It's that time of the year again. Summer Sci-Fi block busters and all their intense theoretical systems of post-structural baggage.
This time I watched Jurassic World on Sunday evening. There is something about monster movies that allow them to tap into the world of meta cinema. It starts with Voyage Dans La Lune where the ant-like monsters are able to appear and disappear. The director figured out he could stop the camera and the actors could move off the set then start the camera back up on an empty set. Movie magic reminds us about the literal manipulation of cellulose to create still images that flash before our eyes. Then king kong stunned the world with stop motion animation. The premise of finding a secret lost world that can only be transferred by the cinematic screen means that some monsters only ever exist through the lens of a camera.
Peter Jackson's king kong was even more meta cinema with the director, Jack Black, taking the role of lead supporting actor next to Kong. That was an adventure to make cinema and re-stage scenes of the original film while also re-expanding on that lost world and the magic of CG dinosaurs.
Thus Jurassic World evolves from such a genetic lineage as the fourth installment of the Jurassic Franchise. The plot is that the park is up and running and the wealthy with small children travel across the world to see live dinosaurs. There are ingenious kid-friendly dinosaur experiences like the triceratops petting zoo which made me laugh. Many a dig at the Disney's Amusement emporium. One wonders how the park supports so many side personnel to run the hibachi restaurants, copious gift stores, as well as custodians for the monolithic hotels connected by monorail. There should have been a side story about some cleaning person who tries to escape the chaos of pterosaurs when they descend upon the guests. (That scene also needed a flight of the Valkyries, but I digress) I want more moments of individual bravery, of course the ex-Navy marine will be tough as guts. But everyone else... meh. Otherwise, I can't figure out if these workers also live on the island or if they take the ferry to work every day. The theme park bureaucracy might be the real monster of the film.
No, that's a mistake, Capitalism is the obvious monster. It seeps deep into the fossilized bones of the plot. The move is self-aware that we all go to watch these films with the expectation that a dinosaur will break loose and kill people. The movie is about making a bigger, better, scarier dinosaur through genetic manipulation to attract new audiences. The movie itself hinges on computer graphics artists and focus groups making a bigger, better, scarier dinosaur through digital manipulation. We are the guests of Jurassic World. (On a side note I wonder how Michael Crichton would feel about the continued return to his techno-thriller world?)
The funny thing is that trans genetics of this scale requires more money than the park can generate. They need investors. So Verizon offers to fund the newly created "Indomitus Rex." One of the comic lackeys in the control room starts joking: "what's next, Doritosaurus?" Haha, product placement, the movie seems to sigh sarcastically. But then the monster escapes and everyone seems to be driving everywhere in Mercedes Benz SUVs. Every scene starts with a shot of a car pulling up to a research or containment building. The camera follows the chrome grill, un-bespeckled by Central American mud, and the famous inverted Y symbol shines in our eyes before diegesis continues. Jurassic World needed corporate investors to design it's overthetop dino romp.
I don't mean to be too negative. They needed the money to include both CG and robotic scenes. Yes Robots. It seems to be a badge of honor among the new age of directors to still employ robots in their movies. The common eye doesn't look for these transitions but the two obvious ones were a heart wrenching scene where an apatasaurus dies from blood loss after the frenzied Indomintus Rex slaughters everything in the large herbivore exhibit. The humans hold its head in their lap and the minute twitches and eye blinks where beautiful to behold.
In addition, the velociraptors have great moments of robotic animation. It turns out as a side project the ex-Navy guy is training them like dogs of war. They respond to his commands and he pets them to build affection. But they would still eat them. So they have special walls where the raptors stick in their dino-muzzles and hydraulics lock in their heads. Now just the snout and eyes show while the rest of the dinosaur is behind a steel wall. Really ingenious trickery to use a robot but not have to animate the whole beast. Again, the quiver of lips and flaring nostrils make the proto-birds more engaging than the humans.
When I dump on the human components, I specifically want to call out the railroading of character motivation. Each character archetype needs to exist: the optimistic CEO, the realistic second in command, the greedy pro-military shadow branch of the corporation, the teenage kids getting stuck in wild dinosaur situations, the evil scientist who says he's not evil but just following the money, and the non-scientist who treats dinosaurs like animals that deserve respect. Each of these need to exist to have a full Jurassic experience yet when they reveal themselves individually it is so mind-numbingly obvious who's going to get eaten and who will survive. The genetics of the screenplay feel exposed. These movies cannot escape the original heirloom summer blockbuster established by Spielberg.
In fact, to continue with the meta aspect of the movie, the film digs up its own fossils. As the kids run away from Indomitus rex in the restricted part of the island they run into the old park headquarters. That's right, they rebuild the set of the original movie and cover it with ivy and dust. The movie seems obsessed with discovering its own bones and understanding where it came from.
As you can see I don't quite have a grasp of the meta just yet. It seems too aware that the joke is sickening, but it keeps going and it gets fresh again, but then it gets sickening, but then in the final scene when the realize they need the T. Rex to fight Indomitus Rex the female protagonist runs to the cage entrance and lights a red flare. In that moment they summon the iconic moment in the first movie when the paleontologist guides the T. Rex away from the children in the jeep. That is true American movie bravery. That burning red flare carries so much history and emotion that millions who grew up in the 90s hold the scene dearly in their minds. I fell in love with movies yet again.
Appendix:
If there was ever a small amount of original satire, it is at a moment when the two leads find the smashed gyroball where the kids were last known before the monster tried to eat them. Around the broken glass and metal the woman finds a smashed samsung phone and starts to whimper that her nephews are dead. Then the male lead says, "look foot prints, they escaped." In the instant before, the woman assumed that no teenager would ever go anywhere without their phone and if it was left behind then he must be dead. That's commentary on the state of American youth.
Monday, June 15, 2015
Monday, June 17, 2013
The Legend of Hell House
I picked this British gem in the haunted house genre because Richard Matheson wrote the script. It was weird and dry. It was almost like Left 4 Dead, but in a house. and a ghost not zombies. It had tremendous atmosphere, taking place specifically before Christmas. It was a slow fun romp. Shots like the reflection of a tea kettle and furniture in the foreground were visually impressive. I enjoyed the architecture of the red bedroom, full of mirrors and sexual repression brought the house to life.
Indeed, the sexuality was everywhere. Breasts on statue after statue. Probably worth another viewing for anyone with a film and gender interests. All I know are that these two quotes made me laugh:
"The house is a giant battery"
"these walls are sheathed with lead"
Indeed, the sexuality was everywhere. Breasts on statue after statue. Probably worth another viewing for anyone with a film and gender interests. All I know are that these two quotes made me laugh:
"The house is a giant battery"
"these walls are sheathed with lead"
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
Wes Craven Double Review
Last semester, I went to a midnight screening of Wes Craven's Scream (1996). I then went to a talk with Wes Craven hosted by my school. Finally, last night I watched A Nightmare on Elmstreet. This double review will therefore include ideas from that talk and my thoughts on Wes Craven in general.
The first thing to know about Wes Craven is he did not plan on a film career. He read profusely as a child, a act that allowed him to escape the narrow thought of his Fundamentalist Baptist upbringing (an upbringing that forbid movies!). Made his way to college and continued to read and study literature. He got a job teaching history of Western Civilization at some small college in the North East. Western Civilization, that's the key. I notice that Wes Craven's horror includes an understanding of the most elemental components of Western narrative. A Nightmare on Elmestreet, as he explained, deals with the fundamental human experience of dreams. If your English class ever read Macbeth, your mind should be buzzing with the half memories of lectures about Macbeth upsetting the natural sanctity of sleep when he kills Duncan. Its no accident that during Nancy's nightmare at school, the teacher is also teaching Shakespeare. Wes Craven bursts with Western Canon.
In the talk, Craven mentioned his fascination with nightmares. What is the evolutionary purpose of the nightmare. He answer: we need the mental stage to cope with our fear. A place to explore our fears of death and our concern about evil that lurks at the fringes of rationality. Stories of evil are necessary in our society.
This brings us the evil core of Nightmare, Freddy Kruger. His creation in an amalgam of several ideas. His method of attack, through dreams, came from an article on a Cambodian child afraid of sleeping because of his war-torn nightmares. The dream is a space where we have no protection, no one can help us. He implement: a glove of knives, combines the primordial weapon of the knife with the dextrous hand. His costume: a sweater whose two colors cause the most amount of retinal stress. No need to hide in the shadows in a dream. With his ability to teleport, Freddy can be equally garish and nightmarish. The most important component though is that ultimately evil intention of wanting to hurt children. Wes Craven told us about his terror as a child looking out his window seeing a man, presumably drunk, staring back at him from the street. Young Wes pulled back from view, hid in his room. After an indescribable amount of time, he returned to the window, the man was still there. That is a man who wanted to terrorize an innocent child. That is evil.
Returning to the Craven's narrative structure. I've noticed the theme of sins. Sins of the parents in Last House on the Left to avenge the sins against their child. Sins of the parents being paid by the child for Nightmare. The parents killed a man, and that man will in turn kill their own children. Scream also has a similar narrative seed. The killer, Billy, wanted to make Sidney Prescott's mother pay for sleeping with his dad. That's my favorite part about Scream, cut through all the jokes, meta jokes, and meta-meta-jokes (nothing beats bugging the TV room with a camera and putting the couch of horror viewing onto the screen to then be watched by the audience) and there is still a damn good mystery and damn good characters.
Wes Craven's characters rock. Most horror, even some of my favorites, does not flesh out any characters, some will only invest in the protagonist. Craven makes everyone interesting. The mother of Nightmare has an amazing amount of suffering and problems that are tangent to the main story about her daughter but such character development is relevant to increasing the stakes by showing that these are all real people being terrorized by the supernatural.
Returning to the power of this terror, I love the frustration integral to horror. This frustration is more than just screaming at the idiots on the screen, "don't go in there!". The best employment of such frustration evokes a dread at our own helplessness. That moment when our muscles tense, "Oh shit", and yet we can't do anything. Fight or flight fails. We are biologically helpless, yet the evil is still going to get us. Nightmare is full of such dreaded helpless moments: bars on Nancy's house locking her inside with a killer ghoul, the boyfriend falling asleep... twice, and seeing the sheets tie themselves in a noose while the police doubt Nancy's warnings. The greatest emerges from the very nature of dreams. The lack of an explanation about the beginning of a dream, so beautifully described by DiCaprio in the link, is a genius way to begin a horror sequence. When I heard Nancy's phone ring after she unplugged it... goose bumps, heart rate, trembling shaking anxiety. Shit, we're already in a dream. Shit, shit, shit. He's going to get us.
That is horror.
I conclude with a beautiful quote from the Wes Craven talk. This should be every horror fans response to those who pompously say there is no reason to pay to be scared.
"We don't pay to be scared. We are already afraid before we go to the theater."
The first thing to know about Wes Craven is he did not plan on a film career. He read profusely as a child, a act that allowed him to escape the narrow thought of his Fundamentalist Baptist upbringing (an upbringing that forbid movies!). Made his way to college and continued to read and study literature. He got a job teaching history of Western Civilization at some small college in the North East. Western Civilization, that's the key. I notice that Wes Craven's horror includes an understanding of the most elemental components of Western narrative. A Nightmare on Elmestreet, as he explained, deals with the fundamental human experience of dreams. If your English class ever read Macbeth, your mind should be buzzing with the half memories of lectures about Macbeth upsetting the natural sanctity of sleep when he kills Duncan. Its no accident that during Nancy's nightmare at school, the teacher is also teaching Shakespeare. Wes Craven bursts with Western Canon.
In the talk, Craven mentioned his fascination with nightmares. What is the evolutionary purpose of the nightmare. He answer: we need the mental stage to cope with our fear. A place to explore our fears of death and our concern about evil that lurks at the fringes of rationality. Stories of evil are necessary in our society.
This brings us the evil core of Nightmare, Freddy Kruger. His creation in an amalgam of several ideas. His method of attack, through dreams, came from an article on a Cambodian child afraid of sleeping because of his war-torn nightmares. The dream is a space where we have no protection, no one can help us. He implement: a glove of knives, combines the primordial weapon of the knife with the dextrous hand. His costume: a sweater whose two colors cause the most amount of retinal stress. No need to hide in the shadows in a dream. With his ability to teleport, Freddy can be equally garish and nightmarish. The most important component though is that ultimately evil intention of wanting to hurt children. Wes Craven told us about his terror as a child looking out his window seeing a man, presumably drunk, staring back at him from the street. Young Wes pulled back from view, hid in his room. After an indescribable amount of time, he returned to the window, the man was still there. That is a man who wanted to terrorize an innocent child. That is evil.
Returning to the Craven's narrative structure. I've noticed the theme of sins. Sins of the parents in Last House on the Left to avenge the sins against their child. Sins of the parents being paid by the child for Nightmare. The parents killed a man, and that man will in turn kill their own children. Scream also has a similar narrative seed. The killer, Billy, wanted to make Sidney Prescott's mother pay for sleeping with his dad. That's my favorite part about Scream, cut through all the jokes, meta jokes, and meta-meta-jokes (nothing beats bugging the TV room with a camera and putting the couch of horror viewing onto the screen to then be watched by the audience) and there is still a damn good mystery and damn good characters.
Wes Craven's characters rock. Most horror, even some of my favorites, does not flesh out any characters, some will only invest in the protagonist. Craven makes everyone interesting. The mother of Nightmare has an amazing amount of suffering and problems that are tangent to the main story about her daughter but such character development is relevant to increasing the stakes by showing that these are all real people being terrorized by the supernatural.
Returning to the power of this terror, I love the frustration integral to horror. This frustration is more than just screaming at the idiots on the screen, "don't go in there!". The best employment of such frustration evokes a dread at our own helplessness. That moment when our muscles tense, "Oh shit", and yet we can't do anything. Fight or flight fails. We are biologically helpless, yet the evil is still going to get us. Nightmare is full of such dreaded helpless moments: bars on Nancy's house locking her inside with a killer ghoul, the boyfriend falling asleep... twice, and seeing the sheets tie themselves in a noose while the police doubt Nancy's warnings. The greatest emerges from the very nature of dreams. The lack of an explanation about the beginning of a dream, so beautifully described by DiCaprio in the link, is a genius way to begin a horror sequence. When I heard Nancy's phone ring after she unplugged it... goose bumps, heart rate, trembling shaking anxiety. Shit, we're already in a dream. Shit, shit, shit. He's going to get us.
That is horror.
I conclude with a beautiful quote from the Wes Craven talk. This should be every horror fans response to those who pompously say there is no reason to pay to be scared.
"We don't pay to be scared. We are already afraid before we go to the theater."
Greatest Puns
I've heard puns are the lowest form of humor. However, I believe in creativity and art as a circle. Anything that is "the lowest" or "the worst" is also dangerously close to going around and entering the ranks of brilliance and genius. Here is a list of puns I find amazing:
Visual Puns.
A head giving head. Herbert West- Reanimator
The mask of scream appearing in the reflection of the refrigerators in the ice cream aisle of a grocery store. Scream
Visual Puns.
A head giving head. Herbert West- Reanimator
The mask of scream appearing in the reflection of the refrigerators in the ice cream aisle of a grocery store. Scream
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Noroi, The Curse (2005)
What few essays I've read on horror, none have yet acknowledged the feeling of "creepy". Horror and terror are distinct but I need to better understand creepy. As a long and complex entry in J-horror, Noroi left me with a distinct chill about the silliest of symbols joined together in a demon resurrection film. Pigeons, ectoplasmic worms, child psychics, a village at the bottom of a dammed lake--Noroi has it all. Although it employs VHS tech for its atmosphere, it is not dependent on the technology for the dread it creates. Instead, Noroi is fascinating because it feels like such an ancient horror narrative that still leads the contemporary protagonists to frightening situations. Without attempting a long essay, that last sentence hints to my understanding of "creepy" as an effect in horror. Creepy is the doubt that makes an folk horror story real. A doubt that some magic has slipped through the cracks of science and reason. A doubt that the Kagutaba is out there.
Watch Noroi, one of my new favorites.
Saturday, January 12, 2013
Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things (1972)
So thanks to wikipedia, I learned the director of this movie, Bob Clark, also directed the wonderful early slasher, Black Christmas, who's actress, Olivia Hussey, played Juliet in "the good" film adaptation of R&J that the quirky drama teacher showed my class in middle school.
You may think I'm avoiding writing about CSPwDT. WAIT! That's a horrible acronym. Let's just call it Children. Wait, that's kind of creepy. In fact way creepier than this movie. Let's just call it the horrendously amateur zombie movie that has no action until the last ten minutes. And that folks, is the number one reason it should not be watched.
I have other, more minor flaws, that upset me. There were too many names in the title sequence. The electronic soundtrack felt like it was dripping. The lighting made many shots unclear. It's a shame though, because the screen play had promise. I jotted down some enjoyable phrases:
"clever girl"
"sanctum of satan"
"vibrations are powerful"
"what a perfect place for mass murder"
"It's like a great B movie"
"a fire a day keeps those ghosts away"
"I do have talent, when I have a good part... and get in character"
Those last few point to an attempt at horrality. But their delivery and placement did not make for enjoyable, ironic meta humor. It just made for a bunch of idiots copying night of the living dead-but making it stupid. Stupid, because of the man I dubbed Prospero, the charlatan who leads the "teens" to the haunted island. His lines were ridiculously intellectual and shakespearean. And the part when the ugly girl goes all "Yenta the matchmaker" and bugs out her eyes.
So much potential wasted.
You may think I'm avoiding writing about CSPwDT. WAIT! That's a horrible acronym. Let's just call it Children. Wait, that's kind of creepy. In fact way creepier than this movie. Let's just call it the horrendously amateur zombie movie that has no action until the last ten minutes. And that folks, is the number one reason it should not be watched.
I have other, more minor flaws, that upset me. There were too many names in the title sequence. The electronic soundtrack felt like it was dripping. The lighting made many shots unclear. It's a shame though, because the screen play had promise. I jotted down some enjoyable phrases:
"clever girl"
"sanctum of satan"
"vibrations are powerful"
"what a perfect place for mass murder"
"It's like a great B movie"
"a fire a day keeps those ghosts away"
"I do have talent, when I have a good part... and get in character"
Those last few point to an attempt at horrality. But their delivery and placement did not make for enjoyable, ironic meta humor. It just made for a bunch of idiots copying night of the living dead-but making it stupid. Stupid, because of the man I dubbed Prospero, the charlatan who leads the "teens" to the haunted island. His lines were ridiculously intellectual and shakespearean. And the part when the ugly girl goes all "Yenta the matchmaker" and bugs out her eyes.
So much potential wasted.
Friday, January 4, 2013
Trouble Every Day (2001)
Ah Claire Denis, I did not expect you to turn up on my list. I must of selected Trouble Every Day during random googling of phrases such as "unknown horror", "european horror", and "transgressive film". The plate of shrimp in this case is that my English professor showed us a film, Beau Travail, also directed by Denis (pronounced Deni) last month.
As such, I totally recognized her style and as soon as the Comic Sans title sequence ended (which I mentioned to a friend who joked "I would have turned it off") the film thrust an audience of one into a creeping tale of suppressed lust.
The striking element of Trouble Every Day is that as one who's been with the genre of horror for awhile, I totally knew its tropes. I knew the seductive femme fatale shown in the beginning was going to kill men after seducing them. I just knew that the American couple's honeymoon in France would not be hunky-dory. I just knew the two teens were going to unleash the femme fatale's dangerous lust. However, I did not know that it would take long shots of gritty French interiors and wordless character development that diverts from the established protagonists to follow the hotel maid to get to these conclusions. Denis rejects "horrality" in all its self aware glory by not letting the tropes propel the film. Instead, the camera's focused eye maintained a brutal grip on the narrative. The audience suffers unease while the camera lingers on places instead of gazing upon the actual horrific events.
Adding with the horror tropes, the "explanation" of the characters' vampirism/cannibalism/sexual bloodlust derives from a Resident Evil-like scientific experiment with rainforest plants containing hormones or some such biochemistry that changes humans. There were beautiful shots of stirring rods spinning in beakers and flasks being shaken on electric shakers. Mechanical repetition that contrasts with the organic irregularity of the characters' lifestyles.
Even though I identified these tropes, Denis refuses to completely align with them and demands the viewer make their own connections. The most powerful scenes are those with blood. Beautiful blood. Breathtaking crimson arabesque that leaps from shredded capillaries and paint the external world. These are scenes of pure transgression where the internal fluids become an external hue. As a result, the violence and the sex are the most concrete actions in the film. Trouble Every Day is a successful, artistic horror film because the reasons for the violence don't matter. The tropes don't make the film. The tropes are a product of showing me the true violent lust capable within a human being.
As such, I totally recognized her style and as soon as the Comic Sans title sequence ended (which I mentioned to a friend who joked "I would have turned it off") the film thrust an audience of one into a creeping tale of suppressed lust.
The striking element of Trouble Every Day is that as one who's been with the genre of horror for awhile, I totally knew its tropes. I knew the seductive femme fatale shown in the beginning was going to kill men after seducing them. I just knew that the American couple's honeymoon in France would not be hunky-dory. I just knew the two teens were going to unleash the femme fatale's dangerous lust. However, I did not know that it would take long shots of gritty French interiors and wordless character development that diverts from the established protagonists to follow the hotel maid to get to these conclusions. Denis rejects "horrality" in all its self aware glory by not letting the tropes propel the film. Instead, the camera's focused eye maintained a brutal grip on the narrative. The audience suffers unease while the camera lingers on places instead of gazing upon the actual horrific events.
Adding with the horror tropes, the "explanation" of the characters' vampirism/cannibalism/sexual bloodlust derives from a Resident Evil-like scientific experiment with rainforest plants containing hormones or some such biochemistry that changes humans. There were beautiful shots of stirring rods spinning in beakers and flasks being shaken on electric shakers. Mechanical repetition that contrasts with the organic irregularity of the characters' lifestyles.
Even though I identified these tropes, Denis refuses to completely align with them and demands the viewer make their own connections. The most powerful scenes are those with blood. Beautiful blood. Breathtaking crimson arabesque that leaps from shredded capillaries and paint the external world. These are scenes of pure transgression where the internal fluids become an external hue. As a result, the violence and the sex are the most concrete actions in the film. Trouble Every Day is a successful, artistic horror film because the reasons for the violence don't matter. The tropes don't make the film. The tropes are a product of showing me the true violent lust capable within a human being.
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