Room 237 (2013)

"The Shining" is one of my favorite movies of all time. It's moody, it's superbly acted, and it's terrifying as all holy hell. Few films can match it for conveying a since of cold, bleak dread and creeping terror. The air of mystery about it in all the different layers of the story and the baffling last shot of the film only adds another level of enjoyment to it when you sit down and discuss it with other people, and hear their thoughts on what in the world is going on. Everybody seems to have their own ideas as to what's really happening, so there's always a lot to talk about.

When I heard about the documentary "Room 237," which featured several people giving their own interpretations of what the film was, ranging from plausible to outlandish, tin-foil hat theories, I was quick to check it out. The glowing critical praise heaped upon it didn't hurt my expectations. Seriously, this thing pulled a 93% on Rotten Tomatoes.

I really don't know why I still even look at that website. "Room 237" was, hands down, one of the worst documentaries I've ever seen in my life. And that's not just because of the content, but because it's so poorly put together that it's borderline incomprehensible and damn near unwatchable. This is amateur hour. This is a waste of an hour and forty minutes that could have been better spent just watching the making-of documentary on the DVD of "The Shining" rather than this pathetic heap of conspiracy laden, film school drop-out, post-modern elitist garbage.

Pictured above - Something more relevant to "The Shining."

"Room 237" is composed of a bunch of interviews of people who tell us what they believe "The Shining" to be about. Who these people are or what their credentials might be is never mentioned once, so I find myself wondering why I should be listening to them in the first place. Apparently noted film critics or professors or directors or producers or screenwriters or actors aren't the kinds of people we want to interview when we're discussing one of the most celebrated horror films of all time. No, let's get this schmuck who wrote a crackpot theory on the internet. He'll know what's up.

As advertised these crackpot theories do indeed run the gambit from "slightly plausible" to "have you lost your damn mind?" The most sane one is probably the notion that "The Shining" is a metaphor for the genocide of the American Indians, but I found even that to be a bit of a stretch. Yeah, there's that line "White man's burden, Lloyd," and there's a lot of Native American motifs in the hotel, but then again it WAS built in a region heavily populated by them. Having decor of that nature in a hotel, particularly in Colorado is hardly out of the ordinary. The only reason that theory gets something of a pass was because they say in the film that the Overlook was built on an Indian burial ground. That's a decent connection, but then again the person putting that hypothesis forward also insists that the lynchpin that proves their case is a can of Calumet baking powder behind Jack Nicholsen in the pantry. See, it's got a Native American with a headdress on it. And 'Calumet' means 'peace pipe,' and you see it when Jack is talking with the ghosts, which clearly means they're having a pow-wow, which clearly means it's all about genocide.

See?! See it behind him?! IRON. CLAD.

Yeah, it's stupid, I know. But like I said, that's the least vapid of the theories. Let's not even get into the creep who says it's all about sexual obsession as he points out penises in the carpet and objects that, were one looking for it hard enough, might slightly look like erections if you squinted and were really thinking about erections a lot. Then there was the lady who insisted it's about Greek mythology because she thought a skier on a poster clearly looked like a Minotaur (it didn't), and the hotel had a hedge maze. And of course we couldn't have an analysis of a film without the Nazis, could we? So here comes the guy insisting that "The Shining" is obviously about the Holocaust because Jack has a German brand typewriter.

And then there's the moon landing. Oh man. This was rich. Apparently Stanley Kubrick helped fake the footage of the moon landing. Not that we didn't go to the moon, because we did. But we faked the famous footage, and Kubrick was involved in that. And "The Shining" is his covert confession of having done that. You see, Danny wears an Apollo 11 sweater at one point, and the keys to Room 237 say "ROOM NO. 237," which contains the letters R, O, M and N, which can ONLY spell out "Moon Room." Can you doubt the rock solid pillar of truth this analysis stands upon?

Can I shut this off now? Please?

Each one of these lunatics retells their revelations which the same gravity as the Narrator realizing he's also Tyler Durden, all saying roughly the exact same phrase of "It just jumped out at me. It was so crystal clear. I couldn't believe it." But once again, I must ask the question of why do we care? Who are you? Why do we care what you think of "The Shining?" Are you a filmmaker? Did you know Kubrick? Do you have a degree in film? Have you ever even taken a film class? I have no answers to any of this because "Room 237" never tells us. It's bad enough that the people talking at us never EVER cite any sources whatsoever while making wild claims that really should be backed up with facts, an aspect that lends credence to my belief that these jokers have no business being listened to in the first place, but that's made worse when it becomes clear that you may as well go down to the local movie theater and ask the dude selling popcorn what the crap he thought was going on at the end of "2001: A Space Odyssey." It's unlikely you're going to get an insightful hypothesis.

Speaking of film class, that's really what "Room 237" is like. This is everyone single film theory class you had to suffer through in college, had you ever taken them. I had to take several myself, being a film minor, and the 'Nam-esque flashbacks I was getting from this were enough to send me into cold sweats. I hate post-modern deconstruction. I hate it bad, and I always have. I can't stand how everything needs a "meaning," and the thought that the intent of the creator is completely irrelevant to the "meaning" of the work, which is a hallmark of the critical process at work, always struck me as exceedingly arrogant on the part of the critic. It opens up the door for them to pour in so much subjective excess baggage that any meaning quickly devolves into the critic giving a confessional about what they see as opposed what was actually there. It turns a movie into a two hour long Rorschach test, and I find that completely obnoxious.

Yeah, you could inject meaning into the shapes of the carpet, like it appearing to trap Danny inside of it. Or see them as a bunch of penises. Or you know...maybe a cigar is just a cigar.

What baffles me is that, as stupid as the theories are, this documentary is so shoddily put together that it comes across more like a final film class project of a straight C minus student who wasn't going to do well in the class anyway and didn't really care enough to salvage his grade. Nearly all the footage is simply clips from "The Shining." There's maybe 90 seconds of original footage shot for this. At no point do we see any of the people talking, a side effect I surmise to be the result of most of the interviews probably taking place over the phone, which I picked up on due to varying degrees of quality in the audio. That's also telling when, during one point, one of the interviewees stops to check on his crying baby for a second. Then he comes back after a moment and says "Sorry. Um, where was I?" They left that in. I swear to Crom they left that in. How professional.

Not only do we never see the people talking or get their names on screen when it changes person, but the film switches back and forth between their incoherent, droning babbling so frequently that it's nearly impossible to tell who is speaking or remember what in the world they were talking about beforehand. Before long it quickly devolves to the point of not knowing what in the world anybody is even talking about because there is no consistent narrative to latch onto. Maybe if they had let one person finish their theory before going on to the next guy it would have been stupid, but at least it would have been slightly coherent.

When Jack Torrance is laughing at your craziness, you may have a problem.

"The Shining" is such an amazing movie. And it deserves a better documentary than this. The only reason it was so well reviewed by critics is because it's doing what they love to do: Making something far more complicated than it needs to be while acting superior about it. Piss off with that.

This is one of the worst trailers I've ever seen. Would you believe it was the better of the two that I found?

THE BOTTOM LINE - If you ever wanted a crash course in the most obnoxious film classes you could ever take, watch "Room 237." It's stupid to the point of being offensive, it's arrogant to the point of making your eyes roll, and it's so amateur in it's execution that I've literally seen college students make a more coherent, informative documentary. This is utter trash, more telling about obsession over a movie than the actual movie itself.

Crawlspace (2012)

Dang. Looking at my posts, I realize that I haven't seen a good IFC Midnight film since last August. "Kill List," the first film from that distributor that I wrote about for this blog, was a fantastically intense drop down a rabbit hole of madness, but everything I've watched since then has been middling at best to outright horrendous at worst. And I really like IFC Midnight stuff usually, so it's time for them to step up to the damn plate here.

Australia's "Crawlspace" isn't going to bring glory back to IFC Midnight single-handed like it was Conan hoisting the severed head of Thulsa Doom into the air or anything, but at the very least it is a life preserver to keep it above water, so to speak. It probably won't be finding its way into my collection, unless I need to round out a "5 for 10" deal or something, but at the very least it didn't offend me. And after seeing something like "Rites of Spring," that's such a relief that it almost makes the whole thing worth it on that fact alone.

The story starts us off cold with a woman waking up to find herself laying in one of those giant "only exists in movies" air shafts, with a giant surgical scar on her head and mutilated bodies all around her. From her reaction it's pretty clear this is not something she was expecting to wake up to. Looking at her wrist she sees a metal doohickey that says "EVE" on it. Now, Eve is clearly supposed to be her name, but given the fact that she's dressed just like her I'm choosing to believe that it's really Chell from "Portal" and that GLaDOS has had a particularly fun afternoon.

"Well done. Here come the test results: 'You are a horrible person.' That's what it says. 'A horrible person.' We weren't even testing for that."

Now, anybody worth two braincells would instantly put several things together here from the first 40 seconds. First is that Eve is obviously an experiment given the brain surgery scar. Second is that given her name, she's the first of a new line of most likely weaponized humans, probably created by a shady government. Third is that she clearly killed those people in the vent with her, and she's got some kind of amnesia. It's all pretty obvious, and yeah that's pretty much what's going on. I don't feel bad about spoiling that. If you didn't pick up on it, clearly you aren't a big consumer of science fiction, and I feel bad for you.

The point I'm trying to illustrate here is that there isn't a whole lot of innovation going on with the story of "Crawlspace." That's not to say it's bad, though. Despite the fact that we may have seen stories very similar to this before (in fact it's very similar to a plot you'd see in a video game), it's got enough style and intrigue to keep our attention throughout. And dare I say, this is probably close to what you would have gotten had the "Resident Evil" franchise been given a proper adaptation.

You know, despite not having a plot anything like "Resident Evil." And stuff. SHUT UP I WATCHED THIS AND YOU DIDN'T SO YOU HAVE TO TAKE MY WORD FOR IT.

The majority of the film is following around a squad of soldiers who have been sent into the facility to wipe out the population after things go very, very bad inside. As per the course for situations like this, the soldiers come across people they can't bring themselves to kill despite the fact they are trained for that very purpose. That crap usually bugs me, and yeah it bugged me at first here, too, but at least by the end an entirely plausible explanation is given to us. So I can't really be that mad. Besides, there's no movie if they capped Eve in the dome the second they met her, so I guess they've got me there.

Along the way they met some crazy experiments, crazy people, and crazy people who have had experiments done on them. Lots of things get shot, people get torn to shreds, minds are literally blown, and some surgical saws are taken to the face. All in all, it's quite the eventful afternoon.

"For my next trick, I'm going to make the audience very uncomfortable!"

I think there were three reasons why "Crawlspace" worked fairly well for me. The first was that it was subtle enough in its revealing of the plot that, despite the cliches which worked their way into the story, there was a great sense of mystery to it which kept me invested and curious throughout. And to be honest there were some things they threw in which I was not expecting, including a very well done framing device at the end which left a nice aftertaste once the credits started rolling.

Secondly, the film is claustrophobic and cramped enough to be fairly intense from the setting alone, and the Fincher-esque color palette gives it a great sleazy sheen that reminds me of "Alien 3," which love it or hate it is a gorgeous movie. It's also nice to see a film that is mostly very dark but is still discernible as to what's going on. The lighting in "Crawlspace" is doing a lot of legwork for the mood, and deserves a lot of credit.

Lastly the cast is strong enough to make you really care about the characters, again, as stock as they may be. You really don't want to see bad things happen to them, as much as that is a guaranteed certainty. It's surprising how often movies forget to have likable characters, but here they are all pretty likeable even if they're jerks. Amber Clayton as Eve was mysterious and fun to watch, as was Peta Sergeant as the not-Vasquez of the squad of soldiers. My favorite though was Eddie Baroo as the soldier named "Fourpack." Because he's a couple cans short of a six, see?

"C'mon daan ta Sydney. We'll geet tageetha, have a few laughs..."

You know, I've seen a lot of movies like this in my time. A lot. A hell of a lot. But that doesn't mean that I can't enjoy one that comes along and does it well. It's frankly a minor miracle when they're not terrible. And "Crawlspace" mostly certainly is not terrible. In fact, had it been a video game movie, it probably would have been one of the better ones ever made. It certainly feels like one. So take that for what it's worth.

I actually really like this trailer.

THE BOTTOM LINE - "Crawlspace" is a fun, bloody action flick with a dash of science fiction to give it a slight "X-Files" vibe. Granted it's a hyper violent episode of it, but Scully and Mulder would be right at home. If an action packed, R-rated "X-Files" episode sounds like a good time to go, have at it, hoss. You could much worse than this.

Hellgate (2011)

My forays into what was once one of my favorite film distributors, IFC Midnight, have hit some snags recently. It's not enough to make me retract my support or not be a fan anymore, but as of late they've had more misses than hits. "Kill List" was the only good one from them I've seen recently. The rest sucked. Again, I'm not about to stop taking interest whenever I see their label on a movie, but at this point my expectations have started to bottom out.

This brings me to "Hellgate." I should have probably expected mediocrity from this one under normal circumstances, but it had the audacity to flash the words "Cary Elwes" and "Hellgate" at me - a combination of words that just sounds awesome. Who doesn't want to see Cary Elwes entering a gate of the Hell variety? That just screams entertainment value. Plus he's a great actor who doesn't get nearly enough work, so anytime he pops up I'm down for an hour and a half sit. And Oscar winner William Hurt is in it too, which is also sweet. Sounds like fun.

Fun is not a word I'd use to describe "Hellgate," however. There's another word that fits it much better, and while that word doesn't start with an F, there is an adjective that does which can be added in front of it. The word is "Boring." If you slap that mystery adjective on the front of that word, it gives us the phrase F_______ Boring. What that word starting with F is will be left for you to deduce.

"Is it Fezzik?"

"Hellgate" is such a nothing of a film. It's an hour and a half long movie which moves at such a glacier pace that I would have sworn it was closer to the length of the 4 hour extended cut of "Return of The King" had I not been checking my watch constantly to see how much longer I had to sit there.

The idea is that Cary Elwes is Jeff, a guy who visits Thailand with his wife and son when a car crash in the opening scene blissfully cuts short the disturbingly horrendous acting by anyone in the car who isn't Cary Elwes. When he awakens from his brief coma to find his wife and son died in the wreck, Jeff starts his rehabilitation only to find that he's seeing a bunch of creepy things that won't leave him alone. So he freaks out a bit, he wonders what's happening to him, and his nurse tells him to relax. That cycle goes on for quite a bit.

Eventually they get to the bottom of what's going on, which is that the spirits of his family can't rest until some arbitrary thing is done within some arbitrary length of time or bad things happen or something. So enter William Hurt, who is supposed to be this Ghostbuster/Zen Master/Surfer/Exorcist type guy who is Jeff's only hope. With his help, Jeff enters the Hellgate and faces the forces of darkness to put the souls of his family to rest.

 William Hurt just found a hangnail. It's far more interesting than anything happening to Cary Elwes.

This all sounds intriguing, and perhaps in another movie with decent atmosphere, effective scares, and most importantly decent performances it could have had potential. But as it is "Hellgate" is simply too plodding, spending far too much of its run-time rehashing the same tired idea over and over again, too brightly lit and sterile looking to be atmospheric, too repetitive and lazy to be scary, and too disinterested in itself by having actors who look like they just don't care at all about what they're doing.

Cary Elwes isn't anywhere near his best here, but William Hurt was the worst offender in that category. He is capable of great acting, but here he just stands around looking bored, kind of sleepy and irritated to be there. Every word out of his mouth gives the impression that he's 2 seconds away from telling the director that there will be no more takes, that the last one he did was good enough, and to shove it if he doesn't like it. Clearly this was a paycheck for everyone involved, as nobody is really trying anyway, but Hurt is noticeably bad in "Hellgate." It's clear he does not give a single damn here. He just wanted a paycheck and a trip to Thailand.

"HEY! I said get the hell away from me with that camera! No, I don't care if we're still rolling. It's 5. I'm done. I'll be at the bar. If you try to come and get me, I will stab you in the balls."

And as spooky as the idea of creatures from Hell is, the second biggest fault of the movie after the acting comes from the pathetic attempt at being scary by showing us the same quick flashes of those said creatures over and over and over again until it's such a nonsensical mess of really bad makeup and lousy fake teeth that it eventually looses all meaning in context to anything. It's really amazing when a movie overplays its hand so much to so little effect that demons popping up to rip out your soul serves more to help you take note of how not to apply a prosthesis, rather than causing you any fright.

Oh no. A demon from Hell. This is SO different from the last 27 times I've seen this exact shot that the experience is completely new for me now. I'm so afraid I think I may have soiled myself.

And the pisser is that the demons popping up wasn't even well handled the first time we saw it. Let alone at the point were I'd seen it dozens of times. The pathetic attempts at horror here would be laughed off of the sets of Halloween themed kids films. The Large Marge scene in "Pee Wee's Big Adventure" was scarier than this.

Maybe that's not fair. I don't think "Hellgate" is necessarily meant to be a horror film, though it was certainly marketed as one. The original title was "Shadows," which honestly fits much better, but the title and the marketing not being misleading would only make "Hellgate" better by technicality. It would still be boring even if it was honest with us.

 Don't be fooled. It's nowhere near as interesting as the trailer. Nor as coherent.

THE BOTTOM LINE - "Hellgate" was absurdly close to making the prestigious list of "I hit the STOP button" films. In retrospect, I shouldn't have bothered muscling through to the end. It's a plodding, boring, poorly acted, confusing drama which tries to keep your attention by making lazy attempts at horror which is just about as scary as "Ernest Scared Stupid." Only that movie had better special effects.

Rites of Spring (2012)

Man, did I want to like this movie. I wanted to like this movie hard right out of the gate. All it took was one look at the box and I was on board. The retro styling of that admittedly fantastic cover art reminded me of movies like "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre," what with the understated silhouette of a women strung up in a field in front of a creepy looking house. It's subtle and beautifully simplistic which only enhances the ominous feeling it's trying to convey. Although I do wonder what in the world she's hanging from. Is the rope attached to the sky?

Add to the fact that it's an IFC Midnight film and I was sold. I was excited to throw this bad boy in and see some hopefully messed up and disturbing indie-horror goodness.

I hate being lied to. This movie sucked.

While it wasn't as painfully bad as some other indie horror I've seen this year, mostly because it did feature some unique genre blending to mix things up a bit, "Rites of Spring" fell victim to too much obfuscation and complete lack of any resolution. And while I don't need everything spelled out clearly for me to enjoy a film, it helps if I at least have some idea of what in the crap is going on by the time the credits start rolling.

"Rites of Spring" combines two different stories (of two different genres). The first story is about a kidnapping plot involving a guy named Ben (AJ Bowen), who absconds with the daughter of his rich ex-boss with the help of his brother, his girlfriend (?), and a clearly psychopathic dude named Paul. The plan is to hold her ransom for $2 million dollars, which starts off just fine. That is, until Paul, being clearly psychopathic, decides to shoot the rich dude's wife in the head "Just to show he's serious."

Okay. A few things. First off, you broke into his house with paintball masks and a gun, tied him up, and ran out of the house with his daughter in a sack over your shoulder. I have a suspicion he won't think you're bluffing. Why would you even think he'd assume that? Do you seriously think he might not pay to get his daughter back? If you thought that was even a possibility, why even target him? Find someone else.

"What? This?! Nah, this a gun shaped lighter! I'm joshing ya, bro! Dude, you need to lighten up, man. You take stuff too seriously."

Secondly, on the off chance you get caught, you just ramped the charges up from kidnapping to first degree murder. Have fun with that. And finally, when you go ahead and blow his wife's head off, it increases the chances that he'll just go ahead and go Charles Bronson on your dumb ass. And guess what? That's exactly what happens. Which is actually a nice twist. I liked that.

The rich dude completely dupes Ben's dumb brother and winds up at their meeting place with a loaded gun. He's got them dead to rights, too, and the movie would have probably been over right there had he not been betrayed and shot by the babysitter. Allow me to explain. You see, during the kidnapping Paul ties up the babysitter who was also at the house and brings her with them. Once rich guy unties her, you find out she's really working with Paul the whole time, and they were planning on killing Ben and the rest and taking all the money. And no, I have no idea why Ben is working with, once again, the clearly psychopathic Paul. Whatever. It's kind of stupid.

The other story involves two girls, one being Rachel (Anessa Ramsey). They are abducted from a bar one night and wake up in the barn, hanging from the rafters. A creepy old cracker (Marco St. John) is a dude who has been abducting and sacrificing to Teh Evils what seems like several young women every spring for roughly 30 years. Every March 21st he does this. Like clockwork. So his crops grow. The town is notorious for it. And he has never. been. caught.

Really.

REALLY!?

You're telling me that this guy is roughly the most prodigious serial killer in United States history, and it's just essentially Farmer Fran sacrificing people in his barn so that, what? His corn is slightly fuller? Dude, get some pesticide. I don't think pacts with Satan is required to make crops happen. It's a fairly well documented science. Somebody please toss this man a Farmer's Almanac!

I'm not going to go into the whole semantics of police investigation, but that is ridiculous. Being a serial killer is hard work. Seriously, it is. You have to be smart about it, otherwise they'll catch you. And they'll do it fairly quickly, too. Hell, even I'd start piecing together that perhaps it's a ritualistic, possibly shamanistic thing when they are always abducted right before the first day of Spring in a rural area with a large farming community where a good crop turnout is very important. Maybe the police should check the farms and look for the one with the GIANT ALTER TO BAAL BEING USED AS A SCARECROW!?!?

Pictured above - Subtlety.

Anyway, Rachel's friend gets sacrificed in a scene that started off with potential but ended up just being kind of lame. And while I normally applaud a film for letting the audiences' imagination do most of the work, since it's scarier that way, there is a difference between being subtle and not showing us anything at all.

Take for instance the scene right before the sacrifice. Creepy Old Cracker removes the girl's clothes with a razor, then washes her body before putting this cow mask on her. Yes, that is pretty silly, but it could have worked. That scene is good because it's slow paced and builds up the tension for what will happen after. Then the next scene, Rachel wakes up and her friend is gone. She manages to escape and looks for her, only to find her hanging in the next room, still wearing the mask. When Rachel goes to take the mask off, we see her friend has been beheaded.

Right there, that is not scary. That is a complete waste of the scene before it. That scene was intense. And it's thrown away on a gag that isn't shocking or even really gory. It's just a body without a head. Okay. Whatever. We have no context for how it happened, what the girl went through, or even who did it.

For comparison, in the film "Law Abiding Citizen," Gerard Butler tortures a man to death in horrifying ways. Seriously, it's enough to make you gag. But you don't see a single frame of it. What you DO experience though, is Gerard Butler describing exactly what he's about to do to the guy in painstaking detail. That's the part that makes you want to retch. And when it cuts away to the police investigating later, all we see is the aftermath of blood and body parts strewn about, so our mind is going full blast processing the carnage that went down, which is disturbingly easy because he already told us all we needed to know. That's how to effectively do a "tell don't show" scene.

If you're not telling or showing in a "tell don't show" scene, all you're doing is "don't."

Once Rachel escapes she is chased by the monster that killed her friend, which I think it's also the creature that Creepy Old Cracker is worshiping. I actually have no idea, but it would appear to be the case since it's the thing killing the sacrifices. It doesn't make too much sense though, because Creepy Old Cracker keeps it locked in his basement, which doesn't seem very worshipful. And how it's supposed to help with the crops growing, I have no idea, because it doesn't seem to do much more than just sit in its hole and occasionally kill people.

It'd be like saying Jason Voorhees brings the rain by sacrificing the kids at Crystal Lake.

It's at this point that the two films collide as Rachel busts into the building that the whole ransom thing is going down, with the creature right on her heels. It proceeds to kill a few of them, until all that's left is the Rachel, Ben and the chick who may or may not be his girlfriend. And what of the little girl who was kidnapped? Runs away into the woods, never to be seen in the movie again. That's the first of a series of plot threads with no resolution.

That's when we also find out the shocking twist that Ben and Rachel USED TO WORK TOGETHER!!!

DUN DUN DUN!!!!!

Wait a minute...that means...my god!!!

Nothing. That means nothing. It's a coincidence that goes nowhere. Why would you even put that in the script? Irony? Symbolism? What? It has nothing to do with anything. Whatever. The stupid thing is almost over.

The survivors predictably end up running right to the farm Rachel escaped from, the odds of which are substantial considering the 360 degree choice they were presented with, as ANY direction is equally valid when running from a murdering demon spawn with a giant axe. Creepy Old Cracker shows up again, captures them immediately, and gets ready to sacrifice Ben and his girlfriend. It's at this point where AJ Bowen shows off his acting chops by delivering lines like "What are you doing?" and "Why are you doing this?" and "Where are you taking her?" with the intensity of asking the delivery guy what took so long, and why he should have to pay full price for late pizza.

Careful, Creepy Old Cracker. Torture him anymore and he might raise his voice at you.

It's at this point we find out why Creepy Old Cracker is doing is. The answer is - I have no idea. Then we find out what the creature is. The answer is - I have no idea. Then we find out why the creature is killing everything in sight despite the fact that apparently all it is interested in is sacrifices set up by Creepy Old Cracker. The answer is - Ok you get the idea. What I'm saying is that this movie doesn't explain jack about anything.

So Ben's maybe-girlfriend gets killed in a stupid manner, Ben may have gotten killed in a stupid manner, and Rachel is too stupid to figure out that if someone is standing on the roof of your car an easy method of their removal involves HITTING THE DAMN GAS PEDAL. And she does this twice. Ugh. Then there's this scene at a gas station which implies that people in the community are in on the whole sacrifice thing, which like everything else is never explained. Then Rachel maybe kills the creature and runs away into the credits which appear out of nowhere to stop the movie before any questions can be answered.

Listen, "Rites of Spring," I know you think you're like "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre," but seriously screw you for trying to rip off the ending. You're nowhere near as good as TCSM.

You see, the difference between those two films is that the end of TCSM was the end of the story. She got away. Yes, it's abrupt, and yes the villain still lives but it's an ending. "Rites of Spring" just stops. To say this is an unsatisfying ending is beyond an understatement. We don't know the fate of Ben. We don't know the fate of Rachel. We don't know the fate of Creepy Old Cracker. We don't know the fate of the creature. By the end, we don't know anything about anything, really.

And why would you leave all these questions up in the air when all I wanted to know throughout the whole damn affair was WHAT IN THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE?!

You know what's the quickest way to not give a rat's ass about a movie? For me it's not knowing what's going on, and having the movie be too crappy to care about it. Except when it thinks it's so good that it doesn't have to explain anything. That's worse because it's pretentious, too.

THE BOTTOM LINE - "Rites of Spring" was a huge disappointment. Despite some interesting genre mixing it never manages to become interesting or exciting or scary at any point in the film. Every time that possibility shows up it is quickly snubbed out by cliche or simply cutting away from the interesting bits. You know it's bad when I'm left saying at the end: "I would have rather watched a torture porn movie." And I hate torture porn.

ATM (2012)

Ah. Hello, American Investor. Welcome to the third and final part of my "IFC Midnight Trilogy Weekend Thingy." For the past three days I've been watching some movies from one of my favorite film distributors, IFC Midnight, and writing down my thoughts about each one. The first film, "Kill List" was an intense, tripped out crime drama that I found to be quite good. The second one, "The Corridor" would have been more enjoyable had it made a bit more sense.

For the last film, I took a look at the thriller, "ATM." Like the other two, this one was sold to me on the premise alone. All I did was read the back of the case. Other than that I had no idea what I was in for.

Reading the description I thought that "ATM" had some promise. The concept was that three people are trapped inside a walk-in ATM in the middle of the wintery night by a masked man who won't let them out. I'm sure that very concept sounds dumb to some people out there, but keep in mind that I was one of the few people who liked "Phonebooth," so you can't blame me for being slightly optimistic.

I think the thing I like about movies like "Phonebooth" is that they really tend to humanize the characters. You really get to know someone when you're trapped in a box with them for a few hours, and as long as the actor does a good job, there's some real drama to be squeezed out of a situation like that. I mean, as long as the characters are not horrifyingly stupid. I mean, can you imagine being trapped in a small space with a bunch of absolute idiots?

Wait. That sentence sounds eerily like foreshadowing. What the hell am I in for?

Well, I guess it had to happen eventually. I had a feeling that I may finally come across an IFC Midnight film that I hated in this little experiment. And well done on that, because "ATM" was freaking terrible. I hated this goddamn movie. Hated it. Hated hated hated hated it.

I almost want to watch the film again, and from beginning to end chart down and record on a minute by minute basis everything about "ATM" that pissed me off. Trust me, that could fill a novel, but most of it would be me simply typing YOU ARE STUPID as hard as I possibly could type it without breaking my keyboard, so it would get redundant pretty quickly. That and I would have to watch "ATM" again, and screw that.

Okay, so let's get this over with, because the less I have to relive the experience of watching this turd the better. The film begins with David and Corey, our two male leads. David is played by Brian Geraghty, who you may remember from "The Hurt Locker," and he's playing your "average Joe," which means he's quite bland and has no real characteristics that make him memorable in any way. Corey is played by Josh Peck, who you may remember from nothing unless you watch Nickelodeon, and he's the comic relief, which means he's the biggest douchebag you've ever had to suffer through.

God, just looking at him makes me want to put my fist through the monitor.

Just imagine if some sick mad scientist combined Jonah Hill and Dane Cook, made him a fratboy with a New York "Ey, buddy, I'm walkin' 'ere! Fowgitabowdit" attitude, then got that abomination onto the Multiverse drunk, and put him in a stressful situation where he could not physically stop talking because of nerves.

Isn't it a special occasion when you just know the next hour and a half is going to be like reeds under your fingernails after a character has been talking for less than ten seconds? And the amazing thing is that I really do believe that "ATM" wants us to like this piece of septic runoff. The movie honestly wants me to NOT want him dead?! At this rate one of us will be dead soon either way.

Don't you dare try to stop me...

Rounding out the cast is professional Nichole Kidman clone, Alice Eve as Emily, who is meant to function as David's love interest. I say "meant to" because what she actually does is provide 110 lbs of dead weight that does nothing useful at all, and simply sits in the corner, flails about, and whines "I can't!" whenever she is asked to contribute to their escape. What I love most about that is the fact that on the interview on the DVD, Alice referred to her character as "strong." Lady, your character is as useful as Princess Peach is to Mario. Don't flatter yourself. Your character sucks and you know it.

So the three of them wind up going to the ATM in the middle of the night, and we find the first dumb thing of the movie. David seems to think that at 1:35 AM, when it is literally -3 degrees outside, it's a good idea to park about 100 feet away from the ATM. He parks halfway across the damn parking lot. Perhaps he read the script and knew that would make the killer's job way too hard if the car was closer.

"Jerry, I don't see nothin'!"

"No, jus' kip lookin' dare. Does'r'sum noice crappies right in dare."

"Oh yah, Jerry, now I sees 'em. Oh yah, dem's good eatin's."

#ijustwroteabettermovie

Then, when they are all inside the ATM, the killer just stands outside. He never says a single word. I'm serious, too. Not once in the entire film do we a) hear the killer speak or b) see his face. Hell, I can't even be 100% sure that it's a "he." At no point do you get the slightest explanation as to why he's doing what he's doing. And I know what they're going for with this: the idea is that it's really scary when there's no rhyme or reason to violence. But even the most chaotic evil villains tend to have some kind of reason for it. I mean, The Joker had a method to his various kinds of madness. And when he talked about it, that's when you realized how sick and scary he was.

Imagine if The Joker hadn't said a word in "The Dark Knight?" Do you really think that scene in the hospital where he turns Harvey would have been the same if he had just handed him a gun and pointed to Harvey's coin? No, it would have been stupid. Instead we got dialogue like "Introduce a little anarchy, you upset the established order and everything becomes chaos. I'm an agent of chaos. And you know the thing about chaos? It's fair." It's at points like that when we see how twisted and warped The Joker is, and that's what makes a memorable villain.

Seriously, Team Rocket is more intimidating than this guy.

There's so much stupid going on that it really becomes difficult to list it all. The most problematic thing about "ATM" is that it asks us to believe that the killer has them completely screwed when I lost count of the number of times that they could have made a break for it without the killer ever knowing. Because here's the kicker: the killer leaves all the time. On several occasions he's snooping around out back, just doing whatever, and the three doofuses just stay there like he's right outside the door. Usually they end up having the same conversation every time consisting of David and Corey switching back and forth between wanting to stay and wanting to go (seriously it's like the script flipped names at points as far as characters state of mind goes) and Emily whining and saying "No! You can't go out there! Please don't leave me!" because there's no way she's attempting to survive this, and she has to drag everyone else down with her.

These really do become forehead slapping painful to watch, especially when it's paired with dialogue like:
David: "I can make it! I'll be halfway across the parking lot before he knows I'm gone!"
Corey: "Yeah?! And what about the other half?!"

"Me and my Tin Tin hair will run like the wind!"

Ugh. Just ugh. That's all I can say to that stupidity. I mean, what do you want me to say to a guy that doesn't realize that, assuming the killer is not indeed The Flash, David will probably be out of the parking lot by then? Does Corey really think that the killer can run more than twice as fast as David? See what I mean about the whining? It's an hour and a half of this.

And while I realize that not everyone is capable of defending themselves in a freaky situation, I really can't get behind characters who are so disinterested in surviving. For example, I counted no less than 5 objects inside the ATM that the characters could have used as weapons to defend themselves, and many of those would have probably been pretty effective, especially if they attacked the killer together.

And before you go off thinking that perhaps they didn't have it in them, guess what? They totally kill a guy they think is the killer. Yeah, that probably needs a little explaining. About halfway through the film, a guy wearing nearly the exact same outfit as the killer walks into the ATM. Corey and David immediately jump him, beat the holy hell out of him, and David ends up strangling him to death with a cord. Now, why the killer let this guy just walk into the ATM when he'd killed two other people at that point for simply being in the vicinity I have no idea. But that's not the point.

My point is that the two of them took a guy down, and they are both clearly okay with the thought of killing the person tormenting them. And yes, they are greatly upset by this intensely stupid occurrence, but the fact remains, they have it in them to take someone out. So why don't the three of you grab that steel trashcan, that bottle of liquor and that pen and open that door, tackle that parka-wearing nutjob and start swinging, smashing and stabbing until he no longer occupies this realm of existence!

What? Did you use up all your encounter and daily powers or something?! KICK HIS ASS!!!

Oh, I'm sorry, I forget. You must not want to live. And you know what? After seeing this movie, I really was rooting for the killer, because he was doing the world a favor by killing these idiots.

And there is no scene that exemplifies that more than a scene near the back end of the film where David and Emily, as the killer is pounding on the back wall of the ATM, in other words CLEARLY in no position to know where they are, and telegraphing exactly where he is, run outside to aid Corey, who was stabbed earlier during his escape attempt. After making it to Corey, they pick him up. Now, at this point I should remind you that the killer is still behind the ATM, and does not know they're gone. There is also a functioning car not 20 feet away from them. For $10,000, what do they do?

That's correct! They drag Corey back inside the ATM to die of his wounds! Because THAT makes sense!

YOU DON'T DESERVE LIFE.

THE BOTTOM LINE - "ATM" is bad. Ungodly bad. I can't remember ever seeing a group of protagonists I hated more. This is making my "Worst of 2012" list. It's not even enjoyably bad. It just hurts. Skip it, and punch anyone you see watching it in the face.

The Corridor (2010)

This is the second entry in my IFC Midnight Trilogy Weekend Thingy. Yeah, I suppose that's what we'll call it. Once again, I'm back to talk a bit about one of my favorite film distributors, and the tripped-out, weird crap they release. Let's dive into some Midnight.

You know, I'm kind of glad "The Corridor" is the second film I looked at here for this little trilogy. I usually give decent to glowing reviews to nearly everything I see that's IFC Midnight, and someone might see that as playing favorites or just being a fanboy. I assure you, while their track record, as far as I am concerned, has pretty much been spot on up to now, that doesn't make me play favorites. I can prove that right now in fact, because the unfortunate truth of the matter is that I really didn't care too much for "The Corridor."

So while I'm a little bummed that IFC Midnight made a movie I didn't care for, at least it's not going to be three straight entries of saying "This was a good movie." After all, what fun is being a movie snob if you can't bitch a bit? That's where the fun is!

"The Corridor" can really be summed up with the following question: "What if Stephen King wrote a story about a bunch of friends in the wintery woods that wasn't "Dreamcatcher" after passing out while watching "Donnie Darko" after smoking half of a brick of weed?"

What? Don't like at me like that. I can't have been the only person to ever ask that question.

The look of a man who just blew his own mind.

Anyways, it is very Stephen King-esque, what with a group of close-nit friends on the cusp of getting old who find that they have very grown up problems now and aren't really coping with it very well. Also, one of them is an asshole, one is them is a nerd, one of them is a jock, one of them is insane, and one is the main character. And they also treat each other like total crap to the point where honestly I have no idea why they still associate with each other. Yeah, this sounds like a Stephen King story. Oh well. At least it's not taking place in Maine.

"The Corridor" starts with a rather confusing scene (get used to that phrase) where the crazy one, Tyler, is locked in a closet with a knife, and his mom is lying on the ground dead of a pill overdose, and he has gone slightly nuts. This is where the crazy thing comes in for him. I'm assuming he wasn't crazy before. The rest of the cast come in and restrain him, but not before Tyler slices the asshole's face and stabs the main character's hand. Flash forward to an undisclosed period of time later, Tyler is out of the nuthouse, and they have all gone up to a cabin to have a party/funeral for Tyler's mom.

The interaction between these guys is actually pretty realistic. The acting in "The Corridor" is admittedly quite well done, and it's a strong ensemble cast that features what I'm assuming is among the very finest in Canadian actors you've never heard of. Although the asshole, played by Stephen Gilbert was in "Saw VI." And the main character played by David Patrick Flemming looks a bit like Damian Lewis. How's that for prestige?

Yay Canada!

I did dig the performances in this, even though most of the movie consists of them being total jerks to each other. It does make sense though. I mean, if a friend of yours just came out of the looney bin after stabbing about 50% of the group, I'd be a tad wary as well, although I think their default setting is simply "TOOL." I'm just saying, maybe exceedingly harsh "good-natured" ribbing can be checked at the door at your friend's mother's funeral, especially when he's been checked out of the asylum for less than a day. But that's just me.

It makes me wonder again why on earth these guys want anything to do with each other in the first place, because they clearly don't like each other very much the majority of the time. This is made worse when the eponymous corridor is found. What the corridor is, I can't really tell you. That is the point in the movie where it really starts getting crazy weird. And just to reassure you, no, it never is really explained. Suffice to say that the corridor is bad, and makes people do very bad things.

Basically, the corridor is like a force field that is only visible when someone walks inside it. Kind of. Every time someone walks into it, it gets bigger. I think. Since the corridor can't speak for itself and the characters are just as in the dark about the nature of the corridor as we as the audience are, it's really all conjecture. And while there are several confusing scenes were one of the characters, under the influence of the corridor, start yelling and screaming about what "it" wants and what "it" means, all that winds up generally happening is that these people act like maniacs and start killing each other.

I get the feeling that it's one of those movies that is meant to be one big metaphor, but I'll be damned if I could tell you what it's a metaphor for. Perhaps if I put on my Pretentious Cap and thought a bit I might be able to equate the corridor to man's basic dark instinct, or maybe having something to do with how society tells us to suppress those feelings which can end in violent outbursts, or maybe it's a metaphor for how we're all animals and we'll rip each other to pieces given half a chance. I don't know. I think you'd have to stretch a lot and get really snooty to try and extract deeper meaning from this. But man, there's enough obfuscation to really make you feel like you missed something.

"You fool! If we explain crap we don't look intellectual!"

Oh and someone gets crucified. I'm pretty sure you're not allowed to make an artsy film without a crucifixion. It's just common sense. 

Speaking of that, I do have to give the movie credit with some of the "shock" moments. "The Corridor" is not an exceedingly gory film, but it does have some moments of "Eeeewww," if you will. The most notable moment for me was one of the characters getting scalped, as the party holding the knife says, "for his own good." This is at the point where the corridor is completely making these guys go crazy-go-nuts, and I must admit it's pretty creepy. Most motivational speakers don't scalp you, put your scalp on another guy's head, then pat you on the back and say "I'm proud of you," all while everyone in the room is smiling and happy. That's messed up. And rather confusing.

Other than the occasional shocking moment like that, I can't really find much to recommend "The Corridor." It's not that it's a bad film necessarily, since it is well directed, has memorable scenes, and most of all is quite well acted. It's just that by the end, it just left me kind of hollow. I didn't really pull anything from this movie, even though the lead-in to it was good. The ending is so crazy and nonsensical that it really makes you feel that this journey through insanity just wasn't worth it.

There are few movies that can stand up simply on the merits of being crazy. If a movie is going to take you on a psychotropic trip, it better be for a good reason. The payoff better be rewarding in some way. Movies like "The Fountain" or "Black Swan" or "Inception" or "A Clockwork Orange" or "Donnie Darko" or even "Primer" will have your brain doing cartwheels for days because there was a lot to take in and a lot to think about. But if you get to the end of the movie and all you can say is "Well, that was weird," then what's the point? Weird for the sake of weird?

Dammit, Japan. Stop making weird things adorable.

THE BOTTOM LINE - Fans of strange, obtuse stories that might be considered vaguely metaphorical (did I just describe Sundance?) might get a kick out of "The Corridor." While I usually like weird stuff, despite the good acting, this one didn't do much for me, mostly because of the really unsatisfying, explain absolutely nothing ending. Other than that, in a change of pace for IFC Midnight, I'd skip this one.

Kill List (2011)

This is the first entry in my IFC Midnight Weekend Trilogy. For the next three days, I'll be watching three films from one of my favorite film distributors, Independent Film Channel, or IFC. Specifically, I'll be looking at my favorite label of theirs, IFC Midnight, which is their "genre channel," if you will. Basically, IFC Midnight is what they label films of theirs that are weird, creepy, scary or generally just kind of whacked out. It's no surprise then that I generally really like most anything they release with that label on it. If anything, I know I'm going to watch something unique, and they haven't let me down yet.

So join me on this rousing adventure as I reflect on the first film in my IFC Midnight Trilogy: "Kill List!"

This is a movie that's difficult to classify, although one could take the easy way out and just call it a "dark drama." I guess that would be fairly accurate, although that's not really the feeling that you get while watching it. The word "drama" just doesn't have the right gravity for a movie like "Kill List," although "weird" and "bleak" and "violent" would be good descriptors for it.

SOON.

What's notable about it is that even though it is a crime drama for a good portion of the film, there was still a weird sense of what I can only call spookiness hanging over "Kill List." I'm not sure if it was the fact that I was expecting creepy stuff to start happening because it's an IFC Midnight movie, although they may have been a factor. And to be sure, even though there are little hints of it throughout, by the end the creepiness does make itself known in an ending that is possibly one of the craziest, turn the movie on its head, whiplash inducing change of tone endings I've ever seen.

"Kill List" is a movie about Jay, a hitman who, after a botched job in Kiev, is reluctant to take another assignment. We never see or are told about what happened in Kiev, but it obviously was bad enough to make a seasoned pro want to quit. After not working for 8 months, Jay is offered another job by his friend and fellow assassin, Gal. In an effort to support his family, he reluctantly takes it. The job is to kill three people, a priest, a librarian, and a rich man.

Jay, played in a masterful performance by Neil Maskell, finds out quick enough that there is far more to the job than they initially anticipated. The men they are sent to kill all seem to know something that Jay and Gal don't, and the further into the mess they get, the more nefarious things they uncover, which usually ends with Jay going off the deep end in a rage of horrendous violence, which is in contrast to Gal's more deliberate, methodical ways. As the film progresses, this gets worse and worse until it's all Gal can do to contain Jay's psychopathic outbursts.

And then, we come to the last job. The last act of this movie is, in a word, crazy. I'm reluctant to give anything away, but suffice to say that it definitely takes on the tone of a horror film in the last 20 minutes. And it's such a shock when it happens that it seems like we've wandered onto the set of an entirely different film. At the same time, it does fit with the creepy vibe the movie had been giving off, almost as if we can finally put a reason to why the movie has been doing that the whole time.

The end of the film is most definitely one of those "make or break it" moments for the audience. It would not be a stretch at all to imagine someone complaining that the end came right the hell out of nowhere, didn't make any sense, was confusing, and was just insane, for lack of a better word. And in some ways they would be correct. This is a crazy ending that "Kill List" has, and it is abrupt, and it does make you scratch your head and say "What the crap is going on?" This is all true.

As weird as it is to say, yeah, it's kind of like that.

But that's why I loved it. Here's the thing: the end of "Kill List" is nuts, but it does make sense when you think about it. Because that's the key, you just have to let it sink in for a bit. Now, is every question answered? Oh good lord, no. There are more open ended questions at the end of this movie than there are homophobes in the GOP, but that doesn't mean it's not a good ending. Maybe we don't need to know everything about everything. "Kill List" gives us just enough hints that we are able to draw our own conclusions about the "why" of the film.

Although the ending was by far the most attention grabbing part of the film, due to its insanity, I found the rest of "Kill List" to be an intensely absorbing film. There's a fantastic sense of tension going on throughout, like a rubber band being pulled tighter and tighter, and you're just waiting for it to snap at any moment. Once the killings start happening it only gets more intense, because the violence in "Kill List" is pretty brutal, and any time they're on the job it's only a matter of time before some more is thrown your way, and the anticipation leading up to it is pretty nail-biting. It actually reminds me of a Tarantino film in that way, although Tarantino's violence tends to be more sudden. "Kill List" is a bit more drawn out, but they are both equally effective. It's also reminded me of "Drive" in that regard as well, now that I think of it.

Did I mention it's kind of violent? *Urrp* Oh god...that hammer...

The cast also deserves another call out, because they were all very good. I mentioned Neil Maskell before, but MyAnna Buring, who was in "The Descent" is also outstanding. However, Michael Smiley was the standout for me as Gal, and wound up being my favorite character. He has this great Irish swagger to him which endears him to the audience, although once again, it's strange to be drawn to people who are killing other people for a living. Ironically Smiley was also in "Burke & Hare," which had protagonists with similar occupations, and like that movie, killing isn't a pleasure for them, it's a job. I'm not sure which mindset would be worse, honestly.

There isn't too much more to say about "Kill List" other than that. If you want an intense movie with some hard hitting violence and a completely insane ending, you could do far worse than this one.

But watch it with subtitles on. Unless you happen to be from the region of the UK they are from and can understand what in the crap they are saying. I never thought the Irishman would be the guy who was easiest to understand.

THE BOTTOM LINE -  I enjoyed "Kill List" a good amount, and would recommended it to anyone looking for a good, dark thriller. It's got that distinct IFC Midnight flavor that reeks of creepy. Once again, their track record is intact with me. Recommended.