Horny House of Horror (2010)

This unimaginative, technically inept horror film created for the Japanese home entertainment market fails to transcend the overcrowded sub-genre from which it hails. Fans of Japanese cinema shouldn't be surprised by the eminent lack of production values here and by how straightforward and predictable the narrative turns out to be. Casual horror fans might either be aroused or put off by the copious amounts of sexual themes and genital violence, but this comes only as very mild recommendation for undiscriminating gorehounds. Most people will want to steer clear of this one.

Bland salarymen as protagonists, baseball outfits,
gross-out humor, nudity aplenty and geysers of blood
with nobody at the helm: here's another typical entry
in Japanese gore cinema

When three everymen decide to celebrate their last days together (the protagonist being engaged to a domineering woman who disapproves of his friends and their unabashed love for baseball), they stumble upon the titular massage parlor and are quickly drawn in by its suspiciously low prices. Obviously, these are only meant to veil the actual function of the bordello, which is to mutilate horny men during the act of sex for the entertainment of some perverts watching the whole thing live. But the naive protagonists pay no mind, and are quickly drawn into a nightmarish world of deadly sex toys and ugly decors. Likewise, the viewer is caught in a series of increasingly ugly sets, increasingly annoying antagonists (most of which is Akemi's foul-mouthed lead whore), and increasingly unfunny antics meant to amuse only the most undiscriminating of toilet humor fans, with plausibility being a mere afterthought on the whole. Granted that the vast majority of men value their penises much more than I do, I still doubt that they'd risk death in order to reclaim their severed organ in hopes of reattachment. Seeing how this is the kind of pressing matter that the film addresses as some of its most dramatic issues, you should easily be informed as to the level of this effort.

That said, the film features an incredible amount of penile trauma and blood showers, with lots of gratuitous female nudity to entice viewers while they are repulsed by the lingering promise of castration. The focus here is put squarely on gore, rubber prosthetics and juvenile humor instead of any coherent attempt at creating an affective or engrossing narrative. While this should be just enough to delight fans of the genre, it won't be anyone else's cup of tea. Just picture this for a spell: a close-up of a girl's butt shot at an angle so as to barely hide her vagina from which a shower of blood violently spurts, followed by the severed penis inside her, all of this punctuated by the ungodly screams of the male victim. If you really, really want to see such stuff, despite the incredibly crappy technical framework of the film, then go right ahead: enjoy! By the way, it will be hard for one to interpret such an attack as feminist backlash against the patriarchal Japanese society since the female perpetrators are but slave agents working for a male crime boss. Obviously, if you can manage to identify with the dumb protagonists, then you might find yourself somewhat troubled by their ordeal, in which case you might actually find an angle from which to successfully enjoy the film. Otherwise, I'm sure you wouldn't even consider buying a ticket for such a title. And nor should you.

"Get a hard-on and I cut your dick": if you can appreciate
the deeper implications of such a prank, then please
rent the film...

Of course, the film also score some points for its unabashed showcase of nudity (male and female alike). For those who like her, I must mention the presence of porn starlet Asami in a typically raucous role, that of a veteran cock muncher equipped with a set of metallic vagina dentatae. Personally, I have a hard time enjoying her tomboy antics and her deep, raspy voice and I was much more attracted to the more dramatic, more sympathetic, but eventually more traditional character played by gorgeous Saori Hara, another porn actress. The luckless whore entangled in a world of intimidation and blackmail will certainly sound more appealing to most film-goers, but in the end, the joyous, mass-murdering cock-slasher would have a better dramatic potential, had her character been properly handled. At any rate, characterization is not the film's strong suit, nor is story structure, direction, production or any important technical area, the sole effective department being that of special effects, which manages to produce all of the functional elements of the film, namely the latex prosthetics and onscreen blood meant to gross out the audience.

Saori Hara (born Mai Kato) is a sight to behold. Unfortunately,
the same can't be said about the film's sets, cinematography,
graphic humor, art direction, acting, editing...

Personally, I bought a ticket for Horny House of Horror just to fill some time. And I soon found out that this was the film's main function too: fill some time. But seeing how I could've been doing anything else than watching this stuff, I also realized that time can be spent instead of filled, spent in order to reap future benefits and not just immediate thrills. That said, I quite enjoyed the opening cartoon depicting the function of Japanese whorehouses within society: instructive and lighthearted despite the adult material at hand. I should've left right after...


1/5 This cheap effort in button-pushing is recommended only for die-hard Japanese horror fans and undiscriminating gorehounds.

Beyond the Black Rainbow (2010)

The pinnacle of postmodern genre cinema, here is a film that manages to create a stunning retro-futuristic world by borrowing heavily from the esthetics of 1970s sci-fi, then reinvents itself using elements from 1980s slashers, creating a brilliant hybrid that perfectly befits the central subject matter. With some nearly experimental flashback sequences thrown in the mix with good measure, the end result is... perplexing to say the least, but swarming with unforgettable imagery. But most of all, Beyond the Black Rainbow is a surprisingly gripping film, and a rare example of truly affective horror.

At the heart of the narrative is a beautiful young woman named Elena who was apparently born and raised in a lab as part of an experiment in para-psychological research. While the exact purpose of her "creation" remains hazy, her ordeal is very real, and so are her psychic powers. Opposite Elena is a rigorous and fearsome researcher whom we assume is also her father. The man spends his entire day scrutinizing the girl with utmost interest as he would a very promising lab rat. And strangely enough, he seems to revel in making her cry (which amounts to provoking a sought-after emotional response from the subject). But contrary to the girl, he has a life outside the lab, returning home to the suburbs each night and exchanging nods with his estranged, TV-addicted wife. And while he indulges in memories past, as any suburban dweller would, Elena eventually breaks free from her holding/living cell, and goes on to explore the massive scientific facility she calls home. At some point, at around the 100-minute mark, she even manages to escape into the "wild", where she is tracked down mercilessly by the creep in a white coat, now sporting a monstrous, bald look.

Poor Elena is entrapped even by her hair

Extremely slow-moving (and a tad overlong), the film tells its story through an accumulation of facts that build up to create a hazy whole. Eschewing synthetic explanations, the narrative is all the more horrific in its depiction of everyday weirdness. In fact, the elusive design of the ongoing experiments makes it all the more unnerving in our appreciation thereof, leaving our perverse mind squarely in charge of imagining the worst, informed as we are only by sudden flashes of ugliness and a truly alarming psycho-anatomical handbook. But most importantly, it uses elaborate, impressionistic images to attack our senses, and keep us wholly involved with the world of the film.

Instead of the usual cables and sparkling white operating rooms from other "laboratory" horror films, Beyond relies on alien organic processes to create affect. In one particularly effective sequence, and the high point of the film, the antagonist is reminded of "simpler times" by his dying mentor, Dr. Mercurio Arboria (itself a name that is almost Asimovian in its perfection). But those "simpler times" are not so simple to grasp for our feverish minds, boggled as they are by the spectacle of evil Barry being used as a willing subject in a hypnotic seance of weird science. Pictured as a white silhouette dipped in a thick, black liquid that seems straight out of The Matrix, he fast becomes one of the strangest entities ever to grace the screen. In fact, rarely has any realist depiction of mad science been so gripping and unforgettable.

Evidently, the literal depiction of science, and especially of para-psychology, can only go so far in describing the actual experience thereof, which is what the film delivers by using symbolism and impressionism, thus proving that even overly rational endeavors need not be framed in a down-to-Earth manner, especially when they concern the inner workings of the mind and its impenetrable depths. Science is boring. But experimental cinema is fun! Which is what the film aims to prove with a very particular, very engrossing storytelling technique that eschews the need for contrived, wordy explanations by making us share the protagonist's experience almost intimately.

And while the experimental "rebirth" sequence will leave you aghast, its contribution to the overall mood of the film pales in comparison with that of the claustrophobic, monochrome settings. Comprised of black, red and white walls with little to no features, naked, empty rooms and endless corridors, the lab comes out as a labyrinthine, living depiction of despair. One can find no hope or no beauty in it, but most importantly, no definite purpose, which is perhaps its most fearsome feature. Just like the underground lab from Shozin Fukui's Rubber Lover (with which the present film shares more than just superficial features), it basks in a dreadful sense of inescapability. But most dreadful yet, it eludes our compulsion to find a reason for its existence. Like the titular cube from Vincenzo Natali's seminal thriller (and another stellar example of how crafty English Canada is when it comes to genre cinema), the horror lies squarely in the existence of the lab and not in the underlying reasons for its existence. Obviously, the victimization of pure, whitely-veiled Elena also informs our reaction to events onscreen. But the true affect derives from the frustrating architecture of the lab and the deceiving whiteness of its walls, which seem to close down on the viewer like an eggshell recovering a helpless chick. Which is how both us and the protagonist are meant to feel in the symbiotic experience that is the film.

The outside world is but a tad less bleak
than the intestinal world of the lab

That is until poor Elena manages to make her way through a series of monochrome corridors filled with monstrous apparitions, all the way to a cozy employee lounge complete with a plaid sofa and a toaster oven. Leaving the oneiric (nightmarish) landscape of the lab per se, our mute heroine suddenly pops up in the "real" world of lunch breaks and radio chatter. This marks a clean break in the narrative, the result of which causes the protagonist to be born again in the mind-numbing normalcy of the 1980s, which abruptly replaces the film's atmospheric, esoteric approach to filmmaking with a very prosaic, pragmatic one. And while this represents a welcome pause from the oppressive atmosphere of the lab, it allows us to see a world only slightly less bleak. Sure, Elena's emergence outside of the medical complex where she has spent her life is a particularly exhilarating moment. The overly luminous, overly sanitary interiors from her past life have been shed like a discarded skin. But the vast, pitch-black countryside she enters next is not the liberating panacea that one would expect. Vastness aside, the high reeds sprouting throughout the open field she now walks make the whole decor out to be yet another inextricable maze. And with the appearance of a stalker, whose impending attack looms over Elena like the proverbial sword of Damocles, it becomes another danger zone as well, where she must pursue her struggle.

Now, when I use the word 'stalker', I do so knowing that the specter of Jason Voorhees and other subpar knife maniacs will likely be invoked. That said, I found the audience's reaction perfectly consistent with the tradition embodied by such laughable figures, into which Barry transforms after shedding his organically-glued wig. If Jason were to suddenly waltz in any other atmospheric sci-fi puzzle, you'd have similar laughs ringing through the theater. Not only does the boogeyman feel somewhat out of place in the world of the film, but his apparition coincides with that of a more open, more familiar setting. Thus, freed from the suffocating constraints of the lab where it was imprisoned along with the protagonist, the audience starts enjoying itself in a carefree kind of way. Just like the raucous audiences of slasher films.

The world of slashers is much more easily
intelligible than that of the lab...

But while the film's last part constitutes a sudden departure from the mood so painstakingly established in the first 100 minutes, it marks a very informed decision from the director. The transition from the overly scientific, overly sensual horror from the past to the everyday, supernatural fantasy of the Reagan years acts as a trap meant to catch slasher fans in their comfort zone, leaving them ripe for the stunning finale. But most importantly, it perfectly exemplifies the narrative cleavage between 70s and 80s horror, which happened almost exactly in between the two decades and which seems to have definitely transformed the appreciation of horror cinema as is. Seeing how the audience plays along, erupting from their nearly catatonic quietude to engage loudly with events onscreen, it seems that the film hits its mark in making us react to that cleavage, which is partly responsible for the estrangement of sensibilities between generations. But is that mere reaction to warrant the film a success? Not necessarily, but it does elevate the film a notch, making it aware of itself, like some mutated entity born out of a carefully conducted experiment.

In the end, Elena finally manages to kill Barry, and the weirdly "scientific" tradition that he represents. Only then is she able to hoist herself out of her lab prison and into yet another bleak, labyrinthine setting, 1980s suburbia. In that regard, the very final shot is chilling to the bone. It shows us a lengthy row of perfectly similar modular houses, lit by dim street lights forming bleak halos around the brown-colored buildings. Elena is no longer a lab rat. Far from it. She has now entered the universal sea of sameness. Her mental abilities are now likely to wither and die like the dandelions on the front lawn of her neighbors. She thus comes to a new form of prison, that of her father, that of the everyday tedium of middle class life. Moreover, she becomes not simply a prison escapee, but a final girl, informing us in resonant fashion as to the crucial narrative shift occurring with the popularization of slasher films, and the soon-to-be steady output of prefabricated narratives meant to entrap youths in a comatose stupor.

That said, the film somewhat functions like Ridley Scott's seminal slasher-cum-space ballet Alien, which itself comes at a crucial time in film history, embodying both the atmosphere-heavy tradition of the very first space exploration film and the simplicity of the slasher film. Not unlike Beyond, Alien can be broken down in two complementary parts, one that relies on dark, impressionistic imagery to create affect and the other that simply involves the tension of being chased by a monster. Both films are also akin in their usage of white to depict both the overly sanitary conditions of medical labs and to hint at fetus-like innocence. The imagery of the womb is also important to both films as they chronicle the birth and youth of two similar, albeit different kinds of 'alien' creatures, one being the "perfect" xenomorph beloved by Ian Holm's Ash and the other being young Elena.

Beyond actually goes a step further in its homage to Alien by using a segmented number in its credits. Anybody who has seen Scott's film will remember how the title gradually appears onscreen using an accumulation of straight white lines. Beyond does something similar when printing the current date onscreen, with each of the four numbers slowly spelling '1983'. So you can see how the director plays on expectations, not only likening his film to Alien, but by unveiling a '3' that one thought would be a '4', as in '1984', perhaps a more befitting date for the action of the film. Obviously, director Cosmatos is a clever film buff, and he has a special knack for toying with viewers. And so, one hopes to he leaves us with more than just this film and a handful of clips.

Few people will mention it, but the graphic depiction of vaginas actually helps strengthen the horrific tone of the film. Let me explain. This has to do with the psycho-anatomical textbook I mentioned earlier. This tome is actually uncovered by an unsuspecting orderly who flips through the pages with an increasing unease that mirrors our own. Seeing the multiplication of anatomical drawings involved in obscure diagrams, we are increasingly alarmed with each turning page, imagining alien operations beyond the realm of our understanding, experiments in deconstructing the fragile body of Elena into mere components meant to make her something necessarily more monstrous than what she presently is. Then, we get to the vagina, the depiction of which is uncompromising and the specific involvement of which is made explicit, as if it was intended as a vessel for channeling psychic energy. And given the opacity of the screenplay, this can mean a number of things. Obviously, it would be hard to top Von Trier's Antichrist in terms of repulsive genital mutilation, but one can sure as hell try, insofar as his imagination is left unchecked. Hence, poor white-gowned Elena need not be sexualized for her to be involved in a sexual nightmare. Not unlike the slasher film virgin...

Elena's captivating beauty makes the viewer

particularly adverse to vaginal mutilation

Beyond the Black Rainbow is a film that you will either love or hate. But it shan't leave you unmoved. Its weird, oppressive atmosphere will clamp down on you like the metallic jaws of a bear trap, its mysterious characters will make you wonder about their unseen depths and the impressionistic sequences of tar-bathing will make your brain overheat. Now, whether you just go with the flow and accept mood as the film's primary driving force or you rather question, and eventually get frustrated with the opacity of the narrative will directly influence your appreciation of the film. As the credits rolled, very few people applauded, as if too shocked to straighten their arms and bring their hands together. I guess these people all took the latter approach, and found themselves struggling to find a grasp on the film. If they had considered retro-futuristic parapsychology for what it is, namely something that one cannot possibly grasp, they could have allowed themselves to sink into the world so painstakingly crafted by Panos Cosmatos. Then again, maybe these people who didn't applaud actually liked the film, insofar as they were totally glued in place. That, my friends, is yet another question in a frenzy of questions begged by the film. But in the end, one should always remember the primary rule of fiction cinema and suspend their disbelief for the duration of any given film. Then, and only then can the mind let itself open to the sensory attacks from which horror best proceeds. And, if anything, Beyond the Black Rainbow is a prime example of horror cinema's power of affect. An immense achievement.


3,5/5 Savvy and effective, this atmospheric entry in postmodern horror is not only an unforgettable sensory experience, but a brilliantly self-reflexive exercise in retro-futurism.

Contagion (2011)

As the title indicates, Contagion is a timely disaster epic that chronicles the rapid spread of a new strain of virus eluding the grasp of medical science. After SARS and the Bird Flu, it was about time to cash in on the widespread "disease" paranoia that has swept Western civilization for the greater benefits of Purell manufacturers and all cleaning products outfits. The received idea according to which extreme sanitation strengthens a people instead of weakening it has grown strong in recent years, and so does the film profit from it, tightening the screw in the heads of disease freaks with the help of alarming sub-titles mentioning the number of days elapsed since the beginning of the outbreak.

You know things are bad when they whip out
those orange bio-hazard suits

Day 1: ??? - Established early on as a major narrative tenet, the search for what happened on the first day of the titular event is a concern quickly relegated to the backseat, but re-emerging as a predictable, alarmist epilogue to the film.

Day 2: After a business trip in Hong Kong, Gwyneth Paltrow's character goes back home to Minneapolis by way of Chicago, where she meets with a former lover, infecting the man in question, her son and many Chinese locals in the process. This marks the beginning of a pandemic, which the domino effect sees spreading through Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas in as much time as it takes Danny Ocean to elaborate a foolproof scheme to rob a casino. Said domino effect is depicted using a fast-paced series of vignettes served with the upbeat tempo befitting the cool montage sequences from the Ocean films.

Days 3-150: People start dying and international health officials are mobilized to help isolate, analyze and eventually combat the virus at the heart of the pandemic, a unique bat-pig compound with a very short incubation period and devastating effects akin to those of a deadly attack of seizure (be sure to check out Gwyneth Paltrow dying on the kitchen floor while convulsing and foaming profusely at the mouth). The film vies to chronicle the evolution of the disease and of its cure through a boatload of weakly interrelated storylines featuring a boatload of A-list international actors. The disintegration of the social fabric and the human drama are not focuses here, but mere cogs in what is essentially the blandly expository, grossly alarmist depiction of a pandemic enforced with a rapid fire of fast-moving, wordy exposition scenes.

Exotic locales abound, as in the best crime capers

I should've known what I bargained for when I sat down to see this big-budget disaster epic by Steven Soderbergh. I should've foreseen precisely what I would get. But still, I managed to be amazed by the director's reverence to previous money-making formulas, as exemplified by his imbuing the present film with the distinct airs of a crime caper. Seeing scientists in heavy bio-hazard suits walking in slow-motion to ear-blasting club music, you'd swear you were watching George Clooney strutting his stuff on some sumptuous casino floor. The same goes for the cohorts of health officials cruising through the streets of Hong Kong aboard shimmering luxury cars. Then, there's the nearly hilarious scene where a blatantly unconvincing Marion Cotillard tracks down the "movement" of the virus by spying on Gwyneth Paltrow through a series of security cameras posted on the walls of a HK game room. There's no escaping the memory of surveillance scenes from Soderbergh's other films when one is confronted with examples of such a weirdly formatted disaster epic. At any moment, it seems that the Ocean gang is about to come out of hiding and devise a brilliant scheme to put that nasty virus back in its place! Luckily, the ensemble is masterfully composed, intimate in the framing of its characters, and fast-moving enough to make you forget about the total lack of dramatic issues, and overbid of superficial science.

The first few shots should indicate precisely what to expect from this film: the music is loud and mostly meant to energize the often boring contents of the shots, the editing is fast and it fragments the film's universe into a myriad of anecdotal snippets gathered from all corners of the world. But most interestingly, the camera focuses almost voyeuristically on its characters, using close-ups of redenned faces and prostrated bodies to better delineate the myriad individual dramas unfolding here, or at least, the myriad of situations in which the virus is involved. Fortunately, this camera remains controlled, and it doesn't give in to the panic that it is supposed to portray, remaining at a comfortable distance from the action epics of lesser directors, such as J.J. Abrams, Michael Bay or Paul Greengrass.

The camera's proximity to the characters is the film's greatest
asset and one of its rare attempts at humanizing the disease

The impressive ensemble cast (Kate Winslet, Matt Damon, Marion Cotillard, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Laurence Fishburne...) successfully manages to interpret a plethora of flat, purely operative characters apparently devoid of the most basic humanity. And while the amount of talent at work here is undeniable, it is underused in roles best befitting TV series, where each character delivers interchangeable, over-witty lines of dialogue in an endless exchange of words akin to a stale, but nervously edited, political debate.

In that regard, one should look at the rhetorical tennis match set up between the righteous CDC head played by Laurence Fishburne, his self-sacrificing team of dedicated scientists, and the unethical blogger played by Jude Law, who, despite a credible tone, hardly compares with the current roster of right-wing pundits. In the event of a worldwide outbreak of killer viruses, you can expect such pundits and the powers that be to come at odds with far fiercer intents. You can also expect pharmaceutical companies to profit at a much larger extent, and FEMA to struggle helplessly all the while. Strangely, the present film doesn't capitalize on the nefarious influence of the health industry, nor on government incompetence in order to better cement the narrative, finding faults only in Jude Law's character for jumping in bed with one purveyor of holistic drugs, and for hampering the progress of the righteous, fully dedicated government scientists hard at work to solve the crisis. In fact, the film touches on crucial issues such as mass hysteria, drug approval processes and patent wars only superficially, taking a rather synthetic approach to the pandemic as a clearly delineated event, with a beginning, a middle, and an end. This helps fit the film within the restrictive thriller mold, but it also traps it within that mold, unable to reach beyond the scope of disposable entertainment and into the realm of true affect.

While Soderbergh manages to capture some rather chilling images of death and mayhem, such as Gwyneth Paltrow's seizure attack, or the rising criminality in urban areas, he does so circumstantially, forwarding the plot purely chronologically, with little importance awarded to the characters' emotional state. That said, the film is almost completely devoid of dramatic tension, showcasing death as simply "something that happens" within the world of the film, like the execution of a henchman by James Bond. You will thus be surprised to see Matt Damon's character unable to shed a single tear for his decimated family, the corpses of which are shown in grim close-ups, with their grayish, chapped lips and open skulls making a mockery of their weak, fleshy shells. And you yourself will have a hard time being moved by the death of gorgeous Kate Winslet, who nearly makes us laugh with the revelation of her infection. Showing unflinching professionalism under fire, she reacts to the first symptoms of the disease by fast grabbing the phone and gathering information about the people she had contact with in the last day. Despite the inevitability of her death, she remains calm, and acts in order to better prevent the infecti0n from spreading, much like the cold professional of other Soderbergh films and not the human that she should become in that event. If it is any indication of the film's attitude toward its (far too numerous) characters, the reaction of the first doctor to come in contact with the disease is so dry as to make you shrug your shoulders in disbelief. "Sorry Mr. Damon, but your wife just suffered a fatal seizure of unknown origin. Please be directed to one of our anguish specialists". I guess that with half a billion dead across the globe, a single death is no more than a statistic. But then, the film's intimate framing of its protagonists is rendered absurd by such a conclusion...

Expect to see a lot more panicked telephone calls than

spurting blood and actual drama

All in all, Contagion is an enjoyable slice of high-class entertainment, mostly due to its fast pacing, shifting international locales and the sure hand of director Soderbergh at the helm. The latter is quite possibly the best mainstream director to currently work on mass-marketed drivel. But he is clearly not a sentimental type, more a cerebral type, focused exclusively on the narrative at hand, and not the characters within the narrative, making it advance fast and seamlessly, but leaving many a good souls behind in the process. And so, while his new film boasts the same superb production values as his Ocean films, it fails to rise above the televisual level in terms of dramatic intensity, which greatly impairs its efficiency as an intimate portrayal of average humans in a state of crisis.


2,5/5 This enjoyable, masterfully shot disaster epic is crafted just like a crime caper, with all the fast-talking, witty characters and sumptuous exotic locales that it involves. The result however, is that dramatic content is sacrificed at the profit of style.

The Whisperer in Darkness (2011)

Commissioned by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, the organization which brought the infamous Call of Cthulhu to the screen back in 2005, this ambitious new adaptation was shot using the "Mythoscope" process ("a mix of modern and vintage techniques", as stated on the promotional website) in a bid to create "the most authentic and faithful screen adaptation of a Lovecraft story yet attempted". Oblivious to the monumental contradiction involved in trying to remain "faithful" to Lovecraft's elusive tale of madness, the makers of this film have managed instead to undermine, and even compromise the impregnable opacity of the Cthulhu mythos through an overbid of naive imagery meant to ape 1930s horror films. The end result is at once a commendable effort (in terms paper-mâché) and a very dubious achievement (in terms of adaptation).

Gaps in representation - Exhibit A
R'lyeh as expressionistic nightmare (The Call of Cthulhu)

Gaps in representation - Exhibit B
R'lyeh as postmodern fantasy (South Park, S14E13)

Imagining is always better than seeing
(or how Lovecraftian tales elude depiction)

Members of the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society are people of obvious reverence and dedication to the grand master's work. Unfortunately, their very enterprise is meaningless, as the Lovecraftian mythos will forever elude description. A case in point is the feature-length adaptation of The Whisperer in Darkness, which takes great pride in trying to recapture the gloomy atmosphere of the New England countryside by using elaborate models and lovingly painted backgrounds. Where it fails is in its naive depiction of the mi-gos and their famed "brain cylinders". Up until now, these creatures and contraptions existed only as feverish scraps of dreams salvaged from the tale of a madman. But now that they have taken definite shape, their mystique has all but vanished. The resulting film, no matter how carefully crafted it is, remains the umpteenth proof that one cannot successfully adapt Lovecraft to the screen... unless your name is Stuart Gordon and you stay as far as possible from the source material.

Things always look scarier from afar

For those unfamiliar with the eponymous short story from which the film derives, I shall provide a short synopsis. Following an historical flood in the farmlands of Vermont, many locals report sightings of weird carcasses floating amidst tree trunks and debris. While skeptical at first, folklorist Albert Wilmarth eventually engages in a correspondence with one of these locals, aging farmer Henry Akeley, who vies to substantiate his own sightings with material evidence (photos of alien footprints and one strange artifact). After receiving a certain number of letters from an increasingly alarmed Akeley, Wilmarth eventually receives a formal invitation to share in the bucolic splendors of Vermont in order to better grasp the extent of the alien invasion. Obviously, this is all a trap, a trap set up by the deviant mi-gos, a sentient race of flying fungi from outer space hellbent on hiding their existence from humans. Naively enough, Wilmarth falls into that trap, but manages to elude the creatures' grasp momentarily. He then proceeds to figure out how they have harvested Akeley's brain using a custom preservation cylinder and replaced his body with that of a dummy. He also overhears talks of a strange ritual meant to open a rift between Earth and the mi-gos' home planet of Yuggoth (Pluto). Rushing to the scene, he ultimately tries to save Earth from invasion.

What is a mi-go? Let us first consider this pressing question when trying to appraise the relevance of the present film. According to Lovecraft, a mi-go is "a great crab with a lot of pyramided fleshy rings or knots of thick, ropy stuff covered with feelers where a man's head would be." But according to the makers of this film, it is something much less intriguing, and much more rigidly delineated, something that seems to leave the realm of imagination the second it lands onscreen. Now, the very vagueness of the description above is perhaps its greatest literary strength, for it puts the reader at odds against his own sense of wonder. It also insures a lasting legacy for the creatures thus depicted by making them a million things at once, as many things as there are people to try and imagine their features. In that regard, the author's deliberate use of vague and mysterious words such as "stuff", "self-luminous", "things", "growths" and "half-polypous" is meant precisely to create a gap in representation between the readers of his stories, the rationale being that the sight of the monsters depicted is too much for the human mind to process. Hence, remaining "faithful" to Lovecraft can never amount to positing any representation of his words as the definitive one.

Gaps in representation - Exhibit C
The colour as translucent jellyfish (19 Nocturne Boulevard)

After all, there is no definite shape for the limbs of Cthulian creatures, nor is there a shape for the impossible angles covering the lost city of R'lyeh. As for the colour out of space, it is one that varies from reader to reader, boggling the mind of anyone who would attempt to imagine it, for it is, by definition, unimaginable. The colour is perhaps the best example of Lovecraftian excess, as it quite explicitly fails to fit in the spectrum of human understanding. For those unfamiliar with the short story of the same name, the colour out of space is one that possess no equivalent on Earth. That is why it is dubbed "colour". It is for lack of a more precise term. Hence, if one were to show the colour using Earthly means, they would immediately betray its nature. And so, we can see how the embodiment of anything Lovecraft transforms it into something lesser than what it was, namely a glimpse of otherworldly horror.

While the writer often offers elaborate descriptions of sets and moods, he rarely gives his monsters too many details so as to preserve the unholy mystique surrounding their apparition. Unlike Homeric tales, where every single element is rendered using wordy descriptions of epic length, Lovecraft often circumvents monstrous depictions. Which basically means that, these creatures he mentions cannot be described accurately, given their alien shape and unimaginable features which push observers beyond the limits of sanity. That said, they shouldn't be described at length because as many things horrific, seeing them amounts to much less than imagining them. And this is particularly true here, as the mi-gos are so carefully crafted by the nerds at the helm so as to alienate the imagination of all who would rather revel in their own personal fears than to partake in the fears imposed by others. And ultimately, it is a very egotistic pursuit to try and create "definitive" incarnations of literary creatures such as the the flying devils from the present short story, or the orks and dwarves of The Lord of the Rings, which become breathing stereotypes under the thumb of Peter Jackson and crew. And thus the literary mystique crumbles under the weight of rigid images meant to crystallize their constantly fluctuating meaning.

Written using the first person, Lovecraft's stories all share the intimate tone necessary to convey madness as a quintessentially personal experience. Monstrous occurrences, feverish dreams and uneasy impressions, all are detailed as if right in front of the reader. Insofar as film rather takes the "invisible" approach to the narrator, it contributes to the deconstruction of Lovecraft's entire enterprise. In that regard, it would be somewhat of a crude mistake to equate voice-over narration with literary narration, as the former is involved in an antagonist relationship with the images it accompanies. At best, voice-over narration is a worthy complement to the images onscreen. At worst, it will completely ruin an author's attempt at cultivating ambiguity (see Blade Runner). But here, it is merely a way to convey a false sense of faithfulness to the story. It does not add anything more to an adaptation that has shed the diary mode of storytelling as soon as it chose to emulate the theatrical techniques of early Hollywood. What is thus found lacking is the personal "experience" of vision conveyed by Lovecraft's characters and which helps locate the mythos outside the realm of natural perception, and into the realm of madness. Which is something that only Brakhage or other such talented experimental filmmakers can hope to achieve, by equating the camera not to an eye per se, but a mind's eye. After all, while Lovecraft often privileges naturalistic depictions of his sets, he always manages to touch on something alien whose experience will forever remain out of grasp. And while it is relatively easy to convey the sense of something alien with words, or the absence thereof, the same cannot be said of the invisible camera, which is naturalistic by default in its framing of reality. That said, it would take quite a supplementary effort to allow it to convey any form of "personal" realism. And that effort, I'm sorry to say, remains far beyond the reach of the filmmakers at work here.

Fancy marquee posters and dubious gimmicks such as "Mythoscope"
are only meant to hide the fact Lovecraft adaptations are completely
absurd...unless they feature blonde bombshells having their pussy
licked by severed heads.

Koodos for attempting the impossible
While I insist strongly here on the foolishness of slavishly bringing Lovecraft to the screen, I must admit that Sean Branney's film does boast some undeniable craftsmanship qualities, mostly where art direction and set design are concerned. The lovingly crafted sets meant to depict the thick forests of Vermont, with their recessed caves and hooked corpses, the stuffy interiors of the Akeley farm, with their long shadows drawn over cloaked figures, everything in sight is in its rightful place. As for the more high-minded concepts included in the film, such as the plane ride and aerial confrontation with the mi-gos, as well as the otherworldly contraption meant to project the consciousness of the encased brains, they all appear just naive enough to convey the candid sense of wonder derived from early horror films. This prompts me to remark, as I did when I saw Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings, that the creators at work here have done a great "nerd's job" of bringing the film's universe to the screen. Unfortunately for Branney and crew, their source material is far more involving and impenetrable than Jackson's, making the ordeal of adapting it nearly insurmountable.

The photography may be sharp and the lightning quite befitting the atmosphere the producers were aiming for. But the direction and general imagery are so conventional, so naive, as to completely miss the mark when it comes to creating a spiritual filiation with the source material at hand. After all, other such inspirational films mentioned by the crew include Dracula and Frankenstein, both of which are based on novels which lend themselves much more readily to the kind of theatrical adaptation attempted here than Lovecraft's stories. And this also informs part of the shapelessness of the work, which tries too hard to peg down the source material to an epoch which it transcended even when it was released. And this doesn't seem to stem from a lack of Lovecraftian knowledge however, but a lack of film knowledge. That said, German expressionism or French impressionism might have proved a better, albeit harder to replicate, technique to convey Lovecraft's word onscreen. At this point, I'd like to refer back to The Call of Cthulhu, where the engrossing images of R'lyeh and it's "impossible angles" (which seem to point directly to German expressionism) are imbued with a distinctly Caligari-esque quality (see image above). As for the elaborate sets created for the present film, they fail both to transcend their nature and to add anything meaningful to the mood of the film.

The Whisperer in Darkness is a monumental achievement in set
design. Here,we see the scale model used to depict the Vermont
mountainsides.

Crafting a contemporary reworking wouldn't have been such a bad idea either, considering that the story itself was perfect in its original, literary iteration. One shouldn't be burdened with slavish adaptations. One should instead demand that the author upgrades on the source material in order to create a distinct cultural item than that from which it came. But seeing how the producers are grouped under the name "historical society", their dedication to the exactitude of facts must be precise, and so their artistic temperament is diluted in purely intellectual concerns. Which points out to a blatant contradiction in their work, that of appraising Lovecraft's work in a purely scientific, rational fashion, whereas it is one that should be depicted in a expressionistic fashion. By choosing to opt for the candor of early Hollywood cinema, the authors are effectively pointing to their own candor, which finds its quintessential expression in the narrow artistic enterprise within which they have tried to cram Lovecraft's otherworldly, ever-expanding genius.


2/5 A well-made, useless film, and a slavish adaptation of the classic H.P. Lovecraft tale.

Some Guy Who Kills People (2011)

Is being a self-sufficient asshole reason
enough to be executed? A pressing question.

Produced by bona fide comedy godfather John Landis and directed by Jack Perez (of Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus "fame"), this surprisingly potent, blacker-than-black comedy achieves a nice blend of sweet and sour moments by relying on a crafty screenplay by Ryan Levin interpreted to perfection by veteran and newcomers alike. The balance of humor and drama is hard to achieve in any black comedy, but the cast manages to pull through with great success here as each individual member keeps a consistent tone throughout the story and remains unfazed by the the film's sharp dramatic fluctuations. Unfortunately, the lackluster twist ending feels ridiculously contrived as it is engineered to jam the viewers' radar at all costs. Still, Some Guy Who Kills People is a commendable achievement in postmodern genre-mixing, allowing for the clever deconstruction of the "loveable loser" archetype, a timely figure that barely hides a disconcerting truth about modern men.

The narrative focuses on the ordeals experienced by Ken, a troubled loner with a history of mental illness, the genesis of which is depicted through a series of recurring flashbacks that the viewer slowly pieces together to from a coherent traumatic experience. Ken allots his time between his day job at a local ice cream parlor and the therapeutic cartoons he draws at home, while under the auspicious eyes of his exasperated mother. Aside from the bitter old woman and his friend/co-worker Irv, Ken is all alone... until his estranged daughter resurfaces and tries to make up for lost time. Unfortunately, the man is not a suitable father for the witty young girl. Underneath the "normal" surface provided by his white and yellow uniform, there lies a shadow of a man, made hollow by the events depicted in the aforementioned flashbacks. So, when the dark and mysterious figures who previously tormented him start dying in ritualistic fashion, all signs point to him. And with the town's sheriff (and his mother's lover) hot on the murderer's trail, the clamp is fast tightening down on Ken... who stands to lose much more than his personal freedom now that he is responsible for the happiness of a promising daughter. And so, a police intrigue develops alongside the main storyline concerning the protagonist's ups and downs, bringing an extra dimension to the narrative, one that provides almost all of the genuine laughs contained in the film.

Actually, the two parallel storylines are but opposite faces of the same coin, situating reality in and outside the comic book universe imagined by Ken to better cope with life. While his hardships as an ice cream vendor, juggling between a domineering mother and a demanding daughter, are deeply rooted in reality, the colorful murder set-pieces and half-assed police investigation possess all the characteristics of fluff fantasy, as depicted in the film's poster. The dualistic nature of the narrative is explained in surprisingly straightforward terms once the sheriff uncovers the true nature of Ken's drawings, therapeutic ventures just beyond the dark veil of reality.

You'll be surprised at just how clever cops are when it
comes to puns. I'm sure you could think of a few just
by looking at this still.

First-time feature screenwriter Levin deserves some koodos for managing to seamlessly, and meaningfully incorporate a comedic police investigation to Ken's heavy family drama. By setting up the town sheriff (Barry Bostwick) as the kinky lover of the protagonist's mother, he bridges the two parallel storylines at a crucial emotional junction. This allows the sheriff's frequent taunts (pertaining to how he's "gonna get freaky with" or give oil massages to Ken's mother) to work as comedic devices while they subsequently help mine Ken's morale. It also allows the two storylines to interpenetrate in meaningful ways, giving the sheriff a chance to seamlessly close in on his "stepson" as well as creating tension between the two elderly lovers. Unfortunately, Levin lacks finesse when it comes to wrapping up the story, and when chronicling the emotional maturation of the protagonist, using surprising shortcuts (such as Lucy Davis' sudden infatuation with spineless, dead-eyed Ken) and incongruous twists to cement the mix, using the estranged daughter as little more than your standard catalyst for the protagonist's slow, steady, and ultimately predictable maturation toward adulthood.

Luckily, there is an army of talented actors hard at work to manipulate us in all the right directions, and shape coherently contradictory characters in the process. If Kevin Corrigan delivers a touching performance as the impotent protagonist, he is outplayed by veterans Karen Black (playing his cynical mother) and Barry Bostwick (playing the goofy sheriff). Black is razor-sharp when it comes to unbalancing her son, dishing out some surprisingly nasty jabs whenever she can, which helps keep him in a perpetual state of self-centered helplessness. Nonetheless, she manages to come out as a sympathetic character whose plight (her raising a reclusive tadpole) is perfectly intelligible. And while one is likely to frown upon her cruelest taunts (such as those concerning Ken's self-inflicted scars or social inadequacy), it is not so hard to understand where she is coming from and what she intends to do with these taunts, namely to shake Ken out of his stupor. As for Bostwick, he scene-steals his way through the film, providing laughs in vast amounts as he plays the dumb cop in one scene, only to amaze us with his cleverness in the next. The quantity of puns he manages to deliver with success is actually amazing. I'd never have thunk it, but there is still some energy in the old coot. Hell, he was just cast as FDR in a nearly completed new film entitled FDR: American Badass!!

That said, not all praise should go to Black and Bostwick. For me, the real revelation here was the incredibly charismatic Ariel Gade, who plays the role of Ken's daughter with contagious energy, illuminating the somber narrative with her smile, which also symbolizes the promise of something better on the horizon. Giving life to a somewhat overdetermined character, Gade's implication is crucial to the success of the film, providing just the right amount of naivety and quirkiness to the plot to counter-balance the darker aspects of the human psyche at work in the other characters' minds. She represents beauty untainted by the ugliness of life, and truly a gal to fight for, opposite bland, obligatory love interest Stephanie (Lucy Davis, who isn't asked to do much here but pose next to Kevin Corrigan).

When does one's misfortune start becoming funny?

There is an undercurrent of tragedy to the story and it perfectly undermines the moments of comedy. Seeing how Ken is depicted as an irremediably broken man with no resolve left, a man in need of a major epiphany to help him rise up from the depths of mediocrity, the film violently departs from the recent, but well established tradition of "the loveable loser", made famous by the Jason Biggs/Judd Apatow comedies. Ken needs not simply reveal his true self to a beautiful, understanding girl in order to grow outside of his shell. He needs to overcome mental illness and the bane of uncertainty on a regular basis, being constantly reminded of past traumas by the scars on his wrist. And these traumas go far deeper than the casual humiliation and mild awkwardness suffered by the beautiful, "troubled" teens from Hollywood. They are not the wounds of a youth in need of legitimacy, they're the wounds of an adult who has failed to fulfill that quest for legitimacy. This makes Ken a deconstructed loser type, an embodiment of the actual toll that it takes on a person to be perceived as the loveable loser. His antics are rarely amusing, they're pathetic. And so, the audience's chuckles are always laced, forcing us to reflect on exactly how funny a poor man's misfortune truly is, adding a layer of self-reflexivity to the film in the process.

Hence, the comic book look of the film, which the poster brandishes a little too brazenly, is used only to delineate the inner workings of Ken's mind, leaving his body hopelessly trapped in the tangible, everyday world where costumes are donned for humiliation, and where vengeance is a sad, lonely act akin to masturbation. The frequent recourse to hand-drawn illustrations, including a wide array of highly expressionistic depictions of felled bad guys which are fast used as evidence against their author, are meant to highlight this discrepancy. The distorted features of the victim's faces appear in sharp contrast with Ken's stoic looks, contributing a great deal to the idea of a vagabond mind escaping from the prison of the flesh. What draws Ken back to the world of the living is a feisty young girl, and conveniently, a girl who is at that very point in life where he himself broke down and gave way for depression to get a hold of him. While young Amy hardly seems to share Ken's blood at first, cracks eventually start to form in her surprisingly self-assured facade, proving that she also is a challenged person in need of help to achieve emancipation. Seeing how both hers and Ken's trauma is related to high school basketball, both of them are able to learn from the other and grow past what is basically a traumatic life experience. And with their collaboration, the two of them will manage to patch up both their respective families, which were almost completely devastated following's Ken's mental breakdown. And this too contributes to the realism of the ensemble, depicting the full extent to which one's man failures can affect the ones around him, and particularly those who love him.

Karen Black plays a very complex character, who cruelly taunts her
son in order to better salvage him from apathy

The film also begs pressing questions relative to female supremacy. Thus, one will realize that all men within the narrative are weak-willed followers, finding personal meaning only through their agency with females, whom are depicted as "calling all shots". If Karen Black's character is instrumental in Ken's victimization, so is his daughter instrumental in his eventual recovery. It is her who encourages him to date, helping him shed his shell. It is her from which his life derives meaning. She is cheerful and self-assured, despite adversity. As for Ken, he cracks under pressure like a twig, making male inadequacy a salient feature of Perez' film. With the somber tone used to depict the protagonist, one is prompted to appraise the rising number of impotent males in leading film roles as a sign of the ages, rather than as a comedic novelty. If Seth Rogen is amusing as the dice-rolling slacker from Knocked Up (opposite despicable bitch queen Katherine Heigl), Kevin Corrigan isn't as Ken. He is the reminder of male uncertainty and ultimately, of the shrinking importance of the male hero. Far from being the typical slacker hero, he is proof that there is no such thing as a slacker "hero", only a slacker to be rehabilitated and made a man once more.

All in all, the film succeeds in its desire to craft an engrossing black comedy by cleverly blending elements from the loveable loser narrative with elements from the exploitation-era revenge plot by way of comic book antics. Such clever alchemy is achieved despite the screenwriter's blunt use of dated motifs to forward the main storyline. Because despite a clear lack of experience, Levin manages to probe unseen depths within many colliding genres, allowing the film to transcend the oft-rigid codes of comedy in order to better craft a realistic protagonist and to subsequently deconstruct the loveable loser archetype, away from bubblegum Hollywood narratives and into the territory of self-reflexivity.


3/5 A surprisingly potent black comedy that establishes screenwriter Levin as a force to be reckoned with. The superb cast further helps him compensate for the lackluster twist ending and predictable motifs used in delineating the protagonist's evolution.


P.S. Fans of British comedy will certainly recognize Ken's love interest, Lucy Davis, as The Office's Dawn Tinsley and Shaun of the Dead's Dianne, proving my contention that she is just mildly attractive enough to play girlfriend to a bunch of desperate saddos, the leader of which is The Office's loser hero, Tim Canterbury.