Category: Movies

Books, Movies

The Ruins Is Scarier as a Book than a Movie

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There’s a Friends episode where the characters Rachel and Joey exchange their favorite books to show each other how great their choice is. Joey’s favorite book is Stephen King’s The Shining while Rachel’s is Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. Both end up enjoying the other’s pick, but there’s a funny scene where Rachel has to put The Shining in her freezer because it’s so scary. That’s what Scott Smith’s book The Ruins always reminds me of—a freezer book—because it is just that scary. The first time I read that novel, I would have to close the book at times and physically put it away from me to keep me from reading more. It wasn’t because the book was bad or the plot was lagging; it was because the story was so scary that I would need a little recovery time.

I’ve avoided watching the movie version of The Ruins for a while. Smith’s first book A Simple Plan was made into a devastating movie of the same name that was directed by Sam Raimi, one of my favorite moviemakers. Both of those works have the power to depress me for days after reading or seeing it, and I think that shows how well Smith is able to tap into the human psyche and show the darkness that exists within. Maybe I was afraid the same would happen with The Ruins, but that instead of depression, I would just experience pure adrenaline from fear for days on end. Or maybe I was just frightened that the movie wouldn’t live up to the book.

In The Ruins, a pair of American boyfriends and girlfriends (the girlfriends are best friends) are on vacation in Mexico, after graduating from college. It’s their last hurrah before settling down to jobs or graduate school and the serious task of being a grown-up. While on vacation, they meet people of different nationalities but similar age and become a loose-knit group that parties together. The German among them has lost track of his brother, with whom he came on vacation. They had a fight, and his brother chased after a female archaeologist that he became infatuated with and followed her to a dig site at some ancient Mayan ruins. He wants to go find his brother. The Americans decide to help their German friend find his brother, along with another who they simply call the Greek in the movie (real Greek, not fraternity Greek), and they think maybe they’ll have a little adventure along the way.

What makes the book work so well is the idea of a stranger in a strange land and what can happen when the strange land doesn’t play by the same rules as the strangers. When the Europeans and Americans go to the Mayan ruins, which are looked over by bloodthirsty plant life, they lose their usual tools—cell phones and other technology—and the plant life actually ends up using those against them. They also come across ancient rites and rituals that they don’t understand and fall subject to without knowing about them. In the movie version of the book, this concept is muddy and comes out wrong. Rather than the group coming across as naïve innocents who stumble into becoming a sacrifice, they’re portrayed as—well, spoiled Americans. At one point in the movie version of The Ruins, one of the characters says with righteous indignation, “Four Americans on vacation don’t just disappear,” and immediately I didn’t want to root for these people.

Another big flaw in the film, I think, is trying to physically portray the evil plant life, a vine with poppy-like flowers that creeps and uses mimicry to play the characters off one another, dividing and conquering. The special effects don’t come off as very terrifying—instead, the vines end up looking silly, like they were taken from a scene in the 1970s’ version of the TV series Land of the Lost. This is too bad because the plant is horrific in the book version; it’s what made the book so scary and eerie.

Movies

Pitch Perfect Gets It Right

by horrorfeminista2 Comments on Pitch Perfect Gets It Right

Be still, my nerd-loving heart.

That’s how I felt from the first frame of Pitch Perfect to the end.

When I first saw trailers for this movie, it looked like a formulaic inspiration film—something like the Stomp the Yard or Step Up movies. I thought it would be fun, but not $13.50 worth of fun. I was content to wait until the movie came to video. This is one of the few times, though, when the trailer doesn’t take the best parts of the film and present an unrealistic view of it. There’s comic genius in Pitch Perfect that can’t be conveyed by the trailer. After seeing the stellar review of Pitch Perfect in New York magazine, I made plans to go see it with friends, and those were probably the most joyful 112 minutes of my weekend.

 

At Barden University, there are several a cappella groups, but the two main rivals are the all-female group, the Barden Bellas, and the all-male group, the Treble Makers (who also happen to be the national a cappella champions). The Bellas and Treble Makers faced off the previous year at Lincoln Center, where the current leader of the Bellas, Aubrey (Anna Camp), blew the competition by vomiting all over the audience during their performance. Sadly, that was the only interesting part of the Bellas’ routine. Now, Aubrey and co-captain Chloe (Brittany Snow), the sugar to Aubrey’s snot, are trying to recruit new talent but finding it rather difficult after their competition performance and bad behavior the previous year.

Aubrey and Chloe have no choice but to take on misfits they wouldn’t have given a second glance to the other year, and this is where it gets fun. It’s like all of the stereotypes ever given to women have infiltrated the sorority house. There’s the slut Stacie (Alexis Knapp), the androgynous man/woman and token black Cynthia Rose (Ester Dean), the silent Asian girl Lilly (Hana Mae Lee), and the fat girl who goes by the super-obvious Fat Amy (Rebel Wilson). This crew of misfits ends up bringing the razzle-dazzle that the Bellas have sorely needed. Beca (Anna Kendrick), the alternative girl, is recruited at the last minute after a rather sour start to the college year (she’s forced to go to college with a free ride rather than LA, where she wants to move and get a start on her music career—oh, the horrors). Kendrick is able as the unlikely star and motivating force behind the Bellas, but Rebel Wilson as Fat Amy is my favorite in this very enjoyable cast. Somebody needs to give this actress her own comedy show. She can even make “Um” hilarious when it comes out of her mouth. She was a bright light the few times she appeared on-screen in Bridesmaids last year, but in Pitch Perfect, she steals every scene she’s in.

These goofy protagonists are only as strong as their antagonists, and the Treble Makers are equally worthy and ridiculous as rivals to the Bellas. They’re led by Bumper (Adam DeVine), king of the nerds, who’s completely unaware of this as he throws himself into the Treble Makers’ routines and mocks his competition (“Girl power!”). Beca’s persistent love interest Jesse (Skylar Astin) joins the Treble Makers, but everybody feels bad for Jesse’s adorably nerdy roommate Benji (Ben Platt), who’s obsessed with Star Wars and magic, when he doesn’t make it into the group. The Bellas are warned that if they are ever romantically involved with one of the Treble Makers, they’ll be cut from the team. Beca’s not worried about that, though Jesse does everything in his power to change her mind.

The jokes in Pitch Perfect are fresh and funny. I hadn’t heard any of them before, and sometimes it would take a minute or two for the joke to hit me before I started snorting laughter. And I did snort often. But if the antics of the Bellas and the Treble Makers aren’t enough for you, then surely the team of judges will slay you. John (John Michael Higgins) is a misogynist so steeped in his own bullshit he doesn’t even smell it, and Gail (Elizabeth Banks) tartly meets each of his no-brainers with a zinger that flies over his head. Their show within a show brought something new to the competition faceoff that I’ve seen played out so many times before.

We left the theater with big smiles on our faces, and one friend said, “All right, I’m calling it. That’s going to win the Oscar.”

It should, really—the Oscar for fun.

Movies

The Possession: Don’t Open the Box!

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I was so happy when I saw The Possession take the number one spot at the box office two weeks in a row. It was the little horror movie that could, yet people seemed completely shocked when that happened. They shouldn’t be. When a screenplay agent visited the last coworking studio I was at, Paragraph, he did not recommend doing a screenplay on spec unless it was a low-budget horror movie script because those were always sellable. He also said writers shouldn’t slum and try to do a horror script to break into the business. You really have to believe in your material and bring something new to the table to impress today’s jaded horror fans.

Though I was impressed with The Possession’s success, I ended up being tardy to see the movie. It’s on its way out of the theaters now, and I think part of my problem was finding someone to see it with. Everybody had already gone when I wanted to see it, and it’s no fun seeing a horror movie if you don’t have somebody to scream with. This ended up being the second feature in me and Valerie’s horror movie weekend. While watching, Valerie said she always learns something in horror movies, and within the very first few minutes of seeing this one, the number one lesson was apparent: Don’t open the box.

The Possession has an original premise that reminds me of Joe Hill’s Heart-Shaped Box (where the protagonist goes to great lengths to secure a haunted object advertised on the Internet). The movie opens with a scary scene where an older woman confronts an antique wooden box on her mantel. It emits spooky sounds like a Goblin song from a Dario Argento movie, and it’s pretty obvious who or what is going to win in this matchup.

Next, the audience is introduced to a fractured family—mom (Kyra Sedgwick) and dad (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) have divorced and their two daughters, Hannah (Madison Davenport) and Em (Natasha Calis), are shuffled between two separate residences. Dad has just moved into a new prefab house, and on the way there, the family car passes a yard sale. The girls convince their father to stop—after all, what can be more pleasurable on a fall day than a yard sale? The girls play dress up and frolic, but then the younger daughter, Em, finds the antique box containing the dybbuk and falls under its spell immediately. She convinces her father to buy it, and with that and a whole load of other items, the family makes out like bandits, paying only fifty dollars for everything.

Once the family gets everything home, Em asks for help opening the box, which seems to be impossible as it has no seams. Eventually she’s able to do it by herself in her room, and the box opens to show off all manner of ugly things, like desiccated moth bodies, a huge yellowed tooth, and an antique ring that Em immediately slams on her finger. It’s such an old-lady ring, and Valerie and I were both surprised that her parents didn’t see and comment on such a thing, especially when it starts discoloring her hand like a spreading bruise.

Em begins exhibiting unpleasant personality traits that are not very becoming to a little ten-year-old girl, such as stabbing her father with a fork between bites of pancake, tackling a kid who takes off with her box and beating him senseless, and presenting her mother’s boyfriend with a disgusting gift. Strangely enough, it’s her part-time father who is troubled by this behavior when it was his absenteeism that brought about the divorce in the first place. Her mother blames all the misbehaving on the divorce.

As the undesirable behavior escalates in Em, her father is denied access to her after what looks like an incident of child abuse. But he knows something is seriously wrong with his little girl and goes to find help first at his university, where he coaches basketball, and then with a group of Hasidic Jews in Borough Park, Brooklyn. (Another lesson we learned: Help is near our neighborhood. If a dybbuk ever threatens us, we now know where to go.) He’s turned down by the shul, but one rebel Jew, Tzadok (Matisyahu), agrees to help him. By this time, Em’s mother realizes something is up and has taken her daughter to the hospital, where there’s further confirmation that something’s not quite right. This ended up being one of several scenes that seemed liked paler versions of The Exorcist.

The only difference in the exorcism scene at the end was the religion used, but this wasn’t enough to make it new or scary. Also, I felt there was some cheating. The religious authority said the dybbuk was attracted to innocence so some of the possession choices the spirit made were quite puzzling if that’s the case. Because of this, the movie ended on a rather blah note for me, which was disappointing after it had been going along so well. Endings—they’re so hard to get right.

Movies

Jennifer Lawrence Rocks House at the End of the Street

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My friend’s daughter was staying the weekend with me, and since there are a few horror movies in the theater right now (with more to come in preparation for Halloween—whee, I love this time of year!), we decided to do a horror movie weekend. First up was House at the End of the Street, and my fifteen-year-old charge met me at the Park Slope Pavilion, our favorite shabby-chic theater, with her friend. We fed a friend’s cat that I’m cat sitting (the Halloween-colored Bellatrix), and then went to have a little Thai food, where we told each other ghost stories before the movie. Valerie’s friend lives in a house in Brooklyn that’s been in her family for generations and a few family members have actually died there, so there have been some sightings of great-grandma and others.

Once we were properly in the mood and with twelve minutes to spare, we ran to the theater and got our seats just in time for the movie. It took me a little while to get into House at the End of the Street. There’s a murder where a husband and wife are taken out by their daughter, which frees up the glorious house next door for Elissa (Jennifer Lawrence) and her mother (Elisabeth Shue) to move into. I really liked the casting for the mother-daughter pair—I don’t think I’ve been this happy about a casting decision since Teri Garr was cast as Phoebe’s mother on Friends—but I wish there had been more depth to their characters.

Mother and daughter have been led to believe that the house where the murders happened is abandoned, but they soon learn otherwise at a neighborhood barbecue where everybody bitches about the long-lost son, who has returned to fix up the house and resell it, because he’s driving down the value of their homes. Of course, this is the reason that Elissa and her mother are able to live in their house in the first place, so they can’t complain.

Elissa’s introduced to the perfect neighborhood boy, but later at school when he invites her to a social gathering, she finds out he’s a brat and flees. Elissa is picked up by the next-door neighbor, the son of the murdered parents who everybody else hates, and after that meeting the two form a friendship.

The best thing about House at the End of the Street is Jennifer Lawrence as Elissa. It was satisfying to sit in the movie theater next to two teenage girls and see a worthy role model on-screen for them. Elissa plays guitar and sings, and when slimy kids come on to her or tease her, she doesn’t cave into peer pressure and sometimes even fights back with her fists. Stranded on a dark road with a menacing car passing by, she pulls out her cell phone and dials, being a smart girl. Later in the story, horror movie clichés dumb down her character, but Lawrence still comes off as steely. And at this point in her career, I wouldn’t expect anything less. After playing Ree in Winter’s Bone, Mystique in X-Men, and Katniss in The Hunger Games, Jennifer Lawrence is always going to be the epitome of tough girl for me.

There’s a good twist in the movie that I didn’t see coming, but the ending turns into one of those long, drawn-out climaxes that I’ve seen repeated quite a few times. I’m confident the main character won’t be killed, so I’m just sitting there, feeling ho-hum, until everybody calms down and the enemy is vanquished. The best part of these average horror movies is when the audience’s reactions are out of proportion to what’s on-screen. I think the screaming, the comments of “No, don’t do that; don’t go down there,” and being in a dark movie theater while this is going on makes viewing the movie a richer experience. The audience is always a crucial factor for me when going to see a horror movie.

After the movie, the two girls talked about how they liked it but weren’t really scared, and we climbed on the bus to go home. We sent Valerie’s friend home with instructions to call when she got there so we would know that she hadn’t been chloroformed and kidnapped, and then Valerie and I walked home, talking about important things, like how would you react in a life-or-death situation? Would you be able to do what needs to be done or would you shut down, whimper and curl into a ball, waiting for the murderer to get you? We made fun of the girl going down into the dark, creepy basement, but Valerie said she realized that it had to be done to advance the plot. Maybe this next generation of horror writers will be able to find a more creative way to get the protagonist into the basement or change the location of where the horror is hidden altogether.

Movies

We Need to Talk About Kevin Provides Real-World Horror

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It seems like it’s happening more and more these days, but maybe it’s just that we’re more connected now than we have ever been before. Is it two or three times a year that we hear about a young person going into a school or a public place and then going ballistic, killing as many people as possible in a short period of time? I think the last time this happened was this summer when The Dark Knight Rises opened, and a guy dressed like the Joker went into a midnight showing of the movie and started firing. Immediately, everybody knew, and the victims’ last tweets were made public within a day.

The movie We Need to Talk About Kevin looks at the events leading up to and after such a horrific event through the eyes of a parent, in this case the point of view of Kevin’s mother, who has known that there was something wrong with her son since birth. Eva Khatchadourian has been ostracized by everybody in the town that she lives in ever since her son went on a rampage at his high school. She struggles with an act of vandalism that happens at the beginning of the movie, and the red paint that she removes throughout the movie, as well as the general refurbishing of her house, works as a symbol at various times in the movie. There are also scenes comparing Eva’s life before and after the event. She once lived in a sparkling-clean, posh house with lots of windows and worked as a travel writer. Now she lives in a dark, rundown house with leftover plates of scrambled eggs lying around and works at a travel office where one of her main duties is photocopying. She’s gone from being a confident, put-together woman to one who’s fraying at the edges.

Eva is a flawed person and what her son did was incredibly awful, but it’s hard to believe all of the abuse that she is subjected to in the course of the movie. My biggest question is why did Eva stay in that town where everybody knew what happened? Maybe she wanted to stay close to her son who’s locked up nearby (she’s shown visiting him periodically during the movie where most of the sessions are silent and she sits with a blank face). Maybe she just feels like she has to punish herself for being the person who gave birth to such a monster.

Throughout his childhood, her son Kevin shows the classic signs of a sociopathic personality: he screams constantly as an infant, is incredibly late to toilet train, shows no empathy, and abuses those who are smaller and helpless under him. (A lot of his behavior reminded me of how Nancy Spungen’s mother describes her early childhood in And I Don’t Want to Live This Life.) Kevin is also a master manipulator from a very young age and plays his parents off each other perfectly. Daddy (John C. Reilly) is the good guy and only sees the happy faces that his son puts on in order to get what he wants. It’s Eva who sees what really lies beneath, but even she can be played by Kevin. When he’s sick and Eva takes care of him, Kevin is entranced by a book that she reads to him, and it is the one moment in the movie where Eva nurtures her son and he allows her to do it, even extending the moment with his mother by locking his dad out. Later, it turns out that this story time only served to provide Kevin with his weapon of choice.

Both the actors (Jasper Newell and Ezra Miller) who play Kevin as a young boy and teenager are wonderful. If you thought Damien was evil in The Omen, wait until you get a load of Kevin. Tilda Swinton is equally able as his mother Eva, showing love and hate for her son before the tragedy, but after, her face seems to be a blank slate as she drifts on autopilot trying to put the pieces of her life back together. The only time that she seems to react is when she encounters victims of her son and then her primary emotional response is shame. And I think this is how a woman in her situation would act.

There are visual and sound motifs used in the movie that some might find a little heavy-handed, but I really liked them. I thought they gave the movie more texture and made it meaty. Actually this whole movie could be taken apart as a piece of literature. There’s comparison and contrast, symbols, motifs. But I doubt a high school teacher would be able to get this movie on a syllabus with its dark and twisted themes. A pity since it would provoke so much discussion.

Horror, Movies

Best Sister Horror Movies: Five Films About Sisterhood, Trauma, and Survival

by horrorfeminista3 Comments on Best Sister Horror Movies: Five Films About Sisterhood, Trauma, and Survival

I’m lucky enough to have two sisters, and the relationships I have with them are some of the most important in my life. Because we have so much shared history and are close in age, I don’t think there’s anybody who knows me better, maybe even better than I know myself. But at the same time, there’s a lot of competition and rivalry between sisters that just makes me want to snarl sometimes. That’s why sister horror movies are some of my favorites in the genre. When you have sister characters, there’s natural, built-in conflict. You know there’s nobody who would have your back more but who you might want to drop-kick a minute later. As of right now, here are some of favorite sister horror movies.

1. Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? is my top sister horror film. Two aging, reclusive sisters have a battle of wills that has been years in the making. Blanche, the older sister, has respect and good will as a silver screen star, who was cut down in her prime in an automobile accident that was believed to have been caused by her younger sister Jane. She’s been in a wheelchair ever since then with Jane taking care of her. Jane had a successful career in her youth as a vaudeville performer who went by the name Baby Jane. She supported her family during these early years, but when she grew up, her talent did not. She’s been riding Blanche’s coattails ever since, a position that she resents. Now, Jane is a blowsy drunk out of touch with reality, who decides to stage a career comeback by reviving her stage persona Baby Jane, complete with floppy hair bow and ruffled pinafore. Bette Davis pulls out all the stops in this performance, and I love her bravery in bringing such an ugly caricature to life. What I also like in this movie is that each of the sisters had a position of power at some time in their sibling relationship, and then the positions were flip-flopped. Typically in a sister story, one sister is more dominant than the other—more beautiful, more talented, more something—but in reality, I’ve found that these positions switch all the time. Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, the two actresses playing Baby Jane and Blanche, hated each other, and this really comes through in the scenes where they fight, making for good, dishy fun. Since we have a wheelchair at our disposal, my sister Kristi and I have threatened for years to be Baby Jane and Blanche for Halloween. I’d be Baby Jane.

2. Night of the Comet

This eighties gem came out when Halley’s Comet could be seen from Earth, and people were getting a little pre-millennial. Sisters Regina and Samantha end up staying the night in protected spaces while everybody else has comet parties, and they remain human as a result. The rest of the population has either turned into red dust or zombies. Thankfully, the Belmont sisters had a father in the military, who taught them how to fight and use guns, so they’re able to protect themselves and other stragglers that they come across. There’s some sibling rivalry when older sister Regina has chemistry with what appears to be the last guy left on earth, but Regina and Samantha have sister-bonding moments, too. Night of the Comet is B-movie horror in the same vein as Evil Dead II. It’s goofy and a real time capsule of eighties fashion, reveling in neon and pastel colors, asymmetrical collars, and big, glorious hair.

3. An American Crime

An American Crime is a devastating movie based on a true story, and it will haunt you for days. It’s billed as a drama, but trust me, it’s horror. Sylvia Likens and her younger sister Jenny are the children of carnival workers who travel around a lot. When their mother and father get ready to go on the circuit again, the father decides to board his daughters with Gertrude Baniszewski, mother of their new friends, for $20 a week. When the second week’s payment doesn’t show up, Gertrude whips Sylvia and Jenny. Sylvia asks to take most of Jenny’s punishment when her sister falls because of the brace on her leg, and after that, Sylvia becomes the focus of Gertrude’s abuse, sparing Jenny. But it doesn’t stop with that. Gertrude enlists the help of her own children in the torture of Sylvia, so there are sisters beating on sisters. Catherine Keener gives an incredible performance as Gertrude Baniszewski, and there is such nuance to it that you can see the glimmers of how abuse originates, the cycle that goes on in perpetuity if left unchecked.

4. Ginger Snaps

Ginger Snaps showcases the Fitzgerald sisters, Ginger and Brigette, who are so close in age that they’re in the same grade in high school. Ginger is slightly older, and these two sisters of the weird, whose shared passion is death photography, have a pact to be together forever—in life or death. Ginger and Brigette are late bloomers—hard to believe, but it’s a movie and some suspension of disbelief is necessary. They sneak out, and Ginger is bitten by something wolflike that claws open her chest. Brigette gets her home, and they find that the wound is magically healing. At the same time, Ginger experiences her first period. Following this are some comical body horror moments as Ginger deals with tampon shopping, extreme body hair, and a torrential flow. With this flood of hormones and magic, Ginger also becomes extremely sexual and starts experimenting with boys. The two are pulling apart and bickering, but Brigette is determined to save her older sister from becoming a werewolf. Mimi Rogers appears as the girls’ mother, and I feel like her role could have been so much more. She plays a square mother in hair scrunchies and sparkly sweaters trying to usher her utterly strange daughters through adolescence. She’s daffy but willing to do anything to help her girls. I think a great sequel would include the mother, but so far the two movies following Ginger Snaps have focused on one or both of the sisters.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=011YdVip2KM]

5. A Tale of Two Sisters

A Tale of Two Sisters is a moody, atmospheric Korean horror movie that takes a couple of viewings before all of the puzzle pieces come together. But I like it because the movie takes American horror clichés and stands them on end, creating even more scares because they don’t play out the way they’re supposed to. In A Tale of Two Sisters, older sister Soo-mi, the dominant one, and Soo-yeon, the younger, dowdier sister, accompany their father and new stepmother out to their country house. The father seems disinterested in the girls’ situation, and they end up involved in great conflict with their crazy-acting stepmother. The scenes are bizarre and nonlinear, but they do come together in the end, and the mystery is eventually resolved. It’s a different kind of movie, but it will keep you thinking for days about the complex bond that sisters share and what happens when somebody tries to break that.

Are there any other sister horror movies that deserve to be on this list? Let me know if you can think of any, because I’m always looking for more.

Books, Movies

Getting Lisbeth Salander Right

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I read Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy and was taken by his Lisbeth Salander character—the most interesting one in his books, though she’s secondary to Larsson’s main character, Mikael Blomkvist, who I don’t get at all. Lisbeth has been the victim of both physical and sexual violence, but rather than being undone by it, she uses this to temper herself as a weapon so she can get revenge.

What I like about Larsson’s books is that he didn’t use sexual violence to be titillating; he did seem to have some purpose in using it as a plot device. According to Larrson’s partner Eva Gabrielsson, who was with him for thirty-two years before he died, the reason he wrote so much about sexual violence was because he witnessed the gang rape of a girl when he was a teenager. He didn’t do anything to stop it at camp, and when he tried to apologize to the girl later, she freaked out, screaming, “Get away from me! You’re one of them!” He carried this guilt with him his entire life, and with his character Lisbeth Salander, he tried to exorcise his demons by giving her the power to be the angel of destruction, taking out those who do wrong against women.

The books were pretty clipping reads, but I found myself bored during the non-Lisbeth parts and exasperated by the manwhore character Blomkvist, a journalist who falls into bed with just about anybody, though he seems to have no exceptional qualities. He’s presented as a doughnut of a man, and maybe that’s where his secret powers lie. Lots of people like doughnuts. Otherwise, how can this be explained:

She stopped and smiled at him.

“Do you know what I’d like to do now?” she said.

“No.”

“I’d like to take you home and undress you.”

“This could get a bit awkward.”

“I know. But I wasn’t planning on telling my boss.”

“We don’t know how this story’s going to turn out. We could end up on opposite sides of the barricades.”

“I’ll take my chances. Now, are you going to come quietly or do I have to handcuff you?”

—from The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Stieg Larsson

This is just one of the many female characters who falls for Blomkvist, and while Lisbeth does succumb to his charms, she shakes him off eventually. The series was made into movies in Sweden, starring Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth, and she’s a pretty kick-ass Lisbeth. There’s an intelligence in her eyes that I find just right for the genius-level Lisbeth Salander, who has an eidetic memory and can make abstract connections lickety-split. The only problem I had with the Swedish version is the complicated legal mess that Blomkvist falls into, which leads to his introduction to Lisbeth in the first place. It’s quite tedious stuff that doesn’t film in a very interesting manner.

David Fincher directed an American version of the first book The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo that came out late last year. In this version, Rooney Mara takes on the character Lisbeth Salander. Her Lisbeth is quite a bit different—heavier on piercings and with a more alien-like demeanor than anything else. It’s different than Noomi Rapace’s version, but I can buy it. What I didn’t like is the way Lisbeth’s filmed in this version. There’s lots of T&A shots of Lisbeth that don’t add to the story, and the only reason I can think of for them being in the film is to titillate (no pun intended). I can’t blame the actress for this; I don’t think she made these choices. Instead, it reminds me of the photographer Otto Öse in Joyce Carol Oates’s novel Blonde. He took the iconic photos of Marilyn Monroe on red velvet that may very well have launched her career and tells her this before the photo shoot: “I’m using crushed velvet for a candy-box effect. You’re a piece of candy, luscious enough to eat.”

I can’t say that I’m comfortable with Lisbeth Salander being portrayed this way.

Movies

Revisionist History Continues with Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

by horrorfeministaLeave a Comment on Revisionist History Continues with Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

When I saw the trailer for Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, I was intrigued. So many of our presidents have become heroes, were deified by their deaths, so the idea of pairing off some of our better ones with monsters to see what happens—well, that’s interesting. My young friend Valerie and I spent a subway ride home trying to match U.S. presidents with appropriate monsters. For some reason, we decided President Obama should go up against the Mummy. I like the idea of pairing Teddy Roosevelt with zombies—there would be a whole lot of shooting going on. And his daughter Alice liked to pack a pistol in her purse, so that could make for some great scenes. We’d need a night owl president to go up against werewolves, and who would we pair JFK with? A succubus, I guess.

After seeing Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, I’m no longer sure that this is a good idea. The movie started out well for me, but I think I was manufacturing my own horror. I got to the Park Slope Pavilion Theater this morning for a matinee, and I was the only person there and as jumpy as my cat Marlin, going off when the air-conditioning vents started blowing. It reminded me of when I went to the New Orleans wax museum all by myself. The tableaux there are amateurish and cheesy, but when you’re there all alone with these people-sized figures the terror is amplified. It’s something more about the situation than the entertainment. Unfortunately, two other people came into the shabby theater with its vinyl-covered seats and patched screen, or I think I would have enjoyed the movie better, imagining the creepy things that could happen in an empty theater.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is shot in the steampunk style that I’ve seen most recently in the Sherlock Holmes series, and while it’s lovely to look at, I think the style brings up more questions than it answers, such as, Where do all these people get the tinted John Lennon glasses during the pre-Civil War era? and Why’s this blonde lady running around in pants?

The story’s pretty flimsy and tries to do too much, hemmed in by history or is it the other way around? This is a bastardized version of the Abraham Lincoln story that attempts to hit the major points while also explaining the origin of vampires in the United States. This particular story predates the one that Bram Stoker came up with, and vampire Count Dracula would have been quite surprised by what he sailed into.

With everything that Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter tries to cram in, the story feels rushed and oddly disjointed. Not a lot of time is spent on character development. The audience is quickly introduced to the bad guy, who resembles the Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland but is shown to be undead. As a child, Lincoln loses his mother to this creature and a vendetta is born. Unfortunately, by the time Lincoln matures and is able to do something about this, he appears to have lost his fire. He is introduced to a twitchy mentor, Henry Sturges, who decides to train Abraham Lincoln to be a vampire hunter and killer. What follows is the most half-assed Rocky training sequence that I’ve ever seen. After about a minute with a little pep talk, Abraham Lincoln can suddenly twirl an ax like a baton, which he does constantly throughout the rest of the movie. This version of Abraham Lincoln is too milquetoast to pull it off, though.

That’s what kills me. The moviemakers have taken this iconic image—the black stovepipe hat, greatcoat, and beard combined with oratorical power—and totally blown it. Abraham Lincoln comes off as a patsy for members of vampiric society, and once this is established there is no substance to back up the actual important events of his life. The fight scenes where he contorts his body in Matrix-like gymnastics while twirling his ax handle just look buffoonish, and what should have been a great climactic moment—when Abraham Lincoln grows his whiskers and becomes president of the United States—falls flat.

This movie is all style and no story. There are some moments that could have really been opened up and made memorable—a feeding ball for vampires, an army of undead fighting Union soldiers, the presidential election, for God’s sake. But these events are glossed over, speeded through with a few montages, and instead the movie focuses in loving detail on chase sequences. I felt like I was on a train to nowhere.

Movies

Indulging in Revisionist History with Captain America

by horrorfeministaLeave a Comment on Indulging in Revisionist History with Captain America

To celebrate the Fourth of July, I got a jump on the holiday by watching Captain America. Somehow, I missed this one in theaters last year. I’ve been working on some U.S. history materials the last few years, and what I find most incredible is the history that I never knew, that’s never been taught. This stuff wasn’t in the social studies books that I grudgingly read or I would have been such a fan—the best U.S. history student that you ever saw.

In the deep fact-checking files that students don’t see, I learned about how early presidential inaugurations were free-for-alls, where the public came to the White House to drink and destroy it like a frat house—only to be lured out by tubs full of sour mash whiskey. And then last week, I read about how a senator was caned until he fell unconscious (and took three years to recover from his beating) because he didn’t agree with adding more slave slates during the western expansion of the United States. These are the things that are dusted over and sanitized in social studies textbooks, and now I know that I was taught a very edited view of U.S. history. Still, I wasn’t prepared for the liberties that Captain America took. I felt a little twinge while watching the movie, thinking, That’s not how it went! But the idea of an American hero won out in the end, and I rolled with it.

Now, Captain America did highlight some all-American things. There’s the nighty-eight-pound weakling with sand kicked in his face who then becomes big and strong—those ads were still running in comic books when I read them alongside the ones for X-ray vision glasses. And then when Captain America gains his powers, there’s the gimmickry and massive advertising campaign that the U.S. military concocts. There’s nothing more American than advertising. Poor Captain America gets tricked out in tights with pitiful Capricorn ears sewn to his face mask (I know they’re supposed to be wings, but they looked like little deflated horns to me) and is backed up by chorus girls in high heels because sex sells.

Alongside this Americana is the America that I don’t recognize, where a woman runs special operations and stamps out sexism immediately with one swing of her fist. Then later, Captain America liberates a U.S. Army unit that includes a token African American and Japanese American and no racism. Last time I checked the military was segregated during World War II and Japanese Americans had been forced to internment camps. I don’t know, perhaps where Captain America chooses to walk, a utopian, rarefied universe rises up to greet him.

I wasn’t particularly bothered by this revision of history, and it put me in mind of the Grey’s Anatomy series when it first began and I liked it enormously. It wasn’t until the series had been running for a few months that the show’s creator came forward and said she intentionally gave the hospital’s top staff positions to African Americans. I had never even considered or puzzled over this when watching the show; I just knew that I liked it. After reading about these intentional decisions, I wanted to see more of this reflected in television and movies. Why not create the world we want to live in and see if it follows in real life?

I’m not sure how I feel about this applied to U.S. history, though. I remember that quote from George Santayana—“those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”—and I sure as hell don’t want to have to go through slavery, World War II, Rwanda and machetes, and other atrocities that just seem too mean to believe.

Movies

Pixar Tries Princess Pic with Brave

by horrorfeministaLeave a Comment on Pixar Tries Princess Pic with Brave

With Pixar, I’m used to seeing original stories, but most of them do seem to be boy oriented. This year, Pixar’s offering is geared toward girls, and that means a princess film, which has been almost exclusively Disney’s territory in the animation business.

In Brave, an Irish royal family takes center stage. King Fergus, large, red haired, and with a crunched-up nose, likes to hunt and be wild, and his firstborn, Princess Merida, inherits this trait. His wife, however, is all about propriety, manners, and tradition. She lets her husband and triplet sons slide because they are after all boys, but she rules over her daughter with an iron fist.

On her rare days off from being a princess, Merida goes rogue, wandering the countryside on her horse, armed with her bow and arrow. (This seems to be the ladies’ weapon of choice this year—first Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games and now Princess Merida.) After one of these jaunts, Princess Merida finds out that she will have to marry a suitor, who competes successfully for her hand, from one of the clans. Her mother explains that it’s tradition and she had to do this herself when she was Merida’s age.

Strapped into a dress with her red curls obscured by a wimple, Princess Merida is introduced to the competing suitors the next day, and they are a sorry lot. Princess Merida and her father make fun of them while sitting on their thrones as each is presented. The problem is Princess Merida actually has to marry one of them. Deeming them all unsuitable, Merida takes things into her own hands and defies tradition. The men seem somewhat flummoxed by this, but it’s her mother who’s truly pissed, telling her that she’s embarrassed the men. The princess responds by ripping a tapestry, and her mother tosses her most beloved possession, her bow and arrow, into the fire.

Princess Merida runs away and follows some magical will-o-wisps to a witch’s (no, woodcarver’s) hovel. This woman is conflicted about her abilities, but Merida divines what she is and asks for a spell that will change her fate. This witch/woodcarver complies and presents Merida with a big, fat cake and no certain directions. Somehow, Princess Merida knows what to do, and upon returning home, she presents the cake to her mother as a peace offering. The queen takes ill, and after being escorted upstairs by the princess, she turns into a large, hippy bear.

This is where the story gets interesting. Due to a run-in early in life, King Fergus hates bears; he has an all-consuming passion to destroy bears, so it’s most unfortunate when the queen becomes one. There are funny moments when the queen tries to keep up her human traits while in bear form, and some truly terrifying ones where the queen forgets her human nature and starts attacking her children as a bear would. At the heart of this story seems to be the mother-daughter conflict that some may experience—the mother wanting her daughter to follow in her footsteps and the daughter wanting anything but. There are flashes of something a little darker, too, and I wish there had been more of this in the movie—what happens when a mother resists her maternal nature and instead becomes a monster toward her children?

These are the things that Grimm’s fairy tales are made of and why those stories stick with me to this day. They hit a dark psychological truth that I can recognize in myself. There are glimmers of this in Brave, but in the end the story veers the way of happily ever after, complete with daffy songs and a too-simple resolution. I much prefer the theme of “mothers as monsters” rather than “the ties that bind.” Brave is a pleasant enough movie, but I can’t help feeling that it could have been so much more.