PARANORMAL ACTIVITY

You may have heard of Paranormal Activity already, it’s the one with “Scared the beard off of Steven Spielberg” and “Make the execs at Paramount collectively vomit in terror” all over the poster. At this point you’ll probably be thinking that it’s nothing more than overhyped toss and since the actors are unknowns, they use their real names and most, if not all, of the publicity is stating that this is real footage of events that really happened. It kind of reminds me of something along the lines of another overhyped horror, I'd hate to name names but it rhymes with The Hair Bitch Project. OK so far so unimpressed but as soon as the lights went up after THAT final scene I can honestly say that Paranormal Activity is one of the scariest film I’ve seen all year.

A young couple has recently moved into a house together and the girl is experiencing strange happenings during the night that she cannot explain. The fella decides to buy a video camera in order to catch on film what exactly is going and though he is skeptical of any paranormal wrong-doings he aims to put his lovely lady’s mind to rest. What happens over the course of a month of their filming is what very few horror’s are able to achieve and that is a genuine building terror while never once getting boring, never once getting overexcited and shooting its horror load in the faces of the audience before the end of the first act and actually creating something that felt real enough for most of us to sleep with the light on for the next few days. Ours heroes played by new-comers Katie Featherson and Micah Sloat are a completely believable couple and as shit starts to go down and their relationship begins to break down, it’s a credit to their performances that I got that feeling usually reserved for real-life couples, where I actually like those two together and hope they work it out. The chemistry between them is perfectly pitched going from the two fooling around with the camera (Micah even suggests a sex-time recording but is instantly shot down) to Katie at her emotional breaking point. At one point demanding Micah put the camera down while he stubbornly wants to keep film but unlike Cloverfield where the cameraman ridiculously films everything, Micah knows eventually when to put the camera down and when to turn the camera off.

But the real star of the show is the direction of Oren Peli whom creates an atmosphere so uncommon in modern horror that it needs to be seen! Peli isn’t some hyper gore fanatic anxious to get to the blood, guts and monsters without any thought to the actual scare-factor (I’m looking at you Descent 2). He is conscious of how a good ghost story needs to be told, not by plodding uneventfulness but by suspense and the slow escalation of something trying to terrorize the psyche of his victims/audience. It comes to a point where even a creaking door makes the audience squeal. Happily this isn’t a shaky-cam riot where you get nauseous and can’t follow what is happening rather the camera barely moves when the fear start building and is unflinching when the real horror starts.

Paranormal Activity is a rare thing in modern horror; something that is subtle yet totally immerses the audience and creates one of the most effective shockers for years.

On a side note: See this in the cinema! Seriously, the only way to see it is with a big audience in the dark much like when I lost my virginity.


- Pahl Disasterfield

ZOMBIELAND

I will admit, initially, I was very sceptical. It looked like a cheap Shaun of the Dead knock-off or something and despite my love of all things zombie (Zombie Flesh Eaters on mute is the business!), I don’t think I have time to sit through another attempt to recapture the gold that is Shaun of the Dead.

What made Shaun so great was its mix of humour and genuine horror. It had generous amounts of gore, laughs and appreciation for the genre and making things at times heartbreaking creates what I always considered to be as sincere and realistic a zombie film as you’ll ever get. It’d be unfair to compare Shaun with Zombieland since Shaun is actually vastly superior. That isn’t to say I hated Zombieland, on the contrary, its pretty damn good.

Set an unspecified amount of time after the zombie apocalypse and the few remaining survivors are wandering around trying to stay alive, this is where we meet Columbus, a young nerdlinger who has managed to avoid zombification due to his set of survival rules. Eventually he meets up with Woody Harrelson’s Tallahassee, a weapon swinging zombie-killing machine who takes great delight in despatching the undead as imaginatively as possible. The pair head off together, briefly discussing rumours of a zombie free, promise land, picking up Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin along the way and there folk lies yours plot. The thing that needs to be made clear about Zombieland is that this is strictly a comedy first and horror film as a second thought. Sure you have a reasonable helping of gore and one or two jumps in the opening act but we’re mainly playing for laughs here. In fact for a lot of the middle section, the zombies are almost non-existent.

This is kind of where the movies falls down. When we hit the mid-point of the movie it seems to grid to a complete halt. The characters are fun comic roles and while I did find there blossoming relationship between the two main characters to be quite sweet I think that, unlike in Shaun of the Dead, the pacing is shot as soon as the zombie threat dies down and I don't want to say that it is the characters inability to hold onto the movie beyond the zombies, they are all genuinally likeable. Its kind of like it just ran out of things to do until some young upstart writer came bounding in with five pages of script he spent all night writing with the mother of all cameos contained therein and man, is it a fun cameo. If you haven’t heard who it is yet then guard your ears! It worth not knowing cause it really is very cool when it does happen and also manages to kick-start the movie into its terribly fun second half.

Woody Harrelson, it must be pointed out, is superb. The guy NEEDS more roles like this! The delight he takes in killing zombies is (pun-o-mania) infectious. Though he doesn’t reach the loveable and perfectly realised heights of Nick Frost in Shaun, Woody, when he is good, is a joy to watch. Otherwise everyone does a fine job, Jesse Eisenberg’s Columbus is a hugely likeable lead, a role Michael Cera should take a look at as an example of playing awkward teen/twenty-something without the audience wanting to punch him in the chest.

At the end of it all Zombieland is just great fun, its not going to set any new rules for the zombie genre nor break any ground but its waaaaay better than I expected and I really had a great time at it. It’s a perfect Saturday night movie, its not too horrifying nor too bleak that it’ll ruin your evening. It’s the kind of movie you leave with a big old smile and a good time had by all. Also I must mention the opening credits, they are absolutely awesome!

Shaun of the Dead still did it better though.

- Pahl Disasterfield

THE FOREST OF HANDS AND TEETH

Zombies are a cheap shorthand for the end of the world. It costs next to nothing to plaster your friends with corn starch and derma-wax and shamble them in front of a camera. It’s cheaper still if you shut yourself in a basement with baggy eyes and endless coffee, clattering out crowded page after crowded page of the living dead. If left to the uninspired, the wrist underneath that shorthand would’ve grown achy and tired long ago, but lucky us, there are talented people out there, talented enough to reanimate the dead.

People like Carrie Ryan. Her young adult novel The Forest of Hands and Teeth debuted in March. It reads like Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale crossed with Richard Matheson’s I am Legend. Generations after zombies have claimed the world, a tiny village holds out against the apocalypse, protected from a wilderness of mindless cannibals by fence and by faith. A young woman dreams of a world beyond the forest, a life outside the fundamentalist beliefs of her village. Mary can’t stop thinking about the Ocean, inspired by the stories her mother tells her of a vast body of salt-water, unimaginably vast, for “…how could God allow so much water to become useless?” But when her mother dies and she is forced to choose between marriage or the Sisterhood, between a life devoted to a man or a life devoted to God, Mary begins to question everything she’s told and everything she’s ever believed.

The Forest of Hands and Teeth is peppered with flaws. Unreliable narrators abound in post-apocalyptic fiction. If the world wimped out, up would become down, cats would chase dogs, Uwe Boll would make a good movie etc, etc. However, there are unreliable narrators and there is creaky storytelling and The Forest of Hands and Teeth is, at times, creakier than robot porn. At one point, Mary is surrounded by the ‘Unconsecrated’. She is knocked unconscious, awakening later to find herself alive and free of the dead. Is it a miracle? Is it blind luck? Circuit Sluts: Indecent Download is on its way to those lucky contestants who said it's a lazy way of writing yourself out of a corner. It’s hinted that the Sisterhood guard terrible secrets about the apocalypse, that they know more than they’re telling about the zombie hordes, but if you're expecting that to be paid off you're reading the wrong book. This is the first of a trilogy, and Ryan is comfortable saving any answers, even the ghosts of answers, for book two and three. What answers are here are so few and far apart the dots could be joined into any shape.

Where The Forest of Hands and Teeth succeeds is in packing an emotional punch. Ryan’s prose is a haunted, confessional whisper and it’s hard not to empathise with a main character determined to hold onto her dreams, no matter how tough the circumstances. Forced into the Sisterhood after her mother dies, Mary refuses to be broken by a routine of silence and servitude. She bides her time, an atheist in nun’s clothing, sneaking out of her room each night in a hunt for the truth. What do the Sisterhood know about the Unconsecrated? Who is the mysterious girl imprisoned in the room next to hers? The answers might mean exile from the village, but she searches anyway. When the love of her life, a love she thought unrequited, pulls a 180, the relationship comes with a price. Him or the Ocean. His love or her curiosity. Her decision has an emotional payoff that almost makes up for the novel's lack of a narrative one.

Sometimes the constant, sombre tone grates a bit, but for the most part The Forest of Hands and Teeth is an enjoyable read. It's another example of the increasing richness of young adult literature, and it's nice to see zombies used to discuss the clash between reason and faith. It's there in post-apocalyptic fiction, but in a zombie story it's usually second fiddle to the action. Speaking of action, Ryan isn't afraid of having her characters throw down. There's a particularily rocking scene where Mary fights off the undead with a scythe, and if you're a romance fan, you'll find the obligatory love triangle/quadrangle to get hot and bothered by. With Charlie Higson's ya novel The Enemy hitting the bookshops and Zombieland hitting the cinemas this month, The Forest of Hands and Teeth is yet another sign that 2009 is a good year for the end of the world. ~Piotr Harmsden

PANDORUM!

Those of you that have been at the butt end of my venom spitting rants about Transformers 2, highlighting how vile and contemptuous that movie is, would be safe to assume I have chosen my worst film of the year already. I had, that is until I spend 10 bucks to see Pandorum. Ben Foster and Randy Quaid wake up in a spaceship from ‘hyper-sleep’ and find they are ‘alone’ and have no ‘idea’ what is going ‘on’.
There is a lot of yawn-atron science talk where Foster and Quaid explain how the reactor needs to be turned on or the ship will something or other, leading to the ship exploding and whatever whatever. It really isnt THAT important, just take it for me that Foster needs to get to somewhere quick and that means going facing off against body piercing aliens out for blood.

So yeah, nothing ground breaking, but it doesn’t need to be, it needs to entertaining and is it?

…

…

No.

I like Ben Foster and he has always had the (just barely) supporting roles see 3.10 To Yuma, 30 Days of Night and The Punisher and he is always pretty damn good in them. So he gets a nice starring role here and I’ve suddenly developed high hopes! Here is a brief run down of how I felt as this movie…happened.

Ten Minutes In – Don’t know what happening, cool, cause that builds mystery and tension and shit.

Twenty Minutes In – Don’t know what’s happening, ok, there are monsters on board but I don’t know what they look like cause the camera was all over the place. Nice. Way to build some serious monster tension for some sweet big reveal and shit.

Fifty Minutes In – Eh…there ARE monsters on this ship so like why are we pissing about with these guys who are like tribesmen now? Huh? Also why is this fucker explaining the whole stinking story to me.

One Hour In – I don’t care.

Bear in mind between the minutes of forty-five to fifty, I am fairly certain I wanted to leave. But what’s the problem? Its not so much the acting as across the board it’s pretty solid, where the problems lies, is, well, everything else. The lighting is too dark, the camera is obviously on speed and the twist is so inherently dumb but has a smugness about it like if a stupid person looked you dead in the eye and said an outrageous lie but you can't disprove this lie, even though you know its incorrect.

What’s worse is the immense boredom throughout the near two hour length. I can handle stupidity (The first Transformers aint gonna win any Smart-ass prizes but its damn entertaining) but its when its coupled with extreme levels of boredom due, mainly, to many of the key scenes looking like a camera vomited onto the projector. Any monster attack is coupled with the camera darting all over the screen as if to look anywhere BUT where the monster is at. There are moments where I genuinely thought our hero was in danger when it turned out he had been in the clear for several minutes. The direction didnt manage to tell the story in any way. That might explain the clunky, convoluted dialogue that peaks in one scene where we are actually explained everything by a man who for all intents and purposes is pointing at a blackboard telling you pretty much everything has gone down up to that point. This film had such little respect for its audience that it needed to sit them down and walk through the entire back-story just so they ‘get it’ when the final reveal comes. Its one of these horrible set-ups that is a wink to the audience, a ‘oh, be sure not to forget THIS’ that just lost me entirely.

OK so it’s not Transformers 2 bad but its big problem is that it damn smug. It has this idea that it’s a dark, psychological horror that will shock and terrify you, when its just really badly made. There is little to no benefit to see this, its one of these films that will show to the party, leave and everyone will ask the next morning, “wait…Pandorum was here last night?!”

- Pahl Disasterfield