30 of 31 Horror Films I've Never Seen 2016: Devil Fetus (1983)

Some films are just so completely insane that they're brilliant.  Trashy? Yes.  Crude? Yes.  Outright offensive? Probably, but in all the best ways possible.  Films like this defy every concept of logic we can think of.  Characters make some of the worst decisions, but the consequences are often hilarious if not totally brutal.  Films like Hausu and Evil Dead or The Visitor all fit this criteria.  Weird, wacky, and bloody.  Heung-Chun Lau's Devil Fetus completely earns the right to be called brilliantly insane.

Set in Hong Kong, a woman buys a strange (and phalic) vase from a market auction and unwittingly releases a demon which possesses and kills her.  Sensing the demonic presence in her body, a priest binds the spirit to her name stone with a warning not to touch it for 12 years.  Of course just shy of 12 years later, the demon is released and possesses the woman's nephew, going on a murderous rampage among the family.

Where do I even begin?  This movie is so crazy that when I watched it in a full theater at The 11th Annual Aero Theatre Horrorthon the entire room was in an uproar.  People laughed and gasped and audibly responded to the insane amounts of gore that we presented on the screen.  The subtitles, many of which seemed really poorly translated, added to the insanity in such hilarious ways that regardless of how much the content didn't make sense, it created a whole extra level of enjoyment.  And it pulls every trick in the book to create it's strange world of visual insanity.

Be warned, this is not by any means a "good" film, but it is easily one of the most insanely enjoyable Horror films I've ever seen.  It was so much fun, I couldn't believe that I hadn't seen it before.  The entire time I kept thinking, that it was like someone took the plot of The Exorcist and then genetically altered it's DNA to bind it with Hausu and through it straight into a Hong Kong incubator, unleashing it upon the world before any of the kinks were worked out.  And it completely worked!  This is one of those movies that I will now likely unleash upon unsuspecting friends (probably after a couple of beers) just to watch their faces twist and contort with chaotic confusion.  That' just how worth it this film is to watch.  Unless, of course, you don't like to ever have any fun.

29 of 31 Horror Films I've Never Seen 2016: The Gift (2000)

When I was in High School and I started binging on Horror films I was given a copy of The Evil Dead.  Needless to say, that crazy film hooked me for life.  I've watched almost all of Sam Raimi's films since and have a lifelong obsession with Bruce Campbell thanks to it.  Among his post Army of Darkness films are a number of intrigues entries (as well as a few duds) but whatever you say about Raimi you can't say he doesn't have a certain way about his films that makes them uniquely his.  Even when he's treading more studio friendly ground there are unmistakable Raimi moments.  Whether it's that yellow '73 Oldsmobile, a shot of a full moon on a foggy night, or strangely slapstick humor in otherwise frightening situations, a Sam Raimi film is a Sam Raimi film.  That's what makes the Billy Bob Thornton/Tom Epperson penned The Gift so interesting.

Cate Blanchette stars as Annie, a single mother with a unique gift of extrasensory perception in a small southern town called Brixton.  She spends her days offering card readings to locals in exchange for donations of food and supplies.  After a woman goes missing, the investigators turn to Annie and her gift as a last result to try and find her.

While the plot synopsis of the film is relatively simple, what makes the gift so intriguing is the sense of Southern Gothic mixed with Raimi's stylistic elements.  A good deal of the script is spent getting to know the characters who, as people in small towns  are, have a good deal of dark secrets under their well meaning mannerisms.  Complex issues of abuse and mental disturbance abound on the periphery but all of the sub plots combine toward the conclusion making for a truly complete story.  Giovanni Ribisi shines particularly as Buddy, the local mechanic who suffers from serious mental trauma surrounding his father.

One can really feel the small town aesthetic attributable to both Raimi and Thornton's youth.  I would almost be so bold as to call it a spiritual sibling to Thornton's Sling Blade if in setting alone.  Regardless of the large star ridden ensemble cast there is a truthfulness to the characters that reads marvelously.  I found myself stunned by how much I enjoyed actors that I normally don't think much of, like Keanu Reeves and Katie Holmes.  Reeves as a truly despicable wife abusing redneck was fascinating to watch and the amount of animosity that he instills is perfect to the character.  All in all, it fits well thematically as a follow up to A Simple Plan (which starred Thornton), in it's exploration of the darkness inherent in all people.  Not as outrageous as his earlier works, but still a worthy film to the Raimi oeuvre.

25 of 31 Horror Films I've Never Seen: Spring (2014)

I love films with open endings.  I like philosophical exploration, emotional clarity, and above all things I love when a film is unafraid to explore honesty.  There are so many different ways to do it; metaphorically, allegorically, scientifically, and spiritually.  So what do you call a film that explores the metaphysics of love via a monster movie format?  All of the above I suppose and that's what makes Aaron Moorehead and Justin Benson's Spring an immensely great film.

After his mother succumbs to cancer, Evan's (Lou Taylor Pucci) life is completely upended by tragedy and circumstance causing him to flee the United States.  With no idea where to go he books a flight to Italy where fate pushes him towards Louise (Nadia Hilker) an incredible woman harboring a dark secret.

Every review you will ever read likes to draw comparison's to Richard Linklater, particularly Before Sunrise and due to many of the creature transformation effects present (and the seaside setting) to the horror of H.P. Lovecraft.  It's an apt comparison, at least stylistically, but there is something so completely honest about Spring that I think it's almost unfair.  That is not to say that Linklater's films don't contain honesty, but he does have a certain pretension to philosophical meandering that is nowhere near as present in Moorehead and Benson's work.  The immediate intimacy between the two leads is electric and their dialogue is so refreshingly honest, witty, blunt, charming, and mature.  So much of dialogue in films is made up of arguments that lead nowhere.  Evan and Louise communicate so fully throughout the film that it almost makes it read even more as a fantasy, if only because the audience isn't used to it.

This film was a breakout success following their first film Resolution which gained some notoriety at the Tribecca Film Festival in 2012, another film in which they use the Horror genre as a springboard (pun intended) to discuss other more real life issues and fears.  Spring, outside of being an incredible mash up of genre, is also an exquisitely shot film where the camera itself takes on the presence of an invisible character.  Settling on strange animal and plant activity happening the foreground which starts of barely noticeable and slowly becomes a focal metaphor to the rest of the narrative, the camera never feels intrusive or uninviting, but instead a welcoming power.  It is also so refreshing to see a film that isn't afraid to inhale deeply personal emotions and exhale a monstrous creature that feasts on living prey.  A fantastic second feature from a team of incredible filmmakers who are absolutely worth following.

23 of 31 Horror Films I've Never Seen 2016: Another (2014)

There is nothing more frustrating than when a film's tone becomes muddy and inconsistent.  Ultimately it alienates all tastes in the audience because it is impossible to make up one's mind when the film dashes interesting moments with amateurish and poorly written dialogue scenes.  Such is the fate of  Jason Bognacki's Another (aka Mark of the Witch).

Following her birthday, Jordyn (Paulie Redding), begins to have bizarre hallucinations and experiences extreme losses in time and memory ultimately leading her to the conclusion that she may be marked by the Devil.

What can I say about this film without being overly negative?  It has a number of interesting sequences remnicients of fever dreams, but ultimately it cops out on these moments with poorly written dialogue to move the plot forward.  Throw in a number of actors (especially the lead) who were likely chosen more based on their looks than their ability to act and you have a grade A mess on your hands.  It's like Bognacki just couldn't decide if he was making an arthouse horror film or a straightforward demonic possession exploitation film.  Scenes that are intended to be seductive or erotic are flat and lifeless.  To much of the post production feels rushed and unpolished.  Sure, the score has some interesting use of classics mixed with tripped out sensory attacking pieces, but that doesn't mean a damn when the whole scene is marred by completely uninteresting dialogue.

I wish I could say this didn't happen so often in horror films, but the truth is it happens all the time.  How the scripts get produced is beyond me.  The upsetting thing for me about the film is that the beginning had my attention almost immediately and then when it had me craving more it dashed that hope by a drastic and inexplicable tonal shift.  These shifts happen all over the finished product of the film and the conclusion is an annoying twist that felt completely unnecessary.  Where the film completely fails in dialogue it attempts to make up for with high concept cinematography, but this unfortunately gives it far too much of a disjointed feeling.  Give it a look if you've got the time, if anything to see what it's like when a filmmaker can't seem to decide what kind of movie they're making.

22 of 31 Horror Films I've Never Seen 2016: A Field In England (2013)

Hallucinations are probably some of my favorite plot devices in Horror films.  The boundaries don't exist when making a hallucination sequence because hallucinations, in of themselves, are boundless.  They're completely tailored to one's individual fears and anxieties as well as their perceptions.  They're visual, aural, and tactile and when done right they leaver the viewer incredibly confused!  Ben Wheatley's A Field In England may be one of the greatest hallucinatory films of the last decade, at the very least, and definitely boasts the 5.1 sound design I've heard on a film in as much time.

Set during Oliver Cromwell's parliamentary civil war in England the story follows a group of men deserting a battlefield.  The band together to find an ale house and after a meal which included quite a bit of hallucinatory mushrooms along the way uncover an alchemist who takes control of them and forces them to help him find a hidden treasure buried someone in the field.

This movie is a trip.  Literally.  Amy Jump's incredible script is period correct (which is pretty awesome), the characters are all so fully realized that the connectivity between them is really beautiful, and the sound mix, as I stated before, is almost ungodly.  The incredible grounded realism combined with hallucinatory sequencing travels around the circle of the 5.1 environment.  The only downside to that fact is that I can't really imagine it having the same effect in a stereo environment which does alienate some viewers for home release.  However, that doesn't take away from the visual field which is grimy and incredibly grounded.  It could be anywhere and it could be nowhere which heightens the incredibly uneasy mood and tone of the film.

I also love that it was shot in Black and White.  The binary coarseness of it heightens the overall tone in all the best ways possible to accentuate the performances.  And what performances they were.  Michael Smiley, who I know best as Tyres in Spaced, is a truly wicked villain.  He's a malicious egoist who is so completely self assured that when his "victims" retake control of the situation his downfall is beautifully brutal.  All of the elements combining in this film are symbiotic toward the overall vision, which is what most films truly aim for (but don't always succeed at) in the long run.  While this film certainly skirts the fine line of what is Horror and what is not, it's occult influence is incredibly clear and it's unconventional narrative is brilliant.

 

21 of 31 Horror Films I've Never Seen 2016: Firestarter 2: Rekindled (2002)

Sometimes you watch a movie that your gut immediately tells you is going to be bad.  From the promotional artwork, to the plot synopsis, to the cast list, to the fact that it's a sequel to a film that definitively should not have a sequel.  When I finally got a copy Firestarter it happened to come in a set with a tv miniseries sequel directed by Robert Iscove called Firestarter 2: Rekindled.  I knew from the start it was going to be pretty bad, but sometimes you just can't help yourself.

Set roughly 10 to 15 years after the events of the original film, Firestarter 2 finds Charlie McGee (Marguerite Moreau) under an assumed name going to a college in Colorado.  Many of the key moments of Stephen King's novel are retold in flashbacks juxtaposed to the current events in which she is being sought out by Vincent Sforza (Danny Nucci) a naive office worker who believes he is finding survivors from the original drug test that created Charlie's powers in the first place to compensate them for damages.  Of course it's all an elaborate trap that leads Charlie back against her original foe, (previously assumed dead) John Rainbird (Malcolm McDowell), and a new group of psychic powered children he is grooming.

I'm going to be short and sweet about this:  For a TV movie, it's okay, but otherwise it's pure dreck as I pretty much knew it would be from the start.  Marguerite Moreau is interesting as an actress and Malcolm McDowell is always fun to watch, but their characters are such boring cliche's that it's easy to be distracted.  It has a larger budget than most TV films had at the time but that doesn't save it from it's many glaring faults.  Flat lighting, annoyingly relentless score (seriously there is not one moment without cheap and utterly bad music), and a relatively boring script.

The real reason I watched it was for Dennis Hopper's cameo and I liked the idea of the concept.  Why wouldn't I want to revisit a character of one of my favorite sci-fi horror films?  The concept isn't all that uninteresting, but all the things worth exploring are pretty much ignored in favor of pulpy (i.e. boring) cliches.  So ultimately it's another case of another film that can only be made enjoyable with inebriation, which I suppose means it has it's moments, but they're too far in between to really make a difference or save the end result.

19 of 31 Horror Films I've Never Seen 2016: The Relic (1997)

Humans are obsessed with monsters.  We use the word to describe anything that causes us to fear, including other humans, and to describe anything that seems beyond empathy.  We also use it to describe any type of predator creature that could kill us.  We're naturally terrified of the idea that we are not above decimation by something bigger and meaner that doesn't give a single care to our well being in the world.  We create monsters for a variety of reasons, some even spiritual, but the end game seems to always come back to fear.  How else do you describe Peter Hyams' The Relic.

An anthropologist is documenting a Brazilian tribal ritual.  The shaman gives him tea which he drinks and he suffers a particularly violent reaction.  Later that evening he rushes to a cargo ship begging the captain to remove a crate that he was sending to the Chicago Natural History Museum, but he is denied.  He sneaks aboard the boat to find his crates, but discovers that they've accidentally been left on the dock and he is now out to sea with the ship.  Six weeks later, the ship is found floating, it's entire crew killed and brought to the Chicago Harbor where superstitious Lt. Vincent D'Agosta (Tom Sizemore) is investigating it.  Another week later, crates from Brazil full of strange leaves show up and the night that Evolutionary Biologist Dr. Margo Green (Penelope Ann Miller) is studying them, a guard is murdered at the Chicago Natural History Museum in a similar fashion as the crew on the boat.  A huge gala is approaching and all signs are pointing to something other than a simple criminal mind.

Where do I begin with this film?  While the subtext has many interesting ideas floating around it's nothing more than a basic creature feature.  Rather than focusing on the mythos behind the creature's creation and the implications of that mythos the audience is taken into a serious of under lit situations where people are grabbed by a wheezing off camera monster who viciously decapitates them and eats part of their brain.  For a bunch of supposedly intelligent scientists everyone in the film makes increasingly stupid decisions (aside from D'Agosta) that usually end up with them getting killed brutally.  The first have focuses primarily on tension and suspense but as soon as the creature shows it's face it's an all out action movie of people running away from a truly terrifying looking beast designed by Stan Winston.

This film came out at the same time as Mimic and I recall the trailers on TV being pretty similar looking.  Though The Relic got a much bigger budget Mimic is ultimately a far more unsettling film with a much more terrifying premise.  Both films falter in the second half, Relic with it's sudden shift in genre and Mimic with it's anticlimactic "happy ending."  The thing is that even while Tom Sizemore pulled off a great subdued performance as an edgy superstitious detective, none of the characters really draw sympathy from the audience.  They're caricatures at best and the only one I found myself caring about was a wheelchair bound Dr. Frock (James Whitmore) who has about as little screen time as Dr. Cuthbert (Linda Hunt).  At the end of the day, it's a monster movie that takes itself a little too seriously and doesn't really offer anything more than the typical jump scares and creature kills.  But I suppose with a couple of friends, a case of beer, and all the lights off it can make for a sort of entertaining watch.

18 of 31 Horror Films I've Never Seen 2016: The Devil's Backbone (2001)

There are two kind of film goers.  Those who believe that Guillermo del Toro is one of the most visionary directors working today and those who are wrong.  Though his films have been received by fairly mixed reviews and many of his passion projects have been flat out rejected by Hollywood studios he still manages to impart a very unique and beautiful style upon them.  I love his films quite a bit but I have a very special place in my heart for his Spanish films.  I waited a while to watch The Devil's Backbone because every time I thought about watching it the timing was just wrong.  If you're reading this, then you know the day has finally come!

Set during the Spanish Civil War (same as Pan's Labyrinth), the story follows Carlos (Fernando Tielve), a 12-year-old child who has been dropped off at an orphanage by his father's comrades (following the death of his father).  After being coerced by the orphanage's main bully, Jaime (Inigo Garces) he happens across a ghost, referred to by the children as, The One Who Sighs, and the plot ever so thickens.

What makes this movie so absolutely brilliant (aside from it's gorgeous production design, slick cinematography, and expert direction) is it's tone.  del Toro said in a 2013 Interview for Criterion Collection (available on the Devil's Backbone home release) that his idea for the film was to synthesize everything about Gothic literature into a setting that one would not expect.  In this case, a Spanish Civil War era children's orphenage in the country.  Not only did he achieve this goal, he did so completely and utterly.  Everything about this film feels fresh, even 15 years after it was made.  The incredibly dynamic characters are so brimming with life and personality (even the ghost) that they transcend the limits of the story, each of them being essential to the resolution.

What kills me the most about the film is that it is evidence of everything that is wrong with Hollywood film studios.  That an artist can make a film that expounds beyond the confines of it's genre could be so consistently stifled in the industry is baffling to me.  Just read any behind the scenes account of what happened when he shot Mimic for Miramax.  It's a horror story of it's own.  Then jump ahead to the behind the scenes stories of his attempt to make The Mountains of Madness.  Even with James Cameron's direct support Universal refused to give him a green light and the project was cancelled.  The list goes on.  Each time he manages to make a film (that isn't Hellboy) one can just FEEL the studio meddling.  All you have to do is watch Pacific Rim once and you can immediately tell that the studio execs stepped all over the finished product.  While I feel remiss ending this with a rant, I can't quite help myself so let me conclude with this:  If you like him or not, Guillermo Del Toro is one of the most unique creative voices in cinema right now and he god damn well deserves to make his art.

17 of 31 Horror Films I've Never Seen 2016: Housebound (2014)

Everyone walks out of a movie once in a while.  Maybe because something pulled you away or maybe because you just couldn't sit through it, whatever the reason, we all walk out of a movie at least once.  Of course, the home version of this is, everyone turns off a movie early once in a while.  There are too many excuses to be made for it so I'm not going to bother saddling them here.  The point is that I once tried to watch Gerard Johnstone's Housebound and I turned it off in the first 20 minutes.  I'm not really sure what the hell I was thinking either, because it's a great film.

A troubled young woman, Kylie (Morgana O'Reilly), botches an attempted ATM theft and is remanded to house arrest at her old home for 8 months.  Upon returning home, with shitty attitude intact, she overhears her mother, Miriam (Rima Te Wiata), calling in to a radio station to tell about an experience in the basement that led her to believe the house is haunted.  Kylie dismisses this until she starts to experience strange things as well and after a bit of digging with the help of her paranormal enthusiast probation officer, Amos (Glen-Paul Waru), she discovers that the house was previously a half-way house that a young girl was murdered in 15 years ago, and that her spirit is haunting the house.  How do you get rid of a vengeful spirit?  Help it find it's killer of course.

As I said before, the first time I tried to watch this film I only made it about 20 minutes before I turned it off.  My excuses, though they don't really matter, are only two.  One: I was tired. Two: Kylie is such an unlikable character during the first half of the film that it's hard to watch as a result.  This speaks loads to Morgana O'Reilly's performance because she won me over by the end of the film, with a little bit of a rousing pep talk from her probation officer.  She is so nasty, rude, and god damn awful to everyone around her that it made the decision to go to sleep that much easier.  At the prodding of a friend of who visited recently, I decided to give it another go and try to focus on the more humorous aspects of the film.  This helped tremendously.

The film is really quite funny and maintains a dry sense of wit even in some very serious situations.  All of the characters feel like real people, even when they're slight parodies and the intrigue of the mystery increases with the duration of the film so that when it finally comes to the big climactic ending the audience is left with a thoroughly satisfying conclusion.  It occurred to me that there were probably a lot more clues throughout the earlier half of the film that I completely missed, giving the film the appeal of multiple viewings.  Top notch acting and excellent production quality round out a truly entertaining piece of New Zealand cinema!

16 of 31 Horror Movies I've Never Seen 2016: Jaws 2 (1978)

Sequels.  If there is one thing that you will almost never escape in the modern cinema experience it is the sequel.  Some films deserve them, some films don't, and some films are made specifically for them.  My whole life I somehow avoided watching any of the sequels to Jaws because I 100% believed that they would be a sheer waste of time and effort to sit through.  Sometimes though, usually when sick or hungover, sequels are all one's brain can handle.  Jeannot Szwarc's Jaws 2 is one of those movies, easy on the brain, generally entertaining, and no where nearly as good as it's predecessor.

Three years after the events of Jaws a new shark shows up to cause mayhem for Chief Brody (Roy Scheider) and his family, as well as the town of Amity.  Once again, Brody sees all the signs of shark attacks and the town council dismisses his urges as those of a traumatized lunatic.  As we, the audience, know the body count is only going to increase.

Let's be realistic, if it weren't for Roy Scheider, this movie would be a god damn catastrophe.  The first two thirds of the film follow the plot points of the original film to a T.  Other than that the movie is shot pretty well, but it doesn't out do the first film in any real way.  There is a good deal more of pyrotechnic stunt work throughout, including a boat explosion and plenty of open water scenes.  Really the most interesting thing about the film is the trivia section of it's IMDB page though.  That and watching Scheider embody traumatic response to the reality of his situation.

All this aside, the film ended up being one of the most successful sequels of it's time, yielding such a lovely box office gross that Universal gave Szwarc the opportunity to make Somewhere in Time.  It's got a good reprisal of the theme in John William's score as well as returning actors Lorraine Gray and Murray Hamilton, but in all reality this is not a film that can be taken seriously in any way, and once you can get passed that fact you can probably enjoy it for what it is.  A shark exploitation movie.  Personally, when it comes to Animal Horror Exploitation films I tend to lean towards the Italians.  We just take ourselves a wee bit too seriously with our sequels over here.

Lousy quality, but the re-release trailers is 4 minutes long...

14 of 31 Horror Film I've Never Seen 2016: Bone Tomahawk (2015)

Westerns are tough for Hollywood.  Don't ask me why, but when westerns come up they're almost always avoided like the plague.  The conventional argument is that they cost too much and don't guarantee a high return.  Until quite recently it seemed you had to work on a shoestring budget in the independent world in order to even make one.  As can be expected, there is still no guarantee of a grand success (though I suppose Quentin Tarantino would disagree with that), but if anything modern Westerns still have a place in the cinema.  Since the greatest thing about Genre filmmaking is the ability to mix and match Genre's together we can finally explore all the horrific and supernatural aspects of Western mythology.  Or, as is the case with S. Craig Zahler's Bone Tomahawk, we can examine the horrifically brutal reality of the danger inherent in all beings.

This film is one of the greatest examples of the "slow burn" story.  It's like the strike of a match, it sparks suddenly and then slowly burns to the end with a magnificently brutal flourish.  After his wife and a local deputy are kidnapped by a tribe of cannibal troglodytes, a cowboy (Patrick Wilson) hunts after them with the Sheriff (Kurt Russell), a gunslinger (Matthew Fox) and an elderly deputy (Richard Jenkins).  If I say anymore it would spoil it so I'm going to leave it at that.  Like a good western, the story doesn't rush to get us to the payoff.  We experience the environment and characters who live in that environment.  Hence, the "slow burn."

This film is so detailed in it's setting that even the dialogue is period correct.  Not for one minute, does it feel anachronistic.  The floor boards creek, the light is motivated, and the horse hoofs are deep.  The journey to get to the cannibal tribe alone takes time and that time is spent showing what such a journey entails, not to the degree of boring details, but to the degree of the physical and emotional toll such a rescue mission takes upon the characters.  We see all the stubbornness that men are capable of, as well as their resilience, and their ability to act quickly.

As a horror movie, the pacing and camera work brilliantly builds tension.  When we finally get to see the troglodytes it is fast, brutal, and oh does it deliver on the gore front.  We're talking cringe worthy, look away, "Oh my god they're not going to show it... HOLY SHIT THEY'RE SHOWING IT!" kind of Gore.  They're pretty terrifying and due to the inbred nature of their tribe come complete with a creepy vocal defect that further likens them to wild beasts or monsters.  The filmmakers are very careful not to liken the tribe to other Native tribes and also quick to point out the foolhardiness of male bravado.  When the gunslinger makes a remark that he's "...killed more Indians than anyone in this room" a Native man replies "That's an ugly boast."  On one level, they're four men on a rescue mission, on another level they represent the different archetypes of thought regarding life in the west.  Together they function as a whole.  Perhaps not for those in need of constant action, but I'll be damned if this isn't one of the best recent Westerns I've seen and a damn good Horror film to boot!

10 of 31 Horror Films I've Never Seen 2016: Bound to Vengeance (2015)

Exploitation films are somewhat of a conundrum for me.  On one hand, I adore them for their daring visual techniques, bold storytelling, and usually killer soundtracks.  On the other hand, I abhor their obvious exploitative treatment of "the other," which is a way of saying "just about anything that isn't white, hetero-normative, and male."  Usually I just try to ignore the obvious, since I am watching an exploitation film after all, and occasionally I get surprised by those little needles hiding in the haystack.  I'm constantly fascinated by the new generation of exploitation films which focus more on the tertiary things like sex, violence and gore, but have started becoming more inclusive (though they still have a long way to go) of "the other."  J.M. Cravioto's Bound to Vengeance falls somewhere in the transitory stage of almost brilliant and doesn't quite hit the mark I hoped it would.

When Eve (Tina Ivlev), a kidnapped girl, frees herself from bondage and discovers that she's part of a much bigger kidnapping sex slavery ring.  Arming herself a gun, a home-made choker pole (like animal control officers use to catch stray dogs), and a number of pictures of bound women with names, she takes control of her captor (Richard Tyson) and forces him to take her to each of the girls in the picture, in the hopes of liberating them.  Things do not quite go as she hopes and the plot, indeed, thickens.

This film falls into the "rape/revenge" category of exploitation films, but unlike most of it's genre it does not go into graphic detail of the rape, choosing to imply it with flashback cutting, and sticks to the revenge.  Bondage, as a theme, is present everywhere, from the title, to how the women are found, to a more metaphysical emotional bondage that Eve has with her captor.  She can't escape him until she has met out her vengeance because he has the addresses that she needs in order to do so.  I would say that her character is probably one of the most nuanced women in the genre, except for the fact that she is still beholden to the male fantasy of the "badass woman who takes revenge into her own hands."  In that, while the offer a few moments of humanity, she is mostly portrayed as a revenge driven killing machine bordering on psychotically obsessed.

Considering that it was shot on, likely, a low budget, it has a very consistent look, feel, and style to it.  It also boasts a great score by Simon Boswell, but the film fails out quite in dialogue.  Nevermind that it has a few plot holes (why does no one ever call the police when they hear gunshots?), all exploitation films have those, but Ivlev's performance is consistently hampered by unbelievable dialogue situations.  While Tyson's sociopathic predatory performance is yields well, it's just damn hard to buy into Eve falling for a number of the little traps he sets her up for.  To put it bluntly, if we refer to this film by the three act structure, upon which most films are based, the second act falters in a number of places.  The first and third act, luckily, make up for that, but still, this film is clearly only going to be accepted by a niche audience that knows what they're getting into and perhaps that's the ultimate downfall of the film.  It tries to be the best of both exploitative and art worlds when the filmmakers probably should have picked one or the other and went with it.

08 of 31 Horror Films I've Never Seen 2016: Stake Land (2010)

Survival is the most common theme in Horror films.  Whether it is a gang of unlucky teenagers camping in the woods or a lone survivor trapped in a house, the core of every Horror movie is survival against insurmountable odds, usually with an supernaturally evil flair.  Stories about people surviving a full blown wasteland situation are always intriguing and when you change the methods up a bit you usually get an interesting result.  Such is Jim Mickle's Stake Land.

The world presented is like George A. Romero's Day of the Dead except instead of zombies the night is filled with ravenous vampires.  The story centers on Martin (Connor Paolo), a young boy who is rescued by a lone vampire hunter, Mister (Nick Damici), and learns to survive the new America, attempting to travel North to New Eden AKA Canada.  Along the way he discovers the cruelties of mankind while learning the skills required to survive in Stake Land.  Simple and always up for reinterpretation.

What makes the film a treat to watch is the character dynamic.  Damici's Mister is a simple, take no shit, hardened kind of man.  He is a survivor.  He is tough, he is resourceful, and he shows no mercy.  Unlike most stoic hero types, however, he has empathy.  He and Martin take in a number of "strays," like Sister (Kelly McGillis) on their journey to New Eden, people who need their help but can handle themselves in this dark land where danger lurks around every corner.  Martin, is just young enough to still have the desire to help and protect, while simultaneous is being made into a man by the sheer danger of the environment he lives in.  He trains daily with Mister and together they form a unique partnership of mutual respect and protection.  Many themes that would show up later in AMC's The Walking Dead are present here, showing the universality of thought behind what would become a conflict in an unforgiving wasteland.  How does one deal with pregnancy? Old age? Lawlessness?  Self-reliance.

The look and feel of the film are grimy and bleak.  At any second one expects the protagonists to be decimated, whether by crazy religious nuts, cannibals, or blood sucking vampires.  The camera, at times, is relentless, heightening the feeling of anxiety and terror wherever and whenever possible, barely giving a reprieve except for when the story calls for it.  Mickle has worked with Cinematographer Ryan Samul since his first feature, Mulberry St, and it is clear that the two are on the same wavelength.  Wherever the story falters, and it does on occasion, it is hardly noticeable because of the expressive camera work.

Co-written with Damici, the story sets itself apart from most others of it's ilk by focusing heavily on the characters and how their survival in the world effects them.  That said, it is still a horror movie, and as such has a few faults that can be attributed to typical Horror movie tropes such, but they are dealt with so quickly that one doesn't quite have much time to think about them before being engrossed in the film once again.  Well worth the watch.