I've Seeeen The Light!: The Descent: Part 2 (2009) Review

The Descent was easily one of the best horror movies of the past decade. It did a lot of things right, not the least of which was the lighting. As I mentioned in my ramblings about The Descent, too often in horror movies, a scene is illuminated when there is no logical source of light. It's particularly frustrating when characters are fumbling around, as if it is pitch black, but we (the audience) can clearly see everything. “What, are you frickin’ blind?! The knife’s right there! I can see it, why can’t you?!” It requires a suspension of disbelief that I'm just not capable of, and has ruined many a horror movie for me. In The Descent, instead of falling into the trap of lighting scenes that shouldn't be lit, so we can see the action, Neil Marshall actually uses the lack of light to make the film more immersive and really ratchet up the tension. I'm convinced it's a large part of the reason why the film works so well.

So, now that I’m the record (twice) about how stupefyingly good the lighting was in the original Descent, you're probably not going to be surprised when I say that the biggest problem with the sequel is... you guessed it, kids: the lighting. But I'll get to that in a moment.

The Descent: Part 2 picks up two days after the events depicted in The Descent, with a search party out looking for the six women that disappeared, caverning in the Appalachian Mountains. Before you can say "I wonder when the first jump scare will happen", a local hillbilly, some way away from where the search party is looking, stumbles across a bloodied, battered, and borderline catatonic Sarah (Shauna Macdonald), one of the six women who made the original hellish descent.

Sarah is quickly escorted to hospital, and is given a clean bill of (physical) health by doctors, but is unresponsive to questioning from the local cops about what happened to her and her five friends. Good cop, Ellen (Krysten Cummings), just thinks Sarah’s in shock. But bad cop, Vaines (Gavan O’Herlihy), thinks she’s hiding something.

For reasons that aren't well explained, bad cop Vaines subsequently decides to form a small sub-search-party on the quiet and go search the area were Sarah was found, dragging the dazed and confused Sarah along for the ride. Conveniently, or coincidently, this means we now have a new party of six - Ellen, Vaines, Sarah and three rescue workers (including the too-cute-for-words, Australian actress, Anna Skeller) - making another descent into the "unchartered" caverns.

To be completely fair, The Descent: Part 2 is pretty good by horror movie sequel standards. But to be completely complete, horror movie sequel standards are pretty low. The film starts well, and the early cavern scenes are effective, but as the film moves into its third act director, Jon Harris, strays from what made the original film so effective and it hurts his sequel, big time.

Harris lays on the blood & gore, which is all fine and dandy, but in case there's any chance his audience might not see all the money he spent on the blood & gore effects he lights the "pitch black" caverns like a Victorian ballroom. We get a much better view of everything, to be sure, but it completely shatters the illusion of these poor sods being stuck in a dark, claustrophobic, cavern. It also means we see more of the cave dwellers and, as is so often the case with movie monsters, the more we see of them the less scary they become.

If the inexplicable bright lights illuminating the pitch black caverns don't ruin the final act for you then the film's conclusion surely will. The final scene feels like a desperate afterthought. Actually, an afterthought infers some sort of "thought", and that’s probably misleading. Clearly, no thought went into the film's finale which makes virtually no sense, and is completely irreconcilable with the events that transpire at the beginning of the film. It's not bad enough to take the award for most idiotic ending away from the recent Last House On The Left remake, but it's not far off.

The Descent: Part 2 works well for a good portion of its running time and is probably better than a sequel to The Descent deserves to be. It's just a shame Harris mishandles the film's last act, because it had the potential to be a genuinely worthy sequel.

Creepy Crawling: The Descent (2005) Review

Sarah (Shauna Macdonald), Juno (Natalie Mendoza), and Beth (Alex Reid) are a trio of care free adventurers until their world is turned upside down by the sudden death of Sarah's husband and daughter in a tragic accident. A year after the accident Juno decides to get the band back together and organises a caverning expedition in the Appalachian Mountains for the trio and another three friends. Seeds of doubt about Juno's true intentions are sown early and it's not long before the expedition turns pear shaped. The six women find themselves lost in an uncharted cave system, and the seemingly neurotic Sarah believes they are not alone.

I've seen so many horror movies, and am so accustomed to all the techniques used to shock audiences it's pretty rare for jump scares to catch me off guard these days. Such is the talent of Neil Marshall, however, that I damn near leapt through the back of my seat on more than one occasion whilst watching The Descent.

But there's more than just well orchestrated "boo" moments on offer here. The claustrophobic nature of crawling through caves is so well captured you almost feel like you’re stuck in these ridiculously confined spaces right along with the women. With the way Marsall shoots this film, merely being stuck in these caves is creepy enough, but when the real threat to the women’s life emerges The Descent really ratchets up the tension.

Some might complain about the weak characterisations (particularly of the three additional friends) but we get enough of an insight into the principle characters of Sarah and Juno to care about what happens to them.

Another thing that impressed me about this film was the lighting. Too often in horror movies when there is no logical no source of light, film-makers light the scene anyway (check out the little known New Zealand horror film The Locals for the absolute worst example of what I'm talking about). In a pitch black cavern the only light that should exist is the light from the girls' torches, flares and glow sticks. Marshall mostly adheres to this, which is commendable given the number of horror films that don't.

After the cooler than cool Dog Soldiers it was great to see such a promising director follow up with what is arguably an even better film.

Misnomer Monday

You just know when film-makers shove the word "final" in the title it most probably won't be. This film's misnomer title is kinda cool because it's actually a double barrelled misnomer. As New Nightmare and Freddy Vs Jason proved, this 1991 outing did not signal Freddy's death, nor was it the final nightmare.

So, to the inevitable question: what should it have been called?

Freddy Doesn't Die: Ever?
A Nightmare On Elm Street 6: The Dream Anaglyph Glasses?
A Nightmare On Elm Street 6: Freddy Walks Into a Bar...?

Quick BIQ Review: The Last House On The Left (1972)

There are a number of cinematic heuristics that hold true for most movie goers. Things like: sequels are generally not as good as the originals, and: all Uwe Boll movies suck. After seeing The Last House On The Left, there’s another I’d like to suggest, and that is: notorious 70’s horror movies are never as shocking as they are reputed to be.

I imagine The Last House On The Left may have been shocking in 1972, but today it’s just, well, a patchy old horror movie. I say “patchy” because everything from the direction, to the performances, to the cinematography, to the story itself, are all over the shop. The performances of the three main “bad guys” are solid and the scenes where they torment their victims are effective. However, the performances of the victim’s parents are woefully unconvincing and when combined with the exploitative plotting in the later stages of the film the whole thing just becomes laughably inept.

After finally seeing this notorious film I just kept wondering what all the fuss was about.

Turdsday Movie Review: Rampage: The Hillside Strangler Murders (2006)

I wasn't very impressed with the unscary, unfunny horror/comedy Club Dread. But shinning like a diamond in that pile of poo was the stunning Brittany Daniel. Naturally, after seeing Club Dread, I was keen to see more of Ms Daniel, so when I read that she had the lead role and appeared naked in the direct-to-video release Rampage: The Hillside Strangler Murders… well, let’s just say I rented this movie for all the wrong reasons.

Rampage: The Hillside Strangler Murders starts rather ominously: with an opening credit sequence that has no opening credits. The camera swirls around capturing glimpses of red light district neons before fading to black. The screen remains black for a while, before we get more swirling neons, and another fade to black, more swirling neons, more black, and so it goes on, like we’re supposed to be watching the opening credits… but there are none. Apparently Chris Fisher, the director of this train wreck, decided to move the credits to the end of the film, but it never occurred to him to get rid of the opening sequence designed to house them. Good grief.

From this bewildering opening onwards, the camera never stops moving in Rampage. It constantly, incessantly, swirls around and around and around and around the subjects it's filming. Watching this wretched film is like riding the Gravitron for an hour and a half. It took quite a great deal of self control for me to hold down my dinner while watching this spectacularly ill-conceived film.

For those interested in a plot synopsis, I think it was basically some derivative nonsense about a shrink (Brittany Daniel) and a serial killer (Clifton Collins Jr.), but I was just too distracted by my motion sickness to really take any of it in. According to people who know more about the real hillside strangler murder cases than I do, this film is wildly inaccurate.

Not even a naked Brittany Daniel could save this truly dreadful film.

Rampage: The Hillside Strangler Murders is exclusively available on DVD, but you could experience pretty much the same thing for less money if you simply held a picture of Brittany Daniel at arm’s length and gave yourself a wizzy dizz.

Top 20 Horror Movies

The seminal high preistess of horror blogging, Ms Stacie Ponder (aka Final Girl), has put the call out for everyone's top 20 horror movies (Linkety-Link). Why? It matters not. It's not our job to question, it's our job to create lists.

So, putting together a list of one's favourite 20 horror movies should be pretty simple, right? Wrong, douchebag! It's a god-forsaken nightmare, more frightening than any movie that might actually make it onto any resultant list.

What should be included? What should be excluded? Is Pretty Women really a "horror" movie? These are the inevitable questions one must grapple with if one is to produce a Top 20 Horror Movies list of any credence. We have until the 26th of this month to finalise our lists so I'm taking my time and thinkin' out loud, here's what I have so far...

01. Psycho (1960)
02. Scream (1996)
03. A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984)
04. Ring, The (2002)
05. Alien (1979)
06. Orphanage, The (2007)
07. Rec (2007)
08. April Fool's Day (1986)
09. Evil Dead, The (1981)
10. An American Werewolf In London (1981)
11. Funny Games (2007)
12. Descent, The (2005)
13. Rosemary's Baby (1968)
14. Identity (2003)
15. Skeleton Key, The (2005)
16. Saw (2004)
17. Eden Lake (2008)
18. Psycho II (1983)
19. New Nightmare (1994)
20. Donkey Punch (2008)

Reserves - Movies I'd like to have in the list that I can't quite squeeze in
Child's Play (1988)
Dog Soldiers (2002)
Exorcist, The (1973)
High Tension (2003)
Open Water (2003)
Pathology (2008)
Serpent and the Rainbow (1988)
Sixth Sense, The (1999)
Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

Toga Party Massacre: 300 (2006) Review

One of the most disappointing things about the DVD release of 300 is that it doesn’t come with a coupon to order the Wenham Workout video. If I can briefly steal from the vernacular of Friday Night Football commentators, David Wenham is HUGE!, in 300. He’s so pumped up that I suspect if you were to stick a pressure gauge up his butt it would register well over 200 PSI.

But I well and truly digress.

When King Leonidas (Gerard Butler) learns that a Persian invasion of Sparta is imminent, as a matter of Spartan law, he seeks permission from the religious elders to deploy the Spartan army to fight the Persians and defend Sparta. The elder’s make the suicidal decision of declining his request (notch that up as another win for religion), so he instead hand picks 300 Spartan warriors and goes for a stroll to the Hot Gates, a narrow pass the Persians must traverse in order to concur Sparta. Here, the King and his brave, buff, toga party fend off wave after wave of Persian attacks, in between yelling quite a bit about glory and death.

Visually, 300 is simply stunning. I can’t honestly recall a film this visually striking. But it seems that so much effort has gone into making the film look good no one seemed terribly concerned about whether the story could sustain proceedings for 2 hours, and it really doesn’t.

The first battle is entertaining, but each subsequent attack by the Persians becomes less and less interesting. Seeing a man being impaled with a large spear in a shower of computer generated blood is fun once or twice but after the 57th slow-mo impaling it all becomes a bit monotonous. I guess I was expecting excitement and tension, the likes of which I experienced when I first saw the mother of all battle-against-the-odds movies Zulu. But 300 doesn’t really deliver in this regard. It’s more akin to watching someone else play a video game… with cool graphics!

Gerard Butler does a tremendous job delivering his lines with conviction and gusto. He plays a very straight bat, and you can almost believe that someone, at some point, may have actually acted and spoken this way, but the same can’t be said for David Wenham. The silly voice he puts on is at complete odds with his newly acquired physique, and an affirmation that he was completely the wrong actor for the role of the King’s messenger man Dilios.

For me 300 is a classic example of a 2.5 star film, it’s not a failure, but it’s not one I’d readily recommend.