The leaves are turning, the air is crisp, and there are plastic spiders, synthetic spiderwebs and carved pumpkins decorating the houses up and down my street. All of which means that it must be my favorite time of year, Halloween, a time to dress up in outlandish costumes, get some candy, and celebrate all things ghastly and ghoulish. To get in the mood, I've been watching some horror movies lately, and thought I'd offer some short reviews of them, in no particular order...
Jennifer's BodyStarring Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried
This high-school horror movie from 2009 features local favorite Amanda Seyfried and Megan Fox (as the title character) in a campy story about two girls who part ways after a fateful night seeing an aspiring indie rock band at a club. Jennifer is the pretty, popular one, like Alicia Silverstone in Clueless, and Amanda plays "Needy" Lesnicky, her pain-Jane BFF. After Jennifer goes off in the band's van she returns, changed, and with a desire for eviscerating her male high school classmates. The story's played mostly for laughs, the gore is light and the sex even lighter, considering Jennifer's actually been turned into a succubus. Still, Amanda Seyfried is good in it. Mildly entertaining.
Wes Craven presents Dracula 2000Starring Gerard Butler, Christopher Plummer and Justine Waddell
This decade-old entry into the Dracula sub-genre begins from an interesting premise: Dracula is truly immortal, and cannot be killed. Van Helsing (Plummer) has captured him and devoted himself to eventually finding a way to do so, but has been unsuccessful for a coupla hundred years. To extend his own life to watch over Dracula, Van Helsing has been taking regular injections of Dracula's blood.
Predictably, some thieves break into Van Helsing's private holdings and inadvertently free Dracula (played, unrecognizably, by a younger, thinner, non-bearded Gerard Butler), who makes a beeline for Van Helsing's daughter (in New Orleans, natch), with whom he feels a connection because she carries his blood. Along the way he makes vampires out of Jeri Ryan, Omar Epps and others, and Van Helsing and his assistant pursue. Vampire slaying ensues---kinda makes you wonder how neophytes who didn't know vampires existed 5 minutes before can be so good at staking hearts and lopping off heads, but whatever...
Unfortunately, this fun premise, and a great twist at the end, are wasted on a schlocky production, unsure whether it's funny or serious, and definitely not scary. Suitable for a round of MST3K, or as a curiosity if you're a big Gerard Butler fan.
Halloween II (2009)Written and directed by Rob Zombie
Starring Scout Taylor-Compton, Brad Dourif and Malcolm McDowell
Michael Myers comes back a year after his first rampage to finish the job. In Rob Zombie's second entry into the Halloween mythos, he rethinks a lot of the story and gives Michael Myers a supernatural motive of sorts for all the mayhem. Having had success with the initial remake, the studio gave him a lot more freedom with this one, and he uses it, after an initial tip of the hat to the hospital carnage of the original Halloween 2, to jump a year forward, follow up on the characters (Malcolm McDowell's "growth" being particularly witty) and change the characters to his liking.
More importantly, and in contrast to such well-conceived but poorly executed dreck as Dracula 2000 above, Zombie shows that he knows how to create tension in a horror film, giving surprises at the right time, using music and pacing and slow motion. Zombie mixes up the killings, showing enough but not too much, conveying the brutality and pain of Myers' attacks. Zombie seems, more often than not, more interested in the aftermath than the actual attack. Very skillfully handled. I hope Zombie continues to make many more horror movies, and this one is set up for a very different Halloween III.
