Kaya Scodelario plays Haley Keller, a swimmer at the University of Florida who has a loving but troubled relationship with her father, Dave (Barry Pepper). With a Category 5 hurricane on a collision course with the state of Florida, everyone has been ordered to evacuate the area. However, Haley is concerned that her father may not have gotten the message or, being the stubborn type that he is, he may have gotten the message and just decided to ignore it. (I could totally relate to Haley’s frustration. When Dallas got hit by tornadoes last month, my Dad not only refused to hide in his laundry room but he also called me up to inform me that he was sitting out on his back patio watching for any twisters.) With the storm raging all around her, Haley searches for her father. When she finally finds him, he’s in the crawlspace of their vacation home. He’s unconscious. He’s wounded. And he’s surrounded by alligators! It’s now up to Haley to save the lives of not only her father but also the family dog. And, of course, she has to do all of this without getting eaten by an alligator herself. Even worse, even if they do manage to outswim the alligators, Haley and Dave are still going to have to deal with the ever intensifying storm that is raging outside.
Crawl is an intense and exciting film, one that clocks in at a brisk 87 minutes and which has a lot more going on underneath the surface than might be readily apparent. Yes, this is a film about two people and a dog who are trapped in a flooded crawlspace by a bunch of hungry alligators. And yes, I’m sure that some people will be totally boring and predictable and make a big deal about the film’s environmental subtext. (“How many more innocent people have to be eaten by alligators before we pass the Green New Deal!?”) But, at its heart, this is a film about relationships. Dave has always been hard on Haley. Haley has always both loved and resented her father. The flooding and subsequent alligator attacks may justify the pressure that Dave put on Haley to become the best but, even more importantly, it allows Haley to show that she actually is the best and that she doesn’t always need Dave to tell her what to do. With Dave spending the majority of the film incapacitated in one way or the other, it’s often up to Haley to keep them both from getting eaten as they try to move from one flooded location to another. It’s up to Haley to keep fighting and fight she does. Haley never gives up and never surrenders and, for me, Crawl is a thousand times more empowering than Captain Marvel or any of the other more obviously heavy-handed “girl power” films that have come out this year.
As directed by Alexandra Aja, there’s not a single wasted moment to be found in Crawl. He plunges straight into the story and the film is pretty much an unrelenting thrill ride from beginning to end. Even more importantly, Aja is smart enough to trust his audience to be able to read between the lines of this genre film without necessarily beating the audience over the head with its message. This is a film that can be appreciated as both a thriller and a heartfelt look at a difficult but loving relationship. This is a grindhouse film with a heart, featuring a strong and committed performance from Kaya Scodelario. As Haley is, again and again, forced to prove her strength, she becomes a stand-in for all of us. Crawl is genre filmmaking at its best, along with being one of the most impressive films of 2019.
4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!
This October, we’re using 4 Shots From 4 Films to look at some of the best years that horror has to offer!
As I watched the end of High Tension, my immediate reaction was to storm out of my office, walk down the hallway, kick open the door to Arleigh’s mancave and yell at him for recommending this film to me. But then, I realized that Arleigh never recommended that I watch High Tension. He recommended La Horde and I got my French horror movies mixed up.
So, Arleigh is off the hook. I have no one to blame but myself and the filmmakers.
Anyway, High Tension is one of those films that starts out well but then totally falls apart due to a big twist that doesn’t make any sense. It’s also a pretty obvious rip-off of a Dean Koontz novel called Intensity. Intensity is a really good book, by the way. Perhaps not coincidentally, that awful twist that ruins High Tension is not present in Intensity. That twist was the one original thing that was contributed to High Tension and it pretty much ruined the whole movie.
Anyway, in High Tension, Marie (Cecile de France) and Alex (Maiwenn) are law students and best friends. Marie is spending the weekend with Alex’s family. She meets Alex’s mom. She meets Alex’s dad. She walks around at night and smokes a cigarette and sits on a swing and briefly spies on Alex as she showers. And then, during the night, a killer (Philippe Nahon) suddenly shows up, kills mom and dad, and kidnaps Alex! Determined to save her friend’s life, Marie chases the killer across the French countryside. For a while, she’s locked in the killer’s truck with Marie. And then, later on, she’s in a car and she’s chasing the truck. Because of the twist, it’s important to pay attention to the scenes where Marie is in a car and chasing the killer’s truck. Because, honestly, I’m not sure how any of that was supposed to have actually happened…
See, I love a good twist. I love a clever twist. I love an implausible twist. I love twists that are totally and completely over the top. What I do not like is a totally and completely unfair twist, one that cheats by basically defying the laws of the physics.
What’s truly unfortunate is that the film works perfectly without the twist. The twist is not necessary. (For proof, just read Intensity.) Up until the twist, the film is well-directed and suspenseful. Cecile de France, Maiween, and Nahon all give excellent performances. The film’s graphic violence may be excessive but it’s still undeniably effective. The nightmare-inducing gore effects were provided by Giannetto De Rossi, who created some of the most effective zombie makeup of all time for Lucio Fulci’s Zombi 2.
I mean, there’s so much that works and then just hit that twist and you shout, “Dammit!”
The kids of the Harry Potter film franchise have all gone their separate ways. Some have moved on to taking smaller roles. Others have begun to take on roles that tries to rehabilitate their image from just being a Harry Potter actor. Emma Watson has had some success in redoing her post-Potter image. Yet, it’s the “Chosen One” himself who looks to really be going with as many left-field film role choices since the end of the franchise.
Daniel Radcliffe has been taking some interesting risks with his post-Potter career. Even before the franchise was over he had begun working on redoing his image. Whether it was doing the stage play Equus or taking on a horror film role with the gothic horror The Woman in Black, Radcliffe seems more than willing to leave his Potter days behind him.
The first trailer from the film adaptation of the Joe Hill penned dark fantasy Horns has now arrived. We see brief glimpses of Radcliffe in the title role with the proverbial horns that becomes the center of the film’s plotline.
Time will tell if Horns will be another notch in making Daniel Radcliffe less the Potter-kid and ore the talented actor he’s turning out to be.
Horns will be making it’s presence know this Halloween 2014.
By all logic, Maniac has no right to be as good a film as it is.
A remake of William Lustig’s notoriously sleazy (if grimly effective) 1980 film, Maniac tells the story of Frank Zito (Elijah Wood, taking on a role previously played to repulsive perfection by Joe Spinell). Frank is a twitchy young man who sells mannequins for a living, has frequent conversations with his dead mother, suffers from intense migraines, and relieves stress by scalping strangers. Much like the original Maniac, the remake is largely plotless. Frank stalks women. Frank yells at his mannequins. Frank pursues an unlikely romance with an incredibly naive photographer (played here by the very sympathetic Nora Arnezeder). Much blood is spilled and the film eventually comes to a conclusion that’s even darker than Lustig’s original.
One thing that does distinguish this remake from the original Maniac is that director Franck Khalfoun and producer (and screenwriter) Alexandre Aja attempt to truly put the viewers in Frank’s disturbed mind. With the exception of a few isolated moments, the entire film is a collection of p.o.v. shots. While we hear Frank talk throughout the film, the only time that we actually see him is during the rare moment that Frank takes the time to look at his reflection. That may sound gimmicky (and it is) but, at the same time, it actually works surprisingly well. Much like Frank, the audience spends the film trapped in his disturbed mind and often unsure about whether they’re seeing something real or having another hate-fueled hallucination.
It helps that Elijah Wood gives a surprisingly credible performance in the role of Frank. While we only actually get to see his face a handful of times, Wood makes every one of those moments count. Unlike the original’s Joe Spinell (who gave a performance that was so incredibly sleazy that he almost seemed to be surrounded by a cloud of grime whenever he showed up on screen), Elijah Wood uses his youthful face and his deceptively gentle voice to turn Frank into a disturbingly plausible threat. With his nervous eyes and rather befuddled expression, Wood makes Frank into the murderer next door One reason why serial killers are so scary is because the majority of them look more like Elijah Wood than Joe Spinell. Director Khalfoun uses Wood’s passive screen presence to put the audience at ease, just as surely as Frank uses his innocent face to fool his victims. As a result, the viewers keep expecting Frank to show some shimmer of humanity. That’s make it all the more disturbing to watch as the film reveals just how much of a monster Frank truly is.
Playing the role of Frank’s love interest, Nora Arnezeder also deserves a lot of credit. While the original film definitely suffered because you never believed that Caroline Munro’s classy photographer would actually be attracted to Joe Spinell, the relationship between Wood and Arnezeder is a lot more plausible and hence, it also has the potential to be a lot more tragic. Without Arnezeder’s empathetic performance, Maniac would just be a numbing collection of scenes of people being murdered. However, Arnezeder creates a character that viewers will actually care about. We worry about her as we watch her relationship with Frank develop but, at the same time, we can understand what she thinks she sees in this shy and eccentric man. As opposed to the original film and despite all of the graphic violence (and it is graphic, make no mistake), the remake of Maniac never feels misogynistic and that’s largely due to the work of Nora Arnezeder. Arnezeder gives us something that the original never bothered to do, a character to sympathize with.
Finally, you can’t talk about the remake of Maniac without mentioning the film’s excellent score. Composed by a French composer who goes by the name of Rob, the synth-heavy score has a wonderfully retro feel to it that pays homage to both the old grindhouse films and also adds a propulsive element of menace to every scene. Much like the electronic score of the far different Upstream Color, the score of Maniac becomes a character all of its own. I would even go as far to say that it’s perhaps one of the best horror score that I’ve ever heard.
I wasn’t expecting much of Maniac. In fact, the only reason I saw it was out of curiosity. I was expecting to be a typical horror remake, a cynical film made solely to exploit the notoriety of its source.
Was I ever wrong!
Maniac is not a pleasant film. It’s a dark and gore-filled movie but, in its disturbing way, it’s also oddly effective and compelling. It’s a film that probably has no right to be good and yet, that’s exactly what it is.
There was one film that had caught my interest once the project was announced in late 2011. The film was going to be the horror remake of the classic, grindhouse slasher flick from 1980 called Maniac. This film is considered by many fan of the grindhouse and exploitation scene as a classic in the slasher genre. It was also hailed by many moral groups as a prime example of how horror cinema was beginning to reach “pornographic levels of violence” especially towards female victims.
So, it was quite an interesting bit of news when the remake was announced and Frodo Baggins himself would take on the role of the film’s serial killer in Frank. It was an inspired bit of casting that gave the film’s early production a much needed boost in interest. It’s now been over a year and the film has made the genre film festival circuits and the buzz surrounding the Franck Khalfoun-directed film is that it more than lives up to the grindhouse and exploitation aesthetics of the original while bringing in a fresh new stylistic take on the slasher genre.
We have below is the first 6 minutes of the Maniac remake and one can see how creepy the POV-style the filmmakers are going to take for the film has turned out.
There’s still no release date announced for Maniac.
If there was ever a horror film in the last ten years or so that has garnered so much love/hate responses from those who watched it then I will say that Alexandre Aja’s debut film Haute Tensiondefinitely reign on top. It’s also from this very controversial film (at least amongst genre fans) that my latest “Scenes I Love” comes from.
It’s actually fairly early in the film with a brutally, gruesome kill by the film’s serial killer that helps establish the tone Aja was going for. We have the scene of Cécile de France as Marie unable to go to sleep and hearing the house’s doorbell ring and her bet friend’s father going downstairs to answer. Unbeknownst to everyone in the house it’s a brutish figure played by Philippe Nahon who proceeds to brutalize and decapitate the father in a very ingenious and very bloody fashion.
This scene was quite shocking when it first appeared on the big-screen especially since it was from a French horror film that usually didn’t have such extreme violence. Well, this scene definitely helped establish the arrival of the so-called “New French Extremity” film movement of the 2000’s and which continues on to this day. One nice trivia about this establishing scene for this film is that the man responsible for the visual effects for the death is none other than Giannetto De Rossi who also happened to have done much of the effects work for noted Italian horror maestro Lucio Fulci.
Last November I posted news about plans to remake William Lustig’s classic grindhouse slasher flick, Maniac, and how the most unexpected choice of Elijah Wood for the role of the serial killer Frank.
The film had it’s premiere at this year’s Cannes Film Festival and the response to the film by filmmaker Frank Khalfoun seem to be positive. Horror remakes have always been hit-or-miss. If such positive reactions are to be believed then 2012’s Maniacmay just be the horror hit of the year.
The film hasn’t been picked up by a North American distributor so any sort of release date for the US is still up in the air. Until then enjoy the first trailer of the film and a good red band trailer to boot.
If there was ever a film that many people who hate grindhouse and exploitation films always like to point out as a perfect example of films that should never have been made it would be William Lustig’s classic 80’s splatter film, Maniac. This film has been called depraved, misogynistic, obscene and those are just the tame labels heaped on this horror film.
There had been talks down the years to make a direct sequel to the film, but the many plans to do so always never got past the development stage. In late 2010, the remake rights to Maniac was obtained by a French company and it looks like the world will soon be seeing a new take on this controversial film hitting the theaters in a year or so.
The film will be produced by the kings of horror remakes, Alexandre Aja and Grégory Levasseur, with Franck Khalfoun (director of the underrated P2) set to helm the project. It’s the role of the serial killer Frank which has been much discussed by fans of the film who either hate or love that a remake was being of it. While names such as Tom Sizemore has been discussed the role finally landed on the lap of a very unexpected choice: Elijah Wood.
Elijah Wood would be the last pick many fans of the original film would make, but I think this pick is interesting in many ways. For one thing, Wood can definitely pull off the serial killer look, just not the beefy way Joe Spinell did. Wood already has done the serial killer role as the mute and creepy Kevin in Sin City. Wood’s casting as Frank can also go a long way in making sure this remake puts it’s own stamp on the character and story. Finally, Wood has the boy next door look that goes against the stereotypical film serial killer.
While I’m still hoping that Aja would do more original film projects instead of remaking past horror films, I am impressed at how he has done with past horror remakes like The Hills Have Eyes and Piranha. Even though he’s producing and not directing I hope he still brings the sort of manic glee to the production that the two previously mentioned films seemed to have which translated to the screen.
My opinion is that if this remake recreates the Disco Boy scene in all its glory then the remake will be the greatest ever.
So, grindhouse fans what do you think of this remake and the casting?
Many people have issues about remakes and reboots. They see it as unnecessary and a proof that the film industry has run out of ideas. I can’t say that either points have no validity to them, but I disagree with both.While all genres of film have had it’s share of remakes and reboots its the horror section of the film aisle which has seen the most. This shouldn’t come as a shock since horror has always been ripe for remakes. The stories in horror films have always been quite simple and producers take advantage of this by remaking them for a new generation. Take the simple set-up, change the time and setting with a new cast of cheap, unknown actors and you got yourself a horror flick which should make back its budget and make its filmmakers a profit.
While most horror remakes usually range from average to truly dreadful there comes a time when one comes out of the horror remake heap to actually show promise and quality not seen in its remake brethren. One such film is in the Alexandre Aja directed and Wes Craven produced The Hills Have Eyes. Aja’s The Hills Have Eyes is the rare horror remake in that its more than a match to Wes Craven’s original and, at times, surpasses it.
Alexandre Aja first burst onto the horror-cinema scene with his ambitious and grisly homage to grindhouse horror: Haute Tension. Haute Tension was one nasty piece of horror filmmaking which brought to mind 70’s and early 80’s horror exploitation and grindhouse mentality. Aja’s directorial debut was a no-hold-s-barred punch and kick to the stomach that was overtly violent and sublimely painful for the audience to watch. Aja was soon tapped by Wes Craven to lead the remake project of his own The Hills Have Eyes and to Aja’s growing reputation as a rising star of horror, he grew as a filmmaker and more than earned this reputation.
Aja’s The Hills Have Eyes follows pretty much the very same story and characters as the original. This remake has abit more of a political sense to its storytelling in that it doesn’t just pit the basic premise of civilized humans versus the primal inbred, mutant hill dweller, but also the different demographics of red state versus blue state. This theme was hammered through to the audience through the subsurface conflict between Big Bob Carter’s (well-played by industry veteran Ted Levine) red state gung-ho ex-detective and his son-in-law Doug’s (X2‘s Aaron Stafford) pacifist mentality. I think this new wrinkle in the original’s sparse and tight story was unnecessary and unsubtly done. I really didn’t want to know what political leanings and motivations the Carter family members followed. What I did care about was how they would react to the outside forces that was soon to menace and attack them.
The first half of the film was very deliberate in its set-up as it slowly built up the tension and dread as the Carter family’s journey through a supposedly short-cut through the desert put them closer and closer to the dangerous people who dwelt amongst the hills bordering the desert road. Once the family becomes stranded in the middle of nowhere the fun begins for horror-aficionados. For those who have seen the original this remake doesn’t deviate from the main story. The hill people who, up until now have only been glimpsed through quick shadowy movements across the screen, were the true cause of the family’s predicament attack in a brutal and grisly fashion. None of the Carter family members were spared from this attack. From Big Bob Carter, his wife Ethel, their three children, son-in-law and young granddaughter they all suffer in one form or another. The night attack on the camper is the main highlight of the film and shows that Aja hasn’t lost his touch for creating a horror setpiece that doesn’t hold back. From the brutal rape of the Carter’s youngest daughter Brenda to the sudden deaths of several Carter family members. This sequence was both fast-paced and chaotic in nature. It also helped push the definition of what constitute a very hard R-rating. Just like Zombie’s The Devil’s Rejects and Roth’s Hostel, The Hills Have Eyes pushed the limits and boundaries of what the MPAA has allowed so far in terms of on-screen violence when it was first released in 2006. I’m very surprised that some of the violence and deaths in this film made the final cut. This film definitely brings back the 70’s style horror.
The cast for this remake was one high point that the original didn’t have. Where Craven had a very inexperienced cast for the original film. Aja had the luxury of a bigger budget to hire a more competent and able group of actors. A cast that was led by Ted Levine who shined in his role as the patriarch of the civilized Carters. Kathleen Quinlan as the mother of the bunch soldiers on even though its almost predestined in films such as this that she would be one of the doomed. The two daughters as played by Vinessa Shaw and Lost’s Emilie De Ravin were quite good in roles that involved some very graphic rape sequences. Much kudos must go to De Ravin for having to perform through her scene during the trailer-camper attack. But the two actors who excelled in the film has to be pacifist turned avenging angel Doug as played by Aaron Stafford. We see in his character Doug the lengths a civilized human being would go through to survive and protect those he cares for. Even if this means resorting to becoming more brutal and primal than the inbred, mutant hill dwellers. It’s in Doug’s character where the basic premise of the clash of the modern with the primitive comes close to matching the same theme in the original. To a smaller degree this was also echoed in the Carter’s teenage son Bobby. Dan Byrd of Entourage plays Bobby Carter and its in him we see the level-headedness of the family. Despite all the horror and carnage he has seen the hill dwellers have inflicted on his family, Bobby remains somewhat calm and even-keeled to protect what is left of his family. The only drawback as to the cast itself was that the opposing family seemed to have been shortchanged. In the original we actually got to understand some of the motivations that drove the hill dwellers to prey on unsuspecting travelers through their area. In this remake the hill dwellers seem more like superhuman monsters and boogeymen. It didn’t bother me as much, but then it also lessened the impact of the story’s basic premise of civilization versus primitives.
Lastly, the look of the film helps add to the grindhouse nature of Aja’s remake. The film has an oversaturated look and feel that took advantage of the desert location and the high-sun overhead. This oversaturation of the film’s look also lends some credence to its grindhouse sensibilities. It looked, felt and acted like something made during the late 70’s and early 80’s. For most fans of horror it would really come down to the special-effects used to show the death and violence’s impact on the audience. Once again, Greg Nicotero and his crew at KNB EFX house show that they’re the premiere effects house. The make-up used to show the mutant effects on the survivors of the original inhabitants of the hills was excellently done. The same goes for the gags used to show the many brutal and messy deaths of both families.
There’s no denying that The Hills Have Eyes was all about pain when boiled down to its most basic denominator. This film is all about pushing the boundaries and piling on violence upon violence. The Hills Have Eyes is not a film that tells us violence solves nothing. Here it does solve the problem for the Carter clan and is also the only avenue of survival of the remaining Carters. The same goes for the nuclear survivors and their offspring who stayed in the irradiated zones that was their home. This film is all about survival and the levels and heights individuals would take to achieve it.
The Hills Have Eyes might not be the original second helping some have expected from Aja after his brilliant, if somewhat flawed first major film with Haute Tension, but it does show his growth as a filmmaker and his clean grasp of what makes horror cinema truly terrifying and uncomfortable. Two ingredients that makes for making a genre exploitation fare into something of a classic. I’m sure that outside of the horror-aficionado circles this film will either be met with indifference or disgust, but for those who revel in this type of filmmaking then it’s a glorious continuation of the grindhouse horror revival that began with Aja’s own Haute Tension, continued by Zombie’s The Devil’s Rejects, Roth’s Hostel and continues to live each and every year with the many direct-to-video releases of cheap, but very good horror films. It truly is a great time to be a fan of horror and Aja’s The Hills Have Eyes more than holds its own against Craven’s original.
Through the Shattered Lens 