Horror Movie Review: The Ring

The Ring (2002) is quite simply, a terrifying film. It is based upon "Ringu", a Japanese horror film that I can't even watch again, that's how scary the original version is. It has a meta-ness that makes it even MORE terrifying. For this blog entry, I am going to refrain from spoilers, because if you haven't seen it and you even remotely enjoy horror, I do not want to spoil the experience for you. It's at the library. It's not sexist, at ALL. It passes the Bechdel test. It's not racist, though there could be more people of color. It's just straight scary.

The thing that this movie does right is visceral. To feel fear, one must be connected to all of their senses. One must be overtaken by sights, sounds, intellect and to feeeeel something. This movie has an atmosphere. It is wet and gritty and grimy. Watching it makes you feel cold and soggy, and that makes everything that much more horrifying.

I saw this film when it was still in the theatre and a friend called me afterward whispering, "7 days." "The Ring" is possibly the single horror movie that made me genuinely frightened in a sustained way. The fear lingered in me as a miasma of foreboding for, well, a week at least. The filmmakers had me right where they wanted me. The tactics this film uses to paralyze you with fear turn that fear back onto you. The fear is generalized enough that you don't need a trigger in the world outside the movie to feel scared again once it's over. The MOVIE is the trigger. The MOVIE has inception-ed you. It's not a movie where you see a monster grab someone's ankle as they're getting out of bed and then you're scared to get out of bed at that exact moment your foot hits the floor in real life. You're scared anytime, anywhere. That's the genius of this film. Ugh, and the wetness. I think the wetness enhances it so much more because fall is a cold and wet time of year and that's when one typically watches horror films. Life takes on the eeriness of this visceral horror film.

My one complaint is, "What IS the killer's motivation? I mean, seriously."

Totally recommend, if you like feeling completely creeped the eff out, man.

Aesthetics/Visual Effects: 4

Plot: 4

Characters: 3.5

Score: 3.5

Treatment of Women/Minorities: 4

Rewatchability: 2.5

OVERALL: 21.5

Horror Movie Review: American Psycho

"I have to return some videotapes."

American Psycho (2000) is a movie I have seen many times since I started becoming obsessed with serial killers in my teens. It is probably almost as depraved as Poppy Z Brite's "Exquisite Corpse". When I was 15, depraved was exactly what I was looking for, but my relationship to this movie is a bit more complicated now. I hadn't even planned on watching this movie for my horror reviews, but when I saw it in my movie folder, it seemed so inevitable that I watched it immediately instead of the planned "Resident Evil".

"American Psycho" is a movie about a culture ('80s Wall Street) so self-involved that a man within it can kill "a lot of people" and even confess to it without anyone seeing him for the extreme sociopath he really is, without even his peers being able to tell him apart from all the other rich assholes.

This movie is a masterpiece and it's directed by a woman, Mary Harron. The screenplay was adapted from the book by two women. It won awards. It paved the way for Jeffrey Lindsay's Dexter. But it doesn't pass the Bechdel test, and I'm not sure how to feel about that. The movie straight-up hates women. Women are brutally beaten and murdered by the protagonist and the other men in the movie say things like, "There are no girls with good personalities." I think we're supposed to see that Patrick Batemen isn't really any worse than the asshole-misogynists around him. At least he's upfront about his sociopathy. His peers just talk about raping and murdering women while Bateman really does it. We are supposed to see how depraved and awful these men are. There's a deleted scene on the DVD wherein Reese Witherspoon's character treats Batemen with as much disdain and dismissiveness as most of the men treat the women in this movie and it takes a bit of the bite out of all the girl-hate in this movie, but it was taken out of the final edit.

I am disgusted watching this character, but you're not supposed to relate to or like him at all. It's sort of a feat to have a main character in a movie that you can't like because he has ZERO humanity, you don't care what happens to him, and yet you still like the film. It's possible that without this book-turned-movie, we wouldn't have Dexter Morgan. For that, I will allow "American Psycho" to exist. Some of the sardonic wit and even the constant inner monologue translated into Dexter's storyline later in the decade. Dexter is like if Bateman was likable, not sexist, and had some humanity. Now THAT is a sociopath I can get behind!

Minorities are only in roles of service in this movie, and even then only peripherally.

The music in this film is a fantastic list of '80s hits and underground dance tracks. Bateman also has several scenes wherein he cites facts about '80s pop he likes WHILE he's killing people with various scary tools. It is freaking hilarious to watch someone cut a peer to pieces with a chainsaw while delivering an in-depth analysis of Huey Lewis & The News. I don't care who you are.

Throughout the film, my range of emotions went seamlessly from disgust to smirky I-see-what-you-did-there to ooh-I-love-this-song! back to disgust again. I suspect this was the intention, but I still have problems with the treatment of women and minorities in this film. We could have at least had a scene or two with women in conversation with one another, whether they served as a contrast to the depravity of the men or they were exactly as bad as the men. Either way, the mere presence of women would have softened the blow of how sexist this movie appears.

The ending is very ambiguous, which is infuriating, but also the right choice for the film. At the end, you don't even know if he really killed anyone at all. What? Genius.

Aesthetics/Visual Effects: 3.5

Plot: 3.5

Characters: 2

Music: 4.5

Treatment of Women/Minorities: 1

Rewatchability: 3

OVERALL: 17.5

Horror Movie Review: 28 Days Later

28 Days Later (2002) is a zombie horror film I remember truly enjoying when I first saw it. It seemed innovative and artsy to my 2002-self. Rewatching it in 2015 turned out to be a disappointment I wasn't expecting. What had seemed innovative in 2002-- mostly the music and that the zombies didn't lumber, they ran -- has been copied to such an extent that it wasn't even enjoyable to me this time around. The music is quite good in this film. I can appreciate some of the aesthetic choices as well, such as the zombies being fast and the film quality being like a handheld camcorder with skewed shots that are made to seem as if they weren't framed by a professional. However, post-apocalyptic films just can't do it for me in my post-2011-tornado-destroyed-my-home/life world. I'm done with films in which the protagonist is waking up from a coma to a ravaged city, at least when it's realistic and hopeless. If it's Milla Jovovich waking up with a buzz cut and weapons, I'm in, but scrawny dudes with no personality in a bleak world? No thanks.

Speaking of scrawny dudes, Cillian Murphy as Jim was a tasteless lump of stale white bread to me. I can't see him as a heroic figure and he wasn't painted with the brushstrokes of any sort of personality. Take away those "dreamy" blue eyes, and this kid's got no charisma whatsoever. Naomi Harris as Selena, on the other hand, enters the film as a magnificent hardass with a ruthless violence to match her cold and emotionless line deliveries. However, her character takes a 180 turn almost the moment she meets Jim, turning into a helpless damsel that nurtures a child and forgets how to defend herself. There's a scene in which a group of men are about to rape her and the aforementioned child and instead of the manic violence you'd expect from the character presented at the beginning of the film, Selena simply gives Hannah enough Valium so that she won't "care" that she's being raped and prepares to just lie there and take it while scrawny Jim somehow comes to save them. What?

Despite the fact that half of the film Selena is clutching Hannah in fear, it passes the Bechdel test with only about three lines spoken between the two female characters. Hannah is a tiny bit of a badass towards the end, but not enough to convey even something as simple as agency. Selena is a woman of color and a biracial romance ensues between her and Jim, so points for diversity I guess. The relationship feels so forced, however. There's zero chemistry between the actors and no real reason for them to be into each other save from apocalyptic scenario levels of attraction, but they don't even really fight side-by-side when Selena is busy being meek and Jim is somehow using his 90-pound self to save her ass every twenty minutes.

So, yeah, I basically didn't like this movie at all this time around. It wasn't even that I was offended by the treatment of women so much as I was simply bored. This is the first of these horror films that has bored me. I was disgusted by "Hellraiser". My skin was crawling in suspense and anger at "The Shining". But I was never bored like I was watching "28 Days Later". It just does not hold up.

Aesthetics/Visual Effects: 2

Plot: 3

Characters: 2

Score: 3

Treatment of Women/Minorities: 2.5

Rewatchability: 0

OVERALL: 12.5

Horror Movie Review: Queen of the Damned

Queen of the Damned (2002) is not a great movie, but Aaliyah's performance/image as Akasha, the "queen of the damned" is one of the most perfect bits of casting ever in the whole history of film. She is dark and sultry and very very evil. She is my favorite female villain on film. She is the number one character I try to embody as I walk down the street, for a woman in our patriarchal society must embody a chick of extreme badassness, and you would NEVER mess with Akasha. She can burn you from the inside out with just the flick of her wrist. She can rip out your heart with her bare hands and suck it so dry that it crumbles between her fingers (see below). The scene these gifs are from is my favorite villain-entrance scene ever, and it happens around the 50minute mark in the film. She bellydances into a bar full of vampires, does that heart-sucking thing, incinerates the building and all the vampires in it with her MIND, then walks out triumphantly. It is THE most empowering action/destruction scene ever. The reason she can incinerate vampires with her mind is that she is the original first vampire. She holds within her the source of vampirism, effectively the mother of all vampires. They can't live without her. As I've mentioned before, though Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles have a lot of flaws, her origin story for vampires is the most intriguing to me. The book is the best of the series in my opinion because the entire history of vampires is laid out in great detail within.

The score is pretty great but the soundtrack is mostly awful. The music of Lestat's band is represented by Jonathan Davis' (of Korn) voice and arrangements. It's just not my style and makes the movie seem even cheesier than it is. The casting in the film is hit or miss. In contrast to the PERFECT casting of Aaliyah as Akasha there's the dubious casting of Lestat, Jesse, and Maharat, just to name a few. The details taken from the book are at times right on and at other times questionable. There is an omitted character (Mekare) that is sort of really important to the storyline of the book. There are a couple of rewrites of plot points that don't make sense to me (Marius is NOT Lestat's maker, etc) because they contradict both the book and the first movie. They totally left out Akasha's evil scheme to eradicate all but 10ish percent of the men on earth, which was a big part of her evil and why she needed to be de-throned. As it is in the film version, I didn't really get why she needed to be "dealt with". There are many parts in the movie that don't explain what's happening or convey the emotions felt by the characters well at all, which I think would make the film hard to follow if you hadn't read the book. And if you're going to assume we've read the book, stay true to the book, you know?

This film is really not as bad as I'm making it sound, but it is quite a big disappointment to me because I love the book and so many aspects of the film feel like they're almost right. At times they get the emotions/themes of the book so right, at other times so very very wrong. Aaliyah died just after, or maybe even during, shooting the film. My assumption is that the editing was rushed in order to get it out as soon after her death as possible and I think the film's end result really suffered because of that.

The treatment of women is not great. It does pass the Bechdel test, but barely. In the book, Jesse's relationship with Maharet and the Great Family was a big part of the plot, but this movie makes it all about Lestat. The book is so dense in content, however, that I don't think a movie could ever do it justice unless it was done as a trilogy. I would love to see this movie redone right someday, but without Aaliyah, it will be difficult. What a tragedy to lose her just when she was on her way to becoming a legend. The year of her death came her villain film debut and a spectacular album! RIP, Aaliyah. We needed you so much.  I am very impressed that film made the right decision in casting Akasha as a black woman. It would have been a complete failure had they cast a white woman, because this chick is from ancient Egypt! She's SUPPOSED to be black, and I am pleasantly shocked they did this part right in film for once.

Despite its oceans of disappointments, "Queen of the Damned" is still a campy mostly-good time. 

Aesthetics/Visual Effects: 3.5

Plot: 2.5

Characters: 3.0

Score: 3.0

Treatment of Women/Minorities: 3.0

Rewatchability: 3.5

OVERALL: 18.5

Horror Movie Review: The Cell

How JLo looks in the serial killer's mind.

The Cell (2000) is more of a psychological horror than a traditional one. It's not well regarded, but I cannot comprehend why. The score is phenomenal, the imagery is gorgeous, and the plot is intriguing. Even the DVD special features have depth and a respect for the field of psychology. There's even this unique feature wherein you can watch the film without dialogue hearing only the score. So, here's the gist: we need to find where a serial killer has trapped his next victim who is not dead yet, but the killer is in a coma/catatonic state for which he will likely never recover and there's a time factor. JLo is a psychologist that specializes in a new technology in which she Matrixes herself into the brains of coma patients. The minds of others are represented by complex dream universes of imagery and symbolism. It is just SO. FREAKING. COOL. The symbolism is complex, but believable. During the course of the film we get to see what the serial killer's mind (above) is like, what JLo's mind is like (below), and another patient of hers as well. They are different landscapes according to the psychological structure of each person's mind and again, I just think that's one of the most intriguing ideas presented by any movie ever.

JLo is very Mary in her own mind...but she also kills things with a bow and arrow later.

I think seeing this movie is a bit of a therapy session in and of itself. Thinking of people's minds as landscapes is something that I've done ever since seeing this movie in 2000, and it helps me understand myself and others. Art in general is a landscape of the artist's mind in whatever form that art takes.

As for representation of women and people of color, we do have a bit of that in this movie. It passes the Bechdel test. There is a Latina woman and a black woman as main characters in the film. They are both professionals that are good at their jobs and respected as equals by their coworkers.

There's also many glimpses of this cute puppy throughout the film.

In the scary category, seeing into the mind of a serial killer is really terrifying at times, but I also like that we are meant to sympathize with him. Ultimately, he cannot be saved. It is too late for a person that kills people, but that doesn't mean they haven't had a lot of pain to get them to that point. We get to see what made him become the monster and we're meant to feel empathy, but not as a means to excuse anything he's done.

The killer is a sort of gleeful god in his own mind.

I really enjoyed rewatching this movie from beginning to end. It is a well constructed and thoughtful film. If you like visually and aurally magnificent films and the more psychological aspects of horror, I highly recommend "The Cell". It's not streaming and not at Joplin's library, but if you and I are close, I will totally let you borrow it.

Aesthetics/Visual Effects: 5.0

Plot: 4.0

Characters: 3.5

Score: 4.5

Treatment of Women/Minorities: 3.5

Rewatchability: 4.0

OVERALL: 24.5

Horror Movie Review: Return of the Living Dead 3

"You should have just left me dead."

Return of the Living Dead 3 (1993) is, for my money and time, one of the top 5 best zombie movies. I had had memories of this movie being campy in the bad way and not at all good, but I was wrong. Rewatching it today for the first time since I owned it on VHS pre-tornado was an unexpected pleasure. Back in the '90s I loved this movie for Julie (pictured above). I waited for her moment standing pierced and bleeding, hissing like the bride of Frankenstein. This is a zombie movie about the suffering and vulnerability of zombies. Julie has feelings. Julie loves her boyfriend. Julie doesn't want to hurt anyone so she mutilates herself because the pain distracts her from her hunger for brains, if only for a moment. This movie blames the human scientists experimenting with zombies as bio-weapons, not the zombies themselves. The boyfriend continues to help Julie through her transformation from "bad girl" to dead to zombie. It's kind of sweet, actually.

Visually, I am not a fan of zombies. I like pretty villains and zombies are not hot, but Melinda Clarke as the zombie Julie Walker is one of the very prettiest. I have had a serious crush on her since I first saw this movie, though I never saw her in anything else. She became one of my style icons. I confess, on many a night walking alone in the streets of Joplin, I pretend I am Julie Walker. No one fucks with Julie Walker, unless you want your brains eaten, yo. I also identified with her as a teenager because I was a self-mutilator. I have often said that I did it because of self-exploration, and I think that's mostly true, but I also did it because the physical pain of hurting yourself really does dull the pain of other things. I "grew" out of this phase and watching Julie hurt herself no longer makes me feel relief, but I would recommend this movie to teenage girls that cut and are into horror. Watching Julie pierce herself to avoid eating her boyfriend can be pretty cathartic, if you need that kind of catharsis. Also, for the boob-lovers among us, Melinda Clarke's are top notch. Her nudity in this film doesn't feel as icky as it does in most horror because it happens within a more "natural" context of sex between a couple and then later....well, she pierces herself a lot, sooooo, yeah. Ok, so I'm super attracted to Julie/Melinda. Moving on...

As I mentioned above, through the characterization of Julie we get to see that zombies have feelings, vulnerability, and cognitive functioning. Most of the movie, you think she's an exception, but later you find that's not completely true. We get to see her before and after death. She vacillates between extreme hunger for brains and remorse. She genuinely wants to die because her pain is so great. She experiences remorse for her kills and she struggles to control herself throughout the film. She isn't quite as powerful as I like my villains. She is basically the "Angel-with-a-soul" version of a zombie, but it didn't really annoy me. She was a predator, but she was conflicted about it.

Aside from Julie's character, the rest of the movie is pretty typical zombie fair. The zombies are gross brain-eaters. The humans are heartless scientists. It barely passes the Bechdel test, but there are women in authority in this movie. There are many named characters of races other than white, though they all die. However, everyone dies in this movie save for one named character, and though he IS a white male, he's not one you're rooting for and he's not a hero or anything.

This is a somewhat difficult movie to find. I don't think it was well-liked. It's not streaming, but you can borrow the DVD if you'd like. "Return of the Living Dead 3" is truly a pretty great zombie horror film, as far as the straightforward zombie films are concerned.

Aesthetics/Visual Effects: 3.5

Plot: 3.5

Characters: 3.0

Score: 2.5

Treatment of Women/Minorities: 3.0

Rewatchability: 3.5

OVERALL: 19

Horror Movie Review: Friday the 13th

Friday the 13th (1980) is the worst horror movie I've ever seen. Here's the entire plot: crazy dude warns teenagers that they're all going to die if they go to this haunted camp...

and then they do.

I really really want to leave my review at that, but I wasted an hour and a half of my life on this piece of trash, so let me think of something else to say.

All the dudes in this film are gropey, rapey and gross and all the chicks are devoid of personalities. I think it kinda passed the Bechdel test, maybe? Not a single person of color anywhere and blatant racism, even. There were 11 deaths out of only 13 named characters. There was no suspense because you knew they were just going to get picked off one by one and you didn't care about any of them anyway. The characters made stupid decisions that made me yell at the TV alot. Slasher movies are so boring. I find no enjoyment watching people repeatedly die gruesome deaths.

There wasn't even an interesting villain. The murderer was a vanilla-looking mom avenging her son's long ago accidental drowning. Bore. ING.

Aesthetics/Visual Effects: 1 (the point is for the scenery, not horror aspects of the film)

Plot: 0

Characters: 1

Score: 1

Treatment of Women/Minorities: .5

Rewatchability: 0

OVERALL: 3.5

Horror Movie Review: Poltergeist

"No more."

Poltergeist (1982) is the most heartwarming horror movie I've ever seen. Steven Spielberg directed...'nough said. But honestly, the family dynamic in this movie was really quite believable. I cared about this family. It passed the Bechdel test almost immediately (these '80s horror movies are surprising me with how progressive they were!) and the women characters had definite personalities. The dad was a caring father. The little girl (above) didn't do a lot of unnecessary screaming, crying, or whining. In fact, the little boy did the majority of the screaming and whining. The mother smoked pot and had a youthful sense of humor, but wasn't painted as irresponsible or uncaring towards her children because of it. There was zero scolding of her for smoking pot by the dad or the movie itself either. In other words, she wasn't shown as a "bad" character because of this trait. This film almost set itself up as a sitcom. Lovable family that laughs together and loves each other. No nudity. Nothing pissed me off about this film.

There's this really great scene between the mom and a female psychologist/paranormal investigator wherein neither woman judges the other and they just have a philosophical bonding moment together wherein they obviously see one another as people doing their best in the world. This is the kind of moment you hardly EVER see between women in film. Kudos, Spielberg!

Minorities: there was one person of color and he was a side character, but he wasn't shown as inept or stupid and he didn't die, so half a point, I guess.

The only downside to Poltergeist is that the horror aspects of the film ramped up unexpectedly to 11 in the last half hour. As soon as you hear the little girl deadpan, "No more." I think the film should have gone to black. When I rewatch it, that will be my stopping point, I think. I liked that the horror was offscreen for most of the movie. Just when you think everything has been resolved, all the sudden they throw every possible horrific thing at the viewer and it's really overkill, for me anyway.

Overall, I recommend this movie. It's a philosophical horror movie with heart. I can dig that.

Aesthetics/Visual Effects: 3.5

Plot: 3.0

Characters: 4.0

Score: 2.5

Treatment of Women/Minorities: 4.0

Rewatchability: 3.5

OVERALL: 20.5

Horror Movie Review: A Nightmare on Elm Street

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) is an enjoyable and straightforward horror movie from beginning to end. It includes many of the tropes of horror we have come to love/hate without using them against women.

******SPOILER ALERT******

Two of the horror tropes present: The virgin lives and if you have sex, you die. Buuuuut, Nancy never says she's a virgin and both of the characters involved in the sex die, not just the woman. It turns out in the end that it was ALL a dream, so no one really died at all. Bonus: no boobs!!! There were a couple of see-thru nightgown scenes, but they were focused on bush-peeps that were relatively subtle for horror.

I was really surprised at how much I enjoyed this movie. I like a horrific dream theme, what can I say? The teenagers actually look like teenagers, including Johnny Depp (though he's 21 here) in his very first role looking very non-Johnny Depp in khaki pants and Izod sweaters.

I am really pleased at the treatment of women in this movie. It passes the Bechdel Test within the first five minutes. The main character and hero of the piece is a woman. Nancy asks the men (her dad, her boyfriend, etc) in her life to help her, but they fail her repeatedly, so she saves herself! No people of color or other diversity in this film, but that's one of the only downsides to this nearly perfect horror film.

A Nightmare on Elm Street is simply damn good horror. I recommend it.

Aesthetics/Visual Effects: 4.0

Plot: 4.0

Characters: 3.5

Score: 3.5

Treatment of Women/Minorities: 3.5

Rewatchability: 3.5

OVERALL: 22

Horror Movie Review: The Shining

Shut up, Tony!

The Shining (1980) is a legendary horror film for a reason. It is genuinely terrifying. Every shot is gorgeous. The score builds to a level that makes you feel like you're ready to claw through your skin by the end. The film is two and a half hours long and takes its sweet molasses time to build to the level of complete madness you feel by the end. If you like your horror psychologically realistic and simmered to a slow and total terror meltdown, this is the movie for you...

UNLESS you're not into women and minorities being treated like garbage. This film repeatedly names women "bitch" in that really ugly way that women used to be called bitch on the regular by their abusive husbands. There's also a scene in which a black man is referred to as that lovely N-word not even I of the foulest mouth will utter. We are supposed to forgive the "women are bitches" and "black people are n______" arguments because they are uttered by the bad guys, but I'm betting that Kubrick is one of these bad guys. You'll not get forgiveness from me, Stanley.

This movie doesn't pass the Bechdel Test either. Despite the lengthy conversation between the doctor and Wendy in the beginning of the film, the doctor was not named and they only talked about Danny and Jack.

The storyline of this film is a little too close to home for me. I don't like my horror to mirror life. Men go "crazy" and ax-murder their wives and children all the time. I was pleasantly surprised, however,

**************SPOILER ALERT******************

that Wendy and Danny actually survive. The Shining is thought to be one of the greatest horror movies of all time and there's only one onscreen murder and then the eventual freezing-to-death of Jack the psychotic protagonist.

This movie is actually fairly impressive, but I won't be watching it again.

Aesthetic/Visual Effects: 4.0

Plot: 2.5

Characters: 2.0

Score: 2.0

Treatment of Women: 1.0

Rewatchability: 0

OVERALL: 11.5