1) Would You Rather (2012)- David Guy Levy directed this sick little shocker about a twisted 1%er (played by the Re-Animator's Jeffrey Combs) who hosts a dinner party/contest where the winner gets all their problems solved. June Squibb (fresh off of her academy award nomination for Nebraska), The Crab Man from My Name is Earl, The snitchy Barksdale from the Wire, John Heard (of Home Alone fame), Enver Gjokaj (from anything Joss Whedon has had a hand in lately and Agent Carter), the Penguin from Gotham...all add up to a fairly impressive cast for such a decidedly grade-B horror movie. Combs presents the guests with no-win scenarios and makes them choose one to act on. For example, the first round is "would you rather receive a torture level electric shock or give one to the person sitting beside you?" And things get worse from there. The poster is an eye with a razor blade held to it so...yeah, don't expect cuddles and sunshine.
The characters barely exist as sketches. Brittany Snow is our protagonist and we basically know that she has a sick brother who has expensive treatments. John Heard is a recovering alcoholic. One guy is a war vet, another is a professional gambler. We don't really get to know anyone too well and that is pretty much by design. Instead of building sympathy for these poor characters, we are faced with the same dilemma they are...knowing what we know, how would we act?
As the guests drop one by one, the ending becomes more and more obvious. Even a red herring "savior" plotline is woefully predictable. If you don't see the ending of this movie coming, I have to assume you have never seen a movie or read a story before in your life. The acting and premise are solid, the script is the weak part. I can't recommend it but I also wouldn't blame the curious for checking it out.
2) The ABCs of Death 2 (2014)- Anthologies are rough at the best of times. To hit a consistent tone and pace is nearly impossible. With the ABCs of Death, you have 26 segments crammed into a two hour run time. The first one was kind of all over the place and caused me to laugh incredulously as often as I winced from something horrific. The sequel is actually much tighter. Gone are the killer farts of Japanese Schoolgirls and killer toilets of the first edition. Pretty much every segment keeps close to the baseline idea of showing weird ways people can die. Bill Plympton and a weird bit about escaped prisoners running into a muscular man with a baby provide the only two comedic takes I can recall and they are both so off-putting as to be easily taken with the rest of the film.
Some highlights, for me, included a man on the phone with his wife while she is being stalked by an intruder; a hitman realizing that air ducts aren't all they are cracked up to be in movies; and a reality where zombies have all been cured and are placing all the "heroic" people who tried to shoot them in the head on trial for attempted murder. Some seem to have a political agenda (like the F segment about a female Israeli soldier stuck in a tree being found by an arab boy) or hammer home old cliches about looks (the U segment is basically a passive aggressive "ugly people are people too" PSA). There is nothing as brutally disturbing as the masturbation contest from part 1. Even though there is gore, I wouldn't call it excessive (a beheading early on takes CGI to the limit).
All in all, plenty to check out. If you like horror, you'll probably find something to like here. No matter your taste, you will probably hate something in here, too.
3) Banshee Chapter (2013)- Your movie might be in trouble if the viewer cannot honestly tell if it is meant to be a found footage flick until halfway through (spoiler: it is not, somehow?). It starts as a documentary and features footage taken by the main character but, all too often, it switches into third person "normal" viewing with no rhyme or reason. It seems like a poorly thought through concept that is only applied when it would be scarier to see something first person.
Anyway, the movie claims to be based on a true story. Which is technically true in the same way that sharks have attacked people and, therefore, Jaws is based on a true story. The government did do MK-Ultra experiments in the 1960s and there are these weird shortwave broadcasts no one can explain (one is featured in Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot album). This movie tries to explore both while tying them into a Lovecraftian idea of other-dimensional beings coming to inhabit our bodies.
The movie stars Katia Winters as an investigative journalist. Her college best friend, played by Michael McMillian, has vanished after taking a dose of the MK-Ultra drug of choice. He was working on a book about the experiments and the whole first ten minutes or so is definitely a found footage take on his last hours before disappearing. Winters keeps hitting weird dead ends until she tracks down Ted Levine (you know him as the police captain on Monk), playing a thinly veiled Hunter S Thompson character. He has a great time chewing the scenery as a drugged out wacko who loves messing with people. When Winters tries to trick him into giving her some of the drug her friend took, the plot actually starts (about halfway through the movie).
The acting is all fine here, for the most part. The writing/directing of Blair Erickson is all over the place and really problematic. Nonsensical plot developments shoved into the denouement don't add anything to the story. It is all just a hot mess, to be honest. Unless you just really want to see Hunter S Thompson in an HP Lovecraft story, I would avoid this one.
4) Preservation (2014)- Finally, a horror movie with something on its mind. Parental anxiety has been explored in many great horror flicks like Rosemary's Baby and The Exorcist. This particular movie seems to almost exclusively be about how hyper-masculinity has been perverted into nearly sociopathic tendencies. But it is also a pretty satisfying survival horror movie, too.
Christopher Denham (a pretty solid character actor in his own right) directed this thriller about a woman, her husband and her brother-in-law going camping for a weekend in a closed down state park. The woman knows she is pregnant and has been waiting to tell her husband. Her husband is one of those "always on a cell phone" jerks spouting off about survival of the fittest when he is talking about business. Her brother-in-law is a bag of crazy just back from war who really wants to have sex with her. We follow these three around for a bit but, before long, all their gear and tents have been stolen and they have black "x"s painted on their foreheads. What follows is a yet another Strangers riff where masked assailants stalk and kill our protagonists.
Pablo Schrieber (who first came to my notice as the main character of The Wire season 2) plays the slightly unhinged brother-in-law just off enough that you believe he actually could be responsible for the whole thing when his brother accuses him of going PTSD. Wrenn Schmidt is very believable as the pregnant woman who finds herself in a kill or be killed situation. You really pull for the main characters and Denham dehumanizes the killers in such a way that you can't help but hope they fail.
There are tons of texts and subtexts that children aren't allowed to be children anymore. A closed down "Kidz Museum" seems cheesy and absurd when you imagine a modern, jaded kid trying to enjoy it. A playground is covered in graffiti and the killers speak only in text messages to each other. It is super over-the-top but it makes you think, if you brought a young man into this modern world, can you steer him away from sociopathy?
I like horror movies that have something to say. This one isn't particularly clever and it doesn't redefine the genre (how many times would you turn your back on someone who isn't dead? I mean, come on!). It does put some interesting characters into a tense situation where you are never quite sure how it is going to turn out. People who know me know I hate movies where the killers just get to kill at whim with no consequences (like The Strangers) so just know this movie passes my test of horror approval.
Next time, I will have seen a bunch more horror. In the meantime, see some quality horror presented by the Film House this month with Cabin in the Woods on the 8th and Shaun of the Dead on the 12th.
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