La Horde (2009) and Mutants (2009)

Mutants and La Horde are two French fast-zombie movies that follow the Romero format: hole up in a building for shelter and fend off sieging flesh-eaters while the survivors fester from within. Since these films are superficially so similar, I am reviewing them together.

La Horde (2009) - 3/4

Amongst the many zombie genre trends to come from the films of George Romero, one I've never been keen on is badassery. Badassery is common in American cinema, deriving from the Western, in which tough-as-nails gunslingers have to show one another just how tough they can be. The Italians made badassery so ridiculous with films like Django that Terence Hill and Bud Spencer turned it into comedy with considerable success in the Trinity films. Romero, like, but perhaps not to quite the same extant as John Carpenter, is influenced by these western tropes. The cockfight between Ben and Cooper in Night of the Living Dead, the bluster of the scientists and military personnel in The Crazies, the opening of Dawn of the Dead, and most extremely the entirety of Day of the Dead, all show these tropes. Day of the Dead is an apotheosis of badassery and its messiah is Captain Rhodes, who yells to the zombies eating his intestines, "Choke on them!" Captain Rhodes is really responsible for the profusion of badassery in zombie films. Rough, tough guys who are always ready to kick ass, zombie or human, and who never go down without a fight: that's a badass.

Since Day of the Dead, there is scarcely a zombie picture without a healthy dose of badassery: Army of Darkness, Dead Alive, The Undead, Romero's own Survival of the Dead, just to name some well-known films; there are also the multitudes of straight-to-video films that are assembled of crumbs from Romero's table. The latest in this trend is La Horde.

La Horde is ambitious, however: it doesn't want to be just another badass zombie film; it wants to be the badass zombie film. That's not to say the film is badass, as some synonym for epic, but that all of the characters are 90% Captain Rhodes, 10% unique personality. We begin with a team of rogue cops agreeing to storm a tenement and get revenge on the gangsters within for killing a cop. Not only are the rogue cops a collection of badasses out for blood, and not only do gangsters, much like western outlaws, get by on their badassery, but when they're put together, they must constantly strive to out-badass one another. Explosions from the city and the sounds of creatures from within the building interrupts their conflict and, wouldn't you know it, puts the cops n' crooks together to be a badass team of badasses.

I claimed not to be keen on badassery and I should say why. Let's go back to Romero. What makes Day of the Dead an inferior entry in the series than Dawn for many critics is that Day is emotionally exhausting. Emotional exhaustion is acceptable in a film that earns its emotions. But in Day the exhaustion is due to characters constantly throwing tantrums at one another, making threats, and "getting up in each other's faces." They're trying to get the dominant position over one another, to out-badass the other. These displays of power, a necessary part of badassery since no badass can give in to domination, are pissing contests; and pissing contests grow very dull and tiring when the bladder never empties, if you'll excuse the strained metaphor. Badassery is a social ritual within the group, symbolic action that is stylized, formal, repetitive and grows tedious very quickly because we sense the artifice behind it. It works best in small doses, like the saloon fight in Shane, or when played tongue-in-cheek like in Army of Darkness. If overused characters never have an opportunity to simmer down and talk reasonably; they can never be themselves: every moment is a tense moment of heightened emotion while they play the badass. Flourishes like the famous Rhodes death scene are very effective and the reason badassery continues to get deployed. However, filmmakers don't seem to realize that it must be used with temperence.

Dawn of the Dead works so well because once the characters get to the mall and have peace, they don't need to be badasses anymore. Even Day offers moments of respite amongst the three protagonists. La Horde offers no respite of any kind. The characters never for a moment stop struggling to prove what badasses they are. This brings with it a host of problems. Badasses often forget to think, for instance. In La Horde, these badasses never figure out that zombies must be shot in the head or indeed shot at all: There are two lengthy hand-to-hand fights with zombies that amount to choreographed fights with growling punching bags. These two scenes are kind of fun, if too protracted. A life-long viewer of zombie films, I just kept commanding them to just shoot the zombie in the head. With Romero's zombies, punching might work; but these zombies are inexplicably faster and stronger than normal humans.

We also get, as in Day of the Dead, the exhaustion. These characters are forever yelling at and threatening one another, pointing guns, getting face-to-face for slowly- and gravely-spoken "This is how it is" moments. With the life-threatening situation raging around them, one would think they'd set the badassery aside and focus on staying alive. Not so. They're all Captain Rhodes. For anyone who found the constant badassery in Ghosts of Mars tedious, La Horde will be found considerably more tedious. However, as with Captain Rhodes, this does yield some impressive moments, including a one-versus-dozens moment guaranteed to get anyone cheering. And in the midst of the tedious badassery, La Horde does manage to deliver some tense moments of zombie pursuit and exciting zombie action.

Zombie action and badassery aside, there is also a political component to La Horde that most outside of France won't get. France has a lot of riots. We all know this. The reason they have so many riots is that they've allowed loads of refugees, who could care less about France, to become citizens. These people do whatever they want, because France isn't their home and they have no respect for it. Unfortunately, there are a lot of them and they're well-armed. These are the film's gangsters, all Africans or Czechs, now put alongside the cops and made to feel what it's like to be a helpless victim in a country they thought was theirs. The zombies' behaviour is holding up a mirror of sorts to these invaders, showing them how self-destructive it is to work against the country that gave them freedom and security. Not being from France myself, it's difficult to say exactly what is the political message, whether a plea for cooperation or rather an invective, even against the very badassery the pervades the film for tearing the country apart and leaving it vulnerable to much worse potential situations.

Mutants (2009) - 2.5/4

The perfect antidote to the ostentatious and egocentric behaviour that is badassery: love. Other-centered, self-effacing is genuine love. For at the center of Mutants is the necrophiliac love story between a doctor and her zombifying husband, who must resist the urge to eat and/or rape his wife with all his inner resources. They hole up in an evacuated hospital and she struggles to save him and get help while zombies and a band of badasses with guns get in her way.

Zombie love stories have been done before. Soavi's Cemetery Man is probably the most famous instance and a tough precedent to beat. Arguably, it has been overcome already with Yuzna's underrated Return of the Living Dead 3. Yuzna follows the trajectory of his couple's relationship through the zombification process and shows a fascination for the effect of the zombie infection on the thoughts and emotions of the infected member, Julie. She describes the agony and hunger of being a zombie, the way it changes her, and yet she never does abandon or harm her lover. Without any explicit mention from the characters, we can see that love can overcome the desire to eat brains.

Mutants isn't quite as sentimental as Cemetery Man and RotLD3. While the doctor and her husband do love one another, practicalities override affection. When her husband seems dangerous, she doesn't hesitate to chain him up and he doesn't hesitate to put a gun to his own head. Where RotLD3 culminates in a Romeo and Juliet moment, Mutants culminates in the stark realization that maybe infection wins and maybe what seemed to be love can be reduced to simple biology. There aren't many optimistic zombie movies, are there?

Unfortunately Mutants doesn't focus on the husband and wife relationship. As with so many of the recent French horror movies, Mutants seems afraid of allowing interiority and emotional space privilege over a barrage of external events. That's fine if the promise or hint of interiority is not offered, as in La Horde. Here filmmaker David Morlet tantalizes us with the necrophiliac relationship, but would rather give us a group of badasses with guns barging into the hospital and slapping the doctor around rather than allow more than a few minutes emotional development between the couple. Had these characters been in the film from the beginning, their presence would have constituted interesting dramatic tension. However, they only make entrance toward the end of a film with a meager 80-something minute runtime. We simply cannot care about them; they just distract from the more interesting matters. These characters are, of course, an excuse for zombie and human carnage. But we've all seen zombie carnage before. Zombie films need some new contribution, new idea to rise above the rest. Mutants had an opportunity to give that, but sadly failed to appreciate the opportunity.

Perhaps the film's attention defecit issues are simply a result of its cynicism. Practical reality, such as infection, zombies, idiots with guns, and the need for supplies do consistently override love. And if pregnancy is the film's symbol for love, a protective force throughout, the film's ambiguous final note may be the most cynical of all. If this is so, the film sacrifices not just its opportunity to investigate love in time of zombie apocalypse, but also some of its entertainment value: The inconsistency makes it difficult to enjoy the film's action, as it never sustains interest in anything, the relationship, the human conflicts, or the zombie-killing. Although what it does offer of each is competent and occasionally fascinating.

The Twilight Saga - 3/4

As a relatively little-read internet reviewer, I question the wisdom of writing about the Twilight series. What can I have to say that hasn't been said? I don't care to wade through all the internet literature on Twilight; I can only hope I, as an impartial outsider, have some fresh insight to contribute. For my part, writing about the films will satisfy a need to express just why, despite not being the target audience, I find these films so fascinating. ("These films," incidentally, refers to Twilight, New Moon, and Eclipse.)

The gist of the series is as follows. Bella, a fairly normal albeit melancholic and diffident teen girl in her senior year of highschool, returns to her hometown to live with her father. While fitting in with the normal students, she's drawn to the strangely contemptuous and pallid Edward. Soon they fall in love and she learns he's a vampire. The complication comes from Jacob, a childhood friend with whom she also falls in love and who happens to be a werewolf. Throughout the films Bella learns about both vampire and werewolf society and of the antipathy between them. She realizes she's not being fought over by two attractive young men, but by two whole societies. To choose one is to preclude herself from the other. The indecisive Bella dicks both men around for an inordinately long time and causes both conflicts and truces between the societies as she does so.

What most interests me about the films is Bella's dilemma. I suppose that's what interest teenage girls as well, but for different reasons. I'm fascinated by her dilemma because of what it represents, namely, class conflict. The vampires have extremely white skin, traditional nuclear family structure (despite not being related to one another), high education, elegant clothes, a spotless and modern-design mansion, and impeccable manners. The werewolves, in contrast, all have tanned skin, a loose and shifting family structure (follow the character Leah), trade learning (motorcycle repair), wear nothing but shorts, live in wood cabins, and often roughhouse.

The contrast is between what Nietzsche classed as Apollonian and Dionysian impulses; between cultured life and natural life (i.e. the Noble Savage). Cultured life has always been seen as high class and natural life low class. On the other hand, as in Rousseau, cultured life is seen as phony and natural life truer and purer. These prejudices have been in place as long as human civilization. There are certainly virtues to both 'sides', if indeed it's necessary to have sides. Cultured life can be seen as too secondary, detached from lived experience; too effete in situations that really count. A library science scholar is useless in a survival situation; a mechanic isn't. However, sophistication has attractions: artistic and poetic beauty, deep conversations, romance and comedy.

The sexual implications, however, are at the forefront of Twilight. The sexual implications of the class distinction is, as in Twilight, centered upon the men. Women are supposed to, and often do, want men who are aggressive, muscular, tough, good with their hands, often sweating and getting dirty--"manly" men. On the other hand, they like men who are romantic, poetic, witty, and intellectually stimulating--cultured men. The men who are of the "manly" variety are made to feel inadquate for their lack of refinement; the refined men are made to feel inadequate for not being manly enough, as though culture is feminizing. (The arts are oftened considered 'sissy' stuff by the uncultured.) Hence the depiction so often found in Hollywood of a woman who marries a cultured man then has an affair with a brawny, working-class man. The lower class is seen as good for sexual stimulation, the upper class as good for intellectual stimulation. (It is on this prejudice that the whole of interracial pornography seems to thrive.) Bella's position in the film is in choosing between the two ends of the spectrum women desire: men who can be wild and men who can, as Shakespeare put it, word them.(1) Edward can word her; Jacob can thrill her.

This distinction is represented faithfully in the films. Edward is always seen as having to restrain his passion (his desire for her blood), Jacob is always free to express his passion. Where Edward has graduated from school countless times, as he's perpetually 17, Jacob spends his time roughhousing and cliffdiving with his fellow shirt-allergy sufferers. (McConaughey and Danzig would make good werewolves.) The most revealing scene, presented so chastely for the teens of course, is when Bella is being kept safely on a frosty mountain. While she freezes in the tent, the undead Edward, whose body produces no heat, is unable to keep her warm. Jacob, however, produces more body heat than the average human. So he has to slip into bed with Bella to warm her while Edward sits, observing. That's the distinction in a nutshell: hot/cold in bed, good/bad with words, restrained/unrestrained emotions.

Of course, the distinction is objectionable to men. Cultured men are not incapable of being wild lovers or aggressive fighters; 'uncultured' men are not incapable of being poets or sensitive lovers. What is unfortunate about the Twilight Saga is that it never provides an alternative. Rather than suggest that this dichotomy is unnecessary or an illusion created by over a century filled with penny-dreadful romance novels, soap operas, and pandering movies, Twilight takes us into the mind of a girl who is indeed choosing between the sides and never learns how erroneous that is. A bildungsroman Twilight is not. The progress is not interior; it is merely exterior. She chooses and that is all. To be fair, Edward, at least, does not fit his stereotype; he is able to thrill her in between his sullen, soft-spoken speeches. Also to be fair, Bella herself is choosing between the individuals as individuals, not as archetypes.

While both individuals Bella has to choose from are admirable. It would be difficult for any woman to really find either Edward or Jacob anything less than desirable. Both are very handsome young men; both are very sincere and loyal; both are a teenage girl's dream come true, albeit in different ways. Bella's insistance on keeping both men on a leash while she chooses thus makes her a rather unpleasant character. One might argue that Jacob is a puppy that doesn't give up. Rather, he's a practical man who needs to be given a clear and straight-forward denial, which is not forthcoming from Bella. She prefers to keep him around so she can dangle in front of him like a carrot, leading him to do whatever she wants but giving nothing in return. Edward, on the other hand, she keeps closer, but frequently humiliates when she wants to make sure Jacob doesn't leave her grip and thus throws him a bone. Why either of these genuinely nice young men want anything to do with her is puzzling to me.

But it's just a girl's fantasy. I'm taking a fantasy too seriously. The films are and must be seen as the fantasies of a girl as she daydreams on a rainy day, listening to indie rock on her iPod. The dream is of two implausibly attractive and generous young men fighting for her; of whole cultures fighting to protect her, because she's the fairest princess in the land. Because this is her fantasy, it doesn't matter if she's kind of a bitch. Because this is her fantasy, we can set aside the realism and just enjoy it for what it is. Hopefully girls who fantasize this way will grow up and learn that real people can be so much more than cultured and wildman archetypes.

The events of the series that are not directly concerned with Bella's dual love are caused by it. An evening game with Edward's family attracts the attention of some renegade vampires. The rest of the series deals with the repercussions. Both vampire family and werewolf family strive to protect Bella for the sakes of their smitten members. This results in some conflicts between the families and some temporary truces. Bella's interference with the cold but cease-fire relationship leads to a perhaps more amicable peace. I would like to relate this to the class-conflict issue discussed earlier, but I can't, except as a dream of risible optimism. The point is that a shared love unites classes and cultures. But of course, all people do love and long for the same things and it hasn't worked yet.

Each film manages to include some fantastical fight scenes. These are enjoyable for their kinetic and aggressive qualities. Vampires can take and deliver punches that are just impossible in real life. In other words, the fights are very much descendents of The Matrix's fight scenes. Either you like this sort of fight choreography or you don't. Personally I prefer traditional, Jackie Chan-style fights; but there's undeniably quite a lot of enjoyment to be had in seeing a werewolf tearing a vampire to pieces.

What isn't fun is the constant posing. Before a fight, after a fight, and sometimes randomly, the characters, usually the vampires, will strike book-cover style poses. The artificiaility is cloying. Nobody randomly poses in real life. And I don't remember it being the plight of vampires to randomly strike poses. It's an artifact of the filmmaking, allowing poster-shots mid-film. The results are silly and tedious.

Overall, the series is surprisingly entertaining. They are indeed geared for a female audience, a girl's fantasy. But girls fatasize much as men do. Men fantasize about fighting for girls; girls fantasize about being fought over by men. Our fantasizes couldn't be more compatible. We still have fights, love, sex, suffering, more fights, and more love. So choose a side and dive into the fantasy. I chose Edward, if you must know.

(1) "He words me, girls, he words me." Antony and Cleopatra, 5.2.