Delayed Reaction: Sleepaway Camp

Premise: A series of mysterious murders happen at a camp, but it's not Friday the 13th.

 

I struggle with this movie. It's not my favorite flavor of horror at all. Slashers aren't my go-to horror genre. And, whatever my Mendoza line for bad acting in horror movies is, Sleepaway Camp is on the wrong side of it. This acting is really dreadful in many places. You could argue that it's campy, but camp doesn't appeal to me much either. Still, there are a few things the movie does very right. It's got some inventive kills. It's rather transgressive and regressive at the same time. The twist ending is very successful as a surprise. I'm still untangling what it's saying about trans people and becoming serial killers. Whatever it is, it's not the most elegant message.

 

Regardless, I'm trying to increase my exposure to horror film history, and this is a quiet essential of the mid-80s. When looking at any era, it's important to look at the marquee movies, but it's just as important to see the movies that push up against the trend. Sleepaway Camp does exactly that. While not wholly successful, it looks for a fresh, boundary-pushing way to expand the slasher genre. If nothing else, that's pretty cool.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: The Ruins

Premise: A group of friends visit ruins while on a trip in Mexico and, well, discover why the locals don't go there.

 

I swear I'll get to the actual movie in a moment. First, I want to point out a perfect example of why it's so difficult to get horror recommendations. In the Wikipedia Critical Response for this section, it includes the following two takes on the movie.

• The Rotten Tomatoes consensus is "Despite a solid cast and truly frightening source material, The Ruins founders, thanks to a weak script and an excess of gore."
• The James Beradinelli review says "The Ruins does what a good psychological horror movie should do: rely on tension rather than gore to achieve its aims."

So, The Ruins is both too gory and praised for how it doesn't rely on gore? You don't really see that in other genres. Goodfellas is either violent to a fault or uses violence to make a point. Chris Nolan movies are either overwritten or tightly constructed. It's not like comedies get criticized for having too much slapstick by some then praised by others for how they don't use slapstick. I wish there was a way to weight horror takes going in based on a person's tolerance for common horror elements. Like, if a person rates as a 2 out of 10 for found footage, I know to level-set their Paranormal Activity take. Or if a person is 9/10 for gore, perhaps I should be cautious about that Saw IV rave.

 

OK. Onto the movie. Here's my level-setting going in this movie. Before I even watch it, this is what I know and what I can assume about it as a result. It's a major studio (Paramount) horror movie. It has recognizable stars. I should expect a certain amount of polish on the movie. It'll rely more on visual effects, since they have the money for it. It has an R-rating, which indicates a higher level of freedom. Had it been PG-13, they'd have to more carefully consider the structure of the scares and level or violence. It's really hard (but not impossible) to do your best work in horror with that looming over you. First time director and a journeyman writer, so probably not much of a vision and little ability to fight studio notes.

 

Put that together, and I'm expecting acting that will be able to keep me engaged, even when not much is happening. There will be a couple good horror ideas that they'll probably overuse. I'll like it while being aware of ways that they could've made it more memorable. And that's pretty much what I did get from this movie.

 

Jena Malone and Shawn Ashmore* are ideal 2008 stars. Jonathan Tucker does have resting villain face which messed with me. I kept waiting for him to be more of a dick. He's fine though. There's always gotta be a Laura Ramsey in these too: someone who is perfectly fine but this marks the high point in her career. I really like the idea and visuals of the vines overtaking them. It turns out to be one trick the filmmakers overuse rather than advance, but it works. I'm sure someone could explain to me that this is exploitative of Mayan culture. I was fine with it though.

 

I think the lasting impact of The Ruins will be that it's a movie people confuse with The Descent but aren't that upset when they realize they are watching the wrong one. Overall, there's worse fates for a movie.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Await Further Instructions

Premise: A family wakes up on Christmas morning with all the exits to the house blocked off by some mysterious wall and instructions on their TV to guide them.

 

Introductory Note: It unsettles me whenever I talk about a movie with no Wikipedia page. It makes me second guess how well I remember the movie. And, in general, I sort of rely on Wikipedia to be smarter than me on all things. If a movie isn't on Wikipedia, maybe I'm going too indie with my movies.

 

Black Mirror sure has dominated this discussion, huh? My first thought coming away from this movie was "this would've made a great Black Mirror episode". For several years, that show has been the authority on high premise stories about technology's influence over people. I feel bad for anyone else working in that space fighting for recognition. I'm sure it annoys the filmmakers behind Await Further Instructions to see everyone credit Black Mirror for this movie. I know I'm not helping.

 

As is, the movie is pretty good. I enjoy a good bottle movie: take a bunch of personalities, shake them up, then trap them in a room together. That's simple and effective filmmaking as long as it isn't used as a chance for characters to rotate giant monologues. Await Further Instructions is a killer idea. I'm not sure what I'd do in that situation. Probably panic and pass out. (I don't handle pressure well.) I enjoy a lot of the stuff in the movie about people being exposed for who they really are when you turn up the temperature on them.

 

My two concerns with the movie are how hard it hits its point and how things escalate in the last act. It hits the commentary of people submitting to authority a little too hard. The dogmatic way the father listens to the TV message is so extreme. A lot of people in that house act like a writer trying to make a point more than real people. The less the plot drives this kind of movie, the better it tends to be.

 

I guess the movie had to go somewhere by the end. I wish it would've been more about the family tearing each other apart than the mysterious thing enveloping the house taking over. It transitioned the film from unsettling in its ambiguity to more straight-forwardly scary. Think about it. Wouldn't it be so much creepier if the only intervention was the exits being blocked and the TV giving instructions, then it all goes away when everyone - or maybe all but one - are dead? That then cuts to seeing the same thing happen in other houses. I know it's dumb to write the movie you wished something would be rather than talk about the movie itself, but that's just an example. I just with the writer and director had more faith in the premise's ability to scare people. It has enough of the interpersonal dynamics and mystery to be worth watching though.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Quick Reaction: I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang

It's funny how timely movies feel positively quaint after a few years. This movie actually caused quite a stir at the time. It's based on a true story and led to the release of many prisoners, including the man it's based on. That's pretty cool. Chain gangs are such a trope at this point though. The stories about them have gotten so much more interesting over time. And watching this, it's almost comical how simple this man's situation is. He's a young, handsome veteran who never got in trouble before. After he escapes, he turns into a model citizen and a pillar of the community. In 1932, just taking the stand that the movie does make it a challenge to get a greenlight at all. Now, making something so uncomplex wouldn't get made for the opposite reason: It's not risky enough. I'm not bagging on this movie that was made an entire John Williams ago. It's tracking the evolution of "message movies" in Hollywood. If this was what they were calling progressive in 1932, then it explains how something like The Jazz Singer could be a sensation five years earlier.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: The Prodigy

Premise: A young boy who is advanced beyond his years has a malevolent secret inside him.

 

There's this great episode of House about a sick genius teen who is a grade-A asshole. Like, he even makes House seem kind by comparison. Throughout the episode, you kind of assume that whatever's wrong with him is also affecting his personality. However, it turns out that it's not related. He's just a prick. And that ending is somehow darker than if he had just died.

 

What I'm trying to say is, why couldn't the kid in The Prodigy just suck? I got annoyed when I realized how many hoops the movie would jump through to avoid making the kid evil. I'm used to this. Demons and devils use children as vessels all the time in horror. The 90's had it right though with non-horror movies like Problem Child and The Good Son. Just make a kid evil.

 

That's my only thought on this movie. As I learned that the kid was just possessed by a dead serial killer, this got a lot less interesting. It absolved Taylor Schilling of any nature vs. nurture questions. It makes all of the kid's actions less menacing. And having such a bizarre explanation without it being a demonic possession feels less plausible.

 

Remember how cool it was in The Ring when you find out that Naomi Watts wasn't supposed to help Samara? Chase that feeling more.

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Nurse 3-D

Premise: A nurse...kills people.

 

I'm willing to entertain that this movie is intentionally campy and mindless. I think no one involved was under the impression that they were making a serious horror movie. That mindset for a movie doesn't appeal to me that much. I'm not a "body count" kind of horror fan...

 

...Actually, no. I'm not going to hedge with this movie. It is terrible. All of it. Paz de la Heurta is a zombie throughout. Apparently, they overdubbed all her lines with another actress which...I don't even know what to say. That narration is so bad as is and that means one or two things. 1) Paz de la Heurta's original narration and performance were even worse. 2) Someone went out of their way thinking this narration was good enough. Either way, it's embarrassing.

 

I guess she got naked though and Katrina Bowden had a couple shower scenes, so at least the movie snuck in the erotic part of the movie.That's...something.

 

I think there was room for the movie to be clever. As is, it has all the wit of that friend you have who thinks they know how to use sarcasm but actually just says a bunch of inscrutable insults. The movie was filmed in 2011 and sat on shelf until 2014, when it was released as quietly as possible.

 

And here's why using Rotten Tomatoes for horror movies is useless. This movie has a 61%. That's technically fresh. That's higher than my beloved V/H/S. I know I'm higher on V/H/S than nearly anyone, but there is no world where Nurse 3D is a better movie than V/H/S. The reason for this discrepancy? As far as I can tell, most reviewers took the stance "I didn't like Nurse 3-D, but if you are into that kind of thing, it's OK." That's patronizing, lazy, and not at all helpful. Basically, the RT formula, which is just thumbs up or thumbs down, sees a bunch of hedged thumbs up and suddenly a movie has a good enough score that people will accidentally think it's worth watching. Notice how Metacritic, which has its own flaws but does have a more nuanced scale, has Nurse 3D sitting at a much more accurate 23. With no review higher than a 63.

 

I made the mistake of watching a few too many of the bad horror movies from my October list in a row, and, as you can tell, I no longer give a shit about my normal position of remembering that even bad movies represent a lot of time that professional put in and that the fact any movie gets made is a minor miracle. Burn this movie.

 

Verdict: Strongly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Halloween: Resurrection

Premise: A reality show has a live internet feed of people staying in Michael Myers' old house, and guess who shows up.

 

Can we talk about how insane the Halloween franchise is? John Carpenter makes the original. It's an indie hit. He dreams of making Halloween a sort of anthology franchise but is convinced to make (produce and write) Halloween II, which is a retread of the original. They then attempt the anthology idea with Halloween III: Season of the Witch. Despite actually being pretty good, people revolt and make it clear that Halloween = Michael Myers, it takes six years for Halloween to come back with another Michael Myers movie that feels quite low rent. That begins a trilogy centered around his niece coming out in 1988, 1989, and [another gap] 1995. A few years later, they do a soft reboot of the franchise with H20, more in the vein of the teen friendly Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer kind of horror movies. It does OK. 4 years later, they bring the series back again with Halloween: Resurrection, trying to tap into the Blair Witch Project success. It takes a few more years off before in 2007, Rob Zombie frees the series from its tortured timeline and makes a pair of movies in his image. They finally give people enough time to miss the franchise, and 9 year later come out with another soft reboot that finally realizes that Laurie Strode is as important to the franchise as Michael Myers. Two more sequels on the way.

 

That's nuts, right?

 

If Halloween: Resurrection isn't the saddest installment, then I'm very worried about what I have to look forward to. The one good thing I can say about this movie is that it understood how the internet and an amateur footage conceit could be used. It certainly didn't master it, but it was right about trying to integrate that. Everything else is awful. It's not trying to be scary at all. It's just a slasher. The characters are forgettable. There's a whole unconnected opening with Laurie Strode that feels like it was shot afterwards when they realized the movie was too short. Even with that, this thing clocks in at barely 90 minutes. The only fun of the movie is remembering when casting Busta Rhymes and Tyra Banks was a hip thing to do and seeing a young Katee Sackhoff and Luke Kirby. It's safe to say, if there was one Halloween movie that the producers could just wipe away, it would be this one.

 

Verdict: Strongly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: The Eye

Premise: After a cornea transplant a woman starts seeing death.

 

The Ring really hurt horror for a while. Regardless of if you prefer the 1998 original (which I plan to finally watch soon), the American version is a great movie. The cast, tone, and direction are all exactly right. That really opened the gates for Hollywood to remake Asian horror movies with increasingly diminished returns. Unsurprisingly, many of the reviews of The Eye make the point to say it isn't better than the original. That's a shame, because they really could've just said it wasn't very good. The problem these horror remakes run into is thinking that the idea is enough. The Eye has a great premise. Jessica Alba's new eyes sees death. It doesn't make logical sense, but it doesn't need to. It's a clear idea to communicate. It's a great excuse to make Alba doubt herself and see things for jump scares.

 

As The Ring (and countless other movies) proves though, the problem isn't that someone had the audacity to take a good idea from another country that most people haven't seen and use it for an American movie. The Ring had a star who went on to get Oscar nominations and a populist director of the highest caliber in Gore Verbinski. On the other end. The Eye has Jessica Alba, who has to be deployed pretty specifically and directors with one moderately successful French horror movie to their names. Screenplay written by the guy who wrote Gothika (...OK...), The Big Bounce (Uhhh), and Snakes on a Plane (Yikes). I don't know. I guess I'm annoyed when the lesson from a bad movie is "never adapt or remake something" rather than "put in a real effort to make the movie good."

 

And honestly, this is an easy movie to leave on for 98 minutes. Cut it down to under 90 and I would've even considered throwing it a Weakly Recommend, just for being harmless. As is, this movie never needs to be seen by anyone again, but there isn't much to get worked up about in it.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: The Silence

Premise: After escaping from a deep, dark cave, flying creatures attracted by sound attack the Earth.

 

I know. I know. I know. I understand that production cycles are a lot slower than most people think. This movie is based on a horror novel from 2015. It was filmed in Fall of 2017. I'm sure that they had no idea that A Quiet Place would come in 2018 and become a blockbuster and cultural touchstone. Even though The Silence came out a year after A Quiet Place, it was in no way made as an attempt to capitalize on that movie*. That said...It's really hard not to call this a knock off of A Quiet Place.

 

*Then again, Stanley Tucci is married to Emily Blunt's sister. There's no way the similarities didn't come up at Thanksgiving dinner at some point.

 

It doesn't help that everything about A Quiet Place is better. The Silence never captures the terror of making a sound, and that's the one thing this movie absolutely must do. Without that, it's just a generic action movie. I don't care if it's pulled from the book, Kiernan Shipka as a recently deaf girl is pretty awful. The fact that she speaks perfectly may be reflective of actual later-life deaf people, but in the movie it's a hard thing to square. She's deaf, just as an excuse for the family to all know sign language. However, she can speak without any volume modulation needed and knows how to read lips perfectly. Again, I don't know exactly how it works for actual deaf people. It all seems too easy and convenient for this movie though. A Quiet Place smartly side-stepped the problem by casting an actual deaf actress to play the daughter. Then Shipka is also the narrator? She has a little brother in The Silence. Why couldn't he be the deaf one? It still lets her know ASL, but there aren't all the questions about how fully verbal and not fully deaf she is throughout the movie.

 

This thing is a mess. Worst of all, it bungles the tension with sound so much that it's not really even a horror movie. It's a disaster movie at most. It's a sad waste of a pretty good cast. Like, I'll see just about anything if you tell me Stanley Tucci and Kiernan Shipka are in it.

 

Verdict: Strongly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: The Babysitter: Killer Queen

Premise: Cole again is targeted as a sacrifice for a satanic ritual.

 

The problem with most sequels is that there are normally three elements to a movie that make it special, and the filmmakers only scale up two of them. For example, a blockbuster will amp up the action then increase the comedy to match, but they won't focus on the story. That's the most common formula problem. I'll admit, I didn't care that much for The Babysitter, but the things to like about it were the crazy characters, the comic violence, and the nice story about growing up at the center. Killer Queen has even more fun with the character and violence excesses. It doesn't make a central story to match though. As a result, it's much more of a B-movie than even the first one: best enjoyed by drunk people at a midnight showing, maybe.

 

For me, the biggest mistake of the movie was bringing back the cult members from the original. The basic formula of this series gives the freedom to make colorful and crazy characters. You can have stability with Judah Lewis at the center. Samara Weaving becomes the mascot of it to an extent. The heel turn for Emily Alyn Lind is quite wonderful. Bringing back the same cult members is really boring though. Bella Thorne, Hana Mae Lee, and co. were fun enough in the first movie, but they aren't designed as characters that need any rounding. Simply building a new cult for Lind to have a pact with fills the movie with a lot more creativity and frees it from having to spotlight the returning cast even more.

 

It's also weird seeing a movie sexualize actual teenagers so much. Lewis, Lind, and welcome newcomer Jenna Ortega were all 17/18 when this was shot. I really don't know how I feel about that. On one hand, it's nice to see people who are so close to the right age for the roles. On the other hand, this is awful leering of women who are that young. I'm not saying this from some moral high horse. I mainly comment because the movie made me feel like a dirty old man, and it feels weird that my take away from this was "Well, the movie was awful but at least the cast was nice to look at."

 

Verdict: Strongly Don't Recommend