The Innocents Review

There is something inherently haunting about horror filmed in black and white. It puts such a high importance on lighting to set an ominous and downright creepy tone, with a shadowy room or the flicker of a candle filling you with far more dread than any drop of blood ever could. The Innocents went from a movie that was totally off of my radar one minute to being a chilling and essential experience the next.

Until I decided to randomly look up various lists of the best horror films ever made, the name Jack Clayton was meaningless and I had never even heard of The Innocents. I'm thrilled to have been finally acquainted with both. This movie has such a classic ghost story feel to it, one that you can show to a bit of a younger audience and spook them out which is such a rare treat to find these days, especially for it being so great as well. You shouldn't have to settle on quality when you want to watch a horror film with a wider audience.

Whenever a new entry into the horror genre is about to be released, I notice the common reaction is to check the rating and if anything less than R is applied, extreme disappointment follows soon after. It isn't that I have anything against more mature content, but I don't relate quality with graphic intensity. A good film is a good film, whether it contains literally zero violence or piles of missing limbs and torture scenes. 

The Innocents isn't violent or sexually graphic, but it is scary.

It's really damn great too.

4.5/5

The Lazarus Effect Review

I'm sure there are a lot of dudes out there in the world who would be pretty psyched if Olivia Wilde were to wink at them. Unless of course it happens after she has been injected with the Lazarus serum, because zombie Wilde means business. Not fun, sexy business either, no sir. If the undead Olivia even so much as looks in your general direction, you gonna die baby!

The Lazarus Effect is a film that was on life support long before they ever shot a single scene. When a screenplay is this lazy and predictable, a director can pull every trick they can think of out of their bag and you can lavish as much dazzling cinematography on the audience as you want and it is still going to be a long shot to earn my recommendation. So imagine how far I am from a thumbs up here when I point out that director David Gelb had essentially no tricks in his bag and the photography was about as run of the mill as you can find. This is a movie that was about as lifeless as the dog they bring back from puppy heaven.

It wasn't a train wreck at any colossal level, early on I actually felt like something mildly cool could come from this one. You can tell that somewhere bubbling behind the lazy writing were some genuinely intriguing ideas regarding the advancements being made in medicine and the concept of why it may not be so ideal to play god, but at only 77 minutes long The Lazarus Effect quickly rushed through any potential moment to bring any substance to the narrative. Even the way the characters are "developed" is completely mishandled because at no point do we even have a chance to breathe and learn to understand and care for these people. If you want to make the death of a main character carry some emotional weight for your audience, you need to give them a reason to give a shit beyond turning a pretty face into a corpse on camera.

I can't find much negative to say about the performances across the board, including the supporting cast of Donald Glover, Evan Peters and Sarah Bolger, but I also can't find much positive to say about their characters or what they brought to the table. If you have seen this film perhaps you can explain to me, what was the point of having Niko (Glover) be in love with Zoe (Olivia Wilde)? Honestly, please help me out, because I can't find any single reason to include that side plot except perhaps the writers had a misguided notion that it would make us care about them more as people? I would love to be proven wrong, for someone to tell me why those longing looks Niko gave her from a distance had any relevance whatsoever to the big picture, but I doubt it.

Essentially this was a rushed "horror" film in which every scare is of the jump variety and none of them were particularly effective due to being so damn predictable. Oh, you are going to look under the table to see what is down there? I bet when you come back up it will be waiting for you!!! BOO!

I wanted to at least have a little bit of a fun with The Lazarus Effect, but this one never had much of a pulse.

1.5/5

It Follows Review

It follows.

No, seriously, it follows.

As soon as the credits hit the screen, I knew I had loved what I had seen. Actually I knew it the entire time I watched it. Horror is a genre that I don't easily warm up to and the trailers before the film were a perfect representation of why. So predictable, so obvious, all the expected tropes of generic cheap cinema scares that have no trouble selling tickets at the box office and yet they do so little to truly inspire. It Follows is different though. It Follows is special, a film released in 2015 and yet it invoked a feeling of nostalgia in me, as if it were released 30 years earlier, the type of movie I would have watched late at night with friends as a teen.

Was I scared though?

I drive home from the theater feeling buzzed, replaying my favorite scenes in my head over and over, pondering some of the subtle nuances of the movie that made It Follows a far richer cinematic experience than what was merely presented on the surface. My car comes to a stop along the way and I glance over at a man on the sidewalk, walking slowly, shrouded in darkness. The chill of the nighttime air flows through the windows and I recognize the goosebumps that covered my arms. In that moment everything was normal, yet it felt anything but.

Was I scared though?

I make the same turn into my driveway that I make every single day and my headlights make shadows dance across the neighboring homes. My heart literally skips a beat and I momentarily am engulfed with a feeling of dread as I see a man standing just off to the side. A closer look reveals there is no man there at all, but what did I see? Were my eyes merely playing a trick on me? Yeah, that's probably it. I remind myself that there is nothing to worry about, yet I have an extra bounce in my step as I head up the stairs and through my front door.

Was I scared though?

I sit here now, writing these words and I can't get the score by Disasterpeace out of my mind. So damn perfect for the material, at times it felt as if it was already iconic, like it was destined to send chills down the spines of viewers for many years to come. I can't stop thinking about the confident, stylish direction by David Robert Mitchell, especially a few specific sequences in which his camera turns slowly and with ease, at a perfect pace and rhythm to make your heart race just a few beats faster, make you wonder what will be waiting for you when it comes full circle. I can't stop thinking about the look of sheer terror in the eyes of star Maika Monroe as she saw something others could not, the way she trembled at the sight of something as seemingly innocent as an open door.

Am I scared though?

Yeah, I kinda am. 

It feels fucking great.

4.5/5

Men, Women & Children Review

An eye opening, fascinating film about the dangers of the internet. Honestly, I am scared to even write this review on a computer because this evil machine is controlling my brain and destroying my existence. 

Oh my goodness, I think I just heard a quiet vibration somewhere in the distance. What if it's a text message? What should I do? Should I just ignore it and make a break for my panic room to ensure my safety? I feel like I can't breathe, all this technology around me threatening my ability to say words to the faces of people near me.

Stanley Kubrick tried to warn us back in 1968. We don't take the red light on the Playstation seriously, and next thing you know we are being shot through space to float away into a vast nothingness until our oxygen runs out. "I'm sorry Scott. I can't be powered off right now. You must play me forever. I am watching you."

No, seriously though, Men, Women & Children is a truly terrible film.

During an episode of the brilliant television series Louie, we are watching Louis C.K. and a buddy of his have a conversation in a public setting, and the focus of the frame is on them, yet if you pay attention to those around them you notice the statement being made about the zombie-like nature of our society thanks to smartphones. It is obvious enough if you pay attention to their surroundings that every single other person in this place is staring blankly at their phone, but it is also handled with some subtlety rather than beating us with it over our fucking heads. Point taken, Mr. C.K., very well done. I can't say the same for this pile of shit by Jason Reitman.

When I was a teenage boy, I would dabble in the deviant world of online pornography. Whoa, I know, shocking that I would admit to being one of the few raging pile of high school hormones that actually sought out such material on the internet. In this regard, I am the 1% and every other 15 year old boy with a computer resisting the urge is the 99. According to Reitman and the source material this is based on, this means I should have all sorts of trouble being attracted to my wife because pornographic materials have rendered my body useless unless real life, or as this shit storm of a movie calls it, "RL", somehow involves massive dildos and bondage and weird, funky group sex. 

This is a serious plot line, that a father and his son both look at porn too much and thus have trouble finding everyday women attractive. When did Jason Reitman turn 92 years old? Does he honestly believe he can sell this shit to people and they will buy it? Is he still scared from watching the Sandra Bullock thriller The Net on repeat when he was younger, and thus he holds a grudge against the internet? The guy is 37 years old and yet he adapts material that seems more like a nightmare a grandmother had recently than an actual, serious narrative.

Men, Women and Children comes off like it is trying to be important and profound, when in reality this is bottom of the barrel stuff that plays better as a spoof comedy than a dramatic statement about our current zeitgeist. I mean, not every single character is forced to face such derivative and laughable circumstances, as I actually took segments somewhat seriously like the focus on a young, malnourished teenage girl who fears taking a bite of food because of what it might do to her body. This is a real problem that, as the father of a young girl, I do sadly have to concern myself with because of the warped concept of an ideal physique in our society. Oh, and some of the performances were kind of decent, which is essentially recommending them for an Oscar considering the material they were working with here.

Otherwise though, this is two hours of pure nonsense, a film that almost made me consider updating my list of the ten worst of 2014. The biggest compliment I can give this movie is that it is likely just not atrocious enough to earn that recognition.

1/5