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Posted on January 15, 2016

The Forest (2016) Review

Gwen

95 min | 2016 | (USA) | Jason Zada

Grade: B-

Synopsis: A young American woman named Sara Price (Dormer) travels to Japan’s Suicide Forest (Aokigahara) in search of her missing twin who has a troubled past.

Review: Slow, building horror with a cerebral bend.

If you are looking for jump scares, tons of special FX, or gore, this movie is not for you. If I had to categorize it, I would call it more of a suspenseful thriller. The Forest is like the burn in your muscles the day after a good run. While watching The Forest, it is at times difficult to tell the difference between what is real and imagined. The film’s dream-like quality leaves you as disoriented as the characters that attempt to navigate the labyrinth inside the Aokigahara Forest.

Be prepared, the Aokigahara doesn’t actually play as large of a role in the film as you might think. I won’t give away any spoilers but if you are going to enjoy this film, you have to go in with an open mind. Upon viewing trailers, one might think the whole film is about the horrors that lurk within this specific forest…not so much. The Suicide Forest is a conduit for the larger portion of the film to unfurl. In fact, I would suggest that the nebulous forest is just a means for Sara and her twin, Jess (also played by Dormer) to work out their equally ill-defined inner demons.

Posted on January 14, 2016

Silent Retreat (2016) Review

Dawn Keetley

Summary: Silent Retreat is worth watching. Great cinematography and suspenseful, well-told story, as well as its exploration of the double, elevate this film a bit above the average.

Silent Retreat is directed by Ace Jordan, written by Jordan and Heather Smith, produced by Starko Entertainment, and was released to VOD and DVD on January 12, 2016.

Shot in a beautiful location on Big Bear Lake in California, Silent Retreat follows a group of media employees who head into the woods for a weekend retreat. They soon discover that the lodge they’re staying in was, not too long ago, a psychiatric hospital. And then the retreat participants start unaccountably disappearing.

I was definitely engaged by Silent Retreat, but I have to say up front that it has some significant problems. The writing (specifically the dialogue) was not great and neither, unfortunately, was the acting, which seemed generally to be of daytime-soap-opera quality. And as much as the story itself was one of the film’s strengths, I did see the big reveal (that is, the identity of the killer) coming from at least the middle of the film.

Posted on January 4, 2016

Body (2015): The Many Faces of Satan

Dawn Keetley

An independent film that premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival in January 2015, Body is written and directed by Dan Berk and Robert Olsen and produced by Last Pictures. Body was released to Video on Demand on December 29 and is definitely worth watching.

Body traces a rather familiar plot—reminiscent of Shallow Grave (Danny Boyle, 1994) and I Know What You Did Last Summer (Jim Gillespie, 1997)—but it utterly transcends and transforms that plot in its development of character, its superb acting (by all four main characters), its allegorical depth, and the beauty of its ending.

Three twentysomething friends—Holly (Helen Rogers), Cali (Alexandra Turshen), and Mel (Lauren Molina)—are hanging out on Christmas Eve playing Scrabble, drinking, and smoking pot when Cali comes up with the idea of crashing her “uncle’s” house. Once the friends are there, reveling in its wealth, it comes out that the house isn’t Cali’s uncle’s house after all but the home of a family she used to babysit for. As the friends are about to leave (Mel and Holly aren’t happy about Cali’s deception), a man (Larry Fessenden) comes in, alerted to something’s being amiss by the many blazing lights. As the friends rush past him to get out, Holly inadvertently knocks him down the stairs. The friends’ elaborate plan to explain his dead body to the police goes awry when they realize he is not, in fact, dead—merely paralyzed. As they struggle with what to do, deep and finally deadly rifts emerge among the friends.

Posted on December 21, 2015

Contamination with a look at Paralysis: Psychological Horror

Dawn Keetley

20 min | 2013 | (USA) | R. Shanea Williams

Contamination is a short film written and directed by R. Shanea Williams, available on Vimeo. It is a strikingly powerful depiction of what it feels like to suffer from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder—and it indicates the preoccupation of Williams with psychological horror, with the horrors of the world, both real and imagined.

Williams is currently making another short film, more explicitly within the horror tradition, called Paralysis, about a woman suffering from a sleep disorder. In an interview with Graveyard Shift Sisters about her latest film, Williams recounts that one of her professors at NYU told her to “Write what you’re afraid of.” Williams adds, “I ALWAYS start there.”

Posted on December 19, 2015

The Walking Dead (1936): Revenge and Zombies

Dawn Keetley

In 1936, Warner Brothers released a (now) little-known film directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Boris Karloff, the title of which is nonetheless very well-known: The Walking Dead. I watched it recently because . . . well, because of the title! It turned out to be pretty interesting—and actually quite relevant to fans of AMC’s The Walking Dead and zombie fans in general.

Karloff plays John Ellman, a man who is framed by a group of corrupt city leaders for the murder of a judge. Two witnesses of the murder come forward to clear Ellman in the minutes before his scheduled execution—but, they’re too late. It turns out, however, that they work for a man, Dr. Evan Beaumont (Edward Gwenn), who just happens to be able to reanimate the dead, and who is desperate to find out what secrets lie beyond the grave. Beaumont brings Ellman back to life in a process that involves the standard test tubes and jolts of electricity. Although apparently alive, Ellman has virtually no memory—indeed little consciousness at all. But he does seem uncannily able to recognize the men who framed him. He sets out on a course of revenge.