smithyofhersoul Reviews

Evil Dead (2013)

Dim-witted dubebro schlock

[1/10 · 19 April 2013]

You know how some films are so bad, they back unwittingly into genius? Well, this rehash of Sam Raimi's 'Evil Dead' is definitely not one of them. The only thing this film backs unwittingly into is dim-witted, wooden dudebro schlock, so profoundly disengaging and ultimately unsatisfying that at one point I actually started composing haiku to its monumental awfulness on my mobile phone.

Perhaps I'm a little bias: I've got to admit I find scenes of violence towards women rather hard to take, and the horror-genre's disproportionate fondness for them, kind of troubling. I must make a distinction here, though, between violence justified by narrative and handled with tension, realism and empathy; and the violence of your typical 'torture porn' which is unmotivated, unrelenting and gleefully gratuitous. 'Evil Dead' falls into this latter category with the hollow splash of a turd landing in a hot-tub.

Don't get me wrong, I love the horror genre; that's why this kind of hackneyed nonsense is so depressing. And I had hopes too. I even dared to dream that this remake might improve upon or address some of things that bothered me about the original. Nope. How wrong can a person be? What distinguished Raimi's 'Evil Dead' was its inventive playfulness; a kind of B-movie shoe-string baroque. Silly, unquestionably, and of its time (with all the sexploiation undertones that this implies) absolutely, but a credible achievement nonetheless for its day. It was eager and engaging and weird as all get out. It didn't take itself too seriously either; it had (odd as this may sound) a quirky, dirty charm to it, and so a person was more willing to go with Raimi (and Campbell) and just ride the wave.

It's successor, though? Honestly, I don't even know where to start. The acting was unforgivably bad. And no, I'm not about to tell you that Bruce Campbell bestrode the known Thespian world like a colossus, but I am saying that when Alvarez decided to raise the emotional register and stakes of the film (Jane Levy's character, 'Mia' going cold turkey, the uneasy relationship between Mia and her estranged brother David, played by Shilho Fernandez) he needed to be sure that he had actors who could pull it off... He didn't. The supporting performances were risibly insipid and undistinguished, but in all fairness to Jessica Lucas and Elizabeth Blackmore they didn't have much to do but shout and die, horribly. Lou Taylor Pucci fares a little better, in that he actually gets to do a bit of toothless and unconvincing dudebro bonding, and display some actual emotions (fear, annoyance, and what is maybe meant to be confusion) before dying, horribly.

Sigh. To be honest, though, and to give the actors the benefit of the doubt, the dialogue was so silted and lacklustre, the characterisation so minimal and so poor, that there was really very little they could have done with it. Mia was the only protagonist with even so much as a semi-fleshed-out back-story or any distinguishing traits at all, and thus the only one of five (if you don't count the dog) who it was remotely possible to care about in any way. It's probably for this reason alone that Jane Levy's performance wasn't as abysmally bad as her co-stars.

The 'plot' really wasn't much better. What I'd hoped for, and what the trailers, and the way the film was being talked-up, seemed to suggest, was that this version would elaborate and lend substance to the more interesting and off-the-wall aspects of the original story... It doesn't... In any way... Shape... Or form. All it does is rehash the same scenarios, while sloshing round plenty of self-indulgent school-boy gore, with scant regard for things like basic human biology, the tensile strength of metals (hands are not detachable, electric carving knives can't cut through bone, car batteries are not a valid substitute for a defibrillator), or the dignity of women (yes, that scene is still there and still as well-handled as ever, also: nail gun to the face). And yeah, I get that the original had moments of utter idiocy, but what is forgivable in the context of a seventies b-movie, is not so acceptable to the twenty-first century sensibility, not with the bloated budgets of most modern horrors. What directors of such films would do well to realise is that a 'remake' doesn't just mean 'the same but bloodier'. To be truly credible, relevant and engaging to today's more sophisticated- jaded even- pallet, you need to bring a new dimension to the story, at the very least you need to tell it better. Rob Zombie's 'Halloween' franchise does this; Alexandre Aja's take on 'The Hills Have Eyes' wasn't a total loss either. In a cultural climate all ready saturated with better examples of the 'remake' genre Alvarez's film looks like little more than a cynical attempt to cash in on a trend. It evinces little love for the original, or for the poor audience who forked over time and money they won't get back to go and see this execrable bunkum.

I wanted to like this film, I really did, but can only see it appealing to teenage boys, or boy-children of limited intelligence and sensitivity.

The Wicker Tree (2011)

precious little power in the blood

[1/10 · 20 August 2012]

Although 'The Wicker Tree' is not the worst film I've ever seen- the dubious honour of that title goes to 'The Haunted House of Horror' (Tigon, 1969) – it is possibly the most disappointing. Disappointing, in the first instance, because it bills itself as the true spiritual successor (rather than straight sequel) to 1973's seminal cult horror classic 'The Wicker Man' and then fails, in every conceivable sense, to live up to either the standard or the spirit of the original. Disappointing too because a watch-through reveals some striking and genuinely scary ideas obscured beneath clumsy scripting, clunking, unimaginative direction and acting so wooden you could plane it, varnish it, and wind up with a nice set of bookshelves.

This execrable film is actually written by Robin Hardy. Yes, the Robin Hardy, who directed its 1973 predecessor. It is adapted from his 2006 novel, 'Cowboys for Christ', and, to be fair to Hardy, it is easy to imagine how the various strands of spoof, satire, social commentary, and creepily unsettling suspense-horror, might very well combine on the printed page as compelling (albeit rather far-fetched) muti-layered pulp-fiction. The script however is a disaster; it does not allow for sufficient treatment or integration of the various themes Hardy is trying to tease out, and the acting and direction are far from subtle enough to lend even the most fleeting suspension of disbelief to what is, let's be honest, a pretty silly story.

Don't get me wrong, 'The Wicker Man' would be devilishly hard to live up to no matter who was taking a crack at it. For a kick off it is deservedly regarded as a classic of the genre; its various idiosyncrasies and absurdities (Ekland's 'Scottish' accent, the sometimes brilliant but at others rather hokey acoustic music, Christopher Lee in a dress, etc) are choreographed to a slow-building perfect storm of morally unsettling, ultimately shocking horror. It is, in short, a tough act to follow. Secondly, there is the practical problem that once Edward Woodward's Christan copper was consigned to the flames in1973, and the true facts about Summerisle revealed in all their barbarous folk-art glory, there is very little left for a successor to play with, in terms of creating tension and suspense. These things rely, after all, on a fruitful friction between disclosure and restraint, of the terrible truth being revealed by tortuously slow degrees, one step out of sync with viewer comprehension. From 'The Wicker Tree' we all ready know what to expect: a neo-pagan community with a blood-thirsty penchant for human sacrifice. Before the film even starts there is precious little left to surprise the audience with.

Not that this need necessarily lead to a bad film. Needn't, but does. Mc Tavish does a passably creepy and cruel Sir Lachlan Morrison, and David Plimmer's prophet has curious pathos. Neither character, however, is given enough space to develop; they're just 'there', serving only to shunt the action from one ponderous scene to another. In the meantime the poor audience are stuck with 'Beth' and 'Steve' (Brittania Nicol and Henry Garrett respectively), every bit as characterless as their names imply. They're supposed to be Christian Evangelists from the heart of the bible-belt, but there's no credibly zealous passion in their dialogue. They're supposed to be in love, but watching them embrace is like watching the fumbling of two malfunctioning automata. Good actors could have made the viewer care about their ultimate fate, but 'Beth' and 'Steve' are so dim-witted, dull and two-dimensional; their characterisation so completely lacklustre, that there is none of the emotional investment that would have provided this film with a much needed frisson.

Also, one wonders if Hardy had his best thinking cap on when transposing the action from the island of Summerisle to mainland Scotland 'on the border with England'. The Summerisle scenario worked, after all, because it was geographically and culturally remote; because the mainland police had traditionally little jurisdiction there, and the murderous practices initiated by the Laird were allowed to develop unobserved and unchecked. This would simply not be possible on the mainland. Also, the Scottish Lowlands still have quite a strong Christian identity, far from the atheistic disinterest or reinvented Paganism suggested by the film. It's not, whichever way you slice it, a credible setting, and although you can read in it Hardy's desire not to get bogged down in making a canonical 'sequel', it can also be less charitably read as a flimsy way of excusing the dreadful 'Scottish' accents of many of the cast, most notably Honeysuckle Weeks, whose attempted portrayal of a sympathetic seductress is about as convincing as corn-syrup blood and as erotic as corrugated cardboard.

Again, though, the film could still have been saved by strong central performances and some sensitive direction to draw out the good ideas lurking in the background. The prayer meeting scene, for example, when the residents of Tressock become disconcertingly enthused by that old Christian hymn 'There is Power in the Blood' could not only have provided some ominous and atmospheric horror, but also cast satirical light on the hypocrisy of Christianity, a religion of 'peace', steeped in images of blood and sacrifice every bit as horrifying as the Pagans of Summerisle or Tressock are used to. Beth's struggle to come to terms with her former 'trailer trash' image could, if handled correctly, also have been used to make some interesting points about the shallow and commercial nature of modern 'faith', while giving depth to her character. Nicol's acting wasn't up to it, sadly. Neither was Garrett's when it came to his own dance with temptation. The best the pair of them ever managed was to look as conflicted as a person choosing between different brands of fabric softener. Neither of their deaths mean very much because as characters they were barely alive to being with.

In short then, this film promises much and delivers spectacularly little. It is hammy, hackneyed and thoroughly uninspiring. Sorry.

Horror House (1969)

compellingly awful, consistently cretinous

[1/10 · 10 September 2010]

Wow. Incredible. I have just got through (and believe me that is the correct expression) watching this with my husband and feel that I can now say without fear of exaggeration that it is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the most stupid film I have ever seen. Okay, I am willing to concede that it might not actually be the most stupid film in the world, but I do have a hard time imagining anything more consistently cretinous. To be fair, though, that could just be because the human brain was never designed to conceive of idiocy of that magnitude without literally imploding from the impossible and unbearable strain.

The premise is simple: a gaggle of hip, swinging-sixties socialites are induced to leave a happening party in the middle of the night (for reasons that are never adequately or convincingly explained), to drive, for miles, in the dark, to the far less salubrious surroundings of a deserted, reputedly haunted manor house slap-bang in a wooded square acre of nowhere. What follows has a numbing inevitability about it, not helped by the fact that the 'haunted house' has all the atmosphere of a Wetherspoons pub, or that the ensuing antics of the actors are so whimsically asinine that you often wonder if you're not watching an episode of Hollyoaks where the cast have unwittingly invented time travel.

That is not to say that the acting was the worst thing about this film. The continuity errors are so numerous that they could form the basis of the most liver-punishing 'have a shot when you spot one' drinking game ever devised, and the script seems to exist with the sole purpose of propelling the cast through an increasingly nonsensical series of events, the downward spiral of which is only ever briefly punctuated by bouts of jaunty inanity or otherwise motiveless dialogue. And yes, I know a great deal of the horror genre's dramatic tension derives from the protagonists making bad choices and doing stupid things, but the decision-making process depicted in this film wouldn't make sense anywhere outside the confines of an insane asylum, and if your dog behaved with such flagrant dim-wittedness you'd shoot it to put it out of its misery. I kid you not: They not only decide to visit the house in the first place, but after one of their number is murdered and they know that a member of the remaining five is responsible they decide to cover up said murder and continue associating with each other, returning, in fact, to the scene of the crime at a later date and repeating their actions in order to discover the identity of the killer. Yes, that's right, they voluntarily lock themselves in to a structurally unsound horror house where they saw a close friend murdered with the probable killer in order to solve? the crime? Never before has the phrase WTF? been so aptly applied.

Not that this is an adequate description of the sheer range of stupidity on offer. My personal favourite is the group 'bitch', Sylvia, who displays great promise in the field of utter stark-staring twittery very early on, continually accepting lifts from a man who is, to all intents and purposes, stalking her. She later goes for gold, achieving a personal best of leaving the house where she has only recently, voluntarily arrived because she is too scared (or 'bored' as she puts it), only to walk miles in the dark through a wooded area that is previously unknown to her, dressed in platform boots and white Mary Quant mini dress, looking for all the world like a futuristic prostitute. She then proceeds to hitch a lift with a perfect stranger. Sheer genius. Another example of barefaced unabashed full-frontal empty-headedness is the group standing around discussing complicity in the murder of their friend outside the police station where they have been brought for questioning. It was at this point I did start to wonder if I was watching a film at all and not some celluloid decent in to madness, either that or a very subtle (albeit bizarre) form of anti-drugs propaganda.

There are yet many other rare gems on offer, but it is only fair that you are allowed to discover them for yourself. This film is, after all, a rare cultural artefact, crystallising as it does the essence of all that is gleefully crapulent in sixties cinema. Truly, like a major road traffic accident, it is compellingly awful, and as such to be saluted.