Tag: movie

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Doktor Events Movies

Winner of Second Annual “Impy” for Short Form Cinematic Horror: “I Owe You”

The Winner of the Second Annual “Impy” award for Cinematic Excellence in Short Horror is “I Owe You” directed by Mike McNeese for Hands Off Productions of Columbus, Ohio. We state pretty clearly in our rules that the Impy recognizes excellence in Midwest Snob Horror for films screened at the Three Corpse Circus, defining “Midwest” by a list of qualifying states “with the possible exception of Ohio.” However, we at the DailyNightmare, based in Ann Arbor, MI, are over-joyed to make an exception for this fine film. I hope the talented folks at Hands Off don’t mind that, in lieu of a cash prize this year, we’re offering a gift certificate at the M Go Blue Gift Shop.

All kidding aside, let me enumerate the glories of this cinematic gem. “I Owe You” is a taut thriller, telling the story of two friends estranged for five years whose paths cross again after a tragic event. Will they settle old debts or seal their own doom?

Impy2“I Owe You” features a great economy of effect, like the best thrillers. The camera work is masterful without being showy or mannered. Smooth tracking shots give energy to the scenes. Each shot matters to the narrative whole. The actors are all solid, especially the two principals, Brian Spangler and Johnny Diloretto, who convey a believable repartee and character mannerisms. They sold every line.

And each line in “I Owe You” matters. Many films at the Three Corpse Circus had an equally strong visual sensibility and some even had acting of a similar excellence. What propelled “I Owe You” to the forefront, in our judges’ opinion, was the clean storyline and the spare expressiveness of the script, penned by Randall Greenland. I sincerely didn’t see it coming.

For its uncluttered look and feel, great performances and killer screenplay, we at DailyNightmare.com are extremely proud to award this year’s Impy award to “I Owe You.”

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Movies

Movie: “The Woman”

The Woman Movie Poster

Be prepared for a unsettlingly creepy and weirdly gory viewing with The Woman (Bloody Disgusting Selects), directed by Lucky McKee, based on a book by Jack Ketchum and Lucky McKee, also titled The Woman. If you expect to be surprised, you’ll be in a good position for watching this seemlingly straight-forward story about a family that takes in a feral woman.

The Netflix description had setup certain expectations for me which the movie destroyed coming out of the gate. The description on the envelope claimed we would watch the family breakdown as they attempted to “civilize” a feral woman, but from the first scene the family dynamics alone sent a shiver down my throat.

A sticky, icky candy-coating shines right from the scene where the family are guests at a barbeque. From his perch on the deck, the father gazes out at his miserable and uncomfortable teenage daughter and scolds his wife. Around the corner, the adolescent son practices free throws, while ignoring a group of boys tormenting a little girl. You can’t put a finger on it yet, but there’s something wrong in this house.

The action gets rolling when the father finds a wild woman living in the woods. He immediately prepares for her capture by putting the family to work on clearing an outbuilding, a project which they all undertake immediately and without question. Back in the woods, he traps the woman, knocks her out, and then takes her to the building and restrains her. He enlists his family in the project of helping “fix” her.

Ultimately, “The Woman” is a film that’s as much about power as it is about horror. The movie delivers both the gore and violence one expects from a horror film, but it packs the emotional punch of a well-rendered drama as it explores the power inequalities within the family and between the sexes. Don’t be surprised if certain dialogues make you cringe just as much as the scenes of bit-off appendages or torn-off skin. Like with any good film, expect the ideas in the movie haunt you in the days that follow.

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Movies

Movie: “Blood and Donuts”

bloodanddonuts_poster

by Samantha Reeve, from the Great White North

Think of vampires portrayed in films, and you’ll likely picture the suave, sexy kind that seduce their victims. It’s hard not to – Hollywood has been churning out these handsome bloodsuckers since Bela Lugosi‘s charming Dracula hit the screens in 1931. Though less common, the reluctant vampire is one we’ve even seen before. But one who’s also shy and socially awkward? This is what makes Boya’s character in the 1995 Canadian horror-comedy Blood & Donuts the rarest breed of all.

Having crawled into a bag for hibernation back in ’69, Boya is awakened when a golfer’s stray ball knocks down the shack it was stored in. He jumps into a nearby taxi and asks to be taken to a local cemetery, where he digs up his belongings, and then wanders off the find a room to rent. Meanwhile the taxi driver, Earl, is back at his favourite donut shop, but has been getting harassed by some local thugs. Boya ends up at the donut shop by chance and is able to intervene, saving Earl from a beating with his vampiric strength and agility. He quickly befriends and falls for Molly, the beautiful waitress, and thus begins his involvement in both humans’ troubles.

Devoid of the major laughs or scares you’d find in most horror-comedies, Blood and Donuts is a subtler (but still an enjoyable and unique) take on the genre. It’s lighthearted and filled with characters you can root for – one’s you love even though most of the actors gave pretty poor performances. The few scenes where Boya gets mad and transforms into a terrifying vampire are great, and the campy quality of the rest of the film keeps the ball rolling. Horror fans will also enjoy the cameo appearance of the legendary David Cronenberg, who plays the crime boss.

Though frequently forgotten on many “best Canadian horror” lists, in my books Blood and Donuts is a must-see for those with a penchant for either Canadian horror or 90’s cult comedies.

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Movies

Movies: “Good Neighbours”

GoodNeighborsMoviePoster

by Samantha Reeve, from the Great White North

Good Neighbors (2010) is not often labelled as a horror film. You’ll usually find it listed under drama and thriller, but it has pretty much everything you’d want in a good horror flick: murder, suspense, and creepy characters. What it lacks, and I salute its creators for this, is a lot of the blood and gore that currently dominates the horror genre.

Set in 1995 Montreal, our tale focuses on three people that inhabit an apartment building. Victor, the new arrival, is a teacher who has returned from a stay in China. He befriends Louise, a waitress, and Spencer, a man left crippled and wheelchair-bound after an accident. A serial killer has been preying on the young women of the area, but the trio soon discovers that none of them are who they seem and one of them may be tied to the deaths.

Now without giving too much away, I’m going to say that the strongest, most unsettling thing in Good Neighbours is the characters. From the get-go they seem like mostly agreeable people, but their flaws and potentials as suspects are slowly revealed: Victor is the seemingly friendly guy who creates a fantasy relationship between himself and Louise, and goes so far as to tell others they’re engaged. Louise, with her affection for her cats, first comes off as a kind animal-lover – but one who only cares for animals. Last we have Spencer, the handsome man who was dealt a cruel hand, but who harbours some very dark secrets. With no one to root for, it’s a strange but satisfying story to watch.

One of my only gripes with this film is the choice to set it in 1995. While there was some added tension with the backdrop being the 1995 referendum (in which Quebecers voted to not separate from Canada), the costumers and production designers did little (if nothing) to make this look like the 90’s. Nit-picking, I know, but it felt kind of lazy that there were three lines of dialogue that were meant to completely transport us back in time.

Griping aside, I recommend this film to anyone with a penchant for smarter, less action and murder-packed horror. Be warned, though, that watching the trailers will actually kill much of the mystery – so if you’ve yet to see it, steer clear and take my word for it. You’ll be in for a better ride.

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Movies

Movie: “Mamá”

A feature length adaptation of this tasty short — courtesy of one Guillermo del Toro — is popping later in January. But the integrity and craft of this original short is exactly the kind of thing we love here at the DailyNightmare.

Dig it!

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Christmas Movies

Movie: Cyriak 2012

Had enough of the Holidays yet? Does it ever feel like holiday cheer is drilling into your brain? Then this delicious little clip might be just whatcha need!

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Movies

Movies: British Horror Short Maker “Bloody Cuts”

Thanks to io9 for tipping me off to Bloody Cuts, a producer of high quality, short horror films. They’ve got a good handful of films created and posted so far and thematically they run the gamut from urban folk-horror to zombie apocalypse to, well, my personal favorite is the supernatural child-terror of “Suckablood.” The camera work is sharp and the special effects are for the most part effective. In perusing the credits, there seems an oddly large number of folks with the last name “Franklin” involved — maybe they’re like the Ramones…

Bloody Cuts have run an Indie-Go-Go fundraiser but if you enjoy quality short horror as much as I do, feel free to use the “Donate” button to slip ’em a bit of cash.

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Movies

Troma Movies now on YouTube

Those purveyors of premium schlock, Troma, have released a whole slew of their full length movies on YouTube. Great fun. They might not be exactly fitting with our “snob” reputation here at the DailyNightmare, but Troma has a full four decade legacy of producing authentically independant films… or at least movies. Love ’em or hate ’em, that’s an impressive track record. And they’ve released films that they distribute too like “White Zombie” with Bela Lugosi, considered the first zombie movie.

http://www.youtube.com/user/Tromamovies?feature=watch

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Movies music This Just In

“13th Sign” – WORLD PREMIERE – Friday, 18th @ Filmore, Detroit

THIS FRIDAY – November 18th, 2011 – is the red carpet world premiere of “The 13th Sign” downtown Detroit at the Filmore. The film stars members of Cleveland-based dark industrial musicians Mushroomhead. The band will also be playing at the premiere. Come on out and support Midwestern horror.

A couple things appeal to us about “The 13th Sign.” First of all, I can’t say that I’ve ever attended a movie premiere in Detroit before, let alone for a horror film. May their numbers increase. I wanna see fright flicks premiere everywhere across the Midwest, in decrepit movie palaces and sleazy bars, in run-down urban centers and suburban malls and even at classy places like the Filmore. Let there be MORE Midwestern horror.

Furthermore, “The 13th Sign” looks like a serious horror movie. Not to disrespect purveyors of comedy-horror or camp but we at the Dailynightmare just have to tip the top hat to folks trying to make sincerely scary material. It’s so hard to do. The story seems to be occult-flavored torture which isn’t everyone’s cup of brew, admittedly, but for crying out loud, at least it’s not another zombie movie.

Here’s the teaser trailer (and here are links to other video bits)

And one of my favorite Mushroomhead videos (“Solitaire Unraveling”)

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Art Movies Other Haunts

Movies: Three Corpse Circus (review)

Three Corpse Circus took over the historic Michigan Theatre in Ann Arbor, MI last night, Devil’s Night and presented four hours of short horror movies. Yup, four whole hours of films, contests and costumed tomfoolery. If you weren’t there, you done goofed up bad. I spoke briefly with one of the organizers Jonathan Barkan who says they hope the Circus will grow to be more than just a film festival, that Three Corpse Circus might become a rallying point for the horror community in Michigan. Last night was a excellent start.

The films were better than I’d feared, a notch above the mixed bag you’d expect from a college town. A couple were real gems. Others were arty and experimental. Some cute and amusing. And to be frank, some were unspeakable, trite, poorly shot, not acted at all… dumb. Bad even for Youtube. But what I saw last night were movies I never would have seen elsewhere. Most of the pieces had some aspect that was pretty interesting. Their failures were mostly in consistency. Technically, I suppose many of the movies were “mediocre” but I mean a kind of expectant and exciting mediocrity. They left me with a sense of anticipation, that I’m really interested in seeing the NEXT movie by these film makers.

A great example of this category is “The Lair.” (http://www.thelair-movie.com/) The acting was more than good enough, much better than many commercial horror movies. There was evidence of actual script composition and, egad, character development, again a relative rarity in short horror. Competent editing built actual suspense and didn’t rely on cheap jump scares, well, not excessively. OK so the setting was the tried and true deserted campground and, granted, the premise wasn’t the most original. But the piece was generally effective. If I had to be a dick – and critics are supposed to be dicks, right? – the footage shot at night was too grainy. But where else would I have had the opportunity to see this film except at a film festival like Three Corpse Circus?

A gem of the evening was “Connected,” one two offerings from Denmark. (http://www.ov43.com/) Clocking in at barely 8 minutes, “Connected” gets in, does the job and gets out and it does so ENTIRELY WORDLESSLY. Great futuristic costumes, a convincing post apocalyptic backdrop and a clear situation, conflict and bleak resolution. It was probably dark science fiction more than straight out horror but, damn, it was a joy to watch. And again, I never would have even heard of it if I hadn’t attended the Three Corpse Circus.

The true highlight of the evening for me was the other Danish film Opstandelsen (“Ressurection”) which was as good a zombie movie as I’ve ever seen – and this is coming from someone who doesn’t find zombies particularly compelling. The movie is shot in and around an old austere church and incidentally, they shot the HELL out of this location. There are scenes in the sanctuary, the basement, UNDERNEATH the basement, the bell tower… I’ve whined in the past how easy access to fantastic ancient locations can make even crappy European movies into something watch-worthy, but the makers of Opstandelsen squeeze every bit of ambience from this place. It’s not just a cheap and easy backdrop. The prosthetics were first rate and relatively understated. The blood and gore was believable and I think the tone of its color grew progressively darker until the blood was nearly black by the end. The make up especially on the female survivor was exceptional. By the end of the movie, she was basically wearing corpse paint – her skin so pale as to be nearly white with drippy spatters of dark blood around her eyes. Lovely! The script showed off nice characterization with juicy familial strife. All three of the primary survivors had character arcs that led to satisfying conclusions. Damn, it’s hard to find something to complain about but, perhaps the range of the acting was a bit constrained – one character always stuck on high, another on low with the coke-snorting protagonist being a nice blend. I’d have to see it again before I said it was perfect but since it’s a 50 minute movie, a length too short to distribute commercially and too long for the internet, there is likely NO chance I would have been able to see it at all except at a film festival like Three Corpse Circus.

You’ve picked up on my take-home message by now. If you’re into horror and you’re in Michigan, get to the next Three Corpse Circus. It was well worth while this year and every indication is that it’s just going to continue to get better.

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Movies

Movies: “Of Dolls and Murder”

Dolls are creepy. Dollhouses are creepy. And when dollhouses are the setting for crime scene re-creations – correction, MURDER scene re-creations, well, that’s creepy-delicious. To add the perfect touch, the narrator is John Waters. (No, he’s NOT the ex-singer for Pink Floyd.)

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Comics Movies

Credit Sequence (Fan-Made) for “Walking Dead” adaptation

I’m not that a true-fan of zombies as a mega-genre but this credit sequence has enough crack-snapple-and-bop to get me interested in seeing the actual adaptation of the long-running comic “Walking Dead.”

Walking Dead Credits

And of course, here’s the actual trailer:

Walking Dead Trailer1

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid83327935001?bctid=59356961100

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Movies Other Haunts

Movie – Buffy and Edward

As a footnote to the post from yesterday about how vampires suck, er, that is, how they don’t seem to suck anymore, here’s the obvious video clip. I know you’ve already seen this clip but I still crack up when I watch it.

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"What We Fear" Movies

Movies: Mist Monsters!

Lovely work here. These are clips of a sea monster projected on water mist. Very, very effective even with Youtube video quality. Sony created the beast to promote the movie “Water Horse: Legend of the Deep” though honestly, to my eyes, the promotion looks WA-A-Y cooler than the movie. Am I the only one who things something like this should have been done for “Cloverfield?”

Mist Monster in Tokyo Harbor

Tokyo News Report on the Mist Monster

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Nightmares

Nightmare #180 – Housesitting

(Male 30’s) This wasn’t so much a nightmare as a really strange dream. Then again, maybe it was a nightmare. I dreamed that my therapist asked me to house-sit her apartment. I know, I know. There’s absolutely no way that this would happen in real life but I didn’t think anything of it in the dream. So she evidently leaves and I stop by and I’m not really certain what I’m supposed to do. It’s a small apartment, basically a large one bedroom with a kitchen at one end and a living area at the other. It’s very stylish though. She’s got this huge floor to ceiling bookcase though, and it’s absolutely filled with DVDs. I had to chuckle because whenever I bring up a movie, she always makes me explain what I mean. She’s got all the classics: Casablanca, Citizen Cane… But then she’s also got a whole shelf full of horror movies. And by horror, I mean those nasty torture / slasher movies that seemed so popular a couple years ago. For instance, she had like THREE copies of “The Toolbox Murders.” These weren’t classics and they weren’t even very good horror movies. They were the kind of movies watched by folks who like watching grisly, twisted violence. I tried to tell myself that it must just be a professional interest or something. But seeing those, it felt funny at first and then a little sickening and then I was rather scared, like I should really be getting out of there.

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Halloween Movies

Movies: Slick Claymation Zombies

Stop motion animation of any kind is a labor of love. Sure, computers have made some aspects slightly less tedious but the technique still involves taking hundreds of pictures and moving figures thousands of times. So even on a merely technical level this short claymation video is impressive.

But also consider the sheer quantity of gore in this clip. It would be impossible or at least highly cost prohibitive in most other kinds of video. The storyline too is fine. The same producer made earlier pieces that are much rougher.

Part One

Part Two

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Book Comics Movies

The “30 Days of Night” Franchise

(The Grim Gnome) I don’t like vampires, generally speaking. The whole rule-bound / old-world / invitation-only aspects make them about as scary as a supernatural Certified Public Accountant. Except for the ones in “30 Days of Night.” If you haven’t heard of this series you either have been moldering away in a casket or you’re metaphysically immune to the effects of horror-culture. A few years back, writer Steve Niles and artist Ben Templesmith wove together a freshly twisted premise with spattery exuberant artwork and pumped life back into the genre of the horror comic. The fresh twist on the vampire rules that gets “30 Days of Night” rolling is obvious from the title; if vampires hate sunlight, then what if they attacked a place that didn’t have much of it, say, a city located near the Arctic circle? What if a whole ragtag clan of vampires threw a party of sorts during the month of darkness and attacked the whole town. Add human hero. Stir well. Garnish with a nasty skewer at the end and, heck that’s what started the juggernaut. I really have to recommend it. Quite highly.




A sequel picked up the storyline and propelled it forward, again ending with a sickening little twist. And a third, completing a classical trilogy, right? If I understand the chronology correctly, the movie started development around this time and the comics kept coming. A collection of tales appeared, including a rather dumb one about vampires in space. Some of these feature artists other than Templesmith and honestly, I feel cheated with those issues, especially cheated when the artist is attempting to make work that sort of / kind of / almost resembles Templesmith’s art. So though I can’t highly recommend them all — one reason I can’t is because they’re STILL making new ones — I still have to confess I’ve bought and savored every one of them.

Niles’s other comics are nothing to ignore… but for the moment I WILL ignore them, or to be more exact I’ll postpone looking at them until another post. Who knew that comics would work so well for horror? I sure didn’t. I thought the EC’s Crypt Keeper was just weird and, OK, so I was afraid of “The Tomb of Dracula” but I was kid back then. I even thought “Dark Shadows” was scary.

And then there’s the “30 Days of Night” movie. I admit that I felt an actual quiver of excitement when I first heard Sam (“Army of Darkness”) Raimi’s name connected with the project. Alas, it was only as a producer. There are parts of the movie that are very good. For instance, some of the shots are very haunting, like an aerial tracking shot that shows the carnage of the initial attack. And throughout the movies human faces seem to have unusually de-saturated color which makes everyone look cold .. and then also makes the blood really pop out. And I really appreciated that at least a couple times when humans were standing outside in sub-zero temperatures that there were clouds of condensation when they breathed or spoke. As curmudgeonly northerner, I can’t STAND fake winters on screen. My comments don’t sound like a love-fest, though do they? Perhaps I’m grumpy for paying good money to see the movie in the theatre. I’m a stingy curmudgeon. But furthermore, I can’t help but thinking that the comic book was scarier. There was a LOT of back story in the comic book that was simply removed for the movie, so much that there doesn’t seem to be much possibility for a sequel. I was honestly pretty shocked that so much editing was required because I don’t usually consider comics to be that dense when it comes to story line.

“30 Days of Night” – the movie – comes out on video this week. Though I don’t feel unusually COMPELLED to see the movie again when it comes out on video, if I’m honest with myself, I’m pretty sure I will. If for no other reason than it will remind me of how much I loved the original comic.

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Nightmares

Nightmare #128 – Aliens in Quarantine

(Female, early 30’s) I remember this dream from when I was a child. I must have just seen the movie “E.T.” which is a charming movie except for the part at the end where E.T. has been captured and is in quarantine. He seemed so sad and in such distress. My dream takes off from there. The wall paper in my childhood bedroom was covered in tiny dolls, each probably 3 or 4 inches tall. In my dream, each one of them was a space alien, a space alien as cute and vulnerable as E.T. The walls themselves were transformed into some kind of quarantine for the cute little space aliens. I tried to close my eyes so I didn’t have to see them anymore and it felt like there was a little alien floating over both of my eyes.

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Movies

Movies: Potato Head Psycho

This is just dumb-dumb-dumb but kind of fun anyway. True film-snobs will note that it’s only a paraphrase of the original and not a shot for shot remake which could be an interesting “finger exercise” for would-be filmmakers. Just imagine how many different ways this iconic scene could be re-envisioned while keeping the same editing pattern, possibly even the same soundtrack: an unsuspecting shrub that gets pruned, blissfully unaware mise-en-place that gets shredded into mire-poix, etc. Incidentally, if you actually try any of these variants, let me know and I’ll post them as well.

But now, on to this installment of Friday Night Movies:

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Movies

Movie Review – “A Tale of Two Sisters”

by Elsa L.

This weekend found me caught in the spell of the Korean horror film, A Tale of Two Sisters (Janghwa, Hongryeon: 2003) The film stretches our American expectations of a horror film while conjuring an impressive sense of imminent and inexplicable danger as well as an effectively melancholy mood.

The story begins with the return of the two sisters to their family home after a stay in the hospital. When they are greeted frightening enthusiasm by their stepmom, we remember that underlying rule of horror films: things aren’t always what they seem. Could this parental figure possibly be as evil as she appears to be?

The family tensions play out further during the dinner scene: the cold and distant father, the out-of-control stepmom, the close bond between the teenage sisters. Bedtime finds us leaning forward in anticipation; we know something bad is going to happen or maybe already has. We just don’t yet know what.

The dark mood of the film is underscored by the large but darkly imposing house; the family is comfortable, maybe even wealthy, but still not safe. The camera convinces us that there is something frightening in the William Morris patterned wallpaper. We don’t know exactly what we are looking for, but we know that something scary lurks in this house.

Is there a ghost or something supernatural haunting the sisters or it is something more like rage and jealousy? I don’t want to reveal too much of the plot while at the same time acknowledging that the story is one that you’ll want to try to figure out. Many horror films offer a few “disposable characters” bumped off early in the film, but there are no such expendable victims here. We are drawn into caring about the sisters and their welfare. Like Su-Yuon, the older sister, we wait for the truth to be revealed. We depend on her to get to the bottom of matters.

Su-Yuon is our closest connection in the story but she proves to be an unreliable narrator– a device that catches me off-guard every time in movies or literature. I want to believe what I’m seeing and hearing, and to trust that the characters and the filmmaker are showing the true story to me. The film offers a lesson in trust to the characters and views both.

A horror film or a foreign film asks the viewer to puzzle out meaning. A foreign horror film challenges us twice as much perhaps. A Tale of Two Sisters crosses the cultural divide in ways that will fascinate, mystify and haunt you after the film is over.