Noise in the Middle: Movie Review

I've been on a horror movie kick for a while (as I've said before particularly here and here, I love a good horror movie, and I also think that after the last year+ of insanity, nothing really scares me anymore, or at least fiction doesn't scare me more than reality). I've been checking out every horror movie I can find on my various streaming services and, well, I've definitely watched some crappy ones. Maybe I'll blog about them sometime.

This evening, I watched Noise in the Middle, the story of a grieving widow and his daughter with severe autism, who seek out an experimental treatment (what appears to be transcranial magnetic stimulation therapy or something like it). What he doesn't realize is that the house he rents is haunted by an occult-loving sadist and the ghosts of the children from his poor house/orphanage that he bound to be trapped in the house after their death. Or something. It's not completely clear but it apparently involved branding the children with an infinity symbol and also the children killing him and themselves with a fire. Or something. 

The concept was promising - although I find the "kid with autism has special powers (in this case, is a conduit and can see spirits)" concept to be problematic, just like I found the "woman with dementia is actually possessed" concept to be problematic in The Taking of Deborah Logan - and the movie started off great. We established the background, got some ominous shots and glowing eyes in dark rooms. We also saw some really interesting symbolic imagery after Emmy's (the daughter) treatments with TMS, very Ring-video type images, which could have been used more fully in connection with the haunted house and the concept but sadly was not. We even had the "person randomly finds occult shop/enthusiast who believes the main character and helps them" trope used for more humorous and uplifting effect. 

In the middle, things began to drag and become more convoluted, which I thought might be used to tie in the symbolic imagery from Emmy's sessions, but sadly was not. The end was just a big old mess. It felt like the writer had a great idea, spent lots of time on the beginning, lost steam in the middle, and then had to just finish the damn thing by the end. The movie toyed with so many horror concepts (haunted house starts to bring out the darkness in/infect the father, like The Shining; seemingly random images have more concrete meaning for the mystery, like Ringu/The Ring; grief manifested as a spirit or entity, like The Babadook) but never really fully committed to any of it.

Overall, I'd say don't bother with this one. The beginning made me have high expectations that this movie would be good/meaningful/even a little scary, but I ended up with "WTF did I just watch and why?". 

A is for Alpha

So for today, the letter A, I thought I'd start at the very beginning because Julie Andrews says it's a very good place to start. And that's with alpha, the first letter of the Greek alphabet.

Alpha is a really important concept in statistics. Statistics is all about probability. I know that sounds kind of obvious. If you've taken a stats class or even a section on statistics in another math class, they probably spent a lot of time talking to you about probability. In the past, they did that hands in poker. The downfall of teaching it that way is you have to teach people poker so they understand what hands are better than other hands. I guess that makes dorm parties a little more interesting. More recently, I've seen them use combinations of dice or coin flips. But I don't think that people understand the connection of why is it that we're really hammering down this concept of probability, and the probability of different combinations, or that some outcomes are more or less likely than others.

That's because any statistical inference we make - and by statistical inference I mean any decision we make based on the results of statistical tests - is based entirely on probability. It's the probability that the outcome we saw was unlikely - so unlikely that we can conclude it had to be because of a real difference rather than just chance.

So let's go with a concrete example. Let's say I do an experiment, and I want to test the effect of caffeine consumption on test performance. I think having caffeine before you take a test is going to give you a better grade than no caffeine (my hypothesis). This exact study has probably been done hundreds or thousands of times. I've got my experimental group that I have drink caffeinated coffee, and my control group that I force to drink decaf, because I'm a mean person - but sometimes it's necessary for science. And then I give them a test and see how well they did. I expect that, on average, the experimental group will do better. Now, I can't just look and go, "Hey, the experimental group has a higher score!" It would be really really unlikely for the groups to have the exact same average, but how much different do they need to be before we would say there is a real difference? We would set a cut-off, a critical value - if the difference is at least this big, we will conclude that there is a real difference between my two groups and not just random chance.

And the way that we set that critical value is with probability. We go with a difference that would have a small chance of happening by random luck alone. And that is alpha. We set that ahead of time. The most common alpha - the convention - is 0.05, which means that the critical value is based on a difference we would have only a 5% chance of seeing if we just had random luck operating - if there wasn't a true difference between caffeine consumers and non-caffeine consumers.

But that's 5% - that's not 0! There's still a chance that we'll find a difference that isn't real; it's not because of the caffeine, it's just luck. We accept that. We know that's a possibility. We can't really know from a single study whether there is a real effect of caffeine, or whether we've fallen in that 5%. In fact, when we fall in that 5%, we've made what's called a Type I error. We're saying, "Hey, there's something here!" when really there's nothing.

You know in horror movies, which I blog about a lot, someone walks in a room and we think the murderer is going to jump out at them, and instead it's just a cat? They jump, we jump, everyone freaks out. It's like that. We reacted like it was the murderer but it was just the cat.

That's Type I error. Except in this case, we don't have the immediate feedback of seeing the cat or not being dead to know we didn't actually find something real. All we know is we found something and it made us jump. We don't know if we should have jumped or not. This probably why I hate jump scares in horror movies. I'm traumatized by the possibility of Type I error.

So does that mean there are a bunch of studies out there that have found results that are just bogus, that are just Type I error? Yes, it does. Because with an alpha of 0.05, that means if there is no real effect, and you do that study 100 times, 5 of them will probably come out significant. And considering that we have this thing called publication bias, where studies that find significant results are more likely to published, there's a whole lot of type I error floating around out there. This is why replication is so important and needs to be encouraged. And why we need to stop publication bias. And we also need to stop something I've blogged about before called p-hacking.

P-hacking is directly related to alpha. When you have a huge dataset, tons of variables, and you just run analyses willy nilly, looking for a significant result, you're dramatically increasing the chance that you'll commit a Type I error, that at least one of those results will be significant just by chance. If you have an alpha of 0.05 each time you run a test, those probabilities add up. Because even if there's no relationship between two variables, there's a 5% chance you'll find one anyway. And that's just for 1 test. If you run 2 tests, it's 10%, 3 tests, 15%, and so on and so on. If you run 20 tests, 1 of those is probably going to be significant just by luck. If you 100 tests, 5 will probably be significant just by chance.

And if you don't tell people, "Oh, by the way, we just ran a shit-ton of tests, and only reported the few that were significant," they might not realize how much you inflated your Type I error rate. So this is why you shouldn't do a bunch of a tests, and if you're going to do a whole bunch of tests you should, plan them ahead of time, and do a correction to your alpha. It's 5% each shot. So if you're doing 10 tests, you've inflated that to 50%. So you should instead take that .05 and divide it by the number of tests you're going to do.

If you're doing 10 tests, your alpha for each test is .05/10. If you want to learn a new term to impress your friends, that is called a Bonferoni correction. It's named after a guy named Bonferoni, who came up with it. I can kind of understand wanting to name something after yourself, especially with a name like Bonferoni, because I bet he got made fun of for that name (people still make fun of it), and the best way to get back at the haters is to make them say your name with a little bit of respect. I can get behind that.

Women, Cannibals, and the Horror Movie Zeitgeist

It's always interesting to observe the different zeitgeists in horror. Though you'll see particular horror movie creatures come and go, it's interesting how one seems to catch on for a time and suddenly they're everywhere. In the late 90s/early 00s, it was vampires. Then it was zombies. Today, according to Kate Robertson of the Atlantic, it's female cannibals:

Having spent the last five years studying the female cannibal (an admittedly odd subject even in academic circles), I’ve been fascinated by how the subject has gained more mainstream visibility of late. While the female cannibal isn’t new to pop culture, she’s relevant in ways that go beyond shock value, by capturing ever-present social anxieties about gender, hunger, sex, and empowerment. These new works center on women who, in addition to eating humans, negotiate and subvert expectations for how women should look and behave. They’re motivated by physical hunger but also by sexual desire, making them an extension of the femme fatale—the beautiful woman who deceives and ensnares men. In eating flesh, characters like Justine simply redirect this fear from the metaphorical to the physical. There’s a persistent stereotype that women will “suck men dry”; well, these ones will literally devour you.

It’s significant that the grotesqueness of these women’s eating habits—their proclivity to gorge on human flesh—is rendered through beautiful bodies. Portrayals of female hunger in visual culture more broadly are tangled up in social expectations about how women manage their bodies, expectations shaped in part by fad diets, targeted advertising, and celebrity culture. Eating is thus not just about nourishment, but also about appearance. It’s why when celebrities admit that they like fast food, too, or that they don’t like dieting either, they seem relatable in a way that can feel carefully orchestrated. When these “rule-breaking” women happen to be gorgeous, their rebelliousness becomes that much more appealing.

Robertson discusses the portrayal of the female cannibal in two recent movies, Raw and The Lure, as well as a recent show Santa Clarita Diet (which is actually a zombie show, so it's not truly cannibalism, because zombies were once human but are now, well, zombies that feast on humans, but I digress). In these instances, the notion of hunger is explored as a metaphor for awakening and sex. It's not altogether different from the metaphor used by Joss Whedon in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where the literal monsters she faced were stand-ins for the figurative monsters we encounter in a traditional coming of age story.

That's probably one reason why I find the genre of horror to be so fascinating - it can be straightforward, yes (because these movies make a lot of money), but it can also be nuanced and full of symbolism. It can be used to explore hard social issues, especially in climates where such commentary might not be possible. It can be a way to camouflage statements that might be at best frowned upon and at worst censored and attacked. Think of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein as less of a monster story and more of a commentary on scientific ethics and the thin line between breakthrough and playing god. Scratch below the surface of the some of the best horror, and you'll find many different messages underneath.

I'll admit, the gore/grossout subgenre of horror is one of my least favorite, though there are definitely movies in that subgenre I love (Evil Dead 2, The Thing). So I wasn't sure on first reading about it whether I was interested in seeing Raw. But it sounds to me like a thought-provoking work that gets to the heart of what I love about good horror - as symbolism and commentary.

The Problem With Horror

I've done a lot of talking recently about what is and is not good horror. This video that popped up in my recommended videos on YouTube perfectly sums it up:

Welcome to 2017!

Happy New Year, DT readers! I hope everyone had a lovely New Year's celebration. We just returned from the Detroit suburbs where we hung out with friends; the celebration involved lots of funny YouTube videos, 4 adults splitting 5 bottles of wine, a game of Cards Against Humanity, and a soak in the hot tub. Now I'm back home to recuperate and finally put away some of the Christmas gifts we still have sitting out - between having plans every night last week and being out of town two weekends in a row, I haven't spent much time in my apartment.

Now we can look back at 2016, happy to have it behind us. And if we want to revisit it, we should at least recognize it for what it was - a horror movie. In fact, someone was even kind enough to make a trailer, featuring exploding phones, rooms of people doing the mannequin challenge, Brexit, and an orange bad guy (among other things):

TSMR: Housebound

Time for another movie review! Yesterday, I reviewed Contracted, which attempted to take a well-known horror subgenre and turned it on its head (poorly, while also falling into many annoying horror tropes). Today, a movie that turns a subgenre on its head and does it really well: Housebound.

Kylie is a habitual offender, who is caught trying to steal an ATM. Her lawyer tries to get her placed in a rehabilitation clinic, but the judge notes her history of recidivism and argues that these programs, which she has been sentenced to before, have not helped. Instead, he sentences her to 8 months house arrest at the home of Kylie’s mother and step-father, Miriam and Graeme. We also meet Amos, the security guard in charge of her ankle monitor, who puts it on and shows us how it works.

Kylie has a very poor relationship with her mother and step-father, and continuously ignores and demeans them, while sitting around drinking, watching TV, and binge-eating. One night when she tries to use the house phone, after misplacing her cell phone, she finds Miriam on the phone with a talk show, talking about her potentially haunted house. Kylie doubts this story and thinks Miriam is just trying to get attention, until she goes into the basement one night and a hand reaches out and grabs her ankle, setting off her ankle monitor. Amos shows up to see if Kylie tried to tamper with the monitor, and Kylie tells him someone is in the house. When they find no evidence of an intruder, Miriam tells Amos about her theory that the house is haunted. Amos believes her immediately and accuses Kylie of having a closed mind. Amos, who it turns out is an amateur paranormal investigator, returns the next day to set up video surveillance equipment and help figure out if the house is haunted, and by whom.

The movie is described as a horror comedy, and there are some very funny moments, such as the Teddy Ruxpin-like doll that says creepy things to Kylie and corners her in the shower, as well as the interactions between Amos and Kylie. That being said, the movie has some legitimately creepy moments, with funny moments interspersed to lighten the mood, but fortunately without detracting from the mystery and suspense. What could have been a by-the-book haunted house movie is able to take those tropes and turn them around, making something new and different. Well-written lead characters that avoid the horror stereotypes also keep things interesting, and keep you engaged.

As is often the case in horror movies, though, there will be moments where you find yourself shouting at the character, "What are you doing?!" But, unlike other horror movies, you'll probably laugh at the same time. As I said, there are some legitimately creepy moments, so it doesn't come across as a parody, though it might technically be a parody of horror as a genre (rather than specific movies, like Scary Movie). If you like super-creepy horror, you might not care for this movie as much, but if you like your horror with a good dose of comedy - like much of the old school horror, such as The Nightmare on Elm Street series - while still having a few creepy chills, you'll like Housebound.

TSMR: Contracted

Time for another Totally Superfluous Movie Review of one of October's viewings: Contracted.

The movie follows a young woman named Samantha Williams, as she bumbles from one bad situation to another. It starts with a man (who we later learn is named BJ) having sex with a corpse in the morgue. (It doesn't actually show that, but it's pretty obvious that's what is happening.) We also notice the corpse has a biohazard toe tag.

In the next scene, Samantha is attending a party thrown by her friend Alice. Before entering the party, Samantha calls and leaves a message for a woman named Nikki, who we gather is or was Samantha's girlfriend. Both women work for the same restaurant, Samantha as a server and Nikki as a bartender. Samantha asks Nikki to meet her at the party after she gets off work, but doesn't seem optimistic that Nikki will show up. Samantha greets Alice, who asks after Nikki. Samantha brushes off the question, then excuses herself to the bathroom. On her way there, she encounters Riley, who clearly has a crush on Samantha and is jealous of Nikki, and Zain, Samantha's former dealer.

After returning from the bathroom, Alice hands Samantha shot after shot, and the two get very drunk. A drunk Alice humiliates Riley over his feelings for Samantha, and Samantha notices BJ watching her throughout the party. While stumbling around in the kitchen, BJ approaches Samantha and hands her a cup that he insists is her drink. Samantha is so intoxicated, she states she doesn't remember having a drink in her hand, but accepts it without question. He asks if Samantha is seeing anyone, and she tells him about Nikki. Later, BJ takes Samantha back to his car, and has sex with her despite her requests for him to stop. (This is one point of contention on the movie. The filmmaker describes it as a one night stand, while others recognize it for what it is: rape.)

Samantha wakes up the next morning in her bed, with no memory of how she got there, and feeling very hungover. She fights with her mother, Nancy, who disparages Samantha's "lifestyle choices" (specifically, being in a relationship with a woman, as well as sleeping later after going out to a party). Nancy also expresses fear that Samantha has relapsed into hard drug use - we find out later that her drug of choice was heroin. Samantha talks to Alice, who mentions the police were asking about a man named Brent Jaffe who was at the party. Since he introduced himself as BJ, rather than his full name, Samantha doesn't initially make the connection that the police are looking for the man who raped her until much later in the movie. Over the course of the next few days, Samantha starts developing some horrifying symptoms, including an extremely heavy period, bright blue veins on her lower abdomen, and red eyes, and worries that this is something worse than a hangover.

Samantha goes to see a doctor about her symptoms, and he finds that she has an extremely low heart rate and infections in both her ears. When she shows him the veins on her abdomen, he asks if she had unprotected sex. Though she argues that she is in a relationship with a woman, and has been for many months, she finally admits that she had sex with a man the night before. She never describes it as rape though, and seems more interested in hiding it from people, especially Nikki, who she is trying to rekindle her relationship with. The doctor draws some blood to figure out what she has. But the symptoms continue to worsen rapidly.

The film has almost no likeable characters, and most of them are walking stereotypes. Nancy is a controlling mother, Alice is just a party girl stereotype, Riley is that guy who describes himself as nice but would take advantage of the girl he likes at first opportunity, and Nikki is somehow both territorial over Samantha while clearly demonstrating she's just not that into her. And BJ - well, who could possibly identify with a character who must view necrophilia as great practice for raping intoxicated women? The only one you could maybe identify with is Samantha, because the initial actions of the story are not her fault, but as the movie goes on, she just digs herself in deeper.

Reading up on the film, I found out the filmmaker's goal was "to tell a story within the virus/infection subgenre like we’ve never seen before. I’ve recently become interested in using sex as a device to drive genre films because it’s something most people can understand and relate to, so your story inherently feels familiar to the audience." What it ends up being is a movie that punishes a girl for being gay and/or getting drunk, through rape followed by an infection that rapidly changes her physically and emotionally. After the party, her motivation seems to be getting Nikki back and hiding what happened/is happening to her.

In doing research on the movie for this post, I learned a few new terms, including body horror (a gross-out genre of horror that focuses on physiological changes, as the character turns into a literal monster), and mumblecore, a genre of independent film that focuses on naturalistic dialogue over plot development. Some well-known examples of mumblecore are Slackers and Clerks. When combined with the horror genre, it's often called mumblegore.

If you're looking for a good horror movie to check out this October, I'd give Contracted a pass. But if you want a modern example of how the horror genre punishes people, especially women, for being sexual beings, Contracted is definitely that.

Not So Superfluous Movie Review: Hush

Last night, I watched another horror film, one that had been recommended to me many times: Hush. And since it was just released widely this year, it's not exactly a superfluous movie review - yay!

The movie is about Maddie Young, a writer living alone away from the city, who is deaf and mute, due to a bout with meningitis as a teenager. We meet her as she is cooking dinner, and is visited by next-door neighbor, Sarah, who has just finished Maddie's book. Maddie describes her approach to writing to Sarah, and notes that she writes many potential endings to any of her stories.

Their interaction is briefly interrupted when Maddie's (forgotten) cooking sets off her fire alarm, which is extremely loud; Maddie shares that this is so she can feel the vibrations of the alarm, even if she is asleep. We are able to gather that Maddie is completely deaf, rather than simply extremely hearing impaired.

Later that night, as Maddie is cleaning up the remnants of her cooking, Sarah runs onto Maddie's porch and bangs on the door. Maddie unfortunately doesn't hear her, and we realize that Sarah is being chased by a masked man. The man stabs and kills Sarah, noticing that Maddie doesn't notice what is happening. Later, as Maddie is Facetime-ing with her sister on her laptop, he sneaks in and steals Maddie's phone, then sneaks back outside and sends her pictures through various windows of the house to alert her of his presence.

Maddie is able to lock her doors to keep the man out, but before she can contact 911 through her computer, the man cuts off the power, shutting down her Wi-Fi. She writes a note on her door in lipstick, telling him that she didn't see his face and won't tell anyone about what he did. He removes his mask, communicating to her that he knows she won't tell anyone about him, because he is not going to let her live. The rest of the film is about the man terrorizing Maddie, while she tries to alert help, distract the attacker, and escape.

The movie only has 5 characters (6 if you count the cat), and takes place in and around a single house. Still, the movie is action-packed and keeps you engaged. Additionally, the lead character has very little dialogue (since she is mute - the only dialogue from her comes in the form of her inner voice, which is very craftily done, especially in one scene as she considers the different endings, so it doesn't feel like lame voice-over. Most of her dialogue is in the form of sign language with subtitles. In fact, the director is very thoughtful in his use of sound, and actually used the sound of ultrasound machines to give us a glimpse of what Maddie's world sounds like, during the scenes that adopt Maddie's POV. He made this decision because he feared complete silence would make the audience seek sound from elsewhere or tune out from the movie. Additional sounds, such as Maddie's breathing, were added in during post-sound editing.

I really only have three complaints about the movie. The very beginning of the movie (where the splash screens of the different production houses are displayed) is completely soundless. I thought there was something wrong with my speakers at first, which I'm guessing was intended, and they probably expected people to turn their sound up as a result, because the very beginning of the movie featured a sudden bell sound that made me jump. I can understand where they were going with this, since it's a movie where sound or lack of sound make an important statement, but it was a little gimmicky.

The second thing is that, when Sarah runs onto Maddie's porch, and has enough of a headstart from the masked man to bang on the door several times and call for help, we assumed the door was locked. However, moments later, the masked man sneaks through one door (which is unlocked), and then Maddie runs around the house locking doors, including the porch door (which was unlocked just before). How come Sarah couldn't get in? It's possible she didn't try, and assumed it was locked or was in such a state of panic she didn't even think about it. At the time, I didn't pay attention to whether she tried the door. Relatedly (number 3), it seems strange that the masked man wasn't that concerned Sarah was trying to alert her neighbor, suggesting he knew Maddie was deaf. But he acts surprised when he observes this and does a few tests (knocking on and scraping his knife across the glass) to confirm. Since he didn't know before Sarah ran to that house that Maddie was deaf, wasn't he worried that she would call the police before he was able to stop her?

Despite these potential plot holes, the movie was excellently done, in writing, acting, and filming. I highly recommend it, despite the fact that the home invasion genre is one of my least favorite forms of horror.

TSMR: The Amityville Horror Remake

So I finally sat down and watched the 2005 remake of The Amityville Horror last night. Totally unbelievable. I mean, do you know any grown men who take baths?

Kidding. But honestly, I'm kind of glad I skipped this movie up to now. It was bad. So here's my Totally Superfluous Movie Review of an 11 year old film.

Kathy and George Lutz are house-hunting and find a beautiful home at bargain prices. They of course ask what's wrong with it, and are told by the realtor that a brutal murder happened in the home. The grown son, Ronald DeFeo Jr., kills his entire family, claiming they were demons and that the house told him to do it. So Kathy, George, and Kathy's 3 children (Billy, Michael, and Chelsea) move into the house posthaste. (After all, it was a steal!)

Almost immediately, George starts displaying uncharacteristic cruelty and irritability, which Kathy writes off as stress, even when George becomes abusive to the children and Kathy herself. The timeline of George's decline was really too short. You didn't have enough time to grow to like the character before he turned into a total asshole. So even though you knew the house was the cause of his dickish behavior, you didn't care.

Chelsea also starts acting different, after befriending Jodie, who Kathy believes is an imaginary friend, but is actually the name of one of the deceased DeFeo children. It's never completely clear why the only spirit of the DeFeo family to appear is little Jodie, or whether Jodie is a ghost, a demon, or something else. She sometimes appears in distress about the evil things happening in the house (getting pulled around by disembodied hands), and other times, seems to be pissed off and evil herself. Other creatures show up, but they look inhuman, so I would guess they aren't members of the DeFeo family. Who are they? No one knows, not even the writers it seems.

All the scares were mostly surprise or shock value. They tried throwing in some "creepy" symbolism, but it just came across as "We're trying to do the symbolism of The Ring because that movie was super successful, but we're failing, and, oh, did you see Ryan Reynolds shirtless? Here he is chopping wood. Some of this is working, right?"

After Chelsea tries to kill herself to be with Jodie, Kathy starts to realize there is something seriously wrong. She visits a priest, and asks him to come to the house to do a blessing. The house immediately starts to mess with the priest, causing him to flee in terror. In the meantime, George gets more unhinged, moves into the basement, and kills the family dog. Kathy suggests they pack up and leave, resulting in more abuse from George, who storms into the basement.

On the 28th day in the house, Kathy has finally had enough and goes to the library to do some research. She learns the house was a mission for Native Americans, started by Reverand Ketcham.

Poor Ash Ketchum's family had to change the spelling of their name to
sever any ties they had with the black sheep of their family tree.

This explains the chants George hears of "Catch 'em, kill 'em." Ketcham, get it? So clever. I bet he gave the best sermons.

The book on Reverand Ketcham, which shows a drawing of the house, provides dates in the 1600s. Does this house really look like it was built in the 1600s to you?

So yes, they basically used the Indian Burial Ground trope. Kathy also learns that Ronald DeFeo killed his entire family on their 28th day in the house. So what does she do?

Goes to the priest, of course, and tells him everything she's learned, asking "Could it be true?" ("And, oh, by the way, father, why did you run away like that?") The priest has to be the one to tell her to get the family out of the house. Despite the fact that not long before, she sat at the kitchen table and told George they needed to leave. Now she has some real evidence that the house is bad, and she has to be told. She also decides at this point that the best way to get through to her crazy husband is to call on the telephone and tell him to get the kids and leave. Needless to say, it doesn't work.

She finally does show up, only to fall into the lake because George shined a flashlight in her eyes. While she was standing still. She then finds the coffins George made for the family. It sure was thoughtful of him to label them. I'd hate for him to get confused during his murderous rage and put little Chelsea in the wrong one. The movie really just beats you over the head with obvious things, and then totally fails to address random things.

And then, finally, we have a chase scene, with characters running up the stairs and climbing across the roof, because the house locked all the doors and windows. Breaking the glass in the giant picture window apparently wasn't an option.

Overall, you should skip this one. Looking for a "house made me crazy" movie? Watch The Shining. Need some creepy symbolism with little girl ghosts? Watch The Ring. Want a movie that uses the burial ground trope but doesn't suck? Poltergeist. 

Underrated Horror Books

Though I've professed a love of horror movies (many times), I also blog a lot about one of my other favorite forms of media: the novel. Just in time for Halloween, The Line Up posted a list of 9 underrated horror books to check out. I'm only familiar with one item on the list, but I have a great story to go with it that I've surprisingly never blogged about!

One of my favorite authors is Chuck Palahniuk, who is best known for writing Fight Club. He's written many great books that can be a little difficult to read at times, because of the graphic and unusual situations in which his characters find themselves. For instance, he was inspired to write one of his books after being asked to testify at the sentencing hearing of the man who killed Chuck's father. The death penalty was being sought, and Chuck found himself in a difficult place, wanting justice for his father but not wanting to feel that he had taken a life himself. He wrote Lullaby, in which the lead character discovers a story that will kill the listener. Not only does the protagonist struggle with (and misuse) his newfound power, the power falls into the hands of others who misuse with less struggle. In fact, they discover that just thinking through the story around someone can kill them. It gets weirder, of course.

But the book on the list linked above, Haunted, is probably one of his most graphic yet. The book is actually a series of short stories, that are connected because each character is sharing his/her story at a writers' retreat. I had the pleasure of meeting Chuck when I went to a reading of Haunted at Old Orchard Mall. Chuck has garnered a strong following thanks to Fight Club, and by the time my friend and I arrived, they had already passed out almost 150 numbers to people for the book signing after the reading. Yes, the number was our place in that line - the reading was at 7 or 8 pm, and we finally met Chuck around 1am. I had not expected him to stay until the end of the night, and I had immense respect for him as a fellow writer when they announced partway through the night that Chuck would not leave the building until everyone who wanted a book signed made it through the line. There were still others behind me, so I can't imagine how late he stayed.

The best part of the story, of course, is the reading itself, where Chuck read the short story referenced in the article, "Guts," a story so graphic there are urban legends about people fainting during the reading. I won't say much, except to say the character who told this story poured his guts out, figuratively and literally.

The reading had been advertised for many weeks, and one hopes that the people who scheduled the reading were familiar with the material, or at the very least, Chuck's writing. So, you can understand why Chuck was surprised when, as he was about to start the reading, he heard the sounds of children. He stopped, looked around, and said clearly into the microphone, "Hey, any parents in the store, you should probably know that this material is not appropriate for children. You may want to finish up your purchases and head out." He waited a moment, and read. A few minutes later, more sounds of children, and again, a pause and a strong warning from Chuck. He did that at least once more.

A few weeks later, I met the assistant manager of the store through a mutual friend, and he informed me that Chuck had been banned from Barnes & Noble, because, "You can't read that type of stuff there!"

I never did hear if he was banned from all Barnes & Nobles, or just that one.

How I'll Be Spending October

As I've blogged about many times, I love horror movies. I watch them year-round, but October is the time of year I get to geek out about them publicly and repeatedly. Recently, Hello Giggles shared a list of movies to check out on Netflix this October. Here they are, along with my thoughts:

• They Look Like People - Hey, a horror movie I'm not familiar with! It uses the "warning messages by phone" trope, but despite that, it goes on the list!
• The Amityville Horror (2005 version) - I'll be honest, I'm often hesitant to check out remakes of movies I like, especially with horror movies, where the truly scary part is often revealed at the end. What that means is, if a movie is well-known, everyone knows the punchline, so the movie instead becomes a test of "how scary can we make it" (which often fails or devolves into overuse of gore/cheap tricks without any thoughts to cohesion and storyline: the House of Wax remake is one example of this). The original Amityville was awesomely creepy, so I never checked out the remake. But I should at least give it a shot. I can always bail partway through if it turns out to suck (as I did on a few items on the list).
• The Human Centipede - This one goes on my list of nope. It's really not my idea of good horror (see aforementioned overuse of gore/cheap tricks without coherent storyline), but maybe I should check it out. It goes on the "will watch if I get time" list.
• Would You Rather - This has been on my recommended list for a while now. It goes on the list!
• Hush - Another one that has been recommended for a while - another item on the list!
• Scream 2 - Meh. The first one was good, but I didn't totally get the appeal. It all went downhill after that.
• The Lazarus Effect - I checked this one out last October, mainly because I LOVE LOVE LOVE Olivia Wilde. I thought it was a cool concept until it got into that annoying "You only use 10% of your brain" crap. I think I started writing a review but got distracted.
• The Awakening - I also watched this last October. It was enjoyable, though one of the "twists" was predictable.
• The Taking of Deborah Logan - Watched, and reviewed here.
• The Nightmare - This is a documentary shot like a horror movie, dealing with a scary phenomenon known as sleep paralysis. I've heard good things, and since I've suffered from sleep paralysis in the past, I've been meaning to watch. I will this month and will have to write a review/post about the phenomenon itself. Stay tuned!
• Dark Skies - I started watching and got bored. But I should probably revisit, because I hear good things.
• The Uninvited - Just as I'm hesitant to watch remakes of old horror movies, I'm hesitant on remakes of international horror movies. For every Ring (an awesome remake of an awesome Japanese horror movie), there's The Eye (a bloody awful remake of an awesome Chinese horror movie) - see also The Grudge or Dark Water. This one is based on a Korean horror movie. In these cases, I usually prefer to watch the original, but I'll give it a shot.
• Dead Silence - I'll be honest, I've been meaning to see this movie but dolls freak me out. I'm not kidding.
• Housebound - One of my favorite genre mashups - horror and comedy. It's been on my list!
• V/H/S - This one was recommended to me a couple years ago, and it is seriously awesome. It's a series of vignettes, and 3/4 of them are super creepy. One was just okay.
• Pontypool - I watched this one last year when it popped up in the Netflix horror movie list. I was surprised at the poor ratings/reviews, because I really loved it, so I'm thrilled to see it getting some love this year. It takes the notion of contagious illness/zombification and turns it on its head.
• Dead Snow - Another movie I wasn't aware of! Yay!
• Hellraiser - An old favorite - I can't believe I've never reviewed it. I should remedy that this year.
• Re-Animator - This one, however, I definitely reviewed. Love this movie and all its ridiculousness.
• The Babadook - It's been in my Netflix queue for a while.
• The Fly (1958) - So after all the flack I've given to remakes, I'm sad to admit I've only seen the remake of this movie. Time to remedy that.
• The Host - I heard about this one and found the premise kind of dumb, but I'm happy to try it out.
• The Exorcist - Another favorite. Once again, I can't believe I've never written a review.
• Queen of the Damned - I got bored and fell asleep. I doubt I'll try again.
• Contracted - One of my complaints about horror (and yes, I still love the genre) is that it punishes sexuality, often in women. This movie seemed to be the worst example of that, but since I've heard good things from people I trust, I'm willing to try it out.
• Holidays - I started watching and got bored. But I'm willing to revisit.

Don't Bother, They're Here

In the category of "bizarro news," you may have heard about people dressing up like clowns and terrorizing the locals, in places like Green Bay, Wisconsin, and Greensboro, North Carolina, and a few other places without Green in the name. Being terrified of clowns, they really don't have to do much to terrify me except, you know, look like this:

However, these clowns are being truly scary to everyone who encounters them, including trying to abduct children. So far, there have been reports of creepy clown sightings in 6 states. A few have been arrested, and said after they were just trying to scare people and have fun. But the real question is: WTF? Why clowns? And why so many all of a sudden?

The fear of clowns (also sometimes called coulrophobia) is not an actual diagnosable fear; it doesn't actually appear in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) or the International Classification of Diseases (ICD). But there are many instances in pop culture, such as the horror miniseries It in the 1990s, the seem to correlate with increases in reported fear of clowns. A new version of It comes out next year. Perhaps that's the reason for all this clowning around?

Stranger Inspiration

Recently, I started watching Stranger Things, a Netflix series that you've probably heard of, unless you live under a rock - but if you're able to get internet under that rock in order to read my blog, I'm not sure you have an excuse even then. The show takes place in 1980s small-town Indiana, and begins with the disappearance of Will Byers. But then things get, well, stranger. As a big fan of horror movies (for more evidence, look here), I'm of course loving the series. And probably the biggest reason for that is how the series pays homage to 1980s horror and sci-fi. Even though I'm only about halfway through the series, I wanted to sit down and gather my thoughts on all the different references and homages I've seen in the episodes I've watched so far. I'm going to try to keep this as spoiler-lite as possible.

The Title and the Town

First, I'd say the biggest inspiration for Stranger Things comes from the work of Stephen King. Though the show takes place in Indiana, on multiple occasions I've felt like I was in Castle Rock, the Maine town in and around which King sets many of his stories. In fact, the title of the show reminds me of a particular story by King:

Many of the characters also remind me of the characters from King's work, particularly Police Chief Jim Hopper, who reminds me especially of Sheriff Alan Pangborn from Needful Things.

Then there's Eleven, a girl with psychokinetic abilities. I had her linked to one of King's characters, but when Will's friends (who discovered Eleven while trying to find Will) dress her up to sneak her into school, that clinched the link in my mind.

In fact, the storyline around Eleven draws a lot from Firestarter, including the government agency element and the nosebleeds Eleven experiences when using her powers.

The Disappearance of Will

Then there's the storyline around Will's disappearance, the creature who took him, and his mother's (Joyce, played brilliantly by Winona Ryder) efforts to find him and bring him home. This strongly reminds me of Poltergeist. In Poltergeist, Carol Anne is kidnapped from within her house and taken to another place that sits in a dimension parallel to our own; that is, she is essentially still in the house, just on a different plane. In Stranger Things, we are told by Eleven, and then shown later on, that Will is hiding in his own house. He's just over one dimension.

Just as Diane learns she can communicate with her daughter through the television, Joyce learns she can communicate with Will through lights.

The entrance to the creature's realm, which appears to be in the government lab (though there might be other doors), is also similar to the door opened in the children's closet in Poltergeist:

Nancy and her Friends

At the same time as the story around the disappearance of Will, we have the story of Nancy, older sibling of one of Will's friends. She starts dating a guy from a different crowd, and while Nancy is distracted by him, best friend Barb is taken by the creature. Nancy definitely reminds me of Nancy Thompson from A Nightmare on Elm Street, a normal teenager who is pulled into a terrifying mystery after the brutal murder of her best friend.

Just like Elm Street Nancy, Stranger Things Nancy is present while her friend is being attacked but unable to help, though the friend continues to call out to her.

Just like Elm Street Nancy, Stranger Things Nancy has a jockish boyfriend who really doesn't seem like Nancy's type.

And just like Elm Street Nancy, Stranger Things Nancy is unable to get any adults to believe her story and has to figure out the mystery on her own.

Will's Friends

Switching gears a little (that is, moving away from horror movies and on to different movies of the 80s), there's Will's group of friends, Mike, Dustin, and Lucas. Probably the biggest parallel is of the group of boys from the Goonies.

They're going to keep looking for Will. Because Goonies never say die.

I mean, the leader of the group who pushes his friends to find Will, is named Mike (Mikey, anyone?). Barb and Nancy, before the whole disappearance and mystery, could also be Andy and Stef from the Goonies. Of course, I can also see similarities to Explorers, especially when you factor in the boys' love of science and meddling with things a government agency isn't happy about.


There's definitely more, but I'm going to stop there for now. More when I finish watching the series!

TSMR: Devil

I'm planning to sit down at some point and make a list of all the horror movies I watched throughout October - fortunately, my Netflix viewing history will help fill in a lot of it!  One of those movies was Devil, which I'd seen listed on Netflix before but passed up because the premise was so ridiculous.

Five people are stuck in an elevator.  A police detective on the case must hurry to get them out, because one of the people is the devil.  Yup.

But, it was October, and I knew I wanted to watch some horror movies I hadn't already seen, so I decided to give it a try.

The movie is written (but not directed) by M. Night Shyamalan.  It definitely shows.  Full disclosure: I do like many of his movies, including some that were panned by critics.  But it drives me nuts that he always needs to have this huge twist close to the end.  The twist was really well done in "The Sixth Sense" but felt a little strained in some of his other movies.

Shyamalan also frequently uses two literary elements in combination - these two elements contradict each other, which is how he is able to lead up to the twist.  This might be why some of his other movies, although I enjoyed them, felt much more predictable than "The Sixth Sense" - I've seen enough of his movies to be onto the toolkit he's using.

The first element is the "red herring": I would imagine most people have heard this term.  It is an element of the story that seems to be crucial and allows the characters (and audience) to solve the mystery, when it is actually simply a distraction from the real truth.  In some cases, it is the opposite of what is actually true.  In others, it is simply another potential version of the truth that turns out to be incorrect.  The point is that the red herrings are meant to distract you, not only from the actual truth, but from Shyamalan's other favorite tool: Chekhov's gun.

Anton Chekhov was a writer of both short stories and plays, though he was also a physician. His comment on this dual life was that "Medicine is my lawful wife and literature is my mistress."  He first starting writing as a way to make money, but then began to enjoy it and started honing his craft.  One of his many contributions to literature is what has become known as Chekhov's gun.

Chekhov did not believe in unnecessary details.  He felt that any information given in a story, or any prop on the stage of a play, should be essential to the story.  His example was that if the writer describes a shotgun hanging above the fireplace (or if a loaded gun is on stage during a play), someone had better fire that gun in the story.  If the gun will never be used, there is no point in taking the time to describe it (or show it) to the reader (or audience).

In Shyamalan's work, the "gun" is usually a small element, introduced early in the story, as simply a fact about the character or even an event that happened before the start of the story that later on becomes the key to solving the mystery.

Despite knowing what tricks Shyamalan had up his sleeve, I'll admit that I actually did enjoy "Devil".  I'm not sure if I'd truly consider it a horror movie, though I can see why it was classified that way.  There are a few points in the story where the movie tries to be scary (and sometimes, it is effective).  But I'd consider this movie to be a mystery-thriller with supernatural elements.

Overall, I'd recommend checking this movie out, especially if:
1) you're a fan of Shyamalan's work
2) you want to watch a horror movie (or your friend/roommate/significant other wants to watch a horror movie) but you don't really want to be scared
or
3) you like mysteries, but can also suspend disbelief (especially if you don't believe in the supernatural)

Devilishly yours,
~Sara

TSMR Double-Feature: Evil Dead and The Thing

I've been informed that my recent TSMRs have been rather spoiler-heavy.  I'll admit, they've taken a play-by-play, MST3K approach - which is a style I really enjoy, because it reflects my thought process (and occasionally speech) while I'm watching movies.

I'm totally that guy.  I just need robots.

As much as I'd like to make my posts completely spoiler-free, I don't want my posts to become little more than a synopsis with commentary and overarching things that worked or did not work.  Instead, I'll attempt to make my posts spoiler-light.

Evil Dead
First up, Evil Dead, which I watched yesterday while I was home sick.  What better movie to watch when one is ill: when I'm really sick, I kind of feel like I'm possessed, so a movie about demonic possession is actually pretty fitting.

This movie is a prime example of the blood and gore subgenre of horror: constant bleeding, oozing, dismembering, and disintegrating.  Though there are funny moments in the movie, I think Sam Raimi was attempting to make a legitimately scary independent film.  Of course, after making this movie, he obviously figured out the concept could be better if they added humor and got rid of Bruce Campbell's unibrow.

Don't worry, Bruce - I still love you, unibrow and all

Five people: couple 1 (Ash & Linda), couple 2, and fifth wheel (Ash's sister), head up to an old cabin for a fun weekend of listening to demonic texts on a tape recorder.  That might not be what they originally intended to do, but they didn't really seem to have a plan otherwise, so when they found a strange book and tape recorder in the basement, they were thrilled to have a fun group activity.

And if that gets boring, here's another fun activity to try

On the recording, they learn that the strange book is apparently bound in human flesh and inked in human blood, and that it apparently has the power to raise demons.  Ash's sister gets pissed off and doesn't want to listen anymore.  But the male member of couple 2, who also enjoys scaring people and pointing guns at them for fun, decides to skip over all the exposition and go straight to the demon-raising.  Ash's sister stomps off to her room, couple 2 goes to their room, where they seem to spend the whole time just getting undressed by the window, and Ash & Linda have some cute exchanges over a necklace Ash bought for Linda.

But the action picks up again when Ash's sister decides to investigate a strange noise outside - because it's a horror movie, and that's what people do in horror movies - and instead gets attacked and assaulted by the trees.  Yes, that kind of assaulted.  That scene in particular is probably what resulted in this movie getting banned in multiple countries.

Of course, it could have been the aforementioned dismemberment.

Ash's sister decides it's time to leave, but she and Ash discover that the bridge (the only way to and from the cabin) has been destroyed.  They're stuck there for the night, and that's when the real fun begins.

I have two complaints about the film (and don't get me wrong, I do enjoy this movie, but not as much as Evil Dead 2): 1. In many shots, the camera is obviously in someone's hand, because it's shaky - not Blair Witch Project shaky, but enough to be distracting. 2. There's not a lot of story beyond group of kids, book, recording, crazy sh*t happens.

Evil Dead 2 doesn't have either of these issues - look for a blog post about Evil Dead 2 in the near future.

The Thing
I don't think I would ever be able to pick a favorite horror movie, but I could probably make a top 5 list.  And among those 5 would be The Thing.  I can seriously watch this movie again and again.

The film begins with a spaceship crashing to Earth.  Next, we see Antarctica 1982, and a lone dog running across the snow, a helicopter chasing it.  The dog happens upon a US research station and seeks refuge among the people there, but the two men in the helicopter seem to want nothing more than the dog dead, even firing at it while a group of US workers are standing around.  One man blows himself up while attempting to throw a grenade.  The other one accidentally shoots one of the men in the group, and another man from the US group shoots and kills the shooter.

With two dead Norwegians on their hands, Doctor Copper decides to do some investigating to determine what caused these men to go crazy.  He asks MacReady, helicopter pilot and most-trusted man in the whole group, to fly him to the Norwegian base.  In the meantime, Clark, the resident dog lover welcomes the dog in, allowing it to wander around for much of the day.  At the Norwegian camp, they find the rest of the Norwegians dead, some of which appear self-inflicted, and a body that appears human, except for the fact it has two heads.

And this isn't even the weirdest thing you'll see

The characters learn pretty quickly that the dog is no dog - it's a creature that is able to absorb and imitate other living creatures perfectly.  Which means, it could not only become a dog, it could easily become one of the people at the base.

The great thing about the movie is that, while the monster is important, what is more interesting is how quickly the characters begin to question and distrust each other.  And the viewer goes through the same thing.  Who is a "thing" and who is real?

The movie doesn't bother giving a lot of background on the group, other than establishing basic personalities and some job titles of the characters.  Mac, Copper, and Clark have already been mentioned above.  Other than them, we have:

Garry, the leader who seems to receive nothing but disdain from his subordinates
Bennings, the annoying guy who gets shot
Palmer, the pothead/least-trusted helicopter pilot ever
Windows, the radio guy
Blair, the biologist/closet computer programmer, who figures out the whole "Thing" thing
Childs, or Mr. "Voodoo Bullsh*t"
Norris, the geologist, who figures out the age of the ice the ship crashed into
Nauls, the cook and Stevie Wonder fan
Fuchs, a more junior biologist and Mac's biggest fan

Honestly, I don't think we ever learn what research they're doing, or what they spend their day doing besides drinking, getting high, and watching reruns of gameshows.  But somehow, the movie works and the only thing you wonder while watching is what the heck is going to happen next.  In fact, without knowing a lot about the characters, it makes it harder for you to figure out who is a "thing" and who is not.  You have no basis for comparison, no past experience with their behavior to determine what is normal for that character.

You'll walk away from the movie with lots of great one-liners.  And if you need an excuse to watch the movie again, there are some great drinking games out there.

Any recommendations for the next movie I should watch?  Let me know!

Doubly yours,
~Sara

Totally Superfluous Movie Review (Halloween Edition): Re-Animator

Next on my list: Re-Animator. One of the things I like about this movie is the cold open – it jumps right into the action. This tactic has been used in other horror movies and was perhaps most clearly spoofed in the opening for Ghostbusters. Dr. Gruber, an imminent researcher in brain death, is heard screaming in his office. When the police burst in, they find Dr. Gruber dying violently on the ground, as a young man in glasses hunches over him with a syringe. Dr. Gruber’s eyeballs explode and he dies, but the young man insists that he didn’t kill Dr. Gruber:

Flash to a young med student, Dan Cain, doing compressions on a woman in the ER. The doctor overseeing the case decides to use the defibrillator, which is unsuccessful at reviving the woman. As Dan tries to continue doing compressions, the doctor chastises the young man for not knowing when to give up, which “any good doctor should know.” BTW, any good doctor would also know that you don’t defibrillate someone in flat-line (or what the dumbass doc calls “straight line”).

As punishment for caring too much, Dan is told to take the woman down to the morgue. There, we observe Dan get a little jumpy around the dead bodies, and we once again see the young man from the first scene – who is introduced as Mr. Herbert West, a new 3rd year student. He speaks with a faux accent and calls another brain researcher, Dr. Carl Hill, a plagiarist. Nice guy.

Dan, who is not only a talented student, has also made the dean of the med school (Dean Halsey) like him, despite the fact that Dan is banging the dean’s daughter, Megan. Herbert interrupts their post-coital shenanigans to inquire about Dan’s need for a roommate. Though Megan immediately takes a disliking to Herbert, Dan accepts Herbert’s wad of cash and welcomes him.

During a lesson, Herbert takes his frustrations with Dr. Hill’s theories on brain death out on a couple of poor defenseless pencils.

Later, we see that Dr. Hill is about as creepy as Herbert, except the object of his creepiness is Megan. Megan runs off for a “study date” with Dan and during said date, they discover Dan’s beloved cat, Rufus, dead in Herbert’s fridge. Herbert blackmails Dan into dropping it by threatening to tell the dean that Dan and Megan are sleeping together. Um, I think the dean kind of already knows, but apparently that worked.

Later that night, Dan awakens to find Rufus alive and pissed. Dan helps Herbert kill Rufus, and Herbert brings him back to life (again) to show the effectiveness of the “elixir of life” Herbert has created.

Also helps turtles learn the way of the ninja

The howls of the cat were apparently so loud, Megan could hear it all the way at her house, because she inexplicably shows up and sees the Frankenstein-ian experiment.

The next day, when Dan tells the dean about the experiments, Dean Halsey expels Herbert, requests a written apology from Dan, and suggests that criminal charges may be filed. Nonetheless, Dan, the med student who cared too much, sneaks Herbert into the morgue to use the elixir on a human subject.

The experiment is a success, but the elixir turns the body into the Incredible Hulk, who attacks and kills Dean Halsey. Herbert decides that the body they used was dead too long and that they should use the elixir on a fresh body: Dean Halsey. Dean Halsey awakens, a little less hulk-y than the other guy, but still unable to speak and pretty pissed off. In a textbook case of medical conflict of interest, Dr. Hill takes Dean Halsey into his care, forces Megan to sign a consent form for exploratory brain surgery on the dean, and also tells her he is there if she’s ever feeling horny… er, lonely. ‘scuse me.

Dan confesses everything to Meg, while Herbert gets a taste of his own medicine (pun fully intended) when Dr. Hill blackmails him into telling him how we has been able to reanimate the dead. Herbert decapitates Dr. Hill and, not being satisfied with turning his head into a trophy with a nearby paper spike, decides to reanimate Dr. Hill’s head and body.

The pencil is totally a metaphor

But Hill once again gets the better of Herbert, by directing his body (somehow) to knock Herbert out, and steal Herbert’s notes and serum. Meanwhile, Dan discovers Hill’s creep file on Meg, which consists of newspaper clippings, photos, and a lock of her hair. I don’t even want to know how he got that last one.

Somehow, Hill is a perfect reanimation, despite the disconnect between his head and body. (Apparently decapitation was the missing ingredient.) Not a speechless hulk, he can speak (hiss is probably more accurate a word), coach his brainless/earless body to perform tasks, and control Dean Halsey into kidnapping Meg and bringing her to the morgue. Because, apparently that’s where sick MDs like get to lucky. When Herbert comes in to stop Hill, and Dan sneaks in to rescue Meg, Hill unleashes his own undead army of reanimated and lobotomized corpses. Hilarity ensues.

No really. If this movie were to create a new genre of horror, it would probably be called zombie slapstick. My favorite would have to be when Hill’s intestine decides to strangle Herbert.

Dean Halsey sacrifices himself to help Dan and Meg escape, but Meg is strangled in the elevator by one of the reanimated corpses. Dan tries to save her with CPR, then carries her to the ER, where they try to bring her back to no avail. No wonder there is an army’s worth of bodies in the morgue – the doctors in this hospital apparently suck as reviving people. What, they never heard of intubation?

Fortunately, Dan had the time to grab some of Herbert’s elixir, and he injects Meg as the screen goes black.

So the movie is definitely ridiculous, but totally entertaining. The score is pretty good, especially for a horror movie. If you enjoy horror movies with equal parts comedy, you’ll definitely want to put Re-Animator on your list.

Animatedly yours,
~Sara

Totally Superfluous Movie Review (Halloween Edition): The Shining

Next in my month of horror movies: The Shining. Another great horror movie. I’ve been a big fan of Stephen King since I was kid, and have read many of his books, including The Shining. I know that King was not a huge fan of what Stanley Kubrick did with this movie, because he felt it changed some of the messages of the book. King felt the movie downplayed the influence of the supernatural and the dark forces in the hotel, instead placing the motivation toward evil and violent actions within the main character, Jack Torrance.  In fact, he thought casting Jack Nicholson was a bad move, because it clued viewers in that Jack was going to go mad at some point in the movie.

Even when he's trying to make a good impression, he looks creepy

Social psychologists have long studied the interplay of internal motivations within people and the external environment. However, the film does still suggest that the Overlook reinforced the darkness of Jack’s character, giving him a venue where such actions could occur.

The film begins with Jack interviewing for a job as winter caretaker at the Overlook, an ornate hotel placed in a secluded, beautiful area of the Rocky Mountains. The general manager explains that the hotel closes during the winter months because of the brutal snow that makes the mountain roads impassable and difficult to keep clean. As a result, the hotel hires a caretaker to stay in the hotel during winter months to keep the boiler running, do routine maintenance, and generally look after the hotel and grounds. Jack also learns that a previous caretaker lost his mind and murdered his wife and two daughters, before killing himself. Cozy. So maybe babysitting ghosts is part of the caretaker's job...

We then meet Wendy, Jack’s wife, and Danny, their son, as well as Danny’s “imaginary” friend Tony. Why do I put imaginary in quotes? Well, I’ll get to that later. This was actually the first time I’ve noticed that Wendy is reading “The Catcher in the Rye” during this scene.

Insert favorite conspiracy theory here

Danny, or more specifically Tony, tells Wendy that he doesn’t want to go to the Overlook, but refuses to say why. We also learn that Danny has no friends his age where they live – since they only moved there 3 weeks ago – so it doesn’t seem to be the social isolation of the Overlook that has him concerned. Tony – correctly – informs Danny that Jack has gotten the job and that they will be going to the Overlook soon. A terrifying vision of blood rushing out of the elevators at the Overlook sends Danny into shock, and Wendy calls in a doctor to check him out.

The doctor examines Danny and, finding no real problems, tells Wendy that Danny should be fine. She asks Wendy for more details about Danny’s history, and learns that Jack, a recovering alcoholic, once dislocated Danny’s shoulder while drunk. Hmmm, wonder if Wendy mentioned she and Danny were about to spend several months in a hotel with Jack, and little to no contact with the outside world. But hey, what could possibly go wrong?

The family heads up to the hotel, where they receive a tour of the grounds and meet, among others, Dick Hallorann, the head chef. Danny is surprised to learn that Dick also has some psychic abilities. Dick’s grandmother called the gift “shining.” Dick tells Danny that in addition to some people who can “shine,” there are also places that “shine.” Danny asks Dick if there’s anything bad in the hotel, but Dick insists there’s nothing to be worried about. The place isn’t bad – it’s just shiny. 

Jack and Wendy also learn that the hotel was built on ancient Indian burial ground. Yes, this is one of the more trite portions of the story. But it doesn’t seem that the actions of the previous caretaker are what caused the problems in the hotel, or Danny’s fears. In fact, later events in the story seem to suggest that the darkness at the Overlook is actually what caused the caretaker to go crazy in the first place. Pissed off Native American spirits is the only answer they give to why this place brings out the worst in people. Of course, some of the color combinations might have also set some people off.

The horror

The hotel clears out, leaving the Torrance family as the only occupants – well, the only living ones anyway. The movie does many things to pull you into the crazy, disorganized world, where days blur into each other. For instance, title cards flash up days of the week: Thursday, Wednesday, etc., but without any additional context – a month and date, where this particular Wednesday falls from the previous title card and so on. The viewer becomes as confused as the characters in the movie, who don’t have other people or events to help them distinguish one day from the next. Wendy plays with Danny and chats up the local law enforcement on the radio. Danny, when he isn’t playing with Wendy, tools around the hotel in his hot wheels. Jack clicks away at his typewriter, throws balls around, and generally behaves like a douche.

On one of Danny’s rides around the hotel, he runs into the two daughters of the previous caretaker. Though he reminds himself that Dick told him these things aren’t real, just echoes of the past, the girls call Danny by name and ask him to come play with them. This is the first indication that the forces in the hotel aren’t just lingering events, but sentient forces that can interact with the world of the living.

Just as Danny decides to check out room 237, Jack begins screaming in his sleep. Though Jack seems already dark and disturbed from the beginning, the dream that he has re-enacted the actions of the previous caretaker seems to truly scare him. He tells Wendy that he feels like he’s losing his mind; some part of him recognizes that something isn’t right, even if at other times he seems to welcome the darkness of the Overlook. This is (unfortunately for all involved) Jack’s last moment of lucidity.

Danny wanders into the room, having been attacked by something in room 237, and Wendy – believing that no one else is in the hotel – accuses Jack of hurting Danny. Jack angrily stomps down to the ballroom, where he finds the bar – which was emptied when the last employees left – fully stocked and manned by Lloyd. Jack shares his frustrations over several glasses of Jack Daniels, when Wendy bursts in to tell Jack that Danny was actually attacked by a crazy woman in the hotel.

Jack goes to room 237 to investigate, where he finds what appears at first to be a young and attractive woman in the bathtub. Like any stereotypical man who thinks with – well, you know – Jack temporarily forgets that this woman apparently tried to murder his son and sees this as a great opportunity for getting laid. But his libido quickly drops to zero when he watches the young woman transform into an old, partially decayed woman.

Jeez, Lloyd, how much did I drink?

Jack returns to the family’s apartment and, rather than fess up to his apparent ‘beer goggles,’ he lies and tells Wendy there is no one else in the hotel. Meanwhile, Danny is catatonic, but Jack refuses to explore the option of leaving the hotel to get help. He once again storms off.

Wendy goes to find Jack to plead with him once again, and is appalled to discover that Jack has been writing the most boring (and totally plagiarized) novel ever.

The one note novel then seems to carry over into the dialogue of the movie, as Danny ceases speaking any dialogue beyond repeatedly requesting Bacardi and Grenadine. Or maybe he was talking about something else? After all, he’s way too young to drink. He literally has to spell it out for Wendy (and the viewer) before we realize that Danny is actually talking about murder.

Silly kid. Should have said edicimoh. Okay, maybe not.

Dick Hallorann, who feels Danny’s fragile state all the way from Miami, catches a flight back to Denver, and drives up to the Overlook to check things out, where things don’t turn out so well for him. Poor Dick. He’s got enough shine for him to feel the darkness of the Overlook from Miami Beach, but not enough to see a wounded Jack hiding with an axe 5 feet away. If shining were my gift, I’d return it. It seems to cause a lot of trouble.

Wendy stumbles upon a yiffing party and hightails it out of there.

The rest of the movie consists of running around – Danny running away from Jack, Jack chasing Danny with an axe, and Wendy running from one macabre image after another. Wendy and Danny finally find each other, and Jack freezes to death in the labyrinth.

It seems the final message of the film is that the Overlook attracts the darkest, most disturbed personalities, and helps push them to do the evil actions already lurking within them. It then swallows the dark person whole, making them part of the place forever – even going so far as to rewrite history to make them a fixture of the hotel. The film ends by zooming in on a picture of Jack at a party, dated in the 1920s.

Only a supersmart kid and an incredibly resourceful wife are able to escape.

The question I’ve always had about the movie is: Who is Tony? Is he a side of Danny’s personality, a dissociative identity Danny created to protect himself from things that would be painful or dangerous? Is he a spirit or some other supernatural being that uses Danny’s “shining” ability to interact with him? I’m guessing it would be the former, considering that certain things are hidden from Danny – like Tony’s initial visions of the Overlook. If Danny had his own shining ability, that allowed him to talk to Tony, he wouldn’t need Tony to show him things. Which leads to the bigger question – what dark things has Danny already seen that would spark this psychological division?

This is perhaps the most interesting lingering question (to me anyway). Dissociative identity disorder (what has been in the past known as multiple personalities or split personality) generally occurs among people who have experienced extreme, and repeated, trauma. When the traumatic event occurs, they dissociate – they pretend they are someone else, or that they are simply watching something happen without experiencing it – as a defense mechanism. This becomes a learned behavior so that over time, the response gets faster and more automatic at the sign of any potential trauma. Maybe the actions of his drunk father brought it on? Perhaps the dislocated shoulder wasn’t the only incident. Or maybe Danny saw many other terrible things with his shining.

I’ll be honest – I really like the movie, though I think the acting is pretty crappy at times. What makes the movie so good is the compelling story and the legit creep factor of many of these scenes. And a few WTF scenes thrown in for good measure. And with that, I give you this picture again.

Superfluously yours,
~Sara