The Image Loft's Halloween Recommendations

Happy Halloween! I may have left it to the last minute, but here are ten of the Image Loft's favourite alternative horror films. There are certainly a lot more obscure lists out there, but if you want something a little different from the usual humdrum in the cinema, and have seen the classics, here are a few well worth checking out to get you in the spirit. 

1. Vampyr

Carl Theodor Dreyer 

1932

Dreyer's hazy, dreamlike tale of the Occult and a tormented village utilizes some astonishing camera work and effects to create a truly unique atmosphere. Shadows come to life, skeleton doctors and perhaps the best out of body experience ever shot. I had the fortune of seeing this over the summer with a live ambient soundtrack, the result was one of the best cinematic experiences I've had this year.  

2. Cat People

Jacques Tourneur 

1942 

Often credited with the worlds first jump scare, Jacques Tourneur and Val Lewton's movie is much more than an early low budget shocker. It is a frank study of female sexuality and jealousy. Cat People tells the story of a young Serbian woman, Irena, who believes herself to be a descendant of a race of people who turn into cats when sexually aroused. With some genuinely terrifying moments (see the photo to the left) and tortured protagonists, this is an unnerving and sophisticated symbolic chiller has an emotional core to it as well.

3. Fiend Without a Face

Arthur Crabtree

1958

Invisible atomic monsters attack a U.S. Armed Forces base and the local residents. The quest for knowledge is a theme often touched upon in the horror genre, dating back to Frankenstein and before, but here it has never been dealt with more direct. The fiend without a face is our own strive to grow becoming an animated monster that feeds on our memories and itellect. Some terrific, brain stomping effects and a particulary memorable sound effect, Fiend Without a Face remains a sci-fi tinged classic. 

 4. The Innocents

Jack Layton

1961

Based on Henry Jame's novel The Turn of the Screw and adapted for the screen by Truman Capote, this masterpiece of tension, setting and Freud. Deborah Kerr is fantastic as the sex starved Governess who believes two ghosts are manipulating the children in her care. The powerful high key lighting creates a prolonged intensity and the sound design is unparalleled, but the star of the show is in it's child performances by Martin Stephens (The Village of the Damned) and Pamela Franklin who create some of the most haunting scenes you'll see. It remains one of Britain's best horror films.  

5. Kuroneko

Kaneto Shindo

1968 

Often overlooked compared to Shindo's previous film; Onibaba, but that is a disservice to this minor classic. A Poetic horror fable from Japan. An evil spirit is praying on the hearts of Samurai and a war hero is dispatched to destroy it, but upon arrival he realises that it will not be as simple. Beautifully photographed with unsettling other-worldly sets dripping with atmosphere. The first half scares give way to a more complex film about love, revenge and family but it remains one of the highlights I've seen this year.

6. Hour of the Wolf

(Vargtimmen)

Ingmar Bergman

1968

Although much of Bergman's canon can be associated with the horror genre; the dreams of Borg in Wild Strawberries, the images of death in The Seventh Seal or the 'Spider God' of Through a Glass Darkly, it is with this film that he pushed closer to out right terror. A tortured artist recounts his fears and dreams to his wife on an isolated island while he is regularly approached by the rich landowners to come visit, eventually leading to the most horrific dinner party ever. Bergman truly gives himself to his fears both sexually and artistically here, making the film feel almost like an homage to the master. Fascinating and intense, this is one of my favourites.

7. House

(Hausu)

 Nobuhiko Obayashi

1977

Although the recent Criterion release has allowed Obayashi's surreal exploration of teenage lift to gain new life, it still remains largely unknown by most. Outrageous, twisted, whacky... how to describe Houuuuuuse is virtually impossible, it simply must be seen to be believed. It may not be the Halloween film to keep you up at night with the lights on, but with a group of friends and some drinks you'll be sure to have a terrific night.

Trailer Link

8. The Vanishing 

(Spoorloos)

 George Sluizer

1988

To call George Sluizer's 1988 European thriller a horror film may seem like a bit of a reach, but I'm indulging for a reason. It follows a mans obsessive three year search to discover the fate of his girlfriend who disappeared from a parking lot in the middle of the day. Her abductor is no ordinary psycho, a mild mannered family man and professor, The Vanishing is a slow, but engaging psychological thriller that does away with genre conventions to pose questions about the human condition; Does truth mean closure? And at what cost? Do we all harbor darker thoughts? However it is the films finale that lands it firmly on this list. To give away anything would be an injustice. For me, it is easily one of the most upsetting and unforgettable of images committed to celluloid. 

9. The Prophecy

Gregory Widen

1995

Big in scale, but short on budget Widen's tale of Angels, tortured 'priest detectives' and all out heavenly war is the stuff of total nonsense, but also the perfect Halloween treat. Christopher Walken delivers in spades as the angel Gabriel, perched on roof tops and sounding his trumpet (literally) to produce some giggles and Viggo Mortensen's appearance as Lucifer is all to brief but stays in the mind long after, for all the right reasons. It's not short on atmosphere either, with a tremendous sense of background scale, Prophecy earns it's cult following.

10. INLAND EMPIRE

David Lynch

2006

For many, Lynch's most recent feature is one of the most impenetrable movies ever made. A three hour long odyssey of surreal insanity; queue talking rabbits, creepy neighbours, Polish sex workers and of course the Locomotion. Starring Laura Dern, in one of this decades great performances, she is an actress who has just been cast as the star of a new remake of a cursed Polish film, or has she? Maybe she is just the product of an imagination of a girl who is hypnotized into believing she is someone else making a movie about herself...(?) You can understand the frustration of many. But for all it's twists, Lynch underscores his film with moments of absolute horror. Virtually indescribable, Lynch has an understanding of the individual's subconscious and peeling back the layers, he discovers the most disturbing of images. 

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So there you have it, a briefly compiled list of some alternate titles to get you into the Halloween spirit. Have a good night folk, and I'll leave you with this to get your movie themed costumes rolling:

[Review] Paranormal Activity 4 - Sleeping tight

It has been five years since the disappearance of Katie and Hunter, and a suburban family witness strange events in their neighborhood when a woman and a mysterious child move in.

If there is one thing the Paranormal Activity series has taught me, it's if I ever find myself in a house prone to misogynistic demon squatters, I shan't be doing any investigating, no, I will be bolting the door shut and slipping on a pair of head phones. This is a technique that has so far been rejected by hyper-curious protagonists in the series, now in it's fourth outing.

I said in my Sinister review that a horror movie can be made the a good theatre atmosphere, or at least spared. Watching people watch the movie can prove an entertaining counterpart, or replacement if what's on screen is found wanting. The Paranormal Activity series has been an effective example in illustrating my theory. Witnessing an audience jump, scream, gasp, laugh and shout calls to mind a modern day Cinema Paradiso and to this day proves to be one of my most guilty cinematic pleasures. 

After a short series of flashbacks reminding us of what went down at the end of Paranormal Activity 2 (the third film was a prequel) set back in 2006. Five years on, and the film picks up with a new family, which honestly left me dumbfounded, at four films in why give us somebody new? At this stage we know the major players, although what they want is still up for grabs, so these late additions feel a lot like space occupiers until the real party shows up. Despite this, and a rather half-hearted subtext about suburban dissatisfaction and the knock-on effects on children, lead Alex (played by Kathryn Newton) and boyfriend Matt (Matt Shively) produce fairly natural performances and believable hormonal endorsed interactions (including a webcam scene I'm surprised wasn't cut in light of recent events.) 

Logic has never been this series strong point, protagonists have been defying common sense since the beginning and this time it shades all sense of plausibility. Time and time again you'll find yourself questioning not just the characters actions but the story as well. Plot points and information are tossed out without any explanation or development, characters fade in and out of the action whenever it suits and by the time Alex is running around the amidst the shenanigans with a laptop, you can't help but feel that these guys aren't brave or curious, they're just stupid. 

These issues spill over to the film making as well. Just a word of advice to directors Joost and Schulman, when you have a film based entirely off repeated camera angles, continuity errors are a big no. There's also an abundance of jump cuts this time, characters teleport around the frame for no reason other than to speed up the action. I said in my Sinister review that there was a digital sense to movies evil. Such is not the case here, an opportunity to do something new is missed and the film's overall design seems well... just lazy.

By now the formula has lost all steam, where the original film was restrained and paced, here it's just frustrating and pointless. We know the routine, we know the scares and we do not need the first 40 minutes of this film. The tagline for this forth entry reads; All the activity has led to this. I wish we got a sense of that.

The only new addition to the scares this time around is the rather effective Microsoft Kinect. The thousands of projected tracking dots lead to some of the films best moments but it's a poor substitute for last years low tech 'Fan-Cam.' Otherwise the usual abundance of creaking doors, possessed furniture and the ole' leg drag make their usual, and by now predictable appearance. If the first film was playing on middle class fears of home invasion, here the terror lies in their material possessions with homicidal cars (a nod to Hithcock's Shadow of a Doubt), flying chandlers and of course the aforementioned Kinnect. It would be a lie if I said it lacked any real heart pounding moments, but they're spread so thinly that you can't help feel that they are running out steam, something that I believe the audience agreed with. The usual hundrum and buzzing was reduced to a quiet murmur that evaporated when the scene ended.

When your horror film's best sequence is a rather tongue-in-cheek Shining reference, you're in trouble.

Paranormal Activity 4 has all the hallmarks of a series that is running out of steam. It's cluttered mythology, senseless characters and repetitive tactics have really hit a wall here. It's still can provide cheap weekend thrills with brief glimpses of ingenuity, but I feel it's time to put this series to bed, with the door shut and the camera off.  

 2/5

[Review] Sinister - Paranormal Art-ivity

 

Found footage helps a true-crime novelist realize how and why a family was murdered in his new home, though his discoveries put his entire family in the path of a supernatural entity. 

It's October, which of course means all the horror movies are wheeled out with a half decent shot at box office success. I am rather partial to the horror genre, with the exception of some real stinkers (Apollo 18, The Devil Inside,) there is usually a level of campy enjoyment to be found. Even that enjoyment lies in the nature of watching people watch the film. But alas every so often, amongst all the haunting, slasher, zombie, exorcism and Paranormal goings on, a spark of creativity creeps in. Recently America has been letting slip, leaving it to the rest of the world to fill the void (see - Kill List, Berberian Sound Studio, [Rec.], The Orphanage, Martyrs) hence the message of this years Cabin in the Woods. Last years Insidious came close, what was a very effective and at times downright terrifying opening half gave way to well... the films mental last forty minutes, queue weird slapstick and Darth Maul.

Well enter Sinister, by Apple inc. Errr I mean Emily Rose director Scott Derrickson which despite it's problems, leads the charge of the Halloween releases as a surprisingly complex gem on the dangers of the horror genre. 

'And this is us after the family visit to Blackpool.'

Ellison Oswalt, played by a convincing and gruff Ethan Hawke is a struggling true-crime novelist, who reckons he's stumbled onto the story of a missing girl so good that it will reignite his struggling career and push him back on easy streak. So, he packs up his family as well as a few extra copies of his successful 'Kentucky Blood' and moves the family into the house of the missing girl. Only to discover a box of 'Home movies' in the attic, and as you'd expect, a surge of activities of the paranormal variety begin to happen to Ellison and his family. 

If I had to describe Sinister in a word, it would be messy.  The film is filled to the brim with ideas, scares, characters and plot-lines that would normally cripple a film of it's genre, but here it all amounts to a film of its own creation. It's as if Derrickson chucked everything at the wall (or projector screen) and see what stuck, and as luck would have it, most of it. 

Jump scares and creepy kids aside, Sinister is actually a well handled meta-film about the dangers of  horror films much like the magnificent Berberian Sound Studio I reviewed last month, but a much warmer and accessible film. Oswalt is a man drained by his own work, studying and recording horrific crimes and murders, creating a rift between himself from his family. He spends most of his time in his office, locked at all times to stop his children from seeing what he sees for fear of nightmares. When he discovers the tapes curiosity gets the better of him, and he gradually becomes obsessed with the gruesome sights projected onto the screen, he puts his family and himself much at risk. It's not necessarily a found footage film, but it incorporates the style very tidily into the narrative, and who doesn't love the look of Super 8? More so, the film is equally about the changing technology within film making, our new HD cameras and the weightless, possibly indestructible computer files they reside on. Brought to us by copious amounts of close ups of the Apple logo, of course. There is a sense of adaptation, or dare I say it - a new, digital evil to be found in the film's boogie man.

Perhaps the film's most crippling issue is it's scare tactics. Relying to heavily on cliches and jump scares, any tension the film racks up doesn't really last long once the scenes over, let alone after you've left the screening. Still, it's not without it's moments, a fantastic sequence involving one of the dogs from the Omen and the children of the corn is elevated thanks to the films distinct soundtrack, and overbearing lighting set up. As for the boogie man himself, well... he's got a pretty stupid looking face so he comes across somewhere between Michael Myers and a WWE wrestler, but I'd be lying if I said he didn't make my heart thud at least. 

Meanwhile at the Josef Fritzl Cine-kids club.

Else where there are scenes that are just downright weird, James Ransome's believer 'Deputy So-and-So' from the county police department, for example is one of the (perhaps unintentionally) creepiest characters I've seen all year, there is a certain slyness in the naivety of his voice. And watching the scene where Oswalt asks him for help is well... weird. There is also a peculiar sequence involving some missing ghost kids dancing around the house, invisible to the eye of bat-wielding Oswalt, which just seemed a little off... even the audience began to chuckle after the initial jump scare.

At 110 minutes, Sinister is long for a film of its type. And while it holds its own, rarely dragging, it could shed a few scenes. There is too much of Oswalt storming around the house armed with a baseball bat, and his family are sidelined for the most part save a through away lines and false scares. And the shock ending that you'd expect from this type of film feels rather cheap, especially since it's easily figured it out within the first 10 minutes. 

Ultimately Sinister pays off as a chaotic explosion of horror and technology, just a few memorable scares away from being a minor classic. Instead it settles for the perfect Halloween cinema experience; smart, engaging and enjoyable but ultimately forgettable. 

3/5