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Posted on September 25, 2015

Titicut Follies (1967) Review: When Horror is Real

Note: I have opted not to include images in this review because of their potentially exploitative nature. Upon the film’s release, there was considerable debate as to the ethics of filming individuals incapable of giving their consent. It is a question worth considering and, as such, I will only be using the official film poster.

Unrated | 1967 | 84 min | (USA) | Frederick Wiseman

Grade: A

Given my penchant for slasher horror, it isn’t often that I find myself cinematically provoked to squeamishness. But a recent viewing of Frederick Wiseman’s unflinching 1967 documentary Titicut Follies left me feeling downright nauseous. Much of that reaction is owed to the human indignities suffered by those shown in the film. Not for the faint of heart, this documentary examines life inside an American mental institution and lays bare the harsh realities that face mentally ill inhabitants of state funded facilities. With so many horror films being inspired by real life horror, I think an exploration of this documentary is useful in understanding why horror films can be so triggering.

Posted on September 23, 2015

Why EVERYTHING Works in FOX’s Scream Queens

Gwen

The two hour premier of Scream Queens was everything I had hoped for and more. Where do I begin? It does what MTV’s Scream couldn’t, it takes it where A&E’s Bates Motel doesn’t, and it revitalized all that FX’s American Horror Story started with. This show has all the makings of greatness. Below are a few off the top things that the show has going for it.

The PLOT

This horror comedy makes the best of both the horror and the comedy. The pacing, the suspense, the one liners (Pissy Spacek), self-reflexivity (not running upstairs), and deaths are awe inspiring. I instantly was able to dive into the characters as if I was taken back to the days of watching Swan’s Crossing. This show is a slick blend of Mean Girls, House Bunny, Black Christmas, and But I’m A Cheerleader. Sorority Girls from Kappa Kappa Tau are being knocked off one by one by a demonically dressed killer. The story is dripping with campiness and political incorrectness. The season premier definitely leaves you craving the next installment in order to figure out who is thinning the crowd.

Posted on September 17, 2015

Backcountry (2014)

Dawn Keetley

Summary: In Backcountry, A couple, Jenn (Missy Peregrym) and Alex (Jeff Roop) go camping in the woods. They encounter a bear.

If you want to see a truly terrifying film, forget going to the theater to see M. Night Shyamalan’s The Visit. Spend the money on Backcountry, a 2014 Canadian film that opened in the US in March 2015 and was recently released to video on demand through services like Amazon and itunes.

I was transfixed by this film: it’s simple (deceptively so), beautifully filmed, well-written and acted, and will grip you from beginning to end.

One of the brilliant things about the film is that while it is, on the one hand, thoroughly grounded in the real world—no monsters, nothing supernatural—it is nonetheless steeped in the horror film tradition. Indeed, it brings the naturalistic world into the realm of horror so unobtrusively that you don’t realize what’s happening on first viewing—and so you don’t know exactly why you’re so uneasy when the characters go swimming, when they walk through the woods, when they hear acorns falling.

Posted on September 12, 2015

The Visit (2015) Film Review

Gwen

The Visit

PG-13 | 94 min | M. Night Shyamalan | (USA) | 2015

Review: I should have gone to see Gremlins at the midnight movies tonight.

Synopsis: A brother and sister go for a week-long vacation to visit their grandparents for the very first time. Upon getting to know their grandparents they learn that there is something greatly awry in their Pennsylvania farmhouse.

Grade: D

The only thing going for this review is that I had about four hours in the car to think about it prior to going on a massive stream of conscious rant about how disappointed I was. Frankly, the only thing scary about this movie was that immediately after the film I was attacked by my neighbor’s dog. The most humane way I can put this baby down is to argue why I was so let down by this film.

I noticed that several film sites bill this movie as horror / comedy. Spoiler alert…it was neither.

Posted on September 11, 2015

127 Hours: Geological Horror

Dawn Keetley

Animal and even plant horror are familiar categories: you can find entries for horror films featuring mammals, reptiles, amphibians, insects, birds, and plants, for instance, on Wikipedia (check out the List of Natural Horror Films). So far, however, you’ll be hard-pressed to find anything about geological horror. So where are the horror films about rocks and minerals? (That’s not a rhetorical question: if you know of any, please let me know!) My main purpose in this post is to suggest a candidate for the horror genre that features a boulder. The film is 127 Hours (2010), directed by Danny Boyle of 28 Days Later (2002) fame. It depicts the (real) ordeal of Aron Ralston (James Franco), whose arm becomes trapped by a boulder as he’s climbing in Blue John Canyon in Utah: as the title suggests, he spent 127 hours in the canyon before freeing himself by amputating his arm and stumbling across the desert to find help.

There are, of course, a multitude of films about natural disasters (tsunamis, volcanoes, earthquakes, avalanches etc.), but these films tend not to be horror films (they’re routinely classified as action)—and natural disasters are typically not exploited in the horror genre—except sometimes as plot devices to trap characters in places where they have to face other monsters. 127 Hours is a horror film. The film is not wholly horror; indeed, it swerves away from horror near the end. But in and by that swerve it demonstrates what actually makes a horror film (and what doesn’t).