Død Snø - Dead Snow Indeed

I don't profess for a second that this is incredibly deep, highbrow cinema, but my God it's brilliant fun. This is the Norwegian mash-up of their own native folklore with some zom-com and solid homage to classics of the genre like early Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson films. It's as gory as anything I've seen so far, it's pretty inventive in parts, and it knows how to deliver what the crowd wants, both on the scares and laughs fronts.

When five randy Norsk med students hole up in an isolated snowed-in cabin for a good time over the weekend, it looks to be an excessively enjoyable time marked by the consumption of alcoholic beverages, perverted sexual practises and some light skidoo-ing. However, the classic spooky harbinger visits them with the story of the Nazi soldiers who terrorised the local community, nicking all their valuables and stashing it. These nasty Nazis were eventually driven into the mountains by the pissed off locals and never seen again. Surprise surprise, our youthful friends happen upon quite the discovery - the treasure trove of stolen trinkets left under the cabin by those light-fingered fascists! And yeah, naturally the soldiers are awoken, and they want their gold back. And being zombies, there isn't much they won't do to get it back. We watch them go to town on the harbinger to establish their status of serious killing machines. Cue a fight for survival between our future medical practitioners and the stiff SS, and of course, some serious bloodshed.

Directed by Tommy Wirkola, this is exciting stuff. Having previously made Kill Buljo - the Scandinavian love letter to Tarantino's Kill Bill - he's a director who's adept at  handling homage without getting overly sentimental or derivative. There are serious moments too, though you'll have to wade through some liberal amounts of camp and gore to get there. The little emotional touches that bind our characters together are pretty solid and nice to watch - but is nice really enough? The familiarity  here doesn't quite honour the adage and breed contempt, but it does end up birthing what's almost a sense of apathy with their being dispatched. The action scenes are well handled and feel quite inventive in certain patches, which is good to see. The gore is excessive, sure, but it's what this genre almost necessitates to go beyond the plausible and establish itself as merely entertainment. the film's opening also boasts the most inventive use of In The Hall Of The Mountain King I've seen since The Social Network, and it concluded with a terrific jump scare. But it's the comedy side of this film that is most resounding - there are guilty pleasures aplenty to be had, both with some classic visual gags (rock climbing with intestinal guide ropes!?) and one-liners that lose none of their punch in conversion to subtitles - watch for the lad who worries that he may have insulted the undead troop a little too much... absolutely priceless.

The FX team of Per Steinar Hoftun, Shino Kotani and Steinar Kaarstein definitely earned their keep. Fake blood was applied by the gallon, and some fairly strong prosthetic work was required to assemble the horde and also to maintain a sense of reality for the multiple dismemberments and mutilations. The supporting work of Janne Røhmen (the key make-up artist) can also not be brushed off in the creation of the zombie mass who present as a sort of mottled off grey colour. The score is nothing special - energetic, maintains a bit of tension when necessary, no stand out tracks (aside from the aforementioned Mountain King rendition). Dead Snow is edited quite tightly, and there is no problem's to be found there.

Just a few problems that I do feel I need to voice however... Firstly, it's actually absurd just how stupid some of these victims are. If this is a fair portrayal of the future of Norway's medical professionals, I think it's fair to say that their unbelievably high standard of living is about to plummet astronomically. I don't mind the distribution of a few knuckleheads in a cast just to stir the pot a little, but to populate the whole cast with characters who repeatedly do dumb things is a tad excessive. It feels somewhat weak that the film-makers had to rely on poor decisions to get their characters in sticky situations. Just a thought. And secondly, the cinematography was a mixed bag. Some spectacular vistas are framed and enjoyed in the light, but when the sun sets, some serious shadowing issues began to arise. The dark is not Matthew Bradley Weston's best friend (the director of photography), and the low budget must have caused some shooting constraints that are somewhat evident in the finished product. It's not impossible to work out what's happening, but having to strain doesn't make for a pleasant viewing experience.

So yeah, lots of fun, but under the knife it falls of the bone a little too easily for my liking. With that said, it's still an excellent low budget effort and it had a respectable run at the global box office and various festivals. If anything, it's a good sign for Wirkola's current film in development, Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters (my excitement is further augmented by Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton's involvement). I bestow Dead Snow a handsome 2 out of 3 isolated cabins - worth a look, but lower your expectations a tad.

Trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ap4TiNIKQJ8

[●REC] ² - Who's Up For Round 2?

What makes a good sequel? I like to think that it retains those elements from the original that made it successful, but takes them in a new direction and adds some new elements. While The Descent Part 2 lacked this originality, relying on the first without really differentiating itself, [•REC]² delivers exactly this. It’s still scary and handy-cam and claustrophobic and effective, but there are new layers here – parallel storylines, bigger twists, serious weaponry, multiple cameras. Is it as good as the original? No. But is it good? Hells yeah.

A squad of cops are sent into the apartment block in which the infection originated in the original to analyse the situation, accompanied by a health department official. We watch it through their helmet-cams and the camera their unit takes in. They make their way up to the penthouse and search for information, when a sound draws one of the four policemen into a lower apartment. The others watch through his camera as he is attacked by a rabid woman and presumably killed. They demand information from the health department bloke, and he admits that he is in fact a priest, and the infection is demonic in nature. They cannot leave the block until a blood sample of the girl who was initially possessed is located. Meanwhile, some youngsters find their way into the block through the sewers with a camera in the hope of capturing some valuable footage, and also become embroiled in the chaos. Their search for the virus’ source gets nasty – she is not a nice gal and doesn't particularly want to have her blood sample taken, but who does like needles really?

It's more of the same where the cast are concerned - pretty solid, maybe a little amateurish, but this almost helps their cause of making us believe that they are simply ordinary folk caught up in an unimaginable maelstrom of shit. The police unit that we follow through hell are well chosen and established as very separate characters, which is handy when stuff starts going down so we can keep track of who's been 'turned' and who is still with us in the land of the mentally functional. Our pretty lead from the original film makes a surprising return and holds her end of the bargain, with her ability to believably sustain what is a pretty surprising ending helping the movie along somewhat. The most notable of the cast I'd have to give to our friend the health official/undercover priest - I'd describe him as a sort of Paul Bettany-lite. He has a certain desperation about him, and his almost unnerving faith is important in adding a sense of gravitas to what could have been just an average exorcism style questioning of faith and all those other tough religious themes.

Those behind the camera are pretty much the same as the first film, and they keep their game's pretty solid. A nice touch was the reversal of the cameraman's name - this one sees the camera carrying officer addressed as Rosso, this time the cinematographer's last time (Pablo Rosso). There were no motion sickness concerns that can crop up in this style of shooting, and everything that you needed to see was pretty unmissable - just one of the benefits of having a trained direct of photography behind the majority of the shaky-cam work. This time round actually required a little more skilful editing as the viewers switch between the multiple cams, and it was pretty tight in this regard - scares were effectively built up to and dropped on the viewers with the greatest of prejudice, and this pays off. The directors also changed their game up a little this time around, both as necessitated by the stylistic upgrades of multiple cams and story lines and also just generally. I didn't know how many times I could get scared by small, possessed children/creatures dropping out of the top of the frame, but [●REC] ² certainly tried to set a defined number.

The sound design is just as important this time around, and probably even steps it up a notch with some booming firearms thrown in the mix. The long periods of silence broken by frenetic mob sounds are still intact, and they do the same job just as well. One minor gripe in that respect is that they maybe come less often than they should - the survival of more major characters to the finale means that there are more mouths to break the silence, and this is almost a little frustrating (does me wishing movie characters would hurry up and kick the bucket make me a bad person?).

And finally to the ending. What an absolute prick of an ending. It's gross, upsetting, creepy, gross, tragic, spooky... did I mention gross? AVOID THE FOLLOWING IF YOU'RE ALLERGIC TO SPOILERS. Our friend from the first film miraculously survives and tags along with the policemen, but slowly goes a little mental and effectively kills the survivors. She then proceeds to imitate the priest's voice perfectly to have the forces surrounding the building let her out. You guessed it - she's been possessed by the demon at the root of all this mayhem. We're then treated to a flashback in which we see the original film's ending, only this time augmented with footage of the reporter having a thick wormy creature forced down her throat by the woman who haunts the attic, and we just know that this was the beginning of our female protagonist's possession. It really hurts to watch, and I can all but guarantee that you'll be feeling something slithering around in your throat for a few days afterwards.

But like I said, it doesn't improve on the original, though it's a damn good effort for a foreign horror sequel. It's still pretty scary, and laden with some sultry Spanish accents for your pleasure, so it's ultimately worth taking a peek at. It's no18 standards out of a 700mL bottle of Smirnoff Vodders like the first film, but I'd certainly pay a solid 14 standards.

I'm hopefully going to get a new review up every day this week so stay tuned for this canon of carnage. You stay classy.

Get amongst the trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G18Y-S8YrQ0

The Cabin In The Woods - Mind. Blown.

The inaugural outing of the Horror Club turned out to be a resounding success, and this is largely attributable to the brilliance of the film at its heart. The Cabin in the Woods is absolutely mind-blowing cinema. It’s hilarious, terrifying, mind-bending, dramatic and fundamentally emotion driven. If you haven’t yet seen it, walk away from your computer and find it immediately. Stop reading and educate yourself as to its brilliance. Seriously – leave, enjoy, return, and revel in its radiance with me.

 The less you know about this film, the better. So I’m going to give you the studio synopsis of this film, which has been constructed no doubt with a team of brilliant writers to minimise any spoilers – and it’s very light on details. Here it is: Five friends go to a cabin in the woods. Bad things happen. You think you know the story. Think again.

PLEASE, IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE FILM, STOP READING UNTIL YOU HAVE. I’D RATE SPOILING THIS MOVIE AS MORE CRIMINAL THAN SPOILING THE SIXTH SENSE. DON’T EVEN WATCH THE TRAILER. JUST KNOW THAT IT WON’T DISAPPOINT. THIS COMING PARAGRAPH IS A FULL ON PLOT DESCRIPTION – AVOID IT ALL COSTS UNTIL AFTER SEEING THE MOVIE.

We begin with Hadley and Sitterson (Bradley Whitford and Richard Jenkins) in an industrial plant, discussing some cryptic project – it seems important, and there’s mention of other similarly vital failed attempts worldwide, leaving it up to them and the Japanese. Simultaneously, five young, bright, attractive student friends go for a weekend away at the titular cabin. They are Curt and Jules (a couple), Holden and Dana (a set up couple) and Marty (the stoner). They encounter a mysterious ‘harbinger’ at a gas station, a creepy old hick, and we slowly start to suspect that something isn’t quite right. We flick back and forth between the kids and the technicians, and more of a picture begins to emerge – the kids are part of something bigger, though they don’t know it, and they’re being chemically manipulated to optimise stupidity by one of the technicians’ colleagues. The kids explore the cabin and pick rooms – Holden realises that he has a one-sided mirror through to Dana’s room, and starts watching her getting changed before calling it up and switching rooms. What a pussy. In the plant, there appears to be a weird betting pool to do with the demise of the youngsters. The kids start partying and playing truth or dare, which results in an incredibly tense moment in which a mounted wolf head cops first base. The basement hatch springs open at the command of the operators, and the students descend to check it out. There, they become obsessed with different knickknacks, like a puzzle orb, a scarab pendant and a diary. The technicians watch with baited breath, and we know that something’s going to go down – the diary wins, and Dana distracts the others from their items by reciting a Latin passage which ultimately awakens a family of ‘backward, pain-worshipping, zombified rednecks’ called the Buckners, who start towards the cabin. Jules and Curt head outside for a cheeky wink wink, and are promptly attacked. Jules is killed. Curt runs back and alerts the others – they begin to respond logically to the danger, but the chemicals pumped into the cabin alter their thinking to maximise kill opportunities – the button pushers are now definitely suss. They get locked in their rooms, and Marty is dragged outside and into a murder dungeon by a zombie. Holden breaks through the mirror to get to Dana, and they get into the basement via an alternate entrance. Curt joins them and they manage to get to the RV and escape. However, a rock tunnel collapses around them after a brief rush from the techies, and they’re forced to try to jump the well placed and treacherous ravine on Curt’s motorbike. Unfortunately for the big guy, he hits an invisible forcefield and perishes in the attempt. A distraught Dana and Holden turn the RV around and drive back, but a sneaky zombie – having managed to stow away in their vehicle – dispatches Holden with a well-placed stake through the neck. The techies celebrate for some mysterious reason – a ritual of sorts appears to have been completed by this death. The RV crashes into the lake nearby, and Dana must fight to survive against the remaining Papa Zombie awaiting her on the wharf. But the scientists are suddenly told there’s a problem – while Dana’s death is optional (being the ‘virgin’), it appears that Marty has actually survived. Marty rescues Dana, and together they go down the elevator that Marty has found from whence the zombie family came. They find themselves surrounded by werewolves, ghouls, Pinhead-like characters – Dana is struck by the realisation that they chose their own fate, and her reading of the diary selected the Buckners. She is understandably upset. People downstairs are being given commands to kill Marty at any cost, but Dana is essentially up to personal discretion. They get out of the lifts and hide from the assault team assaulting them in a control box. Dana finds the magic button and releases the contents of the other lifts onto the soldiers. It gets bloody. Every imaginable horror creature is set loose to rampage through the compound. Everyone is brutally hunted down and murdered, except Dana and Marty, who make it through a secret passage to a room below, where Sigourney Weaver explains to them what’s just gone down. It’s a right carried out annually to assuage the Old Ones – Gods who live in the Earth and demand sacrifices. Without their sacrifice properly carried out (with Marty still alive), the world ends as the Old Ones bust free. Very uplifting stuff.

Sorry about that rant – the movie is hard to talk about without knowing the full plot. But moving on. Our five leads are uniformly great. They embody the classic genre archetypes – The Whore (Jules – Anna Hutchison), The Joker (Marty – Fran Kranz), The Athlete (Curt – Chris Hemsworth), The Scholar (Holden – Jesse Williams) and The Virgin (Dana – Kristen Connolly) – and do so for a very particular reason. Jules is stunningly gorgeous, and her transformation from brain to foolish zombie fodder is painfully human. Her repartee with Curt is believable (I’d guess partly because Hutchison is a Kiwi and Hemsworth is an Aussie – just a bit of trans-Tasman banter), and their relationship feels natural given their respective looks/smarts. Williams is the ultimate combination of testosterone fuelled sporting prowess (his body checks on some of the undead are priceless slapstick) and – before being influenced by Hadley and Sitterson’s gasses – surprising intellect. His death is pitch perfect – epic, tragic and just predictable enough to have the audience clenched in painful anticipation. Marty’s primary function is to provide comic relief, and he smashes this objective out of the park. His astute observations of their situation and the logic (or lack thereof) in his peers’ actions are spot on, and being the lead whom best represents the audience in the film due to his lack of mental affectedness, Kranz is incredibly likable as he asks the questions we as viewers are begging of the situations on screen.  Williams is sweet and quietly bright as the unexpectedly athletic Holden, and the rapport he develops with Dana is pretty adorable – I don’t know many blokes who’d tell everyone about the one sided mirror from his room to the attractive girl’s bedroom… Probably classifiable as the lead, Dana rounds out the five in an eminently likable fashion. She feels vulnerable, but there’s an internal strength that builds throughout and is unleashed beautifully throughout the final few scenes. It must be said however that Hadley and Sitterson steal the show. Jenkins and Whitford nail it. They’re hilarious, they share brilliant chemistry, they can play the whole world weary, ‘we’ve seen it all before’ act, they can do crisis control fear on another level, and they can die with gravitas and irony.

This film’s primary strength is its script, and if the system wasn’t laden with political undercurrents, I’d rally behind it until my dying breath for an Oscar. It riffs off every possible cliché in the teenage friends vs. murderous forces book, and it’s so damn refreshing to see such inventiveness. If the twist feels tired, it’s only because MGM had this finished film in storage for 3 years before Lionsgate bought the distribution rights – Sigourney Weaver’s cameo may have been emulated in Paul, but it feels more special here. The humour is outstanding and unmistakably Whedonesque – it’s the same wit that was so praised in The Avengers, and it works even better here given the morbid subject matter sandwiching it. The development of the characters is handled carefully, and they’re all fleshed out to the point that it is remarkably sad to see them go. And go they do – the death scenes peppering the opening two acts and absolutely cluttering act trois are inventive and guiltily pleasurable.

Drew Goddard – first time director and co-writer – is no slouch either. His stylistic flourishes feel fresh and energetic, and he’s definitely out to impress with this film. One of the highlights of the film is the irony it develops. Goddard teams well with Lisa Lassek (who worked with Whedon on The Avengers), whose editing allows many of the jokes to work brilliantly through the structural mirroring – the repetition of ‘Let’s get this party started!’ on both sides of the observation wall is brilliant and haunting. The cuts back and forth between the cabin and the technicians below are flawless, and provide much needed laughs. But don’t think for a second that this is just a spoof of horror films – whereas Scary Movie focused on the gags, this dishes up the scares too. While it’s more about generating terror and rabid fear as all manner of beasties are released towards the end, the opening scenes populated by the Buckners get some solid jump scares in. What’s more, many slashers seem to lose steam as they trundle along, but this number is impressive in the way it only vamps up the energy in the final act as every last modicum of shit they can rustle up hits the fan.

David Julyan’s score is another strong asset – the musical cues are classically string propelled and generate such palpable tension it almost hurts. Four brief moments were particular stand outs. The basement set moment in which our characters are all seemingly drawn in by different items crackles with suspense and builds up to an amazing crescendo. The track entitled The Diary of Patience Buckner is at once both tragic and frightening, and watching the Buckners rise from the ground is heart wrenching for us as viewers, given our reasonable suspicions that it won’t end well for the students. For Jules – the number playing over the top of Curt’s inspirational speech before he hits the force field like a bug on a windshield – is epic and emotional in equal measure, and toys with our expectations of the action we’re seeing. Finally, the orchestral strains that billow across viewers during the amazing zoom which reveals Marty and Dana in their lift surrounded by every horrific creature imaginable in adjacent lifts are incredible. It encapsulates the hopelessness, the perverse humour, the tragedy and the torture of their situation, and crafts a truly memorable reveal.

Now, DJ Cheeky Wingz, Esteban and I all caught this together at the Chauvel, so I'll let them gush to you about how deeply it moved them. Enjoy.

Esteban's contribution:

Although I don't know what a woods are, I certainly do know what this film is about. I would select it as the best film I have reviewed before. I laughed and jumped in fright, but the best of all was the plot was so unknown. I think I know what happens after a bit and then the bit after is slightly different to what I predicted would happen. Whoever wrote it must have had a spacious and bonding imagination.

If you are bored on a night by yourself, and you haven't nothing to do, or are not busy or perhaps you are so tired you just don't want to do the things you have to do, that kind of mood, and you want to laugh, choose this film. Or if you want to be scared choose this film. Or if you want to be aroused sexually, choose this film (but stop it about 45 minutes through cause that’s when all the sexy stuff stops for the most).

 I rate the cabin in the wood full score. I'm super impress.

DJ Cheeky Wingz's contribution:

Cabin in The Woods is somewhat of a fearless masked bandit in that it provides some sort of question from insanity for people of all ages however I think in my heart that if you enjoy warm milk and lemon myrtle biscuits then you will like this movie even more than the first time you saw it. This movie has become one of the greatest underdog stories ever told purely because of the use of horse women within the plot and this was deliberately done by director J.K Rowling because one day as she walked back to her car in the rain she spotted a headless man inside her car and she stuck her fingers in the space where the man’s head should have been and a small eagle appeared and told her that she was truly beautiful. Perhaps if this movie was a little bit longer then it would have been successful in establishing the central plot which has some issues around it mainly to do with the lack of kind friends and the fact that is wasn’t filmed in a very funny country (Iceland is really very cold in winter) and perhaps it would have been quite a bit better if sometimes all of the characters smiled at the same time and tasted each others cheeks because it would make it seem like a good idea. All in all I feel this movie is really quite sad because I loved all the characters in this movie one time before and perhaps with some greater emphasis on naked fishermen and lady singers with no mouths and our worst enemies the desert sandal this movie would be quite great. If I were to make it feel good I would give it a half dead pig.

I don’t think I can stress enough how much I enjoyed this movie. It’s astounding. I spent the next few hours raving at anyone who would listen about it. I wouldn’t change a thing about it. It’s bold, funny and shit scary. Almost the perfect date movie (share some laughs and then enjoy her burying her head in your shoulder – you’re welcome), though the gore may turn off some of the more sensitive ladies. I offer it a perfect score – so close to flawless that I cannot differentiate it from perfection itself. Watch it. Please.

The trailer is filled with spoilers, but here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJUIgf7lsCY 

PS: Sorry for my lateness with this one, but there will be hopefully two reviews per week for the next few months... Welcome back to Terror Bites, and please comment on the reviews.