Watch: A British Pub Goes Mad in Horror Short Film 'Cursed Words'

"For the protection of the audience." Don't speak the cursed words, and you may live through the night. Or just grab a pint, and enjoy as everyone else goes mad. Cursed Words is the latest horror short film made by the Staszkiewicz Bros, British filmmakers named Joe & Lloyd Stas. These are the same guys who made the fantastic Spooky Club horror short a few years ago. Set in a small British pub, all hell breaks loose when a man reads three words from a mysterious, bloodstained letter. This stars Ryan Lane, Olivia Newton, Michael Muyunda, Martin Valentine, Ben Galler, Helen Booden, Tom Stas, and Lilou Stas, with Chewie the dog. As violent & bloody as it is, this falls into the category of "fun" horror more than anything.

Thanks to Lloyd for the tip. Original description from Vimeo: "In a small British pub, all hell breaks loose when a man reads three words from a mysterious, bloodstained letter." Cursed Words is directed by British filmmakers Joe & Lloyd Stas, of the production company "Holomax" (follow them @holomax or visit their official website for more). They also both made the excellent short films Spooky Club and Dead Bird Pocket previously. Produced by Genevieve J. Ingham. Featuring cinematography by Stuart Ensor, and special FX work by Baris Kareli. The Stas Brothers produce all of these projects independently, creating original work entirely on their own. For more info on the film, visit Vimeo. To see more shorts, click here. Your thoughts?

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Justin Long in Official Trailer for Indie 'After Class' AKA 'Safe Spaces'

"You got an army of people who love you at your back." Gravitas has debuted an official trailer for an indie film titled After Class, which initially premiered under the title Safe Spaces at the Tribeca Film Festival earlier this year. It's getting the usual VOD release in December, if anyone is curious anyway. Justin Long plays an NYU professor who gets in trouble after trying to create "safe spaces" for his students. So he skips town and spends a week re-connecting with his family and an ill grandmother while attempting to defend his reputation. The cast includes Fran Drescher, Richard Schiff, Camrus Johnson, Kate Berlant, Becky Ann Baker, Tyler Wladis, Lynn Cohen, Samrat Chakrabarti, Dana Eskelson, and Michael Godere. Well this seems rather charming and uplifting in a warm way, it might actually be worth a watch.

Here's the first official trailer (+ promo poster) for Daniel Schechter's After Class, direct from YouTube:

Justin Long plays a New York college professor who aims for his classroom to be a safe space for students, but a lesson plan pushes students to share more than they wish, forcing him take a deeper look at whether safe spaces live up to their name. He escapes from the local college controversy to reconnect with his own unique family, who are navigating how to deal with the emotions of having an ailing grandmother. After Class, also known as Safe Spaces, is both written & directed by indie American editor / filmmaker Daniel Schechter, director of the films Goodbye Baby, Supporting Characters, and Life of Crime previously. This first premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival earlier this year. Gravitas Ventures will release Schechter's After Class in select US theaters + on VOD stating December 6th later this fall. Anyone interested in this one?

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‘See’ Review: So Many Trees, Not Enough Forest

[Note: Only the first three episodes have been made available before the series premiere.]

There are two giant entities joining the streaming wars this week, but while Disney+ has the advantage of established content they can milk in the form of new shows set in the Marvel and Star Wars universes, Apple tv+ has… well, it has lots of money to play with, and that means they can take big, risky swings at original content. The upside is that the result could be a smartly entertaining show with a stellar cast, but the downside? Judging by the first three episodes at least, the downside is a big genre series that lacks both an established IP and the weight to become one. See drops viewers into a post-apocalyptic world populated by the blind, but its central conceit and effort towards world-building feels messy, rushed, and unsure of itself. So yeah, I’ll say it — See lacks vision.

A virus struck humanity in the 21st century wiping out the vast majority of the population. The roughly two million survivors were left blind, a trait they passed down through their offspring, and now centuries later the concept of sight is a mere myth and mere mention of it constitutes heresy. Tribes of humans wander the Earth, each their own pocket of misery and struggle, and each ultimately beholden to the cruel reign of Queen Kane (Sylvia Hoeks; Blade Runner 2049, 2017). The Alkenny tribe prefers to stay out of reach, but after taking in a pregnant woman named Maghra (Hera Hilmar; Mortal Engines, 2018) their troubles grow too strong to ignore. The tribe’s leader, Baba Voss (Jason Momoa), marries her and raises her newborn twins alongside her, but the discovery that the children can see sets their world ablaze.

Some in the tribe suspect Maghra and her offspring of witchcraft, while witch hunters sent by the queen violently descend on the Alkenny in pursuit of the children’s real father. The tribe has to go on the run while dealing with traitors, invaders, and the possibility that they hold the key to humanity’s future.

See is the brainchild of writer Steven Knight (Locke, 2013) and director Francis Lawrence (I Am Legend, 2007), but while both talents have shown the ability to wrangle a story into submission before, their efforts here — at least through the first three episodes — feel uncertain and unconcerned. The result is a series that feels like a soft rehash of too many others without ever feeling like its own entity. It looks good and takes full advantage of Canada’s natural landscapes, but little of interest is happening within so far.

The world-building is perhaps its biggest issue as, some token efforts aside, See doesn’t convince as a world built around the blind. The twins grow quickly through these early episodes into teenagers, and having been gifted books in English — it’s the language they all speak fairly fluently despite characters bearing exotic names — they teach themselves to read from scratch until they understand literary themes, biology, and astrophysics. It seems like a stretch. There are some interesting touches including clanking bracelets used to identify yourself and messages exchanged via a beaded, knotted string, and a rope grid strung throughout their village feels useful, but the attempt to establish a violently perverted kingdom sees all the tropes employed without merit or explanation. People are a sad species and would no doubt fall in line, but no effort is given to exploring how this world is held together by people who can’t see and have never seen what’s standing before them. It might make more sense if the world outside was presented as ruthless and unlivable, but one (entertaining) bear attack aside it seems pretty damn habitable out there. We see a single mutated animal and hear mention of “monsters” created through incest, but neither appear as if they’re necessarily going anywhere.

The lack of threats outside of the queen’s antics leaves quite a bit to be desired as we’ve seen this story before, and the basics of it can be lifted and dropped into any time period. The most successful fantasy tales balance the familiar with the creative — even Game of Thrones has dragons, sorcery, and more to play with — but here it feels like episodes of The Walking Dead without a zombie threat. It’s just people trying to survive against other more oppressive people, and not even the Children of Men-like narrative of newborns to save the world is able to infuse it with its own life.

One element that does work, at least visually, is the action set-pieces. A clash of armies offers up bloodshed and fun tactical choices — even if it is unclear how they’re all able to strike and defend despite the cacophony of sound around them — while Momoa gets more than a few brutally efficient kills in along the way too. The scenes feel designed and choreographed for our viewing pleasure, which of course they are, but it makes you wonder who in the world itself is the intended audience. The queen’s penchant for Lou Reed music and masturbation during prayer is another element that entertains without feeling like it quite makes sense. There’s an argument to be made that all prayer is just masturbation for the soul, but it’s not entirely clear that’s what the series has in mind.

Seeing was believing, but now humanity is reduced to believing in magic and gods, neither of which are shown to be real as of yet leaving viewers with what amounts to an iron Age tale built on humanity’s ignorance. As it stands there’s little to compel moving forward, but one exception rests in the teenager Haniwa (Nesta Cooper; The Edge of Seventeen, 2016). While her brother is cautious and useless, she’s used her increased knowledge to fashion weapons, formulate thoughts, and develop a superiority complex. She teases at one point that she could kill anyone and everyone and no one would be the wiser, and there’s a sincerity in her voice. When it comes time for the breeding festival (don’t ask), she wonders disdainfully “why would I want the seed of a blind man?” The twins may hold the hope of humanity, but Haniwa’s moral cloudiness and suggestive darkness might just hold the hope for the series.

The first three episodes of See premiere on Apple tv+ starting November 1st with the first season’s remaining episodes arriving weekly.

The post ‘See’ Review: So Many Trees, Not Enough Forest appeared first on Film School Rejects.

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24 Things We Learned from the ‘Halloween: H20’ Commentary

Today is Halloween! So happy Halloween I guess, unless you’re reading this after October 31st in which case I hope you’re having a great day anyway. In honor of the holiday I decided to jump back into the Halloween franchise for a commentary track we haven’t covered yet — we’ve previously done Halloween (1978) and Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995).

There are commentary tracks for all of the films, but for now I chose Halloween: H20 (1998). The film sees Jamie Lee Curtis return to the franchise for the first time since 1981, and her argument towards the film’s existence and her role in it is the exact same one she would make twenty years later with Halloween (2018). Laurie Strode has been suffering for years from the trauma of that night, she’s picked up alcohol and guns as a defense, and she decides it’s time to bring the fight to Michael. The films are fairly different, but the themes and motivations are surprisingly the same.

Keep reading to see what I heard on the commentary track for…

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Halloween: H20 (1998)

Commentators: Steve Miner (director), Jamie Lee Curtis (actor), Sean Clark (moderator)

1. When asked how the film came about Curtis begins by saying she called John Carpenter and Debra Hill, met them for lunch, and broached the idea of coming together again for a sequel celebrating the twentieth anniversary. Carpenter dropped out fairly quickly, Hill eventually followed suit, and Curtis was left to ride this ship alone. “My thought from the beginning was this poor girl has been terrorized for twenty years, she’s been on the run, her life has been ruined by the trauma she’s suffered, and let’s meet someone in that shape.” It’s the same mentality she would later bring to Halloween (2018).

2. It was in producer Moustapha Akkad’s contract, per Curtis, that Michael Myers couldn’t actually die. Curtis was firm on needing Laurie to believe she had killed Michael, so tying these two disparate strands together took some work.

3. Curtis and Miner first worked together on Forever Young (1992) which was J.J. Abrams’ first produced script. She approached the Friday the 13th: Part 2 (1981) director about tackling this film after Carpenter walked away from the project.

4. She is no fan of her film Virus (1999). “It’s the worst movie ever made,” she says, adding that she lobbied hard to have the director fired and replaced by Miner. He couldn’t do it, though, as he was working on Dawson’s Creek (1998-2003), which is where he met writer Kevin Williamson who was eventually brought in to work on this film’s script.

5. Nurse Marion is played by Nancy Stephens — a recurring character from Halloween (1978) and Halloween II (1981) who is returning again in the stupidly named Halloween Kills (2020). She’s married to Rick Rosenthal who directed the first sequel.

6. Michael is wearing the mask from Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995) during his attack on Marion, but all of his later appearances feature a new mask sculpted for this film. They had shot the sequence while the studio went back and forth on which mask they preferred. Clark actually owns the mask in question now.

7. This is Josh Hartnett’s debut, and they recall having to choose between him and “Steve the director’s son.” They can’t actually recall his name, but Miner is adamant that he’s now a big star. I can only assume they’re referring to Timmy Spielberg.

8. “The result of terror is dysfunction,” says Curtis as the overriding theme of the film. It’s an idea that would be revisited for Rob Zombie’s Halloween II (2009) and Halloween (2018).

9. Clark asks if they gave any thought to who John’s (Hartnett) father was, but they say it doesn’t matter. Sounds like an admission that Dr. Loomis had a baby…

10. He comments that this was the second time Curtis appeared on screen with her mother Janet Leigh, but he’s corrected when she points out that they also co-starred on the same episode of The Love Boat back in 1978.

11. Curtis recalls lobbying for a brief scene where her character gets out of a car and does a double take as Mike Myers (Shrek, 2001) walks by, but the actor “shut us down.”

12. Miner recalls late night phone calls from Curtis worried and complaining about the state of the script. They credit Williamson’s uncredited contributions as making things far, far better.

13. Miner views this as a direct sequel to Carpenter’s original Halloween. That makes this the second of three direct sequels to that first film. He later adds that the film needed to end with Laurie killing her brother — a relationship that was first introduced in Halloween II (1981) — so who the hell knows what his deal is.

14. Curtis and Michelle Williams bonded over books, and the young actor gave Curtis a first-edition (the title is unnamed) when they wrapped. “She’s very intellectual.”

15. She recalls Hartnett being someone who wanted to be an actor but didn’t want the trappings of stardom. He would wear a knit beanie on set at all times, remove it to film a scene, and then immediately return it to his head as a way of retaining his personality. “I respected him for it. It was annoying, but I respected him for it.”

16. The school buses used to show how all of the school’s students are leaving for a break were picked up by the studio on the cheap and didn’t come with seats.

17. When Norma (Leigh) drives away from the school it’s in the same model/color car as she drove in Psycho (1960).

18. Michael is played by Chris Durand who also played the killer (part of the time) in Scream 2 (1997) which is playing on a TV in one of the student’s dorm room.

19. Curtis loves candy corn which we can all agree is gross.

20. Michael’s mask is digitally enhanced at 58:27, and “it looks odd.”

21. Curtis’ stunt double broke her foot during the scene where they’re driving the car and have to stop to open the gate. It’s bonkers, but apparently she slammed on the brakes and “the anti-lock brakes pushed back on her.”

22. As far as Curtis is concerned, the movie starts at 1:09:28 when Laurie sends the kids for help but stays behind to face off against Michael.

23. “Don’t drop the freaking knife!” yells Curtis as Laurie drops the freaking knife. “Ahh, I could punch her in the nose right now.” She adds that “they” made her drop the knife in the first movie and isn’t sure why she didn’t learn from her mistakes.

24. Curtis knew that Laurie would be killing an innocent man at the end of the film thinking it was Michael, but Laurie didn’t, and it was part of her deal in returning that there could be no hint of it in the film itself leaving audiences to instead believe that this was the end. It was Williamson who came up with the idea of Laurie cutting off a paramedic’s head unaware that Michael had swapped clothes with the poor shmuck at some point. Per the deal, she would return for a cameo in any follow-up, make it clear she had gone crazy, and then be killed.

Best in Context-Free Commentary

“Let’s get back together and kill the guy.”

“The trick to these movies is to make ’em wait.”

“Oh, my mom’s in this.”

“It was at the end of the day and I was pissed.”

“Oh she’s gonna die.”

“This is good Steve! I’m really liking this movie!”

“Adam Arkin is a knucklehead. His dad wouldn’t have shot the wrong guy.”

Final Thoughts

Curtis is a fun presence on the commentary track and offers some enjoyable quotes, but good gravy is she not interested at first in sharing. Clark’s left to chime in sporadically, and the handful of questions for her he does manage are replied to with short answers, but she eventually warms up to him. She interacts better with Miner as they recall aspects of the production, but she also interjects with her own thoughts regardless of what the others are talking about at the time. Still, it’s hard to argue with her enthusiasm for the character and film. It’s interesting mostly because her passionate arguments feel like the exact ones she and others made in the lead up to Halloween (2018). Regardless, it’s a fun listen.

Read more Commentary Commentary from the archives.

The post 24 Things We Learned from the ‘Halloween: H20’ Commentary appeared first on Film School Rejects.

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Double Take: Is Rob Zombie’s ‘Halloween II’ Secretly a Masterpiece?

Double Take is a series in which Anna Swanson and Meg Shields sit down and yell at each other about the controversial, uncomfortable, and contentious corners of cinema. There are many reasons this series started, but the catalyst for having a long conversation to work through dicey topics was a comment made by FSR’s own Rob Hunter. Upon discovering Anna’s deep and sincere love for Rob Zombie’s much-maligned ‘Halloween II,’ Rob remarked that this is an opinion so gobsmacking it must be unpacked. So that’s exactly what we’re doing. 

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For our first Triple Take, we got Rob on the horn to offer a counterpoint to Anna’s praise for the film. Together, the three of us aimed to work through what makes the film so problematic for some and so beloved for others. Boasting a 21% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, the sequel/remake is a gnarly rampage with all the tact that one would expect from a Zombie film. It is more belligerent than Zombie’s 2007 Halloween (which even Anna agrees isn’t a good movie). The sequel tracks the return of Michael Myers (Tyler Mane) and follows Laurie Strode’s (Scout Taylor-Compton) traumatic response to the events of the first film. Halloween II is a film that we all agreed goes for it. The question we were left with was if it’s a gamble that pays off. 

Halloween II celebrated its 10th anniversary earlier this year, and with a bit of perspective afforded through time, Meg, Anna, and Rob sat down to unpack this deeply divisive movie. This is the conversation that followed: 

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MS: I’m not gonna tell you what I think about Halloween II and it is your job to convince me that it is either good or bad. 

RH: Why do you assume that I think it’s bad?

AS: That’s why we’re here! That’s how this came about! Because you hate it!

RH: Yeah, ok, no it’s terrible. So no worries about that. 

MS: Anna to kick things off can you relay to Rob what happened during our viewing?

AS: Ok, so I tried to show Meg Halloween II

MS: Not correct. You made me watch both of Rob Zombie’s Halloweens, back-to-back.

AS: You needed the context. But what happened was, I hadn’t seen the director’s cut before, only theatrical. I didn’t realize until too late that the director’s cut has a different ending and I was showing her that one. In the director’s cut, Laurie is shot at the end.

RH: Best part of the movie.

AS: [deep sigh]

MS: Rob, is there any part of it that you think is redeemable?

RH: Oh boy…I mean I like when Laurie gets shot. But that aside… give me a minute…

MS: I wrote some down. Brad Dourif is in it, and that’s good because we like it when he gets work. Ummm… I think Scout Taylor Compton is doing something.

RH: Generous, but go on.

MS: I’ll reveal my hand: I think my overall take, and the reason I think it’s such a point of contention, is that it wants to be something that it isn’t. It’s fighting its own genetics. It wants to be something banana pants like The Beyond, just like: total chaos. But Zombie actually thinks he’s delivering realism. If you listen to interviews with him, he thought he was really getting down to it and not producing a wild, nightmare logic fantasy.

AS: I think there’s realism too.

MS: You think this film is realistic?!?

AS: There are moments, but say what you were gonna say.

MS: To me, in all his work, Zombie is hyper-stylized. That’s part of his charm. I can see how if him fighting the zaniness of it all would result in something a little messy. 

RH: Are you drawing a line between the beats of the movie that are bad but grounded in “realism” and the bad parts that are fucking Zombie’s wife on a horse? The movie only exists because 1) the first movie turned a profit, and 2) he wanted to give his wife some work. There’s no reason for that character in the film. I should also say I’ve seen all of Zombie’s movies and I’m a fan of one of them: Lords of Salem. The rest of them I either dislike or actively dislike.

MS: I don’t hate Zombie. I’m on record loving House of 1000 Corpses, which I like because I think it actually knows that its bonkers. It’s not so serious. I think Halloween II is very serious, Anna. 

RH: The movie is serious as hell, and it falls in line with the first film. I think this is my problem with both films: Zombie is so in love with his killers, his killer in this case, and he so despises the people that Michael Myers is killing. That comes across frame-by-frame. The second one is so serious, it’s devoid of oxygen, of air. There’s no fun or entertainment. There’s no impact.

MS: I’ve seen some people give it credit for being a remake that goes in its own direction, but, uh, Zombie is just doing Halloween IV. All the cool weird parts: the psychic link she has, the genetic component of serial killing–that’s in Halloween IV. 

RH: Can I jump ahead and point out that this film is devoid of gory setpieces? There are a face stomp and stabbings…it’s not creative. 

AS: I mean…. He has a knife. That’s what he does. 

MS: Michael Myers has impaled people with guns, he can be creative.

RH: This is Zombie, he does gory, bloody stuff in his movies. If I’m coming at this looking at the potential for this to be a worthwhile movie, one of the things that you can take away from a horror movie is a memorable kill. There’s nothing in this movie that stands out. 

MS: One thing that, Anna did sell me on was the Dr. Loomis angle and the idea of him being a scummy opportunist. You argued that as a good addition and I think you’re right. 

AS: Yeah, so, first of all, if you’re gonna get Malcolm McDowell you gotta put him to work. And, I like that it lampoons the true-crime thing of profiting off of tragedy. I like that it shows Loomis as exploitative… 

MS: And you can’t replicate Donald Pleasance. I think regardless of whether it’s executed well or not, doing a different thing was the right move. 

RH: Removed from the movie, I love McDowell. But Zombie has no grasp on tone, so you move from deadly serious brutality to fucking slapstick with McDowell and the two bits do not go together. He’s comic relief for so much of the movie. It’s designed for laughter and when you smash that up against the rest of the movie, you’re left with two things that don’t go together. 

AS: I don’t think it’s slapstick and I don’t think it’s as sharp of a pivot. I think what you’re describing is exactly what happens in Halloween (2018). Sorry: Hallow2018. That’s what it does: it pulls those sharp turns from trying to be horror to trying to be comedy. I think Halloween II maybe has some comedic beats, but they’re not as disruptive of the film’s overall tone.

RH: I should ask before we move forward, do words mean the same in Canadian as they do in American?

AS: [Sighs] Ok, I want to point out regarding the death scenes, one that comes to mind is the scene in the strip club where the dude is strung up by the lights. That’s fun. That’s a good use of a set-piece. But back to Loomis. I like that the jokes are at his expense! 

MS: I liked the first sequence in the hospital before the “it was all a dream” rug pull.

RH: It’s an extended dream sequence. That was the first time I said “fuck you” aloud at the screen. 

AS: I like the fake-out hospital because it really highlights how much he’s aware of the other films and he knows our familiarity with it but then he’s going in a completely different direction. 

MS: But he’s still just doing Halloween IV! Zombie missed the boat on picking up at the beginning of II instead of the end of IV.

AS: Wait, what? In what way do you want that?

MS: I want a small child…being murderous. Look, Anna. Defend your movie.

AS: Ok, alright, I like how fresh it is, it does something new. I do think there’s a tension between the surrealist fantasy and the brutal realism but that works. There are killings that feel very real. When Annie is being murdered and she’s just saying “ow” over and over again, it’s for-real upsetting. It’s not this shrieking horror movie yelling, it’s real fucking pain.

RH: I had that in my notes. Annie is the only character in either film that I, as a viewer, feel anything towards. But, that said, they turn around in this movie and treat her the same way: she’s brutalized and left naked on the floor. Cutting away from the video and just having the audio, I do think is effective, I’ll grant it that. I just feel like it doesn’t work in this movie because you wait a few minutes and you’re laughing along with Loomis, “hyuh hyuh hyuh.” If Zombie had kept it a brutal slasher I would respect it a lot more. But these beats, I don’t care about the Annie stuff with everything else. 

AS: I think we do care about Annie, partly because we see how much she’s all Laurie has. And speaking of Laurie—

RH: Let me just say: I’m not a fan of Halloween (2018), and I did appreciate that Zombie — poorly and shittily — made an effort to explore the trauma. To a degree, I was down for that. The problem is that he makes a traumatized person into a character who won’t stop screaming, who is obnoxious. And again, I can’t judge her because she’s been through trauma, but we’re still stuck for 110 minutes with this person and nothing to latch onto. I appreciate the attempt, but it gets lost in the execution. It’s better than what they did with Halloween (2018) and the handling of trauma. 

AS: Yeah, that’s exactly what I was gonna say. I like how much Halloween II is about trauma and how much it commits to bleakness. There’s no real way out of this. There’s no happy ending. It’s a big commitment to make a film that’s kinda mean and upsetting. I really respect that it doesn’t pretend she’s gonna find a real solution. By making her so erratic, we know she won’t end this film on a positive note — no fucking way. I like that Zombie makes us sit with that knowledge. 

MS: Right but like: Zombie wants to be Michael Myers, or likes him a lot. I think that gets in the way of what you’re saying… 

RH: He absolutely sympathizes with him. If you go back to 80s horror movies, a lot of them are built on the idea that the person who ends up being the killer was bullied or had some prank committed against him. But this is something that’s dealt with in the first few minutes and then it doesn’t get touched on because it’s not important. Zombie just focuses on that and wants to keep reminding us of that. He’s clearly in Michael’s corner. He’s more interested in that character. As a film, it ends up being an experience where, as much as people criticize later Elm Streets or other Halloween movies for how they allow you to root for the killer, Zombie takes that, removes all of the fun and says, “Yes, that’s what we’re gonna do, we’re gonna support the killer.” He’s brutalizing people left and right, but that’s ok because of the shit from his past. So, for there to be no happy ending for Laurie, it’s because Zombie looks at her pain as “this is what this family is. This is reality and there is no escape.” I don’t mind movies that end on a complete downer, but if from the beginning it feels like this is gonna be shitty for everyone involved, there’s no entertainment value. There’s no suspense. There’s no emotional connection. I don’t know what I’m left with. 

AS: The fact that I view Laurie as doomed doesn’t remove an emotional connection for me. I think Zombie does spend time with Michael, but because it’s not fun. I don’t think we’re supposed to enjoy it. If it was more fun to watch him kill people then I would be on board with criticizing how much Zombie likes Michael. I don’t think just because the film expands on his backstory that is the same thing as supporting or sympathizing. To me, it’s about understanding what Laurie is experiencing through this connection to him. 

RH: Huh. I mean, I disagree obviously. But, to that connection, do we agree that the vision of his mother is not supernatural shenanigans, but a mental vision? There’s a later scene where they both react to the same vision. This vision of his mother, and it’s not really her character. Going back to the first movie, she was compassionate towards her son. She was taken aback by his actions. So this vision is not one based on memory. It’s there to support Michael’s psychopathic agenda. It’s imagined. My point is that this supports the idea that Zombie just wants to give Michael excuses. The vision is supporting him. It’s another thing telling him he’s right to be doing this. 

AS:  Exactly. That’s not a real person supporting him. The vision is part of his psychosis. It’s him inventing reasons. This is about how disturbed Michael is–not about someone else giving him the green light or to detract from the fact that he wants to do this. 

MS: But it’s not Michael inventing an excuse, it’s Rob Zombie inventing an excuse for Michael. I think it would be better if the movie just went full-on buck wild rather than try to be serious. It wants to have its cake and eat it too. 

AS: But there’s a method to the madness because what is actually happening is brutal and visceral and upsetting and real. But as Laurie is losing her mind, her experiences are becoming increasingly messy and surreal. It’s how she is perceiving events not how they actually are. 

MS: You don’t think the psychic link exists?

AS: I think Laurie thinks it is real. Laurie is losing it, she’s feeling this inability to move past Michael, and that’s informing her mentality. She feels that there’s a reason she is so tied to Michael. Maybe there is, maybe there isn’t. But that’s how she’s experiencing it. 

MS: [exacerbated] You’re contradicting yourself.

AS: No, what I’m saying is that there is a realism and there is a fantasy. The actual real events are done in a very brutal way, the violence is honest and real. And then Laurie’s mental space is being filled with fantasy and surrealism because she can’t process what’s going on in the real world, so she turns inward. She’s having a psychotic break. It doesn’t change the world around her. When she sees a horse, there isn’t really a horse. But when Annie is killed, it is real and upsetting.

MS: I still feel like you, like Zombie, are trying to have it both ways. Can we talk about the party? The big party that Zombie clearly wanted to throw for all his friends?

RH: I thought it was a wrap party and they were just shooting extra footage. It’s this weird-ass little town where you can have an ambulance crash into a cow, and then you have this huge-ass Hollywood party.

MS: See, I like that. It’s stupid. It’s like a Fulci movie; a small town but then there’s a ballroom down the street for some reason. 

RH: Yeah but in a Fulci movie it never also tries to be real.

MS: That’s correct… 

RH: So in Halloween II, it stands out because it’s supposed to be hardcore and real but now here’s this gibberish. Also, do you think Zombie is supporting a nature over nurture hypothesis?

MS: I’m glad we got to this point. It’s gotta be nature.

RH: I think that’s what he’s saying, especially with the fact that she’s having these shared visions and is connected to Michael.

AS: But she’s having these visions after enduring the trauma, so that’s kinda nurture. 

[Rob and Meg make confused noises]

AS: I think in terms of Laurie going full fucking fantasty, that happens after the trauma of the events of the first movie. 

MS: Right but Annie didn’t go off the deep end and she experienced quite similar trauma. 

RH: As the film kept reminding us. 

AS: Different strokes for different folks! People respond to trauma differently. There’s no one size fits all! Annie has a great dad! That helped her!

MS: So…nature?

AS: Well no. It’s the support that Annie’s had. 

RH: [giggling]

AS: I mean, I do think that there is an element of nature over nurture, but I don’t think it’s like, a hard and fast one hundred percent. 

MS: But canonically it is right. [laughing] That’s the whole point of Halloween IV. 

RH: But so we agree on this: that at the end of the film when she [Laurie] goes to stab Loomis–I guess you could argue that that’s strictly because he wrote the book–but still that’s a homicidal act. She’s not going to stab Michael who’s killed all her friends, which clearly she doesn’t care that much about as she does her reputation. 

AS: In the theatrical cut she does stab Michael. 

RH: So, is the director’s cut ending supposed to suggest that she survives the shooting? Because much like the nature element, that her brother Michael can survive multiple bullet wounds, she also has inherited that ability since at the end of the film she’s in an abnormally long psych ward. Is that what we’re supposed to buy?

AS: I think she’s in her own mind. I don’t think what we’re seeing exists in the real world at all at that point. I read the end scene of her in the hospital room as a complete fantasy happening as she’s dying, imagining moving on to the next world by reuniting with her family. 

RH: I can see that. Again, that room is obviously not real-size. It’s clearly a dream room. But I’d also argue that filmmakers with these kinds of movies are always going to make sure that they’re ending allows the possibility of a follow up. So you’ve got to keep the person alive. But it makes more sense to me that she’s dead and this is just a mental snapshot. 

MS: Rob Zombie’s Halloween III when?

AS: [visibly excited] I would love that. I would prefer that over more David Gordon Green movies. 

RH: I would happily pass on both. 

AS: Rob, if you had to pick if you were to get another Rob Zombie Halloween or another David Gordon Green Halloween, which would it be? One is going to exist, which is it?

RH: [struggling] I would, uh, I feel like this is going to underscore everything I’ve just said, but I would take the Zombie one. From beginning to end, Halloween II clearly shows a filmmaker with an artistic intent and, to a degree, an ability. 

MS: You can accuse Zombie of a lot of things, but not of not making choices. That man makes choices.

RH: They’re just in service of a shitty, shitty script.

AS: I will concede that I think he could have pulled back on some of the comedy with Loomis. That wouldn’t have hurt the film at all. 

RH: [presumably raising his hands up in celebration like an inflatable tube man] Score!

AS: But I do think that what he is doing for the most part with the Loomis character, of showing him as someone exploitative, is good. I like how much he goes after Loomis for that. 

MS: I agree. I think Zombie’s take on the Loomis character that holds water. 

RH: I would agree as well, I just don’t think that the execution works or comes together well enough in this movie. I think that he’s a smart target to go after, but I would have loved to have seen all of those sequences played straight with him being fucking criticized, lambasted, given shit, for what he’s doing. The closest we get is the dad who shows up at the book signing with a picture of his dead daughter from the first movie. Everything else with Loomis is comical. It’s played for laughs, through both his performance and the beats. Weird Al Yankovic… 

MS: I forgot about the Weird Al part. [groaning]

RH: Yeah. That whole scene reminds me, in one of the Nightmare on Elm Street films there’s a talk show sequence. I can’t remember which one–

MS and AS, simultaneously: Are you thinking of Joker?

RH: No. Anyway, all that Loomis stuff is so comical it loses a lot of the bite that it deserves. It loses its punch because it’s like “woop-de-doo look at this little funny bit over here.” It doesn’t land as well as it should. 

MS: I haven’t seen the new Halloween. 

AS: Don’t. 

RH: It’s so bland. 

MS: Does it bring anything new to the table that can hold a candle to the wacky shit in the Zombie films? LIke does Hallo2018 have anything new to say, and if so, are any of the new twists as bold as what Zombie did?

AS: No. 

RH: I would agree. No.    

AS: There’s one idea in it that I’m especially annoyed it squandered. There’s a true-crime podcast about the Myers murders. And when I saw that I was like “oh, there’s potential there.” Like this is of the moment in the horror world and you could do something interesting with it. And then it’s not at all. In any shape or form. 

RH: I don’t hate the 2018 remake but I do find it kind of harmless and safe. It does have some good kills using some fun practical effects, so it has that going for it. And I know everyone lost their shit over the grief and trauma angle, but it’s not that at all. 

AS: It’s very simplified. 

MS: There are so many horror remakes that I constantly forget exist. I think that even the people who really don’t like Halloween II would never accuse it of being non-existent or forgettable. 

AS: Yeah like the Nightmare on Elm Street remake with Rooney Mara. 

MS: Or like, remember when they remade Poltergeist in 2015? 

AS: No I don’t. 

MS: No one does! I think for all of it’s sins, Halloween II is doing something. 

RH: I think that’s the definite take-away because even though I don’t like either of Zombie’s Halloween films, they’re not like the vast majority of these “safe” remakes, that don’t try anything new or stick too close to the original.

MS: Or try and please everyone. 

RH: Right. Like fan service and that kind of stuff. At least Zombie is like: I have the basic structure down. Now I’m going to do my own thing. With the second film more so than one. I don’t like it, but I can give it some begrudging respect I guess. 

AS: Rob, do you like Zombie’s Halloween II more than his first Halloween movie? 

RH: I don’t like either one of them. 

MS: That wasn’t the question. 

RH: Two is the [groaning] more ambitious film. 

MS: That’s like a parent being like “you looked like you were having a lot of fun up there.”

RH: Halloween II is still bad. But it’s got elements that are still worthy of discussion. 

MS: Now I’m just thinking of all the “not safe” directors I wish were given blank checks to fuck with properties the way Zombie was. I’d prefer that timeline over the mayonnaise we’re getting from most studios. I’d love to see someone fuck with Child’s Play in a way people had to have an opinion about. The remake has come out, allegedly. No one’s talking about it. It’s a nothing movie. It doesn’t exist.

AS: I’d rather hate something than be completely apathetic. 

RH: Absolutely. The fact that I had any kind of feeling whatsoever, even though its negative, is impressive. Child’s Play, you go in you go out. Even the Pet Sematary remake I was just like okay. There were changes but they weren’t bold like the ones Zombie has made. I do think it’s interesting, cause a lot of people, especially with Zombie’s last few movies, keep talking about how it’s so unfortunate that he’s not getting a big budget, and for both Halloween films he had 15 million bucks each. It shows. The money is on screen. 

MS: Yeah he blew it on that party in Halloween II and then he was like: “Michael, take my wardrobe.” 

RH: Exactly. But I think it shows that he, as much as I prefer the bold choice timeline, had the chance, and it was this. 

AS: Yeah, and god bless. He did a great job. 

RH: Do you actually think that this is a great movie? Halloween II?

AS: Yep.

RH: Okay but real talk. Meg’s gone, she’s getting popcorn and Columbo VHS tapes, is this a great movie?

AS: Yeah. It’s a four-star movie. 

RH: Out of how many?

AS: Five. 

RH: This is an interesting movie for someone to say is great. For any movie, you’ve got to be on its wavelength and find things that appeal to you…I don’t feel like I fully understand why you think it’s great. 

MS: If I may, Anna, is the thing that makes this film “good for you” the way the film takes Laurie’s trauma so seriously?

AS: Yes. And I like that, whether it’s well-executed or not, I like the ambition of it, I like that Zombie wants to do something completely different way. 

RH: So you like Halloween III. 

AS: Love Halloween III. But yeah I like the way this film is more interested in Laurie’s experience than just using it as fodder to make the film “about something.”

[Authors’ note: Rob was giggling throughout this]

RH: I don’t get the empathy side of Halloween II. Maybe it’s because I’m just an asshole, but I don’t see the effort made. I appreciate what it tries to do with the trauma, and it’s definitely better than Halloween (2018), but I feel like it puts it out there and essentially says: look we’re acknowledging that she’s fucked up. And that’s the end of it. I don’t think it does anything else with her on that subject. Especially with the back half shifting to the dream stuff. 

AS: I think if it tried to do more than what it’s already doing with Laurie’s trauma, it would pretend that there’s an answer, and I don’t think there always is. 

MS: I don’t think we’re saying that the film needs to fix her trauma. But after she gets past the tipping point, there’s no variation. Do you know what I mean? If the film is dealing with female pain, the lack of emotional payoff is a big problem to the point where it could be read as objectifying her or her trauma. 

RH: I don’t think the movie has sympathy for Laurie. I think that it uses her and her trauma the same way it uses Annie and Annie’s trauma. The same way it uses women who are consistently naked in the movie. Not just as sexy beats of women being naked, but as being naked, in their worst moment, and fucking brutalizing them. I don’t need a fix, but the film presents Laurie at her most shrill and says: “Ok, this is just the status quo now.” There are no additional gains there. Instead, it’s just Zombie saying: I’m going to take full advantage, and exploit these characters at this moment, for my cheap thrills because, again, I wish I was Michael Myers. 

AS: I can’t disagree with how you read this movie — I read it differently!

MS: This is the truest Double Take. Every other time Anna and I have talked we’ve either come to an agreement or it’s been us against the world. This is the first stalemate we’ve had. I’m excited we’re finally fighting. This is what we wanted. 

RH: But what do you guys think about, what I would argue, is the pure exploitation Zombie takes towards his mostly female characters. To me, it’s fine if you’re going for a straight, serious horror film, but that’s not what this is.

MS: Zombie’s entire career is trying to make The Texas Chainsaw Massacre II again. That’s his purpose on this earth. I think the way that he treats women in his films is of a very grindhouse sensibility: maniacs brutalizing shrieking women. I can see the connective tissue between Zombie’s work and his inspiration from the 70s.

RH: But with something like Werewolf Women of the SS, I would love for him to make that full feature movie. That kind of exploitation, Nazisploitation, whatever camp over the top ridiculousness would work. But here, where I take umbrage–

AS: Great David Fincher word. 

RH: Nice. Where I take umbrage is Zombie applying that aesthetic, that women are best served naked, bloodied, and terrorized, and pairing it with straight, horrifying, intentional brutality. It’s not like the My Bloody Valentine remake where you’ve got the naked lady running around being chased because that movie is purely silly. 

MS: What you’re talking about is self-awareness. Maybe Zombie was too close to Halloween II to have the perspective to see what the film needed. He spends way more time pathologizing Michael than Laurie because, at the end of the day, he’s way more interested in absolving Michael Myers. 

AS: I think there’s a difference between understanding and excusing.

RH: It’s explaining. 

AS: The fact that Michael Myers thinks he has reasons doesn’t mean that those reasons are good. And I don’t think we need to give Laurie reasons for what she’s doing in the sense that like, we want to empathize with her actions because I don’t think that what she’s doing is wrong in that way. She’s the victim here, right?

MS: I don’t know about Zombie’s lack of care for Laurie being intentional. I don’t think that’s true. And you and I give a lot of fucks about directorial intention so be careful how you proceed. 

AS: I buy that there’s a problem with how Zombie presents the brutality against women. I’m not defending it. But I will say that I would rather have something straight-up uncomfortable over something that pretends Laurie’s trauma can be put into a neat box. 

MS: You’re using the same move we made in our discussion about The House That Jack Built: that violence against women shouldn’t be treated with kid-gloves and to some degree, should be hard to watch. But that move is only goin if we’re not on the side of the villain. Which is true of Jack in a way that is absolutely not true of Halloween II. 

AS: Yeah. And I don’t think this movie is as good as The House That Jack Built! But I don’t think we’re supposed to sympathize with Michael. 

MS: I dis-a-fuckin-gree.

AS: What?

MS: This film is in love with Michael Myers!

RH: A comparison for me is something like Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. It’s brutal, straightforward, it’s played serious. There’s obviously a little bit of levity in it, depending on your tastes. Henry does give points over to his circumstance to explain where he’s coming from. But at no point does it belittle what’s happening, either through funny shenanigans or fantasy beats, it just lets it be, so you get the seriousness of it. It never feels like it’s trivializing any of it if that makes sense. 

AS: Do we read Halloween II as “trivializing?” 

RH: That’s my point about the tone. I think if it stuck with the “horror elements,” not the Loomis stuff or the dreams, I’d be closer to your side of the argument. Because when it wants to be brutal it’s brutal. The problem is that whenever I felt the least bit heightened, going back to the Annie beat, I feel like its deflated shortly after that by jumping back to McDowell or having Sheri Moon Zombie show up with her horse. It immediately says: nevermind, there’s also this shit going on. It doesn’t allow you to wallow in the seriousness of it because it keeps reminding you that it’s “a fucking glory project for my wife.”

MS: Oh no. This is a glory project for Rob Zombie. 

RH: Yeah, either way. 

AS: I see what you’re saying. My experience of the film is different. 

MS: “I FEEL.”

AS: I don’t find the tonal shifts as jarring! But that’s subjective and I can’t argue with your subjective experience. 

MS: [laughing] Anna, you can’t show up to this dog fight and then be like: “it’s all subjective!” 

AS: No, just that specific thing! I’ve made my case on the other stuff.

RH: I’m not sure you’ve made your case, but you have spoken it. 

MS: [laughing]

AS: I’ve pled my case how about that?

MS: Do you think in the way A24 has a pit where they keep their waifs, Rob Zombie has a pit with like his wife and Bill Moseley? 

AS: A wife pit?

MS: His two wives: Bill Moseley and Sheri Moon. 

RH: At least he lets Bill Moseley out once and awhile. 

AS: I’ve thought of something. 

MS: Ok. 

AS: I want to see Rob Zombie make a Cat People movie. 

MS: Oh. 

RH: [groans]

The post Double Take: Is Rob Zombie’s ‘Halloween II’ Secretly a Masterpiece? appeared first on Film School Rejects.

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The 50 Best Horror Movies of the Decade

This very special list is both the end of our 31 Days of Horror series and the beginning of our Decade Rewind, which runs throughout November.

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There are a lot of things that have gone horribly wrong for the world over the past decade, but the quality of horror movies reaching our eyeballs from around the globe is not among them. Between theaters, Blu-ray, streaming, and festivals fans of genre thrills have little to complain about. The great ones rarely find big success at the box-office, but there are plenty of them out there if you make the effort to look. As this decade — 2010 to 2019 — comes to a close, we decided to do just that and look back over ten years of horror cinema in order to celebrate the best of the best.

Who’s “we” exactly? Well, if FSR is a big, happy family of film fans then the Boo Crew is made up of those of us whose movie tastes run dark, weird, gory, and wet. We love all kinds of movies, of course, but our twisted little hearts belong to the dark arts, and that means we’ve seen thousands of horror films over the last ten years from the good to the bad to the ugly. So join Chris Coffel, Valerie Ettenhofer, Kieran Fisher, Brad Gullickson, Meg Shields, Jacob Trussell, Anna Swanson, and myself as we put that knowledge and subjective taste to use with a ranked list of the decade’s 50 best horror movies.

We’re a democracy of eight meaning the list below isn’t the taste of a single person — several of my personal favorites failed to make the cut including The Den (2013) and Deadman Inferno (2015) — and that in turn guarantees a terrifically varied look at the best the decade has to offer. (This is a celebration, though, so with that in mind each of us have snuck in an extra movie, ones that didn’t make the list but that we want to highlight anyway.) As with the rest of our 31 Days of Horror Lists, these results are arrived at through a combination of 90% math and 10% editorial veto power. That editor is me, so if you have a problem with what’s here, the order, or what’s missing, be sure to email your mom and she’ll get it to me ASAP. And now, without further yammering, here are the 50 Best Horror Movies of the Decade!

50. It: Chapter One (2017)

In 2017, It: Chapter One seemed poised to kick off a Renaissance of Stephen King adaptations.Two years and at least six adaptations later, and nothing has even come close to matching this coming-of-age masterpiece. Part horror story, part adventure comedy, part coming-of-age saga, this sprawling retelling of King’s killer clown epic hits all the beats that are essential to the author’s greatest works. Bill Skarsgaard may be the face of Pennywise, and his full-body performance is one for the ages, but it’s the very real adult fears — abuse, bigotry, loneliness, mortality, and more — that most threaten to isolate our adolescent heroes. The scariest sequences genuinely shock and upset, as when Pennywise taunts the kids at Neibolt House, but the moments of levity and that pure, perfectly channeled joy that comes with the discovery of a first best friend group are just as memorable. The entire child cast of the Loser’s Club has gone on to do interesting other projects (including other horror films) after these star-making roles, which makes this nostalgia-heavy film already feel like a bit of a time capsule. The good news is, you can always go back to Derry. (Val Ettenhofer)

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49. The Tall Man (2012, Canada)

I get it. You watched Pascal Laugier’s brilliantly structured, socially damning follow-up to his masterpiece, 2008’s Martyrs, scoffed at the narrative turn in the back half, and decided it wasn’t for you. Well that’s your loss, because The Tall Man is a horror film that shifts effortlessly between truly terrifying elements resulting in a movie that delivers as a genre gem while also landing with a heavy punch to the heart and gut. Jessica Biel shines in a darkly unglamorous role as a woman whose child is abducted by a vicious phantom — or is she? The story flips in smart, affecting ways while retaining a focus on the singular key horror of children in imminent danger, and while it tests viewer loyalties it does so in ways that encourage thought, debate, and empathy in ways the genre rarely touches. I’ve written an entire defense of The Tall Man, but it’s filled with spoilers, so if you’ve yet to see this uniquely crafted and daring horror flick don’t read it yet. Give the movie a chance… hell, give the movie a second chance, and marvel as the pieces fall into place with a film that goes above and beyond by giving far more than most genre fare even attempts. (Rob Hunter)

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48. Piranha 3-D (2010)

This B-movie exploitation throwback is a maximalist delight that is buoyed (ha!) by director Alexandre Aja’s undeniable skill and love for well-crafted gore. The premise is simple: Spring break. College kids in a lake. Flesh-hungry piranhas. What more could any of you want? Piranha 3-D is a movie that knows what it is and never purports to be anything other than a good old fashioned, bloody, bananas schlockfest. Sure, “elevated” might be the horror buzzword for the 2010s, but Piranha 3-D excels by going in the opposite direction: straight down to the depths of its aquatic setting until it dredges up every over-the-top kill scene that a horror fan could hope for. And then, naturally, it goes back for seconds. (Anna Swanson)

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47. As Above, So Below (2014)

One of the great under-seen genre gems of the decade, As Above, So Below hits a horror sweet spot by balancing thrilling adventure with a smorgasbord of unnerving moments and images. The plot alone is auspicious enough: an alchemic scholar (Perdita Weeks) teams up with her ex (Ben Feldman, who should be in everything) and a group that includes a cameraman and tour guide in order to scour the Paris catacombs in search of Nicholas Flamel’s legendary philosopher’s stone. The Indiana Jones-lite plot gives way to a series of horrors as the group discovers, in frightening increments, that the dingy, shadowy catacombs may be a gateway to someplace even darker. John Erick Dowdle’s direction utilizes a handheld camera POV better than almost any other horror film, making nearly every shot an anticipatory setup as the group rounds corner after corner, shining a light on a seemingly endless string of horrors as they go. Even in its freakiest moments, As Above, So Below never forfeits its surprisingly layered mythology, and Weeks’ brainy, fearless Scarlett is a character deserving of her own franchise. (Val Ettenhofer)

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46. Overlord (2018)

In a decade sorely lacking in A-level action horror, Overlord easily triumphs. Armed with the pulpy glee of EC Comics and the narrative clarity of the best B-Movies, Overlord sees a group of American soldiers dropped into a French town with a serious Nazi problem… and a secret. With limited time, and a tower to blow up, our Yankee heroes must race against the clock to complete their objective, come hell or high horror. Speaking of which: damn. Mashing genres and body parts in equal measure, Overlord is like someone put Saving Private Ryan and Re-Animator in a blender, and it kicks all kinds of ass. Always a pleasure to see this much inventive, full-frontal gore on the big screen. It’s the best video game movie that isn’t based on a video game, and it’ll take you to church. Wait… no, not that church—wait! NO! (Meg Shields)

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45. Hagazussa (2017, Austria)

Slow as molasses and as richly sublime as the best Romantic artworks, this atmospheric horror masterwork is a testament to the merits of a slow pace. Set in the 15th century Austrian Alps, Hagazussa explores the freedom and terror that come from a life spent fending for oneself. The film revolves around Albrun (Aleksandra Cwen), an isolated goat farmer who aims to make her way in the world while the supernatural lurks at her periphery. Director Lukas Feigelfeld expertly balances his expansive location with his narrative’s interest in the claustrophobic confines of existence itself. Contemplative, foreboding, and genuinely saddening, this film allows unease to slowly creep in until the feeling of dread consumes all. Hagazussa is the ultimate example of a film where nothing happens and everything happens; it sneaks up on you, taking its time but imbuing each frame with an eerie sense of misery. It is, as the kids say, a mood. (Anna Swanson)

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Bonus! Baskin (2015, Turkey)

When the word of Can Evrenol’s Baskin started slithering its way into the horror community, it was met with dangerously hyperbolic statements like “pure nightmare fuel” and “insane descent into hell”. A normal movie wouldn’t be able to live up to such lofty appraisal, but Baskin isn’t a normal movie. While the Turkish film – about cops responding to a call in a remote abandoned building – clearly is drawing from Clive Barker, Lucio Fulci, and a little H.P. Lovecraft, Evrenol doesn’t put all of his weight onto his influences. Rather he pulls inspiration from each of these masters of horror to make something truly unique. It’s bursting at the seams with violent gore, cyclical dream logic, and incredible surrealistic imagery evocative of the artists Zdzisław Beksiński and Rene Magritte. Not to add to the hyperbole around the film, but Baskin is a monumental achievement of art house horror. It transcends mere splatter film to become a true work of art. Something that would have made Luis Buñuel say “Holy fuck, dude.” (Jacob Trussell)

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44. Scream 4 (2011)

Die-hard fans of the franchise know there’s no such thing as a bad Scream movie. The sequels to the 1996 classic are dated, sure, but each is a cleverly set-up window into the Hollywood ideologies of its time period. Scream 4 was released in 2011, a year during which 18 of the top 20 U.S. box office films were some form of sequel, spin-off, adaptation, or reboot. Naturally, the film has a lot on its mind regarding the dearth of original content that would go on to preoccupy us for the rest of this decade. Core cast members Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox, and David Arquette all return for what would ultimately turn out to be horror master Wes Craven’s final film, while franchise newcomers like Emma Roberts, Hayden Pannetierre, and scene-stealing Rory Culkin (who plays the film’s requisite movie nerd, this time a Very Online teen) round out the cast. Scream 4 manages to keep the franchise fresh after 15 years, and it’s got a go-big-or-go-home attitude that teeters wonderfully between parody and true horror. (Val Ettenhofer)

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43. Cargo (2017, Australia)

All we’re looking for nowadays from a zombie movie is to be surprised. By anything. Just one unique take on the well worn ghoul that doesn’t remind us of something The Walking Dead has already beaten to death is a win in my book. So with Cargo, writers/directors Yolanda Ramke and Ben Howling take all of the familiar tropes — survivors bobbing and weaving between the undead, the “monsters of men” — and drop them into a new environment (the Australian bush) from a fresh perspective (a widower, racing against the clock to bring his daughter to safety before he goes full zombie and eats her) that absolutely revitalizes a sub-genre that’s been going through the motions for almost two decades now. Cargo is the natural progression of the type of films George A. Romero made his name creating. It’s a new story that makes tired tropes feel alive again. (Jacob Trussell)

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42. A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014)

Ana Lily Amirpour’s confident debut, a morose horror western told in B&W will be rightfully remembered for playing with vampire tropes and twisting them to give us a fresh feminist perspective to an overly patriarchal archetype. But what is also surprising, and less discussed, is its tender view towards masculinity in the film’s toxic environment. Sheila Vand, the titular girl, is drawn towards Arash (Arash Marandi) because he breaks her perception of what masculinity can be. Surprise! We don’t always woo the ladies by doing rails of coke before pumping iron over the worst techno Iran has to offer. It’s mad how progressive it is that a man just listening is refreshing, but as we untie the bundle of snakes that has defined masculinity for centuries, having young men be seen as caring and compassionate is vital, and it’s also an indicator to Amirpour’s future. She is a writer/director looking for the important truths we need to hear today, refreshingly told through familiar stories we’ve heard forever. (Jacob Trussell)

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41. They Look Like People (2015)

Horror films come in all shapes and sizes, and while I love monsters, maulings, and mayhem as much as the next Boo Crew member I also have a soft spot for quieter horrors. Credit my affection in part to the stories of the late Charles L. Grant who crafted tales that seem gentle at first glance only to reveal they sliced your throat and stabbed your heart on page one — and you didn’t even notice until it’s far too late. Which brings me to writer/director/everything Perry Blackshear’s harrowing, devastating, and ultimately terrifying feature debut. It’s a simple tale involving old friends, both lost in life and dealing with rejections and depression, but one is sicker than he’s let on. Voices in his head have revealed an unsavory truth, that many of the people around him are actually demons invading our world and dedicated to humanity’s destruction. The voices seem sincere, the visions feel real, and the only response is to kill the demons first. Are they real, or is it all in his head? The film delivers a tense, frightening, and fist-clenching slow burn seemingly destined to end poorly for those around him, and viewers will feel every anguished thought, cry, and suspenseful beat. (Rob Hunter)

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The post The 50 Best Horror Movies of the Decade appeared first on Film School Rejects.

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More Wacky Humor in Final Trailer for 'Jumanji: The Next Level' Sequel

"This next adventure is even more challenging!" Sony Pictures has debuted the second & final trailer for the sequel Jumanji: The Next Level, the follow-up to the new Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle movie that was a sort-of sequel to the original Jumanji movie from 1995. This time, they get sent back into the game but the characters are switched - different people end up with the same four avatars. But where is everyone else? Nothing is as they expect inside. The players must brave parts unknown, from arid deserts to snowy mountains, in order to escape the world's most dangerous game. The full cast this time includes Dwayne Johnson, Jack Black, Kevin Hart, Karen Gillan as avatars; Danny DeVito, Ser'Darius Blain, Danny Glover, Morgan Turner as players; along with Alex Wolff, Nick Jonas, Colin Hanks, Rhys Darby, Awkwafina, and Dania Ramirez. This looks like it might be just as wildly entertaining as the first movie.

Here's the second official trailer (+ posters) for Jake Kasdan's Jumanji: The Next Level, from YouTube:

You can still watch the first full trailer for Kasdan's Jumanji: The Next Level here, for the original reveal.

In Jumanji: The Next Level, the gang is back but the game has changed. As they return to Jumanji to rescue one of their own, they discover that nothing is as they expect. The players will have to brave parts unknown and unexplored, from the arid deserts to the snowy mountains, in order to escape the world’s most dangerous game. Jumanji: The Next Level is once again directed by filmmaker Jake Kasdan, of the films Orange County, The TV Set, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, Bad Teacher, Sex Tape, and the first Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle previously, along with a lot of TV work. The screenplay is written by Jeff Pinkner and Scott Rosenberg, both from the first one. Sony Pictures will release Jumanji: The Next Level in theaters everywhere starting on December 13th, 2019 late this fall. Still look good? Who wants to watch?

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The Forgotten: History's Greatest Monster

There have been very many takes on Bram Stoker's Victorian shocker Dracula, but most of them have quite a bit in common, either adapting, closely or loosely, the book's text, or suggesting a sequel that takes the original as read. Jonathan, the debut film of writer-director Hans W. Geißendörfer in West Germany in 1970, does something else.

The Jonathan of the title would appear to be J. Harker, though he's never explicitly named as such, and he's a German villager rather than a London estate agent. Rather than visiting a sinister count on business, he's sent off to be a vampire-hunting secret agent. As bloodsuckers ravage the countryside, his daring mission is to infiltrate the castle of the fiends' leader, free the prisoners, open the doors for an attacking peasant army, and help drive the undead horde into the sea.

Which, in a rather flat and disappointing manner, is exactly what happens.

Actually, the staging of the climax is great—the problem is merely that it unfolds exactly as foretold.

What's interesting—aside from the strange departures from source novel and legend—is what happens en route. Jonathan's journey doesn't go well: thieves, who are probably vampires, steal his garlic and crucifix and bible, and kill his coachman and horses. Locals throw stones at him: they've grown suspicious of strangers since the depredations of the vampires began. And everywhere is chaos and bloodshed.

The late Robby Müller's camera explores the hellish, war-torn landscape like the eye of one facing one of those great paintings by Brueghel or Bosch, only it travels in three dimensions and the figures move and talk. The camerawork is incredibly complex and elegant, perpetually tracking and panning to explore its environment, passing over scenes of horror in a calm, somnambulist manner. It's not like the photography of your typical monster movie, though perhaps it owes something to Dreyer's Vampyr. The unfussed, dispassionate, sedate movement never seems to react to shocking scenes, or even hesitate before them, it just glides serenely on to the next atrocity.

And the film isn't short of violence and gore. In fact, the beatings doled out to both human and vampiric characters are strikingly painful to watch, enacted as they are before an indifferent lens. One moment, in which a live rat is repeatedly stomped to death, went too far for my taste, as I disapprove of any animal cruelty in film, and I speak as one who once, in a moment of panic, bludgeoned a rogue mouse flat with a copy of Brewer's Cinema: A Phrase and Fable Dictionary (large, hardback).

Something about the film gives one a bad feeling. The combination of classical music and vaguely prog rock stylings on the soundtrack recalls Herzog and the whole venture anticipates his remake of Nosferatu (and the vamps here have a similar unexplained ability to sometimes go abroad by day). But the music doesn't work as well: the ambitious production works best with a vaguely realist aesthetic, and you can't make something more realistic by adding music to it. The aggressive side-parting sported by our lead vampire strongly suggests an unsubtle Hitler analogy. Billed only as the Count, he does re-stage a central scene of the novel, the squabble with his brides over Jonathan and the offering of a baby as snack, so we can assume he's Dracula alright. But if Geißendörfer evinces an unpleasant sensibility in several ways, his work with Müller is so fascinating and beautiful that the film rises above itself and is worthy of our admiration.

And its coldness makes it genuinely creepy. There are also several bits where characters stare fixedly into the lens. We don't know for sure that they can see us. But the strong impression is given that they know we're there.

***

The Forgotten is a regular fortnightly column by David Cairns, author of Shadowplay.

 

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New York Indie Producer Graham Swon Discusses His Directorial Debut

In the past decade, a series of directors have come out of the New York repertory film scene, people who’ve watched countless amounts of movies and have distilled that labor of pure love for cinema into films made within that context. Filmmakers like Ted Fendt, Gina Telaroli, and Ricky D’Ambrose jump to mind immediately in that context, as well as the resurgence of Dan Sallit, who since his 2012 feature The Unspeakable Act has managed to get more festival and theater distribution than ever before; or the case of Argentinian filmmaker Matías Piñeiro, who moved to New York to teach but also became a usual presence in the city at repertory cinemas. One thing all of these filmmakers have in common is a name that repeats in most of their recent work: Graham Swon as producer.

Graham Swon is also part of that intense type of cinephile filmmakers that was birthed out of the New York repertoire theaters. Graham studied theater directing at Carnegie Mellon and decided to move onto film. His work at the distributor Cinema Guild led to his first work as a producer  with Counting (2015), directed by Jem Cohen, and his productions grew from there into a passion of bringing to reality the films that his friends wanted to make, films like Piñiero's Hermia & Helena (2016), Fendt's Classical Period (2018), and Sallitt's Fourteen (2019).

Swon’s feature debut as a director, The World is Full of Secrets, premiered at the Belfort Entrevous Film Festival in 2018, and has made the rounds in Canada, France, United States, Brazil, Chile, and soon it’ll be part of the Mar del Plata Film Festival in Argentina. This independent film features a group of teenager girls in 1997 who meet for a sleepover party, at which they issue a challenge: to tell the most frightening awful story they can.

Through the stories themselves, a foreboding voiceover, and the depiction of teenage rituals involving mirrors, blood and candles, Swon conjures an atmosphere of horror and dark unease. All of that captures both the feeling of a sleepover, but also that sensation of trying to stay awake at 3 am and discerning what’s happening on the horror movie that’s playing on the television.

The film mostly focuses on the faces of these girls who tell their stories, and Swon chooses to tell these stories uninterrupted, in a single shot, to draw us into the horror and violence that is frequently directed at women in these tales. The most unforgettable of these stories is the one told by Suzie (Ayla Guttman), a long tale of revenge between girlfriends who are the same age as the characters that are listening, involving stabbing, witchery, and unrequited love.

I spoke with Graham Swon on the phone to talk about his film, which opens Halloween night at Anthology Film Archives, and about his work as a producer for the past few years.

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NOTEBOOK: What is the origin of the stories told in The World is Full of Secrets by the actresses?

SWON: The origin of the script was actually the long story about Mary-Anne, the story that’s told with the candles, that Suzie tells. I had started working on a script around that narrative that initially was something more, you know, direct: that was the subject, that was the plot, that was the film. While I was working on it I would get twenty pages into the script and come up to the point where the violence started to come in and I would think: “Ah, I don’t really wanna film this, I don’t really wanna show this, I don’t really wanna go out in a field with young girls and have them stabbing each other and everything else.” So there was something viscerally unpleasant about the idea of shooting it to me, and also about showing it on screen. But I was still interested in the narrative and the dynamics of the relationships between the characters, so I kept coming back to it. And then [I] hit upon the idea of having it told instead of shown, and the rest of the script really grew out of that decision, out of the idea that you can take on this element of the story being told that can allow the viewer to receive that story and receive the information in that story, and even think about the violence in that story, without it becoming oriented very heavily [on] the depiction of the violence and torture that happen. The rest grew out of that: having this kind of pseudo-Decameron type structure of people telling stories in a circle, and finding different relationships between different things from there.

All of these stories told in the film are based on real stories, sometimes multiple real stories. The names of the people are not the same, and some of the exact details are not the same, but I would say it’s influenced very heavily by a real story.

In terms of the Mary-Anne story: I read a lot of true crime, something that’s been interesting to me since I was young, and usually when we think of violence with adults, it’s usually men, relatively rarely women. And when we get adolescent violence, with young men you often see this kind of either lone wolf, or a pair of two people, organizing violence against others. And with young women it’s very often internal to the group: a group of friends, two or three really close friends killing another friend, and then lying about it. The Slenderman case was one that recently got a lot of press, but there are numerous cases like it. I think it possibly says something about a certain kind of psychology that goes on there, but also the cultural conditioning that dictates how young women might feel able to express violence, but I don’t want to over-psychoanalyze that.

NOTEBOOK: These long stories told by the characters feel natural, because they make mistakes, flubs and all. How did you work with these young actresses to have them remember them?

SWON: We rehearsed a lot. They’re written, not improvised at all, and they’re pretty close to word-perfect, actually. When we were auditioning, I was especially interested in looking for actors who had experience in theater, where memorizing that kind of quantity of text is maybe not common, but it’s not completely unheard of. I think in cinema it’s really rare, but in theater if you’re memorizing the entire contents of a play you’re learning more text than that, so it’s achievable. Some of the mistakes or little errors are written in, and some of them were kind of naturally occurring. I was interested in keeping a certain amount of that error, because I think it reflects more the way that people actually speak. I think that if they were doing these perfect clean monologues it wouldn’t resemble the way an actual 15-year old would tell a story.

NOTEBOOK: The World is Full of Secrets feels more connected to your work in theater than to your work as a producer, specially as it breaks out from a certain geography and even a sort of circle of common collaborators. Was this a conscious choice for you?

SWON: Obviously, the big difference between writing and directing something versus producing something, like when I’m working with Ricky, or Ted, or Matías, [is that] I’m a little bit more in like a midwife role rather than a mother role, if that makes sense. So there are some differences that are just my taste versus other peoples’ taste. The kind of actors that Ted Fendt uses are very connected to his life and where he’s from and are not the kind of performers who would also appear in one of Ricky’s films. So there are some differences there. It wasn’t a conscious choice, but I do think that I, at some point, have grown a little bit tired of the reality of shooting around city streets and apartments, which happens a lot in New York independent film for obvious reasons.

My experience in theatre was definitely hugely important in this film. I think a lot of what I am interested in, in terms of acting in particular, relates more directly to theatre than cinema. But one of the joys of cinema as an art form is the way it can incorporate other forms—so there can be here some theatre, some literature, some painting. I thought at one point of staging the script instead of filming it, but it would be a completely different piece; you cannot get that kind of intimacy with a human face in the theatre. Time functions completely differently in theatre. So even if there are many theatrical ideas, I think this is a fundamentally cinematic work and must be.

NOTEBOOK: The World is Full of Secrets has recently been part of the Youth Film Competition at the Valdivia Film Festival, and it’s now opening on Halloween at the Anthology Film Archives, which I think are two extremely different contexts. Is it a surprise to see this film have such diverse reception, both in terms of audience and programming?

SWON: It’s been interesting, because when it screened at Belfort Entrevous in France, they don’t have a Youth Film Competition the same way as Valdivia, but they also have a lot of high school students that attend that come in from around France, so for the first screening there it was almost all high school students [as in Valdivia]. Which I was initially worried about, that maybe they would find it boring, or that they wouldn’t connect to the more formal elements, but I’ve found now that it’s been shown that the younger audiences, teenage audiences, or college-age audiences often respond to it most strongly, which has been nice. Something I was really interested in doing with the film was to take some of the techniques in art cinema or experimental cinema, things like the long takes or the superimpositions, and put them in a popular narrative framework. And I always kind of hoped that they would be acceptable to people, that it would help people to access a different way to make films or think about films. And generally I found that to be the case.

Simultaneously, strictly because the film doesn’t fit evenly into any box, I had hoped, for instance, that it would screen in more genre festivals, where it largely hasn’t shown, because I think they see it too much as an art film, without the kind of conventional gore and scares that most contemporary horror films are built around. I think sometimes some of the art film crowds find it too wrapped up in the ideas of youth and genre and things like that, that are a little bit separate. I’ve been happy that the more it shows, I think the more it finds its audience, and I hope lot of more young people discovering it when it gets released on DVD and digital format, because I think probably not a huge number of them are going see it in theaters.

NOTEBOOK: Regarding the connection that teenage audiences have had with your movie, it reminds me of the kind of media they’re used to watch, the vlogs, the YouTube videos, which are often comprised of people talking to the camera in mostly uninterrupted shots.

SWON: Somebody else mentioned the same thing to me, that there was a similarity to the direct address and something in YouTube videos. It’s not a form that I’ve deeply explored [laughs], but I think it’s something interesting. It wasn’t something that I was thinking about consciously when I made it, so if it has a resonance I’m happy that it exists.

When I was finishing the edit for the film, [I heard of] an experimental television program in 1933 called The Television Ghost. And because of the television technology at that point, it was very rough: it’s not the type of technology that was ultimately used, they couldn’t move the camera, they couldn’t have too much movement within the frame. And the show was people standing, head and shoulder shots, looking directly at the camera, and they were ghosts telling the story of how they had died. And I thought, “ah, that’s amazing, that’s like somehow very close to the content of the film.” And I think there are resonances with those kinds of forms and different types of ideas of storytelling, which recycle themselves through different technologies.

NOTEBOOK: You’ve spoken before about how cinephilia became a sort of a code when it came to directing The World is Full of Secrets, especially when you worked with your cinematographer in trying to capture the style and lighting of the film. Since you’ve mostly worked with directors who are intense cinephiles and have the same background as you, does that code come into play when it comes to producing?

SWON: One of the things that you gain from cinephilia is a lot of different references to ways in which something can be done. By seeing a whole bunch of different films you have a lot of different things you can refer to in your mind of what’s possible. So I think, for sure, that even the idea to make some of those movies is made easier if you’ve watched a lot of Rohmer films, for instance, and you can say: “I know it’s possible, not just to make a movie, but to make a really good movie with five people in the crew, three apartments, no lights,” because you’ve seen it done, you know? So, that’s certainly a factor. I definitely think that an awareness of different modes of production helps you think about how to solve problems and make things that may appear to be difficult, possible for a production. I think about other movies a lot when I’m producing, although the language isn’t used in the same way as talking about how to light a shot, for instance.

I work with cinephilic directors because those are the people I’m friends with and I think we all, on some level, met from going to a lot of the same movies, and that circle moves out in different ways. After a certain number of times of seeing the same person in the theater you start talking to them, and that’s how you build these connections. I think New York cinephilia has been very healthy in the last decade, and that’s why there are a lot of interesting filmmakers coming out of it right now, and I’m happy to know them [laughs]. And I’m more interested in making the kind of movies those directors are interested in making than in working with, maybe, a more conventional commercial film school style of director.

For pretty much for all of the filmmakers that I work with, and even beyond other independent filmmakers working in America, there’s really no money in it, there’s not even really funding for it, so you end up really needing a group of people who care about it in a different way. I don’t think anyone is expecting to get rich or famous off of making these kind of films, it’s more out of an adoration and interest in the form, and what’s possible within it. And I think that, for all of us, comes out of watching a lot of movies and wanting to be closer to them.

NOTEBOOK: You’ve produced movies shot on film (Ted Fendt) and on digital (the later works of Dan Sallitt and Ricky D’Ambrose). What do you feel are the differences from the production point of view?

SWON: I think that there are differences, they’re not necessarily massive, and I think it’s more about your attitude. Film has something nice, because there’s a lot of pressure that goes onto a shoot, because the possibility of doing a lot of takes isn’t as financially comfortable. But something like Ted’s films, an awful lot of the budget ends up having to go to the analog materials, especially in the post-production. For example, in the case of Classical Period, where Ted really wanted not only to shoot on film, but also photo-chemically color-correct the film, have the negative cut… so the 16mm print of Classical Period is a fully analog object, which wasn’t the case for Short Stay [Ted Fendt, 2016], where we ended up having to scan the negative and then go back out to a 35mm blow-up. There’s definitely a big financial difference in how the money gets spent, because that’s a big weight on the production, it’s one of the reasons people moved to digital.

I think that at the end of the day it’s about thinking about what quality you need. I think a lot of filmmakers that I see using 16mm seem to be using it almost as a filter effect, something to give a pre-packaged feeling of a style or a mood. I don’t find that particularly interesting. I think Ted deals with film in a different way and is doing it very intimately, on a formal level, so I think it makes more sense for him to use it. I think often times if you don’t have a reason to be shooting on film, it’s putting a lot of pressure on you to do so, especially financial pressure.

And then, of course there are different possibilities and different things, like after Ted saw The World is Full of Secrets he said: “ah, it’s good you shot digitally, because [the length of] the shots wouldn’t be possible [on film].” You know? So, I think it’s good to think about what camera you’re using, and what the qualities of it are, and how you can pull something out of it, regardless of what you’re doing, but I don’t think it transforms most elements of the production, a lot of things stay relatively the same.

NOTEBOOK: Jem Cohen’s Counting is the first film you produced, how did you come on board?

SWON: Several of the filmmakers that I’ve worked with as a producer, I started with them as a distributor, because I worked a long time at Cinema Guild and then at Kino Lorber doing theatrical distribution. That’s how I met Matías, doing the release of Viola. At that time I met Dan Sallitt because I helped get a home video release for The Unspeakable Act, and that’s also how I met Jem, because I worked on the release of Museum Hours. My former boss at Cinema Guild, Ryan Krivoshey, who now runs Grasshopper Film, and I had worked really closely with Jem on all the elements in Museum Hours and had become really good friends with him. [Jem Cohen] had already shot all the material in Counting, he had been shooting the material over several years, traveling to festivals, when he was in different countries, he would shoot, shoot, shoot. Jem is somebody who’s always shooting. If you meet Jem in the street and walk with him for a few blocks, he may stop and take a camera out and shoot the corner for a few minutes. So, he’s always collecting material. With Counting, he had already shot everything and done a lot of the editing, but he needed help to get the money and organization to do the post-production and finish the film. Ryan and I came on and helped organize that and get the finishing funds, so I spent a lot of time with Jem doing the color correction and finishing that film, but I think really no one else other than Jem was really involved in capturing and planning the content, as much as it can be planned, as it’s a documentary of a certain way. 

NOTEBOOK: What are the future projects in the works, both as director and producer?

SWON: There are lots of projects, but it's hard to know what will come next. Ideas are never the issue, only available resources. I'm working on a film around paintings with Matías Piñeiro, derived from an idea we have for a mode of production that resembles a game. I just finished writing a second feature of my own, an anti-civilization melodrama set in 1939 inspired in part by the writings and life of Barbara Newhall Follett. Cinema is so slow and costly, you just have to stay focused, and have faith that it will move forward in whatever shape it takes.

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