Last House On The Left is a pretty standard grindhouse remake - the film looks more attractive but is less impactful and I never find myself caring about that poor girl or what line the family is crossing.  Like When A Stranger Calls, the thing that gives the original power is the thing that everybody knows about already, and that really dilutes any attempt to recapture its vengeful goodness.  The sort of horror represented by Last House only really works when it has two key elements: empathy and catharsis.  This has neither.  There’s a glimmer of a cathartic moment, when John appears in the kitchen, claw hammer in hand, and helps his battered, terrified wife to her feet, but it’s too short and the audience has to wait too long for the payoff that inevitably comes from it.  Which is in fact my problem with most of the second half of the movie.  It should be twenty minutes shorter.

But that’s not what I want to talk about today.

In the theater last night, there were no fewer than 3 children that I estimated to be under 12 years of age, sitting dutifully with their parents.  This bothered me immediately, but really, really bothered me once I heard a little girl audibly ask “why the man was doing that” during the rape scene.  Which means the parents let her watch that scene without covering her eyes or removing her from the theater.

Seriously.

Fuck. You.

Is the world so desensitized to its own ugliness that any parent can walk into a theater with a little girl and think “She can handle the R-rated slasher movie.  Screw Hotel For Dogs or The Jonas Brothers.”  If that is your only viable choice for seeing a movie with your elementary-aged child, stay home and call Child goddamn Services to come pick the kids up.  Then you can watch whatever you want, you callous shits.

So, now that Pride and Prejudice is apparently public domain, we’re seeing some exciting projects come about: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which I’ve already pre-ordered, and the space-alien horror flick Pride and Predator.  The movie, it’s going to be horrid, because there’s no way that it’s going to be the actual Predator.  Which got me thinking about what would be even better.

Are you ready?

ALIENS VS. PREDATOR VS. PRIDE VS. PREJUDICE

Wow, it’s been awhile, yeah?  And it’s not that the horror well has been dry, either, just that I haven’t been writing about them.  So, let’s do a rapid fire thing to get caught up, shall we?

The Unborn: “Nazis always make a movie better,” a friend of mine told me recently.  When she said that, I immediately threw this movie in her face.  A concentration camp ghost story with deep roots in Jewish mythology certainly sounds cool.  It doesn’t hurt that Odette Yustman is absolutely gorgeous, either.  Except that Yustman, while beautiful, is less lifelike on screen than the lowest common denominator of Jessica Biel and Diane Kruger, and David Goyer directing David Goyer’s script has never worked as well as it should have.  Goyer, like George Lucas, works best when there are people around to tell him his ideas are bad.  The Unborn should have been better than it was, but was maddeningly forgettable.

My Bloody Valentine In 3D: YES.  I don’t go in for gimmick movies a lot, and I certainly have remake reservations a lot of the time, but the sheer reveling that this movie does in its gimmicky remakery makes me love it a bit.  It will probably play much differently when I watch it at home without the pickaxe (or naked girls, or shotguns, or human jaws) coming through the screen at me, but this is one of those ‘they got it right’ movies for me in the sense that it’s a great thrill ride with lots of blood.

Friday The 13th: The first 20 minutes of this movie are fucking gold.  Fried gold, in fact, to abuse the Internet vernacular.  And then it stops being good very abruptly.  The latter part of the film has no panache, and malicious redneck fast-running Jason is a bit unforgivable to the purist in me.  Yes, ladies, I know that Jared Padalecki is pretty.  I know, Veronica Mars fans, that Dick Casablancas gets speared through the head. But neither of those things is enough to make the movie click.

The Uninvited: A completely lackluster Korean horror remake.  Don’t bother.

A Haunting In Connecticutt: When was the last time one of these ‘based on a true story’ things was actually good?  Was it the original Amityville?  Probably.

Listen, I know all three of you reading this probably already subscribe to Chris Sims’s blog, but on the off chance that you don’t, you need to check out his latest post, which is guaranteed to crack the Internet in half.  I have no words.  None.

Word to the wise: Chris is talking about the most recent issue of Tarot, which means that the post is extremely unsafe for work.  And for your sanity.  Read it and then come back.

Think about this: Of the ten thousand plus visits that Chris has gotten for this post, at least a tenth of these people have clicked through because someone told them it was “the hottest thing ever.”

Think About It, Won’t You?

You know, those awesome homemade magazines that have all but vanished now that we all have blogs?  My friends and co-bloggers at Alert Nerd still produce a quarterly (mostly) zine we call Grok.  And it’s awesome.

This issue’s theme is Nameless Horror, and there’s lots of mythos and monsters, but also the dread of picking a screen name and the specter of a committed relationship.  There’s also this thing I wrote about my ride-along with some real-life ghost hunters. And some insane nightmare fuel from Internet pal Stephen Graham Jones.

Go ahead and give Grok a read.  At the very least, print it out and use its 69 jam-packed pages as a weapon or a pillow.  We know it’s tough out on the streets.

That Quarantine will not be successful is not amazing surprise, but it is unfortunate.

Unfortunate because, for a remake of a movie that draws heavily from Cloverfield and The Blair Witch Project, it’s not that bad.  On the bad side, it’s simple and workmanlike, without the nuance that informed the other two “This is bad and I’m recording with a camera” movies I mentioned above.  On the plus side, It’s taut, it never drags and many of the ‘dumb mistakes’ that horror victims often make seem a bit more natural here.

Just like Blair Witch, Quarantine’s premise works because while we know it can’t happen, some hidden part of us is sure that it could, that it has, that it could even happen to us.  Of course, rather than getting lost in the woods, this particular fear is that our government will wordlessly leave us to die in the name of the so-called greater good.

If you’re pro-zombie, Quarantine’s a Netflixer, but take some Dramamine first because, like, lots of shaking and running.

Once the ‘game’ portion of Saw V begins and five unwitting, morally gray contestants are forced to navigate a series of ever-less-clever death traps in order to survive a series of explosions* in order to escape captivity with an increased sense of moral rectitude enforced by way of limb loss and/or self-inflicted torture, the voice of Jigsaw intones that the ‘contestants’ should ignore their instincts in order to survive.

The balance of the film shows that their instincts involve acting like fucking idiots.

In fact, the entire plot of Saw V is predicated on the assumption that everyone in the film except for Jigsaw and his secret apprentice is a total moron, especially Agent Strahm, who seems canny for about a second when he escapes a trap at the beginning of the movie only to engage in a fumbling, Ahab-like quest that can only end badly.

Saw V fumbles a second time in that it’s the only entry in the series that is not an effective standalone film.  There are several elements, including the subplot with Jigsaw’s estranged wife, that are introduced and never go anywhere  - meaning that the payoff is basically teased for next year’s Saw VI.  As much as I appreciate the complexity of the series as a whole, there’s nothing like a delayed payoff to kill my buzz.

Strike three?  Completely ignoring the end of Saw IV.  We end with Jigsaw telling Hoffman that he’s about to be tested, and lo, this never happens.  See above about being forced to wait for Saw VI.

That said, I can’t hate that someone dies after shoving their arm through a band saw.  Or that this is the first movie in the series where the contestants are really up front about trying to kill one another without even a second thought.  The lack of cutthroat behavior between the victims in Saw II always rung a bit false.

I’m still interested in seeing how the series ends, so I’ll be back next year for Saw VI, but my expectations are going to be suitably low.  Saw V is nothing more than a gory placeholder that makes sure all the pieces are in place for the finale.

*My thoughts on using explosions as a horror device are amply on record in my review of Thr3e.  That Saw is now at this level is depressing.