Little Deaths (2011)

I've been rolling the British-made Little Deaths around in my head since I watched it a few days ago, wondering what exactly to say about it. If you can't stop thinking about a horror movie - does that make it good? This is an odd one.

Little Deaths, as the name and the artwork suggests, is about sex and death. Two staples in our genre. Here we have three shorts collected together but without any wraparound or connecting threads. I suppose it's a bit like The ABC's of Death, with nothing but a common theme to unite the work.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I feel it works better with larger projects (like the alphabet). For this, when the credits rolled after the third story, it felt undercooked, somehow? I hadn't been keeping track of the time but I had assumed there'd be more than three segments in this anthology.

Anyhow, this trio of tales has elements of sex, death, and also revenge. House & Home (written/directed by Sean Hogan) seems to generally be considered the best of the three - at least judging by the Letterboxd reviews. It concerns an affluent couple whose hobbies include kidnapping and abusing young homeless women. This is a pretty typical "they picked on the wrong girl this time!" story, though the reveal wasn't quite what I was expecting. It's fine enough, but the degradation that comes before the payoff made me feel uneasy and kind of exhausted. 

Mutant Tool (written/directed by Andrew Parkinson) is bonkers but loses a lot of its impact due to its plodding plot. I am a fan of stories about imprisoned and exploited entities, so long as they escape and the captors get their comeuppance. This doesn't exactly happen here, but the ending is satisfactorily dark.

The third and final tale is Bitch (written/directed by Simon Rumley), and it's the one I've thought the most about post-viewing, but I honestly can't decide if I like it or not. 

Here, we witness the day-to-day goings on in an abusive relationship between Claire (Kate Braithwaite) and Pete (Tom Sawyer). Claire is mean and manipulative; she does what she wants and makes Pete feel bad until he goes along with it, treating him like shit in front of his friends as well as in private. They have a kinky "puppy play" situation where Pete wears a mask and leash, crawls around on all fours, and gets pegged by Claire (and sleeps in a kennel in the spare room) but we get the distinct impression that this is more for her enjoyment than his. Ultimately, after she literally fucks one of his friends right in front of him, Pete breaks. He begins to set up a revenge plot that preys upon her deepest fears.

This story is tough to watch, it goes without saying, as abuse is never a fun thing to witness. Sawyer does well in portraying Pete as a sweet bloke trapped in his relationship. He seems constantly agonised and yet the crumbs of affection or interest Claire throws him, plus the hope that things will improve are enough to keep him from leaving. 

Claire is - aptly, given the title - shown almost entirely as a bitch. A horrible, selfish, abusive woman. Her moments of phobia are the only glimpse we get into something deeper or less repulsive about this character. As the villain, I guess this makes sense, but it's a shame to see such broad strokes used. Tackling an abusive relationship from the lesser-represented side of a male survivor is refreshing, but painting Claire so one-dimensional makes it come across more like Rumley just fucking hates women. Her unpleasant fate is not entirely clear, and I hope this was the creator's intent and not an oversight. I won't spoil it, but I have my reasons for disagreeing with a few reads I've seen of what becomes of her.

(aside: well... yikes. I just found out that Rumley also directed the most upsetting segment of the aforementioned The ABC's of Death: P is for Pressure. So honestly, I'm not going to waste too much time wondering what his motivation was here).

I think what got to me most about Bitch was its use of music as it's made clear what Pete is doing. An emotive, uplifting instrumental plays over this montage, stopping with jarring immediacy on a shot of him weeping at what he's done. It's my favourite part of the entirety of Little Deaths, though I'm not sure it's enough to redeem the whole thing...

This is streaming on Shudder at time of writing. It's barely over 1hr30 so if you feel like gulping down three odd little stories, you could do a lot worse??

Murder Party (2007)

Murder Party is the directorial debut of Jeremy Saulnier, the same name who brought us the fantastic Blue Ruin and Green Room. Some of the cast from those films also feature here, too.

Written by Saulnier also, this is a no-budget, all heart, black comedy horror which came as a really refreshing watch after a few false starts for me lately (I tried to make it through Don't Go In The Woods, I really did, but it was SO bad).

Chris (Chris Sharp) is a normal-bordering-on-boring guy whose Halloween plans involve renting some horror VHS tapes and sitting with his cat with some candy corn. On his way home that evening however, he finds an invite to a "Murder Party" and on a whim, decides to attend. He makes some pumpkin bread (and an impressive costume out of cardboard and duct tape) and heads out.

Once there, he soon realises the people throwing the party are a bunch of hipster wanker artist types, and the invite was part of a project they're working on. Even worse, the murder in question is real, and it's him they plan to kill.

Tied up and held hostage in a warehouse, Chris witnesses the group interact, with all their quirks and odd dynamics on display (unrequited love, unabashed drug use, ego, sex...). For a lot of this movie it's a one location, almost stage-play-like deal, following the Steadicam as it travels around, settling on each character as we learn a little about them. They are an unlikeable group really, but they are also such fuck-ups that it's funny to watch this ridiculous, cruel, and largely unplanned "project" of theirs play out and start to crumble down around them.

Macon Blair.

Drunk, lovestruck Macon is played by Blue Ruin lead Macon Blair (most characters are named after their actor) and is a standout amongst the group, particularly in the final act. Similarly, Chris Sharp spins screentime gold with his role, and his talent for comedy is very obvious. He strikes an absolutely perfect pitch of naive nerd in an unbelievable situation.

The love-to-hate character here has to be Alexander (Sandy Barnett), a stupendously smarmy, manipulative arsehole and the leader of the group. Barnett excels, because I absolutely hated this guy!

As the tension and antics within the warehouse increase, the third act sees complete mayhem ensue, including a rooftop chase - both characters still in costume - and the relatively gore free nature of the film up to this point, going right out the window.

As much as I'm done with railing against remakes and re-tellings, it does seem regrettably seldom that I'm left reflecting on the originality of a horror film as the credits roll. Murder Party for sure provoked this response, and has definitely made me realise that I need to add Jeremy Saulnier to my list of names to look for and follow.

Fun, funny, cute and gory. This is streaming on Shudder at time of writing!

Killing Ground (2016)

Killing Ground is an Australian Eden Lake, only with some timeline quirks, rape, baby violence, and a dog that actually survives (as far as we know).

To be honest I'm currently experiencing some fatigue from depictions of rape on screen. The moment I realised just how toxic the toxic males in this film were, it was downhill from there. Once that veil drops, that switch goes in their eyes (and credit to the actor Aaron Glenane for portraying this so well here) that's it, we know what comes next.

It's hard watching women sexually brutalised over and over, y'know? No matter how well it's done, no matter if the story sees the survivor exact revenge. It's still a narrative choice that depresses and drains. I wouldn't have knowingly chosen a "rape film" the night I watched this, and yet there I was, again, watching one.

So... I'm sorry, I'm tired. This is going to be a quick/lazy review. Here, have a look at some of the different artwork used for this movie...

I'll admit that first image was the one I saw and that's mostly why I gave this a chance. As these images suggest, Killing Ground is a nasty, competently-told tale of really awful shit happening on a camping trip. 

It's written and directed by Damien Power and it's streaming on Netflix now.

Angst (1983)

Coming off the back of a true crime binge (I pretty much constantly listen to true crime stuff, but recently it's been particularly intense) I've been tempering my desire to watch home invasion horror movies. This is a sub-genre I really enjoy, but part of that enjoyment stems from the fact it's one of the most terrifying.

Nevertheless! Once I realised it was on Shudder, I couldn't put off watching Angst (alternative title Schizophrenia) for very long. This may well be the granddaddy of home invasion movies, and it is a relentlessly unsettling experience.

Made in Austria (in German, with subtitles) and directed by Gerald Kargl - causing such controversy and box office backlash upon its release that he never made another movie - Angst is based on the true case of mass murderer Werner Kniesek and even utilizes phrasing from real confessions...

(How do you know you're too deep into true crime? When you can identify real confession dialogue without being told...)

The story chronicles the first 24 hours of freedom of "K", a psychopathic murderer. We not only follow K (an astonishing performance by Erwin Leder, whose other roles include Das Boot, and er, Underworld) but we're inside his head, too; hearing all of the manic thoughts, twisted leaps of logic and sickening plans that pass through his damaged brain.

Angst has us witness, in painstaking detail and intimacy, every single moment of this man's mania; the entire spectrum from an almost hysterical bloodlust, through sweat (and semen :/) drenched murders, to the post-kill clean up and groggy comedown, to thinking about doing it all over again.

We see him leave prison and immediately begin the hunt. Like a true addict, he's desperately uncomfortable and barely able to function, he needs to spill blood so much. We watch as one-by-one he chooses victims and dismisses them, finally finding a satisfactory set-up: a huge but strangely devoid of furniture house to break into, and a family to terrorize.

Sparse of dialogue in-scene, much of the exposition comes from either a doctor, giving comprehensive background and the medical/criminal diagnoses of K; or the man himself, narrating his obsessive frenzy.

He speaks incessantly of his "plan", although this spree repeatedly plays out like he's close to losing control of the situation. In one of many choices made that tinge the film with horrible realism, K is not a "cool" looking dude (see: most serial killers are awkward, conventionally unattractive individuals). He is a thin, sweaty, rat-faced man. His strength comes from his psychosis, not from his physical stature, and so even though he possess a terrifying presence, he is also barely able to move his hostages, alive or dead. There are numerous, uncomfortably protracted scenes of him dragging his victims from room to room.

"Visceral" is a word that gets thrown around a lot in this genre, and there are definitely a couple of instances in this movie where that word springs to mind.

Learning that Gaspar Noé is a fan of Angst came as absolutely no shock, and the sickening violence and profound sadness of Irreversible now makes a little more sense. Tonally both films are brutal in subject matter and uncompromising in their portrayal of it. They're also both aggressively visual pieces of cinema.

The cinematography in Angst was by Zbigniew Rybczynski who, I was excited to learn, was the director of a short I became slightly obsessed with a couple of months ago! 

The camerawork often takes on a dynamic, experimental style: when K runs, the vertigo-inducing "SnorriCam" is used; our viewpoint appears abnormally high up in some scenes, and too low to the ground in others; outside, what today would be a simple drone shot, must have taken some doing in the early 80s to achieve, as the camera lifts so high we're able to watch K from a bird's eye view as he runs around the house's estate opening gates and jumping over walls. 

And good luck forgetting the faces of Angst, in all of their grotesque close-up glory.

Every aspect of this film was a choice to provoke unease. Even the soundscapes are unnerving, with the score a repetitive synth march or a low-note dread-filled dirge, and normally innocuous noises such as footsteps and chewing food are blown up on the soundtrack to monstrous versions of the real thing.

Films that dwell so heavily on the viewpoint of a cold-blooded killer are always going to be for the strong of stomach, and the depths to which K sinks are matched only by the fact that we sink there too, in witnessing every painful second of it. If you want a truly soul-destroying double bill, Angst and Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer would be a hell of a way to spend an evening. If the thought of taking stock of what you just participated in doesn't appeal, then maybe give this a hard pass.

Personally, as deeply grim as this film gets, I "enjoyed" it an awful lot for its full on commitment to making me feel so uncomfortable. Like Irreversible, it'll leave you with an empty feeling afterwards - but it's a beautifully constructed, frightening representation of the mind of a psychopath. It's a fucking travesty Kargl never made another movie. I cannot imagine the sights he would have shown us, if THIS was the first thing he had in his head. 

On Shudder right now, and you'll get a content warning if you decide to watch it!

Oculus (2013)

I'll cut to the chase: this is a pretty pedestrian modern horror movie from Mike Flanagan. Which is surprising, given that he worked on Hush and Gerald's Game, both of which are far superior. At the risk of sounding like a snob, Oculus plays like a cash-in summer blockbuster: a hit with non-genre fans (those squares!) who fancy something scary, but a little too "horror by numbers" for anyone with a decent bit of experience.

Starring Karen Gillan (Doctor Who, Guardians of the Galaxy), Katee Sackhoff (Kara 'Starbuck' Thrace from Battlestar Galactica) and Rory Cochrane (the super stoned dude in Dazed and Confused), Oculus deals with family loss, and two siblings trying to overcome it. 

Unfortunately for her brother Tim (Brenton Thwaites), Kaylie (Gillan, sporting what I can only describe as a terrifying fringe) has become obsessed with proving that their father becoming a homicidal maniac 11 years ago was not your average psychotic break but in fact was due to a cursed mirror that hung in his office. She's managed to track it down and take possession, and she's invited Tim - himself fresh out of an institution for killing dad back then, in self defense - to come along and bear witness to the spooky goings on in their old house. What could possibly go wrong.

It's no more of a stretch than the average flick I suppose, but what doesn't help is Kaylie's general cold manner. She's an unlikeable lead character, and her odd rhythm of speech didn't do anything to warm me to her, either (I'd love to know if that was an actor or writer/director choice). We're to assume that her horrific family history affects her deeply, that she's never let go of the terrors she witnessed; yet I couldn't help but think this could've been played with more subtlety, rather than making her an obsessed robot. 

She reprimands Tim for his logical reading of those past events, telling him the doctors brainwashed him... because a killer mirror is so much more believable?! She's dismissive and withholding even to her fiance, too. It's no great tragedy when (spoilers) she kills him, because (a) we barely know the guy, and (b) she doesn't seem to have much of a connection to him anyway. Kaylie is a character born within this story to definitely die by the end of it, there's just nowhere else for her to go.

Additionally, most of the scares here are overworked and cheap. Creepy veiny people with weird eyes glide around the house, there's fingernail violence, and the old "accidentally killing someone who startles another character" plot twist. All of which do their job on a perfunctory level, but things never get any more interesting.

Anyone well versed in the genre will be able to call the majority of the eerie payoffs, they are signposted so blatantly - although the scene where Kaylie appears to bite into a lightbulb thinking it's an apple is one of the better moments here.

Flanagan is adept at fluidly transitioning the action between past and present. The young and older versions of the siblings all inhabit this space together, adding an otherworldly, untrustworthy quality to events happening within the house. Nothing is what it seems within the mirror's "sphere of influence", and this was definitely creepy... but only in a way that what I call the "Hotel California Effect"* always is.

NAILED IT. Full review here.

Oculus gets a 73% on Rotten Tomatoes, which kind of blows my mind.

It's on US Netflix now, but I'm pretty certain there are better choices you could make.


*This is when a character is trying to escape somewhere but the evil force at work manages to trap or loop them into always coming back. So named because my first memory of this eerie idea was from listening to the Eagles song 🎶 (sorry not sorry!).

Zoltan... Hound of Dracula (1978).

With almost as many canine cast members as human, this is a rare thing: a horror film where it seems as though the pooches have a fighting chance... nay, emerge victorious!

*punches air in freeze frame*

Bitchin' title screen!

 Bitchin' poster, tagline and alternate title! (from here)

Okay, Zoltan, Hound of Dracula, I'm listening. 

Well of course it made sense I should watch this. I'd have to be sillier than a box of puppies not to give it a whirl!

Bringing to mind Food of the Gods (thankfully minus the [at least overt] animal cruelty) and countless others, Zoltan is that special kind of 70s "so bad it's good" horror flick. It's one to get the beers and popcorn in for, get some friends round and repeatedly splutter together, at the straight-faced silliness of it all.

So let me introduce you to Zoltan. He's a hellhound Doberman with an intense stare and a pursed lipped, wrinkly-faced master.

 

 Why are you laughing? This is deadly serious!

The plot is simple: hound and half-vampire companion get resurrected and travel to the States to find Count Dracula's ancestor. The guy in question - who is a bit of an annoying dick, actually - is on holiday with his wife, children, family dogs and... a box of puppies.

Puppies! Puppies. How happy was I?!

I think the best way to approach Zoltan is to discuss what we can learn from it. There are an awful lot of lessons here. Very important lessons. Are we ready? Then I shall begin.

When standing guard over a crypt marked with the family name "Dracula", feel free to remove the stake from any of the inhabitants. It's fiiine, go for it.

Make your mouth look like a bum hole when addressing your hellhound.

Putting big fake teeth on a Doberman will suffice in conveying its hellhoundness.

When in the middle of nowhere, let your children, dogs and puppies sleep outside the RV, whilst you cosy up inside.

Puppies can get bitten too :(

:(

My absolute favourite. Take a shot of a dog yawn and with the help of fake blood and canny dubbing, viola! It's a terrifying howl!

Two dogs can tear the shit out of a little wooden hut in a matter of minutes.

The best type of barricade is one comprised of a blanket jammed into an open window. That'll keep the evil out!

 

Don't be afraid to get a little Cujo with proceedings.

A severed owl head = bad omen. Obviously.

Zombie puppy!

Wait, what?!

Okay I may have completely lost the already skittish thread by the end, there.

What isn't pictured:

• Hurling a dog at someone from off screen is the same as the dog leaping of its own accord (couldn't cap this as it was too blurry/I was laughing too much). 
• All of the dogs in the film will have the same two dubbed barks; hey, why not bung some elephant and chimp sounds into the mix, too?

So then, file this one under "chortles rather than screams" - but there's nothing wrong with that! The beauty of this genre we all love so much is that it happily encompasses both. 

Right, I'm off to throw some dogs...

See No Evil (2006).

The first major film to be produced by WWE Studios, it stars professional wrestler Kane as a 7ft mummy's boy murder machine, who dispatches a group of incredibly irritating juvenile delinquents.

Being abused as a child by a religious maniac apparently turns a person into a super-strong brick shithouse. Unsurprisingly, Kane does a decent enough job in this role.

I could pick about ten billion holes in this film (eg: how does one acquire thong tan lines in prison?) but it would be pointless; this is throw-ho-ho-away horror. See See No Evil once.

Starting with a nice jump scare which actually made me jump, the flick soon settles more into grisly creepiness rather than out-and-out scary. Lots of shots of rats and roaches and lots of fingers rummaging around in eye sockets.

Yes, perhaps as a nod to Fulci but more likely just because it's guaranteed to make the audience go "Ick!", there is an awful lot of ocular horror here.

In fact, one of the working titles for the film was Eye Scream Man. Shame they didn't keep that, you can never go wrong with a good strong pun.

It's a stalk and slash by numbers. And for all of its gruesomeness, it could have been improved by being more so - or by more imaginative kills. Though witnessing the most annoying female character forced to eat her mobile phone was something of a treat.

Tell you what else was a treat...

And he didn't get killed off. In fact, he even got the last laugh!

This film was so assured of its audience's ADD, it placed what would normally be a post-credit sequence about 30 seconds into the credits instead. Okay everyone we're done! You can turn the thing off now!