Critical Film: A Review of Walled In

Walled In

Starring:

* Mischa Barton
* Cameron Bright
* Deborah Kara Unger
* Noam Jenkins
* Pascal Greggory

Director:

* Gilles Paquet-Brenner

The house on haunted hill has people in the waaaaaalls! That was the first thing I thought after the movie started on the uncommon note of drowning a little girl in a tomb of cement. They showed the building designed by renown architect Joseph Malestrazza, the scene of a string of 16 murders of tenants who lived there. I swore that I was looking at the set of House on Haunted Hill the entire time because every view from inside looked like it was borrowed. I almost expected to see the ghost of Chris Kattan open a way out so our lead protagonist, Sam, could escape. The movie revolves around Sam, an engineer sent by her father to lay out the plans to demolish the building…why he didn’t send a team, or assistants..who knows.. She arrives and is greeted by the obsessive Jimmy, whom she finds out just ONE day after arriving, has a massive crush on her and believes she will do anything he says. This apparently doesn’t phase her, nor does the fact that a man almost kills her with an axe, the place was the tomb of 16+ people, nor that Jimmy’s father was one of the victims of the killer.

The films has numerous flaws, but it is shot rather well. The camera angles led you to believe that secrets hid around every corner, along with the lighting, everything was made really creepy. The major problems lay in horror movie judgment and the way the film pulled a 180 from what it was leading up to into something completely different. Sam should have made a call, gotten people out there to help her when things were going crazy. She should have not gone into the room where the bodies were found in the middle of the night with only a single flashlight held by the kid who obviously has a huge and obsessive crush on you. The movie also goes from being a most excellent ghost film into The Babysitter territory with the kid’s obsession leading him to imprison her with Joseph Malestrazza, whom was kept alive and it turned out HE was the murderer! Nooooot a big shocker, seeing as how most of the bodies were found in his walls of his own room in his own building..

Turning from ghosts to love story gone wrong makes no sense given what the viewer is shown before hand, but besides being a little disorienting, the movie isn’t all that bad. The acting is pretty damn good, the camerawork and atmosphere are done very well, but the attempt to fuse two completely separate types of movies into one is where the movie failed. Not bad, but not the best either, that’s why it gets a 3.7 out of 5.

Critical Film: A Review of From Beyond

From Beyond (1986)

Starring:

* Jeffery Combs
* Barbara Crampton
* Ted Sorel
* Ken Foree

Director:

* Stewart Gordon

Adapted from H.P. Lovecraft, From Beyond is a story of mad science gone wrong. A portal to a dimension out of sync with our own is discovered through a certain harmonic pitch which stimulates the pineal gland. The dimension it uncovers though, is full of brain eating monsters! Dr. Pretorius, who was just born to be a mad scientist, creates the device and ends up merging with a monster FROOOOM BEEEYOOOONNNNDDDDD and it’s up to Crawford to prove that the device should be dismantled and that he wasn’t crazy. The movie has a great line after Crawford is committed to the psych ward, “It ate his head…like… a GINGERBREAD MAN!”, I couldn’t help but laugh at that line. The movie itself is about Dr. Crawford, Bubba the police officer, and Dr. McMichaels trying to fight the urge of keeping the machine on and giving into the high it gives you and the evil that is beyond our own world.

The movie is actually quite well done, having an almost Poe-esque feel to parts of it. The monster effects were classic 1980’s, utilizing a lot of gore and plastic faces being melted, but combine the effects with the feeling the set gave, along with the out of this world orchestral score, this movie excelled. It did drag on in parts, when you wish that the movie would stop going for lame quips or unneeded “feeding” scenes, but that was really the only part that dragged it down. The nudity is underplayed by the raw sexual desires that Dr. McMichaels was feeling. It was quite a sight to see her give an unconscious Crawford a handjob while she was dressed as a dominatrix, even for the 80’s! The movie was a good trip through the twisted landscapes Lovecraft has always provided, but the ending was somewhat strange. Crawford was mutating due to his exposure to the device, but McMichaels should be mutating as well, but that was never brought up as the movie ended with her laughing crazily, probably negating the freedom Crawford allowed her to have by sacrificing himself to the other dimension in an eternal struggle between Pretorious and himself. All in all, despite the campy effects, the script, plot, and character acting more than make up for the flaws of this film.

Critical Film: A Review of Session 9

Session 9

Starring:

* David Caruso
* Stephen Gevedon
* Peter Mullan
* Josh Lucas
* Paul Guilfoyle

Director:

* Brad Anderson

When you work at an insane asylum, you gotta be… crazy. YEAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH! Sorry, that will be the only CSI: Miami joke in this. The movie is a wonderfully slow romp through psychosis, in which you develop little feeling for the characters because they aren’t well fleshed out and little emotional ties to when they die. The story takes place at at an abandoned insane asylum that a crew wins the bid to restore. Enter Phil, Gordy, and their crew, which only has 1 week to complete the repairs. The place seems to have been left almost completely in tact, with files, folders, patient interviews available to anyone who was to stroll in or casually do some B and E.

The acting is very wooden and stiff, Caruso does a decent job of shedding his CSI police-ness and does a great job of throwing the creepy at you. The rest of the actors were not very attachable. I felt no qualms when one of them died because the story never gives the opportunity to form any type of bond before they are murdered off. The camera work is done well, as is the atmosphere. Any movie that takes place in a real abandoned insane asylum is going to get top rating in the field of atmosphere. The angles used for shots was done well, which speaks more to the location design than anything else. The special effects are almost nonexistent, but there are a few, blood/flashbacks/etc. With the acting being sub-par, the camera work and atmosphere being excellent, but the lack of any significant special effects, Session 9 earns a 3 out of 5.

Writing: Moment in Time - The Right Moment

As the last drops fall from the cup, trailing the course through his cracked lips to slide in fiery trails down his throat, he felt a light touch on his arm and a voice next to his ear telling him that it was time to leave. He pushed his chair back from the table and tossed his faded leather jacket over his shoulder. With a quick wave to his friends, he took her hand and they stepped out the door, feeling the wave of cold strike their hot skin. He pauses, pulls the pack of menthol's from his inner pocket and strikes his lighter, sending a small heat to battle the chill. He takes a deep breath and her hand in the same instant as they walk down the sidewalk which was dimly lit behind the hazy snow obscuring the globes above them.

They talked of little things, the words almost meaningless, the only thing mattering is that their were together. They laughed at an off-color joke she made and he felt her body tense, as if the act of enjoying herself was something to be frightened of. They passed restaurants and bars, gas stations and office buildings, totally engrossed in each other and lost in the moment. The trail of smoke from his cigarette could have been the chill losing the battle from the warmth in each of their hearts, but they never noticed.

They walked to her door and he flicked his cigarette into a snowbank, watching the cherry red tip flare in its death throws and die. She slide her hands into both of his, her heart in both those warm pools of brown. He smiled at her and told her that they would have to do this again, adding, as he looked into the swirling snow above them, during better weather. She agreed and told him so, watching the emotions flick across his face, but she could have been seeing the heat of the moment and the cold fiercely fighting on his face. She turned to walk in her door, but heard her name called just as her small hand touched the bronze door handle. She turned to see him on one knee, reaching deeply into one pocket all the while never taking his eyes from the reason he was happiest in life. Her breath caught as he pulled out a small box. Her eyes watered as he opened it. She never forgot that cold, snowy night, where the lights in the snow reflected in a rainbow starburst on the small diamond he placed on her finger.

Poetry: Pretty Girl on The Mountain

Pretty girl on the mountain,
caught somewhere 'tween heaven and hell,
you have no idea
where you are.

We can watch and point
and laugh and curse
knowing we will never reach that high,
but you're on every station
all across the nation,
psychobabble coursing from your lips.

I want to turn you off because you turn me on
and leave me running in the cold,
but every time I try I feel the hand of death.

Pretty girl on the mountain,
you ride the airwaves through the sky
and course into our collective veins,
careless to the cries in pleasures and pains.

I want to drop the remote, unplug the computer, lose the cell, hide the keys, mute the volume, turn off the lights, but I cant,
oh I knew I never could.

So I'll sit in mindless servitude to you
brains leaking to the floor along with self determination.
Staring at the pixels that make you that pretty girl on the mountain of consumerism.

Wring: Moment in Time - The Rush

He brought the car down hard. The entire chassy shook with the impact, but he no longer cared. He was too busy singing along to his radio as it blared into the cool October air. His hands firmly held the wheel, much like it used to hold her. As he regained a straight path, he took a sip from the liter of vodka he bought and sped through a red light. The red lights flashing behind him never registered in his mind. Faster and faster he went until he struck the break so hard that the car seemed to cry as he flew into the turn. The car behind him drew closer then swerved to dodge a possible collision. His pulse was racing as he hit 100 miles per hour; pounding by the time he hit 130. He drove for hours, but it must have been only minutes - until he hit the road block. The shots fired and he pressed harder on the gas. The pistons pumped faster and faster as each bullet tore through his body. Each flip the car made no longer mattered. When they finally ended and the police surrounded his car, he was still awake, taking a sip from his half-broken bottle. He smiled, said something which was filed away in a police case labeled Drunk Driver, and forgotten.

Poetry: Sometimes (Wishful Thinking)

Sometimes I wish I was first,
rather than waiting in a queue.
Spending life in second gear,
wheels turning but moving nowhere.

Sometimes I wish I felt attractive,
wiping away social norms with a coarse cloth.
Feeling wanted and desired,
the first move not mine but anothers'.

Sometimes I wish you would believe me,
forgetting the lies of others and listening.
Words of truth are seldom spoken,
a world coated in lies. . . save my words.

Sometimes I wish these things,
though I know they will rarely happen.
Though I wish, I'll work to make them true,
hanging hope upon the hook of Sometimes.