Thy Fearful Symmetry

Burning Bright (2010)

Director: Carlos Brooks

Rated: PG13

I dug up this film while going through Garret Dillahunt's IMDb page—trying to find at least one movie he'd been in where he wasn't a bad guy. The man is typecast, I swear. I found this recent (sort of) title and, having never heard of it (despite its original premise), decided to check it out.

It's about a young woman and her autistic brother trapped in a boarded-up house with a Bengal tiger during a hurricane.

Trust me, it's actually pretty good.

The film opens with a cameo by Meat Loaf. He's not in the credits, but it's kind of hard to miss the guy when you're from my generation. Dillahunt's character, Johnny, is trying to buy a Bengal tiger for his safari venture and Meat Loaf is warning the man about the danger of the specific tiger he's got in the cage. It's attacked people before.

There are two things going on here. Johnny has spent, like, all of the family's money (he's the stepfather—the mother committed suicide) on this safari thing and has basically wasted it all. Our protagonist, Kelly (Briana Evigan), needs to send her brother to a hospital for his special needs, however, and they can't afford it. She has a scholarship for college, but must start within the next semester because she has cited family issues to defer twice beforehand. Which means she is putting off college to take care of her little brother. She confronts her stepfather and they argue.

The second plot point is the coming hurricane. The house is boarded up tight and Kelly falls asleep. She wakes during the storm, finds a note from Johnny saying that he went to the store, and then sees a huge Bengal tiger cross the hallway. Did I mention that he's been starved for a while now?

She can't leave the house because it's all boarded up from outside. She can't get through to emergency services on her cell phone because the call volume is so high during the hurricane. Spoiler, Johnny is the one who let the tiger loose in the house. He has hunkered down in a bar for the duration of the storm—possibly with the intention of collecting the insurance money in the event of the kids' deaths.

Pictured: an utter douchebag

And he would have gotten away with it had Kelly been less resourseful. There is a brilliantly filmed moment where she's hiding from the tiger in the laundry chute—her bare feet sliding and gripping the metal as the animal prowls below, peeking up the laundry chute when he hears her.

It's not a masterpiece of a movie. It drags here and there and the plot is a little questionable (did Meat Loaf just advertise "man-eating tiger" on CraigsList or something?). But it is a bit of a unique twist on the old "killer in the house" trope. Because of the hurricane, Kelly can't simply grab her brother and run outside. She can't get through to the authorities because emergency services is too clogged up. Dialogue kind of suffers, though, in place of these riveting moments with the tiger. The tiger, himself, is cleverly filmed. This is not a computer generated animal. This tiger is real and very menacing. Remember the scene with the tiger in Gladiator and how that was so cool? Okay, maybe not, but my point is that the filming technique in Burning Bright is something worth seeing.

Now, is this movie worth buying? Well, the DVD comes with special features, so it is. In my mind, a DVD has infinite re-watchability if it includes something like a behind the scenes documentary or a commentary track. So, check it out. The set-pieces with the tiger alone are very much worth seeing. And it's a clever take on the "killer in my house" trope since Kelly can't leave due to the hurricane. Even if she managed to get outside the house, where the hell is she going to go to get out of the storm?


Nowhere, that's where. 

That French Horror Film That I Will Never Watch Again

Martyrs (2008)

Director: Pascal Laugier

Rated: R

Let me begin this review with a little story. Back in 2008, I watched this French movie called High Tension and I decided that I rather liked the French horror genre. So I followed that up with Frontier(s), which had waaay more gore in it than I'm used to. That was sort of the signal to "stop," but I didn't pay it any attention. I was enjoying a new side of foreign film and thought the premise for Martyrs sounded interesting. So I checked it out.

I will never, ever, watch this movie again.

Once was enough.

The comparison of violence I witnessed in the last, oh, half hour of Martyrs to the entirety of High Tension is ridiculous. Martyrs put me through the emotional wringer and left me feeling limp and sick to my stomach. I cried for, like, a solid hour after watching this movie. Messy crying, too—none of that delicate "oh, let me dab at my eyes with this tissue" crap.

It is a beautifully shot movie. It is extremely well-acted. The special effects are so good that one scene in particular just had me gaping in terror instead of wondering how they did it. You know that moment when an awesome stunt happens and you wonder to yourself "how did they do that? How much corn syrup did they end up using?" That never happened while I was watching Martyrs. I was just sucked in. The story had a hold on me and I believed what I was seeing.

And I never want to see it again.

Here's the IMDb summary:

A young woman's quest for revenge against the people who kidnapped and tormented her as a child leads her and a friend, who is also a victim of child abuse, on a terrifying journey into a living hell of depravity.

"Tormented" is such a light word for them to use. No, she was tortured. But don't go comparing this in your head to Hostel or Saw. Those movies seem to celebrate their violence. Martyrs is shocking when the violence happens. It's not there to be celebrated, it's there to be a part of the story that's being told of this girl and her need for revenge and her only friend's difficulty coping with it. There was no letting up in it at all. There are no moments of tension-breaking humor and no cutaways to secondary characters on a second plot point. I wouldn't necessarily call it "meaningless," because there is a point to it—a story is being told about some terrible people who do terrible things for a specific reason to these girls.

Here is what one YouTube reviewer had to say about it:

I am only including a video for this particular movie because of how difficult it is to explain how good Martyrs is and how much I can't make myself watch it again. SlimmBob here does a pretty good job of letting you know the main story without spoiling plot points and showing just how emotionally drained it can make you.

Here's what I wrote for Amazon.com in November of 2009:

One for the strong of will…

...not the faint of heart or mind.

Not to give any plot points away, Martyrs is—succinctly—good. It's one of those films that you watch with your hands cupped over your mouth, tears pouring down your face... At no time did I ever lean back in my seat with relief. Not even at the end. In fact, I started at the credits dumbly until they finished.

It is a powerful film. The narrative unfolds slowly and halfway through it one is left wondering where this could possibly be going and how on earth can it get any worse than it already has? Then it does. The main character is plunged into a situation that I will not delve deeper into to save those who may watch. As a warning, you may only want to watch it once (as I did). While the characters resonate deeply with me and I am invested in both of their stories, I don't think I can watch this happen again. But I do recommend it for it's dramatic narrative. As far as story-telling goes, Martyrs weaves one hell of a tale that leaves the viewer thinking about the outcome for hours after you have turned the DVD player off.

As an avid horror film watcher, I am a poor gauge to measure how "gory" something is (after seeing so many I've gotten rather desensitized to the imagery and this, frankly, worries me). I'll put it this way: emotionally, by the end of it all, I felt like curling into a dark corner and crying for a while (and I did end up bawling for a some time). And yes, it is violent. The images in the last twenty to fifteen minutes were hard for me to watch, but I was just too transfixed (in the "Oh God, Oh God, Oh God" sense of the word) to turn away.

There is talk about remaking Martyrs for the American audience with the producers of Twilight, and to that I say: "Pppffffttt. That'll never happen."

And I hope it doesn't. Because a version of this movie that's palatable to America's current audience would be impossible to watch. They'd change the things that made the French version so chilling just to keep from offending anyone. They'd dumb it down. In fact, the guy they want to direct it, Daniel Stamm, said this:

"[The original film] is very nihilistic. The American approach [that I'm looking at] would go through all that darkness but then give a glimmer of hope. You don't have to shoot yourself when it's over."

That whole "there is no hope" thing was kind of part of the whole movie, so... No. Just, "no."

Plus, I'd have to watch it again.

And I won't do that.

I can't make myself recommend this one to everyone. It was an excellent example of filmmaking, but it was just so... If your curiosity has been piqued but you can't make yourself watch something that will either make you feel utterly depressed or sick, then go read Critical Dave's review of it (it's full of spoilers). If you can handle it? Do a little research on it first and watch it.

Here is the trailer:

Not Your Average Slasher Movie

Tucker & Dale Vs Evil (2010)

Director: Eli Craig

Rated: R

I recently came across this movie after browsing through the horror tag over on Trailer Addict, and I couldn't be happier for finding it. The premise of the movie is a flip on the tired old "college kids being hunted in the woods" one that we have seen over and over. Instead, the unfortunate hillbillies are mistaken for murderous kidnappers and are attacked by the college kids.

Tucker (Alan Tudyk) and Dale (Tyler Labine) are a pair of best friends set out to a cabin in the woods of West Virginia to fix it up as a vacation home and do a little fishing. Early on in the movie you get the feeling that these two have known each other since they were little kids (which is proven in a line of dialogue later on), and they are a pair of really likable guys. 

In parallel, we have the stereotypical college kids heading out to the backwoods to party. The usual horror tropes follow: the kids are nearly in a car accident as Tucker is pulling out in the road, the kids are off-put by Tucker's appearance at a gas station, and Dale accidentally scares the crap out of the kids by trying to flirt with Allison (Katrina Bowden) whilst inexplicably holding a scythe (he was given advice from Tucker to "smile and laugh" and the payoff is both hilarious and slightly sad). 

Let's be honest here. He's adorable.

So, plot things happen, Allison cracks her head on a rock while getting ready to go skinny dipping, Dale (who is night fishing with Tucker and trying not to peep at Allison while she takes her shirt off) jumps in and saves her from drowning, and her friends see this:

"We got your friend!"

They assume that Dale is trying to eat her face. Because they're kind of dimwitted. They run off, leaving Tucker and Dale to return to the cabin with Allison. They bandage her head, dress her in some less revealing clothes, and Dale makes her breakfast. Twice. 

Meanwhile, back with the college kids, they are all assuming the worst has happened to Allison. Chad, the "leader" of the group, vows revenge. One character, Chuck, decides to go back to the car to drive into town and get help. Upon finding Tucker's cabin, everyone assumes the worst. Everyone except Mitch (whose name I only know because it's on his shirt), who keeps interjecting with actual logic. Such as: "perhaps they took Allison to the hospital," and "it's just a cabin, it doesn't mean they're psycho killers." Mitch is therefore the only smart one of the bunch. But he's still nervous about just going in there alone.

To be fair, this place does remind me a lot of the cabin in Evil Dead.

Meanerwhile, after some awkward explanations, Allison and Dale end up playing a trivia game together while Tucker does some yard work. All while this is going on, Mitch is approaching the cabin to talk with either Tucker or Dale, and Tucker is using a chainsaw to break up a tree stump. Which has a bee's nest inside it. This leads to Tucker fleeing the immediate area all while swinging the chainsaw around like Leatherface and causes Mitch (and the others) to run in a panic.

This is when the insane accidental deaths start happening.

Back with the trivia game, we're given a little more insight into Dale. It's revealed that he is incredibly good at retaining information but never made it past the third grade. He considers himself stupid because of that fact. Allison tells him: "there's a difference between education and intellect." 

In general, Dale has very low self-esteem. We see Tucker often try and boost the guy's mood and point out the positives in Dale's personality, but it's hard to just suddenly gain self-worth when it's so easy to think negatively about oneself. It also doesn't help when Tucker loses his temper with Dale and blames him for some things. 

Allison then proceeds to nail the premise of the movie on the proverbial head when she says that: "so many of the major problems and conflicts in the world are caused by a lack of communication."

Such as: "we've got your friend."

Tucker returns, covered in bee stings, and tells Allison that he saw one of her friends while he was outside. Allison suggests she go find them herself, but Dale is rightfully concerned about her leaving considering she hit her head hard enough to knock herself out for quite a while. Instead, he and Tucker head out.

Then the group of college kids find Mitch and assume that Tucker and Dale killed him. 

There's a nice touch here where one character is starting to call someone on her cell phone, but Chad breaks it in a fit, claiming that it'll never work out in the woods. She could have gotten a through to someone if the idiot hadn't destroyed her phone—which is a nice turn on the "phones don't work out here" trope so often used in horror movies. 

Chad is starting to show signs of being, well, a little unhinged. It does not help whatsoever that he and the other college kids overhear an out-of-context conversation between Tucker and Dale. It really doesn't help when Dale decides it would be a good idea to leave them all a note to let them know that Allison is safe. 

It really, really doesn't help that Dale wrote the note with a freaking axe.

So things get worse. College kids die like they're competing for Darwin awards. Allison gets knocked unconscious again, Chuck finds a cop who was established earlier on in the movie, and shenanigans ensue.

Stupid: diving headfirst into a wood chipper. 

The movie just keeps escalating from here on out, and I won't give away anymore spoilers because it's worth watching. Alan Tudyk is perfect, Tyler Labine is a big ole softy, and Katrina Bowden is blissfully normal (especially in comparison to the other two girls who are pretty much just caricatures).

Essentially, Tucker & Dale Vs Evil is a spoof movie for the "creepy/murderous hillbillies" horror genre. I would have liked to have a better idea of who each of the college kids were, considering I didn't know half of their names. That, however, is the only complaint I have for the movie on a whole. Well, that, and one continuity issue regarding fingers that bothered me. I do recommend it, though. 

Watch it for Tucker and Dale.

All in all, Tucker & Dale Vs Evil is a fun movie to watch. Go buy it, rent it, or whatever it.