The Visit (2015)

As you well know, M. Night Shyamalan's credibility among film-goers started gradually tapering off with each questionable release following his breakout dead people movie. There was shit involving aliens and villages and Paul Giamatti and then M. Night pretty much said "fuck it" and started doing Airbender and Mark Walberg flops that solidified his status as a sellout laughing stock. Then along comes a 'found footage' movie that I immediately wrote off as Shyamalan's meager attempt to stay relevant by cashing in on this abysmal, genre-killing trend. Well, "The Visit" managed to find it's way into my night of whiskey sours after a buck-and-a-half was dumped into a Redbox and... I'll be damned, this could very well be Shyamalan's best work. No shit.

The plot concerns a brother and sister who go to meet up for the first time with their estranged grandparents out on their farm. The girl is trying to make a documentary of their stay (for the bullshit sake of this tired fucking format...), but they quickly come to realize that their elderly relatives are completely batshit crazy with such 'quirks' as nanna clawing the walls nekkid in the middle of the night, gramps' paranoia of being followed by strangers, and much more. Things eventually come to a head in a trademark 'Shyamalan twist' (goes without saying...) that is actually not too bad...

First off, and it should come as no surprise, the handheld camcorder thing is the main problem I had with "The Visit" and, like many of these types of 'found footage' flicks, is unnecessary for a large portion of the movie, if not all. I don't understand why movies can't just go the "Cannibal Holocaust" route and use the FF 'style' only when it works for a given scene. Structuring a whole movie this way - through an established camera's POV - limits a film greatly and usually stops making ANY sense once things start getting chaotic (they keep the camera rolling and the action always manages to be in the frame...). But it sure is cost effect, right?

Other than that (and the rapping kid... Holy shit was that excruciating!...), "The Visit" actually has it's enjoyable moments involving the whacked out geezers' quality performances and a pretty strong climax. Again, the 'Shyamalan twist' is well executed and the attempts at humor - while uncomfortable - didn't seem to get in the way of the film's 'darker' moments.

Overall - the needless 'found footage' element aside - "The Visit" was quite a bit better than I expected. Definitely M. Night's "purest" horror flick to date, in that it felt like a HORROR flick, more than the overly emotional, 'psychological-thriller' stuff he's done in the past. It's nothing that's going to recharge the genre, but it's a watchable flick.

Broken (2006)

Pretty standard and dull torture flick. I remember quite a few other reviewers speaking highly of this one when this came out so I picked up a copy and gave it a spin back in the day. All I really recalled about "Broken" was kinda digging the last 15 seconds or so, so recently I revisited it and realized why that was all I remembered... The rest of the movie consists of virtually NOTHING.

A woman and her young daughter are kidnapped and separated deep in the woods by a psychotic survivalist whose objective is apparently to break her down and make her into a slave of sorts...

Apart from the initial "game" where the guy ties his captives to a tree by their neck with a razor blade sewn into their abdomen that they have to extract in order to free themselves and the aforementioned "surprise ending" - the bulk of "Broken" is incredibly slow and forgettable. Too much so to really strike me as all that 'disturbing' or 'sick'. It just seemed like a slapped together and heavily padded cash-in of the time. Weak.

Crimson Peak (2015)

I can't say I'm a huge fan of Guillermo del Toro's films across the board, but I did dig "Pan's Labyrinth" and I vaguely remember "The Devil's Backbone" being alright, but it's been years since I saw it. The rest of his most recent credits are attached to all sorts of "Pacific Rim" and "Hobbit" shit that I could give a rat's ass about. "Crimson Peak" was one I figured I'd watch eventually, seeing as how, again, I enjoyed "Pan's Labyrinth", and was moderately interested in seeing how the self-professed horror fanatic would 'spin' the ever-dwindling mainstream approach to the genre. In all, I wasn't all that impressed...

The daughter of a wealthy capitalist falls in love with an English inventor and the two move to England's countryside after her father's mysterious murder. While waiting for dead daddy's money to arrive, they move into her new husband and his nutty sister's childhood mansion where he's attempting to break into the clay mining business. While there, his new bride starts seeing ghoulish apparitions lurking around the halls and rooms, giving way to a violent background involving the strange siblings.

Visually, "Crimson Peak" is as lavish looking as you would expect from del Toro, but as it turns out, this only goes so far in keeping the movie engaging. Being a supernatural period piece gave it potential, I thought, and a slower pace CAN add to a tense build, but this flick gives in to the same overuse of CGI that almost all these types of ghost/haunting-themed films do these days. And every effect is so up front and in-your-face that all you can do is laugh at the cartoonish, digitized obnoxiousness. One scene contains a homage to "The Shining" that has all the subtlety of a Mack truck barrel rolling through an artillery range and the creepiness of a Saturday morning cartoon (which it looked like...). That, on top of the characters being extremely dull and the story feeling somewhat disjointed made "Crimson Peak" just hard to get 'into'.

The film comes across as exactly what it is: a horror flick made by a guy long marred by studio influence and giant robot movies whom everyone seems to mistake for a visionary.

Love (2015)

Gaspar Noé's latest cinematic incursion isn't nearly as strong as his previous films as far as violence and 'disturbing' content, but plays out as a more ostentatious 'art'-porn mash-up centering around a toxic love story. Noé's signature 'trashy', yet visually ornate style provides enough value to override aspects of pretension that movies like this tend to secrete.

Much like his most well-known flick, "Irreversible", "Love" is told in a non-linear structure - shuffling the sequence of events detailing the volatile romance between an arrogant, hotheaded American man and a French fille with sexually manifested 'daddy issues'. In true-to-life fashion, their intense relationship begins deteriorating after introducing a 16-year old girl into a three-way sex fantasy situation. Homeboy starts screwing around with the new girl behind his chick's back, slips some swimmers past the goalie and the rest is history. Not even jealousy-laden exhibitionism and tranny sex coercion can save them...

So, the name of the game here: too much drugs and sexual exploration can really sour a relationship. I gotta say, I enjoyed "Love" quite a bit as a much "tamer" example of Noé's style. The 'hardcore' scenes come across as necessary to the tone of the movie, I'd say, though provide nothing 'groundbreaking' as this type of thing is becoming more common practice among auteur film-makers trying to extract 'art' from pornography by using unsimulated sex and marketing it as such. In this case, there's a pompousness to the film, of course, but I thought the more 'hardcore' material worked well, overall, in "exposing" the actors a bit, thus, making their characters seem a bit more REAL. Speaking of which, the characters are well fleshed out and the performances are strong with genuine sounding dialog, for the most part. My hat goes off to the performances.

If you're curious about a much "lighter" and clearly more personal approach from Gaspar Noe, I'd definitely recommend "Love".

Christmas Cruelty (2013)

Overall, this is a pretty damn cool Christmas slasher flick out of Norway. Nothing outstanding, story-wise, but if some Yuletide rape and dismemberment is of interest to you, then this is a worthy option.

A serial killer in a Santa suit and mask tracks down a woman in his work file that he is fixated on. And that's more or less the gist...

To be honest, the very beginning and last half hour is when "Christmas Cruelty" truly shines with such delightful offerings of splattery carnage as skull crushing, vag-stabbing and chainsaw mutilation to name only a few examples. The middle portion of the film is not without it's merits, but takes a much slower pace than I would've preferred after such a strong opening scene (circular saw infanticide!). Also, some of the editing choices and music video-style interludes were a little overdone at times. Still, the characters are enjoyable enough in making their Krampus masks to go out scaring unsuspecting people, as well as mixing one of the most epic xmas party cocktails ever. One of the characters' rantings was also pretty funny. The practical gore effects are convincing and quite nasty at times, definitely making for some solid CRUELTY, as promised. Gotta recommend this one to my gorehounds looking for some enjoyable, holiday-themed sleazy fun.