There isn’t really anything fresh about this movie. Everything in it has been done a billion times, but it was compelling and silly enough to keep me interested. As far as clown movies go, it is funnier than Patch Adams but less funny than It. All three movies have dead kids though. So there’s that.
A guy finds a haunted clown suit, which he dons in order to amuse a battalion of annoying brats at his son’s birthday party. BAM: He’s cursed.
As explained by the Wise Elder character, Peter Stormare (the guy who feeds Steve Buscemi into a wood chipper in Fargo), clowns were originally not balloon sculpting ding-dongs, but cave dwelling Nordic demons who would feast on children. The costume is haunted and infested with demonic energy. Stormare even has a leather bound ancient text complete with Guillermo del Toroesque clown monster sketches, so you know he’s legit.
Dude can’t get out of the clown suit; it’s bonded to him like the Venom symbiote or the Goosebumps haunted mask and it is slowly transforming him into the Icelandic variety of Bronze Age kid-munching clowns. The only way to get him out of the suit/stop the clown-demon is to chop his head off or let him eat five children. Once he gets started munching on kids, you’d think they would just let him finish, but the other characters are committed to decapitation despite the pileup of child corpses.
To the guy’s credit, he tries to decapitate himself, but he quits trying once he realizes how fun it is to eat kids. Once the dust from the exposition settles, the rest of the movie is pretty typical possession/demon/slasher stuff that borrows from other popular killer clown stories: He has the fangs of It, but none of the one liners; he has the charisma of Gacy, but none of the sodomy; he looks just like a juggalo, but doesn’t dump Faygo all over himself or rap about titties.
The origin story of the actual movie is more interesting than the clown mythology in the film itself. A couple of guys made a fake trailer for this movie with no (clear) intention of ever filming the thing. In their mock trailer, they start with “From Master of Horror, Eli Roth…” which I guess flattered/interested Roth enough to track these guys down and invite himself on board as the producer. No one probably thought of this movie as “theirs”; the trailer-makers probably thought their inside joke got scooped up as Roth’s new pet and Roth probably thought his semi-pandering to internet horror nerds and attachment of his name would be enough of a contribution. What emerges is a pretty “meh” horror movie with some cool cinematography and make-up that follows a played out formula.
I find myself drawn to murder. I find myself drawn to ooze. I find myself drawn to “The Thing,” an insidious opus that pits an Arctic research scientist and connoisseur of flamethrowers, the illustrious Kurt Russell, in a gripping battle against a ruthless shape-shifting extraterrestrial entity. Lurking behind this tale of flamethrowers and aliens is the subtle backdrop of paranoia and fear of the Cold War. Pay heed, Dear Reader! I shall not trifle with frivolous matters as I extol the virtues of one of my most cherished films.
“The Thing” emerged from the depths of the cinematic abyss in the year 1982, an era preceding my own existence, yet it served as one of the initial forays into the realms of R-rated horror that graced my impressionable senses. A mere handful of years had passed since the release of “Alien,” and it is within this black tarn of terror, steeped in isolation and the maddening whispers of paranoia, that both films share a common bond. Yet, dare I proclaim that “The Thing” supersedes its predecessor in sheer terror and suspense, for the malevolent alien in Carpenter’s gorefest manages to slither to a more intimate proximity with its victims. True that the larva-stage “Alien” reaches remarkable intimacy with the horrific impregnation of John Hurt’s Kane, but the knuckle-whitening dread of “The Thing” is another species of violation, seeping into the film and spreading like a slow virus tormenting the viewer with unstoppable Chinese water-torture consistency.
It is a tale of scientists delving too deep into the icy recesses of the Arctic, unearthing the dreadful abomination. They receive their punishment for their Promethean mining: The creature unleashes a torrent of unbridled savagery upon the unsuspecting researchers (a ghastly depiction captured in the lamentable and largely computer-generated “The Thing” prequel from 2011). Fleeing to a neighboring research station under the watchful eyes of Kurt Russell and his comrades, the Thing seeks solace within their midst.
The enigmatic biology of this insidious entity confounds the mind, even a mind as twisted as a Keeper of this labyrinthine purgatory of film, Dear Reader! Capable of both mimicry and absorption, it assimilates living beings on a cellular level until they become one with the Thing itself. How terrible a fate! A sentient creature possessing a hive-mind consciousness, each cell harbors an independent survival instinct, capable of autonomous existence. Perhaps my pathetic words stumble in the attempt to convey the intricacies of this alien phenomenon. Fear not, for within the movie itself, diabetic scientist Sir Wilford Brimley fantastically decodes the puzzle, employing Atari-esque expository computer models to portray the alien’s macabre microbiology.
The titular Thing, able to shapeshift and assimilate, claims its prey one vulnerable individual at a time. Its nefarious intentions reveal a subtext steeped in Cold War paranoia—a foreign power donning the guise of a friend. Patriotic 1982 anxieties now expand to intergalactic proportions, Dear Reader! And while “The Thing” can be read to embody America’s deepest fears of communism – violently forced “equality,” absolute homogeneity – Kurt Russell, his character radiating the spirit of rugged individualism at an almost sexual level, stands as the ultimate embodiment of blue-blooded Americans. Behold! He resembles Wild Bill Hickok more than the Arctic scientist he purports to be, a testament accentuated by the enduring presence of his trusty cowboy hat, scruffy facial hair, and gunslinger-like acumen with a flamethrower.
Yes, the dread of the Cold War beats a hellish tattoo throughout this evil tale, culminating in a horrifying and exciting showdown of Mutually Assured Destruction. Close viewers may appreciate subtle foreshadowing at the film’s outset, as Russell, confronted by his imminent loss to a computer at a game of chess, retaliates with a defiant gesture: dousing the motherboard with a cascade of delicious looking Scotch. We later see the Thing, meticulously calculating its moves, methodically dismantling the base piece by piece, while Russell, embracing the spirit of incendiary stalemate, seeks to engulf the entire compound in a blazing conflagration. Attention all abysmal pinkos: Witness the triumph of (quite sexy) unyielding resolve!
The naysayers will come, Dear Reader. They may swarm like rats, in fact, while you seek refuge in Carpenter’s masterpiece, dismissing the aforementioned allegorical essence of this beautiful and sinister film. Disregard them, Dear Reader, for they shall dissipate like ephemeral apparitions if you refuse to grant them your attention. I stand resolute in my conviction that this timeless work harbors layers of significance. To its original audience, “The Thing” embodied the specter of communism. In due course, it metamorphosized into a reflection of the AIDS crisis, and now, a metaphorical terrorist cell. “Snake Plissken Fights a Monster, The End” would have sufficed for the lesser minds, but oh, there is a profusion of meaning to unravel here, is there not? An unraveling that could very well unravel one’s mind along with it!
Detractors may also seek your attention through the pathetic practice of critiquing Kurt Russell’s performance, lamenting his, as one with a lesser mind might say, over-the-top “ham-fisted” approach to the role. Yes, I concede that his Kurt Russelly demeanor persists throughout the narrative. But I ask, who would you have preferred in his stead? Shall we wish instead for our arctic cowboy to be the venerable Clint Eastwood, that sage dispenser of stoic scowls, gazing intently at the Thing for a span of ninety minutes? Nay, we are blessed with the presence of a man who has masterfully carved a career from frenzied outbursts and unbridled cowboy-hat-wearing-lunacy.
Marvel, dear reader, at the grotesque spectacle of the special effects that adorn this cinematic marvel, a testament to the prowess of horror and science-fiction makeup. Other movie reviews from other Keepers locked in crypts of their own shall undoubtedly lavish more attention upon this aspect, and rightly so. I shall only touch upon them so that you can understand the magnitude of carnage that this film offers. Do recall, for example, that delicious scene with the arms (you know which arms, I’m afraid), featuring an individual quite abruptly bereft of such appendages. The sheer shock it evokes is perhaps only paralleled by “birth” of the original Alien in “Alien.” However, in “The Thing,” the practical effects slaughterhouse is unrelenting: Limbs are severed, lifeless flesh is reanimated, and unsuspecting victims are drenched in the vile tendrils of parasitic Thing goo. Horrific revelations abound!
I cannot attach a stronger recommendation. In the Crypt, I remain… watching…
This is an outrageous clusterfuck of superhero origin movie clichés and Transformers 3 levels of CGI nonsense. I seriously couldn’t understand what was happening during the gushers of CGI, and when the camera stopped spinning long enough for me to get it, I was sorry that I did.
There is nothing “Dracula” about this movie. All of the seduction, complexity, and horror is erased completely. What remains is a seriously pathetic Dracula reboot attempt where the character is reimagined as a Batman (pun actually not intended) kind of avenger who, like the protagonist of every kung-fu movie and side scrolling video game, fights bad guys of increasing difficulty until the final battle scene with the “boss”. I suppose if you enjoy vampire movies and want to see a worse PG-13 version of one of those Underworld movies, where vampires do kung-fu, you might like this one. I think this is the only movie I have seen with Dracula in it where Dracula is just not fucking cool at all. He looks/behaves like the lead singer of Creed.
Tywin Lannister plays a cave-dwelling Nosferatu-ish vampire who gives Vlad his CGI abilities. This part is pretty cool. It’s a “deal with the devil” setup where Vlad has to gamble his soul in order to gain vamp-power. Lannisterferatu performs some CGI magic on him and then Vlad is able to do stuff like turn into a CGI swarm of bats, CGI heal from CGI attacks from CGI weapons, and movie at CGI super-speed. He can even create CGI tornados. The only thing he does that is not created by computers is his slow-motion walking/brooding in his trench coat that will make even devout Boondock Saints fans cringe.
There are a lot of “what have I become?” scenes and there is virtually no blood/gore in the battle scenes that interrupt Vlad’s pity party. Like another wretched monster reboot attempt, I, Frankenstein, the fight scenes are CGI-ed into blobs of spinning confusion and virtually all the killing blows are cropped out so that they can score that ever-sought-after PG-13 rating.
If you are someone who is generally unbothered by gratuitous CGI, and you like PG-13 action movies, give this a shot. But I just felt like I was watching a mixture of video games and sadder-than-John-Snow whining woven into what barely passes as a story.
Yes, this is the movie where Scarlett Johansson gets naked. Yes, it is also a pretty good movie that you should watch for reasons other than just the nude scenes. Again, yes, this is the movie where Scarlett Johansson gets naked.
What an extreme “don’t talk to strangers” cautionary tale. Johansson plays a seductive alien who drives around looking for dudes to lure back to her lair where she leads them into a vat of black goo that dissolves everything except their skin. You never see her do anything with their skin, but you know at some point she is going to wear it, or one of her alien homies is going to wear it. Underneath all that Johansson, is a really grotesque alien.
At first glance, the movie is really repetitive; the driving/seducing/goo takes up a good half of the film and the scenes are all really similar: Johansson drives up to whomever looks the loneliest, charms them into her van (and then to her lair), and then the next thing you know, the poor guy has a raging boner and is following naked Johansson (did I mention there are nude scenes?) until he realizes he’s in black goo, sinking like rock in quicksand. His face melts into disappointment; this was NOT covered in sex-ed!
What’s fun about this repetition is the tension. After you see one guy swallowed by the black goo, the rest of her seductions are rife with fucking evil dramatic irony. We know that if she gets a dude in the van, it’s black goo time, but all he can think about is naked Johansson, even though there is something sort of… off about her. All you can think about naked Johansson too, but you know there is also black goo. The music during the black goo parts is eerie and there are some uncomfortable first-person shots. I liked it.
What’s extra fucked up is the fact that a lot of the footage of her failing to convince a guy to hop in the van is actually footage of her asking real pedestrians, in real life, to hop in her van for a ride. A lot of guys turned Johansson down for a weird van ride and their nervous refusals are included in the film. So when you see her hungrily asking a dude to get in her van to hang out, and the guy says, “no Scarlett Johansson, I do not want to hang out with you,” it’s real! Fucking idiots.
Like I said, the drawn out and suspenseful seductions take up a lot of time, but the formula changes when the alien starts to have what appears to be an existential crisis. “Why am I getting naked and luring lonely guys into black goo?!” It doesn’t end well.
The majority of the director’s credits include music videos, which winds up being a good thing. The movie looks fucking awesome (Even scenes that don’t involve naked Johansson. There, I said it.). The shots are all carefully framed, there are those gnarly first-person sequences, and Johansson fluctuates between flawless and grotesque, angelic and demonic through isolating tracking shots and unflattering close-ups.
“Here is an ancient text that discusses 976-EVIL.”
976-EVIL 2: D-
Socrates: Glaucon, I have come across a mind-bending film called 976-EVIL 2. It tells the story of Spike, a wise-cracking motorcyclist, who finds himself entangled in a battle against a haunted jerk-off hotline. Have you encountered such a narrative?
Glaucon: Socrates, I am well aware of this film, but I have no experience with actual jerk-off hotlines – haunted or otherwise. I need you to accept this fact before we converse further.
Socrates: Glaucon, I am your friend. I am perfectly willing to uphold your ridiculous jerk-off hotline denials and pretend that you are not a sick deviant so that we may discuss the film.
Glaucon (sighs): Very well, Socrates… Where shall we begin? With the villain, perhaps? The story revolves around a teacher with, shall we say, “unsavory” tendencies who uses a supernatural jerk-off hotline to project himself onto the astral plane to commit heinous acts against blonde teenagers. Quite a distasteful premise, wouldn’t you agree?
Socrates: Indeed, Glaucon. And what do you make of this teacher’s preference for targeting blonde teens? Does it not raise questions about the origin of his motives and the depths of his depravity? Targeting this group so specifically speaks to pathological behavior often present in minds that dwell in the depths of sexual fetishes, like… your friend… whom we discussed at length while exploring the philosophical depravity of 976-EVIL, the genesis for this Satanic jerk-off hotline saga.
Glaucon: Ah yes, my friend Epicurus who was ensnared in the unfortunate web of phone sex addiction back in 1988… A sad, sad tale that absolutely centered on his carnal jerk-off hotline impulses! I do not think this film is so complicated, Socrates. Perhaps the slaying of numerous young blondes is merely a cinematic choice fit for the genre, a means to generate suspense and shock value. After all, these filmmakers often rely on such cheap tactics to captivate the audience. If we suspend our disbelief to allow for an astral plane jerk-off hotline, why not suspend it further and accept the premise at face value?
Socrates: Perhaps, Glaucon. Yet, as the story unfolds, we encounter a multitude of unoriginal ideas and borrowed elements beyond the reuse of the demonic jerk-off hotline. The parallels to other films, such as Evil Dead 2 and Pleasantville, are evident and there is also a character who is a veritable carbon copy of Elvira, Mistress of the Dark with dyed blonde hair. Does this not suggest a lack of creativity and originality on the part of the filmmakers worthy of condemning this film?
Glaucon: Socrates, it is not uncommon for artists to draw inspiration from existing works; you know this. We’re talking about the filmmakers who are crafting a feature film around a magical jerk-off hotline! And besides, there are new and exciting ideas in this film: Spike is haunted by phones; they ring wherever he goes! There is a scene where they manage to blow up a truck! How did they get the money for this, Socrates? Let us not forget about when Spike kills himself so he can infiltrate the astral plane and combat the evil blonde-killing teacher.
Socrates: Indeed, Glaucon, what you speak is true. I will concede that this is the first film I have seen in which a teen suicide leads to the creation of an anti-jerk-off phone sex ghost. I am willing to give this film a D-.
‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring except Santa in his jack-off dungeon.
Christmas Evil: B+
Christmas Evil has everything I look for in a good cult classic. It takes itself somewhat seriously, has abysmal acting from people trying as hard as they can to act, and has clichés before they were clichés. This was like a Taxi Driver Christmas Special. And before you get on your Silent Night, Deadly Night high horse, please note that Christmas Evil came out four years before SNDN…
Harry experiences some Christmas-related trauma as a young boy (he sees his father dressed as Santa, going down on his mom RIGHT NEXT TO THE CHRISTMAS TREE) and then grows up with a weird Christmas complex. He learns Santa isn’t a guy who comes down the chimney with a sack of toys, he’s a guy who smells like Pall Malls and does naughty things to your mom just 18 inches away from your stocking.
Harry grows up and gets a job at a toy factory and in his spare time, he spies on little girls and boys, keeping a genuinely creepy naughty/nice list. He also hums Christmas carols non-stop, builds his own custom dolls/action figures, and shuts out the outside world completely, effectively turning his home into his own demented South Pole.
The people at the toy factory start taking advantage of him even though it’s Christmas time. It’s very Dickensian. After an escalating series of minor abuses from coworkers and family members, Henry does the only thing that makes sense: He dresses like Santa and goes on a killing spree. “Naughty” people get attacked with a hatchet, “Nice” people get toys that Henry made after hours at the toy factory and in his South Pole jack-off dungeon.
There are some demented scenes of people getting slashed during midnight mass and another scene where Henry kills a guy in his bed on Christmas morning and then leaves behind toys for the guy’s kids. There are also some hilarious scenes of Harry hiding in bushes and driving around in a sex offender-y van, dressed like Santa, talking to himself.
At one point, some townsfolk form a mob, gather torches and weapons, and run around looking for Harry like some 18th century Carpathian villagers.
Henry is a likeable slasher who has a Travis Bicklian moral code he tries to stick to, but he is eventually undone by his own need to be a real-life Santa. I’ll leave it at that. This is a good slasher and I recommend you check it out.
You DO NOT want to see what he is doing with his hands.
Shakma: F
Some teenaged nerds all work together in a lab carrying out experiments to genetically modify apes and give them super-intelligence, strength, and agility, which always turns out to be a great idea in every horror movie I have ever seen. The teens are strangely cheery and self-absorbed as they work to decode baboon genomes while acting like they are characters from Saved by the Bell. One ape, Shakma, almost murders a guy, so they put poor Shakma down with (what appears to be) lethal force and wheel his unattended corpse into an empty room with an unlocked door. Another great idea.
The professor who runs this operation is a real piece of shit. He wears a bowtie and corsage and never for one single second ponders the ethics behind his chimp-enhancement experiments; he is always diddling around on his computer, swiveling around in his office chair, and pontificating like a wannabe Bill Nye the Science Guy. More like Bill Jerk the Science Jerk, right? “Making great progress on these homicidal genetically modified apes today! Everything sure is swell! Science is marvelous!”
One day, instead of devoting a single thought to the hubris and absolute stupidity behind heading a program that is essentially a murderous super-ape factory, the professor decides to close shop early and conduct a live-action role playing game with his staff, which he will be overseeing as the Dungeon Master. This involves walkie-talkies, motion sensor technology, and eventually, a bloodthirsty Shakma (nope, he is not dead). What could go wrong?
The teens wander around the building all night as pawns in the professor’s RPG and eventually, recipients of Shakma’s vindictive maulings. Shakma fucks some shit up and it is not pretty. I don’t mean the carnage, I mean it looks lame. There are quick shots of what is basically baboon stock footage edited into longer shots of the teens being molested by a baboon hand puppet (I wish I was making the puppet thing up). There are no shots where Shakma and the actors are in the frame together and the illusion that they are is fucking flimsy at best.
They got an actual baboon for the movie and IMDB claims that the filmmakers were able to capture some great shots of Shakma going apeshit by putting a female baboon in heat nearby. I believe it. Watch the movie; pretty much every time Shakma is banging on a door or window, he has a giant red-rocket boner.
Man, I wonder what was going through that director’s head when he told the crew “Hey, today, I want to get some shots of the baboon getting mad, so we need to work together to give him a boner and get him really frustrated.”
If that sounds appealing to you, teens thinking they are playing a version of Dungeons & Dragons as they get killed by a super-ape that never spears in the same shot as them, then I don’t really know what to say to you.
“LOL bro you are like totally dying right now! OMG!”
Unfriended: C-
As a business model, this is the best horror movie I have ever seen. It apparently cost nothing to produce and in fact, it seems like the conception itself made money before the film even hit theaters. In an MTV Production where every kill is off-screened or shaky-cammed, where virtually 100% of the movie is framed in big-name product placement, where the actors are all unknown teens with very undemanding roles, I imagine the cash flow pre-ticket sales to be somewhere between epic and unimaginable.
The plot is a cross between I Know What You Did Last Summer and Fear.com, featuring a handful of morally dubious teens who collectively LOLed at the gruesome suicide of a cyber-bullied classmate all coming together to Skype and talk shit on the anniversary of her death. Their chat session becomes “haunted” by a paranormal chatroom presence and then the teens are systematically killed while the #poltergeist ROFLs.
I’ll pay the movie another compliment by acknowledging that it the most original flavor of “found footage” that I have seen probably ever. Since The Blair Witch Project, pretty much all FF movies (sex tapes not included) took the same approach with the only innovations being that they were tied to various genres. Monster movie? Cloverfield. Superhero movie? Chronicle. And so forth. Same story frame: Footage is found and played back with all of the grain, shake, and terror. Unfriended is different. The grit and immediacy of FF is there but it is rebooted for the Cell Phone Video Age; you’re not watching video footage found in a dead teenager’s handy-cam, you are watching a Skype session unfold in real time on a teenager’s laptop, with each of the chatters dying off one by one. It was as clever and fresh as a gimmicky twist on a now gimmicky genre can be.
The fun stops there. For all the novelty in the setup, I felt incredibly unentertained for all 88 minutes. I suspect this was because every character was sitting at a desk or laying on a bed for the entire movie. There is a kind of sedentary feel to the whole thing. I never feel like the haunting is “pursuing” the characters, if that makes sense. The deaths are all abrupt with little or no buildup, all off-screen implied kills. The shaky-cam cop out is updated to buffering. It gets fucking old.
I also don’t think the movie is going to age well. Imagine someone made a mediocre (that is being kind) Myspace-based slasher flick ten years ago. It would probably be a joke now. The “skin” that this movie wears is Skype and a bookmarks bar full of Millennial-friendly brand partners. I just see people ironically laughing at this movie a few years from now, un-ironically laughing years after that, and finally sighing dismissively until the end of time.
Ultimately, I’ll give this movie props for trying something inventive with found footage, but when you get past the shtick-ish shell, it is an incredibly cheap and uneventful slasher drone with nothing to offer other than the continued implication that you should download Spotify.
BLOODCRYPT 