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Posted on May 11, 2016

Ben Wheatley’s High-Rise: Pretty but Empty

Dawn Keetley

Synopsis: Although Tom Hiddleston is brilliant as its shiny, empty protagonist, High-Rise is tedious, pretentious and, well, empty.

I am an avid fan of Ben Wheatley’s Kill List (2011) and so was eagerly awaiting his latest film, High-Rise, which is based on J. G. Ballard’s 1975 novel of the same name. I was sorely disappointed: High-Rise is a pretentious and pointless film. It somehow manages to be heavy-handed in its attempted allegory and empty of any actual meaning. It was boring; I hated every single character; and I found myself asking every few minutes why I was still watching.

High-Rise begins at the end, with its bloodied protagonist, Dr. Robert Laing (played very effectively by the talented Tom Hiddleston), roasting a dog on top of a high-rise apartment building in some faceless urban landscape. The film then backtracks to the months of chaos and violence that ravaged the apartment block—spurious class conflict enflamed by the perpetual confinement of the high-rise. Indeed, the best part of the film may be the towering figure of the building itself, which is all-encompassing: we only ever see fleeting and partial glimpses of the world beyond, and that exterior landscape only ever appears in the frame with the high-rise (one part of the film I did love, actually). Read more

Posted on May 8, 2016

Holidays (2016)

Dawn Keetley

Holidays, released in April 2016, is a horror anthology featuring eight short films (which I’ll list with directors at the end). Since I’m not a huge fan of anthologies, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this one—and that’s in large part due to the strong narrative continuities that bind the individual films together. Collectively, they (1) illuminate the often primitive violence that still lurks beneath our holidays rituals; (2) showcase the power of body horror; and (3) make strikingly clear that a major gender transformation is not happening but has already happened in horror.

(1) Three of the films explicitly take up the rituals surrounding some of our most vaunted holidays, now more often than not papered over with Hallmark cards and polite, well-coiffed brunches in expensive restaurants. Read more

Posted on May 6, 2016

S. A. Bodeen’s The Detour—Including Thoughts from the Author

Dawn Keetley

I’ve read a fair amount of young adult fiction of late, most of it with a leaning toward the horror genre (not surprisingly). The Detour by S. A. Bodeen, published in 2015, is one of the few that has really stayed with me.

After thinking about it—on and off—for several days, I realized that part of the reason the novel wasn’t letting go of me was that it featured a distinctly unlikable protagonist. The Detour also raises important questions that (even more importantly) are not resolved and perhaps don’t even have clear answers. The Detour thus stretches what can sometimes be the often rather suffocating confines of YA literature, with its firmly drawn moral boundaries and clear resolutions. Read more

Posted on May 3, 2016

First Look: Beacon Point (2016)

Elizabeth Erwin

Update: Beacon Point will premiere in LA at Dances with Films on Friday, June 10th @ 11:30pm at the Chinese Theater. Get tickets here.

There has been a trend in recent years for American horror films to offer audiences either a cerebral horror experience or one steeped in gory visuals. But as a fan of the ways in which both modes of storytelling can offer a deeply personalized viewing experience, I’ve been waiting for a film to merge both approaches successfully. Beacon Point, director Eric Blue’s first foray into feature filmmaking, is that film.

We are first introduced to Zoe (Rae Olivier), who impulsively quits her job to embark on a group hike on the Appalachian Trail. She is joined in this adventure by a rag tag group of equally inexperienced hikers: Dan (Eric Goins), a Silicon Valley success story dealing with a recent divorce, along with Brian (Jason Burkey) and Cheese (RJ Shearer), two recently reunited brothers. As they are led off the beaten trail by their secretive tour guide Drake (Jon Briddell), a series of grisly discoveries sets the stage for a terrifying adventure that lingers with you long after the ending credits have rolled.

Posted on May 2, 2016

Echoes of Horror: Short Cut

Gwen

Earlier this week I was asked to create a twenty minute training presentation as part of a job interview. In their gross misstep, I was encouraged to train the team on “anything”. It was mentioned that previous candidates had done trainings on how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, or even how to do the perfect round house kick. Bouncing between ideas of how to cast spells from Harry Potter and teaching the team how to count and sex horseshoe crabs, (if you had any doubt about my nerd credentials, I believe this confirms it) I opted to go with a power point presentation on “How To Survive an 80s Horror Film”.

While working on the presentation, I found myself thinking about the ways that horror permeates broader culture. It is a well-known fact that there have been several horror comedy films and spoofs such as the Scary Movie franchise. But that is too obvious. Likewise, hip hop has borrowed elements of horror for emphasis within rap lyrics.[i] I looked back on my many nights watching USA Up All Night with Rhonda Shear and I immediately thought about the film Summer School (1987). For all you fans of Agent Gibbs on NCIS, this film is worth a look. More important to this brief analysis, are the characters of Chainsaw (Cameron) and Dave (Riley).

Chainsaw and Dave are presented as a little left of center at first. In an attempt to impress a beautiful foreign exchange student, they put on a display that involves lots of fake blood and some vicious bunnies. Only to be met with the source of their inspiration, Anna-Maria (Udenio) saying, “It’s disgusting…I love it!” These guys don’t fit the mold, none of the kids in Summer School do, not even the teacher. They might love prosthetic limbs, gore, and outlandish attire, but they are really good kids. More prominently, Chainsaw and Dave are able to turn negative labels on their ear by challenging the principal’s assessment of the kids as “psychopaths”. Read more