This prequel to Sofia Coppola's Somewhere stars Stephen Dorff as Glen, a little boy who's afraid of black magic and demons and flies into hysterics over every bad or scary thing that happens and makes repeat demands that on-vacation parents be called and sobs in front of people and feels shame about over-emoting in front of people so hides in his room. Basically, it's a close cinematic match to my personal memories of being a boy.
Glen is such a fucking kid, which I think means Dorff was a good child actor,
AND GLEN IS TOTALLY JUSTIFIED, by the way, in being terrified by the evil-seeming world. There is evil in the world,
the evil is in the backyard.
!!!!!!!!!
Yaaaaay :)
There seem to be a high number of 80s genre movies that promise to deliver fantasy and fun and then deliver those things. I like how inventive they feel -- maybe a lot of contemporary multiplex movies feel less inventive to me because they're not original stories but remakes and adaptations and well you know.
I kept waiting for The Gate to run out of steam. It does not run out of steam FYI. The script is by Michael Nankin, who co-wrote and co-directed the cult-classic Midnight Madness. The script is often sharp and playful, and crisp, and pops. Popcorn dialogue.
Glen has a nice arc about discovering his capacity for courage, and also I like his friend Terry (Louis Tripp, whose career it seems never quite took off), who also feels naturalistic and fleshed-out: he's a nerd/occultist/heavy metal fan (which nears my perception of IRL heavy metal fans) who grieves his mother's untimely death.
One might make the case that The Gate has subtext, but that subtext exists only though subjective interpretation, in some Todd Haynes-type semiotic deconstructionist pov, concerning maybe suburbia and fear of the unknown, if one wanted to make that case. It'd be interesting I bet. If any of that makes sense it's true, I swear.
But overall I think it's the kind of movie that it's best not to overthink. I sat back and experienced the movie and was rewarded with surges of pleasurable adventure. I'm happy to say director Tibor Takács, whose other work is unfamiliar to me, has a sharp eye for cinematics.
I like it as a black magic movie because I don't think black magic is serious. As a godless person I dislike religious black magic movies, like Catholic horror movies, because they're too serious. There are some exceptions, like Alucarda, which treats the devil in the way I think he works: as an absurdity.
In summary, good job here everyone. The Gate is good.Good job :)
All these punk rockers and party freaks are on their way to a New Year's countdown celebration slash Made in Japan concert bash hosted by Diane "Blaze" Sullivan (Roz Kelly).
This party is for broadcast tv, and during the show people call in to vote for their fav song.
Blaze picks up a call and a strange voice tells her someone she knows is going to be murdered tonight and the voice says its name is Evil and Evil says these things through a voice modulator and Evil sounds creepy and Blaze becomes a little worried you could say.
Meanwhile Blaze's son has a psychotic hissy fit because he landed a role in a show and his mother doesn't care and his mother doesn't pay attention to him.
Evil proves he's legit at 9pm PDT which is 12am EST.
He tapes his murder and again phones Blaze and plays the tape and tells Blaze a person is going to die at midnight in each time zone.
While watching the movie I kept thinking it looked niced. I liked its camera choices, the camera's personality, and certain aesthetic considerations.
Turns out d.p. Thomas E. Ackerman went on to shoot the original Frankenweenie short, as well as Beetlejuice, Moonwalker, Baby's Day Out, Jumanji, Rat Race, Snow Dogs, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World, Scary Movie 4, and other movies. I didn't even mention he was a camera operator on One from the Heart and other movies.
Pretty cool. Director Emmett Alston later made um Nine Deaths of the Ninja and um Demonwarp um and um Tigershark and 3 Little Ninjas and the Lost Treasure um.
In the movie things go off the rails for a bit, not crazy off the rails, but still cool. Basically, owing to a traffic accident, Evil ends up detouring through a drive-in, while dressed as a priest, and being chased by a motorcycle gang.
From there he kidnaps a girl mid-makeout and has more misadventures,
THIS SECTION IS TOTALLY SKIPPABLE/PERSONAL SHIT BARELY RELATED TO THE MOVIE JESUS CHRIST
The Faculty, I'd never seen the The Faculty.
It rests at a funny crossroads in my cinephilic journey. In 1998 I hadn't yet transitioned from late-night HBO and genre movies to 'serious' movies. Around this time I ate up horror movies, and around this time teenager horror movies were the rage -- Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Disturbing Behavior, Urban Legend, um, Scream 2, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, um, The Blair Witch Project, Scream 3, um, Final Destination, um, Jeepers Creepers, things like that. But somehow I missed The Faculty.
Robert Rodriguez is a moviemaker I understood to be some kind of notable moviemaker and I watched his movies when I became fanatic about movies. I watched El Mariachi and Desperado and From Dusk 'Til Dawn. I thought he was fun but I didn't get it. I really didn't get it. I thought because he was fun he wasn't serious. I bought his movies and subsequently sold them because I thought they didn't belong in a serious movie collection. I don't own any of his movies currently, and only recently have I returned to him.
And now I understand the intelligence and dedication it takes to make a fun movie. I get it now. The dude is a badass. I get it.
THIS SECTION DEALS WITH THE MOVIE CALLED THE FACULTY AND ITS DIRECTOR ROBERT RODRIGUEZ
The Faculty peels off the starting line with atmosphere and verve. Some pre-title mayhem.
Post-title Rodriguez introduces each high school character with a little moment that says a thing about them, so we know Zeke Tyler (Josh Hartnett) is the badass rebel, Casey Connor (Elijah Wood) is the weakling dweeb, etc. Their names appear on the screen:
Strange how the character credit creates a distance between the actor and his character. It's a slick trick, I think. For the viewer in that moment there's only Casey Connor; maybe outside the movie there's an Elijah Wood, maybe.
Rodriguez doesn't sweat the space between reality and cinema. His movies, at their best, are completely unshackled and pregnant with limitless possibility. He's the master of a movie world and introduces characters like this because he knows they're in a movie and doesn't pretend otherwise -- think of how obvious this is and think too about how many directors want to disguise the artificial aspects of moviemaking. So you believe in the movie or whatever.
Rodriguez doesn't care if you believe it, he has another plan. He makes his movies too large to forget. It's a whole other way of looking at movies, and Rodriguez's commitment to the angle is total and unwavering.
Why are fireworks going off during a high school football game and why do they sync with dramatic beats? The answer is fuck you.
Rodriguez knows how to make an image stick. He knows how to captivate and arrest.
It's a bummer that, after introductions, brakes are applied for character development, plot exposition, and other transitional elements. I'd say the movie comes to a flat-out stop when the cops are called in and Casey attempts to convince them he found a dead teacher in the staff closet but they don't believe him and his parents ask if he's on drugs and things like that. These moments appease the laws of reality, viz., they're unnecessary. And boring. Reality? AHAHAHA.
I'd about written off the movie up until the moment Zeke breaks off the knife part of a paper cutter
uses it to slice off the fingers of Prof. Edward Furlong (Jon Stewart)
stabs him in the eye with a homemade-drugs-filled ballpoint pen
and Prof. Furlong's fingers crawl over the floor.
This is the moment when the beast of cinema breaks free, and it pretty much reigns through the remainder of the movie. Seriously, a bunch of cool things happen. I'm restraining myself from posting screencaps of all of them because a) there are so many b) it would give all the cool things away, and maybe you haven't seen this movie before.
The scene a little after the Prof. Furlong scene echoes a famous scene from John Carpenter's The Thing and gives it a splash of social commentary -- the teenagers must take Zeke's homemade drug to prove they're normal.
The outrageousness is played straight-facedly.
It kind of feels like what it's like to take drugs among teenage friends.
Maybe there are too many giggles, maybe giggles are a cheap way of expressing a character is high. Maybe not. Giggles happen.
It is a funny situation, after all.
The way Rodriguez inserts the dramatic beats into this scene, and raises the tension, and treats it seriously... I don't know, this scene says so much about him as a moviemaker.
The movie's ending cashes in on the earlier character development. There's a nice and tidy message that's sort of like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which the movie references multiple times, but with a maraschino cherry topping. It's simple: be a badass, and like fuck everyone else.
It's cool. The movie and Rodriguez are of one mind. The movie asks you to think a little more about the characters: Casey Connor is the weakling dweeb, sure. But what else could he be.
A cover of David Bowie's Changes plays over the closing credits.
WHY THIS MOVIE (things written before watching Pet Sematary Two):
Edward Furlong and Anthony Perkins I think of in roughly the same way. It's to do with creepy sexiness and troubled interiors. They're pretty boys who seem broken in some vague way.
In real life they never achieved huge success but starred in famous movies. They add a quality of incompleteness to the characters they play, and their incompleteness seems related to a kind of existential misery and an overabundance of feelings. Like they're too trapped in themselves to be what other people want them to be. When they're on screen I feel somehow close to them. They're actors I identify with to a degree I feel uncertain about because I've never investigated their real world lives, it could be total fantasy. What I'm describing is how I feel when I see them in movies.
Pet Sematary Two was directed by Mary Lambert. Thankfully. Like Barbara Peeters with Humanoids from the Deep, or Kathryn Bigelow with Near Dark and Point Break, Lambert is a female who treasures the particulars of masculine pop movies. Lambert gets it. She gets what's fun and interesting about horror movies, and she imprints her strong personality onto the movie, offering contributions to the horror vernacular. This is cool because it means she's not trying to outdo horror movies, or whatever, i.e. she's not placing herself above the tradition, but instead she's trying to make an interesting and good horror movie. And the reader of Inner Genre knows I love love when an outsider interprets Hollywood formula because the outsider, if confident with oneself, will invariably expose interesting and exciting details about the outsider and about the formula.
Lambert also directed Pet Sematary One, a movie that is one of five movies that scared and scarred me as a child (the others being the original The Blob, original Night of the Living Dead, Leviathan, and a Nightmare on Elm Street movie not sure which one). And she directed early Madonna music videos, e.g. Material Girl, Like a Virgin, and Like a Prayer. Imagine if you were the person who directed those videos. I sincerely hope Lambert wakes up each morning feeling good about herself. She also directed an episode of the Rebel Highway series, but unfortunately I tired of the series before I made it to her episode.
THIS MOVIE (things written after watching Pet Sematary Two):
Cool.
Pet Sematary Two blends elements of teenager movies with horror movies, resulting in an emotionally charged and rock fueled movie.
Jeff Matthews (Edward Furlong) loses his mother and he and his father (Anthony Edwards) relocate to her hometown, which is the Pet Sematary town. Jeff is bullied in and out of school by badboy Clyde Parker (Jared Rushton) and has only one friend, chubby Drew Gilbert (Jason McGuire). Drew's stepfather Gus Gilbert (Clancy Brown) is the sheriff of the town and an asshole to Drew.
Pet Sematary Two made me think about Tamra Davis and Guncrazy because it used family drama as narrative impetus, bolstered emotional beats with rock music, implemented music video-like visual tools, showed compassion to the downtrodden, and piggybacked on an established genre. Then I thought about how Davis and Lambert both began their careers as music video directors and I began to see them as precursors to moviemakers like Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze, and Richard Ayoade. Similar to contemporary David Fincher, Davis and Lambert's movies adhere somewhat closely to traditional ideas about movie form, while it seems later music video directors turned movie directors are more likely/expected to explore new methods of execution -- or more blatantly explore them. Interestingly, Alien³, Guncrazy, and Pet Sematary Two are all movies from 1992, and the first two were directorial debuts. Menace II Society was released in 1993. Was this the first wave of music video directors turned movie directors? I'll figure out a way to research that question and write about earlier examples if they exist. But this was definitely a wave.
The not-great news is I feel like genre formulas operate as restrictions in Lambert's Pet Sematary Two, and that the movie fails to escape the trappings of its genre. I had this problem with Guncrazy too. And I know that at the beginning of this piece I complimented Lambert on her affection for the horror genre and for not placing herself above the genre and now it seems like I'm contradicting myself maybe. Pet Sematary Two is a good movie even.
The thing that bothers me is the movie fails to answer essential questions about its characters because its loyalty is to genre above its characters and their emotions. And that's where it fails me. Richly layered and interesting characters can't help but interrupt the flow of a genre movie, and I think Pet Sematary Two begins to develop its characters and their unique motivations/desires, but ultimately abandons the complexity of their makeup for the safety of genre formula.
In this way I think my perspective differs from other genre fans who are more interested in tight narrative structure and traditional methods of storytelling. It can be said that themes and ideas are of more consequence than character and emotion -- and I don't fully disagree, it's possible for all these things to co-exist. But even a purist would probably be disappointed by Pet Sematary Two because its resolve is one-noted and its logic insular to the movie. It'd be hard to extract meaning or philosophical content from the movie's ending.
Although I'll say the movie has a nice last touch, a little tribute to the characters who died during the movie (not pictured).
It's a rather straight path to the heart of Alucarda; it begins with a little bit of madness, a dying mother trusting a wild looking gypsy to deliver her newborn baby girl to a convent, and ends in total madness. The insanity of its closing moments would be terribly fun to describe, but if you've seen the movie you already know, and if you haven't seen it I wouldn't want to give it away.
"They used the most evil language I ever heard to recognize Satan as their lord and master."
Although clearly made by a serious devotee of horror mythology, its exact roots seem difficult to delineate. The grandmommy of them all, the novella Carmilla, is likely an influence, but the title is of course the feminine version of the backwards spelled Dracula, first used as the name of Dracula's son in 1943's Son of Dracula.
The director Juan López Moctezuma began in the theater. Early in his career he encountered, befriended, and collaborated with Alejandro Jodorowsky, working in producing roles on Fando y Lis and El Topo. The mania of Jodorowsky's films is present in Alucarda; the two filmmakers share a creative point of view of visual and thematic adventurousness. But then, the 70s were like that, weren't they?
"This is not an act of faith! This is the most primitive expression of ignorance I've ever seen!"
"Now, how can you explain this from your scientific point of view?"
There isn't much in the way of political subversiveness, at least compared to the extreme heights of other films' political subversiveness at the time. Moctezuma seems both critical and curious about religion; the film both attacks and sympathizes with the nuns and priests. It's interesting that the nuns are not dressed in traditional nun habits, but rather wrapped in white cloth almost like mummies. The whiteness of their strange clothes is, of course, perfect for soaking the red of blood.
There are a few moments of pure diabolical playfulness and bucolic bliss, but not to the extent of Séria's Don't Deliver Us From Evil. Moctezuma's agenda is to create a seriously sinister demonic possession movie, but his is more jubilant, sensational, and playful than Friedkin's brow-sweating and anti-everything The Exorcist. It's insane like Russell's The Devils, but doesn't make you feel insane yourself like that movie does.
Point is, Alucarda, despite its similarities and dissimilarities with other movies, is its own thing. The movie works as it is, and would work if those other movies didn't exist. Moctezuma's seriousness and passion win. When watching the movie the emotion which overrides all others is appreciation, an appreciation for cinematic form and the ability of filmmakers with talent and heart to enmesh the unrealities of fantastic cinema with the unrealities of the human spirit.
"But me? One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.
Then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
and life. Days go by. It is even in
prose, I am a real poet. My poem
is finished and I haven't mentioned
orange yet. It's twelve poems, I call
it ORANGES."
- from Frank O'Hara's Why I Am Not a Painter, because this could be Why I Am Not a Critic, as it's only tangentially a discussion of Basket Case:
It's difficult for me to imagine a mainstream one-thousand theater rerelease of Basket Case, mainly because it's never enjoyed such mammoth distribution. The film, even in its time of production, was self-consciously executed from the margins. Made by a certain type of movie fan, it's dedicated to Herschell Gordon Lewis, for a reciprocating audience familiar with its rote of camp and humor infused gore and horror, it has fared better than some of its contemporaries that didn't make it to dvd and don't enjoy reputations. The lifespans of this film type are entirely dependent upon fans of the movies, as the film is released by an independent distributor, Something Weird, and has only a sliver of cultural relevance. If not for its esoteric demand it could easily become lost, and, more terrifying to me, people could easily question the relevance of its disappearance. While films by Orson Welles are still underseen and underreleased, who cares about Basket Case? I care about both, and think everyone else should too.
The question of its perpetuation is for me a matter of social self-censorship, a matter of the merits of Basket Case versus the reality of Basket Case. Films like this are now rarely ever made, supplanted mostly by films of ironic self-consciousness, and far better produced films, and distribution for independent films is ever diminishing. Within Basket Case, for example, shot in New York City, 1982, the protagonist strolls by a kung-fu theater playing a triple feature next to a grindhouse with its own set of features. In John Cassavetes' The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, Ben Gazzara takes his dancer girlfriends to a kung-fu theater and has to ask the girls to leave because they're still sitting after three movies! Three kung-fu movies! This culture, even in its time marginal, has mostly disappeared. Its lingering presence can be relished in revival screenings, in youth populated revival screenings, wherein the majority excitedly see the movie for a first time or attend for an "experience," and especially in random encounters with aging film fans. Nothing reminds me of the shared, universal condition of human suffering and longing so much as encountering a genuine fan of a movie after a revival screening, someone seeing it for the second time since its initial theatrical release, even better if it's a non-cinephile, and only loves the particular movie and had to see it again. For me, the more esoteric the film, the deeper the connection, because I often have meaningful conversations about popular films, but rarely have the chance for passionate conversation about the obscure, and treasure when I do. The conversation can be of a delicate, personal nature, the kind prone to evaporate with time.
Films from the margins often show or appeal to the marginalized. For example, their actors are often less talented, less perfectly beautiful, or never became well-known enough for their looks and talent to receive popular validation. Sometimes they are unappealing, sometimes despicable, sometimes outrageous. In this way outsider independent films can depict overlooked characters in a society, people not usually on screens, screens more and more reserved for manufactured, big-budgeted entertainment. So in time an outsider film can come to be defined by what it does show, the particular forms of personality and character it exhibits.
Cities well-known for filmmaking often tend to depict shifting populations. Think of the shades of urban character that flourish and vanish through decades of Los Angeles film, and the continuing near-eradication of particular forms of eccentricity that used to be a striking characteristic of New York City's personality. Bright, imaginative, fresh-thinking NYC films still exist for a different type of minority, one that has always blossomed in the film community: the sophisticated, cultured film fan. Recent NYC movies like Momma's Man, Frownland, and Tiny Furniture prosper because their subjects are members of the viewing cadre, and they're great films, but it's hard to imagine Gazzara's dancers sitting through them in succession*!
Diminished and homogeneous genre films, and other forms of esotericism, are partially to blame for the receding scope of independent films. The baby has been thrown out with the bath water. As smaller independent theaters, production companies, and distributors leave the stage, theatrical options narrow, and with them the potential for diverse encounters. Quality levels have risen, in theaters and films, but the curious and unconventional continue to die out^. All film fans have recently heard the repopularized "I'd rather stay home and watch television (!)" The reason for this get-the-fuck-out-of-town comment's revitalization is that television has begun to surprise its audiences, while cinema only flatters.
Cinematic taste has turned the corner while fleeing from Basket Case and films like it, and that's too bad. The progress of narrative variety and the evolution of filmic curiosity shouldn't be slowed to accommodate the safe or familiar. It's not that I want Basket Case to be remade again, the solution Hollywood suggests with their surge of remakes, it's that I see a necessity for an environment of creativity that allows for films like it to be made. In order to sustain the legacy of Basket Case, the outer boundaries of the imagination must continually be sought by filmmakers of all types. While continuing to ask for honesty, I also ask for invention, and gratefully welcome the intrusion of dreams.
* Momma's Man, Frownland, and Tiny Furniture, while not portraying an audience generating minority, due of course portray the statistically marginal, and are made deliberately non-mainstream in order to appeal to a certain group. They don't have well-known actors and they receive limited distribution. Like Basket Case, they sometimes challenge your reasons for watching them with either poor or atypical decisions and processes. The films' specific tones and points of view alienate audiences seeking comfortable inclusion, but reward the curious. I love them, and love that they get shown, but they're not the subject here. They should stay the same and in addition there can be other types of films.
^ If I must mention Internet alternatives well here I have, but it's not really the subject.
Screamers begins with scrolling text over black. A background story, to catch the viewer up on the happenings of Sirius 6B and conditions between the NEB and Alliance. This is extremely helpful for those of us not yet familiar with the ongoings of 2078, but it's not necessary. Most of the information emerges organically as the story develops; though the text is helpful in an orientating sort of way. It's nice. Why it's mostly sci-fi and fantasy films that begin this way I'm not sure, I think it'd work to the same extent in a romcom or action movie. One possible reason is that scrolling text requires reading and a modicum of patience, factors that obstruct enjoyment for some movie goers, yet are acceptable for some sci-fi geeks and the like. Though a lot of times when a film cuts to text I can feel some of the audience turn against the idea. The text, of course, is anyway read to us by a narrator, and maybe it's simply more sophisticated, artistically, to have a visual counterpoint to the narration. Many movies of all types begin with a voice over narration, but only in sci-fi and fantasy films does the text function on an ornamental level.
Scrolling text is a slow opening, and Screamers does little to ignite its jet thrusters in the moments following. The first scene is atmospheric. It establishes the forlornness of the protagonists, the malevolence of the landscape, and introduces the screamers. Screamers are an advanced version of the worms in Tremors. They stalk you subterraneously. They're murderous. They're mechanical. They're self-sufficient. They improve themselves, in order to better kill. They're Phillip K. Dick inventions, and the movie is based on his "Second Variety," adapted by the also-great Dan O' Bannon, co-written by Miguel Tejada-Flores. O'Bannon writer of Alien, stalwart genre writer and sometimes actor and/or director, whose breakthrough was with John Carpenter and Dark Star.
O'Bannon tends to build his scripts upward, and this is the experience of Screamers. He gives you as a gift the death of the message boy by screamers in the beginning, and then backs off and develops his characters, the severity of their plight, and the stakes. Few writers, compared to the whole, give their characters this much consideration. I consider O'Bannon a-grade, though Screamers is a b-grade genre film in terms of budget and acting, with the exception of the also a-grade Peter Weller as the main character. Weller isn't a-grade simply because he's RoboCop. His performance in Screamers is textured: you sense his loss, his struggle, his growing disillusionment, vestiges of discipline, a protracted sense of responsibility, fragments of sympathy and goodwill. You sense both the ice in his veins and the restorative warm blood in his heart.
Mysteriously, perhaps unnecessarily, a plane crashes outside the Sirius 6B Alliance base. The only survivor, unfortunately, is Andrew Lauer. Lauer gives the kind of performance that projects insecurity and astonishing insincerity. I can easily see Lauer on the Late Night couch, right ankle propped on left knee, telling David his experience in the weird sci-fi film. Lauer deserved the sitcom sidekick hell to which he was later banished. There's not a moment of believability in his entire performance. He's the worst part of the film; I'd believe in space colonies before I'd believe a moment of his acting in Screamers. There's too his role as the ace new-graduate of military school who's dying to get out and shoot some guns and prove himself, a pretty annoying and single dimensional character in the first place.
So there's that. Weller chooses to bring Lauer along with him. They set out in response to the message of peace delivered by the boy in the first scene. Their journey from the Alliance base to the NEB base is another moment of mood setting and orientation. This is when we the audience see the devastation nuclear war has borne upon Sirius 6B. It's also when we the audience are allowed to explore the environment and see the extent of the filmmaker's imaginings of this fictitious planet; it's a real powerful genre moment, I mean it, and perhaps partly the depth of this experience relies on a certain development of appreciation*, a building of understanding about the avenues of innuendo and allusion genre filmmakers explore while creating films of fantasy, because if you're tuned in on their wavelength, if you're experiencing the inner genre of the film, you're seeing shadows of real pain, you're seeing the skeleton of a belief system, suggestions of fear, paranoia, insecurity, anxiety, longing, patches of dread, bursts of horror, and genuine human feeling and thought. A good genre film gives up something personal, and if it does that, and you can read it, a connection as powerful as what happens in dramas or romances, whatever, occurs, a sharing of world views between the filmmakers and the audience.
D.H. Lawrence, for example, uses landscapes composed of emotion to enhance the depth of his characters in Sons and Lovers. Some of his text could fit into a Philip K. Dick story, and illustrates the dramatic range of landscape metaphor and allegory.
"Their two hands lay on the rough stone parapet of the Castle wall … He was brooding now, staring out over the country from under sullen brows. The little, interesting diversity of shapes had vanished from the scene; all that remained was a vast, dark matrix of sorrow and tragedy, the same in all the houses and river-flats and the people and the birds; they were only shapen differently. And now that the forms seem to have melted away, there remained the mass from which all the landscape was composed, a dark mass of struggle and pain. The factory, the girls, his mother, the large, uplifted church, the thicket of the town, merged into one atmosphere - dark, brooding, and sorrowful, every bit." (Clara chapter)
At any rate, part of the delight of a sci-fi film is often the exhibition of the unfamiliar elements. The presence of Lauer interferes with the effectiveness of this long scene, in which Weller and Lauer encounter a young boy, named David, in the ruins of a major city on Sirius 6B, and bring him along with them to the NEB base. David is small and dirty and clutches a stuffed bear. He says very little, mostly "Can I come with you," and is only slightly more tolerable than Lauer. The presence of them together is insufferable. In these moments Weller is outnumbered, and the film is statistically at its lowest point.
Dramatic justice services the young David a rifle-shot through the chest, delivered by the bunkered Roy Dupuis (badass with tear drop tattoos) and Charles Powell (geeky and skittish with glasses), two off course NEB soldiers being sheltered by the strong-willed Jennifer Rubin. David is a Level 3 screamer, a weapon disguised as a boy, and Dupuis and Powell know this from previous experience. Rubin, Dupuis, Powell, Weller, and Lauer compose the largest and longest staying group of characters in the film, and together they set out into the perilous deserts of Sirius 6B, determined to reach the NEB base.
Things get worse. The NEB base is devastated, no one remains. Weller can't contact his Alliance base due to radioactivity interference. Powell and Dupuis can't get along: the overbearing Dupuis easily frustrates and enrages the fragile and nervous Powell. Their feud is a high-point in the movie. Progressed in increments, their mutual antipathy culminates in the killing of Powell by Dupuis, who claims to suspect the former of being a screamer. What and who are the screamers evolving into is an important question for the rest of the film.
* I mean development of appreciation in both a positive and negative sense. I understand that certain sci-fi films and novels require a heavy level of commitment from the audience, and I understand why for some people that would inhibit the performance of the work as dramatic material. Completely understand. James Cameron recently referred to contemporary sci-fi as fractal, and said that he doesn't read it anymore because of the high entry level. The king of filmic sci-fi doesn't even have the time or intensity of dedication required to consistently/excessively engage with the material.
Screamers is an old-favorite of mine, a film I was exposed to at an early stage and so I cherish with a fondness peculiar to emblems of nostalgia. Last night I attempted to watch it with fresh, impartial eyes. I was mostly successful, I think, because I could see the film's problems: its over-active camera work, its concessions to action film tropes, its sometimes lousy acting, and its overambitious scope in relation to its budget and potentialities. It comes on pretty strong. I also think there's a lot to admire about the film, perfectly expressed by the film's trailer.
astral |ˈastrəl|
adjective [ attrib. ]
• of or relating to a supposed nonphysical realm of existence to which various psychic and paranormal phenomena are ascribed, and in which the physical human body is said to have a counterpart.
If you remember, my last encounter with Friday the 13th: The Series, Episode 3.3, Crippled Inside was about a high school girl who possessed a magical and cursed wicker wheelchair that allowed her to astral project and commit physical acts of revenge on a villainous gang of high school boys.
Well this one, Episode 1.12, Faith Healer, was directed by David Cronenberg, and is about an evangelist who claims to heal the diseased and dying. Despite common sense I initially hoped it was going to be the same Crippled Inside story, told again. I hoped the whole series was just variations on that concept. It wasn't, of course, though the first scene features a young blind man in a wheelchair. He's in a church and the evangelist circles him as he explains to the gathered crowd how the ethereal hand of god will heal the boy, using the evangelist as a vessel of course, and but then just as he's about to demonstrate a party-pooper intervenes and accuses the evangelist of being a fraud. He pops a contact out of the boy's eye and asks the audience: why would a blind man wear contacts? As the crowd gasps, the evangelist dashes out of the church...
CUT TO:
In the alley an old man in a wheelchair, angry from betrayal, verbally lashes out at the evangelist. Old dude's pissed because he wanted to be healed. The lying piece of shit evangelist simply runs past the wheelchair bound old man; but despite the geriatric condition of his aggressors, he's frantic, and he falls into some trash ditch at the end of the alley. Among the garbage is a Roger Rabbit kind of cartoony oversized white glove, which for some mystical reason the evangelist immediately wants to stick his hand inside.
BIG MOMENT:
A diseased woman approaches him - her disease is a melting face of sores. Very Cronenbergian. She's pissed like the previous wheelchair man and accosts the evangelist regarding his deception and amorality and wickedness, etc., false advertising etc., and but do I have to tell you that the goddamn glove really fucking heals? Swear to God it does. He touches the woman and she turns middle-aged and red-headed and cured. The evangelist is stoked - his luck really turned around in short order.
CUT TO:
SHIT, the woman's affliction is in the glove! You can tell because it's full of sores now, too, and when the evangelist goes to pull the glove off parts of his skin rise up with the glove, exposing a bloody fleshless interior in his forearm, very Cronenbergian. The guy understandably freaks out, which attracts the attention of a policeman who is serendipitously across the street.
NO SHIT:
The fucking glove can pass on the disease to other people! And not only that, but through the science of this process, the disease is magnified and worsened and the gloved victim dies of horribleness in complete agony and terrible, ultimate suffering. Adios officer.
DUDE'S REALLY EXCITED:
Because his shtick just went legitimate. You don't see him fist pumping the air though (because this is fucking Cronenberg), you see him on a television commercial, advertising his real-deal healing powers. Those kids with their bullshit whatever recurring plot line which ties together the series see him on tv. And in this season the uncle is around with the bullshit kids and anyway for some reason I forget they need to get the glove, which is this episode's cursed object!
SOME DULL SHIT ABOUT THIS OR THAT:
Anyway the uncle, Jack, is old friends with the skeptical party-pooper from the first sequence, whose name is Jerry. And anyway Jack and Jerry
GO UP THE PLOT HILL, UNTIL:
Jerry confronts the evangelist for a second time. The evangelist is mortified at first, because of their history, but the glove has bolstered his confidence so he accepts Jerry's challenge: he'll heal whomever Jerry selects to be healed, in order to prove to Jerry that now he's authentic.
Jerry reveals to Jack, whom he's tied up, that HE suffers from a fatal disease; Jerry himself has some melted chocolate colored puss sores on his stomach. That disease is called Very Cronenbergian. HE's going to be the one to be healed.
DRAMATIC CULMINATION:
The evangelist tricks Jerry and doesn't heal him! Dead serious. Well, Jerry's pissed, and he starts firing his Marine pistol, which I forgot to mention. A security guard gets shot, and the evangelist does too. He escapes after Jerry shoots him twice.
HE (THE EVANGELIST) HEALS HIS OWN BULLET WOUNDS USING THE GLOVE:
But while running away crashes his car. Stuck in his car, he has no one to pass the disease (the disease of being shot) onto this time. This passing on of the ailment was demonstrated again before, besides the lady, which I forgot to mention. It was another lady, in an alley, and it involved a poodle in flight.
Also, Jack is tied up because Jerry double-crossed him because using cursed objects for personal gain is very morally reprehensible, and although Jack and Jerry are best friends, there's still no reason for Jack to allow Jerry to fucking use the devil's powers for personal gain, for Christ's sake. Forget about that for a moment though, because the evangelist is in the car and can't move, and Jerry is on the hunt.
CAN YOU FUCKING BELIEVE:
Jerry makes it to the car in time to see the evangelist die from internal gun fires, and the evangelist expires in front of Jerry's eyes.
WHICH IS FINE WITH JERRY, WHO TAKES THE GLOVE FROM NEXT TO THE DEAD EVANGELIST:
And then Jerry plans on healing himself and passing the disease onto Jack. Thankfully the cousins show up in time though.
OH FUCK:
Earlier, in that second demonstration of the glove's powers I forgot to mention but then mentioned, there's fucking pulsing face sores on a woman in an alleyway. Very Cronenbergian.
We have cocktails and appetizers at Bar Mingo until 6:40, and I don't want to run the twenty blocks so we take a cab to the theater. Someone with us knows the cab driver. We make it just in time: the girl walks toward the camera down the two-lane road hugged on all sides by fields, great open Texas fields. Byrne begins his narration, introducing the town. His voice is mostly relaxed, with undulations of terrific joy and puzzlement.
John Goodman works in a microchip plant. He wants to find a wife. Sad music causes him to lie down on the floor. He can remember kids' names if they sit in alphabetical order. He dances (there're musical pieces, frequent but spontaneous, for example a great moment has Byrne in a field, reflecting with a real estate agent on the curious nature of housing developments, and as the camera tracks with Byrne a group of kids appear screen right; they carry instruments and burst into song). Goodman is Byrne's traveling companion through this mostly relaxed narrative tapestry (it also has undulations of terrific joy and puzzlement). Byrne's car is not leased, it's privately owned. He's a crazy driver.
It's an easy to like movie. It's critical but affectionate, and it's more curious than critical. It's more perceptive than curious. It's more funny than perceptive.
Ten minute intermission. We avoid security cameras. The movie has started when we re-enter, so we crouch as we cross the front of the theater to our seats. We're front row. I want to dance but I'm too self-conscious about it. There's seriously a dance floor in front of the screen. I notice the guy next to me keeps shaking his leg, and then I notice that I keep shaking my leg. I think that in our heads me and this guy are the purest dancers here, the real dancers. I stop shaking my leg, my theory being that the energy will grow and I will explode into a dance frenzy on the stage. Sometimes in bursts I hear the audience singing along. Sometimes they clap after the songs. I stare at the screen, mesmerized.
On the way back I call a lamp pole a lamp post, but no one says anything to me about my mistake.
We arrive twenty minutes early. The previous movie hasn't let out. We wait on the sidewalk.
It's more gory than I remembered. I try to keep a list of the types of brutality: eye gouging, face tearing, throat slashing, bulging sores erupting with green puss. I think next time I'll bring paper if I want to keep a list of types of brutality featured. Terribly creepy and visceral fang sequences. My favorite moment used to be the helicopter breaking through the roof, but now it's the girl pushing the theater screen with her hands, an effect reminiscent of Videodrome.
I keep yawning during the movie. Am I tired (later, I'll come home and watch thirty-forty minutes of Man of Aran, waiting to fall asleep), or am I bored? Maybe you can't follow Stop Making Sense with Demons. I blank out for about twenty minutes, after the pimp dies.
Here's the thing about Spinal Tap: they're a real fucking band. I've seen their 2007 Live Aid performance, and this year I saw them on Conan. They're real people playing real instruments and writing real songs, and it's only their story and context that is fictitious. If they had never left the movie, if their characters hadn't exited the film, they wouldn't have the conceptual legitimacy that they do. Their continued existence is a laceration to the rules of their conception. I love that.
Here's the thing about Coven: the plot is fictitious. Fictitious? The plot is nonsensical, ludicrous, and etc. It's somehow about real feelings though, and I know this because I know Mark Borchardt, and I know him because of Chris Smith's film American Movie. The parallel existence of these films allows a bilateral comprehension of the man and movie. Coven the film is the coded token of a man's soul, and American Movie is the decoder.
This relationship is essential to me. Ross McElwee competently and sometimes impressively attempts this within a single film, but he makes personal decisions about what he exposes about himself. As honest as he can be, he still operates under a narrative shield, and that inherently creates distance. Jonathan Caouette's Tarnation is an emotionally infectious testimony to success by way of complete filmic candor. His film offers total honesty and achieves this because Caouette mines his own gut, but then that's all there is. The closest it comes to Coven-like mystification is the sequence that ruminates on the creation of a rock opera. If that rock opera had been included, it would have been Caouette's Coven.
Less you think I'm ascribing too much meaning to these films, American Movie and Coven, let me be clear: I'd love this concept with every opportunity. I achieve it to lesser degrees when I watch special features, biographical documentaries, read essays, etc, but the connection, it seems to me, has never been stronger than it is here. You can name for yourself other examples which near this effort, but the core and distinctive feature is the amount of information which it is necessary to receive from American Movie in order to understand Coven. Coven requires American Movie for its efficacy.
After American Movie, the alcohol motif in Coven makes sense. The language is understandable. The passion is detectable. Beyond that, the narrative's mysterious interruptions of supernaturally deleterious entities become bizarrely meaningful (absurdly relevant and metaphorical), and this meaning is the beginning of comprehending the function of horror films in general. If I sometimes want to attribute metaphysical, spiritual, or existential qualities to horror films, it seems to me that American Movie/Coven represent a golden bridge for a validation of that effort. Borchardt's personality is splashed across Chris Smith's documentary, and in turn it is splattered through the Coven narrative.
And here's what blows my mind: Coven becomes a real film. I fucking love that.
There's a great palette here, a terrific vision for a film, and if Calvaire had fully realized all its potential it would have been a great film. It itself borrows from other cinematic visions, it's a veritable stew of Psycho, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Deliverance, but it uses these former genre achievements as a backdrop to express its own cinematic voice. The result is bizarre, and surreal in the proper sense.
These are the elements of the film, the three overlapping motifs which I am speaking of: 1. The genre riffs. The echoing of past horror films. If this was a stage, Calvaire has done the equivalent of hanging an Edvard Munch painting as a backdrop to the drama. The legacy is intentionally highlighted in order to build from it, in order to establish the boundaries which will be broken. 2. "Writer/director Welz said he purposely wanted to create the characters in the film against type, by fleshing-out and sympathizing more with the character of the villain rather than his victim." I would say that what happened, intentionally or not, is that everyone in the film became a victim. Everyone is worthy of sympathy. 3. The end. Last night I had a conversation with someone whose opinion was that the last ten minutes of a film validate or invalidate all the antecedent exposition. I'm sure horror/thriller filmmakers believe this and often count on the audience possessing this belief. I think Calvaire is very successful in its delivery because its final lingering note is a psychological one that casts a new light on the actions of the film. Rather than ending in a final violent moment, Calvaire ends with a moment that reshapes all the already ample violence which has occurred.
The tone, the characters, the conclusion: all slightly complimentary and slightly contradictory. There's nothing to make sense of, which elevates the film over the intellectual or high-minded horror films that attempt to have social meaning. Horror is horrifying in part because it is senseless and unpredictable, at east this is the modern sense of horror, and Calvaire demonstrates how effective it can be to have a narrative which mirrors this. The villains in Calvaire are neither faceless nor understandable, and they're neither vacant nor obscure. In this way Calvaire is clearly a horror film like Texas Chainsaw Massacre and not a thriller like Psycho or Peeping Tom, the distinction to me being that a horror film works on the psychology of the audience and a thriller works on the psychology of the character/mood.
Still, it has its borders and boundaries. It takes too much time to set up a basically unused environment (the end would work fine standing alone). It sometimes relies on its allusions for effect, and it spends too much time on them. It should have dared to explore its chore intention, "According to director Fabrice Du Welz there are really only two characters in the film - Marc and Bartel. Welz says that the rest of the people in the film are all some variation of the character of Bartel. Notice how everyone in the film is desperate to be close to Marc, just like crazy Bartel." I hope Fabrice Du Welz is able to develop a confident voice and continue pursuing his strange path. He has another film, Vinyan, and I wonder if he pushed forward or diverted onto a new goal.
I'm about to discuss a film featuring a full-grown adult dressed in a rabbit costume wrestling a live horse. The director is William Claxton, who I see also directed the classic Twilight Zone episode I Sing the Body Electric, and later went on to direct 68 episodes of Little House on the Prairie. It's a 1972 film set in the southern state of Arizona, with the southern side of Arizona played to a high pitch, stars Psycho's Janet Leigh and Star Trek's DeForest Kelley, alongside Stuart Whitman, Rory Calhoun, and Paul Fix (each with over 100 other IMDb credits to their names). I'd like to draw attention to the fact that Night of the Lepus is based upon a novel by Russell Braddon called The Year of the Angry Rabbit.
Lepus is Latin for rabbit, and in Night of the Lepus an experimental serum injection on a member of an overabundant population of rabbits results in extraordinarily giant sized killer rabbits. The rabbits, in their horrifying onslaught, attack general stores, produce trucks, families, persons, horses, and cows. Scenes of blood-dripping rabbit-fangs abound, which is to say that Night of the Lepus delivers in its b-movie premise where others do not.
While I can enjoy just about any film with a lunatic storyline, it's rare to find one that's also engaging and fulfilling. Through a mixture of convincing miniature sets and actual rabbits, and full-grown adults in rabbit costumes, the rabbits terrorize in glorious scene after scene. This satisfies me on two levels. Beyond the accomplishments of the filmmakers, there is also the pleasure of the concept being committed to with such wild ambition.
It's complete and undisguised absurdity, and for me it's like Night of the Lepus is a tune and filmmaking is a piano. I enjoy a composition of fantasy that drives my mind into the corners of possibility, where my own ideas bloom, outside the typical tracks, settled figuratively in its own small-town ways. The laws of eco-horror permit all acts in Lepus, but seldom have I seen such creative use or passionate dedication. The willingness of this film to venture into mutant-rabbit territory spurs me on forward into my own direction, god bless 'em.
Private Parts (Blood Relations, the alternate USA title according to IMDb, is a much better title for the film) shares characteristics with the three previously discussed films. Obviously Eating Raoul, as this is another Paul Bartel film, and Peeping Tom, because it's a thriller with themes of obsession, and Shaun of the Dead, owing to the filmic depth of its characters and the unraveling of the narrative. Not Quite Hollywood too, because Private Parts is a personal take on a type of genre.
The film is typical for the period, especially as the name Corman is attached to the production. It's a genre film that faintly exhibits personal traits of the filmmaker, but is geared toward commercial success and exploitative reactions. Following Eating Raoul with Private Parts, traveling in reverse order, illustrates the way filmmaker's interests can break through the surface of a genre narrative without finding full expression. Private Parts is a diluted combination of Bartel's impulses, several previous films (most obviously Blow-Up and Psycho), and genre intrepidity. In Not Quite Hollywood QT talks about the one scene everyone talks about in a good genre film, the scene that's complete 'what the fuck' and 'did they just do that' material. Private Parts has that scene, which Quint of AICN also mentioned in his recent write-up of the film.
I'd like to think that Bartel was inspired by Bava at the time. I know he was around Joe Dante, and I know Dante was into Bava. Regardless, the film plays out like an Italian genre film. There's murder, sexual perversion, mystery, suspense, drama - there are all the qualities that make a film exciting and interesting. This is how it fails: it doesn't wholly commit itself to one idea. It shares qualities with many films but fails to become its own. Development of story and plot is the primary concern, and all peripheral components of filmmaking, including characters, are driven toward a final revelation, or simple audience titillation. Not that Bava had fully realized characters, but he had fully realized films, movies that were cinematically excessive. Bartel totters between character-driven and genre-driven, and wedges these two on his filmmaking inclinations.
It works to the extent that Bartel is an interesting person, a competent filmmaker, and has a bizarre script to draw from. A tapestry of peculiar Los Angeles eccentrics is the direct link between this and Eating Raoul. I love the way Bartel views LA in both films. The problem is in Private Parts the characters, the unusual LA personalities, aren't allowed to steer the film. They're pushed into the background, and to describe them is to simply reduce them to their exploitative and attractive features: a man-loving priest, a sexually oppressed photographer, a time trapped old woman, an alcoholic, an innocent midwestern girl. The tone of Eating Raoul is determined by its characters' mindset. When that happens it makes every shift in the narrative feel like a furthering of character development. That's the difference between a good genre film and a great genre film, generally speaking.
Private Parts is exciting and easy to watch and not a bad film: there is one scene in particular I rewatched about twenty times. But the difference between it and Eating Raoul is significant. Eating Raoul feels like a film made by a man, and Private Parts feel like a movie produced through a system.
In the roughly five years since I last watched Peeping Tom (the receipt is saved inside the case, purchased December 2004, before I knew you could find any dvd you wanted online, back when my collection was completely dependent upon the stock of Borders and Best Buy; I remember finding Peeping Tom in Fingerprints in Long Beach and telling my friend "I don't have the money for this but I don't know when I'll see it again") my life has progressed only in a behind-the-camera sense. Only through thoughts of the camera, by imagining the world through a lens, an imaginary lens at that, wanting to record everything and being able to record hardly anything. And my eyes have stolen the images of all I've seen, none of it first belonging to me.
I've brought myself into a desert of passion and lost my way. Deluded and in a fit of hysteria, hallucinating dreams of the silver screens, I watched Peeping Tom again last night in the perfect state to be genuinely thrilled. Imbued with my own guilt, thoroughly directed along by master craftsman Michael Powell (you can forget how good some filmmakers are), and able to understand what was being shown to me, Peeping Tom was for me a white-knuckled hair-raising endeavor.
Karlheinz Böhm, with the veneer of a masculine Hitchcockian blonde, channels the pitiful eeriness of Peter Lorre. His voice is shy and limited, as are his eyes, and his movements and the noises he makes (Helen never knows when he is home, but her blind alcoholic mother Vivian does), but he is unguarded, unprotected: he allows Helen easy access into his personal world, he hides a corpse on his own set, he takes photos of his bodies being discovered. He's crazy we know, and he knows it, except only he knows the extent. He knows the direction the madness is headed in, and once revealed to us, Böhm, Mark Lewis, becomes a tragic hero of morbid, warped, obsessive and passionate intensity. He seeks to fill a void created by his father, who taught him to love through the camera and by fear, and as an artist he risks everything to fill the void.
I'm reminded of Paul Schrader's quote on screenwriting, "When screenwriting, be prepared to drop your pants and show your dirty laundry. If you can't do that, better find yourself something more polite." Michael Powell goes well beyond this, beyond irrational fears and embarrassing idiosyncrasies, beyond failed romances and personal regrets. It's not the usual dramatic material Powell explores in his film, but the unusualness of his attractions at a sinister and intrinsic level. In the special features Peeping Tom is referred to as a Chinese Box, with riddles and mysteries and puns hidden within itself. Consider the ways in which the film overlaps with Powell's personal life: Powell casting himself as Mark's father, including his own first camera in Mark's collection, and casting his own son as young Mark. The creepiness of the film is immensely heightened by its apparent honesty and lack of compromise.
In its completeness Peeping Tom exposes what is unnerving about the Josh Harris types and captures the futility and randomness of modern murder better than Bogdanovich's Targets or McNaughton's Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. Peeping Tom also investigates the development of psychosis in a serial killer better than any other movie, exceeding the usual motivations or explanations. The horrifying revelation at the end of Psycho is rapidly summarized by a doctor in the next scene, but Peeping Tom explains itself out over the course of its running time, allowing the character of Mark to grow and enlarge in our minds.
Most of this could not be achieved without the skill of Michael Powell. A great thriller is directly the result of a great filmmaker, it's a genre that magnifies the strengths and weaknesses of the filmmaker, and it's impossible to fake. Michael Powell, Alfred Hitchcock, Henri-Georges Clouzot, Brian De Palma, Roman Polanski, Richard Franklin, and Kiyoshi Kurosawa are all names linked to unbridled passion for cinema. A bad thriller works on movie mechanics, and they're like seeing the inside of a clock, while a great thriller, like Peeping Tom, can change both the way you see the breathing world, and the way you see cinema.
If you haven't read part one yet, then, you know, read part one first.
After Night of the Living Dead, Shaun of the Dead makes the best use of the zombie-to-death horror relationship, and the meaty symbolism the zombie state represents. If you haven't read Simon Pegg's essay on Why the undead should never be allowed to run yet, then, you know, read that before you read this. It'll begin to demonstrate how much the writers of Shaun really cared about what they were writing, really thought about the subject and material, and it'll settle all debate as to whether the humor was biting or affectionate, if that question lingers in your mind (if it does, you should watch Shaun before reading, you know, anything, period.).
If you count the high points in Shaun, from an emotional perspective, three of them deal with the sadness of death and fragility of life. There are five high points total. The three deathcentric ones would be Philip's essentially unearned death scene, the first burst of brilliance from the movie, Barbara's inevitable demise and the consequent conflict, and Ed's heroic and redeeming final stand. The two remaining points are the Shaun/Liz reunion, and the Shaun/Liz David/Dianne love dynamics. The latter enjoys a partial appearance in the film's death theme, but it's earned so hard and fast, and by such different means, that it doesn't really count in my book. The book that I keep for my personal records. For me the David/Dianne death scene falls into the category of eradication of dispensable characters.
The first half of Shaun establishes the absurdity of the zombie scenario, and the second half highlights the bitter tragedy of absurdity. If it strives for too much and extends itself too far, the more the film should be appreciated. An attempt to unravel the fears and repressions of a person is the basis of the most exciting and engaging genre films, and if Shaun doesn't explore new territory, it does stick faithfully and effectively to its material. It gives itself entirely to its material, which is what a film of its nature must do.
There is an element of double-layered symbolism to Shaun because of its fetishistic treatment of popular culture. In the second sequence of the film, right after the hilarious bar scene, the inhabitants of London are filmed as zombielike creatures, and it's unclear if at that point they're even zombies or not. Wright and Pegg riff on one of Romero's other contributions to the zombie symbolism, the zombification that is a result of commercialism and materialism. This statement is made clearer by the fate of Ed and the lack of substantial difference between who he was alive and what he's like as a zombie. Furthermore, Shaun could and I think should be read as a wishful rumination of the zombie universe. Although the characters in the film cannot choose their deaths, Wright and Pegg chose for each of them to die a zombie death. Beyond a horror staple, the message, in the context of the film, is that zombie death is a great death to have. I think they could have killed all the characters and still it would have been a happy ending, because of the positivity and enthusiasm that Wright and Pegg portray the gruesomeness within. It's a rather tame horror film, and if it wasn't for the investment of characters Wright and Pegg corner you into this would be even easier to see.
What about the skill of execution? Beyond differing thoughts on the subject material, Wright is clearly a gifted director, and one of the few working today who can craft a movie that fires on all engines. It's a rare breed of film that finds success in the horror/comedy field, and it's even rarer for it to have identifiable characters. Wright's films also have the energy and tactility that so many modern films endeavor toward, and it's achieved effortlessly. His films are enjoyable and easy to watch. They don't make too many mistakes, and they sometimes land on brilliant moments (as discussed).
Wright is also gifted at giving his films over to his audience. His fans become fanatics, true believers. He's the Paul Thomas Anderson of genre films. People decode Wright's films, they study them, they search out their influences, they hunt down Wright's interviews, Wright's early films, Wright's breakfast menu, etc. Wright is probably the furthest you can get from the self-indulgent and self-satisfying type of filmmaker. He's one of the few filmmakers who has retained his original beliefs despite a typically souring successful career. His blog is like a 16 year old's blog. It's like the blog of someone who yesterday discovered films. His movies are like that too. His movies have the pulse of movies, they're real movies, the kind you look forward to seeing.
