9 Soon to Be Dead

 

We've talked about this before: I have a soft spot for early 2000s Saw-ish low budget thrillers about strangers being locked in a space until one emerges the survivor. I am, at heart, a very simple person.

So here's a new one.

Quick Plot: A foggy credits montage sees 9 unrelated adults chloroformed and abducted, later awakening in a sterile mansion where all of the windows and doors have been bricked shut. A voice from hidden speakers announces the plan: they are strangers, not connected in any way, and only one can walk out the door $5 million richer. That's all he's saying, so have at it.

Surprisingly, a few of the characters have clearly seen a Nine Dead or two and immediately start looking for traps or timers. But nope, our announcer wasn't lying. There are no tricks. Bland food will be dispensed every few hours. The water is running. There are enough sharp objects hanging around to make murder possible. It's all up to them.

"Them" is your fairly typical batch of low budget horror fodder: a sympathetic chorus girl dancer, shamed tennis pro turned party girl, bickering married couple, bitter parolee, aspiring rapper, uppity fashion designer, police officer complete with a loaded gun, and an Irish priest played by Dennis Hopper.

No, seriously.

Seeing Hopper slumming it in a movie I never knew existed is a surprise, but for the most part, that's where the shocks end. Philippe Vidal's script lets the story darken at just the right point, though the immediate mayhem that comes after feels somehow rushed.

Directed by the I Spit On Your Grave remake's Steven Monroe, House of 9 is, to put it plainly (and rhymingly), fine. The better-than-average cast is peppered with European actors that you since recognize as having gone on to have legitimate careers, and it lets them eke out more interesting characters than the fairly flat screenplay lays out. I've seen so many of these kinds of films that I was genuinely pleased to realize the watcher's introduction wasn't a lie. This is a situation organized entirely to see what nine strangers will do to survive (and win a lot of money).

On one hand, House of 9 is far less wackily interesting than a lot of the other random titles that came out around the same time. No aliens, no six degrees of separation connections, no mazes. It still packs the same nihilistic attitude widespread in the genre (and I mean the particular subgenre of the early aughts) but with a slightly (and I mean slightly) higher quality than most of its competition. 

High Points

Sometimes it's hard to clearly identify how a cast elevates a mediocre setup, but let me give you a key example: Peter Capaldi's line reading of "my coat is in there" after the gang has decided to lock the possibly manslaughtering rapper in their bedroom is so perfectly played that it gave me a genuine laugh.

Low Points

All that's to say that there still isn't very much here that you haven't seen before, and most of it is stuff few actually LIKE seeing

Lessons Learned

Artists don't make money (but they do sleep with their glasses on)

When assigning roommates in a volatile situation, maybe read the room a little closer and rather than trust pure chance, don't pair people who have already expressed extreme rage at each other together

Nothing helps to meet that runtime more effectively than a montage taken seriously

Rent/Bury/Buy

If you're part of that fairly quiet horror contingent that actually enjoys exploring the myriad of low budget "strangers trapped in a room until most of them die at the hands of a well-spoken but invisible monster" subgenre, then House of 9 is certainly worth your time. No, it's not "good," but it's far higher quality than a whole else that came out in those early post-Saw years. To my knowledge, it's also the only one that stars Dennis Hopper as a kind priest so if that's your thing, have at it!

I Spit On Your Day of the Remake

I will not begin this post on 2010’s I Spit On Your Grave with yet another disclaimer for how I wish uppity genre fans would drop the ‘all remakes suck!’ mantra with the same fervor I feel for wanting studios to stop remaking movies. It’s a conundrum. We deal with it. There are highs and lows, but we as film lovers should always maintain open minds.

But in case this is misunderstood, I do indeed wish a plague on you, It’s Alive 2009.

Moving on...

Quick Plot: Jennifer HIll is a ridiculously successful-for-her-can’t-rent-a-car-yet age novelist heading to a rented home in the boonies to work on her next book, jog, and drink case after case of red wine. Minus the jogging, it actually sounds like a dream vacation to my ears but folks don’t normally spit on the graves of happy holidayers.

During a routine fill-up at the local gas station where the only people in town hang out, Jennifer meets a few ragged townies with poor hygiene and pickup lines but an impressive ability to make the city girl feel really uncomfortable. Later, Jennifer encounters the town town idiot/plumber named Matthew whose skills under the toilet earn him a kiss and the testosterone-heavy party plans of his pals.

For the most part thus far, I Spit On Your Grave is closely following the trajectory laid down 32 years earlier, although the men are cast as would-be rapists almost immediately in contrast to the original, which first made them almost flirty. Moving on, Steven Monroe’s new film treats the abuse of Jennifer in a very different manner. Like the original, the quartet of grimy fellas show up with one thing on their collective mind, but where Meir Zarchi followed one rape with another--each a symbol of the competitive men topping one another with their violence--Monroe’s instead focuses on how the guys humiliate the richer and more successful Jennifer. We certainly understand the original’s ringleader as a man frustrated with and intimidated by Jennifer’s position for both economical and gender reasons, and unfortunately, some of that is missed here. What the men put our victim through is truly wrong, but their motives seem far less complicated (though in fairness, only the original’s Johnny seemed to have any real depth).

But look at us, examining the timely undertones of grindhouse when there are bear traps, acid baths, and men getting their eyes pecked out by crows to talk about! Consider the pretension raped out of this review.

Because really, I Spit On Your Grave is not a serious film. It starts out that way, with glossy-grainy Last House on the Left-like style carving out a tragedy and trying with solemn earnestness to make us care. Once Jennifer falls into a brown groggy lake, I Spit On Your Grave suddenly transforms into an over-the-top-torture porn pop tart bursting with gigglesome Jigsaw-like murder traps only a lifelong member of the Girl Scouts could even dream of rigging. 

I know it sounds awful. Or awesome. It’s sort of both.

See, after the rape, I Spit On Your Grave is, in an odd way, not really Jennifer’s story. We don’t see her recover or plot her revenge as Monroe instead focuses on the guilty parties slowly realizing she survived. It definitely hurts the film, as any of Jennifer’s possible depth is quashed once she becomes a near-silent, almost J-horror-esque ghostess who can’t be foiled. It’s pretty ridiculous, as are the kills. Seriously, I’m talking sticking-a-shotgun-in-our-anus ridiculous. Which...hey, sometimes has its place.

High Points

Not to say that the actual rape was, you know, good or anything, but the leadup to Jennifer’s humiliation is actually quite effective in being as mean as the original without any sugar coating

Low Points

Sarah Butler isn’t necessarily bad as Jennifer, but it’s really impossible to buy her as a successful independent novelist when she should still be getting carded to buy cigarettes.

Lessons Learned

Good whiskey is a treat generally reserved for baptisms, weddings, and funerals

Like soon-to-be rape victims, overweight rural fourth wheels may experience the unfortunate act of having lots of things stuffed inside their mouths (including, but not limited to, guns, video tapes, and rats)

A cell phone’s place is never in the bathroom. Really people, you’re in a horror movie set in the 21st century. Don’t give the Laws of Getting Rid of Phones any leeway

Rent/Bury/Buy

A lot of film folk have trashed I Spit On Your Grave as Just Another Awful Remake. I am not one of them. It’s a flawed film, a disjointed slight mess that doesn’t quite know what it wants to be. At the same time, it approaches the material with an interesting balance of faithfulness and experimentation, keeping the storyline so close to its predecessor but trying new things with how it all unfolds. Those who despise gruesome Saw-ish violence should probably stay away, but the curious might get something out of the film. It’s not actually good, but as a ‘fan’ of the original, I found the remake to be worth a tepid watch. 

Let the Sunshine In. Then Die.

Daylight Savings is a cruel calendar trick and a reason to distrust farmers, but we can be thankful for  one thing: sunshine. Bright, warm, orange hued illumination a whole 60 minutes ahead of schedule.

As I walked home this week and actually saw things, I started thinking about the effectiveness of daylight and its underuse in horror. Sure, there’s some primal fear and easy camera tricks to harvest in midnight cinema, but today, let’s take a look at films not afraid to let the sunshine in.

In rough chronological order:

1. The Wicker Man

Some of the earlier eeriness occurs in that sexy witching hour, when snails cuddle and Britt Ekland’s body double booty shakes, but Robin Hardy’s 1974 classic enigma truly comes to pagan life in its last terrifying act set during a beautiful fall early afternoon (well it starts in the morning, but those choral parades take forever). With the bright glare sometimes forcing you to look away, the film bypasses any of the tricks of night vision, letting all the weirdness of bunny masks, pancake makeup, and group singing hang out in full view. When (SPOILER ALERT) Sergeant Howie screams his final hymn from a blazing, goats a’fire filled sacrificial structure, the glory of the natural sun shines straight through to the audience.

2. I Spit On Your Grave

Brutal gang rape is horrifying any time of day, but this 1978 shocker is made all the worse by its fully lit cruelty. Filmmaker Meir Zarchi doesn't shy away from showing you the horrors experienced by lead Camille Keaton, filming her pale body with a matter-of-fact detachment that simply lets the crime speak for itself.

3. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

Spanning dusk to dawn, Tobe Hooper’s classic set the bar for all-out backwoods psychohorror. The introduction of Leatherface--silent, husky, and full of gutty grime--is shocking not just because of his untamed violence, but also due to the sudden appearance of such a grotesque human in full light. It’s fitting then that TCM ends on such a memorable, sun-lit shot as our chainsaw-wielding madman swings his roaring sword across a slowly waking Texas morning landscape.

4. Jaws

Quint’s account of the USS Indianapolis may be told in haunting shadow, but his lower half gets crunched on what may otherwise be a perfect July beach morning. 

5. The Brood

Generally, kindergarten days begin with the Pledge of Allegiance and one kid vomiting in the morning circle, but leave it to David Cronenberg to capture a different sort of start to alphabet games and adding practice. This 1979 chiller features many fine sequences, but it’s the schoolteacher slaughter that truly horrifies anybody with a pulse. A sunny winter morning turns exceedingly bloody as two evil gnomish creatures bludgeon Ms. Mayer with kiddie tools...right in front of a classroom full of 6 year olds. Time for milk and cookies yet?

6. Friday the 13th

A good deal of this series benefits from those summer days, fitting when the entire concept is based on camping. Since we already know what Jason Voohres looks like by Part III, there’s really no more point in hiding his face in the nighttime shadows (something the misguided remake didn’t seem to understand). All this sunny machete action began in its ‘80s glory with the initial film, where several counselors met their end before they got the chance to put on their pajamas. More notably, the 1980 hallmark of dead teenager movies ends with one of the best jump scares in horror history, when final girl Alice survives into the early morning, only to get a terrifying wake-up call with a dozen and counting sequel potential.

7. The Burning

Yes, George Costanza himself--with hair--handing out condoms to camp counselors intent on seducing underage high schoolers is reason enough see this not-so-good 1981 slasher, but the real highlight is a raft massacre of a dozen kid campers via sharp, rusty garden shears. A great scene of gruesome cruelty and refreshingly timed for all to see.

8. Day of the Dead

Not the best Romero installment by any means (or at least, mine), but it’s hard to argue with those opening five minutes, where scabby, rotting zombies shuffle through an abandoned Florida street on what could otherwise be a fine day for a jog.

9. The Devil’s Rejects

The perfect flip side to the rave-colored black-lit House of 1000 Corpses (look close enough and I’m sure you’ll find some velvety neon posters of wizards hanging on Dr. Satan's walls), Rob Zombie’s matured throwback followup is dripping with the sweaty grime from a hot southern sun. From the daytime hotel massacre and truck scramble to the slow-motion Freebird finale, The Devil’s Rejects makes you feel the heat, one stabbed banjoist at a time.

10. Dawn of the Dead

Zach Snyder's surprisingly spry reimagining of zombies gone shopping smartly avoids the better-in-the-dark style of so many other modern films by opening and closing with two beautifully spring-like sunny days...that just happen to include Olympian trained sprinting undead. Before Johnny Cash's Man Comes Around or Ving Rhames' cool rears its shiny bald head, Dawn of the Dead starts so innocently in a bland, postcard worthy suburb of middle America before waking up the next day to neighborhood shootouts and helicopter crashes. It's fitting that the film ends at its titular time of day as our survivors make their way to a new--probably very short--life sailing a yacht on what would otherwise be an expensive mini vacation.

11. All the Boys Love Mandy Lane

Sure, the bulk of this still unjustly unreleased slasher takes place overnight on a blood-soaked ranch, but its grand finale gets the hot desert morning treatment, making its stunning twist all the more jarring. See it to believe it...when it actually gets legally put into theaters.

12. The Strangers

While the majority of this unofficial Ils remake occurs in the quiet midnight hours, the real horror is saved for sunrise. To avoid spoiling a fairly recent film, I’ll tread softer than the barely audible whispering of star Liv Tyler and simply say that in this surprisingly vicious minimalist slasher, the terror doesn’t end just because it’s time for waffles.

13. 28 Weeks Later

Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later offered a few effective AM shots, but it’s Juan Carlos Fresnadillo’s underrated sequel that takes full advantage of the rare British sun with one of the most terrifying opening sequences of recent years. There’s a reason you have to seal yourself indoors in the event of an infected cannibal rampage, and all it takes is one open eyehole to let the chaos destroy any safety you’ve built with fellow survivors. Watching a horde of infected chase after Robert Carlyle, operatic classical music playing maniacally in the background, is enough to make you turn out the lights.

14. The Ruins

Most vacationing college students traveling to Central America want nothing more than to surround themselves with hot people and work on their tans, but that gets taken a little too far in this 2008 adaptation of Scott Smith’s novel. Five fresh-faced young folks find themselves trapped on a mysterious Mayan structure, battling the threat of homicidal vines and--cue the sound cue--each other. While the film’s screaming plants lurk inside darkened caves, most of the more disturbing action occurs under the dry, scorching sun to ill-prepared twentysomethings running low on water and high on tequila. Nearly everything is fully visible, and all of it horrific in a way rarely seen in your typical pretty-people-in-trouble flicks of the 21st century.

15. Carriers

Highly contagious disease is ravaging its way through America--and presumably, the world--but you’d never know it if you just glanced out your window. The gorgeous weather offers an intriguing contrast to the increasingly tense atmosphere of this 2009 thriller as humans die off and plague erodes the line between morality and survival. There’s something disturbing, and yet perfectly fine about nature’s continuance in the face of human obliteration, and Carriers captures it with sunshine to spare.

and a few Honorable Mentions via some fine folks on Twitter

Cabin Fever

The Crazies

Drag Me to Hell

Let the Right One In

Martyrs

Picnic At Hanging Rock

Rosemary’s Baby

plus & Recommendations I Haven’t Seen:

And Soon the Darkness

The Children

Curtains

Dead Snow

Love the One You're With

If you’ve read anything about Deadgirl, a first time effort by co-directors Marcel Sarmiento and Gadi Harel, you may be expecting an unwatchable piece of exploitation rich in zombie rape and I Spit On Your Grave levels of depravity. You’d be wrong on two counts, since 1) I Spit On Your Grave is a film I’ll defend for other reasons and 2) Deadgirl is actually a haunting, disturbing, and somewhat restrained little film that’s far stronger than its premise could have damned it to be.

Quick Plot: High school stoners JT (Noah Segan) and Rickie (Shiloh Fernandez) cut school one day to hang out in the local abandoned asylum (was my suburban hometown the only place in America that didn’t have of these, by the way?). Upon tossing around some rolling chairs and chugging unbranded cans of beer, the boys come upon a bolted room and a beautiful corpse chained inside. Rickie is freaked out. JT is aroused. 

The next day, Rickie returns to find JT has drawn his own conclusions about the “Deadgirl”: she’s undead and has been left all alone. Rickie remains horrified but has no idea how to pry his best friend’s um, attention, away from what seems like a gift from the gods. As children of broken homes in a small town with no future, JT and Rickie are aware that they have little else going for them. The don’t catch the attention of the ladies--not the fleshy Daisy Dukes-donning gas station pumper and certainly not Rickie’s unrequited crush of a cute redhead dating the token jockjerk. For JT and later, their even more fried friend Wheeler, life has never been better than having a gorgeous, complacent, full grown woman tied to a table for their personal pleasure. The more sensitive Rickie, on the other hand, knows it’s wrong but isn’t quite ready to alienate his best friend (and sadly, the only thing he seems to have in his life) over a corpse.

I worry my synopsis of Deadgirl is still making the film sound a tad homemade pornish, but it is a surprisingly sensitive film. I can’t downplay the subject matter and indeed, there are some extremely uncomfortable scenes that some filmgoers won’t make it through. Overall, however, Deadgirl is disturbing and thoughtful, not exploitive and gratuitous. The most horrific moments are found in JT’s increasingly distant dialogue, while the actual sex is portrayed with appropriately un-erotic staging. Think of the non-cathartic nature of the torture scenes in The Girl Next Door, as opposed to the more heavily stylized scenes that tend to rear their glossy heads in mainstream cinema.

Overall, Deadgirl has the feel of a short story in a zombie anthology mixed with an indie drama about small town youth. The performances are a tad inconsistent (perhaps there’s only so much Candice Accola can do with Charlie Brown’s Little Redheaded Girl role compared to Segan’s creepily macabre JT and Fernandez’s likable enough RIckie) but hold steady enough to sell a film that depends so much on its characters. There are some truly memorable images, such as Deadgirl’s overly makeup’d face which is, one scene later, covered with a magazine cutout that recalls Claire’s Season 4 collage work in Six Feet Under.

High Points

We’ve seen zombies as everything from choreographed two-steppers to Olympian sprinters and softball players, so it’s pretty impressive to see a film that brings something new not just to an undead-themed story, but also in its creepily haunting depiction of the “Deadgirl,” aided by Jenny Spain’s careful performance.

Abandoned asylums make everything better

It’s refreshing to see a film about teenagers that doesn’t force trendy lingo or pop culture references into their mouths. There’s nary a cell phone or high speed Internet connection to be found, and it adds a strange timeliness that make Deadgirl work for any era

Low Points

Although occasionally evocative, the score calls attention to itself far too often

First of all, is it a requirement for all high school films to feature a character named Johnny? Next, does Johnny always have to be played by an actor pushing 30?

Lessons Learned

Abduction is far more difficult than it looks, unless you’re the big man on campus and you’re throwing two stoners into your trunk in the middle of school recess

Oh, boys. Do I really have to tell you to be careful where to put your valuables?

Meat left in the open will spoil***

Winning Line

“I wish I was 15 again.”

“I’m 17.”

“Man, I wish I was 15 again.”

I actually really love this quick exchange between Rickie and his mother’s girlfriend, played by the solid character actor Michael Bowen. It captures the lack of adult influences on Rickie and his friends, but more importantly, it quietly points out that 17 is indeed a different point of life

Rent/Bury/Buy

Deadgirl is currently on Netflix’s Instant Watch, so give it a try when you’re in the mood for a serious, dark, and deep ride into a mean mean place. The production values are top notch so if you can get behind the characters and survive the idea of what you will see, then I recommend a tryout. It almost has a Jack Ketchum-y feel that’s been numbed by some IFC serum. It won't brighten your day, but it will provide a thoughtfully unsettling film experience worthy of your time.

***A personal story: When I was in high school, every health class was forced to undergo the inevitable STD slideshow which was fabulous on every level. First, the teacher (who apparently freelanced with this lesson plan all over Long Island) asked us to raise our hands if we planned on going away to college. Without any irony or exception, she pointed to the 90% of the class and claimed that each and every one of us would get crabs, because that’s what happens when you share a toilet. This was followed by magnified shots of just what crabs are and what they do, which in turn was followed by one of the school jocks--sadly not named Johnny--trotting outside and returning with a very reddened face.