Zombos' Closet of Horror

[REC] 2 (2009) Divinely Horrific

If Prince of Darkness married The Exorcist and they conceived a bouncing bundle of terror while watching Bava's Demons, its name would be [REC] 2.

ZC Rating 4 of 7: Very Good

[Rec] 2 picks up immediately where [REC] left us, only this time we are with a 4-man SWAT team waiting to escort another Ministry of Health official, Dr. Owen (Jonathan Mellor), into the locked-down building. Only he knows more than they do.

With one skittish hand-held camera and three helmet minicams worn by the heavily armed police, directors Balaguero and Plaza criss-cross the action across apartments and up and down the stairwell with reckless abandon, informing us and terrifying us with what we fully see, partially see, and don't see.

Under Dr. Owen's insistence they head to the attic, stepping over pools of blood as they climb the staircase, guns poised. When they reach the attic, he tells them to record everything, including the newspaper clippings taped to the walls. A frightened voice played from a reel to reel tape recorder hints at an experiment gone out of control. Distant screams prompt an argument when the police want to investigate and Dr. Owen tells them not to. Over the doctor's protests and warnings, Martos heads down the staircase and enters one of the apartments. We see what he sees as his helmet minicam switches on. What he sees in the dim light rushes towards him with ill-intent, leaving his helmet on the floor and him fighting for his life. They rush to his aid but it's too late--"He was fine a couple of minutes ago. What kind of a virus does that?"--He's now infected and attacks them. Dr. Owen stops the attack in an unexpected way and they lock Martos in another room.

How the doctor did it leads to an explanation for what is going on, who lived in the attic apartment, and why they must return there to find a potential cure. The police officers are incredulous and fraying at the seems by the minute. The infected tenants want to pry those seems apart even more. Patient Zero, hinted at in the last minutes of [REC], is also in the attic. Only they need to figure out how to find her...And she's not alone...And the old reliable gimmick of using an air duct big enough for an elephant to fit through is used for a scare. At least it's grimy like it should be and the scare is worth it.

[REC] 2 is an old school horror show dressed up with enough exuberantly creative point of view camerawork to keep you dizzy and jumpy at the same time. Unlike its Americanized version, Quarantine, which resorts to a more "plausible" terrorist-weapon plot line to explain the source of contagion, [REC] 2 unabashedly returns to the roots of cinematic horror to overwhelm the apartment building's tenants with a supernatural malevolence that will not be stopped. By kicking old school for their modus operandi, while playing with our perspective  to the point of disorientation, [REC] 2 maintains a freshness and exhilaration that many American horror movie sequels fail to do.

Better keep the popcorn and soda safely cradled while you watch this movie and your seatbelt fastened at all times. It's a bumpy-in-the-night ride, the ending of which leaves [REC] 3 a strong possibility. And if that happens I'm definitely taking Dramamine before I see it.

Frozen (2010): Minimalist Horror Best Served Cold

ZC Rating: 5 of 7 (Excellent)

I noticed I was shivering when well into watching Frozen. Granted it was the first show of the day in a chilly theater (outside it was below freezing), but a few of those shivers came from my fear of heights and a persistent memory of the one time I rode a ski lift. I become uneasy every time I think back to that experience; how I kept wishing the long ride would end faster, how I gulped and closed my eyes each time the ground sloped farther away from me and silently cheered when it came closer, how that small seat and flimsy security bar made me wish, even harder, I'd staid back in the warm lodge nursing a hot chocolate like I'd wanted to.

Director and writer Adam Green fills the first half-hour with youthful banter and playfulness. Parker (Emma Bell), prodded on by Dan (Kevin Zegers) and Joe (Shawn Ashmore), convinces the ski lift operator with cash and a warm smile to let them ride without tickets. People are everywhere, the sun is shining, and Joe meets a girl and scores her phone number after her ex-boyfriend gets jealous and knocks him down.

They should have ended the day eating pizza and drinking hot chocolate in the lodge instead of going for one last run on the slopes, but Joe makes Parker and Dan feel guilty for wasting his time earlier keeping pace with Dan's girlfriend, Parker, who, being a beginner, fell down a lot. They hop onto the ski lift just as everyone else is finishing up or heading home. An all too plausible misjudgment leaves them stranded with a storm approaching. When the ride stops they complain. When the lights shut off, one by one, leaving them swinging in the cold wind, they realize the worst has happened: no one knows they're up their; and the resort will be closed for the week; and it's getting colder.

A closeup of the ski lift switch being pulled to turn off the ride and a long shot of those comfortingly bright lights slowly winking out in back of the three skiers, provide two of the most chilling moments in this minimalist horror. Parker, Joe, and Dan's decisions from this point on provide the rest.

Paranormal Activity (2007) Lean and Mean Scares

The idea for the film came about when Oren Peli began to experience "weird things" at the home in which he was living and wondered what would happen if he were to set up cameras to capture what happened as he slept at night. The vulnerability of being asleep, he reasoned, tapped into a human being's most primal fear, stating, "If something is lurking in your home there's not much you can do about it." (Paranormal Activity on Wikipedia)

Rating 5 of 7: Excellent

Paranormal Activity surprisingly frightens more with less scares as odd as that may sound. With a razor-thin budget, a cast of only four people, and events taking place entirely in one location--Katie and Micah's home--director Oren Peli's ingenious movie is a distillation of simple spook show tactics escalating in intensity. It is the Blair Witch version of home invasion-styled horror, understated but unrelenting.

Katie (Katie Featherston) has been haunted by paranormal events since she was thirteen. Micah (Micah Sloat), surprised by this revelation, is annoyed she did not tell him this before spooky sounds begin to keep them up at night. Micah sets up his camera in their bedroom, facing the bed, and hooks it up to his laptop so it can record while they sleep. We see everything through Micah's camera: the bedroom they sleep in; the rest of the house as he carries it into the bathroom, or the living room, or the kitchen during the day. We mostly see Katie as Micah holds the camera, which is probably why she grows more annoyed with his insistence on tackling her problem with his typical, and insensitive, guy attitude of technology-can-handle-it. I admit I would have tackled it the same way. While his constant recording and EVPs appear to give him control over the situation, he becomes increasingly frustrated because all he can do is observe events after they have taken place. How many of us, like Micah, feel powerful by all our techno-gadgets, yet, like him, all we do is watch, listen, wait, worry, and yearn for more sleep?

Pick a Post Sensation 15 Jennifer's Body Autopsy

Beware! The members of the League of Tana Tea Drinkers dig six feet deep to bring you the Jennifer's Body autopsy, to share their varied views on this girl-eats-boy horrorfest.

I Love Horror -- "While the plot certainly leaves something to be desired, nearly every problem associated with Jennifer’s Body can be directly contributed to Diablo Cody’s dialogue."

Kindertrauma -- "The trick is to not think of it as a horror film because the horror elements are really just decorative. This is more of a black comedy like HEATHERS with a bit of THE CRAFT thrown in..."

Dinner With Max Jenke -- "It doesn't reinvent the genre but it's distinctly different from its competition and that alone is commendable. The advertising campaign is totally misleading, though."

Day of the Woman -- "I seriously have always wondered what happens if someone sacrifices a girl to Satan and she wasn't a virgin." (And, on a tangential note, DOTW takes on PoppaScotch regarding the reality of feminist horror films.)

TheoFantastique -- "In the discussion Poole notes that Jennifer’s Body includes a subtle attempt ”to sneak a feminist message into the cineplex, subverting the paradigm of horror films in which women are merely the shrieking victims of male violence.”

Zombos' Closet of Horror -- "Jennifer's Body has artistic touches that come from how it uses dialog, its characters, and its story to create a familiar but stylish rhythm scored with traditional horror tropes."

The Collector (2009) A Man, A Little Girl, And a Psycho Killer With a Trunk

At the end of The Collector I felt cheated. I cannot tell you why as that would give the ending away. But here is a clue; in Sabotage, Alfred Hitchcock regretted blowing up the bus. While he wanted the audience to feel uncomfortable from the buildup of tension between the boy, the bus, and the bomb ticking away, he felt he cheated the audience by blowing up the bus, killing the boy and everyone on it. In a word, his payoff for putting the audience through the wringer was negative, not positive. Hitchcock realized he let his audience down: no one wanted to see the bomb go off after all that suspense.

In combining Cube-like lethal traps with a hint of Saw-styled ingenuity and malice, and yet another relentless masked-slasher victimizing a family in unsavory, bloodily grisly ways, Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton (Feast) do their darnedest to pulverize the audience with fears of helplessness, torture, and death. They almost succeed, but choose to blow up the bus by going the usual horror franchise-building byway at the end with a negative payoff. In their case, however, the bomb takes the form of a trunk for the one he always takes.

Orphan (2009) Hell On Heels

ZC Rating 4 of 7: Very Good

Kids may say and do the damndedest things, but little orphan Esther is hell to be around. In Orphan, a movie that will do for adoption services what Jaws did for the summer beach trade, young Isabelle Fuhrman chills the scenery.

Dressed in Old World frilly finery, speaking with a European accent that would make Bela Lugosi blush, and harboring a dark secret that makes her a dicey addition to the Coleman family, Esther's talent with a claw hammer and penchant for surreptitious mayhem is a solid B-movie thrill ride not seen in a while. The twist-ending will also make anyone currently seeking adoption double-check that paperwork again and again.

Kate Coleman (Vera Farmiga) has a rough time of it after her third child is stillborn. Hitting the bottle she loses her teaching job, and her drinking almost costs the life of her second child, Max (Aryana Engineer), who is deaf but knows what people say with the help of her hearing aid and by reading lips. This puts a strain on Kate's relationship with husband John (Peter Sarsgaard). I should note that many horror movies begin with a severely strained relationship that leads to much more strain (usually from bloodletting and death, of course), which in this case is precipitated by the adoption of sweetly sinister little Esther from St. Mariana Orphanage.

Malefique (2002)Hell Is Other People

ZC Rating 4 of 7: Very Good (Let me know if the ending here reminds you of the one in Being John Malkovich)

Four characters in search of an exit sustain and disdain each other's mauvaise foi in this incarceration screenplay involving a serial killer's dark arts journal written in 1920. With freedom just out of reach beyond a barred window, a locked door and four dreary walls complete their bleak prospects for salvation.

The beginning teases us with Danvers, the murderer who fears growing old, busy in his fetid cell and not alone. A crispy-charred corpse frozen in agony and one unfortunate individual with a gaping chest wound hint at arcane mischief afoot. Danvers casually dips his fingers into the man's wound and draws blood to draw mystical symbols on the wall of his cell. Gore is sparsely used in Maléfique, a film directed by Eric Valette, but when it is, its brief, dramatic appearance provides suitable goosebumps.

Present day. Of the four men imprisoned in the small cell, the only one with hope of freedom is newly admitted Carrère (Gérald Laroche), but as time passes he grows more despondent and desperate to see his son again. His three cellmates are Marcus (Clovis Cornillac), who is midway between being a man and a woman and hoping for the latter; Lassalle (Philippe Laudenbach) who no longer reads or dares to listen to the many books involved in his wife's murder; and Pâquerette (Dimitri Rataud), who is an insane child dressed like a man. He eats anything and everything, has had a very regrettable childhood--though not as bad as his 6-month old sister: she fared worse because he eats anything and everything--and he likes to make visits to the prison infirmary, necessitated by acts of self-mutilation.

Knowing (2009) Destiny In a Handbasket

ZC Rating 5 of 7: Excellent

That particular sequence caused me no end of headaches and nightmares, because we decided at an early stage to get it all in one continuous shot. So from the moment when the plane crashes into the freeway and goes breaking up and exploding into a field, Nic’s character then pursues, and runs into the maelstrom and tries to save people (Alex Proyas Interview).

I am taken aback by the negative--at Times, vitriolic-- criticism for Nicolas Cage and director Alex Proyas' dark, apocalyptic thriller Knowing; such disdain is usually reserved for horror films, not more mainstream fare. As he did in Dark City, Proyas conjures another sepia-toned vision of determinism, fate, and faith, and ratchets up the tension with three carefully crafted, special effects-laden scenes of death and destruction before finishing with an outstanding fourth. Cage, as astrophysicist John Koestler, portrays an everyman, quirks and all, coiled and held tight in the moments, filled with knowledge but mostly powerless. Borrowing the science fiction staples of pending global cataclysm (seen in 1951's When Worlds Collide, slated to be remade in 2010 by Stephen Sommers), and celestial intervention, Knowing is an emotionally charged drama meticulously combining horror, science fiction, and fantasy conventions into an absorbing story worthy of more serious, and less caustic, critique.

The Uninvited (2009)

ZC Rating 5 of 7: Excellent

The mind is a poor host at times, bringing in uninvited nightmares when least expected and most unwanted. In this American remake of A Tale of Two Sisters, those uninvited, bake-eiga-styled nightmares haunt Anna's dreams and waking moments, whether in her darkened bedroom or in the sunlight-bright hallways of her nooks and crannies shorefront home. And while that may be disconcerting for Anna (Emily Browning), it certainly is a good thing for us. Directors Thomas and Charles Guard's The Uninvited is deftly handled with splendid and unexpected--for a horror movie-- photography, real acting, and suspenseful pacing that places it well above the usual horror affair of blood spatters, screams, and more bloody spatters. This is classy horror at its best.

Mystery surrounds Anna's release from a psychiatric hospital. Ten months earlier her invalid mother died in a fiery explosion and Anna has no memory of that night, but she does have a recurring dream in which the spectre of a red-haired girl, very fresh-from-the-grave looking, tells her "not to go out." Her therapist, not entirely sure of what it all means, still considers Anna well enough to leave the hospital. While you already have an inkling this may not be the best therapeutic course of action for her, it does set up the frights when she returns home. (Hint: pay close attention to Anna's friend in the hospital who complains she will have no one to tell her stories to when Anna leaves.)

What I'd Rather See: The Horror Movie Victim's Guide to Being a Good Victim

Let's applaud the hapless victims in horror films. They contribute so much to our enjoyment of their terror, their hysteria, and their blood. They are sliced, diced, minced, blintzed, mangled, strangled, eaten, beaten, slurped, blurped--feel free to insert your own action verbs here--and grilled and chilled in countless ways, just to make us jump in our seats, upchuck our popcorn, or tickle our fright-bone. They lighten our distressing job's tedium and those tomorrow's and tomorrow's and tomorrow's doldrums. Their witless, death-attracting antics creep forth in an endless and frenetic pace from film to film, keeping us happy--because we are not them.

The more paranoid you are, the safer you are, that's the public service message every horror movie leaves us with. Anyone who takes a dirt road detour, leaving the sureness of good solid tarmac beneath their wheels, well, what more can be said? If you follow directions from a toothless, unwashed, gas station attendant with expensive tourist swag in his unkempt excuse for living quarters, you're just begging for it: the drawn-out and quartered, bloody end of it. But if all horror movie victims acted smart and careful we would be bored stiff because nothing bad could come of it. So why do we keep writing books that show potential victims how to survive?