We're Opening Doors!

 

As a 44-year-old, I'm not exactly sure when I was supposed to have learned about liminal spaces. Obviously, it's a big thing! Backrooms? Kids love these backrooms!

I'm still trying to figure out what they are. 

I think today's film lives in this universe. But I don't know, because I'm rather old. 

Quick Plot: Brian is filming his graffiti artist pal Emily at work in an abandoned building when she discovers a perfectly clean white door standing in the middle of rubble. She enters, only to disappear as Brian spots some kind of red-eyed create inside.

One month later, filmmaker pals Sam and Ash discover the footage online and decide to investigate for their next documentary project. They start by interviewing Brian, who fears the worst. That doesn't stop the women from finding the door and bringing it to their very own apartment.

At first, Sam and Ash are still convinced it's all a trick. By the second door opening, they realize they're very, very wrong.

Something is happening on the other side. There are dead loved ones, chatty Malteses, and mirrors that are not quite mirrors. After post-it'ing out all the possibilities, the women decide their only real option is to go inside. 

Armed with their cell phones, they discover a sort of children's play area with shades of Squid Game's production design. Signs guide them to free hugs dispensed by a giant stuffed panda...who then reveals spidery tentacles and chases them outside. 

Back in the real world, Ash and Sam team up with college professor Innis, a specialist in these kinds of altered realities. He helps lead them to some important conclusions: these doors are gateways to other dimensions (obviously) but more importantly, the person entering has some sway over its design. 

That's important when these places might require some kind of human sacrifice.

At barely 80 minutes, Hostile Dimensions wastes little time plunging us into its weird little worlds. Writer/director Graham Hughes, with some great help from lead actors Annabel Logan and Joma West, nails his unique tone. Hostile Dimensions is horror with an undercurrent of comedy that somehow works so much better than my description would probably have you believe. 

By this point in time, found footage is a familiar genre that still remains incredibly tricky to pull off well. Hostile Dimensions manages to succeed with an intriguing story, natural actors, and a willingness to embrace the absurd. 

High Points

I love a short movie, and I love a short movie even more when it ends and I want more

Low Points

While I was intrigued by one of our main character's pretty big choices in the end, I did feel (maybe because of the 80 minute runtime) that we didn't quite get to a point where I understood it

Lessons Learned

When something tells you it's dangerous, you should believe it

A talking dog is scary in any size

There's not much of an audience for stories about boutique teddy bear manufacturers

Rent/Bury/Buy

I had a great time with Hostile Dimensions. It's as unnerving as it is funny as it is, simply, very strange. Find it on Shudder.

Making a Splash

After a decade of complaining about the bland murkiness of found footage horror, it's strange to realize I kind of ... miss them. 

Quick Plot: Like any attractive white 20something couple, Tina and Ben are eager vloggers pumping out videos where they investigate haunted historical sites. Ben is far more into the metrics than Tina, who'd rather just enjoy the history with a glass of wine.

I'm with you, Tina.

Bummed by their lack of views, the couple heads to a remote part of France to scuba dive through an abandoned submerged facility. Unfortunately, the lakeside area is now a tourist attraction but thankfully (or not), a local named Pierre knows a far better off-the-map spot where an entire house is fully intact underwater.

With 61 minutes and 22 seconds of potential air supply, Ben and Tina dive down and float through a shockingly well-preserved mansion decorated with both Christian and satanic icons. Their footage gets quite a boost when they discover a couple chained and masked, clearly having been tortured to death and left as terrifying aquatic lawn ornaments. 

And of course, just as they decide to turn back to shore, the house decides it would rather keep them there. 

Written and directed by the Inside team of Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo, The Deep House is a found-ish footage haunted house story with a great premise and some tight execution. Inside was a game-change for horror, bringing French extremity to the forefront. Like most genre fans, I was pretty impressed at its debut, though a rewatch a few years back left me thinking some of its style hadn't aged overly well. 

Who knows how I'll feel about The Deep House in 15 years, but today, I dub it a success. Underwater stories are always going to have some natural built-in tension, but they can also be murky, losing some of the actual watchability due to the limitations of filming in aquatic conditions (yes 47 Meters Down, I'm looking at you). The Deep House manages to show us exactly what we need to see while teasing what's just out of our characters' reach. It's exactly as it should be. 

High Points

The concept of "haunted house under the sea" is pretty spectacular, but the details also go a long way. I don't want to spoil them, but let's say that the way our ghosts exist and move in this plain is perfectly strange and fitting

Low Points

At this point, it's basically a given that any leading male character in a found footage horror film is going to be awful. Actor James Jagger is perfectly fine as Ben, but not surprisingly, Ben is pretty much the worst. You could do better Tina. 

Lessons Learned

You don't go viral by drinking vino

The trashier a hotel looks form the outside, the fancier the bathtub will be inside

 

Jump scares are a surefire ticket to maximum likes

Rent/Bury/Buy

I haven't heard many positive comments on The Deep House, but for me, it's a high recommend. The film is currently streaming on Amazon Prime (though I've seen it jump from three different platforms in the last year). Find it...wherever it is.

England's Not So Funny Home Video

 

Ever since Heather Donohue let her final nasal buildup drop into our souls in 1999, found footage has almost exclusively been associated with horror. Sure, the oddball Project X or Chronicle has occasionally come along to take the style into other genres, but for the most part, shaky cam and "DID YOU SEE THAT?!" dialogue on repeat has been reserved for our kinds of movies.

This makes Exhibit A such an oddball film. Its cover art clearly feels like it belongs next to your Paranormal Activitys and CrowsNests, but the final product is far more akin to Michael Haneke's The Seventh Continent. Perhaps its lack of easy classification is why I never heard of this 2007 gem until now.

Quick Plot: Meet the Kings, a middle class British family ready to test out their newest toy: a user-friendly handheld video camera. Dad Andy is a jovial salesman eager to document some family fun, while teenage daughter Judith uses it as a chance to get a closer look at her beautiful sunbathing neighbor. 

Much of Exhibit A unrolls like a simple compilation family film, but there's a sense of immense impending dread that makes you hold your breath for a good portion of its running time. As Andy and mom Sheila start the process of buying a new home and adding a pool to up the selling value of their own, it becomes all too clear that things are not quite what they seem, at least in Andy's professional life. 

Written and directed by Dom Rotheroe (with a story credit for Darren Bender and much of the filming done by the actual cast), Exhibit A is ferociously good, hard-to-categorize film that will leave you feeling more disturbed than a good deal of what passes for straight horror. We know it's leading somewhere dark, but it's the constant squirming sadness of watching a seemingly normal family fall apart that makes the entire 85 minute run time feel interminable. 

As Andy, Bradley Cole plays a man who lives to be the jovial center of fun. When life makes that impossible, he simply can't handle it, and his spirited, long-suffering wife is justifiably past the point of understanding. When their fighting erupts into Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? depths of long-simmering hate, we as the audience want to crawl under the Kings' kitchen table and rock ourselves back and forth. 

This is a powerful, disturbing, and incredibly well-made film. I'll likely never want to watch it again, but that won't stop me from recommending it to anyone up for its darkness.

High Points

It's one thing to watch a violent man go crazy and hurt his family, but it's a whole deeper conflict when said man clearly does love them. The fact that Andy, upon discovering a window in Judith's secret sexuality, wants to enthusiastically support her makes it even clearer that Exhibit A is about people, not shocks. This man is not evil; he's just incredibly unstable, and in the end, this story is all the more sad and affecting for it

Low Points

The only negative I have for this film comes in its marketing, which clearly positions it in such a way that most viewers will inevitably sit down expecting a very different style of film

Lessons Learned

You can't disturb the top soil when it's raining!

Girls prefer it if you're not quite so obvious

If you can't talk, you can't sell

Random Spoiler Tie with What Keeps You Alive

Much has been written about the awful "kill your gays" trend that seems to so often target lesbians in television and film. Exhibit A and What Keeps You Alive have very little in common as movies (aside from both being incredibly good and high recommendations from me), but it's fascinating that both end on the exact same note: our heroine, who happens to be a queer woman, letting out the smallest gasp of air to leave the audience with hope that she will live. In both cases, it's a moment loaded with heft because we certainly know she'll have a hard path forward, but still, for all of the dead supporting LGBTQ+ characters we find in our genre stories, there's something to be thankful for in these two cases

Rent/Bury/Buy

Exhibit A is not a film I'll want to revisit any time soon (if ever), but I'd also shout from the virtual rafters that those with a strong stomach looking for a heavy, disturbing, important hard-to-classify genre film give it a chance. I'm shocked that I'd never heard of it until recently, when it should be a title to regularly show up on those constant "best found footage film" listicles the internet seems to love. It's streaming now on Prime and deserves your eyeballs when they're ready.

Not a Visual Medium

To understand my feelings on Hell House LLC, you could take a quick trip down recent memory lane and read my review of The Houses October Built. Though the newer film focuses on the people that make haunts and THOB follows its fans, they both kind of hate their audience, or just feel as if we're unworthy of actually seeing anything.

Shaky cam is entirely understandable in found footage as a storytelling device, but when you have actual human beings who are going to WATCH (or try to) your movie, maybe find another way to express chaos and fear. Likewise, while it's entirely believable that a group of twentysomething friends might all be white, it's also entirely uninteresting when every single member of the cast--and this includes supporting characters and extras--is white, don't you, as a filmmaker, at SOME point look back and notice that?

Also, like 90% of found footage or slashers focusing on young-ish characters, everyone is awful and the world is no worse for their deaths.

Guys, I might be a little grumpy.

Quick Plot: One year ago, a mysterious massacre occurred at an upstate New York Halloween haunt. Some leaked youtube videos and camera footage have left clues as to what went down, but it remains a closed case until a documentary film crew decides to investigate.

Heading to the site of the slaughter, the crew interviews local historians to piece together the events leading up to the tragedy. It seems the hotel was showing signs of being haunted all through the setup, but the team's leader was too brazen to quit. The sole survivor of the original haunt's staff drops off one last round of footage, but naturally, by the time the filmmakers get through it, it's once again too late.

Written and directed by Stephen Cognetti, Hell House LLC sits right in the middle of the found footage pile of recent horror films. It has a decent setup and smartly leans into the simple truth that clown mannequins are creepy to lend some atmosphere, but its insistence on being, I guess, truthful to the experience of a scared victim wielding a camera in times of trouble is simply annoying. I'm not one to experience motion sickness while watching a movie, but I found myself deliberately looking away from the screen on more than one occasion because the shakiness was genuinely unpleasant to watch.

Worse, Hell House LLC doesn't redeem itself with anyone worth rooting for. Like virtually every other found footage horror movie made in the last ten years, all of our leads are bland white twentysomethings (I'm fairly certain the only people of color in the whole film are clowns) who behave like an unholy combination of frat boys and hipsters. I couldn't tell anyone apart, and hence felt absolutely nothing when anyone went missing. How could I even know who was who? 

I'd heard good things about Hell House LLC, and I suppose found footage diehards will find what they're looking for. If, of course, they can actually see anything...

High Points

While it would have been nicer to actually SEE them, I will say that Cognetti has some good instincts when it comes to staging scares...

Low Points

You know, if only we could SEE them

Lessons Learned

Never remain friends with a group of young white people who decide to film themselves, not because you'll almost inevitably die in a blur, your last words being, "What the f*ck," but more because if two decades of found footage horror has taught me anything, it's that young white people who enjoy filming themselves are almost certainly an awful combination of bland and rude

Rent/Bury/Buy

I pretty much hated the experience of watching Hell House LLC, but I recognize that it's a decent entry into the low standards set by found footage. It has some good setup and a few nice jump scares, and it seems as though many in the horror community have embraced it. Both this film and its sequel are streaming on Shudder.

What a Big Camera You Have

They made a sequel to Creep! It's a full one minute longer than the first film's brief 77 minute running time. It damn well better earn those 60 seconds. 

Quick Plot: Now calling himself Aaron (the name of his most recent victim), the man we met in Creep as Josef is continuing his odd hobby of befriending lonely people, getting under their skin, and murdering them without warning. The shame is that his heart just isn't in it anymore.

A few hours away, a struggling filmmaker named Sara is feeling down that her documentary web series "Encounters" is tanking in the youtube views. When she sees "Aaron's" Craig's List ad seeking a filmmaker ("fans of Interview With a Vampire a plus"), she decides it's just weird enough to make for the subject of her series finale. 

Of course, Sara has no idea that Aaron is a serial killer, and even after he confesses, she has no real reason to believe him. To Sara, this visit is the chance to finally explore something deep with her camera. Sure, Aaron is testing every boundary and clearly playing his own version of two lies and a truth with every statement that comes out of his mouth, but it's naturally just a tad too late before the reality really kicks in. 

Like Creep, Creep 2 is directed by Patrick Brice and written by Brice and star Mark Duplass. I enjoyed that film well enough, but found the unbalanced nature of pairing such a fascinating presence like Duplass with his bland target (played by Brice himself) a letdown. Creep 2 wisely improves upon this, using the same basic setup but putting Aaron/Josef's chronicler and possible victim on a much more even playing field. 

Played by Desiree Akhavan, Sara has a very specific confidence that allows her to challenge Aaron. With nearly two decades of post-Blair Witch film crews investigating subjects that will doom them in our public conscious, it's not easy to make a found footage horror film about an ambitious young director without leaving your audience sensing deja vu. Thankfully, Sara manages to feel fresh. Akhavan has a brave (if not always bright) energy totally fitting to a an experimental, fresh-out-of-film school documentarian, and her interaction with Aaron goes in a variety of directions you don't quite see coming.

It's a shame then, that Creep 2 has such a poorly executed ending. I won't spoil anything here, and the news that Creep 3 has been greenlit certainly takes some of the frustration out of my initial viewing. But dangit: Creep 2 goes so well for so long, then tosses in an incredibly rushed coda that just doesn't seem to line up with the story we've been watching.

High Points

By golly, is there a more engaging onscreen presence than Mark Duplass? It's also such a treat to see him get to play off such an interestingly drawn character as Akhavan's Sara (and as said earlier, such a gigantic step forward from the first film's costar)

Low Points

DAT ENDING

Lessons Learned

Death by blender should never be ruled out for execution

Perhaps documenting your fail-safe escape plan isn't the best way to keep a fail-safe escape plan secret

Wolf masks offer just enough peripheral vision clearance for safe country road driving

Rent/Bury/Buy

Creep 2 is a Blumhouse production that goes straight to Netflix, and like its predecessor, it makes perfect sense as a breezy streaming view. Mark Duplass continues to make incredibly weird (in the best of ways) choices, and watching him tap into whatever pleasantly unsettling darkness is within his Aaron is always a strange pleasure. Give it a go.