Ten Days of Terror!: Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter

Films: Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on The New Portable.

If I told you that I was looking forward to watching the fourth Friday the 13th movie, called Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, you'd likely think I was lying. A big part of that lack of desire comes directly from the fact that I know it was nothing like the final chapter of the series. There are some really well-done slasher movies, of course, and the original in this series is a classic for a lot of reasons. The second one introduces Jason Voorhees as the killer and the third introduces his now-iconic hockey mask. What the hell could the fourth one offer?

The answer to that is a hell of a lot of dead teenagers. I mean, that was expected given the nature of the series and the placement of this one in the series. There’s going to be a lot of dead kids by the end of it, mostly killed with a variety of bladed weapons. Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter is going to follow the standard “plot” structure of the series. We’ll get a couple of initial kills from Jason, we’ll set up all of the cannon fodder (and the final girl), we’ll have some gratuitous nudity for a bit, the kids will more or less pair off for sex, and Jason will kill them for their sins.

Ten Days of Terror!: Ghost Team

Film: Ghost Team
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on the new portable.

I like horror movies, and this is naturally the time of year when just about everyone is watching horror movies. I do get tired of a steady diet of them, though. Putting together this many reviews all at once has me kind of dazed and wanting a little change of pace. Something horror-adjacent would still be close enough, I figure, but not so close that I feel like I’m spinning my wheels. So, Ghost Team looked like it would fill the bill. This is a comedy, but appears to have some relationship with undead things, so it felt like a good choice.

I’ll spoil the surprise—it wasn’t a good choice. Ghost Team commits the biggest comedy sin: it’s not funny. It also commits the biggest movie sin that there is: it’s boring. I like a lot of the cast members here. There are plenty of people I have seen here in other movies and whose work I have enjoyed, but Ghost Team is boring, nonsensical, and a bit insulting to the intelligence of the average moviegoer.

Ten Days of Terror!: Absentia

Film: Absentia
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on the new internet machine.

One of my favorite bands is a group from Dayton, Ohio called Guided by Voices. While there are several GbV discs that have great production values, there are a bunch that sound like they were recorded in singer/writer/erstwhile guitarist Rob Pollard’s basement. There’s a particular charm in these lo-fi recordings, an earnestness that simply can’t exist in more professional sessions. Absentia is like that. This is a movie made for $70,000, and it’s far better than a great many horror movies made for 100 times that.

Tricia (Courtney Bell), is a pregnant woman living in a seedy neighborhood in Glendale. Her husband Daniel (Morgan Peter Brown) has been missing for seven years, and while her pregnancy is clearly evidence that she has moved on in some respects, there is a part of her that is still wrapped up in trying to finally close that door and tie off that loose end in her life. Her sister Callie (Katie Parker), a former (and possibly current) addict arrives at her house. Callie is there to help Tricia declare Daniel dead in absentia, find a new place to live, and move on with her life.

Ten Days of Terror!: Dead & Buried

Film: Dead & Buried
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on the new internet machine.

It can take a great deal to surprise me when it comes to a movie, so I’m always pleased when it happens. I put on Dead & Buried today on a kind of whim, since it’s a difficult movie to find. What I expected was a weird little horror movie that perhaps had a decent moment or two, but was likely to be forgettable. What a surprise to discover a genuinely good horror film that has a shock ending that works as well now as it did almost 40 years ago.

We start with a photographer (Christopher Allport) taking pictures somewhere on the Atlantic coast. He meets a young woman (Lisa Blount) and begins taking pictures of her. Thus distracted, he doesn’t realize as other people show up, start taking pictures of him, and then beat him senseless. Eventually, he is tied up and lit on fire while a crowd of people watch.

Ten Days of Terror!: Black Water

Film: Black Water
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on the new internet machine.

There is a particular style of Man vs. Nature film that, when done well enough, can’t help but work. While they’ve probably been around forever, I tend to associate this style with the back half of Jaws, when the three men go out on a small boat to hunt the killer shark. There’s no help coming and it’s just the man against the creature until the final credits roll. Naturally, this works best for big, scary creatures that eat people. I mean, sure you’ve got films like The Killer Shrews that follow this formula, but it seems popular for sharks and alligators. Deep Blue Sea, Open Water, Rogue, Crawl…all of these are exemplars of the style. That’s also what we’re going to get with Black Water.

Black Water is an Australian film based (we are told) on true events. Like any good Man vs. Nature film, this is a high concept movie. Here’s the entirety of your plot: a woman, her pregnant sister, and the sister’s husband go fishing in the middle of nowhere in Australia with a guide. They are soon attacked by a very large and ferocious crocodile and attempt to survive. That’s it.

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Adapted Screenplay 2017

The Contenders:

Call Me by Your Name (winner)
The Disaster Artist
Logan
Molly’s Game
Mudbound

Ten Days of Terror!: Leviathan

Film: Leviathan (1989)
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on the new internet machine.

Every now and then, someone hits upon an incredibly successful idea for a film and it becomes one of the new defaults. You can see this with a film like Die Hard, which spawned dozens of “Die Hard on a pseudo-sequels and copycats. There was Die Hard on a plane (Con Air, Passenger 57, Air Force One), Die Hard on a submarine or boat (Under Siege, Speed 2), Die Hard on a mountain (Cliffhanger), comedy Die Hard in a mall (Paul Blart: Mall Cop) and more. Alien is a similar film, although it’s roots certainly run deeper to films like The Thing from Another World. It’s easy to think of Alien as a haunted house in space, but it’s more a film about people trapped with a monster. They can’t get out because there’s nowhere to go, either because of weather, inaccessibility, or simply being off-planet. Underwater movies are great for this; Deep Blue Sea is an example of the form. So is 1989’s Leviathan, which also tosses in some elements from The Thing.

The fact that a film is derivative of another film doesn’t mean that it’s not any good, clearly. There are lots of good Die Hard on a…movies and plenty of good people trapped with something nasty movies. Leviathan has the added benefit of a really good B-movie cast, including Peter Weller, Richard Crenna, Hector Elizondo, Daniel Stern, Meg Foster, and Ernie Hudson. It also includes Lisa Eilbacher, best-known to me (at least) as Axel Foley’s friend Jenny in Beverley Hills Cop. So, it’s a tried-and-true premise and a pretty decent cast, which bodes well. Sadly, Leviathan is ultimately a lot more derivative than it could be. It’s equal parts Alien and The Thing and not in the same area code as either of them.