Marchlands (2011)

NetFlix N/A
IMDB 7.4/10
My Rating: 8/10

In this ITV 5 part miniseries, 3 families across 3 different time periods are impacted by the supernatural repercussions of a young girl's death.

During the years we lived overseas, we watched a lot of BBC via our satellite dish but very little ITV, other than the occasional US TV shows they'd run.  ITV was... Well, as the Brits might say, it was Chav-TV.  Reality shows by the ton, trashy soaps about self-obsessed young people having sex all the time, and just generally not what you'd think of as intelligent television.  That's why I was all the more surprised to be so impressed with this show - When did ITV start making TV for people who weren't the UK equivalent of Dittoheads?  (Normally I'd pick on the Tea Party as my example of Stupidus Americanus, but Rush is on my mind at the moment for his absolutely hilarious and roundly internet-mocked accusations that comicbook villain Bane is a liberal conspiracy to make Mitt Romney look bad.  Nevermind that Rush would probably be a Bane fan if he'd just get to know him...)

So, Marchlands is a great show.  Let's just start with that up front.  You especially need to see this if you're an old-school horror fan, because the style of scares here is right out of The Haunting or The Legend of Hell House.  This is not full up with jerkycam ghosts and "BOO!" jump scares - Instead, we're introduced to a cast that we believe in and invest in, and we're slowly drawn into the mystery of the hauntings that occur... So slowly that when something genuinely creepy happens, the skin goes all prickly.

The story is really three stories in one.  In the 1960's, a young couple live with parents in the titled household and cope with grieving over the loss of their daughter.  Mysterious circumstances surround her accidental drowning and the heartbroken mother is essentially walled out by the "Everything must be normal" facade of her family and village friends.  In the 80's, a family with children live in the same house and find their daughter increasingly targeted by an unseen presence that she calls her "invisible friend".  And in the present day, a young couple buy the house for their quiet country escape and find something is very interested in their newborn baby.

All three tales connect in ways both expected and unexpected.  It reminded me somewhat of American Horror Story in this respect with the house's past always lurking right on the edge of the current day experience and giving deeper layers of meaning to all sorts of seemingly casual occurrences.  It isn't so intense as American Horror Story, though - While AHS was like a steam train barreling directly at you, Marchlands is more of a soft touch...  Just a delicate whisper of scares here and there, just enough to keep you uneasy.  It helps that the characters are so real.  Alex Kingston departs from her River Song persona in Doctor Who to embody a frustrated, anxious 80's housewife, and the producers did a great job at choosing look-alike actors to play younger and older versions of the same characters across the time span.

To enjoy it the most, don't look at it as a horror series, look at it as a mystery with horror elements.  The cloud overhanging the death of the young girl is gradually unveiled over the series and for once, everything wraps to a tidy conclusion without any jarring, "Let's throw this in just to be clever" twists - It's smart but doesn't try to be TOO smart.  Worth seeing!

Fragile (2005)

NetFlix 3.4/5
IMDB 6.2/10
My Rating: 6/10  

An American nurse is assigned to help transition a group of children from an old hospital to a new location, but becomes aware that a menacing and ghostly "Mechanical Girl" does not want the kids to leave.


What this movie does right:
A creepy, old-style ghost story with limited FX and disturbing undertones set in a dilapidated children's hospital full of helpless victims for the haunting, and an incredibly disturbing ghost.


What this movie does wrong:
Calista Flockhart


I will be the first to admit open bias here.  I absolutely loathed Ally McBeal.  My wife and I started watching it in its first season, when it was a really clever and funny show about a clever and funny young woman and her overactive imagination as she grappled with 20-something life.  However, the series played a bait-and-switch on us - Over the course of its run, it hooked us with engaging secondary characters who were empathetic and enjoyable to watch, while at the same time transforming Ally herself into the worst sort of histrionic, bitchy, self-sabotaging harpy.  Ally spent the last half of the series feeling terribly sorry for herself despite being a high-powered lawyer with a big city apartment in her 20's, because she was lonely and yet could not help but screw up every relationship that she fell into with her latent insanity.  She was the sort of woman that men do not just avoid, they actively run from, and the more the show tried to tell us that Ally was just a beautiful, sensitive soul with too much emotion for this world, the more I wanted to shake her and slap some sense into her.  So what the hell does all this have to do with this film?  It's simple - Calista Flockhart carries all this baggage into this movie and while I was hoping to see some different acting range from her, by the end of the film I was as unsympathetic to her as I was to Ally.


The character problems are the same - In Fragile, Flockhart plays a nurse with a troubled past, who comes to the Isle of Wight to help look after a group of hospitalized children during a big relocation.  While taking the night shift, she begins to have unsettling visions of ghosts and hears strange noises.  Events begin to escalate as the moving date nears, and our heroine realizes that there is a malevolent force in the building determined to keep the children there, and willing to break them into splinters to get what it wants.  Unfortunately, Flockhart handles the situation in a very-Ally way, by bonding closely with the kids while being a bitch to everyone else, including characters who are openly trying to help her, and insists on the primacy of her emotions and feelings over any actual logic... For instance, when she realizes that the kids need to be moved ASAP, she doesn't go to her boss and point to obvious threats like the near-disastrous elevator breakdown, but instead insists that she has "a feeling" about "something awful" in the place and that everyone should bow to her feelings.  I'm not sure how the NHS works in the UK, but I have my own feeling that this approach would not be likely to take one very far up the chain of command in terms of actually accomplishing your desired goal.  The fact that she is clearly a bit unbalanced herself, and has some sort of mysterious bad baggage in her nursing career past, does not incline to help her case.  So, being Ally again, she becomes spiteful and nasty to everyone, even those who are doing their best to be friendly to her.  She only shows any sort of kindness to the children, but here her progress beggars belief, as she manages to befriend and bond with a withdrawn orphan girl within only a couple of days.

 

So, if the heroine is so unpleasant, why did I give this a 6? It's because it does so much else that's right.  In fact, if they'd had another lead actress with a different approach, I'd have most likely rated this one a 7 or 8, because story-wise, it was most marvelously creepy.  It's a very old-school ghost story that for the most part feels more like something from the early 70's instead of the 2000's...  No wretched CGI distractions, no overdone Playstation ghost FX, no Japan horror ripoff girls with black hair over their faces.  In short, it's just a great little ghost story.  The setting is terrific - The hospital where events take place is a remote country building, now half unused, with a deserted second floor that's been empty and abandoned since the 1950's.

It's pretty much impossible for an abandoned hospital wing not to be creepy, and the setting makes for an eerie "Late night shift at Precinct 13" feel as our heroine patrols the quiet halls full of shipping boxes, listening to disturbing sounds from above and catching furtive movements in the shadows.  Some reviewers have complained that the movie is dull in the first half, but in my opinion it built perfectly, a slow and steady increase of supernatural tension that leads to a chaotic climax where Ally (GOD DAMN STOP SAYING THAT) has to brave the deserted floor and face down the menacing ghost.  And the menacing ghost, it must be said, is pretty freaking menacing - One of the scarier spooks on film and one that resolutely does not fall into the usual expectations of modern ghost behavior.  No staticky film, no sudden jumps from one spot to another, no stuttered movement, no CGI transforms - It's just one pale figure wrapped in mechanical splints that will unnerve you by its very presence.

In the end, I'm torn.  My personal bias against Calista Flockhart kept me from sympathizing with her character in the way I've been drawn into other haunting victims, like The Haunting's poor doomed Eleanor or even that so-typical suburban 80's family in Poltergeist.  On the other hand, it was a good concept wrapped around an unappealing character, and I give everything else about the the movie high marks.  Indeed, Ally fans might even consider this a great scary movie, but for myself, the best I can say is that it was a creepy and enjoyable way to pass 90 minutes, but I didn't come away from it with any desire to see it again or think much about it afterward.  It was, however, an enjoyable "filler" movie for the oncoming Halloween movie season.

The Woman in Black (1989)

NetFlix N/A
IMDB 7.5/10
My Rating: 8/10

A young lawyer is sent to an isolated village to settle the affairs of a recently deceased woman, and finds the area haunted by a mysterious woman in black.

First up, this movie is available on DVD from Amazon but sadly, is not for rent on Netflix, so interested viewers will have to track down a purchasable copy.  That said, it is worth the effort for anyone who loves a good ghost story, because it's one of the best.  Based on the novel by Susan Hill, this is easily among my favorite ghost story films ever.  I review it here specifically with the knowledge that it's about to be remade in 2012 by the newly-reconstituted Hammer Films and given the track record of most modern remakes, I want to promote the original version as much as possible.

I am a huge fan of a good haunting movie.  My all-time favorite is The Haunting, based on Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, but others include The Changeling, The Legend of Hell House, The Ring, Haunted, and the more recent The Eclipse (reviewed by me here).  As a longtime fan of the classic British horror story, this was made just for me.  It's a slow moving, slow burning, gothic nightmare that builds gradually and without hurry to its horrific conclusion.

A young lawyer on the way up is given his "big assignment" - Travel to a remote village to settle the affairs of a regular client of his firm.  On arrival, he finds that the deceased woman had no friends among the locals and was generally regarded as mad.  The entire first half of the movie is all foreboding, and despite the 80's date it is straight out of a 40's ghost story complete with wary villagers, suspicious innkeeper, and plenty of conversation-stopping mentions of the dead lady in question.  Something is clearly amiss and our hero is eventually forced to relocate to the dead woman's isolated home on the coast, which is accessible only by a daily-flooded causeway.  As he investigates her house and records, he uncovers a terrible tale of tragedy and hate that puts him in fear for his sanity.

 

The recreated early 20th century sets are beautiful and not overdone, as so many modern remakes tend to be (Compare the disturbing and believable Hill House in the original The Haunting with the insipidly overblown funhouse sets of the 90's version).  Overall, it's a low budget film with more of a TV movie look than a feature film, but that works in its favor because it keeps the situation grounded.  The Woman in Black does not appear in swirls of smoke or staticky stutter-cam, she's just... there...

The low budget means we don't have gobs of FX weighing everything down, and like the best ghost stories, more is accomplished with an eerie sound in the night or a creaking door than with CGI monsters.  I'm virtually certain the upcoming remake is going to CGI the WIB into some sort of stretchy-faced demon, probably with long wet hair over her face, which will be distracting and pointless compared to the original WIB's relentless stare.  As our hero declares to a confidant, "I could just feel the most relentless hate coming off of her in waves." 

This is not a film for the attention deficit crowd.  It moves slowly and quietly, and it takes half the running time before the first odd occurrences are experienced.  It's a bit of a period drama this way, and fans of Jane Austen books and Wuthering Heights will feel right at home.  The Masterpiece Theater style also works well because it sets you up like a tourist at a table of card sharks - When THE SCENE comes, it will knock you for a loop. Yes, this is one of those rare movies with a "THE SCENE".  I noted with amusement that on the IMDB boards, everyone refers to THE SCENE and everyone who's seen the movie knows exactly what they're referring to.  Not a lot of films out there like that (Though again, I'd say 2009's The Eclipse also has at least two THE SCENEs in it that qualify).  It isn't gross, graphic, or violent, yet when this movie's THE SCENE hits, you'll want to crawl into the back of your couch.  Overall, The Woman in Black is the perfect fog-shrouded period ghost story, and the perfect way to kick off an Autumn season of spooky films.

Outcasts, the BBC Miniseries

IMDB 6.3
My Rating: 4/10

The adventures of the first human colony on a distant planet as they attempt to rebuild civilization on an alien world amid interpersonal struggles and political infighting.

This is about to start broadcasting on BBC America, so I thought it was worth a short mention for those who might be interested by the premise.  BBC seems to be pushing it a bit as "BSG without the space ships", all the way to the casting of former "Apollo" Jamie Bamber for the opening episode.  Unfortunately, what could and should have been some riveting sci-fi about a subject not tackled in a very long time, becomes yet another dull character drama, at least in my opinion.  I have not yet watched the entire first season - Take that as you will, because it is both a condemnation of myself for writing a review of a show that I haven't fully finished watching yet, and also a rather damning commentary on the show itself, that it just hasn't engaged me enough to keep me hungry for the next episode (I'm right up on Game of Thrones, though!)

I was just reading an interview article about this series in Sci Fi Now magazine, and head writer Ben Richards perfectly summed up the problems of the series when he stated, "I don't come from a sci-fi background, so it was a huge challenge and almost a bit of a surprise to me to realize that I was doing a science fiction project".  Richards ".. never experimented with genre" and goes on to say, "The problem I encountered was writing things that I thought were devastatingly original , and the story editor going, 'Yeah, they kind of did that in Blade Runner'".  While I applaud their editorial decision not to have CGI aliens crawling around everywhere, the unfortunate result of all this apologizing for the "SF" label (The overall impression I got from the production team was that they wanted to make an SF series to be different, yet were almost embarrassed to be doing SF and kept focusing on the character relationships) is that it's a science fiction series that doesn't have any of the appeal of good science fiction.

There are virtually no intriguing "What If?"s. Our group is trying to run a small outpost settlement on an alien world, but no episode I've seen so far even touches on anything genuinely alien.  There's Earth-air, Earth-water, Earth day/night cycles, Earth plant life...  Indeed, the only SF-ish part of the concept is the fact that our group has previously genetically created some artificial humans better adapted to this new world, and then tried to kill them.  The bulk of each episode so far has been focused on inter-character politics - "Will she sleep with that guy?", "Will this guy's faction gain more power?", "Why is this guy so weird?", and so forth.  The original concept was the story of British pioneers in Australia, of all things, and it shows, with the SF aspect being more tacked-on than central, as one would expect it to be in a saga about adapting to an alien world.

I don't know... Perhaps it's me, and I'm in the minority for preferring to see stories about our characters experiencing bouts of madness from a slightly different air composition, or unexpected behavioral problems from an altered day/night cycle, or startling encounters with the fauna of an extra-solar world.  I can say that if you're more into the politics of such things - more interested, say, in whether the ultra religious people will seize power and shape the new society, or whether it will be founded on liberal values (And given that this is BBC, we pretty much know already which side will be the good guys in this little turf war) - then you might enjoy it more than I did.  It is well acted, and Hermione Norris is always fun to behold.  The stories are logical and relatable.  There is nothing bad about it, per se, it's just that I ultimately question the purpose of making this a SF series when so much of the tale is bending itself into contortions trying NOT to be a SF story.  And lastly, it's just dull...  Not one character really stands out so far, there's no one to be sympathetic with, and there's no one in this brave young world whose fate I'm really invested in.  I want a colonization show that I want to follow every week, because I want them to succeed, because successfully transplanting ourselves onto another world would be the most amazing and breathtaking accomplishment the human race could aspire to.  I want something that will wind me up and hold me tightly involved in the sheer grandness of that undertaking, and the terrifying fragility of it and the skin-tingling magnificence of genuinely being the first human colony on another world.

Outcasts needs more jazz.

Madhouse (1974)

NetFlix
IMDB
My Rating: 6/10

Down on his luck and trying to keep a grip on his precarious mental health, has-been horror-film icon Paul Toombes (Vincent Price) takes a stab at revitalizing his career by starring in a television series based on his famous silver screen persona, Dr. Death. But when people start dying in gruesome ways that resemble Dr. Death's handiwork, Toombes suspects the evil character has completely taken over his mind. Jim Clark directs this thriller.

 These days, "Scream" gets all the credit for being the first post-modern, self-aware horror film (Even though that award should really go to "There's nothing out there").  Roll back the timeline a few decades, though, and you find this forgotten gem, starring Vincent Price, Peter Cushing and Robert Quarry (of "Count Yorga:  Vampire", a movie I have sadly not yet seen).  Put Vincent Price and Peter Cushing in the same movie and it's worth showing up just to watch them read a telephone directory.  Alas, Cushing isn't in this much - He wanders in and out of the story, probably from other movie contracts during the same time period.  But back to "Scream" -  "Madhouse" kept reminding me of "Scream" as it played through...  It's a weird fusion, sort of a mashup of 50's/60's gothic horror classics and emerging 70's London disco culture, self-referencing all the way and, like "Scream", resembling a slasher/horror on the surface and actually being a twisted mystery underneath.

Price plays himself, a famous horror actor who's not coping well with the changing times.  His iconic screen character Dr. Death was forcibly retired years past, when his bride-to-be was beheaded under mysterious circumstances and Price was committed to an asylum due to mental breakdown.  Now he's out, healthy, and being wooed by old friend Cushing to make a comeback as Dr. Death in an ongoing TV series.  Unfortunately, the reappearance of Dr. Death in his life brings, well... the reappearance of Dr. Death in his life, and before you can say Wes Craven, a mysterious figure in a death mask starts appearing and murdering everyone close to him.  The murders keep occurring during blackout periods for Price, leaving him and the police wondering if he's gone batty once more and is rowing without all his cards in the deck.


I have to give special kudos to Price's very simple-yet-enjoyable Doctor Death makeup...

... but the real visual winner here is the "killer" version of Dr. Death, who ends up out-Screaming the "Scream" phantom and being one of the more unnerving slasher killers ever:

It's an effectively creepy and simple look that I hope to steal for a Halloween costume one of these years, if I can ever convince any Trick or Treaters to come back to our house again.  The killer Dr. Death mows his way through the cast in various creative ways, some of which make no sense whatsoever but presage the "Death by garden implement" wave of 80's slashers.  The whole thing builds to a dramatic conclusion that literally brings the house down in an obvious homage to Price's old Poe films.

Oh, and did I mention that there's also a crazy disfigured spider lady living in Cushing's basement, for no apparent reason?

So, all of this sounds like good stuff so far, and it is, but why the middling rating?  The problem is that it's all a bit of a mess.  It has a lot of good pieces, but the director doesn't seem to know how to fit them together, and the tone is so uneven that people on the IMDB board are mistakenly complaining that the film has been edited down over the years.  Sadly, this isn't the case - The jarring transitions and mood breakers are all original, and it often seems that just when you're getting into a nice suspenseful scene, it cuts to a 70's pantsuit party or other silliness.  It tries hard to bridge the older world of crumbling castle horrors with the mid-70's "Deep Red" mod murder vibe, but doesn't quite manage it, leaving the whole thing feeling like two disparate movies stuck together with packing tape.  One minute Price is making his way by candlelight through a cobwebbed basement in the dead of night, the next minute Dr. Death is killing someone to a pop song and disco ball lights.  If it had any other actors in the title roles it would have lost another couple of points on the rating scale, but Price and Cushing do a mighty job of keeping the whole thing watchable and interesting, even though you'll guess who the killer is well before the end.

A forgotten curiosity worth visiting if you're a fan of these legendary horror actors, but not so great for anyone else.


Suggested Accompaniment:  I've said before that Danish freehands are the pipes for 70's films, and here again they're a nice fit.  Something big, swanky, and as outrageously over the top as bell bottom pants would be the ideal pipe for this flick.  But in honor of the movie's split personality, go with a traditional English tobacco...  Maybe Dunhill London Mix, something like that, which should balance out the experience nicely. 

Franklyn

NetFlix
IMDB
My Rating: 6/10  

In the futuristic Meanwhile City, a masked vigilante (Ryan Phillippe) seeks out his nemesis while in contemporary London, an art student (Eva Green) attempts to kill herself, a heartbroken lover (Sam Riley) looks for someone new and a father (Bernard Hill) searches for his son. Writer-director Gerald McMorrow's sci-fi drama follows these desperate individuals as their lives become intertwined by fate.

A very odd movie, but one which I think most everyone here would enjoy with a few caveats. For starters, it's NOT a superhero/SF/action flick, despite what posters and categories and trailers might suggest - It's a contemporary psychological drama set mostly in modern day London. The posters and ads seem to focus on the action aspects of a masked mystery man in Meanwhile City, and while he is the crux of the movie, don't go into this expecting Batman or Watchmen. It's more like a surreal fusion of Brazil, Dark City, and a BBC character drama. The SF/superhero aspect of it is only one slice of story out of multiple concurrent tales.

In modern London, a troubled young artist plans suicide, a young man is jilted at the altar and develops an obsession for a childhood sweetheart, and a father searches frantically for his lost son. In Meanwhile City, something straight out of a Gilliam-verse, a Rorschach-esque masked vigilante roams the streets, ostracized because he is an atheist in a city where everyone has to have a religion by law. He stalks his enemy, a child murderer, while being pursued by the agents of the church/government.

It's a weird mix for a movie. The modern day stories are intriguing and good in their own right, but can't help but be overshadowed by the weirdness of Meanwhile City, where everyone has a religion and change them regularly (I was particularly fond of the Seventh Day Manicurists).  It isn't on the level of Brazil by a long shot but it does have some wicked dark humor in it, in the Meanwhile City sections. In fact, I was wishing they'd spent more time there and fleshed out the city more, because the little bits of it that we get are wonderfully weird.

Here is another film that you'll watch for one hour wondering WTF is going on and if these stories will ever connect, but they do, eventually. In fact, I thought the ending was just a little bit TOO twee compared to the preceding, but the threads do tie together in interesting fashion. I can't say, "This is awesome, you MUST run out and watch it", but I can say, "It is worth seeing and won't disappoint if you don't go in expecting a superhero action film." There are no superhero antics. Well, there is one slow-mo fight scene that sticks out in a pretty dumb "300" way but it's mercifully brief. I almost wonder if it was included just for the trailer, since the rest of the violence is quite realistic and of the "Gonna break this bar stool over your head" variety. Mostly it seemed to be a dark psychological drama that the promoters looked at and said, "Hey, if we focus on this masked guy we'll bring in all the Watchmen audience and the teens", so the promotional material for it makes it look VERY different than it is. 

Worth seeing. 

Suggested Accompaniment:   Black sandblasted churchwarden.  Or even a clay - I don't say this often about any movies made after 1949 but this would work well as a clay pipe movie, especially if you're lucky enough to have one of the artistic creations of French artisan Gerard Prungnaud.  Let me load up my Prungnaud calabash with some Gawith Bracken Flake, pour a mug of Black Chocolate Stout, and I'm a happy hobbit.

Ondine

NetFlix
IMDB
My Rating: 6.5 /10  

An Irish fisherman (Colin Farrell) hauls in an unexpected catch when a mysterious girl (Alicja Bachleda) gets tangled in his nets and soon affects the lives of everyone around her in this fantastical seaside tale from director Neil Jordan (Interview with the Vampire). Is it possible this beautiful stranger is a mythical sea nymph who's been summoned from the ocean's depths ... or is she something far more common?

If you're looking for something to watch with the missus, you could do much worse than this.  Take a pinch of "Local Hero" and a dab of "Secret of Roan Innish" and stir them into a mystery/romance and you get this. The wives will love it and the husbands won't be bored, because it's about a million times better than the typical chick flick. Colin Farrell even plays a sympathetic part, instead of his usual dickish persona. The coastal scenery of Ireland is terrific, too.

Basically, our hero is a lonely fisherman separated from an alcoholic wife with a crippled daughter, and one day he hauls up his net and there's a girl in it. She doesn't want to be seen by anyone and seems to have magical fishie powers. There's some amusing stuff as his wheelchair-bound daughter starts an investigation on the mystery woman living in dad's shack, and some very understated humor. It's all quite relaxing and non-shrill, with excellent music. Things take a dark turn when the selkie husband appears and starts pursuing the girl, leading to a final revelation about her nature.

The only downside is the language, since there are several heavy Irish accents involved and even with five years of exposure to various regional accents thanks to BBC, we both found some of the dialog difficult to follow. There was a lot of, "Can you turn this up a little more?"

If your wife is after you to watch something other than monster movies, I recommend this as a choice that will not fry your sanity.

Suggested Accompaniment: If you need me to tell you Guinness and a Peterson pipe filled with Peterson Irish Oak, you'll not be getting any Lucky Charms, ever.

Die, Monster, Die!

NetFlix
IMDB
My Rating: 5/10





A 1960's Boris Karloff movie that one would think would be a shoe-in to love, given that it also stars Nick Adams of Godzilla movie fame, but alas, it's a fairly tepid affair. It is worth watching just to see Karloff, but it says something that 20-30 minutes could have been cut without notice from its already short 1:23 running time.

This may be the first Lovecraft movie adaptation, I'm not sure, but it does predate the 70's Dunwich Horror with a nice retelling of "The Colour out of Space". Nick Adams arrives at Little English Village to see the Witley family only to find all the locals crossing themselves and bolting their windows at mention of the name. (I so wish this would happen to me someday, but so far no luck.  I long for the day I come to a new town and ask about a local family name, only to have everyone at the diner pull out crosses and start muttering and clear out)  Turns out Papa Witley (Karloff) has something going on with a crashed meteorite, and weird afflictions are plaguing everyone at Witley manor. Adams' investigation leads to a horrifying climax as the effects of the meteor are unveiled.

This was an enjoyable flick for any "old horror movie" fan, but it could have been a lot better. The build-up is nice, but the pacing starts to drag badly and by the time you're halfway through it feels like you've spent two hours already watching Nick Adams creep quietly downstairs to check on a strange noise. I am all for slow-building tension, but the lack of action does cause some attention drift. Some moments are excellent, however, like Karloff's performance and some mutated *things* found halfway through. Overall, a disappointing case of having all the right ingredients (Karloff, Adams, spooky manor house, devil worship, mutants, crazy women roaming the grounds, radioactive monsters) but never quite managing to get them all to gel properly into a delicious whole. Fun if you're patient, but could have been much better. 

Suggested Accompaniment:  60's British horrors always call out for a classical British pipe.  Load up with something like Dunhill Nightcap, add a pint of Guinness and you're set to go.

The Eclipse

NetFlix 
IMDB
My Rating: 10/10





EXCELLENT movie. Perfect, IMO.  Thinking about it long after it was over.  Note - NOT the Twilight movie, this is a 2009 Irish indie film, so don't think my mind has been possessed by a tweenie emo girl and I've started watching body-waxed vampire movies.


Review! Erm, OK, well for starters, this is a ghost story movie you can watch with your wife or SO. The trailers and promo stuff are not doing it any favors, IMO, because the marketing makes it look like a thriller or horror film, and in fact it is that and a lot of other things... It's really a ghost story, family drama, romance, comedy, and meditation on loss. And I will add that one key factor of enjoying this movie seems to be having experienced the loss of a loved one or close friend yourself. From comments I've read, a lot of folks who haven't gone through the process of someone suddenly just not being there any more, have a hard time relating to the film emotionally. 

The lead character has lost his wife to cancer, and is left grieving with two children and a father-in-law in a rest home. Strange events lead him to believe he is being haunted. Over the course of a few days, he works as a support guy for a local literary festival and crosses paths with a smart female horror writer and a drunken, egotistical, "name" writer. Aiden Quinn has a hilariously sad part as the famous author.

Someone on IMDB said that if you go into this expecting a horror movie, you'll be disappointed. Expect a thriller, and you'll be disappointed. Expect a romance, and you'll be disappointed. You kind of have to go into it expecting nothing and willing to go with the flow, to really enjoy it. While it is not an overt horror movie, I will say that it has some of the absolutely scariest scenes in cinema history - I jumped off the couch and nearly spilled my pipe all over myself at one point. It's reminiscent of "The Woman in Black" that way... Everyone remembers THAT scene from WiB, and the scare scenes in this are on par. While there are other things going on in the movie (Relationships starting, ending, family drama, etc), the haunting hovers over everything and jumps in at the most unexpected moments. 

 

It's also stunning to look at. The town where it was filmed is an amazing backdrop, and the cinematography and framing is fantastic. The use of lighting, blacks, silhouettes, landscapes, etc is really a visual treat. When it was over, Em commented, "That was as gorgeous as the Secret of Kells in an entirely different way". 

I have no idea what to compare it to. The pace is slow, the story is quiet and understated, the characters are riveting and real, and it has this odd quirky sense of humor on top of everything else - I think I can safely say that if you enjoyed the film "Local Hero", you would also enjoy this. Imagine "Local Hero" crossed with "Paranormal Activity", if you dare.

On IMDB, the comments run towards lots of thoughtful, well written positive reviews giving it a 7-10/10 rating, and various people giving it a 1 and saying it was the most boring movie they ever saw, was completely stupid, etc... "Nothing HAPPENEDDDDDD" was a common refrain. I'll admit that when it ended, I blinked and my first reaction was, "What? That's all?", but on reflection I feel it had a perfect ending - Ambiguous and open, so you can decide for yourself what happens next. Mostly I was just bummed to be parting company with these excellent characters after only 90 minutes. I do think that roughly 3 out of ten people will really love the movie, probably 5 of ten will shrug and think, "Meh", and 2 of ten will not be able to sit still or enjoy it at all because they want to see Jigsaw cutting up girls with silicon boobs.
 
Best watched when feeling quiet, contemplative, and perhaps a bit sad - and not in the mood for explosions, monsters, wacky comedy or car chases. Funnily enough, I would call this a very "adult" movie, in the sense that one has to have experienced some of the issues in the movie to really relate to it and appreciate it.

Damn good flick.

Second opinion: http://www.coldfusionvideo.com/archives/eclipse-the-2009/
(Interestingly, his complaints were what I liked - The fact that the movie does not hand you wrapped-and-tied explanations for everything. I enjoyed the ambiguity much like I enjoyed the ending of "The Thing" - Others who want definite explanations and a neat wrap-up will not be as happy)

Suggested Accompaniment: Something extremely elegant.  This is not a movie for a bathtub of buttered popcorn; it is more a movie for a glass of dry white wine and a long-stemmed black churchwarden pipe, preferably loaded with a slow burning flake tobacco like Three Nuns... Something sharp and with just a bit of bite.

Doghouse

NetFlix
IMDB
My Rating: 5/10



I'd read several mediocre to bad reviews of this so I wasn't sure what to expect, but I thought it was several gallons of fun poured into a bathtub full of otters, personally. Basic plot - A group of henpecked British lads get together for a vacation in the country, to have time away from the various harpy women in their lives. They plan to stay in Moodley, a remote village surrounded by miles of nothing. Unfortunately, Moodley has been the site of government testing of British trioxin, your usual zombie virus that only targets women. Thus, our boozing lads find themselves forced to battle a horde of flesh-eating ZomBirds.

A lot of the bad reviews complained about this being misogynistic. I think this is being way overly PC, because A) it's a zombie horror-comedy, not an art film, B) a lot of the fun is in the "War of the sexes" angle, and C) the guys are hardly portrayed in a winning light either. YMMV. Basically, it will spin on whether you find it offensive or funny seeing the guys constantly attacked by female stereotypes (Zombie bride, fat zombie lady with hair in rollers, zombie hairdresser, goth zombie Wiccan from the local occult shop, etc).

It also gets compared negatively to Shaun of the Dead, since it is a British film and there is now a rule that all British horror films must be compared to SOTD. It's not as good as SOTD. It is, however, a lot better than most of the B horror films I've watched lately. It's a classic-on-wheels compared to "Primal", for instance. There are some good laughs to be had and it works well as a survival horror flick, even including some clever uses of zombie-fighting gear born of male fixations, like toy guns and RC cars. Also, "sounds that only women can hear" FTW.

A lot of reviewers claim to have hated the ending. I felt the ending was terrific - Perfectly uproariously ambiguous. Again, YMMV.

I thought it was a hoot, and my wife enjoyed it too. Worth seeing.  7/10

Trailer:

Suggested Accompaniment:  Do they still sell Old Peculiar?  Because that would be the perfect beer for this.  If not OP, have a pint of Sam Smith's Taddy Porter, and load up a giant sized Comoy or Ben Wade sandblast with some Gawith Black XX.  If the Zombirds don't kill you, the tobacco will, but if you live through both, no one will ever doubt your manhood.