Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil

Oh hidey ho, there, officer, we've had a doozy of a day. There we were minding our own business, just doing chores around the house, when kids started killing themselves all over my property   

   Have you ever seen a giant, horrifying spider, and some genius felt the need to impart the wise saying, "They're more afraid of you than you are of them?"  Well, that's what Tucker and Dale vs. Evil is all about.
   Nine college aged douche bags drive out to the middle of nowhere to smoke some weed and drink some beers.  After making uncomfortable, lingering eye contact with a couple of hicks on the highway, they stop at a general store in a backwoods, small town in the middle of nowhere.
   Meanwhile, Tucker (Alan Tudyk) and Dale (Tyler Labine) just bought themselves a vacation home in the middle of the woods near Morris Lake.  They stop at the local convenience store to pick up a few supplies to fix the place up.  A scythe, some beer, a wood chipper...  The college aged kids are immediately horrified and disgusted by the so-called hillbillies.  Maybe Dale shouldn't have approached them carrying a giant scythe, but sometimes meeting new people is awkward.
   When they finally arrive, Tucker and Dale are immediately enchanted with their new vacation home.  One of the beams is loose and potentially lethal, the previous owner liked to collect bones and newspaper clippings about murder, but they don't see the dust and grime, they see something they never thought they would be able to achieve.
   While fishing on the lake, Tucker and Dale see Allie (Katrina Bowden) slip and fall in.  Attempting to rescue her, they accidentally abduct her.  In their attempts to save her, the college kids just seem to keep stumbling into harm's way.  Tucker and Dale are super confused when the kids appear to have started killing themselves all around them.  A couple of them spear themselves on sharp branches.  Another throws himself into a wood chipper.  The sheriff accidentally nails himself in the face with, well, a board filled with nails. Then one of them shoots himself in the face.  There's all kinds of twist and turns, it's wacky.
   Chad, the ringleader of the college kids, kidnaps Tucker and ties him upside-down in a tree before chopping off a couple of his fingers.  Suddenly the roles are reversed and the innocent, "crazy hillbillies" are being hunted by the college kids.
   Tucker and Dale vs. Evil is really all about class warfare.  The rich college kids make a few too many assumptions about two guys who happen to live in a rural area, but in the end their ringleader proves himself to be the real menace.  Combining slapstick and gore, Tucker and Dale vs. Evil is a truly funny parody of the standard slasher-in-the-woods story.  A bit contrived at times, I'll give it four out of five bushwhacking scythes.

Shutter (Thai Version, Duh)

In my opinion these pictures represent more than macabre urban legends.  They are signs.  Think about it.  Why would the dead return to the living without a message to convey?

  Beginning with Ringu in 1998, throughout the late nineties and early naughts, if you wanted good horror, you had to turn to Asia (Now it's all about the French/Western Europe).  Nobody does creepy horror quite like the Asians.  Of course, most of them are fairly similar: pale girl, long hair, out for revenge.
   Shutter is one of my favorite Asian horror movies.  Only four years later, Hollywood felt the need to release their own, Americanized version, 'cause that's what we do.  Read subtitles?  Fuck that, let's just make our own with that guy from Dawson's Creek.  Seems legit.
   Being the movie purist I tend to be, ninety-nine percent of the time I'm going to prefer the original version of any movie over the remake.  Some things just don't translate well to Hollywood.
   Jane, a college student, and Tun, a professional photographer are leaving a wedding together.  Jane is the designated driver and doesn't seem to have been drinking, but she still ends up running someone over.  Tun orders her to drive away, leaving the obviously injured woman unconscious on the side of the road.  Mysterious things start happening around the couple.  Jane starts having creepy dreams.  His neck is super sore and he's gained about one hundred and twenty pounds in, like, two weeks.  Tun can't seem to take a picture without a mysterious spirit photobombing every single one of them.
   They take these photos to a Weekly World News- style magazine, and the editor tells them that while most spirit photography is faked, other pictures can't be explained.  One way to be sure that a picture actually features a ghost is to take its picture with a Polaroid camera.  The camera develops its own film, meaning that there's no chance of human error or tampering.
   Eventually Jane finds evidence that Tun is actually the one being haunted by the ghost of his ex-girlfriend, Natre.  She's an odd loner who quickly and dramatically fell in love with Tun in college.  Spoiler alert: The villain here is not the restless spirit of Tun's ex-girlfriend, it's Tun.  Apparently he let his gross friends rape her while he just watched.  She kills each of his friends, one by one, until only Tun is left.  Rather than killing him outright, her ghost has been riding around on his shoulders.  Desperately trying to free himself of her ghost, he throws himself out a window.  Absolutely no one mourns him.
   Love this movie.  The twist at the end is genius, and although it surprised me the first time I saw it, the hints sprinkled throughout the story are pretty fun to look for the second, third, and fourth time around.  It's a bit slower than the American version, which is often true.  Us Americans really don't have the attention span for a slow, thoughtful build-up of the creep factor.  Maybe that's why we also felt the need to remake Ringu and Ju-on.  Plenty of jump scares to keep the tension high, though.  If you don't feel like reading the subtitles, I judge you, I guess the American version with Joshua Jackson isn't awful, but you'll be doing yourself a disservice if you don't at least try to watch the Thai version.  Shutter gets four out of five Polaroid pictures.

You can watch the full movie here.

American Psycho

I have all the characteristics of a human being: blood, flesh, skin, hair; but not a single, clear, identifiable emotion, except for greed and disgust. Something horrible is happening inside of me and I don't know why. My nightly bloodlust has overflown into my days. I feel lethal, on the verge of frenzy. I think my mask of sanity is about to slip.

   The first time I tried to watch this movie, I couldn't finish it.  Surprising, I know.  I think it was mostly because of the scene with the two prostitutes and the coat hanger.  You'll have to use your imagination, because whatever happens isn't actually shown in the movie.  You see the coat hanger, then the prostitutes, bloodied and crying, leaving.  About a year ago I read the original novel American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis.  That book makes this movie look like a kids' show.
   It's about Patrick Bateman (why yes, that is a reference to Norman Bates from Psycho, how clever of you to notice), played by Christian Bale, post- Newsies and pre- Terminator.  Patrick is obsessed with a few things: pop culture, having all the best stuff,  and physical fitness.  Christian Bale wasn't even this physically fit when he played the Dark Knight.  Oh, and he's obsessed with "murders and executions," and he works in mergers and acquisitions.  Although he's extremely wealthy, he never does any work.  His favorite topic to talk about are serial killers.  No one seems to know what he's talking about when he references Ed Gein or Ted Bundy.
   It borders on funny.  Everything about Patrick Bateman is horrible, but he's so over the top.  He moonwalks during murders.  He watches himself posing in the mirror during sex, more interested in his own perfection than the girls he's screwing.  Somehow he manages to slip confessions into conversations, "I like to dissect girls," he tells someone, "Did you know I'm utterly insane?"
   Although set in the eighties, this movie may always be applicable.  There will always be the extremely wealthy, those who believe that no action of theirs will ever have long-term negative consequences.  He and his fellow Wall Street business men do drugs in public bathrooms and hate women.  They all seem to be of the opinion that the only reason for a woman to have a decent personality is because she's physically unattractive.  They spend hundreds of dollars on dinners and trade wives and girlfriends like Pokemon cards.
   Most compelling about American Psycho is the fact that, like in the book, the audience is never quite sure if any of the atrocities Bateman performs ever actually happened outside of his own head, especially when an ATM tells him to feed it a cat.  By the end, he's not even sure.  At one point he shoots a car with a handgun.  The car explodes in a huge, fiery explosion, and Bateman looks at his gun, like "Whaaaaat?" (because despite what action movies want you to believe, that cannot happen).  Utterly insane, American Psycho will seriously make you doubt the sanity of Christian Bale.  Suddenly all those drunken melt downs aren't all that surprising.  Body count: 41 (18 on screen).  American Psycho gets five out of five lines of coke.
   Now if you'll excuse me, I have to return some video tapes.

VHS

   Let's just start by saying that I am so fucking sick of found-footage horror movies.  They were cool once, with The Blair Witch Project, [REC] (the Spanish version, duh), and maybe the first Paranormal Activity movie.  Now they're done.  The sub-genre is dead.  Let's say a few words, dig a grave, and bury them.
   VHS, despite what I consider a lackluster format, gets points for doing things that haven't been done yet.  It's a horror anthology, with five bite-sized horror stories framed by another.

Tape 56
The frame narrative.  Basically a bunch of hooligans break into an old, dead guy's house and start watching his VHS tapes, looking for one that they're supposed to steal.  Why this dude still has VHS tapes or a VCR are completely beyond me.  My future hypothetical children probably won't even know what VHS tapes are.     Spoiler: Anyway, turns out old, dead dude is a zombie and all the hooligans die.  Nobody mourns them.

Amateur Night
The first tape is POV through some creeper's camera glasses.  His friends want him to use these glasses to film himself having sex with a couple of girls they picked up at that bar.  One of them is creepy and weird.  She has huge, bug-eyes, and all she keeps saying is "I like you."  Spoiler: Once she starts growing scales and eating his friends, Clint loses his boner.  Discovering he is no longer interested, the shame of the succubus is palpable.  You actually feel sorry for her, right until she picks up Clint with her foot-talons, flies him straight up, and drops him onto the ground below.

Second Honeymoon
A married couple, Sam and Stephanie, go on a road trip through Old West tourist traps.  After they check into their skeazy hotel a mysterious woman knocks on their door and asks for a ride.  They politely decline.  Next thing we know, a mysterious intruder picks up the camera and films the sleeping couple, lingering on the buttocks of the wife.  Next the intruder dips Sam's toothbrush in the toilet.  Honestly, he probably deserves it after pressuring Stephanie to have sex on camera and accusing her of stealing money out of his wallet.
Spoiler: The intruder kills Sam, turns out to be a hot lesbian, and then makes out with Stephanie in front of the camera.  

Tuesday the Seventeenth
Four young adults go camping at an underpopulated lake.  Anyone who's read my previous posts knows how I feel about camping. Obviously inspired by Friday the 13th. Spoiler: Survivor girl is nuts and used her friends as bait so she can kill the killer.  Super unsuccessfully.

The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger
I have to admit, I don't think I really got this one.  Emily keeps telling her doctor boyfriend about all this creepy shit that keeps happening in her new apartment.  Plus she has this weird thing in her arm that she keeps trying to dig out with tweezers and kitchen implements.  Spoiler: Doctors diagnose her as schizoaffective, but really her boyfriend is helping aliens use her as an incubator for their creepy alien fetuses. Oh, and he's cheating on her.  The girl he's cheating on also has this weird thing in her arm...

10/31/98
Four dudes attempt to go to a Halloween party.  They don't realize that they have the wrong house, even though there seems to be no one there.  They break in anyway, because hey, the party has to be there, right?  Instead of a super cool haunted house, they end up witnessing an exorcism.  Being the super geniuses they so obviously are, they save the girl the strange men in the attack are trying to exorcise.  Spoiler: She drives their car in front of an oncoming train.  No one is surprised.

Apparently they're making a second one, to which I say, "meh."  Barely worth a watch once, I can't believe I watched it twice.  VHS gets two out of five VHS tapes.

Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Reasons to Never Ever Go Camping

   Okay, I am aware that this Top Ten Tuesday is five days late.  I tried a couple of other lists and they just really didn't pan out.  So here it is, I hope it was worth it.

10. Deliverance

A bunch of manly men go on a canoeing trip.  Before they head out they infuriate the banjo playing, inbred yokels.  That's like rule number one in the horror movie handbook.  Don't piss off the yokels.  Eventually they're in a fight to defend their innocence from man-on-man rape.  Rape is already a terrifying concept for women, but it's almost inconceivable for men.

9. The Thing

Yeah, buddy.  I'm not talking the newer prequel, I'm talking the Kurt Russel original in all its eighties glory.  Directed by John Carpenter, one of the masters of horror.  Claustrophobic, gory, and paranoid throughout, this may not technically be a camping movie, but they are trapped in the middle of nowhere.

8. Cabin Fever

Have you ever wanted to see an actor from Boy Meets World be psychologically tortured?  Admit it, we all have.  When a flesh eating virus hits a cabin full of twenty-something kids, we get to watch them fall apart.  Haha, literally.

7. I Spit on Your Grave

This time I am talking about the remake.  I haven't yet seen the original (I know, I know, I'm a bad Movie Monster).  This movie proves, once again, that most of the time humans are the most terrifying creatures on Earth.

6.Cabin in the Woods

See my full review here.

5. Friday the 13th

Not even sleep-away camps for kids are safe, especially not if you're a hormone-crazed young adult.  One of the great slasher movies of the 1980's, Friday the 13th is one of the best slasher movies of all time.  With an original twist before twists became prerequisites, nobody wants to attend Camp Crystal Lake.

4.Blair Witch Project

The first found footage movie.  Made for next to nothing, it was also the most profitable movie of all time.  In a lot of cases with horror movies, the more shit the actors have to go through, the better the final product (The Shining, Evil Dead, Clockwork Orange, Stanley Kubrick films in general...).  The three unknown actors were basically never told what was going to happen.  They were given a camera and some simple guidelines, then the director had some fun tormenting them until they were close to insanity.

3. The Hills Have Eyes

Nobody likes backwoods, inbred mutants, which is probably why they're so sad and misunderstood.  Nah, they're just bloodthirsty and weird looking.  I'm really referring to both versions here.  The remake was pretty true to the original, and most of what they added was worth it.  This movie is why camping isn't even okay in an RV.

2.Evil Dead

Now, I haven't seen the remake yet.  I've heard mixed reviews, but the red band trailers all looked goretastic.  Really, better special effects and a higher budget are almost blasphemous when applied to Bruce Campbell and Sam Raimi's first film.  Featuring some awesome camera work and some crazy originality, the remake might not be worth a watch, but I judge people who haven't seen the original.

1. Wolf Creek

Everything in Australia wants to kill you.  From the sharks, to the giant spiders, to the backwoods rapists, everything wants you dead.  One of the most realistic slasher movies ever, it's even creepier because it's based on a couple of real-life Australian serial killers.  And you thought I was exaggerating.

Slither

He looks like something that fell off my dick during the war.

   Grant Grant decides to screw around on his wife with the town slut in the woods.  First of all, if you ever find yourself in the woods in a horror movie, you should probably figure out a way to not be in the woods.  This is why I never go camping, people.  No, it's not fun, it's terrifying, and it's also how you get attacked by zombie redneck torture families, flesh eating viruses, and rapey trees.  Plus the bugs and lack of indoor plumbing.  I'm getting off track.

   Anyway, Grant Grant is about to bone the town slut when they find a creepy, mysterious blob.  A creepy, mysterious, breathing blob.  Being the genius he obviously is, he pokes it with a stick.  The blob retaliates by turning him into a giant amorphous blob.  

   Let's be honest, though, Grant Grant was creepy and gross before he turned into a giant amorphous blob.  You may recognize Michael Rooker from Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer and The Walking Dead.  Elizabeth Banks plays his wife, who, even after finding a pile of dead pets in their basement, still wants to work out their issues.

   Like with all slugs, there is a hierarchy.  Grant Grant is at the top.  He impregnated the town slut with thousands of his slug-like spawn.  Rather than giving birth the normal way, she blows up like Violet Beauregard and the alien slugs explode out of her like a gory water balloon.  Actually, as far as I can tell, that is giving birth the normal way.  "These little fuckers are tearing me apart!" she screams, before spraying the sheriff's department with them.  The slugs then squirm off and zombify the townspeople, who then wander all zombie-like over to the giant amorphous blob that used to be Grant Grant and merge with him.

   Although Nathan Fillion plays the sheriff as sarcastic and not-so-secretly sweet, most of the laughs come from Gregg Henry, who plays Mayor MacReady.  MacReady isn't really anyone's idea of an ideal mayor.  He's crass, impatient, sarcastic, and cowardly.  But jeezo-peezo is he fun to laugh at.  At the beginning of the movie he's sitting in his car and in a fit of road rage he screams, "Move the fuck out of the way, cocksucker!"  Before he looks over to see a voter and her ten year old daughter.  "Eh, you win some, you lose some," he shrugs.

   Somehow, this modern creature feature managed to pull of the combination of horror and comedy, which is probably mostly thanks to the cast, as well as the script, written and directed by James Gunn, Slither was featured in the 30 Even Scarier Movie Moments.  Maybe a little too dependent on CGI rather than practical effects, The Movie Monster gives Slither four out of five alien slugs.

The Lost Boys

One thing about living in Santa Carla I never could stomach. All the damn vampires.

   The Lost Boys is my favorite eighties movie.  And it is SO eighties.  Kiefer Sutherland wasn't weird looking yet.  The first movie featuring the Coreys together.  Everyone has their left ear pierced and a mullet.  Includes a dirtbike race on the beach to some rockin' eighties music.

   Michael is being seduced by a gay vampire street gang run by Kiefer Sutherland before all his DUIs.  The Coreys are trying to kill said vampire street gang.  And their mom is dating Edward Herrman!  

   These vampires don't sparkle.  They're not all depressed and conflicted about being bloodsuckers.  They don't go to high school even though they're over one hundred years old.  The Lost Boys features your very standard vampire rules:

• super sensitivity to sunlight, crosses, garlic, and holy water
• super speed
• super strength
• super hypnosis
• super healing
• super dependence on human blood (none of that "vegetarian" bullsh*t)
• rad dirt bike skills
• greatest weakness: a stake in the heart
  Fun fact about stakes: mythology originally stated that the stakes were used to nail vampires inside their coffins so they couldn't rise.  You could also defeat vampires by tying them in a net.  They had to untie all the knots before they could rise.  Otherwise you could just carry a handful of rice with you.  Legend also stated that vampires suffered from arithmomania, an obsession with numbers.  They would have to count every grain of rice before they came after you.  Oh, and when gingers die, they rise as vampires.

   Oh, and they have bat feet.  However, they're not your standard vampires.  They aren't romantic.  They don't have accents.  They are in touch with the times.  "Sleep all day. Party all night. Never grow old. Never die. It's fun to be a vampire."

   This is a vampire classic, up there with Dracula, and invented the term "vamp out," which later was adopted by Buffy the Vampire Slayer (created by the great Joss Whedon).  Like Angel and Spike, The Lost Boys morph into ugly, fangy creatures when they are hungry or super pissed.  It's pretty goretastic and you always have to appreciate eighties special effects.  Shares a release year with Near Dark, I haven't seen it yet which is a TRAVESTY and I won't allow it.  The Lost Boys gets five out of five eighties mullets for being the best eighties movie of the eighties (f*ck you, John Hughes).