Fantastic Fest 2011 Review: You're Next.

Adam Wingard’s You’re Next takes a familiar horror scenario – a group of individuals find themselves trapped in a remote location, besieged by malevolent forces hell bent on killing them one by one – and makes it feel fresh and new. Part of this comes from the extremely canny filmmaking, which is aware of horror movie clichés and invokes or subverts them to pitch-perfect effect throughout. Another way that You’re Next manages not to feel like the hundreds of other slasher films of yore is in the plot, which branches out from the basic premise, throwing a couple of surprising twists into the mix to keep the proceedings lively and consistently tense. Utilizing a cast of indie staples (including horror director Ti West and mumblecore maven Joe Swanberg) along with such genre stalwarts as cult-horror scream queen Barbara Crampton, the film feels like that rarest of all things in today’s cinema: something unique and interesting. Not content to pander to genre fans, the film instead aims to take them on an exhilarating ride, which it pulls off with aplomb.

After a quick and suitably nasty prologue that gives a taste of the threat our protagonists will be facing we are introduced to Crispin (A.J. Bowen) and his girlfriend Erin (Sharni Vinson), who are traveling to Crispin’s parents house deep in the country in order to celebrate their anniversary. The celebration is doubling as a family reunion of sorts, as the grown children and their respective significant others (including Swanberg as Crispin’s cocky brother and West as a boyfriend of their sister) meet under the same roof for the first time in a long while. As they’re wont to do, old tensions come to the surface as sibling rivalry and other divisions come back into play. It isn’t long however, until the domestic drama is interrupted by homicidal figures lurking in the woods. Wearing creepily blank animal masks, these intruders (armed with crossbows and knives) are hellbent on exterminating everyone inside. As the body count begins to rise, the nature of the threat is revealed to be more complex than initially suspected, as well as one member of the family who is revealed to have much more to them than meets the eye.

As mentioned before, the plot is somewhat basic. Just three years ago there was a slasher film with a similar premise in The Strangers. But while that film was content to wallow in sadism and cheap nihilism, You’re Next spins off into something altogether unexpected once the initial siege has begun. I want to be careful about spoiling too much here, as much of the fun comes from the turns that the plot takes as the film progresses. Several times I thought that I had a pretty good handle on what the film was doing and where it was going, then suddenly the film would throw out a curveball and I was forced to reconsider my notion of what the film was doing. It’s such a pleasure while watching a modern horror film to be unsure as to what route the plot will take and which characters will end up alive or dead.

Wingard knows how to scare his audience as well and wrings some terrific jump scares from the proceedings. Clearly well-versed in horror movies, he manages to mix it up by playing on the audience’s knowledge of genre clichés and deftly misdirecting them. Even the moments that you expect to be fakeouts – the typical “oh, it was just the cat” scares – work like gangbusters here. As good as Wingard’s direction is, a lot of this effect also comes from Simon Barrett’s clever script, which balances character moments and scares very effectively. One character, in particular, is destined to become a new horror fan favorite, along the lines of Ash from the Evil Dead films and from where I’m sitting it’s more than deserved. In a genre as stuffed with memorable characters as the horror genre, it’s exhilarating to see a new one come along and blow everyone away for the first time (as definitely happened in the screening that I attended).

All of this would not be quite as effective without the support of a cast and everyone involved here is game. A.J. Bowen is suitably schlubby and his relationship with his family is in many ways the most developed of any of the characters. The other brothers and sisters are all up to the challenge of pulling this material off, but there are two notable standouts. First of all is Joe Swanberg; while I couldn’t stand the guy (or his film) when I saw Silver Bullets earlier this year, here he is perfectly smarmy as the “favorite brother,” providing some of the film’s biggest laugh lines. The other performance that must be mentioned is Sharni Vinson as Erin, who gets perhaps the hardest role to play and accomplishes it so well that she reveals herself as someone who deserves to be a star immediately so that we can see her in more movies. The antagonists are creepy throughout; even as their role in the story is revealed to be more complicated they retain their air of menace.

I don’t want to say too much about You’re Next; the film was picked up by Lion’s Gate prior to the screening and is not due for release until fall of 2012, a ridiculously long time to shelve a movie as filled with commercial potential as this one. I hope that whenever they cut a trailer they are very coy about what transpires, letting audiences discover it as mine did. This is one of those films that, if handled right, could be an audience favorite, building a fanbase and setting the stage for a new horror franchise. For right now, Wingard, Barrett and company have crafted one the best slasher film in years, one that isn’t a satire or a deconstruction, but rather a wickedly fun piece of work that hooks you from the beginning and takes you on a ride that you won’t soon forget. I can’t wait to see the film again and I hope that, when it is finally theatrically released, people discover it and enjoy it as much as I did.

Fantastic Fest 2011 Review: The Human Centipede II: Full Sequence

For all the notoriety garnered by its outlandish premise, Tom Six’s 2009 cult-horror sensation The Human Centipede was a relatively tame experience. The idea of a mad-scientist surgically stitching three humans front to end as a disgusting experiment (“100% Medically Accurate!” proclaimed the tagline) proved more gruesome in the imagination than anything that was actually portrayed in the film and the finished product displayed a somewhat admirable restraint in what it actually revealed to the audience. Soon after the film started to make waves, however, writer/director Six began making promises that the sequel would “make the first look like My Little Pony,” delivering on the disgusting potential of the premise to make the most revolting movie of all time.

Two years later, The Human Centipede II has arrived with no little fanfare; the British Board of Film Classifications refused to classify the film due to its extreme content, effectively banning it in the United Kingdom. That is objectionable to me for two reasons: One: because I am against censorship as a general rule and Two: because banning the film gives it more notoriety and the film, as disgustingly over the top as it is, doesn’t warrant the attention.

Martin is a hugely obese, anti-social loser who passes his days working in a parking garage in London and being emotionally abused by his unstable mother. Martin, who in his youth suffered sexual abuse at the hands of his father, is obsessed with the original Human Centipede, watching it over and over again and fantasizing about recreating the titular experiment for himself. In between being screamed at by his abusive downstairs neighbor, enduring death threats from his mother and pleasuring himself to a DVD of the original film, Martin begins to put into motion a plan to further the Human Centipede legacy, abducting people who pass through his parking garage and storing them in an abandoned warehouse, where he begins his deranged continuation of the work begun in the original film,

The first thing that should be evident from that plot synopsis of Human Centipede II is that it is not a direct sequel to the first film, but rather a film about the first one. Yes, much like Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows, this is a meta-movie, one that purports to comment on the original film, its fans and the psychological toll that cinematic violence can take on fans of such fare. He even brings back one of the stars of the first film (Ashlynn Yennie) to play herself as an actress who becomes part of Martin’s twisted experiment. This is a risky proposition at best (see the aforementioned Blair Witch 2, or better yet, don’t), but at least it can be said that Six is not repeating himself here as might be the obvious route to take after having initial success.  Unfortunately that’s pretty much all that can be said about this sequel, as any cleverness or ingenuity begins and ends with the premise. The film itself spends its first two-thirds mired in tedium, giving us endless scenes of Martin watching the first film, being berated by his mother and every so often bashing someone over the head and dragging them to his grimy lair. We witness this procession of scenes play out no less than four times, the film seemingly determined to bore its audience to death. This stretch of the film isn’t helped by its approach to its characters, who either embody shallow Psych 101 character types (Martin is a crazed maniac because he was abused as a child), or are one-note, nightmarish fiends (besides Martin’s crazed mother, even his psychologist is a predatory creep bent on molesting him). Only a few of Martin’s slowly accumulating pool of victims are given any distinguishing characteristics at all; One is pregnant, one is a jerk with lots of tattoos and the others are faceless stand-ins existing to be mutilated horribly. After all this tedium one begins to long for something, anything, else to happen to alleviate sense of boredom.

The final half-hour or so, however, will make you pine for the preceding segment of film, as monotony is replaced by excruciating violence. “Be careful what you wish for” seems to be the motto for this part of the movie, as Tom Six gives viewers all of the viscera that was only hinted at in the previous Centipede. Flesh is cut, tendons are sawed through, tongues are ripped out, teeth knocked out with a hammer and more. All the while the camera lingers on the horrifying aftermath, lovingly rendered in black and white photography (which does nothing to diminish the impact). The inevitable “feeding” scene goes so far over the top that it reaches South Park-level absurdity that would provoke laughs if it wasn’t so repulsive. The concluding half-hour seems designed to test the limits of what an audience will accept in a horror film, but it’s all just too much. By the time the most heinous incident occurs (which involves barbed wire) I didn’t feel much of anything, because Six had already bludgeoned me into submission. An incident involving a pregnant woman manages to shock only because it goes to such ludicrous lengths to provoke a reaction. After all of this the film wraps up with an ending that is the definition of a cop-out, rendering everything that the film has shown you utterly without consequence.

The ingredients were there to make Human Centipede II a unique entry into the horror canon. The story contained the possibility to examine how movie violence takes its toll on those who watch it as well as how movie fans can pervert and distort their objects of fandom by crossing into obsession. Unfortunately the film’s psychology is much too shallow to realize that potential, so what the viewer is left with is a parade of tedium punctuated by violence so extreme that it becomes numbing. It seems that Tom Six has thoroughly exhausted his concept within just two films, though he has plans for a third. Human Centipede II will make you long for the comparative restraint and refinement of the first installment and reveals Tom Six as a filmmaker of disgusting, resoundingly limited imagination.

Review: Red State

To talk about Red State without bringing up the filmmaker is nearly impossible, because Kevin Smith has gone to great pains to make himself the center of attention in place of his work. From his Sundance stunt in which he publicly excoriated the major studio’s method of distribution – inflating marketing budgets so much that smaller films designed for niche audiences have no shot at profitability – in a room full of distributors and critics, to the announcement that he would be touring with the film and sometimes charging up to $70 a ticket in order to hear him speak before and after the feature, Smith has turned a low-budget, small-scale horror film into more fodder for his cult of personality. Love him or hate him, Smith is a showman and he has succeeded in making Red State seem like an event: something that every film fan should see in order to determine whether it’s an evolutionary leap forward for a one-time critical darling, or another downward step for a filmmaker who has (quite literally) gone to pot.

The film begins with three horny teenagers who answer an ad through a Craigslist-like service for a woman who will have sex with all three of them for money. The gang travels into the backwoods of Cooper’s Dell and meet up with the willing partner in her trailer. Soon enough the boys have been knocked unconscious, coming to in the local Five Points Church, headed by the eerily charismatic Abin Cooper (Michael Parks). Pastor Cooper believes that homosexuality and rampant fornication should be capital crimes and proves his point (after a long-winded sermon) by executing a gay man tied to a cross, intending to do the same to the boys. Meanwhile, ATF Agent Keenan (John Goodman) has been called in to deal with the cult using questionably severe tactics, This leads to a bloody standoff between the ATF agents and the brood occupying Cooper’s compound, all of whom are only too willing to die for their twisted beliefs.

Red State starts off heavy-handedly and remains that way through much of the runtime. Before the plot can begin in earnest, Smith has Travis (Michael Angarano) drive by Cooper’s group of zealots while they’re protesting a soldier’s funeral, wielding such signs as “God Hates America.” The point is obvious; Abin Cooper and the Five Points group are standing in for Fred Phelps and his hateful Westboro Baptist Church. Smith, not trusting us to get the point, then has Travis attend a class in which his teacher delivers gobs of exposition about the church and why they’re both dangerous and protected under the First Amendment. Though the film is a tonal departure from Smith’s previous ribald works, it retains his tendency to just have his characters talk endlessly, constantly telling and telling and then showing and then telling some more. Once the action begins at the church, Parks’ Cooper delivers a sermon that is longer than many actual sermons I’ve attended, layering on the fire and brimstone until one’s eyes start to glaze over. When the ATF arrives the film’s sudden shift into Waco-inspired siege film, though abrupt, momentarily promises to usher in some excitement, but Smith’s clumsy staging of these scenes put an end to that notion.  The film wraps up with even more speechifying, this time couched in a heavy dose of cynicism that comes off more like adolescent sneering than true world-weariness. There are genuine, contentious ideas that Smith is dealing with in this premise, which makes it all the more disappointing that the treatment they receive is so shallow.

Another issue with Red State is the characters. I’m not talking about the performances, which are generally excellent. Parks in particular is wonderful, delivering his hateful religious proclamations with creepy charm and barely-hidden malice. He gives his character depth that isn’t apparent in the other characters. But the rest of the characterizations remain strictly one-note. Goodman gives it his all but his character remains a cipher, a man whose primary story function is to react to everything else and occasionally change his character motivations from scene to scene. The three teenagers who start out as our protagonists are quickly discarded once the action starts, save for a totally unnecessary subplot involving Cooper’s granddaughter that serves only to allow Smith one more “shocking” moment to emphasize the film’s immature nihilism. They barely register, along with Stephen Root and Kevin Pollak in two other poorly defined roles.

There is a moment toward the end of Red State that suggests a story turn so bold that I was ready to overlook the film’s myriad flaws and re-evaluate what Smith was up to all along. Like the other interesting ideas in the film, Smith can’t stick with it, instead wrapping up with a scene that seems conceptually stolen from Burn After Reading. It’s a disappointing end to a film that fails to capitalize on its potential at nearly every turn, taking a volatile premise rife with contemporary significance and turning it into an unengaging action/horror film that constantly backs away from its most interesting ideas. In the end Red State will be more remembered for the circus of hype that its creator spun around it, a triumph for the filmmaker as a brand but a less than promising detour for Smith as an artist.