horror

Mama: delivering the scares without splatter

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The pretty good horror movie Mama, with Jessica Chastain, can send chills down your spine without any slashing or splattering.  It’s the story of two orphaned little girls who have survived in the forest for four years.  When they are rescued, they are feral creatures who scurry about on four legs.  They are sheltered at first in a research institute, and then in their uncle’s home.  It turns out that, unbeknownst to the adult characters, the sisters were “parented” in the forest by a being who comes along with them.

Jessica Chastain brings an unexpectedly rich characterization to this genre film.  She plays the uncle’s girlfriend, the tattooed bass player in a rock band, who didn’t sign up to parent two deeply troubled kids.  She is apologetically non-maternal, but forced by circumstance to co-parent and then to single parent the girls.  Ultimately, she has a face-off with a very jealous and very scary competitor.

The entire cast is excellent, especially Megan Charpentier as the older daughter and Daniel Kash as the ambitious scientist.   Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, the scary bad guy in Headhunters, plays softer as both the girls’ decompensating dad and their compassionate uncle.

I’m generally not a fan of horror films and I especially loathe the gorefests that currently dominate the genre.  But the Mama delivers the scares the old-fashioned way, with inventive characters, a sense of foreboding and a creepy and dangerous villain.

 

I Am a Ghost: a smart genre-bender, not for everybody

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I Am a Ghost is a singular ghost story about a young woman who has haunted her Victorian home since her death a century ago.  First she ambles about the house, repeating the most ordinary chores – sweeping the hall, frying eggs and the like.  Then she communicates with a medium hired to rid the house of the ghost; neither can see the other.  The medium is having a tough time because, in her life, the young woman suffered from Multiple Personality Disorder (so there are multiple personalities to guide to the Other Side).   The movie climaxes with some jolting scares.

It’s a change of pace for writer H.P. Mendoza, whose previous films have been contemporary musical comedies, including the hilarious Colma: The Musical (available on Netflix streaming).  At the screening I attended, Mendoza said that I Am a Ghost is neither low-budget, very low-budget or micro-budget – he directed it on no budget (financed on his credit cards).  Yet it looks better than some Hollywood films and is a whole lot smarter.

Besides the creepiness and the frights, the story is about memory.  The ghost thinks she is having new experiences, but she is merely reliving her past experiences, most of which are banal.  Mendoza doesn’t explain this until the audience has endured about 35 minutes of repetitive household tasks.

I Am a Ghost is only 74 minutes long.  If you go with the memory idea, it works.  If you don’t have the patience, you’ll find the first half of the film to be very tedious.

The dialogue between ghost and medium evokes a session between patient and therapist, with both becoming increasingly frustrated.  This interchange is funny and is the highlight of the film.  I Am a Ghost is a good choice for ghost story aficionados who are open to a genre-bender.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter: blood-sucking, irony and not much else

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OK, so the filmmakers turned the most revered statesman of the 19th Century into an action hero.  I am a Lincoln buff, and I chose not to be offended and to go with it, but…  Seth Grahame-Smith adapted the screenplay from his best-selling novel about Abe avenging his mother by running amok through the vampires with a silver-edged axe. 

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter  has two things going for it.  The first is vampire-killing action scenes and lots of ’em.  The second is the silly irony of putting Abraham Lincoln in a vampire movie.  The silliness is enhanced by the vampire-killing Lincoln being as stiff and humorless as the marble statue in the Lincoln Memorial.  (The real Lincoln was earthy, down-to-earth and very funny.)

Unfortunately, that’s just not enough.  I’ll save you some time and give you the abridged version.  Vampire pops up, gets killed by Abe.  Repeat.

3D or not 3D?  If you MUST see this movie, eschew the extra cost and see it in 2D.

 

 

Coming up on TV: She Freak

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She's lookin' for trouble and she's gonna find it

Turner Classic Movies is airing a real guilty pleasure of mine on March 16:  She Freak from 1967.  A nasty and manipulative skank mistreats all the slimeballs in a carnival until they disfigure her and she becomes the unwilling monster star of the sideshow.  It’s fun to mock the lame-o acting, the dim dialogue and the low, low, low budget.

It’s also a time capsule – with real 1967 carnival crowds in Bakersfield, Sacramento and Los Angeles.   You may recognize the diner-in-the-middle-of-nowhere because it was filmed at Piru, California (look it up on a map), where at least 50 movies have been filmed.

Look for Bill McKinney  (famed for the infamous “Squeal like a pig” scene in Deliverance) as Steve St. John.

a 79-year-old scary treat for Halloween weekend

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Director Tod Browning and his cast of FREAKS

Bad things happen at the circus.  And bad things happen in Freaks.  This is one of the most unsettling horror films, because it was filmed in 1932 with real circus freaks.  If you have teenagers jaded by today’s empty horror flicks, this will knock them for a loop.  Only 64 minutes. Available on DVD and often televised around Halloween.