Hannibal (2001)

"People will say we're in love", quoth Dr Lecter to Starling. Well, people did say a lot in response to Hannibal, such as how full of shit author Thomas Harris was when he released a highly anticipated follow-up to The Silence of the Lambs, the film adaptation of which had already become considered a classic of cinema. For Starling and Lecter to end up as lovers and companions, free in the world, was just too implausible and tone deaf for most to swallow. I confess that during my adolescent infatuation with the Starling and Lecter pairing, I revelled in this fan-fic of an ending. It made perfect sense to me, and satisfied the sexual chemistry that had been brewing, in my view, for years between the characters. I still somewhat stand by this, but it really does read like the ending was drawn from a Reader's Wives contest or something.

When the third book in the Lecter series, simply titled Hannibal, was announced for cinematic adaptation, some speculated that parts of the novel were simply too obscene to translate to screen.

Many a book far more extreme than Hannibal has been very faithfully adapted to the screen, but when the writers got their grubby mits on Harris' book, they decided to water it down in very derogatory and inexplicable ways. The novel it takes its material from is far from perfect, but a number of key characters and plot threads that were fairly central to the story never quite made the leap from page to screen. Hannibal is a pretty messy and poorly-coordinated movie, that is far too preoccupied with looking stylish.

Captured that Demme sophistication perfectly

Ridley Scott's professional name has gone through some transition over the years. Alien brought him acclaim as a sharp and effective visual storyteller; someone who could craft characters and cast actors who breathed life into them. His 21st century reputation precedes him as an overly-flashy, technologically-preoccupied director whose grasp on character and sensical plot seems to have slipped. Prometheus characterises this shift in artistic direction. Scott was about midway between these two extremes when he took the directorial helm of Hannibal, and what he turned out was a confused mish-mash of these styles. Far too much time is dedicated to visuals that do not suit the narrative, while the two or three main characters whose lives constitute the emotional weight of the story are diluted to mere silhouettes.

Hannibal, as written by Thomas Harris, is driven by its characters and their experiences. We are a decade on from Starling's ordeal with Buffalo Bill; she is physically and emotionally worn out by the significant influence that media and federal politics have had on the career she has strived so hard for; meanwhile Lecter, having escaped custody at the end of Silence of the Lambs, is living his best life in Italy, seamlessly carrying on as an art curator. His morbid curiosity with Starling is tickled by prominent media coverage of an assignment gone wrong that ended in the deaths of a perp and several of her colleagues, and he drip-drops back into her life via taunting correspondence. The third figure, this book's Buffalo Bill, if you like, is one Mason Verger, a meat empire heir with a history of paying big bucks to cover up his indiscretions, the most heinous being systematic child molestation. He is a hideously disfigured husk of a man whose life depends on a cornucopia of machinery and personal care, provided by his right-hand man Cordell. A sort of mutual, three-way pursuit ensues between Starling, Lecter and Verger. Starling wants to track down Lecter through Verger's inside knowledge and possibly revive her career; Verger wants to take the ultimate revenge on the psychologist who coerced him into cutting off his own face; Lecter... well, he wants to enjoy the finer things in life, and probably to use Starling's professional situation to gain her trust.

Ridley Scott presents Hannibal in Whoville

Now Scott is a filmmaker who knows his way around a good visual, and you'll recall that one of the many weapons in Silence of the Lambs' arsenal was the engrossing cinematography by Tak Fujimoto. The film guides audience sympathy and hints at motives and alliances, all through meticulous use of a camera: the close-up fourth-wall-breaking shots of Clarice as she talks to people, and the way she only makes eye contact with those she considers her intellectual equals. These include Lecter, Ardelia, Jack Crawford, and even Buffalo Bill himself. It was a prime example of how to tell a story visually. Hannibal requires this same attention to detail and emotional drive, but it just doesn't get it. This time John Mathieson is in charge of cinematography, and although he also worked for Scott on Gladiator the year before, it is rather telling that one of his later works was none other than Joel Schumacher's Phantom of the Opera - a movie notorious for visuals that get an A for effort but fall artistically flat. It's all, "oh, that looks pretty cool", and no, "that shot tells me a lot about X, Y or Z". It's not all about looking cool, kids.

I'm generally not one for pointing out dated film techniques, as I like to appreciate art for what it was in the context of its creation. However, Hannibal just screams early-'00s with its approach to visuals. Like the contemporaneous Lord of the Rings movies, the action will suddenly and randomly go into a slow frame rate for a few seconds. It puts silly images not just into the background, but into the foreground of its shots, such as a flock of pigeons forming Lecter's face on the cobblestones. It just throws any shit at the screen to see what sticks, like a first year film student project, as if the director is unsure of his style. And that's what's so damn frustrating. This is Ridley fucking Scott. He knows much better than this. But at least he could give his very talented actors some decent direction, right? RIGHT?

Ohhh, you know I also voiced Caitlyn Jenner?

For whatever reason, Jodie Foster does not reprise the role she gave so much heart to, and honestly, if I'd had my way, they would have just called off this stupid idea then and there. But hey, still gotta make those sweet sweet dollas, amirite? So Julianne Moore, of all people, gets called in to fill Foster's boots, and this movie is the reason I still have trouble liking Moore to this day. It's certainly true that Starling is not the same woman she was ten years before, and Moore is only doing what the writers and producers tell her to do, but her performance is so stilted and cold that I cannot even like Clarice Starling, or hope for her to succeed! Gary Oldman, who is hidden under layers of prosthetics and even had his name scratched from the credits and marketing, is somehow infinitely more engaging than Moore, and he is playing a fucking child molester! Why do I find myself more drawn to his silly games, than I do to Starling's very grave situation? 

Even the brilliant Hopkins, whose serious and studious approach to his work is well-known, has his cinematic prowess neutered by the ways the director and cinematographer decide to show him to us. No longer is he the predator, watching unblinking, as he eyes up his imminent prey; no longer is he such a powerful creature that he occupies every inch of the space he stands in. Now he is an average man, in civilian clothing, striding down the endless streets of Florence, standing lonely in the vast halls of old churches and apartment buildings. The way he disappeared into the crowd at the end of Silence, he continues almost the entirety of this film. Suddenly, he is a little blip on the landscape, despite being the namesake of the entire story. 

One movie that really does need a porn parody

Thomas Harris has always built this world with a good number of substantial characters. Silence gave us the likes of Crawford, Chilton, Ardelia, Catherine and Senator Martin, and they were all pertinent and realistic figures within the narrative. The book Hannibal brings back Crawford and Nurse Barney, and introduces Verger's sister Margot, whose ultimate murder of her twisted brother is entirely justified in the story as we read it. Her elimination from the movie causes a terrible domino effect: Barney is introduced, then has no further purpose to serve, so disappears; the bit part of Cordell is the one to finally kill Mason Verger, but he has so little personal or emotional stake in the situation, that it seems unreasonable, and unprecedented. Compare it, if you will, to Arya being the one to kill the Night King. We all thought the same thing: why her? Of all the conflicts she has endured, the Night King was the last person on her mind; meanwhile, a good half-dozen other characters' arcs seem to have led to this very moment, in which they will defeat the ultimate evil in a profound and meaningful way. So after being subject to nothing more sinister than Verger's minging face and snippy attitude, Cordell suddenly decides that he hates his boss so much that he will murder him. However, Margot has suffered years of sexual and emotional abuse at the hands of her brother, to the point that she is a bodybuilder in an effort to feel powerful, and has engaged with Starling and Barney extensively. She is square in the middle of this whole mess, and she has many good reasons to make her brother suffer. Why they decided to cut her character, I will never understand.

As a result of Harris' work, not Scott's, there are two lawmen who become supposedly central figures to this story. The first is the detestable Paul Krendler, who got a brief mention and sweeping mid-close-up in Silence, this time played by Ray Liotta. Now he is high-ranking, hates Starling for some reason, and has the mentality of a frat boy half-a-keg deep. He peeks at a pen-and-ink sketch of a nude woman like a naughty schoolboy, and concludes his officious diatribe at Starling with, "this town is full of cornpone country pussy." It's as if Scott woke up one morning and thought, "I forgot about the feminism!" and put this stupid line in off the cuff to emphasis what an asshole this character is, but once again, this is the regrettable work of Harris. Silence, both in film and literary forms, gave a subtle undertone of the sexism Starling faced in her job, but it never preached or made a point of it, like modern takes on the same story would. Basically, Krendler is a douchey man-child who wants to destroy Starling's career.

Then there is Detective Pazzi who - so underwritten that you need to have read the book to know - is a somewhat disgraced Florentine police officer, and he is looking to improve his financial and professional standing by capturing Lecter, who he has spotted working in a local museum, and is on the FBI's Most Wanted List alongside Osama Bin Laden (lol). Poor old Pazzi, however, is way out of his league, as most lawmen tend to be in these stories, and not only does he end up dead, but Lecter even serenades him with the embarrassing histories of his traitorous ancestors before disembowelling him. So... Senora Pazzi is one husband lighter, the unfortunate tourists in the square that night get a holiday to remember, and Lecter... escapes and somehow gets back to the US, completely undetected. Pazzi's sacrificial lamb-ing serves as the climax of the second act, but then once the third act gets going, you realise that he died for nothing. Hell, he lived for nothing. His influence on the story is negligible. Despite his calls to an official FBI phone line, and Starling's explicit warning to him not to pursue Lecter, nobody goes looking for him, or wonders what the hell happened to that overconfident married Italian dude that just disappeared. Our time is all but wasted on this whole saga, and when we get back to the US, there is no trace of Pazzi at all. Just forgeddabowdim. 

One of the defining characteristics of Silence of the Lambs is how neatly, how perfectly, everything came together. No loose end left, no stone unturned. Hannibal is such a jumbled mess that asks questions and doesn't answer them. And as much as I dislike the visual style, general direction and overall tone of this movie, much blame is to be attributed to Harris, or moreover, the writers who decided that his way was the best. It is a piss-poor follow-up to its impeccable predecessor, and such bad form on behalf of everyone involved. It's like when the problem kids at the grammar school get lectured by their form tutor about how they are letting themselves down: it's embarrassing, but entirely true.

You're not going out like that, Paul

Hannibal seems to have fallen by the wayside, mostly forgotten by your average moviegoer. If anybody you ask does, in fact, recall having seen it at some point, I am fairly certain that the only thing they can tell you about is brains, in some form or other. It's either the stupid scene in which Lecter slices off Krendler's crown to serve his brain matter alongside a fine wine sauce and side salad, or it is the even stupider final scene, in which a young child with an unnatural desire to try weird food badgers Lecter into feeding him tupperwared leftovers of Krendler's brain. Mmmm, tastes of Pabst Blue Ribbon and misogyny! I never took the Lecter chronicles for stories that had to be explicitly gory. We aren't supposed to fear that this immensely intelligent psychological professional will empty our skulls out like jack'o'lanterns. We are supposed to fear that he is the everyman, someone who we might start chatting to in a cafe, only for a short conversation to have given him everything he needs to mentally torment us for the rest of our lives. Murder is almost incidental when it comes to Hannibal Lecter. If it weren't, he would be your average Michael or Jason or Freddy. It is that razor-sharp brain that is so terrifying. This is why Hannibal eventually spills out into a silly freak show, culminating in Lecter feeding Krendler his own Michelin-star-worthy cerebral matter, before he chops off his own hand to save Starling the same fate. 

I have always believed that Lecter was in love with Starling, in some weird way or other. This movie tippy-toes around such an implication, and pushes it too far as to imply that Lecter would disable himself in such a fashion to avoid capture by the authorities. I mean, he has evaded them before, and has always been about self-preservation. How can he play piano or write or draw with one hand? OK, he is Hannibal Lecter, I'm sure he'd soon train himself to do so, but the point is that I don't believe that Lecter would do this out of desperation, or affection for Starling. I am far more inclined to believe that Starling would flee her tattered FBI career and scant social life, to take refuge with Lecter, with his money, intellectualism, and uncanny ability to evade capture. 

George R R Martin has said that if a writer changes the direction of his work halfway through the narrative (in his case, because fans have guessed what will happen), they inevitably throw the whole product out of joint. The first half, or whatever, has been carefully crafted to result in the logical second half, and moving the goalpost mid-game just ruins everything. Consider this when watching Hannibal which, for the most part, follows Harris' material. The main difference is the ending, and where Starling and Lecter end up. Harris was writing towards them living an exuberant life together under the radar, but Scott detours the third act toward a final confrontation, before Lecter escapes again, with all emotional ends untied. This bitter encounter, paired with Krendler's head-shrinking, gives us a really flaccid and unsatisfactory ending to the second chapter between one of the most memorable couples in film history. 

Hard Candy (2005)

 

What if...? is the central question to any writer. First you write what you know, then you ask 'what if...?'. I never thought a seriously thrilling psychological movie would - at least in my mind - spawn from an episode of To Catch A Predator. It is difficult to make a movie with a moral or societal message that doesn't come off as biased or preachy, and given today's climate, it is probably suitable that a movie like Hard Candy was made in the mid-'00s, just on the precipice of artistic expansion, mere years before the populace apparently became too precious to take a joke, or to acknowledge genuine social commentary when it presents itself. I cannot imagine a movie like Hard Candy being made either today, or even five years ago. It is sometimes terrifying how quickly the societal landscape evolves, and often not for the better, especially when it comes to freedom of artistic expression.

Hard Candy is an amazingly intelligent, sensitive and thrilling movie that is effectively a 90-minute  two-hander of intense conversation, like Educating Rita or Venus in Fur. Elliot Page plays Hayley, a fourteen-year-old girl who meets middle-aged photographer Geoff (Patrick Wilson) on a chatroom, and gets together with him at a local coffee house. They hit it off and she talks him into taking her back to his place, where things take an unusual and *SPOILERY* turn. Hayley roofies Geoff and he wakes up in a slightly less horrifying scenario than the fellas in Hostel: tied to a chair, threatened with bodily harm... and accused of child abuse. Hayley has targeted Geoff as a predator, but once he is subdued, the identity of the predator is suddenly up for question.

I thawt yew wawnted to be shayved... down thayr

It is rare, as the writer and director of this picture both remarked, for a movie to be so succinctly summarised, but as is often the case with character-driven pieces, plot is not necessarily pertinent. Almost Famous and Me Without You are two examples that spring to mind of one-line-plot movies that find their momentum in their immensely detailed characters, who feel like real people. Although Hard Candy is much harder-hitting material than either of these movies, it is essentially a character profile with genuine dramatic tension. Hayley is a vigilante and Geoff is a sinner of the worst kind who tries to spare his reputation the truth right until the end. It could work well as a stage play in its excellence with dialogue and characterisation, and purposeful use of literal frames to reflect the photographic lens through which Geoff allegedly sees the world. 

Hard Candy hangs heavily on its two leading actors, and they carry it with simultaneous ease and torment. Page, given the duality of Hayley, is required to craft a base character, and an alter ego masquerading as a naive teenager, and it is eerily effective. She shows little glimmers of flirtation and precociousness, while maintaining an adolescent naivete; later she suggests entirely through facial expression that her character was molested as a child, and sees this whole ordeal as retribution for not only herself, but for every other young person who was ever victimised. Wilson, meanwhile, runs the gamut of emotion, and is essentially the characterisation of the audience itself, reacting to the each new twist of the ordeal he finds himself in. Importantly, he never once shows true evil to anybody. He goes through flirtatious manipulation, lust, confusion, anger, mortal fear, rage, guilt, submission, but he never lets us see the side of him that caused Hayley to target him in the first place. He is a real, complex person with many layers, and Wilson's performance is nothing short of athletic.

For tonight is the night that my beautiful
creature is destined to be born!

Not only is this movie an intense emotional ride, but it is like wandering through a chic, minimalist art gallery to look at. Everything has a sleek Scandinavian flavour to it, with expressive pops of colour hinting at some thematic undertone. Indeed, the opening credits are a simple shifting of a single red shape among a variety of white backgrounds, suggesting a small but lingering figure stalking just beyond the periphery. And not for the first time, we are forced to consider who this figure really is. Perhaps their identity depends on what sort of a person is looking. Those with devious skeletons in their closet may see that figure as the reason they still look over their shoulder every day. Those of a more innocent nature might consider it the unremarkable perpetrator of terrible cruelty. 

St. Trinian's (2007)

 St. Trinian's has attitude oozing from every cinematic and dramatic pore. It typifies the last peak of real comedy, before fear of offending people became such a central social construct. It perfectly ties the visual wackiness of Ronald Searle's cartoons, the very kinky camp of the newly liberated '60s movies, and the wider spectrum of weirdness that was the nova of the 2000s. It achieved all this before the scene imploded into the comically-emasculated era we are now stuck in. Drag, drugs and innuendo are the heart of this picture, in perfect keeping with the infamous reputation that St. Trinian's has held for decades. I saw this movie in the cinema upon its initial release, and as a fifteen-year-old, really enjoyed the rebellion and overall craziness; but it has proven to be one of those movies like Beetlejuice or Elvira: Mistress of the Dark, that I realise, upon each subsequent viewing, contains lots of clever and well-masked adult jokes. This is your perfect 'family' movie, the kind that is all but dead now, but was still staggering on during my own teenage years.

Don't worry - they are all of age.

Annabel Fritton (Talulah Riley) is marooned at St. Trinian's school by her rich, neglectful father (Rupert Everett), where her estranged aunt Camilla (also Rupert Everett) is the flirtatious and boundless headmistress. Her new classmates put Annabel through the ringer, testing her ability to be one of them, while the school's chaotic educational and financial habits put it into foreclosure. In a staunch effort to avoid being sent to 'normal schools', the girls plan a heist in which they will steal a priceless piece of art and sell it on the black market to bring their beloved sanctuary back into the black. Helming this mission are Flash Harry (Russell Brand in his mid-'00s heyday) and head girl Kelly (Gemma Arterton). 

It's hard to make a movie that really speaks to young people. Teenagers were a newly-discovered breed in the 1950s, and music and book genres scrambled to keep up with the fresh demand. But real young adult cinema has always been a rare underdog of a genre, and any picture that dared to walk the line generally fell on either the terrible side, or the fantastic side. Roger Ebert once said of Richard Linklater's School of Rock, "[it] is about as serious as it can be about its comic subject, and never condescends to its characters or its audience. The kids aren't turned into cloying little clones, but remain stubborn, uncertain, insecure and kidlike." His take on School of Rock ran through my head for the entire running time of St. Trinian's. This movie is aligned entirely with its young characters, completely understanding their emotions and motives; meanwhile, adult figures of authority are also rounded people, whose vices form a common ground between child and grownup. 

Love story of the century

Miss Fritton carries on the grand tradition of the headmistress of St. Trinian's being a man in drag. Rupert Everett, a veteran of campy comedy, is the jewel in this crown. His performance is affected just on the verge of silliness, always taking itself only as seriously as it can be. He accommodates a big white flipper with a poncy sort of lisp, dresses like the Queen on her downtime, and leans fully into his romantic interest in Colin Firth, who lends the second appendage in this spicy little two-hander. Firth is a government minister of education, and plans to rehabilitate Britain's schools by starting from the bottom: St. Trinian's. When he rocks up to "the gates of hell", he discovers not only an underground vodka distillery, a crucified student and a tropical zoo, but that the captain of this ghostly ship is his former university lover. Firth and Everett enjoy a stiffly flirtatious relationship, before she finally gets him drunk one night, and he wakes up in far fewer clothes than he remembers having on.

Heh. Didn't recognise her without
her brother's dick in her

The British film industry has experienced a lot of peaks and troughs over the years. When the original St. Trinian's movies were made in the '50s and '60s, films were on the decline due to the sharp rise of TV in the home. However, what you couldn't get on TV was sex and violence, which in turn led to a boom in small-budget horrors and sexy comedies, like the Carry On and Hammer movies. Aside from the odd worldwide sensations like the Harry Potter or James Bond franchises, the British film scene rarely eeks out into the wider audience, especially now that Disney and other such soulless corporations are buying up any property worth having. It is only fitting that the reboot of St. Trinian's would be a bombastic, utterly British picture, absolutely bursting at the seams with both new and experienced British talent. Firth and Everett are alongside the likes of Celia Imrie, Toby Jones and Lena Headey, while the student population consists of Gemma Arterton, Lily Cole, Juno Temple and Paloma Faith, among others. It's an absolute smorgasbord of UK names.

It takes a really keen director and/or writer to make a truly enjoyable movie for young people. Stephen Spielberg directing Hook, or any John Hughes project, or Rob Reiner on Stand By Me: these guys absolutely understood being young, and what fun and fear and frolics were. St. Trinian's is directed by Barnaby Thompson (producer of the Kevin and Perry movies) and Oliver Parker (who started out in classic literature movies and merged into comedy), and their backgrounds play so nicely into their management of this project. They both understand playful kiddish humour, but can structure a decent narrative and appreciate old source material. They prove to have been the perfect choices for this picture, which could have gone so far awry. Revivals of beloved old properties usually have a hard time reintroducing themselves and gaining traction, and for one reason or another, they are often quite awful. St. Trinian's is such an entertaining experience, that treads the path of its predecessors without it being dated. It is a modern Carry On, the likes of which could have spawned others of its ilk, much to the joy of the British audience. 

Rat Race (2001)

We are living in dangerous times. Day by day, a loud-mouthed minority is sulking its way to centre stage and making nonsensical demands of the sensical majority. Comedy is a victim of modern 21st century culture. In recent years, it has been gradually distanced, as if by a disinterested spouse; increasingly held at arm's length. This last year or so has brought about an 'ethic' cleansing, if you like, and some invisible but all-powerful entity has dictated that much of the comedy we have known and loved over the years is no longer suitable for human consumption. So terrified are those at the top of hurting the feelings of some battered minority that no group or topic is fair game for a laugh. Top filmmakers have turned from comedy because of the overly-sensitive society we now face each day. The Zucker/Abrahams union have indirectly been all but exiled from the modern comedy cinema scene, and in retrospect, their first picture of the 21st century was already far tamer than their hits of the '80s. Perhaps I am some sort of cretin, but the sort of comedy that these guys made pretty much epitomises my taste in humour.

Loosely based on the '60s comedy It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, Rat Race is an ensemble picture with a cast rivalling many that came before it. Donald Sinclair (John Cleese) is the rich tycoon at the head of the Venetian Hotel on the Las Vegas strip, whose days are passed by placing outlandish bets with a group of other, equally-rich tycoons. His latest whim involves randomly selecting a handful of the hotel's patrons, and setting them loose on a rule-free race to New Mexico to retrieve a duffel bag containing $2 million cash. Like the best of ensemble pictures, every party is equally important to the plot, overall outcome and comedy, so I will outline each of them. Vera (Whoopi Goldberg) has just reunited with her birth daughter Meryl (Lanai Chapman); Randy (Jon Lovitz) is on a long-awaited family vacation with his wife Bev (Kathy Najimy) and their two children; corporate robot Nick (Breckin Meyer) is too eager to leave a friend's bachelor party, and he meets spunky helicopter pilot Tracy (Amy Smart, in a cute little reunion since Road Trip); Duane (Seth Green) and Wayne (Vince Vieluf) are brothers and petty criminals looking for the scheme that will financially see them through the day; Owen (Cuba Gooding Jr.) is a recently disgraced football referee trying to avoid the attention of a public that hates his guts; and Enrico Pollini (Rowan Atkinson doing his best non-mute Bean) is a random narcoleptic Italian. Along the way they encounter minor characters played by the likes of Wayne Knight, Kathy Bates, Dean Cain and - of all fucking people - Gloria Allred.

Genuine reactions to co-starring with John Cleese

A long list of big names is only a small part of making a great movie. Actors are still people, and just like in less interesting work environments, people don't always work well together, they don't always turn out to be as qualified for the job as they first seemed, sometimes they realise they have taken a job that they hate and drop out. Sometimes the management doesn't deserve the talent they have hired. But then, sometimes, a really great combination of people, both in front of and behind the camera, is hit upon, and they produce something really special together. This doesn't always equate to initial box office or critical success, but it is often recognised eventually, as Rat Race has come to be in more recent years. 

Andy Breckman is credited for the script, but it is very obvious that the Zucker/Abrahams team have had either a direct or indirect hand in its structure and finer details. The likes of The Naked Gun and Airplane! have shown their ability to satisfactorily weave humour into traditional story arcs, and Rat Race is almost identical in basic format: major characters are succinctly introduced in small opening scenes, then the driving crisis or motivation takes the narrative lead, with much hilarity ensuing, before the crisis or motivation is brought to a decent conclusion, leaving us with a bunch of characters we are fond of, and a fairly basic story well told.

Well, you'll laugh later.

If one takes a cursory look at typical '80s and '90s comedy, whether on film or TV, and then does the same at a '00s or '10s production, there are a number of fundamental differences. Let's compare, for example, Airplane! and Jack and Jill *shudder*, or early Simpsons with more recent seasons of Family Guy. One of the most prominent differences is the set-up of what one might call a 'joke'. Earlier examples recognised a theatrical method that went into enjoyable comedy, and so would give a joke its source, its stream and its river, so to speak. Take the intercom skit at the beginning of Airplane!, which begins with the usual announcements we are all used to hearing at an airport; then the two announcers start opposing each other and arguing, before we finally realise that they are a recently broken-up couple using their work environment to take digs at each other. You wouldn't tell this as your typical anecdotal joke around the water cooler - it relies on a realistic context and human delivery, and it is this humanistic element that makes comedy truly great. Compare this, if you dare, to any sequence in Jack and Jill, that expects its audience to laugh at the mere mention of bodily fluid. Prolonged sequences showing us the results of Mexican food on the human bowel, and nothing about our characters, make for cheap laughs, if there are even people out there who still laugh at feces anymore. 

Rat Race allows each group of characters to realise their own plot thread, while cleverly crossing their paths every now and then en route to the finish line, and actually being funny. As the characters endure humiliating, terrifying, painful, and all too illegal calamities in pursuit of the prize money, Sinclair monitors them from Vegas, taking bets from his rich buddies on who will prosper, among other things. Their amusing little bets that punctuate the race action range from guessing how much a hooker would charge for a rather exotic 'party', to which hotel maid can hang from a curtain rail the longest. A thoroughly unexpected wrap-up of the race reunites Sinclair with the competitors, and leaves him thoroughly disgusted at the idea of having thrown away millions of dollars at once, for the first time in his life. 

Let's demonstrate what I mean about the clever style of comedy by breaking down one or two sequences from Rat Race. Bev having insisted that she and the kids accompany him on what is supposedly an urgent drive to a spontaneous job interview, Randy is unwilling to make any pit stops on his way to New Mexico. So when his young daughter needs to use the bathroom, a bit of back-and-forth within the car hard-cuts to the poor girl with her backside stuck out of the window of the speeding car. In itself, this is a funny outcome; but when the action later cuts back to Randy, having been pulled over by police, with an officer in the background angrily wiping down the windscreen of his car, the joke makes its slam dunk. Jack and Jill forces its audience to listen to a straight minute or so of fart noises while Jill mounts the toilet after her first taste of Mexican cuisine; Rat Race simply implies to us the more disgusting element of the situation, so that we can get straight to laughing at its aftermath.

Wait wait wait! What if we were the new 
panel on The View?

On another path, Vera and Meryl have crashed their car in the middle of the desert, and stumble upon a group of scientists preparing to make an attempt at the land speed record with a rocket car. Blagging their way into the cockpit by posing as models, they steal the car, and end up on a breakneck journey across the sand, jaws flapping. Meanwhile, apparently nearby, Nick and Tracy are being held up at gunpoint by a cowboy mechanic, who mocks them, insisting that if what he was doing was so wrong, the Heavenly Father would give him a sign. At that exact moment, the rocket car zooms by, the force of which brings the mechanic's establishment crashing to the ground. Then the joke goes that one step further, when the rocket car finally screeches to a halt, and the ladies, suffering severe motion sickness, are mistaken for members of a group of mental patients out on a trip in the desert, and taken aboard their bus.

It is this organic, unwinding motion of the comedy that makes it so damn satisfying. It's like going to throw away an empty cigarette carton, only to realise there is one cigarette left in there. This is how you make a joke runs its course, rather than wring itself dry. Compare either of the scenarios I have just explained to the dreadful 'Wonderful Life' argument over the dinner table in Jack and Jill. That scene (for some goddamn reason) thinks that the more times it makes the same non-joke in a row, the funnier it gets. It is absolutely possible to milk a single comedic idea, but it has to be nurtured, not tossed in mid-air and stretched transparent like a flimsy pizza base. There are very few bits in Rat Race that could be considered 'immediate gratification' humour. Zucker/Abrahams are habitual in their need to make art of a funny idea, and make it integral to the story they are trying to tell - because after all, they are telling an amusing story, not just shocking or sickening us into laughing in the moment. Every ridiculous scenario that befalls the characters has a direct impact on their journey, and like songs in a good musical, they are used to progress the plot, not stop it in its tracks and divert things.

The cast seeing the future of comedy

Comedy endings are hard to pull off in a way that satisfies the story, the character arcs and, importantly, the humour. The likes of Jack and Jill like to pretend that they have a heart at their core, and so follow the rom-com formula of having characters argue, go their separate ways, and romantically reunite before living happily ever after, but these sorts of movies often cast off the comedy element in favour of a more traditionally conclusive ending. Well Rat Race manages to give us an ending we really don't expect, which concludes the arc of each character without any individual coming out on top, and tie the loose ends of the story in a way that feels meaningful but not indulgent or overly sappy.

Comedy is walking a tightrope right now, and it looks as if it will never quite get to the other side, or even fall one way or the other. It feels like the line will just get thinner and thinner until nobody is willing to attempt the walk in the first place. In the era when people are deleting tweets just to avoid, or attempt to back-pedal on, social outrage, very few people are willing to put out an entire movie that demonstrates cutting commentary, or simply makes us laugh. Sacha Baron Cohen is the only exception that springs to mind. Although Airplane! still gets daytime reruns on TV, its content is heavily cut to make it acceptable to its viewing audience. Even Rat Race, a spring chicken of a movie, gets the same broadcast treatment, with a lot of the context of the comedy stripped. So many grounds the script dares to breach, such as Nazis, men in drag, porn and mental illness, would be avoided like the plague by movie-makers these days. People died in those camps; transgender people should not be joked about; misogyny should not be encouraged; mental illness is a pandemic to be understood and helped. I oppose none of these points, and importantly, nor does this movie. Fun is not being made of massacre or gender identity, but society's reactions to these topics are being used to frame the unwittingly horrendous situations the characters find themselves in.

Jon Lovitz realising that one day he would have some
douchebag tweeting at him for this.

Consider, for example, the scenario with the most elaborate set-up in the whole movie. As you will observe, it is a continually unfolding narrative, as characterises the movie. Desperate for a break from the road, Randy's daughter convinces him to stop at the signposted Barbie Museum, which turns out to be a shrine to SS figurehead Klaus Barbie, and not her beloved Mattel toy. When Duane and Wayne happen to pass by and notice their opponent's car, they vandalise it, forcing Randy to hijack Hitler's car from the museum parking lot. While driving, Eva Braun's mislaid dark lipstick gets smeared on the steering wheel, and a sudden brake sees the red-hot cigarette lighter fly into Randy's open mouth. By the time the car has been crashed into a WWII veterans celebration, he has acquired a moustache from the wheel and an unintelligible speaking voice from the burned tongue. His attempts to communicate his plight to the veterans in the crowd lead to him being shot at. The point of the joke is not the evils of the Nazi regime; the point is that Randy has, through a comedy of errors, come to be mistaken for someone impersonating Hitler in order to offend veterans. And this is about the most unwanted, uncomfortable situation that a person could find themselves in. That is why it is funny. 

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.

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.

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.