Shrieker: So Simple a Dog Can Understand

Today's first installment of the remainder of October Halloween season Halloween class horror movie reviews is the 1998 Creature Feature straight to VHS classic dun da da da! Shrieker (1998)

This film should be filed under "so bad their good" blah blah, but I don't like that.  I prefer something like "sincere flop" or "heartfelt nonsense" along with films like Troll II, Troll, and the 1990s classic, starring Friends actress Jennifer Aniston, Leprechaun.

Clocking in at an hour and 12 minutes, Shrieker is a creature feature that teases you with the monster in the first two minutes.  The denouement involves a group of stereotype college student squatters in an abandoned hospital (thanks privatized medicine).  The protagonist is a math major that pretends she's smart but isn't.  The men are clueless mansplainers always appealing to a backward sense of "reason" and "sanity."  The communist, feminist roommate is always pissed off.

The dialogue is forced, but I think that's what I like about this film.  The film says exactly what it intends to say without subtlety.  It is exactly what it is.  It is the story that it is laboriously telling.  IT'S THE SHRIEKER!

While I was watching this film I happened to glance over at our dog.  He was laying in front of the screen, his ears perked up and his eyes were locked on the television screen.  He was actually paying rapt attention to the film.  I started to understand why.  The film was so simple in its form that a canine mind could actually grasp and be entertained by it.

Rating: 6/10

Romantic Films for an iconoclastic Sweetest Day

Tomorrow is Sweetest Day, a holiday that I knew nothing about until my girlfriend who was living in Ohio informed me that people have actually been celebrating it for years in the Mid-West.  We celebrated our first Sweetest Day together over Skype.  Our relationship started long distance so we had to sync up films on our computers so that we could simulate the experience of watching a film together via Skype.  A year later we are cohabitating and she said "Yes" when I asked her to marry me.  This Sweetest Day we are spending together and we are going to watch some of our favorite romantic movies for an iconoclastic Sweetest Day.  This will be the last entry in November that I do about non-horror genre films as the rest of the month I will devote to the Halloween season.  Here is the list:

1. Harold and Maude (1971)

When we were dating long distance, over Skype, we united over this Hal Ashby film that it turned out was one of both of our favorites.  It is the story of a non-traditional romance between a death obsessed young man and an elderly woman with one foot in the grave.  The film is one of Ashby's finest (and they're almost all good) and the wonderful soundtrack from Cat Stevens doesn't hurt either.

2. Fando y Lis (1968)

After exposing my future fiance to Alejandro Jodorowsky's the Holy Mountain for the first time (without too much incident) I decided to suggest we watch another of my favorite Jodorowsky masterpieces, Fando y Lis.  With a story written by Jodorowsky's Panic Movement cohort, playwright and director Fernando Arrabal, the film is a psychedelic journey through the trials and tribulations of relationships.  Filmed in beautiful black and white with some stunning surreal mise en scene Fando y Lis still retains its status as one of my favorite films of all time.  To my surprise, she enjoyed it as well despite it's challenging pacing, disturbing themes and dense symbolism.

3. a. Before Sunrise (1995)
    b. Before Sunset (2004)
    c. Before Midnight (2013)

Having been a fan of Richard Linklater's meandering philosophical films like Slacker (1991) and Waking Life (2001) for some time, my future fiance suggested to me the Before films featuring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy and their stimulating chemistry.  The same characters appear in Waking Life so I had already been introduced to them.  Their charming philosophical ramblings provoke the viewer to look beyond the surface of reality and to explore the truth hidden beneath.  Each film is filmed almost a decade after the other and we see the characters age and their relationship seems also to age like a vintage wine.  I understand the actors were so taken by the chemistry between the characters and the philosophical issues they discussed that they helped Linkater write the second and third films.  They were nominated for an Oscar for Before Midnight.

Young Adult Novel Adaptations: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

Saw this with my daughter and fiance recently at the request of my daughter.  She had read the book and enjoyed it so was interested in seeing the adaptation.  Despite some minor variations, the film stayed mostly with the plot of the book apparently.  Having not read the book, I cannot comment on these differences at this time.

What I can comment on is the apparent phenomenon of adaptations of young adult fiction novels into films.  A string of formulaic, dystopian type thrillers came on the heels of The Hunger Games (2012).

The Hunger Games actually does have a redeeming message about class, although by the end it reveals itself to be ever so slightly a reactionary message.  The Giver (2014), however, an apparent Hunger Games clone, has an entirely Ayn Randian objectivist message that I don't recall getting from the book when I read it as a teen.

I do remember it being influential on my thinking as an angsty youth who suffered as an individualist beneath the wheel of conformism.  I calk it up to youth.  Seeing the adaptation of the Giver years later revealed it to me to be a profoundly reactionary, right-wing message.  A utopian society where there are no poor, no wars and not crime but there is also not individualism sounds a lot like Cold War anti-Communism in the context of a few years of radical thinking and praxis.

This brings me to Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2016) directed by over-rated "auteur" Tim Burton.  First, the plot has the unfortunate odor of blockbuster super-hero type films that have flooded theaters with mediocrity lately.  The message appears to be that "peculiar" is "special" and that "special" means that you have super-powers to do things that are what Hume would define as miracles: "a violation of the laws of nature." This is maybe a liberal attempt at teaching that people with disabilities are valuable to society, but fails to convey this message as all the "peculiarities" of the children are supernatural things that are in fact very useful in a number different context.  Rather than disabilities they are super-abilities.

Tim Burton follows a string of shitty films including the bastardized remake of Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory (1971), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), the incredibly boring Corpse Bride (2005) and the profoundly awful Alice in Wonderland (2010).

Some of Burton's early films including Edward Scissorhands (1990), Ed Wood (1994), Beetlejuice (1988) and Mars Attacks (1996) were rather inspired.  However, at this point Tim Burton's aesthetic is tired and run down and his films are commercial, CGI-infused visual spectacles that attempt to make up for lack of good story telling by offering a lot of flashing lights on screen.

Miss Peregrine kept my attention and did have some interesting moments and ideas, but it suffered from the society of the spectacle pathology of CGI obsession and constant action rather than character development and commentary.

Rating: 6/10

Goofy horror cinema star Justin Long

I first came across Justin Long as Warren Cheswick in the short lived, early 2000s TV show Ed.  Warren Cheswick, Ed's assistant at the bowling alley, was the epitome of the boyish man-child character that would define Long's career.

Unbeknownst to me as a youth in the 2001, Long had already starred in Jeepers Creepers and Jeepers Creepers II by the time the episodes of Ed with the Warren Cheswick character hit the airwaves.  Long's juvenile-looking face and goofy mannerisms made him perfect for the Warren Cheswick role, but how could this character actor do as the lead in a horror film?

I recently re-watched Victor Salva's Jeepers Creepers (2001) and Sam Raimi's Drag Me to Hell (2009), both starring Justin Long.

It has been a long while since I had seen Jeepers Creepers and I honestly didn't remember a lot about it.  It surprised me at how well it held my attention.  It is an entertaining adventure-type horror film with comedic and over-the-top elements.  In fact, both films in this post can be considered that type of film.  Perhaps that is why Long does so well as the lead in both.  His boyish goofiness is probably what caused Salva to cast him.

Jeepers Creepers follows brother and sister, Darry and Trish, as they attempt to go visit their parents, but are stalked by some kind of demonic monster on the way.  Rather than a horror-comedy, I would describe it more as a film that has moments where chuckles are appropriate, yet still retains its dark, creepy ambiance.  The only negative thing I would say about it is that the end does drag on a bit and the monster is shown way too much for the film to retain the uncanny suspense built around the monster in the beginning.

Rating: 7/10

The other film is drag me to hell and Long is actually a supporting actor to Alison Lohman's excellent lead performance as a savvy yet innocent professional woman who is cursed by an apparenetly Roma witch.  The film examines many elements of occult magic including Jungian psychoanalysis, Voodoo trance states, Santeria seance rituals and tarot reading.  It is also perhaps an homage to the classic horror films of the 1970s and 80s.  Thus, the over-the-top elements in the film (*possible spoiler* one scene in particular that takes place at a wake is not exactly gory, but is quite disgusting and disturbing *possible spoiler*) look to be a recycling of classic horror tropes that probably terrified audiences in the heyday of 70s and 80s gorefest, but come across as more comedic to audiences in the early 21st century.

Again, this is another of those adventure type horror films like From Dusk Till Dawn or El Dia De Bestia.  Definitely worth a watch if you're down for some light entertainment, but don't expect any kind of profound analysis of the relevance of pagan occultism in an increasingly modernized society or a lament about the struggle of the Roma diaspora.

Rating: 7/10