The Blair Witch Offspring, part 2 - ALTERED (2006)

Part 2 of this year's reviews of The Blair Witch Offspring focuses on the first movie that Eduardo Sanchez made after the unexpected success of The Blair Witch Project.  Much like our previous offspring Lovely Molly, Altered showed at some festivals before getting picked up by a major distributor who plopped it out on DVD with little fanfare (as was the case with every other Blair Witch Offspring).  While Blair Witch and Molly both relied on slowly unveiling mysterious supernatural presences, Altered rips the guts out of that concept and tells its buddies to get on their hunting gear.  Strap on some goggles, this is going to be messy.

In the wilds of Deep, South South, three good ol' boys, Cody (Not John Hawkes), Duke (Not Danny McBride), and Otis (Not Real-Life Steelworker From The Deer Hunter), are hunting unusual game.  Sporting modified weapons they go after something not quite animal but certainly not human, finally capturing it and bringing it to the fortified doorstep of Wyatt (Not I Ran Out Of Actors).  All of them are connected by this thing, connected by the alien race it comes from, connected by a history of abduction and death.  Wyatt has a particular connection to the alien, as his encounter was more drawn out than the others and left him with an organic, psychic communication device in his intestines, and despite having ripped it out years ago he still senses the presence of the aliens.  Nobody quite knows what to do with the wounded alien, and the E.T.-cidal wishes of Cody, whose brother was killed by the aliens long ago, aren't helping things.  Neither is the fact that the alien was able to hypnotize Wyatt's wife into nearly letting it go.  Or the local sheriff (the older police captain from The Cell) showing up investigating a "hostage situation".  Neither is the fact that Cody has gotten infected by an alien disease/parasite that starts eating away at his skin.

I was a bit worried about this flick before I first saw it, mostly because it was before I'd seen Lovely Molly and the only trailer I'd seen for it didn't show a single frame of real footage, leading me to believe that its distributors, Rogue Pictures, thought they had a stinker on their hands.  I was delighted to find that not only is the film really good but it wasn't at all a found footage movie, showing that Eduardo Sánchez was able to make the leap to real cameras and proper shot framing and narrative structure with aplomb.  The script here is credited entirely to Jamie Nash and it does a great job of showing the real weight these men have on their shoulders because of their experiences, as well as the terror of an enemy snooping on their planet to see if humans should be left alive.  While this is another movie filled with crass hillbillies arguing with each other the acting and dialogue is good enough that they come across as very real people with decades of comradery between them.  The effects are great, both the aliens and the copious amounts of gore (the aliens have a penchant for ripping out people's small intestines in order to attach the tracking devices).  Particularly impressive is what happens to Cody, as his affliction gradually eats away his flesh during the movie and his appearance during the climax is both impressive and haunting.  I'll admit that the alien design isn't anything I haven't seen before but it's very well executed for such a low-budget flick.  There's a lot of great cinematography on display, most notably the entrancingly clear night sky crammed with stars, an effect people only get to see when far away from society but in the context of story means that the characters are anything but alone.  If you've got a hankering for alien-based horror and a strong stomach hunt down Altered for a wild-'n'-vicious ride.  You weren't planning on keeping your small intestines, were you?

(See, if I'd seen this trailer first I might have seen this flick sooner, Rogue.)

~PNK

The Blair Witch Offspring, part 1 - LOVELY MOLLY (2011)

Anybody who's been subjected to my gaping maw flapping on about horror movies knows that I'm a huge fan of The Blair Witch Project, so much so that I bought a CD pitched as an alternative soundtrack to the film (which notably has no music) for a review without hesitation.  While luck might have played a significant role in the film's success I still think it's one of the best horror films of the last 20 years and it's still one of all-time favorites after more than a dozen viewings.  It's also a good example of a great film with two directors at the helm, first-timers Eduardo Sánchez and Daniel Myrick, who each went on to have successful solo careers in low-budget genre cinema.  I've been trying to track down and watch all the movies each director separately made after Blair Witch in the hopes that they're worthwhile and the two I've seen, both directed by Sánchez, are very good and quite different from each other, and I'm reviewing both of them in the days preceding Halloween.  One is a puzzle and the other a battle, so let's start with the puzzle, 2011's Lovely Molly.

No production logo, no "Some Guy Presents", nothing - the film begins with a smash cut to home video footage of Molly (Gretchen Lodge) tearfully pleading to whoever might be watching about "it"'s actions, and then puts a knife to her throat.  She can't go through with it, but that's just for now.  The film flashes back to Molly's recent wedding, and then to Molly's new life in her family's large, old home with her husband Tim (Johnny Lewis).  Late one night their security alarm goes off and they find their front door opened, but nobody is found by the police.  Molly starts exploring the house with her camcorder, making her way into an old shack and prying some floorboards up to see what's underneath.  She finds a strange insignia or crest, showing two horse heads attached to a sword, and her private humming is met by unknown voices.  It's not the only secret the house holds, as Molly can't bear to stay in certain rooms, especially those with pictures and knickknacks of her troubled, recently deceased parents.  Molly's unease about her new living situation isn't helped by an unknown person rattling her back door so hard it makes a deafening noise, nor do her husband's frequent work-related absences and her crudbomb job as a mall custodian.  The disturbances escalate, sending Molly looking into closet to find walking nightmares and filming inside her neighbors' houses late at night, and Tim returns to find her naked and freezing cold, staring at nothing, saying "he's alive."  Molly's malaise turns physical as her skin takes on a clammy, dull color, she relapses into old drug habits, and someone has been following her, someone that sings to her and has hooves...someone she thought she'd never, ever see again.

If Lovely Molly is good at anything it's good at drawing the viewer into an increasing atmosphere of horrific recurrence - a return of old demons, personal and mythical, physical and habitual.  The script, cowritten by Sanchez and screenwriter Jamie Nash (who debuted with the insane Christmas-themed horror comedy Two Front Teeth in 2006), deepen the thematic well of the story by using deftly intertwining narrative devices, most fascinatingly Molly's drug dependence and her need to collect evidence and confessions on video.  Pretty much everybody's favorite scene from Blair Witch is the "confession" by Heather near the film's ending, her face mostly off camera and brimming with tears.  Lovely Molly isn't a found footage film at all but Sanchez understood the power of characters in a horror setting who feel a need to immortalize a moment or perceived truth on film, as well as the need to be filmed themselves.  What's brilliant about the camcorder footage in this film is that Molly is filming explicitly to prove what she thinks is going on to the world, but half of the footage is maddeningly inconclusive and the other half shows her in states where she's not really herself.  Her relapse to addiction and increasingly erratic behavior only feed into the unreliability of her own actions to exonerate herself and expose the true nature of whatever is threatening her, and while in another film this might come across as hackneyed the elliptical, almost dizzying pace keeps the interplay fresh and the incidents unnerving and unexpected.  Gretchen Lodge is another key to the film's success - even though this is her first film her performance is unhinged and deeply frightening.  Another strength of Blair Witch ported to the film is the use of small incidents and running symbols to spiderweb the supernatural into existence.  Everything about the Blair Witch was discovered in fragments and anecdotes, and the otherworldly being at the heart of Lovely Molly is revealed with such patience as to make its presence as evocative and ultimately overwhelming as possible.  The film also manages to make a case for handheld camerawork as a platform for visual beauty, capturing dust in beams of light and creating booming interplay with contrasting focuses.  And certainly not least is the piercing, behind-the-eardrum musical score by post-rock legends Tortoise, as well as the use of extremely high pitches that slip into your brain like metal slivers.

While I'm more than happy to sing Lovely Molly's praises I seem to be in a minority of people who really liked it, as it's sitting at a meager 5.3 stars on IMDB, though I'll admit that it does have small flaws, such as spotty acting and a collection of varyingly informative moments that might be too cryptic and unconventional for some viewers.  Even I'll admit that there were tidbits I don't get after watching the movie a second time for this review, but I feel that the unexplained and unexplainable have a surer place in horror than in any other genre and it'd be nice to get a bunch of fellow Molly viewers in a restaurant booth together so we can hash out theories over big plates of hash browns.  At the very least the film convinced me that the filmmakers knew exactly what was going on even if I didn't know, something all films like this must have before filming starts if they want to have any cohesion.  If you want something filled with creeping, mysterious dread this Halloween, pop in Lovely Molly by itself or as part 1 of a double feature with the similarly-themed and sorely underrated American remake of Silent House.  Or double feature it with our next foray into Eduardo Sánchez's nightmares...

~PNK

The Sewer Rocking the Boat - THE GHOULS (2003)

If you're like me you're a big fan of the Gyllenhaals (and pine for more movies with both Jake and Maggie, preferably playing siblings a la Donnie Darko) and shrieked with delight, as well as fear, at Jake's amazingly creepy turn as the petty-thief-turned-TV-news-stringer Louis Bloom in last year's brilliant Nightcrawler.  Arguably 2014's best mainstream film after Birdman, Nightcrawler did an unbelievable job introducing the world to the horrific possibilities of gathering lurid footage for local news outlets...or so the producers thought.  That's not a knock on Nightcrawler's quality, just a note that it wasn't the first movie to look at L.A. news stringers in a less than flattering light.  A much smaller film, The Ghouls, snuck out on video a decade earlier after modest festival circulation and never became well-known enough to be forgotten.  I would've never seen it if not for a handy positive review by Fred Adelman over at his indispensable genre film review site Critical Condition.  With only a few days left before Halloween I felt it a welcome obligation to get the reviews back up and running to spotlight a few horror flicks that needed more recognition, and The Ghouls is a sucker-punch way to get into the spirit.  While Nightcrawler drew its viewers into its creeps gradually and got a lot of unsettling material with great restraint, The Ghouls leaps right for the jugular and then sells it to the 6 A.M. block for easy ratings.

Eric Hayes (Timothy Muskatell) scratches out a living filming grisly crimes and their aftermaths for sale to local news outlets, and less than two minutes into the movie is found filming a man stab his naked girlfriend to death while their baby cries in the corner.  Almost everybody he knows despises him, including the producers he sells his tapes to and possibly even his girlfriend Sue (Tina Birchfield).  One night while stumbling to his car after a good boozing he sees a woman being dragged into an alley, and he runs to her with his camera expecting a juicy mugging or rape.  What he sees instead is a bunch of dirty, barely human beings eating her alive, and not only does he barely make it out unscathed but he had the misfortune of forgetting to put a tape into his camera.  Desperate to get evidence of urban cannibals on film, he promises big results to one of his news clients and decides to follow any lead he can to find his perps.  The only thing is, the only people willing to talk about them are scared to death and lead him into the sewers, and not even the news is ready for what he might find...

Shot on grainy digital video and drowning in unpalatable subject matter and visuals, The Ghouls is one of the bleakest and grimiest films I've ever seen about the dark side of media.  Eric Hayes is about as anti as a hero gets, more than willing to let people get attacked and even killed for a chance at profitable footage and lashing out at people who criticize him for it.  What's so fascinating is how the film makes you sympathize with him despite his obvious flaws, his curiosity and willingness to plunge into darkness to find out the truth about L.A.'s seediest underbelly making him compellingly human against a decidedly inhuman threat.  Let's be clear here - this film could easily be pitched as Nightcrawlers meets C.H.U.D. and in no way is that a bad thing, as it manages to synthesize the better themes of both films and carve out its own identity in the process.  You might be thinking that a 2003 movie shot on digital video, and exclusively at night, might be unpleasant to look at, but thankfully writer-director Chad Ferrin, has a fine eye for shot composition and remembered to bring some good lighting.  A lot of movies shot on video can't help but look like the director secretly shot his friends goofing off using a hidden camera in his glasses, but Ferrin manages to shoot The Ghouls so professionally that it's easy to forget you're watching a medium that wouldn't start looking really good for years.  Ferrin, a Troma graduate, managed to write a script that's both intelligent and engaging but also allows for the production to be as cheap and minimal as possible, as all its characters live and work in hovels and the actors probably wore their own clothes while shooting.  What he saved on sets and costumes he made up for in good gore effects and a good casting director, as with a film this cheap everybody needs to be pitch perfect right away and there's not a whiffed performance in the house.  Especially notable is Timothy Muskatell as Eric, an actor whose most mainstream role has been a supporting role in  Deadgirl yet he brings a real intelligence and heart to a role that desperately needs its empathetic qualities proven rather than just shown.  There's also an eerie-yet-minimal free-jazz-meets-tomandandy to heighten the caustic danger of the story, with most of the film letting the droning din of a nocturnal urban landscape immerse us in dread.  And then there's that soul-crushing last line.  I mean, damn.

With its graphic violence and depressing story, The Ghouls might look like a hard sell - don't let it be.  The smart script, solid direction, excellent acting and good pacing all make The Ghouls way more enjoyable than you might be expecting, crafting a minor horror classic out of limited means and stark realism.  Is it better than Nightcrawler?  No, but what recent movie is?  Is it better than C.H.U.D.I?  Well, I don't know, but C.H.U.D. wasn't exactly perfect, either (but was still way better than C.H.U.D. II: Bud the Chud).  You've got a little more time in your Halloween viewing block, don't you?  Here, I'll sweeten the deal - its distributor threw it up on YouTube in full for free.  How's that for grabbing your attention?

~PNK