Apollo 18

2011 found footage thing

Rating: 12/20

Plot: A trio of astronauts venture to the moon on a secret mission that NASA never tells us about. Those sons of bitches!

In space, no one can hear you say, "Puh-leeze!"

I saw a preview for this on the big screen during one of my rare trips to the theater, and I was pretty excited about it. A found footage horror flick that takes place on the moon? It's a really cool premise. And the moon stuff looked so good in the preview, even better than the stuff that NASA did with Neil Armstrong in their studios in the late-60s. The visuals in this are never an issue. There was never a moment in this movie that I didn't believe this was taking place on the moon. The filming is imperfect from a variety of cameras, as unprofessional as it should be since it's being shot by panicking astronauts. Some of the shakiness and jitteriness could induce seizures though. And this movie is suspenseful and scary. I was on edge for most of the movie until the end when I got frustrated and bored. The main issue with this movie is the astronauts are forced to say some really dumb things, and they do it in what I can only describe as a heroic monotone delivery. The movie is sans music, like a found footage thing should be, but it's got all kinds of chittering insect noises that often seem louder than they should be and eventually become grating. There were times when the chittering (the subtitles would say things like "Chittering intensifies," so that's not my word) almost seemed more like a soundtrack than the actual sounds of moon beings. A good found footage film isn't allowed to have anything in it that wouldn't be in the footage being found, and this one has some scenes from a barbecue that just don't make sense and a lot of shots of the astronauts sleeping. Of course, the first real scare is during one of those scenes, a scene of an astronaut going "Aaaaahh!" There's a surgery scene where this thing really jumps the crater (you know, because there are no sharks on the moon--or so NASA would have us believe), and this builds up to something so frustratingly stupid that it had me slapping my forehead. Rocks? Seriously? Rocks? This was disappointing because it could have been much, much better.

[Rec]

2007 found footage zombie movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A news reporter and cameraman doing a piece on the lives of firemen get trapped with a bunch of people in a quarantined apartment building. It's zombilarious!

First, there's nothing too intelligent or original about this. I want to get that out of the way right off the bat. Also, I want to throw my main gripe out there--the found footage realism is screwed up with this little what-where-they-thinking? camera trick in the middle of this. But if you're just wanting something scary in that things-jumping-out-and-scaring-you kind of way, this Blair-clone delivers pretty hard. Don't misunderstand. It's not The Blair Witch Project exactly. Here, the filmmakers don't depend solely on mood, ambiance, subtle creeps, and mere suggestions of the evil that is lurking about. No, with [Rec] (dumb title, by the way), you have a lot of the violence and mayhem take place right in front of the lone camera. I was impressed with the set-ups, almost a choreography, and the apartment building's winding stairwell and long hallways gave a lot of opportunities for some creative horror shots. The final scenes take place in a room packed with details. So there's creepiness in this movie, but there are also those Rarr! Creepy thing! scenes that made me pee a little bit. And there are a lot of those. If you're into that sort of thing, I'm sure you'll like this. That this found footage genre hasn't gotten old yet, at least for me, is pretty amazing. I think I like that this genre's got legs.

Trollhunter

2010 troll movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Some documentarians--a couple guys and a gal--investigate murmurings of some kind of monster in the woods. Hey, wait a minute!

Actually, the kids are trying to figure out what's killing bears, but they stumble upon a guy who claims to be the titular hunter of trolls hired by the government to keep these giant trolls in their place and the secret of their existence a secret. He reluctantly agrees to let them tag along, probably because the girl is kind of cute.

Hell yeah! Rampaging trolls? I'm all over that. This puts a new spin on both monster movies and the found footage genre. The special effects are very good in that the giant trolls manage to mesh with the settings, but I do with they would have done a little more. They're really kind of there to be seen and then later turned to stone or evaporated. One would think that this found footage stuff would get old, but this Blair Witch-but-with-special-effects works because it's got a sense of humor. It toys with Norwegian folklore and never quite takes itself seriously enough to be a straight horror movie. The acting works well enough to keep the "This is real!" claim at the beginning afloat even though there isn't a single person on earth who is going to watch this and think it's real.

Well, I take that back. I did have a student this week who genuinely thought the Paranormal Activity movies were real. Maybe I should show him this and see what he thinks.

I liked the title character played by Otto Jespersen, ruggedly and aloofly, and I may have given this movie a bonus point for how pretty Norway looked. This is a very cool movie with a nicely indeterminate ending, and I'd say it's a must-see if you're into trolls.

The Last Broadcast

1998 horror mockumentary

Rating: 8/20

Plot: A documentarian attempts to get to the bottom of the gruesome murders of some public access show hosts looking for the Jersey Devil. It's horrifying!

I want to get settled right off the bat--the only thing that this movie has in common with the far superior Blair Witch Project is that they both have a lot of trees in them. Only a small portion of this is found footage stuff. The rest is complex and gimmicky with all kinds of television trickery and those big sound effects you hear when you're watching those television expose things. The guy making the documentary got on my nerves and misused the word "ironic," and the acting from the rest of the cast was just not good enough to carry this thing. Things get repetitious and tiresome, and there's not a single moment of this where there's any real tension or scares. By the time we get to the big twist at the end, things stop making sense almost entirely. Not only that, it confuses matters by breaking its own pseudo-documentary rules. If anything, this made me appreciate the brilliance of Blair Witch even more. The simplicity of that one, and Paranormal Activity as well, is what makes that one successful. The makers of this one bite off way more than they can chew, and they end up with a big mess.

The Blair Witch Project

1999 horror movie

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Some kids explore the woods with a couple video cameras in an attempt to make a documentary about a local urban legend. They die!

I always avoided seeing this a second time because I didn't figure it could be anywhere near as good as the first time. And it really isn't. The initial shock of watching this no-budget horror movie without a single damn witch just isn't going to be duplicated in subsequent viewings. But the movie, one that my brother says is the best horror movie ever made, is still so well done. They really do a ton with their one hundred dollar budget, and the three principals do a good job of keeping this thing real. I've said it before--if the actors fail in something like this, the whole foundation falls to pieces. There might be a handful of moments where they slip and don't quite respond like normal folk, but for the most part they sell this. This movie feels very loose, more or less unscripted, and I think it benefits from that. The three probably look genuinely freaked out at times because they are genuinely freaked out. I also like how Blair Witch builds tension, subtly and with never an over-the-top moment. The mystery progresses realistically, and the rather ambiguous ending keeps the feeling of unease alive long after you take this out of the dvd player. Blair Witch really succeeds because it doesn't do things the way regular movies do--the unknown actors, the lack of script, the absence of a score, the refusal to ever show us anything that resembles a witch. And unlike most movies like this that unleash a caboodle of copycats, I don't mind it so much because a lot of those copycats are actually pretty good.

Paranormal Activity 2

2010 horror sequel

Rating: 11/20

Plot: Some demon thing is bullying a family, threatening to swipe their baby. And their little dog, too. It slams the cabinet door, makes messes, and stays out well past curfew. Oh, and it might be having sex with the pool cleaning device. If this is anything like the first movie [SPOILER ALERT: It kind of is.], then these people are probably going to die. And the dog. Dog's not making it either.

Second verse, same as the first? Except this bunch of paranormal activity involves a dog and a baby. The dog's good, maybe my favorite animal actor of the year. This builds suspense really well and has some moments that about made my stomach leave my body, but unless my recollection of the first movie is just wrong, the scares here are more of the loud, sudden noise or sudden movement variety than pure unadulterated psychological horror. This movie's got a pattern. It lulls you to sleep by showing you the series of blue-hued (see poster) security video where nothing is happening unless you count a pool cleaning robot thingy moving around as "something happening." But whereas the first Paranormal Activity movie managed to seem original despite borrowing heavily from Blair Witch, this one seems too much like a gimmicky Xeroxed copy. The acting's not bad although the dad doesn't always seem like a normal guy to me, and I'm still impressed with the no-budget affects and the amount of creepiness this conjures up. A lot of it is that it just takes away so much that is familiar about traditional horror movies--the music, a lurking camera, changes in perspective. The sameness of it all really creates a feeling of uneasiness. I do wonder how much the performances in this know beforehand or if the director just sticks them in situations and then makes things happen. I suppose that I could look that up, but I don't care about the movie enough to do it.

Cannibal Holocaust

1980 first "found footage" film

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A quartet of cocky and shady documentarians travel to the jungles of South America to film some of the inhabitants. They never return. An anthropologist is sent to get the help of a guide and find out what happened to the kids. He finds their skulls and procures some film footage containing their last moments as something other than food. After he returns to the States, network executives, convinced that showing the footage to the masses is a good idea, watch the film with the anthropologist.

Give credit (or blame?) this for the Blair Witches and Paranormal Activities of the world. And being a sort of prototype, and a low budget one at that, it's understandably imperfect, a little rough around the edges, and uneven. The found footage stuff is really a film within the film, and the outer layer is just ho-hum traditional stuff. Knowing that the found footage stuff was coming up, I couldn't stop wondering who the heck was filming the anthropologist during his journey. The found footage stuff is as gruesome as violence and horror gets in film, for better and for worse. So realistic were the scenes of death, rape, and titular cannibalism, in fact, that director Ruggero Deodato was arrested and had to show a court how a scene featuring impaling was pulled off because people actually suspected the actors and actresses were murdered. I'm not sure the scenes are that realistic, but they are brutal and realistic enough to put this firmly in the not-for-the-squeamish category. Ironically, a film-within-the-film-that-is-within-the-film (sort of) does show actual firing squad execution footage, but guess that real violence is copacetic. The most visually disturbing or cringe-worthy scene in the entire movie doesn't feature human violence at all, by the way. No, the death and subsequent devouring of a poor turtle is, and I doubt I watch something more difficult in a long, long time. I did always secretly wonder what the inside parts of a turtle looked like though. I'm not sure Deodata is trying to say anything about the media or filmmakers treatment of third world peoples or trying to expose some of society's ills or if he's just going for the shock. I suspect it's the latter, and a lot of people would find this movie to be nothing more than a repulsive, exploitative piece of trash. I can understand that view; in fact, I wonder why so much of the violence shown had to be sexual and could have done without some really unnecessary nudity. I can't say I enjoyed all of Cannibal Holocaust, but you have to give this Italian movie some credit for ingenuity and accidentally inventing a sub-genre at the same time.

If you've got the balls, take the Cannibal Holocaust challenge. I was able to watch even the most gruesome bits of this movie while eating a noodle salad, a mango, and sunflower seeds. What can you eat while watching Cannibal Holocaust?