Carnage

Carnage (2011)

Director: Roman Polanski 

Cast: Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly, Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz

Roman Polanski's Carnage opens with a steady-cam shot of an idyllic, seemingly normal encounter between young boys in Brooklyn Bridge Park. Two of the boys begin to argue, which ends with one hitting the other with a stick and storming away. Because this scene is viewed sans audio, the benign encounter gives the viewer the strange feeling that we have watched from a protective glass case.

This opening shot differs drastically from the remainder of the film, in which the viewer often feels bombarded and trapped in the swanky apartment of two middle-aged, bourgeois parents, Michael and Penelope Longstreet (John C.Reilly and Jodie Foster). We are not introduced to this apartment, but rather thrown in the pit, as the second shot features Penelope typing a letter recounting the fight between her son and the other boy, whose parents, Alan and Nancy Cohen (Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz), peer over her shoulder and politely correct her version of the story.  Polanski's set up provides us with a sense that Alan and Nancy will soon leave the Longstreet's after having indulged in the usual banalities we all are so familiar with during these awkward situations. Of course, that's not at all what happens.

Carnage is nothing if not hilarious, a bombardment of quips and spurious defenses that culminates in a climax of embarrassing, unadulterated venting. Everyone's worst side comes out, and once that happens, some of their best comes out, as well. John C. Reilly's Michael is a seemingly wimpy schmuck until he casually admits to voluntarily killing the family hamster, and later, proclaiming that he has been pussy-whipped and fashioned (literally) by his controlling, hypocritical wife. Similarly, Christoph Waltz's Alan initially appears dismissive and rude, constantly (literally) interrupting his hosts to answer business calls on his cell phone. Toward the end, however, he reveals himself, in the film's greatest monologue, to have clear and justifiable reasoning for his actions and perceptions of these social interactions.

If the men transform from masculine stereotypes to wise monsters, the females do the opposite. We recognize the superficiality and self-righteousness of Penelope even before her strong facade breaks down revealing her true, hysterical colors. Nancy is the most sympathetic of the bunch, initially because her husband is such a prick, but later, because she shows herself as a chronic sack of nerves who can't cope with any semblance of confrontation thrown her way. She vomits grotesquely from the stress, and upon recovering, gets drunk beyond oblivion on an empty stomach off Michael's scotch.

The fact that such character transformations can occur within the confines of a single setting with little to no action  is a momentous testament to the exquisiteness of Yasmine Reza's screenplay. If the film seems to end abruptly, it is only because (and here, I speculate) Reza recognized a great piece while writing and decided it was better to end it then see it drown in redundancy. I do not condemn this, but admire it. The film remains a flawless representation of man's powerless time and place in the universe, where forces beyond our control bring us in contact with strangers, and when our own inexplicable notions of civility prevent us from ever escaping. 

A

Cabin in the Woods

Cabin in the Woods (2012)


Director: Drew Goddard


Cast: Kristen Connoly, Anna Hutchison, Fran Kranz, Richard Jenkins, Bradley Whitford, Chris Hemsworth

**(The following review contains spoilers throughout)**

Cabin in the Woods features a scene where one of the female characters, Jules (Anna Hutchison) is dared to make out with the walled, taxidermied head of a snarling, ferocious wolf. Unexpectedly, she dives into the challenge, seducing and then sensually licking the inside of the mouth and teeth of the stationary bust.

This ridiculous and disturbing scene is one of many arbitrary interludes that help to contribute the sense of anything-goes, a general feeling that pervades throughout this hilarious and insane genre melding of classic horror shtick, governmental conspiracy, and ancient occult fanaticism. 

The film begins with two middle-age bureaucratic workers ( Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford) chatting casually over coffee in a high security facility.  They are preparing for an operation that remains a secret  to the audience until the last third of the movie. All we know is that we are competing with the Japanese, and that much is at stake if the project goes bust. The title of the film is blasted across the screen of these two men's sterile environment, a display intrinsically opposed to audience conception of the milieu of a "cabin in the woods."

Cut to our heroine Dana (Kristen Connolly) in her undies, preparing for a weekend get-away to aforementioned cabin with four other college students-- hottie Dana, hunky Curt (Chris Hemsworth), stoner Marty (Fran Kranz), and demure new guy Holden (Jesse Williams). They head out for the cabin and their journey is interrupted and their scenes spliced with the white-collar happenings of the "puppeteers", the government workers who infiltrate and engineer their inevitable deadly and gory fates.

Once the horror begins, with a spike through the hand nonetheless, what follows is an incessantly entertaining phantasmagoria of 19th century zombies wielding iron farm tools, deadly electric nets, and a rubric of rotating cubes all housing every conceivable monster known to man. An interesting concept by itself, Goddard actively choose to hold nothing back and mercilessly unleashes every worst fear onto its characters. It comes as no surprise,then, that in the final scene, the "real" monsters are unleashed as well, ancient underground gods that will cause the suffering of every human being on earth because they were not satiated.

Cabin in the Woods is so self-aware, so tongue-in-cheek, and so thoroughly creative that it begs to answer the question of whether we have entered a new era of horror-- one that sets the bar high for the survival of the fittest writers and directors as far as sheer originality goes. If this movie can feature a scene where dozens of elevators are opened at once and a heavily armed SWAT team is devoured by every horror creature from dozens of past classic films, where does that leave audience imagination?  How are we to be frightened by being eaten by one monster, when we have a film that features all? 

It is evident that this movie was greatly motivated by copious amounts of weed smoking, both in its construction (the ancient sacrifice must involve the death of the five figures of "whore", "athlete", "scholar", "fool", and "virigin, classic horror tropes), and how the central, uncharacteristic hero is fool/stoner Marty, who becomes impervious to government mechanics because of "all the shit he smokes". Regardless, Cabin in the Woods is a wonderful exercise in how we should never hold back our craziest cinematic ideas, and how to, more basically, write a fantastic fucking screenplay. 

B+

Insidious

Insidious (2011)

Director: James Wan

Cast: Rose Byrne, Patrick Wilson, Barbara Hershey, Lin Shaye, Ty Simpkins

21st century American Horror films can be lumped together in several categories.

The first fall into the successful, money-making theatrical releases, such as the terrible Saw and Hostile franchises, Paranormal Activities, and remakes of classics like Halloween and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Included in here is also the "Dead" remakes, like Zach Snyder's Dawn of the Dead, and Romero's Land of the Dead, definitely the best of this category.

The second category is reserved for the overseas remakes, like the creepy, slithery ghosts of Asian inspired enterprises (The Grudge, The Ring), and even-paced, highly creative endeavors like Let Me In (from Sweden's Let the Right One In). In this second category, I would also include foreign directors who create stellar English language films, such as Amenabar's A + ghost epic, The Others.

The third involves independent films for gore enthusiasts and horror aficionados like myself, which frequently hit our most vulnerable terror buttons and remain etched into a canon of best of the best: Cabin Fever, Wolf Creek, The Human Centipede, Jeepers Creepers, The Descent. Several of these films are so nasty and horrifying that I wouldn't even advise most people to watch them. I love them!

But the last category is also my favorite, and these are B+ movies with B actors, which take place (usually) in quaint, upper-class American homes, and seem on the surface generic in story, and make little money in the box-office and usually come out at the beginning of the year. One example is the terrifying Orphan. Another is Insidious.

Insidious is one of those original and frightening endeavors that plays with our sensibilities for the simple life of thirty-some professionals. Unlike the third category of horror films, movies like Insidious tend to dive straight into the terror, instead of setting up the slow "normal people doing normal things" pace for the first hour. There is value in both techniques, but there is something to be praised about these films that must maintain the fright tempo before inevitably presenting us with our boogey man.

Renai and Josh Lambert (Rose Byrne and Patrick Wilson, respectively) move into a new house with their three children. When it opens, Renai and her younger son, Dalton, are both having bad dreams and not sleeping well. Items in the house keep moving or being misplaced. Patrick Wilson works too hard and his wife is forced to unpack all by herself. Dalton goes upstairs to the attic, hears some terrifying noises, and falls and hits his head. He's fine. Everyone goes to bed. But the next morning he doesn't wake up, and he's stuck in an inexplicable coma for the rest of the film.

In B+ American movies, the central female character (i.e the mother and wife) is the protagonist, always a step ahead of the game than her husband. Renai hears voices in the baby's room through the monitor. She witnesses a large ghost man dressed in black in her room. After convincing her husband to move to another house (genius idea! Movie's over, let's all go home), she almost immediately meets another ghost, a creepy little 1920's boy running and dancing about. Finally, she has the idea to contact a specialist in these matters; a ghost whisperer and her two nerdy toadies.

Now comes the twist (Spoilers ahead!) which was obvious from the start. Dalton is an astro-planer, and drifted too far outside his body one night, never to return. And now cruel-spirited ghosts and spirits want to possess him, including a particularly vicious demon with a predilection for marionette puppets. It is up to Josh, a reformed astro-planer, to enter the ghost world and retrieve his son's lost soul before it's too late.

Insidious is consistently scary, consistently engaging, and genuinely disturbing for all the right reasons. James Wan is great at suggestions, so that when we see the interior of the ghost world, with a stationary young teenager holding a shotgun, pointing it at her murdered nuclear family, and grinning, we grimace from the concept, rather than the visuals.

No good horror film has a happy ending. The doomed ending is as intrinsic to the genre as everything else. Why is this so? Well, I believe that horror narratives serve as catalysts for our inherent sense of cosmic punishment. Characters can behave badly, or in goodness, but it doesn't make a damn bit of difference. What's out there waiting to destroy us has only one agenda, and once it's pointed us out among others, we are fucked. The best we can do is hope and pray that everything will work out in the end, even if we never had a chance.

B+

Get Him To The Greek

Get Him to the Greek (2010)

Director: Nicholas Stoller

Cast: Jonah Hill, Russell Brand, P Diddy, Rose Byrne, Elizabeth Moss

Get Him to the Greek has remained largely unrecognized and taken for granted, a forgotten gem that premiered among a series of abrasive and crude comedies in the last five years. This is most likely because of the popularity and succession of the Jonah Hill canon, and the pervading unpopularity of Russell Brand, who's subsequent film, Arthur, was perceived as one of the worst of the year.

However, despite its seemingly stock and generic genre biases, Get Him to the Greek surpasses its counterparts in characterization and wit, in part due to the brilliant chemistry between Hill and Brand. Underneath the surface of bro-comedy laughs, GHTTG is a rather depressing film involving a failed rock star who has lost his career and family because he could not curb his substance abuse, and an unfortunate and overweight corporate lackey who has long awaited his big chance to prove himself in the eyes of his boss, music industry leader Sergio Roma (Pdiddy).

GHTTG opens with Sergio asking his subservient minions (with hilarious cameos afforded by Aziz Ansari and Nick Kroll) to present him with ideas for the next big music star. Sergio assures his employees that well, fuck the recession, he's "gonna be fine." It's his employees who are fucked, and this pronouncement transports the film into our own relevant and failing epoch of talentless entertainment and superficial, money-making promotions.

Aaron Green (Hill) boldly suggests that his company try to revitalize the career of his favorite musician, Aldous Snow (Brand), who has already been introduced in a hilarious interlude of MTV paparazzi shenaningans and his failed marriage with pop-star Jackie (a perfect Rose Byrne). Green's idea is initially shut down by Sergio, only later to be picked up again, and solidifies the realistic pace and tone of the movie. Green is suffering from serious relationship problems with his live-in girlfriend and medical resident, Daphne (Elizabeth Moss), and they break up because of his own career insecurities. Green is sent on a mission: retrieve Alduos in London and make sure he arrives at The Greek in Los Angeles for a come-back show.

What ensues for the demure Green is a tumult of Bushmills swilling, coke and extasy laden parties, and one nightclub black-out frenzy as Aldous ambivalently accompanies Green with pit stops on NYC and Las Vegas. Green goes out of his way and beyond his ethics for Aldous. On their way to the Today Show, Green smokes the remainder of Aldous's joint and whiskey to prevent him from making a mess of himself on live television. In Las Vegas, Green is encouraged to smoke a "Jeffrey", a fat blunt filled with PCP, weed, crack, and basically "a little of everything." We meet Aldous's father, a former rock star who engages in a violent confrontation with his son. Throughout, Aldous attempts to connect with his ex-wife, who informs him at the end that his son is not his, but was fathered by another man.

Shockingly, GHTTG turns out to be a movie about love. Aldous consistently tries to reconcile with Jackie as Green attempts to correct his mistake of breaking things off with Daphne. The men's relationships serve as a dichotomy that pushes the plot along and culminates in the fracture of their bro-ship. By the time the duo make it to LA, the despondent Aldous has lost all hope after meeting with Jackie, and attempts to kill himself by jumping off a building into the street below. Of course, he is saved in the end by Green, who convinces him that his life does, in fact, have purpose. His music makes people happy, after all, and what more could he ask for?

GHTTG is a comedy about friendship, personal success, and second chances. Although Green attempts to prevent Aldous from going on stage at the end and further feed into Sergio's corporate pressure, Aldous declines, and assures his friend that he loves performing more than anything. By performing on his own accord and realizing he needs to stop his drug use, Snow has evolved into his own agent. This irony bumps GHTTG from generic B stock comedy, to a highly characterized portrait of failure and perseverance.

A