Index to ghost, zombie and general horror films commented on here:

BRIEF REVIEWS:

5

Flight of the Living Dead: Outbreak on a Plane
The Meeksville Ghost
Night of the Living Dorks
The Booth [Bûsu]
Angel on my Shoulder
Trespassers
Grindhouse:
• Planet Terror
• Death Proof
Zombie Town

Zombie Town (US-2006; dir. Damon Lemay)

Filled with references to zombies, and full to bursting with zombie film tropes, Zombie Town is actually in the marginal alien-infestation mode of zombie film, its zombies being citizens taken over and animated by slugs that feed off human blood but which inject their hosts with some sort of adrenalin-like substance that makes them largely invulnerable to bodily damage (with the exception of shots to the head, of course). As such it lines up with recent films like Slither (2006), 1986's Night of the Creeps and even scifi z-flicks such as Edward L. Cahn's Invisible Invaders (1959).

Of course Zombie Town is much more oriented toward Romero's zombie apocalypse genre than these, as it spins its tale of a small US town locked in by various circumstances and suddenly overwhelmed by cannibalistic zombies. A cast of locals with a variable life span eventually focuses on three individuals -- two of whom are ex-lovers soon to be reunited in adversity, and the third a wise-cracking smartarse whose services prove indispensible -- as they struggle to (a) survive, and (b) find a way to stop the zombie-parasites before they spread across America.

The film is bloody, full-on and cheap -- though personally I find this last fact the least significant of the three. Director Lemay does a good job of deflecting our attention from budget deficiencies by working his decent, if generic, script well and having leads who give human interest to the main protagonists; they are believable and likeable, despite foibles and failings, and such empathy drags us into a film more easily than expensive SFX. Only the grain of the film, some bad day-for-night lighting glitches, a few narrative lapses and the occasional overacting from supporting-cast members draws attention to Zombie Town's low-budget independent B-film origins.

It may not have an original shred of flesh on its body, but its entertainment value and good humour make it one of the less forgettable independent zombie films of recent times.

2 March 2008

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Grindhouse (US-2007; dir. Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino and others)

Grindhouse is the product of an enthusiasm for exploitation films made during the 1960s and 70s. It is a pastiche and a celebration, the sort of thing already exemplified in the work of writer/director Quentin Tarantino, who has made a career out of "re-creating" those cinematic experiences that played into his development as a filmmaker. Tarantino's Kill Bill movies replicate Asian martial arts revenge flicks, just as his Jackie Brown was a prime example of so-called blaxploitation. Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs and From Dusk til Dawn all show the influence to varying degrees -- and the fact that Tarantino has sponsored a line of DVDs that offer restored exploitation and cult films is further indication of his passion.

Robert Rodriquez, of course, has always been Tarantino's partner-in-crime and they conspire on this exploitation double feature, too. Love 'em or hate 'em, they represent an energetic aesthetic movement that has brought B-film nostalgia into the box-office in a unique way. Yet where other films in Tarantino's oeuvre have explored the aesthetic in a more upmarket fashion, Grindhouse, both conceptually and in execution, has made the passion for re-creation so absolute that it's hard to know where it can go from here without actually reversing time and become what it is exploiting. It reproduces the aesthetic warts and all.

A word of explanation: "Grindhouse" films were cheaply made throwaways designed to exploit perceived trends in extreme cinema and were traditionally shown in "flea-pit" independent cinemas known as "grindhouses". Their programs were made up of B-films, which were often shown in double features. The films ran the gauntlet of various disreputable sub-genres: gore horror, Asian martial arts, scifi, sexploitation, blaxploitation, redneck violence, sexual revenge – that sort of thing. Grindhouse cinemas needed a lot of such films to fill their busy schedules, so certain studios would "grind" them out like sausages, frequently developing the gaudy posters long before actually working out what the movies themselves were about. Many were made for drive-in consumption. True or not, the perception is that such films were screened from poor-quality, grainy, scratched prints, and marred by missing reels – injuries sustained through frequent screenings, constant recycling and misuse. The films were full of extreme gore, exaggerated (and clichéd) characterisation, beautiful women and macho men, bare breasts, bare chests, car chases, explosions and ludicrous plotlines -- lots of fun for all the family, so long as we're talking about Leatherface's family.

Before the mega-success of Jaws (a B-film in concept, though not in budget) brought exploitation films into the mainstream, the grindhouses thrived. After Jaws, the big studios took exploitation upon themselves, to such an extent that the vast majority of box-office hits from then on were in the typical B-film genres – sci-fi, horror, monster, gangster, spy -- and it became too expensive for the B-film studios to compete. Many of them simply closed down, while others took to making porn.

Tarantino and Rodriquez's Grindhouse was originally designed as a double feature of "typical" exploitation B-flicks, complete with previews (for bogus "coming attractions") and all the trimmings. As such, it should be treated as a single unit, seen in its entirety in one sitting -- though in fact box-office failure in the US has meant that the "coming attractions" were dropped and the two features separated, each offered up in "cleaner" versions and re-released. As of this writing, they are only available on DVD separately. It's a pity, for the complete package is a marvellous concoction and a thoroughly entertaining indulgence in low-grade-cinema nostalgia.

Preceding the first feature is a wonderfully extreme and tasteless trailer for a fake film called "Machete" – a violent revenge epic directed by Rodriquez and starring the "rugged" and aesthetically scary Danny Trejo. Between the two films (and after the interval) are three more "coming attractions": "Werewolf Women of the SS" by Rob Zombie (werewolves, Nazis, SS dominatrices, women-on-women catfights, etc. etc.); "Don't" – an hilarious pisstake on the trailers of all those 70s horror movies with titles like "Don't Go in the House!", "Don't Look In the Basement!", and "Don't Answer the Phone!"), this one directed by Edgar Wright of Shaun of the Dead fame; and "Thanksgiving", a gross holiday-themed slasher film from Eli Roth (Cabin Fever, Hostel). Spot-on, all of them. Apparently Rob Zombie and Rodriguez may be succumbing to the pleas of exploitation fans and their own insatiable love of tawdry horror and turning their fake trailers into full-length films.

But the features are the main attraction. They are: Planet Terror (directed by Rodriquez) and Death Proof (directed by Tarantino).

Planet Terror (US-2007; dir. Robert Rodriguez)

Planet Terror is a gore-drenched zombie movie of the military-conspiracy / viral infection kind, full of paranoia, guns, pus, blood, gore, severed limbs, strippers, gross medical procedures, exploding cars, exploding heads, man-on-man, man-on-woman and woman-on-woman aggro, needles, dodgy Texan food, torture and sex. Among its pleasures are Tom Savini (make-up SFX guru responsible for the bodily trauma seen in such films as Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead and the Friday the 13th movies) getting cut up and pulled apart in spectacular fashion; Bruce Willis as an infected military commander who comes to a grossly gluggy end; a melting penis; an ex-go-go dancer (Rose McGowan) who loses her leg and has it replaced by hi-tech ordnance; and a scene in which a horde of the infected are cut to pieces by a military helicopter in flight. As it goes along the narrative gets more and more extreme and the imagery more and more ludicrous, injected with every unlikely act of physical violence Rodriquez could wedge in. Meanwhile, the design work is beautiful and the SFX spectacular. It is weirdly faithful (if more upmarket) rendition of its B-film template -- exaggerated sure, but the genre works on exaggeration anyway. Here, the result is hilarious.

Death Proof (US-2007; dir. Quentin Tarantino)

Death Proof is Duel meets Vanishing Point meets Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! Kurt Russell stars as Stuntman Mike, a psycho stunt man with a pathological drive to kill (spectacularly, of course) sexually attractive young women with his car -- a "death-proof" stunt vehicle. The first part of the film sees him annihilate, spectacularly, a group of ordinary bimbos out on the town. The second half sees him try the same thing with a bunch of attractive women who happen to be stunt drivers themselves, including New Zealand film professional Zoë Bell. The resulting carnage does not go Mike's way.

In producing this Good Ol' Boy redneck car-chase orgy cum chick-revenge film, Tarantino wanted to make the car crashes as visceral as possible and so he did them the old-fashioned way, sans CGI. The result has, it must be said, a lot of impact. If the film might be seen to slowdown a bit too much in places as Tarantino over-indulges in some of that smart-arse semi-comedic banter that he made famous in Pulp Fiction, it must also be added that it is through his control of the pacing that he succeeds in involving the audience in the characters and their fate, thus ensuring that the violence has all the more impact.

Anyway, both films are rather tasty examples of their respective tasteless sub-genres, well-directed and involving -- even if that involvement devolves to an appreciation of the absolute absurdity of the narrative's extremes. Such irony abounds in both films, of course. Grindhouse movies are characterised by cheap violence and cheap bad taste. Rodriquez and Tarantino re-create the form, only with expensive violence and expensive bad taste; then do whatever they can to make the result look cheap and nasty. The print is marred by patches of graininess, scratches and blemishes (sometimes concentrated on scenes of bare flesh and iconic nastiness – you know, the scenes that are watched over and over obsessively until the film becomes worn in those spots) -- and even a missing reel (burnt by an overheated projector, or simply "lost"). The careful placement of these blemishes, especially the missing reel, is part of the joke, of course.

Unfortunately Grindhouse's poor box-office performance suggests that much of its audience didn't get the joke.

Another irony is that Grindhouse, which celebrates and replicates no-art film aesthetics has been showing in arthouse cinemas around the country, at least in Australia. But in so doing, we get to see it the way it was meant to be seen, all in one piece and with its blemishes in tact.

Want a good ol' nasty time (and a good laugh)? Well, what are you waiting for? See it when it comes to a flea-pit theatre near you!

22 January 2008

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Trespassers (Mexico/US-2006; dir. Ian McCrudden)

Trespassers is one of those not-quite-a-zombie-flick zombie flicks that draws on some of the aesthetics of recent successes in the genre without embracing the full package. It has a supernatural scenario that involves a curse and a horde of cannibalistic, semi-decayed human monsters -- the product of the curse. But if you pay attention to the somewhat inelegantly inserted back-story that occurs toward the end, you'll soon realise that the "monsters" are neither zombies nor corporeal ghosts -- they are men and women who have simply been cursed with an insatiable hunger for everything, whether human flesh or not. In fact, that they are still alive becomes clear when the protagonist successfully stabs one of their number to death through the chest. It's hard to maintain the pretense of being one of the "living dead" when a basic tenet of the living dead -- being indifferent to ordinary bodily trauma -- is so flagrantly ignored. (The status of the Evil Character behind all the trouble, vis á vis being alive or dead, is, however, somewhat more problematic.)

Nevertheless, there is a modern zombie vibe to the film, so that, like 28 Days Later, it can fit easily enough somewhere on the periphery of the subgenre. Mind you, nothing in the script tries to claim the film for zombiedom -- it's only the marketeers and a few reviewers who do that. The film itself is silent on the subject, despite the uncanny resemblance of the "zombies" to 28 Days Later's pseudo-dead.

Five typical college graduates head off on a Mexican holiday jaunt, lured to "the perfect surfing beach" by the brother of one of them. The beach is isolated, "unspoilt" by either tourists or locals, and sports terrific wave breaks. I admit I was totally uninvolved during this opening, as the scenario had all the hallmarks of standard dumb teen slasher fare. After a prologue in which the brother barely gets the necessary phone call in before something indefinite snatches him and his girlfriend, we follow the five summonees as they travel toward Mexico, stopping once or twice for no apparent narratively-relevant reason. However, at this point I found my attitude subtly changing; what made the difference was the realisation that, though only given half a chance, the film was generating a decent atmosphere and making me care about the stereotypical but effectively acted characters. A well-choreographed "pit-stop" at a derelict gas station is so full of nebulous menace that by the time the travellers actually reach the beach, the idyllic splendour of the place feels tainted and we're ready for the shit to hit the fan.

The follow-up "shit-hitting" sequences involve evidence regarding the fate of the missing brother, teen flirtation that is mostly handled in a layback, non-exploitative manner, some requisite sexploitative bare-breasted perving (which, in its favour, serves a narrative purpose), the discovery of gnawed human bones and, once darkness falls, the "zombies" attacking...

Director McCrudden makes enthusiastic use of a handheld camera, but unlike in, say, The Blair Witch Project, its extremes are saved for violent moments, so that it (a) didn't make me nauseous, and (b) manages to create tension. Some reviewers complain about the night scenes being totally obscure, but while it was occasionally rather dark, the image always managed to be clear enough on my plasma-screen TV and I didn't feel as though I was missing anything. Yes, the gore remains suggestive rather than in-your-face, but that didn't worry me either, as this is a film that is clearly going for suspense rather than gross-out.

For a moment, at the very end, I was a bit concerned that the filmmakers were planning on using that totally unsurprising surprise final reveal where one of the characters who seems to have escaped scott-free suddenly "turns". But thankfully, though he toys with our expectations here and there, McCrudden follows the logic of the film's mythology instead.

In short, while Trespassers will never find an honourable place in the Dungeon of Great Horror Films, it was, for me, a suspenseful and likeable entertainment that at least deserves a good word or two spoken in its favour -- in spite of its clichés and conceptual limitations.

4 January 2008

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Angel on My Shoulder (US-1946; dir. Archie Mayo)

In the first few minutes of this supernatural gangster comedy-drama, Eddie Kagle (imbued by Paul Muni with all the appropriately iconic tough-guy mannerisms we've come to expect from the era of Cagney, Bogart and Edward G. Robinson) is released from prison and murdered by his erstwhile partner, Smiley Williams. In a blink -- and through a cloud of steam -- he finds himself in Hell, but displays so much attitude that he gives the somewhat bureaucratic Devil (Claude Rains) a devilish idea. Seems Ol' Nick needs to win a point or two in his eternal struggle with the Man Upstairs and at the moment destroying the auspicious career of Judge Fredrick Parker looks like his best bet. Parker is a good man, doing good work among underpriveleged youth and hence limiting the Evil One's ability to get new staff to man the furnaces. But Parker is Kagle's double, which provides the Devil with an "in". If he can insert Kagle's disembodied spirit into Parker's body, and get him to act as the bitter, selfish criminal he's always been, what chance will the Judge have of becoming State Governor and thus spreading his good works even further?

What Nick fails to take due account of, however, is the influence of the Judge's beautiful fiance, Barbara (Anne Baxter). That, and Kagle's basic awareness of his love-deprived, emotionally stunted past.

With a good script, excellent actors and enough darkness to give the essentially sentiment tale an edge without destroying its good nature, Angel on My Shoulder is a wonderfully entertaining comedy that makes its point with enough of a dramatic edge to make you care about the ghostly Kagle's ultimately rather bleak, if deliberately chosen, fate. The ending is redemptive, sure, but a completely happy outcome isn't what you can expect. There is always a price to pay for salvation.

Angel on my Shoulder was written by Harry Segall, who is also known for the similarly afterlife-themed Here Comes Mr Jordan (1941) -- later turned into a play (and a movie) under the title Heaven Can Wait. In Here Comes Mr Jordan the protagonist is a boxer who dies too early due to an inexperienced angel's over-enthusiasm and is subsequently given a second chance in the body of a murdered millionnaire. In this film, Claude Rains plays an archangel who accompanies the lost soul on his quest to remake the dead millionnaire's life in his own image. His Mr Jordon shares many characteristics with Angel on my Shoulder's Nick, particularly his dry sense-of-humour -- though there are important differences between the roles. Rains is magnificent as a Satan who is both personable and darkly sardonic, occasionally allowing a hint of underlying cruelty to emerge through a glance or a subtle gesture.

Afterlife films, mainly lighthearted and comedic in nature, were very popular in the 1940s, no doubt offering a harmless way for a society suffering from war and its aftermath to deal with years of death and loss. The fact that Angel on my Shoulder actually depicts Hell (as a shadowy, fire-singed underworld, in which the damned toil endelessly to keep the furnaces burning hot enough to ensure its Overlord's comfort) is one of the surprisingly dark joys of the film -- and gives it a lingering, slightly bitter, aftertaste.

9 December 2007

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The Booth (Japan-2005; dir. Yoshihiro Nakamura) aka Bûsu

With a running time of just over 70 minutes, The Booth is a small J-Horror gem -- though without "dead wet girls" or any of the other post-Ring stereotypes. Set almost entirely inside an old, disused radio broadcast studio, it uses its closed environment and bleak settings to full advantage, focusing attention not on startling (or otherwise) SFX, but on the main character and his struggle with guilt. As a ghost story, it has the occasional scare, but more to the point it is an unsettling supernatural drama that uses its fantasy elements to focus our attention on the emotional realities it explores rather than to overwhelm our imaginations through violence or creepy spectacle. The one time it does seem to draw on the "spectral woman" trope, it ends up undermining our expectations to good, and somehow even more creepy, effect.

Shogo (Ryuta Sato) is a personable but emotionally selfish and arrogant DJ, host of a late-night call-in radio program called "Love Lines". On this particular night the show has been moved to a disused studio -- a studio with a reputation (it turns out) for being haunted. A DJ from decades before had hanged himself in the studio -- in an incident that begins the film and sets the groundwork for what is to come -- though that is not to say the dead man is responsible for the haunting. Now, in the midst of his broadcast, Shogo finds himself having flashes of memory, memory of culpable behaviour -- and being interrupted by odd noises and a female voice saying: "Liar!" As callers ring in to tell him embarrassing or humiliating things that have been said to them by loved ones (the show's theme for the night), and he dishes out somewhat fatuous advice in response, we become aware that one way or another all the examples of humiliating put-downs or ill-treatment that he hears can be laid at his own door. It all seems to be about him. Worse, lying behind it all is the possibility that he has been responsible for the death of a female co-worker. As his fear and guilt grows, Shogo begins to face the reality that his past may be catching up with him in more ways than one ...

The Booth is tightly and elegantly written, with back-story well integrated into on-screen events, and perfectly structured to draw us inexorably through the experience. Ryuto Sato is engaging as Shogo, skirting around the edge of the "arrogant star" stereotype without ever becoming a caricature or making him hopelessly unsympathetic. As we learn more about Shogo's past behaviour, we find ourselves approving of him less and less, but it is always against a background of personability set up in the initial scenes -- so we "stay" with him during his dilemma. Meanwhile, director Nakamura proves expert at deflecting us, of leading us artfully astray. Truth becomes elastic, and Shogo's interpretation of events more and more subjective, reflecting his basic self-loathing. In the end, reality becomes so internalised that there is really only one path open for the emotionally bankrupt DJ to take ...

In a not-insignificant way, the power of the film lies in the fact that we are never quite sure who or what is haunting the studio. In fact, it is as though it is not haunted in the ordinary sense at all, but rather draws to the surface the ghosts that those entering it bring with them.

7 December 2007

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Night of the Living Dorks (Germany-2004; dir. Mathias Dinter) aka Die Nacht der lebenden Loser

Cross-genre horror films are becoming more prevalent. It's inevitable, really, as filmmakers attempt to break out of the rut of whatever contemporary trend is currently doing the rounds. The German zombie flick Night of the Living Dorks not only goes the route of zombie-comedy (as epitomised most famously in Britain with the now-classic rom-com-zom film, Shaun of the Dead -- made at roughly the same time), but joins teen-comedy traditions of the Revenge of the Nerds kind with those of the zombie film. The result, much to my surprise, is thoroughly entertaining and rather funny.

The story is simple. A trio of typical high-school outcasts ("losers" is a better, and more thematically appropriate, translation of the original German title than "dorks") convince a bunch of goths to help them cast a voodoo love spell so that one of their number can score with the school slut. But it goes wrong and they are dusted with the remains of a Haitian zombie (bought off eBay). When they subsequently die in a car crash, they come back as zombies -- considerably stronger than before and free of pain, if prone to cannibalistic hunger and accelerated levels of decay. Suddenly school -- and revenge -- is looking good. Being dead is cool. Naturally, however, the Good Unlife doesn't last too long before blood flows, the Naziesque gym teacher gets eaten and a zombie plague starts to look likely. It's hard to maintain decent levels of joi de vivre when you're forced to reattach body parts with a staple-gun.

The film could have been awful but in fact the crass sex jokes, though present, are kept to a minimum, the script is funny and sometimes original, the stereotypical characters are well-played and rather endearing, and the direction is spot-on, director Dinter displaying a knowing grasp of both teen-sex-comedy tropes and zombie traditions. Even more: the narrative doesn't always do what you expect it to do, the pacing is generally tight, building to a deliberately chaotic climax (I preferred the "official" ending over the alternate one offered as an extra -- which is completely divergent in tone), and there are a few socio-political undercurrents for those who notice such things. What more can you ask for? Gore? There's even a modicum of that available.

One thing though: watch the original version, in German language with subtitles. The English dubbed version is up there with the worst of the old-school bad dubbing of '70s Japanese fantasy films. Ten minutes of that and anyone in their right mind would eject the disk!

5 December 2007

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The Meeksville Ghost (US-2000; dir. David Lister)

This review contains spoilers

A non-horror supernatural comedy-drama (parts of which suggest Back to the Future 3 in setting and tone, though without that film's budget, dynamism or general panache), The Meeksville Ghost tells a story of past misdeeds, present-day villainy, and the outworkings of a spectral curse.

Meeksville is an isolated and failing township on the verge of final collapse. Judge Reinhold plays the cursed dead-guy from the Old West, Lucius Meeks, who must right a past wrong in order to find eternal rest but needs help to do it -- being unable to directly communicate or even be seen by anyone. Help arrives in the form of Daniel (Andrew Kavovit), who had been adopted as a baby and now returns to Meeksville in search of his biological family. Though it is pretty obvious to the viewer, Daniel little realises that he is kin to the ghost that haunts the place (and whom he alone can see) -- but everything eventually becomes clear for him after he is roped into helping right the wrong and save the town. At the same time he falls for Kate Carter, who, in a Romero-and-Juliet twist, proves to be the descendent of the man Lucius shot during a single crucial event from the past. There is an "evil" landowner, Emily Meeks (Lesley-Anne Down), who is trying to buy up all the town's land -- and who turns out to be Daniel's mother. What Daniel and Kate need to do to defeat her is find the real deeds to the land. The climax, which takes place in the past and ignores the temporal anomalies it creates, brings the past and the present into direct conflict. The film ends with appropriate sentimentality.

The tale is a standard western melodrama, with a ghostly overlay. Yet there is enough in the production to take the edge off any feelings of old-fashioned familiarity. The direction, which can be a little lacklustre, and the at-times overly passive performances, give The Meeksville Ghost the air of a telemovie, which it probably is -- a relatively cheap production, limited in its setting and the number of cast members (so that at times the isolated township seems positively unpopulated). Not that the film lacks style, though; particularly effective are the scenes set in the Old West, which are done in sepia, like old photographs. Filmed in South Africa, it is unfailingly good-humoured and optimistic in its resolution, and its humour is gentle. The SFX, such as they are, are effective enough. Overall, it is rather undemandingly entertaining.

What it isn't, though -- contrary to statements made in some reviews -- is a Western remake of Oscar Wilde's Canterville Ghost. Neither the plot nor the tone bear any meaningful relationship to Wilde's satirical farce.

17 November 2007

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Flight of the Living Dead: Outbreak on a Plane (US-2007; dir. Scott Thomas)

Despite its spoofy -- and rather clumsy -- double-barrel title (which evokes Snakes on a Plane as well as the more relevant influence, Night of the Living Dead), Flight of the Living Dead: Outbreak on a Plane is a suspenseful, gore-splattered rollercoaster ride of a zombie film that takes itself just seriously enough to avoid destroying the effectiveness of its horror elements. While it replicates the general plot of Snakes on a Plane, replacing that film's snakes with cannibalistic undead, it isn't the rip-off that this and the title suggests -- in fact, it was written and began production before its bigger budgeted ophidian rival, under the title Plane Dead. Clearly the distributors didn't have enough confidence in it to let it stand on its own merits.

They should have. Though the film lacks the metaphorical resonances and sociopolitical undercurrents that the best zombie films exhibit (except perhaps in its depiction of international air travel as such), it is an involving affair that easily carries you over its more glaring factual errors -- you know, all that guff about shooting guns in a pressurised cabin environment (see Note below), being allowed to take a putter on board an international flight when in reality even nail-cutters are verboten, and incorrect engine numbering (don't ask). Though it would have been better to have avoided any such errors (if they are errors), the writers did a pretty good job of working the concept. In the end, you don't really mind.

The film is directed cannily, with artful care given to narrative momentum and pacing. Some might argue that the extended opening, which introduces the stock characters and lets them interact for a while, is a bit slow, but the slowness in fact allows the viewer to get involved, so that the undead frenzy, when it comes, is all the more effective. Generally speaking, slow-build works better than bull-in-a-china-shop fury. Either way, by the time the zombies get loose, you're thoroughly caught up in the rush...

Flight's zombies are fast -- like those of the Dawn of the Dead remake -- but inexorably undead in nature. Bloody, rapidly decaying skin and the suggestion of bone and sinew in their make-up is effective, as is the relatively low-budget CGI. Claustrophobia, gore, suspense and the terror of realising that there's no way out all work to make this zombie flick one of the more entertaining of recent times.

And of course the film's ending could be taken to represent the beginning of Romero's zombie apocalypse, the experiment-in-immortality-gone-wrong representing the origin of the living dead plague.

There is a class of horror film that blends horror and humour without resorting to self-parody or extreme slapstick; that runs with the absurdities and makes us believe them; that gives life to stock characters; that knows and loves its subgenre and thus revels in the re-creation. Such films are good humoured without being comedies; horror without being wrist-slittingly dark. The best example of this kind of monster pic is Tremors, which does giant sand worms. Other good examples are Slither (invasive space maggots) and Frankenfish (monster fish). Flight of the Living Dead does it for cannibal zombies.

Note: It’s interesting that one of the big criticisms leveled against Flight of the Living Dead by online critics is the shooting that goes on inside the aircraft. They protest that allowing guns to be used on a plane would result in the walls being punctured and therefore lead to violent decompression of the cabin. Bodies sucked into the void! I wonder if the Mythbusters have tackled this idea. At any rate I came across an article by an aircraft technician that pointed out that it was the idea that there would be a violent decompression that was in fact the Hollywood fallacy. Up until relatively recent times air-wardens carried guns. Moreover, the sky-tech said, there are gaps in the shell of aircraft anyway, to help regulate the airflow. On top of that, he went on, the cabin walls of most aircraft (as well as the windows) were generally able to withstand impact from handgun bullets. So, one way or the other, no explosive decompressions!

13 November 2007

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The Gravedancers (US-2006; dir. Mike Mendez)

The Gravedancers' main addition to cinematic ghost lore is a curse disguised as a life-affirming rhyme. Said rhyme is discovered on a condolence card by the morbidly intoxicated friends of the deceased as they gather around his grave to "see him off", and it tempts them to dance on nearby graves in an act of spontaneous affirmation. The effect of this is to raise a trio of disaffected -- and sociopathic -- ghosts. Over the course of the following month these ghosts will haunt the dancers, it is said, the violence and weirdness excalating until the haunted friends are finally "at rest". As weirdness and finally disturbing spectral violence begins to drive them toward insanity and death, they gain the help of a paranormal researcher and his assistant. Though it is the researchers who elucidate the problem, they aren't quite so effective when it comes to finding a solution and bring their own agendas on board...

The initial narrative premise gives this low-budget haunting tale a big boost and luckily the skill of director Mendez, excellent cinematography, decent actors, an effective script and ambitious SFX all come together to create a film full of carefully paced atmosphere creation, shocks and intelligently integrated action set-pieces. Mendez makes the most of his meagre budget and the result looks more expensive than it had the right to do.

While not about to find a place in the very top tier of ghost movies, The Gravedancers does offer an entertaining and generally engrossing experience that takes it beyond the ordinary run-of-the-mill spook-fest. It's not perfect, of course: the three separate hauntings, featuring three malicious ghosts with slightly different hang-ups, are perhaps a little unwieldy, narratively, though Mendez and crew manage to ride out the bumpy bits, keeping the suspense largely in tact. As well, Poltergeist-like fantasy elements at the climax, especially the giant ghost, push us over into comicbook spectacle -- and this is a little tonally jarring. But by then we're so caught up in the action that it doesn't make all that much difference, except in retrospect.

Meanwhile the ghosts themselves, with their disturbing skeletal grins, were imaged using techniques pioneered by the Japanese -- though Mendez and his designers have adopted the aesthetic rather than simply replicating the imagery. Meanwhile, classic themes of guilt and emotional dysfunctions arising from the past are worked into the plot through the characterisation and the interaction of the protagonists -- and manage to be enhanced rather than nullified by the violent threat of the ghosts. Except for the aforementioned tonal glitches, the film feels well-integrated, artistically.

The Gravedancers was released as part of the 8 Films To Die For® After Dark Horrorfest in 2006. From various comments made in online reviews, it seems that the film underwent further visual enhancement before being released to DVD.

13 November 2007

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The Dead Will Tell (US-2004; dir. Stephen T. Kay)

Anne Heche plays Emily Parker, a lawyer whose life takes a supernatural turn when her fiancé buys her an antique engagement ring that seems to be haunted by its previous owner. Emily's happiness and sanity come under threat as her awareness of a spectral stalker increases and she begins to obsess over finding out the truth behind the excalating weirdness. Her emotional turmoil is exacerbated by a fear that past mental instability is making a comeback.

The Dead Will Tell is an unpretentious ghost story that breaks no new ground, but works well due to an excellent performance by Heche, a taut, low-key script and cinematography that uses a distinctive colour palette and high contrast lighting to great advantage (not to mention the beautiful New Orleans settings). A cast made up of the likes of Chris Sarandon, Jonathan LaPaglia and Kathleen Quinlan -- all of whom put in good work -- gives it considerable authority; and Kay's direction is able to generate effective moments of frisson despite the story's emphasis on drama over thrills.

Though made for TV, The Dead Will Tell never feels uncomfortably restricted or shoddy, and readily engages its audience in the generic events, making them seem fresh.

21 October 2007

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Dead and Deader (US-2006; dir. Patrick Dinhut)

In a "making of" documentary on the Anchor Bay DVD, writer/producer Mark Altman remarks that Dead and Deader is more of a superhero film than a zombie flick. Well, it has all the characteristics of current gut-munching apocalyptic zombie cinema, so the statement is a little deceptive -- but he does have a point. Protagonist Lt. Bobby Quinn (played by ex-Superman Dean Cain) is infected by the zombie virus but due to a get-out clause in the film's zombie creation ethos (which involves a rare breed of scorpion), he ends up dead but not braindead, and able to control his desire for raw meat -- more or less. This has left him with super-strength and super-senses, able to leap tall tables, undead monsters and difficult plot holes in a single bound. Quinn takes it upon himself to use his abilities to hunt down all the less-ethically sensitive of the undead in order to save the world. At one point his non-dead buddies even discuss possible superhero names for him ("Mortis Man"?).

The idea of a zombie superhero isn't a new one. Between 1973 and 1975, Marvel Comics ran a limited comic series called "Tales of the Zombie". Though the titular hero, Simon Garth, was initially a lot less independently minded than Quinn, Marvel's propensity for superheroism showed through -- as the Frazetta cover for issue 1 illustrates:

Nevertheless, the fact that Quinn is half-human, half-ghoul does give Dead and Deader a unique feel -- which lasts for about two thirds of the film, at which juncture all the generic running-around-in-a-confined-space-trying-to-avoid-being-eaten and engaging-in-lots-of-undead-head-blasting tropes really kick in. At this point, if there was ever any doubt, you know you're in post-Romero zombie territory.

Cain does a good job as the half-zombie, aided and abetted by black cook Judson (Guy Torry) -- who provides a modernised version of the humorous nigger sidekick that was so prevalent in C-grade horror flicks back in the 1930s/40s -- and the attractive Susan Ward as Holly, a sexy film student Quinn picks up in a bar along the way. As well as other more physical attributes (and a libido that doesn't seem overly intimidated by the knowledge that Quinn is in fact a corpse), Holly provides a continuous film-history overview ("I may be a movie geek, but I'm really hot!") -- engaging, for example, in a running (literally) argument over the relative merits of the original Romero Dawn of the Dead and the recent remake.

In fact, Dead and Deader is jam-packed with such pop-culture references, both visual and verbal, most of them relating to zombie flicks, but touching on other genres as well (for example, two soon-to-die grunts argue about whether the best 007 was Connery or Moore). All this self-indulgent postmodernism will either amuse or annoy you according to your predilections. I thought much of it worked as a sort of nascant commentary, but that the writers might have done better to show a little more restraint -- in the interests of dramatic conviction. Still, the semi-humorous, "zom-edic" tone of this film is mostly to the point and is maintained effectively throughout -- veering from bloody and suspenseful to wry and wise-cracking with enthusiastic aplomb. Some of the jokes remain stillborn, sure, but Dinhut and the cast pull off most of them.

Though made-for-TV, Dead and Deader is no doubt gory enough for your average punter. There's blood and guts and decapitations aplenty, even if very little of it carries much visceral impact. The rest of the cast (including the effectively nasty Peter Greene as the villain of the piece) do a good job of giving the film texture -- and it is nice to see Dean Haglund of X-Files fame turn up as an undertaker. They all die -- mostly twice -- with tongue-in-cheek conviction. Sure, the film isn't as essentially subversive or as outrageously inventive as its progenitors in the sub-genre, such as Raimi's Evil Dead films or, more-to-the-point, Gordon's Re-Animator and Jackson's extreme horror-comedy Braindead. But it does the job. It kept me amused and minimally critical for the duration. In short, a successful if minor entry in the sub-genre.

The final scene has the three protagonists contemplating how Quinn can continue to use his undead powers for Good. As they walk across the compound, Holly quotes Casablanca to the effect: "I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship." Which gives the general impression that Altman was hoping that Dead and Deader might become a film franchise or a TV series. Who knows? There have been worse ideas in the history of cinema.

20 October 2007

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The Quick and the Undead (US-2006; dir. Gerald Nott)

A decent concept, classy cinematography and splatterings of blood and brain matter do not alone add up to an effective zombie film.

It's 85 years after the archetypal zombie plague has swept the world, leaving the countryside rather desolate and flesh-eating undead wandering about, Romero-fashion, looking for a feed. A class of hunter has developed to deal with the problem, scouring the empty fields and small deserted towns for zombies, whom they shoot in the head and whose little fingers they collect as "proof of purchase". Rivalry between a gang of hunters and the archetypal "western" loner result in a revenge scenario, with a touch of conspiracy thrown in -- after all, if you were an unscrupulous bounty-hunter wouldn't it be in your benefit to actually spread the zombie disease in order to maintain your business? But what does it all add up to? The answer: in The Quick and the Undead, nothing much.

The idea of a Romeroesque zombie film with a Western flavour is an appealing one. Here, however, the result is hampered by a lead actor whose Clint Eastwood/Kurt Russell impersonation not only wears thin fairly quickly but effectively prevents the viewer from ever believing in and caring about the protagonist, and a script that doesn't develop much at all beyond the initial premise and is riddled with awful cliché-riddled dialogue. The plot is so single-minded and straightforward as to be as uninvolving as the characters and the whole thing comes over as simply a wasted opportunity.

It's not the low budget that is the problem. The film looks good (clear image, great 2.85:1 widescreen image on the DVD) and with better handling of the narrative and dramatically relevant dialogue could have delivered considerable impact. But it all feels empty and pointless. Nor is there any sign of real background development on the part of the writer/director. Who pays the bounty? What are the rules? How is it managed? Where is the non-zombified populace? Where's the army? All we ever see are zombies and bounty hunters. How do they get food? How do they keep their bikes fueled and running? This lack of a convincing context, combined with poor characterisation, terrible dialogue and an almost complete lack of dramatic pacing kill any chance of audience involvement in this particular excursion into the zombie apocalypse.

14 October 2007

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Severed (Canada-2005; dir. Carl Bessai)

Can't tell the zombies from the trees? Here's the story in brief: a bunch of people run around a logging camp and adjacent forest trying not to get eaten by zombies (largely unsuccessfully) -- and then the film stops.

That's about it.

Okay, I admit there's a bit more to Severed. Leaving it there would be unfair. The film has its good points, even if at heart it's just a typical post-Romero flesh-eating zombie flick made with considerable (to me, unsuccessful) cinematographic style, but with little plotting beyond the running around bit and nothing new added to the mix. There is some back-story, of course – all the stuff that gets the zombie plague going. In this case, the plague is precipitated by ill-considered experimentation on old-growth tree fungus by the company that is logging the forest, and set in motion, inadvertently, by a group of environmentalist protesters. That takes about twenty minutes, and then it's all running around trying not to get eaten. Lots of gore, torn flesh, and bashing in the heads of zombies. The zombies are not of the "crawl-out-of-their-graves" kind, mind you, but of the "killer-plague-that-turns-you-into-a-monster" variety – yet they effectively replicate Romeroesque living-dead behaviour in the way they lurch around as though losing the flexibility of their muscles through rigor mortis while trying to rip throats apart. So for me they were definitely zombies and I approve!

However, none of this is original or even rarely seen. With zombie-fan enthusiasm, the filmmakers have tried to fit as many tropes of the sub-genre into Severed's running time as they could – sudden unexpected attacks, cannibalistic gut-chewing, claustrophobic sieges (first in a small shed, then in a compound), thwarted escapes by car, brutal survivor sub-cultures, non-zombie aggression and betrayal that brings about disaster – and it ends inconclusively and poignantly in a manner that offers the possibility of more to come. All too common.

Part of what differentiates Severed from a crypt-load of 1980s-and-beyond zombie flicks that do all these things, however, are the following positive aspects:

• Good characters. Despite being stereotypes of the genre, the writing, acting and direction give the protagonists considerable conviction. This particularly applies to the two leads (Paul Campbell as the naïve son of the Big Businessman and Sarah Lind as the Feisty Environmentalist) – both of whom handle the rather shallow requirements of their roles with so much attention to subtle and mostly restrained, yet emotionally true, detail that their characters seem to have depth and occasionally make you care.

• Compassion. When they have to defend themselves by bashing in the heads of zombies, the protagonists actually get upset about it. These folk aren't celluloid heroes. They are depicted as ordinary people for whom violence and killing, even directed at the undead, is traumatic.

• Sense of reality. Director Bessai and his crew give the whole thing a look that is neither comicbook nor B-film garish, but naturalistically gritty. The way the characters are depicted is the main driver of this sense of realism, but the set design and cinematography definitely help.

• Pace. With reservations, Bessai directs the action well.

Sounds okay, right? Well, Severed is certainly not trash cinema. Up to a point, Bessai knows what he's doing and gives it his all. Yet for me there were problems.

Apart from the clichéd, non-event plotting, the insistent striving for style makes much of the film either annoying or simply difficult to sit through. All action scenes, of which there are commendably plenty, are filmed using that hand-held, jerky camera technique we see so often these days. The image jerks and wobbles, action smears into a blur, and the confusion effectively conveys urgency and chaos. This is fine in moderation, but one persons' moderation is another's excess and I found that it rapidly became annoying. You can't clearly see anything and after a while, even if you don't congenitally suffer from motion-sickness, you're likely to start to feel the effects. Nausea set in for me in the climactic stages, where the action is fairly unremitting. It was all too much and I started to feel ill.

Then the film ended. Stopped dead. I can see what effect Bessai was straining for with the poignant last scene, but as a satisfying ending, no, it didn't work for me at all. I came away feeling like the digital transmission had been interrupted. Romero's zombie films – which also involve a lot of running around and trying not to get eaten by zombies – feel like rounded works following a thematically driven pathway and purposeful plot structure. Severed felt like an enthusiastic and competent imitation of the genre, when taken on a scene-by-scene basis. Overall, however, it felt a little pointless.

Still, there's no question that when it comes to cannibalistic zombie pics, this isn't anywhere near the worst of them. If it hadn't made me motion-sick (I don't know about you, but if I want a film to make me feel sick, I want it to be because of the thematic content, not because the camera wouldn't keep still), I would have been reasonably happy having stayed up into the early hours of the morning to watch it.

But then I'm a zombie junkie. Others might not be so forgiving.

One last thing: why is it called "Severed", you may ask? Frankly, beyond some very tenuous thematic possibilities or the general suggestion of dismemberment carried by the word, I can't come up with anything terribly convincing. The DVD subtitle is apparently "Forest of the Dead", which is both accurate and links the film to many of its predecessors. But I guess someone thought it sounded too B-grade and pulpy in light of the film's artistic pretensions.

16 August 2007
Originally published on Horrorscope

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The Return (US-2006, dir. Asif Kapadia)

Be warned -- this commentary contains major spoilers

In a depressing display of obtuse literal-mindedness, one reviewer quoted on metacritics.com dismisses this supernatural drama thus: "The Return gets this year's award for most misleading poster, with its image of an empty-eyed, gray-skinned zombie/ghost that appears nowhere in the movie" (quoted from LA Weekly). Yet despite the fact that there is no literal empty-eyed, gray-skinned zombie/ghost in The Return, the image referred to encapsulates the film's story, atmospherics and themes with considerable visual cannyness. Even the tagline -- which may lead us to resent the fact that The Return doesn't feature a vengeful Grudge-like spectre if we respond to a film on the basis of shallow assumptions rather than what's actually on the screen -- is not inaccurate, despite the lack of a physically objective ghost. The connection between poster image and film is subtler than that. Even accepting that maybe such subtlety isn't the best marketing ploy, it's a bit embarrassing when the publicity department has a more insightful grip on a film's semiotics than a professional film commentator.

Sarah Michelle Geller stars as Joanna Mills, a young woman whose life from age 11 has been blighted by haunting visions of an ominous stalker -- a curse that has lead to restlessness, self-mutilation and problems of identity. Her "return" to a small town in Texas is the catalyst for an escalation in the nature and intensity of her visions -- and leads to revelations that tie together discordant elements of her past and present, allowing Joanna and the victim of a murder to find a mutual resolution in more ways than one.

So on a plot level the film develops as a mystery-based narrative -- as many ghost stories do -- consisting of an investigation into events of the past or, as in this case, into the meaning of disturbances in the present that find their origins in the past.

What the film is not, however, is a horror movie in the gore/violence tradition -- though it contains some violence, more than a modicum of threat and a few splatterings of blood. The hoary old question as to whether its suspenseful, atmospheric approach means that it isn't, therefore, a horror movie is too silly to bother with, as the definition of "horror" as a genre thus assumed is one that would dispossess a rather large number of acknowledged horror films. For me, The Return is indeed a supernatural horror drama, and works its horrors through the occasional "scare" or creepy visual image; but more significantly through atmosphere and implication. If, as I believe, the horror genre deals with the violation of accepted reality and themes of unnatural intrusion from beyond the norm, then The Return is firmly within the genre.

Joanna experiences fragmented memories that do not seem to be her own, though subjectively she is at the centre of them. They involve violence and murder. Hints regarding the identity of the victim accumulate, but it is not until they lead to the murderer himself that the pieces fall into place. It may be that the ultimate revelation does not come as a great surprise to the viewer, but that doesn't mean that the confirmation and the details that inform that climax don't offer a dramatically satisfying conclusion. Indeed for me the unstated realisation that Joanna as she was at 11 is dead and that she was brought back through being inhabited by the murderer victim's spirit resonated strongly backwards into the events depicted in the film and gave me a chilling realisation of what such a revelation might mean, emotionally. Such a realisation is definitely the stuff of horror.

So what about the image in the poster? It gives us an eye blanched of colour, ashen and dead. Inside the eye is a hand, as though someone is inside trying to get out -- just as the murder victim's spirit is inside the body that had once belonged to Joanna Mills (who, strictly speaking is dead). As if that symbolic depiction of the theme isn't enough, throughout the film Joanna looks at herself in mirrors and reflections, as though she doesn't recognise herself; at times she appears to be trying to peer inside her eye, searching for something recognisable. This is why the "present day" of the film generally looks so pale and lifeless -- because it is, at least for the alien life inside Joanna that is struggling to remember where it came from. Only memory flashes of the past are in full, vibrant colour. The fractured memories, the grim tone, the sense of alienation are all direct visualisations of the ghost's dilemma.

The Return is a horror film of considerable style -- not irrelevant style, but style that creates an atmosphere that directly enhances the theme. It isn't a "teen horror" as I've seen it referred to. Apart from anything else, Geller's character is 26, and the film does not have any of the characteristics of the current crop of teen horrors. It asks for a mature appreciation -- and an attention that can pick up visual meanings without having them verbally expressed. Nor is it a feel-good picture; indeed the final "revelation" should leave anyone who has been paying attention and who is sensitive to the nuances being conveyed feeling decidedly unsettled.

I liked this film a lot, and the more I thought about it, the more I appreciated its intelligence and artistic coherence. Condemning it on the basis of irrelevant expectations or because Geller isn't playing Buffy the Vampire Slayer would be a shame.

17 July 2007

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Watch Me (Aust-2006, dir. Melanie Ansley)

If ghost films such as the Japanese Ring, Ju-On: the Grudge, Dark Water and Kairö, as well as various Korean, Thai and, yes, American variants, can be best understood as an aesthetic movement rather than as mere imitation (a position argued by David Kalat in his excellent book J-Horror), then Watch Me is the work of an Australian offshoot of the "School". This is its primary artistic heritage, despite phantom hints of Argento and other horror masters -- including Sam Raimi via one particularly noticable nod to his low-budget classic, The Evil Dead.

The Asian influence (along with others) is freely admitted on the film's website, but anyone well-versed in contemporary horror won't need a primer to see the J-Horror connections. There's the female ghost with long hair, partially hidden features and visually discordant movement (in Watch Me the hair is red rather than black -- and the way this colour visually segues into hints of bloodiness works extremely well -- and the ghost's "nightshirt" yellow). There's the technology-driven mode of propagation (here an email spam video clip). There's the background of violent exploitation (murder in the form of a snuff film). There's the strong female victim who is forced to face up to the viral "curse" and must investigate it in order to stop its spread. There's the relatively subtle and atmospheric approach to horror and the use of various techniques for unsettling the audience that are reminiscent of Hideo Nakata's modus operandi. Then there's the carefully utilised auditory landscape, a source of extreme creepiness...

But like the best of the post-Ring J-Horrors, Watch Me manages to achieve an identity of its own. What it does is take the subgenre's basic conceptual elements and forges its own vision of them, melding a slightly different narrative approach, subtle trope variants and some new thematic elements onto the template. Director Ansley and producer Sam Voutas may not be creating a new aesthetic, but they have produced an effective extension of the old one.

The film is cheaply made, there's no doubt about that, and this shows throughout. Resource limitations affect the depth and texture of the digital image and stops the film from achieving a greater expansiveness, both in terms of setting and narrative possibilities. This results in a conceptual glitch here and there, but cheapness need not translate into shoddy film-making. Ansley makes the most of what's at hand; she paces scenes for best dramatic effect, has a terrific sense of colour and movement and directs her actors well. Lead Frances Marrington is sympathetic and convincing as Tess Hooper (echoes of Tobe Hooper in the name perhaps?), a cinema-studies student whose friends view a spam email attachment headed "Watch Me" and subsequently die, their eyes sewn shut. Tanya McHenry is effectively weird as the redheaded ghost. Sam Voutas, though, is a highlight, giving an unsettling performance in a role that helps make Watch Me different from other J-Horror pastiches and gives it self-identity. His Taku, the "freak boy", is an unlikely "hero", but we believe in him as a character and his strained relationship with Hooper gives the fairly standard narrative line considerable added impact.

All in all, despite some minor narrative weaknesses and in defiance of its minimal budget, Watch Me proves to be an involving entertainment and a more-than-decent addition to the J-Horror aesthetic.

24 April 2007

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Urban Legends: Bloody Mary (US-2005, dir. Mary Lambert)

Though clearly seen as something of a throw-away by its director, Mary Lambert of Pet Semetary fame, this third installment in the Urban Legend series does offer enough by way of B-grade horror schlock to rise ever-so-slightly above its own derivativeness. Unlike the previous Urban Legend films, it is of a supernatural disposition, containing elements of such teen spectral revenge fests as Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II as well as ordinary slasher fare. It also suggests (and makes direct reference to) Candyman -- smugly claiming, in fact, that the "basis" of Clive Barker's tale post-dates the tale of Bloody Mary. At any rate, beyond the "say her name three times and she will appear" urban legend concept, the connection with Candyman is irrelevant -- as is the idea itself, by and large.

Overall, the film has some effective death scenes, develops its narrative in a way that isn't entirely one-dimensional and references the earlier films in the series with some pizzaz. Unfortunately it also succumbs to careless plotting and emotional shallowness -- as in the almost indifferent death of a sympathetic lead character, a death that elicits almost no reaction from the protagonist, who would have been expected to care deeply. Attempting to incorporate a real sense of grief, however, would have muddied the neatness of the film's ending, so it was clearly easier to ignore it altogether. Other significant characters come and go according to convenience rather than logic, as do narrative points, and there is a sense of undigested, on-the-spot pragmatism that doesn't do much to convince audiences that they should take this at all seriously, even on a pulp level.

Bloody Mary herself, however, is effective enough, managing to be both abjective and sympathetic in classic monster fashion. As depicted, her appearance and manner are influenced by Sadako from Ringu, of course, but this is inevitable given that film's current aesthetic dominance within ghost film culture. Nevertheless, she makes an effective antagonist and is largely responsible for making the film as entertaining as it is, albeit at a fairly minor level.

9 April 2007

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The Maid (Singapore-2005, dir. Kelvin Tong)

The Maid is an interesting cultural variant on the current Asian ghost craze. Made and set in Singapore, it tells the story of Rosa (played with affecting innocence by Alessandra de Rossi) -- a young woman from the Philippines who has come to the city of Singapore to earn money as a housemaid in order to pay for her younger brother's much-needed medical bills. She arrives in the midst of the Chinese Seventh Month -- or Hungry Ghost Month -- when the Gates of Hell are said to open and ghosts wander the streets seeking resolution or recompense for past grievances. As the Big City appears to be much more superstitious than her rural hometown, Rosa fails to take due account of the numerous "rules" designed to protect the innocent from the hungry ghosts (such as Never Sit in the Front Row at the Opera -- the breaking of which rule provides one of the movie's best frissons). As a result, Rosa finds herself haunted, unable to make a distinction between the living and the dead, both of which have agendas that become clearer as the film progresses. Events build toward a frightening (and nasty) climax as the past is inevitably resurrected and the motives of the living and the dead dovetail on the question of Rosa's fate.

Though The Maid reportedly received a significant amount of funding from Singapore's Media Development Authority, the film's budget was clearly small and it sometimes shows in the less-than-perfect lighting and the unimpressive quality of the soundtrack -- though it is hard to judge these aspects fairly given the poor transfer on the HK VCD I was viewing. Nevertheless, despite such possible negatives, the movie proves to be an involving experience, with decent acting and carefully paced narrative build-up that may even hold a few surprises for the unwary.

Though it portrays a Singapore that is a scary place to visit in the Seventh Month, a real hotbed of spectral activity, The Maid's cultural background (including its take on the role of imported Philippine maids), and its canny melding of Chinese traditions with J-Horror aesthetics, give it a unique appeal