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.

Grave Encounters (2011)

Found Footage is often snubbed by a certain faction of the movie-going world, considered dull, unoriginal and unwatchable due to the 'shakey camera' cliche; I maintain that it is the same as basically any other subgenre, in that there are a few really good examples and many bad ones, but the subgenre itself does not inherently make a movie bad - or good, for that matter. I have quite a few post-Blair Witch favourites of FF, which include Crowsnest, Apollo 18 and the Grave Encounters movies. The duology is unprecedented proof of that rare wonder: the sequel that lives up to its original. Writers/directors The Vicious Brothers are very much my kind of filmmakers: my generation, grungy as fuck, and worshippers of all good horror. They are the sort of dedicated and learned auteurs that you would be happy to see succeed, and they did exactly that with the Grave Encounters films.

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

In a throwback to the format of the very first FF movie Cannibal Holocaust, the footage that constitutes the main narrative of the movie is set to a realistic framework, in which a TV producer explains to a documentary camera that the following picture was compiled from 76 hours of footage found after the disappearance of his crew on a job at an abandoned and supposedly haunted asylum. The show is Grave Encounters, and it is basically Ghost Hunters, as depicted by South Park ("It's the gayest show in the fucking world!"). Host Lance Preston and his colleagues pout at the camera, desperately try to look hard, and contrive non-existant ghostly experience, while we see their many outtakes in which their disbelief in the paranormal and generally unprofessional attitude is made evident.

They have arranged to spend the night - eight hours - locked in Collingwood Asylum, with the cooperation of the building's caretaker, who chains the door from the outside, and promises to return for them in the morning (how is this very notion somehow unsettling?). For a while they go about their media-whore jobs, but they inevitably soon come to realise that the ghosts they have spent five previous episodes simulating do actually exist, and they are none too satisfied with this revelation.

If you can't figure what happens in the next two seconds, you
have not seen a movie this side of the millennium.

I have yet to investigate any special features on my DVD, but have previously watched behind-the-scenes featurettes on the sequel, and it is very insightful. One of the main objectives that the Vicious Brothers had was that the many old horror tropes would be null and void in their line of narrative.

Like a souped up 1408, the asylum is an entity in itself, and shifts its shape to fuck with its captives. Every supposed escape and exit leads to another dark corridor. When 'rules' no longer apply, we the audience are unable to judge the characters' choices, because there is basically no way out and no way to fight. It is an inescapable nightmare, and this makes for a brilliantly tense viewing experience.

Blair Witch (2016)

I’d be willing to bet that few proper film fans out there were actually excited when a third Blair Witch movie was made – I wasn’t, but I figured it was going to be an hour and a half’s worth of moderately-entertaining stuff that I wouldn’t necessarily regret watching.

There are few movies out there with quite the cult status of The Blair Witch Project: although a tried-and-tested schtick even in the ‘90s, the concept of a film that blurred the lines between fiction and reality really hit home hard, especially when it coincided with the true advent of the internet. The web provided never-before-exploited marketing opportunities, and step by step, the makers had assembled something of a snuff film whose authenticity could be verified by all other sources – as well as the fact that the ‘actors’ seemed to have dropped off the face of the earth. It was a true sensation, the likes of which has barely been emulated, if at all, since.  This is why it was a bold choice for a sequel, especially since the first one flew very much under the radar, and no one had ever attempted anything like it since.

The premise of the film is that James (James Allan McCune), the younger brother of Heather Donahue - our original protagonist of the dribbly nostril and considerable lung capacity – was a small child when his sister disappeared, and all these years later is using the mystery for his friend Lisa (Callie Hernandez) to base her college film project on. James has spent an unspecified time obsessing over the idea that his sister is still alive in the haunted woods of Burkittsville, prompting him to mull over mysterious internet videos and other clues that might affirm his suspicions.

 

His online musings have seen him make contact with a guy who uploaded mysterious footage of a woman running through a house that police searches of the area could never locate. Despite the woman’s face obviously not being that of Heather Donahue, this video gives James all the motivation he needs, and he sets out to team up with the internet guy to find his totally-still-alive sister. Where would a horror movie be without an overambitious assumption to set the ball rolling?

For diversity and that insulting bit of tokenism, they bring two black friends along – Peter (Brandon Scott) and Ashley (Corbin Reid) – whose sole purpose, it seems, is to complain about the imminent danger they are in. Oh, well, and of course to be the first ones to die. You didn’t think we’d moved past that old chestnut, didya? Not one black death, but two. This must be some kind of record.

This being a thoroughly modern murder mashup, the kids come prepared. Where Heather, Josh and Mike had weighty mid ‘90s VHS film equipment to lug around, these guys have earpiece cameras that don’t fall out, handheld cameras, GPS, cell phones, walkie-talkies and even a drone: about as well prepared for potential supernatural encounters as you can be. Equipment-wise, at least.

You remember that episode of South Park in which the plotline of the latest Indiana Jones movie is compared to our favourite archaeologist being sexually assaulted by Spielberg and Lucas? You might make a similar comparison with Blair Witch. Post-Millennial horror has become an incredibly formulaic experience, with a standard that is a million miles from everything that the original movie was, and it seems that the makers just couldn’t help themselves when it came to ‘modernising’ the beloved product. First night there are creepy noises outside – guy sits up to investigate – BOOM! It’s only his friend descending in a loud and stupidly unannounced fashion on his tent. It’s like the camping version of ‘Oh, its only the cat. Phew!’ Ashley cuts her foot when they decide to wade barefoot (?!) through a river, only for a closer inspection to reveal *GASP* something wiggling under her skin! Is this Blair Witch or fucking Alien? This whole build-up for no pay off is not only a waste, but totally ill-fitted to the genre.

The final act of the movie is where it loses all its rhythm. One of the major strengths of the original Blair Witch movie is that basically all of the horrors were unseen, so by the end we are not only terrified, but wondering quite what went on. What did happen to Josh? Why was Mike not fighting? Who left the goodies outside their tent? One thing we can establish onscreen is that all the action is contained within a very real and reliable world. Sure, they get lost in the woods and go round in circles, but that’s easy to do. Blair Witch decides to go down a more definitive route, and takes a leaf out of the book of…well, basically every found footage movie to be made in the past 15 years that took place in some sort of abandoned building. Grave Encounters et al.

The morning hours come but it is eternal darkness outside. We see tents being thrown through the air by unseen forces. Characters age years in a matter of hours. Yup, it’s one of those time- and space-bending theories that sounds like it should have a technical name but I haven’t managed to find it. Once again, it’s overkill. Being preyed upon by an unseen malevolent entity through seemingly endless woods is bad enough, and this twist really does nothing to enhance the plot – it just feels disjointed, like a rejected transplant organ.

The Blair Witch Project followed in the footsteps of some of the best horror/thrillers of our time, by using that classic Hitchcockian technique of keeping the antagonist off-camera. Psycho and Jaws are great examples of this, and the sheer horror created by The Blair Witch Project relied very heavily on letting our imaginations do the work. We were fed many influences, from the opening interviews with local townspeople and other folklore, giving us a haunting image of the witch and her atrocities, and we were taunted with terrifying sounds and the characters’ reactions to their surroundings. Never once did we see the Witch. Was she even real? This is the kind of direction strong horrors take.

Not only does Blair Witch break this golden rule, but it changes the story. You’ll recall Mary Brown telling Heather, Mike and Josh about her childhood encounter with the witch, and describing her as being a person covered in fur-like hair, whose feet never touched the ground. Lane and Talia - the internet guy and his girlfriend - shit all over this long-held impression, instead telling us that the Witch’s death at the hands of the townspeople saw her stripped naked and suspended from a tree, rocks weighing her arms and legs down - effectively a makeshift rack. When we finally get a look at the Witch (which we never should), she is the standard product of a modern horror movie: a pale, long-limbed humanoid that we have seen in a million other supernatural horror movies this side of the Millennium.

Research informs me that director Simon Barrett tried to make out like this creature wasn’t actually the witch, leading fans to deduce that this creature may in fact have been Heather, mutilated and controlled by the Witch. I call BS on this one, for the reason that Barrett made his utter ignorance of the entire Blair Witch mythology known in the DVD featurette exploring the sets. He seemed under the impression that the original house was still standing ‘somewhere in Maryland’, but this assumption seemed to have no bearing on his decision to build a set to replicate it (even though the set doesn’t replicate it at all). 

Were he any sort of fan, he would know that the historic Griggs House in Granite was demolished some years ago, before which it had gained a considerable cult following, with fans exploring and recreating classic scenes for their own photo albums. He struck me, sadly, as the type to rewrite history because he was too cool or important to actually learn the facts. After the film got a lukewarm reception – with many critics and fans agreeing that the introduction of the creature onscreen killed all tension – I reckon he was just looking to create a bit of a stir, which his ‘revelation’ managed to do. This reckless style of his is evident throughout the movie, always trying to add themes or take the mythology in a new direction, or just start again from scratch. His script is puzzling, and not in the good way that actually encourages theorisation, but in the bad way that is simply incoherent.

The Dyatlov Pass Incident [AKA Devil's Pass] (2013)

I feel bad for Renny Harlin: has any other relatively mainstream director ever been so consistently middle-of-the-road throughout a thirty-odd-year filmmaking career? Boasting five Razzie nominations for Worst Director, and of course, the Guinness-certified Biggest Box Office Flop of All Time (Cutthroat Island), Harlin has done well just to keep working in this business. But the saddest part is that he obviously has real talent: almost all of his pictures have some strong elements, and often, they seem like great movies from a distance. But they are always plagued with silly little problems that bring the main product down. Consider Deep Blue Sea: even on its release it was the go-to shark movie after Jaws, and it has maintained a strong cult following, at least among my own generation. But despite the movie’s many strengths, it is difficult to forget the critical reception, or to forget what we all knew: it was a silly, silly film, with many logical inconsistencies. This, sadly, is a pattern that seems to stalk Harlin throughout his career. 

With the Dyatlov Pass Incident (A.K.A. Devil’s Pass), Harlin had rather unique opportunity to really have fun. For anybody not familiar with the events of 1959 in the Ural Mountains, a group of nine students – all experienced hikers and mountaineers – set out on a trek and never came back. A short time later, rescue teams found all nine dead, under mysterious circumstances. Some were partially undressed, some had massive internal injuries without any outer trace of struggle, and examination of their tent found it had been cut open from the inside and fled from in the middle of the night. No official explanation has ever been offered, in spite of rampant speculation and conspiracy theory – ranging from yeti and UFO to military experiment and infrasound – making this incident an absolute dream to turn into a film, which nobody has ever done. And Harlin, in his classic style, starts off well and ends well, but loses his footing somewhere in between.

It’s a found footage movie, which is just as laborious a filmmaking technique as any other nowadays. In fact it is the Dolly Parton of filmmaking: you have no idea how expensive it is to look this cheap! Behind the scenes featurettes show Harlin crawling around in the snow looking for the most appropriate camera angles, crossing off requirements and scenes from the storyboards – FF is a surprisingly technical process. Unfortunately for the most part, this movie underutilises the format, which in the second act seems to simply serves as a means to masking breaks in continuity. A good FF will take advantage of the moods and emotions you can create by adopting a handheld POV (The Blair Witch Project), but almost nothing here is done with this extra dimension. At least until the end.

So how would Dyatlov Pass and FF go together? Ding-ding-ding ‘College documentary project’! Holly (Holly Goss) reckons she’s 21 when she’s at least a decade past that, and has had Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters-style premonitions of the Ural Mountains all her life. She has apparently been given a project grant by the University of ARE-gan where she is a student (she and almost all the actors are British and acting American, and Goss’ accent is slippery at best). So she takes a few friends to Russia and off they hike. Either Holly is very disoriented with her facts, or the writers made the least effort possible to change key information, as she recounts the Dyatlov Pass events inaccurately, attributing one victim's injuries to another and so forth. 

The group's overnight stay at the site where the Dyatlov group's bodies were found kicks off the horror but doesn't keep it going. Explosions set off an avalanche that kills one and breaks the legs of another of Holly's friends, but not only are they now fighting for survival with no equipment in some seriously harsh conditions, they are also subject to what lies behind the mysterious door Holly found in the side of the mountain. Here Harlin goes and stamps his trademark silliness all over what was shaping up to be a respectable picture. And it's not even the time travel twist that bothers me: it's a good twist, as limited as my comprehension of time paradoxes is. What bothers me is the introduction of lurking humanoid creatures. As I told about in my review of the sequel Blair Witch, as a modern horror viewer I am sick to death of lanky, pale, glowing-eyed, quadroped humanoid creatures. From I Am Legend and The Descent to basically every creature movie of this decade, it has been done a thousand times, and never very distinctively. Come up with a new monster, or do a different kind of horror.

It happens that these monsters are relative to the time travel theme, but even then, they are badly done with CGI and suddenly bring the entire quality of the movie down. I actually sighed and rolled my eyes, it was so poor. This idiotic Resident Evil-style sequence takes place, and it's nowhere near as terrifying as, say, the chase by the hooded and armed assailants who originally chased them was. The entire movie could have done much better were it not for the creature feature.

People on discussion boards have presented an interesting array of ideas and interpretations that the time travel theme has prompted, as well as on how sloppily it is executed. The second act of the movie takes on that annoying horror habit of telling rather than showing. So the remaining characters talk the audience through their patchy theory on what is going on and what they should do next. For example, tell me what's wrong with this suggestion: they theorise that the wormhole they have discovered will take them anywhere that they think of hard enough, so they should think of the place that's freshest in their minds that they recall vividly, for the best chances of success; they decide on outside of the door, on the side of the mountain. Answer: well, everything. Let's assume their theory that the wormhole can take them anywhere is somehow correct. How do we know all you have to do is picture your destination to get there? Secondly, if they are going for a place that they can recall vividly, how about home, thousands of miles away from this hellish situation? How about anywhere but back out into the Russian wilderness with still no supplies or equipment? What exactly is the plan once they get back out onto the side of the mountain, where they managed to lock out the two hooded assailants earlier? 

Just this face... for 90 long minutes

Renny Harlin seems to suffer from over-confidence. His behind-the-scenes dialogue always boasts of things we don't see as an audience: how frightening that scene was, how fantastically talented the actors were. Here he was determined to hire unknowns (that's fine, lots of horrors like to do that), but he also reckons that they were the cream of the crop. Performances are mediocre at best, but the prize here goes to Holly Goss for being terrible. She never ever seems scared when she finds herself in terrifying situations, and has this gormless look on her face throughout. Plus, as early implied, her accent is not great. 

You know what this movie should have been? An account of the real Dyatlov group and their doomed expedition, without the found footage format. Just a straight up narrative of what we know happened, and then perhaps a fictionalised account of what could have caused the group to flee their tent and eventually die. Because the appeal of the Dyatlov Pass incident is that it is a real life event that still doesn't make much sense, and feels like one of those unsolvable mysteries. There you have your perfect movie! You don't need to modernise it and make it about American college students for it to be interesting. 

Grave Encounters 2 (2012)

What’s the best sequel of all time? While it may not be Grave Encounters 2, I would argue that it’s one of the strongest horror sequels we’ve had for some time. If I’m honest, I remember little of the first movie, but this is for good reason. It is one of a slurry of found footage horrors based on paranormal investigator TV crews getting lost in the bowels of an abandoned hospital/asylum/prison, and how often has a movie like this turned out a truly memorable character that you can instantly distinguish without having to subconsciously label them Brunette 1 and Brunette 2? The first Grave Encounters is one of these, and it’s a lot of fun and has plenty of good jump scares; the sequel manages to top itself by taking on the same fictitious reality as used in the Blair Witch Project 2, in which the first movie is acknowledged as a movie.

Alex (Richard Harmon) is an uptight obsessive who is working on his own horror movie while

Nothing unsettling about this guy

becoming engrossed in the mysteries surrounding the movie Grave Encounters, and soon abandons his own project in favour of an investigative piece, in which he aims to prove that the movie was reality and that a whole TV crew are dead by ghostly means. OK, let’s take an obligatory moment right here to appreciate the one eventuality that characters in these sorts of plotlines always seem to take for granted: they go somewhere dangerous and creepy to prove that ghosts exist, and then when they get that startling proof, they are far from overjoyed. In fact, one might venture to say that they bite off more than they can chew in the ghost-hunting business and give Yvette Fielding a run for her money on the screamometer. One time it might be cool for one of these crews to actually show some sort of spiritual efficiency when faced with ghosts.

19th century-style filmmaking

Anyhow, Alex brings along his small crew of friends and they break into the same abandoned asylum. But this isn’t just any asylum, this is a shapeshifting, time-bending asylum from M&S, so prepare for the mindfucks. What really made me look again at this movie was the featurette on the DVD, which gives you behind the scenes footage and interviews with director John Poliquin and writers/producers The Vicious Brothers. Part of a small gaggle of modern horrormakers that miss the spit-and-sawdust levels of filming and reach into the past for their inspiration, the Vicious Brothers detail the tremendous technical measure that goes into making a movie look so small-scale, and the box of tricks they use to pull it all off, including such Victorian wonders as forced perspective. Consider, for example, the simple genius that goes into designing a shot in which a creature twice the size of the characters comes crashing down a corridor like a huge house spider, by using a particularly tall and lanky actor in a scaled-down set. It’s just pure excellence.

A supernatural version of a Welcome Mat

There is further method to the madness: by introducing the building as a weird entity that seems to dangle between dimensions and is capable of manipulation, all classic audience reactions are suspended. The hackneyed knowledge of running outside instead of upstairs or not believing the bad guy is really dead is long forgotten once physical rules no longer apply, leaving the audience with little option but to sit tight and hope for the best. It’s filmed very well, and FF opponents will have to try harder than the ‘shaky camera’ excuse with this one, as it’s coherent even given the context. It is a gripping and watchable movie, and has a couple of really fantastic Oh Shit moments, which are particularly important in a film that is brimming with jump scares.

I suppose it would be beneficial to watch Grave Encounters before embarking on this interesting sequel, and if you’re here and interested in the sorts of movies I write about, it probably wouldn’t be a waste of 90 minutes of your life. But if all else fails, watch it so you can watch the second one and get it, because it’s a really good movie, and a rare example of a sequel outshining its predecessor. 

The Sacrament (2013)

Finally, a decent example of post-modern found footage horror. Let us make this the third relevant step in the subgenre thus far: 1) the original and best Cannibal Holocaust by Ruggero Deodato, 2) The Blair Witch Project and 3) Ti West's The Sacrament. These three films have presented to us unimaginable terror through the medium of handheld footage, and have done so to such admirable effect that I feel they warrant this three-step programme in FF.

The synopsis of The Sacrament will almost certainly ring bells for many people. Some people may actually remember the real events upon which the movie is based occurring. I was gripped by the premise of a mockumentary about a guy who is invited by his sister to visit the strange cult village she lives in, and the madness that goes on within. OK, lemme just throw it straight out there. Kool Aid. There we have it: the Jonestown massacre of 1978. Once I'd finished being thrilled to hell by The Sacrament, I went and googled it, and soon found the reason the story seemed so familiar to me, and watched several absolutely soul-crushing documentaries on the tragedy. Let there be no mistake: this movie is, at times, painful to watch, and not in any gratuitous, explicitly savage or violent way, but in often quietly disturbing moments, with a wholly crushing sense of dread building from the outset. It is, in this way, that it is amazingly effective.

For my birthday this year, I was given (after much hinting) the Shameless DVD release of House On The Edge Of The Park by Deodato (Cannibal Holocaust), and whilst powering through the special features, an interesting lecture came up, held by some English film professors, with the director and actor Giovanni Lombardo Radice present. These professors had been commissioned to examine the results of violent movies on audiences, and this was one of the titles they looked at. Their findings were interesting: most people were disturbed by brutality and control inflicted on vulnerable characters. Surprisingly, mostly Ricky. His character is the secondary antagonist, who answers to Alex (David Hess), and he comes across as mentally challenged. Where the audience could, for the most part, accept the violence going on between the fully functioning adults, they were uncomfortable with the young, virginal Cindy getting caught up in the trouble, and the obvious manipulation of a mentally incapacitated man.

The story of Jim Jones, the wacko proprietor of Jonestown, shows bold and consistent themes that ran throughout the guy's life. He always had a knack for sniffing out vulnerable people, who felt outcast and ill-fitting, and giving them a place where they belonged. As a child, he actually was one of those sickos who got off on torturing animals. And when shit hit the fan, the dude ran. The really disturbing element of The Sacrament, rather like with HOTEOTP, is that the victims' vulnerability is what throws them into the arms of evil people. It's a classic abusive relationship. The abuser is dominant, and presents themselves as an escape, a refuge, which the victim dares not try to escape, for fear of what's on the outside being worse than the inside. The relationship is ruled by fear, isolation, insecurity. And what kind of place, we come to ultimately ask, must a person be in to feel like killing themselves, their friends and children, is the best, or only, option.

Something I came to notice only after I had watched this movie and gone on to learn about the incident through documentaries, was that The Sacrament is practically a shot-for-shot recount of the real incident, with names and dates changed to protect those (very very few) still living. Not that this is really necessary, but still...they had to fictionalise something. Patrick (Kentucker Audley) is a photographer, who receives a letter from his recovering addict of a sister Caroline (Amy Seimetz), inviting him to visit her at Eden Parish. It's one of those places that the residents refer to as a 'community' when we know it's a total freakin' cult. Patrick's two buddies, Jake (Joe Swanberg) and Sam (AJ Bowen) are professionals in media and looking for a compelling story.

My boyfriend said to me when the guys first arrive at the 'community', "They have a watchtower. Only one kind of place has a watchtower." While the residents willing to speak to the crew rave about the freedom and peace that their new home has given them, a distinctly ominous tone is set with the introduction of the Jones figure, here named The Father, on the first evening at a village meeting. He has agreed to be interviewed by the guys, luring them into an intense exchange somewhat reminiscent of Dr Lecter's psychic musings. Father is played, with a thrashing undercurrent of menace, by a wonderful actor (ironically) named Gene Jones. A 60-something balding fellow with immeasurable manipulations behind those dark glasses, Father is an astonishing character, played with measure and daring by Jones. He embodies the macabre evil that slowly decays his character, and is frighteningly similar to the real Jones.


As mentioned, the movie is a distinctly accurate reconstruction of the massacre, so the details need not be disclosed here. But the film crew get out alive, as did one or two of Congressman Leo Ryan's people back in '78. But the interactions and manipulations that festered in that town and brought on its imminent demise are painfully crafted by West, leaving the audience gripped in fear and horror and despair. You witness the movie's finale as a desperate, helpless onlooker, mouth hanging open for minutes at a time. If the Titanic had been sank deliberately by a mad captain, the situations would begin to be comparable. It's a level of horror that transcends horror: it's tragedy. As helicopter shots capture the shrinking patchwork of whole families, lying face down on the ground, arms about each other in dying embrace, masses and masses of people, it's like having been plucked from Hell and stuck on a bird's shoulders, to be nothing more than a silent, rescued witness of the aftermath of murder. The Sacrament is utterly sombre, and unforgettable. It is brilliant.

Creep (2015)

Netflix can't keep up with me in bed. Honest to God, every night, I lie there, scrolling endlessly for a new horror movie to watch. I've watched them all, and they send a new one our way perhaps once a week, once a fortnight during a particularly dry spell. Despite its periodic impotence, Netflix continues to do good for indie movies and original series, offering a widely visible platform for their hard work. I have seen some obscure movies thanks to Netflix... Willow Creek to name a terrible one...Devils Backbone Texas to name a moderately better one, Afflicted to name a very decent one. And following these three titles in their found footage style, comes a movie far more daring and bold in its approach, in the form of Creep.

Not to be mistaken with British picture made in 2004 with Run Lola Run's Franka Potente and Harry Brown's terrifying Sean Harris, which is a far more disturbing experience than this, but only because it really goes there with the physical violence. This Creep really likes to play psychological games though, and on the most vulnerable of people. The movie taps into the widely held fear of strangers from the internet. As almost any freelancer could surely tell you (and I can certainly vouch for this), while scoping for suitable jobs to lend your skills to, you are liable to come across a bit of a weirdo every now and then. Creep's freelancer is Aaron, a cameraman, who has answered a Craigslist ad for a $1000 working day at some remote (albeit fucking fabulous) house up in the mountains.

Now just as much as $1000 for a maximum of 24 hours of your time is a pretty tidy sum, it is also almost so much that you rather expect you'll be fellating some hunchbacked hermaphrodite in a dirty basement by the end of the day for it. I mean, at least when Nev Schulman goes poking around with internet weirdos at their very own houses, he takes Max with him for backup (not to mention the considerable MTV crew, but still...). This cameraman goes it alone, and although this particular error doesn't see him to his fate, it seems a stupid move for a seemingly intelligent, college-educated fellow like Aaron (Patrick Brice). His personality, his sensibility and sensitivity are what escort him to an early grave, when that classic puzzle of Etiquette vs Instinct kicks in.

Up at the beautiful house in the mountains, Aaron finds nobody home. He is suddenly snuck up on by a weird looking fella played by Mark Duplass who, for better or worse, was adorned by the Lord with the face of the world's most prolific child molester. He reminds me somewhat of Michael Shannon's darker roles, but with the deadpan hardness of Ted Levine. One look at the dude, in his gorgeously sculpting running lycra, and we are certain who our titular Creep is. He is Josef, and he is weird. He is instantly very hands-on, hugging Aaron, insisting that this is by far the least weird thing that will happen today. Very encouraging. He swiftly invites the cameraman in, and hands him his $1000, thereby ruling money out of the equation, and making the encounter a 'relationship.' Further encouraging.

Josef explains that he is a cancer survivor, whose illness has returned in the form of an inoperable brain tumour, and he has little time left to live. Thing is, his lovely wife, who remains absent throughout, is expecting their first child, and so he wants to make a video diary of a day in his life, for his son to watch when he is older, in memory of the father he never knew. Very touching, and a pretty decent premise. For Aaron is no street-smart yob who throws a curse out every second word, he is sensitive and discreet, so he is never going to tell this poor dying man that this idea is very creepy and that he'd rather leave the premises post haste. He is going to suck it up, and sit tight, camera in hand, no matter how bizarre it gets. Cos let's face it, guilt stings worse than a knife wound.

It starts off as an 'Uncomfortable' reading on the Weirdometer. Josef strips off and bathes, holding his imaginary son in his arms and playing with him in a manner that would instantly look innocent were there an actual baby present. They go for a hike in the woods, during which Josef continuously runs off and jumps out at Aaron. He seems to get off on shitting people up. When they get back to the house, Aaron is talked into staying for a drink, despite his intention to leave. During this time, Josef makes a very queer confession. The cameraman has pulled one of those "oh yeah, the camera's definitely off" tricks. A while back, he found his internet browser history full of bestiality porn, and conceded that his wife had some sick fetish, which she flat out denied to him. So he went away under the premise of a work meeting, then broke into his house that night, wearing a fearsome wolf mask (Josef names it Peachfuzz, and brandishes the thing throughout the movie) and raped his wife, much to her delight. But when he returned from his 'business trip', she never mentioned anything, and was suddenly happy, and the internet history was clear again. By now, the Weirdometer is registering a solid 'Fearing for one's orifices'.

After Josef's shaking revelation, Aaron can't find his keys, and starts to get agitated, as he has been trying to leave for quite a while now. Josef plays it cool, and convinces Aaron to stay the night, but the poor stranded one drugs the weirdo's whiskey, and he passes out. While he's unconscious, Josef's phone rings, and the woman on the other end warns Aaron to get the hell out, as her brother is crazy, and there is no wife or child. This is the glorious 'Oh Shit' moment that sends the rest of the movie into its delicious downward spiral. Every good horror movie needs at least one of these moments: the impact that provokes a physical reaction in you, where you feel a thud in your chest, or a prickling in your stomach. I think to enjoy a lot of movies, we must temporarily resign our consciousness to that of the film, in order to fully receive its intended effect. When a picture lacks this artistic climax, it can fall dismally short of its potential. As Above, So Below is a recent demonstration of this.

From here, Aaron finds himself the subject of a dreadful stalking, which is handled in a sensitive and surprising manner. Many a horror victim have found themselves hunted from afar, but it is unusual to see a lone male stalking another lone male, with zero supernatural influences involved. The movie starts to steer towards the Fatal Attraction route, in which the perfectly plausible actions of an unstable human can be not only scary in a jump-out-of-your-seat, in-the-moment way, but also in the slowly-building-sense-of-menace way. It achieves what the better horror movies do; it's like the film version of clitoral and vaginal orgasms: they are quite different, singularly enjoyable, but best used in well-crafted combination. That we can be jumped out on and given the rushes of adrenaline whilst viewing, and later be haunted by a sense of real-life dread that could follow us home, is horror movie magic.

Found Footages are not usually known for their artistic camerawork; they are more of an excuse for the sloppiest and most negligent of production values. But movies such as Creep effortlessly demonstrate the making of an effective movie with minimal requirements. The one camera which records the story is used thoughtfully, and maintains a perfect balance of potent and meaningful shots, and spontaneous realism. When the camera (or Aaron, or us...it's all basically the same) finds itself suddenly in some symbolically-constructed scene, it is believable as coincidence, or accident. We are never reminded of our passive safety as an audience, not even when this stunning money-shot is thrown our way...

Duplass and Brice wrote the movie as a duo, with Brice directing, and it seems like acting in their own creation was a good move, both artistically and financially. Brice appears to be your typical Film School grad, with this being his first feature length credit. Duplass has far more works to his name, but they make a formidable team. Brice's academic and practical expertise help to make the entire picture look and feel beyond its means, and Duplass' acting experience lands him a role which he seems to be remarkably comfortable in. I say this, not to flippantly suggest that he has an extracurricular penchant for stalking or murder, but to emphasise the realism he achieves. Serious horror antagonists must be handled as such, not as a character to pretend to be, but as a being who we are to believe exists, and so has regular, human feelings and emotions. Ted Levine's Buffalo Bill is a great example. He is ridiculous, monstrous...and yet we know him. He could be that scruffy guy you see shuffling around the supermarket sometimes. More terrifyingly, Duplass could be your kid's school principal.

I believe professionalism is the key to Creep's success. It is not treated as a thrill ride, with a jump quota to fill and millions to make in box office dollars. It is treated (thank you, Mr Brice) as a serious, compelling story. Minimalist and realist. No need for effects, fancy equipment or even a cameo by Robert Englund. This, as a former academic film student myself, is what we strive to achieve in the field. It's got 'it'. Now, you see that long white bar across the top of the screen upon which you read this? Click it, type in Netflix.com, and thank me later.

As Above, So Below (2014)

A fortnight ago, I was several hundred feet under the streets of Paris, wandering through endless tunnels walled with human bones, holding my video camera in one hand, and finding myself surprisingly regardless of the camera screen. I was focused on the real, what was going on around me in the place that I was at this very time. The footage was incidental; it could be looked at when I got home. For now, I was going to really have fun and learn a lot exploring the Catacombs. Having been alerted to the release of As Above, So Below from its exciting enough but rather usual marketing campaign last year, but not having seen it yet, I thought a lot about the idea of a handheld picture being made down there.

The Paris Catacombs only allow 200 people down at any one time, hence the often lengthy queue. The strange thing was, the place was so vast that we only saw perhaps six or eight other people the entire time we were down there. The majority of the time, we were alone. That sheds a little light on how huge the tunnels are, and that's the guided route. Visitors will observe alternative routes leading off of tunnels, the tourist route marked out by gates. Some of these alternative tunnels ride off into complete darkness. If people arrogant and intrusive enough to be found in a movie like this were to cut the locks and skulk off, it could most definitely end pretty disastrously.

What would make a movie like that even better, I decided, was my realisation that I paid no attention to what my camera was capturing, but what was in front of me. This offered massive potential for forces/creatures unseen to the characters but acknowledged by the audience. This could be really chilling. It was obvious: the Catacombs made for a brilliant horror film setting.

In fairness, As Above, So Below ended up going in a somewhat unexpected direction towards its conclusion, and although a bit messily constructed, it is a highly researched film. Respect must be paid for effort made. There is a lot of mythical and legendary namedropping, such as the philosopher's stone and Nicolas Flamel, and a lot of that irritatingly vague cryptography that the characters must battle their baffled little selves through. There is also a lot of jaw-dropping stupidity from one solitary character.

Leading lady Scarlett (Perdita Weeks) is a middle-class parent's wet dream. She looks no older than 25, yet she holds two PhDs, a Masters degree, and speaks six languages fluently (two of those being dead), and to top it all off, she is a university professor! She is everything I aspired to be at the naive age of 13. She is like Lara Croft. Because not only is she a painfully qualified academic, she is also a badass (which in this instance is synonymous with moron). She doesn't have the sexual prowess and ridiculously tightly clad bod, but she unlawfully trespasses on an Iranian cave system that is minutes from being demolished by dynamite, knowing the legal ramifications, and presumably, just how mindblowingly stupid and death-welcoming the decision is. All the warning alarms are blaring, and she finds the Rose Key, a large relic that her scholarly father sought his whole life. Lo and behold, explosives start going off all around her, and there is a frantic, and admittedly tense, run-for-life back to the exit, via helmetcam.

This is the format for most of the movie, plonking it in the increasingly cloudy subgenre I know and love...the Found Footage. The more people make this kind of fad movie, the more audiences ask, 'Who finds the footage?' The early and more classic examples of FF offered explanations as to the recovery of the materials, but of late, the genre is straying from being 'found', and settling as 'homemade'. There no longer has to be a barely-believable reason that this footage, exactly as it is presented to us, was recovered from some unsurvived crime scene or tragedy. It is now more of a medium, just a different narrative perspective, which continues to be exercised to varying levels of success. The premise for filming the incidents we witness are ever up for question: it helps if one or more persons has some kind of professional business in filmmaking or television; those assholes who just inexplicably film every mundane thing that he and his asshole friends do, with seemingly limitless battery power, are far less likely to keep our attention.

Scarlett is the subject of a documentary being filmed by Benji (Edwin Hodge) about her uptake of the search for the philosopher's stone, which drove her father to self-destructive madness. She seems minimally deterred by the stone's blatantly negative psychic affects, or by anything else for that matter. She breaks into demolition sites, churches, large underground tombs, and when her old flame George (Ben Feldman) is reluctantly recruited on her latest mission into the Catacombs, where she is convinced the stone is hidden, we find out that her shenanigans formerly resulted in the couple's incarceration in a Turkish prison. She is irritatingly relentless in her carelessness, which she masquerades as determination and adventurousness.

George speaks Arabic, which is why he is recruited for the various translations needed on the quest, and his skills are centre stage as he gives the English form of an Arabic riddle. And whaddaya know?! It still has perfect rhythm and rhyme, as though it were originally written in English, although this is surely impossible. Then, in a Paris nightclub, Scarlett ropes a semi-suave looking dude named Papion (not sure where the 'butterfly' symbolism occurs in any part of the film -- his parents must have seen in him some gentility which we do not). He is en garde, and swaggery, and he can show the group a non-official route to the treasure. And old Pap is a package deal: he brings relatively professional cronies along, who are experienced climbers, potholers, etc. Seems like a fairly safe setup for what is inevitably doomed to at least partial failure. Scarlett will still have her documentary regardless, we can concede early on.

It follows a fairly standard pattern at first: caves collapse, no way but forward, group leader arrogantly insists they take the tunnel of doom rather than the legit ones, a whole bunch of rather juvenile-feeling clue-busting, which Scarlett continuously solves quickly and inexplicably. It's always one of those things that could refer to fucking anything, and that only Jonathan Creek could solve, and only after several days of non-active conversations and thoughtful stares in a duffle coat. But then, a few peer-deaths down the line, things start getting... I dunno...not theological, not existential, perhaps a little spiritual. In another problem-solving scenario, and probably the most risky one yet, Scarlett concedes that the reason the world is going crazy and rooms are shifting and weird cloaked figures are stalking them, is that each of the survivors has some guilt, some personal demon which haunts them, that they must release before they are to get out. With a little Inferno referencing and a generally Abrahamic Damnation style, things steer away from the lower-market FF movies with many quick flashes of ghostly faces, and go in a far more big-budget direction with its ideology, leaning more toward the likes of Insidious and The Possession.

The plot and setting seemed relatively original for a movie of its kind, but it constantly felt like something was missing. We had the slow and subtle build-up, with plenty of calmness and establishment of plan and walking and talking, and the first few 'encounters' are typically ambiguous in nature, warranting the characters to shrug them off or not recognise them at all until shit really starts going down. And for the first hour or so, I believed that some kind of dramatic peak was imminent, but this movie left me totally blue-balled. All great (or good...or even just mediocre) horror movies must have at least one moment of forceful impact, the Oh Shit moment, in which everything that you have watched so far comes to fruition, and you feel thrilled. You need the moment in which everyday existence is turned upside down, and the hapless characters find themselves within a scenario that they never imagined they'd experience. We need the world to fall away.

And the crazy thing is that in this movie, it quite literally does, yet it is never enough. It's like 100 minutes of digital foreplay followed by the light going out...and not even a cigarette to conclude. It's all good stuff, but it didn't have any real climax. And moreover, the ending leaves everything unnervingly unanswered. From the course of action they've given us, we all make assumptions about the condition of the world the few survivors escape to. It's no real conclusion. But the movie is far less shaky and so more watchable than a lot of its kind, and gets some interesting shots, and some pretty great atmosphere from its sets.

I feel like I want to give As Above, So Below more credit than it truly deserves: the use of the Parisian catacombs is brilliant, themes are interesting and performances and camera work is somewhat above average. But the scary bits are far too diluted, and most of them turn out to have been contained in the trailer, which is one of my pet peeves. It seems unfulfilled, and that's how it left me feeling. Not all that I had expected. It's worth seeing, and it's fun enough, but if you're looking for a Found Footage movie that packs a punch, go for the Blair Witch Project, or even low-enders like Crowsnest and Grave Encounters 2. If you're strong of stomach, go straight to Cannibal Holocaust.