‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ Review: The Long-Awaited Queen Biopic Lacks a Kind of Magic

Queen is one of the classic bands that define what rock and roll is, so it comes with great disappointment not much is rock and roll about the big screen depiction of their journey, Bohemian Rhapsody. X-Men director Bryan Singer‘s movie is missing the inspiring, infectiously energetic, and high-spirited beauty of the band’s music. It’s an overly conventional biopic about an unconventional band — a group that saw themselves as misfits, and yet Singer treats them like almost every other rock band we’ve ever seen in a movie before.

After opening during the the lead up to the band’s breathtaking 1985 Live Aid performance, Anthony McCarten‘s script transitions to young Farrokh Bulsara aka Freddie Mercury (Rami Malek) working at Heathrow airport and living at home with a loving sister and mother and a disappointed father, who is not much more than a shallow stand in for conventional dreams and disenchantment over his son’s choices. Mercury’s family members, like his often frustrated and equally inventive band mates, are rarely given time to grow in scenes.

Most of Singer’s blockbuster work has never exactly been intimate, but even with a run-time of over two hours, he never digs deep enough into Mercury’s relationships with the men and women in his love life and his band including guitarist Brian May (Gwilym Lee), bassist John Deacon (Joseph Mazzello), and drummer Roger Taylor (Ben Taylor), who he meets one night out when he witnesses one of their performances. As fate would have it, the three musicians and songwriters meet Mercury immediately after they lose their lead sing to another band. Not long after their paths crossed and the four of them join forces, the group rapidly evolves into the almighty Queen and begin writing hits like “Another One Bites the Dust” and “Bohemian Rhapsody” and touring the world.

So much of the story is how one of the band members thought of a classic beat or song, and while that information is wonderful to read about, it’s more repetitive than cinematic in Bohemian Rhapsody. All the light bulb moments and flashes of inspiration — we all know where they’re going — aren’t very revealing scenes and don’t bring us significantly closer to the band. They tell us little beyond the initial spark of a song or only remind us of what great songs Queen produced, so these grand and inspiring moments of creativity in real life come off as routine biopic cliches in Bohemian Rhapsody.

There are few genuinely electric moments, mostly because Malek’s magnetic and often thrilling performance is a portrayal that never reeks of imitation. Capturing even a tiny spark of Freddie Mercury’s charisma would’ve been impressive, but it’s a real feat how much the Mr. Robot star does Mercury’s transfixing showmanship justice. When Mercury plays to a stadium crowd (or the world in the case of Live Aid), Malek makes the thundering applause and cheers feel earned and believable with his liveliness and energy. The actor elevates the depiction of Live Aid into something more than a beat-by-beat, CG-infested recreation of one of the most iconic live performances, which McCarten and Singer arguably treat as a disingenuous feel-good moment after Mercury has been diagnosed with HIV. (The concert took place in ’85, which was two years before Mercury was diagnosed, so Queen’s Live Aid performance is turned into something it was not.)

Even though Malek’s commitment is palpable in every scene, his authenticity is out of touch with the rest of the narrative, which focuses on one particularly redundant chapter of the Freddie Mercury story. That out-of-place story line is the parasitic assistant, Paul Prenter (Allen Leech), who poisons Mercury’s life and isolates him from his band mates and a woman Mercury loved, Mary Austin (Lucy Boynton). The whole evil assistant story line is right out of a ’90s thriller with an obsessive Prenter disrupting Mercury’s life with his toxic influence.

McCarten and Singer dedicate a disappointing amount of screen time to this man, and arguably give him more attention he doesn’t deserve. Is a conniving right-hand man really a major part of what defines Mercury’s far-too-short journey on this planet? Was Prenter that critical to his life story? More important than Mercury’s father, mother, and sister, who aren’t given half the amount of time screen time? True story or not, it’s an uninteresting character and subplot that doesn’t add much substance to the story of Queen and Freddie Mercury.

Singer, who was fired by 20th Century Fox with two weeks left of production and replaced by Dexter Fletcher (Eddie the Eagle), doesn’t get that sense of closeness to an artist like the most satisfying biopics tend to do. Now, there are a few sequences that do humanize the iconic front-man, like when Singer shows Mercury’s loneliness during a phone call between him and Mary, but the director’s perspective on Queen has a general coldness to it. The biopic is never as emotional as it should be, as lively as it should be, or as heartbreaking as it should be. Moments that should be devastating or inspiring aren’t. The band talks about how much they love each other, but on a deeper gut level, Singer never makes you feel it.

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Rebel Wilson in Trailer for Romantic Comedy Spoof 'Isn't It Romantic'

"I have to get a man to fall in love with me." Warner Bros has released a fun first trailer for a new comedy coming out on Valentine's Day next year titled Isn't It Romantic, from director Todd Strauss-Schulson (of The Final Girls). This twist on romantic comedies stars Rebel Wilson as a woman who wakes up inside a romantic comedy world, where she's the star of every classic romantic comedy and she can't escape. It's a bit like that film They Came Together from a few years ago, mixed with Groundhog's Day, in a way. The trailer is pretty damn good, and I have a feeling this might be something really unique. This trailer gives us a full introduction to the setup, but I'm still curious to see more. Isn't It Romantic also stars Liam Hemsworth, Adam Devine, Priyanka Chopra, and Betty Gilpin. Just watch the trailer below and get a look at this.

Here's the first official trailer for Todd Strauss-Schulson's Isn't It Romantic, direct from WB's YouTube:

New York City architect Natalie (Rebel Wilson) works hard to get noticed at her job but is more likely to be asked to deliver coffee and bagels than to design the city's next skyscraper. And if things weren't bad enough, Natalie, a lifelong cynic when it comes to love, has an encounter with a mugger that renders her unconscious, waking to discover that her life has suddenly become her worst nightmare—a romantic comedy—and she is the leading lady. Isn't It Romantic is directed by American filmmaker Todd Strauss-Schulson, director of the films Private High Musical, A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas, and The Final Girls previously. The screenplay is written by Erin Cardillo and Dana Fox & Katie Silberman; from a story by Erin Cardillo. Warner Bros will release Strauss-Schulson's Isn't It Romantic in theaters everywhere starting February 14th, 2019, on Valentine's Day, early next year. First impression? What do you think?

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Every ‘Simpsons’ ‘Treehouse of Horror’ Special Ranked

Everyone typically has their own Halloween season traditions. Some make candy apples, others carve pumpkins, and others watch scary movies. For my brother and I, it was watching the new Treehouse of Horror episode of The Simpsons once we were old enough to both handle and understand the content, while also spending time catching up on whatever Treehouse of Horror specials we weren’t yet born to see or were too young to watch at the time of their premiere. And throughout the years it’s been a great way to ring in the spooky month of fall.

The Simpsons “Treehouse of Horror” special has almost always been a thing for the show. It first premiered as episode three of Season 2 in October 1990. While other shows do Christmas specials or Thanksgiving episodes, The Simpsons does Halloween, and for the most part, it’s usually always lots of fun, blending creepy with funny in the best of ways.

Over the years, however, it’s become iconic and ingrained in our culture, as everything about The Simpsons is, and they’ve of course made countless parodies and references to classic books, TV shows, and films of or within the horror genre. Everything from The Twilight Zone to The Shining to Attack of the 50 Foot Woman to Coraline has been spoofed on a Treehouse of Horror bit. There was even one special year for Season 25 when Guillermo del Toro directed the opening, and incorporated at least 26 horror references into one three minute segment. So The Simpsons aren’t playing around when it comes to pulling in every bit of horror, sci-fi, fantasy, and just outright creepy element of story they can use for their Treehouse of Horror episodes.

While the special has become a key part of pop culture now, though, it was probably a little shocking for audiences when it first started. After all, The Simpsons have always been a little edgy with their jokes and references, even if a lot of it is pretty tame in comparison to many other adult animated programs today. But during a Treehouse of Horror episode, they pull no punches in terms of making the show scarier. There’s lots of gore, death, and some pretty eerie images that could frighten an audience, especially a younger audience.

At the beginning of the first few Treehouse of Horror episodes, Marge would come out at the beginning to address and warn the audience ahead of time. Eventually, these alerts from Marge went away, but they still make sure to make each opening distinct enough to where it’s clear from the get-go that this isn’t your average Simpsons episode, typically making it as bloody as possible. And even though there have been some non-frightening episodes among the bunch, that number is equally matched if not outnumbered by ones that can make your skin crawl while you’re having a good laugh.

This year marked the 29th Treehouse of Horror episode in Season 30. Every episode reliably has two things: three different stories and an appearance from Kang and Kodos. Sometimes episodes knock it out of the park with all three bits and other times only one if any stands out from the bunch. All I know is that they’re probably pretty difficult to put together, cramming three different beginnings, middles, and ends into one 22-minute show. Even the worst Treehouse of Horror is still a pretty admirable feat. So here they all are, ranked for your Halloween enjoyment.

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29. Treehouse of Horror IX (Season 10, October 29, 1998)

Picking an episode to go at the very bottom of a ranking isn’t the easiest to do, but this episode just doesn’t really cut it for a Treehouse of Horror special. The segments are weak and nowhere near as funny as so many others. After Snake is executed, Homer gets his toupee and then is possessed by Snake so that he can get revenge on his enemies even in the afterlife. Bart and Lisa are stuck in an Itchy and Scratchy cartoon where Itchy and Scratchy try to kill them. And Maggie is actually the product of Marge and Kang? On their premises alone they sound interesting, but their execution is pretty unmemorable.

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28. Treehouse of Horror XXI (Season 22, November 7, 2010)

Sometimes the openings on these episodes are more fun than the rest. Deciding to parody The Office’s opening is an interesting choice for introducing a Treehouse of Horror special, but it works really well. Not at all scary, but still a cool and different opening. That said, the episode itself falls flat. One tale plays into the Twilight craze of the time with Lisa crushing on a vampire, and it’s fine. Other than that, there’s not much going for it.

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27. Treehouse of Horror XXII (Season 23, October 30, 2011)

This episode is all around strange, but it borders being good and just okay. There are some cool premises in it that just don’t really live up to what they’re trying to do. Sure it’s funny to see Homer become his own version of Spider-Man and communicate through farts, but it’s not really doing much else. The other two tales are a little better, where Ned becomes a serial killer and Bart travels to an alien planet, but I’m just not a fan.

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26. Treehouse of Horror XIII (Season 14, November 3, 2002)

What begins pretty strong with a really great tale about multiple Homers becomes a little incoherent. Homer’s hammock continues to duplicate him, leading him to think he can use all of the Homers to do his different chores and responsibilities. Things get chaotic, however, which leads to the town deciding to get rid of the Homers by enticing them with donuts so that they jump over a cliff, which ends up attracting the real Homer to his death. It’s great. But the second tale engages in a bit of a messy and mixed message. After realizing the tragedies that can be caused by gun violence, Lisa bans guns totally, which then ends up causes more problems for the town when old outlaw gunslingers like Billy the Kid pop back up. And while “Hibberts Island” is an interesting and strange story, for the most part, it’s forgettable.

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25. Treehouse of Horror XXVIIII (Season 30, October 21, 2018)

This most recent Treehouse of Horror episode is interesting because surprisingly, it’s the first of the specials to use a Jurassic Park premise. It seems that Mr. Burns would have wanted to cash in on “Geriatric Park” long ago. This tale definitely stands out amongst all the rest in the episode and is really fun because, of course, dinosaurs. But a retirement place where old people turn into dinosaurs? Now, that’s definitely a Treehouse of Horror.

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The Subversive Horror of ‘The Vanishing’

If ever any month was made for horror movies, it’s October. Building up to Halloween, there’s a whole month’s worth of movie-watching to fill, whether with hallowed favourites, creepy new additions to the genre or the perennial raft of spooky remakes and sequels that hits during the month.

Yearly rituals are always in need of new blood, however, making October a prime month for unearthing forgotten frights from cinematic history. Dutch director George Sluizer’s 1988 movie The Vanishing (or Spoorloos) is one such under-remembered masterpiece of horror filmmaking. Released thirty years ago this year, The Vanishing’s memory has perhaps been blighted by the wholly inferior American remake that Sluizer himself directed in 1993, which was sapped of all its original potency by Hollywood’s demand for a happy ending. Widely regarded to have one of the scariest endings in cinematic history – Stanley Kubrick said it was the most terrifying film he’d ever seen – the original Vanishing is a horror film with a difference. Entirely free of the sensationalism that was then (and is now) a stock feature of most horror films, The Vanishing tells the story of one woman’s strange disappearance and the consuming effect that mystery has on her bereft partner in strikingly clinical tones that make both villains and victims of the audience.

Young Dutch couple Saskia (Johanna Ter Steege) and Rex (Gene Bervoets) are taking a road trip to their vacation spot in France when, after stopping to stretch their legs at a highway rest stop, Saskia vanishes. Her disappearance is so swift and leaves so few clues that Rex is initially more dumbfounded than he is scared. That effect persists three years later, as Rex lives in perpetual pursuit of any morsel of information that will shed light on Saskia’s disappearance to the detriment of his new relationship: he plasters posters bearing her image everywhere, travels back and forth to France to hunt for clues, and fronts TV appeals assuring her kidnapper that his need to know what happened to Saskia is greater than his need for revenge; the truth is all he asks.

Where The Vanishing marks itself out is in its readiness to share most of that truth with its audience from the outset. Even before Saskia goes missing, we’re introduced to her kidnapper, a mild-mannered French family man named Raymond (Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu). We see him as he spies the couple at the rest stop, strapping his arm into a fake sling; later, we flash back to learn that he feigns this injury to make his unsuspecting young female victims soft with sympathy for him. Sluizer also shows us Raymond meticulously practising his means of abduction, timing himself as he rehearses his lines, pressing chloroform-soaked handkerchiefs to his own face, and measuring his heart rate once the deed is done. Barely a third of the way into The Vanishing, Sluizer has answered for us the central question of stories like this: whodunit?

What he withholds is the why and the how. Rex gives us the answer to the former himself, satisfying for us the other essential hunger we have when watching films like this: the need to make sense of the psychology of killers.

Raymond himself is not entirely interesting, a fact Sluizer’s detached style of filmmaking accentuates: the scenes in which he rehearses his tactics, for example, are shot in such a matter-of-fact tone that his constant line fluffing becomes more farcical than it does frightening. But Sluizer gives this rather banal villain an edge in a flash back to his childhood. Without spoiling the specifics, they reveal a mind consumed not by homicidal rage but by an obstinate attitude towards destiny; a tenacious commitment to doing whatever it is that he believes he has been predestined not to. There is a quasi-logic to his argument here that makes it more terrifying than most other twisted rationales murderous characters offer up.

That certainly makes Raymond an intriguing psychological case study, but the most effective of director Sluizer’s weapons lies in arousing in his audience an increasingly urgent curiosity as to the how of Saskia’s disappearance. We know who, we know why, but – aside from the inkling the chloroform montage gives us – we don’t know exactly what happened when she left Rex to buy them both a drink. That ignorance is the first that we share with Rex, who, three years on from his girlfriend’s kidnapping, is willing to do anything to learn the truth.

Rex’s curiosity is put to the ultimate test when Raymond, moved by Rex’s TV appeal, agrees to reveal all on one condition: Rex must learn what happened to Saskia by going through the same experience she did. Rex’s readiness to give in to that ultimatum is understandable, given his desperation; for the last three years, he’s been haunted by the ghost of what happened that day, and this is his only chance to exorcise those demons.

What’s more remarkable, however, is that Sluizer makes us, the audience, contradict our own natural sympathies with Rex by willing him on in this incredibly risky gamble. Part of what makes so many horror movies engaging is that they turn us into active participants; wise, wary counsels who sense every danger and know just how to conquer them. Who can watch Psycho, for example, without feeling the salvational urge to reach through the screen and convince Marion Crane to pick another — any other — motel? In The Vanishing, Sluizer intelligently reorients the horror so that, because we’re in the dark with Rex, we make the irrational choice in spite of our own premonitions. He whets our appetite for revelation with the who and the why, but these are mere teasers; hooks to get us hungry for the last of Raymond’s secrets. Just like it does for Rex, sating that curiosity becomes paramount for us, and we’re ready to defy our better impulses to slake that thirst.

Sluizer, who achieved little commercial success after this film, deserves much of the credit for this feat of audience manipulation. His direction adds layers and mood where other filmmakers may have let the film run on the fumes of the plot’s innate intrigue. Much of the movie’s intelligence becomes apparent on re-watching – Sluizer leaves clues for us everywhere – but there are moments that stand out even on first view; Sluizer’s choice to keep Raymond visible, but always out of focus, in the background of one of Rex’s many returns to France, months before he knows Raymond’s identity, is one. It’s difficult to purge your brain of the abject panic induced by The Vanishing’s tunnel scene, too, the total darkness of which has us lose our bearings in time and space (and not for the only time; when we’re plunged into darkness again, Bervoets’ performance becomes a bare bulb of brilliance illuminating us in our shared guilt).

There are further touches of the surreal – such as the moment Rex’s extremely ‘80s computer manifests his persisting obsession with Saskia – but The Vanishing’s commitment to realism is what leaves the biggest impression. Donnadieu all but embodies the banality of evil, while Ter Steege’s charisma is so natural you question why she didn’t go on to bigger things (although she very nearly did, having been cast as the lead in Kubrick’s cancelled Wartime Lies). And by some miracle, Sluizer makes even the dullest of locations — a road tunnel, a highway rest stop — evocative venues for terror. Perhaps they work so well in this respect because they’re transitory in nature; places we should only pass through, never stay, lest we tempt fate. It would spoil the film’s magic to delve too deep into its ending, but suffice it to say that The Vanishing wants us to believe that curiosity works the same way.

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Why Horror Matters

“The cinema was made for horror films. No other kind of film offers that same mysterious anticipation as you head into a darkened auditorium. No other makes such powerful use of sound and image. The cinema is where we come to share a collective dream and horror films are the most dream-like of all. Perhaps because they engage with our nightmares. ” – Mark Gatiss

In November of 2017, I visited the Museum of Pop Culture (MoPOP)  in Seattle. Not knowing anything about MoPOP ahead of time, I felt delighted and genuinely surprised by everything I encountered. I walked through an insightful section about independent developers and video games with live demos, spent a fair amount of time in a remarkable exhibit about Jim Henson‘s career that included real Muppet fur on the walls (it’s softer than you’d think), and couldn’t help but do several laps around a wonderful David Bowie exhibit that featured rare photos of the rock star by Mick Pop. I took a break and eyed the brochure. A certain exhibit piqued my interest: “Scared to Death: The Thrill of Horror Film.” I rushed over and found myself descending a creepy stairwell and into the heart of an incredible collection of horror props and history. I felt at home. Seeing all of the different people of all ages wander around the exhibit re-affirmed what I knew all along: HORROR MATTERS.

Fast-forward to October of 2018, my copy of the new Fangoria reached my mailbox. I took the issue out, flipped through it, and couldn’t help but feel like I did exploring MoPOP’s horror exhibit. I adore everything about the new Fangoria from the beautiful design work and magazine stock that feels like a trade paperback to the thought-provoking essays and insightful interviews. Longtime scribe for the original Fangoria, Michael Gingold, penned a new essay for the Fall 2018 issue called, “IT IS A HORROR FILM.” It’s a lovely reflection of the genre and Fangoria magazine, the “is it or is it not a horror movie?” debate, and how things have changed in some ways and stayed the same in other ways. It brought me back to my early years with the genre.

Horror has faced aspersions time after time. In being on the fringe of pop culture, the genre has had the space to do bold things. To be transgressive. To leave an indelible mark on the medium of film. This isn’t to say every horror movie is inherently great, but it most assuredly has the potential for potency. The genre is a platform for poignant stories that tap into a primal part of us. Horror movies can be exhilarating and boast rich subtext. Some more so than others and that’s okay. There are different subgenres and kinds of horror movies. This hasn’t stopped people from dismissing the entire genre, much like people dismissed science-fiction movies during the genre’s nascence.

This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t talk about the flaws of the work within the genre—including problematic things—for having a dialogue is how we can be mindful and do better. Essays upon essays have and will be written about this topic. Engaging with the genre instead of dismissing it entirely is important. My mother forbade me from having anything to do with horror when I was a child. She had her own preconceptions about the genre, perhaps due to the sociopolitical climate at the time, the negative reputation of horror that spawned from the onslaught of the slasher subgenre, and her own fears. This didn’t stop me from feeling drawn to horror. It primed my imagination, scared the living hell out of me, helped me process traumatic parts of my life, and thrilled me in a way that felt entirely different from other genres.

My earliest memories with horror were surreptitiously reading pages of Stephen King‘s Pet Semetary in the library, watching bits and pieces of the IT mini-series on ABC, and looking at all the VHS covers for horror movies at video shops. I had to make do with my imagination and accounts from people who were familiar with these things. Long before I had watched The Exorcist (1973) for the first time on DVD, I had seen the VHS cover of it countless times, as well as glimpsed bits of it on a nearby drive-in screen during a re-release of it. My mother eventually changed her mind about horror and later watched them with me. I dove headfirst into the classics—often with my grandma who loves movies and the genre—while trying to keep up with the new releases. I worked at a movie theater as a teenager which was next to a home video store, and I’d take recommendations from co-workers and pick up used horror DVDs to watch and later discuss with them. My love for it hasn’t waned.

At its core, horror is about fear. Survival is innate to us. Programmed into our autonomic nervous system are two responses: the sympathetic (“fight or flight” response) and parasympathetic systems (“rest or digest” response). Think of them as a “balancing act” to either amp us up or relax us with physiological changes in the brain and body. It’s a survival mechanism. This along with our brains placing a greater emphasis on narratives with emotional resonance are why horror is thrilling, memorable, and has prevailed for so long. We live in a world that has beautiful AND horrific things. There are acts of compassion and grisly acts of violence. There is life and there is death. There is what we know and what we don’t know. The unknowable is terrifying and at the heart of what we fear.

Horror is a fertile ground for stories that can take us to dark and dangerous places without actually being dangerous. Universal’s classic movie monsters brought horror literature from the page to a medium in its nascence. Frankenstein (1931), The Invisible Man (1933), and The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) are fascinating explorations of mortality and the downfall of egotistical men toying with things beyond their understanding. Psycho (1960), Black Christmas (1974), and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) were what set the stage for Halloween (1978), which in turn led to Friday the 13th (1980), A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), Child’s Play (1988), and Scream (1996). I don’t have the space to name every slasher horror movie, but those I’ve mentioned all have different approaches. Then there is, of course, the spate of horror films from Hammer Film Productions in London throughout the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. At Hammer’s peak, they made vibrant, gothic horror movies that pushed content boundaries with the well-oiled machine that was the production studio and lean budgets. Guillermo del Toro’s Crimson Peak (2015) is a beautiful tribute to the gothic atmosphere of those Hammer films.

Horror can explore difficult or even unspeakable subjects and give the audience a greater understanding through metaphorical imagery and the visceral nature of the genre. Rod Serling left the guaranteed screenwriting work inside the movie studio system and put up his own money for The Twilight Zone (1959) television series. Serling wanted to write stories with sociopolitical messages, and his work was stymied over and over by the network sponsors’ demands. In creating an anthology show that billed itself as “science-fiction,” but really felt like the nexus of the former and “horror,” Serling was able to write stories with biting social commentary. The reputation of the genre gave The Twilight Zone a facade to subvert viewers’ expectations and escape the censors. George A. Romero pushed the genre further with Night of the Living Dead (1968), Dawn of the Dead (1978), and Day of the Dead (1985) — all movies with an incisive social commentary, and boundary-pushing gore and thrills. Get Out (2017) masterfully uses horror by subverting the supernatural/possession subgenre and creating a powerful story about race in America. The Twilight Zone (2019) revival series in good hands with Jordan Peele at the helm.

Horror feels like the direct descendant of fairy tales, folklore, and the like; they’re stories we told to run each other through the gamut of emotions. John Bloom in his detailed essay published in the Texas Monthly about the making of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre cites professor and critic Mikita Brottman‘s analysis of the movie as an “inversion” of the fairy tale with parallels to Hansel and Gretel. “In this fairy tale there is only evil: the good that exists is either defeated, annihilated, or driven away.” Guillermo del Toro’s Cronos (1993), The Devil’s Backbone (2001), Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), and The Shape of Water (2017) are beautiful and haunting fairy tales framed through a lens of modern sensibilities. I love that Scream (1996), Shaun of the Dead (2004), Juan of the Dead (2012), Cabin in the Woods (2012), and What We Do in the Shadows (2015) all exist together as earnest subversions of the genre made with the utmost love for it.

Horror movies don’t happen in a bubble. Ask any horror filmmaker to name their favorite horror films, and they’ll rattle off not just a bunch of horror movies but also a bunch of movies. That’s the magic of storytelling. If you love a medium, you may be partial to certain genres or subgenres, but you can love more than one kind of thing. The beauty of horror movies is that there are different spectrums they fall under. You have bigger and smaller movies, artistic and mainstream films, and stories that intersect with other genres such as comedy and science-fiction. There’s an undeniable visceral quality to the genre. If done right, the catharsis is palpable. You can appreciate the artistry of the visual effects, the energy of the performers, and the craft of the editing and sound design. The story, characters, and themes can be simple and surface-level, but they can also carry multiple dimensions. There’s room for nuance. This isn’t relegated to just horror or the medium of film, but every genre and every form of storytelling.

During the process of writing this piece, I came to the understanding that fear is relative to each of us and how we FEEL about something is more important in a medium than necessarily how we UNDERSTAND it. I’m most assuredly not alone in my experience with the genre of horror. Each of us has a story to tell about our relationship with it. For this piece, I reached out to writers whose work I like a great deal and asked them how they would define “horror.”

Here are the great contributions I received:

“Horror, for me, is about sedition: an active (often gleeful) irreverence for givens about our world, bodies, and values. Horror picks at sanctified safety blankets like ‘organs stay on the inside’ and ‘it’s wrong to eat people’ and makes us watch. There is discomfort here but there is also joy. Joy and relief at confronting the disturbance of hallowed ground and coming out the other side in one piece. Mostly.” – Meg Shields

“At the bottom of it all, fear and revulsion are among the most common human experiences. They are certainly the first emotions we feel when we’re brought into this world, and to a lesser extent, we encounter them every day. Horror brings out the animal in all of us, and it not only reminds us of what we fear, it inevitably makes us ask ourselves why we fear it. These fears are not always specifically about death and decay, though those are obviously huge parts of horror, but also social mores and taboos. I think the best works in the horror genre elicit strong physical and emotional responses that may not make sense on an intellectual level until much later. But the gut level is where the intellectual work begins.” – Kate Blair

“For me, the best horror strikes straight to a dark, thrilling place in my heart, a sort of cozy scariness, both a safe and unsafe place that reminds me of hiding behind the couch while my big cousin watched A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, or staying up late to watch POLTERGEIST on the TV after my parents went to sleep, eating peanut butter straight out of the jar. It feels old and new in that way, hitting both the nostalgic and adventurous parts of my brain. Great horror always makes me feel 8 years old again, like I’m getting away with watching something I shouldn’t be watching, and I love that feeling.” – Meredith Borders

What I love about all of these responses is that each one is different but all stem back from one thing: WHY HORROR MATTERS. John Carpenter‘s In the Mouth of Madness (1995) feels like a reflection of horror and us grappling with our fears through it. The scene in which John Trent (Sam Neill) walks over to the portal torn through Sutter Cane (Jürgen Prochnow) and can’t help but stare at the horrors in the abyss encapsulates why we watch horror movies. The genre matters because it’s persisted not just in the medium of film, but in storytelling as a whole. Fear is a primal part of us. It’s a necessary part of our being. We can’t help but stare at the abyss as we reconcile the horrors of the world around us. Horror can have downbeat endings. Characters can have a pyrrhic victory or perhaps no victory at all. Our own lives are complicated and horror embraces this truth.

Jennifer Kent, Bong Joon-ho, Panos Cosmatos, Karyn Kusama, Jordan Peele, Robert Eggers, Guillermo del Toro, Julia Ducournau, Mike Flanagan, Ari Aster, and Yeon Sang-ho are just a small selection of the filmmakers doing amazing things in the genre today.

It’s been a hell of a journey so far with horror, and the exciting thing is that I still have plenty of movies to watch—both old and new. I can’t wait to see what’s next.

The post Why Horror Matters appeared first on Film School Rejects.

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First Trailer for Noir Thriller 'Hospitality' Starring Emmanuelle Chriqui

"The less fortunate you are, the more desperate you are…" Kandoo Releasing has debuted the official trailer for an indie crime thriller titled Hospitality, the latest film by directors Nick Chakwin & David Guglielmos (No Way to Live). The story is about a former prostitute named Donna who has turned her brothel into a legitimate bed and breakfast, moving on from her old life. But troubles come around when an ex-con arrives to collect what he has been hiding in the place. Of course, he's not the only one looking for it. Emmanuelle Chriqui stars as Donna, with a small cast including Conner McVicker, Sam Trammell, JR Bourne, and Jim Beaver. This looks like a sneaky, noir thriller with some interesting twists and turns. Take a look.

Here's the official trailer (+ poster) for Nick Chakwin & David Guglielmos Hospitality, from YouTube:

Former prostitute Donna (Emmanuelle Chriqui) turned her brothel into a legitimate bed and breakfast, following the birth of her cognitively deficit son Jimmy (Conner McVicker). Trouble comes knocking when ex-con Cam (Sam Trammell) arrives to collect what he’s been hiding there for the past two decades. As it turns out, he’s not the only one looking for it. In a brutal fight for survival, Donna must protect Jimmy and her home from a crooked cop (JR Bourne) and a thug (Jim Beaver). Hospitality is co-directed and co-written by filmmakers Nick Chakwin & David Guglielmo, both of whom directed the film No Way to Live together previously; this is their second feature. It hasn't premiered at any film festivals before. Kandoo will release Hospitality in select theaters + on VOD starting December 7th this year. Anyone interested?

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Rushes. Elaine May Returns, 2-Minute Trailer for 14-Hour Film, Louis Cha

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.

NEWS

Louis Cha, 1924 - 2018

• Louis Cha, widely regarded as the most influential Chinese martial arts novelist of the 20th century, has died at the age of 94. Notably, several of Cha's best-selling wuxia novels—written under the pen name Jin Yong—have been adapted into films, including King Hu's The Swordsman and Wong Kar-wai's Ashes of Time.  
• Parasite, Bong Joon-ho's follow-up to Okja, has finished shooting ahead of its 2019 release. Bong has stated that "despite the title, the film does not include either parasites or alien creatures," though these stills certainly point to creeping tensions.

Here is a first look at Bong Joon-ho’s PARASITE starring Song Kang-ho, Lee Sun-kyun, Cho Yeo-jeong, Choi Woo-sik & Park So-dam that wrapped last month!!  #기생충 pic.twitter.com/C9jjkjoWhK

— Jason Bechervaise (@Jasebechervaise) October 23, 2018 

• We're naturally saddened to hear that the Wachowski sisters have closed their production offices, with Lana Wachowski reportedly suggesting that she had "accomplished everything she wanted to do [with cinema]." Few filmmakers can arrive at this resolution in their careers, thus we can't help but wish the Wachowski's the very best.

RECOMMENDED VIEWING

• An icy, edgy trailer for Brady Corbet's Vox Lux, starring Natalie Portman. From our coverage of the Venice Film Festival, Leonardo Goi described the film as "a merciless autopsy of a bulimic society and its inability to process success and horror."

• Mariano Llinás' 14-hour epic of spy games and storytelling gets its first sweeping trailer. Here's our review of this wondrous film.

• The latest comedic vision from the Romanian New Wave will soon hit U.S. theaters—here's the delightful trailer for Corneliu Porumboiu's Infinite Football.

 

• New Hollywood auteur Monte Hellman directed this short documentary on Francis Ford Coppola, who appears to be in the middle of production on his 1981 opus One from the Heart at the time. The director eloquently speaks on the future of cinema, art, and love.

• We love this magical livestream of a train ride through the Norwegian mountainside, not only for its relaxing effect, but also because it feels like a technological extension of the sensorial effective of the Lumière brothers' 1896 Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat.

RECOMMENDED READING

Natalie Portman in Vox Lux.

• Also for Vanity Fair, writer Durga Chew-Bose pens a keen profile of Natalie Portman, and the personal and political changes that have occurred throughout her career, including her involvement in #MeToo and Time's Up.
• The Brooklyn Academy of Music is now showing a number of postwar Japanese horror films for Ghosts and Monsters: Postwar Japanese Horror. For Vulture, Bilge Ebiri has provided a primer for the series, and the distinct dimensions of Japanese horror, which is "based less on surface scares and more on mood and moral complexity."
• Continuing the October 31st celebrations in the form of film criticism, there's Mike Thorn and Nathan Smith discussing the complex view of Evil in Rob Zombie's maligned revisions of John Carpenter's Halloween, and elsewhere the Graveyard Shift Sisters consider the treatment of class and race in Wes Craven's underestimated The People Underneath the Stairs.

Elaine May by Brigitte Lacombe

• For the first time in 50 years, Elaine May returns to Broadway in Kenneth Lonergan's The Waverly Gallery. Vanity Fair's K. Austin Collins reviews the "righteously historic occasion, [...] a poignant, agonized, but also warm, funny, generous turn—in other words, a perfect Elaine May vehicle."
• Surveying 209 critics from around the world, the BBC has provided a list of the "100 greatest foreign language films," or films in a language other than English. Notably, the roster only includes four films directed by women, and a quarter of its titles are from East Asia. You can find a catalog of individual submissions here.
• For her column Phantom Light, Film Comment's Imogen Sara Smith pairs Karpo Godina's satirical jazz film Red Boogie and Paweł Pawlikowski’s musical Cold War: "Both use a patchwork of different musical styles to evoke the turbulent historical currents their characters must navigate."

RECENTLY ON THE NOTEBOOK

• Artist Ben Rivers and Tom Emerson discuss their new film Trees Down Here, a collaborative effort about the natural history of Cowan Court, Churchill College Cambridge.
• Following the premiere of Monrovia, Indiana at the Venice Film Festival, Frederick Wiseman sat down with Annabel Brady-Brown for an interview regarding his approach to the American Midwest, and the "ghost of politics [hovering] over the film."
• Evan Morgan reviews Vetrimaaran's Vada Chennai, and its depiction of oscillating movements of underworld power in a Chennai neighborhood.

EXTRAS AND RE-DISCOVERIES

• Jamie Lee Curtis upends the press junket interview format for an impromptu reading of a moving, prescient Steinbeck passage:

Jamie Lee Curtis (@jamieleecurtis) treated @jdrrr to a reading of her favourite literary passage, taken from John Steinbeck's classic novel East of Eden. pic.twitter.com/BdK9dq1T9a

— ABC Arts (@ABCArts) October 25, 2018

 

 

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'People's Republic of Desire' Doc Trailer About Live-Streaming in China

"Where did he get all that money?" You don't want to know the answer. An official trailer has debuted for a documentary from China titled People's Republic of Desire, all about the live-streaming phenomenon that has taken over the country. This doc film won the Grand Jury Award for Best Documentary Feature at the SXSW Film Festival this year, anda lso the Grand Jury Award for International Documentary at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival. Made by documentary filmmaker Hao Wu, the film follows three young characters – a singer, a comedian, and a migrant worker – as they search for fame, fortune and real human connection in live streaming. There's an immense amount of fame and fortune in the live-streaming world, and this film looks at both the good and the bad. It seems to be a scary cautionary tale of how self-absorbed society has become, and how superficial everyone (and everything) is in this hyper-connected, internet era.

Here's the trailer (+ poster) for Hao Wu's doc People's Republic of Desire, from Indiewire's YouTube:

As an entire generation has come of age on social media, virtual relationships are slowly replacing real-life human connections. And China has taken it to an extreme. Here, live streaming has become the most popular online entertainment for hundreds of millions. People's Republic of Desire provides a vérité journey into this digital universe, where young performers earn as much as US$150,000 a month singing, dancing or doing talk shows to live, interactive audiences of tens of thousands. Their fans include China's super rich, who each night lavish virtual gifts on their favorite performers (40% of the money paid for these gifts go to the performers), and the dirt poor, many of them migrant workers in urban areas of the country searching for a cheap way to be entertained, and to feel connected. People's Republic of Desire is directed by Chinese filmmaker Hao Wu, of the docs Beijing or Bust and The Road to Fame previously. This premiered at the SXSW Film Festival earlier this year, and next plays at DOC NYC coming up soon. People's Republic of Desire will be released in select US theaters starting November 30th this fall. Who's curious?

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Watch: Incredible 2-Minute Horror Short 'Salt' Directed by Rob Savage

"You'll be safe - just stay inside the circle." We've saved the best for last…! After posting a bunch of horror shorts throughout October, one of the best shorts has debuted online just in time for Halloween. Salt is the latest horror short made by filmmaker Rob Savage, with his writing partner Jed Shepherd. The two last made the highly successful Dawn of the Deaf, a zombie movie told entirely in sign language. Salt is a two-minute horror short about a mother protecting her sick daughter - using a ring of salt. Starring Alice Lowe, Beau Gadson, and James Swanton. It's incredible how much they pull off in two minutes, with all of the elements (concept, production design, cinematography) working in harmony to make this instantly iconic.

Thanks to everyone on Twitter for the tip on this one. Short description from Vimeo: "A demonic presence closes in on a mother and her sick daughter. Their only protection - a ring of Salt." Salt is directed by up-and-coming filmmaker Rob Savage - follow him on Twitter @DirRobSavage. You can find more of his work on his Vimeo. The screenplay is by Jed Shepherd & Rob Savage; with cinematography by Sam Heasman, and music composed by Patrick Jonsson. Produced by Douglas Cox. Savage explained to Source Creative that: "I like to drop an audience into a scenario as late as possible and leave them with their imaginations fired up." For behind-the-scenes, visit Jed's Instagram. For more info, head to Vimeo. To see more shorts, click here.

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Trailer for Documentary 'The Last Animals' Fights to Save The Animals

"Extinction happens in front of our eyes." Save the animals! They are important, too. An official trailer has debuted for the documentary The Last Animals, the feature directorial debut of renown photojournalist Kate Brooks. The Last Animals follows the conservationists, scientists and activists battling poachers and criminal networks to save elephants and rhinos from the edge of extinction. It's a film about how important it is to fight back, to organize systems of defense and to mobilize people in order to save the animals that are threatened by ever-greedy humans who want them dead for their own gain. This is similar to the other doc The Ivory Game about elephant poaching, and just as powerful. These films are so important and show how incredibly passionate people are fighting to save what truly matters, even putting their own lives on the line.

Here's the first official trailer (+ poster) for Kate Brooks' documentary The Last Animals, from YouTube:

In this feature length documentary, conflict photographer Kate Brooks turns her lens from the war zones she is used to covering all over the world to a new kind of genocide: the organized, industrial scale killing of African elephants and rhinos and the extraordinary people who go to incredible lengths to protect them from poachers and criminal cartels. The Last Animals is directed by American photographer / filmmaker Kate Brooks, making her feature directorial debut with this film. This first premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival last year, and also played numerous film festivals through out 2017. It won the Impact Award at the Wildscreen Festival 2018. The Last Animals opens in the UK this fall, and will release in the US in spring 2019. Stay tuned for any updates. For more, visit the doc's official website. Who really wants to watch this?

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New Trailer for Lars von Trier's Demented 'The House That Jack Built'

"If you feel like screaming, I definitely think you should." IFC Films has unveiled their full official US trailer for Lars von Trier's controversial, demented serial killer film The House That Jack Built, which first premiered at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year. The film stars Matt Dillon as the titular Jack, a highly intelligent serial killer, following him for 12 years profiling his murders. It's the latest creation from a very angry, very drunk Lars von Trier obsessed with "the idea that life is evil and soulless." Also starring Bruno Ganz, Uma Thurman, Ed Speleers, Siobhan Fallon Hogan, Sofie Gråbøl, Riley Keough, and Yu Ji-tae. IFC is also hosting a one-night only screening event on November 28th of what's being called the "Director's Cut", though I'm not sure how different it is from the film they're eventually releasing. I saw this in Cannes, and besides being evil, it's just a bad film in many ways. One of LvT's biggest failures.

Here's the full US trailer (+ poster) Lars von Trier's The House That Jack Built, direct from YouTube:

And here's their Twitter spot for The House That Jack Built promoting the special one-night only showing:

If you want to scream, we definitely think that you should. The unrated
director’s cut of #HouseThatJackBuilt will be in
theaters for ONE NIGHT ONLY! Buy tickets NOW:https://t.co/fV5z7rQC7e pic.twitter.com/w47AFPgSw4

— THTJackBuilt (@THTJackBuilt) October 31, 2018

You can still watch the teaser trailer for The House That Jack Built here, and the other full festival trailer.

The story follows Jack (Matt Dillon), a highly intelligent serial killer, over the course of 12 years and depicts the murders that truly develop Jack as a serial killer. The House That Jack Built is both written and directed by controversial but acclaimed Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier, director of films including The Element of Crime, Breaking the Waves, Dancer in the Dark, Dogville, Manderlay, The Boss of It All, Antichrist, Melancholia, and Nymphomaniac previously. The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival as a last minute addition to the official selection, playing out of competition. IFC Films will release von Trier's The House That Jack Built in select theaters + on VOD starting December 14th this year. Still interested?

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The 31 Best Final Shots in Horror

The best movies don’t waste a single frame, but realistically speaking, most fumble more than a few. It happens, and you just hope that whatever follows that particular scene fares far better. A film’s last shot, though, doesn’t have that opportunity — it’s the last thing we see before the credits roll. Those final beats are nowhere more relevant than in a horror movie, and perhaps not coincidentally, far too many horror films drop the ball in their final moments.

Too many, but not all. Some go out with the perfect scene, sequence, and shot leaving viewers with a sigh of relief, a punch to the gut, or even the creeping sensation that there’s reason to be afraid even after the television has been turned off and the lights turned back on. To that end we went looking for the best final shots in horror — the end images, the final shots, the last moments before we fade to black.

Keep reading for a look at the 31 best final shots in horror as voted on by Chris Coffel, Kieran Fisher, Brad Gullickson, Meg Shields, Anna Swanson, Jacob Trussell, and myself.

31. Ils (2006)

The Shot

After a night of being attacked by anonymous intruders, Clémentine and Lucas have both been violently murdered. As the next day begins the killers emerge from the woods — they’re all children. Following the events of the previous nights, the kids exit the woods, walk down a road, and board a bus as if it was an ordinary day. The film’s closing text insinuates it as being based on a true story. Even without this claim, the image itself is enough to horrify as we are left to consider how casual even young children could be about brutal violence. Kids do the darndest things! – Anna Swanson

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30. Little Shop of Horrors (1986)

The Shot

The theatrical ending for Frank Oz’s opus Little Shop of Horrors is wonderful, leaving us lingering on a budding Audrey II planting roots in Audrey I’s Rockwell-esque ‘Somewhere That’s Green’. We’re left with a mischievous hopefulness where our heroes prevail but danger is never far behind. But the alternate, and original, ending is where it’s at. Not only in the fact that we get one of the stage show’s best songs, “Don’t Feed The Plants,” but we get marauding Audrey II’s terrorizing the globe, destroying cities Godzilla-style until the final fatal frame: a roaring Audrey II breaks the fourth wall, literally. Audrey II’s boisterous laugh bursts through the “screen” leaving the audience with the sinking feeling: maybe we’re next. – Jacob Trussell

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29. Thirst (2009)

The Shot

Park Chan-wook‘s foray into the world of vampires is among the best of the sub-genre, and it’s filled with beauty, terror, and the darkest of humor. His vampires are far from elegant creatures and instead betray their human origins at every turn in their impulses, emotions, and desires. Tae-ju (Ok-bin Kim) is the epitome of all of that, and after a lifetime spent flipping off her shoes to feel the earth below her feet as she runs away from her pains she’s found new sensations as a vampire. Unfortunately for those around her, those sensations often involve their suffering, and when Sang-hyun (Song Kang-ho) decides to end it for both of them by stranding them in an open field at sunrise she fights back with everything she’s got. Finally, reluctantly, she accepts her fate by his side, joins him on the hood of the car, and puts on her old pair of shoes. The sun begins to char their flesh, their muscle and bone turn to ash, and the shoes fall to the dirt.- Rob Hunter

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28. The Conjuring (2013)

The Shot

While The Conjuring is not for want of jump scares, they certainly don’t define what makes the film scary. That said, we’ve been hardwired to anticipate screamers and James Wan knows it. In the film’s final moments, we zoom in on a cursed object: a music box, outfitted with a mirror we know reveals ghosts. But nothing appears, and the gotcha stinger never comes. Which is somehow much, much, worse. Guess I’ll hold my breath till the sequel. – Meg Shields

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27. The Beyond (1981)

The Shot

Zombies, spiders, more zombies, a possessed dog, and even more zombies can make any home renovation a nightmare, and that’s exactly what Liza finds after inheriting an old hotel in Louisiana. She and a new friend face off against the monstrous threats while searching for the cause, but when they escape the undead it’s into a whole new kind of hell. They wander into another world, an ethereal landscape reeking of death and oppression, and as they stare at their new home and the eternal suffering that awaits them they’re stricken blind in one last supernatural injustice. They now belong to the “sea of darkness.” – Rob Hunter

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26. Race With the Devil (1975)

The Shot

Satanists are everywhere. They’re our policemen, neighbors, the strangers we meet only to realize later that they’re not so kind after all. Think Operation Mayhem from Fight Club only attired in sexy robes. At least that’s what Satanic Panic movies of the 70’s would have you believe anyway. Race with the Devil is one of those movies, and it teaches us that meddling in business that has nothing to do with us is a bad idea. As the ending shows, there’s no escaping the wrath of cultists, because they’re eyes are all over. This final shot is a gut punch, and I love it. – Kieran Fisher

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25. Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)

The Shot

A desperate Tom Atkins yells into a gas station telephone like a mad man, pleading to have a commercial removed from television. While we cannot hear the conversation on the other end we can safely assume they view him as a raving lunatic, but what if he’s right? The commercial is removed from one channel, and then another, but unfortunately it’s too late to stop the third and final one. As the delightfully delirious Silver Shamrock theme blares from the TV set Atkins lets out an emotional scream, his sweet, stylish ‘stache fully in frame, and we cut to black. Brilliant. – Chris Coffel

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24. Spring (2014)

The Shot

Does your love matter? While you may feel changed by its emotion, the question of whether that love has the power to change another is a terrifying proposition. Evan (Lou Taylor Pucci) loves Louise (Nadia Hilker), but as a mortal man caught up inside the infatuation with an immortal sea creature, that love cannot halt centuries of evolution. He demands the impossible from her, and that request scares Louise. Men are usually her fodder. Evan and Louise sit upon the ruins of Pompeii, the town in which she was born, and as the sun rises behind them, Mount Vesuvius erupts, ending its 70-year dormancy. The final wide shot of Spring is about as blissfully romantic as monster movies can get. Despite some rather graphic sounds indicating a biological metamorphosis, Evan looks down upon Louise and sees no beast, only the woman he adores. His love meets her love, and they are both forever changed. – Brad Gullickson

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23. 30 Days of Night (2007)

The Shot

The setup to this vampire flick is genius — vampires descend on a small Alaskan town as it enters a month-long period without daylight — and the execution is equally fantastic. For all the horror and action, though, the film’s heart belongs to the estranged couple trapped there together and forced to fight for survival alongside the other townspeople. Eben (Josh Hartnett) and Stella (Melissa George) make it through to the end, but it comes with a terrible price, and as the sun rises after thirty days of night it burns Eben’s newly undead flesh to ash. Stella holds him tight as he dies in the dawn’s sunlightbefore closing her eyes in a brief return to the darkness. – Rob Hunter

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22. Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)

The Shot

We already know how terrifying Bette Davis’ titular Baby Jane is, but it’s her final breaking moment that I find most chilling. Confronted with the fact that she did not cripple her older sister years prior, altering both of their lives forever, she whispers “You mean all this time we could have been friends?” Leaving the dying Blanche on the beach, Jane begins dancing as a crowd forms, reverting back to her vaudevillian Baby alter ego as police approach. It’s bleak, and tragic, and Jane’s ultimate breaking point. But, in its own twisted way, this revelation also sets her free. Free to live in a fantasy world of her own design, where she is still the star of the show. Forever and ever and ever. – Jacob Trussell

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21. The Blair Witch Project (1999)

The Shot

As Heather and Mike search the abandoned house looking for Josh they become separated and Heather discovers Mike in the basement facing the wall. The film has brilliantly build tension to the point that this simple image of him turned away from her elicits feeling of deep seated unease and fear. Heather’s screams are ones of total and overwhelming terror as she realizes she’s now been left alone to face the force in the room with her. The final frame of this shot — the camera knocked away from Heather so it faces the wall while lying on its side — dislocates us from our identification with the person who was holding the camera. We’re left alone with no answers, only our imaginations to fill in what horrors could be happening off screen in the moments before the film cuts to black. – Anna Swanson

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20. I Saw the Devil (2010)

The Shot

When you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves. Or three graves. Uh, better make it a half dozen, maybe a full dozen. After completing an epic hunt to capture and kill the man responsible for murdering his fiancé, NIS agent Kim Soo-hyun (Lee Byung-hun) meanders down the center of a street listening to the machinations of his vengeance trigger via an earpiece. Do the sounds bring him satisfaction or pleasure? Of course not. The final shot of I Saw The Devil takes no pleasure in documenting the climactic misery of Soo-hyun. As he halts his march down the road, clawing at his eyes, and sobbing, the shot continues its retreat, leaving him to the hell of his own making. What comes after the fade to black? Nothing. – Brad Gullickson

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19. [Rec] (2007)

The Shot

This is one of those movies where you don’t foresee a happy ending. The sense of threat is palpable in every scene and as soon as shit hits the fan, it feels like only a matter of time before inevitable doom comes knocking. But our protagonists put up a good fight all the same, and for a while we’re even given some false hope. Then when the final shot takes away any shred of hope we foolishly allowed ourselves to have, it’s a real kick in the teeth. – Kieran Fisher

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18. Poltergeist (1982)

The Shot

Tobe Hooper‘s collaboration with producer Steven Spielberg gifted movie lovers with one of the best and spookiest haunted house movies ever made. It’s terrifically scary, but it succeeds equally on the strength of its characters and humor. Those two elements cap off the film beautifully as the family — after surviving the ghostly terrors, rescuing their daughter from the creepy TV, and watching their home eat itself — finds solace and overdue relaxation in a motel room. While most horror movies these days feel compelled to end with an additional scare, here we’re given more humanity and humor as the closed motel room door opens and the father wheels the room’s television out onto the walkway. Better safe than sorry. – Rob Hunter

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17. Christmas Evil (1980)

The Shot

If you are like me, then the finale of Christmas Evil is what cements the film as a true lost classic. A film apart from its more Slasher Santa-centric brethren, Christmas Evil plays as a bizarrely sweet psychodrama with explosions of violence. But as Harry’s fugue state deepens, being chased by his brother and a torch bearing community, he drives off a bridge. While we hear what are ostensibly the sounds of his van crashing, what we see is something wholly unexpected. His van, with Santa’s sleigh painted on the side, continues flying, curving upwards towards the moon as Harry looks on in bewilderment. In voice over he recites the last lines of “The Night Before Christmas” as his van disappears. For a film filled with a macabre sense of the yuletide spirit, it’s the perfect button on a surreal Christmas story. – Jacob Trussell

The post The 31 Best Final Shots in Horror appeared first on Film School Rejects.

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Horror and Comedy are More Alike Than You Think

So, I’m going to level with you guys: I can’t stand horror movies. I’m too much of a scaredy-cat. Fortunately, the horror-comedy is a fun little genre hybrid that lets even a wimp like me participate in the festivities of the spooky-scary Halloween season.

There’s a new video essay from The Discarded Image, part of an ongoing series analyzing comedy, that breaks down the wonderful subgenre that combines two separate primary genres. The video explores how filmmakers juxtapose genre quirks and tropes to create movies that can be both funny and scary. It also details how using the same filmmaking techniques and style are employed in both horror and comedy, and how elements of the two genres can accentuate each other when placed side by side.

Watch the video essay, titled “Deconstructing Funny: Horror Comedy,” here:

It’s interesting to look back and realize how many similarities the two genres have and how many classics have exploited those similarities. A lot of old creature flicks rely on moments of comedy to lighten the tension and are more memorable and interesting for it. The levity also makes these films easier for the squeamish, like myself, to watch, and thus tend to be a bit more family-friendly.

Horror films eventually moved away from having comedic moments, preferring to create an atmosphere with a lot of tension. Horror-comedy then took on a position of being its own subgenre. But I think there’s still room in modern horror movies for a bit of weirdness and fun on occasion. The constant tension present in serious horror movies is something I find exhausting, and relieving that tension through humor can be a useful tool.

Let’s be fair. All this stuff about comedy in horror is mostly about Gremlins, which is just one of the excellent examples cited in the video essay. Most of the other films cited weigh more on the comedy side, such as What We Do in the Shadows and Shaun of the Dead. For them, the atmosphere of tension is part of the joke. Typically, in a horror movie, we are introduced to the world in its default state, which is a terrifying hellscape of some sort. There is something keeping the ensemble cast together, usually for the purposes of killing them off. By contrast, What We Do in the Shadows and Evil Dead II imply a world outside this by asking the reasonable question “now what?”

The films point out the many contrivances that a normal horror movie scenario requires to make sense. They acknowledge the need for the contrivance and, by asking you to believe their answer, implicitly ask you to acknowledge the absurdity of the scenario. Thus, some of that tension present in a more serious horror film is relieved in horror-comedy — and that helps to keep me in the room when such a movie is playing.

Horror-comedies can then go on to actually be quite tense and scary. After all, the scenario is exactly that of a normal horror movie. But this leaves the “undercut” technique, as noted by the video, available at any time. The movies can always stop being super scary to go back to being funny, and usually do, which lets those of us who can’t stand horror movies experience those fun moments of terror that horror movie buffs enjoy so much, while also being sure we’re not going to have nightmares.

After all, we can always think about “what happens next,” or “how did we get in this scenario,” and there’s typically a joke at the end of this fridge logic, built into the world of the film’s broader “undercut” to defuse any lingering scares before they can interrupt our sleep.

Not all horror movies need an element of comedy, but I think that some could benefit from a little more. Certainly it would help in getting weak stomachs like mine into seats.

The post Horror and Comedy are More Alike Than You Think appeared first on Film School Rejects.

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‘Werewolves Within’ and ‘Child of Light’ Could Be Game Changing Video Game Adaptations

Who likes video game movies? According to Variety, Ubisoft has begun work on two new video game adaptations: Child of Light and Werewolves Within. Both projects are coming out of Ubisoft’s Women’s Film and Television Fellowship. The Fellowship participants, Mishna Wolff and Tasha Huo, are set to helm the scripts of a Werewolves Within movie and Child of Light TV series, respectively.

Wolff and Huo were given access to the Ubisoft vault of IP to choose their projects, and creating these pitches were part of the Fellowship from the start. Both writers note the importance of Ubisoft and the Fellowship program, which mentored and guided them through the development process, on their success.

As for the properties themselves, they don’t strike as the type of big hits Ubisoft would normally be shooting for. For those unfamiliar with the company, in the world of video game publishers, Ubisoft is kind of the Mark Wahlberg to EA’s Matt Damon. Ubisoft is not quite as big or as extravagant as EA; their profits aren’t as huge, their controversies are not the same kind of PR circus as EA’s, but they’re kind of the same flavor.

They’re both publishers of a large amount of the electronic content that hits shelves every year. While EA puts out sports games like Madden, Ubisoft typically releases a big generic game about shooting people every year or so that’s guaranteed to pull in a profit. You may know these franchises by name; Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, and any video game with Tom Clancy’s name in the title.

But under the hood, Ubisoft actually funds and releases a not-insubstantial amount of independently developed, artsy, unusual games. Ubisoft is the publisher of the murder-mystery gameTransference and the cartoony climbing game Grow Home. Their IP library contains the likes of Rayman, Prince of Persia, and, yes, Child of Light and Werewolf Within.

Wolff and Huo each spoke to Variety about what attracted them to the properties, and their descriptions make it clear that these two games are nothing like the macho fare of Ubisoft’s big titles. Child of Light is an artsy platforming role-playing game with a coming of age story, and Werewolf Within is a virtual reality multiplayer game that kind of plays like the card game “Mafia” that you may have played in your school days.

For their part, Ubisoft tried to branch out into movies in 2016 with Assassin’s Creed. It… wasn’t great. It’s currently sitting at a Metacritic score of 36 and opened at barely over $10 million for a Christmas release on a $125 million budget. After such a failure, most big studios and companies would move on from the idea of creating movies based on video games.

Except this situation has a few rather unique variables. Ubisoft is not a movie studio, and Assassin’s Creed is a franchise that has more streams of revenue it can rely on. Assassin’s Creed movies may be something we can forget about in the long term, but Ubisoft seems bent on adapting properties into film and television, and their IP vault has some hidden gems in it. Even if nobody in the gaming business is interested in a sequel or reboot, the moviegoing public may not have those same hang-ups, especially since some of these game franchises existed before gaming was part of the public cultural conversation.

There’s a stigma associated with being a video game adaptation for the screen. A lot of stuff that works in one medium drags down the other, and too often filmmakers make the wrong decisions when working on these projects. But Ubisoft’s Women’s Film and Television Fellowship is bringing new talent to the fore, and giving them opportunities to develop these stories and tell them with solid financial backing and a non-interventionist creative environment.

I wouldn’t write off video game adaptations just yet, at least not Child of Light or Werewolves Within. We may find ourselves pleasantly surprised in the next few years.

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