Tuesday, January 14, 2014
CURSE OF CHUCKY (2013)
After efforts to reboot the Halloween, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Evil Dead, Scream, and Texas Chain Saw series have fallen through pretty pathetically, it's good to see that Chucky is still Chucky. The killer Good Guy Doll™ has still got it.
While many horror series pass through different hands and different approaches, Curse of Chucky benefits from familiarity and limited ambition. It sticks with what has worked about the concept. The series thus far has had the same producer and writer, and Brad Dourif has voiced the titular killer in each one. Curse continues the tradition by keeping things spare, lean, and simple.
Nica (Fiona Dourif, Brad's daughter), bound to a wheelchair, lives with her mother Sarah (Chantal Quesnelle) in an old, decaying mansion that looks carted in from a James Whale film. One afternoon she receives a strange package from an unclear sender. Inside: well, you know. Terror is soon pursuing Nica and Sarah in their labyrinthine house, as well as Nica's sister Barb (Danielle Busutti), her husband Ian (Brennan Elliott), their young daughter Alice (Summer Howell), and their au pair Jill (Maitland McConnell).
None of what happens here is groundbreaking, but writer-director Don Mancini creates believable characters with real relationships that exist for reasons other than to be chopped up. They have real family troubles that are connected to the impending Chucky massacre, and not artificially built like many horror films' stabbing fodder. The performances are also exceptionally good: the younger Dourif makes for a tenacious heroine, and Elliott a likably boorish male foil. A Martinez also appears as the family's priest, and factors into one of the movie's more gleefully nasty scenes.
Mancini, in his second feature as director, shows a sure hand at suspense. He makes great use of the setting, which helpfully includes a leaky roof, a winding staircase and a creaky old elevator. Even though he's been with the series for six entries now (and has only written two screenplays that aren't Chucky-related), he doesn't seem to have grown tired of it.
The elder Dourif, too, is a major reason that Chucky is still as effective a presence as he is. Chucky's voice has a unique clownish menace that can be at once enticing for children and disturbing. It's also nice that Dourif gets to appear on screen this time around, too, as Chucky's former human self, serial killer Charles Lee Ray. And if his appearance was not inspired by Tommy Wiseau, it should have been.
The movie sags quite a bit in its third act. Its climax is diluted by backstories and flashbacks which don't contribute much to the story. The little girl disappears for a long stretch for no particular reason. And it ends a few too many times: I think you'll agree that there is one perfect moment where it ought to have cut to black, but it continues on for a few extraneous scenes, including one after the credits which strangely seems to negate the one that came before it.
*** out of ****
Monday, January 13, 2014
AN OKAY YEAR AT THE MOVIES 2014, Week 1
1. The Bay (2012): Jan. 2
2. Texas Chain Saw (2013): Jan. 2
3. The World's End (2013): Jan. 2
4. Upstream Color (2013): Jan. 3
5. The Apparition (2012): Jan. 3
6. I Saw the Devil (2010): Jan. 5
7. Stiches (2012): Jan. 6
8. 2012 (2009): Jan. 7
9. The Sorcerer's Apprentice (2010): Jan. 10
10. Tower Heist (2011): Jan. 10
The Bay (2012, Barry Levinson): ** 1/2
An interesting experiment in eco-horror: a found-footage Paranormal Activity-style mockumentary in which the pollution of Chesapeake Bay leads to horrific results. Its heart is in the right place, and the environmental message is urgent, but Levinson's shaky hand with the genre is evident, and many of the scares don't land. Still, the point of view (compiled from various first-person and journalist accounts) is flawless, and there are a number of creepy crawlies that are good for a shock or two.
Texas Chain Saw (2013, John Luessenhop): **
Reboot of the legendary slasher series ignores the above-average 2003 remake as well as the below-average 2006 prequel, and aims to be more of a direct followup to the original film. Results are middling, scares are few, though blood and gore is plentiful. Oddly, its biggest success is making the saw-wielding Leatherface into an antihero, something at which Rob Zombie failed with his two Halloween movies.
The World's End (2013, Edgar Wright): ***
The closing chapter of the Edgar Wright/Simon Pegg Cornetto Trilogy, in which the not-quite-recovering alcoholic Gary King (Pegg) reunites his old school buddies (Nick Frost, Eddie Marsan, Paddy Considine, Martin Freeman) for a night of drinking and debauchery in their hometown. Like its predecessors, Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, it has a genre side-plot, this time influenced by apocalyptic actioners like They Live and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, that ties into the characters' relationships and exacerbates each one's troubles. But the character work is so good, and the performances so charming, that it might have just been about the reunion of five friends without all the action-movie business. Still, it's consistently hilarious.
Upstream Color (2013, Shane Carruth): ***
This is a love story that, at the very least, has never been told before. A woman (Amy Siemetz) is attacked, brainwashed, and has her memories stolen. Soon she meets a man (writer-director-composer Carruth) whom she suspects has had the same thing happened to him, and may have some of her memories. Hypnotic, strange, and engrossing, told from a dreamlike first-person point of view inspired by David Lynch and Terrence Malick. Only problem: its puzzling, difficult framing device can be tiring.
The Apparition (2012, Todd Lincoln): 1/2
Uninvolving ghost story is the type of film that's usually lazily ripped from Asian horror; this time it's an original dud. Kelly (Ashley Greene) finds out that she's being haunted by a malevolent ghost that her boyfriend (Sebastian Stan) and his buddy (Tom Felton) awakened years ago. Filled with half-baked ideas and empty scenes that are meant to be eerie but are just boring. Two redeeming qualities: (1) the final shot is an effective rip-off from the 2005 Korean film Cello, and (2) the 82-minute running time includes ten minutes of end credits.
I Saw the Devil (2010, Ji-woon Kim): ** 1/2
After his fiancee is murdered, a federal agent (Byung-hun Lee) tracks down the killer (Oldboy's Min-sik Choi) to take his revenge... but simply killing him would be too easy. Long, bloody, and brutal, and director Kim takes the revenge thriller to an extreme degree, though Lee's revenge plan is too much of a movie concoction, and his descent to the same level as the killer is predictable. Choi is memorably ruthless and sadistic as the amoral, seemingly invincible murderer.
Stitches (2012, Conor McMahon): **
After he's accidentally killed at a child's birthday party, a cantankerous clown (Ross Noble) returns from the dead to take revenge on the now-teenaged kids who caused his death. The shabby, drunken, foul-mouthed Noble is never as scary as a regular well-behaved clown, but the movie is at least populated by awful, annoying brat teenagers who we're happy to see killed in comically graphic ways.
2012 (2009, Roland Emmerich): ***
I've got a soft spot for Irwin Allen, so this movie was music to my ears. An all star cast including John Cusack, Oliver Platt, Danny Glover, Thandie Newton, and Woody Harrelson battles the rising oceans and shifting earth crusts after the Mayan prophecy of 2012 is proven to be true. Not the tightest of storytelling, but no one does this sort of thing better than Emmerich; the special-effects scenes of the world's destruction are spellbinding.
The Sorcerer's Apprentice (2010, Jon Turteltaub): ** 1/2
Pleasant and usually fun, if disappointing, reunion of the star and director of National Treasure. Nicolas Cage is Balthazar, student of Merlin, who's reawakened in modern-day New York to stop an evil wizard (Alfred Molina) from world domination. He's got the help of a college student (Jay Baruchel), whom he's taken as his apprentice. Some fun special-effects sequences set in realistic New York locations, and likable performances from Cage as the frazzled hero, Baruchel as the awkward apprentice, and Molina as the flamboyant villain.
Tower Heist (2011, Brett Ratner): ***
A heist movie for the Occupy Wall Street era: formulaic but entertaining, with a surprisingly potent economic message. The manager (Ben Stiller) of a Trump Tower-like condo building in New York invests his employees' pensions with his billionaire penthouse resident (Alan Alda); when the billionaire is arrested for fraud, the employees have to find their money, and steal it back. Never more than predictable, but consistently likable, with a terrific ensemble of performers. Alda is exceptionally sleazy as the Bernie Madoff-like scam artist, and Eddie Murphy and Matthew Broderick have their best roles in years as a career burglar and a disgraced businessman, respectively.
2. Texas Chain Saw (2013): Jan. 2
3. The World's End (2013): Jan. 2
4. Upstream Color (2013): Jan. 3
5. The Apparition (2012): Jan. 3
6. I Saw the Devil (2010): Jan. 5
7. Stiches (2012): Jan. 6
8. 2012 (2009): Jan. 7
9. The Sorcerer's Apprentice (2010): Jan. 10
10. Tower Heist (2011): Jan. 10
The Bay (2012, Barry Levinson): ** 1/2
An interesting experiment in eco-horror: a found-footage Paranormal Activity-style mockumentary in which the pollution of Chesapeake Bay leads to horrific results. Its heart is in the right place, and the environmental message is urgent, but Levinson's shaky hand with the genre is evident, and many of the scares don't land. Still, the point of view (compiled from various first-person and journalist accounts) is flawless, and there are a number of creepy crawlies that are good for a shock or two.
Texas Chain Saw (2013, John Luessenhop): **
Reboot of the legendary slasher series ignores the above-average 2003 remake as well as the below-average 2006 prequel, and aims to be more of a direct followup to the original film. Results are middling, scares are few, though blood and gore is plentiful. Oddly, its biggest success is making the saw-wielding Leatherface into an antihero, something at which Rob Zombie failed with his two Halloween movies.
The World's End (2013, Edgar Wright): ***
The closing chapter of the Edgar Wright/Simon Pegg Cornetto Trilogy, in which the not-quite-recovering alcoholic Gary King (Pegg) reunites his old school buddies (Nick Frost, Eddie Marsan, Paddy Considine, Martin Freeman) for a night of drinking and debauchery in their hometown. Like its predecessors, Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, it has a genre side-plot, this time influenced by apocalyptic actioners like They Live and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, that ties into the characters' relationships and exacerbates each one's troubles. But the character work is so good, and the performances so charming, that it might have just been about the reunion of five friends without all the action-movie business. Still, it's consistently hilarious.
Upstream Color (2013, Shane Carruth): ***
This is a love story that, at the very least, has never been told before. A woman (Amy Siemetz) is attacked, brainwashed, and has her memories stolen. Soon she meets a man (writer-director-composer Carruth) whom she suspects has had the same thing happened to him, and may have some of her memories. Hypnotic, strange, and engrossing, told from a dreamlike first-person point of view inspired by David Lynch and Terrence Malick. Only problem: its puzzling, difficult framing device can be tiring.
The Apparition (2012, Todd Lincoln): 1/2
Uninvolving ghost story is the type of film that's usually lazily ripped from Asian horror; this time it's an original dud. Kelly (Ashley Greene) finds out that she's being haunted by a malevolent ghost that her boyfriend (Sebastian Stan) and his buddy (Tom Felton) awakened years ago. Filled with half-baked ideas and empty scenes that are meant to be eerie but are just boring. Two redeeming qualities: (1) the final shot is an effective rip-off from the 2005 Korean film Cello, and (2) the 82-minute running time includes ten minutes of end credits.
I Saw the Devil (2010, Ji-woon Kim): ** 1/2
After his fiancee is murdered, a federal agent (Byung-hun Lee) tracks down the killer (Oldboy's Min-sik Choi) to take his revenge... but simply killing him would be too easy. Long, bloody, and brutal, and director Kim takes the revenge thriller to an extreme degree, though Lee's revenge plan is too much of a movie concoction, and his descent to the same level as the killer is predictable. Choi is memorably ruthless and sadistic as the amoral, seemingly invincible murderer.
Stitches (2012, Conor McMahon): **
After he's accidentally killed at a child's birthday party, a cantankerous clown (Ross Noble) returns from the dead to take revenge on the now-teenaged kids who caused his death. The shabby, drunken, foul-mouthed Noble is never as scary as a regular well-behaved clown, but the movie is at least populated by awful, annoying brat teenagers who we're happy to see killed in comically graphic ways.
2012 (2009, Roland Emmerich): ***
I've got a soft spot for Irwin Allen, so this movie was music to my ears. An all star cast including John Cusack, Oliver Platt, Danny Glover, Thandie Newton, and Woody Harrelson battles the rising oceans and shifting earth crusts after the Mayan prophecy of 2012 is proven to be true. Not the tightest of storytelling, but no one does this sort of thing better than Emmerich; the special-effects scenes of the world's destruction are spellbinding.
The Sorcerer's Apprentice (2010, Jon Turteltaub): ** 1/2
Pleasant and usually fun, if disappointing, reunion of the star and director of National Treasure. Nicolas Cage is Balthazar, student of Merlin, who's reawakened in modern-day New York to stop an evil wizard (Alfred Molina) from world domination. He's got the help of a college student (Jay Baruchel), whom he's taken as his apprentice. Some fun special-effects sequences set in realistic New York locations, and likable performances from Cage as the frazzled hero, Baruchel as the awkward apprentice, and Molina as the flamboyant villain.
Tower Heist (2011, Brett Ratner): ***
A heist movie for the Occupy Wall Street era: formulaic but entertaining, with a surprisingly potent economic message. The manager (Ben Stiller) of a Trump Tower-like condo building in New York invests his employees' pensions with his billionaire penthouse resident (Alan Alda); when the billionaire is arrested for fraud, the employees have to find their money, and steal it back. Never more than predictable, but consistently likable, with a terrific ensemble of performers. Alda is exceptionally sleazy as the Bernie Madoff-like scam artist, and Eddie Murphy and Matthew Broderick have their best roles in years as a career burglar and a disgraced businessman, respectively.
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