Shocktober Day 30: The House of the Devil

The House of the Devil (2009)

If you summed it up in one sentence, The House of the Devil wouldn’t seem like much. A college student, Samantha Hughes (Jocelin Donahue) takes an unusual babysitting job under a mysterious client. Yet, writer/director Ti West’s breakout cult favorite has enough style and scares to make it worth watching. The music and overall feel gel perfectly with the film’s clever 1980s setting. The cast including; Jocelin Donahue, Tom Noonan, Dee Wallace and Greta Gerwig are a step above your average horror movie cast and the results feel like a breath of fresh air from a young burgeoning talent.

The client is the eerily calm Mr. Ulman (Tom Noonan) and his wife (Mary Woronov) who have plans to attend a lunar eclipse event. The baby? Isn’t a baby at all but an old woman upstairs… Or is it? Once Samantha is left alone she is left to stew in a mess of intrigue and sounds going bump in the night. Just look at the film’s title and maybe you can start making some guesses.

Before this, West directed several overlooked films to varying degrees of success and then the straight-to-DVD “Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever”. It would have been easy for West to get sucked into making crappy, director-for-hire, bargain big DVD gigs for the rest of the career but instead he made what he actually wanted to make. There’s not much else I can say without spoiling anything but this film is superb, old-school, horror fun.

She’s a little bit Frances Ha and a little bit Farrah Fawcett.

Make Us Blind So We Can Never Look Back

CHVRCHΞS – The Bones of What You Believe

First Haim, now Chvrches, it’s like I don’t know what the hell to believe anymore. There are these super pleasant, catchy, fun albums buoyed by actual talent that all the websites I go to for music review love …And I just can’t be all about them. I want to be, I mean, I really loved this year’s Tegan and Sara album. How is this different? I can’t really tell you. That’s annoying. I’ve been putting off writing about Chvrches for like a month now because I can’t really tell you why I like it, but I don’t love it.

Who are Chvrches, you ask? What do they sound like? Why is their name spelled so stupidly? I can answer two of those three questions. Chvrches are are a Scottish synthpop trio, led by singer Lauren Mayberry. They make music that just drenched in catchy synth hooks, but it’s Mayberry’s voice that has made the band the talk of town for going on a year now. There is literally nothing in the world I’m less qualified to write about than the strengths and weaknesses of someone’s singing – so, uh, she sounds good? She definitely stands out, and when you get to “Under the Tide,” which is sung by bandmate Martin Doherty (who’s not bad), you’ll be confused and angry that the lady’s pretty voice is stuck in back.

There’s also a bit of a bite to these songs. Lyrically and musically, Chvrches isn’t afraid to go dark. I think that’s what helps differentiate it in my mind from popular dance music, which, as far as I can tell, is entirely about getting slizzard and fucking. Of course that’s not the only thing thing that separates The Bones of What You Believe from Rhianna, or whoever is popular now. This music sounds like humans wrote it, for one. I get kind of a M83 vibe on some tracks, maybe a bit of New Order on others. These are favorable comparisons.

But I dunno, man. Everyone talks about “The Mother We Share,” which is a great song. I actually think the song that follows it, “We Sink,” is the best on the album. I think I really like The Bones of What You Believe, but it just doesn’t stick with me like my favorite albums do. Oh, maybe that’s my problem. Maybe I should stop trying to look for my new favorite album every year. Huh. That’s a dour note to end on… Candy for breakfast!

Favorite Tracks: “The Mother We Share,” “We Sink,” “Night Sky”

Obsessong: “Monster Mash”

I love Halloween. Something about the idea of ghouls and ghosts being embraced on a national level just sends shivers down my prickly spine. Which is why I’ve always wondered why there aren’t more Halloween songs? There’s got to be dozens of classic Christmas songs. It’s not like there’s not a great wealth of material to draw from; vampires, jack-o-lanterns, candy, the possibilities are endless. Then again, does the world need anymore when you already have the spooky classic that is “Monster Mash”?

Song: “Monster “Mash by Bobby “Boris” Pickett and the Crypt-Kickers
Album: Is The Original Monster Mash
Year: 1962
Written By: Bobby Pickett and Leonard L. Capizzi
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Shocktober Day 29: Zombieland

Zombieland (2009)

You wouldn’t think there’d be anymore room for zombie comedies after Shaun of the Dead and yet, Zombieland found away. Perhaps it’s because the zombie outbreak in this film has gone global, leaving more room to poke fun at the ridiculous heights people will reach to survive. It doesn’t hurt that the cast is made up of strong comedic personalities either. The results are both amusing and nauseating.

“Columbus” (Jesse Eisenberg) is a seemingly meek college student surviving in the zombie apocalypse. By using a set of rules for survival, Columbus attempts to travel from Austin, Texas to Columbus, Ohio (Thus his namesake) to find his family. Along the way he meets a Twinkie obsessed zombie hunter, “Tallahassee” (Woody Harrelson) and a pair of resourceful sisters, “Wichita” (Emma Stone) and “Little Rock” (Abigail Breslin). They shift the journey to “Pacific Playland” in L.A. where there are supposedly no zombies… Or so they think!

Zombieland is like the dumber, crazier, younger brother to Shaun of the Dead. That’s not to say it’s not clever, but the jokes tend to lie on the raunchier side. The energy is high and the pacing is quick, which is only enhanced by the decision to include fast zombies as opposed to slow ones. It’s a great popcorn flick with some great laughs, big scares, and possibly the greatest cameo of all time. You know what I’m talking about.

Batters up!… I’m really running out of interesting things to say.

Shocktober Day 28: Splice

Splice (2009)

Anytime I’ve ever heard anyone talk about Splice the conversation has never gone any further than, “Did you know Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley both have sex with that experiment thing?” That may be true, but this movie is so much more than making sexy time with the find of the century. Splice is about creation and desire and the classic “You can’t play with god!” theme that has made so many previous sci-fi and horror movies so memorable.

Splice is about genetic engineers Clive Nicoli (Adrien Brody) and Elsa Kast (Sarah Polley) who hope to achieve success by combining the DNA strands of several animals to create an animal/human hybrid. The results are a humanoid creature with a pointed stinger that they lovingly name “Dren”. The organism ages quickly, growing from a young girl-thing to a eerily beautiful woman-thing and soon becomes aggressive. It becomes difficult for Clive and Elsa to take charge of something that they have grown to love and even harder when Dren becomes lethal. And yes, there’s a part where Dren learns she can change her gender and has sex both with researchers. Deal with it.

This David Cronenberg-esque thriller was written and directed by Vincenzo Natali, best known for his sci-fi cult favorite flick Cube and Splice continues his trend of thought provoking experiences. Where do we draw the line between what makes something civilized or human? If something is highly intelligent should it be held captive? There’s so much being said from an ethical standpoint. Combined with clever writing, entertaining effects, and a slick pace, Splice is a rewarding experience. It’s a movie that’s more than just Adrien Brody getting it on with some kind of human hybrid.

Let’s get it on!

R.I.P. Lou Reed

Lou Reed: 1942-2013

Looking back, it’s kind of weird how linear my musical education as a teenager was. Take for instance my first exposure to Lou Reed and The Velvet Underground. At that point, I was very strictly dictating the music I was listening to based on the albums that were high on the Rolling Stone 500 Greatest albums list that came out in 2003. And when you look at the upper part of that list, it’s pretty much pound-for-pound albums that are “classic” in the most impeachable and monolithic way possible. And upon discovering each of these albums, I don’t think I ever questioned their greatness.

However, The Velvet Undergound & Nico was different. Here was an album that was almost 40 years old when I first heard it, and yet it practically challenged me to question what “great music” is. I mean the instruments were frequently out of tune, Lou Reed’s lyrics were weird and kinky, he sounded like he was perpetually on drugs, and then the album didn’t even end with some masterful opus, which I had come to expect from most “great albums”. Instead it ended with seven minutes of pure noise.

I find this eerily coincidental, because this is the exact same effect that Lou Reed’s music had on rock music as a whole. It challenged people. It went in radical directions in terms of subject matter, and completely perplexed people who were accustomed to the peace and love of what they perceived to be the counterculture. And in the process, he basically created what we now see as “cool” or “alternative” or “indie” or whatever you want to call rock music that sits comfortably outside the mainstream.

Of course, this all makes it hard to say anything about Lou Reed that hasn’t already been said, so I’ll just stop trying and say that he was one of the all-time great rock songwriters, and truly a guy that dared to go against the grain and subvert expectations. Which in this time of mourning, couldn’t help but remind me of the Lou Reed composition “Afters Hours”, which has got to be one of the most weirdly hopeful and optimistic songs about death I’ve ever heard. So for now, I guess we’ll just have to close the door…

Shocktober Day 27: Drag Me to Hell

Drag Me to Hell (2009)

It always pisses me off when there’s a director with a distinct style who strays so far from what made them great. Filmmakers that find a little bit of success and then never look back to their roots, ignore their fans, and just make mainstream shlock. This is why it was such a surprise to see Sam Raimi return to what made him Sam Raimi with Drag Me to Hell. It was the first time Raimi had made a slapstick-horror movie since Army of Darkness in 1992. Don’t let its PG-13 rating deceive you, this is everything you could ever want from the clown prince of horror.

Alison Lohman plays Christine Brown, a loan officer who evicts an old gypsy (Lorna Raver) from her home only to be cursed. Strange and horrifying events begin to unfold in Christine’s life as she searches to save her soul. Can Christine end the gypsy curse? Or must she be doomed to be “dragged to hell!” It’s so simple and yet so sweet. Drag Me to Hell sets up something very straightforward (in Raimi terms) and then leaves room for all the gross-out gags and effects sequences. The whole thing is like walking through some kind of haunted house, there’s something around every corner.

I love the premise and honestly, they had me at “Gypsy Curse”. Though it’s not as gory as the Evil Dead films, it’s just as gross. Popped eyeballs, puss, and other bodily fluids make Drag Me to Hell a gross-out fest that any fan would be proud to consider as a child to Evil Dead. The only thing that could have made it better would’ve been a came from Bruce Campbell, but alas, he wasn’t available for shooting. Nonetheless, Drag Me to Hell is a real ride.

Takin’ Care of Business, everyday!