Television Review - American Horror Story: "Afterbirth"

 

I know that this is ridiculously late, and most of you have already tuned in for this anti-climactic, utterly disappointing finale to a show that couldn't really get much lower in my eyes. If you have, I invite you to join me as we finish up American Horror Story's first season; it will be back for a second, although how long it will last is anyone's guess.

When we last left the Harmons, almost everyone was dead. Vivien died in a particularly nasty childbirth, Viollet was already dead thanks to an overdose, and Ben was dead from the chest up with the only working thing on him being his groin. I could argue that everyone was mentally dead to begin with, but I think I'd be beating a dead horse there. Ben's now got a baby with no mother, and he struggles with what to do with him. Obviously suicide flits through his mind, although Constance stops by to play the nurturing, caring neighbor who certainly knows what's best for children (because, you know, she has none now) and talks him out of it. Ah, but it's not all easy within this haunted house, as Ben attempts to leave when he gets the blessing from Vivien and Violet in ghost form; Hayden has him murdered by a couple of people we don't really get to see, and then Ben returns to the house as a ghost and Constance takes their baby.

All of this happens in the first half of this episode, which was a surprise to me because I thought it would take the writers the entire episode to have Ben commit to killing himself. The surprise is soon decimated by this episode's tedium, however, because American Horror Story shows just how easy it is to reboot the series by bringing in another happy family, tearing them apart with almost every single ghost you've ever seen in the show, and then driving them out again. Easy, shmeezy, and the sad part is that the quick recap of the basics of what happened in this season happen in about twenty minutes. The haunted house gimmick to scare away the new family is decidedly entertaining, and that's because it almost feels like a mockery of the show itself; ironically, American Horror Story seems to do satirical impersonations of itself better than an actual horror story.

Hey, did I mention that Constance gets a baby? She sure does, because "Afterbirth" features a number of unending monologues from Constance about how this baby is her reason for living (I guess that Tate and Addy were rejects from God) that are so cloying that I was tempted to fast-forward.

The season ends on an interesting note, hinting that the devilish baby brought into the world by Vivien is actually the baby that survived. Now Constance has him in her care, and apparently he likes to murder things and point at them - this might have been the best part of the episode thanks to the little boy, who is pretty goddam cute as he gestures innocently to the woman bleeding all over his nursery.

But what's most disappointing about this episode, besides the season preceding it, is that it plays the whole thing extremely safe. Rebooting the series in the last episode, which plays out exactly like what happened to the Harmons? Simply killing off the family? These are things that people assumed from the outset, but it's not what they really wanted to happen until they found out how annoying and nonsensical the Harmons would be. The show was unceasingly frustrating all season long, but this conclusion ended the Horror Story on an extremely horrific low.

The Evil Ad #48

 

Thanks to Neato Coolville, the Internet has gained a scan of one of the grooviest Halloween pamphlets from Dunkin Donuts - a step-by-step booklet on how to plan your Halloween party. The estimate on this brochure is that it's circa the '60s or the '70s, so you can bet that the Halloween parties thrown using these DD ideas were supremo. Just don't forget the coffee, or the suits at Dunkin Donuts will come back from the dead to serve you a cup. 

Movie Review - The Ward

There is something about an asylum that draws us to them as a central setting for a horror movie. They house people who are scary; some patients may have murdered people, others might be incomprehensible. And asylums are a dark blight on medical science, with numerous reports of lobotomies and electroshock therapy deep within their past. So John Carpenter revisits a time when all of these things really could happen, where cameras weren't watching every patient's move, by traveling back to 1966 in North Bend, Oregon.

The Ward is first and foremost a ghost story about revenge. Kristen (Amber Heard) burns down a house and gets locked away in North Bend's asylum, where she meets four other girls who are also locked away. But the strange happenings at the asylum seem connected to Alice, a girl who disappeared from the asylum before Kristen arrived. When the girls start getting butchered in various displays of grisly psychological treatment, Kristen sets out to find out what happened to Alice.

John Carpenter isn't on his A-game here, especially during the scarier parts of the film. Where his main focus used to be creating tension through slow escalations, The Ward resembles one of the newer breeds of slasher, where sequences are drawn out only long enough to provide Alice a reasonable way to kill her victim. Despite Alice's gruesomely burnt face, her appearance is never very frightening - and Carpenter, it seems, never attempts to make it feel that way either. He resorts to easy jump scares, like hands reaching up behind the girls or an appearance of the woman behind the characters after they turn around. Why is it that we must resort to such tedium, especially when Carpenter refuses to try to counteract our expectations? It makes The Ward a hard pill to swallow, a generic grouping of easy spooks that won't work on veteran horror viewers.

At least The Ward has a twist, if rather shallow. It's certainly not a new concept, although it works here fairly well. If there's anything wrong with the finale, it's that it never explains Alice's burnt face - if she was strangled, surely her face wouldn't have swelled up like a prune. It all feels like Carpenter included Alice's disfigurement because The Ward needed something eerie, and it shows you how little faith he had in his own bland scares in the first place.

But I'll tell you what - up until Alice was fully revealed, The Ward had me pretty enraptured with its five female characters. Their personalities are so different - and rightfully so, since they need to be - and the script does a fine job of developing them into more rounded two-dimensional characters, if that makes sense. And Alice does get some nice special effects makeup, even if her full visage isn't as terrifying as it could be shrouded in a little mystery. But ultimately The Ward is an emaciated film from John Carpenter, and it's something that should be locked away rather than reveled as another Carpenter great. In fact, take the title as a warning to stay away from it.

The Ward on Rotten Tomatoes

Movie Review - The Shrine (2010)

I live in a small town, and sometimes I find myself wishing there was a weird cult group that met at night and cast spells against our neighbors. It would give small-town living some life - imagine looking out the window to see your neighbor, not picking up the paper or snowblowing the driveway or anything mundane but twirling his fingers and flicking them towards your house in a burst of evil energy. It would certainly change the tone of your town.

The Shrine focuses on a small Polish village with a religious cult following where hikers and backpackers have gone missing. It's not Hostel or anything like that - the film quickly abolishes that concept with a scene that reassures this Polish town has no hostels. What it does have, though, is a dense layer of fog that covers a gruesome statue that bleeds from its eyes and follows those who dare look at it with its stare.

Ace reporter Carmen (Cindy Sampson), who notably does not do any such reporting on the trip, heads off to Poland with her photographer boyfriend Marcus (Aaron Ashmore) and an intern Sara (Meghan Heffern) to uncover the truth about the disappearances. There, she finds a bunch of unwelcoming locals who seem to be the cause of the deaths; their harsh, guttural growls don't really help things, especially when they're told to leave the country and go back to England.

The opening bits of The Shrine are quite slow, unnecessarily so. There's not much development done for the characters, despite there being only three of them. As noted before, Carmen does no reporting whatsoever during the film, even though she states she's been swamped with work. Marcus doesn't photograph much; his personality is limited to being angry at Carmen, scared for his life, or a mixture being angry-scared thanks to the villagers. Besides that, Marcus as a person barely exists. The same goes for Sara, except it's even more explicit - she barely gets a chance to talk, and her breakthrough moment is when she vomits up junk and is seemingly tortured by the villagers.

The Shrine is also fairly jumbled, often beginning scenarios it never returns to. An eyeless ghost visits Carmen and warns her not to go early in the film; it's a generic scare that not only doesn't work for the film, it's also so different from the rest of the film that it doesn't make sense - and no ghosts return after that, not even to talk to poor Sara.

There are some moments of flashing greatness, like the mist that envelopes the forest where the statue is housed. The statue is genuinely creepy, even if it does look ripped off from a gargoyle I saw once at a Six Flags Frightfest. It doesn't matter, though; the trick works, at least for that moment, and once the statue's head moves towards Carmen, it's an expected scare that is eerie anyway. These moments are very few, however, and sitting through those times where the Polish cultists grunt about the English or waiting for the expected twist to finally be revealed can be excruciating.

There was another thing that really bothered me about The Shrine, and that was the simple fact that the cultists could have easily just spoken to Marcus about, you know, the shrine and the inexplicably strange fog that everyone saw, and they could have been like, "Dude, those bitches are possessed," and things could have gone a lot smoother. Or the cultists could have just warned the kids about going in the woods, rather than confronting them physically and forcing them to search the forest. It's also disconcerting that Marcus would jump to smashing his girlfriend's face in with a spiked mask before he attempted to find a cure for her possession. Just saying, perhaps she was right to fight with him in the beginning of the movie.

There's not a whole lot about The Shrine that could be considered worthwhile viewing; it's not terribly bad, which means you will be able to sit through it without cringing at the dialogue or shouting at the TV like a hothead. It's certainly watchable, and it can be entertaining, but The Shrine won't be worshiped by most.

The Shrine on Rotten Tomatoes

Horror Horizon - January 31

Notable DVD releases for the coming Tuesday. Selections are subject to Blu-Ray release as well.

The Thing (2-Disc Combo Pack or separately)

"It's not human. Yet.   From the producers of Dawn of the Dead comes the chilling prelude to John Carpenter's cult classic film.  When paleontologist Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) travels to an isolated outpost in Antarctica for the expedition of a lifetime, she joins an international team that unearths a remarkable discovery.  Their elation quickly turns to fear as they realize that their experiment has freed a mysterious being from its frozen prison.  Paranoia spreads like an epidemic as a creature that can mimic anything it touches will pit human against human as it tries to survive and flourish in this spine-tingling thriller."

Dream House

"Will Atenton (Daniel Craig) quit a high-profile job in Manhattan to relocate his wife, Libby (Oscar®-winner Rachel Weisz), and their two daughters to a quaint New England town. But as they settle into their new life, they discover their perfect home was once the murder scene of a mother and her children.  When Will investigates, he's not sure if he's seeing ghosts or if the tragic events are somehow related to his past.  The only clues come from his mysterious neighbor, Ann (Oscar®-nominee Naomi Watts), who helps him piece together this haunting puzzle.  Full of twists and suspense, this psychological thriller will have you on the edge of your seat."

Night Train Murders (Blu-Ray)

"It was released as SECOND HOUSE ON THE LEFT, NEW HOUSE ON THE LEFT, and TORTURE TRAIN. The ads screamed, "Most movies last less than two hours! This is one of everlasting torment!" It remains one of the most graphically fiendish films in exploitation history, the story of two teenage girls traveling through Europe, forced into a nightmare of sexual assault and sadistic violence."

Dead Hooker in a Trunk

"Set in beautiful Vancouver, four friends set out on an everyday errand and end up in a fight for their lives when they discover the body of a dead hooker left in their trunk. Lead by a sexy, impulsive Badass, her distant Geek twin sister, their bible thumping, Jesus loving Goody Two Shoes friend, and a chaotic, rock star Junkie pal, the group has to put aside their differences to dispose of the body before they're next. Thrown into their own personal purgatory, they face off against persistent police, a sleazy motel manager, chainsaw wielding triads, and a brutal serial killer. All the while they are followed by a mysterious Cowboy Pimp who wants to claim the corpse for his own. Will they uncover the truth behind the body and be able to stand up to their demons? Buckle up and get ready for the ride of your life filled with gun fights, extreme violence, blood, guts, gore, and goats. Dead Hooker In A Trunk is the unexpected first feature film written, directed, and produced by identical twin sisters, Jen and Sylvia Soska. The two newcomers created an impossible film that is an underground sensation, destined to become a cult classic and will make you fall in love with films again!"

2-Headed Shark Attack

"Survivors escape to a deserted atoll after a Semester at Sea ship is sunk by a mutated two-headed shark. But when the atoll starts flooding, no one is safe from the double jaws of the monster."

Dr. Jekyll Vs. the Werewolf

"Paul Naschy returns once again to his famed role as El Hombre Lobo. This time out he's searching for a cure to his full moon bloodlust and seeks the help of none other than Dr. Jekyll's grandson. Aided by the beautiful Justine (Shirley Corrigan) Naschy and Jekyll attempt to cure his werewolf problem by turning him into Mr. Hyde!! This plan doesn't exactly turn out as they had hoped. With loads of creepy atmosphere!

Limited Edition To Just 500 Units. Each Unit is Hand Numbered!"

Spiderhole

"They say squatting is dead - a term that takes on a sinister double meaning when four homeless art students decide to take up residence in an abandoned London House where a hidden terror lurks."

Blubberella

"An action comedy centered on an overweight woman whose footsteps cause explosions and whose dual swords are used against anyone who makes fun of her."

Roxsy Tyler's Carnival of Horrors: A Leech Named Bassant

"The first home DVD from the popular web-series brings you "A Leech Named Bassant". Roxsy Tyler and Johnnie 13 decide to do a good deed (for once) and have a blood drive. The blood drive is supposedly to help starving vampires in Somalia. As Roxsy and Johnnie continue on they host the classic horror film "Attack of the Giant Leeches" from 1959. During Roxsy and Johnnie's charitable efforts they notice a health inspector snooping around the carnival grounds. Roxsy Tyler suspects the health inspector might know she really isn't having a blood drive but finding random people to feed to her new pet giant leech."

Ubaldo Terzani Horror Show

"Alessio Rinaldi, a 25-year-old director, gets the charge from a producer to write the script of his first movie with Ubaldo Terzani, a well-known writer of horror novels. Alessio moves into Terzani's house to start this collaboration, and a strange relationship of psychological dependence grows between them: Ubaldo Terzani unveils his dark side, and Alessio fall in a desperate depth of craziness and nightmares. There is a reason why Terzani's bestsellers are so frightening ... Alessio will discover that reality can be unexpectedly more terrifying than every brainchild, and he will have to fight hard to escape Ubaldo Terzani's jaws."

The Bunnyman Massacre

"Driving through remote regions of California, a group of friends on a road trip to Vegas are forced into a frightening game of cat and mouse with a five ton truck. When looking for help they make the mistake of knocking on the door of a nearby old house, the house where the Bunnyman lives, they must then fight against becoming the next chapter in the terrifying story of the iconic psychopath in the bunny suit and chain saw. A horror movie mix of Duel and Texas Chain Saw Massacre, not all bunny rabbits are cute!!" 

Graphic Thursday: "Vampires Fly At Dusk"

I thought I'd break out my first volume of the Creepy collection that I got for Christmas with a short story from the first issue. All the way back from 1965 comes "Vampires Fly At Dusk", a short that proceeds much as you'd expect - a small superstitious town, a mysterious count, and a lady-friend who appears to be in danger from her blood-sucking lover. But "Vampires Fly At Dusk" packs a twist that turns the genre trope on its head, and I will admit that, though by today's standards the finale might be somewhat benign, I didn't see it coming and expected a different kind of scenario. From Creepy #1, here's the story:

(Sorry for the blurry edges - the binding did not make scanning easy. Please click on each for a larger view and higher resolution.)

 

 

 

 

Movie Review - The Dead (2010)

 

Let's be honest here - zombie films are notorious for their generic qualities. When's the last time you tuned in to a zombie flick expecting something new or exciting to happen? I know that it's been a while for me, and that's because the genre has become so overloaded with cheap low-budget flicks looking to mock their own favorite zombie movies. The Ford brothers have attempted to reinvent the zombie genre yet again with The Dead, a zombie film set in the midst of Africa during an outbreak of disease.

The setting of the film is one of its most important features, not just because of the realism of each desert shot but because it focuses the social commentary. The zombies in The Dead are mostly black, and although some video games have come under fire for their depiction of race, The Dead works to showcase the poor conditions of Africa and the resiliency of those who live there. The Fords don't necessarily dwell on their own political allegories, and one can certainly overlook much of the film's commentary and write it off as a coincidence that the zombie apocalypse is set in Africa. But there are moments of stand-out metaphor, such as the shared journey between white protagonist Brian Murphy (Rob Freeman) and African Daniel Dembele (Prince David Oseia), or the prospect of hope symbolized by a necklace given to Dembele's son as Murphy stands to fight with him.

 

The settings are gorgeously shot, with an eye for color (and by color I mean the vast range of orange and red that the hot sun and sand can evoke). Zombie extras dot the landscape in almost every shot, even climbing a hill as Murphy makes his way towards the camera. These little pieces add a hopelessness to the film, an extra amount of detail that goes a long way towards making The Dead's character quests depressingly bleak. There's a quality to the scenery that reminds me a lot of old Italian zombie films. And thanks to some impressingly good special effects, the intense gore also triggers that sense of nostalgia.

But by the same token, The Dead often shambles like the zombies in the film. Murphy and Zembele join up, heading towards an air base and attempting to find a military outpost where Zembele's son is supposed to be. Along the way, the two hijack a truck and go off-roading through the sands, risking axles and gas in order to make good speed out of Africa. But there are zombies everywhere, dead who have wandered from villages far and wide for the chance to rip into living flesh. And with these dead comes a stall in the film, a routine of Murphy Zembele being forced to settle down for the night, being surprised by a zombie attack, and making it out alive. It's a process that repeats multiple times during the middle of the film, where the truck breaks down or they get stuck in a rut or they must make a run for from zombies who quickly closed around them. While these scenes can be tense, they're often just filler, used to take up some more time on a journey that ultimately seems out of reach. 

Yet despite these lulls, The Dead is often poignant and compellingly depressive. And though the finale seems to lead us to the same futile position in which we began our journey, one thing has changed - that despite the dangers of Africa, we can join together, accept equality, because home is no longer there. When countries finally dissolve into what they are - simply bordering territories of land - people forget cultural and societal differences, and accept all of humanity.

Book Review - Survivors by James Wesley, Rawles

 

I don't want to hear about a plummeting economy, nor do I want to be reminded of my escalating debt after college that I have to pay back in small increments. Don't even mention the ridiculous gas prices. Our economy is bleak and unrelentingly depressing, and the idea of a future of mass governmental and economic collapse isn't very farfetched. James Wesley, Rawles has crafted two novels out of this catastrophic concept, the first being Patriots and the subsequent half-sequel being Survivors. Rawles is known for his survival blog - SurvivalBlog.com - and for being a hardcore survivalist. Survivors is full of fact and notation, detailed accounts of how to survive a collapse for those who haven't been studying up on the zombie apocalypse.

Survivors documents a few different players in the governmental collapse, focusing on families, an army vet trying to return home, and a group of looters deemed La Fuerza. Rawles switches back and forth between these protagonists, often intermingling their storylines and structuring the novel by months during the collapse. But Rawles has a thick cast of characters, and his list at the beginning of the novel is mammoth and somewhat offputting. The novel isn't long enough to sustain a deep characterization for each of the characters, and it often means Rawles puts certain character backgrounds in front of others. This means that some scenarios feel more important than others, and it gives Survivors an uneven pacing.

The novel is also extensively researched, which, by most standards, would translate into a fantastically realistic book. But Survivors is too detailed in its scope; there often pages literally filled with acronyms about military slang, or whole pages devoted to describing morse code. Though Rawles is simply trying to teach survivalism during his novel, it bogs down Survivors so much that I wouldn't be surprised if some simply set the book down and walked away.

The plot, though intensely filled, never really seems to progress anywhere. It makes it difficult to guess where Survivors is headed, but it also means that the reader becomes less invested with the lack of focus. Instead, the novel wanders through the collapse, often slipping oddly back and forth in time or skipping whole sections of plot through expositional narration from Rawles. In short, there's little action besides the ending standoff between La Fuerza and a group of protective townspeople; even this vignette, though, ends with a cliffhanger that leaves the reader in much the same situation that they started in at the beginning of Survivors.

While strongly researched, Survivors is often extremely intricate and overburdened by explanations that aren't really necessary. Coupled with the fact that Rawles is unable to focus on one specific plot, it makes it difficult for the reader to survive through the endless slosh of information that breaks up a winding plot.

 

The Evil Ad #47

 Here's a good-looking ad for the Reader's Den comic shop, whereever that's located. Never seen one myself, but in my search for interesting horror ads, I stumbled upon this one. It would've been perfect for Friday the 13th, had I realized that it was Friday the 13th last week.

This would be the perfect addition to your pen holder at work - and a good way to scare your nieces or daughters. Or maybe you just have an embarrassing Barbie story from your childhood; I know I do.

Viewer Vomit #6: Choose the next film!

After almost half a year, Viewer Vomit returns to The Moon is a Dead World for the sixth installment. This time, I'm looking for initial suggestions for the next horror film in the series. The only catch is that the movie must be on Netflix Instant. The reason for this is to make the film more accessible for those who want to participate, and it's also easier for me to locate the film. It'll give me more time to watch it as well.

Shoot your suggestions for films in the comments below, and I'll soon compile them into a voting list for the sidebar. Then, after that I'll post a deadline for each contributor's review. Hopefully we get some more participation going this time - and I hope the regulars make it back too.

Post the film suggestions below. Let's say I'll check back in a week for four of the best suggestions.