Christina Delassalle (Véra Clouzot) is in a tough situation. She runs a young boy’s boarding school with her husband Michel (Paul Meurisse) whose stern and controlling demeanor makes him hated by all including his wife. Michel harbors much resentment for Christina and she for him with his abusive and cheating mannerisms. After eight years together, Christina reaches the point where she wants Michel gone one way or another. She schemes with her closest companion Nicole (Simone Signoret), also Michel’s former mistress, and develop a fool-proof plan to dispatch of the man.

The two women lure Michel to Nicole’s house where he is sedated with a tainted bottle of wine and then submerged in a filled bathtub as Nicole keeps him under until his struggling stops. They load the body into a giant wicker trunk and cart it back to the boarding school where they dump it in the filthy swimming pool, thinking he will surface in a few days as an apparent accident or suicide. The body then disappears but other things appear in its place like his dry-cleaned suit or his lighter.

It is only within the past few years that I’ve come to appreciate foreign as well as black-and-white films. As such Henri-Georges Clouzot‘s thriller never really stuck out as a horror staple, probably due to the fact that it is made more than fifty years ago as well as subtitled. That is a shame though since Diabolique is a treat to watch for a prime example of how a tense film is put together. When the body goes missing and other haunting reminders of the missing man surface instead, you can feel the subdued panic between both women as they worry about the likelihood of going to jail, being blackmailed, or worse being hunted down by the man they were sure was dead. While the “horror” elements are rather tame, the tension between the two female leads and even the haunting “presence” by Michel is more than enough to create a great noir film with its suspenseful elements of paranoia and effective camerawork.

The Coffin, directed by Ekachai Uekrongtham will be released on DVD August 31, via Breaking Glass Pictures. It is based on a Thai ritual. The ritual involves a person who wishes to “cheat death and end bad luck” being sealed in a coffin and a funeral being performed over them. This is done in large groups.  People claim to have gone into a coffin with Cancer and come out only to be given a clean bill of health on their next doctor visit.  Some people believe in it and others believe it is hogwash.

Su (Karen Mok) is a young woman who left Bangkok and Jack, to whom she was going to marry. She hasn’t told anyone that she has lung cancer. She goes to Thailand to be part of a mass funeral. Soon after participating (possibly even on her way home from it as the movie suggests) she is involved in a serious car accident. She escapes with only bruises, but learns that she no longer has cancer. While recuperating, she is given some terrible news and begins to have disturbing visions.

Chris’s (Ananda Evringham) girlfriend is in a coma. He goes in to a coffin with her name written on a piece of paper. While in the coffin he has strange, frightening visions of a woman. He ends up having a seizure and is brought to the hospital where he is revived after his heart had stopped. His girlfriend wakes from her coma and they both start having visions of that same woman.

The film goes back and forth between the two as they struggle with these nightmarish visions and try to figure out how to stop them.

Now, you may have noticed that I used the phrase “cheat death” and suddenly had visions of tires crushing heads or perhaps more lovely images of sweet Emma Bell in another film of late. Let me assure you, this film’s ramifications for cheating death are far less flashy (silly) and over the top. They are terrifyingly psychological. The constant visions and slow, psychological torment these characters went through is much more satisfying than the bizarre, elaborate and sometimes 3D fuckery of The Final Destination Films. That’s because it’s not Death chasing them; it’s Karma. Karma won’t kill you. It will just make you full of regret and make you wish you were dead.

This film is creepy. It is dimly lit and mostly blue, gray and just feels cold all the time. In the beginning it resembled a National Geographic Channel documentary (not necessarily by that previous description, just because of the camera work). The entire film looked very pretty in stark contrast to the events transpiring, which just made it more creepy. There were moments in this film in which I jumped and possibly exclaimed an expletive. Complete out of nowhere scares. Then there were others that were not so clever, but at least they weren’t terrible. It is not often that I am startled during a film, so needless to say, this film had my entire attention.

The direction is excellent, the acting well done. There really isn’t anything not to like about this film. Especially the end. I won’t ruin it, but “lesson learned” is a nice way to put it. This is a great and interesting thriller, check it out.

Much like my relationship with this film, Hollis Parker (Noel Palomaria) is trying to forget the memory and stop the nightmares of when his wife was murdered 4 years ago. Currently, he hosts a web show called Strangers Online. Guests call via their web cams for sexual and relationship advice, to show their bodies, or sometimes just to be plain weird. Hollis’s show is quite popular, as is he. Hollis is in therapy, as he is guilt ridden over not being able to protect his wife from being murdered. This is what leads to his nightmares. He lives in seclusion with his girlfriend, Laura (Eva Frajko). A new intern, Karen (Tara Killian) has quite a crush on Hollis, which develops into an unhealthy obsession. Laura also appears to have someone obsessing over her as well, and things just get completely boring from there.

This is just terrible. It is so incredibly boring. The funny thing is, it so boring that when a sex scene occurs, you are kind of jarred. If this were a porno, then the alternating scenes of uselessness and sex would make sense. But since this a terribly lifeless “erotic thriller,” it’s kind of like driving down a long highway staring at miles of trees, then seeing a field of cows. You get all excited at first because it’s not trees, but then you are like, “Ah who cares, it’s just cows.”

The audio was quite inconsistent. A lot of times you  can’t hear the actors, sometimes you can hear them very well. You can always hear the terrible music, however.

This film is also a liar by way of its categorization. It is nether erotic nor thrilling.  It just kind of sits there and presents random scenes of little to no interest, much like a screen saver that is a slideshow of someone else’s photo album.

There really is not much to say about this film. It’s not funny, not suspenseful, not erotic, not thought provoking and it does not contribute anything to American Cinema. So, there you go. It’s crap.

The Anniversary at Shallow Creek is very reminiscent of other horror films. It’s predictable. It’s formulaic. And yet…I kind of enjoyed it.

College kids and lovers Sam and Paige have decided to take a nice vacation to Sam’s uncle’s house. Unfortunately, Paige’s brother Anthony invites himself and his girlfriend along, and then 2 more kids join. What was mean to be a romantic getaway turns in to a party for 3 girls and 3 guys. The house appears to be located in a desert or a just plain under developed area where the houses are so far apart, you can make as much noise as you want, and no one else will hear you. The name of the place is Shallow Creek, and exactly one year ago to the day, a young couple were murdered in the same area. Will history repeat itself? What the hell do you think? Drunken young people on vacation in a remote location where people have been murdered before? Well, I wont spoil it for you.

Yes.

So, here’s the thing about this film. You will probably figure out the killer before the halfway point of the film. You may even figure out the “twist.” Yes, the characters make dumb decisions. To be honest, there isn’t really anything new here. But if I restricted myself only to films that were unique and showed me new things, I would probably only be watching Inception, and even that is up for debate.

However, there are some things to enjoy. The deaths are pretty enjoyable and sometimes even startling (right up until the film steals from Saw; in fact, at one point this film becomes a kind of mix of Saw and The Strangers). The effects are pretty decent when someone dies.

The acting is a bit painful until the slaughter begins. Suddenly the ensemble works very well with each other and they deliver their lines much better. I will attribute that to the script being its worst when establishing the little to no characterization or exposition.

So what was it that landed me on the “enjoyed it” side of the fence? There are a lot of low budget films out there. Especially low budget horror films. Comparatively, this one is just fine. It does not look or feel that low budget. This film really used its budget wisely. There is some decent tension. Some of the actors turn in some enjoyable performances. There are a lot worse films you could suffer through. This may not be enough to make it “good,” but it is not unwatchable by any means.

This film is directed by Jon D. Wagner and is written by Eric Fisher and Brianna Lee Johnson. It’s clear that they love horror/killer films, and it is not a bad first effort. If I could provide direct feedback to them: On your next effort, steal less. Homages are fine, but blatant lifts from other films is another thing entirely.

Remind me to keep my mouth shut the next time I say I should have been scarred. 2010′s I Spit on Your Grave is a remake of a 1978 film of the same name. I was unimpressed by the original with its bland characters, lack of tension and surprisingly boring execution of a heinous serious of events. The remake rectifies these issues, but to the complete extreme.

The story is the same; a writer named Jennifer arrives in the deep country to write her first novel. Before she gets to her cabin, she interacts with some locals, a healthy mix of creepy, retarded and seemingly harmless. An embarrassing event occurs at the gas station which establishes part of a motive for some depraved acts. This combined with a retarded chap’s misinterpretation of a kiss from Jennifer, quickly results in the go ahead for those acts. Jennifer is assaulted, mentally tortured, and ultimately raped repeatedly. Before the assailants can kill her, she jumps into the river and disappears. Her body is never recovered. About a month later she returns, to get her revenge.

There are some improvements from the original. There actually is a clearly established motive for these men to commit the acts that they do. In the original, they seemed to be a result of mostly them just being country psychos. Also, in the original, the men were lured in to the most ridiculous of traps and met there demise. The remake has them being ambushed for lack of a better term and dispatched in fairly quick and bizarre fashions. Having said those things, this version seemed more realistic.

However.

This film (I watched the unrated version) is quite vile. Needless to say, the crimes committed against Jennifer were most certainly uncomfortable and heinous. Not just the rape, but the mental abuse and games they play with her were just as evil. But, also the crimes committed against the men. Horrible, elaborate deaths. Disturbing at best.

This leads to the ultimate debate that should occur if both men and women view this at the same time. Were Jennifer’s actions justified? It’s clearly obvious her actions are revenge driven, but in case you may not pick up on that, she says the same things to each victim that were said to her during her ordeal. But does that make her right in her actions? If, not what would be fitting? Arrests and eventual death chamber? Same end result. Just not as inhumane. Possibly. I say that the debate “should” occur because it certainly will not. Everyone will be too busy washing their brains in hot water in an effort to remove some of the images. The film seems more interested in shock value than healthy discussion. Not that all films should result in a healthy discussion, but man. You have quite a controversial subject to not want to spark one.

The film is better acted, directed and just plain is better than the original. But is it good? Unfortunately, no. It goes too far. Instead of say, the A Time to Kill approach about justifiable homicide, which mostly involves a deadly reaction to something and then a trial, this film just shows repeated horrible acts, which leaves you too jarred to even discuss the subject.

The original was not necessarily a bad movie to my hazy recollection but it certainly did not have the prestige or fan base as some of PD’s other endeavors. In fact, I don’t recall much outcry when this was announced comparatively to their other projects. The story is largely the same in both versions, re-emphasizing the production company’s reliance on remaking instead of reimagining. Here, young couple Jim and Grace are traveling through the southwest to meet up with some friends. On the way, they almost strike a man standing in the middle of the road. Being in the middle of nowhere, Jim wants to stop and give the man a ride but Grace objects and the two carry on.

Later at a gas station, Jim is approached by the man in the road who introduces himself as John Ryder. He has hitched a ride with a trucker but now needs a ride to a motel. Jim agrees but not long into their trek Ryder goes crazy and threatens Grace with a knife before he is kicked from the moving car. Ryder targets the pair and begins a path of death and mayhem which he successfully frames them for. The bulk of the movie is Jim and Grace trying to not only stay away from the suspecting police but also the crazed mad man on a somewhat clichéd, but still terrifying spree.

We’ve already established with Battle: Los Angeles that I do not necessarily need my movies to be groundbreaking to be enjoyable. In fact, just like that movie, I could see most of the relevant plot points coming a mile a way. I just need something to keep my short attention span engaged and shockingly, The Hitcher actually delivers. There are a fair amount of car chases and shoot-outs to be had and even if some of the ancillary characters are incredibly stupid (cops who just look while being shot at), everything is fairly straight-forward and shockingly restrained considering this film’s remade cinematic brethren.

Sean Bean plays Ryder pretty terrifically as equal parts bat-shit insane and just diabolical. He is never really given a true motive or reason for targeting the couple but that does not matter much when random cars are falling from the sky and people are dropping dead every few minutes. The story by Eric Bernt and Jake Wade Wall start the action very early and the direction by Dave Meyers gives the film a frenetic pace as Ryder ups the ante while upping the body count as well.

Sophia Bush and Zach Knighton as Grace and Jim respectively portray their characters absent the standard clichés you would expect in this type of movie. Relatively speaking, they are proactive and smart and even have a nice chemistry together. When the shit hits the fan (or the torque of a tractor trailer), Bush is fairly convincing as a badass as well. Neal McDonough as the lead lawman pursuing the kids/murderousmadman/whichever is pretty entertaining with a few choice lines and a solid performance.

I must say that given the output of the production company, I expected The Hitcher to be a half-realized, shameless ripoff of a previous film. To an extent, it was but that doesn’t stop the film from being a tense, yet amusing way to kill an hour and a half.

Ryan Reynolds certainly has come a long way since the Nickelodeon teen drama Fifteen.

Buried takes place entirely in a large wooden coffin buried a few feet underground in Iraq. Paul Conroy (Reynolds) is a truck driver whose convoy was attacked while working there. Children were throwing rocks at his truck, an IED blew up one of the other trucks, and the next thing he recalls is waking up in this box.  Also in the box is a Zippo, a BlackBerry (not his), a glowstick, a candle, a flashlight, a note written in another language, a knife, a pen and Paul’s anxiety medication. Damn Paul’s luck suffering from anxiety having been buried in a coffin alive.

This film could have gone horribly awry, what with the numerous possible plot holes, one of which being him buried with so many items that would be useful to him. Well, I assure you, he is in this box for a reason and each item serves a specific function essential to that reason. One of the other more obvious concerns would be having to spend an entire film in the coffin, but the 95 minute runtime ensures that we do not get irritated at the lack of scenery. As does Ryan Reynolds. He gives us a great performance, making sure we feel every bit of desperation, panic, et al. that he does. And his actions are plausible. He reacts and does things the very same way that you or I would. And I say you or I, meaning, as opposed to a trained combat soldier, which he is not.

Another point of concern is that since we wake up in the coffin with Paul, we learn little to nothing about his character, which in any other film, would detach us from his plight and leave us to not really care about him. But he is trapped in a box. He is not a jerk (that we know of). He is married with a child. He is innocent. This is enough for us to want him to live. He is like us. Or at least enough like us.

The only problem with a film like this is that it has no replay value. It goes through all the emotional journey. Desperation, anger, tedium, hysteria. And it does this successfully. Therefore, once  experienced in its entirety, there is no motivation to see it again. And not so much because you know how it will end, but rather simply because a journey is exciting because of the unknown events that will occur. “How will this get resolved?” “Who will he call?” Once you know the answers, the novelty is gone.

The film does a great job of being completely realistic, entertaining, and removing any doubt that being buried alive is quite a horrific experience (is there doubt?). It is definitely worth a viewing.

Road Games bares a strong resemblance  to Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window, only this one is on the road. This makes sense as the film’s writer/director Richard Franklin was a Hitchcock fan, and even directed Psycho II. While not nearly as good as Rear Window, at least it was better than the “update” Disturbia that was vomited onto movie screens years later.

Patrick Quid (Stacey Keach) drives a truck (“Just because I drive a truck, doesn’t mean I’m a truck driver”) and wants nothing more than to check into a motel and get some rest. He receives a call over the radio that he is needed to make an emergency delivery of meat to Perth. He reluctantly agrees when offered double time. At a gas station he notices a female hitchhiker the he passed on the road, who was picked up by a man driving a green van. They apparently take the last room at the motel while Quid was talking on his radio and he is forced to sleep in the truck with his dingo. In the morning, Quid notices the driver of the van watching the garbage men picking up the motel trash from his window. He finds this mildly suspicious but starts the long drive to make his shipment. Quid passes his time talking to his dingo and commenting on the other people on the road. He passes a different hitchhiker and is eventually passed by the green van on the road. Quid notices a cooler in the front seat. Quid is “tricked” into picking up a hitchhiker, Madeleine who says her husband left her on the side of the road. As they are playing a game to pass the time, they come across a man digging on the side of the road. It is the driver of the green van, who flees when he sees that he is being watched. Quid begins to put together that he must have killed the hitchhiker, threw some of her body away and was just burying the rest. This scares Madeleine, who runs from Quid, almost falling off of a cliff. Quid has another encounter with the green van before picking up another hitchhiker, Pamela (Jamie Lee Curtis), whom he calls Hitch. The two of them discuss the killer in the area, which Quid now obviously thinks is the other driver. Quid and the driver have several other encounters with the driver and while he is incredibly suspicious, the signs begin to point to Quid as having something to do with the disappearances and killings. For example, he is pulled over by the police and told that his name was on the register at the hotel, and they know he checked in with the now missing hitchhiker. He is let go and the encounters continue until the exciting (?) conclusion of the film.

Much like the road (and possibly this review), the film drags for a long time. We get decent character development and plot exposition, but it’s presented in a fairly uninteresting way. Perhaps a better script could have made it a little more interesting, as the dialogue is pretty boring. Keach and Curtis turn in decent performances (especially Keach), but the lack of suspense or interesting conversation is distracting.  This is no spoiler, but we know right away that Quid is not the killer and clearly the driver of the green van is, so that saps the suspense right out of the film. I suppose we are supposed to be pulled in by the fact that Quid could clearly be mistaken for the killer, and this is handled in quite a clever fashion, but it still was not enough. It’s odd that such a fan of Hitchcock would fail at suspense.

I hate films like this. It’s directed fairly well for what it is, solid performances, but just plain boring. It’s kind of like winning a free lunch at a restaurant that requires you to sit through an hour long business presentation. The food is free and good, but you really aren’t interested in the presentation.

Shadowland has won several awards, including Best Feature Film at Fright Night Film Festival 2010, Best Director at Yellow Fever International Film Festival and Best Actress (Caitlin McIntosh) at both Freakshow Horror Film Festival and St. Louis Filmmakers Showcase.

We decided to make this review a group project, and all three of us watched the film, then shared our thoughts in podcast form.

Ultimately, we felt that it was a valiant first effort by Weed, and there were a lot of positives. We did, however question some of the choices made, and even some of the story in general. Please enjoy our first podcast review and check out the Shadowland website for more information about the film.

Check out our interview with director Wyatt Weed and producer Gayle Gallagher here.

Well, I might be able to get into a bit more detail. Centered around the Zodiac killings of the late 1960s in California, the David Fincher directed thriller is more based on the act of catching a killer through monotonous investigation rather than the murders themselves. This is quite remarkable even considering that the Zodiac murders could have merely been a blip on the radar if not for the killer taunting the police and news reporters with letters, phone calls, and bloody pieces of fabric.

For anyone watching this expecting another Se7en out of Fincher, you will be horribly disappointed as this is the least straight-forward serial killer movie I have seen in quite a while. The thing that is truly engrossing about the movie, and according to PBF the story itself, is that the gaps in the facts pull you into the story even more as all the investigators (and as such Fincher and writer James Vanderbilt) have to go on is spotty information from traumatized or less than reliable witnesses. Similar to the case, Zodiac is strung together on a series of damning, yet highly circumstantial, evidence that leads to the “favorite” suspect as much as it clears him. It is quite different to see a movie that is put together just like a court case, without a “smoking gun” and asking you to come to your own conclusions.

I really don’t even know where to start with the cast as they were all phenomenal. Mark Ruffalo and Anthony Edwards as the San Francisco detectives Dave Toschi and Bill Armstrong respectively tasked with the Zodiac case are incredible, both in their prowess to the clues leading to Zodiac and the banter they have between them. (Favorite line: “You’re not an idiot, you waited for him to put it in park.”) Likewise, their journalistic counterparts of Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr.) and Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) are equally respectable as both are invested in the case to the point that they risk their own safety (and sanity) to track down information on their own.

He has not really impressed me before, but I was quite blown away by Gyllenhaal who begins the story as a meek political cartoonist on the outskirts of the investigation only to take charge when it has been all but forgotten. His transformation from naive and bright-eyed to totally consumed with cracking the mystery of Zodiac was gradual enough but damn compelling as he almost single-handedly puts together the decades-old pieces of the puzzle that no one else cared to. While I fully expect that some elements of the story were fabricated or fictionalized compared to the real events, the character of Graysmith (who was also the writer of the source book) was one of the most complete and successful depictions of a character that would be largely inconsequential in another movie.

That is what I enjoyed the most in this film: almost everything you would expect in a true Hollywood film does not happen. There is no grand stand-off between the lead cop and the villain. Some characters (even played by pretty decent actors like Zach Grenier or Brian Cox) are around for a handful of scenes and just disappear. Fincher leaves a lot of grey area around the innocence or guilt of the prime suspect as the evidence is compelling, but not a sure thing. Even the ending (which I suspect would piss a lot of people off) is purposely vague and almost anti-climactic with no real resolution in the case at hand, just like the real events were. Rather than detract from the movie, this only makes it more engaging as we are clamoring for solid answers that do not exist. In fact, I cannot think of a more satisfying movie that leaves so many questions unanswered.