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Posted on February 20, 2017

XX: What’s in the Box?

Dawn Keetley

XX, from XYZ Films and Magnet Releasing, features four short films all directed and written by women: indeed, it is the first ever all-female horror anthology. “The Box” is written and directed by Jovanka Vuckovic (“The Captured Bird”) and based on the enigmatic short story by Jack Ketchum. “The Birthday Party” is co-written by Roxanne Benjamin and Annie Clark and directed by Clark (in her directorial debut). “Don’t Fall” is written and directed by Roxanne Benjamin (Southbound, V/H/S, and V/H/S/2). And “Her Only Living Son” is written and directed by Karyn Kusama (Jennifer’s Body and The Invitation).

Since the quality of the films in anthologies are typically uneven, I was pleasantly surprised by the high quality of all four of the short films in XX: they are all well-directed, well-written, well-acted, and all four of them offer something—some enigma—to think about after the film ends. In fact, that’s how I’d sum up what ties the films together, which is perhaps indicated in the title: each film introduces a mystery that remains a mystery—a kind of gap or hole in the story that doesn’t get filled in. X, as it were, marks the spot. X marks this central and provocative absence.

The two best entries, the two richest and most thought-provoking, are those that frame the anthology—Vuckovic’s “The Box” and Kusama’s “Her Only Living Son.”

Posted on February 6, 2017

Don’t Knock Twice and the New Horror of Motherhood

Dawn Keetley

Don’t Knock Twice is an interesting film that is lifted up by its exceptional performances and cinematography and by the way it taps into what I think is an intriguing new trend in horror film: the horror of motherhood.

Directed by talented Welsh filmmaker Caradog W. James (best known for the 2013 sci-fi film The Machine), Don’t Knock Twice centers on the relationship of Jess (Katee Sackhoff, of Battlestar Galactica) and the teenage daughter she abandoned nine years ago, Chloe (Lucy Boynton). The film opens with Chloe and her boyfriend Danny (Jordan Bolger) being inexplicably drawn to a house nearby where a woman named Mary Aminov used to live. Convinced that, years ago, she kidnapped and killed a boy who lived in their group home, Chloe and Danny harassed her long after the police decided they had no case. They drove her, it seems, to suicide, and now a legend has flourished that something demonic lives in her house. If you knock twice on the door, it will come to get you. Danny, of course, knocks twice. And then the demonic witch comes to get him. In terror, Chloe flees to her mother’s home—even though she had earlier brutally refused Jess’s plea that Chloe come live with her. But the witch pursues Chloe even to her mother’s house—and so Jess ends up fighting for her daughter’s life.

Posted on January 23, 2017

The Rezort: The Conflicted Politics of Zombie Film

Dawn Keetley

The Rezort advertises itself as Jurassic World meets The Walking Dead and, while it has little in common with AMC’s blockbuster series, it is a lot like Jurassic World (and perhaps even more like Jurassic Park).

The film is set ten years after a virus has killed billions of the earth’s inhabitants and transformed them into zombies. As in World War Z (2013), the humans fought back and, finally, after a devastating war, conquered the undead. The last few remaining zombies are confined to one lone island, the expensive and luxurious Rezort, where survivors can pay to hunt them. The film opens with a group of survivors assembling at the Rezort for their shot at working out their anger and grief on the cause of humanity’s devastation. One of them, however, in a plot device that blends Jurassic Park (1993) and 28 Days Later (2002), turns out to be a member of “Living 2”—an “Undead Rights Activist,” and in downloading files from the Rezort’s system, she introduces a virus. When the group is on the island, the virus causes the safety systems to shut down. As the undead are freed from their enclosures, the group of vacationers have to battle them in earnest.

Posted on January 16, 2017

The Bye Bye Man: Ideas Are Real

Dawn Keetley

The Bye Bye Man is a decent horror film. I can’t say it’s terribly innovative but it was enjoyable enough—and interesting enough—for me to recommend it.

In some ways, The Bye Bye Man feels like something of a throwback to the 1990s and early 2000s. It evoked Candyman (1992), Final Destination (2000), and The Ring (2002)—with a nod to the more recent Slenderman mythology.

Posted on January 11, 2017

Why Don’t Breathe is Way Better Than Conjuring 2

Dawn Keetley

I finally got around to watching two films that kept turning up on the best horror of 2016 lists—and while I could not agree more that Fede Alvarez’s Don’t Breathe belongs at the top of that list, James Wan’s The Conjuring 2 shouldn’t even be up for consideration.

The only things that really excited me about Conjuring 2 were the mid-1970s English setting of the film, which felt very authentic—the clothes, the school satchels, the cars, the music, the posters of Starsky and Hutch—and the genuinely creepy nun (and, sure enough, there’s a spin-off called The Nun in the works; doesn’t anyone remember how horrible Annabelle was?). Aside from that, Conjuring 2 was a huge disappointment, and not least because it served up exactly the same plot as The Conjuring (James Wan, 2013).