I liked this movie. I liked it in whole and in parts - meaning I enjoyed the film as a whole (and have watched it several times, inflicting it on various friends...), but there were touches in it that really creeped me, and that isn't something that happens every day.
The film is your basic teenagers on the way home from the prom get lost and stuck and run into spooky family in the middle of nowhere - mayhem ensues. Actually, this is the movie I thought of (fondly) when I first heard about "House of 1000 Corpses". I like this movie much better, and not just because I REALLY want to bring it to a "Matthew McConaghy Fan Club" movie night.
(SPOILERS)
It's the details that make this movie. The wall of drivers' licenses that you can see in the background in one room of the creepy family's house, which implies they've been at this for a while. The filthy bathroom where you can't see the human skin hanging on the back of the door until you're already inside with the door closed.
I've always found it hard to imagine a female villain character who actually "works" in a movie like this, unless she's either essentially browbeaten and incapable of individual action, or is utterly, irredeemably psychotic. This movie has a creepy female character who both casually flashes passersby from her office window (explaining only that she just got implants and everyone seems to want to see them) and flirts with cops while she has a girl tied up in her trunk. She also gives a variety of weird "conspiracy theory"ish explanations for why she goes along with what the spooky family does.
Most unusual of all is the weird guy in the limousine who shows up for no particular reason and implies that he put these people here for some reason - presumably to generate exactly the type of urban legends they are generating - and who might be.... Satan? Some underling, anyway. Maybe Ranger Asmodeus (from Equinox) has a cousin. ..
The movie left me wondering - in the best possible way. Not the usual "why did they make this?" or "how could they have thought this was good?" But instead "who is that guy? Does he have other enclaves of evil out there just waiting for his visits?" and "that woman - was she a victim at one point who talked her way into joining them as a survival mechanism, and then convinced herself that it was OK?"
Ya know?
The film is your basic teenagers on the way home from the prom get lost and stuck and run into spooky family in the middle of nowhere - mayhem ensues. Actually, this is the movie I thought of (fondly) when I first heard about "House of 1000 Corpses". I like this movie much better, and not just because I REALLY want to bring it to a "Matthew McConaghy Fan Club" movie night.
(SPOILERS)
It's the details that make this movie. The wall of drivers' licenses that you can see in the background in one room of the creepy family's house, which implies they've been at this for a while. The filthy bathroom where you can't see the human skin hanging on the back of the door until you're already inside with the door closed.
I've always found it hard to imagine a female villain character who actually "works" in a movie like this, unless she's either essentially browbeaten and incapable of individual action, or is utterly, irredeemably psychotic. This movie has a creepy female character who both casually flashes passersby from her office window (explaining only that she just got implants and everyone seems to want to see them) and flirts with cops while she has a girl tied up in her trunk. She also gives a variety of weird "conspiracy theory"ish explanations for why she goes along with what the spooky family does.
Most unusual of all is the weird guy in the limousine who shows up for no particular reason and implies that he put these people here for some reason - presumably to generate exactly the type of urban legends they are generating - and who might be.... Satan? Some underling, anyway. Maybe Ranger Asmodeus (from Equinox) has a cousin. ..
The movie left me wondering - in the best possible way. Not the usual "why did they make this?" or "how could they have thought this was good?" But instead "who is that guy? Does he have other enclaves of evil out there just waiting for his visits?" and "that woman - was she a victim at one point who talked her way into joining them as a survival mechanism, and then convinced herself that it was OK?"
Ya know?