Hatchet

            My first two reviews here at Highbrow Horror have been of very straight faced, serious horror films. I love them because they truly are terrifying and have been deemed so by nearly everyone who has seen them over the years. However, I don’t think I enjoy anything more than a good ole’ gory schlock fest full of dark humor and insanity that doesn’t take itself seriously for a second or is too low budget to know better. And that is exactly what Hatchet is.

            Back in the 80’s, one subgenre of the horror film reigned supreme, the slasher. Slasher films never pretended to be more than they were, which was outrageously violent, ultra sleazy, nudity-filled gore fests. This subgenre has yielded some of the greatest horror films of all time such as the Friday the 13^th series, Nightmare on Elm Street, and even more obscure films such as Maniac and Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. In the 90’s there was the Scream franchise and after that, Hollywood began churning out mainstream re-makes of these films and others from around the globe. It seemed that no one had an original idea anymore.

            Then in 2006, writer/director Adam Green gave us Hatchet. The film boasted two tag lines, “It’s not a remake. It’s not a sequal. And it’s not based on a Japanese one,” and “Old school American horror.” I am happy to say that these two taglines perfectly capture the light feel and awesome approach to this wildly gorey romp through the swamp.

            The film introduces Victor Crowley, a deformed and hideous creature who lives in the Lousiana bayou. As a child, he lived with his father, who kept him hidden away from the rest of society as he was constantly made fun of and humiliated. One Halloween night, years ago, a group of kids gathered at the Crowley house to scare Victor by throwing fire crackers on the front porch. Victor was alone while his dad was out in town. Accidentally the house was caught on fire and Victor was trapped. When his dad arrived home, he quickly grabbed a hatchet and began to chop down the front door to get to his son. Little did he know that Victor was on the other side of the door and the hatchet killed his son. Now, Victor Crowley haunts the swamp and gruesomely murders anyone who dares venture into it. This legend becomes all too real when a swamp boat tour is broken down near Victors house. One by one the members of the tour are picked off as Victor Crowley exacts his revenge against the society that ruined his life.

            This movie is clearly made with one type of audience in mind, the slasher film audience. It doesn’t pretend to be anything it’s not for one second. There isn’t any hidden subtext rich in social commentary on the state of America or anything like that. It plays out with its tongue firmly planted in cheek and embraces everything that happens with arms wide open. People complain that it’s too funny, or that Victor looks like something from the Goonies, and to those people I would say, chill out! I think everything about this movie is intentional and made to make us laugh and squirm.

            And squirm we certainly will, as the gore score is off the charts in this one. We see people’s limbs wripped from their torso’s, numerous decapitations, a man hacked in half sideways with a hatchet, a sandbelt sanding away a girls lower jaw, and a womans face wripped in half via Victor Crowley’s bare hands. It’s all done “in camera” with traditional F/X, no CGI and it looks amazing. I’ll take this type of gore any day and this instantly gives the film more props from me.

            Top it all off with a handful of awesome cameos from Robert Englund (everyone knows him as Freddy Krueger), and Tony Todd (the Candy Man). Victor Crowley is played by Kane Hodder, everyone’s favorite Jason Vorhees from the Friday the 13^th series.

            So, as you can see, this is a winner with me. From it’s light campy tone, the amazing gore F/X work, to the cameos of genre favorites, Hatchet is a film that sets out to make the slasher fan happy, and it worked very well with this slasher fan.

            Hatchet 2 comes out October 1^st unrated to theatres and promises to up the ante on all accounts. If you are a fan of gory horror films, you’ll see Hatchet 2 in theatres because this hardly ever happens. Most of the time the MPAA comes in and cuts a violent film to shreds and we only see a portion of the directors vision. With Hatchet 2, we get to see everything Adam Green wanted us to see, and I can’t wait to see it for myself.

-Dave

Poster by Micah Moseby.

Dead Snow

  A group of medical students are spending the week at a secluded cabin in the mountains to relax and escape the stress of school.  Unfortunately for them, their cabin sits atop the site where a large battalion of Nazis froze to death during WWII.  Oh, by the way, the Nazis are now zombies.  How? Why? That’s not important.  What is important is that these college kids are now in a fight for their lives against a troop of flesh eating National Socialists.

            Dead Snow is a movie made by horror fans for horror fans and director Tommy Wirkola makes this very clear from the get-go.  Wirkola’s Norwegian Nazi-zombie flick can be seen as his homage to classic horror comedies of the 80’s and early 90’s.  Fans of the early works of Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson will be instantly sold.  The self-aware nature of Dead Snow is what allows it to succeed.  While the premise of a group of kids visiting a secluded cabin has been done to death, it becomes justified when the characters reference the Evil Dead and Friday the 13th in the opening scenes of the movie.  From that point on, any self-respecting horror fan viewing this film is forced to abandon any “they don’t make them like they used to” attitudes toward contemporary horror and simply enjoy the ride.     

  The first half of the movie is pretty slow-paced, almost to a fault considering the familiar nature of its narrative structure.  Once the students are settled in the cabin, they are visited by a mysterious drifter who claims there is a curse on the mountains and they would be well advised to leave as soon as possible and never come back.  The kids ignore the warnings and the drifter continues to inexplicably wander aimlessly through the same mountains he claims are too dangerous for any human to inhabit.  Even though a good forty-five minutes are spent setting the stage in Dead Snow, the characters are still relatively one-dimensional, with the only real attempt at depth being that one of the medical students is, ironically, afraid of blood.  

  However, the uneventful first half of Dead Snow is completely redeemed once zombies start to rise from the snow.  As soon as the living-dead Nazis begin to attack the cabin, any notion that Wirkola would not be able to live up to the standard of classic horror he references at the beginning of the film is instantly abandoned.  Dead Snow features the cutting edge in gore-related technology and showcases a brutal struggle for survival as the characters face off against the undead Third Reich.  Each blood-soaked attack leave will you thinking, “There is no way they can top that” and yet, somehow, Wirkola manages to continue to outdo himself in every scene until the credits roll.

Horror connoisseurs are sure to appreciate Dead Snow, a film that is truly aware and respectful of its roots.  If the notion of an unoriginal plot or one-dimensional characters concerns you, then you’re missing the point.  Dead Snow delivers tense and shocking moments as well as thrills, laughs, and plenty of buckets of blood.  This movie pulls no punches and is exactly what you want from a film about undead Nazis.  It’s time to update your Netflix queues, horror fans.  Dead Snow will not disappoint.

-Jonah

Poster by Phantom City Creative.

The Wicker Man (1973)

             A few years ago, I made a mistake. I walked into the movie theatre here in town and bought a ticket to see a film titled The Wicker Man. It had Nicholas Cage in it and it appeared to be a suspense/horror film. Little did I know that I was buying a ticket to the worst hour and a half of my life and that this poor excuse for a movie was actually a Hollywood remake of a much better 1973 British film. After watching the original Wicker Man the other night, I wished to God that I had never seen the remake. I basically knew everything that was going to happen and that doesn’t leave a lot of room to be shocked by the film’s fantastic ending. I did, however, find myself much more engrossed and interested in this odd little film that should have never been touched by Hollywood. For the sake of the rest of this review, I will pretend that the remake does not exist and I will only speak of the 1973 original as a stand-alone film. 

The film starts off quickly as a police detective is flying into Summerisle, an island off the coast of Scotland, in search of a missing girl. Upon arriving on the island, many of the people he comes in contact with claim they have never seen the girl in their life. Even the woman who had originally written him the letter begging him to come help says that she has never seen the girl and that her daughter is perfectly safe. It isn’t long before our good detective, Sgt. Neil Howie, begins to notice the strange behavior of all the inhabitants on the island, such as the frequent song and dance everyone in the town seems prone to, the midnight group copulation in the local cemetary, the inn-keepers daughter banging on the walls at night, and the naked women crying over tombstones. Sgt. Howie holds a meeting with Lord Summerisle, played by the fantastic Christopher Lee, in which he tells Howie that the island worships the old Gods of the sea, land, air, and sun. They believe in being fertile just as the earth is, thus all the sexual nature of the local inhabitants. Howie, who is a devout Christian, is mortified by this and begins a battle of the wits with Lord Summerisle and it’s inhabitants that boils to a fantastic twist and a climax that is truly haunting.

The first thing that stands out about this film to me, is character. The two leads, Howie and Lord Summerisle are polar opposites of eachother. One character represents fundamentalist Christianity and the other Paganism. When Howie arrives on the island, he is quick to throw around the fact that he is a devout Christian. His staunch beliefs are readily apparent as he prays by his bed, while the inn-keepers daughter dances naked in the room next to him, banging on his walls. He is constantly reciting scripture to the locals as they reveal their Pagan ways to him. It’s a perfect example of great indirect characterization that isn’t done hardly at all in horror films anymore.

Then there is Lord Summerisle. He represents the other end of the spectrum, which is Paganism. His entire island runs wild with abberant sexuality and worship of the earth’s elements and he encourages it and enjoys it. He is, of course, a jolly and happy man, but his wickedness is brimming under the surface. His words to Sgt. Howie are not cruel, in fact, he gives Howie permission to do as he pleases in regards to his search for the missing girl, but underneath his kindness is an evil that is not fully realized until the final moments of the film.

What I like most about this film is the fact that the antagonist is not some monster, demon, ghost, or some other genre cliche. Instead, it is the people’s beliefs that bring harm and danger. The idea that someones belief system or religion can bring them to do the most outrageous and inhuman things is something very much rooted in reality and rings true for past history (Jim Jones) and even to current events (Westboro Baptist Church and the Koran burning pastor come to mind). But it’s not just the villagers’ beliefs that are examined, it is also Sgt. Howie’s. The instant he steps foot on the island he brings his judgment and “holier than thou” attitude with him. The clash between these two viewpoints is the focal point of the film. It is something much deeper than what is normally put on display in horror films. While what happens in the Wicker Man is, on the surface, disturbing and scary, digging deeper reveals the true horrors because they have the potential to reside in each one of us. I think the idea that extremism is possible on all sides of the spectrum is something that needs to be heard, especially today.

Now, I don’t like everything about this film. There are moments where I feel that things can become a bit “hokey” for a lack of a better term. The local inhabitants on the island randomly begin singing strage Pagan songs sometimes and dress in outrageous costumes, particularly at the end. That being said, I understand that this was done to disorient the viewer and make us feel like an outsider on the island. And I believe it works rather well, I felt just as much confused and lost as Sgt. Howie did and I think this adds to the mystery and suspense of the film. I just think that sometimes it got a little too over the top and it took me out of the viewing experience just a bit.

That small issue aside, I say see the original 1973 Wicker Man. And don’t look into it much before you see it. The less you know about this film, the more rewarding and disturbing it will be for you. Also, do I need to say avoid the remake at all costs? It will truly ruin the experience for you. I believe the only reason I enjoyed the original so much was because I hadn’t seen the awful remake in years. Don’t let it spoil this very unique, intriguing, and ultimately haunting film. 

-Dave

Inside

            Leave it to the French. This has become my motto towards horror films lately. The 2000s were somewhat of a bleak era for American horror. America was caught up producing remake after remake of the genres greatest hits including: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween, and The Hills Have Eyes just to name a few. There was a sever lack of creativity outside of Eli Roth and a few select others. So while this was going on here, the French were busy upping the ante with their own imprint of brutality. In 2003 the French unveiled Haute Tension (High Tension). High Tension was released in North America two years later. Its depiction of violence and depravity was something that hadn’t been seen since the golden years of horror in the 70s and 80s. This was a very good first impression of French horror that would only be outdone with future films, which leads us to Inside.           

            Inside, or À l'intérieur, found its way onto DVD in the states in 2007. The film starts our with a nasty car wreck in which we find our main character, Sarah. Sarah, our lone survivor of the wreck also happens to be pregnant. Fast forward to Christmas Eve, our heroine is due the next day. Visions of her deceased husband from the wreck haunt her through the night. Here is where things get awfully bad. Late in the evening, Sarah gets a ring at the doorbell. Santa, maybe? I wish. It turns out to be a mysterious woman who knows a lot about Sarah. Frightened, Sarah calls the police to report the incident. The police arrive to find nothing at all and wish our poor Sarah a safe and merry Christmas.

            What unfolds for the next hour is one of the greatest achievements of the horror genre in a few decades. I won’t get into great detail because I don’t want to spoil much of the surprises, but consider this: our villain’s choice of weapon is a large pair of scissors. The blood flows real quick as Sarah is stuck in a nasty game of cat and mouse in her home with this mysterious woman who wants to take her baby from the womb. A few poor guests meet a grim fate at the hands of a pair of scissors. Throw in a lobotomy, an incredible blown off head scene, and a human hand stabbed to the wall and you have yourself an ultraviolent French horror film.

            Although the film takes place entirely in Sarah’s home, the tension is nightmarish. The FX is some of the best I’ve seen, and doesn’t rely on CGI to get the job done. The last fifteen minutes of the film are pure carnage and chaos that won’t leave your mind for a few days. I’m sure everyone has heard that before in a horror film review, but you haven’t seen it like the French do. So does Sarah survive and keep the baby? This is one hell of a journey you’ll have to make for yourself to find out. Welcome to French horror 101, courtesy of Highbrow Horror. 

- Chris

Poster by Micah Moseby.

The Thing (1982)

           Director John Carpenter is known for creating arguably the scariest and most widely known horror icon of all time, Michael Myers. When Halloween was released in 1978, it changed the game for horror and created an entire new subgenre, the slasher film. There were many films leading up to this moment that helped shape the slasher film, Italy’s giallo film craze and Black Christmas mostly, but Halloween definitely blew the doors open for the genre. After this film, Carpenter would go on to make other big hits such as The Fog, Escape from New York, and Big Trouble in Little China. But in the midst of all that, he directed one of his best works that is still widely under appreciated and over looked.
           In 1982, Carpenter directed his take on The Thing, a loose remake of the 1952 film, The Thing From Another World. When it was initially released, it was shunned by critics and failed at the box office. It was labeled as “excessive” and “nauseas inducing” and panned by nearly everyone who saw it. Years later, in retrospect, it is considered a masterpiece of the sci-fi/horror genre and hailed for its pacing and atmosphere, performances, and FX work.
           The film is set deep in Antarctica and follows R.J. Macready (Kurt Russel) and his research team after they come in contact with an alien life form that can assimilate into other organisms and in turn imitate them. The film opens with a helicopter chasing after a dog through the snow. Upon the dog’s arrival to Macready’s camp, the helicopter touches down and the pilot begins shooting wildly at the animal. After a skirmish with the research team, the pilot is killed and his helicopter destroyed. The team decides to adopt the dog and place it with the others kept on the site. It isn’t long before everyone realizes that this dog isn’t really a dog anymore and they have granted access to a being far more sinister than any of them realized.
           The first thing about this movie that works is the atmosphere that is increased exponentially as the film progresses. The claustrophobia and feeling of isolation is made apparent at the very first few shots of the film. With wide sweeping shots of the frozen tundra, and narrow tracking shots through the teams research compound, the camera works to create this sense of tension and overbearing dread. As paranoia sets in among the crew, we as an audience begin to feel their bewilderment and fear of the unknown. There are moments where the person you would least expect to be the alien comes out of no where and suprises you with a jolt of violence that will send you flailing in your chair. It has been called a “slow burn” film and I agree. It takes its time and lets things spin out of control. It all spirals to a bombshell climax that is an explosion of fire and gore. It never eases off of the tension pedal and by the time it is over and the credits roll, you will still be holding your breath.
           This kind of atmosphere and paranoia would not be possible to depict without the performances to back them up. And while all of the actors, there are no women at all in this film, do a commendable job, my main praise goes to Kurt Russell. Has anyone seen a movie with Kurt Russell where he isn’t just a complete bad ass? He takes control of the team and leads an assault against the creature with a calm and collected sense of responsibilty. But as things get worse, his mental state begins to collapse. He balances this calm and cool with the manic paranoia and desperation that only an actor of Kurt’s caliber could pull off. Even though we never know who the alien may be imitating, we as an audience root for Kurt all the way.
           I would be leaving out quite possibly the best aspect of The Thing if I didn’t mention it’s wildly impressive gore FX work. This film came out in 1982, but if it were released today, it would still be impressive. Some of the things that happen in this movie are absolutley insane; including, but not limited to: a dogs face splitting in half to reveal a vicious monster, a man’s chest opening and turning into teeth that bite off another character’s arm that spews geysers of blood, and a characters head splitting in half to reveal another set of teeth that in turn eats another man. Insane right? That’s not even half of it. Mere words can’t describe the insanity that is committed to celluloid in this fantastic film. You simply have to see it to believe it.
           I’m not sure if I need to do anymore glowing and raving to get you to see this movie, but if I haven’t said enough, GO RENT IT TODAY! It is widely available on DVD and can probably be found in any video rental store. It is one of Carpenter’s masterpieces that is too good to not be seen.

- Dave

Survival of the Dead

            Master of the undead, George Romero is back with his latest installment to his “of the Dead” franchise.  Many complain that Romero is passed his prime. While Romero may not be redefining the horror genre with his later works, his “Dead” films consistently demonstrate clever wit, high tension, thought-provoking themes, and, of course, buckets of gore.  I, for one, have never seen a Romero film I wouldn’t recommend and Survival of the Dead is no exception.

            Like most Romero flicks, Survival takes place during the zombie apocalypse.  The dead have returned to life with a taste for human flesh and anyone who still has a pulse is struggling to survive.  A group of renegade soldiers seek refuge on a small island off the coast of North America.  They soon discover that the island is inhabited by two feuding families at war with each other because of their ideological differences concerning the undead.   One side believes the zombies should be disposed of while the other side believes their souls are still intact and humans and zombies will eventually be able to coexist.  Romero uses these families to provide interesting social commentary for the pro-choice/pro-life debate.  The soldiers must now settle the score between the two families and, at the same time, somehow manage not to be eaten by the ever-growing army of the undead.

            Say what you will about how the acting bad or how the plot is absurd, but you cannot deny that everything about Survival is completely deliberate.  Romero is fully conscious as a filmmaker and his work is unapologetically his own.  This film won’t win awards or be remembered for its innovation or artistic merit, but it is still a thrilling ride from start to finish.  While this may not be on par with Night of the Living Dead or Dawn of the Dead, a lesser Romero zombie movie is still better than 90% of the zombie movies out there and this is one that should not be missed.  Survival of the Dead is now available on DVD.  See it.

- Jonah

Poster by Charlie Adlard.