It’s very rare these days that a film can be unsettling without having to resort to cheap tactics to manipulate its audience in to feeling so. Most often horror movies are given the burden of making audiences feel uneasy and queasy while delivering something gory or horrifying. The truth behind “Martha Marcy May Marlene” is that is it the most unsettling and outright disturbing film of the year, and isn’t necessarily what one could call a horror film. It packs in frights in small portions through the persona of the cult our protagonist Martha is hopelessly leashed to, but it isn’t necessarily a horror film. “Martha Marcy May Marlene” is about the subtleties, the quirk in facial expressions, and the flick of the face.
Tag Archives: Thriller
We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011)
A long time ago a hateful loathsome woman gave birth to a sociopathic little shit who grew up and turned in to a murderer. There, I just saved you two hours of one of the most irritating movies to arrive in theaters this year. A waste of talent and of time, “We Need to Talk About Kevin” is about nothing more than the searing hatred felt between a mother and a son and what results out of apathy, neglect, and outright torturous mental abuse. This is basically the origin of Michael Myers. An upright well adjusted family bringing up a young boy in a suburban home, all of whom seem normal but are filled with maladjusted individuals who one day awake to discover their boy is a disgusting monster who offers nothing to society.
Chillerama (2011)
“Chillerama” feels like yet another production from the indie underground circuit that looks like it was so much fun to make. Everyone had a lot of laughs, the scripts were probably riots, and the directors joint efforts probably elicited a lot of pats on the backs. But when you see “Chillerama” you begin to realize that it was much more fun to make than it is to watch. I like Adam Green, I enjoy throwbacks to drive-in cinema, and I adore anthologies, but “Chillerama” is a swing and total miss for the directors whose entire project is summed up by bad sex jokes, flat dialogue, and poor effects.
Batman: The Line (2011)
I don’t know too much about Batman lore and I don’t pretend to. So it’s a tall order to ask viewers to keep in mind that this film is set between two issues of Batman that they likely never read before. Surely enough though, “Batman: The Line” works within the context of the Jason Todd storyline and really doesn’t take much time to expound on the scenario we’re witnessing save for a newspaper clipping of what occurred before we set down on Batman and the current Robin.
The Thing (2011)
In director John Carpenter’s masterpiece of contemporary horror cinema entitled “The Thing,” we’re told that not only is the beast of the film weak, thus forced to take on the shape and form of humanity, but it also acts as an independent species. So while we think we may be seeing one monster, there’s an off chance this thing is really multiple organisms struggling for survival by hiding in our skin. There’s no one true thing in the Carpenter film, possibly multiple or even dozens of monsters hiding in our skins that we’re killing off one by one who continue regenerating. The wholly unnecessary “The Thing” now in 2011, completely shatters such a thesis by informing us that yes there’s one thing, and yes, this is what it looks like. Within the first fifteen minutes of the film.
The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence) (2011)
There’s no reason to watch Tom Six’s movies. I’ll just say it. The man, as far as I can see, is a haughty self-satisfied tool who has no loyalty to his craft or his fans. And yes he has fans. Honestly! “Human Centipede” bred a legion of torture porn fans convinced Six was on to something with his “artistic” enterprise in to human suffering. In reality Six has admitted his idea of Human Centipede is far-fetched. He doesn’t even stand by his film, often mocking it with hushed snickers. And now we have “Human Centipede II,” a meta-movie that shows Six’s general disgust and discontent for his fans. Here, the movie he made is really a movie and the world we live in is a black and white cesspool. His one true fan is a bulbous, obese, perverse, man-child who does nothing but revel in human suffering because he’s trying to manifest the Human Centipede for himself.
Specimen (1996)
“Specimen” is one of those late nineties relics that has to be seen to be believed or else you’ll be sure it never existed. A TV movie and straight to video film, “Specimen” is by and large one of the many blemishes on its stars filmographies that acts as merely a vehicle and some work during their down time and serves as nothing more than filler. A rip off of “The Terminator 2,” “Firestarter,” and “Fire in the Sky,” Douglas Bradshaw’s film is one I discovered in the 1999 and have yet to get over. It’s a cheesy knock off and one that prides itself in being a shameless carbon copy, but I love it just the same at the end of the day.