Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings

Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings

Directed by: Declan O’Brian

USA/Germany, 2011

Horror, 93min

Tut, tut, tut… Twentieth Century Fox… You bastards. Tut, tut, tut, Declan O’Brian. Despite the fact that I every now and then can enjoy franchise fare –which in more than one way is the elevator muzak of horror cinema – it really rubs me the wrong way on occasions because of it’s predictability, ridicule and wafer thin plots. Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings is one such movie, and although I try not to trash movies here, I just have to give a few pointers as to why I feel this one didn’t’ really make it work.

Being part four in an on-going franchise, which basically rips off The Hills Have Eyes and sticks it in a slightly different context, naming this entry “Bloody Beginnings” is a goddamned joke. The movie opens with a short “way back in 1974” pre-title sequence where two doctors gawk the caged up freaks, and gives minimal insight into the three disfigured inbreeds known as the “Hilliker Brothers”. A hand full of dialogue lines are strewn about and then as through magic – or a stolen hair pin – the boogeymen break out, release the other freaks, and slaughter the Doctors… Then it’s rapidly back to 2000now, and I’m still waiting for the bloody beginnings as a few lines of dialogue, some gory effects and torture machines constructed by what I thought where inbred freaks, not rocket scientists, don’t’ really give any insight into the genesis of the Hilliker brothers at all. Hell, at least Platinum Dunes had the decency to try giving some insight into the tormented life of young Leatherface in their shit feast Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning - didn't work, but they tried. The main question is why the hell do we need to explain evil every goddamned time? Don't you think the horror would be even deeper if you didn't know WHY?

Then credits, and there’s a fast cut to not one, but two couples fucking. One heterosexual and the other, which is most likely supposed to shock us in the way it’s shot and edited, is a homosexual couple. Oh, lesbians, not gays, gays would be way too alienating for the conventional genre audience.

Guess what, they buzzing from post coital buzz when clueless Kenia [Jenny Pudavick] stomps into the room telling them to get ready for their weekend in the woods, without making a single remark about the four naked people or the rancid musky smell that must linger in that room.

Further ridicule is added to the “plot” when one of the gang members has a premonition that something bad will happen… or was he the only one to pay attention to the weather report that flagged for sudden shock snowstorms?

Following a shitty snow scooter sequence – which has the leading lady Pudavick – grinning moronically as if she’s in a Tampax commercial – the gang in an attempt to avoid the storm by taking the wrong trail – doh, never saw that one coming – and when they are midst white out, they bump into the abandoned – but strangely still heated – Glenville Sanatorium of the opening sequence. They bunk up for the night, find a couple of bottles of thirty year old whiskey and then oh my fucking god, the obligatory “do any of you guys have cell coverage” moment! I have to force myself from ramming my note pen right into my eye as to never have to sit through another by the book generic horror flick ever again. Why, oh why do we need to have cell coverage scenes in every fucking movie? You loose me completely at that point.

Stereotypical characters – such as the lesbian couple who despite what’s going on, make out and have it off at least three times during the ninety minute film, dorky pot smoking dudes, third base girlfriends, nerdy guy and quirky virginal heroine hardly create empathy for any of the characters what so ever, and make’s the movie feel agonisingly tedious for long times. When shit hit’s the fan – almost 40 minutes in – it becomes routinely run, run, run, chase, chase, chase, where ever second scene feels like a “Oh you go that way, I’ll go this way”, “If we split up we hold a better chance of finding blah, blah…” you get the picture. It’s as if the screenwriters never watched Wes Craven’s Scream, because all the jokes he was shooting off where aimed at the bullshit which had become generic horror! 

There’s never a real moment where it lands and generates emotions for anyone at all, and something that really felt out of place was the melancholic music every time a character dies… strange, and totally out of place, as I still don’t give a fuck about them, and this far in they are merely lambs to the slaughter and I want to see them die terrifying deaths. At best it feels like a gory episode of Scooby Doo, and perhaps this is why the sudden quick-fix ending doesn’t really do anything for me either. The only thing missing is that the gang – the few left – round up the inbred monsters, rip off their masks and reveal Dr. McQuaid from the opening segment to be the real villain! Zoinks Scooby!

 Special effects are pretty cool, the mutants look awesome, and even pass close-up in strong light scrutiny. In line with the Scooby-Doo referent, the blood flows almost cartoonish, and albeit being violent and supposedly sensitive scenes – thanks melancholic music cue! - many of them are right out funny, which I guess they should be. After all this is all about escapism in more than one-way.

Despite the pie-tossing above, and my annoyance of arrogant, insulting filmmaking, yeah, I find it arrogant, as said this is what gives genre films a bad rep, the cooperate hotdog factory of terror turds, I’m sure that Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings will find it’s prime audience. I’m not the target for generic horror anymore, it was way over two decades ago I was in that niche. After all if you want a few shots of tits’n’ass, water thin plot that plays by all the rules and conventions, shallow characters and a lot of cheap jump scares, some really cool and brutal special effects, then you know that this move is right up your street… which is why Wrong Turn 5: Bloodbath is already slated and Doug Bradley is supposed to star… "Jesus wept!"... wait, that's another franchise they took to hell already isn't it?

The Divide

The Divide

Directed by: Xavier Gens

USA/Canada/Germany, 2011

Horror/Drama, 107min

Second to the “Home invasion” genre, the genre’ that freaks me out the most is the post apocalypse ones. Not the fantastic one’s where we have rebuilt civilization in whatever way we can, but the ones dealing with the hours, days, and weeks after the balloon pops. I blame this all on being part of Generation X, growing up fearing the nuclear bomb, and all those British high on realism survival horrors that blitzed onto our TV screens late eighties, early nineties.

 Sometime back then (or even further if you really look for it) there’s a vital change in movies of what we refer to as “modern age”. They frequently have a theme proving that it makes no matter what the external threat may be, humans will always fight amongst each other. We will not rally up together to communally fight one common foe,  but we will single out individuals within the group and attack them first. Almost like when animals sense the weakness within their pack. But the twist in genre films being that the internal tormentor will be the primary antagonist for the protagonist, and life will not go on – or adapt to new conditions – before this antagonist is taken care of.

Nine people hide away in an underground bunker/safe room in the bottom of their New York building as nukes take out their city. Moment’s later fractions start to form in the small group. Initially it’ seems to be them all against Janitor Mickey, who’ already lives in the shelter below to start with. Then a secondary threat is posed when men in biohazard suits break into the shelter – which the nine at first think is a rescue team – only to kidnap the youngest female child of the group.  From here on the group shatter as they realize they are powerless in the situation. With this insight new forces start to surface within the group, and the small community becomes a merciless dictatorship where one man rules them all.

Xavier Gens really has a knack for stabbing knives into his audience and then slowly twisting them around forming a gaping hole. The Divide, just like his earlier Frontière(s) 2007 is a harsh, haunting chamber piece with a dark insight into the human mind. Several sudden plot twists bring edge to the piece, and every time one thinks the characters will react in one specific way, they go the other. One could definitely call the movie a study of human decay, and how a group, no matter how small it may be, will soon be confronted by choices that will polarize them.

The main narrative is of course survival, in small and larger arcs, the main large arc being staying in the bunker until it’s safe to venture outside, the macro perspective to survival. What’s alarming with the piece is how they react when they realize what is going on outside their shelter, or at least what they think is happening. The group crumbles and plummets into an even deeper darkness as they start to lash out at each other. Restrained food and water start taking its toll and they fall even deeper into desperation and frustration. Here some of the finer subplots come into play, the one concerning Eva [Lauren German] and her boyfriend Sam [Ivan Gonzalez], the triangular tension between bothers Adrien [Ashton Holmes], Josh [Milo Ventimiglia] and his best (perhaps even boyfriend) Bobby [Michael Eklund], the personal grudge between Devlin [Courtney B. Vance] and Mickey the Janitor [Michael Biehn] etc. It al builds neatly off smaller subplots to intertwine with each other to become subplots of their own which later evolve into main narrative.

Just like in zombie drama/horror’s paranoia is a big part of The Divide. The fractions within the constellations don’t dare trust each other, and perhaps they shouldn’t either. I love what Gens has done with the Mickey character, and put moral doubt in an otherwise commonly sacred character, the 9-11 fire fighter. (or perhaps I should say Karl Mueller and Eron Sheefan,  as they wrote the story). Its’s also the character who has the most dimension, as we never really know where we have him. One minute he’s lying, or is he, then he’s telling the truth or is he? He’s a scarred and complex character, who puts many of the others to shame.

German’s Eva more or less comes off as a typical passive female lead – No, she’s no Milla Jovovich or Sigourney Weaver, kicking ass from square one – but she does have a great character arch as she grows with the tension and frustration slowly cranked up throughout the movie. Finally she has no other option but to react, and cut her ties with everything. And talking of past, I love when small hints are given to backstory, without becoming ridiculously daft. At one moment Sam screams “You where nothing, a junkie walking the streets before you met me!” Again these small sub-plots such as the one between Eva and Sam is fascinating and definitely what bring the characters to life. Eva and Sam’s relationship is so over, but they still haven’t dared let go… which is metaphorical for the journey that Eva makes in the movie. She doesn’t really dare, she’s passive until she’s forced beyond the norm.

Cast wise it varies, some are really impressive, especially Milo Ventimiglia and Michael Bien who I feel are completely cast contrary to what one would have expected from them. Venitmiglia gives a great performance as a complete psychopathic guy who stumbles over too much power to fast. An interesting note on the two leading men, where Biehn at first comes off as the antagonist of the piece, values shift through actions and deeds. Despite what we may think of Mickey, it s nothing compared to what Bobby and Joey do to him which shifts the balance of focus. From that moment on we empathise more with him and the two men take over the role of antagonists.

German and Arquette as the only female cast members do what they can, but Arquette does all the real work, she has a traumatizing road ahead of her and loosing her only solid rock – “the only good in me” – she plummets down into chaos and depravation at the hands of Joey and Bobby. Almost like a bully mentality, as long as she sticks with them and let’s them have their way, she’s not at the boot of the torment. Other’s are completely over the top, and perhaps should have toned it down a bit. Then again, who knows how the hell we’d react when faced with death by starvation and radiation poisoning whilst trapped in a fallout shelter with a load of people I hated…

The ending is dark and nihilistic, but at the same time, immersed with the same poetic beauty that I find in other Gens films, and despite the violent climax offers a suggestion of hope and a future after the terrifying ordeal. I also find it kind of interesting that both Frontier(s) and The Divide both feature somewhat passive female characters that transform completely only when then have been pushed to far. This generates a determined fighting machine that will let nothing or anyone stand in their route to survival.

The Divide is an intense ride, a powerful journey of human decay, dark depravity, as it’s characters regress to primal beings, and at the same time an intense ride as the will to endure is tested in extreme ways. The Divide provoked me in several ways, and played with some of my basic fears and definitely made me think about those “What if” scenarios. That’s a good reason to watch if there where any.

The Sweet Hand of the White Rose

The Sweet Hand of the White Rose

Directed by: Davide Melini

Spain, 2010

Horror/Drama, 16min

Sometimes short form storytelling is extremely potent. I was reminded of this when I was searching for a completely different on my mac, and came across the link to indie filmmaker, Davide Melini’s charming The Sweet Hand of the White Rose. See, already now you are curious to what this could be, as the name echoes Giallo and EuroGoth heritage. You won’t be disappointed, and amusingly enough, Melini’s short spook flick also comes with an crucial message!

 

One sentence synopsis, go:

Whilst paying an unsolicited visit to unfortunate young Rose’s [Natasha Machuca] grave, Mark [Carlos Bahos] is startled by sudden lightning, bloody tracks and a figure in white which beckons him towards a dark corner of the cemetery where a harrowing secret is soon to be revealed.

 

Despite only being just under seventeen minutes, and very sparse on dialogue, Melini manages to create a good atmosphere, momentary tension, a few effective jump scares and last moment twist. Despite much in The Sweet Hand of the White Rose being somewhat predictable - come on, we watch genre movies every day and we know how stuff clicks - I would be interested to see where Melini would go with a full feature script as he, already in his short works, manages to - even if briefly – tap into what I see as keystones of effective horror storytelling; remorse, guilt, and empathy. It’s kind of restrained in short form, but given more time for exposition, tricks and traits, then the sky is the limit, and Melini is already using genre to spread an important message!

 

I wouldn’t be surprised to see Melilni’s name pop up again in a near future (fingers crossed), he’s already shot several attention-grabbing short films, worked as an assistant director on Dario Argento’s Mother of Tears: The Third Mother, and has seen his movies, both The Sweet Hand of the White Rose and its predecessor Puzzle, play to great reception at the 32’nd Fanta Festival in Italy, and several other niched festivals since it’s release. I certainly hope he get’s a shot at a full feature, because his movies are certainly short cinema at their finest.

You can easily check out The Sweet Hand of the White Rose on Davide Melini’s official youtube page, HERE, and it will take you less time to watch then deciding what the next film of the evening will be.

 

My apologies go out out Davide for taking forever to review this movie. Just as in his film, life sometimes get’s on the way of what you intended, but today it had the power of stopping me in my tracks and hooked me completely once again.

Wake Up and Die

Wake Up and Die

Original title: Volver a morir

Directed by: Miguel Urrutia

Colombia, 2011

Horror, Drama, 83min

Imagine being caught up in a loop that you couldn’t break out of… a nightmare world where each time you woke and opened your eyes, you’d know that you would be facing violent death in just a few minutes. How long could you take it? What would you do to break the circle?

Camilla [Andrea Montenegro] wakes up naked in bed next to the equally naked Darío [Luis Fernando Bohórquez] who talks about how great last night was… Camilla hasn’t got the faintest idea what he’s talking about. She has no recollection at all of the night before at all, or who he is. So when he folds down the photograph of his mother, you know things are going to turn bad.

Presenting the night before – where Camilla hooks up with Darío – under the credits and titles sequence is an effective way of getting tedious exposition out of the way. Instead the main narrative can get right in there without showing us awkward pickup lines and tainting characters with drunken, horny dialogue. Instead we are relieved of all of that and it also establishes certain “prejudices” about the characters that will be flipped over a while later. What at first seems to be an slightly awkward “where the hell am I, how much did I drink last night, and who the hell is that lying next to me?” progresses into a fearsome provocation as Darío forces his way upon Camilla. At first in a simple way, by yanking the sheet’s she’s covering herself with while she tries to locate herself by looking out the window from her. We can sense her discomfort as she once again stands naked in front of the, to her, unbeknownst man. They end up making out, which leads to forced intercourse before Darío wraps his large hands around her frail throat. A fairly dark and disturbing look into the ordinary world, before a series of non-linear time warps establish the set up – Darío kills Camilla. She awakens in his bed. The nightmare starts all over again.

Already from hearing the name: Wake Up and Die, this movie grabbed my attention. There’s something dark in that title, dark and sinister that appeals to my exploitation glands. The imagery of the opening set up, echoed any anticipation I had built up before finally watching this film. Even in their simplest form, I find myself constantly blown away by the stunning cinematography and fantastic compositions that come with independent horror film of today. Ten, fifteen years ago, a lot of these independent horror movies would have been shot on DV, or even worse Hi8 or S-VHS and would never have stood a chance against the competition in the way that films do these days. Cinematographer Alejandro Ardila and Miguel Urrutia have shot a movie that looks just as brooding, dark and disturbing as the title insinuates, and it looks fantastic.

But WHY do we automatically take Camilla’s side in this dark tale? Well definitely because it’s her ordeal we are witnessing, she’s the one who takes us on the first flashback hence giving us a reference point. It’s her emotions we relate to, the fear in her eyes, the shame of waking up in a strange place, the exposure of being naked in front of a strange person. Undoubtedly the vulnerability! Now it may seem a bit generic to go to claim that the vulnerable female is the point of identification, and that’s not what I’m pointing at. In fact it’s the emotional recognition that we share with Camilla that makes us empathise with her. If Urrutia had taken us alongside Darío’s path during that first morning, we would have empathized with him. Instead he’s the dominant character and she the “prey” so we take sides with her. After all, deep down in our basic human programming, we want things to be fair and just, so seeing a “prey” being stalked we empathies with it. That’s why we go “Awww no!” each time the baby antelope is trapped and killed by the lions in the nature shows we watch, despite us really respecting and admiring the lion too. Emotional recognition gives Empathy. Urrutia later uses this in an cunning way to lead his audience down a path which may play tricks on their minds!

The driving force comes out of the fact that it becomes a challenge for Camilla to find out more and more about Darío each time she get’s a fresh start. At the same time she has figure out how she can stay alive for the short period of time before it all starts over again. But for each additional piece of information Camilla figures out or finds, the more questions are posed.

In an interesting way this splendid exploitation flick builds off a twisted investigation plot. An investigation plot set in a chamber piece. I was surprised that the movie stays true to the chamber piece, all the way through, as it can cause a problem story wise if you isolate all the action to one location – Darío’s apartment. But for independent filmmakers, this is the kind of plot that can save your budget, as you only have to use few locations. Urrutia pulls it off with bravura, and it never feels cramped or as if the small location restrains the action. Instead it becomes part of the narrative, as we understand along the way, that Camilla’s freedom and safety is outside that apartment. I say this is a variant on the Investigation plot, as Camilla has to puzzle things she learns from each cycle, to figure out a way to take command of the situation, hence becoming the one with the upper hand and in some way defeating the repetitive and deadly loop. There’s a great toying with the audience as audio cues are used to indicate that Darío is ready to kill. A piece of classical music on the radio, and keeping it “everyday realistic” the sound of Darío urinating are the key sounds. When they are heard – or used as part of the narrative, they work as referents to the fact that the end is near, or is it.

Again, to support the twisted investigation plot, the more we learn of the situation, the more dark secrets are revealed. We slowly start to understand how things come together and learn the motifs for what is about to happen. There’s a splendid sequence of the loop, where roles are flipped head over ass, and Urrutia challenges everything we have learned so far, and the last act reveals some sinister dark secrets that definitely elevate the movie into serial killer, trophy collector turf which puts Ed Gein to shame.

Luis Fernando Bohórquez and hot Peruvian actress/model Andrea Montenegro mostly known for their parts in Telenovelas are basically naked throughout the whole movie – an impressive feat to say the least. It’s a detail that I like with the entire movie, a realism that stays true to the story. Yeah, it’s silly, but I hate when sex scenes end with people getting out of bed in their underwear, I want realism. Moments like Camilla searching the apartment, partially to map it out, partially to find her underwear as they obviously came off all over the place last night may seem as insignificant, but for me they sell the reality of the piece. The next time she awakens, she knows where to find her shirt, where the unlocked door is, where that hidden torture chamber is. It’s quite possible that Urrutia’s background in documentary films has had a part in this excellent approach, but either way, it’s one of the fine details that make the movie so much more than just a scary exploitation flick.

When talking of Urrutia’s eye for detail, it’s appropriate to mention the way he’s edited his movie. What at first seems to be fast blitz edits in-between cycles, is in fact rapid exposition and the deeper into the intrigue one get’s the more these blasts of fast images can be seen as some form of depraved Easter eggs. Because if you pay attention – which you should – you will see some really disturbing material in these in between splices, backstory, death, necrophilia… told you! Pay attention.

I can’t say how many movie it takes to define a series of films as a “new wave”, but Colombia definitely is onto something, Juan Felipe Orozco’s Al final del espectro (At the End of the Spectra) 2006, Jaime Osorio Marquez El páramo (The Squad) 2011, and now Wake Up and Die, are definitely a fresh spark from a country we perhaps should be keeping our eye on.

Wake Up and Die is a delightful kick in the bollocks: raw, intriguing and sadistically beautiful in its frustrating loop of violence and nightmare. I definitely encourage you to seek this movie out and give it all your support it’s worth every second.

Wake Up and Die is set to be released from NjutaFilms later in 2012.