I'm Spoiling This Movie

Film: The Uninvited (2009)
Format: DVD from Cortland Public Library on basement television.

I’m going to spoil The Uninvited in this review. I’m going to be nice enough to put that spoiler information below the fold—you'll have to click on “more” to get to it. I do that not out of respect for the movie, but out of respect for you, the reader. This is a movie that deserves to be spoiled because it is not merely a shoddy remake of a vastly superior film, but because the shock ending it utilizes has been used better in every other film I’ve seen that has used it.

In fact, I am not merely going to spoil this movie. In doing so, I will be spoiling a few other movies as well. I’m sorry about that. However, I’m going to be extremely careful in this respect. In the next paragraph, I’m going to mention the main film that this one is aping, mainly because this is technically a remake of that film. This means that if you haven’t seen that film (and you should—it's brilliant), you can avoid having it spoiled by not reading past paragraph #3. The other movies that essentially do the same thing as this one will be much further in the review, and most of those are old enough that they won’t be spoiled, and the one that is more recent is disappointing enough that you’re not losing much.

Teratophilia

Film: La Bête (The Beast)
Format: Streaming video from Kanopy on Fire!

I’m not shy about dropping the occasional curse on this blog. I tend to do so after the first couple of paragraphs to avoid offending anyone without their consent of opting to read further. That’s not going to be the case with La Bête (The Beast), a French horror film that is legitimately as much erotica as it is horror. You should know what you are getting into with this film. When I say that this is erotic horror, you need to think less “sexy” and more “porn for the artistic crowd.” This borders on In the Realm of the Senses levels of sexual content. If you decide to watch this, make sure your shades are drawn. You’ve been warned.

This is also going to be evident from the jump. La Bête opens with horses fucking, and again, I mean this legitimately. I mean giant horse dicks and pulsating horse vaginas. This is what lies ahead for us, because the “Beast” in the title is both a real beast and a sexual one, and so what’s to come is going to very much be what you’d expect if Penthouse decided to make Beauty and the Beast.

Death, Where Is Thy Sting?

Film: Ab-Normal Beauty (Sei mong se jun)
Format: Streaming video from Kanopy on Fire!

I think everyone, more or less, is affected by ideas of death. You can be repelled by it, fearful of it, anxious for it, curious about it, or compelled, but at some level, we’re all going to have to face thoughts of it at one time or another. It’s healthy to deal with it, but it’s also really easy for it to become an obsession, either faked (like many a goth) or real—and the real obsession can end up getting dangerous. A film like Ab-Normal Beauty (or Sei mong se jun in the original Cantonese) explores that idea, both in terms of fascination with death and dangerous obsession with it.

Jiney (Race Wong) is an award-winning art student, but despite all of the acclaim that she receives, she is unhappy with her work. No amount of praise from fellow student Anson (Anson Leung) will help her feel better about herself, and her roommate/girlfriend Jas (Race Wong’s real-life sister Rosanne Wong) tries to help her get her mind off of her disappointment in her work. When Jiney witnesses a fatal car accident, she uses the opportunity to start snapping pictures and finds herself drawn to these images of death.

Scooby-Dooby-Don't

Film: Lake of the Dead (De dødes tjern)
Format: Streaming video from Amazon Prime on various players.

When I think about horror movies, there are parts of the world that I don’t really consider that much. Scandanavia is one of those places, and I’m not sure why that is. I’m happy to think of British and French horror, German and Spanish, Italian, Korean, Japanese, Mexican, and more, but Scandanavia rarely comes to mind, even with films like Midsommar. Lake of the Dead (or De dødes tjern in the original Norwegian) is very much an example of folk horror, using a remote cabin and a legend to create a sense of dread in the audience and the characters.

The film takes place in 1958, the present day for the characters involved. Author Bernhard Borge (Henki Kolstad) and his wife Sonja (Bjørg Engh) take a trip with four friends from Oslo. Those friends include psychoanalyst Kai (Erling Lindahl), editor Gabriel (André Bjerke), lawyer Harald (Georg Richter), and Harald’s fiancée Liljan (Henny Moan). The purpose of the trip is to visit Liljan’s brother Bjørn (Per Lillo Stenberg) at a cabin deep in the forest. When they arrive at the cabin, Bjørn is nowhere to be found.

What I've Caught Up With, October 2024 Part 2

I didn’t complete a lot of television shows entirely in October. I opted for a horror theme in shows (naturally) and after finishing All of Us are Dead at the end of September, I went with Deadboy Detectives, and have now transitioned into finishing the first season of NOS4A2, which is good so far. Other than that, I finished the latest seasons of The Bear and The Boys. In November, I expect to finish NOS4A2, and probably Boston Legal, The Good Place, and Schitt’s Creek, but we’ll see.

What I've Caught Up With, October 2024 Part 1

The rule with these posts is that I want to make sure that every movie I review is searchable. Blogger limits the labels on a specific post to 200 characters including spaces. I didn't knock out a ton of movies in October, but some had longer names, and the total character number was just over the 200 limit, forcing me to split this into two posts. The last two weeks of October were rough, and a lot of my movie watching was rewatches, just as background noise. So, here's hoping that November will pick up again.

Ten Days of Terror!: Horror Shorts

Film: The Call of Cthulhu; Whistle and I’ll Come to You (1968); Outer Space
Format: Internet video on laptop.

People who read horror either love H.P. Lovecraft’s work or they hate it. I don’t know that there’s a lot of middle ground. One of the problems with Lovecraft’s writing is that, like Ray Bradbury’s writing, it doesn’t always translate well to film. In Bradbury’s case, it’s dialogue—no one actually speaks like Bradbury characters do. With Lovecraft, it’s the fact that his creepy crawlies and monsters defy description. This hasn’t prevented people from trying to film Lovecraft stories, but most of them don’t live up to the promise. The creature at the end of the original Hellboy is probably the closest we’ve seen to a true Lovecraftian horror on film. His story “The Call of Cthulhu” was thought to be unfilmable, but about 20 years ago, a group of independent filmmakers created The Call of Cthulhu as a traditional silent film…and it works.

Like a lot of Lovecraft (and Poe before him), the story is told in flashback, by a narrator who is relating his story to someone, trying to explain exactly what happened. In this case, a man (Matt Foyer) inherits the work of his great-uncle, who was obsessed with a religious cult called the Cthulhu Cult. The nephew pours through the work and becomes similarly obsessed himself. The fact that everyone who encounters or deals with the cult in some way seems to end up dead does not dissuade him. Encounters with the cult itself eventually leads the man to searching for the source of the cult, which leads him to the fabled city of R’lyeh, where great Cthulhu lies sleeping.