For a film called “Axed,” I was expecting something really dark and gruesome, and yet in the end I didn’t realize how trying Ryan Lee Driscoll’s horror drama would be. It’s a practice in tedium and boredom, with a mean spirit that is often very forced. If that’s not enough the direction leaves much to be desired with a series of performances that are sub-par at best. It’s a despicable film about a despicable man, torturing despicable people for no real reason, when it all boils down to it.
Imagine waking up one morning to run your errands, and you’re then stopped by police who insist you’ve committed a horrible crime? And what happens when everyone else you come across swears you’ve committed this horrible crime, and you know yourself that you’ve never even held a gun? How do you convince everyone that you’re an innocent man, when people can identify you as a criminal, and present evidence that contradicts your claims? What happens when you’re about to go to jail for a crime you have committed and can’t prove that you didn’t commit it? That’s the nightmare Manny Balestrero, a family man, finds himself in, in Alfred Hitchcock’s gripping and awfully horrifying thriller that sees a wrongly convicted man who has no chance of proving he’s committed the awful crime he’s been accused of.
You have to wonder if Gus Van Sant either garners an enormous amount of hubris, or just has a masochistic streak in him. Why else would he dive head first in to a remake of a hallowed horror and cinematic classic? And why else would he deliver a remake that’s exactly shot for shot? And “Psycho 1998” isn’t a remake that’s shot for shot with some liberties taken. It’s shot for shot to where director Van Sant copies every single shot of the original film, except with new actors. Van Sant fills the remake with a surreal tone in the vein of David Lynch to where the movie is adrift in a time period blurred between the fifties and contemporary time.
Director Alfred Hitchcock managed to set a precedent in 1960, not only for creating one of the greatest psychological thrillers, but for films that could become masterpieces despite their low budget. He also helped pave the way for the classic shocking twist that many directors continue copying today. Adapted from the novel that was based on the murders of Ed Gein, Hitchcock offers film-goers as much twists and turns as possible while managing to scare us at the same time. “Psycho” is the psychological examination of the twisted human psyche, the darkness in every human as Hitchcock was brilliant in conveying.
You have to love the twist director Vincenzo Natali brings to the ghost movie sub-genre. While “Haunter” is by no means a terrifying film, it really works because it’s unique and often times original. It’s a very entertaining amalgam of “The Others” and “Amityville Horror” that centers on the ghosts that have been victimized by an evil entity lurking within a house and what happens when the victims of the specter finally decide to bring down the entity once and for all.
As much as I wanted to love Thomas Shankland’s horror film “The Children,” it’s yet another genre entry that’s all build and no bang. In fact the first hour of the whole film is nothing but build-up and off screen chaos, and there’s almost no pay off to anything that occurs. Whenever Shankland has a chance to blast the audience with carnage and havoc, it’s all so abruptly ended. You assume a movie about a mysterious chemical that turns children in to rotten maniacs merciless in their pursuit to murder adults would be straight forward and frantic. In reality it’s very slow, and there’s nothing straight forward about anything here.
Director David Nutter and writer Scott Rosenberg take a page from Ira Levin’s “The Stepford Wives” to offer nineties kids a modern take on the author’s novel. Who am I kidding? The pair rip chapters from author Levin and basically just retro-fit it for a modern audience, when all is said and done. “Disturbing Behavior” is basically “The Stepford Wives” except replacing the commentary on conservative men adjusting to the rising tide of feminism, we’re given a town of parents so unwilling to work on their kids they’d much rather just operate on them to make them in to model citizens.