Well, it’s official: the Road to Hell is pretty much paved over. Directing duo the Strause Brothers have given interviews in which they expressed their (presumably sincere) intention to return to the dark, scary tone of 1979’s ALIEN, yet ALIENS VS. PREDATOR: REQUIEM is just about as bad as its 2004 predecessor ALIEN VS. PREDATOR. In fact, if the Straus Brothers had truly wanted to remain faithful to the tone of ALIEN, they would not have made ALIENS VS. PREDATOR at all, because there is quite literally nothing in this film that harkens back in any way to Ridley Scott’s tense, atmospheric, and utterly convincing direction; the mindless action aesthetic is pure AVP. To be fair, the new screenplay (by Shane Salemo) jetisons the videogame structure of Paul W. S. Anderson’s AVP script, but eliminating a single flaw is hardly enough to justify another re-hash of an idea that was never much more than a joke to begin with - especially when that idea is so bogged down with inherited baggage and continuity problems that it has little chance yielding a convincing film. The funny thing is that, if the AVP premise had been abandoned in favor of featuring an original monster, this scenario might have yielded a halfway decent (if not to bright) B-movie monster flick. As it is, we just get a muddled mess. Continue Reading »

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NATIONAL TREASURE remained tops at the U.S. box office over the three-day period from Friday, December 27 through Sunday, December 29, and the top four slots remained in the hands of hold-over titles, allowing little room for new films to find a niche in the marketplace.

ALIENS VS PREDATOR: REQUIEM, in 2,611 theatres, had to settle for sixth place, with $10.05-million worth of tickets sold during its first weekend of release. Combined with its Christmas Day debut, the film’s total stands at $26.88-million.

THE WATER HORSE: LEGEND OF THE DEEP swam into seventh place with $9.2-million, earned in 2,772 theatres. The film also debuted on Christmas Day; the Tuesday to Sunday total is $16.82-million.

As for hold-over fantasy, sci-fi, and horror films…

ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS showed impressive staying power, rising from third to second place in its third weekend of release. Earning $30-million, the animated film lifted its total to $142.38-million.

I AM LEGEND, also in its third week, showed ever so slight signs of decay, slipping from second to third place - the first time it has fallen behind the CHIPMUNKS movie. Not to worry, however, LEGEND added another $27.5-million to its hefty three-week gross of $194.58-million.

SWEENEY TODD slipped from #5 to #9, where it sliced its way through $8-million worth of tickets. After two weekends in theatres, the total is $26.72-million.

ENCHANTED materialized in 10th place, down three notches fom the previous weekend. The film added $6.5-million to its $110.65-million total.

THE GOLDEN COMPASS dropped out of the Top Ten, sliding from #9 to #12. With a $4.36-million weekend, the U.S. toal is now a disappointing. $58.87-million.

Read the complete Top Ten here.

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There are a couple of interesting articles available today that examine the subtle approach to horror used in THE ORPHANAGE:

“ORPHANAGE is more than just a horror film” consists mostly of an interview with director Juan Antonio Bayona, who insists that he did not make just a horror film:

“A ghost story doesn’t have to be a horror story,” said Bayona. “That’s the lesson I learned as a kid, watching Spanish movies about the Franco regime. They deal with ghosts, with loss, ghosts as something psychological, not related to visual effects. Everything in this script happens in the mind of Laura.”

“Subtly Terrifying, Just Like Real Life” is more in-depth, with quotes from Bayona, actress Belen Reuda, executive producer Guillermo Del Toro, and critic Mikita Brottman. (Full Disclosure: a favorable quote from me was included in the promotional materials for Brottman’s book Offensive Films.) The article attempts to set THE ORPHANGE in context, as a new entry in the classic tradition that includes THE INNOCENTS (1961), as opposed to the more contemporary “torture porn” films.

“The horror genre has many incarnations,” Mr. Del Toro, whose filmography as a director of horror includes “Cronos,” “Mimic” and “Hellboy,” said in a telephone interview. “So many people tend to lump them all together, but that’s like lumping a Farrelly brothers comedy with one by Peter Sellers or Woody Allen. There are many incarnations, some classic, some transgressive. They may be shocking or emotional or both. They all have a right to exist. I’m in favor of anything that evokes thought or emotion.”

He can’t, however, see himself producing what is commonly called torture porn “because I think it’s dehumanizing, and nothing works if there’s no human empathy. All the suspense is completely empty if the characters are not human.”

Mikita Brottman, author of “Offensive Films” (Greenwood Press) and a professor of language and literature at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, said: “Films like ‘Hostel’ are more like the grand guignol of late-19th-century French street theater, in that subtlety, psychology, character and sustained narrative are all sacrificed on the altar of shock effect and images of bodily disintegration.

“‘Hostel stands in relation to ‘Orphanage’ as hard-core porn does to Hollywood romance — distilled, undiluted collections of those moments that their traditional counterparts can’t reveal.”

And speaking of Guillermo Del Toro, a recent poll has voted his 2006 fantasy-war-horror film PAN’S LABYRINTH as the most popular foreign language film in the U.K.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Because of their similar settings and genre tropes, some viewers have been drawing parallels between the current release THE ORPHANAGE, which was executive produced by Guillermo Del Toro and THE DEVIL’S BACKBONE , which was directed and co-written by Del Toro. Personally, we think the similarities are mostly generic, and the details are quite different; nevertheless, we offer up this retrospective review of BACKBONE, which is one of the greatest ghost stories ever committed to celluloid.

There’s a moment in the fourth HELLRAISER movie that illuminates much of what is wrong with the horror genre. One of the lead characters is decapitated in a series of slow-motion cuts meant to be a highlight of the film, but the impact is negligible, because nothing about the scene is truly crafted to terrify an audience; it’s all about providing a show-stopping special effects tour-de-force, and that’s exactly how the audiences “reads” the scene—as something unreal and unaffecting, a series of almost abstract images totally divorced from any kind of emotional impact. Put bluntly, what’s happening on screen doesn’t matter; the scene could be lifted out of context and it would make little difference, because you just don’t care. Now, as a kind of antidote to that approach, we have THE DEVIL’S BACKBONE, a film that strives as mightily and successfully as any in the genre to make you care, to make the events on screen affect you as if they really do matter. To watch this film is to enter its world, as completely as you ever entered any mainstream drama, and the range of emotions evoked is impressive without every being manipulative. This is a film rich in texture, characterization and themes. Besides being genuinely creepy, it is also surprisingly moving. It is, quite probably (and this is not a back-handed compliment) the saddest horror movie ever made.

Continue Reading »

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The ghost story is such an ancient form of storytelling that one might have expected it to wither away and die like a dried up flower laid upon a dusty tombstone, yet it continues to live on - in both literature and film - like some kind of mournful banshee, refusing to rest quietly in its grave. How is it that a genre whose basic machinery was codified over a century ago - before the birth of modern cinema - can continue to engender new and terrifying movie-going experiences? The secret - as illustrated in the new Spanish-language film THE ORPHANGE - is that the film must be about something other than simply a haunting. Create a character and/or a situation that invokes dark and dismal thoughts, and then use the supernatural devices as externalizations of the character’s anguished mental state; the old, familiar cliches can still send a shiver down the spine when they serve a solid, dramatic purpose. In short, the way to craft a modern ghost story is to craft an interesting story with a ghost (or at least the possibility of one) included. Continue Reading »

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EDITOR’S NOTE: With ALIENS VS. PREDATOR: REQUIEM now on screens, we offer a flasback review of 2004’s ALIEN VS. PREDATOR.

The long-anticipated movie monster match-up (which had been in development for decades) turns out to be a considerable disappointment, dumbing the ALIEN series down to the level of a videogame. Fortunately, the film is not a complete misfire on the level of mindless entertainment: the funny thing is, it’s exactly what you would expect it to be, as long as you don’t expect too much. Some reason is contrived to get some hapless humans stuck in between a rock and a hard place, and then lots of people die as the special effects team goes crazy depicting the battle between the two franchise stars.

The result is not too horrible, but it’s not nearly the exciting slugfest it could have been. At least writer-director Paul W. S. Anderson had the sense of humor to include a clip from FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLFMAN early on - proving he realizes that he is simply making contrived movie monster match-up that no one can take seriously. ALIEN series star Sigourney Weaver wisely took a pass, but Lance Henrikesen shows up as an “ancestor” of the android Bishop seen in ALIENS and ALIEN 3.

Continue Reading »

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“What if it [The Rage Virus] comes back again?”–Major Scarlett
“We kill it.”–General Stone

The geopolitical allegory is biting (no pun intended!), bleak and[mordant. A U.S.-led NATO force enters an England transformed by the “Rage Virus” into an empty, ravaged wasteland. The victims of the virus have all died of starvation, the infected bodies have been disposed of, and it appears the man-made pestilence has run its course. The military, now operating from a safe Green Zone, has brought in 15,000 refugees to repopulate the British Isles.

Alas, nothing exists in a vacuum, and in spite of the sleek sanctuaries, surveillance cameras, vigilant snipers, firepower and hi-tech security smarts, chaos lies in wait. The occupation forces - faced with a horrific viral resurgence and an inability, in a pinch, to distinguish “The Friendlies” from the rabid, slavering brutes - loses control of the situation which quickly turns into a quagmire of escalating horror, violence, and death. Sound familiar? Continue Reading »

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Universal Pictures has put out a press release for DEATH RACE, the remake of the classic exploitation film DEATH RACE 2000 (1975), which starred David Carradine and Sylvester Stallone. The new version stars Jason Statham as a convict forced by a sadistic warden to run a countrywide gauntlet in a souped up speedster.

For some reason, the storyline sounds more like DEATH SPORT, the disappointing 1978 spin-off of DEATH RACE 2000:

Jason Statham leads the cast of an action-thriller set in the post-industrial wasteland of tomorrow, with the world’s most brutal sporting event as its backdrop. A penitentiary full of felons has inspired the jailers to create a grisly pastime ripe for lucrative kickbacks. Now, adrenalized inmates, a global audience hungry for televised violence and a spectacular arena come together to form the Death Race.

Three-time speedway champion Jensen Ames (Statham) is an expert at survival in the harsh landscape that has become our country. Just as he thinks he has turned his life around, the ex-con is framed for a gruesome murder he didn’t commit. Forced to don the mask of the mythical driver Frankenstein—a crowd favorite who seems impossible to kill—Ames is given an easy choice by Terminal Island’s warden (Joan Allen): suit up or rot away in a cell.

His face hidden by a metallic mask, one convict will be put through an insane three-day challenge. Ames must survive a gauntlet of the most vicious criminals in the country’s toughest prison to claim the prize of freedom. Driving a monster car outfitted with machine guns, flamethrowers and grenade launchers, one desperate man will destroy anything in his path to win the most twisted spectator sport on Earth.

It is also interesting to note that the remake had to drop the “2000″ from the title or risk sounding like a historical movie, rather than a futuristic one. We have long since passed the time when the real-life calendar caught up with speculative fiction’s predictions of the future. (Think of 1984 and 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY as examples.)

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY, GEORGE BAILY examines Frank Capra’s Christmas classic IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE, reminding us that the film originally fare poorly with audiences and critics and only became popular thanks to television reruns and video re-releases. Writer Graham Fuller insists that the film’s reputation as an optimistic piece of fantasy is a mis-interpretation, but he never quite explains what he believes the film truly is.

2007 YEAR IN REVIEW: TEN WORST FILMS includes such worthy entries as MR. MAGORIUM’S WONDER EMPORIUM, THE ASTRONAUT FARMER, YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH, and PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD’S END.

HORROR SHOW AT CHICAGO CITY ARTS GALLERY looks at an art exhibition curated by a husband and wife team who teach a course in horror writing and film production.

BIRMINGHAM PLANS SCIENCE FICTION CONVENTION TO RIVAL DRAGONCON: The title pretty much says it all.

THE BEST IN SCI FI TV 2007 takes a look at how well gender and minority roles were presented in this years television sci-fi shows.

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2008 HORROR MOVIE ROUND-UP is another article (like “Holiday Films for 2008“) looking forward to next year’s releases. Slightly mistitled (it should of course be called “Horror Movie Preview”), the article gives a good glimpse of potential horror hits for 2008:

• Jan. 18 - Cloverfield (Paramount)
  Feb. 01 - The Eye (Lionsgate)
  Feb. 01 - Shrooms (Capitol)
  Feb. 08 - One Missed Call (Warner Bros.)
  Feb. 15 - Diary of the Dead
  Feb. 22 - The Signal (POP Films)
  Mar. 21 - Shutter (Fox)
  Apr. 4  - The Ruins (Paramount)
  July. 11 - Hellboy II: The Golden Army (Universal)
  Sept. 19 - Case 39 (Paramount)
  Nov. 7 - The Changeling (Universal)

I have seen SHROOMS, DIARY OF THE DEAD, and THE SIGNAL, all of which are worth seeing. I have no hope for remakes THE EYE and ONE MISSED CALL, but CLOVERFIELD looks interesting. Hopefully, 2008 will turn out to be a strong one for the horror genre

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Over at the Vault of Horror, we find this photo of the re-booted Hulk:

The image prompted the Vault’s webmaster to comment:

With a script rewrite by Edward Norton–who takes over the role of Bruce Banner–rumor has it this new one seeks to undo the damage wrought by Ang Lee’s overly sober and somewhat pretentious outing. Also, as you can see, there has been a concerted effort to step up the CGI work, which was another oft-cited letdown in the original. I also notice the big guy looks a lot more like he does in the classic comics.
Despite being marketed as a restart of the franchise, the plot of the picture does seem to pick up where the last one left off. Although I did enjoy the first one a little more than most, it certainly didn’t live up to my expectations. Nevertheless, I am giving Marvel Entertainment and new director Louis Leterrier the benefit of the doubt. It does seem to be an earnest attempt to respond to fan complaints, most notably with the excellent casting of Norton. The film hits theaters on June 13 (my ninth wedding anniversary–Hey, what an excellent way to celebrate, right, sweetheart….??)

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Apparently unhappy with this year’s output of holiday films, the Hollywood Reporter casts its eyes toward next yearand finds a glut of high-profile releases that (it predicts) will wow audiences. Many of the most potentially lucrative are sci-fi, fantasy, and horror, even if falling only on the borderline of the genres.

The next James Bond film starring Daniel Craig will open on November 17:

Not much is known at this point about Bond 22’s story, but it’s said to be picking up within minutes of where “Casino Royale” left off with Bond confronting the terrorist Mr. White, played by Danish actor Jesper Christensen (”The Interpreter”), whom Bond shot in the leg in the last scene of “Casino Royale.” Bond 22’s prime villain is reportedly Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the head of SPECTRE and Bond’s nemesis in earlier episodes of the series.

The word is that Blofeld will be played by French actor Mathieu Almaric, who could be Oscar nominated for his current performance in Julian Schnabel’s “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” as the paralyzed Jean-Dominique Bauby. Don’t expect to see favorite Bond series supporting players like Miss Moneypenny or Q in Bond 22 as they reportedly aren’t in its storyline. In any event, having a Bond film to kick off the 2008 pre-Thanksgiving period is something to look forward to and it should get things off to a great start at the boxoffice.

 Also coming out in November are two sequels, MADAGASCAR: THE CRATE ESCAPE and HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE, plus an animated Disney fantasy called BOLT (about a dog whose starring role in a TV series has convinced him that he has superpowers).

Rounding out the November releases is THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON, which David Fincher directed from a screenplay by Eric Roth, based on a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald about a man who ages backwards.

December 12 is scheduled for THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, a remake of the 1951 science-fiction classic, this time directed by Scott Derrickson (THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE), with Keanu Reeves and Jennifer Connelly taking lead roles.

Also coming out that month is THE TALE OF DESPEREAUX, an animated film from Universal, about a mouse with big dreams who falls in love with a princess. Dustin Hoffman, Kevin Kline, Sigourney Weaver, Christopher Lloyd, William H. Macy, and Emma Watson are among the voice talent.

Two genre titles are scheduled for Christmas Day 2008: BEDTIME and the next STAR TREK feature film. BEDTIME stars Adam Sandler as a man who tells fantasy bedtime stories to his children - which begin to come true. The TREK film will relate the early days of Kirk and Spock at Starfleet Academy.

Looks like there is lots to look forward to…

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Two reviews of WATERHORSE: LEGEND OF THE DEEP.

Cinematical’s Kim Voynar says:

The Water Horse mostly fires on all cylinders. It’s a charming little tale about a lonely boy who finds courage he never knew he had, a cute little sea creature who grows quickly into an impressive vision of what the Loch Ness Monster might look like. The adventure of keeping Crusoe safe has just the right balance of peril and excitement without crossing the line into being too scary for younger kids. I took my whole brood, ranging in age from four to 10, to the screening; all the kids enjoyed it very much and even the youngest didn’t lose interest or find it too scary. The secondary storyline about the two men rivaling over Mrs. Macmorrow is pretty subtle and will sail over the heads of younger viewers, while giving the grownups an interest in what happens there.

Joshua Stames at ComingSoon.Net opines:

Despite the fact that more and more family fantasy films seem to be getting made every year in the wake of the success of the “Harry Potter” series and “The Chronicles of Narnia,” it seems that genuinely good children’s films are getting more and more rare, with most drifting into easy preciousness or childish slapstick or both. If this year’s earlier attempts, “The Seeker” and “The Golden Compass” were examples of how to do the genre completely wrong, then “The Water Horse” is a fine example of how to do it right.

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In a combination of review and interview at EyeWeekly.Com, Jason Anderson proclaims:

Elegantly rendered and effectively spooky, The Orphanage courts the same viewers that may or may not have much love for genre movies but still happily lost themselves in Pan’s Labyrinth — in other words, folks too classy to admit to seeing a Wishmaster movie. In fact, Guillermo Del Toro had more than a spectral presence in this first feature by Spanish filmmaker Juan Antonio Bayona. Del Toro and Bayona met 14 years ago at the Sitges fantasy film fest. The director of Pan’s Labyrinth and Cronos kept tabs on his friend’s budding movie career, eventually agreeing to not only co-produce The Orphanage but endorse it with the “Guillermo Del Toro Presents…” that appears in the marketing.

In an interview with Bayona and The Orphanage’s star Belén Rueda at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, the director says that the films have another important connection. “We were both focused on the idea of how people make fiction to understand their reality,” says Bayona. “I didn’t know we shared this because Guillermo was editing Pan’s Labyrinth while we were working on ours.”

And though both movies combine elements of horror, fantasy and psychological drama, The Orphanage is a less radical departure from genre tropes, drawing from a tradition of ghost stories that stems from Henry James’ 1898 chiller The Turn of the Screw. Rueda stars as Laura, a woman who returns with her husband and young son to open a school in the orphanage where she was raised. Various strange occurrences and one tragic event lead Laura to investigate the mysteries of the place and of her past.

While The Orphanage is reminiscent of The Turn of the Screw and such cinematic kin as The Innocents and The Others, Bayona says that fully conveying Laura’s story was more important than worrying about reference points. “Everything was so strong about this character and her journey,” he says, adding that “what started like a scary movie ended like a melodrama.”

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What news of sci-fi, fantasy, and horror is wafting through the Internet this holiday season? Follow us, and find out…

BLADE RUNNER: THE FINAL CUT FOR CHRISTMAS is a nice article that examines the historical importance of the film and looks at some of the flaws that have been corrected in the latest DVD release.

ARE WEL ALL BECOMING GEEKS? asks why some people still profess to hate science-fiction, even though many of the innovations we take fo granted today (like digital watches and iPods) were first imagined by sci-fi visionaries.

10 SCIENCE FICTION MOVIES EVERY SCI-FI FAN SHOULD WATCH starts out strong with BLADE RUNNER, 2001, 12 MONKEYS, etc, then goes down the tubes with THE 13TH FLOOR and PITCH BLACK.

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