Location Location Location

As some of you know and others don't care about, I spent the last year or so contributing to Pop Syndicate, a recently renovated website that lost all its past content (and writers). The following article appeared in 2009 and since you can't find it anywhere else in InterWorld, I'm rerunning it here. Apologies for the deja vu.


Some time back, I mentioned a movie that deserves no real further discussion: Moscow Zero, the Val Kilmer-headlined Russian thriller with little thrills and even less Kilmer. What bothered me was not so much that the film was dull (because anything that helps me sleep is welcome in my life) but that it wasted one of the greatest potential settings of any horror. The Moscow Metro system is deeper than hell and probably crawling with more agents of evil than Walmart in December. 

Naturally, this got me thinking of other places that naturally frighten visitors and the films that utilized set location for maximum thrills. Enter at your own risk:

Closed carnivals

Is there anything sadder than a man-made playground abandoned by man?  Squeaky rides and stale popcorn just aren’t the same without screaming kids that beg for seconds and then throw up the remains on wooden roller coaster...especially when the amusement park is littered with ghostly apparitions that really like to waltz. Hence, the classic 1962 Carnival of Souls, a beautifully surreal ghost story inspired by a lonely Salt Lake City locale and filmed to translate its spooky atmosphere onto the big screen. 

Warehouses

Part of my workday is stationed in an overcrowded appliance warehouse. Recently, I took a wrong turn and ended up navigating a labyrinth of boxes that would make the Goblin King grip his codpiece in GPS-less fear. Storage facilities are dangerous places, and not just because they tend to be generously stocked with sharp objects and sloppily stacked with heavy boxes. While Final Destination 3 packed on the precarious nail gun and other fatal industrial accouterments, my heart goes out to Child's Play 2 for its factory finale. Many people never understand why a two-foot doll instills such fear in so many filmgoers, but imagine a petite plastic redhead chasing you through an endless maze of ominous cardboard. It’s scary. And brown.

Hotels

The thing about lodging facilities is, despite all lazily standard attempts to make you think otherwise, they’re not your home. In fact, they’re no one’s home, yet countless scores of travelers have come before to sleep, make love, and flip through basic cable, all under the watch of bland pastel paintings in rooms that look identical to a million others across your respective country. There’s something existential and empty about the very idea of a pay-by-the-night place. Of course, The Shining is the definitive hotel horror for capturing the vast emptiness of a place that has been well lived (and died)-in before a cracking family moves in. I’d also point to the more recent Bug. The terror of this Friedkin thriller/drama/horror/undefined piece of disturbia doesn’t necessarily lie in its setting, but Ashley Judd’s cheap residential motel does help to create an atmosphere that never feels quite like home--thus making her lonely and longing waitress all the more vulnerable to forming a not-so-healthy connection with Michael Shannon’s quiet and slowly unraveling stranger. One thing’s for sure: by the end of Bug, you’ll never have to worry about confusing that room with the Day’s Inn.

Empty asylums

What’s scarier than a home for the criminally insane? How about one abandoned by the criminally insane? House on Haunted Hill makes nice use of its institutional mansion setting, but few films have created such a terrifying location as Brad Anderson’s Session 9. Filmed in the former Danvers State Hospital (aka the State Lunatic Hospital at Danvers, a far scarier title), Session 9 follows a frustrated asbestos removal crew and their ill-fated attempt to clean up am empty  (and most likely haunted) asylum. Like Carnival of Souls, Session 9 absorbs its environment, squeezing every drop of horror and letting it spread into the cast, music, lighting, and overall filmic effect. Plus, it achieves the seemingly impossible task of making David Caruso sympathetic. 

Tundra

I gave up watching Survivor the day Mark Burnett announced the show would never be filmed in the Arctic. To me, watching resourceful people combat frostbite and fight polar bears is far more exciting than seeing bad cases of sunburn aggravating oozing mosquito bites... which is probably why I hold winter horror in such high esteem. For true frozen conditions, John Carpenter’s The Thing pretty much corners the vast, cold market on ice, especially since Kurt Russell & Co. battle the boredom and isolation of Antarctica while  dealing with a shape-shifting gooey creature set on world domination. The more recent 30 Days of Night took great advantage of the Arctic Circle’s weirdly misunderstood sunrise patterns by, naturally, making it a haven for vampires. Sure, it fudged the actual earth science a tad, but 30 Days of Night also answered the question for why America’s largest state has such a small population.  

So my safely nestled readers, which films have you constantly noting the nearest exit? Also, what are some of your everyday hot spots just waiting for a bloody massacre to redden to floors?

Quick Fix Finales

Paul Solet’s Grace is a fascinating, disturbing, and haunting little thriller that wedges itself under your skin, then dies suddenly before it can lay eggs. It’s effective and upsetting but for me, it stumbles in its third act by forcing its characters into a contrived and somewhat predictable violent confrontation.

I love cinematic violence. Splatter films have their own sub-section in my DVD collection and my heart tends to drop a tad when it learns a kickass trailer is approved for thirteen year olds. Recent favorites include the French import Inside, which provided a powerful example of how to end with (SPOILERS) a do-it-yourself C-sectiom and not have your audience feel exploited, and William Friedken’s woefully underrated Bug, a play-turned-film chronicling a romantic descent into mania that culminated in a horrifically graphic nightmare. The flawed but fun Silent Hill is rightfully memorable for its razor-sharp ivy-filled finale. And yes, Carrie is a classic example of how to build character and story well enough to earn a 20 minute massacre. These films--and their endings--leave the audience feeling hurt and abused, but not cheated.

Think of the apex of baby horror, Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby. It never teases us with the suggestion that poor Mrs. Woodhouse is going to have to stab her way through a coven of satanists or wrestle her evil neighbors (although the sight of pregnant Mia Farrow tumbling with the gloriously spry Ruth Gordon would have bested Yoda’s dual with Christopher Lee as greatest fight in mainstream filmdom). There is no final chase with slain civilians or blood-soaked showdown. Rosemary confronts her tormentors and makes a decision, leaving us terrified of what’s to come by the sheer force of suggestion.

One of my favorite films of this year so far has been Neill Blomkamp's incredibly innovative District 9. Thoughtful, skeptical, and not afraid to twist and reshape the typical summer blockbuster cliches, this film comes dangerously close to being Great (yes, with a capital) and then...well it gets really...fun. By its final act, the documentary style and social subtext so carefully explored in the opening half hour take a break while a Trasformers-y chase and shootout closes the show. It’s fun to watch and rich with suspense, but ultimately, it reduces what started out as an almost subversive and important popcorn film to a smarter-to-than-your-average alien actionfest.

Some films take the opposite route by opening with the money shots and slowly fooling us with second act smarts. Take Larry Cohen's God Told Me To, which features a terrifying first scene wherein a madman guns down New York extras and quickly moves slows down into more heady fare. Its most disturbing scene is a mere monologue (although said speech is said by a father explaining how he killed his entire family). The blockbuster juggernaut The Sixth Sense is admittedly low on the type of violence found in a Clark film, but notice how it also leaves its entire last 30 minutes to quiet moments as characters deal with the supernatural in calm yet creepy ways. Even Shion Sono's Suicide Club--an avant garde piece of sorts busting with blood, flattened-out human skin, and stickily stubborn earlobes--ultimately steps away from its insane visual nastiness to wrap up (kind of) its plot (although for some, J-pop may be more frightening and offensive than jumping in front of a moving subway or slicing off your own hand while making a sandwich for the kids).

This brings me back to Grace, which is indeed a strong and worth-your-money movie. The problem I have with it (cue SPOILER sirens) is not that it ends with an act of violence between its two female leads, but that it reduces a complex relationship into what you can do with a hammer and ex-girlfriend. Did I expect family counseling or a custody case? No, but the sudden resolution felt too easy in eliminating a character that had been developed so carefully throughout the film. I believe anyone is capable of violence, and more specifically, that most mothers would not hesitate in doing whatever it would take to protect their children. 

It just doesn't mean that's all we deserve to watch.

Agree, disagree, want to end this with a quick and sudden act of violence? Leave it in word form below: