Screenhead

Being a movie reviewer, especially one who is a horror film expert besides by sheer dint of having seen a number of  titles sufficiently large that I’ve lost count, allows you to see some of the worst villains Hollywood can dream up.  Monsters straight out of hell itself and from everywhere in between—even a few sent from heaven!  But out of the many, many such evildoers that I’ve seen in my day, there are precious few who can compare to the sheer insensate evil that was Albert Fish.

So when I heard about The Gray Man, a movie about him, I knew it was going to be an interesting ride, one way or another.

Indeed, that’s what The Gray Man is all about—in 1928, a ten year old little girl by the name of Grace Budd was kidnapped, last seen in the company of a kindly old grandfather figure by the name of Albert Fish.  Six years later, authorities arrest Fish for his role in the kidnapping…but what else they’ll discover is beyond anything they could have imagined.

This is a man who was so evil that he wrote a series of anonymous letters, detailing his crimes, and sent them to newspapers.  This is a man so spectacularly evil by human standards that one of his letters detailed a recipe.  The recipe was for “roasted child ass”.  It involved onions and carrots.

Watching this admittedly dramatized piece about the life of a man whose evil was downright shocking by any standard is at once difficult and compelling.  Getting a look at his family life is also a shocker, as nothing I had ever seen before focused on that angle.  It was a surprise to see these different angles, and they added to the whole thing with a certain depth and clarity that really made this interesting.

A word about actor Patrick Bauchau, the guy who portrayed Albert Fish:  this guy was absolutely amazing, nothing but.  He went from kindly old grandfather to raw meat eating psychopath in a matter of what seemed like minutes.  He could ooze elderly benevolence one minute and project a menace almost too thick and black to see through the next.  His range is beyond belief and must be seen to be truly appreciated.

I’ve seen a lot of horror movies involving true crime figures—the BTK Killer may have the most right now, and everybody from Jeffrey Dahmer to the Alphabet Killer and the Zodiac and all the rest have at least one.  But The Gray Man could easily be the best one I’ve ever seen.  Fuelled by Bauchau’s downright compulsive performance and riding a fearsome wave of source material that’s both brutal and horrifying, The Gray Man may well be one of the scariest, classiest, and most compelling pieces of suspense / horror I’ve seen in some time.  Even better is how, in the end, they actually manage to arrest Fish—but not on murder or abduction charges.

I warn you ahead of time, though—if you have a weak heart or stomach or constitution in general, then you’ll likely want to stay away from this one.  It’s downright brutal, even if there’s not a whole lot of blood.  But if you want to look into the face of an evil deeper than any Cenobite or Cylon or anything else Hollywood can dream up, then The Gray Man is exactly the movie you want to see.

I’ve always been leery of any movie that purports to be “based on a true story“, especially when horror films use it.  Now, I’ve said it before and it bears repeating that the best horror is  that which is most plausible.  If there’s no way whatever you’re watching could actually come to pass, then what reason is there to be afraid?  That which you’re watching is just out and out fiction, and as any ten year old can tell you, fiction doesn’t happen.  But when something that COULD happen comes up, even when it’s not necessarily likely, it’s still scary.  It may be a one  in a million shot, but that just means it could happen three hundred times in the United States alone.  The possibility that what you see unfold in front of you could happen to you or your family or even your friends makes things extra scary.

But when a film like The Haunting in Connecticut openly advertises that it’s “based on a true story”, it goes too far.  Yes, plausibility is a scary thing.  But ADVERTISING plausibility in an attempt to generate plausibility, now…that’s just crass.  It’s as though they know the work can’t stand on its own merits thus they have to underline the plausibility factor to get scares.

Interestingly, this isn’t the case with The Haunting in Connecticut.  The Haunting in Connecticut is actually plenty scary by itself, but it’s not without its flaws.

The story is actually almost too simple—a family with an eldest son suffering from cancer moves to a rental home to be close to said eldest son’s treatments.  They’re offered a good deal on a spacious house with plenty of room in a quiet neighborhood…but it’s got a history.  It’s got a LOT of history, not to mention a few ghosts besides.  The situation gets steadily worse for the family until the explosive ending in which all the secrets are disgorged and brought out into the light.

Like I said, extremely simplistic storyline.  That’s basically it—cancer boy and company go through a haunted house hell ride until they come out the other side.    Not exactly long on the plot.  Not much growth, not much change, and what character development there is (the father of the family was a lying drunk, briefly, and the many stresses he’s under triggers a relapse) seems tacked on and meaningless.

But the lack of focus on character development has instead left the movie to focus on scaring holy hell out of its audience.  I heard screaming from the audience on this one, folks.  Screaming.  Even I, a veteran of numerous horror films, got a good jump out of a few scenes.  Yes, The Haunting in Connecticut is heavily dependent on the jump scare to win its daily bread, but that doesn’t necessarily make it unpleasant.  What it makes it is fun.

Yes, The Haunting in Connecticut is a fun, somewhat scary little romp that might be better served by waiting for a bargain matinee or for a DVD release.  But even if you go full price, you likely won’t have a bad time.  And in the end, isn’t that all that counts as far as movies go?

This is one that may have slipped past your radar, and if it has, it’s a crying shame, because it is some seriously creepy stuff.  If you want a really powerful horror movie with plenty of punch,  then you need look no farther than Death of a Ghost Hunter.

Presented as being “Based on a true story”, this features ghost hunter Carter Simms, who’s just been offered five thousand dollars to conduct a three day, three night investigation into what’s currently known as the Masterson House.  The Masterson House has a pretty long history involving no less than death, child molestation and religious insanity.  And Carter’s been dropped into the thick of it.

Needless to say, when you hear the phrase “based on a true story”, hang on to your wallet.  Even the slightest sliver of truth in a movie qualifies it for “based on a true story” classification because they need never tell you just HOW based it is.  Let me put it to you this way–if I have a story where an elderly woman bashed a burglar’s head in with a frying pan (and something like that happened not so long ago) and I make a movie about an elderly woman who’s a serial killer, goes around bashing open heads with her frying pan and say that it’s “based on a true story”, it’s not like I’ve lied to you.  There may be some legal differences–I’m not a lawyer–but it’s been my experience that “based on a true story” is little more than a marketing gimmick.

But frankly, that really doesn’t make much difference.  While there will be actual ghost hunters out there who poo-pooh the methods shown in Death of a Ghost Hunter, this is not supposed to be a nonfiction treatise on ghost hunting methodology.  What this IS supposed to be, however, is a horror flick about a ghost hunter.  And when viewed in that light, Death of a Ghost Hunter is solid and well put together.  I spent plenty of time scared by this simple, low-budget ghost hunting movie, mostly because what you DON’T see is almost as freaky as what you DO see.  Yes, of course the ghostly images and EVPs are scary stuff.  But watching the ghost hunters bumble around this house in the pitch black armed with flashlights–where often, all you can SEE is what’s illuminated by the small circle of light–is a spectacularly creepy experience.

I will, however, make an exception for about the last fifteen minutes.  The creepy sort of falls apart in light of this clearly tacked-on ending that makes the sublime mistake of explaining ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING about the movie.  The background on the Masterson House, the background on the characters, what happens TO the killed characters…all of it is just too much exposition, thrown onto the end for little or no clear reason.

But still, I’ve already called the best way to describe Death of a Ghost Hunter.  Leave aside the technical inaccuracies and the shaky definition of “based on a true story” and a truly weak sauce ending–Death of a Ghost Hunter is a spectacularly creepy experience.

I have to admit, starting from the very moment I caught the trailers for The Strangers, I was downright engrossed.  A movie that revolved around a home invasion in the middle of nowhere, possibly based on a true story??  The very idea had me double-checking the locks on my house doors at night.  After all, I TOO live in the middle of nowhere, and once this kind of terror comes to the middle of nowhere, well, no one’s safe.

The plot, which as I mentioned was based on a true story (to what extent is difficult to say and even harder to prove–I went rummaging around the internet for days after I first heard about it and frankly, I found nothing but a fat lot of nothing), centers on a couple in deep relationship trouble who’ve gone out to a small vacation home to settle their hash and possibly break up.  This agenda is interrupted by the gradually building appearance of three random lunatics who want to kill the couple.

Why?  Well, I’ll tell you that part in a minute.  It may well be the scariest part of the whole movie and I want to spring it on you at the end. Just like they did.

When I actually managed to see The Strangers, it surpassed my every expectation.  Managing to be both claustrophobic and expansive, I still had a hard time believing that this kind of horror could be wrought from such a minimalist design, despite the fact that I’d literally JUST seen it going on in front of my very eyes.  I mean, come on–we’ve got basically five characters.  Everyone else involved in this is essentially a nonperson who’s only got a couple minutes of screen time.  We’ve got one real set–the house and its immediate environs like a barn and a small chunk of woods and a street near the house.  All of this happens in approximately five, maybe six hours of real time (from late night to sunrise that same morning) and the result is a white-hot terror experience unlike literally anything before it.

Seriously–can you find a parallel here?  Anything I could come up with for a parallel on this fell horribly short.  I tried comparing it to early Craven, and came up a complete loss.  I tried Romero, and it wasn’t a good match there either.  A series of titles and directors passed through my mind, and nothing stuck.  If there IS a parallel for The Strangers, man, I wish somebody’d fill me in, because I want to see it.  Especially if it’s anywhere NEAR as good as what I just got done watching.

Oh…and the ending.  Yes, the ending may well be the scariest part of the whole affair.  You see, just before the evil killer types finally catch up with our heroic couple, the female half of the heroic couple makes the mistake of asking her tormentors, why?  Why have they come to kill them?  Surely they haven’t WRONGED these lunatic monsters in some way!

The answer you’ll get out of these wackjobs is easily the single scariest four words I’ve heard in a movie in some time.

For those of you who haven’t seen it–and I wholeheartedly recommend that you do–don’t read the last line.  Because that’s the answer to our heroic couple’s question, and it’s a spoiler:

“Because you were home.”

The official trailer for Notorious made its online debut late last night following the BET Hip-Hop Awards show, where it made its broadcast debut to a standing ovation. It’s easy to see why there was a standing ovation. This trailer is too cool for school.  Movie opens January 16^th!

My Name is Jody Williams, with Audrey Wells attached to direct, has Naomi Watts negotiating for the lead role.

Jody Williams is a true story, based on the screenplay by Wells, about an uncompromising teacher who works at a temporary employment agency.  She left her comfortable life in Washington to pursue an incredible career in global activism. 

Nearly a decade and a half later, Williams was presented with the Nobel Peace Prize for leading an international campaign to eradicate land mines.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Williams famously called President Bill Clinton a “weenie” for not signing the land mine ban.

In a country in the grips of evil, in a police state where every move is being watched, in a world where justice and honor have been subverted, a group of men hidden inside the highest reaches of power decide to take action. Tom Cruise stars in the suspense film, VALKYRIE, based on the true story of Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg (CRUISE) and the daring and ingenious plot to eliminate one of the most evil tyrants the world has ever known. Director Bryan Singer (THE USUAL SUSPECTS, X-MEN, SUPERMAN RETURNS) re-teams with Academy Award-winning USUAL SUSPECTS screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie to bring to life the story of the men who led the operation to assassinate Hitler. The film also stars an acclaimed cast including Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson, Carice van Houten, Thomas Kretschmann, Eddie Izzard, Christian Berkel and Terence Stamp.