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Spectre (2006) Review

Thomas returns to his home town after receiving a tarot card in the mail, a reminder of Moira a past lover he had when he was a young. On returning home he finds his home town undergoing great changes with new apartments and old friends there shunning him as a result of past deeds. We follow him and in a flashback watch the unfolding of his relationship with Moira.

She was a woman told to be a whore and witch by his home down when Thomas was young. She was said to have many lovers and walk around the house nude. This is what brought Thomas and his friends to go spy on her. After a failed attempt at this he is injured and taken in by Moira.

She heals his wounds and at the same time a relationship builds between them. He begins sneaking to her home and all the while the town talks down on her, blaming her for a curse on the town. While their relationship continues he begins being suspicious of her strange behavior. This leads to a rather fiery end to their relationship and what brings the now elder Thomas home. He wants to find whether Moira is still around waiting for him back home.

Part of ‘6 Films to Keep you Awake’ in Spain this is a ghost drama that hits some solid points. The acting is great between Moira and Thomas. The rest of the cast is mostly background and you don’t see them enough to build a connection with them, the primary focus is on Moira and Thomas.

The plot is slow but interesting, as Moira has many rules regarding when Thomas can visit her. With rumors going around the town adding to the mystery of who she is and what is she doing late at night. The town’s superstitious beliefs playing a heavy role in their outlook on Moira. The finale is wonderful and brings everything together in a nice little shock moment for Thomas and the audience.

Killer Klowns from Outer Space starts with Mike and Debbie making out at Top of the World, a makeout point in their small town. When They witness a falling star that lands nearby they decide to take a look. Once there they find a strange circus tent and they work themselves up to take a look inside. Inside is a spaceship with cocoons of cotton candy holding humans inside. They escape to be able to run to Debbie’s ex boyfriend who is one of the sheriffs of the town. He believes her enough to look for proof. While out looking for proof the killer clowns come into town to wreak havoc and take as many people as they can.

This movie has a few issues with timing of the scenes, glaring is when debbie is stepping in to take a shower. After she steps into the shower we see multiple scenes that take a decent amount of time then back to her just stepping out, this makes it feel odd and hard to know what point in the timeline her scene is. Also the Pharmacy scene, while funny, keeps getting slipped between other scenes and drug out longer than was really needed.

Otherwise this film has that right mix of campy lines, and over the tip focus on the technology of the clowns themselves. This works to make the clowns feel grounded in their own otherworldly tech, seeing how they capture humans. The technology they have is very cartoonish in a way with circus themes like popcorn, balloons, cotton candy, and other forms their tech takes. The practical effects and costuming still hold up today and I love the expressiveness of the clowns they were able to bring out.

Grabbed this film from redbox and actually was not disappointed. This is a steady moving supernatural horror. Rachel is a survivor from a attempted murder, but she is left paralyzed and bedridden. Her brother Jesse and his son Alex is there to see her and help her recover. We quickly learn there was a pact or cult involved in the attempted murder and the entities of those that killed themselves want Rachel to give them Alex as an offering as a Pure Unscarred soul is much more valuable than her own. To get her to give in they give her 7 days to give in to their demands while cursing her. She is unable to let anyone hear her voice or they will die and be given to the entities. All through this time the entities attempt to give her visions and pain that are to try and force her to call out and give them Alex.

I really liked this premise and the story did not feel at all overdone. We have a story of the tension of being unable to talk to those that could potentially help you. Along with the fact the constant mental barrage of every night visitations and pain and hallucinations tormenting Rachel you can feel the desperation to not just cry out. All the while Rachel is finding out how to stop this and origins of the cult while being trapped in a hospital bed. This I think is the best point of this film as like Saw the creators did well to keep the story contained into a single room through most of the film.

Characters are not top tier sure, Jesse seems to always talk just below a whisper but clear enough to hear just annoying to keep hearing that. Rachel is well acted, withdrawn and not overly expressive which makes the sequences later on much more strong as she is being assaulted by these things. I didn’t have any issues with the side and secondary actors though the writing for them seems a bit overdone, lots of dialogue in this film with not a lot of movement in the characters.

I loved the camera and special effects work, instead of full on showing what is occurring to the victims of the curse when Rachel does speak we hear most of the effects, cracking bones and twisting flesh while the camera either is viewing at an off angle or in the reflection in a character’s eye or a mirror. While when they do give a full on shot of what happens it is blurred and loses focus in a non-obtrusive way, the special effects could be said to be lower budget but the director did well to work around the limitation and this made the effects work great.

Three boys each having tough lives. Victor lost his father to cancer, Thomas is in an abusive home, Daniel with negligent parents. These friends ditch school on their last day before summer to explore. When they go to an old Movie studio they stumble on a pair of men who kidnapped a woman and are holled up in the basement of the old studio. The boys attempt to contact the authorities but are believed to be lying after other circumstances come to light about what they did during their explorations. They are taken home only to find out that night they are being hunted down by one of the men in an old clown mask.

I loved this film, it starts out very sharp and brutal, but instead of continuing it focuses on giving wonderful characterization to each of our primary characters. I felt for all three of the boys going through their own issues in life when they are descended upon by this powerful force. It plays out like a classic slasher but you add in the characterization of our leads and it enhances the story beyond that premise. The antagonist is very ruthless and imposing when he is in frame not buff but having height and just awkward and strange movements and actions that accent how dangerous he can be.

I felt the ending was a little soft compared to the rest, it didn’t feel like it matched what tension was being built throughout. We never know exactly why the pair were kidnapping that girl in the first place or what was happening to her while she was down in that basement. THis was my only real issue with the film. With this strong leadup and focus on the characters they don’t really get a finishing sequence that felt equal to what we went through to get to that point. It wasn’t horrible but just felt quick and could have been worked on to get a bit more impact.

The story is a coming of age with a much darker tone. Seeing each character existing within more extreme family types and what occurs as a result of the brutality of life comes down on them with those backgrounds. Within each situation where one of the boys must deal with the hunter, we see the advancement and result of each boy’s time growing up within each family situation and how they have handled it. The ending had a symbol I’ll not describe fully here as it is best to experience the movie to see it. Though I can say it sums up the idea that the friends you have in school and growing up always leave a bit of themselves with you whether you are together always or not this mark is with you as you grow up.

The tension throughout this movie is very well done and it was enjoyable. Using focus to bring the hunter towards the background or out of sight as he moves in such disturbing but smooth and precise ways while stalking them. Sound was used heavily to hint at what you cannot see, the sliding of someone along the floor just under what the camera is showing us or offscreen added to the build in more than a few scenes. I loved how the actual more violent deaths, excluding the opening sequence, were held back until the third part of the film making it more impactful when we get the strength of the hunter displayed proudly.

Three girls out in Costa Rica for a bachelorette party/vacation between them. The Bride herself still has some misgivings about the marriage as her fiance really is interested in children while she herself is not. This is shot in a found footage style, bringing the viewer closer to the characters while they have a wild time..and even the bride’s drink gets spiked. During this vacation the group travels to a swimming hole mentioned by some of the natives there. Once there they wade into this murky but beautiful blue tinted pond. Our Bride to be gets bit by something in the pond. This ends their little excursion and they make their way back to the resort where more partying and some regretful actions take place. The acting is a little bland here and for a found footage sequence that sort of hurts the characters.

Once back home, the filming style changes to a more traditional style which fits the actors better. Our bride now has a few things to tell her fiancee but she has a fear about doing so with only a week away from the wedding. His mother is heavy into ritual and he himself is under her roof literally, he lives in the apartment complex his mother is landlord to. He does not stay over with his bride keeping the ritual of no sex before marriage intact.

Her ideas about children and the marriage start changing though as that little bite becomes much more. Changing her into something of pure instinct to create young in a rather nasty way. Her body seeps a slime and small round eggs appear around the house as she slips deeper into this haze and holes herself up within her apartment.

The special effects are very well done, it doesn’t overdo the transformation, matching the 3 or 4 day span this movie takes place in, it does enough to transform her and dress the whole apartment in a slimy mess of eggs, and other liquids oozing from her body in many scenes. The change was still minimal but enough to show her shift into this insectoid creature in a believable way. I can see those not used to more..gooey things to be sickened by this movie.

The pacing of the movie is slow, with nothing very significant happening until the halfway point, even then we get small hints of what is going on to keep us waiting. It keeps this pace up with only a slight faster kick towards the end but still it is not overly fast sort of mimicking an unchecked disease with small bursts of greater injury but overall is a slow withering we are presented, escalating in intensity not speed.

I felt this leaned toward a Power of Nature movie with sprinkles of Body Horror and Creature Feature. We see this woman who at the beginning is not interested or unable to have children, going along with her friends and how her fiance wishes to do things. After she is infected, she finds herself surrounded by thousands of children and being more forceful in her decisions with her Fiancee and her friends.

I would recommend this movie for those into body horror along with fans of creatures. It does a good job of that transformation while not as extreme a change as we saw in something like The Thing or Cronenburg’s works it still has that element there. We see the life cycle of these creatures so we are at the same time learning about these things as we watch the movie.

I was hearing about The Green Inferno for well over a year, with release delays and issues finding a distributor. Finally, the movie is released to theaters and while it had some flaws toward the end I still enjoyed it as a breath of fresh air in the horror climate. Something I’ve been seeing more often in my favorite genre lately.

    We follow Justine, a freshmen in college whom has an interest in a protest group, or more importantly the leader of the group, Alejandro. THis protester group though is thought of by her friends and well herself too as silly or strange as the causes they fight are not standard. Like protesting Janitor’s rights for health insurance as we see in the opening sequences. She, blinded by her crush, is invited by the group to go with them on a mission. Peruvian oil companies in the Amazon are killing off whole tribes of natives to get at the land they have settled on. THis group believes they can stop this from happening and travel there to stage a protest and putting cameras on the atrocities taking place. Once there though their plane crashes and they are taken hostage by a tribe of cannibals.

    As many comparisons to Cannibal Holocaust have been made since Eli first talked about this movie I’ll add my own comparisons. I believe Eli did a great job of keeping this movie as his own while still letting it be as Cannibal Holocaust was. Both of these movies were social commentaries, Deodato’s work was a commentary on the Italian filmmakers taking advantage and falsifying their footage for more shock value by doing very atrocious things to natives and the land alike. While Eli Roth was focused on the more recent ideas of people who act as if they feel and fight for a cause but have no understanding of the cause itself, they want to fight just for the sake of a fight or to further their own egos and exploits regardless of how it affects those who are really experiencing the issue, something we have seen a lot more of recently with an internet based society.

    The violence was exactly as it needed to be. In all of Eli’s movies I have never felt he has overdone the violence. This movie is the same, while yes it is very violent it is used to show what the characters are experiencing. You don’t see a full butchery of a human corpse other than once, when it is most impactful. Other scenes that could have easily given you more full on scenes of this Eli eluded to or showed smaller clips, something the characters themselves did, the first time they are stuck watching as a friend is butchered and cooked but after that all of their focus is on surviving and trying to escape so what the movie showed you was exactly how the characters were thinking. The tension is built by the action itself rather than false scares. Eli built tension and sometimes even just taunts you at what may occur next sometimes leaving you in that suspension to let the movie continue to draw you along. Even amid all this violence and tension Eli instead of giving jump scares to release that tension adds some humor, I couldn’t help but laugh at what occurred but it felt natural.

    The violence though was not the worst of the movie, this surprised the hell out of me as I was watching. The scenes of grotesque gore were done in a way where it wasn’t the most vile thing in the movie. After the screams and cries end The Green Inferno presents a calming setting as all the natives sit down to eat their meal. While it is a human they are eating they are talking, dancing, smiling, being a community. The whole tribe sitting in their smaller groups just eating a meal. This is accented by sounds of only the jungle itself with an occasional tone that is more upbeat. I feel this very well created a good separation between the ones trapped and the natives. While the natives are not doing this to be cruel or evil, it is just a way of life for them. As normal as us going to the store and grabbing some meat, cooking it on a grill and serving it to our family. This is their life and their land, so while seeing a human cut up and served may be disgusting to those trapped in the cage awaiting their end the natives are just doing as they always have done. The children of the tribe play around them and guards keep them in their little pen like the meat they are, there is no villainy in any of the tribe. The sound and music greatly accented these scenes and while feeling minimal it worked.

    I loved the sound of this movie. When we are following the protesters on their quest we have the standard background music of any movie you go watch nowadays. As soon as you reach the amazon though there is barely any music other than tribal drums and the sounds of the amazon itself. This was rather jarring at first as most movies in general try and control emotions of the crowd by using background music to tell you how you should be feeling in the moment. Having a movie that did not attempt this whatsoever, brought out the tragedy of the deaths but also the slice of life scenes of the natives just having their dinner. It was a strange change of pace but it was done well. This minimal background music also brought forward every sound that would normally be muted by music so screams, voices and flesh are primary in your ears.

The actors ran the gamut of average to well done. Those actors in the forefront were good when interacting with each other, but some of the scenes where they were being injured or tense were not extraordinary and could have been a bit better but it didn’t ruin the movie for me. The primary characters made you properly hate or love them, by the end of the movie I was truly despising at least one of them, but never the natives themselves. Now the natives were rather good for being a tribe that has never even heard of a movie. This could have killed the movie but the natives themselves were very good at not looking to the camera and acting normal as if the cameras were not there. Eli made a good choice of actually going to a real tribe rather than hiring a bunch of off the street actors to play the extras. This led to a very real feel to the actions of the natives when not in the very brutal scenes of slaughter. The other secondary actors were a little flat in their performances but as I said before it wasn’t so blatantly bad that the movie lost me.