ANOKS: Things on Tuesday

I’ve been pretty remiss keeping up with my ANOKS postings this past month as both work-life and home-life have ramped up. You know, just in time for the Holidays.

Kelly originally put “The Thing” in the “Animals Can Kill You” category, which is sort of a misnomer. Though since she didn’t have an “Aliens Aren’t All Friendly Like E.T.” category (which I think would be a good one for next year), we can work with it.

John Carpenter’s 1982 film “The Thing” is a modern masterpiece of horror. Kurt Russell plays the head of an American outpost in the Antarctic that comes across a destroyed neighboring Norwegian outpost, which had found something buried in the ice. Now, everyone is dead. Well, almost everyone. You see, they save a single sled dog…

“The Thing” excels because the isolating Antarctic environment and the cramped, well-worn outpost creates a palpable sense of isolation. And of course, we as the audience know that Very Bad Things are about to happen, and the dawning realization of the crew heightens the horror. This movie also works because the horror is dosed out in fair amounts of physical (the alien’s various transformations are repulsive) and psychological. As the team begins to wonder who can be trusted and who can’t, Carpenter changes from audience-in-the-know to audience-doesn’t-know-either mode. Great, great movie. 10 stars out of 10.

But one of the things a lot of people may not know is that the film is actually based on a 1951 film “The Thing From Another World” and a short story from the 30s “Who Goes There?” (Carpenter’s version is truer to that source material). I hadn’t seen the 50s film in a while and so re-watched it for ANOKS. And, it is also a pretty taut, minimalist thriller.


In it, an American arctic team comes across a spaceship frozen in the ice and they find an inhabitant encased in ice. As you might imagine, the alien is (mistakenly) thawed and hilarity ensues. The film does a good job of pitting military, scientific and societal priorities against one another as the team tries to figure out how to deal with the marauding alien. 8 out of 10 stars.

ANOKS: The Strangers

A while ago, my good friend and fellow blogger Kelly had the idea that we (the collective we of her, me and Jen – as well as anyone else that would like to join in) should do a scary-movie marathon in October, heretofore known as “A Nightmare On Kel’s Street”, or ANOKS. One scary movie-a-day, culminating naturally (or perhaps supernaturally) on Halloween.

That led to a perhaps obvious problem — how do you choose just 31 scary movies? There were way too many good choices. Therefore, we’re going to start thinking and watching scary films a good six weeks in front of Halloween (and even a few weeks after, I mean, because really, you can’t have too many scary movies, can you?) – which I still say is way better than those damned “pre-Christmas” promos that I’ve begun to see in stores.

You can see the sub-genres chosen and the final movie schedule here.

This is going to require some major Netflix contortions – especially when living in a home where love of scary movies is, let’s just say, not completely universal.

First up: The Strangers

Synopsis: A couple (Liv Tyler and some other guy) go to an out of the way getaway house after going to a friend’s wedding. They begin to get harassed by three people in masks, who continually up the intensity of their presence, ultimately perpetrating Very Bad Things to the nice, good-looking couple.

There’s not much new here from a storytelling perspective – isolated locale, plenty of dead phones, for example – but the sparse less-is-more filming (not many effects, gratuitous gore or escalating body count) keep this movie pretty taut and claustrophobic. And if you don’t like being the only one in an empty house, this movie will probably push some buttons. The couple didn’t do anything to deserve or invoke the attention of these psychos, which I suppose is the point – that random evil can happen to you and really ruin your day. As such, that lack-of-plot is where “The Strangers” falls short for me. So, while it’s creepy and atmospheric, it left me wanting a little more.

6 out of 10.

I hope that many of you will join in for ANOKS when you can and offer up your own thoughts on horror-movies!

ANOKS: Haunted Houses

Every locality has an old house or hotel – dilapidated and empty in which strange happenings were rumored to occur. When I was growing up, it was the old converted mansion that served as our local library. Never would want to be caught in there after closing time, let me tell you.

Haunted houses like that are great. You can drive by them and get a shiver, or be stupid teens and try and one-up one another by seeing who can spend the longest time in it before getting the willies and fleeing. You can go visit the otherworldly inhabitants, but leave them there when you’re ready to go.

But what happens when the ghosts come to you?

Two of this week's ANOKS movies (“Poltergeist” and “Paranormal Activity”) share this basic premise: nice suburban family is beset by a series of unexplained occurrences. They try to figure out what’s going on. They call in mediums and investigators. Bad Things start to escalate, threatening the family.



Now I will easily call “Poltergeist” one of my favorite movies of my teenage years. Earlier in the summer of 1982, Steven Spielberg had released “E.T.” – to near-universal praise. One of the things that worked so well in that story was that the family in it didn’t look like a “movie” family; they looked like a normal suburban family. Their house was a mess. The kids bickered. There was a “naturalness” to them. Spielberg and Tobe Hooper channeled that same suburban-reality into “Poltergeist”, where a typical suburban California family finds out they’re living in the wrong house.



I mean, I know this movie’s been copied and spoofed so many times that it’s hard to disassociate it and remember how good (and scary) the original is. Man – a static-snowfield on a tv STILL creeps me out. The tree, the horrible creepy clown doll, the moving-steak-maggots, JoBeth Williams being tossed around like a ragdoll. Still these days, when I want to express manic incredulous faux-anger (which happens more often than you might think…) I will rage, “YOU ONLY MOVED THE HEAD STONES! YOU ONLY MOVED THE HEAD STONES!” Great movie. 9 stars.

Almost 30 years later, evil spirits again descended on a suburban California home. In “Paranormal Activity”, a young couple starts hearing strange things and sets up video cameras to see if they can catch what’s going on. As you might guess, things begin to get worse. A lot worse. In “Poltergeist”, the evil spirits wanted to steal and use the daughter in their other dimension. Here, they seem bent on using the home (and the couple) to manifest themselves in this dimension. Now, “Paranormal Activity” utilizes the same conventions as “The Blair Witch Project” – low budget, handheld cameras, actors you don’t know, and the plot device of “here’s the footage we found afterward”. At least since the cameras were mounted, they didn’t shake around the whole time.



The film does a really good job of building tension, even without explicit effects and really any “action”. The horror and tension are all built in the viewer’s imagination. For me, I was a little extra creeped out because the house that “Paranormal Activity” was filmed in is about a mile and half from our home and looks pretty darn similar. So yeah, sometimes I get a little spooked if I hear something from somewhere else in the house. 8 stars.

ANOKS: The Ring & The Blair Witch Project

This installment of A Nightmare on Kel’s Street brings two movies that I really liked that I thought would make an interesting juxtaposition: “The Ring” and “The Blair Witch Project”.

When I first watched “The Ring”, I found it to be an incredibly well-done horror yarn, and I still do. Naomi Watts as a single-mom that inadvertently stumbles into a cursed videotape (see, just like in “Vacancy” nothing good comes from the VCR). The curse plays out that you’ll die in 7 days, unless of course, you show the video to someone else.

The horror elements are really well done – the plot unfolds at a good pace with some good twists, the tape is really disturbing, the evil Samara is really creepy, and the horse on the ferry… don’t get me started about the horse on the ferry. Though perhaps, my favorite thing was gorgeous cinematography (something rarely brought up in horror flicks…) – taking place in the Pacific Northwest, the whole movie seemed to take place in a muted palette of greys and blues. 8 stars

I think it’s interesting to contrast that movie to “The Blair Witch Project” – which was certainly a phenomenon about a decade ago. The premise is that a video (I can’t remember, was it also a VCR tape?!?!) is recovered from a lost group of slackers that went off into the Maryland woods in search of a local legend, the Blair Witch.

This film couldn’t be more different than “The Ring” – whereas “The Ring” was gorgeously shot and had great production values, “Blair Witch” relied on a home-video-esque handheld shooting that certainly tested audience’s motion-sickness defences. Also, by using unknown actors, the filmmakers really tried to capture a sense of “realism”. Moreso than most, this movie has really been put through the ringer (get it? oh nevermind…) of popular opinion. At first a phenomenon and then receiving the all-too-predictable backlash of “it’s just a gimmick movie”. I’m glad that I hadn’t seen it or thought about it in a long time, because you know what it is? Scary. 9 stars

All horror movies ask you to suspend your disbelief but in different ways. “The Ring” is a gorgeous and creepy and visually disturbing and asks you to put aside the idea of a cursed videotape and spirits crawling out of televisions. “Blair Witch” does of great job of tapping into the very common feeling of “hey, did you hear that?” coupled to an active imagination. There’s very little “action” and almost the whole movie plays on fear and mounting psychological anxiety. It’s very easy to get creeped out when you’re alone in the woods at night — and so the leap you have to make for it is pretty small.

ANOKS: Zombie-time

Vampires have been the “it” undead for a while now – and why not? They’re smart. They’re really long-lived and mysterious. Needless to say, they’re dangerous – ninja-sneaky and super-strong all in one package. And in recent incarnations they ooze all sorts of sexual attraction as evidenced by so many victims going through the whole “No, no, no – yes, yes, yes!” arc while being exsanguinated.

But let’s move down the undead foodchain a bit. Actually, let’s move all the way to the bottom of it. To zombies. You’ve really lost the undead lottery if you end up as a zombie. Why? Because zombies are like the anti-vampire. They’re stupid. They’re clumsy. They’re slow. And zombies probably test the limit of Rule 34.

But I will say that zombies get an “A” for effort. I mean, the thing about zombies is that they are relentless. You can’t talk a zombie out of what it wants to do. And you’re going to tire and need to sleep, but they don’t. And unlike vampires, they don’t stop shambling when the sun rises, so no break there.

And if you’re not careful, there can end up being a lot of them – which is where zombies end up getting really dangerous. I mean anyone with an axe can take out one zombie, but 10? 100? 1000? Man, you got a problem.

Which brings us to the latest installment for A Nightmare on Kel’s Street: Night of the Living Dead and Zombieland.

Night of the Living Dead is THE seminal zombie movie. Made in the late-60s on a shoestring budget, it tells the story of a group of people that attempt to survive the initial appearance of “ghouls” – the recently dead come back to life, or unlife, such as it is. Being filmed in black-and-white with no real known actors gives it a sense of realism and the movie, which starts off seeming like a pseudo-comedy gets pretty ugly, pretty fast with some really gruesome scenes and some gut-turning “gnaw-gnaw-gnaw” sound effects. Despite all the remakes and sequels, it still works. 8 stars.

Zombieland, which came out a couple of years ago, is on the other end of the zombie-apocalypse – after the zombies have toppled civilization. In this send up, a nerd, a mercenary (wonderfully played by Woody Harrelson) and two sisters are survivors trying to make their way to some sort of safety in a zombie apocalypse. Poking fun and both people and the entire zombie-genre, these guys get it right – and with really one of the best surprise cameos in a long time. A lot of goofy fun. 8 stars.

So, maybe zombies are getting a little bit of due after all this vampire-love. In fact, AMC is producing an adaption of “The Walking Dead” – a series which will take place in a not-nearly-so-funny post zombie-apocalypse America.

Hmmm… now I’m hungry.

ANOKS: The Ruins

One of the classic plot devices in horror movies is isolation. The protagonists (or victims, whatever you want to call them) are in a terrifying situation because they’re alone, with little or no chance of calling for or finding help. Think “The Thing”. Think “The Shining”. Heck, even movies we’ve already talked about like “Vacancy” or “The Strangers” rely on the bad guys isolating their targets – because face it, it’s just not as scary if you can dial 911. (Actually, it can be scarier if you can call for help and it doesn’t matter, but I digress…)

Author Scott Smith used isolation to great effectiveness in his novel “The Ruins”. In it, four friends just out of college are partying in Mexico and decide to get away from the same-old same-old of the resort and go see some nearby ruins. As you might imagine, this turns out to be a Bad Idea and there’s all sorts of red-flags associated with it, but being young and not-very-wise, the crew plows on.

The friends (and a hanger-on from the resort that wanted to go along) get to the vine-covered ruins of an Aztec-ish pyramid after a fairly arduous journey. Upon exploring it, they are “quarantined” on it by gun and bow-wielding locals. Then, Really Bad Things start to happen. Because you know what? Those vines aren’t just there for show.

In his previous book, “A Simple Plan”, Smith explored the psychology of greed and disintegration of personal relationships after some friends make some bad choices (it’s a great book if you’ve never read it). In “The Ruins” there is a similar proposition: the friends make some bad choices and get into a bad spot. We begin to watch them crack – both individually and communally – from both a physical (they have little water and food) and mental standpoint as things go from bad to worse to… worse than worse. It’s a really great, creepy mix of horror and psychology.

And I would love to say that film version captures the isolation and psychological horror of the story effectively. But I can’t. Two things missed the mark in the movie: first, they focused too much on the physical horror and not enough on the psychological stress and friends’ relationships unraveling. Second, the movie is too short. Part of the effectiveness of the book is that Smith covers the down time – the worrying, the dread, the hopeful-to-hopeless cycle of not being able to get out of their predicament – and punctuates that with short bursts of action. The filmmakers move the story too quickly – cramming parts together so that is seems like the friends are being knocked around like ping-pong balls and never get to really reflect on their situation.

Still, as a straight-up horror flick, it mostly works -- it’s just too bad about the missed opportunity.

7 stars.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to throw out all our houseplants.