Category: 2000s

The Ring (2002)

Published on by Chris Scullion2 Comments

Director: Gore Verbinski

Starring: Naomi Watts, Martin Handerson, Brian Cox, David Dorfman, Daveigh Chase

“My wife was not supposed to have a child.” (Richard Morgan, The Ring)

Legend has it there’s a dodgy video tape doing the rounds, one with no markings on it and no cover. If you watch it you’re presented with a strange series of images and eerie sounds, after which the phone will ring in your house and a child’s voice will inform you that you have seven days to live. Sure enough, one week later, if you don’t figure out the tape’s secret and do what you’re supposed to do, you’ll die a grisly death. If you ask me, these anti-piracy campaigns are getting a little heavy-handed.

She just couldn't bear to switch over to digital, but it was too late

Of course I’m pulling your leg, you cheeky young tyke. I’m instead referring to the cursed tape in The Ring, the American remake of the cult Japanese favourite Ringu. When journalist Rachel’s (Watts) niece watches the tape with her friends and all four die separately at exactly the same time, Rachel decides to investigate and see what’s really going on. By watching the tape first to see if the same thing will happen to her, naturally.  Continue reading “The Ring (2002)” →

Monster House (2006)

Published on by Chris Scullion2 Comments

Director: Gil Kenan

Starring: voices of Mitchel Musso, Sam Lerner, Spencer Locke, Steve Buscemi

“Are you guys mentally challenged? Because if you are, I’m certified to teach you baseball.” (Jenny, Monster House)

DJ and Chowder have the feeling that not all is right with the creepy house across the road. After its owner, the evil Mr Nebbercracker (Buscemi), has a heart attack and is sent to hospital the house appears to take on a life of its own, terrorising the local residents. But surely there has to be a more logical explanation for this… after all, houses don’t just come to life and eat people, do they? You bet your balls they do.

"You're right, he does look a little bit like a chubby Jamie Oliver"

After witnessing the creepy chateau coming alive and saving a girl called Jenny from its evil clutches DJ, Chowder and their new lady chum decide to work together to put an end to the evil house so the rest of the street will be safe.

Despite being a movie aimed at children, Monster House feels a lot like The Goonies and The Monster Squad in that it appeals to adults too because the children in it are so believable. There’s no “gee whiz mom” lines or “mwa wa waaa” musical stings throughout, this is a film that feels surprisingly realistic despite its use of stylised CGI animation.  Continue reading “Monster House (2006)” →

Paranormal Activity (2007)

Published on by Chris Scullion6 Comments

Director: Oren Peli

Starring: Katie Featherston, Micah Sloat

MICAH – “What if we just get this Ouija board and we find out what it wants and then we give it what it wants? Then it’s gone.”
PSYCHIC – “Because what it probably wants is Katie.”

You wake up in the middle of the night. In the darkness you can just about make out a black shadow standing at the door. It doesn’t move. It’s just standing there, watching you. You close your eyes but when you open them again the shadow is still there. In a panic, you slowly reach down to the side of your bed, being careful not to take your eye off the shadow, and grab your phone, turning it on. What little illumination it provides is just enough to dimly light the room and reveal… a coat, hanging from the door. Relieved, you lie back down again and close your eyes, but something lingers in your head that maybe, just maybe, the coat was a trick and the real monster is still quietly and invisibly watching over you.

The believable relationship between Katie and Micah helps the film's credibility

If you can relate to this sort of thing and have experienced similar moments before where you’ve nervously studied shapes in the dark to figure out what they are, then Paranormal Activity may quite frankly scare the shite out of you, despite what the “big men” say.

You know the sort of people I mean – the ones who pipe up any time The Exorcist is mentioned, just so they can sound tough and say “Exorcist? Ha, that wasn’t scary at all… in fact, I laughed all the way through it”. Deep down you know that either they’re lying, they didn’t allow themselves to get so emotionally involved with it or, as is increasingly likely these days, they didn’t watch it in the right conditions. And it’s the latter that’s crucially important when watching Paranormal Activity. But more on that later.  Continue reading “Paranormal Activity (2007)” →

Demons Never Die (2011)

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Director: Arjun Rose

Starring: Robert Sheehan, Jennie Jacques, Jason Maza, Ashley Walters, Reggie Yates, Tulisa Contostavlos

“The truth is we’ve all thought about it at some point – death that is. Life can be painful, we’d like to know that we can end it all if we had to. The warning signs are there if you look hard enough. Those pretty girls who seem to have everything – smiles on the outside, but inside they’re broken.” (Bates, Demons Never Die)

Slasher films have been ten-a-penny since the early ’80s but Demons Never Die is to be commended for trying something different – it’s a slasher film where the victims actually want to die.

Set in London, Demons Never Die tells the story of a group of college students, depressed for various reasons, who have all agreed to carry out a suicide pact. They decide that they’ll all meet up somewhere in the near future and overdose on pills together. While they’re in the process of arguing the whens, wheres and hows of this grim little arrangement however, someone in a mask is offing them one-by-one anyway, annoying the other members of the group who think their chums are killing themselves on their own instead of sticking to the pact.

Here's the lovely Tulisa, double-checking the script to see if she's really only in the first two minutes of the film

It’s an interesting idea (at least initially), but one that throws up its own problems. Many slashers suffer in their inability to make the audience feel empathy for its characters – in between all the killings and screaming it’s often hard to develop a character enough that the person watching grows to like them and doesn’t want them to die. Since the characters here all start off wanting to die anyway, it’s very hard to build up some sort of sympathy for them and think “oh, I hope they don’t get killed”, since you know they’re going to run off and have a hundred Nurofen later anyway.  Continue reading “Demons Never Die (2011)” →

Twilight (2008)

Published on by Chris Scullion7 Comments

Director: Catherine Hardwicke

Starring: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner

“I hate you for making me want you so much.” (Edward, Twilight)

I’ve spoken of my dislike of a Twilight film before when my girlfriend dragged me to see Breaking Dawn Volume 1, but since then said girlfriend has become a fiancée and as such the values of compromise, sharing and such bollocks are reinforced more than ever. It’s for this reason then that I was recently sat down in front of Twilight, the first film in the interminable Twilight saga and the only one I hadn’t had the “pleasure” of seeing yet. Needless to say, my thoughts on the series haven’t changed after watching this 110-minute prologue.

Not everyone has nearly two hours to watch a bunch of fannies jumping about and pretending to be vampires, so I’ve decided to present you with a slightly rewritten version of the Twilight script. I’ve basically taken out all the needless romance stuff and left you with the core story. Enjoy.  Continue reading “Twilight (2008)” →

Resurrecting The Street Walker (2009)

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Director: Ozgur Uyanik

Starring: James Powell, Tom Shaw, Lorna Beckett

“I’m trying to make myself indispensable.” (James, Resurrecting The Street Walker)

The mockumentary has been done so many times now that it would take something pretty special to grab people’s attention these days (case in point, Troll Hunter). Resurrecting The Street Walker manages this on an incredibly low budget and left me very impressed with the results, despite it ultimately not being the zombie prostitute film I thought the title was promising.

James is a budding filmmaker who’s desperate to get into the industry. He becomes a runner at a small production company in London in the hope that his hard work will eventually get him noticed and eventually move him up the filmmaking ladder.

James demonstrates the best way to defend against a confrontational lamp

While sorting out the company’s archives one day, James comes across some reels of The Street Walker, a (fake) 1980s video nasty that was ultimately never finished when the cast and crew went AWOL. Sensing an opportunity to make a name for himself, James convinces his boss to let him film the remaining scenes of The Street Walker and release it as “the film that was never released”. Meanwhile, James’s mate Marcus, himself a filmmaker, starts a documentary following James as he starts work on his project.  Continue reading “Resurrecting The Street Walker (2009)” →