From the Shelf: Arang (2006, Ahn Sang-hoon)
Acquired: April of ‘07 as a review screener from the sadly-defunct Tartan Films.
Seen before?: Once - May 7th, 2007.
I covered most anything that’s worth covering in my Blogcritics review of this well-worn ghost movie, though it’s probably worth mentioning that the line of dialogue cited in the review (“It’s better to meet a ghost than a pervert”) more or less serves as a keystone to the entire film. Perversity and rape keep popping up as the film rolls on, making the thing seem like a long Korean knockoff of “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit” (or, as I prefer to call it, “Law and Order: The All-Rape Edition”). Doesn’t make the film any better, but I figured I’d at least bring it up.
Up next: The reason I got a DVD player…
Horror Challenge entry #17-#22: Quick words to catch up
I think Adam is gonna whup me this year, unless I go bugfuck nuts next week. I’ve gotten caught up in other things. (I only got in two — TWO! — films this past week. I suck.) Anyway, here’s some brief thoughts on films I haven’t written about yet:
#16: Thirst (1979, Rod Hardy) Takes the class metaphor implicit in Browning’s Dracula and runs all the way home with it, creating a system wherein a group of privileged bloodsuckers descended from nobility (the lead, a woman the clan is trying to coerce into their way of life, is a relative of Countess Bathory) sustain their hungers via controlled blood farming and exploitation of semi-willing donors. As both a slashing metaphor for the allure of moral compromise as a path to financial gain and as a unique, institutionally bright take on the vampire genre, it’s solid stuff. Good B-movie cast too, with Henry Silva, Robert Thompson (from Patrick) and David Hemmings among the featured players. Shame, then, that lead actress Chantal Contouri is the weak link — while she handles the dialogue scenes and any bit of business that requires her to play haughty, she’s far more awkward when attempting to express states of extreme emotional distress. Which dampens much of her character’s arc.
#17: It’s My Party and I’ll Die if I Want To (2007, Tony Wash) No-budget spam-in-a-haunted-house flick showcases some pretty neat dimestore FX ingenuity. (Tom Savini has a cameo as an electrician, implicitly sanctifying the filmmakers’ efforts with his mere presence.) That’s about all it showcases, though: the filmmaking is rudimentary, the actors are mediocre, the characters are mostly obnoxious. Wash doesn’t do anything you can’t also find in The Evil Dead, Night of the Demons or any other film in this genre, really; you can’t fault the enthusiasm, though, and it looks like this was at least fun to make. So there’s that.
#18: The Uninvited (2009, Charles & Thomas Guard) Tries hard to maintain a semblance of fidelity to its source material… so much so that it ends up feeling like an imperfect wax simulacrum. There’s a far more interesting movie in here, one about the painful and awkward dynamic of resentment between teenagers and those they perceive as intruders into their carefully-composed familial worlds; this intriguing film, alas, is thrown over for tired shocks involving dead kids.
#19: Friday the 13th (2009, Marcus Nispel) Aren’t these things supposed to be, you know, fun? A humorless, grim version of this series was about the last thing the world needed, but fuck it — this is the 21st century, and the classic slasher has no place in the era of slickly aesthetized torture. So here he is, your ‘roided-up and angry as fuck Runnin’ Jason, as emblematic of the mean-spirited film that spawned him as Classic Jason is of his more mechanically goofy outings. Has exactly one inspired moment (Willa Ford’s death scene, a neat little symphony of cause and effect as related to aquatic breasts), and given the film surrounding it, I’m tempted to think of it as a happy accident.
#20: Count Yorga, Vampire (1970, Bob Kelljan) Robert Quarry cuts a striking figure as an ancient vampire — his seedy, weary elegance gives the impression of a man hiding something and wanting you to know that he’s hiding something, that he considers you beneath him and he’s only just holding his poisonous contempt in check. He’s a sight better than the film, really, which plays out like a cross between a superhero origin story and a J-horror discovery narrative. There’s a lot of meandering and time spent wandering around, reiterating things that should be plainly obvious… until, starting at the first meeting between Quarry’s Count Yorga and Roger Perry in the distaff Van Helsing role, turning as it does into a barbed war of words to rival anything in Inglourious Basterds, Kelljan abruptly kicks this shit into high gear. The propulsive third act forgives a lot of this film’s sins. I have it on good authority that the sequel dispenses with this film’s faults. Which makes me kinda excited.
#21: Paranormal Activity (2009 Oren Peli) If Peli had succeeded in drumming up any sympathy for the two characters here, I might be siding with this scrappy flick’s champions. But he didn’t. Rarely have I more wanted to shove myself through the screen and smack a couple of faces into sense. So fuck this undeniably effective but exasperating video wonder.
#22: Blood: The Last Vampire (2009, Chris Nahon) Remember in Kiss of the Dragon when Jet Li fought those two giant blonde guys? That was awesome. Nahon shoulda quit while he was ahead.
