The Bone Collector (1999)

If there has never been a porn parody, I'm on it.

Before a household movie night at the weekend, I hadn't watched The Bone Collector in perhaps ten years. Though I know it well, as it was one of the first movies I caught on TV that my mum actually allowed me to buy on VHS, even though I was several years younger than the rating demanded.  A thirteen-year-old me thought it was a pretty cool movie with a good crime mystery to it. A withered and haggard twenty-eight-year-old me thought it was a silly, nonsensical and hilariously '90s movie that was moth-eaten in so many places, I couldn't believe I never noticed its threadbare appearance before.

I didn't become an NYC cop to monitor
glory holes.

The movie opens (after the flashy and entirely too-long credit sequence) to an able-bodied Lincoln Rhyme (Denzel Washington) on assignment to retrieve the corpse of a fellow police officer who has died on the job. Some big heavy object comes hurtling at Washington out of nowhere and we cut to him waking up, in his luxurious apartment, being stared at by a falcon on the windowsill. If it sounds like this falcon, who appears numerous times, will have any relevance, you are already giving this movie far too much credit. Rhyme, it transpires, is a top forensic mind who continues on full pay as a detective from the confines of his home hospital bed, which is linked up to all the best and bulkiest gadgets that the '90s could muster. His friend/nurse is Thelma, played endearingly by Queen Latifah, and she is there to CPR him out of seizures and tell meddling police officers to fuck off.

We then meet Amelia Donaghy (Angelina Jolie), who a nicely succinct scene tells us suffers insomnia and cannot bring herself to commit to a relationship. It seems the only thing that drives her in life is her job as an NYPD cop. Now lemme just stop it right there and say, "Kid -- does this seem familiar to you?" If it's not already ringing bells, the rest of the movie will beat you over the head with how much it wants to be Silence of the Lambs. This may be too early to outline the entire thing, but bear with me. The Bone Collector, in a nutshell, involves a young female law enforcer with trauma in her past, who somehow hooks up with a restrained genius that will help her catch a serial killer, and perhaps alleviate her past horrors by saving the lives of innocent strangers. There is also a sexual undertone to the relationship between the cop and the genius. When rewatching this movie, I took the director for some naive newcomer whose ambitiousness was commendable, but was let down by material not even fit to polish Silence's good bag and cheap shoes. It was only upon researching that I realised Phillip Noyce was at the helm: by 1999 he was a veteran filmmaker, and had turned out some decent thrillers, including Dead Calm, which I really enjoyed. Perhaps Noyce was feeling lazy, or just taking easy jobs.

Amelia takes a call on the job one day, to be met at the shabby railway tracks by a young street kid, who alerts her to the half-buried body of a man. She spots what appears to be neatly laid-out clues from the perp, and has the balls to run at an oncoming train with her flashlight in an attempt to preserve the evidence. Now don't ask me how the hell it happens, but this incident somehow results in her showing up with colleagues at Rhyme's apartment in no time, and suddenly she is on the case. Rhyme apparently takes a liking to Amelia's tenacity and constantly teary eyes, and begins to read her for filth in the fashion of the 'magical negro' stereotype; note that this is also how he solves crimes. Throughout the movie, he spouts out random words and numbers in a way that clearly make sense to him, but the visuals present it as utterly random, and there is no way the audience can follow Rhyme with his logic like they should, and like other, better productions would allow them to. We are never sure where his instincts or logic come from, and by the time all the loose ends have been supposedly tied up, the way Rhyme arrives at what turn out to be correct conclusions never makes any goddamn sense. 

Their initial reaction to the script.

And that's not through lack of trying to help the audience make sense of it all. It's just that the writer and director clearly thought that their audience would be entirely braindead and unable to understand the basics, let alone the more integral plot points. A sequence towards the end demonstrates this, in which Jolie comes across the final clue and adopts the methods of thinking that Rhyme has impressed upon her throughout the story. She stares fixedly at the number of an abandoned train carriage, while muttering, "Help me Rhyme, help me!" and the visuals do some silly sepia montage of different places she might have seen the number. Now these visuals (let's just forget the stupid dialogue ever happened) could have worked in a far less cheesy way had the director established this visual theme earlier on. As I mentioned, the camera often just sits, looking at Rhyme along with his colleagues, waiting for him to spout his random wisdom, and when he does, everyone springs into action. The earlier scenes of his thinking and deducing could have also had these sepia montages, and then the whole thread of Rhyme teaching Donaghy to be a good detective could have felt fluent and deserved. Instead, it just jumps out of nowhere and seems laughable. It is topped when she finally figures the clue out, and exclaims, "He's going to kill Rhyme!", as if the visuals hadn't just given us that information on a silver platter. 

So the plot... well, the man buried by the train tracks turns out to be a man who we earlier saw hailing a cab with his wife from an airport, but being accosted by the driver. His wife is still missing. Later one or two totally unimportant and unestablished characters are pounced upon by some dude in a balaclava, and each time, he leaves ridiculous clues for the police to find. I guess the conspicuousness of the clues doesn't matter though, as the clues themselves make no fucking sense anyhow, and if it weren't for Rhyme's magical omniscience, they would never be solved by anyone.

Long story short, some dickhead is recreating murders from some old crime novel, which Amelia finds, and thankfully doesn't have to read, as all the important points are illustrated -- how convenient. Given the standard of dialogue, I'm almost surprised she doesn't blurt out, "The killer is copying this book!" in the style of "It's goblin spelled backwards!" The movie tries weakly to imply that one of Rhyme's many professional associates is the culprit, focusing mainly on the flamboyant Latino who makes the odd joke.

I'm your number one fan!

Since we're here, we may as well talk about the conclusion of this stupid movie. No, the killer isn't Manny or whatever his stereotypical Mexican name was; it's Richard, the geek who hovers in the background, tuning up Rhyme's heart monitors or some shit. Richard gives the silliest fucking 'culprit spills the tea' scene I have ever seen. It would seem that two or three brief flashes in this movie are meant to imply that at some point, a few cops were put away for some sort of corrupt act, although it is never elaborated upon. Turns out - and you can thank the clunky dialogue for me knowing this - that Richard was one of the cops incriminated by some paper or other that Rhyme wrote, and so after being donut-punched in federal for six years, he spent another two learning how to tweak crappy late-'90s PC monitors in order to get to kill Lincoln Rhyme. Yeah, that doesn't sound like a monumental waste of time and energy.

And if you thought that was crazy, you ought to hear the rest. Rhyme's nearest and dearest know that he fears a seizure that would vegetate him, and so has suicide plans in place. Knowing that what he dreads most is becoming a "vegetable", Richard sets upon him, asking him what sort of vegetable he wants to be. A carrot or a zucchini. Christ, way to take the seriousness out of a scene! Well thankfully, Rhyme's state of the art hospital bed just happens to have an emergency collapse mode -- cos why wouldn't that be useful in a medical situation? -- and he traps Richard's fingers in the frame, before biting his neck and dragging him along like a limp-limbed hyena. It is truly funny, and takes all the wind out of the drama's sails. 

Nothing makes sense in this picture. The killer's motives are stupid, the clues are ludicrous, and the implications of unfinished plot threads are worse. What of Amelia's boyfriend? Does she learn through her struggles to commit to a relationship? I dunno, but she certainly became more comfortable with molesting comatose cripples. Does Lincoln learn to value life more? Apparently, but it's only so that the movie can end on the cheesiest, stupidest Christmas ending I ever fucking saw. Amelia's depression and old traumas are only ever alluded to, yet her whole character seems to hang on them. Is she now at peace with her father's suicide, and can she go forward in life? God knows, but she looks hot in a slinky black dress while putting presents under Rhyme's tree. 

So glad we got over our individual traumas,
thanks to the magic of crime-solving
 and Christmas.

And if all of this didn't seem vapid and tone-deaf enough, guess what song they chose for the closing credits? Don't Give Up by Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush! The musical tone and the themes of the song only fit this movie in the loosest sense, and it reminds me of those god-awful slow, belting versions of songs that Celine Dion or whoever would sing at the end of '90s Disney movies. There is an old TV movie from about the same time called Perfect Body, starring former Power Ranger Amy Jo Johnson, about a gymnast training to Olympic standard, who develops an eating disorder. After all the trouble and trauma this causes her, the final scene is of the girl in a dimly-lit gym, once again mounting the horse, while Don't Give Up plays softly in the background. That movie uses the song perfectly, but The Bone Collector left me baffled with this choice.

Roger Ebert once said that the cast of The Bone Collector was too good for the material, and now I absolutely get what he was saying. I watched this with five or six people, all of whom recognised some of the character actors. This movie strikes me as a strictly Paycheck Picture. I'm sure it was largely forgotten six months after its release, and if not for the odd TV rerun, it would be a footnote on many successful actors' resumes.

School of Rock (2003)

Would you tell Hendrix to sell his guitar?!

And we shall teach rock...to the world.

If you answered 'yes' to this question, then getchow ass outta my neighborhood! School of Rock holds at least one record in my life: it is the only movie I ever watched twice in the cinema... in one day! My sister and I went, then went again - it was that good of a movie. And most of all, it inspired us to get more into music. My siblings and I were heavily influenced by our mother to make music, and to this day, I play eight instruments and sing. Although I didn't get into a serious band until I was 15, I spent years pursuing music because of this amazing movie.

Jack Black plays Dewey Finn, your typical pub-singing rock musician, whose "rock'n'roll authority" is deemed too much for the band that he founded. The band kicks him out, and he declares that he will find an awesome new group to kick their asses. Dewey lives with his friend and former bandmate Ned Schneebly (Mike White) and his pain-in-the-ass girlfriend Patty (Sarah Silverman), who constantly pressure him for the rent he owes them but can't give them, thanks to his unstable professional habits.

STEP OWWFFF!

When Dewey answers the phone relating to a teaching job offer for Ned, he sees his opportunity to pay off his debts and maybe get fucking Patty off his back for a while. He easily lands Ned's job at a posh prep school, naively headed by Principal Mullins (the hilarious Joan Cusack), and quickly hijacks the class as the next upcoming rock band and their extensive crew to play at the upcoming Battle of the Bands. While Dewey find his professional and spiritual calling, the kids feel liberated from their strict middle-class upbringings, and everybody embraces their skill and happiness. It is a shared turf of happiness for people of every age and background.

So what makes School of Rock so fucking awesome? Well Jack Black has to be awarded a considerable amount of credit. He is the kind of character that most people had in their school class at some time; someone charismatic and funny and annoying and enviable. I certainly remember a girl called Lotte who was my class's Jack Black. He, like Robin Williams and Jim Carrey before him, improvs so much of his performance, and is as engaging and loveable as both of the guys aforementioned. I imagine that even without the amazing script by Mr Schnaaayblaaay himself Mike White, Jack Black's improvisation skills would have carried the movie.

The script and direction is reminiscent of John Hughes, with a childish naivete in adults that turns out a miraculously compassionate coming-of-age film. It doesn't pull a "how do you do, fellow kids", or make every child character a brainless brat with no second (letalone third) dimension. The kids have their own struggles, from weight issues to overbearing parents, and they are really relatable - Tomika's line "cos I'm fat" breaks my heart every time. These were not experienced kid actors (except perhaps for Miranda Cosgrove), they were young and enthusiastic musicians who brought their own spark to this amazing ensemble movie. And God knows that in the company of Jack Black, they were clearly made to feel like a million dollars in their own selves, and each one of them shines.

"Bubblegum!"

Jack Black is a really special dude. To many adults, he probably comes across as a maddening man-child who has never 'grown up'. He presents a real Peter Pan sitch. He clearly lives every day in joy and fun and fulfilment, and it doesn't hurt anyone. In fact, it seems to do so many people so much good: from his fans, to his kids, to his colleagues, to his own self. His personality is infectious and has such a liberating quality. I don't care how few people admit to it, many folks would love to feel so comfortable as to be a Jack Black of this world. I sure know I would. It's the kind of feeling adults only get on drugs or at festivals.

The adult creators have never lost their roots, and totally get what it is to have adolescent angst, and manage to channel them into creative arts. It is so rare for a movie that truly understands kids to be released, and God knows, at that stressful and crazy point in life, kids need a couple of movies that speak to them. School of Rock can be that to pretty much anyone. I still haven't played in a hardcore rock band that people love, but this movie makes me feel like I still can.

Trolls World Tour (2020)

Please...help me!

Never has a movie been so painful to watch for me. The Amityville Haunting was dull, ignorant and had a strangely incestuous vibe; Disney's remake of The Lion King was a 260-million-dollar autopsy; Up (much to the disbelief of everyone around me) struck me as unbearably saccharine. Of course, the last few years have churned out an obscene number of merchandisable family movies: some were surprisingly enjoyable (The Lego Movie), others were the cinematic equivalent of a puppy massacre (The Emoji Movie). But never have I sat through a movie more vapid, vacant or insulting than Trolls World Tour. I managed to miss the first movie, but got roped into watching this one, and within minutes, my face was contorted into a shape reminiscent of Gordon Ramsay dredging his bare hand through a bucket of rancid shrimp chowder. It remained that way until long after the credits mercifully rolled.

What this film thinks I look like while watching

Trolls World Tour is worse than a Lifetime movie. It is worse than an after-school special. It is worse than any educational film ever played on a janky old VHS machine in a classroom. You see, Trolls has a very particular AND SCREAMINGLY OBVIOUS moral to it. It offers the absolute laziest allegory for racism and the pursuit of a multicultural environment I have ever witnessed. Basically, it turns out that the Trolls from the first movie are Pop Trolls, and that there are many other races of Troll in the world, all defined by their musical genre preference. Other tribes include Rock, Funk, Techno, Classical and Country, each of which has inherited a magical guitar string that represents their culture. Well, some of them did. We meet a number of other genre trolls, such as Reggae and K-Pop, who were apparently not important enough to get their own magic string.

Queen Barb is the head of the Rock Trolls very obviously modelled on Joan Jett, and for whatever reason, she has decided to indoctrinate all the other races with high-voltage rock, with the ultimate goal of a world of Rock Trolls. She rampages round Troll World, assaulting the residents with neon sound waves in order to snatch their strings away. Poppy (voiced irritatingly by Anna Kendrick) is now queen of the Pop Trolls, and sets out on a quest to be the most brightly-coloured SJW in history.

What I actually look like while watching

Now don't get me wrong - these are the sorts of setups that can engage young audiences with more adult topics like discrimination and acceptance, if handled appropriately. But too many family movies these days assume that kids are stupid, and insist on providing their audience with the moral in large print, audio and braille forms, and this is one of the worst offenders. It's apparently not enough for the plot to involve different races trying to remain separate while one character sees them all as one and the same; this movie is determined to be a 90-minute Michael Jackson Black or White music video. Poppy keeps spouting such obvious lines as "There's no difference between us, we're all Trolls!" and basically doing whatever she can to telegraph the point... well, at least when she's not being an empty-headed bitch. The idea that the five writers were sat on their solid-gold sofas somewhere, having been paid to write this trash, made me want to commit harakiri.

Not only is this the worst movie I have ever seen, Poppy is perhaps the worst character I have ever seen. She follows the modern cartoon trope of being loud, 'quirky' and hyperactive, but is emotionally empty. She is an absolute non-character, and when the movie gets to the essential "friends have a fight and go their separate ways" part, she furrows her brow as if we are supposed to believe she feels any emotions beyond self-fellatio. She treats everyone around her horribly, ignoring everything they say while purporting to be an amazing queen who is trying to save her people and unite the nations. Some cuck of a fellow troll called Branch (Justin Timberlake) nips at her heels the entire movie, and eventually professes his love for her, despite her being a cunt.

Ah's ain't no racial stereotype,
noooo Suh!

A llama-type creature that grew up among the Pop Trolls sets out too - again, for some reason - and finds out that he was born to the Funk Trolls but his egg was stolen before he hatched. Given how racially sensitive this shit movie is trying to be, I find it amusing that the character with Funk genetics is voiced by a black guy, has dreads and is a quadruped while all the other trolls are mostly human-like. This character stands out almost like Steve Martin in The Jerk, but supposedly in the name of acceptance. When he meets his birth parents, he is suddenly turned on the race he grew up with, because it turns out that the Pop Trolls stole the Funk Trolls' string years ago. You heard them -- THE WHITE MAN STOLE THE BLACK MAN'S STRING! Unbelievable.

If this wasn't sounding sickening enough to you yet, the human form of Ipicac syrup shows up, because apparently no American family movie can get by without some foreigner shaking things up with a Kent accent. Fucking James Corden voices some stupid fat character that carries around a gimp maggot, who will ultimately give us the first of two "friends have a fight and go their separate ways" skits.

The characters, plot and moral may remind me of Jeff Goldblum saying "that is one big pile of shit", but I'm not even close to done complaining about this celluloid abortion. What Trolls even more obviously than its racially inclusive message, is rip every ounce of nostalgia from our souls, sticks it in a blender and hits frappe. If The Lego Movie has taught other filmmakers anything, it's that pop culture references make a movie. It acts as a Jukebox Musical of the worst kind, filling itself out with heavily-autotuned covers of everyone's favourite songs. "Hey, you like Cyndi Lauper? Well here's her best song if it got sent through Brundle Fly's teleportation pod!" The whole thing goes exactly like that. The majority shareholder of this movie is Mr Horrendous Song-Covers, and every ounce of his input is obnoxiously bright and flashy like an arcade game, seemingly to distract the audience from the lack of substance with shiny things. What isn't horribly boring and vapid dialogue is uber-colourful and robotic music video. The fucking thing even resorts to a 30-second Hammer Time reference to endear us to it, but it made me feel like I would punch this movie if it were a person.

Why do I like you again?

I have never had cancer, but I'm certain that this movie caused some insidious DNA mutation in me. This movie actually made me feel like crying because of how bad it was. When Rolling Stone magazine finally recognises my brilliance and asks me in an interview what the two most painful experiences of my life were, I will reply, "Childbirth and Trolls World Tour". My eyes, ears and soul were violated by this movie, my intelligence had seven shades of shit beaten out of it by this movie, and the only thing this fucking movie taught me is that black people are actually troll llamas named Quincy.

Ju-On: The Grudge (2002)

Any basic kid of my generation remembers the craze of Japanese ghost women haunting their dreams in the early 2000s. I distinctly remember getting rather pissed one time off at two friends who slept over, and kept wailing into the night about Samara coming to get them. Ju-On: The Grudge and Ringu were two Japanese horror movies that soon got American remakes and exploded onto the Western mainstream, and both spawned an obscene number of sequels et al. I enjoyed all such movies back in the day, and after more than ten years, I decided to revisit Ju-On: The Grudge.

The throaty croaking, the creaking woman with long black hair and cat screeches are so widely known of The Grudge, but what only fans will recognise it for is the episodic framing, eerie use of sweeping camera and minimal musical score, and overall excellence in creating suspense. For all the Scary Movie-style parody and social recognition that the franchise has attracted, Ju-On: The Grudge remains a quietly scary film that horror rookies will be scared by, and horror experts will be impressed by.

"Bubblegum!"

The story of Ju-On: The Grudge is centred on a particular house in suburban Japan. A typical Japanese family home with paper doors and minimal decoration, its boxy interiors capture the majority of the movie's action and fear. A catatonic old woman lives in the house, and very quickly, the family and acquaintances who set foot in the place are hunted down by a ghostly woman and disappear. What is essentially a basic setup is made more mysterious in its non-linear presentation, jumping around on the story's timeline to ultimately give us a complete jigsaw puzzle.

Get those nuts away from my face!

I've experienced a moderate body of Asian horror movies over the years, and would never claim to be an expert, or even an enthusiast, despite how highly I would recommend the movies I have seen and the genre they represent. I find Ju-On: The Grudge to be an easily watchable movie. I know of many people who really will not give their time to foreign movies, and I swear to God, if I had a nickel for every time I had heard, "If I wanted to read, I'd go to a library!" But I think that this movie is a fairly easy transition for a world cinema novice. Speech, of course, plays an important part, but a surprising amount of the movie is visual, and I believe transcends cultural and linguistic boundaries. Honestly, this could be a silent movie of the '20s with just a musical score and still work terrifically.

All this pussy and nobody's getting laid

As I said, I am no expert in Asian movies, and speak about three words of Japanese, but as an enthusiastic linguist of the English language, I can say that at times, the standard of acting is hard to judge due to the cadences of spoken Japanese. When compared to their corresponding subtitles, some regular spoken sequences can come across as over-acted to an English-speaking audience, but I understand that this could be due to the natural sound of the Japanese language. However, as I have observed with many a horror movie over the years, the actors are largely very convincing and engaging when acting frightened.


Director/writer Takashi Shimizu has fun within the visual and narrative boundaries he set for himself and his crew, and manages to communicate fear up-close and in long shots. Those iconic extreme close-ups of the faces of the ghosts' imminent victims are so well crafted and acted, and truly stand out as the highlights of the movie. The repeated sweeping tracking shots of victims as they succumb to the haunting are wonderfully simplistic while establishing key visual themes; by the third or fourth chapter of this chilling tale, we understand what is to come both visually and narratively, but that doesn't stop it from being absolutely terrifying when it arrives.

Helloooo? Avon calling!

As it happens, I did not find Ju-On: The Grudge as immediately terrifying as I either remembered or anticipated. I did not jump, and no scene gave me the chills or gave me trouble sleeping (as tall an order as that is for me these days), but as a film enthusiast, I really appreciate this picture. It clearly inspired enough tension and excitement in people to spew a whole gooey egg-nest from its cinematic loins, but the humility and understated charm of Shimizu's Ju-On: The Grudge is an entirely enjoyable and magnetic cinematic experience.

Urban Explorer (2011)

Andy Fetscher's Urban Explorer was one of my several cheap DVD store punts that turned out to be, as Roger Ebert once called Last House, "about four times as good as you'd expect". I am a keen urban explorer in real life, and am always totally compelled by movies that use it as a subject. Truth is, amazing suspense can be conjured on the screen simply by having characters be in places they shouldn't, such as in Area 51. The likes of As Above So Below and Chernobyl Diaries keep me coming back again and again, and while Urban Explorer has a lot in common with them, it delivers on the visceral horror aspects that the other titles may be lacking. I discovered this movie by chance about a year ago, and have since snagged a wonderful boyfriend who lived in Germany for many years and is fluent in the language, so I was eager to watch this movie again for his input, if nothing else, for his unique insight into the language and translations. He didn't disappoint.

Still I think he's raather tastyyyy!

A very cosmopolitan movie, Urban Explorer follows the journey of Denis and Marie are a couple ready to snoop around the undercarriage of Berlin for their anniversary, along with other couple Lucia and Juna, under the guidance of local Kris. Naturally, all seems well at first, before things go disastrously wrong, and they are stranded miles beneath the surface where nobody knows they have ventured. However, one of the cool perspectives that this movie offers is the lack of supernatural interference. There are no radiation zombies like in Chernobyl Diaries, no Dante's Inferno like in As Above, and no time-travelling Soviets like in Devil's Pass. All we have to fear this time around is a truly maniacal German fellow with huge teeth, huge eyes and a beard that even I don't find sexy, and isn't a real person always that much more frightening than a monster?

The group are fairly unremarkable, but can all be defined by one trait. Lucia is the dumbass who causes the whole disaster in one absent-minded moment; Juna is the Asian chick who may be into other chicks and wears a dangly earring that will later explain her fate when found on the floor of the Maniacal German's lair. Marie is a Venezuelan nurse and the girlfriend of Denis, who it later transpires once studied in Berlin, and is actually quite a competent German speaker, despite insisting that he only speaks it "a bit". Kris is the shifty German guide who we decide early on must be the antagonist because he's just so damn shifty and German, but we later find out he's the very least of our issues.

I was told I was in a Bob Clarke movie!

Midway through the movie, weird hermit Armin (Klaus Stiglmeier) literally drops into the story, offering suspiciously convenient help to the injured party and his desperate comrades. It all takes a turn that we don't tend to see in these movies, and paces the story in a more patient way, not to its detriment. This is a longer movie than many of its kind, but it works well. There are sequences in which silence and space are drawn out to excruciating lengths, crafting a proper sense of suspense. Urban Explorer is a great and slick-looking picture, and it throws some new ideas into the ring. It also wisely avoids the temptation to format itself as a found footage picture, and by doing so allows itself maximum cinematic freedom. It is not constrained by what the characters would be filming themselves, and has fun with the space and angles this allows. It really is about four times better than you'd expect.

"It's the gayest show in the fucking world!"

Sure, the characters are nothing special and this is no piece of high intellectualism, but it offers a fucking good viewing experience of its type, and goes above and beyond to deliver an engaging show that isn't just a dime a dozen. It also has that typically European ballsy attitude to conclusions that mainstream American audiences don't appreciate: the horrors are man-made, and even when it looks like the nightmare is over, this significantly powerful and relentless human being wipes away all hope in the way that true criminals do in the real world. There is a boldly hopeless tone to the film, and I truly admire a movie that dares to lean into this sort of theme, with no happy ending and no unrealistic escapes. It's a tense and unnerving experience that never lets up, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

(Incidentally, my boytoy advised me that the hermit speaks very colloquial German and that Denis' conversation is suitably amateur for his character, so it is even a carefully written movie.)

A Serbian Film (2010)

How bad can a movie themed on
mid-century communist propaganda possibly be?!

A Serbian Film is one of those controversial movies you get once in a blue moon that the creators insist there is deeper meaning to, much to the disagreement of audiences and critics. Mark Kermode disputed there being any legitimate allegory being made by the movie, and it has gone down in recent history as one of the most horrifying films ever made. Having finally subjected myself to its uncut version, I am baffled as to how anybody can not recognise the statements being made. I know virtually nothing about Serbia, except for it having a history of severe unrest in many senses, but I could very explicitly identify what the movie was trying to convey. Despite what one might expect having heard the grisly keywords associated with it, A Serbian Film is a devastatingly effective movie with plenty of angst.

Miloš is a retired porn actor who has settled down with a wife and child, but given up a good income and lavish lifestyle in the process. Struggling to get by and realising a quiet part of him misses the guy he once was, he is informed by a former colleague of a filmmaker who is producing a new high art form of pornography, and wants Miloš as his star. Coddled beneath several layers of armed security guards is Vukmir, a sinister and eccentric multimillionaire with a chip on his shoulder about the state of modern Serbian society. He is well practised in his prophetic rhetoric, ranting at length about what real art is, and what it is to feel and live. He wants to sign Miloš for big bucks, but is unwilling to tell his actor exactly what he will be performing, as part of some pornographic method acting school of thought or something.

No autographs, please.

Miloš is dubious about the unspecified nature of the work, but his wife Marija is heavily swayed by the money he will receive in return, so he decides to go for it. First day on set, Miloš is directed by Vukmir via an earpiece while flanked by several armed heavies holding cameras. Some odd domestic is going on between a mother and her adolescent daughter, both of whom go on to be central co-stars in this weird improv. By the second day, Miloš' convictions are being tested too hard by Vukmir's depraved setups, and he decides the next day to throw in the towel.

Suddenly Miloš awakens, hungover and bloodied, and it is three days later. Haunted and unable to find anybody he knows, he racks his brain for scraps of memory and tries to piece together what the hell happened to him. Through flashback and footage on a stolen camera, the movie takes us through Miloš' dreadful search for the truth, and we know things will somehow never been the same for him again.

Fans of Last House on the Left may recall that the original draft of its script was a more pornographically-oriented take on things, and as A Serbian Film was wrapping up, I couldn't help but compare it to Last House. It ultimately tells the same story, of an innocent and loving family torn apart by cruel outsiders, and how the family members react and are irreparably damaged by the ordeal. It is hard to classify either movie as horror, because they are really more like hard dramatic tragedies; they show us relatable and likeable characters whose terrible experiences stir emotional reactions in us as viewers. If I felt anything at the end of A Serbian Film, I felt sadness.

This is the greatest show!

Another element that these two movies have in common is that they narrate from the perspective of the family while framing them visually from the voyeuristic view of the aggressors. A Serbian Film is a very slickly produced picture, with sharp and very precise camerawork and sound. As we follow Miloš through this dark chapter, the camera always follows him like a stalker: we see him from over the shoulders of the people he converses with, or the corners of rooms. The feeling of being watched is intrinsically woven into the style of the movie, while sound forces the foreboding atmosphere upon us like a millstone, with inventive use of string plucking, static-like electronics and even what sounds like tearing paper. An incredible tension is created, starting with small tugs and stirs, and finally climaxing (eh-hem) in the film's closing minutes as an unbearable outburst.

This film is nothing short of ballsy. Srđan Todorović gets to show off an incredible range in the role of Miloš, and wouldn't work so well were it not for his courage to do exactly what the character requires of him. Were his performance to lack a certain emotion and vulnerability, we would not be able to feel for him anywhere near as much as we do by the time his nightmarish ordeal finally ends. I cannot imagine any of the roles in this movie being easy to fill for a director or for an actor, and every single person gives it their all, and absolute sincerity. Sergej Trifunović as Vukmir grasps just the right note of villainy and cunning. He is eccentric without being cartoonish, and measured enough for us to never quite peg him as a straight-up bad guy; he genuinely believes in what he does, and there is more to his motives than simply enjoying causing pain.

If this scene doesn't turn you on, you
clearly don't understand high art.

There is a great scene early on in the movie in which Miloš and Marija are in bed together watching one of his old skinflicks. They have the old "difference between love and fucking" discussion and Marija tells him that she quite fancies just being fucked once in a while. So he tries on the rough, underwear-tearing persona that he hung up years ago, and while she seems somewhat turned on by it, he clearly is not. The action cuts back and forth between the couple fucking, and Miloš' onscreen performance, before he recedes, turns his wife back over, starts to kiss her, and goes on to actually make love to her. This tells us so much about Miloš, and about his relationship with Marija. Although he clearly has the capacity (and from what we all hear, quite the knack) for your classic porn-style fucking, it is a compartmentalised section of his personality that he realises he doesn't like to open out into other sections, and just maybe, he has grown to dislike that side of himself.

Many an exploitation flick is accused of doing exactly what it says on the tin: exploiting suffering. More specifically, they are accused of 'glorifying' violence. A Serbian Film has definitely met its fair share of this vein of criticism, but it never once looks at violence through a rose tinted filter. Every second of pain is depicted as cruel and senseless, and despite its inherently sexualised framing, is never presented for titillation or kicks. It wants us to look at its content in the harsh, brutal way that it truly exists in the world, and ultimately, it wants our understanding of Miloš to grow as a result. The impact of the movie hinges on how we feel for the characters being wronged, not how gross and sensationalist it can be.

Uh... no homo.

The casual moviegoer is unlikely to accidentally stumble into this picture without any prior understanding of what they are getting themselves into, but let it be known: this is a gruesome and hard-hitting picture which in its uncut version uses some very disturbing imagery. It is stuff you won't shake off easily, but if you feel you can handle it, it is very worth seeing. I got so much more from watching this movie than I had anticipated, and am still somewhat surprised to be declaring it a moving and very effective piece.

I wonder what Roger Ebert would have made of this movie. Although he was still alive and critiquing when it came out, he never reviewed it. I feel like his 70s self - the same one that commended Last House - would have seen redeeming qualities in it, and perhaps even recommended it, much to the horror of the average moviegoer. In his mid-80s, Siskel-centric era, he may have decried it for its sexually-oriented violence. I know that by his twilight years, he had grown pretty damn tired of the hardcore exploitation flicks. That was his taste. I love me a hardcore exploitation flick, and A Serbian Film is as extreme as it gets in terms of content and context.

Slender Man (2018)

Who is the real savage?

How in the hell can you make a horror movie so boring and ugly to look at? How do you make a 90 minute movie feel so goddamn long? How do you make a movie without any sense of framing, momentum or feeling of any kind? Well I don't know, but I have a feeling director Sylvain White does. For some reason, makers decided that 2018 was not in the least bit five years too late to milk a buck out of the old creepy pasta Slender Man, and for reasons unclear, a fictional character that thousands around the world have crafted intriguing stories or ideas around wasn't able to become a good movie. It's irritating, seeing as the character has all the pieces to be something really scary, but what was turned out by (who else?) Sony in 2018 was not scary, not entertaining and not even watchable.

Forget everything you know about even the most basic storytelling techniques, because they have no place in this goddamn neighbourhood! Almost every good (or even mediocre) horror knows to open with an attention-grabbing scene to establish thrills and some idea of antagonist--hell, even the really crap movies know to do this. Know how Slender Man opens? With the most bland shots of a high school you can imagine, and then two girls sitting on the bleachers taking selfies. Cor damn! Unencumbered thrills are certain to follow. I don't know how they will possibly top this informative and exhilarating introduction.

Their exact reactions to receiving parts in this film

The first dialogue we get is from the four main girls talking about what age they would be if they could stay that way forever, before they cross paths with a group of boys who say they're going to be having a sleepover and doing secret stuff. As sexual as that sounds, one of the girls later tells the others that the boys are in fact summoning Slender Man--which still sounds pretty sexual. This serves as our very unceremonious introduction to what we know will be the antagonist, but only because the title tells us so.

Within five minutes, the girls are also having a sleepover and soon watch a stupid Ring-style 'website video' that supposedly summons the creature. The pacing of the first act (not that traditional acts are even decipherable) is so jarringly abrupt and sets the tone for the rest of this dull, dull movie: two minute scenes of nothing that continuously fail to establish any flow or linearity. Despite denouncing the concept of Slender Man as bullshit just moments before, they are suddenly creeped out by the video and begin to have crazy visions and stuff.

Although a caption helpfully informs the stupid audience that it is now a week later, the kids are suddenly on a class trip to a cemetery (?!?) and one of the girls just vanishes. Suddenly the cops are here to look for her, and she's a missing person. We're no more than fifteen minutes into the film. You thought that one of the four main characters would get any actual screen time or development? You should have known better. Next one of the other girls starts going crazy and stops coming to school. I can't even remember if she dies or what, the movie just forgets about her and I have no idea what we're supposed to make of it all. By this point Joey King's character has covered every inch of her bedroom wall with scribblings and newspaper clippings and is convinced that Slender Man is after them. It feels like perhaps they are positioning her to be the main character, but then she dies in tree-mendous fashion (sorry), and the one remaining girl is suddenly the central figure.

Sony could legit be the next Jason or Michael. True evil.

Everything is just so disjointed and inconsequential. I have never seen a movie so jumbled and pointless. The split-ended thread of a plotline is padded out to bursting point with pointless sequences of nightmares, hallucinations, stupid visual segues and the worst evil of all... Sony product placement. The movie seems certain that if it throws enough CGI mist and trees and dismembered limbs at you that it'll be scary or even somewhat arty. The real events of the movie could just about make a short, but it has nothing to offer a feature length picture. Decent movies use their run time to create tension and build characters that the audience cares about, whereas all the filler in Slender Man is boring and useless and does nothing to move anything along.

Slender Man is also understood to cause a beanie hat epidemic

The performances never once hit the right note, always falling into either underacting or overacting. Joey King is easily the strongest in the movie, but even she is poorly directed and always seems to be playing a part rather than being a person. White's direction is completely misjudged, coming off as either incompetent or lazy. Slender Man doesn't seem to fit very naturally into White's scant filmography, and he seems way in over his head with directing a horror movie that actually engages the audience. I kept wondering how fucking long the thing had left to run, and when it did end, it was in keeping with the rest of the crappy movie. One shot could have made a reasonable cut to black, but it goes on to another pointless scene, but then it still doesn't end. The final note is a voiceover and schoolkids in the hallways, talking about how we let ideas infect us like viruses or some such shit. The ending aims at some weird Lifetime TV movie moral, and doesn't fit at all with what came before it.

There are plenty of bad horror movies that are at least watchable or entertaining, but Slender Man is the dullest and least scary viewing experience I have had in a good long time. It really is as bad as people say, and having watched it twice now, can confirm that you will gain nothing for checking it out.

Chaos (2005) - A Retrospective

Now we know that we can't even be in our houses without
getting murdered, so we may as well end it all now.

Years ago, in my quest to find the world's most gruesome movies, I came across a little old picture by the name of Chaos (not to be mistaken for the Jason Statham movie of the same title and year). Chaos achieved perhaps more notoriety than it deserved when Roger Ebert was the first big critic to write about it, and he hated, hated, hated this movie. In a scenario not unlike that of The Brown Bunny, Ebert managed to land in a back-and-forth with filmmakers who were displeased with his take on their projects. He denounced the movie as "ugly, nihilistic and cruel", and I honestly can't think of three words that better sum up the vibe it gives off.

I first reviewed Chaos in a long-winded essay here and broke down in minute detail my problems with it. Dialogue was boring and for some reason often racist; the narrative was a near beat-for-beat retread of Last House on the Left; the last few minutes just insulted everyone from audience to characters. So perhaps as a result of deep-rooted self-loathing, I had a spare hour and watched it again today (it's a thankfully short movie, although it doesn't feel short enough), and felt the need to go into a few finer points that ultimately make Chaos as horrific as it is.

Within the first minute I realised that I was all geared up for round two of hating, hating, hating this movie, so had to make a conscious effort to lower my guard and try to see it through fresh eyes. The action leading up to the main plot point of the film - that being the killing of the girls - is all rather pedestrian and does the bare minimum required of it in giving us simple intros to our characters. The action following the killing of the girls is some of the most bewildering stuff I have ever seen. The second act, the top of our story arc, the money shot, is how the girls get done in, and even the more stoic horror goer may find this part simply too much. I always knew it was too much, but in all my rage and discomfort, neglected to consider why I felt that way.

This doesn't seem familiar in the slightest.

Chaos is entirely diegetic in terms of its soundtrack; that is, there is no score, sound editing or anything. It is just spoken word and muffled scream. It can often feel like watching a reel of dailies, though I assume the makers were going for the verite style which I have to admit they pull off to a pretty remarkable degree. There is accounting for angles and camera movement - this is not your conventional found footage - but other than this, it is a very raw experience in terms of composition. Almost no FX were required for what has to be one of the most gruesome films I've ever seen, and the knifeplay can't add up to more than one minute of the runtime, but a truly sinister and hopeless atmosphere is created, making what we watch all the more effective.

Our ring leader Chaos is played with terrifying realism, and at times apparent ease, by Kevin Gage. He is really ballsy with his performance and never once restrains himself or seems like he's even trying. There is a particular shot in which he goes to lug Angelica from the van, and simply grabs her by the back of her jeans and carry her like a bag of groceries. His take on this villain feels authentic, with wavering tempers and eerie coolness. He doesn't feel like a regular guy playing make believe, and I cannot imagine how uncomfortable a shooting experience this must have been for him and his co-stars. Gal pal Daisy feels similarly real as we see her stance and loyalties fluctuate throughout, and we manage to scrape just a sliver of sympathy together for her.

The girls Angelica and Emily (Maya Barovich and Chantal Degroat respectively) are what sell the film in terms of realism. I have often documented my dislike for horror actors who just can't convince me that they are in real pain or terror; there is movie screaming and then there is real life screaming, and the two are very different. Both actresses get to wail and scream and cry their hearts out, and it is their willingness to push their comfort levels and endure snotty noses and coughing dust that makes you engage more than you might with your average genre victim. What I liked the most in this sense - as disgusting as it is - is Degroat's almost lack of reaction when she is murdered. The pain exceeds the human body's capacity, and rather than scream, she just groans and screeches as the life drains out of her. I don't know how, but these actresses managed to deeply understand fear, physical and mental pain and portray them in a disturbingly real way.

Nor does this.

The lack of score where you feel there should be one (I noted a few occasions where any other movie would have obeyed specific musical tropes) manages to tie all the horror together and leave us no escape route. The movie somehow makes good use of the parent characters, by cutting back to them every now and then to give us time to breathe. This was what Craven was going for with the cop duo in his film, and in Chaos you can feel it full force -- it is actually a relief when the horrifically stereotyped black mother starts whining and chatting shit for a minute.

Director DeFalco managed to bag himself actors who were far, far better than his movie required them to be, but generally demonstrates that he does know what he's doing. It's just that he pulled his evil plan off so well that we have nothing to think about except how horrifying all of this is. When it's over you feel zero sense of satisfaction or really any emotion at all. It is a deadening slog of a movie that leaves you drained and no better for having watched it.

I didn't feel that Chaos was a particularly badly made movie the first time I saw it, but it had zero entertainment value in the traditional sense. Even the edgier 'torture porn' like the Saw sequels are exciting and enjoyable in their own funny way, but Chaos is just as bleak and deadpan as it gets. I notice this time around that it is a more competently made picture than I initially gave it credit for, and most of the choices made by the director seem fairly justified. At least up until the final sequence. But I maintain that it is a thoroughly uncomfortable, unsettling movie that has not a drop of fun or relief to offer its audience.

The Girl Next Door (2007)

Daniel Farrands has caused something of a stir in recent years with his choice of film projects. Last year he threw bees into so many bonnets that Nicolas Cage practically showed up to scream about his eyes, with the controversial Haunting of Sharon Tate. This year he has swiftly followed it up with The Murder of Nicole Brown, and with these two titles coming consecutively, people's ears have pricked at the not-so-subtle trend emerging. Farrands has been universally branded as a smut-peddler  thanks to these projects, and I was inclined to consider him such myself after watching Sharon Tate, but my research into that picture dragged up something a little odd.

A good ten years ago, my sister raved to me about "the most disturbing" movie she had ever seen, titled The Girl Next Door, and I didn't get around to seeing it until about 18 months ago. I was pleasantly surprised by this grimy and largely unheard of little movie, and in retrospect, it plays rather intriguingly as a part of Farrands' filmography.

This writer's choice to make films based on true crime events is far from recent. The Girl Next Door is taken from the crimes of Gertrude Baniszewski and her children towards Sylvia Likens, and while it never shies from the grit of the ordeal, it shows an incredible amount of craft and care -- almost sensitivity. I cannot help but wonder how, in the space of fifteen-odd years, Farrands' approach to filmmaking can have deteriorated so terribly.

Any bozo can string together 90 minutes of depravity and call it a movie, but not many manage to pull off true human horror in a way that feels real or relatable. Last House on the Left, Eden Lake and Creep are fine examples of well-crafted stories of man vs. man, and while The Girl Next Door may not be quite as competent a picture as these, it gives it a bloody good go, and delivers an unexpectedly strong and engaging look at child abuse.

Mom, you're blocking the TV!

Based on Jack Ketchum's novel of the same name, the movie is about two young carnival girls taken in by a single mother. Meg (Blythe Auffarth) and her sister Susan (Madeline Taylor) go to live at the home of Ruth Chandler (Blanche Baker) so that their carny parents can more freely make a living on the travelling circuit. Ruth is a smoky, emaciated mother of many adolescent children, whose house is always full of local kids. The narrative chooses to focus on David (Daniel Manche), a kid who hangs out at the Chandler residence, and tells the story from his perspective. This proves a very clever choice; not only does the audience endure the cruelty on screen, but considers it from the innocent stance of a child who is free to come and go as he pleases. There are some great little scenes in which David tries to broach the subject of Ruth's abuse to his parents, but doesn't quite know how to, or simply sits in silence alone, fretting over what should be done.

The strongest element of this movie is how the narrative handles the events. Many a lower picture simply shows us people inflicting cruelty on others and just expects us to believe in their reasons for doing so. When you hear of such a twisted true crime story on the news, often the toughest thing to comprehend is how things get to that point, particularly when multiple aggressors are involved. Who first suggests such crimes? What does one have to do, or say, to a person to get them to behave in such ways? In the real world, everything has momentum and contributing factors that move situations from A to B, and so if we are to truly engage with a movie like this, we have to understand the villains as real people and not caricatures of evil.

It's not as if Ruth and her children just randomly start torturing the girls the day they arrive. There is a slow build up, a series of escalating incidents that eventually lead to the abuse, and Farrands' writing is integral to this realism. Everyone likes to think that they would have the morality and strength to stand up to bad people and prevent them from doing harm, but human behaviour is complex and some people have the capacity to manipulate and influence others negatively. When defending the use of violence in movies, I sometimes use Game of Thrones as an example. If we hadn't been shown Joffrey's many escalating acts of cruelty, would we have understood him in the way that the characters around him did, and would we have felt satisfied by the end of his story? A good narratives fleshes out its antagonists in a way that uses them as more than a plot device or pantomime villain.

There is a largely unnecessary framing device that follows David in middle age, beginning with him witnessing a hit and run, and ending with his conviction to let go of his decades-old guilt. It's not a bad idea to try and give some indication of the long term effects of this trauma on David as our young narrator, but what it could have added to the picture as a whole is undermined by how rushed and tacked on it feels. The ending is rather abrupt, and the momentum of the drama might have been better served by simply scrapping the framing and brooding on the dark basement where the ordeal finally screeches to a halt.

Suck my fat one, ya cheap dimestore hood.

Acting is surprisingly good, particularly from Blanche Baker, and good use of colour and space is made to convey the freedom of wide open spaces and the rigidity of the house's four walls. There is a tangible sense of atmosphere, of time and place, in a way that reminds me of Stand By Me. The kids feel real, and do and say things that creatures unsure of who or what they are would. Against the backdrop of colourful '50s suburbia, the visceral goings-on in the house appear that much darker and dirtier. It's not a long or rambling movie, but it succeeds in crafting a very believable world in creative ways. 

The abuse inflicted upon the girls is upsetting and difficult to forget, so this is not an exploitation movie for beginners, but those with the stomach for such scenes and an appreciation for good writing will really dig The Girl Next Door. Meanwhile, Farrands should seriously go back to the drawing board with the way his career is going, and maybe take a Screenwriting 101 refresher course, as he seems to have forgotten everything.

Hostel (2005)

The 00s was an era of reimagining horror. 9/11 had a profound effect on almost every facet of modern life, and movies were far from immune. Not unlike the way the Vietnam war influenced a new chapter of horror in the early '70s, 9/11 brought real-life terror and gore to the forefront of the public conscience, and changed what viewers looked for in entertainment. Although action movies and TV serials scrambled to rearrange into a less close-to-home format, the horror genre leaned into it, and a new wave, later dubbed Torture Porn, was born.

The two key figures in the Torture Porn movement were Saw (2004) and Hostel (2005), each of which divided audiences in their ultra-visceral depictions of violence. Nobody around in the '00s can forget people asking "Did you see Saw?" before chuckling at their own comic brilliance, and talk of Hostel was hot on its heels. As a younger teenager during this period, I had to wallow in hearsay until each of the movies was released on DVD, and I clearly recall my first viewing of each. Hostel I acquired by taking advantage of my older boyfriend, and we watched it at his house with my sister. At the time I deduced it to be one half softcore porn and one half slasher gore with a nice memorable eyeball schtick, and have gone on since to develop a real fondness for it.

Each Eli Roth movie is a real character; some people can't stand his sophomoric blend of blood and humour, while others revel in his silly, in-your-face approach to making films. My sister and I have always been firm fixtures in the latter group, and share a particular fondness for the most divisive aspect of any Roth movie: the dialogue. If your patience is stretched by Roth's style, Hostel will be far from your cuppa soup, but those who enjoy a bit of silly humour in place of the pointless ramblings that usually open up earlier slashers find his style refreshing. Of course, Roth is also fond of elaborate practical effects, with which he likes to have a lot of gory fun. Anti-TorturePorners point out that violence doesn't equate to scare, which is certainly true, and that a good movie wouldn't have to resort to explicit violence, which I don't believe is true.

Beanie hat! 

Now what I do think is that violence and other forms of cruelty can be absolutely necessary to properly tell a story. Hostel doesn't deliver much real narrative to 'justify' its gore, as we are ultimately not really supposed to like or relate to any of the characters (another Roth trademark), but this doesn't mean there is no thought or perspective to it. Even if the audience doesn't explicitly notice that the movie's style is deliberate in its depictions of violence, they notice the effects.

Roth is far from a tactless filmmaker, and I think that his childlike enthusiasm for every single frame he shoots is his real strength. His work is always more than competent on a technical level, and all gore considered, he makes really good-looking and engaging movies. He is not looking to win any prestigious awards or merge his way into the Hollywood elite, but simply wants to have a really good time making the sorts of movies he would watch himself, and for other people to have fun watching them. For sheer entertainment value, Roth is always a safe bet for me.

World's most trustworthy travel agent

There is not a lot to say about the plot of Hostel, as the fun is in the experience as a whole, but let's give it a try. Paxton (Jay Hernandez) is backpacking across Europe with his meek friend Josh (Derek Richardson), and other tourist Oli (Eyþór Guðjónsson) has been picked up at some point in their travels. We meet them in Amsterdam, where they are busy doing what all good Roth characters do: partying. They get thrown out of clubs, dip in and out of whorehouses, and of course, refer to many things pejoratively as "gay". They come across a seriously weird-looking fella named Alexei, played by Lubomir Bukovy, who tells them that if they want the pure shit from source, they need to trek through the Slovakian wilderness to a village that is populated entirely by Page 3 girls and child thugs. The guys are all pretty stupid, so do they consider this trip a good idea? Of coursh, ma horsh.

While on the train to Slovakia, they are buttonholed by some geeky old dude (Jan Vlasák) whose defining characteristic is eating chicken salad with his twitchy fingers. When said fingers get a little too close to Josh's junk for comfort, the guys throw an all-American freak-out at the gayness of it all, and the Salad guy skulks away apologetically. In response to the sexual assault of their buddy, Paxton and Oli throw a few more homo jokes out for good measure. They arrive in the whore village and stay at a...*dun-dun-duuuuun* hostel, where they lament the lack of English dubbing on local television and how very gay it is that they have to share a room at a hostel. It soon becomes clear that the situation isn't quite so guy-on-guy as they had anticipated, when two hot women in their room invite them over to the spa.

The only time Paxton hated having balls in his mouth

So the partying is in full swing, but after the first night, Oli has disappeared. Paxton insists that this shouldn't spoil their fun, so they do some more partying, and the next day Josh is gone too. Curiouser and curiouser! All the locals are kinda shady, and a gang of kids mug people for such riches as bubblegum, but hey, it's probably just be because they're European.  In the course of trying to find the friend that actually matters enough to rouse his suspicions, Paxton is also set upon, revealing that this quaint little village not only has hot women and kid thugs, it also has millionaires who pay to torture foreigners in an abandoned building. And what's worse... they're all in on it! Ooh, faced!

What got under people's skin about Hostel and Saw was that they were more than just corn syrup and condoms full of sausage meat - they were presented in a vivid and immersive way that felt inescapable. Scores of slasher movies from yesteryear would throw lots of blood around, but rarely focused so hard on the suffering of those being minced. Hostel lingers on the victims of the situation, emphasising the experience of being tortured, tears and blood and vomit. None of the characters is a big badass who just tells their assailant what a "sick fuck" they are while having their limbs removed with table cutlery. They behave like real people, and show violence for what it really is - long, slow suffering.

It's the gayest movie in the fucking world!

Roth's tongue-in-cheek style does require a somewhat turbulent tone that may not make for comfortable viewing by all, but it functions as his charming little take on the genre that I can never help but enjoy and watch repeatedly.