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Reviews
Four Boxes (2009)
A truly daring and ingeniously original thriller
Four Boxes requires a lot of patience, but it's well worth the investment of your time. A little less than an hour into this film, I was sitting here asking myself - not for the first time - why I was watching such a boring and pointless movie. Then, all of a sudden, everything changed, and Four Boxes reached right out and grabbed me. In just a few shocking seconds of revelation, the filmmakers press all of the buttons for suspense and horror. It's instant brilliance, in my opinion. Then, having cinematically punched you in the face, the filmmakers follow that up with another surprising slap across the chops that completely re-frames what you just saw. Then, determined not to fall back on any conventionality, these guys deliver a decidedly weird and unexpected ending. There's more originality and daring filmmaking in this low budget, independent film's final twenty-five minutes than you could possibly scrape up across all of Hollywood.
The first two thirds of this movie seems like an exercise in futility about three characters living lives of quiet desperation. Trevor Grainger (Justin Kirk) and Rob Rankus (Sam Rosen) are two exceedingly average guys who supplement their incomes by acquiring the possessions of dead loners and selling them on EBAY. As they temporarily move in to clean out the house of the late Bill Zill, they're joined by Amber Croft (Terryn Westbrook), a girl who used to date Trevor but is now engaged to Rob. Apart from some love triangle friction, there isn't much going on here at all. Zill was apparently a pretty weird dude, though, who seemingly left behind some cryptic clues about something. For the most part, though, our characters spend a lot of time watching this little web site Rob discovered called Four Boxes. As he explains it, the site began with a woman broadcasting live video feeds from four different rooms in her home; then she moved out, leaving the cameras in place. The new tenant, a seriously weird dude the friends nickname "Havoc," apparently has no idea that his personal life is being broadcast all over the Internet. He sleeps in a bat-cage, frequently dons a gas mask, and seems to be making more than a few bombs. The question our characters face is whether or not what they are seeing is actually real and, if so, what - if anything - they should do about it. All of that just serves to set up the real meat of the story, though - and I'm not going to give anything away as far as that is concerned.
Some people are going to give up on this movie before it delivers its impressive payload. The characters are rather pathetic, uninteresting, and downright depressing, making it hard to care what might happen to any of them. You may think you're watching the worst movie ever made, but I'm telling you to hang in there. When the you-know-what hits the fan, you're going to want to be there. Four Boxes - made for a mere forty thousand dollars, is billed as "part thriller, part dark comedy, part social satire" - and, in the end, it is all of that and more.
The Ward (2010)
Everything a John Carpenter film shouldn't be -- uninspired, derivative, and predictable
I certainly didn't suspect such a rookie-like ending from John Carpenter, and I have to say that those final moments take something away from an already somewhat weak storyline leading up to it. Perhaps all those years away from directing feature-length films has left Carpenter a little rusty; even apart from the droll predictability of the ending, The Ward just doesn't strike me as the work of a master director. The film succeeds in drawing you into the story, but you never truly bond with the characters and there is very little in the way of real suspense or horror. Carpenter is seemingly content to keep reaching his hand into the same old bag of tricks that every other Hollywood horror director has relied upon for years and years. The Ward isn't a bad film, but it's certainly a disappointing John Carpenter film - derivative, much too predictable, and far too reliant on scare tactics that stopped being scary in the 1980s.
We don't know much about Kristen (Amber Heard) when she is first brought to North Bend Psychiatric Hospital. She's bruised and battered and wearing nothing but a slip - just the way police found her after she burned down a farmhouse for reasons even she can't explain. Even though she doesn't remember anything before the fire, the whole amnesia thing doesn't seem to bother her a bit, though -- she is far too concerned with escaping from the psych ward. I can't say I blame her, really - what with some spooky and hideous looking girl roaming the halls at night and stealing her blanket from her locked room. On the other hand, the place isn't all that bad for a psych ward, especially given the fact that there are only four other girls in the entire ward, none of whom are the drooling zombie type roaming the less restricted halls. Apparently, Kristen and the other girls are part of some experiment on the part of Dr. Stringer (Jared Harris). Iris (Lyndsy Fonseca) is a talented sketch artist; Sarah's (Danielle Panabaker) only fault seems to be the type of self-conceit that goes along with being beautiful; Zoey (Laura-Leigh) has the intellect of a child; only Emily (Meryl Streep's daughter Mamie Gummer) demonstrates the type of behavior that would typically be considered crazy. A rebel at heart, Kristen proves a rather trying patient for Dr. Springer, Nurse Lundt, and the orderlies, attempting to escape on multiple occasions. She tries to tell them that there's a ghost on the ward who is trying to kill her, but of course they don't believe her. Things only get worse when the other girls begin disappearing.
If this sounds a lot like your run-of-the-mill Hollywood horror plot, that's because that is exactly what it is. There is nothing her that any horror fan hasn't already seen before - probably in more effective films than this one. Here and there, Carpenter manages to generate a slight amount of tension and suspense, but these moments are fleeting - and there are no chills to be had from the sudden appearance of the ghost in any situation. Truth be told, Carpenter even fails to generate an atmosphere appropriate for any mental health ward - haunted or not. His over-reliance on character stereotypes and utterly predictable plot twists make this a most uninspired effort. Even a much less renowned director could have phoned this one in and achieved similar results.
Special Dead (2006)
An instant cult classic
I've been dying to see this movie since I first heard of it late last year. Sure, we could talk all day about just how "wrong" this movie is, but why not sit back, toss those bunched-up PC panties aside for a freaking hour and a half, and enjoy the heck out of this hilarious zombie movie already enjoying a cult following. And for what it's worth, name me one other movie that transforms the mentally challenged into heroes. That's what I thought. Anyway, Special Dead is just hilarious, not only milking numerous stereotypes for all they're worth, but kicking them once they're proverbially down. The zombies are just downright disgusting, their grey skin peeling off in bunches, their mouths filled with meat, blood, dirt, and heaven knows what else, and their blood just waiting to shoot out in mini-geysers as soon as they're attacked. I don't know what the chicken-eating zombie was actually eating, but it looked even nastier than the real thing. Low-budget horror filmmakers could learn a lot from watching this movie. Even the soundtrack, featuring the likes of Dark Reign and Eating Alice, is pretty kicking - although nothing tops Andy Allen's unique campfire song (there's even a sing-along version before the ending credits).
As the tagline says, "Sometimes heroes ride the short bus," and in this case they ride it to Camp Special Dude owned and operated by Cameron "Snuff" Stone (Larrs Jackson, who was just hilarious, especially on the topic of zombie horses), who bought the camp years ago for a song - because, we soon learn, it was infested with zombies. Snuff's second in command is his son Machiavelli "Mack" Stone (Jason Brubaker). Mack only seems to care about making time with female counselors Cassie (Amy Wade) and Harley (Haneka Haynes), but he turns out to have real skills when it comes to dispatching zombies. The "special" kids include Snuff's wheelchair-bound daughter Dale (Gia Franzia); Todd (Anthony Rutowicz), whose loud talking, hideous toboggan, and talent for making all kinds of things out of popsicle sticks do little to help him convince Dale to be his girlfriend; an uncommunicative mountain of flesh who could well be descended from Tor Johnson (David Reynolds); a shy "helmet head" (April Wade); and several others of less importance to the story. Adding greatly to the fun is Eriq (Jah Shams), a young gangster bound for boot camp who was accidentally placed on the wrong bus. All of the actors were darn near brilliant, if you ask me (especially Franzia and Rutowicz).
Don't write any of these characters off too soon, not even the most challenged among them. While guys like Mack rely mostly on obvious weapons such as shotguns, sickles, numchuks - yes, numchuks - and good, old-fashioned bare fists, the campers tend to adopt more unconventional fighting methods. Of course, not everyone can survive, so you get the additional treat of watching special campers taking on their now-zombified peers. You may want to turn your head at one point, though, as Mack demonstrates a most disgusting, non-lethal zombie-controlling method.
Now, maybe you're thinking you won't see any sex or nudity in a film like this - well, think again. You, along with some of the voyeuristic campers, will definitely see "boobies" at Camp Special Dude. You'll also hear plenty of foul language (of course, if I were fighting for my life against zombies, I would be cursing up a blue streak, too). For the most part, though, this is a genuinely original and creative film (a real rarity in the American-made horror genre). Just remember that everything you see here is all in the name of gory fun. Where else are you going to see a zombie with Tourette Syndrome? Needless to say, some people will feel deeply offended and outraged by this film (and most of them will undoubtedly condemn it without ever seeing so much as a trailer), but Special Dead wears such sobriquets as "the most offensive zombie movie ever made" with pride. I'll be enjoying this movie numerous times in the coming years.
The Votive Pit (2006)
A brutally honest, surrealistic look at American public education
The Votive Pit serves up a brutally honest, surrealistic look at American public education from the point of view of the system's front line warriors, the teachers. They are an eclectic mix an extremely eclectic mix of individuals, some of them tip-toeing on the brink of madness. Besieged on all sides by unruly students, patronizing and unhelpful administrators, unhappy parents, and of course the capricious whims of lawmakers, the eighth grade teachers of Odyssey Middle School are floundering in the deep end of the pool. This noxious cauldron has all kinds of nasty ingredients threatening to boil over: the increasingly disturbing behavior of students, teachers' inability to discipline them effectively, the problematic strictures put down by legislators who know nothing about the reality of public education, problematic input (or lack thereof) from parents, the contentious issue of religion in the schools, and ultimately the plague of school violence. With so much educational angst building up not to mention one character's increasingly surrealistic waking dreams it's inevitable that the whole thing ends up in bloodshed.
The film is open to a variety of interpretations, but I would say that the story is built around the character of Bald Man (Shamrock McShane), a science teacher who is striving to understand who and what he is, why he is there, and what education is supposed to be about. Bald Man is teetering on madness, and some of the later scenes seem to be, to some degree, products of his disturbed mind a fact which makes the second half of the film a little confusing. I found a second viewing to be a great help in understanding it all. Bald Man has gone several days without eating or sleeping, and he walks around with his broken doorknob, wondering if it is some sort of talisman. My favorite character by far, though, is Edna (Sara Morsey), a history teacher who is less than two weeks away from retirement. You get the sense that Edna was at one time a committed teacher who took pride in her job, but time and changing conditions within the school have transformed her into a bitter, unhappy woman who is far from shy about her complaints. According to Bald Man, Edna is "hanging in there like a rusty fishhook" (a line that's just too darn good not to quote). She longs for the days of old, when kids actually wanted to learn and administrators didn't have teachers running through patronizing, useless hoops. One half of the Cold War Ladies, she is joined by the younger but equally fed up language arts teacher, Gladys (Rachel Iannelli), who strikes me as something of a nineteenth century schoolmarm stuck in the 21st century classroom. "Professor" Dedalus (Scot Davis) is everything Gladys is not, a free thinker who has his own radical teaching style not only does he refuse to play by the book, he disdains the use of any textbook in his history classes. He also skips all the frivolous teachers' meetings and gets away with it, which particularly galls Edna. Rounding out the teaching faculty we meet here is Laurelei (Erica Corbett), a young and naive special education teacher who has not yet been around long enough to admit defeat in the face of educational dysfunctionality.
Representing the administration is Vice Principal Wendy (Julie Tidwell) unfortunately, we never get to see the oft-mentioned dean "Willie Wonka." Wendy is a young, annoyingly pleasant go-getter who foists nothing but "motivational" slogans and educational mantras (don't even get her started on her "pluses and deltas") on the faculty. This basically translates into a complete lack of support for the teachers, a fact Edna points out on many an occasion. You might think that the guidance counselor would be a voice of reason in this Votive Pit, but Dr. Jim Evergreen (Dirk Drake) isn't good at putting his book knowledge to practical use; he mainly just tries to avoid conflict.
The Votive Pit plays as great satire, brilliantly illuminating some of the absurdities and entrenched problems threatening to turn the public schools into the kind of nightmare world brought to life so provocatively here by director Mike McShane. The film plays on many levels, I should add, including a distinctly comical one dark comedy, obviously. Behind it all is an unfortunate truth, however, and that is what makes the film so compelling. I can't say I understand all of the aspects of the film, but the project as a whole makes its point exceedingly well. If you're not familiar with independent films, The Votive Pit may play rather strangely to you (the students of Odyssey are, for example, heard but almost never seen, and the Bald Man's surrealistic episodes sometimes make the line between fantasy and reality impossible to discern), but this film offers yet more evidence that the only originality and true creativity in American cinema is coming from the camp of independent filmmakers.