You're Next - Checked this out because it was by the director of The Guest and I was quite pleasantly surprised by what he did with what I thought was a pretty hackneyed horror premise (family under siege by malicious, murderous home invaders). After seeing this Adam Wingard is definitely on my radar as a hidden gem of a horror auteur! What really makes this one work is the interactions between the bourgeois family under siege from the scary animal mask people, before the action starts the battle lines are drawn and you know exactly who hates who and how much. The petty bickering of the family is genuinely funny and entertaining and likely could have sustained a movie by itself, the obnoxious successful brother is particularly good. The family rivalries are worked into the larger plot and themes well, and the various turns in the plot proceed logically from there. Though Erin's backstory is a bit of a contrived way to frame her as a more lethal Kevin McCallister she makes an effective protagonist as an audience cipher, being the character most divorced from the family's internal politics. The invaders work well enough as antagonists, though they are prone to superhuman horror movie contrivances at time. Great gore effects and kills, the way the violence invades the idyllic bourgeois space and quickly turns it from an oasis of upper middle class tranquility to an abattoir is genuinely rattling, especially as the film progresses and the violence becomes more reciprocal and is often inflicted by these upper class creature comforts. And between all this weighty thematic stuff is tightly plotted suspense that will have you constantly doing a mental inventory of where you last saw one of the bad guys and where they might be lurking next in the house, the geography of which is very well thought out and creates a great sense of place and space for you to imagine horrible things jumping out of the shadows from. Great fun! ***1/2 out of ****
We Need to Talk About Kevin - Other half of my Halloween double feature. Kind of a "horror drama," Tilda Swinton plays a mother whose teenage son Kevin has committed a massacre. Her deteriorating mental and emotional state is told through fractured time, flashing back to Kevin as a baby, toddler, child and preteen from the present as we watch how this child came, or perhaps always was, such a monster. This is a slow movie and it was late and I dozed a few times, but its really good at building an atmosphere of dread. For most of the movie we know that Kevin did something horrible, but not exactly what, and major characters appearing in the flashback sequences but not in the "present" makes for some effective foreshadowing. Swinton's performance is really great and really is what makes this a good movie rather than just a passable one. Her range of emotion seems very genuine and realistic for a mother whose child is, frankly, a little fucking demon, seeming to openly hate him at times but not able to let go of her maternal instincts. It's a genuinely disturbing meditation on parenthood that will make you think twice about having kids. The actors that play child Kevin and teenage Kevin are also really good, and the dead eyed nonchalant evil they imbue the character with makes you wonder if something demonic is happening here. John C. Reilly is okay enough as the dad but is mostly window dressing. While there's not a whole lot of movies about the teenage massacre that's become so common these days, what makes this one unique among the others is how the focus is on the family (specifically the mother) of the killer and their "role" in the incident, from how they brought up their child to how it affects them after its over. This one gets under your skin, though its definitely something of a slow burn - a bit slow to get started. *** out of ****
The House by the Cemetery - The last in Lucio Fulci's "Gates of Hell" trilogy, this was the last film in an all night horror fest I went to awhile back but wasn't able to stay until 3 AM to watch this one. Had high hopes since the other film I've seen in the unofficial trilogy, The Beyond, was really really fucking great. Unfortunately can't quite say the same for this one from what I saw (missed the end). Opens with some great Fulci gore but then they really take their foot off the accelerator and just start coasting. Like I said above I fell asleep before the ending so maybe I was too tired to really keep up but the plot is mostly incomprehensible, not in the cool The Beyond way either. Some guy is looking for a mysterious thing and a family moved into a new house but how they're really related is really anyone's guess. Whereas Fulci's most successful films like this rely on a sort of "dream logic" where everything makes sense on film even though it really doesn't on paper, this one fills more like an investigative mystery at the start and as such its kind of frustrating and stupid that nothing makes any sense. And while they're never really anything to write home about the English dub in this one is just laughably bad, the kid (why is he wearing lipstick btw) sounds like a 16 year old girl. Sick score though, as is typical for Fulci, though the epic Fabio Frizzi didn't do this one. Will try to finish this one up so I can give a more complete impression, but tentatively I give this one ** out of ****
