best friend, etc.) and a ton of terrific quotes.  Here are some of my favorites:

“The most beautiful thing in the world is smoking pot and f***ing on a waterbed, at the same time.”

“I guess I'm so used to bodies...dead ones...that I'm callous.”

“Professor Brown – you see – is a homosexual.”

This movie was terrible, but very, very entertaining.  I loved it.  It was pure 80s b-movie schlock, with rampant nudity and gore.  And it was wonderful.  I can see myself re-watching this many times.  It seems like a fun one to sit around and watch with friends.

Rating: 5/5

He looks like this in every single one of his scenes

The Woman in Black

What I liked:
The atmosphere.  This was a subtle, slow-burning movie.  It took a while to get going.  But, once it did, it really grabbed me.  It was the overall atmosphere of the movie that pulled me in.  The setting was perfect.  An old British town with stone buildings and mud streets.  The old house that Arthur Kipps (Daniel Radcliffe) spends most of the movie in is out in the middle of a marsh...it's a long drive down a muddy road just to get there.  And, since the road is covered with water for half the day, he is stranded in the house by himself for long stretches.  It gives the movie a very claustrophobic feel.

The story.  Like I said, it starts slow, and it also starts with a bit of confusion.  The viewer is as in the dark as Arthur, and we learn what's going on along with him.  He is sent to the town to collect the paperwork to sell the Eel Marsh House, a large house on the edge of town.  Its last owner (Alice Drablow) died, preceded by the death of her husband and child (her child died in the marsh).  The people in the town are less than thrilled to see him, but he's not sure why.  Throughout his time there, he discovers that many of the town's children have died horrible deaths (most of them seeming to have taken their own lives).  He also begins seeing weird things in and around the house: a woman in a black dress - the only thing visible is her white face.

The characters.  The townspeople are terrific.  Dark and mysterious and a little sinister.  And I was surprised by how much I loved Daniel Radcliffe in the role of Arthur.  He was fantastic.  I thought I would be distracted by him, but fairly early into the movie I was able to get past the fact that he was Harry Potter.  And his character was great.  My favorite part was how unafraid he was to investigate any strange noises he heard in the house.  Hear a strange knocking down the hall?  Go check it out.  See a rocking chair rocking in an empty room?  Walk up to it and stop it.  He was obviously taken aback and confused by the events in the house, but that didn't stop him from investigating each and every one of them.  

I didn't really dislike anything in this movie.  I loved it.  I thought it was legitimately creepy.  It was the first movie to scare me since Quarantine.

It was a fantastic haunted house movie.  There were a handful of "gotcha" scares, but, for the most part, this movie built up its scares through hard work and atmosphere.  It worked hard for those scares, and it earned every single one.

Watch this movie, especially if you're into the haunted house genre.

Rating: 5/5

Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies

In an attempt to capitalize on the upcoming release of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, Asylum released this movie.  It's cheap (the budget was roughly $150,000).  It's cheesy.  The zombies look kind of terrible.  And yet, I kind of enjoyed it.

Lincoln, having been introduced to zombies at a very young age (his mother was turned into a zombie when he was a child, and he was forced to kill her), knows the signs of a zombie outbreak.  When sees an undead soldier and hears about a fort (behind enemy lines) that has been overrun, he gathers a group of men and attempts to wipe out the infection before it spreads.

Throughout the course of the movie, we meet Stonewall Jackson, Pat Garrett, John Wilkes Booth, a young Teddy Roosevelt, and Lincoln's long lost love - a hooker named Sophia.

We find out where Roosevelt got the phrase "Speak softly and carry a big stick."  We discover Lincoln's favorite line to shout when decapitating zombies ("Emancipate this!").  We find out how Stonewall Jackson died.  And we find out why Lincoln was actually assassinated (or, rather, the circumstances surrounding his assassination).

(L-R) Annika (who may possibly be Lincoln's daughter), Lincoln, & Teddy Roosevelt

Needless to say, this was not a great movie.  But it was an entertaining movie.  If you're looking for a terrible (and enjoyable) movie to watch, you could do worse than this one.  You can currently find it for $1 at Redbox.  It's well worth that price.

Rating: 2.5/5

You can find it here at Redbox.  Lincoln and his scythe demand that you check it out!