Horror-ble!: [REC]

Is a remake usually better than the original? The Spanish language film [REC] was remade as Quarantine for the U.S. market.

[REC] continues in the recent horror trend of found video footage (started by The Blair Witch Project I think). In this scenario, the story begins innocuously when a soft-news tv reporter follows some firefighters overnight. The reporter, Angela, hopes to get some exciting footage although the firemen tell her most days it is just waiting around. A call does come in though, a report of an elderly woman who locked herself in her apartment, and Angela and her cameraman Pablo excitedly ride along.

When they arrive at the small apartment building, most of the inhabitants are gathered in the foyer with a couple policemen. Things are a bit confusing but they go up to the woman’s apartment, she is a bit incoherent and they approach her carefully, but suddenly she goes berserk and fiercely bites one of the men. As everyone tries to make sense of what has just happened, they discover that the building is in lockdown, with policemen on the outside telling them to stay indoors, that some sort of contagion is loose in the building.

As the film continues, it comes out that a sick dog may have been Patient Zero, spreading a rabies-like virus that is causing the havoc inside the building. Meanwhile, Angela naturally has Pablo continue filming the story, giving on camera commentary when she can. It turns into mayhem and she and Pablo become less of journalists and more of victims like the others, as they accuse each other, hide secrets, and try to get as much info as possible from the people outside. We see, through their camera, as a health technician is sent in to tend to the injured victims, but that he really has something to hide. One by one, they are picked off, and as they get infected, they become killers.

Chicago International Film Festival 2013 is here!

Past seven days

The film festival starts later this week, but that doesn't mean I have slowed down on watching other movies!

A.C.O.D.
Captain Phillips
The Door in the Floor
A Hijacking
The Hunt
Mostly Martha
Romeo & Juliet (2013)
Star Trek Into Darkness
Unstoppable

Horror-ble!: Ravenous

During the Mexican American war, Lt. Boyd (Guy Pearce) admits that through his cowardice—playing dead—he managed to infiltrate and take a Mexican battalion. In public, his C.O. (John Spencer) awards him a medal, but in private he banishes him to a motley outpost in California. Promoted to Captain, Boyd joins Colonel Hart (Jeffrey Jones), the gung-ho soldier Reich (Neal McDonough), the “over-medicated”—i.e., stoned—Cleaves (David Arquette), the loopy Toffler (Jeremy Davies), the alcoholic camp doctor Major Knox (Stephen Spinella) and a brother and sister Indian pair.

Boyd has a secret that becomes more of a problem once a disheveled and malnourished frozen soldier, Colqhoun (Robert Carlyle) stumbles into their camp. He says his wagon train got lost and their guide, Colonel Ives, soon forced them into cannibalism to survive, with last victims being Colqhoun and a civilian woman. Seeing that he himself was soon going to die, Colqhoun escaped and struggled to survive until he arrived here. Hart, realizing the woman might still be alive, bands everyone together except Knox, who has been drunken and unconscious, to rescue her in a cave Colqhoun leads them to.

Boyd tries to convince others that Colqhoun has taken his cannibalism to extremes, equating him to the native American myth of the Weendigo, a creature, sometimes human, that through cannibalism extracts the strength of others, but needing to feed more and more.

Horror-ble!: Martin

As a lead-up to Halloween, the next few weeks will include some posts on horror films! Hope you enjoy and find one to your liking.

The action in George Romero's "Martin" begins on a night train to New York, as a young man, Martin (John Amplas), drugs a woman then slashes her with a razor, faking a suicide. It is not entirely apparent if he actually has sex with her or if he drinks her blood. He is met in Pittsburgh by a dapper older gentleman who takes him to a house, where he accuses Martin of being a vampire. But all the man's religious and vampire talismans are wasted as Martin grabs the garlic and cross, reminding the old man he is a cousin of his. The old man continues in his assertions that the family married into vampires and Martin is one of them.

There are flashbacks in black and white to an incident where a young man who looks like Martin is being exorcised by a priest and onlookers. Like in the present, this young man is unaffected by the cleansing.

Martin continues to live in the house with the old relative and his friendly granddaughter, helping out in the corner store they own by delivering groceries to housewives. While in the house Martin is an average guy and the granddaughter is pretty sympathetic to him--she has heard these family stories for ages too and thinks her grandfather is crazy for thinking Martin is "Nosferatu."

A creepy encounter with a woman doesn't go as Martin expects and he has to improvise.  Suddenly there is a voiceover conversation, and it appears that Martin has called in to a late night radio show to discuss his vampirism. The host doesn't seem fazed by Martin and wants to meet him. Martin calls in several times to talk and although it is somewhat of a release for him, he is always scared of revealing too much.  He starts an affair with a lonely housewife, but still needs to satisfy his bloodlust.  Later the grandfather blames Martin for the death of a woman and does something just as horrible as what he accuses Martin of doing.