Horror Thoughts

Top 5 Horror Movie Twists

2008-07-02T14:57:00.000-07:00

Call it hackneyed, cliche and overused or call it creative, ingenious and original; no matter which way one sides, it's hard to deny the impact of a twist ending. A ludicrous twist ending can destroy a movie just as easily as a fantastic twist can elevate a film into classic status. Personally, great twist endings are something I live for.

While some of the best twists to ever appear in cinema have happened in other genres (The Usual Suspects, Fight Club, Empire Strikes Back) it's horror that fits the mold perfectly to dramatic twists, turns and "Oh, I never saw that coming" type stories. To that end, I've assorted what I believe are the top five horror movie twists to date.

It should go without saying but just in case, I'm going to go ahead and warn readers that spoilers are ahead.

Number 5 - SE7EN

Se7en was an absolutely brilliant movie from the very start, one that didn't need a twist ending to "save" it. But oh, what an ending it was. From the minute that John Doe (excellently played by Kevin Spacey) turns himself in after committing five murders symbolizing the deadly sins - gluttony, lust, greed, sloth and pride, the audience is immediately forced to ask "What about envy and wrath?" while being thrust forward onto the edge of their seats. Needless to say, John Doe has plunged the protagonists into a trap, involving a certain character's loved one, which all leads to a stunning conclusion that's hard to forget.

Number 4 - ANGEL HEART

This is a lesser known, very underrated one so I'm going to try to avoid giving it away, as many summaries of this film often do. Regardless, Angel Heart is the story of private investigator Harry Angel, hired by the wealthy Louis Cyphre to locate an old crooner by the name of Johnny Favorite, who was injured in WWII. At first glance and then throughout the film, it hardly seems apt to describe this movie was horror or anything other than a hardboiled detective story. However, in the final act, just as the viewer is convinced they've figured things out, the tables turn completely out of left field and Angel finds himself in a horrifying, gut-wrenching predicament worse than any of his worst nightmares.

Number 3 - SAW

Saw is a fairly recent movie but that shouldn't disqualify it from the rankings. Even if one disagrees with the direction of the later sequels or dislikes the series all together, the ending of the original film truly is worth commending for its sheer shock value. Right at the end, it seems the Jigsaw Killer has been killed and one of the protagonists, Dr. Lawrence, has been driven to the point of sawing off his own foot to escape the trap. As Lawrence tells Adam, still chained to the wall, that he'll find help, he stumbles away (never to be seen again, except in fan message boards). Then, the unthinkable happens. The presumed corpse that has been lying in the room from the start of the film stands up, fully alive, reveals himself to be the true Jigsaw Killer, slams the door shut on Adam and in the process, gives birth to the biggest ongoing franchise in horror today.

Number 2 - FRIDAY THE 13TH

Okay, so nowadays a "gotcha" ending like this is practically an expected part of any horror movie. But it's only become so traditional because Friday the 13th did it so perfectly. Sure, I'm not the biggest fan of the first movie--the series only really kicks off once Jason gets the hockeymask in Part 3--but the ending is a true classic. It's enough enough of a twist that the killer of the movie is an old lady but nothing can top that finale on the lake, where everything seems safe...until the decomposed, previously thought dead Jason Voorhees launches himself from the water, making his big debut on the silver screen.

And finally, that brings us to numero uno...

Number 1 - NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD

I'm sure some may have expected Psycho to be here but overall, I really have to give it to George Romero's 1968 masterpiece. There's a huge amount to commend about Night of the Living Dead, from its creation of those lumbering, undead zombies, to the eerie black and white atmosphere and especially to Romero's undercover social commentary. Nowhere is this commentary more evident than the ending of the film. After all the survivors except one, Ben, are killed, Ben takes refuge in the basement as the zombies flood into the house. The next day a glimmer of hope seems to arrive, as a band of rednecks are going across the country shooting up all the undead creatures roaming the field. Finally, they arrive at the house and kill all the remaining zombies and Ben, finally saved, rushes out to freedom...only to mistaken for a zombie himself and shot instantly. The social implications of this act alone are fascinating, made only more bleak by the fact that Ben was an African American and his death by other humans can easily be seen as a sly comment on racial attitudes of the time. Romero would take his social commentary and ideas even farther in Night of the Living Dead's four sequels but truly, his first movie made the strongest statements of them all.

Now, of course, there's many more great twist endings that couldn't fit onto the list, so honorable mentions go to the previously-mentioned Psycho, as well as Scream and The Sixth Sense.

Have any other movies you think are worth mentioning? Disagree with any of my choices? Either way, comments are welcome and appreciated.

- Nicholas Conley

TRIBUTE: The Tarman

2008-06-27T16:42:00.000-07:00

Last night, I was watching Return of the Living Dead on IFC and remembering just what a terrific movie it was. In fact, I'd even go so far as to say that as amazing as the Romero films are, Return is probably my favorite zombie flick ever made. The movie deftly combines the genres of horror and comedy in a superb manner that manages to scare the viewer just as much as it makes he or she laugh. However, I truly believe that the one thing that truly makes the movie such a cult classic is a certain zombie by the name of the "Tarman" (though he's never referred to as such in the movie). The Tarman is, clearly, the greatest undead zombie in the history of cinema.

It's hard to define what makes the Tarman so great until one sees the movie. Then, it becomes clear as day. Return of the Living Dead is a movie filled with interesting and innovative zombie characters but the Tarman is, even on first glance, more than a little unique in appearance. One could say he has the appearance of an EC comics character brought to life and then dipped in hot, black tar. There's nothing remotely human looking about him and it's hard to even picture the Tarman being human before he was ever bit; it's as if he was put on the earth for the express purpose of being a zombie. This makes him immediately stand out from the majority of movie zombies, who, even in the greatest Romero movies and even many of them in Return, were often little more than people with powdery makeup and maybe a flesh wound of two. Of course, most zombies haven't been sitting in a machine for decades but regardless...

What makes this look all come together, however, is the Tarman's eerie movements. During the movie, the character moves in such a jerky, unreal way that he seems absolutely like a real zombie. One would think such movements would have to be done with prosthetics but in fact it's just the amazing physical acting of one Alan Trautman, the man behind the mask.

The reason that the Tarman is such an enduring character, other than his creepy presence, is what he brought to the world of zombies. Much like Bub in Day of the Dead, albeit played very differently, the Tarman may have been dead but his brain clearly wasn't. Unlike Bub, however, this intelligence never deterred him from his primary goal...and that goal was, as he quotes so memorably in the movie, "BRAIIINS!" Return of the Living Dead was the movie that introduced the world to the concept of zombies feasting on human brains, instead of just cannibalizing whatever they could get a hold of and the popular image of a zombie screaming for these "BRAIIINS!" is, in every way, based on the Tarman. When looked at in such a way, one could never count the amount of zombie movies that have owed a debt since 1985 to this memorable monster.

Of course, as Return was in essence a horror/comedy, The Tarman's hardly a deep character. There's nothing human to him, he doesn't rediscover his humanity the way Bub or Big Daddydo in the Romero films and in the end, he's nothing more than a decades old, intelligent, brain-thirsty zombie that no viewer could ever imagine existing before he was changed. However, that might be the very reason that the character makes such an impact. Clearly, the Tarman is an underrated figure in zombie movie history that should be celebrated as the cult classic zombie that he is.

Adios,
-Nicholas Conley

Shoggoths on film

2008-06-26T11:03:00.000-07:00

"Mountains of Madness, which is a project I've had for several years, if it comes to fruition I'd rather do that immediately while the iron is hot," del Toro says. "But it all depends on so many factors — creative, personal — that every time I predict what I'm going to do next, I fail."

http://movies.ign.com/articles/739/739225p1.html

This was the statement that director Guillermo Del Toro (Pan's Labyrinth, Hellboy) made in 2006 on the subject of a movie adaption of H. P. Lovecraft's classic novella, At the Mountains of Madness. Since then, the subject has been mostly quiet and Del Toro has had some difficulty in getting studio funding, as his script supposedly stays true to the original story in that it has an unhappy ending and no love interest. As of right now, the project is scheduled to be released in 2010 but there's no telling if that will be the case, especially seeing as it was just recently announced that Del Toro would be moving to New Zealand for four years to direct a two-part adaption of The Hobbit.

It's absolutely insane that Hollywood has yet to fully embrace Lovecraft's Cthulu mythos but not really surprising. Lovecraft's work is loved in horror circles for all the same reasons that studios would balk at adapting it; his writing style is dry and realistic, with little emphasis on character, it's dark and almost always depressing, it's incredibly surreal and offbeat and likely the most significant difficulty is that it's never, ever simple. Lovecraftian monsters aren't everyday brutish creatures that fling up from nuclear experiments, they're mythical, godlike, unrepentant, evil beings that predate mankind by thousands of years and are described as being more horrifying than the human eye could ever imagine.

It's been tried before, no doubt but never has it been done correctly. Flicks like the The Unnamable have little to do with the stories they're based on and Re-Animator, as great as it is, is based on one of the least "Lovecraftian" Lovecraft tales. The closest to accomplishing the feat has been the films by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society but these still make one lust for a big budget adaption. When Cloverfield was still in its secretive early stages, there was some speculation that the monster might be Cthulhu himself...ah, if only, if only.

However, from what Del Toro has said in interviews, it seems clear that he has the right ideas and know how to make a Lovecraft movie work and At the Mountains of Madness is one of the best stories to transfer to film. While the story is written just as dryly as any other, the events described in it have huge potential to be extremely cinematic. One has to just picture a vast range of icy, antarctic mountains that put Everest to shame, surrounding an ancient city that predates mankind by thousands of years, or to imagine what today's effects and Del Tor's imagination could do with the Shoggoths; hideous, tar black, giant amorphous monsters that constantly change shape and sprout new pairs of eyes. Shoggoths, as imagined by Del Toro, could very easily be as memorable a creature as his Pale Man in Pan's Labyrinth, or even in time become an absolutely icon film monster like Giger's Alien or the shape shifter in John Carpenter's The Thing. One can only hope.

Lovecraft's monsters and the dark, mysterious atmosphere of his works are something that the horror genre desperately needs right now. What once was old is new again and a touch of Madness could be just the thing to revolutionize today's remake-crazy horror movies.

-Nicholas Conley

A dying breed

2008-06-18T13:56:00.000-07:00

I really can't understand the hatred that I've seen thrown around at this year's much-hyped revival of the giant monster movie genre, Cloverfield (recently released on DVD). In interviews before the movie came out, J. J. Abrams was quoted as saying that he wanted to give Americans their own Godzilla and walking out of the movie theater last January, to say I was blown away would be an understatement. The reality of the experience was an incredible thing and speaking as someone who's seen more horror movies than I could ever count, it was the first film in a long time that actually had me feeling unnerved at the end. Just driving home, I was fully dreading that a giant purple leg would crawl around from behind the buildings. Cloverfield was an excellent revitalization of what had been a stagnant genre and I for one was eagerly anticipating not only a follow-up but a revival of the giant monster genre in general.

The movie made its fair share of money, to be sure. However, I've noticed a very negative fallout after the release, with many disappointed viewers. Part of me wonders if Cloverfield was simply over hyped...but on the other hand, one starts to consider if maybe, just maybe, people are incapable of ever taking a giant monster seriously again. Peter Jackson's King Kong, which was anticipated to the extreme, wasn't near the monster success that everyone expected and we can even go back to the failure of 1998's Godzilla, though that can be blamed on the movie, well, sucking.

Is it simply that the age of giant, city-destroying monsters, created by King Kong in the 1930's and brought to its greatest heights by Godzilla and nuclear paranoia in the 1950's, is over and done with? One never knows. But, as a diehard fan, I'll certainly hope for the best and be eagerly anticipating any announcements concerning a possible Cloverfield 2.

- Nicholas Conley

Breathing new life into Friday the 13th

2008-06-17T13:43:00.000-07:00

This last week, horror fans were finally greeted with the first look at the brand new hockey mask of Jason Voorhees, of Friday the 13th fame -- only, well, it's not so new at all, since it's essentially just another step forward from the same mask design we saw in Freddy Vs. Jason. That's alright, though, since if it ain't broke, why fix it?

In any case, to many fans this is the first real breath of life that the Friday franchise has sent out since 2003. While it's unlikely that most fans were clamoring for a full-out remake/reimagining of their beloved franchise, this is the age of horror remakes, where re-envisioning has become the only way for an old horror franchise to survive. Of course, horror is one of the few genres that can be successfully remade time and again (See The Fly, Halloween, The Thing, etc.) and this will be the subject of a later blog but for now, let's focus on the question that many people are asking; was anything so wrong with Jason before that he now needs to be reinvented?

To put it bluntly, no, it wasn't necessary to start from scratch and yes, it's probably only being done because such is the trend right now. However, that doesn't mean that the remake a bad idea, at least not in theory. Let's start with the basics and remember back to the very first Friday the 13th film in 1980. It was a simple enough slasher film done in the spirit of the original Halloween but with the neat twist that the killer was an old woman striking out after the death of her son Jason. The sequel, then, kept the same formula but immediately changed the storyline by having a grown Jason, now wearing a sack over his disfigured face, seeking revenge on the teenage population for his mother's murder in the first movie. Between the second and third movies, Jason has now become the central antagonist of the story and developed a super strong pain tolerance that allows him to take axes in the head and still keep slashing. That is, until he's killed by a young boy named Tommy Jarvis in part IV...

Is the emergence of a trend becoming clear here? Because throughout its lifespan, Friday the 13th has never stopped reinventing itself and this reinvention only became more and more radical as the series progressed. In film V, the killer is a paramedic in a Jason mask trying to avenge his son's death, leading to a conclusion wherein the older Tommy Jarvis seems set to take the stage as the new antagonist--and then, in part 6, this ending is reworked and Jason is resurrected from the dead by lightning. Now, Jason has become a super powered zombie that truly is, for all intents and purposes, invincible. This lasts for two more movies until we reach part 9, the abominable, sickeningly stupid Jason Goes to Hell which almost ruins the series with its left field accusations that Mr. Voorhees is in actuality an evil spirit of sorts that can possess other bodies. Finally, we find ourselves at Jason X, where Jason is, well, cryogenically frozen for a thousand years and wakes up on a space station. Now, if we were to watch the original Friday for the first time again, could anyone ever predict that the series would take the course that it did?

All of this wandering around is just again to prove the point that even though the previous movies all were in continuity with each other (more or less), they reinvented the concept time and again to the point where, by the end, it had little in common with the original idea. To that end, what's wrong with another take on it?

However, there's more potential to the idea of a Friday the 13th remake than that implies. Far more. Assuming that the makers of this remake don't fuck it up, we're being given the chance to start from scratch, take all the best parts of the previous series, ditch the worst and maybe finally, for the first time, truly be consistent. We can now start with a disfigured, mentally retarded hulk by the name of Jason Voorhees avenging the death of his mother and not have ridiculous Jason Goes to Hell type complications to ignore. In fact, there's even unexplored territory to cover in the story of Jason; I know not everyone cared for the way that Rob Zombie fleshed out Michael Myers in his Halloween but I personally thought it was fantastic. I'd love to see Jason receive similar treatment, because the tragic concepts behind the character hold a lot of potential even beyond that of Myers, potential that as of yet, has never been covered before.

So, as sacrilegious as it might seem to some, I throw my full support behind the Friday the 13th remake. Sure, it's entirely possible that it might not live up to the potential behind it but shouldn't we, the fans, give it a chance? I'd love to hear any of your opinions, both positive and negative, so please feel free to leave comments.

Over and out,
- Nicholas Conley