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Three horror films
Nov. 1st, 2013 12:15 amIn keeping with the end of October, Other Kenjari and I have watched three good horror movies over the last week.
Mama (2013)
This movie was wonderfully creepy and compelling. It starts out with the disappearance into the woods of two sisters, ages 3 and 1. Five years later, they are found living in an abandoned cabin, semi-feral. The girls are given over to the care of their uncle Lucas (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and his rocker girlfriend Annabel (Jessica Chastain). It soon becomes clear that the girls may not have been alone in that cabin and that they are not exactly alone in their new home, either.
Mama is extremely well done, and I highly recommend it. The direction is terrific. Andrés Muschietti makes great use of the contrast between foreground and background and does great things with the edges of frames so that the viewer is often very aware of things that are not on camera. I also liked the way the house was filmed - it seemed both big and claustrophobic, like there was a lot of space but it was very sharply divided and boxed off. I really appreciated Muschietti's restraint with jump cuts, too. His sparing use of them made them all the more effective. The effects are very good. Apparently, the person playing Mama is able to dislocate joints at will, so that there was less reliance on CGI. The performances are great - the little girls who play the sisters get just the right balance of creepy and innocent. I especially liked Jessica Chastain who really nails the tensions between Annabel's reluctance to take on a parental role and her desire to do right by Lucas and the girls.
( mild spoilers )
Carrie (1976)
I think this version holds up really well, despite its age and low budget. It sticks tightly to the plot and moves along quickly, getting right to the meat of things.
Let me get my one complaint out of the way. The opening shower scene is way too heavy on the soft-core male-gaze titillation. It's much more a fantasy about girls locker rooms than any kind of reality. Plus, I find it hard to believe that anyone in Carrie's position, bullied at school and abused at home, would be that unselfconscious and relaxed in a public shower. The scene bears little resemblance to the way it is in the book.
The rest of the movie was quite good, though. Sissy Spacek aptly captures all the fragility of adolescence. Piper Laurie is really creepy as Carrie's mother, too. I especially liked how the film brings out the way in which this is a horror story on two levels. There's the more obvious horror of Carrie wreaking havoc on the prom. But the movie is pretty clear that there's ample horror in what is done to Carrie as well: the bullying, her mother's fanaticism and abuse, and that awful final prank.
The Shining (1980)
It has been years and years since I last saw this film, and there was a lot I didn't remember about it: how long it is, how slow the build up of the horror is. But it was just as good as I remembered it. Kubrick does a great job of making the Overlook Hotel itself a character - watching the movie you really feel it as a presence in its own right. I think the length and the slowness, as well as some really amazing use of music and silence*, helps to build and intensify the atmosphere of isolation and remoteness. I also like how it never really stops being creepy - even when the pace quickens and there is more action at the end, it never loses its feeling of creeping dread.
*The famous elevator of blood scene is done in either complete silence or just a simple, quiet drone, which is surprisingly effective.
Mama (2013)
This movie was wonderfully creepy and compelling. It starts out with the disappearance into the woods of two sisters, ages 3 and 1. Five years later, they are found living in an abandoned cabin, semi-feral. The girls are given over to the care of their uncle Lucas (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and his rocker girlfriend Annabel (Jessica Chastain). It soon becomes clear that the girls may not have been alone in that cabin and that they are not exactly alone in their new home, either.
Mama is extremely well done, and I highly recommend it. The direction is terrific. Andrés Muschietti makes great use of the contrast between foreground and background and does great things with the edges of frames so that the viewer is often very aware of things that are not on camera. I also liked the way the house was filmed - it seemed both big and claustrophobic, like there was a lot of space but it was very sharply divided and boxed off. I really appreciated Muschietti's restraint with jump cuts, too. His sparing use of them made them all the more effective. The effects are very good. Apparently, the person playing Mama is able to dislocate joints at will, so that there was less reliance on CGI. The performances are great - the little girls who play the sisters get just the right balance of creepy and innocent. I especially liked Jessica Chastain who really nails the tensions between Annabel's reluctance to take on a parental role and her desire to do right by Lucas and the girls.
( mild spoilers )
Carrie (1976)
I think this version holds up really well, despite its age and low budget. It sticks tightly to the plot and moves along quickly, getting right to the meat of things.
Let me get my one complaint out of the way. The opening shower scene is way too heavy on the soft-core male-gaze titillation. It's much more a fantasy about girls locker rooms than any kind of reality. Plus, I find it hard to believe that anyone in Carrie's position, bullied at school and abused at home, would be that unselfconscious and relaxed in a public shower. The scene bears little resemblance to the way it is in the book.
The rest of the movie was quite good, though. Sissy Spacek aptly captures all the fragility of adolescence. Piper Laurie is really creepy as Carrie's mother, too. I especially liked how the film brings out the way in which this is a horror story on two levels. There's the more obvious horror of Carrie wreaking havoc on the prom. But the movie is pretty clear that there's ample horror in what is done to Carrie as well: the bullying, her mother's fanaticism and abuse, and that awful final prank.
The Shining (1980)
It has been years and years since I last saw this film, and there was a lot I didn't remember about it: how long it is, how slow the build up of the horror is. But it was just as good as I remembered it. Kubrick does a great job of making the Overlook Hotel itself a character - watching the movie you really feel it as a presence in its own right. I think the length and the slowness, as well as some really amazing use of music and silence*, helps to build and intensify the atmosphere of isolation and remoteness. I also like how it never really stops being creepy - even when the pace quickens and there is more action at the end, it never loses its feeling of creeping dread.
*The famous elevator of blood scene is done in either complete silence or just a simple, quiet drone, which is surprisingly effective.
