A GHOST STORY – Man rises from dead as sheet ghost, hankers after still living wife – that’s about it. ‘A Ghost Story’ is genius, I really liked it. There’s only so much black humour you can wring out of the forlorn figure of (ultimate horror cliché) the sheet ghost, but to its credit ‘A Ghost Story’ isn’t about that. It’s about numbed emotions and endless, awful sadness – a terminally empty barrel of laughs, then, although there are a few funerary rattlings along the way to leaven the despair. The film has a formal as well as an existential minimalism about it, a good looking sparseness to match the long silences and shots of figures just standing there, staring into the holes where their lives once were. Fave bit has to be the scene where bereaved lady eats a pie in angry, awkward silence over about five minutes. I’m not joking, that was mesmerising, and kind of summed up the rest of the film for me. Not a genre piece, and a film that will test your patience if you’re in the mood for straightforward entertainment. But if you’re looking to be perplexed and dumbfounded as to how a film this weird made it out of the relative mainstream, then go ahead, it’s a bona fide ‘cult classic’ of years to come.
SOME KIND OF HATE – Moody gothic type stabs his school bully and ends up in a hippy rehab centre out in the desert. The ghost of a former pupil wants to use him to exact revenge on her killers. ‘Some Kind of Hate’ is pretty good, but I found myself gradually tiring of it. It started promisingly, and seemed to boil up a good degree of tension whilst exploring some ‘difficult themes’. Then it seemed to take a dive into the usual territory i.e aforementioned murder victim, back from the dead and after revenge… no problems with that thematically, it’s just that the relatively ‘heightened’ horror stuff seemed less intense than the dramatic build up. Well put together though, and absorbing enough in places.
THE BONEYARD – Back to the nineties with this little known zombie flick. I think I caught it ages ago on of those budget UK labels… Hardgore, maybe. It didn’t make much of an impression back then, but I really quite liked it when I checked out the 88 Films version – probably I’m just so shallow that improving the pq actually enhances the movie full stop for me. Anyway, it’s basically an undead siege scenario that plays out in a morgue with cops and a psychic. It’s post-‘Reanimator’ / the 80s, so there are a couple of stabs at humour, but the underlying theme is morbid i.e connected with the risen corpses of children, and this comes across through the visuals – those zombie kids are really creepy. There’s also a big zombie poodle. Maybe the early nineties clunkiness stops any real darkness from taking root, but in many ways it’s well made and well-considered. Worth checking out.
GREMLIN’S CURSE – Not sure about the awkward title… or the movie, for that matter. Actually, no, I quite liked it, although it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea unless they’re into attempts to merge Sci-fi channel type schlock with dour family drama. Which is what I warmed to. It’s about a box that contains a small, havoc-wreaking monster – you’d want to get rid of it pretty quickly, but the only way is to pass it on to a loved one (don’t ask me why, and I’m sure the makers don’t have an answer either). In this case, the box lands in a dysfunctional family and the predictable happens – to the films credit, it doesn’t skimp on death. Direction, editing, music are all flatly TV-esque, but there is a nastiness at work in places – i.e scene in which screaming kid witnesses little beast burrowing out of dead mother’s stomach. All this is enough to make it seem slightly odd, therefore interesting.
INCIDENT IN A GHOSTLAND – From the director of ‘Martyrs’. A mother and two kids relocate to a relative’s old, gothic house and are plunged into a nightmare when two freakos with a shared doll fetish gatecrash the show… not saying any more ‘cos it’ll spoil the slightly hackneyed ‘twist’ lurking round the corner that upends the narrative of the film’s first half. I was well up for IIAG, being a fan of ‘Martyrs’ and Laugier’s stuff in general, and of course whenever he puts anything out there’s a lot of murmuring about whether it’ll be a ‘return to form’, which is a bit unfair I think as everything gets pre-judged in a way. Inevitably, it doesn’t stun the way ‘Martyrs’ did and still does, but the horror is more concentrated, or maybe just more brutal, than in ‘The Tall Man’, his previous feature. Visually it’s strong, and from my point of view it doesn’t hurt that it’s crammed full of weird dolls – yes, what a sucker for cliché I am. As is Laugier, apparently, because I have to say that IIAG, stripped to the core, isn’t dissimilar to a lot of latter day genre product. It may wear its ‘art’ on its sleeve, but beneath the groovy phantasmagoria of the film’s overstuffed visuals it’s basically about two murderous dudes terrorising some kids. I liked it, and it works because Laugier has panache and flair, but I wouldn’t blame others for being less enthusiastic
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