Cold Sweat (2010)

(Original title: Sudor Frio) 

This much maligned midnight film is actually a decent example of contemporary exploitation cinema, boasting an exemplary knack for cost-effective filmmaking and some refreshing takes on female nudity and the aesthetics of explosions. Given its minute setting and diminutive roster of characters, director Bogliano favors an impressionistic approach to his craft, hence managing to create a truly immersive film experience. The narrative is absolutely nonsensical, refuting the laws of chemistry, physics and common sense in a bid to fuel a nearly oneiric atmosphere imbedded in disturbing historical fact, but it certainly doesn't impair the sheer enjoyment to be had from this didactic effort in retrospection.

The film stars a clueless young man named Roman. Having recently lost track of girlfriend Jacquie through the intervention of an online seducer dressed as Death Note's L, Roman commissions female friend Ali to arrange a date with the mysterious young man in order to discover Jacquie's whereabouts. Invited for a romantic dinner in a rundown apartment complex on the bad side of Buenos Aires, Ali is then captured by two psychotic old men, former members of the fearsome "Triple A" (Argentine Anticommunist Alliance) and holders of 25 cases of dynamite stolen from revolutionary fighters of the 1970s. Having just lost yet another stunning lady to these creepy old reactionaries, Roman must dig deep, put on his thinking cap, assume his balls and get in there to save the day. And while lovely Ali proves to be a more resourceful, charismatic and ultimately better character, it is Roman that really needs to grow up through this ordeal, casting away his childish antics to better face the perspective of manhood.

Blowback: devious members of Triple A come out of
retirement to torture ignorant youths.

The most insistent criticism of the film stems from its nonsensical tribulations. I've seen this time and time again. People complain about what they think is an unrealistic situation, suggesting myriad other ways in which it could've been resolved and applying their "wisdom" to every single issue of every single film. They throw their hands in the air, as if annoyed by the fact that the events onscreen are not verisimilar, oblivious to the actual nature of exploitation cinema. Unable to suspend their disbelief anymore, these spectators are slowly sapping all the fantasy out of movie theaters, subsequently validating the widespread recourse to gritty remakes as a way to streamline Hollywoodian production. Given this new trend, it was inevitable that Cold Sweat would be relegated to the halls of infamy. I personally failed to see this coming, but then I am just a melancholy dinosaur, lumbering around in a world that is quickly escaping my grasp. And while I think that lapses in logic are no basis for criticizing such a sensuous film experience, I cannot defend Bogliano's dubious screenplay other than to say that it conveniently compensates for the production's lack of budget by filling wholes through iffy causality. 

Actually, the film resorts to a fairly common means of narrative economy by using the "house of horror" approach to storytelling, proceeding from a collage of unrelated vignettes to create an horrific atmosphere rather than focusing on a linear dramatic storyline. As such, it proves to be more of a freak show than an actual narrative film, not unlike Rob Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses, the latter effort proving equally nonsensical in its patchwork of eclectic influences. Drawing from the tradition of Grand Guignol, both these features boast various horrific set pieces used indiscriminately for their individual shock value and not any sort of dramatic power. Being a Southern import, Cold Sweat throws in a good measure of erotic vignettes, hence providing a touch of burlesque to the mix and making it all the more appealing to thrill-seeking spectators. It's pure exploitation, but the film has no greater pretenses, nor does it try to hide behind dubious morality or any delusion of dramatic grandeur.

Using the "house of horror" approach, the film
trades plausibility for shock value.

Trading emotional realism and narrative logic for sheer expressive power, the film makes use of canted shots, aggressive close-ups and a cacophonous soundtrack to create a sensuous diegetic space meant to convey and not merely portray the protagonists' harrowing experience. Foremost contributor to the film's oppressive atmosphere is the lingering presence of hard rock music, the shriller notes of which are amplified to complement the shocking spectacle of exploding heads and surging intestines. Then, there is the impressionistic editing, which proceeds from a succession of close-ups and medium shots to fragment space into fearsome shards of oppressive scenery. Whether they're intercoms threatening to expose the protagonists' presence or crates full of dynamite, nearly every element of decor seems to reveal a new menace. Not only does this type of spatial construction contribute a dizzying sense of disorientation amongst the viewers and protagonists alike, but it allows the director to make the most out of its diminutive sets, creating a labyrinthine deathtrap from just a handful of contiguous rooms. Drawing from a vast arsenal of economical visual devices, he also uses canted shots and slow motion to create evocative tableaux out of mundane, often overdetermined images. Hence, the climactic explosion of one of the villains becomes a highly stylized affair featuring surging intestines flying through the screen. But despite the sheer amount of cheap building blocks used in its construction, the film heavily relies on one even cheaper plot device, one that can be easily defined as narrative panacea*, and that is nitroglycerin.

The weak screenplay takes many shortcuts, but none more blatant than the inclusion of  a highly volatile "contact" explosive akin to nitroglycerin. Imbued with daft properties, this gooey liquid is said by the antagonist to explode on impact or when exposed to high temperatures. Once its efficiency is proven through the explosion of a naked woman's head, it subsequently allows the director to create suspense out of nowhere, conveying a sense of impending doom with the mere sight of a single drop. It also justifies the shameless exhibition of glistening female flesh in the film's most prominent scene. This happens when Roman finally discovers ex-girlfriend Jacquie (played by nude model Camila Velasco) tied to a table in a dimly-lit basement. Seeing how she is covered in nitro, the young man smartly suggests that she remove her clothes, lest she risks dying from friction. This warrants a fairly large amount of close-ups on Camila's glistening naked flesh, including a peek at her lovely breasts. Obviously, it's all fairly gratuitous, but then so is exploitation cinema, spurred on by narrative rationales akin to excuses meant to justify the showcase of unrestrained violence and unbridled eroticism. Here, you could actually consider the entire screenplay as an excuse to justify the film, but I doubt that this will prove its worth amongst casual viewers...

Glistening female flesh is one of the film's
most distinctive, most enticing features.

Luckily, while the premise of the film appears slim enough, it offers rare insight into Argentinian history, hence becoming a didactic exercise to help enlighten vacuous protagonist Roman and foreign audiences alike. Using archival footage from the "Dirty War" to introduce its anti-communist antagonists and their stolen stash of dynamite, Cold Sweat uses real-life horror not only to help shape our appreciation of those antagonists, but also to expose a gaping wound in the national unconscious kept open by the continuing trials of former military officers accused of heinous war crimes. Drawing from that real-life horror, the director manages to infuse his villains with a truly fearsome agenda, one that seems to find renewed relevance in its opposition against the carefree, uneducated youths of today, further hinting at the unnerving presence of a vengeful reactionary undercurrent threatening the populist gains inherited from Peronism.

Politics aside, Cold Sweat is a straightforward, unapologetic effort in exploitation cinema. Based on a flimsy screenplay tantamount to a convenient excuse for the showcase of tits and blood, the film thrives on a powerfully evocative visual landscape to immerse us into the diegetic world. And while it features a fair share of lapses in logic, the film ultimately succeeds in its humble goals by providing ample amounts of shock and exploitative material. Boasting three stunning brunettes exposed in various states of undress, it also proves to be a rare threat for women enthusiasts and a perfect example of unapologetic midnight cinema.

A single drop of narrative panacea goes a long way.
If you don't believe me, just ask Ridley Scott!

3/5  Despite a flimsy screenplay, this muscular exploitation effort features enough impressionistic shocks and enticing female flesh to please any thrill-seeking filmgoer undeterred by faulty logic.

* I originally coined this term to convey my appreciation of the multi-purpose black goop from Ridley Scott's atrociously penned Alien prequel Prometheus. Used indiscriminately to create a plethora of contradicting effects, this substance constitutes one of the laziest plot devices I've ever seen, begging the question as to what exactly Scott was searching for during the 33 years between the original film and this fourth follow-up: God or narrative panacea?

Grave Encounters (2011)

While the title of this independent Canadian effort seems to infer some straight-to-video disaster with faint allures of J-Horror, it is actually meant as a crude parody of paranormal investigation shows, the eminently poor quality of the wordplay being a direct window into the two directors’ contempt for the many bargain-basement Ghostbusters currently saturating the airwaves. Adamant on exposing the charlatanism inherent to their practices, the Vicious Brothers hence create their own fictitious crew of witless opportunists and have them partake in a real-life nightmare meant to expunge their sins. Shot entirely from a subjective point of view and capitalizing on the “found footage” gimmick, Grave Encounters is a direct heir to The Blair Witch Project, which it updates through the use of truly claustrophobic settings and a constantly widening offscreen space. The result is nothing original, but it is quite effective, with a minimal amount of occult events producing maximal effect. Relentlessly paced, with no wiggle room left for the entrapped protagonists, it also boasts a rare quality amongst contemporary horror films: the ability to actually scare you.

Forced attrition is the wage of witless ghost hunters.

The titular TV show is the brainchild of con artist Lance Preston, whose alleged childhood brush with the occult is the hook for his hokey ghost-hunting concept. This is all explained through an introductory interview with one of the show’s producers who shares an hilarious promo in which Preston tells of his “traumatic” background and solemnly invites the viewer for some “grave encounters”. The producer then goes on to explain the show’s popularity and hint at the horrific events that caused its untimely end. Apparently, something went awry in the process of filming the sixth episode, something that decimated the crew, leaving their raw footage as only testimony of their ordeal. Edited down from 76 hours, the following 90-minute account of the events gives us a privileged insight into what actually happened. We thus get to see Preston and the gang conducting preliminary interviews and setting up their gear for an overnight lock-inside the asbestos-filled walls of a disaffected mental asylum. Using unconvincing testimony from various caretakers, some of which is literally made-up, they gather some highly unlikely proof for the alleged haunting of the building by former patients. But despite everybody’s initial skepticism, ghosts really do manifest during the night, senselessly tormenting the film crew for our own sadistic pleasure. 

Anchoring the story in the “authentic” world of reality TV, the Vicious Brothers’ bid for verisimilitude is established very early through the use of constant re-framing and re-takes, numerous interventions from the crew and the presence of blurred faces to indicate non-cooperative subjects. It’s rarely pretty, but it gives the film the raw quality necessary to formulate a relevant critique of reality TV aesthetics and allow terror to take a truly tangible form, which the derelict setting exacerbates to wild extremes. An absolute wet dream for urban explorers, the disaffected Riverview Hospital hypnotically draws you in its infected bowels alongside the protagonists, with which we share a kindred fascination for its macabre history. As such, it proves to be the primary vector of the film’s creepy atmosphere and an economical way for the filmmakers to create affect through simple suggestion. And while derelict mental institutions are slowly becoming overdetermined horror settings, they will always retain a genuinely creepy quality. Not because they house the most singular elements of our society, but because they suggest wild extremes in doctor/patient relationships, undue imprisonment and experimental surgery meant to benefit self-seeking eccentrics over helpless Others. This makes the perspective of tortured souls looking for retribution all the more tangible, not unlike the unwavering feeling of entrapment that one derives from being clustered within its walls like the poor souls of old. In that sense, Grave Encounters reminded me of Session 9, another low-budget horror effort capitalizing on the asylum setting for maximal affect. Both using oppressive ruins as ready-made sources of terror, they effortlessly convey a similar feeling of claustrophobia while focusing on the disturbing imprint from barbaric practices past. Here, every element of décor is bone-chilling, from the crayon-covered walls to the empty bathtubs and the stainless steel gurneys, all remnants of a tortured past constantly trying to emerge into the light of day, creating as many hideouts for angry ghosts as there are evidences of previous foul play.

Approximate framing a necessary ill for success
in the world of "found footage" films.

Further cultivating verisimilitude in a bid for increasingly tangible terror, the film features a smart dosage of parody, which allows for a relevant critique of TV excess that eludes the traps of absurdist flamboyance. Hence, the protagonists are depicted as properly vacuous and self-serving while retaining a certain measure of humanity necessary to make us partake in their plight. As for the exploration of their deceitful ghost-hunting methods, it is achieved in a fun, but level-headed way that prevents the film from transforming into a self-defeating farce. This is initially achieved in a rather seamless manner, through casual interviews with active caretakers who mention various generic symptoms of ghostly possession (cold breezes, open windows…), hinting at supernatural presence without actually making verifiable claims. The film crew then proceeds to mount cameras near “paranormal hotspots” in order to capture elusive specters on film. The protagonists' seamless usage of that perplexing expression proves quite useful in appraising the semi-serious nature of their endeavor, which allows them to coin hokey technical terms to better substantiate their outlandish "beliefs". The ongoing parody of their methods then continues with the introduction of the paranormal investigator’s toolkit, complete with many dubious contraptions that will find renewed relevance along the way as platforms for ghostly manifestations. In the end, while these colorful elements of ghost-hunting lore all convey a definite pictorial quality to the characters and their craft, their limited originality prevents any slip in realism. Even when self-promoter Preston and phony medium Houston Gray start challenging each other for the best conjuring method caught on tape, we are spared any bothersome hysterics that might’ve hindered the sense of terror deriving from the film’s realistic approach. Such restraint from the directors is crucial in cultivating the appropriate mood, and it is admirably achieved throughout.  

Further taking advantage of its limited budget by cashing in on the intangible sense of menace permeating the main set, the film creates unbearable tension through absence alone. Waiting incessantly for the first occult event to grace the screen, we are constantly left scrutinizing the depth of field in search of an elusive presence, becoming increasingly edgy from the sheer certainty, but constant withholding of impending horror. When forces from beyond finally do manifest, their actions are initially quite tame, almost playful. Hence, we see a wheelchair moving forward almost imperceptibly in a empty corridor, then the hair of a crew member swerving above her head. We derive some mild unease with such unwarranted presence, early goosebumps to prepare us for the following massacre.  That said, things quickly take a turn for the worst when another crew member is pushed down a flight of stairs, paving the way for a literal descent into Hell as deformed ghouls start dropping from the ceiling, flash-banging and lobotomizing those unfortunate enough to stand in their path. Pacing is key to creating affect here, as we slowly become involved in the protagonists' plunge into madness, but it can only be achieved through careful manipulation of the audience. Evidently, the "found footage" gimmick provides immediate spectator expectations, informing us of the protagonists' demise even before their first appearance onscreen. While causing obvious dramatic limitations, this gives a chance for skillful directors to effortlessly shape our spectatorial experience. Here, the Vicious Brothers constantly keep us on our toes by cleverly withholding the realization of our expectations and by using gradation in order to catalyze them for greater effect. While these techniques allow us to seamlessly step into the diegetic world, they are also effective against the protagonists, whose maddening experience becomes equally gradual and inevitable as the turn of an oiled screw driven by a relentless power drill, which aggressively causes their forced attrition.

Widening offscreen space is key
to manipulating spectator expectations.

While it is seamlessly cultivated through the very emptiness of the film’s vast settings, absence is also conveyed cinematographically through the creation of a particularly vast offscreen space. Featuring many interlocking white corridors lined up with doors to patient cells, it seems like every shot exudes a constant sense of impending menace stemming from all edges of the frame (even the upper one, as the diegetic ghouls can also drop from the ceiling). Hence, a simple static shot taken from the middle of a corridor is bursting with a disturbing sense of dread, creating depth in the scenery from the mere suggestion of a lurking monster. It’s really simple stuff, but so are the mechanics of fear when stripped to its bare bones by such a disturbingly realistic effort. As the story unfolds, offscreen space is widened even more as the characters’ field of vision is systematically narrowed by the use of increasingly inaccurate equipment. The night-vision lens, for example, merely creates additional offscreen space by providing a mere halo of light around which darkness accumulates, simultaneously providing cover for lurking entities and impairing the protagonists' progression through their oppressive surroundings. Shadows are thus literally threatening to engulf the protagonists as they are lured toward the asylum's endless underground tunnels, forced into a dark void that threatens to penetrate their minds like the nasty orbitoclasts of early brain surgeons. Enduring the ordeal alongside them, ours then become a truly harrowing experience in dreadful expectations and the perfect materialization of urban exploration gone awry.

Unfortunately for this surprisingly cost-effective piece of genre filmmaking, it features a complacent  screenplay that shamelessly invokes otherworldly logic to make sense of all inexplicable phenomena plaguing the characters. Case is point is when the exasperated film crew decides to look for a way out of the asylum. After busting down the door from which they originally entered, they are inexplicably faced with yet another empty corridor. After following a sign indicating the way to the roof, they are faced with a dead-end. Never bothering to provide a satisfactory rationale for such events other to say that they imply some ghostly shenanigans, The Vicious Brothers unduly trap their protagonists and compromise all of their chances for survival, making them akin to the mindless cannon fodder of slasher films. And while such screenwriting shortcomings could be said to derive from the "found footage" format, with our intimate knowledge of the protagonists' fate forcing the directors to deprive their characters of any fighting chance, I'm sure that any competent screenwriter would beg to differ. Especially since there are so many interesting things to do with dark exteriors, most important of which is the preservation of the film's naturalistic approach to its outlandish material...

Darkness clamps down on the protagonists,
engulfing the spectator alongside them.

All in all, while the film doesn’t transcend the fairly rigid mold from which it originates, it is quite effective in fulfilling its humble objectives. The characters are true-to-life and their ordeal bears definite airs of verisimilitude, allowing for the creation of genuine terror from nearly nothing at all, empty settings and empty pockets. A very satisfying effort from Canadian duo The Vicious Brothers.

3/5  Despite a lack of originality and a barren premise, Grave Encounters proves to be ruthlessly cost-effective in its ability to generate heartfelt onscreen terror. 

Rabies (2011)

Looks like we're fucked: Kalevet (Rabies).

In order to understand the nature of this unorthodox Israeli import, one must first understand the double entendre contained in the original title and the subsequent act of treachery involved in translating it to "Rabies", a simplistic title that necessarily seems to infer some form of viral outbreak. In Hebrew, Kalevet does mean "rabies", but only in the formal sense of the word. On a day-to-day basis, it is rather used as a versatile curse word, something akin to the American "fuck". Hence, what is implied by the title is both a clinical expression meant to describe a form of murderous frenzy AND a vernacular expression meant to express one's fiery emotions. As such, it informs both the serious nature of the onscreen violence and the playful, darkly humorous character exposition. Such blending of formal and informal meanings also extends to the narrative structure of the film, as formal expectations are often met with informal tribulations in a constantly surprising, often clever effort in genre subversion. That said, while it seems innocuous enough, the original title selected by the filmmakers is actually bursting with meaning, the actual depth of which was completely overlooked when choosing a politically correct international title to help promote the film abroad. This also provides yet another example of just how far North American bourgeois are willing to go in order to protect their fellowmen' ears from harmless expletives on the heels of translating French shocker Baise-moi (Fuck Me) to Rape Me. And while the present travesty doesn't alter the original meaning completely, it remains an infuriating display of gusto from the champions of hypocrisy, nations that will sooner give medals to child killers than allowing their own children to use curse words...

Strangely enough, the issue of treacherous translations is also quite relevant to the notions of misunderstanding and incommunicability, which permeate the film's storyline and reverberate across time and space to crack the veneer of Israel's shady military complex. For one, I was far less surprised by the fact that Rabies came out of Israel, a warring nation located in a boiling kettle of angst and hatred, than by the fact that it is one of the first Israeli horror films. Perhaps was it long overdue as a means to channel one's murderous impulses away from Native Palestinians and into the realm of popular arts... That said, while it seems to represent a breakthrough in therapeutic craftsmanship, I was quite skeptical at first as to the film's overall quality. After all, any given "first" is usually derivative of better, older material. It often seems, and especially where genre cinema is concerned, that greatness comes with maturity. And seeing how this is not only an Israeli first, but also the first feature film by both co-directors Keshales and Papushado, Rabies was not a sure bet at all. Luckily, my skeptical mindset left me ripe for a surprisingly positive experience. Because while the film is indeed derivative, it is only so in order to better deconstruct narrative conventions, and surprise the viewer who thinks himself in a comfort zone.

The spectacle of shapely blondes going down deserted country
roads is certainly overdetermined, but the present film
goes beyond any conventional reading thereof.

Most of the time, you know a good film from the very first shot. Here, that first shot contains nothing but darkness, darkness and a panicked voice that fills the entire theater with a biting sense of dread.   This disembodied voice belongs to a young woman fallen down a trap, sudden victim of a brutal manhunter roaming the countryside for prey. The fact that the pit in which she has fallen is actually a trap intended for human beings should surprise no one. What will surprise you is the clever double-framing of the young woman's brother, leaning at the edge of the pit looking down. The young man thus belongs to a film within a film (or frame within a frame) and his appearance coincides with that of the two directors, looking down into a familiar sub-genre and deciding to bare its mechanisms with rare savvy. With the following narrative taking shape in rather conventional fashion, as many obligatory types (obnoxious young yuppies, an older couple on a RV trip and a pair of colorful crooked cops) are succinctly exposed as they congregate toward the trap-laden forest home to the trapper, they set up the table for numerous role reversals and many baffled expectations, as well as some rare insight into the nature of violence in the countrywide hunting ground that is Israel.

Pushing plausibility aside imperiously, and relying on broad caricatures to hammer their point about the predictability of genre cinema, Keshales and Papushado create a playful variation on a well-known theme by relying on misunderstanding, a device transplanted from the comedy genre with great effect, and incommunicability, two notions that hold paramount interest in their parallel investigation of Middle Eastern violence as a whole. This allows them not only to create a relevant meditation on the absurdity of war, but also to achieve some narrative economy by creating new from old. Their protagonists sure as hell resemble those of American slashers: sparkling but vacuous, with preppy clothes and shimmering cars to match. These four kids are out in the country, driving daddy's luxury van, when they are mingled in a series of sordid affairs. In typical slasher film fashion, they even run over a guy whom they presume has died from the blow. But nothing is farther from the truth, for he will become a pivotal character in the narrative. You see, he is the guy we first saw leaning over us, and whose sister is now being dragged through the forest by a kaki-clad hunter. But everything is not as it seems for the would-be killer is put out of commission very early and the remaining characters are left to kill each other in a series of misunderstandings and through some randomly placed traps. The fact that the people herein are killed by the people who you would least expect, and not some lone psycho that has come to embody the whole of evil, is somewhat symptomatic of the paranoid mindset one would expect to emerge from the Middle Eastern powder keg. And so are the convenient landmines peppering the scenery. They're all reminders of the homegrown type of violence which has transformed the lone psycho into an irrelevant figure defused by the multiform, antagonistic nature of violence as depicted in the film. Misunderstanding then becomes more than a simple narrative strand, but a potent reminder of how violence often originates, how it is sustained through time, and how it is the absence of dialogue which keeps it alive forever. As such, misunderstanding finds its reflection in the notion of incommunicability, or the constant choice to eschew dialogue in order to better indulge in a gratifying brand of purgative violence.

Violence rooted in petty rivalries and the desire to protect
oneself from outsiders: the first Israeli horror film...

Drawing from the standard motifs associated with the slasher sub-genre, Rabies uses visceral representations of violence and sexuality to better confront us with our own violent desires and to question the extent of our civility. Here, it is used to critique abusive authority, as exemplified by the nasty vaginal probing made implicit during the police frisking scene. It is also used to explain violence as a byproduct of passion, which is shown to be manifold in nature, an expression both of hatred and love. This is exemplified by the centrality of blonde bombshell Shir in terms of amorous devotion from the male protagonists, which leads to an absurdly fearsome fratricidal fight scene that will dazzle you with its sheer brutality. Actually, the dedication that characters entertain toward each other acts as a powerful incentive for any given action here, most of which have to do with protecting a loved one, which is itself an act of love that quickly turns to hatred under the light of passion.

The mechanics of action and reaction contained in this film actually go a long way to help us make sense of the Israeli mindset, caught in between two distinctive brands of violence: their own violence, which is gutsy and instinctive, a means to protect one's own interest in the face of overwhelming adversity, and the violence of their rivals, which is sneaky, but ever-present. Hence, the edgy stance of the protagonists, hence their fratricidal struggle, hence their jumping the gun in front of anything that can be conceived as a treat. Hannah Brown's negative review of the film for the Jerusalem Post is actually quite enlightening in that regard. In her opening paragraph, she mentions just how unimpressive horror films appear to the inhabitants of Israel, who must deal with the threat of "suicide bombings, missiles and wars" on a daily basis. Inadvertently, she thus seems to warrant the explosive nature of violence contained within the film, which she calls "random" in a later paragraph, unaware that random is the most precise, most accurate epithet befitting the nature of violence in the Israeli context. After all, aren't suicide bombings and unmarked landmine explosions some of the most random forms of violence out there? Maybe that's just an outsider's opinion, but it seems to me that a heavily militarized nation almost completely surrounded by enemies would be rather quick to jump the gun and eliminate any random element which it saw as a threat, a contention from which the film seems to proceed almost exclusively. Violence replaces dialogue here, as it does on a regular basis in present-day Israel, and the constant threats under which the protagonists come under is a huge reason for that. For one, I was surprised with how conveniently minefields are used here to entrap and challenge the protagonists, but that was without realizing just how tight the mine belt is around the Israeli borders, especially in the Golan region. In my opinion, the presence of mines as a constant reminder of an outside threat also informs the characters' edgy recourse to violence. Used primarily as a cheap narrative device, it acts nonetheless as a potent reminder of one's place in the chain of violence that has entrapped both the Israeli and their Palestinian counterparts alike.

In the end, the film's insight into the politics of violence and its subversion of genre conventions are only skin-deep. And so the informed horror fan should manage to anticipate every twist once the inner workings of the film have been established and it has been made clear that every plot device will be systematically turned around 180 degrees. Characterization also becomes problematic as the protagonists exist only as archetypes to be undone. Fortunately, this shouldn't prevent anybody from enjoying the film on a visceral level as it relies on loads of shocking onscreen violence and a cleverly irreverent script (featuring some of the crookedest cops on this side of Bad Lieutenant and some strange contentions as to the sexiest things a woman can do) to keep you entertained throughout. As for the two stunning leading ladies, they light up the screen so brightly as to make you forget about any flaw that might plague the film.

3/5  Extremely interesting for its playful subversion of genre staples and subtle dabbling into the politics of Israeli violence, Kalevet is eventually limited by the very conventions that it vies to undo.

World War Z (2013)

A review for Alex...

This review is dedicated to my friend Alex, who likes his zombie films with extra gravy. I’m sorry Alex, but you shouldn't expect too much gore from a 200,000,000$ film...

---

Adapted from the eponymous bestseller by Max Brooks, World War Z is a hulking summer blockbuster that plays more like an overblown thriller in the vein of Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion than a true, indulgent zombie film. That said, it now makes perfect sense to see the word itself being truncated to its smallest form. “Zombie” might as well have been replaced altogether in this lush Brad Pitt vehicle, where the aging star travels the world in search of a cure for a nasty worldwide pandemic. So, you might want to forget about survivalist horror here, forget about Romero and simply bask in the large-scale, and highly improbable set pieces showcased with great flair here. Just accept how money can change the zombie narratives of old and you might very well have a good time with this new, good-looking entry in the genre.

Million-dollar zombies have no bite.

The narrative focuses on the Lane family, and particularly Gerry Lane (Pitt), an ex-UN infiltrator who is saved from extinction thanks to his government ties. While stuck in New York gridlock with his family, Gerry gets off his car in order to inquire about the situation. It should be obvious to everyone, but the cause of gridlock is the sudden presence of hyperactive zombies dashing toward humans at lightning speed, bashing their heads unto windshields and prying out victims on which to feed. The one novelty in such an otherwise overdetermined premise is the speed at which the infection is spread. Personally, I was very surprised to see zombie victims rise up and attack within a scant 12 seconds from infection. In my mind, this greatly compromised the survival rate of humanity, whom is quickly seen faltering like a deck of cards under high winds. After stealing a camper and heading into New Jersey for supplies and shelter, Gerry’s family is rescued by an old army buddy of his, who manages to send a helicopter on the rooftop of a large apartment complex. But he does so not only out of friendship, but out of necessity. You see, Gerry is considered necessary personnel by the army thanks to his background in covert ops. He is thus sent out to investigate the cause of the outbreak by locating patient zero. First stop: South Korea, where the first memo concerning the plague originated. From there, Gerry will travel to Israel and the UK in search of a cure, which he eventually manages to find thanks to an eye-popping effort in screenwriting gymnastics.

While proceeding from age-old narrative conventions, the film is refreshingly realistic from a sociological standpoint and rewarding in its all-encompassing vantage point on the catastrophe, hence providing one of the most readily acceptable scenarios in the genre. With the military quickly taking charge of operations after the outbreak and boarding the necessary personnel onto large battleships way off the coastline, the premise might reek of militarism, but it also opens up far larger narrative possibilities than your average zombie film, at least where scope is concerned. There's no scraping for food here, walking through ghost towns or struggling to find shelter. There is an actual meta-narrative through which the whole of humanity can be saved and redeemed by the heroics of one man. There is hope, and not merely a daily struggle with the living dead. Obviously, such a "big picture" outlook is indebted to the "big picture" budget of the film and that is why one should accept to trade cheap gore for the promise of grander narrative schemes.

World War Z is a "big picture" zombie film, actually a

rarer occurence than the traditional survivalist horror film.

The one major problem in regards to realism here lies in the overwhelmingly pro-Israeli stance of the screenplay. In the narrative, Israel has managed to seal off its borders from the infected wasteland, and they are letting the surrounding Palestinians IN, arguing that every human salvaged from the outside world is one less zombie to fight. Now, that’s the biggest load of crap I've ever heard. We all know what Israel would do with Palestine should a zombie outbreak occur: they would bomb the Natives alongside the zombies with no distinction whatsoever, arguing that it was God’s design all along. But while this pro-Israeli bullshit tends to defuse the potency of the narrative, it remains coherent with a certain American tendency to depict Israelis as good guys in order to further their own anti-Arab agenda. I won't dwell on it, but I must insist on just how incongruous it is to involve such dubious politics in an otherwise solid anticipation effort... I mean, if one is to exacerbate current political trends to such an extreme as to suggest that North Korea could actually survive the tragedy by removing the teeth of all its citizens, then you might as well acknowledge Israeli's protectionist, exclusionist politics as a fact, and not merely an unjust attempt at slender!

From a genre perspective, no one will be impressed with the level of gore in this tame PG-13 effort. Still, the action sequences manage to provide excitement in spades mostly due to the sheer scale of the mayhem. That is the main contribution of money to the film. It allows us to really see humanity on the brink of extinction, during breathtaking sequences of destruction, where the rushing dead fill up busy city streets and even climb city walls. Like the ominous counter aboard the Americans' floating HQ, which constantly updates the projected number of victims from the plague, so too does the number of victims rises up exponentially during the massive invasion scenes set in New York, Israel, Scotland and inbetween (during a particularly exciting, and improbable stint aboard a flying plane). The initial invasion scene is actually quite striking in its depiction of absolute chaos, with walls of cars blocking the way in all directions and hyperactive brutes largely ignoring their own physical integrity in order to reach human flesh. Involving both large numbers of extras in makeup and quality CGI effects, these sequences leave nothing to be desired, except for the occasional machete to the skull and some casual disembowelment. On the big screen, this really makes for some pulse-pounding entertainment. I mean, this ain't a 1980s VHS cheapie, folks. This ain't Troma. It's "World War" Z!

The mayhem scenes are a sight to behold.

Unfortunately, while most large-scale open-air action sequences here are absolutely sumptuous, the close-quarter encounters with the infected are edited frantically and confusingly. Not unlike 28 Weeks Later, so too does World War Z rely on disorientation to create a sense of excitement during the cramped chase scenes pitting Pitt and his family against the undead. The result often feels tiresome and dizzying, but mostly unnecessary. Given the quality of the production, it would have been a cinch to frame better shots and edit them accordingly. And while the hyperactive editing of near-shots might be understood as a mere sign of our times, it still has no place in a big-budget effort such as this one. There is a thing called Steadicam, after all...

What does redeem the film is the sheer amount of exciting world travel involved in the narrative. Flying from the US to Korea, then to Israel and the UK, and back to American soil, all the while running from zany zombies, Gerry Lane is nothing short of a sci-fi James Bond, equally resourceful, ingenious… and lucky. He is the quintessential American hero, fighting selflessly for family and country. Such a story structure also provides a welcome twist to the tired zombie genre by adding inquisitive elements to the mix. Again, it’s all a question of money. While the B-series horror hero merely struggles for his own survival, the A-series hero can envision grander schemes, that is the survival of the entire species. With superior production values and world-class actors to boot, these grander schemes materialize seamlessly and so too is the meta-narrative reborn out of its own ashes, making the cottage from Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968) appear as the narrative dead-end that it really is.

 Despite the disintegration of Western society, Brad Pitt's Gerry Lane

remains a typically American hero, fighting selflessly for family and country.

What is perhaps the most annoying feature of the present narrative is the lack of a proper conclusion. From what we see at the end, it seems like the producers weren’t sure about a potential sequel, choosing a half-open ending in order both to end the story and leave it open. That is called having your cake and eating it too. Is the invasion over? Is it not? Will we actually see our human brethren resolve the crisis? Once the cure is found and Gerry is reunited with his family in Nova Scotia, the hero goes on to explain how the world will be saved through a series of images that look suspiciously like a trailer for a sequel to come. This leaves the viewer unfulfilled and it suggests a great lack of respect by the filmmakers. Sitting there for 2 hours and having to swallow the rationale behind Gerry finding the cure, we were entitled to something more definitive as a conclusion. What we are given instead leaves a bitter taste of plaster and plywood in our mouths from what is essentially an unfinished product. In turn, it dulls the power of the meta-narrative to truly concretize the exhilarating victory of good over evil. This is not enough to invalidate the whole film, but it is very much akin to ending a concerto on a false note. Shame...

3/5  Well-produced zombie film for the whole family provide wonderful thrills, but mostly steers clears of the actual horror genre. 

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.

Hobo With a Shotgun (2011)

"If only you could see what I've seen with your eyes..."

Despite a complete lack of depth, Jason Eisener's neo-grindhouse Hobo still gets the job done. Like a creaky roller coaster, it takes you for one hell of a relentless ride into the abysmal depths of society, caricatured with (very) broad strokes of a bloody brush on a decrepit urban canvas. Genre icon Rutger Hauer therein manages to combine the murderous anger of replicant Roy Batty, the tenderheartedness of Blind Fury's Nick Parker and the derelict look of The Hitcher in one engrossing character with iconic potential: a poor man's Batman whose visceral sense of justice is unmarred by aristocratic word-chewing and flashy gadgets. Well-supported by a cast of ultra-nasty villains and heroic hookers, he breezes through the narrative with his hand on the pump and the viscera of his adversaries all over his dirty clothes. That said, the title alone should give you a fairly accurate description of what to expect from the film, not in its literal connotation alone, but in its simplistic, straightforward and politically incorrect wording.

Hobo wishes to start anew. But he needs

to do a little cleaning first...

Face value

Frankly, while the film is highly entertaining, a delight for undiscriminating fans of gory violence, it doesn't have any further ambition. When I first read the synopsis, I immediately thought about Street Trash. And so I braced myself for an unapologetic milieu study that used black humor to highlight the desperate joie de vivre necessary to endure life in the gutter. But that was without taking into account the film's gorgeous cinematography, its surprising sense of social realism and tendency toward self-deprecation, which are nowhere to be found in Hobo.

Eisener's film is a lovingly crafted homage to both the exploitation cinema of the 1970s and the gore cinema of the 1980s. But beyond this crude, yet successful crossover of genres, it has little to offer in terms of artistic or intellectual depth. It is purely focused on fan service, which makes it refreshingly unpretentious, but also wholly limited. Everything on the screen has great face value, but from the moment you scratch the surface and try to find deeper meaning, you will be met with the coldness of interstellar void.

Although it shares Troma's knack for crafting overly nasty, intellectually inane villains, Hobo lacks the lighthearted, parodic tone that helps propel Kaufman's films near the realm of social satire. What's left are unidimensional, hardly memorable archetypes whose raison d'être is entirely limited to titillating our bloodlust and providing meaty obstacles on the protagonist's course. There are no hilarious stabs at municipal politics or juvenile nihilism in here, just an endless strand of clay pigeons succeeding each other under a rain of buckshot.

Using a gritty, grainy style of photography to circumvent the atrocities, the film uses disgusting violence in order to justify disgusting retaliation in a never-ending loop of immediate, simplistic causality. Thus, the only fun to derive from the film lies with one's own twisted sense of justice and enthusiasm for ruthless gore. But then again, the target audience has both of these qualities in spades.

Blowing up balls for justice

Street cleaning in a nutshell

Thankfully, the film is so fast-paced and full of nasty splatter that it hardly gives you time to breathe and reflect on the flimsiness of the narrative. It starts with an unnamed hobo on a train, crossing the border into Hopetown, which the locals have dubbed Scumtown, a much more adequate denomination for this urban hellhole. One of the first events witnessed by Hauer's character is a brutal street execution carried out by local crime kingpin "The Drake" and his two dim-witted sons Slick and Ivan. Their victim, Drake's brother, is stuck through a manhole with a cast-iron cover fastened around his head, then beheaded in front of a large crowd forced to cheer at gunpoint. After that, a scantily clad she-bum rushes in and starts dancing lasciviously over the geyser of blood.

After witnessing a number of such tasteless incidents, culminating in a particularly mean-spirited robbery in which a toddler is menaced at gunpoint, the protagonist abandons his dream of purchasing a lawnmower to start a landscaping business and buys a shotgun instead, with which he wreaks havocs on the many different types of criminals plaguing Hopetown, following the trail of bodies right up to The Drake. In the process, he befriends a warm-hearted prostitute who gets stuck in the crossfire when she attempts to help him exact justice. There are no subplots here, just a mean, literal and linear chronicle of the titular character's exploits, highlighted by frequently creative gore and some tame attempts at humor articulated around crude word plays and a cameo by popular Canadian show host George Stroumboulopoulos who hams it up as a newscaster brutally murdered on the air. As for any attempts at legitimate social critique, they are marred by an overly cartoony depiction of violence and a total lack of nuance in the characterization.

Beheading in 3-2-1...

Canadian genre fans unite!

Just with the description above, you should know instantly whether or not this film is your cup of tea. Even a mildly positive reaction should warrant a ticket for the ride, for there is no let-down following the initial street execution. There is actually an incremental progression in the brutality of the violence, which is sure to please even the most demanding of gorehounds. That said, I urge all Canadian genre fans to crowd the few theaters in which the film is shown nationwide. At the dawn of these umpteenth general elections, it will give you a rare chance to appreciate federal money well spent.

The reviewer for this week's Montreal Mirror opened his article with a statement to the effect that Hobo represents the most controversial use of Telefilm's money since David Cronenberg's Shivers in the late 70s. While a far cry from David's first commercial feature film, a venereal zombie film and a strong link in his unbroken chain of body horror films, Hobo delivers what every genre fans relishes: rhythm, gore and a total lack of morality. And it delivers all these things in stacks. Thus, you get blown-off heads, beheadings, broken limbs, hung orderlies, carbonized children, splattered hobos, hands stuck in lawnmowers, shotgun wounds to the stomach, bone shard impalements, neck-sawing, skate blade kicks, fuming electrocutions, cop killings, chest carving, genital explosions, all comprised in the short, 86-minutes runtime. Suffice it to say that this film is j-u-i-c-y, and it is quite unapologetic about it. Its Manichean outlook on justice and personal politics in the face of criminality actually help it stuff brutality with brutality, creating a turducken of gore, which becomes the perfect vehicle for the crafty special effects team at work here.

Getting your money's worth

From the moment you approach the box office and say: "One ticket for Hobo with a Shotgun", you should know where your money is going. Or at least, you should have a pretty fair idea of what to expect. That said, nobody who willingly decides to cross the threshold into the theater should be disappointed with the film. For Canadians, it's also a rare chance to see their tax money at work. And while not every taxpayer will agree with the filmmakers' usage of immoral ultra-violence, nobody can deny that they did a great job of giving the fans exactly what they want, which is what popular cinema is all about. Thus, while it is a social investment in monetary terms, Hobo gives us an instant return onscreen, in a vernacular language shared by all, rich and poor, Francophone and Anglophone, men and women. Truly, it is one of the very, very few good things to come out of Harper the First's Conservative government. But now, come May 2nd, it will be time for a new era of medieval obscurantism to begin. After that, our home horror films won't be on the screens anymore, but in the streets, where cops with stun batons will beat and jail 100-pounds hippies armed with cardboard signs in a tyrannical display of power that perfectly exemplifies the state of North-American democracy as a form of representative repression. Still, when corrupt heads of state start ruining your lives, you can always turn to the horizon and maybe, just maybe, a hobo with a shotgun will be there!

3/5: A relentless gorefest that gives you no time to reflect on its shallowness.

Footnote 02/14: Added half a star. Karim Hussain's over-saturated photography is just that good, and a nice way to create that vintage 70s look! 

Neighborhood Watch (2005)

Note: This review contains images of extreme gore. Please stop reading if you are easily offended by the sight of a man's hand probing his own insides. Otherwise, please enjoy.

Cheaply made but devilishly efficient, this rugged entry in the suburban horror sub-genre is a maelstrom of despair that engulfs your soul in a repugnant spiral of disillusionment that will leave broken and hollow. The weirdly excessive gore scenes showcased near the end are in it for a small part, but what really distinguishes this film from other such genre entries is its permeating ugliness. The characters, the sets, the situations, everything here shares an unfathomable crass quality that actually makes them all uneasy to look at. More importantly, Neighborhood Watch offers no safe haven to the viewer, no break. It is ugly from top to bottom. It is a prison that you will unlikely leave unscathed. And, distressing as it may be, it is a prison with airs of reality.

A prison with airs of reality:
the Zeecor corporation.

How disgusting is life?

Let us take care of the bullshit first. While the film boasts to be based on real events, it doesn't derive any form of realism from it. Besides, realism is rarely an asset in an horror film. What we have got here is a depressing semblance of reality. It's a narrative that could be conceived as plausible, but only in a very specific context of mental illness. The film's efficiency derives not from such considerations. It derives from an overwhelming, and somewhat artificial, insistence on the uglier aspects of daily life and our casual acceptance thereof. The problem is not with a certain undercurrent of madness plaguing American Southerners, as one is let to believe by the offensive ramblings of a nasty radio guru which the protagonist listens to day-in day-out, it is with the daily sacrifices we have to make in order to attain a prefabricated form of happiness, which the desert bungalow is synonymous with. It is also a film about the part everyone plays in the unhappiness of his neighbors and fellowmen. And while it hammers its point home with some shockingly repulsive imagery and a healthy dose of grotesque caricature, it never loses sight of the ball. In short, Neighborhood Watch is trash with a purpose.

The plot of the film involves newlyweds Bob and Wendi moving into a ghost town created by the nefarious Zeecor corporation, where Bob has just landed a job. Despite the decrepit aspect of the town and its senile population, the couple seems happy at first, enjoying the feeling of success one can derive from the ownership of a desert bungalow. But soon after their arrival, they become plagued by a mentally-disturbed neighbor named Adrian Trumbull, a man so evil and despicable as to elicit disgust from even the most forgiving of Christians. Annoyed with the couple having sex in his sterile, sexless town, the man does everything he can to intrude in their lives, appearing as a friend to be when he is actually akin to the antichrist. As a token of good will, he even offers his neighbors candy, which he has laced with powerful laxatives. After a while, during which Bob and Wendi try to ward Adrian off to no avail, he even poisons their water supply, sending them in a wicked spiral of sickness. But after many trials and tribulations, including many nasty scenes in the bathroom, Trumbull is defeated while performing some amateur surgery on himself.

Suburban dilemma: Unwanted
generosity vs panicked refusal.

Prefabricated towns, prefabricated villains
While it is quite easy to grasp the protagonists' terror, antagonist Adrian Trumbull remains a very problematic figure. Halfway between the casually intrusive neighbor and the demented psycho, he seems to be both a would-be realistic and a fantastically evil character. While his mild-mannered, slightly insistent relationship with the protagonists seems to imply nothing more than a clumsy attempt at dialogue, the overdetermined sets used to depict the inside of his house would seem to suggest a total loon. The dark, cluttered space where he spends his days, his chaotic collection of jars containing pickled body parts and poisons, the offensive radio chatter that hums in the air and the guy's nasty habit of eating the crusty bits of flesh surrounding a stitched-up wound on his hairy belly, all of these point squarely to an unrepentant madman. And while these somewhat generic indicators of madness contribute their fair share to the disturbing imagery of the film, they contrast with the more grounded, would-be realistic horror elements used in setting up the narrative. Most importantly, it makes Adrian to be a man so whacked out as to warrant some sort of characterization. Making him instead to be a simple consumer of radio drivel doesn't even start to explain his current situation. If you're still unsure about my words, then please be directed to the official website of the film in order to better bask in the atmosphere permeating Adrian Trumbull's house. What you will find is something far removed from the standard esthetics of the suburban horror film, where horror is hidden beyond the surface. What you will find is the endless multiplication of "horrific" surfaces, something akin to what had previously been done with John Doe's apartment in Se7en, but without as much relevance within the narrative. And while I feel the makers of this film should've expended on Adrian's background, I also feel that this could've been a self-defeating exercise as nothing could possibly be satisfactory in trying to explain his casual evilness. As it stands, the man is perhaps too much of a caricature, or a caricature that's just out of synch with the other caricatures contained in spades within the film.

I remember seeing this film the year it came out, but I also remember hating it. When trying to recall why, I can only think about the lame story structure and the somewhat redundant nature thereof. I also remember being underwhelmed by the gore after falling victim to the overblown publicity focused on supposed cases of hives and nervous breakdowns suffered by theater patrons during test screenings. I mean, if one were to put an unsuspecting housewife in front of this film, then maybe you would garner such pathological results. But seeing how I shared the screening with the hardened crowd of Fantasia (where only one person out of a sold-out crowd of 750 walked out of A Serbian Film), I should've known better and expect nothing in the way of transcendental gore. But being the explorer of extreme horror that I am, I still entertained a crazy hope fueled by my own emotional instability. And I was let down. Actually, it took a second screening, during one of my frequent moments of depression, for me to really understand what the film was truly about, namely everyday horror, and not extraordinary horror as I was first led to believe.

Extraordinary horror: Adrian
Trumbull probing his own insides.

Horror is in the desert bungalow
With the aggressive publicity campaign focused on the goriest, but also most overdetermined aspects of the film, the distributors of this film have failed to delineate the most horrific aspects thereof, namely the everyday ugliness to be found in the protagonist's occupation and the "dream house" which he has just bought with his candid wife. The arid, lawn-less exterior of the bungalow, its repulsive architecture and darkened interiors contribute much more to the horrific atmosphere permeating the film than the stuffy interiors of Adrian Trumbull's house, with its jars full of preserved body parts and poisons. Youthful dreams of ownership, moving up in the world, starting a family, these are all dirtied by the process of realizing that dream by selecting the cheapest package available, including corporate lodging in a ghost town filled with old people and the physical partaking in the environmental crimes committed by said corporation. Then, there's the possibility of ladder-climbing, but it involves the whoring of oneself in an effort to be extracted from the window-less depths of a bland office building. As disruptive as it may appear, the involvement of a psychotic neighbor hellbent on poisoning you is merely a supplementary horror thrown on an overcrowded canvas. Besides, the overdetermined imagery associated with the man's evil eventually falls flat but in the places where one can imagine him to be nothing more than an intrusive neighbor, which taps into the mundane aspects of horror that I praise here.

That said, despite the highly implausible surgery scenes, the overly aggressive tone of the radio preacher and the excessively cluttered shelves permeating the antagonist's lair, the whole thing plays out along terms familiar enough to make you share the protagonists' ordeal. Seeing how it revolves around everyday annoyances (such as a neighbor's annoying intrusiveness, trouble in the workplace and a fading sense of community), it will undoubtedly involve even the most level-headed viewer. There is no supernatural occurrences here, no vampire or alien next door, just the straightforward, highly intelligible reality of sickness. Hence, the power of diarrhea, hives, and stomachaches to better help the viewer partake in the action as a physical entity not impervious to sickness. The sneaky nature of chemical warfare (depicted as an expedient both for Adrian and the Zeecor corporation) takes a horrific dimension in the corporeality of the protagonists and their fellowmen (the viewers). As for the crumbling sense of community, it also affects us all on both sides of the screen. The isolation of the protagonists, their alienation with their neighbors, their vain attempt to mobilize people under the titular banner, all of this should also hit the viewer right at home, where all of our individual/familial bubbles are lined up contiguously without really touching or interpenetrating. Horror is thus produced not by introducing an horrific element within a homely world, but by highlighting (with recourse to a caricature) the horrific elements deeply ingrained in what should be a homely world.

Everyday horror: the desert
bungalow as dream house.

Deadly end in sight

Repackaged under the lame title Deadly End, Neighborhood Watch has left the festival scene for the video market without much of a fuss, the main reason being that it isn't your average horror film. It is a highly offensive piece of trash. Still, it is a very powerful, very depressing effort as it cultivates the darker aspects of a somewhat mundane reality. In my mind, this is a film not unlike Belgian export Ex-Drummer in the sense that I would both recommend you see it, but also stay away from it. Both these films are so repulsive in their depiction of everyday life as to completely depress you. But they do so for a purpose. They do so for you to look around for a moment, and think. Think about what it is for you to live your life as you do, and what it is for others to live their lives, then think about what it is you could do so that the bleakness shown in these movies is no more. I originally wanted to rate the film 3 out of 5, but as I was writing the present review, I felt a sort of icky feeling against my skin. I even shied away from a third viewing, knowing what to expect, but not exactly sure that I wanted to experience it... Such staying power is rare amongst casual genre films. And if you consider director Graeme Whifler's career, it is all the more impressive, seeing how he thus trades the silly one-liners of flat slasher film Dr. Giggles (which he penned) for corrosive satire, making Neighborhood Watch more than a simple video UFO, but a masterpiece in its own right.


3/5 Cheap, but very effective, this film successfully walks the fine line between satire and farce to create a very twisted meditation on the horrors of everyday life.

Footnote 02/14: Removed half a star from the rating. Got carried away again because of my depressed mindset at the time of writing this review.