Countdown to Hallows' Eve #4: Descend Into Darkness and Feast Your Eyes
Welcome, once again, to the first ever Countdown to Hallows' Eve event! We're four issues into this thing with four days to go, and while we're counting backwards, let's go back in time to July 19, 2008 (SW@ Ticket #56: Descend into Darkness and Feast Your Eyes) for this special trilogy of fear:
You know what that means, folks; you're in for several minutes of big-chested women and wannabe macho men making stupid decisions to the benefit of mutants, monsters, and tool-wielding maniacs everywhere. And by "everywhere," I mean run-down buildings and roads in the middle of nowhere. So let's get critical!
If I'm going to write this without using too many more exclamation points, I'll have to get some inspiration by first reviewing the horror movies that didn't really scare me.
Most recently, I tried to indulge in Feast: Unrated, the latest Project Greenlight...umm...project from Matt Damon and Ben Affleck (co-created with Wes Craven, the horror movie genius behind the Nightmare on Elm Street saga and the Scream trilogy--still one of the best mystery-slashers ever made, even with the degenerating quality and originality that plague the modern sequel). The movie starts out on a good note, with frighteningly funny character profiles, including name, occupation, useful skills, and life expectancy (which, with giant, skinless, ravenous monsters heading their way, won't be very long).
Otherwise, the few scares are predictable and the presentation of the film indicates more influence by Kevin Smith than Wes Craven. A severed monster-penis flops around the barroom floor like a hooked salmon, and the characters drop enough F-Bombs to make you want to check your ears for sexually transmitted diseases.
Thankfully, there is one meaningful chip off the Smith block present in Feast: the banding together of various freaks, stoners, ass-kickers, and other aggrandized specimens of dysfunctional human normalcy, to pursue the common goal of living whatever life there is to live. It's quite fascinating how many weapons one can find or make in a bar, but if you're looking to be good and scared, don't waste your money.
F+
As much as I like wrestling, I have five words for you: See No Evil equals yawn. Kane "stars" as Jacob Goodnight, a murderous giant who rips out his victims' eyeballs with his jagged fingernails. Seeing as how (no pun intended) the eyes are the windows to the soul, Jacob's MO is more intimate than that of your average movie serial killer, thus an attempt to sell Kane's character (unsuccessfully, I'm disappointed to say) as being more frightening than your average movie serial killer. The plot is simple enough: a juvenile detention center sends eight inmates to clean up a run-down hotel, where Jacob has taken up residence behind the walls. Chaperoning the reluctant cleaning crew is Detective Frank Williams, the officer responsible for putting a bullet in Jacob's head four years ago. One by one, the nine sacrificial lambs are gutted, beheaded, strung up, and splattered every which way, making the clean-up that much more difficult for the remaining "characters." Although The Big Red Killing Machine is markedly more intelligent than Jason, Freddy, Michael, et al, he has less on-screen presence than the crew's cleaning equipment. The cliche of religious-abuse-turns-child-to-serial-killer provides a measure of human interest to a movie that otherwise lacks it, but I still saw no horror in See No Evil.
C-
There's something about total darkness that scares the hell out of me, and The Descent uses that something very effectively.
The Descent should more rightly be called "Yet Another Scary Movie That Never Would Have Happened If Those Stupid Girls Had Stuck to the Plan." But the good thing about horror films is that, stupidity notwithstanding, they attempt to show you something you've never seen before, and they have the potential to scare and consequently entertain. While The Descent is a concept we have seen before (of greater technological, and less cinematic, quality in that Sci-Fi Channel reject, The Cave), it is far scarier than its predecessor.
One good aspect of The Descent is that for most of the movie, we cannot see that to which we have been previously exposed, nor do we really know when we will be exposed to it again. But the darkness does not work alone in heightening our fear; when compared to the well-rendered giant bat creatures featured in The Cave, the fast, poorly photographed humanoid cave-dwellers that hunt our heroines in The Descent are just scarier. They surprise, ravage, and leap away, only remaining on camera long enough to reveal their horrific countenances and shed some blood.
I might also mention that the resources available to the accidental spelunkers are less than those available to the expert cave-divers in The Cave, making the suspense more suspenseful, the horror more horrific, the action more...packed. The anti-climactic cliffhanger ending left me feeling unresolved and confused, which I don't much care for. But between the catalyzing stupidity and the unfulfilling ending, I was thoroughly scared and entertained. Okay, now I'm inspired to use exclamation points!!!!!!!!
B+
Countdown Update (October 26, 2015): The Sci-Fi Channel has since re-branded itself with the much shorter SyFy handle, perhaps in an effort to be more friendly to members of Generation Now. Feast has spawned two sequels, each more ludicrous and senselessly gag-inducing that the previous, so much so that I did not finish the third. See No Evil has had a direct-to-video sequel in past years, and I have not felt even the slightest urge to indulge my non-existent curiosity. The Descent also had a direct-to-video sequel, perhaps too soon after the success of the first outing. I had such high hopes for The Descent: Part 2, which took place immediately after the survivor's escape at the end of The Descent. But the first mistake they made was giving the survivor amnesia as a convenient excuse to send her back down with another group to look for her spelunking partner (whom she has forgotten is dead). The second mistake was bringing the cave-monsters (now termed "crawlers") into the light. It reveals a creature design that is both unoriginal and poorly done; something one might find in The Hills Have Eyes or your average turbo-zombie production. The third was making the true villain of The Descent: Part 2 a human being. It lessened the dynamic between man and monster. It all turned The Descent: Part 2 into something that was less of a sequel to The Descent than it was just an idea I had seen before hundreds of times. Strike three! You're out!
F
And with that,
I am also
out.
You know what that means, folks; you're in for several minutes of big-chested women and wannabe macho men making stupid decisions to the benefit of mutants, monsters, and tool-wielding maniacs everywhere. And by "everywhere," I mean run-down buildings and roads in the middle of nowhere. So let's get critical!
If I'm going to write this without using too many more exclamation points, I'll have to get some inspiration by first reviewing the horror movies that didn't really scare me.
Most recently, I tried to indulge in Feast: Unrated, the latest Project Greenlight...umm...project from Matt Damon and Ben Affleck (co-created with Wes Craven, the horror movie genius behind the Nightmare on Elm Street saga and the Scream trilogy--still one of the best mystery-slashers ever made, even with the degenerating quality and originality that plague the modern sequel). The movie starts out on a good note, with frighteningly funny character profiles, including name, occupation, useful skills, and life expectancy (which, with giant, skinless, ravenous monsters heading their way, won't be very long).Otherwise, the few scares are predictable and the presentation of the film indicates more influence by Kevin Smith than Wes Craven. A severed monster-penis flops around the barroom floor like a hooked salmon, and the characters drop enough F-Bombs to make you want to check your ears for sexually transmitted diseases.
Thankfully, there is one meaningful chip off the Smith block present in Feast: the banding together of various freaks, stoners, ass-kickers, and other aggrandized specimens of dysfunctional human normalcy, to pursue the common goal of living whatever life there is to live. It's quite fascinating how many weapons one can find or make in a bar, but if you're looking to be good and scared, don't waste your money.
F+
As much as I like wrestling, I have five words for you: See No Evil equals yawn. Kane "stars" as Jacob Goodnight, a murderous giant who rips out his victims' eyeballs with his jagged fingernails. Seeing as how (no pun intended) the eyes are the windows to the soul, Jacob's MO is more intimate than that of your average movie serial killer, thus an attempt to sell Kane's character (unsuccessfully, I'm disappointed to say) as being more frightening than your average movie serial killer. The plot is simple enough: a juvenile detention center sends eight inmates to clean up a run-down hotel, where Jacob has taken up residence behind the walls. Chaperoning the reluctant cleaning crew is Detective Frank Williams, the officer responsible for putting a bullet in Jacob's head four years ago. One by one, the nine sacrificial lambs are gutted, beheaded, strung up, and splattered every which way, making the clean-up that much more difficult for the remaining "characters." Although The Big Red Killing Machine is markedly more intelligent than Jason, Freddy, Michael, et al, he has less on-screen presence than the crew's cleaning equipment. The cliche of religious-abuse-turns-child-to-serial-killer provides a measure of human interest to a movie that otherwise lacks it, but I still saw no horror in See No Evil.C-
There's something about total darkness that scares the hell out of me, and The Descent uses that something very effectively.The Descent should more rightly be called "Yet Another Scary Movie That Never Would Have Happened If Those Stupid Girls Had Stuck to the Plan." But the good thing about horror films is that, stupidity notwithstanding, they attempt to show you something you've never seen before, and they have the potential to scare and consequently entertain. While The Descent is a concept we have seen before (of greater technological, and less cinematic, quality in that Sci-Fi Channel reject, The Cave), it is far scarier than its predecessor.
One good aspect of The Descent is that for most of the movie, we cannot see that to which we have been previously exposed, nor do we really know when we will be exposed to it again. But the darkness does not work alone in heightening our fear; when compared to the well-rendered giant bat creatures featured in The Cave, the fast, poorly photographed humanoid cave-dwellers that hunt our heroines in The Descent are just scarier. They surprise, ravage, and leap away, only remaining on camera long enough to reveal their horrific countenances and shed some blood.
I might also mention that the resources available to the accidental spelunkers are less than those available to the expert cave-divers in The Cave, making the suspense more suspenseful, the horror more horrific, the action more...packed. The anti-climactic cliffhanger ending left me feeling unresolved and confused, which I don't much care for. But between the catalyzing stupidity and the unfulfilling ending, I was thoroughly scared and entertained. Okay, now I'm inspired to use exclamation points!!!!!!!!
B+
F
And with that,
I am also
out.
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