The world of exploitation film ripped open and laid raw for you to experience. From 70's grindhouse to current underground, it is all here. So ripe you can practically smell it.
THE TALL MAN (2012) D. PASCAL LAUGIER IMAGE ENT. 2.35 I had heard a lot of poor word of mouth about this movie, the sophomore effort from Pascal Laugier director of MARTYRS. Of course it isn't going to live up to that film because it is one of the best, most important horror films of the last decade. But I am pleased to say that THE TALL MAN is a vivid, brave and intelligent horror film that is for grown ups. It may not be as visceral as his previous film, but it makes up for it with great plot twists and fantastic acting. Structurally it is very similar to MARTYRS in that it opens with one storyline and half way through switches gears dramatically to explore the story from a very different point of view. even the last couple of minutes have a slight shadow to his previous film. THE TALL MAN deals with a small mountain mining town in which the industry has basically vanished. Also vanishing is the children in the town and a legend has grown up to explain it. That a mysterious, probably supernatural force called THE TALL MAN has snatched the kids. Local Nurse Julia (Jessica Biel) is doing what she can to take care of the people in the region. But she is a single mom herself and very busy trying to keep her own home life together. Then one night the Tall Man comes calling for her son, leading to a harrowing chase in which he is snatched away. But when she returns to the town, battered, bloody and mentally shaken everyone in the town seems to be against her, and harboring some sort of grudge... To say anymore would be to give too much away. The film goes to some very interesting places including some rather savage social commentary. The movie is very intense, growing more so as the film progresses and turns. The ending is surprisingly touching and effective.
Last year on my original Exploitation Nation Blog (still nested on the Today.com set of bogs if anyone is interested to go read them) I did an experiment where I had my immediate circle of friends that I hang out with nearly every weekend give me their top ten picks of the year as well. I posted them as I got them in. I'm going to do that again this year. Naturally I will be starting today with my own list. So here goes the top 10 films of 2009 by Andy Copp
Actually, this year was a fantastic year for movies and picking just ten was damn near impossible. I had it nailed down then at the last minute I saw one more movie that I felt had to be put into the list and that shuffled things around again. I still need to see THE HURT LOCKER and MOON both of which I missed on their theatrical runs (MOON barely played Dayton, and I just missed THE HURT LOCKER even though it was from one of my favorite filmmakers, which is inexcusable). So I am doing eleven movies. Sue me. It is my blog and I do what I want when I want... So here we go!
11) DEADGIRL - This independently produced sleeper horror film is dividing fans much like the film MARTYRS. For some reason lots of horror fans are just seeing it as a male masturbatory rape fantasy, while many others are seeing a brilliant study of male pack behavior, sexual politics, and high school peer pressure all wrapped up in a very disturbing, pitch fucking black zombie film. Either way people are having a hard time with a movie that deals with teen boys who are keeping a zombie girl as a rape toy, only to start pimping her out to others. Ugly, unpleasant, filthy, smart, sad, and at times really beautiful, this is what independent horror should be aspiring to. When most independent zombie films play for laughs, this plays for keeps.
10) PONTYPOOL - Canadian director Bruce McDonald makes my list two years in a row, last year with the experimental THE TRACY FRAGMENTS, and this year with his witty and savage zombie film that almost has no zombies. PONTYPOOL is actually more of an intellectual exercise in semantics about language and separation between people when it breaks down. Yet also succeeds in being a damn scary and tense movie all the way through. The tension continues to get ratcheted up, wisely never really showing the menace until almost having to, and then just briefly. Almost unbearably tense, with just enough humor to get you through, and a humanistic message in the tail.
9) FANTASTIC MR. FOX -Wes Anderson’s incredibly dry humor take Roald Dahl’s children’s book perplexed parents and families who went to see this old school stop motion animated flick. But I’m sure it delighted his fans. For me personally it was the first time I had encountered his work and I had loads of fun with it. The laughs are not roll on the ground funny, but sort of a sideways look at life, and by having them be animals it is even more interesting and bizarre. The characters are all really well developed, yet contain distinctive elements of their animal personalities beyond just being say, the cute opossum, or what have you. There is a rather high level of violence for an animated ‘kids” movie and the Foxes do indeed do what they are known for, which is kill chickens, which is never glossed over. Which, I am sure, is another reason parents stayed away in droves. The stop motion is totally old school, done by hand, using puppets with real fur, which gives it a beautiful, very real look to it that is very fresh in this slick computer age. The entire film feels so real you want to reach up and touch it.
8) AVATAR - No one is as shocked as I am about this. The trailers for AVATAR tried to sell it on the special effects and hardware involved. The “wow” factor for the wii generation was supposed to pull you into the theater, but in fact had the opposite effect on me and turned me off completely. Had I not started hearing these rabidly negative reviews bitching about the film’s “Socialist-Liberal” (yes, that is how I have read it described) agenda and pro ecology rants I would have never bothered to see it. The story arc is too familiar, but what does with that familiar story arc is quite unlike anything you’ve ever seen. The creation of a whole world that we have never experienced is so nuanced and complete that it is consistently breathtaking. Yet, all this special effects muscle is being used to put across a deeply felt message about how we treat the world (maybe the universe?) and that just because we can go into an indigenous area to take what we want doesn’t mean we should. That the eco-system is really the life-line of any planet and greed will destroy that, until quite possibly the planet is forced to fight back itself. The clear jabs at America’s out of control sense of manifest destiny that has overlapped into the constant “War on Terror” are loud and clear and well represented here. Next to the original James Cameron THE TERMINATOR which is a sentimental favorite, I think this may be Cameron’s best film.
7) DISTRICT 9 - The Summer Blockbuster comes of age with the incredible, smart Sci-Fi thriller that takes on racism, apartheid, and other racially motivated marginalization by way of replacing minorities with aliens. A simple tactic really, but the brilliant directing and flawless effects couple with the ability to imbue the alien characters with actual performances makes this simply, amazing. This takes what could have easily been tired cliches (the “handheld” story telling device, the old one man becomes part of the “other side” and helps to fight for them) and really redeems them. But at the end it is those rich characters, especially the lead, that are steeped in shades of grey, that makes this so stimulating.
6) OBSERVE AND REPORT- The bravest comedy in years. Advertised as a frolicking Seth Rogan feel good yuck fest in a mall ala Paul Blart Mall Cop. What you get, is Taxi Driver for the consumer generation. A movie that invites you to laugh at things totally fucked up in our culture but then turns you around and shows you just how fucked up those things are and implicates you for laughing. Is mental illness funny? Is racism funny? Is drug abuse funny? Is broken home life and destruction of the family unit funny? Nope. But you will laugh and maybe not feel so good about yourself for doing so. And maybe think about the things you laughed at. This is also one of the most well directed movies to come from mainstream Hollywood in a longtime, especially with the use of music. Just brilliant. The reference to OLDBOY was a nice touch too.
5) MARTYRS - For some reason MARTYRS has become the most attacked horror film in recent years. The people who hate it, hate it with a passion, like the movie was made purposefully to hurt them on some personal level. The movie is roundly considered to have gone way too far, to have pushed to envelope and is just “torture porn” (the stupidest fucking term in the history of journalism). What it IS, is among the most uncompromising, relentless, terrifying, brutal, and SMART horror films in recent memory. While it is not as good as ANTICHRIST, it is still one of the most impressive horror features in many a moon and I think a turning point in the genre. Yes, it is too much for most audiences. But those audiences do not have to watch it. This isn’t TWILIGHT for god’s sake. This is for that segment of horror fans who can take it, and demand entertainment that is deeper in meaning than the average Hollywood cesspool. That’s where audiences get lost, is that by the midpoint the movie makes a HUGE demand on the audience to stick with it. The film is challenging you to stay on board at that point. Making a commentary on the "torture" films surrounding it. Saying "Hey if you like this kind of stuff, then HERE IT IS!" Then if you CAN stay on board, the story goes places new and strange. But I think most audiences tune out, get offended and can’t handle what they are experiencing. And the movie IS forcing them to experience it. It is commenting on the wave of “torture” films more than participating in them.
4) WATCHMEN - If there ever was a movie that has people gunning for it before release this was it. This was NEVER going to satisfy the comics fan base unless it was a seven episode mini-series on HBO and even then I doubt any director could deliver anything that fans would agree worked. What Zack SnyderDID deliver was an amazingly faithful adaptation that shocked audiences that were unfamiliar and expecting BATMAN, pissed off conservatives who couldn’t handle sex in superhero stories or the political content, and angered comic nerds because the final third of the movie was different than the totally unfilmable comic. What the movie delivers is dead on characters, with great performances (Rorschach, The Comedian, Nite Owl and Dr, Manhattan are all perfect, The Jupiter Women are both very good, though Sally Jupiter’s old age make up is regrettably a little off). Fans complained that the action scenes were out of place, but for fucks sake it IS a comic book movie after all, there needs to be action. For a three hour super hero movie to not have any would be absurd. The movie builds a world unlike any other comic movie ever made, with an unique point of view. It is faithful to the source material to a fault. There is not much more one can ask than that.
3) LIFE IS HOT IN CRACKTOWN- The most unjustly maligned movie of the year. Not because it got bad reviews. But because it was just simply ignored. By festivals, by critics, by audiences at large, and a distributor that just didn’t have the power to push it out there enough. Buddy Giovanazzo’s dream project based on his incredible book of short stories is probably even more powerful that expected as he managed to do something the book didn’t really do. Find the heart and soul of even the most despicable characters in the work. The book is about the horrors of street life and drugs. The movie is about the humanity of the people who live the lives involved in those horrors. Where this could have been two hours of living, breathing hell, it instead manages to be filled with a bleak hope as we watch people with pride, dreams, goals and self worth. We watch them love, live, party, work and struggle to get by. There is violence, some of it brutal, ugly and extreme. The gang rape that opens the movie has a LOT to do with why the movie was passed on by film festivals the world over, though so totally important to the tone of the film. Without it those characters would be completely off balance. The performances here are without peer and deserve Oscar nods especially Kerry Washington as the proud transsexual struggling with her heroin habit. It is sad that the movie PRECIOUS (while not a bad film at all), which shares a good deal of themes with this movie, managed such a good deal of steam (thanks to big name support of Oprah and Tyler Perry), while this was ignored. Buddy G should have said this was a true story.
2) ANTICHRIST - Lars Von Trier lives to be controversial it seems. But I don’t give a shit about all of that. I’ve only seen a few of his movies and don’t care about the controversy he drums up. I saw this without hardly any knowledge of the controversy surrounding him and this film. So what I got to see was basically just a pure movie as it was intended, not colored with the hoopla and craziness. What I got was the most powerful horror film in years and one of the most moving and disturbing treatises on how humans deal with grief, how women have been treated throughout centuries, how sexuality has been repressed and abused, and just how far humanity will go to control one another to avoid their own accountability. A bleak, dark, uncompromising, powerful, assault, filled with meaning and imagery that is impossible to forget. This movie is not for the weak of heart and especially the weak of mind. Which is why so many critics hate it. They want to join the club and be part of something, the elitist group that feel the are smarter than this smart-alec art filmmaker who has dared to cross boundaries that good taste has dictated. They don’t seem to understand that conservatism has no place in art or horror. They didn't take the time to see the layers to the film and the true brilliance of everything on screen.
1) WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE - I can almost safely say that there has been no other movie in recent years at which at no point did I stop and think about the craft of which the movie was made. Where I was simply drawn into the movie so utterly and completely to the point that I was struck with awe and lost, that my film geek side was put to rest and the little kid inside of me that loved movies so much was woke up so completely that I was taken into the movie and lost. No real world, just the one in the movie. WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE did this for me. Granted I was predisposed to loving it. The book meant soooo much to me as a kid that it is pretty much a genetic code to who I am today. My Mom read it to me daily until I was able to read it myself. So when the Wild Things showed up the first time in the movie I literally wept. Seriously, full on tears of joy at seeing something so powerful from my childhood born into reality so perfectly. By the time Max leaves them at the end and they all howl together saying good bye I was full on bawling like a baby, not wanting to leave them either. I’d been happy to spend the rest of my days in that theater, sleeping in a pile with them. None of this touches on the multiple layers of meaning and depth the movie has. I want to see it again so badly, but at the same time I am almost afraid to because I don’t want to taint that perfect experience of seeing it the first time. (Besides the guy snoring in front of us in the theater. Asshead.)
The worst movies of the year was actually a damn sight harder this time around to come up with as I didn't feel that I went to that many truly awful movies. I saw a few that I was ambivalent about like PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, or ones that I liked but did not love like INGLORIOUS BASTERDS (I still don't see the brilliance that everyone else sees. Cut it by 20 minutes and loose the custie touches and make Eli Roth's character never speak and it might come a lot closer). But truly bad films? Well the following were in the shitpile...
FRIDAY THE 13th (remake) - It is almost a cheat to put this on the worst list as I in no way expected it to be good. Directed by shit-hack extraordinaire Marcus Nispel whose bowel movements are even an artistic embarrassment and probably more entertaining than his films. To call him a hack is insulting to true hacks who are trying to just earn a living. At least it had righteous titties, and a funny unintentional subplot that inadvertently makes Jason Vorhees look like he’s a pissed off pot farmer.
X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE - As if Brett Ratner hadn’t fucked up the X-MEN franchise enough 20th Century Fox had to really rape and plunder it with this spin-off series launch pad. The problem here is the same thing that killed BLADE TRINITY. (Well, besides a director infatuated with his hunky stars abs.) The focus is not to make a good or coherent film, but to stuff as many franchisable characters into the flick as possible as to spin it off in the future to other money making series. So what you have is a movie that makes no god damn sense unless you read the comic books to understand who the hell everyone is. Then it pisses those fans off because it is completely unfaithful to those characters. The first five minutes are pretty good, and then it goes to hell in a hand basket as it clearly is being directed by committee. With some of the worst CGI special effects in a modern big studio release film ever. I Like Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, he's great. He deserves a much, much better movie than this.
DRAG ME TO HELL - I refuse to be all fan geek and fall all over myself because Sam Raimi came back to the genre and made a horror movie. He really didn’t. This is still a slapstick comedy in a horror movie’s clothes, and this time most of the comedy is so goofy that is just makes your head hurt. To me this kind of horror/comedy stuff was dead in 1988. It also doesn’t help much that every single minority character in the movie is either so disgusting that you can’t look at the screen (drooling , spitting, snotting, etc) or lying, cheating, thieving, conniving scumbags out to make a buck while the white-bread heroes are just trying to outsmart them. Seems to me that someone's hometown aw shucks point of view has been mightily curtailed from directing $200 million dollar movies. I mean there is actually a scene where an anvil appears out of nowhere to be dropped on someone!?!?! Did Chuck Jones actually ghost direct this? I CAN however respect the last ten seconds, however predictible they may be.
H2: HALLOWEEN 2 - Rob Zombie what the hell are you thinking? Have you just gotten to the point that you have isolated yourself in your own little castle of money and horror goodies that you have no idea what you are putting out anymore? When you put out something that doesn’t work (say the HALLOWEEN remake?) you blame the studios, yet you claim totally autonomy on this sequel (that you claim you never wanted to make in the first place) and this is what we get? Get a good co-writer and take a workshop on writing characters and dialogue and come back and talk to us dude.
MY NAME IS BRUCE -Seems I’m shitting on the Sacred cows here, so I might as well continue. Bruce Campbell, fan boy icon. Shitty director. Seemingly has become a self absorbed assface. Or that is what he wants everyone to believe he has become and plays in the movies. But the shitty director part is still true, hence this damn near unwatchable and completely unfunny mess.
One great thing about this year at the movies was that I got to go to the drive in a LOT. The Dixie-Twin drive in for reason's I don't understand changed their policy this past summer from playing basically family friendly films to almost all horror/exploitation/sci-fi. Every horror film that came out during the warm months played there and we went there to see them all. This was as close to the glory days of From Dusk Till Dawn Trash nights as one could get anymore. So just the experience of being in your car watching horror on the outdoor screen made a turd like HALLOWEEN 2 that much more fun and passable. Hell, even something I wouldn't have bothered to see like SORORITY ROW got me to pay to see it because it was at the drive in. Best of all they had a retro-weekend where they showed & JOHN CARPENTER'S VAMPIRES, & KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE on one screen with GHOST & ROADHOUSE on the other (as a tribute to the fallen Patrick Swayze) with proceeds going to the local cancer charity. Pretty dope. The double feature of ORPHAN and THE COLLECTOR was like I had time warped into 1983 as both films were a total throwback to old school horror and seeing them at the drive in was perfect. I will be patronizing the Dixie Twin this upcoming year as along as the keep this kind of programming going. I was told they hope to do some more retro stuff this upcoming year.
So that's my year in review, we'll see what my friends have coming up. But I get the feeling that WATCHMEN is going to be an interesting bone(r) of contention...
The following article originally appeared on my Facebook profile but the varied discussion, plus the fact that people are STILL calling MARTYRS torture porn, has moved me to throw it up here as well.
So I'm cruising through borders today to buy the book WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE for my friend's kids cause every child should own it (especially before the new movie comes out). And I stop to look at the new horror magazines. The new RUE MORGUE had a cover story on the new French horror film MARTYRS (See the review elsewhere here for my thoughts on this film) which I thought was cool. I dig when magazines spotlight foreign or indie horror. But right across the front of the mag is the headline "Transcendent TORTURE PORN punishes NORTH AMERICA" written with that exact emphasis and capitals. I immediately just put the magazine back down in disgust.
Come on people it is time to stop with the fucking term TORTURE PORN.
Rue Morgue you're better than that. The term TORTURE PORN is a lazy bullshit term developed by the American right wing news media at the height of the popularity of the SAW and HOSTEL films that was supposed to denigrate the genre. Using it when describing genre movies plays into that mindset and insults not only the movies you are writing about, but the fans and the genre itself. Horror films are NOT pornography. Nor are they torture, no matter if that is what they portray. No one is being tortured for real, it is all special effects. JACKASS would be closer to something that you might want to call TORTURE COMEDY maybe (but I don't even subscribe to that idea). Tony Timpone editor of FANGORIA magazine (who has been at the helm of that mag for over twenty years now. Who is ever the Editor in chief of a magazine for that long?) has said in some recent interviews that he thought the recent French horror film FRONTIER(S) was nothing but, wait for it, TORTURE PORN. He wrote and editorial 2 years ago slamming the film CAPTIVITY (before he even saw it) for being, you got it, TORTURE PORN. (Granted CAPTIVITY sucks the gas from a dead donkey's ass, but that is beside the point). Now Tony, FRONTIER(S) is actually a pretty prime example of the tried and true backwoods massacre/survivalist horror film (HILLS HAVE EYES, TEXAS CHAINSAW, ring any bells?) and yes CAPTIVITY does cater to the torture elements of some modern horror films, but as bad as it is, it also hearkens back to the sexual obsession type films of the early 70's such as THE COLLECTOR or even PETS. And guess what? None of those older films are even remotely TORTURE PORN!!! (But god yes CAPTIVITY sucks)
You want to see some actual TORTURE PORN? Then here is some... Try the German series SLAVE SEX from the 80's. Shot on video XXX S+M videos that ran at least into 30 volumes or more that showed things like women hung by their breasts by rope, burned with blow torches, steel skewers and needles pushed through their breasts, labia nailed to the table etc. Men with hooks through their penises with buckets hanging off them, their cocks sewn INTO their scrotum, pubic hair set on fire, scrotum nailed to boards etc. Or the other famous German underground porn series FORCED ENTRY that ran into the 40 volume range that centered on simulated rape and not so simulated torture? Then we can travel to Japan for the BUSHIDO tapes that are rumored to have been made by the Yakuza and are pretty much just woman being sexually tortured by heavily tattooed underground mafiosotypes with ropes, hooks, speculum, whips, rods, canes, needles and anything else they can get their hands on. Or what about the TOSHIHIRO RARE FETISH series where women are tied up and have various viscous liquids poured into their eyes, nostrils and other orifices and then are covered in cow and pig guts before being sexed up? And I'm not even going to tell you what happens in the SQUIRM FEST tapes.
This stuff is actually TORTURE PORN. Two things make it fulfill that term. 1) It is actually pornography. The goal for these tapes is to arouse and get the person watching off. There is no plot, no story construction, no characters, no fancy camera work. Just you are there watching this SEXUAL stuff happening for the benefit of the the camera and therefore YOU the viewer. And 2) There is actual TORTURE going on. Granted the participants are getting paid (at least I would hope so, though some of the shit they go through makes you wonder if they are just repaying some Yakuza debt, or drug habit and sometimes they sincerely don't look like they want to be there. But I'm sure that is all part of the frisson of these as well) and are taking the abuse the same way a boxer would a twelve round fight.) But in the most outright obvious, clear explanation of the term, these are actually TORTURE PORN.
Movies like HOSTEL, SAW, MARTYRS, FRONTIER(S), INSIDE, CAPTIVITY, HAUTE TENSION, or any other recent horror film are NOT. Because not matter how much you may or may not like the material they are NOT pornography. No one is in the theater jerking off to them. There may be a few sickos who do, but then there are lots of sickos who jerk off to Disney cartoons too and that doesn't make them Pornography either. The intent of these films is not sexual gratification and release. The intent is to horrify, scare and provide catharsis. To take the viewer on a ride through a series of complex and unpleasant emotions and fears, that by the end will hopefully allow them to release some aggression and terrors. Also the so called TORTURE on screen is never under any circumstances real. The violence is acting and special effects. Even a film as questionable as say MURDER SET PIECES, where it is arguable that the director is putting the actresses through the paces for his own sexual gratification, is still at the end of the day, phony. These are effects, camera trickery and people acting out scenarios for the service of a story to be viewed by an audience that is here for no other reason but to enjoy a horror movie.
But to call horror films TORTURE PORN is to put horror films in the same ghetto as porn. Now I have nothing against porno at all. I watch my share, hell, I even know a porn actor or two. I've nothing against the genre. It is as legit as anything else. But this term is being used to degrade. Porn is generally seen by the public as something bad or to be kept in the shadows and fought against. That it is somehow poisonous to good people. Yet it is a multi-billion dollar industry, so we know the people who say those things are liars. But to label the horror genre with the porn tag is to put it into bed with the porn genre and say it is also something bad, something to be ashamed of. Something unhealthy and evil, that will corrupt the family and normal people of the world. And that is a dangerous precedent to set. The right wing media was setting out to do just that when they started throwing around the term TORTURE PORN several years ago. The aim was to scare middle America into thinking horror films were the equal of the hardest most unsettling pornography that were scarring the youth of the nation. The Bill O'Reilly's of the world (who openly admitted he had never even seen the movies discussed) was happy to throw the whole horror genre under the bus. Now we have the genre itself walking right out in front of the bus willingly, saying "yep we are TORTURE PORN. Our genre is made of SHIT and we are gonna keep saying it!"
TORTURE PORN is a bullshit term made up to hurt the genre and scare idiots who watch too much TV. Lets stop hurting the genre by bandying it around and start being more creative and smarter than those we would like to see the genre fail. Let's stop using the distinctions created by the media that degrade our precious genre and in the process stabbing ourselves in our own hearts.
MARTYRS (2008) D. PASCAL LAUGIER Wild Bunch (Production Company) 1.85
Genre tongue waggers are calling this one this year's answer to INSIDE because it is French, gory as hell, and uncompromising. While I liked INSIDE to a certain degree I also think this movie is far better written than that one with a good deal more on its mind. A lot of genre critics are accusing this current wave of French horror directors of a game of gruesome one up man ship as it seems each film from the land of golden fries takes the gore and brutality up a couple of notches than the one before it. But to say that ignores that each film has had their own distinct feel and approach to the genre. All of them may be gory and aggressive, with a lot of bad attitude, but they each have different things going on as well. With that said this one may be the richest in depth and story of the group I have seen (INSIDE, FRONTIER(S) and now MARTYRS, I still need to see MALEFIQUE).
The film opens suddenly with a young just barely preteen girl running out of a building. She is in her underwear, filthy, bloody, her head shaved almost down to the scalp. She is bruised and clearly hurt and has been held captive. We can hear a commotion inside the building she is running out of, but she hits the sidewalk running for her life. During the opening credits we learn what has happened to her as we get a super 8 police file footage of the crime scene investigation. She was being held captive in a small room, chained to a wall with enough length to slightly move around. She had one chair to sit in, that had a hole cut in the center so she could use the bathroom in the bucket below it. She was not sexually abused in anyway, but was clearly beaten repeatedly, and malnourished over the extended time she was held captive. Otherwise the girl is not talking. We also see file footage of her in the mental asylum she has been taken to, where doctors and other children cannot get through to her. They eventually get out of her that her name is Lucie and she makes friends with another girl there named Anna and they bond. After the credits Anna is being asked by the hospital staff and police to help them get through to Lucie to find out if she can help them find who was holding her captive. Anna says Lucie doesn't know, that she never really saw them. Later than evening Anna finds Lucie in their room with deep slashes on her arms, and she begs Anna not to tell anyone. She claims she did not do it to herself. That night we see a very twisted, old, naked, female shape crawling around the floor of the girl's room and hovering over Lucie's bed and Lucie clearly sees it too. Cut to black.
Then we meet a nice suburban family, two teenagers, a boy and girl, fighting over a love note. Dad trying to get them to settle down while he gets ready for the day and Mom working in the garden digging a dead mouse out of a pipe. The family basically gangs up on the boy because he is failing out of school and wants to move in with his girlfriend, who no one really likes. Apparently she wants to come by later and the family isn't too hip to that idea either. It is clear this family is going to play into the movie ahead in an integral way.
To go any further with a plot description will only go into spoiler territory that should NOT be discussed when seeing this film. I went in blind and was knocked senseless and so should you. Suffice to say that it does NOT go anywhere you are expecting it to. One plot element does play out in a way you sort of expect it to, but then that almost leads you to think the rest of the film will play out a certain way, and then it just steadfastly refuses to play by the rules from that point on. In fact this is a movie that just throws the rules right out the window and makes them up anew as it goes. This is sure to piss people off and annoy the shit out of some viewers. Other viewers my become bored at some points of the film as it certainly tries your patience at times. But the film is rich with rewards for those who stick with it. There is psychological and theological meat to chew on for quite some time after the film has ended if you choose to look at it closely enough. But to discuss any of this I have to talk about some spoilers. So if you have not seen the films. QUIT READING NOW. Come back after you have seen it.
The first half of the film is relatively straight forward revenge fueled splatter with Lucie all grown up killing the people who tortured her as a kid. But Lucie herself is being tortured mentally by the woman she didn't have the heart to save when she escaped. So in fact Lucie has continued to the torture started by the cult well after she escaped from them. They instilled the psychological steps, but she continued it all these years later. The question being, if she had not escaped, would she have died or became a martyr? Anna on the other hand once she experiences her friend (that she clearly loves) dying, she symbolically starts the process of saving not only Lucie but the old woman Lucie could never save. When she discovers the woman in the basement/laboratory she doesn't hesitate to free her, care for her, take off her shackles and face mask. She does everything to free this woman from her bondage. Something she never really could do for her friend. Nor that her friend could ever do originally either. And unfortunately not for this woman ultimately.
Once the cult arrive in the movie it takes a sharp right turn. Pacing wise this is very, very jarring as the first half had been very fast, incredibly violent and visceral. Now suddenly we are thrust into this philosophically based interpersonal torture and debasement session that is repetitious to the extreme. The friends I watched it with were evenly split down the middle. Half saying it was horrifying and effective as showing how the psychological torture and breaking down of the psyche worked, the other half being bored at the repetition and not empathizing with Anna's plight. I think most American audiences are going to go with the latter half of my friends who tuned out as it is at first grueling but most audiences are going to miss the point of the repetition, or just not care. thus throwing themselves out for the rest of the movie, which is near brilliance.
The last third is even more brutal as Anna is skinned alive and left to hang. But she finally hits the point of transcendence where she crosses over into life after death without dying. (clearly modeled after the photo they show in the film from the book TEARS OF EROS) She becomes a Martyr and manages to come back and tell the old lady who runs the cult what she saw. We the viewer don't know what she said though. Once the cult is gathered to hear what was said, the old lady sequesters herself away and shoots herself before telling anyone.
In the annals of pure nihilism, that ending has got to be close to the top. We've experienced true horror for this lead character. Horror that is not fake, not in her mind, not supernatural. Things that are actually occurring with the whole point being that she will hit a point of transcending the pain and suffering and basically see god, or something on the other side. But the down side to that is that since she is not dead, she comes back. She is stuck in the state of horror and disrepair these people have put her in to get her to that point. She seems to not be suffering after her Martyrdom, but who is to say that will last? The ultimate irony is that it really was for naught as the leader of the cult became selfish and capped herself once she had the knowledge of what awaited her. This girl's suffering was meaningless and just a tool. Every one's suffering was meaningless and just a tool to her own salvation.
Now apply that to just about any religion that has martyrdom as part of their doctrine...
Not an easy film to embrace. Not an easy film to watch or even like at times. But the more I think about it, the more brilliant it becomes.
Naturally Hollywood is remaking it. I simply cannot see how they can do this. Even if I was okay with the idea, and I am NOT, I cannot see how the story can be pared down, sanitized, and made user friendly for US audiences. But then again FUNNY GAMES was remade pretty much frame for frame, so I guess anything is possible.
