Drew Barrymore's Whip It (2009)

I don't know jack about roller derby, but that's okay, because in a sixty-second sequence the rules are explained, after Ellen Page's Bliss Cavender raises her hand and asks at tryouts. By the end of Drew Barrymore's Whip It (2009), knowing the rules of the game is really non-essential, although watching the fantastically-shot roller derby sequences is a lot of fun (Zoe Bell, as Bloody Holly, is amazing to watch in action). Whip It is a wholly positive film about fitting in, finding a family, and figuring out what's important in life.

Bodeen, Texas: the boys have got football and Pearl beer; the old folks have got bingo; and the ladies have the beauty pageants. Brooke Cavender (Marcia Gay Harden) is doing the vicarious-living bit with her two daughters, younger Shania and seventeen-year-old Bliss (Ellen Page). The first scene of the three together, exiting a local pageant, says all: Former-queen Brooke walks proudly side-by-side with little Shania, holding an obscenely large trophy, while older Bliss shuffles behind with her eye-catching, blue hair looking a little towards the ground. The local diner, where Bliss works with her best friend, Pash (Alia Shawkat), serves a huge pork sandwich, entitled "The Squealer," which is free if eaten in under three minutes. In a small town gossip moves quickly and some of Bliss's more popular schoolmates come into the diner to tease her about the blue-hair pageant fiasco. At the local mall, where Brooke is taking her daughters shopping, Bliss wants a pair of boots from the head shop, but Brooke gets embarrassed after commenting on the pretty "vases" under the counter. Three young ladies roller skate into the shop, with brightly-colored hair, piercings, and tattoos, and leave fliers for a roller derby event in Austin on Friday. Bliss takes one before leaving (with her boots).

Austin, Texas: Bliss and Pash make the trek to the roller derby and have a blast. Bliss even catches the eye of young rocker, Oliver (Landon Pigg), and the two develop a romantic relationship over the course of Whip It. The most important person Bliss meets is Maggie Mayhem (Kristen Viig), who plays for the "Hurl Scouts" team and encourages Bliss to tryout for the league. Bliss pulls her Barbie skates out of the attic and hits the asphalt to practice.

As Whip It unfolds, Bliss finds the family and acceptance that she wants in the Austin counter-culture and roller derby league that wishes she had back in Bodeen. Wiig's Maggie becomes a close friend, older sister, and even a sometimes mother to Bliss. Wigg is incredibly endearing in her role and she really makes a strong impression with her performance. Her scenes with Page are heartfelt and feel real: these two aren't too cool to avoid talking directly to each other about their feelings. The rest of Bliss's teammates, Rosa Sparks (Eve), Smashley Simpson (Barrymore), and Bell's Holly really rally around Bliss's energy and enthusiasm. They all develop a deep sisterly kinship and support for one another. Even Whip It's bad girl, Iron Maven (Juliette Lewis in a great performance) is drawn to her competitive spirit; and despite her teasing, Bliss doesn't really find anything at all wrong with her new home in Austin.

Despite the solace Bliss finds in Austin, the real drama of Whip It takes place back in Bodeen with mom, Brooke, and dad, Earl (Daniel Stern). In the very brief scenes which Barrymore shows Brooke and Earl together and alone or apart and alone, the scenes speak loudly. Stern's Earl watches his neighbor's sons toss a football in their front yard, while his neighbor proudly watches his two sons. Bliss catches her mom making her rounds quietly as a postal carrier, possibly with the image in her mind of a once-beauty queen working hard to make a better life for her two daughters (even though Bliss doesn't share her dream). Harden is one of the finest actresses currently working in America today, and she gives a stellar performance. Barrymore also takes time to focus on Bliss and Pash's friendship, and Shawkat is excellent in her role. The screenplay by Shauna Cross (based on her novel) doesn't take the easy way out: Bliss has to come to terms with her Bodeen life before she can move on to her new life in Austin. Barrymore could just coast on the comedy and the roller derby scenes (which are a lot of fun and infectious), as the trailer emphasizes, but she and Cross take the time to add genuine emotion to the drama. The attention to detail in character and development in Whip It is equal to its attention to visuals and locations. The performances (especially Page who gives another brilliant turn after Juno), the direction, and the screenplay are what make Whip It memorable.

Whip It was, for me, as much fun as Greg Mottola's Adventureland (2009) (which also has a performance from Wiig). A little film that deserves a lot of attention and is one of my favorites of this year. See it.

Ti West's The House of the Devil (2009)

Ti West's aptly-titled The House of the Devil (2009) embraces a theme that I often think about (usually while driving my pick-up truck or while stuck in traffic): technology. Culturally, technology is a beautiful thing: often its advancements are celebrated and quickly integrated into our daily lives. There in no quicker way to earn the moniker "grandpa/ma" than to not have some new gadget; in fact, it's even expected (think of your boy/girlfriend or spouse being not able to reach you twenty-four hours a day on a cell phone). Technology has also been embraced by art: where would science-fiction be without strong imaginations aided by the artist's view of present and/or future technology? However in some genres, specifically horror, technology has become (not always) a detriment. In 1975, Stephen King published his phenomenal horror novel, 'Salem's Lot, about the literal death of the titular small town in Maine by vampires. King's novel became more prescient than possibly its author (or reader) imagined. The motif of small-town isolation was key to the novel's success while culturally, the small town in the U.S. was about to metaphorically die: gadgets and innovations, such as the cell phone and the internet make isolation impossible. As soon as the first pair of fangs would have sunk into the neck of the first victim, someone at the local drugstore would have tweeted its happening from his/her iPhone. 'Salem's Lot could not be set in present day and neither could West set his 2009 film during present day. The House of the Devil is set in the Walkman/tight pants/big-hair era of the 80s, and God Bless Ti West for it. Here we go:

Sophomore college student Samantha (Jocelin Donahue) is perusing her prospective apartment for rent from The Landlady (Dee Wallace). Samantha desperately desires some independence and privacy: her very messy roommate likes to shag in the early morning, sleep during the day, and attend classes leisurely. Samantha's problems are also financial: she doesn't have enough money to cover the deposits for the apartment, but The Landlady cuts her some slack and waives them. She'll take only the first month's rent by Monday, and the apartment will be Samantha's. Samantha is grateful, but her financial woes continue. She needs a job to come up with the money to live off campus. On a bulletin board, outside of her dorm, Samantha spies a posting for a "Babysitter Wanted" and a phone number. She dials the number from a pay phone and gets an answering machine. Samantha leaves a message, and as she is walking away, the pay phone rings (ominously as *69 hasn't caught on yet). The voice on the phone asks Samantha that he is in dire need of help immediately and would she meet him in front of the student center? She accepts to meet, but the voice no shows. Samantha meets her pretty, happy-go-lucky friend, Megan (Greta Gerwig) over pizza, who tells her to relax: all her financial worries will be taken care of. Samantha's despondent after the no-show by the voice but during the early evening, her roommate awakens and tells her that a guy called. A babysitter is still needed, for tonight, and will Samantha take the job? Yes, she will.

The voice on the phone is revealed to be the very tall, elderly, cane-bearing Mr. Ulman (Tom Noonan) who lives in a very large home out in the country with his wife, Mrs. Ulman (Mary Woronov). Mr. Ulman is as desperate as Samantha: tonight's a very important evening, a rare solar eclipse, and Mr. Ulman told a small fib: he doesn't have a child but an elderly mother. Please accept the job, Samantha, I'll give you an extra hundred, making two hundred. Fine, how about three hundred? Four hundred, says Samantha. Megan, who drove Samantha to the house, thinks the guy is a weirdo and splits, but Samantha is taking this job, despite her friend's attempts to dissuade her. It looks easy enough, since the old man and his wife are only going to be gone for a few hours with an infirm mother who needs little care. Good luck.

The House of the Devil moves at a very slow place: it begins at the early morning appointment with The Landlady and ends at the very end of the p.m. hours, near the end of the eclipse. The deliberate pacing of the film allows time to get to know Samantha and view her surroundings, but the pacing of the film also mimics the pacing of low-budget horror films of the late-70s and 80s, where a lack of money had to be stretched out with as many scenes as possible to fill ninety minutes. I immediately think of films such as those by John Carpenter, such as Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) and Halloween (1978). There are a litany of scenes of watching Jamie Lee Curtis's Laurie Strode walking around her neighborhood, either in the morning where she meets Tommy Wallace, with her friends after school, or during very late Halloween evening before the start of the final act. In fact, The House of the Devil is shot similarly to Carpenter: Carpenter is the king of classic compositions: close-ups, mediums, and wide static shots, occasionally punctuated by a smooth and following tracking shot. When Megan drives Samantha out to the house for her job, the scene is shot nearly identical to the scene in Halloween when Annie drives Laurie to her babysitting gig (a sequence which was filmed incidentally by Debra Hill as a pick-up shot, as Carpenter relates on my Criterion laserdisc commentary). Watching people walking and talking is not necessarily compelling cinema, but during that era, filler was necessary. West successfully channels that vibe. There are other nods to films of the period, such as Theodore Gershuny's Silent Night, Bloody Night (1974), starring a very young Mary Woronov. I'll stop before I geek out some more, as I loved this period of horror cinema.

What West excels at so well, however, is the sense of isolation through the absence of modern technology which creates the horrific and driving tension of The House of the Devil. West does it quite playfully: Samantha's only contact with the outside world from within the House (save running from the house to another location) is with a wall telephone: it's not a touch-tone phone but the slightly-slower rotary phone; and it has an extra-long cord, connecting the receiver to the headpiece (emphasizing the absence of the more convenient cordless remote phone). This phone is seemingly the only one in the house. When Megan leaves and drives away, Samantha cannot contact her while driving: no cellular phones, so Samantha has to wait for Megan to drive all the way home and check her answering machine for Samantha's messages. There is no internet or computer in the house's office but a pair of eyeglasses within the desk with lenses as thick as coke bottles. Samantha takes her time to explore all of the house, and West drops clues to the older couple's true identity and foreshadows the Satanic final act.

Finally, really the only way that the viewer would ever know that The House of the Devil was a horror film is by its title (which really, though, succinctly says everything about the film). The film belongs to that rare class of cult films which generations discovered usually on late-nite television, often on some local television station's "Horror Theatre," (which West also jokes on within House) and all alone sitting on the couch, the viewer was scared witless by the unsuspecting and unexpected horror (since it was probably the only thing worth watching on the four or five channels). With the advent of VHS and especially DVD, those now older viewers are feeling nostalgia for the cinema, and they're popping up on new formats. Those older viewers want to revisit and recreate that scary evening late at night on the couch. The House of the Devil is a new horror film, born from nostalgia from another generation and made with a lot of love. The House of the Devil won't appeal to all viewers, but for those from another generation, like myself who remembers scares from another era, will love it just as fondly. See it.

Clarence Fok's Don't Open Your Eyes (2006)

"You bastard! I'm an evil man and I'll become an evil ghost. I'll come back for you!" These ain't words about Kenny but words from the dying lips of Killer (Roderick Lam). Killer has just eaten a clip of bullets from Sargeant Seven Yiu (Alex Fong), who auspiciously ran into Killer on a rooftop in a t.v. antenna fiasco. Seven was assigned to find Killer and his crew. Earlier in the day, a ransom pick-up from a Killer kidnapping went horribly wrong and involved a police officer's death. The dead police officer was filling in for Seven during the sting; however, Seven was too drunk that morning to show up for work. Lickety-split, Seven's giving up the bottle, as he tells his partner Keung (Sammy Leung) as they leave the mortuary. Madame Tsui arrives after Killer's killing and pulls Seven and Leung off duty and reassigns the duo to the Seventh precinct for clerical work. Seven gets a text message from his sister about his Auntie Seventh: she's dying and has some important words for Seven. At her bedside, Seven listens as Auntie explains: Auntie was the seventh child of her generation and so is Seven. When the seventh member of the previous generation dies, the seventh member of the younger generation acquires immediately a special gift: "ghost-eyes," the ability to see spectres walking and interacting on the human plane. I guess Seven is going to see Killer again whether he likes it or not in Clarence Fok's Don't Open Your Eyes. (2006).Don't Open Your Eyes is a Jing Wong production (who also possibly scripted; I could find no information on its credited screenwriter, G.K. Fung), and the film has all of the hallmarks: slapstick humor and farce, sometimes offensive, sex, violence, and stunts, and this being a horror film, some scares, maybe. The director, Clarence Fok, is probably best known to Western Asian cult film fans for his Category III classic, Naked Killer (1993) (also a Wong production with Chingmy Yau and Simon Yam). Some of my other Fok favorites are The Iceman Cometh (1999), Her Name is Cat (1998), and Century of the Dragon (1999). Fok is no stranger to Hong Kong exploitation cinema, and he and Wong are kindred spirits. Both Wong and Fok really have a command of a low-budget: it's not as if they are able to hide their budgets and make their films look more glossy and slick; rather, their films feel as if the low budget is embraced and celebrated: few locations, multiple camera angles, and fortuitous lighting. There is a real spontaneity within the cinema, as if the Fok and Wong are making up the scenes right before shooting and the actors react and have fun. Don't Open Your Eyes is a recipe for uneven cinema or a bizarre melange of sequences.The seven motif drives the horror within Don't Open Your Eyes (as if you couldn't tell from the plot set up). Wong regular Wah Yuen plays Uncle Bing who is the supernatural consultant to the Seventh Precinct (a job, if qualified for, I would heartily accept and perform to the best of my abilities). Yuen delivers the best supernatural scenes, especially with his daughter, Pearl (Monie Tung), who's often possessed by rogue spirits. Yuen's Bing tells Fong's Seven that he'll help him with his supernatural conundrum, and at Bing's home he'll summon Wai (the dead police officer) to help him. The seance scene is pretty cool and atmospheric, and like a lot of supernatural HK cinema, there's a real emphasis and detail with the rituals. Bing prays to General Kwan, and there's a fantastic scene later in the film where Bing dresses up to stop Killer. This scene follows the most offensive scene of the film which is made all the more disturbing by some cheap comedy by Leung's Keung (whose character is the primary vehicle for all of the film's comedy). However, a Jing Wong film without an offensive joke would be short-changing the viewer, cheap joke or not. Killer's crew, Lotus, Lun, and his lady, Ling, provide some brutal and nasty gangster action, machine gun and machete-style, to balance the horror hijinx and humor. The action sequences are fast and intense with an emphasis on bloody squibs (old-school exploitation style). Jo Kuk plays Fiona, and she and Fong provide a sweet and sentimental romance within Don't Open Your Eyes.

Hong Kong horror/comedy cinema, for me, is like an addictive drug: intense or mellow, it always gets me high. If you're a fan of the genre, or Fok or Wong, Don't Open Your Eyes is a bizarre film packed with multiple commercial and exploitative elements, guaranteed to surprise the curious.

Bille August's Smilla's Sense of Snow (1997)

Smilla Jasperson, a scientist who works in the study of ice and snow, born of maternal Greenlandic descent and paternal American descent, lives in Copenhagen, and on the way home, she discovers a young Greenlandic child, Isaiah, to whom she has grown closer more than anyone living, laying dead in the snow in front of her apartment building, apparently having fell to his death from the rooftop. Smilla doesn't trust the police's explanation of Isaiah's death (an accident) but trusts her own intuition, "her sense of snow," and begins to investigate the mystery behind the child's death in Bille August's Smilla's Sense of Snow (1997).

To begin with, bad pun intended, Smilla's Sense of Snow is cold. Its opening imagery of an Inuit fisherman in Greenland with dogsled in tow, who encounters a mysterious explosion, which leads to a furious snowstorm to the imagery of the film's primary location, a very cold Copenhagen, the film's coldness is literal. August's film style appears the same way: classically composed, close-ups, medium, and wide shots punctuated by smooth and flowing tracking shots, accompanied by minimal use of soft music. Nothing is colder, however, than the performances within the film, especially of its primary character, Smilla, portrayed by Julia Ormond. Smilla is a wonderfully drawn character (Peter Høeg, who authored the novel of the same name, is a personal favorite of mine. His novel is brilliant, as are his other works. I recommend giving all of his work a read.) Smilla's cultural heritage seems to be born from complete polar opposites: her mother was a Greenlandic hunter, who lived within and lived off the land with an extreme reverence. There are multiple words within her language for snow. Smilla relates, in a dinner scene with shy, stuttering neighbor (Gabriel Byrne) that after her mother's death and her subsequent move to Denmark to live with her father, that she would not sleep indoors. Smilla feels a kinship to the snow and its magic. Perhaps this kinship led her into her current career and obsession: the scientific study of ice and snow, of which she is an authority, unmatched really by anyone in the world. This logical and deductive side is born from her paternal heritage: her father is a American scientist (Robert Loggia), also well-respected and held in repute, who very much loves his daughter yet doesn't really understand her. Smilla's cultural heritage is unique, and she is a unique character: beautiful, complex, intelligent, obsessive, and very cold. Despite her cultural heritage, Smilla is very much a member of the human race and should have emotion. Of course, Smilla does, but the rendering of these emotions are not felt by the viewer, neither from August's direction nor from Ormond's performance.For whatever reason, August does not want to let the viewer into Smilla's Sense of Snow. Smilla's angry and stand-offish (understandably, the viewer will later learn) and she often lashes out on the unsuspecting. For example, when Gabriel Byrne's character comes out of his apartment to offer something to drink or eat (really some company) shortly after the discovery of the child's corpse, Smilla angrily accuses him of preying on her supposed vulnerability: Byrne just wants to get her wrapped up in emotion and take advantage of her. Byrne's character sees behind her anger: he knows she's hurting and doesn't completely mean what she says. On paper this scene feels intimate and close; however, August's rendition is seriously lacking: medium shots from the two speaking from two different levels atop the stairs. The performance by Byrne is kind-of quiet and sweet but Ormond's performance doesn't resonate. Her emotion feels contrived, as if an actor is attempting to portray an actor's version of anger. Raw emotion from Ormond would have been welcomed but there is virtually none at all. Even her scenes with Isaiah, shown in flashbacks, are rigid and forced. The dialogue is unoriginal and trite: "Go away," Smilla says, "I'm not going to be your little friend." "Would you read me a story?" asks the small, sweet child. In a ridiculous, sing-songy mocking voice, Smilla says "No, I won't read you a story." Ormond's Smilla has similar scenes with the child: the real driving force for Smilla's obsession in the mystery is truly lacking: how is anyone supposed to feel for her?To be fair, Smilla's Sense of Snow appears as if its director and its performers were intimidated and confused as to how to render Høeg's complex novel. His novel is filled with emotion but a lot of Smilla's conflicts are internal. August, taking film's visual storytelling too literally, is unable to crack the transition from page to screen. The overall feel of Smilla's Sense of Snow, beyond its coldness, is conservatism: succeed or fail, August and his performers aren't going to take any risks. It's almost as if August just wants to objectively film the action and gamble that his viewer will be intrigued. Well, first-time viewers perhaps will: Smilla's Sense of Snow is a very intriguing mystery and it's worth seeing to watch it unexpectedly unfold. Then again, Høeg's novel is an expertly-rendered mystery, so I would much rather recommend it. A missed opportunity, Smilla's Sense of Snow should fade into obscurity as a would-be curiosity.

Hong-jin Na's The Chaser (2008)

Hong-jin Na's The Chaser (2008) is a story about one man, Jung-ho (Yun-seok Kim), feeling the first pangs of guilt. Jung-ho is a police detective turned pimp and he just forked out a bunch of cash for some new ladies. His recently-purchased ladies are disappearing: at first, Jung-ho believes his ladies are running away, as he tells his shady creditor to whom he's in debt for the purchases. Two go missing and then a third. A client calls and asks for some company and there's only Mi-jin (Yeong-hie Seo) left. Mi-jin is sick at home and her seven-year-old daughter is playing nursemaid. Jung-ho could give a damn that she's sick and tells her to go to work. The cell-phone number from which the prospective client called is familiar: in fact, the last time any of his missing ladies were seen, it was with this client from this number. The cell phone belongs to Young-min Ji (Jung-woo Ha), and Jung-ho makes a seemingly logical deduction: this bastard is taking my girls and selling them. Jung-ho instructs Mi-jin to text him when she arrives at her client's home, but Young-min is not selling the girls. Mi-jin can't get a signal from her cell phone from Young-min's bathroom. She's a prisoner, and Jung-ho doesn't know where she is.

The Chaser is a well-crafted thriller that takes places over the course of primarily one evening. Beyond its excellent plot, the film is also a searing portrait of its main character, Jung-ho, and his nemesis, Young-min. Hong-jin Na shoots his film objectively in the modern style, producing a very slick-looking and intimate film with some disturbing scenes of violence, some over-the-top yet grounded humor, and fantastic drama. The plot of The Chaser and the character arcs are seamless. Jung-ho goes through three revelations as to the condition of his missing ladies: runaways, kidnap victims, and [insert your best guess here after I set the plot up for you]. His first two beliefs as to the ladies' condition are based on his material nature while the final one is based in his hidden humanity. Jung-ho looks and acts like a modern business man: slick-looking clothes, drives a Jaguar, and has a well-structured business: his assistant, whom Jung-ho calls "Meathead," solicits business cards all throughout the city and Jung-ho holds multiple cell phones for prospective client contact and close-monitoring of his ladies whereabouts and accounts. Since Jung-ho is hurting financially, because his ladies are missing, Jung-ho believes the problem is financial: someone is ripping him off. Jung-ho sees his ladies as cash-producers, not people. When one of his ladies gets assaulted by a john, Jung-ho takes the opportunity to beat the would-be client and take all of his cash: he's going to make some money off one of his ladies, one way or the other. It didn't matter that she could have been brutally beaten or had another mundane and innocuous transaction: the bottom line is the almighty dollar. This is, of course, Jung-ho's most glaring flaw, and the viewer watches The Chaser asking "is Jung-ho diligently searching for Mi-jin, because she's the last bankable lady in his stable or somewhere, during the course of the evening, does Jung-ho soften and look for Mi-jin out of remorse and feeling?"Young-min is a sick individual but he's slick. His operation is equal to Jung-ho's: well-structured and almost contingency-proof. Young-min knows how to play the system, as well. The police and the politicians are tied up for the night: the mayor of Seoul is making the rounds amongst the locals. An angry protester throws some feces his way. The police nab the "shit-thrower" but fail to prevent the embarrassment. Failing to efficiently take care of the Jung-ho/Young-min/Min-ji situation will make the police and its government appear amazingly inept. Watching Young-min interact over the course of The Chaser is extremely unassuming: it's only really towards the end of the film that the viewer is able to look backwards and see his motives in action.It's difficult to write about The Chaser, because I believe the viewer really needs to know little about it and just experience it. Hong-jin Na's film delivers unexpected twists and turns amongst the backdrop of a masterfully-executed visual style. The streets feel real, because The Chaser is filmed that way: the viewer is never outside of the action, as all the locations feel authentic. Na's compositions are equally organic: nothing in The Chaser feels showy. The lighting is perfect. The minimal use of music is effective, as it only accompanies a few intense scenes. The performances rival the plot for which is better, and in the end, I'll take both. The Chaser is one of the best thrillers that I've seen in a very long time. See it.

Karyn Kusama's Jennifer's Body (2009)

I've never seen a Megan Fox movie, although I've seen her adorn numerous glossy magazine covers while standing in line at the grocery store. I've never seen a film directed by Karyn Kusama, although her two previous films, Girlfight (2000) and Aeon Flux (2005), look kinda cool. I have, however, seen Jason Reitman's Juno (2007), penned by Diablo Cody, who won the Academy Award for her screenplay; and Juno is a personal favorite, one of my favorite films of this decade. I didn't even know that she wrote Karyn Kusama's Jennifer's Body (2009) till after it premiered in theatres (I read very few film sites). Cody's screenplay for Jennifer's Body was the primary attraction for me seeing it, and I didn't really know what it was about (although some horror bloggers that I follow have given it some recent attention).

Amanda Seyfried (who looks a lot to me like a young Naomi Watts) plays Needy Lesnicky, who currently resides in a mental asylum, and from within those walls, she's going to tell her story as to how she got there (some killings had something to do with it). Needy is a cute, young high-school student, who's also very smart and very normal. Needy has a cute, young, smart, and equally normal boyfriend, Chip (Johnny Simmons), and her best friend, Jennifer (Megan Fox), is a strikingly-beautiful cheerleader. They're an odd couple of "BFFs," as one student remarks to Needy during a pep rally, "Why are you waving at Jennifer?"; then, "You two must be lovers." Jennifer asks Needy to go a bar to see an indie band, Low Shoulder, whose lead singer Jennifer's gots the hots for. Devil's Kettle, their small town, doesn't have a club but the one bar, named after a waterfall which collects in a whirlpool (leading down into a seeming endless pit). The band's frontman, Nikolai Wolf (Adam Brody), is smitten with Jennifer, even more excited, because he believes that she's a virgin. The band starts playing and a fire breaks out, trapping everyone inside. Jennifer and Needy escape, along with the band, Low Shoulder, who really kept their cool during the whole goings on. Nikolai asks Jennifer if she wants to ride with the band in their van, and she accepts. Needy goes home alone. Jennifer shows at her house later, caked in blood with a ravenous appetite and a need to vomit up a big, black nasty pool of viscous liquid. Rock on. Time for Jennifer's Body to hit the high school with some demonic hijinx.

As I sat in the theatre, I began thinking why does this film feel so familiar? Well, my high school years are very over, but when I was thirteen or fourteen, the Jennifer's Body of my generation was called Heathers (1988), directed by Michael Lehmann and smartly-scripted by Daniel Waters. When I was twenty-three I remember taking my very cute girlfriend to see Robert Rodriguez's The Faculty (1998), also smartly-scripted, this time by Kevin Williamson. Jennifer's Body is a dark comedy/satire of high-school life against a genre backdrop (for Heathers, it was a teenage Bonnie and Clyde; for The Faculty, it was an alien invasion). Jennifer's Body opts for a demonic, Succubus-driven spin. Cody is a sharp, observant writer (also exec-produced) and she brings her spin on the satire, perhaps for a newer generation. Cody's immediate strong point is her female characters, often armed with an acerbic wit and a sassy tongue, and Needy and Jennifer are great characters. However, I really love, as she did in Juno, when she subversively pens ineffectual, stuttering male characters, like Chip, or poseurs, like Nicolai. Traditional cinema is full of shrill, emotional, and vulnerable female characters, so it's really fun to watch Cody turn the guys inside out (as Jennifer literally does throughout the movie). One of the best scenes is when Needy and Chip have sex: it's really humorous when Chip immediately begins groping her breasts, and when Needy's having a demonic moment with Jennifer, while Chip's working away, he asks, "Am I hurting you?"

Cody's dialogue and story is terrific, and I wish that Kusama's visuals matched her words. Jennifer's Body is way too glossy for the material. I really wanted a gritter feel to the material, although there are some great compositions, like a wide shot of Fox swimming in the lake after a kill or the beautiful shots of the waterfall and whirlpool. Fox is dead sexy on screen and she looks devilishly good, and the effects are well-done when she gets sinister. Seyfried really carries Jennifer's Body, and she's outstanding. If she weren't good in her role, then the film would just feel cold. Surprisingly, Jennifer's Body is really tame in terms of sexuality. There's nothing really steamy or shocking, but overall, the film has a truly risque vibe that just really teases the viewer: a smart choice by the film makers (keeping the focus on the story and the dialogue). The violence, like the sexuality, isn't over-the-top, and the film doesn't really provide any true scary bits (I'm certain that this wasn't intended as a traditional and true horror film).

Since Ms. Megan Fox gets a vast amount of fanboy love (she's quite good in the film, also; it looks like she's having a lot of fun), after viewing Jennifer's Body, I've pretty much accepted my fanboy-love for Diablo Cody. I'll line up for any film that's she's involved in, and Jennifer's Body is a lot more fun than it should be. Cody's certainly captured my heart, in demonic fashion.

Toshiharu Ikeda's Evil Dead Trap (1988)

Late-nite media personalities, at least in horror cinema, have it bad: poor radio DJ Stevie Wayne, atop her lighthouse station, in John Carpenter's The Fog (1980); sweet and unsuspecting host of television show, "While You Were Sleeping," Ángela in Jaume Balagueró & Paco Plaza's [Rec] (2007); and Nami, also a late-nite t.v. show host of a sensational news show (of clips of horrific news stories), in Toshiharu Ikeda's Evil Dead Trap (1988). Stevie really gets thrown for a loop: she's just spinning her records and keeping the sailors tuned in with her seductive voice, while the ominous fog comes in across Antonio Bay bringing in ghostly figures from past. Ángela just wanted a little action, beyond folks eating, sleeping, and watching t.v.; she didn't expect at all the horror which awaited her within an apartment building in the wee hours of the morning. Nami, however, should know better: she accepts an invitation to horror. Here is what her invitation looks like: a videotape sits at Nami's editing deck in a envelope with a label which reads, "For those who suffer from sleepless nights." Thinking its a work tape, a submission from a viewer, Nami pops it into the VCR. The initial imagery is from a person's p.o.v. while driving: shots of tollway exits, tunnels, roads, etc. leading to a location. Nami stops her fast-forwarding when the tape shows a bound woman, and now the camera seems to have a knife attached to it: a penetrating cut to the woman's abdomen followed by an extremely graphic piercing and slicing of her eyeball. After the killer (and camera person) finishes the victim with a final stab, the camera lingers on the disfigured face of its victim. In a static shot, the image pixelates into Nami's face. Nami's a little shocked.
Nami wants to investigate, but her producer attempts to dissuade her.
It's probably not genuine.
We don't have the money in the budget for an investigation.
Fine, then, do what you want, but I'm not responsible.

What does Nami expect to find?
A corpse, which would equal some serious and needed publicity for the show.
Nothing, because it's a hoax.
A killer, maybe.
Toshiharu Ikeda's Evil Dead Trap (1988) is a low-budget exploitation/horror film, which became quite (in)famous in the pre-Internet era, which is quite an accomplishment in itself. Its low-budget roots are glaring: its central focus is a genuine location, seemingly an old army base in Japan once used by Americans. Its main building and curtilage seem quite large. And spooky. It looks like the type of place where kids do not want to play, but film makers fall in love at first sight. Takashi Ishii, the screenwriter (and writer/director of many of an (in)famous exploitation flick, himself), pens his script around it. Nami and four of her colleagues decide to investigate the location, and within ten to fifteen minutes of Evil Dead Trap, the five have arrived, using the video that Nami received as it was intended: a map. The five immediately split up: Nami goes in one direction alone; Rei, Nami's stylist, and Kondo, a production assistant, also a budding couple, go in another; and Akio and Rya, the final two in Nami's production team, go in another. Rei and Kondo begin squabbling. Apparently, during their first date, Kondo had a little too much to drink. Rei shrugs him off when Kondo apologizes. "It seems as if everyone stopped working," says Rei, "and just left," as she investigates the location's workshop. Kondo is nowhere to be found. In a closet, Kondo pops out wearing monster teeth and gives Rei a scare. She pushes him down and Kondo gets up excited. Whether its the location, Rei's aggressiveness, or their seclusion, Kondo and Rei decide to shag. Rei cleans up, and Kondo splits, leaving Rei all alone in the workshop.

Akio and Rya are snapping photos and chit-chatting in a spooky, rubble-filled room. Apparently, Nami really does need this story. Being a woman in the media with an all-woman production team means Nami has to work twice as hard to be successful. Rya leaves the building and wanders off alone, hoping to find their vehicle. Rya wants to go home. Akio finds the main location shown on the videocassette and enters.

Nami finds the corpse of an animal, riddled with maggots, in another building. A mysterious stranger appears, wearing a black suit and dark sunglasses. The dark stranger asks Nami what she is doing here. She's a television reporter and investigating a story. Who is he? He's looking for his brother, who is somewhere in the building. Don't take any risks, says the stranger, and be careful for what you go looking for. The stranger wanders off, and Nami and her team reunite, minus one.
Story, setting, and location are simple, but Ikeda's execution (and violence) are unique in Evil Dead Trap. The score by Tomohiko Kira is effectively well-done and evocative of Dario Argento's Deep Red (1975) and John Carpenter's Halloween (1978). Nearly every murder sequence is completely different; the killer doesn't have a particular motif, so each murder seems out of a different film. All are extremely bloody and very disturbing. Several shifts in tone and atmosphere are disorienting: slow and quiet in daylight, slow and quiet in a dark tunnel, fierce and intense and quick, one-time sensual and sexual, and often graphic and explicit. Ikeda's visuals are disorienting as well: his camera doesn't often match the action but goes against it: for example, one character will be seen going down the hall, while the camera is running the other way and capturing the action; or in a scene, where the crew spies something down a long corridor and the camera zooms in and pans out (making the crew and what it spies collapse together within the frame). Ishii ties the location together with as many exploitation elements as he can imagine, while Ikeda delivers an incoherent and multiple style visually, atmospherically, and viscerally. The ending is mind-boggling. Over twenty years later, Evil Dead Trap stands above most slashers which have come after, so its notoriety is unsurprising. As a caveat, Evil Dead Trap is still perhaps too much for a lot of viewers, so beware.As I write this entry during the witching hour, I am glad that even with its most liberal definition, an amateur blogger cannot really be considered part of the media. Just writing about Evil Dead Trap gives me the willies, and it is a film "For those who suffer from sleepless nights."