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.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Sunday, January 2, 2011
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.
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.
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