This week I got to watch a couple of examples of the two major types of horror film that are prevalent in today’s cinema. One is, of course, the first-person “found footage” pseudo-documentary approach that was pioneered by The Blair Witch Project and re-pioneered by Paranormal Activity. The other has made quite a surprise comeback recently, and that is the spare, spooky, efficient ghost story. This subgenre has been reinvigorated with the re-emergence of Hammer Studios, the company behind some of the best horror and suspense B-movies ever made.
Atrocious represents the first category. Its premise is that it’s edited together from 35 hours of footage from a family’s vacation in rural Spain. The implication is that something happened to the family. We hear urban legends about the nearby forest. The kids are themselves making a documentary about the forest to explore the urban legend. Stories of disappearances are told. The family friend says he was told never to go into the woods. And there is a Shining-like labyrinth in the backyard that is easy to become lost in.
Though the story doesn’t stand up to close scrutiny, Atrocious is one of the scariest films I’ve seen recently. It’s not the most original, but the way it uses the first-person point of view is expert. It doesn’t cheat; the camera never goes anywhere that the characters holding it wouldn’t, and we are placed firmly in their shoes. We don’t see anything they don’t see. The film teases us with limited light and the possibility that something is around the corner. At night the film switches to a stationary camera, a la Paranormal Activity, pointed out the window toward the woods, that sees all that happens while the characters are asleep.
The film doesn’t quite pay off in the end, opting for a conclusion that doesn’t live up to the tension that has been built. Writer-director Fernando Barreda Luna might have instead gone with a more mysterious ending, rather than one which explains too much. Still, Atrocious is lean, taut, and very scary.
The Woman in Black represents the other kind of horror film. It’s the same kind of movie that Hammer Studios used to make long ago, when Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee ruled the day. It has haunted houses, forbidding English fog, vengeful spirits, and incredulous people who wander down dark hallways at midnight. Though not as highbrow as Hammer’s other prominent new production, Let Me In, it’s more of a throwback to the old Hammer, and a welcome sign that this kind of movie is still alive after all.
Daniel Radcliffe, in his first non-Harry Potter film role since The Tailor of Panama, plays Arthur Kipps, a young lawyer who leaves his four-year-old son to look into the case of a recently deceased woman’s estate. Kipps is a haunted man already, having lost his wife (Sophie Stuckey, who played a haunted little girl in the underseen Close Your Eyes and The Dark) during childbirth. He stays at the dead woman’s lavish yet run-down house, only to find the surrounding town plagued by strange occurrences, and the house haunted by the title character.
Director James Watkins (who co-wrote the terrifying My Little Eye, one of my favorites) doesn’t quite make the house into its own character, the way Robert Wise did with The Haunting or Stanley Kubrick did with The Shining, but he does make it a spooky place to be. The Woman in Black is a cleverly constructed film, even if it isn’t much more. Candles flicker, creepy dolls seem to stare directly at us, children behave precociously and seem to be eerily prescient. And of course, the Woman in Black appears occasionally to give us a fright.
Radcliffe appears very young to be a lawyer, not to mention a father, and the movie uses that to its effect. His character is young and naive, but also filled with a goodness that is lost on the more jaded older characters. Ciaran Hinds is likable as the only one of the townspeople who befriends him, and Janet McTeer has a few things up her sleeve as his wife.
If The Woman in Black is not particularly ambitious, it is an entertaining throwback to the Hammer quickies of yesteryear. The kind of movie that was directed by Freddie Francis and written by Jimmy Sangster. Its point is not so much to fill you with dread, but rather to jump out from the dark and scare you. And that’s okay too.
25. Midnight in Paris (2011): Feb. 5
26. Trigger Man (2007): Feb. 6
27. The Woman in Black (2012): Feb. 6
28. The Artist (2011): Feb. 6
29. Atrocious (2010): Feb. 8
30. Oleanna (1994): Feb. 9
There have been 42 days so far this year, so that puts me 12 behind. This is harder than I thought it would be, but let's not give up.
No comments:
Post a Comment