Review: Alligator (1980)

One thing I have pushed for this year and last with my horror-movie-a-day tradition in October is to primarily watch movies I hadn't seen before and write reviews on them - a goal I have been fairly successful with.  But in doing so, I started missing out on several of my favorites and, more importantly, I didn't get the chance to recommend those beloved horror movies to the (beloved) people that read them.  So tonight's movie was an opportunity to address that.

For 1980's Alligator is amongst my favorite horror movies.  It's a real gem of a film, giving character actors like Robert Forster and Robin Riker the opportunity to play the lead while lampshading several famous critiques of this brand of creature feature.  It even goes out of its way to add extra plot points that one would think would've come up already in this particular genre.

This is a smart film.  People act like human beings (never a given in horror movies where we often get, at best, a singular trait for each of the characters), most of the decisions are fairly rational outside of the villains, and the story progresses in a fairly believable way.  Having this level of competence after watching movies like Tentacles or The Food of the Gods - even if I did enjoy the latter of those - is a balm of the soul.

Do we really need a plot summary?  If so: Building on the urban legend of giant alligators in the sewers after being flushed down the drain, Alligator follows Detective David Madison (Forster) as he deals with two investigations.  The first involves people's pets disappearing and, if they are found, the pets having grown much larger than they should have in a normal time.  The second involves people disappearing in the sewer systems under Chicago, with their remains eventually coming out from the same sewer exit as the oversized animals.  Seems our alligator has been feeding on test experiments dumped into the sewer and has somewhat mutated itself.

Now, to go into the genius of the script: it allows the audience to figure out the connection well before our characters do.  Madison starts to piece it together after meeting with herpetologist Dr. Marisa Kendall (Riker), and the movie doesn't waste time revealing who is responsible for both the pet kidnappings and the giant alligator (tying those two plot threads together nicely).  At that point it is off to the races as they try to stop the alligator from its killing spree.

Riker and Forster play off each very well throughout the movie, and while the early scenes aren't bad, the movie takes off once the two start working together.  There's also some dry humor throughout - including a particularly well done running gag.

The effects for this movie are also fairly strong.  While some of it has aged poorly - what wouldn't after 45 years? - the practical work rings truer than the CGI of many later films. The centerpiece 'animal runs amok' scene still works all these years later because of the effort put into the practical effects.

If I were to critique it, I would say the direction - outside of one particular scene that scared me something good as a child - is pretty pedestrian.  Nothing mindbogglingly bad, but nothing of note outside that one scene.  There's also a character (Thomas Kemp, played by Bart Braverman) that seems to be missing a scene or two.  He very much comes across as having an agenda against Madison, but it feels underexplored.

All that said, I recommend this movie to everyone.  It has just the right level of everything - humor, gore, story, scariness - without going overboard.

8 out of 10

Review: High Tension (2003)

High Tension (or Haute Tension, if we are using the French title) follows best friends Marie (Cecile de France) and Alex (Maïwenn) as they go to the latter's parent's house for the weekend.  While there, a man appears and attacks the family, with Marie spending the greater part of the movie trying to either get help or defeat The Killer (Philippe Nahon) and save Alex.

This movie was at the forefront of the New French Extremity movement: French films that had excessive violence and explicit sexual imagery.  Filled with all sorts of gore, and occasionally extreme sexual violence (which this film thankfully did not have), it was part of a movement of filmmakers that pushed the limits of what film allowed at the time, and there are still films today that are considered influenced by, if not a continuation of, this movement.

Now there is something to be said for the critic's view of violence in cinema.  Is the filmmaker trying to say something?  Is it necessary to the plot?  Is there some sort of metaphor that the director/screenwriter is trying to use?  In the case of this film, I think the answer is: Let's show some violence and it doesn't go any deeper than that.

I did not like this movie.  Not because of the violence - I have seen worse, and there is something to be said for how well done the effects are for this film in that particular department - but because it doesn't make sense.  There is a late twist - which the movie became famous for, though thankfully I had forgotten the spoiler before watching it - that doesn't make any sense.  I don't mean they didn't set it up properly (there is actually a decent bit of foreshadowing for it), I mean that there are several scenes that absolutely do not work once you factor in that twist.

So much of the film just falls apart if you bother to look back on it.  It's frankly astounding that it happens because this is a movie with so much thought put into it that for this twist - which creates so many different plot holes - to be used requires a complete divorcing of critical thinking.  Even if we try to work with what is presented to us, maybe think of the film as having an unreliable narrator, it still doesn't cover up what we are shown - there are too many characters present for it to work.

The movie isn't completely without merit - our main actress is quite good, and the movie does have a few scenes with well-built tension, but that damn twist just undoes all of the work put into the rest of the film.  And given the lack of scares in this film - it really does count on the gore to do most of its work - you have time to think about what doesn't work.

Maybe if they had wrapped up the movie about 10 minutes earlier?  Or cut out a section of the post-reveal?  I don't know, the movie is already a fairly short 95 minutes - a relentlessly paced 95 at that - but something needed to be changed.

It really is disappointing, as I have heard good things from multiple people about this one.  I definitely would not recommend it - except maybe as a hate-watch, but there are better movies to do that with than this - and it took all of my energy to not reveal the twist because this movie doesn't deserve to be unspoiled.  I don't even want to bump up its score for the craft and acting, because I worry that it might encourage someone to watch it despite that.

2.5 out of 10

Review: Vermines (2023)

It's always interesting to watch a horror film with Themes.  Vermines, released as Infested in the US, is a movie practically dripping with them.  Racism, classism, police brutality, friendship, honor: all have a part to play in this, much deeper than something described to me as 'French Arachnophobia.'  It was a woefully inadequate description of what I ended up watching.

Thankfully, the movie still works well even if you don't engage with the themes - though it is nothing if richer an experience to do so - telling a creepy story of spiders rapidly reproducing and taking over a Banlieue in Paris.  A group of friends works to save themselves from these highly aggressive spiders, with the predictable, and a few unpredictable, challenges in the way.

Our main character is Kaleb (Theo Christine), collector of exotic animals, who buys the first of the spiders to invade the building.  He and his sister Manon (Lisa Nyarko) are arguing over selling or keeping their home, with Manon doing quite a bit of renovating in hopes of moving away.  They are helped by Mathys (Jerome Niel), a friend of both, and Kaleb's estranged friend Jordy (Finnegan Oldfield) and Jordy's girlfriend Lila (Sofia Lesaffre).

The dynamics of this friend group is an essential part of the story, with buried resentments amongst them, particularly after the death of Kaleb and Manon's mother, adding extra stress once the bodies start piling up.  This feels like a believable group of people, and their reactions to one another and the situation drives the story moreso than the attacking spiders.

The first 75% of the movie works amazingly well.  There are interesting shots, music choices, along with some decent character building of not only the group of friends, but of other residents within the building.  Every attempt to control or evade the spiders is staged well, and the film never gets less-interesting when the spiders are not on screen.

That last 25% though...

It is not uncommon for creature features to lose a bit of steam towards the end as they work to either escape or defeat whatever monster they are up against.  Vermines does a better job than most at overcoming this, but it still starts to turn me away with some choices made regarding the spiders.

I won't spoil said choices, but it involves an escalation that I don't think was necessarily needed, plus a slight tonal shift that is part of the transition to the climax that forces the movie to basically rebuild the energy.  It overplays certain emotional payoffs also, which is more minor sin of the ending, but another glance at that final section of the script might've been warranted.

It doesn't remove the movie, thankfully, but it does let the air out a bit as you get to the end.  I'd still readily recommend this movie though.

7 out of 10

Review: The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971)

I did not vibe with this movie.  It is perfectly adequate as far as films go, though not without critique.  It just didn't really work for me.

The Abominable Dr. Phibes is a tale of revenge: Dr. Phibes (Vincent Price) is hideously scarred and believed dead after an accident.  Said accident was caused by him rushing to the hospital where his wife had died during surgery.  Blaming the doctors and nurse that performed the operation for her death and his own disfigurement, he sets about killing them using the plagues of Egypt as his inspiration.

This is a weird movie.  Tonally all over the place, it vacillates between comedy, horror, procedural, and mystery while never really doing any of them well.  Price is excellent in his role, but otherwise the film feels like it isn't quite sure what it wants to be.  The ending is played as if it were a tragedy, but I don't think the audience is really meant to be on Phibes's side, which would be necessary for it to work.

The comedy is mostly on the side of the police, and while a few scenes are rather successful, humor-wise, it is at odds with the fact that all of these people are getting killed, some of them quite brutally.  If this tone had permeated the entire movie, it could have worked, but since so much of it is played straight, it feels especially incongruous.

There is a certain amount of camp to the movie that is what ultimately saves it.  It doesn't quite make it a great movie - although there are some that disagree with that statement and consider this amongst the best work Price has done - but it does make it fascinating to watch.  Price, saddled with a character who cannot move any part of his body above the neck - no, really - sells the hell out of it, delivering monologues with such verve that one wonders what the performance would have looked like with facial movements.

More camp comes from the various manners in which Phibes kills the doctors (and single nurse, which seems weird to foist part of the blame on), which in many cases only use the plagues of Egypt in the broadest interpretation of them.  Many of them lack all reason (the nurse, who gets possibly the most brutal of the kills, requires a person to not only believe that a person would sleep so soundly that they wouldn't feel a large amount of a syrupy substance dumped on their face, but also so soundly that they could be eaten alive without being disturbed in the slightest).  It only works if you just give up on applying anything resembling logic and just roll with what is happening.

It's a bit of a mess, plotwise, which makes sense as the writers had no other major credits before or after this film.  It hobbles along, carried in some parts by Price, in others by camp, and in a few by both, but it doesn't ascend to a climax so much as stumble into a finale that I'm still not sure was adequate for the proceeding film.

Would I recommend it?  Probably?  Vincent Price is a treasure, and there is merit in his performance here, but I might have to watch this movie again before I can decide where I would settle on its rating.

For now, we'll say 6.5 out of 10, but who knows what I'll feel in the future.

Review: Resident Evil (2002)

A caveat:  I watched this on a Blu-ray released many, many years ago (Resident Evil: Extinction is one of the previews on my copy) and it was not a very good transfer.  Several scenes have a weird fuzziness to them that I am fairly certain weren't supposed to be there, so I will be refraining from discussing technical aspects of this film - not that those are ever large parts of my review, but this one will feature less than normal.

So, Resident Evil, directed by Paul W.S. Anderson (he of Mortal Kombat and Event Horizon fame) and starring Milla Jovovich, Eric Mabius, and Michelle Rodriguez.  Savaged by critics when it came out, but more recently reappraised with a more positive response.  I remember seeing this one in theaters and fondly remember the viewing experience.  And rewatching it,  I am glad people have come around on it.

Now, this is a cheesy movie, make no mistake.  This was a film made about a video game in the early aughts, the fact it is any sort of good is a minor miracle.  But Anderson gave the movie the right amount of seriousness to go with the cheesy, plus a decent amount of homages to the game it was based off of, which helped win the audience over.  Most of the performances are also pitched perfectly for what the movie is (though I don't think Rodriguez is very good in this one).

The plot moves along fairly quickly, the exposition delivery is somewhat clunky but overall justified, the action is top notch.  Really, the biggest issue for this movie is the computer effects, particularly that of the Licker, aging fairly poorly.  There are a couple of scenes where a practical one is used and it is so much better looking that I wished it had been feasible for it to have been used more.

I think the only other criticism I would have would be the death of a character towards the end.  They are kept around pretty much only to serve as a deus ex machina, the abruptly killed off during the climax.  I really feel like the character should've been a survivor, or at the very least not killed off so thoughtlessly.

I know the more recent one was much more well received, but to me, this is still the best of the many movies in this franchise.  It might just be nostalgia, but it is probably more that these characters are at least somewhat competent once they realize the situation they are in.  Either way, this is a film I am generally happy to rewatch, and one I'd readily recommend.

7 out of 10

Review: The Boogeyman (2023)

This movie needed to be rated R.

Almost every critique I have of this movie comes back to the PG-13 limitation placed on this (on a Stephen King adaptation!  After IT had already come out!).  It works within that limitation well, but it is fighting a losing battle against that PG-13 rating.

To give a clear example of how that rating cut this movie off at the knees: Only 3 people die in the entire film (not necessarily a bad thing), and 2 of those are within the first 15 minutes of this roughly 100 minute movie and both are offscreen.  You cannot have a child-murdering monster movie where nothing happens for a large chunk of the movie.

Even calling the titular Boogeyman a child-murdering monster is a bit of a stretch.  Unlike the aforementioned IT adaptation, this movie pulls its punches to a severe degree when it comes to actually endangering the children.  It's almost as if the Boogeyman is going out of its way to not kill the child and teenager it is terrorizing.  It doesn't matter how many scenes you have of the creature slowly menacing Sadie and Sawyer (Sophie Thatcher and Vivien Lyra Blair) - even if they are well-done escalations of the creature's threat - if ultimately the creature doesn't do anything other than scare them, it loses quite a bit of its mystique.

And it's frustrating because the movie is actually good despite this.  Both Thatcher and Blair give  strong performances, as does Chris Messina as their father and Madison Hu as Sadie's friend Bethany.  Hu might just be the best performance in the film even if it feels like a decent chunk of her character was cut.  David Dastmalchian also makes a cameo appearance as a previous victim of the monster and spins quite a bit of gold within his shortened screentime.

As mentioned above, director Rob Savage does effectively build tension throughout the film, with a major assist from cinematographer Eli Born.  Lighting is especially important for this movie, and genuine effort was put into making the scenes dark while still allowing the audience to see just enough of the monster to let the imagination run wild.  The final full reveal of the Boogeyman is a bit disappointing, but they do build up to that reveal masterfully.

So yeah, this is a pretty decent movie that just needed the handcuffs taken off of it to be great.  Ah well, I think I'd still recommend it, but never as a first choice.

6.5 out of 10

Review: Bulbbul (2020)

There's always a danger when watching a foreign film that something will go over your head that is obvious to the intended audience.  Having said that, I will attempt to review this movie on the merits,  even if I am fairly certain I have missed some sort of commentary or trope that would be obvious to the Indian audience this was made for.  Apologies in advance!

Bulbbul, set in the 1800s, follows the titular Bulbbul (Trupti Dimri, Ruchi Mahajan as a child), flashing back between her childhood marriage to Indranil (Rahul Bose) along with her childhood friendship with Indranil's brother Satya (Avinash Tiwary, Varun Buddhadev as a child) who is much closer to her in age; and 20 years later, as Bulbbul has taken over the duties of her husband's estate due to his long absence.

It is in the latter scenes where we learn that a 'chudail' or witch, has been terrorizing the area, killing multiple men.  Satya, returning home after being away for five years, sets about trying to find the murderer while also trying to figure out what has caused Bulbul's personality to have changed so dramatically in the interim.

This is a movie where the colors on the screen reflect the mood of the same.  A bright violent red, or a cold blue saturation instantly prepares the viewer for what is to come, setting them on edge with nothing but a color swap.  It's an effective tactic, and it adds the the hyper-realism that permeates the movie.

The performances are topnotch, with Dimri giving the film its best performance, followed closely by Paoli Dam as Binodini, the scheming wife of Indranil's twin brother Mahendra (also played by Bose).  Dam gives an outright poisonous portrayal in the flashbacks, coupled with a frightened paranoid performance after the time jump.

This film has mood for days, and while it has elements of horror, it is much more of a tragedy once the story finishes.  I don't think the plot would be terribly surprising for anyone - the film goes to the places you expect it to - but it tells its story well, and I am glad to have watched it.

Would I recommend it to others?  Well, the film is in Hindi, so unless you already speak that you would need to be prepared for subtitles, but it is engaging enough in its visuals that I think most would enjoy it even if that is a drawback to them.  I would warn that there is sexual violence for those that would be triggered by such a thing.

7 out of 10