What I'm Watching: The Houses October Built

Oh geeze, I haven't done a Trisklet in over a month.  I am a bad webmonkey.  I'll try and be better in the new year.  Even though I've got a bunch of leftovers from 2014 to get through, I thought I'd kick off 2015 with the most recent movie I've watched.

Bonus because it's also fresh in my brain place.

That movie would be the found footage flick, The Houses October Built.  We follow a group of five friends who decide to go on an exploration of haunted houses (Or haunts) across the southern US, in the week leading up to Halloween.

That's actually super refreshing, and actually a GOOD and sensible use of found footage.  "Hey, let's go on a road trip, and film it!" and then shit happens?  Yeah, that's the second perfect setup for a found footage film.  For the other great example of a perfect setup, there's Grave Encounters.

So, the actual plot of the movie is actually really slow, if you sit back and look at it.  Nothing really major happens until the second half, and that's being generous.  A more accurate point would probably be the last 20 to 30 minutes.

But oh, those haunted houses.  That gives them perfect moments to keep things going, and just as the character stuff in the RV needs a break, the group hits one up and there's some good adventures in there.

Now, you know they're just haunted houses, and there's no REAL scares, but if you're along with the characters' journey, you end up enjoying the frenetic exploration of the locations.  Mixed in with those trips, they nudge the plot along as some of the characters are kinda jerky to the people working the haunts, make fun of them, and hunt around for the mythical extreme haunt, the Blue Skeleton.

While they search, they also run afoul of a few of the workers, which eventually comes around to bite them in the ass, as these familiar, and terrifying, faces keep popping up no matter where they go.  There's equal harassment being done by both parties, so while the main group does start to come dangerously close to making the viewers not like them, they never QUITE cross that line.  For the most part, you don't want these people to die.

One of the best parts, making this movie stand out from the rest of the found footage pile, is that they outright state that some of the scenes were filmed by the workers at the haunts, such as when they break into the RV to mess with the group, and once the kidnapping starts.  It breaks up the action, and allows for moments where our protagonists actually put down the damned cameras, the biggest problem of the subgenre.

I really enjoyed this flick, and that first half can even just be taken as just a genuine exploration of the budding haunted house industry that explodes every Halloween.  The fictionalised horror make things all the more fun, and if anything, would make going to a haunted house THAT much more terrifying.  I'm sure things like this DON'T happen, but sharks also aren't a bit problem, but we all know what Jaws did for those animals.

The ending has been a sticking point for a lot of people, as they usually are with found footage horror flicks.  I've complained about them plenty.  Just...how do you end these things?  But I didn't mind the ending here.  It's...definitively open ended.

So many FF horrors end with vague, VAGUE endings, where the filming just STOPS because the Monster of the Week has appeared and killed the people holding the cameras, and what do you do then?  Fortunately, the killers in this case have cameras of their own, and are as obsessed as anyone else over filming everything, so we get to go a little further.

The movie still ends pretty vaguely, but way more clearly than normally.  There is enough room for an interpretation I *really* like, and y'all should back out right the heck now, because here come the spoilers.

We close with the group being buried alive in coffins and screaming for their lives, after being tormented and chased around a run down home, and transported on a bus, and being generally terrified.

But...these people were looking for the most extreme haunt.  They found it.  So...what if instead of dying in those coffins, they were let out, and the haunters all had a good laugh at how pants-wettingly terrified the five friends were?  We never ACTUALLY see anyone die.

It would be perfectly in line with what they were looking for, and I would've liked to see them end up that way.  A great kind of "be careful what you wish for" tale.  Which the movie still *is*.  The best argument for not having that ending is because it would've been anticlimactic to bury everyone, then let them go and smile and say "Just kidding!" and credits roll.

But because the movie is left open ended, but dark, you can absolutely go that route with an interpretation of what happens next.

All in all, Houses may have taken a while to get to the real horror, but it kept things interesting enough with good characters, a sense of humour, and a unique story that really made *sense* to tell as found footage, and used the trappings of that to good effect.

This is definitely a recommendation.  And y'all know I don't recommend found footage flicks lightly, since they can be so problematic with their storytelling.

What I'm Watching: Devil's Carnival

Awhile ago, I saw Repo! The Genetic Opera, and if you haven't seen my thoughts on it, they were...not favourable.  I didn't HATE it, and there were a few good moments.  I liked the style, but the music never really landed for me or spoke to me.

Still, I could see why some people would get into it, and if the singing was a little more...I dunno, it's hard to explain just what about it didn't work for me.  It felt too forced sometimes, like the singing wasn't natural enough.  It's a style thing, I guess.

I honestly want to revisit it and see if it's grown on me.  But enough of a movie that came out years ago, this is supposed to be about Terrance Zdunich's LATEST project, the Devil's Carnival!

Obviously I saw some talent in this guy, since I came back for his second project.  His songs in Repo! were easily some of my faves, and the guy's got some serious vision going on.  The trailer was decent, and the concept intrigued me, so sure!  I'll give him another shot!

The plot revolves around a trio of people with darkness in their past meeting untimely ends and finding themselves in a Hell that is represented by a devilish carnival with a slew of rules, and they must navigate their way through, avoiding temptations tailored for their sins, with the chance of some day finding their way to Heaven, should they be found worthy.

Surprise! that's a long shot.  At best.

The stories and songs are based around Aesop's Fables, and that is certainly a rich pit to mine.  Many people have done it before, but never quite this way.  And twisting the stories, and modernising them, and putting them through the lens of Lucifer's trials for the damned is actually very clever.

Remember back during my review of Dark Dealer, when I said I wish that it was an anthology series of people struggling to outwit the devil at games of chance and whatnot?  Yeah, surprise is on me, this IS that series.  Zdunich has every intention of making multiple Devil's Carnival movies with several stories in each, and it was like my request was instantly answered.

And yeah, while there's a lot here I genuinely DO like, it has a lot of the same flaws as Repo! The Genetic Opera.  There is just something about the musical style for some of the songs that just reads as 'off' to me, and I'm not enough of a musical person to articulate it.  Still, there's more songs in here I *do* like, and once again Terrance's songs shine with his distinctive, rich voice.  I'd seriously come back AGAIN just to hear him sing.

On a whole, Devil's Carnival works for me a LOT better than Repo! does, with stronger songs, content that is more up my alley with the morality plays and demonic overtones.  As I watched the movie, and listened to the commentaries, and watched it again, it definitely grew on me, and while a few things do still bug me, I really did almost instantly come around and quite enjoyed this.

It's tough to judge the cast, since acting and singing are two different things, with some similarities, but coming across in different ways on screen.  With most of the story being conveyed through song, and the heightened acting that comes with it, there's a lot of scenery chewing, but it's almost all in the absolute best ways.  Briana Evigan especially, who plays a dual role of a thief and her mirror self, tempting her to take more than she should, eats up the screen and the joy and fun she has as Twin is so SO fun to watch, as her own fun just oozes off the screen.

The weakest story for me was the adaptation of "The Scorpion and the Frog," and a large part of that is my personal dislike of the overused story.  It's a good lesson about people not being able to change, but argh it's everywhere.  But that's my own issues.  They twist the story around to try and make it be about the innocent young girl whose nature is unchangeable and gets her in trouble, instead of the ever-stinging Scorpion (A 1950s style Greaser bad boy, in a perfect bit of style) that can't resist his nature.  They never quite sell the idea, and it didn't really connect until it was outright explained that THAT is what they were going for.

Sean Patrick Flannery finishes up things with a story about a father who couldn't handle his young son's death and took his own life, winding up in the carnival.  Flannery gives a haunting performance as he struggles to find his way through the labyrinth of his own demons, making great use of the carnival setting.  He eventually is released by Lucifer and sent up to Heaven, as a plot point that will grow into the next Devil's Carnival movie.

I really can't say enough about Terrance Zdunich here, either.  The man has vision, he is clearly creative, and has such a great voice and presence.  He is the glue that holds this together, both creatively, and as Lucifer, the common thread that ties all the stories together, sharing them from his book of fables.  It's such a great hook and wrapper to the story, and scratches an itch I've had for awhile for just this sort of anthology.

Overall, Devil's Carnival was an enjoyable, creative musical journey that I found more enjoyable than Repo!, and if you're a fan of that, then you'll probably love this too.  While it wasn't perfect, and still had some rough spots, I was sold enough, and enjoyed enough, that I am eagerly awaiting the next installment of stories in this universe.

What I'm Watching: Ouija

Hello friend.

Time for a quick review, and I finally got out of the house to get in some Halloween-themed movie watching done.  And since SOME franchise has been bumping their movies into the far flung future, or January *coughcoughParanormalAcitivitycough* I had little in the way of options besides Ouija.

Did I spell that right?  Eh, we all know the movie.  Or at least the board...game...party thing.

I'll admit right off the bat, that I largely went to see this movie because of the cast, and then some of the people involved, and the idea didn't sound terrible.  Shelley Hennig does a great job with very little, making you care about her character with the scant stuff they gave her.  She's great at these sort of innocent good girl roles, but is capable of so much more.  Still, she brings to life the character of Debbie more than a lot of others may have.

Also, Olivia Cooke does much the same, and carries over a lot of her personable character from Bates Motel, and again makes you care about what she's going through, in a movie where they could have easily dropped the ball on that and just not bothered.  A lot of this movie hinges on you giving a crap about the friendship between Debbie and Laine, and the lengths they'd go to for each other, even beyond death.

Even Lin Shaye does a good job, as someone also connected to the spirit board.  Her role requires her to be a couple of things at once, and not a lot of people could have pulled it off as believably as she did.

The movie's plot revolves around a girl who messes around with a Ouija board in ways she shouldn't, leading to her untimely demise, and her best friend being unable to move on.  So of course SHE finds the spirit board and wants to say goodbye.  The plot thickens when she discovers that her death was not a suicide like everyone thinks, and that it may have been the other spirits communicating through the board.

See, we have a perfectly sensible plot there, right?  We've got a decent cast, and if you're gonna do a movie about a Ouija board, that's probably the way you want to go about it.  You've got mystery and intrigue, and some decent chances for horror.

And don't get me wrong, the movie's pretty solid.  It's got it's plot, it unfolds pretty well, and the 83 minute runtime is pretty much exactly how long this movie needed to be.  The pacing moves along nicely, and I really like the way the story peels back its layers and reveals the real story going on.  I seriously thought the movie might be cruising to an early end, but it found a good way to twist things one last time, that did NOT feel contrived, and didn't drag things out.

This also hit me right as I'm thinking about my own friend who died exactly ten years ago, and a lot of my thoughts back then are back on my mind.  I was in a very similar mental place, and having my mind back there REALLY helped me connect with what Laine was going through after her friend's death, and really spoke to the me from 2004.  A number of lines really hit me in the feels.

The biggest flaw of the movie, and I can't really fault it for this, but the movie doesn't really do enough to make itself unique.  There's no real innovation here, the scares are actually good, but stuff we've seen before, and the movie is WAY too reliant on that same tingly music sting from Insidious.  I've ALWAYS found it annoying, because it is such a cheap way to try and drum up emotion, and I personally find it a grating sound and it throws me right out of the movie.  Leave it in Insidious, where it still doesn't belong, but you don't need to copy THAT, of all things.

On the plus side, there was a GREAT moment of triumph where the tables turn at the end of the movie, that almost had me cheering.  It was almost exactly what I wanted them to do, and I was glad to see it happen.

So, Ouija is a mixed bag.  It's probably the best sort of thing you will get from a movie about the Ouija board, that sets up its own rules and plays fair with the audience (except for a few too many jump scares).  It may not be the most original horror movie, but I was thoroughly entertained, and I do recommend it if you can catch it cheap.  Enjoyable fluff that was a good way to kill an evening.

What I'm Watching: Scarecrow

The harvest time is upon us, so I thought it was FINALLY time to get around to this supernatural thriller from Syfy Channel, starring Lacey Chabert, and Robin Dunne from the third Species movie.

We've actually got quite a few familiar faces to Canadian cinema and television, even beyond those two.  And that's one endearing factor to the movie for me.  I love playing "Spot the Canadian Actor You've Seen in a Dozen Guest Spots Last Year".

The movie sets up a bunch of kids who've gotten into trouble over some vague stuff that really doesn't matter to the plot.  Regardless, they got detention for it, and are being punished by getting used as cheap labour to move a scarecrow from a nearby farm into town.

See, the town has some local folklore about a scarecrow that tormented the town back in the day, and to commemorate their survival and defeat, the townspeople have their festival.  But the farm where this happened, and thus the site of the festival, is being sold so the festival is moving, and the kids are doing the work.

And surprise!  The legends are real!

Honestly, that's a pretty solid recipe for a good, fun seasonal horror flick, and the movie delivers quite well.  It wastes no time delivering some scares, and the acting is pretty solid from almost everyone.

With so many characters, the kids suffer a lot on the side of characterisation, but Lacey and Robin are the leads, and get fleshed out rather well.

It's not long at all before the eponymous scarecrow monster shows up and our cast holes up in a nearby building as best they can.  Now, a lot of movies would stop there, and just have everyone get picked off in that one building over the next hour.  I appreciate "Scarecrow" mixing things up and actually changing locations a few times during the course of the movie.  There's arguments for both formulas.  Stuck in one place gives you that sense of being trapped, something always right there, but there's something to be said for trying to run, and being unable to get away, no matter how far you go, or no matter what you do.

And while the kids could easily have fallen into the unlikable asshole stereotype, they wisely avoid that, and only have a few jerks in the cast.  There's very few characters you WANT to see get killed by the monster.  Even for a group of kids that are supposedly on a detention trip.  A number of movies, again, would make them all your typical delinquents, but most of these kids are just your average students who made a bad decision and got in trouble for it.

The best part though, is the monster.  It is genuinely unique, actually works as CGI, and gives a great vibe of creepiness, and should scare a good number of people.  It pushes at the edges of a few of my personal buttons, and while it's your typical evil force with no real character, the design really shines and is such a great look, of this shadowy thing made up of branches and darkness that barely can be described as human.  It also works as something you can slice and shoot at with little to no effect.  It has a few Terminator 2 nods because of that, but I am sure those were deliberate.  And well done, for the scarecrow.

I was pretty surprised with just HOW quickly the movie chews through the cast.  Most of the deaths involve variations on stabbing or crushing by the monster, so there's not much creativity there, but it's still pretty fun.  They mix things up just enough, and the means of HOW they end up in the place to get stabby that keeps things interesting.

The plot unfolds a bit too lopsided for my tastes as well.  There's a lot of running and death and more running before they decide to stop and say, "Oh yeah, here's WHY this is all happening and what's going on!"  At least, in anything more than throwaway lines.  It's still mostly satisfying, and the plot rockets along so fast that you almost don't notice that all you're doing for half the movie is watching carnage before story.

There's no real twists, save for one major character turn.  You can pretty much figure out the course of the plot pretty quickly into the movie.  Probably even from this review.  The plot is pretty basic, and ultimately doesn't serve up enough answers, or have a really proper ending.

It's a solid enough movie, with a decent and engaging cast.  It's well made, and has a unique monster that's genuinely creepy.  I've had worse times spending 90 minutes watching a movie.  I've also had better, but this is a solid little popcorn flick that is perfect for the season.  It may not have a great resolution, but it's got a good ride with some fun times, and is very entertaining in all the GOOD ways.  Definitely worth seeking out and having a fun November movie night.