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Posted on September 8, 2015

Post 9-11 Fears and The Village

Gwen

PG-13 | M. Night Shyamalan | 108 min | (USA) | 2004

This review evolved serendipitously as M. Night Shyamalan has a new film coming out this week. The Visit premiers on September 11, 2015 and, in preparation, my cohorts and I decided to review some M. Night Shyamalan films to pump ourselves up. I decided to review my favorite film from the Philadelphia-based director and, upon doing so, I found new meaning in The Village. In anticipation of his new September 11^th release, I fortuitously came across post 9-11 fears emanating throughout The Village.

The Village uses fear to harness its inhabitants. What the elders have in common is that they founded their society after a deep bond of common loss. To do so, they tangentially build upon history books to disseminate stories of a nebulous enemy who lurks beyond their borders. Clear boundaries are drawn throughout the film between one society and another.

Posted on September 4, 2015

Gwen’s Favorite Wes Craven Moments

Gwen

My list is slightly different than Dawn’s and Elizabeth’s. Instead of favorite moments I wanted to point out my favorite things from Wes Craven. If you are familiar with our site you might have come across my top ten horror films at some point. You will notice that People Under the Stairs (1991) is listed as one of my favorite horror films. That being said, I want to pay my respect to Wes Craven not only for making one of my favorite horror films, but also for making my favorite movie monster in Freddy Krueger.

I was a young teen when People Under the Stairs was released and for some reason it resonated with me. This film expressed ideas about suburbia, family, and the upper class that I didn’t know how to articulate at the time. I just knew that I felt like those people (suburban, upper class) weren’t all that better than me, they just hid their crazy a little bit better. People Under the Stairs depicted an exaggerated display of this world on the big screen. This world emulated the world in my mind. It was one where the throw away kids mattered, one where good people looked different and were not always from the top of society. The Robesons’ barbarism and callousness is deeply contrasted by the altruism of Fool (Adams), Alice (Langer), and Roach (Whalen).[i] These three kids learned how to survive their surroundings, help those around them, and make meaningful change.

Posted on August 24, 2015

Sinister 2 (2015) Film Review: The Critics Got It Wrong

Gwen

R | 2015 | 97 min | (USA) | Ciaran Foy

Review: Ripe with commentary on the American family, Sinister 2 is scary but won’t leave you scared.

Synopsis: An abused woman and her twin sons moved into an abandoned home that holds unexpected inhabitants.

Grade: B

Posted on August 24, 2015

Suicide Club (2002) and Noriko’s Dinner Table (2005): Decade Old Films Find New Relevance in the Digital Age

Gwen

Disclaimer: Suicide Club is super weird at times and by weird I mean weird! I literally had a moment of serious jaw dropping, like the first time I watched John Waters’ Pink Flamingos…but I digress. That being said, this film has become a cult classic in its own right and the meaning underlying the film still holds up extremely well today. Now on to Noriko’s Dinner Table (NDT), this prequel fills in necessary gaps but it plays out more like a three hour long drama. So if you are seeking gore or scares, NDT might not be for you. If you skip it, you will still get the gist of Suicide Club.

Aside of the intermittent strangeness, Suicide Club was way ahead of its time. The film investigates a series of suicides sweeping across the nation. In doing so it reveals what happens when there is a break down in connections between people. Both Suicide Club and Noriko’s Dinner Table focus particularly on the loss of connection between family members. In Suicide Club this is visible in the familial interactions for example when the children visibly go on watching television as their father tries to hold a family meeting. Later, this same father comes home and doesn’t even notice his child is completely covered in blood. Noriko’s Dinner Table takes this one step further when both daughters run away to Tokyo to live amongst rental families because their father never understood them. Over and again Noriko and her sister Yuka make it clear how disconnected they felt from their father.

Posted on August 20, 2015

Sinister (2012) Offers an Unintentional Hero

Gwen

It goes without saying that mothers bear the brunt of blame in horror films. Most often it’s monstrous mothers to blame for allowing evil into the sacred temple of the family home. Sinister is one of the few films centered on the ineffective father. More importantly, it is part of a smaller subsect of horror films that critiques the biological father rather than the interloping step-father. Scholars such as Vivian Sobchack and Tony Williams suggest that the horrific father is often indicative of challenged patriarchal power. If indeed this is correct, then who is challenging the power and why?