Forget Me Not (2009) - 2.5/4

After a mildly mysterious, but not particularly encouraging pre-title sequence, Forget Me Not introduces us to a menagerie of tedious high school seniors and their sad little lives of fucking and drinking. Quite nice camera movements are wasted on a student house party that looks like the student house parties you see in every high school comedy or drama since the '90s, with lots of attractive, half-naked teens drinking and writhing, "having fun". I don't make a point of describing this lifestyle in a deliberately contemptous tone because I was never invited to these parties, but because I think the director, and co-writer, Tyler Oliver, purposely sets up a 'normal' (as defined by movies) group of high school buddies to disarm us. Then he starts to screw with it--and that's when it gets fun.

In the middle of a round of "tell your first time" the responsible Final Girl character, Sandy, decides to tell her first kiss instead, which took place during The Game. "The Game!" everyone says, "let's play!" Their banal existences suddenly take on some meaning, a tinge of mystery. What is this bizarre game these bland people play? Well, they chant a creepy chant about ceasing to exist and going to hell, pronounce one person "The Ghost" and then the rest hide. The Ghost touches each one, making them ghosts, until there's only one non-ghost left. When they play this game again, a strange girl joins in. After she appears to commit suicide and then disappear, despite having won The Game, each participant starts disappearing in real life. The catch is that the only one who remembers the ghosted participant is the Final Girl. Everyone else forgets that person existed. The whole world changes, as though that person never existed.

Forget Me Not plays out as a fun metaphysical mystery, not unlike one of those episodes of Star Trek where they'd get trapped in a time loop or some godlike being's anus. And the drive to crack the mystery, the full solution to which Oliver manages to hold out of reach for a good while, is what kept me engaged. Even after the mystery is cracked, there are some metaphysical shenanigans that will keep the intellectually-engaged viewer interested. For instance, the pattern of The Game played in the first act dictates much of what will happen for the rest of the movie. What is the significance of that?

Of course, interest does not equal plausibility. One wonders just how a person can be erased from the time-space continuum. The most superficial answer provided is strongly inadequate. And the other possible answer, suggested by the final shots, isn't explored in quite enough detail, tantalizing as it is. As allegory, however, it presents an interested interplay of how individual lives vie to be remembered, how our lives are valuable after death mostly for the way we impact the living, whether a close friend or the whole world. Death is frightening, but being forgotten may be even worse. You have to do something worthwhile to be remembered. And when we watch the first ten minutes of the movie, we wonder how many of these young people will really deserve to be remembered, and how many will go the way of the third eunuch in the Court of Tiglath-Pilesar?

Forget Me Not does also contain some proper ghost-monster action that is not as successful as the rest of the film. For horror zonks, the gittery, fast-moving ghost-monster, with its 'crick'-'crick' body sounds and large-mouthed roar, will be mildly annoying, because we see this monster in every low-budget supernatural horror movie, sometimes even on youtube. Otherwise, they're fairly creepy creations out of which Oliver gets some good mileage. Forget Me Not has a good many creepy, spooky moments, the best of which are, naturally, of a more metaphysical variety.

The Sweet House of Horrors (1989)

The films of Fulci's late career are generally considered to be hit-and-miss-and-miss-and-miss. I've tended to like his later works, finding them more indulgent of his intuitive and experimental approach. It's easy to neglect that Fulci studied film theory and knows his avant-garde cinema and theory very well. While Fulci is stylistically on form here with lots of great ideas, I'm afraid The Sweet House of Horrors is a miss for one wretched reason: CHILDREN.

A couple, in their palatial country house, are murdered when they surprise a burglar. The murdered woman's sister and her husband become guardians of the children and move into the house. When they decide to sell the house to get money for the children's future and because the house appears to be haunted. The ghosts of the murdered don't take kindly to the notion of being separated from their children and begin some pretty tame mischief.

The gore that was absent from Ghosts of Sodom is back in full force. The couple at the beginning are murdered in the most brutal fashion, with Fulci's trademark ocular damage. A gardener is later run over by a vehicle that leaves his chest split open like a melon, gushing blood. However, the creepy, nightmarish style of Ghosts of Sodom and the hell gate trilogy is abandoned for a plot that makes more sense.

There are some interesting setpieces involving a bizarre, black-cloaked German medium, the killing of the gardener, and the opening murder. These moments show Fulci stylistically in great form; his visual ideas are always a pleasure.

However, the major problem with the film is the children. The children are, of course, in cahoots with their ghostly parents. They're snotty little brats to begin with, calling adults stupid and generally being wretched know-it-alls. Once they have supernatural forces on their side, they become insufferable. These are children who need a good beating. Even when they're crying over their parents' death, they're blowing bubbles with their bubble-gum. Maybe Fulci intended them to be despicable, for them to be the sort of villains of the picture; in which case he succeeded all too well. They're so vile they defile the film itself.

It's worth watching to see the great Fulci at work with some interesting ideas. It is, formally, a good film. But the story leaves quite a bit to be desired, and not just abundant child-beating. It's missing a certain horrific core. This is more like an Italian Beetlejuice without Beetlejuice.

Bonus points:
Phony wax hand effect
Gratuitous abuse of the disabled
Flashbacks to gore scenes of only minutes earlier
Talking, animatronic duck
Dubbing children with adult voices

The Black Cat (1968)

The Black Cat is a love story. A vampire story. A ghost story. A samurai story. A family drama. A tragedy. A morality tale. It is emotionally and psychologically complex, but narrativistically simple.

A beautiful young woman and her mother-in-law are raped and murdered by a group of samurai. They sell their souls to 'the evil gods' in exchange for revenge: eternal blood-thirst for all samurai. The husband of the young woman got lucky and killed an enemy general, earning him instant promotion to samurai. The myriad conflicts that ensues you'll have to watch to see.

Japanese horror of the '60s had a fixation on several elements that are instantly recognizable: 1. Samurai. 2. Morality tales. 3. Raped women. 4. Vengeful, life-sucking ghosts. 5. Exquisite cinematography. I've only seen three myself, Kwaidan, Ugetsu (which isn't quite a horror film), and The Black Cat. While Kwaidan is the most beautiful visually, it achieves this with glacial pace. You wouldn't think short, anthologized stories could move so slowly. Ugetsu has the greatest story and the strongest impact with its morally complex vision. But The Black Cat is the best out and out horror film with the superior kinetics.

The Black Cat can only be described as choreographed. It's like a ballet with the celluloid as the stage. Every element of movement is controlled: the women somersaulting through the air, the fog in the wind, the samurai's blade. Disorienting jump-cuts accompany the highly mobile evil spirits whenever they're fighting, giving them a much more vital feel than the actually living people. Their vitality is their hatred. Where emotions like greed or ambition are self-serving, love and hate are purely other-directed. They expend all one's energy. In The Black Cat they are pitted against one another.

This is a gorgeous example of the fine era of Japanese fantastique cinema, to be watched alongside Onibaba, Woman in the Dunes, Kwaidan and even Ugetsu as an equal.