AKA a trashy, horny and dull flat line with all the charm and depth of an egg cup. 1/5 screams
SPOILERS AHEAD AND MATURE CONTENT:
Recently I’ve been on a bit of a horror-comedy binge. For those of you who know me, I know you’ll be shocked by this. I’ve always been very, very, anti-horror-comedies. I think, mainly, for most of the reasons i’ll give in this review. They tend to be generic bloodbaths with the odd dark joke or laugh thrown in. I’ve always hated them, so I decided to conduct an experiment. I watched two in one night and decided to compare them mentally. I was going to do a contrast review between ‘Girls with Balls’ and ‘Cockneys Vs Zombies’ but realised that if I were to concentrate on comparing the two then I might lose the initial spark, the description and intimacy.
As part of this curiosity study, I watched it like I would have done at thirteen. Open-minded, unaware of tropes and cliches and reader reception theory. An English teacher I had for A levels once joked that his marriage ended because English destroys your brain so that you can longer enjoy a book or film without intensely over-analysing it. It’s a tough ole’ life being a writer, what can I say. Anyway, back at the ranch this film is a synthetic, shallow exploration of, well, basically nothing.
Even early on in the narrative you can sense the bland atmosphere. There’s no hook, nothing intriguing or even eye-catching. When a film is so uninteresting that you spend the run time scrolling through Twitter, this is not a compliment to the film. One of my main problems with it is the characterisation. The MC’s are unlikeable, nothingy, hypersexualised and as interesting as cotton wool. How are we meant to care about the deaths, the blood, the chaos when the characters themselves are just dull – cardboard dialogue, attempts to be comedic that just crash and burn as they leave the actors’ mouths. BUT, for Morgan’s sexy dance scene…I can forgive them a little.
Side note: who on earth is the singing narrator? Which of the writers of this travesty decided ‘oh, you know what we really need here – a guy with a guitar who plays no real role in the movie, just pops up now and then to sing country narrations’. Just..what? He does not add anything to the film. He’s not amusing or necessary. The first thing that did actually make me laugh was as blondie tries this odd stripping sequence whilst wearing a falcon helmet. As she begins to show her breasts, the two men begin making out and this subverted expectation actually does work pretty well as a small laughing prompt.
I have an issue with Morgan – I’m sorry but her stabbing the team leader twice with a machete just comes straight out of nowhere. Okay, she’s a bit of a bitch but there’s a pretty large difference between being a dick and being a murderer. Jesus, imagine if they were the same. My dating history would just be a list of straight up psychopaths. But, I digress, two of the most visually interesting sequences are two that, I will admit, did make me think. Firstly, the f***ing chihuahua scene. Warn me, people! I cannot cope with dogs dying…it wasn’t funny, just sad and gross. Why, just why? Also the headless body – what is with that guy? I mean it’s not exactly Mike the chicken here (If you have no idea what i’m talking about, please google ‘Mike the chicken’ he lived for two years without his head. What a legend. “Come at me bitches, I’m not becoming nuggets’.) and he stumbles around seemingly with consciousness, for flipping ages. Ugh.
Returning to chickens, briefly, the only scene that made me jump was when an unexpected chicken appears from the bushes. Now, that’s not exactly a compliment for the movie. As I mentioned, the characters are so underdeveloped and so are the villains. They’re not intimidating, disgusting or even interesting. How can you have any emotional connection, fear or disgust when the villains don’t even utter one word of dialogue. We are completely unaware of their motivations, their flaws, their narcissistic pathologies. All we see are men in dress up with a bit of face paint. Bad, bad writing ya’ll. Seriously, this film was 1 hour 17 minutes of my life I’ll never get back.
Second side note: using your only phone call to scald a cheating boyfriend is just utterly ridiculous.
One thing I realised, this film could’ve been fantastic if it was an exploration of Morgan’s devolution into madness and murderous impulses. If it was a character piece, like ‘American Mary’ or ‘Maniac’ it could have been a great watch. But instead we’re given a monotonous, drab and wearisome hunting flick that neither raises your adrenaline nor holds your attention for more than five minutes.
Overall, this film is a tedious, bland, tired rehash of every teen slasher flick, complete with every weatherworn cliche and kinky stereotype to hook in horny preteens. It has no goals, depth or intelligence. (Sadly, I did write far more than this about this particular flick at about 2am last night but somehow didn’t save 3/4 of it so I’ve tried my best to regurgitate the main points).
“The moral of our story, as you can plainly see, defend yourself from rapists by learning to volley”. Okay…but they weren’t rapists?
I am so done with this film. Ugh. Do yourself a favour and don’t watch it. Just…don’t.
AKA where I do a list, a rant, a poem – basically anything goes on Freaky Fridays. And when I get more of you lovely people following my blog you can give suggestions for what YOU’D like on Freaky Fridays.
SPOILERS AHEAD!! AND VERY MATURE CONTENT.
Soooooo, first one. I’ve been thinking about this over the weekend, I decided I wanted to do a list for the first post. Then I spent a while mulling it over, the best villains? No, too ordinary. The best zombie movies? Gosh, not yet, that will take a lot of thinking – like, months. You know I love me some zombie flicks. So, I have decided on *drum roll* the most disturbing horror films of all time. In my opinion of course. I’m not going on gore or blood, i’m going on films that you will never forget, that are forged into your memory and branded onto your nightmares. Here we go.
#10Goodnight Mommy (2014) This is an Austrian horror movie that follows the lives of a mother and her twin boys after she’s undergone cosmetic facial surgery. The premise, leaving the mother’s face always wrapped in gauze and bandages, has a sort of ‘Eyes without a face’ ring to it. But the atmosphere is just unsettling throughout, paranoia seeps in and you become just as perplexed and fearful as the boys and – eventually – the mother. The utter cruelty that comes from a nine year old is a cause for unease as it is, he glues – yes, glues – his mother to the living room floor. He glues her mouth shut. He burns her face. He cuts her lips with scissors. He is just a little psychopath, basically. It turns out his twin was a hallucination all along. The ending is disturbing also, the three of them all embracing with these fixed, strange smiles in a freakin’ cornfield. I just cannot with this film. Something about children being evil is petrifying enough but one that has hallucinations, access to sharp objects and cockroaches (that was a tough and bizarre scene).
#9 Scrapbook (2000) Jeesh I had honestly forgotten about this film until about ten minutes ago. Possibly my preteen brain blocked it out. I remember watching it illegally in about four sessions on the bus to and from school, hiding it towards me so nobody saw the horrific, sadistic sexual violence. This film has a fairly simple presence; girl gets kidnapped, gets repeatedly raped and beaten for several days. But it’s just the production of it is so gritty, so realistic – you could seriously believe that the ordeals were truly happening to this poor girl. It goes beyond just being hit once, it’s constant beating and various ways of raping and he even urinates on her. The only saving grace for this daring film, literally the only saving grace, is that in the end she manages to kill him and put it in his awful scrapbook of murder and blah. But otherwise this film is honestly a test to watch, if you can make it to the end – congratulations! You have no soul. 🙂
#8 The Sacrament (2013) I’ve actually, recently, reviewed this film as I’m making my way through Eli Roth’s repertoire, and it’s a fantastic film – it’s done brilliantly, acted amazingly but damn is it disturbing. Watching a mother slit her own daughter’s throat, hundreds of people drinking the poison and the “painless” death becomes agony and the gasp for breath and beg you to help them. It’s a tense, somewhat slow burn. But it’s just somehow just effective. It barely has any gore or guts but it still manages to be disturbing so, bravo, you sick people.
#7Mother! (2017) No, just – no freaking way with this bloody film. Nope. A baby gets freakin’ torn apart and eaten like a freaking fried chicken. I just can’t with this piece of evilness. Honestly even thinking about this film hurts my heart a little bit. Don’t get be wrong the premise is bizarrely and horribly intriguing and original and the acting is fantastic. But just f**k off Darren Aronofsky!
#6: 120 Days of Sodom or Salo (1957) Why am I doing this list? I’m just mentally revisiting all of this devastation in one hit and it’s a strange mix of fear and just ‘nahhhhhhh’. Anyway, this film. Again it’s just a real test to watch, I barely managed to get through it and I’m good with shiz like this but holy hot guacamole. It’s so realistically done, filmed so naturally. And it’s just so brutal. We’re talking rape, all kinds of rape, forced marriage, murder, made to eat faeces, having to have orgies, being whipped and beaten. This film is scarring, cheers Italy.
#5: Requiem For a Dream(2000) The second Darren Aronofsky appearance on this list. Okay, hands held up, the eagle-eyed amongst you will note that this isn’t a horror movie. Correct. If i’m admitting to the struggle of the mid-numbers for this category, I had to steer slightly off of course for this number slot. It dawned on me that I had a fairly clear image of the first five films and the top two but the middle numbers stumped me for a week or so. Apologies, but I had to put this one in here. For those of you who haven’t witnessed this sharp, muddy and honest portrayal of the rock bottoms of various drug addictions, crazed utopias that devolve into this sickening, beautifully eerie spiral. Four people, four interwoven story lines all set into motion by the haunting piano piece of the title. I was about fourteen when I first saw this film and, a while before discovering my particular penchant for violent horrors, I remember finishing it with this atmosphere of unease and discomfort thick around me. I’ve been planning in rewatching it lately as an adult, to see if I find it just as viscerally unsettling as I did then. Personally I think this movie is a piece of art, it is just phenomenally produced, shot and acted and it doesn’t shy away from the gritty subject matter nor does it romanticise addiction, quite the opposite in fact. For those of you nineteen years late to the game you may not understand what I mean by the ending! For those of you who do, there’s nothing more to say. And, despite it being more of a psychological drama than anything else, it does maintain the mood and craftsmanship of any great psychological horror – it’s minute detail, its shocking visuals, its uncomfortable dirty realism all combine into this murky, itchy disturbance. Personally this film effects me more, emotionally and pictorially, than any horror. It doesn’t rely, until the end anyhow, on massively shocking visuals or gore, it’s more about in-articulation, losing your humanity, losing everything to this living inferno dreamscape.
#4:The Human Centipede2 (Full Sequence) (2011) I’m unsure how old I was when I first endured this film. I remember being fairly nonplussed with the first instalment in this body-horror franchise. I thought it was over-hyped and sometimes just a bit dull. In fact the only scene that stuck with me, and still makes my stomach churn a little, was the infected staples image. On the flip side of the coin, the second movie was too much. Strikingly meta, albeit over-relying on monochrome camerawork – be honest with us, Tom Six, was this just so you could save some dosh on fake blood and use chocolate sauce instead? – it follows a repugnant man, Martin, in the same world as us, a world in which the first film exists, who obsessively studies it. Even more meta is the inclusion of Ashlynn Yennie, who played Jenny in the first film, playing herself. The main difference between this fella and the sick b***ard from the first time round is that this one has zero medical training and so his – much larger scale – centipede is haphazardly constructed and even involves a pregnant woman which, to be fair, was a step too far. Pregnant women and infants do not belong in these films (but, then again, wait until #2 on this list) can we just universally agree on that? That put aside, there are certain scenes in this movie that really are sickening for no other reason than to get people talking – sexual and physical molestation of children, masturbating with sandpaper, the severing of the knee ligaments, removal of teeth with a hammer, anal exsanguination, removal of tongues with pliers, laxatives (‘nuf said), barbed-wire-wrapped-rape (a sentence I never thought i’d write), a newborn’s skull being crushed by an accelerator pedal and a live centipede being inserted into Martin’s anus. Blimey, what a list.
#3/Honorary Mention: Cannibal Holocaust (1980) Okay, this 1980 Italian found-footage film didn’t make it onto the actual list because, unpopular opinion, I don’t actually find it disturbing. I’m not sure why, maybe as it’s dated now? Who knows. But I had to at least mention it because it involves the actual slaughter of animals such as turtles, monkeys and fish. I find that more disturbing than any on here! DO NOT MESS WITH THE ANIMALS!!!
#2: A Serbian Film (2010) This is one of those exploitation horrors that if you’ve never actually watched it, it’s likely that you’ve heard about it. It follows an ageing porn star who becomes embroiled in one last hurrah, as it were, but what begins as a last assignment in the adult industry soon becomes a grotesque extended metaphor for life in Serbia – that the country ‘screws its inhabitants from the moment they’re born’. Soon this flick becomes all about the shock factor, it’s filthy and bloody and just perverse. It’s no coincidence that I always see this film at the top of most banned and disturbing horrors lists. I can’t remember exactly how many countries banned this one for, I may be wrong in thinking it’s over 10? Correct me in the comments if you know. Anyway, this film includes necrophilia, incest, newborn-rape (you don’t entirely see it, thank God!) and lots of just…uncomfortable feelings. It’s not even that it necessarily makes that much of an impression on first or second watch, it’s only when you start questioning the whole morality of it that it starts to f**k with you head.
#1: Martyrs (2008)
Here we are, number one. The big uno. This French horror film is many things:
unnerving, grotesque, haunting, scaring, banned and has even been associated
with being responsible for the New Wave French Extremity movement. The plot
follows a young girl escaping from a year’s worth of torture and abuse, then
sees this young girl’s, Lucie’s, hallucinations of a ghost figure. Years later
she arrives to a family’s house as a young adult and shoots them, believing
them responsible for her miserable childhood. Anna is there (her childhood
friend) and Lucie subsequently kills herself. Anna finds a strange cellar under
the basement with a woman, Sarah, who is emaciated and translucent, with metal
bolted to her temples – her eyes in permanent darkness. This proves Lucie was
right about the family and Sarah was the ghost-like, psychological
representation of her guilt. Anna sets Sarah free, after pretty hard to bare
attempts at removing the metal. plates. Then people arrive, gunning down Sarah
(cry – seriously this film is so messed up) and kidnapping Anna (Like, what the
frick did Anna do?). It’s revealed that these people are a sort of academic,
philosophical cult who believe that by inflicting the most extreme systems of
agony and torture on the human body a person could “transcend” to a
utopia-esc post-heaven. They flay Anna alive, again incredibly disturbing to
watch, and she survives, in a euphoric type state. The leader of the
organisation, Mademoiselle, eagerly returns to hear of Anna’s revelations. Anna
whispers in her ear. She proceeds to kill herself. The film ends on Anna’s face
in a catatonic state. It had really mixed critical response, unsurprisingly. I
just remember feeling so violated afterwards. The physical horror of it all is
just too much.
AKA ‘Well that came out of nowhere, didn’t it?’ 4/5 screams.
SPOILERS AHEAD
I thought i’d get this review out of my system whilst I can still remember my natural reactions to this latest release of Netflix’s homegrown horrors. Funnily enough this was one of the films that made me realise how much I wanted to start this blog. So, manners remembered, thank you Richard Shepherd for your inspiration. After ‘The Babysitter’, ‘Annihilation’, ‘The Open House’, ‘Before I Wake’ amongst others which compile the very mixed bag I had my doubts but tried to go in with an open mind anyhow.
Despite initial concerns about the ambiguous premise and trailer, on one Sunday morning I wrestled in bed with a delightful hangover. Downing orange juice like there was no tomorrow and cuddling into a fort made of pillows, I saw this film pop up on Netflix. I looked the trailer up in my fugue and, in hindsight, I now have very mixed feelings about the scene they chose for the promotional video. I think it was a very clever hook and certainly gripping but it was also such an important crux of the whole twisted journey that I think it may have been worth keeping it back in the arsenal. But maybe that’s just me.
One thing I loved about this movie was how multilayered its sub-genre identification is. Half of it was this shadowy, psychological thriller yet there were elements of body horror in there. The latter part of this artistic, paranoid tapestry even morphs into a revenge film. Instead of, as discussed in my review of ‘The Shrine’, getting lost in the chaos of different tropes it instead picks and chooses very certain and deliberate themes from each sub-genre without muddying the tone.
Honestly the atmosphere of this film is superb. Erotic, tense, bloody, twisted and oh so moody. The reds and beauty of the colour scheme transforms it into something elegant and wrong, something you know you shouldn’t be loving but you really are.
We can’t talk about ‘The Perfection’ without talking about the acting. There wasn’t one character I didn’t believe and didn’t have some sort of relationship with, even if it was revulsion or fear. The sexual connection in the beginning between the two female protagonists is beautiful and sensual and perfectly delicate. Now that is a sign of fantastic writing and production. The cherry on the cake was the music, these stunning eerie violins and cellos, you can almost taste the anxiety of being perfect in each piece.
Then, before I stop gushing over this film, the ending was an absolute grenade to the guts. I didn’t see it coming in the slightest, it was messy and perfectly balanced between shocking visuals, disgust and sympathy yet distracted by how stunning the music is.
Seriously, if you haven’t seen this film go and watch it now – it’s this darkly witty, sharp, sexy and stunningly captured expression of desire, abuse, self-esteem and even, somehow, morality. So clever. I plan on watching it again over the coming weeks and possibly doing a video review.
So what did you guys think about ‘The Perfection’? Do you agree with me or do you think it was trying too hard to be different, trying to be a piece of art rather than a film? Let me know in the comments.
Now that we’ve got a horror film watched and under our belts, let’s have a cuppa and a chat about what on earth i’m up to on this page.
Well, if you’ve wandered in off of the dusty streets of the internet then welcome! I’m Liv and i’m a writer, performer, singer, freelance journalist and (if you can’t tell) a gigantic horror film nut. Anything with a few machetes and a few gallons of red corn syrup, sign me up, pal.
What You Can Expect: $ Movie reviews $ TV reviews $ Top 10’s $ Opinion pieces $ Games/comics (I’m not particularly well versed in this side of the horror kingdom but if it’s something that peaks interest let me know in the comments). $ Hopefully some video-blogs and some collaborations with fellow horror fans
My aim is to post at least one review per week as well as a weekly special entitled, somewhat self-consciously, ‘Fright Night Fridays’. Which, you guessed it, will hopefully get released every Friday.
I think that’s everything folks, if you have any recommendations please leave me a message in the comments or head on over to the contact page.
Don't Scream 