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Posted on September 10, 2016

The Neighbour Isn’t What You Think It Is—It’s Much Better

Dawn Keetley

The Neighbour (2016) was one of those films that started out well and then got better. It started out appearing to be one kind of story, and then it became another—a much more human story. At every turn, writers Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton reveal that characters who appear unredeemable, the sadistic stock characters of exploitation horror, are just powerless individuals, caught in a web of hopelessness, trying to survive.

The Neighbour is Marcus Dunstan’s third film as director, following on the heels of The Collector (2009) and The Collection (2012), both also written by Dunstan and Melton. These two earlier films can’t help but shape expectations for The Neighbour, as does the trailer and all the brief synopses of the film. As the summary on IMDb tells us: “the film follows a man who discovers the dark truth about his neighbor and the secrets he may be keeping in the basement.” So you could be forgiven for thinking The Neighbour is another Collector, another entry in the by-now rather tired “torture-porn” subgenre. It isn’t. It’s much more interesting than that. Read more

Posted on September 8, 2016

Billionaire Ransom (2016): Watch it for the Scenery

Dawn Keetley

My primary motivation for watching the recently-released Billionaire Ransom (Take Down outside the US) was its filming location. I was punished, it seems, for my less-than-serious motivation in that the film’s location ended up being by far the best thing about it.

Billionaire Ransom is directed by Jim Gillespie, known for I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997), and written by Alexander Ignon. It features a cast of young people (led by Jeremy Sumpter and Phoebe Tonkin), all of whom are rich and spoiled and sent to some kind of punitive boot camp for moral rehabilitation. As they are being taught the basics of survival on an isolated island, they are kidnapped by a group of criminals interested in a little wealth redistribution. The rich kids then get to practice their newly-honed survival skills with their very lives on the line. Read more

Posted on August 29, 2016

Don’t Breathe (2016): The Politics of Justice and the Subjectivity of Victimhood

Gwen

Sometimes, I wonder if justice is blind or if it is just oblivious. In recent history, Ethan Couch received a lenient sentence after recklessly mowing down several innocent victims while intoxicated on liquor and affluenza. The former Stanford swimmer, Brock Turner received only a six month sentence after sexually assaulting an unconscious woman.[i] Shortly thereafter, Indiana University frat boy John Enochs escaped two counts of felony rape with a year of probation while David Becker received two years of probation for sexually assaulting two 18 year old girls. What are the repercussions of these lenient sentences? When did it become more important to protect a perpetrator from being branded a sexual offender than to ensure justice? How is it that a judge and/or jury came to worry more about the hopeful college experience of a young college-bound Massachusetts boy over his two 18-year-old victims? You might ask, what does this have to do with the film, Don’t Breathe (2016)…I say everything.

In the wake of national outrage after these trials, Don’t Breathe brings light to what we view as justice and who is a deserving victim. By definition, a victim is “a person harmed, injured, or killed as a result of a crime, accident, or other event or action”.[ii] However, in the eyes of a subjective public, being a victim of a crime does not concretely translate into victimhood as we see in Fede Alvarez’s film, Don’t Breathe. Read more

Posted on August 19, 2016

Nerve (2016): The Most Dangerous Game

Dawn Keetley

The more horror I read and watch, the more I realize that certain stories are repeatedly told over the decades. Different generations will create different variations, but the story will fundamentally be the same. This is by no means a bad thing: we create our world by telling stories, and some stories are just so crucial to the human condition, so much about who we are, that they need—they demand—to be re-told. One extremely important story in the horror tradition is the story of the dangerous game. It originated (in modern form, anyway) in the 1924 short story by Richard Connell called (not surprisingly) “The Most Dangerous Game.” It’s been made into several films over the decades (e.g., RKO’s faithful 1932 adaptation, The Most Dangerous Game, starring Joel McCrea, 1961’s Bloodlust!, 1994’s Surviving the Game, with Rutger Hauer and Ice-T, and 2004’s The Eliminator). The most recent incarnation of the dangerous game story, I would argue, is Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman’s Nerve (2016). Read more

Posted on August 2, 2016

Lights Out: Living life while trying to stay in control.

Gwen

PG-13 | 2016 | David Sandberg | 81 min | (USA)

If you are looking for a review of the film, you won’t find it here (but you will find plot spoilers so proceed with caution). While I found the film worthwhile, I was more captivated by the function of the monster rather than the storyline. Therefore, this piece focuses on the monster rather than the movie. It was clear to me that the film’s underlying narrative is about the struggles of living life with a major depressive disorder.[1] However, I could not help but see the film two-fold with the antagonist Diana (Alicia Vela-Bailey) serving both as a manifestation of Sophie’s (Maria Bello) debilitating depression as well as her abusive partner.[2] Let me elaborate.

In order for me to better explain my point of view, let’s review some of the background. Sophie grew up struggling with depression which led to a childhood admission to an inpatient psychiatric hospital. While in this hospital, Sophie meets Diana and forges a friendship as healthy as a host to its succubus. Diana is in the hospital for manipulating her father into killing himself by inserting her thoughts into his head. Once in the hospital, Diana locates her next plaything in the form of Sophie, and, as we come to see, Diana plays for keeps. During a mishap in the hospital, Diana passes away and somehow becomes fused into Sophie’s psyche. Read more