Note: This review is also featured on Send More Cops.

There’s more to a zombie movie than brain-eating, dismemberment, and finding clever ways to dispose of the zombie threat.

Granted, there are a lot of people out there who want nothing more out of their zombie flicks.  No matter how idiotic the rest of the movie, if we get a good crowbar-through-the-forehead gag, they’re satisfied.  They’re also stupid, and probably enjoyed the Day of the Dead remake.

What made George Romero’s zombie films as successful as they were had a lot to do with a very important point that a lot of people tend to skim over: What happens when the zombies are off-screen.  Because if you can’t give a shit about the characters involved, what’s gonna make you care when they’re threatened by some flesh-eater?

That’s not to say that Dance of the Dead should be compared to a Romero zombie flick (nor should any other zombie movie; Romero’s are in a class of their own).  But the filmmakers (writer Joe Ballarini and director Gregg Bishop) make it a point to create likable characters who you’re going to enjoy following for 90 minutes.  The film takes place on prom night, so when the inevitable zombie invasion begins, the only people available to save the prom-goers from becoming zombie lunch (200 teenagers in a single room?  Zombie smorgasbord) are the ones that couldn’t get dates to the prom.  The losers, the weirdos, the geeks.

And maybe that’s what make you love ‘em so much.  Because let’s face it: most zombie fans are, to some extent, geeks or outcasts of some kind.  I may not have been in the Science Fiction Club (gimme a little credit here) but I was, ya know, one of those weirdo art students.  It’s easy to relate to the heroes when you yourself may not have been the prom king/queen.*

The first 20 minutes are funny and entertaining enough that I’d have been happy spending the evening with the geek heroes even if the zombie attack had never happened.  But happen it does, and the filmmakers waste no time in changing the mood from funny to downright creepy.  From then on out, it’s pretty much your typical zombie plot — get to cover, board the windows, find weapons, etc. — until the outcasts decide to make a visit to the high school to rescue the rest of the student body, but the script manages to stay funny enough that you don’t mind the fact that, well, you’ve seen a lot of this before.

All of that stuff that I mentioned at the beginning of this review?  The stuff that you expect to see in every zombie movie?  Well, it’s all here too.  In loads.  And for a movie with a budget as low as this one, the effects (mostly practical, with the odd CGI effect thrown in here and there) look incredible.  And oh yes, lots of blood, guts and gore.

I’m not going to go out and say that Dance of the Dead is the greatest zombie movie you’ll ever see, and it’s light years away from achieving the greatness of the horror comedy of, say, Shaun of the Dead.  The movie’s got its issues.  After getting off to a strong start, the movie slows down a bit in the second act, as if the filmmakers decided that they needed to throw a few cliches in just so that the audience doesn’t feel disappointed.  The aforementioned boarding up of an old house, the weapons-building montage, the crazy gym teacher who turns out to be a militaristic nutjob (just the person to have with you during the Apocalypse) are all things that you’ve seen in countless other films.  But it’s got enough of its own flourishes — including zombies literally launching themselves from their graves and hitting the ground running! — to make the movie more worth your while.

While most of the horror hitting your local mulitplex is little more than marketing trash designed more to sell tickets than to actually, uh, entertain, it’s good to know that excellent, entertaining and fun horror flicks are still out there to be found.

*Note: While I did go to the prom — twice — I kind of hated it and think that a zombie invasion would’ve probably been a vast improvement over the night’s events.

It’s currently 3:15 am. I have to be at work (for a double shift) at 11:00am. Realistically, I should be in bed right now, catching up on some much-needed beauty sleep.

I should have come home after work tonight and gone to sleep at a responsible time. But I just couldn’t wait.

I should wait until tomorrow night and just write a full review of Hellboy II: The Golden Army. But, by then, you will have probably already seen the movie yourself and drawn your own conclusions.

But I can’t sleep. Not without getting a few thoughts on this movie out in to the world. I can’t stop thinking about the movie. I want to live in Hellboy’s world. I want to shop in the troll market.

Hellboy 2 is an absolutely wonderful movie with more imagination than any other film you’ve seen this year. It’s breathtaking in its wonder and its magic. Guillermo del Toro is a genius with a mind that works unlike anyone else’s. And in Hellboy 2, his mind is splattered across the screen in a way that he hasn’t been able to accomplish before, for a variety of reasons.

I may one day try to write that full review that I mentioned (if I can put my love for this movie into words other than saying “I want to make love to this movie”). But until then, know this: When you see this movie — and you should, you need to — you will fall in love with it. If you don’t, then you’ve forgotten what wonder is.

Now, I’m going to bed with visions of Tooth Fairies dancing in my head.

Lifeforce (1985)

What the hell was that?

Okay, I’ve got to admit it. Before Lifeforce was chosen as the latest (and my first) entry in the Final Girl Film Club, I really didn’t know anything about it. I mean, yeah, I’d heard it mentioned in passing, but I pretty much thought that it was considered just another of Tobe Hooper’s failed directorial efforts (read: Everything that’s not Leatherface- or Spielberg-related). Oh, but it’s so much more! We’ve got boobies, space travel, giant bat creatures, boobies, zombies, Patrick Stewart, space vampires, and boobies! Really, what more could you ask for in a movie?

Oh. A coherent plot? Well, erm…

I’m not sure if I should blame the scattershot-ness of the plot on the screenwriters, Dan O’Bannon and Don Jakoby, or on the writer of the original novel (cleverly titled The Space Vampires), Colin Wilson. But since Dan O’Bannon is responsible for the existence of Alien AND Return of the Living Dead, and Colin Wilson is some guy I’ve never heard of, I’m going to go ahead and place the blame on Wilson. That’s how journalism works, folks!

The plot goes something like this: A crew of British and American astronauts* who are in space for…something… discover that there’s a 150-mile long alien spacecraft hanging out in the tail of Haley’s comet. Of course, they go to investigate and discover that the inhabitants of the spacecraft — giant bats, basically — are all dead. But the crew soon discovers three perfectly preserved humanoid bodies in crystal coffins, one of which looks like this** and naturally gets a lot more screen time than the other two.

Thirty days pass, blah blah blah, the Britmerican crew is dead, but the bodies, miraculously, survive and are brought to earth where, the Space Lady decides to pull a fast one on us and not be dead. She promptly sucks the “life force” (a-ha!) out of a nearby guard, despite the fact that he was sporting some pretty state of the art protective gear:

You see, Space Lady and her space friends (who end up exploded so the filmmakers didn’t have to go all Austin Powers trying to think of ways to keep their junk out of the camera’s view) are Space Vampires. And they have to feed on the life force of other beings to stay alive. Every two hours. Which, I’m thinking, would get pretty damned tiresome. If they don’t feed? They explode into a poof of dust. Really, it would kind of suck to be a Space Vampire. (Get it? It would “suck.” Heh.)

Oh, but I didn’t mention the fact that the victims of the Space Vampires turn into zombies. ZOMBIES! If you think this stuff is convoluted, wait until you get to the part where the Space Lady can partially transfer part of her life force to other people, a bit like the killer did in Fallen. How this works is never really explained, but it does give us the excitement of seeing Captain Picard — under the possession of Space Lady — declare her love for Colonel Tom Carlson, the only astronaut to survive the original Haley’s Comet mission, and someone who seems to have a special connection to the Space Vampires…

…because he is a Space Vampire! At least, I think that’s what they were trying to get in the end, as some sort of big twist that had very little impact. So little impact, actually, that I’m not even going to bother apologizing for spoiling it for you.

If it sounds like I’m bashing Lifeforce, it’s because, well, I sort of am. It’s a ridiculous mess that feels like 5 movies mashed together into one incoherent piece of cinema. But you’ve gotta give the folks behind this credit for having the ambition to not only roll with a concept as silly as Space Vampires (who, it turns out, visited earth eons ago and that’s where the vampire legend originated! ::slaps forehead::), but to add zombies into the mix as well. By the third act of, our antagonist is literally running through hoards of zombies trying to get to a naked Space Lady and save the world from the soul-sucking alien vampires. If that sentence were any stupider, I think my head might explode.

But it’s a fun movie, and it’s worth a watch if only to enjoy its ridiculousness. I only wish that the movie had the kind of self-knowing humor that O’Bannon’s Return of the Living Dead would show later on. As it is, Lifeforce takes itself a little too seriously considering its premise. But all of its shortcomings are forgiven simply due to the fact that Space Lady is indeed naked for the entire movie. So if you, like me, are a fan of aliens, vampires, zombies, and boobies, then by all means, watch Lifeforce. There’s bound to be something in it to entertain you.

A Note About The Poster: I’m not sure what’s going on in the poster that I’ve got pictured at the top of this article but I think it’s pretty safe to say that whoever designed it never even saw the movie or really even knew what it was about. I think they heard two words — “space” and “boobies” — and their mind shut off, and this is all they could come up with.

*Do the British even HAVE a space program? Oh, wait, this is a movie about space vampires. Believability not a big drawing point.

**Yep, this is NSFW. I could’ve warned you ahead of time, but I figured if you’re at work, you should probably be doing something more productive than reading my blog anyway. You got what you deserved.

Prophecy (1979)

Somebody should’ve shown Prophecy to M. Night Shyamalan. This is how you do environmental horror, sir. Actually, I’m going to start referring to this kind of film as “Greensploitation.” I’ve got a feeling we’ll be seeing more of these in the near future what with how enviro-conscious everyone is these days.

Ah, but Prophecy was made in 1979 yet still manages to be…erm… topical? Sort of. I don’t know that mercury poisoning was ever a huge issue in New England, but since in 1979, I was… not alive… I can’t say for sure.

I mean, yeah, ingesting mercury is really bad for you, but I don’t think it causes the kind of genetic mutation that this movie depicts (which, basically, is ManBearPig).

Anyways, for those of you who don’t know, Prophecy (no, not the Christopher Walken one; stop asking me that) spins the tale of a doctor and his cellist wife who are asked to do something in the woods involving a logging company and the Indians who are protesting having their trees chopped down. I’m not sure what because I wasn’t listening. Oh, but why send a doctor to do this? Because he’s good with people. Forget the fact that he’s got no experience in environmental science or anything like that (though he inexplicably knows a whole lot about nature-type things, more so as the film moves along). Turns out that something in the water is causing craziness to happen, which the doc is first tipped off to when he sees a duck get eaten by a fish. Which is, ya know, backwards.

Then he sees a five-foot salmon, a giant tadpole, and a pissed off raccoon (which, in my experience, is pretty much every raccoon; seriously, those things have anger issues). While watching this, I kept thinking “Wait, isn’t this supposed to be a horror movie?” Aside from an opening scene in which some bloodhounds pretend to be lemmings, there wasn’t a whole lot of horrific stuff happening. Giant fish? Puhleeze. A five foot salmon only means one thing to me: extra deliciousness.

Oh, but it turns out that eating said salmon is what’s causing all the craziness after all. The Evil Logging Company and their Evil Paper Factory are dumping mercury into the water, the fish live in the mercury, things eat fish, things go crazy, things have ugly devil babies. And just as I was getting into all of the mystery aspects of the film, this happens:

Shit! Did you see that?!

From then on, things take a turn for the worst for everyone involved, especially Sleeping Bag Guy. Because, as you can see, there’s a giant Two Face Bear running around the woods, committing random acts of violence against camping gear enthusiasts and, basically, it’s all us humans’ fault because we cause too much pollution. Where’s Captain Planet when you need him?

Weirdly enough, the second half of the film is when things really start getting bogged down. I was with the film up until this point, but it turns out that John Frankenheimer is better at filming story stuff than, uh, other stuff. Like the scary horror movie stuff which doesn’t ever come off as actually scary. And that’s too bad because the bear is pretty danged awesome (and was created by the apparently awesome Tom Burman) but after the bear attacks a camp, the movie turns into one of those people-walking-through the woods movies and we get lots of shots of people… walking. It’s like Lord of the Rings, but instead of Dwarfs and Elves and Hobbits and Wizards, we get a doctor, a cellist, and a couple of Indians.

That is, until the big finale in which our heroes decide to actually face off against ManBearPig and stop being weenies. Unfortunately, a couple of ‘em get bitch-slapped by a giant bear, ending their life prematurely. (But awesomely. Who wouldn’t want that story associated with their death? “How’d John die?” “Well, he got smacked in the face by a giant mutated bear thing.” “Shit. I’m jealous.”) Luckily, our doctor hero has a hidden talent that involves poking bears in the eye with arrows. The end. OR IS IT?! There’s some other creature that rears its pretty head at the end of the movie, teasing a sequel that, sadly, never happened.

Prophecy is by no means a good movie, though from a guy like John Frankenheimer, I would’ve expected better (although this is by no means his worse movie — here’s lookin’ at you, Reindeer Games!). But still, it’s a helluva much better entry into the just-created Greensploitation drama than, oh let’s say, The Happening.*

*In fact, not only would I rather watch Prophecy than watch The Happening again, but I’d rather get bitch-slapped by Two Face Bear than to watch The Happening again. That’s how much fuck The Happening.

The Happening (2008)

I’m really going to try to be nice about this (at least, nicer than I was on my first attempt).

I’m not sure what happened to the promising young director who brought us The Sixth Sense a few years ago, but surely this atrocity wasn’t really directed by the same guy.

I mean, I’d heard that The Happening was bad, but I didn’t expect this. I’ve always been a fan of M. Night. I mean, I even liked The Lady in the Water, a movie that was pretty much universally hated. So, I thought, maybe when I saw the also-universally-hated The Happening, I’d like it too!

WRONG. The Happening is a terrible movie. This is bad filmmaking on a massive scale. I’m really not sure how somebody didn’t step in at somepoint and say “You know what, Night? What you’re doing right now… not so good.” I don’t know how someone at the studio read this script and greenlighted the movie. I don’t know how the actors were given the script and decided that this was something they’d want to be a part of. I don’t know how those same actors — who are all usually really good — delivered their lines in such an unemotional way (presumably under Night’s direction) without raising a fuss about it.

When you first hear the premise of the movie, it seems intriguing: Some unexplained phenomenon is causing people to off themselves en masse. But once you find out what’s causing this “event” (SPOILER: It’s the fucking trees, exacting their revenge on us for not recycling enough), it’s so stupid and idiotic that you think that it can’t possibly be true. You think — you hope – that maybe Shyamalan is giving us this information (which we hear pretty early on in the film) to throw us off and that he’s going to give us the REAL reason behind what’s happening in one of his signature twist endings.

No such luck. It really is that stupid.

I’d go ahead and make fun of the terrible acting in the movie but it’s almost not worth it. Any actor would have a hard time believably uttering some of the dreadful dialog that Shyamalan fills their mouths with. I mean, this is a cast — Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel, John Leguizamo — that I’d normally get a geek boner for, but they’re all so remarkably bad that you can’t really blame anyone but the director (or their agents, for getting them involved in this shitty script in the first place).

You’d think somebody, at some point, would’ve stepped in and said, “Ya know, Night, what you’re doing right here… not working.”

The Happening is sadly, laughably bad. It’s the kind of movie that, had it been made 50 years ago, could’ve made a contribution as one of my favorite episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Because the only way to be entertained by this movie, in any way, is by making fun of it*.

“A film by M. Night Shyamalan.” Those words used to mean something to me. They used to be a reason to get my butt in the movie theater seat. These days, they still mean something, but they serve as words of warning. Sorry, Night, but you’ve squandered all of the love that you gained with your other films. Next time — if there is a next time — you’re going to have to knock it out of the park to win us back.

*Although, you could also create a pretty effective drinking game with it too. Take a shot every time someone says the word “happening.” You’ll be blitzed in a jiffy.

Fuck this movie.

Vampires (1998)

“How do you like your stake, bitch?!”

That line, uttered by Daniel Baldwin (he’s the fat one!) is either really cheesy or really awesome. I can’t decide.

And that’s sort of the problem that I have with the whole movie.  It’s got a cool concept.  Vampire slayers, hired by the Catholic church, are hunting down the original vampire before he gets his hands on an ancient artifact that will allow him to walk around during the day.  It’s not super-original, but how original can you really get in a vampire movie?  The premise, along with the location (the southwestern desert) has a lot of potential for a pretty unique vampire tale, a vampire Western of sorts.  And that kind of seems to be what John Carpenter was going for here.  Unfortunately, by this point, Carpenter had apparently run his creative well dry, and Vampires is left with no style, no atmosphere and no scares.

Was Carpenter trying to make a non-scary vampire movie or what?  Seriously, the movie plays almost like a straight-forward action movie.  The bad guys just happen to be undead blood-suckers.  And the main villain, a vampire named Valek, (played by Thomas Ian Griffith) is the epitome of a cliched vampire.  He runs around looking like he just bought some new threads at Vampires R’ Us.  Pale skin?  Check.  Dark hair?  Check.  Black clothing?  Check?  Cape?  Erm, how about a flowing black coat instead?

It feels like a movie that some no-name first timer will no real feel for the genre would create.  Not something created by the guy who’s responsible for one of the all time classics.  (After this, Carpenter made Ghosts of Mars so, uh, things could always be worse.)

I watched Vampires with the intention of writing about it for The Moon is a Dead World’s Vampire Blog-A-Thon.  I hadn’t seen the movie since about 10 years ago when it was released on VHS.  And 16 year-old me really liked it.  Unfortunately, it seems, 16-year-old me had pretty bad taste in movies.  Either that, or he just hadn’t seen enough really good stuff to make comparisons with. 

I thought I’d write about Vampires and maybe try to make a case for it as some sort of “lost gem” of horror cinema.  But I just can’t do that.  If the film feels like it hasn’t gotten any love over the past decade it’s because, quite frankly, it doesn’t deserve much.  It’s not exactly an awful film.  It’s just yet another formulaic horror movie that just happens to have a former master’s name attached to the marquee.  In fact, I’d have to say that if Carpenter’s name were not attached, Vampires would’ve become nothing more than a late-night pay cable staple.  As it turns out, it is a late-night pay cable staple.  It’s just one that you kind of wish would’ve turned out a little bit better.

Viewed on DVD (Personal Collection)

The Machine Girl [Kataude mashin gâru] (2008)

If the trailer for The Machine Girl doesn’t make you want to see the movie, then there’s not much that I’d be able to do to change your mind. If that sort of over-the-top, blood-spattered roaring rampage of Japanese revenge doesn’t get your juices flowing, then I’ve got nothin’ for you.

But for those who’ve seen the trailer and are shivering with anticipation, wondering if the film itself is all that the trailer makes it out to be, then I can go ahead and answer that for you with a resounding “Yes.” The Machine Girl is ridiculous. It is over-the-top. It’s a bloody comic book of a movie with no basis in any sort of reality that I’ve ever witnessed. But when you’ve got a protagonist with a machine gun for an arm, what can you really expect? Other than awesome, I mean.

The plot’s pretty simple, and really just serves as an excuse to unleash some bloodletting. Ami and her brother Yu are orphans whose parents offed themselves over shame or something, because they were falsely (?) accused of being murderers. Why are two school-aged kids allowed to live alone together without proper adult supervision? I don’t know. Maybe DSS works differently in Japan. Yu and his friend Takashi are constantly picked on by bullies, the leader of which also happens to be the son of a Yakuza. Yep, we’ve got Yakuza. (Awesome factor just went up a notch.) Oh, and it’s a Yakuza gang that’s descended from a ninja clan. (More awesome.) A ninja clan named after Hatori Hanzo. (Too much awesome… can’t… handle…)

Whew. Okay. So anyways, these bullies basically bully Yu and Takashi to death and Ami’s none too happy about her only living relative ending up on a nosedive from a parking garage. So she seeks revenge, does a decent job of taking on the Yakuza, but not good enough to keep from having her arm lopped off. She eventually escapes and stumbles to the house of Takashi’s parents, a couple of mechanics who wisely sew up Ami’s arm instead of taking her to a hospital. They train in some kung fu type stuff, plot revenge against the Yakuza, and eventually retrofit Ami’s nub with a machine gun.

Unfortunately, it does take about 2/3 of the movie for Ami to get her machine gun arm, but that doesn’t mean that the movie shies away from other gloriously gory fun. Yous till get to see some decapitation, head-knifing, forehead-nailing, and a tempura-fried arm. Which looks delicious. And once Ami does get that arm, all hell breaks loose, as she immediately kills the shit out of some tracksuit-wearing ninjas (in a clip that was released online, almost in its entirety, a few weeks back).

As I said before, the “plot” is nothing more than an excuse to have fun with lots of fake blood. That’s not a complaint, at all. Because in a movie like this, you really watch it for the action scenes. You watch it for the chainsaw battles, the face-exploding, and the pee-pee electrocution. Really, you watch it for the blood. The violence is pretty intense throughout, but is presented in such an exaggerated and unrealistic way that you never really get the feeling that what you’re seeing is real (unlike, say, the Saw or Hostel films, which went for realism). For a more well-known example, think of Kill Bill, particularly the House of Blue Leaves fight sequence that capped off Vol. 1. It’s a big, live-action comic book.

In fact, I’d like to view The Machine Girl as a sort of super-hero origin story, and this is just the beginning of her adventures. This is one of the few cases that calls for a sequel, where we get to see The Machine Girl go on to take on other Yakuza gangs with her weapon of choice. It’d be a blast to follow Ami on even more blood-soaked adventures.

Viewed on DVD (Personal Collection).

From Beyond (1986)

I’m ashamed of myself. Before tonight, I’d painted Stuart Gordon as a one-trick pony. Re-Animator. I’d seen a couple of his other films, like Dagon and Castle Freak, and…well… they were okay. Good enough. But just barely beyond the realm of awful. And his season 1 Masters of Horror episode? That was awful. (I gave up on season two before his episode aired.) But Re-Animator… It’s a classic! How could anything else he made possibly compare to it?

But I’d heard good things about From Beyond. Ever since the DVD was finally released last year, I’d been hearing good things about it and it’s been on my list of DVDs That I Need to Buy One Day. So while I was making a quick trip to Best Buy yesterday to pick up The Machine Girl, I happened to glance over and saw that From Beyond was on sale for a mere $8.99*. How could I resist?!

But after watching it today, I’d have to say that From Beyond is at least as good as Re-Animator, if not better. (Blasphemy? Maybe.) It might not have the fun and re-watchability of the adventures of Herbert West, but in the realm of horror, it’s pretty damned good.

The film opens with a physicist, Crawford Tillinghast (played by the always-great Jeffrey Combs), working on a device called The Resonator, which is supposed to stimulate the brain’s pineal gland, with the hopes of unlocking a “sixth sense.” Instead, he starts to see weird butthole-mouthed eels flying through the air, promptly gets bit by one, and runs downstairs to tell his sadomasochistic colleague, Dr. Pretorius, about his success. Pretorius soon has his head bitten off by interdimensional beings. Which will always ruin your weekend.

And this is all before the opening credits (and apparently, is the entirety of the H.P. Lovecraft story on which the film is based). Everything that happens next is purely the invention of Gordon and his co-writers. And that invention moves into some pretty weird territory that you’d expect from a Cronenberg flick. Add to that the extreme gooey-ness of the creatures and it could pass for one of Cronie’s films from this era.

Naturally, the head-eating creatures from Dimension X are, of course, going to show up again, and they do so in the form of Dr. Pretorius, returning in a monstrous form (which gets increasingly more monstrous as the film goes on) that looks a lot like Grant Grant’s long lost cousin.

Weird stuff abounds. Stuff involving S&M (the pineal gland also controls sex drive), toothed-worm thingies growing out of peoples’ foreheads, flesh-eating flies (?), and Ken Foree in underwear small enough to make me feel a little bit uncomfortable (this was intercut with a scene of Barbara Crampton having her blouse ripped off, only adding to my confusion). And it’s pretty gross but in, you know, an awesome way.

So Basically, What I’m Saying Is: See the movie. I mean, only if you’re into really good, really slimy, really fun, really f’ed up horror movies. Or if you just really wanna see Ken Foree’s junk. Whatever floats your boat.

And Another Thing: The version of the movie that I watched is the Unrated Director’s Cut. Apparently there were several scenes in the movie that the MPAA was none too happy with back in 1986 when the film was released, but those scenes have been put back into the film over two decades later. I couldn’t tell you how this differs from the original version, since this is the only version I’ve ever seen. (There’s a good, short, featurette on the DVD that talks about the hassle of finding and editing the new footage back into the film.) And the DVD looks absolutely incredible. The bright reds and purples that make up the movie’s palette sort of pop off the screen. Buy that shizzle.

*This was a little weird, because the other $8.99 sale items seemed to be marketed as Father’s Day gifts. I can’t imagine giving my dad the gift of From Beyond. But whatever, I lucked out and got it for nine bucks so who am I to argue?

The Strangers (2008)

These days, there seems to be two types of horror films in mainstream America. You’ve got the so-called “torture porn” films like Hostel and Saw. Or you’ve got remakes — either or foreign films like One Missed Call or Shutter*, or of classic horror films, like Prom Night (not that the original Prom Night could really be considered a classic, but you get my point, right?). They’re not always bad movies — though usually they are — but it’s really very seldom that one comes along that’s actually, um, scary. And they’re horror movies, right? Shouldn’t “scary” sort of be the whole endgame?

So when a movie like The Strangers comes along, it’s like a breath of creepy fresh air. I’m not going to say that The Strangers is the second coming of the American horror film or anything, but when a horror movie does so many things right, you can’t help but be giddy about its success (not financially, since the numbers have yet to come out; plus it’s competing against that other horror movie this weekend).

What makes The Strangers work so well is that it takes a decisive 70s approach to horror filmmaking. In particular, I’m thinking of the pre-Jason slashers like, of course, the king Michael Myers himself. A lot of the decisions that are made by the filmmakers in The Strangers seem to stem from a love of John Carpenter’s classic.

The film starts with the audio of a 911 phone call from a couple of kids who find the aftermath of whatever it is that we’re about to see. The kids are freaking out, telling the operator that “There’s blood everywhere!” So we know what we’re in for from the get-go. But then the movie moves into flashback mode and shows our protagonists, James and Kristen, played by Scott Speedman and Liv Tyler (yummy), and we get their backstory (a failed proposal after a friend’s wedding reception followed by some really awkward moments as the couple head to James’ family’s summer home where the celebration of their engagement was supposed to happen) and, well, we actually start caring about the characters. In fact, I was so into what was going on between the two characters that at times I forgot the horribleness that was surely about to come to them.

When the creepiness does begin, it begins with a loud bang on the door. And that just begins to show where the movie really shines. We don’t see everything. In fact, we see very little of the baddies before the finale. But we hear them. A lot. I’d have to say that 75% of the scares in the movie come from the sound design. It kind of brings to mind that old Hitchcockian quote about how what you imagine is always much scarier than what you actually see. But in this case, it’s your imagination wondering just what the hell these people are going to do once they inevitably find their way into James and Kristen’s house?

We hear banging, clanging, feet shuffling across grass, and an old record player that gets used to full effect several times, including the creepiest use of Merle Haggard in a movie ever. Most of the tension comes from the fact that, yeah we hear them, but where are they are what are they doing? It’s the same situation that our victims are in.

So when we do see the baddies, they’re even creepier. They tend to stick to the dark and emerge from the shadows in a very Michael Myers-type way, just emerging from the blackness like they appeared out of nowhere. It also helps that the masks that they wear are really fucking creepy.

Another plus: We don’t have a clue why these masked peoples are doing what they’re doing. Remember in the first Halloween when Michael Myers was killing babysitters just because he was a psychotic killing bastard? You know, before they gave him a sister in part 2? He was scarier then, right? What’s scarier: Someone who’s coming after you for some sort of revenge or vengeance, or someone who’s coming after you just for shits and giggles and because they just enjoy stabbing folks? That’s what we get here: Three masked people who are just screwing with poor James and Kristen just because, well, because they were home. And that’s just… disturbing.

Oh Yeah: When I saw the trailer to this movie, I thought it was a remake to the French home-invasion flick, Ils (aka Them) and I’d actually read on a few horror-themed websites that this was the case, but it just ain’t true. Although the two movies do draw some parallels, The Strangers was actually written two years prior. So don’t get all horror fan huffy puffy and refuse to see The Strangers just because you think it’s yet another Americanizing of a solid foreign horror film. It’s not. It’s a solid horror film in its own right and deserves to be seen, so that director Brian Bertino can go on to creep us out some more in the future. Although when this comes out on DVD, I can’t say that I won’t be watching a Strangers/Them two-fer.

Viewed in a theater (Regal Hollywood 20).

*I accidentally typed “Shitter” here. Freudian slip?