The Wicker Tree (2011) - 2.5/4

Some people are very consistent in their obsessions. Robin Hardy appears to be one of those. He wrote and directed the horror classic, The Wicker Man, a very strange film with otherworldly cadences. That film concerned a Christian police inspector who is sent to some remote hamlet on a British isle, somewhere off the coast of Scotland. There he encounters an infuriating lack of Christianity. Under the rule of the gentlemanly Lord Summerisle, a fictitious brand of Paganism has propsered and the villagers couldn't be happier. The inspector not so much.

I suppose there could be some ambiguity read into The Wicker Man as to just which side Hardy is on. I'm not sure he's on any side, strictly speaking. There's no doubt to me that Hardy holds the Christian inspector, and his brand of Christianity, in contempt. He's our protagonist and first-time viewers enjoy the island's mystery through him, giving him some sympathy. His moral behavior also lends him considerable dignity. Hardy gives the inspector a martyr's death and villainizes the Pagans thoroughly, of course, and this has no doubt led to multiple interpretations. There's an apparent fondness for the Pagans and their now morally taboo ways, but they are cast as the villains of a horror movie--many of them stubbornly cruel simpletons.

The Wicker Tree is a kind of sequel to Wicker Man, but in many ways a rinse-and-repeat. This time, it's a lot less subtle and a lot more fun. Instead of a morally righteous British Anglican born and raised in good values, what we get is a white trash country music gal. She used to play up the farmer's daughter slut look and looked damn good doing it. Then she found Jesus, and all Nashville said, "Dang!" She's Born Again and using her celebrity to spread the Gospel, in this case to a certain Pagan island off Scotland. She also drags her gosh darn cowboy boyfriend (cowboyfriend?) with her, as he pretends to like his chastity ring.

This is where The Wicker Tree gets good. Because the Pagan village is not full of pagans, it's full of horny pagans. My favorite kind of pagan. Everything in the village is about sex. Every innocent little sea chanty, pub ditty, or lullaby the characters sing, line of poetry they recite, is all thin innuendo. Now, our country gal is too blonde and dumb to grasp anything's going on. But her cowboy, while certainly dumb, happens to have a penis, so he's picking up on it. Particularly the part where a gorgeous and naked pagan girl asks him to strip and join her in the radioactive pond.

There actually is a plot to The Wicker Tree, though it's kinda convoluted and not that important to enjoying the film. Lord Summerisle's successor is a knighted businessman whose specialty is nuclear energy. Somehow his nuclear power plant ties into a pagan ritual that involves crowning a May Queen, killing her 'Laddie'--who must ride a horse--and then burning her at some wicker contraption. Failing the first rule of good missionary work, our Nashville refugees do not bother to learn any of the culture they've come to destroy, and so gladly accept the May Queen and Laddie titles.

Now this bimbo country star is so dumb, I don't feel much sympathy for her. "Dear God, thank you for making my voice so good, and my looks okay." She really says that. The cowboy I kinda like. He's stupid too, but open to the point of naivity. He just does what he's told. You get the feeling it wouldn't take much to convert him to Paganism. The point is, there's none of the ambiguity here that you had in Wicker Man. Clearly Hardy thinks these Born Again Christians are morons. American Christianity is even more contemptible to him than the British kind. For him, it's a Christianity of ignorant rednecks repressing their sexuality. He's all too happy to throw them into a sexually liberated environment of amoral hedonism and watch them be destroyed by it. The pagans remain villainized barbarians who impose their beliefs on the unwitting Christians with brutality. But before this horror formalism takes over, you sense he really likes these horny pagans as much as I do. They're a good lot before they kill you.

So that's The Wicker Tree. For anyone who's seen The Wicker Man, there aren't really any surprises. That's part of the reason it's not too well regarded. Another reason is that its tone is so different than the original, less austere and mysterious, less otherworldly, and more earthy, crass, "Dionysian." Hardy still comes across as a self-taught filmmaker with his own odd cadences, but Wicker Tree is really a b-movie that has fun with sex and violence. It's a riot.

The Devil's Rock (2011) - 3/4

Nazi occultism is always an interesting subject and certainly ripe material for a horror movie. I am inclined to think the occult tendencies in the Third Reich were purely decorative and symbolic. But that doesn't make it any less fascinating for a curious imagination. Paul Campion writes and directs The Devil's Rock, a low-budget, three-or-four actor movie that tries to capture the drama of the individual Ally soldier against the Reich and this its most intimidating aspect.

The Devil's Rock concerns Captain Ben Grogan, an unfortunate New Zealand soldier who accidentally washes up on a beach in the Channel Islands prepared to kick ass. He soon discovers it's the wrong beach in more ways than one. On this island, Nazi occult experiments have summoned a succubus that the Nazi Colonel hoped to control for the glory of the Reich. And the Colonel has lost control.

Where Campion really excels and shows an incredible talent is crafting, in a very limited set with only three actors, the impression of a much larger world. The geographical and historical sense of the mid-WW2 world is created purely out of good dialogue well-delivered. More than that, through dialogue with the demonic succubus and the German occultist, he gives reality to the demonic planes that we of course never get to see.

Where Campion does not excel is in generating real suspense. He has all the elements: a mysterious screamer locked in an equally mysterious room, a bunker filled with dead bodies, a highly claustrophobic set. Unfortunately, Campion wastes very little time revealing to us that the woman locked away is a demon. He makes an effort, after the reveal, to craft some psychological thrills in that the demon looks like Grogan's dead wife. But we already know she's a demon! We've seen her red with black, curled horns--like Tim Curry in Legend. The reveal should have come nearer the film's end, leaving us to wonder if the Germans didn't somehow resurrect Grogan's wife or indeed to just wonder what the hell is going on. The audience, namely myself, should have been kept wondering and then the psychological thrills would have really worked. We would have been wary for Grogan as he was drawn to his wife. As it stands, the only suspense is between the Nazi and Grogan.

When I checked Campion's filmography to research this review, I was surprised to find that I had already seen one of his shorts some time before The Devil's Rock was released. A minimal, strange film called "Eel Girl" that is actually a bit more suspenseful than The Devil's Rock, but based on the same notion. A scientist is sexually drawn to an attractive monster-girl kept in an aquarium. As he gives in to his lusts, the eel girl stretches her mouth to devour the scientist whole.

Reflecting on the similarities between "Eel Girl" and The Devil's Rock, I wonder if I didn't find Campion's problem. You see, there are some people who have peculiar fetishes, one of which is called 'vore.' Vore fetishism is finding sexual stimulation in seeing someone devoured by something: a monster, a snake, a demon, whatever. There are also some men who find monster-girls particularly arousing as they appear in horror movies, comic books, and Japanese cartoons. The thought of being devoured by these monster girls really interest some men. Campion is a clever enough director, I wonder if he didn't knowingly sacrifice suspense for his own interest in monster-girl devouring. That would be a foolish move, since vore fetishism has very niche appeal.

Whatever the reason for the blunder, it does leave The Devil's Rock limping. What could have been one helluva feature film debut is more of a promise of great things to come than a great thing in itself. The Devil's Rock is still impressive for its limitations and a decent horror film in its own right.

Deadheads (2011) - 3/4

Deadheads is another heartwarming zombie horror comedy in the vein of Shaun of the Dead and the legions of other heartwarming/hearteating zombie comedies. If you're sick of zombie comedies, as I am, Deadheads will still please you, because it is a genuinely charming and funny movie.

Mark wakes up to find himself a zombie in the middle of an outbreak. He's one of the few zombies that can actually think and talk. A smart zombie. Or smombie, if you will. (But why would you?) He teams up with another smart-zombie, Brent, a slacker doofus who just wants someone to hang with. They acquire a pet stupid-zombie, Cheese, and an old war vet with a TMI problem. Together they try to find Mark's girlfriend and help Mark perform his last planned action before death, propose marriage to her. Unfortunately, the usual anti-zombie elements are in place, like a black guy with a shotgun and dudes in hazmat suits.

The characters' personalities are established quickly and they're immediately likeable misfits. These are zombies you'd want to hang with so long as you had some Fabreeze nearby. Their misadventures consequently prove amusing. Goofy jokes that might ordinarily be groan-worthy work quite well. I particularly enjoyed Brent's constant movie references. I enjoyed spending time with these idiots and I wanted them to win.

I also found it amusing how much of Deadheads's structure is based on Star Wars. Cheese is clearly intended to be Chewbacca, down to some outright shot-references. While Brent ought to be Han Solo, the incestuous vibe had to go. So the Han Solo/Luke Skywalker roles flip between Brent and Mark. The girlfriend, Ellie, is Leia. Her dad is Darth Vader. Watch the movie and see how much the roles fit. I believe it was conscious on the part of the writer-directors, the Brothers Pierce.

Like Star Wars, Deadheads is a crowd-pleaser. It is self-consciously a crowd-pleaser. The douchebags are all really douchebags, the good guys are really good guys, and goodguyery will triumph over douchebaggery. Sometimes that's tedious and saccharine. Deadheads does it right. Cliches and spotty acting will quickly become negligible. This movie is a lot of fun and you will indeed be pleased by it. Watch it when you're depressed. It'll do you better than that whiskey in your sock drawer.

Hellgate (2011) - 2/4

Hellgate is a film about a man (Cary Elwes) who survives a car accident that kills his wife and son. From then on he can see ghosts. They can see him, too, and seem to want something from him. Fortunately, he lives in Thailand, where they have mystics coming out the wazoo, so he learns that he's fading from life and has to reclaim his soul from the world of the dead.

Hellgate's primary attraction to me was certainly the part about reclaiming his soul from the dead. What really sealed the deal, though--I can't lie--was the presence of both Cary Elwes and William Hurt. A lot of actors I used to count on, like Michael Madsen and Christian Slater, take any five minute role for top billing and sucker me into mediocre film experiences. Screw them, man! But Elwes and Hurt are still cool cats--or are they?

Structurally, Hellgate is an odd experience, almost like a few different films merged. The first half is a tasteless gruel of Asian ghost movie cliches, probably because this is a Thai co-production. Plaintive Asian ghosts shamble and beckon, trying to touch Elwes. They don't seem particularly scary or threatening. That's the major problem with this segment. It's just not scary, tense, or suspenseful; nor does 'seeing dead people' strike me as particularly interesting. Blame Shyamalan and Japan.

The second half of Hellgate is much more interesting. This is the section where Elwes ventures on a mystical journey courtesy a Thai mystic and an ex-patriate American (William Hurt). Leading up to the journey to the world of the dead, Hellgate has the mystical feel, if not the depth, of a film like Dragonfly. Once taken to the world of the dead, however, the film excels. The portrayals of this world and the ritual required to enter it are as creepy, strange, and inventive as they should be. I wished writer-director John Penney had gotten the film to the world of the dead much sooner, in fact, or at least showed the same level of invention in earlier parts of the film.

The overall experience of Hellgate is disjointed, held together only by the gradual unfurling of the characters. It has its charming moments, mostly involving William Hurt. But there's an awkwardness to the writing and direction that just never goes away. If you know what to expect, it's an adequate mystical adventure/horror film, only really worth watching for the final twenty minutes.

Rites of Spring (2011) - 2.5/4

Since time immemorial, plucky blondes have been known to be disasterous for harvests. That's why they had to be sacrificed to crop gods all the world over. Or at least given entry-level secretarial positions. Jump forward hundreds of years, and we have all but forgotten the wisdom of our forefathers. Now plucky blondes appear in board rooms, vote in senates, and even write movie reviews.

The Rites of Spring begins with a failed harvest of sorts. A blonde (Anessa Ramsey) has cost the corporation that employs her $10 million. The boss has no idea who was responsible for the blunder, so he's fired some others whom he either appreciates less or wants to fuck less. Before she can confess her mistake to save her colleagues, she's kidnapped and taken to a barn, where an old man tortures her and her friend. Meanwhile, the stooges who got fired plan a heist to kidnap the boss's daughter and get $2 million in ransom. Their desperate plan takes them somewhere in the woods not far from where the blonde kidnapper has taken her. She escapes and finds her colleagues, but something much worse than the old guy is following her.

Rites of Spring begins with that intricate bit of plotting, which serves the dual purpose of giving us a lot of assholes we want murdered and not boring us during the exposition phase. Maybe there's a comment in there on the persistance of old-time harvest values in modern society or karma and consequences or something. I don't know. What it does is launch us into the real meat of the movie, which is somewhere between a slasher and a creature feature.

Here Rites of Spring is only moderately successful. The blonde is just plucky enough for you to care about her survival and the creature is just dangerous enough to make you fear for her safety. The basic mechanics work. However, giving the creature a blade to kill with really takes away from his creature-ness. And his creature powers make him such a formidable slasher, that it's hard to buy the blonde has enough pluck to get away--we're talking astronomical levels of pluck.

The creature's purpose and significance, and its relationship to the old man are all sources of intrigue that drew me into the film. Perhaps these were the most interesting aspects of the film, in fact. Far more interesting than who was double-crossing whom in the heist subplot. Yet, in the abrupt ending, I realized I knew more about the heist than the creature and old man. All we do know is it has something to do with the harvest. Is the creature the shambling personification of winter, the death that must come before the harvest? Or is it just a zombie with a scythe? Or is it a real harvest deity that needs plucky blonde blood? What radius does its harvest goodness spread once it's been given some delicious girl meat? We never find out.

Overall, Rites of Spring is a decent indepent horror flick, more ambitious and much better executed that the majority of its kind. About half way along, unfortunately, the more interesting aspects of the film seem abandoned to easy, cheap slashing and horror movie cliches, suggesting filmmaker Padraig Reynolds forgot the wisdom of our forefathers and did not sacrifice his plucky blonde.

Eyes of the Mothman (2011) - 3/4

Something about the legend of the mothman, often classified amongst cryptozoological legends like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster, that stimulates a degree of seriousness not reserved for those others. There have been several films on Bigfoot and Nessie, most of them silly and of very poor quality. The mothman, however, inspired The Mothman Prophecies (2000), one of the most elegant, mysterious, and mature horror movies since The Haunting (1960). And when one watches the various documentaries on Bigfoot and Nessie, where cryptozoologists build upon one another’s loose, largely invented or at least misconstrued data, and then a documentary like Eyes of the Mothman, one can see why there is such a difference. Because the mothman is not just a creature, it’s a protracted series of events that seem to contain some undeniable reality.

Eyes of the Mothman, much like The Mothan Prophecies, is an elegant and evolved work. The genteel shots of the local environments, the poetic voice of narrator Richard Pait that suggests honesty and patience, and the quotes from poets like Tennyson are the earliest cues that this is not the ordinary conspiracy/UFO documentary. As Eyes scrutinizes Point Pleasant from the Revolutionary War through TNT stockpiling, the mothman events and up to the present, the cues are confirmed. Eyes’s two-and-a-half hour runtime is intimidating, but ultimately justified by the breadth of research.

Eyes begins with the local folklore of Revolutionary War-era Chief Cornstalk’s supposed curse on the land. The anthropological scrutiny of the curse is given objectively: Native curses were land-based rather than individual-based, for various reasons. This grounding is not the basis for the remainder of the documentary, but serves two perhaps opposes purposes. The first is to start in mystery, the possibility of something spiritual or unnatural. The other is to show a small town prone to self-mythologizing. Director Pellowski deserves credit for allowing both suggestions to coexist.

Next is a fretting discussion of the World War TNT stockpiles in the Point Pleasant wilderness. Local ponds were frequently contaminated and mutant fish have been discovered. Eyes has its weaknesses on issues of science. The professor interviewed casually remarks that intelligent life has only been on earth for two-thousand years. That would make Socrates a feces-flinging primate. So rather than involve real biologists in the discussion, the possibility that the mothman is a genetic mutation is glibly implied without scrutiny. Again, this grounding has two purposes. For one, the vastly unpredictable worlds of biology and chemistry gives a natural alternative to Native curses. But Pellowski is also showing a small town distrustful of outsiders, including—if not especially—its own government.

Eyes thankfully plunges from there right into the peculiar phenomena of the mothman sightings. The rashes, swollen eyes, and psychological disturbances of the sightings are described by actual sufferers or other Point Pleasant locals. The relationship to the TNT stockpiles takes on some credibility. Some biologists did then and still now suggest witnesses only saw a particularly large, foreign crane—perhaps a mutant one.

Point Pleasant's situation develops from the mothman sightings into UFO sightings, visitations by men in black, the appearance of a strange man known as ‘Indrid Cold’—an innately creepy name, I think—the prophecies of things to come, and finally the collapse of the bridge. Following that particular tragedy, all the weird phenomena stops. Either the mass hysteria has been blown away by genuine tragedy, or there was a real and occult trajectory to the strange events.

The complexity of the series of events encompassed by the rubric ‘mothman’ is highly fascinating in itself, of course. There is just so much more to the Point Pleasant events than the mothman sightings. But what’s more interesting is how Eyes presents the mothman sightings as a real community event. Locals describe hanging around an area known for sightings, hoping to see the mothman. One even says it was like going to the drive-in. They were afraid of it, and yet they loved it. The mothman brought excitement in a boring town. The men in black brought a feeling of significance and importance. The bridge tragedy brought sense, one way or another.

Eyes never makes a statement. The complex mixture of genuine, confused, fudged, and then outright invented data is presented by Pellowski with honesty and integrity, albeit passively. Pellowski shows a certain reluctance to engage in open skepticism or criticism. The interviews also fail to engage any critics, but instead some unrelated ‘paranormal investigators.’ But the patient comprehensiveness of Eyes gives the intelligent viewer room to ponder. If there is any overarching point to Eyes, it is that the one consistent point amongst all witnesses, the strange, red eyes, suggest some reality to the events. But if there is any lasting value to be derived from this documentary, it is the scrutiny of a small town’s obsessions, collective neuroses, and mythologizing imagination.

Amphibious 3D (2011) - 2/4

I've always been fascinated by Yuzna's work. He always teeters on the brink of hackwork, using story-ideas that are disarmingly insipid. Yet, when you watch the films, you see he always takes a different approach than any other filmmaker would, and there's always something, some wealth of subconscious, buried in the play of creative gore effects and strange appetites. With Rottweiler (2004), he pushed the killer-dog movie about as far as it could logically go until the killer dog became an archetypal fiend, a sort of symbol of fate, like Francis Thompson's Hound of Heaven. Amphibious 3D, unfortunately, never does get pushed into the archetypal realms quite like Rottweiler does, but, as with any Yuzna film, it teases with more below the surface; and Amphibious is a good deal more subtle than most monsters-from-the-sea movies we've been seeing from SyFy, the Asylum, and several other b-movie filmmakers who hopped aboard that particular shark-filled train.

The plot, a fairly typical one, concerns a pretty female researcher interested in some scientific thing or other--it doesn't matter what--and chartering a boat from a charming local white guy. They uncover the prehistoric monster, which the researcher has no trouble identifying, and together slay the beast. In this case, the charming boat owner, fittingly named Jack Bowman, is Michael Pare and the researcher, with the pornstar name of Skylar Shane, is played by some TV actress from the Netherlands.

What makes Amphibious 3D stand out is not the 3D, but the remote Indonesian setting. Most of the action takes place on a fishing platform so far out to sea that you can't see the mainland. Here a part-time smuggler and full-time fishing-platform foreman manages his child slave labour. Some of the action does take place on an Indonesian island where a religious ritual, reminiscent of footage of voodoo rituals from Haiti, is taking place.

One of the children on the fishing platform is a dark, scrawny child sold by a witchdoctor. The other kids taunt him and call him something like 'voodoo boy.' The researcher, it turns out, lost a daughter on a scientific survey and now hallucinates her daughter in the island ritual, and finds a surrogate for her daughter in the weak boy on the fishing platform. It is in this material that the film's darker depths are to be found, with its play on maternity and on the mystique of a culture that threatens to devour the outsider.

Unfortunately, subconscious depths does not imply interesting action, in this case. Much of what happens on the fishing platform is boring, as we're just waiting for the monster action to begin. The character drama, the shallow interactions, is not good enough to sustain interest, even in these interesting locations.

Worthy of note, however, is the cool monster. I won't spoil what it is, but Yuzna uses real effects, as he always does, so that the monster is really, physically present with the actors. When someone sticks an axe in the creature's 'head', he really does that. Though little of the monster is seen until the end, the climax, for anyone who loves classic monster movies and creature effects, more than makes up for the scarcity until then.

Amphibious 3D is admittedly sub-par Yuzna. There are moments where it suggests the possibility of being a giant sea monster version of I Walked with a Zombie (1943), but it sadly never rises to being as clever and haunting as that film. It has a lot more going on in its depths, a perverse subconscious that bubbles up in the film's final, disturbing moment, than the likes of Two-Headed Shark (2012) or Mega-Python vs Gatoroid (2011), but it's never as much fun.

Super Shark (2011) - 2.5/4

There's no denying that sharksploitation is the 'sploitation de jour. Most exploitation subgenres take place in previous generations, like the nunsploitation films of the '70s, the blaxsploitation films of the '70s, and the nazisploitation films of the, heh, '70s. Well, the 2000s and 2010s lay claim to sharksploitation. This isn't to say there aren't precurors. Jaws (1975) is, of course, the Black Narcissus of sharksploitation; but there are its ridiculous sequels, films like Deep Blue Sea (1999), and many much cheaper shark movies.

What's interesting about an exploitation subgenre isn't its august precursors or its saturation period--that's the period when the same old narrative is clearly old and tired--but its decadent period, when all creativity is set to scattershot in the hopes something will hit and make the screenplay original. This is the period that gives us the most baroque, bizarre examples of a subgenre. There are only so many times you can have an angry shark attack a beach before it gets boring. But if that shark can take out a commercial jet just by jumping from the sea, it's stupid, but it's not boring.

That's a glorious example of the thoroughly decadent Megashark versus Giant Octopus (2009), a production of the SyFy network. While SyFy films are much derided for their weak CG, washed-up TV actors, and below-average screenplays, the freedom they gave screenwriters to go wild with the CG sharks essentially created sharksploitation as it now stands. How does it now stand? Well, here are some of the titles: Megashark versus Giant Octopus, Megashark versus Crocosaurus (2010), Sharktopus (2010), Shark Night 3D (2011), Swamp Shark (2011), Sand Sharks (2011), of course, Super Shark, and, my personal favourite title, Shark Exorcist (2011).

While the trailer suggests Super Shark is much the same as the SyFy sharksploitation movies, if perhaps a little more tongue-in-cheek, what makes it such a special entry into the subgenre is that it's co-written and directed by Fred Olen Ray, who specialized in over-the-top bizarre horror comedies back in the '80s, making cult classics like Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers (1988), Beverly Hills Vamp (1989), and Scalps (1983). Could Super Shark be a return to form? Not quite, but it's quite a bit better than any of the other sharksploitation movies mentioned and is intentionally satirizing the subgenre.

Super Shark concerns a shark released by an oil rig's reckless drilling, a shark with the ability to walk around on its fins and even use them to fly. The oil rig, like a giant metal vagina, was naturally destroyed in the process of giving birth to the supershark, attracting the attention of an anti-oil company crusader who looks pretty good in a bikini. She investigates the water and harasses the CEO over dinner and champagne. Meanwhile, a bikini contest is taking place on the shore and two local lifeguards are competing for the same buff dude. But how will they stop the super shark before he eats all the beach losers?

Well, since Super Shark is a genre send-up, we know it'll have to involve the army and a preposterous solution. As it happens, it does! As even the trailer informs us, "Walking tank for a walking shark!" Indeed. Actually, that Super Shark is a satire is in the very title, which mocks the trend in SyFy movies to make sharks impossibly powerful, as in the aforementioned commercial jet destruction. Of supershark, "That's one big ass shark," we're told. And given the guy who says this hasn't seen the shark, but has only seen what it's done, he'd be right. A shark that can topple an oil rig would have to be thousands of tons heavy. But shark movies don't work that way. Little known fact: sharks can brace themselves against thin air, making it possible to topple oil rigs with sheer muscular force even while leaping in the air. You'd expect the shark to just lift his body up, but no, he pulls the rig down. Physics does not apply in shark movies, of course. And that's part of the joke. But the best joke of all is when the shark starts eating up the melodramatic subplots, a hallmark of SyFy writing. Well-done, supershark!

The best sharksploitation movies are a flurry of witty soundbytes and preposterous shark attack sequences. Super Shark scores many points on both fronts. Most of the soundbytes belong to John Schneider as the oil CEO, whose earnest yet sardonic involvement in the film and/or narrative is just the level of irony needed for this sort of film. It's a very good performance. And the shark appears to be a combination of CG and model, or perhaps it's just unusually good CG for the budget. A damn fine-looking shark. As with any sharksploitation film, the plot tends to drag. Generally this is when the army gets involved and we have to wait for them to try out various weapons on the invincible beast. Fred Olen Ray knows this and tries to toss as much plot down the shark's gullet as possible, keeping the film hustling along far better than other sharksploitation flicks. Nevertheless, there's a fair amount of screenwriting debris that slows the pace. Surely the shark could've eaten another subplot or two? Otherwise, Super Shark is quite an entertaining, low-budget sharksploitation horror comedy.

Wake Wood (2011) - 2.5/4

An Irish couple's little girl accidentally feeds herself to a dog. Not the brightest kid, but her parents grieve anyway. They grieve so much they move to Wake Wood, a town of about 40 people, one of whom is Timothy Spall in frumpy fat guy clothes. Turns out Spall's one of those folk wizards who always seem to know an inordinately complicated series of actions that will result in raising someone from the dead, cursing an ex-boyfriend, or making that prostitute who fell on your cat after drinking too much gingerbeer lose a leg to leprosy. In this case, it's raising the dead, namely Little Miss Dogfood 2010. Unfortunately, mommy and daddy, trained, as medical folk, in incomprehensible prescriptions, are incapable of following instructions and so bring forth a monster in a little girl's body--and I don't mean in the hentai sense.

I suppose Wake Wood earns the peculiar distinction of being the goriest evil kid movie thus far. I guess Hammer wanted to make a comeback with a bang, so they have a lot of gooey birthing sequences, organ-removal, mutilated animals, corpse mutilation, and more. It's not just gore, it's weird gore, with strange and compelling wounds, goo, and violations. I think this was a wise decision, as the film is a bit slow-paced, with many of the early deaths being pure accident, and has a plot guessable to anyone who has seen, heard of, or buried a pet since the release of Pet Sematary. The only way to make such a film work is strong atmosphere or going wild with the grue. David Keating aims for a little of both.

As for atmospherics, Keating offers small town Irish folkiness by day and torch-lit rituals by night. The folkiness works well enough as a fantasy of Irish small towns. Of course, it's not inconceivable that this fantasy could be real. These folk wizards walked the lands, even here in Canada, within my mother's memory. I still remember tales of these folk wizards. Like the time a man fell extremely ill, baffling the doctors, and was near death. In came the bumpkin wizard with the pronouncement, "COD LIVER OIL!" "A thimble-full?" someone wondered. No! A shot glass? No! A tea cup? No, no, no! A whole goddam pitcher of the stuff! Jesus Mary and Joseph alone know how many codfish livers were squished between a rock and the dry heel of a gouty sailor to get all that oil, but it was going to be pumped down this sick man's throat whether he liked it or not. If he was going to die, it'd damn well be in a puddle of cod liver oil he sweated through his own skin. And y'know what? It worked. So, the folkiness works too. The torchlit rituals also work. They're both attractive and frightening at once, like a Goya painting or Christian Bale.

So, what Wake Wood is lacking in narrative originality it makes up for in its style. And ultimately it's always style that counts.

Rage of the Yeti (2011) - 2.5/4

Actually, this film should be called Starvation-Motivated Hunt of the Yerin, but what can ya do? I like to imagine the SyFy channel operates a bit like RKO used to. RKO would give Val Lewton a preposterous movie title that they thought would bring in an audience, like I Walked with a Zombie, and Lewton had to get his writers to come up with a story to fit the title. Lewton was a genius, so he made it work. But SyFy is kinda short on geniuses. Well, enter David Hewlett, a hard-working, long-suffering, and talented Canadian actor--y'know, the sorta guy who never, ever gets a big break--who's given the big break of directing this whopper of a title. Maybe they needed a Canadian to give it that Northern touch. And by St. Athanasius of the Trinity Enthroned, he gets it right! What a guy.

It's not that Rage of the Yeti is transformed into an art film, commenting on the abuses of the Inuit by White Man or making us realize we have to learn to respect nature or it will consume us; no, it's not that. It's not that Rage of the Yeti has a compelling, engrossing plot with rich characters that illuminate the complexity of humanity either; don't get Rage of the Yeti confused with Henry James's Rape of the Yeti--that's a totally different story. It's that everyone involved in this movie doesn't seem to be aware that this is a cheap SyFy movie filled with silly CGI monsters or, if they are, they don't care. The actors don't hold back at all. You'd think they were doing Tennessee Williams. And in a way I can't ever justify or explain, they are.

The cast re-unites the leads of Witchblade the TV series. Remember that one? I do. It wasn't great, but, well, my mom liked it. Yancy Butler still looks good, though her voice sounds like an overweight lesbian who drinks whiskey every night to forget she's in a loveless heterosexual marriage that's given her the one meaningful thing in her life, her kids. David Chokachi also still looks good; in fact, he may well have been stored in formaldehyde since Witchblade was cancelled. At any rate, the rapport they developed in that series is on display in Rage of the Yeti. They work very comfortably together, and both seem to really be having fun with their parts. Credit also goes to Hewlett himself, who plays an eccentric billionaire intent on Yeti-collectin', and to Matthew Kevin Anderson as Chokachi's brother and partner. The brothers and Hewlett have this Brendan Fraser-in-The-Mummy kinda banter--of course, that banter goes back to the Indiana Jones movies, where Harrison Ford perfected the style. At any rate, it's enjoyable.

As far as the plot is concerned--haha, plot--you have two eccentric billionaires after an ancient document about a 'missing link' known as the 'Yerin'. 'Yerin' is, in that rich language Asian, the term for 'Yeti', apparently. Not only do they find the document, they find the Yerin themselves. And the Yerin are hungry for human flesh. Did you know yetis have bullet-proof skin? Did you know they can outrun a snowmobile? Did you know they can crash into a landing plane and not be damaged? These are the facts they don't give you in your community college biology books. Turns out you have to shoot 'em in the eyes, blast 'em in the head with a rocket launcher, or slice through 'em with a concrete-cutting torch. So the movie's action is a balance between yetis assaulting douchebags in the snow and Butler and Chokachi blowing the everloving crap out of computer-generated yetis while making witty repartee.

You don't watch Rage of the Yeti for the plot or the production value. You have to be content with fun. And the characters, the game actors, and Hewlett's lighthearted direction keep this movie very fun. It's a classical b-movie done right.

Don't Let Him In (2011) - 1.5/4

"Good, bad, I'm the guy with the gun." - Ashley J. Williams

A problem one has after watching a lot of movies, especially low budget movies, is that you've seen it all before. Rather than marvel over a movie being bad, I'm constantly surprised by how creative filmmakers are at making the Same Old Plot (SOP) somehow interesting. How can a psychopathic killer stalking cute college girls still be interesting? After watching so many films with the SOP--whatever the P may be--I've come to the conclusion that it doesn't matter so much whether the film is good or bad, but whether it's weird, fascinating, stamped with some personal style. It has to have that something special. That Something Special can even trump concerns of Good and Bad.

This is especially important to note for filmmakers working with very low budgets. The tendency amongst first-time filmmakers with low budgets is, unfortunately, to stick to 'safe' plots that have been done many times before. These plots have been done well and glossy by Hollywood, interesting and quirky by other low-budget filmmakers. Yet many filmmakers try to imitate the respectable Hollywood instantiations and, lacking both the imaginative quirks of independents and the gloss of Hollywood, merely present the plot in the most banal style possible. Low-budget, independent filmmakers have to take risks, dare to be odd, disliked, bad. That takes imagination and creativity; in independent cinema, there's no-one to be creative for you.

The problem with Don't Let Him In isn't that it's bad. I suppose you could say it's good--it doesn't take enough risks to be bad. The acting is of a high quality, the gore is decent, the pacing is good; there aren't any problems with the dialogue, characters, or the plot development, as it follows very well-established guidelines in these areas. Yet the film isn't the slightest bit interesting. It's good, in a sense, but totally plain, flavourless, nondescript, bland. It has nothing really weird in it, no peculiarities, no offbeat variations, fascinating flaws, or moments of creative brilliance--in short, no personality. It just coasts along, ever so competently, without imagination.

Don't Let Him In concerns a very familiar plot. There is a psychopathic killer on the loose. A group of friends all go into the woods and realize they're at risk of getting killed by the serial killer dubbed 'The Tree Surgeon'; and soon enough they do indeed start getting killed. One character fights back with modest intelligence. There is a slight quirk, or variation, in the plot--a twist--as one would expect.

If that plot sounds like something you want to see, you can see it handled solidly in Don't Let Him In. While the film does nothing else, it delivers that plot quite well. The only thing approaching a stand-out moment in the film is a shot of the killer drooling. This shot won't perturb an unremarkable evening watching Don't Let Him In, however.

Husk (2011) - 2.5/4

Remember that magnificent story by Jorge Luis Borges where a spy is summoned to a mansion; there he finds himself trapped in an infinite labyrinth inside a novel and he shoots a detective to prove it? Well Husk has nothing to do with that. Husk is about killer scarecrows.

Husk is actually a sort of magic realist fantasy as much as it is a horror. Yes, it's about killer scarecrows. But it's also about a complex and inscrutable mechanism that creates, controls, and maintains the scarecrows, as well as the various instruments of the mechanism. It functions as follows: whenever humans enter the cornfield, they are attacked and crucified by a scarecrow; the victim is then entranced and summoned to a room in the farmhouse containing nothing but an Olde Tyme sewing machine; the zombie-like victim then stitches together a scarecrow mask and wears it; with that the victim is forever a scarecrow controlled by the mechanism, ready to assault more humans.

There are other rules governing the mechanism. For one, the scarecrows can't leave the cornfield once they're in it. They can't even return to the farmhouse. Also, only one scarecrow can be mobile at any given time. The mechanism can't control two scarecrows at once. And perhaps the most peculiar of all the mechanism's activities is the visions it grants to one of the victims, revealing the past.

The film tries to explain these rules by means of, as is so often the case, a past tragedy (fratricide); but the explanation is deeply inadequate for explaining the whole mechanism. Tragedy is not trauma; there's no reason a personal trauma like murder should become a cosmic trauma, unless of course the cosmos is within a dream. But even granting that Freudian premise, still only a few pieces of the mechanism are explained. Really, the rules are arbitrary. Whether that's a good or bad thing comes down to the individual viewer. Some will no doubt find it frustrating. I personally enjoyed the lack of explanation. It was much more interesting to me to see the characters struggling, like scientists, to figure out how this anomalous portion of the universe works rather than asking the more theological question of, "Why?".

The plot of Husk is that a group of 20-somethings are driving to wherever a group of 20-somethings would drive to when they crash right outside the farmhouse of the scarecrows. Naturally they gravitate toward the farmhouse seeking help. One-by-one the scarecrows whittle them down and convert them into scarecrows while the survivors, especially the young man gifted with visions of the farmhouse's past (Devon Graye), try to figure out the mechanism and fight back.

A difficulty many viewers will have with Husk is the plot holes, and just about all of these plot holes come from the arbitrary rules of the mechanism. For instance, if the sewing is so integral to the creation of the scarecrows, why not simply destroy the sewing machine? Or, for that matter, burn down the house? Several options appear open to them to interfere with the mechanism one way or another, either to stop the mechanism or at least render the scarecrows ineffectual. But, as we must always say of plot holes, "If they did that, there'd be no movie."

For anyone who wishes to dig further, there arealso some Freudian implications to enjoy. Following trauma, the sufferer represses the memory and the repressed trauma bubbles up as compulsive repetition. The Freudian ideal is to face the trauma and no longer repress it. In Husk, the mechanism is about as clear a representation of repetition-compulsion as one could hope for. The trauma is the fratricide that is too much for, well, the cosmos? the ghost of the murderer? or for the dreamer of this nightmare, namely the audience? Whomever it may be, it is through the character of the visionary that we begin to face the trauma. This parallel with psychoanalytic theory could well have been intentional, as so many young filmmakers are acquainted with film theory. If not, it's still a fruitful area of inquiry.

The main pleasure of Husk, however, is to just enjoy the killer scarecrows and the young adults kicking scarecrow ass. Killer scarecrows just aren't that common a movie monster. In fact, the best killer scarecrow before this film is in an episode of Friday the 13th: The Series. So as far as killer scarecrow action goes, Husk is an excellent update for the 2010s.

Laid to Rest (2009) & ChromeSkull: Laid to Rest 2 (2011)

Laid to Rest is, to put it plainly, a horror fan's horror film. Everything a lover of horror films enjoys in the genre, including some of its more charming weaknesses, is offered by the bucket in this film. Kind of a miracle, in that it pushes the more salient features of slasher films to an extreme and is, on top of that, a competent and very good film.

The extremity to which I refer is in brutality and gore. We're now in the Third Wave of Slasher Films. The First Wave began the genre with the well-known conventions and equally well-known franchises: Halloween, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, etc.. The Second Wave of Slasher Films distinguished itself by an awareness of the films' history, a self-consciousness of the slasher-esque situation they present. The major franchises of the Second Wave are the Scream films, I Know What You Did Last Summer, and Urban Legends. The Third Wave of slashers is distinguished by its Return to Purity. These films look to what made slashers fun and try to give the viewer that. Adam West's Hatchet, the Wrong Turn films, Rob Zombie's Halloween films, and Laid to Rest all fall into the Third Wave. (It's no coincidence that Rob Zombie resurrected Michael Myers for the Third Wave, after all: Michael is the first and purest slasher monster.) The plots of these movies are as thin as need be, the women are hot, and the 'monsters' are impossibly strong--despite, in the cases of Hatchet and Wrong Turn, genetic decadence working against them--so that they can cut through skulls, rip apart heads, and do whatever godawful violence the make-up department can come up with.

Of the Third Wave of Slashers, the direct-to-video, independent pictures tend to be more brutal. Rob Zombie's Halloween 2 is about as brutal as a studio-released slasher could ever be--and it is indeed pretty brutal. Laid to Rest exceeds that film by a margin and Laid to Rest 2 exceeds it by miles. The slasher-monster ChromeSkull has no difficulty passing his blades through skulls, lifting corpses with one hand, or even exploding heads in the first film. In the sequel, bodies and faces are carved in every disturbing way imaginable, including a clumsy mastectomy. Since writer-director Robert Hall has had a long career in the make-up department of horror movies, it's no surprise that this area of his films keep up. Every slice is accompanied by realistic gushes of blood and nebulous chunks.

Where Laid to Rest impresses is in going beyond this first step of brutal set-pieces. West's Hatchet scarcely has a plot or characters; both are a clothesline on which to hang the slightly tongue-in-cheek brutal kills. Wrong Turn, similarly, offers more of a situation than a plot: there are dangerous, inbred hicks and there are people they want to kill. Rob Zombie's Halloween films stand out amongst Third Wave slashers for their intricate plots and, especially in the second film, three-dimensional characters. Laid to Rest exceeds these films in plot as well: a girl wakes up in a coffin in a funeral home with no recollection of how she got there; she's immediately pursued by the vicious ChromeSkull. The pursuit is the exciting, suspenseful slasher action. But the question of who she is and why she woke up in a coffin lingers through the action, giving the film a layer of mystery and a touch of absurd nightmare.

That Hall's script is able to provide answers to the mystery while sustaining the action is really the miracle. Instead of wasting our time with flashbacks, video footage, minimal dialogue, and realistic character behaviour gradually reveals the answers to some mysteries and leaves others remain--as some should. The film's structuring is a thing of beauty.

What isn't so beautiful about Laid to Rest is a flaw it shares with Third Wave slashers. This is a general callousness toward its characters. The brutality I praise above can and will strike any character, no matter how deserving of some nobility and dignity. Now it can be argued that a psychopathic killer could care less about how well a character as fought back and is fair game for brutal slaughter as anyone else. That is, of course, true. I'm not blaming the killer; I'm blaming the writer's approach. Laid to Rest, unlike, say, Hatchet, doesn't contain a great deal of comedy. ChromeSkull's kills are serious business. There is only one kill that is kind of a joke, based on a running gag and delivered to one of the film's most likeable characters while everyone watches. The death is disturbing (an inflation death), inexplicably tongue-in-cheek, and left me feeling there was no point caring about anyone's life--a rather important thing to do if a horror film is to be a good one. Compare to the death of Annie in Zombie's Halloween 2, where Zombie devotes a cinematic Moment of Silence to the character. While Zombie's approach is out of place and overdramatic, it's nevertheless superior to a glib dismissal.

Laid to Rest 2 shares the flaws of the first film and intensifies them. The protagonist of the first film, for instance, is casually dispatched within the first few minutes. Unfortunately, it also dispenses with the mysterious plot that made the first film so good. In this film, ChromeSkull is revealed to be the head of some organization of psychopaths who devote themselves to helping ChromeSkull set up his 'laboratory', make his weapons, and find his prey. Perhaps Hall believed the mystery of who these people are, why they're helping ChromeSkull, and who ChromeSkull really is, should hook audiences even more. But these are two different kinds of mysteries altogether. The first film gives us a close mystery of a single character's nightmare, loss of identity, unexplained location, and unknown enemy. In this film, we have more a conspiracy than a mystery. The conspiracy involves an annoying playboy who wants to be the next ChromeSkull. Unfortunately for him, the first ChromeSkull still lives and has no desire to be replaced. Meanwhile, ChromeSkull's other assistant (Danielle Harris) finds him another victim, a mostly-blind girl, to be his comeback prey.

The strong structuring and screenwriting of the first film is entangled, in the sequel, by its own ambitious plotting. Hall wants us to follow the ChromeSkull wannabe, ChromeSkull, the efforts of the police force to find the blind girl, the blind girl, a remaining character from the first film and how their threads all cross each other. Our attention is so dissipated, we care about no-one. Laid to Rest 2 is, consequently, a messy film. Characters are forgotten as the film jumps from one plot point to another, the protagonists don't really protag, and the various questions the film does raise by way of conspiracy are left unanswered. It is not a good thing that this drew comparisons in my mind to the infamous Thorn plot of Halloween 6. This is not to say the plot is all uninteresting; just that, in all its increased complexity, it lacks both the intimacy and mystique of the first film.

Perhaps a bit of hubris got in the way. Laid to Rest is a really good film and ChromeSkull is a really good slasher. But much of Laid to Rest 2 is devoted to telling us ChromeSkull is a really good slasher. When Hall has ChromeSkull walk over Godzilla's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, so as to say, "Here is horror's latest and best," we're given a basic theme of this film: ChromeSkull is already a legend and piddly psychopaths want to be as badass as him. The amazing thing is that Hall is almost able to justify this kind of hubris. When we see this dork trying to be ChromeSkull, we do side with ChromeSkull; we want him to show up the dork like Stormare stuffing Buscemi into the woodchipper. There are levels of evil and ChromeSkull is something beyond a common psychopathic serial killer. The mystery of him and his motive is really the core strength holding Laid to Rest 2 together; in fact, the full title, ChromeSkull: Laid to Rest 2 is quite apt.

Ultimately, though, Laid to Rest 2 ramps up the extremity at the expense of the intimacy and wonder that made the first so remarkable. In this way it loses itself in the same trap as most other Third Wave slashers. While it's not fair on Hall to ask that he simply remake the first film in the sequel and while his experiment in expanding the Laid to Rest universe is impressive in its own right, it is fair to note the experiment isn't entirely successful. Perhaps a decade down the road, in hindsight, this film will be viewed with the affection given to other bonkers sequels like Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2--but I doubt it.

Overall, the Laid to Rest films are an impressive series of independent slashers and about the best the Third Wave of Slasher Films has to offer.

Priest (2011) - 2/4

About halfway through Priest it struck me that I was watching The Searchers with alien vampires instead of Comanches and ninja priests instead of cowboys. That's not to say it's as good, interesting, or morally complex as The Searchers--or even as a wrinkle in John Wayne's left one; it's just to say that the writer looked to the most moving western ever made for his narrative structure and then filled it with a lot of sci-fi cliches, like a dogmatically-ruled futuristic city, some specially-trained warriors, a rebellious antihero, slick CGI and slow-motion fight sequences.

Priest is about an old warrior teaming up with a young warrior, a sheriff, to recover his niece, held captive by a pack of vampires. If she's been infected, the old warrior will kill her. The young warrior is in love with her, however, and wants to prevent this turn of events.

So that's The Searchers part of it. Here's the scifi part. Vampires are these alien-like creatures, all teeth and no eyes, and priests are like superhuman ninjas trained to fight them--they kick ass for the lord, yes. Vampires are supposed to have been wiped out. That's what the cardinals are telling everyone. The 'old warrior', a middle-aged priest, wants to kill some vampires, but the cardinals have a problem with him heading out to kill things they claim don't exist.

(There's something curiously insightful about how religion works in that, reflecting somewhat how the Catholic Church--the obviously caricatured institution in Priest--dealt with figures like Galileo. The film's representation of a personal religion apart from an institutional one also shows a level of intellectual maturity not usually welcome in Hollywood. So often the hero in these films must divorce himself from all spirituality. In this film, a few tyrannical men have seized power in the Church; otherwise, religion can be a source of personal strength.)

Meanwhile, the vampires are using this opportunity to launch an attack on the city. Karl Urban plays his villain character very Disney-like throughout this sequence, reeking mayhem and taunting the protagonist whilst striking silhouette poses and flailing his arms to no less than a symphony.

The whole film is, in fact, like second-rate Disney, as morally flat and cartoonish as Aladdin 2: The Return of Jafar. It entertains while it hastens past areas needing more development, insults your intelligence, and leaves you with no concern for the destiny of its characters: you'd hardly believe the writers have seen The Searchers were it not for the obvious borrowing. Priest sadly contains a good many missed opportunities for something more; but sometimes you just have to enjoy your priest-on-alien action in a post-apocalyptic western setting for what it is.

Deadrise (2011) - 3/4

Horror films have long been associated with nightmares, so much so that some critics analyze them as one would a dream. The ease with which horror films depart from normality and what we perceive to be our reality lends them a generally oneiric quality. Some horror films, playing off this tradition, deliberately introduce ambiguity between dream and reality. From Europe, Bergman's Hour of the Wolf and Valerie and Her Week of Wonders are prime examples. From America we have Carnival of Souls, which we discover is ultimately a nearly feature-length death dream, Mulholland Dr., and Slumber Party Massacre II.

Deadrise is a languid, almost hypnotic, horror-drama, starring Xena's Renee O'Connor as Paula and According to Jim's Larry Joe Campbell as Vigs, firmly planted in the tradition of Ambiguous Reality horrors. What there is of a plot is quickly summarized: Paula is looking into an old ship for the historical society when a piano is dropped on her car and she's forced to stay on the ship, with its caretaker Vigs, having one surreal nightmare after another. As in Slumber Party Massacre II and Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, the films Deadrise most resembles, we're rarely certain whether she's still dreaming or awake.

The film begins with Paula taking a celebratory lunch, alone, in a hotel restaurant. She gets some spicy salmon, shows the waiter a picture of her daughter, checks out his ass, then falls asleep following a report on blood-sucking eels. We never see her wake up. The film simply cuts to Paula's drive toward the ship. Perhaps all that follows the blood-sucking eels is a dream. Moreover, when the piano falls on her car, the long shot reveals no-one standing beside the car. Cut to a medium shot and suddenly Paula is there. Perhaps the continuity girl was hit by a bus or, more likely, Brauer is giving us a taste of Carnival of Horrors, by which I mean Paula could have died there and all that follows is a death dream. After meeting Vigs and being given a room, she goes to sleep and we're then treated to an arabesque of dreams-succeeding-dreams until the end of the film. Perhaps, too, everything up to this point is reality and what follows are the dreams.

Defining where reality ends and dream begins is important in such films for determining just what information, if any, we have about a character outside of what the dream reveals. If gestalt theory tells us everything in a dream is a depiction of oneself, then one needs the paten to decode the dream; and that paten is some significant knowledge of the dreamer's conscious life. All we know of Mary Henry in Carnival of Souls is that she's an organist and dies in a car crash. Of Courtney, in Slumber Party Massacre II, however, we know that she lost her sister and witnessed the murders in the first Slumber Party Massacre. And of Valerie we know that she's hitting puberty, is an orphan, and lives with her religious grandmother. In the cases of Courtney and Valerie, we can analyze the events of the films according to what we know of their consciousness: Courtney is working through the trauma of what she endured in the driller-killer murders and Valerie is working through her sexual awakening. With Mary Henry, all that we see, if it tells us anything about her soul, can only be very generalized, as we know so little about her.

All we know of Paula for sure is that she's had some success for the historical society, has a daughter who wants a puppy, ate the spicy salmon, and was disturbed by the blood-sucking eels. We could add her driving up to the ship. We could add further her meeting with Vigs and all he tells and shows her. Granted we have more information about Paula than we do about Mary Henry, the information we do have about Paula is yet not particularly salient as the cause of a psychosexual phantasmagoria. Unlike Courtney and Valerie, what we know of Paula's life does not seem sufficient to cause what we witness in the film, nor, by that token, sufficient to explain a lot of what we see.

At any rate, it's the viewer's pleasure, or not, to read the subconscious of the character of Paula on the screen. The momentum is a therapeutic one towards a sort of self-realization, the first important step of which, whether in dream or reality, occurs with the destruction of her car by a piano. The next is the loss of her cellphone in the water. Because we have so little relevant information on Paula and only minimal motivation to analyze Paula's subconscious journey to psychological or spiritual health, this aspect of the film can be mystifying, tedious, or simply uninteresting.

I made no effort at trying to understand Paula's issues, traumas, or crises, and chose to simply enjoy Paula's dreams for the quirky and amusing set pieces that they are: Paula attempts to dispose of some disgusting sausages, but finds her plate infinitely stocked; blood-sucking eels pour out of a shower; Vigs has several conspiracies going on involving the eels, poison, and sausages. These sequences are enjoyable, well-written, well-filmed, and creative within budget.

It is strongly to Brauer's credit that his style can be characterized by patience. While there are a few awkward edits and shots, particularly one in the restaurant, the shots never seem cut before their time; they're held as long as is needed for the performance to take place and sometimes held beyond what the subject requires. The camera's position is rarely obtrusive, its movements fluid and congenial to the physical surroundings. This generosity with time allows the viewer to get a feel for the space in which the characters inhabit, for the environment acting upon them. We also get a sense of depth to the characters, a feeling that they're really thinking before they speak. There's a reality and genuineness to the film that gives one a real feeling of being there.

Nevertheless, the pacing will be boring to many viewers. What keeps the film from becoming boring is a strong sense of wit in the writing, a wit expertly handled by Campbell and O'Connor, both veterans in television comedy. They have interesting screen chemistry, reacting to one another's thoughts and ideas in a very amusing way. Campbell, as the highly eccentric Vigs, is particularly funny. The character is just so odd and yet oblivious of his oddness; Campbell seems to be channeling a bit of Chris Farley here.

If one enters this film with the right temperament and expectations, ready for more mood and character than thrills, more surrealism and oddness--sometimes funny, sometimes grotesque--than horror, one should have an good time. Though certainly not as sophisticated as Valerie and Her Week of Wonders or Hour of the Wolf, Deadrise is an enjoyable hour and a half spent aboard a derelict with two interesting people--or maybe it's just one person--and, of course, their dreams.