Marsha Marsha Marshes

 

I will give almost any Shudder release that sounds mildly intriguing a chance...particularly if said film is short.

Quick Plot: Pria and Ben are microbiologists vying for the same university promotion. Tensions are high, but they have to team up for a weekend in the titular marshes to collect some samples, with undergrad Will tagging along to assist. Along the way, Pria runs afoul of a local couple who don't take kindly to scientists clogging their hunting grounds.

That turns out to be the least of their problems. Around the campfire, Ben tells Will and Pria a ghost story about a Wolf Creek-ish spirit that haunts Australia's wilderness. The next morning, the group awakens to discover something very wrong. 

Just don't ask me to explain what it actually is. 

The Marshes is a strange little movie. Clocking in at under 90 minutes, you'd expect a fairly tight package. The result is anything but. 

Writer/director Roger Scott has a decent touch with actors and a beautiful handle on his visuals. Mostly shot in broad daylight, The Marshes (both the film and literal marshes) look great. The story...less so.

I like ambiguity when done well. The Marshes does not do this well. It throws a dozen threats at us and never actually explains which ones are even happening. There's a supernatural monster...or just a human hunter? The environment may be trapping them in circles...or they may just have a very, very bad sense of direction. 

For scientists, our characters are excessively stupid. While the actors are doing their best (particularly Dafna Kronental) it's hard for us to root too hard for their survival when they're so very bad at it. And when we don't even understand what's hunting them. 

High Points

I'm always in favor of daylight horror, and if nothing else, The Marshes has a nice amount of it

Low Points

This is a movie where someone outruns a sadistic killer only to immediately sit down, look at his friends, and say, "I'm going to go over there to poop now." It is one of the dumbest things I have ever seen happen in a horror movie, and I have, without exaggeration, watched thousands of not JUST horror movies, but very dumb ones

Lessons Learned

Science is the best way to disappoint your parents

Knife-wielding pig hunters are scarier than most ghosts

A grad school education will tell you that it's not normal for a compass to spin like a wheel of fortune

Rent/Bury/Buy

Sigh. I was rooting for The Marshes. It was nicely shot, decently acted, and seemed to demonstrate some promise for its writer/director. Unfortunately, the script is a mess. I found this film incredibly unsatisfying.

A Very Long Weekend

 

In the year 2024, it seems pretty official that '90s horror, once despised by genre fans, has aged in a fairly charming and enjoyable way. 

Maybe we just need another decade for the grisly aughts to find the same redemption. 

Quick Plot: Rob is a successful prosecutor taking his French artist girlfriend Pia on a romantic getaway. Their destination? Fishing in a rather rudimentary rented boat through the marshes of Australia. Confident Rob wants to do some exploring, while reluctant Pia is quickly proven right in her instincts: they're lost, it's pouring, and the only shelter nearby makes Leatherface's adobe look like Graceland. 

Pia and Rob quickly end up on the bad side of weed-growing brothers Jimmy and Brett, but the worst is still to come with the return of their dad, Poppy. Egos are bruised, baby kangaroos are stewed, and some very rusty implements are put to use.

Storm Warning came out in 2007, which was four entries into the Saw series. Horror was pretty ugly at the time, and I mean that literally. It was the era of including the phrase "grisly violence" under your R-rating in your red band trailer to make sure genre fans had a reason to care. 

As you might guess, this isn't my favorite mood of film. That being said, Storm Warning, with its Aussie bonafides, feels far more justified in its visceral darkness than some of its American counterparts because at its heart, it's Ozsploitation. Screenwriter Everett De Roche penned the story sometime in the '80s following his down under classics Patrick and Long Weekend. While the actual filmmaking feels of the aughts, there is a throwback quality that works.

For director Jamie Blanks, Storm Warning feels slightly out of character. He's better known for the fun twist on late '90s slashers with Urban Legend and the campy Valentine. Storm Warning is meaner, but there are still some touches of dark humor. This is the kind of movie that you can smell, which is both a compliment and a warning.

High Points

Storm Warning has a small cast, but each member delivers incredibly well to elevate the whole film, with Nadia Fares standing out and holding it all together

Low Points

It's just...you know...this is a fairly disgusting and unpleasant film

Lessons Learned

The French are lovable for their ability to cook and be cool

Something they apparently don't teach in Australian law school: if being held captive by a violent band of outlaws, it's best practice to not tell them that you're a lawyer

Even weed-growing dirty Australian backwoods criminals are smart enough to not leave their keys in the car

Rent/Bury/Buy

Storm Warning came out in one of the least enjoyable eras of horror, but for what it is, it's quite good. That doesn't mean you'll ever be in the mood to watch it. Still, when you crave this very specific, rather unpleasant mood of horror, this will satisfy. Find it on Amazon Prime. 

Alison, It's Your Birthday

Dear readers and lovers of all things horror, I should hope that by this point in our odd internet relationship, I don't have to still pitch the benefits of subscribing to Shudder. It remains such a wonderful destination for the genre, both new and old, hosting titles we've all long loved and even better, those we've never heard of. 

Their biggest recent release (literally; it's 3 1/2 hours long) is Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror. It's a must-watch for any genre fan, shining thoughtful discussion on both well-known titles like The Wicker Man and a whole batch of more obscure work previously unavailable on general home media. 

But it gets better! Dozens of titles referenced in the doc are also now streaming on Shudder, which makes perfect sense (though try telling that to other streaming sites doing similar work). I'll warn you that I've definitely fallen down the grassy hole of the genre, so expect the next several weeks to include a LOT of forest haunts. 

First up: 1981's Alison's Birthday, a folk horror so folksy it has its own tiny Stonehenge. 

Quick Plot: A trio of teenagers are having fun with their homemade ouija board until things turn dark. Chrissy is possessed by a spirit from the other side with an important message for young Alison: don't return home on your 19th birthday, because Mirne is after you.

Alison doesn't know a Mirne, and before the night is over, she'll no longer know a Chrissy. An unusual breeze blows a bookcase on her friend, killing her instantly.

Three years later, Alison has moved away from her suburban hometown, eking out a living at a record store while she dates the charming Peter. Aunt Jenny, who raised her after her parents died in a car accident, calls Alison begging her to come home for her fated 19th birthday. Sure, it's not an exciting age, but Uncle Dean is dying, and Jenny has big party plans for their last family celebration.

Peter and Alison head home, and while Jenny and Dean are nice enough, Alison quickly remembers the many reasons she moved far away. There's something off about the place where she grew up. Maybe it's the non-suspicious replica of Stonehenge hiding in the backyard or the Minnie Castevet-ish tonics Aunt Jenny is always pushing down Alison's throat. Perhaps it's the bizarre nightmares now haunting Alison, visions of ritualistic sacrifice causing her to toss and turn as her 102-year-old great grandmother wheels herself into Alison's bedroom to watch her sleep. 

Yes, you really can't ever go home again.

Written and directed by Ian Coughlan, Alison's Birthday is a genuine treat. A sad, haunting little taste of something unnerving, but a satisfying bite nonetheless. It somehow feels both oddly familiar and completely fresh. The story is smartly small, focusing so finely on poor Alison's fate, wisely fleshing out Peter just enough so that we're equally invested in his mission to save her. 

There are serious Hereditary vibes circling the themes, and I'd be shocked if a VHS rental of this movie didn't imprint on a young Ari Aster. I'm also fairly shocked this movie hasn't been discussed more over the years. Maybe it was its lack of easy availability or small scale: ultimately, this is a very intimate story about one young woman's fate. Let's face it: that type of material doesn't always connect with a general fanbase who would rather see women in a very different light.  

Make no mistake: there is a lot of pain in Alison's Birthday, and a mounting sense of sad, inescapable dread. The ending packs an incredibly powerful punch that I won't forget. 

This is good stuff.

High Points

One of the key factors in making Alison's Birthday work is how the characters actually address the far-fetched supernatural possibilities at play. Alison is logical but dubious, and Peter, as he becomes deeper and deeper involved in solving the mystery, enlists the aid of his professional psychic pal. She in turn doesn't speak about these cults as if they're an ear to the underworld, but is very clear that Peter needs to know WHY and HOW they think the way they do if he has any hope of saving his girlfriend. It's an important distinction that helps ground the chaos

Low Points

It's the era, and that's that, but some of Alison's Birthday's score occasionally dates itself with such an electronic action-packed sound that doesn't quite align with the old-world eeriness of its folk horror roots

Lessons Learned (The Oz Edition)

Lyle was not a popular surname in 1980s Australia

All Australian babies are born with blue eyes

Pagan rituals down under call for the finest formalwear

Rent/Bury/Buy

I adored Alison's Birthday, and would be shocked if you didn't too. Go get it.  

We All Have Nightmares of Stage Fright

There are LOT of films with the title "Nightmares," which makes me want to use 1980s's Nightmares' alternate title, Stage Fright, except I've already reviewed TWO movies with that title and you know what? I'm just confused now.

Quick Plot: Young Cathy is supposed to be fast asleep in the back seat of the car en route to visit Grandma, but the little girl wakes up just in time to see her mother making out with a man in the passenger seat who is in no way her father. Her shock causes an accident that throws her mother through the windshield. Confused and well-intentioned Cathy pulls her mother back inside, accidentally slitting her throat with broken glass shards.

Some years later, Cathy is a talented but nightmare-plagued actress who goes by the name Helen Selleck. After accepting a key role in an experimental play directed by one of Australia's most prominent theater kings, she hesitantly begins a romantic relationship with Terry, her soap opera bred costar. 

As the rehearsal process begins, a rash of glass shard-based murders follows. While they seem specifically based on Helen's wrath, all the killings are done in a sort of POV style that never shows us the identity of the murderer(ess). 

Until, well, SPOILER, I think maybe?

...we have it confirmed at the end that yes, yeah obviously, duh, it's Helen.

So obviously, Nightmares isn't necessarily the cleanest of low budget Ozsploitation slashers to now air in grainy Amazon Prime glory. The film seems to hold back on Helen's wrath as if it hadn't decided whether the killer's identity should be a mystery or not, only to dump it on us at the end as if we knew all along. It's...strange.

As is most of Nightmares really, which is why it's extremely ridiculous fun. Directed with a clear hatred towards highbrow critics by John Lamond, Nightmares is at its best when it's playing with the flamboyant bitchiness of the theater world, from its ascot clad director who insults his cast Shakespearean level language to the bisexual critic who flaunts his influence with relish. The actual horror is muddled in its execution and whatever Hitchcockian points the film wanted to explore with its sex-scared lead gets lost amongst the shards of glass and randomly inserted T&A, but Nightmares remains, if nothing else, an awkwardly entertaining good time.

High Points

As someone who spent a fair amount of time around theater people, I appreciate how Nightmares finds some snarky ways to target some of their more obnoxious habits (cut to Emily's college memory of being publicly shamed for introducing myself at an audition with "I'll be doing a monologue from Macbeth")

Low Points

You know, the fact that the story seems more confused than the lead character

Lessons Learned

Surviving a brutal car accident can change a lot of things about you, including eliminating any trace of your Australian accent

Never whistle or wear green in a theater in front of obnoxiously superstitious theater people

There's no such thing as a one hour call

Rent/Bury/Buy

Nightmares is not by any conventional definition a good movie. It's a messy, weirdly shot oddity that nevertheless entertained me for the right and wrong reasons. Dive in when you want some 1980 era Aussie sleaze. 

You Call That a Kangaroo? THIS Is a Kangaroo

It hardly seems like a full decade has passed since the success of a little movie called Saw signaled a change in theatrical horror. After the latter half of the '90s brought us mostly disappointing Scream knockoffs starring pretty WB Network twentysomethings who never met an R they couldn't PG-13, a new generation of filmgoers eagerly welcomed James Wan and Leigh Whannell's more mean-spirited (and far more blood covered) indie hit.

What this meant for the rest of the industry was that uncompromisingly gruesome violence was the new self-aware slasher. Like it or loathe it, the term 'torture porn' became shockingly household, especially after the success of Eli Roth's meta(ish) Hostel.

Filmed in Australia and loosely based on recent events, Greg McLean's Wolf Creek was quickly targeted by critics (the late great Roger Ebert and David Edelstein among them) as the epitome of this new and cruel subgenre. The fact that it had its wide release opening day on Christmas in the U.S. didn't help matters. Whether or not Wolf Creek fits the much debated categorization of torture porn, it's still hard to argue that it was one of the more brutal representatives.

Also, as some would say, one of its best.

Wolf Creek wasn’t a game changer, but the film was well-made enough to catch many a horror fan’s attention. Some eight years later, McLean apparently found some inspiration to pick up where he left off.

Quick Plot: A pair of jerky highway cops pull over a junky truck going decidedly under the speed limit. While their ticket-happy attitudes aren’t that admirable, they don’t quite warrant being shot in the head and/or burned alive.

Ah, the outback.

Mick Taylor is back in action, luring tourists to their extremely painful rape and death. We meet a pair of attractive young German backpackers who seem primed for the next 90 minutes of our time, only to instead (MILD SPOILER) bow out early and make way for Paul, a British university student who sort of resembles a Shia Labeouf with more presumed respect for musical theater.

Essentially, what we have here is Wolf Creek...again. Only this time, there are CGI kangaroos.

In 2005, Greg McLean’s Wolf Creek was a refreshing entry into the horror scene. Sure, it stuck to fairly well-explored territory (attractive young people lured to their horrible deaths by an extremely powerful and charismatic sadist) but its execution was sharp enough that the film rose above its (if you want to say it) 'torture porn' brethren. McLean took his time skillfully building up his characters with nearly an hour's worth of seemingly mundane plotting, making it all the more jarring when they found themselves cowering at the hands of the outstandingly terrifying John Jarratt. There were minor twists on the typical slasher formula (the order of deaths, for example, violating what 40 years of genre cinema has standardized) to keep you guessing, along with the beautifully open and mysterious character that was the Australian outback.

I don't know what I wanted from a film called Wolf Creek 2, but I'm pretty sure what McLean made will be, for some, everything they hoped for. Jarratt's back with even more screen time to chew and spit out, this time leaning a little more towards latter day Freddy Krueger spouting wisecracks and puns as he destroys his prey. We are once again treated to some bait 'n switch victims, with plenty of innocent bystanders taking the brunt. Mick Taylor continues his personal war on tourism and reveals, probably to the glee to many, his Martyrs-like underground lair complete with an entire city's worth of tortured souls.

For me, this was far less exciting than it sounds.

McLean is, let it not be argued, good at making movies. He shoots his outback setting with admirable grandeur and terror, and paces his action in a way that feels quick but not rushed. It's just that for me, Wolf Creek 2 was just not a tale that I could invest in. I'd seen it before, just without the CGI kangaroos.

I could probably have gone on living without the CGI kangaroos.

High Points

Much like the first Wolf Creek, this film’s eagerness to keep you guessing about the identity of your final girl keeps the action interesting

Low Points

I normally love John Jarratt and thought his Mick Taylor was something truly special in Wolf Creek, but here, he just feels a little too much of a wisecracking jokester. Sure, he’s still doing terribly violent things to innocent people, but how many corpses laying around an endless dungeon can you pass by before it just feels like overkill?

Lessons Learned

Australian cops are also offended by the term 'pig'

Know your Australian folk songs. Love your Australian folk songs.

First rule of the outback: never ever stop

The second rule of the outback: never go there

Rent/Bury/Buy

If you loved Wolf Creek, there is little reason you won’t find some enjoyment from Wolf Creek 2. If you liked Wolf Creek and were hoping to see something new, well, CGI kangaroos are, I guess, new. The film left me rather cold, but it's hard to argue with McLean's skill behind the camera. I’d much rather see him explore new territory with his next film, but as horror sequels go, one generally expects much worse.

Is It Monday Yet?

In case my eagerness to insert Frogs or Empire of the Ants into any unrelated conversation has gotten past you, I really, really really, really really really, and did I mention really? love the strange pocket of genre cinema known as Nature Strikes Back. Whether we’re dealing with two-story high chickens or Leslie Nielson wrestling a bear bare-chested, there’s just something about animals banding together to take us silly opposable thumb wielders down that never fails to make me smile.

Colin Eggleston’s Long Weekend (with a script from Patrick scribe Everett de Roche) is best described as the arthouse interpretation of what is otherwise considered a fairly silly (yet incredibly enjoyable) batch of films. Think of it as Day of the Animals That Are Afraid of Virginia Woolf.

Quick Plot: Marcia and Peter are an incredibly unhappy married couple with some disposable income and a lot of harmful secrets. To maybe mend some of their troubles, they begrudgingly embark upon a small road trip to what they expect to be a secluded beach located deep into the forests of Australia. Though Marcia would rather be basking in the comfort of a five-star hotel, Peter insists on lugging his expensive camping gear and chubby dog Cricket for one of those manly back-to-nature vacations that only rich people can actually take.

The ride there is not without its difficulty. Peter receives some strangely contradictory information at a local gas station that seems to be urging him away from his destination, although it’s the brutal running-over-of-a-kangaroo that sets an eerie tone. As news reports drop hints about bird attacks and Eggleston’s camera glares ominously at wayward wombats (band name trademark pending), we get the increasing sensation that nature isn’t crazy about these bickering humans.

Neither are we. Ever so slowly, Marcia and Peter reveal some of the reasons for their coldness towards each other, including infidelity and unwanted abortion. Throughout it all, Marcia seems to share our sentiment that something in this natural paradise wants them out. A sea cow (yes, it’s apparently a thing) washes up onshore. Peter gets Fabio’d by a giant seagull. 

Harpoons shoot on their own. A grime coated Barbie doll with Marcia’s haircut ominously shows up naked as Marcia sunbathes a few feet away. 

Something is off, and perhaps, the film surmises, deservedly so, as we witness Peter litter and nonchalantly chop down a tree while Marcia sprays pesticide at innocent ants. Their disregard for the outdoors is noted.

Long Weekend is a supremely strange film, one that sort of uses the guise of Nature Strikes Back to serve up a far more haunting story about a toxic relationship. Although we do get hints that animals are misbehaving elsewhere in the country, the two-character thrust of the film could almost lead you to believe all these seemingly ‘unnatural’ natural acts are actually part of our leads’ unraveling psyches. Certainly the fate of one character seems, albeit unclearly, to be more an act of human than god or goose. 

Some might find it pretentious, especially since the film is often categorized alongside much lighter fare like Food of the Gods. This is a horror movie in the way that Picnic At Hanging Rock is a horror movie: something supernatural is at work, but that’s ultimately just an excuse. The horror exists between a man and woman who seem to derive more pleasure in hurting their partner than loving them, and yet, as Peter points out so pointedly to Marcia, as clear as it is that the love is gone, the need for one another will probably never die. These people have ruined each other, and therefore, who else can take them?

Long Weekend isn’t shy about its metaphors (re: broken egg), but Eggleston makes them work by creating such a haunting and unusual mood through his depiction of nature. From both an audio and visual point of view, Long Weekend is incredibly atmospheric. Once you plop the saga of Peter and Marcia inside such a landscape, the results are bound to be intense.

High Points
Enough can’t be said about the look of the film, lovingly captured by director of photography Vincent Monton. In an age of forced perspective effects or artful editing around ever putting an animal in the same frame as a human, Monton finds ways to use close shots of creatures to hauntingly brilliant effect

John Hargreaves and Briony Behets have an uphill battle in playing two extremely unlikable characters, and credit must go to both for making such strong commitments 

Without spoiling, let me say that I adored everything about the ending of this film

Low Points
Well, the thing is that the very nature of Long Weekend feels like an uncomfortably long weekend where you ended up stuck tagging along as a third wheel to the most miserably married couple in Australia. So this isn’t exactly a fun romp, which can, you know, be a bit of a drag

Lessons Learned
A domesticated pet is, to the natural animals of the wildness, something of an uncle tom

Whatever you do, do not feed the possums

It’s not smart to leave your dog home alone unsupervised for three days, but when all is said and done, it might be preferable to spending a dreadful weekend in your company

Rent/Bury/Buy
Remade in 2008, Long Weekend is something truly unusual and well worth a quiet night of watching. The Synapse released DVD includes a fascinating commentary track and photo still gallery with an audio interview of the late Hargreaves (which comes with a spoiler warning, something I find endearingly adorable). White it won’t give you that fun beer & friends party night feeling like Frogs, Long Weekend is an eerie descent into marital hell that just so happens to be spoken in the language of animals amuck. Give it a try.

And watch your back. A koala might be doing the same.