Girl House (2014)

Hey guys, fancy being pleasantly surprised by how good a movie is, even when you're sure it's going to be a typical exploitative gorefest with as many naked girls crammed in as a compact disc will hold? Well then, check out this slick Canadian slasher entitled Girl House. In a sentence: psycho killer in house full of webcam porn girls. Right? It sounds cheesy and stupid and gratuitous. That's what my Pop thought when he pointed it out to me in a shop, and that's what I thought when I went to watch it today. So I was somewhat taken aback when I realised I was in fact in for a creative and intriguing horror-thriller. And the surprise addition of the Thriller is one of its potent ingredients.

Kylie (Ali Cobrin) is a college student whose father has recently passed away, leaving her mother penniless and living abroad somewhere. She has been approached by some guy in a suit who says she'd be perfect for his company. And there's no funny business. He's not some greasy-haired cigar chomper hollering 'Hey honey, you wanna be a big time movie staahh? Wanna come sit on my casting couch?' She is fully aware that the job is doing webcam shows. But this does seem like a surprisingly decent company.

Girl House is different from the rest: it's like a cyber Playboy Mansion. All the girls live in a gorgeous secluded house which is rigged up with cameras as if installed by E! themselves, and their USP is that clients get to watch them in any room, at any time, whether they're sleeping, showering, playing pool or stripping. The idea is that the people watching get to feel like they 'know' the girls, and therefore are more loyal and better paying customers. The house has security guards and high walls, the operating system is protected by a whole team of computer specialists. The location is untraceable, and the system unhackable. But then, the Titanic was unsinkable.

All starts well. Kylie settles into the mansion, everybody is nice, and her first show (although very mild) goes pretty successfully, especially when she attracts the attention of Loverboy, an eager user who plans to come back for more. It looks like she'll be able to earn her good money, send it to her mom, and all will be well. And even when a guy from her high school recognises her, and confesses his eternal love for her to the pal he's watching with, he manages to start a relationship with Girl House's favourite New Girl. The introduction of these two guys, Ben (Adam DiMarco) and his buddy Alex (Wesley MacInnes), adds real dimension to the plot, and is written well enough to fork the road without losing the quality. It is their involvement that adds the Thrill to the equation.

When the Webcam Porn Rampage starts, everything is, of course, being broadcast live on the website, much to the horror of its clients (and particularly amusingly, a young boy), and Ben and Alex bear witness. They become the unofficial Day Savers by making many frantic phone calls, driving a 70 mile distance at top speed, and hacking the website. This level of commitment to rectifying the bad situation in a third party is most unusual in horror. But they are great characters: distinct, well acted and level headed.

There's really nothing not to love in Girl House. The script by Nick Gordon is excellent - well paced, imaginative and thoughtful enough to distinguish the dialogue of each character - and Matthews' direction is strong; all the actors are in the Good to Great range, and production design is wonderful. And if none of these more artistically admirable qualities are enough to draw you... there's also lots of hot girls in various stages of undress and a whole bunch of creatively staged murders.

All Hallows Eve (2013)

Season's greetings to all! Having just returned from my mum's house for the winter festivities, with a collection of horror movies bestowed to me by my sister, I have much new to write about, and today's is for a movie my sister declared one of the scariest things she's ever seen, and as I have documented here, she is a hardcore fan like me, and does not crack easily. It is All Hallows Eve by one Damien Leone, who research informs me has been developing something of a YouTube following with his short horrors. Two such pictures he incorporates into this anthology feature, his directorial debut.

The movie opens on Halloween night, at a house where Sarah (Katie Maguire) is babysitting two adolescents Tia and Tommy, and they have just returned from trick or treating. Turning out their candy bags, a VHS tape falls out, and the kids manage to wrangle Sarah into letting them watch it. Most definitely ill-advised, but where would a horror movie be without a clueless babysitter who is surely old enough to know better? In a cross between The Ring and Creepshow, the video (as this is one of those few households like mine which actually has a working VHS player hooked up to a TV) ties together the short films of Leone into a feature plotline.

That being said, the plotline is somewhat evasive, and the significance of the tape is dropped on us in the closing minutes. The finale of this movie is thrilling. As is the third of the three shorts on the tape which leads into the finale. The first short involves women kidnapped from a train station by Leone's signature character Art the Clown, played menacingly by Mike Giannelli, and taken to a satanic cult for rape and/or sacrifice. I'm pretty sure I spotted Eden Sher from The Middle as one of the girls, though I have not been able to find anything to back this suspicion up. This short is decent enough - fairly college project-y - and an obvious mark of a decent filmmaker in the making.

The second is somewhat silly, but again, research enlightens me. Poor Leone had some pretty severe monetary and time restraints whilst trying to pull this feature project together, and needed to produce both the middle short film and the core storyline in a frantic rush. And, having been involved in several indie productions, to various capacities, I could totally understand his plight. He said the middle short just didn't come together like he'd imagined. My first year film class project, which I did entirely by myself, was great and got an A, and I was really proud of it. My second year project was interrupted by various difficulties, and despite getting a B, I knew it was a piece of shit. Sometimes creative projects (particularly those with a deadline) just don't work out on paper the way they did in your head, and at least Leone was accepting enough of that to admit it.

Now don't get me wrong - the second short is not bad. It's just... flaccid. It starts well, consequences are dire, things are getting kind of creepy. A woman is moving from the city to an isolated house in the country with her (presently away) husband, when all electronics suddenly shut down and something crashes in the backyard. I think the real error comes with the on-screen acknowledgement of the creature. It's an alien. And a really, really typical looking alien. And it's a guy in a suit. And not only do we see him, but he becomes a very visible second character, which is majorly off-putting. The unknown is often scariest. Art the Clown appears again, quite inexplicably, in the last shot, as the painting the unseen husband has been obsessing over. At this point, I was groping for a link between the character, these two scenarios, and the 'real life' in which a babysitter and two kids are watching.

The third and final short on the tape is the first of several Oh Shit moments in the homestretch of All Hallows Eve. The first two films are really very tame in terms of horror or gore. They could probably both pass for a 12 certificate (or PG-13). The third goes all out, and involves a woman stopping for gas in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night. As she pulls up, the attendant is kicking Art out of his joint for smearing shit on the bathroom walls. The attendant gets a pretty raw deal. The girl, however, after thinking she's escaped time after time, suffers one of those fates that you come across every now and then that sears its way onto your brain for life. Although this site carries a hefty Spoiler Alert throughout, this is one element I shall not give away. Because it is probably the shock of it that makes it such an effective bridge to the finale of the Babysitter thread.

And as for the actual ending... what will become of the babysitter and the kids? Again, I shall restrain myself and leave it vague, but I must comment upon what a clever piece of filmmaking it is. In the years that I have looked at film journalistically, I have learned to separate myself from the fiction created by consenting adults working a sometimes challenging job for varying sums. But this ending is one that really got inside my head and played with me, and actually left me struggling to sleep. I very nearly gave in to the trick and turned the movie off prematurely. I tell you, I felt twelve again, struggling to sleep because of a movie! It was almost nostalgic.

Although it's not particularly consistent, All Hallows Eve has a stellar payoff, which justifies its slow build up. It's a really good scare, and that is something I find harder and harder to come by.