Movie Review: The Sacrament (2013)

 

Some of my favorite filmmaking people come together again for 2013's The Sacrament, a movie vehemently recommended to me by the lovely Sharni Vinson herself. I have a cool life sometimes. Anyway. I had to wait much longer than I wanted to in order to see The Sacrament but I was happy to see that it mostly lived up to my expectations.

Two documentary filmmakers, Sam and Jake, follow their friend Patrick to an undisclosed foreign country to potentially rescue his sister because Patrick fears that she has fallen in with a radical Christian cult. The men arrive at the heavily guarded Eden Parish, where everyone is as happy as can be under the leadership of a man known as "Father." But when Sam and Jake get the real story of Eden Parish from some residents, they realize they might not make it out of there alive.

What surprised me the most about The Sacrament was how simple the story was. This unfortunately was also what disappointed me most about the movie. If you've ever watched any documentary about cults, or most specifically if you know the story of the Jonestown massacre, then this is the most predictable movie ever. So I guess I was disappointed that the movie was basically just a simplistic retelling of Jonestown with nothing really new added to the story. Writer and director Ti West was obviously going for the more realistic approach to the story and I would say he excelled at that.

The Sacrament is a beautiful film, and another found footage output that takes advantage of the fact that the people behind the cameras are supposed to be professionals and not amateurs. It almost looks way better than it should. Scenes are full of bright light and muted earth tone colors, which is all wonderfully juxtaposed by the constant foreboding tone of the film's score. It seems to be there to keep reminding you that you should be scared, and that all this is a lie. There are times when the found footage aspect is called into question, though - especially in the scene where Father talks to the group before the "last sacrament." It is supposed to be just Caroline who has a video camera, yet the scene is shot from several different angles all at once. One little thing that I liked that they did with the look of the film was have the opening credits appear on screen as lower-thirds, the kind of thing that you see in documentaries and on the news as a way to identify the people speaking on screen with their name and title. It makes the film look and feel like a real documentary.

My new favorite AJ Bowen comes back to me as nice guy Sam, the guy who can't help but try to do something when he finds out the sinister happenings at Eden Parish. My goodness, he's adorable and I want him. His co-star from A Horrible Way to Die, Amy Seimetz, is with him again here as Caroline. She is perfect as the jolly, yet creepy, everything-is-wonderful-here cult girl who spouts nothing but positives about Eden Parish - and you don't believe a single word of it. In an eerie reminder of the leader of the Peoples Temple of Jonestown, actor Gene Jones portrays Father. He does very much resemble a father figure (in fact, he looks a lot like my deceased grandfather) whom you believe could possess the charm and charisma to have power over all these people. Joe Swanberg and Kentucker Audley as Jake and Patrick respectively have their moments here and there but are mostly left in the background, or behind the camera.

Despite the predictability of the cyanide poisoning sequence, West still makes it a horrible thing to watch. Something I loved that he did here was not only showing people seizing and vomiting violently, but also showing the little things that are just as horrific when you look at the circumstance. The mixing of the cyanide in a large punch bowl and watching children absently drinking it up like it was their morning milk, with their parents encouraging them. The fear and uncertainty on the faces of some of the congregation as they stare at their Styrofoam cups. And worst of all, the woman who approaches the obvious baby bundle in the arms of its mother with a syringe full of the laced punch.

After this, there are a couple more shock moments that haunted me for the rest of the evening, and the film concludes. Though The Sacrament was predictable and maybe less than I hoped for story-wise, I was still very satisfied with what I got. The film is a tight, tense thriller made by a filmmaker who more than knows what he's doing, and the acting is perfect by all involved. Thumbs up.

Movie Review: The ABCs of Death (2012)

Oh dear goodness, this was a test of perseverance. As I often like to take notes while I'm watching a new movie - just random thoughts that help me write my reviews later - The ABCs of Death nearly kicked my ass because a movie that was already over 2 hours long took me around 3 hours to watch because I had to keep pausing and writing. And like I predicted, I was sometimes writing very positive things and sometimes writing very, very negative things. The ABCs of Death is just like any anthology wherein you have hits and misses, but this one had far too many misses to make me recommend the whole thing.

So you probably know the deal here: Twenty-six filmmakers from around the world were each given a letter of the alphabet, and they had to come up with a word that started with that letter to make a short film about death. Out of the 26, I count 9 that I put stars by, meaning that I really liked it, and 3 that I put half stars by, meaning that I sorta liked it. I guess that's not so bad but a lot of these dudes could have done so much better. And a lot of them needed to stay away from anything having to do with the bathroom.

"A is for Apocalypse"

Directed by Nacho Vigalando

This was an excellent way to start things out. This is the kind of short film that I really like - they get the main point across but the story has so much room to grow if it was given more time. The lighting is beautiful and the effects work is absolutely killer. This one definitely gets a star.

"B is for Bigfoot"

Directed by Adrian Garcia Bogliano

Could have been so much better if two things had happened: one, if there had actually been a freaking Bigfoot in the short, and two, if the director hadn't wasted so much of the minimal time on the two characters telling the story rather than showing us something interesting. Weak. The main actress was good, though.

"C is for Cycle"

Directed by Diaz Espinoza

A mysterious hole in the bushes of a man's backyard are the center of a strange "cycle" of events in this short. The production quality leaves a little to be desired, but again this was semi-interesting because I can see it being a part of a much larger story. 

"D is for Dogfight"

Directed by Marcel Sarmiento

Easily my favorite one of all! "Dogfight" shows a boxer in some kind of underground Fight Club type thing were he has to fight a vicious dog. The whole thing is in slow motion and it looks so freaking pretty, you guys! The angles are perfect, and I'll be damned if the dog isn't one really good actor. It's a simple story with a simple little twist to it that had me totally LOLing and falling in love with this thing at the same time. Two thumbs up!

"E is for Exterminate"

Directed by Angela Bettis

I'm so sorry, my dear Angela, but this was lame. The CGI spider was bad enough but then the whole ending was completely ruined because it's so similar to an urban legend that's been around for years. I guess I was expecting something a bit more imaginative. Still love you, girlfriend.

"F is for Fart"

Directed by Noboru Iguchi

I have nothing nice to say about this. That is all.

"G is for Gravity"

Directed by Andrew Traucki

The death of a surfer is so... boring. All this consisted of was a POV shot of a guy getting his stuff out of the back of his car, running onto the beach and into the water, paddling around for a little bit, and then somehow falling in the water and drowning or something. The last shot is the surfboard standing on end in the water. Guess I don't get it, or it's just not all that impressive. Boo.

"H is for Hydro-Electric Diffusion"

Directed by Thomas Cappelen Malling

Thus begins one of the many "What in the holy fuck is this" shorts. Or maybe it began with the fart one. A Nazi cat stripteasing for a dogfighter dog and then trying to kill him with some electric machine thing? Was this a reference to something else that I totally didn't get? Whatever. Hated it.

"I is for Ingrown"

Directed by Jorge Michel Grau

Gorgeous. A woman tied up in a bathtub is being murdered by her husband, with some really beautiful and meaningful dialogue playing in the background. The actress is also beautiful and so committed to the role that it is painful to watch the way she scratches at her throat and arms, and the way whatever her husband injected her with makes her vomit through her gag. Ew. Really nice job here, Mr. Grau!

"J is for Jidai-Geki (Samurai Movie)"

Directed by Yudai Yamaguchi

There's not a lot of substance or meaning to this short, but it's good for a bit of a laugh. The effects aren't bad, however, I'm still wondering about those wigs or whatever it was those guys had on the tops of their heads. Was there a point to that?

"K is for Klutz"

Directed by Anders Morganthaler

"K is for Klutz" is one of a few animated shorts in the bunch. Though the animation is nice, poo and toilet humor has, was, and always will be incredibly juvenile and unfunny so this one lost points with me for the subject matter.

"L is for Libido"

Directed by Timo Tjahjanto

This is one that started out like it could be half-funny, half-serious but then turned into all kinds of serious. It actually turns out to be pretty fucking fucked up, as it deals with the depths of sexual perversion and gratification. The gore is excellent with the spikes that come up through the chairs, and the images just get worse and worse as this short invades your mind. You all know I love the dark stuff so I was all over this one - even though there is a quick scene involving a child that... I can't even go there. The set is amazing, the acting is good, this looks like a real movie. Loved it.

"M is for Miscarriage"

Directed by Ti West

A shorter than short, lazy piece of "filmmaking." I expected so much more from Ti West because though this short does deliver an effective punch, it is by far the weakest of all the shorts and even worse than the fart one. So, so disappointing.

"N is for Nuptials"

Directed by Banjong Pisanthanakun

Surprisingly a very cute and entertaining piece about a man who buys a parrot to help him propose to his girlfriend and the parrot ends up revealing one of the man's secrets which turns out to be deadly for him! This one got a half star just for being funny even though there's not much else to the story. The actors are also beyond adorable.

"O is for Orgasm"

Directed by Bruno Forzani and Helene Cattet

Not so much a short film as an experimental film, and a well done one at that. I couldn't give it a star because it just didn't do anything for me on a personal level, but I can admit that it is beautifully shot and is very good at keeping your attention. I would appreciate if someone would explain the bubbles to me, though.

"P is for Pressure"

Directed by Simon Rumley

Really nice story that is told with no dialogue and a succession of quick shots and short scenes to show the hard life of a young single woman with three kids. There's no horror element to the story, and it instead reaches you on a real emotional level that hits hard. I'll never condone the killing of a kitten for a bicycle but at least there's a happy ending. This one gets a star for sure.

"Q is for Quack"

Directed by Adam Wingard

OMG, this was genius. Director Adam Wingard and writer Simon Barrett (love both of these dudes) play themselves in the short, lamenting over the fact that they were assigned the letter "Q" for their ABCs of Death segment. Needless to say, they come up with a clever way to solve their problem - even if it doesn't have very good consequences for them. Too funny. I love these dudes even more now!

"R is for Removed"

Directed by Srdjan Spasojevic

From the director of the controversial A Serbian Film (which I still need to write about...) comes another hardcore - no pun intended - story about... something. Yeah, it was another one I didn't get at all. Some kind of medical experiment on a guy who's got pieces of film strip in his flesh or something? Is that right? Then he escapes and kills everyone in pretty gross ways. A lot of these shorts are starting to make me feel really, really stupid and like I should have paid more attention in English lit class about symbolism and all that crap. I need to read up on this one some more.

"S is for Speed"

Directed by Jake West

Hated this at first because it was incredibly amateurish and hokey looking, but it ended up getting a half star for turning into a more serious story about death chasing a pair of junkie girls. Nice turnaround!

"T is for Toilet"

Directed by Lee Hardcastle

After Dogfight, this is definitely my second favorite of all the segments. It's a pretty crude (effects-wise) claymation short about a boy's fear of the toilet. He has a dream where the toilet turns into a monster and hideously devours his parents, with some great stuff that is all the more entertaining because it's claymation. The ending is funny in a really, really horrible way - but you will completely love it. "Danny Glover had nothing to be afraid of in Lethal Weapon 2." So true.

"U is for Unearthed"

Directed by Ben Wheatley

Unearthed is the only short to take on a true horror trope - vampires! It's another one that avoids the cost of effects by doing it in POV but it works here, as a vampire first escapes from the earth, attacks people in the woods, and then is ceremoniously put down. Simple, but effective. That's all you need to do, people. Good work.

"V is for Vagitus (The Cry of a Newborn Baby)"

Directed by Kaare Andrews

Okay, um... wow! So put Vagitus up next to Miscarriage, and you'll understand my frustration with Mr. Ti West. Vagitus has this whole crazy sci-fi story about the future and prophets and babies - I don't care! There was wonderful action, acting, and effects work in such a short time that it felt like someone had cut together the best parts of a full length movie. Excellent!

"W is for WTF!"

Directed by Jon Schnepp

WTF indeed. It starts out as a real story, similar to what they did in Quack actually, but then just turns into a series of random shots of stuff I don't remember. The title pops onto screen at the end and you go, Oh. So none of that was supposed to make any sense or anything. Just a lot of WTF shots. Boring. Not creative.

"X is for XXL"

Directed Xavier Gens

Fucking YES, you guys. This was beyond perfect in so many ways. It's a social commentary, a moral commentary, and so incredibly gruesome and disturbing in an incredibly meaningful, heartbreaking way. Love, love, love it.

"Y is for Youngbuck"

Directed Jason Eisener

So, no one likes a perverted old guy and Eisener goes about the subject of revenge in a very interesting way. Still, I didn't like it. Not enough explanation or exploration, and it really needed to flesh out the story just a bit more.

"Z is for Zetsumetsu (Extinction)"

Directed by Yoshihiro Nishimura

Very much the biggest WTF short of all - it out-WTFs the previous WTF segment, and I didn't know that was possible. I have no idea what this was about or what the point of it was so therefore I don't care and I don't like it. There's naked chicks and big penises, and way more ridiculousness than I can handle. An ADULT made this thing, right? Oi vey.

FINALLY, THE END. Okay, so I'm naming my top three favorites as Dogfight, Toilet, and XXL. Least favorite and most disappointing was Miscarriage, and also Hydro-Electric Diffusion, Gravity... and about 10 other ones. I was hoping for a better balance of hits and misses with all these shorts but I guess that might have been impossible with all these different personalities and styles. We'll see what a new crop of directors can come up with in the next ABCs of Death!

Movie Review: V/H/S (2012)

You know what the cool thing about V/H/S is? It's an anthology film, so you technically don't really have to say whether you love or hate ALL of the movie. Maybe you can only like some of it, and pretty much hate the rest of it - which was sadly my reaction to the film. I really wanted to like V/H/S so much, and had such high hopes for it, but ultimately a good portion of it disappointed me. I will say that the stories got better as the movie went on - just the overall execution on everything was not my favorite.

Tape 56

Directed by Adam Wingard

(A Horrible Way to Die, You're Next)

Tape 56 is the wraparound story (ah, so that's what that is called) of the anthology and there's really not a lot to it. Pretty much right away, you hate all the characters and therefore couldn't give a shit what happens to them. They are a group of petty thieves and crooks who think that a hard day's work includes smashing up windows, stealing stuff, and grabbing innocent women in parking buildings and exposing their breasts for a video camera. Classy. They break into a house to steal a rare VHS tape and come up a dead guy in a room with a bunch of tapes and they start watching them and those tapes are the rest of the movie, get it? Was especially disappointed with this one after I found out that the director was Adam Wingard, the man behind the wonderful movie A Horrible Way to Die. I don't really get what happened at the end of this segment

Also, I need to point out that like all of Wingard's other projects, most of Tape 56 was shot in Columbia, Missouri - very near where I am sitting right now. Hit me up for your next project, dawg. I'll get your coffee. 

Amateur Night

Directed by David Bruckner

(The Signal)

Fuck you. Seriously? With Amateur Night, we just go from one group of assholes to another group of assholes. If I were in the same room as the main characters in Amateur Night, I guarantee they would have been dead a lot fucking sooner. So again, I hate all the characters and don't give a shit about what happens to them. They're just some douchebags who make the token "nice guy" of their group wear glasses with a camera on them so he can film the guys having sex with girls in their hotel room. They go bar hopping and bring back two chicks - one passes out almost immediately, and the other is... well, not what you would call normal. There's a bit of awkward suspense with how weird the girl is and how she keeps whispering to Token Nice Guy "I like you". It's pretty obvious that she's going to turn on the guys and kill the guys. The gore work when it finally happens is very good, which is a nice balance to the fact that I don't give a shit that these guys are getting ripped apart, and the makeup on the girl is also very cool. Dug the ending as well. Definitely unexpected, and something I haven't seen before.

Second Honeymoon

Directed by Ti West

(The House of the Devil, The Innkeepers)

So with Ti West's previous projects, I was betting that we could expect a bit more of the slow burn (well, not too slow - he only had about 20 minutes to work with here) with not a lot of payoff at the end. But for some reason, this one still worked on some level for me. Most of it is rather boring as it follows the road trip of a young couple apparently having their second honeymoon, I guess. There are a couple of creepy parts when a girl comes to their door and asks for a ride and when an unknown person comes into their hotel room while they are sleeping, and West does a good job of frustrating the audience by not letting us know what this means for the characters. Was it just a burglar? Or somebody with more sinister intentions? I'm really starting to like Joe Swanberg as an actor. He was great in A Horrible Way to Die and I love just how real and normal he is in this. He's also the third asshole of V/H/S as he makes a few suspiciously asshole-y remarks to his girl. For me, this made the payoff at the end actually be a very nice payoff.

Word of advice, guys: Do not act like a dick when your girlfriend will not strip and/or have sex with you on camera. That's a good way to... well, just watch the segment and find out.

   

Tuesday the 17th

Directed by Glenn McQuaid

(I Sell the Dead)

Hm. Not really too much to say about this one. As the title might imply, this short is your typical kids-getting-killed-in-the-woods story, even though it does have a bit of a twist. The girl, Wendy, that brings all her friends to these woods acts very creepy and the woods themselves seem to have a strange effect on the camera. There are some subliminal shots of dead bodies around the woods and when the requisite killer-in-the-woods shows up, he is always distorted on the camera so you can't really see him. That part was a cool idea, but the rest of this segment was just meh. Again, the gore work was great looking, I just wished that there was a bit more to the story. Tuesday the 17th might make a good feature-length film to help explain just who/what the killer is.

The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger

Directed by Joe Swanberg

So now Mr. Swanberg goes behind the camera with short whose title is longer than the film itself. This segment makes a nice break from the video camera footage of the other segments by now using Skype footage of a girl with an apparently haunted apartment talking to her surgeon boyfriend who is away. They try to jump-scare the audience with images of ghostly little kids running around Emily's apartment but that doesn't work out too well. I like the twist where it's revealed that her boyfriend is not really in Michigan but rather in one of the apartments right next door, and the reason for him being there is... well, here's a spoiler: the kids are not actually kids but aliens, I guess, who have been using Emily to make their little alien babies since she was twelve. I'm not quite sure how I feel about this, as there are so many unanswered questions with this scenario. This segment is a nice attempt, but ultimately falls short of being scary or interesting and instead is just confusing.

10/31/98

Directed by Radio Silence

Okay, this was by far my favorite of the bunch. Awesome way to end the movie. Four guys trying to go to a Halloween party end up at the wrong house, where they get a lot more Halloween-type craziness than they bargained for. One point for this segment comes from the main dudes actually not being assholes. Another point is given for the cameraperson's costume - a nanny cam. Very cute. The most points are given for the awesome freaking climax. For a while the guys just wander around this empty house (why they stay there when there is clearly not a Halloween party going on is anybody's guess but we can overlook that for now) but when they find their way up to attic and come upon some dudes yelling all Evangelical priest-like and have a girl tied up, that's when the fun starts. The crazy guys get mysteriously pulled up by some force and disappear into the ceiling, and the main characters get the girl and run out. The house has now become alive - objects flying around, hands and arms coming out of the walls and floors, doors disappearing - and that shit was AWESOME. I was seriously freaked out the whole time and absolutely loving it. My kind of haunted house, seriously. Or possessed house, or whatever it was. 

So all in all, V/H/S turns out to be hit and miss. The concept is nice because it gave the directors the opportunity to put a bunch of totally different stories together; it's just that only two of them were great and the rest barely mediocre. I liked that the look of film really was in VHS style, but the many, many times throughout the piece that the video and audio went all distorted got very annoying after a while. V/H/S was not the biggest disappointment of 2012 but a lot of the film left something to be desired. Repeated viewing will probably have me skipping over most of the segments to get to the actual good ones, especially the last one. A sequel is (of course) in the works already with a new crop of directors, but I'm still interested to see what they come up with. 

Movie Review: The Innkeepers (2011)

Okay first of all, how much do I love that awesome retro poster? A LOT, I tell you. It's kind of fantastic. Secondly, how much did I love The Innkeepers? Again, A LOT and I have to say that I would rank it a bit higher than the other ghostly movie I watched the other day - Harry Potter and the Woman in Black... er I mean, just The Woman in Black of course. I'm not the first person to make that joke, am I? Oh, poor Danny Radcliffe. He's always going to be Harry Potter, isn't he? Anyway upon first hearing of The Innkeepers way back when, I was totally jonesing for a good ghost story (I LOVE GHOST MOVIES) and was hoping that this one would not disappoint me. It totally didn't.

On its last weekend open for business, two employees of The Yankee Pedlar Inn - Claire and Luke - have to deal with some pretty strange supernatural and natural guests. The inn has been long thought to be haunted by the ghost of Madeline O'Malley, a woman who hung herself in the hotel when she thought her lover had left her, and Claire and Luke will try to spend the next few days getting proof of her existence in the hopes of keeping the inn open. But they may get more than what they bargained for...

My first experience with Ti West as a director was really not good. I cannot begin to describe how much I utterly hated Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever (one of the reasons being the use of the word "fever" twice in the title) and I wish to erase the experience from my brain. Second experience with Mr. West was much better, with the wonderful The House of the Devil, and that movie gave me more confidence  in what he could do with The Innkeepers. So I guess I kinda like this new golden boy of horror now. We'll see what he does next. With House of the Devil and now Innkeepers, his obvious chosen style is the slow burn type of horror story which I am really starting to like. It definitely works for this particular movie as it is a character-centered story, although that may not be readily obvious in the first part of the movie.

And really, it is the portrayal of the two main characters that first got me loving The Innkeepers. Sara Paxton plays Claire, a somewhat introverted and mousey girl whose age is hard to pinpoint because Paxton always looks like a 14-year-old boy. Comedic actor Pat Healy is Luke, a lonely guy who has an obsession with the paranormal, and a crush on Claire. Their interactions throughout the movie are played so real and lovable and they are exactly the kinds of characters I like to watch in movies because they remind me of how I am with my own friends and co-workers. Some might find Paxton's portrayal especially as a little annoying and a bit like she was "acting" too much, but to me it was endearing. She's not a bitch, and she's not a complete pushover either. She's ignorant of Luke's feelings for her but that just makes Luke all the more endearing as well.

Okay, so I liked the characters. How about the rest of the movie? It is well shot and carefully constructed to wind up the tension very tight and keep it there until the end. The tension is good and there are small releases of that tension along the way, but you can tell that it is all leading up to something much more involved. The scenes of Claire doing the EVP recording, especially the thing with the piano, were my favorite parts to watch. With any ghost movie, these scenes are usually about either waiting for something big to happen or waiting for something small to happen... or even waiting for nothing to happen. For me, it doesn't matter which one of these outcomes is actually followed through with because it's all about the suspense. And I like the suspense in The Innkeepers.

As for the ending, yes, it's unexpected. Yes, it sucks because it's not what we want to happen. But I was okay with it. I didn't get it at first, but another reviewer reminded me of the conversation Claire and Luke had with the psychic about deja vu, and the psychic mentioning that she saw three ghosts in the hotel. Not everybody will pick up on these details, which is probably why I've read so many comments about the ending being uneventful and a letdown. To me it was not exactly satisfying, but I understood it (if not after the fact) so I appreciated the director going for non-happy ending to keep up with what happened earlier in the film.

The one thing I wish West hadn't done was show the ghost full-face before the end... or even at all. The scare with the ghost under the sheet in Claire's bed was very effective but I was almost disappointed at getting to see the ghost so early in the story. More so, I was disappointed at the look of the ghost itself (or herself). She's too generic looking, like every other ghost I've seen in horror movies in recent years, and it reminded me too much of the myriad of female ghosts in Asian horror movies. I just wish the ghost had been kept more hidden until the denouement, which would have made that scene all the more frightening and disturbing.

Otherwise, I'm loving The Innkeepers for the moment. It's got what I like most about horror movies - GHOSTS, I LOVE GHOSTS, GHOSTS GHOSTS GHOSTS! - along with some wonderfully quirky characters, and a tight, yet delightfully slow and drawn out plot. Thumbs up!